[MD] atomic preferences and panexperientialism (panpyschism)

[Ian Glendinning]

Hi dmb,
Obviously I can find Birch, and I have dozens of links to my readings
of Chalmers (and the rest of the Arizona science of consciousness
school) on my own blog ... I meant the specific article in question.
I'll look for a Platt posting on MD.

I still disagree about there being a category error with emergence per
se. Clearly, it would be selecting the wrong categories of "objects"
to suggest the church of reason "emerged" from the current recent
physical buildings,or any form of explanation in their terms, but it
would not be wrong to suggest that its social and intellectual
patterns emerged on top of physical and biologically evolved layers.
But if that's all you meant by the category error, then there is
really no disagreement.

Without reading the specific Birch article I still smell that IDC vs
natural emergence scent in the Birch words you quoted .... before Krim
pointed out the Templeton connection. Krim is not in the right frame
of mind for your arguments - or style of argument more like - but as
you subsequently explained, all you were really doing was holding up
panpsychism as valid, whatever Birch's other defects.

I think somewhere at root here you are trying to make a point about
some kind of physical reductionism - and you see "emergence" as a word
signalling that error - greedy reductionism as Dennett would say. The
kind of reductionism that points out the physical explanations of
material processes as the source of emergence, as if that explains all
the bio-socio-intellectual patterns and processes too. (I take it as a
given the MoQ tells us to look at patterns of value in all levels up
to the situation in question.)

Ian

On Sun, Aug 29, 2010 at 8:55 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ian said:
>  Hi dmb, I'm afraid I don't see the category error. ... Could you point me back at the whole article, so I can take a look at any arguments.
>
> dmb says:
> Actually, it was Platt who posted the link to that article. And I'm sure you know how to use google. Chalmers has a website with thousands of articles on the topic, including his own.
> http://consc.net/online
>
> As for the category error, it would be like trying to explain the church of reason by describing the workings of the physical buildings on a university campus. The category error would be a matter of talking about doors and windows where you should be talking about truth and reason.
>
>
>
>
>
>> Ian
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