It’s an intrinsic property of arguments in contexts. Specifically, whether something is question-begging depends on what one’s trying to prove.
A formal argument will include a conclusion. If that is the same as one of its premises, a question is being begged.
Indeed explanations aren’t arguments. The arguments we’re talking about are ones of the form “Theory X is better than theory Y because it explains alleged facts F better”. Merely saying “Consciousness (or whatever) is fundamental” is of course not question-begging. But if the existence, or some property, of consciousness is one of the alleged facts F, and if theory X simply postulates whatever property it is of consciousness, then a question is being begged.
I don’t see that that is the case. The rather informal argument you gave mentions facts being explained better. Simply positing things is better than not explaining them at all, but not as good explaining them parsimoniously, without additional posits.
in general, claiming that something’s fundamental and just happens to have the properties it’s known to have is a pretty weak move;
Yes—in general. But it is not invariably invalid, as formal question-begging is.
Those would be the factors that make the posit that consciousness is fundamental (part of) a good explanation.
I’m afraid I don’t understand. Would you care to say a little more.
A novel ontological posit can be part of a good expanation. Examples tend to be complicated.
en to those fields produce actually-quite-similar effects that we generally don’t call matter, such as physical forces.) “Space” isn’t quite a first-class citizen either; spacetime is; its geometry is determined by the matter-and-similar-stuff in it. I wouldn’t say that space and matter (or spacetime and mass/energy) are exactly unified;
Neither would I.
(“don’t exactly take them as separate fundamental things”)
Ontological fundamentals are going to be rather useless if they don’t relate to each other at all...and they are not going to be fundamentals. plural, if they relate too closely. So that is to be expected.
Sure, but most arguments—including in particular many of the sort this discussion was originally about—are not formalized. Specifically, theistic or supernaturalist arguments based on consciousness, morality and free will generally leave most of their premises unstated and most of their steps implicit. Accordingly, the appropriate notion of question-begging needs to be generalized slightly. I suppose you might prefer to use some other term for the logical flaw I’m complaining about: what’s being assumed is not necessarily exactly what they set out to prove, but some other thing that stands in about as much need of proof, and for much the same reasons, as what they’re purporting to prove.
Simply positing things is better than not explaining them at all
See, here’s where we disagree. I think simply positing things is worse than just leaving them unexplained, unless either (1) there’s some actual reason to think they need simply positing, or (2) they’re posited in a way that actually leads to useful predictions (and those predictions don’t get refuted).
In epistemology, positing that there’s an external world with which our experience is somewhat correlated is useful because of #1; if you don’t make such an assumption then you simply can’t get started.
In physics, positing electrons (or the quantum field from which they arise, or whatever) is useful because of #2; what you’re positing has precisely defined behaviour which lets you deduce all kinds of true things.
But how does positing consciousness as fundamental help you in either respect? And, if it doesn’t, how does it help at all? It seems to me that it just serves to discourage you for looking for better explanations.
But it is not invariably invalid
Well, there’s an interesting rhetorical move. I say “X is a pretty weak move, and Y is invalid”. You quote only the first half and say “But it’s not invariably invalid”. Bah.
A novel ontological posit can be part of a good explanation.
Of course. Perhaps it wasn’t clear what I was asking. You said “Those would be the factors that …” but I can’t tell what things you were referring to; you said “a good explanation” but I can’t tell what good explanation. (And I’m not sure whether when you said “make” you actually meant “hypothetically might make” or “actually do make”. The latter seems like the obvious meaning but then surely you owe us some more information about this alleged good explanation.)
Well, there’s an interesting rhetorical move. I say “X is a pretty weak move, and Y is invalid”. You quote only the first half and say “But it’s not invariably invalid”. Bah.
I don’t see the problem. I was trying to emphasise that question begging is not the right diagnosis of the problem.
I suppose you might prefer to use some other term for the logical flaw I’m complaining about:
Yep. As above.
But how does positing consciousness as fundamental help you in either respect? And, if it doesn’t, how does it help at all? It seems to me that it just serves to discourage you for looking for better explanations.
You’re not distingusihing the cases where the posit is part of a theory and where it isn’t. Where we have a theory,
we can test it. We don’t have a satisfactory dualist or physicalistic theory. So what is going on at this stage
is not really theorisation,. but speculation about the form a theory should take.
Of course. Perhaps it wasn’t clear what I was asking. You said “Those would be the factors that …” but I can’t tell what things you were referring to; you said “a good explanation” but I can’t tell what good explanation
As I indicated, that is difficult to answer succintly. I think the posit of colour charge works within QCD, but saying what is good about QCD is like summarising Proust.
You’re not distinguishing the cases where the posit is part of a theory and where it isn’t.
I think we’re failing to communicate, because that distinction is an important part of what I’m getting at. The proponents of consciousness-as-fundamental show no sign of having any interest in making consciousness into part of a theory that’s any use, and that’s part of what I think is wrong with what they’re saying.
that is difficult to answer succinctly.
You seem not to be willing to try to answer at all. You won’t say what you meant, you won’t say whether you think there’s a useful theory that includes consciousness as a fundamental phenomenon, you hint vaguely that there might be such a theory and it might have some explanatory power but you won’t say what it might look like or how it might do its explaining. You say “those would be the factors that do X” and then refuse to say just what “those” are or anything about how they do X.
How is it possible to have a meaningful discussion on these terms?
I think we’re failing to communicate, because that distinction is an important part of what I’m getting at. The proponents of consciousness-as-fundamental show no sign of having any interest in making consciousness into part of a theory that’s any use, and that’s part of what I think is wrong with what they’re saying
As I pointed out, physicalists don’t have a solution to the Hard Problem either. You say they are trying and dualists aren’t, but you offer no evidence.
that is difficult to answer succinctly.
You seem not to be willing to try to answer at all.
That is because it is difficult. As I said.
you won’t say whether you think there’s a useful theory that includes consciousness as a fundamental phenomenon, you hint vaguely that there might be such a theory a
I’m sorry, but I’m just not saying the things you think I am saying. What I said was:
“what is going on at this stage is not really theorisation,. but speculation about the form a theory should take”
ETA
The point is not that dualism is true and physicalism false. The point was only ever that dualism is not as obviously false as sometimes made out.
Evidence that physicalists have been trying: books like Dennett’s “Consciousness explained” and Edelman’s “Neural Darwinism” and Koch’s “The quest for consciousness” and so forth, all putting forward hypotheses about what physical goings-on give rise to consciousness and how.
Evidence that dualists aren’t trying (more specifically, not trying to do more than just say “Consciousness is fundamental, and that’s all there is to it” or something else that similarly tries to take credit for solving the problem without doing the work): I’m not sure what sort of evidence I could present. All I can say is that I’ve so far not seen any sign that dualists are trying, or have any interest in doing so.
I’m sorry, but I’m just not saying the things you think I am saying.
Well, I do keep asking you to clarify your meaning—and you keep replying by saying things like “That is because it is difficult”. I decline to take the blame for not understanding you if you aren’t prepared to try to be understood.
dualism is not as obviously false as sometimes made out.
I haven’t been claiming that dualism is obviously false. I’ve been claiming that some things offered as evidence for dualism (or for more complicated sets of ideas that involve dualism) are rotten evidence.
I haven’t read Chalmers’s book, but so far as I can tell from reading about it it doesn’t in fact offer the sort of thing I’m complaining dualists aren’t trying to do. Is that wrong? If so, where in the book—I have a copy on my overflowing to-be-read shelves—should I look to find an attempt, or at least some work heading towards an attempt, to offer an actual explanation of why the relationship between consciousness and physical stuff is the way it is? (Note: simply saying “there are bridging laws that make that relationship what it is” is not an explanation, nor anything like one; but if Chalmers has something more substantial to offer then I’m all ears.)
[EDITED a minute or two after posting; I’d forgotten that I do actually have a copy of Chalmers’s book. It’s been sat in my read-this-some-time pile for about the last 10 years, though. Note: “10 years” is literal, not rhetorical. I went to Amazon to see how much it would cost if I wanted to buy it and Amazon kindly put up a note saying “You purchased this in 2001.”]
If you are looking for a completely satisfactory explanation of consc. you are not going to find it the dualist literature or the physicalist literature. I don’t see there is much else I can add. If you want to know what Chalmer’s book says, you have to read it yourself. Alternatively, you could become less inclined to come to strong conclusions about ideas you are not familiar with. EIther way it is up to you. I am not particularly selling dualism myself.
If you want to know what Chalmer’s book says, you have to read it yourself.
That’s one of the very bad things about philosophy. Nobody tells you “if you want to understand general relativity, read Einstein’s papers”—it has been rehashed and cut into parts and explained in various ways and accompanied with exercises and summed up or stretched out and put into a bunch of textbooks. Nobody tells you “if you want to know what Nozick thought about libertarianism, go read his book”—just grab the summary and commentary on ESR or Faré′s websites.
Equally, the OP could read WP articles, amazon reviews, etc. (And Chalmer’s book itself contains summaries of much foregoing mind-body phil.).
The thing is he is claiming that dualists are making no efforts to explain: but they are[*], he is just making no effort to find out what they are saying.
[*] Dualist phils. have no miraculous way of rising through the academic ranks whilst publishing nothing.
[...] an attempt, or at least some work heading towards an attempt, to offer an actual explanation [...]
You:
If you are looking for a completely satisfactory explanation [...]
I do wish you wouldn’t do that.
If you want to know what Chalmers’s book says, you have to read it yourself.
Clearly that’s true for some definitions of “what C’s book says” and false for others. On the other hand, if what I actually want to know is whether C’s book contains a particular sort of thing then it seems obviously reasonable to ask whether you’ve got any suggestions for where in it I should look.
you could become less inclined to come to strong conclusions about ideas you are not familiar with
What particular strong conclusions do you have in mind? And what ideas are they about with which you think I’m unfamiliar?
So I had a look at the first five things linked from the first of those pages.
A dissertation by Aryanosi. Not available online so far as I can tell. Aryanosi does not in fact appear to be a dualist; at least, looking for other work of his the first thing I found was a paper offering an argument for the thesis that the mind is identical with the brain. Excerpt: “This brings me to the argument I would like to put forward, to the conclusion that the doctrine of naturalistic dualism is probabilistically incoherent, and that physicalism, in the form of the identity thesis, is the likeliest candidate for the mental-physical relation.” I did also find a chapter of his dissertation online. It’s concerned with Chalmers’s zombie argument, and argues that it’s unsound.
A paper on gallium arsenide nanowires. It seems unlikely that this has anything to say about dualism. I have no idea what it’s doing on that page.
A paper whose filename is whyiamnotadualist.pdf. Presumably its author is not a dualist.
Looks like another version of the same paper.
Not available online. I can’t tell from the abstract whether the author is a dualist, but it doesn’t appear to be either defending dualism or attempting to construct a theory of how dualism might “work”.
So that seems to be 0 for 5. This doesn’t encourage me to read on and check more. What makes you regard it as “evidence that dualists are trying”? Evidence that some people are writing about dualism, yes, but that’s not the same thing at all. To save me wading through every link there, is there anything there that actually (1) is by a dualist and (2) offers the sort of thing I was complaining dualists don’t do?
A formal argument will include a conclusion. If that is the same as one of its premises, a question is being begged.
I don’t see that that is the case. The rather informal argument you gave mentions facts being explained better. Simply positing things is better than not explaining them at all, but not as good explaining them parsimoniously, without additional posits.
Yes—in general. But it is not invariably invalid, as formal question-begging is.
A novel ontological posit can be part of a good expanation. Examples tend to be complicated.
Neither would I.
Ontological fundamentals are going to be rather useless if they don’t relate to each other at all...and they are not going to be fundamentals. plural, if they relate too closely. So that is to be expected.
Sure, but most arguments—including in particular many of the sort this discussion was originally about—are not formalized. Specifically, theistic or supernaturalist arguments based on consciousness, morality and free will generally leave most of their premises unstated and most of their steps implicit. Accordingly, the appropriate notion of question-begging needs to be generalized slightly. I suppose you might prefer to use some other term for the logical flaw I’m complaining about: what’s being assumed is not necessarily exactly what they set out to prove, but some other thing that stands in about as much need of proof, and for much the same reasons, as what they’re purporting to prove.
See, here’s where we disagree. I think simply positing things is worse than just leaving them unexplained, unless either (1) there’s some actual reason to think they need simply positing, or (2) they’re posited in a way that actually leads to useful predictions (and those predictions don’t get refuted).
In epistemology, positing that there’s an external world with which our experience is somewhat correlated is useful because of #1; if you don’t make such an assumption then you simply can’t get started.
In physics, positing electrons (or the quantum field from which they arise, or whatever) is useful because of #2; what you’re positing has precisely defined behaviour which lets you deduce all kinds of true things.
But how does positing consciousness as fundamental help you in either respect? And, if it doesn’t, how does it help at all? It seems to me that it just serves to discourage you for looking for better explanations.
Well, there’s an interesting rhetorical move. I say “X is a pretty weak move, and Y is invalid”. You quote only the first half and say “But it’s not invariably invalid”. Bah.
Of course. Perhaps it wasn’t clear what I was asking. You said “Those would be the factors that …” but I can’t tell what things you were referring to; you said “a good explanation” but I can’t tell what good explanation. (And I’m not sure whether when you said “make” you actually meant “hypothetically might make” or “actually do make”. The latter seems like the obvious meaning but then surely you owe us some more information about this alleged good explanation.)
I don’t see the problem. I was trying to emphasise that question begging is not the right diagnosis of the problem.
Yep. As above.
You’re not distingusihing the cases where the posit is part of a theory and where it isn’t. Where we have a theory, we can test it. We don’t have a satisfactory dualist or physicalistic theory. So what is going on at this stage is not really theorisation,. but speculation about the form a theory should take.
As I indicated, that is difficult to answer succintly. I think the posit of colour charge works within QCD, but saying what is good about QCD is like summarising Proust.
I think we’re failing to communicate, because that distinction is an important part of what I’m getting at. The proponents of consciousness-as-fundamental show no sign of having any interest in making consciousness into part of a theory that’s any use, and that’s part of what I think is wrong with what they’re saying.
You seem not to be willing to try to answer at all. You won’t say what you meant, you won’t say whether you think there’s a useful theory that includes consciousness as a fundamental phenomenon, you hint vaguely that there might be such a theory and it might have some explanatory power but you won’t say what it might look like or how it might do its explaining. You say “those would be the factors that do X” and then refuse to say just what “those” are or anything about how they do X.
How is it possible to have a meaningful discussion on these terms?
As I pointed out, physicalists don’t have a solution to the Hard Problem either. You say they are trying and dualists aren’t, but you offer no evidence.
That is because it is difficult. As I said.
I’m sorry, but I’m just not saying the things you think I am saying. What I said was:
“what is going on at this stage is not really theorisation,. but speculation about the form a theory should take”
ETA
The point is not that dualism is true and physicalism false. The point was only ever that dualism is not as obviously false as sometimes made out.
Evidence that physicalists have been trying: books like Dennett’s “Consciousness explained” and Edelman’s “Neural Darwinism” and Koch’s “The quest for consciousness” and so forth, all putting forward hypotheses about what physical goings-on give rise to consciousness and how.
Evidence that dualists aren’t trying (more specifically, not trying to do more than just say “Consciousness is fundamental, and that’s all there is to it” or something else that similarly tries to take credit for solving the problem without doing the work): I’m not sure what sort of evidence I could present. All I can say is that I’ve so far not seen any sign that dualists are trying, or have any interest in doing so.
Well, I do keep asking you to clarify your meaning—and you keep replying by saying things like “That is because it is difficult”. I decline to take the blame for not understanding you if you aren’t prepared to try to be understood.
I haven’t been claiming that dualism is obviously false. I’ve been claiming that some things offered as evidence for dualism (or for more complicated sets of ideas that involve dualism) are rotten evidence.
Evidence that dualists are trying...
..not to forget The Conscious Mind (400+ pages)
I haven’t read Chalmers’s book, but so far as I can tell from reading about it it doesn’t in fact offer the sort of thing I’m complaining dualists aren’t trying to do. Is that wrong? If so, where in the book—I have a copy on my overflowing to-be-read shelves—should I look to find an attempt, or at least some work heading towards an attempt, to offer an actual explanation of why the relationship between consciousness and physical stuff is the way it is? (Note: simply saying “there are bridging laws that make that relationship what it is” is not an explanation, nor anything like one; but if Chalmers has something more substantial to offer then I’m all ears.)
[EDITED a minute or two after posting; I’d forgotten that I do actually have a copy of Chalmers’s book. It’s been sat in my read-this-some-time pile for about the last 10 years, though. Note: “10 years” is literal, not rhetorical. I went to Amazon to see how much it would cost if I wanted to buy it and Amazon kindly put up a note saying “You purchased this in 2001.”]
If you are looking for a completely satisfactory explanation of consc. you are not going to find it the dualist literature or the physicalist literature. I don’t see there is much else I can add. If you want to know what Chalmer’s book says, you have to read it yourself. Alternatively, you could become less inclined to come to strong conclusions about ideas you are not familiar with. EIther way it is up to you. I am not particularly selling dualism myself.
That’s one of the very bad things about philosophy. Nobody tells you “if you want to understand general relativity, read Einstein’s papers”—it has been rehashed and cut into parts and explained in various ways and accompanied with exercises and summed up or stretched out and put into a bunch of textbooks. Nobody tells you “if you want to know what Nozick thought about libertarianism, go read his book”—just grab the summary and commentary on ESR or Faré′s websites.
Equally, the OP could read WP articles, amazon reviews, etc. (And Chalmer’s book itself contains summaries of much foregoing mind-body phil.).
The thing is he is claiming that dualists are making no efforts to explain: but they are[*], he is just making no effort to find out what they are saying.
[*] Dualist phils. have no miraculous way of rising through the academic ranks whilst publishing nothing.
Me:
You:
I do wish you wouldn’t do that.
Clearly that’s true for some definitions of “what C’s book says” and false for others. On the other hand, if what I actually want to know is whether C’s book contains a particular sort of thing then it seems obviously reasonable to ask whether you’ve got any suggestions for where in it I should look.
What particular strong conclusions do you have in mind? And what ideas are they about with which you think I’m unfamiliar?
That dualists aren’t interested in explaining consc, for some value of “explaining consc” where by physicalists are interested.
eg. the ones in TCM.
So I had a look at the first five things linked from the first of those pages.
A dissertation by Aryanosi. Not available online so far as I can tell. Aryanosi does not in fact appear to be a dualist; at least, looking for other work of his the first thing I found was a paper offering an argument for the thesis that the mind is identical with the brain. Excerpt: “This brings me to the argument I would like to put forward, to the conclusion that the doctrine of naturalistic dualism is probabilistically incoherent, and that physicalism, in the form of the identity thesis, is the likeliest candidate for the mental-physical relation.” I did also find a chapter of his dissertation online. It’s concerned with Chalmers’s zombie argument, and argues that it’s unsound.
A paper on gallium arsenide nanowires. It seems unlikely that this has anything to say about dualism. I have no idea what it’s doing on that page.
A paper whose filename is whyiamnotadualist.pdf. Presumably its author is not a dualist.
Looks like another version of the same paper.
Not available online. I can’t tell from the abstract whether the author is a dualist, but it doesn’t appear to be either defending dualism or attempting to construct a theory of how dualism might “work”.
So that seems to be 0 for 5. This doesn’t encourage me to read on and check more. What makes you regard it as “evidence that dualists are trying”? Evidence that some people are writing about dualism, yes, but that’s not the same thing at all. To save me wading through every link there, is there anything there that actually (1) is by a dualist and (2) offers the sort of thing I was complaining dualists don’t do?