Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Pattern-chaser]

Atla wrote:
Yep and that's just the way things are. This is the folly of dualistic Western philosophy, and of science trying to do philosophy. Among many others, we have phenomenologists like Heidegger, qualia/consciousness eliminativists like Dennett, all kinds of dual-aspect believers like Chalmers, and not a single one of them actually knows what they are talking about.
And this is nearly 100 years after dualistic philosophy was refuted by science.

A bold statement. I would like to know how it is that "phenomenologists like Heidegger" don't know what they're talking about.

Yes, and in addition, I would still like to know how "dualistic philosophy was refuted by science."

[thrasymachus]

Gertie wrote:
Yet you claim to know (some) brain states are experiential states based on correlation. Something we're not in a position to know. It's a hypothesis which requires backing up, because it's only one of several whole cloth hypotheses, and requires an explanation as to how the same identical thing can simultaneously have contradictory properties.

But why is it you think we are not in a position to know that brain states correlate with mental states? Clearly such correlations have been demonstrated in, say, brain surgery that requires patients to be awake so they can report about the mental state that is being excited by a physical stimulus (a probe).

But the problem is not whether or not such states correlate in this way or not. the problem is that, even if a materialist's reduction is right, and, as reductions go, what is REALLY happening when a person smells something, sees it, and the rest, is this actual observable brain activity, this would thereby localize perception, and one would then have to explain how knowledge relationships are possible between subject and object at all. After all, a brain given in the scientist's own conception, a locus of boundaries, a delimited "thing," and unless you want to commit to some kind of "action at a distance," which is a bit like Harry Potter's wand, i.e., an acausal "knowledge event" (is knowledge causal?? Well then, what kind of causal model permits the "distance" between subject and object to be spanned or closed such that S's knowledge of P is actually OF P, and not of its own affairs?), you are bound to an impossibility of ever affirming anything beyond the this brain activity.

The real culprit here is the presumption of science in matters of philosophy.

[thrasymachus]

Faustus5 wrote
What I will ignore is bad philosophy which decides to re-invent the rules for what counts as a scientific explanation without giving good reasons for doing so.

Clearly you don't understand the issue then. You don't know where the boundaries are between empirically confirmed ideas and what those ideas presuppose in their analysis.

A scientific explanation of a natural phenomenon is one that describes what physically happens and why, tracing casual connections in a system from beginning to end. Then it is done. So a scientific explanation of a mental state will be one which traces all the causal pathways from brain events to the motor events subjects use to describe what their experiences are like. That's it.

Causal? Is knowledge, that which rises out of the relationship between knower and known, therefore a causal matter? If you really think empirical science is the be all and end all is understanding the world, then you at least have to have a working model for empirical science's empirical knowledge. If such knowledge is causal in its nature, then you have to explain how one gets knowledge out of causality.

Remember, the "we're looking into it" approach to this matter will not avail you, for any sophisticated and complicated scientist's view on this presupposes simply causality. That is, you can say, well, there is an object, see the causal connections, from the surface, to the eye, into the cortex and so on, and you can do this with the most detailed neurochemistry available, but if you cannot explain how this train of causality delivers the object to mental affairs, then you're just whistling dixy. I mean, you have to have at least a prima facie idea of how causality can satisfy the reaching across distance from one object to another.

I'm aware that you believe this would just be turning our backs on a very real and difficult problem. I don't see it that way, obviously. I see it as us turning our backs on a community of very smart people who have deluded themselves about the nature of consciousness and who are not producing works or ideas I find even remotely compelling or interesting. If you find value in this sort of thing, good for you. I'm on a different path.

I despise delusion as well. Delusion, in the broadest definition, occurs when one believes without justification, a dogmatic adherence to orthodoxy is often in place. Some call your position scientism: empirical science IS the modern orthodoxy, and a move from making great cell phones and computers and dental equipment, to the assumption that this is also what makes for a response to philosophical questions is entirely delusory. Case in point? See the above.

[Faustus5]

Yes we see it differently. As I said, the current physicalist scientific model of what the world is made of and how it works has no place for experience. So if we agree experience exists, that means the model is incomplete.

We agree that experience exists, we just disagree on what it means to explain it, specifically on what is fair to ask of science and what is not.
Someone notices that in stretches of calm weather, sea shells on the beach tend to be sorted by size and shape. They ask why this pattern is formed rather than another.

A scientist who specializes in the physics of fluid turbulence attempts to explain. She goes over how the energy in the waves acts on various bodies depending on their shape, mass, and orientation. This tells a causal story for each kind of shell, perhaps using statistical analysis in some area, or telling a brute deterministic story at other points.

If the person responds with the objection that the question of why this pattern rather than another is on display was never answered by these kinds of narratives, we would (or should) regard the person as confused. The scientist really did answer the question, and there’s nothing more to be said. Once you’ve shown what happens and why in each step of the causal chain, explanation is done.

I feel the same way about neuroanatomical explanations of conscious experience. Why did this pain feel sharp and this one feel dull? Because in one case this kind of nerve was stimulated, and in the other case a different kind of nerve was stimulated. Why does chocolate taste this way, and hot sauce tastes that way? Because chocolate stimulates the following kinds of nerves located here and here and here, activating these kinds of brain areas, whereas hot sauce causes the following activities in these different nerves and brain areas over here and here.

You aren’t going to get anything else from brain science, and in my view it is not reasonable to think anything remains to be explained. This is what explaining a conscious experience looks like, and it could never look like anything else.

I think most would agree we don't know everything, but there is a particular problem re experience, in that it's not third person observable or measurable, which the basic toolkit of science relies on.

As I pointed out earlier, we already have the capacity to observe/measure some aspects of conscious experience from a third person perspective, and the existence of very specific kinds of experiences (visual illusions) have been predicted based on knowledge of how the brain works.

Besides, too much is made out of the first person/third person distinction. In the end the most important thing about the brain events in consciousness is that they are representing features of the world, feeding very specific kinds of information to other systems in the body of an agent. That information flow is not being wired into the same systems of an outside observer. That’s all there is to it.

It’s like making a big deal out of the way a stream looks like from a helicopter hundreds of meters in the air and what it looks like as you are knocked off your feet once you personally step into its current.

If you don't have an answer to the question of the nature of consciousness, on what basis do you get to decide what suggestions are deluded?

Except I do indeed think we have an answer to the question on the nature of consciousness, at least in outline, we’ve had it for decades, and it continues to improve. Sure, some philosophers disagree, but I’ve yet to see a single reason to take their criticisms seriously.

[Atla]

Atla wrote:
Yep and that's just the way things are. This is the folly of dualistic Western philosophy, and of science trying to do philosophy. Among many others, we have phenomenologists like Heidegger, qualia/consciousness eliminativists like Dennett, all kinds of dual-aspect believers like Chalmers, and not a single one of them actually knows what they are talking about.
And this is nearly 100 years after dualistic philosophy was refuted by science.

A bold statement. I would like to know how it is that "phenomnologists like Heidegger" don't know what their talking about.

Phenomenology just seems to be psychology (male psychology actually) and doesn't even address what being/existence actually is.

[Atla]

@Atla wrote:
Yep and that's just the way things are. This is the folly of dualistic Western philosophy, and of science trying to do philosophy. Among many others, we have phenomenologists like Heidegger, qualia/consciousness eliminativists like Dennett, all kinds of dual-aspect believers like Chalmers, and not a single one of them actually knows what they are talking about.
And this is nearly 100 years after dualistic philosophy was refuted by science.

A bold statement. I would like to know how it is that "phenomenologists like Heidegger" don't know what they're talking about.

Yes, and in addition, I would still like to know how "dualistic philosophy was refuted by science."

It was shown that the 'contents of the mind' and the 'physical universe' are linked in such a way, that it really makes no sense to consider them two different things.

[Atla]

@Atla wrote:
Yep and that's just the way things are. This is the folly of dualistic Western philosophy, and of science trying to do philosophy. Among many others, we have phenomenologists like Heidegger, qualia/consciousness eliminativists like Dennett, all kinds of dual-aspect believers like Chalmers, and not a single one of them actually knows what they are talking about.
And this is nearly 100 years after dualistic philosophy was refuted by science.

A bold statement. I would like to know how it is that "phenomenologists like Heidegger" don't know what they're talking about.

Yes, and in addition, I would still like to know how "dualistic philosophy was refuted by science."

'Separateness' was also refuted, 'thingness' was also refuted. There are no separate things, objects. 'Things' are artifacts of human thinking. No subject-object dichotomy, no I-other dichotomy etc. etc. etc. etc.
It's a big topic, and it takes some dedication to work it all out. Most professional philosophers avoid it like the plague, either because they are idiots, or because they are smart but realize their paychecks depend on keeping Western philosophy intact.

[Faustus5]

Clearly you don't understand the issue then. You don't know where the boundaries are between empirically confirmed ideas and what those ideas presuppose in their analysis.

Perhaps the ideas being presupposed seem perfectly acceptable to me until I hear a good argument questioning them.

Causal? Is knowledge, that which rises out of the relationship between knower and known, therefore a causal matter?

Well, there are entire conversations to have about the use of cultural/institutional norms to evaluate knowledge and what is “best” done with it, but in the context of this discussion, I’m only concerned with the parts of knowledge that are modeled by cognitive neuroscience. The other stuff isn’t relevant (again, in the narrow confines of what I’m discussing in this context).

That is, you can say, well, there is an object, see the causal connections, from the surface, to the eye, into the cortex and so on, and you can do this with the most detailed neurochemistry available, but if you cannot explain how this train of causality delivers the object to mental affairs, then you're just whistling dixy.

That’s exactly what explaining such a thing would look like in the context of this discussion. We aren’t talking about the philosophy of epistemology in this thread, after all, and I don’t think it is terribly relevant. We are talking about the possibilities of a scientific account of consciousness and what it would look like.

Some call your position scientism: empirical science IS the modern orthodoxy, and a move from making great cell phones and computers and dental equipment, to the assumption that this is also what makes for a response to philosophical questions is entirely delusory.

That’s fine if you think this way, but until you can do more than just stamp your feet in protest and instead offer a serious and legitimate critique of a scientific appreciation of consciousness, why should I take you seriously? Throwing the S word around is just pure laziness.

[Pattern-chaser]

Yep and that's just the way things are. This is the folly of dualistic Western philosophy, and of science trying to do philosophy. Among many others, we have phenomenologists like Heidegger, qualia/consciousness eliminativists like Dennett, all kinds of dual-aspect believers like Chalmers, and not a single one of them actually knows what they are talking about.
And this is nearly 100 years after dualistic philosophy was refuted by science.

A bold statement. I would like to know how it is that "phenomenologists like Heidegger" don't know what they're talking about.

Yes, and in addition, I would still like to know how "dualistic philosophy was refuted by science."

It was shown that the 'contents of the mind' and the 'physical universe' are linked in such a way, that it really makes no sense to consider them two different things.

So they weren't "refuted", but casually dismissed because "it makes no sense". Fair enough.

'Separateness' was also refuted, 'thingness' was also refuted. There are no separate things, objects. 'Things' are artifacts of human thinking. No subject-object dichotomy, no I-other dichotomy etc. etc. etc. etc.
It's a big topic, and it takes some dedication to work it all out. Most professional philosophers avoid it like the plague, either because they are idiots, or because they are smart but realize their paychecks depend on keeping Western philosophy intact.

"Refuted" sounds formal and authoritative. I don't think "separateness" or "thingness" have been formally disproved in any meaningful sense. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I find the way you are saying it to be confusing and unclear. That's probably my fault....

[Atla]

It was shown that the 'contents of the mind' and the 'physical universe' are linked in such a way, that it really makes no sense to consider them two different things.

So they weren't "refuted", but casually dismissed because "it makes no sense". Fair enough.

'Separateness' was also refuted, 'thingness' was also refuted. There are no separate things, objects. 'Things' are artifacts of human thinking. No subject-object dichotomy, no I-other dichotomy etc. etc. etc. etc.
It's a big topic, and it takes some dedication to work it all out. Most professional philosophers avoid it like the plague, either because they are idiots, or because they are smart but realize their paychecks depend on keeping Western philosophy intact.

"Refuted" sounds formal and authoritative. I don't think "separateness" or "thingness" have been formally disproved in any meaningful sense. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I find the way you are saying it to be confusing and unclear. That's probably my fault....

Is it completely meaningless to say that the existence of the Christian God, or Zeus, or whoever, was disproven? After all, we can't prove a negative.

[Terrapin Station]

So they weren't "refuted", but casually dismissed because "it makes no sense". Fair enough.



"Refuted" sounds formal and authoritative. I don't think "separateness" or "thingness" have been formally disproved in any meaningful sense. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I find the way you are saying it to be confusing and unclear. That's probably my fault....

Is it completely meaningless to say that the existence of the Christian God, or Zeus, or whoever, was disproven? After all, we can't prove a negative.

Aside from the usual proof issues with empirical claims, you only can't prove a negative if (a) the domain is limitless and/or (b) for some practical reason it's not possible to exhaust the domain in an examination, and (c) the negative isn't simply incoherent or impossible.

So, for example, we can easily prove a negative when it comes to something like "I do not have a billion dollars in my bank account" because neither (a) nor (b) are the case. We can easily check the bank account and see that there isn't a billion dollars in it.

Or we can easily prove a negative when it comes to something like, "There are no living things in the universe that aren't living things," even though we can't practically check everywhere in the universe, because it's logically contradictory.

Of course, another issue is simply that "negatives" are positives rephrased.

[Gertie]

Faustus

Gertie wrote: ↑
October 10th, 2020, 6:36 pm
Yes we see it differently. As I said, the current physicalist scientific model of what the world is made of and how it works has no place for experience. So if we agree experience exists, that means the model is incomplete.

We agree that experience exists, we just disagree on what it means to explain it, specifically on what is fair to ask of science and what is not.

Right.

specifically on what is fair to ask of science and what is not.

Well, it's more a case of what is a legitimate question to me. Whether science (currently, or in principle ever) can explain it is a different issue.

Someone notices that in stretches of calm weather, sea shells on the beach tend to be sorted by size and shape. They ask why this pattern is formed rather than another.
A scientist who specializes in the physics of fluid turbulence attempts to explain. She goes over how the energy in the waves acts on various bodies depending on their shape, mass, and orientation. This tells a causal story for each kind of shell, perhaps using statistical analysis in some area, or telling a brute deterministic story at other points.

If the person responds with the objection that the question of why this pattern rather than another is on display was never answered by these kinds of narratives, we would (or should) regard the person as confused. The scientist really did answer the question, and there’s nothing more to be said. Once you’ve shown what happens and why in each step of the causal chain, explanation is done.

OK. In such instances I'd say that if the scientist had all the necessary info she could give a complete account in principle which was in line with the current scientific model of what the world is made of and how it works. (Of course in practice you can't know every factor in play, but if she did then inprinciple she could give the correct answer). With experience she couldn't in principle do that.

I feel the same way about neuroanatomical explanations of conscious experience. Why did this pain feel sharp and this one feel dull? Because in one case this kind of nerve was stimulated, and in the other case a different kind of nerve was stimulated. Why does chocolate taste this way, and hot sauce tastes that way? Because chocolate stimulates the following kinds of nerves located here and here and here, activating these kinds of brain areas, whereas hot sauce causes the following activities in these different nerves and brain areas over here and here.

You're talking about what Chalmers calls the Easy Problems, what we can in principle work out as neuroscience progresses. Again the unanswered question lies in why particular nerves correlate with any experiential state at all. That's where the explanatory gap lies. It's not a problem for the sea shore scientist, she just needs all the details. This is a problem of not having an explanation for the nature of the relationship between the material stuff/processes and experience (aka the mind-body problem).

You aren’t going to get anything else from brain science, and in my view it is not reasonable to think anything remains to be explained. This is what explaining a conscious experience looks like, and it could never look like anything else.

We might not be able to get anything other that further observation of correlation from brain science. That's because as Chalmers says, this isn't a question science seems to have the appropriate toolkit to answer, hence he calls it The Hard Problem. So here's my issue with your position as I understand it -

* I don't see how the mind-body problem not being apparently amenable to the scientific method de-legitimises the question?

* Or allows you to form a conclusion about the mind-body problem, such as Identity Theory being correct? Surely that requires some justification beyond pointing at correlation (as others point to it and come to different conclusions)...?

Gertie wrote: ↑
October 10th, 2020, 6:36 pm
I think most would agree we don't know everything, but there is a particular problem re experience, in that it's not third person observable or measurable, which the basic toolkit of science relies on.

As I pointed out earlier, we already have the capacity to observe/measure some aspects of conscious experience from a third person perspective, and the existence of very specific kinds of experiences (visual illusions) have been predicted based on knowledge of how the brain works.

Besides, too much is made out of the first person/third person distinction. In the end the most important thing about the brain events in consciousness is that they are representing features of the world, feeding very specific kinds of information to other systems in the body of an agent. That information flow is not being wired into the same systems of an outside observer. That’s all there is to it


It’s like making a big deal out of the way a stream looks like from a helicopter hundreds of meters in the air and what it looks like as you are knocked off your feet once you personally step into its current.

You're right that's what's important for how we function day to day. And we understand utility based accounts, that's not a problem. Philosophy shouldn't be parochial and ignore questions which aren't immediately useful. Or easy. And say we came to discover our personal experience is not specific substrate dependant, we might be able to discard our mortal bodies, that looks important! Or when we develop AI which passes the Turing Test, it will be important to know if it genuinely has experience in terms of how we treat it. If panpsychism is true it will revolutionise our relationship with the world. There are plenty of ways that understanding experience is important too.

Re 'First person perspective', that's just a way we describe the 'what it's like' nature of experience. That we've discovered correlation with some physical systems we can inter-subjectively observe is a helpful clue re the mind-body relationship, but it doesn't tell us what the nature of that relationship is. As is the discrete, unified nature of the field of consciousness, located in a specific place and time, correlated with a specific discrete material body. This shows there is some close mind-body relationship, at least with some physical systems. We know that. But simply noting there are first and third person perspectives explains nothing. All it says is my experience correlates with this stuff here, not that stuff over there - but not how and why.

Gertie wrote: ↑
October 10th, 2020, 6:36 pm
If you don't have an answer to the question of the nature of consciousness, on what basis do you get to decide what suggestions are deluded?

Except I do indeed think we have an answer to the question on the nature of consciousness, at least in outline, we’ve had it for decades, and it continues to improve. Sure, some philosophers disagree, but I’ve yet to see a single reason to take their criticisms seriously.

You mean that we've noted correlation between specific experiential states and some specific material processes? I could note that when I lift my coffee cup with my hand, the cup rises. That could mean my arm is made of anti gravity, or a special field arises when my hand interacts with coffee cups, or a million things. But in fact there is one correct explanation, which explains the correlation. Correlation itself isn't the explanation.

[Gertie]

thras

Gertie wrote:
Yet you claim to know (some) brain states are experiential states based on correlation. Something we're not in a position to know. It's a hypothesis which requires backing up, because it's only one of several whole cloth hypotheses, and requires an explanation as to how the same identical thing can simultaneously have contradictory properties.

But why is it you think we are not in a position to know that brain states correlate with mental states? Clearly such correlations have been demonstrated in, say, brain surgery that requires patients to be awake so they can report about the mental state that is being excited by a physical stimulus (a probe).

You simply misunderstood me there. You're right we do know some experiential states correlate with specific brain states, and I assume that will continue to hold as we discover more details. I was challenging the Identity Theory explanation for that correlation.

But the problem is not whether or not such states correlate in this way or not. the problem is that, even if a materialist's reduction is right, and, as reductions go, what is REALLY happening when a person smells something, sees it, and the rest, is this actual observable brain activity, this would thereby localize perception, and one would then have to explain how knowledge relationships are possible between subject and object at all. After all, a brain given in the scientist's own conception, a locus of boundaries, a delimited "thing," and unless you want to commit to some kind of "action at a distance," which is a bit like Harry Potter's wand, i.e., an acausal "knowledge event" (is knowledge causal?? Well then, what kind of causal model permits the "distance" between subject and object to be spanned or closed such that S's knowledge of P is actually OF P, and not of its own affairs?), you are bound to an impossibility of ever affirming anything beyond the this brain activity.

I think a materialist reductionist could argue this is a novel emergent property of material processes which isn't currently accounted for in our materialist model. How such a materialist could explain this is a problem, I agree. Likewise how they could demonstrate the truth of such a claim.

[Pattern-chaser]

So they weren't "refuted", but casually dismissed because "it makes no sense". Fair enough.



"Refuted" sounds formal and authoritative. I don't think "separateness" or "thingness" have been formally disproved in any meaningful sense. I don't disagree with what you're saying, but I find the way you are saying it to be confusing and unclear. That's probably my fault....

Is it completely meaningless to say that the existence of the Christian God, or Zeus, or whoever, was disproven?

Not meaningless, no. It would be wrong to say so.

After all, we can't prove a negative.

Exactly so.

[Sculptor1]

After all, we can't prove a negative.

Proving a negative is possible, but depends on what it is.

When a person gives a full definition of a thing, what ever that is, it is possible to disprove it.
Even if it does not exist.
You do it by unpacking everything that is said and demonstrating that such a thing is impossible, incoherent, or irrational.
It is possible to prove a negative.
If I say there is no biscuits left in the biscuit tin, I can prove that by demonstrating the existence of the negative space where they were earlier.

If you are saying that god cannot be disproven, in this way, you are asserting that god does not exist in the first place.