--- In
Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@.
..> wrote:
>
> --- In
Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > Right, in this context it's the caused.
>
> I'm confused. Are you saying that water molecules cause my sensation of
> wetness?
In a sense yes. The molecules in action produce certain stimuli while your brain, in processing the signals generated by the stimuli, produces a feeling of wetness that is part of being the subject you are.
So the water causes your feeling of wetness, the molecules doing what they do cause your feeling of wetness, AND your brain, running the processes it runs, causes your feeling of wetness. Lots of causes here, depending on how you look at it and what you need to explain.
Recapitulation:
If we are explaining how it is we come to experience wetness instead of dryness we point to the water as the cause. (It rained and the water got in there!)
If we are explaining how it is that water has the feature we recognize as wetness we describe its molecular nature. (We invoke chemistry and physical theory.)
If we are explaining how it is that an entity can feel wetness (or anything at all), i.e., how it is that there are subjects in the universe, we explain how brains do what they do.
>If so, we need a causal trail. From the molecules to Bruce's
> sensation, step by step. Any gaps and we have a presumed cause. However,
> if one can show that the very nature of the gap is such that it can't be
> crossed, then the presumption of cause is without merit.
>
That's where the issue becomes one of what is the best way to conceive of consciousness. But yes, this is the crux. If you can show that there is no way a physical account can explain this because of an unbridgeable gap between experience and physics, then you can undermine the whole approach I have been pushing. However, you can't do it either by 1) arguing the metaphysics or 2) assuming what you must now demonstrate, i.e., assume dualism.
> So-- if you hold that we can never know what an object is "in-itself",
> i.e., apart from anyone perceiving it, because the very act of
> perception creates a gap between what is (theoretically) and what is
> seen (actually), then, by this argument, objects cannot cause
> perception.
>
I don't "hold" that because I don't think there is any way to speak intelligibly about an object in itself. All we can ever know are the objects as we have them or as we conceive them (which depends on what they are as we have them).
I am not arguing that there is a gap between what we know and what is. There may be or there may not be. There is certainly plenty we don't yet know but I don't know that there is knowable stuff that we cannot, in principle, know.
> One ought not conclude from this that objects don't exist, that they are
> just what the mind imagines, but, rather, the relationship between
> object and mind is other than causal.
>
Where do you get the idea I am concluding objects don't exist?
> > Do we always have the option to ignore severe pain or other kinds of
> distress? Or extreme pleasure?
>
> Yes. The empirical and everyday evidence is overwhelming. A fact of
> life.
>
We must live in different worlds then. When I am in severe pain, if it is severe enough, I can't ignore it. I can sometimes work through it by focusing on something else but my ability to do that is dependent on the degree of severity. We are the creatures of the physical in my experience even if we have minds.
> > Do we intend to be conscious and then become conscious?
>
> This sometimes happens in dreams. But, usually, we find ourselves
> conscious. Good question. Relevance?
>
Not relevant at all but you keep talking about the problem of intention vis a vis the idea of an existentially dependent relationship of minds on brains. I was merely pointing out that irrelevance.
> > What sense of "intentional" have you in mind
>
> The everyday sense. The one researchers use.
>
Which researchers? Some are interested in studying purposive behavior and that is one kind of intention (and likely the "everyday sense"). Others are interested in studying the role and nature of awareness in behaving entities (the sense in which philosophers and cognitive scientists are interested) and that is the other kind. So since you say the "everyday sense", are we to presume you are talking about purposes? If so, I suspect we have hit one of those confusions again. But let's see how you explicate this further on.
> > Brains produce minds which includes intentionality and purposiveness
> (having intentions).
>
> "Production" requires a thing produced and a place to put it.
Only when we're producing cars and light trucks (or some equivalent) in factories (or some equivalents)
. We also produce plays and movies and responses in rats. We can produce a novel if we try. Producing is not so singular a thing as you think. (But we have been over this before, too, haven't we?)
> This
> metaphor fails. The relationship between brain and mind can't be
> productive.
Productive as in yielding something useful or as in yielding some outcome or output?
> Your researcher seems to hold that a person uses his brain
> to do mental work. Let's read him closely.
>
Yes, let's. Do we use our brain like a tool in the toolbox do you think? How would it be if we decided not to use our brain? Well perhaps that just means we decide not to do a certain kind of thinking, a certain level. But that isn't what's meant. In this case the issue is whether we can say we use our brain to be conscious? But isn't that an odd locution? How could we use it to be conscious if we weren't already conscious? So in this context it makes no sense to say this is about how we "use" our brains.
> > But that doesn't mean we suppose that the person is a separate sort of
> thing,
> > ontologically distinct, etc., etc. That, rather, is your own mistake,
>
> Can't possibly be my mistake because I make no ontological claims about
> what basic substances or things exist.
Neither does Searle but his basic problem lies in thinking that consciousness cannot be reduced to anything more basic than itself. Thus he makes an ontological assumption in this regard, even while claiming not to have done so.
> Ontology is your burden and why
> you fight against dualism which, in your mind, suggests a different two
> substances.
I don't fight against it. I point out when it is implied. I don't know if dualism is true or not and admit it could be. But I see no reason to presume it if we can explain minds in terms of physical phenomena alone and I believe we can, that the Dennettian model is a perfectly reasonable, viable way of doing that.
If you want to show that it isn't, you need to show that it is missing something that is part and parcel of consciousness. But doing that by assuming dualism (via a claim that consciousness/
mind/experience cannot be physical) merely invokes dualism again and now you have to argue for it, but you don't and don't want to even acknowledge that you are depending on THAT assumption to deny the Dennettian model. But, if you would honestly look at the implications of what you have said here so many times, you would see that you ARE assuming dualism. My view is that that is to forget about Occam's Razor but if you do wish to ignore it, you still have to produce an argument for it, either based on evidence or reasons.
> I just hold for different sorts of explanations. Causation
> for physics. Reason, intentionality for psychology. You want to make
> psychology dependent upon physics. But your researcher, if you read him,
> does not.
>
I don't want to make psychology dependent on physics at all. They are different disciplines and have their own distinct areas of concerns, techniques, methods of discourse, theories, etc. But I do want to understand how psychological phenomena arise in a physical universe. That's why there is a different discipline at issue here, or several actually, including cognitive science, neurobiology, etc.
But have you a citation to back up whatever the point is you seem to want to make about Dehaene? Perhaps we could look at it together and actually read his words? Then maybe we can come to some agreement as to what he is saying.
> > If brain researchers can discover what it is that brains do that
> result in consciousness
>
> Quote me where Dehaena is attempting to show that "what brains do result
> in C."
>
Well you could go back and look at the text I put on this list. But I expect you won't. At the moment I have a limitation in my flexibility moving around different Internet sites but I tell you what, I will do that and post it separately, or the next time I respond to you, how's that? However, you could save me the trouble and just go read what he is saying (which I have already posted) since it's all about how brains produce consciousness from start to finish. But I suppose you want me to produce (there's that word again and I'm not even a factory!) some pithy statement here between quote marks. And so I will do so as we go forward.
> > The supposition that brains do things that happen at a sub-conscious
> > or pre-conscious level is also perfectly consistent with the idea that
> brains produce consciousness
>
> only if you persume there is a person who experiences the subconscious
> (at some level) and the consciousnes "produced by the brain."
Say what? I'm sorry but this point isn't clear to me. Can you explain it better?
>This is no
> different from saying that my heart tells my I'm anxious.
How so? Remember when I noted that my little grandson answered a question I asked him about how he knew something with "my brain told me"? He has since learned that one does not say that and the reason we don't is because one is not separate from one's brain. Feeling anxious may be accompanied by a heightened heart rate and sometimes we may not notice the feeling before we notice the heart's racing and then we might actually say something like that. But more usually, we feel anxious without noticing the heart racing even if its racing is a part of feeling anxious.
But why should you think this has anything to do with talk about brains and consciousness?
> This analysis
> begins with a conscious person who then experiences his body.
>
So what? That still says nothing about how conscious persons come to be conscious persons.
> > he is studying how the brain produces awareness
>
> Quote, please. I read him as showing how I use my brain to be conscious.
Have you really read the stuff at all? If you had you would not be asking this question (not if you are being sincere anyway). But I will oblige you on the next go-round. Not that it will matter I suppose!
> ? Would you say my fingers produce music? If so, the brain produces C in
> that sense.
>
Your fingers may be said to produce music, sure.
> > What do you mean by "emergence" here?
>
> Science cannot survive with one logical type of explanation. The logic
> of physics isn't that of psychology. Even physics has different types of
> accounts. A psychological account starts with the person, not the mind
> nor the body.
>
What do you mean by "emergence" though? We already know there are persons with minds and bodies. But what is this "emergence" you are now invoking? What are examples of it? How does it occur? When and where does it occur?
> "Emergence" suggests discrete levels of analysis required by the
> emergence of unique phenomena. The link between levels is not causal.
>
> bruce
Not what it "suggests", what IS it?
Some think "emergence" refers to someone coming out of his or her bath. Or coming out of a space capsule, say. But surely that isn't what you mean. Sometimes the occurrence of a new feature from some other level of operation is meant, as in the wetness of water is an emergent feature of water's atomic structure. Perhaps that's how you mean it? Sometimes peoople speak of the appearance of something from something else that is otherwise inexplicable. Perhaps THAT is what you have in mind? I shall be obliged if you would give us a bit of an explanation re: this just as I have agreed to find you a quote from the Dehaene talk that demonstrates he is talking about what his whole talk is about to satisfy your skepticism.
We can reconvene here when I have your quote and you are prepared to explain yourself with regard to "emergence", okay?
SWM
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