Also, nowhere have I claimed that material reduction below any certain point
is valid.
I know that, but also nowhere do you give an alternative for that, if we
exclude the ontological interpretation of MR! My point is without this
interpretation, the view defaults to a mechanical one against our wishes,
because you lose the entailment with functions.
====
Again, I am
unsure what "entailment with functions" means. In any case, there is no
reversion to a mechanical view. See further below.
====
And certainly since I claim that a property like consciousness is
emergent, then it is - by definition - not mechanistic.
Agreed. Although, for the sake of argument, one can imagine emergent
phenomena that are mechanical.
====
What I meant,
and stated poorly, was that the system which has this emergent property
of consciousness is not mechanistic. It is a complex system and thus not
amenable to reductionism. (see further below)
====
It only needs to commute with
a model of it to be mechanical.
So, if we say the pulse
signal of a pulsar is an emergent phenomena of the system, it is very regular
and easily modeled. If flatness is an emergent property of a certain
manufacturing process, still flatness is easily modeled. But I accept that
above the level where you say consciousness emerges, your concept of it is
then certainly not mechanical, i.e., it has properties that are not
representable in any final system model.
So I do not
understand how you interpret my statement as "mechanistic". All I claim is
that emergent properties are - by definition - not properties of their
constituents.
I realize it is not intentional to propose anything mechanistic, as that
is the taboo in Rosenology (and a slandar on my part for which I apologise if
it was taken that way). However, my point is that inadvertently, I believe a
theory of emergence must default to mechanism below the level of supposed
emergence. Why wouldn't it, if there isn't a non-mechanical basis for it that
extends all the way down?
====
From a Rosennean
perspective, the reductionistic principle is nullified, and so there
is no "all the way down". "Lower" levels of reality do not universally
(or generally) determine or entail "higher" levels of reality, or vice versa.
The 'higher'/'lower'/'up'/'down' terminology is just an artefact of the
Newtonian paradigm.
====
So, I'm defending the idea
that complexity is the basis for consciousness and that it must extends all
the way down, and I'm associating the cause for complexity as the modeling
relation itself. Since that cause involves functional/formal
entailments,
=====
I do not know
what "functional/formal entailments" means.
=====
it is associated with the
qualities of mind, however differently from human qualities.
On the contrary, to posit that a property of a system is a property of that
system because it is the property of its smallest pieces is precisely
reductionist/mechanistic.
True, it is reductionist, but not mechanist. Rosen has a precise
defintion for a mechanism which I accept fully.
====
"Reductionism",
in Rosennean terminology, implies Rosen's definition of 'mechanism': a
system is amenable to reductionism IFF it is a Rosennean mechanism.
Complex systems, on the other hand, are not amenable to
reductionism.
====
Also, the "smaller pieces" in
this case are not parts, they are wholes themselves - fully entailed natural
systems in Rosen's terms. So it is a very non-mechanical reduction. Mechanism
separates the formal and material entailments.
====
I do not know what you mean by "fully entailed natural
systems". Are you saying they are complex?
I am not
familiar with the terms "formal and material entailments". Are you
referring to Aristotelian formal cause and material cause?
====
I argued elsewhere
that all thinking involves some kind of reduction, it is reduction to what
that is the concern.
Thus, to me, panpsychism (for lack of a better
word) seems to me quite mechanistic, in that it proposes that these
properties of life and consciousness exist not by virtue of being emergent
properties of a complex system organization, but by virtue of being
properties of all the atoms/etc. that make up an organism, which combine to
form a sum total of that property for the organism.
======
Again, I agree it is a reduction, which no theory can escape, but it
is not mechanical because the MR does not commute
====
What is this MR
that you are referring to? What are the two systems in the MR? Why does it not
commute?
====
as long as there are
functional/formal causes involved, which is what in this view represents
"psyche."
It is a very significant departure from mechanism and
Newtonian view which places "psyche" outside the system in order to get
computability. Where does it then go? A. it goes to God, which mechanistic
science can then exclude as not its domain, B. it goes to human consciousness,
which traditionally is treated as an exception to the rest of nature. All this
is a trick to get mechanistic/computable theory for everything else. Rosen
describes this trick very well, and its fallacies.
=====
I am not sure,
but I think I have a rough idea of what you are proposing. Basically,
that 1) all reality is complex in the Rosennean sense by virtue of some kind
of ontological MR (psyche?) that is part of each piece of fundamental reality,
and 2) any complex systems (including living organisms) admits
reduction to fundamental (perhaps quantum?) particles.
If so, this
would seem to fall outside/beyond the Rosennean paradigm of "complex". Complex
systems do not admit reduction. This is an oft repeated theme of Rosen.
Perhaps you are
reaching toward that next paradigm......
=====
So, what I'm doing,
very simply, and with planned naieve ity (to then set up any possible
dis-proof), is putting functional/formal entailment back in. Its a very
obvious thing to do in the Rosennean view, and the epistemological next step
would be to ask, "why not?" What prevents that? We've seen only that one needs
to be careful with definition of terms so as not to invoke past ideas, but
nothing to exclude the notion if those meanings are made clear.
I am aware that I have switched the traditional burden of proof, which
would be to prove that plants, rocks, quanta, etc. have formal
entailments.
=====
Again, I am not understanding some terminology. What do you mean by "formal
entailments"?
=====
Let's visit that later, when there's more time to dig up
references. Simply, the MR shows entailment between formal system and natural
system. Those are the entailments I'm speaking of.
Perhaps Judith can
add something on the terminology, if perhaps I'm mis-labeling it?
All
the best,
John Kineman