[lit-ideas] Re: the first lines are the argument referred by
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 6 Nov 2011 00:15:51 +0000 (GMT)
________________________________
From: Phil Enns <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxx>
>Below is a link to an article I came across a few days ago.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/the-hardest-problem-in-science/40845
>Apparently not everyone would agree that it is demonstrated that a thought
>isn't identical to a brain state.
The article is not (philosophically) very developed and while it may not agree
that it is demonstrated etc., that may be because it simply does not consider
any argument that thought is not identical to a brain state, still less does it
rebut any such argument.
The writer's POV is in some respects akin to what Popper in TSAIB terms
"promissory materialism": this is the view that while we may be very far off at
present, developments in neurology etc will eventually reveal every mental
event to be identical (somehow) with a physical-chemical brain state.
In fact, such is the lack of argumentation, and the emphasising of the
difficulty involved, that it is not even clear that the writer is anything like
a confident 'promissory materialist'.
We read for example:-
"But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even
imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it.
In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first
base, not to mention a home run. Let’s say that a particular cerebral
nucleus was found, existing only in conscious creatures. Would that
solve it? Or maybe a specific molecule, synthesized only in the heat of
subjective mental functioning, increasing in quantity in proportion as
sensations are increasingly vivid, disappearing with unconsciousness,
and present in diminished quantity from human to hippo to herring to
hemlock tree. Or maybe a kind of reverberating electrical circuit. I’d
be utterly fascinated by any of these findings, or any of an immense
number of easily imagined alternatives. But satisfied? Not one bit."
This could be read as saying that whatever conceivable neurophysical advances
might be made, the writer cannot see how they would satisfactorily solve "the
hard problem of consciousness." So the article may be read as saying "As a
scientist I am committed to some form of materialist explanation (provided
'materialist' is extended beyond mere matter to encompass what may be known by
studies of the physical, chemical and biological aspects involved) for
consciousness, and indeed as a scientist only a materialist explanation could
be a properly scientific explanation; and yet I cannot see how any such
materialist explanation could satisfactorily account for consciousness."
Read this way, the writer may be taken to express a kind of dilemma for someone
who regards themselves as holding to a scientific POV (and to scientific
solutions to questions of fact), but who is also sensitive to the peculiarity
of "the hard problem of consciousness" that makes it seem resistant to a
scientific solution. Read this way, the question of whether (and in what way) a
thought is identical with a brain state is not given any definitive answer
here, one way or another, but is simply seen as posing a dilemma.
For Popper, such a scientist should perhaps be persuaded that the scientific
POV does not support the view that thought is merely some kind of brain state,
and the view that it does support such a view is not a properly scientific but
in fact - as believed by scientists - a somewhat naive and unreflective
philosophical view or indeed prejudice (if we were to take this 'prejudice' in
favour materialist explanation far enough, we would be committed to giving a
materialist explanation for our being able to give a successful materialist
explanation for consciousness; and indeed committed to the view that natural
science could explain, and therefore predict, its own (future) results -
against this, Popper argues, particularly in The Open Universe, that it is
logically impossible that science could ever reach a form or level or state
whereby its own explanatory successes were explained scientifically). Popper
argues that, insofar as a correct scientific POV
will be a Darwinian one, only interactionism is properly compatible with a
Darwinian understanding of consciousness for only if consciousness can have
some downward causal affect on the brain and on physical action can it have any
kind of evolutionary function. This point is amplified when we see how the
evolutionary use and function of consciousness is itself massively amplified by
the interaction of World 2 consciousness with World 3 objects.
Donal
Wondering which Hilary Putnam (and on which planet) Eric means?
England
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