"feedbackdroid" <feedbackdroid from yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:d63bb5f2-22f5-439f-ae8b-b778f284223e from e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
On Mar 9, 11:12 am, "Alpha" <OmegaZero2... from yahoo.com> wrote:
> "feedbackdroid" <feedbackdr... from yahoo.com> wrote in message
>> news:290aed2b-af2d-43eb-b153-76064e601865 from d21g2000prf.googlegroups.com...> On Mar 8, 11:03 am, "Alpha" <OmegaZero2... from yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> > Unfortunately, nonthing in that paper tells us how to account for
> > first-person experience, which is the most irrefutable aspect of our
> > existence. Psychology has a chance, AI on its current tracks has no
> > chance,
> > and neither does neuroscience as received; only the addition of an
> > introspective approach (appreciated by some psychologists over a long
> > time
> > span of history) will find out what consciousness is;
>> Introspection?
>> Good grief, Charlie Brown [to plagiarize a well-known phrase], what
> possible
> introspective miracle is going to occur in the future, and that hasn't
> happened
> over the past 2400 years or so, to provide some enlightenment on
> conscious
> ness and first-person experience? Philosophy will magically solve the
> problem
> via some newly-minted word-game?
>> No; but a scientific approach to the data ammassed by such introspective
> reports can lend insight into what kinds of mechanisms might be
> responsible
> for them, and importantly, what can be ruled out as purported NCCs of
> such.
>
Ok, that might be a plan. Use introspection to augment neuroscience
measurements. At least it might help plan the next set of neuroscience
experiemnts.
But 2400 "additional" years of wordgames alone aren't about to solve
much,
I think. What did introspective philosophy give us? Dualism, and
mainly
as a result of lack of imagination. They couldn't think of any better
way
to explain consciousness. And of course, it also gave us the now-dead
concept of vitalism.
Yet all of the introspectionists, from the eastern perennial philosophers to
the German idelaists (esp. the more modern thoughts of Franklin
Merrill-Wolff), across culture and across the millenia, have their
descriptions of consciousness in common. That is data that can be very
useful and data that cannot be just eliminated by antiquated notions of
materialism based on classical physics. This is a quantum universre and
there is *no* admonition from QM laws against qm effects in macro-scale
phenomena, including quasi-micro-scale mental/brain processes.
As to dualism: there does not have to be a dualist or non-dualist approach;
there can be a third way akin to dual-aspect theory etc. And these ways are
much more accomodating to mental processes being extant and causal in
Universe that the antiquated materialist accounts of Universe (wherein there
are really "particles" interacting, when we know there are no such things -
particles are time-sliced convenineces of thought only etc.) Remember - so
far, identity theory is dead in the warter as there is no empirical data, no
explanation, no theory as to how nerons create mental phenomena. And mental
phenomenology is what brain is all about!!!
So I disagree that they do not have a better way of explaining
consciousness. Explanation starts with empirical data and the
introspectionists accounts are replete with such data.
>>> > what the first-person
> > experience is. There is a case to be made that the fields are
> > complementary; introspection would add important data /explanadums those
> > other fields are supposed to be providing analysis and explanation of!
>
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