Having trouble with my Internet connection for a change. Not sure if this message went through so am sending it again. If it shows up twice, I'll take the liberty of deleting this version tomorrow!
--- In
Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "BruceD" <blroadies@.
..> wrote:
>
> --- In
Wittrs@yahoogroups.com, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > > In what sense am I a causal agent? I think. I have caused nothing.
> >
> > You think and make certain decisions
>
> Just what does "You" refer to? The material brain...
>
You, Bruce.
> > and then you act in ways that are consistent with the decisions, the
> choices,
>
> or inconsistent. There is no causal connection between decision and act.
Depends on what we mean by "cause" in the given context.
> But to return to the "You"
>
> > Now if you imagine that the mind inside the head
>
> Which I don't and I take it nor do you. How do you imagine it?
>
I don't. It's not entity-like so there is no observable thing to point to or imagine. See immediately below (which, if you had, you wouldn't have needed to ask that question. (However, note the elipsis you have added in the text, suggesting that I was saying a "function" is the same as a "working brain" which I don't say (pointing up the problems with Sean's approach here of insisting on cutting others' words).
> > But if the mind is just a function ... a working brain
>
> rather than "what a person does" as I imagine, where "person" refers to
> no entity of any kind or any substance...
but you think differently.
..
>
I know what you say you imagine but then you go on about how mind isg mental, not physical, suggesting in this very denial that the two ideas can be juxtaposed in this way. Of course "mind" refers to a different kind of referent entirely (the wheel and its spin are not the same kind of thing, not parallel existents in the world). "Mind" does not refer to anything entity-like that differs from brains only in being mental rather than physical as brains are!
> > then the brain, which is physical, has no problem doing things
> > in a physical world.
>
> But the only thing the brain does in the physical world is to emit
> electric currents.
And those electrical discharges interact with one another and, in so doing, cause physical sensation, movement of our limbs, autonomic bodily functions, etc., etc.
>The brain doesn't get on Lists or fall in love.
You'd have a mighty hard time of it trying these things without a brain though!
> So
> your physical account, an entity account, needs to locate a free self,
That just reflects a wrong conception of what it means to be a "free self".
> but instead you have...
> >
> > ...get the epiphenomenalism question raised by Joe..
> > But isn't the mind just a bit of froth on the sea,
>
> is exactly what Joe means by epiphenomenalism.
..jsut a spill over of
> some stuff that stands in causal relation to the big stuff, the sea, the
> brain, and hence not free at all.
>
If the mind is a complex phenomenon consisting of many operations happening in a brain (the view I've been presenting) then the "press secretary" speaks for the executive branch as well as for other offices in the hierarchy (many of which have perfectly physical causal connections to various aspects of the world). This is still about understanding a certain conception of mind, a certain way of thinking about it, picturing it, etc., etc. If you can't do it though, well I guess you can't. I can't force you to . . .
> > Now we have a picture of a mind as a lot of things going on on a
> physical
>
> whatever,
Yes, whatever. If it doesn't speak to you, if you just can't see it, then there's an end, isn't there? Many can't connect with or accept that particular picture including others on lists like this one.
> like a GPS system which tells you what turns to make but to
> which we do not attribute a self.
The point is that sufficient complexity yields a self on this view and the attribution of intentionality comes naturally when behavioral criteria cross a certain threshold (that's what it means to speak of being intentional)
. As Gerardo used to argue, though I think he was wrong in his interpretation of it, there is also internal behavior which accords with the subjective experience we have in accompaniment with our own behaviors.
> If one built a GPS that qualified to
> be a self then it would have to free and we would have the problem of
> explaining how something causal in nature has suddenly become free and
> intentional.
>
Given sufficient complexity you get the same degree of freedom we find in ourselves. No more no less. That is the point of this model.
> Of course, we can say the freedom of mind is an illusion, that all acts
> stand in a causal relation to one another, mind as free is
> epiphenomenal.
..the choice is yours. But you can't have both. Sorry. The
> mind can't both be free and mechanical.
>
Why not? It depends what one means by both terms. If by freedom you mean absolutely free beyond any and all physical influence, we already know that is not our condition since we can be under the influence, too tired or cold or hot to think clearly, suffer from brain damage, etc., etc. But that isn't what it means to be free under the law and it isn't what it means to be politically free or even free to choose in ordinary usage. As to being "mechanical" the tremendous complexity of the physical universe makes being mechanical something different on a molecular or even cellular level than it is on in terms of simple machines or even relatively complex manmade machines.
So you have to look at the ways in which the words are being used and not just assume simple, uniform and nuance free usages for these terms.
> > intentional causes are possible...are grounded in physical causes.
>
> Is a contradiction in terms.
Only if you aren't careful with your terms. If you don't recognize the range of uses for "free" and "mechanical" as noted above, then you imagine a "contradiction"
. But a more sophisticated approach to these uses dissolves such contradictions.
> What we mean by an intentional act is that
> it was freely done and not mchanically caused.
But that doesn't mean we mean that the human body and brain are either uninvolved in such acts or are beyond the affect of physical influence!
> That the brain is best
> described causally and the mind best described intentionallly is our
> problem. You are trying to solve it by deny intentionality.
>
That's simply false, a misunderstanding of everything I've said and have been saying since we started this four or five lists ago!
> > It's certainly the case that Dennett, via his notion of intentional
> stances
> > is proposing that intentionality ...we ascribe... for practical
> reasons
>
> Which means we elect to do this because it makes sense.
But not conscious sense. It comes about as a way of our interacting with others in the world. We don't think "I shall pretend so and so means to do what he is doing because it helps me predict his behaviors better". We just do it because that is part of our way of being in the world, it comes with our behavioral territory.
> Not because we
> are caused to do this.
If it comes with our behavioral territory we certainly are caused to do this because it is part of our genetic predispositions, our genetic behavioral inheritance. It's at least partly in our genes!
> Our brain doesn't cause us to adopt a stance.
No, our brain just operates in certain ways that amounts to taking such stances under certain conditions. THAT of course, is the sense of "cause" Searle invokes when speaking of brains causing consciousness and which I have adopted as reasonable and helpful in understanding this phenomenon.
> or
> does the brain adopt a stance. Only people do. And they do it because of
> reason, not causes.
>
We don't reason out whether another person is intentional or not under ordinary conditions (though we might do it that way if confronted with animated entities that are radically different from ourselves). We just recognize intentionality in others under ordinary circumstances. Dennett's view is that there is no special thing in the other called intentionality, nothing to find by opening the head or seeking a psychic link with that other person. "Intentionality" is just the way we describe (what we ascribe to) the phenomena of the other's behavior if it meets certain tests.
People are the kinds of entities that meet such tests but they may not be the only such entities (indeed, if we define "intentionality" broadly enough, then a whole range of non-human animals will meet the tests).
> > But does this mean there is no referent,
> > nothing we mean when we refer to intentionality?
>
> Yes. There is a referent. The person.
>
There is also the mind which we refer to all the time. And we have in mind certain things when we use a term like "consciousness"
, too, thus another referent (or referents).
> > 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.
>
> Yes. Meaning there is no spiritual substance in the head. No entity at
> all.
Now you've got it. But note that Dennett aknowledges a mental life and his whole point is to explain it mechanistically, as it were. It's the effort to achieve that explanation that you seem to repeatedly object to, arguing instead for "unintelligibility" which I think is plain wrong.
> But it doesn't follow from this that what we call the mind, self,
> stands in a causal relationship.
>
Depends what we mean by "cause".
> > We still need to understand what it is brains do that results in
> conscious
>
> Yes. The biological basis of mind, no one can deny. But a basis need not
> stand in a causal relationship.
Depends what we mean by "cause". You obviously still cannot bring yourself to recognize the kind of usage I have been alluding to. Oh well . . .
> The mind need not be seen as forth but
> as emergent system that requires a radically different language game
> that cannot be reduced to the physical game.
That we use different vocabularies, forms of _expression_ and even grammar to speak about motives and motivated behavior than we use to speak about what brains do, does not preclude the possibility that we can explain one set of phenomena (organism behavior and subjective experience) in terms of another (the morphology of brains and their electrical behaviors). You keep hoping to declare that the fact that there are at least these two ways of talking obviates the possibility that either is reducible to the other in any sense and that is simply not true because all you have to do is look at modern neurobiology, etc., to see that it can be done. You can't stipulate unintelligibility however attractive that alternative is to you.
> That's our difference.
>
> > Dennett's idea that consciousness is just lots of "virtual machines"
>
> if understood as mechanical devices is contradictory with his remarks
> about intentional stance.
>
It's not contradictory at all.
> > Dennett's notion of the intentional stance is...dependent on
> > his description of consciousness as being physically derived.
>
> I read "physically derived" as emergent from the physical meaning
What is the "physical meaning"?
> that
> there is no necessary relation between brain and mind.
There most certainly is or have you seen some disembodied minds recently?
> It could have
> been that there were only brains and the organisms never became
> self-aware.
It could have been. That is certainly a reasonable description of many organisms with brains unlike ours.
> When they did, no new substance emerged. That they did is a
> contingent, not a necessary fact.
>
>
Right. So? Where do you think I have asserted a "necessary fact"????
> > Why presume an extra ontological basis to explain
> > the presence of minds in the world if we can do it without that?
>
> Why presume any ontological basis?
Well you're the one who keeps talking about the mental as being wholly separate from the physical. If it is wholly separate as you say then it is an ontological basic (I meant "basic" not "basis" above, by the way). If it is not wholly separate, if it is just a dependent outcome of some physical phenomena, then it is physically based, physically derived and thus causally dependent (existentially dependent) on whatever physical phenomena produce it. And so forth . . .
> All of science is an ordering of our
> experience of the world. This can be accomplished without presuming any
> special whatever that lies at the basis of the stuff experienced.
>
Then why do you insist on denying the possibility of intelligibly describing consciousness as causally derived from brains?
> > Dennett's thesis is well known and it is that consciousness
> > is to brains as computational processes running
> > on computers is to computers
>
> He must mean computers that have become aware of being computers.
He suggests that computers can, at least in principle, be brought to this state. But consciousness on his view (and mine) is not a single thing but an amalgam of features on a continuum of complexity. Thus one could have a computer with lower levels of consciousness that has not yet gotten to the point of being able to be aware of itself as anything at all.
> And
> now that they have become aware are they free to think whatever or are
> they locked into their programs, like my talking GPS?
>
To the extent we are free they, in principle, could be, too. But that doesn't mean they cannot be conscious unless and until they have achieved the same level of self-awareness and autonomy as we have.
> > what is causal is the brain and the mind is just what the brain does,
>
> So all our thoughts and acts are caused by prior causal events and what
> we take to be freedom is an illusion?
>
This is that same mistake yet again.
It depends on what we mean by "freedom". I am free to sit here and answer you or not but there are certain personality traits I have that have caused me to develop in such a way that my tendency is to sit here and answer you even when I know it's hopeless to do so! I am an amalgam of my genetic blueprint (received from my ancestors with the possible occasional anomaly) and my experiences over a lifetime which, together, have shaped my flesh, including my brain and its pathways and dispositions to fire in certain ways which prompt my behavior at this keyboard when reading your posts.
So am I a free agent or am I a mere automaton, albeit of a naturally occurring kind? Does such an either/or question even make sense? Yet it is the very question you want to pose!
> > 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.
>
> An inner life as a Zombie. It thinks hat it is caused to think. Do you
> freely think?
>
If it thinks it has cause to think then how can it be a zombie? That is Dennett's point about the incoherence of such a concept. We cannot really conceive of a philosophical zombie and still think it's without awareness! When we think we can do this all we're doing is confusing a faulty Hollywood notion of a zombie (an animated corpse that acts with apparent robotic intention) with our image of ourselves.
> > The behaviors of the other are the criteria for treating them as
> conscious
>
> Right! Do you treat others as if all what they and do are simply the
> product of causes.
>
Of course not! Why would I? Nothing I have said about the Dennettian model implies that I would or should or that that is what one does when one explains consciousness in this way!
> > So are we all zombies?
>
> We are if the brain causes mental events.
>
And zombies like that aren't what we normally mean by zombies at all. See above!
> > 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?
>
> I appear to because you think in terms of ontological simples, physical
> and/mental. If you hear someone denying the physical simple, you think
> they are proposing the mental simple. I'm rejecting all simples.
>
> bruce
Except when you say that brains can't cause consciousness because there is no resultant entity to observe (no blood from the marrow, no urine from the kidneys, etc.).
My point is not that you CLAIM to think the mind is entity-like but that your criticisms of my remarks all hinge on just such a supposition (as when you say brains can't cause consciousness because, unlike the marrow and the blood, there is no resultant physical observable -- well, of course, there isn't, which is why the notion of "cause" I've invoked is not the same as what we mean when we speak of the phenomena of billiard balls striking one another and causing equal and opposite reactions).
You argue that thoughts are mental, not physical and with this we have no dispute at one level, but then you want to say there is nothing physical about thoughts at all and here we are in clear disagreement because my point is that thoughts are just one aspect of a very complex physical phenomenon occurring in brains. Since the mental does not consist of parallel existents but of features of particular kinds of complex physical phenomena, the fact that there is nothing to be found in the way of blood from bone marrow is NOT an argument against this kind of causal claim.
SWM
============
=========
=========
=========
==
Need Something? Check here:
http://ludwig.squarespace.com/wittrslinks/
