Your mind is just the physical hunk you call your brain

[ebola?]

To continue:

>>re: analyticity, a priori / a posteriori, necessary vs. contingent>>

Ah. I've been a bit mentally sloppy on these issues, since I've only really engaged with the difference between necessity and contingency in regard to the former two distinctions. Quine thus doesn't speak to this issue directly, but his "On the Two Dogmas of Empiricism" puts my kind of ontology in dialogue with more dominant currents in analytic philosophy.

>>
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.>>

I do not hold this view. Objects (and the very fringe that delineates objects) emerge in our interactions with our environment. Concepts which classify and point to objects are not static "things" or designators. Rather, they are elements of a process where we interact with our environment in pursuit of satisfying wants. Concepts are functional in this interaction.

So what is the relevance of the above? It is impossible to establish a single property or cluster of properties that designate objects necessarily. Rather, our terms and in turn their referents are fluid, and they shift insofar as they are put to use and vis-a-vis other terms.


>>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.>>

What is "stuff itself" though? If you are epistemologically honest, you are referring to an act of scientific observation (through spectral analysis, chemical reagent testing, etc.), involving an investigator, her instruments, an underlying body of theory, and something that is being investigated.

Why do you privilege these properties above all others, as bearing the essence of the thing "in itself"?

>>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.>>

I have a different view. The "thingness" of the thing in that glass is accorded its existence as an object insofar as it mutually orients participants to coordinate their activity toward that thing. This activity can be overt motion, speech, or even thought. Objects and their properties then emerge from however the interaction transpires. And, hey, with our basic level of education, the findings of material science play a central role.

ebola

 

[IcarusRisen]

Wait, do we have actual philosophy majors here? I thought this forum was a bunch of people spouting off their pseudo-philosophy. But here I find talk about a priori and a posteriori knowledge.

 

[Pander Bear]

it just tends to get lost among the fight club and tool threads

 

[dada]

Can the consciousness egsistr temporarily with the somatic systems suspended?

 

[The_Idler]

ok skywise, i trust completely in materialism and reductionism,
so do you believe in a non-physical spirit or consciousness or any kind of "super"natural force, that would mean a mental state would not match exactly with a brain state?

-- in other words, do you believe that there is something "special",
something other than the physically real electricity, matter and chemicals,
which, along with the state of the physically real brain, influences the state of the "mind"?

are you, basically, a dualist?


i am a firm believer in the idea that, although a mental state is not "made of" things in physical existence,
it MUST be caused by things in physical existence.
this is because i cannot see any evidence to suggest that anything ever observed in all existence was influenced by anything NOT in the same existence.
To me, consciousness and mental activity are to cranial activity,
as what you can see on your terminal or computer screen is to the electricity and code inside the machine.
So your desktop background is NOT a load of 1s and 0s, or electrical impulses on a PCB, for that matter, but it also IS, in the same sense that the mental state is the brain state.

 

[skywise]

ebola & Quine

Well, I have to say that this is an objection that I was not at all prepared for. I'm not sure if it is entirely incompatible with rigid designation though.

The idea that concepts are "fluid" shouldn't be a problem if I understand it right. In fact, I think that words do change meaning and reference. For example, the word 'fish' used to include dolphins. And I don't think it was just that we always used 'fish' to rigidly refer to some sea animals that evolved from certain ancestors, then found out that dolphins evolved from mammals and therefore were not fish. I think that 'fish' used to just mean "creatures of the sea with fins and the like" and that later it changed to have this evolutionary meaning where fish could not share evolutionary ancestors with mammals. There's a discussion of this in Moby Dick where one of the characters is fine with the fact that dolphins are mammals, but doesn't think this means that dolphins are not fish.

Maybe part of the problem is that I have not distinguished modal necessity and rigidity from temporal necessity and rigidity. The words can change their references and their meanings over time. The important thing is that whenever we use the words, we refer to whatever their referents are at that time across all possible worlds (i.e. rigidly).

Anyway, if this temporal fluidity is what you have in mind then it is no problem for rigid designation. Our concepts and words can change meaning for humans throughout history and for individuals throughout their lives. My first word was "water". No doubt my utterance did not include H2O as part of the meaning.

What it *did* include, however, was (so I'm told) my physically pointing to a glass of water that my grandmother had given me. And this, I think, is how we all use the word 'water'. As a way to pick out a thing in our experience. If you're objection is just that the actual thing referred to is not H2O, that's fine. It can be that water only seems to be essentially H2O to the unenlightened and is actually some sort of complex Quinean thing that emerges from how we orient ourselves toward the world. The important part for rigid designation is that when you say, "It's possible for water to be opaque", that this is functionally the same as physically pointing to the water in your glass and saying, "It's possible for that to be opaque".

Contrast with the 'inventor of bifocals'. Even if you think that there are no real essences "out there" in the world you can see how 'inventor of bifocals' and 'water' work differently in the language. When you conceive of different situations or worlds, "the inventor of bifocals" is not necessarily attached to our concept of Ben Franklin. It is perfectly coherent to say "It is possible the inventor of bifocals was not the man that he actually was (Ben Franklin)." This is because 'inventor of bifocals' is not rigidly attached to any particular x. Saying, "It is possible that the inventor of bifocals was not the man he actually was" is logically like saying, "It is possible that x (the man he actually was) did not have property p (property of inventing bifocals).

Now, as you know, I think that 'water' is rigidly (in the modal, not temporal sense) attached to the 'x' that it is (whether it is H2O or a Quinean thing). This is because I think saying 'water' is basically like pointing to a thing in our experience. But, if its OK with you I'd like to move on to the more relevant examples of 'pain' and 'brain state p' in our discussions. Even in your quineian view, could you have a pain that doesn't hurt?

It's very hard to imagine someone being in pain without feeling it. When someone gets cut very deeply sometimes it does not immediately hurt. Do we say in this case, "Oh, he's in pain he just doesn't feel it". Or do we think there is something kind of absurd about that statement? Of course, I think the latter is true and that to feel pain is to be in pain and vice versa.

Ditto with 'brain state p'. It seems like 'brain state p' is rigidly attached to the actual brain state it is (even if brain states turn out to be some emergent Quinean thing). I think it's going to be very tough to come up with an example of a specific brain state that isn't that very brain state or of a brain state in general that is not a brain state at all.

If either 'brain state p' or 'pain' are more like 'the inventor of bifocals' than 'benjamin franklin' then Arg. 1 is a wash. If they rigidly attach to their "x's" then the statement "pain is brain state p" is necessary if true. But, if it's necessary we shouldn't be able to imagine a counterfactual in which they come apart. We can imagine such counterfactuals. Hence the statement "pain is brain state p" is not necessary. Hence it is false.

 

[skywise]

i am a firm believer in the idea that, although a mental state is not "made of" things in physical existence,
it MUST be caused by things in physical existence.
this is because i cannot see any evidence to suggest that anything ever observed in all existence was influenced by anything NOT in the same existence.
To me, consciousness and mental activity are to cranial activity,
as what you can see on your terminal or computer screen is to the electricity and code inside the machine.
So your desktop background is NOT a load of 1s and 0s, or electrical impulses on a PCB, for that matter, but it also IS, in the same sense that the mental state is the brain state.

Look, the theory you keep championing is called functionalism. This is the view that the brain is like a physical computer which causes mental states. As I've posted several times, the arguments in this thread say nothing one way or the other about that view. Although, you may find it interesting to know that your view was "invented" in the same paper that Hilary Putnam wrote Arg. 2. Basically Putnam used Arg. 2 to show that strict identity doesn't work but that he had a new, better theory invulnerable to Arg. 2 called functionalism. Maybe I'll make a thread about this popular view as I read more about it.

And please stop asking me what my views are regarding what the mind is. As I've said to you, I have no such views at the moment. I only have views about what the mind is not. Eventually I hope to have views about what it is, but I'm going about this via a process of elimination.

 

[The_Idler]

ok thankyou...
i do not study philosophy, i am simply a guy who likes to think, and talk about thinking.
for me, philosophy is pointless, ie its all academic.
its just also very interesting, and a pleasant mental stimulation, especially while on opium =]

 

[ebola?]

>>
i do not study philosophy, i am simply a guy who likes to think, and talk about thinking.
for me, philosophy is pointless, ie its all academic. >>

So you enjoy philosophizing, but you think that philosophy is pointless?
Fair enough. Me too.

>>re: skywise's last post>>

mmmm...I think that you might finally have convinced me.
let me mull it over a bit and get back to you.

ebola

 

[ebola?]

>>
Maybe part of the problem is that I have not distinguished modal necessity and rigidity from temporal necessity and rigidity. The words can change their references and their meanings over time. The important thing is that whenever we use the words, we refer to whatever their referents are at that time across all possible worlds (i.e. rigidly).>>

Fair enough. However, I'm having a bit of trouble squaring reasoning in terms of possible worlds with my ontology. If something rigidly designates across all possible worlds, does that means that it designates the same object across all possible interactions that could have occurred at this moment?

>>If you're objection is just that the actual thing referred to is not H2O, that's fine. It can be that water only seems to be essentially H2O to the unenlightened and is actually some sort of complex Quinean thing that emerges from how we orient ourselves toward the world. The important part for rigid designation is that when you say, "It's possible for water to be opaque", that this is functionally the same as physically pointing to the water in your glass and saying, "It's possible for that to be opaque".>>

Now I think that I'm getting it!
So the crux of whether something rigidly designates is whether the designation points to a single thing. If we can imagine that thing as having different properties while still being that same thing that we are pointing to, that means that these properties are not part of that designation.

So to bring it back to your argument but also to put it in terms of my ontology, "the mind" cannot rigidly designate "the brain" because the rules of language use, given the particular situation of our current interaction with the world (our history + the present state of affairs), allow for us to posit a brain without a mind while we're still pointing to the same "that", the brain.

Okay...but what happens if we shift our perspective in terms of the borders between objects, changing what will appear as distinct and what is there to designate, generating new terms in the process? What if I discard the concept of a brain and a mind, replacing it with a "brain-mind", "body-mind", or "human social organism"? What if I replace it with "thinking cell-mass"?

ebola

 

[skywise]

>>Fair enough. However, I'm having a bit of trouble squaring reasoning in terms of possible worlds with my ontology. If something rigidly designates across all possible worlds, does that means that it designates the same object across all possible interactions that could have occurred at this moment?

Well, I would say "at any moment." Maybe I shouldn't have put the difference in terms of "temporal" necessity and modal necessity. I think what would be better is to say this: It is not necessary that certain words rigidly designate the things that they do. There are countless possible situations in which the words 'water' or 'Ben Franklin' were used to talk about other things. So, it's just a matter of contingent fact that we use the utterance 'Ben Franklin' to rigidly designate a certain man (he could have been named 'purple mumpkins' instead).

But, given the fact that a word rigidly refers to a certain thing, then it designates that thing in any possible situation we come up with regarding the thing designated. Kripke thinks that when we say something like "It's possible that Al Gore could have won the election" we just stipulate, as a matter of convention, that we are talking about the man we happen to call "Al Gore' in the actual world. It's like we point at something in the actual world and then pop up a possible situation around it.

]Now I think that I'm getting it!
So the crux of whether something rigidly designates is whether the designation points to a single thing. If we can imagine that thing as having different properties while still being that same thing that we are pointing to, that means that these properties are not part of that designation.

More or less, yes. It means that the properties are not necessary to the thing that is designated. It also means that it is possible to take away those properties and still be talking about the same thing. Said another way, it means those properties are only contingent facts about the thing.

So to bring it back to your argument but also to put it in terms of my ontology, "the mind" cannot rigidly designate "the brain" because the rules of language use, given the particular situation of our current interaction with the world (our history + the present state of affairs), allow for us to posit a brain without a mind while we're still pointing to the same "that", the brain.

I think this is exactly right (although its a little hard to tell because of my ignorance of what exactly is entailed by Quinean ontology).

Okay...but what happens if we shift our perspective in terms of the borders between objects, changing what will appear as distinct and what is there to designate, generating new terms in the process? What if I discard the concept of a brain and a mind, replacing it with a "brain-mind", "body-mind", or "human social organism"? What if I replace it with "thinking cell-mass"?
ebola

Well, I think that if we discarded the concepts of mind and brain and replaced them with something like "thinking cell mass" then the identity between the thinking cell mass and itself would be necessary and true. But, I think the problem is whether or not we can successfully do this. I mean, it seems like "thinking cell mass" is just a complex concept for mind and brain (m & b). So the true identity statement would just be (m & b) is (m&b). The question of whether or not m is b is just pushed back.

This may be beside the point, but it could help to distinguish between the necessity of the identity statement and the necessity of the identity. The necessity of the statement "pain is brain state p" is only the case if 'pain' and 'brain state p' are rigid designators. But the necessity of the identity of the thing with itself is the case because it just doesn't seem possible for something to not be what it essentially is.

I mean, if you take any single thing, say the particular monitor in front of you. It's just not possible in any sense for it not to be that monitor. You can't imagine a case where it's some different monitor because that would be a case where it's not the monitor you currently have in front of you. So, if pain and brain state p are exactly the same thing then it just should not be possible in any sense to have one without the other.

In contrast, identity statements between rigid designators are only necessary because rigid designators, by convention, specify that someone is talking about a particular thing and nothing else. Non-rigid designators, by linguistic convention, pick out any old thing so long as it satisfies certain conditions (like inventing bifocals).

But to get back to the main point in your post. For us to be justified in conflating 'pain' with 'brain state p' into one concept, we would need to have good reason to believe that they are one and the same thing. This entails having good reason to believe that they share all the same properties.

But, it is true for all things that it is not possible for them to be another thing. But it seems possible to have pain without brain state p. There seems to be no contradiction when imagining ghosts or, less controversially, when imagining two different brain state types (such as an octupus brain state and a human one) causing the same mental type, pain.

In contrast, it does seem true of pain that it has the property of being necessarily identical to itself (I can't imagine a pain that isn't painful). Since Pain has the property of being necessarily identical to pain, but brain state p does not have the property of being necessarily identical to pain, then they do not share all the same properties. But if pain and brain state p were identical they would have all the same properties. Hence, they must not be identical.

(You could also argue the converse. Since brain state p has the property of being necessarily identical to itself, but pain does not have the property of being necessarily identical to brain state p, then they do not share all of the same properties.... Hence, they must not be identical).

Hopefully this helps address the issues you raise and isn't just one big post of question begging. //goes to bed.

 

[BodhiSvaha33]

Look, the theory you keep championing is called functionalism. This is the view that the brain is like a physical computer which causes mental states. As I've posted several times, the arguments in this thread say nothing one way or the other about that view. Although, you may find it interesting to know that your view was "invented" in the same paper that Hilary Putnam wrote Arg. 2. Basically Putnam used Arg. 2 to show that strict identity doesn't work but that he had a new, better theory invulnerable to Arg. 2 called functionalism. Maybe I'll make a thread about this popular view as I read more about it.

And please stop asking me what my views are regarding what the mind is. As I've said to you, I have no such views at the moment. I only have views about what the mind is not. Eventually I hope to have views about what it is, but I'm going about this via a process of elimination.

I still think "strict identity" is essentially a strawman. I realize some people have adhered to this view, but it really makes no sense at all. It would be like saying digestion is identical to the GI tract.

Functionalism isn't some kind of fallback position for materialists. It's the only kind of materialism that makes any sense. Contrast this with god-of-the-gaps "theories" like "interactive dualism".

 

[blue_locus]

If you guys want to read a book that explores a lot of these issues in perhaps a more lucid and coherent manner than this thread, you should check out Into the Silent Land by Paul Broks. We had to read it for a neuro class I took, and it's one of my favorites in the "pop" neuropsych genre.

 

[skywise]

Functionalism isn't some kind of fallback position for materialists. It's the only kind of materialism that makes any sense.

Hindsight is 20/20. It took the rise and fall of behaviorism in the earlier part of the 20th century, then the rise of strict identity theories in the 50s and their fall in the 60s and 70s before "the only kind of materialism that makes sense" was even formulated.

Plus, even though very few people, once they've had it laid out for them like this, are likely to call themselves strict identity theorists, I think that there is still value in considering a view like this and rejecting it. Many times I've seen bluelighters rashly post views on the mind that, if they thought about it, would entail the difficulties presented here. Hell, to begin with you were saying there wasn't even a non-trivial difference between strict identity and functionalism. Now you're calling strict identity an absurd straw man and functionalism the only materialist view that makes sense!

 

[BodhiSvaha33]

Hindsight is 20/20. It took the rise and fall of behaviorism in the earlier part of the 20th century, then the rise of strict identity theories in the 50s and their fall in the 60s and 70s before "the only kind of materialism that makes sense" was even formulated.

Behaviorism is totally unrelated to theories of mind. In fact they explicitly rejected the necessity of mentioning the mind at all... black boxes and all that. Silly, but you're right, it took far too long for behaviorism to finally die. It's a great example of how politics and personalities interfere with science.

Plus, even though very few people, once they've had it laid out for them like this, are likely to call themselves strict identity theorists, I think that there is still value in considering a view like this and rejecting it. Many times I've seen bluelighters rashly post views on the mind that, if they thought about it, would entail the difficulties presented here. Hell, to begin with you were saying there wasn't even a non-trivial difference between strict identity and functionalism. Now you're calling strict identity an absurd straw man and functionalism the only materialist view that makes sense!

That's because I didn't even realize at first that you were arguing against strict identity rather than functionalism. My bad. You're right that there is clarification value in considering, and rejecting, the strict identity view.

 

[Paralogic]

I feel like the mind is a concept we created using language as its foundation to express its existence. Where as the brain is a concept we give life to by giving it a mathematic and physical (I guess scientific) foundation to explain its existence. I just feel like the comparison made by the OP isnt one that can be made a general point over the fact that humanity was aware of conciousness's existence before we created the fundamental laws to establish the idea of an organ that allows us to be concious and conceptualize conciousness's origin. So to make the image I guess either brain would be the categorical to minds quantitative lol. Sorry my thinking is not as great as it used to be.

 

[ebola?]

Skywise, I think we are overall in agreement, however:

>>
Well, I think that if we discarded the concepts of mind and brain and replaced them with something like "thinking cell mass" then the identity between the thinking cell mass and itself would be necessary and true. But, I think the problem is whether or not we can successfully do this. I mean, it seems like "thinking cell mass" is just a complex concept for mind and brain (m & b). So the true identity statement would just be (m & b) is (m&b). The question of whether or not m is b is just pushed back.>>

Working within my ontology and epistemology, though, you do not have recourse to "simple concepts". All concepts are relational, to each other and present and past situations. They are thus in a state of flux that precludes any concept from being "simple" or "complex".

>>
But to get back to the main point in your post. For us to be justified in conflating 'pain' with 'brain state p' into one concept, we would need to have good reason to believe that they are one and the same thing. This entails having good reason to believe that they share all the same properties.>>

Or more precisely, that the concepts must be functionally identical for a given situation. For a researcher in neuroscience, they may well be. For me when I have this pain? The two concepts are then pretty different.

>>Hopefully this helps address the issues you raise and isn't just one big post of question begging. //goes to bed.>>

Oh, I don't think it begs the question, but I do think that you sneak in a different metaphysics, the one I originally had qualms with.

ebola