[Wittrs] Is Homeostasis the Answer? (Re: Variations in the Idea of Consciousness)
- From: "jrstern" <jrstern@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:20:19 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
>
> > Is this a special case?
> >
> > Do you worry about how cats come to be in a world chock full of non-cats?
> > Hot things in a world chock full of cold things?
>
> I said this, Josh, not Neil (in case you are confusing the two of us in your
> question above). My issue, in saying it, was not to wonder how there could be
> minds in the world at all but to wonder how minds happen in the world, given
> the evident physical and, therefore, apparently inanimate, nature of this
> world in which minds occur?
Yes, Stuart, I'm clear it was you saying this.
But I wanted to take issue with it, and Neil had responded without
taking issue with it, so I responded to both separately.
> That is, my "how" was not a metaphysical "how" (how can things come to be,
> whether particular things or things in general) but a scientific one, i.e.,
> what is it about some physical things that produces the subjectness of minds
> that have manifestly come to be in this world?
But the question is, whether there are ANY different issues
regarding mind, that do not also concern any mereological or
phenomenal entities.
This is a methodological question Fodor spend extensive time
on, what questions of "mind" are really questions of scientific
or philosophical methods more generally? Because there does seem
to be a tendency to treat any questions of mind as if they were
specific to minds only - as I suppose a fisherman considers all
questions of the world in the context of fish.
Josh
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