[Wittrs] Re: Clarity is Arising
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:12:19 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> just because a disagreement is expressed in language doesn't mean that
> there is no disagreement except as to the choice of which language to
> use to express a pre-existing agreement.
>
Quite right nor am I making THAT assertion. I am saying, rather, that it just
happens to be the case in this situation. In other words I am suggesting that
if you both stepped back and examined your respective remarks and those of your
interlocutor you would see, as I think I see, that there isn't much daylight
between your respective positions and that you are really arguing about how to
talk about something rather than whether or not there is a difference in the
phenomena being talked about.
> I'll let Cayuse speak for himself; but, I believe that there is a real
> disagreement not just a difference between the language we use in which
> to express an underlying agreement.
>
Okay, what is it? Do either of you deny the occurrence of mental phenomena
(other than how you want to name them) or that we don't have uses for words
like "self" and "I" and "me" in the context of referencing such phenomena?
Cayuse thinks he is arguing that, if we dig down deeply enough, we find no self
in the "undercurrent of experience", but agrees that we think we are selves and
can refer to ourselves thusly in the same range of circumstances that you think
we can.
Cayuse thinks, however, that if you really drill down you fall out of language
and can say nothing more except that he persists in thinking we can name the
spot we fall out ("the all", "the microcosm", etc.) and that some, like
Wittgenstein, have done so intelligibly (by noting the unintelligibility of
trying to do so).
You think that the very fact that there is experience implies an experiencer
(as do I, by the way), but Cayuse says that is part of the illusion because
there really is no experiencer to be found. Well, I agree that the experiencer
is a construct but then so is a notion of experience so both are constructed
notions. Insofar as they are, the one implies the other, and insofar as the
"real" reality is outside or beyond the construct, nothing can be said (though
Cayuse perversely continues to hang onto the language of referencing here).
Insofar as nothing can be said, well, nothing can be said, so your bedrock is
correct (you seem to be stopping at the right place) and Cayuse is
linguistically misled. But you proceed to try to make this a logical argument
about how things really are when all such an argument can be is about how we
really talk.
Cayuse, by the way, is right about the construct business nor do I think you
would argue that (though presumably you could -- however in such a case I think
you'd be hard pressed to show that this was anything more than a difference in
your ways of talking).
Indeed, I would suggest that it's all constructs. Everything we think and say,
in any articulable way, is imposed by how we are set up to function in the
world (as Neil has been wont to argue).
> >>these sound like contradictory positions to me; they can't both be
> >>true.
>
> >They can if it's just a matter of how one chooses to phrase things.
>
> I seem to recall a long (3+ months, IIRC) thread on Analytic in which
> you claimed that there was no difference relevant to philosophy of
> consciousness between Cartesian style interactive substance dualism and
> Chalmers style epiphenomenal property dualism because, after dropping
> all the qualifiers ('interactive substance' and 'epiphenomenal
> property'), you found dualism in each case.
>
I think you misread a lot of what I was writing there. I was making the point
that dualism, insofar as it is real dualism, always boils down to substance
dualism, i.e., a claim that the universe is made up of two distinct ontological
basics (such that neither can be explanatorily reduced to the other). You
raised the distinction between "property dualism" and "substance dualism" but
note that I never addressed your Chalmers/Descartes distinction except to note
that dualism is dualism and that Chalmers styles himself a dualist.
I am not much interested in the epiphenomenal distinction since I don't think
that goes to the point of the question I have repeatedly raised, namely whether
we need a physical platform, like brains, to have minds or whether minds are
distinct and separate from anything physical. Epiphenomenalism is certainly one
of the possible outcomes of holding a dualist position on minds but the issue
isn't whether epiphenomenalism is true or makes any sense but whether dualism,
itself, is the case.
Recall that I have argued that dualism is, at least, possible but that there is
no reason to invoke it just to explain mind, absent either 1) some evidence for
it -- e.g., encounters with bodiless minds -- or 2) an inability to explain the
occurrence of minds in a physical way (nor is it enough to invoke dualism to
assert that such an inability is the case because that would be circular).
Since I think there is such an ability (see Dennett), we have no reason to step
into a metaphysical quagmire by going beyond Occam's classic dictum here.
I argued on that list that, if a claim is really dualism, it's no different at
bottom than what has been traditionally understood to be substance dualism.
However, Walter introduced an ambiguous claim that depended on an assertion
that consciousness is really just some property(ies) like "intentionality"
which some physical entities have and some don't. When I tried to press him on
whether he meant this in a way that allowed for a reduction of such
"properties" to something more basic in terms of the physicality of brains, he
refused to be specific and became angry and so we pretty much ended it.
My position is still the same. I agree that we can call what I have called
features of consciousness "properties" (as Walter and PJ and some others wanted
to do) however just asserting THAT does not imply dualism by itself ( to speak
of properties is not necessarily to assert "property dualism"). "Property" can
just be another word for "feature" or "characteristic", which terms are
metaphysically neutral (even if "property" in certain philosophical traditions
isn't.) Here is where our choice of terms can get us into trouble.
The issue at the time was whether Searle, in claiming that any dualism worthy
of the name reduces to substance dualism (a position I share with him), had got
"property dualism" wrong as Walter maintained. Walter's claim (which he
asserted, sometimes very emphatically, but which he never really argued for)
was that Searle's (and by implication my) definition of "property dualism" qua
dualism was wrong. He seemed to be saying that "property dualism" did not imply
any difference on the matter of ontological basicness, but because he refused
to commit to whether or not he agreed that the mental "property" he had in mind
could be reduced to what wasn't, itself, intentional (he sometimes seemed to
say he did but then sometimes that he didn't, and refused to finally commit one
way or another), we never got to the bottom of it.
Insofar as we never resolved the question of whether the "property" Walter
asserted was relevant to a claim of "property dualism" or was reducible, in
fact or principle, to something physical (in which case it did not imply an
ontologically basic difference), the issue ended up as nothing more than a
question of which of us could make our case on-line more loudly and gain the
support of other posters on that list (a support which depended mainly on
pre-existing inclinations -- "allegiances" in Sean's terminology).
I lost because the other posters, on balance, refused to agree with my position
(which was in sync with Searle's use -- though I had taken Searle to task on
other matters) and I ultimately had to leave that list when the list host
decided he didn't want to hear from me on these matters any longer because of
my refusal to acknowledge "losing", and most of the other active posters seemed
to concur. I never stay where I am not welcome. It's a matter of manners, I
suppose.
> did you walk away from that thread believing that, deep down, everyone
> else truly agreed with you on the substantive issue; and, only disagreed
> as to how best to express their agreement with your point of view?
>
> Joe
Absurd and a clear misunderstanding of everything I said then and have been
saying here, now. See above.
SWM
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