[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "blroadies" <blroadies@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 19 Aug 2009 21:34:24 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
> You can always stipulate a use of the word that identifies as
> some objective phenomenon in the world, and then its scientific
> investigation would be legitimate, but to do so is to overlook a
> significant idea for which the word "consciousness"
While I agree with your nice distinction between the "physical world" --
out there so to speak -- that anyone can enter and "my visual room" --
which is no room at all and hence no one, including me can enter, I
think you give away too much by suggesting -- if in fact you are
suggesting -- that "my visual room" can't be studied scientifically,
i.e., objectively.
There is a vast scientific literature on 1st person perception. It is
every bit as objective as the behavioral research. This mistake, not
sure it is yours, is to think of perception as some inner event only
present to the person. A person's reports about his world is piece of
data no different from what he did that day.
What concerns me is in the effort to defend a non-physicalistic concept
of consciousness (which I share), one imagines a private realm apart
from the physical.
Consciousness is neither a private place or a special substance. It is
an attribution made to others and ourself under certain circumstances.
bruce
has been
> recruited. Since you dislike LW's use of the term "microcosm"
> in the TLP, let's jump to his use of the "visual room" example
> in PI 398:
>
> "[...] I think we can say: you are talking (if, for example, you are
> sitting in a room) of the 'visual room'. The 'visual room' is the one
> that has no owner. I can as little own it as I can walk about it, or
> look at it, or point to it. Inasmuch as it cannot be any one else's
> it is not mine either. In other words, it does not belong to me
> because I want to use the same form of expression about it as
> about the material room in which I sit. The description of the latter
> need not mention an owner, in fact it need not have any owner.
> But then the visual room cannot have any owner. "For" - one might
> say - "it has no master, outside or in. [...]"
>
> I think this similarly captures the use of the word "consciousness"
> to which I refer (whatever LW might have had to say about my use
> of the word for this application).
>
>
>
> <snip>
> > Obviously speaking of "the microcosm" as you've used it (...)
> > does not lend itself to a scientific inquiry. But then I would say
> > that is irrelevant to the description of consciousness that is at
issue.
>
> This IS the description of consciousness that is at issue. Whatever
> other uses of the word may be stipulated, this use is of particular
> interesting to many people. It's one thing to count yourself out of
> that group, but quite another to deny use of the word to those
> that are interested in that particular issue.
>
>
> >> It is that idea that Chalmers is addressing, and it stands in
> >> need of a preliminary philosophical investigation before any
> >> decision can be made as to whether it is suitable for scientific
> >> investigation.
> >
> > I'm not proposing to investigate a dualist notion absent evidence
> > of dualism and there is none that I am aware of. Given that,
> > all claims of dualism can be nothing but metaphysical speculation
> > and that isn't science.
>
>
> Are you thereby discarding the distinction that LW makes
> between the "visual room" and the "material room in which I sit"?
>
>
> >> It would be a mistake to have so much faith in science
> >> as to deem that preliminary investigation unnecessary (scientism).
> >
> > Why?
>
> Because science can't address every kind of question that can be
posed.
>
>
> >> This overlooks the use of the world that Chalmers is addressing.
> >
> > No it doesn't. Chalmer's use, whatever else it addresses,
> > is directed at the idea of being a subject in the world and
> > that is an observable phenomenon.
>
> Then here we have a difference of interpretation. Chalmers recruits
> Nagel's term "what it's like [to be me]", and on my reading this
> implicates precisely what LW calls in his example "the visual room".
>
>
> > As Galen Strawson notes, there is no emergence ex nihilo.
>
> I don't know whether that's the case or not. All I can say
> is that I have no use for any such hypothesis.
>
>
> > He concludes from this that consciousness is ubiquitous,
> > found everywhere and at every level in the physical universe.
>
> I'm not sure that this is what he concludes. I rather suspect he's
> saying that we have no grounds for rejecting that possibility
> since the nature of matter is insufficiently understood.
>
>
> > But there is a much simpler explanation (one that doesn't
> > require that we revise how we think about the universe).
>
> Strawson's proposal doesn't require that we revise how we think
> about the universe, except inasmuch as it draws our attention
> to an unwarranted prejudice.
>
>
> > It's that consciousness is just a function (or set of functions)
> > of certain arrangements of physical things. If consciousness is
> > explainable that way, there's no need to look for a metaphysical
> > explanation. I think it is and that people like Dennett have made
> > the case quite satisfactorily.
>
> You can always stipulate a use of the word that identifies as
> some objective phenomenon in the world, and then its scientific
> investigation would be legitimate, but to do so is to overlook a
> significant idea for which the word "consciousness" has been
> recruited.
>
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