From: ian glendinning (psybertron@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Sep 13 2005 - 11:32:21 BST
Hi Scott,
OK - GEB and Mind's I - good - Consciousness Explained, (like The
Origin of Species), clearly doesn't do what it says on the tin.
Dennett I hold onto for his explanations of evolution, but not
consciousness - I've moved onto Chalmers for that. (I'm drafting a
paper on that at the moment.)
You may have to fit your bakery analogy more explicitly to the brain
physiology / natural history of consciousness case, for me to
understand the "category mistake" I'm afraid. I don't see it. I think
what you are calling the category mistake is what I'm referring to as
the recognising the "level of pattern" involved. We may be closer than
appears.
Finally you say ...
"A theory of peception has to show how the non-spatio-temporal gets
turned into the spatio-temporal. It is possible that physics may give
us some handle on this, but not biology or cognitive science."
I say .. agreed.
I see this as more "the topology of the physio-biological", with
explanation based on information theory, about the levels and their
patterns and relationships. I don't believe the particular
physio-biological substrate is "necessary" to an explanation of
consciousness. There may well be aspects of physics (Hammeroff's
micro-tubule pixie dust, say) that explain certain physiological
phenomena, as yet not well understood, but I'm beginning to doubt it.
I still hang onto a lingering hope that the quantum information /
holochory physics may explain a communication channel (and shared
consciousness) sneaking in uder the radar of the material,
bio-chemical and electromagnetic, but that's highly speculative. All I
claim here is that there is enough to believe (suspend scepticism) in
a good quality scientific explanation of consiousness being tractable.
(Scepticism will need to be applied to testing the explanation, but
must be suspended whilst creating it.)
Ian
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