This Strawson piece just appeared in the NY Times.
It’s a position that I found attractive long ago. FWIW, I preferred Strawson’s father as a philosopher but I give the son some credit for consistently pushing this position for years. (IIRC, correctly, he also has no sympathy for compatibalism, and is an old-fashioned hard determinist.
What do y’all think?
An excerpt:
Every day, it seems, some verifiably intelligent person tells us that we don’t know what consciousness is. The nature of consciousness, they say, is an awesome mystery. It’s the ultimate hard problem. The current Wikipedia entry is typical: Consciousness “is the most mysterious aspect of our lives”; philosophers “have struggled to comprehend the nature of consciousness.”
I find this odd because we know exactly what consciousness is — where by “consciousness” I mean what most people mean in this debate: experience of any kind whatever. It’s the most familiar thing there is, whether it’s experience of emotion, pain, understanding what someone is saying, seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or feeling. It is in fact the only thing in the universe whose ultimate intrinsic nature we can claim to know. It is utterly unmysterious.
(Edited by Neil Rickert, to avoid possible copyright problems).
Right. Plantinga makes basically the same argument.
It’s your universe. I don’t understand why you keep trying to fit all the rest of it into it.
I’d be interested in evidence that consciousness could be physical.
Somehow a lot of words get written, but that evidence is never forthcoming.
Maybe they don’t think it’s physical.
If someone showed you an example of a physical consciousness you would deny it.
Whereas to me it doesn’t make sense to have a statement like, “Nothing in the world we see is self-sufficient – except the brain.” No special pleading, thanks.
That’s a big if. What if the brain can’t do all the work of etc? Where did you get that it can? Dead people also have brains, but it doesn’t seem to work for them.
The homunculus as you call it makes the difference between life and death. For you, I take it, this is not something that needs to be explained. It can simply be sort of glossed over. If you cannot put life in a box and show it at neuroscientists’ conference, then it doesn’t exist, right?
More to the point, where did you get that it cannot?
Out if interest, if something else other than the brain is out there is doing that “work” is that something the last step in that chain, or is there something else out there doing the “work” for that thing also?
Presumably under your schema, the “dead” brain is functioning just as well as an alive one (as life is not part of the physical brain is it) and therefore dead people must be able to perceive themselves rotting.
When is the connection severed between brains and the other, if at all?
The next step is to demonstrate that dead people are conscious.
You welcome. And thanks for the award.
Do you have an actual objection that you would like answered?
On physicalism, a dead brain is as much a brain as a live brain. Supposedly, you just keep adding “complexity” and it begins to do amazing things. In reality, you can keep building amazingly complex whatever, it never becomes alive just because of complexity. The same oddity is present in ID theory.
No, this is presumably so on physicalism, because physicalism has no definition for life.
If your definition for life is biological, then let’s note that death seems to be as much part of biology as life is. An organism may be fully alive at one moment and fully dead the next moment, while physically keeping the same configuration. KN seems to think this requires no explanation.
Not true, by definition.
ETA:
Unless you die at ground zero in a nuclear explosion, you do not die in a moment. When blood circulation stops, cells begin dying of asphyxiation, slowly. Some will not get the news for days.
Asphyxiation is a change of configuration. It is chemistry.
That’s an interesting point.
Why would one need a “definition for life” in order to take note of the numerous differences that occur at certain junctures? Definitions are admittedly difficult, but, fortunately, they’re not always necessary. When there’s a flat line, we pretty much know we’ve got death–a few Lazari notwithstanding.
If you are totally ignorant of biology.
Is there a bacterium homunculus that explains the difference between a living bacterium and a dead one? Is there a tree homunculus that explains the difference between a living tree and a dead one? Is there a frog homunculus that explains the difference between a living frog and a dead one?
I do not see how positing the existence of an immaterial entity that is undetectable by any causal intervention with the spatio-temporal nexus helps explain the difference between (1) systems that can maintain themselves at a far-from-equilibrium thermodynamic relation with their the larger systems in which they are embedded and (2) systems that are at thermodynamic equilibrium with the larger systems in which they are embedded. The difference between (1) and (2) is all the difference there is between life and death.
But physicalism does distinguish between “operational” and “broken”. Where did you get this silly idea:
Sooo completely not what physicalism states or what any physicalist holds. Physicalists are quite knowledgeable about the what constitutes a “working brain” and the factors that underlie a “non-working” brain.
Once again, the folks who claim to have access to some “infallible minded god” can’t seem to demonstrate any access to that fount of accurate knowledge…
Electronic repair would be difficult if one assumed that a broken device was indistinguishable from one that works.
Seriously, this dead person physically indistinguishable from live person is copied from the stupidest and most ignorant of creationist tracts.
Proof that even some live brains are not used.
I get the feeling that folks like FMM and Erik and the like are actually fighting against this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodAtheist?from=Main.StrawAtheist
And in so doing, they come across as this:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KnightTemplar
Well, obviously there must be. According to Erik, matter in inert. And a live bacterium is not inert. So there must be a homunculus.
There must be a food homunculus, too. For, if matter is inert, one could not get nutrition from matter. So the nutrition must come from the food homunculus. And it must be a robust homunculus, to survive cooking.
But here’s what I want to know. When we buy food, we usually pay for it by weight. So how can I tell how much of that weight is from inert matter, and how much is from the food homunculus?
</sarcasm>
Oh my, a can of worms from your link:
When there’s a flat line, we know that we’ve got death, but this doesn’t tell us why we’ve got death.
Your statement here begins with a why, so I assume that you take why-questions to be legitimate. Assuming that why-questions are legitimate, we will need definitions for death/life in order to answer why-questions about them.
Is there no difference between a living entity and a dead one? If there is, then what’s the difference? How can you tell (explain) the difference?
So, the difference is “can” in (1). Why can they, but (2) can not? What’s the physical organ or cog that makes (1) maintain themselves, while (2) cannot maintain themselves? I say that if there is no such physical organ or cog, then the difference is immaterial.
For a physicalist, there should be a physical entity for everything. If not, define your type of physicalism.
When there is nothing physical making the difference, but the difference is obviously there (because we can verify if someone is dead or not), then the difference is there for immaterial reasons and it’s unwarranted to say that it’s “undetectable by any causal intervention with the spatio-temporal nexus”. Since the difference is visible, there is evident “causal intervention” if you will, except that it’s not deterministic or mechanistic. We are talking about will and consciousness after all.
If you honestly want to talk about will and consciousness, you must first accept what we know about them for certain – they have never been seen or objectively isolated, thus they are invisible and objectively undetectable. You cannot rigidly posit that they must be physical objects just because you are more comfy with tangible things. Such approach would be unscientific.
Oh crud…meant to redact that before posting the link…
(/sarcasm)
We have to have meaning for “death” and “life,” which we do.
Life is very complex, and so is its breakdown. We know a number things about death, we don’t know everything and we don’t have to in order to recognize the difference.
Oh well, you’re clearly no biologist, or otherwise in possession of knowledge that pertains to the matter.
And you actually think you know about “physicalism,” with such a gross misunderstanding of what it’s about.
Learn about it, rather than demanding a simplistic “definition” for it. Learning about it (actually, learning about science, since “physicalism” is more a sack term than anything else) is what is necessary, not your feeble attempts to jamb it into your present poor understanding.
Complete nonsense. There is a host of things physical making the difference. It differs from one cause of death to another. Electrolyte imbalances kill by destroying nerve conduction, which leads to the heart stopping and cell death by lack of oxygen. Asphyxiation kills by lack of oxygen, of course, but the organism dies before most cells do, because brain cells die much more quickly from a lack of oxygen. Essentially, cell death comes by the loss of organization–the cell can no longer function as a living entity.
Learn some biology so you can even begin to discuss these matters.
Very deterministic, and “mechanistic” if you prefer the word. We know how to kill things, we do it all of the time with weeds, bugs, and vertebrates.
Meaningless. There’s no objective difference between objective and subjective, but they are merely convenient terms for what is actually all more on the “subjective” side of things (we really know everything as subjects, with no magical non-subjective understanding possible, but some subjective things take on a more factual sense to us, hence we call them “objective”). We certainly have detected our consciousness. “Will” I don’t even think exists as something on its own, but is simply what we call a confluence of desires and intentions.
We can certainly note how intimately tied to and affected by the “physical” it is. That is scientific, and your attempts to use your very faulty knowledge of biology to make space for magic is unscientific.
Glen Davidson
It’s scary sometimes to see what theists believe about science.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HollywoodScience
(yeah…been reading this site a lot recently. Just plain apt and darn funny.)
This is the kind of derangement — parent induced — that Dawkins had in mind when he spoke of religious indoctrination as child abuse.
The utter inability to think sensibly about things that can be settled empirically.
How effing ignorant do you have to be argue — in public, where people can see you — that a dead person is physically the same as a live person.
Or that cellular death is not instantaneous, and there is a period between the stopping of the heart and the onset of irreversible processes.
http://www.glasswings.com.au/comics/idrewthis/d/20050516.html
Can be settled or has been settled? There’s a decisive difference.
If this question has been settled empirically, then surely you can inform me what the physical difference between a dead and a live person is. Surely you noticed it when I asked it the first time.
And during that period the processes are reversible and the heart can, mechanically every time, be restarted? To me it seems like sometimes yes, sometimes no. Again, what is the specific physical difference that determines if you’ll stay alive or not?
What if someone says, “Intelligent design is very complex, and so is its breakdown. We know a number of things about it, we don’t now everything and we don’t have to in order to recognize the difference [between an intelligently designed thing and non].” What would you reply?
You sound quite committed and serious.
That it’s a nonsense statement.
I was actually generalizing from facts. Your hypothetical is just a meaningless pretense that something entirely different (that is simple and simplistic) is the same.
Glen Davidson
Yes, I am committed and serious about getting matters right.
You seem…less so.
Glen Davidson
Are you trying to argue that there are no physical determinants for whether or not a person can be revived?
I’m quite content conceding that we don’t know in advance whether a person will survive a heart stoppage. In fact I had an uncle-in-law whose heart continued for 25 years after his brain stopped recording new memories.
I think we went round and round about this on a previous thread. That’s okay. your brain stopped recording new thoughts a long time ago.
Erik, you could learn a lot about the physicality of consciousness from taking care of a brain injured loved one for 25 years or so. In fact, this would be such a valuable educational experience, I sincerely hope you are not deprived of the opportunity.
I’d ask, “where’s the body?”
Seriously, assuming by “intelligent design” you are referring to the phenomenon (and not the human activity* as that’s whole different concept) and not the supposed area of study of said phenomena in general, then the question relating to the analogy to our understanding of life and death suffers from the fallacy of Weak Analogy (to say nothing of question begging.)
For our (albeit limited) understanding of life and death, we have bodies. Lots of them. Billions upon billions upon billions actually. And while there are holes in many aspects of our understanding of why life occurs and why it ceases, we actually have some areas we know about in ridiculous detail, particularly when it comes to understanding what processes occur during life, why they stop working, and what happens when they stop working. And we have those bodies…and the histories of many, many, many of those bodies, so we know in billions of cases what happened between when something was living and why it died.
So, where’s this supposed “intelligent design” body? Or any artifact? Where’s any dividing line between something encompassing this “intelligent design” phenomenon and when it no longer contains intelligent design? Where’s an example of the supposed “complex breakdown” you mention. I mean, according to the “experts”, there’s no state change supposedly with this “intelligent design” phenomenon; either something is supposedly the result of intelligent design or something isn’t. So it doesn’t appear that the two frameworks of phenomena are similar in that respect. That would be an example of the weak analogy fallacy.
But let’s keep going anyway. So far, no one seems to be capable of pointing to the actual phenomenon of this supposed “intelligent design”, so that’s a problem. The purveyors of this concept insist (unlike life and death) that the phenomenon is inferred. Ok. What are the entailments of some body (artifact) from which this phenomenon is inferred? Dembski once touted the concept of “CSI” as one of those entailments, but alas no one’s ever been able to show anything actually has any “CSI”, let alone calculate any sort of relative measure for it. FIASCO or whatever other acronyms that have been offered seem to have fallen to the same fate.
Which then brings up the question regarding your analogy above: What are the “number of things about it” that anyone actually knows? Can any be listed? Can even one item concerning what is supposed known about “intelligent design” be listed? Anything? I’ve been on these and other boards for years and never seen one item. If you’ve got one, it would be interesting to compare it to what we know regarding other phenomenon.
* Of course, there is intelligent design that we know about: human intelligent design. No “CSI”, “FSCO/I”, or “FIASCO” necessary for identification; we have the designers themselves, the designs themselves, and the products of those designs. Easy-peazey to study that phenomenon. Alas, it does not in anyway imply or provide any information about any other type of designer beyond humans or human designs .
It’s scary sometimes to see what atheists believe about science. Or philosophy. Or theology.
The next step is to demonstrate that dead people are not physical.
I take it that you believe that both the sun and the earth are alive.
The utter inability to think sensibly about things that cannot be settled empirically.
Good. I am asking the same thing. What is that physical thing which makes the difference between a live entity and a dead one? If there is no such physical thing, but there is a difference between a live entity and a dead one, then the difference is non-physical.
I wonder what the “radio brain” gang’s thoughts are on babies. If our consciousness was indeed being transmitted odd how you have to learn how to be a human from scratch, from end to end. Mentally and physically. Why, if you are already consciousness somewhere else?
But I probably overestimate their thought capacity.
lol, Mung, just caught some of your comments there. Honestly, repeating what the adults say back onto them is not half as clever as you think it is.
For human consciousness, matter may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for consciousness. I can build a computer that can say “ouch” when I inflict the equivalent of some sort of “painful” input on its sensors. No matter how complex the system is, and how human-like its behavior to a pain response is, I don’t think it will experience pain like a human soul is able to experience it, it can only recite what is programmed into it with no feeling.
By way of extension, suppose hypothetically we could create a complex chemical system that can be programmed to give a pain response like a computer. It doesn’t seem it will know pain like a human soul.
And from a totally different angle, I don’t think consciousness is reducible to matter, and neither do a few physicists.
And:
Praise for the book QuantumEnigma:
Why isn’t the answer “metabolism”?
What is the difference between a working radio and a non-working radio?
This is only one part of very complicated activity which also involves growth, self-repair and survival instinct of the organism as a whole. What is metabolism if it is not the intricate, coordinated activity brought about by the organism as a whole in order to maintain its existence.
Stephen Talbott has this to say about the coordinated activity that constitutes the life of an individual organsim:
Life cannot be expained by reducing the question to the physical activity of molecules. It is a coordinated activity involving the whole organism
A non-working radio if left to itself will eventually fall apart. A working radio will only carry on working if it is maintained externally by human activity.
What is achieved internally by a living organism is achieved from without by the radio which is an inanimate object.
Theism: living off of arguments from ignorance and other fallacies since… forever
So are you arguing that the chemistry of metabolism that keeps a human working is non-physical?
I’m a bit confused about what maintence is required to keep a radio working. I know they occasionally break, but then, people break. At least a third of humans die before being born.
Life cannot be explained because there’s a lot we do not know.
Therefore Xenu.
Pretending that “there is none” follows from “we can’t define” is just a pretty example of an argument from ignorance fallacy. IIRC your definition obsession also causes you to hold some extremely ridiculous positions about marriage. You should get over that stuff.
The arrangement or configuration is the difference.
Charlie, I’m adding you to the list of people who could be educated about the location of consciousness by caring for a mentally handicapped relative. I hope you get the opportunity.
The following post by Dr. Shallit may be of interest to readers of this thread:
Yes, your brain certainly is a computer.
It is in response to an Aeon article which denies that assertion (or is it a statement?); that article is linked in Dr. Shallit’s post.
For what I think is a more nuanced discussion of the issues, I recommend Piccinini’s papers, for example this one:
Is Everything a Turing Machine and Does it Matter for Philosophy of Mind?