[Wittrs] Re: SWM's causal/object-like self
- From: "BruceD" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:01:10 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@...> wrote:
> > In what sense am I a causal agent? I think. I have caused nothing.
>
> You think and make certain decisions
Just what does "You" refer to? The material brain...
> and then you act in ways that are consistent with the decisions, the
choices,
or inconsistent. There is no causal connection between decision and act.
But to return to the "You"
> Now if you imagine that the mind inside the head
Which I don't and I take it nor do you. How do you imagine it?
> But if the mind is just a function ... a working brain
rather than "what a person does" as I imagine, where "person" refers to
no entity of any kind or any substance...but you think differently...
> then the brain, which is physical, has no problem doing things
> in a physical world.
But the only thing the brain does in the physical world is to emit
electric currents. The brain doesn't get on Lists or fall in love. So
your physical account, an entity account, needs to locate a free self,
but instead you have...
>
> ...get the epiphenomenalism question raised by Joe..
> But isn't the mind just a bit of froth on the sea,
is exactly what Joe means by epiphenomenalism...jsut a spill over of
some stuff that stands in causal relation to the big stuff, the sea, the
brain, and hence not free at all.
> Now we have a picture of a mind as a lot of things going on on a
physical
whatever, like a GPS system which tells you what turns to make but to
which we do not attribute a self. If one built a GPS that qualified to
be a self then it would have to free and we would have the problem of
explaining how something causal in nature has suddenly become free and
intentional.
Of course, we can say the freedom of mind is an illusion, that all acts
stand in a causal relation to one another, mind as free is
epiphenomenal...the choice is yours. But you can't have both. Sorry. The
mind can't both be free and mechanical.
> intentional causes are possible...are grounded in physical causes.
Is a contradiction in terms. What we mean by an intentional act is that
it was freely done and not mchanically caused. That the brain is best
described causally and the mind best described intentionallly is our
problem. You are trying to solve it by deny intentionality.
> It's certainly the case that Dennett, via his notion of intentional
stances
> is proposing that intentionality ...we ascribe... for practical
reasons
Which means we elect to do this because it makes sense. Not because we
are caused to do this. Our brain doesn't cause us to adopt a stance. or
does the brain adopt a stance. Only people do. And they do it because of
reason, not causes.
> But does this mean there is no referent,
> nothing we mean when we refer to intentionality?
Yes. There is a referent. The person.
> Note that Dennett's notion of the intentional stance
> is part and parcel with his argument for conceiving of consciousness
> as a physical process based system of a particular kind.
Yes. Meaning there is no spiritual substance in the head. No entity at
all. But it doesn't follow from this that what we call the mind, self,
stands in a causal relationship.
> We still need to understand what it is brains do that results in
conscious
Yes. The biological basis of mind, no one can deny. But a basis need not
stand in a causal relationship. The mind need not be seen as forth but
as emergent system that requires a radically different language game
that cannot be reduced to the physical game. That's our difference.
> Dennett's idea that consciousness is just lots of "virtual machines"
if understood as mechanical devices is contradictory with his remarks
about intentional stance.
> Dennett's notion of the intentional stance is...dependent on
> his description of consciousness as being physically derived.
I read "physically derived" as emergent from the physical meaning that
there is no necessary relation between brain and mind. It could have
been that there were only brains and the organisms never became
self-aware. When they did, no new substance emerged. That they did is a
contingent, not a necessary fact.
> Why presume an extra ontological basis to explain
> the presence of minds in the world if we can do it without that?
Why presume any ontological basis? All of science is an ordering of our
experience of the world. This can be accomplished without presuming any
special whatever that lies at the basis of the stuff experienced.
> Dennett's thesis is well known and it is that consciousness
> is to brains as computational processes running
> on computers is to computers
He must mean computers that have become aware of being computers. And
now that they have become aware are they free to think whatever or are
they locked into their programs, like my talking GPS?
> what is causal is the brain and the mind is just what the brain does,
So all our thoughts and acts are caused by prior causal events and what
we take to be freedom is an illusion?
> we suppose that a zombie has everything going on
> that we have including the same inner workings of its brain,
> the same behaviors, the same responses,
> then there is no ground for thinking it lacks an inner life.
An inner life as a Zombie. It thinks hat it is caused to think. Do you
freely think?
> The behaviors of the other are the criteria for treating them as
conscious
Right! Do you treat others as if all what they and do are simply the
product of causes.
> So are we all zombies?
We are if the brain causes mental events.
> Why do you keep insisting on treating the idea of consciousness
> as if it were some mental entity that somehow co-exists with the
physical?
I appear to because you think in terms of ontological simples, physical
and/mental. If you hear someone denying the physical simple, you think
they are proposing the mental simple. I'm rejecting all simples.
bruce
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