How does mind move matter? To me, the question appears rather uninteresting. A simple collision is all that’s required to move matter.
How does the mind act at all, and what are the acts of the mind?
1. Simple apprehension
2. Judging
3. Reasoning
Alan Fox asserts that knowledge consists of apprehension.
Elizabeth Liddle claims that she agrees with Alan, but fails to incorporate her belief in the construction of mental models with Alan’s reductionist denial of the incorporation of mental models.
Does knowledge consist only of what can be sensed, as Alan Fox claims?
Or does knowledge consist of only what can be sensed and modeled, as Elizabeth claims?
Can science resolve the question of what can be considered knowledge, as Alan Fox claims?
I’ve been commenting on comments. So now I’ll comment directly on Mung’s post.
I see “mind” as a metaphorical term, so I don’t see “how the mind acts” as a real question. But we can investigate how a person acts.
Of those three listed items, I see judging (or making judgments) as the most important. We sometimes use reasoning in making judgments. And we often — perhaps always — use perception (which I assume to mean about the same as “apprehension” in that judging.
If human cognition evolved, as I believe it did, then it is that ability at making judgments that mainly provided the selective advantage. That’s why I see it as the most important.
Here’s a puzzle for me. Some people, who declare themselves to be materialists, assert that we have no free will. And when I listen to them arguing that, they often seem to be implying that we have no ability to make decisions. So it would seem that they are denying that we do judging, unless I have misunderstood them. The puzzle is why they would think this. If making decisions or judgments is merely an illusion, the it is hard to see how there would be any selective advantage in generating that illusion. So I fail to see how purely illusory judging could have evolved.
In my opinion, no. And I am not at all sure that Alan Fox makes such a claim.
That’s hard to say. Just because we can express something as a problem, it does not follow that science can solve that problem. Science is mostly pragmatic. It solves what it can solve, and tries to build on that.
As far as scientific study, I’m inclined to say that Jean Piaget’s research was a scientific study of knowledge and of how we acquire it. And I see Piaget’s way of studying knowledge as likely to more successful that what is done under the heading “epistemology”, within philosophy.
Tell us oh Lover Of Truth, how did the Meyer’s claimed disembodied intelligent “mind” cause the “simple collisions to move matter” in the Cambrian? What objects collided to form the “designed” phyla? I know IDiots hate reality but somewhere along the line you have to leave woo-ville and enter the world of real physical forces.
Neil Rickert,
Whether putting the emphasis (correctly, I think) on “knowing-how” rather than on “knowing-that” requires getting away from the JTB conception of knowledge depends on whether there is a correspondingly pragmatic conception of justification and belief.
On the first, one might put the emphasis on being able to provide a justification — to engage in the process of justifying — rather than on being able to recite a justification. On the second, one might put the emphasis on beliefs as “dispositions to behave” rather than as “sentences in the head”.
I’m tired of trying to patiently put up with the constant philosophy-bashing here. I’m done.
Not quite sure why you make this distinction. I would think visual input about our surroundings is natural and provides useful information. Also I find natural such an ambiguous word. Are you using it as an antonym to artificial or imaginary?
I can’t imagine watching the behaviour of birds in the wild not involving receiving visual (and auditory, perhaps) information. And I only claim the necessity of perception to information gathering, not its sufficiency.
We appear only to differ on how much of our development and use of knowledge requires perception. I don’t question that we can cogitate on what we know and develop ideas etc. from there. But nothing can happen without sensory input initially.
Indeed. A broken toe is a sure cure for solipsism.
Not sure if that means “Yes?” or “Yes!”
Perhaps our difference is only semantic.
We do not know how masses attract each other, or distort the space frame if you want. So the hypothesis of angels moving particles is still not falsified.
No I reject the wrong extrapolation made based on the “western scientific knowledge”:
Done being patient, or done with the site?
I always find it amusing when someone claims to not be using philosophy when they interpret, organize and model sensory data, or in making their arguments about things. All that’s really going on is that they just don’t realize that they are assuming that their unspoken, unrecognized interpretive framework (read: philosophy) represents “reality”.
Add “Philosophy doesn’t contribute anything useful to science” as yet another case of the blind, self-negating nonsense that is materialist atheism. Science, and scientific methodology, is a branch of philosophy. Always has been. The materialist narrative continues to saw at the branch it is sitting on as if it can support itself without philosophical axioms and principles.
Well, one can balance a checkbook without studying number theory.
In doing so, one could say number theory is useless.
But perhaps it isn’t useless to some researchers, perhaps in some aspects of computer science or physics. (I don’t know.)
The real question is whether academic philosophy contributes to research or to technology or to public policy. A few examples would advance the discussion.
I’ve only had one introductory course in philosophy. From the first day were were told that everyone is either a Platonist or an Aristotelian. The statement was tongue in cheek, but it has stuck, because I still see the dichotomy appear on threads like this. It’s a bit like being a Paleyan or a Darwinian. There are certain dichotomies that seem to sum up deep differences in the way people see the world.
Scientists can be placed in buckets by philosophers according to their views and their methods, but I don’t see scientists “using” academic philosophy.
So I will ask the same question I asked Gregory: can you cite some field of science that has missed a great discovery due to ignorance of academic philosophy? What area of research is suffering?
I ask this with regard to social science and public policy as well as with regard to the “hard” sciences and technology.
I hope you understand that those of us who “bash” philosophy are interested in and open to a discussion of under what circumstances academic philosophy is useful.
I do not bash music I don’t like, or art, or spectator sports because they are not useful, but I will point out that their value lies mostly in entertainment. This doesn’t mean they have no value, but it means their value is circumscribed.
KN
I’m sorry if I’ve contributed to this “philosophy-bashing”. My education never included any philosophy and I have been wondering out loud what I have been missing. Probably exposure to the cod-philosophers and amateur apologists at Uncommon Descent has tainted my first impressions. I have indeed marvelled at your restraint when responding to some pretty blunt comments. I certainly appreciate the effort you have expended in trying to communicate your ideas and defend your profession.
I’m a pragmatist. But I am not a philosophical pragmatist. I have trouble making sense of the philosophy of pragmatism.
To me, both “belief” and “justification” are vague terms. We really cannot pin them down. They don’t belong in a theory, unless they have specific technical definitions to be used within that theory.
I don’t see knowledge as linguistic. I see knowledge as having to do with the causal structure of the world. I see obtaining knowledge as having more to do with intentionality that with belief. I see science as primarily concerned with growing intentionality than with giving us beliefs. That is to say, science is engaged in extending our causal connectedness with the world.
I don’t have a problem with beliefs as dispositions to behave. But, looked at that way, beliefs should be seen as neither true nor false, as neither justified nor unjustified.
Let me be clearer.
I do not criticize philosophers for studying justified true belief. That is entirely appropriate. I do not criticize them for using a rather simplistic and idealized view of “belief” and “justification” in that study. That, too, seems appropriate. And I do not criticize them for using “knowledge” as a purely technical name for that purely technical study. What bothers me, is that they seem to actually believe that this is real knowledge, and not just a technical study area within their discipline.
I’m sorry you saw that as philosophy bashing. I thought I was just responding to a point in the OP.
I do not want philosophy to go away. I would like to see it get better.
I find it pretty hard to get excited about a field when it’s internet presence is dominated by hucksters and charlatans. It’s as if 98 percent of every medical discussion were dominated by homeopathy and faith healing.
Now it’s time for confession. When a professional philosopher and a denizen of UD get into a discussion, I have trouble telling who makes more sense. Logical fallacies can be spotted, but the problem seems to be with premises and definitions.
The problem I have is related to the absence of traction with the “real” world. I simply don’t see that one side being right or wrong makes any difference in the way I live my life.
I just can’t figure out what better would mean.
I sometimes enjoy reading philosophical discussions, but I can’t see how they apply to living my life.
I could say something similar about art and music, but that doesn’t mean they are worthless. It just means they do not affect the way I manage my life.
This site seems to have been started to discuss the validity of evolution as natural history and as an explanation for biological change. A major side issue is the teaching of evolution in high school.
I have trouble connecting academic philosophy with the teaching of science. I just can’t make the connection on my own.
In the previous comment, you said:
Fixing that would make philosophy better.
I can’t see how that wouldn’t be science.
Just about everything I see that is wrong with politics and public policy seems to be tied to the absence of responsiveness to feedback. Policies and laws don’t have mechanisms that adapt to their effects.
What I’m asserting here is consistent with my general rule that you can’t design anything non-trivial without cut and try. In my mind, that includes rules for ethics and morals, laws and policies. I fail to see any aspect of life that could not be improved by empirical thinking.
So that makes me an evolutionist, I suppose.
Mathematics has traction with the real world, yet it isn’t science.
Maybe not, but I haven’t strongly denied that academic philosophy has no traction. I just stated that I can’t see it and have asked for examples.
There are odd things about the mind and about thinking and inventing.
Music would not seem to be connected to the real world, but there is evidence that early musical training enhances performance in other academic disciplines.
I would not doubt that the discipline involved in philosophical reasoning enhances more worldly abilities.
I just don’t see a direct link between philosophy and life decisions.
Natural signals are very noisy. If vision is inputting natural signals, then why isn’t visual experience noisy?
Let’s start with an ethernet. We talk of inputting data from an ethernet. If you were to put the noisy ethernet signal on an oscilloscope, you might have difficulty finding the data to input. The way it really works, is there is a local timer. Most of the information is in the time interval between major signal transitions. Only part of that is on the ethernet line. Consulting the clock for timing is the other part.
Back to vision. If I take a photograph that is a little out of focus, the picture is blurry. I happen to be near-sighted. Wearing my glasses, I see pretty clearly. If I look at the tree outside the window, I can see the leaves quite clearly, with detail. If I am not wearing those glasses, I see less detail. But what I see is still not blurry. If this were inputting the poorly focussed signals, why is it not blurry? My best guess for vision, is that it is a bit like ethernet. As the eye moves in saccades, timing of signal transitions is used. There aren’t as many signal transitions without the corrective lenses, hence less detail. But the transitions that are detected can still be detected pretty accurately, even without corrective lenses. Hence no blurriness.
I look at my wrist watch to read the time. There are no naturally occurring signals to provide that information.
How do you read the time? In all activities that involve interaction with your environment you use your senses.
That’s a miscommunication. My point was that wrist watches do not occur naturally, and the information that they provide is not available from purely natural signals. That is, it is not available in a world with no human artifacts.
Not available at a watches level of detail, but clock hands are analogs of shadows, which are natural time indicators.
Which doesn’t change the fact that we are a bundle of evolved responses to sensory feedback.
Can you define “improved”? I mean you try to get what?
Interestingly, if you lock humans away from time cues, they adopt a cycle that is not far off 24 hours (early reports of 25 hours have been revised), but does gradually drift out of phase.
At best, the shadows would get you something approximating solar time. My watch reports standard time (or a close approximation), which is importantly different from solar time.
My extended point would be that every important thing about what we are — our thoughts, our minds– is built from sensory input. No one born deaf and blind learns language.
We are not blank slates, but neither are we born with cognition.
Firstly, and most importantly, I want to apologize for having my lost my temper yesterday. I clearly over-reacted, and that wasn’t appropriate.
Secondly, moving onto to some of the issues at work here — firstly, I happily sign off on the idea that philosophy does not contribute to first-order knowledge of how the world really is. As my current philosophical ‘hero’ Wilfrid Sellars put it,
And I would certainly love to see science taken much more seriously in public policy, especially with regard to climate change and environmental destruction.
The question remains, though, what follows from scientific realism (as it is called), and whether scientific realism is compatible with our first-person sense of ourselves as purposeful, goal-oriented beings with consciousness and intentionality who are capable of responding to reasons as reasons for beliefs and actions, and hence responsible for both. (I will call this first-personal stance, following Sellars, “the manifest image”, in contrast to “the scientific image”.)
Sellars thought that they are compatible — mostly, but not entirely. And he devoted the bulk of his philosophical writings to defending the epistemic priority of science, diagnosing the compatibility and incompatibility between science and first-person experience, and proposing how the incompatibilities could be eliminated.
By contrast, Nagel thinks that the first-person stance has ultimate priority, and that the scientific conception must be modified in order to accommodate it. That’s why his Mind and Cosmos has been garnering so much attention, both negative and positive.
But — here’s the important bit: the question of which has priority — the manifest image or the scientific image? — is not itself a scientific question. And how we resolve it has fairly significant consequences for how we assign the cultural and political authority of science. What we see in the “anti-materialism” that fuels the intelligent design movement is (among other things) a philosophical view according to which the scientific image cannot be rendered compatible with the manifest image, and therefore so much the worse for the scientific image. (Though of course the tension arises for them because of a commitment to explicating the manifest image in theological terms.)
Whereas I think that a non-theological explication of the manifest image, and a non-reductionist, non-mechanistic explication of the scientific image, shows that the two are not ultimately incompatible — despite the tensions between them at our particular moment in cultural evolution.
That’s precisely what I was disagreeing with.
How about: every important thing about what we are — our thoughts, our minds– is built from interaction with the world (including with other people).
My point is that it is not input alone. And I actually suspect you agree with that, based on other comments you have made.
Who said anything about “academic philosophy”? Whether people realize it or not, their worldview – even if unrealized, unrecognized, misunderstoood, etc. – is a philosophy. Claiming that one isn’t using it is like claiming one is not breathing because they don’t see the air, and also claiming that their life (behavior) is not dependent on it. IMO, being a bad philosopher makes one more likely to be a bad scientist simply because they are not equipped to understand how their a priori worldview beliefs affect everything they do in very direct and in very subtle ways.
Missed discoveries? How would I possibly be able to provide an example of a missed discovery to your satisfaction? At best, one can point to delayed discoveries and and scientific investigations/investigators that were once ridiculed due to the prevailing philosophy (worldviews), including what kind of possibilities might exist, how to set up an experiment, what can affect it, etc.
IMO, lots of areas of research are suffering due to the materialist mindset because that mindset imposes a very limited perspective.
I’ll agree with Sellars on that.
I wonder, though, if that is a correct assessment of Nagel’s view.
I did not find anything in “Mind and Cosmos” that disagreed with how I see our position in the world. Yes, Nagel attacked evolution. But I rather thought that he was attacking a strawman version of evolution. And yes, he attacked reductive materialism of the kind that Alex Rosenberg advocates. I happen to also disagree with that Rosenberg view, and I don’t see anything in science that requires me to agree with Rosenberg.
I’ll agree with that.
The priority is clear, the scientific image is daughter of the manifest image. Only the right manifest image can lead to the right scientific image.
Then it’ll be easy for you to name 5 and give a specific example for each of the problem and the solution to that problem.
OK, sounds good. Can you do that please?
Behavior modified by feedback. That pretty much defines a system that learns. That’s really what’s going on with the “selfish gene” and with brains.
Populations of genomes learn, and populations of neurons learn. the physical implementation is different, but the dynamics are the same.
When I say sensory input I mean feedback. In crudest terms, the consequences of action.
Helen Keller was able to learn language because she had already learned it as an infant, prior to becoming deaf and blind. Others who have become deaf and blind from birth have not mastered language or useful communication.
We are what we learn to be in early childhood. We are not born with minds. We are born with structures capable of learning to be minds.
Just my opinion.
You can call a dog a five legged animal, but it will still have four legs.
Philosophy is a formal way of talking about the world, and lots of people go through life without formalizing their thoughts. Perhaps their lives are not worth living, but then again, they didn’t ask for our pinion.
We are indeed miscommunicating. I was pressed for time when I wrote my earlier comment. Petrushka has made the point that if a human being develops from birth deprived of the stimulation that would normally occur in a social environment, then developent is irrevocably affected. Watches are a distraction. Everything that we are as social animals begins with social interactions, learning. It is impossible for learning to happen other than via our senses. If you think there are other “ways of knowing” or other ways that humans can learn, other than beginning by building on sensory inputs, I’d be interested to hear about it. Sure, Humans are evolutionarily disposed to learn a language (language cannot develop in species that lack the “hardware”, brain capacity and adaptations for complex vocalisations) but without the interaction with other humans, the potential remains unexploited.
No, I don’t claim knowledge “is only what can be sensed”. I do think that all that humans can achieve starts with learning, which is only possible through sensory inputs.
Kantian Naturalist,
I envy your ability to over-react. I suffer from British reserve and am only able to under-react when severely peeved!
I think people can invent. Among the things they can invent are thoughts that are completely new to the world. If they pass through the sieve of analysis and criticism, they can become knowledge.
In my opinion, thoughts of the purpose of life or of existence do not pass through the sieve. They can be entertaining, but are not knowledge. I do not wish to imply that entertainment is without value. Some might argue that the drudgery of survival is worth it only because of art, music, philosophy and such.
Knowledge can include knowledge of invented abstract things. I know I’ve harped on art, music and philosophy (and math), but I think it’s important to recognize that these things exist, that they have internal logic and can be discussed as true or false, good or bad.
What they may or may not have is traction with the “real” world. The connection with the world is the place where science and empiricism resides.
Nothing is true or false, good or bad in the world, but feedback makes it so.
heh
That’s interesting. I have very little accommodation in my vision now, and everything is blurry when I’m not wearing my glasses, including distant things. But to me they look blurry. In other words I’m aware that there’s stuff I’m not seeing. But it’s possible that if I’d never been able to see that stuff, it wouldn’t look blurry.
That relates to some interesting stuff about saccades – if you set up a visual display and link it to an eye tracker so that only the part of the display that is foveated is actually clear (for instance text – the rest is just random letters) the reader is often not aware that the scene is unclear – because everywhere you look, becomes clear! It’s what I call the “fridge light” effect – the fridge light is only on when you open the door, but as far as we are concerned, it’s on all the time, because whenever we need it, it’s on.
However, if in the periphery of the display (i.e. not near the foveated spot) you don’t provide a hint of what’s there, the subject is highly aware that not enough is being displayed, and the display becomes very hard to parse. For example if you present a scene in which you can only see the parts you are foveating and the rest is white screen, you can’t figure the image out. However, if the scene is merely blurred, you don’t notice the blur.
I probably didn’t describe that very well. But saccades and vision is part of what I do!
I would say that the only the right understanding of the manifest image can explain how the scientific image grows out of the manifest image. But, at the same time, one of the goals of the scientific explanation of the world would be to explain how creatures like us — creatures able to conceived of ourselves as we manifestly do — came into existence. So if the manifest image grounds the scientific image in one sense of ‘grounds’, so do does the scientific image ground the manifest image in a different sense of ‘grounds’.
For one thing, it is a philosophical question whether scientific realism entails hyper-reductive materialism. (Rosenberg intentionally calls his view “scientism”, saying that he’s trying to reclaim the word from its pejorative use.) In fact, Rosenberg reserves his harshest criticisms for people like me, who want to naturalize intentionality and purposiveness. But at the same time, I worry about philosophers like Nagel who think that there’s some empirically detectable feature of reality that scientists have missed (in this case, “natural teleology”). I mean, that just looks like an astonishing act of hubris to me.
It seems a bit odd to me to assert that she had “learned language” by the time she was 19 months old. But certainly she had acquired a lot of linguistic-related information, as well as a rich set of auditory and visual domain mappings. But do we really know that those who are born blind and deaf from birth have not mastered any language at all?
Yes, that seems right to me. If a normal mature human being is a rational animal, then a normal infant is (at best) a potentially rational animal. As one philosopher I know likes to put it, a child isn’t a person until he or she has mastered conditionals.
Coming soon: post-partum abortions, because “they’re not persons” until they can pass a state test for personhood. That sounds like a good parenting tool for the future: “Eat your vegetables, Jimmy. You know what happened to your brother when he wouldn’t eat his vegetables.”
William J. Murray,
Not at all — it just means that infanticide is wrong for different reasons than murder is wrong, just as killing animals for no morally weighty reason is wrong for different reasons than murder is wrong. (Whether food production or medical research are morally weighty, or sufficiently morally weighty, is precisely what makes those issues fraught with controversy.)
For that matter, from the claim that fetuses aren’t persons, it doesn’t at all follow that abortion is morally permissible. It would follow only under the following constraint:
(1) abortion would be morally permissible if, but only if, fetuses were not persons.
(2) and fetuses are not persons
(3) so, abortion is morally permissible.
But I’m only defending (2), not (1) — so my commitment to (2) does not, by itself, entail that I am committed to (3). In fact, I do hold both (2) and (3), but my argument for (3) isn’t tied to (1).
Rather, I hold a weaker claim:
(1*) the rights of potential persons are not sufficient to override the rights of actual persons;
(2*) the right to bodily self-determination is a right of actual persons;
(3*) to force a woman to give birth against her will is a violation of her right to bodily self-determination*;
(4) fetuses, though not actual persons, are still potential persons;
(5) but, even if fetuses are potential persons, that status is insufficient to force a woman to give birth against her will
(6) therefore, abortion is morally permissible.
The reason why infanticide is not morally permissible, even if abortion is, is because the moral permissibility of abortion is contingent upon the exercise of the woman’s right to bodily self-determination. The continuance of the life of the infant does not impose constraints on the exercise of the mother’s right to bodily self-determination, and so the argument for the permissibility of abortion does not entail the permissibility of infanticide.
* note: I take it that one is “pro-life” if one thinks that there are some conditions under which a woman should be forced to give birth against her will. If one does not think that there are any such conditions, then one is pro-choice — period.
KN: bravo. And thanks.
And if I was ever tempted to consider Philosophy a useless pursuit, you have put it well beyond temptation now.
That is a consequence of being “pro-life”. Yet some countries still jail women who miscarry! (link)
I always thought it bizarre when men were allowed to vote in the Irish referendum on abortion.
This is philosophy? I never knew!
1. Who gets to set up what the criteria for “personhood” is?
2. Obviously, you believe “potential personhood” grants some rights to the fetus/infant or else you wouldn’t have a problem with infanticide.Why, then, should the “right of bodily self-determination” trump the “right of potential personhood”? After all, unless the woman’s life is in danger, her entire “personhood” is not at risk, while the entire future personhood of the fetus is about to be terminated.
First, let me say that, although IANAP, I regard philosophy as being as valuable as science if for no other reason than it compels us to evaluate what we think and believe and why we do so. This can be an uncomfortable process but I think that, since the science we do has its beginnings in thought, we are the better for trying to understand it.
On the question of abortion, I argue for a qualified opposition on the grounds, not of religious belief, since I am agnostic/atheist in Russell’s sense, but of the right to life.
I regard rights as entitlements or privileges granted by a society to its members and their function is to regulate the way members of society behave towards one another. Most rights, however, are not ‘whole-life’ rights. In many societies, the right to marry, for example, like others, only becomes available after the individual reaches a certain age. Before that the individual is deemed incompetent to exercise it responsibly.
The right to life, however, in my view should be a ‘whole-life’ right. It should apply from the very beginning of an individual’s existence. the question is, when does an individual human being begin to exist? Note that I did not refer to personhood. I think it’s too woolly a notion to be useful and something of a red herring.
Although we see ourselves as three-dimensional objects in space both science and philosophy tell us we are better understood as events in four-dimensional spacetime along the lines of Heinlein’s “pink worms”. Our physical boundaries are obvious but what of our temporal? If death marks the end of the individual’s existence then where is the beginning? Not birth, I would argue, since it makes little sense. If we regard the baby, once it is born, as having the right to life, how do we defend denying that right to the unborn given that the only difference is that it is no longer directly dependent on the mother for life support? To me it makes more sense to regard the individual’s existence as dating from conception or, perhaps, implantation.
Now, of course, any rights-based opposition to abortion has to recognize that, in such circumstances, there are two individuals whose rights have to be considered, both the child’s and the mother’s. The first question to be answered is, do we allow that the right to life takes priority over all others. If we do then the unborn child’s right to life is paramount. The only qualification would be where continuing to carry the child would pose a threat to the life of the mother. In such a situation abortion would be permissible on the grounds of being the lesser of two evils.
.
All together now: