Klaus and Ricardo
Well, this is interesting.
Klaus said: i have no idea what a semantic effect could be.
Why communicate if there is no semantic effect?
Klaus said: i cannot see how "every change follows an action. And then
looped off to say "accepting such explanations would lead to the
construction of actors where none are evident, eventually to an ultimate
actor who's actions change the weather, oxidized iron, makes people grow up,
etc."
How do you define change? Say in the oxidation of iron or what makes people
grow up, etc.? I think you may have to use a few verbs.
Klaus said: "how could abstractions be the cause of anything -- without an
actor?
Right! add the activity and you can get change caused by an abstraction.
Klaus said: "feelings simply are. they don't tell you what to do. they
cannot explain what you do."
I disagree: I believe that feelings (including intuitions) decisively guide
our thoughts and actions and contribute to its explanation. Don Norman put
it nicely: ³Emotions are inseparable from and a necessary part of cognition.
Everything we do, everything we think is tinged with emotion, much of it
subconscious. In turn, our emotions change the way we think, and serve as
constant guides to appropriate behavior²
Klaus quoting Dawkins: "i believe, but cannot prove, that all life, all
intelligence, all creativity and all "design" (his quotation marks) anywhere
in the universe,is the direct or indirect product of darwinian natural
selection. It follows that design comes later in the universe, after a
period of darvinian evolution. design cannot precede evolution and
therefore cannot underlie the universe."
Klaus said: "note that he does not use the concept of causation. the
producer-product relationship, which he invokes, is a explanatory structure
that does not fit into causal explanations"
Are you saying that evolution is not causal? Also the most telling words in
Dawkins last sentence are "cannot precede". As humans we design with what
evolution has "caused" and nurture those gifts throughout our experience in
this world. I'm with Dawkins all the way - there is no master designer or
"ultimate actor"- but there are causes. Also, since when does the
producer-product relationship not fit into causal explanations?
Ricardo said:"It is urgent to replace linear-causation thinking with a view
of interconnected systems of interactions in which components are both
'products and producers'."
I agree wholeheartedly. I have been using action/change in an effort to
avoid the kind of linear, physical mindset that haunts the concept of
causality. If anyone wants a good "complex systems" model for what I mean
consider Gerald Edleman's Dynamic Core Hypothesis in his recent book "The
Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination" Briefly put it
"accounts for the properties of conscious experience by linking these
properties to the specific neural processes that can give rise to them". The
"causes" involved in thought are quite complex, involving as they do input
from "activity" in the body, brain and external world - but they are there
or there would be no neural processes, mindsets, "products or producers".
Chuck
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