"Do you believe YOU are an illusion?" Not sure I care : ) Philosophers love to go abstract, but isn't there a philosophy based on practicality? In other words, they avoid problems that lead nowhere
I'm not sure, but I think it just gets more and more abstract from here.
The thing is, philosophy is about exploring the foundations of practicalities and views we take for granted. It's amazing how many problems we can solve even while standing on a shaky foundation!
It seems to me you have misunderstood what illusionism is saying! I don't know any illusionist claiming that consciousness is not real. Nor do we claim to have introspective access to what it is or how it works. That's kind of the whole point! And above all, consciousness does NOT emerge from any processing. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of computational functionalism. That's a dualistic framing (of one kind or another). That's like saying that ios/android emerges from the processing in your smartphone!!
No, physicalism does not mean that consciousness is fictional. Maybe to some, but not in general.
It's pretty evident to me that the mind is not just the brain - embodiment is crucial. But no, it's not evident at all the mind is not the body. That there's a mind-body problem at all. It sure is evident to some people, like you. But don't generalise!
If you don't mind answering... Do you believe in the Darwinian framework for understanding and explaining animal evolution, biological structure, and behaviour?
I realize there are many types of physicalists and that illusionists, eliminative materialists, functionalists, and computationalists all see big differences amongst their views. I can appreciate that there are subtleties involved here that I'm not remarking on. I consider certain forms of panpsychism and property dualism (and other -isms) physicalist too insofar as they assume a reductive-materialistic causal framework which says the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. From what I understand, the former group agree that "introspection"—whatever that is—is hopeless, that only a third person perspective can reveal the truth about consciousness (with perhaps a limited first person understanding of experience, and only because it's necessary to establish correlations). Whereas the latter try to defend epiphenomenal qualia, which is a problematic view that comes directly as a consequence of their physicalist reductive assumption. Their understanding of experience is also very limited, and that, too, comes as a result of their physicalist framework. The current debates about zombies and Mary's room and qualia are almost entirely about these narrow problems involved in epiphenomenalism. Property dualists call the other side "physicalist", but that's confusing, because deep down, they're physicalists too.
The mind-body problem, on the other hand, has been around for thousands of years, and it's still very much alive. Chalmers understood that he wasn't really coming up with anything new when he talked about the hard problem, since it's the mind-body problem reformulated in his property dualist terms. That said, HIS hard problem isn't quite the same: He begins by assuming a physicalist (causally reductive) framework and then wonders how simple irreducible "phenomenal" (or epiphenomenal) qualities can "arise" from the purely mechanistic world. The mind-body problem, on the other hand, does not give up the causal efficacy of the agent or the causal nature of experience on the whole. I don't want to say the mind-body problem is harder than the hard problem, but it deals with a much more complete picture of experience, and many of the criticisms that attempt to dissolve the hard problem don't apply to it.
"Do you believe in the Darwinian framework for understanding and explaining animal evolution, biological structure, and behaviour?"
In my undergraduate thesis I defended a teleological understanding against the reductive-mechanistic view of Descartes. This is not to say I'm a creationist, however. I think the Darwinian framework isn't sufficient when talking about reality as a whole. Reductionism systematically subtracts the values and meaning that we actually do find in our experiences of the world. It's not as if science stands back objectively watching the world and determining there is no meaning or purpose to any of it. It instead subtracts values and purpose as a matter of method. That's not necessarily a problem as a matter of method. It's only a problem when that method gets taken to be the only way one can know anything whatsoever, when that method is allowed to become metaphysics.
Thank you so much for this elaborate response! This, I think, let's me much better understand your position. Also, your thesis sounds like a fascinating one!
Honestly, I'm kinda sympathetic to your position. I actually think some forms of idealism that I have come with limited contact with, like Advaita Vedanta, are quite beautiful. I was even leaning in that direction previously. I even kind of believe it in one sense, but as metaphor.
I'm glad we agree on the problems of epiphenomenalism, and I totally see why you label property dualists as physicalists. Agreed. I also agree on what you say about Chalmers and the Hard Problem. Yes, the mind-body problem is millennia old (but why isn't it much, much older?).
What I don't understand is how any form of idealism let's you, in the end, escape from a similar epiphenomenalsm problem. This last remark, I suspect, will lead you to think that I do not understand idealism. If so, I agree - but I think the reason don't understand it because it cannot be understood! It's incoherent! (just expressing my view!).
To explain why - this is what I aimed for with my question about Darwinism. I meant it as a very specific question as I stated it. Not if it is sufficient for talking about reality as a whole. I totally agree!
The Darwinian framework cannot even begin to touch on what matter is made of. Nor can physics! Physics can say that molecules are made of atoms, and atoms are made of electrons, neutrons and protons. Neutrons and protons are made of quarks. But then what? It quickly hits rock bottom. All of this is compatible with matter being fundamental, or being a manifestation of Atman, or in a dream, or in a simulation. Darwin or Einstein or Schrödinger simply have nothing to say about this! (when doing what they are most well known for - Schrödinger famously was sympathetic to idealism if I'm not mistaken).
Whatever matter is fundamentally, or manifest in, I suspect you agree that molecules are made of atoms. Right? Also, proteins and lipids and DNA and RNA are made of molecules. Cells are made of proteins and lipids and DNA and RNA. Animals are made of cells.
My question sought to find out if you thought there were any detectable violations of the physical-Darwinian framework when it comes to animal behaviour. In other words, no matter what matter is made of, or a manifestation of, a reductionist physical-Darwinian framework can explain why proteins, cells and animals behave the way they do. Natural selection and animal cognition (innate, learned) explains the Gazelles high jump, the lions roar, and the birds mating rituals. Reducing animal behaviour to patterns of muscle contractions may risk missing the beauty of the emergent high-level phenomena. But it does not lead us to conclude that the laws of physics are violated somewhere in the behaviour of the cells of the animal. Or am I wrong to presume that you agree with that? If you don't agree - then this is an empirical question! Biology, bioscanning, neuroimagery, some scientific investigation should be able to uncover unexpected behaviour at the molecular level!
If you agree to this - then it seems to me you have put yourself in a difficult position. Why? Because humans are, I hope you agree, animals! We are not special in that regard. When we talk, or write, this is animal behaviour in complex patterns. Therefore, every expression of the mind-body problem since ancient times, categorises under animal behaviour. It's not reducible to it "JUST animal behaviour, JUST muscle activity), but it is constrained by it "it IS a part of the spectrum of animal behaviour". So, as far as I can see, you must agree that the emergence of the mind-body problem tradition, and your own talking about it, and your talking about Darwinism not capturing the entirety of reality is, no matter if true or false, ultimately animal behaviour that can be understood in the physics-Darwinian framework. While immensely more complex, there is no fundamental difference in kind between your or my behaviour when compared to that of the lions or the chimps or the ants. Either Darwinism is true, or the laws of physics as we know them are violated. The big mystery then, is why the people in the anti-physicalist/illusionist camps are not proposing ways in which the laws of physics, or biology (as we typically understand it), can be shown to be violated.
If you think I'm making a mistake here, I'm grateful if you could point it out. As I see it, you run into the same problem of epiphenomenalism as Chalmers does. If there is causal closure in physical stuff (no matter what it is made of), then physics can explain everything that is manifest in that physical stuff. Among the things it can explain is ever single word the entire written works, and every utterance, made by humans. Including all physical manifestations of expressed opinions in philosophy of mind and religion.
The good news is, one need not deny the beauty and the realness of consciousness to escape this conundrum. There are beautiful solutions in both eastern and western traditions. As I see it. Thanks!
Idealists don't need to demonstrate violations in the laws of physics or in evolution. And I am the last person to insist on a sharp division between animals and humans. I would accuse scientists of making that division too sharp; they are the ones who currently subject animals to torture, all for the sake of supposedly advancing scientific knowledge by a tiny smidge. They have a long history of seeing animals as less intelligent than animals really are, less sentient than they really are, which is a convenient way to justify animal abuse.
But back to the point.
It might be helpful to look at this through the lens of the debate between scientific instrumentalism and scientific realism. Instrumentalists say science isn't capable of obtaining knowledge of a mind-independent reality. How is it possible to know the world as it is in itself outside of our minds, after all? It isn't. It's really that simple. Whatever it is that we know, we know with our minds. Objective knowledge turns out to be consensus, not reaching outside our minds. Scientific realism is a kind of faith that science can somehow know what is impossible to know. Realists often argue that if science can't know reality, then that would make scientific progress a miracle. Idealists can answer in many ways here. I will say, "What progress? How can you know you're making progress toward a mind-independent reality without knowing that mind-independent reality? You have nothing to compare science to." I believe idealism explains the instrumental success of science better than other views. If reality IS mind-dependent, instrumental success comes as no surprise at all. The principles and values, the understanding of what makes something true or real, exist in minds, not "out there". These principles and values which have been at work in the scientific endeavor have been at work in other areas as well (art, morality, language, philosophy, for instance), some have simply chosen not to notice.
"If there is causal closure in physical stuff (no matter what it is made of), then physics can explain everything that is manifest in that physical stuff. Among the things it can explain is ever single word the entire written works, and every utterance, made by humans. Including all physical manifestations of expressed opinions in philosophy of mind and religion."
I mean, go on then. Explain everything. Because so far as I know, science can't explain most things or even a great number of things that matter to people, and yet in our culture today we're under the mistaken impression that it can. Science love is in the air we breathe. There is no escape from an uncritical adoration of science as a kind of technological god that control everything in the universe. Whenever someone points out that some question lies outside the purview of science (once upon a time this idea would not have been controversial), advocates of scientism say, "We will one day!" But such a view operates on a perpetual promissory note for a total comprehension of all things that can never arrive. It's a failure to see that science is by its very nature incomplete.
I'm not sure why causal closure and reductionism is still so popular as a metaphysical theory. Reductionism is useful at certain scales of scientific inquiry, but it presupposes that the universe is made up of fundamental building blocks which everything else must reduce to. Yet we have never found fundamental Matter, we found observer-dependent weirdness instead. Matter has always been what Berkeley called an "abstract idea" (he never got credit for that!) but for some reason many can't let go of the outdated reductionist causal framework that grew out of this billiard ball conception.
I hope I haven't confused you too much! Idealism is a confounding slap in the face to common sense at first, but once you get past the initial hurdle, everything starts falling into place. It's the only view so far as I know that can account for both science's instrumental success and the physical world of our ordinary lives.
With my limited knowledge of your views, I would presume that you don't draw that distinction between humans and animals!
I am sympathetic to a lot of what you're saying. As a physician, I constant encounter a widespread uncritical appeal to "science shows that..." and "it is scientifically proven". I'm sick of it! Unsurprisingly though, I'm going to claim that you're still missing the point.
I totally agree that we cannot know anything mind-independently. This is a point made by many anti-functionalists. To me, this is not a profound insight. It's just trivially true. And minds can always be mistaken.
I'm not deep into the debate about scientific realism, and I'm sure many positions of defending it are unreasonable, for the reasons you state. But I am sympathetic to the term in the following way, perhaps misunderstanding what others mean by it: I am as certain that electrons exist as I am that earth is round. I'm as certain that water is H2O that I am that I live in Sweden. If matter is fundamental or not, is beside the point (I suspect you won't agree, but I insist on this point). Whatever H an O fundamentally is, water is still H2O. I could be mistaken about all of this. I could be deluded. Everyone could. But I'm going to bet my money on it every time.
There's no way to determine that we don't live in a simulation or that matter is not a manifestation of something else. I'm not going to argue with you there. But the converse is also true. There's no way you can determine that mind is not just matter, computational. Introspection gives us no information in either direction. The fact that knowing about matter is a state of mind is trivial. It only proves that we can be mistaken. It doesn't say anything about whether materialistic neuroscience is sufficient to account for mind, in either direction.
"I mean, go on then. Explain everything. Because so far as I know, science can't explain most things or even a great number of things that matter to people, and yet in our culture today we're under the mistaken impression that it can"
I'm saying it can, in principle, account for everything. Not that science today, one day or EVER can. In fact, I'm certain it never will be able to explain every detail of everything - for the same reason that a hard drive can never contain all the information about itself. The limits of self-referential systems prohibit this, no matter how powerful our minds and methods are.
Look, it's just like evolution. One can believe in evolution without having to explain why insects are attracted to artificial light, or how life begun. One can believe that water is made of H2O without being able to explain what quarks, or even atoms, are fundamentally made of. Even if one is mistaken that atoms cannot be split, one can still know that water is H2O.
Likewise, one can believe in material neuroscience without being forced to explain "everything". As a computational functionalist, I agree fully that everything minds know are mind-dependent, not "direct". Everything is conceptual, a construction of mind, virtual. There is never any direct knowing of anything at all. But the very notions of "mind" and "quality" are not exempt!
You judge that science can't explain most things that matter to people. I judge that it can (not in every detail, but in principle). It's a judgement call. Mind-dependent. It depends on the differences in our neurological make-up. The same goes for our believs about mind itself. Am I wrong to suppose that you would agree to this: if we could rewire your neurons to be more like mine, in the right ways, you would be a functionalist? And if we rewire mine certain ways, I would be an idealist? Our beliefs CAN be explained by the physical mecanisms that precede expressing "I'm an idealist". It's not just the exterior behaviour per se. It's the behaviour of every neuronal event preceding that expression that is the explanation. In principle.
"I'm not sure why causal closure and reductionism is still so popular as a metaphysical theory. Reductionism is useful at certain scales of scientific inquiry, but it presupposes that the universe is made up of fundamental building blocks which everything else must reduce to. "'
No, it doesn't. Not to me, and other structural realists, anyway. I don't presuppose anything about what's fundamental. But if causal closure is not the case, then propose a way to investigate that! Science should be able to detect this! I'm not demanding you exactly how, but propose a direction! Give a suggestion for why zero (mind dependent, empirical) evidence against causal closure has been found so far! Anti-functionalists have been inadvertently dodging this forever. Peaople like Chalmers and Goff are gradually waking up to this problem.
"Idealists don't need to demonstrate violations in the laws of physics or in evolution".
Yes, you do, actually. Or else, you must admit that animal behaviour can, in principle, be accounted for in the framework of the laws of physics and evolution, just as well as water can be accounted for in terms of oxygen and hydrogen. Whether the laws of physics and evolution are manifestations in mind or not is irrelevant. If the laws of physics and evolution can account for everything you say, then all talk about idealism emerges from complex physics and evolution. It is a concept, like any other, in the cognitive landscape of animals. It is not special.
"It's the only view so far as I know that can account for both science's instrumental success and the physical world of our ordinary lives"
Sure, but how does it explain what consciousness actually is? How does it explain that neurons, 100% obeying the laws of physics, coordinate so as to write your post and your responses to me? How does it explain anti-functionalism, and functionalism?
You keep referencing a causally closed universe with the so-called "omnipotent" laws of physics as your metaphysical foundation. We are all without exceptions products of our culture, and as a culture, all the scientific community has done is replace the Immortal Gods of the Greeks with the Immortal Laws of Physics. Both concepts are a fallacy.
The only thing that is causally closed in our universe are the tools that we invent and consequently construct. Our understanding of the physical world is based solely on our understanding of tool making; and to infer that this knowledge can be transferred and superimposed on the true nature of reality is nonsense.
I'm not in the mind changing business Mark, but try this on for size. Whenever one is convinced by a rational argument one does not know more but one knows less. This is because the door to any other explanation is slammed shut.
You keep saying that you are not in the business of changing minds, but you keep acting like you are. What's wrong with that? Why else discuss? Isn't it to make progress, either in oneself or others (or both)?
I keep referencing causal closure because I see no alternative, and I hear no suggestions to an alternative. Everyone's (inadvertently) dodging, as far as I can tell.
I you have an alternative, please suggest how it interacts with or modifies the behaviour of the elections in brains. Or don't you believe in electrons? (not necessarily fundamental, but in some form)
I disagree wholly that our understanding of the physical world is based solely on our tool making. I don't need tools to understand how rain behaves, for example.
I understand that scientists are human, and I did feel a bit guilty about picking on this guy since he's not a famous intellectual. On the other hand, our culture has become so "science-y" that ordinary people are willing to believe just about anything a scientist (in this case a neurosurgeon) has to say about reality, and they don't realize that they're straying beyond their expertise.
Indeed, they could start by acknowledging our nervous system! Things got brain-centric so rapidly that somehow even these obvious physical aspects of us got left in the dust!
I hate it when scientists are so philosophically lazy, like that article. I kind of agree with a good chunk of it, but those surgeries and experiments do not prove that the self or free will are illusions at all.
Re split-brain patients, I think that they do have two selves afterwards. The reason they don't report experiencing having two selves is that to experience having two selves they would have to be one self! But you can see that they are disunified from their conflicting actions.
This ties into my belief that the mind is a community (of neurons) -- the surgery splits that community into two communities that cannot effectively communicate anymore. The unity that a community experiences is real, and I would say that it creates a genuine "self", but it's not absolute. This is why we can deceive ourselves and experience inner conflicts -- we're not perfectly unified. And I actually think it's a key part of ethics/morality to try to become more unified with yourself. Aristotle makes this point in NE, that good people are unified with themselves, while bad people hate their own company, are full of regrets, and "their soul is in a state of civil war".
It is interesting that there appear to be brain regions responsible for creating the sense of self, but it's funny to me that he takes these as evidence that we are illusory, rather than as evidence of non-dualism. Or just as evidence that our brains are not perfect at identifying the difference between self and world and have to work to make that distinction.
But if we take the self/consciousness as the "window" through which we experience everything, then I do believe the self is an illusion. Not because of neuroscience findings, but because of Buddhist philosophy convincing me. I see this idea of consciousness as tied with the idea that there's an "observer" that simply receives all our sense impressions, and that this observer or pure awareness is our "true self". I think this is one of those ideas that's unnecessary, and doesn't make sense when you think about it deeply. Basically, I think that experiences create/constitute the experiencer, not the other way around. Experiences aren't something we have or receive, they're something we do. There's not a unified self that receives all the experiences, but the unity of self we do have is more like a community of interacting "drops of experience" (stealing Whitehead's phrase).
I'm also not entirely opposed to the idea that we're fictional, so long as we accept that *everything* is fictional and nothing really exists, like Jan Westerhoff argues here - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0020174X.2021.1934268 (it's a good read, and less absurd than it sounds imo).
There's a great book by another neuroscientist, Kevin Mitchell, about how we do have (libertarian) free will, and that tears apart the supposed experiments disproving it.
Yes, I'm totally with you on the view that we can be at war with ourselves. But I take this to be the case because I think it explains a great deal about our experiences, not because multiple selves can be found in the brain. It's not possible to find multiple selves in the brain, when you think about it, because the only way we can know about the functions of the brain is by correlation to experience. Even those studies that purport to eliminate the need for subject reporting ultimately have to calibrate things first with an initial subject report.
The Buddhist explanation of the illusory self is really quite different and I'm not necessarily against that idea, though I'm not entirely sure I understand it.
"Experiences aren't something we have or receive, they're something we do."
I wonder if it's not both, though? Some experiences of things are experienced as 'given' whereas others are experienced as more active. Ultimately we don't think of ourselves as creating reality, right? But there is also a sense in which we don't want to suppose that reality is just sitting there waiting for us to experience it.
"There's not a unified self that receives all the experiences, but the unity of self we do have is more like a community of interacting "drops of experience" (stealing Whitehead's phrase)."
I like this idea, and Whitehead and panpsychism in general, but I'm not sure I actually experience such extreme disunity either. I don't experience that many "selves". Maybe a handful or so. :) I do tend to think of the self as defined by unity, like the Kantian unity of apperception (which is about as empty as it gets, I think, just shy of saying the self doesn't exist). On the other hand I have no serious attachment to this idea and could be talked out of it, though likely toward a less empty concept of self.
"I'm also not entirely opposed to the idea that we're fictional, so long as we accept that *everything* is fictional and nothing really exists,"
But if everything is fictional, what is the reality? How can that reality be known except through our "fictional" experience? Or should I just click the link and shut up? :)
Regarding the free will debates, one of the things about taking experience as epistemologically fundamental is you get agency for free. Which makes the brain studies somewhat irrelevant to that point, although I admit, I do enjoy reading those arguments debunking the deterministic conclusion some draw from the Libet experiments. Fun stuff!
You're right that we can't exactly "find" multiple selves in the brain, but I think that's for roughly the same reason as the general problem of other minds. I don't know if there are other selves in the brain, and if there are I don't know what their experience is like, but they may well be there and we're just not communicating. But I don't want to assume the hemisphere responsible for speech is the only conscious one. Both hands seem to have "something going on upstairs."
I think I expressed myself poorly when I said they're not something we have or receive, but something we do. You're right that experience is receptive/passive. My point was more that we should avoid treating it as a noun, and instead treat it as a verb.
I think the Buddhist idea of the self as illusory might be expressed by saying the "Kantian unity of apperception" (thank you for the new term!) is *emptiness*, or "interbeing" (Thich Nhat Hanh's term). Nothing has its own essential independent existence. We all exist in relation and dependence on each other, so that all things exist in all others. It's this "relational mesh" (as I called it elsewhere) that is the "ground" of both mind and being.
Westerhoff's argument (which is again based off Mahayana Buddhist ideas) is that there is no reality at all — it's illusions all the way down. It's brilliantly bold. The argument basically consists of arguing for (1) that only what's metaphysically fundamental is really real and everything else is just appearances, and (2) that non-foundationalism is true and there is no metaphysical foundation. It does involve accepting an infinite regress of illusions, but why exactly should that be unacceptable? It's a really interesting paper, if you like absurd ideas like that.
It's a bit like the joke about going crazier than the conspiracy theorist. They say the moon landing was a hoax: you say "Pff, you believe in *the moon*? Eliminative materialists say mind is an illusion and everything is physical: you say "Pff, you believe in *reality*?"
"But I don't want to assume the hemisphere responsible for speech is the only conscious one" Yeah, I agree. I just meant the illusionism claim just seemed to come out of left field.
"My point was more that we should avoid treating it as a noun, and instead treat it as a verb." I like that!
I think I like the relational mesh concept better than the illusions all the way down idea, but maybe with a transcendental unity of apperception thrown in for good measure.
It's not a bad way to deal with conspiracy theories and other crazy ideas...out-crazy them!
>“In a sense, the surgery had created two separate selves. In some of these patients, one side of their body (controlled by one hemisphere) would do one thing, while the other half (controlled by the other hemisphere) would do the opposite. For example, one hand would button their shirt while the other hand would unbutton it.”
I’m convinced there are many me’s* warring, cooperating and bargaining with each other all day long. The window you mention later is always there for them to look through, but they all step forward or fall back behind the scenes, beyond my control. For every shirt I button, I hold the genuine and simultaneous impulse to unbutton it. I’m run by committee, but only one member ever emerges from the boardroom at a time.
I’ve said terrible things that, while the words were coming out my mouth, I knew shouldn’t be said. How is that possible? I’ve read something I wrote that I thought was profound, read it again five minutes later and knew it was cheese.
I guess that’s why I’m not convinced sense of self and consciousness are so closely linked. Consciousness is your window. Self is whoever happens to be looking through it at a particular moment.
*Not to be confused with Mini-Me, the separate self of Dr. Evil. Totally different thing. Neither of them wear shirts with buttons.
I'm actually very much in favor of the view that the self can be divided against itself. Here I was trying to stick with his version of the self, which he blurred with the mind, to keep things simple for the sake of the argument. But the self divided against itself is an ancient view that you see remnants of even in pop psychology today. For instance, when we talk about someone being "neurotic", that concept involves a degree of lack of self knowledge. If it were impossible to lack self-knowledge, we wouldn't be able to wrap our minds around this whole idea that there are neurotic people in the world (and we might be neurotic ourselves at times)! I've also experienced—too many times to count—that perplexing moment where a part of me knows I'm about to say something really terrible that I'll have to apologize for later...and yet I say that hurtful thing anyway! How is it possible? It's crazy! Here we see the explanatory power of the 'self divided'.
I think it's only relatively recently that the scientific view has flattened out the rich experiential understanding that we are all familiar with on a daily basis. Being awake and alert to the world gets taken to mean "conscious", and experience gets turned into a simple on/off switch. Lights on/lights off. But that's too simplistic for the reasons you're pointing out. I have no set theory up my sleeve except to say that experience is far more complicated than that.
"Consciousness is your window. Self is whoever happens to be looking through it at a particular moment."
"I’m run by committee, but only one member ever emerges from the boardroom at a time."
But I wonder, who is aware of all the selves? Who knows they're even there? In other words, in that moment when we watch ourselves saying something hurtful and at the same time know we'll later regret it, who is that? It seems there are two selves appearing at the window of consciousness at the same time, where one self is throwing a tantrum and completely obviously to the other, but the other is shaking its head at the infant. Or maybe the one shaking its head IS the window of consciousness? I don't know, just some thoughts!
> Here I was trying to stick with his version of the self, which he blurred with the mind, to keep things simple for the sake of the argument.
I see.
> But I wonder, who is aware of all the selves? Who knows they're even there? In other words, in that moment when we watch ourselves saying something hurtful and at the same time know we'll later regret it, who is that?
That’s a good question. I’m not sure. It’s almost a quis custodiet ipsos custodes thing. Maybe the few times we notice, it’s in the transitions, but that sounds fishy.
Then there’s the meditators and psychonauts who swear self isn’t fundamental to experience at all. In fact, they’d argue it’s an obstacle. That’s kind of an attractive notion to me, but despite a few trips of my own, I’ve never experienced that.
I think I’m losing my sense of “self” this very minute just from semantic satiation.
Interesting. Usually, people, especially those eager to naturalize everything, will tell you that split-brain patients have a split consciousness/self/subject/identity, ignoring the facts and research showing the contrary. Why? Because, otherwise, it would not fit into a physicalist mind-brain identity theory (the brain produces the self). On that false premise, they then make up all kinds of stories that "save the appearances." This neurosurgeon seems to be no different, since he cites Libet's experiments as evidence because they save his no-free-will belief system while ignoring the fact that they have been shown to be flawed. Nonetheless, once directly confronted with the reality he deals with in his practice, he could no longer deny the facts and rejects the mainstream narrative on split brains. A split brain does not split the self. How could he save his belief system? By denying the self! And voila! Making up yet another contrived and incoherent story the world is back in order. 😊
"A split brain does not split the self. How could he save his belief system? By denying the self! And voila! Making up yet another contrived and incoherent story the world is back in order. 😊"
Exactly! Notice the author of the article says:
"In the case of the magician, the assistant’s wellbeing is real, and the cutting is the trick. For the brain surgeon, the cutting is the real part, while the patient’s sense of a unified self is the illusion."
He might as well add, "and brain surgeons are always right".
While I agree with the eliminativists, I'm not always wild about how they frame things. For example, I prefer to say the self isn't what we might intuitively think it is.
On the split brain patients, it seems like we need to distinguish between the sense of self and a self as something that has unified coordination. The sense of self, essentially our built in model of a unified self, seems to persist in split brain patients. The only requirement for that is each side, or at least the side with language, has its own model of that self.
But we know the self as unified coordination doesn't persist, at least when the patient's sensory abilities are restricted so the two sides can't take behavioral cues from each other. If the self actually was non-physical, shouldn't we expect the coordination to be unaffected?
Along those lines, my interpretation might be similar to yours if the split brain patients' abilities had been completely unaffected. (Although even here we'd still have to rule out that the signals weren't going through the midbrain or lower regions, or through the peripheral nervous system in some fashion.)
I don't think experience is like a window. That seems to presuppose there's a complete self looking through the window. But then, what's going on in that inner self, does it have its own window with its own internal self, ad-infinitum? It seems more likely to me that experience is the self being changed (learning, memory, etc) based on sensorimotor activity.
Science is dependent on experience. But it's worth nothing that not all experience is created equal. Many experiences are misleading. Which is why science relies as much as it can on experiments, controlled structured experience, to make the resulting conclusions as reliable as possible.
I think Descartes does deconstruct the self from experience, actually, since he takes the thinking self for the whole. The "I think" of the cogito is a rather sparse self that leaves most of experience behind. This is the criticism Husserl makes against Descartes.
"it seems like we need to distinguish between the sense of self and a self as something that has unified coordination."
I like the distinction, but can't we just say the self acts against itself without calling the self an illusion?
" If the self actually was non-physical, shouldn't we expect the coordination to be unaffected?"
No, not at all. Not even brain death, much less lack of coordination, can disprove the existence of the mind or soul or self. Many theories of mind take the non-physical soul to be dependent on the brain in some way, but this is not to say the soul is identical to it. Perhaps souls require a brain (which some see as a filter or reducing valve) in order to appear here on earth in the lives we currently lead. Hell, even some kinds of functionalism and computationalism aren't disproved here, since they never rested their case on the mind-brain identity theory.
I noticed in the comments section the author backtracks on his previous point that the mind is not physical and then says, " ...if we remove part of the brain important for recognizing faces, or consolidating memory, those functions will be impaired and our loved one’s or even ourselves will appear foreign."
So according to his own reasoning, removing the part of the brain responsible for the self should remove or at least impair the sense of self. With other theories of mind that don't equate the brain to the self or mind, the results of these experiments are irrelevant to their case.
"Along those lines, my interpretation might be similar to yours if the split brain patients' abilities had been completely unaffected."
The problem is, there is always an escape route. I know you're aware of this kind of thing happening in the history of science, so I think you know what I mean when I say what we're seeing now are ad-hoc explanations in the face of seriously contradictory evidence. According to the guy above, and many others, there's a certain way things should go—the removal of x should result in the loss or impairment of y function. But whenever the function is not lost, there's always an ad hoc excuse for it—the brain's plasticity. This is the new theory of epicycles. I highly recommend reading Marco Masi's paper on the mind-brain identity theory if you get a chance (assuming you haven't already):
It wasn't until I read this paper that I found out you can surgically take out half the brain without killing the patient. Either half. And not only do people survive this surgery, their lives improve. When I looked at those MRIs, I was astounded. Logically, all it takes is one example to the contrary to disprove the IDENTITY of particular regions of the brain to particular functions. The ad hoc story is: the diseased half of the brain is what's removed, so the functions have moved over to the other side by the time the surgery takes place. But what does that explain, exactly? First of all, this grand migration of functions isn't terribly plausible, and it does seem just too weirdly symmetrical. Second of all, and most importantly, the model that takes various regions of the brain to be responsible for various functions can't be the case when either side of the brain can be removed without loss of those functions. Taking the average or normal brain as the model on which to rest your theory doesn't make sense here at all, not when you're trying to establish the identity of the brain region to the function.
Does this in itself destroy physicalism? No, only the mind-brain identity theory described. There are of course other theories, but I find those less than plausible as well. Anyway, the author was the one who said the self and mind are not physical, so I was going with that. And you know I agree with him there. :)
"I don't think experience is like a window. That seems to presuppose there's a complete self looking through the window."
I don't think that. I think we can talk about the self divided against itself. I think what's going on here is that scientists and philosophers have taken consciousness to be nothing more than awareness. I think it's much more complicated than that.
"But it's worth nothing that not all experience is created equal. Many experiences are misleading. Which is why science relies as much as it can on experiments, controlled structured experience, to make the resulting conclusions as reliable as possible."
What makes scientists experiences above the fray of widespread error?
“I like the distinction, but can't we just say the self acts against itself without calling the self an illusion?”
As I noted above, calling it an illusion isn’t my preferred approach. To me it’s just a strident expression of disagreement with common folk theories. I prefer talking about more plausible alternative theories.
“Not even brain death, much less lack of coordination, can disprove the existence of the mind or soul or self.”
Maybe not. But it seems like as we leave less and less for that non-physical soul or self to actually do, it becomes increasingly redundant. Often that’s as close as science gets to disproving a proposition. There was never a disproof of the luminiferous ether, or phlogiston. They just became redundant and ceased to be areas of investigation.
“so I think you know what I mean when I say what we're seeing now are ad-hoc explanations in the face of seriously contradictory evidence.”
I agree that when that happens, it’s a problem. But I don’t see it happening with physicalism. Sure, particular physicalist theories are constantly being falsified. But that’s a constant in science. It just means that particular theory is done, not that every physical theory is toast. To use your analogy, falsifying the Ptolemaic model didn't falsify the idea of modeling the cosmos, it only falsified that particular model.
I’m not big on mind-brain identity theory, at least without functionality in between as a translation layer. But Massi in that paper loses me in the intro: “On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena.” I’m sure he can find some physicalist somewhere who says something like this, but it misrepresents the vast majority of physicalists. I’d scrutinize any cited sources he uses before trusting his assertions.
“I think what's going on here is that scientists and philosophers have taken consciousness to be nothing more than awareness. I think it's much more complicated than that.”
As you know, my view is that “consciousness” is not a semantically determinate term. People use the word for all kinds of things. That said, what do you see as the difference between it and “awareness”? (I know David Chalmers once tried to make a distinction, reserving “awareness” for functionality and “consciousness” for the non-physical aspect, but he got a lot of pushback and it didn’t seem to stick.)
“What makes scientists experiences above the fray of widespread error?”
Other scientists constantly striving to show how wrong they are. What makes scientists collectively above that fray? The methodologies worked out through trial and error over decades and centuries. Doesn’t mean they’re incapable of error. But when fields with a solid track record of producing reliable information hammer out a consensus, it seems like it makes sense for the rest of us to pay attention.
"But it seems like as we leave less and less for that non-physical soul or self to actually do, it becomes increasingly redundant."
I'm not sure I'm following here. What do you mean, less to do?
"I agree that when that happens, it’s a problem. But I don’t see it happening with physicalism."
Yeah, as I said, the points in this paper are about the mind-brain identity theory, not physicalism in general. The loss of function methods described here wouldn't necessarily speak to other physicalist theories.
"On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena"
Let's see if I can explain this. I think by "material monism" he means the theory that the mind is the brain, the mind-brain identity theory. "Material" being the material brain. The mind-brain identity theory is the version of physicalism at issue in the paper. If the mind IS the brain, what is the point of talking about mind? Why does it feel like it's not the same thing as the brain? Why does it feel like it's something if it's really nothing but the brain? That's what happens when we identify the mind with the brain. If the mind is nothing but the brain, it becomes epiphenomenal, an unreal phantom of the brain that we can't stop talking about for some reason. The mind can't do anything. It can't cause anything. It's nothing.
I take the difference between awareness and consciousness to be what one picks out from experience at any given moment. I'm aware of the ceiling fan running. Other things might be happening at the same time that I'm only vaguely aware of. I talked about this in my last post under "Consciousness as parts of consciousness":
I only bring up question of what makes scientists above the fray of widespread error to counter the idea that experience can be massively wrong. If that is the case, and all scientific theorizing takes place in the experiences of scientists, what brings even the collective consensus above the fray? Wouldn't that simply be a massively wrong consensus built on massive error? I didn't mean to get into the instrumentalism vs. realism debate, but to point out a deeper epistemic problem with the view that experience is massively wrong. It seems to me if everyone is out to sea, clinging onto each other doesn't prevent drowning, it only means everyone drowns together. (Which I admit would be much more comforting than drowning alone. But still.)
The history of neurology, going back to Phineas Gage, is that damage to the brain leads to function loss (or at least change). If you read about case studies, no part of the mind seems immune: perception, memory, ethical judgments, emotions, etc. This is one reason why dualist inclined philosophers gravitated more toward property dualism rather than substance dualism. They were focusing on what supposedly isn’t already covered by neurological brain function.
I know there are lots of stories of patients miraculously able to retain function despite catastrophic brain tissue loss. I advise following the citation trail on these. When I’ve done it in the past, either the ultimate source wasn’t reliable, or the actual case was far less dramatic. For instance, a young child can take a major loss and recover, to an extent, but injury in adulthood typically fare much worse.
“Why does it feel like it's not the same thing as the brain?”
This seems to presuppose that feelings would necessarily evolve to be accurate on something like this. It’s hard to see what the survival advantage might have been. Most humans in history got by without knowing what the brain did. One of the roles of science is to push beyond our feelings and instinctive intuitions.
“If the mind is nothing but the brain, it becomes epiphenomenal”
I don’t follow this step. If the mind is the brain, then mind and brain seem to amount to alternate descriptions of the same system, each of which may be useful for different purposes. So to say my memory of getting hit by a baseball makes me more cautious at a baseball game might be to say that my synaptic weights make my behavior more cautious than before the sensory processing of being hit by a baseball altered those weights.
To me, to evoke epiphenomenalism (in the philosophical sense) is to posit something non-causal. In my experience, that’s more likely to come from the non-physicalist side than the physicalist one. (Biologists sometimes use the word, but they usually mean something like a spandrel, something that may have effects, just not adaptive ones.)
“I only bring up question of what makes scientists above the fray of widespread error to counter the idea that experience can be massively wrong.”
But my point is that scientists don’t depend on experience simpliciter, but experience that is controlled to ensure relevant factors are being tested, and that is reproducible or otherwise verifiable in the experience of others. And any explanation of that controlled reproducible experience is scrutinized by their colleagues to ensure there aren’t others with fewer assumptions.
I’m sure you saw that news story of astronomers finding a putative sign of life on an exoplanet. They’ve been met by a raft of responses pointing out all the possible non-biological causes of that sign, aside from questions about how reproducible the sign detection is. That’s part of the scientific process.
"The history of neurology, going back to Phineas Gage, is that damage to the brain leads to function loss (or at least change). If you read about case studies, no part of the mind seems immune: perception, memory, ethical judgments, emotions, etc."
I think something's getting confused here. Perceptions, memories, ethical judgments and emotions are either illusions or don't exist according to the mind-brain identity theory. (They don't exist AS SUCH in the brain.) How can an illusion or something that doesn't exist have a causal role? Wouldn't it have to be physical to have a causal role (according to physicalism)? Part of what makes identity theory uniquely baffling is that it can't (or shouldn't be able to) distinguish between mental states and brain states. These are identical, according to the theory. In which case there is also no way to differentiate brain states from each other except by appeal to illusions or, most paradoxically, nothing at all. Of course, no one who holds this view seems to see this. They presuppose mental states to explain brain states, then say mental states don't exist or are illusory.
"This is one reason why dualist inclined philosophers gravitated more toward property dualism rather than substance dualism. They were focusing on what supposedly isn’t already covered by neurological brain function."
I don't see that. Chalmers, for instance, talks about the explanatory gap between all physicalist theories of consciousness and experience. He didn't think experience really was explained by neurological brain function. But I agree that there was a desire to reconcile experience to physicalist premises and a scientific understanding. They did seem to want to eliminate any talk of souls or "mental substances" and so devised a way to talk about experience as being "properties" of the physical world. As a consequence of this attempt at reconciliation to physicalism, they couldn't have an account of experience that included agency, since physicalism denies the possibility of agency in its causally closed universe. So instead of accounting for lived experience as a whole (with its agency and causal efficacy), they took experience in the very narrow sense of having only epiphenomenal qualities (qualia). But notice, there is no epiphenomenalism under traditional substance dualism. Traditional substance dualism posits causal efficacy going both ways and wonders how this two way street (interaction) is possible when the substances are so different. Remove the causal agency from the experiencing subject and you have physicalism.
"This seems to presuppose that feelings would necessarily evolve to be accurate on something like this. It’s hard to see what the survival advantage might have been."
This is a point that's seriously baffling to me. There can be no survival advantage OR disadvantage for an illusion. There can only be an advantage or disadvantage for a brain under the reductive physicalist framework. In other words, the illusory or non-existent experience can have no causal efficacy under reductionism. I get the reason why illusionists would want to say illusions have survival benefits, since they want to explain why an illusion of experience should exist at all. They don't want it to be epiphenomenal in nature. But this supposed survival benefit only begs the question by presupposing an illusion of experience has causal efficacy. But this can't be the case when an illusion is supposed to be nothing more than a metaphor for the brain.
Epiphenomenalism is a problem unique to physicalism, it arises directly from physicalism when physicalism is not taken to the extreme. No one actually has taken it to the extreme. To escape epiphenomenalism it would have to be a theory that completely denies the existence of experience, any experience whatsoever. Experience can't be an illusion or byproduct or emergent property. But this is very hard to swallow.
"scientists don’t depend on experience simpliciter,"
Do you mean certain kinds of experiences are veridical, but others not? The reason I say this is, if your experiences are wholly non-veridical, and the same is true for everyone, the verification process can't escape the result of mass delusion. Whatever experiences are shared and verified must also be non-veridical since there are only non-veridical experiences to choose from. Veridical experiences can't magically arise from a pool of entirely non-veridical experiences. The only way out that I can see is to have some kind of experience be veridical. (Sorry if this was repetitive.)
“How can an illusion or something that doesn't exist have a causal role?”
It seems like all illusions are part of the causal chain. Otherwise how could we even know about or discuss them? Of course, the idea is that some of those effects are people reaching the wrong conclusions. But there’s no reason why other effects couldn’t be adaptive.
But again, “illusion” isn’t my preferred term, so I don’t want to dig-in on this hill. I prefer to talk in terms of experience as functionality. I know you see that as evading the fact that I’m denying your version of experience. I see it as just putting higher credence in a more plausible theory of experience.
“Do you mean certain kinds of experiences are veridical, but others not?”
I do, but not in absolute terms. Your following remarks seem to see it as a binary distinction: veridical vs non-veridical. If that were true, then indeed we would never be able to derive veridical (reliable) conclusions out of non-verical experience.
But I think it’s more accurate to say it’s a spectrum. If I have the experience of an angel coming down to speak with me, but no one else perceives it, then that seems pretty low on the reliability scale (at least that it’s something outside of my mind). However, if others see it, and our responses are recorded before we’ve had a chance to influence each other, then the chance that *something* remarkable happened increases substantially. We can sieve for the reliable parts of experiences with varying levels of reliability, and build more reliable conclusions..
Of course, we never achieve perfect reliability. But it can be high enough that we’re much better off from the effort.
“If everyone lied all the time, language would break down.”
That’s basically what’s happened in the US and in many other (usually poorer, and more unequal) countries now, right? Language becomes meaningless, and people are intentionally confused and misled without the tools to find their way out—hence literal mind control and lack of any real objective or cognitive skills by a big share of the population (for the exact inverse, see a country like Finland).
It’s funny, because I raised many of these points essentially using the more limited knowledge and tools I had at the time, as a science student at my elite institution 20 years ago, and at best, I got a “oh, interesting, you think that’s important?” And at worst, aggressive pragmatic disinterest. But it really makes sense that America became both the leader of science and the leading abuser of it as part of the military industrial complex, given the history of the Manhattan project and everything that followed—this, and the successive generations of scientists, seem to bear little relation to the history of science up to this point, and its philosophical and artistic predecessors.
It does seem as if we're taking the first steps towards a breakdown, although I'm a big believer in the autonomy of language from any individual or group's influence, so hopefully language will "float above" the fray and we can continue to talk to each other without losing our minds, or at least the normal people can.
As for the mind control, I'm not sure I'd call it that. Maybe that's true of a small portion of the population. It's true that our education system in the US is so terrible I knew I wasn't getting the real deal even while I was a child within the system. But I think there is some small smidge of common sense that remains, just a smidge, despite our widespread lack of critical thinking skills. A real problem is there's a kind of pragmatism taking over that allows those who previously wouldn't have accepted x y and z behaviors to now accept them as a means to an end. Of course, liberals have reigned supreme when it comes to pragmatism, at least that used to be the case.
" it really makes sense that America became both the leader of science and the leading abuser of it as part of the military industrial complex, given the history of the Manhattan project and everything that followed"
"The brain is in some sense responsible for who we are, right?"
Yep, just like protons, neutrons and electrons are responsible for who we are. It’s very difficult to discard the empirical evidence isn’t it?
These riddles are only difficult if and only if one chooses to address these compelling questions within our current scientific framework. To reiterate: the physical sciences are not in the business of ontological realism, the scientific community’s mandate from the very beginning has been and is still based on instrumentalism.
Therefore, setting instrumentalism aside, if an ontology starts from a fundamental premise that life is both universal and ubiquitous, then one should be able to recognize that there are currently two kinds of life forms in our universe, organic life forms and inorganic life forms.
According to this fundamental premise, the existence of organic life forms are dependent upon the constituents that make its existence possible, and those essential components consist of living, inorganic life forms. So far so good, yes? Next question: should life forms in our universe be limited and constrained to only two different types?
This is where the brain fits into this story line and how is it responsible for who we are?
If the right organization and complexity of inorganic life forms result in organic biological life forms, then should it be any surprise that the right organization and complexity of biological life forms should result in quantum life forms? Hmmmmm?
According to Stuart Kauffman’s theory of “Adjacent Possibles” and my theory of “Conditions on a Possibility”, this emergent quantum life form should be expected to evolve. So, let me introduce you to the “Quantum You”. The quantum you cannot exist independently of the biological brain anymore than organic biological life forms can exist independently of inorganic life forms.
I don’t know about you, but I’m digging this ontology big time…..
That is a good question Tina. One could refer to the standard intellectual acrobatics that the scientific community uses to justify their definition of life. Unfortunately there is no consensus and the rationale is a mixed bag of hand-waving. So in the end, the line of demarcation between living matter and dead matter is arbitrary and cannot be justified.
I have my own ideas and they are many, but in the end why does it matter is life is indeed universal??
I was wondering about the "organic" vs. "inorganic" part more than the life part, but life—there's one I've been thinking about a lot lately. Recently I looked into the scientific definition of life and yes, it's a total mess. One thing I noticed is that many of the definitions seem to presuppose agency or autonomy from physical laws in their murky characterizations of life as a “self-sustaining process” or “self-generation” or a “self-organizing system” or “low entropy”. But then how can this causally-anomalous entity fit into the framework of “nothing over and above the physical”? By their definitions it sounds as if there is something above the physical, and it’s called life. Life pops up (or "emerges") magically and disappears magically. Maybe life is only known by an entity's survival for a time against physical laws?
As for me, I think of life as animate. It moves, it reaches, it acts with purpose, it repeats itself, and all sorts of things like that. The idea of dead matter might depend on our experience of death at our scale of seeing things, when we witness that shocking and rapid transition from animate to inanimate. We assume what's left behind is dead matter. Maybe if we look closer, we'll see that what's left behind is not as inanimate as we initially thought. And on larger scales it's the same thing, everything animated, just in slow motion. Still, the soul is no longer there, and that's what counts for us and perhaps what gives meaning to life vs. dead matter.
Organic verses inorganic; there are some clear and sensible differences for sure. Both require motion that results in form. Inorganic systems are more durable and have a greater ability to resist change because of their nature. The chemical bonds that stabilize these systems have a greater degree of stored energy, so one could say that inorganic systems are built, destroyed and shaped by fire and great pressure.
In contrast, organic systems are more fragile; the transformations from one form to another are robust, active, energetic and require less energy over all. The “conditions on the possibility” for organic systems has to be just right; the Goldilocks zone. Organic systems emerge from inorganic systems and because this transformation from one form of life to another is so profound, how it occurs has not been identified. It’s an ongoing mystery but we are still dealing with what scientists call emergence, strong emergence to be more specific.
At the highest level of biological complexity an organic system has what we call a brain. It is within this biological construction that the real magic takes place. Overlooked by the scientific community is a cognitive system that for all practical purpose is a new life form and that life form is quantum. This should not be a surprise, and as I pointed out earlier it should be something that we would expect to find going forward. Again, from a scientific perspective we are dealing with strong emergence here.
This localized quantum system is really, really, really fragile compared to the other life forms. Talk about robust, active, energetic and animated; it has all of these characteristics and more, not to mention our experience of consciousness and everything that goes with it. it’s almost like an entire universe unto itself. This cognitive systems builds information from the raw sensory stimuli, stores it in the biological brain and then processes that information to make sense of itself and the world around itself.
I don’t think it would be misdirected to refer to this life form as a soul because it is a unique entity for sure. And when the biological infrastructure that supports this life form no longer functions, this quantum life form ceases to exist. I don not think this cessation of life is more profound than when one witnesses the passing of a loved one be it a family member or a cherished pet; one moment they are here and the next moment they are gone.
I think I'm starting to get the picture. Everything is life, so inorganic and organic preserve our normal understanding of the distinction that used to be captured by dead matter/life?
"...so inorganic and organic preserve our normal understanding of the distinction that used to be captured by dead matter/life?"
Right: you've got it. Conditions on a Possibly or the synthetic scientific method is looking for full and complete inclusion within an ontology where there are no exceptions or contradictions.
Within that framework I've taken it to the next level by positing that what we refer to as mind with its experience of consciousness is the next evolutionary progression of life. And for all practical purposes this new life form is quantum.
Personally, I think this is very exciting and it fills in the explanatory gaps that all other assumptions contain.
Theodore H. Schwartz is mixing up two issues: where the self resides, and whether the self is an illusion.
If the self resides in the brain, one might reasonably expect a split brain to result in a split self, and a diminished brain to result in a diminished self. This does not happen. The obvious conclusion is that the self and the brain are not exactly the same thing.
Instead of arguing contrary to the evidence that they are the same thing, the doctor for some reason concludes that the self is an illusion. But when we split a brain, why wouldn't we just get two illusory selves? That would be equally compatible with his theory. It's not compatible with the facts, but this just means that his theory does not address the facts, and in painfully obvious ways. Philosophy may not be brain surgery, but brain surgery is not philosophy.
As for the reality of fiction, here we step into the realm of "ways of seeing," and I suppose Goethean science. (I am just about to start that section of Marco Masi's book.) When dealing with theories of consciousness, we always seem to get wrapped up in scientific or left-brain modes of thought, and the debate gets defined in those terms. This immediate concession to immanence dooms any hope of progress. As George Steiner wrote in _Real Presences_ "If the terms of the argument are solely those of immanence, the free, real presence of meaning within form cannot be adequately defined or given metaphysical plausibility." Our appeal must be to a way of thinking for which left-brain thinking has no time or respect. There isn't much hope of dragging scientists along unless they are open to the so-called "intuitive" way of thinking that understands the kinds of truth than only fiction can express or communicate or discuss. The question is how to impart this sense of "intuition" so that it becomes a real and valid part of their thought processes. Until then, our science will proceed with only one eye open.
Philosophy may not be brain surgery, but brain surgery is not philosophy.
Ha! I want that bumper sticker. Or t-shirt. I don't actually stick bumper stickers on my car.
I just finished that section...you're catching up to me fast! That reminds me, I was meaning to look for Goethe on our bookshelf.
"When dealing with theories of consciousness, we always seem to get wrapped up in scientific or left-brain modes of thought, and the debate gets defined in those terms"
I couldn't agree with you more! I'm so frustrated with myself because I can't help but get caught up in it too. This is a very real part of our culture too, in ways we don't often realize. Notice the metaphor you used: "left-brained" thinking. I was watching Ian McGilchrist on YouTube last night because I'm not all that familiar with his views and wanted to find out more before I commit to reading his honking huge volumes. I was surprised that he took the left brain-right brain dichotomy so literally. I imagined he was using that framework purely as a metaphor. After watching the video it occurred to me that had he not framed his talk in that neuroscience-y way, people probably wouldn't take what he says seriously. If you don't have a scientific angle, people just don't care about what you have to say. I think this bias is reflected in the physicalism that's taken for granted amongst most philosophers these days. Even panpsychists!
But what's the way out? I'm not entirely sure. I don't think anything that has the slightest whiff of woo will help at all, at least not with the majority. The only thing I can think of is an appeal to common sense. Maybe that's not the right way to put it. Maybe it's an appeal to the people we are in everyday life. There are things we all believe in deep down as we go about our ordinary lives, and the illusory self ain't one of them. Maybe that should be a measuring stick to remind people of: if you really believe what you're saying, you'll believe it when you're watching TV or cooking dinner. Maybe we should hold our theories at a minimum accountable to the person we are in our daily lives. That wouldn't require learning meditation or anything like that.
I really hate to say it folks, but the desire to be a part of the church of science is a cult movement that is no different than a cult following intrinsic to religion. One cannot trust what religious leaders tell the masses and one cannot trust what the scientific and academic institutions tell us either.
The only solution is to reject both metaphysical positions and go it alone. Rewrite the script of original assumptions and maybe just maybe, one will bump into other individuals who are doing the same thing and have come to the same conclusions.
Blogs like yours are the perfect venue for that type of intellectual revitalization.
I'm not the most optimistic sort of person, so I tend to agree there's not much chance of changing anyone's mind. But I'm glad you enjoy this venue! I'm glad you're here!
In that post I point out that _The Master and His Emissary_ never suggests that the fix is to modify anybody's brain, for example "using pills." But last night I came across an article on Psyche that <a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/psychedelics-are-philosophical-tools-for-demolishing-assumptions"> suggests using psychedelics</a> as a means of "demolishing assumptions" and opening the mind to other ways of seeing. And then I read another Psyche article about the value of <a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/there-is-knowledge-in-the-land-as-well-as-in-ourselves"> Indigenous knowledge</a> and an appreciation of "the land," or in this case, "the country." For a while, I was looking into Indigenous concepts of land and story, and I'm convinced there's a lesson to be drawn about ways of knowing. I just haven't put my finger on it.
Bringing our thoughts back to the commonplace, in the manner of Hume after a hard day's skepticism, is certainly a good way to guard against overthinking things. But more than this, we need to feel deeply the significance of the commonplace. Cooking dinner isn't just doing chemistry, but it's not just cooking dinner either. It's participating in something much larger.
Just a thought here Jim. I think a lesson we can learn from the indigenous peoples of the America is that as a stone-age culture they did not seek to dominate, control nor take advantage of the natural world. They saw themselves as one with the natural world and that everything was a life form including rocks.
I think this pathological desire for a sense of control, which is an illusion by the way, and the domination of nature skews our vision and ability to see clearly. We seek understanding through the apprehension of a prehension of "I know not what". We seek to control instead of allowing the prehension to develop over time until the prehension becomes complete, resulting in comprehension, a becoming at one with the natural world where everything without exception is alive.
Where I live we are very conscious of Indigenous peoples and their potential contribution to our understanding. The concept of "two-eyed seeing," which I've talked about on my blog, originated in Cape Breton, not that far from here. I think you're right that the Indigenous "way of seeing" does not divide humans from nature in the way that so-called "Western" thought does -- as if Nature were a separate thing that can be manipulated safely from a remove. But I would be wary of portraying the Indigenous way of seeing as a type of animism. That's a Western simplification of something harder for us to grasp, involving the importance of "the land" and the significance of "story." I've blogged about this in "Two-Eyed Seeing, Part II -- Knowledge as Relationship."
Yeah, I agree that neither animism nor a form of panpsychism is part of the tradition. I was surprised to learn from a friend of mine who is very familiar with Lakota tradition that the Lakota's belief systems runs on a parallel track with the metaphysical model I've been developing over the last few years.
Thank you! I just watched a newly popular show on CBC, North of North, a comedy slice of life that takes place in a small town in Nunavut--the cool thing is that it stars and was made almost entirely by Inuk people, so it seems a very realistic representation of modern cultural life and the blending of all the worlds in this present moment. Really enjoyed most of it, we need more of that.
I watched the first three episodes last night. It's pretty good. Presumably it's also available on Netflix, since they were involved in the production.
"I think in the end he does accept it as only a metaphor"
Ah, okay, that's a relief.
I'll check out those links!
"But more than this, we need to feel deeply the significance of the commonplace."
I'm so very much on board with this idea. It's so easy to let life pass by without seeing much or any significance in the mundane. I think this is what interests me about writing fiction. In writing about the mundane, it's brought to the foreground and given a special status that forces us to pay attention to it and see features of it that we hadn't noticed before. I think this is also why I'm drawn to literary fiction and to some degree realism. With TV and movies, I want a tight plot, but with literary fiction, the plot is very secondary to those "phenomenological" moments of where the mundane gets clarified and brought to the foreground, which in turn brings you into such experiences more deeply.
I must admit, though, of all the commonplace experiences, cooking dinner might be one of the harder ones to appreciate, at least for me. Folding laundry too. My husband claims to find significance in the folding of laundry, but when I offer to let him take over the task, he is very quick to add that the meaning comes more from when I fold his laundry, since he is apparently incapable of folding things in just the way I fold them. When I offer to teach him, he switches the story to, "No, it only works when you do it."
That's something I like about fiction too. I seldom read it, but I especially enjoy the little epiphanies that run through well-written stories.
I just searched the Internet for "zen cooking" and zen folding laundry." Loads of hits for both. Now I'm wondering what I could add "zen" to that wouldn't find anything. At random I tried "nose-picking." Guess what?
I mostly agree, except with the characterisation of ‘experience’ as ‘knowledge’. Experience is always subjective, and it cannot be made objective (as knowledge/truth) by adding more subjective experience, but only by some metaphysical standard that strands above experience. Philosophers disagree on what this standard should be, but most probably agree that nonsense is not knowledge, and so, at the very least, knowledge is subject to the fundamental laws of logic, which we never experience but infer from the act of thinking itself (which includes thinking about experience).
One could ask ‘what controls the brain’? If nothing, because the brain is identical with all thought, which includes the thought about the brain, then the thought about the brain is not identical with the brain, so it does not refer to itself (is not the Self). If the brain is identical just with the thought about the brain then it does not exist whenever it does not think about the brain, but in those movements there are other thoughts still occurring to the Self, therefore the brain is still not the Self.
Ah so much going on here. So starting with experience as knowledge, I wouldn't say those are the same. And I'd resist the 'subjective-objective' mode of thinking, at least at first, as much as possible. There is a sense in which experience is definitely 1st person— you can't experience my perspective as I experience it—but that's a fairly limited way to think about experience when you take a step back and try to think about experience on the whole. In ordinary life we don't think this way, but assume without a doubt that we share experiences with others. "Oh try this ice cream, it's delicious!" We don't need metaphysical standards to fully believe in shared experience. It's only later while we're doing philosophy that consider what metaphysical standards are necessary, and this experience of theories and logic is another mode of experience, a theoretical mode where thoughts about the mind-brain identity theory are happening at the same time as the more ordinary mode, where the TV is playing a YouTube channel with kittens and puppies playing in the background and a gentle breeze is coming in through the open window and any number of things are happening at the same time. What I've described here is all experience. From this vantage point, what is known is less interesting than what is unknown.
I argue that a metaphysical standard is already presupposed in the use of language, in thought, in all meaning; there are implicit rules we tend to unwittingly follow and unwittingly enforce on one another when appealing to experience. These rules allow us to identify words and objects consistently at different times, or at different points in a story that we ‘experience’, which in turn allows us to configure multiple elements (words, impressions, feelings) intro a story, which only then become meaningful. For example, we identify a tree in terms of some characteristic relations that are taken to fit the category ‘tree’. To perceive a tree is of itself not truth-apt just like like feeling cold or thinking of something that may happen tomorrow; these are just narrative fragments, like words or sentences in a language. It is only once they are presented as a part of a story we call ‘reality’ that they become truth-apt, but only as claims about ‘reality’, by which I mean that they can be verified according to some standard of ‘realness’. We may ask whether what we perceived was indeed a tree, a real tree, or was it an illusion, or a miscategorisation, but this does not change the original impression. Impressions cannot be of themselves true or false just like thinking of number 3 by itself is neither true nor false. More formally, following the reasoning of Douglas Lavin https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/381695, our judgment about ‘what we see’ cannot be subject to a principle (such as ‘true/false’) if that principle is subject to our judgment, evidently because this schema is logically circular.
To intuitively tie it all together I like to describe ‘experience’ as an object-language that we all ‘speak’ (phenomenologically), therefore share when the phenomenological association is invoked, so when we see a tree we experience a meaning ‘tree’, similarly to the meaning of a word “tree” (our next level meta-language), according to the laws of sense (our highest order meta-language that cannot be spoken). Logical consistency is a meta-language that cannot be spoken because it is an intrinsic aspect of consciousness; its structure.
I also agree that a metaphysical standard is presupposed in language—that's what my husband's book, Truth and Generosity: How Truth Makes Language Possible, is about:
By ‘generosity’ here you seem to mean what some people call ‘intellectual charity’, which consists in making the effort to interpret the statements of others in a way that makes the most sense vis a vis the totality of meaning that we possess, going as far as completing incomplete expression or correcting non-critical inconsistencies by modifying the common definitions of terms, and then asking whether, on these extended terms, we understand the person as intended. I would argue that the criterion of sense overrides statistical normalcy, unless normalcy is coextensive with ‘sense’. One could subsequently ask: what makes ‘truth’ (as distinct from being ‘truthful’ in expressing our beliefs)?
Ah yes, truth. That gets explained later in the book. It's not defined, exactly, but the reason for that is explained. It's a bit too complicated to relate in the comment section. The book was written before AI or statistical normalcy became a thing, so that's not really a focus, but yeah, meaning is not determined in that way.
I used the term statistical normalcy because in the first chapter you talk about ‘normalcy’ of meaning as the most common use of the term, if I recall correctly. Based on the first chapter I can determine that I am not the target audience (not enough ‘meat’ in it for me), so let us continue this topic here, if you get something of value from this.
One could ask: how do you know that your standard of truth is true? This of course cannot be answered without appealing to some higher principle, which is one of the reasons why I agree with Frege that the concept of truth is at best superfluous, and typically nonsensical, except when it is synonymous with the systemic consistency of sense. If this is roughly your model then I probably agree.
Like you, Tina, I'm not too happy with the surgeon's claim that "the mind and the self do not physically exist. Which is not to say that they don’t exist at all. They are fictional mental constructs, akin to the concepts of love, justice or freedom.” In my view, the mind is not a fiction but reality. Nor is my experience reducible to my brain as he sometimes seems to think (if I read him correctly).
Also like you, I wonder about what traits experience or consciousness have. Examples of diminished consciousness and preattentive consciousness indicate that consciousness can be separated from subjectivity and cognitive access. The other main answer to the question of what consciousness is usually centers on qualia, both sensory and emotional (e.g., pain and fear). These qualia also infuse memory and thought.
Your statement that there's more to experience than qualia is intriguing. Take, for example, abstract theorizing. While it seems remote from qualia, Einstein once said that his theorizing consisted of a “combinatory play” of images with a “muscular feel” to it, according to the psychologist, Jaques Hadamard (1945, p.142). I can't help but wonder if there's more to experience than qualia--and if so, what it would be. Any ideas about this? --Mostyn
I've read the essay on panpsychism that you posted a few months ago. So since you are here now I have a question.
Do you see the mind not as what the brain does but as a separate and distinct system that is physically part of the architecture of the brain, such as a cognitive system for example?
One of the most outstanding features of consciousness that most people overlook is that the mentation process is at the fundamental level motion, resulting in form: motion being first cause, a feeling or thought being the form.
As far as what the experience of consciousness entails, that is a vey broad and sweeping question. In short it's the entire package of what it is like to be alive; and it is this visceral experience of all of the qualities that make us willing to do almost anything to continue our existence. It all goes back to the feeling, sensation and most of all the value of the experience. Value is the wild card in our experience and it is also the wild card for what drives complexity and diversity in our universe.
Just an FYI: I used to be on the panpsychism bus for a long time but have since move on. I consider myself a pragmatic physicalist which means that everything in our universe that has structure/form as a result of motion is physical. Since thoughts, emotions and feeling have structure these quailia must also be physical.
Hi Mostyn! Good question. I was wondering if someone would ask. As I was responding to your question I started to realize this will probably be better explained in another blog post, so thank you for the inspiration!
As I'm sure you know, there are ambiguities involved with the word "qualia". Some seem to take it to mean just "qualities" or "what it's like". Others mean something much more specific and technical, and what they describe sounds more like a theoretical understanding of 1st person subjective phenomenal experience from a third person attitude. If you compare talk of qualia from any side of the contemporary debate to phenomenological descriptions of experience from non-analytic philosophers (like Whitehead or Husserl, for instance), you'll notice the characterizations of experience are very far apart. Especially when it comes to things like privacy and the non-relational "intrinsic" aspects of experience. I'm coming to the conclusion the reason for this is not that one or the other kind of description is wrong, but that the two camps of philosophers are starting from different attitudes which yields different types of descriptions that appear to be at odds with one another. But I'll write more about this hopefully in the coming weeks. Thanks for the idea!
Mostyn sent me an email saying he couldn't figure out how to reply, so this is his response:
"I like your interesting stress on motion, although I think the nature and dynamics neural and mental motion differ. In my view, the conscious mind is the inner, hidden nature of neural electrochemical events beyond what EEGs display of them. This isn’t reductive physicalism, for the mind isn’t the observable neural activities of physical science. Nor is it nonreductive physicalism, where consciousness magically emerges from the organization of nonconscious physical events.
Nor is this view supervenient or epiphenomenal physicalism, where all causality comes from physical laws. I feel that while lower sensory levels may be epiphenomenal, higher levels have their own conscious dynamics irreducible to electrochemical laws. So, we’re not puppets of physical dynamics but have free will due to our conscious feelings and decisions.
I also like your stress on values. In my view, values and feelings/qualia generally are the source of our nonphysical dynamics. While scientists can observe neural electrochemical events, they can’t observe how they weigh moral choices or decide which suitor we love most. This occurs in the hidden, inner nature of these events. The decisions rest on our weighing of feelings/qualia, not just on simple electrochemical laws." —Mostyn
Thanks Tina, Mostyn's reply was very helpful for me to understand where he is coming from.
His metaphysical model is well thought out but like all other ontologies I've encountered it is not inclusive and it contains built in exceptions which for all practical purposes are contradictions within a framework of logical consistency and universality.
"...values and feelings/qualia generally are the source of our nonphysical dynamics."
With this statement Mostyn is really, really close to my ontology. To be totally inclusive I would add that value and feeling/qualia are the source of all physical dynamics responsible for motion resulting in form, not just for mental life but for organic and inorganic life as well.
The brain is not extracable from the body and vice versa. Many brain parts and many body parts can be lost without affecting an overall sense of self. Removing certain body parts, like the heart, or brain parts, including major trauma, will eradicate or deeply affect our self awareness. But self awareness is not an all or nothing game. The system responsible for self awareness, appropriately called the proprioceptive sensory motor system, is treated dismissively in neuroscience and is poorly understood, compared to the other major systems, interoception (visceral awareness) and exteroception (our conventional external senses). Self awareness involves multiple levels of awareness and even metacognitive (human) or reflective self awareness is more than a single part of the brain or body. The best place for us to look for new, richer, or more meaningful self awareness is deep within. The proprioceptive system is the deepest sensory motor system and resides in our postural core. This is where modern and non-modern meditative approaches like yoga and tai chi have always sought awareness, beyond the surface phenomenon of the body and the environment.
Yes, I agree it makes little sense to talk about the brain without the body, and self awareness is much more complex than we often appreciate. I was just reading about the non-modern approaches last night and find these frameworks much richer than the current scientific one.
You are right that premodern and non-modern approaches are much more integrative and intuitive. We can learn from these approaches but unfortunately it is a fact of history that we can’t ever go backwards. We need to keep moving forward and build on the wisdom that we inherit. Although what we can call a reductive or objectifying tradition in modern science has been dominant throughout history there has also been an active and rich holistic or somatic tradition on the periphery and perhaps more behind the scenes. Even Newton acknowledged that the kind of science which he helped to define only works for nonliving things and that a very different kind of laws are required for a physics of living things. This is emerging into cohesive clarity now. It is very exciting and hopeful to discover that here at the final stages of modernity we have made a great deal of progress toward a kind of a new physics of life. I am a body worker and have had my hands literally inside some of these new “fleshy” or somatic principles and as a scholar study them enthusiastically. I would love to discuss it more deeply with you if you would like.
"Even Newton acknowledged that the kind of science which he helped to define only works for nonliving things and that a very different kind of laws are required for a physics of living things. This is emerging into cohesive clarity now."
I wish more people understood this. Science was designed to explain matter, not everything.
I just came across this article from a couple days ago: "Consciousness reveals there's no single objective world" by Christian List (https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-reveals-reality-cannot-be-described-auid-3151). List's central theme here is that any theory of consciousness needs to recognize first-personal perspective (individual internal experiences). The article discusses the 'philosophical zombie' thought experiment.
““So why didn’t these split-brain patients, post-surgery, feel like they had two selves? “
Perhaps because only one hemisphere (probably the left) is REPORTIING what it feels. And it’s accurate; it is only one self and it’s unaware of the other self over in the right hemisphere that isn’t talking.
That's one possibility. It's hard to know whether there is another silent self without it reporting on what it feels as well, which would of course make it not silent. Or maybe there aren't actually two selves, but one self uncoordinated with another aspect of itself. A pop psychology analogy might be neurotic people who let their ego go out of control without realizing this sabotages the very possibility of the ego getting what it wants. Like that guy at the party who can't stop reminding people of how awesome he is, which only makes people think he is not awesome.
Of course we are getting into very speculative and murky terrain here but I question the concept of a unified self even in intact brains. In what sense are our visual, auditory and tactile consciousnesses all “one”? I think this may well be a conceit of language which receives inputs from all of them and refers to all of them as belonging to a unified “I/me”. But our visual ”self” may be “unaware” ( in the subjective sense) of the auditory one and vice versa,
just like each hemisphere of the other in the split brain may be Yet they all may be said to be conscious in the way we require of selfhood.
I tend to think of the self in the Kantian way as the (perhaps transcendental) unity of experience rather than divided up into various processes, but like the word 'consciousness', it's a slippery concept (and one I haven't given nearly as much thought to as I should). Somehow I want to keep the self distinct from awareness to allow for more complex possibilities within experience. I talk about this somewhat here, (although this post is more about consciousness than the self):
Yes, I too subscribe viscerally to a unified self but this fundamental unity really does kind of crumble in your fingers as you try to inspect it. What kind of subjective fact is unity even supposed to be? What exactly is the shared me-ness across multiple senses and across time? It’s far far more slippery than the raw facts of subjective experience themselves.
Enjoyed your piece. Of course we’re talking about the soul and absolutely that term has been banished (perhaps usefully?) and simply replaced with less fraught terminology. But, again, this terminology sneaks in a kind of unified substance of experience that I question is actually justified
As far as I can see, you're dodging my argument completely. I'm sorry. If you can't provide any kind of broad stroke suggestion for a non-mechanical, non-neuroscientific explanation for how you come to speak about consciousness, or motivate why I should read your recommendations, then I judge it's not a good use of my time to do so. Could be wrong, but it's my best judgement.
Oh, I get it. Somehow it's my job to motivate you; right. A good use of your time would be to question your own belief system; do the hard work of thinking for yourself instead of relying upon others to do your thinking for you.
We're all really stupid if not for relying on the thinking and knowledge of others. Collectively we make progress. Not as individuals. That is an illusion.
My "belief system" is rather new, because I'm constantly questioning it. I recommend the same to you.
I don't mind discussing ideas that challenge the metaphysical position of other individuals such as yourself. A combative free exchange of ideas is productive if one is willing to entertain someone else's point of view instead doubling down on their own biases. My own ideas have evolved because of the exchanging of ideas.
For example, I saw panpsychism as the way forward for consciousness studies until a very combative Idealist pointed out an error in my ontology. As a result I made the necessary changes that resulted in a theory that now conforms to logical consistency by being inclusive and universal. But in the end I recognize that you and I will have to agree to disagree. It is within that spirit that I address your following comments.
"I keep referencing causal closure because I see no alternative, and I hear no suggestions to an alternative."
If you took my advice and read the comments I posted on this particular blog you will see that I offer an alternative to a causally closed, mechanical universe. The alternative to a mechanical universe is a living universe where life is universal and ubiquitous at every level of complexity. Within the dynamic of life itself there exists a limited degree of self-determination for every system as it responds to value.
"I don't need tools to understand how rain behaves, for example."
Yes you do, and that tool is rationality. Rationality is the primary and fundamental tool in your tool box. Rationality is limited in scope because it is a binary system, a system that by its own nature divides the world into parts. In contrast to the binary system of rationality we have reasoning, which is a linear system. Reasoning has to the ability to hold every possibility in a superposition until an intellectual measurement is made thereby collapsing all of the possibilities into a single discrete outcome. Once the possibilities have collapsed, then rationality kicks in.
I do not expect you to understand any of this but out of respect to you and others who may read these comments I've posted this.
Yeah I need cognitive tools, I thought you just meant microscopes and stuff...
I think you're still misunderstanding my whole point! I'm not asking for an alternative to a causally closed universe! Who knows, maybe it isn't. That's not the point!!
I'm asking if you believe that there is causal closure in humans in general, or brains in particular. If you believe electrons in brains behave like electrons anywhere else, following the laws of physics, then you do. If you don't believe in causal closure in humans, then the violations of the laws of physics as we know them should be detectable. Suggest a way forward. I'm not saying it can't be so! I'm saying don't dodge the problem!
I too realise we are probably too far apart for you to understand any of this or why I'm coming back to the same thing. But who knows!
"I'm asking if you believe that there is causal closure in humans in general, or brains in particular."
The short answer is no and the long answer is absolutely not. Electrons in brains behave like electron everywhere in the universe but they do not follow laws. If you believe that there are actually laws that command unwavering, unquestioning obedience from its unknowing, unsuspecting subjects, electrons in this example then yes, we are too far apart to have any meaningful communication.
The physical sciences have a limited reach and the "only" way forward is through the synthetic scientific method. Immanuel Kant outlined this modality in his "Critique of Pure Reason". He referred to it as synthetic a priori judgements followed by rigorous synthetic a priori analysis. It is pure reason, not rationality. Rationality always begins with an assumption and reasoning does not.
Thanks. Okay, so then why do electrons and other particles "seem" to behave as predicted by the standard model of particle physics? I'm not saying physical sciences have unlimited reach, but why do you figure they seem to behave mechanistically? Furthermore, why do all the parts of living cells seem to behave in accordance with the physical sciences? Shouldn't the physical sciences be able to find divergence?
"Do you believe YOU are an illusion?" Not sure I care : ) Philosophers love to go abstract, but isn't there a philosophy based on practicality? In other words, they avoid problems that lead nowhere
I'm not sure, but I think it just gets more and more abstract from here.
The thing is, philosophy is about exploring the foundations of practicalities and views we take for granted. It's amazing how many problems we can solve even while standing on a shaky foundation!
Nice piece!
It seems to me you have misunderstood what illusionism is saying! I don't know any illusionist claiming that consciousness is not real. Nor do we claim to have introspective access to what it is or how it works. That's kind of the whole point! And above all, consciousness does NOT emerge from any processing. That's a fundamental misunderstanding of computational functionalism. That's a dualistic framing (of one kind or another). That's like saying that ios/android emerges from the processing in your smartphone!!
No, physicalism does not mean that consciousness is fictional. Maybe to some, but not in general.
It's pretty evident to me that the mind is not just the brain - embodiment is crucial. But no, it's not evident at all the mind is not the body. That there's a mind-body problem at all. It sure is evident to some people, like you. But don't generalise!
If you don't mind answering... Do you believe in the Darwinian framework for understanding and explaining animal evolution, biological structure, and behaviour?
I realize there are many types of physicalists and that illusionists, eliminative materialists, functionalists, and computationalists all see big differences amongst their views. I can appreciate that there are subtleties involved here that I'm not remarking on. I consider certain forms of panpsychism and property dualism (and other -isms) physicalist too insofar as they assume a reductive-materialistic causal framework which says the whole is equal to the sum of its parts. From what I understand, the former group agree that "introspection"—whatever that is—is hopeless, that only a third person perspective can reveal the truth about consciousness (with perhaps a limited first person understanding of experience, and only because it's necessary to establish correlations). Whereas the latter try to defend epiphenomenal qualia, which is a problematic view that comes directly as a consequence of their physicalist reductive assumption. Their understanding of experience is also very limited, and that, too, comes as a result of their physicalist framework. The current debates about zombies and Mary's room and qualia are almost entirely about these narrow problems involved in epiphenomenalism. Property dualists call the other side "physicalist", but that's confusing, because deep down, they're physicalists too.
The mind-body problem, on the other hand, has been around for thousands of years, and it's still very much alive. Chalmers understood that he wasn't really coming up with anything new when he talked about the hard problem, since it's the mind-body problem reformulated in his property dualist terms. That said, HIS hard problem isn't quite the same: He begins by assuming a physicalist (causally reductive) framework and then wonders how simple irreducible "phenomenal" (or epiphenomenal) qualities can "arise" from the purely mechanistic world. The mind-body problem, on the other hand, does not give up the causal efficacy of the agent or the causal nature of experience on the whole. I don't want to say the mind-body problem is harder than the hard problem, but it deals with a much more complete picture of experience, and many of the criticisms that attempt to dissolve the hard problem don't apply to it.
"Do you believe in the Darwinian framework for understanding and explaining animal evolution, biological structure, and behaviour?"
In my undergraduate thesis I defended a teleological understanding against the reductive-mechanistic view of Descartes. This is not to say I'm a creationist, however. I think the Darwinian framework isn't sufficient when talking about reality as a whole. Reductionism systematically subtracts the values and meaning that we actually do find in our experiences of the world. It's not as if science stands back objectively watching the world and determining there is no meaning or purpose to any of it. It instead subtracts values and purpose as a matter of method. That's not necessarily a problem as a matter of method. It's only a problem when that method gets taken to be the only way one can know anything whatsoever, when that method is allowed to become metaphysics.
Thank you so much for this elaborate response! This, I think, let's me much better understand your position. Also, your thesis sounds like a fascinating one!
Honestly, I'm kinda sympathetic to your position. I actually think some forms of idealism that I have come with limited contact with, like Advaita Vedanta, are quite beautiful. I was even leaning in that direction previously. I even kind of believe it in one sense, but as metaphor.
I'm glad we agree on the problems of epiphenomenalism, and I totally see why you label property dualists as physicalists. Agreed. I also agree on what you say about Chalmers and the Hard Problem. Yes, the mind-body problem is millennia old (but why isn't it much, much older?).
What I don't understand is how any form of idealism let's you, in the end, escape from a similar epiphenomenalsm problem. This last remark, I suspect, will lead you to think that I do not understand idealism. If so, I agree - but I think the reason don't understand it because it cannot be understood! It's incoherent! (just expressing my view!).
To explain why - this is what I aimed for with my question about Darwinism. I meant it as a very specific question as I stated it. Not if it is sufficient for talking about reality as a whole. I totally agree!
The Darwinian framework cannot even begin to touch on what matter is made of. Nor can physics! Physics can say that molecules are made of atoms, and atoms are made of electrons, neutrons and protons. Neutrons and protons are made of quarks. But then what? It quickly hits rock bottom. All of this is compatible with matter being fundamental, or being a manifestation of Atman, or in a dream, or in a simulation. Darwin or Einstein or Schrödinger simply have nothing to say about this! (when doing what they are most well known for - Schrödinger famously was sympathetic to idealism if I'm not mistaken).
Whatever matter is fundamentally, or manifest in, I suspect you agree that molecules are made of atoms. Right? Also, proteins and lipids and DNA and RNA are made of molecules. Cells are made of proteins and lipids and DNA and RNA. Animals are made of cells.
My question sought to find out if you thought there were any detectable violations of the physical-Darwinian framework when it comes to animal behaviour. In other words, no matter what matter is made of, or a manifestation of, a reductionist physical-Darwinian framework can explain why proteins, cells and animals behave the way they do. Natural selection and animal cognition (innate, learned) explains the Gazelles high jump, the lions roar, and the birds mating rituals. Reducing animal behaviour to patterns of muscle contractions may risk missing the beauty of the emergent high-level phenomena. But it does not lead us to conclude that the laws of physics are violated somewhere in the behaviour of the cells of the animal. Or am I wrong to presume that you agree with that? If you don't agree - then this is an empirical question! Biology, bioscanning, neuroimagery, some scientific investigation should be able to uncover unexpected behaviour at the molecular level!
If you agree to this - then it seems to me you have put yourself in a difficult position. Why? Because humans are, I hope you agree, animals! We are not special in that regard. When we talk, or write, this is animal behaviour in complex patterns. Therefore, every expression of the mind-body problem since ancient times, categorises under animal behaviour. It's not reducible to it "JUST animal behaviour, JUST muscle activity), but it is constrained by it "it IS a part of the spectrum of animal behaviour". So, as far as I can see, you must agree that the emergence of the mind-body problem tradition, and your own talking about it, and your talking about Darwinism not capturing the entirety of reality is, no matter if true or false, ultimately animal behaviour that can be understood in the physics-Darwinian framework. While immensely more complex, there is no fundamental difference in kind between your or my behaviour when compared to that of the lions or the chimps or the ants. Either Darwinism is true, or the laws of physics as we know them are violated. The big mystery then, is why the people in the anti-physicalist/illusionist camps are not proposing ways in which the laws of physics, or biology (as we typically understand it), can be shown to be violated.
If you think I'm making a mistake here, I'm grateful if you could point it out. As I see it, you run into the same problem of epiphenomenalism as Chalmers does. If there is causal closure in physical stuff (no matter what it is made of), then physics can explain everything that is manifest in that physical stuff. Among the things it can explain is ever single word the entire written works, and every utterance, made by humans. Including all physical manifestations of expressed opinions in philosophy of mind and religion.
The good news is, one need not deny the beauty and the realness of consciousness to escape this conundrum. There are beautiful solutions in both eastern and western traditions. As I see it. Thanks!
Idealists don't need to demonstrate violations in the laws of physics or in evolution. And I am the last person to insist on a sharp division between animals and humans. I would accuse scientists of making that division too sharp; they are the ones who currently subject animals to torture, all for the sake of supposedly advancing scientific knowledge by a tiny smidge. They have a long history of seeing animals as less intelligent than animals really are, less sentient than they really are, which is a convenient way to justify animal abuse.
But back to the point.
It might be helpful to look at this through the lens of the debate between scientific instrumentalism and scientific realism. Instrumentalists say science isn't capable of obtaining knowledge of a mind-independent reality. How is it possible to know the world as it is in itself outside of our minds, after all? It isn't. It's really that simple. Whatever it is that we know, we know with our minds. Objective knowledge turns out to be consensus, not reaching outside our minds. Scientific realism is a kind of faith that science can somehow know what is impossible to know. Realists often argue that if science can't know reality, then that would make scientific progress a miracle. Idealists can answer in many ways here. I will say, "What progress? How can you know you're making progress toward a mind-independent reality without knowing that mind-independent reality? You have nothing to compare science to." I believe idealism explains the instrumental success of science better than other views. If reality IS mind-dependent, instrumental success comes as no surprise at all. The principles and values, the understanding of what makes something true or real, exist in minds, not "out there". These principles and values which have been at work in the scientific endeavor have been at work in other areas as well (art, morality, language, philosophy, for instance), some have simply chosen not to notice.
"If there is causal closure in physical stuff (no matter what it is made of), then physics can explain everything that is manifest in that physical stuff. Among the things it can explain is ever single word the entire written works, and every utterance, made by humans. Including all physical manifestations of expressed opinions in philosophy of mind and religion."
I mean, go on then. Explain everything. Because so far as I know, science can't explain most things or even a great number of things that matter to people, and yet in our culture today we're under the mistaken impression that it can. Science love is in the air we breathe. There is no escape from an uncritical adoration of science as a kind of technological god that control everything in the universe. Whenever someone points out that some question lies outside the purview of science (once upon a time this idea would not have been controversial), advocates of scientism say, "We will one day!" But such a view operates on a perpetual promissory note for a total comprehension of all things that can never arrive. It's a failure to see that science is by its very nature incomplete.
I'm not sure why causal closure and reductionism is still so popular as a metaphysical theory. Reductionism is useful at certain scales of scientific inquiry, but it presupposes that the universe is made up of fundamental building blocks which everything else must reduce to. Yet we have never found fundamental Matter, we found observer-dependent weirdness instead. Matter has always been what Berkeley called an "abstract idea" (he never got credit for that!) but for some reason many can't let go of the outdated reductionist causal framework that grew out of this billiard ball conception.
I hope I haven't confused you too much! Idealism is a confounding slap in the face to common sense at first, but once you get past the initial hurdle, everything starts falling into place. It's the only view so far as I know that can account for both science's instrumental success and the physical world of our ordinary lives.
Thank you, again, Tina!
With my limited knowledge of your views, I would presume that you don't draw that distinction between humans and animals!
I am sympathetic to a lot of what you're saying. As a physician, I constant encounter a widespread uncritical appeal to "science shows that..." and "it is scientifically proven". I'm sick of it! Unsurprisingly though, I'm going to claim that you're still missing the point.
I totally agree that we cannot know anything mind-independently. This is a point made by many anti-functionalists. To me, this is not a profound insight. It's just trivially true. And minds can always be mistaken.
I'm not deep into the debate about scientific realism, and I'm sure many positions of defending it are unreasonable, for the reasons you state. But I am sympathetic to the term in the following way, perhaps misunderstanding what others mean by it: I am as certain that electrons exist as I am that earth is round. I'm as certain that water is H2O that I am that I live in Sweden. If matter is fundamental or not, is beside the point (I suspect you won't agree, but I insist on this point). Whatever H an O fundamentally is, water is still H2O. I could be mistaken about all of this. I could be deluded. Everyone could. But I'm going to bet my money on it every time.
There's no way to determine that we don't live in a simulation or that matter is not a manifestation of something else. I'm not going to argue with you there. But the converse is also true. There's no way you can determine that mind is not just matter, computational. Introspection gives us no information in either direction. The fact that knowing about matter is a state of mind is trivial. It only proves that we can be mistaken. It doesn't say anything about whether materialistic neuroscience is sufficient to account for mind, in either direction.
"I mean, go on then. Explain everything. Because so far as I know, science can't explain most things or even a great number of things that matter to people, and yet in our culture today we're under the mistaken impression that it can"
I'm saying it can, in principle, account for everything. Not that science today, one day or EVER can. In fact, I'm certain it never will be able to explain every detail of everything - for the same reason that a hard drive can never contain all the information about itself. The limits of self-referential systems prohibit this, no matter how powerful our minds and methods are.
Look, it's just like evolution. One can believe in evolution without having to explain why insects are attracted to artificial light, or how life begun. One can believe that water is made of H2O without being able to explain what quarks, or even atoms, are fundamentally made of. Even if one is mistaken that atoms cannot be split, one can still know that water is H2O.
Likewise, one can believe in material neuroscience without being forced to explain "everything". As a computational functionalist, I agree fully that everything minds know are mind-dependent, not "direct". Everything is conceptual, a construction of mind, virtual. There is never any direct knowing of anything at all. But the very notions of "mind" and "quality" are not exempt!
You judge that science can't explain most things that matter to people. I judge that it can (not in every detail, but in principle). It's a judgement call. Mind-dependent. It depends on the differences in our neurological make-up. The same goes for our believs about mind itself. Am I wrong to suppose that you would agree to this: if we could rewire your neurons to be more like mine, in the right ways, you would be a functionalist? And if we rewire mine certain ways, I would be an idealist? Our beliefs CAN be explained by the physical mecanisms that precede expressing "I'm an idealist". It's not just the exterior behaviour per se. It's the behaviour of every neuronal event preceding that expression that is the explanation. In principle.
"I'm not sure why causal closure and reductionism is still so popular as a metaphysical theory. Reductionism is useful at certain scales of scientific inquiry, but it presupposes that the universe is made up of fundamental building blocks which everything else must reduce to. "'
No, it doesn't. Not to me, and other structural realists, anyway. I don't presuppose anything about what's fundamental. But if causal closure is not the case, then propose a way to investigate that! Science should be able to detect this! I'm not demanding you exactly how, but propose a direction! Give a suggestion for why zero (mind dependent, empirical) evidence against causal closure has been found so far! Anti-functionalists have been inadvertently dodging this forever. Peaople like Chalmers and Goff are gradually waking up to this problem.
"Idealists don't need to demonstrate violations in the laws of physics or in evolution".
Yes, you do, actually. Or else, you must admit that animal behaviour can, in principle, be accounted for in the framework of the laws of physics and evolution, just as well as water can be accounted for in terms of oxygen and hydrogen. Whether the laws of physics and evolution are manifestations in mind or not is irrelevant. If the laws of physics and evolution can account for everything you say, then all talk about idealism emerges from complex physics and evolution. It is a concept, like any other, in the cognitive landscape of animals. It is not special.
"It's the only view so far as I know that can account for both science's instrumental success and the physical world of our ordinary lives"
Sure, but how does it explain what consciousness actually is? How does it explain that neurons, 100% obeying the laws of physics, coordinate so as to write your post and your responses to me? How does it explain anti-functionalism, and functionalism?
Thanks!
Mark,
You keep referencing a causally closed universe with the so-called "omnipotent" laws of physics as your metaphysical foundation. We are all without exceptions products of our culture, and as a culture, all the scientific community has done is replace the Immortal Gods of the Greeks with the Immortal Laws of Physics. Both concepts are a fallacy.
The only thing that is causally closed in our universe are the tools that we invent and consequently construct. Our understanding of the physical world is based solely on our understanding of tool making; and to infer that this knowledge can be transferred and superimposed on the true nature of reality is nonsense.
I'm not in the mind changing business Mark, but try this on for size. Whenever one is convinced by a rational argument one does not know more but one knows less. This is because the door to any other explanation is slammed shut.
First cause,
You keep saying that you are not in the business of changing minds, but you keep acting like you are. What's wrong with that? Why else discuss? Isn't it to make progress, either in oneself or others (or both)?
I keep referencing causal closure because I see no alternative, and I hear no suggestions to an alternative. Everyone's (inadvertently) dodging, as far as I can tell.
I you have an alternative, please suggest how it interacts with or modifies the behaviour of the elections in brains. Or don't you believe in electrons? (not necessarily fundamental, but in some form)
I disagree wholly that our understanding of the physical world is based solely on our tool making. I don't need tools to understand how rain behaves, for example.
Scientists are human. The open critical view is usually replaced by a focus on delivering the results . Expected results.
So having said that. They could start by acknowledging how basic is our understanding of our nervous system. There is more than the brain.
So we are way far from pining the self or the awareness to specific regions of our brain or else..
Unless of course you are ballsy enough😄
I understand that scientists are human, and I did feel a bit guilty about picking on this guy since he's not a famous intellectual. On the other hand, our culture has become so "science-y" that ordinary people are willing to believe just about anything a scientist (in this case a neurosurgeon) has to say about reality, and they don't realize that they're straying beyond their expertise.
Indeed, they could start by acknowledging our nervous system! Things got brain-centric so rapidly that somehow even these obvious physical aspects of us got left in the dust!
I hate it when scientists are so philosophically lazy, like that article. I kind of agree with a good chunk of it, but those surgeries and experiments do not prove that the self or free will are illusions at all.
Re split-brain patients, I think that they do have two selves afterwards. The reason they don't report experiencing having two selves is that to experience having two selves they would have to be one self! But you can see that they are disunified from their conflicting actions.
This ties into my belief that the mind is a community (of neurons) -- the surgery splits that community into two communities that cannot effectively communicate anymore. The unity that a community experiences is real, and I would say that it creates a genuine "self", but it's not absolute. This is why we can deceive ourselves and experience inner conflicts -- we're not perfectly unified. And I actually think it's a key part of ethics/morality to try to become more unified with yourself. Aristotle makes this point in NE, that good people are unified with themselves, while bad people hate their own company, are full of regrets, and "their soul is in a state of civil war".
It is interesting that there appear to be brain regions responsible for creating the sense of self, but it's funny to me that he takes these as evidence that we are illusory, rather than as evidence of non-dualism. Or just as evidence that our brains are not perfect at identifying the difference between self and world and have to work to make that distinction.
But if we take the self/consciousness as the "window" through which we experience everything, then I do believe the self is an illusion. Not because of neuroscience findings, but because of Buddhist philosophy convincing me. I see this idea of consciousness as tied with the idea that there's an "observer" that simply receives all our sense impressions, and that this observer or pure awareness is our "true self". I think this is one of those ideas that's unnecessary, and doesn't make sense when you think about it deeply. Basically, I think that experiences create/constitute the experiencer, not the other way around. Experiences aren't something we have or receive, they're something we do. There's not a unified self that receives all the experiences, but the unity of self we do have is more like a community of interacting "drops of experience" (stealing Whitehead's phrase).
I'm also not entirely opposed to the idea that we're fictional, so long as we accept that *everything* is fictional and nothing really exists, like Jan Westerhoff argues here - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0020174X.2021.1934268 (it's a good read, and less absurd than it sounds imo).
There's a great book by another neuroscientist, Kevin Mitchell, about how we do have (libertarian) free will, and that tears apart the supposed experiments disproving it.
Yes, I'm totally with you on the view that we can be at war with ourselves. But I take this to be the case because I think it explains a great deal about our experiences, not because multiple selves can be found in the brain. It's not possible to find multiple selves in the brain, when you think about it, because the only way we can know about the functions of the brain is by correlation to experience. Even those studies that purport to eliminate the need for subject reporting ultimately have to calibrate things first with an initial subject report.
The Buddhist explanation of the illusory self is really quite different and I'm not necessarily against that idea, though I'm not entirely sure I understand it.
"Experiences aren't something we have or receive, they're something we do."
I wonder if it's not both, though? Some experiences of things are experienced as 'given' whereas others are experienced as more active. Ultimately we don't think of ourselves as creating reality, right? But there is also a sense in which we don't want to suppose that reality is just sitting there waiting for us to experience it.
"There's not a unified self that receives all the experiences, but the unity of self we do have is more like a community of interacting "drops of experience" (stealing Whitehead's phrase)."
I like this idea, and Whitehead and panpsychism in general, but I'm not sure I actually experience such extreme disunity either. I don't experience that many "selves". Maybe a handful or so. :) I do tend to think of the self as defined by unity, like the Kantian unity of apperception (which is about as empty as it gets, I think, just shy of saying the self doesn't exist). On the other hand I have no serious attachment to this idea and could be talked out of it, though likely toward a less empty concept of self.
"I'm also not entirely opposed to the idea that we're fictional, so long as we accept that *everything* is fictional and nothing really exists,"
But if everything is fictional, what is the reality? How can that reality be known except through our "fictional" experience? Or should I just click the link and shut up? :)
Regarding the free will debates, one of the things about taking experience as epistemologically fundamental is you get agency for free. Which makes the brain studies somewhat irrelevant to that point, although I admit, I do enjoy reading those arguments debunking the deterministic conclusion some draw from the Libet experiments. Fun stuff!
You're right that we can't exactly "find" multiple selves in the brain, but I think that's for roughly the same reason as the general problem of other minds. I don't know if there are other selves in the brain, and if there are I don't know what their experience is like, but they may well be there and we're just not communicating. But I don't want to assume the hemisphere responsible for speech is the only conscious one. Both hands seem to have "something going on upstairs."
I think I expressed myself poorly when I said they're not something we have or receive, but something we do. You're right that experience is receptive/passive. My point was more that we should avoid treating it as a noun, and instead treat it as a verb.
I think the Buddhist idea of the self as illusory might be expressed by saying the "Kantian unity of apperception" (thank you for the new term!) is *emptiness*, or "interbeing" (Thich Nhat Hanh's term). Nothing has its own essential independent existence. We all exist in relation and dependence on each other, so that all things exist in all others. It's this "relational mesh" (as I called it elsewhere) that is the "ground" of both mind and being.
Westerhoff's argument (which is again based off Mahayana Buddhist ideas) is that there is no reality at all — it's illusions all the way down. It's brilliantly bold. The argument basically consists of arguing for (1) that only what's metaphysically fundamental is really real and everything else is just appearances, and (2) that non-foundationalism is true and there is no metaphysical foundation. It does involve accepting an infinite regress of illusions, but why exactly should that be unacceptable? It's a really interesting paper, if you like absurd ideas like that.
It's a bit like the joke about going crazier than the conspiracy theorist. They say the moon landing was a hoax: you say "Pff, you believe in *the moon*? Eliminative materialists say mind is an illusion and everything is physical: you say "Pff, you believe in *reality*?"
"But I don't want to assume the hemisphere responsible for speech is the only conscious one" Yeah, I agree. I just meant the illusionism claim just seemed to come out of left field.
"My point was more that we should avoid treating it as a noun, and instead treat it as a verb." I like that!
I think I like the relational mesh concept better than the illusions all the way down idea, but maybe with a transcendental unity of apperception thrown in for good measure.
It's not a bad way to deal with conspiracy theories and other crazy ideas...out-crazy them!
>“In a sense, the surgery had created two separate selves. In some of these patients, one side of their body (controlled by one hemisphere) would do one thing, while the other half (controlled by the other hemisphere) would do the opposite. For example, one hand would button their shirt while the other hand would unbutton it.”
I’m convinced there are many me’s* warring, cooperating and bargaining with each other all day long. The window you mention later is always there for them to look through, but they all step forward or fall back behind the scenes, beyond my control. For every shirt I button, I hold the genuine and simultaneous impulse to unbutton it. I’m run by committee, but only one member ever emerges from the boardroom at a time.
I’ve said terrible things that, while the words were coming out my mouth, I knew shouldn’t be said. How is that possible? I’ve read something I wrote that I thought was profound, read it again five minutes later and knew it was cheese.
I guess that’s why I’m not convinced sense of self and consciousness are so closely linked. Consciousness is your window. Self is whoever happens to be looking through it at a particular moment.
*Not to be confused with Mini-Me, the separate self of Dr. Evil. Totally different thing. Neither of them wear shirts with buttons.
I'm actually very much in favor of the view that the self can be divided against itself. Here I was trying to stick with his version of the self, which he blurred with the mind, to keep things simple for the sake of the argument. But the self divided against itself is an ancient view that you see remnants of even in pop psychology today. For instance, when we talk about someone being "neurotic", that concept involves a degree of lack of self knowledge. If it were impossible to lack self-knowledge, we wouldn't be able to wrap our minds around this whole idea that there are neurotic people in the world (and we might be neurotic ourselves at times)! I've also experienced—too many times to count—that perplexing moment where a part of me knows I'm about to say something really terrible that I'll have to apologize for later...and yet I say that hurtful thing anyway! How is it possible? It's crazy! Here we see the explanatory power of the 'self divided'.
I think it's only relatively recently that the scientific view has flattened out the rich experiential understanding that we are all familiar with on a daily basis. Being awake and alert to the world gets taken to mean "conscious", and experience gets turned into a simple on/off switch. Lights on/lights off. But that's too simplistic for the reasons you're pointing out. I have no set theory up my sleeve except to say that experience is far more complicated than that.
"Consciousness is your window. Self is whoever happens to be looking through it at a particular moment."
"I’m run by committee, but only one member ever emerges from the boardroom at a time."
But I wonder, who is aware of all the selves? Who knows they're even there? In other words, in that moment when we watch ourselves saying something hurtful and at the same time know we'll later regret it, who is that? It seems there are two selves appearing at the window of consciousness at the same time, where one self is throwing a tantrum and completely obviously to the other, but the other is shaking its head at the infant. Or maybe the one shaking its head IS the window of consciousness? I don't know, just some thoughts!
> Here I was trying to stick with his version of the self, which he blurred with the mind, to keep things simple for the sake of the argument.
I see.
> But I wonder, who is aware of all the selves? Who knows they're even there? In other words, in that moment when we watch ourselves saying something hurtful and at the same time know we'll later regret it, who is that?
That’s a good question. I’m not sure. It’s almost a quis custodiet ipsos custodes thing. Maybe the few times we notice, it’s in the transitions, but that sounds fishy.
Then there’s the meditators and psychonauts who swear self isn’t fundamental to experience at all. In fact, they’d argue it’s an obstacle. That’s kind of an attractive notion to me, but despite a few trips of my own, I’ve never experienced that.
I think I’m losing my sense of “self” this very minute just from semantic satiation.
Haha...I hear you.
Interesting. Usually, people, especially those eager to naturalize everything, will tell you that split-brain patients have a split consciousness/self/subject/identity, ignoring the facts and research showing the contrary. Why? Because, otherwise, it would not fit into a physicalist mind-brain identity theory (the brain produces the self). On that false premise, they then make up all kinds of stories that "save the appearances." This neurosurgeon seems to be no different, since he cites Libet's experiments as evidence because they save his no-free-will belief system while ignoring the fact that they have been shown to be flawed. Nonetheless, once directly confronted with the reality he deals with in his practice, he could no longer deny the facts and rejects the mainstream narrative on split brains. A split brain does not split the self. How could he save his belief system? By denying the self! And voila! Making up yet another contrived and incoherent story the world is back in order. 😊
“This is not a pipe”
"A split brain does not split the self. How could he save his belief system? By denying the self! And voila! Making up yet another contrived and incoherent story the world is back in order. 😊"
Exactly! Notice the author of the article says:
"In the case of the magician, the assistant’s wellbeing is real, and the cutting is the trick. For the brain surgeon, the cutting is the real part, while the patient’s sense of a unified self is the illusion."
He might as well add, "and brain surgeons are always right".
While I agree with the eliminativists, I'm not always wild about how they frame things. For example, I prefer to say the self isn't what we might intuitively think it is.
On the split brain patients, it seems like we need to distinguish between the sense of self and a self as something that has unified coordination. The sense of self, essentially our built in model of a unified self, seems to persist in split brain patients. The only requirement for that is each side, or at least the side with language, has its own model of that self.
But we know the self as unified coordination doesn't persist, at least when the patient's sensory abilities are restricted so the two sides can't take behavioral cues from each other. If the self actually was non-physical, shouldn't we expect the coordination to be unaffected?
Along those lines, my interpretation might be similar to yours if the split brain patients' abilities had been completely unaffected. (Although even here we'd still have to rule out that the signals weren't going through the midbrain or lower regions, or through the peripheral nervous system in some fashion.)
I don't think experience is like a window. That seems to presuppose there's a complete self looking through the window. But then, what's going on in that inner self, does it have its own window with its own internal self, ad-infinitum? It seems more likely to me that experience is the self being changed (learning, memory, etc) based on sensorimotor activity.
Science is dependent on experience. But it's worth nothing that not all experience is created equal. Many experiences are misleading. Which is why science relies as much as it can on experiments, controlled structured experience, to make the resulting conclusions as reliable as possible.
Should be go all Descartes and de-contruct self from experience.?
Is that what going all Descartes would involve? I would've thought just the opposite.
I can not conceive self if not as sheer experience. Doubting this and constructing something aside seems to me a tad creative.
PS: Please let me indulge in my poor reference to Descartes
I think Descartes does deconstruct the self from experience, actually, since he takes the thinking self for the whole. The "I think" of the cogito is a rather sparse self that leaves most of experience behind. This is the criticism Husserl makes against Descartes.
"it seems like we need to distinguish between the sense of self and a self as something that has unified coordination."
I like the distinction, but can't we just say the self acts against itself without calling the self an illusion?
" If the self actually was non-physical, shouldn't we expect the coordination to be unaffected?"
No, not at all. Not even brain death, much less lack of coordination, can disprove the existence of the mind or soul or self. Many theories of mind take the non-physical soul to be dependent on the brain in some way, but this is not to say the soul is identical to it. Perhaps souls require a brain (which some see as a filter or reducing valve) in order to appear here on earth in the lives we currently lead. Hell, even some kinds of functionalism and computationalism aren't disproved here, since they never rested their case on the mind-brain identity theory.
I noticed in the comments section the author backtracks on his previous point that the mind is not physical and then says, " ...if we remove part of the brain important for recognizing faces, or consolidating memory, those functions will be impaired and our loved one’s or even ourselves will appear foreign."
So according to his own reasoning, removing the part of the brain responsible for the self should remove or at least impair the sense of self. With other theories of mind that don't equate the brain to the self or mind, the results of these experiments are irrelevant to their case.
"Along those lines, my interpretation might be similar to yours if the split brain patients' abilities had been completely unaffected."
The problem is, there is always an escape route. I know you're aware of this kind of thing happening in the history of science, so I think you know what I mean when I say what we're seeing now are ad-hoc explanations in the face of seriously contradictory evidence. According to the guy above, and many others, there's a certain way things should go—the removal of x should result in the loss or impairment of y function. But whenever the function is not lost, there's always an ad hoc excuse for it—the brain's plasticity. This is the new theory of epicycles. I highly recommend reading Marco Masi's paper on the mind-brain identity theory if you get a chance (assuming you haven't already):
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1150605/full
It wasn't until I read this paper that I found out you can surgically take out half the brain without killing the patient. Either half. And not only do people survive this surgery, their lives improve. When I looked at those MRIs, I was astounded. Logically, all it takes is one example to the contrary to disprove the IDENTITY of particular regions of the brain to particular functions. The ad hoc story is: the diseased half of the brain is what's removed, so the functions have moved over to the other side by the time the surgery takes place. But what does that explain, exactly? First of all, this grand migration of functions isn't terribly plausible, and it does seem just too weirdly symmetrical. Second of all, and most importantly, the model that takes various regions of the brain to be responsible for various functions can't be the case when either side of the brain can be removed without loss of those functions. Taking the average or normal brain as the model on which to rest your theory doesn't make sense here at all, not when you're trying to establish the identity of the brain region to the function.
Does this in itself destroy physicalism? No, only the mind-brain identity theory described. There are of course other theories, but I find those less than plausible as well. Anyway, the author was the one who said the self and mind are not physical, so I was going with that. And you know I agree with him there. :)
"I don't think experience is like a window. That seems to presuppose there's a complete self looking through the window."
I don't think that. I think we can talk about the self divided against itself. I think what's going on here is that scientists and philosophers have taken consciousness to be nothing more than awareness. I think it's much more complicated than that.
"But it's worth nothing that not all experience is created equal. Many experiences are misleading. Which is why science relies as much as it can on experiments, controlled structured experience, to make the resulting conclusions as reliable as possible."
What makes scientists experiences above the fray of widespread error?
“I like the distinction, but can't we just say the self acts against itself without calling the self an illusion?”
As I noted above, calling it an illusion isn’t my preferred approach. To me it’s just a strident expression of disagreement with common folk theories. I prefer talking about more plausible alternative theories.
“Not even brain death, much less lack of coordination, can disprove the existence of the mind or soul or self.”
Maybe not. But it seems like as we leave less and less for that non-physical soul or self to actually do, it becomes increasingly redundant. Often that’s as close as science gets to disproving a proposition. There was never a disproof of the luminiferous ether, or phlogiston. They just became redundant and ceased to be areas of investigation.
“so I think you know what I mean when I say what we're seeing now are ad-hoc explanations in the face of seriously contradictory evidence.”
I agree that when that happens, it’s a problem. But I don’t see it happening with physicalism. Sure, particular physicalist theories are constantly being falsified. But that’s a constant in science. It just means that particular theory is done, not that every physical theory is toast. To use your analogy, falsifying the Ptolemaic model didn't falsify the idea of modeling the cosmos, it only falsified that particular model.
I’m not big on mind-brain identity theory, at least without functionality in between as a translation layer. But Massi in that paper loses me in the intro: “On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena.” I’m sure he can find some physicalist somewhere who says something like this, but it misrepresents the vast majority of physicalists. I’d scrutinize any cited sources he uses before trusting his assertions.
“I think what's going on here is that scientists and philosophers have taken consciousness to be nothing more than awareness. I think it's much more complicated than that.”
As you know, my view is that “consciousness” is not a semantically determinate term. People use the word for all kinds of things. That said, what do you see as the difference between it and “awareness”? (I know David Chalmers once tried to make a distinction, reserving “awareness” for functionality and “consciousness” for the non-physical aspect, but he got a lot of pushback and it didn’t seem to stick.)
“What makes scientists experiences above the fray of widespread error?”
Other scientists constantly striving to show how wrong they are. What makes scientists collectively above that fray? The methodologies worked out through trial and error over decades and centuries. Doesn’t mean they’re incapable of error. But when fields with a solid track record of producing reliable information hammer out a consensus, it seems like it makes sense for the rest of us to pay attention.
"But it seems like as we leave less and less for that non-physical soul or self to actually do, it becomes increasingly redundant."
I'm not sure I'm following here. What do you mean, less to do?
"I agree that when that happens, it’s a problem. But I don’t see it happening with physicalism."
Yeah, as I said, the points in this paper are about the mind-brain identity theory, not physicalism in general. The loss of function methods described here wouldn't necessarily speak to other physicalist theories.
"On the one hand, material monism posits consciousness and mind as pure brain epiphenomena"
Let's see if I can explain this. I think by "material monism" he means the theory that the mind is the brain, the mind-brain identity theory. "Material" being the material brain. The mind-brain identity theory is the version of physicalism at issue in the paper. If the mind IS the brain, what is the point of talking about mind? Why does it feel like it's not the same thing as the brain? Why does it feel like it's something if it's really nothing but the brain? That's what happens when we identify the mind with the brain. If the mind is nothing but the brain, it becomes epiphenomenal, an unreal phantom of the brain that we can't stop talking about for some reason. The mind can't do anything. It can't cause anything. It's nothing.
I take the difference between awareness and consciousness to be what one picks out from experience at any given moment. I'm aware of the ceiling fan running. Other things might be happening at the same time that I'm only vaguely aware of. I talked about this in my last post under "Consciousness as parts of consciousness":
https://open.substack.com/pub/philosophyandfiction/p/do-souls-lurk-behind-consciousness?r=schg4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I only bring up question of what makes scientists above the fray of widespread error to counter the idea that experience can be massively wrong. If that is the case, and all scientific theorizing takes place in the experiences of scientists, what brings even the collective consensus above the fray? Wouldn't that simply be a massively wrong consensus built on massive error? I didn't mean to get into the instrumentalism vs. realism debate, but to point out a deeper epistemic problem with the view that experience is massively wrong. It seems to me if everyone is out to sea, clinging onto each other doesn't prevent drowning, it only means everyone drowns together. (Which I admit would be much more comforting than drowning alone. But still.)
“What do you mean, less to do?”
The history of neurology, going back to Phineas Gage, is that damage to the brain leads to function loss (or at least change). If you read about case studies, no part of the mind seems immune: perception, memory, ethical judgments, emotions, etc. This is one reason why dualist inclined philosophers gravitated more toward property dualism rather than substance dualism. They were focusing on what supposedly isn’t already covered by neurological brain function.
I know there are lots of stories of patients miraculously able to retain function despite catastrophic brain tissue loss. I advise following the citation trail on these. When I’ve done it in the past, either the ultimate source wasn’t reliable, or the actual case was far less dramatic. For instance, a young child can take a major loss and recover, to an extent, but injury in adulthood typically fare much worse.
“Why does it feel like it's not the same thing as the brain?”
This seems to presuppose that feelings would necessarily evolve to be accurate on something like this. It’s hard to see what the survival advantage might have been. Most humans in history got by without knowing what the brain did. One of the roles of science is to push beyond our feelings and instinctive intuitions.
“If the mind is nothing but the brain, it becomes epiphenomenal”
I don’t follow this step. If the mind is the brain, then mind and brain seem to amount to alternate descriptions of the same system, each of which may be useful for different purposes. So to say my memory of getting hit by a baseball makes me more cautious at a baseball game might be to say that my synaptic weights make my behavior more cautious than before the sensory processing of being hit by a baseball altered those weights.
To me, to evoke epiphenomenalism (in the philosophical sense) is to posit something non-causal. In my experience, that’s more likely to come from the non-physicalist side than the physicalist one. (Biologists sometimes use the word, but they usually mean something like a spandrel, something that may have effects, just not adaptive ones.)
“I only bring up question of what makes scientists above the fray of widespread error to counter the idea that experience can be massively wrong.”
But my point is that scientists don’t depend on experience simpliciter, but experience that is controlled to ensure relevant factors are being tested, and that is reproducible or otherwise verifiable in the experience of others. And any explanation of that controlled reproducible experience is scrutinized by their colleagues to ensure there aren’t others with fewer assumptions.
I’m sure you saw that news story of astronomers finding a putative sign of life on an exoplanet. They’ve been met by a raft of responses pointing out all the possible non-biological causes of that sign, aside from questions about how reproducible the sign detection is. That’s part of the scientific process.
"The history of neurology, going back to Phineas Gage, is that damage to the brain leads to function loss (or at least change). If you read about case studies, no part of the mind seems immune: perception, memory, ethical judgments, emotions, etc."
I think something's getting confused here. Perceptions, memories, ethical judgments and emotions are either illusions or don't exist according to the mind-brain identity theory. (They don't exist AS SUCH in the brain.) How can an illusion or something that doesn't exist have a causal role? Wouldn't it have to be physical to have a causal role (according to physicalism)? Part of what makes identity theory uniquely baffling is that it can't (or shouldn't be able to) distinguish between mental states and brain states. These are identical, according to the theory. In which case there is also no way to differentiate brain states from each other except by appeal to illusions or, most paradoxically, nothing at all. Of course, no one who holds this view seems to see this. They presuppose mental states to explain brain states, then say mental states don't exist or are illusory.
"This is one reason why dualist inclined philosophers gravitated more toward property dualism rather than substance dualism. They were focusing on what supposedly isn’t already covered by neurological brain function."
I don't see that. Chalmers, for instance, talks about the explanatory gap between all physicalist theories of consciousness and experience. He didn't think experience really was explained by neurological brain function. But I agree that there was a desire to reconcile experience to physicalist premises and a scientific understanding. They did seem to want to eliminate any talk of souls or "mental substances" and so devised a way to talk about experience as being "properties" of the physical world. As a consequence of this attempt at reconciliation to physicalism, they couldn't have an account of experience that included agency, since physicalism denies the possibility of agency in its causally closed universe. So instead of accounting for lived experience as a whole (with its agency and causal efficacy), they took experience in the very narrow sense of having only epiphenomenal qualities (qualia). But notice, there is no epiphenomenalism under traditional substance dualism. Traditional substance dualism posits causal efficacy going both ways and wonders how this two way street (interaction) is possible when the substances are so different. Remove the causal agency from the experiencing subject and you have physicalism.
"This seems to presuppose that feelings would necessarily evolve to be accurate on something like this. It’s hard to see what the survival advantage might have been."
This is a point that's seriously baffling to me. There can be no survival advantage OR disadvantage for an illusion. There can only be an advantage or disadvantage for a brain under the reductive physicalist framework. In other words, the illusory or non-existent experience can have no causal efficacy under reductionism. I get the reason why illusionists would want to say illusions have survival benefits, since they want to explain why an illusion of experience should exist at all. They don't want it to be epiphenomenal in nature. But this supposed survival benefit only begs the question by presupposing an illusion of experience has causal efficacy. But this can't be the case when an illusion is supposed to be nothing more than a metaphor for the brain.
Epiphenomenalism is a problem unique to physicalism, it arises directly from physicalism when physicalism is not taken to the extreme. No one actually has taken it to the extreme. To escape epiphenomenalism it would have to be a theory that completely denies the existence of experience, any experience whatsoever. Experience can't be an illusion or byproduct or emergent property. But this is very hard to swallow.
"scientists don’t depend on experience simpliciter,"
Do you mean certain kinds of experiences are veridical, but others not? The reason I say this is, if your experiences are wholly non-veridical, and the same is true for everyone, the verification process can't escape the result of mass delusion. Whatever experiences are shared and verified must also be non-veridical since there are only non-veridical experiences to choose from. Veridical experiences can't magically arise from a pool of entirely non-veridical experiences. The only way out that I can see is to have some kind of experience be veridical. (Sorry if this was repetitive.)
“How can an illusion or something that doesn't exist have a causal role?”
It seems like all illusions are part of the causal chain. Otherwise how could we even know about or discuss them? Of course, the idea is that some of those effects are people reaching the wrong conclusions. But there’s no reason why other effects couldn’t be adaptive.
But again, “illusion” isn’t my preferred term, so I don’t want to dig-in on this hill. I prefer to talk in terms of experience as functionality. I know you see that as evading the fact that I’m denying your version of experience. I see it as just putting higher credence in a more plausible theory of experience.
“Do you mean certain kinds of experiences are veridical, but others not?”
I do, but not in absolute terms. Your following remarks seem to see it as a binary distinction: veridical vs non-veridical. If that were true, then indeed we would never be able to derive veridical (reliable) conclusions out of non-verical experience.
But I think it’s more accurate to say it’s a spectrum. If I have the experience of an angel coming down to speak with me, but no one else perceives it, then that seems pretty low on the reliability scale (at least that it’s something outside of my mind). However, if others see it, and our responses are recorded before we’ve had a chance to influence each other, then the chance that *something* remarkable happened increases substantially. We can sieve for the reliable parts of experiences with varying levels of reliability, and build more reliable conclusions..
Of course, we never achieve perfect reliability. But it can be high enough that we’re much better off from the effort.
“If everyone lied all the time, language would break down.”
That’s basically what’s happened in the US and in many other (usually poorer, and more unequal) countries now, right? Language becomes meaningless, and people are intentionally confused and misled without the tools to find their way out—hence literal mind control and lack of any real objective or cognitive skills by a big share of the population (for the exact inverse, see a country like Finland).
It’s funny, because I raised many of these points essentially using the more limited knowledge and tools I had at the time, as a science student at my elite institution 20 years ago, and at best, I got a “oh, interesting, you think that’s important?” And at worst, aggressive pragmatic disinterest. But it really makes sense that America became both the leader of science and the leading abuser of it as part of the military industrial complex, given the history of the Manhattan project and everything that followed—this, and the successive generations of scientists, seem to bear little relation to the history of science up to this point, and its philosophical and artistic predecessors.
It does seem as if we're taking the first steps towards a breakdown, although I'm a big believer in the autonomy of language from any individual or group's influence, so hopefully language will "float above" the fray and we can continue to talk to each other without losing our minds, or at least the normal people can.
As for the mind control, I'm not sure I'd call it that. Maybe that's true of a small portion of the population. It's true that our education system in the US is so terrible I knew I wasn't getting the real deal even while I was a child within the system. But I think there is some small smidge of common sense that remains, just a smidge, despite our widespread lack of critical thinking skills. A real problem is there's a kind of pragmatism taking over that allows those who previously wouldn't have accepted x y and z behaviors to now accept them as a means to an end. Of course, liberals have reigned supreme when it comes to pragmatism, at least that used to be the case.
" it really makes sense that America became both the leader of science and the leading abuser of it as part of the military industrial complex, given the history of the Manhattan project and everything that followed"
STEM! STEM! STEM!
"The brain is in some sense responsible for who we are, right?"
Yep, just like protons, neutrons and electrons are responsible for who we are. It’s very difficult to discard the empirical evidence isn’t it?
These riddles are only difficult if and only if one chooses to address these compelling questions within our current scientific framework. To reiterate: the physical sciences are not in the business of ontological realism, the scientific community’s mandate from the very beginning has been and is still based on instrumentalism.
Therefore, setting instrumentalism aside, if an ontology starts from a fundamental premise that life is both universal and ubiquitous, then one should be able to recognize that there are currently two kinds of life forms in our universe, organic life forms and inorganic life forms.
According to this fundamental premise, the existence of organic life forms are dependent upon the constituents that make its existence possible, and those essential components consist of living, inorganic life forms. So far so good, yes? Next question: should life forms in our universe be limited and constrained to only two different types?
This is where the brain fits into this story line and how is it responsible for who we are?
If the right organization and complexity of inorganic life forms result in organic biological life forms, then should it be any surprise that the right organization and complexity of biological life forms should result in quantum life forms? Hmmmmm?
According to Stuart Kauffman’s theory of “Adjacent Possibles” and my theory of “Conditions on a Possibility”, this emergent quantum life form should be expected to evolve. So, let me introduce you to the “Quantum You”. The quantum you cannot exist independently of the biological brain anymore than organic biological life forms can exist independently of inorganic life forms.
I don’t know about you, but I’m digging this ontology big time…..
I wonder what makes a life form organic vs. inorganic?
That is a good question Tina. One could refer to the standard intellectual acrobatics that the scientific community uses to justify their definition of life. Unfortunately there is no consensus and the rationale is a mixed bag of hand-waving. So in the end, the line of demarcation between living matter and dead matter is arbitrary and cannot be justified.
I have my own ideas and they are many, but in the end why does it matter is life is indeed universal??
I was wondering about the "organic" vs. "inorganic" part more than the life part, but life—there's one I've been thinking about a lot lately. Recently I looked into the scientific definition of life and yes, it's a total mess. One thing I noticed is that many of the definitions seem to presuppose agency or autonomy from physical laws in their murky characterizations of life as a “self-sustaining process” or “self-generation” or a “self-organizing system” or “low entropy”. But then how can this causally-anomalous entity fit into the framework of “nothing over and above the physical”? By their definitions it sounds as if there is something above the physical, and it’s called life. Life pops up (or "emerges") magically and disappears magically. Maybe life is only known by an entity's survival for a time against physical laws?
As for me, I think of life as animate. It moves, it reaches, it acts with purpose, it repeats itself, and all sorts of things like that. The idea of dead matter might depend on our experience of death at our scale of seeing things, when we witness that shocking and rapid transition from animate to inanimate. We assume what's left behind is dead matter. Maybe if we look closer, we'll see that what's left behind is not as inanimate as we initially thought. And on larger scales it's the same thing, everything animated, just in slow motion. Still, the soul is no longer there, and that's what counts for us and perhaps what gives meaning to life vs. dead matter.
Organic verses inorganic; there are some clear and sensible differences for sure. Both require motion that results in form. Inorganic systems are more durable and have a greater ability to resist change because of their nature. The chemical bonds that stabilize these systems have a greater degree of stored energy, so one could say that inorganic systems are built, destroyed and shaped by fire and great pressure.
In contrast, organic systems are more fragile; the transformations from one form to another are robust, active, energetic and require less energy over all. The “conditions on the possibility” for organic systems has to be just right; the Goldilocks zone. Organic systems emerge from inorganic systems and because this transformation from one form of life to another is so profound, how it occurs has not been identified. It’s an ongoing mystery but we are still dealing with what scientists call emergence, strong emergence to be more specific.
At the highest level of biological complexity an organic system has what we call a brain. It is within this biological construction that the real magic takes place. Overlooked by the scientific community is a cognitive system that for all practical purpose is a new life form and that life form is quantum. This should not be a surprise, and as I pointed out earlier it should be something that we would expect to find going forward. Again, from a scientific perspective we are dealing with strong emergence here.
This localized quantum system is really, really, really fragile compared to the other life forms. Talk about robust, active, energetic and animated; it has all of these characteristics and more, not to mention our experience of consciousness and everything that goes with it. it’s almost like an entire universe unto itself. This cognitive systems builds information from the raw sensory stimuli, stores it in the biological brain and then processes that information to make sense of itself and the world around itself.
I don’t think it would be misdirected to refer to this life form as a soul because it is a unique entity for sure. And when the biological infrastructure that supports this life form no longer functions, this quantum life form ceases to exist. I don not think this cessation of life is more profound than when one witnesses the passing of a loved one be it a family member or a cherished pet; one moment they are here and the next moment they are gone.
I think I'm starting to get the picture. Everything is life, so inorganic and organic preserve our normal understanding of the distinction that used to be captured by dead matter/life?
"...so inorganic and organic preserve our normal understanding of the distinction that used to be captured by dead matter/life?"
Right: you've got it. Conditions on a Possibly or the synthetic scientific method is looking for full and complete inclusion within an ontology where there are no exceptions or contradictions.
Within that framework I've taken it to the next level by positing that what we refer to as mind with its experience of consciousness is the next evolutionary progression of life. And for all practical purposes this new life form is quantum.
Personally, I think this is very exciting and it fills in the explanatory gaps that all other assumptions contain.
Theodore H. Schwartz is mixing up two issues: where the self resides, and whether the self is an illusion.
If the self resides in the brain, one might reasonably expect a split brain to result in a split self, and a diminished brain to result in a diminished self. This does not happen. The obvious conclusion is that the self and the brain are not exactly the same thing.
Instead of arguing contrary to the evidence that they are the same thing, the doctor for some reason concludes that the self is an illusion. But when we split a brain, why wouldn't we just get two illusory selves? That would be equally compatible with his theory. It's not compatible with the facts, but this just means that his theory does not address the facts, and in painfully obvious ways. Philosophy may not be brain surgery, but brain surgery is not philosophy.
As for the reality of fiction, here we step into the realm of "ways of seeing," and I suppose Goethean science. (I am just about to start that section of Marco Masi's book.) When dealing with theories of consciousness, we always seem to get wrapped up in scientific or left-brain modes of thought, and the debate gets defined in those terms. This immediate concession to immanence dooms any hope of progress. As George Steiner wrote in _Real Presences_ "If the terms of the argument are solely those of immanence, the free, real presence of meaning within form cannot be adequately defined or given metaphysical plausibility." Our appeal must be to a way of thinking for which left-brain thinking has no time or respect. There isn't much hope of dragging scientists along unless they are open to the so-called "intuitive" way of thinking that understands the kinds of truth than only fiction can express or communicate or discuss. The question is how to impart this sense of "intuition" so that it becomes a real and valid part of their thought processes. Until then, our science will proceed with only one eye open.
Philosophy may not be brain surgery, but brain surgery is not philosophy.
Ha! I want that bumper sticker. Or t-shirt. I don't actually stick bumper stickers on my car.
I just finished that section...you're catching up to me fast! That reminds me, I was meaning to look for Goethe on our bookshelf.
"When dealing with theories of consciousness, we always seem to get wrapped up in scientific or left-brain modes of thought, and the debate gets defined in those terms"
I couldn't agree with you more! I'm so frustrated with myself because I can't help but get caught up in it too. This is a very real part of our culture too, in ways we don't often realize. Notice the metaphor you used: "left-brained" thinking. I was watching Ian McGilchrist on YouTube last night because I'm not all that familiar with his views and wanted to find out more before I commit to reading his honking huge volumes. I was surprised that he took the left brain-right brain dichotomy so literally. I imagined he was using that framework purely as a metaphor. After watching the video it occurred to me that had he not framed his talk in that neuroscience-y way, people probably wouldn't take what he says seriously. If you don't have a scientific angle, people just don't care about what you have to say. I think this bias is reflected in the physicalism that's taken for granted amongst most philosophers these days. Even panpsychists!
But what's the way out? I'm not entirely sure. I don't think anything that has the slightest whiff of woo will help at all, at least not with the majority. The only thing I can think of is an appeal to common sense. Maybe that's not the right way to put it. Maybe it's an appeal to the people we are in everyday life. There are things we all believe in deep down as we go about our ordinary lives, and the illusory self ain't one of them. Maybe that should be a measuring stick to remind people of: if you really believe what you're saying, you'll believe it when you're watching TV or cooking dinner. Maybe we should hold our theories at a minimum accountable to the person we are in our daily lives. That wouldn't require learning meditation or anything like that.
I really hate to say it folks, but the desire to be a part of the church of science is a cult movement that is no different than a cult following intrinsic to religion. One cannot trust what religious leaders tell the masses and one cannot trust what the scientific and academic institutions tell us either.
The only solution is to reject both metaphysical positions and go it alone. Rewrite the script of original assumptions and maybe just maybe, one will bump into other individuals who are doing the same thing and have come to the same conclusions.
Blogs like yours are the perfect venue for that type of intellectual revitalization.
I'm not the most optimistic sort of person, so I tend to agree there's not much chance of changing anyone's mind. But I'm glad you enjoy this venue! I'm glad you're here!
This might have been the one time I invoked the"left-brain" metaphor without explicitly mentioning McGilchrist. I think in the end he does accept it as only a metaphor; see my <a href="https://staggeringimplications.wordpress.com/2022/03/07/the-divided-brain-part-iii-it-had-all-been-a-metaphor/"> The Divided Review, Part III--It Had All Been a Metaphor</a>.
In that post I point out that _The Master and His Emissary_ never suggests that the fix is to modify anybody's brain, for example "using pills." But last night I came across an article on Psyche that <a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/psychedelics-are-philosophical-tools-for-demolishing-assumptions"> suggests using psychedelics</a> as a means of "demolishing assumptions" and opening the mind to other ways of seeing. And then I read another Psyche article about the value of <a href="https://psyche.co/ideas/there-is-knowledge-in-the-land-as-well-as-in-ourselves"> Indigenous knowledge</a> and an appreciation of "the land," or in this case, "the country." For a while, I was looking into Indigenous concepts of land and story, and I'm convinced there's a lesson to be drawn about ways of knowing. I just haven't put my finger on it.
Bringing our thoughts back to the commonplace, in the manner of Hume after a hard day's skepticism, is certainly a good way to guard against overthinking things. But more than this, we need to feel deeply the significance of the commonplace. Cooking dinner isn't just doing chemistry, but it's not just cooking dinner either. It's participating in something much larger.
Just a thought here Jim. I think a lesson we can learn from the indigenous peoples of the America is that as a stone-age culture they did not seek to dominate, control nor take advantage of the natural world. They saw themselves as one with the natural world and that everything was a life form including rocks.
I think this pathological desire for a sense of control, which is an illusion by the way, and the domination of nature skews our vision and ability to see clearly. We seek understanding through the apprehension of a prehension of "I know not what". We seek to control instead of allowing the prehension to develop over time until the prehension becomes complete, resulting in comprehension, a becoming at one with the natural world where everything without exception is alive.
Where I live we are very conscious of Indigenous peoples and their potential contribution to our understanding. The concept of "two-eyed seeing," which I've talked about on my blog, originated in Cape Breton, not that far from here. I think you're right that the Indigenous "way of seeing" does not divide humans from nature in the way that so-called "Western" thought does -- as if Nature were a separate thing that can be manipulated safely from a remove. But I would be wary of portraying the Indigenous way of seeing as a type of animism. That's a Western simplification of something harder for us to grasp, involving the importance of "the land" and the significance of "story." I've blogged about this in "Two-Eyed Seeing, Part II -- Knowledge as Relationship."
https://staggeringimplications.wordpress.com/2022/02/11/two-eyed-seeing-part-ii-knowledge-as-relationship/
The post has a link to Part I, which includes a list of external discussions and papers under "Additional Resources."
Yeah, I agree that neither animism nor a form of panpsychism is part of the tradition. I was surprised to learn from a friend of mine who is very familiar with Lakota tradition that the Lakota's belief systems runs on a parallel track with the metaphysical model I've been developing over the last few years.
Hmmmm, who would have thunk it right?
Thank you! I just watched a newly popular show on CBC, North of North, a comedy slice of life that takes place in a small town in Nunavut--the cool thing is that it stars and was made almost entirely by Inuk people, so it seems a very realistic representation of modern cultural life and the blending of all the worlds in this present moment. Really enjoyed most of it, we need more of that.
I'll have to look that show up on CBC Gem.
I watched the first three episodes last night. It's pretty good. Presumably it's also available on Netflix, since they were involved in the production.
"I think in the end he does accept it as only a metaphor"
Ah, okay, that's a relief.
I'll check out those links!
"But more than this, we need to feel deeply the significance of the commonplace."
I'm so very much on board with this idea. It's so easy to let life pass by without seeing much or any significance in the mundane. I think this is what interests me about writing fiction. In writing about the mundane, it's brought to the foreground and given a special status that forces us to pay attention to it and see features of it that we hadn't noticed before. I think this is also why I'm drawn to literary fiction and to some degree realism. With TV and movies, I want a tight plot, but with literary fiction, the plot is very secondary to those "phenomenological" moments of where the mundane gets clarified and brought to the foreground, which in turn brings you into such experiences more deeply.
I must admit, though, of all the commonplace experiences, cooking dinner might be one of the harder ones to appreciate, at least for me. Folding laundry too. My husband claims to find significance in the folding of laundry, but when I offer to let him take over the task, he is very quick to add that the meaning comes more from when I fold his laundry, since he is apparently incapable of folding things in just the way I fold them. When I offer to teach him, he switches the story to, "No, it only works when you do it."
That's something I like about fiction too. I seldom read it, but I especially enjoy the little epiphanies that run through well-written stories.
I just searched the Internet for "zen cooking" and zen folding laundry." Loads of hits for both. Now I'm wondering what I could add "zen" to that wouldn't find anything. At random I tried "nose-picking." Guess what?
Ha!
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/cartoon-zen-and-the-art-of-nose-picking--448460075403109676/
I mostly agree, except with the characterisation of ‘experience’ as ‘knowledge’. Experience is always subjective, and it cannot be made objective (as knowledge/truth) by adding more subjective experience, but only by some metaphysical standard that strands above experience. Philosophers disagree on what this standard should be, but most probably agree that nonsense is not knowledge, and so, at the very least, knowledge is subject to the fundamental laws of logic, which we never experience but infer from the act of thinking itself (which includes thinking about experience).
One could ask ‘what controls the brain’? If nothing, because the brain is identical with all thought, which includes the thought about the brain, then the thought about the brain is not identical with the brain, so it does not refer to itself (is not the Self). If the brain is identical just with the thought about the brain then it does not exist whenever it does not think about the brain, but in those movements there are other thoughts still occurring to the Self, therefore the brain is still not the Self.
Ah so much going on here. So starting with experience as knowledge, I wouldn't say those are the same. And I'd resist the 'subjective-objective' mode of thinking, at least at first, as much as possible. There is a sense in which experience is definitely 1st person— you can't experience my perspective as I experience it—but that's a fairly limited way to think about experience when you take a step back and try to think about experience on the whole. In ordinary life we don't think this way, but assume without a doubt that we share experiences with others. "Oh try this ice cream, it's delicious!" We don't need metaphysical standards to fully believe in shared experience. It's only later while we're doing philosophy that consider what metaphysical standards are necessary, and this experience of theories and logic is another mode of experience, a theoretical mode where thoughts about the mind-brain identity theory are happening at the same time as the more ordinary mode, where the TV is playing a YouTube channel with kittens and puppies playing in the background and a gentle breeze is coming in through the open window and any number of things are happening at the same time. What I've described here is all experience. From this vantage point, what is known is less interesting than what is unknown.
I argue that a metaphysical standard is already presupposed in the use of language, in thought, in all meaning; there are implicit rules we tend to unwittingly follow and unwittingly enforce on one another when appealing to experience. These rules allow us to identify words and objects consistently at different times, or at different points in a story that we ‘experience’, which in turn allows us to configure multiple elements (words, impressions, feelings) intro a story, which only then become meaningful. For example, we identify a tree in terms of some characteristic relations that are taken to fit the category ‘tree’. To perceive a tree is of itself not truth-apt just like like feeling cold or thinking of something that may happen tomorrow; these are just narrative fragments, like words or sentences in a language. It is only once they are presented as a part of a story we call ‘reality’ that they become truth-apt, but only as claims about ‘reality’, by which I mean that they can be verified according to some standard of ‘realness’. We may ask whether what we perceived was indeed a tree, a real tree, or was it an illusion, or a miscategorisation, but this does not change the original impression. Impressions cannot be of themselves true or false just like thinking of number 3 by itself is neither true nor false. More formally, following the reasoning of Douglas Lavin https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/381695, our judgment about ‘what we see’ cannot be subject to a principle (such as ‘true/false’) if that principle is subject to our judgment, evidently because this schema is logically circular.
To intuitively tie it all together I like to describe ‘experience’ as an object-language that we all ‘speak’ (phenomenologically), therefore share when the phenomenological association is invoked, so when we see a tree we experience a meaning ‘tree’, similarly to the meaning of a word “tree” (our next level meta-language), according to the laws of sense (our highest order meta-language that cannot be spoken). Logical consistency is a meta-language that cannot be spoken because it is an intrinsic aspect of consciousness; its structure.
I also agree that a metaphysical standard is presupposed in language—that's what my husband's book, Truth and Generosity: How Truth Makes Language Possible, is about:
https://open.substack.com/pub/philosophyandfiction/p/truth-and-generosity-how-truth-makes?r=schg4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Here I was trying to keep experience open to non-linguistic kinds of experience as well as linguistic. I'll check out that link to Lavin. Thanks!
By ‘generosity’ here you seem to mean what some people call ‘intellectual charity’, which consists in making the effort to interpret the statements of others in a way that makes the most sense vis a vis the totality of meaning that we possess, going as far as completing incomplete expression or correcting non-critical inconsistencies by modifying the common definitions of terms, and then asking whether, on these extended terms, we understand the person as intended. I would argue that the criterion of sense overrides statistical normalcy, unless normalcy is coextensive with ‘sense’. One could subsequently ask: what makes ‘truth’ (as distinct from being ‘truthful’ in expressing our beliefs)?
Ah yes, truth. That gets explained later in the book. It's not defined, exactly, but the reason for that is explained. It's a bit too complicated to relate in the comment section. The book was written before AI or statistical normalcy became a thing, so that's not really a focus, but yeah, meaning is not determined in that way.
I used the term statistical normalcy because in the first chapter you talk about ‘normalcy’ of meaning as the most common use of the term, if I recall correctly. Based on the first chapter I can determine that I am not the target audience (not enough ‘meat’ in it for me), so let us continue this topic here, if you get something of value from this.
One could ask: how do you know that your standard of truth is true? This of course cannot be answered without appealing to some higher principle, which is one of the reasons why I agree with Frege that the concept of truth is at best superfluous, and typically nonsensical, except when it is synonymous with the systemic consistency of sense. If this is roughly your model then I probably agree.
Like you, Tina, I'm not too happy with the surgeon's claim that "the mind and the self do not physically exist. Which is not to say that they don’t exist at all. They are fictional mental constructs, akin to the concepts of love, justice or freedom.” In my view, the mind is not a fiction but reality. Nor is my experience reducible to my brain as he sometimes seems to think (if I read him correctly).
Also like you, I wonder about what traits experience or consciousness have. Examples of diminished consciousness and preattentive consciousness indicate that consciousness can be separated from subjectivity and cognitive access. The other main answer to the question of what consciousness is usually centers on qualia, both sensory and emotional (e.g., pain and fear). These qualia also infuse memory and thought.
Your statement that there's more to experience than qualia is intriguing. Take, for example, abstract theorizing. While it seems remote from qualia, Einstein once said that his theorizing consisted of a “combinatory play” of images with a “muscular feel” to it, according to the psychologist, Jaques Hadamard (1945, p.142). I can't help but wonder if there's more to experience than qualia--and if so, what it would be. Any ideas about this? --Mostyn
Mostyn,
I've read the essay on panpsychism that you posted a few months ago. So since you are here now I have a question.
Do you see the mind not as what the brain does but as a separate and distinct system that is physically part of the architecture of the brain, such as a cognitive system for example?
One of the most outstanding features of consciousness that most people overlook is that the mentation process is at the fundamental level motion, resulting in form: motion being first cause, a feeling or thought being the form.
As far as what the experience of consciousness entails, that is a vey broad and sweeping question. In short it's the entire package of what it is like to be alive; and it is this visceral experience of all of the qualities that make us willing to do almost anything to continue our existence. It all goes back to the feeling, sensation and most of all the value of the experience. Value is the wild card in our experience and it is also the wild card for what drives complexity and diversity in our universe.
Just an FYI: I used to be on the panpsychism bus for a long time but have since move on. I consider myself a pragmatic physicalist which means that everything in our universe that has structure/form as a result of motion is physical. Since thoughts, emotions and feeling have structure these quailia must also be physical.
Hi Mostyn! Good question. I was wondering if someone would ask. As I was responding to your question I started to realize this will probably be better explained in another blog post, so thank you for the inspiration!
As I'm sure you know, there are ambiguities involved with the word "qualia". Some seem to take it to mean just "qualities" or "what it's like". Others mean something much more specific and technical, and what they describe sounds more like a theoretical understanding of 1st person subjective phenomenal experience from a third person attitude. If you compare talk of qualia from any side of the contemporary debate to phenomenological descriptions of experience from non-analytic philosophers (like Whitehead or Husserl, for instance), you'll notice the characterizations of experience are very far apart. Especially when it comes to things like privacy and the non-relational "intrinsic" aspects of experience. I'm coming to the conclusion the reason for this is not that one or the other kind of description is wrong, but that the two camps of philosophers are starting from different attitudes which yields different types of descriptions that appear to be at odds with one another. But I'll write more about this hopefully in the coming weeks. Thanks for the idea!
Mostyn sent me an email saying he couldn't figure out how to reply, so this is his response:
"I like your interesting stress on motion, although I think the nature and dynamics neural and mental motion differ. In my view, the conscious mind is the inner, hidden nature of neural electrochemical events beyond what EEGs display of them. This isn’t reductive physicalism, for the mind isn’t the observable neural activities of physical science. Nor is it nonreductive physicalism, where consciousness magically emerges from the organization of nonconscious physical events.
Nor is this view supervenient or epiphenomenal physicalism, where all causality comes from physical laws. I feel that while lower sensory levels may be epiphenomenal, higher levels have their own conscious dynamics irreducible to electrochemical laws. So, we’re not puppets of physical dynamics but have free will due to our conscious feelings and decisions.
I also like your stress on values. In my view, values and feelings/qualia generally are the source of our nonphysical dynamics. While scientists can observe neural electrochemical events, they can’t observe how they weigh moral choices or decide which suitor we love most. This occurs in the hidden, inner nature of these events. The decisions rest on our weighing of feelings/qualia, not just on simple electrochemical laws." —Mostyn
Thanks Tina, Mostyn's reply was very helpful for me to understand where he is coming from.
His metaphysical model is well thought out but like all other ontologies I've encountered it is not inclusive and it contains built in exceptions which for all practical purposes are contradictions within a framework of logical consistency and universality.
"...values and feelings/qualia generally are the source of our nonphysical dynamics."
With this statement Mostyn is really, really close to my ontology. To be totally inclusive I would add that value and feeling/qualia are the source of all physical dynamics responsible for motion resulting in form, not just for mental life but for organic and inorganic life as well.
I sent this Mostyn via email. :)
The brain is not extracable from the body and vice versa. Many brain parts and many body parts can be lost without affecting an overall sense of self. Removing certain body parts, like the heart, or brain parts, including major trauma, will eradicate or deeply affect our self awareness. But self awareness is not an all or nothing game. The system responsible for self awareness, appropriately called the proprioceptive sensory motor system, is treated dismissively in neuroscience and is poorly understood, compared to the other major systems, interoception (visceral awareness) and exteroception (our conventional external senses). Self awareness involves multiple levels of awareness and even metacognitive (human) or reflective self awareness is more than a single part of the brain or body. The best place for us to look for new, richer, or more meaningful self awareness is deep within. The proprioceptive system is the deepest sensory motor system and resides in our postural core. This is where modern and non-modern meditative approaches like yoga and tai chi have always sought awareness, beyond the surface phenomenon of the body and the environment.
Yes, I agree it makes little sense to talk about the brain without the body, and self awareness is much more complex than we often appreciate. I was just reading about the non-modern approaches last night and find these frameworks much richer than the current scientific one.
I liked your discussion and wanted to add to it. It is something I think about and read about and work with all the time.
Thanks!
You are right that premodern and non-modern approaches are much more integrative and intuitive. We can learn from these approaches but unfortunately it is a fact of history that we can’t ever go backwards. We need to keep moving forward and build on the wisdom that we inherit. Although what we can call a reductive or objectifying tradition in modern science has been dominant throughout history there has also been an active and rich holistic or somatic tradition on the periphery and perhaps more behind the scenes. Even Newton acknowledged that the kind of science which he helped to define only works for nonliving things and that a very different kind of laws are required for a physics of living things. This is emerging into cohesive clarity now. It is very exciting and hopeful to discover that here at the final stages of modernity we have made a great deal of progress toward a kind of a new physics of life. I am a body worker and have had my hands literally inside some of these new “fleshy” or somatic principles and as a scholar study them enthusiastically. I would love to discuss it more deeply with you if you would like.
"Even Newton acknowledged that the kind of science which he helped to define only works for nonliving things and that a very different kind of laws are required for a physics of living things. This is emerging into cohesive clarity now."
I wish more people understood this. Science was designed to explain matter, not everything.
I just came across this article from a couple days ago: "Consciousness reveals there's no single objective world" by Christian List (https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-reveals-reality-cannot-be-described-auid-3151). List's central theme here is that any theory of consciousness needs to recognize first-personal perspective (individual internal experiences). The article discusses the 'philosophical zombie' thought experiment.
Thanks for the article! I'll check it out.
Oh darn, it's paywalled. I think I get the gist though.
““So why didn’t these split-brain patients, post-surgery, feel like they had two selves? “
Perhaps because only one hemisphere (probably the left) is REPORTIING what it feels. And it’s accurate; it is only one self and it’s unaware of the other self over in the right hemisphere that isn’t talking.
That's one possibility. It's hard to know whether there is another silent self without it reporting on what it feels as well, which would of course make it not silent. Or maybe there aren't actually two selves, but one self uncoordinated with another aspect of itself. A pop psychology analogy might be neurotic people who let their ego go out of control without realizing this sabotages the very possibility of the ego getting what it wants. Like that guy at the party who can't stop reminding people of how awesome he is, which only makes people think he is not awesome.
Of course we are getting into very speculative and murky terrain here but I question the concept of a unified self even in intact brains. In what sense are our visual, auditory and tactile consciousnesses all “one”? I think this may well be a conceit of language which receives inputs from all of them and refers to all of them as belonging to a unified “I/me”. But our visual ”self” may be “unaware” ( in the subjective sense) of the auditory one and vice versa,
just like each hemisphere of the other in the split brain may be Yet they all may be said to be conscious in the way we require of selfhood.
I tend to think of the self in the Kantian way as the (perhaps transcendental) unity of experience rather than divided up into various processes, but like the word 'consciousness', it's a slippery concept (and one I haven't given nearly as much thought to as I should). Somehow I want to keep the self distinct from awareness to allow for more complex possibilities within experience. I talk about this somewhat here, (although this post is more about consciousness than the self):
https://open.substack.com/pub/philosophyandfiction/p/do-souls-lurk-behind-consciousness?r=schg4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Yes, I too subscribe viscerally to a unified self but this fundamental unity really does kind of crumble in your fingers as you try to inspect it. What kind of subjective fact is unity even supposed to be? What exactly is the shared me-ness across multiple senses and across time? It’s far far more slippery than the raw facts of subjective experience themselves.
Enjoyed your piece. Of course we’re talking about the soul and absolutely that term has been banished (perhaps usefully?) and simply replaced with less fraught terminology. But, again, this terminology sneaks in a kind of unified substance of experience that I question is actually justified
As far as I can see, you're dodging my argument completely. I'm sorry. If you can't provide any kind of broad stroke suggestion for a non-mechanical, non-neuroscientific explanation for how you come to speak about consciousness, or motivate why I should read your recommendations, then I judge it's not a good use of my time to do so. Could be wrong, but it's my best judgement.
Oh, I get it. Somehow it's my job to motivate you; right. A good use of your time would be to question your own belief system; do the hard work of thinking for yourself instead of relying upon others to do your thinking for you.
We are done here.......
Haha no that's not what I'm saying at all!
We're all really stupid if not for relying on the thinking and knowledge of others. Collectively we make progress. Not as individuals. That is an illusion.
My "belief system" is rather new, because I'm constantly questioning it. I recommend the same to you.
All we can all do is our best.
I don't mind discussing ideas that challenge the metaphysical position of other individuals such as yourself. A combative free exchange of ideas is productive if one is willing to entertain someone else's point of view instead doubling down on their own biases. My own ideas have evolved because of the exchanging of ideas.
For example, I saw panpsychism as the way forward for consciousness studies until a very combative Idealist pointed out an error in my ontology. As a result I made the necessary changes that resulted in a theory that now conforms to logical consistency by being inclusive and universal. But in the end I recognize that you and I will have to agree to disagree. It is within that spirit that I address your following comments.
"I keep referencing causal closure because I see no alternative, and I hear no suggestions to an alternative."
If you took my advice and read the comments I posted on this particular blog you will see that I offer an alternative to a causally closed, mechanical universe. The alternative to a mechanical universe is a living universe where life is universal and ubiquitous at every level of complexity. Within the dynamic of life itself there exists a limited degree of self-determination for every system as it responds to value.
"I don't need tools to understand how rain behaves, for example."
Yes you do, and that tool is rationality. Rationality is the primary and fundamental tool in your tool box. Rationality is limited in scope because it is a binary system, a system that by its own nature divides the world into parts. In contrast to the binary system of rationality we have reasoning, which is a linear system. Reasoning has to the ability to hold every possibility in a superposition until an intellectual measurement is made thereby collapsing all of the possibilities into a single discrete outcome. Once the possibilities have collapsed, then rationality kicks in.
I do not expect you to understand any of this but out of respect to you and others who may read these comments I've posted this.
Hey, thank you!
Yeah I need cognitive tools, I thought you just meant microscopes and stuff...
I think you're still misunderstanding my whole point! I'm not asking for an alternative to a causally closed universe! Who knows, maybe it isn't. That's not the point!!
I'm asking if you believe that there is causal closure in humans in general, or brains in particular. If you believe electrons in brains behave like electrons anywhere else, following the laws of physics, then you do. If you don't believe in causal closure in humans, then the violations of the laws of physics as we know them should be detectable. Suggest a way forward. I'm not saying it can't be so! I'm saying don't dodge the problem!
I too realise we are probably too far apart for you to understand any of this or why I'm coming back to the same thing. But who knows!
"I'm asking if you believe that there is causal closure in humans in general, or brains in particular."
The short answer is no and the long answer is absolutely not. Electrons in brains behave like electron everywhere in the universe but they do not follow laws. If you believe that there are actually laws that command unwavering, unquestioning obedience from its unknowing, unsuspecting subjects, electrons in this example then yes, we are too far apart to have any meaningful communication.
The physical sciences have a limited reach and the "only" way forward is through the synthetic scientific method. Immanuel Kant outlined this modality in his "Critique of Pure Reason". He referred to it as synthetic a priori judgements followed by rigorous synthetic a priori analysis. It is pure reason, not rationality. Rationality always begins with an assumption and reasoning does not.
Thanks. Okay, so then why do electrons and other particles "seem" to behave as predicted by the standard model of particle physics? I'm not saying physical sciences have unlimited reach, but why do you figure they seem to behave mechanistically? Furthermore, why do all the parts of living cells seem to behave in accordance with the physical sciences? Shouldn't the physical sciences be able to find divergence?