[lit-ideas] The location of location
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 07:27:32 -0500
In a message dated 1/26/2015 2:08:03 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes:
I agree it would appear contradictory to argue (1) pain belongs to W2 but
(2) that pain also is located within the W1 brain and (3) W2 is located in
a way distinct to anything located in W1 [i.e. W2 events, like conscious
pain, do not share the identical spatio-temporal location of any W1 events].
I also agree that there is a large and unresolved problem as to the
'location' of consciousness, and thus of W2. I would also agree there is a
large
and unresolved problem as to the 'location' of W3 or W3 contents. But these
admittedly large and unresolved problems are far from conclusive arguments
against the independence of W2 and of W3 from W1.
I don't intend to suggest a solution to these large problems but here
clarify that Popper's position is that W3 "exists but exists nowhere" and that
W2 is located not within W1 but somehow adjacent to the W1 brain.
It seems that we have no obvious model for locating anything in space and
time except in the way we seek to locate W1 objects within W1: and this
creates an admitted problem, for there is a lack of any clear model for how we
'locate' W2 or W3 in these terms.
Despite this, it seems overwhelmingly the case that consciousness exists;
and though it is less overwhelming, the strong case is that consciousness
is distinct from being a mere W1 process - for there is no analogue of
consciousness in any W1 processes as these are conceived by science.
So we quickly reach one of the immense and weird imponderables of the
mind-body problem, that have given rise to very different reactions -
including
that radical materialism, a la Quine, that takes consciousness to be
merely an illusion. But if consciousness is not simply an illusion, the
mind-body dichotomy surfaces in all its presently unsolvable strangeness.
There is
no present possible position without strangeness - the radical materialist,
in denying consciousness, is one of the strangest. Against the strangeness
of these alternative positions [e.g. panpsychism] it might seem less
strange to accept the admitted strangeness of accepting a W3 and a W2 that
cannot readily be 'located', and certainly not 'located' in W1 terms.
It seems simpler to postulate that space-time belongs in w1 only?
There's the physical world, and space and time are physical 'concepts' or
entities or items.
w2 is the world of thinking.
Palma:
"Note that, if Descartes were right, thought can’t have extension
properties, such as temporal properties."
The implicature is that Descartes ain't right?
If an item in the world of 'psychology' has spatio-temporal
qualifications, it seems to me because it 'corresponds' in some way to some
item in the
physical world, which necessarily does.
w3, the world of concepts and stuff surely does not require on the other
hand any sort of Cartesian spatio-temporal coordinate. But surely the
CONTENT of a book on space and time (such as Einstein's) belongs in this
'third
reich', as Popper's predecessor also called it.
Cheers,
Speranza
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