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

  • From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
  • To: wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:09:38 -0000

--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> brendamirsky wrote:
> > "Cayuse" wrote:
> >> Some of the "contents of consciousness" may be categorized as
> >> 'subjective', and some may be categorized as 'objective'. Those
> >> "contents", then, either /encompass/ the union of the set of
> >> phenomena qualified as subjective with the set of phenomena
> >> qualified as objective, or else they /consist/ of that union. Thus
> >> conscious experience is neither subjective nor objective.
> >
> <snip>
> > You speak of "subjective" and "objective" with regard to what you
> > call the "contents" of consciousness but I don't have the sense that
> > you have fully explicated these terms for the purpose of this
> > discussion. Needless to say the terms may mean different things in
> > different contexts so we have to be clear on what it is we do mean
> > here, how we ARE using these terms.
>
> It doesn't matter how these terms are used, except inasmuch as
> they are not synonymous. Since they qualify different kinds of items
> in the "contents of consciousness", the "contents of consciousness"
> encompass /both/ of these qualified categories.
>


If the "qualified categories" are not adequately explicated then they are just 
words, appearing to have sense while lacking it. So it certainly does matter 
how they are used!

Here you want to do with these terms what you have previously done with 
"consciousness", "experience", and "the all." It strikes me as obscurantism 
since it seems to be set against any real attempts at clarity.


>
> > Now you also say this: "Those 'contents', then, either /encompass/
> > the union of the set of phenomena qualified as subjective with the
> > set of phenomena qualified as objective, or else they /consist/ of
> > that union."
> >
> > What does THIS mean? What is it to "encompass the union"?
> > How does a union get encompassed? More, what does it mean to say
> > that the "contents" "consist of that union"? How is a union a content
> > (assuming "content" is even an appropriate term for what is meant here)?
>
> Example:
> The set of all integers /encompasses/ the the set of all positive integers
> /and/ the set of all negative integers (i.e. the /union/ of those two sets),
> but does not /consist/ of that union since it omits something.


What is omitted?


> The set of all integers /consists/ of the set of all positive integers
> /and/ the set of all negative integers /and/ zero (no remainder).
>

So zero is like all the other integers? Isn't that a stipulation though, i.e., 
can't we simply agree to stipulate that zero is not, itself, an integer in 
which case it wouldn't fit into your set?

More importantly, what has this to say about or do with our question about what 
consciousness is? I have described the referent of THAT word as being an open 
ended collection of certain features we recognize in our mental lives. You have 
called them "contents" while denying a container and, yet, speaking of 
something as being the sum of them all and thus containing them, i.e., a class 
containing whatever they are. You have further said that these "contents" are 
knowable as referents whereas the complete collection of them, "the all", is 
unknowable and therefore a nonsensical term.

So what has your claim that there is a union of the subjective and the 
objective to do with (or to say about) the original question of what we mean by 
a term like "consciousness"? And haven't we been over this ground before? 


>
> >>>> More precisely, the view that p-consciousness has no place
> >>>> in a physicalist paradigm.
> >>>
> >>> I'm sorry but I don't understand that.
> >>
> >> Since the idea has no empirical content, it cannot be studied
> >> objectively.
> >
> > Phenomenal consciousness has no empirical content? But we can get
> > reports about what anyone is seeing all the time and that's pretty
> > empirical don't you think? We can also determine what someone or some
> > inarticulate subject is seeing via various research strategms.
>
> Reports are publicly observable. Regarding "what someone or
> some inarticulate subject is seeing via various research stratagems",
> the overt /behavior/ of that someone or of that inarticulate subject
> is also publicly observable. Based on such behavior (including any
> verbal reports they may make), we can /imagine/ what another
> /may be/ experiencing, but their /experience/ is not publicly observable.
>
>


Aside from some claims that it might be accessible from the outside at some 
level of technology (I'm inclined to doubt it but not entirely dismiss the 
possibility), what we mean by "mind" when considering others beyond ourselves 
is really just their behavioral performance, including their testimony when it 
is available. Thus we can recognize the presence of minds in other bodies and 
study what causes them, i.e., what brains do. All perfectly empirical, of 
course. To think otherwise would be peculiar. What about our own subjective 
experience (the subjective aspect of our lives)? Well no one claims that is 
accessible to others but that doesn't mean we must assume that we are 
qualitatively different than other organisms that behave like us, etc. Thus we 
don't stand apart from the universe that includes other beings. To think we do 
would, of course, be a form of solipsism which Wittgenstein, even in his 
earlier solipsistic days when writing the Tractatus was at pains to dissociate 
himself from.


> >>> I was making the point that consciousness involves experience
> >>> which means experiencing what we call experiences and that
> >>> to be in THAT position is what it means when we speak of
> >>> being a subject, i.e., having a point of view, etc.
> >>
> >> In what manner does consciousness "involve" experience?
> >
> > If by "consciousness" we mean awareness, as in being aware of this or
> > that, then anything we are aware of is an experience and that means
> > an experiencer experiencing an experience.
>
> Since you say that consciousness "involves" experience, you can't
> be using the two words synonymously. In what way do they differ?


Recall that I have defined "consciousness" as being an array of features we 
have including awareness. Whether awareness is the one essential feature that 
is needed to make consciousness consciousness or is an amalgam of other 
features or is only possible when joined with other features, etc., is an open 
question. What is not open, though, is that we don't always use "consciousness" 
and "awareness" synomymously. For instance a mind or consciousness may be 
temporarily unaware (asleep, distracted, in a drug-induced state). It is also 
conceivable that a machine with sufficient sensitivity and the capacity to make 
connections to a set of layered representative schemas may have some limited 
awareness but still lack the full array of features that would prompt us to 
call it conscious.

The point is that "consciousness", on the view I have adopted and for which I 
am arguing, refers to a somewhat open ended array of features we find in 
ourselves and which may have no clear delineating line between what is and what 
isn't going to be counted as conscious. This is why I don't use the words 
synonymously and why I have refrained from doing so since we began these 
discussions.


> (And since you've added a third word "awareness", are you
> using the words consciousness and awareness synonymously?)
>

It is possible that they may be properly used that way but I am not yet 
committed to that view. At this point I think we mean by "consciousness" an 
array of features we find in ourselves that includes: awareness, understanding, 
thinking about, intelligence, feeling, perceiving, etc. Whether these break 
down into more basic features or are a complete list, in themselves, is still 
an open question on my view. Bottom line: I don't think there is a thing called 
consciousness or mind though I do think that there is a referent for this term 
(and thus, as you would put it, a grammar for the term's use). As Marvin Minsky 
puts it elsewhere (though I think he derives the insight from Wittgenstein) 
"consciousness" is a "suitcase word". It means many different things (sometimes 
depending on context) but no particular thing. As you further know from what I 
have said in the past, I use "consciousness" and "mind" synonymously in a broad 
range of cases.


>
> >> By "access consciousness" I mean what Block identified in his paper
> >> as belonging to what he called "access consciousness" in contrast to
> >> "phenomenal consciousness".
> >
> > So by "access consciousness" you mean what Block calls "access
> > consciousness" All right. What DOES he call "access consciousness"?
>
> Ned Block:
> Consciousness is a mongrel concept:


Like so many concepts, eh? Chalmers and Minsky have also noticed this which 
means "consciousness" is one of those more difficult to get one's mind around 
words.


> there are a number of very different
> "consciousnesses." Phenomenal consciousness is experience; the phenomenally
> conscious aspect of a state is what it is like to be in that state. The mark
> of access-consciousness, by contrast, is availability for use in reasoning
> and rationally guiding speech and action. These concepts are often partly or
> totally conflated, with bad results. This target article uses as an example
> a form of reasoning about a function of "consciousness" based on the
> phenomenon of blindsight. Some information about stimuli in the blind field
> is represented in the brains of blindsight patients, as shown by their
> correct "guesses," but they cannot harness this information in the service
> of action, and this is said to show that a function of phenomenal
> consciousness is somehow to enable information represented in the brain to
> guide action. But stimuli in the blind field are BOTH access-unconscious and
> phenomenally unconscious. The fallacy is: an obvious function of the
> machinery of access-consciousness is illicitly transferred to phenomenal
> consciousness.
> http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/OldArchive/bbs.block.html
>

Thanks. I suppose I am just unduly dense here though. I don't see how this 
distinction applies to what we have been discussing. I have said that I take 
access consciousness to be what we have access to in ourselves (as opposed to 
things going on below the surface of our aware minds. Block is saying the 
opposite, i.e., that it's what we seem to lack access to (awareness of) that is 
what he means by "access consciousness". So we cannot agree that I am 
interested in what you call access consciousness while you are interested in 
phenomenal consciousness. Indeed, I am interested in precisely what you 
characterize as phenomenal consciousness, having experience.

What is it to have experience? In the sense in which we are here using the 
term, it's to be aware of what is going on in terms of the sensory input we are 
receiving or some mental operations we are engaged in (calculating a number, 
thinking about the meaning of a word, remembering an image, feeling an emotion, 
etc.). I cannot therefore agree that Block's proposal is helpful in 
differentiating our interests.

Where we seem to be at odds is in your insistence that this awareness somehow 
stands over and apart from all the things of which we are aware. A long time 
back I suggested that in this you were likening mind to Kant's transcendental 
subject, a subject that is transparent to itself, that sees but is not seen, 
etc., but you denied it then. I presume you would do so still. Nevertheless 
your likening of what I call "consciousness" to "the all" or the "visual room" 
(as you found it stated in the PI) seems to me to be more and more a move in 
that direction.

To reiterate. I mean by "consciousness" the array of features we find in 
ourselves which we recognize as being part of our mental lives. You want to 
call these "content" and differentiate them from something else that is 
unnameable because it is inexpressible but which you have sometimes expressed 
it as "the all" or "the microcosm". I think when you make this move you step 
out too far and end up positing a mystical entity that can be named yet not 
known, etc., etc. I don't think this is at all consistent with the later 
Wittgenstein and think it only shakily consistent with the earlier one because 
he certainly flirted with such mysticism as we have seen. Nevertheless, I think 
we should take him at his word and forsake the grave errors of the Tractatus 
for the improvements in the Investigations.

>
> >> I'm referring to your claim above that there is no "first-person
> >> perspective", no "consciousness".
> >
> > I'm sorry but where do you think I made any such claim?
>
> Let's rewind a bit then:
>
> >> To take this "third-person world" as the primary datum (in which
> >> this "first-person perspective" now has to be accounted for) is to
> >> put the cart before the horse.
> >
> > There is no horse if you are right vis a vis "the all".
>
> Sticking to the terms I used in my comment above,
> are you saying that there is no "third-person world"?
> Or there is no "first-person perspective"?
>


I am saying that, on your own statement, there is no way to conceive of, or 
even imagine, "the all", i.e., it is a referentless referent, a term for 
something without grammar (to use your own words again). Therefore, if you are 
likening consciousness to THAT and the horse is consciousness then there is 
nothing there and thus no horse to put before the cart as you proposed. If 
there is no referent to refer to then the horse is a chimera. But recall THAT 
is not my position when referring to "consciousness". It's yours! I think 
"consciousness" is just a term we use to refer to an array of features we find 
in ourselves when we think about our mental lives.

SWM


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