'Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.' ~ Max Planck. — Wayfarer
I don't see consciousness as anything fundamental in the world, just what it is like to be a really complex version of a modelling relation. — apokrisis
So what is really the story is that there is a systems perspective. Instead of life or mind being ontic simples - animating spirits - they are understood in terms of a particular species of complexity. And the job is to seek explanations in those terms. Once you get that and start looking around, you find there are a whole range of people and groups who have been feeling the same elephant. They might all use different jargon. But they are arriving at the same kind of insights. — apokrisis
The problem is that "the world", "complexities", and "systems" are all things created by the mind. Now you're trying to turn this around, and claim that the world, and complex systems create a mind. — Metaphysician Undercover
So your perspective is no further along than Plato's people in the cave. — Metaphysician Undercover
But that epistemic problem is accepted as the starting point of pragmatism. — apokrisis
Well in fact it is. — apokrisis
he's decided on what he believes and then supports in what may well add up to pseudo-scientific terminology. (I don't know for sure, as I'm not well versed enough in maths to judge it, but that's my intuitive feel for it.) — Wayfarer
This was my first reaction. [Hoffman] tries to hard to be acceptable to academia. But who can blame him considering what academia (dominated by materialists) had done to everyone who has dated challenge the supremacy of materialism-determinism. They positively crucify everyone who introduces a concept that is not hard-circuited. — Rich
You're misunderstanding.... — Janus
if it is unconscious, then how could you know that it is consciousness doing the integrating? — Janus
Evolution has shaped us with perceptions that allow us to survive. But part of that involves hiding from us the stuff we don’t need to know. And that’s pretty much all of reality, whatever reality might be.
According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness.
As I said above, h. sapiens, by virtue of being a language-using, story-telling, and rational being, is able to understand in modes that are not strictly determined by biology. That is why, for one, the distinction between 'appearance and reality' has such a long provenance in philosophy. Indeed I could argue that part of the intuition of philosophy itself, is to transcend the purely biological, the instinctive side of the organism that is purely concerned with survival and propagation. After all, it was ancient philosophy, first and foremost, which first preached renunciation and celibacy, and that certainly flies in the face of the presumed supremacy of the 'selfish gene'. — Wayfarer
To start, I question the value of trying to define consciousness as that already puts it in the class of a thing rather than a process. — apokrisis
Once you know enough about how the brain executes any function, you can see why it has the particular qualitative character that it does. — apokrisis
But the question of "why any qualitative character at all - when perhaps there might be just zombiedom?" is the kind of query which already reifies awareness in an illegitimate way...So I am starting with the belief that awareness is the outcome of a certain species of systems complexity. — apokrisis
To think the Hard Problem actually makes sense is to have already concluded consciousness is an ontic "simple", against all the scientific evidence that it is what you get from an unbelievably complex and integrated world modelling process. — apokrisis
Salthe coined the idea of infodynamics. Pattee really sharpened things with his epistemic cut. And then this particular group of systems biologists heard about Peircean semiotics - which had pretty much been lost until the 1990s - and realised that they were basically recapitulating what Peirce had already said. So as a group they did the honourable thing and relabelled themselves bio-semioticians. — apokrisis
There were other allied groups around. Dozens of them. I was part of Salthe and Pattee's group - having looked around and found they were head and shoulders above the rest. — apokrisis
The proper question we ought to be asking is what kind of fundamental system or process is a brain (in a body with a mind)? That is, we know the brain with its embodied modelling relation with the world is a really complex example of living mindfulness. It meets your working definition in terms of "the set of conditions experienced, and functions exercised, by a psychophysical being which produce personal and social behaviour." — apokrisis
Don't we need to understand the motivations behind renunciation before concluding that it's inconsistent with biology?
— praxis
How would you go about understanding those motivations? Which discipline would that fall under? — Wayfarer
Referring to the selfish gene puts it squarely in a social context, so sociobiology, — praxis
Then [Hoffman] goes on and tries to couch this simple idea with suffocating verbiage which is self-contradictory within a single paragraph concerning the precise nature of consciousness. This for me is usually a a red flag. Internal contradictions hidden with excessive verbiage and complicated mathematics is almost always a sign of obfuscation. — Rich
I don't think sociobiology has anything in particular to do with the understanding of the spiritual, psychological or religious motivations behind renunciation. — Wayfarer
But as the kinds of people who look at such questions from the perspective of biology, are not well-schooled in other disciplines, such as comparative religion, cultural history or anthropology, then they will invariably try and understand it in those terms. 'If the only tool you have is a hammer', said Abraham Maslow, 'everything looks like a nail.' — Wayfarer
I think it's more that he wishes to present his thesis in the terms his audience will understand, and so has created a mathematical model, justified with relation to evolutionary theory, which is the only kind of model that the audience he wishes to impress will take seriously. If he instead spoke about the issue in purely philosophical terms, he would then be simply another guy in the philosophy department, with the resulting loss of prestige and social kudos. This way, he gets to wear 'the white coat of authority'. — Wayfarer
I was just curious if you had investigated the motivation behind renunciation using any tool. — praxis
Rational animal, thank you. It's a qualifier that makes a fundamental diifference. — Wayfarer
I fully accept the facts of evolution, but I believe that once h. sapiens crosses a certain threshold, she is able to see things in a way that are not simply 'biologically determined'. Such, indeed, is the meaning of the 'sapience' after which our kind is named. — Wayfarer
The world we do see, comprises the evolutionarily-conditioned experience of that world, which is shaped first and foremost by the requirements of survival. — Wayfarer
Indeed I could argue that part of the intuition of philosophy itself, is to transcend the purely biological, the instinctive side of the organism that is purely concerned with survival and propagation. — Wayfarer
The point I was making was comparing Hoffman's analysis with traditional metaphysical accounts of 'appearance and reality'. From the standpoint of evolutionary theory, metaphysics doesn't really make any sense, as it really can't be said to provide any kind of survival advantage. I threw in the 'selfish gene' as I regard Richard Dawkins as epitomising biological reductionism. For him, whatever exists only does so because it represents a survival advantage. Even reason and language are depicted in evolutionary terms, as 'adaptions'. But, asking the question, adapted for what, the answer can only be the propagation of the genes - that is the only rationale possible for evolutionary biology. So metaphysics is completely off the radar for that kind of attitude, it makes no sense whatever. — Wayfarer
Surely, even a process can be defined. — Galuchat
What types (i.e., classes) of functions do you think brains execute? — Galuchat
The Tartu Schools of Semiotics (Moscow) and Biosemiotics (Copenhagen) produced work from many scholars beginning in the 1960s. — Galuchat
this is just a further indication that apokrisis promotes a backward ontology. — Metaphysician Undercover
Thanks, any time I'm told that I have a special gift (which is exceedingly rare), I will not hesitate to take that as a compliment. — Metaphysician Undercover
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