From: tree of knowledge system discussion <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Michael Mascolo
Sent: Tuesday, September 7, 2021 9:02 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Materialism without Reductionism -- and why "mind" is a troublesome concept...

I wonder if we might be talking passed each other.  I wonder if we are approaching the issue of reductionism with different meanings in mind.  My comments are mainly directed at the need for a theory of persons in which consciousness is not seen as something that is non-material — that is, spiritual or non-corporeal.  If the emergent product has properties that are not in the base elements, then that emergent product is irreducible.  So, yes, the experience of red is irreducible to the base elements (neural firings).  Nonetheless, I suggest that the emergent experience of red is the equivalent of the novel organizational whole — the integrated biological structures and processes that produce the experience of “red”.  We will not find red in the synapses; it the emergent product of the network.

A bicycle is not to be found in its parts; a bicycle is an emergent whole that arises when the parts are put together and function as one unit.  The musical tone of the violin is not to be found in the violin, but in the playing of this song by this master at this time — and then heard by this person with this level of sophistication, etc.  The tone of is an emergent equivalent, I suggest, of the whole.  This is an issue of parts and wholes, I think.

Bruce and Robert seem to be speaking of a different sense of reductionism — whether the experience of redness can be, in some sense, objectively identified (they might be able to clarify my understanding of their positions here) in those bodily processes. In my view, it can’t!  The experience of red is indeed irreducible. And the reason that the experience of red cannot be reduced to an objective characterization is that…well… objective — that is “third person” characterizations — do not exhaust the ways we come to know.  We cannot know “objectively” that this or that brain state provides the neurobiological substrata of the experiencing of red independent of the first and second person frames of reference.  First person experience is not reducible to third person observation.  (In fact, I would argue that BOTH first and third person descriptions of the world RELY UPON second person, shared intersubjective categories.  Without shared intersubjective categories, we would have not way to make first and third person experiences intelligible).

Given this, I am wondering if there is really disagreement here.  Brian, Robert, Gregg and Mike all seem to agree in some sense of emergence in order to explain the origins of experience; we seem to agree that no “objective” identification of “the experience of red” in the brain is possible (or even makes sense).  I imagine that we might agree that given the intersubjective category “red” — one that we create by coordinating our use of the word “red” with our experiences-of-the-world — that is, we agree that the word “red” correspond to the range of colors that we point to in this object, that one, that one and that one — we might be able to identify third person pattens of biological activity that are the equivalent —that correspond to or are the biological substrata for — experiencing red.  Do we?  If not, where do we disagree?

My Best,

Mike