ComestibleVenom

I'm not missing, the point, I know exactly what you're saying and it is a simple straw man of identity theory/inter-theoretic reductionism. You are saying in essence that since IT asserts "A is a subset of B" then it asserts that "B is a subset of A."

((A is a subset of B) implies (B is a subset of A)) is FALSE!


Secondly, your other comments on mind/brain reduction demonstrate a clear misconception of them. In science, there is no such thing as a mind-brain correlation. The only things that we ever correlate are physical things. This infallible mental stuff is notoriously invisible.

GodFearingAtheist
Heat is a global property of a molecules. (ignoring cases where, for instance, the heat is a measure of the radiation rather than molecules per se)

That something is a property of a systemic set of relationships does not mean that it cannot be reduced to more fundamental physical concepts.

Since the brain is chemicals, uncontroversially so, it can be reduced. Everything the brain DOES can be reduced to physics.

There's no magical point at which systems cease being physical matter. There's no fairy dust squirted into a baby's brain at birth. When you take away all the brain and everything it does oops!, nothing left but an eviscrated physical skull.

ComestibleVenom

You're right, let me clarify my position. Since after mentioning a few alternate positions and introduced 'identity theory' as the final alternative, I assumed that you meant to class a range of positions. My own differs in signficant respects from the one Kripke is attacking.

There are two extremes to talking about experience. One is a hypothetical, high-level scientific description of it. The other, commonly called 'folk-psychology' is basically an appeal to what we THINK we know intuitivly about consciousness.

The first one is reducible in every sense that any other scientific theory is reducible. This is basically what identity theorists are talking about, and in this sense they are absolutely correct.

The other extreme is the qualia that Daniel Dennett denies. No, these theories cannot in fact be reduced insofar as they are factually incorrect. If it cannot be reduced, appeals to non-physical entities or extraneous ontological whisps are inevitable.

Again, this poses no problem for reductionism anymore than the fact that a "square" can be constructed from either eggs or string. That doesn't mean that the squares we see are irreducible to physics, because physics involves not only the parts of the universe but all their relationships to each other

Their position is, however, much closer to scientific practice. Thus, despite the popular appeal of their folk-psychological intuitions, despite the appeal of the idea that humans have limited infallibility, such opinions can only become more irrelevant as the neurosciences develop.

There is *no such thing as a first-person cause*. Every word you say about this first person perspectives isolated epistemically from the third-person world, is itself caused by nothing other than that third person world. The reduction is inevitable unless an appeal to ghosts is made.

Secondly, you are totally misrepresenting Dennett. He denies only ideosyncratic and contradictory notions of what a first person mental state is. Namely those that are intrinsic, ineffable and infallible.

sodium

This is similar to some of the discussion in the "Proof of Materialism" thread, where I argue against qualia. My argument is similar to Thomas Ash's, although I seem to come to a different conclusion.

First, here are the doctrines I think qualia believers would assert.

1) Our perceptions are not entirely reducible to the physical. They are qualia, and they occur, but would not be described in a complete physical description.

2) The qualia are caused by brain states, but do not cause physical events. There is no part of the brain where physical events have immaterial causes.

3) Your own experience of qualia causes you to argue that #1 is true.

But #3 contradicts #2. If qualia don't have physical effects, then they can't be responsible for a physical effect like you typing an argument on a keyboard. In fact, if your thoughts are caused by physical brain states, qualia can't even be responsible for your belief that they exist.

Now, there are ways around this
1) Adopt something much more like Cartesian Dualism despite the apparent contradiction with what we know about the brain.

2) Claim that the argument for qualia isn't from experience, but that their presence can be deduced anyway. But this is hard to square with believing in zombies as a theoretic possibility.

3) Decide that materialism is true. Perceptions are purely physical, so their ability to cause physical things (even false beliefs) is no mystery.

So, what's your choice?

John Page

Qualia are delusory, but do exist? An apparent contradiction. methinks, but one that can be resolved by considering qualia as forms with no material equivalent.

It seems to me there is a difference between the subject of the mind's thought (a mental representation of something or other that the mind/brain can contemplate) and the mental representation itself.

1. We can imagine that the subject of our thoughts (including thought itself) can have all sorts of fantastic properties and qualia. This is the advantage of imagination to create and ponder the possibilities.
2. The mental representation (of the subject, which we are contemplating here in the abstract) will have certain characteristics to distinguish it either through context or other parameters. One might say that a form (idealized mental representation) has qualia, but one might just as well say they have qualities.

Cheers, john

sodium

I see, I guess, but I don't think it matters precisely what qualia are. If qualia don't have physical effects, then your belief in qualia isn't actually caused by the qualia. So, do qualia have physical effects? Is your belief in qualia actually caused by qualia?

Thomas Ash

I never made the case for any problem with routine decisions like choosing the dress. The problem I pointed out that is the experience of conciousness was simply a secondary effect of the brain, not an integrated part of it's functioning at all, then there's no way that the information about what that experience feels like could get back to the brain to be thought about. But, somehow, it obviously does.

Whether it's a scientific question or a philosophical question (I still hold that it's a scientific question for the reason I give below), the problem is that this seems to be an implication of Identity Theory, but also seems very unlikely.

The reason I think this is a philosophical question is: how on earth would you go a bout finding the answer scientifically? Given that we only ever have access to our own conciousness, and that only by introspection (a fundamentally philosophical method) rather than experimentation, I don't see how we could ever know scientifically whether something is concious or not.

I still think you have to answer my 'thoughts about conciousness' objection. Can anyone do so?

Thomas Ash

Yep, that's a good argument too.

John Page

Let me just say that belief in qualia may have physical (external to the mind) consequent effects, the same as belief in god(s), logic etc.

wordfailure

Thomas Ash:

Cognitive scientists, at least as I see it, are saying that the workings of the brain are not as they seem to us from inside. You are in effect objecting that that isn't how it seems to you from inside, and that you will refuse to believe them until they can make it seem that way to you from inside. It may be that the way our brains physically function, for example in simplifying sense data in order to make some kind of sense of it, creates interpretations or models that don't accurately reflect reality at all but nevertheless somehow work for us. After all, evolutionary pressure is demonstrably toward that which works rather than that which is most objectively accurate or correct (whatever the heck those things can mean outside of mind). I can imagine scenarios in which it seems feasible that what consciousness feels like does not get back to the brain, for example that consciousness is not a discreet thing at all in the way our brain is able to envision it, or that consciousness and the brain are sometimes singing a duet but only the brain realizes it because the consciousness is not able to hear that level of brain sounds, or even that the brain has a consciousness of its own not accessible to this other epiphenominal consciousness. But there is no non-empirical way to settle this. Even if it turns out that science is unable to figure out how this all works, philosophy cannot provide valid answers for such questions, IMO, for to do so would merely be to select solutions by preference. This is not the value of philosophy for me. In fact the value of philosophy as I see it is to help us realize that philosophical answers to this type of question are no answer at all. Think of a shell game. If we cannot determine empirically which shell the pea is under, it does not become a philosophical question. We cannot philosophize our way into knowing where the pea is. The value of philosophy for me lies in its capability to remind us of this.

Thomas Ash

It's interesting that someone else on this board has had exactly the same thought as me - this is a good statement of my argument as regards the problem of our being able to think about conciousness. I'll run through your options...

I can see that this might be a way you could choose to head, though not one I'd personally like to take. But it doesn't in itself provide a solution to the relationship between mind and brain - if anything it makes it more obscure by emphasizing the difference between these two things. And, as you say, it goes flat against everything we know about neuroscience - and in a field like this, what little empirical knowledge we do have should be treated as precious.

Actually, I see this as one of the least bad options, but some alternative pathway has to be proposed if it's going to be accepted. It sure feels like it comes from experience, and that's pretty hard to argue against.

But that's just Identity Theory, and I've already listed the flaws of that (and others have covered them yet further.)

Eek. Is changing the subject an option ?

So, what do you think about the Euro?