tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541500.post1357117239735907543..comments2024-03-29T07:31:49.016+09:00Comments on BigHominid's Hairy Chasms: Ave, Bill and Malcolm!Kevin Kimhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01328790917314282058noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541500.post-68622214287141260962011-11-23T00:50:39.417+09:002011-11-23T00:50:39.417+09:00Hi Kevin,
Just saw this - thanks for the link!
I...Hi Kevin,<br /><br />Just saw this - thanks for the link!<br /><br />I never expect to make any headway with Bill V. -- philosophy of mind is an enormously technical academic field -- but I do enjoy "crossing hands" with him now and then.<br /><br />His main point is a "parity of reasoning" argument; he maintains that since only physical things have physical properties, then only mental things can have mental properties. I see this as simply an appeal to intuition, and don't see why it isn't equally plausible that physical things can have mental properties. That certainly seems to be what neuroscience is telling us, after all.<br /><br />Another issue I've been haranguing him about for years, and have never got a satisfactory answer from him on, is why we can't pry apart essentially subjective phenomena -- (i.e., conscious self-awareness and qualia) -- from intentionality. I think there is all sorts of unconscious intentionality in the world.<br /><br />But to accept that you have to accept that the blind "design" process of evolution can build intentionality into the physical world. For a hard-core dualist like Bill, it is simply axiomatic that no purely physical system can be "about" anything at all. And that's really the rub in this discussion as well.<br /><br />Oh well, I'm glad he puts up with me.Malcolm Pollackhttp://malcolmpollack.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541500.post-1317836175428882262011-11-22T02:53:13.883+09:002011-11-22T02:53:13.883+09:00That may be true, but I think a strong case is bei...That may be true, but I think a strong case is being built for the physicalist side. The substance dualist side does little more than repeatedly claim, "It's impossible! Material things can't be the source of mental phenomena!"-- whereas the physicalists, relying on physicalist assumptions, continue to build machines that exhibit increasingly complex problem-solving behaviors. <br /><br />It's sort of an ontology-recapitulates-phylogeny event: our computers and robots are evolving evolved in fits and starts, and in branching directions, in much the way that biological consciousness has done over the aeons. The consciousness develops slowly, by uneven degrees, over time. We're not at a stage where any man-made device might be called truly conscious, but I can't ignore the increasing complexity in the teleonomic behaviors of our artifacts.<br /><br />I think Malcolm had a point when he said we still don't know enough about consciousness to rule out, <i>a priori,</i> what consciousness <i>can't</i> be. I made a similar point about consciousness in my Arnold-versus-Britney dialogue long ago (quoted <a href="http://bighominid.blogspot.com/2011/02/see-what-i-mean.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>).Kevin Kimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01328790917314282058noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5541500.post-31339819564793933602011-11-22T00:38:41.854+09:002011-11-22T00:38:41.854+09:00Addofio here
It occurs to me, based solely on you...Addofio here<br /><br />It occurs to me, based solely on your summary (scoff at my laziness and ignorance, that's OK) that both positions are, as things stand currently, matters of faith. Which probably says something interesting or profound about the human condition or the role of faith in our lives, but I'm too tired (coming off four days of driving, the last of which was 14 hours on the road) to figure it out.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com