[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "swmaerske" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:37:22 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "Cayuse" <z.z7@...> wrote:
>
> Stuart wrote:
> > Sometimes nonsense of this type is more subtle and
> > it looks like we're saying something even if we're not.
> > (I would offer Cayuse's example of saying the mind is the
> > microcosm -- taken from the TLP -- as an example of that.)
>
>
> Not to put too fine a point on it, I have never made the claim
> that the mind is the microcosm. My claim was that the way that LW
> employed the term "microcosm" in the TLP is indistinguishable from
> the way that Nagel describes his use of the term "consciousness".
>
Not to re-open this particular pandora's box but I was talking about
consciousness originally (in the thread in which we were exchanging thoughts)
and I explained that as being what characterizes mind. You proposed that the
consciousness we were speaking of was the same as Wittgenstein's "microcosm" in
the TLP text and cited the text at one point in the discussion. Later you
amended that to a claim that it is the "all" which you indicated was
tantamount, in your view, to Wittgenstein's "micrcosm" reference.
Above I was making a point about nonsense as non-sense and used your reference
to "the microcosm" being the same as what we mean by "consciousness" (which I
equate with mind as we have already discussed) as a means of demonstrating what
I believe fit that bill. But it would be the same if you said "consciousness is
the all", too. That is, it would amount to the same thing, a "non-sense" claim.
Nagel's use of the term "consciousness", however either of us takes it, was
never at issue for me or in the general discussion except peripherally insofar
as you introduced it. What WAS at issue was what consciousness was and saying
it is "the microcosm" (which you initially proposed and later backed up with a
TLP citation) or saying it is the "all" is equally non-sense as far as I can
see.
Why? Because, per your own statements, there is no referent to refer to, and no
grammar to guide our usage in these cases. As I repeatedly noted, what then is
left to say or think about under such circumstances? Of course, when a term or
phrase cannot be elucidated because it is without grammar or referent, that IS
what is meant by non-sense in the Wittgensteinian sense.
>
> > For the record I am using it in THIS way: Question -'What causes
> > the wetness of water?' Answer - 'The way the constituent molecules
> > of the water behaves under certain ambient conditions.' Question -
> > 'What causes the subjective experiences that some organisms have?
> > Answer - 'The way the processes performed by a certain organ in that
> > organism's body operate under certain conditions.' The rest, of course,
> > are the operational details that science (as in Edelman's or Hawkins'
> > work) must flesh out.
>
> We have a clear understanding of the mechanism by which inter-molecular
> forces are responsible for surface tension in water, so there is a strong
> case for speaking of those forces as the "cause" of the wetness of water.
And that IS the sense I am using the term "cause" here which was my point to
Bruce who keeps mixing the different uses of the terms together in his
responses to me. I am trying to get him to see that there is a usage that is
perfectly reasonable here and that my usage is not the usage he persists in
imputing to me.
Further, that we don't yet have the same level of information about the causes
of consciousness as we have about the causes of water's wetness isn't relevant.
There was a time when we didn't have this information about water either but
water was still wet and there was something that made it so.
> There is not only no such understanding of any mechanism by which
> brain activity is putatively responsible for subjective experience, but,
> given the non-empirical nature of subjective experience, there is not even
> the slightest indication of how such an understanding might be possible.
I dispute your claim that it is non-empirical. It is highly empirical in that
we can see conscious entities all around us and we have experience (albeit not
publicly observable) of being conscious ourselves. What is it to be empirical,
after all, but to be based in experience.
Of course Wittgenstein makes the telling point that the subject matter of
subjective experience, the referents if you will, are not of the sort that we
can readily use our language to reference because of the fact that language is
intrinsically a public phenomenon. But that doesn't change the fact that we
HAVE experience of being subjects just as we have experience of the objects all
around us.
Brains exist in the world and can be studied, including what they do. It's a
mistake to think that because consciousness is, at its core, subjective, and
brains are the source of that subjectness, they cannot be studied empirically
(via science) for what they do.
> Your comment that "The rest, of course, are the operational details that
> science (...) must flesh out" burdens science with a task that is beyond
> its brief.
>
I will reiterate what I've said in the past. I am speaking about science, not
religion or anything mystical. I grant that there is an area of being a subject
that seems intrinsically mysterious to us because it is something we feel we
can know and yet it doesn't fit into any of the usual categories of knowledge.
Thus it looks like another domain entirely, beckoning us to a new way of
understanding it. The later Wittgenstein pointed out that it isn't a separate
domain at all and that we don't approach it and shouldn't approach it as though
it were and that when we try to we confuse ourselves, run aground
metaphysically, stumble lingustically, etc.
Being a subject means having subjective experience in all its many aspects. One
doesn't require or use science to study the experiencing of these in oneself.
But since such experiences occur (in ourselves as well as in others) it is
perfectly reasonable to apply science to the study of this phenomenon as it
relates to the physical elements of objective experience (that which can be
shared, in principle, with other observers). Brains and behavior are observable
and observing is what observers share between them, the capacity to observe. It
is brains that we have in common that enable us to observe. So brains and what
they do are a perfectly reasonable subject matter for scientific investigation.
There's lots of room in philosophy to create clouds of marvelous smoke by
talking about things that manifestly can't be talked about but if that smoke
doesn't add to clarity (because it gives the appearance of a real discourse
when none is occurring for want of a grammar and referential objects) what's
the point?
SWM
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