From: Dan Fabulich (daniel.fabulich@yale.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 01 2000 - 04:58:18 MST
> That attack on logical positivism has always bothered me.
>
> I usually see this attack directed at some form of matieralism ("Matieralism
> can't explain emotions.") The answer for that is "Yes it can, emotions are
> patterns of neuron firings in the brain." (c.f. Dennett, Hofstadter).
>
> Could a similar defense work for logical positivism? Given empirical
> knowledge of how human (or any other kind of) mind(s) work, don't
> philosophical systems and ideas become just as matieralistic and examinable
> as computer programs?
As a guy with sympathies for the logical positivists (as, I think, we'd
all do well to have at some point or other), I have to say that the attack
bothered me a bit as well when I first heard it. However, I find the
attack on logical positivism *as stated* to be irrefutable. ... and yet
one can't help but wonder if some more refined version of logical
positivism can do the job better.
However, your move sounds to me more like the sociobiologist's move to
make ethics a science than logical positivism per se. The problem with it
is this: Suppose I waved a magic wand and, all of a sudden, we knew
everything about all of our future behaviors. (I want to stress that this
wand is magical, and we will never have a wand like this.) We now try to
ask, "given that So-and-so did such-and-such on such-and-such a day with
such-and-such intentions, heck, even given that her action has
such-and-such Total Consequences (tm) [now this is REALLY a magic wand!],
was this action right or wrong?"
It's not at all obvious what answer you'd give, if any, since no empirical
facts by themselves can establish that an action is right. You could make
a claim WITHIN ethical theory that "an action is right iff the following
facts obtain ..." but that claim itself would not be verifiable.
Note that I'm WITH Dennett et al in arguing that, for example, spooky
mental qualia don't exist, but I DON'T think that I can prove this
scientifically; I'd be at a loss as to how to even begin to do something
so. The best science can give us is: "No verifiable evidence for them SO
far!" which is a sufficient knockdown for many theories but not for
theories which attempt to tell some story about how they're true but
necessarily unverifiable. So called "mental realists" like Searle and
Nagel do that with arguments about qualia, and most ethical theories can
run a similar trick. "Of course it hasn't been verified. I TOLD you it
wasn't verifiable. It's still right, however."
> Aside: "source-code", or "domdule" level understanding of the structure of
> the human mind could tell us, once and for all, in real physical terms,
> exactly what humans mean by "mean" (assuming most humans use isomorphic
> mental machinery for these sorts of cognitive operations, which seems
> reasonable). Epistimelogy would become empirically descriptive, and we'ed
> have some sort of physical base on which to build a philosophy .
Would we? "But how do you know that your source-code understanding is the
RIGHT one?" any skeptical epistemologist might point out.
> This is the sort of stuff I was hoping to see when I started studying
> psychology. Boy was I in for a disappointment :)
May I direct you towards our fantastic cognitive science department? They
may have a lot more of what you're looking for there. ;)
> P.S. I think Eliezer said it best when he observed that when one attempts to
> bottom out human formal systems like physics or math or philosophy, one
> finds human semantic primitives, not universal ontological primitives.
How could you tell the difference?
-Dan
-unless you love someone-
-nothing else makes any sense-
e.e. cummings
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