[time 418] Re: [time 417] The double-aspect ontology of David Chalmers


Matti Pitkanen (matpitka@pcu.helsinki.fi)
Thu, 1 Jul 1999 07:52:01 +0300 (EET DST)


On Wed, 30 Jun 1999, Stephen P. King wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I found an interesting quotable in david Chalmers' book The
> Conscious Mind:
>
> "So the suggestion is that the information spaces required by
> physics are themselves grounded in phenomenal or protophenomenal
> properties. Each instantiation of such an information space is in fact a
> phenomenal (or protophenomenal) realization. Every time a feature such
> as mass and charge is realized, there is an intrinsic property behind
> it: a phenomenal or protophenomenal property, or a microphenomenal
> property for short. We will have a set of basic microphenomenal spaces,
> one for each fundamental physical property, and it is these spaces that
> will ground the information spaces that physics requires. The ultimate
> differences are these microphenomenal differences.
> Of course, this view again requires a variety of "outrageous"
> panpsychism, but I have already argued that such a panpsychism is not as
> unreasonable as commonly supposed. Given that I have already suggested
> that there may be phenomenal properties whenever there is information,
> we might as well press these properties into service in a useful role.
> The ontology that this leads us to might truly by called a
> double-aspect ontology. Physics requires information states but cares
> only about their relations, not their intrinsic nature; phenomenology
> requires information states, but cares only about the intrinsic nature.
> This view postulates a single basic set of information states unifying
> the two. We might say that internal aspects of these states are
> phenomenal, and the external aspects are physical. Or as a slogan:
> Experience is information from the inside; physics is information from
> the outside."

I have probably read these lines a couple of years ago.
This is nice formulation for dualism. Experience and physics as same
thing seen from different sides. I believe that Chalmers defines physics
what I would call objective reality. And experience as conscious
information about it. There are several counterarguments.

a) Why and how universe decomposes into several regions having inside and
outside. Why no only single huge conscious experience representing all
possible information about Universe meaning drowning into details as
*duality* would suggest?

b) Why conscious experiences seem to give so little information about the
objective reality?.

c) How it is possible to have wrong information, make mistakes, in the
framework of strict duality?

d) Isn't consciousness is epiphenomenon? Is free will illusion?

e) Doesn't this lead to panpsychism as Chalmers himself admits?

The manner to save the day is to introduce quantum jump between objective
realities and define conscious information as information difference.

Best,

MP

>
> Onward to the Unknown,
>
> Stephen
>



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