boneyard bill

contracycle writes:

Because the explanations you offered do not add up to a reductive explanation of sentient experience. Go back and read some of the previous posts where I have dealt with this. I'm tired of repeating myself. I already answered this point the last time I posted and I answered it quite emphatically.

boneyard bill

deleted

boneyard bill

contracycle asks:

Because it can't be reduced to anything more basic.

Adrian Selby

Bill, i have to dispute your thinking that the biperspectival identity theory is property dualist.

The term identity as its used here is used to denote an identity of reference, with the acceptance that there is not an identity of sense, given that the perspectives on any particular brain phenomena fundamentally differ in terms of the mode of access only, namely, immediate or intradermal, and mediate, or extradermal. The difference in perspective is acknowledged, but it is not held to be a law like relation, rather it is a difference of perspective on an event which is singular. The two 'things' are not in a lawlike relation to each other, or identical with each other, the identity is that the origin of and reference for the phenomenological difference is singular, and thus it is not a property dualist theory but a reductionist one.

Again, it acknowledges that the undergoing of brain processes is different from the observation of the undergoing, and the perspectives generate currently disparate but very useful vocabularies. Because the brain scanning itself to itself seems to scan pain does not mean that it isn't in fact scanning a c-firing, and to demand that the brain be 'experiencing' c-firings in order to be reductionist with any success is entirely missing the point, if this is something you're intimating.

'Mind' is a description that the functioning system gives itself, and has given itself before it was capable of realising that 'it' could indeed be solely responsible for consciousness and all that. I wouldn't criticise our limited ability to conceive of conceptual models that were capable of the refinement we have now as some evidence that the current refinement is somehow incapable of describing anew a way of understanding how mentallings can be physical.

I guess I'm going to leave it there, Sodium and Contracycle are refuting points in a manner entirely consistent with my own and are doing a far better job too Many thanks for your input and comments Bill, I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

Adrian

(are YOU incorrigibly analytic?)

boneyard bill

contracycle writes:

Where? Not by you.

boneyard bill

Spacer1 writes:

And my point here has been, and I have made it before, that you are still positing a law-like relationship. You havn't reduced the first person report to the third person report. You have merely claimed they are identical. You haven't shown that they are identical.

This law-like relationship then becomes a fundamental postulate of the system, and fundamental postulate feeds back into your ontology.

All of this has been discussed previously. I realize that 7 pages is a lot to review, but what's the point of bringing up issues that have already been discussed? My answer can be found in more detail, and many times, in the preceding posts on this thread.

Adrian Selby

Ahem, sorry, I'd just like to add

A lawlike relation of reports is not a lawlike relation of properties, asking for one report to be reduced to the other is perfectly ok in a material system, neuropsychologists do the reduction all the time, and observations confirm or disconfirm the success.

I hope you aren't equating comments about how properties of something singular must be dual and reports of something singular must be dual. There are no dual properties of the substance, just a duality of reports based only on the difference in perspective. There is nothing special about the immediate access, there is nothing different going on, there is no identity between the first and third person access, and suggesting that a mode of access is a property such that one can argue there are two properties seems mistaken to me.

Right, now I'm out. I think

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

At last someone is bringing up some new points to discuss.

The event is held to be singular. There are two reports of one event. The claim is that first person reports and third person reports are reporting a singular event.

But this language reduces to the claim, "c-fiber firings are sentient experience." Note that the identity here is claimed. It is not proven. It is therefore a postulate. Now it can be postulating one of two things:

1. I can be postulating that sentient experience can be reduced to c-fiber firings, but just haven't figured out how yet. This is simply the argument from faith that I have been criticizing. Or

2. C-fiber firings just are sentient experience. Note that this is still a claim. The identity is not proven. For example, the definition of a c-fiber firing would include the presence of an electrical discharge. But there is nothing involved in the defintion of sentient experience that involves electrical discharges.

So, if we accept that c-fiber firings just are sentient experience, then we are making a statement about the nature of material processes. And the claim being here is that sentient experience is a fundamental characteristic of some material processes. But such a characteristic is at odds with our current definition of materialism.

The ontology which does make that claim is property dualism. I am not denying that there is one event. I am claiming, however, that the nature of that event, as described by the identity theory, carries ontological implications.

When you impute a certain character to an event, you are also characterizing the material and processes which make up that event.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

No. But mind and matter are both present, and the one is not reduced to the other.

Adrian Selby

I helplessly click reply

Mind is not there, mind and matter are not both present, only matter is, and the mode of access to the matter is what generates the concept of mind. Mind is a concept that systems of matter use to discuss themselves. Mind is not something that is present, it is a term to refer to a bag of concepts that describe the undergoing of successive brain state changes.

You suggest I'm claiming this without evidence, that

but there is, there never used to be, but now there is. You cannot define what a sentient experience actually is without reference to electrical discharges unless you're asking merely for the report of the brain state undergone in terms and concepts useful for the holistic description of that succession of brain states in general usage terms, i.e. in socially useful parlance. How is it you're wanting to define sentient experience exactly, I define it as the brain's awareness of its environment, both conscious and not conscious. A loose definition but to the point. The evidence I have stems from there being no evidence to the contrary so far, but also the predictability of observations based on hypotheses that have this as a basis, plus the modelling of similar systems and the analsys of similar cruder systems in nature that have predictive and goal oriented capability, such as most organisms. If you are differentiating between the awareness a bee has of pollen and its 'goal' and my awareness of a set of tits and my 'goal' in relation to them as more than just complexity then we are suggesting a difference in kind of experience and this suggests there is something more than material processes going on. I'd be interested in your view on this.

c-firings and sentient experience are terms we find useful in referring to a single phenomena most accurately described in the vocabulary of neurophysiology. Sentient experience is no more than the undergoing of brain processes. This isn't an identity, its a reduction. What was previously taken to be different is now in fact nothing more than the physical. There is no relation between the two, there is the view that the one is the other, they are the same thing, i.e. a thing cannot have a relation to itself, it is itself.

Your point 2. is not conclusive in my view.

I disagree. We are making a statement about the nature of sentient experience, namely, that it is merely the undergoing of material processes. It is not a characteristic of material processes, unless you say that undergoing a material process is a characteristic of the process. That would require further discussion.