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Topic: James Barham: Thoughts on Thinking Matter
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Mark Szlazak
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Member # 391
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posted 11. February 2003 00:31
Rex,
quote:
With respect to (2), I do think that there are two senses of the word "fact", and that confusion between the two of these can cause errors in reasoning. Specifically, the Mary example is only particularly telling if she can only learn book-knowledge yet we judge what she has learned by imagining her experiences. If this is done, I cry "foul", because the two are very different as experiences. (And the bare differences of neuroscience agree that they are different, due to differential activation of the limbic system, among other things.)
Ok. This is progress. So the situation is this, according to Rex: (1) We have observational facts about sensation gained from a distinctively first-person point of view; (2) We have observational and theoretical facts about the physical learned as 'book knowledge'; (3) These facts are psychologically different, and the (2)-facts do not entail the (1)-facts.
The question is: Of what significance is the failure of entailment?
Rex claims: No significance because the experience of acquiring one is different from the experience of acquiring the other.
Note that the following argument is invalid: Observations of swinging pendulums are experiential facts. Knowledge of Newtonian mechanics is book knowledge. Therefore, knowledge of Newtonian mechanics cannot entail observational facts about swinging pendulums (due to differential activation of the limbic system, among other facts).
There is clearly something going on other than differential activation of neural systems.
I claim: Both sets of facts contain information about the world. Our scientific responsibility is to understand how all the different facts we possess about the world relate to one another. If the (2)-facts fail to entail the (1)-facts, then there is some observational information about the world not conveyed by the (2)-facts. This is a straightforward failure of prediction by scientific theory, therefore the theory is incomplete. Since, by hypothesis, the (2)-facts are a complete and adequate theory of the physical, there are facts other than physical facts.
quote:
With the objections removed to (3), I argue that neither (3) nor not-(3) is inconsistent with what we have discussed so far, but that physical evidence about the impact of the physical world on (people's reports of) first-person sensation suggests (3) rather than not-(3).
If the (2)-facts fail to entail the (1)-facts, then (3) (the supposition that neural mechanisms implement or realize experience) is inconsistent. The inconsistency arises as follows:
Rex's Premise: Neural mechanisms implement experience.
Premise: If X implements Y, then the X-facts entail the Y-facts.
Conclusion of independent argument: The neural-facts do not entail the experience-facts.
The contradiction follows straightforwardly. To avoid it, the physicalist must either show (1) The neural-facts do entail the experience-facts after all; or (2) X can implement Y even if the X-facts do not entail the Y-facts.
Again, I discuss both of these options at length in my chapter three and conclude they do not work.
Response (1) requires an "opaque" entailment, in which two sets of facts are related by entailment but we are psychologically closed to how or why. This move has the problem that it cannot account for the particular kind of failure evidenced in this case and ultimately leads to eliminativism about consciousness.
Response (2) requires appealing to a kind of connection that can underwrite implementation and that can exist without entailment. Appeals to identity are the most common kind of appeals. The problem is that these connections all fail upon analysis to do the work that physalism needs done. I cannot repeat here all the analysis I do in chapter three, but the chapter is on-line at: http://ai.uga.edu/~ghrosenb/chptr3.pdf . The title of the chapter is, "Objections to the argument against physicalism."
--Gregg
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Rex Kerr
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posted 11. February 2003 04:30
Dan, to my mind you seem to be wanting to have your cake and eat it too:
quote:
To put it as starkly as possible, I am saying there is no evolution without evolutionists. Evolutionists with respect to evolution are like mechanics and passengers with respect to airplanes. You can't have one without the other.
Ultimately there is no distinction between the word and the process it describes.
quote:
A process will continue in its normal, habitual pattern unless it is interrupted by something else. Anything else would be incoherent. Idealism explains coherence in its most general sense, which is something that physics certainly cannot do.
It would be incoherent for bananas to rot only while they were being watched.
I don't understand why it would be incoherent for bananas to rot only while being watched. They don't, but that is an empirical matter.
In fact, it is this very tendency of things to continue in their normal, habitual pattern unless interrupted that clashes with your claim that there is no distinction between the word and the process it describes. Fruit rots before it is named. Things degrade in other ways before that process of degradation is named. People name things incorrectly. And as far as we can tell, everything continues in its normal habitual pattern.
It's almost like the universe doesn't care whether we name bananas or not, whether we exist or not, whether we are idealists or existentialists or Platonists or physicalists. It just keeps going about doing its thing, and it keeps doing it in spite of our theories saying that it should, or shouldn't, or that we can't know either way.
This is perfectly expected under many theories (including physicalism). It seems an unnatural add-on for your flavor of idealism--but a necessary one, since this is what is observed. Perhaps your web site explains this (provide a link if so?). Or perhaps you can explain what you mean by "there is no evolution without evolutionists" in the context of a universe that has everything going about its normal habitual pattern without being watched.
(I really have to thank Mark Szlazak for continually relaying Gregg's messages! It's been an unexpectedly illuminating discussion so far, at least for me.)
Gregg wrote:
quote:
So the situation is this, according to Rex: (1) We have observational facts about sensation gained from a distinctively first-person point of view; (2) We have observational and theoretical facts about the physical learned as 'book knowledge'; (3) These facts are psychologically different, and the (2)-facts do not entail the (1)-facts.
Actually, I don't think that this is quite my position, although it is a fair characterization of my summary. My summary was insufficiently clear. I'll explain in more detail below the next quote.
quote:
I claim: Both sets of facts contain information about the world. Our scientific responsibility is to understand how all the different facts we possess about the world relate to one another. If the (2)-facts fail to entail the (1)-facts, then there is some observational information about the world not conveyed by the (2)-facts.
Again, I think we're mixing perspectives here in an unwarranted way.
I'm going to present a point of view as if it had been established, for simplicity in language. It is, of course, a tentative hypothesis and/or thought-experiment, to test for consistency (and refute the argument-by-counterexample).
As an abstract 3rd party observer, my (2)-facts can (putatively) explain the operation of everyone, including why and how they experience their (1)-facts and emotions. As a 3rd party, there is nothing left to explain.
As a 1st person experiencer, I can learn (2)-facts, and they feel different to me from (1)-facts. This is okay, because to account for this I notice the similarity between myself and everyone else, and appeal to the third-person account to explain my own functioning. I cannot directly experience all of the operations that go on to make me function, but that is irrelevant--I can verify that I experience what I ought to experience according to the third person account.
Now, if I want to have a new experience, I know from the third-person perspective that certain things need to happen in my brain. And I also know that those things can only happen (with present technology) if I have certain experiences. Thinking about them as (2)-facts does not activate the correct portions of my brain to have the same experience.
With this view, what is there left to account for? Where is the missing piece?
I have skimmed through chapter 3 (52 pages is a bit much for my spare time right now!), and I can't recognize any of the lines of argument in there as something that addresses my counterargument. It is most similar to opaque entailment, I think, but I do not assume anything to be opaque: in theory it could be transparently indirect. In fact, I would expect transparency once we know enough about neuroscience. (It's rather translucent right now, tending towards the opaque side.)
If it would help to show why the pendulum analogy with my position fails, I'd be happy to explain. This is already pretty long, though.
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Dan Smith
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posted 11. February 2003 10:40
Rex,
Your points are well taken.
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It's almost like the universe doesn't care whether we name bananas or not, whether we exist or not, whether we are idealists or existentialists or Platonists or physicalists. It just keeps going about doing its thing, and it keeps doing it in spite of our theories saying that it should, or shouldn't, or that we can't know either way.
Ultimately, any non-mystical idealist who wishes to be coherent will have to appeal to a higher power. Idealists are naturally and logically theistic. I am certainly no exception to that rule. More specifically we must appeal to a Creator.
Nowadays, most theists are dualists in the Cartesian sense: they postulate separate realms of matter and spirit. Science, as we know it, arose within this dualist paradigm. Science does provide a relatively coherent account of the material world. Where it becomes incoherent, where it comes to grief, is when it attempts to account for the spiritual or mental realm. You, Mark and Gregg are among a legion of thoughtful, conscientious people trying to bring back together that which Descartes had torn asunder, by trying to think their way back from the material to the mental.
Invariably, you, Mark, Gregg and all the other former dualists will end up by postulating some version of panpsychism, or sometimes called neutral monism. Gregg calls this panexperientialism or liberal naturalism. Thus do you and they think that you all have managed to avoid any appeal to a higher power.
This would be fine if it worked, but it doesn’t. Where lies the problem? It lies right here as described by Gregg in
Chapter 7.2:
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Unfortunately, from a physicalist perspective the kind of causal role typing at issue is just a conceptual exercise. Nature does not know about the existence of implicit reference systems against which one can define a functional role for things. The true physical reality contains no intrinsically favored contexts or roles. However Liberal Naturalists, freed from reductionism, may consider the ontology of functional entities in a more pure way. Perhaps nature is able to provide a favored context for some causal roles screened off from physical being in some way? While I have argued that functional explanation cannot provide an explanation of consciousness by itself, perhaps it may still play an essential role in solving certain problems.
A good solution to the problem along these lines would define “causal role” in a way that avoids objectionable functional teleology, interest relativity and norms, and that explains how nature could be sensitive to them through a normal mechanism not jury-rigged to work only in cognitive contexts. A natural research program that grows out of these issues is one that seeks to understand causation. What is it to have a causal role, and what is it to be a canonical context for a causal role? As Liberal Naturalists, we should try to understand these issues more completely.
Will Gregg be able to avoid teleology and still explain the mind? I’ll wager not. But why is Gregg struggling so to avoid even a little teleology? Many who think of themselves as liberal naturalists are not nearly as abstemious as Gregg with respect to teleology. Gregg is more percipient than the rest of the crowd of naturalists. He realizes that if you give the Telos an inch, it will take a mile. That is the basis of my rational theism. God is just the Telos. God is the goal, the end of creation. God is the Alpha and the Omega. There is no such thing as half of a Telos. It is incoherent and irrational. Teleology is the Mother of all Slippery Slopes. If you set one foot on that slope you will end up right in the lap of God. Yes, Gregg is striving to avoid that fate. Is this because he hates God? I doubt it. I think he may hate the idea of the Eschaton, which is another face of the Telos. He doesn’t want the world to end unnaturally. It would be like a premature death, he might think.
But I am not here to psychoanalyze. Rather, I am excited by the prospect that Gregg is exploring the last logical means for naturalists to avoid the Telos. If he fails, the naturalists will have no choice but to embrace the Telos. After a short break, I’ll begin to examine Gregg’s strategy for avoiding teleology. Soon, after this break, we may be able to ascertain the fate of the world. Will it be the ‘heat death’ or the Telos?
I recognize there was a bit of leap here from rotting bananas to the Eschaton, but that is just the sort of mischief that teleology can get us into.
Oh, yes, in the meantime, here is my website:
Best Possible World
Dan
[ 11. February 2003, 10:51: Message edited by: Dan Smith ]
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Mark Szlazak
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posted 11. February 2003 19:37
Rex, my pleasure. The exchange with Gregg is illuminating.
quote:
I'm going to present a point of view as if it had been established, for simplicity in language. It is, of course, a tentative hypothesis and/or thought-experiment, to test for consistency (and refute the argument-by-counterexample).
quote:
As an abstract 3rd party observer, my (2)-facts can (putatively) explain the operation of everyone, including why and how they experience their (1)-facts and emotions. As a 3rd party, there is nothing left to explain.
I agree with Rex that (2)-facts can putatively explain the operation of everyone. On a weak enough reading of "explain" these operational facts can explain (1)-facts, also. But that's only because standards of explanation can vary widely with context and purpose. On a reading of "explain" strong enough to support physicalism, unfortunately, the (2)-facts fail to explain the (1)-facts. That's the crux of the problem.
quote:
As a 1st person experiencer, I can learn (2)-facts, and they feel different to me from (1)-facts. This is okay, because to account for this I notice the similarity between myself and everyone else, and appeal to the third-person account to explain my own functioning. I cannot directly experience all of the operations that go on to make me function, but that is irrelevant--I can verify that I experience what I ought to experience according to the third person account.
I read Rex's intuition to be something like this: If I cannot introspect my mechanisms as mechanisms, then I will experience phenomenal content instead.
That claim seems clearly in need of explanation/justification itself. We have observational facts about phenomenal content that seem inconsistent with the claim that facts about our cognitive mechanisms would entail the facts about our experience of phenomenal content, regardless of whether I can introspect my mechanisms. It would seem to follow that I would not experience phenomenal content, *even if* I could not introspect my mechanisms. Although I would operate similarly, there is no reason intrinsic to the theory of my mechanisms to believe I would experience at all (I'm assuming we are not taking experience as a primitive by putting a conditional of the form (mechanisms ==> experience) into our theory of my mechanisms from the very start -- that would be cheating).
quote:
Now, if I want to have a new experience, I know from the third-person perspective that certain things need to happen in my brain. And I also know that those things can only happen (with present technology) if I have certain experiences. Thinking about them as (2)-facts does not activate the correct portions of my brain to have the same experience. With this view, what is there left to account for? Where is the missing piece?
The account explains all sorts of behaviour and, with respect to experience, it might explain some verbal behavior using the word 'experience'. What's left out of the account is the existence of experience in the first place, and the character of the phenomenal properties.
An argument from cognitive difference will be available for any two sets of correlated but distinct facts, but that doesn't establish anything about whether they are facts about the same thing or in what way they are related. Consider: If I think about the sun that will activate a different part of my brain than if I look at the moon. Therefore, the fact that I think the sun is different from the moon is explained by the fact that different parts of my brain are activated when I think about one as opposed to experiencing the other. That means it is cognitively inevitable that I think the sun and the moon are different.
This cognitive inevitability of my belief does nothing to undermine the warrant for my belief that the sun and the moon are different. If anything, it strengthens that warrant, on the assumption that I am a soundly functional and careful reasoner. The problem with an argument such as this is that we are not trying to account for brain activity, but facts about the world. The relations between those facts are informational: they are transparent with respect to neural instantiation. If observation and analysis says these informational differences cannot be closed, either we are missing some information or we are suffering from delusions (glitches in our ability to process and relate the information). One case leads to the falsity of physicalism, the other (I believe) to eliminativism about consciousness. Because our belief in consciousness is based directly on observational facts, eliminativism is not an option, so we need to revise our belief in physicalism.
quote:
I have skimmed through chapter 3 (52 pages is a bit much for my spare time right now!), and I can't recognize any of the lines of argument in there as something that addresses my counterargument. It is most similar to opaque entailment, I think, but I do not assume anything to be opaque: in theory it could be transparently indirect. In fact, I would expect transparency once we know enough about neuroscience. (It's rather translucent right now, tending towards the opaque side.)
Rex has my sympathies. It is work for me to find to time to keep up this discussion, and I don't have to digest long, sophisticated arguments written in books by other people and posted on the web. If he is taking an opaque entailment line of defense, I'd be happy to see him try to work it out. To my knowledge, no one has ever really tried to develop it in anything that would count as viable detail without falling into eliminativism.
--Gregg
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Rex Kerr
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posted 12. February 2003 05:13
Dan wrote:
quote:
Ultimately, any non-mystical idealist who wishes to be coherent will have to appeal to a higher power.
I am not certain that this saves coherency. Regardless of whether there is a higher power or not, we still can ask the question Why don't bananas care whether we watch them or not?. For idealists, there apparently must be a creator to name/know/create bananas in the same way that evolutionists are needed for the existence of evoultion. But this fails to address the original question: Why don't bananas care?.
One tactic is simply to appeal to the mystery of superior intelligence: we cannot know the answer, because it depends on the higher power. But if this is a fair tactic for theists, it is equally fair for non-theists to postulate that they can't know the answer to certain questions: we cannot know the answer because we cannot coherently ask the question; we cannot know the answer because we expect that it is beyond our ability to understand; we cannot know the answer because there is no answer that could satisfy us.
In every case, the response is: the nature of reality prevents an answer. Of course, in each case you need to make a compelling argument that if reality is what you think, that an answer is prevented; and somewhere there needs to be a separate argument made that the nature of reality is what you think it is.
So I will raise the point yet again: Why don't the bananas care? How do you account for this under Idealism?
(Personally, under an Idealist framework of the type that you seem to be advocating, I would expect that intelligences such as ours could change the rest of the world in at least minor ways simply by thinking about it. Although a number of role-playing games are based in part on this premise--and they are fun to play--I see very little evidence for anything of the sort in the real world.)
Gregg wrote:
quote:
I read Rex's intuition to be something like this: If I cannot introspect my mechanisms as mechanisms, then I will experience phenomenal content instead.
Not exactly. You will experience phenomenal content regardless of whether you can introspect your mechanisms as mechanisms. The inability to introspect mechanisms of phenomenal content should not be taken as evidence that there is no mechanism. Intuitively, an introspective gap would seem to indicate an actual gap, given that very many of our conscious thoughts are open to introspection. (For example, I can consider what I am writing here, why I am writing it, whether I am using good or poor styles of argumentation, and so on.)
However, there are many examples of introspection failing--ranging from angry and irrational people shouting that they are "calm" and "thinking clearly", to the holes about the size of one segment of a thumb at arm's length in our visual field--holes that are completely imperceptible without concentration and careful tests.
quote:
We have observational facts about phenomenal content that seem inconsistent with the claim that facts about our cognitive mechanisms would entail the facts about our experience of phenomenal content, regardless of whether I can introspect my mechanisms.
I would like to see more examples of these facts. We are always in danger of making errors in perception, and given how unreliable certain types of introspective perception are (e.g. "do you have holes in your visual field?"), we need to think carefully about how much weight to place on these observations.
The examples I've seen are dots of color--which doesn't really show anything since there is bare difference between different wavelengths (colors) of light--and our thought-experiment with Mary the superneuroscientist, which only (to my knowledge) appeals to a vague intuition.
quote:
The account explains all sorts of behaviour and, with respect to experience, it might explain some verbal behavior using the word 'experience'. What's left out of the account is the existence of experience in the first place, and the character of the phenomenal properties.
An argument from cognitive difference will be available for any two sets of correlated but distinct facts, but that doesn't establish anything about whether they are facts about the same thing or in what way they are related.
I don't see why this is the case. If I believe that other people are conscious, and I study their function and find that neural activity pattern y on brain region Z happens iff they are having a sunset-over-Maui-viewing-experience, and pattern x iff they are having an online-philosophical-discussion-experience, and so on, and that if there is a lack of activity on Z they do not report any experience, haven't I found a physical correlate of experience that would seem to explain the existence of experience? Furthermore, upon a more careful dissection of patterns y and x and so on, we could presumably correlate the properties of the physical pattern with the nature of the reported experience.
There are a couple of pieces missing here. One piece missing is the solution to the problem of how I know anyone other than me is conscious. I do this by parsimony of explanation in analogy to myself. If you have another method, it would be interesting to see it explained, so that you can show why the same argument works to affirm the existence of other conscious beings, yet fails to work to affirm that the processes that occur inside said beings are responsible for the consciousness.
The other piece missing is that if I have no experiences, I cannot know "what it feels like" to experience pattern x. This should be neither surprising nor troubling; as I've mentioned, I do not dispute that book-learning of facts feels different than direct experience. As such, while knowledge of pattern x may give us equal predictive power whether or not we've had experiences, we won't be able to imagine what pattern x feels like unless we've had similar feelings that we can relate it to.
quote:
The problem with an argument such as this is that we are not trying to account for brain activity, but facts about the world. The relations between those facts are informational: they are transparent with respect to neural instantiation.
Well, are we asking questions about ontology or epistemology? The two need not start with the same primitives. Our epistemology necessarily needs to start with our conscious experience, and we can work outwards until we have convinced ourselves of the primitives that we need to begin ontology. The ontology can then be used to explain the existence of our own brains and our capacity for epistemology.
In any case, I am not sure what you mean that facts are "transparent with respect to neural instantiation". The simple existence of a neural firing pattern is not enough to establish something as a fact. Then again, the very notion of "fact" is a rather tricky one.
How would one distinguish facts from non-facts based on neuronal firing patterns? I imagine it would be very similar to what one does when one is trying to consider whether a statement is factual or not, except you'd be looking at neuronal firing patterns in lieu of thinking through various lines of justification and whatnot. (After all, my position is that the two will ultimately be the same thing.) You can then conclude something like: this pattern of firing corresponds to a belief that is well-justified within the cognitive context of this person, and therefore they are as justified in taking this as a fact as any other belief (and in fact they do, because we are looking at the firing pattern corresponding to their belief that this is a fact).
After sorting through that curiously tangled explanation, one might object: yes, but is this belief True? To which I would respond: is it True that Truth exists? Put another way, the system would have to be self-consistent--it would be highly problematic if looking at neuronal firing patterns indicated that these patterns could very well be unrelated to everything going on outside the brain, and that we should have no reason to believe that our thoughts correspond to anything outside ourselves. But although this is a formal danger, I don't see much evidence for it, and certainly the possibility of danger doesn't invalidate the position.
Finally, with respect to opaque entailment, you admit in chapter three that
quote:
A strategy of opaque entailment would be viable if the anti-physicalist arguments were arguments from ignorance having the form, I cannot see how the physical facts could entail the facts about experience, so they do not.
This is exactly why, aside from speculation about what things might look like once neuroscience has pulled aside the opacity, my argument is that the anti-physicalist position is actually an argument from ignorance.
I doubt the reliability of what I imagine are the "observational evidence that the facts of consciousness are not facts of [bare difference]". I doubt the reliability not because it is convenient for my position, but rather because I have observed that this class of observation is surprisingly unreliable in cases where it is easily tested.
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Dan Smith
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posted 12. February 2003 13:52
Rex,
I applaud your persistence; you are not going to let a little thing like the Eschaton divert your attention from the fragrance of that rotting banana. And in the greater scheme, the banana might be more important than the Eschaton, but I’m doubting it.
There is no reason for the idealist to be intimidated by any ordinary or scientific facts about the world, especially if they are coherent. We idealists own coherence, no matter what flavor it may come in. It is the scientists who cannot explain why the world is so understandable to us. First, they cannot begin to explain why there exists anyone to understand anything, much less understand everything, including our own existence, which understanding is exactly what is promised by RATIONAL theism. The only mystery that will remain at the end of the day will be the cosmic power of love, but there hangs another tale.
In short, it would be incoherent or anomalous for your banana not to ripen. If it did not ripen, you would not be able to eat it. And you should be thankful that you don’t have to sit there watching your banana so as to make it edible. That happens almost automatically. This is all in accord with the general coherence of what we call Nature. And it is also in accord with the concept of the Best Possible World.
You deeper concern is, why, in this Best of Possible Worlds, do we have to work for a living? Why can’t we just use our minds and imagine ourselves right into Paradise? In this Paradise, bananas would always be just perfectly ripe, and would materialize in front of us on our mental command.
I have a simple answer: the paradise we imagine is exactly where we are heading. We will all have arrived there at the time of the Eschaton, which should be occurring within the next thousand years. And, of course, some of us will be getting there a lot quicker.
Next question: why then do we have to bother with this present, seemingly, much less than prefect world? There are at least two answers.
Think about it from God’s point of view. If you were God would you really want to spend all eternity just contemplating your navel? Is not the most cherished aspect of our humanity really just our power to create, especially and including the creation of more humans? Would you wish to deprive God of this power?
But, couldn’t God have done a better job of creation? The principal point of my BPW website is to argue otherwise.
There is, however, an additional consideration, which will bring us back to that banana. There logically cannot be a creation without a separation between it and its Creator. From our perspective, the creative, self-revealing God is, necessarily, also the self-concealing God.
Now here is where rational theism begins to get interesting. According to any good gnostic, and I am surely one of those, the only real source of evil in the world is our ignorance of God. Who is to blame for our ignorance? Ultimately, who else but God? But that is not all; it gets worse. There is a logical correlation, as I have already suggested, between creation and separation or concealment. Thus the ‘greater’ the creation, the greater the separation or concealment, and thus the greater our ignorance and thus, finally, the greater the evil. So, the greatest possible creation will logically also be the one with the greatest potential for evil.
Does this mean that the Best Possible World = the Worst Possible World?
Yes and no. I only said the greatest potential for evil. It is the great challenge for us and God to keep that evil to a minimum.
It is evil that gives our world its spiritual weight, or, more precisely, its spiritual gravitas or gravity. From all available evidence, our world is the spiritual center of gravity of the Cosmos. This is the center of spiritual action. Didn’t most of us want to be where the action is? Well, if so, we surely came to the right place.
So here we are in perdition. But perdition has a bright side, namely, salvation. Now, I recognize that we humans are a proud lot. We don’t like charity. We like to solve our own problems. We don’t really want a savior. OK, then, here’s the deal. In the BPW we get the minimal salvation package. According to some folks, this minimal package was just some poor bloke riding around on an ass, who eventually got his you know what nailed to you know where. Now, if you can come up with lesser salvation package than that, well, I’ll eat my hat.
Does that fully explain the banana problem? If not, let me just reiterate. What we love to think of, as Nature is really just the Veil between the Creator and ourselves. The measure of the great artist, it is often said, is self-transparency, invisibility. In which case, God surely measures up. What we call history has actually been our ‘fall’ or our sojourn into matter. But matter is like a tunnel, you can only go so far into it. My claim is that we have logically gone as far as we can into it, before we see the light at the other end. There is a great deal of evidence that we are just beginning to see that light. This Internet, technological marvel that it is, that you and I are using, is no small part of that evidence, as we are on the verge of discovering. If my own articulation of the BPW is insufficient, greater articulators will follow, and very soon.
Gregg Rosenberg’s book is another significant part of that evidence, as I will, hopefully, soon explore with whomever is interested. The evidence is everywhere we truly care to look. The evidence is right there in that ripe banana, if we look carefully. All we have to do is fully grok on its coherence.
Dan
[ 12. February 2003, 14:33: Message edited by: Dan Smith ]
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Mark Szlazak
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posted 12. February 2003 16:57
Gregg's good for one more go around.
Rex wrote:
quote:
Not exactly. You will experience phenomenal content regardless of whether you can introspect your mechanisms as mechanisms. The inability to introspect mechanisms of phenomenal content should not be taken as evidence that there is no mechanism.
Well, the argument is clearly not, "We cannot introspect mechanisms of phenomenal content, so therefore there are no mechanisms."
Compare: We cannot introspect the mechanisms of perception or learning or memory, but no one is making the argument, "We cannot introspect the mechanisms of perception/learning/memory, so therefore there are no mechanisms underlying perception/learning/memory." In fact, we all agree there are mechanisms underlying those abilities.
The argument is, "We have observational information (not a *lack* of instrospective information) that phenonenal qualities are contents instantiating a difference structure. The existence of these contents is not implied by a pattern of bare difference. A pattern of bare difference is all that physicalism has to offer, so physicalism is false."
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However, there are many examples of introspection failing--ranging from angry and irrational people shouting that they are "calm" and "thinking clearly", to the holes about the size of one segment of a thumb at arm's length in our visual field--holes that are completely imperceptible without concentration and careful tests
It is not clear to me that my observation of what red looks like or pain feels like or what it is like to have an emotion counts as introspection. When I want to know what red looks like, I open my eyes and pay attention. Similarly with pain. Regardless, even if this is introspection it is introspection of a normal kind in normal use. To claim that it is wrong is to find fault with the argument that phenomenal contents are observables. Rex hasn't raised any real objections to that argument, so I'm not sure where he is going with this.
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I would like to see more examples of these facts. We are always in danger of making errors in perception, and given how unreliable certain types of introspective perception are (e.g. "do you have holes in your visual field?"), we need to think carefully about how much weight to place on these observations. The examples I've seen are dots of color--which doesn't really show anything since there is bare difference between different wavelengths (colors) of light--and our thought-experiment with Mary the superneuroscientist, which only (to my knowledge)appeals to a vague intuition.
The examples of color show something precisely *because* there are bare differences between wavelengths of light: it is an example of perceiving an identical difference structure yet different colors.
I'm not sure in what way my use of Mary is vague? Is Rex saying that learning about the anatomy and neural processing of the visual system would give Mary knowledge of what a color looks like? I thought we had already agreed that there were first-person facts to account for.
Examples can multiple, though. The Mary example generalizes to any kind of sensation, not just color. The color example generalized to any input space that is structured, so that two parts of it can share an identical difference structure the way that two parts of a color space can share an identical difference structure.
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I don't see why this is the case. If I believe that other people are conscious, and I study their function and find that neural activity pattern y on brain region Z happens iff they are having a sunset-over-Maui-viewing-experience, and pattern x iff they are having an online-philosophical-discussion-experience, and so on, and that if there is a lack of activity on Z they do not report any experience, haven't I found a physical correlate of experience that would seem to explain the existence of experience? Furthermore, upon a more careful dissection of patterns y and x and so on, we could presumably correlate the properties of the physical pattern with the nature of the reported experience.
I agree with all of this. The problem is that correlation is not a strong enough relation to make physicalism true. I explain why not in quite a bit of detail in chapter three. Basically, physicalism is only true if the correlatoins exist because of some stronger relation, entailment, that ensures the correlation.
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I doubt the reliability of what I imagine are the "observational evidence that the facts of consciousness are not facts of [bare difference]". I doubt the reliability not because it is convenient for my position, but rather because I have observed that this class of observation is surprisingly unreliable in cases where it is easily tested
This is a legitimate challenge. The reply is, first, that it is very unclear that the observations I call upon are instances of "introspection" in the relevant sense. Do I "introspect" what the color of red looks like? The arguments against physicalism would work just as well if it turned out that colors were objective properties of objects directly perceived. Second, the experiments showing how introspection can go wrong have one or more of a certain number of features: processing limits are being reached or attention is being divided; the subject is damaged in some way; or the subject is being asked to confabulate an explanation for some behavior, where we know already that explanations of behavior are, in general, highly sophisticated and malleable rationalizations.
The observations used in my arguments have none of these features.
--Gregg
[ 12. February 2003, 19:12: Message edited by: Mark Szlazak ]
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Rex Kerr
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posted 12. February 2003 19:21
Hm, I'm afraid Gregg and I haven't communicated very successfully in that last exchange. I'll concentrate on the examples of bare difference failing to account for phenomenal content in Chapter 2, since there are no new examples.
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The examples of color show something precisely *because* there are bare differences between wavelengths of light: it is an example of perceiving an identical difference structure yet different colors.
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We can observe that a pattern of differences between colors can produce another color. For instance, a field of tightly packed yellow and red dots may yield anexperience of phenomenal orange under the right viewing conditions. However, we can also observe that the shade of orange that results is not produced by the mere pattern of difference. It has to be a pattern of difference between the appropriate colors thus providing no explanation of color in terms of mere patterns of difference.
In this example, you keep some patterns of difference and ignore other patterns of difference and complain that perception changes. Well, yes, if you change a pattern of difference that is essential to perception, it ought to change!
Let's look at what is going on in more detail. Our eyes have three different types of photoreceptor cells that are sensitive to different frequences of light (roughly red, green, and blue). If you place patches of pigment on a surface that are large enough, sets of photoreceptor cells with be exposed to light coming off of only one patch. Yellow light will excite the red and green photoreceptor cells, resulting in a certain firing pattern of retinal ganglion cells corresponding to the yellow patch. In the red patches, you'll get firing of predominantly of the red-detecting cells.
Now, if you make the patches smaller, light from multiple patches will fall on a single photoreceptor cell. The mix of red and yellow will excite the red photoreceptors pretty well, and the green photoreceptors not-so-well (since they're really only sensitive to the yellow component). You then get a mixed firing pattern of strong red/weak green.
If you color everything true orange, then the red photoreceptors respond well (red is close to orange), and the green ones poorly (green is not so close to orange). You get a mixed firing pattern of strong red/weak green.
Now if we return to the examples of color, we see that we have a certain pattern of difference, and in fact it is the pattern of difference (in both spacing and color) between red and yellow dots that explains why we see orange--in that true orange (590nm, for instance) will induce the same pattern of bare difference in our retinas.
I completely fail to see how this tells us anything that would lead us to believe that you perceive different colors despite an identical difference structure.
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Most find it hard to deny that Mary learns something factual the first time she sees red (even if it is just a fact about a new mode of presentation for an already known fact)....Whatever one thinks this implies about physicalism, it certainly implies something about phenomenal redness. It follows inevitably that whatever she learns about the experiencing of red is not just a fact about bare difference or patterns of bare difference.
It is not a fact that Mary knows, but that does not mean that it is not explained by a fact that we know. I have addressed this at length in previous posts--Mary's book knowledge feels different to her than her experiences, something that presumably she expects, given what she knows about neuroscience.
So again, I fail to see where the problem arises. (Also, the phrase "most find it hard to deny" makes it difficult to analyze precisely what the nature of Mary's new knowledge/experience is, and makes it equally hard to understand whether the difficulty is warranted or psychological; most adults find it hard to deny that their children are far above average (despite the obvious inherent contradiction in that belief).)
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I agree with all of this [matching neuronal firing patterns to experiences]. The problem is that correlation is not a strong enough relation to make physicalism true. I explain why not in quite a bit of detail in chapter three. Basically, physicalism is only true if the correlatoins exist because of some stronger relation, entailment, that ensures the correlation.
Yes, but how do you get from correlation to something stronger?
In any area?
If you can do such a thing at all, why can't the same process be used here?
Likewise, I use correlations between my behavior and my own consciousness (to the extent that I'm aware of it) to justify my belief that other humans are also conscious. I presume that you do this also, in some fashion. How do you proceed? Why not proceed in the same fashion with these pattern-experience correlations?
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Second, the experiments showing how introspection can go wrong have one or more of a certain number of features...
There are experiments that have none of these features. They're easiest to generate with visual cues. Introspection would lead one to believe that your visual input was fairly uniform and completely free of holes. It would lead one to believe that you see both moving and still objects where-they-are. It would lead one to believe that there are no breaks in the transmission of visual information. It would lead one to believe that when one looks at something, one's eyes are fixed on that thing at one spot (unless one is actively moving one's eyes around).
All of these things are, in fact, false. Some can be introspected with difficulty--finding your "blind spots", which are about 15 degrees outward from "straight ahead". Some can't be introspected at all; it takes modern camera systems to really demonstrate the micro-saccades that one's eyes take when supposedly looking at an object with a fixed gaze.
Thankfully, our ability to reliably assess "what is out there" is much better than our ability to reliably assess what it is we are doing when we look at what is out there.
The reason why I mention introspection is precisely because it seems that it is introspection that causes us to place any weight on the Mary example at all. Since the color example is not illustrative, the Mary example is the only one left.
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Dan Smith
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posted 13. February 2003 21:45
Rex, Mark, and Gregg,
I have been trying to puzzle out where Rex and Gregg differ, or are miscommunicating.
In the instance of ‘premise 3’ of chapter two, Gregg is talking only about the abstract ‘life’ world. Rex, however, is jumping ahead to consider the actual physical world. He is getting ahead of Gregg’s argument strategy, and so misconstrues his initially more specific, logical point.
In the ‘life’ world, the entire physics can be formally represented by a two dimensional pattern of dots, each having just two discrete states. In that virtual world, these difference patterns are the only allowable constructs. Gregg wishes to show that in such a simple world there is no basis by which the known facts of color could arise or be accounted for.
The question is whether any such pattern could account for the facts of color sensation in that world. We are not talking here about rods and cones or any actual biological constructs. This is a purely conceptual or logical argument, not biological, and pertaining only to this virtual world.
It is a general fact of color experience that a difference structure of two colors can produce a third color. This is just the abstract way that a color spectrum operates. However, in the ‘toy’ physics being considered here, even if we allowed, counterfactually, an initial color content or state for all the cells, any such difference pattern could result in different colors, depending on the putative content of the dots or cells. Thus, it cannot be merely a fact about the bare difference structure that could account for this most basic fact of differential color experience.
Gregg will then go on to show how a similar argument could be applied to our actual, physical world, hopefully demonstrating that our present concept of physics also cannot account for the facts of experience. He then attempts to amend the physics to account for the known facts of color.
Dan
[ 13. February 2003, 22:29: Message edited by: Dan Smith ]
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Mark Szlazak
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posted 13. February 2003 23:27
Rex excised this from my chapter:
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We can observe that a pattern of differences between colors can produce another color. For instance, a field of tightly packed yellow and red dots may yield anexperience of phenomenal orange under the right viewing conditions. However, we can also observe that the shade of orange that results is not produced by the mere pattern of difference. It has to be a pattern of difference between the appropriate colors thus providing no explanation of color in terms of mere patterns of difference.
Before responding to Rex's specific comments, I would like to point out that I draw no true implications from this observation. I go on to say it is merely suggestive. The discussion actually continues as follows,
"The example shows that, even allowing that we start with colors, one cannot reduce some colors to the mere difference structure among other colors."
This makes it clear that I am talking about the difference structure of the color wheel, and not the retinal processing details Rex goes on to discuss. From this, I say the following,
"The observation above is suggestive. After all, the skeptic is maintaining a much weaker position. The position the skeptic is defending is that patterns of bare differences do not entail the facts about the phenomenal qualities. Patterns of bare differences are difference structures whose identity obtains because of a mere formal difference, ungrounded by content at all. The skeptic notes that orange cannot even be reduced to the structure of difference between red and yellow once we allow substitutions for the phenomenal content of red and yellow. We can observe more straightforwardly that red and yellow are not constituted by patterns of mere difference, without any content at all."
In context, I think it is clear I am doing an observational analysis of the phenomenal qualities themselves in a way that has more in common with psychophysics than studies of low-level neural processing. I don't see that Rex's discussion really addresses this.
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Gregg: Most find it hard to deny that Mary learns something factual the first time she sees red (even if it is just a fact about a new mode of presentation for an already known fact)....Whatever one thinks this implies about physicalism, it certainly implies something about phenomenal redness. It follows inevitably that whatever she learns about the experiencing of red is not just a fact about bare difference or patterns of bare difference.
Rex: It is not a fact that Mary knows, but that does not mean that it is not explained by a fact that we know. I have addressed this at length in previous posts--Mary's book knowledge feels different to her than her experiences, something that presumably she expects, given what she knows about neuroscience.
Did Rex mean, "It *is* a fact that Mary knows."? I assume he did. Regardless, his response is a non-sequitor as far as I can tell, and I have tried to point that out previously. His response seems to be an inference of the form,
Rule: If knowledge of X feels different than knowledge of Y feels, then conclusions of difference between X and Y cannot be trusted.
This is not responsive to the argument given, which is about the things we have knowledge of, not about how it feels to have the knowledge.
Compare: It feels different to learn how heat effects H20 than it feels to observe water boiling, so we would not expect the facts about H20 to entail the facts about water.
That inference is clearly fallacious and Rex hasn't differentiated the inference rule his response assumes from that inference.
Rex's questions about getting something stronger than correlation are answered in my chapter three.
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Gregg: Second, the experiments showing how introspection can go wrong have one or more of a certain number of features...
Rex: There are experiments that have none of these features. They're easiest to generate with visual cues. Introspection would lead one to believe that your visual input was fairly uniform and completely free of holes. It would lead one to believe that you see both moving and still objects where-they-are. It would lead one to believe that there are no breaks in the transmission of visual information. It would lead one to believe that when one looks at something, one's eyes are fixed on that thing at one spot(unless one is actively moving one's eyes around).
The most important thing here is that the observations my argument requires are like the kinds of observations used in psychophysics, which have proven to be highly reliable. Using them one can predict a surprisingly large number of features of neural coding, like the fact that perceptual contents are bound, that colors are three-dimensional, that perceived similarities in qualia correspond to similarities in neural coding, etc. Rex's examples are really not analogous to psychophysical observation of phenomenal qualities.
Secondarily, Rex is working with a different concept of introspection than I am, as I wouldn't classify those phenonema as errors of introspection at all. For example, our percept of our visual field is meta-stable at the cortical level so the jumpiness of saccades is not reflected in it. Thus when we fail to "notice" that our eyes are not fixed on one spot that is an introspective success, not a failure, as the object of introspection is our percept of the visual field and not the behavior of the lower level mechanisms. Similarly, our "failure" to notice holes in our visual field, when not due to lack of attention, is due to filling-in that occurs at higher levels. Thus there *is* no hole in the visual percept that we are reporting on, and the observation is a success for introspection, not a failure.
In general, the subject matter of introspection for me is not about low level mechanisms and how they process information nor is it about how our experiences relate to the external world, so failures to introspect features of those things do not constitue failures of introspection. Introspective judgments are about the higher-level percepts, thoughts, sensations, and memories that are encoded at (apparently) the cortical level. Widespread introspective failure in normally functioning subjects is not common, according to the understanding of introspection that I have.
I do not know how Rex defines "introspection".
With this, I am afraid I'm going to have to bow out of this discussion. I think Rex and I have each had a fair opportunity to lay out our views and perhaps it is best if we each take time to reflect on what the other has said to this point. As I said in my last message, my feeling is that we have reached the point of diminishing return on our investment in the discussion [Mark Szlazak: in the email to me for Greggs previous post].
best,
--Gregg
[ 13. February 2003, 23:49: Message edited by: Mark Szlazak ]
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Rex Kerr
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posted 14. February 2003 05:45
I'd like to thank Gregg for the interesting and illuminating discussion!
I'm afraid we have ended in a position where I fail to understand all of Gregg's supposedly suggestive examples, because I either find bare differences that account in part for the phenomenal difference, or am not seeing how certain experiences should be considered to be reliable and used in the argument. (E.g. why should psychophysics be used to tell us about what is implementable when we have ample evidence that our obvious interpretations of implementation based on perception can be shown by sufficiently sophisticated psychophysical tests to be badly wrong?) Since these examples are essential to Gregg's anti-physicalist argument, it is no surprise that I am still completely unconvinced by it!
(I do think, however, that it rules out certain types of physicalism and/or illustrates necessary features of any successful physicalism.)
But, anyway, I agree with Gregg that we have both had adequate time to present our cases.
Thanks again to Mark for conveying the messages back and forth!
Dan--the reason I don't address the Life World scenario directly is that the examples used to support points about the Life World are taken from the real world. Also, discussions about the Life World are more likely to be tainted by our lack of ability to imagine the complexity and emergent properties of Life Worlds. I would run the argument backwards: physicalism works in the real world, so by Gregg's analogy, I would expect that something like consciousness could exist in appropriate Life Worlds. (And anyway, appropriate Life Worlds are Universal Turing Machines, and all UTMs are computationally equivalent; the physicalist view of our universe is well-approximated by a UTM (with some important caveats, but not any that are relevant to consciousness as far as I know).)
Edited to fix a typo.
[ 14. February 2003, 05:46: Message edited by: Rex Kerr ]
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Dan Smith
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posted 14. February 2003 13:16
Rex,
You say:
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The reason I don't address the Life World scenario directly is that the examples used to support points about the Life World are taken from the real world.
The whole point of this exercise is to see if ‘real world’ psychology can be supported by and accounted for within any artificial world.
It is clear to me that Gregg has presented a new and powerful argument to the contrary: the Life World cannot support the fundamental facts of actual color perception.
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Also, discussions about the Life World are more likely to be tainted by our lack of ability to imagine the complexity and emergent properties of Life Worlds. I would run the argument backwards: physicalism works in the real world, so by Gregg's analogy, I would expect that something like consciousness could exist in appropriate Life Worlds.
Gregg’s argument demonstrates the logical impossibility of color vision in the Life World. Try as hard as your might, Rex, you will not be able to imagine a way to square the circle. That also has be proven impossible.
“… physicalism works in the real world…”!! Wait a minute, Rex; I was under the very distinct impression that this is precisely the topic of this discussion: to determine the efficacy of physicalism. You seem to be falling into the same mental trap that so many of your physicalist predecessors fell into, they simply could not imagine any alternative to physicalism and so they were not even able to attend to simple arguments to the contrary. The lack of comprehension is about par for the physicalist course, unfortunately, and is one reason why the academic, intellectual community has a hard time finding any justification for treating physicalism as a live option. If you wish to turn that tide, you have your work cut out.
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(And anyway, appropriate Life Worlds are Universal Turing Machines, and all UTMs are computationally equivalent; the physicalist view of our universe is well-approximated by a UTM (with some important caveats, but not any that are relevant to consciousness as far as I know).)
The fact that the Life World supports a UTM but cannot support color vision, and that in its turn a UTM can support physics, modulo the Quantum, is then a fatal argument against physicalism. Do you not see this logical progression?
Dan
[ 14. February 2003, 13:32: Message edited by: Dan Smith ]
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Rex Kerr
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posted 14. February 2003 15:13
Dan, I see the logical progression.
However, I find the real-world intuition applied to Life World systems utterly unconvincing.
Perhaps this is because I know too much about the real world, and so get distracted by details that are irrelevant to the point being made. But I also get the feeling that some people making anti-physicalist arguments know too little about the real world and overlook important details.
If you understand the nature of Gregg's examples, you're welcome to try to enlighten me.
For example: on what basis would I say that Mary the Superneuroscientist learns something upon seeing red the first time? Well, I certainly can't appeal to my Mary-level knowledge of neuroscience, because I don't have that level of knowledge. I can appeal to my intuition that, for instance, I learn more by going to a foreign country than reading about it. But when you get persnickity about where that intuition actually comes from, you end up with a lot of examples that don't really capture the bare difference/phenomenal content split; and a self-reflective intuition about how it feels like this must be working, which can't be trusted based on how badly our other self-reflective intuitions end up being at telling us how things are working.
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William Brookfield
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posted 14. February 2003 17:20
Hi Rex,
I hope you do not feel too besieged by non-physicalists. Hopefully I can respond briefly to your earlier comments.
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William -- Darwinism, being material, must conform to the physical ideal of Weinbergian pointlessness. That is to say, the Darwinian version of the 'struggle to survive' must be entirely derived from a physical energy potential
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Rex -- Minimization of energy powers biochemical reactions; these maintain life and enable movement, reproduction, metabolism and the like; some collections of biochemical reactions move and metabolize others, which makes reproduction of the original a very high-energy event. Over time, those sets of biochemical reactions whose energy minimization is consistent with reproduction continue to exist.
I *do* understand your point, but I do not see this as being the entire derivaton / the derivaton in question.
Perhaps I could clarify my use of the word “derived” as it applies to my point.
To begin with, there seems to exist a fundamental problem for physicalism. Everyone who is conscious, is certain of the reality of their consciousness. Consciousness is self evident. This is not true for the physical world. With only "physical" evidence for reference, arguments for the *reality* of the physical are hopelessly circular. While a physical architecture or style is obvious, the physical-as-reality model is underivable and must be accepted on blind faith.
Other derivational challenges/problems for physicalism include;
The initial derivation of a lawful universe from a lawless initial singularity.
Derivation of animate organisms from inanimate dead matter.
Derivation of self regulating organisms from dead matter that has no concept of self.
Derivation of a reproducing organism from non-reproducing dead matter.
Derivation of consciousness from unconsciousness.
Another problem for physicalism is the use of *language* to describe meaningless physical systems. All languages are structured sequences of *meanings.* Every *functioning* word has an associated
non-physical *meaning* (a Weinbergian “tooth fairy”). What do such non-physical *meanings* have to do with a *physical* universe/system?
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Dan Smith
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posted 14. February 2003 22:34
Rex,
It seems, on its face, to be very awkward to maintain that Mary learns nothing upon experiencing color for the first time. She learns what it is like to have that first-hand phenomenal experience. I don’t think that you or I can really imagine what it would be like to be a bat. Would we not learn something by having that experience? Unless you are an eliminativist about phenomenal experience, and I gather that you are not, then there is only one way to have it, and that is first-hand.
But let’s get back to Mary, or rather to her sister, Arlene, the art critic. Let us suppose that that she works for the New York Times, which establishment has just received, by special delivery, our first ever painting from the Beta Reticulans.
Of course, there will be many things to learn by looking at the painting. But the assignment put to Arlene is simply to describe in detail her initial gut feelings as to the aesthetics of her experience. There will be no textbooks for her to consult. She can only introspect.
Are you saying that we could have gotten the information she is about to report to us in some other fashion? Are you saying that her neuroscientist sister could have predicted her response?
Perhaps Mary could have cloned Arlene and then shown the Recticulan painting to Arlene2 before showing it to Arlene. That is the only way to make a prediction about Arlene. Would that support physicalism? I’ll be happy to consider that case, if you like.
Dan
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