[Wittrs] Re: Minds, Brains and What There Is

  • From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 00:36:08 -0000

--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> brendamirsky wrote:
> > "Cayuse" wrote:
> >> swmaerske wrote:
> >>> "Cayuse" wrote:
> >>>> The error is attempting to explain what is at the
> >>>> limit of explanation, whether that attempt is made
> >>>> by Chalmers, or Dennett, or anybody else.
> >>>
> >>> There's no "what-it-is-like" to explain
> >>
> >> If there is a "what it is like to be in pain" then
> >
> > "what-it-is-like" lacks a referent whereas including pain adds one.
> > That's an important distinction.
>
> Pain can't be a referent.
>

It most certainly can.

It was when I had my heart attack and had to tell the doctor what I was feeling.

Yes it was hard to explain because I could not point to anything public that 
the doctors and I could share the observation of. But it was certainly more 
than crying "ouch"!

Wittgenstein's point is NOT to say that we can're refer to our private 
sensations like pains, but that language works differently in such cases. There 
is no particular pain, just a sensation which is unique and generic all at 
once, contra the rock we call a "rock" which involves being able to point to 
shared particulars, distinguish a particular rock from a general concept of 
being a rock or the class of rocks, etc. Language, being a public phenomenon, 
has its main area of application in referring to objects in the public sphere. 
But this doesn't mean we don't have mental lives, don't recognize mental lives 
in others or are unable to talk about such things with others.

A pain isn't like the rock but it isn't nothing either, remember? It requires 
different linguistic handling but it doesn't cease to be or fall out of the 
scope of language entirely. If it did, Wittgenstein couldn't have complained 
about his toothache to his dentist and I couldn't have referenced a sensation I 
was experiencing in my chest!


>
> >>> But it is not some mysterious "what-it-is-like".
> >>
> >> There is nothing "mysterious" about a collection
> >> of contents summing to an entirety.
> >
> > There is if the entirety is inconceivable by definition. If you argue
> > we do think about it then you are either saying we imagine something
> > (which doesn't mean we are actually able to think about it) or we do
> > in the way we think about anything else, in which case there is a
> > referent, which you have already denied.
>
> I don't understand your claim that we aren't able to think about
> imagined things.
>

I didn't say we can't imagine them though. I said that sometimes we only 
imagine we are conceiving of something when, in fact, what we are picturing is 
very different from what we are describing (think of philosophical zombies and 
square circles).

By "think" above I was referring to the ability to conceive of things. Not 
everything we can imagine will be real. Now some things may just not be real 
empirically. A unicorn could exist after all even if it doesn't in fact (a 
horse with a horn on its forehead, why not? -- though perhaps one might doubt 
the possibility of the magical elements typically included in the description 
for sounder reason -- though even there I would say that it is at least 
empirically possible that magic could work, even if, in fact, there is no 
current reason to think so). Even a flying purple people eater could be real. A 
square circle looks like it couldn't be, though perhaps some day string theory 
or some other equally esoteric physics will make even that feasible.

How about "the all"? Well there's no doubt we can say there must be an all 
(i.e., the sum total of everything). But the issue is not whether there is such 
a sum total but whether it is meaningful to speak of it as a referent except in 
the most abstract of terms (that there must be such a complete "thing"). 
Language allows us to speak abstractly at times, after all, even demands that 
we do.

But we can wax so abstract as to lose our linguistic bearings. If language 
doesn't provide an easy medium for speaking of mental phenomena (because they 
aren't part of the public sphere in which language is constructed and used), 
how much less amenable must it be to speaking about something that is by 
definition impossible to reference in any comprehensive or (per your own 
statements) comprehensible way?

>
> >>>> "Nothing" cannot be comprised of contents. This is not
> >>>> a mere assertion but an argument. If you consider the
> >>>> argument to be invalid then present a refutation.
> >> <snip>
> >>> You talk about "the whole" where before you spoke about
> >>> "the all" and "the microcosm". What are these things?
> >>
> >> They are the collective entirety of the "contents of consciousness".
> >
> > Whatever that can be! If being conscious means having a mental life,
> > i.e., experiencing, then it is open ended and endless. We cannot give
> > a detailed description of everything that is included in any given
> > mental life. Therefore it is inconceivable that we can think about
> > the "entirety" though we can certainly think about it in the
> > abstract, as if we could really pick out every one of its
> > constituents in one fell swoop.
>
> It is, in a sense, the experiential version of speaking about "the universe"
> as the collective entirety of material objects and their relationships
> (described in terms of "forces"). We can and do think and speak of
> "the universe", regardless of the fact that "we cannot give a detailed
> description of everying that is included" in it.


Certainly. But this is purely abstract. We cannot, then, proceed to speak of an 
abstract as if it were a concrete referent, something we can pick out in the 
world of phenomena.


> We do so "in the abstract"
> as you rightly say, and the same goes for the collective entirety of the
> "contents of consciousness" -- i.e. the *idea* of the collective entirety
> of the "contents of consciousness" enters into that collective entirety as
> part of those contents.
>
>


Which means what, in the end? You want to tell us it means nothing because it 
is the "what-it-is-like" which has no referent, no grammar, no application. So 
what are you doing trying to come up with an application for the purposes of 
discussion here?

If there is nothing to be said, don't say. (Those things whereof we cannot know 
. . . .).

Which gets back to my use of "consciousness". I am most assuredly NOT speaking 
of your "what-it-is-like" (or Nagel's) when I speak of consciousness. I AM, by 
my own statement, speaking of the features we generally find in our own 
experiences of being subjects. I am speaking of features like thinking about 
things, being aware, having a sense of self, understanding, etc. These are 
mental phenomena and so are not easily spoken of in ordinary language as we 
find again and again in these discussions. There seems to be endless fuzziness 
to these terms and it is hard to reach agreement on what each of us means. But, 
I submit, it isn't impossible though it is made ever so much more difficult 
because some don't want to reach agreement (preferring, instead, to keep the 
door closed on the possibility that we could definitively tie minds to brains, 
consciousness to physical media, being a subject to physics).

Given MY use of the term "consciousness" (not to mention "subjectness", 
experience, etc.) there is no reason to suppose that I mean anything like your 
"what it is like" or your "all" or "the microcosm" or what you wrongly take 
Wittgenstein to mean with his reference to "the visual room". I don't mean any 
such thing. I mean what I have said I mean, namely the features we associate 
with being a subject, having a mind, having a mental life, etc.


> >>> But I can conceive of a unicorn or a flying purple people eater
> >>> without there being such things.
> >>
> >> Any such concepts would be just more of the "contents of
> >> consciousness".
> >
> > This isn't about these concepts as "contents of consciousness" but as
> > referents and how different referents work, i.e., some concepts
> > connect to real phenomena (often in a variety of ways) and some have
> > no such connection but survive, instead, on the role they play in
> > various narratives and other fictions.
>
> Concepts that connect to real phenomena, together with the
> "real phenomena" to which they connect, and concepts that have
> no such connection, are just more of the "contents of consciousness".
>

Which is irrelevant to my point since I AM talking ABOUT the contents of 
consciousness in the sense that I am interested in those features of our mental 
lives that constitute, for us, what it means to be a subject, to be conscious, 
to have a mind, etc., etc. Insofar as you are trying to distinguish between 
contents and something else, something transcendental and unreferenceable, I 
can only say that it is irrelevant to what I am concerned about, i.e., how 
brains produce minds. Moreover, insofar as it is unreferenceable, you err when 
you keep referencing it. If it has no application, then what are you talking 
about? What do your referential words mean?

>
> >>> A word can relate to some conceptual picture we hold or imagine
> >>> without that picture having any relation to any actual thing in the
> >>> world.
> >>
> >> Whether or not that picture has any relation to any actual thing
> >> in the world, the word, the picture, and any relation to any actual
> >> thing in the world are /all/ part of the "contents of consciousness".
> >
> > What has that to do with whether or not you can equate my use of
> > "consciousness" with your use of "the all", etc.?
>
> If your use of the word includes "what it is like to be in pain",
> then it includes "what it is like".
>
>

And that is all about the contents. There is no "what it is like" without the 
part that follows whether it is "to be in pain" or "to be a bat". That there is 
subjectness is not controversial as far as I can see. What subjectness consists 
of seems to be both because some here don't want to accept the brain-mind 
causal relation while others just don't want to allow the possibility of 
speaking about this at all. Both views are mistaken.


> >>>> We not only CAN conceive of a whole,
> >>>> but we DO conceive of a whole.
> >>>
> >>> We IMAGINE we do.
> >>
> >> Can I IMAGINE that I have a concept? I don't think so.
> >
> > Can you conceive of a square circle?
>
> No, and neither can I /imagine/ that I can conceive of a square
> circle. Squares and circles are mutually exclusive by definition,
> unlike parts and wholes.
>

Then how can you imagine that you can conceive of "the all" given that it is 
simply impossible that you can have awareness of every constituent element in 
the universe for all time and all space?

>
> >> But I can have a concept of something imaginary.
> >> Sometimes such a concept has an application (like "the electron"),
> >> but in the case of Nagel's "what it is like", there is no
> >> application.
> >
> > Then there's nothing more to be said, is there, though somehow you
> > keep finding ways to say things about whatever it is you think has no
> > application!
> >
> > If your point is to say the "what it is like" is imaginary, then why
> > belabor the matter like this and why do you imagine it has any
> > relation to my points about the features of what we call
> > "consciousness" or the notion that we can study how the brain
> > produces these?
>
> The fact that we /can/ imagine this entirety of the "contents of
> consciousness", this "what it is like to be me", leads us into metaphysical
> speculation as soon as we imagine other people to be similarly associated
> (in particular to the materialism, idealism, dualism kind of metaphysics).
> To indulge in this sort of speculation is to attempt to explain what is at
> the limit of explanation, and so is a hiding to nothing.
>
>

What's the point of belaboring it though? No one here that I can see is arguing 
for metaphysics as a legitimate domain of inquiry. But you are apparently 
trying to link a perfectly empirical question to a metaphysical issue and then 
to deep-six the empirical question by denying the possibility of the 
metaphysics with which you have wrongly equated the original question. The 
mistake occurs at the outset, when you confuse an empirical issue with a 
metaphysical one.

SWM


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