display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
5789 | I now think syntax is not in the physics, but in the eye of the beholder [Searle] |
Full Idea: It seems to me now that syntax is not intrinsic to the physics of the system, but is in the eye of the beholder. | |
From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This seems right, in that whether strung beads are a toy or an abacus depends on the user. It doesn't follow that the 'beholder' stands outside the physics. A beholder is another physical system, of a particular type of high complexity. |
5798 | Consciousness has a first-person ontology, so it cannot be reduced without omitting something [Searle] |
Full Idea: Consciousness has a first-person or subjective ontology and so cannot be reduced to anything that has third-person or objective ontology. If you try to reduce or eliminate one in favour of the other you leave something out. | |
From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.10) | |
A reaction: Misconceived. There is no such thing as 'first-person' ontology, though there are subjective viewpoints, but then a camera has a viewpoint which is lost if you eliminate it. If consciousness is physical events, that leaves viewpoints untouched. |
5787 | There is non-event causation between mind and brain, as between a table and its solidity [Searle] |
Full Idea: The solidity of a table is explained causally by the behaviour of the molecules of which it is composed, but the solidity is not an extra event, it is just a feature of the table. This non-event causation models the relationship of mind and brain. | |
From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: He calls it 'non-event' causation, while referring to the 'behaviour of molecules'. Ask a physicist what a 'feature' is. Better to think of it as one process 'emerging' as another process at the macro-level. |
5797 | The pattern of molecules in the sea is much more complex than the complexity of brain neurons [Searle] |
Full Idea: The pattern of molecules in the ocean is vastly more complex than any pattern of neurons in my brain. | |
From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.6) | |
A reaction: A nice warning for anyone foolish enough to pin their explanatory hopes simply on 'complexity', but we would not be so foolish. A subtler account of complexity (e.g. by Edelman and Tononi) might make brains much more complex than oceans. |
5796 | If tree rings contain information about age, then age contains information about rings [Searle] |
Full Idea: You could say that tree-rings contain information about the age of a tree, but you could as well say that the age of a tree in years contains information about the number of rings in a tree stump. ..'Information' is not a real causal feature of the world. | |
From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.5) | |
A reaction: A nice point for fans of 'information' to ponder. However, you cannot deny the causal connection between the age and the rings. Information has a subjective aspect, but you cannot, for example, eliminate the role of DNA in making organisms. |