--- In
Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@.
..> wrote:
>
> --- In
Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > that there is no reason to presume, on this model, that the speaking
> self,
> > the thinking self, is not also part of the acting self, the causal
> self, etc.
>
> In what sense am I a causal agent? I think. I have caused nothing.
You think and make certain decisions and then you act in ways that are consistent with the decisions, the choices, you've made. Now if you imagine that the mind inside the head (or floating nearby or in some coextensive dimension or whatever) is a distinct entity of a fundamentally different type than the entity we call the brain, then it looks like you have a problem, i.e., how can the two totally distinct and separate entities interact?
But if the mind is just a function or a set of functionalities of a working brain in good order, etc., then the brain, which is physical, has no problem doing things in a physical world.
Then, of course, you get the epiphenomenalism question raised by Joe. But isn't the mind just a bit of froth on the sea, an effect of the brain that is merely along for the ride? This idea, too, is mistaken since, again, it presumes that the mind must be a separate phenomenon from the brain. But the froth on the surface of the ocean is not a separate entity, just one element or aspect of the ocean in motion, etc. Well then, if the mind is like the froth, it causes nothing, right?
But on the view I have been describing the mind is a complex system consisting of various processes performing various tasks. If the mind is identifiable with the self, what if the self is itself just a complex mix of certain functions and, indeed, many different selves, depending on what we're looking at, how we're looking at it, etc.? Now we have a picture of a mind as a lot of things going on on a physical platform like a brain and, at a certain point, some of those things cross a certain threshold which we call being conscious as in having certain features we associate with consciousness, e.g., awareness, intentionality, understanding, etc., etc.
But this is old news. All I'm doing here is repeating the same refrain I've offered before. Yet that IS the answer to the same persistent question you pose, to wit, how can a mind cause anything or be caused by anything, and so forth.
> I
> speak, I've caused air molecules to move. Causation requires a medium in
> which the cause interacts with the effect. My thinking isn't in any
> medium. Hence it can't stand in any causal relation.
>
The mind is to the brain as the turning is to the wheel (though they are NOT the same thing but they have an analogous relationship)
.
> I think I'll write to you. I do. I've caused energy to be burned. But
> what I've written, the content, whether it causes you grief or joy,
> isn't caused in the same sense. For unlike the burning of energy, my
> note to you may have had no effect at all on your thinking.
>
Yes, there are different senses of "cause" but 1) we don't always mean "cause" in the same way (in recognition that there are different senses as you correctly note) and 2) the fact that intentional causes are possible does not negate the possibility that they are grounded in physical causes.
> > conscious subjects...have causal relations with the things of the
> universe
>
> Yes when the physically interact, eat or crush them. Unless you think
> the mind can cause material events to change, like bending a fork with
> intense concentration.
>
This isn't about paranormal claims.
> > 1) The self or subject is seen as a separate existent from the things
> it apprehends.
>
> Or the self, subject, doesn't exist at all in the sense that things
> exist.
You could say that and I wouldn't disagree but then I wouldn't agree that it therefore makes sense to say it doesn't exist at all in any sense -- and this isn't new either as we've been over this ground before, too.
Note that your proposal here fits better with choice #4 below as well it should since I take it from your own frequent insistence that it is unintelligible to speak of brains as being the physical cause of minds!
> This is what Dennett means by the intention stance. When I see
> you as a conscious being, but not your chair, I'm not suggesting that
> the chair is lacking some something that exist only inside of you.
>
What is the "this" you have in mind? That Dennett agrees with #1 (he doesn't) or with your recasting above which I have suggested is represented by #4 below?
It's certainly the case that Dennett, via his notion of intentional stances is proposing that intentionality is not a thing in the world but something we ascribe to some things in the world for practical reasons (helps us in dealing with them). I'm not sure I agree with that but I see his point in making such a distinction. It seems to me to be premised on the notion that what we call consciousness occurs on a continuum and that there is no sharp demarcation along the continuum between features when they are side by side. Thus what we mean by "intentional" may be applied under a rather broad set of conditions, based on the "behavior" of the physical entity under observation.
But is such an intentionality a thing in the world (since I've called things like intentionality features we associate with consciousness)
? If we mean by a thing in the world a physical object that has dimension, extension, mass, texture, etc., etc., if we mean a thing with physical boundaries, then I would say of course it is not. But does this mean there is no referent, nothing we mean when we refer to intentionality? I would not agree with that interpretation even if intentionality, isn't, as a referent, like a rubber ball that we can toss back and forth, watch it fly through the air, feel its impact on our hands when we catch it, etc.
> > 2) brains somehow summon/bring/
introduce some fundamentally new
> existent into the world).
>
> Same as #1. The self is some object, but here it is called fundamentally
> new. But we don't need any of that if we simply take Dennett's stance.
>
Bruce, my purpose in presenting four options was not to argue for them but merely to show what I think the range of possibilities is so you don't need to deny each of them in this context. But if your purpose is just to declare that you are in sync with Dennett on this, vis a vis the notion of the intentional stance, then perhaps we have found some common ground?
Note that Dennett's notion of the intentional stance is part and parcel with his argument for conceiving of consciousness as a physical process based system of a particular kind. That is, he argues that there is no special entity called mind, just the things brains do which we recognize in ourselves and in others as a number of named features. Again think of Minsky's point about "system properties". A wheel has a certain property along these same lines, i.e., it has the property of being able to turn, of spinning in a circle under certain conditions. Certain very complex physical processes in brains, on this view, have the property of being intentional. So what is it to be "intentional"
? Well, that's hard to say (because insofar as we have the subjective experience of it in mind it is an area not amenable to our language which is public in its genesis and context). However, we can speak about being intentional to some degree, though it often happens t
hat we find language lets us down in this arena in a way it doesn't when we speak of public objects of reference, etc.
> > 3) The self or subject is ...brains or parts of brains or activities
> of brains...produced
> > and which ARE reducible to those phenomena which are not, themselves,
> subject-like,
>
> Same as #2, with the addition that this new stuff is reducible to the
> old stuff. Since the self isn't any kind of stuff, we don't need it.
>
It isn't "stuff" and I am not calling it that, you are! So what you are saying "we don't need" is something you are introducing as a way of understanding my point but that very imputation of the term "stuff" actually misses my point. So no, we don't need any kind of stuff here but we do still need to explain, in a scientific way, how brains produce consciousness, albeit without confusing this with being about something called "stuff". We still need to understand what it is brains do that results in conscious entities like ourselves. But no, this is NOT to say consciousness is an entity or like an entity!
> > 4) The self or subject is not explicable in any way
>
> Dennett's explanation works for me.
>
Well it looks like we are making some progress then. Are you now also agreeing with Dennett's idea that consciousness is just lots of "virtual machines" (computational programs) running on the massively parallel "hardware" that is the brain, which is to say a conscious brain could at least theoretically be constructed on a massively parallel computational platform running the right kinds of programs in the right way. Note that Dennett's idea of the intentional stance ties into that picture of how brains work to produce conscious minds!
> > As you know, I hold that #3 offers the best explanation for the
> presence of subjects in the universe.
>
> If you hold that the self is some kind of thing.
>
Depends what you think I mean by "thing". As I have said many times in the past, we use words like "thing" in a range of ways. Sometimes all we mean is that which we are referring to, as in "that thing you do", etc., etc. Not every use of "thing" implies a physical object, a physical entity, etc. Do we really need to go over this again?
> > In the final analysis it's truth or falsity is an empirical question.
>
> The neurological research that show the correlates of consciousness can
> tell us whether we should think of the self as an object or, as Dennett,
> what we ascribe to someone
>
Dennett's notion of the intentional stance is not his whole position and it is dependent on his description of consciousness as being physically derived. Are you embracing that view, too, or do you just want to accept "the intentional stance" and, if that is all you want to do, how do you delink this notion from the larger point Dennett is making?
> > On this view, it strikes me that #3 is the best choice because it
> doesn't require that
> > we posit extra existents in the universe
>
> Not true. You posit them and then reduce them. So #3 is the least
> parsimonious.
>
#1 and #2 imply a dualist picture of the universe, i.e., that the universe is at bottom made up of at least two ontologically distinct basic phenomena. #3 does not imply that or require that it be presumed. Therefore #3 is more parsimonious than the first two. That is, #3 is consistent with a simpler picture of the universe. Why presume an extra ontological basis to explain the presence of minds in the world if we can do it without that?
> > But I have explained to you why I don't think epiphenomenalism is
> implied by a Dennettian thesis,
> > i.e., brains are causal and consciousness is a function of brains,
>
> I'm no longer sure that is Dennett's thesis but it is yours.
Dennett's thesis is well known and it is that consciousness is to brains as computational processes running on computers is to computers (though he adds the caveat that the computer must be at least as massively parallel as the brain since it is the complexity of the operations that enables what we call consciousness to occur -- see Dehaene's "global neuronal workspace").
> If
> conscious thought is simply the causal end product of organic chemistry,
> then what is ordinarily meant by being human, a free, intentional agent,
> is lot of hot air.
Dennett actually addresses such questions (though I am not always in agreement with him). Suffice it to say that on his view what is causal is the brain and the mind is just what the brain does, resulting in certain behaviors of the organism with that brain and in certain experiences that that organism has as part of its behaviors. And on that, at least, I am in full agreement.
The role of organic chemistry is the same as that of the wiring and electrical behavior of the computer running its programs. They are different platforms capable of achieving the same result on this view, even though they are made of different material and, perhaps, accomplish their tasks in different ways (carbon based molecular chemistry vs. silicon based physics).
> Everything we say and do is determined by events
> unknown to us. You thesis isn't true or false but just the noises your
> brain makes. Simply, we're Zombies.
>
Dennett's approach to that claim is to argue that the notion of "philosophical zombies" (the relevant kind here) is incoherent. I think he is right on that. If we suppose that a zombie has everything going on that we have including the same inner workings of its brain, the same behaviors, the same responses, then there is no ground for thinking it lacks an inner life. Imagine confronting someone who acted perfectly like ourselves, in every relevant way, and no matter how we approached it, how we tested it, this creature gave every indication that any of us do of being conscious. On what grounds would you say it isn't conscious while you are? Indeed, you have no more access than this to every other creature you encounter in the world that you take to be conscious. If Wittgenstein'
s private language claim is right, that's all we ever mean when we suppose another has a mind and isn't a mindless zombie! The behaviors of the other are the criteria for treating them
as conscious, not the evidence for it, not symptoms of consciousness.
So are we all zombies? Well Dennett makes that very point when he notes that if anything is a philosophical zombie then we all are which is why it is incoherent to suppose we can imagine such creatures in the first place. As Ramachandran notes, the brain is a complex phenomenon and it is certainly reasonable to suppose a lot of what it does is zombie-like, i.e., that we are unaware (unconscious) of many of the things our brains are doing when we are being conscious at all. Think of that woman who lost her sight because of carbon monoxide poisoning. But that we don't have access to everything our brain is doing, that there are parts of our brains' functioning that is zombie-like is NOT to imply that we are zombies in the philosophical sense.
> > I don't deny there is an experiencing "I" either. What causes it?
>
> A person attributing it to himself or to another.
>
Mine was a rhetorical question. But note that your answer doesn't help since the notion of "a person" already assumes a self, an I. So you can't answer a question of what causes it by saying that I cause myself. Now there is a sense where this could be said, e.g., you could mean that the physical "I" causes the awareness of being an "I" and in that all you're doing is saying the brain, as part of the physical organism, causes the awareness of being a self. Another sense: You could mean that the psychological self builds up certain self images that it uses to define itself in certain circumstances. But that isn't what my question referred to. That is, I was referring to how we get consciousness in the world and it is no answer to say the conscious self brings about consciousness. Why not? Because this is about how it is that some physical things are animated with sentience and some aren't. And that question is about what brains do.
> > his more polemical claims such as that we are all zombies which he
> doesn't mean literally!)
>
> If Dennett's thesis actually is that the brain causes consciousness (in
> the sense in which cause is used in physics),
> then there is no way of
> distinguishing between the literal and the metaphorical.
He is being quite literal in his claim though he sometimes resorts to metaphors to make a point clearer.
> Whatever is
> said is caused by a brain event. Period. Then again, if we are not
> actually Zombies, but free agents, which is implied by Dennett's
> notional of intentional stance (the very notion of "intention" implies a
> non-causal freedom to choose) then Dennett's gripe is actually with
> spiritualism, the little man inside your skull.
>
Well remember Dennett says, albeit with tongue in cheek, that we are all zombies in the sense that philosophers mean when they use the term. Nevertheless, he does not think we are denied free will by this in the sense in which we actually use the term "free will" (rather than in some ultimate, metaphysical sense of freedom, i.e., that to be said to have "free will" we must be completely and utterly uninfluenced by anything physical in the universe at some very deep level when we make our choices -- he doesn't think we need that kind of condition to be free in the way we actually use the term "free will" and I think he's right on that).
> A non-causal sense of self doesn't require that little man.
>
> bruce
>
Then why do you keep bringing it up? Why do you keep insisting on treating the idea of consciousness as if it were some mental entity that somehow co-exists with the physical?
SWM
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