And I keep saying that being conscious means being aware that you are conscious, and that is empirical evidenceof consciousness.
I can abandon and then recover the concept of consciousness, because there is stuff of which I am aware, but which other people are not aware, stuff that is private to me, and “consciousness” is the accustomed label for the awareness, and “subjective” is the accustomed label for the privacy.
Metaphysical beliefs, physicalism and so on, are not relevant. What is relevant is where you are willing to look for evidence. Most physicalists are willing to accept the introspective evidence for consciousness. You seem to think that the concept of consciousness cannot be recovered on the basis of evidence, and what you seem to mean by that is that you cannot detect someone else’s consciousness. You have implicitly decided that your own introspective, subjective first person evidence doesn’t count. That’s an unusual attitude, which is why you have ended up with a minority opinion.
I don’t have external OR introspective evidence of Loki and Zeus. The fact that you consider consciousness to fall into the same category as Zeus is another indication of your disregard of introspection.
sigh I agree with that sentiment. However, conversations where parties become entrenched should probably be called off. Do you really feel this could end in opinions being changed? I perceive your tone as slightly dismissive—am I wong to think this might indicate non-willingness to move at all on the issue?
I don’t mean to imply anything personal. I still feel you’re overlooking an important point about the ideas you’re referring to having fundamentally dualist foundations when you take a proper look at their epistemology. You refer to introspection but introspection (aside from in casual lay usage) is properly a Dualist concept—it implies mind-body separation, and it is not in any way empirical knowledge. Even more prominently the use of the word “subjective” is almost the definition of bringing Dualism into the discussion, because the subject in subjective comes directly from Descartes separation of mind and body.
If someone wishes to be Monist, wouldn’t they start by not assuming Dualist concepts? They’d start with the reliable empirical evidence (neuroscience etc) and approach thought interaction as a interactions between internal brain states. They wouldn’t conceptualise those interactions using Dualist terminology like “consciousness”, at least in any discussion where there was precise science or important issues to be considered.
I thought this was a well explained and epistemologically straightforward part of my post. The general reaction has to me appeared to have been immediate rejection without questions or attempts at clarifications. Actually I’m disappointed that the part people mostly want to reject so utterly is the only part getting much attention. Every sense I get is that the people that have replied can’t even consider the possibility that there is problem with the way consciousness is thought about in FAI discussions. That worries me, but I can’t see the possiblity of movement at this point, so I’m not terribly enthusiastic about continuing this repeating over and over of the various positions. I’m happy to continue if you find the concept interesting, and I guess I’m at least getting comments, but if you feel that you’ve already made up your mind let’s not waste any more time.
People rarely change their mind’s outright in a discussion, but often update on the meta level...for instance about how contentious their claims are, or how strong the arguments for or against are.
Since you are putting forward the minority opinion here...you’re aware of that, right?...you are prima facie more likely to be the one who is missing something. No, that is not my sole argument.
Obviously, I think I am doing the epistemology right...but I have only been studying philosophy for 35 years, so I am sure I have plenty to learn.
Who told you that introspection implies separation of mind and body? For one thing it seems to work whatever you believe. For another, the majority of physicalists who aren’t eliminativists don’t see the problem: they see human introspection as a more sophisticated version of a computers ability to report on its free disk space or whatever.
But theny you say you are talking about proper intuition …which would be a true scotsman argument.
Who told you that subjectivity comes from Descartes? I’ve seen it explained by physicalists as due to Loebian limitations. In any case, a historical premise, that X comes from Y, does not support a conceptual claim that belief in X is not rationally consistent without belief in Z.
Who told you that introspection isn’t empirical evidence? Introspective evidence is a complex subject that doesn’t summarize down thatway.
I can consider the idea that there is something wrong with the concept of consciousness … I am… but I am not seeing good arguments...it all boils down to you supporting minority opinions with idiosyncratic definitions.
Stealthy appeal to authority, but ok. I can see you’re a good philosopher, I wouldn’t seek to question your credibility as a philosopher, but I do wish to call into question this particular position, and I hope you’ll come with on this :-)
Who told you that introspection implies separation of mind and body?
I wrote on this topic at uni, but you’ll have to forgive me if I haven’t got proper sources handy...
“The sharp distinction between subject and object corresponds to the distinction, in the philosophy of René Descartes, between thought and extension. Descartes believed that thought (subjectivity) was the essence of the mind, and that extension (the occupation of space) was the essence of matter.” [wikipedia omg]
I’ll see if I can find a better source. I hope you’ll resist the temptation to attack the source for now, as its pretty much the same as a range of explanations I ran into at uni. “Subject” can be directly linked back to the Cartesian separation.
But theny you say you are talking about proper intuition
I didn’t mention intuition. You’re right that proper isnt the “proper” language to use here :-) I should have said thorough. However, I think my point is clear either way—its a characterisation of the literature. I guess we do perceive that literature very differently for now. I wasn’t aware that my position was minority in wider philosophy, or do you mean on LW?
Who told you that introspection isn’t empirical evidence? Introspective evidence is a complex subject that doesn’t summarize down thatway.
I haven’t actually seen introspection discussed much by name in philosophy, usually its consciousness, subject/object etc. I infer that it implies subjective experience and is by definition not empirical. So my position to clarify is not that introspection is false, but rather that introspection in the way we are talking about it here is framing a Monist perception of the world by arbitrarily “importing” a Dualist term (or a term that at least very strongly implies subjectivity). Though we might argue for its “usefulness”, this is ultimately unhelpful because we are tempted to make another “useful” leap to “consciousness”, which is a compounds otherwise small problems.
I believe that if one is a consistent physicalist, then empirical evidence (the vast majority of definintions of this refer to sensory data as a prerequistite of “empirical”) would be examined as reliable, ie. primary, without framing that evidence using a posteriori or idealist concepts. So you get the brain and behaviours. The introspective aspects, which you are right, a physicalist does not need to entirely deny, are then framed using the reliable (as claimed by physicalists) empirically established concepts. So in that sense the brain can interact with itself, but there is no particular thing in the study of the brain to suggest reference to concepts that have historically been used in Dualism, such as consciousness. Any usage of those terms as merely rhetorical (communicating with lay people, or discussing issues with Dualists) and are not treated as legitimate categories for philosophical thought. Those concepts might loosely stretch over the same areas, but they are very different for the physicalist to categories like “the brain” which are non-arbitrary because they are categories that appear to be suggested “by the evidence”.
Again I don’t wish to claim Dualist or Monsism or whatever is true (can of worms). I also don’t wish to claim that all Physicalists think what I just described—I haven’t met them all or read everyone’s work. What I wish to claim is that a consistently physicalist position implies the rejection of justifications for concepts that are epistemological Dualist, and I also wish to claim that acceptance of consciousness, because it does not emerge from empirical sense data, relies on acceptance of “subject” which can be directly traced to Descartes separation of mind and body (“subject” and its tools for interacting with “objects”) (ie. Dualist). Therefore the consistent Physicalist does not accept consciousness.
I am trying not to appeal to authority. I like unconventional claims. I also like good arguments. I am trying to get you to give a good argument for your unconventional claim.
I wasn’t aware that my position was minority in wider philosophy, or do you mean on LW?
Both. Well the claim that that consciousness is ontologocally fundamental is a dualism/idealist claim.
The claim that consciousness exists at all isn’t.
You don’t seem to put much weight on the qualification “ontologocally fundamental”
″ René Descartes, between thought and extension. Descartes believed that thought (subjectivity) was the essence of the mind, and that extension (the occupation of space) was the essence of matter.” [wikipedia omg]”
What you need is evidence that monists don’t or can’t or shouldn’t shouldn’t believe in consciousness or subjectivity or introspection. Evidence that dualists do is not equivalent.
I haven’t actually seen introspection discussed much by name in philosophy, usually its consciousness, subject/object etc.
There’s an article on SEP.
[introspection] is by definition not empirical.
Where did you see the definition? In any case, introspection is widely used in psychology.
So in that sense the brain can interact with itself, but there is no particular thing in the study of the brain to suggest reference to concepts that have historically been used in Dualism, such as consciousness.
There are plenty, because of the way it is defined...as self awareness or higher order thought. It’s use in dualism doesn’t counteract that...particularly as it is not exclusive of its use in physicalism.
Any usage of those terms as merely rhetorical (communicating with lay people, or discussing issues with Dualists) and are not treated as legitimate categories for philosophical thought.
Says who?
What I wish to claim is that a consistently physicalist position implies the rejection of justifications for concepts that are epistemological Dualist
You haven’t demonstrated that any concepts are inherently dualist, and physicalist clearly do use terms like consciousness.
I also wish to claim that acceptance of consciousness, because it does not emerge from empirical sense data,
Here’s an experiment:
Stand next to someone.
Without speaking, Think about something hard to guess.
Ask them what it is.
If they don’t know, you have just proved you have private thoughts, if which you are aware.
:-( I’m disappointed at this outcome. I think you’re mentally avoiding the core issue here—but I guess my saying so is not going to achieve much. I’ll answer some of your points quickly and make this my last post in this subthread.
What you need is evidence that monists don’t or can’t or shouldn’t shouldn’t believe in consciousness or subjectivity or introspection. Evidence that dualists do is not equivalent.
You’re twisting my claim. Someone can’t disprove a pure concept or schema—asking them to do so is a red herring. Instead one ought to prove rather than assume the appropriateness of a concept. I’ve pointed out that in order to derive a concept of “consciousness”, you have to rely on an understanding of it as “subjective”, and that subjective is a Dualist term derived directly from mind-body separation. As you’ve basically agreed to the first part of that, and haven’t mounted any substantial objection to the second, I honestly cannot fathom your further your insistence that consciousness can be Physicalist?
If they don’t know, you have just proved you have private thoughts, if which you are aware.
I didn’t claim there were no private thoughts. A Physicalist might accept there is something like private thought, but they wouldn’t then conceptualise private thought using arguments that rely on “subjective” and therefore Dualism. They’d seek to develop a schema arising out of physical reality.
Where did you see the definition? In any case, introspection is widely used in psychology.
That in no way shows that it’s empirical. Empirical means sense data. You can’t get sense-data for your own thoughts, or your consciousness. Sure you can operate under the assumption that thoughts are happenning, but to select a priori formulations based on purely subjective experience is treating your subjective thought as categorically different from sense data (concepts created independent of sense-data). Those different categories—THAT’S DUALISM.
Clarify for me—are you denying or accepting that “subject” is directly tied into the Cartesian separation? It’s simply not possible for claims to rely on subject/object distinctions and not to rely on the mind-body distinction.
We’ve really exausted the productive side of this discussion long ago, so let me conclude my posts on this by suggesting a new way to look at this—say you had someone who had never heard of “consciousness”, and who was also a Physicalist. They have thoughts, they accept that they have thoughts, but because they feel they are a physical organism with a physical brain, they also state that as a physical system their brain cannot include a reliable map of itself. This means of one’s own mind’s structure is innaccessible—accurate introspection is unreliable at best. What are you possibly going to say to them to convince them that consciousness is a thing, without treating the mind as reliable over and beyond their empirical knowledge / sense data? It’s not enough to say that consciousness might be there—so might Fraud’s “ego” and “id” or all sorts of historical concepts based on “subjective experience”. You instead have to go to the empirical evidence without conceptual preconceptions and work backword from there. To work from a priori thought simply isn’t reliable in the way it is for a Dualist.
TLDR; A Physicalist conceptualises the mental in terms of the physical—not the other way around.
If you ever want to really explore the concept play the Physicalist with no knowledge of consciousness and take a highly skeptical view to the concept . Refuse to believe in it unless proof is given and see what happens. Who knows—you could be able to mount a more influential enunciation of its impossiblity than me.
You’re twisting my claim. Someone can’t disprove a pure concept or schema—asking them to do so is a red herring
I didn’t say anything about disproving a concept. What you need to disprove is the claim that physicalists employ the concept of consciousness. That is not the concept itself.
.
Instead one ought to prove rather than assume the appropriateness of a concept.
One ought to provide evidence for extraordinary claims,
I’ve pointed out that in order to derive a concept of “consciousness”, you have to rely on an understanding of it as “subjective”, and that subjective is a Dualist term derived directly from mind-body separation
In order to support your claim about consciousness, you have made an identical claim about subjectivity, which is equally in need of support, and equally unsupported. That is going in circles.
As you’ve basically agreed to the first part of that, and haven’t mounted any substantial objection to the second,
What is the second claim even asserting.. Subjective is a term used by dualusts? Yes. It is only used by dualists? No. I’ve list count of the number of physicalists who have informed me of the “fact” that morality is subjective...
I honestly cannot fathom your further your insistence that consciousness can be Physicalist?
See your own claims that the MENTAL can be explained physically, below.
I didn’t claim there were no private thoughts. A Physicalist might accept there is something like private thought, but they wouldn’t then conceptualise private thought using arguments that rely on “subjective” and therefore Dualism.
How do you know? As it happens, the meaning of “subjective” is closer to “private mental event” than it is to “non physical mind stuff”. You haven’t really argued against that, since vague claims that the the two terms have a common origin, or are used by the same people don’t establish synonymity.
They’d seek to develop a schema arising out of physical reality.
As opposed to what? “Subjective” has a primarily epistemological meaning..you know that, right?
Epistemology is largely orthogonal to ontology … you know that, right?
In any case, introspection is widely used in psychology.
That in no way shows that it’s empirical. Empirical means sense data. You can’t get sense-data for your own thoughts, or your consciousness.
If your computer tells you it is low on memory, is that not empirical?
In any case, coming up with an idiosyncratic definitions of empirical that is narrower than the definition actual physicalists and scientists use proves nothing.
Sure you can operate under the assumption that thoughts are happenning,
!!!
There are no thoughts happening to you?
but to select a priori formulations based on purely subjective experience
Whatever that means.
is treating your subjective thought as categorically different from sense data (concepts created independent of sense-data). Those different categories—THAT’S DUALISM.
No, dualism is not having different categories, .or philosophers would be arguing about Pepsi-Coke dualism.
Dualism is ONTOLOGICAL categories.
Clarify for me—are you denying or accepting that “subject” is directly tied into the Cartesian separation?
I would summarize that as hopelessly vague.
It’s simply not possible for claims to rely on subject/object distinctions and not to rely on the mind-body distinction.
You need to argue that point. I can’t see any connection at all. Define the subject as the perceiver of states of affairs external to itself (like the observer in physics)… where is the immaterial mind there?
We’ve really exausted the productive side of this discussion long ago, so let me conclude my posts on this by suggesting a new way to look at this—say you had someone who had never heard of “consciousness”, and who was also a Physicalist. They have thoughts, they accept that they have thoughts, but because they feel they are a physical organism with a physical brain, they also state that as a physical system their brain cannot include a reliable map of itself.
I’ve never heard them do that. There are reasons why one wouldn’t expect a combination of completed reliability and total accuracy. But that would be setting the bar too high anyway.
Maps can be judged reliable enough, and accurate, enough even though they don’t go down to the blade of grass level.
In fact it would be bad news if all mental content were accessible to introspection: the existence of unconscious mentality is part of the standard theory of consciousness, which almost everyone believes in, including most physicalists.
This means of one’s own mind’s structure is innaccessible—accurate introspection is unreliable at best.
So? You can set the bar at a place where the introspection undershoots it. For that matter, you can set the bar at a place where conventional empiricism undershoots, since that isn’t 100% reliable either...ask Pons and Fleishman.
Backtrack: the point was to demonstrate that consciousness, in some sense, exists. Since consciousness is self awareness, any level of introspection indicates some nonzero level of consciousness. Introspection about anything in particular is not required. Consciousness is not supposed to be all embracing—it is contrasted with unconscious mentality, after all—so all encompassing introspection is not needed as evidence for it.
What are you possibly going to say to them to convince them that consciousness is a thing
I am not in the business of talking about consciousness as a thing. That is your terminology,
In fact there are at least three claims here:
1 Consciousness doesn’t exist at all.(Eliminativism)
2 Consciousness exists as a reducible physical phenomenon (physicalism)
3 Consciousness exists as an irreducible non physical phenomenal.(dualism)
You keep trying to squeeze those three propositions into a scheme that has only two slots, “thing” and “not thing”, and it keeps not working. It inevitably loses information. Three doesn’t go into two.
To understand what someone else us saying, you need to interpret it in terms of their categories, not yours.
without treating the mind as reliable over and beyond their empirical knowledge / sense data.
Nobody has at any stage said anything to imply that introspection is, or needs to be, more reliable than conventional empiricism.
It’s not enough to say that consciousness might be there—so might Fraud’s “ego” and “id” or all sorts of historical concepts based on “subjective experience”.
Who said otherwise? I have conceded that eliminativism, position 1, exists, so I have tacitly conceded that it is a challenge.to position 2. I am not treating position 2 as an unproblematic default. But you HAVE been treating position 1 as a default.
Why do you insist that evidence for position 2 must be very strong, that nothing short of 100% accurate and reliable data can support it. Could it be that you are conflating position 2 with position 3? Position 3, the claim that consciousness requires its own ontology, IS an extraordinary claim, requiring strong evidence. Is that what you are doing when you read “ontologocally fundamental” as ” ”?
You instead have to go to the empirical evidence without conceptual preconceptions and work backword from there.
You don’t have evidence that that is possible at all, nor that it lead to the result you expect.
To work from a priori thought simply isn’t reliable in the way it is for a Dualist.TLDR; A Physicalist conceptualises the mental in terms of the physical—not the other way around.
A type 2 position is to conceptualise the mental in term of the physical, and to conceptualise consciousness in terms of the physical, and to conceptualise the subjective in terms of the physical....
That is not the same as rejecting the mental (etc) wholesale.
This isn’t productive. As you’ve insisted on a long and highly critical response again, I sadly feel I need to briefly reply.
What you need to disprove is the claim that physicalists employ the concept of consciousness
No. I merely show that the core claims of physicalism and this use of consciousness are incompatible. That’s what I’ve done. Whether some particular physicalists choose to employ some concept is a different question and a massive red herring, as I already said.
One ought to provide evidence for extraordinary claims,
Whereas ordinary claims don’t need evidence? Could you be presenting your claims as “ordinary” to avoid the burden of evidence?
standard theory of consciousness, which almost everyone believes in, including most physicalists.
A “standard” theory of consciousness, that almost everyone believes in, including most physicalist, and presumably most dualists too? Dualists and physicalists have agreed on the nature of consciousness? I think you’ve gone waaaaay into the realms of fantasy on this one.
1 Consciousness doesn’t exist at all.(Eliminativism)
You have warped my position again. I didn’t argue it didn’t exist, I argued that it is a concept that is rooted in dualism. I explained why. I argued that a physicalist would be consistent if they instead used concepts drawn from empirical investigations of the brain. You seem to feel that the physical should be conceptualised based upon the mental, rather than the other way around. That position isn’t compatible with physicalism, because it implies treating the mental as categorically superior. Doing so is not an ontologically neutral position as you are presenting it.
Nobody has at any stage said anything to imply that introspection is, or needs to be, more reliable than conventional empiricism.
If so then why are you treating concepts derived from pure introspection as the superior schema to categorise empirical evidence?
You need to argue that point … [etc.]
I did, you selectively ignored the arguments. This conversation has become largely pointless. Perhaps you feel you can achieve some goal of “winning” by merely repeating yourself and achieving “victory” by the other person losing faith in the merit of the conversation. Your basic approach seems to be (1) find some minor points that you can rephrase and attack (2) simply ignore the main points and claim over and over again the main proposition hasn’t been proven. (3) deny the need to support your own claims when asked because they are conventional or “ordinary”. As such I think it would be a mistake for me to see you as honestly engaged with my propositions here. That’s a shame, because I think you would be a very interesting person to talk to if you weren’t so eager to “win”. Good luck and goodbye.
They don’t need the re-presentation of existing evidence.
A “standard” theory of consciousness, that almost everyone believes in, including most physicalist, and presumably most dualists too? Dualists and physicalists have agreed on the nature of consciousness?
They disagree about some things, and they agree enough to be talking about the same thing. Disagreement requires commonalities , otherwise it’s just miscommumication.
1 Consciousness doesn’t exist at all.(Eliminativism)
You have warped my position again. I didn’t argue it didn’t exist,
I didn’t say you were eliminativist. I said you were shoehorning three categories into two categories. What is your response to that?
. I explained why. I argued that a physicalist would be consistent if they instead used concepts drawn from empirical investigations of the brain. You seem to feel that the physical should be conceptualised based upon the mental, rather than the other way around.
Both versions are naive. The explanatory process doesn’t start with a perfect set of concepts...reality isn’t pre-labelled. The explanatory process start with a set of “folk” or prima facie concepts, each of which may be retained, modified, or discarded as things are better understood. You cant start from nothing because you have to be able to state your explanandum, you have to state which phenomenon you are trying to explain. But having to have to a starting point does not prejudice the process forever, since the modification and abandonment options are available. For instance, the concept of phlogiston was abandoned, whereas the concept the atom was modified to no longer require indivisibility. Heat is a favourite example of a reductive explanation. The concept of heat as something to be explained was retained, but the earlier, non reductive explanation of heat as a kind of substance was abandoned, in favour of identifying heat with molecular motion. Since molecular motion exits, heat exists, but it doesn’t exist separately—dualistically—from everything else. This style of explanation is what non eliminative physicalists, the type 2 position, are aiming at.
That position isn’t compatible with physicalism, because it implies treating the mental as categorically superior.
Your background assumptions are wrong. There aren’t any inherently, unchangeably, mental concepts. If you can reduce something to physics, like heat, then it’s physical. You don’t know in advance what you can reduce. The different positions on the nature of consciousness are different guesses or bets on the outcome. Non eliminating physicalism, the type 2 position is bet on the outcome that consciousness will be identified with some physical process. at which point it will no longer be a “dualistic concept”.
Nobody has at any stage said anything to imply that introspection is, or needs to be, more reliable than conventional empiricism.
If so then why are you treating concepts derived from pure introspection as the superior schema to categorise empirical evidence?
I am not using concepts derived from introspection. The very fact of introspection indicates that consciousness, by a fairly minimal definition, is existent. Why do you ignore introspection? Why not look down the telescope?
There aren’t any inherently, unchangeably, mental concepts.
From what I can observe in your position it seems like you are treating consciousness in exactly this way. For example, could you explain how it could possibly be challenged by evidence? How could it change or be refined if we say “introspection therefore consciousness”?
The very fact of introspection indicates that consciousness, by a fairly minimal definition, is existent.
I don’t see how this follows. As there are a whole host of definitions of consciousness, could you explicitly select a definition, and explain why you feel that introspection proves that particular definintion (not just a general sense of introspectionyness) must follow? Consciousness definitions usually imply some form of discrete mental agent, endowed with certain fairly significant properties. I don’t see how that follows from “person A can’t see what person B is thinking”, unless you invoke dualism. We need to understand what thought is first, and we would need a very compelling reason a physicalist would seek to derive concepts to deal with thought from disembodied thought itself rather than the physical world as they observe it.
Positions:
1 Consciousness doesn’t exist at all.(Eliminativism) 2 Consciousness exists as a reducible physical phenomenon (physicalism) 3 Consciousness exists as an irreducible non physical phenomenal.(dualism)
I’m not conflating these positions as I feel you probably think I am, merely holding that (2) is not logically consistent. If (2) was “when we observe the brain we see a discrete phenomenon that we call consciousness”, I would say that it is more logically consistent, though I would call for a different word that isn’t historically associated with dualism.
Why do you ignore introspection? Why not look down the telescope?
I don’t wish to ignore it. I merely think a consistent physicalist would categorise it, like everything else, as a physical process, and therefore seek to understand and explain it using empirical evidence rather than purely mental concepts that don’t seem to exist in physical space?
I finally note you refuse again to accept any burden of evidence for your claims, and merely say the field generally supports your position. Anyone can say that for any position. I think you should drop claims of conventionality and stick to the reasoning and refutations that you propose. Noone expects references for logical statements, but claims that you have the support of most philosophers should be supported.
There aren’t any inherently, unchangeably, mental concepts.From what I can observe in your position it seems like you are treating consciousness in exactly this way. For example, could you explain how it could possibly be challenged by evidence?
I have put forward the existence of introspection as evidence for the existence of consciousness .
It is therefore logically possible for the existence of consciousness to be challenged by the non existence of introspection.
It’s not actually possible because introspection actually exists. The empirical claim that consciousness exists is supported by the empirical evidence,like any other. (Not empirical in your gerrymandered sense, of course, but empirical in the sense of not being apriori or tautologous).
The very fact of introspection indicates that consciousness, by a fairly minimal definition, is existent.
I don’t see how this follows.
As there are a whole host of definitions of consciousness, could you explicitly select a definition, and explain why you feel that introspection proves that particular definintion
Already answered: again,
Consciousness =def self awareness
Introspection =def self awareness
(not just a general sense of introspectionyness) must follow? Consciousness definitions usually imply some form of discrete mental agent, endowed with certain fairly significant properties.
Is the ability to introspect not an unusual property? Are we actually differing, apart from your higher level of vagueness?
I don’t see how that follows from “person A can’t see what person B is thinking”,
Person B can tell what person B is thinking, as well. That is important.
unless you invoke dualism. We need to understand what thought is first, and we would need a very compelling reason a physicalist would seek to derive concepts to deal with thought from disembodied thought itself
Who said anything about disembodied thought.
rather than the physical world as they observe it.Positions:1 Consciousness doesn’t exist at all.(Eliminativism) 2 Consciousness exists as a reducible physical phenomenon (physicalism) 3 Consciousness exists as an irreducible non physical phenomenal.(dualism)I’m not conflating these positions as I feel you probably think I am, merely holding that (2) is not logically consistent.
So what is the actual contradiction?
If (2) was “when we observe the brain we see a discrete phenomenon that we call consciousness”, I would say that it is more logically consistent, though I would call for a different word that isn’t historically associated with dualism.
Why a discrete phenomenon?
Is a historical association enough to make an inconsistency?
Why do you ignore introspection? Why not look down the telescope?I don’t wish to ignore it. I merely think a consistent physicalist would categorise it, like everything else, as a physical process, and therefore seek to understand and explain it using empirical evidence rather than purely mental concepts that don’t seem to exist in physical space?
I have given a detailed explanation as to why consciousness is not an inherently mental concept. You need to respond to that, and not just repeat your claim.
I finally note you refuse again to accept any burden of evidence for your claims,
False. Here is the explanation again:
“Both versions are naive. The explanatory process doesn’t start with a perfect set of concepts...reality isn’t pre-labelled. The explanatory process start with a set of “folk” or prima facie concepts, each of which may be retained, modified, or discarded as things are better understood. You cant start from nothing because you have to be able to state your explanandum, you have to state which phenomenon you are trying to explain. But having to have to a starting point does not prejudice the process forever, since the modification and abandonment options are available. For instance, the concept of phlogiston was abandoned, whereas the concept the atom was modified to no longer require indivisibility. Heat is a favourite example of a reductive explanation. The concept of heat as something to be explained was retained, but the earlier, non reductive explanation of heat as a kind of substance was abandoned. This style of explanation is what non eliminate physicalists, the type 2 position, are aiming at.”
Your engagement here is insincere. You argue based on to cherry-picking and distorting my statements. You simply ignore the explanations given and say “you haven’t given justification” and then you give off-hand vague answers for my own queries and then state “already answered”. I’m done with this.
And I keep saying that being conscious means being aware that you are conscious, and that is empirical evidenceof consciousness.
I can abandon and then recover the concept of consciousness, because there is stuff of which I am aware, but which other people are not aware, stuff that is private to me, and “consciousness” is the accustomed label for the awareness, and “subjective” is the accustomed label for the privacy.
Metaphysical beliefs, physicalism and so on, are not relevant. What is relevant is where you are willing to look for evidence. Most physicalists are willing to accept the introspective evidence for consciousness. You seem to think that the concept of consciousness cannot be recovered on the basis of evidence, and what you seem to mean by that is that you cannot detect someone else’s consciousness. You have implicitly decided that your own introspective, subjective first person evidence doesn’t count. That’s an unusual attitude, which is why you have ended up with a minority opinion.
I don’t have external OR introspective evidence of Loki and Zeus. The fact that you consider consciousness to fall into the same category as Zeus is another indication of your disregard of introspection.
I want to reply so bad it hurts, but I’ll resist thanks for the convo.
Yeah, well, replying could lead to updating or something crazy like that.
sigh I agree with that sentiment. However, conversations where parties become entrenched should probably be called off. Do you really feel this could end in opinions being changed? I perceive your tone as slightly dismissive—am I wong to think this might indicate non-willingness to move at all on the issue?
I don’t mean to imply anything personal. I still feel you’re overlooking an important point about the ideas you’re referring to having fundamentally dualist foundations when you take a proper look at their epistemology. You refer to introspection but introspection (aside from in casual lay usage) is properly a Dualist concept—it implies mind-body separation, and it is not in any way empirical knowledge. Even more prominently the use of the word “subjective” is almost the definition of bringing Dualism into the discussion, because the subject in subjective comes directly from Descartes separation of mind and body.
If someone wishes to be Monist, wouldn’t they start by not assuming Dualist concepts? They’d start with the reliable empirical evidence (neuroscience etc) and approach thought interaction as a interactions between internal brain states. They wouldn’t conceptualise those interactions using Dualist terminology like “consciousness”, at least in any discussion where there was precise science or important issues to be considered.
I thought this was a well explained and epistemologically straightforward part of my post. The general reaction has to me appeared to have been immediate rejection without questions or attempts at clarifications. Actually I’m disappointed that the part people mostly want to reject so utterly is the only part getting much attention. Every sense I get is that the people that have replied can’t even consider the possibility that there is problem with the way consciousness is thought about in FAI discussions. That worries me, but I can’t see the possiblity of movement at this point, so I’m not terribly enthusiastic about continuing this repeating over and over of the various positions. I’m happy to continue if you find the concept interesting, and I guess I’m at least getting comments, but if you feel that you’ve already made up your mind let’s not waste any more time.
People rarely change their mind’s outright in a discussion, but often update on the meta level...for instance about how contentious their claims are, or how strong the arguments for or against are.
Since you are putting forward the minority opinion here...you’re aware of that, right?...you are prima facie more likely to be the one who is missing something. No, that is not my sole argument.
Obviously, I think I am doing the epistemology right...but I have only been studying philosophy for 35 years, so I am sure I have plenty to learn.
Who told you that introspection implies separation of mind and body? For one thing it seems to work whatever you believe. For another, the majority of physicalists who aren’t eliminativists don’t see the problem: they see human introspection as a more sophisticated version of a computers ability to report on its free disk space or whatever.
But theny you say you are talking about proper intuition …which would be a true scotsman argument.
Who told you that subjectivity comes from Descartes? I’ve seen it explained by physicalists as due to Loebian limitations. In any case, a historical premise, that X comes from Y, does not support a conceptual claim that belief in X is not rationally consistent without belief in Z.
Who told you that introspection isn’t empirical evidence? Introspective evidence is a complex subject that doesn’t summarize down thatway.
I can consider the idea that there is something wrong with the concept of consciousness … I am… but I am not seeing good arguments...it all boils down to you supporting minority opinions with idiosyncratic definitions.
Ok thanks for this comment.
Stealthy appeal to authority, but ok. I can see you’re a good philosopher, I wouldn’t seek to question your credibility as a philosopher, but I do wish to call into question this particular position, and I hope you’ll come with on this :-)
I wrote on this topic at uni, but you’ll have to forgive me if I haven’t got proper sources handy...
“The sharp distinction between subject and object corresponds to the distinction, in the philosophy of René Descartes, between thought and extension. Descartes believed that thought (subjectivity) was the essence of the mind, and that extension (the occupation of space) was the essence of matter.” [wikipedia omg]
I’ll see if I can find a better source. I hope you’ll resist the temptation to attack the source for now, as its pretty much the same as a range of explanations I ran into at uni. “Subject” can be directly linked back to the Cartesian separation.
I didn’t mention intuition. You’re right that proper isnt the “proper” language to use here :-) I should have said thorough. However, I think my point is clear either way—its a characterisation of the literature. I guess we do perceive that literature very differently for now. I wasn’t aware that my position was minority in wider philosophy, or do you mean on LW?
I haven’t actually seen introspection discussed much by name in philosophy, usually its consciousness, subject/object etc. I infer that it implies subjective experience and is by definition not empirical. So my position to clarify is not that introspection is false, but rather that introspection in the way we are talking about it here is framing a Monist perception of the world by arbitrarily “importing” a Dualist term (or a term that at least very strongly implies subjectivity). Though we might argue for its “usefulness”, this is ultimately unhelpful because we are tempted to make another “useful” leap to “consciousness”, which is a compounds otherwise small problems.
I believe that if one is a consistent physicalist, then empirical evidence (the vast majority of definintions of this refer to sensory data as a prerequistite of “empirical”) would be examined as reliable, ie. primary, without framing that evidence using a posteriori or idealist concepts. So you get the brain and behaviours. The introspective aspects, which you are right, a physicalist does not need to entirely deny, are then framed using the reliable (as claimed by physicalists) empirically established concepts. So in that sense the brain can interact with itself, but there is no particular thing in the study of the brain to suggest reference to concepts that have historically been used in Dualism, such as consciousness. Any usage of those terms as merely rhetorical (communicating with lay people, or discussing issues with Dualists) and are not treated as legitimate categories for philosophical thought. Those concepts might loosely stretch over the same areas, but they are very different for the physicalist to categories like “the brain” which are non-arbitrary because they are categories that appear to be suggested “by the evidence”.
Again I don’t wish to claim Dualist or Monsism or whatever is true (can of worms). I also don’t wish to claim that all Physicalists think what I just described—I haven’t met them all or read everyone’s work. What I wish to claim is that a consistently physicalist position implies the rejection of justifications for concepts that are epistemological Dualist, and I also wish to claim that acceptance of consciousness, because it does not emerge from empirical sense data, relies on acceptance of “subject” which can be directly traced to Descartes separation of mind and body (“subject” and its tools for interacting with “objects”) (ie. Dualist). Therefore the consistent Physicalist does not accept consciousness.
I am trying not to appeal to authority. I like unconventional claims. I also like good arguments. I am trying to get you to give a good argument for your unconventional claim.
Both. Well the claim that that consciousness is ontologocally fundamental is a dualism/idealist claim. The claim that consciousness exists at all isn’t. You don’t seem to put much weight on the qualification “ontologocally fundamental”
What you need is evidence that monists don’t or can’t or shouldn’t shouldn’t believe in consciousness or subjectivity or introspection. Evidence that dualists do is not equivalent.
There’s an article on SEP.
Where did you see the definition? In any case, introspection is widely used in psychology.
There are plenty, because of the way it is defined...as self awareness or higher order thought. It’s use in dualism doesn’t counteract that...particularly as it is not exclusive of its use in physicalism.
Says who?
You haven’t demonstrated that any concepts are inherently dualist, and physicalist clearly do use terms like consciousness.
Here’s an experiment:
Stand next to someone.
Without speaking, Think about something hard to guess.
Ask them what it is.
If they don’t know, you have just proved you have private thoughts, if which you are aware.
:-( I’m disappointed at this outcome. I think you’re mentally avoiding the core issue here—but I guess my saying so is not going to achieve much. I’ll answer some of your points quickly and make this my last post in this subthread.
You’re twisting my claim. Someone can’t disprove a pure concept or schema—asking them to do so is a red herring. Instead one ought to prove rather than assume the appropriateness of a concept. I’ve pointed out that in order to derive a concept of “consciousness”, you have to rely on an understanding of it as “subjective”, and that subjective is a Dualist term derived directly from mind-body separation. As you’ve basically agreed to the first part of that, and haven’t mounted any substantial objection to the second, I honestly cannot fathom your further your insistence that consciousness can be Physicalist?
I didn’t claim there were no private thoughts. A Physicalist might accept there is something like private thought, but they wouldn’t then conceptualise private thought using arguments that rely on “subjective” and therefore Dualism. They’d seek to develop a schema arising out of physical reality.
That in no way shows that it’s empirical. Empirical means sense data. You can’t get sense-data for your own thoughts, or your consciousness. Sure you can operate under the assumption that thoughts are happenning, but to select a priori formulations based on purely subjective experience is treating your subjective thought as categorically different from sense data (concepts created independent of sense-data). Those different categories—THAT’S DUALISM.
Clarify for me—are you denying or accepting that “subject” is directly tied into the Cartesian separation? It’s simply not possible for claims to rely on subject/object distinctions and not to rely on the mind-body distinction.
We’ve really exausted the productive side of this discussion long ago, so let me conclude my posts on this by suggesting a new way to look at this—say you had someone who had never heard of “consciousness”, and who was also a Physicalist. They have thoughts, they accept that they have thoughts, but because they feel they are a physical organism with a physical brain, they also state that as a physical system their brain cannot include a reliable map of itself. This means of one’s own mind’s structure is innaccessible—accurate introspection is unreliable at best. What are you possibly going to say to them to convince them that consciousness is a thing, without treating the mind as reliable over and beyond their empirical knowledge / sense data? It’s not enough to say that consciousness might be there—so might Fraud’s “ego” and “id” or all sorts of historical concepts based on “subjective experience”. You instead have to go to the empirical evidence without conceptual preconceptions and work backword from there. To work from a priori thought simply isn’t reliable in the way it is for a Dualist.
TLDR; A Physicalist conceptualises the mental in terms of the physical—not the other way around.
If you ever want to really explore the concept play the Physicalist with no knowledge of consciousness and take a highly skeptical view to the concept . Refuse to believe in it unless proof is given and see what happens. Who knows—you could be able to mount a more influential enunciation of its impossiblity than me.
That’s all from me for now.
I didn’t say anything about disproving a concept. What you need to disprove is the claim that physicalists employ the concept of consciousness. That is not the concept itself.
.
One ought to provide evidence for extraordinary claims,
In order to support your claim about consciousness, you have made an identical claim about subjectivity, which is equally in need of support, and equally unsupported. That is going in circles.
What is the second claim even asserting.. Subjective is a term used by dualusts? Yes. It is only used by dualists? No. I’ve list count of the number of physicalists who have informed me of the “fact” that morality is subjective...
See your own claims that the MENTAL can be explained physically, below.
How do you know? As it happens, the meaning of “subjective” is closer to “private mental event” than it is to “non physical mind stuff”. You haven’t really argued against that, since vague claims that the the two terms have a common origin, or are used by the same people don’t establish synonymity.
As opposed to what? “Subjective” has a primarily epistemological meaning..you know that, right? Epistemology is largely orthogonal to ontology … you know that, right?
If your computer tells you it is low on memory, is that not empirical?
In any case, coming up with an idiosyncratic definitions of empirical that is narrower than the definition actual physicalists and scientists use proves nothing.
!!!
There are no thoughts happening to you?
Whatever that means.
No, dualism is not having different categories, .or philosophers would be arguing about Pepsi-Coke dualism.
Dualism is ONTOLOGICAL categories.
I would summarize that as hopelessly vague.
You need to argue that point. I can’t see any connection at all. Define the subject as the perceiver of states of affairs external to itself (like the observer in physics)… where is the immaterial mind there?
I’ve never heard them do that. There are reasons why one wouldn’t expect a combination of completed reliability and total accuracy. But that would be setting the bar too high anyway. Maps can be judged reliable enough, and accurate, enough even though they don’t go down to the blade of grass level.
In fact it would be bad news if all mental content were accessible to introspection: the existence of unconscious mentality is part of the standard theory of consciousness, which almost everyone believes in, including most physicalists.
So? You can set the bar at a place where the introspection undershoots it. For that matter, you can set the bar at a place where conventional empiricism undershoots, since that isn’t 100% reliable either...ask Pons and Fleishman.
Backtrack: the point was to demonstrate that consciousness, in some sense, exists. Since consciousness is self awareness, any level of introspection indicates some nonzero level of consciousness. Introspection about anything in particular is not required. Consciousness is not supposed to be all embracing—it is contrasted with unconscious mentality, after all—so all encompassing introspection is not needed as evidence for it.
I am not in the business of talking about consciousness as a thing. That is your terminology, In fact there are at least three claims here:
1 Consciousness doesn’t exist at all.(Eliminativism) 2 Consciousness exists as a reducible physical phenomenon (physicalism) 3 Consciousness exists as an irreducible non physical phenomenal.(dualism)
You keep trying to squeeze those three propositions into a scheme that has only two slots, “thing” and “not thing”, and it keeps not working. It inevitably loses information. Three doesn’t go into two. To understand what someone else us saying, you need to interpret it in terms of their categories, not yours.
Nobody has at any stage said anything to imply that introspection is, or needs to be, more reliable than conventional empiricism.
Who said otherwise? I have conceded that eliminativism, position 1, exists, so I have tacitly conceded that it is a challenge.to position 2. I am not treating position 2 as an unproblematic default. But you HAVE been treating position 1 as a default.
Why do you insist that evidence for position 2 must be very strong, that nothing short of 100% accurate and reliable data can support it. Could it be that you are conflating position 2 with position 3? Position 3, the claim that consciousness requires its own ontology, IS an extraordinary claim, requiring strong evidence. Is that what you are doing when you read “ontologocally fundamental” as ” ”?
You don’t have evidence that that is possible at all, nor that it lead to the result you expect.
A type 2 position is to conceptualise the mental in term of the physical, and to conceptualise consciousness in terms of the physical, and to conceptualise the subjective in terms of the physical....
That is not the same as rejecting the mental (etc) wholesale.
This isn’t productive. As you’ve insisted on a long and highly critical response again, I sadly feel I need to briefly reply.
No. I merely show that the core claims of physicalism and this use of consciousness are incompatible. That’s what I’ve done. Whether some particular physicalists choose to employ some concept is a different question and a massive red herring, as I already said.
Whereas ordinary claims don’t need evidence? Could you be presenting your claims as “ordinary” to avoid the burden of evidence?
A “standard” theory of consciousness, that almost everyone believes in, including most physicalist, and presumably most dualists too? Dualists and physicalists have agreed on the nature of consciousness? I think you’ve gone waaaaay into the realms of fantasy on this one.
You have warped my position again. I didn’t argue it didn’t exist, I argued that it is a concept that is rooted in dualism. I explained why. I argued that a physicalist would be consistent if they instead used concepts drawn from empirical investigations of the brain. You seem to feel that the physical should be conceptualised based upon the mental, rather than the other way around. That position isn’t compatible with physicalism, because it implies treating the mental as categorically superior. Doing so is not an ontologically neutral position as you are presenting it.
If so then why are you treating concepts derived from pure introspection as the superior schema to categorise empirical evidence?
I did, you selectively ignored the arguments. This conversation has become largely pointless. Perhaps you feel you can achieve some goal of “winning” by merely repeating yourself and achieving “victory” by the other person losing faith in the merit of the conversation. Your basic approach seems to be (1) find some minor points that you can rephrase and attack (2) simply ignore the main points and claim over and over again the main proposition hasn’t been proven. (3) deny the need to support your own claims when asked because they are conventional or “ordinary”. As such I think it would be a mistake for me to see you as honestly engaged with my propositions here. That’s a shame, because I think you would be a very interesting person to talk to if you weren’t so eager to “win”. Good luck and goodbye.
They don’t need the re-presentation of existing evidence.
They disagree about some things, and they agree enough to be talking about the same thing. Disagreement requires commonalities , otherwise it’s just miscommumication.
I didn’t say you were eliminativist. I said you were shoehorning three categories into two categories. What is your response to that?
Both versions are naive. The explanatory process doesn’t start with a perfect set of concepts...reality isn’t pre-labelled. The explanatory process start with a set of “folk” or prima facie concepts, each of which may be retained, modified, or discarded as things are better understood. You cant start from nothing because you have to be able to state your explanandum, you have to state which phenomenon you are trying to explain. But having to have to a starting point does not prejudice the process forever, since the modification and abandonment options are available. For instance, the concept of phlogiston was abandoned, whereas the concept the atom was modified to no longer require indivisibility. Heat is a favourite example of a reductive explanation. The concept of heat as something to be explained was retained, but the earlier, non reductive explanation of heat as a kind of substance was abandoned, in favour of identifying heat with molecular motion. Since molecular motion exits, heat exists, but it doesn’t exist separately—dualistically—from everything else. This style of explanation is what non eliminative physicalists, the type 2 position, are aiming at.
Your background assumptions are wrong. There aren’t any inherently, unchangeably, mental concepts. If you can reduce something to physics, like heat, then it’s physical. You don’t know in advance what you can reduce. The different positions on the nature of consciousness are different guesses or bets on the outcome. Non eliminating physicalism, the type 2 position is bet on the outcome that consciousness will be identified with some physical process. at which point it will no longer be a “dualistic concept”.
I am not using concepts derived from introspection. The very fact of introspection indicates that consciousness, by a fairly minimal definition, is existent. Why do you ignore introspection? Why not look down the telescope?
From what I can observe in your position it seems like you are treating consciousness in exactly this way. For example, could you explain how it could possibly be challenged by evidence? How could it change or be refined if we say “introspection therefore consciousness”?
I don’t see how this follows. As there are a whole host of definitions of consciousness, could you explicitly select a definition, and explain why you feel that introspection proves that particular definintion (not just a general sense of introspectionyness) must follow? Consciousness definitions usually imply some form of discrete mental agent, endowed with certain fairly significant properties. I don’t see how that follows from “person A can’t see what person B is thinking”, unless you invoke dualism. We need to understand what thought is first, and we would need a very compelling reason a physicalist would seek to derive concepts to deal with thought from disembodied thought itself rather than the physical world as they observe it.
Positions:
I’m not conflating these positions as I feel you probably think I am, merely holding that (2) is not logically consistent. If (2) was “when we observe the brain we see a discrete phenomenon that we call consciousness”, I would say that it is more logically consistent, though I would call for a different word that isn’t historically associated with dualism.
I don’t wish to ignore it. I merely think a consistent physicalist would categorise it, like everything else, as a physical process, and therefore seek to understand and explain it using empirical evidence rather than purely mental concepts that don’t seem to exist in physical space?
I finally note you refuse again to accept any burden of evidence for your claims, and merely say the field generally supports your position. Anyone can say that for any position. I think you should drop claims of conventionality and stick to the reasoning and refutations that you propose. Noone expects references for logical statements, but claims that you have the support of most philosophers should be supported.
EDIT> Reply bait oh man
I have put forward the existence of introspection as evidence for the existence of consciousness . It is therefore logically possible for the existence of consciousness to be challenged by the non existence of introspection. It’s not actually possible because introspection actually exists. The empirical claim that consciousness exists is supported by the empirical evidence,like any other. (Not empirical in your gerrymandered sense, of course, but empirical in the sense of not being apriori or tautologous).
Already answered: again,
Consciousness =def self awareness
Introspection =def self awareness
Is the ability to introspect not an unusual property? Are we actually differing, apart from your higher level of vagueness?
Person B can tell what person B is thinking, as well. That is important.
Who said anything about disembodied thought.
So what is the actual contradiction?
Why a discrete phenomenon?
Is a historical association enough to make an inconsistency?
I have given a detailed explanation as to why consciousness is not an inherently mental concept. You need to respond to that, and not just repeat your claim.
False. Here is the explanation again:
“Both versions are naive. The explanatory process doesn’t start with a perfect set of concepts...reality isn’t pre-labelled. The explanatory process start with a set of “folk” or prima facie concepts, each of which may be retained, modified, or discarded as things are better understood. You cant start from nothing because you have to be able to state your explanandum, you have to state which phenomenon you are trying to explain. But having to have to a starting point does not prejudice the process forever, since the modification and abandonment options are available. For instance, the concept of phlogiston was abandoned, whereas the concept the atom was modified to no longer require indivisibility. Heat is a favourite example of a reductive explanation. The concept of heat as something to be explained was retained, but the earlier, non reductive explanation of heat as a kind of substance was abandoned. This style of explanation is what non eliminate physicalists, the type 2 position, are aiming at.”
Your engagement here is insincere. You argue based on to cherry-picking and distorting my statements. You simply ignore the explanations given and say “you haven’t given justification” and then you give off-hand vague answers for my own queries and then state “already answered”. I’m done with this.