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

  • From: "Cayuse" <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:27:11 +0100

SWM wrote:

"Cayuse" wrote:

It doesn't matter how these terms are used, except inasmuch as
they are not synonymous. Since they qualify different kinds of items
in the "contents of consciousness", the "contents of consciousness"
encompass /both/ of these qualified categories.


If the "qualified categories" are not adequately explicated then they
are just words, appearing to have sense while lacking it. So it
certainly does matter how they are used!

Here you want to do with these terms what you have previously done
with "consciousness", "experience", and "the all." It strikes me as
obscurantism since it seems to be set against any real attempts at
clarity.


What is being clarified here is that it doesn't matter how a proper
subset is qualified with regard to a set of elements, any set of
elements cannot be a member of a proper subset of itself.



Example:
The set of all integers /encompasses/ the the set of all positive
integers /and/ the set of all negative integers (i.e. the /union/ of
those two sets), but does not /consist/ of that union since it omits
something. The set of all integers /consists/ of the set of all positive
integers /and/ the set of all negative integers /and/ zero (no
remainder).


So zero is like all the other integers? Isn't that a stipulation
though, i.e., can't we simply agree to stipulate that zero is not,
itself, an integer in which case it wouldn't fit into your set?


If we stipulated that zero is not an integer, then the set of all integers
would /consist/ of the union of the set of all positive integers with the
set of all negative integers.



Phenomenal consciousness has no empirical content? But we can get
reports about what anyone is seeing all the time and that's pretty
empirical don't you think? We can also determine what someone or
some inarticulate subject is seeing via various research strategms.


Reports are publicly observable. Regarding "what someone or
some inarticulate subject is seeing via various research stratagems",
the overt /behavior/ of that someone or of that inarticulate subject
is also publicly observable. Based on such behavior (including any
verbal reports they may make), we can /imagine/ what another
/may be/ experiencing, but their /experience/ is not publicly
observable.



<snip>

What about our own subjective experience (the subjective aspect of our
lives)? Well no one claims that is accessible to others but that doesn't
mean we must assume that we are qualitatively different than other
organisms that behave like us, etc.


It sounds like you're saying that you /imagine/ others to have subjective
experience, and that this /imagined/ subjective experience is not publicly
accessible. Not much different from what I said to start with.



Since you say that consciousness "involves" experience, you can't
be using the two words synonymously. In what way do they differ?



<snip>

The point is that "consciousness", on the view I have adopted and for
which I am arguing, refers to a somewhat open ended array of features
we find in ourselves and which may have no clear delineating line
between what is and what isn't going to be counted as conscious.

<snip>

http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.block.html


Thanks. I suppose I am just unduly dense here though. I don't see how
this distinction applies to what we have been discussing. I have said
that I take access consciousness to be what we have access to in
ourselves (as opposed to things going on below the surface of our
aware minds. Block is saying the opposite, i.e., that it's what we
seem to lack access to (awareness of) that is what he means by
"access consciousness". So we cannot agree that I am interested in
what you call access consciousness while you are interested in
phenomenal consciousness. Indeed, I am interested in precisely what
you characterize as phenomenal consciousness, having experience.


Then you are saying much more than merely that "consciousness, on the
view I have adopted and for which I am arguing, refers to a somewhat
open ended array of features we find in ourselves and which may have
no clear delineating line between what is and what isn't going to be
counted as conscious" -- you are identifying one particular member
of that family as the focus of your interest, namely what Block calls
P-consciousness and what Nagel calls the "what it is like to be [...]".

From the paper referenced above:
"I'll say more about phenomenal consciousness later, but for now, let me
just say that phenomenal consciousness is experience; what makes a state
phenomenally conscious is that there is something "it is like" (Nagel, 1974)
to be in that state."



Where we seem to be at odds is in your insistence that this awareness
somehow stands over and apart from all the things of which we are
aware.


This is not an accurate portrayal of my view. Consciousness is
not something over and above the "contents of consciousness",
but rather it denotes the very existence of that "content".



To take this "third-person world" as the primary datum (in which
this "first-person perspective" now has to be accounted for) is to
put the cart before the horse.


There is no horse if you are right vis a vis "the all".


Sticking to the terms I used in my comment above,
are you saying that there is no "third-person world"?
Or there is no "first-person perspective"?


I am saying that, on your own statement, there is no way to conceive
of, or even imagine, "the all",


/Sticking to the terms I used in my comment above/,
are you saying that there is no "third-person world"?
Or there is no "first-person perspective"?
Or are you saying something else in regard to the
"third-person world" and/or the "first-person perspective"? 

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