I really didn’t get the “why” of your “functionalism implies dualism” thesis.
Well, let’s review what it is that we’re trying to explain. Consider what you are, from the subjective perspective. You’re a locus of awareness, experiencing some texture of sensations organized into forms. Then, we have what is supposed to be the physical reality of you: about O(10^26) atoms, executing an intricate nested dance of systems within systems, inside a skull somewhere. An individual sensation—the finest grain of that texture of sensation you’re always experiencing, e.g. some pixel of red in your visual field—is supposed to be the very same thing as a particular massed movement of billions of atoms somewhere in your visual cortex. Even if you say that the redness is “how this movement feels” or “how it feels to be this movement” or some similar turn of phrase, you’re still tending towards a type of dualism, property dualism, because you’re saying that along with its physically recognizable properties, this flow of atoms has a property that otherwise plays no role in physics, the property of “how it feels”.
the “borderline cases” issue is just a very classical issue in a reductionist view of “multi-layered map of a single-layered reality”. It’s the same kind of “borderline cases” you’ve [got] with not being able to take at quark-level what is exactly part of a given object and what is not, and I really don’t see how it implies dualism.
For macroscopic concepts like chair, we can get away with vagueness about borderline cases, because there’s no reason to believe that “chair” is anything more than a heuristic concept for talking about certain large clusters of atoms. The experience of a chair is a collaboration between a world of atoms and a mind of perceptions and concepts. But you can’t reduce the mind itself in this way, because of the circularity involved.
As near as I can tell, you say our models look too imprecise to explain consciousness. You must know the argument that consciousness ain’t that precise—how do you respond? Because when I put this together with the first link, I don’t see what you have left to explain. (But I may be slightly drunk.)
An individual sensation—the finest grain of that texture of sensation you’re always experiencing, e.g. some pixel of red in your visual field—is supposed to be the very same thing as a particular massed movement of billions of atoms somewhere in your visual cortex.
No, not the very same thing. Many kinds of “massed movement of billions of atoms” can generate the same sensation. Sure, exactly the same movement of the whole brain will always generate the same sensation, but in real life, it won’t just happen, a brain will never be exactly in the same state.
you’re still tending towards a type of dualism, property dualism, because you’re saying that along with its physically recognizable properties, this flow of atoms has a property that otherwise plays no role in physics, the property of “how it feels”.
The configuration of atoms on my hard disk has a property of being an ext4 filesystem, while being an ext4 filesystem plays no role in physics, so I believe in property dualism ? Property is part of the map, not of the territory. The property of that hard disk is that it holds that movie file. The same movie file (for me, at the level of the map which is useful to me) exists on my USB key, and on that DVD. The physical configuration of the two is totally different, for me it’s the same file.
It’s exactly the same with “feeling” or “seeing red”. And it doesn’t matter that my DVD is slightly damaged so some DVD players will be able to read it, but others won’t, making it a “borderline case”.
But you can’t reduce the mind itself in this way, because of the circularity involved.
I don’t see the problem with that kind of circularity (but maybe I did read too much Hoftsdatder, so “strange loops” have became a normal fundamental concept to me). Also, you seem to forget that perception involve vagueness. Our perceptions aren’t binary “red” and “orange”. When require to classify something between “red” and “orange”, we’ll end up with one (one will get slightly higher activation), but overall, the “red” or “orange” symbols in our brain are more-or-less strongly activated and can be activated at the same time for borderline cases. So the borderline cases aren’t even that problematic.
Well, let’s review what it is that we’re trying to explain. Consider what you are, from the subjective perspective. You’re a locus of awareness, experiencing some texture of sensations organized into forms. Then, we have what is supposed to be the physical reality of you: about O(10^26) atoms, executing an intricate nested dance of systems within systems, inside a skull somewhere. An individual sensation—the finest grain of that texture of sensation you’re always experiencing, e.g. some pixel of red in your visual field—is supposed to be the very same thing as a particular massed movement of billions of atoms somewhere in your visual cortex. Even if you say that the redness is “how this movement feels” or “how it feels to be this movement” or some similar turn of phrase, you’re still tending towards a type of dualism, property dualism, because you’re saying that along with its physically recognizable properties, this flow of atoms has a property that otherwise plays no role in physics, the property of “how it feels”.
For macroscopic concepts like chair, we can get away with vagueness about borderline cases, because there’s no reason to believe that “chair” is anything more than a heuristic concept for talking about certain large clusters of atoms. The experience of a chair is a collaboration between a world of atoms and a mind of perceptions and concepts. But you can’t reduce the mind itself in this way, because of the circularity involved.
So what part of the answer do you disagree with?
As near as I can tell, you say our models look too imprecise to explain consciousness. You must know the argument that consciousness ain’t that precise—how do you respond? Because when I put this together with the first link, I don’t see what you have left to explain. (But I may be slightly drunk.)
No, not the very same thing. Many kinds of “massed movement of billions of atoms” can generate the same sensation. Sure, exactly the same movement of the whole brain will always generate the same sensation, but in real life, it won’t just happen, a brain will never be exactly in the same state.
The configuration of atoms on my hard disk has a property of being an ext4 filesystem, while being an ext4 filesystem plays no role in physics, so I believe in property dualism ? Property is part of the map, not of the territory. The property of that hard disk is that it holds that movie file. The same movie file (for me, at the level of the map which is useful to me) exists on my USB key, and on that DVD. The physical configuration of the two is totally different, for me it’s the same file.
It’s exactly the same with “feeling” or “seeing red”. And it doesn’t matter that my DVD is slightly damaged so some DVD players will be able to read it, but others won’t, making it a “borderline case”.
I don’t see the problem with that kind of circularity (but maybe I did read too much Hoftsdatder, so “strange loops” have became a normal fundamental concept to me). Also, you seem to forget that perception involve vagueness. Our perceptions aren’t binary “red” and “orange”. When require to classify something between “red” and “orange”, we’ll end up with one (one will get slightly higher activation), but overall, the “red” or “orange” symbols in our brain are more-or-less strongly activated and can be activated at the same time for borderline cases. So the borderline cases aren’t even that problematic.