[Wittrs] Minds, Brains and What There Is

  • From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 07 Sep 2009 14:27:00 -0000

--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> swmaerske wrote:
> > "Cayuse" wrote:
> >> What has relevance for science are those aspects attaching to
> >> the word 'consciousness' that have empirical content. Nagel
> >> identifies a use of that word that has /no/ empirical content,
> >> and that consequently can have no relevance for science.
> >
> > The fact that subjectness exists IS relevant empirically.
> > What that subjectness is is therefore also relevant in this way.
>
> Whether or not another person has a "what it is like"
> cannot be known, and moreover it has no application.
>

The first part of your claim is obscure because of your use of "what it is 
like", but if all it means is that we cannot know if others have minds as we 
do, Wittgenstein has already dealt effectively with this via his private 
language remarks (the so-called private language argmument). As to the absence 
of "application" itself this "it has no application" comment of yours has 
become something of a mantra, repeated endlessly albeit without support. I 
dispute this claim because you are talking about it on this list and thus it 
has an application. Insofar, of course, as you cannot talk about it, you just 
cannot. So if it has no application in THAT sense there is no "it" to 
reference, no matter how many times you ritualistically refer to it.

>
> >> I'm wondering how contrived one has to be in
> >> order to completely divorce one's use of that word entirely from
> >> Nagel's, since if that /can't/ be done, there will always remain
> >> this residue that is intractable to science and that therefore poses
> >> a particularly /hard/ problem for those hoping to see consciousness
> >> fit into an entirely physicalist account.
> >
> > Sorry but I don't see how this is any harder than any other
> > scientific problem was until we solved it. The only reason to think
> > it is "hard" in some special way is if we start out assuming that
> > whatever consciousness is it is fundamentally separate from the
> > physical world that includes everything else. And THAT is dualism.
> > Obviously if we presume at the outset that dualism is the case (even
> > if we're reluctant to acknowledge it as such, as you seem to be) then
> > it follows that it is "hard" in some insurmountable way to explain
> > consciousness as being part of the physical world. But that is only
> > because dualism assumes the insurmountable difficulty of Chalmers'
> > "hard problem" in the first place, hence my point that the argument
> > for this is, at bottom, circular.
>
> Your point is mistaken. The fact of the /existence/ of the
> "what it is like to be me" does not implicated a different ontological
> category to the /contents/ of that "what it is like to be me".


It does for Chalmers since he is a self-acknowledged dualist. His dualism rests 
on a claim that explaining consciousness is a "hard problem" in a sense of 
being empirically insurmountable. But that is only true if consciousness is 
already presumed to be excluded from the realm of any possible empirical 
investigation because, if it isn't, it's no harder than any other as yet 
unsolved problem. So to presume a "hard problem" in this Chalmersian sense we 
have to presume dualism. It's not the "hard problem" that implies dualism but 
dualism that implies the "hard problem." Get past the presumption of dualism 
and there is no special "hardness" at issue.


> Chalmers is correct in identifying this as a uniquely hard problem
> for any physicalist account since the existence of the whole cannot
> be explained in terms of the relationships between its parts.
>

That says nothing because there is NO reason to presume we must define 
consciousness as some "whole", some "all", nor is there any sense to such a 
definition as you, yourself, admitted. I see how important this is to you 
Cayues, but really it's the wrong tree to be barking up. All you can do is 
continue to tie yourself up in these linguistic tangles reflecting talking 
about what you wish to assert cannot be spoken about!

>
> >>> On the other hand I don't recall Nagel's comments as being intended
> >>> to amplify a religious perspective at all.
> >>
> >> I'm defending Chalmers' view that physicalism encounters a uniquely
> >> hard problem of consciousness following his adoption of Nagel's use
> >> of the word. Neither Nagel nor Chalmers are talking about a religious or
> >> a spiritual perspective. I don't see any reason to employ those terms in
> >> this debate and so I neither use them nor acknowledge their use by
> >> others.
> >
> > There is dualism and all it entails which is compatible with a
> > western religious perspective but need not be seen as one and the
> > same. On the other hand, you get round the dualist problem by
> > asserting incomprehensibility and THAT's the religious part as in
> > Buddhism or certain other mystical claims. Outside of some religious
> > language game, there's no philosophy to be done since, on your own
> > testimony, there is no grammar and no referent for what you equate
> > "subjective experience" with. If so, there's nothing to talk about
> > and philosophy involves talking. On the other hand disciplines like
> > Zen and other forms of Buddhism aim to get past the discursive and
> > into direct experience which is consistent with you notion that we
> > have "consternation" when we realize this idea but that we demolish
> > that by recognizing that there is nothing to be said. The problem is
> > you don't seem to want to stop there. You want to keep talking about
> > what cannot be said as though there was something that really can be
> > said. And that is your own particular self-contradiction.
>
> Neither Nagel nor Chalmers are talking about a religious or a spiritual
> perspective.


But Chalmers is self-avowedly dualist as already noted and dualism is 
consistent with, if not inextricably bound up with, certain religious 
perspectives. I won't speak about Nagel because it's been a long time since I 
read him. But certainly MANY philosophers have veered into a religious qua 
metaphysical perspective. I will just say this: At the point where you are 
talking about what cannot be talked about philosophy breaks down as discourse 
though it may survive as poetry and/or metaphysical speculation. The later 
Wittgenstein clearly saw this though his earlier (younger) self did not. Anyone 
is free to indulge in metaphysics or poetry, of course. But then we should at 
least be honest with ourselves about what it is we're doing.


>I don't see any reason to employ those terms in this debate
> and so I neither use them nor acknowledge their use by others.


Acknowledge or not, I am making a point about the possibilities of use. You 
keep saying there is nothing that can be said about "subjective experience" and 
so it "has no application", etc., etc. And yet you keep trying to say things 
about it as if it had an application! I am pointing out that there are language 
games where one CAN do this (religion, poetry, metaphysical speculation) and 
that these are all somewhat related. But none of this is philosophy as the 
later Wittgenstein conceived it nor as many in modern philosophy understand it 
today.


> I continue to discuss this issue since I'm happy to take on anybody
> contesting Chalmers' claim that there is a use of the word 'consciousness'
> that presents a uniquely hard problem for any physicalist account.
>

So you are defending his naturalistic dualism? If so, on what grounds? If not, 
how are you defending his claim?

>
> >>>>>> The question is specious.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> All you're doing is assuming your conclusion, i.e., that we can't
> >>>>> speak of what brings it (consciousness) about because it is too
> >>>>> "hard" to explain.
> >>>>
> >>>> That "the question is specious" is an entirely different claim to
> >>>> the claim that "it's hard to explain what brings consciousness
> >>>> about".
> >>>
> >>> I probably shouldn't be doing this because I am rather tired of
> >>> going round and round and never getting anywhere but I'll take a
> >>> shot anyway. What is the basis of your claim that "the question is
> >>> specious" then (since you previously coupled it with a claim about the
> >>> Chalmersian "hardness" of the question???
> >>
> >> We seek an explanation for what we can't fit into our world-view.
> >
> > There is nothing to be explained because there is nothing that can be
> > described or even referenced here re: your notion of "subjective
> > experience". The all is not a referent and cannot be spoken of
> > because, frankly, it isn't. All of this is an illusion that occurs
> > when we start using language in a way that produces intellectual
> > logjams.
> >
> > Then we can either stand back, awe-struck by a great mystery, or see
> > that there is nothing to be awe-struck about and it's just back to
> > herding our oxes. You are making much of nothing at all.
>
> Sounds like you agree that the question is specious.
>

Your version of the question, not mine.

Of course, you have been attacking my version as if it were yours though I have 
been at pains to point out for a long time here that it is not.

The problem is that while you want to take a stand on "speciousness" you don't 
want to recognize either that your continued effort to articulate something 
about this is mistaken or that others who use these terms simply mean something 
different and wholly outside the framework you consider yourself to be using. 
That is, I am not talking about what cannot be talked about, you are. I have no 
interest, from the point of view of philosophy, in any "subjective experience" 
that is "the all" or "the microcosm", etc. I do sometimes find myself 
interested in this as a poetic metaphor, an insight that sometimes prompts me 
to a feeling of awe or even a rather pleasant confusion. But from the 
perspective of scientifically explaining how brains do what they do or just 
what they do, such poetic feelings simply have no relevance.

The thing you need to do is get to the point where you can see this distinction 
and break free of the confusion that keeps prompting you to mix up such 
feelings with any notion of scientific explanation.


>
> >> This mode of behavior confers a better understanding of our habitat,
> >> and that in turn confers advantages in terms of survival and
> >> reproduction, and so our propensity to seek explanation has become
> >> instinctive.
> >
> > Seeking explanations is part of what we do because of what we
> > are.Philosophers and others often make mistakes by seeking
> > explanations when explanations have no role to play.
>
> Sounds like you agree that the question is specious.
>

It sounds like we agree I suppose but as long as you continue to mix up the 
poetry with the science of this, I suspect we are just not going to be on the 
same page.

>
> >> But explanation must end somewhere, and our instinct doesn't take
> >> that into account.
> >
> > Sure it does. We don't ask every question interminably. In most
> > ordinary instances we know when to end the search, when we have got
> > what we need. Only in certain rarified realms like philosophy and
> > religion do some of us insist on pressing beyond the normal terminus.
> > It was one of Wittgenstein's great contributions to have reminded us
> > of the value of the ordinary.
>
> Sounds like you agree that the question is specious.
>
>

Understanding Wittgenstein is not, on my view, buying into a few of his 
insights in isolation. It is, rather, a matter of rethinking everything 
according to the full range of his insights. It's not just about quoting a few 
passages selectively and in isolation because they appear to support a 
particular interpretation. You have to look at the whole way he had of seeing 
the world. Selective citation doesn't work anymore for the mystic's eye view 
than it does for the behaviorist.


> >> As Chalmers says, it is an innocent dualism entirely compatible
> >> with the scientific view of the world. There is nothing spiritual
> >> or mystical about it. The dualism I reject is /substance/ dualism.
> >
> > Is it "innocent"? What if it is mistaken? If so it is not so innocent
> > at all because it leads us to conceive wrongly of consciousness.
> > Merely because Chalmers declares his use innocent doesn't mean it
> > really is. But dualism MIGHT be necessary to explain consciousness if
> > we cannot explain it any other way. But I am arguing we can and this
> > argument hinges not one wit on your strange idea of that "subjective
> > experience" = "the all" or "the microcsm". Rather it considers
> > consciousness as so many layered and interacting processes. If all
> > the features of consciousness can be explained in this way, then
> > there is NO reason to presume dualism. Nor can you claim that we must
> > because there is a "hard problem" because THAT hinges entirely on a
> > presumptive dualist conception of consciousness in the first place.
>
> Chalmers:
> "There is not just one problem of consciousness. "Consciousness" is an
> ambiguous term, referring to many different phenomena. Each of these
> phenomena needs to be explained, but some are easier to explain than others.


Relative difficulty is not the issue. It's when he gets to the point of 
asserting a "hard problem" as in being insurmountable that any of this matters.


> At the start, it is useful to divide the associated problems of
> consciousness into "hard" and "easy" problems. The easy problems of
> consciousness are those that seem directly susceptible to the standard
> methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of
> computational or neural mechanisms. The hard problems are those that seem to
> resist those methods. [...]
>
> "There is no real issue about whether these phenomena can be explained
> scientifically. All of them are straightforwardly vulnerable to explanation
> in terms of computational or neural mechanisms. To explain access and
> reportability, for example, we need only specify the mechanism by which
> information about internal states is retrieved and made available for verbal
> report. To explain the integration of information, we need only exhibit
> mechanisms by which information is brought together and exploited by later
> processes. For an account of sleep and wakefulness, an appropriate
> neurophysiological account of the processes responsible for organisms'
> contrasting behavior in those states will suffice. In each case, an
> appropriate cognitive or neurophysiological model can clearly do the
> explanatory work.
>
> "If these phenomena were all there was to consciousness, then consciousness
> would not be much of a problem. Although we do not yet have anything close
> to a complete explanation of these phenomena, we have a clear idea of how we
> might go about explaining them. This is why I call these problems the easy
> problems. Of course, "easy" is a relative term. Getting the details right
> will probably take a century or two of difficult empirical work. Still,
> there is every reason to believe that the methods of cognitive science and
> neuroscience will succeed.
>

Yes, so far so good with Chalmers!


> "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When
> we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there
> is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something
> it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is
> experience."
> http://consc.net/papers/facing.html
>

And this, of course, is where he goes wrong, i.e., he assumes that subjectness 
cannot be explained physically. THIS IS his presumption of dualism. But suppose 
we could explain what it is to be a subject, what it is to have experience, to 
experience, in purely physical terms? Then, of course, the problem is no harder 
than any difficult scientific undertaking. Daniel Dennett has, I believe, 
developed and proposed a very convincing model that demonstrates how 
consciousness (including having experience) can be accounted for on a physical 
model. That is, he explains it as a process-based system performing certain 
tasks, certain functions. This functionalism is physically grounded and 
recognizes that information processing (in the broad sense of this term) is 
something that is accomplished physically even if there is no information we 
can point to beyond our representations of it.

I have seen, repeatedly, that the main arguments against Dennett's model is 
that this is counterintuitive because it doesn't seem to make sense. How can 
information processing ever be aware as we (conscious entities) are? Where is 
that awareness? But this kind of criticism stems from a pre-existing commitment 
to a dualist conception of consciousness, that being aware, being a subject 
with experiences, is just qualitatively different from anything known or 
knowable as an object in the universe. How can a machine have awareness? How 
can a brain, which is really an organic machine have it? Well, we know it does 
so something else must be at work.

For Chalmers, the naturalistic dualist, it's some deep fundamental inexplicable 
principle of the universe on a par with gravity and electromagnetism, all of 
which are known through their phenomenal implications but are not directly 
knowable and so must be posited to explain the phenomena. Chalmers thinks we 
must similarly posit a principle of consciousness. Another philosopher, Galen 
Strawson, claims to be a monist but argues, along similar lines, that since 
consciousness seems to emerge from the physical stuff of brains, it must 
already have been there at some level since nothing can emerge from something 
else.

Strawson presumes "emergence" must mean emergence ex nihilo (which is 
scientifically impossible as far as we know) or manifesting in different ways 
and draws his conclusion from the latter as being the only emergence possible, 
i.e., that consciousness must already be present, ubiquitous on all levels, if 
it is anywhere. Chalmers presumes dualism to begin with because he cannot see 
how a complex process-based system could have experience, have the features of 
being a subject.

But if Dennett's analysis is right, then there is no reason to embrace adding 
extra things to the universe to explain it, i.e., Chalmers' consciousness 
principle or Strawson's conscious dimension of all physical things. The 
criticisms I've seen leveled against Dennett all hinge on claims that awareness 
is something ontologically different and separate from anything physical and so 
has to be explained differently, hence the Chalmersian notion of a "hard 
problem". But Dennett's model (Consciousness Explained) does a very good job of 
accounting for the features we call experience, the things that make up being a 
subject.

If Dennett's model could not adequately account for consciousness or if nothing 
else that is phyically grounded could (Edelman or Hawkins, say), then there 
would be sound reason to consider a more complex explanation of the world 
(dualism). But insofar as the main argument against his approach involves 
presuming dualism, there is only circularity here. That is we cannot say 
Dennett's model cannot work because the world is dualist (consisting of 
consciousness and matter) therefore dualism (a la Chalmers or someone else) 
must be true.

One further point. There are critics of Dennett's model including Edelman who 
maintains that only something like brains can produce minds because brains 
operate on a different principle than computers (selectionist rather than 
instructionist) and the computational principle is excluded from this. Hawkins 
argues against a certain computational approach, i.e., that computers cannot be 
big enough to do everything brains do via a complex system of multiple 
algorithms. But both are in agreement with Dennett to this extent: 
consciousness (subjective experience) is a function of physical processes 
performed by brains. That is they are not dualists as Chalmers explicitly is 
and Strawson implicitly is (he actually argues that he is a monist but only in 
a deep metaphysical sense since he recognizes two higher level features of 
whatever makes up the universe: matter and mind).

SWM

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