[Wittrs] Re: Dennett's paradigm shift.
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:12:10 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
> > Again the claim that the mind just is the brain is not a claim that
> the mind is a physical thing
> > but a feature (or features) of a physical thing.
>
> What is so difficult to grasp is the assertion that X is a feature of a
> physical thing but can't be physically detected (as the turning of a
> wheel can). X can only be associated with the physical thing, as in my
> love for my car. My love isn't physical.
>
What is it to be "physically detected"? Some things in the universe are only
physically detected indirectly (like gravity and atoms and strong and weak
nuclear forces and electro magnetism). Why should not being able to "see" into
another's mind be thought of as any different? If subjectivity exists it's a
phenomenon in the universe whether it has extension, texture, color or mass or
not! If it's a phenomenon in the universe then why should we presume that it
can only be encountered in the way we encounter sticks and stones and bones?
> Nor is it conceivable that the "mind is just the brain" when the two
> share no common properties aside from correlations which, we with our
> minds, impose. Thus, I agree...
>
> > the physical constituents of matter at all levels show no evidence of
> being conscious, having minds).
>
> Right! The brain isn't conscious. People are. That's why brain-talk
> can't be substituted from people-talk.
>
People are, yes. But only because they have the right kinds of brains working
in the right way. So under certain circumstances it would make perfect sense to
speak of a brain as conscious, even if that isn't the usual locution in our
everyday experience. You want to hang your hat on sticking to usual locutions
in order to eliminate other possibilities but that is just an arbitrary
linguistic maneuver which has no bearing on the role of brains in the matter of
consciousness.
> > Can the mental life easily go on (or go on at all) without the
> physical process?
>
> No. But that fact doesn't explain how we get from the physical to the
> mental.
Right, Dennett's thesis offers at least one way to do that. You can argue the
thesis is wrong but you can't do it merely BECAUSE it hinges on the supposition
that brains cause consciousness by certain things they do BECAUSE THAT IS HIS
THESIS. A flat denial is only that, and not an argument against what you wish
to deny.
> Causation is an empty gesture because there is no way of
> connecting cause and effect.
>
The way is how Dennett does it, by explaining the features of consciousness as
so many processes operating in concert the way computer programs running on a
massively parallel processing computer do what they do. Again, all you are
doing here is denying his way of conceiving consciousness but without any
argument for THAT except to point us back to how we ordinarily speak of who is
conscious ("people are conscious"). But there is NO evidence that that is the
only way we can use "conscious" and plenty of reason to think we can (and do)
use it differently. That is, you seem to want to argue that a common linguistic
use is so severely limited that there is no way we can think about whether
brains are conscious and that is absurd for lots of reasons. One, of course, is
that on the Wittgensteinian view, our words are highly flexible in general.
Another is the evidence of modern science itself where people like Dehaene and
others are looking at brains to find consciousness. If brains aren't causal of
the conscious behaviors and self-reports of the people with them, then why
bother to look there? Why not just stick with a person's big toe?
> > Kill the brain and what happens to subjective experience?
>
> What does that tell us aside from a necessary condition?
A breathable atmosphere is a necessary condition but it, alone, doesn't enable
consciousness in an organism. You confuse your conditions here.
> BTW: Kill the
> mind and what happens to the physical world?
How do you kill the mind other than by impairing the brain? Or are you arguing
an idealist viewpoint now?
>We have two concepts, mind
> and body, they are internally related. If one goes, so does the other.
> Now that perhaps is a paradigm shift because it asks you to drop both
> materialism and idealism.
>
Once again: THIS ISN'T ABOUT MATERIALISM VS IDEALISM except in your mind
apparently. This is about whether consciousness can be explained in a way that
is consistent with physicalism (a modern variant of the classical philosophical
position of materialism) but it is not an argument for physicalism!
> > nor does the wheel's turning analogize with a secretion.
>
> A wheel turning is at point a, b, c, and the analogy to mind is...
>
> >I think you are so intent on avoiding the picture of mind-brain
> dependence,
>
> Read carefully. I insist on dependence but conceptual, not material. Now
> that's a shift.
>
> bruce
>
"The analogy to mind is" that the brain's operations result in certain kinds of
behaviors of the entity with the brain and in subjective experiences (as
evidenced by behaviors and reports and as experienced by each subject having
them). Like the wheel in motion which gives us the turning, the brain in
operation gives us the occurrence of subjectivity.
SWM
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