[Wittrs] Re: Is the brain a hammer?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 03 May 2010 21:27:33 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
<snip>
>
> > I didn't suggest the brain chooses to be conscious
>
> I know. You clearly say that the person chooses. Yet you have brain
> causing...causing what?. This is where I get lost.
Look at Searle's use of "cause". But if you don't like it there are lots of
other words that will serve: "engender", "produce", "bring about", "make
happen", even, as we have seen more recently, "constitute".
What do brains "cause"?
The state of being a subject (having a mind, understood as being in the
condition of having a certain array of features associated with what we call
"being a subject": awareness, intentionality, understanding, etc.).
>
> BTW: By this point on give up trying to understand what is or is not
> Dualism, or causation, for that matter, it ain't the words but the logic
> of the account.
>
Yes, there are lots of permutations and there's plenty of room for entangling
locutions if one is intent on doing that.
> > But how is it to express oneself?
>
> Well, we have a choice. You stimulate section A of my brain and I say "I
> remember April." Choice 1- The stimulation caused this being to utter
> that sentence.
Or caused a panoply of things including: 1) the particular vocalization(s) and
2) the mental associations that are typically connected with instances of those
vocalizations.
> Choice 2- The stimulation prompted a nostalgic reflection
> of a girlfriend and a song. Which choice is more useful in understanding
> our lives a as beings with a brain?
>
Which choice is more useful in the pursuit of research aimed at discovering how
the relevant mental associations and behaviors occur?
The point is that the model I have been advocating here, for explaining mind,
sees mind as a function of a highly complex system running on the physical
platform of a brain. While that may not help in the course of a clinical
psychology regimen (your business) there's no reason to think it won't in the
course of a neurobiologist's research into how brains do what they do or an AI
researcher's research into what it is physical platforms like brains need to do
in order to produce a mind.
> > The issue is what causes the subject What brings it about in the
> world?
>
> Right! As you point out we are already there in asking the question. So
> we can only ask of others who are not there yet. Right?
We ask it of ourselves as in when researchers like Dehaene pursue a line of
inquiry through experimentation. Since we are already there, we cannot be said
to be asking it of others who aren't. If they are others, then they are already
there already, no?
Is there some meaning slippage here, Bruce? Does "not there yet" mean don't
share the same understanding or not yet in existence? If the latter how can we
ask anything at all since there's no one to ask! But if it just means they
don't share the same understanding, then there is no barrier to asking.
> And we find that
> brain matures, at some point this entity becomes a subject. In the
> process of development all sorts of bio-chemical activity went on in a
> context of environmental inputs. If you will, this makes the subject.
>
Okay.
> But the subject emerges, for us the observer, it is not the physical
> brain that we encounter.
Of course not and nothing I've said so far here implies otherwise!
> The ongoing brain bio-chemical activity doesn't
> serve the person coming to know himself or us coming to know him.
>
If you're referring to matters if a clinical nature in psychology I would tend
to agree. Similarly I would agree that this is irrelevant for day to day
interactions with others. We don't think of them in terms of their brain
activity (though there may be cases where this would be appropriate).
> > I don't think that one has to hold that this makes us automatons.
>
> I don't see how you can have it both ways at the same time. The brain
> operates causally, period.
As we've seen, you and I have a very different understandings of "causal" here
as well as of its implications.
> If every thought and act stands in a causal
> relation to brain activity, then we are automatons. If the brain
> exercises choice, we have vitalism.
>
No. A false dichotomy. But let's approach this from a different perspective. We
know that it feels like we have choice to us. Isn't that what we mean by choice
in this context then? Are you not making the mistake of invoking some different
notion of what it means to be free to choose?
> > Because I am talking about how a physical phenomenon, a brain,
> > produces a subjective phenomenon, a mind.
>
> You talk about mind as if it were an object "produced." Though sometimes
> you talk about subjectivity as what the brain "does."
I don't like the "object" usage though I would agree that "mind" can be an
"object of reference" and that this can lead us to confusion since we hear
"object" and think of something physical (with physically observable features).
I prefer the action usage here, i.e., that mind, being conscious, is what a
brain does. But it does it in a mindless way, i.e., mind arises from a physical
platform that is not, itself, mind.
> I prefer the
> latter. Because mind isn't an object but an activity.
I share that preference though I grant there may be times when it makes sense
to think of mind as a thing, an object, etc. (See immediately above.)
> The puzzler is the
> relationship between brain and mind activity. We have a correlation.
> What can we say beyond that without mixing a causal language with an
> intentional one.
>
I don't see any reason why there should be any need to mix our descriptive
vocabularies or language games here!
> BTW: Think about the difference between the relationship of cause and
> effect and the relationship between reasons and behavior.
>
Already have since we have discussed that before, too. The ideas of thinking
about, drawing conclusions, deciding to act and then acting involve something
quite different than the idea of physical interaction of unthinking things.
Nevertheless, unless we realize that an account of thinking things must
originate in an account of unthinking things we end up with a need for a
homunculus in our explanation of how mind happens in the world. And then
nothing is really explained at all!
> > Could he do any of it without a brain to make him what he is?
>
> Does the brain make the man or does the man make the brain.
Clothes make the man. Do clothes make the brain if the brain makes the man? Do
brains make the clothes if it takes a man (or woman) to tailor and manufacture
them and such entities must have brains to do any of this?
My point, of course, is there are lots of ways of speaking but we don't
necessarily resolve this kind of discussion by looking for such pithy answers!
The linguistic usages involved are way too different. We have to be careful not
to pull our terms out of the contexts in which they find their meaning!
> Well,one
> must start with a brain but how one lives (thinks and feels) alters the
> brain.
>
> bruce
>
No argument from me on that one, though I would add that we still know precious
little about how the alterations occur or what they consist of in terms of the
physical platform which the brain is! Of course, it's the project of people
like Dehaene to discover some of the answers to those questions.
SWM
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