Thinking Christian Comments
Original Post: A Challenge to the Argument From Reason
Tom wrote: "Suppose for a moment that evolution could have done for the earliest humans what he suggests, in providing us a cognitive advantage for things like hunting, agriculture, storing and cooking food, warfare, etc. What selective advantage in those conditions would have caused evolution to go so far with it?"
Here's one hypothesis: http://web.missouri.edu/~gearyd/
...innetal2005.pdf
Hi Tom,
Thanks for taking the time to address these questions.
Your first criticism is that you can't see why rationality would evolve. I think that the paper Jordan cites is a good response, but there's another way of seeing it in simple terms.
I think you agree that having the ability to generalize and create models of our environment (i.e., be rational) has dramatic evolutionary advantages over learning via genetic change, or learning via dog-like conditioning. What you question is why these abilities should lead to mathematics and art.
The answer is that our ability to reason has to be generic in order to be better than genetics or conditioning. If we could only create mental models of, say, a river ecosystem, we would not be able to adapt within one lifetime to a new life in a desert climate. If we had such limitations, we might as well rely on genetic or dog-like conditioned-response. The whole point of rationality is that it is generic. That it doesn't matter what's over the next mountain ridge, or what species we're hunting (or is hunting us) this year.
So, once you have this generic ability, it's going to get applied to all sorts of things, including an exploration of abstract relationships, some of which will not actually be instantiated in the environment. You don't know the value of information you don't have, and you don't know a priori what experiences ought to be related using our generic powers of inference.
You then say:
Think carefully now: we know our thoughts can be about such things. But doctor(logic) says our thoughts just are our brain states, and just physical. So it seems he is committed to the position that the physical state of our brain is about other things. I have real trouble seeing how anything physical can have this aboutness.Frankly, this isn't a very good criticism. You're just saying you don't understand the mechanism of the connection.
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This runs afoul of what we understand to be true of physical objects and conditions. Just as a rock is not "about" a chair, so a neuron or an electrochemical event cannot be "about" the square root of 16.
You supply examples (e.g., the rock and the chair) that are not even remotely applicable to the case we're looking at.
It's sort of like asking how it is possible for a fox to physically sense that it is standing in a stream. After all, rocks cannot sense chairs. Yet the thing that makes the interactions between the matter in a fox and the matter in a stream a "sensation" relate to the structure and dynamics of foxes.
To specifically answer your question, a belief is about a thing when it leads to an expectation about experience of that thing. And the thing doesn't have to be physically real for this to hold (because the experience could be mental). My belief that 2+2=4 is about my expectations of adding 2 and 2. My belief that there is a man named Tom who is writing this blog post relates to my expectations about what I will read next, or what might happen if we arranged to meet for a drink, etc.
Indeed, this gets to the heart of my philosophical position. Aboutness is not magic. Aboutness is a relationship between a thing and experience of that thing. And if we lose sight of this fact, we can be led into the error of thinking that the meaning of a language sentence is unrelated to experience.
In other words, what does aboutness really mean to you? If you don't have a theory of aboutness (IOW, you just go with your gut), then it's no wonder that you cannot imagine a physical implementation of aboutness.
The main problem with DL's latest is that it doesn't give even a hypothetical account of how material processes could make the mind capable of apprehending truth.
Rather, what it gives an account of is how material processes might cause an organism to have brain states that cause it to respond to environmental stimuli in such a way that it is more likely to survive than an organism without those brain states would.
Let's say I have a robot, equipped with various sensory equipment that allow it to receive visual, tactile, auditory, and other data, like your typical mammal. Now, let's say I program this robot such that when an object is approaching, it moves out of the way.
This program would be an example of what DL calls an "Instinctive, non-rational response that represents a very simple relationship between cause and effect". However, the response would represent cause and effect to me, not to the robot. It doesn't represent anything to the robot, which is just a mindless automaton.
The robot doesn't have any beliefs. It's just passively acting out its programming. It doesn't think to itself "Upon seeing an approaching object I should expect an impending collision". Getting out of the way of approaching objects isn't the same as believing that you should get out of the way of approaching objects to avoid a collision (or for any other reason).
And since my robot doesn't have any beliefs, it doesn't have any beliefs that may be true or false. That means that it isn't even one iota closer to apprehending truth than a robot that hadn't been programmed at all.
It won't matter if I program my robot using ever more elaborate models, which cause it to behave in a manner allowing it to survive an even greater variety of situations. It still won't have any beliefs, or be any closer to knowing truth. Multiply 0 by any number, and you still get 0.
The only possible way to get "beliefs" out of this is to simply define "beliefs" as brain states (or CPU states) that contribute to behavior, which is what DL has done. If you use this definition, then you can say that I am programming "beliefs" into my robot.
There's a lot of problems with this view, but here's the biggest one: If beliefs are just brain states that cause behavior, then what makes a brain state (aka a "belief") true? Well, if your reason for positing that beliefs are brain states is to give an account of how natural selection could lead to the ability to apprehend truth, then you really only have one option: true beliefs (brain states) must be defined as those that cause an organism to survive.
But this is a relativistic definition of truth. Truth is now defined as whatever beliefs that survive, or lead to survival. Note the echoes of Nietzsche here ("There is no truth, but only power"). And this brings with it all the usual absurdities of Post-Modernist relativism and subjectivism.
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To put it all more succinctly: there are only two approaches a materialist may take when trying to account for beliefs and truth. He may say that beliefs are epiphenomenal, or he may say that they are identical with brain states.
The first allows for the existence of objective truth, but is absurd because it precludes any possibility that the ability to form true beliefs could be selected for, and implies that your actions are irrational because they are totally unrelated to the truth of your beliefs.
The second allows that natural selection could select beliefs, but is absurd because it doesn't allow for objective truth, but requires that "truth" be defined relativistically in terms of survival.
While both positions are fatally flawed, they exhaust the options available for materialism (aside from outright eliminativism, which is even worse). In my experience, most materialists hold some fuzzy combination of both these positions, even though they are mutually exclusive. When they try to develop and clarify their thinking, they follow along one train of thought until they are cornered, at which point they switch to the other one, where they continue until they are cornered again and switch back. And so on indefinitely, mix-n-matching as appropriate.
Deuce, under your second option about, what if you look at truth more as a matter of accuracy, that is, between an abstract model and the environment. Accuracy with reality or the environment will tend to have selective advantage. If I have an abstract model of 2+2=4, then I predict that when I put 2 apples in a bag, and then do so again, I'll have 4 apples in the bag. 2+2=5 does not match up so well with reality. So why can't evolution have produced an organism with the ability to make those models? Such an organism would have a different (and supposedly advantageous) method of accurately predicting its environment.
This gets around the necessity of truth being defined in terms of survival. Truth is truth, and it has a survival value.
Deuce,
Paul answered your criticism pretty well. A belief is true when its expectation is met (or will be met).
Truth is not defined as "whatever beliefs lead to survival." True beliefs lead to verified expectation. And such beliefs do indeed have a survival benefit.
Finally, your comments about robots don't consider two things: reflection and modeling.
Let's consider a building temperature controller. It implements some set of rules (a model) to predict whether the building temperature will rise or fall, and it acts accordingly. We can even give this system some adaptability, e.g., some of its model parameters are continuously adapted to obtain better predictions.
Most people would not consider the system's "confidences" to be proper beliefs. The reason for this is that the system neither models nor questions its own "confidences". It does not reflect on the consequences of failure. It does not devise new models of its experience, partly because any fixed model need not record very much history.
But if a machine devised its own models of its environment, was aware that it was devising such models, and sought out the best ones with an eye to the consequences of failure, then we might well consider the "confidences" of such a machine to be proper beliefs.
Paul and doctor(logic), you gave excellent answers to Deuce's questions but you gave up your own foundations to do it.
You have both stated your belief that Deuce defined "truth" incorrectly when he said it was "whatever beliefs that survive, or lead to survival." Paul, you have defined it as accuracy, and dl, you have defined it as the relation that obtains when a belief's expectation is met. Both of those, broadly understodd, are pretty well congruent with a correspondence theory of truth, which I adhere to and Deuce probably does too. So we are at least somewhat in agreement as to what makes beliefs true or not.
So it appears to me that you have rebutted Deuce by telling him something that he already believes. So we have to find the point of differentiation, the reason Deuce said what he did. That point is in the explanation of how humans can come to a point of seeing and recognizing truth. He said it himself right there at the beginning: "The main problem with DL's latest is that it doesn't even give a hypothetical account of how material processes could make the mind capable of apprehending truth."
Deuce went on to describe how material processes could (hypothetically) produce an organism that can act in a way to maximize its own survival. The jump from survival efficiency to "truth" is unexplained, and it is because the material processes do not have a way to introduce beliefs into the organism. Without beliefs, there can be no true or false beliefs.
Now, we all observe that we have beliefs, and we believe that some of them are true beliefs. The problem Deuce pointed it is not so much about truth; it's one step back from that, at the stage of beliefs. He wrote,
Getting out of the way of approaching objects isn't the same as believing that you should get out of the way of approaching objects to avoid a collision (or for any other reason).
He goes on to discuss that greater complexity in the organism doesn't solve this problem.
He discusses a possible objection to this position:
The only possible way to get "beliefs" out of this is to simply define "beliefs" as brain states (or CPU states) that contribute to behavior, which is what DL has done. If you use this definition, then you can say that I am programming "beliefs" into my robot.
There's a lot of problems with this view, but here's the biggest one: If beliefs are just brain states that cause behavior, then what makes a brain state (aka a "belief") true? Well, if your reason for positing that beliefs are brain states is to give an account of how natural selection could lead to the ability to apprehend truth, then you really only have one option: true beliefs (brain states) must be defined as those that cause an organism to survive.
But this is a relativistic definition of truth....
And Paul and DL, I think both of you would reject a relativistic definition of truth.
Back to your first comment here, doctor(logic), I was starting to write an answer but got interrupted. I've saved it to finish later tonight.
Back to your first comment here, doctor(logic), you wrote,
I think you agree that having the ability to generalize and create models of our environment (i.e., be rational) has dramatic evolutionary advantages over learning via genetic change, or learning via dog-like conditioning. What you question is why these abilities should lead to mathematics and art.
I would agree that this ability has dramatic ... advantages over other approaches, and if I were to grant for the sake of argument that evolution might be true, then I might also insert "evolutionary" into that ellipsis.
But I wasn't really just wondering how evolution could give us mathematical or artistic abilities. These were representative of the larger question: why would evolution have built in us such cognitive overkill? Why should we be able so effectively to handle cognitive demands that could have had, during years of evolutionary development, absolutely no survival value whatever? I speak here of things like non-Euclidean geometry, higher-dimensional math, imaginary and complex numbers, and far more I'm sure than I'm even aware of. I'm thinking of music and literature.
To say that evolution would have favored some ability to model and work with abstractions is to say far too little, for the level of these abstractions is so immeasurably far beyond what we could have needed, or could have enhanced survival.
I haven't had time to read the paper Jordan linked to. As a general rule, I appreciate it when people summarize what they link to and explain some of what they think it is that helps answer the questions at hand. But I'll read it when I get a chance. Life is ever more busy.
Tom,
Here's the gist of the paper I linked to (taken from the abstract):
"...as our hominin ancestors became increasing[ly] able to master the traditional hostile forces of nature, selective pressures resulting from competition among conspecifics became increasingly important, particularly in regard to social competencies. Given the precondition of competition among kin- and reciprocity-based coalitions (shared with chimpanzees), an autocatalytic social arms race was initiated, which eventually resulted in the unusual collection of traits characteristic of the human species, such as concealed ovulation, extensive biparental care, complex sociality, and an extraordinary collection of cognitive abilities."
Tom,
The jump from survival efficiency to "truth" is unexplained, and it is because the material processes do not have a way to introduce beliefs into the organism. Without beliefs, there can be no true or false beliefs.Let's parse this. You are supposing that it is better for a mind to accept what we would normally describe as falsehoods, if those falsehoods made the mind more likely to survive.
What kinds of false beliefs would increase survival, Tom?
Certainly not something like the location of prey. Or the amount of fruit needed to feed a child. Or the patterns in the weather. Or the psychology of your neighbors in the next village. Correct beliefs about all of the above would aid survival.
How about the belief that God will reward you for fighting well in battle? There's a claim that has bearing on your survival, but which does not rely on the claim actually being true or false. You'll fight harder, and be more likely to win, just for believing.
So, the prime example of a belief that has survival impact without needing correspondence to truth is a religious belief.
Beliefs that relate to empirical facts are least likely to be false because such false beliefs are more likely to hurt than to help. (Of course, as long as the other tribe doesn't figure it out either, you might still get by for a time.)
These were representative of the larger question: why would evolution have built in us such cognitive overkill?The short answer to your question is, how much is overkill when you don't know in advance how much you need?
In fact, we do not suffer from overkill. There are lots of day-to-day problems that seem intractable to our puny minds.
(And it seems that no matter how smart we are, we could always wonder why we were smart enough to apply those smarts to something non-survival-related. If we were morons, our smartest morons might ponder why it is that we evolved to compose such wonderful moronic music.)
Again, the whole point of intelligence as far as evolution is concerned is that it's general purpose. To be effective, rational minds have to turn their power on every pattern they see, searching for something of significance. A lot of the time, the mind is going to see patterns that it thinks might be significant. Some of those patterns will be real, and some of those patterns will be survival significant. Any sufficiently powerful rational mind is going to find mathematics, music, art and so on. You could ask why we have minds as powerful as we do, but that question as a trivial answer. More powerful minds might well find new art and trivia, but they will also find new weapons, new agricultural techniques, new social systems, and new medical cures.
If you take away the curiosity that leads minds to explore art, you'll take away the same curiosity that leads men to wonder why their crops aren't growing.
Personally, I don't think we're going to solve a lot of today's problems with the monkey brains we have. We're going to enhance our mental capacities with implants and artificial neurons, and then we'll start to see patterns and structures we could never see before. We'll start to solve many of the problems that have held us back over the centuries. I say we are cognitively underpowered.
I think Tom summed up my point pretty well.
You can construct a naturalistic hypothesis about how evolution could generate sophisticated brain circuitry that would allow an organism to respond to environmental cues and survive its surroundings in sophisticated ways. However, this tells you precisely nothing about how an organism could gain the ability to develop true beliefs, unless you define "true beliefs" as brain configurations that cause an organism to survive. However, if you do that, then you've committed yourself to a relativistic definition of truth.
On the other hand, if you subscribe to an objective, non-relativist definition of truth, it is impossible to construct a naturalistic hypothesis about how an organism could gain the ability to develop true beliefs.
If higher and higher levels of thinking and intelligence, along with adding thinking about abstract relationships, contributes to survival of a species, why is it that the species which are least intelligent are the ones with the greatest history of survivability; ie, insects? Seems counterintuitive to me.
I'm going to be out of the loop for a little while, but let me just respond to the essence of Tom's argument against DL and me:
The jump from survival efficiency to "truth" is unexplained, and it is because the material processes do not have a way to introduce beliefs into the organism. Without beliefs, there can be no true or false beliefs.It's not a jump, it's a logical sequence: what is true has survival value, so organisms will evolve that can distinguish truth. A (true) belief is merely that material part of an organism's brain that is programmed to operate when the truth it holds is needed for some survival issue.
Deuce,
You don't seem to be responding to my last comment.
However, this tells you precisely nothing about how an organism could gain the ability to develop true beliefs, unless you define "true beliefs" as brain configurations that cause an organism to survive.You're suggesting that there's no feedback mechanism between what is true and what is survival relevant. There quite obviously is in most cases. This is what I said in my last comment.
There's no need to define true beliefs as what leads to survival. I can define true beliefs as those whose predictions are (or would be) confirmed. There's almost always a survival benefit to this.
Michael,
If higher and higher levels of thinking and intelligence, along with adding thinking about abstract relationships, contributes to survival of a species, why is it that the species which are least intelligent are the ones with the greatest history of survivability; ie, insects? Seems counterintuitive to me.Different species use different strategies.
Bacteria have a great strategy. They keep it simple, and rely upon their fast growth and mutation rate to adapt to their environment. It's very difficult to wipe out all species of bacteria.
Insects also breed quickly, but are more sophisticated than bacteria. They're cold-blooded so they can survive in many climates, and survive for long periods without food.
Larger animals find niches that benefit from their long lifetimes, e.g., being top predator.
Humans trade off birth rate, physical strength, and independence of young for intelligence, social cohesion, and adaptability within a single lifetime.
Insects, monkeys and humans are all equally advanced in the eyes of evolutionary biology. Ability to survive mass extinctions is not the only way to assess evolutionary progress.
Michael, the general reasons why different organisms evolve different solutions to surviving are (1) different environments, and (2) an element of randomness in mutation, as well as (3) the complex interplay between the two.
Sorry if I am going over old ground... but if we accept an exclusively materialistic arena for thought and cognition-Such as DL's -then I see 2 immediate problems the first of which Tom mentioned:
1.The question of how can one piece of material be about another piece of material.
2.materialism allows for cause and effect alone,including epiphenomenal causes,if they were to exist.
Materialism allows for no agency, in which case every thought including the thoughts on this blog are determined like laplace's demond,so how can anything we determined brains say be truely objective (divorced from cause) and have a chance of being true
Mike,
1.The question of how can one piece of material be about another piece of material.What does it mean for one thing (material or otherwise) to be about a piece of material?
Suppose you think "That coffee mug is dirty." What does it mean for your thought of a coffee mug to be about that coffee mug? How do you know that your thought is not about your toothbrush?
Once you ask (and try to answer these questions), then you'll have some basis for defining what it means for one thing to be about another. And that basis can be physical.
2.materialism allows for cause and effect alone,including epiphenomenal causes,if they were to exist.What makes you think that proper thought is divorced from cause? The opposite is true. Suppose I give you two numbers, and expect you to give me the sum. Is your answer divorced from the two numbers I give you? Divorced from the conventions of mathematics and numerals? If anything, the degree to which your answer deviates from these causes is the degree to which you get the answer wrong.
Materialism allows for no agency, in which case every thought including the thoughts on this blog are determined like laplace's demond,so how can anything we determined brains say be truely objective (divorced from cause) and have a chance of being true
Besides, "divorced from deterministic cause" is totally equivalent to "random." Indeed, that's the definition of random: fundamentally indeterminate.
"And what makes our inability to know things absolute is that they are simple in themselves, while we are composed of two opposing natures of different kinds, soul and body. For it is impossible for the part of us which reasons to be anything but spiritual, and even if it were claimed that we are simply corporeal, that would still more preclude us from knowing things, since there is nothing so inconceivable as the idea that matter knows itself. We cannot possibly know how it could know itself. Thus, if we are simply material, we can know nothing at all..." from Pascal's "Pensees"
Ah, yes. The old argument from personal incredulity.
Ah, yes. The old argument from personal incredulity.
Are you personally incredulous of his argument?
The following paraphrase seems much more reasonable to me than Pascal's original version:
"For it is impossible for the part of us which reasons to be anything but physical, and even if it were claimed that we are simply non-corporeal, that would still more preclude us from knowing things, since there is nothing so inconceivable as the idea that the non-physical knows itself. We cannot possibly know how it could know itself. Thus, if we are simply non-corporeal, we can know nothing at all..." "
Isn't all incredulity personal? Interesting that Pascal scribbled those thoughts down 350 years ago.
Randy,
You are not paraphrasing but changing the meaning of the text. Best to note that and not put quotation marks around it. Better just to say this is something Randy said which is quite a bit distant from the kind of things Pascal said.
doctor(logic),
"Suppose you think 'That coffee mug is dirty.' What does it mean for your thought of a coffee mug to be about that coffee mug? How do you know that your thought is not about your toothbrush?
"Once you ask (and try to answer these questions), then you'll have some basis for defining what it means for one thing to be about another. And that basis can be physical."
The way I know this is by personal awareness. I know that thought is about the coffee mug because I am having the thought and I can know what my thoughts are about.
Now, how does that help me to see that thought can have a physical basis?
Later in that comment you said that thoughts could be causal and yet purely physical. This is true if thoughts are exactly equal to their physical phenomena, as you have said you believe they are. But we have already discussed that, and I don't think you've shown it to be true yet. Do you want to pick up that discussion again?
Tom,
The way I know this is by personal awareness. I know that thought is about the coffee mug because I am having the thought and I can know what my thoughts are about.Your answer is that you just know that your thoughts are about stuff?
Well, imagine being momentarily confused about a reference, and how you would establish that you were confused.
Suppose you ask yourself if you have taken out the trash today. Suppose you recall thinking just this afternoon that you have just completed a chore. For a moment you rest easily, thinking that you did indeed take out the trash. But did you? Maybe you folded the laundry instead. The test of whether your conclusion about chore completion was about laundry or trash relies on several factors, including:
1) The existence of details in your memory that pertain to having taken out the trash today.
2) The future observation that there is trash in your house versus out by the curb.
3) The possible non-existence of other recollections of recent chores completed.
These types of confusions occur all the time, and they are resolved by testing our predictions (expectations) about experiences and recollections of recognized objects.
In other words, there's excellent reason to believe that aboutness is related to prediction and expectation and recognition. Your thought about the chore being completed is about the trash because it makes predictions about future experiences and recollections of the past that relate to what you recognize as "trash."
If I think about "walking in the rain," the things that give my thought aboutness are
a) a recognition of what experiences I will categorize as rain,
b) an expectation of how I will feel when I walk in the rain,
c) recollections of past experiences that I would recognize as walks in the rain.
My thoughts about walking in the rain are not about algebra because the thoughts don't predict experiences or recollections of performing algebraic computations.
Physical mechanisms are quite capable of implementing recognition and recollection, in fact the brain happens to be full of auto-associative neural nets that do precisely this.
I have not provided a proof that my model of aboutness is correct, but I have provided a plausible alternative (esp. given brain structure) to your idea that aboutness is a basic quantity that cannot be reduced to anything else.
That leads me to this quote of yours:
Later in that comment you said that thoughts could be causal and yet purely physical. This is true if thoughts are exactly equal to their physical phenomena, as you have said you believe they are. But we have already discussed that, and I don't think you've shown it to be true yet. Do you want to pick up that discussion again?My goal is not to prove my position to you without a shadow of a doubt. Your position (and the function of the AfR) is to show that it is impossible for naturalistic systems to provide aboutness (among other things). However, the AfR relies on your implicit axiom that aboutness is basic, so it cannot exclude naturalism after all. The basicness on which the AfR relies is just an unquestioned assumption on your part.
When I question the assumption "I just know X," I'm led to ask "what would be the signature of confusion (or partial confusion) about X, and how would that confusion be resolved?" This is a general approach that I use when thinking about meaning, rationality, morality, etc.
Applying this kind of inquiry to aboutness, I think it's clear that aboutness might not be basic, and if it isn't basic, there's no in-principle objection to physical minds having thoughts "about" things.
There's another way to position the AfR. You could say that the AfR is a sort of argument for a "metaphysics of the gaps" between things not yet explained by naturalism. However, as you know, these kinds of arguments are extremely weak. The AfR is only impressive if it rules out naturalism, but it fails to do that.
Wow, Dr. Logic, you must be busy testing all your "aboutnesses" and "awarenesses." Doesn't give you much time to actually be "about" something and have much "awareness."
dl, I think you're approaching the wrong question. You've explained how I can test whether my thought about the trash is accurate; whether I have in fact emptied the trash when my thoughts say to me that I have. That has no bearing on whether my thought is about the trash. The way I can know that my thought is about the trash is by being aware that the trash is what I'm thinking about. You repeat the following confusion later when you wrote,
When I question the assumption "I just know X," I'm led to ask "what would be the signature of confusion (or partial confusion) about X, and how would that confusion be resolved?"
The current question is not whether you accurately know X, but whether your thoughts are about X. Aboutness remains a matter of direct, incorrigible knowledge.
When you switched to thoughts about walking in the rain, your points a), b), and c) were probably okay. But you didn't draw any inferential connection from them to:
My thoughts about walking in the rain are not about algebra because the thoughts don't predict experiences or recollections of performing algebraic computations.
You drew a connection, but you did not show that predictions have any essential part of it.
I can have a thought about something I've never entertained in memory. It can be completely non-predictive. It could be a thought, say, about what life would be like on a Terra-like planet near Alpha Centauri if this planet observed Christmas at the equinox. That thought is just about that topic. It is not a recollection (though it refers to recollections of knowledge about Terra, the star, Christmas, equinoxes...). It predicts nothing. Or to be more accurate, there is nothing about its "aboutness" that relies on any prediction or recollection.
Physical mechanisms are quite capable of implementing recognition and recollection, in fact the brain happens to be full of auto-associative neural nets that do precisely this.
The brain demonstrably is associated with recollection and recognition. No dispute there. But there is always something else, besides those circuits, that is actually doing the recognizing and recollecting, something that captures those experiences and places them into the experience that says "I" recollect or "I" recognize. No credible physical explanation for that has come forth, to my knowledge.
So I don't think you've done anything at all like successfully showing that a physical thing can be about another physical thing. And this is just wrong here:
You could say that the AfR is a sort of argument for a "metaphysics of the gaps" between things not yet explained by naturalism.
First, if you think that someday some physical explanation for the experience of "I think..." is forthcoming, you are also practicing an "of the gaps" metaphysics. You are trusting the gap will be filled by your answer rather than mine.
But more importantly, this aboutness problem is not a scientific problem, it's a philosophical one; and it's not about "not yet explained," it's about "cannot be explained in principle." This is because in principle it remains impossible for a physical thing to be about another physical thing.
You correctly said (correctly, that is, given my insertions here):
Your position (and the function of the AfR [in its form as we're discussing it here]) is to show that it is impossible for naturalistic systems to provide aboutness (among other things). However, the AfR [in its form being discussed here] relies on your implicit axiom that aboutness is basic...
I think it is quite properly basic (in the epistemological sense), and your attempted counter-examples here miss the mark by being about something else--they are about accuracy rather than aboutness.
DL
You wrote:
>>My thoughts about walking in the rain are not about algebra because the thoughts don't predict experiences or recollections of performing algebraic computations.
DL
You wrote:
"My thoughts about walking in the rain are not about algebra because the thoughts don't predict experiences or recollections of performing algebraic computations."
That argument can be persuasive only if you know that it is about intentionality ('aboutness') and not about something else. You could form an argument from a predictive relationship in order to know that the argument itself is about intentionality, but then how would you know that that new argument was about your intentionality argument? And so on. At some point you must 'just know' what your argument is about or else face infinite regress.
Tom,
The current question is not whether you accurately know X, but whether your thoughts are about X.I'm not saying that aboutness is the same as accurately knowing. Knowing suggests knowing regularities beyond recognition. I'm saying that aboutness is the same as recognizability.
If you experienced a distinctive phenomenon (which might involve any combination of senses and emotions), you could only think "about" that phenomenon if you could recognize that phenomenon.
In your example of a planet around Alpha Centauri, the thing that makes your thought about that planet is the fact that, if you saw such a planet, you would say "ah, that's what I was thinking about!"
If you were to think of that planet, see it, and not be able to recognize that your thought about the planet correlated with its observation, you would have great difficulty justifying the claim that you had thought about it.
Aboutness remains a matter of direct, incorrigible knowledge.I don't think you have shown this. I have another point to make, in my next comment to Darek.
Darek,
I think that's a rather pretty argument, but I do think it is flawed.
By your reasoning, one could say that we cannot know the laws of thought or rationality. For example, if you take your argument as valid, we would be rationally incapable of saying that logic was required for rationality, or that the axioms of geometry were required for the Pythagorean theorem.
The way we know that logic is required for rationality is by seeing that breaking consistency breaks intuitive rationality. We see that geometry breaks if we deny its axioms. In the same way, we see that aboutness breaks if you give up recognizability.
(And I would say that meaning breaks when you give up prediction because you can't claim to know what a set of symbols mean when you cannot say what states of affairs are more or less likely as a consequence of its truth.)
DL
Please note, I was drawing out an implication of your reasoning. You were the one who gave a means of determing "aboutness" that requires intuitive recognition of aboutness in order to get off the ground.
In your response to Tom you say:
"I'm saying that aboutness is the same as recognizability."
Then, in response to me you say:
"In the same way, we see that aboutness breaks if you give up recognizability."
So, are you identifying aboutness with recognizability or making it dependent upon recongizability? In either case, aren't you making recognizablity incorrigible or properly basic? If not, isn't "seeing" that consistency cannot be broken incorrigible? You cannot keep backing up forever.
BTW, mustn't you know what symbols mean before predictive verification is possible? You can't make an observation and then claim, "Ah, now I know what those symbols meant--they must have predicted exactly what I have observed!"
Darek,
So, are you identifying aboutness with recognizability or making it dependent upon recognizability?I'm saying it's one of the two. Personally, I suspect it is recognizability, but that our experience of recognizability is non-linear. That is, we not only recognize, but recognize that we recognize, and recognize that we recognize that we recognize.
In either case, aren't you making recognizability incorrigible or properly basic?In a sense, yes, but there are important differences in our views about basicness, incorrigibility and physical implementation.
What is basicness? Basicness in this context means that we must assume that we possess a certain mental capacity sufficiently to reach conclusions. For example, we assume we are sufficiently rational to correctly reason to conclusions (at least statistically, given enough attempts). A person can reason to a conclusion, but a second analysis may reveal an error, and a triple check will confirm or refute the error, and so on. All that we require is that we can converge on correct conclusions. That's not what I would call incorrigible.
I think the same applies to aboutness. We assume that our thoughts are "about" things, and mostly they will be. If we had a thought about something that was incorrect because it lacked aboutness, we might not be made aware of the error, or we might ascribe the error to some other faculty. So I don't really see aboutness as necessitating incorrigibility, even if it demands statistical basicness.
Finally, there are known mechanistic implementations of recognizability. Matter can recognize matter.
BTW, mustn't you know what symbols mean before predictive verification is possible? You can't make an observation and then claim, "Ah, now I know what those symbols meant--they must have predicted exactly what I have observed!"Yes. Although we learn symbols by making theories about their meaning in the way you describe, and testing those theories with more evidence. Sorry if I'm missing a deeper point you are trying to make with this aside.
Man, I hate getting so far behind!
Back to the question I raised a week or so about how we evolved cognitive overkill--well, it's subject to considerable debate, that we're probably not qualified to settle here. It's unclear how much "overkill" is so much that it's not credible under evolution; and it's unclear how much transfer of abilities there is between survival-useful cognitions like modeling the path of a stone through the air, and survival-irrelevant cognitions like complex mathematics. (I'm of course referring to survival under the cognitions in which we supposedly evolved.) I don't think we're going to resolve those things here. I think they're still good questions, but I'll grant that I haven't proved anything by them.
The question of "aboutness" is still very much alive, and so is the question of agency. I'm going to go back a few days to doctor(logic) at 1:07 am, 08.23.07.:
What makes you think that proper thought is divorced from cause? The opposite is true. Suppose I give you two numbers, and expect you to give me the sum. Is your answer divorced from the two numbers I give you? Divorced from the conventions of mathematics and numerals? If anything, the degree to which your answer deviates from these causes is the degree to which you get the answer wrong.
You're stating the problem by your answer. It almost sounds like you're saying my thoughts are caused by your question; as if agency lies somewhere external to my own thinking. This is a microcosm of a much bigger problem, which is that there is nothing controlling or determining my thinking, if you are correct, other than the law-based or chance interactions of the atoms in my brain. These atoms are not intelligent; and no complexity of arrangement of these atoms can be, either; for no matter how many there are, they can only do what law and chance require them to do.
You abdicate yourself to your parts.
That's the agency problem in a tiny nutshell. On the "aboutness" (or intentionality) problem, dl, you really didn't catch the point from Pascal that followed, as it was quoted to us by J. Clark at 1:11 pm that day. This was decidedly not an argument from personal incredulity. It's a mistake that's often made also in discussions of ID: an argument is made that X is impossible, and strong reasons for that are given; and the rejoinder is made, "your problem is that you can't think of a way for X." No, the problem is that X is impossible for the reasons given. "Can you think of a way to add two even integers in ordinary arithmetic and get an odd sum? Ah--you just can't think of a way. But surely there could be one, somewhere!"
Then, doctor(logic), you try to get us to believe that all thought is validated by its being predictive in one way or another. My first reaction is, wow, that's really round-about. It's really strained. It seems to me I know what my thoughts are about just by knowing what they're about! They don't have to result in any behavior, any result at all, in order for me to have confidence in their aboutness or their referents. You say,
The basicness [of aboutness] on which the AfR relies is just an unquestioned assumption on your part.
No, it's a solid result of observation, as well as a conclusion based on the logical impossibility of aboutness between just physical objects.
Your answer to me this morning at 10:07 doesn't have much connection to your previous argument, which I was responding to. You turned from a discussion that was clearly about the accuracy of one's thoughts, to saying aboutness is about recognizability.
If you experienced a distinctive phenomenon (which might involve any combination of senses and emotions), you could only think "about" that phenomenon if you could recognize that phenomenon.
Recognizability is probably important for the sake of naming or understanding what we are thinking about, but "aboutness" is not identical to naming or understanding.
Darek's infinite regress argument seems pretty strong to me. The infinite regress you accuse him of simply does not exist if you can take some thoughts, some knowledge, as properly basic. If not, then you have the regress. Your argument is certainly subject to that regress; his is not.
The way we know that logic is required for rationality is by seeing that breaking consistency breaks intuitive rationality.
There's also a sense in which we just "see" some things as true. Plantinga writes that we can just see, it is self-evident, that "If all cats are animals, and Maynard is a cat, then Maynard is an animal." It's self-evident in the sense that to understand the sentence is to agree with it; one cannot understand it without giving it assent. It is properly basic, incorrigible, and especially, not depending on any predictive power in it.
I think I'm trying to say what Darek said at 3:17; and he probably said it better. And then you made our point for us--infinite regress:
I'm saying it's one of the two. Personally, I suspect it is recognizability, but that our experience of recognizability is non-linear. That is, we not only recognize, but recognize that we recognize, and recognize that we recognize that we recognize.
You have a very non-standard definition of basicness, and I wonder if that's part of our problem:
Basicness in this context means that we must assume that we possess a certain mental capacity sufficiently to reach conclusions. For example, we assume we are sufficiently rational to correctly reason to conclusions (at least statistically, given enough attempts).
If "basicness" involves assumptions like these, and statistical reasoning, it's not "basicness" in any sense I've heard it used!
Finally, there are known mechanistic implementations of recognizability. Matter can recognize matter.
No, it can only react to matter in a completely non-cognitive sense. I refer you way back to Deuce's early comments and the following comments.
Tom,
It seems to me I know what my thoughts are about just by knowing what they're about! They don't have to result in any behavior, any result at all, in order for me to have confidence in their aboutness or their referents.
This relates to what Victor Stenger talked about in that radio program I told you about. When asked how a person could know they are feeling perturbed, rather than quizzical, Stenger said the person can't know for sure until their first-person knowledge is verified by empirical observation - meaning charts, graphs, MRI's, etc. First person knowledge takes a back seat to empirical observation.
Scientism --- yuck.
SteveK:
Exactly. This sort of muddled thinking on DL’s part is a result of his implicit Idealism… animated partially by his yucky (indeed!) scientism. (What a rhetorical trick, by the way, shared with Ron: spout scientism while hiding behind real science and claiming others (who don’t agree with their personal opinions) attack science. What self-serving balderdash!)
Recall: DL is the one stuck inside his mind by claiming the ONLY thing we can know are the thoughts/patterns in our minds, and that we cannot know the real objects in the outside world. He tries to duck this by asserting we DO know objects in the extramental world because our “brain states” are “associated” with them. Really? On what possible basis can they be “associated” if the ONLY thing we know are the ideas/patterns in our minds? Association, after all, is based on two or more parties playing by the same epistemic rules. If all DL claims we know are ideas/patterns, then he’s trying pull a fast one. For all his positivist dependence on empirical data, DL (and Stenger) are empirical data’s worst enemies… and round and round the little wheel the hamster goes.
DL’s implicit philosophical Idealism is at the heart of his many misunderstandings of the world around him (including his contempt for faith, by the way). If the idea/pattern is the ONLY thing we can know, then we can easily understand DL’s infatuation with trying to mathematicize everything: to him, it’s the symbol—not the thing represented by the symbol—that’s important. In other words, it’s the media and not the message that matters—in fact, the media IS the message for DL. It’s confusing the map which describes the territory for the territory itself.
(It’s also the same problem Paul faces: he wants materialism to be exclusively true (“ideas ARE neurons”) but can’t produce a reasonable argument to connect material entities to ideas that represent them because he doesn’t know what an idea is in the first place—hence the illicit mixing of ontological kinds producing a reductionist view of the world.)
DL’s problem is the oldest one in the book of Idealism: he tends to assign a real object a symbolic value while proceeding to forget that it’s first a natural thing and only afterward can it be a symbol in his mind: in his own words, ideas/patterns become solely that which we know rather than those things by which we know things. As Harris, Stenger, Dawkins, Dennett, etc. fail on basic philosophical distinctions, DL barely squeezes out a D–.
That’s why you guys sense the deeply unconvincing character (predictability applied fully and to all things is only one gravely incorrect misunderstanding) of what he proposes… over and over and over as if repeating it enough will make it true. Thank you, DL, for bringing to light exactly why atheism and your personal philosophies are so unconvincing… and in many cases so deadly.
DL
You wrote:
"If we had a thought about something that was incorrect because it lacked aboutness, we might not be made aware of the error, or we might ascribe the error to some other faculty."
Say that you experience yourself to be thinking about X at the present moment. Could a scientist that is (unbeknownst to you) monitoring your brain introduce himself and present persuasive evidence that you are actually thinking about Y? And if he did, would he be using the words "thinking about" in the way we normally take them? Could he convince you that what you experience yourself to be thinking about is not actually what you experience yourself to be thinking about?
Things like beliefs and their characteristics, such as intentionality, certainly seem to be things we examine through introspection rather than inspection.
Say I hold a coin in my hand. Simultaneously I hold a belief in my mind about the coin that is in my hand. How do I know about the coin? I see it and feel it because it has opacity, size and mass. How do I know about the belief? I can't see my belief or feel it the way I do the coin, nor do I physically see characteristics of the belief such as what it is about.
Doesn't a difference in the way we know a thing indicate something about the nature of the thing and the nature of our relation to that thing? If we know a coin--or a the tinkle of a bell or the temperature of the room we are in--through the senses but know what we believe or what we are thinking about apart from sensory contact, doesn't that indicate a fundamental difference in the nature of the thing known in either case?
BTW, Victor has just put up a post on intentionality on DI2 which is worth a look. Perhaps we'll bump into each other over there . . .
I think this is probably the Victor Reppert/DI2 link Darek was talking about.
Tom,
This is a microcosm of a much bigger problem, which is that there is nothing controlling or determining my thinking, if you are correct, other than the law-based or chance interactions of the atoms in my brain. These atoms are not intelligent; and no complexity of arrangement of these atoms can be, either; for no matter how many there are, they can only do what law and chance require them to do.You're just stating your denial of the possibility, not proving it. Your claim is that law and chance cannot yield control and determination of thought. That claim is only underwritten by your intuition.
I've asked this same question numerous times and never obtained a satisfactory answer. If I add two numbers to get a sum, where's my free will in coming up with an answer? Surely, the correct conclusion is only guaranteed by causal connections. It's not guaranteed by my ability to choose to get the wrong answer.
And if the will is involved in the prior decision to try to seek the consistent and correct answer, then what is the value in free will of the variety you describe?
You have admitted in the past that if the world is deterministic, we would not know the difference, so how can you possibly have proof for your side of the argument?
No, the problem is that X is impossible for the reasons given. "Can you think of a way to add two even integers in ordinary arithmetic and get an odd sum? Ah--you just can't think of a way. But surely there could be one, somewhere!"The example you give can be shown using a deductive proof (using mathematical induction). That's the kind of proof that would be convincing. Unfortunately, you don't have anything like that.
What you have here is a case in which human minds are (perhaps) the only things that have aboutness. You are saying that if human minds are physical, then there is something unique (and as yet unknown) about human brains that makes them different from other physical systems (to which we would not ascribe the property of aboutness). Sure. But that's not a proof that they are not exceptional physical machines.
In fact, now that I think about it, the argument has no bias in your favor at all because there are no supernatural systems to be found. All we have is hearsay that supernatural systems exist. So claiming that minds are non-physical would be to claim that minds are unique examples of the supernatural in the world. That's at least as strong as your argument.
No, it's a solid result of observation, as well as a conclusion based on the logical impossibility of aboutness between just physical objects.Again, it's time to redeem this promise. Where is the logical impossibility? Where is the proof? I don't see it anywhere.
I think I'm trying to say what Darek said at 3:17; and he probably said it better. And then you made our point for us--infinite regress:I think you missed an analogy here. My nonlinear product here is analogous to an infinite series in mathematics. Just because we can create infinite series in maths does not mean that mathemetics is flawed with infinite regress. A mathematical system has axioms that are basic, but that does not prohibit infinite constructions.
I'm saying it's one of the two. Personally, I suspect it is recognizability, but that our experience of recognizability is non-linear. That is, we not only recognize, but recognize that we recognize, and recognize that we recognize that we recognize.
BTW, you mentioned that I accused Darek of an infinite regress. I don't see where I did that.
Finally, there are known mechanistic implementations of recognizability. Matter can recognize matter.Deuce's comment gives an example of a simplistic physical system that we all agree is inadequate for general consciousness, rationality, generalization, etc., then Deuce claims without proof that no additional complexity will result in those things. That's not a proof. That's an assertion.
No, it can only react to matter in a completely non-cognitive sense. I refer you way back to Deuce's early comments and the following comments.
You guys are the ones making the strong claims, but you're citing simplistic examples or our lack of detailed models. That sort of support is not airtight, and totally inadequate to make your strong claims.
This whole attack on the capability of the brain to be able to produce rational behavior seems to me to rest on the assumption that the thing causing such behavior must itself be rational.
Would someone here please care to present an argument that could convince a skeptic like me to accept such an assumption?
Darek,
Say that you experience yourself to be thinking about X at the present moment. Could a scientist that is (unbeknownst to you) monitoring your brain introduce himself and present persuasive evidence that you are actually thinking about Y?I think so. I think it is very unlikely to occur when we think about simple objects we perceive with our five senses. For example, it would be difficult to experience oneself thinking about an apple when one is really thinking about a banana.
However, abstractions give far more opportunities for this sort of error. I gave an example earlier in the thread. I can think of X, then think of Y, then think of a property of X (I'll refer to as Z), and mistakenly experience the feeling that my thought of Z was about Y instead of X.
You could ascribe such an error to some other system, e.g., rationality. You could say that I went from "X, Y, X has property Z, therefore Y has property Z," which is an error of logical inference. However, we're not using such detailed syllogisms when we make these kinds of errors, so it's far from clear that aboutness is incorrigible and reasoning is not (or vice versa).
Say I hold a coin in my hand. Simultaneously I hold a belief in my mind about the coin that is in my hand. How do I know about the coin? I see it and feel it because it has opacity, size and mass. How do I know about the belief? I can't see my belief or feel it the way I do the coin, nor do I physically see characteristics of the belief such as what it is about.No, not to the extent that you demand. I think it's a strange demand to make that the test of physicalism be that a concept register on our physical senses.
Doesn't a difference in the way we know a thing indicate something about the nature of the thing and the nature of our relation to that thing?
The same sorts of networks that look at external sensation can also look at processes occurring within a brain. When employed in the latter fashion, there's no requirement that such networks also correlate with spacial location. There's no requirement that such "virtual sensation" of beliefs feel like a belief is in one part of my brain or another. In fact, we know that the brain does not do this. The dualists here happy to admit that memory is physical, but we don't have any sense of where in our brains particular memories are stored. So if the rest of mind is also physical, why should those functions result in the experience of beliefs being located in a particular place in our brain?
Randy,
That's an excellent point. There's a demand from the theists that any system that is rational (or about things) be made out of stuff that is rational or about things. It's no different from demanding that a digestive system be ultimately made out of things which digest.
doctor(logic>,
"You're just stating your denial of the possibility, not proving it. Your claim is that law and chance cannot yield control and determination of thought. That claim is only underwritten by your intuition."
I'm not going to take the time to restate all the arguments. I'd like for you to at least be reminded that the claim is not only underwritten by intuition. We've been over this on several discussion threads, and there has been far more to it than intuition every time; and if you haven't recognized it so far I despair of trying to help you see it one more time.
But I guess I have to do some of it one more time.
I've asked this same question numerous times and never obtained a satisfactory answer. If I add two numbers to get a sum, where's my free will in coming up with an answer? Surely, the correct conclusion is only guaranteed by causal connections.
This "causal connection" thing is only underwritten by your own intuitions. Everyone else (well, not everyone, but a lot of people) would say it's a matter of simple seeing, or understanding. It's not a matter of causal connections but of rational connections. There's no good reason to equate the two.
And as I have stated before, the more mechanistically a thought or opinion is caused (as C.S. Lewis pointed out) the less we tend to trust its rationality. If we see, for example, that your beliefs about elephants in the room are chemically caused by alcohol, we tend to discount it. If your belief that the Spanish Inquisition is after you is caused by a lesion in your brain, we tend not to believe it. In fact, if you believe that you are married, and we find a lesion in your brain, we'll probably decide to check the documents.
Lewis distinguished the "because" of mechanical causation from the "because" of rational grounding. They really ought not be equated, for they are not at all the same. Rational grounding involves non-physical entities--propositions at least, and their logical relations. Tying them to physical necessity or chance just removes them from their proper realm.
You have admitted in the past that if the world is deterministic, we would not know the difference, so how can you possibly have proof for your side of the argument?
I don't think I admitted quite that. Yes, it's conceivable that the world is deterministic, and that we are mechanically caused to believe that we have rationality. But if that is the case, then we are wrong. We are mechanically caused to believe a falsehood. Given that we do have the intuition or sensation of being rationality, there are, it seems to me, two possibilities: we are mechanistically determined in our brains, and our intuition of rationality is wrong; or, we are not mechanistically determined in our brains, and our intuition of rationality might be right.
Given our experience of rationality, a non-deterministic, non-chance explanation fits the facts far better.
Now, from this point, please at least do not say that my claim is only underwritten by intuition. Yes, my intuition of being (at least somewhat!) rational is part of the argument, but there is far more behind it than that.
So claiming that minds are non-physical would be to claim that minds are unique examples of the supernatural in the world.
That's true in a sense. They are examples of something not just natural. "Supernatural" has connotations that don't fit, but "not just natural" does fit.
You said you did not accuse Darek of infinite regress. You didn't use those words, but I thought that was what you were saying yesterday at 10:26 with this:
By your reasoning, one could say that we cannot know the laws of thought or rationality. For example, if you take your argument as valid, we would be rationally incapable of saying that logic was required for rationality, or that the axioms of geometry were required for the Pythagorean theorem.
The only way that made sense to me was to take it that you were turning his infinite regress argument back around at him, which, as I said, did not work. Maybe that wasn't what you were trying to say.
I'll come back here tomorrow with more information on the problem of aboutness between strictly physical systems.
Randy,
This whole attack on the capability of the brain to be able to produce rational behavior seems to me to rest on the assumption that the thing causing such behavior must itself be rational.
Not exactly that. It rests on the conviction that the thing causing such behavior must not be blind, random, and/or mechanistic. If the cause of the behavior is blind, random, and/or mechanistic, then where does rationality have room to enter?
Tom,
"Not exactly that. It rests on the conviction that the thing causing such behavior must not be blind, random, and/or mechanistic."
You are just repeating the very assumption I'm questioning.
" If the cause of the behavior is blind, random, and/or mechanistic, then where does rationality have room to enter?"
And aksing me a question is not a logical argument that is going to convince me that the thing that produces rational behavior has to itself be rational.
Tom,
And as I have stated before, the more mechanistically a thought or opinion is caused (as C.S. Lewis pointed out) the less we tend to trust its rationality.This is a canard. It's a shame that Lewis gets so much respect for such an awful argument.
All you are showing is that when a deterministic path to a conclusion is dominated by irrelevancy, we don't trust the conclusion. What does that have to do with deterministic paths dominated by relevancy?
That is, the brain lesions and alcohol that you cite as reasons to doubt a conclusion are clearly elements that interfere with normal functioning of the brain (and mind, curiously!). There is simply no test whatsoever of mechanistic versus non-mechanistic systems in this argument.
I'll prove it. Satan is known to be able to pervert human minds and possess them. Satan is supernatural and non-material. When human minds are under the influence of Satan, we tend not to trust their conclusions. Therefore, any mind that is operating through supernatural means cannot be trusted to reach the correct conclusions. (Incorrect)
The obvious response to this is that maybe there are some constellations of supernatural forces that result in proper thinking. IOW, it is not valid to infer that, since some forces in that category result in improper thinking, all forces in that category do so. The Satan argument isn't sensitive to the material/non-material causation issue.
Lewis distinguished the "because" of mechanical causation from the "because" of rational grounding.We've talked about rational grounding in the past and gotten nowhere. My questions still go unanswered.
Either the mind causally explores the timeless syllogisms in a timelike fashion, or else the syllogisms act instantaneously on our minds in a causal fashion. I fail to see how you will escape the simple logic of causality no matter how you do it.
They really ought not be equated, for they are not at all the same. Rational grounding involves non-physical entities--propositions at least, and their logical relations. Tying them to physical necessity or chance just removes them from their proper realm.This is not a matter of making thoughts a priori physical. It is a matter of making thoughts a priori time dependent.
I have a thought at a specific time. I don't process a syllogism instantaneously. I process premises at times T, T+1, T+2 and so on.
Logically, for anything that happens at time T, I can ask whether the event depends on the past. I don't care whether the event is physical or part of the spirit world, it still makes sense to ask the question.
Yes, it's conceivable that the world is deterministic, and that we are mechanically caused to believe that we have rationality. But if that is the case, then we are wrong. We are mechanically caused to believe a falsehood. Given that we do have the intuition or sensation of being rationality, there are, it seems to me, two possibilities: we are mechanistically determined in our brains, and our intuition of rationality is wrong; or, we are not mechanistically determined in our brains, and our intuition of rationality might be right.Where does this come from? Is it dogma? Intuition? Is it Lewis's argument about physical causes?
The vast majority of naturalists agree that we are rational, and see no conflict between determinism and rationality. I certainly see no problem with it as my argument about Satan illustrates.
Given our experience of rationality, a non-deterministic, non-chance explanation fits the facts far better.Let's try to settle this issue one more time.
An event is an interaction or process that takes place at time T. The event is deterministic if the outcome of the event depends on timeless constants (things outside of time) or events prior to T.
If the event is not deterministic, it does not depend on events prior. It cannot depend on events in the future unless the future already exists (which just reverses the sense of causality). Therefore, the outcome of the event depends on NOTHING. We have exhausted all of the possibilities. It doesn't depend on anything inside time (the past or future) nor anything outside of time. You cannot get any more fundamentally "chance" or random than that. This analysis is logically airtight.
Randy,
"Not exactly that. It rests on the conviction that the thing causing such behavior must not be blind, random, and/or mechanistic."
You are just repeating the very assumption I'm questioning.
I wasn't trying to just repeat the assumption in question. I was stating it in a different way, and the difference makes a difference, I think. You had said,
This whole attack on the capability of the brain to be able to produce rational behavior seems to me to rest on the assumption that the thing causing such behavior must itself be rational.
That's a positive statement about "the thing causing such behavior," a commitment to some clear identity and property of the "thing." My response was more modest, a negative statement, that the "thing" not be blind, random, and/or mechanistic. It's a fine point, and if it seems to be of no consequence to you, I don't need to dispute that opinion. What matters more is the second part, about which you wrote,
" If the cause of the behavior is blind, random, and/or mechanistic, then where does rationality have room to enter?"
And aksing me a question is not a logical argument that is going to convince me that the thing that produces rational behavior has to itself be rational.
Well, asking questions is a philosophical technique that goes back at least to Socrates, and can be part of a logical argument. I could have said, "If the cause of the behavior is blind, random, and/or mechanistic, there is no room for rationality to enter." But I've already said something like that in different ways, and I've presented some arguments. I'll present more. But I want to know what you think about it. How can rationality enter into a process that is foundationally blind, random, and/or mechanistic? It's a genuine question for you, not a rhetorical trick.
DL
You wrote:
"No, not to the extent that you demand."
Alright. But to some extent. Let's say we agree that there are things that we can perceive apart from the senses or scientific instruments and that these things must have some property that allows them to be so perceived.
Fair enough?
And you wrote:
"The same sorts of networks that look at external sensation can also look at processes occurring within a brain."
But you cannot "look" at neurotransmitter uptake in your brain by thinking, can you, even though uptake is a process? Or change of electrical potential in the cortex. But you could in principle detect those things with scientific instruments, right? Are we agreed to that point?
doctor(logic),
"This is a canard. It's a shame that Lewis gets so much respect for such an awful argument."
What's a canard? Wait, wait, I know the answer--and I see a mighty fine example right there in that quote.
"All you are showing is that when a deterministic path to a conclusion is dominated by irrelevancy, we don't trust the conclusion. What does that have to do with deterministic paths dominated by relevancy?
That is, the brain lesions and alcohol that you cite as reasons to doubt a conclusion are clearly elements that interfere with normal functioning of the brain (and mind, curiously!). There is simply no test whatsoever of mechanistic versus non-mechanistic systems in this argument."
I think you're right--with the ellipsis I'm going to add--that I was saying "that when a ... path to a conclusion is dominated by irrelevancy, we don't trust the conclusion." The statement would also be true with the word "deterministic" included; but in this form it is more general and therefore I think it's more useful.
So if a path to a conclusion is dominated by irrelevancy, we don't trust the conclusion. Now the question is whether a mechanistic path can avoid being dominated by irrelevancy. If not, then we have to conclude that mechanistic explanations are inadequate for rationality. (By "mechanistic" here, I include both random and law-determined physical events.) The question is the same one I just asked Randy again. We know:
P: At the foundational, atomic or molecular level (under physicalism) the physical brain operates without regard to rationality.
Chemicals combine on the basis of laws of chemical reactions. Electrical events happen according to laws of electrical behavior. Quantum events happen however they happen, with no regard to any rationality.
At the molecular level, there is no regard for, no connection to, propositions in particular. Now, propositions are bearers of truth. (The following is largely from Moreland and Craig's text on Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview. The section I'm quoting is not peculiarly Christian--it's a general exposition of the correspondence theory of truth. This comment is directed toward doctor(logic) who accepts the correspondence theory of truth, so it is not my intention to debate that theory here.) If you are going to accept a correspondence theory of truth, you need a truth-bearer, that which carries the truth: propositions, in other words. Propositions are not identical to sentences or statements. Sentences or statements differ from propositions in that they are sense-perceptible markings, tokens, strings of sounds, gestures, etc. The general problem with sentences or statements as truth-bearers is that they may or may not contain meaning. When they do not contain meaning, they cannot be truth-bearers. When they do contain meaning, they are always expressions of proposition--which leads us back to propositions as truth-bearers.
Thoughts and beliefs are also not truth-bearers; yet again, it is their content, not their momentary instantiations, that carries truth. This leads us again back to propositions, which are the content of thoughts and beliefs.
Now, looking further into a correspondence theory of truth, there also must be a truth-maker--a state of affairs such that the truth-bearer (the proposition) expresses a true fact about that state of affairs. If the proposition is the one expressed in, "Grass is green," then its truth depends on there being a state of affairs such that grass actually is green. Grass's being green (having the property of greenness) is the truth-maker for the proposition expressed in "grass is green." (Obviously there can be falsehood-makers as well. Grass's being a plant is a falsehood-maker to the proposition expressed in, "Grass is a species of animal." But for simplicity I'll just speak of truth-bearers and truth-makers, and let the reader draw the conclusions relating to other possible conditions.)
But that's not all. The correspondence theory of truth requires that there be a truth-bearer, a truth-maker, and also a correspondence relation between them. That relation depends on propositions having "aboutness," which we've been discussing, or "ofness" or "intentionality," (which is the more technical term, but I'm going to stick with "aboutness" anyway here). Moreland and Craig say (p. 136),
The intentionality of a proposition is a natural affinity or intrinsic directedness towards its intentional object., i.e., the specific state of affairs it picks out. Thus truth-makers make truth-bearers true, not in the sense that the former stand in an efficient causal relation with the latter and cause them to be true. Rather, the truth-bearer, the proposition, picks out a specific state of affairs due to the proposition's intrinsic intentionality, and that specific state of affairs "makes" the proposition true just in case it actually is the way the proposition represents it to be.
Propositions are not physical. Sentences and statements, identified as the expression of propositions, may be. Print out this comment and you'll have a page of physical sentences, but the propositions expressed by them are not physical. That is the common view, at any rate. Propositions are not physical because they are not located in space (the same proposition can exist in more than one mind at the same time); they are not located in time (the proposition expressed by "all cats are mammals" is true now in the same way it was true a thousand years ago); it need not be grasped by any (finite) person to exist (the proposition expressed by, "AC circuits can by analyzed through complex number mathematics" was true long before AC circuits or complex number mathematics were discovered). These properties of propositions are not seriously in dispute among people who hold to a correspondence theory of truth.
So let's leave Moreland and Craig behind, and backtrack to where we were before, bearing in mind that we have now identified propositions as truth-bearers, and states of affairs as truth-makers. We can now restate an earlier point and say that
P1: At the foundational, atomic or molecular level (under physicalism) the physical brain operates without regard to truth-bearers.
It follows that at that micro level, the physical brain operates without regard for truth. Physical reactions--mechanistic or random--just are not about truth. They have no propositional characteristics at all. They display law-like consistency, but do not let that mislead you into thinking of "true" in the wrong sense. They may be trustworthy, reliable, dependable, consistent--but those properties are analogues of a different sense of the word "true." They do not relate to rational truth or logical truth, the kind of truth that obtains when a proposition stands in a correspondence relation to a truth-maker.
Whence, then, under physicalism, does a physical event find its connection to truth, or to any proposition at all? We know that thoughts can express propositions, but the physical events that are equated with thoughts (under your version of physicalism) do not seem to admit propositions into their picture.
I'll explain that assertion: You have earlier said that you believe that thoughts just are physical conditions and processes in the brain. That was your response to a question I asked: whether you think thoughts are epiphenomal ("riders" or "passengers" on the events in the brain), or whether thoughts just are events in the brain. (There are other physicalist options, but you have stated your adherence to one option already so we need not explore those.)
Brain events are composed of a hierarchical series of law and chance relations. Law and chance seem to be the only things operating to produce brain events (matter is involved, of course, but without law and chance it is inert; and I'm sure you would not suggest inert matter as your candidate for producing the relevant brain events). Law and chance, then seem to be the only things operating to produce thoughts. But law and chance have no regard for propositions, as I've shown above. If the only things operating to produce thoughts, from the micro level on up to the macro level, are things that have no regard for (no connection to) propositions, then there is no way for thoughts to have any connection to propositions.
Or do you suggest that there is something at the level of thought, at the macro level, that could overrule physical law and quantum chance events? And do you suggest that there is something in some proposed propositional content of macro-level brain events that could overrule law and chance? How could it do that? It seems that the propositional content of thoughts, if such a thing could exist under your physicalism, would be causally effete, ineffective, in the face of the inexorable, unstoppable, undirected operation of law and chance. So you could never say that one thought leads to another, except in the sense that one thought and the next are causally linked by law and chance, which have no concern for propositions or for truth. Let me shorten that last sentence for clarity: You could never say that one thought leads to another except by processes that have no concern for propositions or truth.
(Now, for the first time ever, I've overrun HaloScan's length limit. Sheesh! If you're still with me, hang on. I'll pick this up immediately in another comment.)
(Continued from the 11:21 am comment)
So I would propose:
P2: At the macro level, under physicalism, the physical brain operates without connection to truth-bearers, unless some truth-bearing capacity is introduced from a non-physical source.
And since you equate thought to physical brain events, P3 follows:
P3: At the macro level, thought has no connection to truth-bearers, unless some truth-bearing capacity is introduced from a non-physical source.
P4 also follows:
P4: Thought has no connection to truth.
One might propose that the non-physical source of P2 and P3 is something cast up out of just physical conditions--complexity, perhaps. It behooves the person proposing that possibility to show how complex interactions taking place just through law and chance can find a connection to propositions. Remember, law and chance are the only processes operating at every level of the brain. Therefore your physicalism seems to be a commitment to the belief that law and chance can find a connection to propositions. How? Law and chance just have no way to be truth-bearers, at any level of complexity. This is not a failure of imagination ("I can't quite see how law and chance could be truth-bearers or have any meaningful connection to truth-bearers"). It's not in their nature; it's impossible in principle.
doctor(logic), you have often used the word "magical" as a pejorative toward dualistic or supernaturalistic explanations. I'm wondering whether it fits better here. Somewhere in the hierarchy of law and chance, something magical happens to the brain that permits its events to be truth-bearers. What is that something? How does truth-bearing enter in?
Tom,
"That's a positive statement about "the thing causing such behavior," a commitment to some clear identity and property of the "thing." My response was more modest, a negative statement, that the "thing" not be blind, random, and/or mechanistic. It's a fine point, and if it seems to be of no consequence to you, I don't need to dispute that opinion. What matters more is the second part, about which you wrote,"
I think then that I need simply rephrase my statement:
This whole attack on the capability of the brain to be able to produce rational behavior seems to me to rest on the assumption that the thing causing such behavior must not itself be non-rational.
"" If the cause of the behavior is blind, random, and/or mechanistic, then where does rationality have room to enter?"
Randy: And aksing me a question is not a logical argument that is going to convince me that the thing that produces rational behavior has to itself be rational.
Tom: Well, asking questions is a philosophical technique that goes back at least to Socrates, and can be part of a logical argument. I could have said, "If the cause of the behavior is blind, random, and/or mechanistic, there is no room for rationality to enter." But I've already said something like that in different ways, and I've presented some arguments. I'll present more. But I want to know what you think about it. How can rationality enter into a process that is foundationally blind, random, and/or mechanistic? It's a genuine question for you, not a rhetorical trick."
I didn't think you were pulling a rheorical trick. I think what is happening here is that you are making an assumption that needs to be established by logical argument.
You see, I'm not saying that I know how something that is non-rational can produce rational behavior. I'm saying I see no logical reason for assuming that it can't. In other words, it doesn't appear to me to be at all abvious that something non-rational cannot be responsible for rational behavior.
I think you need to provide a logical argument if you are going to establish a principle that makes it logically impossible for something that is non-rational to produce rational behavior.
Tom,
You could never say that one thought leads to another except by processes that have no concern for propositions or truth.
This sums up your point nicely, Tom. You went to extraordinary lengths to get there and I appreciate it.
By the way, Tom, your above reply to doctor(logic) seems to rest on the same assumption.
Can you make a logical argument showing that whatever it is that produces rational behavior cannot itself be non-rational. I'm looking for something clear here that doesn't cloud the issue by trying to define the nature of chemical or physical laws. Or how one defines truth. Or whatever.
You should be able to lay out in an abstract manner what logical principle would be violated if "something" non-rational produced "something" rational.
Tom:
Let’s say I do the following:
(1) I print out in black ink and 12-point Arial the word “atheist” on a white sheet of paper;
(2) I arrange irregularly-shaped & different classes of rocks of average 5-cm diameter to form the word “atheist” (with each letter averaging 50-cm in height) on a sandy beach;
(3) I lay the piece of paper with the printed word “atheist” next to the arrangement of stones “atheist.”
Mathematically speaking (meaning: I’m only paying attention to size and position of the constituent parts of the two words), the multi-colored, irregularly-shaped, ~5-kg arrangement of the stones is far more complex than the arrangements of black pigments on the printed page. Fair enough.
Question: which of the words has more meaning to the same observer/reader?
(Perhaps a follow-on question might shed more light: is dirt in a rug the same way that meaning is in a word? Here’s another: Mt. Everest is far more complex mathematically than one of the mountain climbers scaling its peak... so why can’t Mt. Everest think? Wouldn’t an intellectually honest inquirer try to understand the differences in ontological degree AND kind?)
To scientistically-idealistic minds like DL’s (we can only know the ideas/patterns in our minds, and not the real extra-mental objects), to reductionist minds like Paul’s (“ideas are neurons”), and to materialist minds like Ron’s and ordinary seeker’s—all a priori and intentionally limited in their ability to take in large parts of reality (meaning: they reject certain evidence and data because it fits their preconceived notions of reality)—the question poses a huge difficulty. On the one hand, mathematically, one is forced to conclude the arrangement of rocks is more “meaningful.” On the other hand, if common sense is not yet extinguished, they know this can’t be the case for each word is equally meaningful. So, clearly, mathematics can’t even begin to address the question. Can any of the modern/natural empirical sciences? No, of course not. Is there anything remotely “predictable” (DL’s insanely-absolutist hobby horse) about this? Come on… give me a break! Can psychology, sociology, history, etc.? No, for their subject areas are not targeted at understanding what meaning is and how it can be in a word.
And yet, look at the mental gymnastics these guys have to resort to as reflected in these discussions. DL refuses to consider ontology (let alone metaphysics) as a serious endeavor and thus is hamstrung in his ability to distinguish ontological orders… in fact, he can’t even distinguish the ontological difference between things as simple as a ball and its color red: for him they are both the same kind of thing—material entity / physical phenomenon. And yet, he can put one in his pocket, but not the other (“redness”) by itself. There is an ontological difference between them. Paul is as reductionist as one can get (again, “ideas are neurons”) and has little clue as to what a concept is vs. an image in the mind vs. an extra-mental object, and in that sense is more ontologically-challenged than DL. I’m not convinced, by any stretch of the imagination, whether ordinary seeker and Ron know what they’re talking about when bandying about highly-nuanced concepts such as “dualism” and “rationality.” (Randy appears to be falling into the same trap.)
What is “dualism”? Merely, the highly-complex, time-dependent, electro-chemical patterns in the physical brain? If so, then the “meaning” of “atheist” question above stops them cold. If the word “dualism” is a symbol, then to what precisely does it point? Moreover, it’s one thing to assert (like Paul) that those patterns in the brain ARE the concept (just like trying to assert the map IS the territory); it’s another thing altogether to demonstrate that this is indeed the case, i.e., to make the leap of faith that patterns ARE the thing itself. Why can’t they do this? Again: because they are ignorant of very important ontological distinctions. You, Tom, said it nicely from another perspective:
You could never say that one thought leads to another except by processes that have no concern for propositions or truth.Having differing understandings of the various subjects discussed here is fine. But when these guys walk into such discussions with lots of inaccurate—if not incoherent—philosophical views of reality AND pounding people of faith over the head for not thinking like they do (liberally sprinkled, of course, with DL’s crude historicism and genetic fallacies), well, one wonders just how secure they are in their views. It would be of greater benefit to all if they first understood some of the concepts under discussion (especially not limiting them artificially to scientistic misunderstandings) rather than dogmatically imposing half-baked ideas upon others.
Darek,
Let's say we agree that there are things that we can perceive apart from the [five] senses or scientific instruments and that these things must have some property that allows them to be so perceived.Sure.
Fair enough?
But you cannot "look" at neurotransmitter uptake in your brain by thinking, can you, even though uptake is a process? Or change of electrical potential in the cortex. But you could in principle detect those things with scientific instruments, right? Are we agreed to that point?Agreed.
And similarly, you cannot (through direct experience) see, hear or touch ATP transport in cells that mediate our sense of touch. You can only "see" things like ATP transport by creating delicate and complex arrangements of matter, and creating explanatory mental models. If we did not create predictive models of ATP transport, ATP transport would be totally invisible. Yet we accept ATP transport models because they predict future experiences in the way that, say, vitalist models does not. Sound good, too?
Randy, my above reply to doctor(logic) was a logical argument that a specific set of non-rational entitites (law, chance, and matter) cannot produce rational thought. I don't know why trying to define the nature of chemical or physical laws, or defining truth, clouds the issue. I think they are central to the issue.
The question isn't whether just any non-rational thing at all can ever under any circumstances lead to any rational thing at all. I hope my general statement, which was just one sentence of an argument on rationality in the context of mind and brain, didn't lead you to think I was trying to make an abstract case that would apply everywhere for all possible situations. I actually think it might be possible to make that case, but by its generality it would be much more difficult to do. And needlessly so--for the question is whether non-rationally based processes in the brain can lead to rational thought. It's a more limited question, but it's the relevant question.
So I don't see why it should be necessary to lay out anything further by way of abstract argument. Let's see where this one goes.
Can you make a logical argument showing that whatever it is that produces rational behavior cannot itself be non-rational.
Holo's comment about Mt. Everest and Randy's comment above got me thinking (that can be dangerous). Can Randy or DL make a logical argument that says Mt. Everest can't have rational thoughts since the same physical laws are at work in Everest?
StveK,
Most non-rational cause produce non-rational effects. I'd even venture that 99.99999% of non-rational causes have non-rational effect.
But that conclusion is only reached through inductive reasoning. You need a deductive proof if you wish to lay out a case that it is logically impossible for a non-rational cause to have a rational effect.
Tom is denying that he needs to do that. But I still believes he does if he wishes the argument of reason to be a defeater for naturalism. We still don't know enough about the brain to be able to establish a logical principle that it cannot possibly bring about rational behavior.
Tom,
P: At the foundational, atomic or molecular level (under physicalism) the physical brain operates without regard to rationality.True. But at the foundational level, physical laws operate without regard to the "laws" of hydrocarbon combustion. However, if you have a bunch of hydrocarbons and some oxygen, those hydrocarbon molecules obey a rich new set of rules that aren't apparent at the level of the Standard Model.
I'll state this more succinctly. The basic laws operating on matter and energy are like Lego. Certain configurations of matter and energy will appear to behave according to novel rules that aren't explicit in the basic laws.
I think I've used this example before: billiard balls. As long as the billiard balls are on a flat surface, and they maintain their approximately spherical structure, and their energy is within a certain range, then the rules of billiard balls will apply to them. These rules can be found in books on pool-playing technique. Those rules relating to the spin and momentum of the balls are nowhere explicit in the laws of quantum physics. Rather, they emerge when you combine the basic laws with certain configurations of matter and energy.
So the point is that by creating novel configurations of matter and energy, we can devise novel laws that are not explicit in the basic laws.
In principle, there's no conflict between having one set rules that apply in one domain/scale, and having different laws that apply at the most basic level.
Chemicals combine on the basis of laws of chemical reactions. Electrical events happen according to laws of electrical behavior. Quantum events happen however they happen, with no regard to any rationality.Yes, but you can equally-well say that fundamental particles collide without regard to the laws of chemical reactions. If you bombard a Sodium Chloride molecule with a 1TeV electron, I can tell you that we are no longer in the realm of chemistry (chemical laws no longer apply). We may not even remain within the realm of nuclear physics.
Propositions are not physical. Sentences and statements, identified as the expression of propositions, may be... These properties of propositions are not seriously in dispute among people who hold to a correspondence theory of truth.I think this oversimplifies the situation. I don't want to get too deeply into it on this thread, but I'll give you a hint at what I'm talking about.
When you say that "all cats are mammals" is true in all places an at all times, you mean that if you could space-time travel to any place or time, you would still assert its truth. You also mean that if another thinking entity understands the proposition/idea, they too will agree. That's not the same thing as saying that the proposition or idea in your head is not physical, right?
If minds are physical, then they can still conclude that something is the case independent of their own location, place in time, or instantiation.
P1: At the foundational, atomic or molecular level (under physicalism) the physical brain operates without regard to truth-bearers.This, too, falls to my prior point. It doesn't matter that the ultimate laws of physics fail to reflect some more complex set of laws. The important question is whether there is the possibility that some configuration of matter operating under those ultimate laws can reflect the complex/emergent law.
It follows that at that micro level, the physical brain operates without regard for truth.
Law and chance, then seem to be the only things operating to produce thoughts. But law and chance have no regard for propositions, as I've shown above. If the only things operating to produce thoughts, from the micro level on up to the macro level, are things that have no regard for (no connection to) propositions, then there is no way for thoughts to have any connection to propositions.This is sort of like saying that the ultimate laws of particle physics (e.g., the Standard Model, Superstring theory, etc.) don't respect the rules of chemistry physics. Of course, it is true that the ultimate laws are not imposed by the need for chemical physics. However, that does not mean that there must be some magic involved in chemistry because the ultimate laws do not reflect notions of atoms, molecules and ions and liquid concentrations.
Or do you suggest that there is something at the level of thought, at the macro level, that could overrule physical law and quantum chance events?No, there's no need for overruling. The laws of thought are like the laws of chemistry. The laws of thought are the result of ultimate laws applied to special configurations.
And do you suggest that there is something in some proposed propositional content of macro-level brain events that could overrule law and chance?Again, I find no need for any overruling. Ultimate laws applied to special configurations yield the appearance of new laws.
It behooves the person proposing that possibility to show how complex interactions taking place just through law and chance can find a connection to propositions.It would be ideal, but it is not an imperative for this argument. Your premise is that if you find some system of laws, L, then every entity upon which L acts should be reflected in the ultimate laws upon which L supervenes. That's simply not a valid premise. If it were, we would have to declare that chemistry was supernatural because the Standard Model of particle physics makes no mention of atoms or molecules.
If it were true, then you would have a stronger case, and it would behoove me to provide a detailed explanation. However, your premise is not strong enough for that.
At the same time, I can devise a vague sketch of a physical mind based upon the work of many other thinkers. Minds are brains that predict the future. A true prediction is one that comes true in the experience of the predictor. Predictions are facilitated by laws, and laws always imply non-contradiction and the validity of logic. So, any generic prediction system will be a general purpose inference engine capable of handling abstractions and generalizations. Any such engine will recognize theorems of logic and set theory as they apply in general cases. It will recognize tautological truths.
So truth is related to prediction, expectation and verification, all of which can have physical implementations.
Steve,
Can Randy or DL make a logical argument that says Mt. Everest can't have rational thoughts since the same physical laws are at work in Everest?You can make a very strong inductive argument as long as you have some notion of what thought and truth actually are.
Based on the sketch in my last comment, I would argue that Everest has no apparent implementations of memory or prediction, and no apparent sensory apparatus for confirming or disconfirming prediction. That means it would be incapable of appreciating truth, and without that capacity, it cannot be rational.
However, your question reflects the same false premise that Tom employed, namely, that the entities and laws of some emergent system have to be found in the fundamental system.
The reason that Everest needn't be rational is the same reason why the physics of octane combustion needn't be present on the surface of the Sun. Just because the Sun and the Earth's surface are made out of the same stuff does not mean that structures and emergent rules of Earth should apply to the Sun (or vice versa).
This may be a little off-topic (I accept your censure if it is, Tom, but I'd genuinely appreciate some sort of response if you have the time), but I've been stumped by theists' rejection of moral standards behind which there is no authority. I simply don't understand why theists seem to believe that a morality that has developed among living beings is somehow less than a morality believed to have been given by God. After all, what is morality? Morality is how we act toward others. Moral excellence is defined by the tenet, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you," a tenet found in most if not all of the world's major religious belief systems. And yet this tenet is nothing more (or less) than a description of how to have a successful social system, an understanding that most certainly could have evolved as generation upon generation of human and pre-human social groups learned to co-operate. So why then do theists insist that this human-developed moral standard is value-less if it has only the authority of humanity behind it?
Randy:
You're question begging quite strongly: before arguing your position, please explain what rationality is. If you resort only to the modern empirical sciences, and then conclude the brain is the necessary and sufficient foundation for the capacity to reason, then you're argument is circular: "reasoning is material by its very nature because the MES say so."
Second, I not sure Tom denies a "deductive proof" is required to show that the capacity to reason is an immaterial capacity. What he is saying is that if one a priori limits oneself to the MES, then one will, at best, obtain a self-fulfilling prophesy. That's the trap you're setting for yourself--which DL, Paul, ordinary seeker, and Ron have (almost) intentionally fallen in to: all knowledge begins in the senses, but not all knowledge is sensory knowledge. You're knowledge of the concept "day after tomorrow" cannot be seen in any way by any of your five primary senses... yet it's there--its exists in some way.
(By the way, you're using "deductive proof" incorrectly as applied to philosophical arguments: a "proof" shows the formal validity of an argument (i.e., whether it's structure is correct); while a "demonstration" is much stronger for it shows both the validity of the form of the argument and the soundness of the argument as a whole because the "material" aspects (the propositions) of the argument must also be true. I can easily provide you a structurally valid proof that is an unsound argument: Three is an odd number. My son is three. Therefore, my son is odd. The argument is fallacious not because of its form, and not even because of the propositions taken in an of themselves, but because I’m mixing ontological orders.)
P.S.: DL has just again demonstrated he doesn’t know what thought, rationality, or the capacity to reason are by failing to adequately address SteveK’s mountain/mountain climber question. And, the onus is on him to do so based on his scientistic assertions. The three acts of the mind (as opposed to the brain) are: (1) perception [knowing of the existence of something based merely on sensory input], (2) judgment [formulating propositions about what something is or is not], (3) reasoning [using sensory input and judgment about the truth of propositions to reason to new knowledge beyond the reach of the senses]. No collection of atoms—no matter how complex—can “perceive” anything, in an analogous way that no matter how many gears [category: substance] you have, they will not move [category: accident of quality] in and of themselves; or no matter how many DL’s you put in a room you will never equal the genius of Einstein—IQ’s don’t “add.” As explained earlier, this is precisely DL’s error repeated over and over: equivocation of the kind of things discussed: he reduces all being to the same kind of thing: for him thinking is physically-based ONLY and PRIOR to him explaining what thinking is without circularly falling back on arguments that depend exclusively on the MESs. It’s not the eye that sees (perceives)—it’s the mind: the eye and the brain are necessary, but certainly not sufficient. It’s not my arm that perceives the cold glass it touches—it’s me, myself, I. Now, if complex collections of atoms cannot “perceive,” then how much less so do you think they can judge and reason?
" Randy:
You're question begging quite strongly: before arguing your position, please explain what rationality is. If you resort only to the modern empirical sciences, and then conclude the brain is the necessary and sufficient foundation for the capacity to reason, then you're argument is circular: "reasoning is material by its very nature because the MES say so.""
Hmm, I thought I was avoiding question begging by not insisting on my particular theory of rationality being the correct one.
And have I made any reference to science here?
All I'm really doing is wondering why there is this assumption here that whatever it is that produces what you would call rational behavior cannot itself be non-rational.
Tom,
"P1: At the foundational, atomic or molecular level (under physicalism) the physical brain operates without regard to truth-bearers."
One can't hope to build an accurate model of how the brain reasons by only looking at what is happening at the molecular level or the atomic level. That's absurd, Tom.
You've dressed all of this up in very fanciful metapysical lingo but when all of that is stripped away it looks to me like you are pointing to the obvious fact that mere physical activity is or can be described as non-rational. I doubt that there is any disagreement on that point whether one is a naturalist or supernaturalist.
What is in doubt is your assumption that such physical activity can never result in reasoning or rational behavior.
I'm sorry, but I'm still looking for that principle that makes it logically impossible for something non-rational to produce rational behavior.
Randy, you wrote,
One can't hope to build an accurate model of how the brain reasons by only looking at what is happening at the molecular level or the atomic level. That's absurd, Tom.
Well of course! I didn't do that, though. Please look at some of the rest of what I wrote, Randy, beginning with "Brain events are composed of a hierarchical series of law and chance relations...."
DL
We are here:
Darek: Let's say we agree that there are things that we can perceive apart from the [five] senses or scientific instruments and that these things must have some property that allows them to be so perceived.
Fair enough?
DL: Sure.
Darek: So far, so good. Now, take physical things outside the mind/brain--events and states in our environment. Are the properties of those things determined other than by their impact upon the five senses, either directly or through scientific instruments? Properties such as mass, charge, position, momentum, etc. Are those properties perceivable apart from use of the five senses and scientific instruments? Or to put it slightly more strongly, could we even say that those properties are actually defined by their impact upon the senses or instruments?
Randy,
There's something I hope you can do in future responses, here and on other threads. Let's consider this comment:
All I'm really doing is wondering why there is this assumption here that whatever it is that produces what you would call rational behavior cannot itself be non-rational.
What you call an assumption is not an assumption. It's the conclusion of a lengthy argument. That argument contains the answer to the "why" question you seem to want to ask. It is my answer to why rationality cannot come from processes driven by nothing but chance and law.
Apparently that explanation is unsatisfying to you; it seems incomplete, wrong, or otherwise lacking. Well, it's your turn now. Instead of just ignoring the argument I gave, please let us know what you think is lacking or unsatisfactory in it.
Darek,
Now, take physical things outside the mind/brain--events and states in our environment. Are the properties of those things determined other than by their impact upon the five senses, either directly or through scientific instruments?Yes, if taken to mean that we don't generally regard something as physical without noting a correlation between that thing and the five senses or a scientific instrument.
Or to put it slightly more strongly, could we even say that those properties are actually defined by their impact upon the senses or instruments?This might be a little too strong. Quarks are names we give to elements of a mathematical model, and we consider quarks to be physical because the model correlates with the 5 senses and our scientific instruments. However, it is fair to say that we would not consider quarks to be physical if they were not part of a model of what we see with our senses.
DL
OK, We have agreed that generally speaking the properties of physical events/states are perceived by their effect on the five senses/instruments.
We agreed before that that there are events/states in the mind that are somehow perceivable apart from the five senses/instruments, remember?
Now, how could we go about verifying, scientifically, that there are events/states with the property of being perceivable apart from the affect such events/states have upon the five senses/instruments?
_______
Secondly, I was reminded above of our previous discussion about special science laws and rationality.
If you remember, I pointed out that laws describing emergent processes such as thermodynamics, aerodynamics, optics, etc. are determined by and dependent upon the basic laws of physics, whereas the rules of logic are not. You replied that the rules of logic have no force, much like the rules of baseball, the only difference being that the rules of logic apply across possible universes and the rules of baseball do not. (Quite a difference, wouldn't you say?)
Perhaps without embarking on an abstruse debate about the nature of physical laws, we can just say that such laws rules meaningfully describe properties/processes. I think you would agree that the rules of logic meaningfully describe rational thought, just as the laws of aerodynamics meaningfully describe flight. But again, there is a difference in determinacy/dependency with respect to particle physics (or whatever level of physics proves to be basic). The laws of aerodynamics are determined by and dependent upon the laws of basic physics; the rules of logic are independent of the laws of physics.
I don't think your baseball example will do the work you expect of it. Given slightly different laws of physics, there might be something recognizably similar to baseball that would have to have different rules--perhaps less than ninety feet between bases--in order to proceed more or less as does the game of baseball.
Rules of logic are still distinguished.
Darek,
Now, how could we go about verifying, scientifically, that there are events/states with the property of being perceivable apart from the affect such events/states have upon the five senses/instruments?I'm not sure I understand your question.
The point of scientific inquiry is to identify predictive, observer-independent facts. If we are to inquire about facts about a particular observer, e.g., me, that inquiry would be done from the outside. It would proceed in analogy with investigation of any phenomenon. For example, science allows us to see that acidity is an objective property of lemon juice, and not just how we subjectively feel about lemons. It does this by showing that observer-independent interactions between lemons and, say, bicarbonate of soda are predicted by acidity. The analogue of this as applied to my thoughts would be to make my self the object of inquiry, and show that the mechanisms of my thoughts control external-observer-independent interactions between me and other stuff. That's what psychology does.
. You replied that the rules of logic have no force, much like the rules of baseball, the only difference being that the rules of logic apply across possible universes and the rules of baseball do not. (Quite a difference, wouldn't you say?)You may have misunderstood me. The laws of correct rational thought are like the laws of baseball. However, the laws of logic itself are embedded in the laws of physics (any physics) because every lawful system must obey non-contradiction and implication from prior states. IOW, you cannot have a system of laws and have that system also be broadly illogical. You cannot have a laws that says X must be the case, and X must not be the case at the same time.
So, the laws of logic are not independent of the laws of physics. However, the laws of rational thought are not everywhere implied by physics in the sense that a chunk of matter may or may not think rationally, depending on its configuration. The same is true of wings. There's no law that says everything must fly as we conventionally use the term "fly". Rather, there may be configurations of matter that do "fly."
DL
"I'm not sure I understand your question."
Let me put it this way. Mental objects like propositions are present to us in a different way than are events/states around us. We can't verify their unique properties the way we verify the properties of external states. We cannot verify their properties through scientific observation because all scientific observations presuppose those properties. Granted, you see this distinction between mental and physical states as a merely a quirk, if I read you correctly. But I think this distinction is incapable of being obliterated, which gives it a fundamental status.
"The laws of correct rational thought are like the laws of baseball. However, the laws of logic itself are embedded in the laws of physics (any physics) because every lawful system must obey non-contradiction and implication from prior states."
You seem to make a distinction between "laws of correct rational thought" and "laws of logic itself." OK, let's just take the laws of correct rational thought and leave aside the laws of logic itself. Based on your own analogy, are the following formulations appropriate or not?
1) The laws of aerodynamics meaningfully describe the process of flight. Flight is a physical process. Therefore, the laws of aerodynamics are determined by and dependent upon the fundamental laws of physics.
2) The laws of correct rational thought meaningfully describe the process of reasoning. Reasoning is a physical process. Therefore, the laws of correct rational thought are determined by and dependent upon the fundamental laws of physics.
I believe these similar formulations are clearly implied by your comparison, but the second one is false. The laws of correct rational thought will be the same in any universe regardless of physical laws, therefore they cannot be determined by and dependent upon physical laws. Keep in mind that we are talking about the rules governing rational thought as a specific, higher order process, not the logic implicit in every law, every property, every event and every state that ever has been or ever will be.
doctor(logic),
"The analogue of this as applied to my thoughts would be to make my self the object of inquiry, and show that the mechanisms of my thoughts control external-observer-independent interactions between me and other stuff. That's what psychology does."
No, not really. The more accurately that kind of thing has described psychology down the decades, the less successful psychology has been. The extreme example has been behaviorism, which reigned in the mid-20th century. Recently we've moved back much more strongly toward cognitive models, and therapies have become more effective through that shift.
We still use some behavioral insights--or rather, ideas co-opted by behaviorism, centuries-old teachings on the law of sowing and reaping (we learn through consequences). But you don't see strict behaviorism in psychology at all, as you might have 40-60 years ago.
So it's no longer really true that psychology "show[s] that the mechanisms of my thoughts control external-observer-independent interactions between me and other stuff." Even when psychology tried to do that it failed miserably.
Oh, and by the way, any hint that we might be getting there soon through neurology is very, very dim. You might call it neurology of the gaps.
Darek,
1)... Therefore, the laws of aerodynamics are determined by and dependent upon the fundamental laws of physics.There's a subtle equivocation here between obligation and categorization.
2)... Therefore, the laws of correct rational thought are determined by and dependent upon the fundamental laws of physics.
A moral obligation to think rationally is one thing. A category of thoughts we would classify as rational is another. Actual mental function could be physical, whether that function was rational or not.
For example, the laws of aerodynamics also describe bricks falling off buildings. The aerodynamic equivalent of irrationality. Only a subset of objects moving through air would be categorized as "flying" in the sense of a wing. We would not say that bricks "ought" to fly like wings.
In the end, we do not infer that wings that fly are more than physical, so why should we infer that minds that think rationally are more than physical?
We can talk about where our sense of obligation to think rationally comes from, but that's a separate issue, IMO.
The laws of correct rational thought will be the same in any universe regardless of physical laws, therefore they cannot be determined by and dependent upon physical laws.The implementation of a physical brain that thinks rationally will be dependent on those laws. Let's go back to aerodynamics. The laws of correct propulsion may be valid in any universe, but the implementation of propulsion systems will remain physics dependent.
DL
Where in my post was there anything about "ought" or obligation? The language I used was "meaningfully describe." There was no equivocation whatsoever. Please go back and read the language of my numbered formulations.
The laws of aerodynamics meaningfully describe flight or the falling of a brick, but not the behavior of a molecule or of a cell in a petri dish. They apply to certain emergent properties/processes.
In a universe with sufficiently different physical laws, the laws of aerodynamics that meaningfully describe flight in our universe will not meaningfully describe flight in that universe. But the rules of logic that meaningfully describe thought in our universe will do so in any other.
Darek,
Where in my post was there anything about "ought" or obligation? The language I used was "meaningfully describe." There was no equivocation whatsoever. Please go back and read the language of my numbered formulations.Sorry, I must have misunderstood you. I assumed that since I distinguished laws of thought and laws of logic that you could not be taking them to be the same.
The laws of aerodynamics meaningfully describe flight or the falling of a brick, but not the behavior of a molecule or of a cell in a petri dish. They apply to certain emergent properties/processes.I don't agree.
In a universe with sufficiently different physical laws, the laws of aerodynamics that meaningfully describe flight in our universe will not meaningfully describe flight in that universe. But the rules of logic that meaningfully describe thought in our universe will do so in any other.
Rational thought is a process that utilizes logic and the laws of physics to make inferences. Logic (in the sense of non-contradiction) is not the same thing as inference. The implementation of a rational system changes with the laws of physics in the same way that the implementation of a wing changes when we change physics.
In order to compare across universes, we make analogies. For example, we might say that there are many universes in which we can identify analogues of Earth gravity, air, motion, etc., and in each of the universes there is an analogue of flying. The actual specifics of those rules will be different from universe to universe, so an implementation of a wing in one universe won't work in another universe.
However, we can say exactly the same things for rationality. There may be many universes in which we can identify analogues of inference, computation, etc. (generally, ways of applying rules that guarantee non-contradiction to infer analogues of facts), and in each such universe there is an analogue of rationality. The actual specifics of those rules will be different from universe to universe, so implementations of rational systems in one universe won't work in another universe.
I don't see a significant difference between rationality and flying.
Put another way, you're implicitly saying that there's this thing called "flying" that's common across universes, as long as we find certain analogues. Well, if analogues form the common point of reference between universes, then "inference" is a common analogue, just like "flying". In that case, what changes from universe to universe is the implementation of "flying systems" or "inference systems".
It's not the laws of thought that are the same in each universe. It is logic itself which is special because every set of laws of physics must respect non-contradiction.
DL
"It's not the laws of thought that are the same in each universe."
That's quite a claim. Can you imagine a universe in which the rules for relating premises to one another in order to reach a logical conclusion are different than those we use? Is there a universe in which what we take to be logical fallacy is sound reasoning, or vice versa? Remember we are speaking here about rules of logic as rules for describing thought as rational or not. If you see some process that cannot be considered "thinking"--say, photosynthesis--then those rules obviously do not apply to it. The rules for describing thought as rational or not must meaningfully describe our thoughts about photosynthesis, but not photosynthesis itself.
True, computation might be considered to offer a way out here as follows:
3) Computation is meaningfully described by the rules of logic. Computation is a physical process. Therefore a physical process may be meaningfully described the rules of logic.
Note that it does not really resolve the argument from my previous numbered formulations, but seems to offer a paradoxical counterexample. However, the resolution of the paradox does not favor the physicalist model of reasoning.
First, note that all computation cannot qualify. The function of the DNA molecule can be called "computation," but rules of logic do not meaningfully describe it. But for some human-engineered computation they seem to do so. How can this be?
Bring back in aerodynamics. Flight can be simulated by computation, right? And laws of aerodynamics have something to do with simulation of flight. But simulation of flight is not flight, therefore the laws of aerodynamics do not describe it the same way they describe flight. Well, what would a simulation of rational thought be if not a computational process? So we have the following:
4) Laws of aerodynamics do not meaningfully describe computer flight simulation in the same way they describe flight. Rules of logic describe rational thought analogously to the way laws of aerodynamics describe flight. Therefore rules of logic do not describe computer simulation of rational thought the same way they describe rational thought.
Notice that this resolves the apparent conflict, but does so in favor of the AfR. Certain (physical) computational processes are aligned by the human mind so as to usefully represent flight and the description of flight by the laws of aerodynamics. Certain computations are also aligned so as to represent rational inference and the description of rational inference by the rules of logic. But representations are not to be mistaken for what they represent. Computation does not after all invalidate the reasoning based on my earlier formulations.
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