Date: Fri, 29 Dec 2000 01:58:02 -0500 (EST)
From: Dan Fabulich <daniel.fabulich@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: MVT: all-conquering philosophy?
>
S> OK. I also think that language is faulty and misleading in general,
S> which I why I am starting to develop a word-free visual philosophy
S> (some examples at www.extropia.net vis phil sector).
>Being visual is not enough.
Nor is being wordy ..... but philosophy does not allow itself
to use pictures, but in my approach I can use any symbolic forms.
>All the ordinary philosophical problems
>can be translated into, for example, American Sign Language, with only
>a few complications. After all, writing is visual. The difference is
>in how much formal structure your language has, and how much is left
>to be inferred from humanity and charity. On the formal end, you've
>got the propositional calculus and Lojban. On the informal end,
>you've got abstract dance, jazz,
Purely visual & auditory surely ... we use our musical judgements not
verbal ....
>painting, and others. In the middle
>towards the formal end you've got speech; ASL is a little less formal
>than speech, and more dependent on "context" (ie charity and humanity)
But I allow myself all the mediums ... so my analysis is more complete
than one limited to linguistic analysis...
>Philosophical analysis is something worth doing; if philosophical
>issues don't appear at all in some more-informal visual language, then
>that just tells me that you can't do philosophy in that language. If
>translating problems into a certain language makes a certain answer
>appear obvious, then that may be a compelling argument for that
>answer, as we currently take to be the case with the propositional
>calculus. But just as you can't have an analytic discussion about
>mind in the language of jazz, (no, you can't, [no, you can't,])
But you can't have an analytic discussion about mind if you
are a physicalist either ... and maybe you can have a purely
diagrammatic discussion about the mind using pictures ...
>that
>doesn't mean that we should stop playing/listening to jazz or stop
having analytic discussions about the metaphysics of mind.
S> Yes, a shorter or more elegant proof in maths is better than one
S> using more terms. I claim MVT is the simplest and most elegant
S> account. MVT also explains more phenomena, and reduces several
S> other theories in science (and philosophy) to a more basic account.
>On philosophical grounds, then, I say that MVT doesn't seem very
>elegant to me; that it doesn't even seem to be right on philosophical
>terms, on account of the qualitative differences between "holes" (as
>missing functionality) and feelings.
Forget "holes" .. this was one of my arguments about your atomism.
Substitute "abstract" or "absent" .. and consider that "symbols" are the
medium of all types of mentation and that the pineal unitary sense organ
has become symbolic rather than actual.
Or does your type of physicalism deny symbols?
S> Are "principles" physical then? Otherwise your determinist position
S> starts to come apart ... What about "desires" ... didn't you say that
S> our beliefs only come from desires (or was it vice-versa)?
>We change parts of our programming from time to time, but when we do,
>we follow a metaprogram. Metaprograms change from time to time, but
>when they do, it happens under a metametaprogram. And so on.
>Determinism doesn't rule out the possibility of history any more than
>it demands fatalism; all I've described here is a bit of history of
>science.
I repeat my question: "Are "principles" physical then? "
I don't think you are using "metaprogram" in the accepted
psychotherapeutic sense here, but are changing the idea to try
and fit with your philosophical bias. Brains can not only change
their "programming" but can reconfigure their own *hardware*
S> That may be true if words are your ONLY medium of communication.
S> The "questioning" idea might not be problematic if we commune using
S> touch signals, or visual display predominantly. "Questioning" might
S> translate to a "feeling of puzzlement" of a particular grain. I might
S> want to say that we can rely on and trust our *feelings* (that MVT
S> is the true account) more than lots of us currently do. Or I might
S> appeal to pattern completion and recognition, and suggest that our
S> judgement be based on a satisfactory visualisation of the matter.
>Yes, but I don't share those feelings with you.
Ah, so you adopt an *Intuitionist * stance here .. your words have
given out so you appeal to feelings. I happen to think most
philosophical so-called analysis does come down to feelings
and aesthetics ...
> >Yes, but we must be careful not to overload the term "psychological."
> >Feelings are psychological, and so are "holes," but they're
> >psychological in very different ways. Sadness, for example, has no
> >physical place at all, by virtue of its purely mental character.
>
S> I don't disagree with this. We have infinite-state potential to
experience
S> any feeling imaginable.
>I'm not sure what your response had to do with my original claim. I
>just meant that feelings have no location. Finite-state and
>infinite-state doesn't seem to enter into that question.
I wanted to draw attention that you do think that "holes" are
"psychological" .... not physical ..... again supporting an idealist
account rather than your denial of consciousness. The infinite-state
is possible only because part of the (whole-part fusion) is absent.
>And being infinite-state certainly isn't an INTUITION I have. What
>would it feel like to be very-many-state? Would that feel differently
>from being infinite-state?
It is an idea .....
And yes, I do think that the symbolic sensor/ phantom component
is true infinite-state in a way that an analog infinite state CRT is not.
>You might say "it doesn't feel like anything to be finite-state," but
>I certainly don't see why *that* has to be true. Why couldn't you
>have one-state or two-state illusions? Why not twenty? Or twenty
>million? Why only infinite?
But I think it does feel like something ... like what we experience
in fact.
>Can you imagine checking on this, even internally? You'd have one
>imagining after another, again and again, until... what? You halted?
>Until you didn't halt? Until you gave up?
No, that would be boring. I leave such nonsense thought experiments
to academic philosophers ...... what is the point you are making?
S> Let me understand this correctly ... you claim that "space" or "void"
S> is physical ... although it just has location and not any matter/
physical
S> stuff? I think "location" is a dimension, much like "time" .. and as such
S> isn't necessarily (or maybe isn't either probably, or even *possibly*)
S> physical. Matter, time and space are assigned as different variants
S> in physics ... so can these things be identical?
>I don't follow you. I'd never said that matter, time and space are
>identical.
No, never said you did, was asking you this.
>I do think that they're all physical; that they share
>that one property in common.
Time is the *measurement* of movement in space .. therefore
must be subjective because measurement is integral, not
incidental to the concept of time. There is no "time" out there
that you can point to ... it is just a concept ... not physical.
> I take it that the correct move in a
>phenomenological scenario is to be an anti-realist about physics: to
>say "when you say matter, you really mean such-and-such matter
>qualia..." or "when you say physical, you really mean having
>such-and-such sensations in common..."
I won't use the qualia jargon, but yes, I largely agree with the above.
>Anyway, the very fact that "holes" have a "location" by definition
>whereas "feelings" don't, is enough to show that "holes" are
>analytically different from "feelings," whatever other properties
>these things have.
Sure, except that the only knowledge you have of the hole is
indirect, via your feelings/ perceptions/ logical reasoning and
depth perception &c. The illusion of the hole has an illusionary
location .. there isn't any "hole" independent of the illusion, or
if there is it is impossible to know. Same with any so-called
"physical objects" .. but MVT idealism explains how the illusion
is produced. I don't need to deny the existence of physical objects,
maybe they are there, or maybe we hallucinate them, who knows
and who cares. The physical brain is necessary, but not sufficient
for consciousness. A self-referential and abstract component is
needed in order to interact with the world of symbols & abstraction.
S> I include "possibly" because of the possible that all is mental, and
S> space, physical stuff, atoms and all the rest of it are just
S> concepts combined with conscious perceptions (real virtuality in
S> MVT-terms) plus self-generated imagination.
>Again, this doesn't bother me. Even in a virtual reality, you have to
>wonder how your sensations-of-brains are connected to other minds.
S> Anyway, you are not consistent saying that "we use our minds to
S> demarcate" if your system does not include "minds" ... conscious
S> organs.
>We anti-realists get this a lot. It's completely fallacious.
>Anti-realists about Xs assert that there aren't really Xs, AND that we
>should reinterpret claims about Xs to be claims about Ys. So when
>somebody says "The anti-realist contradicts himself when he says
>such-and-such about Xs, yet maintains that there are no Xs!" they're
>making a flat-out mistake. It is not wrong to talk about
>consciousness or pain or other feelings; all I ask is that we remember
>that these are handy terms for physical phenomena.
I don't accept that "consciousness" is a handy term for a physical
phenomena at all .. and have an example that might prove my case.
With chemical medicine you can establish causal links between
relief of symptoms or cure of illness and the physical properties of
a drug.
However, all experiments ever done on the subject have shown
that a "placebo effect" operates .... but the sugar pill has no
chemical effects in the cure, only psychological.
>The way to avoid this mistake is to remember that it is *very* rare
>that an intelligent person will assert an outright contradiction,
>especially an intelligent philosopher; they're probably saying
>something else similar.
Disagree. The wisest men in history have made glaring errors
and believed crass theories. Especially philosophers.
>In this case, I could have said that "holes are psychological only in
>that we use our BRAINS to demarcate their boundaries" without any loss
>of meaning. Indeed, I obviously should have said this: it would have been
>clearer to you.
But holes have no "substance" and are JUST their boundaries.
>But forgive me if I slip back into such handy phrases as "Imagine that
>..." "I feel differently ..." or "... they both feel the same." I'm
>being an anti-realist about these phrases. We both get to say them,
>but we get to say them for different reasons.
Yes, but when I say them I mean what I say, and when you say them
they are packed together with a unwieldy bunch of provisos &c. in
that you should really qualify each statement before using it.
S> Yes, so are there some truth or empirical grounds which reinforce
S> even the hypnosis, or make the hypnosis easier to take if experience
S> is in agreement?
>Well, it doesn't matter to me whether there's a "truth" or not. I'll
>go about acting like my intuitions are pretty well (but not perfectly)
>in touch with it, either way.
Yes, we accept and use the phantom pineal eye because the brain is
fooled (or addicted) into receiving inputs and generating outputs as
though the thing was still physical and functional.
>I'd assume that hypnosis is harder to the extent that it disagrees with
>my currently active beliefs/desires, but that there's nothing else
>helping or hindering the matter. Hypnotizing me to believe the truth
>when I strongly believe a falsehood should be no harder than
>hypnotizing me to believe a falsehood when I believe the truth, all
>else being equal (which it so rarely is).
There is less work for the hypnotist .. but yes, works either case.
The point I am making is for the primacy of the mental/ conscious.
If I suggested to you under somnambulistic trance that I was burning
a cigarette stub on your hand, not only would you experience it,
but might well manifest burn marks! (See placebo effect argument).
S> And given that we could already be in trance or working on
S> post-hypnotic suggestions, how do you make any truth claims for your
S> own beliefs in determinism, epiphenobblyism and all that Turing
S> machine rubbish?
>I make truth claims because I'm following my intuitions, and my
>program.
Where is this program located? Or do you just mean cultural
conditioning and things you have learnt or been told?
>Do I make justified truth claims? I think I do, and that
>has to be pretty much good enough for me.
Are you conscious of making these justified truth claims?
> S> No Turing machines of the sort you discuss have ever, not will ever,be
> S> built.
>
> >.Perhaps not, but only on account of their being too cumbersome, slow,
> >expensive, and hard to build, not by virtue of their being different
> >in principle.
>
S> Yes, or in other words the idea of building them is daft! So why would
S> evolution (infinitely pragmatic) have used such a daft design?
>Nobody's arguing that nature has actually designed a tape-reader, or
>that the human brain has any tape. But nature might be stuck using a
>million tape-reader-equivalents instead of something better because
>Turing machine equivalents (the collection of which, in turn, is one
>big Turing machine equivalent) are all that are physically available.
You are wrong in fact here ... neurons are mini-transputers, more like
transistors than Turing machine heads. And they flock together to work
on particular problems. Talk of Turing machines is positively misleading.
> S> The SHAPE of the brain effects its function, the shape evolved, and
> S> (gestalt) can be described in terms of foreground OR background
> S> (holes), or both.
>
> >But holes are different from sadness; different in kind and in
> >principle. They may be linked, but they're not the same.
>
S> No, you continue to misunderstand that "holes" are an analogy that I
S> use to point out some shared attributes with the "absent" or
S> "abstract" pineal eye .... but I by no means hold that this analogy
S> is the whole story.
>Sure, I see where you're going here. To say that something is
>"missing a certain function" is just to state counterfactually that,
>if you had a pineal eye, you'd act in such-and-such a way. It is to
>describe a certain possible state-of-affairs in which you had a pineal
>eye, and you acted that way. But that "possible state-of-affairs" is
>just an idea, a non-physical if not purely mental object. So "missing
>functions" are psychological just like possibilities are.
Not "just an idea" ... but a pervasive felt experience ... like phantom
vision or tinnitus are not "ideas" or indivual concepts.
>Why this little parable about functionalism? Because your view, that
>being conscious just is to miss the functionality of the pineal eye,
>and nothing more, amounts to a kind of anti-functionalism: it is to
>say that being conscious means to have a MISSING physical
>functionality, rather than a present physical functionality, as Putnam
>had argued. It's a modal property of a physical object either way.
It is necessary for the brain to construct the impression of the
old median eye in order to integrate all the sense-data with
hormonal responses .. the original pineal eye carried out hormonal
functions that have had to be replaced ... as well as missing
information about the world that now has to be modelled or assumed.
The phantom pineal eye is a perceptual phantom as well as a
phantom of the physical component.
Consciousness is centrally evoked ... and this is not to say:
"being conscious just is to miss the functionality of the pineal eye,
and nothing more" because I readily accept that we are conscious
of many other facts, and that e-2 animals and insects might
have teleological experience ... but it is a necessary component
to explain symbolic and self-referential consciousness (dreams
and the narrative self &c).
>Your anti-functionalist view suffers from all the same problems as
>functionalism; all the same objections. Maybe it has all the same
>intuitive support. Certainly it's worth noting that missing
>pineal-eye functionality seems to cause positive physical
>functionality like the kind Putnam was interested in. That's what led
>us to conclude that the pineal eye was interesting: missing that
>physical functionality seemed to grant us another functionality:
>intelligent behavior. But we can't really use this as a solution for
>the mind/body problem, or even as intuitive support for a solution,
>because you'd just be arguing for functionalism: you'd be using
>functionalism to argue that you'd solved the mind/body problem.
I accept some of this ... but still feel it is worth exploring which types
of
problems can be cleared up by MVT .. and even if it provides a
better analogy than existing ones, this is of value. I do think it
answers the Leibnitz Law objection to Descartes, and on this
(the original formulation of the mind-body problem) point I do think it
overcomes Leibnitz objection .... which was that the pineal GLAND,
or any other physical part of the brain by extension, cannot interact
with "psychological" events which are not physical.
The abstract, phantom pineal eye is not physical in the same way that
the pineal gland is physical: thus it could interact ....
What I want to do is go from "could" to *does* ... and this is tricky.
S> I will reciprocally agree with a weaker version of determinism: after
S> all we cannot step outside this Universe (at least very easily!) and I
S> accept that we do not have free will in all things. Perhaps by combining
S> these weaker versions we can stop this tired old Free Will debate?
>Probably not, so long as philosophers assert that we CAN make
>decisions wholly independent from how we were last week or laster
>year, and so long as philosophers argue that the difference between us
>a million Turing machines (or one big fast one) is that one is
>free-willed and the other is not.
But the differences are so obvious I do not think you can
sustain this Turing argument for long .....
S> The von Neumann and Turing analogies as to how a brain works
S> are of as much use and out of date as the 1920's analogies between
S> the brain and a telephone exchange.
>Because the Turing-Church thesis tells us of what we human beings are
>capable (namely, nothing more than of what a bunch of Turing machines
>are capable, and therefore nothing more than of what one great big
>fast Turing machine is capable) and what can possibly act like us.
I think you are making an unjustified leap to conclusion here. An
malefic demon is capable of acting exactly like us, or maybe
if we had your fairy physics that could explain everything ... but in
fact what we have are brains that are massively parallel distributed
systems, and not any of the other things. We have the solution already,
so why do philosophers continue to look for worse solutions?
S> This isn't a case of just "equivalent but slower" .... they would also be
S> working in a completely different way from you. Neural computers
S> are reverse engineered from brain circuits, so are a lot more
S> convincing ... this ISN'T just an aesthetic matter either ... the neural
S> computational model of the brain is BETTER than the older serial
S> computational models ... sure a load of sluggard academics still use it
S> but they are due for reduction by MVT pretty soon, I hope.
>But the fact that they'd do the same things at the end of a very long
>day, I insist, IS interesting.
I can't deny it is interesting to you ...... but certainly isn't to me.
>They WOULD behave the same way, though
>one would do so much much slower (but that's all).
NO ... I won't allow this. Turing machines do not reconfigure their
circuitry, they do not compute in parallel, and I do not think it
possible for them to be instantiated biologically ...
Furthermore, and the key point, they aren't CONSCIOUS but
we are ... our neural wetware is capable of manifesting non-physical
components and the associated phantom illusions ... do you claim
that Turing machines could have, then lose but remember, a pineal
eye (or any other body part come to that). I think not.
www.steve-nichols.com
Posthuman Council member
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