[Wittrs] Understanding Dualism
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:48:54 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
>
<snip>
>
> I'll try to expand on that a little.
>
> The held view among philosophers seems to assume two processes at work
> with respect to the input.
>
> Process A: This is usually taken to be a passive mechanical sensory
> process that inputs signals.
>
> Process B: This is taken to be where the signals are somehow
> interpreted, meaning is somehow found, and conscious experience is
> somehow generated. AI folk take process B as being computational,
> while the sense-data people take it to be some kind of unconscious
> thought. Note that those two need not be mutually exclusive.
>
Ah, I see how you are conceiving this. Yes, you're right, I think, that many,
including many philosophers, take the position that there is the physical
processing and then some kind of mental occurrence(s) which the physical
processes feed into or somehow produce. And yes, this holding of an ontological
distinction at a basic level of occurrence is indeed a dualist view.
I would disagree though if you think that AI folks, in supposing the "mental"
is strictly computational are positing some kind of non-physical process at
work. I know of no AI folks who suppose computation, as in computational
processes running on computers, isn't physical. Yes, when we do computations in
our head we are not doing anything we would think of as overtly physical (in
fact what we're doing seems completely non-physical when, by "physical" we mean
particular objects we find in the world with features like extension, mass,
texture and so forth). When we interpret the operations of a computer as
performing computation, such ideas (that we have about what computers are
doing) aren't physical entities.
But neither of these facs says anything about the possibility of either of
these phenomena being, themselves, aspects of physical operations which is to
say that they are, at bottom, grounded or sourced in ("caused by" in Searlean
parlance) physical entities.
The idea that the mind is a feature of some physical entities/operations
(brains and what they do, say) is not necessarily a claim that mind is a
separate (ontologically basic) phenomenon in the universe. (Though I agree that
I have seen folks who agree with the modern common sense view, that minds are
"caused by" what brains do, will sometimes still hold to the claim that this
just means that some physical phenomena (say, what brains do) just happen to
have an extra property or feature which is not physical in the way other
properties or features of physical phenomena are.
I think this is an especially confused view. (It is one, by the way, that
Walter on Analytic has in the past articulated -- as when he has held that
"intentionality" is a property that some physical events just happen to have --
but which he has not rigorously defended as far as I know.)
The supposition that, to explain the presence of mind in the universe we need
to posit that it is a separate phenomenon (either at bottom or as a peculiar
and unique property of some physical stuff) is, I would say, dualism, although
the position articulated by Walter is subtler in that it doesn't route us back
to dualism explicitly (in the way claims about ontological basics would).
I think a little careful unpacking will show that Walter's position is
dualistic in the relevant sense, too.
Walter, in opposing its characterization as dualism, has suggested that it is
really a kind of multi-ism, i.e., that there are a great many different things
in the world, not just two -- that which is physical and that which is mental.
But I think this misses the point, since the issue isn't whether there are two
things or one but, rather, whether to explain the presence of mind in the
world, we have to posit something underlying mind that isn't physical. If mind
is just some "mental property" that attaches to some physical events but not
others, as Walter would have it, then how does it happen in the world? Does it
simply burst full blown into existence, conjured up by certain physical events?
(I suppose this is why Walter has, occasionally, embraced "mysterianism", i.e.,
he recognizes that he is really asserting something that is finally
inexplicable.)
Anyway, back to my main point: I would argue that the fact that AI folks speak
of computation (in the context of computers, of course!) does not warrant a
claim that they are supposing that the computations going on in computers is
anything other than physical.
> It seems that the efforts to investigate consciousness are focussed on
> understanding process B. Process A is usually taken for granted and
> not much studied.
>
I don't see that at all, Neil. It seems to me that that is precisely what
researchers like Dehaene are doing with regard to brains and, more, that
computationalists (so-called AIers), insofar as they are engaged in attempting
to replicate what a mind does in terms of getting a machine to do it, are
certainly looking at how and which information is taken in by a conscious
entity, how it gets there and what happens to it that turns it into subjective
experience within the machine itself.
> My use of "dualism" was in part a reference to those dual processes.
>
I see. As I have suggested, I don't think the process you designate as B need
be thought of as non-physical in any way that is relevant to the question of
dualism though I agree they may be and that we have seen instances in these
discussions where, in fact, they are. But the dualism is manifest, I would
suggest, in the supposition of some deep level of ontological distinction in
the processes, not in recognizing that there are such process distinctions.
> As far as I can tell, process B is purely imaginary, which would make
> it immaterial.
>
I think we disagree here because there is a distinction I think you are not
making: computation as a process we do in our minds is not what is meant by
computation in computers where the reference is to certain physical operations.
Insofar as we recognize that our brains are physical and that the overtly
non-physical phenomena of mind, including engaging in mental computations, is
physically based (the result of what our brains do), we are simply talking
about different things which happen to have the same name: "computation". The
mental process of adding two plus two (with whatever associative mental
awareness occurs in each of us when we do it) is NOT the process of adding
these numbers in a computer. But then it isn't the process of adding them at a
cellular level in the brain, either. And that is the genuinely critical issue
here.
> It seems to me that there is only one process, namely perception. It is
> not a passive pickup of raw signals. Rather, it is an active seeking
> of meaningful information.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
> =========================================
Here is the rock upon which our competing understandings always seem to
founder. I don't think one can simply refer to "perception" as if it were some
kind of basic phenomenon underlying other things. Like everything we call
"mental" it looks to me to be a complex phenomenon, consisting of lots of
operations. If seeing is one example of "perception" (and that is a perfectly
usual use of "seeing" and "perception") then it's pretty clear that seeing is a
complex activity. That it results in a certain type of awareness of an object
in the subject who is seeing looks to me to clearly be another example of such
complexity.
I'm aware that you have striven to make the case that whatever it is mind is is
an outcome of certain life-based (homeostatic system) properties, but I don't
see how that necessarily works based on argument alone. While it could happen
that we come to a conclusion that only living entities can achieve
consciousness, based on empirical data, it doesn't follow that this is the
case, it seems to me, from a claim that perception is a physical process while
computation isn't.
Thanks for expanding on your view (and I do hope that this time I have properly
understood it).
SWM
=========================================
Need Something? Check here: http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
Other related posts:
