Consciousness Trilemma

[Whateverist]

Thanks for trying but apart from the missive to avoid taking things too far I'm missing it.

[The Grand Nudger]

You are matching local and general truth values into the same context for comparison.

?  

If there are no discrete systems...then there cannot be a discrete system that maps to our conscious experience.  

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?

What seems true to you is very often wrong.  Eliminitive materialists judge the assertion of your experiences accuracy by relation to whether or not there is anything in your brain that is, or could...do what you say "you" are doing.  

No, I think this is special pleading, now.  

....?

It's just an explicit admission that our language and concepts regarding what solid was or referred to were in error.  We couldn't pass through an object, we threw shit at it and that stuff couldn't pass through - so we called it solid.  We assumed that there was no space to pass through..and this assumption necessarily poisoned our understanding of what it meant to be solid....as it's poisoning your understanding of both solidity and materialism in general..... right now.  

Similarly, we assume that there is some I in there because our experience seems to strongly suggest that there is.  Is there?  Do you think that there's an I in our brain?  Because..if you don't...you're not disagreeing.  

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.

Our idea of what solid was was in error, but that doesn't make any object any less of what it is...I still can't walk through a wall.  Similarly, if you'll allow for us to be conscious in the same way that a table is solid..an eliminitive materialist, like dennet, will say;

"OFC consciousness exists, it's just not what you think it is"

-and proceed to offer an eliminitive materialists explanation of that thing...such as multiple drafts.  

Do you have a substantive objection or a laundry list of semantic objections?  

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.

I don't know how many times I have to explain that I'm not an eliminitive materialist, lol.  I'm just trying, and failing, to help you understand their position.   The only way to disagree with eliminitive materialism is to say that there -is- some discrete mental state of self, some discrete mental state of qualia.  A materialist can;t do that without finding that state or at least explaining how it would be possible.  You can..but then the question is simply asked again - does whatever that thing is and how it works map to our experience?  How does it, whatever it is, whatever it;s made of, wherever it resides, -do- that?

Delaying the necessary reduction. 

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.

-and there's the trouble.  We're constantly looping back round to your own ideas while pretending that we are addressing or even disagreeing with -their- ideas.  We aren't. Maybe your own ideas are just flat out wrong? No amount of referring to them will tell us anything about eliminitive materialism's position. Just as no amount of referring to your misaprehensions of solidity will tell us about the structure of material objects. To an eliminitive materialist, no amount of referring to what is not there or cannot be will explain our consciousness.

[bennyboy]

What seems true to you is very often wrong.  Eliminitive materialists judge the assertion of your experiences accuracy by relation to whether or not there is anything in your brain that is, or could...do what you say "you" are doing.  

I'd say it's likely that what seems true to me is ALWAYS wrong, unless there is a context established by which truth can be measured.

-and there's the trouble.  We're constantly looping back round to your own ideas while pretending that we are addressing or even disagreeing with -their- ideas.  We aren't.   Maybe your own ideas are just flat out wrong? No amount of referring to them will tell us anything about eliminitive materialism's position.  Just as no amount of referring to your misaprehensions of solidity will tell us about the structure of material objects.  To an eliminitive materialist, no amount of referring to what is not there or cannot be will explain our consciousness.

Except you're not talking about what's not there, but what's not there as such, and I'm saying that nothing is there as such. They say there's consciousness, but it's not there as such, and your strong perception and beliefs about it are illusory. I'm saying that a table is not there as such, either. Yeah, there's a table, because you can experience touching and seeing it-- but it's not what you think it is.

What I fail to do is to see why mind should be treated specially in this way when treated as an object of inquiry, but why nothing else should.

[The Grand Nudger]

Because there's a wall in front of you that isn't at all illusory in the way that -they- consider mind illusory.  

You know what I think?  I think you ran out of objections to em..now you're just objecting to existence.

[bennyboy]

Because there's a wall in front of you that isn't at all illusory in the way that -they- consider mind illusory.  

You know what I think?  I think you ran out of objections to em..now you're just objecting to existence.

No, if you look at my posts, you can pretty clearly see that I'm trying to get a refined position-- what is true, what is considered illusion, and on what basis?  Are there non-arbitrary criteria?

Eliminativism is about letting go ideas that are not represented in reality.  I consider many aspects of the material world view to be ideas which aren't represented in reality.

Let me ask you a very simple question.  You say what eliminativists say mind isn't.  What is  it, in their view, and how do they know it is this?

[The Grand Nudger]

Which has been explained to you, explicitly, more than once or twice or even three times.  I'll explain it again.  Eliminitive materialists contend that some or many of the mental states that most people believe in (including scientists and philosophers of mind) will not or cannot map to a discrete neural state.  That they have not, yet, goes without saying...if they did, we'd already have a solid explanation of mind.  

In that way, those mental states are illusory. The state of the table as "solid" -does- map to something objectively verifiable and fully within the confines of both what we consider to be solid objects and the underlying material paradigm that explains them.  The fact that, regardless of the space between atoms, there's isn't enough space for -us- to pass between them.  

You've already been made aware of an eliminitivist theory of mind, multiple drafts...to which you had little to no objection. You're now asking this question as though you hadn't already been made aware, hadn't already discussed it.

[bennyboy]

Which has been explained to you, explicitly, more than once or twice or even three times.  I'll explain it again.  Eliminitive materialists contend that some or many of the mental states that most people believe in (including scientists and philosophers of mind) will not or cannot map to a discrete neural state.  That they have not, yet, goes without saying...if they did, we'd already have a solid explanation of mind.  

In that way, those mental states are illusory. The state of the table as "solid" -does- map to something objectively verifiable and fully within the confines of both what we consider to be solid objects and the underlying material paradigm that explains them.  The fact that, regardless of the space between atoms, there's isn't enough space for -us- to pass between them.  

You've already been made aware of an eliminitivist theory of mind, multiple drafts...to which you had little to no objection.  You're now asking this question as though you hadn't already been made aware, hadn't already discussed it.

It's fairly easy to say what things aren't.  Mind isn't a barrel of blue cheese or a Magic Space Monkey, for example.  But what is it?  What do they think it is, and how would they determine whether a given physical subsystem has it?

You have often done this before-- said that you've explained things over and over and it's not my fault if you get it.  But I'm not really that dumb a guy, and my memory's not really that bad.  If you had proposed a theory of mind detailed enough to take seriously, I believe I would have noticed it.  I even stopped for a day to go read the wikipedia page, and was left with the same questions I'm having now-- which are the exact questions that a theory of mind must be prepared to answer:

1)  Do you believe there's mind?
2)  If no, fuck off, because "mind" is a label, at least in part, for the experience of qualia, and whatever they are, they are in fact being experienced when I wake up in the morning.
3)  If yes, then what do you say mind is, how do you know it is this, and by what criteria do I establish whether a given physical system has/is it?

Anything which doesn't arrive at (3), with a sensible explanation of a material mechanism, cannot be called a material theory of mind.

[The Grand Nudger]

Benny.....multiple drafts is an eliminitivist theory of mind.  

At some point, it -is- your fault if you're not getting it.

Eliminitivists think that mind is processing. They propose that mind is processing because that's what the brain does. They refer both to behavior and structure as an indication that a creature might might possess what they propose mind to be - hence the quote "we're all p-zombies" from Dennet.

---

-cont

They feel that mind is, more accurately, the behavior of a system..and not a thing that we will find in the brain - and all non-eliminitivist theories of mind depend upon it being an actual thing in the brain (sorry, I'm excluding any form of substance dualism here...deal with it).  

If one system behaves exactly as a "known mind" behaves..it makes little sense to withhold the classification from them.  We believe, in the case of p-zombies...that there is some difference between us.  The proposition is that we are exactly the same as a p-zombie except for one thing..we experience....

..but, ofc, if a p-zombie were exactly the same as we were in all ways but one..it would -also- seem to believe that it experienced, and it would relate this belief to us in ways identical to our own beliefs about experience.  There's no way to rescue -us- from that situation barring bare assertions, once proposed..and good reason in the way of nuerology to accept that we -are- such a system.  In their opinions.

[bennyboy]

Eliminitivists think that mind is processing.  They propose that mind is processing because that's what the brain does.  They refer both to behavior and structure as an indication that a creature might might possess what they propose mind to be - hence the quote "we're all p-zombies" from Dennet. They feel that mind is, more accurately, the behavior of a system..and not a thing that we will find in the brain - and all non-eliminitivist theories of mind depend upon it being an actual thing in the brain (sorry, I'm excluding any form of substance dualism here...deal with it).  

--edit--

Okay, I've thought about your last post a little more, and my question has changed: in a determinist materialism, what's the difference between thing, state, processing and behavior? Isn't "processing" a change of state over time? Isn't "behavior" simply a change of state that is propagating outside the processing system through some interface (say, bodily movements)?

It seems to me that distinguishing among these kind of like saying "this isn't about position-- it's about velocity and time." These are all so closely interrelated that they are mutually dependent.