[Wittrs] Religion, Mind and How We Work
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 25 May 2010 11:59:02 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Joseph Polanik <jPolanik@...> wrote:
> SWM wrote:
>
> >Joseph Polanik wrote:
>
> >>I cited TLP 5.6 to disqualify Dennett's eliminative materialism.
>
> >How do you think it does that?
> accepting eliminative materialism as a philosophy of consciousness
> presupposes a limiting of one's language; a linguistic lobotomy.
>
No it doesn't. It merely puts different usages in their place. Not all
linguistic usages are applicable in all circumstances. That's an important
feature of language we would all do well to learn and remember.
> >>your claim is that Dennett does not deny subjective experiences
> >>despite wanting to eliminate any language by which we refer to such
> >>experiences.
>
> >He is not interested in eliminating ordinary references to subjective
> >experience
>
> yes, like you, he probably wouldn't try telling his wife and kids that
> his love for them is nothing other than the operation of sex hormones
> and brain chemicals. this is just behavioral denial, the failure to live
> your own philosophy.
>
No it's not. It's nothing to do with one's philosophy of life and living per se
(how we operate in the course of our daily lives) but, rather, with how one
thinks about certain things (in this case minds and the role of brains) in
certain contexts (science, engineering, etc.).
I will agree that this does have implications for one's religious and
behavioral choices, however, just as everything we think has. Thus an interest
in the religious life might well be curtailed by a conviction that there is no
soul, no afterlife, no deity, etc. But that's no different than anything else
as everything ties in, one way or the other. Nevertheless, one would be foolish
to blindly adhere to what one has no basis to believe in merely because one
wants to do so or to turn a blind eye to what seems to be the way things are if
one thinks one has good reason to think that way.
On the other hand, as others here have noted, Wittgenstein suggested that
religious commitment was a function of one's personal choices wihtout regard to
facts in the world, that is, to one's way of operating in the world, one's
feelings and preferences, etc. There is something to be said for that, too.
Personally, I have done the religious thing in a variety of ways over the years
and continue to have respect for that enterprise but it no longer suits me. On
the other hand, my disaffection with religiosity hasn't led me to treat my
wife, children or their children as just a bunch of robots either, or to start
pulling off the legs of helpless insects! Thinking we are just complex organic
machines is not to deny our humanity or to lose respect for life in its many
manifestations. It's a strange conceit of religion to think that it, alone,
offers a path to concern for the world and all that's in it.
Denying dualism (or any of its equivalents) isn't to deny what we are as human
beings but to explain what we are in a different way.
> [the term behavioral denial comes from the counseling professions where
> the paradigmic illustration is the drunk who *says* he wants to stop
> drinking but who hangs out in bars (because that's where his friends
> are) and ends up drinking (to be friendly). I think it applies here
> because of the disconnect inherent in advocating of a theory one refuses
> to self-apply.]
>
What makes you think I don't "self-apply", doctor? Is choosing to give up
formal religious affiliations and practices, after years of engaging in such, a
failure to self-apply? Or is this just about some strange notion of yours that
to think of ourselves as physically based machines (of the organic persuasion)
is to treat all others as mindless automatons or worse?
But why should that connection be made at all? Who says that only a belief that
others are irreducible, non-physical subjects can lead to our treating others
with respect, love, compassion, etc.?
> >or in denying that we have subjective experience. His point is to
> >explain the occurrence of such experiences by reference to something
> >more basic (something constitutive, to use a term that has recently
> >gained some cachet here!) which is not, itself, experience,
> >subjectiveness, etc.
>
> yes, when Dennett says 'the mind is the brain' he is using the is of
> constitution; and, that's where the problem arises. you (and he) want to
> say things like 'X is nothing more than what constitutes X' or 'X is
> nothing other than what constitutes X' or simply 'X is what constitutes
> X'.
>
Well it is, albeit one has to include among the constituent elements not just
the physical elements (whatever their description) but the means of combination
(i.e., the arrangements of the pertinent events, their operating modes, etc.).
A system is more than just its finite parts.
> in physics that may often make perfect sense. it seems quite sensible to
> say that lightning is nothing other than the electrical phenomena that
> constitute it.
>
> however, it is self-refuting to attempt to explain consciousness as
> nothing other than a non-conscious brain activity.
>
That's because it isn't described, on this view, as "nothing other than a
non-conscious brain activity". The thesis offered by Dennett and to which I
subscribe posits that consciousness is a multiplicity of non-conscious brain
activities at various levels, arranged in a certain way and interacting in a
way made possible by that arrangement.
Any given "non-conscious brain activity" (or computational process if we extend
the analogy to computers) is not, itself, what we mean by "consciousness".
Since this hinges on describing consciousness as a system-level feature (or
phenomenon), it does not imply anything about the constituent elements being
conscious themselves -- or needing to be.
> can you say, with a straight face, "I am conscious of being nothing
> other than a non-conscious brain activity".
>
> Joe
Of course not, nor would I want to. (Here I would note in passing that you are
using "conscious" as a synonym for awareness.)
Indeed, on this view our inability to be aware of whatever is going on below
the surface of our aware thought processes would NOT be accessible to us (thus
explaining why it isn't when we look for it), so that there is no reason to
miss that access when we think about it or when we find, when looking for it,
that it isn't there.
What we are conscious of are things that rise to a certain level in their
capacity to affect us, that pass a certain threshold. Lots of things, including
our autonomic nervous systems and the organs such systems control, happen below
the level of our awareness. Our lungs breathe, our heart beats, our blood flows
through our flesh carrying certain important components to our individual
cells, our kidneys process waste, our stomachs and related organs digest what
we eat, our bodies balance, and so forth and so on. There are other things that
happen within our perceptual processing that we don't notice, too (such as the
constant movement of our eyes -- their saccades as Neil has mentioned), either
because we are not equipped to notice them or, in some cases, because we get
used to not noticing them. Indeed, sometimes there's a fine line between what
can never be accessed and what we can learn to have some access to because, in
some cases, the inaccessibility is a function not of a strict exclusion of
access but of a learned reduction of attention and in other instances (with
biofeedback, say) we can learn to access corellary sensations that relate to
some of the things our bodies do without our direct awareness.
In the end, we are very complicated systems, indeed. Why suppose then that,
where the production of consciousness, itself, is concerned, some other kind of
generating mechanism must be in play, especially if we can account for
everything, including consciousness (as Dennnett does) without the presence or
involvement of such an add-on being invoked?
SWM
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