Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id CAA23180 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Tue, 3 Oct 2000 02:15:46 +0100 Message-Id: <200010030113.VAA21607@mail5.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 20:17:58 -0500 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Re: the conscious universe In-reply-to: <20001002113913.A1380@reborntechnology.co.uk> References: <200010020839.EAA29199@mail5.lig.bellsouth.net>; from joedees@bellsouth.net on Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 03:44:43AM -0500 X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.01b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Date sent: Mon, 2 Oct 2000 11:39:13 +0100
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Subject: Re: the conscious universe
From: Robin Faichney <robin@reborntechnology.co.uk>
Send reply to: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> On Mon, Oct 02, 2000 at 03:44:43AM -0500, Joe E. Dees wrote:
> > > <snip>
> > >
> > Since my primary field is philosophy, I can speak upon this.
>
> Given Wade's opinion of philosophy and philosophers, he might not be too
> impressed by your statements. Unless they happen to support his own,
> of course.
>
> > There is nothing logical, or in the least bit philosophical, about
> > Robin's unsupported, and indeed, evidentiarily insupportable,
> > assumption that the entire universe, and every atom in it, is
> > conscious.
>
> > Such a contention is concrete, not abstract, yet is not
> > testable, and thus violates Popperian Falsifiability, as it is a
> > positive universal empirical statement, and no universal statement
> > may be empirically tested everywherewhen.
>
> Where's your evidence for "concrete consciousness"? :-)
>
The presence, to us, of a perceived and interpreted and
intersubjectively corroborational world. Consciousness is
consciousness OF, that is (until it recursively wraps around into
self-consciousness) of other-than-itself. Thus the presence of any
perceived objects at all point to the perceiving comnsciousness
which apodictically (that's self-evidently, Robin) grounds such a
presence, and therefore such consciousness can be attributed
more concrete reality than any kantian noumenon inferred to
underlie our perceptions, even though such a noumenon is itself
existent. Any object-in-itself, although unknowable in its entireity,
must contain the object-for us as a part that cannot contradict
such a whole; in other words, it must be such that, when placed in
the presence of our sensory apparatuses, the perceptions we do
indeed have of it result.
>
> > In fact, Robin has not
> > the whisp of a suggestion how one might go about testing a lump
> > of granite for its purported consciousness.
>
> You seem to be confusing empirical testability with logical and/or
> philosophical validity. Which, in a philosopher, is rather surprising.
>
If you are here speaking of metaphysics, be advised that it's a dead
discipline in seroius philosophical circles; the self-contradictory
effort to compose and propose multiple, mutually contradictory and
untestable fantasies about what lies beyond physics has been
subsumed by ontology, which instead digs beneath the
superficially apparent sedimentation to deduce and derive a more
profound foundation, which must still must be testable and not be
contradicted or falsified by such testing. The three criteria used to
test candidate truth-claims (another triad, Chris!) are external
coherence (compatibility with contiguous verified truths), internal
consistency (there must be no self-contradiction or reductio ad
absurdum contained in the candidate truth) and correspondence of
the map statement with the territory reality it purports to represent.
When one of these are found, the other two are also. Of course,
the nature of the Verification Principle and Popperian Falsifiability
are that nothing can be proven absolutely true, since firther
evidence may require a theory to ne elaborated, modified or
discarded, but a self-contradiction, clash with neighboring truths or
poor fit with reality (and where one is found, the other two can be,
too) can render a candidate truth-claim absolutely false.
Consciousness, as I pointed out above, is indeed an empirical
phenomenon; it is no sterile abstraction, but occurs, and can be
observed to occur, in parts of the universe, while it has NEVER
been observed in others. Thus, its omnipresence cannot be
asserted without violating Popperian falsifiability, and the field of
philosophy concerned with such principles is known as the
philosophy of science. The fact that you do not answer my
question about how to test a part of reality (the lump of granite) for
consciousness is an elegant demonstration that the attribution of
consciousness to the whole of reality is an exercise of faith, and
not knowledge. It does not even qualify as philosophy of religion; it
is a religious belief itself, not views upon such a belief and beliefs
like and unlike it (which is what the philosophy of religion contains).
>
> > It is a purely
> > mysticoreligious assumption. Of course, absence of evidence is
> > not evidence of absence, but neither is it evidence of presence.
> > Since such an assertion could never be tested, it cannot be an
> > article of knowledge, philosophical or otherwise, and is correctly
> > labeled an article of faith/belief.
>
> I've said, several times, that consciousness is subjective, and its
> location a matter of opinion, not one of fact. Do you consider all
> matters of opinion to be "mysticoreligious"?
>
Actually, the location of your consciousness is within your body,
more specifically your brain and associated nervous system and
perceptual and reactional apparatuses tied to those nerve endings,
but of these, your brain is essential - it is the critical physical
substrate of the dynamically recursive complex patternings
characteristic of consciousness. If you doubt this, then have your
brain removed from your skull and crushed by a steamroller and try
to get the rest of you to sense or affect anything with the
perceptual and actional apparatuses left.
> --
> Robin Faichney
>
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>
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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