The Human Question

Don't our thoughts always occur in a practical context?  Don't all practical contexts involve self-movement, memory of the past, anticipation of the future, freely initiated interaction with our environment and desire? Have you ever met a person who only talked when answering questions?  Who otherwise remained inert?  Who never had to learn a language from scratch but came pre-programmed?  Who possessed no other life activities other than communicating?  Who could think and communicate but not perceive?

Russell maintained (sez Feser) that the same reality is neither mental nor physical, but a third "neither" that presents itself in two modes.  The difference between the two is one of representation.  When I consider sensation in the first person, I see that I see color.  When I consider it in the third person, I see a brain.  As Feser said, this is an epistemological difference but not a metaphysical. To the latter I would counter that there is not difference in mode of presentation without a difference in the thing presented.   One mode of presentation considers it according to its matter, the other through its form.  The identity statement--"the brainy entity acting in such and such a way is Jeremy perceiving color" is essentially "entity x viewed in terms of its proximate matter is the same entity x but now viewed under its form.":

Ed Feser argues against panpsychism by pointing out that even if molecules did have consciousness, molecules without consciousness could perform their roles just as well.  I anticipate that proponents of panpsychism would counter by postulating that the actions we see in physics would be impossible without consciousness.  To which I would reply that if there are a few counter-examples (of course, it's hard to talk seriously of counter-examples when the proponents of the opposite example can't illustrate their position with even one example), then we might refer to these as zombie molecules. Slightly more seriously: isn't the positing of psyches in this manner not unlike Aristotle's attributing of consciousness to the spheres?

"A naturalistic expansion of evolutionary theory to account for consciousness would not refer to the intentions of a designer.  [and now the part that I really like]  But if it aspires to explain the appearance of consciousness as such, it would have to offer some account of why the appearance of conscious organisms, and not merely behaviorally complex organisms, was likely."

Pan psychism is a clumsy way of recognizing the need for final and formal causality in nature.  And it seems less whimsical once one considers that our knowledge of final causality in nature has its roots in our self knowledge, i.e., our knowledge of self as agent.  For both an Aristotelian and a pan-psychist might agree (albeit for different reasons) that lower-than-human entities are, in a sense, diminished versions of human agents.

Can consciousness be adequately described in terms of behavior?  If that is the case, then what sort of behavior is the act of wondering about the whole universe/multverse/cosmos?

Rough draft: Science's greater objectivity hinges upon the objectively quantifiable nature of its object. That object is such because it pertains to common sensibles. Common sensible features of the perceived world are grasped as such through kinesthesis. Kinesthesis itself is no less a qualia than any other object of perception, albeit more objective because the point of convergence of more than one sense (movement of eyes; movement of limbs). Moral of the story: there's no non-qualitative point of access to nature.

Dawkins' central philosophical argument against theism can be paraphrased thus: 1. a being that can do what God purportedly does must be very complex, and 2. such a being must have evolved, and 3. no being that has evolved could be God. The first claim can be dealt with by looking at the arguments for the divine simplicity (Q. 3 in the Summa theologiae).  Those arguments hinge upon the five ways, which Dawkins either ignores or (in the case of the first way) misreads in a way that is almost comical. But of course, one who misunderstands human nature will not be able to take the arguments in Q3 seriously.  So the preamble to these arguments must be philosophical anthropology: namely, the contrasting of the binding problem that besets materialism, with the notion of the soul as the first activity of the body.  Once once recognizes the need for an activity (the soul) that is, with respect to the body, simple, one is able to appreciate how God could be simply immateria...

I am not sure of what is meant by 'folk psychology': is it our tendency to reify aspects of perception, belief into representations?  Could it be our common sense convictions about our agency (i.e., sizing up a situation in terms of our goals; deliberating about what to do, deciding upon, initiating and carrying out actions)?  If the former, then it's a kind of explanation that can can be challenged philosophically (and I tend to think that it cannot be tested empirically); if it's the latter, then it is not so much an explanation that could  be undermined by scientific investigation as it is the condition for the possibility of any philosophical or scientific reasoning. Every explanation that one could hope to come up with re any process in nature, must (if it posits any sort of causality whatsoever), in order to be intelligible, derive any notion of a causality from our our awareness of our own agency.   There's no push (or pull) without a pushy person...

The following concerns the experiment whereby you put one hand in very warm water and the other in cold.   Then after 5 minutes put both in water that is lukewarm, with the result that the previously colder hand experiences warmth, and the previously cold hand experiences warmth.  If we look at the sensation of temperature as the having of the same quality w/n that exists without, then the above experiment is quite a counter example.  But if you think of sensation as a a registering of the process that takes place when the two interact, then it will not be such an embarrassment. But how describe the different ways in which we might sense the same object (either the aforementioned lukewarm water or perhaps a solid object at the same lukewarm temperature)?  Perhaps we can say that they are two profiles  of the same object (with apologies to all bona fide phenomenologists).

It just occurred to me that the qualia of which Nagle speaks is the same as that "something more than mechanism" that I wrote about in a previous post. Hopefully, I'll be able to pull the two together more.... gotta think about this...

What Nagle's essay on what it's like to be a bat shows is not that there's something extra material called qualia in the mind, but that there's something extra quantifiable called qualia in nature.

The only way in which we are able to recognize X as a brain state corresponding to mental state Y is in virtue of reports given by those who possessed  brain states like X and who reported Y.  In fact, what we call "one" brain state is really a set of processes.  As in neurons that fire, say, 40 times a second.  The very act of calling it one brain state rather than many depends upon a report of this collection of physical events as pertaining to one mental event. If we take a snapshot of all of the many processes occurring at the same time and compare it with a different set of processes shortly thereafter, we may find that to the mental state correspond many brain states.  If (IF!) one can, on the basis of knowing the physical state determine the mental state, THEN it's not a two-way street: that is, from knowing what a mental state is one cannot infer which "snapshot" of the neural state  obtains.

Holism does not need to be demonstrated: it's the position from which any argument for dualism or materialism must begin.  And it is presupposed by the scientific method.  To recognize the latter (as well as its implications) is to demythologize positivism.

I would start my postulating not with the immortality of the soul or the existence of God but by postulating the everlastingness of the community of rational beings whose actions are transparent to each other.  (Well, okay: I would not exactly postulate such a belief: rather, I'd note that we tend to act as if we belonged to such a community, at least when we act virtuously).  And prior to talking (as I believe Kant doe) of punishment / reward in the next life, I would consider how this everlasting community would (in virtue of its transparency) arrive at a right judgment of the value / disvalue of the actions of each of its members.  A negative judgment by such a community would be a kind of ostracism.  And that ostracism would itself be the punishment.  And our sense of our own guilt would be our both anticipating and internalizing this ostracism: with this sense of guilt, vice becomes its own punishment.  And our sense of being in friendship with others ...

Proponents of same sex marriage have argued that since non-fertile heterosexual couples are allowed to marry, so should same sex couples.   My reply is that non-fertile heterosexual couples not only may marry but they are expected to avoid sex if they do not marry.  That is because abstinence outside of marriage and marriage itself are to be understood not in utilitarian terms, as valuable simply because of their procreative ability, but rather as having a meaning, as communicative.  And what is communicated has everything to do with fertility EVEN in the case of those who are not fertile.   (complete this argument with discussion of how a ruler/teacher would want sex to be revered in such a certain way by fertile couples, in a way that would place sex within the context of commitment, etc. and how, in order for such couples to regard it in that way, sex, as having a word-like quality, would have to have that meaning even when the same couples are not fertile....

If mechanism is to be taken seriously as a scientific hypothesis, then it must be testable.  If it is to be tested, then a test must be constructed that would yield different results if mechanism is true than it would if its alternative holism is true (by holism I mean the thesis that there is one or many operations of the whole that are more just the summation of the parts.  That whole can be either passed on from a like whole or emergent). Has such a test ever been imagined?  undertaken?  

Vitalism looked for a force among other forces to be found in the parts of the whole.  Whereas, the powers and soul as understood by Aristotelians are to be found in the whole, not in the parts.

I would like test materialism. Take one set of neuronal firings X1 as pertaining to a proposition P1 that contradicts P2, to which neuronal firings X2 pertains. Is it physically impossible for both X1 and X2 to fire "together" in the way in which they would for one who affirms any two propositions as simultaneously true? If it is not physically impossible, then it is possible to affirm two contradictories as simultaneously true. If it is physically impossible, AND if materialism is true, then wouldn't that affirming a contradiction be impossible because of of the impossibility of the physical process that is associated with that affirmation. But perhaps it is impossible only in this world.  Perhaps there's a way to reconfigure neuron-like events so that, in another possible universe, another version of X1 and X2 could fire simultaneously. If so, then P1*P2 is true in some possible worlds. But if P1*P2 is not true in any possible worlds, then it seems tha...

What if two animals of the same species managed to exchange matter with each other?  That is, what if the matter excreted by animal A were transformed and then ingested by animal B so that the latter eventually came to consist solely of matter that had once belonged to A?  (and vice versa as well!) This question poses something like Neurath's boat.  Only in this case it is two boats that manage to exchange lumber until the one belongs to the other. No point to this as far as I can tell... just fun to consider.

The central problem besetting dualism, says Ed Feser in his Philosophy of Mind, is the interaction of mind and body. My neo-Aristotelian / Polyanyian (new word!) alternative to dualism is the claim that the higher level appropriates the actions of the lower level.  This is true first of all in cases in which immateriality is not even a consideration.  For example, sentient activity appropriates lower-level organic activity. This metaphor is rooted in a passage in Aristotle's De sensu  where he says that the common sense takes on the operations of the lower, external senses like a craftsman who is using tools.  Certainly there is a klunky way of interpreting this simile. But I only intend to convey by it that the higher power takes the operation of the lower power and, without doubling it, makes that lower level activity part of its own higher level activity. if the human soul is subsistent, then in appropriates human powers as well.  But we regard the tool...

The first knows a little bit of science and is confident about the discipline's ability to reveal the truth, even when it flies in the face of our common sense convictions.  The second can quote scripture and is confident that the doctrines he finds therein will reveal all relevant truths. The first does not know how science uses models.  Hence (s)he takes the planetary model of the atom as "gospel truth" and will object to the notion that, say, a table is solid because there is so much space between the marble-like atoms. What the first needs to consider is the fact that the material substratum consists not just of particles that are smaller versions of the life world, but consists also (or trutly) of fields that aren't exactly here or there in the same way, say, a marble or billiard ball is here or there.  The model understood without the math is misleading.  The material substratum is beyond our imagining.  All affirmations thereof are necessarily paradox...

When we seek to understand something unlike our everyday world, we rely on the known to make comparisons with and render intelligible the unknown.  But the more remote our object is from our study, the more our everyday concepts used in these comparisons will fall short.  And the more they fall short, the more we will be forced to use paradox to form concepts of that which is foreign to our everyday world.  Paradox is a platform/Spielraum on which we stand so that we may gaze at novel forms.