tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.comments2023-06-19T09:54:34.673-04:00Guide to RealitySteve Esserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03127743863789489392noreply@blogger.comBlogger870125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-69671878454238849222011-07-21T13:48:29.758-04:002011-07-21T13:48:29.758-04:00If at some point your explanations end with a brut...If at some point your explanations end with a brute fact or facts about reality (i.e there's no further "reason that it's that way"), I don't see why it follows that this means it could be something different tomorrow.Steve Esserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03127743863789489392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-51007118169900342542011-07-21T01:00:50.054-04:002011-07-21T01:00:50.054-04:00Why would the ground of being push towards one kin...Why would the ground of being push towards one kind of reality instead of some other kind?<br /><br />Why would power properties dispose towards certain outcomes instead of others?<br /><br /><br />It would seem to me that contingency would still have the final word: ultimately there is no reason, it just is that way. <br /><br />And since there's no reason that it's that way, there's no reason it why it won't be some other way tomorrow.<br /><br />Right?Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10637109782433403780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-40048838918745318332011-07-20T10:35:02.342-04:002011-07-20T10:35:02.342-04:00I've been thinking about the following: The p...I've been thinking about the following: The philosophers advocating this "causal powers" view (see <a href="http://philpapers.org/archive/MUMAPT.1.pdf" rel="nofollow">here</a>) advance this idea that they are characterized by having a modal strength in-between pure contingency on the one hand and necessity on the other.<br /><br />Power properties dispose toward certain outcomes, but the outcomes are not guaranteed.<br /><br />Meillassoux (and most others) don't have anything like this in mind as an option.<br /><br />Could the ground of being be something pushing toward a certain kind of reality, rather than being simply hyper-chaos?Steve Esserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03127743863789489392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-80892090860040170472011-07-19T17:00:48.888-04:002011-07-19T17:00:48.888-04:00So how do you think this compares to Meillassoux&#...So how do you think this compares to Meillassoux's views on the necessity of contingency?Allenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10637109782433403780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-70153967517628561582011-07-02T11:02:47.801-04:002011-07-02T11:02:47.801-04:00OK. Thanks, CPaul.OK. Thanks, CPaul.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-15066721103823886812011-07-01T21:38:34.314-04:002011-07-01T21:38:34.314-04:00I really respect the equanimity of your approach t...I really respect the equanimity of your approach to the fascinating topics you explore in depth but with ease. You really hit on the subtlety of differences of these two smart individuals' views. I am inclined to agree that Gertler's view is the more robust one.<br /><br />I have recently posted three succinct xtranormal animations on youtube. Since the topics are reality and consciousness it seems fitting enough to cite them here for you and your readers. <br /><br />http://youtu.be/L_HU1Dn_Cq0<br /><br />- CPaulcpaul_hiddenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10977455601450409627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-2489306828704160102011-06-30T14:04:46.483-04:002011-06-30T14:04:46.483-04:00Metaphysics is no longer a subject to criticize or...Metaphysics is no longer a subject to criticize or word of critics. This is a science which is transforming its its shape to the actual face.Sennaya Swamyhttp://www.EgyptianCode.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-91519326533032998052011-06-29T14:47:28.038-04:002011-06-29T14:47:28.038-04:00how about book five will be coming soon . or never...how about book five will be coming soon . or never . thats makes uop for a lot of readinggilberthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06376018213959059109noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-18307753766007460122011-06-26T12:44:53.990-04:002011-06-26T12:44:53.990-04:00We know only the abstract possibilia within abstra...We know only the abstract possibilia within abstract systems, not actual things/events. It appears that almost all animals reptiles birds insects etc have or at some point in their existences have 2 eyes a nose and a mouth- usually in a head type area. All events in the natural world may be actualizations of possibilities and like Darwin, one finds ones self down the road to a priori land. No "all possible worlds" are possible.LFhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18174377990164973260noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-51103425407358495432011-06-25T13:33:11.830-04:002011-06-25T13:33:11.830-04:00I knew you wouldn't like that.
My view is th...I knew you wouldn't like that. <br />My view is that local causal structure is in "the spirit" of SR the way it is typically described (light cones, etc.), even if it's not in the mathematical description.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-88284789312661327012011-06-25T10:25:08.121-04:002011-06-25T10:25:08.121-04:00This paper is deeply shocking because it assumes t...This paper is deeply shocking because it assumes that local causality is a necessary part of Special Relativity. The speed of light is not a maximum velocity except for massive objects. You can see that the editors had a problem with this assumption because the paper has "Appendix A" tacked on where Bell's reasoning:<br /><br />"..we declare redundant certain<br />of the conditional variables in the last expression because they are at space-like separation from the result in question."<br /><br />Bell can "declare" all he likes but SPECIAL relativity does not have that limitation.<br /><br />Modern relativity is the postulate that the universe contains a four dimensional manifold and this leads to there being a velocity that is measured to be the same for all observers and leads to the laws of dynamics being the same in all frames of reference. I thorougly recommend a quick look at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_special_relativity#Einstein.27s_postulate:_the_constancy_of_the_speed_of_light" rel="nofollow">Wikipedia into to SR</a>.Thoughtshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17866896441731516034noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-22887193928720906142011-06-17T08:55:07.741-04:002011-06-17T08:55:07.741-04:00By "modern interpretation" you mean many...By "modern interpretation" you mean many-worlds interpretation of QM I assume. I guess that can sidestep the issue.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-85879097515715555322011-06-17T07:14:27.420-04:002011-06-17T07:14:27.420-04:00If a measurement causes decoherence in a distant o...If a measurement causes decoherence in a distant object then the modern interpretation is that a universe has been selected where the properties of the measured and the distant object have the observed properties. This neatly separates QM from SR so that they can both be true.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-84756097602971931662011-05-19T14:55:10.688-04:002011-05-19T14:55:10.688-04:00I'm glad you think so Steve. Having done a fai...I'm glad you think so Steve. Having done a fair amount of googling, the only similar view I've managed to dredge up was expressed by Jaron Lanier during an online conversation, when he speculated that "without consciousness, perhaps there's just quarks". I usually find it hard going to get people to appreciate why there might be a problem with our usual assumptions about this. Having posted yesterday's comments, I happened to be having a conversation in the pub with some philosophically-inclined friends, and tried the same exposition out on them - they had absolutely no clue what I was talking about. I pointed out that I wasn't peddling some knock-down mind-body theory, just trying to to see where our assumptions about "physical reality" lead if you're actually prepared to take them seriously. They just kept frowning and saying "what's the problem - yes, of course there are particles, but they're arranged into macroscopic objects and that's what we experience". No matter how often I insisted that this "conclusion" was in fact an unavoidable but irremediably a posteriori assumption founded in an implicit overdetermination of the elements of physical reality, they still couldn't grasp my point. Realism - "naive" or otherwise - had them in its relentless grip. "Semantics!" they said. I gave up.<br /><br />This "assumption" is of course our common situation, and I certainly don't have any definitive solution of how it is to be reconciled with a micro-physical "completist" account. Maybe Rosenberg's approach will turn out to lie in the right direction - i.e. a self-consistent macroscopic history (his "natural individuals") condensing from the microscopic flux through the influence of hidden layers of casual structure. But my own suspicions, for what they're worth, don't really lie in the direction of hidden properties of matter; I actually find the functional/computational approach rather persuasive (as indeed does Rosenberg) but incomplete (as again does he). My argument against Dennett-style eliminativism about consciousness is that, rigorously applied, it denies not merely phenomenal, but macroscopic, reality and thus radically fails to save the appearances in its bare form. Somehow the localisation of a "virtual" first person environment from a global third-person ensemble of maximal fragmentation comes to be "realised" in this sui-generis form. Somehow two "views of reality" - global and local, whole and part - intersect, neither being dispensable without the loss of some crucial element of truth. There is indeed a suggestive similarity in this to the "hardware"/"software" relationship, but perhaps one in which the "hardware" isn't what we take it to be and the "software" is no mere metaphor but a fundamental level of reality.dnn8350https://www.blogger.com/profile/13028876540733025341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-59167914908146434262011-05-19T10:42:44.602-04:002011-05-19T10:42:44.602-04:00That's a very interesting idea. It's good...That's a very interesting idea. It's good to hear from someone who's been doing some serious thinking on this.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-13458158553968048282011-05-18T12:29:06.627-04:002011-05-18T12:29:06.627-04:00Rosenberg's ideas about "tracking" r...Rosenberg's ideas about "tracking" really got me thinking again about some speculations of my own. The purely "effective" story is what Dennett et al would have us believe is the whole schmear ("who you gonna believe", as Groucho Marx once asked an incredulous Chico "me or your own eyes?"). It's also, in effect, the story of Chalmers' zombie - the doppelganger that is "effectively" identical but phenomenally lacking. Finally, it's the narrative of physical science tout court. But is all this to presume too much? Are these purely effective versions of events in fact helping themselves to levels of "reality" to which they are not, viewed strictly in their own terms, entitled? After all, if we eliminate any idea of "strong causal emergence" (which is at least the implicit assumption of micro-physical theory - i.e. quantum mechanics is a complete theory of both the micro-and macro-scopic) what do we have but particles and their interactions? It's no use appealing for anything further to the composite reality of our experience, or pointing out that QM isn't much help in understanding or predicting anything beyond two or perhaps three-particle interactions, because this is all after the fact - i.e. it is begging the question by citing the evidence of experience, the very matter under question. After all, according to QM, there is a sort of micro-physical machine that does all the work at the fundamental level, and this level is all that Occam would appear to need to account for anything and everything that exists and occurs (OK there's the small question of gravity, but you get my drift).<br /><br />If god is contemplating all of this from some peaceful spot outside of everything, presumably she may be perfectly cognizant of the details of how some particle at the tip of what I am pleased to call my nose arrived at that point in spacetime on the basis of what was initiated at the big bang, without invoking any of the complexly derived entities and events that notionally might constitute "me" or my "macroscopic environment". The fundamental point in Chalmers' zombie argument gets missed, I think, even by him. When we imagine the zombie we should invoke, not a human-like facsimile uttering the same statements and entertaining the same thoughts and beliefs, but rather the bare micro-physical effective substructure prior to any such interpretation. Indeed, looked at in this way, the zombie is US. And god might well have arranged matters this way ("just the facts, maam"). But she didn't. And the evidence to the contrary is precisely our knowledge by acquaintance of an integrated environment of composite objects and events that transcends (but doesn't contradict) the reductive narrative. This knowledge has the aspect of an INTERPRETATION projected on (or integrated over) the microphysical story. Without that knowledge by acquaintance, god might still entertain herself by imagining our "zombie" or "virtual" selves existing and functioning in terms of that "interpretative environment", but we ourselves would have no purchase on any reality beyond our particulate existence.dnn8350https://www.blogger.com/profile/13028876540733025341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-14740589222549264962011-05-18T12:19:12.722-04:002011-05-18T12:19:12.722-04:00The part of Rosenberg's book I had in mind is ...The part of Rosenberg's book I had in mind is in "The Consciousness Hypothesis" chapter under "the knowledge paradox" (page 258, Oxford hard-back edition). He says "The knowledge paradox stems from our knowing we are conscious even though experiencing seems not to be causally responsible for our brain states. On the carrier view, one might have a nagging feeling that causal responsibility hangs only off the effective side of things." This is indeed my point of departure.<br /><br />He goes on to describe a direct knowledge by acquaintance - a "knowing what" - which (crucially for his argument) is not "truth evaluable": e.g. knowing what it is like to hear a scream, to smell a baby, etc. "The epistemic puzzle for consciousness", he says, "does not concern how we may have knowledge in the "knowing what...." sense" because "this knowledge is knowledge of the basic causal nature of the particular we are." I concur with this if only because something of the sort seems necessary to block an infinite regress of 'homunculi'. But, he says, "the problem is to explain how this "knowing what......." justifies instances of propositional knowledge expressed by "knowing that....." clauses. How does the intimacy of acquaintance license the uttering of sentences?" In my view, these comments are the pivot of the entire book because, lacking a plausible reconciliation of these types of knowing and a link to the behaviour thus engendered, his whole project founders.<br /><br />He goes on to sketch how "knowing that can emerge from knowing what with the help of knowing how." There isn't space to recapitulate his entire argument here, but he concludes "Even though consciousness is not physical, its activity underlies our physical nature as a carrier of our nomic content. Our physical states, although not causally interacting with our conscious states, track and therefore represent those states.........phenomenal properties are used to represent themselves."<br /><br />The section on the knowledge paradox is dense and rather subtle. He concludes by conceding that the "effective" side of things should indeed be understood as being entirely responsible for our judgements and utterances about conscious experiences. This is the point, of course, at which Dennett and the functionalist/computationalist school rest their case, and indeed any substantially divergent conclusion would be problematical, to say the least, for current theories of micro-physical reality. But Rosenberg of course doesn't rest here; he argues that the "effective narrative" is not the whole story: the complex of effective action, that (construed somehow) must comprise the objects and events of our experience and the justification of our behaviour, systematically "tracks" its phenomenal counterpart.<br /><br />Having run out of space, I'll say more about this in the following comment.dnn8350https://www.blogger.com/profile/13028876540733025341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-30971961229801797602011-05-17T13:54:21.661-04:002011-05-17T13:54:21.661-04:00Ok , the qualitative aspect of things seems necess...Ok , the qualitative aspect of things seems necessary for consciousness and real causality, but still doesn’t seem needed for a complete functional description of humans. So the problem is why do we have dispositions to make reference to the qualitative side? (Let’s assume this is indeed a problem, although I have some feeling that perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising if the qualitative/dispositional divide is only in our descriptions of nature, not in nature itself.)<br /><br />You describe Rosenberg’s idea (and I haven’t reviewed his book again on this yet) as:<br /><br /><i>His proposal, if I've understood him, seems to be a sort of overdetermination of reference, in that a "functional" or effective analogue of qualitative reference is somehow simultaneously "realised" by the qualitative substructure.</i><br /><br />You then say:<br /><br /> <i>…the purely effective or extrinsic description of the physical world can plausibly be reduced (ontologically, that is) to the level of particle interactions…</i><br /><br />and<br /><br /> <i>all composite structure (i.e. our macroscopic environment) would consequently seem, in some fundamental sense, to be more properly an aspect of epistemology - i.e. an a posteriori interpretation of a micro-physical "zombie" machine that seemingly runs perfectly happily on its own. If this be so, then the "realisation" of the qualitative counterpart of effective properties would in fact be constitutive of our entire experiential world of composite objects and events. This might be a sufficient justification for the removal of any accusation of "epiphenomenalism"! </i><br /><br />So, are you saying that the fact that our experiential field includes “lumpy” macro objects and events (rather than a chaos of particles) is evidence of the work the qualitative side is doing?Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-33791158010840660292011-05-15T19:57:20.908-04:002011-05-15T19:57:20.908-04:00That's interesting, although I'm not compl...That's interesting, although I'm not completely sure I understand. I'm heading out for a trip, and I'll follow up a bit later. Thanks. - SteveStevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-16779785307968757512011-05-15T19:17:44.928-04:002011-05-15T19:17:44.928-04:00I know you like Greg Rosenberg's ideas, but as...I know you like Greg Rosenberg's ideas, but as I recall at the very end of his book he still had difficulty with this aspect - i.e. even with receptive properties and carrier structure in place, we still want the effective account to be functionally "complete" (at least in principle). But if this is to be so, it would seem to leave no purchase for additional "impetus" from the qualitative aspects. Hence, as I think he admits, our ability to refer to them still seems puzzling. His proposal, if I've understood him, seems to be a sort of overdetermination of reference, in that a "functional" or effective analogue of qualitative reference is somehow simultaneously "realised" by the qualitative substructure. Actually, this seems not implausible to me. To put it crudely, if one omits the circular thinking and question begging that is customary in this area, the purely effective or extrinsic description of the physical world can plausibly be reduced (ontologically, that is) to the level of particle interactions. Unless one is motivated to posit strong causal emergence at some higher level (i.e. "downward causation"), all composite structure (i.e. our macroscopic environment) would consequently seem, in some fundamental sense, to be more properly an aspect of epistemology - i.e. an a posteriori interpretation of a micro-physical "zombie" machine that seemingly runs perfectly happily on its own. If this be so, then the "realisation" of the qualitative counterpart of effective properties would in fact be constitutive of our entire experiential world of composite objects and events. This might be a sufficient justification for the removal of any accusation of "epiphenomenalism"!dnn8350https://www.blogger.com/profile/13028876540733025341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-61687228913010831412011-05-15T18:33:57.607-04:002011-05-15T18:33:57.607-04:00Hi. That's a good question. But I think the ...Hi. That's a good question. But I think the functional (extrinsic) and qualitative (intrinsic) are unified at the most fundamental physical level. I'm not arguing for dualism, but a monism. So maybe it's not mysterious that the functional/dispositional aspects of consciousness can include the impetus to refer to the qualitative aspect.<br /><br />See, I don't like the software/hardware analogy -- since it seems to assume (as functionalist/computationalist models do) that the software can be implemented on a variety of hardware platforms. But that's what I'm denying. Consciousness is the way it is because of its instantiation at the quantum level where "software" and "hardware" (the qualitative and dispositional aspects of things) are inseparable/unified.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-74554930674431308882011-05-15T18:03:45.970-04:002011-05-15T18:03:45.970-04:00I know this comment comes a bit late in the day, b...I know this comment comes a bit late in the day, but I hope it's still relevant. Your contention is that, since the "feel" of consciousness seems not to be explicable as an "extrinsic" aspect of function, it may instead derive from some additional "intrinsic" quality. If so, how are we to explain our propensity to refer to such "functionally opaque" qualities, if the referring itself (i.e. the "access" account of consciousness) is deemed to be entirely functionally explicable? As an analogy, computer software can have no independent knowledge of, and hence no motivation to refer to, whatever underlying hardware may be responsible for its execution, because the "intrinsic" qualities of such hardware are hidden from the software "point of view".dnn8350https://www.blogger.com/profile/13028876540733025341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-61143178640762924652011-05-15T18:02:05.039-04:002011-05-15T18:02:05.039-04:00This comment has been removed by the author.dnn8350https://www.blogger.com/profile/13028876540733025341noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-4577135129450146372011-05-14T10:56:21.251-04:002011-05-14T10:56:21.251-04:00Yeah, their, and most's, philosophy izzzzzz, &...Yeah, their, and most's, philosophy izzzzzz, "If we like it, it's philosophy."https://www.blogger.com/profile/03037704048671379868noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7247637.post-15424148162190006182011-05-09T16:12:38.317-04:002011-05-09T16:12:38.317-04:00My previous comment looks wrong. Rather than talk...My previous comment looks wrong. Rather than talking about making two simultaneous measurements of the same property, we could consider simultaneous measurements of two different but compatible properties of the same system. There doesn't seem to be a problem with that with regard to SR.<br /><br />The conflict with SR comes with trying to observe the same measurement event in two frames. But that problem has no practical impact on empirical results, since you still cannot use the non-local effect of the collapse for super-luminal signaling.Stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14851240963321295307noreply@blogger.com