tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post748446317185295834..comments2024-01-14T01:51:23.999-05:00Comments on DuckRabbit: Monk in the land of churchesDuckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11349267352262603510noreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-10960273458355577202007-12-15T11:54:00.000-05:002007-12-15T11:54:00.000-05:00Anton has responded here (or click the link below...Anton has responded <A HREF="http://brainscam.blogspot.com/2007/12/churchland-again-how-to-duck-some.html" REL="nofollow">here</A> (or click the link below, either one). So let's go over there; but of course if my response gets unwieldy I'll do a separate post here.Duckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11349267352262603510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-3978669482758693342007-12-12T22:41:00.000-05:002007-12-12T22:41:00.000-05:00Yes, some interesting comments over there. I've n...Yes, some interesting comments over there. I've noticed that commenters at LR often turn down Leiter's invitation to abuse Continentals.Duckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11349267352262603510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-46910827181980085182007-12-11T23:05:00.000-05:002007-12-11T23:05:00.000-05:00can you feel the continental love??http://leiterre...can you feel the continental love??<BR/><BR/>http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2007/12/longuenesse-on.html#commentsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-77935937443204891662007-12-10T17:19:00.000-05:002007-12-10T17:19:00.000-05:00I've posted some incomplete thoughts over at my bl...I've posted some incomplete thoughts over at my blog:<BR/><BR/>www.methodsofprojection.blogspot.comN. N.https://www.blogger.com/profile/05983492370711591794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-56406128518667314362007-12-09T00:32:00.000-05:002007-12-09T00:32:00.000-05:00I haven't read all the comments(some of them are l...I haven't read all the comments(some of them are long!), but that is definitely not going to stop me.<BR/><BR/>1. mind-brain identity theory is incoherent because there can be no physical fact about subjective experience and all experience is subjective. qualia is just the most obvious example, but really science can't describe how my computer appears to me. it can construct a way in which the computer appears, but i experience the computer subjectively.<BR/><BR/>2. neuroscience is a good thing. understanding the brain from a scientific perspective is important for many reasons and will probably be beneficial.<BR/><BR/>3. however this does not mean that understanding the brain will mean we understand consciousness. this is because that even if consciousness is somehow rooted in the brain, that does not mean that consciousness is limited to the brain. i am conscious of my entire body and the way in which i interact with the world is through my body. i have no idea how to relate to the world through my mind (though it seems like Professor X can and I am quite jealous).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-22285826178058887412007-12-09T00:28:00.000-05:002007-12-09T00:28:00.000-05:00S-Dan, for an informative debate on these sorts o...S-Dan, for an informative debate on these sorts of issues google around for the dialoque of Dr. Changeux and Ricoeur from a few years ago, who on occasion quotes St. Wittgenstein as well. Dr. Changeux mostly defeats Ricoeur's various gambits--whether Cartesian, Wittgensteinian, or theological--in a manner of moves, including the supposed denials of iso-morphism (between brain structure and thinking) that some metaphysicians take for argument.<BR/><BR/>Moreover, the sort of pejorative "materialist" accusations of d-r are mostly "bad air" as Nietzsche would say: modern neurology is not some Democritus-like billard-ball model of causality, but involves highly complex bio-chemical models that are just beginning to be unravelled (yet Wm James himself had suggested a physiological sort of analysis of consciousness a century ago, did he not) . <BR/><BR/>While various cortical areas have been correlated with brain functions, from syntax/semantics, quantitative reasoning, memory, etc., the Changeux's (and Churchlands, and Pinker perhaps in that group) grant that a complete isomorphism remains years if not decades away. But at some point in the next few decades humans more than likely will neurally-interface with digital-networks ala Strange Days, if not William Gibson...................Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-7847043140838737652007-12-08T22:26:00.000-05:002007-12-08T22:26:00.000-05:00Sweet Dreams is definitely worthwhile, but as far ...<I>Sweet Dreams</I> is definitely worthwhile, but as far as "intuition pumps" go, there are probably more per unit area in <I>Consciousness Explained</I>.<BR/><BR/>And yes, I do mean *Phineas* Gage. I probably said "Nicholas" because I really dislike Nicholas *Cage*, so much so that a spike through the head seems like just the ticket.Duckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11349267352262603510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-75957151292769775042007-12-08T21:33:00.000-05:002007-12-08T21:33:00.000-05:00The quote was from memory; PI 79 actually reads "S...The quote was from memory; PI 79 actually reads "Say what you choose, so long as it does not prevent you from seeing the facts. (And when you see them there is a good deal that you will not say.)" I have PI in searchable PDF form, which makes looking these things up a good bit easier. (Though typos can be a problem. It's not the best scan in the world.)<BR/><BR/>"Okay, but now this is starting to sound analytic: what will count for us as the "details" *just is* what is irrelevant to our philosophical question."<BR/>Point taken.<BR/><BR/>On reflection, reports of weird psychological phenomena certainly were helpful (to me) in getting away from a view of first-person authority as relying on some sort of "introspection" of mental facts. I suppose I can see how other weird phenomena could be helpful in dispelling other bits of Cartesianism. I should probably pick up "Sweet Dreams".<BR/><BR/>Also, did you mean Phineas Gage? He's the railroad-spike-through-the-head guy. Nicolas Gage appears to be some sort of Irish nobleman. If "the current Viscount Gage of Firle Place" has something to do with cognitive science, Google is not helping me figure out what it could be.Daniel Lindquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05443116324301716578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-54922315042800371222007-12-08T14:40:00.000-05:002007-12-08T14:40:00.000-05:00Thanks Daniel as always. Rambly is okay. In fact...Thanks Daniel as always. Rambly is okay. In fact maybe that's appropriate here where we have to look at things from a bunch of angles. But it can make it hard to see if we agree.<BR/><BR/>Re: the first part of your comment, I think we do agree. "Speak as you please ... " is a good moral. Is that the actual quote? (if so where is it? I love LW but I forget where he says what.) The time I saw him Conant said (on his own behalf, not quoting) "we can say whatever we want as long as we don't get confused," which is also good. Problems arise when we take one way of talking to be <I>forced</I> on us by "the facts themselves" (i.e. plus our unexamined philosophical commitments, which are really doing the forcing). So when I criticize a particular way of talking, it is usually to worry about it being misleading (say, in leaving a relevantly problematic assumption in place) rather than it being Wrong. Yet we can indeed speak of "facts" here. The picture *is* a picture-rabbit, and if you're not seeing it you're missing something. (Bonus: you've given me the impetus for another post.)<BR/><BR/>"It seems to me that one might say that the <I>details</I> of what goes on in the eye and brain are irrelevant to [philosophical/conceptual] questions".<BR/><BR/>Okay, but now this is starting to sound analytic: what will count for us as the "details" *just is* what is irrelevant to our philosophical question.<BR/><BR/>"But I have a hard time seeing how neuroscience could be helpful in quandaries of this sort."<BR/><BR/>Let's say you're burdened with a hopelessly Cartesian view of the mind. This is a philosophical issue, not an empirical one. Neuroscience can't decide it for us. I agree with all that.<BR/><BR/>In the ("purely"?) philosophical context, we've been hammering away at this conception ever since Kant (or even Spinoza, depending on how you look at it; but from the present perspective Kant's looks more like the key advance). That hasn't (*cough*) been universally successful. So nowadays we use thought experiments like brains in vats to capture, and then (with our counterexamples or other analyses) dismiss the relevant confused but tenacious intuitions. (Of course Kant uses thought experiments too, or at least examples, like left-handed gloves and cinnabar and 7 + 5 = 12 and whatnot.)<BR/><BR/>But for a lot of people (including most philosophers, alas) this hasn't worked either. Maybe it's still too abstract, or too removed from things we can see (that brains in vats are hard to imagine may be the point, but it also makes that point paradoxically hard to grasp). So Dennett tries something else. Forget <I>thought</I> experiments. How about *actual* experiments (concerning eye saccades or whatever), or even weird clinical phenomena that we didn't have to "set up" at all (Nicolas Gage, blindsight, blindness denial, other Oliver Sacks-y things). These aren't abstract at all: they're full-fledged empirical phenomena, well within the domain of neuroscience, and demanding neuroscientific explanation ("Doctor, what's wrong with me?").<BR/><BR/>So let's listen in when neuroscientists explain them. They say things like "well, there's no one part of the brain where "the experience of vision" takes place; different parts of the brain are responsible for different aspects of it, and there's no one place where they "come together". [Insert long complicated description of neurological "details" here.] That's what accounts for these weird phenomena."<BR/><BR/>Now if you ask neuroscientists, they'll say their explanation consists in the long complicated description I redacted, and the rest of it was an informal gloss on it for our convenience. It's not <I>required</I> by the data, but it seems to be the natural way to talk, and it helps dispel some of the mysterious nature of these phenomena (how can someone <I>sincerely deny that they're blind?</I>) But that part – and that result – is just what we philosophers are interested in.<BR/><BR/>Let's say this does the trick. Will we say that the problem was "solved by neuroscience"? That's a stretch, as I wouldn't count it as "doing the trick" until we had really incorporated that way of talking (i.e as an option) into our thinking about the whole range of subjects (and ways of talking about them) for which the Cartesian conception of mind is causing conceptual problems. That's for philosophers to do (and have been trying to do already, well before the theoretical-neuroscientific Johnny Come Latelies). And of course there's no necessary connection (as it can seem to materialists that there is) between appealing to neuroscience and fighting Cartesianism (as for my money materialism is just as Cartesian as dualism – just as "dualistic" even).<BR/><BR/>But it seems to me just as much of a stretch, in the good cases, to say that neuroscience was <I>irrelevant</I> here (the mere supplier of details), or even that (in a limited way) it was less than *instrumental*. That some of us didn't <I>need</I> to turn to neuroscience doesn't mean that it <I>can't</I> help to do so. Nothing's going to make neuroscience into philosophy, so I don't see the point in insisting on sharp disciplinary lines between the theoretical aspects of (still strictly) empirical science and the more specific manifestations of philosophical ideas (qua philosophical). The problem with Churchland was not that he was turning to neuroscience at all, but that even before he does so we can tell that his project was doomed to failure, whatever the neuroscientists say.Duckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11349267352262603510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-22231586465959371662007-12-08T02:45:00.000-05:002007-12-08T02:45:00.000-05:00I'm not sure why saying we "see the same drawing" ...I'm not sure why saying we "see the same drawing" in the different aspects (now a duck, now a rabbit) leads to scheme-content dualism. But then I'm inclined to say "we see the same drawing, <I>and</I> different drawings" -- and this not in a contradictory sense, since what "same drawing" and "different drawing" get at here can be fleshed out in ways that don't entail anything (A&~A)-ish. ("See, both the duck and the rabbit are printed with the same lines of ink. But the lines look one way when you see them as forming a duck, and another way when you see them as forming a rabbit. So, both same and different.") But it also seems fine to me to say that we have a "single drawing" that appears in different ways, or multiple drawings formed from a single set of lines, or several other ways of describing the duckrabbit. "Speak as you please, so long as you don't lose sight of the facts" and all that.<BR/><BR/>If by "The duckrabbit is a single drawing which can be seen in different ways" one meant that the drawing is really, say, <I>just lines</I> without any particular form (the "single drawing"), and that the duck and the rabbit are both interpretations of those plain lines, then I can see the scheme-content worries: the "plain lines" are just another aspect of the duckrabbit, just another way the lines can be seen, and not something "merely empirical" for a "conceptual scheme" to organize. (This was actually my first response to W's duckrabbit in PI -- it didn't look like much of <I>anything</I>; I still think it's a pretty poor excuse for a rabbit.) But I don't think that this scheme-content-y thought is forced on everyone who wants to say the duck and the rabbit are the "same drawing" or "same image" or "same picture".<BR/><BR/>On the issue of "conceptual problems": It seems plausible to me that there might be "conceptual problems" (as opposed to "empirical problems") which are not answered by philosophy. A judge resolving apparently contradictory laws in a court-ruling, for example. Or possibly things like Einstein's theories -- Einstein did not make additional empirical inquiries to formulate his theories, but took some of the problems which were already known in existing systems of physics and resolved them by fiddling with concepts like "mass", "space", and their mathematical stand-ins. Or possibly the sorts of redescriptions of problematic situations one finds in counseling, or in novels. I'm not inclined to call any of these "philosophy", nor do any of them strike me as "empirical problems"; in each case the empirical is held constant, so to speak -- the judge, the theorist, the counselor, and the novelist do not need to call for further experimentation to solve their problems (at least not in <I>every</I> case). So this would seem to be a sense in which there are conceptual problems, but it's not philosophy's task to solve them. (I'm not sure how well I like this paragraph. There are certainly ways in which philosophy is <I>like</I> jurisprudence, scientific theorizing, psychotherapy, and creative writing, so it's probably too fast to just say that these are "not philosophy". Duck's right that this is a tricky line to walk.)<BR/><BR/>"So while in some sense it's true that "what is going on in the brain or eye at the time I am so struck is simply irrelevant" – which is why I was able to say what I did without using any neuroscience – in another sense it isn't. Empirical results can and do affect our philosophical understanding of them. How could they not? They provide the content for our map."<BR/>It seems to me that one might say that the <I>details</I> of what goes on in the eye and brain are irrelevant to questions of, say, whether the objects of perception are distal or proximal, direct or representational. Though of course what I'm doing with my eyes (along with my brain and other organs) when I see something is just what I'm concerned with when I try to clear up a conceptual issue about visual perception. Certainly my visual experience (and what I know about my capacity for visual experiences) is not <I>floating free</I> of the conceptual issues I'm worried about here; the conceptual issues bother me because of their intimate link to my own experiences, and my experience involves the concepts I'm concerned with. (Indeed, trying to decide which concepts are appropriate for describing what my experiencing an object involves is just what the conceptual problem is.) But I have a hard time seeing how neuroscience could be helpful in quandaries of this sort. Which is an entirely separate question from whether or not neuroscience generally is tilting at windmills. Plenty of "empirical" questions about the mind that neuroscience might be able to answer, like "How can we cure congenital blindness?" and "How can we suppress visual hallucinations in schizophrenics?". These are questions about the <I>mind</I> as opposed to the <I>brain</I> (they're posed in psychological vocabulary), but they are still clearly in the domain of medicine, not philosophy. And it would be possible for them to be answered without our understanding the biochemical processes "underlying" our medicine. (We might develop a useful antipsychotic drug by trial and error, through refining previous drugs, without at any point having a good story about what we're doing "at the neural level". Or even at a higher biological level; we might be only able to describe our progress in psychological vocabulary, with talk of minds, seeings, etc..)<BR/><BR/>That was kinda rambly. In related news, Vicodin is a heckuva pill.Daniel Lindquisthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05443116324301716578noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-22755516184971586242007-12-07T15:12:00.000-05:002007-12-07T15:12:00.000-05:00I said "Philosophy doesn't provide answers by itse...I said "Philosophy doesn't provide answers by itself, to conceptual problems or scientific ones"; and N. N. naturally asks:<BR/><BR/>"Why not conceptual problems?"<BR/><BR/>Hmmm. I try to walk a fine line here, and perhaps I fell over a bit to one side this time. Let me try again. I am indeed willing to see philosophy as "providing answers" to conceptual problems (as Wittgenstein does here, in untangling the conceptual mess). I'm even willing (<I>pace</I> "Wittgensteinian" "quietism") to see some of those answers as taking the form (in the context) of philosophical "doctrines." So I shouldn't have said that. I just wanted to register the therapeutic aspect of the "answer" here. ("<I>pace</I> Wittgensteinian quietism"! Get it?? Honestly, I'm such a card. But there's a point there too ... )<BR/><BR/>"So while we don't want to close off empirical enquiries, there certainly are limits to what those inquiries can tell us."<BR/><BR/>I agree, but I'm not convinced that we should construe the nature of those limits in the way you do. It just sounds like a conceptual/empirical dualism. It's true that you can pick up the issue from the conceptual end. But I take "mapping the logical geography" of a concept to mean explaining its uses in such a way as to "reject the [misleading] grammar that [all too often, in concert with misguided philosophy] tries to force itself on us [thus creating "philosophical problems," the kinds with deflationary rather than "constructive" "answers"]." And delineating the proper arrangement of empirical uses of a concept seems to me inseparable from <I>what those empirical uses actually are</I>, which is itself inseparable from the states of affairs they are used to describe – that is, actual empirical results.<BR/><BR/>So while in some sense it's true that "what is going on in the brain or eye at the time I am so struck is simply irrelevant" – which is why I was able to say what I did without using any neuroscience – in another sense it isn't. Empirical results can and do affect our philosophical understanding of them. How could they not? They provide the <I>content</I> for our map. If they were different then so would the map be. Often – even most of the time – this is trivial, allowing us to ignore the particular details of the empirical results (as here). But sometimes it isn't – and we can't know ahead of time when that will be, but instead deal with the results (and, most likely, the resulting conceptual confusion) when they come in.<BR/><BR/>That won't be enough, but I'll leave the rest for later. (It's a Davidsonian thing.)Duckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11349267352262603510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-73702114322804089852007-12-07T12:07:00.000-05:002007-12-07T12:07:00.000-05:00It's true that the materialist answer "leaves some...<I> It's true that the materialist answer "leaves something out" conceptually.</I><BR/><BR/><BR/><BR/>Such as? That the behaviorist --or neurologist---cannot reproduce someone else's sensations or perceptions of color on paper or transmit them to another person does not mean that something is left out, nor does it disprove the "identity" thesis (or bio-dependency of consciousness in older terms): it means that cognitive science has not as of yet been fully worked out. <BR/><BR/>For a more relevant proof of bio-dependency of mind, try this hypothetical: ingest a pint of Jaegermeister quickly. Then go for a drive on the 101. <BR/><BR/> (and, funny the penal code actually upholds that rather crude "causal conditional")Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-64889894696876300502007-12-07T11:38:00.000-05:002007-12-07T11:38:00.000-05:00"Philosophy doesn't provide answers by itself, to ..."Philosophy doesn't provide answers by itself, to conceptual problems or scientific ones."<BR/><BR/>Why not to conceptual problems? If the question is "What is it to 'be struck' by a likeness (or whatever)," then what is going on in the brain or eye at the time I am so struck is simply irrelevant. Whatever is going on in the brain or eye, while it may play some role (i.e., as a physical condition), does not figure into the concept of 'being struck.' And that's what we're after. We want to know what 'being struck' amounts to, which is to say, we want to know what this form of words <I>means</I>, what are the (rough) boundaries of the concept. And this is what philosophy is supposed to tell us. As a critique of language, philosopy is supposed to map out the logical geography of this concept.<BR/><BR/>So while we don't want to close of empirical enquiries, there certainly are limits to what those inquiries can tell us. At most, they can tell us that certain physical processes (in the brain or eye) are inductively well correlated to certain <I>other</I> phenomena (e.g., a facial expression) that are constitutive (in a family-resemblance sort of way) of what it is 'be struck' by a likeness.N. N.https://www.blogger.com/profile/05983492370711591794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-75071331172504860352007-12-07T11:20:00.000-05:002007-12-07T11:20:00.000-05:00Thanks DR! My favorite parts of PI are before tha...Thanks DR! My favorite parts of PI are before that. But this part is great too. Check it out, everybody:<BR/><BR/>---<BR/>"But you will surely admit that there is a difference between pain-behaviour accompanied by pain and pain-behaviour without any pain?" [Hmm, someone thinks W is a behaviourist.] Admit it? What greater difference could there be?—"And yet you again and again reach the conclusion that the sensation itself is a <I>nothing</I>."—Not at all. It is not a <I>something</I>, but not a <I>nothing</I> either! The conclusion was only that a nothing would serve just as well as a something about which nothing could be said [i.e. because of its essential privacy, like the beetle of §293]. We have only rejected the grammar which tries to force itself on us here.<BR/>---<BR/><BR/>I would go on, but that's enough for now. As for the other issue, I was probably too quick to attribute that non-pragmatic attitude to W himself. I was probably thinking about how when people (like Monk) argue against the very idea of cognitive science on conceptual grounds, they sometimes do so in W's name. As here, my sympathy with that criticism goes only so far. But we'll get into that later, when I get back to Dennett.<BR/><BR/>Thanks again!Duckhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11349267352262603510noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10666901.post-4761883509596926852007-12-07T09:44:00.000-05:002007-12-07T09:44:00.000-05:00The line about not a something and not a nothing e...The line about not a something and not a nothing either (<I>"Sie ist kein Etwas, aber auch nicht ein Nichts!"</I>) is from PI 304.<BR/><BR/>And I think Wittgenstein would agree with you that no line of empirical inquiry should (or could) be closed off by philosophy.DRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08332954000692559637noreply@blogger.com