Is the philosophy of mind dead?
Both neuroscience and artificial intelligence research are working on models and applications to compensate for damage to the organism on the one hand and to autonomize process sequences on the other. Both proceed inductively, collecting empirical data and evaluating them statistically. And both are hardly dependent on the insights of the philosophy of mind. Even if one may disagree, it will be shown that both can do without theories of consciousness, because consciousness plays a role in the philosophy of mind, but hardly in the two disciplines mentioned. Why? The answer is relatively simple: a machine will never be able to develop consciousness, because life and thus consciousness is based on the autocatalytic principle, and silicon is not capable of that. In addition, every machine lacks an endocrine system that makes experience possible in the first place. Also, the use of biohybrid techniques will not create consciousness, since life only functions as a whole in such a way that consciousness can arise. Anything else will result in half-intelligent idiots at best. Finally, one cannot subjectivize 'objective' statistical data, so that a subjective perception could arise. An intelligent machine system will therefore only ever require the application of statistical data, i.e. it will be able to be produced from the average of certain populations. Subjective experience is therefore excluded.
The same applies to neuroscience, but the other way around. It is not possible to objectify subjective experience in order to make it accessible to research. Again, objective data can only be obtained from statistical models. To build interfaces, for example, it will only work with big data. The hope for both lies in the development of high-performance computers, possibly in the field of quantum computing, in order to be able to process the necessary large data sets quickly and resource-efficiently enough.
Of course, the task of philosophy is not the application- or therapy-related development, but it is about the nature of mental states, their effects and causes. Central to this is the question of the relationship between mental and physical states, but also other questions such as: What are mental states? What is consciousness? How do mental states relate to physical states? Can mental states be explained reductively? Are we free in our thoughts and wills? What is the importance of the mind in our understanding of the world?
The philosophy of mind deals with findings from philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science. The descriptive philosophy of mind tries to give mental states an accurate description. To this end, terms and definitions are developed that are intended to delimit the subject area of the philosophy of mind. The Analytic Philosophy of Mind seeks to understand the basic principles and structures of mind. To this end, questions such as free will are discussed.
If we look at the history of the philosophy of mind and its current state, we see a picture that is characterized by linguistic confusions, epistemological aberrations and categorical errors.
These very different directions and approaches can be roughly divided into dualistic, eliminative and openly inconsistent.
The dualistic ones usually appear with two substances, a material one, which is attributed to the body, and an immaterial one, which is assigned to the mind. Inevitably, one enters religious, esoteric or mystical ground, because an immaterial spirit lacks any real justification. A distinction must be made between those who speak of immaterial things in relation to thoughts, since they cannot be touched. The immaterial here is therefore not of a substantive nature, but of a linguistic nature. Body and mind sometimes work partly independently of each other, sometimes in parallel, sometimes the mind supervenes over the body, sometimes it influences it. None of these attempts, however, can solve the mind-body problem, and it remains an unsatisfactory dualism. And this contradicts the fact that every organism consists of nothing more than flesh and blood, thus of matter.
Then there are those who reject materialism without closing the explanatory gap it creates. They tend to confuse materialism with physicalism, which in turn generally rejects consciousness as an illusion. Which brings us to the eliminationists. They get rid of the problem of consciousness because they can't explain it. Because they draw their argument exclusively from physics, which has no terms for consciousness. Their rejection applies to both the first and third person perspectives.
Let's move on to the most pitiful, the inconsistent. They make the crucial mistake right from the start and disqualify themselves by confusing cause and effect or including the cause in the effect. We are talking about the fashion trend that is carried out under the sign of the four E's. The concepts of embodiment and externalization of consciousness do not mention the body and environment as determinants, but as components of consciousness. Embeddedness and enactivism also abolish the distinction between subject and object, which contradicts all view. All in all, the result is a conglomerate that no longer allows for analytical separation. In order to underline this ideologically, one even tries to prove that, for example, the decision to put one foot in front of the other is made in the foot and not in the brain. Those who find this nonsensical are accused of neurocentrism. It's like accusing a cardiologist of cardiocentrism. The attempt to argue against this usually fails due to the lack of epistemological qualifications of the protagonists. Sentences such as 'I am not brain' are uttered. As if anyone had ever said that.
There are countless variations between all these directions.
Thus, almost the entire history of the philosophy of mind up to the present day can be regarded as evidence of how it cannot work. There is no doubt that it has made a positive contribution.
The main problem lies in incorrect categorization. In the case of body-mind dualism, the body does not mean the entire body, and the mind does not mean the head. By body is meant the physical (of the brain) and by mind the mental (of the brain). So they are not two substances, but two perspectives on one and the same object, namely the brain. The physical describes physiology, the mental describes psychology. You can establish a relationship between the two (correlation), so that you say, for example, that the firing of certain neurons (physiology) corresponds to a certain behavior (psychology). The problem lies in the fact that there is not a psychological counterpart for every physiological concept, and so there is constant linguistic confusion by arbitrarily jumping back and forth between the two perspectives. And it is precisely this that provokes a mental dualism again and again. But what you must not do under any circumstances is to establish a causality between the two perspectives, such as the neurons x determine a behavior y. This way of thinking is so deeply rooted in us that it is difficult to overcome it. And one will involuntarily ask, yes, but how does consciousness arise if not through neurons. Each discipline, physiology and psychology, must find its own answer to this with its own terms. So the question is, can what is called consciousness in psychology be described physiologically?
One possibility would be to use a dynamically system-theoretical approach as metatheory and sketch the maximum of structural density with causal force as an analogue to what is described in psychology as consciousness. There, in turn, it means a purposeful intentional behavior based on abstractions.
As long as the philosophy of mind does not make use of a sharp and categorically clear approach to the theory of science and instead loses itself in all kinds of irrationalities, it can be called dead.
In this form, it is of no use to science, nor does it provide an explanation for the nature of consciousness, but rather causes confusion. The instrumentalist approach of neuroscience and AI does not need such a philosophy.
The same applies to neuroscience, but the other way around. It is not possible to objectify subjective experience in order to make it accessible to research. Again, objective data can only be obtained from statistical models. To build interfaces, for example, it will only work with big data. The hope for both lies in the development of high-performance computers, possibly in the field of quantum computing, in order to be able to process the necessary large data sets quickly and resource-efficiently enough.
Of course, the task of philosophy is not the application- or therapy-related development, but it is about the nature of mental states, their effects and causes. Central to this is the question of the relationship between mental and physical states, but also other questions such as: What are mental states? What is consciousness? How do mental states relate to physical states? Can mental states be explained reductively? Are we free in our thoughts and wills? What is the importance of the mind in our understanding of the world?
The philosophy of mind deals with findings from philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science. The descriptive philosophy of mind tries to give mental states an accurate description. To this end, terms and definitions are developed that are intended to delimit the subject area of the philosophy of mind. The Analytic Philosophy of Mind seeks to understand the basic principles and structures of mind. To this end, questions such as free will are discussed.
If we look at the history of the philosophy of mind and its current state, we see a picture that is characterized by linguistic confusions, epistemological aberrations and categorical errors.
These very different directions and approaches can be roughly divided into dualistic, eliminative and openly inconsistent.
The dualistic ones usually appear with two substances, a material one, which is attributed to the body, and an immaterial one, which is assigned to the mind. Inevitably, one enters religious, esoteric or mystical ground, because an immaterial spirit lacks any real justification. A distinction must be made between those who speak of immaterial things in relation to thoughts, since they cannot be touched. The immaterial here is therefore not of a substantive nature, but of a linguistic nature. Body and mind sometimes work partly independently of each other, sometimes in parallel, sometimes the mind supervenes over the body, sometimes it influences it. None of these attempts, however, can solve the mind-body problem, and it remains an unsatisfactory dualism. And this contradicts the fact that every organism consists of nothing more than flesh and blood, thus of matter.
Then there are those who reject materialism without closing the explanatory gap it creates. They tend to confuse materialism with physicalism, which in turn generally rejects consciousness as an illusion. Which brings us to the eliminationists. They get rid of the problem of consciousness because they can't explain it. Because they draw their argument exclusively from physics, which has no terms for consciousness. Their rejection applies to both the first and third person perspectives.
Let's move on to the most pitiful, the inconsistent. They make the crucial mistake right from the start and disqualify themselves by confusing cause and effect or including the cause in the effect. We are talking about the fashion trend that is carried out under the sign of the four E's. The concepts of embodiment and externalization of consciousness do not mention the body and environment as determinants, but as components of consciousness. Embeddedness and enactivism also abolish the distinction between subject and object, which contradicts all view. All in all, the result is a conglomerate that no longer allows for analytical separation. In order to underline this ideologically, one even tries to prove that, for example, the decision to put one foot in front of the other is made in the foot and not in the brain. Those who find this nonsensical are accused of neurocentrism. It's like accusing a cardiologist of cardiocentrism. The attempt to argue against this usually fails due to the lack of epistemological qualifications of the protagonists. Sentences such as 'I am not brain' are uttered. As if anyone had ever said that.
There are countless variations between all these directions.
Thus, almost the entire history of the philosophy of mind up to the present day can be regarded as evidence of how it cannot work. There is no doubt that it has made a positive contribution.
The main problem lies in incorrect categorization. In the case of body-mind dualism, the body does not mean the entire body, and the mind does not mean the head. By body is meant the physical (of the brain) and by mind the mental (of the brain). So they are not two substances, but two perspectives on one and the same object, namely the brain. The physical describes physiology, the mental describes psychology. You can establish a relationship between the two (correlation), so that you say, for example, that the firing of certain neurons (physiology) corresponds to a certain behavior (psychology). The problem lies in the fact that there is not a psychological counterpart for every physiological concept, and so there is constant linguistic confusion by arbitrarily jumping back and forth between the two perspectives. And it is precisely this that provokes a mental dualism again and again. But what you must not do under any circumstances is to establish a causality between the two perspectives, such as the neurons x determine a behavior y. This way of thinking is so deeply rooted in us that it is difficult to overcome it. And one will involuntarily ask, yes, but how does consciousness arise if not through neurons. Each discipline, physiology and psychology, must find its own answer to this with its own terms. So the question is, can what is called consciousness in psychology be described physiologically?
One possibility would be to use a dynamically system-theoretical approach as metatheory and sketch the maximum of structural density with causal force as an analogue to what is described in psychology as consciousness. There, in turn, it means a purposeful intentional behavior based on abstractions.
As long as the philosophy of mind does not make use of a sharp and categorically clear approach to the theory of science and instead loses itself in all kinds of irrationalities, it can be called dead.
In this form, it is of no use to science, nor does it provide an explanation for the nature of consciousness, but rather causes confusion. The instrumentalist approach of neuroscience and AI does not need such a philosophy.
Comments (105)
To me, it appears that you have reduced the problem of the philosophy of mind to a set of failed approaches, and then declared the problem eliminated, rather than recognize the limitations of the approaches. Deacon describes this exact problem rather extensively in his book Incomplete Nature.
You present those obstacles that are present.
Quoting Wolfgang
In short, the "computers" should start from having DNA as their building blocks or what?
Actually the famous Turing test itself shows how clueless we are. After all, all the test says is that the computer can fool humans into believing that they are talking to humans. There's absolutely nothing on the "how" and "why" in the test. no philosophy behind it. So where are now then?
Well, I'm sure that here @Wolfgang isn't AI or a bot.
At least... yet.
Because the way computer science and technology has gone with it iyos simply basically by brute force. You don't have to have an underlying understanding, you simply start with basic programming and build up from there. Or have millions of humans picking millions of times the picture where there is a lamp-post, and then use that to "teach" programs to notice lamp posts.
Quoting Wolfgang
I think are basics are still not complete. It usually goes to even more fundamental issues than we first think it goes. The actual culprits might even lurk in our understanding of math and logic.
Quoting Wolfgang
Perhaps the problem originates from the categorical nature of the distinctions you make between what you understand as the subjective and the empirically objective, the physical and the mental. Is instrumentalism in neuroscience a necessity or a choice? The research program of neurophenomenology would seem to be one example of a non-instrumental approach to neuroscience. Or is this irrational? Im curious as to what other irrationalities you have in mind with regard to philosophy of mind. Could you give some examples? This may help to determine whether the source of the difficulties you raise lies with the philosophical models or with the limits of your imagination.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, this.Quoting Joshs
And this.
It seems to me that your hypothesis would benefit from a more concise formulation. As I said (and as the quotes from Joshs also highlight) it is possible that the limitations you descry are with the specific approaches themselves, and are not endemic to the question of the philosophy of mind, per se.
Philosophy of Mind is a useful field of study because it deals with the metaphysics behind the mind--which is certainly not something scientists actually engage in (although they may without realizing it when they formulate their own opinion on the matter).
I think the main reason philosophy of mind is still so prominent is due to the fact that 'awareness' (i.e., the ability to acquire knowledge of one's environment) and 'experience' (i.e., the ability to consciously, subjectively view one's environment) are seemingly severed from one another.
Personally, I used to be an idealist but now I lean to just methodological naturalism (viz., I do not claim knowledge that reality is solely comprised of 'natural' entities) but, since I take the naturalistic approach to acquiring knowledge the only legitimate one we have, I only claim knowledge about the world insofar as I or someone else (that I trust) has been able to empirically test it; and, thusly, my knowledge is conditioned by the human understanding.
To me, any ontological claim that is not just a superficial equivalent to a methodology is, in my opinion, wanting of justification...so much so that I would say it is just another example of human's overstepping the limits of human understanding.
Quoting Wolfgang
The OP clearly seems to think that Philosophy of Mind is a subject that is similar to a Science. Philosophy of Mind is a huge area of subject which encompasses many peripheral areas. Philosophy of Mind is hard to define in its subject and methodology. It would be too simple to think that it can be defined in a few sentences or paragraphs the OP has read in some forum posts for its negative side.
Neuroscience, A.I. and Philosophy of Mind, Metaphysics and Logic must all work together as a unified Science or Subject as suggested by Kant in CPR [A838/B866], NKSmith 1933.
A Science cannot be just a pile of collection of data, experiments and hypotheses. It has to be in a well structured Logic as its foundation interconnecting with the other relevant subjects / sciences.
Some negativists might even say, if they were all clearly separate subjects of their own territories, then A.I. would be looked as a subject studied by some commercially minded bunch of soldering iron heads with the computer chips trying to produce human mind mimicking devices to make bunch of money. Neuroscience would be looked as a subject run by bunch of folks with lab gowns playing with the stem cells and neurons staring at them with the microscopes pretending they are studying or looking at the mind. They have nothing much to do with the study of human minds from the negativists' perspectives. But it would be clearly unfair, wrong point of view and invalid claims stemmed from ignorance and gross misunderstanding of the subjects.
The bottom line is that Philosophy of Mind is not a form of Science. It is a subject of its own, which has different scopes, methodologies, topics, aims and logics. Thinking Philosophy of Mind is in the same level as the other Sciences is nonsense and a gross misunderstanding on even what the subject is.
Since the immanent experience of mind is both what is being explicated and what is doing the explicating this is a mischaracterization. Perhaps it is in some sense a story, that does not make it un-factual, only historical. Scientific facts likewise exist within an historical context, which can be extensively revised as scientific understanding evolves.
Fear of religion.
We know from studies that self-reporting is riddled with bias, inaccuracies, and conflicting takes. A story is not a fact, regardless of its history. Scientific facts are not historical stories, they are long and bloody battles where they are the only victors to survive. The comparison between personal subjective musings and science is like comparing an infant to Einstein.
Many of the philosophers of yesteryear would agree with me that philosophy should ultimately result in factual progress, which requires a strong set of grounded facts to start from.
Exactly, which is why I estimate the greatest challenges to knowledge to be those of our own presuppositions. Because at the end of the day, if you cannot be honest with yourself, no other kind of knowledge will be more reliable. Belief precedes understanding.
Speaking of AI research, I posed this quote to ChatGPT4, who agreed that philosophy of mind is not that relevant to neuroscience. But, it said, in respect of AI research:
[quote=ChatGPT;https://chat.openai.com/share/76ab1ef7-a801-4dcb-b20e-0336df574993]AI research does have relevance to the philosophy of mind, particularly when it comes to questions about consciousness, self-awareness, and ethical considerations related to AI. While many AI researchers primarily focus on practical applications and improving AI system performance, there is a growing subfield of AI ethics and AI philosophy. These researchers do engage with philosophical questions, such as the nature of consciousness in AI, the ethical implications of AI decision-making, and AI's potential impact on society and human values.
So, while the claim is accurate in stating that neuroscience is not heavily dependent on the philosophy of mind, it is more nuanced in the case of AI research. Some aspects of AI research are influenced by philosophical considerations, especially in the realm of ethics and consciousness. Chatbots like myself, which are part of AI research, may draw upon philosophical insights when discussing topics related to ethics, consciousness, and human values. However, the core functionality of chatbots like me is primarily based on language models and machine learning techniques, which are more grounded in empirical data and statistical methods.[/quote]
I have put many philosophical questions to ChatGPT since it came out, and have been overall impressed with the responses (not least the personable tone, and the way it conveys genuine interest (e.g. 'that is an intriguing insight', 'that is a very nuanced analysis', and so on.)
This is just slinging rhetorical shit, at those you see as part of the social band you are opposed to.
Quoting Wolfgang
I found this IMF statement sobering:
I have had a couple of detail work jobs (decades ago) for which I thought a computer would be more effective and cheaper. The main reason humans end up in these jobs at all is that computers have difficulty handling file folders and handling pieces of paper, and carrying work to and from the copy center. It was opposable thumbs and not mental capacity that mattered in this university department support job. Then too, some people probably preferred talking to humans, and giving humans orders more than doing the same with a machine.
Downgrading jobs has already happened as a result of automation, technology, and computerization, so chatGPT's effects may not stand out that much from the background.
So, bypassing the question of the theory of mind, I'm more interested in the theoretical question of what we are going to do for the minds of those cast aside by AI. I didn't like the detail-work job, but it paid for lots of mindwork I did on my own.
As for the impact on the jobs market, I can guess there will be employment categories that are going to be impacted. Apparently it's very handy with coding (I don't write code, so can't tell). I think many writing roles could be impacted, it turns out blog posts and short articles very easily. Personally I'm at the end of my career so I can't see it replacing me - I mean, it can't do what I'm required to do every day - but it's getting more capable all the time.
Recurrent neural networks.. essentially. Not literally.. but similar concept in regard to allowing time-sensitive, history-dependent behavior.
I enjoy gathering my own information about the Middle Ages or mushrooms, or whatever, and I rarely feel the need to ask an AI anything, I'm not producing products for anybody.
That said, they seem to be remarkable achievements by their makers, and using them should be helpful enough as long as one remembers that they don't actually care about us (and can not care) and they are not self-aware. At some point we will find a psychopathic / sociopathic executive employing a psychopathic / sociopathic AI system to achieve his goals. The AI system won't be responsible for magnifying the executive's anti-social harm.
Yet, anyway. Maybe at some point in the future an AI system will have an evil intention and will carry it out on its own. Somehow it seems less likely, but an AI system may instead have an urge to do unbidden good deeds and will benefit many. Even humans get such urges every now and then.
A snippet from a recent exchange:
I thought that a pretty cool response, but then, it was also telling me what I wanted to hear (although, how did it know that :chin: )
As it happened, I asked a similar question two weeks ago.
Me - Is maths the result of human cognitive processes, or is it an external fact in the world?
The techniques of science and even it's formalized theories can be considered instrumental, but if the purpose of science isn't considered to be instrumentally pragmatic but explanatory in the above sense, then there exists a semantic or explanatory gap between the tools of science and it's supposed goals, which must be filled somehow, leading us back to philosophy and it's patchwork of vague and apparently inconsistent pre-theories
So if we reject the idea that science and philosophy have distinct goals, then what you have described under the heading of the philosophy of mind, is the pitiful state of science as a whole. Also your summary of AI is interesting, because it reflects society's recent obsession with Machine Learning that has up until recently, ignored the normative discipline of symbolic reasoning, which must be addressed if AI is to scale to more difficult problems in a fashion that is reliable and understandable, but that direction opens the can of worms known as the Philosophy of Language, which is at the heart of Philosophy of Mind...
As i see it, the mind-body problem is but one example of the semantic under-determination of scientific theories, and one's tolerance for semantic under-determination depends on what ones goals are.
:up: Philosophy of Language + Philosophy of Science + Metaphysics
Quoting Wolfgang
The fact that Philosophy of Mind overlaps with Philosophy of Science doesn't prevent philosophers of mind from using a sharp and categorically clear approach to science. One philosopher of mind that I sometimes read is John Searle. His naturalist approach is fairly clear, I think (although I'm aware that it's been criticized for being covertly dualist.)
I actually agree with you in how brains do time perseption but there is more to it. In dealing with the past or future, brains are picking up on something non-physical, retaining it, and using it as input for further mental processing. It's like the brain deals in these non-physical things.
As you say, recurrent neural networks, but there seems to be an ability to 'go off the page' of what is possible with physical matter and do things in a non-physical environment. Seems like math for example is an exercise in manipulating non-physicals
Why does this need to be the case? I don't see why the brain needs anything else other than, effectively, remember its own activity through processes such as synaptic plasticity and recurrent feedback.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
Seems to me basically everything we experience is modeled off activity at our sensory boundaries. Things like math are just an abstraction of that information from our sensory boundaries. All our concepts are abstractions though. When I see a dog, that involves an abstraction because even though all dogs look different I can recognize that there is something the same about them and I can categorize them accordingly. The concept of similarity is as much an abstraction where I can identify different objects as the same. Once I can see objects as the same I can count them numerically, just as a direct consequence of sensory information. Obviously though, these concepts are so abstract that they can apply to virtually any different arrangement of sensory information. Simultaneously, this kind of abstraction is not qualitatively different from my ability to recognize a dog or recognize that lines have different directions. All perceptual categorization involves lumping different things into the same concept and this doesn't seem any different from how we have come upon concepts in math.
Neuroscience has nothing to do with the mind. Neuroscience deals with the brain. They are two totally different things.
Some neuroscientists are well aware of that, and have started to break the mold, looking for answers about the mind and consciousness in other terrains.
But the spirit of the unification of different subjects into one has not fully dead even today. We see some recent contemporary academics publishing the articles and books under the title and scope looking at the Mind from Philosophy, Neuroscience, Clinical Psychology, Metaphysics and Linguistic studies looking at them from the integrated perspectives. They are all interconnected to the topic, and none of them are regarded as irrational, or out of scope subjects. Philosophy of Mind is not dead.
I'm still agreeing with most of what you are saying. Everything is physically based.
My issue is abstractions have specific parameters and recurrent neural networks must conform to the subject matter. And once the abstraction is in place (physically instantiated) the abstraction can drive mental process.
I referenced a University of Minnesota psychiatric intervention program in another thread. I'll give the reference again here.
YouTube...search UMN psychiatric intervention.
From what I know it's typical of the programs in that school. Heavily financed by pharma. It's an example of neurology that leans heavily toward physicalism and because of financing, alternatives are discouraged.
A lot of their studies get discredited. Twins study for example.
Oops....try YouTube. Search for UMN Interventional Psychiatry.
You may or may not be interested, but here is an essay by a Aristotelian Thomist on why human intellectual capacity is different in kind to sense-perception. The section immediately after III is relevant to your claim. (Probably not the ideal thread to discuss it, but it is connected to your remark.)
I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from. I'm pretty sure its been proven neural networks are like universal computers that can pretty much learn to perform any task in principle.
Reading this article is like trying to translate a completely different Kuhnian paradigm. Its just completely disconnected from the way I think about it that I don't think it is saying anything or addressing anything that touches how I conceive of things. The brain is basically a neural network that can make inferences about sensory data, predict what goes next, generate behavior under a model of what should come next embodied in its physiology/anatomy. Abstractions are just a product of what these neural networks are calable of doing. Just completely alien to what this article talks about.
But we know that because of the ability to make inferences, to infer causality, to say that this phenomena must mean that [x]. And that, I say, is epistemologically prior to whatever we deem to be physical, as the definition of physical relies on just those rational abilities - abilities which are quite separate from sensory perception. I see the claim that abstractions are a product of physical causation as incoherent, as the notion of causation itself is an abstraction, relying on the ability to abstract and generalise. Thats the point of Maritains argument:
I don't know if I think epistemological priority comes into this. For me its about consistent observations we make.
This stuff:
Quoting Wayfarer
Might be one.
Facts about things like brains can be another. They don't really contradict each other at all, and why would they? What we know about the world and have observed tells us that they are intimately related to a deep, deep extent. Its pretty much certain at this point that our abilities to do anything mental - to see, think, behave, whatever - are a direct consequence of brain function. Thats just the status of our knowledge about the world at the moment and I don't think things like the hard problem of consciousness give us any reason to doubt that. In light of the hard problem, nothing about the mind can be reduced, abstract or not. That doesn't mean these things are not a consequence of brain function. Computers and machine learning programs can perform abstraction. In theory, any kind of abstraction could be performed by some kind of neural network.
And I think the motivation for that is to try bring the issue into the ambit of science, neuroscience in particular, as if this makes it tractable to scientific method. It is exactly one of the targets of the hard problem.
Quoting Apustimelogist
We can imbue machines with that ability, because we already possess it. If we can discern it in brain functions to some extent it's because we know what it is, and so, what we're looking for. And we know what it is, because it is internal to thought. If it were not already so, we would not be able to discern it in anything. We can't see it from the outside, though, because in order to see it, we must already possess it. Instead we project it onto the physical domain, although it is not innately present in it.
Thanks for the Youtube info. Yes, it looks like they are very active in promoting their Dept.
Scientific theories will often have internal and external contradictions arising from different theories and previous experimental and observational data, which require philosophical investigations and logical enquiries clarifying and concluding for the best principles. Without Philosophy of Mind, it would be daunting and impossible task to carry out such academic and critical processes for A.I. or Neuroscience subjects.
You can say everything is brain biology, brain state and brain process.
My perspective is you can develope theory of mind a little more. A lot of what we discuss here can fit a universal form like this:
Physical brain; (abstractions)
Physical brain; (concepts)
Physical brain; (sensing physical environment)
Physical brain; (muscle control)
Physical brain; (thinking)
Physical brain; (ideas)
Physical brain; (knowledge)
Physical brain; (information)
Physical brain; (consciousness)
Physical brain; (language)
Physical brain; (mathematics)
Physical brain; (science)
Physical brain; (philosophy)
Physical brain; (non-physicals)
Physical brain; (time perseption)
Physical brain; (visualizing)
Physical brain; (manipulating physical matter)
Physical brain; (manipulating non-physicals)
Physical brain; (how to communicate)
Physical brain; (how to encode and decode physical matter)
On and on
The notation semicolon parentheses means such that the subject in the parentheses is supported by physical brain state.
Given in this form I think it's easier to understand the debate of monism or dualism.
Also things like the word information in language isn't something that can exist outside this brain supported form.
Yes, I think this is reasonable insofar as it doesn't devolve into dualism.
I think science is just how human knowledge naturally manifests for particular kinds of subject matter. If the hard problem cannot be resolved in science, it cannot be resolved in any area of human knowledge.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but surely this is the case with all knowledge. Knowledge doesn't come in a vacuum without our own prior knowledge, prior abilities. I don't think it changes the empirical relationships we observe, which suggest that the cause of what we possess is brains.
I don't think dualism is an issue as long as the relation is understood. But subject matter appears to drive the physical world both by our experience and observation.
No, because we do not know enough and lack the capacity to make the leap from physiology to consciousness. Some may say that just wait for technology to advance and we'll show you. Well, it's been a good 40 years or so in research of the brain sciences, but we cannot even explain how the taste of chocolate could be explained neurophysiological. Asking for the taste of chocolate or the color blue, are not particularly ambitious things to ask an explanation for. But, so far, virtually nothing.
But this I think overlooks the issue, we have experience, through which we can see brains in other people (or more accurately, we designate an organ in another person and consider it a brain). But when we do brain science, we are not seeing the inside of persons thoughts, we are having perceptions of the brain of another person, and assume, quite correctly, that the thought comes from the brain, but we do not see how the brain yields thoughts, only that it does so.
Perhaps the taste of chocolate is not in the neurophysiology of the brain but in the chocolate :cool:
There is, of course, neurophysiological activity going on in the brain that is constitutive for tasting the chocolate, i.e. experiencing the taste, but the chocolate that you taste is elsewhere, not a part of the brain activity.
That is similar to the logical positivism of the mid 20th Century - 'whatever can be known, can be known by means of science'.
Maybe then you'll understand better what I mean.
Many believe that one can combine the first and third person perspectives of consciousness simply because they are the same term, consciousness. But both have nothing to do with each other, they are completely different levels.
You cannot objectify qualia, therefore you cannot examine them scientifically.
The phenomenologists can't do it either, they just don't know it yet. :wink:
You are pointing out the description of what Wilfred Sellars' says when he mentions the Manifest Image of Man, and the Scientific image of man, as you seem to indicate, two distinct perspectives which someone, at least in an ideal science, could explain with some clarity and insight, but which for now, we designate, roughly, between common-sense understanding and science.
I agree there is no mind-body problem, because we don't know what a body is, literally. Physicists don't even know what a particle is, though they do agree on some of its properties. And Newton demolished the one clear conception of materialism that existed, which was mechanical materialism. Now it's taken to mean, whatever physics says.
That can't be right, for today's physics will be different tomorrow, and physics does not tell us anything about the mind or brain, only that they are at the very bottom, made of the stuff physics describes, but that leaves a lot of stuff out.
I also agree that the hard problem of consciousness is extremely misleading, because we have many hard problems, not least the nature of motion, which Newton, Locke, Hume, Priestley, Russell and Chomsky have pointed out.
Sure, we can say that thoughts arise from brain, somehow, but we aren't too clear on how it does so.
The one explicit disagreement that I can see is that we can do so without metaphysics. Either something exists (in the world), or it does not. If we agree that something exists, it must have a nature - what's left to be determined is what the nature of the existing thing is. Crucially, whatever exists must accommodate both minds and brains, so the nature of things must allow for this continuity.
I'm unsure we can, other than as a position.
I'm not sure what you mean.
No, that is exactly the dualism that we cannot get out of our thinking. The brain and the mind are not both up there in the head. Depending on who examines it, they call it a brain or a mind. Both together don't work.
I don't quite understand, how is it that the (to use a less problematic term - perhaps) mind/brain are not in the head?
If we read a novel, we imagine the stuff the book tells us, that would be a mental representation. If a neuroscientist examines a person reading a book, then he is talking about a brain.
But you can't invoke the brain at the level of novels, because we don't know nearly enough to say how mental representations, never mind concepts work, solely by appealing to the brain, or at least you're not going to get much depth by doing so.
For a scientist's perspective, here's Sean Carroll:
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/
https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/29/seriously-the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-really-are-completely-understood/
From my perspective, in light the huge variety of technology working as well as it does these days, it would seem rather ludicrous to think that physics of tomorrow will be much different in a pragmatic sense. The fact is, modern technology involves having gotten an awful lot of things pretty much right.
Isaac Asimov's essay, The Relativity of Wrong, is well worth reading in considering this topic.
Well, if you keep in mind that we do not know what 95% of the universe is, aside from naming them "dark energy" and "dark matter" and to postulate them in order to make sense of the 5% we do know, I think there's a little bit more work to do.
And even if we do get that, to say that physics can explain concepts or representations (which you have not said), is taking physics way outside of its purview.
From a philosopher's perspective, I feel Sean Carroll, exemplary science communicator and all around gentleman that he might be, is a poor philosopher. Prone to just this kind of error:
Quoting Wolfgang
I'm not sure what you see as the significance, of how you feel about it.
Can you provide a quote by Carroll, that you see as exemplifying the sort of error you are talking about?
I agree :up:
Quoting Wolfgang
Not only is the term 'consciousness' used in two different senses but also 'perspective'. A first person perspective is indeed a perspective, but a third person perspective isn't. There is no such thing as a third person perspective.
Quoting Wolfgang
Wait a minute. We epistemically objectify mental phenomena all the time by talking about them, studying behaviors etc. despite their mode of existing (first person) which makes them ontologically unavailable for other kinds of examination (third person).
From defining mental phenomena as "subjective" and science as "objective" it doesn't follow that mental phenomena is unavailable for science. ´
Not at all. I'm saying there is nothing special about science. I believe knowledge and methodology evolves in different ways to best suit the field. That's how physics has arrived at its methods, same with biology, same with history, sociology, musicology, theology, sabermetrics, anthropology, etc, etc.
I genuinely don't think that there is any possibility of explaining phenomenal consciousness through the lense of a biologist or anyone else. Because I don't think phenomenality can be explained by anyone, I have no motivation to look at things from any different perspective that were to be radically different from modern neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology. I am not casting away phenomena. I just don't think there can be given a compelling, satisfying explanation for what-it's-like-ness.
I appreciate the answer and I like your forthrightness. But I don't think Chalmer's point in 'facing up to the problem of consciousness' really is a call for an explanation. It's not pointing out a flaw in the naturalist account, by saying the nature of consciousness is a problem for naturalism as currently understood. Or that scientific accounts of the mind leave something important out.
Philosophy itself is very much concerned with the meaning of being. It is not concerned with an explanation in the functional sense of explaining one thing in terms of another. From a scientific point of view, that sounds hopelessly vague and quixotic. It's not sharply defined and doesn't have crisp boundaries. But some of the most pressing questions in life are like that.
Quoting Wolfgang
Agree - this is largely attributable to Cartesian dualism which posits a 'res cogitans', literally, 'thinking thing', an oxymoronic conception. However, there has been a revival of interest in hylomorphism, which is derived from Aristotle's matter-form dualism, which is a completely different animal, with current advocates including William Jaworksi and others.
Quoting Wolfgang
I take issue with this claim. From Descartes' oxymoronic 'res cogitans' we inherit an unintelligible metaphor for the nature of mind. The principle problem is indeed perspectival, because the thinking being is never itself among the objects of perception. So it can't be grasped or comprehended objectively, which is why diehard materialists such as Dennett seek to eliminate it. The OP acknowledges this, but then just says 'so much the worse for philosophy'.
So I agree the unsatisfactoriness of dualism arises from trying to treat the mind as some object or thing. But as the OP also says, 'what is mind' is a badly-asked question - UNLESS it is asked as a kind of koan, a question that dissolves itself in the asking of it. By coming to realise that the mind is in some profound and real sense actually unknowable, that it, and therefore we ourselves, are a mystery at the heart of being. So that it is enter religious, esoteric or mystical grounds, an essential and primordial aspect of human being.
As to every organism comprising nothing but matter, this is outright materialism, and I reject it completely. But that doesn't mean endorsing any kind of thinking substance. The aspect of the human nearest the immaterial is the capacity to grasp meaning, is to see the real meaning of things. Of course that is preserved in science, but in a limited and specific way - an instrumental way, according to Adorno's analysis. We value science for its instrumental utility, not so much for its ability to grasp capital T truth. But that kind of insight into the big picture, the overall meaning of things, is precisely what is meant by sagacity (or sapience), and that is where something like 'the immaterial spirit' is revealed, albeit that nowadays sounds a rather gauche expression. (Who is that gauche amigo :chin: )
I think we can be highly confident thoughts arise in human beings from the brain. We can lose almost any part of our bodies and still have thoughts. But if you remove the brain, no more thinking.
The problem is not from where do thoughts come from, but the how.
Physical brain; (mind)
A fairly simple concept.
Again using the same relation it means that mind is supported by physical brain state.
All the things that fit this form are one thing...what the brain supports...but the word mind is a more all encompassing word.
Now instead of mind being off limits we have an understanding of its physical basis and since we have direct access to mind and not to biology we can make some progress.
Physical brain; (thought)
Physical brain; (ideas)
Physical brain; (knowledge)
Physical brain; (information)
Physical brain; (consciousness)
Physical brain; (memory)
Physical brain; (planning)
Physical brain; (time perseption)
Physical brain; (non-physicals)
Physical brain; (communication abilities)
*
*
*
AND mind
Physical brain; (mind)
The pattern seems to be that we have a lot of words for what the brain does. Maybe a trap is that we argue for the meaning of a word and miss the big picture.
Although it supports the functions of mind, surely physical brain is not mind itself is it? Has any Science come to a concrete answer to the question?
I would say the minds physical form is the physical brain itself. To me that is a starting point. After that there is a lot to sort through.
Physically.
If you want to consider the question seriously it will involve studying a lot of science. However, I suspect you just wanted to do philosophical performance art, by asking a non-serious question. Am I right?
I was just asking the most compelling question I used to have on mind problem, but had no answers.
Please elaborate further?
I think that this is a very interesting question, and goes to the heart of what current AI processes actually are. It's more a topic for the philosophy of language, than mind, but the two are closely related, language being a reflection of mind.
The Ai is formulated to look at the exact words which you use, and the exact way that you use them, compare this with others, and thereby categorize you, produce a very specific "type" constructed just for you, the individual. You are a type. But it isn't really "you" that it is representing with that specialized type, it is simply what you want, as represented by that one specific instance of language use. And, as you note, it is very adept at giving you what you ask for. Beside the fact that it has all sort of language use available at its fingertips to analyze, it is very impressive because it is designed with that one intent, to represent what you want, without the interference of having its own desires, which happens with human to human interaction. The machine has the capacity to determine what you want without being influenced by what it wants, if the only thing it wants is to give you what you want.
Of course, misuse is extremely likely. To begin with, ulterior motives are probably already cooked into the machine, intent other than to simply provide a representation of what you want, such as data collection and other forms of classification for you, for advertising or whatever.
Imagine if an AI were to stalk you. It can already produce a very good representation of what you want, from one simple instance of language use. Do you think that if it followed a whole lot of your language use, it could produce a very clear model of "you", or would it get totally confused by all sorts of conflicting wants, and see you as a completely unintelligible being?
Sorry about that waste of time.
Not at all.
Happens to all of us. :smile:
I am not sure what you are suggesting the problem of consciousness is then. I think it must be related to explanation because if there was an explanation then there would be no issue for physicalism. I think though there are alternative ways of looking at naturalism if we go through the avenue of looking at how there may be inherent limits on explanation.
Ultimately, I think as metaphysical frameworks, naturalism and physicalism are pretty thin; but they also capture strong intuitions myself and other people have. As I have mentioned elsewhere I suspect maybe it could be conceptualized instead in terms of the rejection of certain scientist hypotheses about the world e.g. about dualism, the supernatural.
Quoting Wayfarer
For me, meaning is functional. If our behavior is functionally explained by brains entirely then meaning is as well.
If functions are regarded to be nothing more than tools, then it would seem that the intensional meaning of functions is entirely dependent upon the intentional state of the investigator who applies them.
It seems to me that the identification of meaning and function per-se doesn't distinguish function realism from function anti-realism and idealism. (Kripkean skepticism comes to mind again)
I get it. I was drawn to philosophy for different reasons to many here (not necessarily better or worse, but different.) My motivation was the quest for philosophical enlightenment, which is a way of being or attaining a superior affective state. I don't feel I have succceeded in that, but it doesn't dim my belief that it is real and that it is nearer the meaning of philosophy as traditionally understood. I didn't see philosophy as a research program to establish the causal connections between neural states and behaviours, although I have discovered a few sources on the neuroscience of mindfulness, for instance James H. Austin's Zen and the Brain and The Buddha's Brain, Rick Hanson, so there can be a cross-over. But if it's looked at purely through the perspective of today's naturalism (I say 'todays' because the definition constantly shifts), it tends too much towards scientism for my liking. I continue to believe that humans are more than physical - that we are metaphysical beings with access to planes of being beyond the physical.
A good argument for mind is all the variations in our minds. Like all the books in the libraries. Different brains, different minds. Not the case that all brains are alike.
there are neither intensional nor intentional states imo
Quoting sime
Not sure what you're saying here but definitely a fan of Kripkenstein.
"According to functionalists, mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of" - IEP
Yet functionalism leaves the very nature of "doing" unspecified, so it is hard to think of what functionalism rules in versus out. The concept of functions/doing is part descriptive and part normative, and related to metaphysical presuppositions about the nature of time, causality and counterfactuals. For instance, can "doing" purely consist of synchronised motions like the contents of a movie? or is agency, causation and the notion of counterfactuals involved?
Kripke came to mind for similar reasons, in his astonishment to learn that the meaning of mathematical functions is intensional, i.e implicit and normative, as opposed extensional i.e explicit and descriptive.
(Data might be interpreted as expressing a function, but cannot ground the meaning of the function or make the meaning of the function explicit, since the latter's meaning is inexhaustible from the perspective of the user of the function who understands it normatively, while being open to interpretation from the perspective of an observer of the purported function who understands it descriptively)
I asked ChatGPT if it had time perception and it answered NO and that it was a human trait. I thought that was interesting. I asked some geometry questions like 3D objects and it does great on those and sometimes returned more than I would have known so a useful tool. It's a big deal, no doubt. It did seem very mechanical and constrained. Not quite a human response on all questions and on some questions it seemed like it was just retrieving a page of text.
To me it seems like AI is still mechanics. I suspect brains do it differently. My guess is brains are advanced enough that they really do manipulate non-physicals. The computers are just running lines of code.
Not entirely sure about this, I could be wrong.
I still think there is more potential in developing theory of mind than not.
Yes, I wasn't necessarily trying to identify meaning with function but more like there isn't anything more to what we call meaning than 'function' which is just a vague way of me talki g about sequences of events. Like Kripke, Wittgenstein, Quine suggest, I think meaning becomes completely deflated. There's no objective essence about it. We can concpetualize ourselves as complex brains which just go through sequences of brain states. Or alternately sequences of experiences. But with experiences it gets vague and I feel like my intuition of experiences are very different from some other people.
Consciousness and the philosophy of mind is perfect topic for that conjoint study. The history of consciousness research, complete with its ancient history, the later behavioral hiatus, and the recent re-update, is a story the co-dependence between philosophy and science (for better or for worse).
That being said, I am regularly frustrated by intransigent philosophical arguments that seem to derive from some fundamental misunderstanding somewhere or unproven viewpoint, but that the cause is impossible to identify due to the complexity of the arguments. In some cases though it is entirely clear. I've been trying to read Chalmer's The Conscious Mind, and, while Chalmer's was the one who got me interested in consciousness in the first place and I have tremendous respect for him, I am frustrated by the oblique assumptions that riddle his arguments -- assumptions that I don't agree with.
On the other other hand, I have come to recognize and accept that these kinds of debates are the domain of philosophy, and that ultimately they do lead to exactly the outcomes that we need for science to partake.
The topic of consciousness and other philosophy of mind questions are still deeply unknown. Taking a scientific viewpoint, I have a strong theory that explains consciousness in purely reductionist mechanistic principles, and I can argue that it explains phenomenal consciousness. But any arguments I present will not be accepted because the explanations are too far from our intuitions. That's where philosophy of mind comes in, to discuss the hows and whys of the explanatory gap between any scientific theory and our intuitions.
Works for me. :up:
In science, this quality is a feature not a bug and therefore piques my philosophical interest. :cool:
:up:
If you've read Being No One (or its less technical summary The Ego Tunnel) by Thomas Metzinger, I wonder what you think of his phenomenal self model (PSM) of consciousness. If you're not familiar with his work, Malcoim, I highly recommend it given your self-described interest in the philosophy of mind. (Also, this ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/755060)
Was it? I have never heard of anything like that. And when I read the study, the methodology seemed solid.
I've not fully vetted these sources.
The third is an opinion piece by a single researcher, instead of actual research, I did not read the full thing but it seems to generally say something along the same lines as the second link.
Far from the studies being discredited.
https://www.salon.com/2024/04/01/the-most-anti-science-belief-you-can-hold-is-that-science-is-a-religion/
Quoting AmadeusD
What are you even saying? I have defended nothing in this thread.
Twin studies. Not sure how you're missing your own comments?
Quoting Lionino
* flaws.
Quoting Lionino
I don't think you read these sources, then. THey are clearly not doing what they have been purported to be doing. They aren't reliable, for basically anything they have been relied on. If that's not 'discredit'ing I can't understand what you'd think is, short of finding evidence for fraud.
Quoting Lionino
If you have read these sources, I need only say 'Obviously not'.
Pretty bad article, but at least the author is trying to update their thinking:
https://www.salon.com/2024/04/02/some-people-may-see-more-images-per-second-than-others-study-finds/
Doubting that a method of simply gathering data is "discredited" is not what I would a call a "defence" of something. If anything, it is progressfocuses dot com that seems emotionally invested:
That IQ is significantly inheritable is a frequently reproduced finding of psychology which is remarkable for a field that has so much trouble reproducing.
In fact, what I meant by second link is the third, by third is the fourth, I did not realise there were actually 4 of them... Now reading the second link, nevermind, it is basically a medium post by a "Future physician-scientist". Again an opinion piece by someone who does not hold qualifications. In any case, he brings up, like every link, the "equal environments assumption", and in the end, I am not sure you have missed, he shows the graph of a meta-analysis showing the correlation of some traits between twins. The meta-analysis says:
Quoting Meta-analysis of the heritability of human traits based on fifty years of twin studies
Quoting Lionino
That may not be as impressive as it sounds, give that the definition of the concept of IQ is itself fraught with contention.
That makes it more impressive. How many other vaguely-defined concepts do you know of that are very heritable?
Only those that are vaguely heritable.
If one begins with a concept that can be defined in different ways, such that there is no one I.Q. but myriad kinds on there is no overarching consensus, then what exactly it is that is being inherited is also going to suffer from lack of clarity.
An interesting little Zoom-in you've made there. Quoting Lionino
These do not indicate what you've claimed. They bring to the fore the flaws in the study for ascertaining anything between Twins specifically.
Quoting Joshs
As I understand it, it is only contentious with those who do not like the results in aggregate. It is one of the better-tested psychological parameters we know of.
Quoting flannel jesus
The above from FJ makes it clear that IQ is not 'fraught' in any way that you can't ascribe to 'Why are we alive'. We are. It's not arguable. IQ's are consistent and heritable. Minimally mutable. But we don't know what it is. That's not a huge problem.
As much contention as there might, g-factor is still highly related to academic achievement.
Quoting AmadeusD
No clue what you are trying to say. Feel free to make a concrete point.
My guess is theyre as much conflated as they are related. Intelligence tests are already achievement tests.
Raven matrices are not influenced by educational or cultural background. That raven matrices scores and educational background are correlated is more than likely due to a common cause: genetically inherited intelligence.
But given I expect this to either be missed or ignored, lets just move on to agreeing IQ is a fairly robust psychological measure.