[Wittrs] Re: Minds, Brains and What There Is

  • From: "brendamirsky" <emirsky859@xxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 05:56:12 -0000

--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> swmaerske wrote:
> > "Cayuse" wrote:
> >> The "what it is like" is not a /part of/ anything, and not
> >> /apart from/ anything, but it is the /collective entirety/
> >> of the contents of consciousness. There is nothing "special"
> >> about a collection of contents summing to an entirety.
> >
> > Then there's nothing to talk about. There is no "what-it-is-like"
> > and the best evidence for this is that there is no real word for it
> > in our language,
>
> That "there is no real word for it in our language"
> is not an argument that there is no "what it is like".
> Few people have trouble understanding Nagel's paper.
>

Or perhaps just think they don't?

>
> >> The error is attempting to explain what is at the
> >> limit of explanation, whether that attempt is made
> >> by Chalmers, or Dennett, or anybody else.
> >
> > There's no "what-it-is-like" to explain
>
> If there is a "what it is like to be in pain"
> then there is a "what it is like".
>

"what-it-is-like" lacks a referent whereas including pain adds one. That's an 
important distinction.

>
> > But it is not some mysterious "what-it-is-like".
>
> There is nothing "mysterious" about a collection
> of contents summing to an entirety.
>

There is if the entirety is inconceivable by definition. If you argue we do 
think about it then you are either saying we imagine something (which doesn't 
mean we are actually able to think about it) or we do in the way we think about 
anything else, in which case there is a referent, which you have already denied.


>
> >> "Nothing" cannot be comprised of contents. This is not
> >> a mere assertion but an argument. If you consider the
> >> argument to be invalid then present a refutation.
> <snip>
> > You talk about "the whole" where before you spoke about
> > "the all" and "the microcosm". What are these things?
>
> They are the collective entirety of the "contents of consciousness".
>


Whatever that can be! If being conscious means having a mental life, i.e., 
experiencing, then it is open ended and endless. We cannot give a detailed 
description of everything that is included in any given mental life. Therefore 
it is inconceivable that we can think about the "entirety" though we can 
certainly think about it in the abstract, as if we could really pick out every 
one of its constituents in one fell swoop.

Anyway, I think we're back on the same rocks again, don't you? If you want to 
persist in your thinking along these lines, there's nothing I can offer, 
obviously, to dissuade you. You seem quite impervious to any of the 
contradictions I point out in your thinking. Indeed, you seem to think such 
contradictions further your case. As long as you are trying to make that case 
as a philosophical claim, I fear I must respectfully disagree. There is a 
mystical, a poetic, a relgious point to be made, of course, but you seem to 
want to steer clear of that. Thus I can only conclude you are confusing the 
mystical with the philosophical, at least on my view. You are not, of course, 
the first to do this but whether first or only one in a long line, it remains a 
mistake, on my view.


>
> > Well you've told us they aren't because there are no such
> > referents. But you want to say still we can conceive of them,
> > so in that sense there is a referent.
>
> They are not a "something", but not a "nothing" either.
>

But you are hanging your hat on a rather thin hook since the point of this 
statement by Wittgenstein is not to declare that "consciousness" is "the all" 
but to assert that mental phenomena don't fit certain linguistic applications 
and need to be dealt with differently.

>
> > But I can conceive of a unicorn or a flying purple people eater without
> > there being such things.
>
> Any such concepts would be just more of the "contents of consciousness".
>
>

This isn't about these concepts as "contents of consciousness" but as referents 
and how different referents work, i.e., some concepts connect to real phenomena 
(often in a variety of ways) and some have no such connection but survive, 
instead, on the role they play in various narratives and other fictions.


> > A word can relate to some conceptual picture we hold or imagine
> > without that picture having any relation to any actual thing in the world.
>
> Whether or not that picture has any relation to any actual thing
> in the world, the word, the picture, and any relation to any actual
> thing in the world are /all/ part of the "contents of consciousness".
>

What has that to do with whether or not you can equate my use of 
"consciousness" with your use of "the all", etc.?


>
> >> We not only CAN conceive of a whole,
> >> but we DO conceive of a whole.
> >
> > We IMAGINE we do.
>
> Can I IMAGINE that I have a concept? I don't think so.


Can you conceive of a square circle? One can, perhaps, imagine a shape in 
motion, constantly shifting its shape from square to circle and back again, 
perhaps via a slip back and forth between dimensions where in one the shape is 
a circle and in the other it is square. One can say, aha, this shows I can 
imagine this. But all that's really going on is that we are imgagining 
alternating shapes.

One can imagine one is conceiving of a philosophical zombie but the only 
picture to be conjured is 1) a person just like us and 2) a Hollywood zombie 
marching trancelike down the street. Two different pictures where we can tell 
ourselves they are the same because I call them both "zombies". But clearly 
they are not the same. Just calling them by the same name doesn't mean we have 
really conceived of a philosophical zombie. We just pretend to ourselves that 
we have when, in fact, we can have no such conception at all.

Being able to use a word in a certain way doesn't mean it genuinely represents 
what we claim it represents, that it is possible for there to be such a 
referent at all. Merely having a word and some concept connected with it 
doesn't mean we have the concept we think we have. Just being able to say "I 
can conceive of X" doesn't mean I can.

> But I can have a concept of something imaginary.
> Sometimes such a concept has an application (like "the electron"),
> but in the case of Nagel's "what it is like", there is no application.
>


Then there's nothing more to be said, is there, though somehow you keep finding 
ways to say things about whatever it is you think has no application!

If your point is to say the "what it is like" is imaginary, then why belabor 
the matter like this and why do you imagine it has any relation to my points 
about the features of what we call "consciousness" or the notion that we can 
study how the brain produces these?

SWM


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