Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site pyuxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!pyuxww!pyuxd!rlr From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: Sc--nce Attack (self-awareness) Message-ID: <1800@pyuxd.UUCP> Date: Sat, 28-Sep-85 11:58:44 EDT Article-I.D.: pyuxd.1800 Posted: Sat Sep 28 11:58:44 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 2-Oct-85 01:06:02 EDT References: <45200016@hpfcms.UUCP> <1605@pyuxd.UUCP> Organization: Whatever we're calling ourselves this week Lines: 285 >>And I still contend that you make this assumption to reach the conclusion >>you want regarding brains and minds. Which is an ass backwards way to >>think. > Oh, I see -- top-down conceptualization is inferior to bottom-up -- > that's what you seem to be saying. Very few people, (besides Skinnerians) > would agree with you that objective dogmatically precedes subjective. Dennett comes to the same conclusion that you do: top-down and bottom-up are equally viable forms of analysis, he says, but he feels that top-down will make faster progress. The problem is that if the overall model chosen at the top level is flawed, everything that goes down along the way risks the possibility of contamination. > Are we only external behavior? Why are we not also internal sensation? > Why do you deny what you experience? Skinnerism may be a useful > laboratory methodology, but is it the complete truth? Or is the wishful mysticalism the complete truth? Or something else? > John Searle, who argues that human cognition (in particular > intentionality and meaning) is caused by the powerful biochemical > machinery of our brains, is the author of wonderfully cynical plain > language attacks against the assertions by big name AI folks that > human cognitive states are digitally simulatable. > > In particular, he attacks the notion (also expressed by Hofstadter, as > well as in the recent `Soul' debate) that formal symbolic information > processing is the same as what the neurophysical machinery of our brains > does. A digital simulation may simulate our brains, but such an > isomorphism will fail to cause any real mental experience. His > notorious `Chinese Room' experiment from `Minds, Brains, Programs' (too > long to reproduce here, unless there is future interest) is quite > entertaining. Is the reason he rejects the notion that the brain could ever be successfully "duplicated" (perhaps not literally) due to some hard reason that he can put his finger on, or just some anthropocentric notion that we people just MUST be different? > Searle rejects mind/body dualism, attributing equal reality to > subjective experience and objective entities, much as surface tension is > as real as the water molecules which cause it: "The mind-brain problem > is no more of a problem than the digestion-stomach problem". > Consequently, Skinnerism, which denies any reality to mental experience, > is an extreme form of dualism, since it not only artificially splits > the universe, but it discards half of it. Maybe a half that isn't there? > Excerpts from `Minds, Brains, Programs': > The problem with a brain simulator is that it is simulating the > wrong things about the brain. There doesn't even exist a brain simulator, and already it's "simulating the wrong things"! > As long as it only simulates the > formal structure of the sequence of neural firings at synapses, it > won't have simulated what matters about the brain, namely its causal > properties, its ability to produce intentional states. ... How could that be? Why isn't that property a part of the "sequence of neural firings of synapses"? > No one would suppose that we could produce milk and sugar by running > a computer simulation of the formal sequences in lactation and > photosythesis; but where the mind is concerned, many people are > willing to believe in such a miracle, because of ... a deep and > abiding dualism: the mind they suppose is a matter of specific > material causes in a way that milk and sugar are not. Why is this a valid analogy? If the right materials are used and the right processes are achieved, those things can certainly be produced. Why (again) the brain/mind as exception to the rule? > Another from `Intentionality': > To say that an agent is conscious of the conditions of satifaction > of his conscious beliefs and desires is not to say that he has to > have second order intenional states about his first order states of > belief and desire. If it were, we would indeed get an infinite > regress. Rather, the consciousness of the conditions of > satisfaction is part of the conscious belief or desire, since the > intentional content is internal to the states in question. So, because this would represent an "infinite regress" (by this interpretation), it simply cannot be? >>> There is still no way whatsoever to demonstrate that some other >>> radically different kind of structure might not also work as well -- >>> after all, the only aware entities we are certain of are humans -- >>> although I believe animals and maybe plants share this trait with us, to >>> varying degrees. >>There is also no reason to assume that the reason my parakeet is missing and >>there are feathers in my cat's mouth is that nanoscopic aliens from the 23rd >>dimension entered my house, neutralized my cat with a time displacement >>transfuser and digital synthesizer, disintegrated the bird with a Radio >>Shack combination nuclear tambourine/microwave transmiitter/CD player, and >>stuffed real bird feathers in my cat's mouth. If I have a vested interest >>in "proving" that aliens from the 23rd dimension shop at Radio Shack, I >>might choose to make this assumption. > You miss the point: > Is there something intrinsic in the physical construction of humans > that is responsible for mind, or can something qualitatively similar > to mind somehow be `caused' by radically different form and substance? Again, work backwards from the anthropocentric conclusion that "we are different", and then justify everything that "precedes" (postcedes?) it logically. It is you who has missed the point. > I have neither belief nor vested interest in this question. This is why you write 1000 lines a week on the subject. > Subjective knowledge is dubious because it is not (yet) verifiable, > but does that mean I did not sneeze twice last tuesday, because nobody saw > me and all the evidence is gone? The likelihood of your having sneezed is both reasonable (sneezing is a common enough phenomena) and practically irrelevant to the larger scope of things (if you sneeze, does it radically change the universe---not its course of destiny, a la "for want of a nail...", but its whole nature?). On the other hand, those phenomena we have been talking about are both "unreasonable" (from the perspective of evidence) and very relevant to the whole nature of things. It is for that reason that it is very different indeed. >>> How can we say for certain that an arbitrarily complex heap of chemicals >>> is not subjectively experiencing conscious awareness (perhaps even >>> qualitatively similar to our own) even though the result of structures >>> profoundly different from anything found in ourselves? >>We can't. Perhaps the rock you tripped over last week was hurt as much as >>you were. > GRAZIE TANTO!! You're welcome, kimosabe. > The limits of objective knowledge -- one must BE the entity in question. I take it you took this point seriously. OK. Given that we find no physical (observable) mechanism within rocks for performing brain functions, if indeed they do, then it would be a property inherent in all things: rocks, plants, animals (including humans), shoes, terminals, printouts, etc. If you accept this, fine. Then go to Radio Shack and look for aliens from the 23rd dimension. >>Can you describe the mechanism by which it senses and feels all this? > Nope. But science forges ever onward, philosophical and psychological > speculation leading the way. These sorts of scientists also hang out at Radio Shack for the aforementioned purpose. >>> This issue of kinds of knowledge -- objective vs subjective -- is where >>> science SETS ITS OWN LIMITS of observation, and it is where I find >>> strictly materialistic philosophical schemes inadequate for >>> understanding my own human existence. >>Is the limit "objective vs. subjective", or is it "documentable and >>verifiable vs. non- ..."? If your hypothetical experimenters had enough >>knowledge to go into your brain and determine the ACCURACY of your >>subjective ideas, and found them based not on facts but on preconceptions, >>what would you say then? > Preconceptions of what? I do not claim that the interpretation of > subjective ideas is necessarily true -- obviously they are often not in > accord with objectively known facts. > Besides, it's not the ACCURACY of subjective experience that makes them > real, it's the fact that they were experienced in the first place: > Example 1: Dennett's nefarious neurosurgeon implants something in my > brain so that whenever he pushes a button, I feel a pain > in my toe. The button is pushed: > (TRUE) I feel toe-like pains. > (FALSE) My toe requires medical care. The difference is that you claim some correlation between such experiences that cannot be verified and the world outside the brain/body. Again, we've been through the phantom pain bit, and this is the very reason why subjective "knowledge" (quotes most necessary) is not acceptable when it comes to claims about the rest of the world. Also, you could be Laura being infuriating again. > Example 2: I believe I secretly control the world using mental telepathy > that implant my wishes into frogs, but I tell nobody. You just did. The jig is up. Be a solipsist, change the world. > The notion of objective vs subjective is examined by Rorty, who, in > "Philosophy & the Mirror of Nature", imagines an alien planet ("the > Antipodes") populated by people who do not have minds, although they do > have complex brains and vaguely respond like humans. They use words like > `I' for convenience, but lack words such as `feel' or `awareness' that > describe direct inner mental experiences. Hmmm, but they are (of course) "different" from humans? > The very fact that strict behaviorists deny mental states only magnifies > the issue. We can imagine Skinnerian robots exhibiting complex functions > without the need for internal states. This secondary phantom world does > not seem to be logically necessary. But it is not merely an artifice of > our culture -- every culture has evolved similar notions of an internal > noumenal world. So? Every culture has had religions. Every culture (up until recently) has held slaves and made wars. So? >>> Philosophy, the love of wisdom, must never acquiesce to the axioms and >>> definitions of any single viewpoint -- materialistic or otherwise. >>> Instead, philosophy should be a tool for mutual comprehension of all >>> modes of thought. >>Does this mean philosophy should ignore the truth, the realities of the >>world, in favor of propositions about how some might prefer to see the world? > It is commonsense and not the ideology of intellectuals that > determines whether or not something exists, and, if it exists, > what properties it has -- Paul Feyerabend "Well, consider the very roots of our ability to discern truth. Above all (or perhaps I should say 'underneath all'), *common sense* is what we depend on ---that crazily elusive, ubiquitous faculty we all have, to some degree or other. But not to a degree such as 'Bachelor's' or 'Ph.D.'. No, unfortunately, universities do not offer degrees in Common Sense. This is, in a way, a pity. "Given that common sense is [SUPPOSEDLY] common, why have a department devoted to it? My answer would be quite simple: In our lives we are continually encountering strange new situations in which we have to figure out how to apply what we already know. It is not enough to have common sense about known situations; we need also to develop the art of extending common sense to apply to apply to [NEW] situations. ... Common sense, once it starts to roll, gathers more common sense, like a rolling snowball gathering ever more snow. Or, to switch metaphors, if we apply common sense to itself over and over again, we wind up building a skyscraper. The ground floor of this skyscraper is the ordinary common sense we all have, and the rules for building new floors are implicit in the ground floor itself. ... Pretty soon, even though it has all been built up from common ingredients, the structure of this extended common sense is quite arcane and elusive. We might call ths quality represented by the upper floors of the skyscraper "rare sense", but it is usually called [ARE YOU READY, ELLIS?] "science". And some of the ideas and discoveries that have come out of this ... ability defy the ground floor totally. The ideas of relativity and quantum mechanics are anything but commonsensical, in the ground floor sense of the term! They are outcomes of common sense self-applied. [DOES THIS MEAN, BY THE QUOTE ELLIS USES ABOVE THAT HE WOULD THROW OUT THE ANTI-COMMONSENSICAL QM, THUS EFFICIENTLY DISPOSING OF ALL HIS LITTLE THEORIES?]" ---excerpted from "World Views in Collision: The Skeptical Inquirer vs. the National Enquirer" by D. Hofstadter, SciAm 2/82, reproduced in Metamagical Themas > Philosophy, being more flexible than any particular methodology > (including science) does not decide `the realities of the world', > at least not in the sense of `true' or `false'. Philosophical > speculation transcends any partisan view of the world, and is most > valuable for investigating the nature of viewpoints in general. Thank you for answering my question by not answering it. Philosophy is a wide ranging discipline, in which some people are interested in finding truth, but where others could care less about truth and are more interested in rationalizing opinions by creating new axioms from scratch to make the conclusions of those opinions valid. > By nonjudgementally abstracting the definitions, axioms, basic notions, > and arguments of any given point of view, one might determine if an > arbitrary statement is true within that system, or how two systems might > conflict with each other. And by examining whether the axioms of a given system represent accurately the real world, we can find out the validity (or non-validity) of that system. > To the extent that the system under study has a rigorous basis, such > questions can be answered mechanically by logic. More often, the > important questions are based on complex issues like semantics, and that > is one reason philosophy is not reducible to mechanical logic. In fact, philosophers (it seems) sometimes build their own definitions of semantics and language, so that they can, in a meta- sense, manipulate the very "veracity" of their own axioms. -- Popular consensus says that reality is based on popular consensus. Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com