“The materialist who is convinced that all phenomena arise from electrons and quanta and the like controlled by mathematical formulae, must presumably hold that his wife is a rather elaborate differential equation; but he is probably tactful enough not to obtrude this opinion in domestic life.”
Sir Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928), p.341.
27 comments:
I saw someone suggesting recently that Sir Arthur's famous observations that supported Einstein were bogus. So perhaps he's not sound on relatives.
But, I find, Wikipedia takes his side.
"It has been claimed that Eddington's observations were of poor quality and he had unjustly discounted simultaneous observations at Sobral, Brazil which appeared closer to the Newtonian model[3]. The quality of the 1919 results was indeed poor compared to later observations, but was sufficient to persuade contemporary astronomers. The rejection of the results from the Brazil expedition was due to a defect in the telescopes used which, again, was completely accepted and well-understood by contemporary astronomers.[4]. The myth that Eddington's results were fraudulent is a modern invention."
About the integrity of good old Arthur, I entertain no doubts. About Albert, on the other hand, . . .
Albert might have discarded his daughter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieserl_Einstein
I don't suppose that the truth will ever out.
There are many things our society discourages saying but are nonetheless accurate.
Dearieme, I didn’t know about that. Thanks for the information.
TGGP: "There are many things our society discourages saying but are nonetheless accurate."
True enough, but I take it that you believe that the materialist or the mechanistic-physicalist is right, such that you believe that the fundamental mechanistic-physicalistic proposition itself, namely, that everything is mechanical-physical and can in principle be brought under physical-mathematical description; that the proposition given above, namely, that there are many things our society discourages saying but are nonetheless accurate; that all other propositions, including propositions about those propositions and propositions about those propositions about those propositions, ad infinitum; and that all the truth-values of these propositions, — that all these are themselves mechanical-physical and can in principle be brought under physical-mathematical descriptions, which are themselves mechanical-physical and can in principle be brought under physical-mathematical descriptions, which are themselves mechanical-physical and can in principle be brought under physical-mathematical descriptions, ad infinitum.
Now, where in all this is the mind or the agent-intellect that understands the meaning and truth of the propositions and descriptions which it sets forth? If it is nowhere, if it does not exist, then where is the warrant for the belief in the fundamental mechanistic-physicalistic proposition; or is that proposition just gas that has escaped from some old and ill-considered metaphysical corpse?
Furthermore, the proposition that physical-mathematical description of mechanical-physical process is itself a mechanical-physical process is a conceptual absurdity in the first place; for description is intentional, whereas mechanical process is just that which by conceptual definition is non-intentional, such that the proposition would absurdly mean that an aspect of the world that is intentional and is about an aspect of the world that is non-intentional is itself an aspect of the world that is non-intentional and is therefore about nothing.
Materialism and mechanistic-physicalism are bunk, and are kinds of nihilism-irrationalism.
I take it that you believe that the materialist or the mechanistic-physicalist is rightHe may be right, he may be wrong, but his position certainly can't be dismissed this glibly.
"[H]is position certainly can't be dismissed this glibly."
We could call it a summary. (A book-length version is perhaps not suitable for blog-comments.) By the way, Mr Teabag, as a genuine matter of interest, and if you don't mind my asking, do you, as a mathematician, take the Platonic view?
I'm actually more interested in whether social acceptability is a proxy for accuracy.
I would call myself a materialist, although I guess I'm not entirely sure what non-materialism entails. As I have noted elsewhere, even God may be a material being: that is explicitly the case for Mormons and assumed among the more primitive religions.
I think people may be described as having intentions, or as mechanical entities, or both depending on what's useful to you. We emit vibrations in gas that is used as input for the processes going on the brains of others. I believe you are familiar with the writings of David Stove and would not argue against the idea that much of our gaseous emissions can be safely ignored as noise rather than a useful signal entangled with what we are interested in.
Now, where in all this is the mind or the agent-intellect that understands the meaning and truth of the propositions and descriptions which it sets forth?We have brains, and that's all that's really necessary. Either "mind" refers to what the brain does or it's not very useful. To me, whether the Chinese-room + inhabitant "understands" Chinese is a rather meaningless question.
for description is intentionalOn the contrary, it is common to find a person on one end of a dispute write an indictment of the other side that unintentionally describes himself. There is no law of nature ensuring that the suicide rock cannot come into existence through freak accident, and we use mechanical devices like typewriters or computers for describing things all the time. Then it would be our own minds that ascribe meaning to the material descriptions. Does that mean we are special entities whose capabilities go beyond the material? No, computers take in input and analyze it (perhaps also confusing noise for signal) as well.
I try to make my beliefs pay rent in anticipated experience. I don't know how belief in the non-material would do that.
TGGP,
"I think people may be described as having intentions, or as mechanical entities, or both depending on what's useful to you."
You sound like Richard Rorty on a bad day.
"We emit vibrations in gas that is used as input for the processes going on the brains of others. I believe you are familiar with the writings of David Stove and would not argue against the idea that much of our gaseous emissions can be safely ignored as noise rather than a useful signal entangled with what we are interested in."
You mean we sometimes talk guff and others believe it? No doubt. I like Stove, but I am not the neo-positivist that he claimed to be.
"Either 'mind' refers to what the brain does or it's not very useful."
I fail to understand what that means.
["for description is intentional"]
"On the contrary, it is common to find a person on one end of a dispute write an indictment of the other side that unintentionally describes himself."
You are misunderstanding what is meant by "intentionality": it means "about-ness" or "for-ness" and need not indicate conscious intent. A description is about something. A mechanical process without design-derived intentionality is not about anything. (Such is the concept that comes out of the mechanical philosophy, and which has informed materialism and mechanistic-physicalism, though how much of reality is encompassed by that concept is another question.)
"[W]e use mechanical devices like typewriters or computers for describing things all the time. Then it would be our own minds that ascribe meaning to the material descriptions. Does that mean we are special entities whose capabilities go beyond the material? No, computers take in input and analyze it (perhaps also confusing noise for signal) as well."
Again I cannot see what point you are trying to make, apart from re-asserting your belief in materialism, whilst ignoring any points made against it, and yet at the same time half-admitting that minds are required to give descriptions. Moreover, it is precisely the point under consideration here whether we have capabilities that go beyond the mechanical-physical. I am not sure what your mention of computers is meant to suggest. They are machines designed by minds to follow algorithms, but so what? Do you think they analyse and understand meanings? Grasp concepts? Have thoughts?
And less of the Yudkowsky, if you don’t mind.
The Platonic view suggests uniqueness... I would so no, or at any rate not without caveats.
I do in some sense accept the existence of mathematical entities as eternal and unchanging, but only to the extent that any logical tautology is eternal and unchanging... if that's not begging the question.
I certainly don't see anything as an imperfect shadow of anything from some perfect realm. Rather the opposite: the domain of mathematics is a logical distillation of the most basic rules of the physical world.
Thanks, Mr Teabag; it's an interesting subject.
You mean we sometimes talk guffYes.
and others believe it?I suppose one could argue that if I said something meaningless nobody could believe it, because there was nothing there to believe ("belief in belief" being another story). That incidental though.
the neo-positivist that he claimed to be.I didn't know he claimed that. I thought he was supposed to be in the common sense tradition of philosophy (yes, it really exists).
"intentionality": it means "about-ness" or "for-ness" and need not indicate conscious intentHell of a false cognate there. Teleology is a muddy business. I think we can ascribe purpose to a variety of things, but "for-ness" doesn't reside in those things. Looking at a claw-hammer you can see features designed for driving in and removing nails, but one can use it for a paperweight or murder-weapon as well. Viagra was originally created for either blood or heart problems and penicillin was created by accident, and they obtained other purposes later on.
A mechanical process without design-derived intentionality"Mechanism" is often used to imply "design-derived intentionality". If I recall my CS classes correctly, all possible programs can be enumerated and generated by a universal turing machine. Most of them won't be very useful, but if you get lucky and find one that duplicates a useful program, it is of course indistinguishable from a program designed intentionally.
whether we have capabilities that go beyond the mechanical-physicalMechanical devices designed by humans don't have abilities beyond that of a duplicate created by the proverbial tornado-in-the-junkyard (however unlikely such an occurrence is). While we have not done so yet, I don't think there are any capabilities we have that couldn't be duplicated with a mechanical device we designed.
Do you think they analyse and understand meanings? Grasp concepts? Have thoughts?In some senses, yes. Right now they are still fairly primitive compared to people though.
A mechanical process without design-derived intentionality is not about anything.I quite agree. There is no intentionality in un-designed things.
We, on the other hand, like all living things, are the result, and beneficiaries, of a very great deal of design -- and by now have gotten to be rather impressively flexible intentionality machines (some more than others, as will not have escaped the notice of JoC's regular readers).
Of course, there's no settling this question to anyone's satisfaction; the dualist will have his immaterial mind-stuff, and will confidently remind us that "mere" matter obviously cannot be conscious or intentional, while the materialist will point to the obvious causal connections between the physical brain and the mind, and will tax the dualist to explain just how he can possibly have acquired, at this early stage of our inquiry into the natural world, his apparently exhaustive knowledge about what "mere" matter can and cannot do.
So far, then, no materialist can say just what consciousness is, or how the material brain creates it. On the other hand, though, for the dualist flatly to assert that matter cannot possibly give rise to consciousness -- and then to insist upon the existence of a mind that, though entirely immaterial, nevertheless manages somehow to push dumb matter around according to its mysteriously uncaused volition -- is altogether unhelpful, forecloses upon further inquiry, and explains absolutely nothing.
So we are left, I am afraid, with our intuitions, for now at least. I think that may change before long, but I might well be mistaken.
TGGP,
“I didn't know he claimed that.”
He wrote his “neo-positivist credo” as the last chapter in The Plato Cult.
.
“Hell of a false cognate there.”
I didn’t just conjure it up. It is a central concept in the philosophy of mind.
“one that duplicates a useful program . . . ”
I.e., following design. A program shows intentionality or final causality: it is directed towards some end, yet its intentionality or final causality is design-derived from the intentional minds that created it and which exist outside of it.
“I don't think there are any capabilities we have that couldn't be duplicated with a mechanical device we designed.”
Again, that is an issue in question, but do you give no credence to the Lucus-Penrose-Gödelian argument against such a possibility? (And please do not link to Yudkowsky asserting at polemical length that “it is all woo-woo”.) Of course, you wouldn’t be alone in doubting the effectiveness of that argument, since, besides anything else, it puts a spanner in the works of strong AI, and thus provokes professional interests against it, just as the Jaki-Hawking-Gödelian argument puts a spanner in the works of a physical-mathematical Theory of Everything, provoking a similar response.
“In some senses . . .”
In what senses?
Malcolm,
“there’s no settling this question to anyone’s satisfaction”
So it seems, and there is certainly no satisfaction in a perpetual trail of promissory-notes, which seems to be the best but futile defence of materialism against its grave inadequacies. It is funny that this supply of promissory notes has increased greatly in the last hundred years, almost as a panicky but aggressive response to the trend of events in science and philosophy, which set rumours a-flutter that materialism is bankrupt.
“. . . the dualist will have his immaterial mind-stuff”
Let’s not play the rhetorical trick of bringing out the pseudo-Cartesian dualist as whipping boy. (Just as an aside, Galen Strawson — a panpsychist who likes to call himself a real physicalist! — has rightly pointed out that it might help modern philosophers if they actually bothered to read the works of the father of modern philosophy rather than just assume to be true the caricature of his ideas drawn by the behaviourists, by Gilbert Ryle, and by their epigones, most notably Dennett.) Cartesian dualism, however, is a consequence of the mechanical philosophy, a philosophy which, conceiving of nature as an entirely mechanical system without formal-final causality, a system wholly amenable in principle to mechanical-mathematical description, had either to deny the existence of mind, since it evinces obvious signs of formal-final causality/intentionality not amenable to such description, or to take it out of the system of nature altogether. Descartes, to his credit, but under the impress of this philosophy, decided to save the mind by banishing it to a little realm of its own; others have banished it to the void: hence today we have eliminativism.
I find the word “immaterial” no more frightful or shy of concept than the word “material”. I do hold mind — or at least active-intellect — to be immaterial, and, leaving aside the rational demonstrations to that effect, it seems to me quite plainly so, even if for no other reason than that “material” is defined under the metaphysics of the mechanical philosophy to exclude just that which I know to exist indubitably, namely, intentionality or final causality. I cannot yet tell you, however, of the position in which I find myself, since I am not yet quite sure myself; perhaps everything is “immaterial”, or, “to put the conclusion crudely—the stuff of the world is mind-stuff”, as Sir Arthur Eddington said. I don’t know, but I very much doubt I will find myself a proponent of Cartesian dualism, and I can see no rational way that I could be a materialist.
“. . . and will confidently remind us that "mere" matter obviously cannot be conscious or intentional”
As already mentioned, the concept of mere mechanical matter cannot be intentional if it is defined otherwise; and such is the definition which we have inherited from the mechanical philosophy of the seventeenth century which first gave us the radical split between the natural world and the human world. It is well to remind ourselves that this is a problem of modern philosophy.
“. . . while the materialist will point to the obvious causal connections between the physical brain and the mind”
I don’t think that anyone doubts that, when one puts a bullet through a man’s brain, one does not thereby put him in a happy frame of mind, at least as far as we can see.
“. . . and will tax the dualist to explain just how he can possibly have acquired, at this early stage of our inquiry into the natural world, his apparently exhaustive knowledge about what "mere" matter can and cannot do.”
Here again is the materialist’s fixation with the (Cartesian) dualist, his brother in the mechanical philosophy, as it were. Both share the mechanistic conception of matter as a non-intentional substance, a conception which just thereby excludes certain capabilities. Now, one could call oneself a non-mechanistic materialist, but then one must conceive of matter in such a way that it approaches the concept of mind, and as such, especially given the metaphysical-historical baggage that comes with the term “matter”, why call oneself a materialist rather than a neutral monist? No doubt, for the materialist, there will be some sense of unease in making that change in the conception of matter, especially given that neutral-monistic positions notoriously tend to slip towards what is conceived of as being the opposite of materialism, namely, idealism. (At the turn of the nineteenth century, Karl Pearson, in the preface to the second edition of The Grammar of Science, wrote confidently that idealism would become the most credible philosophy amongst scientists (though materialism had always been the minority-view). To some extent that occurred, especially amongst physicists, but it seems that he didn’t reckon with the stubbornness of materialism.)
It is my unoriginal and indeed common-as-muck-sensical contention that mechanical-mathematical description of the world captures only one aspect of it, that is to say, that the nature of worldly phenomena is not exhaustively explained solely by that mechanical-mathematical aspect. Mechanical-mathematical description of the world does not encompass intrinsicality (a point made by both Bertrand Russell and Arthur Eddington) or intentionality or final causality. Yet, whilst the scientist believes in his professional capacity that he ignores these other aspects as metaphysical, he smuggles them in by the very concepts by which he understands the phenomena: in the concepts of process, encoding, information, function, and so on.
“. . . for the dualist flatly to assert that matter cannot possibly give rise to consciousness”
Again, this all depends on the concept of matter. The (Cartesian) dualist is right to flatly assert that “matter” cannot give rise to consciousness just because he and the mechanist-cum-materialist have conceived of it as being just that which cannot give rise to consciousness. As for that mysterious substance that we might call matter out there in the real world, I suspect that it is very different from the way that the (Cartesian) dualist and other matter-mechanists conceive of it, though I do not know.
“. . . to insist upon the existence of a mind that, though entirely immaterial, nevertheless manages somehow to push dumb matter around according to its mysteriously uncaused volition -- is altogether unhelpful, forecloses upon further inquiry, and explains absolutely nothing.”
In return, I am more than happy to intimate the silliness, nay, the absurdity, of insisting upon the existence of a lump of dumb matter which, though entirely mechanical-material and without volition, though having within itself no determinate and universal forms, nor ever having perceived anything except indeterminate and particular-instantiated objects, can nevertheless somehow manage to “push around” and understand determinate and universal immaterial-abstract objects; — and then, if that were not enough, of insisting that oneself is that lump of dumb matter, without volition or fundamental reason, whilst all one’s rationally-inferred beliefs and deliberations yell a perpetual mockery of such an insistence. Yet, leaving aside the pesky question of the conception of matter, upon which depends any intimation as to the silliness of its being “pushed around” by mind, I may say that the postulation of immaterial mind forecloses upon enquiry, etc, in the way that you conceive the terms and direction of that enquiry, which is just a form of question-begging. Furthermore, it is odd to suggest that those who insist on the existence of an immaterial mind are somehow stopping anyone from doing neurology. Some of them have been neurologists! More to the point, however, and far more grave to the future of rational enquiry, is the undermining of rationality itself by its being taken to be nonrational-mechanical-physical causality.
If, in the last analysis, we believe that we have reasons to believe that all reasons reduce to non-reasons, then, in the last analysis, we must believe that we have no reasons to believe so, which is absurd, at which point we must at least entertain the thought that something has gone radically wrong with our beliefs. Any irrationalistic doctrine which seeks to reduce all reasons to non-reasons — whether it be Marxism or Freudianism or just the mechanism-cum-materialism from which those blights on humanity have arisen — gains no credence from me; indeed, given the absurdity which these doctrines entail, and given the polemics and promissory notes that stand in lieu of arguments and reasons in their favour, the onus is on the purveyor of such things to demonstrate to me that they are not just bizarre prejudices; though I may well ask what on earth such a purveyor thinks he is doing if he seeks to persuade me otherwise. Scepticism can go all the way: one may doubt the validity of the laws of logical thought, but one cannot make a rational move against them without presupposing their validity. In a similar sense, one may doubt the existence of agent-intellect, but if one believes that one chooses to do so because one believes one has understood the reasons for doing so, then one believes just that which is at logical odds with what one claims otherwise to believe, namely, that one is causally-determined to do so by nonrational causes. Rationality is a starting-point: to undermine it by radical doubt is to bring it and everything else down to the bestial level of a life at the capricious mercy of sense-particulars — and I humbly suggest that for a rational animal to do such a thing is madness.
I suspect it will take another revolution in thought — comparable in depth of effect to the Aristotelian and the mechanical philosophies — to get us out of this mess, if that is possible. But, given the way things are going, my money is on a counter-revolution to some extent. Max Delbrück was only half-joking when he credited Aristotle with the discovery of DNA. In the metaphysical revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we inherited some very odd prejudices, and discarded some very useful ones.
I'd really like you to explain what you think the relation is between one's willingness to say something to one's wife and its accuracy.
I.e., following design. A program shows intentionality or final causality: it is directed towards some end, yet its intentionality or final causality is design-derived from the intentional minds that created it and which exist outside of it.No, like I was saying a program can be generated without that. Imagine a wireheaded rat that both receives stimulation and increments a number that serves as a program for a turing machine. A bystander comes along at some point and takes the turing machine (severing its connection with the rat) and just for enters some numbers as input. Each time the output is the largest prime factor of the input, for the program to do so just happened to be on the tape after the last increment by the rat. Did the "intentional mind" of the rat design a program for the purpose of finding the largest prime factor? No, because it's not actually necessary in order for the program to have the same behavior. The bystander didn't design it to do so either, he only made use of it and possibly didn't even realize the relation of the output to the input. At the same time, like I said, the program is indistinguishable from another program intentionally designed by a human programmer. So we can conclude that the same functionality of any computing program is possible without intentional design.
Again, that is an issue in question, but do you give no credence to the Lucus-Penrose-Gödelian argument against such a possibility?I haven't actually read Penrose or heard of Lucus so I have enough awareness of what you're alluding to in order to give it specifically any credence.
YudkowskyYou've complained about him a bit, and I suppose I do tend to link too heavily to him on a number of topics, but when someone else has gone to the trouble of explaining things clearer than I could I don't look that gift horse in the mouth. What's wrong with Yudkowsky? I've got my complaints about him, but I don't imagine they're yours.
hus provokes professional interestsMy own line of work is in quite stupid programs nowhere near AI, so I don't share their interests.
In what senses?There's What You See Is What You Meant and even Clippy was an attempt to grasp what a person intended to do. When a computer is analyzing a particular chunk of data (or iterating out the consequences of a possible move in a chess game), I don't think it a terrible abuse of language to say it is "thinking about it". Is there any behavior defined in terms of input and output (to keep things simple for the purposes of this conversation) that a person can perform but no possible machine could? And if a machine can do it, is there any reason to say what it is doing doesn't count as "thinking" other than its construction?
D.,
I too am unsatisfied by promissory-notes, and my optimism that progress will be made in providing a physicalist account of consciousness is due only to a fact and an intuition. The fact is that of the enormous sensitivity with which mental states seem to depend on the physical: a tiny brain injury can transorm a personality; the stimulation of a single neuron can arouse a sensation, thought or memory; a few molecules of this or that substance can delete consciousness altogether. The intuition is my feeling that there is less to it all than meets the eye; that consciousness is far gappier, far less plenary and exotic a phenomenon than we take it to be -- and that matter has a few surprises yet to reveal.
Much of your criticism of physicalism relies upon that which is "material" being intrinsically incompatible with intentionality -- but it seems to me that there is an unproblematic materialist account to be made of the arising of "aboutness" in living organisms, if one grants that there is a natural design process at work in the world that operates upon self-replicating things. That there exist fangs in the world that are "for" injecting venom, or sensory organs that are "about" the prey they detect, seems unproblematic enough; we can easily imagine, also, that the stalking behavior of a snake has as its intentional object the mouse the serpent "wants" to eat, and that the bee's dance "means" something about the location of food, without the need to ascribe consciousness at all. So I think the real problem is consciousness, not intentionality, and that it is important to distinguish between them. If it is to be argued nevertheless that matter cannot support intentionality by definition, then perhaps what we need is just a better definition, or a new word. I grant you that defining just what matter is is no easy job -- it is, as you say, a pesky question -- but simply to say that "matter is that which can never be conscious", and then to slope off for a pint, is perhaps knocking off a bit early. But, I grant you, these are murky waters.
I am unruffled by the objection, often raised, that while perfect rationality depends on an abstract relation of ground-and-consequent, mind-as-brain-activity can only offer cause-and-effect (which C.S. Lewis put forward as "the cardinal difficulty of naturalism"). This would indeed be a problem for materialists if they were were trying to support the claim that we are ideal rationocinators -- but surely that is not what we are, and no materialist philosopher that I know of would make such a claim. What we upright apes are working with, rather, is merely a "good enough" cognitive apparatus that has been shaped, by eons of reitierative design and testing, to model the world's regularities flexibly and extensibly enough to have got us where we are. Indeed, in many (if not most) ways we are quite deeply, and predictably, irrational, as the merest glance at the work of politicians, ad-men, and fundamentalist preachers robustly confirms.
Where I do find myself in complete agreement with your remarks is your comment that "I suspect it will take another revolution in thought — comparable in depth of effect to the Aristotelian and the mechanical philosophies — to get us out of this mess, if that is possible. But, given the way things are going, my money is on a counter-revolution to some extent."
Quite right: we need someone of authentic, revolutionary genius to take the measure of this conundrum (though my money is on the other horse). At any rate I think you will agree, my friend, that until that Einstein of consciousness bursts upon the scene, we scribblers can do little more than to have a bit of sport with it all, and to wave our banners on the sidelines.
Rather well said, Malcolm. The blogger "Hopefully Anonymous" is more interested than I in the issue of consciousness (he suspects everyone other than him might be a turing machine) and points to Christof Koch as standout in that field. I don't know if he qualifies as your revolutionary genius though.
Now, one could call oneself a non-mechanistic materialist, but then one must conceive of matter in such a way that it approaches the concept of mind, and as such, especially given the metaphysical-historical baggage that comes with the term “matter”, why call oneself a materialist rather than a neutral monist?Too much seems to depend on assigning the right "ism".
Can I offer a mathematical analogy? Suppose we have the mathematical equivalent a lump of dumb matter. Without positing the existence of anything further, one immediately finds a meta-structure, existing in the space of relationships that points of 'matter' have to each other. This meta-structure is hugely more organised and elaborate than the original lump, and furthermore is a categorically different sort of thing. It's even indistinguishable from an identical copy not depending on any fundamental lump.
There's no need to assign a label to the belief in such a set-up, since it's uncontroversially true. But if it wasn't? You could call such a person a 'materialist', since the only fundamental substance required to exist is dumb 'matter'. Or a 'dualist' because the lump and the meta-structure do both exist and are ontologically different. Or a 'monist' who holds that only 'matter' exists but that it is not so dumb, since it's simultaneously the building blocks for dull 'lumps', and imbued with the potential to conjure up sophisticated meta-structures. To my mind this is 3 different ways of saying the same thing; no doubt you could come up with many more.
My own best guess about consciousness (I share Malcom's view that is the nub of the problem) is that it relates to matter in a comparable manner to this example. Of course mind is not physical; but somehow it is wholly reliant upon and determined by physical processes. It's in the domain of processes and relationships (and information, if you like) rather than points and lumps, that it's likely to be best understood.
“I'd really like you to explain what you think the relation is between one's willingness to say something to one's wife and its accuracy.”
It may be an interesting request, but I do not quite know what you mean or how it is relevant to any question of the truth of some things. If you mean to ask whether I am sometimes less than perfectly accurate with the facts when speaking with my wife, then I plead guilty, though I doubt that you take that much interest in my marital life. If you mean to ask whether I believe that my wife is a complex differential equation with which I talk, then I plead not guilty; for I cannot even imagine or bring to intellection what it would be like to believe that I am a differential equation engaging in a semiotic relation with another differential equation to which I am further related in holy equation-lock. You may call that a failure of both imagination and intellect, not to say of intuition, but I may console myself with the doubt that anyone much cleverer than I could believe such a thing in his own case – though he can say he believes it.
“So we can conclude that the same functionality of any computing program is possible without intentional design.”
We need not be talking about intentionality as in purpose. A program is intentional, that is to say, it is about something or towards something even if in an utterly dumb manner.
Malcolm,
“Much of your criticism of physicalism relies upon that which is "material" being intrinsically incompatible with intentionality”
Indeed, but it is not I who has defined matter in such a way as to be incompatible with mind. That is the view that standard-contemporary materialism has inherited from the mechanical philosophy. I shall not rehash the point, however, except to say that we both agree that much depends on the conception of matter.
“ . . . but it seems to me that there is an unproblematic materialist account to be made of the arising of "aboutness" in living organisms, if one grants that there is a natural design process at work in the world that operates upon self-replicating things.”
As soon as one grants that there is a natural design process and that “aboutness” arises from it, or rather, giving no credence to the postulation that x-kind can somehow emerge from y-kind, that “aboutness” is an intrinsic aspect of the world, then one is well outside of materialism under its mechanistic conception. To admit that the world is so constituted is in my opinion a step in the right direction out of the mess into which the mechanical philosophy took us; but it is a step away from materialism as it has been understood since the seventeenth century, and is a return to the earlier conception of the schoolmen and, ultimately, Aristotle.
“I am unruffled by the objection, often raised, that while perfect rationality depends on an abstract relation of ground-and-consequent, mind-as-brain-activity can only offer cause-and-effect (which C.S. Lewis put forward as "the cardinal difficulty of naturalism"). This would indeed be a problem for materialists if they were trying to support the claim that we are ideal rationocinators -- but surely that is not what we are, and no materialist philosopher that I know of would make such a claim.”
No one is claiming that human beings, as complex systems, subject to passions and suchlike, are anything but fallible or that we never fail to act in accordance with reason when circumstances demand it. Moreover, the fact that we are not such beings is an important element in the argument against mechanism-cum-materialism; but before we come to a sketch of that particular argument, let us note that the mechanist-cum-materialist is not just saying that we as whole persons are less than perfectly rational — a fact upon which everyone agrees — but rather that the intellect, the abstract concepts upon which it acts, and the laws of logical thought, are physical-mechanical particulars which are indeterminate and variable precisely by their being particular instantiations and not universal forms.
When I reason deductively about abstract concepts, such, for instance, that
No square is a circle,
X is a square,
Therefore,
X is not a circle,
then I have in mind, as to the content of the argument, perfectly determinate abstract objects which I understand to be universally so. The concept of circularity, for instance, is not rough and ready — i.e., indeterminate — like the approximations we see in the particulars of the material world, but is perfectly determinate as an abstract concept, and, as such, is not merely a mental image of a particular instantiation from perception. (I am told that no one can imagine (i.e., form a mental image of) Lorentz rotations in four-dimensional space-time, and I can readily believe so, yet some clever chaps can bring it under the light of their intellects using abstract mathematics such that they can understand the concept.) Furthermore, I take the logical inference that connects such concepts to be universal and perfectly determinate, i.e., not approximately valid, but perfectly valid, and universally so, i.e., that it does not vary with time and place. Now, if such concepts and the laws of logical thought really did vary with time and place as a consequence of their being indeterminate and variable particulars rather than determinate and unchanging universals, then the whole of our system of knowledge, built on countless millions of such concepts and inferences, would be ill-founded, and we could not say that we knew anything about the world except for the brute facts of sense-particulars. But that is not the case.
A distinction has to be made between persons as whole systems, with funny beliefs and silly errors and driving passions, and agent-intellects as parts of those systems which are able, amidst all this noise, to understand abstract concepts and to be able to reason correctly — that is, determinately — about them. What is under question, then, is whether, when we engage in that activity called reasoning, we can do so correctly at all. Plainly we can, and he who cares to argue against that fact had better make his “argument” a shouty one rather than a rational one! But the mechanist-cum-materialist, if he is consistent, cannot but think that our “determinative intellect” and its “determinate abstract objects” are in fact nothing of the kind, but rather that they constitute physical-mechanical processes which vary over time and space according to the indeterminate and particular way in which they are instantiated. In other words, if he takes his mechanism-cum-materialism seriously, he commits himself to irrationalism and relativism, and begins to speak like Richard Rorty, about whom the only good thing I can say is that at least he did take his materialism seriously, or at least as much as that proponent of “liberal irony” could take anything seriously.
I concede that this is all very sketchy, but it gives some indication, albeit a messy one, to a full exposition. I can see, however, that I need to be much clearer in my own thoughts about this perplexing subject.
Now, returning to the fact that we are fallible beings and not ideal ratiocinators, I shall just make a short sketch of an argument ad absurdum against mechanism based on that fact, an argument which derives from Lucas and Penrose and ultimately Gödel.
I.The human mind is fallible and contains inconsistencies.
II.The human mind is a formal system like that of a machine.
Therefore,
III.The human mind is an inconsistent formal system.
IV.An inconsistent formal system is thoroughly inconsistent, that is to say, any proposition that can be stated in that system can be proven using its rules.
Therefore,
V.The human mind is thoroughly inconsistent, that is to say, any proposition that can be stated by it can be proven using its rules.
Therefore,
VI.The human mind can prove itself to be a consistent formal system.
And,
VII.Propositions (I)-(VII), and propositions in contradiction to them, can be proven by the human mind.
And,
VIII. The contradiction of (VII) can be proven thereby.
And,
IX. The contradiction of (VIII) can be proven thereby.
Ad infinitum.
Therefore,
X. The human mind, being thoroughly inconsistent, cannot recognise its own mistakes or recognise the truth of anything.
Since every reasonable man rejects (X) but accepts (I) and (IV), he must reject (II), given that the reasoning is valid.
“[W]e scribblers can do little more than to have a bit of sport with it all, and to wave our banners on the sidelines.”
Too true. Naturally I am embarrassedly aware that I am a paddler who is perhaps muddying the waters rather than clarifying them, though, since I am confined to a little cove in the vast ocean of learning, I feel free to paddle without fear of causing too much trouble.
Mr Teabag,
“Too much seems to depend on assigning the right ‘ism’.”
I think so, but we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of labels in how things develop, or the mess we can get in if we all subtly change our ideas but retain the labels without much realisation that such has occurred. It is a curious fact about us humans that we can follow the label in its journey rather than the idea, in other words, that labels do matter to the social course of thought; for we can choose to attach ourselves to them, and by so doing we hope that their good connotations will attach themselves to us. For instance, if “materialist” carries with it connotations of no-nonsense and hard-headed scientific thinking, and one wishes to be associated with that image, then one wound do well to follow the label “materialist” so long as it carries those connotations and even if it has been subtly attached to a different idea. I realise that I might be accused of poisoning the well against materialism here, but I offer it as a prominent example of how we humans are often tempted to associate ourselves with labels that bear connotations of success and goodness according to certain milieus; and there is no doubt that “materialist” — a label for a metaphysical view — has illegitimately drawn some of its sheen from the successes of science, which is pre-eminently an empirical-methodological enterprise rather than a metaphysical one.
It will come as no surprise to you to hear that I am far from believing that we humans do always or even typically behave and believe according to reason. We are led hither and thither by our passions, and, in many respects, that can be quite charming in itself, and, in many ways, I am quite glad that we are so constituted. But I do believe that we can reason as agents, rather than being solely patients upon which the world performs its operations.
“My own best guess about consciousness . . . is that it relates to matter in a comparable manner to this example.”
The example is a very intriguing one, but the trouble is that consciousness has content (or intrinsicality) and intentionality, and I cannot see how these could emerge from a meta-structure that supervenes on points of matter.
We should not say, however, that it just seems that consciousness has content and intentionality, since that seeming itself is just the sort of thing that needs explaining, rather than “explaining” away, a la Dennett. But it is all too difficult for me, and so I’m off to bed.
Deogolwulf,
Perhaps our views do not diverge quite so widely as we might have thought; we agree rather satisfyingly that what we mean by "matter" is crucial. My view, simply put, is that the human mind is a product of the activity of the human brain, that the human brain consists of matter in a highly complex and unusual arrangement, that this remarkable arrangement of matter is the result of a unimaginably long concatenation of tiny advances in design, and that the process of design itself is entirely non-teleological, and arises in the natural world according to rather simple and easily explicable principles.
Beyond that I make no claim, really; the rest of my view consists almost entirely of an inveterate, parsimonious reluctance to clutter things unnecessarily by introducing any further assumptions. For example I see no need to posit a conscious and purposeful Agent to account for the design effort; the process, it seems, can run very satisfactorily on its own.
You wrote:
'As soon as one grants that there is a natural design process and that “aboutness” arises from it, or rather, giving no credence to the postulation that x-kind can somehow emerge from y-kind, that “aboutness” is an intrinsic aspect of the world, then one is well outside of materialism under its mechanistic conception. To admit that the world is so constituted is in my opinion a step in the right direction out of the mess into which the mechanical philosophy took us; but it is a step away from materialism as it has been understood since the seventeenth century, and is a return to the earlier conception of the schoolmen and, ultimately, Aristotle.'Again, for clarity's sake: my view is that "aboutness" is a property of designed things, and that living things are designed things. Intentionality is, then, an intrinsic aspect of a special subset of the world, but yes, the world is so constituted that intentionality can arise, because there is a simple, natural process by which design can arise. I think all the fuss about intentionality generally misses this very simple point altogether - which I find, frankly, baffling.
Given the arising of intentional creatures, i.e. creatures with interests (whether or not they are capable of representing those interests to themselves, i.e. being aware of them), and given that the world apparently operates according to various dependable regularities, there is a niche for creatures that can learn to adjust their behavior so as to accommodate those regularities in ways that increase their own success. There are at least two ways this learning can happen.
One way, slow but ultimately effective, relies entirely on death. Imagine two similar insects, with slightly different "hard-wired" behavioral inclinations. A new predator has arrived in town, and is setting up shop. One insect tends to fly away when approached; the other lies very still. As it happens, the predator is a frog, easily capable of flicking a bug out of the air. Over time, by this high-stakes process of trial and error, our insect species "learns" to sit still when approached by a frog.
There is another way of accomplishing this, though. Imagine now a creature that is able to test various behaviors, not by actually trying them out against the real world itself, but against an internal model of the world. It can imagine flying away, and has an accurate enough model to picture being caught if it does so. So it lies still, and lives.
This is a very good trick, and creatures that can do it - that can make useful models of the world, and test prospective behavior against the model, rather than in the world itself - can save themselves an awful lot of dying. So there will be a tendency, over time, for there to arise lineages of creatures that do this very well: that make increasingly sophisticated models of the world's denizens and regularities.
All of this gets us most of the way down the road; it can certainly account for intentionality, and also, I think, accounts for our reasoning as well. That nature exhibits mathematical regularities is certainly of interest, but that nature exhibits any regularities at all is an immensely strange and important fact to begin with. That we have, after aeons, arrived at a clever way of modeling them is impressive, but hardly seems beyond the limits of what the aforementioned process of design might be expected to accomplish, given enough time. I am not inclined toward platonism, however, and do not feel the need to assume the actual existence of abstracta of which the particulars of the world are but imperfect copies, from which we make useful generalizations; I do concede, though, that explaining just what the laws of Nature are - i.e., how and where they are written into the fabric of the world - is rather above my pay grade.
But although we are good, in many practical ways, at making and manipulating our models, in many other contexts we do an utterly abysmal job. This I see as being entirely consistent with having a faculty of reason that, far from being a glittering splinter of God's ideal mind, is simply a cobbled-together biological thing, good enough for many useful tricks, and quite inadequate for others, and severely limited in ways we cannot perceive or even imagine - a faculty that not only fails to provide "complete coverage", but indeed cannot even see its own edges, in the same way that we are entirely unaware of the enormous blind spot, the size of five full moons, that lies near the center of our visual field. To imagine, then, that our vaunted Reason is such a splendid thing that it necessarily transcends the capabilities of mere biological tissue strikes me as giving an awful lot of credit where it really isn't due.
The real puzzle remains, then, for me, neither reason nor intentionality - both of which, I think, present no serious obstacle to the worldview limned above - but consciousness. What is it? Why do we need it at all? All the practical evidence seems to indicate that it arises entirely from the workings of the biological brain. But how?
There is more that I ought to say here - I have not even touched upon your remarks about Gödel and Penrose - but it is late, and I am afraid I am off to bed myself, and shall have to issue a promissory note for the rest.
I apologize. My question was not about your behavior specifically (hence "one's", though I suppose that sounds anachronistic these days) or even that of married couples. It was one of social epistemology (to use one of H.A's favorite phrases). I think there is a tendency for us to conceal some of our more ill-founded beliefs due to our correct expectation that others will find them ridiculous and we will be unable to support them, which we do not properly take into account by revising our beliefs (Bryan Caplan calls this "preferences over beliefs"). However, I think the effect is outweighed by other factors having little to do with truth, so I blog anonymously (in part to have more credibility with the kind of audience I want) and read others who do so as well. That's part of why I'm not on board with Dennis Mangan.
A program is intentional, that is to say, it is about something or towards something even if in an utterly dumb manner.If I recall correctly again, most possible programs do not halt. Are they "about" not halting? Usually when people discuss what something is "about" or "for" they mean to say what it's purpose is. What is purposeless for-ness? How do we know anything has for-ness?
There already exists theorem proving computer programs. One can introduce the possibility of producing inconsistencies in such a program. This program may happen to produce no more inconsistencies on average than a human. If one of its incorrect theorems is that it is itself a consistent system do we then conclude it a disproof of materialism? Or do we say that it never actually recognized the truth of anything despite proving as many truths as a human might? Surely it might "recognize a mistake" by proving a contradiction and discarding an old theorem when in fact it was the old theorem that was correct and its recognition a mistake, but the same is true of human beings.
has illegitimately drawn some of its sheen from the successes of science, which is pre-eminently an empirical-methodological enterprise rather than a metaphysical one.I think many materialists would make just that point about science!
But I do believe that we can reason as agents, rather than being solely patients upon which the world performs its operations.What's the difference? How can we distinguish between one and the other?
Just some quick responses, gentlemen.
TGGP:
“I think there is a tendency for us to conceal some of our more ill-founded beliefs due to our correct expectation that others will find them ridiculous and we will be unable to support them, which we do not properly take into account by revising our beliefs.”
I beg your pardon for missing your point. Naturally this reluctance to speak of one’s ill-founded beliefs for fear that everyone will think one an idiot can be harmful to the emergence of new ideas even if for no other reason than that hearing something genuinely silly or ignorant can provoke such an emergence. (My maternal grandfather — an engineer — used to say that, if he was stuck on some solution to a problem, he would talk to his wife, my grandmother, about it; whereupon, having heard the silliest and most pig-ignorant suggestions, he would find that the problem and its solution presented themselves more clearly. My grandmother tells this story — which one might say is quite insulting about her — but she finds it funny. “Silly woman!”, she says he used to say. She herself is a canny lass, though one may suspect that engineering is not her strong point.) Furthermore, as you say, having one’s ignorance exposed can be the impetus-by-humiliation to a revision of one’s false beliefs. On the other hand, a decent degree of reticence is desirable, since if we all begin to express our ill-founded beliefs without hesitation or fear of consequence, then we end up with a cacophony of easy-going ignorance. I realise that I am once more missing your point somewhat, a point which is more directed toward the question of social acceptability, but at the moment, I am not quite sure what to say about it.
“What is purposeless for-ness?”
Purpose is conscious end-directedness; whereas “for-ness”, for instance, just means the way a thing tends by its nature towards some end.
“Surely it might 'recognize a mistake' by proving a contradiction”
A formally inconsistent system can prove any statement according to its own rules, and thus can prove the contrary of any statement therein. It has no way of standing outside of its own rules to recognise that any mistake has been made.
“How can we distinguish between one and the other?”
I thought that was partly what this discussion was about! But, if by nothing else, surely you intuitively distinguish between billiard-balls and persons?
Malcolm:
“All of this gets us most of the way down the road; it can certainly account for intentionality . . .”
I cannot see that at all; it looks suspiciously like a case of Dennettian redefinitions to me. (He’s not my favourite philosopher, as you might have gathered.) Yet we may both be struggling needlessly here. Intrinsicality and intentionality may well be fundaments of the world. Better still, the two together are encompassed by the concept of formal-final causality. (I think there are good reasons to think the world is this way.) Yet, meanwhile, you can call it natural process, a conception which I think implicitly encompasses these concepts anyway! As you say, in some respects, we may not be so far apart as first seems.
“I am not inclined toward platonism, however, and do not feel the need to assume the actual existence of abstracta of which the particulars of the world are but imperfect copies, from which we make useful generalizations”
By speaking of abstract concepts, I am not simply multiplying entities beyond necessity. (Such entities need not be taken in the strict Platonic conception; Aristotle brought them down to earth, as it were.) As I touched upon in my previous comment, there is very good reason to accept that the intellect just cannot do without them. This is in addition to our natural intuition that such entities are not physical in any normal sense of the word. I really do not see why we have to go so far out of our way to avoid accepting them for what they seem to be and what we have very good reason to believe them to be. It does appear to me that this is a very strenuous and overstretched attempt to remain within the bounds of materialism; but why should we?
“The real puzzle remains, then, for me, neither reason nor intentionality - both of which, I think, present no serious obstacle to the worldview limned above - but consciousness. What is it? Why do we need it at all?”
If you recall, I made my puzzlement about the existence of feelings — on just why would anything feel anything rather than just be functionally aware of things — known in post a while back, in which I was rude about Dennett. As you know, it is not called the hard problem for nothing. But there are also problems with the existence of reason and intentionality which I do not think can be quite so easily rewritten as non-problems. (Though there is a case to be made that this concentration on a so-called problem of intentionality is an ill-consequence of taking universal mechanism seriously.) In my opinion, as already stated above, it would be better to start thinking again of formal-final causality, so long as we do not take it in the caricatured version which anti-scholasticism has bequeathed to us.
You make a good point about the benefits of people airing stupid beliefs. The point I was trying to make was that a person's unwillingness to publicly express a belief can be evidence that the belief itself is foolish. However, there are many other reasons to be unwilling to air a belief, and we both agree that there are accurate beliefs that people are unwilling to state publicly. To return to your quote of Sir Eddington, what does the hypothetical materialist's unwillingness to "btrude this opinion in domestic life" tell us about the accuracy of materialism?
whereas “for-ness”, for instance, just means the way a thing tends by its nature towards some end.So something whose output is uniformly random over the possible space of results tends toward all ends, and a program with an infinite loop (which I deliberately create on occassion) tends toward not ending. Living creatures tend toward the end of decaying and dying. Are they for or about decay and death?
It has no way of standing outside of its own rules to recognise that any mistake has been made.A program could make an assertion and later retract it. In that case we might say that it hadn't actually proved its original assertion. Humans do create wrong "proofs" and later retract them. Could we then say that humans never prove anything?
I thought that was partly what this discussion was about!Just why I asked it.
But, if by nothing else, surely you intuitively distinguish between billiard-balls and persons?I distinguish between all sorts of things. I don't intuit but I accept that even billiard balls aren't billiard balls (forgive the Yudkowsky link). What qualifies as a "person" (there are some who say all great apes should) doesn't seem very meaningful to me. If someone decides to declare someone else they dislike an unperson, I'm not going to pull out a reference book and object. For our purposes now I'll accept "person" as a synonym for "homo sapien" (living or dead) and assume that a person probably won't fit in a billiard pocket.
I had been looking forward to reading Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Dennet and writing a post on it, but I wound up let down and with little to say. I came away with the feeling that it just wasn't reductionist materialist enough.
“I don't think there are any capabilities we have that couldn't be duplicated with a mechanical device we designed.”
Really?
Yes, much as one is loathe to know it, in his personal life Einstein was not an honorable man.
Some materialists are not that tactful at all.
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