[Wittrs] Re: Dennett's paradigm shift.
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:32:47 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Justintruth <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
> Here is why I think it is so "hard to grasp" - as you say: You have
> written:
>
> "...if subjectness can be caused by physics then awareness is physical
> in THAT critical sense."
> You have also written:
> "...Of course it's to be non-physical in the sense of it not being
> about describing the physical phenomena but, rather, the ...
> experiential phenomena of subjects..."
> So basically you are saying that consciousness is physical in one
> sense...that it is caused by the brain... and not physical in another
> sense..."of it not being about describing the physical phenomena but,
> rather, the ... experiential phenomena of subjects"
>
Yes.
> Three things would make the debate clearer:
>
> First: Whenever you say that consciousness is physical, or something
> like that, say something like "physical only in the sense that it is
> caused by something material, not in the sense that it is not about
> describing the experiential phenomena of subjects which is in a sense
> non-physical."
>
I have always tried to do that, sometimes writing extensive caveats in order to
make the point (and often repeating myself so that some readers get frustrated
with my apparent didacticism in constantly reiterating the whole long
explanation -- which is why at this stage in the multi-list debate I do tend to
just assume my interlocutors are familiar with what I've said before -- though
naturally that won't apply to new "auditors" of the debate).
I have certainly never suggested that consciousness is entity-like the way a
physical thing or object is. Indeed, denying THAT picture is the crux of my
claim here.
But you have accurately zeroed in on the distinction I have been making and you
did it by citing my own words which ought to indicate that I HAVE been doing
what you urge me to do, i.e., making that distinction. But it does appear as if
there are some who simply won't acknowledge it and persist in confusing a claim
of physical causation with a claim of physical thinghood.
> (Personally I do not like using the term phenomena when dealing with
> consciousness but I can use it loosely here.)
>
I'm using it loosely, too, and not in the technical sense one might use when
arguing for phenomenalism, say.
> Second: Stop calling the idea that the brain causes consciousness a
> new idea, or Dennett's new paradigm shift, etc, as the idea that the
> brain materially causes consciousness has been around a very long time
> and predates Dennett for a very long time. No one yet has a precise
> description of the mechanism and new ideas for it are all over the
> place - that is true. When you say it is a new idea then one naturally
> begins to search for something beyond the fact that the physical brain
> causes consciousness and the confusion is re-initiated.
What is new here is not a claim that the brain causes the mind but how Dennett
explains its occurrence. Nor is it entirely new with Dennett, either, as we
have seen. In fact, I came to it quite independently of Dennett, after reading
and considering Searle's arguments against this view (though Dennett seems to
have reached the conclusion before me and wrote it up in a way that is far more
comprehensive and clearer than I could have done).
As I delved more deeply into Searle's Chinese Room Argument, I realized why his
argument fails, i.e., it presumes irreducibility on the grounds that
consciousness looks irreducible to us when considered on its own terms. How can
something having what Searle calls a First Person ontology be explainable in a
third person way?
In fact, though, even Searle acknowledges that brains "cause" consciousness so
there is a fundamental confusion deep within his argument. And that confusion
rests on an implicit dualism which presumes that consciousness cannot be
reduced to non-conscious constituents. But the only reason that would be true
is if consciousness is inconceivable as a process-based system. But Dennett
shows how it can be -- and that is his contribution in this area.
> In fact, you
> have clarified for me that that is not Dennet's position either, and I
> confess that when I hear him I was very confused because in places he
> seemed to be asserting that consciousness did in fact exist and in
> others that *only* the physical processes instead of the "experiential
> phenomena of subjects" were existing. Often words like "one is fooled
> into believing" etc are used to eliminate the clear case that
> consciousness exists in fact. It is a fact that can be lost or gained
> and that is amply demonstrated by anesthesia which has been arround
> since before my birth.
>
Dennett argues that what consciousness is is not what it appears to be to us,
but he does not argue that we don't have the features we associate with being
conscious (awareness, senses of being a self, understanding, intentionality,
etc.). So on his view consciousness is real -- to us because we experience --
but it's not a real bottom-line entity that co-exists with the physical. Rather
it's an outcome of certain physical events.
> Third: Abandon the wheel moving analogy as it is misleading. The
> motion of a wheel is a physical description of the relation over time
> between the object and some reference. It is confusing because it can
> be interpreted to mean that consciousness means some kind of such
> relationship save it being more complex. Rather consciousness refers,
> as you have said to the ... "experiential phenomena of subjects" which
> is, as you have characterized it "non-physical" in the sense that it
> is distinct form the mere physical phenomena of which the wheel's
> turning is one.
>
I see your point. It can be misleading. But note that I only introduced it (and
now I'm reaching back into the history of these discussions) for Bruce who
could not see how we could refer to something in some physical way if it were
not entity-like. I made the point that we refer to and name all sorts of
things, from institutions to electromagnetism to gravity to various observable
processes, all the time which we believe are part of the physical universe and
yet which are not entity-like the way rocks and trees and rubber balls are.
I am not suggesting, via this analogy, that consciousness is just a physical
process (say the flashing signals occurring in various patterns in the brain)
the way a wheel's turning is. Of course there is subjective experience. That is
the point of the two-sided coin analogy (also imperfect, like the wheel and its
turning, but to the particular point). In this case the relevant brain
processes (certain brain events) are the coin. The physical manifestations we
observe being one side, the subjectness of experience being the other. but no,
you can't flip this coin the way you can one from the U.S. mint. The analogy
has its limitations and is only presented to demonstrate a particular point, in
this case, how one can accept a claim that there is a kind of identity between
brain (or certain aspects of it) and mind, without buying into the paradoxes
that would attend if the identity claim were one of logical identity (a thing
is the same as itself).
Here, I think, Sean makes a good point when he indicates that language with its
wide range of uses is not, strictly speaking, fully accountable within a
syllogistic straight jacket.
> I would abandon the wheel analogy even though it aptly points out that
> not all physical facts are physical objects but rather some are a
> function of the configuration of the objects as Witt. so aptly
> describes. Unfortunately, consciousness is not just a function of the
> configuration of the objects but is the "experiential phenomena of
> subjects" and so the danger of the analogy falsing causing someone to
> believe that you think that "the experienctial phenomena of subjects"
> and the "configuration of physcial objects" in the sense that Witt
> wrote, are identical.
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>
I see your point. Of course, I use the analogy as you explain above. It is not
a claim that consciousness is just so many physical events because there is a
side of the coin that is outside of the usual observable domain of what we
generally recognize as phyical events. This points up the weakness of language
in this domain. Being public in its genesis, it is not highly suited for making
references to non-public phenomena. And yet we persist in doing it. The
alternative would be to pass over this in silence as some Wittgensteinians
might want to say is the better approach in keeping with the early Wittgenstein.
In fact, I don't see any reason to believe the later Wittgenstein would have
agreed, first because he was not anti-science even if he was anti-scientism and
science needs to be able to talk in affirmative terms about this phenomenon we
call consciousness, and second because Wittgenstein himself often alluded to
mental events including having pictures in our heads, thoughts, etc. He could
not have done that if he were a pure behaviorist (as some on this list have
asserted) or even a proto-behaviorist nor if his view was just to go silent in
the face of such questions.
Anyway, thanks for pointing out some areas where I could be clearer or where,
perhaps, others reading my comments may not be getting what I am trying to
convey.
SWM
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