The Human Question

Imagine a dark ocean populated by sailors, each of who travels in an idiosncratic vessel,  laughs the other's ships and points out how the other lost without being able to find land because none of them has reliable navigational tools

What if different patients who have undergone a severing of the corpus callosum report two different scenarios (under different circumstances, assumedly): 1. the situation in which they are able to perceive both with right and left brain inputs, but cannot relate the two together (e.g., cannot name a pencil that one's hand is touching, because the hand that is touching it is not continuous with the language-using part of the brain). 2. the situation in which they are conscious of what is going on in one half but not of the other, and in which the other is engaged in a kind of mutiny against the first. If both of these results occur, then it would seem that the first result is sufficient to show the unifying role of something like the soul; while the second might be explainable in terms of part of the brain displaying a sub-cognitive functionality.

What if the proper object of the human will is not this or that good, but a kind of good, a good under a universal formality (for example, we seek not just to know this or that truth but truth as such, etc.)? One consequence would be that we often cannot really see or imagine precisely what it is that we (at a deeper level) desire, and the things that we imagine to be the objects of our desire are at in some ways merely symbolic of the kind of thing we more truly long for, and this kind of thing is more desirable than this thing (it might be more helpful to say that we desire a way of being rather than this or that being).  For example, what seems at first glance to be mere lust for concrete pleasure here and now might really be an example of a venereal craving that has become super-animated with the desire for power as such.  In other words, sometimes when humans crave sex, they crave it inordinately not simply because of a biochemically caused fixation, but because that ani...

Consider the knowledge that 3+7=10. It doesn’t just happen to be true: it is necessarily true. But perhaps the term "necessarily" is redundant to one who recognizes the ideality of the object of abstract knowledge.   Or perhaps it describes how our intellect, in coming to understand the terms of this proposition, is, as it were, constrained by the way in which terms themselves appear together. Hmmmm.  

Is it because you know that it’s to your evolutionary advantage to think that 3+7=10 that you know that it is true,... ...OR...  ...is it because you know that it 3+7=10 is true that you know it is to your evolutionary advantage to think so?   If you answer that the former is correct, then you imply that mathematical truths are not so much known as they are advantageous to believe in.  And in saying that, you undermine any strong claims that you might have otherwise made about the nature of scientific knowledge. If, on the other hand, you select the latter option, then any appeal to evolutionary advantage is excluded, lest your argument be circular, so that you still need to explain how it is that we can know such truths.

It's hard to take seriously the attempt to construct biology from physics when the one proposing this gets the physics so wrong.  The most damning thing I can say about it to Daniel Dennett is that its Democratean take on nature is... unsophisticated.

Force as found in physics is one thing.  But perhaps we could talk about necessary truths as constraining us to judge one way rather than another.  No, that won't do: forces constrain from outside, while truths of that stripe constrain, as it were, from within. I need to think about this more...

What if the most basic form of consciousness, the bottom basement level, as it were, is the non-representational consciousness of one's own immediate past, present and future (which I'll call temporality)? What if the best that reductionism can do is talk about the representation of these phases? (That is, we don't rely on something present to represent the past and future, which are not present; rather, we directly direct ourselves to the past and future as such.) What if this consciousness is so indispensable to us that this primordial temporality is related to animal consciousness as water is to fishes?  What if we fail to notice its importance because it is ubiquitous? What if the attempt to explain of temporality (our awareness of the immediate past and future) by the analysis of the not so immediate past and future is a question begging exercise? (for we are aware of the mediate through the immediate rather than vice versa).

Fixation is what happens when one gets stuck one on thing as if it were the only thing that mattered; fascination is when one takes delight in one thing because it reminds one of everything that does matter. Fixation enlsaves us to a part of reality; fascination liberates us to consider reality in all of its splendor. (still working on this--fascinating! [or am I just fixated?])

Looking at a summary of his work, I feel like I could spend years studying him.  I feel almost like Augustine, saying, "Late have I loved thee..." but that might be impious.

To Infinity and Beyond http://press.princeton.edu/titles/4887.html

If force is understood as acting upon something or someone else in a manner that goes against the other's own inner tendency or desire, then isn't this inner tendency (which is analogous to desire) more basic than force?  For force (as just stipulated) originates with an inner tendency or desire within the enforcer.  It would seem that desire (understood as analogous term) is more basic than force rather than vice versa. Wouldn't a theory of everything in nature have to recognize the primacy of desire (and its analog in nescient beings)? Isn't a mechanistic view of nature the result of forgetting that desire is more basic than force?

I'll translate the following into regular English some other day, when I have the time: The concept of appropriation (see dissertation's discussion of Aquinas's commentary on De sensu ) can be used to answer the objection that split brain (which results from the severing of the corpus callosum) is a counter-example to the notion of the soul.  Actually, the split-brain objection may be effective against genuine dualism, but hylomorphism can, with the help of the concept of appropriation (the latter being a component of the former), not only deal with this important counter-example, but also deal with what is quite an embarrassment to reductive materialism: the unity of consciousness in a person with an intact corpus callosum.

Aren't cosmogenic myths striking counterexamples to the claim that we may not ask "Why everything?"

"Do you know who decided that corporations are people, too?  Congress.  To see that, you don't need to read any further than  1 U.S.C. §1 , the very first law on the books. It reads: ' In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise  [...] the words 'person' and 'whoever' include corporations, companies, associations, firms, partnerships, societies, and joint stock companies, as well as individuals.' ” from  http://catholicdefense.blogspot.com/2014/06/4-things-you-probably-have-wrong-about.html  See also  http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/1/1  for the very first section of U.S. Code of Law: "In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, unless the context indicates otherwise— words importing the singular include and apply to several persons, parties, or things; words importing the plural include the singular; words importing the masculine gender include the feminine as well; words ...

What if a computer program were found to be unlike a human being, but this became evident only after 100 years?  Would this have implications for computers recently tested and able, so far, to convince their interlocutors of their own humanity?

Perhaps what causes us to seek knowledge of necessary truths is the conception of a perfect state of knowledge, which Alisdair MacIntyre mentions

According to functionalism, the same belief can be instantiated in individuals whose cognitive processes occur in different substrata (think of how there might be a silicon-based life form capable of reasoning, including, for example, mathematical calculation). The central claim of reductionism, on the other hand, is that cognitive processes are identical with physical processes. If that is true, then it would seem at first glance that wherever there is a difference in physical substrata there will different physical processes and hence different cognitive processes.  At a certain level of physical description, for example, a computation done by a carbon-based life form differs from a computation done by a silicon-based life form.  Since their computational processes differ at the level of physics, their cognitive processes do as well.  They do not, therefore, think in the same way.  In this way, it seems that reductionism is inconsistent with functionalism. I t...

When I entertain the same belief at two different times, it seems that two acts are directed toward numerically one object. If so, then how does it even seem to be the case that the two different acts are directed toward the same object? Surely it cannot be through the formal identity of the two: that may (or may not) be a necessary condition, but it is not a sufficient one.  For example, I may do the following: 1. think the same thing twice without reflecting the second time on the fact that I have previously thought it. In such a case, formal identity might suffice for the sameness of the object of two belief acts.  But something more seems to be going on in the situation that I describe below 2. think not only of the same sort of thought directed toward the same object twice, but also to note the sameness of these two thoughts. The second case would seem to involve something more than formal identity of the second act with the first--otherwise there would be no...

I may reference this paper in my own work: http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic565657.files/9/Dennett%20self%20as%20center%20of%20gravity.pdf If the scientist himself is a fiction, wouldn't science then be ... science fiction?

Fifteen years ago, deconstructionists attacked theism, I think for its daring to come up with a comprehensive account of reality.  Today, Sean Carroll and his like say that the very questions which lead to such comprehensive answers should be disallowed.  It seems that both groups of anti-theists have in common this opposition to wonder, as is classically conceived.  But they also disagree with each other: deconstructionsts would attack science's claim to be able to come up with objective answers (this may have to do with the term "logocentrism": I don't know); hence the famous "science wars." Deconstructionism would make us all fideists of a sort, whereas the other brand of anti-theism advocates scientific rationalism.  If so, then theism has been attacked by one group (the quasi-fideists) for being too boldly rational; and later for its perceived opposition to reason.  This reminds me of Chesterton's remark (I think in Orthodoxy)  that upon noting ho...

The original question concerned how our ability to know objective moral truths points to God.  By "objective," my student meant the that many agree about at least some moral truths.  "How does that necessarily point to God?" he asked. One key thing to keep in mind is what "moral objectivity" means.  You would be shortchanging this concept if you thought that it meant only that we tend to have similar judgments, either because he have reached an agreement or because he happen to evolved in a similar way.  Let's compare it to mathematical objectivity.  When I know that 3+7=10 I know an objective truth.  When I reflect on that knowledge, I recognize that there is something amazing going on: I know not only that it's true for me, but that there's something about it that couldn't be otherwise--regardless of whether or not anyone in my life had told me so.  If somewhere else in the cosmos, someone else claims to know that 3+7=10 is false, I kno...

http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2014/07/13188/

Below is my response to P F Strawson (I summarized him in a prior post). PF Strawson argues that one who believes in determinism will continue to engage in interpersonal relationships in a manner that shows concern about morality; therefore, the libertarian argument against determinism is undermined, for it claims that determinism is at odds with morality. I will argue (or rather, in this blog post I will sketch an argument to the effect) that while a vague belief in determinism may be able to coexist with moral convictions, neither desire, moral convictions nor positive freedom (that is, freedom as defined in Strawson's essay) could come into existence if a specific form of determinism were true. Key to this argument is the claim that there is not just one kind of determinism but many, which vary according to the various ways in which one might attempt to justify this claim. A theist who is committed to determinism, for example, might give metaphysical reasons for th...

That is, one who thinks that Benjamin Libbet's experiment could be used to disprove the existence of any free choice whatsoever has not thought clearly about the various contexts in which we may find ourselves making a choice.   Common to those contexts is a prior deliberation that follows upon an oftentimes creative exploration of different possible courses of action. When we look different choices made at different times, we see that they vary to a very great degree and that this difference may be quite relevant to the question of freedom.  In fact, it may be that some choices seem freer than others.  Consider how the agent may consider different courses of action solely in instrumental terms, i.e., neither as desirable or undesirable in themselves.  In another situation, however, the agent may be deciding between means that are themselves instrinsically desirable or undesirable. Consider also how the goal that spurs deliberation may be something of only very imm...

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson.  He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal.  My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this.  I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true.  Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist.  In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...

DD and SC both appeal to the conservation of entity to demonstrate that the the immaterial soul cannot act upon the material body. Sean Carroll does in his discussion with Hans Halverson (give time point) and Dennett does so in the 88th minute of the audiobook version of Consciousness Explained. Doesn't this sort of argument presuppose 1. that the soul is an immaterial thing rather than an activity of the body; 2. that reductive materialism is true; 3. that the only alternative to reductive materialism (or rather, the only alternative other than dualism) is vitalism: the positing of a physical force that is not generated by lower level non-living forces?

I am just beginning to listen to Daniel Dennett's Explaining Consciousness and am thoroughly enjoying it.  That is first of all because it is much less pompous than Freedom Evolves (although he does have a certain fondness for the word 'sophisticated').  Secondly, because he tells a good story.  It most certainly is not because what he has to say seems remotely close to the truth. DD thinks that science can tell us all that's worth knowing about human nature, including what's worth knowing about the nature of knowledge itself.  Nagel and Searle, on the other hand, point to the need for the first person perspective to give us insights into aspects our humanity that cannot be obtained through scientific methodology.  By "first person perspective" I mean what it's like to to have experiences (including intentions, sensations, feelings, desires, etc.) to the one who is having them.  The systematic analysis of the first-person perspective is called "...

http://thomism.wordpress.com/2014/07/11/the-denial-of-free-will-and-omne-quod-movetur/

http://bloggingheads.tv/videos/28899

In the past I've read many summaries of and glanced over Nagel's article "What's it like to be a Bat?" but never read it all of the way through.  Yesterday, I got my first chance to do so (or rather, "Yesterday, curiosity finally overcame laziness and procrastination...").  Here's my attempt to synthesize the points that I found interesting--many of which surprised me, even though I had read and/or listened to multiple summaries. The article argues that the kind of reduction of consciousness to physical processes that has been offered up to that time; instead, an "objective phenomenology" (to be defined later) is needed, although what that would be like is left open. First, let's get to the failure of reductionism.  By "reduction" he means the explanation of a process that we observe by redescribing it in terms of a process that we do not observe.  Take the way water freezes, for example.  We can reduce this process by tal...

After I listened to a philosopher bring up a thought experiment involving the Star-Trek teleporter thought experiments, it occurred to me that less exotic thought experiments are preferable to those involving processes that only happen in science fiction.  In fact, I'll illustrate my point by using nothing other than a (rather mundane) thought experiment. Suppose two philosophers are debating what is for philosophers a hot topic, be it personal identity, divine foreknowledge, the existence of moral absolutes or whatever.  Each tries to refute the other by coming up with a counterexample.  One of them uses a very exotic example of something that happens only in science fiction and whose possibility is doubtful; the other uses an example taken from every day life. Suppose also that each of these counterexamples seems to uncover a weakness in the other's point of view. Other things being equal, the more mundane counterexample counts for more, because it is more consonant...