That's only a problem for those that posit that intentionality is fundamental. — noAxioms

:up: :up: :100:

I would not buy that suggestion. More probably the intentionality emerges from whatever process is used to implement it. I can think of countless emergent properties, not one of which suggest that the properties need to be fundamental. — noAxioms

Ok. But if there is an 'emergence', it must be an intelligible process. The problem for 'emergentism' is that there doesn't seem any convincing explanation of how intentionality, consciousness and so on 'emerge' from something that does not have those properties.

As I said before, that we have yet to find a credible explanation for such an emergence is an evidence against emergentism. Of course, such an absence of an explanation isn't a compelling evidence for the impossibility of an explanation.

Anyway, I also would point out that IMO most forms of physicalism have a difficulty in explaining that composite objects can be 'distinct entities'.

Thus illustrating my point about language. 'Intentional' is reserved for life forms, so if something not living does the exact same thing, a different word (never provided) must be used, or it must be living, thus proving that the inanimate thing cannot do the thing that it's doing (My example was 'accelerating downward' in my prior post). — noAxioms

Ok, thanks for the clarification. But note my point above.

boundless: Ok, but if intentionality is fundamental, then the arising of intentionality is unexplained. — noAxioms

I misphrased this. I meant: if intentionality is fundamental then there is no need for an explanation.

That would make time more fundamental, a contradiction. X just is, and everything else follows from whatever is fundamental. And no, I don't consider time to be fundamental. — noAxioms

Right, but there is also the possibility that ontological dependency doesn't involve a temporary relation. That is, you might say that intentionality isn't fundamental but it is dependent on something else that hasn't intentionality and yet there have not been a time where intentionality didn't exist (I do not see a contradiction in thinking that, at least).

As an illustration, consider the stability of a top floor in a building. It clearly depends on the firmness of the foundations of the builing and yet we don't that 'at a certain point' the upper floor 'came out' from the lower.

So, yeah, arising might be a wrong word. Let's go with 'dependence'.

Again, why? There's plenty that's currently unexplained. Stellar dynamics I think was my example. For a long time, people didn't know stars were even suns. Does that lack of even that explanation make stars (and hundreds of other things) fundamental? What's wrong with just not knowing everything yet? — noAxioms

I hope I have clarified my point above. But let's use this example. Stellar dynamics isn't fundamental because it can be explained in terms of more fundamental processes. Will we discover something similar for intentionality, consciousness and so on? Who knows. Maybe yes. But currently it seems to me that our 'physicalist' models can't do that. In virtue of what properties might intentionality, consciousness and so on 'emerge'?

That's what it means to be true even if the universe didn't exist. — noAxioms

Good, we agree on this. But if they are 'true' even if the universe or multiverse didn't exist, this means that they have a different ontological status. And, in fact, if the multiverse could not exist, this would mean that it is contingent. Mathematical truths, instead, we seem to agree are not contingent.
Given that they aren't contingent, they can't certainly depend on something that is contingent. So, they transcend the multiverse (they would be 'super-natural').

Maybe putting in intelligibility as a requirement for existence isn't such a great idea. Of course that depends on one's definition of 'to exist'. There are definitely some definitions where intelligibility would be needed. — noAxioms

If the physical world wasn't intelligible, then it seems to me that even doing science would be problematic. Indeed, scientific research seems to assume that the physical world is intelligible.

It might be problematic to assume that the physical world is fully intelligible for us, but intelligibility seems to be required for any type of investigation.

A made-up story. Not fiction (Sherlock Holmes say), just something that's wrong. Hard to give an example since one could always presume the posited thing is not wrong. — noAxioms

Ok. I would call these things simply 'wrong explanations' or 'inconsistent explanations' rather than 'super-natural', which seems to me to be better suited for speaking about something that transcends the 'natural' (if there is anything that does do that... IMO mathematical truths for instance do transcend the natural).

Again, why is the explanation necessary? What's wrong with just not knowing everything? Demonstrating the thing in question to be impossible is another story. That's a falsification, and that carries weight. So can you demonstrate than no inanimate thing can intend? Without 'proof by dictionary'? — noAxioms

TBH, I thing that right now the 'virdict' is still open. There is no evidence 'beyond reasonable doubt' to either position about consciousness that can satisfy almost everyone. We can discuss about what position seems 'more reasonable' but we do not have 'convincing evidences'.

That does not sound like any sort of summary of my view, which has no requirement of being alive in order to do something that a living thing might do, such as fall off a cliff. — noAxioms

OK, I stand corrected. Would you describe your position as 'emergentist' then?

Ok. But if there is an 'emergence', it must be an intelligible process. The problem for 'emergentism' is that there doesn't seem any convincing explanation of how intentionality, consciousness and so on 'emerge' from something that does not have those properties. — boundless

The emergence of intentionality (in the sense of 'aboutness') seems well enough explained by the behavior of a trained neural network. See:



This certainly isn't sufficient for an explanation of consciousness. However, in light of how serious a concern AI has become, I'd think it merits serious consideration as an explanation of how intentionality can emerge from a system in which the individual components of the system lack intentionality.

Do you think it is reasonable to grant that we know of an intelligible process in which intentionality emerges?

thanks for the video. It seems interesting. I'll share my thoughts tomorrow about it.

:up:

All this seems to be the stock map vs territory speach, but nowhere is it identified what you think is the map (that I'm talking about), and the territory (which apparently I'm not). — noAxioms

The map is the first-person view. Is the map (first-person view) not part of the territory?

Very few consider the world to be a model. The model is the map, and the world is the territory. Your wording very much implies otherwise, and thus is a strawman representation of a typical monist view. As for your model of what change is, that has multiple interpretations, few particularly relevant to the whole ontology of mind debate. Change comes in frequencies? Frequency is expressed as a rate relative to perceptions?? — noAxioms

I never said that people consider the world as a model. I said that our view is the model and the point was that some people (naive realists) tend to confuse the model with the map in their using terms like, "physical" and "material".

You do understand that we measure change using time, and that doing so entails comparing the relative frequency of change to another type of change (the movement of the hour hand on the clock vs the movement of the sun across the sky)? Do you not agree that our minds are part of the world and changes like anything else in the world, and the time it takes our eye-brain system can receive and process the information compared to the rate at which what you are observing is changing, can play a role in how your mind models what it is seeing.

So old glass flowing is not an actual process, or I suppose just doesn't appear that way despite looking disturbingly like falling liquid? This is getting nitpickly by me. I acknowledge your example, but none of it is science, nor is it particularly illustrative of the point of the topic. — noAxioms

:meh: Everything is a process. Change is relative. The molecules in the glass are moving faster than when it was a solid, therefore the rate of change has increased and is why you see it as a moving object rather than a static one. I don't see how it isn't science when scientists attempt to find consistent processes with consistent frequencies of change (like atomic clocks) to measure the rate of change in other processes. QM says that measuring processes changes them and how they are perceived (wave vs particle), so I don't know what you mean by, "none of it is science".