Zombies and Rat Sex

[tcpip]

The Christmas break has been pretty horrid for me; I've been struck down with a very nasty throat infection which has made breathing difficult and has led to coughing fits. Mentally I have been together, but physically it's been exhausting. It was fortunate that the Christmas day gathering with Brendan E., was relatively sedate with our usual fare of zombie films; I though the 18th century horror-comedy I Sell The Dead had merit, but was less impressed with the recent episodes of The Walking Dead, which has too much soap opera and not enough zombie action. Also will take the opportunity to mention the lightly amusing Z.E.O., a pro-zombie business book which certainly gains kudos for mocking some of the more popular contemporary books in that genre.

With my own state not entirely dissimilar to that of an "inverted zombie" (hat-tip to reddragdiva), I found myself involved in a discussion concerning philosophical zombies, itself which followed by an suprisingly erroneous publication on scientism (not to mention the surprisingly erroneous comments that follow). To summarise for those without the background; not everything in the natural world is reducible only to statements of fact (beauty and goodness are sui generis) and natural consciousness likewise is probably not reducible either (consider supervenience physicalism). One result is that I am considering a neologism that indicates that a person agrees with all the necessary and requisite components of a proposition but still denies its validity.

The countdown to midnight approaches, and we'll be spending our time at the estate, with its outstanding view of the city. But within our home we have expectant rat mothers after we let the hot twins (Naughty and Tricky) spend some wild time with the blonde stud (Riff-Raff). Their cage is rapidly becoming one giant paper nest which leads us to expect that ratlings are imminent. Prior to this breeding program we had arranged with a local pet store cum vet-clinic to take up the excess ratlings when they have come to age. Edit There is now more squeaks than there are observed rats in the cage. Welcome to the world and the new year ratlings.

Comments

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Evidently you find Searle more convincing than I do. His invocation of “meaning” seem hopelessly handwave-y to me.

I think that by linking understanding and consciousness, you mean that the consciousness is the location where understanding takes place?

(And I'm glad the Ron Paul post did you some good. I was getting tired of not having that stuff in one place, so I made an index of my own. Let me know if you find anything else good and I'll add it in.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

As a critic of rule-based meaning I have some time for Searle. I understand that the problem that many had with him is that he didn't really posit a strong alternative definition of meaning. Arguably it came - following Austin - with the notion of intentionality. But Searle, in my opinion, seems to confuse the philosophical concept of intention with the conventional use of the term and as such misreads the phenomenologists; in this much at least, Derrida's critique of Searle was right.

Apropos, I am also using the philosophical definition of consciousness as opposed to the conventional one as well, that is "shared knowledge" and its relationship to conscience. This is a higher level than sapience and sentience which are also sometimes used synonyms to consciousness - not in this case, although they are prerequisites. I do like the suggestion that consciousness is a "location" where understanding takes place, but I would add that consciousness also requires meaning - and that "location" is between people in the linguistic world.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Ah. My Buddhist temptations get the better of me here, thinking about consciousness, hence consciousness as "location", though if you take Buddhist panpsychism all the way, that location is everywhere ....

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Well, of course because it is a metaphysical claim it can't be proved or disproved as long as it retains internal consistency. Which, I will quickly acknowledge, Buddhism does so.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I refer to my panpsychism as a “religious belief” for that very reason.

But I will say the Buddhist account of what “consciousness” is accords with my own subjective experience, and the panpsychism it offers is the only account of consciousness' origins that seems remotely reasonable.

But it's no more satisfactory than any other answer to the coupling problem, so I could still be persuaded of something else ....