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

  • From: "Cayuse" <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Mon, 14 Sep 2009 17:05:22 +0100

swmaerske wrote:

"Cayuse" wrote:

brendamirsky wrote:

"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.


I take LW's point to be that, in the case of sensations, language
is operating on a different principle to that of "object and designation"
-- i.e. pain isn't a "thing" to which language "refers".



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.

<snip>

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?


But still there's nothing "mysterious" about a collection of contents
summing to an entirety.



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.


And neither can we proceed to speak of the "what it is like" as if
it were a concrete referent -- to do so leads us into metaphysical
speculation after the fashion of materialism, idealism, dualism, etc.



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?


It means that the "what it is like" is at the limit of explanation,
and any attempt to explain its existence is a hiding to nothing.



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?


What I'm doing here is pointing out that there is no application in this
case, and any metaphysical speculation in regard to it is nonsensical.



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


Precisely!



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).


Consciousness can be "tied to physical media" if we turn a blind eye to the
use of the word to which Nagel adverts and focus on what Chalmers calls the
"easy problems of consciousness" (in a relative sense). My point is (and has
been all along) that anybody thinking the existence of the "what it is like"
is explicable is surely up against a very hard problem.



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.


Inasmuch as we are both talking about the "contents of consciousness",
this identifies the area of overlap between us. Relationships between
various aspects of those contents may avail themselves to explanation,
but not the brute fact of the /existence/ of those contents.



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?


It is an error to think that language /always/ operates on the
principle of "object and designation", and it is precisely this
error that leads us into nonsensical metaphysical speculation.



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.


The "contents" of WHAT? If you mean the contents of /consciousness/
(as you're using that word in this case) then what is this "consciousness"
over and above the very /existence/ of those contents?


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