Let’s discuss Amie Thomasson’s paper A Nonreductivist Solution to Mental Causation. I’ll save my thoughts for the comment thread.
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The Skeptical Zone
"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken."
I would be inclined to think it bad form to update your own entry.
Maybe so. It’s pretty clear that a lot of people do it (or cause one of their PR people to do it on their behalf), though. E.g., the page on Gary Lucas, a guy I used to collaborate with musically, was clearly put up there by Gary or under his instructions–it’s just another version of his website. I think that’s pretty common in the entertainment world, anyhow.
Another milestone in the philosophical development of BruceS!
This approach amounts to giving a systematic account of what the brain does. But brains cannot be systematized. We are all different. Our brains develop to solve our own individual problems.
Neuroscience can work for those aspects of the brain that are systematizable, but that is unlikely to answer the problems that philosophy of mind wants to answer. And philosophy of mind suffers from a similar problem.
Systematization gives us big picture answers. It does not give us fine detail answers. But the brain seems to have evolved to take care of those fine details, for life depends on getting those right.
I don’t think the externalism stuff is relevant to scientific investigations. In fact, I’m not sure it COULD be. The externalist claims that the exact internal states can have have different semantic results in different circumstances precisely because “meanings ain’t in the head.”
I think that gives a nice picture of the relevance/irrelevance of philosophy to empirical science. Putnam says in the blog entry that the philosophers are useful “gadflies.” I think they’re needed to remind the scientists just what empirical investigations can never tell us–no matter how sophisticated they get.
How are details more important than a general principle? Surely “be cautious” easily takes care of a bunch of cases in life that a ton of details would that amount to the same principle. And the brain easily generalizes and applies general principle for survival.
But don’t brains easily also take care of systematized generalizations and general principles besides details? Isn’t the general principle “be cautious” easily applicable to many life cases that otherwise would require a huge burden of details that actually amount to the same principle? And isn’t it the brain handling both the principles and the specifics?
How is life depentent on getting fine details right? Isn’t brain efficient both in observing all the scales, both the particular and the general? Isn’t it the brain that systematizes the big picture, and since it’s doing that, then isn’t it perhaps evolved to do precisely that?
Hi Erik and welcome to TSZ. First comments have to be approved but any subsequent comments will appear immediately.
I thought I was already registered. I was logged out, so I logged in again, and then the thing kept saying to me duplicate deleted when nothing got posted, so of course I kept retrying. You can remove the re-posts.
What I meant by that, is that Newton’s laws aren’t the most useful when it comes to finding food, water, etc. Instead, you need a more detailed knowledge of the local terrain.
Ah, so what you meant was that something totally irrelevant to finding food won’t help you find food. Of course detailed knowledge of the fleas in the pillow or of the structure of the pine tree on the yard won’t help you find food either but what’s the wisdom in this?
What, among other things, helps you find food is the general urge to look for it, a sense of hunger and its association with food, and general discernment of edible things. And moderation of your urges will help you to not scare the prey away the moment you spot it. Lots of general principles at work to get you food.
Are you saying individuality is a science stopper? It does not seem to have stopped other aspects of biology and the behavioral sciences.
Did you have any specific problems in mind?
I agree that not just neuroscience and individual psychology would be involved in understanding externalism. A full study of human language would need to add the relevant aspects of the psychology of group interaction, the interactions of language communities with other communities, and the interaction of human communities and the world.
But the full understanding of evolutionary theory has the same breadth: all the way from genes and their expression through individual development to population genetics and ecology. That breadth has not stopped the theory from being considered as a whole.
So for studying meaning, philosophers of language and mind could help formulate the questions, analyse the concepts, critique the theories across domains and research programs, much as they do for evolutionary theory.
Unless you think that there is something non-naturalizable in language and intentionality?
In other threads, I’ve understood you to say that the Dennett’s ideas on intentionality, at least as presented in those threads, missed the point of what human meaning was. But other than some references to AT in a post to me, I cannot recall you to have said much more about what you thought meaning did involve –eg which if any of the major theories of meaning you thought were closest to the mark.
Is that silence your way of hinting you think there is something so mysterious as to be non-naturalizable in meaning?
I’d question the use of “never tell us” and replace it by “have yet to tell us”. Unless one really is a mysterian. And even if one is, I don’t think the vast majority of philosophers working with he sciences take that point of view.
I don’t mean to say that there is knowledge that does NOT come from science where philosophy might take a different role in its discovery. I’m only referring to knowledge which all agree is in the domain of science to attempt to uncover.
ETA: An interesting question discussed in the Chalmers presentation at the conference I linked is this: when do we agree that science HAS told us the answer to a question that we agreed was in its domain. Is it philosophers who make that assessment? Or do philosophers simply recognize that a scientific consensus has been reached, and that therefore we have a best answer? Paul C and others defended the second point of view, and that makes sense to me. (Of course, all the usual provisos of fallibility apply).
I rely on feedly to notify me of new entries in blogs that interest me.
But it can be a time waster if you use it to follow too many sites, especially magazine and newspaper blogs. I’ve recently trimmed my list of followed blogs to prevent this.
No, not at all.
I’m saying that it is a philosophy stopper.
It needn’t be. But it is, by virtue of the way that philosophy is done.
Neuroscience cannot solve the problems in philosophy of mind.
Let me try this a second time.
No, individuality is not a science stopper. But, in a sense, it is a phyics stopper. That’s why we have biology as a separate science rather than as a branch of physics.
Biology is also systematic. But it systematizes at a more localized level than does physics.
Bruce, you ask hard questions!
So, OK, let’s see. I do think that intentionality is, as you put it, unnaturalizable, that it’s basic. I don’t have a theory of meaning. The stuff I like is a mish-mash of Wittgenstein, Hall, and Tarski, but I’m not (and never will be) competent to put this and that passage I admire all together into a theory. Finally, I don’t think science is the right place to look for answers to metaphysical questions (like what are the boundaries of science). Hall had an early paper on Metaphysics in some Dagobert Runes melange back in the 40s in which he discussed this at length. I’ve put a couple of short excerpts from that article here
But, unfortunately, I don’t think I got much into the stuff where he discusses the particular question you’re asking here. I’m not sure I could make a bright line between, e.g., theoretical physics and philosophy of science, but when the issues get extremely general/categorial, I believe the inquiry has moved into metaphysics and the scientists are often pretty bad at that kind of thing. I have a suspicion that AT’s forthcoming book on ontology will be useful on this subject, but I’ve not seen any of it, so I could be wrong. Also, she’s a bit more of a Carnapian about external/internal questions than I am, so I might not be entirely sympathetic.
Shocking!
No, individuality is not a science stopper. But, in a sense, it is a phyics stopper. That’s why we have biology as a separate science rather than as a branch of physics.
Wait! Don’t tell me physics is almost as bad as philosophy!!
They’re no problem where they are unless you’d rather I delete them. If so, I’d be happier with a specific link.
BTW, are you the E. Seigner I saw posting at UD recently and prior to that at Ed Feser’s blog?
The discussion seems to have moved on already, so I guess it ceased to be a problem.
Yes.
nice to know.
It’s interesting that these names are from some time ago. I assume from previous stuff you’ve posted that by Wittgenstein you mean the Tractatus version.
Given those dates for your tastes in philosophy, I hesitate to ask about your taste in popular music.
From your attitude to intentionality, I’d guess that you don’t think consciousness is can be naturalized, at least without some form of panpsychism.
Thanks for the Hall paper excerpts — I’ve skimmed it and the topics are not close to what I am currently interested in, but it helps me to understand where your interests lie.
I agree that these types of questions are philosophical. Probably where we disagree is on how much science knowledge is needed in addition to philosophy to answer them fully.
The AT book has an abstract at her site. My layperson’s one sentence summary of the abstract: the metaphysics of existence is easy and most of the past controversies have been a unnecessary.
Possibly that’s a bit too simplistic…
Are you planning to read KN’s book?
I’m not sure if individuality is the right word. After all, every massive object at human scale or larger in the universe has a different number of atoms, but GR works for all of them.
I would go with “complexity”, instead, but don’t ask me to define that word non-circularly (eg, it’s the stuff that physics cannot not explain intelligibly).
I agree with the spirit of what I understand you to be saying.
Care to elaborate on “the way that philosophy is done” in more than one or two sentences? There seem to be many ways of doing philosophy of mind.
Any specific problem in mind? Or just the whole kit and caboodle as lumped under philosophy 201: philosophy of mind.
Even Chalmers believes a suitable extended science may solve them (as I understand him, he means a science with panpsychic entities of some sort added). He sees Tononi and Koch, who are scientists as well as panpsychists of a certain sort, as doing that type of work.
Sure. But if a guy is hungry, then studying GR is not going to help him find something to eat. What he needs to know is something far more localized to his situation.
And this brings me back to my long term disagreement with “knowledge = justified true belief”. To a first approximation, our beliefs are big picture items — what we share with others in the larger community. But knowledge — or at least what I see as knowledge — starts at a far more localized level.
Here’s why that is important. Our brains did not evolve to give us the big picture beliefs. Our ability to do that is a side effect. Our brains evolved to handle the localized stuff; to handle what will help us find the next meal.
In a way, traditional epistemology makes sense. The big picture beliefs are, roughly speaking, the knowledge of the academy. But since the brain did not evolve for those, you cannot use it as a basis for philosophy of mind. Or, if you do, all you will get is the big picture view from the perspective of the academy.
So when some philosophers argue that there can only be derived intentionality, we should understand that as “the academy can only have derived intentionality.” When they argue that consciousness is an illusion, we should understand that as “the academy cannot be conscious”.
What the Chalmers “hard problem” amounts to, in effect, is “how can the academy have qualia?” And, of course, it cannot. The closest it can get is with the theater. So Dennett attacks the “Cartesian Theater”. But much of Dennett’s own philosophy is such that the theater is as close as one can get to consciousness (i.e. consciousness for the academy).
I have a different understanding of how “justified true belief” relates to philosophy of mind.
I’d parse “justified true belief” into three separate issues, only some of which are of direct interest to philosophy of mind:
1. How can we have propositional attitudes like belief towards contents. That I take as the problem of intentionality. I understand the point of Millikan’s program (and others like hers) as trying to understand how we could have evolved to have such a capability. That seems directly related to what you think philosophy of mind should be.
There is also the separate but related issue of how much of that capability to represent is innate and how much develops as we mature. I suspect there is a lot of philosophy which looks at this type of learning, although I am not that familiar with it.
2. How can beliefs be true. I understand that issue to be one of two separate concerns: about semantics, what is it for a proposition to be true, or about mental representations, how can brains/minds represent and misrepresent.
I’d put the semantics into philosophy of language and mental contents into philosophy of mind, where it is also addressed as part of the work I mentioned in 1.
3. When is “true belief” justifiably called knowledge. This is about norms, I think. It seems to me that much modern work deals with how to avoid using “knowledge” to refer to beliefs that are true due to luck despite appearing to be justified. I agree that it is not something that is as of direct interest to philosophy of mind as the first two issues are.
I am not sure I follow the above paragraphs. When you refer to issues with “the academy”, by that noun do you mean philosophers (more particularly, modern analytic philosophers).
What especially puzzles me is what you could mean by “how the academy can have qualia”. Is that a shortform for saying “how we can have qualia the way philosophy has defined them”. If not, what do you mean by the phrase? How can an academic discipline or maybe a class of academics “have qualia” in some other sense?
We can’t and we don’t.
That is to say, our attitudes are not propositional, and “content” as used this way is a misnomer.
Never.
I might come back and say more on this. But maybe I should instead post on my own blog, going into where I disagree.
To me, belief is necessarily emotional, while knowledge is completely unemotional. People have gone to war over the resurrection, but nobody goes to war over Newton’s laws or over GR.
And to me. I’m sure there is a genetic element to the propensity to believe in imaginary entities.
I’ve been influenced by both early and late Witt. There are probably more things I disagree with in late Witt., but that may only be because the Tractatus is so hard to understand.
If it helps, I played a bunch of Meshuggah for our trick-or-treaters the other night. Also some Tibetan throat singing.
I don’t know that panpsychism would help.
Maybe. But there’s a ton of stuff I’d like to read. His interests aren’t exactly in my wheelhouse. (I’m thinking of Brandom, in particular.) If I had time to devote exclusively to my own philosophical interests, I think I’d write something on qualia, focusing on (at least) Putnam, Block, Raffman, Pautz, Wright, and Siegal. That would mean a lot of (non-KN) reading.
Also, I prefer pdfs to books, since I mostly carry around SONY (not Kindle) readers, and my house is too full of effing books.
Really? People get killed or kill themselves over that stuff. Alas poor Galileo, should have stuck to science.
Tononi and his integrated information theory(PDF) seems to have some overlap with Michael Graziano’s ideas on attention schema theory. KN also mentioned Michael Tomasello and his book, A Natural History of Human Thinking. There seems plenty of scope for research into human thinking without resorting to dualism.
Is this quote supposed to be more reminiscent of “Birdman” or “Synecdoche, NY?”
In the interests of proper attribution, that quote is from Neil.
Right: I knew that. Sorry for the confusion.
I’m not sure they are using “information” in the same way. Tononi has a highly mathematical definition of integrated information. As best I can tell from a quick re-skim of G’s book, especially ch 3, Graziano never formally defines his usage of the term. For him, “information” seems to refer to how the configuration of the signalling and connectivity of neurons causally varies to represent the outside world.
But I may be reading him wrong. Possibly someone will let me know if I am ready G wrong….
The interesting thing about Tononi’s panpsychism is that it comes out of the theory, rather than being assumed as a primitive property from the start. For him, the “amount of consciousness” is measured by how much IIT a physical structure instantiates. To be consistent he is forced to attribute a very small amount of consciousness even to diodes. He bites the bullet on that sort of panpsychism. So I’d say for him it is more about being consistent than about accepting (property) dualism from the start.
I’d agree that what one chooses to believe in is partly emotional, at least for unconsidered beliefs, and maybe even after consideration.
I’m not sure if that means beliefs are emotional entities. But I am rarely sure what Neil means when he uses terms from philosophy…
OK. It would be great if you included a glossary, as I think you have your own way of using terms like “knowledge”, “belief”, “propositional attitude”, “representation”.
Would you post a link here to your blog if you do post something?
If you do, maybe you’ll post something, The last four, especially, seem to have embraced the dark side of the force, at least from where I sit.
KN’s book is pretty far from what I have read in philosophy and hence I’ll struggle with it
I was hoping to use it as a learning opportunity, but, that would have required a lot of give and take with KN. Understandably, he has more important things to do.
But I’ll buy it anyway.
BruceS,
You think Tononi subscribes to panpsychism?
OK.
It seems you are as mystified as I am by what Neil means by that paragraph.
People don’t go to war over controversies in science. Galileo was threatened by the Church. Pretty much makes the point. People go to war over beliefs that cannot be decided by evidence.
Only in the special sense I described in my post. Take a look at the link to his stuff you provided, specifically the section “Consciousness as a graded quantity”
BruceSpetrushka,
>,
Ever read. ‘Case of the Midwife Toad’?
I’m guessing that I got referenced in this because you did a reply on your phone.
On your “Birdman” or “Synecdoche, NY” question or Neil, is your point something about the recursion and self referenced in these movies (I’ve only seen second one)? That is, are you taking Neil’s “academy” to refer to the homunculi in Dennett’s homuncular functionalism?
Or are you just trying to out do him in Delphicity (Delphicness?)
It’s a slow day, so no need to use your phone to answer if that is all you have access to now.
Right. Plus they, like Neil, are focused on “the theater.”
I missed the theater pun. Good one.
If Neil really was alluding to the multiple drafts model, I think the analogy fails because the lower level of recursion have to be simpler and its not clear how his comparison tries to capture that.
Plus I still don’t understand why he chose the word “academy”, which I associated initially with the academic establishment (in philosophy in this context).
I suspect I’d do better in following Neil if I had read and understood more symbolic poetry.
Midwifetoad is my name at AtBC.
I mention it because I think it shows that ostensibly scientific positions can sometimes also border on kind of religious fanaticism. A number of threads on this very site are indicative.
Anyhow, I’m not continuing this discussion without a fireplace poker.
The main thing to remember is that some mean old philosopher spanked him in front of a lot of family and friends (and, I think one special girl) when he was seven.
That guy is long dead now thankfully, but Neil is getting his revenge anyhow, by proving that the whole discipline is evil and dastardly–besides just being no damn good.