Maybe you’re familiar with the phenomenon of “waking up”. Do you agree that this is a real thing? If so, does it not imply that it once happened to you for the first time?
Whatever the true nature of subjective experience, the facts about it must be determinate
I agree with that.
there’s room to agree with the letter but not the spirit of your view, by taking ‘the true nature of subjective experience’ to be something ridiculously far away from what we usually think it is and holding that all mentalistic language (as we know it) is irretrievably vague.
What do you think you are doing when you use mentalistic language, then? Do you think it bears no relationship to reality?
A little group of neurons in the brain stem starts sending a train of signals to the base of the thalamus. The thalamus ‘wakes up’ and then sends signals to the cortex and the cortex ‘wakes up’. Consciousness is now ‘on’. Later, the brain stem stops sending the train of signals, the thalamus ‘goes to sleep’ and the cortex slowly winds down the ‘goes to sleep’. Consciousness is now ‘off’. Neither on or off was instantaneous or sharply defined. (Dreaming activated the cortex differently at times during sleep but ignore that for now). Descriptions like this (hopefully more detailed and accurate) are the ‘facts of the matter’ not semantic arguments. Why is it that science is OK for understanding physics and astronomy but not for understanding consciousness?
Why is it that science is OK for understanding physics and astronomy but not for understanding consciousness?
Science in some broad sense “is OK… for understanding consciousness”, but unless you’re a behaviorist, you need to be explaining (and first, you need to be describing) the subjective side of consciousness, not just the physiology of it. It’s the facts about subjectivity which make consciousness a different sort of topic from anything in the natural sciences.
Yes we will have to describe the subjective side of consciousness but the physiology has to come first. As an illustration: if you didn’t know the function of the heart or much about its physiology, it would be useless to try and understand it by how it felt. Hence we would have ideas like ‘loving with all my heart’, ‘my heart is not in it’ etc. which come from the pre-biology world. Once we know how and why the heart works the way it does, those feeling are seen differently.
I am certainly not a behaviorist and I do think that consciousness is an extremely important function of the brain/mind. We probably can’t understand how cognition works without understanding how consciousness works. I just do not think introspection gets us closer to understanding, nor do I think that introspection gives us any direct knowledge of our own minds - ‘direct’ being the important word.
Maybe you’re familiar with the phenomenon of “waking up”. Do you agree that this is a real thing? If so, does it not imply that it once happened to you for the first time?
Right, people wake up and go to sleep. Waking can be relatively quicker or slower depending on the manner of awakening, but… I’m not sure what you think this establishes.
In any case, a sleeping person is not straightforwardly ‘unconscious’ - their mind hasn’t “disappeared” it’s just doing something very different from what it’s doing when it’s awake. A better example would be someone ‘coming round’ from a spell of unconsciousness, and here I think you’ll find that people remember it being a gradual process.
Your whole line of attack here is odd: all that matters for the wider debate is whether or not there are any smooth, gradual processes between consciousness and unconsciousness, not whether or not there also exist rapid-ish transitions between the two.
What do you think you are doing when you use mentalistic language, then? Do you think it bears no relationship to reality?
There are plenty of instances where language is used in a way where its vagueness cannot possibly be eliminated, and yet manages to be meaningful. E.g. “The Battle Of Britain was won primarily because the Luftwaffe switched the focus of their efforts from knocking out the RAF to bombing major cities.” (N.B. I’m not claiming this is true (though it may be) simply that it “bears some relationship to reality”.)
Your whole line of attack here is odd: all that matters for the wider debate is whether or not there are any smooth, gradual processes between consciousness and unconsciousness, not whether or not there also exist rapid-ish transitions between the two.
I am objecting, first of all, to your assertion that the idea that a fetus might “‘switch on’ like a light” at some point in its development is “ridiculous”. Waking up was supposed to be an example of a rapid change, as well as something real and distinctive which must happen for a first time in the life of an organism. But I can make this counterargument even just from the physiological perspective. Sharp transitions do occur in embryonic development, e.g. when the morphogenetic motion of tissues and cavities produces a topological change in the organism. If we are going to associate the presence of a mind, or the presence of a capacity for consciousness, with the existence of a particular functional organization in the brain, how can there not be a first moment when that organization exists? It could consist in something as simple as the first synaptic coupling of two previously separate neural systems. Before the first synapses joining them, certain computations were not possible; after the synapses had formed, they were possible.
As for the significance of “smooth, gradual” transitions between consciousness and unconsciousness, I will revert to that principle which you expressed thus:
“Whatever the true nature of subjective experience, the facts about it must be determinate”
Among the facts about subjective experience are its relationship to “non-subjective” states or forms of existence. Those facts must also be determinate. The transition from consciousness to non-consciousness, if it is a continuum, cannot only be a continuum on the physical/physiological side. It must also be a continuum on the subjective side, even though one end of the continuum is absence of subjectivity. When you say there can be material systems for which there is no fact about its being conscious—it’s not conscious, it’s not not-conscious—you are being just as illogical as the people who believe in “the particle without a definite position”.
I ask myself why you would even think like this. Why wouldn’t you suppose instead that folk psychology can be conceptually refined to the point of being exactly correct? Why the willingness to throw it away, in favor of nothing?
Maybe you’re familiar with the phenomenon of “waking up”. Do you agree that this is a real thing? If so, does it not imply that it once happened to you for the first time?
I agree with that.
What do you think you are doing when you use mentalistic language, then? Do you think it bears no relationship to reality?
A little group of neurons in the brain stem starts sending a train of signals to the base of the thalamus. The thalamus ‘wakes up’ and then sends signals to the cortex and the cortex ‘wakes up’. Consciousness is now ‘on’. Later, the brain stem stops sending the train of signals, the thalamus ‘goes to sleep’ and the cortex slowly winds down the ‘goes to sleep’. Consciousness is now ‘off’. Neither on or off was instantaneous or sharply defined. (Dreaming activated the cortex differently at times during sleep but ignore that for now). Descriptions like this (hopefully more detailed and accurate) are the ‘facts of the matter’ not semantic arguments. Why is it that science is OK for understanding physics and astronomy but not for understanding consciousness?
Science in some broad sense “is OK… for understanding consciousness”, but unless you’re a behaviorist, you need to be explaining (and first, you need to be describing) the subjective side of consciousness, not just the physiology of it. It’s the facts about subjectivity which make consciousness a different sort of topic from anything in the natural sciences.
Yes we will have to describe the subjective side of consciousness but the physiology has to come first. As an illustration: if you didn’t know the function of the heart or much about its physiology, it would be useless to try and understand it by how it felt. Hence we would have ideas like ‘loving with all my heart’, ‘my heart is not in it’ etc. which come from the pre-biology world. Once we know how and why the heart works the way it does, those feeling are seen differently.
I am certainly not a behaviorist and I do think that consciousness is an extremely important function of the brain/mind. We probably can’t understand how cognition works without understanding how consciousness works. I just do not think introspection gets us closer to understanding, nor do I think that introspection gives us any direct knowledge of our own minds - ‘direct’ being the important word.
Right, people wake up and go to sleep. Waking can be relatively quicker or slower depending on the manner of awakening, but… I’m not sure what you think this establishes.
In any case, a sleeping person is not straightforwardly ‘unconscious’ - their mind hasn’t “disappeared” it’s just doing something very different from what it’s doing when it’s awake. A better example would be someone ‘coming round’ from a spell of unconsciousness, and here I think you’ll find that people remember it being a gradual process.
Your whole line of attack here is odd: all that matters for the wider debate is whether or not there are any smooth, gradual processes between consciousness and unconsciousness, not whether or not there also exist rapid-ish transitions between the two.
There are plenty of instances where language is used in a way where its vagueness cannot possibly be eliminated, and yet manages to be meaningful. E.g. “The Battle Of Britain was won primarily because the Luftwaffe switched the focus of their efforts from knocking out the RAF to bombing major cities.” (N.B. I’m not claiming this is true (though it may be) simply that it “bears some relationship to reality”.)
I am objecting, first of all, to your assertion that the idea that a fetus might “‘switch on’ like a light” at some point in its development is “ridiculous”. Waking up was supposed to be an example of a rapid change, as well as something real and distinctive which must happen for a first time in the life of an organism. But I can make this counterargument even just from the physiological perspective. Sharp transitions do occur in embryonic development, e.g. when the morphogenetic motion of tissues and cavities produces a topological change in the organism. If we are going to associate the presence of a mind, or the presence of a capacity for consciousness, with the existence of a particular functional organization in the brain, how can there not be a first moment when that organization exists? It could consist in something as simple as the first synaptic coupling of two previously separate neural systems. Before the first synapses joining them, certain computations were not possible; after the synapses had formed, they were possible.
As for the significance of “smooth, gradual” transitions between consciousness and unconsciousness, I will revert to that principle which you expressed thus:
“Whatever the true nature of subjective experience, the facts about it must be determinate”
Among the facts about subjective experience are its relationship to “non-subjective” states or forms of existence. Those facts must also be determinate. The transition from consciousness to non-consciousness, if it is a continuum, cannot only be a continuum on the physical/physiological side. It must also be a continuum on the subjective side, even though one end of the continuum is absence of subjectivity. When you say there can be material systems for which there is no fact about its being conscious—it’s not conscious, it’s not not-conscious—you are being just as illogical as the people who believe in “the particle without a definite position”.
I ask myself why you would even think like this. Why wouldn’t you suppose instead that folk psychology can be conceptually refined to the point of being exactly correct? Why the willingness to throw it away, in favor of nothing?