(2024-12-12, 05:43 AM)Laird Wrote: Hi Stephen,
Thanks for this. It's helpful in that it confirms something about your view that has until now always seemed only implicit, and kind of vague and unclear, which none of us has ever seemed quite able to pin down, and that is this:
That you do not recognise mind and mentality - nor even phenomenal experience - in their own right (they do not even appear in your list of the three primary substances); rather, you seem to view them as some sort of epiphenomenon or consequence of information, or more likely even as reducible to or even identical to information in the same way that the physicalist sees them as reducible to or identical to matter.
Moreover, like the physicalist, you seem to see that to which mind, mentality, and experience are reduced or with which they are identified - information (objects and their flow) in your case - as deterministic: as captured in their "essence" by "algorithm and programs". It seems to follow then that you see mind and mentality, including phenomenal experience, themselves as deterministic: algorithmic and programmatic. You thus seem implicitly committed to a denial of free will.
This, too, has until now always seemed implicit yet tantalisingly close to being explicit on your view, but now you've finally and helpfully made it very clear.
I have to admit that I didn’t get any of this from his post?
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
- Bertrand Russell