[Wittrs] Re: Is the brain a hammer?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 05 May 2010 09:32:24 -0000
Having trouble again with my computer -- it looks like it's a function of Yahoo
since it only seems to be when I'm using Yahoo that my computer runs into these
difficulties -- I just responded to Bruce below, only to have the response seem
to fail to go through. But I've learned (albeit slowly!) and now save what I
write (at least sometimes). So here it is again. If the other did go through,
this will show up at least twice but no matter:
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
Sticking with his ongoing insistence that one cannot speak of brains causing
minds (as Searle has put it and as I have echoed) Bruce writes:
> ...it is not about what word you use to connect brain and
> mind. It is about the logic of the connection put forth
>
Why did Bruce say that? Because he thinks it's clear that "cause" implies a
certain very specific kind of relation and that brains and minds cannot
conceivably be seen to exist in that relation.
Bruce's position hinges on the fact, often stated by him, that mind is a
different kind of thing than brains and that the word "cause" must always be
seen to designate a relation between things of a common type. Thus, one
physical event may cause another physical event the way the cue ball's strike
against another ball on a billiard table causes the other ball to move. More,
Bruce recognizes other kinds of physical causations including the bone marrow
in a human body causing the formation of blood, etc.
But he is adamant that brains can't be said to cause minds this way because
minds are just different. They aren't physical, aren't some kind of stuff, he
tells us, despite my analogy of the physical outcomes of spinning produced by a
wheel in motion or of a smile on a human face. Even so, says Bruce, the
spinning and the smile are clearly physical while no one can point to the
physical manifestations of a mind. Sure there is behavior but that's not what
we mean by "mind", says Bruce.
So what do we mean? He tells us we mean the subjective experience of falling in
love, desiring something, hoping, etc. Of course, I have denied none of that in
saying that such things are physical because they can be seen to be outcomes of
physical behavior of perfectly physical brains.
Bruce adamantly presses his denial that we can speak of brains as having a
causal relation with minds by noting that the language just doesn't work, based
on his insistence on a particular use of "cause", it's "logic" as he puts it,
that involves our being able to observe the outcome of any event directly (via
its physical characteristics) in the same way as we can observe the cause. If
outcomes and causes aren't the same kind of thing he says, then you can't
conceive of a causal relationship.
In this, of course, he denies the use of "cause" I have championed as relevant
to this application: Speaking of molecular behavior we cannot observe causing
the physical features we encounter in physical terms on our level of
observation (drawn from Searle's account).
Bruce simply draws a line in the sand against such a use of "cause", even if we
sometimes do speak of molecules of H2O causing water's familiar features,
molecules of tables causing the hardness of their surfaces, etc., in this way.
It's really not what we mean by "cause" he says, implicitly denying by this
insistence the notion that the word may refer to a number of different kinds of
relation.
> > What do brains "cause"?
>
Bruce answers:
> It follows, from what I wrote above, I don't know out of context. The
> next sentence provides one
>
and now invokes one of my own efforts to answer this question:
> > The state of being a subject (having a mind)...
>
Bruce again:
> Now connect the dots, the brain working the emergence of the subject.
> Just exactly how and where do these connect?
>
Again he is insisting on physical events only being able to cause other
physical events. Implicit here is his notion that mind is simply not physical
in any pertinent way. (Here I think he draws a misleadingly arbitrary line
dividing what we call "physical" from what we don't. I think this is part of
his confusion.)
He retains a fragment of one of my comments:
> > Or caused a panoply of things
>
And then, arguing for his position that it simply makes no sense to speak of a
causal relation between what is physical and what he insists isn't, he points
out an obvious disjunction:
> memories, etc. Connect the brain tissue and the memory.
>
When I write:
> > 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.
>
He seems to go along:
> It strikes me now that I can adopt that model too. A highly complex
> brain system which I use for various purposes, often out of awareness.
But this is odd since he wants to speak of his using of the "highly complex
brain system" while I was speaking of our being the outcome or function of such
a system. How can we use the system that we are? Do we use ourselves?
Bruce adds:
> My advantage: I posit no causal link: Consequences...
>
> 1. The question of how brain produces mind is irrelevant. I start with
> the person and say how he uses his brain.
>
I ask, is this really irrelevant?
Maybe to someone with no interest in what brains do it would be and as a
psychologist Bruce avers that he is interested in behaviors and the
psychological reports of the behaving entities (people). But he doesn't concern
himself with their internal organs, least of all with their brains.
Of course this reflects a particular way of approaching psychology, the way we
might find among practicing clinicians involved in counseling and assessing
others. This doesn't preclude an interest in brains, of course, but it doesn't
require it.
And Bruce, himself, avers no interest in brains other than of a merely academic
sort, i.e., studying correlations between brain events and behaviors is okay,
as long as it doesn't presume to intrude on the clinical psychologist's domain
of listening to and observing his patients. Bruce is content to leave brains to
neurosurgeons and brain researchers -- as long as they don't presume to tell us
that brains have any causal role with regard to the minds he, as a psychologist
considers his domain of study (where "mind" is understood as the mental lives
and behaviors of those entities we speak of as having minds, i.e., creatures
like ourselves).
Bruce declares:
> 2. The question of how a causally described machine can yield an intent
> is inappropriate. I start with an intention being who uses a causally
> described machine the same way I use my car.
>
Isn't Bruce merely insisting on certain usages by the above and thereby
excluding, by fiat, other uses? He doesn't think gaining an understanding of
other individuals' minds requires a consideration of their brains even while
agreeing that brains are required for them to have minds and that what happens
to their brains does affect the state (including the presence or absence) of
their minds.
In a strange move, Bruce wants to shut the door on certain ways of speaking to
preserve the domain he thinks is the province of clinical psychologists like
himself. Sure we can get drunk, fall asleep, sustain brain damage, he admits,
and sure all of these things affect the mind of the person to which they occur.
But no matter. Talk of their minds must take no account of such things because
"persons" are what matter, he says, not their physical organs. A stroke in the
brain may happen to a mind and create a need to counsel the person whose brain
is thus affected, to help him or her live with the consequences, surmount the
obstacles suddenly affecting him or her. But that's all. The loss, impairment
of other changes in that person's mental faculties are merely seen as events
happening to the person and not factors that alter the person.
According to Bruce, persons may be said to use their brains while brains don't
use their persons! The only real bottomline for Bruce is the person. Brains,
schmains, he seems to be saying!
I have replied (in part, reflecting Bruce's editing of my prior post):
> > AI researcher's research into what it is physical platforms
> > like brains need to do in order to produce a mind.
>
And Bruce answers what he takes my statement to have been about:
> Are based on what brain activity correlates with people's mental
> activity. The A! folks start with a concept of a person and attempt to
> replicate it.
But is this really an answer to my point that AI researchers are looking to
find a way to replicate, via certain kinds of machines (computers) what brains
actually do to produce what we call "minds"?
Me again:
> > We know that it feels like we have choice to us.
>
Bruce, reacting:
> If that is simply caused by the brain, then "choice" is ilsuory.
>
Here Bruce denies that feeling like we have choice is the same as having it and
that is certainly true at one level. We can be fooled in certain contexts. But
can we be fooled in the larger context of living our daily lives in the same
way?
Bruce's main concern seems to be that, in speaking about brains causing minds
some of us are granting too much to the physical realm, granting it too much
influence over minds. Doesn't doing this really mean we're all reduced to being
automatons, he asks?
When I answer that it doesn't because there is a difference between a mindless
physical machine and one with a mind (the one with a mind having the capacity
of choosing among various options by being able to assess relative values and
act to choose one option over another based on that), Bruce says that if we're
all really just some kind of machine, then choice is illusory.
Well, it depends what we mean by "choice" doesn't it? Does the fact that we
have some physical constraints mean we have no choice at all, in which case we
must deny any such constraints in order to reassure ourselves that we have the
capacity to make choices?
Even Bruce recognizes that brains are physical, that they can be affected by
other physical phenomena and that, being so affected, they do affect the mental
lives of the entities of which they are a part. Must we then, as Bruce seems to
want to do, insist that choice, if it is to be that, can only be absolute and
unfettered? Must we hold out for a concept of "free-will" that is at odds even
with physical reality itself? Can I just wave my hand and fly away? Can I click
my heels together and go off to Kansas at will? But if I can't, am I thereby
denied "free-will"?
I wrote:
> > 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 an homunculus in our explanation of how mind
>
Bruce again:
> I was thinking this morning that this was what you were thinking. Two
> points, quickly.
>
> 1. Even if we originate our account in terms of unthinking things, it is
> still an account of and by a thinking thing. So there is no alternative
> but starting with a person thinking.
I shake my head at such a response! Aren't Bruce and I just speaking here of
different things, different elements to investigate, to consider? Must one area
of interest trump or edge out the other? Why isn't there room, in Bruce's
world, for both?
Bruce:
> Physics is written as if it were
> the "view from nowhere." Psychology can't tolerate it. This needs
> elaboration.
>
Why does psychology need to "tolerate" a physical account of how minds come
into being for such an account to be meaningful? Why would the fact that some
proponents of psychology think that discipline can't "tolerate" it even matter?
Why think that the existence of psychology forecloses the possibility of
investigating brains' roles in producing the elements of our subjective lives?
> 2. The person, where we start, is not an homunculus, a detached spirit.
Of course not! But that isn't the point of what I had written. Indeed, it often
seems that Bruce and I are really just talking about entirely different issues,
doesn't it?
Bruce again:
> It is not a thing of any substance.
Once more Bruce invokes ideas like "substance", again evidencing his inability
or unwillingness to embrace a way of conceptualizing minds that analogizes them
to other physical outcomes like the spinning of wheels which is perfectly
physical but not, itself, any sort of physical objects in the world.
Bruce:
>It's materialism, which can't get
> past substance, that attributes the homunculus that begins with the
> person.
>
Rather, it seems to me, that Bruce's critique of the idea that brains are
entirely responsible for the occurrence of minds represents an inability on his
part to get free of the idea of "substance" which, because he cannot shake it,
he then wrongly imputes to others, assuming that it is THAT which they have in
mind. But it is Bruce, himself, who is stuck in this picture, who simply cannot
shake it!
SWM
> more later...
>
> bruce
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