[Wittrs] Re: Current Brain Research: Causal Model?
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 18 Apr 2010 02:27:13 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "BruceD" <blroadies@...> wrote:
> --- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, "SWM" <SWMirsky@> wrote:
>
> > Lots of notions of "causal", aren't there?
>
> Yes. Here is where we get stuck. Specify the use of "cause" that makes
> sense in this research context.
>
Searle's description of the wetness of water (or the solidity of a table) being
caused by the behavior of the molecules making up the water (or the table)
under certain ambient conditions.
> Your example: "I read recently that some researchers have developed a
> machine that can tell what we're thinking..."
>
> Intriguing. Now tell me what is causing what and how you mean cause in
> this context.
>
I didn't say that was "causal". I was thinking rather of recent research that
has determined that individual ideas we have in our minds are often associated
with a single unique neuron which flashes when the person thinks of that idea.
How that translates into ideas, of course, is where causality is at issue.
> Back to my research...
>
> > The brain is the source and, as such, the cause, of conscious
> experience.
>
> The brain is the source in the sense that without it there is no
> experience. But it can't be the cause. Why? Because your model doesn't
> allow for a person who stands in a causal relation to his brain to exist
> in the head because that would make for a ghost in the machine.
Not at all. Where do you see me asserting or even implying any such thing?
>Yes, you
> speak of a person but that is just an attribution. There is no person,
> no other entity, just the brain.
How do you come to that conclusion? What have I ever said to make you think I
equate "person" and "brain"?
> And it is the brain that becomes
> conscious. Its consciousness is caused by external stimulation, from the
> physical world, from the body.
In one sense of "cause", yes. But in another sense it is the complex of
processes that cause or produce the mental life we recognize as having a mind
or being conscious.
> In fact, I have no problem talking about
> it this way, up to this point.
>
> But when "the brain becomes conscious" can any literal version of
> causality account for what happens next or must we shift to intentional
> discourse? That's our problem
>
I have no problem with shifting ways of speaking. Indeed, nothing I've said
about any of this precludes such shifts based on context.
> > What else could be (unless you want to say minds simply co-exist with
> brains and then you're back to dualism again).
>
> Thanks for saying the above once again because it demonstrates your
> commitment to a notion of substance, though you deny this. For you,
> something exists only if it is made of some substance.
Can you show this rather than just assert it? What words have I uttered here
that point to a presumption of substance with regard to consciousness?
> The brain, you
> think, is made of a physical substance.
True, in the sense that anything that is a physical entity consists of some
substance or other. (Note that this is not an assertion about anything that may
be construed as an ultimate "substance" in the Cartesian sense). Do you think
the brain isn't physical?
> Since you agree that the mind
> exists, you can only allow it to be physical (Monism) or a mental
> (Dualism).
I have said many times that not everything that is part of the physical
universe is a physical object. There are faces and smiles and the smile, while
part of the physical object called the face, is not, itself, a physical object.
Rather it is something that the face is doing. Still it is physical. Would you
want to say, rather, that it is non-physical? Can the Cheshire Cat's smile
exist apart from its face? (Well we can conceive of a smiling mouth afloat in
the air but that's just a fantasy given how the world is. And besides, even the
smiling mouth is still a physical phenomenon. Can we have the smile without
even the mouth?)
To recognize that the physical universe consists of much more than just an
infinite number of physical objects is not to suppose that whatever arises from
physical phenomena that is not such an object is therefore not, itself,
physical.
> Why can't you see that my researchers don't think in terms of
> substances, not one, not two. In fact, contemporary physics, with its
> strings and dark matter have abandoned the notion of substance.
>
So have I. Nothing you have said suggests that my claims depend on it one iota.
Yet you persist on attributing it to me. Can you show how my claims imply a
concept of ultimate substance (not just a recognition that there are physical
phenomena in the universe that we sometimes speak of as substances)?
> What interests me is that you want an account of mind, but not of
> matter.
That's the business of physicists it seems to me. And what mind finally is is
the business of neuroscientists and other researchers into the phenomenon. I
count myself as none of these. My interest is whether we can understand mind in
such a way that makes it sensible to explain it in the terms of modern science,
i.e., as a phenomenon of the physical universe. I think, with Dennett and some
others, that we can.
> I guess because you believe that matter exists, out there,
> independent of you, just as you experience it (though contemporary
> physics does not) -- hence no account is required.
I think physicists have that as their concern and that their account, given the
success of that science, is not highly controversial among laypersons (though
there is, of course, plenty of controversy among physicists themselves).
> But mind requires an
> account.
From a philosophical perspective. Scientifically, the researchers will pursue
this as well, with little concern what philosophically oriented thinkers have
to say about their options.
> Is it matter or some other substance?
It seems to me that it is you who cannot rid yourself of this "substance"
question and that you simply persistently conceive of my claims in such terms
though nothing I've said implies that.
> But if you abandon the
> notion of substance for just giving an account of our world, you can
> have models for brain activity and models for the psychological, with
> the continuity based on "our accounting for the world" and not some
> underlying substance.
>
If brains are physical and they cause minds then minds are physical and
pretending that they aren't because they're a different level of phenomenon in
the universe (as a smile is to the face or the turning of the wheel is to the
wheel), is simply a mistake.
> My researchers consider the brain an instrument. An instrument does not
> cause the music.
>
> bruce
>
>
You are using "instrument" in two different ways. Certainly a brain can be
conceived as an artifact that does something, just as a computer can. But an
instrument played by a musician to cause music is clearly a tool for a person
to produce something else. But my heart, while it may be an instrument for
pumping my blood, is not something I use to pump my blood. It just pumps it. I
don't use my brain to be me (though I may "use" it in a tough exam, say, when
someone says, think man, use your brain -- or your head -- to solve that
problem). The brain just does what it does as my heart does what it does and my
stomach what it does, etc. It's not a matter of my using these organs. So your
analogy is a false one.
SWM
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