That’s an interesting theory which sounds overall plausible.
One complaint I have about Dennett is his arguably question-begging choice of terminology. “Homunculus” has a similar connotation to “that ridiculous thing which obviously doesn’t exist if you spell it out for a bit, and if your opinion is otherwise you are very naive”. He should have used more neutral terminology.
As far as I can tell, what he or you seems to mean with “homunculus” is what we usually mean with “me”, “I”, “myself”, “self” etc. I don’t think these terms normally refer partly to our body.
For example, if I was transformed into a ghost, or if I was uploaded (after the singularity), I would arguably still exist, but my body wouldn’t. And if I was instead transformed into a philosophical zombie (be permanently unconscious), I would arguably stop existing. Or think of the popular movie trope “body swap”. After person A and B do a body swap, A has the body of B, and B the body of A. It is not the case that A has the mind of B and B the mind of A. If the person with the body of B says “I”, this refers to person A, not B.
So “I” refers to something in my mind, while my body is, conceptually, just an accidental property of myself, something which I have but may not have. Much like you can change the color of a car while it still being the same car as before. (Whether or not the laws or physics rule out ghosts or zombies or mind uploads is a different question.)
So I would caution against saying things like “The homunculus doesn’t exist”, because what that is saying seems dangerously close to “I don’t exist”. I know you said your main arguments come in the next posts, but this is a possible pitfall I’d like to flag in advance. I think it is more productive to say: I obviously exist, though it is not yet clear in what way or sense.
the homunculus is definitionally the thing that carries “vitalistic force”, and that does the “wanting”, and that does any acts that we describe as “acts of free will”
Who wants things? Me of course. I want things. So the homunculus seems to be myself.
The way I understand it the homunculus is part of self. So if you put the wanting in the homunculus, it’s also inside self. I don’t know about you, but my self concept has more than wanting. To be fair, he homunculus concept is also a bit richer than wanting (I think?) but less encompassing than the full self (I think?).
From both this comment and especially our our thread on Post 2, I have a strong impression that you just completely misunderstand this series and everything in it. I think you have your own area of interest which you call “conceptual analysis” here, involving questions like “what is the self REALLY?”, an area which I dismiss as pointlessly arguing over definitions. Those “what is blah REALLY” questions are out-of-scope for this series.
I really feel like I pulled out all the stops to make that clear, including with boldface font (cf. §1.6.2) and multiple repetitions in multiple posts. :)
And yet you somehow seem to think that this “conceptual analysis” activity is not only part of this series, but indeed the entire point of this series! And you’re latching onto various things that I say that superficially resemble this activity, and you’re misinterpreting them as examples of that activity, when in fact they’re not.
I suggest that you should have a default assumption going forward that anything at all that you think I said in this series, you were probably misunderstanding it. :-P
It’s true that what I’m doing might superficially seem to overlap with “conceptual analysis”. For example, “conceptual analysis” involves talking about intuitions, and this series also involves talking about intuitions. There’s a good reason for that superficial overlap, and I explain that reason in §1.6.
If you can pinpoint ways that I could have written more clearly, I’m open to suggestions. :)
That’s an interesting theory which sounds overall plausible.
One complaint I have about Dennett is his arguably question-begging choice of terminology. “Homunculus” has a similar connotation to “that ridiculous thing which obviously doesn’t exist if you spell it out for a bit, and if your opinion is otherwise you are very naive”. He should have used more neutral terminology.
As far as I can tell, what he or you seems to mean with “homunculus” is what we usually mean with “me”, “I”, “myself”, “self” etc. I don’t think these terms normally refer partly to our body.
For example, if I was transformed into a ghost, or if I was uploaded (after the singularity), I would arguably still exist, but my body wouldn’t. And if I was instead transformed into a philosophical zombie (be permanently unconscious), I would arguably stop existing. Or think of the popular movie trope “body swap”. After person A and B do a body swap, A has the body of B, and B the body of A. It is not the case that A has the mind of B and B the mind of A. If the person with the body of B says “I”, this refers to person A, not B.
So “I” refers to something in my mind, while my body is, conceptually, just an accidental property of myself, something which I have but may not have. Much like you can change the color of a car while it still being the same car as before. (Whether or not the laws or physics rule out ghosts or zombies or mind uploads is a different question.)
So I would caution against saying things like “The homunculus doesn’t exist”, because what that is saying seems dangerously close to “I don’t exist”. I know you said your main arguments come in the next posts, but this is a possible pitfall I’d like to flag in advance. I think it is more productive to say: I obviously exist, though it is not yet clear in what way or sense.
I don’t think what Steve is calling “the homonculus” is the same as the self.
Actually he says so:
It’s part of the self model but not all of it.
Based on Steve’s response to one of my comments, I’m now less sure.
Steve writes:
Who wants things? Me of course. I want things. So the homunculus seems to be myself.
The way I understand it the homunculus is part of self. So if you put the wanting in the homunculus, it’s also inside self. I don’t know about you, but my self concept has more than wanting. To be fair, he homunculus concept is also a bit richer than wanting (I think?) but less encompassing than the full self (I think?).
From both this comment and especially our our thread on Post 2, I have a strong impression that you just completely misunderstand this series and everything in it. I think you have your own area of interest which you call “conceptual analysis” here, involving questions like “what is the self REALLY?”, an area which I dismiss as pointlessly arguing over definitions. Those “what is blah REALLY” questions are out-of-scope for this series.
I really feel like I pulled out all the stops to make that clear, including with boldface font (cf. §1.6.2) and multiple repetitions in multiple posts. :)
And yet you somehow seem to think that this “conceptual analysis” activity is not only part of this series, but indeed the entire point of this series! And you’re latching onto various things that I say that superficially resemble this activity, and you’re misinterpreting them as examples of that activity, when in fact they’re not.
I suggest that you should have a default assumption going forward that anything at all that you think I said in this series, you were probably misunderstanding it. :-P
It’s true that what I’m doing might superficially seem to overlap with “conceptual analysis”. For example, “conceptual analysis” involves talking about intuitions, and this series also involves talking about intuitions. There’s a good reason for that superficial overlap, and I explain that reason in §1.6.
If you can pinpoint ways that I could have written more clearly, I’m open to suggestions. :)
Sorry, I didn’t want to come off as obnoxious. You can remove my comment if you consider it missing the point.
Oh, it’s not obnoxious! You’re engaging in good faith. :)