Responding to Joe re: Dennett -
--- In
Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@..
.> wrote:
<snip>
> >>how can the out-of-the-loop press secretary be anything other than
> >>epiphenomenal?
>
> >By presuming that the self (consciousness in this case) is
> >multi-layered and that the "press secretary" isn't the bottom line
> >agent. That doesn't mean there isn't an agential aspect to the
> >process-based system in the brain that constitutes the consciousness.
> >It just means that all aspects of the agential system are not equal.
>
> is this Dennett's theory or Mirsky's?
>
It's my reading of what Dennett means. However, I would not swear he would say the same or say it as I have said it (and I don't recall his precise words in Consciousness Explained or elsewhere concerning this). After all, my comfort with his model doesn't hinge on his arguments for it but on my own conclusions, reached after considering Searle's CRA over a number of years. When I finally read Dennett's Consciousness Explained I was struck by how much it accorded with what I had come to conclude was the proper answer to Searle's argument about the implications of the Chinese Room scenario.
> in either case, the question is whether the causally effective aspect of
> the human individual is some part of the brain or the narrative center
> of gravity constructed by some part (not necessarily the same part) of
> the brain.
>
On a Dennettian model (and one can say it's certainly not unique to Dennett -- I've recently finished reading Ramachandran'
s Phantoms in the Brain, which basically presents a model like this albeit without Dennett's explicit computational component, and, as we have seen, on this list, Stanislas Dehaene seems to have a similar view), the elements of mind consist of many different functionalities which coalesce into recognizable features at the level of personal observation (introspection)
. At a deep level lots of things are going on to which we don't have introspective access. As Ramachandran puts it, we have multiple zombies operating in our brain, below the conscious level. As Dehaene suggests (though Ramachandran doesn't go this far -- he is eschewing comprehensive theorizing in favor of empirical observations) what produces the experience of consciousness may just be a certain "global" level of operations of these various brain processes that is achieved for some of these operations (or their combinations) but not others.
The "self" (for many, including Ramachandran) is rather like a composite of different elements -- it consists of many different combinations. On such a view, the idea that some aspects of the self, of our mental life, are more salient or more empowered than others is perfectly sensible. It just challenges the idea that, at the core of consciousness, mind, there is a simple element or constituent that is pure consciousness, set apart from everything else, some untouchable thing that makes the experiential parts of mind we normally think of in connection with being a subject in the universe possible.
> >>how can a narrative center of gravity be causally effective at
> >>anything?
>
> >See above.
>
> what was above didn't explain how a literary fiction can be causally
> effective. indeed, Dennett seems to be saying that it is the *brain*
> that is causally effective. that would clearly imply that the narrative
> center of gravity is completely epiphenomenal.
>
I would suggest that is a misreading of him. What he is saying is that the mind is a complex of brain events which, in a manner much like the way an orchestra operates, produce the "music" of being conscious. On such a view, the various referents we have in mind when we use a word like "self" will not always be quite the same. Ramachandran distinguishes between the "embodied self", the "passionate self", the "executive self", the "mnemonic self", the "unified self", the "vigilant self", and the "conceptual and the social self" (which last two he links). pages 247-253
This viewpoint suggests that the "press secretary" you are referring to is just one aspect of a very complex arrangement of mental features and proclivities, all of which are outcomes of various brain operations at various levels of integration. That some aspects of what we think we are are better understood as observer rather than executor doesn't mean we don't have executive capabilities or aren't part of a larger complex with such capabilities. The point is to replace the idea that mind, consciousness, is what it is because of a core constituent that is somehow pure subject. Being a subject is a result, on this view, of a complex of processes found in certain kinds of brains when they are in good operating order and operating at capacity.
> >>But first let me say that Dennett's account does not imply
> >>epiphenomenalism if by that you mean that mind has no effect on the
> >>world but merely goes along for the ride.
>
> that's as good a definition of epiphenomenalism as any.
>
> >>Since Dennett's model is that there is no separate realm of mind,
> >>only a particular realm of physical interactions which happen to have
> >>the features of subjectiveness, mind and the physical behaviors of the
> >>brain are seen to being part of the same phenomenon (though expressed
> >>in both objectively observable and subjectively apprehendable ways).
>
> it sounds like Dennett is posing as an identity theorist to avoid
> exposure as a property dualist; but, let's set that issue aside for now.
>
I suppose one can apply the notion of "identity" as long as the previous caveats I have introduced are observed. If, on the other hand, you want to disregard those caveats then I, at least, would not accept the "identity" nomenclature. I don't speak for Dennett, of course.
As to the reference to "exposure as a property dualist" that is just odd. As I have said in earlier posts, dualism is dualism on my view (and here I'm in agreement with Searle) when it implies an ontological divide. If it is only about "properties" and "properties" is understood as what I mean by "features" or "characteristics" (see my earlier explications)
, then this view isn't dualism at all. Indeed, given the multiplicity of "properties" in the universe, there is no way to confine this to "dualism" (a split between two distinct types). After all, even our various mental features have very different characteristics. More important, I think, is mode of access and that is only a "property" in a very limited way (though even there, I suppose, we could use "property" as the term of distinction)
.
> at the moment, we're focusing on whether Dennett's philosophy or a
> Dennett-consistent philosophy is epiphenomenal; and, what you are saying
> sounds like a clear confession that it is.
>
Does it? How odd. To me it sounds like what I said, that the idea of consciousness doesn't require a notion of a core consciousness that is found by peeling away some outer layers. Rather we can explain it as a complex system which has many constituents, some of which have an executive role and some an observational/
reporting one, etc.
When I sit at my computer and formulate what I want to say to you and hit the keyboard to get it on the screen (before hitting the send button), I am choosing what I am doing, what I want to say. It isn't just randomly generated or driven by some inner compulsion I have (though who knows, eh?).
Yet as my fingers fly over the keys on the board, I don't think about them (though I once had to, before I learned to type with facility). I don't pay any attention to how they find and strike the right keys to get the message on the screen properly or how doing that coordinates with my thinking process. Still I am making them move and, if I do start to think about THAT, I start to find I miss the keys, slow down, make mistakes.
When my wife calls downstairs to me to ask what I'm busy with and I answer her, I don't consciously think about forming the sounds in my throat that come out of my mouth in answer or even about forming the words in my mind that my vocalizations are conveying. I just answer. I just act.
The brain is doing lots of things and sometimes some of the things we have to think about when we first learn those things, we cease to think about once we have learned them. If my wife were calling down to me in Chinese I would have to learn the relevant dialect of that language first to understand her question and then to answer and that would be a laborious process. (I have a favorite Cantonese style restaurant where I always try to pick up a little Chinese in bantering with the manager but, being only an occasional speaker, I often forget and, even if I don't, I have to think a moment, translate something in my head and remember the right combination of sounds along with the right inflections when I speak. A very laborious process.) If I ever manage to learn though, we can assume it would no longer require much thinking, much effort on my part, to answer, no more, at least, than it now takes me to answer questions in English.
The point is that the brain is an organ of many parts and many functions and that being conscious, having a mind, involves the interplay of a broad range of them and is not to be found in some central core waiting to be discovered once the layers of the onion have been peeled away.
> if there are physical interactions only then, if anything is causally
> effective, it is something physical --- even if the center of narrative
> gravity steps up to take credit for it.
>
> Joe
>
>
I think Searle is right here (and, for that matter, Ramachandran and Dennett and quite a few others). The mistake in what you say above arises in this insistence that there is a divide between the physical and the mental. There is certainly a subjective aspect and an objective aspect to experience but it's a mistake to conclude from this that there is an ontological divide here. This is how Ramachandran puts it (starting on page 228):
". . . many people find it disturbing that all the richness of our mental life -- all our thoughts, feelings, emotions, even what we regard as our intimate selves -- arises entirely from the activity of little wisps of protoplasm in the brain. How is this possible? How could something as deeply mysterious as consciousness emerge from a chunk of meat inside the skull? The problem of mind and matter, substance and spirit, illusion and reality, has been a major preoccupation of both Eastern and Western philosophy for millennia, but very little of lasting value has emerged . . ."
"Except for a few eccentrics (called panpsychists) who believe everything in the universe is conscious, including things like anthills, thermostates, and Formica tabletops, most people now agree that consciousness arises in brains and not in spleens, livers, pancreases or any other organ. This is already a good start. But I will narrow the scope of inquiry even further and suggest that consciousness arises not from the whole brain but rather from certain specialized brain circuits that carry out a particular style of computation. . . ."
"The central mystery of the cosmos, as far as I'm concerned, is the following: Why are there always two parallel descriptions of the universe -- the first-person account ('I see red') and the third-person account ('He says that he sees red when certain pathways in his brain encounter a wavelength of six hundred nanometers')
? How can these two accounts be so utterly different yet complementary? Why isn't there only a third-person account, for according to the objective worldview of the physicist and the neuroscientist, that's the only one that really exists? (Scientists who hold this view are called behaviorists.
) Indeed, in their scheme of 'objective science,' the need for a first-person account doesn't even arise -- implying that consciousness doesn't exist. But we all know perfectly well that can't be right. I'm reminded of the old quip about the behaviorist who, just having made passionate love, looks at his lover and says, 'Obviously that was good for you, but was it good for me?' This need to reconcile the first-person and third-person accounts of the universe (the "I" versus the "he" or "it" view) is the single most important unsolved problem in science. Dissolve this barrier, say the Indian mystics and sages, and you will see that the separation between self and nonself is an illusion -- that you are really One with the cosmos.
"Philosophers call this conundrum the riddle of qualia or subjective sensation. How can the flux of ions and electrical currents in little specks of jelly -- the neurons in my brain -- generate the whole subjective world of sensations like red, warmth, cold or pain? By what magic is matter transmuted into the invisible fabric of feelings and sensations? This problem is so puzzling that not everyone agrees it is even a problem . . ."
"For centuries philosophers have assumed that this gap between brain and mind poses a deep epistemological problem -- a barrier that simply cannot be crossed, but does it follow that it can never be corssed? I'd like to argue that there is in fact no such barrier, no great vertical divide in nature between mind and matter, substance and spirit. Indeed, I believe that this barrier is only apparent and that it arises as a result of language. This sort of obstacle emerges when there is any translation from one language to another.
"How does this idea apply to the brain and the study of consciousness? I submit that we are dealing here with two mutually unintelligible languages. One is the language of nerve impulses -- spatial and temporal patterns of neuronal activity that allow us to see red, for example. The second language, the one that allows us to communicate what we are seeing to others, is a natural spoken tongue like English or German or Japanese -- rarified, compressed waves of air traveling between you and the listener. Both are languages in the strict technical sense, that is they are information-
rich messages that are intended to convey meaning, across synapses between different brain parts in one case and across the air between two people in the other.
"The problem is that I can tell you, the color-blind superscientist [a reference to an earlier example I have excluded in this redaction], about my qualia (my experience of seeing red) only by using a spoken language. But the ineffable "experience" itself is lost in the translation . . ."
"But what if I were to skip spoken language as a medium of communication and instead hook a cable of neural pathways (taken from tissue culture or another person) from the color-processing areas in my brain directly into the color-processing regions of your brain . . .? . . . This is a far-fetched scenario, but there is nothing logically impossible about it."
"This scenario demolishes the philosophers' argument that there is an insurmountable logical barrier to understanding qualia. In principle, you can experience another creature's qualia . . ."
"The key here is that the qualia problem is not unique to the mind-body problem. It is no different in kind from problems that arise in any translation, and thus there is no need to invoke a great division in nature between the world of qualia and the material world. There is only one world with lots of translation barriers. If you can overcome them, the problems vanish."
[End excerpts]
SWM
============
=========
=========
=========
==
Need Something? Check here:
http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
