[MD] Consciousness & Moq.

[David Thomas]

Y'all

See a pattern here:

>> Aug 19 [Dave] 
>> "What about consciousness?"  I'm just starting David Chalmers, "The Conscious
>> Mind"............
>> A brief word search of both of RMP's works seems to indicate that he takes
>> it as given and with his resolution of the mind/body problem he solves "the
>> problem of consciousness"

> Aug 19 dmb responds:
> Not sure you've asked an actual question here. What is the problem of
> consciousness, exactly? What's being swept under the rug by RMP's approach?
> But let me remind you that James' Essays in Radical Empiricism basically
> consists of two central essays and all the rest are expansions and
> qualifications of those two main essays. One of them is titled "Does
> Consciousness Exist?" and in it James answers "no", not if you mean a thing,
> an entity that has the thoughts.....
> Hmmmm. Consciousness. Maybe I'll give it some thought.
> What was the question? Can you state it very specifically?

>> Aug 19 Dave restates question
>> Based on what Pirsig calls "MoQ", What commentary, analysis, or conclusions
>> does he make about "consciousness" or "conscious experience"?

>> Aug 20 Dave said to dmb:
>> Brush up on your "supervenience." what the hell ever that is, it is a big
>>deal  to Chalmers.  ...A clue, supervenience is a kind of dependency
>>relationship.....

>Aug 21 dmb says:
> Yea, I know. This is one of the terms used by those who don't want to go all
> the way in saying that the brain and the mind are identical. One such
>position, barely distinguishable from the brain-mind identity theory is known
as "eliminative materialism"....
>I think the MOQ is at odds with this view in a pretty big way.

> Aug 22 dmb says:
> Well, obviously I'm saying that James and Pirsig are both radical empiricists
> and they both reject the traditional conception of consciousness for the same
> reasons. James and Pirsig say the same thing. I'm just adding details that
> aren't included in Lila because you supposedly already read that.

>Aug 23 DMB
> But SOM is also Pirsig's version of the long standing mind/body dualism
> debate wherein mental substance and physical substance are two irreducible
> forms of "stuff" which mysteriously interact but are not dependant on each
> other. Pirsig is ultimately always talking about how each of us has and
> makes sense of our individual experience. It is pure phenomenology.

>> Aug 23 [John Carl]
>> Hey!  I made that point recently.  didya notice Krimel?  About the
>> congruence between dmb's interpertation of the Moq and phenomenology - the
>> most radical of the empiricists?
>> Tha's ok.  Nobody pays much attention to my words, and I don't blame them a
>> bit.

>>Aug 23 Dave T 
>> And then another hilarious congruence. David Chalmers, who dmb rejects prior
>> to reading, argues the phenomena is integral to the "hard problem" of
>>conscious experience.

> Aug 25 dmb:
> Actually, it's pretty exciting to find that I have been thinking about the
> "hard problem of consciousness" all along. I just didn't know it had a name
> and I didn't expect to find such a famous and excellent ally.

Wrong. Don't bother to read Chalmer's book it will at first lift you up,
then burst all your bubbles. If true, particularly your Pirsig ones. He is
developing a theory of consciousness based on what he calls Natural Dualism.
RMP's layer structure would be/is seriously fucked and they rest of it does
not correspond either.

Dave