[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[david buchanan]

Matt and all MOQers:

dmb asked Matt:
...consciousness is needed to speak any kind of language and to play any 
kind of game, so how could a language game create consciousness?

Matt replied:
..."consciousness" is a stance, the first-person stance.  We attribute 
consciousness to things that have an individual perspective, like a person 
or a bat,..  what we call "consciousness" is a function of playing a 
particular language game, the one that creates the first-person stance, the 
one that uses seems-statements.

dmb says:
Thanks for trying, but I still have no idea what you mean. Consciousness is 
the first-person stance? I've never encountered that meaning of the word 
before. Are you talking about the subjective perspective here? 
Self-consciousness? Any creature that has sense organs? And if this applies 
to creatures that WOULD talk about how things seem IF they could talk, then 
in what sense is their "consciousness" created by a language game. As I 
tried to explain in the post you're responding to, I'm not saying you're 
wrong or challenging this position. I'm telling you that I don't know what 
you mean. i would ask you to notice the fact that you're using a very odd 
definition for the central term "consciousness" nor have you informed me 
what you mean by "language game".

Matt said:
The point I'm trying to convince you of is that to give a microstructural 
explanation of an event does not imply reductionism.  All it does is give an 
explanation for a particular purpose (prediction mainly).  You can have 
neurological explanations and mystical explanations.  Reductionism would be 
if you thought a given explanation _emptied out_ all there was to a given 
event.  The pragmatism I'm trying to enunciate purges itself from the notion 
that one could _ever_ empty out an event. That's what I think it means to be 
a nonreductionist...

dmb says:
I still don't see how you split that hair. As I see it, giving a 
neurological explanation for a mystical experience most definitely empties 
out the meaning of that event. It doesn't explain enlightenment, it explains 
enlightenment AWAY. It describes the highest in terms of the lowest. Its 
dismissive, insulting and condescending. Plus, I think its simply incorrect. 
I think these microphysical events don't cause or explain anything about the 
mystical experience. There only the vaguest of correlations between brain 
activity and the content of experience even in simple matters and so I would 
also suggest that microstructural explanations of enlightenment are really 
quite preposterous. And reductionist. And then just so you don't think I've 
lost my edge, I'll say that pragmatism seems to be very good at emptying out 
events, if emptying out means what I think it means, which is something like 
"to render meaningless or inert."

Matt explained:
The kind of flexability in vocabulary I'm trying to encourage is the kind 
illustrated by Pirsig in LILA, page 387, with the Dharmakaya light: "he 
thought that the light was nothing more than an involuntary widening of the 
iris of the eyes of the observer that lets in extra light and makes things 
look brighter, a kind of hallucinatory light produced by optic stimulation, 
somewhat like the light that comes when one stares at something too long."  
When Pirsig says "the light was _nothing more_ than..." he sounds like the 
reductionistic physicalist you're trying to accuse me of being.  But Pirsig 
isn't, and neither am I.  Pirsig is simply giving the microstructural 
explanation of what the light is.  And he clearly does not think that that 
empties out its explanation.  He goes on to talk about it for another couple 
pages.  What he's not doing is adding directly to the _microstructural_ 
explanation, he's providing other explanations for other purposes.

dmb says:
I appreciate the use of example, but I'm not impressed with your 
interpretation here at all. In fact, I think this section makes MY point 
quite neatly. Pirsig is saying that he had dismissed this light as a kind of 
hallucination. The microstructural explanation is used to describe a 
meaningless perception that ought to be dismissed as a trick of the eye. 
Then he loses that dismissive language and talks about the light in terms of 
the artists who saw and rendered it, its appearance across cultures and its 
spiritual meaning. Microstructural and neurological terms can be used if the 
purpose is to empty out the importance and meaning of what you're 
describing. And it seems to me that this is very often the case. I think 
this is one of the central problems with scientific objectivity, one that 
the MOQ is aimed at fixing and that physicalism, reductive or not, looks way 
too much like the enemy. It creates the same sorts of problems and adds some 
too. As I understand it, SOM is a broad label that applies to a variety of 
philosophies, and I'm really beginning to think yours is one of them...

Matt said:
Now, as far as I can tell, to be a naturalist as you want to be, and not a 
supernaturalist, you have to think that all events have microstructural 
explanations, like the one Pirsig gave.  That's what it is to dissociate 
yourself from the idea that God could step in at any moment and change 
things...

dmb says:
Huh? Rejecting the supernatural makes me a naturalist? And a naturalist has 
to think that all events have microstructural explanations? Physics and God 
are my only choices? Yep, that sure sounds like the same old SOM trap. Gotta 
be a nihilist or a dogmatist, is that it? No. I think that's the problem 
we're trying to overcome. Anyway, my comment to Scott was not meant to 
reject any and all belief in divinity. (Here's a thought for tommorrow or 
another day; God is a metaphor that can't be literalized, can only be 
refered to by way of metaphor.) I'm just saying that spirit is natural. And 
so I'm also saying that microstructural explanations do NOT apply to all of 
nature. I think microstructural descriptions are good at describing 
microstructures - and that's about all they're good for. Don't you recall 
Pirsig's pithy little sayings like "you can't find morals in a microscope" 
and how certain levels of reality can't be detected by scientific 
instruments? Don't you take this as a major theme in Pirsig's work and 
therefore find physicalism to be quite incompatible with the MOQ? I do.

Matt continued:
...What you don't think, if you are a pragmatist, a nonreductionist, is that 
a microstructural explanation _empties out_ the event.  The only way that 
could happen is if language stopped growing and every possible thing that 
could be said in the frozen language had been said.  That _was_ the dream of 
reductionists--to find the language, hopefully small, probably physics, that 
could explain everything and that _that_ language would be the _only_ one we 
would ideally need to speak.  But that's not what we have with static 
patterns and Dynamic Quality.

dmb says:
The only way these physical explanations can empty out the event is if 
language was frozen? I don't follow you. I don't know about the reductionist 
dream. Sounds like what the positivists were doing. Is that who you're 
talking about? In any case, you seem to be re-defining "reductionism" in 
such a way that its nearly impossible for anyone to be a reductionist. As 
you may have imagined, I had none of this is mind. As I understand the term, 
a reductionist is somebody who thinks everything can be reduced to a more 
basic element. And as far as I know this word is applied most often to those 
who think mind can be reduced to matter. I can see that you're using 
alternative terms and you want to deny the nihilistic effects of such 
physical explanations, but your escape clause makes no sense to me. And it 
seems that leaving the term "all" out of Rorty's definition of physicalism 
was just a little to convienient for you. Hard to escape the reductionist 
charge when the "all" is put back into the definition. Not that you have to 
follow his every move, but it seemed to rig the game in your favor. Maybe 
I'm too suspicous here, but I had to mention it. Perhaps you like to explain 
this apparent act of disengenuousness  -  in microstructural terms. ;-)

Thanks
dmb

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