Re: [Wittrs] When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: "Cayuse" <z.z7@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:04:33 +0100
Stuart wrote:
> Cayuse wrote:
>> But there's a philosophical problem that needs to be addressed
>> here before we can decide whether there's anything to "hand over"
>> to science, as it were. When we speak of "consciousness", what
>> the hell are we speaking about?
>
> I've already given my definition and it is nothing like your "microcosm".
> It consists of those features we associate with having subjectness,
> the features of our mental lives, e.g., intentionality, perceptions,
> conceptions, feelings, understanding, memories, beliefs, awareness,
> intellligence, etc. I don't suggest that these are exhaustive nor that
> they are each distinct from the other, only that having a mental life,
> being a subject, is characterized by the occurrence of these types
> of things.
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. 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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