Posted by
Nick Thompson on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/quick-question-tp3037681p3071304.html
Jochen,
What follows is a behaviorist snit, and I apologize in advance for it.
Why does the defence of consciousness always come in this form:
"Yet although we agree there is no mysterious downward causation,
we can without doubt consciously influence the activities and movements
of our body"
It is NOT without doubt. I doubt it. So there is at LEAST ONE doubt. I
doubt that I am conscious and that my consciousness affects my acts.
Surely after 5 hundred years there is SOMETHING to be said beyond Decartes
meditations.
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (
[hidden email])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/> [Original Message]
> From: Jochen Fromm <
[hidden email]>
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
[hidden email]>
> Date: 6/12/2009 6:25:26 PM
> Subject: [FRIAM] The ghost in the machine (was 'quick question')
>
> Exactly, I think it is a useless and void concept if one defines it in
> this way. It makes sense the other way round: the stronger the
> emergence, the weaker the causal dependence.
>
> Yet although we agree there is no mysterious downward causation,
> we can without doubt consciously influence the activities and movements
> of our body. If there is no downward causation, who is causing these
> activities? What do you think?
>
> * Wrong question, the actor is not a single entity ?
> * Self-consciousness does not trigger actions, it impedes actions
> (Hamlet's to be or not to be comes to mind) ?
> * We are not the actor of our own story, just the witness of it?
>
> -J.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "russell standish" <
[hidden email]>
> To: <
[hidden email]>; "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity
> Coffee Group" <
[hidden email]>
> Sent: Friday, June 12, 2009 3:17 AM
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] quick question
>
>
> > On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 07:01:38PM -0600, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> >> Steve,
> >>
> >> My understanding of the meaning of "strong" emergence is "inexplicable
> >> emergence".
> >>
> >> Is there another meaning?
> >>
> >> N
> >
> > Bedau defines it as emergence with downward causation. For example, we
> > would say
> > that consciousness is strongly emergent if we felt that we could
> > consciously influence the activities of our neurons, rather than
> > simply our consciousness simply being the result of neuronal activity.
> >
> > I'm not sure this notion has any use in discussions other than
> > consciousness, and even there the notion of epiphenomenalism would say
> > that it is void concept.
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > --
> >
> >
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile)
> > Mathematics
> > UNSW SYDNEY 2052
[hidden email]
> > Australia
http://www.hpcoders.com.au> >
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> >
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