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mike v <bb07974@binghamton.edu>:
> [jeff baldwin]:
> > Given: Life/conciousness/mind is nothing more than chemical reactions.
> > Then:
> > 1) Why/how did/does subjective perception "come to be"?
> If the stated given is correct (and it is not at all clear that it is),
> then subjective perception came about as did any other physical
phenomena.
> It came about, for instance, like heat, which is nothing more than the
> product of a certain type of behavior among molecules.  In similar
> fashion, consciousness would then be reducible to the behavior of
> molecules -- all there would be to being conscious is having a certain
> molecular configuration.  Currently we have absolutely no idea what kind
> of molecular configuration leads to conscious experience.  We do,
however,
> have a pretty good understanding of heat, which, if I recall, is mean
> kinetic energy (or something like that).  

you are confusing explanation with fact, a common error when you attempt to
reconcile the world from the point of view of objective reality.

here is the fact: people try to explain their world based on their
experience. this experience is necessarily subjective. there is no such
thing as objective experience. all scientific fact is explanation, a theory
subject to endless revision, something credible but never knowable.

so, what is heat (your sensation of hot and cold)? heat is a generalisation
of your understanding of heat based on your (subjective) experiences from
thermoreceptors. you can rationalise this into a grander plan that unites
concepts derived from your experience of other modalities, and posit
molecules and so forth.

additionally, because we can generalise bodies of experience into concepts,
we can form complex conceptual schemata involving metatheories of
perceptions. so, no only can we classify heat perception, but the
experience of heat perception, and the experience of the experience of heat
perception. we can generalise about stimuli at the transducer level, and we
can take the result of that computation and feed it into another level, and
so forth. consciousness can thus be seen to be a reflective mechanism: you
are making perceptions of your own and others' behaviour at many levels,
most of them according to quite abstract schemata that have been inferred
at an earlier time. your perception of heat is extremely tangible in
comparison, since it is based primarily on thermoreceptor signals. your
*concept* of heat, however, is made of fairly abstract stuff: not only your
immediate recollection of events you classifed as "hot" or "cold" but a lot
of theories about molecules and how the sensation could come to be.

it may not even be worthwhile trying to explain consciousness in terms of
molecular configurations: the molecular configurations were an explanation
that worked for more tangible, less complex "physical" perceptions of the
world, but it may be necessary to expand drastically on that model before
you can explain consciousness in those terms, just as you can't explain
some of the effects of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo with the theory
of cupulolithiasis (http://www.dog.net.uk/vor/#pathology).

> In fact, our efforts to reduictively explain consciousness in terms of
the
> physical properties of our universe have been so fruitless that we might
> begin to suspect that consciousness might not be part of the physical
> world. ...

perhaps it's not that it isn't part of the physical world, but that our
explanation of the physical world is not yet sufficiently advanced to
explain it.

> > 2) If mind and all its attributes are mere checmical reactions with
> > deterministic, material (and therefore objective) origin, then why
> > does subjective perception at times differ (and markedly so) from
> > objective reality?
>      2) I'm having problems understanding the second question.  I'm not
at
> all clear on why you'd expect subjective "reality" to correspond exactly
> to objective reality, given that experience is physical.    

what *is* objective reality? can you even prove it exists? it certainly
seems credible, given that many people seem to share very similar
experiences and be able to relate them. but they never share the *same*
experience, and sometimes the reports differ enormously. does it make sense
to talk of an objective reality, or should we consider talking in terms of
a shared *illusion* of reality?

> > 3) Why does "the subjective" (in humans only?) strive to "objectify"
> > itself?
>      3) I'm also unclear on this one.  Do you mean to say that we like to
> think that our subjective experiences are somehow representative of an
> objective universe?  I guess I don;t understand what it means to
> "objectify" something.  

me neither.

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