[lit-ideas] Re: w*
- From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 19:07:56 +0000 (UTC)
>It is surely contradictory for Donal to argue that pain, as a mental
>experience, belongs to W2, but also to argue that it is 'really' located in
>the brain and not in the tooth. If it is W2 then it cannot really be located
>anywhere. Donal should clarify his position if he expects a constructive
>reply.>
I agree it would appear contradictory to argue (1) pain belongs to W2 but (2)
that pain also is located within the W1 brain and (3) W2 is located in a way
distinct to anything located in W1 [i.e. W2 events, like conscious pain, do not
share the identical spatio-temporal location of any W1 events].
I also agree that there is a large and unresolved problem as to the 'location'
of consciousness, and thus of W2. I would also agree there is a large and
unresolved problem as to the 'location' of W3 or W3 contents. But these
admittedly large and unresolved problems are far from conclusive arguments
against the independence of W2 and of W3 from W1.
I don't intend to suggest a solution to these large problems but here clarify
that Popper's position is that W3 "exists but exists nowhere" and that W2 is
located not within W1 but somehow adjacent to the W1 brain.
It seems that we have no obvious model for locating anything in space and time
except in the way we seek to locate W1 objects within W1: and this creates an
admitted problem, for there is a lack of any clear model for how we 'locate' W2
or W3 in these terms.
Despite this, it seems overwhelmingly the case that consciousness exists; and
though it is less overwhelming, the strong case is that consciousness is
distinct from being a mere W1 process - for there is no analogue of
consciousness in any W1 processes as these are conceived by science.
So we quickly reach one of the immense and weird imponderables of the mind-body
problem, that have given rise to very different reactions - including that
radical materialism, a la Quine, that takes consciousness to be merely an
illusion. But if consciousness is not simply an illusion, the mind-body
dichotomy surfaces in all its presently unsolvable strangeness. There is no
present possible position without strangeness - the radical materialist, in
denying consciousness, is one of the strangest. Against the strangeness of
these alternative positions [e.g. panpsychism] it might seem less strange to
accept the admitted strangeness of accepting a W3 and a W2 that cannot readily
be 'located', and certainly not 'located' in W1 terms.
DnlLdn
On Monday, 26 January 2015, 9:20, Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
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div.yiv1838388529WordSection1 {}-->In fact Popper (when I read him) was very
confused, this w(hat? World? ‘was’?) stuff is space time located or not?
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On
Behalf Of Omar Kusturica
Sent: 26 January 2015 11:00
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Can I Have A Pain In My Tail? It is surely
contradictory for Donal to argue that pain, as a mental experience, belongs to
W2, but also to argue that it is 'really' located in the brain and not in the
tooth. If it is W2 then it cannot really be located anywhere. Donal should
clarify his position if he expects a constructive reply. O.K. On
Sun, Jan 25, 2015 at 11:28 PM, Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>McEvoy finally notes:
"The clear way of thinking about these things is to disentangle the W1
aspects that go to create the experience of toothache from the W2 experience of
having a toothache, rather than confusedly thinking the W2 experience
means the toothache is located in W1 (which is what, uncritically, we are wont
to do)."
Indeed. Experience, to echo Oakeshott, belongs in W1, as consciousness,
while Wittgenstein's tooth (and its caries) belongs in W1.> This last
comment surely meant to read "Experience...belongs inW2, as consciousness" etc,
Btw, it is beside the point that a dentist will not ask "Where does your W2
tell you is the W1 tooth with the problem causing you pain?" but may simply ask
"Where is the toothache?" or even "Which tooth has the toothache?", and in
asking the question is expecting an answer that directs her to the relevant
part of the mouth. For these questions are simply attempts to find out which is
the problem tooth i.e. to identify the correct object in W1 to which treatment
may be applied. It would be otiose to this inquiry to detour into W2. OTOH we
should not infer from such questions that the dentist is committed to the
(mistaken) theory that the experience of toothache actually resides in the
tooth. The efficacy of local anaesthetics is also beside the point, as Palma
indicated, because the fact that pain resides in W2 does not imply it cannot be
removed by making W1 alterations to its sources in W1. Dnl On
Saturday, 24 January 2015, 12:30, "dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx"
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: In a message dated 1/24/2015 4:08:32
A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx writes in reply to someone else: "None [in this
discussion] ... suggested "that the dog does not have 'pain'". It may be
idiotic to
suggest they did [so suggested] given the whole discussion accepted that
dogs may, like humans, experience pain - even, more specifically, toothache.
Hence the reference to H. P. G., "Can I Have A Pain In My Tail?", dated
1978.
McEvoy:
"The suggestion that pain is not located in the part of the body 'in which
it is felt' is supported [a] by modern neurophysiology and [b] by facts
like patients experiencing great pain in limbs that have been amputated etc.
and [c] by our ability to remove 'the experience of pain in a part of the
body' [an expression that itself may mislead] without treating that part of
the body but by giving painkillers to the part of the brain that creates the
pain-experience."
And thus the answer to H. P. G.'s essay is "No."
McEvoy continues:
"There is a more general point here about the nature of consciousness (of
which pains may form a part) - consciousness is not a mere mirror to nature
or imprint from external reality but is a product of a very complex set of
processes that simulate a 'reality' for us. When I touch this keyboard so
that I experience it as if "it is there", the keyboard "is there" but my
experience of it being there is a simulation of its being there."
And that's why philosophers distinguish between things ("Dinge" in Kant),
or 'material objects' (loosely speaking) and sense data.
McEvoy continues:
"What misleads us is that we do not experience our experience as if it is
a simulation but as if it is giving us direct access to reality - but we
are wrong to be mislead, by the immediacy and apparent "realism" of
experience, into thinking it gives us direct or unmediated access to reality."
What we need is a meta-experience. I am reminded of Oakeshott, an Oxford
don (granted, one term in Nuffield, but once an Oxonian, ALLways an Oxonian")
and his voluminous volume, "The modes of experience", or "Experience and
its modes" (it would be "Experience and HER modes" in the Italian
translation).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Oakeshott
"In his first book - Experience and its Modes - in 1933, Oakeshott notes
that the book owes much to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and F. H. Bradley."
"Commentators also noticed resemblances between this work and the ideas of
thinkers such as R. G. Collingwood [Waynflete Prof. of Metaphysical
Philosophy at Oxford] and Georg Simmel."
"Oakeshott argues hat our experience is usually modal, in the sense that
we always have a governing perspective on the world, be it practical or
theoretical."
"There are various theoretical approaches you can take to understanding the
world."
"Natural science and history for example are separate modes of experience."
"It is a mistake, Oakeshott declares, to treat history as if it ought to be
practised on the model of the natural sciences."
"Philosophy, however, is not a modal interest."
"At this stage of his career, Oakeshott saw philosophy as the world seen
sub specie aeternitatis, literally, 'under the aspect of eternity', free from
presuppositions, whereas science and history and the practical mode relied
on certain assumptions."
"Later (there is some disagreement about exactly when), Oakeshott adopts a
pluralistic view of the various modes of experience, with philosophy just
one 'voice' amongst others, though it retained its self-scrutinizing
character."
Perhaps this was when he left Oxford for some part of London McEvoy is
familiar with (LSE).
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