[MD] Consciousness & Moq.

[David Thomas]

On 8/26/10 12:17 PM, "David Buchanan" <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> dmb continues:
> 
> One response, they say, is to make a distinction between the non-cognitive
> aspects of consciousness, the essence of the hard problem, from cognition. C
> 'mon. You don't see how that resembles the distinction between pre-conceptual
> experience and definable concepts? You don't see how that relates to the
> distinction between dynamic and static? Notice that we're also in the area of
> process philosophy and recall that Sneddon's master's thesis compares Pirsig
> and Whitehead. Notice also that the criticism centers around the fact that
> qualia are not given to precise definition and then recall that Pirsig says
> the same thing about Quality, except of course he does not let that fact stop
> him. He acknowledges the paradoxical nature of building a metaphysics around
> an undefined term and then proceeds anyway. James's radical empiricism is
> centered around pure experience, which is also prior to our conceptual
> categories and is therefore undefinable for the same reasons that DQ is
> undefinable. 
> 
> Gents, there is some real philosophical meat in all this. And I'd be happy to
> discuss it in a reasonable manner.

Jeeezz.................  About your two questions:

>You don't see how that resembles the distinction between pre-conceptual
> experience and definable concepts? You don't see how that relates to the
> distinction between dynamic and static?

No I don't, not based on what I've read of Chalmers so far. I'm only half
way through and trying to correlate with James by rereading bits of his, so
it's slow. Pirsig as I have said does not say much directly and substantive
about consciousness so you just have to keep him in the back of your mind.

First Chalmer's bottom two levels (physical/biological) both naturally and
logically supervene, are causally closed, and "scientific materialism"
pretty well explains the workings in that limited domain. Pretty sure he
would want no part of these being "moral" domains.

If you start with James "streams on consciousness" Chalmers splits it into
two parallel streams. James' psychological-cognizant-awareness stream that
is somewhat known, studied, and amenable to functional analysis. But here
James and Chalmers part. James claims that these psychological functions are
a process and are what the word "consciousness" stands for. Chambers
disagrees claiming there is a parallel phenomena stream or quality stream
integral to experience. It is knowable,  but not amenable to functional
analysis or to the standard methods of science, and is not explainable by
physical or biological laws. Thus the need for a domain for "consciousness"
that naturally supervenes on the lower levels even if it does not logically
supervene.

One place Chambers mentions that this domain "dangles" off the side. My
understanding of that would be if you took RMP four SQ diagram it would
split above the biological. Though I haven't really thought about how it
might fit together from there.

So about you first question I would say that when Chalmer is talking
"parallel streams"  he is relating that to the nature of pre-conceptual
experience and guess at this point that "consciousness" is the domain at the
frontend of conceptualizing process. It "enables" conceptualization, but
that's just a first guess.

On the DQ/SQ question if we took this RMP quote:
>Lila -pg 57
> Dynamic Quality is the pre-intellectual cutting edge of reality, the source of
> all things, completely simple and always new.
Chalmer's might agree with this from an epistemological perspective but not
from a metaphysical one. Since James isn't big on metaphysics I'm not sure
if he isn't in the same camp as Chalmers.

Dave