Ordinary thought distinguishes two kinds of incapacity: I might lack (say) the brute strength to accomplish some task, or I might just not know how to do it. Is this an important (deep, principled) distinction? If so, what is its basis? (What justifies counting some abilities, but not others, as constituting a kind of knowledge?)
It doesn't just seem to be the difference between physical vs. mental incapacities, since even the latter (e.g. working memory limitations) may be intuitively classified as brute incapacities. Nor does the distinction seem to rest on differences in how the capacity may be acquired: practicing the piano does not seem obviously different in kind from lifting weights, though only the former is thought to yield procedural knowledge. Perhaps we need to combine several conditions, but then the resulting classification starts to look a bit ad hoc.
I feel like I must be missing something obvious here. Any thoughts?
Showing newest posts with label mind. Show older posts
Showing newest posts with label mind. Show older posts
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Illusions and Practical Competence
Eric Schwitzgebel has a fascinating post on illusions, and whether they still count as such when the viewer is so familiar with them as to no longer be disposed towards misjudgment:
Note, though, that's there's a fair gap between mere propositional knowledge and the kind of internalized know-how or "fluency" possessed by the skilled oarsman. I am still very much 'taken in' by the Muller-Lyer illusion, despite - intellectually - 'knowing' that it is an illusion. For it to cease to count as an illusion to me, I would need to internalize this knowledge in such a way as to render me fluent in interacting with Muller-Lyer lines. (Were I to come across a worldly instance, I should automatically respond in ways appropriate to the lines being of equal length; just as the skilled oarsman automatically responds appropriately to the shape of his oar in the water.)
djc adds:
Could practical competence vs. merely intellectual knowledge ground this difference? (Imagine someone who has just learned what a mirror is, but who is not yet sufficiently practiced to be competent at using them. It seems plausible that the mirror could still create a sense of 'illusion' for them, even though they know full well - intellectually, at least - what is going on.)
[Related posts: What is illusion?]
If one knows enough about the world, one should know that an oar partly submerged in water (seen from a particular viewing angle) should look bent just like that. If it looked straight, I suppose, a longtime oarsman or a person very familiar with the laws of refraction might think the oar looked strange, might even think that it looked like an oar that is actually bent (bent in such a way as to exactly compensate for the bend a straight oar would seem to have at that angle)...
So is the skilled oarsman experiencing a visual illusion as he looks at the oar? If we say no, then I'm worried we're off onto a slippery slope to entirely denying the possibility of illusions that are known to be such.
Note, though, that's there's a fair gap between mere propositional knowledge and the kind of internalized know-how or "fluency" possessed by the skilled oarsman. I am still very much 'taken in' by the Muller-Lyer illusion, despite - intellectually - 'knowing' that it is an illusion. For it to cease to count as an illusion to me, I would need to internalize this knowledge in such a way as to render me fluent in interacting with Muller-Lyer lines. (Were I to come across a worldly instance, I should automatically respond in ways appropriate to the lines being of equal length; just as the skilled oarsman automatically responds appropriately to the shape of his oar in the water.)
djc adds:
Another nice case is that of mirrors. Does looking at a mirror create an illusion that twin-you is in front of you? When one doesn't know it's a mirror, the "yes" answer seems plausible, but this answer rings less true for the familiar case when one knows it's a mirror. But if one says "no" in this case, then the question is whether there's a principled distinction between this case and the bent stick case, or any other case of a "known illusion".
I suppose that for there to be a principled distinction, one will have to make the case that in some cases (e.g. the mirror case), knowledge of the relevant effect penetrates the experience and changes its content, while in other cases (e.g. the stick case) knowledge does not penetrate the experience in this way. Perhaps there is some intuitive plausibility to the claim that the relevant spatial phenomenology is changed by mirror knowledge in a way that it's not changed by bent-stick knowledge. But it's not clear what the source of this difference is.
Could practical competence vs. merely intellectual knowledge ground this difference? (Imagine someone who has just learned what a mirror is, but who is not yet sufficiently practiced to be competent at using them. It seems plausible that the mirror could still create a sense of 'illusion' for them, even though they know full well - intellectually, at least - what is going on.)
[Related posts: What is illusion?]
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Self-Location
The Guardian breathlessly reports: 'Body swap research shows that self is a trick of the mind'. As one would expect given journalistic standards, there's nothing in the substance of the story that supports this headline. The research shows that our sense of self-location is fallible; we can be tricked into feeling like another body is our own. Our mental representations may be redrawn as though from a different perspective, i.e. 'centering' on a dummy rather than our true bodies. But that shouldn't be surprising. (It's in the nature of a representation that it may misrepresent.)
So I'm not sure how or why this is supposed to have any metaphysical implications for the 'self' (whatever they mean by this). How is this any different from noting that a twig in water appears bent, and concluding that "twigs are a trick of the mind"?
So I'm not sure how or why this is supposed to have any metaphysical implications for the 'self' (whatever they mean by this). How is this any different from noting that a twig in water appears bent, and concluding that "twigs are a trick of the mind"?
Monday, December 01, 2008
The Homunculus in the Chinese Room
Searle's Chinese Room argument:
I think this is a very misleading thought experiment. It's true that a homunculus implementing a program won't necessarily understand what's being implemented, but who ever would have thought otherwise? We may not actually have homunculi running around in our heads, passing electrical charges along from neuron to neuron; but if we did, they wouldn't share our understanding either. The mental states of the imagined homunculi don't limit the mental states that their efforts can give rise to (i.e. in us), and so it is with the Chinese Room. The homunculus' lack of understanding has no implications for the real question of whether there is understanding created by the Chinese Room. So by asking us to focus on the homunculus, Searle introduces a red herring -- and worse, an invitation to 'level confusion' and category mistakes. The SEP has a quote from Margaret Boden that perfectly captures my objection here (see further 4.1.1 The Virtual Mind Reply):
Technically, Searle's above conclusion is true: computers, as implementers of programs, aren't in the category of things to which 'understanding' may be predicated. But neither are brains. So this tells us absolutely nothing of interest. The real question is whether computational processes give rise to conscious and/or intentional mental states, as neuronal processes do. Seen in this light, the Chinese Room seems an entirely unhelpful distraction.
Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a data base) together with a book of instructions for manipulating the symbols (the program). Imagine that people outside the room send in other Chinese symbols which, unknown to the person in the room, are questions in Chinese (the input). And imagine that by following the instructions in the program the man in the room is able to pass out Chinese symbols which are correct answers to the questions (the output). The program enables the person in the room to pass the Turing Test for understanding Chinese but he does not understand a word of Chinese....
The point of the argument is this: if the man in the room does not understand Chinese on the basis of implementing the appropriate program for understanding Chinese then neither does any other digital computer solely on that basis because no computer, qua computer, has anything the man does not have.
I think this is a very misleading thought experiment. It's true that a homunculus implementing a program won't necessarily understand what's being implemented, but who ever would have thought otherwise? We may not actually have homunculi running around in our heads, passing electrical charges along from neuron to neuron; but if we did, they wouldn't share our understanding either. The mental states of the imagined homunculi don't limit the mental states that their efforts can give rise to (i.e. in us), and so it is with the Chinese Room. The homunculus' lack of understanding has no implications for the real question of whether there is understanding created by the Chinese Room. So by asking us to focus on the homunculus, Searle introduces a red herring -- and worse, an invitation to 'level confusion' and category mistakes. The SEP has a quote from Margaret Boden that perfectly captures my objection here (see further 4.1.1 The Virtual Mind Reply):
Computational psychology does not credit the brain with seeing bean-sprouts or understanding English: intentional states such as these are properties of people, not of brains... Searle's description of [the symbol-manipulating homunculus] involves a category-mistake comparable to treating the brain as the bearer, as opposed to the causal basis, of intelligence.
Technically, Searle's above conclusion is true: computers, as implementers of programs, aren't in the category of things to which 'understanding' may be predicated. But neither are brains. So this tells us absolutely nothing of interest. The real question is whether computational processes give rise to conscious and/or intentional mental states, as neuronal processes do. Seen in this light, the Chinese Room seems an entirely unhelpful distraction.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Brain Damage and Physicalism
Ookla-fry writes:
This is a surprisingly common misconception. (Neuroscience student K.L. Dickson makes similar claims here.) It arises from a simple confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. Dualists claim that the physical brain does not metaphysically suffice for mentality (cf. zombies). But Ookla's claim simply doesn't follow from this -- we may still think that the brain plays an essential, but non-exhaustive, role in constituting our minds.
A typical physicalist view is that the mind just is the brain. A dualist view is that the mind arises from the brain (given appropriate background conditions). Nobody holds that the mind is nothing at all to do with the brain.
If dualism were correct then brain damage wouldn't effect cognitive ability. Simple as that.
This is a surprisingly common misconception. (Neuroscience student K.L. Dickson makes similar claims here.) It arises from a simple confusion of necessary and sufficient conditions. Dualists claim that the physical brain does not metaphysically suffice for mentality (cf. zombies). But Ookla's claim simply doesn't follow from this -- we may still think that the brain plays an essential, but non-exhaustive, role in constituting our minds.
A typical physicalist view is that the mind just is the brain. A dualist view is that the mind arises from the brain (given appropriate background conditions). Nobody holds that the mind is nothing at all to do with the brain.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Do Beliefs Exist?
Contrast two competing models of belief:
(A) [Full-blown existence.] Beliefs are something like sentences in the head, written in the language of thought, and physically located in one's "belief box" -- a special area of the brain, perhaps.
(B) Beliefs are more like useful fictions, patterns (Dennett compares them to centers of gravity), or projections that track certain dispositions. So they do not have any independent existence. Rather, S's believing that P is reducible to its being correct to ascribe or attribute this belief to S -- where the correctness conditions for this ascription make no further appeal to beliefs as such.
One may initially be tempted toward the first view on the grounds that it better captures the distinction between explicit and implicit beliefs. Explicit beliefs are literally there in your belief box, whereas one implicitly believes whatever can be easily inferred from one's explicit beliefs (for some appropriate standard of 'ease').
But this doesn't work at all, as Stalnaker points out in 'The Problem of Logical Omniscience, I'. What we want is a distinction between accessible and inaccessible information, but this is independent of the explicit/implicit distinction given to us by the belief box view. After all, just because some information is etched in our brains doesn't necessarily mean (given our search and computational limitations) that we will be able to find this information when we need it.
Imagine the phonebook man (I forget whose example this is), who has memorized the entire phonebook, ordered alphabetically. This way of storing the information means that, given a name as input, he can easily find the number that goes with it. But the reverse is not true: given a random phone number, Phonebook Man has little chance of finding the corresponding name in any reasonable period of time. So it would be misleading to say that he knows (or believes) that #555-5555 belongs to John Smith, even though this information is explicitly stored in his belief box.
On the other hand, he clearly does know the equivalent proposition that John Smith has phone number 555-5555. (He can look up John Smith and get the answer, no trouble.) The dispositions which underlie "belief" are thus relative to a question or probe. This seems to contradict our common-sense notion of belief.
How are we to resolve this puzzle?
(A) [Full-blown existence.] Beliefs are something like sentences in the head, written in the language of thought, and physically located in one's "belief box" -- a special area of the brain, perhaps.
(B) Beliefs are more like useful fictions, patterns (Dennett compares them to centers of gravity), or projections that track certain dispositions. So they do not have any independent existence. Rather, S's believing that P is reducible to its being correct to ascribe or attribute this belief to S -- where the correctness conditions for this ascription make no further appeal to beliefs as such.
One may initially be tempted toward the first view on the grounds that it better captures the distinction between explicit and implicit beliefs. Explicit beliefs are literally there in your belief box, whereas one implicitly believes whatever can be easily inferred from one's explicit beliefs (for some appropriate standard of 'ease').
But this doesn't work at all, as Stalnaker points out in 'The Problem of Logical Omniscience, I'. What we want is a distinction between accessible and inaccessible information, but this is independent of the explicit/implicit distinction given to us by the belief box view. After all, just because some information is etched in our brains doesn't necessarily mean (given our search and computational limitations) that we will be able to find this information when we need it.
Imagine the phonebook man (I forget whose example this is), who has memorized the entire phonebook, ordered alphabetically. This way of storing the information means that, given a name as input, he can easily find the number that goes with it. But the reverse is not true: given a random phone number, Phonebook Man has little chance of finding the corresponding name in any reasonable period of time. So it would be misleading to say that he knows (or believes) that #555-5555 belongs to John Smith, even though this information is explicitly stored in his belief box.
On the other hand, he clearly does know the equivalent proposition that John Smith has phone number 555-5555. (He can look up John Smith and get the answer, no trouble.) The dispositions which underlie "belief" are thus relative to a question or probe. This seems to contradict our common-sense notion of belief.
How are we to resolve this puzzle?
Friday, February 15, 2008
Time-warped Experiences
This is interesting:
Never mind physical (un)responsiveness; does your experience last longer when scared? Do you obtain more pleasure and pain by time seeming to you to pass slower? Does this give us additional reason to bring joy to children (and give less priority to aiding the elderly)?
I'm beginning to think that the way to count or measure an experience is not through its objective duration at all, but simply its richness of representational content (which may better reflect felt duration in any case). This may support my claim that multiple experiences matter less the less qualitatively different they are. Merely repeating the same old information over and over again does nothing to enrich the representation, after all.
Thoughts?
If the brain sped up when in danger, the researchers theorized, numbers on the perceptual chronometers would appear slow enough to read while volunteers fell. Instead, the scientists found that volunteers could not read the numbers at faster-than-normal speeds.
"We discovered that people are not like Neo in The Matrix, dodging bullets in slow-mo," Eagleman said.
Instead, such time warping seems to be a trick played by one's memory. When a person is scared, a brain area called the amygdala becomes more active, laying down an extra set of memories that go along with those normally taken care of by other parts of the brain. "In this way, frightening events are associated with richer and denser memories," Eagleman explained. "And the more memory you have of an event, the longer you believe it took."
Eagleman added this illusion "is related to the phenomenon that time seems to speed up as you grow older. When you're a child, you lay down rich memories for all your experiences; when you're older, you've seen it all before and lay down fewer memories. Therefore, when a child looks back at the end of a summer, it seems to have lasted forever; adults think it zoomed by."
Never mind physical (un)responsiveness; does your experience last longer when scared? Do you obtain more pleasure and pain by time seeming to you to pass slower? Does this give us additional reason to bring joy to children (and give less priority to aiding the elderly)?
I'm beginning to think that the way to count or measure an experience is not through its objective duration at all, but simply its richness of representational content (which may better reflect felt duration in any case). This may support my claim that multiple experiences matter less the less qualitatively different they are. Merely repeating the same old information over and over again does nothing to enrich the representation, after all.
Thoughts?
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Consciousness and Time
Inspired by the discussion at Pea Soup, let's distinguish:
(1) the external, physical duration of a phenomenal experience,
(2) the internal, felt duration of the experience, and
(3) the believed duration of the experience.
To illustrate the differences: Experience machine A gives you pleasant experiences for 100 years. Machine B (allegedly) gives you all the same experiences, feeling exactly the same from the inside, but packed into just a single real-time day. Machine C gives you one day of pleasure, and then simply implants in you the false belief that it felt like it lasted for 100 years.
A key question is whether dimension (2) is stable and independent of the others, i.e. whether Machines B and C are really distinct. But first, we must consider whether qualia (conscious experiences) are to be identified with brain states or their contents:
Clearly, the brain states themselves last only a day in Machine B's case. But they represent 100 years' worth of happenings. How are we to describe this? Here are two options:
(i) What you experience is the brain state itself, and hence lasts for only a day; it's just that you're left with the false impression that it lasted longer than that. Machine B was misdescribed: in fact it is no different from C.
(ii) What you experience is the content as represented by the brain state, viz. 100 years. It is truly the same content/experience as given by Machine A; it's merely the physical bases of the experiences which differ, and that's nothing to care about.
I'm inclined towards (ii). But if experiences can so radically come apart from their underlying brain states, we may question whether Machine C is actually as deceptive as we'd assumed. If the implanted belief changes the contents represented in our phenomenal states, perhaps this actually gives us 100 years of experiences?
One reason for doubting this is reflection on the paucity of the representation. It's one thing to write a story which says "100 years passed", and quite another to fill out the details for 100 years' worth of fictional events. So, if we think of Machine A as taking a long time to impart rich informational content (lots of pleasure), and Machine C as taking a very short time to impart a very thin representation (very little pleasure), the question whether Machine B imparts a lot or only a little pleasure comes down to the richness of the representations it implants. Sound right?
(1) the external, physical duration of a phenomenal experience,
(2) the internal, felt duration of the experience, and
(3) the believed duration of the experience.
To illustrate the differences: Experience machine A gives you pleasant experiences for 100 years. Machine B (allegedly) gives you all the same experiences, feeling exactly the same from the inside, but packed into just a single real-time day. Machine C gives you one day of pleasure, and then simply implants in you the false belief that it felt like it lasted for 100 years.
A key question is whether dimension (2) is stable and independent of the others, i.e. whether Machines B and C are really distinct. But first, we must consider whether qualia (conscious experiences) are to be identified with brain states or their contents:
Our talk of conscious experience risks conflating two distinct objects: the qualities (properties) of the vehicular experience or representation itself, versus the qualities represented in the experience. It's plausible to think that we can access only the latter. For information to be available to us, it must be represented in our minds...
This includes experience itself: there may be facts about it of which we remain unaware. This is plausibly true of the temporal properties of our experiences, for instance. It seems to me that I experience A before experiencing B, but in actual fact all I have access to is my mental representation as of "A followed by B"... I don't really have a "mental eye" in my head to tell me what's going on in there, independently of what eventually enters into a conscious representation. Our introspective capabilities are hence severely limited.
Clearly, the brain states themselves last only a day in Machine B's case. But they represent 100 years' worth of happenings. How are we to describe this? Here are two options:
(i) What you experience is the brain state itself, and hence lasts for only a day; it's just that you're left with the false impression that it lasted longer than that. Machine B was misdescribed: in fact it is no different from C.
(ii) What you experience is the content as represented by the brain state, viz. 100 years. It is truly the same content/experience as given by Machine A; it's merely the physical bases of the experiences which differ, and that's nothing to care about.
I'm inclined towards (ii). But if experiences can so radically come apart from their underlying brain states, we may question whether Machine C is actually as deceptive as we'd assumed. If the implanted belief changes the contents represented in our phenomenal states, perhaps this actually gives us 100 years of experiences?
One reason for doubting this is reflection on the paucity of the representation. It's one thing to write a story which says "100 years passed", and quite another to fill out the details for 100 years' worth of fictional events. So, if we think of Machine A as taking a long time to impart rich informational content (lots of pleasure), and Machine C as taking a very short time to impart a very thin representation (very little pleasure), the question whether Machine B imparts a lot or only a little pleasure comes down to the richness of the representations it implants. Sound right?
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Expecting Immortality
"The experience of being dead should never be expected to any degree at all, because there is no such experience." So writes David Lewis in 'How Many Lives Has Schrodinger's Cat?' (p.17) But perhaps we can have negative expectations, in the sense of not positively expecting any further experiences.
What if I split, amoeba-style, into two future persons, one of whom is promptly shot? In general, I should split my expectations evenly between my future branches. Perhaps I should anticipate the experiences of each branch, separately. (I do not, of course, experience both lives together, in any mutually-accessible kind of way.) If one branch has no experiences at all - being killed before ever awakening, say - then all there is to anticipate is the other, surviving branch. But if it gets to experience a little before dying, then it would seem one allotment of my expectations should capture precisely this: to experience seeing the bullet approaching (or whatever), and then no more.
This is important because if the "no collapse" (or many-worlds) interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, then we are actually splitting all the time. If you shoot me, there exists some (extremely low intensity) state in the superposition in which the bullet passes right through me. However often I die, there is always some version of me that survives. Should I expect, then, to be immortal? Lewis thinks so (p.19):
What should you expect to happen?
(1) You miraculously emerge unscathed (perhaps the cars pass right through you by some quantum fluke).
(2) You get hit by a car, and then have no further experiences (due to being dead).
(3) You get hit by a car, but then miraculously survive (perhaps your crushed body reassembles itself by some quantum fluke).
On the no collapse view, all these outcomes occur, but (presumably) the second does so with much higher frequency or "intensity". Still, even if the overwhelmingly majority of superimposed states involve your getting hit by a car, you will always have some branch that survives this. So there are always further experiences to anticipate. Does this mean we should never anticipate ending up on a dead branch, i.e. one that has no further experiences?
It's not quite enough to ask whether we should expect to be immortal. On the no-collapse view, we are undoubtedly immortal, in the sense that we will always have some surviving branch. But we also die a lot, in that we have a great many terminating branches! So the real question is whether we should ever expect to die. Can our expectations be distributed over branches that contain no further experiences? Or are they restricted to the survivors only?
What if I split, amoeba-style, into two future persons, one of whom is promptly shot? In general, I should split my expectations evenly between my future branches. Perhaps I should anticipate the experiences of each branch, separately. (I do not, of course, experience both lives together, in any mutually-accessible kind of way.) If one branch has no experiences at all - being killed before ever awakening, say - then all there is to anticipate is the other, surviving branch. But if it gets to experience a little before dying, then it would seem one allotment of my expectations should capture precisely this: to experience seeing the bullet approaching (or whatever), and then no more.
This is important because if the "no collapse" (or many-worlds) interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is correct, then we are actually splitting all the time. If you shoot me, there exists some (extremely low intensity) state in the superposition in which the bullet passes right through me. However often I die, there is always some version of me that survives. Should I expect, then, to be immortal? Lewis thinks so (p.19):
Suppose you're fairly sure that there are no collapses, and you're willing to run a risk in the service of truth. Go and wander about on a busy road, preferably a few minutes after closing time. When and if you find yourself still alive, you will have excellent evidence [for the no-collapse view]. If that's not yet enough to convince you, try the experiment a few more times.
What should you expect to happen?
(1) You miraculously emerge unscathed (perhaps the cars pass right through you by some quantum fluke).
(2) You get hit by a car, and then have no further experiences (due to being dead).
(3) You get hit by a car, but then miraculously survive (perhaps your crushed body reassembles itself by some quantum fluke).
On the no collapse view, all these outcomes occur, but (presumably) the second does so with much higher frequency or "intensity". Still, even if the overwhelmingly majority of superimposed states involve your getting hit by a car, you will always have some branch that survives this. So there are always further experiences to anticipate. Does this mean we should never anticipate ending up on a dead branch, i.e. one that has no further experiences?
It's not quite enough to ask whether we should expect to be immortal. On the no-collapse view, we are undoubtedly immortal, in the sense that we will always have some surviving branch. But we also die a lot, in that we have a great many terminating branches! So the real question is whether we should ever expect to die. Can our expectations be distributed over branches that contain no further experiences? Or are they restricted to the survivors only?
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Digital Minds
The old Scientism thread got a bit derailed by a side-discussion about the possibility of Strong Artificial Intelligence: the view that simulated minds could be real minds. To keep things tidy, I'm moving the comments here instead...
I was merely going for hand-waving at the time, but it's an interesting issue, and one I know little about. Thoughts, anyone?
Arun: It is kind of obvious that no simulation by our computers - today or however advanced in the future - of QCD will produce quarks.
Why then is it philosophically acceptable to assume that the simulation of minds will produce minds?
---
Me: suppose a mad scientist replaced some of your neurons with synthetic parts that were functionally identical. They would thus make no difference to the overall functioning of your brain. You would still have all the same thoughts, feelings, etc. Suppose we kept up the replacement, a few at a time, until your entire brain is synthetic. Do you still have a mind? It seems obvious that you would. One explanation for this is that what matters for mentality is the information-processing, rather than the physical substrate in which it occurs. In other words: the mind is software, not hardware.
(I should note, though, that this thesis of Strong AI is philosophically controversial. So it's not quite right to claim that it's "philosophically acceptable to assume" it. Arguments are certainly called for.)
---
Arun: There are several fallacies here.
One is that little incremental changes can be extrapolated. It is entirely possible at some point in the process you've outlined, the mind degrades and finally vanishes.
Two is that even if "synthetically produced functionally identical parts" are used, that has something to do with software, simulation. I mean, I could replace all the parts in my Honda with imitation parts, and it still runs! Therefore "carness" resides not in the hardware?
Say, you replace neuron by neuron my neurons by stem-cell generated neurons (functionally identical synthetic parts). How does that prove that the mind is software?
If "mind is software" then a description of the algorithms it uses should not have to wait on hardware powerful enough to run those in reasonable time. Where are those? How far have we gotten with them?
This "mind is software" may be analogous to "DNA are character strings". Apart from encoding information however, DNA have beyond-the-reach of current simulation physical/chemical behavior that is essential to what it does. Its holding of information cannot be separated into "software" and "hardware".
Philosophy cannot answer these questions, it is a matter for **experimental** science.
---
Jared: Those aren't fallacies; they're disagreements.
Anyway you're on the right track. The argument goes that "mindness" is in the functionality of the parts. So if you've synthetic parts that function just the same, then we'd expect the same results. On the level of an entire brain, we have neither the technology nor skill to make it work. But when it comes to restoring lost vision or hearing due to brain damage, there has been some success.
Philosophy is only technical in thinking, and so allows us to think of how our increasing technologies can be used (cf. Heidegger, Identity and Difference). Analogously, experimental science does not answer, it shows. Hence you need to have philosophy to do a good part of the explication.
---
Arun: If the argument given is some kind of hand-waving plausibility argument, then yes, they're disagreements. If it an attempt at a logical presentation, they are fallacies.
I was merely going for hand-waving at the time, but it's an interesting issue, and one I know little about. Thoughts, anyone?
Friday, October 12, 2007
Intuition Test: Self-Destruction
Suppose you will soon be subject to torture and degradation, such that you would prefer to die beforehand. Suicide is not allowed, but you are offered the opportunity to have all traces of your psychological self purged from your brain -- memories, character, talents, etc. Would that help? Would you fear the upcoming torture any less, perhaps believing that it would now be someone else rather than you who endures it?
How about if your psychological traces are completely transferred into the brain of another person, who goes on to live a happy, torture-free life?
Suppose now that the psychological transfer is compulsory, but beforehand you get to choose which body will be subsequently tortured. What would you choose?
(Cases from Bernard Williams, 'The Self and the Future'.)
How about if your psychological traces are completely transferred into the brain of another person, who goes on to live a happy, torture-free life?
Suppose now that the psychological transfer is compulsory, but beforehand you get to choose which body will be subsequently tortured. What would you choose?
(Cases from Bernard Williams, 'The Self and the Future'.)
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Are reasons in the head?
I'm thirsty - I desire that my thirst be quenched - so I drink some water. What is my reason for drinking the water? Is my desire itself the reason, or is the reason instead whatever qualities of the object inspire my desire, e.g. the water's thirst-quenching quality? Does it matter?
As a terminological point, it seems that a 'reason' is what answers a call for explanation. Why did/should I drink the water? "Because I wanted to" is not much of an answer. "Because it quenches thirst (and I was thirsty)" seems much better.
On the other hand, we want reasons to be the causes of our actions, and it seems more natural to say that our actions are caused by our beliefs and desires than by external qualities. But these are not really competing causal explanations. Features of the external world explain why we have the particular mental states we do. The world causes our behaviour by means of our beliefs and desires.
So there's a quick reason for favouring the view that reasons are things out in the world, rather than just in the head. I'm still not sure I grasp the significance of the debate, though. It's very much like the objects of perception debate (i.e. whether we perceive the external world or just internal sense-data). It all strikes me as mere wordplay and verbal confusion. The base facts are not in dispute: we have mental states that represent the external world. The only question seems to be how to talk about them sensibly. Or am I missing something?
As a terminological point, it seems that a 'reason' is what answers a call for explanation. Why did/should I drink the water? "Because I wanted to" is not much of an answer. "Because it quenches thirst (and I was thirsty)" seems much better.
On the other hand, we want reasons to be the causes of our actions, and it seems more natural to say that our actions are caused by our beliefs and desires than by external qualities. But these are not really competing causal explanations. Features of the external world explain why we have the particular mental states we do. The world causes our behaviour by means of our beliefs and desires.
So there's a quick reason for favouring the view that reasons are things out in the world, rather than just in the head. I'm still not sure I grasp the significance of the debate, though. It's very much like the objects of perception debate (i.e. whether we perceive the external world or just internal sense-data). It all strikes me as mere wordplay and verbal confusion. The base facts are not in dispute: we have mental states that represent the external world. The only question seems to be how to talk about them sensibly. Or am I missing something?
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Indeterminate Identity and Abortion
In response to Edelman's claim that embryonic brain development "involves a dimension of randomness," Mark Vernon writes:
I'm not convinced that Edelman's new biological theory adds anything new to the ethical debate. I mean, it's not exactly news that genetic determinism is false. And everyone else recognizes that "not everything is present in the zygote" -- Edelman's "stochastic processes" aside, how we develop as individuals will at least depend upon the cultural environment we're raised in, etc.
Perhaps the thought is that the potential variance here is so great that we're not talking about a single person developing in different ways; rather, the differences are so vast that they would amount to distinct people. That is, it's not just indeterminate how the fetus will develop; it's indeterminate who the fetus will grow to be. And, we might think, if the fetus' future identity is indeterminate, it cannot presently be identical to either person, and so presumably isn't a person at all.
But again, it's not clear how this argument depends on Edelman's theory, given that most of us already believe that a newborn has the potential to develop in very varied ways (within genetic constraints, just as Edelman grants).
In either case, it remains open to the pro-lifer to deny that even vast psychological differences entail that the possible future persons are numerically distinct. (They are simply alternative future states that the one person could grow into.) After all, the most coherent pro-lifers will be animalists about personal identity, in the sense that they identify human persons with human organisms -- and there's no real question that the latter come into existence at conception.
Am I missing something?
It is the suggestion that not everything is present in the zygote and that external forces subsequently act on the foetus to eventually create human individuality that leads to the conclusion that human life does not begin at conception or kick in at any one time.
I'm not convinced that Edelman's new biological theory adds anything new to the ethical debate. I mean, it's not exactly news that genetic determinism is false. And everyone else recognizes that "not everything is present in the zygote" -- Edelman's "stochastic processes" aside, how we develop as individuals will at least depend upon the cultural environment we're raised in, etc.
Perhaps the thought is that the potential variance here is so great that we're not talking about a single person developing in different ways; rather, the differences are so vast that they would amount to distinct people. That is, it's not just indeterminate how the fetus will develop; it's indeterminate who the fetus will grow to be. And, we might think, if the fetus' future identity is indeterminate, it cannot presently be identical to either person, and so presumably isn't a person at all.
But again, it's not clear how this argument depends on Edelman's theory, given that most of us already believe that a newborn has the potential to develop in very varied ways (within genetic constraints, just as Edelman grants).
In either case, it remains open to the pro-lifer to deny that even vast psychological differences entail that the possible future persons are numerically distinct. (They are simply alternative future states that the one person could grow into.) After all, the most coherent pro-lifers will be animalists about personal identity, in the sense that they identify human persons with human organisms -- and there's no real question that the latter come into existence at conception.
Am I missing something?
Monday, June 25, 2007
Owning Dispositions (by degrees?)
The Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments may be taken to suggest that we are all disposed to act wickedly in certain situations. How should this fact be understood? Is there a little seed of evil lurking inside us, just waiting to get out? Or is it instead that some situations are so extraordinary that they would cause us to behave abnormally, "out of character" with our "true self"? Is this a real distinction? If so, what is its basis, and how do we tell whether any given counterfactual has import for one's "true character"? (I asked a similar question here.)
Another example may help bring out the problem. Suppose a mad scientist could rewire my brain so that I became a crazed serial killer. It seems absurd to say that I already have the disposition to become a crazed serial killer "if rewired". The antecedent condition is one that changes who I am - my character and dispositions - so the counterfactual doesn't really reflect at all on my actual character and dispositions. (Cf. the conditional fallacy.)
I guess the key issue here is whether my current state contains the "causal basis" of my counterfactual behaviour, or whether this is something that's newly introduced by the antecedent condition. Drastic neural rewiring alters the causal basis of my behaviour. But all thought and experience involves some degree of neural rewiring - our brain changes, that's how we learn! So how can we draw any strict line here, between changes that merely draw on our existing dispositions, and changes that introduce whole new ones? Our terms suggest a difference in kind, when the neurobiology may merely differ in degree.
The above discussion seems lacking in conceptual clarity. There must be a better way to understand these issues. Any suggestions? (Quick thought: perhaps dispositions should be understood more exclusively as general tendencies, manifest in a much broader range of behaviours. Then we may discard the above cases as too isolated and specific to justify invoking 'dispositions'.)
Similar issues arise for dispositional beliefs. Peter distinguishes between dormant actual beliefs ("my name is Peter") and merely derivable beliefs ("25 - 11 = 14"). He suggests that the difference consists in whether the proposition is "directly integrated into the person’s mental operations", and so "immediately available when needed". He adds:
This sounds like the above distinction between owned (internal) and disowned (external) dispositions; those that are already present in the agent, and those that aren't (but would be given the right stimulus). But aren't integration and availability likewise matters of degree?
Another example may help bring out the problem. Suppose a mad scientist could rewire my brain so that I became a crazed serial killer. It seems absurd to say that I already have the disposition to become a crazed serial killer "if rewired". The antecedent condition is one that changes who I am - my character and dispositions - so the counterfactual doesn't really reflect at all on my actual character and dispositions. (Cf. the conditional fallacy.)
I guess the key issue here is whether my current state contains the "causal basis" of my counterfactual behaviour, or whether this is something that's newly introduced by the antecedent condition. Drastic neural rewiring alters the causal basis of my behaviour. But all thought and experience involves some degree of neural rewiring - our brain changes, that's how we learn! So how can we draw any strict line here, between changes that merely draw on our existing dispositions, and changes that introduce whole new ones? Our terms suggest a difference in kind, when the neurobiology may merely differ in degree.
The above discussion seems lacking in conceptual clarity. There must be a better way to understand these issues. Any suggestions? (Quick thought: perhaps dispositions should be understood more exclusively as general tendencies, manifest in a much broader range of behaviours. Then we may discard the above cases as too isolated and specific to justify invoking 'dispositions'.)
Similar issues arise for dispositional beliefs. Peter distinguishes between dormant actual beliefs ("my name is Peter") and merely derivable beliefs ("25 - 11 = 14"). He suggests that the difference consists in whether the proposition is "directly integrated into the person’s mental operations", and so "immediately available when needed". He adds:
It is natural to say that plain beliefs are always in mind, although usually unconscious, but derived beliefs are not usually present in any way, except when they are consciously derived from plain beliefs.
This sounds like the above distinction between owned (internal) and disowned (external) dispositions; those that are already present in the agent, and those that aren't (but would be given the right stimulus). But aren't integration and availability likewise matters of degree?
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Fun with Neural Grounding
It's amazing what brains can do (if we assume that they "ground" every subject that we think about):
Reader challenge: On the assumption that this is a valid argument form, what's the most outlandish reductio you can come up with? (E.g. "Because Homo sapiens is the only species to construct complex electrical systems, electricity has to be grounded in some distinctive property of the human brain." Zap!)
Because Homo sapiens is the only species to construct complex moral systems, morality has to be grounded in some distinctive property of the human brain
Reader challenge: On the assumption that this is a valid argument form, what's the most outlandish reductio you can come up with? (E.g. "Because Homo sapiens is the only species to construct complex electrical systems, electricity has to be grounded in some distinctive property of the human brain." Zap!)
Friday, May 04, 2007
Fission and Identity
Johnny-Dee quotes Swinburne's take on fission:
I prefer Parfit's solution, which is to deny that there is any further fact here to know. The physical and psychological facts exhaust the facts. Once those are all specified, there is nothing left to know about the world. It would seem strange to posit two possibilities, alike in every objective and subjective respect, yet somehow differing in virtue of the "identity facts". For what would those consist in, and how could we ever grasp them? Our commonsense concept of identity tracks a familiar kind of continuity, but we have no reason to think there's anything further underlying it.
Reflection on this thought experiment shows that, however much we know about what has happened to my brain—we may know exactly what has happened to every atom in it—and to every other material part of me, we do not necessarily know what has happened to me. From that it follows that there must be more to me than the matter of which my body and brain are made, a further essential immaterial part whose continuing in existence makes the brain (and so the body) to which it is connected my brain (and body), and to this something I give the traditional name of ’soul’. I am my soul plus whatever brain (and body) it is connected to. Normally my soul goes where my brain goes, but in unusual circumstances (such as when my brain is split) it is uncertain where it goes.
I prefer Parfit's solution, which is to deny that there is any further fact here to know. The physical and psychological facts exhaust the facts. Once those are all specified, there is nothing left to know about the world. It would seem strange to posit two possibilities, alike in every objective and subjective respect, yet somehow differing in virtue of the "identity facts". For what would those consist in, and how could we ever grasp them? Our commonsense concept of identity tracks a familiar kind of continuity, but we have no reason to think there's anything further underlying it.
Monday, November 06, 2006
Homunculi and Objective Purpose
'Homunculi' are the metaphorical "little men" in your head that perform cognitive sub-tasks that contribute to your overall cognition.* You might have one responsible for word recognition, for example, and others might guide belief formation. My question is whether any of these homunculi must have intrinsic purposes. For example, Rob Koons (scroll down) argues that "if there were no non-human purposes, then... this would mean that human beings lack minds":
Clayton Littlejohn is unconvinced:
I think that misunderstands Koons' argument, though. It isn't a simple fallacy of division -- Koons isn't assuming that a property of the whole must be present in its parts, or anything like that. Instead, as I understand it, his starting point is the assumption that cognition is inherently normative. One commonly hears this view expressed through the slogan: "belief aims at truth" -- the idea being that this 'aim'/purpose is partly constitutive of belief. I think this is false (on any strong interpretation of the claim), but at least it's not as odd as would be an argument from division where the property transmitted from the whole to the part isn't even the same!
Anyway, returning to the central question: do homunculi have objective purposes? It depends how much we build into the concept of "purpose". There's a very weak sense of the claim that's unobjectionable. We can talk of biological "functions" which mean nothing more than "naturally selected operation", for example (as Brandon points out in comments to Clayton's post). We can describe certain functional roles -- e.g. information acquisition -- that could aid an organism's survival, and no doubt (some of) our cognitive processes evolved precisely because they fill such a role. (To clarify: the initial appearance of a trait is mere chance; what's more predictable is that a functionally apt trait is retained and promoted in the population through natural selection.) But there's nothing metaphysically deep about such talk; such "purposes" invoke nothing over and above the historical facts.
[Besides, I don't think those historical facts are essential to cognition in any case. If a freak quantum accident created an atom-for-atom replica (cf. "Swampman") of me, he would certainly have a mind just as I do, and arguably with all the same beliefs.** But any ascription of "objective purposes" to his accidentally assembled parts would presumably be our mere projection. Unless, I suppose, we individuate purposes the same way (I propose) we do mental states, by forward-looking rather than historical criteria. But that seems ad hoc, and - more importantly - still wouldn't add any metaphysical depth to the claims.]
Koons' view would appear to imply that there could be people that were just like us in every descriptive respect (incl. physics + qualia), and yet they somehow "don't have minds" due to lacking the essential normative components. They have (non-mental?) states that are exactly like beliefs in every respect, except that they don't intrinsically "aim at truth", so they're not "beliefs". Similarly, they form fake "intentions", arising from cognitive processes that happen in fact to "supply deliberation with goals", but because this is not their "intrinsic purpose", none of it really counts.
Now that does seem odd.
(Perhaps one could hold that objective purposes supervene on the descriptive facts, just like morality does, so that it's not really possible to subtract it whilst holding all descriptive facts the same? But then the descriptive facts suffice to establish mentality after all: the supervening normative properties come along for free!)
* = A fun aside: the GFP quote a delightful passage from Michael Freyn which draws on the metaphor of homunculi to motivate skepticism about free will:
** = Bracketing issues about semantic externalism -- "narrow content" will do for present purposes -- I think it's most plausible to hold that beliefs are functionally reducible (perhaps modulo qualia, if you hold that beliefs have an essential phenomenal "feel" to them), e.g. to facts about one's present dispositions and such.
[T]he very possibility of belief presupposes the existence of cognitive faculties with the intrinsic purpose of seeking truth. Similarly, the very possibility of intentions or purposes presupposes the existence of cognitive faculties with the intrinsic purpose of supplying deliberation with goals. Human will cannot be the source of all purpose (function, value, etc.), since brain processes can constitute the human will only by having the appropriate intrinsic purposes (and functions).
Clayton Littlejohn is unconvinced:
It seems that Koons is saying that I couldn't have a mind unless I had parts that had purposes. Isn't it a mistake to say that I have the purposes I do because my brain or cognitive processes has those very purposes? To say that I have the purpose of discovering truth because part of my brain does seems to make a number of mistakes. What's odd is that he goes beyond this in suggesting that I, CL, have the purposes I do because CL's cognitive processes have purposes AND (worse) that they aren't the same as my purposes. Odd, no?
I think that misunderstands Koons' argument, though. It isn't a simple fallacy of division -- Koons isn't assuming that a property of the whole must be present in its parts, or anything like that. Instead, as I understand it, his starting point is the assumption that cognition is inherently normative. One commonly hears this view expressed through the slogan: "belief aims at truth" -- the idea being that this 'aim'/purpose is partly constitutive of belief. I think this is false (on any strong interpretation of the claim), but at least it's not as odd as would be an argument from division where the property transmitted from the whole to the part isn't even the same!
Anyway, returning to the central question: do homunculi have objective purposes? It depends how much we build into the concept of "purpose". There's a very weak sense of the claim that's unobjectionable. We can talk of biological "functions" which mean nothing more than "naturally selected operation", for example (as Brandon points out in comments to Clayton's post). We can describe certain functional roles -- e.g. information acquisition -- that could aid an organism's survival, and no doubt (some of) our cognitive processes evolved precisely because they fill such a role. (To clarify: the initial appearance of a trait is mere chance; what's more predictable is that a functionally apt trait is retained and promoted in the population through natural selection.) But there's nothing metaphysically deep about such talk; such "purposes" invoke nothing over and above the historical facts.
[Besides, I don't think those historical facts are essential to cognition in any case. If a freak quantum accident created an atom-for-atom replica (cf. "Swampman") of me, he would certainly have a mind just as I do, and arguably with all the same beliefs.** But any ascription of "objective purposes" to his accidentally assembled parts would presumably be our mere projection. Unless, I suppose, we individuate purposes the same way (I propose) we do mental states, by forward-looking rather than historical criteria. But that seems ad hoc, and - more importantly - still wouldn't add any metaphysical depth to the claims.]
Koons' view would appear to imply that there could be people that were just like us in every descriptive respect (incl. physics + qualia), and yet they somehow "don't have minds" due to lacking the essential normative components. They have (non-mental?) states that are exactly like beliefs in every respect, except that they don't intrinsically "aim at truth", so they're not "beliefs". Similarly, they form fake "intentions", arising from cognitive processes that happen in fact to "supply deliberation with goals", but because this is not their "intrinsic purpose", none of it really counts.
Now that does seem odd.
(Perhaps one could hold that objective purposes supervene on the descriptive facts, just like morality does, so that it's not really possible to subtract it whilst holding all descriptive facts the same? But then the descriptive facts suffice to establish mentality after all: the supervening normative properties come along for free!)
* = A fun aside: the GFP quote a delightful passage from Michael Freyn which draws on the metaphor of homunculi to motivate skepticism about free will:
I discover that I am not an absolute ruler after all. I am a mere constitutional fiction, a face on the postage stamps, a signature at the bottom of decrees written by unidentified powers behind the throne over which I have no control... even my private entertainments are devised for me by invisible courtiers working in parts of the palace that I have never entered, and could never find my way to go.
** = Bracketing issues about semantic externalism -- "narrow content" will do for present purposes -- I think it's most plausible to hold that beliefs are functionally reducible (perhaps modulo qualia, if you hold that beliefs have an essential phenomenal "feel" to them), e.g. to facts about one's present dispositions and such.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Locating Pain
How is it that the following inference is invalid?
(1) I feel a pain in my fingertip
(2) The fingertip is in my mouth
Therefore,
(3) I feel a pain in my mouth
Tye's initial suggestion (C&P, p.52) invokes the opacity of representation. To experience pain "in" an area is merely for one's experience to represent pain (tissue damage) as being in that area. Because the information in (2) may not be included within the representation, (3) -- understood as the claim that you represent pain as being in your mouth -- does not follow. Such failure of substitution is a familiar feature of representations. (Compare Lois Lane's beliefs about Clark Kent/Superman.)
But this explanation seems misguided. Opacity problems derive from ignorance or incomplete representation (Lois doesn't know that Clark is Superman), whereas this doesn't seem essential to the pain problem. In fact, the problem doesn't seem to depend on the representational aspect of pain at all. Compare:
(1') There is tissue damage in my fingertip
(2') The fingertip is in my mouth
Therefore,
(3') There is tissue damage in my mouth
On the most natural reading, this argument is just as bad as the original one. So plainly the essential problem has nothing to do with representation. It's simply an ambiguity in the word "in". As Tye explains:
Since my damaged finger is in my mouth, there is tissue damage "in" my mouth in the first sense, but plainly not the second -- it is not my mouth itself that is damaged. This carries over to the representations: a veridical experience will represent the pain as being "in" my mouth in the first sense but not the second, and indeed that seems to be exactly what happens. (I feel the pain in my finger, and my finger in my mouth. Hence I feel that there is a pain within my mouth -- specifically, in my finger -- even though it isn't the mouth itself that feels painful.) Thus the initial problem is cleared up nice and simply. So why couldn't Tye be clearer about it? (He doesn't explicate the argument as I do above.) As if this weren't irritating enough, he further muddies the waters:
Grrr. This really doesn't need to be that complicated. "The point", recall, is to explain the inference failure. The inference failure occurs because of the two senses of 'in'. It has nothing to do with referential opacity or substitution failure as a distinctive feature of representation -- that's a total red herring! Sure, representation may be relevant in the more general respect that experiences are representational, but it doesn't have any direct bearing on the particular point at hand. (Perhaps Tye has a different "point" in mind? Otherwise he seems to confuse "miss[ing]" the point with focusing on it! Bizarre.)
There are no "false assumptions" in my simple explanation above. The invalidity of the argument from (1') to (3') is precisely what explains why a representation of (1') -- as asserted by (1) -- doesn't imply a representation of (3') -- or the assertion of (3). My only assumption here is that experiences of pain represent something bodily (e.g. tissue damage), and that's an assumption that Tye himself grants! Whether we want to call this represented thing 'pain' is a merely terminological issue. But here's a quick argument suggesting that we should:
(P1) In general, experiences of X represent X.
Hence, (C1) Experiences of pain represent pain.
(P2) Experiences of pain represent bodily damage
Hence, (C2) Pain = bodily damage.
Of course, what we normally care about when we talk about 'pain' is really the feeling or experience as of pain. But if we want to distinguish the experience itself from the thing represented in experience, then this seems like a natural way to do it. Tye must agree that the thing represented by experiences of pain -- namely, bodily damage -- is "in my mouth in [one] spatial sense". If he denies that the same is true of 'pain', then our disagreement is merely terminological. He shouldn't think I'm making any substantive false assumptions here. I certainly don't think that the experience of pain is spatially located in the mouth, and no such claim figures in the simple explanation of the original inference failure. So there's no good reason to rebuke the simple explanation here.
Oh well, I guess I should quit growling and find something more productive to do. (Maybe sleep.)
(1) I feel a pain in my fingertip
(2) The fingertip is in my mouth
Therefore,
(3) I feel a pain in my mouth
Tye's initial suggestion (C&P, p.52) invokes the opacity of representation. To experience pain "in" an area is merely for one's experience to represent pain (tissue damage) as being in that area. Because the information in (2) may not be included within the representation, (3) -- understood as the claim that you represent pain as being in your mouth -- does not follow. Such failure of substitution is a familiar feature of representations. (Compare Lois Lane's beliefs about Clark Kent/Superman.)
But this explanation seems misguided. Opacity problems derive from ignorance or incomplete representation (Lois doesn't know that Clark is Superman), whereas this doesn't seem essential to the pain problem. In fact, the problem doesn't seem to depend on the representational aspect of pain at all. Compare:
(1') There is tissue damage in my fingertip
(2') The fingertip is in my mouth
Therefore,
(3') There is tissue damage in my mouth
On the most natural reading, this argument is just as bad as the original one. So plainly the essential problem has nothing to do with representation. It's simply an ambiguity in the word "in". As Tye explains:
When there is a hollow physical object, O, the claim that something X is in O can be understood either to assert that X is within the cavity bounded by O or to assert that X is embedded within a portion of the cavity surround. (p.53)
Since my damaged finger is in my mouth, there is tissue damage "in" my mouth in the first sense, but plainly not the second -- it is not my mouth itself that is damaged. This carries over to the representations: a veridical experience will represent the pain as being "in" my mouth in the first sense but not the second, and indeed that seems to be exactly what happens. (I feel the pain in my finger, and my finger in my mouth. Hence I feel that there is a pain within my mouth -- specifically, in my finger -- even though it isn't the mouth itself that feels painful.) Thus the initial problem is cleared up nice and simply. So why couldn't Tye be clearer about it? (He doesn't explicate the argument as I do above.) As if this weren't irritating enough, he further muddies the waters:
Perhaps it will be replied that once different spatial senses of 'in' are admitted, that is all that is needed to explain the inference failure in the last case. The appeal to representation is otiose. This misses the point. The pain/experience of pain is not in my mouth in either spatial sense. To offer an explanation that supposes that it is is to offer an explanation based on false assumptions. And that is to offer no explanation at all. (pp.53-54)
Grrr. This really doesn't need to be that complicated. "The point", recall, is to explain the inference failure. The inference failure occurs because of the two senses of 'in'. It has nothing to do with referential opacity or substitution failure as a distinctive feature of representation -- that's a total red herring! Sure, representation may be relevant in the more general respect that experiences are representational, but it doesn't have any direct bearing on the particular point at hand. (Perhaps Tye has a different "point" in mind? Otherwise he seems to confuse "miss[ing]" the point with focusing on it! Bizarre.)
There are no "false assumptions" in my simple explanation above. The invalidity of the argument from (1') to (3') is precisely what explains why a representation of (1') -- as asserted by (1) -- doesn't imply a representation of (3') -- or the assertion of (3). My only assumption here is that experiences of pain represent something bodily (e.g. tissue damage), and that's an assumption that Tye himself grants! Whether we want to call this represented thing 'pain' is a merely terminological issue. But here's a quick argument suggesting that we should:
(P1) In general, experiences of X represent X.
Hence, (C1) Experiences of pain represent pain.
(P2) Experiences of pain represent bodily damage
Hence, (C2) Pain = bodily damage.
Of course, what we normally care about when we talk about 'pain' is really the feeling or experience as of pain. But if we want to distinguish the experience itself from the thing represented in experience, then this seems like a natural way to do it. Tye must agree that the thing represented by experiences of pain -- namely, bodily damage -- is "in my mouth in [one] spatial sense". If he denies that the same is true of 'pain', then our disagreement is merely terminological. He shouldn't think I'm making any substantive false assumptions here. I certainly don't think that the experience of pain is spatially located in the mouth, and no such claim figures in the simple explanation of the original inference failure. So there's no good reason to rebuke the simple explanation here.
Oh well, I guess I should quit growling and find something more productive to do. (Maybe sleep.)
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
The Feel of Thoughts
Michael Tye argues that "[t]he phenomenology of occurrent thoughts derives fundamentally... from the phenomenology of their associated linguistic, auditory images." (Consciousness and Persons, p.79) He thus denies that the meaning or content of the thought influences its phenomenal "feel". This claim isn't obviously true though, and Tye's main argument for it is far from compelling.
Tye appeals to Twin Earth, where our twins have thoughts that are (presumably) phenomenologically indiscernible from our own, despite having different semantic contents. (Their 'water'-thoughts are about twin-water (XYZ), whereas ours are about H2O.) So a difference in semantic content is not sufficient for a difference in phenomenology.
Of course, just because there are some cases where content makes no difference, it doesn't follow that it never makes a difference. So even if it works, the conclusion of Tye's argument is too weak for his purposes. But I don't think the argument does quite work. Perhaps Tye is simply looking at the wrong kind of semantic content. Rather than looking at the externalist, reference-based "wide content" presupposed above, it's far more intuitive to think that phenomenology will be influenced by a more internalistic form of "narrow content", associated with Fregean sense, cognitive significance, inferential role, and so forth. This alternative kind of content might be captured by the "primary intension" of a Chalmersian 2-D semantics.
The problem with Tye's argument, then, is that the Twin Earth case does not involve any difference in narrow content (or primary intension). The difference in externalist meaning is not one that is internally accessible to the agents, so it is unsurprising that it would not affect their phenomenology. But it would be a leap to thereby conclude that no aspect of a thought's content ever has an intrinsic impact on its phenomenal "feel".
A more appropriate case would involve deeper differences in content, as found in polysemy. Consider two thoughts about "going to the bank", where the first is about a river bank, and the second a financial institution. Will these two thoughts feel the same? This isn't at all obvious, but that's what Tye needs to argue.
P.S. Tye adds in a footnote that there might be associated non-auditory (say, visual) images which contribute to the phenomenology. Perhaps that could explain the apparent differences in the bank case, without any need to appeal to the idea that the semantic content itself has any phenomenal influence. I'm not sure how to adjudicate between these rival explanations.
P.P.S. Presumably deaf people don't associate their thoughts with auditory images. I wonder what their thoughts feel like, then? (Are they associated with visual or kinesthetic/proprioceptive images instead?)
Tye appeals to Twin Earth, where our twins have thoughts that are (presumably) phenomenologically indiscernible from our own, despite having different semantic contents. (Their 'water'-thoughts are about twin-water (XYZ), whereas ours are about H2O.) So a difference in semantic content is not sufficient for a difference in phenomenology.
Of course, just because there are some cases where content makes no difference, it doesn't follow that it never makes a difference. So even if it works, the conclusion of Tye's argument is too weak for his purposes. But I don't think the argument does quite work. Perhaps Tye is simply looking at the wrong kind of semantic content. Rather than looking at the externalist, reference-based "wide content" presupposed above, it's far more intuitive to think that phenomenology will be influenced by a more internalistic form of "narrow content", associated with Fregean sense, cognitive significance, inferential role, and so forth. This alternative kind of content might be captured by the "primary intension" of a Chalmersian 2-D semantics.
The problem with Tye's argument, then, is that the Twin Earth case does not involve any difference in narrow content (or primary intension). The difference in externalist meaning is not one that is internally accessible to the agents, so it is unsurprising that it would not affect their phenomenology. But it would be a leap to thereby conclude that no aspect of a thought's content ever has an intrinsic impact on its phenomenal "feel".
A more appropriate case would involve deeper differences in content, as found in polysemy. Consider two thoughts about "going to the bank", where the first is about a river bank, and the second a financial institution. Will these two thoughts feel the same? This isn't at all obvious, but that's what Tye needs to argue.
P.S. Tye adds in a footnote that there might be associated non-auditory (say, visual) images which contribute to the phenomenology. Perhaps that could explain the apparent differences in the bank case, without any need to appeal to the idea that the semantic content itself has any phenomenal influence. I'm not sure how to adjudicate between these rival explanations.
P.P.S. Presumably deaf people don't associate their thoughts with auditory images. I wonder what their thoughts feel like, then? (Are they associated with visual or kinesthetic/proprioceptive images instead?)
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Feeling the Mood
In addition to such fleeting feelings as joy or distress, our mental lives exhibit a longer-term emotional character, which we might call 'mood'. Over a period of several months, one might characteristically exhibit (any one of) depression, irrepressible cheerfulness, or anything in between. One's mood, so understood, may be a kind of disposition to react in certain ways, or to rally variously successful coping skills. It may manifest in one's general attitude towards life, as an optimist or pessimist, for instance.
Mood looms large in our self-narrated life-stories. At least, I find that I tend to classify periods of my life according to the remembered progression of such moods. (For instance, there's a certain period in high school defined more or less by depression. And, at the other extreme, the first couple of months here in Canberra stand out in my memory - as a distinctive "period" - for being so consistently wonderful.) It's an interesting question just how accurate such remembered impressions are, since of course they gloss over a lot of details. We may blot out shorter periods that are inconsistent with the general mood: forgetting the good that occurs during the bad times, and vice versa. Should this lead us to be skeptical of assigning much moral import to these narratives (say as determinant of the welfare value of one's life)? Or is it legitimate -- is the dominating memorial influence of mood a genuine reflection of its dominating importance?
(I guess I should also check whether my introspective claims resonate with others. Perhaps I have an unusual psychology, or otherwise misreport what's really going on.)
Questions of 'overriding weight' aside, it seems clear enough that mood is at least an important feature of our welfare. When people speak of the desirability of happiness, I think they're generally getting at the importance of positive moods (contentment, life satisfaction, etc.) rather than mere fleeting sensations of pleasure. So, in light of this importance, it becomes an important question how our moods are influenced, and especially whether there are positive influences that are within our power to implement.
Any answers?
Mood looms large in our self-narrated life-stories. At least, I find that I tend to classify periods of my life according to the remembered progression of such moods. (For instance, there's a certain period in high school defined more or less by depression. And, at the other extreme, the first couple of months here in Canberra stand out in my memory - as a distinctive "period" - for being so consistently wonderful.) It's an interesting question just how accurate such remembered impressions are, since of course they gloss over a lot of details. We may blot out shorter periods that are inconsistent with the general mood: forgetting the good that occurs during the bad times, and vice versa. Should this lead us to be skeptical of assigning much moral import to these narratives (say as determinant of the welfare value of one's life)? Or is it legitimate -- is the dominating memorial influence of mood a genuine reflection of its dominating importance?
(I guess I should also check whether my introspective claims resonate with others. Perhaps I have an unusual psychology, or otherwise misreport what's really going on.)
Questions of 'overriding weight' aside, it seems clear enough that mood is at least an important feature of our welfare. When people speak of the desirability of happiness, I think they're generally getting at the importance of positive moods (contentment, life satisfaction, etc.) rather than mere fleeting sensations of pleasure. So, in light of this importance, it becomes an important question how our moods are influenced, and especially whether there are positive influences that are within our power to implement.
Any answers?
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