[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

Thu Mar 30 14:30:01 PST 2006

Matt/Ant

Well sometimes you want to talk to one person
and get real into it, jargon and all for speed, that seems
perfectly acceptable to me.

DM

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ant McWatt" <antmcwatt at hotmail.co.uk>
To: <moq_discuss at moqtalk.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2006 7:51 PM
Subject: [MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

> Matt, DMB,
>
> Matt explained the following to Dave Buchanan March 18th:
>
>>I will admit that conversations between Scott and I can spiral into
>>idiosyncracy fairly quickly, but that's because, in our search to
>>understand each other, we stop playing to the crowd at some point so that
>>we can establish some kind of understanding between each other.  My focus,
>>when writing posts to Scott, isn't on general conversation at the moment,
>>its on Scott.  The idea is that, if we start out in a general, public
>>conversation, where things aren't hooking up and making sense, we'll 
>>spiral
>>into a more or less private conversation to figure things out, and then
>>when we think things are settled, we'll move back out into the public
>>conversation and attempt to hook the more obscure terms we've using with
>>terms that are more understandable to others.  It's just the normal course
>>of inquiry.
>
> Matt,
>
> I understand the thinking behind this explanation but for the benefit of
> newer members and people who haven't read much Rorty, Davidson etc but are
> interested in the issues being discussed (such as myself!) I think you 
> need
> to be clarifying non-MOQ terms to a greater degree especially considering
> the rate of posts that go through here.   Otherwise, your debates are 
> going
> to be limited to only two or three people.  (I'm also suspicious with the
> quality of understanding of any writer who uses too much jargon though I'm
> sure you properly understand most of what you write!).
>
>>  It's like popular science books: "Well, I've been doing all this
>>technical work in physics, in the professional journals and such, but
>>here's what I've found in terms that are easier for the public to
>>understand."  You can't have popular exposition without the technical work
>>in the trenches.  At least not always.
>>
>>DMB said:
>>Consciousness is created is a language game? I'm thinking to myself, don't
>>we suppose that consciousness is needed to speak any kind of language and
>>to play any kind of game, so how could a language game create
>>consciousness?
>
> I agree with Dave here.  Consciousness first, language games (which are 
> just
> one part of consciousness) second (though see next comment for details).
>
>>
>>Matt:
>>All that means is that, for pragmatists like Dennett and Rorty,
>>"consciousness" is a stance, the first-person stance.  We attribute
>>consciousness to things that have an individual perspective, like a person
>>or a bat, things that could reasonably say (if they spoke a language), "I
>>seem to be experiencing/sensing/thinking...."
>
> Dennett as a pragmatist?  That's a new one on me, Matt.  Though I guess 
> you
> must mean a type of neo-pragmatist such as Rorty.
>
> Anyway, this definition of  'consciousness' as "a stance, the first-person
> stance" seems an intuitively false and a limited one especially when it's
> qualified by assertions on the lines that if bats utilised human language,
> they would be asserting things such as "I seem to be
> experiencing/sensing/thinking....".
>
> Firstly, this type of assertion is a hypothetical contrary to fact.
> Remember the 10,000 feet comment that Pirsig makes (in my PhD) about 
> flying
> pigs in relation to Chalmers work on consciousness?  Pigs don't fly, bats
> don't speak English (or any other human language) either.
>
> Secondly, this Dennett/Rorty type of definition is too reductionist as I
> think Dave is pointing out.  I've been reading Timothy Leary's 
> "Psychedelic
> Prayers" (1966, reprinted 1997, p.40-41) recently and the Foreword of the
> text includes a broader definition of consciousness.  I think this is a
> better one than this "first-person stance" one especially because it can
> take proper account for how non-human language using animals can be
> perceived as having consciousness.
>
> Leary divides consciousness in the following ways:
>
> 1. The symbolic mind i.e. the "static intellect" (notice the MOQ-like
> terminology!) "which perceives, discriminates, interprets, remembers 
> learned
> (i.e. conditioned) cues selectively imposed on the kaleidoscope of
> sensation."
>
> (Matt, DMB, Scott: your present debate seems largely concerned with this
> aspect of human-only consciousness).
>
> 2. Neural consciousness i.e. "direct, symbol-free registration of energies
> by nerve endings" such as sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.
>
> (This is the primary sense in which most animals have consciousness).
>
> 3. Introceptive sensations.  i.e. sensations produced from the internal
> organs such as breathing, hunger and your heartbeat.
>
> (This is another sense in which animals have consciousness).
>
> 4. The "information system" (my words not Leary's) running at the cellular
> level (such as DNA).
>
> (This is another sense that animals have consciousness and - presumably -
> also plants).
>
> 5. The "information system" running at the macroscopic level (such as 
> atoms
> and molecules) "which receive and decode quantum energy" (again, my words
> not Leary's).
>
> (Again, this is another sense that animals and plants have consciousness.
> Possibly, you could put Scott's rock in this level as well though I 
> wouldn't
> regard 4 and 5 as processes that humans or animals could be aware of).
>
> A general point.  Leary sees all forms of consciousness as an interaction 
> of
> structure with energy and, finally, it's worth noting that his "account"
> doesn't rely on supernatural events either.
>
> --snip-
>
>>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.  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.
>
> I agree with Matt here, at least, in the sense that a "frozen language"
> (even within just the field of physics) is just not possible so providing
> another reason why the logical positivists were well off track.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Anthony
>
>
> P.S. here's an extract from one of the prayers in Leary's book which made 
> me
> think:
>
>
> Be respectful and compassionate
> But walk carefully when you are among -
>
> learned men
> holy men
> doctors
> government officials
> reporters
> publishers
> professors
> religious leaders
> psychologists
> rich men
> social scientists
> women with beautiful faces
> artists and writers
> men who charge fees
> city men
> movie makers
> men who want to help you
> men who want you to help them
> Christians and Jews
>
> For such as these
> However well meaning
> Place you on their chessboard
> Addict you to their externals
> Distract you from the
> Tao within
>
> The lesson of the Tao is more likely to be found among -
>
> gardeners
> hermits
> mountain men
> smiling eccentrics
> men who build their own homes
> children
> parents who learn from their children
> loafers
> amateur musicians
> serene psychotics
> animals
> men who look at sunsets
> men who walk in the woods
> beautiful women
> cooks
> men who sit by the fire
> wanderers
> men who make bread
> couples who have been in love for years
> smiling men with bad reputations
>
>
> (Extract from Leary, 1966, 1997, p.115-16)
>
>
> .
>
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