[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "Cayuse" <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 7 Sep 2009 13:50:25 +0100
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.
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".
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.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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
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