Now before I start my review of the last chapter, I'd just like to say that I applaud Searle for his humbleness. Like he will admit that even though he thinks he's barking up the right tree, he may not be. And in many ways he is trying to represent consciousness as something more understandable, which is a noble task. One thing I really like about this chapter, is it really encourages scientific research into learning about consciousness. If you read some of your average dualist literature, it's attitude that consciousness can't be discovered or comprehensively described physically or with science as we know it may seem very discouraging for scientists. I feel the way Searle puts it he's very encouraging of scientists trying to follow this path, even though it may be difficult or a dead end. But I'm certainly with Searle in the sense that I think Neurobiological research into consciousness will help us learn a lot about the brain. Sometimes the journey is much more fruitful than the end result.
So, Searle begins by making a controversial statement, he says he believes that just because something is ontologically subjective does not mean it can't be studied objectively. This treads the water of contradiction, but on some levels he may be right. However, as far as studying subjectivity all we really have to go on is reportability and relatedness to our own experiences. Initially I want to accuse Searle of being soft, and he is, but I can see why he does it. He's trying to make consciousness less contradictory with the physical world as we know it. Basically more available for the scientific minded I guess. Sometimes he seems very loose with meaning. Mostly about this statement I'll say that on one hand he's right, but on the other I don't think you can get a deep understanding of subjectivity objectively, there's a wall there that can't be crossed.
He talks about intentionality briefly, kind of defining it, but the next chapter is all about it, so I'm gonna wait till then to really discuss it. I'm still kind of confused, I thought it was like decision making, but it's more about things implying other things in the brain. Like I said, next blog entry I'll give a better description.
After this he goes into several different ways people have attacked the problem of consciousness.
He begins with mysterians who he calls pessimists. Essentially the mysterian angle is that with our current system of science there will be no way to truly understand consciousness. They either believe that it is absolutely impossible to explain as human animals or that we will need to completely revolutionize the way we look at the world to be able to explain it. I think I may be in this camp a bit, I have a strong feeling that the physical world is not the be all end all, that it is just it's own closed system. I know I need to explain that more, but I do feel a complete revolution of how we look at the world would probably shed more light on consciousness than physical science. Not that physical science doesn't have a lot to offer, but like I said earlier, it has boundaries.
Second he talks about supervenience, which actually an idea that stems out of ethics. In ethics it is the idea that two identical actions cannot have different moral values. If an action is good or bad it must be supervenient on other features, and therefore isn't the same action. In the mind, consciousness would be supervenient on the physical processes of the brain. The difference Searle says, is that in morality the action constitutes the morality, but in the brain the supervenience is causal, not constituted. And in other words, supervenience says nothing new, and can pretty much be broken down as the exact same as searle's argument just with different words.
After that he talks about Pan-psychism which is another theory that kind of appeals to me. It is the idea that everything is conscious to some degree. So for example, physics can only talk about extrinsic properties of things. It can only talk about what is objectively observable from the outside, how something interacts with something else, it cannot explain anything that could possibly happening intrinsically in whatever it is discussing, or inside or the exact thing in itself. So maybe the intrinsic things that are moved around by physics are consciousness. And groups of them create consciousness fully. Consciousness is everywhere.
I like it, but Searle does have some good points that I don't think are totally debilitating to the argument, but are certainly worthwhile questions that make you think twice about the theory. First, consciousness appears to be unified and centralized. If it was everywhere part of everything then how is it centralized? His next point is, if it is everywhere why should it feel located. Why don't we have consciousness from the perspective of the room we are in, where do the distinctions happen? Why don't I have the conscious experience of the computer when I touch it? Why does it stop at my hands? Why do I feel it in my brain more than anywhere else? It's a damn good question to be honest. If everything is conscious, why do I feel it here and not there?
So for Searle he thinks that the best way to go about cracking consciousness is via neurobiology. This is how most scientists would like it to be and I'm sure we can learn a whole lot by this method, but you know my views, I don't think this is the right method, but his explanations why he likes it are pretty good.
He explains that there are two ways to go about explaining consciousness through neurobiology, "building block" and "unified field" approaches. In building block the idea is that if you break the problem up into smaller problems you will make the problem easier. A lot of scientific questions are answered this way. Essentially they feel if they say, isolate red, and try to find the point where red becomes a conscious experience, it will open the flood gates to finding out about all the rest of the conscious experiences. My immediate thought is, conscious experiences are so different that I don't know how you could really keep aligning this model up with say, having an emotion of grief. But it is an interesting way to go about it.
Searle has problems with it to. When we are conscious of something it occurs when we are already conscious. So different conscious experiences aren't consciousness itself, but ripples and patterns in the field of consciousness. This is actually the "unified field" approach, which I do like. What consciousness is like, I'll agree is probably much more like that than it is like "YOU SEE RED NOW" black "YOU SEE BLUE NOW" et cetera. Of course this would be a much more difficult way to try and interpret the mind and would require some seriously intense technology. Maybe a problem for the future, the scope of it is just insane.
His last paragraph in this chapter is brilliant and really speaks to me. I'll just quote it here:
"One of the weird features of recent intellectual life was the idea that consciousness--in the literal sense of qualitative , subjective states and processes--was not important, that somehow it didn't matter. One reason this is so preposterous is that consciousness is itself the condition of anything having importance. Only to a conscious being can there be any such thing as importance"
I'll end with that but next chapters all on that intentionality stuff, so I'm interested in what he has to say there.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Tada! It's fixed... right?
So here it is, Searle's about to complete the impossible, he's going to reconcile dualism and materialism, two sects that are completely at odds. So let's get right down to it.
Searle asks us to forget history, forget context and try to re-examine the facts. Honestly a very good idea, let's get all the crap and bullshit out of the way. So, after doing that, we take a look at what we know: science and physics appear to be a closed system of cause and effect and this can explain everything in the world, we have subjective first person qualitative perspective it is undeniable, therefore this subjective first person qualitative perspective is a part of the physical natural world. Appeals to common sense eh?
Ultimately his conclusion can be stated as simply as: consciousness is causally reducible, but ontologically non-reducible. So let's clarify what reduction means. So say we wanted to do a reduction on my desk, we can reduce the desk to the molecules and forces that make up the desk, so it really isn't a desk, what it really is is molecules and forces. It only exists as it is because we designate it that way (i.e. a desk, something to put my computer on), but we can describe it by the smaller things that make it up, it is reducible.
Now what's the difference between a a causal reduction and an ontological one right? Well causally means we can reduce something to the points in history that have brought what we are describing to the point where it is. For example, evolution and genes become a causal reduction of species and organisms.
An ontological reduction is more like my reduction of the desk. Ontology is the study of the nature of existence, so an ontological reduction is a reduction of its substance or existence. But it can be more complicated than just the molecules in the desk. For example what you see on the computer screen can be ontologically reduced to the software processing in your computer.
Basically for everything in physical science, it can be reduced causally and ontologically. If you find one the other isn't far behind. In some cases they could even seem one in the same, like the cause of the desk is the ever present forces of the molecules of wood, and ontologically the desk is the forces and molecules of wood.
Well what Searle's trying to say is, that consciousness is the exception. It can be reduced causally, but not ontologically. So let's give examples. We've (or at least I've) already come to terms with the fact that it deffinitely is not ontologically reducible. For we cannot see inside anyone else's experience. There is no way to tell what is going on in someone's first person, you only have what they tell you, but for you that's always third person knowledge. Therefore consciousness' existence is not reducible to physical properties that make it up.
But Searle claims that consciousness can be explained as caused by the brain. So that consciousness is a process of the brain, just not an ontologically reducible process. It can be explained by the brain functions that cause it to happen. And in this he says that arguments like the philosophical zombies, that are identical to us in every physical manner but have no consciousness, though abstractly conceivable, are not physically possible. If they were an exact physical replica, they would necessarily be conscious, even though consciousness is not reducible to smaller physical parts itself. The key he says, is to discard the historical perspective on it and redefine what we think of as the closed loop of physics so that it can include consciousness and it's interesting nature.
So, I think that's about as clear as I can make his argument. I hope it's clear enough for all of you reading it.
Anyway, there are deffinitely appealing things about the theory I think, i.e. the appeal to common sense. The idea that since consciousness exists it would make a lot more sense as part of the closed loop of physics than it would as this random outside attachment looking in that seems to have nothing at all to do with the physical world. However, I think there are some issues with the argument.
My main problem with it is I think it's really a form of ignoring the hard problem of consciousness. It's how I think Searle thinks it should work, and how he wants it to work, but there's a lot of internal wierdness to it. It still doesn't explain how something could be ontologically irreducible in a physical world. Instead it's more like "consiousness is, physics is, I'm tired of it, let's work it in together some how and worry about other stuff, and stop worrying about this problem that refuses to go away!" He wants so badly to be able to explain consciousness biologically and physiologically, but he can really only go so far.
Unfortunately he's really managed to solve nothing, although I'll give him props for putting more effort in than Dan Dennett, who pretty much rejects the idea of consciousness altogether. It's a valiant effort, but even property dualists believe that consciousness is a natural thing. I don't think Searle is even bringing anything new to the table to be honest. It's kind of like he's saying "consciousness is not reducible physically? No big deal!" Basically just accepting consciousness and moving on to brain science. While I think that's totally viable for say a scientist to say, as a philosopher, I don't think he's digging deep enough.
We'll see though, he's got more coming, including arguments about free will and stuff, so maybe that will make his argument stronger. He does say he believes consciousness has a causal role in the world though I'm not sure how. Deffinitely looking forward to that, certainly more to come.
Searle asks us to forget history, forget context and try to re-examine the facts. Honestly a very good idea, let's get all the crap and bullshit out of the way. So, after doing that, we take a look at what we know: science and physics appear to be a closed system of cause and effect and this can explain everything in the world, we have subjective first person qualitative perspective it is undeniable, therefore this subjective first person qualitative perspective is a part of the physical natural world. Appeals to common sense eh?
Ultimately his conclusion can be stated as simply as: consciousness is causally reducible, but ontologically non-reducible. So let's clarify what reduction means. So say we wanted to do a reduction on my desk, we can reduce the desk to the molecules and forces that make up the desk, so it really isn't a desk, what it really is is molecules and forces. It only exists as it is because we designate it that way (i.e. a desk, something to put my computer on), but we can describe it by the smaller things that make it up, it is reducible.
Now what's the difference between a a causal reduction and an ontological one right? Well causally means we can reduce something to the points in history that have brought what we are describing to the point where it is. For example, evolution and genes become a causal reduction of species and organisms.
An ontological reduction is more like my reduction of the desk. Ontology is the study of the nature of existence, so an ontological reduction is a reduction of its substance or existence. But it can be more complicated than just the molecules in the desk. For example what you see on the computer screen can be ontologically reduced to the software processing in your computer.
Basically for everything in physical science, it can be reduced causally and ontologically. If you find one the other isn't far behind. In some cases they could even seem one in the same, like the cause of the desk is the ever present forces of the molecules of wood, and ontologically the desk is the forces and molecules of wood.
Well what Searle's trying to say is, that consciousness is the exception. It can be reduced causally, but not ontologically. So let's give examples. We've (or at least I've) already come to terms with the fact that it deffinitely is not ontologically reducible. For we cannot see inside anyone else's experience. There is no way to tell what is going on in someone's first person, you only have what they tell you, but for you that's always third person knowledge. Therefore consciousness' existence is not reducible to physical properties that make it up.
But Searle claims that consciousness can be explained as caused by the brain. So that consciousness is a process of the brain, just not an ontologically reducible process. It can be explained by the brain functions that cause it to happen. And in this he says that arguments like the philosophical zombies, that are identical to us in every physical manner but have no consciousness, though abstractly conceivable, are not physically possible. If they were an exact physical replica, they would necessarily be conscious, even though consciousness is not reducible to smaller physical parts itself. The key he says, is to discard the historical perspective on it and redefine what we think of as the closed loop of physics so that it can include consciousness and it's interesting nature.
So, I think that's about as clear as I can make his argument. I hope it's clear enough for all of you reading it.
Anyway, there are deffinitely appealing things about the theory I think, i.e. the appeal to common sense. The idea that since consciousness exists it would make a lot more sense as part of the closed loop of physics than it would as this random outside attachment looking in that seems to have nothing at all to do with the physical world. However, I think there are some issues with the argument.
My main problem with it is I think it's really a form of ignoring the hard problem of consciousness. It's how I think Searle thinks it should work, and how he wants it to work, but there's a lot of internal wierdness to it. It still doesn't explain how something could be ontologically irreducible in a physical world. Instead it's more like "consiousness is, physics is, I'm tired of it, let's work it in together some how and worry about other stuff, and stop worrying about this problem that refuses to go away!" He wants so badly to be able to explain consciousness biologically and physiologically, but he can really only go so far.
Unfortunately he's really managed to solve nothing, although I'll give him props for putting more effort in than Dan Dennett, who pretty much rejects the idea of consciousness altogether. It's a valiant effort, but even property dualists believe that consciousness is a natural thing. I don't think Searle is even bringing anything new to the table to be honest. It's kind of like he's saying "consciousness is not reducible physically? No big deal!" Basically just accepting consciousness and moving on to brain science. While I think that's totally viable for say a scientist to say, as a philosopher, I don't think he's digging deep enough.
We'll see though, he's got more coming, including arguments about free will and stuff, so maybe that will make his argument stronger. He does say he believes consciousness has a causal role in the world though I'm not sure how. Deffinitely looking forward to that, certainly more to come.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Now it gets interesting.
When I last left you with Searle, I felt disappointed and short changed. It seemed as though he had dropped the ball, and didn't have a firm grasp of the topic, and furthermore wasn't going to take consciousness seriously.
Ah, but there's a twist! The last two chapters have been materialism bashing. First he goes through the history materialism, which is very interesting. Essentially starting with psychology and behaviorism which really brought on the return in popularity of the view, and then moving on to functionalism which is basically just a more in depth view. Essentially the development of the computer, and the idea that the brain is just like a computer, our brain being the hardware and our thoughts being the software, was probably the climax and biggest triumph of the materialists. They now had an explanation for cognition and thought, because they had an example that worked in the real world. Pretty fascinating actually and it makes a lot of sense.
And so materialism has become the dominant philosophy among psychologists, scientists and philosophers and it has become quite the popular world view. Among intellectuals it is considered a guaranteed fact really. And science, and the way it has worked for science, and the way science has unfolded has brought us some extremely convincing evidence towards this theory. However, it ignores one extremely important feature of reality, consciousness. Many dismiss in an Occam's Razor fashion, as useless, and since it doesn't seem to accomplish anything it either a. is an illusion or b. is a waste of time. However both of these are clearly false, a. it is the only guaranteed real thing in existence, b. if it is real it is not a waste of time.
Essentially Searle spends most of these chapters disarming materialism with the normal devices, like the ones I used in the argument with my friend, the Zombies, the Inverted colors, et cetera. But he brings up one new one I kind of like that I'm going to share. This one particularly picks on people who love the computer related to the brain example.
He calls this "the Chinese Room." So say you are like me and you don't speak a lick of Chinese. You are put in a room and given a test in Chinese. You have all these dictionaries and books on how to answer these questions, how Chinese is structured and how to put what symbol where. After however long you finish the test and are able to get all the right answers. You still can't speak a lick of Chinese, but you can get the right answer on tests as though you understand Chinese. You understand all the syntax, but know nothing of the language. This is what computers are like, they need to be given a context, but they do not understand meaning. Anyway it's a really interesting example.
Alright, so Searle has bashed Dualism, he's bashed Materialism, the question is now, what the hell is left? Way to go Searle, you've turned what I thought was a disappointment into a freaking page turner. At the end of this last chapter he said he's going to reconcile Dualism and Materialism, so have at it what's next!
Ah, but there's a twist! The last two chapters have been materialism bashing. First he goes through the history materialism, which is very interesting. Essentially starting with psychology and behaviorism which really brought on the return in popularity of the view, and then moving on to functionalism which is basically just a more in depth view. Essentially the development of the computer, and the idea that the brain is just like a computer, our brain being the hardware and our thoughts being the software, was probably the climax and biggest triumph of the materialists. They now had an explanation for cognition and thought, because they had an example that worked in the real world. Pretty fascinating actually and it makes a lot of sense.
And so materialism has become the dominant philosophy among psychologists, scientists and philosophers and it has become quite the popular world view. Among intellectuals it is considered a guaranteed fact really. And science, and the way it has worked for science, and the way science has unfolded has brought us some extremely convincing evidence towards this theory. However, it ignores one extremely important feature of reality, consciousness. Many dismiss in an Occam's Razor fashion, as useless, and since it doesn't seem to accomplish anything it either a. is an illusion or b. is a waste of time. However both of these are clearly false, a. it is the only guaranteed real thing in existence, b. if it is real it is not a waste of time.
Essentially Searle spends most of these chapters disarming materialism with the normal devices, like the ones I used in the argument with my friend, the Zombies, the Inverted colors, et cetera. But he brings up one new one I kind of like that I'm going to share. This one particularly picks on people who love the computer related to the brain example.
He calls this "the Chinese Room." So say you are like me and you don't speak a lick of Chinese. You are put in a room and given a test in Chinese. You have all these dictionaries and books on how to answer these questions, how Chinese is structured and how to put what symbol where. After however long you finish the test and are able to get all the right answers. You still can't speak a lick of Chinese, but you can get the right answer on tests as though you understand Chinese. You understand all the syntax, but know nothing of the language. This is what computers are like, they need to be given a context, but they do not understand meaning. Anyway it's a really interesting example.
Alright, so Searle has bashed Dualism, he's bashed Materialism, the question is now, what the hell is left? Way to go Searle, you've turned what I thought was a disappointment into a freaking page turner. At the end of this last chapter he said he's going to reconcile Dualism and Materialism, so have at it what's next!
Friday, March 12, 2010
A Recent Discussion
So, I'm real close to writing a blog about the next part of the Mind book, but I gotta talk about something else first. However, to give a preview, I'm starting to like where Searle is suddenly headed, so needless to say it is getting much more interesting!
Anyway I was having a discussion with my friend the other day. And I'd like to begin by saying he's really smart, he understands math and science way better than I do, he got a degree in it. However our discussion was about consciousness and it's existence and the nature of physics and such. So it was somewhere between a logic/science/philosophy discussion, but over all it deffinitely got me thinking.
Essentially my position was consciousness exists and is irreducable by physics. It is essentially not physical. He on the other hand said that this is absolutely impossible, and at one point claimed that this theory would be "magic." So I'll go a little back and forth. I'll begin with mine which is clearly less orthodox and needs more explanation, because science in most cases would certainly be on my friends side.
One of the most important parts about arguing about consciousness is being clear on what it is before you start arguing. Otherwise things can get muddy quickly. Consciousness is the subjective experience. When observation is going on it is the thing that is observing. It is the first person. And furthermore as far as my hypothesis goes, and was a topic of contention in the discussion, consciousness is not synonymous with brain states or the cognitive properties that may give rise to it. I.e. "the experience of red" is not synonymous with "the cognitive interpretation of light recieved by the eye at a certain wavelength," even though the latter may give rise to the former.
So I gave him some classic examples to illustrate what I was trying to say. One was the famous zombie example. Essentially imagine an entity that is an exact replica of yourself, physically, physiologically, everything, going through the exact same life that you do, the only difference is, this replica has no conscious experience, no first person reality. It is in essense a zombie. It is physically on all levels exactly the same, but there is no consciousness. Therefore consciousness would be an additional property, not a physical one.
Secondly, I gave the inverted colors argument. This is the idea that when I look at blue and you look at blue, we both call it blue, we both react to it entirely the same way, and behave the same around it, but it turns out what you call blue, is what I call red. There is no way to know that this is not the case. There is no way that physics could prove one way or another what precisely the color that you or I see is. The only person who knows what blue likes like to me, is me.
So my friend responded to the zombie idea by saying that it was impossible for the zombie not to be conscious. Essentially saying that it was necessary that if it was physiologically precisely the same as him, it would necessarily be conscious. He explained that consciousness is an emergent property. For example, the planet earth has an extremely complex weather system. On other solid planets that are larger, the complexity of the weather system increases exponentially. There are different types of weather that we do not experience at all on earth in addition to those that we get on earth. And essentially, because are brains are large and extremely compact, it allows for tons more neural connections than our closest ancestor, and with this exponential increase in complexity, consciousness becomes an emergent property of this new level of complexity. But it is also necessary physically that it emerge at this level of brain complexity.
As for my second example he explained that either a, if we saw different colors there must be a physical explanation. and b. if the two people were physically and physioligically the same then we would know conclusively that they were seeing the same color.
Essentially, his arguments as far as I can tell, revolved around something like, 1. physics is a closed system, 2. if two things are physically identical they are the same thing, 3. if it doesn't exist inside physics, it doesn't exist, 4. consciousness exists, therefore 5. consciousness must be a physical property.
Ultimately it sounds like a pretty solid argument. And his other arguments are also very interesting and on certain levels persuasive, however there are some deffinite holes and fallacies.
Describing how something has occured does not describe what it is. This is the problem with his emergent property argument. Even if consciousness is an emergent property its other problems, the hard problems as Chalmers puts it, don't go away. Secondly as far as the response to his second argument, it is decidedly not conclusive that two people necessarily see the same thing. There is absolutely nothing to check the experiment with. If you look at all the action in the brain, even with superfuturistic technology, you won't see green in the brain, or more importantly you won't see "them seeing green" in the brian, which is actually what consciousness is. Consciousness is unobservable. Brain states that happen at the same time in the brain as someone seeing red, are not seeing red. Red itself is indiscribable to another person, other than pointing to something that is red and saying "it looks like that."
Ulitmately, both of his responses are just attempts at dodging the issue. The examples themselves are by no means a practical explanation, but more an illustration of how consciousness is not observable objectively. How it can be conceived that there are physical replicas of ourselves that are merely computers or zombies and not conscious. The only way to observe consciousness is through the first person. And if it cannot be observed physically than it is not a physical property. This was the point when my friend said "what you are explaining is magic." But consciousness undeniably exists. There is experience being had. This clashes hard with his assumption that "if it does not exist in the physically it doesn't exist." But if that were true, then consciousness wouldn't exist. But it does necessarily, by the mere axiom a=a. If it exists it exists.
Anyway I was having a discussion with my friend the other day. And I'd like to begin by saying he's really smart, he understands math and science way better than I do, he got a degree in it. However our discussion was about consciousness and it's existence and the nature of physics and such. So it was somewhere between a logic/science/philosophy discussion, but over all it deffinitely got me thinking.
Essentially my position was consciousness exists and is irreducable by physics. It is essentially not physical. He on the other hand said that this is absolutely impossible, and at one point claimed that this theory would be "magic." So I'll go a little back and forth. I'll begin with mine which is clearly less orthodox and needs more explanation, because science in most cases would certainly be on my friends side.
One of the most important parts about arguing about consciousness is being clear on what it is before you start arguing. Otherwise things can get muddy quickly. Consciousness is the subjective experience. When observation is going on it is the thing that is observing. It is the first person. And furthermore as far as my hypothesis goes, and was a topic of contention in the discussion, consciousness is not synonymous with brain states or the cognitive properties that may give rise to it. I.e. "the experience of red" is not synonymous with "the cognitive interpretation of light recieved by the eye at a certain wavelength," even though the latter may give rise to the former.
So I gave him some classic examples to illustrate what I was trying to say. One was the famous zombie example. Essentially imagine an entity that is an exact replica of yourself, physically, physiologically, everything, going through the exact same life that you do, the only difference is, this replica has no conscious experience, no first person reality. It is in essense a zombie. It is physically on all levels exactly the same, but there is no consciousness. Therefore consciousness would be an additional property, not a physical one.
Secondly, I gave the inverted colors argument. This is the idea that when I look at blue and you look at blue, we both call it blue, we both react to it entirely the same way, and behave the same around it, but it turns out what you call blue, is what I call red. There is no way to know that this is not the case. There is no way that physics could prove one way or another what precisely the color that you or I see is. The only person who knows what blue likes like to me, is me.
So my friend responded to the zombie idea by saying that it was impossible for the zombie not to be conscious. Essentially saying that it was necessary that if it was physiologically precisely the same as him, it would necessarily be conscious. He explained that consciousness is an emergent property. For example, the planet earth has an extremely complex weather system. On other solid planets that are larger, the complexity of the weather system increases exponentially. There are different types of weather that we do not experience at all on earth in addition to those that we get on earth. And essentially, because are brains are large and extremely compact, it allows for tons more neural connections than our closest ancestor, and with this exponential increase in complexity, consciousness becomes an emergent property of this new level of complexity. But it is also necessary physically that it emerge at this level of brain complexity.
As for my second example he explained that either a, if we saw different colors there must be a physical explanation. and b. if the two people were physically and physioligically the same then we would know conclusively that they were seeing the same color.
Essentially, his arguments as far as I can tell, revolved around something like, 1. physics is a closed system, 2. if two things are physically identical they are the same thing, 3. if it doesn't exist inside physics, it doesn't exist, 4. consciousness exists, therefore 5. consciousness must be a physical property.
Ultimately it sounds like a pretty solid argument. And his other arguments are also very interesting and on certain levels persuasive, however there are some deffinite holes and fallacies.
Describing how something has occured does not describe what it is. This is the problem with his emergent property argument. Even if consciousness is an emergent property its other problems, the hard problems as Chalmers puts it, don't go away. Secondly as far as the response to his second argument, it is decidedly not conclusive that two people necessarily see the same thing. There is absolutely nothing to check the experiment with. If you look at all the action in the brain, even with superfuturistic technology, you won't see green in the brain, or more importantly you won't see "them seeing green" in the brian, which is actually what consciousness is. Consciousness is unobservable. Brain states that happen at the same time in the brain as someone seeing red, are not seeing red. Red itself is indiscribable to another person, other than pointing to something that is red and saying "it looks like that."
Ulitmately, both of his responses are just attempts at dodging the issue. The examples themselves are by no means a practical explanation, but more an illustration of how consciousness is not observable objectively. How it can be conceived that there are physical replicas of ourselves that are merely computers or zombies and not conscious. The only way to observe consciousness is through the first person. And if it cannot be observed physically than it is not a physical property. This was the point when my friend said "what you are explaining is magic." But consciousness undeniably exists. There is experience being had. This clashes hard with his assumption that "if it does not exist in the physically it doesn't exist." But if that were true, then consciousness wouldn't exist. But it does necessarily, by the mere axiom a=a. If it exists it exists.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
New book!: "Mind a Brief Introduction" by John R. Searle
So I've finished "The Selfish Gene" and after reading it I have to say, it's actually a really awsome book. I recommend it to anybody interested in evolution. It ends up being very tastefully done, only a couple little pot shots here and there (at religion), but mostly he is very thorough scientific with it. Plus he's a very good writer, can put things in a way that's not only easy to understand, but kind of makes everything exciting. Despite my criticisms I may have said before, it is a truly fascinating and well written perspective.
So now we start with John R. Searle's "Mind a Brief Introduction." I got this book for a couple reasons, a. I love philosophy of the mind and kind of wanted a refresher and just a survey of what's big these days, b. I wanted to hear a new perspective, after looking at Dennet and Chalmers it seems, at least by the explanation on the back, come up with some kind of crazy third way to look at it. Figured it should be interesting. I like learning stuff.
After reading the intro and the first chapter I must admit I'm kind of disappointed. I mean it is a book for beginners on the subject, so it kind of glosses over some stuff (even though he gets almost randomly specific about other stuff). But since this book has a thesis, and that was one of the things that drew me to it, it is extremely biased.
Well, let me just get to the point that's really bugging me, no more beating around the bush, he calls Descartes contribution to philosophy of the mind a disaster. All I can say is "you can't be fucking serious right?"
Basically he says Descartes has created more questions than answers. I don't see how this takes away from the profoundness of Descartes work. If the truth has more questions than originally thought so be it. I've found that in my life the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know a lot. In fact in most situations more knowledge has led me to find that I have a lot a lot more questions. If you're looking for easy answers, don't be a philosopher. I mean what the hell is the whole point of Socrates right? Question shit! Granted there are problems with the Cartesian model beyond that of "creating more questions" but ultimately Descartes discovered the way in which we can prove the truth of consciousness.
Ok, got that off my chest. Ultimately, Searle has laid out 12 questions based on the problems he has found with Descartes' dualism: 1. Mind-Body Problem, 2. The Problem of Other Minds, 3. Skepticism about the External World, 4. The correct Analysis of Perception, 5. The Problem of Free Will, 6. The Self and Personal Identity, 7. Animals, 8. Sleep, 9. The Problem of Intentionality, 10. Mental Causation and Epiphenomenalism, 11. The Unconscious, 12. Psychological and Social explanation. These are pretty much going to be the focus of his book he explains. The main topics.
Now I do like his stress on importance of philosophy of the mind, and he does have some interesting comments on it's history and how it's picked up the slack of philosophy of language over the past couple decades. And I'm deffinitely going to give him a chance. But he's got some tell tail signs that we may have some disagreements. Especially because he seems to paint some mind ideas with really broad strokes where he ought to be more careful, at least so far it seems. I'm very interested in seeing what his solutions are for these problems though. How he can some how reconcile Dualism and Materialism without being either, and trying to remain purely scientific about it. All I can say is, I guess we'll see!
So now we start with John R. Searle's "Mind a Brief Introduction." I got this book for a couple reasons, a. I love philosophy of the mind and kind of wanted a refresher and just a survey of what's big these days, b. I wanted to hear a new perspective, after looking at Dennet and Chalmers it seems, at least by the explanation on the back, come up with some kind of crazy third way to look at it. Figured it should be interesting. I like learning stuff.
After reading the intro and the first chapter I must admit I'm kind of disappointed. I mean it is a book for beginners on the subject, so it kind of glosses over some stuff (even though he gets almost randomly specific about other stuff). But since this book has a thesis, and that was one of the things that drew me to it, it is extremely biased.
Well, let me just get to the point that's really bugging me, no more beating around the bush, he calls Descartes contribution to philosophy of the mind a disaster. All I can say is "you can't be fucking serious right?"
Basically he says Descartes has created more questions than answers. I don't see how this takes away from the profoundness of Descartes work. If the truth has more questions than originally thought so be it. I've found that in my life the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know a lot. In fact in most situations more knowledge has led me to find that I have a lot a lot more questions. If you're looking for easy answers, don't be a philosopher. I mean what the hell is the whole point of Socrates right? Question shit! Granted there are problems with the Cartesian model beyond that of "creating more questions" but ultimately Descartes discovered the way in which we can prove the truth of consciousness.
Ok, got that off my chest. Ultimately, Searle has laid out 12 questions based on the problems he has found with Descartes' dualism: 1. Mind-Body Problem, 2. The Problem of Other Minds, 3. Skepticism about the External World, 4. The correct Analysis of Perception, 5. The Problem of Free Will, 6. The Self and Personal Identity, 7. Animals, 8. Sleep, 9. The Problem of Intentionality, 10. Mental Causation and Epiphenomenalism, 11. The Unconscious, 12. Psychological and Social explanation. These are pretty much going to be the focus of his book he explains. The main topics.
Now I do like his stress on importance of philosophy of the mind, and he does have some interesting comments on it's history and how it's picked up the slack of philosophy of language over the past couple decades. And I'm deffinitely going to give him a chance. But he's got some tell tail signs that we may have some disagreements. Especially because he seems to paint some mind ideas with really broad strokes where he ought to be more careful, at least so far it seems. I'm very interested in seeing what his solutions are for these problems though. How he can some how reconcile Dualism and Materialism without being either, and trying to remain purely scientific about it. All I can say is, I guess we'll see!
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Thoughts on Morality
Recently I was perusing a local Borders and came across Nietzche's "Beyond Good and Evil." I've pretty much avoided Nietzche since I attempted to read Thus Spoke Zarathustra (especially after being such a fan of Strauss' piece and the connections between the two). Ultimately I found it very aesthetically interesting but couldn't make a lick of sense out of it. Since it was my first encounter with Nietzche and I never took a course on him, I immediately kind of dismissed his stuff as too difficult or nonsensical. Well it turns out that Beyond Good and Evil is the actual stripped down argument from Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I read a couple passages and as it turned out, I've been thinking of some extremely similar topics, especially on ethics, recently. This got me thinking even more, so I'd like to express, hopefully coherently what I've been trying to get at in my head for the past month or months or weeks, I'm not sure how long.
I've always found morals and ethics really difficult. Most Western philosophers come at it way too logically, like "it must be this, or it must be this." De-ontologism or Utilitarianism! Good or Evil! And I feel when you break down morality in this way it turns out to be extremely empty. I'll continue with this in a second.
First we need to consider what ethics or morality is. So we'll keep it simple ethics will be "a code of action" and morality will be "how you should act."
Now one of the most difficult areas of ethics is where do ethics and morality come from? What makes one action better than another? In the case of Abrahamic religion, for example, there are codes given by god. And goodness and morality are dictated by a higher power. Usually this morality revolves around pleasing the god. The only problem I have with this model is, why please the god? It's probably because I do not have a firm grasp of this kind of religious belief, I imagine their best answer would be "because it's God."
For the purposes of my discussion of morality, we are going to bypass that rout, because frankly, I don't believe in God. I'm not ruling out some kind of higher force or whatever, but we'll look at this from a more rationalistic atheistic point of view. Now from this spot we have much more difficulty explaining morality. As far as looking to some kind of observational way to explain morality, you could go the Dawkins rout and obsess over evolution and game theory. But even evolution leads us to something we don't seem to relate to as far as ethics go. Other observational routs could lead you to relativism, but that always leaves controversial questions about Osama Bin Laden and whether his actions could be justified by his culture et cetera.
The other way to go is look to logic and rationality, go internal. There's the Categorical Imperative, considering whether each decision, if everyone did it, would it be good or bad for the world before you decide on it. But ultimately it's absurdly strict. Also it's dependent on "what is good for the world" which is a debatable topic. As well Utilitarianism often makes sense, it's clearly just a numbers game that determines what a moral decision is. But at certain logical ends it too starts to turn somewhat strange.
In essence the problem with all of these ethical systems is that they are too logical. That's right, our rationality seems to call to us to have one blanket mathematical formula to figure out what is a moral decision. It's extremely tempting, to have such a clear cut straight forward answer. But every clear cut straight answer reaches a point where it runs into a wall with our instincts. When it's a formula, there's always a way to twist it into an absurd situation.
So the conclusion I've come to is that there are layers of morality. This is very similar to Buddhist and Hindu layers of knowledge. What is true to you at one point in your life may not be true later. It is said that the Buddha would lie to his pupils often because it would help them reach enlightenment better than telling them the truth. I think that this system can apply to ethics and morality.
It makes sense to have long range guidelines on a society. Common values shared across people. This allows for stability and gives people the opportunity to live moral lives. These are ethical codes, but they should not be followed blindly. Each person is given their own opportunity to discover their own morality. But this is not a formula. As it says in the Tao Te Ching "The way that can be followed is not a true way," true "morality" is coming in tune with the nature and balance of the world. And it is different for each person. There is no clear cut formulaic morality. Common values an ethics serve more for societal stability than they do as actual moral values. Finding the right actions is a personal endeavor and experience. The world will find a way to balance itself anyway. If you push too hard it pushes back twice as hard. There is an innate value in trying to become part of the balance, but there is nothing spelled out. True morality is becoming a part of nature.
I know this may not be very "answerful" but I think too many people are looking for an easy answer. It's not as easy as "act altruistically" or "be nice." It's finding your way.
I've always found morals and ethics really difficult. Most Western philosophers come at it way too logically, like "it must be this, or it must be this." De-ontologism or Utilitarianism! Good or Evil! And I feel when you break down morality in this way it turns out to be extremely empty. I'll continue with this in a second.
First we need to consider what ethics or morality is. So we'll keep it simple ethics will be "a code of action" and morality will be "how you should act."
Now one of the most difficult areas of ethics is where do ethics and morality come from? What makes one action better than another? In the case of Abrahamic religion, for example, there are codes given by god. And goodness and morality are dictated by a higher power. Usually this morality revolves around pleasing the god. The only problem I have with this model is, why please the god? It's probably because I do not have a firm grasp of this kind of religious belief, I imagine their best answer would be "because it's God."
For the purposes of my discussion of morality, we are going to bypass that rout, because frankly, I don't believe in God. I'm not ruling out some kind of higher force or whatever, but we'll look at this from a more rationalistic atheistic point of view. Now from this spot we have much more difficulty explaining morality. As far as looking to some kind of observational way to explain morality, you could go the Dawkins rout and obsess over evolution and game theory. But even evolution leads us to something we don't seem to relate to as far as ethics go. Other observational routs could lead you to relativism, but that always leaves controversial questions about Osama Bin Laden and whether his actions could be justified by his culture et cetera.
The other way to go is look to logic and rationality, go internal. There's the Categorical Imperative, considering whether each decision, if everyone did it, would it be good or bad for the world before you decide on it. But ultimately it's absurdly strict. Also it's dependent on "what is good for the world" which is a debatable topic. As well Utilitarianism often makes sense, it's clearly just a numbers game that determines what a moral decision is. But at certain logical ends it too starts to turn somewhat strange.
In essence the problem with all of these ethical systems is that they are too logical. That's right, our rationality seems to call to us to have one blanket mathematical formula to figure out what is a moral decision. It's extremely tempting, to have such a clear cut straight forward answer. But every clear cut straight answer reaches a point where it runs into a wall with our instincts. When it's a formula, there's always a way to twist it into an absurd situation.
So the conclusion I've come to is that there are layers of morality. This is very similar to Buddhist and Hindu layers of knowledge. What is true to you at one point in your life may not be true later. It is said that the Buddha would lie to his pupils often because it would help them reach enlightenment better than telling them the truth. I think that this system can apply to ethics and morality.
It makes sense to have long range guidelines on a society. Common values shared across people. This allows for stability and gives people the opportunity to live moral lives. These are ethical codes, but they should not be followed blindly. Each person is given their own opportunity to discover their own morality. But this is not a formula. As it says in the Tao Te Ching "The way that can be followed is not a true way," true "morality" is coming in tune with the nature and balance of the world. And it is different for each person. There is no clear cut formulaic morality. Common values an ethics serve more for societal stability than they do as actual moral values. Finding the right actions is a personal endeavor and experience. The world will find a way to balance itself anyway. If you push too hard it pushes back twice as hard. There is an innate value in trying to become part of the balance, but there is nothing spelled out. True morality is becoming a part of nature.
I know this may not be very "answerful" but I think too many people are looking for an easy answer. It's not as easy as "act altruistically" or "be nice." It's finding your way.
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