[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
Of course not. It’s based on the sense of self and agency i.e. the most direct raw input there is. The emergence idea says that these senses are illusory. If we can appeal to things being true because they are obvious, then free will is true and the self truly exists. But I don’t think you’ll accept that.
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Emergence doesn’t say that the sense of self or the sense of agency are illusory; where do you get that idea? It and I fully accept that the senses of self and agency obviously exist. The emergence idea merely says, indirectly, that since it seems that our self and agency emerge from the actions of deterministic and possibly random elements, our agency, which we have, apparently is not libertarian free will-style agengy. Try to get a handle on what you’re arguing against, please.
(In case you’re going to try to play swap-the-definitions on me or something, i figure that ‘agency’ is just the state of being an agent - something that acts and reacts to its environment based on its internal state. This would include purely deterministic agents, such as video game characters.)
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
That’s pattern-noting. Read the primary definition of analysis again i.e. the study of the whole via its constituents. If you are hungry, and eat chips 34% of the time, eat a sandwich 26% of the time and nothing the rest, that’s pattern-noting. It is at most a record of history and a premise for inductive use.
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The mind has conscious and unconsious parts, then. I’d also say that your memory is a separate subcomponent. And your instincts.
Are we playing some kind of silly definition game here? If we are, I don’t care about it. Clearly the mind and its behaviors can be observed (albeit inderectly) and studied. That you’ve found a definition of the word I chose that irks you doesn’t matter to me - the main point is, that the mind is not some ineffable thing.
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
Here’s your factual claim: It’s a fact that we have an internal mental ‘state’. We have moods, thoughts, emotions, inclinations - and at any given time, they’re not in some sort of shroedinger’s cat-like flux. (emphasis added)
Here’s the eliminativism position: Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist. (emphasis added)
You are claiming two things - 1)moods, among other things, exist 2)there is a specific mood at any given time. They are not arguing that moods exist but are uncertain. They’re arguing that moods do not exist, hence contradicting your pt 1.
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Were you aware that “some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist” means that some might exist?
Also, I’m, wondering why I should care about this cite. It looked more like philosophical speculation (like most philosophy is) rather than anything which had been shown to be true through observation and experimentation. Is there something I missed about it that raises it to that level, that I should think it describes reality?
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
Furthermore, you claim you are self-aware and and can sense anger directly. But now you concede that “they might argue our fixed and at-any-instant-determined mental state has a few different things in it than I think it does”. So, you may not be self-aware?
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I’m arguing that you might not be perfectly and completely aware of your mental state. As anybody who’s heard of the subconscious mind knows is true.
You can be aware of some but not all of your mental states. So, the two statements are not contradictory. Nice try, though.
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
The symptoms I listed aren’t “side-effects”. There is no unique anger modality. Anger is a term applied to when some or all from a certain cluster of qualia are experienced.
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I think this is false. Prove it or lose it.
There are a range of mental states all of which we call “anger”. To that degree, there is no ‘unique’ anger modality. However, each of the mental states in that range can individually be detected directly, in real-time as the qualia itself, not as a post-facto assignment based on other qualia being observed.
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
It’s not about “every” aspect. There’s a hard problem of consciousness, still extant, which maintains a chasm between physicalism and consciousness. It’s not just a matter about laying planks. There’s no idea how to build a bridge.
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I think it works kind of like an organic computer. The evidence that I know of seems to support my claim. We have overt evidence of high-level forms with complex behaviors and properties being created out of electrical patterns supported by ‘hardware’ that does not model those patterns in its own form. (That is, computer programs.) We know the brain is hardware that supports patterns, and we know that the mind seems to be a result of the brain. The jump to the idea that the patterns are the mind seems to be a pretty small and simple one.
I just don’t see the chasm. Perphaps it’s that I make bridges of this general type myself as an occupation, so I just don’t see what’s so spectacular about them.
Tell me, what do you know about how computers work? The relation of hardware and software?
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
An argument that something is “really obvious” is an appeal to perceptual clarity. But with perception not being the same as reality, that is a claim, not evidence. That I have free will is obvious as well, but you won’t accept it on that basis.
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We accept the obvious at face value until there is evidence against. Then we need evidence for, and preferably some possible conceptual avenue by which the obvious could be working as it does. Sometimes there is evidence for and ways it could work, such as in the case of objects and observant properties and behaviors; sometimes there is no evidence for, and no way it could work, such as souls and free will properties. In general it’s best to accept what the evidence shows. (Until further evidence is discovered, anyway.)
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
Of course. The same is true for free will. But you are arguing the latter is illusory. Nothing is sacred about the former, given the atomistic model of science.
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Right. Belief in free will was the default position. Until we began to discover that our brains seem to work like computers. (Including the physicality thereof.)
Of course, unlike the evidence that the mind is in the brain, there’s no evidence whatsoever for the nonexistence of objects. Philosophical musing, of course, is not evidence; it can make arguments, but where those arguments are not supported by the evidence (or in this case, where they’re overtly contradicted by the evidence) then they’re not relevent to our understanding of reality.
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
No, I’m asking you to elucidate those physical facts that are directly necessary and sufficient for emergence. The whole point of emergence as you said is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In an ensemble of quarks, from which something emerges, the parts refers to the behavior of each individual quark. But what is the physical factor that adds to the sum, above and beyond the contributions of the parts?
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It’s the pattern and state that the components are in that determines the higher-level effects of the collected group. So, the real physical factor here is the physical positions of their components, which places them in the correct relationships with one another to have greater effects.
If you have a bunch of dominoes all lined up in a row, then pushing one will have an effect that spreads out down the row, knocking them all down - a larger effect than you could normally expect from pushing one domino; an emergent reaction. However, the act of carrying out this action changes the positional relationships such that there is no longer a usable emergent relationship - once they’ve fallen, you can keep tapping that first domino all day and nothing much of interest will happen.
Various other things, of course, tend to stay in relationships that allow their effects to keep on emerging. Your car’s gas pedal continues to work on successive pushes; it doesn’t explode the case into pieces after the first attempt. (Not usually, anyway.) Your muscles continue to pull on and successfully move your limbs (usually), and our minds keep emerging from the electrical patterns and such that are the position and state of the elecrons and other particles in our brains, giving us minds that continue to exist and work over time. (Usually)
If you refuse to recognize that position is a fundamental part of emergence, then there’s not much that can be done for you. You won’t haven’t disproved emergence; you’ll just have failed to understand how it works. It’d be like trying to understand the economy while denying the existence of money; you won’t have disproved the existence of the economy. You’ll just be confused and wrong.
[QUOTE=II Gyan II]
No, he doesn’t take any position. He outlines the argument against emergence and hints at two possible “solutions” - 1)claiming that elementary particles don’t compose the world 2)claiming that objects do exist. Both of these are claims by fiat and not arguments. In other words, the answer to the self-as-fundamental argument itself relies on support by fiat.
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Well, there’s lots of evidence available that objects exist, so even if he doesn’t himself state such an arguement or cite such evidence, I don’t see that as a problem, by the way you paint his position*.
- No, I haven’t read the link more than a cursory glancing at it; feel free to summarize his argument here if you wish me to argue against it. Not that philosophical arguments usually have much to do with reality anyway in my experience, but what the hey.
Speaking of arguments, what is your argument in favor of your ineffable particle thingy theory? If you don’t have one, then you’re just wasting everyone’s time. (Well, yours and my time anyway. Perhaps everyone else has found better things to do.)