Your mind is just the physical hunk you call your brain

[ebola?]

>>
Do you have a positive argument for what the nature of the mind is? I'm a materialist, and count the mind as an emulation of lower physical structures of the brain.>>

Enter Damasio?

>>I think what you, Gahan, don't realize is that it was an aspiration 50 years ago to reduce mental phenomena to just physical (and before that behavioral) phenomena.>>

While at the same time, some interpretations of quantum mechanics strive to reduce matter and energy to information and laws.

On a more general level, the "physical" objects of science are none other than the "mental" perceptions of the scientific investigator.

The fact that the mental and physical are mutually reducible suggests to me that substance-dualism cannot be maintained.

My alternate ontology:
the seat of being is the subject-object interaction itself. "Substances" are rough descriptions of tendencies in these interactions.

So this suggests my preferred way of thinking of the mind (that someone else already hinted at):

An analogy:
What is a flower? A collection of quantum-particles in flux? A system of differentiated cells? An element of an ecological setting?

What is a body-mind (you'll see why I need more than the brain)? A system of neurons? A stream of personal experiences and actions? An element of a physically situated social setting?

The answer is "yes".

>>Yet, if you guys think that the mind is the brain, mental states are brain states, emotions are just chemical reactions in your brain, etc. then you also have to take on argument 2 (which is both harder to dispute and easier to understand than the first).>>

See above. There are multiple valid descriptions for any phenomenon. It turns out that personal experience emerges out of a special set of chemical (or physical or social) reactions. Feelings are chemical reactions, but they are not JUST chemical reactions as a natural scientist would describe them.

ebola

 

[skywise]

The Idler's invalid argument for why the mind is not the brain

And btw, "The Mind" is not the same thing as "The Brain"
A brain is made from matter,
a mind must be conscious, and therefore must be alive.

Dont get me wrong here, i dont believe in any of this shit outside of real physicality, and i do believe in total reductionism (ie somewhere there is a mathematical <- geometric <- physical <- chemical <- etc. reason for everything)
but ima say this
Mind and Brain are two different words, with two different meanings.

Ok, I'm all for denying that the mind is the brain, but your argument for why this is so is simply invalid.

First of all, you simply beg the question by just taking for granted that they are made of different things. The dispute is whether the mind is made of physical stuff and you can't deny this by just saying, "it's made out of consciousness." You have to give a reason why you think this is so (and the position you seem to be advocating, substance dualism, has proven very difficult to defend).

Then you contradict yourself and say that everything, including the mind, must have a physical reduction.

Then you seem to go back to the idea that mind and matter are different substances by arguing that mind and brain have different meanings, therefore they must be different things.

This reasoning is invalid. The word 'lightning' has a different meaning than 'electrical discharge' but that doesn't show that scientists are wrong and lightning is not electrical discharge. Likewise with 'water' and 'h2O' and a slew of other examples. What is important is whether or not two words, even if they have different meanings, have the same referent or not. Reference is what is important to identity statements, not meaning.

 

[skywise]

Very well, so are you saying the mind is not identical to the brain, but is identical to the operation of the brain? That works for me. As long as there's a 1:1 mapping between a particular brain state and a particular mind state, we are not talking dualism.

The point I was making is that any logical argument disconnecting brain and mind would have to apply equally to the circuits and UI of my computer. If we agree on that, the rest is semantics... maybe interesting to philosophers but no one else.

First of all, I'm not making any commitments about whether the mind is identical to the operation of the brain either. As I replied to Atlas, I have no positive view of what the mind is. The arguments in this thread do not say anything one way or the other about whether or not functionalism (operation/mind identity) is true. Maybe I'll make another thread about that sometime.

To your second paragraph, the rest is not "semantics". There are interesting philosophical differences. One example: If mental states are only functions of the brain then one day scientists may be able to make robots out of non-organic matter with mental states (because the identity is between the mind and the operation of the physical stuff, not the physical stuff). But, if mental states are identical to the physical states then we will not ever be able to create robots with mental states unless we can biologically create the exact same type of thing as our brains.

Anyway, if you don't find these issues interesting, fine. But, frankly, I don't give a shit if you think my thread is only interesting to philosophers. This is the philosophy forum, after all. If you want to discuss the differences between the interests of laymen and philosophers feel free to make your own thread. But, please, stop mucking up mine with irrelevant opinions on what's interesting to you.

 

[BodhiSvaha33]

Well, it's certainly nice to see that your study of philosophy has given you a peaceful heart... 8)

I can't imagine anyone arguing that the mind requires an organic human brain only, accept no substitutes -- for one thing, that would imply some kind of metaphysical identity between the brains of different individual people, which is hard to swallow.

Basically, if mind is "what brain does" in the classic formulation, then the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness disappears and our study of mind is greatly simplified. I believe this to be the case, on the basis of physical evidence primarily (i.e. drugs and brain damage). Exorcise the specter of dualism, and we've opened the way for scientific examination of the mind... the rest is hairsplitting.

 

[skywise]

^^ You know, I noticed that you referenced Dennett in an earlier post and you do seem to have some familiarity with consciousness literature. That's why I find it all the more strange that you have never heard of the view that the mind is identical with the brain in the sense I'm attacking. This was the most popular position on consciousness for at least 20 years and still has advocates today.

Also, I know I was pretty harsh in my earlier post. I just find it annoying that you keep dismissing the arguments in my thread as "an academic distinction at most" and "only interesting to philosophers." If you don't find the issues in my thread interesting, why are you even posting in it? I think it's fair game to post threads that aren't interesting to the every day joe (but very interesting to some philosophers) in a philosophy forum.

 

[skywise]

Technical necessity of identity explanation - dedicated to ebola

Ebola is right to say that my examples about the necessity of identity works best (or most obviously) in the case of proper names. This is because proper names are paradigm examples of Rigid Designators. Proper names rigidly designate because they basically function in the language to "tag" or "point to" their referent. Any meaning they might have is incidental. For example, in the case "John Shoemaker," the meaning of shoemaker is not important in determining the reference. Even if "John Shoemaker" stops making shoes or never made shoes, "John Shoemaker" still picks him out because its only function is to "tag" or pick him out.

So what is a rigid designator?. A rigid designator is a word or phrase that picks out the same referent in all logically possible worlds. To say 'Benjamin Franklin' is a rigid designator (or rigidly refers) is to say that it picks out the same person in any possible situation (or world) in which he exists. If the possible situation is one where he does not exist, then 'Benjamin Franklin' does not refer.

A non-rigid designator is a word/phrase that does not designate the same object across all possible worlds. An example of a non-rigid designator is 'the inventor of bi-focals. The intuitive test for testing whether or not something is a rigid designator is to refer to an object by a designator and ask if it could have been a different object. For example, "Could the inventor of bifocals have been someone other than the person he in fact was?" The answer seems to be yes, so 'the inventor of bifocals' is non-rigid. If we ask, Could Benjamin Franklin have been someone other than the person he in fact was (not just have had a different name, or metaphorically have been a different sort of person) the answer seems to be no. So 'Benjamin Franklin' is a rigid designator.

Another way to think about rigid designation is to say that a rigid designator picks out its object by an essential property, whereas a non-rigid designator picks it out by a contingent property (although rigid designation does not depend on any particular view of essentialism, i just bring it up as an explanatory tool). You can think of the name 'Benjamin Franklin' as picking out the man Ben Franklin by the essential property of being the man that he was. In contrast, 'the inventor of bifocals' only picks him out by a contingent property, happening to have invented bi-focals in the actual world.

The position that any identity statement between two rigid designators is necessarily true if true at all follows from the way rigid designators and the modal operator 'necessarily' work. The logical operator 'necessarily' simply means "true across all possible worlds." Rigid designators pick out the same object across all possible worlds. So, if '5+7' is a rigid designator then it picks out the same number in any possible world (in which that number exists). The same is true for '12'. If '5+7' = 12 is a true identity statement then both '5+7' and '12' pick out the same number across all possible worlds. If the two terms pick out the same numbers across all possible worlds then the identity statement is necessary by definition.

Now, to turn to ebola's water/h2O example, I'm going to argue that the identity between the two is necessarily true because 1) I think it is factually true and 2) I think both terms ('water' & 'H2O') rigidly designate. It might also be worth noting that the position that 'water' and 'h2O' are rigid designators, and that "water is H2O"is necessarily true is about as uncontroversial and well accepted as a philosophical position can be among analytic philosophers.

'Water' rigidly designates because it picks out whatever it is in the actual world that has all of the properties that we use to identify water. It does not refer to just the particular combination of sensible qualities that water happens to have. To test this, imagine we find on another planet a substance that is clear, flavorless, quenches thirst, etc. but has a molecular structure different from H2O. Would the newspapers print the next morning "It turns water is not (only) H2O!" or would they print "Scientists find a (different) substance just like water." The idea is we use water to refer to the "whatever it is" in our world that has the properties of being clear, flavorless etc. We then learn that the "whatever it is" is H2O. If we didn't use 'water' to rigidly refer to H2O then in possible situations in which we had something that exhibited all of the sensual properties of water we would say that it was water, even if it wasn't H2O. However much you accept this argument will depend on your intuitions about the language.

edit: It might help to consider the case of gold and white gold. The surface quality of gold is its golden/yellow color (which is reflected in the term's meaning). Yet, eventually we found out that gold's color was not important to its deep structure. Thus, when white gold was discovered we didn't hesitate to call it "gold" even though it was white. What was important to it being the same type of thing as regular gold was the deep structure. This is because the term 'gold' rigidly refers to the deep structure shared by gold and white gold.

It is more obvious that H2O rigidly refers. Can you imagine a situation in which H2O wasn't H2O? No, because it picks out the same referent in any possible situation and a case in which one referent is not itself is inconceivable.

So, both 'water' and H2O' rigidly designate the same object across all possible worlds. So "Water is H2O" is necessary. But why does it seems possible that "It might have turned out that water wasn't h2O?" If it's possible that water is not H2O, then they are not necessarily identical and therefore not identical at all. But, obviously they are identical. This, I think, is the problem ebola was bringing up and I have the answer for it in the next post (this one is already too big).

 

[ebola?]

>>Now, to turn to ebola's water/h2O example, I'm going to argue that the identity between the two is necessarily true because 1) I think it is factually true and 2) I think both terms ('water' & 'H2O') rigidly designate.>>

The above explanation is rather clear to me. I'm a bit confused about where you're going here though. First, how is point one more than tautological? My major qualm, though, is with number two.

>>It might also be worth noting that the position that 'water' and 'h2O' are rigid designators, and that "water is H2O"is necessarily true is about as uncontroversial and well accepted as a philosophical position can be among analytic philosophers.
>>

Yes, but even this consensus cannot shake my deep-seated suspicion of logical positivism.

>>'Water' rigidly designates because it picks out whatever it is in the actual world that has all of the properties that we use to identify water. It does not refer to just the particular combination of sensible qualities that water happens to have. To test this, imagine we find on another planet a substance that is clear, flavorless, quenches thirst, etc. but has a molecular structure different from H2O. Would the newspapers print the next morning "It turns water is not (only) H2O!" or would they print "Scientists find a (different) substance just like water." The idea is we use water to refer to the "whatever it is" in our world that has the properties of being clear, flavorless etc. We then learn that the "whatever it is" is H2O. If we didn't use 'water' to rigidly refer to H2O then in possible situations in which we had something that exhibited all of the sensual properties of water we would say that it was water, even if it wasn't H2O. However much you accept this argument will depend on your intuitions about the language.
>>

I cannot accept this argument. I think that you're privileging a certain aspect of water above all others in an attempt to create a "simple object" of the sort that you'd need to make this rigid designation possible. Yes, water is two hydrogens bonded covalently to an oxygen atom. From the perspective of the chemist or physicist, this is what water IS. However, there are numerous other ways in which we may engage water as we encounter it. If we disaggregate these different experiences of water, then we cannot rigidly designate water in the way that you'd like to.

ebola

 

[skywise]

This isn't logical positivism!

It was not until Logical positivism failed to show that certain kinds of statements don't make sense that the above formulations were even considered plausible. Rigid designation and necessary a posteriori statements are a problem for logical positivsm which has long been widely abandoned. A more substantive reply to come.

 

[skywise]

last part of technical explanation of argument 1

I cannot accept this argument. I think that you're privileging a certain aspect of water above all others in an attempt to create a "simple object" of the sort that you'd need to make this rigid designation possible. Yes, water is two hydrogens bonded covalently to an oxygen atom. From the perspective of the chemist or physicist, this is what water IS. However, there are numerous other ways in which we may engage water as we encounter it. If we disaggregate these different experiences of water, then we cannot rigidly designate water in the way that you'd like to.

ebola

No doubt we can "engage" water in several different ways, but I'm not entirely clear how this applies to the way the referent of 'water' is determined. I don't think that you want to deny that water refers at all.

If you think modal statements make sense (statements such as 'necessarily x' or 'possibly y') then the only way you can deny that water is a rigid designator (I think) is to say that it is a logical possibility for there to be water which is not H2O. If this is your objection, then I would like you to give me a counter-factual in which this is the case. If you want to deny that modal statements about the world make sense then you will have to come up with some extremely impressive arguments (and join forces with your loathed and widely discredited logical positivists!).

I don't think that Kripke (this is his theory) unnaturally tries to make water into a simple substance ad hoc to his theory of naming so much as he looked at how we naturally seem to use expressions of water and built up his theory around it.

Go out and ask your non-philosopher friends, "Can you conceive of a situation in which you have water and not H2O?" I think they will say "no." If there is no possible situation in which water (as we use the term in the actual world) does not refer to H2O then, trivially (by definition), 'water' rigidly designates H2O.

Now, you might reply with this objection:

Objection 1: But it does seem imaginable to me that water might have turned out to be something other than H2O." Back when we first investigated the molecular structure of this clear, flavorless, life-giving substance, it could have turned out to have had some other molecular structure. Therfore, the fact that water = H2O is contingent. Hence, there are contingent identities.

Reply: The case you have described/conceived is not a case in which water was not H2O. It is a case where, for all you knew water could have been something other than H2O. You're imagining being in the same epistemic situation that the people who discovered that water is H2O were in when they first started investigating it. All you know is that there is this clear, flavorless, etc. substance that's molecular structure is still unknown to you. Now, no doubt, it is possible that you could be in this epistemic situation, investigate the clear, flavorless substance, and find out that it's not H2O but has some other molecular structure.

But this is not a case where the stuff that we refer to as 'water' is not 'H2O'. It's a case where someone is in the same epistemic situation as we once were regarding water, investigates some other, very similar substance, and finds out that it is not H2O. It's not a case in which our water, aka H2O, is not H2O.

Notice that this "explaining away" of the illusion of contingency appeals to the difference between our sensual experience of a thing and the thing itself. It also works for heat/molecular motion. It might seem like we can imagine a possible world in which heat turned out not to be molecular motion. But what we are actually imagining is a case where we are in the same epistemic situation that we once were regarding heat, namely a situation in which something feels warm. And it then turns out that something other than molecular motion is causing this warmth. But this is not a case in which that which we call 'heat' in the actual world, turned out not to be molecular motion. It's a case where something else other than heat/molecular motion causes warmth. This is because when we use the word 'heat' we just stipulate as a matter of convention (and I really think this is what most people do) that we are talking the thing that is in fact causing this sensation of warmth in us (which turned out to be molecular motion).

So, it's necessary (true across all possible worlds) that water is H2O and heat is molecular motion because there is no possible world (try to imagine one) in which we have water and not H2O, have H2O but not water, have heat but not molecular motion, or have molecular motion but not heat.

The relevance of all this to the mental state/brain state argument is this: Any identity statement between two rigid designators is necessary. 'Pain' is a rigid deignator. 'Brain state of type p' (the brain state that allegedly is pain) is also a rigid designator. If "Pain = Brain state type p" is true, by virtue of the fact that the words both rigidly designate, then they must be necessarily true. You should not be able to imagine a case where "Pain is not brain state type p" because there is no possible case in which the one, actual thing, we us the words to refer to is not itself. But, I can imagine pains without brain states and brain states without pains (like when I imagine ghosts & zombies). Therefore "pain = brain state p" is not necessary. Therefore it is false.

You will probably want to argue that 'pain' is not a rigid designator. But can there really be a more obvious case of picking out a referent by something essential to it than with a pain? Can you have a pain that does not hurt? This seems to be pretty ridiculous. If you're not hurting (or feeling pain) then how can you be in pain? If you want to argue that "pain is not a rigid designator" (does not pick out the same object across all possible worlds) then you will have to give me an example in which we have a pain that is not painful.

You're tempted to give the possible situation of, "When your brain is in the state that is identical with pain but you don't feel pain" aren't you? This won't work because by doing this you concede that you can imagine the brain state without the actual thing 'pain' that we rigidly refer to in this world. If you can imagine the supposed identical brain state without pain then it's possible to have the brain state without the pain hence the two are not necessarily identical, hence not identical at all.

The other option is to deny that 'brain state p' is a rigid designator. But how could it not be? How is it possible to have a 'brain state p' that is not that actual brain state, 'brain state p'? Ask yourself the quesiton, "Could 'brain state p' not have been the brain state that it refers to in the actual world (not just have been called something different)" and the answer, I think, is no. If you want to talk about brain states in general ask, "Could a brain state not have been a brain state" and the answer again, I think, is no. If you want to deny the rigid designation you have to give a logically possible case in which a brain state of a specific type is not that type of brain state or a brain state in general is not a brain state.

And you cannot explain away the apparent contingency (and therefore falsity) of the identity statement "Pain is brain state p" the same way we explained away the illusory contingency of "water is H2O" or "heat is molecular motion." This is because in those cases we exploited the difference between the sensations we have of water and heat (colorlessness etc. in the former, and warmth in the latter) and the actual things water and heat. But in the case of pain and brain state p this is impossible. Why? Because to be in the same epistemic situation that you are when you have a pain is to have that pain! If you are feeling something that hurts, then you are in pain. So you can't say, "When you imagine pain without brain state p, what you are actually imagining is feeling something else that hurts, but is not pain/brain state p". If it doesn't hurt, it's not pain.

Anyway, thats basically the technical explanation of argument 1 in full. From your earlier post I got a hint that maybe you wanted to deny rigid designation in general. If this is the case, I will try to characterize your view of naming below and you can tell me if I have characterized it right. Once I do that, I will try to give you lots of reasons to think that Kripke's more widely accepted view of how words like 'water', 'Richard Nixon', and 'pain' work more accurately represents how people actually use the language.

 

[BodhiSvaha33]

It all comes down to zombies...

I agree with Dennett, the current prevalence of the Zombic Hunch will one day be seen as one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of philosophy. The only reason this absurd idea has any currency at all is that we put consciousness in a special ontological category without even realizing we're doing it.

Try substituting another attribute for "consciousness" and you'll see what I mean. Take "life", for example. Is it logically possible to have a person who exhibits all the functions of a normal human being, but is not alive? (I'm not talking about those of us who don't have lives .) If you consider "life" to be some ineffable quality that is not tied to any physical state, then yes, it's possible. But if you consider "life" to be a functional, descriptive term, like "has two legs", then no, it's not possible. Eventually we will sigh, realize that consciousness properly belongs in the latter ontological category and not the former, and there will be no more talk of zombies. It will be seen, properly, as the equivalent of imagining a person who has two legs but isn't bipedal.

 

[skywise]

It all comes down to zombies...

I agree with Dennett, the current prevalence of the Zombic Hunch will one day be seen as one of the most bizarre episodes in the history of philosophy. The only reason this absurd idea has any currency at all is that we put consciousness in a special ontological category without even realizing we're doing it.

Try substituting another attribute for "consciousness" and you'll see what I mean. Take "life", for example. Is it logically possible to have a person who exhibits all the functions of a normal human being, but is not alive? (I'm not talking about those of us who don't have lives .) If you consider "life" to be some ineffable quality that is not tied to any physical state, then yes, it's possible. But if you consider "life" to be a functional, descriptive term, like "has two legs", then no, it's not possible. Eventually we will sigh, realize that consciousness properly belongs in the latter ontological category and not the former, and there will be no more talk of zombies. It will be seen, properly, as the equivalent of imagining a person who has two legs but isn't bipedal.

You're mostly right. It depends on the Cartesian intuitions that you could have a mind without a brain, or a brain without a mind, or a mental state without a brain state (or vice versa), or a type of mental state without a type of brain state (or vice versa).

What I'm not sure that you realize is that any single one of these will do. If all things mental are identical to some physical thing (and thus necessarily identical) then there can't be one example where they could possibly come apart.

You have a decent explanation for why zombie intuitions might be wrong. But what about the intuition that you can have a particular brain state without the allegedly identical mental state? Less controversially, what about the actual fact that diverse physical systems realize the same type of of mental state? If the mental and physical can come apart, then it follows that they are not one and the same thing. Of course, you advocate functionalism so this isn't going to bother you. But it does show that your pain cannot be reduced to just the physical stuff going on in your brain (only maybe to the causal functions that those physical going ons realize).

 

[skywise]

my characterization & criticism of ebola's views on the reference of 'water'

I'm not going to go as in depth as I had planned but I do want to characterize my understanding of your position on how words like 'water' function. I also want to say why, if I am characterizing your view right, it seems false to me.

I take your view of 'water' and like designators to function as follows where A is an "everyman" using the language:

When A says 'water' he uses the term to refer to a certain cluster of properties he has asscoiated with the term such as transparency, tastelessness, etc. so that for A, the referent of 'water' is a "cluster" of various properties a, b, b1, c, etc.

My first objection, which depends completely on my intuitions, is that this just doesn't seem to be at all what I mean when I say, "Here is your water". And I don't think that I only mean, "Here is the thirst-quenching liquid [or insert whatever contextually relevant properties of water]" when I say "Here is water" (I think you must have meant something like this when you brought up our "engaging" with water in different ways).

I think that what we generally mean by a statement like "Here is water" is "Here is the stuff (H2O, as it turns out) that exhibits these relevant properties. If you are giving water to someone for drinking, the relevant properties will be its thirst-quenching properties. If you are giving it to someone to put out a fire it will be its fire-smothering properties. But it just seems false to say that when something is on fire and I say, "Here is the water" all I mean is "here is the fire-smotherer" without any regard to what the stuff itself is.

Now, I think you want to say that what the stuff is is the complex cluster of properties. But lets think about this in terms of counter-factuals. If I'm talking about a possible world in which water exists, what am I talking about on your view? Am I talking about its thirst-quenching properties, or its transparency, or its tastelessness? I think you want to say that I'm talking about all of them but this has a very peculiar result. It results in holding all of the properties that water in fact has, as being necessary properties.

Now this seems silly. There is no intuitive sense of "necessary" in which water has to be transparent. Likewise for the property that it has to quench the thirst of people or just about any property in the cluster it in fact has. I mean, maybe there are other reasons or theories for thinking that all these properties are necessary to being water, but it seems highly implausible that this necessity of all properties would follow just from a theory of language!

So, what do you do to save this "cluster theory" of reference from absurd consequences? You modify to a disjunction of course. You say that for something to be water in a possible world is for it to have property a or property b, or property b1, or property c, d, etc. Maybe you give some properties more weights than others (being H2O would probably count for me than being transparent). Then you do a little addition and if it has more properties in common with actual water than it doesn't, then what you have in the counterfactual is water. If it has less than a weighted half of the properties than water has in the actual world, then it is not water.

But, there's something fishy here isn't there? If x by itself does not satisfy a condition, c, and y by itself does not satisfy the condition, then neither will modifying to "x or y"! Likewise, if no single property (or conjunction of properties) suffices for the necessary conditions of a complex substance being a referent for the word 'water', then modifying to a disjunction, no matter how long or weighted or complex won't help at all.

Then there's also the intuitive fishiness. When someone states a counterfactual, "It's possible for the water in my glass to be opaque," does anyone really mean "Without the property of transparency, my current beverage will still have a weighted majority of the properties necessary for it to count as water"??? I find this highly implausible.

What I find much more plausible is that when someone says, "It is possible for the water in my glass to be opaque," they mean, "Take the thing actually in my glass (which happens to be water aka H2O), it is possible that this thing could be opaque. If this is right, then we use the term 'water' to rigidly refer to whatever it actually is (H2O) in all possible worlds.

If you have some alternate theory than the one I attacked I would be really interested to hear it. Likewise if you have any criticisms of these arguments which are intended to show that rigid designation explains how we use terms like 'water' better than cluster theories.

 

[ebola?]

I'm probably not going to finish my reply because I have to run to teach in ten minutes, but. . .

>>
No doubt we can "engage" water in several different ways, but I'm not entirely clear how this applies to the way the referent of 'water' is determined. I don't think that you want to deny that water refers at all.>>

Ah yes! But one of the ways in which we engage water, as scientists detailing its molecular structure, has somehow become privileged in your definition of water...that is, you say water "rigidly designates" h20, while water does not rigidly designate its other aspects. Why is that?

>>If you think modal statements make sense (statements such as 'necessarily x' or 'possibly y')>>

mmm...Following Quine, I reject any sort of sharp synthetic/analytic distinction, as I do reductionism. Statements can be "necessary" or "contingent" (subject to empirical verification), but only within a prior framework of investigation and assumption. I don't believe in statements that are analytic AS SUCH.

>>then the only way you can deny that water is a rigid designator (I think) is to say that it is a logical possibility for there to be water which is not H2O. If this is your objection, then I would like you to give me a counter-factual in which this is the case. >>

I gave you one in my original post, but I break from you in that I do not privilege molecular descriptions as the ultimate qualities of what things ARE. Now I'd like to hear your justification for doing so.

>>If you want to deny that modal statements about the world make sense then you will have to come up with some extremely impressive arguments (and join forces with your loathed and widely discredited logical positivists!).>>

Yeah, you're right. I used "logical positivism" too loosely. My bad.

>>I don't think that Kripke (this is his theory) unnaturally tries to make water into a simple substance ad hoc to his theory of naming so much as he looked at how we naturally seem to use expressions of water and built up his theory around it.>>

Who's the "we"? Do I naturally think of water in terms of its molecular structure?

>>Go out and ask your non-philosopher friends, "Can you conceive of a situation in which you have water and not H2O?" I think they will say "no." >>

I think that some would say, "yes," but they'd then have to weather the counter-arguments that you've just detailed to me.

Now, you might reply with this objection:

>>Objection 1: But it does seem imaginable to me that water might have turned out to be something other than H2O." Back when we first investigated the molecular structure of this clear, flavorless, life-giving substance, it could have turned out to have had some other molecular structure. Therfore, the fact that water = H2O is contingent. Hence, there are contingent identities.

Reply: The case you have described/conceived is not a case in which water was not H2O. It is a case where, for all you knew water could have been something other than H2O. You're imagining being in the same epistemic situation that the people who discovered that water is H2O were in when they first started investigating it. All you know is that there is this clear, flavorless, etc. substance that's molecular structure is still unknown to you. Now, no doubt, it is possible that you could be in this epistemic situation, investigate the clear, flavorless substance, and find out that it's not H2O but has some other molecular structure.>>

I think that your reasoning is sound here, but my objection is rather different from this one.

>>Notice that this "explaining away" of the illusion of contingency appeals to the difference between our sensual experience of a thing and the thing itself.>>

Aha! Very astute of you. When I think strictly about ontology, I don't actually believe in the "thing in itself". Rather, what exists, what is ontologically primary, is an interaction between "us" (humans engage the world socially) and the world outside. Analogy: the interaction is the coin and its motion, and we and the world are its two sides. (Nevermind...that's a shitty analogy).

...gotta go.

ebola

 

[skywise]

^^^

I have to go quickly too. On a quick reading of this post, I think a lot of your q's about why I think "being H2O" is privileged among other properties water has are answered in my last post. I'm guessing we were writing our last two posts at the same time.

But, one thing I want to make clear.

The view I'm championing is not that the statement 'Water is H2O' is analytic. It was a genuine discovery that water is H2O and it doesn't matter if "being H2O" is part of the meaning of 'water' or not. Certainly it was not always part of the meaning of 'water' anyway. What's important is that H2O is the reference of the word 'water'. I know you dispute this point about reference too, but I just want to be clear that if Quine has views against the analytic (which I think he famously does, along with a priori/a posteriori distinctions), they will not work here as I'm not claiming that "water is H2O" is analytic or known a priori.

What I do claim is that the statement "Water is H2O" is synthetic, necessary, and known a posteriori. It's synthetic because it doesn't follow tautologically from the meaning of the terms. It's a posteriori because we come to know it empirically (through science). And it is necessary because of the modal considerations I outlined about the necessity of identity.

Our discussion then turns, I think, on whether or not the view I defend is better or worse then your view about how words like 'water' function in the language.

edit: Also, when I asked the rather cryptic quesiton, "Do you think modal statements make sense?" all I meant by that is, "Do you think statements such as, "It's possible for my glass of water to be opaque" make any kind of sense? If you think they do make sense, then we probably just have differing views on how they make sense (I'm guessing yours is the cluster theory I attacked above). If you think they don't make sense, then you probably think any attempt to understand them is futile. But I get the impression that you're not saying that modal statements (like everyday counterfactuals) are nonsensical.

 

[The_Idler]

The Meaning of the Word.....

________________________________________________________________________________________

mind (mīnd) n.

1. The human consciousness that originates in the brain and is manifested especially in thought, perception, emotion, will, memory, and imagination.


brain (brān) n.

1. The portion of the vertebrate central nervous system that is enclosed within the cranium, continuous with the spinal cord, and composed of gray matter and white matter. It is the primary center for the regulation and control of bodily activities, receiving and interpreting sensory impulses, and transmitting information to the muscles and body organs. It is also the seat of consciousness, thought, memory, and emotion.
________________________________________________________________________________________


skywise, can you please explain why you disagree with these dictionary definitions?
oh and why you think you can make an argument about two words, and then redefine the meanings of them.
semantically Brain =/= Mind
Mind is like the software which runs on the hardware of the brain.

ONE - if you think a mind can exist without a brain, you are at least assuming that they are separate, different things.
TWO - if you think the word mind means the same as the word brain, you are clearly wrong.
THREE - if you are saying the mind is not anything separate, special or supernatural, and exists only as the result of the chemical and electrical interactions in the brain, you are agreeing with me and science.
FOUR - if you are saying the mind is an object, you are clearly wrong.

 

[ebola?]

I gotta run. But briefly, I do not subscribe to the cluster theory you've outlined.
It would be more accurate for me to say that NONE of the traits we associate with a particular designator are necessary rather than that they all are...however, both statements do not describe my view.

My epistemology and ontology is generally pragmatist...I gotta run to teach again.

ebola

 

[BodhiSvaha33]

What I'm not sure that you realize is that any single one of these will do. If all things mental are identical to some physical thing (and thus necessarily identical) then there can't be one example where they could possibly come apart.

I agree that there must be a 1:1 mapping from physical to mental for materialism to be correct. I'm not sure about the other way round, though. Different computers (here they come again!) can run the same operating system. This may open the door to the idea that the OS (mind) is not identical to the hardware (physical substrate), but as you point out, as a functionalist that does not disturb me. As long as hardware --> software, materialism is preserved. An analogy would be chemical synthesis: many different procedures may produce the same chemical, but a given procedure must have the same result every time (if performed correctly, same conditions, etc. etc.).

You have a decent explanation for why zombie intuitions might be wrong. But what about the intuition that you can have a particular brain state without the allegedly identical mental state? Less controversially, what about the actual fact that diverse physical systems realize the same type of of mental state? If the mental and physical can come apart, then it follows that they are not one and the same thing. Of course, you advocate functionalism so this isn't going to bother you. But it does show that your pain cannot be reduced to just the physical stuff going on in your brain (only maybe to the causal functions that those physical going ons realize).

I distrust intuition; there are too many examples of clever philosophical "intuition pumps" that lead to conclusions that are flat wrong. (Zeno's paradox!) Intuition is valuable but not infallible. Before I'd reconsider materialism, I'd need some evidence that it is wrong (VERY solid evidence, considering the mountain weighing down the scale in the other direction).

 

[The_Idler]

seconded.

 

[skywise]

skywise, can you please explain why you disagree with these dictionary definitions?

I do not disagree with the definitions. I never wrote that the words 'consciousness' and 'brain' meant different things. I said that the fact that two words mean different things doesn't prove that they don't refer to the same thing.

If you look up the word 'lightning' in an old enough dictionary it is not going to say that it means electrical discharge. Does this prove that lightning is not electrical discharge? No.

If you found an ancient greek dictionary and looked up the greek word for 'brain', it would say that it was an organ for cooling down the body. If you looked up the ancient greek word for 'heart', it would say that it is the seat for the mind. Do these facts about the meanings of words prove that the heart causes mental states and that the brain causes cooling? No.

Likewise, the fact that consciousness and brain mean different things does not show that consciousness and the brain are in fact two different things.

ONE - if you think a mind can exist without a brain, you are at least assuming that they are separate, different things.

I'm not saying that the mind can exist without the brain in the actual world. I'm just saying it's logically possible (imaginable) that the mind can exist without the brain. I think it's logically possible that Nixon wasn't president too, but I don't think that Nixon wasn't actually president.

And I'm not assuming that the mind and brain are different things. I'm using the fact that it's imaginable for them to come apart to show that it's not logically necessary for them to be identical. I then have separate reasons for thinking that if an identity is not necessarily true then it is not true at all.

TWO - if you think the word mind means the same as the word brain, you are clearly wrong.

I do not think this.

THREE - if you are saying the mind is not anything separate, special or supernatural, and exists only as the result of the chemical and electrical interactions in the brain, you are agreeing with me and science.

I'm not saying anything about what the mind is. I'm only saying what the mind is not. And I'm saying that the mind is not just your brain, particular mental states are not just particular brain states, and types of mental states are not just types of brain states.

FOUR - if you are saying the mind is an object, you are clearly wrong.

I'm not saying this.

 

[skywise]

I distrust intuition; there are too many examples of clever philosophical "intuition pumps" that lead to conclusions that are flat wrong. (Zeno's paradox!) Intuition is valuable but not infallible. Before I'd reconsider materialism, I'd need some evidence that it is wrong (VERY solid evidence, considering the mountain weighing down the scale in the other direction).

I think it's fine to distrust intuitions so long as you have good reasons for distrusting them. But often, I think, intuitions can be quite correct. You bring up Zeno's paradox as a case where an intuition led to absurd consequences. I think this is an odd example. It seems much more intuitive to believe that Achiles can outrun the turtle (which I assume you believe is correct). It is only by distrusting our intuitions that Achiles can run faster than the turtle that we are led to believe otherwise by abstruse philosophical argumentation.

Hell, even in the case of the mind/body problem, the intuition that the identity between the mental state and the physical state was not necessary turned out to be correct on your functionalist view (and led to the formulation of it!).