[Wittrs] Re: Understanding Dualism
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 14:41:32 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "iro3isdx" <xznwrjnk-evca@...> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
>
> > responding to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wittrs/message/6208
> > SWM:
> > Then on what grounds do you think that computationalists are
> > uninterested in the processes which collect and deliver information
> > about the world to the processor?
>
> That I was booted from the ai-philosophy group for discussing the input
> question might perhaps be relevant grounds.
>
Whatever else you can say of Eray, I don't think he is typical of AI
researchers or that he speaks for them. Or that he is known for his tolerance
of disagreement with his own views! I never was quite sure what it was about
what you said that prompted his extreme reaction though so I chalked it up to
some highly technical matter with which I had no real familiarity or to his
feeling particularly truculent that day or to a linguistic passage of two
boats in the night.
As you know, I disagreed with his summary action and still do.
>
> > SWM:
> > Is your concern with THAT distinction?
>
> Both of your "kinds of information" miss the mark.
>
>
Yes, well this does seem to be the story of our exchanges. I am coming to the
conclusion that either I am, in fact, not getting it as you claim or your
position is imprecise enough to make it something of a moving target.
> > SWM:
> > Dualism is the supposition that there must be something other than
> > purely physical processes underlying mental occurrences. If you think
> > "Whether or not computation is physical is of no importance here"
> > then where is the dualism you are opposing?
>
> I am not particularly hung up on "dualism". Contrary to a comment you
> made in a response to Bruce, I am not making an argument against
> dualism. Rather, I am making an argument against a particular way that
> people think about the mind, and I used the term "dualism" because I
> see that kind of thinking as what leads to dualism.
>
My response to your post was to point out that it doesn't lead to dualism as
you suppose if you mean "dualism" in the classically philosophical sense.
However, as I said, it remains possible that you mean it in some other sense,
in which case I am keen to understand what that sense is and to see if it is a
conception I would agree, with you, is a mistake.
But I can't tell until I can figure out what you have in mind when you
reference "dualism" and proceed to describe/define it as the distinction
between the perceptual apparatuses and processes of the organism, on the one
hand, and the intellection/awareness processes on the other.
>
> > SWM:
> > Your statement above leaves "intentionality" unexplicated.
>
> What is it about philosophers? The basis for intentionality is staring
> them in the face, but they seem quite unable to see it even when it is
> pointed out.
>
My comment was not about its basis but about what counts as "intentionality".
Obviously the word is derived from the otherwise ordinary language usage we
employ when speaking of having intentions (as in having objectives in mind when
we act or plan to act). But this isn't what is meant by "intentionality" and
certainly it is not in the case at hand, when we are discussing the features of
consciousness.
A conscious entity may have an intention to act or not have one but it will
always be said to have so-called intentionality insofar as it is conscious and
thinking about anything. This is because "intentionality" does not denote
having objectives or purposes in mind but being in the state of relating to a
referent or idea when we are aware, thinking, etc.
I pointed out that you had not clarified what you mean by "intentionality" and
noted that it is not an easy concept to explain, even if we will tend to think
we know it when we "see" it. And I suggested that there are several ways one
might want to conceive intentionality and that these differences could
conceivably affect how we think about/explain it.
I was, finally, making the point that it doesn't help to invoke a term, like
"intentionality", by way of explaining a phenomenon (like consciousness) if the
term, itself, is not clear and has yet to be sufficiently explicated.
But yes, this does seem to be part of what philosophers will involve themselves
with: unpacking and clarifying the terms and the concepts we use. I find that
this sort of thing really grates on some people and I don't know why. It's as
if they find it bothersome to worry over the bones of meaning, to haggle over
denotations and connotations and so forth. But really, when addressing these
very abstruse kinds of issues, such an effort is generally necessary if we're
to make progress.
(Contrast this with ordinary discourse where we each know what our
interlocutors are saying much of the time and, when we don't, it's usually a
fairly simple matter to obtain a clarification.)
>
> > SWM:
> > I suspect you'll say that it's in the fact of perception itself,
> > i.e., that perceiving is perceiving something which qualifies it
> > as being about something. I'm not sure, however, that that is a
> > fair account. To think about anything need not require perception.
>
> To the contrary, thinking is closely connected to perception.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
> =========================================
Well what are "perception" and "thinking" and how do they relate?
Again, I would agree that we will all tend to want to say something like "I
know it when I 'see' it" (as happens with something like "intentionality") but
in a discussion like this, which aims to get at what we mean by "mind",
"consciousness", and so forth, in order to offer an account of what these terms
denote and what their referents are, that can hardly be enough.
Now you have made a flat statement above that "thinking is closely connected to
perception" and I would not be inclined to disagree in a certain sense. But I
am not sure we have the same sense in mind. My example pointed out that, if we
placed a human being in a sensory deprivation chamber, there is every reason to
believe and no reason to disbelieve (based on the reports of actual subjects),
that thinking continues.
So, on such evidence, we would be right to conclude that thinking is possible
without perception.
However, I would be inclined to believe that the capacities associated with
thinking ARE built up by the organism in and through the processes of
perception (as I sometimes take you to be claiming) and that, given a
sufficient amount of time in the deprivation chamber, the capacities of thought
would break down.
Similarly I expect that depriving an organism of a sufficiently wide range of
sensory experience would preclude the development of thinking as we understand
it in that organism. I believe Helen Keller (who lost her ability to hear and
see at an early age due to illness), reported, years later, after being
provided sufficient training to communicate with others and understand her
world via touch, that, prior to her training, her world was something of a
morass, a blur.
So I would suggest that the kind of organized mental processing we normally
call "thinking" is very much tied up and dependent on the inputs we take from
the world. However, Keller's experiences show that brains like ours have the
capacity to adapt to radical variations in the gamut of sensory inputs so there
must be something in the brain itself, too, that enables/offers structure such
as we find in our ordinary thought processes and in our language. I believe the
current science on this is that it's a two-way street.
So it seems to me that your simple statement that "thinking is closely
connected to perception" is too vague. It doesn't tell us what kind of
"thinking" or what kind of connection you have in mind. And it doesn't tell us
what you think counts as perception. Thus I am moved to agree with you on the
one hand, but, on the other, I have no real idea whether my agreement is with
what you actually have in mind or with something I may be imputing to you and
which may be very far from what you mean.
This is why I say that it's not clear whether I am just not understanding you
or whether your vagueness is simply making your position something of a moving
target.
SWM
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