[FRIAM] rhetoric tangent (was Why the Mystery of Consciousness Is Deeper Than We Thought)

[glen]

OK. But if there's no inside/outside distinction to be made, why ask what you asked distinguishing between doings versus equipment? I can imagine wanting to stick to proximal causes and not relying too much on abstract models based on anatomy, evolution, or whatnot. But if you view (as I do) the equipment as if it's "rolled up doings" ... little packages/recordings of past events/behaviors/doings, then we recognize that equipment is doings and don't need to make *that* distinction at all.

Of course we do need to distinguish between distant past behaviors (like Marcus learning by trial and error or accident what she's doing when pawing at him on the couch). But that past behavior is "rolled up" into, stored in, Marcus' anatomy ... it's potato potato and we just code switch when appropriate.

At a forum-level sociological level, is your restriction to the language of "behaviorist" proximal cause a reflection of your own needs? Or are you trying to teach others some way of thinking you feel like they/we don't have?

On 7/12/24 18:33, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> I  have no trouble stipulating that consciousness is a degree-thing so long as we understand it with reference to patterns of doings rather than in terms of the equipment organisms carry around.


On 7/16/24 12:31, Nicholas Thompson wrote:
> I don't think our disagreement has anything to do with your command of English  which is probably more elegant than my own.  I think it has to do with how far we follow Descartes.   For me, all voices are either inside or outside.  There is no inside/outside distinction to be made.  I am quite prepared to agree that you hear voices that I do now  (and vice versa),  but the fact that each of us does not hear voices the other hears does not make them inner in any useful sense.   Yes Glen, I hear you.   I hereby present my ear to be dopeslapped.

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