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From: aweinste@Diamond.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Harnad's epiphenomenalism
Message-ID: <4021@quartz.Diamond.BBN.COM>
Date: Tue, 10-Feb-87 14:41:21 EST
Article-I.D.: quartz.4021
Posted: Tue Feb 10 14:41:21 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 11-Feb-87 20:19:50 EST
Reply-To: aweinste@Diamond.BBN.COM (Anders Weinstein)
Distribution: world
Organization: BBN Labs, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 62

In defending his thesis of "methodological epiphenomenalism", one of Harnad's
favorite strategies is apparently a variant of G.E. Moore's "naturalistic
fallacy" argument:  For any proposed definition of consciousness, he will
ask:  "You say consciousness is X, but why couldn't you just as well have X
WITHOUT consciousness?" If we concede the meaningfulness of this question in
all cases, obviously this objection will be decisive.

But, I think this argument is as question-begging now as it was when Moore
used it in ethical philosophy.  The definer is proposing that X is just what
consciousness IS.  Accordingly, he does *not* grant that you could have X
without consciousness since, on his view, X and consciousness are one and the
same.

Put another way, the materialist is not trying to ADD anything to the
objective, causal story of X by calling it consciousness. Rather, he is
attempting to illuminate the problematic common-sense notion of consciousness
by showing how it is interpretable in naturalistic terms.  Obviously the
adequacy of any proposed definition of consciousness will need to be
established; the issues to be considered will pertain to whether or not the
definition does reasonable justice to the pre-analytic application of the
term, etc. But these issues are just the usual ones for inter-theoretical
identification, and don't present any special problem in the case of mind and
brain.

Another point that Harnad has often stated is that behavior is in practice
our only criterion for the ascription of consciousness.  While this is
currently true, it does not at all preclude the revision of our theory in the
direction of a more refined criterion.  Compare, say, the definition of
"gold." At one time, this substance was identifiable solely on the basis of
its superficial properties such as color, hardness, and specific gravity.
With the growth of scientific knowledge, a new definition of gold in terms of
atomic structure has come to be accepted, and this criterion now supersedes
the earlier ones. If you like, you might say that atomic theory came to
reveal the "essence" of gold.  I see no reason to suppose an analagous shift
couldn't arise out of the study of the mind and brain.

Harnad's "methodological epiphenomenalism" is a apparently an unavoidable
consequence of his philosophy of mind, which seems to be epiphenomenalism
simpliciter.  I am surprised to find many of Harnad's interlocutors
essentially granting him this controversial premise. Whatever happened to
materialism? As I understood it, the whole field of cognitive science -- the
rehabilitation of mentalistic theorizing in psychology -- was inspired by the
philosophical insight that the functional states of computers seemed to have
just the right sorts of features we would want for psycho-physical
identification. Harnad must believe that this philosophy has failed, dooming
us to return to an uneasy and unappealling view: ontological dualism coupled
with methodological behaviorism -- the worst of both worlds.

Well, I don't think we ought to give this up so easily.  I would urge that
cognitivists *not* buy into the premise of so many of Harnad's replies: the
existence of some weird parallel universe of subjective experience.
(Actually, *multiple* such universes, one per conscious subject, though of
course the existence of more than my own is always open to doubt.) We should
recognize no such private worlds. The most promising prospect we have is that
conscious experiences are either to be identified with functional states of
the brain or eliminated from our ultimate picture of the world. How this
reduction is to be carried out in detail is naturally a matter for
empirical study to reveal, but this should remain one (distant) goal of
mind/brain inquiry.

Anders Weinstein		aweinste@DIAMOND.BBN.COM
BBN Labs, Cambridge MA