[Wittrs] Re: The Epiphenomenalism of Dennett-Consistent Philosophies of Consciousness
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:15:22 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Justintruth <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
<snip>
> >You further assert "No new principles or types of energy or
> > suppositions about extra-physical phenomena need apply".
>
> Ok since you have defined "physical" to include that which is "not a
> physical thing"
Note that by "physical thing" I am referring to those referents we describe in
terms of observable features which have a distinct form that separates them
from the observable features surrounding them, etc. That is I am using the term
above to denote what we also sometimes call "physical objects". Obviously I am
not suggesting that mind is not physical in another sense, namely the sense of
being entirely derived from the same principles, forces and behaviors of our
physical universe, i.e., I'm saying there is no need to add extra things into
the mix which are not already part of what we mean by the physical universe.
> then the new principle that is needed is not - by
> agreement - as you say "extra-physical". However, since minds are to
> be included in the physical universe and since physics does not
> currently describe their existence in any of their current models a
> modification of the current physics is in fact required. Why?
>
That may be. I don't discount the possibility that something else may be
required. I just conclude, for the reasons previously given (which you may or
may not have already read) that an account like Dennett's looks adequate to me
without adding anything else that is not currently known or accounted for as
part of the physical universe.
> I assert that an "arrangement" of physical things is a physical thing
> and since minds are not physical things
Not entity-like, not physical objects but physically derived is how I would put
it.
> and since the physics predicts
> only a new arrangement of physical things based on an old one, then we
> need this new physical principle to establish the relation between an
> arrangement of physical things and the production of physical non-
> things that are minds ? or if you prefer ? between an arrangement of
> physical things and a newly defined physical aspect of those things,
> different from the current aspects described.
>
I would disagree. There is no evidence or reason to think, at this point, that
we need any kind of new principle to explain how brains operate. It is
possible, of course, that such would be needed. But the mere fact that we
currently don't know what it is about the brain's molecular and cellular
arrangements that makes consciousness happen doesn't imply that the existing
principles of explanation we have at our disposal are insufficient. It just may
be that enough information has not yet been gathered and interpreted using
currently known principles.
> We need this to complete the physics if minds are to be considered
> part of the physical universe that it is the function of physics to
> describe since it currently does not describe it.
>
Physics is an evergrowing science to be sure. There are things it cannot yet
explain or give a satisfactory account of. That there are such things does not
imply that the missing ingredient is an as yet undiscovered principle. It
could, of course, but why make such an assumption without first working with
what we already have?
> The following is I think a very bad (false, and misleading in fact)
> analogy: "Mind, while it may be localized in any given brain, is a
> different category of thing, more akin to the turning of a wheel than
> to the wheel itself." This is a very bad analogy because the turning
> of a wheel is very amply defined in terms of the current physics. The
> turning of a wheel in classic physics is defined in terms of the
> angular velocity of an assembly of particles about an axis referenced
> to some coordinate system. It is an arrangement of matter. Angular
> velocity is the vector cross product of the moment radial vector and
> the velocity vector. The velocity vector is the rate of change of the
> position. There is however, nothing in the physics like this about
> mind or awareness etc. This is the first that is not about predicting
> the arrangement of physical things.
>
The fact that mind is still unexplained does not imply it is of a different
order than what is already explained nor that we must presume a need for a
missing principle, as yet undiscovered, to complete the explanation.
The point of the analogy I made was not to say that turning and mind are the
same thing but to show how we don't always restrict ascriptions of physicality
to finite things. There is no turning in the world the way there is the wheel
but both are physical because one doesn't need anything more than the
descriptions provided by physics to explain either of them.
> Nor can this be excused by the fact that the brain is more complicated
> than a wheel. Clearly the brain is more complicated but it is believed
> that it is operating under the same laws and hence no matter how
> complicated will never achieve awareness as a result of the physical
> description.
THAT is an assumption on your part. In fact, the argument of people like
Dennett (and Edelman, a neurobiologist) is precisely that a certain level of
physical complexity is just what IS required.
> In other words it is not the complexity of the motion
> that is the problem. It is because any motion does not imply awareness
> no matter how complex even if it causes the device to pass the Turing
> test.
>
There is that same assumption of yours again! The argument of people like
Dennett is that complexity is the key, that the jump from what we think of as
inanimate matter to animate mind is achieved by a certain level and kind of
physical activity.
> Nor is there in the physical description a description of water, but
> the chemical one has it and can be considered a working out of the
> physical prediction. Water acts as the current physics predicts. For
> all practical purposes for this discussion chemistry can be considered
> an extension of physics that requires no further laws (or few but
> explicit ones) and also the biological one and finally the
> neurological one.
Implying that from the neurological account we can get to the genesis of minds.
> All of these descriptions are consistent with
> (reducible to) the outcome of current physical prediction and they do
> not require any (or very little) maturation of the physics. The brain,
> no matter how complex its motion can be described as an assembly of
> physical things in motion by the current physics. (Ok, I understand
> quantum mechanics and I understand the relativity of time but without
> an elaborate discussion we can't clarify why they are irrelevant or
> second order discussions at best)
>
Talk to Joe about quantum theory. He is the great advocate on this list for
dualism based on collapsing the quantum wave function!
> It is just that the predicted outcome of physical science, classical
> or modern, does not predict awareness.
Then that is a failure in the current level of the science just as science once
failed to predict the things it predicts today. That is no reason to assume
that there must be some radically new principle still missing in our account
(though it could be the case, of course).
> More precisely they predict the
> object model to the point that its extension into experience on the
> objective side (its description of a measurement device and its
> correlation to the experience of that measurement device in the
> experience of an experimental physicist, and even its extension into
> things like the visibility of a certain portion of the spectrum) is
> obvious. Moreover these correlations are documented in physics texts
> with illustrations. And yet we have the fact that mind (on the
> subjective side) occurs.
>
Yes, we have that fact. The issue is what's needed to account for it? We know
brains are the place where minds happen (at least that is consistent with
today's scientifically based explanations). The issue then is to determine what
it is about brains that effects this. Is it something special and unique goint
on in brains? Do we need to posit an entirely new principle to account for what
brains do? Or a new force in the universe? Or can we do it just by studying and
describing the otherwise perfectly ordinary physical interplay that happens
within brains between their constituent parts?
> Therefore a new physical principle(s) is (are) in fact needed. If
> nothing else the extension of the predictive model into experience
> needs to be extended to the subjective side of experience in the same
> way that physical models currently are extended into an experience in
> the lab.
It's not at all clear that a new principle is needed to account for that. In
fact, Dennett's model posits otherwise and is testable using computational
platforms and, as Stanislas Dehaene, a French neurobiolgical researcher has
shown, studying actual working brains.
> Toward that end using an analogy to the way that physical
> models of say lab equipment are correlated to what the actual lab
> equipment looks like to an experimenter seems a better ? but still
> perhaps ultimately false - fit. In this case we need to emphasize that
> the brain device does not just have an objective appearance but causes
> experience to occur and may in fact be an experimenter. The problem is
> at the root of science itself.
>
The issue of subjectness or subjectivity is not necessarily something science
is not equipped to handle. Many think it is up to it, in fact.
> I am never sure what Dennett is saying and I suspect that might be a
> didactic device on his part attempting to be provocative perhaps and
> obscuring the issue to do so.
Dennett is sometimes provocative and often polemical. But he is a clear, if
verbose, writer in my experience. However, the subject matter is susceptible to
much misreading because so many of the terms involved are vague, ambiguous,
have multiple meanings and belong, ultimately, in a realm of reference that is
not amenable to ordinary language. As Wittgenstein showed years ago, language
is public in its provenance, it has its genesis and field of operation within a
community of speakers with shared access to things. But subjective experience
is, by definition, unshared and so language doesn't fit it very well. We try,
by metaphor, expressiveness and, often, extensive description (that exceeds
what we typically need for talk about public things), to compensate. But we are
not always successful and, indeed, perhaps we never can be, at least not with
the degree of definiteness we achieve in our talk about the things we all share
access to.
> But it is clear that if he thinks that
> any physical motion, however complex, when considered as an object in
> motion as understood by the current physics, is awareness, then he has
> not understood the meaning of either the terms of the physics or the
> term awareness.
You should not take my use of the wheel and its turning as an example of his
claim. I merely present that analogy as a way of showing that not everything we
call physical must be object-like. Thus, my point is that we can extend this to
consciousness, too, i.e., we can call it "physical" (in the sense of being part
of the physical reality of the universe, physically derived) without stepping
outside the bounds of what we typically do with language in other venues. That
is, I am pointing out that it is perfectly legitimate to imagine consciousness
as physical in THIS sense, even while agreeing that it isn't physical the way
an apple or a chair are.
> I take away from your response that he is not saying
> that. Thank you for that clarification. However, then some additional
> principles are needed for physics. I think it is the task of neurology/
> cybernetics to find them and it is doing so.
>
Perhaps a new principle or principles will be needed. At this juncture,
however, I see no reason to hasten down that path when we haven't fully
explored the current paths we have.
> So either Dennett is not saying that mind is a physical thing but he
> is saying that mind is just a kind of motion of a physical thing which
> again is plainly false once you see the meaning of the terms, or else
> Dennett is saying that the physical universe contains more than what
> is currently described in the physical model.
Neither. Nearby I actually offered a little of Dennett in response to something
Joe had challenged me on. Perhaps that's a good place to start in getting clear
on Dennett's position since it's in his own words.
> You told me which. I
> believe you are saying the latter.
No.
> In that case the mind can be
> considered "non-physical" meaning "not in the current physical model"
> but can be considered "physical" when the current physics is extended
> to include awareness.
>
No. That's not my point.
> When I say I am aware I do not mean that the mechanism of my brain
> moves in a certain way although, no doubt, the fact that I am aware is
> caused by that motion.
>
Right.
> Recently I accompanied a friend of mine to the hospital as she was
> suffering temporary amnesia. I could during that evening repeat a
> series of questions and she literally would repeat (as the nurses say
> she became "loopy"). She became very much (uncanny) like a machine and
> I was very concerned for her. Each time she looped I was concerned
> precisely because I knew the fear she was experiencing. I was relieved
> when she would forget what was happening and start all over with the
> question: "Where am I?" as her anxiety was also erased by the fact
> that she no longer remembered and she experienced relief. If I were to
> have considered her to be solely what the current physics predicts I
> would not have cared as she would just have been an assembly of
> particles moving.
>
We all may just be such an assembly even so, though that need not be to say
that our particular configured arrangement lacks consciousness, etc.
> I have wondered what it would be like to be a brain running backwards
> ? but I suspect that this missing principle that I suggest exists
> would not allow it because I conjecture that the famous "arrow of
> time" and the information theory on which it is ultimately based will
> one day be associated with mind and with the new principle and the old
> principles of entropy would prevent it. I think running a mind
> backward would violate entropy (although in the extremely unlikely
> case!) I conjecture that for mind to exist the device associated with
> it must consume energy (but maybe not!).
>
This goes too far afield for me. I don't know quite how to respond to proposals
for time machines and such!
> I think we need a new physical principle (and investigative
> techniques) to state under what conditions an assembly of particles
> becomes aware.
I don't nor am I convinced by your presentation that we do. If current paths
proved unsuccessful over a reasonable period of time your approach might look
more promising but as of now, it doesn't seem to be required.
> I am aware that it is not just a simple "becomes aware"
> but each of the many components of awareness needs to be associated
> with those physical motions that are associated with it. I believe
> that that program is being accomplished by neurology and cybernetics.
In what way?
> Its findings need to be scrutinized carefully for the new physical
> principles.
>
> Perhaps Searle is wrong and his Chinese room is ? literally ?
> consciousness.
>
Take a look at Dennett on Searle (the subject of my recent response to Joe)
then.
> One other thing: You mentioned: "..a lot of people get their backs up,
> perhaps because they want to see a distinction between minds and
> brains, a distinction that makes the mind different" There is I think
> a larger program here. Certain religious experience is founded on a
> collapse of the subject object distinction but it is not an
> identification of mind and brain in the sense being proposed by
> Dennett.
Right, it is not.
> In fact the motivation "to get one's back up" is really to
> not allow the sidetrack at this point. Down the road is the discussion
> about what "external" and "internal" are and the implications for
> ethics and Wittgenstein's role can be had but the conversation has to
> stay on track at this point. If we simply claim that the mind is the
> brain in motion and do not modify our understanding of what the brain
> then is, we do indeed throw the baby out with the bathwater.
>
Again I think you take the wrong message from my wheel analogy. Yes, I will
agree that "in motion" is relevant to the causal explanation but I am not
proposing that the mind is fully describable by reference to any such motion.
> But I thank you for providing me the input that Dennett does not
> simply claim that the mind is the motion of the brain. I had actually
> been confused by him on that point as I carefully read one of his
> papers and saw him clearly say that he was not challenging the
> existence of consciousness ? only its special character.
Yes, many get him wrong on that!
> He then
> however seemed to go on latter and imply at least that he was ? and
> everything I read about what he thinks says (or very strongly implies)
> that he thinks it is too.
To say that what we think of as our selves, our conscious minds, is reducible
to more basic constituents, to physical processes going on in brains, etc., is
NOT to say we don't have selves or minds or consciousness! It is merely to say
they are explainable in terms of physical events, etc.
> I think he does not emphasize or clarify
> this point in his more popular venues as well as you have.
>
He tends to be verbose rather than concise, I think. In the nearby post in
which I transcribed text from Dennett's Consciousness Explained which I had
sought out for Joe (because Joe had challenged my claim that Dennett had
accused Searle of what Joe likes to call "substance dualism"), I had to type an
awful lot of words covering some three or four pages in order to show him
making that point. Rather than making the simple statement, he just goes round
and round. It was very annoying for me since I'd have much preferred a simple
declarative from him. But that's just how he writes and, I suspect, it's also
why so many have trouble getting his point. He is a clear, down-to-earth
writer, but he isn't a tight and precise one. There is a difference.
> Perhaps in the future as we achieve biological mastery we can
> experiment by being various devices and have sufficient memory
> connection to remember what we were when we were that. We need
> physical principles that determine what the effect of arranging matter
> is with respect to the subjective experience it produces.
Well that's an interesting proposal. I take it you are suggesting the transfer
of minds from brains to some other physical platforms?
If that is doable at all, it will have to be because a model like Dennett's is
correct.
SWM
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