--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "gabuddabout" <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> Stuart writes:
>
> "The older and more classical view of consciousness, of course, is that it is a unified awareness, an observer of, and actor upon, events in its environment."
>
> You can have consciousness as a unified field without that implying > any form of dualism at all.

You certainly can if you recognize that the so-called unified field isn't a bottom-line but an outcome, a system level property as it were.

The point I was making, though, was that the unified field, in the case that represents dualism, is conceived as an irreducible, the self or observer in the mix to which any further breakdown to something that is NOT the unified field, isn't possible.

It is that commitment to irreducibility that constitutes the dualism.

> One can also have mental events without presupposing dualism.

Of course. That is what Dennett does in his book, Consciousness Explained, and what Searle, when making his Chinese Room argument, (CRA) fails to do.

> It's just that the explanation of the mental events is as a system feature of a brain.

Your pal Searle does seem to recognize this, albeit only hazily, in his talk about brains.

But because he doesn't go into any kind of detail with regard to brains he can get away with the haziness.

The problem for him arises when he talks of computers since his CRA pivots on the notion that understanding (his proxy for consciousness in the CR) cannot be broken down to something else.

The fact, he tells us, that no understanding is evident in the room, as he has specked it, demonstrates that no understanding could ever be in any room made up solely of the same constituents as make up the CR.

But, of course, THAT is the mistake since, if understanding is really a system property, then all the CR demonstrates is that IT is an inadequate system to produce understanding.

For us to think the problem is in the constituents of the system rather than in the robustness (or lack of same) of the system itself, we must think that understanding is a property of one of the constituent elements of the system rather than of how these elements all work together. And so forth.

> How else does one explain the ability to shift one's focus of attention within the unified field--I see a chair now, I see the space between myself and the chair which makes the chair look fuzzy in the background, I can sense the feel the shirt on my back, now my chest, I can look at all the books on the shelf, think about some mambo groove, etc.
>

What has this to do with the issue of whether consciousness is a system function or a process function or some mysterious irreducible property that some physical things/events have and some don't?

> One can even observe events as well as act upon events without presupposing dualism.
>

Of course. So what?

> So one wonders just what distinguishes the classical view from a "modern" one right after you just tried.
>
> Cheers,
> Budd
>
> =========================================

If "one" is wondering, as you say, then "one" has missed the point.

SWM

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:

> The point I was making, though, was that the unified field, in the
case that represents dualism, is conceived as an irreducible,
> the self or observer in the mix to which any further breakdown to
something that is NOT the unified field, isn't possible.

Thank you Stuart. With some correction, you have stated my position. The
unity of the self doesn't suggest that the person is all of one piece,
that he is aware of all his aspects or dispositions, but, rather, the
self can't be broken down, reduced, into something not self, and surely
not physical.

> It is that commitment to irreducibility that constitutes the dualism.

For you, but not for me. Since you start with the assumption that you
know of a physical world other than self, then the self, as it emerges,
is either physical (more of the same), i.e., monism or it is something
other, mental, and hence Dualism. But I don't start with your assumption
of a known physical world other than me.

I start with the person making sense out of his experiences. There are
all sorts of experiences. Some are called physical, others spiritual,
aesthetic, abstract (logic, numbers) and so on. These judgments don't
require the positing of any underlying substance. Hence, the
dualism/monism distinction has no application.

> or some mysterious irreducible property that some physical things...
have and some don't?

Since I don't see the world as consisting only of chunks of the
physical, I wouldn't dream of attributing consciousness as a property to
some of these physical chunks. Rather I experience all sorts of objects,
some alive, some alive in different ways, and, of course people. But a
person's consciousness, for me, isn't a property of his physical body,
even though having a physical body is a condition for being human.

To conclude: Your view, what Nagel calls the "view from nowhere" that
pretends that we can know of a physical world not us, as it is, and try
to say how the physical makes the mental, suppresses that this view is
still a view.

Simply put, you divide the physical from the mental and then try to
imagine how the physical can do this, all the time forgetting that you
have only imagined the physical apparent from the mental.

And I'm not suggesting Idealism. I didn't say mind generated the
physical. I'm just trying to start at the beginning, account giving, and
before the beginning, i.e., some state of absolute materiality.

bruce

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--- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:

> --- In Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > The point I was making, though, was that the unified field, in the
> case that represents dualism, is conceived as an irreducible,
> > the self or observer in the mix to which any further breakdown to
> something that is NOT the unified field, isn't possible.
>

> Thank you Stuart. With some correction, you have stated my position. The
> unity of the self doesn't suggest that the person is all of one piece,
> that he is aware of all his aspects or dispositions, but, rather, the
> self can't be broken down, reduced, into something not self, and surely
> not physical.
>

> > It is that commitment to irreducibility that constitutes the dualism.
>
> For you, but not for me.

So you have said and yet you persistently speak as if this were about two "substances", e.g., as when you tell us that the brain can't be said to cause consciousness because a physical thing (a brain) can't cause a mental thing (a mind), as if there were two competing and totally separate phenomena here! That IS dualistic, Bruce, no matter how many times you deny it. And when you constantly insist that there is a mind-body problem, note that this, too, is dualistic thinking.

>Since you start with the assumption that you
> know of a physical world other than self, then the self, as it emerges,
> is either physical (more of the same), i.e., monism or it is something
> other, mental, and hence Dualism. But I don't start with your assumption
> of a known physical world other than me.
>

So you don't think you credit science and what it has to say about the world through physics, chemistry, biology and so forth? Really?

> I start with the person making sense out of his experiences. There are
> all sorts of experiences. Some are called physical, others spiritual,
> aesthetic, abstract (logic, numbers) and so on. These judgments don't
> require the positing of any underlying substance. Hence, the
> dualism/monism distinction has no application.
>

Except that you continuously fall into ideas that reflect a dualist picture of things. Denying a terminology or even a particular ideology or theory about things is not the same as avoiding the dualist implications that are part and parcel with such terminology, ideologies, theories, etc.

> > or some mysterious irreducible property that some physical things...
> have and some don't?
>

> Since I don't see the world as consisting only of chunks of the
> physical, I wouldn't dream of attributing consciousness as a property to
> some of these physical chunks.

Don't you see that to describe the world in terms of "physical chunks" is to be trapped in this very dualistic picture ("physical chunks" vs. something else)? In fact, modern physics is not premised on explaining the universe in terms of "physical chunks" at all. Modern physics includes notions of energy and quantum fields and so forth. It is not a science of gazillions of atoms qua micro "physical chunks" flying around in empty space. But that it isn't doesn't imply that what we know of as consciousness is something beyond physics at all.

> Rather I experience all sorts of objects,
> some alive, some alive in different ways, and, of course people.

And this subjectivism is completely irrelevant to the idea that one can find out how brains work and replicate that on other physical platforms (which are manifestly, according to modern physics, not made up of "physical chunks").

> But a
> person's consciousness, for me, isn't a property of his physical body,
> even though having a physical body is a condition for being human.
>

Depends what one means by "consciousness", "person", "property" and "physical" doesn't it? Here I think you are just continuing a long running effort that tradies on meaning slippage in the relevant terms in order to avoid having to come to grips with the question of whether we can speak of brains as existing in a causal relation to minds or not.

> To conclude: Your view, what Nagel calls the "view from nowhere" that
> pretends that we can know of a physical world not us, as it is, and try
> to say how the physical makes the mental, suppresses that this view is
> still a view.
>

My view doesn't pretend to suppose we can finally free ourselves from the subjective conditions of knowing but that doesn't mean that, within those conditions, we cannot have scientific knowledge of the sort we already have within a wide range of study areas from the stars to atoms and quanta, from biological organisms to chemical interactions. And that, of course, is all that this is about in the end, i.e., what do brains do and how do they do it?

Your effort, which mashes the meanings of the relevant terms in multiple ways in order to prevent their use for the perfectly reasonable scientific question of what brains can do and how they do it, is merely to pour sand into the cogs of the linguistic machinery we rely on. I think you take this approach because you don't want the idea that brains have a causal relation to minds to obtain under any circumstances. But that is not a good reason for deciding what is true and what is not.

> Simply put, you divide the physical from the mental

Simply put, YOU are the one who constantly puts this in such terms. It is a function of your inability to come to grips with the idea that what we think of as "mental" may just be another outome of some of the things we think of as "physical".

> and then try to
> imagine how the physical can do this, all the time forgetting that you
> have only imagined the physical apparent from the mental.
>

Simply put, there is no denying that there are physical phenomena in the universe that are conscious and physical phenomena that aren't. So what is it that enables some to be conscious and some not to be? Is being conscious some special mental phenomenon that has no part in the physics of the rest of the universe or is it just a part of the same underlying dynamics that give us what we call "physical" things?

> And I'm not suggesting Idealism. I didn't say mind generated the
> physical. I'm just trying to start at the beginning, account giving, and
> before the beginning, i.e., some state of absolute materiality.
>
> bruce
>
>
> =========================================

What is "absolute materiality"? Where did this come from? And how does one get to it if that's what you are hoping to do?

What you are actually doing, I think, is seeking a way to be able to deny the notion that minds are a function of brains (some brains in certain states) in the way science and even our old pal Searle asserts they are. And in doing that you are twisting the shared terms we use for this sort of discussion into pretzels.

Philosophy, at the least, can hope to untwist some of the pretzels that you (and others in pursuit of a similar aim) want to leave us with.

SWM

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