RE: Supervenience, Transcendence, and Mind
September 13, 2014 at 9:25 pm
(This post was last modified: September 13, 2014 at 9:27 pm by genkaus.)
(September 5, 2014 at 7:46 pm)bennyboy Wrote: "A supervenient property, once supervened, should be considered transcendent-- independent of the mechanical structure/function upon which it supervenes."
I think your conclusion of "independence" from "transcendence" is ambiguous and open to equivocation.
(September 5, 2014 at 7:46 pm)bennyboy Wrote: I would term this "transcendence"-- the greenness is independent of the mechanism underlying it, because it doesn't matter HOW the greenness occurs, only that it does.
Here's the problem - the identity of the phenomenon, the "greenness" in this case, is a conceptual imposition. We add this conceptual imposition in order to make it easier for us to refer to the subject at hand without having to go to the underlying mechanism. In effect, the very purpose here is to make it conceptually independent from the underlying mechanism while accepting that existentially it is still dependent on some mechanism. The difference between these two types of "independence" is a significant one to draw.
Apart from this, I agree with the rest of your post.
(September 7, 2014 at 7:10 pm)bennyboy Wrote: The point is that the property has in a sense escaped the bounds of the mechanism on which it supervenes. The property has its own identity, despite supposing to be rooted in that mechanism.
The property having its own identity doesn't imply independence from the underlying mechanism - identity is a conceptual imposition, not an existential one.
