[lit-ideas] Re: the first lines are the argument referred by
- From: "Adriano Palma" <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:52:02 +0200
** For Your Eyes Only **
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for a pittance, virtually all you need you get from the logic manual by
Hlabch (cheap paperback by Oxford up)
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ξε ν’, γγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ἀ ὅτι τ δε
κείμεθα, το ς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.
/begin/read__>sig.file: postal address
palma
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>>> Julie Krueger <juliereneb@xxxxxxxxx> 11/4/2011 1:49 PM >>>
Can someone refer me to a site to the basics of (or beginning) symbolic
logic? My Dad was heavily into it and as a child we played Woof N Proof,
and he taught me alot about symbolic logic, but then that was (I don't
want to count how many) decades ago. I definitely need to brush up.
Julie Krueger
On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 6:38 AM, Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
the argument is a straight application of identity (in either
formulation you like, for informal purposes take it as a 2nd order one)
1. x=y then , for all properties/predicates P(y) IFF P(x) — [I use the
strongest for simplicity]
2. {from 1, by contrap} if P(y) & not-P(x), THEN y isn't identical to
x
3. apply to "x is a thought" and "y is a brain state", conclude y isn't
identical to x
qed
that is the argument
>>> Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> 11/4/2011 1:31 PM >>>
From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>
>it seems essentially correct (up to and excluding physics) Descartes
does have a real argument (see e.g. J. Perry on pre-conceived
naturalism)
This is not enough to key me into what that "real argument" is? Or even
whether "real" here means valid - or something less?
>most of what you say is rather well known
Is this to imply it is therefore uncontroversial (or just that we've
all heard it all [or nearly all] before)? If "uncontroversial" that
would seem remarkable in this field.
It seems unlikely that some of Popper's key points were anything like
accepted (never mind uncontroversial) at the time of his writing, and
afair at least one academic review of TSAIB took it as defending
Cartesian Dualism. A subsequent introductory text like Colin McGinn's
"The Character of Mind", which attempts to reflect contemporary thinking
(though Popper is not found important enough to bear consideration in
this field), seems to take it that dualism implies a Cartesian mental
'substance' [though, and hardly consistently, McGinn does not assume a
physical monism equally implies a Cartesian physical substance] and that
the problem of causation is at the root of the problems of dualism.
These are both contra Popper's contentions that dualism need not imply a
mental 'substance' and that problems of causation do not afford a strong
argument against dualism as problems of causation attend understanding
even the interaction of different kinds of physical entity [e.g.
physical monism].
> (I myself did not notice the Rylean claim that Descartes is original
and new in his dualism, do you have a quote somewhere supporting the
claim you made?)
Here I would suggest that it is perhaps "rather well known" that
Descartes' specific account of dualism was "original and new". This
leaves open, of course, whether Descartes was "original and new in his
dualism" in the sense of being anything like the first dualist, rather
than merely the first Cartesian. He wasn't, says Popper, anything like
the first dualist.
This leaves open what Ryle thought. I have no "The Concept of Mind" to
hand, so will confine myself to amplifying what Popper says vis-a-vis
Ryle, which admittedly falls short of claiming that Ryle claims
Descartes was the first dualist of any stripe. Ryle does, however, refer
expressly to the "Cartesian myth" and sees this as a "fairly new fangled
legend" [Ryle at p.77 of The Physical Basis of Mind]. The "Cartesian
myth" Ryle rejects is actually, according to Popper, the "popular
ancient legend" of the psyche as a shade that may survive the body - a
legend that Descartes in fact, says Popper, "most clearly rejected".
Ryle has 16 page references in the TSAIB's "Index of Names", and there
is a whole section, P5-30, titled "The Ghost in the Machine", where
Popper refers to "Gilbert Ryle's views in his most remarkable book, The
Concept of Mind."
Now, in my view, it is useful to see Popper's comments on Ryle as
indicating that Ryle's position is, in Popper's view, something of a
fudge as to the actual metaphysics at stake, a fudge that Popper's own
specific theory of World 12&3 is designed to avoid. For example, Popper
writes that,"Taking Ryle's book as a whole, there seems to be a general
tendency to deny the existence of most subjective conscious experiences,
and a suggestion that they should be replaced by sheer physical states -
by dispositional states, by dispositions to behave. However, there are
many places in Ryle's book in which it is admitted that we may
genuinelyfeel these states." [Possible fudge, as to whether these
feels are sheer physical states]. And while Ryle notes that the
general trend of The Concept of Mind "will undoubtedly, and harmlessly,
be stigmatized as 'behaviourist'" [p.327], Popper comments (drily imo),
"Yet Ryle is decidedly not a materialist (in the sense of the principle
of physicalism). Of course, he is no dualist; but he is definitely not a
physicalist or monist." So what is he? Something of a metaphysical
fudger perhaps, and perhaps because his school of thought still
subscribes to the anti-metaphysical stance of the
empiricist/positivistic tradition from which it emerged (and to which it
remains indebted, as is indicated by Ryle's views on self-knowledge and
self-observation, which for Popper retain the imprint of flawed
positivistic thinking in line with the traditional empiricism we can
trace back to Locke and Hume, where all knowledge is derived from
sense-based observation). This kind of fudge is indicated again by the
following quotation from Ryle, which, depending on taste, might seem the
height of philosophical good sense or simply high-sounding evasiveness
of the underlying metaphysical issues: "Man need not be degraded to a
machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine...There has yet to be
ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man."
Some might reply that the supposedly hazardous hypothesis that "Man...is
a man" is 'rather well known' (and not much disputed), and this
hypothesis does not tell us (but simply fudges) to what extent man is a
machine or what is the extent and character of the non-machinistic
aspects of man.
Ryle, like many in the Oxford School, may be characterised as a
'metaphysical flat-earther' : the world is metaphysically flat, not
layered and differentiated with different metaphysical dimensions. Being
'flat', it is what it is, and there is no need to give it some specific
metaphysical character (as if there were some other metaphysical
dimension it could be contrasted with) - rather we should guard against
views that try to impute some specific metaphysical character to it (for
example, views like Popper's theory of World123). This kind of
anti-metaphysical stance can be traced at least as far back as Hume and
was given later currency in the dogmas of sense and nonsense proposed by
the Logical Positivists and the early Wittgenstein. In a less explicit
form it still held sway in the school of Ordinary Language Philosophy or
Oxford school and also in the later Wittgenstein.
Despite this fudge, Ryle is clear on one thing, says Popper: "[Ryle]
also explicitly declares (p.328) 'that the two-worlds story is a myth'.
(Presumably, the three-worlds story is even worse)." [TSAIB p.104].
Popper later observes [TSAIB p.116], "We learn to distinguish between
bodies and minds. (This is not, as has been argued especially by Gilbert
Ryle, a philosopher's invention. It is as old as the memory of
mankind..)....Even the theory of the brain as the seat of the mind is at
least 2,500 years old."
Popper's criticism of Ryle here is amplified at P5 section 44, "A
Problem To Be Solved By What Follows", which deserves better than
parsing:
"One of my main aims in writing on the ancient history of the mind-body
problem is to show the baselessness of the doctrine that this problem is
nothing but part of a modern ideology and that it was unknown in
antiquity. This doctrine has a propagandist bias. It is suggested that a
man who has not been brainwashed by a dualist religion or philosophy
would naturally accept materialism. It is asserted that ancient
philosophy was materialist - an assertion which, though misleading,
contains a grain of truth; and it is suggested that those of us who are
interested in the mind, and in the mind-body problem, have been
brainwashed by Descartes and his followers.
Something like this is suggested in the brilliant and valuable Concept
of Mind by Gilbert Ryle...and it is even more strongly suggested in a
broadcast in which Ryle speaks of 'the legend of the two theatres' which
he describes as a 'fairly new-fangled legend'. He also says that 'For
the general terms in which scientists..have set their problems of mind
and body, we philosophers have been chiefly to blame'. For 'we
philosophers' one must read here 'Descartes and the post-Cartesian
philosophers'.
Views like this are not only to be found in an outstanding philosopher
(and student of Plato and Aristotle) such as Ryle, but they are
widespread".
Popper goes on to list points he wishes to argue that "indicate a very
different view from the one which seems so widespread at present."
"(1) Dualism in the form of the story of the ghost in the machine (or,
better, of the ghost in the body) is as old as any historical or
archaeological evidence reaches, though it is unlikely that prior to the
atomists the body was regarded as a machine.
(2) All thinkers of whom we know enough to say anything definite on
their position, up to and including Descartes, were dualist
interactionists.
(3) This dualism is very marked, in spite of the fact that certain
tendencies inherent in human language (which originally was, apparently,
appropriate only for the description of material things and their
properties) seem to make us inclined to speak of minds or souls or
spirits as if they were a peculiar (gas-like) kind of body.
(4) The discovery of the moral world leads to the realization of the
special character of mind. This is so in Homer...Democritus...Socrates.
(5) In the thought of the atomists, one finds materialism,
interactionism, and also the recognition of the special moral character
of the mind; but they did not, I think, draw the consequences of their
own moral contrast between mind and matter.
(6) The Pythagoreans, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle tried to transcend
the 'materialist' way of talking about the mind: they recognised the
non-material character of the psyche and tried to make sense of this
new conception. An important speech attributed to Socrates by Plato in
the Phaedo deals explicitly with the moral explanation of human action
in terms of ends, and decisions, and contrasts this with the explanation
of human behaviour in terms of physiological processes.
(7) Alternatives to interactionism arose only after Descartes. They
arose because of the special difficulties of Descartes' elaborate
interactionism and its clash with his theory of causation in physics.
...(8) We know that, but we do not know how, mind and body interact;
but this is not surprising since we have really no definite idea of how
physical things interact. Nor do we know how mental events interact,
unless we believe in a theory of mental events and their interaction
that is almost certainly false: in associationism. The theory of the
association of ideas is a theory which treats mental events or processes
like things (ideas, pictures) and their interaction as due to something
like attractive force. Associationism is therefore probably just one of
those materialist metaphors which we almost always use when trying to
speak about mental events."
It seems then that, at least at the time of his writing, Popper's views
were against certain widespread views and that Ryle did seem to think
that dualism was a kind of philosopher's make-believe, with Descartes as
its main (modern) author [hence the "Cartesian myth"].
Donal
England
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