Empathy with Animals

[skywise]

Nothing I've said entails "if you can't prove it you can't assume it." What I've said has entailed, "if your conclusion contradicts your premise then one of them has to be wrong." With regard to logic, you come to a contradiction of the cartesian premise if you say that brain states and mental states are identical. To say that they necessarily correlate is logically equivalent to saying they are identical. Whether *in fact* mental states and brain states never come apart is something logic can't decide. You can assume *in fact* they do without being illogical. You can't, however, assume that necessarily they coincide or that they are identical without refuting the Cartesian premise (and good luck on that one).

And your opinion whether such skeptecism can be portrayed as logical is irrelevant. Either Hume was guilty of a logical fallacy regarding cauasality or he wasn't. If you want to say he was you have to show the mistake in his argumentation - not just cite your opinion about how things are. Similarly, piecing together empirical evidence in an intelligent way is only logical in so far as truth is preserved from premises to conclusion. Logic is a specific discipline that doesn't change just because Bollwevil on bluelight has a misinformed opinion about it. Maybe by logical you mean 'plausible.'

 

[Pegasus]

And your opinion whether such skeptecism can be portrayed as logical is irrelevant. Either Hume was guilty of a logical fallacy regarding cauasality or he wasn't. If you want to say he was you have to show the mistake in his argumentation - not just cite your opinion about how things are. Similarly, piecing together empirical evidence in an intelligent way is only logical in so far as truth is preserved from premises to conclusion. Logic is a specific discipline that doesn't change just because Bollwevil on bluelight has a misinformed opinion about it. Maybe by logical you mean 'plausible.'

I did show a mistake in his argumentation. You can't say a conclusion is logical if it defies "plausibility". I'm not entirely sure if I have stepped out of the bounds of "the discipline of logic", but I'm going after reasonable applications of logic here, of which his is not one.

Also, it is relevant...

The only reason I started debating with lmnop was because he said "its only logical that they have something to do with eachother." I then pointed out that, accepting a notoriously difficult to refute premise, its actually only logical to believe in the possibility of them not correlating.

 

[skywise]

What claims, specifically, do you believe are not possible and believe to have refuted by your appeal to their seeming unlikely? If you are trying to deny possibility because it doesn't seem plausible then the logical mistake is in your argumentation, not anyone elses. There was a time when it didn't seem plausible to people that the world was round and revolving around the sun. Certainly that didn't mean it wasn't possible.

edit: I guess what I'm saying is that likelihood, or how plausible something seems, plays no logical role in determining possibility. I also think you're making a mistake in finding a parallel between this discussion and Hume's doubts on causality. How familiar are you with any of the claims you're attacking? Unless you can post the argument and show how it leads from true premises to false conclusions you really haven't shown anything except an opinion. And opinions about validity of logical arguments are about as useful as an opinion on whether or not 2 + 2 = 4.

 

[Pegasus]

^

its actually only logical to believe in the possibility of them not correlating.

I don't understand how you can make a statement like this, when you believe that the two are actually correlated. The reason it is only logical to believe that is because of skepticism and dismissal of empirical evidence, which I have been arguing against. The plausible solution and the logical solution shouldn't contradict.

 

[skywise]

The reason isn't because of any skepticism. The logic of possibility and necessity exists independently of empirical evidence (just like Math does). Empiricism *can't* tell us anything about logical necessity and possibility - its just not equipped to do it. I'm not refuting or skeptical of any empirical findings about mental states and brain states. Its just that empirical findings don't tell us anything about necessity and possibility. This is basic and doesn't rely on any form of skepticism. It's not incoherent for all empirical evidence to point to one thing and for it to be possible that it might be otherwise. You don't need to dismiss empirical evidence to show that something is possible.

While I have taken a skeptical stance in other threads (like the determinism one) thats not whats going on here. Trust me, the skeptical side of me doesn't want to be on the same side as a Cartesian dualist! However, even a skeptic can't avoid taking the possibility that mental states need not correlate to physical states because of cut and dry logical considerations. I've given some brief explanations and shown the bad logic in believing otherwise. If you want something more you're going to have to familiarize yourself with modal logic (which is the logic equipped to deal with necessity and possibility claims).

 

[elemenohpee]

^ I agree that its a very, lets say, "plausible" thing to think given the evidence.

Ok, we're in agreement then.

The only thing I don't like, from an empirical standpoint, is that its a very hard thing to test. Since you're skeptical about mental experience without a nervous system I'll introduce a new term 'qmental experience' to illustrate. Qmental experience has all the properties of mental experience except it only occurs without a nervous system.

Now, lets imagine an organism that has qmental experience. They don't have nervous systems but are actually very good qthinkers, and its very qpainful when they die (and their death causes qanguish in their friends who qlove them). If we dismiss any organism without a nervous system as automatically barred from this type of experience (remember qmental experience is just like mental experience minus the nervous system) then we would be completely obvlivious to something of this sort. One could say, "Well, we don't have any evidence for something like qmental experience" but the point is, if we think having having a nervous system is necessary to feel these things we *couldn't* have evidence to make us recognize qmental experience if it did exist. This all arises out of making a contingent property (arising from a nervous system) our defining criteria for the existence of the thing (mental experience).

If you could introduce some evidence to this effect you might have a point. But you can't just invent hypothetical worlds where anything could be possible and expect that to prove anything.

 

[Pegasus]

Skywise, you are being skeptical. Dismissal of your senses in a case like this leaves you with no evidence to work with. It appears to me that it is only logical to work with what you have available, rather than to discard it. Like I said earlier, I don't see the reason to preemptively squash that logical possibility that my senses have fooled me, especially in a scenario such as this one. (Which is all your logic has done)

Also, why stoop to...

If you want something more you're going to have to familiarize yourself with modal logic

?

Not very graceful...


Edit- Furthermore, the empirical evidence can to a degree be verified. If me and a few other people all agree on a few observations, and assume these observations to be true, then you can say that "based on these perceptions being true, it is only logical to believe there is a relationship", which is essentially what is happening. Collective perception is a worthy building block in a situation where that is all you have to go with... and should we be wrong, our logic was not flawed, as we always said, "based on these perceptions being true"...

 

[skywise]

Ok, we're in agreement then.

If you could introduce some evidence to this effect you might have a point. But you can't just invent hypothetical worlds where anything could be possible and expect that to prove anything.

Yeah, I think you and I at least are pretty much in agreement. I had to laugh, however, at the last part. You see, the logical criteria for a necessary relation is that it holds "in all possible worlds." Conversely, the criteria for the possibility of 'x' is that there is a possible world in which 'x' occurs. Describe a possible situation where something occurs and you actually proved that something is possible! I know the logic is hard to get a hang of if you're not familiar with it but if you think about it for a while you'll see why this is the case (or you could just read about the logic of necessity and possibility). I mean, what more can you want as criteria for possibility of a given x than a possibile situation where x occurs?

If you disagree with this I really can't argue with you about it. I didn't create modal logic, you're not at all familiar with modal logic, we're just going to have to understand that this is how it operates. If you don't believe me do a google search.

 

[skywise]

BollWeevil

I was actually trying to be graceful enough to not turn this thread about empathy with animals into a crash course on modal logic (which I won't do). To respond to your post though, I think I see our misunderstanding. The possibility I'm referring to is *not* the possibility that our senses might have fooled us (epistemic possibility). If you read my earlier posts you'll note that I gave "heat is identical to molecular motion" as a case of a necessary relation. Our senses could fool us in this situation too but that doesn't mean its not logically necessary.

To explain. What we (to the best of our empirical knowledge) in fact pick out when we say 'heat' is molecular motion. We use it to rigidly refer to the phenomenon of molecular motion across all possible worlds. There is no situation (possible world) where heat wouldn't have been molecular motion. There is, of course, a possible situation where something else creates in us the exact same sensation that heat does. But that wouldn't be the thing rigidly referred to as heat/molecular motion.

With mental states/physical states identity claims, epistemic possibility isn't available to explain away the Cartesian intuition that its possible that they might come apart. There's no intermediary of "feeling" because to feel like you're in pain is to be in pain (feel free to plug in any other mental state where "pain" is). We pick out pain by an essential property whereas we pick out heat by a contingent property (the ability to produce the feeling of heat in humans).

As ungraceful as it may seem thats about as far into the details of modal logic as I want to go. It's a complex logic and even if I spent the time it would take to teach a course on all this, as "skywise – random guy on the internet" I probably wouldn't convince you. It's also off topic. If you really are interested I'd suggest picking up Kripke's Naming and Necessity and would be more than happy to talk about this with you once you're familiar with whats up for discussion.

edit: to reply to your edit... Its not illogical to say that there's an actual relationship. Its illogical to say that the relationship is necessary. If the relationships not necessary then its possible for something to exist and feel/think without a nervous system. I don't think we should use non-necessary criteria for feeling/thinking as our guide to picking it out and then use the absence of this contingent criteria as justification for killing a given organism.

 

[elemenohpee]

skywise: how would you go about establishing a necessary relationship between mental and physical states. What would be required?

 

[Pegasus]

Skywise- After looking at this modal logic a bit, I have a question. Let's say that the connection between mental states and physical states was proven (I think it actually can be tested). All observable states have a corresponding opposite state. How would this not hold true "in all possible worlds"? I don't see how this truth could change in different circumstances, without denying causation...

 

[skywise]

lmnop: You would have to somehow show that the Cartesian premise was not a case in which a body existed without a mind. I imagine thats about as clear as mud so I'll use examples to better illustrate.

A non-controversial example of a non-necessary relation amongst logicians and philosophers is the one between Benjamin Franklin and the inventor of bifocals. Ben Franklin is, in fact, the inventor bifocals. It'd not be contrary to logic, however, if Ben Franklin died at the age of 2 and someone else had invented them. That could have happened. Thus, I just described to you a possible world where Ben Franklin wasn't the inventor of bifocals. The relation is not necessary because its not contrary to logic that the inventor of bifocals was someone other than Benjamin Franklin. Being "the inventor of bifocals" is a contingent property of Ben Franklin (contingent on the actual situation).

Now lets contrast this to the necessary relation between '2 + 2' and '4'. I can't give you a counterfactual situation where 2 + 2 is 5. Its not logically possible. A situation where we had 5 would have to be a situation where we didn't have 2 + 2. Similarly, its logically necessary that if P then ~~P (~ is the logical symbol for 'not'). I can't logically describe for you a possible situation where if we have something, then we don't have the thing. Its illogical.

To make a long story short (I'm very tired), relations between things like heat and molecular motion, water and h20, gold and atomic #79 are necessary. On the face of it, it may seem like they're more like Ben Franklin but what is actually possible is that in an epistemically qualititative situation we wouldn't be able to tell the difference between something that produced the same sensations in us as heat, gold, and water but was actually something else. Its not possible that what we actually refer to when we say water could have been anything but h20 and so on.

With things like mental states there is no possibility of "feeling" like you're feeling to be wrong about. If you're in an epistemically equivalent situation to feeling pain then you are having the thing pain. We pick out feelings and thoughts by what they are, not by a contingent property. Thus, the intuition that its possible that minds and body come apart (remember a corpse is a situation where a body exists without a mind and that "functioning" is a contingent property of being a body because it also can leave a body) can't be explained away as illusory like the intuitons that its possible that heat need not be molecular motion.

I'll try to answer BollWeevil's question later.

 

[elemenohpee]

I'm still hung up on the distinction between a body and a corpse. I don't care about corpses, its irrelevant to this situation. What I am saying is that it is impossible to separate the functioning body from the mind. This is my premise, this is what would need to be proven false in order for your cartesian premise to convince me. I believe that there is a necessary relationship between a functioning body and a mental experience, they are two sides of the same coin, like heat and molecular motion. Can you separate the two?

 

[skywise]

You have to understand how 'necessary' operates logically. If there is one set of conditions where a body doesn't have a mind then they are two separate entities. If they are separate entities then any correlation between the two is contingent. If they correlation is contingent then its logically possible for them to occur separately. You can imagine a body existing separately from "funcitoning" right? Thats because "functioning" is contingent. "Mind" is just like "functioning" in this respect. Its contingently correlated to body.

Maybe you're hung up because you think "possibly" entails "actually"?

edit: I think I just figured out a way to show it without appeal to a without a corpse existing without a mind! I don't have time now but I'll post it tomorrow (as well as respond to BollWeevil)

 

[skywise]

Bollweevil (and maybe lmnop - it doesn't rely on the whole corpse bit)

You don't have to deny causality to hold that the relation between mental states and physical states isn't a necessary one.

Here is a thought experiment to illustrate. Lets say that, in fact, I cause a ball to roll. Let's even go further and say that every time a ball rolls I, in fact, push it and am the cause. Would that mean that the relationship between me and the movement of the ball is necessary? Clearly not, right? Even if, in fact, every time a ball rolled it was because I pushed it you can still see how its possible for the ball to move independently of my pushing it. It'd be possible for something else to cause the ball to roll – a gust of wind perhaps. Conversely, it'd be possible for me to push the ball and for it not to move, perhaps because its glued down. None of these situations would be contrary to logic or even to a law of causality. Thus, logical possibility and causality can exist side by side. Even if something is, in fact, always causally related that doesn't mean the relation between the two is necessary.

Its the same thing with mental states and physical states. Go ahead and hold that physical states, in fact, cause mental states (or vice versa). It doesn't mean its not logically possible that something else should cause a mental state. That pain should be caused by something other than a funcitoning nervous system is a logical possibility. The fact that it *is* caused by a nervous system says nothing, in itself, regarding the possibility that something else might cause the same phenomenon.

With a necessary relationship you don't run into this. Its not possible that Clark Kent could be anyone else but Superman because Clark Kent *is* Superman. Its not possible for there to be heat without molecular motion because heat *is* molecular motion. If we have a situation where something feels like heat but isn't molecular motion, then its not heat – just some other phenomenon that happens to create the same sensation in humans that heat does.

Necessary relations are identity relations, *not* causal relations.