Quote from: Jonie on July 23, 2007, 11:33:02 AM
Light's starting point would be its only end point in infinity I think. That is if you saw a beam of light you could follow it back to its source and that would be its only beginning and ending point as light. So maybe the best answer to your question is yes and no. As for their being room for infinite uniqueness, yes more than enough room I would think and maybe there's enough time for it all to manifest.
draft of my thoughts on the thing (/not-thing):
POLYVALENCE
(note: 'qualia' is 'what-it-is-like', or what is ineffable in experience)
I. Information is Not Knowledge[The Knowledge argument
In "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982), Frank Jackson offers what he calls the "Knowledge Argument" for qualia. One example runs as follows:
Mary the colour scientist knows all the physical facts about colour, including every physical fact about the experience of colour in other people, from the behavior a particular colour is likely to elicit to the specific sequence of neurological firings that register that a colour has been seen. However, she has been confined from birth to a room that is black and white, and is only allowed to observe the outside world through a black and white monitor. When she is allowed to leave the room, it must be admitted that she learns something about the colour red the first time she sees it — specifically, she learns what it is like to see that colour
This thought experiment has two purposes. First, it is intended to show that qualia exist. If we agree with the thought experiment, we believe that Mary gains something after she leaves the room — that she acquires knowledge of a particular thing that she did not possess before. That knowledge, Jackson argues, is knowledge of the quale that corresponds to the experience of seeing red, and it must thus be conceded that qualia are real properties, since there is a difference between a person who has access to a particular quale and one who does not.
The second purpose of this argument is to refute the physicalist account of the mind. Specifically, the Knowledge Argument is an attack on the physicalist claim about the completeness of physical truths. The challenge the Knowledge Argument poses to physicalism runs as follows:
1. Before her release, Mary was in possession of all the physical information about colour experiences of other people.
2. After her release, Mary learns something about the colour experiences of other people.
Therefore,
3. Before her release, Mary was not in possession of all the information about other people's colour experiences, even though she was in possession of all the physical information.
Therefore,
4. There are truths about other people's colour experience that are not physical.
Therefore,
5. Physicalism is false.
Finally, Jackson argues that qualia are epiphenomenal: not causally efficacious with respect to the physical world. Jackson does not give a positive justification for this claim — rather, he seems to assert it simply because it defends qualia against the classic problem of dualism. Our natural assumption would be that qualia must be causally efficacious in the physical world, but some would ask how we could argue for their existence if they did not affect our brains. If qualia are to be non-physical properties (which they must be in order to constitute an argument against physicalism), some argue that it is almost impossible to imagine how they could have a causal effect on the physical world. By redefining qualia as epiphenomenal, Jackson attempts to protect them from the demand of playing a causal role.]
OK. I am not a materialist/'physicalist' or the other thing, whatever they call it. (The Middle Way, you know the drill.) The key word here is DUALISM, which no one likes to really deal with, per se.
It is easy to refute Jackson's argument with no skin in this game:
1. Mary was in possession of all the THEORETICAL physical information about color. Which outside of experience is MEANINGLESS. It puts the cart before the horse, in simple terms. (a description of a thing is not the thing itself.)
2. Mary learns something about the experience of color, by definition.
3. ... contains the fallacious premise of #1:
4 & 5. Since the premise can be shown to have been faulty in #1., anything that follows is indefensible, logically.
So the experience of color is all there is to say about 'color' that has any real meaning, because 'color' is a convention which exists to describe an set of experiences.
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The epiphenomenalist view is right where thought breaks, I think. Mr Jackson, who is apparently a very smart man, seems to have confused himself by even considering its validity, which he was hoping to do to refute physicalism, in favor of qualia.
He is trying to wrestle with the idea that thought is its own cause. He doesn't like it, but he isn't sure why, it appears to me.
First, to say that a thing is its own cause is a concept that, empirically, must be experimented on as models, or at a fundamental level, particles; there is 'evidence' that at some levels of the physical plane, this, 'violation of causality', may be possible, but that this indicates a different structure to the universe than we 'know'. And this relates to my statement that a thing is not its description; *this* requires an observer, even if a thing can be quantified. Which some recent experiments have cast into doubt. It isn't 'there' 'til we see it's there. And since there is no such thing as simultaneity, all bets are off.
So you get into a situation: what is a
thing-in-itself? Is thought a thing-in-itself? Does it have
essence, IE: does it exist outside of its own loop?
IF IT DOES, then thought is the origin of all physicality, in fact IS all physicality*. (Physicality, <things>, is/are interdependent.) If it DOES NOT, then it must be caused by itself, or a reasonable facsimile, and this is a vicious circle. And any arguments one hears will tend to follow from that.
(if the brain exists to think, how can the mind be just the brain.)
To be, or not to be, THAT is the question.
*: Here's the thing about dualism: to say that the vice versa of my statement is false, is impossible.
.......
The dualist is always faced with the question of why anyone should find it necessary to believe in the existence of two, ontologically distinct, entities (mind and brain), when it seems possible and would make for a simpler thesis to test against scientific evidence, to explain the same events and properties in terms of one. It is a heuristic principle in science and philosophy not to assume the existence of more entities than is necessary for clear explanation and prediction (see Occam's razor). This argument was criticized by Peter Glassen in a debate with J. J. C. Smart in the pages of Philosophy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Glassen argued that, because it is not a physical entity, Occam's Razor cannot consistently be appealed to by a physicalist or materialist as a justification of mental states or events, such as the belief that dualism is false.
.......
Round and round go the arguments. I include that one, because of its classic absurdity. One side will always reduce the other's arguments thusly, and they will both be correct.
So the physicalists and their opponents are both wrong, and both not-wrong.
Let's say that your thought is yourself. That it meets the terms for a thing-in-itself; that is, that it transcends its own convention. INDEPENDENT OF ATTRIBUTES. This is to say, that it pre-exists materiality. Is neither produced nor does it produce. Pure mind.
It is a boson without a fermion, energy with no object/no matter. (NB: Einstein already made the strongest case of an equivalence of the two, figuring in <
c>) Now, to know about anything, to realize there is this thing called consciousness, we have to have been put into motion, the Big Clock has to have started, and we are able to observe its measurements, in a material sense. Now, *this* cannot be said to be independent of its origin, thought.
This is your mind, but this is NOT your mind.
So, what of the question that is hard to even address: what is the cause of the material world?
Cause cannot be separated from effect, I don't see it. You have to remove <
c> from the equation, which leaves what? Outside of light, it all tends to be a moot point, and here we go again. Ground Zero.
Was there an original cause? IF there can be such an idea, even, can it be given a 'real' point-of-origin? In geometry, a 'point' is considered to have zero dimensionality. There is no *there* there, outside of reference to other 'points'.
<In the beginning, there is no beginning; at center, there is no center>
In arithmetic, division by zero only gives infinitudes. (which is the point. We have a valence.
Not a pre-valence.)
It's just a lotta nothin', so what can it mean?and the age-old musical question is answered:
"you're just A Token of My Extreme"
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ø/∞ T A
