0
An idle thought
Posted by
Kalepha
,
26 July 2008
·
1,012 views
I have started to read a book of essays, Conceivability and Possibility. I am in the introduction written by the book's editors, and I have a desire to try to explain why I have to fight against boredom when reading it (aside from the fact that I don't have an Inspiration-for-Reading-Conceivability-and-Possibility pill).
The limits of contemporary philosophy of mind, the domain primarily responsible for provoking deepened conceivability and possibility considerations, is just this (as I understand it): Given a planar grid and colors serving to individuate its cells, two persons can agree on a certain list of differentiated sets of colors comprising the grid and still recognize that if there are n sets of color types then there are n! possible permutations of those sets resulting in the same list (with its arbitrary color names). While we may ascribe to both minds equal discerning capacities, philosophers of mind tend to be divided on the significance (whether there are trivial or nontrivial implications) of how each mind may still not wrongheadedly ask which permutation exactly the other mind is perceiving.
For my own unworked-out reasons (one being that I presume that I'm in good company with Jaegwon Kim, a philosopher of mind, and probably most of the community for radical life longevity/enhancement), there would be few if no valuable developments from the research journey to qualia epistemology sin psychological fusions. What would any answer imply? That multirealizability of mind is either impossible in the actual world or, at least, a highly constrained affair? . . . But that would already be a commonsense proposition of the lowly, earthly, divinity neglected mind engineer.
Hence, boredom. (At least at the moment, until after tonight's sleep perhaps.)
The limits of contemporary philosophy of mind, the domain primarily responsible for provoking deepened conceivability and possibility considerations, is just this (as I understand it): Given a planar grid and colors serving to individuate its cells, two persons can agree on a certain list of differentiated sets of colors comprising the grid and still recognize that if there are n sets of color types then there are n! possible permutations of those sets resulting in the same list (with its arbitrary color names). While we may ascribe to both minds equal discerning capacities, philosophers of mind tend to be divided on the significance (whether there are trivial or nontrivial implications) of how each mind may still not wrongheadedly ask which permutation exactly the other mind is perceiving.
For my own unworked-out reasons (one being that I presume that I'm in good company with Jaegwon Kim, a philosopher of mind, and probably most of the community for radical life longevity/enhancement), there would be few if no valuable developments from the research journey to qualia epistemology sin psychological fusions. What would any answer imply? That multirealizability of mind is either impossible in the actual world or, at least, a highly constrained affair? . . . But that would already be a commonsense proposition of the lowly, earthly, divinity neglected mind engineer.
Hence, boredom. (At least at the moment, until after tonight's sleep perhaps.)
