Tanasije Gjorgoski said...

Hi JMC, can you please explain premise 3 little more? Some example you had on mind maybe?

May 6, 2008 2:07 PM

j. m. c. dow said...

good question, Tanas. here's what i had in mind. first, there is no possibility of misidentification where there is no grounds for identification. also, one way to discuss self-perception is proprioception defined as perception of what is proper to oneself, or one's body. so, the examples that often drives the claim that one can misidentify one's body in which one's proprioception is hooked up to another individual's body. in this case, one is engaging in self-perception, except that the possibility of error has been provided for. it seems this is both logically possible and nomologically possible, so self-perception is not immune to error through misidentification...

May 7, 2008 8:10 AM

Tanasije Gjorgoski said...

Thanks for the explanation. Hope you won't mind another question, as it seems to me that the argument points to very interesting issues.

You say "there is no possibility of misidentification where there is no grounds for identification".

Would that mean, that self-consciousness isn't a kind of conceptual awareness?

Here is what I'm thinking of:

1.If we are aware of something *as something* (or conceptually), wouldn't that mean that there is some kind of identification (of a concrete thing falling under a concept(X being Y)).

2.From 1, every kind of conceptual awareness has possibility for misidentification

3.From 2 and from your argument, self-consciousness isn't (or doesn't involve) conceptual awareness.

May 9, 2008 1:38 AM

j. m. c. dow said...

thank you for your response again. i find your below argument interesting. but, i think the question about whether a content is conceptual or non-conceptual is very difficult. in my work on perception, via McDowell and Evans, i tend towards conceptualism, definitely in the context of knowledge, cognition, or otherwise judgments about such and such. however, i think there are contexts in which the debates about some content's being conceptual or nonconceptual are sorta beside the point. here's what i have in mind: we might describe the content of say the ability of an organism to distinguish between itself and the world without attributing anything but behavioral dispositions to an organism. well, if that ability is a type of self-consciousness, which i think it is, and if behavioral dispositions are non-conceptual, which they probably are, then yes, that type of self-consciousness is non-conceptual. but, if that means thoughts about oneself are not involved in that type of self-world differentiation, then that's just to say thoughts are not involved, not that it is non-conceptual or conceptual... to put my cards on the table, i think there are at least three types of non-conceptual self-consciousness in the literature (my terms are in parens). people speak about self-world distinction (self-discrimination), perception of one's body (self-presentation) and perspectival self-consciousness (self-synthesis), all of which does not require thought about oneself. that however, does not mean that these levels do not require conceptual forms or structures...

to your argument, though.

the inference from 2 to 3 requires accepting the first premise of the original argument, correct? and, although my original post raises a question, i am more inclined to reject 1 than reject 2 or 3. and, maybe i can reject one with the following argument:

i definitely agree with premise 1, rephrased as "if one is aware of x as x, then awareness of x requires Ix" where x is an individual ("concrete thing") and I is an identifying representation (e.g., in this argument, a self-image). the ordinary language way to say this is: if one is to be aware of something as that very thing, then one must know(pssst!) which thing it is. (where 'pssst!' functions to make you think knowledge is very weak, i.e., not JTB.) (identification constraint).

original premise 2: self-perception is a form of self-consciousness.

new premise: self-perception requires meeting the above identification constraint, since the content of proprioception is awareness of oneself as one's body.

Premise 3: self-perception is not immune to error through misidentification, via the armstrong case, e.g., that my proprioception can be hooked up to another body.

Conclusion: Self-consciousness is not IETM.

There are definitely issues with this argument. Is proprioception conceptual or non-conceptual? Is awareness of one's body awareness of oneself? What type of modality is involved in "the possibility of error has been provided for" in LW's Blue Book account of IETM?

Thanks, Tanas.

May 9, 2008 6:51 AM

I think there is an equivocation being made between the various usages of 'philosophy', primarily between a type of thought and a profession, and my observation is that those who are professionals supposedly dedicated to that type of thought rarely even try to engage in it, and when they do they're not very good at it. If 'philosophy' is 'what philosophers do', I hold that philosophy is useless in every sense. If 'philosophers' are 'those that practice philosophy', the professionals are almost universally undeserving of that title. In that light:

Yes to #1, YES to #2, no to #3, yes to #4.

Posted by: Caledonian | April 28, 2008 at 02:20 PM

Tanasije Gjorgoski on April 14, 2008 6:06 am

You almost got me with the parallelogram question! That was very funny.

Tanasije Gjorgoski on April 14, 2008 6:30 am

BTW, Maybe there is something to the Descartes point (OK, not much, but still…), because lot of naturalists will accept Quinean thesis that anything is revisable (even principle of non-contradiction) in the light of new experiences.

Chris Mathews on April 14, 2008 6:43 am

Sure, laugh it up! Meanwhile, I'm lost in the dark with an imperilled soul, not knowing an isosceles from my assh….

Samuel Skinner on April 14, 2008 6:32 pm

"God wouldn't decieve us!"

"What about crazy people? Or the blind? Or…"

I have no idea why Decartes thought it was such a good answer. Maybe he just got payed by the church and had to come up with yet another reason to be a theist…

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Hi Badda! I'm not sure I understand your comment, since "consciousness" and "experience" sound pretty synonymous to me (at least in the senses I mean to be using them). I'm on board, though, with the last suggestion in your post -- maybe the implicit assumptions behind my finding the report hard to believe need to be jettisoned!

Fri Apr 18, 06:45:00 AM PDT

Badda Being said...

I thought you understood them differently because you also used the phrase "conscious experience." If "consciousness" and "experience" are synonymous to you, then I don't see why you would use consciousness as a modifier of experience. It would be like referring to visual sight.

But let's say then that "conscious experience" is just loose talk and that "consciousness" and "experience" really are synonymous. I have this vague sense that you further equate consciousness with being awake. Or do you rather think that consciousness may obtain even during sleep? It does seem normal after all to say that we experience things during sleep, at least while dreaming, but then again, to say that we may therefore be conscious during sleep might seem unconventional if not downright contradictory.

If "consciousness"/"experience" is synonymous with "wakefulness," then it's just obvious that we can't have waking moments with no experiences whatsoever, in precisely the same way that it's just obvious that we can't have vision with no sight whatsoever. This is probably not the most charitable way to understand you, though, given your sense of the insolubility of the "rich or thin" question: by this understanding, consciousness/experience obviously would be rich.

But if "consciousness"/"experience" is not synonymous with "wakefulness," then try substituting "wakefulness" for every instance of "consciousness" in my first comment and see if that helps you understand the point I was trying to make there.

Sat Apr 19, 12:35:00 AM PDT

Badda Being said...

How about this: if "consciousness" and "experience" are synonymous, then experiential blanks are nothing more than moments of unconsciousness, in which case consciousness/experience is rich by definition, whereas the thin view would be that you can be conscious (have experiences) and unconscious (not have experiences) at the same time.

Sat Apr 19, 02:24:00 PM PDT

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Thanks, Badda, that helps me see the source of some of our miscommunication!

Taking consciousness/experience synonymously and as not the same as wakefulness, I at least don't see it as obvious that we do sometimes lack consciousness while awake. Maybe others (you?) do think it obvious that people frequently have moments of pure experiential blankness when awake. But how do we resolve this? Therein lies the methodological difficulty at the heart of consciousness studies!

Sun Apr 20, 04:19:00 PM PDT

Badda Being said...

What do you find incredible about waking moments with no experience whatsoever if, for you, wakefulness is distinct from consciousness?

Or, more to the point, how does your incredulity even bear upon the "rich or thin" question if you regard consciousness and wakefulness as distinct? For you do seem to think that it has some bearing based on this paragraph:

Now I confess that I incline toward a rich view of experience -- according to which we generally have constant visual experience, constant auditory experience, constant tactile experience of our feet in our shoes (though peripherally and faintly, of course!), and much else going on with us experientially at any one time. I'm not at all sure that this view is right, but to think that we have waking moments with no experience whatsoever...!

* * * *

I think that resolving the problem of apparently conflicting testimony is a matter of clarifying your terms.

If "consciousness" and "experience" are synonymous, then experiential blankness, or the absence of experience, is the same as the absence of consciousness, in which case, again, consciousness is rich by definition.

If "consciousness" and "experience" are synonymous, then, during moments of experiential blankness, there is no consciousness anyway to which the "rich or thin" question could even apply.

But the very fact that you put forth the "rich or thin" question suggests that you regard consciousness and experience as distinct, or at least that you are asking about Consciousness (or conscousness-sub-one) which may or or may not be traversed by consciousness (or consciousness-sub-two) all the way through, that may nor may not be punctuated with moments of unconsciousness.

So it's no wonder that you get conflicting testimony: you're very solicitation sends confusing messages.

There is nothing to resolve but the meaning of your terms.

Sun May 04, 02:11:00 PM PDT

Tanasije Gjorgoski Says:

April 8th, 2008 at 12:36 am

Half serious…

Wouldn't self-explanatory be even more radical version of Given? Not just that the phenomenon is given to us qua that phenomenon, but also the explanation for it!

Clark

Clark

Clark

April 9th, 2008 1:20 am

Clark

With all respect to those dictionaries, I think that something like "Operating System creates and adds new level of abstraction which includes new types of entities and operations on them, and gives ability to the user and other programs to handle those entities." would be closer. The example would be giving to the user such things as "files", "desktop", "icon", "window", "command line", "command", "parameters" etc...

I'm not sure I understand the conclusion you draw from the quoted definitions, but I guess it goes also in the direction of instructions to be executed on abstract level, which are not dependent on exactly the same hardware operations?

Posted by: Tanasije Gjorgoski | 04/04/2008 at 04:18 AM

It seems to me as a normal a

Submitted by Tanasije Gjorgoski (not verified) on Thu, 03/04/2008 - 13:20.

It seems to me as a normal a priori judgment, with the addition of the Berkeley's idea that we can't think of such things as Abstracts, we always think of concrete things, just that we see that some specifics are not important for relation, so the relation we see as holding will hold generally, and not for the individual thing.

reply

Would this be an

Submitted by Al on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 06:36.

Would this be another way of phrasing your point?:

Whilst Johnson talks as though we are here generalising across many instances, this is actually false. Rather, we are making a judgement about a universal, of which there is only one (there is only one red).

Thanks for the comment,

Al

reply

I think actually that

Submitted by Tanasije Gjorgoski (not verified) on Fri, 04/04/2008 - 11:38.

I think actually that Johnson phrasing is pretty straightforward (at least from what I can understand without the context).

Berkeley's idea (afaik) is to deny that there is such thing as universal, but that we: a)make a judgment about the particular instance and b)comprehend that this judgment is independent from some specifics of that particular instance, and hence, comprehend that the same judgment would hold for anything which shares just some of the specifics of this particular instance, and hence we are coming to a general judgment about all such situations.

An example with the triangle would be - we take a concrete triangle, see through some proof that the sum of the angles is 180 degrees, and see that the proof doesn't mention lengths, particular angles, etc.., so we figure out that it will hold generally for all triangles. (so we make general judgment which holds for all triangles, based on analyzing a concrete instance).

Not sure though, if it could work for the color example exactly the same way. The analogy would be that in the concrete case of colors, there are abstract properties (like 'being red', 'being orange' and 'being yellow') which are contained in the concrete case, on base of which we do the judgment, and we see that the exact red, orange and yellow don't matter, so our judgment can hold generally for all yellow, red, and orange colors.

reply

Clark

April 4th, 2008 11:26 pm

Clark

Tanasije Gjorgoski

Clark

Richard Brown Says:

May 2, 2008 at 3:44 pm

Wow, Smitty Dinkle, you are a real asshole (and wrong). Don't post here again unless you are prepared to back up your claims without the insults. Shesh…I don't what they teach you at EMU but 'round here, we mind our fucking manners.

GNZ,

"it would seem likely to be immoral for him to reduce that creation (putting aside 'preventing suffering' for the moment) or for that matter to fail to also 'create' anything that is almost identical (i.e. 'you' or 'you+1′)."

So, god must create an infinite number of 'you'?

GNZ Says:

May 2, 2008 at 7:27 pm

Yes

(Although it may not actually be infinite, since you may be able to count every unique you with an very large finite number.)

Smitty Dinkle Says:

May 5, 2008 at 11:04 am

ROFL, wow. And while yes I may have been an asshole, no I am not wrong please go look up the definitions of the terms I used. I am actually doing a project on reconstructing arguments and this one is as bad as the ones I've seen for creationism, if not worse. He makes several conclusions/premises which are not backed up by any other premise, making this argument invalid, if he intended for this argument to be forceful then he has failed again seeing as the probability of his overall conclusion being wrong is greater than that of being right based on the premises provided.

P1)If P then Q

______________

C1/P2) If Q then Q is possible

P3) If Q is possible then P would make everything Q

____________________

C2/P4) We are not in Q, and if P and not Q then there is no P

first of all the amount of assumptions present in this argument is mind boggling

The Missing P1) P would only make Q

The Missing P2) If Q then P (this one might be seen in P3 but does not appear to be conditional to me)

And Richard, at EMU I am taught by emu's. And my name is Smitty Dinkle. lololololololololololololololololol

Smitty Dinkle Says:

May 5, 2008 at 11:14 am

ooooo I forgot how silly of me

C3) There is no P

Richard Brown Says:

May 6, 2008 at 3:30 pm

That's better Smitty…but you're still wrong. The way you symbolize the argument is incorrect. Here's what it really looks like.

1. If G then M

2. Thus, if G then it is possible that M

3. If it is possible that M then, if C then W

4. But not W and if we assume C, then

5. It is not possible that M

6. So, not G

Now, as we have seen, we can argue over the soundness of this argument, I think it is sound, others do not, but there is no question that it is valid…

I would think that numbers 'transcend' all possible worlds. Seems weird to say that they are located "in" those possible worlds.

After all, the whole "possible world" semantics wouldn't be possible if abstracta are located within the worlds, no?

Comment by Tanasije Gjorgoski - March 31, 2008 @ 9:08 am

I'm not sure I follow, Tanasije. All of the things that exist do so actually. Possible worlds are (complete) descriptions of 'ways things might have been/will be' Any complete description of the way things are/might have been/will be will have to include a pronouncement about what exists.

Comment by Richard Brown - March 31, 2008 @ 8:03 pm

Richard,

I'm thinking of e.g. quantifying over possible worlds, or saying "in half of the possible worlds" or "in two possible worlds" , etc…

If the very possibility to use the possible world semantics depends on those, I'm not sure how can we imagine them as "inside" possible worlds.

Comment by Tanasije Gjorgoski - March 31, 2008 @ 8:08 pm

Oops, "those" = set theory, numbers, and other abstracts.

Comment by Tanasije Gjorgoski - March 31, 2008 @ 8:09 pm

Yeah but we say that stuff outside any possible world, in the actual world. A possible world is just a complete description of how the actual world might have been/will be (they may be abstract objects themselves if one goes infor that sort of thing…Kripke does, others don't). To say that the description is complete is to say that any statement p is either true or false (and not both) 'according to that description' or 'in that possible world'. So there is at least one complete description of the way things are which includes in it a commitment to the existence of numbers and other abstract objects. If the actual world turns out to be a world in which numbers do not exist it will because of that possible world (that could have been actual but is not) that we will get true counter-factual statements like 'If there were numbers, 2+2=4″, we could in fact give a detailed account of the rules which would govern these things as for instance by postulating that 'if there were numbers, they would be goverened by things like Peano's axioms'. In that way we could reason 'as if' numbers existed in the actual world. Feild's claim is that this is all that we need in order to do science and talk about abstract objects.

Comment by Richard Brown - April 1, 2008 @ 6:47 am

That last one is my, my chess blogger identity. :O

Comment by Eric Thomson - March 10, 2008 @ 10:56 am

Hey Josh, isn't a lot of scientific knowledge of that sort too?

Hi ChrissySnow,

Yeah that is the 'traditional story' (due to Russell). My problem with that is that I see science as just a kind of philosophy (natural philosophy) and, besides which, there are no 'solved' problems in science either…

Hey Eric, nice pseudoname

Yes there are such people, and I wouldn't say they are 'fringy' (but even if they were why would that matter? Every theory starts off as 'fringy' even such established ones as the heliocentric model of the solar system.

One way to avoid the reductio is to do the extension with respect to possible worlds. So, 'vertabrates' and 'creatures with a kidney' are co-extensive here but they are not necessarily co-extensive and so they do have different extensions.

Another strategy (a la Quine) is to reject the very idea of intension altogether.

Comment by Richard Brown - March 10, 2008 @ 4:23 pm

No, I don't think science is like that. While it is true that some of the established truths of science are of this sort (e.g. ether and phlogiston would be part of failed hypotheses similiar to Chappell's philosophical examples), many others, such as the discovery of the table of elements, the theory of evolution, or our understanding of human anatomy would count as positive theses about the world that are established scientific knowledge.

Comment by Joshua Livingston - March 10, 2008 @ 8:12 pm

Well, point taken, if by 'established scientific knowledge' you mean what I meant above by 'solved scientific issues'…

Comment by Richard Brown - March 12, 2008 @ 5:01 pm

The Inconcievability of Zombies « Philosophy Sucks! Says:

April 6, 2008 at 9:51 am

[...] back in the '90's; but I suppose that's what I get for forgetting that there aren't any solved problems in philosophy, and it is in the nature of zombies to come back from the dead so I suppose I shouldn't be [...]

Tanasije Gjorgoski Says:

March 8, 2008 at 9:04 am

Hi Gary,

In my thinking about those things, I've concluded two things:

1.There is nothing problematic in saying that 'we can see the tree'. Whatever is included in the process, like photons bouncing off the tree, the sensory organs registering them, the processing going on in the brain, and EVEN if there is sense-data or something, those would be just parts of the "seeing the tree". So, I think there is no important distinction there to draw between 'direct' and 'indirect' realism, and that both can happily agree that "we see the tree (directly)". (Basically to say that what we see is sense-datum or representation, is to misuse the word 'see'.)

2.So where would be the distinction between the direct realism and indirect one? How to pin down what is direct realism them? I've been thinking about it, and I think it is this… Direct realism denies (or should deny) that there is such thing as phenomenal experience. It should say that using 'experience' in such sense is nothing but product of philosophers' theory, and that in proper sense 'experience' is used to refer to the events in the world, in which we take part, in which we are aware of those events (or parts of them), and from which we are affected somehow, or from which we learn something.

So, basically I think that the direct realism vs. representationalism issue can't be framed in the terms of 'direct' or 'indirect' seeing something, but if those accept or deny that such thing as 'phenomenal experience' (or 'conscious experience') exist.

Gary Williams Says:

March 8, 2008 at 1:04 pm

To address your first point, I agree there is nothing problematic about saying "we can see the tree", but that doesn't address whether or not we can *perceive* the tree. Seeing is one thing, a linguistic construct, but I feel like perception is another thing altogether. Perception gets at another question: is the perceptual world out there or inside the mind?That is what indirect vs direct realism really gets at. Trying to cross the subjective divide.

I kind of think you are on to something with your second point, and I think Gibson, amongst others, probably Heidegger, would agree with you. Perception is merely a brain/body/world event. There is no subjective locus of experience for direct realism. There are merely physical events and I suspect it is our language that constructs the narrative for us to talk about "subjectivity" and "phenomenal experience".

Tanasije Gjorgoski Says:

March 8, 2008 at 4:06 pm

But what is "perceive" if not general term that covers seeing, hearing, feeling by touch and so on? I have feeling that one of the problems that direct realists have in distinguishing their view is actually expressing in what way their view differs from the representationalism, given that representationalist can agree that we see, hear, touch, and in general perceive *the actual thing*. I think that so called 'transparency of phenomenal experience' is widely accepted by proponents of representationalism, so given the transparency it is hard for direct realists to even *express* the difference they have in mind.

That's why I think that the what direct realist actually negates is the sensibility of phenomenal/conscious/visual or experience taken as something which a)represents the world (veridically or not) and b)which has what it is likeness (qualitative) characteristic to it.

Also, I want to point is that the issue is not directly related with the issue if one is physicalist or not. I'm inclined for example towards direct realism and denying such thing as phenomenal experience, but I am not physicalist. I think that "I see an apple" is describing a situation to which one can give further physical predicates, but that "seeing an apple" predicate of a situation is not reducible to the physical predicates. That is, I agree that when we give predicate "I am seeing an apple" to a situation, we can also give predicate "photons are bouncing off off the surface of the apple, getting focused by the lenses of my eyes, fall on the retina, etc..", but I don't think that those predicates are equivalent. So, just wanted to say that one can be direct realist, and not be physicalist.

gabe Says:

March 17, 2008 at 8:01 am

Direct realism is presumably just the negation of indirect realism; the thesis that we perceive things such as the tree in virtue of perceiving other things. So direct realism is the thesis that we perceive things such as the tree not in virtue of perceiving anything distinct from them.

I don't think the sense-datum theorist can claim to be a direct realist; the arguments for sense-data usually establish that we perceive sense-data. Also, the term 'sense-data' itself just means 'what is given to the senses'. Representationalism, however, is consistent with direct realism, as one need not see the representations [it may also be consistent with sense-data views: indirect realist sense-data views used to occasionally be called representational views, because the sense-data themselves represents).

A view which does oppose representationalism is naive realism; that construes experience as a relational state; one being in which requires one be related to the elements of the sense that one perceive. Representationalism denies this; representations do not require the existence of what they represent. Is that the dispute you're getting at?

On February 29, 2008 at 5:21 am the.pilgrim Said:

The point of the BIV argument, as I see it, is not that we should be skeptics because we can't be sure we aren't in a vat. The point is that a person in such a vat would have the same phenomenal experience as us, but wouldn't know anything. It invites the question, what's different about us? Well, we are in a environment which is conducive to the proper function of our belief producing cognitive faculties aimed at the truth. The fellow in the vat isn't in such an environment. So we are furnished with knowledge, while he isn't.

Of course we don't have to know that we are in such an environment to have knowledge. We just have to be in that kind of environment.

On February 29, 2008 at 5:28 am Peter Said:

Thomist,

Not only is Descartes' "evil demon" very similar to this, but also the "dream argument."

The aristotelian Peter Simpson wrote an interesting (and short) essay on it in which he draws similar points: "…for what matters here is not the degree of force the argument has but what its structure is meant to be. Descartes clearly intends its structure to be such that it establishes at least the *possibility* of the conclusion, and hence that it *allows one to assume them.*"

It's worth looking at:

http://www.aristotelophile.com/Books/Articles/TheDreamArgumentandDescartesFirstMeditation.pdf

On February 29, 2008 at 6:44 am a thomist Said:

Pligrim,

I really like that reading! But again, the BIV argument admits of many different interpretations. The skeptical reading, however, is the first reading that people tend to have, and with good reason. Taken in this way, it is a serious argument that deserves a response, and I haven't seen the response given here anywhere else. After we refute the skeptical take on the argument, we can still use it to show other things, as you do.

On February 29, 2008 at 11:32 am the.pilgrim Said:

As I see it, the skeptical reading turns on this: that unless you know you are not a BIV, then you can't know anything via your perceptual faculties.

Of course, I disagree. My response is that what counts is that you are in fact not a BIV, whether or not you know it. That is, I'm an externalist. You don't have to know that you know in order to know.

On March 31, 2008 at 7:05 pm Kohl Said:

Please excuse the unacademic presentation of my thoughts on this, Im not very academic in philosophy. More of an art-guy really. And sorry but this goes on for a while.

The only thing I can know to exist is my own mind.

Regardless of the reality I am a part of, all realities necessarily require creatures to have their own private experience. Meaning, the only thing a creature can know to exist is its own mind, whichever postulated universe it is a part of. Therefore, this argument applies to this reality, and any other reality that may be over-arching us if we were BIVs.

The natural way of things, indicates that all other living creatures definately have minds as real as mine. (for example, microcosm, macrocosm…as below, so above…gravity is the most powerful of all forces…)

The BIV hypothesis takes the concept of hypothesised advanced technology, and states that it is 'scientifically possible,' while clumsily avoiding the conceptually larger or 'more potent' issues, that point to the fact that it isn't at all possible.

Although I believe that yes, it is, in a way scientifically possible (in a causally disconnected bubble - the realm of imagination that you mention) to take a brain and manipulate it in a vat to such subtlety and mastery that the world it is in is almost indistinguishable from reality, I would argue on the contrary in terms of this notions practicality, that it is not possible given all other humanistic issues. While a particular scientific theory argues that anything can happen within a long enough period of time, the short existence of the human race, and all sentient races, simply wouldn't be sufficient to realise the BIV system. It would undo the natural law of things if it were true. What im saying, is that being a BIV its possible in its details, but we can realise (even from deductive, sceptical reasoning) that its not possible in the bigger picture. And what is the biggest picture? That everything is unfolding in the way that it should. Why else would you exist in the first place?

The universe is inherently dotted with life, just as it is dotted with matter.

Life conforms to the same principles of matter - paticularly gravity. (see Carl Jungs collective unconcious, it sort of fits in here)

The BIV theory would separate life from matter.

This is impossible.

So bottom line is, claiming that one day science will be able to (or already has managed to) create a BIV system, is like saying 'anything can happen in a long enough period of time…my lifetime is very long, so I must eventually be able to grow my own spiders from my nostrils and shoot them out at things!!

Hope this has made sense

Phritz said...

Ah the secret life of plants! How qualephiliatic. Maybe there's still time for a CPA............

Wed Feb 20, 08:11:00 PM EST

Tanasije Gjorgoski said...

Hi Dave,

I may be wrong, but I find the whole issue quite simple, and can't see the problem in saying that we are not thinking only "in" language.

What does it even mean to think in language? That in our minds we juggle words when we are thinking? When while taking long trip, I'm wondering how much more road is there before I get to my destination, and I wish not much as I'm really bored, does it mean that I'm juggling with words 'how', 'much', etc... Or that to wonder that, I have to pronounce the sentence in myself?

I don't see that we are thinking in anything. We are thinking about things. In the situation described, I think about the trip I'm undertaking, about my mental situation, about the time it will take for the trip to finish, and so on. I don't think about language, nor I can see why should we say that we think in language.

Can I become aware of my boredom, only if I have a word for it maybe? How do people even get to name those phenomena, if they don't become aware of them before having words? Do people started feeling bored only once someone invented the word 'boredom'. Did we become aware of rabbits, just only once somebody invented (for no particular reason) the word 'rabbit'?

You get into the discussion of the relation of specific and universal, but while I agree with certain points, I don't see how those points are supposed to defend the position that we think in language.

BTW, I would also distinguish the relation between thinking and language, and thoughts and language. As I said, I don't see any problem in saying that we aren't thinking in language. On contrary.

However as I don't believe there are 'thoughts' literally in our minds, but that those are used to refer to something that we were thinking about, and that we can, or did express in language, I think that the term 'thought' is tightly connected to the notion of language, and that there can't be non-linguistic thoughts.

So, my position - we don't think in language, but there are no non-linguistic thoughts.

Mon Feb 25, 07:48:00 PM EST

Duck said...

we don't think in language, but there are no non-linguistic thoughts.

That's what I'm saying (perhaps not clearly enough!). My point was that Stephen starts to say the first thing, but ends up saying the second as well (plus some other stuff too).

How do people even get to name those phenomena, if they don't become aware of them before having words?

Again, I agree with your general point here; still, we must be careful. There's a difference between a linguistic creature not (yet) having a word for something, on the one hand, and a prelinguistic creature on the other, not having words at all. In the terms of your own post, I'm happy to attribute, to prelinguistic infants, (let's call it) awareness of there being distinct items behind a screen; but I feel strange attributing prelinguistic knowledge that [as they will later put it] 1 + 1 = 2.

But quasi-knowers like infants and animals are always hard to talk about.

Tue Feb 26, 03:55:00 PM EST

Tanasije Gjorgoski said...

Yeah, I wouldn't claim that infants realize that whenever there are two things, there is one and one more thing.

But that there, in that particular case, they are aware of there being pair qua pair, after seeing one and one more thing being hidden behind the screen. So, I would point to the ability of infants to become aware of a pair qua pair, (and not merely *this one* and *that one* which can't be kept together in thought)

This awareness, in this particular case, I think, is the base of what we express by "whenever there are two things there is one and one more thing".

I don't (going with Berkeley) believe that we get to those kind of general truths by considering abstractions. I think that we see (become aware of) them always in particulars, but ignoring the specific things of those particulars. For example, we won't be able to become aware of the truth of Pythagorean theorem, without becoming aware of the truth in the case of some particular triangle, THOUGH in that awareness we will see that some specific properties of that triangle are not important for the truth, and hence the theorem will hold for any triangle. (Which is exactly how the usual geometrical proofs for Pythagorean theorem go)

That's additional reason why I think that the awareness that infants have in particular case, can be the same one that we express for being true in general case, with one addition - the realization that we can abstract from the type of the things we have in the situation. We as grown up, realize that the type of things is not important, so we come to the more general expression.

Hope I succeeded to make more clear what I was saying in that post.

Wed Feb 27, 05:15:00 AM EST

Tanasije Gjorgoski said...

Oops, for any right triangle.

Wed Feb 27, 05:21:00 AM EST

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Arnold, I'm sorry I don't know your model well enough to comment on it firsthand, yet!

Of course there must be some structures in the brain that can somehow generate a three-dimensional representation (or a set of three dimensional representations, possibly conflicting) of the world. But it does not follow that our phenomenology cleanly accords with any particular stage in that process. I worry that you're assuming that it does. (Of course, you may have an argument that it does, that I haven't read!)

Fri Feb 15, 01:03:00 PM PST

MT said...

Speech is rife with ambiguities, which we resolve routinely and with high accuracy from context, and what you're talking about seems about par for the course. There's a seeming narcissism about these statements that's bugged me in the past--in that the speaker is insinuating universality or absoluteness of his or her subjective experience; but since the experience typically is common human psychophysics in circumstances familiar and recognizable to the listener, I think it's licensed or reasonable. Aristotle's foot isn't recognizable to me, but he was speaking a couple thousand years ago. I recognize what people mean nowadays in talking about distant objects, such as the moon, in units of "the width of your thumb" (outstretched)...a handy concept taught both in art and astronomy. Aristotle's remark makes me think the ancients slept outdoors with feet facing eastward and the sun rising between them. Or vice versa with the moon, which is "the same size," if you know what I mean.

Fri Feb 15, 11:15:00 PM PST

Arnold said...

Eric: You wrote "Of course there must be some structures in the brain that can somehow generate a three-dimensional representation (or a set of three dimensional representations, possibly conflicting) of the world. But it does not follow that our phenomenology cleanly accords with any particular stage in that process. I worry that you're assuming that it does."

If our phenomenology doesn't accord with any particular stage in the neuronal processes of the brain, then with what does our phenomenology accord?

I have presented arguments in support of my theoretical claim in other contexts. Here is a summary:

I have proposed what I take to be a law of conscious content which asserts that for any experience, thought, question, or solution, there is a corresponding analog in the biophysical state of the brain. As a corollary to this principle, I have argued that conventional attempts to understand consciousness by simply searching for the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) in theoretical and empirical investigations are too weak to ground a good understanding of conscious content. Instead, I have proposed that we go beyond NCC and explore brain events that have at least some similarity to our phenomenal experiences, namely, neuronal analogs of conscious content (NAC). In support of this approach, I have presented a theoretical model that goes beyond addressing the sheer correlation between mental states and neuronal events in the brain. It explains how neuronal analogs of phenomenal experience (NAC) can be generated, and it details how other essential human cognitive tasks can be accomplished by the particular structure and dynamics of putative neuronal mechanisms and systems in the brain.

A large body of experimental findings, clinical findings, and phenomenal reports can be explained within a coherent framework by the neuronal structure and dynamics of this theoretical model. In addition, the model accurately predicts many classical illusions and perceptual anomalies. So I believe that the neuronal mechanisms and systems that I have proposed provide a true explanation for many important aspects of human cognition and phenomenal experience. But I can't prove it. Of course, competing theories about the brain, cognition, and consciousness can't be proved either.

Providing the evidence is the best we can do.

Mon Feb 18, 07:51:00 AM PST

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

That's certainly ambitious! My own general inclination is to be suspicious of clean models; but I'll have to check the details of your published work on this to form a more informed opinion about your specific arguments!

Wed Feb 20, 08:58:00 AM PST

Eric Schwitzgebel said...

Interesting thought, MT -- a "foot" meaning literally the same visual arc as what can be covered by your foot at foot's length, rather than an objective unit of measure.

My sense from some of the later discussion is that they conceived it more in terms of objective size, but it's worth re-examining with your suggestion in mind!

Wed Feb 20, 09:24:00 AM PST

Jason T said...

What you say looks right. But I was a bit surprised that the thing you read suggested there weren't any plausible synchronic relative identity cases: I thought that one of the common applications of relative identity (insofar as anything having to do with relative identity is common at all) was in the problem of the many. Tibbles the cat (who is getting sick and tired of being the subject of so many philosophy examples) might be made up of hunk of matter M, or hunk of matter M* which is just M minus a molecule at the tip of Tibbles' whisker. Then M is the same cat as M* (and both are the same cat as Tibbles), but not the same hunk of matter at M*, and all of this is at a time.

Was the author's thought maybe that the problem of the many case is implausible (in a way that, as it turns out, LUMP-MAN isn't)? This might be right: suppose we endorse the following sortally-relative Leibniz Law principle:

(SRLL) If x is the same F as y, then if P(x), then P(y).

Now Tibbles has a problem. He is the same cat as M, so he is made up of (say) 10^23 molecules. But he's the same cat as M*, so he is made up of (10^23)-1 molecules. So there's no single number of molecules such that Tibbles is made of that many molecules. (Or, if you don't like that example, consider how heavy Tibbles is --- presumably, he should be slightly lighter if he's made up of 10^23-1 molecules than if he's made up of a full 10^23 molecules.)

I was thinking one nice feature of the LUMP-MAN case was that (as far as I can tell, anyway) there are no parallel problems. There's some pressure to say that Tibbles is made up of some number of molecules. But there's no downwards pressure to say, for instance, that since the statue LUMP-MAN is a comment on the very nature of art and representation, so is the lump of clay LUMP. And, at least on a cursory look, I can't think of any properties that we want to inherit *downward* the way we tend to think that number of molecules and/or weight gets inherited upwards.

OK, so bold conjecture time (assuming the above is right, which is a big assumption to swallow): relative identity at-a-time is going to be generally plausible only when we've got multiple F's "at the top" (as it were) that are the *same G*, where G is "below" the Fs in the material-constitution hierarchy. Reason: things higher-up in the hierarchy inherit properties from things below them in a way that the things below don't inherit from things higher up.

4:45 PM

Ross Cameron said...

Geoff: the only thing I can think of that might lead you to prefer my case to yours is that you might think the inference from a difference in powers to numerical distinctness was independently dodgy (say because you thought modal predicates were context sensitive) in a way that the inference from a difference in aesthetic qualities to numerical distinctness isn't. (I'm thinking of Fine in recent stuff, who seems to give more weight, when arguing for the non-identity of a thing and its matter, to facts like 'the statue is Romanesque, but the clay isn't' over facts like 'the clay could be squashed but the statue couldn't'. But other than that, the cases look pretty similar to me. Thanks for the extra case.

Jason: The author I was reading was making a pretty throwaway remark on this stuff, so wasn't saying much about it. But everything you said sounded exactly right to me, including the bold conjecture and the reason for it. Really interesting stuff - thanks!

4:27 PM

Daniel Elstein said...

I thought that part of the attraction of relative identity (at least to Geach) was that it helped to make sense of the doctrine of the Trinity (i.e. the Son is the same god as the Father, but not the same person). Now I suppose that due to divine atemporality, that isn't exactly relative identity at a time; but it's hardly relative identity across times either. Of course, I'm gratified if you don't think the doctrine of the Trinity is remotely plausible...

More helpfully, could you have examples like teams, which might be less resistable than the pretentious artist case? E.g. the pub pool team is the same group of people as the pub darts team, but it isn't the same team.

5:13 PM

Ross Cameron said...

Daniel, why do you think my artist case is pretentious? Hee hee. Ambiguity is funny.

Geach did want to use relative identity for the Trinity, of course, and this might be construed as relative identity at a time. But I guess the thought is that if you're going to appeal to relative identity to convince your opponent that the doctrine of the Trinity is coherent, then you should be able to motivate it independently, in which case you'd better find examples of it other than the Trinity.

I think the case of teams is fine as well - but I can't see why it is less resistable than my case: can you say more?

12:52 PM

Daniel Elstein said...

Well, maybe someone would say that that there's only one sculpture, with two modes of presentation. If I draw a duck-rabbit, do I get to say that I've made two drawings? Whereas I'm more inclined to say that there really are two teams. After all, the darts team is gunning for promotion, whereas the pool team stares relegation in the face.

Admittedly, I'm just making a kind of ordinary language argument here, in that we seem happy to talk about multiple teams with the same members, but not about multiple statues made of the same clay. But that's a pretty contingent feature of usage. So maybe I'll change my tune when the Turner prize committee awards the prize for LUMP-MAN. Seriously, it's a lot of money; you should go for it.

11:30 AM