Consciousness Trilemma

[bennyboy]

This is a good example of a view that is commonly held, but actually doesn't hold up to scrutiny, methinks.  The "driving" system includes both you and the car, and the combustion system involves both you and the car as well as the environment; the propulsion involves the road and so on.  Then there's a connection by gravity.

How sure are you that what you call discrete things aren't really so only by concept?

As sure as you are.  This one's a sinking ship Benny.  It doesn't matter.  If there are discrete systems, do we possess such a system as described by our conscious experience?  If there are not, then qed, eliminitivism is true by default. 

You are matching local and general truth values into the same context for comparison. Ultimately, I do not know what is true-- only what seems true to me. If this is sufficient, then my consciousness may be taken at face value; if not, then by what standard will you judge, one way or another, assertions?

And how about QM?  Are you ready to give up on "illusory" concepts like solid and flat, and to discard them as meaningful for that reason?  Surely, they aren't represented in a literal description of material reality as we understand it today.

Ah but they are.  The table -is- literally solid to a creature of your size and composition.  It;s not just tables, either, a great many things you experience as "solid" would not seem that way to other creatures.  The ground beneath your feet, for example.  

No, I think this is special pleading, now. The table is not literally solid, because it consists mainly of empty space. It is solid in the sense that it seems so, and that our definition of solidity rests only on seeming so. This should sound familiar, because it's similar to the way in which consciousness is "literally" a certain way because it seems to be so.

We already -know- where the mental states this maps to reside, and how it is possible for them to do and be so.  Area s2 of the somatosensory processes inputs from your fingertips, for example, when mechanoreceptors in your dermis send a signal to that area - which they are hard wired into.  Your fingertips are mechanical pressure plates, area s2 is the light bulb that turns on when something hits them.  We can watch the whole thing happen in realtime and so it's not quite as difficult to account for as the "qualia" referenced in the same example.  You feel it, but we can see the stuff that makes all of thi happen...we just can;t seem to find the you that's feeling.  The somatosensory, for example, does not then send that processing to any central place.  So....the solidity of the table as represented by the nervous system isn't even remotely illusory in the manner that eliminative materialists might consider self or qualia to be illusory.  I can't walk through a wall.  Why I can't walk through that wall and why my material system presents this data to me is almost unremarkable.  That I "feel" the pressure, well...a little more remarkable..wouldn't you say -particularly in that my material system does not appear to be presenting this data to any "I" in the first place- .  ?

You know, this whole solidity business is a great example of what soprts of things eliminitive materialists might apply their trade.  We had some folk beliefs concerning solidity.  Turns out they were wrong.  Solidity does not mean, after all..that there is no space between atoms...simply that there isn;t enough space for -us- to fit between those atoms.  If we attempted an explanation of solidity that relied on there being no space, rather than no space for us, we would fail..agreed?  The explanation would be necessarily inaccurate.  Our beliefs regarding mind, in their opinion, are just another example of those same sorts of folk stories.  Jut as compelleing as the idea that there was no space between atoms, and largely for the same reasons...but, ultimately, innaccurate.

I would argue that there is likely NOTHING that is as it seems, and that therefore all our experiences should be thrown out on the basis that they are illusory. Then what? I think you're trying to have your cake and it eat, too, by conserving those views which you find pragmatic or comforting, and expecting those which do not accord well with your philosophical beliefs to be abandoned.


And again, we loop back to my pet idea of truth-in-context: the truth of statements seems to depend not so much on actual objective truth, but on the way in which we decide to frame our perspective and define out terms. I advise adopting a more flexible approach to truth. For example, in the context established by a material monist view, we can say that certain ideas of mind are untrue. On the other hand, in the context established by our subjective experiences, given that the self and the perceptions it experiences are brute facts, I would argue that such a monism cannot possibly express or explain those experiences.

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Those who are arguing against eliminative materialism seem to be saying that language is foisting a lie on our understanding of the true nature of the world around us.  But what alternative are you guys proposing?  What use are you finding for the thought that "everything is everything"?  Think I'll take the understanding that comes through the separation and classification of 'parts'.  I'm obviously missing something you guys find important but I'm not sure there is really anything amiss here.

My argument is that eliminative materialism can be taken a lot farther than Khemikal is taking it, and it seems to me that the distinguishing line between what ideas should be accepted and what should be discarded is based more on philosophical predilections than on any actual material reality. In other words, it's an arbitrary distinction cloaked in material pragmatism.

What are the actual criteria by which a theory of mind (for example) would be accepted by eliminativists, I wonder?