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Mitchell_Porter comments on Friendly AI and the limits of computational epistemology - Less Wrong
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Let's say that ontology is the study of that which exists, epistemology the study of knowledge, phenomenology the study of appearances, and methodology the study of technique. There's naturally an interplay between these disciplines. Each discipline has methods, the methods might be employed before you're clear on how they work, so you might perform a phenomenological study of the methods in order to establish what it is that you're doing. Reflection is supposed to be a source of knowledge about consciousness, so it's an epistemological methodology for constructing a phenomenological ontology... I don't have a formula for how it all fits together (but if you do an image search on "hermeneutic circle" you can find various crude flowcharts). If I did, I would be much more advanced.
I wouldn't call that meaning, unless you're going to explicitly say that there are meaning-qualia in your antenna-photon system. Otherwise it's just cause and effect. True meaning is an aspect of consciousness. Functionalist "meaning" is based on an analogy with meaning-driven behavior in a conscious being.
Does your philosophy have a name? Like "functionalist perspectivism"?
Thanks for the description. That would place the core of my claims as an ontology, with implications for how to approach epistemology, and phenomenology.
I recognize that my use of meaning is not normative. I won't defend this use because my model for it is still sloppy, but I will attempt to explain it.
The antenna-photon interaction that you refer to as cause and effect I would refer to as a change in the dynamics of the system, as described from a particular perspective.
To refer to this interaction as cause and effect requires that some aspect of the system be considered the baseline; the effect then is how the state of the system is modified by the influencing entity. Such a perspective can be adopted and might even be useful. But the perspective that I am holding is that the antenna and the photon are interacting. This is a process that modifies both systems. The "meaning" that is formed is unique to the system; it depends on the particulars of the systems and their interactions. Within the system that "meaning" exists in terms of the dynamics allowed by the nature of the system. When we describe that "meaning" we do so in the terms generated from an external perspective, but that description will only capture certain aspects of the "meaning" actually generated within the system.
How does this description compare with your concept of "meaning-qualia"?
I think that both functionalism and perspectivism are poor labels for what I'm attempting to describe; because both philosophies pay too much attention to human consciousness and neither are set to explain the nature of existence generally.
For now I'm calling my philosophy the interpretive context hypothesis (ICH), at least until I discover a better name or a better model.