From: Ant McWatt (antmcwatt@hotmail.co.uk)
Date: Thu Feb 17 2005 - 12:30:00 GMT
Ian Glendinning stated February 16th 2005:
Ant,
These were two specific [references] I noted earlier ...
The first is one of many blogs about Dr James Austin's "Zen and the
Brain" on which Marsha also commented positively on MoQ Discuss
after I'd drawn attention to it...
http://www.psybertron.org/2004/11/amazing-brain.html
(I would say though, that I was getting
the same message from Sacks, Edelman, Zeman and Searle.)
[See] http://www.psybertron.org/2004/11/chalmers-and-qualia.html
[And] this is my most recent post.
http://www.psybertron.org/2005/02/consciousness-and-pirsig.html
I have many other unposted notes on those 5 authors books referred
to.
Ant McWatt notes:
Thanks for these references Ian. Some of them are new to me while a couple
are familiar faces especially David Chalmers and John Searle. The latter is
someone featured heavily in Chapter 3 of my PhD thesis as he makes a lot of
sense for an SOM philosopher. One of the few SOMists I have serious time
for, actually. I also found Chalmers interesting though he appears to be
conflating concepts by intuition with concepts by postulation with his "Hard
Question" of consciousness. As I note:
"Essentially, it appears that Chalmers is conflating the ‘connecting
principles’ for why consciousness developed (from physical matter) with the
‘connecting principles’ of how consciousness and physical matter operate
between each other. Yet, he is addressing the second question when his
‘hard question’ clearly relates to the first. In consequence, Chalmers
confuses the metaphysical obstacles of the connecting principles between
mind and matter with the scientific explanation of their relationship.
Critically, the scientific explanations of consciousness (as with theories
concerning phenomena such as electricity or light) are essentially concepts
by postulation and, as such, open to continual revision."
I hope that Chalmers doesn’t mislead too many of his readers with this
conflation. His brief dismissal of evolutionary criteria and lack of
analysis of the influence that social patterns have on intellectual patterns
are further limitations with his ideas. (Still, at least, he hasn’t set
himself as some sort of expert on consciousness… :)
Anyway, the title of James Austin's text looks especially interesting so it
will be another book for my 2005 reading list!
Best wishes,
Anthony.
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