[Wittrs] [C] Re: Wittgenstein's Way
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:11:25 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
>
>
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > I mean cause as distinct from condition.
>
> Great. I appreciate your time and trouble. Let's check it out.
>
> > 2 : something essential to the appearance or occurrence of something
> else : prerequisite: as a :
> > an environmental requirement available oxygen is an essential
> condition for animal life
>
> I can watch oxygen molecules interact with the body but I can't watch
> brain interact with mind. So, this doesn't work.
>
What you can watch is irrelevant to what causes what, so it does.
Note, again, that you can watch the mouth and watch the smile but there is no
interacting between a mouth and a smile so you can't watch THAT.
The fact that the mouth moves in a certain way is the basis for the occurrence
of the smile. In the sense of "cause" I am explicitly using, the movement of
the mouth causes the smile (though we might also say that there are other
causes in other senses, e.g., the joke caused so and so smile or gas caused the
baby's smile, etc. -- that there are multiple senses of "cause" does not mean
any particular sense isn't ascribable under the right conditions).
Why do I feel this is an endless, literally ENDLESS, argument?
> > 1 a : a reason for an action or condition : motive
>
> Obviously doesn't work. Brain has no motives.
>
Note that my point was to show you that "cause" and "condition" are not the
same, not to give you an exhaustive definition of "cause" which you could get
from going to the link I provided. However, if I must:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cause
1 - b : something that brings about an effect or a result c : a person or thing
that is the occasion of an action or state; especially : an agent that brings
something about
I trust I don't also have to point out that not every agent is a conscious or
subjective agent, i.e., we have things like chemical agents.
> > something that brings about an effect or a result
>
> That would work if I can see HOW the brain brings about the effect.
I'm glad you noticed it would work. But you seem to have failed to notice that
what you can see has nothing to do with whether anything is a cause or not.
> Stimulate the C-fiber and the person reports pain. But does the C-fiber
> bring about the pain (cause it) or is the firing of the fiber identical
> with the pain and hence not a cause.?
If there is no other cause and everytime you stimulate the fiber in question,
the subject cries ouch, what do you think?
> And if the C-fiber causes
> something, exactly what is caused? The pain? The report?
It would be an odd subject who cried "ouch" but didn't feel pain when the fiber
in question is stimulated.
> Remember it
> takes a person to report.
It only takes an organism with a nervous system and the capacity to behave. If
I step on my cat's tail she yowls. She is not reporting, she is expressing or,
better, reacting.
> What is the mechanical relationship between
> the C-fiber and a person? Does this question even make sense?
No, but you asked it, I didn't. The fact that it cannot be answered
intelligibly, on the evidence before us, is therefore not an indication that
there is any problem with my contention.
> Do people
> relate to their C-fibers?
>
I don't even know what that means. However, supposing it means that one of us
has a nerve dangling from whole in his skull called a "C-fiber" and when you
touch it it causes intense pain and you want to yell "ouch", then there is
certainly a relationship, of sorts, i.e., you want that "C-fiber" put back
where it belongs. So this is not, in principle, out of the question, even if it
is in fact, so what's the problem? And, more importantly, what point do you
think is being made by raising it?
> > Moreover, a having brain is not like having oxygen,
>
> You bet. I breath and take in oxygen which is "not me." But I don't have
> an external relationship with my brain and hence my brain can't cause me
> to do anything since my brain and me are internally related.
>
O lord, lord, lord. (I know Sean frowns on such things but at least it's not
"oy"!) Bruce, THERE ARE MULTIPLE USES OF MOST WORDS AND CERTAINLY OF "CAUSE".
YOU DON'T NEED AN "EXTERNAL RELATIONSHIP" WITH YOUR BRAIN FOR IT TO BE THE
CAUSE OF YOU BEING A CONSCIOUS CREATURE. Is this really so difficult to get?
There are the causes of one thing on another, the causes of reasons, the causes
of motivations, the causes of features, etc., etc. Your persistent insistence
on mixing these up and arguing against a claim based on a use I am not
referring to cannot resolve the question at hand. (Note to Sean: despite my
obvious frustration here, I have still offered a REASON for the point I am
making and not merely rhetorical hyperventilating, nor have I personalized
this, so this should pass muster!)
> > Does the brain decide to "hit the snooze"
>
> You agree that brains don't decide but that I do. So what is the
> relationship between the mechanical brain and the intentional Bruce.
It causes your being a conscious subject and not just a hunk of meat.
> A
> mechanism has no intention. One possibility is that intentions are
> illusory. Everything is caused. Is that your thesis?
>
Everything is caused in one sense or another unless you believe in an uncaused
cause. But this says nothing about the reality of intentions.
> >...where's that ghost in the machine?
>
> Yes, that would be your question since you have both a machine and a
> willful person.
See, I have said repeatedly you are a dualist and here you go again: "you have
both a machine and a willful person". And yet you keep denying that you are
dualist while every claim you make is embedded in dualist presumptions.
> Not my question since I don't see humans as machines.
BUT YOU ASK IT, I DON'T! I am not arguing that there are two but when you argue
against me you insist I cannot be right because there are these two things. Why
would you make the claim and then say but it's not your question when you are
the only one who asks it???
> Nor do I see them as spirits. Sorry, I don't buy your dual ontology.
>
Perhaps you have forgotten but you once proposed that "spirit" was the proper
way to refer to minds in lieu of my point that they are just brains doing
certain things! I'm glad, however, that you have now (apparently) jettisoned
that peculiar notion.
The real problem is your implicit ontology, not mine. (See your question about
minds and machines above.)
> > whether you are a body, including a brain that causes your
> consciousness
>
> A consciousness caused entirely by prior factors is antithetical to what
> we mean by agency and yet.
>
What "prior factors" are you talking about? No one said anything about
chronological events!!!
> > I have never denied agency and purpose
>
> which, it seems to me, makes your position self-contradictory.
>
Only because you insist on seeing it in terms of minds and bodies and that
never the twain shall meet.
> > Of course recognition is caused
>
> If so, we have no need to speak of a person who recognizes.
Why not? It's still a phenomenon!
> You make no
> distinction between a computer that recognizes a program and a husband
> who recognizes his wife's love?
Who said THAT?
"Recognize", like "cause" and so many of our other words, has a range of uses!
> If so, you have no need for agency and
> purpose. We are just noisy machines.
>
And if we are, if machines can be conscious and we are among the kinds that
can, so what? Is distaste for the idea that that is what we are an argument
against it if it happens to be true?
> > The face IS physical even if we're not attending to the physical
> material
>
> What do you mean by "we're attending."
Looking at it with attention, thinking about what we're seeing, etc.
> There is no need for a person
> attending.
> A physical thing (which our brain labels as a face) causes
> the brain to make changes in the face outside the skull...and that's it.
>
What does THAT mean?
> > we cannot point to the smile as a physical constituent of the mouth!
>
> There is no "we."
There is too!
> And why can't the brain cause the finger to point
> (excuse me, extend, only a person with an intention can point)
But a person without a brain can't intend! Indeed, such an entity would even
lack the features that would qualify him/her/it as a person!
>and then
> stimulate the language area which causes the mouth to utter the word
> "smile?"
>
> bruce
>
What's your point?
SWM
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