On Chomsky's annoying mysterianism.
Every time he is invited to a show and asked about his consciousness, he gives the following speech.
Step 1: He starts with a story about Newton who apparently destroyed materialism once and for all.
Moreover, Chomsky goes ahead denying altogether even the notion of materialism/physicalism, saying that we do not know what matter is.
Step 2: After he literally obliterates materialism, he makes a strange move - he denies its alternatives too. The reasons are not at all clear, but the story goes something like this: consciousness is part of nature, it is not something supernatural...
Step 3: This is where the strangeness ends, and the situation slips into the area of the dubious. Chomsky claims that consciousness is inexplicable to the human mind, possibly even to any kind of mind. The reasons? Again he refers to a story from the 17th century about the notion of movement or something like that...
I will discuss two recent interviews.
1. The interview with Richard Brown - any relevant question received the following answer: "this is a non-question".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLuONgFbsjw
2. The interview with Closer to Truth: at one point, RLK makes a smart move. It lures Chomsky into the idea of strong emergence, referring to water. Chomsky agrees and seems to embrace immediately the idea that strong emergence is often found in nature and that consciousness is such a phenomenon. Then, after RLK returns to the idea and makes it clear that water is not actually a strong emergence-type phenomenon, Chomsky diverts the discussion, immediately turning to the 17th-century story of "the movement", avoiding the topic in an obvious way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzRkho1s5FA
In conclusion:
Step 1: I don't see any serious argument in the story with Newton against materialism.
Step 2: I see no argument for denying the alternatives.
Step 3: I see no argument for our inability to find an answer to the problems of consciousness.
1. Are there "deep" arguments that I don't understand?
2. What is Chomsky's real motivation for adopting mysteryism?
3, Is Chomsky really a mysterianist, or he hides something?
Step 1: He starts with a story about Newton who apparently destroyed materialism once and for all.
Moreover, Chomsky goes ahead denying altogether even the notion of materialism/physicalism, saying that we do not know what matter is.
Step 2: After he literally obliterates materialism, he makes a strange move - he denies its alternatives too. The reasons are not at all clear, but the story goes something like this: consciousness is part of nature, it is not something supernatural...
Step 3: This is where the strangeness ends, and the situation slips into the area of the dubious. Chomsky claims that consciousness is inexplicable to the human mind, possibly even to any kind of mind. The reasons? Again he refers to a story from the 17th century about the notion of movement or something like that...
I will discuss two recent interviews.
1. The interview with Richard Brown - any relevant question received the following answer: "this is a non-question".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLuONgFbsjw
2. The interview with Closer to Truth: at one point, RLK makes a smart move. It lures Chomsky into the idea of strong emergence, referring to water. Chomsky agrees and seems to embrace immediately the idea that strong emergence is often found in nature and that consciousness is such a phenomenon. Then, after RLK returns to the idea and makes it clear that water is not actually a strong emergence-type phenomenon, Chomsky diverts the discussion, immediately turning to the 17th-century story of "the movement", avoiding the topic in an obvious way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzRkho1s5FA
In conclusion:
Step 1: I don't see any serious argument in the story with Newton against materialism.
Step 2: I see no argument for denying the alternatives.
Step 3: I see no argument for our inability to find an answer to the problems of consciousness.
1. Are there "deep" arguments that I don't understand?
2. What is Chomsky's real motivation for adopting mysteryism?
3, Is Chomsky really a mysterianist, or he hides something?
Comments (193)
Apparently, quite a few deep thinkers have concluded that human Consciousness is an impenetrable mystery. David Chalmers famously called it the "Hard Problem", and he is not even on the list below*1. I don't know what Chomsky's motivation was, but he explains his reasoning in the extensive article linked by Manuel in another thread : https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/ChomskyMysteriesNatureHidden2009.pdf
I suppose the roadblock to understanding Reason by means of Reason is fundamental. It's like seeing the retina of the eye with your own eye. But there are ways around that physical obstruction. Unfortunately, examining Consciousness with the scope of Consciousness is a meta-physical problem, that can't be circumvented by using a mechanism, or another consciousness, to do the "seeing". So, the "mystery" is merely due to the intrinsic limitations of a Subjective perspective on Objective reality.
For my own purposes though, I have simplified the Brain/Mind problem by showing that they are merely two forms of the same fundamental cause : Information (power to enform, to create)*2. This may be solving the problem by redefining a Dualistic difficulty in terms of simplistic Monism. But there are good scientific & philosophical reasons for that equation*3. I'm not nearly as smart as the thinkers on the list below, who publicly renounced the Mind Mystery, as insolvable by scientific methods. "But the new mysterianism is a postmodern position designed to drive a railroad spike through the heart of scientism" (Owen Flanagan) . :cool:
*1. New mysterians :
*** William James,
*** Carl Jung,
*** Colin McGinn is the leading proponent of the new mysterian position among major philosophers.
*** Thomas Nagel, American philosopher.
*** Jerry Fodor, American philosopher and cognitive scientist.[citation needed]
*** Noam Chomsky, American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, and political commentator/activist.
*** Martin Gardner, American mathematics and science writer, considered himself to be a mysterian.
*** John Horgan, American science journalist.
*** Steven Pinker, American psychologist; favoured mysterianism in How the Mind Works, and later wrote: "The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside. This is where I place my bet, though I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn geniusa Darwin or Einstein of consciousnesscomes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us."
*** Roger Penrose, English physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science.[citation needed]
*** Edward Witten, American string theorist.
*** Sam Harris, American neuroscientist, has endorsed mysterianism by stating that "This situation has been characterized as an "explanatory gap" and the "hard problem of consciousness," and it is surely both. I am sympathetic with those who, like ... McGinn and ... Pinker, have judged the impasse to be total: Perhaps the emergence of consciousness is simply incomprehensible in human terms."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism
*2. What is Information ? :
The power to enform, to create, to cause change, the essence of awareness. . . . .
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page16.html
*3. Brain/Mind Paradox :
Empirical Science treats the human mind as an integral function of the physical brain. But we intuitively put the mind in a different category. That's why it has traditionally been associated with a non-physical Soul, which requires a dualistic notion of humanity. The Enformationism paradigm though, is ultimately monistic, viewing Information as the single "substance" of reality. But that primordial stuff has two aspects : an active verb form, EnFormAction (energy), and a passive noun form, Information (matter). The brain is enformed stuff, which converts stored Information (memory) into non-physical ideas, images, and feelings.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
What, in general, may (?) motivate the adoption of 'mysteryism' ?
Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. [Feuerbach]
Hes saying theres not been a technical notion of matter/material since the 17th century, so the mind/body problem cant be answered (since we dont know what body is).
There do seem to be some mysteries in the world. Either they will be discovered one day, or will be something like how rats simply cant run a prime number maze some things are just beyond the scope of human beings. History gives us some clue as to which is which.
So man know thyself was a furphy?
Reality, existence, consciousness, and many other things have no clear definition or "technical notions". Still...
I see that list is drawn from Wikipedia. I don't trust the provenance of that article and I'm sure few of those names would be willing to be described with that name. I'm sure Nagel shouldn't be on it. The only one who willingly adopted it was McGinn afaik.
Besides what would it be to 'explain' consciousness? The whole idea might be a red herring. Of course it is true that psychology is not a precise science, but then you're dealing with the subject of experience, not objects whose properties can be precisely specified.
Still we go on babbling about them, getting nowhere.
Theres a new article on this site every other week about consciousness or some grand unifying theory of existence, and they all make the same mistake: if only we define a word this way or that, itll solve the mystery and everything will fall into place.
Its a silly waste of time.
A Russian guy once told me: "You know what your problem is? You don't have enough problems."
I took his famous Bat essay as being suggestive of mysterian inclinations.
Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. Without consciousness, the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness, it seems hopeless.
Has he ever qualified the word 'seems'?
Quoting Eugen
He does not avoid the topic, he puts it in a larger framework. In part it can be summarized by the saying, "shut up and calculate". Kuhn thinks that we get closer to the truth. Chomsky thinks we develop intelligible theories that predict what will happen, but our theories always leave something unexplained.
The failure of the mechanistic model, he points to gravity, means the failure of intelligibility. We do not know what is going on, how it all works together. This is not to say that the world is not intelligible but that it is not intelligible to us. If the world is not intelligible to us the mind and consciousness is not intelligible to us.
Put differently, the more you know the more there is to know.
I have only a superficial knowledge of the New Mysterian appellation. So I'll let you argue with the Wiki editors, and Dr. Owen Flanagan about what names should be on the list of thinkers, who have punted on the quest to answer the ancient Mind/Body question. The only one I know something about is polymath Martin Gardner, who labelled himself as a Mysterian*1 in a Skeptical Inquirer article many years ago. But then, he was actually referring to the God question : essentially admitting to being an Agnostic instead of an Atheist.
Your question, "what would it be to explain consciousness" is evocative of Nagel's "what is it like to be a bat?" In both questions the subject is Subjectivity. We know our own minds intimately, but other minds have always been somewhat of a mystery*2. I suppose that what "annoys" may be its rejection of the Myth of Objectivity*3 inherent in the faith of Scientism. I don't know what motivated the "deep thinkers" on the New Mysterian list, but I doubt that it was a desire to drive a stake "into the heart of scientism"*4. Instead. More likely, it was merely the realization that some Qualia questions are not susceptible to the empirical methods of Quantitative science, nor to the reductive methods of Analytical philosophy.
I wouldn't call the Consciousness conundrum a "red herring", but the mystery may be a product of how you frame the question. Since human awareness has been traditionally associated with a non-physical
Soul, it would be, by definition, eliminated from the subject matter of Science, and reserved for the purview of Religion. However, in my Enformationism thesis, I postulate that Consciousness is merely a highly-developed form of fundamental Information*5.
So my frame is closer to clarifying Science than to mystifying Religion, in that the emergence of Mind from material evolution was simply a product of eons of information processing*6, instead of instantaneous creation. But one minor mystery remains : who or what programmed the evolutionary Logic (mechanism) and Data (initial conditions) into the Singularity that went "bang", to begin the long procession from mindless matter-melding to mind-driven thinkers asking unanswerable questions? :smile:
*1. I Am a Mysterian :
I belong to a small group of thinkers called the mysterians. It includes Thomas Nagel, Colin McGinn, Jerry Fodor, also Noam Chomsky, Roger Penrose, and a few others.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400847983-003/html?lang=en
*2. Problem of Other Minds :
in philosophy, the problem of justifying the commonsensical belief that others besides oneself possess minds and are capable of thinking or feeling somewhat as one does oneself.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/problem-of-other-minds
*3. The Myth of Objectivity :
The problem of objectivity centers on the question: What can we Know about reality The dominant epistemology (theory of Knowledge) underlying most accounts of cognition begins with the assumption that the world, i.e., objective reality, exists independently of we who observe it. Thus, the logical imperative for the philosopher, psychologist, or neurophysiologist is to account for how we perceive and Know about such a world.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4613-0115-8_2
*4. Scientism : excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.
*5. Is Information Fundamental for a Scientific Theory of Consciousness? :
Arguably, information could even be the fundamental brick with which physical reality is built (Wheelers It from Bit thesis).
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-5777-9_21
*6. What is Information ?
The power to enform, to create, to cause change (e.g. energy); also the essence of awareness : to create Concepts from Percepts.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page16.html
Either we are natural creatures, or we aren't. If we are natural creatures there are things we can do and things we cannot do. We cannot fly like eagles, we don't have the visual acuity of a mantis shrimp, we don't have the capacity to smell as much as dogs and so on.
Continuing with the case of other animals, suppose someone says "dogs will learn how to use laptops, it's just a matter of "learning more" and eventually they will understand it".
That is a silly argument.
Likewise, we as human beings, while possessing properties and capacities which are unique in the whole history of life (as far as we know), are still creatures of nature. Like the dog never being able to use a laptop, there will be things we will never be able to do or understand.
We won't learn to breathe underwater like fish, nor can we understand how it is possible for matter to think. We know it can, but we don't see how it's possible. Likewise, we cannot comprehend the idea that the universe is as large as it is. Sure, we can draw a symbol representing infinity or alternatively, a very large number, but our brains quite quickly "shut down" when we start contemplating galactic distances.
But there's no reason why another, intelligent being somewhere else in the universe would have any problem understanding how matter thinks or have any issues contemplating gigantic distances.
Either something like this is true, or we are completely separate from nature and possess powers given to us by God, or whatever supernatural explanation you would like to invoke.
Nice quote !
This is plausible but somewhat useless ? Who can say ahead of time what we can manage ? How many times must the 'impossible' be achieved to make us doubt our doubt of ourselves ? Wittgenstein used going to the moon as an example of the impossible once. It was 'obviously' impossible, right ?
To me there's a semantic issue here. What can we mean by saying Neptunians understand something like "how matter thinks" unless we also understand ? It's like God knows.
True story.
Perhaps. But do we really understand pushing and pulling ? Or is it just something so familiar we are numb to it ? And isn't making a telephone call action at a distance ? My wife asks me to swing by the store on the way home for some potatoes. I do that. Magical ! And it is. And it isn't. That there is a here here at all is 'magical' and yet the statement is devoid of content.
One way to approach 'explaining consciousness' is maybe as getting clearer about it, becoming less confused. In my view, progress has been made over the years, though it's hard to imagine us finally being satisfied, especially if one posits that current conceptual norms are necessarily unstable, always falling forward (Brandom's take on Hegel).
As for Chomsky's idea that we have no definition of the physical, he seems correct about that. Physical models are subject to constant revision and besides the 'standard model' of physics is known to be radically incomplete. I dispute that there is anything that can be described as purely or only physical. As an heuristic, it is useful for the description of the attributes and behaviours of 'medium size dry goods' but it can't be seen as anywhere near comprehensive or complete.
[quote=Noam Chomsky]The term physical is just kinda like an honorific word, kinda like the word 'real' when we say 'the real truth'. It doesn't add anything, it just says 'this is serious truth'. So to say that something is 'physical' today just means 'you gotta take this seriously'.[/quote]
I do see an itch in some to demystify it, which has its pros and cons. Demystification can be good if it clears the path for inquiry. Mystification can sometimes look like a KEEP OUT sign.
It's worth noting though that Wittgenstein and Heidegger puts this mystery at the center, but in terms of the problem of being, which is arguably a deeper question (less Cartesian baggage which preinterprets beingthere, the being of the there, as a screen.)
:clap:
Great post.
I predict that dogs won't understand laptops for at least 1000 years. Why? They currently don't have such a capacity. Maybe by then they will be a different species who can use a laptop, but they won't be dogs anymore.
Still, we should be skeptical, we do have good evidence that ever since humans domesticated with dogs 15,000 years. In those 15,000 years, the only evidence of change in the species is one of phenotype, not one of cognitive capacities.
If such a being exists, it would know. Not a semantic issue. Dogs understand/know/are familiar with smells we cannot, that's just a biological fact. Same with Cats and night vision.
It sounds semantic because there are no other animals that possess symbolic representations associated with language use, therefore we use the best words we can to approximate what they do that we can't.
Thanks!
:up:
So do I, and, for basically the same reason, I also dispute its shadow : the purely or only mental.
Hiya. I find it strange you addressed the dog analogy when I was clearly talking about the difficultly of us establishing our own limits.
Quoting plaque flag
Quoting Manuel
That's not knowledge. I'm talking about (conceptual) knowledge not sniffs and glances.
Quoting plaque flag
I'm a fan of Chomsky, for what it's worth, but this little streak of his work is hard to endorse.
Also, for what it's worth, I don't agree that this claim should be taken for granted. I don't doubt that a number of thinkers locked in a certain conception of mind and matter are mystified by their relationships, but that may be because of their bad metaphysical assumptions. Variants of dualism are not the only options.
Theyre both nothing-but-isms. And since idealism is the original nothing-but-ism, and the physical is a concept, physicalism might also be described as a form of idealism. Its a hasty projection of an ideal concept onto reality.
What intrigued me (from what I can recall, will definitely be rewatching it again soon):
"You can't answer what it's like to be a bat. You can't answer what it's like to be me. These are non-questions."
"You can't describe what it's like to watch a sunset".
"I look at the screen and I see what looks like a person but it's really just points of light."
"When you speak to me my brain can formulate and understand language. When my wife speaks in Portuguese all I hear is noise."
Why can't we? Any and all of these would be great points of discussion. He does seem to - from my limited understanding - appear to explain away consciousness as something fundamentally "unanswerable". The Mary in the black and white room thought experiment. Would she gain new knowledge? His answer was "sure if she was some sort of super intelligence able to formulate any and all formulae in a single glance, sure." implying we as humans will forever lack such ability? Or something. Really great stuff. Give it a watch if you haven't.
I like how we share a similar mentality on things "some things are unanswerable and so they are non-questions" or as I would say non-issues.
The bat question seems answerable but he overlays it with the assertion (and biological fact) one human's mind is not the same as this specific hypothetical bat's would be. Sure I can eat an insect and describe it. We know what it's like to fly. To sleep at night. We could hang upside down and get the sensation.
What I would ask him is to explain in more detail why we cannot, in his words "not describe what it's like to watch a sunset". An unanswerable and therefore "non-question". He continues to say "sure someone with more literary talent than [ I ] could write a book about it. But you can never describe it". Fascinating.
Really thought provoking. You guys should try to get him on here. Though the man is quite in his older years, has a family, and surely has more pertinent and desirable things to do before, what happens to all men. If only he wrote more books. Amazing to know there are still living legends among us.
:up:
Yes, crude versions anyway of each tend to look like monisms that lose contrastive grip. If all is X, then nothing is. It's up without down, left without right. A wary idealist will notice that the physical is indeed just one concept among others. This is fine until an unwary idealist decides the concepts have private antiphysical / immaterial referents.
Also reminds me of :
[quote=On Certainty]
478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?
479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?
[/quote]
If we view concepts in terms of social norms for sign use (patterns which can be learned by bots), they aren't any more immaterial than the Charleston or a river that's never the same water twice. Intentions and memories and regrets need not be otherworldly but just relatively complex like the beings to which they are attributed. If a dance is not a ghost, why must a person be ?
And that reminds me of this:
[quote=Wilfrid Sellars]The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says[/quote]
But now Ive probably veered off topic, not only from this thread and your comments, but from myself.
Since we don't want to derail the thread, I'll just say that Brandom runs with this insight from Sellars and manages to make this 'space of reasons' amazingly explicit. It'd be great to get your take on the quotes shared in the Becoming Whole discussion, which focuses on what a self or subject is within this space of reasons.
Understood. And I just bought more books today myself.
There's no reason to believe that we happened to evolve into a species that happens to know everything there is to know about the universe. That's simply wishful thinking.
But if you think this is wrong, because we went to the moon, then OK. You seem to believe that we are not creatures of nature. Because if we were, there would have to necessarily be limits to what we can and cannot know. In order to know something, some aspect of reality, one must be ignorant of other parts of it, otherwise, no cognition could possibly develop.
An organ like the brain and a faculty, like our minds, depend on constraints for possibility, otherwise they would have no shape, we would be very much "a blank slate", as Locke argued. That's just not true, we aren't blank slates.
Again, if this doesn't sound at least plausible, then I have nothing more to say, we are too far apart on this topic.
You radically misunderstand me. I find it strange that you seem to project on me some kind of thesis that man is not natural, when that's precisely the view I'm against.
That there are limits to human cognition is an almost empty platitude. Does anyone doubt it ? On the other hand, it's not clear that we can determine those limits. It's arrogant and perhaps envious of us in the present to claim to know what they in the future might achieve. I can think of a few mathematical results that we can apparently safely assume to draw such limits, but they are the exception.
I am happy to drop this issue with you though, as you seem to take it too personally.
It's not that I take the issue too personally, it's that arguing against it - as Dennett does - seems to me to be irrational in the extreme. The point about limits is too trivial, a bit like denying that when we see the sky during the say, it doesn't look blue. That's what I find annoying.
But you grant it as an empty platitude. OK, better than not granting it, no doubt.
There is a fine line between arrogance in terms of saying what we can't achieve, that's correct. On the other hand, it's even more arrogant to think that we can achieve everything, if only we tried enough.
I think it's perfectly clear that we won't be able to learn much, if anything, about free will (and will actions more generally considered). Why do I say something so presumptuous? Intelligent people have been discussing it for over 2000 years without an iota of progress. Now, if someone denies that we have free will, OK.
The idea of matter thinking is one we can make no sense of, how brain matter produces thought seems to me to be a conceptual issue that we cannot understand, for similar reasons as the free-will issue.
There are other issues: in physics for instance, we still have a lot to discover, but we do have to keep in mind practical considerations when it comes to feasible experiments.
But there's obviously still a tremendous about to learn.
:up:
I can't even make sense of 'we can achieve anything.' I don't think we disagree much on this issue. I do think insisting on the mystery of consciousness can be done in an interesting way (forgetfulness of being), but I also think Dennett is right to be frustrated with those who block the road of inquiry. We'll just have to see (if we can endure a relatively honest inquiry) how much consciousness can be further explained.
Quoting Manuel
Personally I think we should look at freedom in terms of what a member of community is held responsible for, and not for some elusive stuff.
I understand that perspective. But I don't see any contradiction or roadblock here by saying that experience is mysterious for us, in terms of how it arises from matter and letting neuroscientists and cognitive scientists do the hard science.
There are important discoveries to be made in these fields no doubt and even if I think they won't be able to explain the so called "hard problem", they can prove me wrong or find some other way of answering the question.
One last comment on Dennett, he has interesting things to say (outside consciousness), but regarding this question he was once asked about it in relation to other animals, and he replied, roughly, by saying "do monkeys and chimpanzees use English or any language? can they ask questions?"
I take this to mean that if monkeys or chimpanzees were capable of asking questions, then they would be capable of answering. It doesn't follow.
So perhaps you and I aren't too different in perspectives. Maybe different emphasis.
I guess I just don't accept that we must frame it this way, as something immaterial arising from matter. As mentioned above, there are uses of 'matter' that I find questionable. But I don't want to derail the thread.
To me the hard problem is maybe a diluted version of the forgetfulness of being. Wittgenstein and Heidegger both discussed something like the strangeness that the world (any world) is here. It's not how it is (this way or that) but that it is. If we insist on a Cartesian framework, then beingthere becomes beingfor (as in being-for-a-subject). But what is this subject ? Did not Descartes assume way too much ? This belongs in another thread I guess, but I wanted to show some sympathy with the spirit of the hard problem if not its letter.
It's not 'enquiry' that is at issue, but subordinating the subject within the scope of the objective sciences. It's intrinsically demeaning to declare that really, humans are confabulations of unconscious processes that only appear to be intelligent due to the requirements of survival.
Quoting plaque flag
There's definitely a connection there - Dennett not only forgets being, but wishes to eliminate it altogether. Which I think is actually the motivation for eliminativism - it's to avoid the responsibility of facing up to what Eric Fromm describes as 'the fear of freedom'. Better to pretend you're a robot or an animal.
I've never understood this. How is it strange?
What if it is true? I don't hold to this view (or dismiss it) but I don't find it demeaning.
If Dennett is right, it actually appeals to my sense of humour - much ado about nothing - which I generally think summarises most human enterprises. Some of us are so proud of our metacognition and our supposed elevation from the other animals, but what is it? A more elaborate form of pissing against a tree to mark out our territory?
Quoting Wayfarer
It matters to us. What better reason do we need? I don't need to affix life to anything transcendent for it to matter. Just as I don't need Great Expectations to be true to be moved and thrilled by it.
You like to ask tough questions. :up:
Can it be said ?
Funny you ask this on Easter. When I was a wee lad at grandpa's house on another Easter when I was maybe 10, I wandered alone down to a creek at the edge of the property. Water was rushing down the slate, madly glistening in the sun, and I was shocked by the thereness of all that beauty, shocked to be alive, shocked that something (anything) was. I had other encounters with this shock / wonder, but they decreased with age. Perhaps it's just a feeling. As Wittgenstein put it, it's fucking nonsense to wonder at a tautology. 'Something is here.'
But it's also 'the mystical.' It's maybe also the uncheckable redness or ecstasy that eludes or underflows public conceptualization. Ineffable feeling, but what then can I mean ?
What if it doesn't matter to others? What if I am the authority in a one-party state who doesn't recognise human rights? Would that matter to you? What if your comfortable acceptance of subjectivism is the legacy of a culture in which the concept of 'human rights' developed in the first place, largely on the basis of Christian ethical norms which uniquely recognised the inestimable worth of every human soul. If you were part of a persecuted minority group in the PRC - of which Christians are one constituency - the absence of the recognition of the intrinsic worth of every individual might have profound ramifications.
I haven't been able to find any of Chomsky's remarks about Dennett, but I know they'd be natural antagonists. In a review of Dennett's last book, we read:
[quote=The Guardian;https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/feb/02/from-bacteria-to-bach-and-back-by-daniel-c-dennett-review]Dennett is one of those American philosophers of mind, so unlike most of their British counterparts, who is comfortable conversing with and responding to the work of evolutionary biologists and cognitive scientists. His heroes, cited frequently here, are Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins in biology, Alan Turing and Claude Shannon in artificial intelligence and information theory. His enemies are creationists and mysterians in general, philosopher John Searle, polymath linguist Noam Chomsky, and biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. His aim is to provide a materialist account of the evolutionary origins of the human mind and consciousness by way of an extension of gene-based natural selection into human culture through the invocation of memes.[/quote]
Nice. I wonder though why we would need to build a metaphysics on such a transitory experience of surprise. Why pull out this emotional reaction and not the one where we wanted to punch someone? Privileging this account of strangeness or surprise seems to be a post hoc rationalisation for the numinous.
That's an old argument against atheism too, but how does God safeguard the importance of human doings ? The threat of his wrath ? The toys he gives us ? But those only matter because we already value ourselves and fear destruction, which is just what one would expect from an evolved creature.
Am I to believe you'll stop loving your family if it's somehow proved to you that there is no god and just Darwinian evolution ? It's absurd, right ?Sentimentality includes love. Convention includes the rational norms that make science and philosophy possible. Why can't the higher evolve from the lower ? How does some alien object or postulate whatnot ground all this when we already value ourselves ? What seal need be set on our selflove to make it enough ?
Well, all that happens regardless of what we believe or what the truth might be, right? North Korea? Parts of Africa?
But the consequences of an idea say nothing much about whether it is true or not.
I can imagine that Dennett's ideas are shocking because they puncture the vested interests of so many groups. Talk about dangerous ideas in a world still in the thrall of romanticism.
I have no idea if Dennett is right or not, or if something similar to his ideas are right or not. But I have no reason to dismiss them on the basis that they might lead to the dissolution of some established values. The argument from disenchantment doesn't resonate with me.
Just to clarify - humans rights are a construct and we can see them violated all over the West too. Try being an Aboriginal community member in this country. Believers violate others rights all the time, so this isn't a secular versus sacred matter.
The point is humans choose their values and also ignore them and a belief in god or transcendence has never safeguarded rights or preserved the sanctity of human life.
The fact that religious institutions routinely violate their own principles is not an argument those principles.
Not just religious institutions. People who believe in transcendent meaning do it. It's not a point we can overlook if we are willing to put atheists on notice as leading to murderous nihilism or rights violations.
It's a simplistic way of putting it, but there are ramifications. Ideas have consequences. I read a thread on some other forum, or Quora, about someone who had really taken on board some philosopher's argument for determinism. He had really come to believe that he had no agency whatever and was deeply unhappy and dissillusioned by it, but couldn't free himself from the idea and it had driven him to despair. We have a current thread about wrestling with solipsism. These ideas do matter. Dennett's most insidious book was called Darwin's Dangerous Idea, in which he says that his form of Darwinism is like an acid that eats everything it touches, including the container it's in. Among its victims are any form of traditional culture and even philosophy itself.
I don't want to defend this or that religious institution but I'm not atheist - my view is that the falsehoods of religions arise from distortions of an originally profound truth. Philosophically, I see enlightenment (not in the sense of the European enlightenment and scientific rationalism) as having cosmic significance, that the Cosmos comes to understand horizons of being that could never be revealed otherwise, through living beings such as ourselves, and that is what the higher religions reflect, although often poorly. So, no, I don't believe we are products of the Dawkins/Dennett dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker. I believe it's an evil ideology masquerading as liberalism.
I also noticed that Chomsky differentiates 'mysteries' from 'problems'. He says that the nature of consciousness is 'a mystery' - not 'a problem' that can be solved. Of course this is anethema to Dennett and materialism generally, whose role it is to drive out of consideration anything which cannot be accomodated in the procrustean bed of neo-darwinian materialism or brought within the purview of the objective sciences.
Sorry, my views sound strange given the philosophers I tend to think are correct. I take it, following Galen Strawson, that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon, it arises from configurations of matter. So, there is no "immaterial"-material problem.
Nor a mind-body problem, as these terms are used of today. I agree with Chomsky (and Locke and Hume and Priestley) that we don't know what "bodies" are. Until we know that, we can't formulate a mind-body problem.
Another issue is considering matter as described by modern physics, not much in it is "material" as that word is taken to be associated with "tangible stuff", but that's another conversation...
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It's a hard topic, though I agree with Descartes in so far as he takes it that experience is the phenomenon, we are most familiar with out of everything. I drop the dualism, especially the substantive kind.
A self is a "fiction" (as Hume says) of a kind - a very useful one. But is a self a subject? Probably not in all respects.
It's very dense territory.
Have you seen/ read Stuart Kauffman ? From what I can tell as a nonbiologist, he's got some good explanations for the emergence of complexity (complementing Darwin and others) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWo7-azGHic&t=841s
I think (?) the later Heidegger was working on an antimetaphysics, because even I, in my noninitiated state, can see that [s]it[/s] slips through all of our conceptual nets -- if 'it' is anything at all, if it's not just nonsense. I just mean (for instance) the radical simplicity of the red of the rose in its redness and thereness, more specifically in the redness and thereness that is not grasped by the public concept, which for just that reason is nonsense, but seems (who could ever tell?) to inspire the hard problem ? What indeed can we hope to build upon that which is more Abyss than Foundation ? But that's perhaps exactly the opportunity, a perverse reversal of the obsession of the clear and the enduring. Risk. Intoxication. The stormy depths. 'Find a girl with far away eyes.'
As you know as well as me, this is great material for working up a cult of personality. We humans love the ineffable, the paradoxical, the esoteric, the grandiose, the mysterious. Give us this day our wizards of the ephemeral and the diaphanous.
If there are real abstract entities, it torpedoes that claim.
Yes; perhaps it's a distraction from the fact that we are going to die; a terror management system. :smile:
I agree with this bit. I think the profound truth is that human beings are special and that some things are sacred.
However, the idea that if you don't accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and you don't believe evolution has a purpose, then you're in thrall to an evil ideology--that is a profound untruth.
That is rather ambiguous - can you explain what you mean by that?
Quoting Wayfarer
Since this is quite vague, it's possible I misrepresented you, but I think I wasn't far off.
I think what I said is a clear response to what I just quoted from your post:
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Jamal
Apart from the possibility that I misrepresented your view, I dont know how to say it clearer.
However, the idea that if one doesnt accept that this is somehow reflected in the cosmos at large and one doesnt believe evolution has a purpose, then one is in thrall to an evil ideology--that is a profound untruth
As for a very nuanced consideration of the idea of telos and teleology in biology that is opposed to materialism but still within the bounds of naturalism, have a read of Steve Talbott's Evolution and the Purposes of Life
You launched a provocative polemic so it deserved a response.
I did glean, in my brief reconnoitre on the topic, that Chomsky himself is sceptical about some Darwinian claims, indeed I recall a book co-authored by him and Robert Berwick, Why Only Us? The authors argue that language is an innate ability that is unique to humans and cannot be explained by traditional Darwinian evolutionary theory. Instead they propose a new theory of language evolution, which they call the "biolinguistic" approach. They argue that the language faculty evolved as a result of natural selection, but that the development of language cannot be explained solely by the gradual accumulation of small changes over time. Instead, they suggest that there was a sudden genetic mutation that allowed for the development of language, and that this mutation was a key factor in the evolution of the human species.
Overall, some of Chomsky's ideas are uncomfortably close to innatism for the liking of empiricist philosophers. There's something altogether too platonic about his 'innate grammar'.
Perhaps. I just watched him defend human morality as constrained by innate structural limitations - or something of the sort - against arguments by that scoundrel and relativist Foucault.
Quoting Wayfarer
This would be a slanted or polemical account of evolution, right?
Whatever Dawkins or Dennett say in polemical mode, I'm not sure words like 'dumb' or 'blind' help us with a full understanding. The evolutionary process is clearly complex and tailored and remarkable enough, without recourse to anthropomorphising nature.
Thanks for expanding, but I'm still not quite clear on your position. Is experience material in your view ? Why is the subject familiar with experience as opposed to simply familiar with the world ? I guess I'm a direct realist in some kind of postHegelian sense. So for me there's no image between us and the world. And there's no pure 'matter' in the sense of secret (we can't get it uncooked) substrate (the matter of physics is, for me, just a piece of the scientific image, itself a piece of the lifeworld among others.)
One of Dawkin's books is called 'The Blind Watchmaker'.
The problem of intentionality, meaning, and purpose is a very deep one, although, as Thomas Nagel observed, much of the debate about it is shaped by the fear of religion:
I think its an important question because it seems to me that setting lifes meaning on the foundation of something either external to/higher than life or else something in the actual workings of evolution itself, is an idea more harmful than the Dennett-Dawkins view of evolution.
Im not saying that the gene-centred view of evolution is right or that teleology is merely a convenient fiction. Im not saying that science isnt significantly infected with Cartesian mechanism and dualism. These issues are interesting, but theyre not really germane to my point. I just wonder how strong ones dedication to meaning in life can be if it depends either on biological theory or cosmic purpose. It also seems somewhat inconsistent to me to expect a determinate connection or mapping between biological theory (empirical reality) and cosmic purpose (transcendent truth). But my main criticism is of the idea that meaning depends on something transcendent. Why cant it be immanent in our speciesin our families, society, and history? What would be wrong with that?
Yes, I've read it and used to own it. I already said it was a polemical title, but you'll note the book is full of descriptions of a highly complex interactive process as organisms interact with their environment and change over time. Is there a need to anthropomorphise this process? Do you have evidence that evolution is directed by higher consciousness? Or is this just an inference, a fallacy of incredulity wherein one can't imagine how it works without some kind of magic?
The intelligence is no less real though for being evolved. It's Darwin's genius that he (and others) made the case for how astounding complexity could emerge from a much simpler situation.
[i]Yes, we have a soul, but in what sense? In the sense that our brains, unlike the brains even of dogs and cats and chimpanzees and dolphins, our brains have functional structures that give our brains powers that no other brains have - powers of look-ahead, primarily. We can understand our position in the world, we can see the future, we can understand where we came from. We know that were here. No buffalo knows its a buffalo, but we jolly well know that were members of Homo sapiens, and its the knowledge that we have and the can-do, our capacity to think ahead and to reflect and to evaluate and to evaluate our evaluations, and evaluate the grounds for our evaluations.
Its this expandable capacity to represent reasons that we have that gives us a soul. But whats it made of? Its made of neurons. Its made of lots of tiny robots. And we can actually explain the structure and operation of that kind of soul, whereas an eternal, immortal, immaterial soul is just a metaphysical rug under which you sweep your embarrassment for not having any explanation.[/i]
Quoting Wayfarer
That's not so plausible, as I see it. Humans are left more free if they emerged from something simpler than they are, more without an example and (worryingly) without any force to catch them if they fall. Dennett pretty clearly is a kindly intellectual. To my knowledge he doesn't wrestle with the problem of the meaning of being, but that's not an easy one to touch. Even Witt and Heid say that (basically, at times) it may be nonsense, unsayable, beneath or above metaphysics/logic/science. I found some quotes that you may not have seen, that may add context (because you may be biased here?)
Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm's "Being greater than which nothing can be conceived," it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred.
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If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things. Keeping that awestruck vision of the world ready to hand while dealing with the demands of daily living is no easy exercise, but it is definitely worth the effort, for if you can stay centered , and engaged , you will find the hard choices easier, the right words will come to you when you need them, and you will indeed be a better person. That, I propose, is the secret to spirituality, and it has nothing at all to do with believing in an immortal soul.
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We live in a world that is subjectively open. And we are designed by evolution to be "informavores", epistemically hungry seekers of information, in an endless quest to improve our purchase on the world, the better to make decisions about our subjectively open future.
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So Paley was right in saying not just that Design was a wonderful thing to explain, but also that Design took Intelligence. All he missedand Darwin providedwas the idea that this Intelligence could be broken into bits so tiny and stupid that they didnt count as intelligence at all, and then distributed through space and time in a gigantic, connected network of algorithmic process.
This just sounds like the rhetoric of resentment or an ad hominem based on impugning motives. It by no means provides us with any evidence that evolution is directed by 'supernatural' powers.
No, but there's also no need to explain it away. Dawkins will often say that the processes he describes give rise to the 'appearance of being designed'. Compared to what? I wonder. Is anything designed whatever? Does the word have any referent, outside the activities of h. sapiens?
Quoting Tom Storm
The fact that any discussion of purpose is bound to be interpreted as a reference to the supernatural is significant. Purpose, meaning and intentionality are fundamental items in the philosophical lexicon.
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Connected by what, and how? Evolution itself is not an agency, it doesn't 'do' anything. People speak about 'the wonders of evolution' nowadays, but natural selection is a filter, not a force.
I'm no expert on Dawkins work but whenever I have read or heard him talk about the 'appearance of design' he is generally providing a rebuttal to some intelligent design proponent.
One of the key problems in dealing with Dawkins' work is separating the blunt polemical from the elaborately scientific. He's trying to be both a bar room brawler (albeit a tweedy, polite one) and a scientist. The two get mixed up and often deliberately so by people who dislike his work.
Quoting Wayfarer
And animals (birds nests, beaver's dams, etc.) Probably not.
This is a twoedged sword, because clearly religion has had much to fear from science in general and perhaps from the theory of evolution most of all. In any issue that matters to people (that isn't too boring and dry), it'll probably always to be possible for either side to accuse the other of motivated reasoning. We can't let ourselves get stuck at that level.
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Any religion has something to fear from scientific discovery is not worth respecting in my view (although the misuse of scientific knowledge is another thing altogether.) You know, none of Darwin's books were ever condemned or prohibited by the major Christian denominations, outside American protestantism. And also, please do know that Thomas Nagel, in that essay, states unequivocally that he himself is atheist, lacks any religious sense. He's critical of the idea of neodarwinian materialism purely on philosophical grounds, elaborated in his later Mind and Cosmos.
One needs randomness too. These days we have the tools create our own simplified Natures in which we can follow evolution closely, for instance :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XEklaH9k6k
:up: Quoting Wayfarer
I've read it and was disappointed. I don't remember it very well, but think I found it too dualist or Cartesian. And what of this ? Does he mean explainable in principle ? He must. Does he think a single cell isn't explainable in principle via chemistry and physics ? A single neuron ? Where's the threshold ?
Maybe it all adds up, after millions of years, to an Einstein and a Darwin.
As we all know Dawkins is not a philosopher. But none of this answers whether we have evidence that evolution is directed by a designer, however we wish to formulate this notion.
So it's not the denial of purpose but finally an explanation of the complex in terms of the simpler and not in terms of the yet more complex and mysterious. Some who were attached to that previous 'explanation' felt that such purpose had turned to dust in their hands. It wasn't real unless God had made it.
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Only insofar as they serve the purposes of evolutionary theory, which is to survive and reproduce, and no further. The philosophical significance of the theory is gravely overstated in my view.
Apropos of all this, a splendid article by Jules Evans on Julian Huxleys evolutionary transhumanism
https://julesevans.medium.com/julian-huxley-and-the-otter-potential-movement-45dbda59fac5
I'd say it does now, by the usual metaphorical extension of our language.
Once minds such as ours originate, they themselves become the possibility of memetic and technological evolution, till all three work together toward an exponential increase in human knowledge power. We are now at the dawn of yet another technological revolution, on the verge of creating beings like ourselves in many ways, in some surprisingly human ways simply better than us. We are creating little gods in our own image, and I don't see why they won't become big gods. I understand that people are ecstatic or disgusted about this or just scared. But I don't see any definite gulf between it and us in the long run. If there was ever a time to think reconsider doubts about Darwin, it may be now.
God or the demiurge was a designer, right? So we are already used to projecting our own creativity beyond us. Evolution was hard to personify, of course, but someone or other found the metaphor useful and applied it. Now it sticks. The blind watchmaker. Pretty clever really.
That is a completely different matter from evolution by natural selection. As is well known, ideas of evolution were found in many cultures prior to Darwin, but it was the idea of natural selection that distinguished Darwins discoveries. And even then, it was quickly applied to (some would say, misappropriated by) those with other agendas, to promote agendas like eugenics. Evolution is one of those marvellously flexible words that can be applied to almost any sense of things improving or changing for the better.
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Platos demiurge was a designer, but God was not described in those terms until the early modern age. That is one of the points of Karen Armstrongs Case for God, which said that by depicting natures laws as the handiwork of God, early modern science laid the groundwork for the kind of atheist polemics that are the speciality of Dawkins.
So you are still not providing arguments, you're just trashing Dawkins and now it's his fault that some bookshops put his work in the 'Religion' section. Is that not a source of amusement rather than scorn?
Quoting Wayfarer
I guess so. Can you demonstrate that there is design in nature and by extension a designer?
That is by design!
Quoting Tom Storm
I myself don't think it needs to be demonstrated, but that if I need to demonstrate it, then probably nothing I could say would be effective.
Ok. That's surely an outlier position, but let's get back to this later.
You seem to have argued essentially that you don't like Darwinism because it is unsatisfying to you aesthetically and is used to render meaning an arbitrary phenomenon. You are uncomfortable with that because there is an abundance of significant classical literature (and more modern work) which argues otherwise. This material and the perennialist tradition resonates with you. The application of Darwinism and scientism has robbed our contemporary understanding of reality of enchantment and transcendent purpose, along with the possibility of intelligibility and truth (the evolutionary argument against naturalism).
You then argue that representatives of Darwinism, like Dawkins or Dennett, are inadequate scholars and bungled representatives of a nihilistic era. They are stunted in their conception of being and ignorant of the important questions of philosophy.
But other than citing writers who deride forms of Darwinism or elevate models of higher consciousness and ultimate meaning, what can you demonstrate?
Evolution has the appearance of design. What reasons do you have for concluding that evolution has a goal or a designer, if this is what you are suggesting? I'm not aware of you making the argument and forgive me if you have earlier. Cut and paste if this helps.
Does this not strike you as slightly messianic? Do you not think others feel the same way about their own cherished beliefs? Yet here you are deriding as 'evil' world views which others may hold to be just as self-evident and foundational as you hold yours to be.
As ever with these arguments, they just come down to you claiming to have some insight into the way things are that others lack.
It's not that other lack the insight, it's not that they fail to understand. It's that they disagree. They differ from you in what they find plausible, important, useful...
It's difference, not evil, not failure, not inadequacy... Just difference.
I reject neo-darwinian materialism as a philosophical attitude, personified by Daniel Dennett, who has published books in its defence. There are many other schools of evolutionary thought which are not nearly so extreme nor so ideological, although Im also critical of scientific naturalism. To me, the fact that humans can wonder about their purpose in the abstract is itself an indication of their ability to transcend their biological origins. And the fact that such wondering is itself regarded as being suspiciously close to fundamentalism, says something.
Quoting Tom Storm
I said that Im not atheist, but Im also not particularly theist. Its more that I reject the specifically modernistic idea that life arises by chance or by fortuitous origins, that its a kind of cosmic crapshoot. Im not going to defend any obviously ID-related position. Its more that todays culture, in rejecting traditional religious accounts, have also rejected a great deal of philosophical reflection on lifes meaning and purpose with it - throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as the saying has it. And thats because in our religious history, having the wrong ideas about such things could get you burned at the stake. This has left a deep shadow in Western culture.
My philosophy, as Ive explained at length elsewhere, is that in sentient rational beings, the Universe comes to know itself. (Thats why I provided that link to Julian Huxley who also said that, this is not something unique to me.) Religious ideas are metaphors for that realisation, although obviously some more so than others. I have a book on my shelf, You Are the Eyes of the World, by the Dzogchen master LonChenPa. I think the East has a more explicit understanding of it, but it is nevertheless a theme or idea found in many world cultures (You are the world was both a globally-released pop song to save starving Africans, and a book by Krishnamurti.) And in the animal world, every single creature is more or less engaged in that undertaking. Check out that Steve Talbott essay I posted upthread.
Quoting Wayfarer
Agree. It is more of a faith based position it seems to me. BTW, I am not saying there is no design in nature, I merely say it can't be demonstrated.
I have no insight about Life but I am satisfied that human lives are random events, with no capital 'm' meaning, only more modest meanings we inherit though culture and/or make for ourselves.
I'll have a crack at it, if you don't mind.
Why are there no humanoids running around? Why aren't fish or frogs or what have you currently growing limbs and evolving into birds or..small mammals or whatever.
If the first being without limbs was inclined to grow limbs. Why aren't we growing fifth limbs? Or extra digits at least.
Why has no scientist ever been able to recreate the conditions for biological life from non-biological sources? They tried simulating striking a chemically identical "primordial soup" with simulated lightning by electricity. Nope. Nothing. These aren't absolute proofs in and of themselves by any means sure, however, makes you think.
I'm all for leaving well enough alone believe me I firmly believe some things men are not meant to know but for sake of discussion.
What other form of life has a unique non-DNA (an old argument being men were never meant to learn science due to wars/bio-engineering/risk of destroying the planet slowly by pollution or instantly by war) form of identification ie. fingerprints? See now that's the real thinking point.
There may be such entities. I don't think it torpedoes it though.
Quoting plaque flag
Sure, experience is material, or physical. I distinguish here an epistemic claim with a metaphysical one. Everything we are familiar or acquainted with is through experience, this is an "idealist" claim. The metaphysical side is that everything is physical stuff.
One is top down (the epistemic claim), the other bottom up (the metaphysical claim). I think that we have an idea of the world, which is provided by the world. So, there is mediation, but it's also a direct realism, I don't understand indirect realism, despite looking at examples or definitions.
But it's not 'only' that. You described one of the alternatives as "evil". You regularly frame disagreement as your interlocutors "not understanding" something about the argument (rather than just disagreeing with it). It's this certainty, and righteousness I was wanting to explore. Retreating to an "only..." just pretends all that didn't happen, but it's in black and white, some examples literally a few posts above this one.
I'm wondering where that self-confidence comes from.
Design Intent is not an object to be demonstrated empirically. But the designer's unique signature patterns (e.g. characteristic brush strokes by Michelangelo) can be recognized intuitively or implicitly by those who look for them. In physical Nature, some call those consistent patterns : "Laws". Einstein was indeed an "outlier" in his sense of design in nature, where other physicists saw only complexity & randomness. :smile:
Design in Nature : How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organizations
https://www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Constructal-Technology-Organizations/dp/0307744345
Constructal Law :
In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in naturetrees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning boltsand reveals how a single principle of physics, the constructal law, accounts for the evolution of these and many other designs in our world.
... Google Books
THE GRAND DESIGN as intuited by Einstein
Usually an increase in complexity is involved. Technology is more complex than ever before, which helps us find yet more technology. Artificial intelligence is becoming exponentially better, and it will presumably begin (if it hasn't already) be used in the development of yet more artificial intelligence.
The greatness of Darwin is explaining how something complex can arise from something simple. This is perhaps 'the' general of form of the wonderful, which also touches on climbing the entropy gradient.
Darwin is to biology as Hegel is to philosophy. In Darwin, biological evolution finds an eye with which to look at itself. I'm not saying that evolution sought this ability, but a supremely social and symbolic creature indeed emerged that could grasp the structure of its own genesis from primeval slime. (In Hegel we see philosophy (an immortal graveleaping Conversation ) that reaching the point where it could grasp its own nature --- or that's one interpretation that sets up the analogy I was making.)
As I see it, a scientist whose work is particularly threatened by religion's attempt to hamper it is even more justified than most in putting on the philosophers' or citizens' cap and speaking out. To be sure, science is also sometimes attacked or misappropriated by atheistic ideologies, so it's at all just religion, even if that is what Dawkins tends to focus on. Personally I'm more interested in Dawkins as a biologist, so I don't keep up with his polemics, because I can read Peter Gay on the philosophes, etc.
Here's Jefferson:
It does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
This sounds like dualism ? Do we only know 'physical' stuff through 'experience' stuff in your view ?
It seems to me that any postulated origin will have to be taken as a brute fact, until it is replaced and explained by an earlier postulated origin. I don't see how there won't always be a 'just because' or 'it's our best guess' at the end of a series of answers to a battery of childish/profound why questions.
I mean, I'd say here with Russell, that we do not know enough about the external world (or physical stuff) to say if its nature is like or unlike "mental stuff" or the world of mind.
Yes, I think the case is that we know discover the world through experience, I literally can't think of another way, it all leads back to experience and how we interpret data.
But I wouldn't go as far as to say that an object, say, a planet, is literally made up of ideas. These things are discovered through experience but are made up by matter. Just like brain activity is made up of physical stuff, that leads to experience, I wouldn't say that the brain is made of experience, although we discover things about it using consciousness.
Again, these things may not be as different as our ordinary intuitions imply.
Seems appropriate. But at some point experience becomes language and visa versa. Experience ends up being understood through language and I struggle to understand to what extent I 'process' through language.
Quoting Manuel
But hypothetically without preconceptions, ideas or language, what exactly is a planet? It seems to me to be an act of constructionism, not merely raw experience. There are understandings, if you like and then we seem to order, contextualize, name.
There is an intimate relation between language and thought, that much is crucial. And a great deal of our language capacity is unconscious and inaccessible to experience. Nevertheless, absent that layer of experience, there could be language going on in a hypothetical Martian, but it'll stay stuck in the relevant organ. So explicitness in experience is important.
I just want to avoid the po-mo orientation in which everything is language and nothing is ever complete. But, I see your point.
Quoting Tom Storm
I can't do a hypothetical if you ask of me to do away with the only things I have that I can use to relate to an object.
Yes, a planet is a construct - in large part. But if you do away with ideas, preconceptions, language, I wouldn't even be guessing.
But based on what I do have, it seems more reasonable to me to say that a planet is made of non-conscious matter, than to say it is made of ideas, which requires a subject. When things become this abstract, one is poking in the dark.
I hear you. It's a wicked problem. Even the notion of consciousness is something I'm pretty sure we couldn't conceive of without language.
Quoting Manuel
But I can't help but find this account compelling. I'm a reluctant post-modernist by osmosis and age. For me nothing is ever complete and I can't imagine myself or my world without language.
It struck me listening to Chomsky recently, in his lambasting of postmodern relativism, that he seems to invoke a structural version of Platonism as a foundational grounding to avoid relativism. In other words, humans seem to have innate limitations or capacities inherent in our cognitive apparatus (is this neo-Kantian?). Not everything is possible or endlessly open if we have such limitations. I wonder also if this is an analogue for some kind of notion of human nature. Thoughts?
We would need something within experience to be able to point out that we have experience in an explicit manner. Otherwise, we are stuck with analyzing behavior. Thus we postulate other mammals to have experience, though they lack language, based on how they behave.
Quoting Tom Storm
It's a long story. The short version is that he was influenced or found enlightening the arguments given by Ralph Cudworth, a 17th century Cambridge Platonist, who essentially articulated Kant's arguments in almost the exact same words, almost 100 years before Kant published his Critique.
Difference among these two being, Cudworth give a much richer account of innate ideas, Kant seems to deny them, arguing that we have certain "filters" that are innate, but not ideas per se.
You could put it in your manner and he might agree, though he would put less emphasis on Plato per se. I think he'd simply say that, we are biological creatures like any other - albeit with unique properties (like language). For us to be able to have any nature, we have to be constrained to give shape to our experience.
If we had no constraints, we would have no nature, we would be kind of like lumps of malleable clay. Just like a dog will never understand how to use a laptop, or a dolphin never be able to learn how to drive, there are things we will never understand. Otherwise, we are not natural creatures.
Then you can add the philosophy.
You aren't the first to point this out, and I think you are correct to do so, and that it's significant. As you probably know, his linguistics is more like physics than what came before ---nice fancy symbolic grammars.
We might talk of the issue in terms of attributing this to hardware (biology) and that to software (culture). Note that biology is inherited in the singular body, so egoistic / personalistic / Cartesian leanings will try to put as much Geist in biology as they can. Or so I would expect.
As far as I can tell, you are what I'd call a dualist. I prefer a phenomenological direct realism. The world and language and us and linguistic norms (semantic-inferential) are all 'given' at the same time. I claim they can't be separated, that to do so results in nonsense (which doesn't mean it's obviovusly nonsense given our human frailties and tendency toward motivated reasoning.)The scientific image is within and a nice part of our encompassing lifeworld, which is not mediated for us by internal images or a veil of sensations. The self is not 'in' the brain but something more like a social convention, a dazzingly selfreferential and selfmodifying 'dance' that primates like us have evolved to be able to engage in. Along these lines, ideas are not immaterial but more like equivalence classes of moves in a symbolic game with and in which we cooperate and compete and even largely are, given what might be called the virtuality of the self as a bearer of responsibility for claims and deeds.
I claim that theses presented by a being that takes itself to be doing philosophy, which is to say conforming to a selftranscending and even universally binding logic, implicit assumes while possibly explicity denying a massive framework all too often left ignored and unappropriated. For instance, did Descartes bother to explain rational norms ? Why would an isolated ghost bother to justify its claims ? How could such a ghost question all of the semantic norms that make such questioning possible ? Small wonder that God is quickly smuggled in.
I'd even claim that the concept of raw experience is itself a philosophical construction, a meme that caught on, perhaps because it was a good crowbar to use against theological tyranny. It mixes well with individualism.
:up: I can see that.
Quoting Manuel
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification.
Quoting Manuel
A useful distinction.
Sure, I could be called a property dualist, though I think it can be misleading to think of experience and non-experience as separate metaphysical things.
God was used back then by almost everybody, Descartes had no special claim in relation to others in using God as an explanation.
As for the rest - It's a bit complex, I could perhaps follow some of it, maybe word things differently in other areas, such as the self.
As for the ghost, Ryle had it wrong, and Chomsky right, so far as I can see. What Newton got rid of was the machine. The ghost remained, and is still here.
To me that's like keeping left but not right, up but not down.
Here's a Brandom quote from my Becoming Whole discussion.
[i]Kants most basic idea, the axis around which all his thought turns, is that what distinguishes exercises of judgment and intentional agency from the performances of merely natural creatures is that judgments and actions are subject to distinctive kinds of normative assessment. Judgments and actions are things we are in a distinctive sense responsible for. They are a kind of commitment we undertake. Kant understands judging and acting as applying rules, concepts, that determine what the subject becomes committed to and responsible for by applying them.
...
The responsibility one undertakes by applying a concept is a task responsibility: a commitment to do something. On the theoretical side, what one is committed to doing, what one becomes liable to assessment as to ones success at doing, is integrating ones judgments into a whole that exhibits a distinctive kind of unity: the synthetic unity of apperception. It is a systematic, rational unity, dynamically created and sustained by drawing inferential consequences from and finding reasons for ones judgments, and rejecting commitments incompatible with those one has undertaken. Apperceiving, the characteristically sapient sort of awareness, is discursive (that is, conceptual) awareness. For it consists in integrating judgments into a unity structured by relations of what judgments provide reasons for and against what others. And those rational relations among judgments are determined by the rules, that is the concepts, one binds oneself by in making the judgments. Each new episode of experience, paradigmatically the making of a perceptual judgment, requires integration into, and hence transformation of the antecedent constellation of commitments. New incompatibilities can arise, which must be dealt with critically by rejecting or modifying prior commitments. New joint consequences can ensue, which must be acknowledged or rejected. The process by which the whole evolves and develops systematically is a paradigmatically rational one, structured by the rhythm of inhalation or amplification by acknowledging new commitments and extracting new consequences, and exhalation or criticism by rejecting or adjusting old commitments in the light of their rational relations to the new ones.[/i]
In other words, you and I are doing being selves right now by trying to live up to this kind of responsibility. I am the kind of the thing, that as an I, must be coherent, or at least minimize incoherence. A self is the kind of thing that can disagree with others but not with itself. It's an avatar on which score is kept in a social space of reasons (inferentially related claims.)
But, respectfully, that's beside the point. Whence the rational norms ? Whence this language in or even as which beingthere finds itself ? Whence the unity of the voice that thoughtlessly and credulously takes itself for an 'I' that ought to make a case for its claims ? What's missing here is an awareness of a massive tacit assumption of the philosophical situation itself.
It's late here so I can't reply to your longer post.
I don't understand your problem with Descartes. What do you mean by "whence the rational norms?"
Beingthere? That's the Heideggerian critique, which is interesting, though Descartes had a specific problem in mind, to account for the mental, since for him and his contemporaries, the physical was well understood. Outside his experiment, in ordinary life he didn't live like a skeptic, nor did he act as if an evil demon was an issue.
The "I" is a construct, I am re-reading Descartes soon, but I believe he was aware of this.
If you could perhaps phrase the post in a different manner, I could better understand your criticism or concern.
Hence the incompatibility between transcendental idealism and naturalism.
Quoting Isaac
The original exchange which you keep referring to was a long time ago, but I think it had to do with something like the 'hard problem' issue. I noticed that in connection with that (and should we decide to pursue it again, it should be in one of the threads on it) that you tend not to recognise that there is a problem which neuroscience can't address. So at the time I made that remark, what I was trying to convey was that if you don't see it as a problem, then there's no use in trying to explain it further.
Quoting Isaac
Specifically I was referring to the eliminative materialism of Daniel Dennett and the way he uses Darwinian biology in support of that view, which I (and a lot of people) regard as anti-humanist. I was certainly not characterising anyone I differ with as evil.
Personally I don't want all of Kant's baggage, but I love what Brandom takes from him in that passage.
Naturalism seems like a blurry concept, so I looked it up to confirm: The term naturalism has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/
We can just say that norms are 'primordial' or foundational. Any philosophy that doesn't account for them, despite of course depending on them and existing within and even as them, is incomplete, flawed, confused.
But one need not insist that norms are outside of nature, anymore than beavers' dams are, now is there any obvious reason that Darwinian evolution can't help explain them. To be sure, our linguistic norms are staggeringly more complex than any other creature's that we're aware of. It makes sense that Darwin and Dennett turned their consideration to how memes might use as hosts. Our is it better to say that we are the bundles of memes that use human bodies as hosts ? Layers! We might more reasonably identify with what binds time here (wacky Korzybski, quoted below) [or as bound time] , as the historical noosphere that Hegel and Heidegger seemed to prioritize. Geist. Memeplasm.
[i]And now what shall we say of human beings? What is to be our definition of Man? Like the animals, human beings do indeed possess the space-binding capacity but, over and above that, human beings possess a most remarkable capacity which is entirely peculiar to them-I mean the capacity to summarise, digest and appropriate the labors and experiences of the past; I mean the capacity to use the fruits of past labors and experiences as intellectual or spiritual capital for developments in the present; I mean the capacity to employ as instruments of increasing power the accumulated achievements of the all-precious lives of the past generations spent in trial and error, trial and success; I mean the capacity of human beings to conduct their lives in the ever increasing light of inherited wisdom; I mean the capacity in virtue of which man is at once the heritor of the by-gone ages and the trustee of posterity.
I would say that the 'I' is indeed a construct in the sense of a social norm. Of course we have individual bodies, so the issue is how these bodies are trained to take responsibility for what they do and become relatively autonomous. You might say that the self is a tradition we perform. Part of this tradition is conforming to logical norms. To be a scientist, for instance, is not to guess randomly and get mad at those who disagree. It's a conformity to more or less explicit rules about presenting and accepting claims. To speak as a philosopher or scientist, is ( I claim) to accept the selftranscending bindingness and legitimacy of these norms. It is to make a move in an always already ideally public space, as if in the light of expectations of telling a coherent story. The coherence of the story that the mouth of the body tells is the coherence of the associated self as a locus of responsibility for just this coherence. So the self is allowed to disagree with others but not itself. To contradict yourself is to fail a social duty, go out of focus. But we aren't perfect, so the self is more like an avatar in social space for a process that strives endlessly toward coherence (and expansion, but that's another issue.)
I really don't see how specificity is a defence against describing an alternative view as 'evil'. The accusation is not one of bigotry, it's of hubris. I'm not concerned that you offend the actual proponents of such a view (thought that is heavily implied), It's that your position is indefensible - literally you admit this yourself "if you don't see it, there's nothing more to say", and yet positions that differ can themselves be 'evil'.
If the only grounds on which you think your position right is that it just 'feels' that way to you, can you not even see that others might defend their own contrasting positions the same way?
Why invoke 'fear of religion', or nihilism, or lack of understanding... when you know from your own personal experience that some positions simply 'feel' right and do so with such strength that it is impossible to really see how they could be mistaken. Can you not empathise then with Dennett, Dawkins, and others who might feel the same way - why must you invoke such nefarious motives to them when you own contrasting position is held with no less passion and with no more defensible ground?
Have you read the essay that this is quoted from, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, by Thomas Nagel? I think what he says in that essay is extremely relevant to many of the arguments we see on this forum, including this one, which is why I quoted it.
I don't know how simply saying that the self is a kind of fiction or a necessary social construction is any less clear than adding the aspect of a "tradition we perform", nor do I see how a scientist or a philosopher is "to accept the selftranscending bindingness and legitimacy of these norms."
What norms? If a scientist is speaking about astronomy, she is specializing in a specific branch of science, attempting to clarify what exists in the mind-independent world. I'm not sure I am seeing the rest of what you are arguing. I suppose I am missing something.
The 'I' is the usurper of the Church's authority. The 'I' is the thing that thinks, that reasons, that chooses, that decides, and wills.
.
Sure. The "I" is a mark of mind (along with creative language use and thinking), which according to him, could not be explained by appeals to materialism, which is why he postulated res cogitans.
The issue for me is, was he aware, maybe inexplicitly, that the self is a creation of the mind, or if he took it to be a literal thing, or both? Then again, by arguing for dualism, one can take it to imply that he took it as a literal thing, maybe unconstructed...
Putting the issue in a modern way, was he aware that the given, which includes the self, is as much as a construct as the external world, which we construct on the basis of sense data?
I'll need to read him in more detail to see if this specific topic is addressed by him.
As I understand him, it is not a mark but the thing that thinks. The 'I' asserts itself. Claims its place and authority.
Quoting Manuel
Does he make this distinction between self and mind?
I see. Although it has a certain intuitive appeal, it is kind of nebulous. Which occasions the question you ask:
Quoting Fooloso4
I don't know. It looks like an important distinction though. Also important is to see what differences there are (if any) between "I" and self.
I think it is important to consider Descartes' rhetoric. He uses the terms 'I', soul, and self interchangeably.
Dogs don't have fingers to operate laptops, but the notion of them learning button-pushing communication is not far-fetched. Amazon has several models of "dog button mats" available. And I've seen several videos of dogs that seem to know how to speak with technology, even though they lack a human larynx. I wonder what Chomsky would say about chatting doggies using human language to convey their thoughts. :smile:
How Do Talking Dog Buttons Work? :
https://www.petmd.com/dog/behavior/how-do-talking-dog-buttons-work
My Talking Dog Uses Her Buttons to Talk About The Past :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CS3kviWGkH0
Can't get this. On the one hand, Chomsly accuses Newton for destroying the notion of materialism and on the other hand, he denies himself the notion of materialism.
There's something wrong here. Or do I misss something?
Thanks for the heads up. Descartes is up next on my re-read list, so once I finish that I may be able to answer some of the questions you pose.
They can't because dogs don't have a language faculty. Communication and language are frequently confused, they are not the same. All animals (or most of them) have some form of communication, but they don't have language.
Quoting Gnomon
They can be taught many tricks, no doubt. But I wouldn't go as far as saying that a dog knows it's pushing a button. More likely the dog reacts to a very specific environment, which we interpret as the dog pushing a button.
I really don't understand what's controversial about the idea that biological creatures have limits. It would be a miracle if they didn't. I mean, it should be completely uncontroversial, a truism.
But, apparently, it's giving up on enquiry or being arrogant or something. Oh well...
It has been a while since there has been a thread on Descartes. Looking forward to hearing what you have to say. What will you be reading?
I have his 3 collected works volumes. Besides the mandatory Meditations (including part of Objections and Replies) and Discourse on Method, I'll probably read his Rules for The Direction of Mind, Principles of Philosophy and Comments on a Certain Broadsheet.
I'll probably skim some of his personal correspondence. And I'm unclear if I'll finish the entire Rules, but that's more or less what I have in mind. Although I want to understand his general thought better, I want to put special focus on innate ideas.
Apparently, the majority of humans do not "fear religion". It's mostly god-fearing intellectuals & liberals who are not attracted to mysterious & authoritarian religions with bloodthirsty deities. Religious people seem to reason that it's best to be on the side of the biggest baddest M-F, when the world is out to get you.
I haven't made a study of that specific fear phenomenon. But I see a possible explanation in Liberal vs Conservative politics. Most ancient religions, from which our tamer modern religions evolved, were designed to appease capricious nature deities or sword-wielding warrior-king gods. I take the words of the "preacher" literally : "Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind." The most fearsome gods were modeled upon the typical Middle-Eastern ("off with his head") Tyrant Kings of the era.
Living in fear of your god makes sense if you don't want to get on his bad side. As a political concept, that may explain the resurgence of Fascism in the modern world : Trump ; Putin, etc. As long as Hitler was successful in dominating Europe, most Germans were content to accept his selective benevolence (Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, non-Aryans, etc. were outcasts). It was only a few intellectuals, who could foresee a bleak future for non-conformists in a Fascist world (e.g. The Man in the High Castle).
The upside of Machiavellian dictators & Tyrant gods is that they mandate order --- making the trains run on time --- making it rain for the pious. But the downside is that they surround themselves with yes-men, and kill-off independent thinkers (philosophers), who ask too many questions. Perhaps Mysterianism envisions a more decent deity, but doesn't see much evidence for it in the political and religious realms. :smile:
Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion :
[i]I am talking about something much deeper--namely, the fear of
religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.[/i]
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1z_IqIxLEwAaRi2ztoP3PIF_6lCSfqm-X/view?pli=1
Note-- Like what? Like Hitler's Reich where Jews like Nagel were not welcome?
The dogs in the videos are obviously using pre-recorded human language to express their limited doggie thoughts. But they seem to know the meaning of those sounds. So, it's true that human Language is uniquely human, but the mental & emotional elements from which spoken & written communication evolved were inherited from animal ancestors, who were limited to gestures, such as wagging tails. Apparently language evolved along with hands, big brains, and upright posture. :smile:
Why Chimpanzees Can't Learn Language :
Chomsky not only argued that language was uniquely human but he also questioned Charles Darwin's theory that language evolved from animal communication and B.F. Skinner's theory that language could be reduced to learned behavior.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/terr17110
That may be the case, gestures are a big form of communication. But it's also quite sophisticated, a bit more so than animals, in terms of the circumstances in which a specific gesture can mean many, many different things to different people.
As to the evolution of language, or cognitive faculties more broadly considered, here's a paper Richard Lewontin, who Chomsky often sites concerning the topic, which is quite interesting:
https://langev.com/pdf/lewontin98theEvolution.pdf
Did you understand Brandom's take on Kant's transcendental unity of apperception ?
Let me use some weird rhetoric to try to get the point across. The following is not meant to be rude.
Who cares if you can see it? Seriously, who ? One cares. A philosopher as such cares. What are doing at this very moment if not holding one another to a joint responsibility to be clear and consistent ? If I speak as a philosopher, then I claim to speak with the authority of our great god secular rationality behind me. Except I'd say that rational norms are between us like stop signs and handshakes, even if they surely leave and depend on marks they leave on personal biology such as our brains.
What makes what a particular human being does science ?
I suggest also that mind-independent world is way too biased metaphysically. I claim that science gives objective unbiased explanations of this world, our world. Its claims aren't independent of 'mind' (it's not even clear what this means) or even of the language they are made of. Its claims are independent of this or that observer. What's negated is not mind but personal perspective. In my view, this kind of dualism is hopeless and yet so often projected on physics, for instance.
The better our bots get, the more it seems that yeah it's continuous with animal communication and we even have synthetic brains analogous to our own that can learn language from examples, finding the structure implicit in those examples to create novel and successful sentences.
I believe I follow some of it, though other points seem to me somewhat dubious. It feels a bit strange to say that one is to be held responsible for making a judgement - I don't think that must follow. It seems to me as if we make judgments much the same way as we breathe in oxygen, that is automatically.
As for the revision of commitments given new data and judgements, that sounds radical, but in my personal experience it's not too frequently that I stumble upon an idea or an argument that makes me revise all or even most of my previous "commitments". That whole idea is strange to me, which is not to say it can't be useful.
As to the plausibility of Brandom's reading of Kant, I may have some doubts, but for that @Mww is your guy. He knows his Kant better than most scholars, as far as I can see. And he's quite a character to boot.
Weird rhetoric? Only if you think it'll make your point clearer. This is already rather dense.
If I understand you correctly, I think rationality (more so than norms) goes significantly beyond stop-signs or handshakes, it's an innate characteristic of a very peculiar creature, namely, human beings.
Quoting plaque flag
That's a fair way to phrase it.
By mind-independent I mean what the word says. If we did not exist, there would still be planets and suns - in some fashion - as would there be photons and fossils. I don't believe that we literally created the world, that there was nothing here prior to homo sapiens.
But without us, these distinctions couldn't be made and what would remain as far as we can tell, is at best a bunch of fields of energy and a worst (from our want of understanding) a "I know not what" Lockean substance, or a noumenon in the negative sense, in Kant's philosophy.
Respectfully, can you not hear the vagueness in this ? Is the difference qualitative or more a matter of complexity ? When will the bots become good enough to make you doubt the divine spark that seems to be hinted at here ?
Here we are though discussing the very norms you don't find plausible. Which inferences play by the rules ? Are valid ? That's us discussing what concepts mean in the first place, or so might an inferentialist claim.
To grasp what I take from Brandom, just zoom out and look at what we are doing right now, along with everyone on this forum. Claims and inferences. Trying to get our moves and conclusions recognized as valid.
Sure. I think the world was here before us and will be after us, in some [s]sense.[/s] But I don't think that implies science studies mindindependent stuff. We simply project our models before and after our ability to talk, which we can do now while we are here. I agree that this is weird situation.
Seems to me we can't say anything at all. But maybe part of the problem is a Cartesian fantasy that we are spirits for whom it makes sense to gaze on the such a Void. To be fair, language and reasoning has a way of 'floating' above bodies, even if it depends on them as hosts.
Thanks. But let me stress in the light of a thousand candles that I'm not intrinsically interested in Kant but rather in reality which Kant may indeed help me understand. Pinker gives a nice spiel on 'professional narcissism' which echoes Heidegger's notion of gossip/chatter. It's too easy for us in our vanity to forget to keep one's eye on the matters themselves. Note also how you are tacitly tracking Brandom for getting Kant right, etc. This is even appropriate, since Brandom makes explicit just this kind of endless scorekeeping. These great names and even our little names are avatars tracking still other avatars.
I'm not sure where you are getting this all.
Honestly, I think we are too far apart to extend this discussion much further. We seem to come from very different backgrounds with very different notions such that we don't even coincide in what should be basic terminology, methodology and orientation.
We don't agree on what language is or what it even does, what mind-independence implies, I don't follow what you are saying when you speak of dualism or some variety of extreme Cartesianism. We disagree on monism, ghosts, machines and more.
Which is all good, it's good to have different perspectives on these things.
In any case, it does look like the topic has gone a bit astray in terms of your OP.
If you read the remainder you might get Nagel's point.
And too often they commit genocide. Who was it that said a society that burns books will eventually burn people? Is gassing to death men, women and children an appropriate price to pay for the trains running on time, I wonder? And as we saw in Stalin's time, even the pious aren't safe from a capricious and jealous god. :razz: Independent thinking isn't the threat. Other people are the threat, as authoritarianism debases itself though paranoia and listlessness. Look at God and Job. An exquisitely Stalinist stunt by a cunt.
I wasn't asking you if you thought it was relevant (I pretty much assumed that), I was asking about the understanding you have of people who differ in opinion from you. I can ask you. I can't ask Nagel.
I've read the article. It's quality can be summed up in one quote...
... and says so much about the tension between philosophy and science.
Why the fuck should we pay the slightest attention to what Nagel 'guesses'?
Do you know how much time and effort goes into a piece of psychology research? If I wanted to try and answer a question even on the periphery of whether fear of religion motivates scientism, I would have to spend the best part of a year in discussion with my statistician and post-grads about what sort of experiment might have some statistical power and how to run it. I'd have to deal with ethics committees, grant bodies, faculty staff... Then I'd finally publish the methodology on a pre-print server, have the entire field of research psychology comment on whether they think that methodology will work, yield significant results. Then, finally, I'd actually carry out the experiment, reproduce the results (even if they were negative) and write it up - including letting everyone know exactly what results I got, how I got them, what statistics I used to check their significance, and what model I was using to test them against. Not to mention I'd write any competing interests, any funding I'd got and properly credit my team. Then it would be reviewed by a panel of my peers for errors, and by an editor for it's 'significance' to the field. Finally, after all that, it would be published in a journal and I could quote "Fear of religion does not drive most appeals to scientism"
And you want to claim that Nagel's 'guess' stands as an equally valid counter to that.
Cherry-picking a single remark doesn't convey the gist of a 5000 word essay, which I think makes many an important point over and above the oft-quoted 'fear of religion' - particularly about the naturalisation of reason. And it's not an essay in social psychology, but an essay on philosophy and cultural dynamics. And actually, that is relevant, as this is a philosophy forum. Perhaps you might feel more at home and less antagonised on a psychology forum?
In what way? What makes it an essay on Philosophy. It makes claims about how humans think (their motives in this case). So what makes that a topic for philosophy? Simply that a philosopher said it?
If Nagel speculated on the speed of light, would that become then a philosophical question?
And in what sense is the argument I put forward about the differences in approach not itself a philosophical question entirely suited to a philosophy forum?
Since we're speculating on motives (and apparently this is a proper topic for philosophy). Here's my counter to Nagel.
Opposition to scientific explanations regarding human mentality (consciousness, motives, reasoning...) is not motivated by a lack of fear, as Nagel guesses, but by a presence of fear. A fear of hard work. It's is difficult to get one's theories approved if one opts to follow an empirical methodology. A pet theory can be quashed irreparably by the weight of statistics. People are afraid that their cherished narratives will be undone by the hard stare of statistical analysis - so they retreat to the safety of their armchairs from which they can pontificate endlessly without fear of any deeply held belief having to ever be challenged, and without fear of their ever having to do the hard slog of proving them to others.
You said that you would create a questionnaire, consult students, and so on. I expect groups like Pew Research might have surveys on such questions (like this one.) That's the kind of thing psychologists do.
I'm sure Nagel wouldn't speculate on the speed of light, or other questions of the kind, because they are questions for physics.
What makes Thomas Nagel's book The Last Word a philosophy text? Well, Nagel is 'the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University,[3] where he taught from 1980 to 2016.[4] His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, political philosophy, and ethics.[5]' (Wikipedia) He's written a number of books on philosophy in addition to The Last Word. He's one of the few academic philosophers who is well-known outside the academy.
Quoting Isaac
Oh, so an ad hominem against philosophers, presumably, and Thomas Nagel, in particular. Too lazy to cut it as a psychologist. Obviously I'm outmatched by such rhetorical firepower.
The argument (a philosophical one about epistemology) is that this is the approach which is best. the one which yields the most useful, accurate answers. That is not a question that can be settled scientifically, it's a philosophical question.
Quoting Wayfarer
None of that answers the question. If Nagel (with all those qualifications) speculated on the speed of light, would that make the speed of light a philosophical question, simply because it was addressed by a qualified philosopher? If not, then what is it about that question that puts it outside the realms of philosophical speculation?
(Note, the above is also a philosophical question, suited to a philosophy forum).
Quoting Wayfarer
Seriously? This started with an accusation that reductionists were just scared of religion. This is apparently not an ad hominem against reductionists, but my counter-suggestion is an ad hominem against philosophers?
In what way is it not and offence for you to claim that reductionists are all just scared of religion, but it is an offence for me to claim that anti-reductionists are just scared of the work required for empirical approaches? They are literally identical in form.. Group X hold the belief they do, not because of intelligent thought, but because of a fear of Y.
I had to back-up to find your casual use of the phrase "fear of religion", that provoked some prickly reaction. In response, you gave a link to Nagel's article Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. I didn't find a specific reference, but I suspect that the "evolutionary naturalism" was Dennett's contra-Chomsky notion of The Evolution of Language*4. Regardless of all that in-fighting among philosophers about the mysterious origins of human language, I found Nagel's article interesting on its own terms. For example, he quoted Charles Peirce to indicate a position that is not religious in practice, but seems to almost deify Nature*1*5.
Nagel's argument sounds amenable to my own information-centric non-religious philosophical worldview. Even though the Enformationism thesis is derived entirely from modern scientific knowledge, not from any traditional religion, I find that some Naturalists are discomfited by the notion "that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental"*2. I suppose that's because Darwin's mundane-evolution theory left the emergence of Mind from Matter as a mystery to solved later. To this day, we still don't have "an adequate theory of consciousness"*3.
Since the content of Nagel's article is off-topic, I won't discuss it further in this post. Except to say that it may indirectly suggest why some of us, frustrated by the inadequacies of Reductionism, Materialism, and Naturalism, have labeled the ultimate origins of Mind, Consciousness, and Language as a poetic mystery, instead of a topic for scientific analysis. :smile:
*1. Charles Pierce :
The only end of science, as such, is to learn the lesson that the universe has to teach it. In Induction it simply surrenders itself to the force of facts. But it finds . . . that this is not enough. It is driven in desperation to call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale. . . . The value of Facts to it, lies only in this, that they belong to Nature; and nature is something great, and beautiful, and sacred, and eternal, and real,--the object of its worship and its aspiration.
___quoted in Nagel's Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion
*2. Thomas Nagel :
The reason I call this view alarming is that it is hard to know what world picture to associate it with, and difficult to avoid the suspicion that the picture will be religious, or quasi-religious. Rationalism has always had a more religious flavor than empiricism. Even without God, the idea of a natural sympathy between the deepest truths of nature and the deepest layers of the human mind, which can be exploited to allow gradual development of a truer and truer conception of reality, makes us more at home in the universe than is secularly comfortable.The thought that the relation between mind and the world is something fundamental makes many people in this day and age nervous . I believe this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.
___ excerpt from Nagel's Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion
*3. Theory of mind and Darwins legacy :
Both dualism and materialism are mistaken because they deny consciousness is part of the physical world. ___John Searle
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1301214110
*4. Dennett and the Evolution of Language :
To my own surprise, Ive come to believe that there is an element of truth in the apparently less plausible Platonic story thats easy to miss, one that seems to be almost completely obscured by the paradox that both Quine and Plato have described. It isnt that our languages were deliberately invented by particular groups of people, legislators of syndics in the formal sense of these words, sitting around particular tables, at particular times in the past. It seems to me that theyre more like our dogs, our wolfhounds and sheepdogs and dachshunds, our retrievers, and pointers and greyhounds. We didnt invent them exactly, but our ancestors did repeatedly make deliberate more or less rational choices in the process that made them what they are today, choices among a long series of slightly incrementally different variants, unconsciously shaping the dogs into precisely what their human breeders needed them to be."
https://kingdablog.com/2017/02/21/dennett-and-the-evolution-of-language/
*5. What is naturalist theory of religion?
"Religious naturalism is a perspective that finds religious meaning in the natural world and rejects the notion of a supernatural realm." The term religious in this context is construed in general terms, separate from the traditions, customs, or beliefs of any one of the established religions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_naturalism
Agree with your analysis and glad you found that essay worthwhile. The bottom line is naturalism is essentially defined against what it denies: most obviously the supernatural. Which, in effect, is taken to mean religion - and not only that, but ideas associated with religion, which are a very broad palette of ideas. Nagel, commenting on Peirces platonist musings, says that Peirces idea of the inward sympathy with nature is alarming to many people:
That is the preamble to the famous and frequently-quoted passage on the fear of religion:
[quote=Thomas Nagel]In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper--namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself. I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the material of which we and our environments are all composed.[/quote]
I've observed it countless times in over 12 years of online debates of just these kinds of questions. There is an undercurrent, a kind of firewall, against such ideas as 'inward sympathy' or 'eternal verities' because they're associated with religion or at least with philosophical spirituality (which is the same thing for most people.)
So, this is the sense that 'fear of religion' drives a good deal of philosophical discussion, including naturalism about the mind. That is why I introduced it: not out of finger pointing but because it is a real and potent undercurrent in debates about mind and cosmos.
Here Nagel turns to an analysis of the notion that reason itself has a naturalistic explanation, namely as a product of evolutionary adaptation - something which Im sure nearly everyone accepts without questioning. It seems commonsense to say that reason evolved in the service of survival. He says, however, that
[quote=Thomas Nagel]Unless it [this analysis] is coupled with an independent basis for confidence in reason, the evolutionary hypothesis is threatening rather than reassuring. It is consistent with continued confidence only if it amounts to the hypothesis that evolution has led to the existence of creatures, namely us, with a capacity for reasoning in whose validity we can have much stronger confidence than would be warranted merely from its having come into existence in that way. I have to be able to believe that the evolutionary explanation is consistent with the proposition that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct--not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so. But to believe that, I have to be justified independently in believing that they are correct. And this cannot be merely on the basis of my contingent psychological disposition, together with the hypothesis that it is the product of natural selection. I can have no justification for trusting a reasoning capacity I have as a consequence of natural selection, unless I am justified in trusting it simply in itself -- that is, believing what it tells me, in virtue of the content of the arguments it delivers. [/quote]
So notice here that Nagel rejects the idea that the faculty of reason can be seen as a product of adaptation - because to do so, is to undermine the sovereignty of reason. Which, one would hope, would be the last thing a philosopher would wish for.
The problem with this not especially useful observation from Nagel is there is an equal and commonly held fear of atheism which can be expressed in exactly the same way as Nagel talks about the fear of religion.
Having worked in palliative and end of life care, I have seen many religious and formerly religious folk die. It is quite astonishing how many Christians confess to their fear of atheism in the same terms Nagel uses but in reverse. Their faith often dies before they do. One former priest I knew, Vincent, put it along these lines -
"A lot of us in faith roles are haunted by the idea that we are wrong, that there actually is no god. That we have been selling people a lie and leading them on. We are terrified that the atheists are right. We are taught to avoid or pity atheists, but they seem to have a better account of suffering and morality and are generally better educated than believers and more tolerant about human behaviour and more charitable towards others. There is little evidence that there's order on our planet or any special meaning for humans, but we fight against this thought and hope our faith will protect us from doubt and from our true feelings."
In this vein there is even a busy organisation, The Clergy Project which supports large groups of clergy all over the world who have lost their faith and have embraced their worst fear - that atheism provides a more reasonable approach than theism. They never wanted a world like that. They were often unprepared for this, but can't help what they believe.
I had some experience when I was very young as a casualty wardsman in a Catholic hospital. The head nurse was a Sister Mary Louise, always immaculately turned out in crisp white and polished black shoes. She was a stern disciplinarian and indefatigible worker, but her compassion impressed me. There were often tragic scenes, it being an emergency ward, and I was hugely impressed by her ability to empathise and literally provide a shoulder to cry on and to weep with the patients, but then to return to her normal equilibrium and carry on with her day. (My wife had major surgery at that same hospital many decades later and again the sense of compassionate concern was palpable.)
I did get that point, but from what I've seen, there is also the case of those strenuously resisting free-thought, for fear of it being too near to dangerous nihilism. There may still be great courage involved in holding that life has no inherent purpose, that we are here for a brief flash, then gone forever. There seems to be a comprehensive mechanism described in Terror Management Theory to deal with this elemental fear of meaninglessness and annihilation.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yeah, well these, like Nagel's other arguments seem to be right out of the Christian apologist's playbook ('atheism is self-refuting', etc), in seeking to address atheism and the fear of nihilism. (And yes, I know N isn't a Christian and a nominal atheist) I have heard hours of this stuff over the years and it is ususally put in the sort of language Nagel uses here - especially if they are influenced by Van Til or Plantinga. They are cool arguments, I agree, but I don't find them convincing. My favourite is the one about the logical absolutes proving the perfect mind of god essentially as guarantor of intelligibility. 'God' of course can be understood as old language for 'higher consciousness'.
Maybe we need a thread on the evolutionary argument against naturalism if you haven't done one yet. There must be one here already... I've probably written in it.
Guilt by association may be emotionally persuasive, but it's not a good logical argument. Your implication of nefarious motives for the Christian rejection of an Atheist article of faith (based on "Fear of Religion" motives?) may be correct. But what if the Christian thinkers are also correct to see Mind from Mindless as a logical paradox?
I am a post-Christian, but I am not an Atheist, because I also see evidence for teleological patterns in scientific evidence*1, and the necessity for Mind from Mind, that is not dependent on ancient religious speculations. My own Enformationism worldview is non-religious, but it has some philosophical parallels, due to seeing the same causal implications (directional patterns) in the objective evidence*2. My thesis & blog go into some detail to provide a rationale for (non-religious) philosophical teleology, and for the not-so-mysterious origin of Consciousness in a material world.
I don't trace the positive direction of evolution (nothingness to stars to human aspiration) back to the wrathful Tyrant-god of Abrahamic traditions. But I am inclined to accept the ancient Greek notion of a First Cause or Prime Mover of some kind. And the "kind" is of the Logos type. Specifically, something with the power to Enform (to cause change of form). My 21st century origin myth is founded on Quantum & Information theories, not stories of loving & punishing & political absentee-father-figures in the sky. Even so, I am forced to agree with the "apologists" that there are signs of teleological intentions (a heuristic program) in the world. But I disagree on some of the attributed anthro-morphic characteristics of the mysterious Programmer. :smile:
*1. Why Teleology Isn't Dead :
[i]Mention teleology in scientific circles and youll usually get a skeptical response. Purpose in the way the world is evolving? Patterns certainlybut purpose? No. . . .
Fascinating to be sure, but in the end, skeptics may ask, what's it all about? Is consciousness really inevitable in the universe?[/i]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnfarrell/2016/06/08/why-teleology-isnt-dead/?sh=2ec8259e6d69
*2. Intentional Causation vs Random Chance :
"At the Santa Fe Institute [for the study of complex adaptive systems] one finds an unusually high density of people who dispute the notion that we are creatures of chance . . . . that there is an inevitability to life . . . . that the emergence of life itself is written into the universal laws."
___excerpt from Fire In The Mind, by George Johnson
Huh? I think you are projecting. I'm not intending to make a logical argument by raising this. I am making what I think is an interesting observation that an atheist philosopher would use the language and arguments of Christian apologetics. As far as I know, this has not been said about Nagel here before. You'll note, I also said they were 'cool arguments'.
'Mind from Mindlessness' as I also suggested, could be a thread here for further discussion.
:up:
Even little folks in peacetime get a taste this way of standing on the front line with clean pants (not shitting themselves, since we are talking psychoanalysis). It's an everyday heroism of not knowing, of maybe it being 'in vain,' with the courage to love and live anyway.
I also don't think I made the point that it is nefarious. Can you explain why this might be seen as nefarious?
Sorry, It wasn't meant to be personal. I was referring to the "christian apologist" argument as "guilt by association". To wit : anything postulated by those committed to a different worldview is inherently emotionally motivated, hence unreasonable. It is indeed "interesting" that both sides in the "fear of nihilism" vs "fear of religion" contentions make similar "self-contradictory" arguments.
In the movie about pre-feminism women's baseball, A League of their Own, the catcher says to the tearful fielder : "there's no crying in baseball". Likewise, there's no Fear in Philosophy. :smile:
Quoting Tom Storm
Sorry again. I was using a provocative word (Nefarious etymology = not divine truth) to describe the finger-pointing between pro vs con sides of the "whence Consciousness" disputes. Each side questions the illicit motives (or impiety), not the reasoning, of the other side.
I find some partial truths on both shores, but I think the final truth is in the inscrutable ocean between. After all these years, the origin of meta-physical Consciousness in a physical world remains a mystery. But people still have polarized opinions on the topic. I apologize, if my finger-pointing at Atheist & Theist apologists sounded offensive to you personally. Typically, I find your posts to be a calm port in a stormy sea of opinions :cool:
Meta-physical : non-physical ; mental vs material ; ideal vs real. Not necessarily super-natural.
No need to apologize - I don't take things personally. I was just correcting your take on my point.
Quoting Gnomon
No problem I didn't take you as being finger pointing. You always seem reasonable towards other's views. :up:
Quoting Gnomon
I'm not sure they are self-contradictory. They are just the same argument coming from opposite directions and demonstrate that we can't use either version as anything more than anecdote.
One of my issues with the evolutionary argument against naturalism is that I accept that human's don't have access to ultimate truth. I see no reason to think there is ultimate truth. Such truth that we have access too is either a value we hold, or something we can use to make sense of our environment (or both). We do acquire usable, demonstrated knowledge that allows us to survive. That in itself is a pretty good test of a quotidian truth value.
Quoting Gnomon
I agree that there is no certainty about this. But I don't believe this gives us permission to fill the gap with metaphysical speculation. We don't know. I'm not even sure we have the right questions about this subject yet. We have an incomplete understanding. Yet I am sympathetic to the idea that consciousness is a kind of illusory phenomenon. But I would never argue that this is the case until we know more.
Ha! What would philosophers do with their free time, if "metaphysical speculation" was not permitted by the truth censors? :smile:
Probably he meant we can't impose our speculations on others as binding.
I hear you. I guess I'm saying I am the truth censor in my own life.
Yes, that's a good clarification.
I see a need to clarify what I mean by the general label for topics related to enigmas like Consciousness. For some modern philosophers, Metaphysics has a stigma of ir-rational un-truth, compared to the rational facts presented by empirical science. "If it ain't physical it ain't real". Yet that negative association derived mainly from reactions to medieval Catholic Scholasticism, which used spiritual assumptions & speculations to support official church dogma and propaganda.
However, that's not the kind of Meta-Physics*1 I'm referring to. Instead, I associate that descriptive label {{addendum to Aristotle's compendium on Nature}} with the second volume that focused, not on physical things, but non-physical ideas & opinions about Nature in general --- including Mind & Consciousness. Metaphysics is about Aboutness*2.
According to my understanding of Meta-Physics, the soft sciences of Psychology, Sociology, History, etc are primarily philosophical & metaphysical*3. They do try to collect "hard" data to support their speculations on topics that lie beyond the empirical tools of Physics. Due to "incomplete understanding" though, their hypotheses rarely reach the mathematical precision and theoretical utility of E=MC^2. Moreover, their conclusions remain unverifiable by empirical methods, hence endlessly debatable by philosophical methods. Sound familiar? :smile:
PS___ "Consciousness" as an "Illusory phenomenon" sounds like an interesting topic for another thread. Unless you want to pursue it in this one. Are illusions physical or meta-physical?
*1. Meta-physics :
[i]The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of reality, including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value.
1. Often dismissed by materialists as idle speculation on topics not amenable to empirical proof.
2. Aristotle divided his treatise on science into two parts. The world as-known-via-the-senses was labeled physics - what we call "Science" today. And the world as-known-by-the-mind, by reason, was labeled metaphysics - what we now call "Philosophy" .
3. Plato called the unseen world that hides behind the physical façade: Ideal as opposed to Real. For him, Ideal forms (concepts) were prior-to the Real substance (matter).
4. Physics refers to the things we perceive with the eye of the body. Meta-physics refers to the things we conceive with the eye of the mind. Meta-physics includes the properties, and qualities, and functions that make a thing what it is. Matter is just the clay from which a thing is made. Meta-physics is the design (form, purpose); physics is the product (shape, action). The act of creation brings an ideal design into actual existence. The design concept is the formal cause of the thing designed.
5. I use a hyphen in the spelling to indicate that I am not talking about Ghosts and Magic, but about Ontology (science of being).[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
*2. Aboutness :
Broadly, the book seeks to naturalistically explain "aboutness", that is, concepts like intentionality, meaning, normativity, purpose, and function; which Deacon groups together and labels as ententional phenomena. ____Terrence Deacon : Incomplete Nature
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incomplete_Nature
He variously defines reference as "aboutness" or "re-presentation," the semiotic or semantic relation between a sign-vehicle and its object.
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/deacon/
*3. Quantum Psychology : How Brain Software Programs You and Your World :
"Quantum Psychology offers a coherent and humorous description of how our thoughts, values and behaviors have been colored by our use of language and our prevailing view of the universe."
https://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Psychology-Brain-Software-Programs/dp/0692767045
PS --- "Quantum Psychology: How Brain Software Programs You & Your World is a book written by science-fiction writer Robert Anton Wilson, originally published in 1990. It deals with what Wilson himself calls "quantum psychology," which is not a field within academic psychology." ___Wikipedia
I don't think you do. It's my point that needs clarification. Like most people, I have no expertise in consciousness and only a passing interest. And the subject is a hotbed of controversy and incomplete understanding. Why would I attempt to acquire an account of it with those limitations? Ditto quantum physics. I am more than comfortable staying away. And I wish more people with no expertise would also stay away from such matters.
As to the more general use of the term 'incomplete understanding'. I take the view that humans are storytellers and build tentative accounts of 'truth' that are useful (or not) for certain purposes. I do not think we arrive at absolute truth. What we tend to do is inherit and choose accounts that, in our judgement, are useful to us.
Quoting Gnomon
See above also. But I was just referencing how Dennett's account is often understood.
That's a surprising position on a philosophy forum. As Descartes concluded, Personal Consciousness is the only thing we know for sure. Everything else is a theory. I assume the "expertise" you mentioned is limited to empirical scientists, since theoretical scientists, lacking hard evidence, can only guess about Consciousness as a general principle. So, the topic has been vexatious for theoretical scientists & philosophers for millennia*1, and untouchable by empirical scientists forever.
Immaterial Consciousness has been off-topic (extraneous, immaterial, inappropriate, inconsequential) for empirical scientists, for obvious reasons. Empirical evidence for non-physical Awareness is completely absent. Until recently, that is. Since information theorists concluded that Information occurs in both Mental & Material forms*2, the possibility of empirical experiments has been taken seriously. Especially by the Santa Fe Institute*3 in New Mexico, near Los Alamos, where mathematical quantum abstractions (ideas) were converted into actual physical earth-shaking power.
Since my philosophical worldview is centered on Information Theory, I am not vexed by the spookiness of Consciousness, but entranced. For empiricists, the notion of Consciousness as a ding an sich is often dismissed as religious nonsense or silly Idealism. But I have come to view the idea of Platonic Ideals through a frame of Pragmatic Idealism*4. Unfortunately, I have none of the kind of expertise you are looking for. I'm just an amateur philosopher asking "what if" questions about both Reality and Ideality. :smile:
*1. What Is Consciousness? :
Scientists are beginning to unravel a mystery that has long vexed philosophers
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-is-consciousness/
*2. Is Information Physical? :
It Depends On What You Mean by Physical So my first point here is that information, like entropy, is a physical thing. Its an extensive property
https://mindmatters.ai/2022/07/is-information-physical-it-depends-on-what-you-mean-by-physical/
*3. The Santa Fe Institute is an independent, nonprofit research and education center that leads global research in complexity science.
https://www.santafe.edu/about/faq
Note -- Complex Systems are holistic combinations of Matter & Mind (logical structure = Information) .
*4. Pragmatic Idealism :
This term sounds like an oxymoron, combining practical realism with otherworldly fantasy. But together they describe the BothAnd attitude toward the contingencies of the world. Pragmatic Idealism is a holistic worldview, grounded upon our sensory experience with, and knowledge of, how the mundane world works, plus how Reality & Ideality work together to make a single whole. As a personal philosophy, it does not replace scientific Realism and doesn't endorse fantasies of magic, miracles & monsters because every thing or fact in the real parts of the world is subject to logical validation or empirical testing prior to belief.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page17.html
https://bothandblog.enformationism.info/page9.html
Well, there is mysterianism which takes a similar view. But I am not a philosopher - just interested in what the themes and issues are and what some people believe and why.
What may be surprising on a philosophy forum is members who know the limitations of what they can say.
Quoting Gnomon
Can I even be sure of that? How do I know it is me doing the thinking? For instance, I have worked for many years with people who experience mental ill health - thought insertion is a common experience. Not to mention disembodied voices. The experience of these is that they are not produced by your own mind.
I'm quite the opposite; I would love to think that there can be purely rational intuition of reality. There have been many, many moments in my life where i have felt this to be true. But the critical side calls this into question, and asks whether this is not just a feeling, a kind of wishful thinking.
So, the idea that what the mind intuits about reality is true on the basis of a deep connection between the "inner workings" of the mind and the inner workings of the world is a nice premise, and from there we can reason our way to, for example, Platonist conclusions, but a critical mind will ask the question as to how we know this most attractive thought is actually true.
And I can't see any possible answer other than that it might "feel right". It isn't empirically verifiable, and it isn't logically necessary, so what other ground do we have?
That said, I think we don't know that our intuitions cannot tell us about reality, either, so I also don't reject the idea; I just cannot settle on one or the other belief. A change in consciousness can bring a different vision, and I know from moments of my own experience that what is felt to be "direct knowing" can be so compelling as to dispel all doubt whatsoever, but such an altered state is not perennial. at least not for me.
Direct knowing like that might indeed constitute sufficient evidence for the individual enjoying that state of mind, but it cannot constitute sufficient evidence for anyone else, although they may be moved to believe by something they see or seem to see in the person with the direct knowing.
Which has among other things resulted in the scientific revolution.
Quoting Janus
My tentative answer is that the world is the experience-of-the-world, and so the order we find in reason, is also the order we find in the world, because they're not ultimately separable (a lot rides on 'ultimately' in that sentence.)
Logical necessity is nowadays often deemed to be a separate issue to physical causation (something I explored in this offsite post.) But that doesn't seem to me to address the 'unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences' which time and again has produced predictions for which at the time there wasn't even the empirical means to test (e.g. relativity, Dirac's discovery of anti-matter.) I think these are all examples of Kant's synthetic a priori and a testimony to the power of reason.
Nagel's point is that if we are to be considered rational beings, then this is because we accept the testimony of reason, not because we are compelled to do so by the requirements of adaptation, but because we can see the truth of its statements. I think it is that power to discern apodictic truths which caused the ancients to grant it a kind of quasi-religious status, and conversely the tendency to deprecate reason as simply an evolved capacity is an indicator of a kind of deep irrationality.
In other words, reason suggests naturalism is false, or at least, incomplete, that there's an explanation needed to account for our preference for such self-evident truths?
To make an argument is indeed to appeal to norms, often within the quest to modify those very norms. Our concept of the rationality itself has evolved through endless self-investigation and self-clarification. Apodictic truths tend to be analytic, syntactical, grammatical, a mere elaboration or unfolding or making explicit of these often tacit norms. It's not at all clear that we need some god to have installed these norms, especially as we've come to understand evolution. Does us having evolved mean we can't trust our own norms ? If so, why exactly ? I don't think we have any choice. We 'are' these norms, and we/they are liquid rather than solid, always on the move, if sufficiently slowly for us to remain sane.
I think self-evident truths are supposed to be the fingerprints of the Divine.
Quoting plaque flag
In ancient and medieval philosophy, the order of nature was seen as Gods handiwork. But that was especially true in respect of Aquinas and that strain of scholastic philosophy that incorporated Aristotelianism - scholastic realism, in short. But the countervailing historical strain was Ockhams nominalism and Bacons early empiricism, and that was the strain that prevailed. (This was the theme of a fantastic book, The Theological Origins of Modernity, M A Gillespie, which I read when I first joined forums. It links nominalism with the rise of theological voluntarism, which says that the soveriegnty of God is not constrained by reason. Very deep and lengthy argument however.)
But look at the current debates around Platonism in mathematics. These revolve around the argument as to whether and in what sense number (and by implication universals generally) can be said to be real. In scholastic realism, universals are understood to be real, and this is what underwrote scholastic metaphysics. The mainstream view today is very much that numbers are discovered not invented, theyre human artifacts. And that is in part because if the reality of such things as number cant be accommodated in the presumptive materialism of modern philosophy.
[quote=SEP, Platonism in Philosophy of Mathematics] Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects that arent part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences.[1] Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate. Mathematical platonism has considerable philosophical significance. If the view is true, it will put great pressure on the physicalist idea that reality is exhausted by the physical. For platonism entails that reality extends far beyond the physical world and includes objects that arent part of the causal and spatiotemporal order studied by the physical sciences.[1] Mathematical platonism, if true, will also put great pressure on many naturalistic theories of knowledge. For there is little doubt that we possess mathematical knowledge. The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate.[/quote]
(Im pursuing an idea that they are real in the sense of Terrence Deacons absentials, i.e. acting as logical constraints within the domain of possibility.)
All of which is completely besides the point of this thread so I will end it there.
Seems harsh !
Trying to explain how reasonable creatures emerged in the first place from simpler conditions is perhaps the most spectacular use of reason so far. Reason is honored in the use of it.
Deciding that 'X did it', with X being more complex and mysterious than ourselves, is moving in the wrong direction. It is even perhaps anti-explanation. Or, more generously, it's an emotionally orienting myth.
Evolutionary biology is an account of how species evolve, but I don't see it as an account of the nature of reason. Should be a different thread, though.
I'm not sure if this is meant to be approval or disapproval.
Quoting Wayfarer
I agree this is true in regard to the collective representation we refer to as 'the phenomenal world'. But we don't know, can't know, whether that representation tells us anything about the world as it is independent of our representations of it.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't believe there is any convincing argument that causation is logically necessary. Apparently, the idea is necessary for us to make sense of our experience. It's true that math does seem to be effective in producing models which enjoy great predictive success. What are the impications of that for metaphysics? Beats me.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think we are compelled to think according to the principles of reason, that is to think in ways which are consistent with our premises, if we want to think well. But again, I would say our premises are not themselves underpinned by pure reason. What seems self-evident is not so on the basis of some chain of argument, otherwise it would be relying on some further premises that chain would necessarily be based upon. The buck has to stop somewhere. It's on account of that that I think the dream of working it all out via reason is just that; a dream.
Yes, but Mysterianism takes the "know nothing" approach only for very select few questions, such as "God" & "Consciousness". Which are mystifying simply because they are immaterial & metaphysical, hence beyond the scope of empirical evidence. But they are not beyond the scope of rational inference, from what physical & metaphysical evidence we do have access to.
For example, Cosmologists used the astronomical evidence then available -- surprisingly indicating expansion of the universe, long assumed to be static & eternal -- to trace the expansion back to a point where their calculations gave infinite outputs. Yet, the general consensus of a Big Bang beginning, left a Big ("god") Gap to be filled by reasonable speculation*1. AFAIK, metaphysical (why?) questions are all that's left for philosophical minds to do, since empirical methods replaced theological scholasticism centuries ago. "What some people believe and why" is a metaphysical question, that won't be answered with empirical evidence.
I too, am not a formally trained philosopher, but merely a curious layman. And I only began to spend time on "philosophical" non-empirical (why?) questions after I retired from productive work. I don't get paid for my time posting mini-essays that may be read by one or two people. Nevertheless, I enjoy engaging with mysteries that have baffled better minds than mine. For me, philosophy is a cheap hobby. :smile:
*1. Why some cosmologists found the Big Bang offensive :
Today, we speak of the Big Bang model of cosmology, but it was not always so. For two decades, the Big Bang model battled against the steady state model. This pitted a Universe with a beginning against an eternal Universe. In the absence of data, philosophical prejudice often drives research.
https://bigthink.com/13-8/steady-state-universe-big-bang/
I think you are over complicating. It is answered when they say what their beliefs are and why they believe them.
Quoting Gnomon
Or unreasonable and uneducated speculation. I am not a cosmologist and the poorly named Big Bang is of minimal interest. Anyone can read Paul Davies, Roger Penrose or Lawrence Krauss if they want a range of simplified conjecture based on expertise. I leave the matter there. :wink: