[Wittrs] Re: Minds, Brains and What There Is

  • From: "Cayuse" <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:41:17 +0100

swmaerske wrote:

I am maintaining that phenomenal consciousness, the experience of
being a subject (having experiences) is explainable in terms of brain
dependence. That is, I am making the point that being a subject is a
condition that occurs BECAUSE of certain things brains do, things
that can theoretically be isolated and identified (even if that has not
yet been successfully accomplished). I think the distinction between
our views has to do with what aspect of being a subject interests us.
You are interested in the relation of subjectness to its "contents" and
want to contemplate the condition of being a subject in toto, as a way
of envisioning or imagining "the all".


This is not an accurate portrayal of my view. We don't need to envision or
imagine "the all" in order to understand that, where 'parts' are identified,
/collections/ of 'parts' are also identified. We may or may not envision or
imagine some kind of 'whole' at the limit of those collections, but it is
not necessary that we do so in order to understand the idea of /collections/
(and I have consistently made the claim that any such vision or image is
nonsensical). The /collection/ that some call the "contents of
consciousness" (or however else one may wish to refer to it) falls into
categories, and the pertinent categories in regard to this debate are those
of 'subjective' and 'objective'. To replace "phenomenal consciousness" with
'subjectness' is to force the "contents of consciousness" into a category of
those very contents. So to maintain that:

"phenomenal consciousness, the experience of being a subject
(having experiences) is explainable in terms of brain dependence"

is to bring the /neutral/ "contents of consciousness" (i.e. encompassing
both the subjective category and the objective category) /into itself/
as the idea of 'subjectness', and then to maintain that this idea has an
empirical relation with another aspect of the "contents of consciousness"
(namely the brain). But what Block calls "access consciousness"
may well be "explainable in terms of brain dependence". 

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