As one who was accused before of presenting a 'charicature of physicalism', I have to take issue with this statement. First, I think it is a reference to David Deutsch's so called 'constructor theorem', which is not actually a predictive scientific theory at all, but sleight-of-hand pop metaphysics based on questionable interpretations of quantum physics. — Wayfarer

Be honest, you haven't read a single Constructor Theory paper. And no, it's a reference to the theory of evolution, maybe you've heard of it?

Secondly, the conundrums that have been thrown up by physics about the nature of matter have given rise to all manner of metaphysical speculation, such as those proposed by David Deutsch and also by Max Tegmark, comprising the idea of infinitely many parallel universes. And these extravagent speculations are based on nothing more than the difficulties of explaining what is seen in experiments involving sub-atomic particles (so called). There's nothing in any of that which comes close to addressing the physical issues involved in the origination of Life OS (otherwise known as DNA). — Wayfarer

The good old bait-and-switch.

We don't know the historical events that gave rise to the abstractions with which the theory of life operates. But once we have digital information, error correction, replication under variation and selection, we have life, according to the theory of evolution. (Though admittedly, digital information and error correction are "pop-metaphysical sleights of hand" introduced by Constructor Theory)

So how it can now be declared that 'the mysteries of life' have been 'solved', when the purported 'simplest components in the Universe' turn out to require the inference of infinite parallel dimensions? As if this has all been solved, as if we know what there is to know. Remember well Lord Kelvin's famous prediction, that 'the details have all been worked out, now it's just a matter of decimal places'. — Wayfarer

Are you offering your conceptual difficulties with quantum mechanics as an argument against evolution in particular, or theories at the appropriate level of emergence in general?

The "intentional stance" is identified with the objects of experience - the actual pain, smell, belief, etc. The exhibited behavior enables us to form the relevant language concepts for those objects. But things are not always as they appear - a person might be in pain but concealing it, or a person might not be in pain but faking it. — Andrew M

Right, so then we couldn't say that the intentional stance is the same thing as what exhibits behaviorally.

'Particles shifted around' is not in question, but 'shifted by what' is. The materialist must say that they are only shifted around by physical forces or at any rate by some factor which is ultimately attributable to same; according to which 'mind over matter' can never occur. — Wayfarer

For the non-eliminativists about mind, mind is an abstraction over matter. People are capable of shifting particles around. They can change the world or change their minds.

Right, so then we couldn't say that the intentional stance is the same thing as what exhibits behaviorally. — Terrapin Station

No. We are interested in what the person is really experiencing, not what they appear to be experiencing.

No. We are interested in what the person is really experiencing, not what they appear to be experiencing. — Andrew M

There's not a difference in my opinion.

There can be a difference in what's really going on that is causing whatever experience they're having, but that's a difference in that case between some events that aren't experience and the experience a person is having.

I'm not sure I follow you. Can you give an example?

Sure, say that you're experiencing the walls melting. Well, that's both what you appear to be experiencing and what you're really experiencing, since there's no difference.

However, what's really going on that caused that experience might be that you took some LSD. But that you took some LSD and it's having the effect of making you see the walls melt isn't what you're experiencing when you experience the walls melting. (Earlier, of course, you surely experienced taking some LSD (well, unless it was given to you surreptitiously).)

What you take to be sufficient to believe or not believe a claim can't be anything other than a personal opinion. — Terrapin Station

The point here was to explain in which sense we can talk about different degrees of consciousness. One way of seeing it was to consider different "states" of the brain: it doesn't really matter if you take a coma to have a degree of consciousness or not, the point is that there is a wide range of possible mental states between being in a coma and fully aware.
Another reason to make a distinction between different degrees of consciousness is to consider the evolution from our monocellular ancestor to contemporary human beings: would you say that there is a precise point in this line of evolution where consciousness appears abruptly? Or would you think that consciousness evolves throught seveal steps?
Damasio for example identifies three main levels of consciousness.

Be honest, you haven't read a single Constructor Theory paper. — Tom

I went to Deutsch's site, viewed the videos, read the abstracts, googled discussion of the topic. There is not much discussion. I have also read about Deutsch's first book, Fabric of Reality. My feeling is that Deutsch is highly overrated as a philosopher, regardless of his scientific contributions.

t's a reference to the theory of evolution, maybe you've heard of it? — Tom

You're much more inclined to condescension than debate. Yes, of course I have 'heard of evolution', and no, I am not an ID advocate. (But from the perspective of evolutionary materialism, anyone who questions the mainstream view has thrown in their lot with ID - that is exactly what Thomas Nagel was accused of, despite his declaration of atheism. That is because evolutionary materialism is monistic, like the religion it evolved from. )

In any case, what I was taking issue with was this statement:

a theory at the correct level of emergence was discovered, which not only explains life, bit explains it rather simply as a phenomenon of replicators.

I don't think that any such theory has been established. The only idea that sounds like it comes from the video on the Deutsch site by one of his associates, which puportedly applies 'constructor theory' to evolution, which is what I think you're talking about here.

Regarding 'my conceptual difficulties with quantum mechanics', I don't have any particular to me. The interpretation of quantum mechanics is a highly vexing issue, which is giving rise to enormous debates. Papering it over with pop philosophy doesn't change that fact. My point is, the nature of matter is still an open question, let alone the nature of life.

For the non-eliminativists about mind, mind is an abstraction over matter. — AndrewM

But is mind reducible to matter?

I'm fine with their being different "levels" of consciousness. I just don't see a good reason to buy that one level features the subject with no awareness of consciousness.

Because Charmers is acting like our experience are reduced that particular idea of "experience." The premise of the "hard problem" relies on this reductionism. Materialism is strawmanned with the accusation they claim exhaustive account account of subjects.

If I say, for example, that conscious states are caused by objects in the world, "the hard problem" will accuse me of not guessing enough description because my account is not exhaustive. But that was never my argument. I know what I'm saying is not exhaustive of a subject. I'm only talking about one minuscule part of the world and its subjects, that some conscious states have been caused by the body.

How can anyone expect this to exhaustive? The entire point is that it is not. To know states of the body and states of experience cause hardly says anything about a subject, let alone amounts to the Being of the subject (and so would qualify as an "exhaustive account").

And, when some alludes this (as Terrapin did, when saying there was no "exhaustive account" to give), the proponents of the "hard problem" complain an exhaustive account must be given, else subjects and their thoughts can exist. As if subjects were nothing more than an experience of our knowledge.

"The hard problem" accuses knowledge of consciousness and body of a failure it never commits. It says the materialist needs to give and "exhaustive account" when no materialist was ever claiming to do so. Not even the (mistaken) eliminative materialist makes such a claim. To say we know bodies cause states of consciousness (whether in a reductionist manner or not) is not to claim exhaustive knowledge of subjects. It's only say we know that bodies have sometimes caused states of consciousness.

'An object' is just what it sounds like - ping-pong balls, computers, cars, trees, planets, stars, to pick a random sample. Objects are just that - things that exist in the world. — Wayfarer

Only to the reductionist who doesn't take subjects seriously.

Objects aren't just things which exist in the world. They are things someone is (or might be) aware of in experience.

But it's never the whole story. Any "object" I might experience is also more than my experience. A ping pong ball, a computer, a car, a tree, a planet, a star, a human arm or a memory of what someone had for breakfast are all subjects. They all more than anyone's experience of them. My experience of my hand is not my hand. The sight of my eye in the mirror is not my eye. The thought of what I did yesterday is not what I did yesterday. Our experiences are not the only states which always extend beyond experience of them. It's true of any state.

Sure, say that you're experiencing the walls melting. Well, that's both what you appear to be experiencing and what you're really experiencing, since there's no difference.

However, what's really going on that caused that experience might be that you took some LSD. But that you took some LSD and it's having the effect of making you see the walls melt isn't what you're experiencing when you experience the walls melting. (Earlier, of course, you surely experienced taking some LSD (well, unless it was given to you surreptitiously).) — Terrapin Station

OK, but you're using the word "experience" in a subjective sense here. In its objective sense ("practical contact with and observation of facts and events"), you're experiencing an hallucination.

When you report that you saw the walls melt, we can take the context into account to figure out what you mean. If it is really thought that you're making an objective claim, then we can go and check the walls.

But is mind reducible to matter? — Wayfarer

No. Mind and matter belong to different categories and to suppose that mind reduces to matter is a category mistake. Mind is not matter. Instead, mind is an abstraction over matter.

Gilbert Ryle gives an example of this mistake in "The Concept of Mind":

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks ‘But where is the University? I have seen where the members of the Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of your University.’ It has then to be explained to him that the University is not another collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if ‘the University’ stood for an extra member of the class of which these other units are members. He was mistakenly allocating the University to the same category as that to which the other institutions belong. — Gilbert Ryle

OK, but you're using the word "experience" in a subjective sense here. In its objective sense ("practical contact with and observation of facts and events"), you're experiencing an hallucination. — Andrew M

I wouldn't say there is a non-subjective sense of experience. You could just use it to denote "events happening to a person" I suppose, but once you introduce observation as you did above, you're in the realm of subjectivity, not objectivity.

I disagree. This is taking us into perception now, but it also relates to the qualia theme. In ordinary usage "observe", and related terms like "see" and "hear", are achievement verbs. When we say that we saw Alice walking across the street, we don't mean that we had a subjective experience of seeing Alice. We mean that Alice was really walking across the street. If we later discover that she was overseas at the time, then we retract our claim. We didn't see Alice at all, we only thought we did.

Since we've covered hallucinations and mistakes, we might as well cover illusions as well! When there is a straight stick partially submerged in water that looks bent, we're not seeing a bent stick, we're seeing a straight stick that appears bent. There is no need to invoke qualia or sense-data to explain the experience.

you're in the realm of subjectivity, not objectivity. — Terrapin Station

Subjectivity is a domain in the realm of objectivity.

No. Mind and matter belong to different categories — AndrewM

Thankyou - that is an instructive example. I found this summary on Wikipedia:

The term "category-mistake" was introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind to remove what he argued to be a confusion over the nature of mind born from Cartesian metaphysics. Ryle alleged that it was a mistake to treat the mind as an object made of an immaterial substance because predications of substance are not meaningful for a collection of dispositions and capacities.

The phrase is introduced in the first chapter. The first example is of a visitor to Oxford (as given in your quote)... .

Ryle goes on to argue that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category-mistake. In the philosophy of the mind, Ryle's category mistake argument can be used to support eliminative materialism. By using the argument, one can attack the existence of a separate, distinct mind. The argument concludes that minds are not conscious, but a collective predicate for a set of observable behaviour and unobservable dispositions.

That underlined sentence is the basis for Dennett's 'intentional stance' argument (and as noted, Dennett was a student of Ryle's.)

But I take issue with this argument, on the grounds that it rests on Ryle's interpretation of the meaning of the term 'substance'. I don't think that Cartesian dualism does posit 'an immaterial substance' in the way that Ryle's argument depicts it (although to be fair, Descartes' concept of mind easily lends itself to such a misrepresentation.)

As I have said throughout this thread I agree that mind is not an object. But I think the notion of 'immaterial substance' is mistaken, and so the criticism of 'mind' based on such a depiction is also mistaken; and furthermore I disagree that this means that intentional agents can be regarded as simply 'bundles of dispositions'. That is essentially the same kind of argument, advanced on the same grounds, as the behaviouralist arguments of Watson, Skinner and others. (Dennett does acknowledge that he is a type of behaviourist).

Now as for your description of mind as 'an abstraction over matter' - what do you propose that means?

Because Charmers is acting like our experience are reduced that particular idea of "experience." The premise of the "hard problem" relies on this reductionism. Materialism is strawmanned with the accusation they claim exhaustive account account of subjects. — TheWillowOfDarkness"

What you're claiming is a 'straw-man' is exactly the claim that is at issue.

No. Mind and matter belong to different categories and to suppose that mind reduces to matter is a category mistake. Mind is not matter. Instead, mind is an abstraction over matter. — Andrew M

Usually when a materialist says that matter exists or is real, she means that matter exists or is real independently of all and any thoughts about it, that is, that matter is not a mere abstraction. If mind exists or is real independently of all and any thoughts about it, then it must be something more than a mere abstraction, no?

So does mind exist, or is it real, or not? And if it does exist or is real, then how? The same question may also be asked about the self.

I'm fine with their being different "levels" of consciousness. I just don't see a good reason to buy that one level features the subject with no awareness of consciousness. — Terrapin Station

What would you think it would happen to the pehonomenal experience, to the self and/or to the consciousness when there is no "awareness of consciousness"? Would it stop its existence? Is consciousness something that can pop in and out from existence to non-existence and vice-versa, unlike matter-energy? Or is there a mental/phenomenal substance that can become conscious or inconscious? How would we call this substance?

But it's never the whole story. Any "object" I might experience is also more than my experience. A ping pong ball, a computer, a car, a tree, a planet, a star, a human arm or a memory of what someone had for breakfast are all subjects. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Wait, you're making objects into subjects, or vise versa, which is the case? A subject is an aspect of your experience, how an object appears within your mind, as a subject. What justifies your assumption that a subject is an object, or that an object is a subject?. Surely an object is not necessarily a subject, as there are unknown objects. And a subject is not necessarily an object as there are fictions. So your conflation of these two is mistaken.

You're much more inclined to condescension than debate. — Wayfarer

Says th expert in "sleight-of-hand pop metaphysics".

I don't think that any such theory has been established. — Wayfarer

The theory is called The Theory of Evolution.

But is mind reducible to matter? — Wayfarer

Um,, well, since life is not reducible to matter, which has been pointed out to you several times, how could anything at a higher level of abstraction such as a mind. So, the answer is NO!

As a matter of note, no theory at the appropriate level of abstraction is reducible.

"The argument concludes that minds are not conscious, but a collective predicate for a set of observable behaviour and unobservable dispositions."

That underlined sentence is the basis for Dennett's 'intentional stance' argument (and as noted, Dennett was a student of Ryle's.) — Wayfarer

That's right, minds are not conscious, human beings are. Mind is the category that mental terms belong to just as matter is the category that physical terms belong to. In ordinary usage, we say we have minds (we have beliefs, purposes, desires), change our minds (revise our opinions), make up our minds (make decisions and choices) and so on. In Aristotelian terms, man is the rational animal.

Now as for your description of mind as 'an abstraction over matter' - what do you propose that means? — Wayfarer

Ryle uses the phrase "ghost in the machine" to characterize Descartes' mind-body dualism. Whether substance or property dualism, the idea of a division between subjective and objective phenomena persists. But rejecting dualism doesn't mean resigning oneself to the machine half of the bargain. It means bringing the ghost out into the light of day as full-blooded objective phenomena.

This means that feelings, pains, desires, beliefs, etc. become things that we can observe in others as well as ourselves. This is the intentional stance. As an added bonus, the problem of other minds is dissolved.

When we recognize that people have intentionality, we have abstracted over the matter that their bodies are made of. They are not merely machines, nor ghosts in machines, but human beings.

Usually when a materialist says that matter exists or is real, she means that matter exists or is real independently of all and any thoughts about it, that is, that matter is not a mere abstraction. If mind exists or is real independently of all and any thoughts about it, then it must be something more than a mere abstraction, no? — John

That's right, matter, minds and selves are real independent of whether anyone ever forms the abstractions. But we need to form the abstractions if we want to talk about those things.

OK, but when you say " mind is an abstraction over matter." it makes it look as though you are asserting that matter is more than a mere abstraction but that mind is not. If mind is not a mere abstraction, and it is not reducible to matter, then that seems to leave the question as to what it is unanswered.

But rejecting dualism doesn't mean resigning oneself to the machine half of the bargain — AndrewM

Why do you think that Dennett has latched onto that phrase 'moist robots' to describe humans, then?

minds are not conscious, human beings are. — AndrewM

I don't buy that. All human beings are conscious, but not all human beings have the same mental attributes or abilities. That is simply behaviourist sloganeering.

A mind. An existing state that is a mind. Not a brain or body, but the states which are the existence of instances of awareness and thinking.

Abstraction is just our representation and discourse. Any time something is thought about, we are using an abstraction of what we know. My thought of a hand is not a hand. It's my thought. I've abstracted the hand-- what is not the hand expresses a meaning of the hand.

I'm saying all objects are subjects. The inability of our knowledge to be "exaustive" is only restricted to people or experience, it's true of every state if the world. There is no state which is also the experience of that state. To be an object, a state which may be experienced, can only entail being more than an object, else existence (thing-in-itself) is reduced to our experience (our representation of a thing).

So any unknown object must also be an unknown subject-- any unknown thing, like anything, is more than any representation of it. When I talk about an unknown object, I speaking about something which is more than my experience of not being aware of something.

I'm not conflating the subject and object (i.e. object=subject). The point is that any state must be an object AND a subject. Fictional entities aren't an issue because they don't exist. They.aren't a state of the world. (unless we are talking within the context of their fictional world, in which case they are both subject and object).

This seems to be an obvious truistic definition of mind. I am trying to find out what the materialist thinks mind is if he wants to say both that mind is real and that it is not reducible to matter. I am not asking to be schooled in the bleeding obvious such as "my thought of a hand is not a hand". I'm asking for answers that justify materialist doctrines and you're not really saying anything, you're just regurgitating platitudes.

I know... but that's exactly the issue. For the materialist is interested in the mind being material. As a non-reductuve materialist, the point is the mind is a thing in-itself, a state of the world which is a mind. That obvious truism is what the materialist is seeking to say-- the mind is a state of the world, not some "mystery" or "magical woo" or "distant realm without relation to anything else." To be real (existing) and not reducable to matter (not any of those empirical forms we experience) is exactly this obvious truism.

Even the reductive materialist is attempting this. Why do they equate the mind with the brain? Well, they are trying to point out minds are states of the world, bound up with all other interacting objects and subjects. The reductive materialist just accepts the dualist myth that minds experiences cannot be states themselves, so they resort to reductionism to try and grasp the worldliness of minds. Since minds themselves cannot exist (as per substance dualism), they must be an "illusion" with something else really going on (brains).

I'm not dealing in platitudes here. My argument is asking that we take the existence of minds seriously, that we understand that minds exist, rather than trying to say they are given by something else.