[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:56:36 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> Stuart wrote:
> > Cayuse wrote:
> >> If consciousness means "being a subject", as in having a concept (or at
> >> least a sense) of "self", then it has nothing to do with Nagel's
> >> definition,
> >> and I would accept that it has empirical content. But if it means "having
> >> subjective experience" then we may be about to lock horns again,
> >> so it would be good if we could get to the bottom of what we each mean
> >> by the phrase "having subjective experience". For me it means being
> >> associated with what Nagel calls a "what it is like", regardless of
> >> whether
> >> or not that "what it is like" encompasses a concept (or at least a sense)
> >> of "self". In this case I maintain my claim that it has no empirical
> >> content.
> >> Perhaps you could say what you mean by "having subjective experience".
> >
> > "What it is like" strikes me as a fair way to describe this. Like you, I
> > don't
> > think the what-it-is-likeness is something we can capture in an empirical
> > study.
>
> Well then, I think that identifies bone of contention between us. As long as
> you insist on including this "subjective experience" in your use of the word
> consciousness, then for that long will we be chewing on this particular bone.
>
I suppose that is true. It seems to me we cannot speak of consciousness without
subjective experience. More, subjective experience is, on my view, analyzable
into particular features we associate with consciousness including awareness,
understanding, feeling, thinking, etc.
>
> > But THAT it occurs, that it is an inextricable part of the world is
> > an empirical fact, as far as I can tell, and how that comes to be
> > is therefore an empirical subject.
> <snip>
> > Minds are not rocks and trees or tables and chairs but they are
> > something in the world in the sense that anything that exists is
> > IN the world.
>
> I don't understand these claims.
I don't think I can do any better in explaining them.
> Subjective experience constitutes no part of what is categorized as
> exteroception, but rather exteroception is a category of the contents > of
> subjective experience.
I don't understand this claim. It seems to me that all instances of perception
of what is thought of as external to us are part of subjective experience
because they consist of particular experiences and you cannot have experience
without an experiencer AND whatever is experienced both. As soon as you have an
experiencer you have an instance of being a subject though, of course, this
doesn't imply that you also have self-awareness or any very high degree of
awareness of the world at all. A rat will have the capacity to remember and
make presumably rudimentary pictures of the world (this is how we might explain
its capacity to learn mazes) whereas it looks like a lizard just lacks these
capacities (Hawkins' idea as to the role the cortex plays since rats have them,
albeit much smaller than ours, whereas lizards don't).
> The fact of the existence of that content (or of any category of that
> content) simply IS the fact of the existence of subjective experience
> (Chalmers calls this a "brute fact", maybe because the possiblity of doubt
> would be misplaced here (Augustine: Si fallor, sum)). Taking "the world" to
> mean the collective totality of that content, I can make no sense of the
> claim that subjective experience "is an inextricable part of the world" -- it
> simply IS
> that world.
Looking at the world around us we see subjects with subjective experience.
Their physical bodies alone aren't part of the world; their subjective
experiences are, too. Moreover, when we look at the world, our very looking is
part of the world, just as the lense in the telescope is part of the world that
includes the images observed through it.
> Taking "the world" to mean the "objective" world inferred through
> exteroception, again I can make no sense of the claim that subjective
> experience "is an inextricable part of the world" -- it makes no appearance
> "in" that world at all, but rather that world makes an appearance "in it".
>
>
There is the same old language problem to be grappled with. The only way
communicating about this kind of thing works is to develop a common vocabulary.
But to do that both sides have to want to. Subjective experience, understood as
what is private to each of us and as the private aspect of the experiences we
can share, is part of the sum total of what is, that is of the world.
If there are physical objects in the world and physical features, there are
also relations between these and states of affairs and, of course, the
experiences of seeing, or otherwise "observing", each of these.
> > I think Wittgenstein's way of approaching this is the correct one.
> > The occurrence of subjectness is not "alien" at all, even if it is
> > radically
> > different from all the things known through it. Indeed this looks no
> > stranger
> > than the idea that the lense in a telescope (or any other part of the
> > telescope) is not the same as the images seen through it. The lense is
> > just a different part of the full gamut of things that make up the world.
> > Given its different position relative to ourselves it seems to be ourselves
> > in a way that the individual objects we encounter through the
> > instrumentalities of the self are not. In another sense, as you have noted,
> > it IS all of a piece, of course. The images and the lense through which
> > we see them are part of the total picture, the "all".
>
>
> Here you have a picture (of a telescope and the images seen through it), but
> it is a picture from a "god's eye" view.
Substitute your own eyeball and your cornea. Do you still think it's from a
"god's eye view"? If so then each and every one of us fits this odd description
in which case there is nothing special or god-like to be found at all. There's
just a subject's eye view.
> It may or may not be correct, but as LW argues, this picture has no
> application.
>
I don't know why you think that but I presume you have some citation to offer.
Let's consider it and see if you're right. After all, how could Wittgenstein
deny the validity of an ordinary view of things, i.e., what we see through our
own vision apparatus (eyes)?
>
> > because the occurrence of subjectness is also seen in the observable
> > world through the behaviors of some of the objects of reference before us
> > (organisms more or less like ourselves) and because there is a clear
> > relation between such subjects and our own experienced subjectness,
> > we can certainly talk about how subjectness fits into the larger scheme of
> > things which includes determining (or trying to determine) what the genesis
> > of being a subject is -- whether it is co-existent or dependent on other
> > features of an otherwise physically explainable world.
>
>
> I'm not sure how to interpret your use of the word "subjectness".
I've already explained it. It's to be on the perceiving end of a perception
relation, the conceiving end of a conception relation, etc. To be a subject is
to be what we are, i.e., to be an experiencer having experiences (since you
cannot be an experiencer without having experience or have experience without
being an experiencer).
> I would agree that "organisms more or less like ourselves" exhibit behaviors
> that are consistent with having a concept of self (that is, the concept of
> "the host organism" located within a conceptual world-model). That is a clear
> matter of behavior, and is therefore
> empirical.
Of course it is and I have said as much.
> But the picture we have of such "others" being associated with "subjective
> experience" is not a matter of behavior, and is therefore non-empirical. As
> LW says, the picture forces itself upon us, but it has no application.
>
> PI part 1:
>
> 424: The picture is there; and I do not dispute its correctness. But what is
> its application? Think of the picture of blindness as a darkness in the soul
> or in the head of the blind man.
>
"I do not dispute its correctness." As to "application" what application do you
think he is challenging? The idea that brains can be shown to be causal re:
minds?
> 425: In numberless cases we exert ourselves to find a picture and once it is
> found the application as it were comes about of itself. In this case we
> already have a picture which forces itself on us at every turn, - but does
> not help us out of the difficulty, which only begins there. [...]
>
Which "difficulty" do you think he is referring to?
> 426: [...] Here again we get the same thing as in set theory: the form of the
> expression we use seems to have been designed for a god, who knows what we
> cannot know; he sees the whole of each of those infinite series and he sees
> into human consciousness. For us, of course, these forms of expression are
> like pontificals which we may put on, but cannot do much with, since we lack
> the effective power that would give these vestments meaning and purpose. [...]
>
And what do you take his point here to be? Recall that we were discussing
whether one can speak of consciousness as a matter of scientific inquiry and
description. Do you think he is denying that possibility in the above quotes?
SWM
Other related posts:
