[lit-ideas] Re: Grice's Philosophy of Perception
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 18:29:37 +0000 (UTC)
Much later still, Grice arrived at an evolutionary standpoint. If we see
apples, we don't see sense data of apples. We do, but we don't care. Grice
uses 'material object' rather inappropriately, for what he means is a 'thing'
in Kant's usage of "noumena" (Ding an sich). It is an apple that nurtures us,
not the sense datum of an apple. So our sensory apparatus is directed towards
the perception of _things_. This realist view is Kantian in nature, but it was
the fashion when Grice was writing, since Davidson and Putnam were endorsing
it too. Meanwhile, Popper was perhaps still fighting with the
observational/theoretical distinction.>
For Popper sense-data are a myth: that is, there are no such thing as
sense-data. In the traditional empiricist view, sense-data are the 'given'
elements - the pre-theoretical building blocks - from which experience is
constructed. This is not Popper's view: in his (neo-Kantian) view there are no
elements from which human experience is constructed, and nothing
pre-theoretical. Instead, whatever kind of sense-experience we have depends on
a framework for it to provide intelligible information - that framework is
largely provided by the brain in conjunction with the central nervous system
(at least for 'higher' animals; in the case of humans, the framework may also
be provided by W3). That framework is not static for the brain/CNS are also
intensely active in how they process sensory input i.e. the brain/CNS is not
just a passive receptable for the 'given' sensory input to stimulate. This view
of 'experience' can be traced to Kant, who was a very farsighted exponent.
There has recently been a series on BBC presented by David Eagleman - 'The
Brain'. It is a neuroscientist's guide to how the mind works. Philosophically
it is 'all over the place' and also botches its presentation of some key
philosophical issues as well as ducking others. Typically, it rides roughshod
over key distinctions of a W1, W2, W3 type: culminating in a presentation of
the 'computational hypothesis' that suggests (maybe) if we could produce a
computer programme corresponding to the (W1) interconnections of the brain, we
could get this 'brain' to run via a machine, and so live on beyond our bodies -
a presentation that rides roughshod over the objection that the W1 programme
will no more have experience of the sort that makes us human than Babbage's
mechanical computer has experience of doing maths as humans do.
But Eagleman does present some fascinating experiments that can be readily
interpreted as refutations of sense-data philosophy (though of course a
refutation can always be evaded). One experiment extends the idea behind
cochlear implants - the idea that we can bypass normal sensory pathways and
create a new pathway to the brain, and, provided the information given to the
brain is structured, the brain can find a way to render that new information
intelligible. Bear in mind that, before they worked, many doubted cochlear
implants could work precisely because they defied the dogma of traditional
empiricism that the brain could only hear with the 'given'.
From Wiki: "Cochlear implants bypass most of the peripheral auditory system
which receives sound and converts that sound into movements of hair cells in
the cochlea; the inside-portion of these hair cells release potassium ions in
response to the movement of the hairs, and the potassium in turn stimulates
other cells to release the neurotransmitter, glutamate, which makes the
cochlear nerve send signals to the brain, which creates the experience of
sound. Instead, the devices pick up sound and digitize it, convert that
digitized sound into electrical signals, and transmits those signals to
electrodes embedded in the cochlea. The electrodes electrically stimulate the
cochlear nerve, causing it to send signals to the brain."
In the tv experiment, a device is created that converts speech in an ordered
way into electronic signals and the device is then attached to the torso with
the signals sending out patterned electronic messages (based on other's speech)
that are felt as electronic pulses on the skin - within a relatively short
time, the experimental subjects can decode these signals as communications
(even though the signals are from speech by others otherwise outside the
subject's field of sense experience e.g. in a building many blocks away; and
the subjects are not doing the decoding because they are consciously following
any code that has been explained to them or because they have consciously tried
to figure it out [i.e. it is like someone is eventually able to decode Morse
code beeping in the background even though no one has given them the code and
even though they have not consciously sought to figure out the code - it just
seems to come to them). But it doesn't just come to them, by way of the
'given'. From the neo-Kantian pov, all this shows the brain's immense role in
turning the so-called 'given' into something intelligible - and that nothing
intelligible is simply 'given'. It is a short step to realising that actually
nothing is 'given' in any epistemic sense.
Popper arrived at this realisation for logical-philosophic-epistemic reasons
long before any of this, for, like Kant, Popper is very farsighted thinker -
and he is farsighted largely because he is a deeply Kantian thinker. These
experiments provide a kind of evidential corroboration for his theory of
knowledge - in a way similar to how many discoveries in the biological field
provide striking corroboration of Darwin's theory of natural selection.
Eagleman provides a very simple example of the integrative role of the
brain/CSN in producing experience: clapping hands - our brains synchronise the
sound and vision of clapping even though (tests prove) the aural and visual
systems work at different speeds (as lightwaves and soundwaves work at
different speeds).
Afaik, there is no extended treatment of the theoretic-observational
distinction within Popper's work - he doesn't present any over-arching 'theory'
of the distinction, even though there must be some distinction: as
'observations' can only check theories where they are (at least somewhat)
independent of the theory. Why no such overarching 'theory'? I think for two
main reasons (a) we don't know enough to present any such useful 'theory' (b)
the way we should apply an analysis of the distinction between observation and
theory depends on the specifics of the problem we are addressing. We don't need
a general theory (to progress with our knowledge), and we can't (presently)
give a useful one anyway.
The thing is: there is an immense amount we don't know from this neo-Kantian
pov, and many of the fundamental questions (like how a W2 is produced by a W1
brain) are simply not understood in any fundamental sense. By contrast,
traditional empiricism at least gives us a straightforward answer to how
experience is arrived at. Nevertheless, the answers of traditional empiricism
are wrongheaded, and naive to the point of absurdity. It would be useful to
start to clear this wrongheaded approach away.
This wrongheaded approach has proved endlessly attractive to generations of
philosophers, especially those inculcated in that tradition (it shows the level
of inculcation that at Oxford, in my time anyway, study of Locke, Hume and
Berkeley was compulsory and sufficient to get a first class degree in PPE,
while study of Kant was just an option - this is rather like making study of
Newton compulsory and adequate to get a first class degree in physics, while
study of Einstein's physics is just an option).
Among those blindest to the hold of tradition are those most inculcated in it.
The tradition goes wider than philosophers and infects many thinkers in
disciplines like neuroscience and psychiatry: for Popper, the Pavlovian idea of
a stimulus 'arc' is just a mistaken upshot of Lockean empiricism, yet this
Pavlovian idea has many versions and they have been widespread at times [e.g.
Watson's conditioning]; even Darwin has not escaped the distorting effects of
this tradition, and there are writers who mistakenly Lockeanise Darwin (a
little like Marxising Christianity or Christianising Marxism, in terms of its
wrongheadedness)
My impression is that Grice has made no significant contribution to advancing
these issues, though he may have helped a few people avoid some crass
confusions of thought (e.g. like thinking we are not nourished by the apple but
by the sense-data of the apple). The truth is we should have abandoned talk of
sense-data like we have abandoned talk of phlogiston in physics. But Grice, if
I understand things correctly, didn't go anywhere near as far as that.
D
L
On Monday, 28 March 2016, 16:08, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
McEvoy, if I recall aright, is using 'observation' in scare quotes to disavow
its strict 'empiricist' application. The current polemic, "cui bono", may
relate. For it's best to understand Popper's "Observe!" being absurd as an
attack on various things, some Griceian, some not. I would think that, given
Popper's formation, he HAD to chose the observation vs. theoretic distinction
(much of a dogma like the two Quine confronted -- if not the second one).
People in the Vienna Circle that Popper knew -- who were not philosophers,
originally -- had been used 'observation' (qua protocol statement) vs. theory
as terms of art. Grice's situation is different since his pedigree is just
philosophical, or purely philosophical. His readings were in the philosophy of
perception alla British or Oxonian empiricism, and only later he got an
interest in Kant. In his "Causal theory of perception", he plays with
'implicature' as it applies to "It seems to me that..." For what is, to use the
Viennese term of art, that we 'observe'? Once in linguistic botanising with
Warnock, Grice and Warnock came to the idea of a visum. What is seen is a
visum. What is observed is an observatum. This may well be G. A. Paul's sense
datum (with which he had no problem -- "Is there a problem about sense data?").
Much later still, Grice arrived at an evolutionary standpoint. If we see
apples, we don't see sense data of apples. We do, but we don't care. Grice uses
'material object' rather inappropriately, for what he means is a 'thing' in
Kant's usage of "noumena" (Ding an sich). It is an apple that nurtures us, not
the sense datum of an apple. So our sensory apparatus is directed towards the
perception of _things_. This realist view is Kantian in nature, but it was the
fashion when Grice was writing, since Davidson and Putnam were endorsing it
too. Meanwhile, Popper was perhaps still fighting with the
observational/theoretical distinction. While non-Oxonian, the distinction can
be traced back to Ramsey and his "Ramsey sentence". But 'observe' does not seem
to have been a term (less so 'theory') that even Cambridge philosophers were
much into. It was more of a Continental thing as practiced by non-philosophers
like the members of the Vienna circle and those who attacked them. When some of
the members of the Vienna Circle emigrated to the USA, this tradition perhaps
merged with American pragmatism, and the idea of the unity of science.
Meanwhile, perhaps Popper was feeling more dissatisfied with simplicities, and
moving on. The question, cui bono, remains, as to what "senses" other than the
empiricist, which seems like the only one, can be given to things like 'see',
'observe', and 'perceive'? Are Kand and the neo-Kantians like Popper giving
'observing', 'perceiving', 'seeing' and 'sensing' a NEW sense (and different
analysis)? How far from Grice would this lead them to? Cheers, Speranza
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