tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post3559746470078779035..comments2024-03-25T11:49:21.281-07:00Comments on The Splintered Mind: What Makes for a Good Philosophical Argument, and The Common Ground Problem for Animal ConsciousnessEric Schwitzgebelhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11541402189204286449noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-90692174925244820752019-10-13T10:42:21.380-07:002019-10-13T10:42:21.380-07:00Actually professor, my point was that psychologica...Actually professor, my point was that psychological dynamics probably <em>aren’t </em>any more complex than the dynamics of physics. The theory is that while it’s not difficult for us to objectively explore the nature of physics, it can be extremely difficult for us to objectively explore ourselves (and thus effective broad theory has eluded us so far). Apparently there’s an element of our nature which we’d rather not formally admit, and given that the social tool of morality lies in opposition (as I discussed earlier). <br /><br />The taboo element, I think, is this: Feeling good, as opposed to bad, constitutes the welfare of anything conscious. This will apply to a garden snail, a human, or anything sentient at a given moment. So if you want to know the welfare of a prisoner over a five day period, take a summation of his or her positive minus negative sensations (not that we have very good measurement tools for this yet, but conceptually at least). Or we might want to understand the welfare of an entire society of people. Is recreational drug legalization best for California? Theoretically the answer will be determined by the happiness of its people under either condition. <br /><br />Utilitarians fail, I think, because they tend to bastardize their theory by trying to keep it moral. My own theory is instead amoral and so conforms with all accepted theory in our harder varieties of science. To be sure, highly repugnant implications do exist. But as long at our paradigm of morality prevents mental and behavioral scientists from formally acknowledging the nature of the welfare of what they study, it seems to me that they should continue to struggle with effective general theory regarding our nature, and so remain soft. This is a problem which I’d like to help fix.Philosopher Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11126076811765843302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-89216603694659122432019-10-13T08:10:43.669-07:002019-10-13T08:10:43.669-07:00Thanks for the continuing comments, folks!
Phil E...Thanks for the continuing comments, folks!<br /><br />Phil Eric: I'm inclined to agree that part of the difficulty with psychology as a science is the complexity of its subject matter compared to, say, planets orbiting a star. I'm not sure I agree with you about selfishness, though. People often sacrifice their self-interest, often their lives. As you note, the mind is complex! Reducing motivation to selfishness without allowing morality to also play a role is probably too simple.<br /><br />Chinaphil: Yes, I agree that is an important value in philosophical argument. Thanks for the reminder and correction!<br /><br />Stu: Right, the point is that it is question-begging. It is still technically valid and maybe even sound. The point is to remind readers that soundness isn't enough.<br /><br />Stephen: While I don't wholly disagree, my perspective is slightly different. At the highest levels of generality, on the biggest-picture questions, empirically-oriented philosophy and philosophically-acute science merge into each other, so that (for example) what Peter Carruthers and Eva Jablonka write on animal consciousness is not radically different in general approach. I think this is more how things do and should go than having a strict division of labor between the empirical science and the abstract philosophy.Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16274774112862434865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-35567898037615281992019-10-12T12:00:24.739-07:002019-10-12T12:00:24.739-07:00What’s the purpose of a philosophical argument Eri...What’s the purpose of a philosophical argument Eric? Do we possess knowledge that we wish to share with others? Do we desire a community of believers for our own beliefs?<br /><br />Being a wholly subjective phenomenon, the consciousness of any organism, including other humans, cannot be known with certainty and I suggested many of your posts ago that we can only <i>infer</i> the consciousness of other organisms. We can then rate the strength of our inference on some scale from zero to near-certainty.<br /><br />But I suggest that knowledge of the consciousness of snails is not a philosophical concern at all and philosophical arguments pro and con are irrelevant. SInce I vote with Hacker that the goal of Philosophy is not about knowledge but is about understanding, I suggest that the concern of any philosophical argument should be the structure and validity of arguments and claims in other domains. In this case—the consciousness of a snail—the soundness of the definitions and the validity of the grounds chosen for evaluating inference strength would be the ingredients of Philosophy’s concern.<br /><br />But, of course, that approach takes away all of the fun, doesn’t it? It bursts the balloon of high-flying philosophical Consciousness Studies and lets all of the HOT air escape, while leaving the speculative pleasures to the neurospecialists. Not all is lost though—Philosophy must still hold the neuronuts accountable.Stephen Wysonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15213141784165096783noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-84999897848712237982019-10-11T02:43:31.778-07:002019-10-11T02:43:31.778-07:00Wait, I am confused by your 'argument'
&q...Wait, I am confused by your 'argument' <br />"Premise: Snails have conscious sensory experiences, and ants have conscious sensory experiences.<br /><br />Conclusion: Therefore, snails have conscious sensory experiences."<br /><br />You have no premise for 'conscious sensory experience'<br />Then you merely list part of your premise as the conclusion. <br /><br />Maybe there was a bad edit or I am missing something being assumed.<br />stu<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-25220124429629019942019-10-09T21:27:15.907-07:002019-10-09T21:27:15.907-07:00In your discussion of what an argument is, I think...In your discussion of what an argument is, I think you undervalue innovation. A good philosophical argument gives an audience a new perspective, either by introducing a new concept or applying a concept in a novel way. This idea of innovation also opens up the possibility of good arguments that don’t persuade: it could still be a good argument if it gives me a new way to think, even if I’m completely unmoved by the specific conclusion argued for. This aspect may be particularly important in arguments used in philosophical education.chinaphilhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14572591745611690731noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-12571693179721104322019-10-06T16:30:20.840-07:002019-10-06T16:30:20.840-07:00Lee,
I think you went too dark there as well, and ...Lee,<br />I think you went too dark there as well, and ironically so. If you’re essentially right (and if cleaned up a bit, I think your rant was about right) then why take such a dark angle? If we’re all self interested products of our circumstances which thus seek control, then why not use some diplomacy to help us feel a bit better about your message? Speaking of us in terms of our “pathologies”, does not give us a feeling of “control”! <br /><br />Professor, <br />Great pairing of topics! I’m going to get a bit deep so hopefully this can be followed. <br /><br />It seems to me that if we define primary consciousness as the standard “What it’s like” idea, then anything which is conscious may be assessed in terms of something that feels positive to negative — remove that and no consciousness shall exist for anything. So here we’re talking about a machine which harbors personal value. If existence can feel good or bad to a garden snail, then it’s conscious… conceptually simple. <br /><br />But now let’s add a variety of life to this situation which is quite clever, or the human. It’s a highly social creature which is thus able to grasp that others desire their own happiness as well, or has tremendous theory of mind skills. So if it’s able to grasp that we’re all self interested products of our circumstances, this could be disconcerting when openly stated. We don’t want others to behave selfishly against us (and even if we behave this way from time to time, not that we always grasp our own selfishness). So instead of being honest about our nature, it may be best for us to claim that selfishness itself is “immoral”. Here we might reap the rewards of our portrayed altruism by gaining the trust of others. Conversely the “honest” (like my good friend Lee) may be persecuted for that very reason. <br /><br />So strong is this “morality paradigm”, I think, that our mental and behavioral sciences have not yet been permitted to honestly grasp the essentials of our nature. Thus these fields remain quite soft, and unlike the less humanly connected fields which carry no such a burden. I perceive a misconception that the reason psychology remains such a soft variety of science today, is because it’s actually far more complex than harder sciences such as physics. Consider the thought that it may instead be taboo…Philosopher Erichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11126076811765843302noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-37184765190045466932019-10-05T09:42:02.855-07:002019-10-05T09:42:02.855-07:00SelfAware: I basically agree with everything you j...SelfAware: I basically agree with everything you just said — which is the pessimistic conclusion of my reflections on garden snails. Because of these problems, there is no good non question begging way to settle among yes, no, or a third option I call *gong* (reject the question).Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16274774112862434865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-65664677945075033622019-10-04T11:47:43.973-07:002019-10-04T11:47:43.973-07:00Eric,
I think there's value in defining a theo...Eric,<br />I think there's value in defining a theoretically innocent version of consciousness, purely from a phenomenological perspective. It's why, although largely agreeing with the illusionists ontologically, I prefer to simply say that phenomenal consciousness only exists, well, phenomenally, that is, subjectively.<br /><br />The problem though, is what then? Any theory neutral version we come up with will be from the human perspective, the only perspective we can really take. We can't ask a garden snail for *its* theoretically neutral idea of whatever consciousness it might have. We have no choice but to take the pre-theory version and try to work out, with as few theoretical assumptions as possible, what observable capabilities might be entailed, and then using that try to infer what might or might not be there.<br /><br />The result, I think, is that a particular non-human animal will have some of your positive examples but not others, and will have some of them in a greatly reduced, perhaps borderline unrecognizable fashion. Reality seems to delight in frustrating our common sense definitions.SelfAwarePatternshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11856665627652130336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-2355722243314225192019-10-04T08:17:03.581-07:002019-10-04T08:17:03.581-07:00Thanks for the interesting comments, folks!
SelfA...Thanks for the interesting comments, folks!<br /><br />SelfAware: Consciousness does seem harder to agree on than these other issues. But I don't think that that's primarily because people mean different things by the word "conscious". To see the debate as basically a verbal dispute about the meaning of that word, while the facts are agreed on, gets the dialectical situation wrong and underplays the real difficulty of the issue! I think, or at least hope, that we can agree on a relatively theoretically innocent definition of consciousness or phenomenal consciousness or conscious experience; and despite agreeing on that innocent definition we might find ourselves far apart on issues of substance about how far consciousness in that sense applies. (On defining consciousness see my<br />https://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DefiningConsciousness.htm<br /><br />Josh: Great to hear from you! Maybe it's not totally hopeless. It would be terrific to find some link -- for example between normativity and consciousness -- that can be widely agreed on by the target audience, which can then be used as an effective argumentative lever in moving opinions. I do somewhat despair, however, after mucking around in this particular debate for a while!<br /><br />Lee: That's a somewhat darker view than my own. Of course you might say that I only fail to accept the view you advocate because it doesn't reinforce my sensation of control!Eric Schwitzgebelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16274774112862434865noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-73156730353671037162019-10-04T07:56:27.418-07:002019-10-04T07:56:27.418-07:00The solipsistic self-model is driven by a patholog...The solipsistic self-model is driven by a pathology, and that pathology is the innate need for a sense of control. The structural qualitative properties of any given solipsistic self-model is determined by those properties and those properties will underwrite the pathology of what is required for a sensation of control. In order to move an audience with a persuasive argument, there has to be a payoff for the individuals within that targeted audience. And that payoff is this: "Does the argument I just heard reinforce a sensation of control which my own beliefs already provide, or does it destabilize the foundations upon which my own beliefs are grounded and therefore destabilizes my own sensation of control?<br /><br />Feeling and sensations will trump the validity of intellectual arguments every time...Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-92213444175488053482019-10-04T07:24:50.837-07:002019-10-04T07:24:50.837-07:00
Great post Eric! When it comes to finding common ...<br />Great post Eric! When it comes to finding common ground about snail consciousness, one strategy is to see if there might be more common ground concerning a related but sufficiently distinct concept. Perhaps, for example, more common ground could be found regarding the question about whether normative terms are genuinely applicable to snails. In a universe without human cognizers, does it make sense to say of a snail that didn’t find food that it *failed*? Searle doesn’t think so (1995), but maybe Searle’s view is in the minority. If there is common ground here, and if it can be shown that there is some link between the possibility of failure and the possibility of consciousness (both of these are big ifs), then maybe those who think that snails can fail but deny that they are consciousness might then find the claim that snails have consciousness slightly more convincing. <br />Josh Rustnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26951738.post-53719430860225285852019-10-04T07:00:27.435-07:002019-10-04T07:00:27.435-07:00I think when it comes to the common ground problem...I think when it comes to the common ground problem, one strategy is to clarify exactly what is being discussed. This is particularly problematic with something like consciousness, where people argue past each other endlessly with different definitions. But if we can delineate more specific capabilities, then the nature of the debate might become more clear.<br /><br />A good example is Joseph LeDoux, who is on the skeptical side for animal consciousness (although not to the extent of Carruthers), and Antonio Damsio, who is far more open to the idea. LeDoux recently noted in an interview that he and Damsio agree on the basic facts. They just interpret them differently.<br /><br />So when looking at a particular animal, we could ask:<br />1. Does it react to the environment?<br />2. Does it build sensory representations of that environment?<br />3. Does it have valence oriented action selection?<br />4. Can it deliberate in an imaginative manner?<br />5. Does it introspect?<br /><br />It seems like these capabilities, or ones like them, are much easier to reach agreement on than whether a particular animal is conscious. Once that agreement is reached, there can be a separate discussion on which definition of consciousness is most applicable.<br /><br />A similar approach can be taken for a debate on something like free will. Exactly what kind of freedom are we talking about? And what do we mean by "will"?SelfAwarePatternshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11856665627652130336noreply@blogger.com