Hey Tim,
Remember that wiki article you linked me to? Maybe we could discuss it in the comments of this link. Sound good?
Remember that wiki article you linked me to? Maybe we could discuss it in the comments of this link. Sound good?
This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level. No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies. None of them thinks about the whole as such. And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist). None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well? And why not parts of these parts, et...
Comments
For starters, the equation by McCulloch doesn't mean anything to me: what's dQ?
The equations aren't really important in that article. dX (where X in any variable) is essentially synonymous with delta_x, or change in X. dX means a small change in X. Technically, dX is an infinitesimally small change in X - this assumption is the basis of calculus. What that equation means in words is that if you add a small amount of heat energy to a closed system otherwise kept at constant temperature, you will likely contribute to it's disorder. This, if I hold an ice cube and put a lighter by it (adding the dQ), some of it will melt into water - thus ruining its order and increasing its entropy (corresponding to an increase in S on the other side of the equation).