Adam Mastroianni has a post that’s getting a pretty good amount of attention. Mastroianni discusses recent claims of fraud in psychology, as well as the replication crisis. But his actual topic is how little difference it makes when most of the studies in question are removed from the scientific record. The overall gist is that if psychology were making progress, it would make a big difference in major theories when this happens.
After noting that psychology remains a young science, one that has yet to establish an overall paradigm similar to many other sciences, Mastroianni notes what he calls three proto-paradigms that often guide research in the field. The first two are that cognition is biased and that situations affect that cognition. He feels these areas have been largely played out. The effects are real, although not to the magical extent implied by some of non-replicable studies. Doing more studies in them hasn’t really advanced our understanding.
But it’s the third he discusses that caught my attention: the study of nouns. To illustrate, he discusses the Ford Motor Company, which he calls a fiction. Ford isn’t the cars and trucks it makes, or the employees who work there, or the factories. It’s all these things working in combination. We find it handy to refer to the whole thing as “Ford” and talk about Ford’s agreement with unions or the government, what Ford does in the marketplace, etc.
I’m not inclined to use the word “fiction” here, because Ford has real causal effects in the world and is in turn affected by it. And anything more concrete we look at is itself going to turn out to be a composite entity of many processes. On the other hand, I take Mastroianni’s point. It pays to keep in mind what kind of thing we’re dealing with when trying to understand Ford.
Anyway, his point is that the same thing applies to many things studied in psychology.
Psychology also employs lots of fictions. Attitudes, norms, depression, the self, stereotypes, emotions, ideology, personality, creativity, morality, intelligence, stress—none of these things actually exist. They are abstract words we use to describe the things people do and the stuff that happens in their minds. It’s hard to talk about psychology without using them, so it’s easy to forget they’re just words.
He goes on to discuss the difficulty in studying something like “leadership”, which is a hazy collection of many different capabilities and activities. It can only be studied by breaking it down into something more measurable. But the results then really only apply to the thing measured. And studying leadership is endless. There will never be a point where you’re finished. It makes any statements about the overall concept unfalsifiable.
I’m not sure I completely agree with this, but again I take his point. It pays to understand what we’re dealing with when studying these topics. It seems like a lot of useful science can happen in these areas, but only if we’re clear what exactly is being studied. Studying “intelligence” is meaningless, but studying particular capabilities is, and definite things can be established about those specific capabilities.
Another post getting attention this week is from Erik Hoel: Consciousness is a great mystery. Its definition isn’t. Hoel addresses what he says is the myth that consciousness is difficult to define. And he cites the standby of philosophers in this area, Thomas Nagel’s “something it is like” or “what it is like” definition, as a straightforward answer. According to Hoel, this isn’t even an opinion, but an irrefutable fact.
Well, I’ve already written my own refutation of this definition. The TL;DR is that the phrases are literally meaningless. They compare a system to an unspecified thing in an unspecified manner. It’s just a tag, one that large numbers of people nod at, with each holding their own private interpretation of what it means. The trouble comes when people start elaborating on those private interpretations and we see how much variance exists between them.
Nagel, to his credit, does elaborate on what he means in the 1974 “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” paper. He and later philosophers provided enough details that Daniel Dennett was able to attack the concepts in his 1988 “Quining Qualia” paper. But since then, most philosophers have accused Dennett of attacking a strawman and disavowed the specific attributes he attacks.
But that again leaves us trying to figure out what people mean when they use those phrases, along with synonymous terms like “qualia” or “phenomenal properties”. Pete Mandik pointed out in 2016 that these phrases form a “synonym circle”, where the terms never resolve to anything concrete and meaningful. He advises “Qualia Quietism”, just not using them, as they do little more than sow confusion.
So where does that leave us with the definition of “consciousness”? As many of you know, my own take here is functional. To me the word refers to a hazy and imprecise collection of functional capabilities. These functional capabilities definitely exist, but we have to keep in mind what we’re talking about when we use the word “consciousness”.
This seems to put it in the same category as Mastroianni’s other nouns. (To be clear, Mastroianni doesn’t mention consciousness, so I have no idea if he’d agree.) Just like with the other nouns, studying it requires breaking it down to more measurable capabilities. Studying each of those capabilities is difficult, but scientifically tractable. In this, my view is similar to Jaycee Reese Anthis’ in what he calls Consciousness Semanticism.
Of course, many will insist that studying functionality isn’t getting at “real” consciousness. But then the burden should be on them to be more specific about what they mean. Once they are, it becomes easier to determine if the resulting concept can be studied scientifically, or if it’s metaphysical and unfalsifiable.
Put another way, consciousness may be a great mystery for those who refuse to clarify the term. The first step in grappling with a mystery is being clear on what we’re talking about. If people aren’t willing to take that step, then the mystery remains intractable… for them. But only because they’ve banished the possible solutions.
I love mysteries, but only the real ones.
What do you think? Does consciousness belong in the category of Mastroianni’s nouns? Is Hoel right that defining it is straightforward? Or is there another definition we should focus on? Am I overlooking intractable mysteries that exist even with precise definitions?
SelfAwarePatterns 
This is what you get when you apply a scientific structure to a topic that is not entirely suitable. When scientists study nature, if they get out of line, nature contradicts them. Psychologists, on the other hand (not neuroscientists, etc.) do not have an arbiter of what is and isn’t correct, so there is far more back and forth, especially in defining terms. There are no “proven approaches” in the field, so everything is up for debate and it could end up like philosophy, as a venue for addressing questions that never get answered.
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Psychology does have some successes it can point to, but it tends to be relatively low level stuff, like how much we can hold in working memory or for how long. And it seems like those successes are increasingly farther in the past.
On the other hand, all this criticism of the field from inside of it strikes me as healthy. And there’s hope with the increasing intersection between psychology and neuroscience, which is uncovering how many of our folk psychological concepts are problematic. (Of course, many of the old guard in psychology aren’t happy about this, but that’s often true of the old guard.)
All that said, Mastroianni, and others like him, are clearly worried you might be right.
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Many of the problems that psychology has with its research extend to other fields.
How many drug trials have lead to dangerous drugs on the market?
And here’s an article about problems in animal research:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/03/animal-behavioral-science-personalities/673432/
Subtitle: “Animal ‘personalities’ are forcing scientists to rethink basic research”
Sampling in any research involving something complex in nature is fraught with difficulties because of the numerous differences and variations unaccounted in the samples and the fact that causation is almost always multi-factor.
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Exactly, but that doesn’t stop people from claiming their science is “settled’ or “proven,” when in fact it is not.
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Handy heuristic terms to help us navigate an ever increasingly complex world. And as that world become more convoluted, so too the terms. Soon we’ll all be speaking, either through emojis or with these contextualized word-clouds drifting along with our communications.
I read that Hoel article (triggered my own post) and frankly, I take that fellow to be a bit of a prick. His neurological-focused ‘novel’ was nearly unreadable. And although I’ll give him his accomplishments, his pedantic approach to all of his communique is hard to swallow.
Fuzzy describing fuzzy, vague conclusions regarding vague subjects. I suspect, in the end, what humans characterize as an amorphous, mysterious condition will be reducible to a set of primitive attributes and reactions. When piled, shuffled and mixed, these properties manifest as a swollen bubble of indescribable meaning but in reality, this thing is primarily hot air inflated by humanity’s hubris.
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It could just be that our handy heuristic terms just haven’t caught up yet. We need to develop new ones as we learn more. Some of the ones we’ve been using for centuries will likely be redefined (the way “planet” was after the Copernican revolution), some discarded, and some new ones created.
I only know Hoel through social media, so can’t say too much about him. I haven’t read his books, and only occasionally read his posts. He does use provocative language. I had to throw away my first comment on his post because it was too responsive to those provocations.
Yeah, when talking about complex phenomena, there generally isn’t a fact of the matter on how the lower level mechanisms are grouped into the higher ones, just what works and what doesn’t. We once took the concept of a species to be a natural kind, but it turned out to be only a rough approximation of what creatures can mate with others. With that understood, it’s still a useful concept. What’s turned out to be less useful is the idea of life having some kind of special essence. Hard to say where many of our current folk psychology concepts will eventually fall.
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“Special essence”! Oh, we’re special alright. In the Universal realm of cognizant beings I’m sure we’re thought of as “special”.
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I liked this post. Like you, I see most things as processes, functions, actions, etc. I think language biases us toward “thinginess” by representing certain concepts as nouns rather than verbs. The big takeaway I got from your post was that complexity and mysteries are in the minds of the beholder. They are not objective descriptions or measures; that is, “consciousness”, if it really exists at all, is not a mystery or too complicated to analyze or emulate. Anyone who wants to seriously explore or talk about consciousness should be required to first define what he means by “consciousness” and/or how he/she intends to measure or test for it. He should also be able to decompose it into component parts that also may be measured and tested for. Anybody who calls consciousness too complicated or mysterious should be understood as admitting that “consciousness is too complicated or mysterious for him or her to deal with.”
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Thanks Mike.
There’s a tendency among a certain type of philosopher to look at aspects of the manifest image, the world as it intuitively seems, be unable to imagine how it could be mapped to a more scientific understanding, and just assume their inability to imagine it means it’s impossible, that the manifest thing is fundamental. It’s a bit like a child knowing nothing about how a TV works, and declaring that its ability to play content from far away must be fundamental, instead of assuming there’s something else working out of sight that’s not yet understood.
We might eventually hit a brute facts layer of reality. But for any particular phenomenon, history seems to suggest it’s not productive to rush to the conclusion we’ve gotten there yet.
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Verbing weirds language. So saith Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes.
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If we had verbed “God”, like we do with “love”, there would never be an argument as to whether or not God exists. Obviously, it exists when you are Godding, and doesn’t when you are not.
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Regarding Hoel’s post, I feel like intuitions regarding perception play a huge part in one’s implicit conception of phenomenal consciousness. If you’re the type of person to think that the properties and objects in our perception are worldly- meaning that when we look at something, we’re just looking through and seeing real physical properties and objects- then anything called phenomenal consciousness has to be something that goes over and above conscious perception. This viewpoint could take the form of naive realism (the object in your experience is the same thing as the object in the physical world) or representationalism (the object in your experience is a representation of the real physical object- they both share the same properties and features).
If you read illusionists like Frankish, it’s obvious they have this conception of perception in mind. For instance, he talks about how when he introspects he just sees physical features and properties (he’s a representationalist) and there’s no real phenomenal quality “there” that goes over and above the physical (this is also called the transparency argument in the philosophy of perception).
If, on the other hand, you think that the objects and properties in your perception are mental and not physical entities, then the term phenomenal consciousness just refers to your first person experiences. It’s easy to see how this could be a meaningful conception which separates experience from non-experience. This is also why most phenomenal realists insist that the “real” physical world is abstract and devoid of any “qualities”- it’s because they don’t think we can have any experiential grasp of the physical at all- by definition if you’re experiencing something it has to be a phenomenal entity.
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That’s an interesting point. I do regularly encounter people who say we only perceive our representations. I actually used to say something like that myself on occasion, although I’ve come to regard it as unfortunate loose talk.
Someone on Twitter recently made the point that representationalism isn’t about us perceiving representations, but about perceptual states being representational. In other words, representations are part of the process of perceiving. Which I think it the view you’re attributing to illusionists.
But I think the reality is more complex than a simple either / or. I do think representations are our perceptions (or at least part of them), but those representations are in terms of our evolutionary affordances. So while light at higher and lower wavelengths does exist in the world, the sharp distinction between reds and greens is more about what the objects reflecting that light mean for us. Does that mean color qualities only exist in us? You could say that, but there’s a functional and evolutionary explanation for it.
And of course I can imagine a red apple even when I’m not looking at it. That’s the representation being activated in my brain. Am I perceiving the representation? Or am I just re-perceiving the apple I once saw? Or some idealized version of one? And where do these deliberations put me in the phenomenal realist vs illusionist camps?
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Hey Mike, I do agree it makes more sense to say that our perceptions are representational, instead of “we perceive representations”. To put it better, we are aware of certain features in our experience, and at least some of these features are representational- they represent or model the external physical features of the world. Technically, it’s more accurate to say that we are aware or that we sense certain features, to use the term “perceive” is to automatically imply that you are aware of some external physical feature, as representationalism does.
Regarding representationalism, it’s important to point out that the term is somewhat of a misnomer. Representationalists aren’t just saying that our sensory states represent the external world (I think pretty much everyone thinks that), they are saying that our sensory states are essentially representational in a very special way.
To make the point clearer with an analogy: If we take the case of a map, we can note that there are structural features of the map that resemble the physcial features of the territory. In this way, the map models or represents the external territory. But it wouldn’t make sense to say that the features of the territory are actually identical to the features of the map. One shouldn’t look at the properties of the map, like its texture (smooth), composition (plastic) or color and conclude that the territory shares the same features.
The representationalists are saying that our sensory experience is NOT like the map-territory case. They assert that the physical world has the same (or very similar) features as the sensory features of our experience. In other words, we don’t have a map of the territory, we literally have a piece of the territory in our minds.
The problem with representationalism is that it seems to lead to some really weird metaphysical implications- that potentially put it into tension with physicalism. Basically, if the brain is not the territory (our brain clearly does not share the same features as the external physical objects of the world- we don’t have apples inside our brains), then how can one simultaneously assert that our experiences are identical to brain states (map), and that the features of the territory (external physical objects) are literally incorporated in the experience?
Most representationalists answer this by denying the first assumption that the properties of our experience are identical to vehicle properties of brain states. But as Papineau argues in his recent book The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience (I would recommend checking it out), this would seem to imply that our brain somehow puts us into contact with a metaphysical universal property type. This would seem to lead to weird things like Platonism (there are universals floating out there) which our brain can somehow put us into contact with when we have sensory experience.
Anyways, I’m getting slightly off track here, but this is also where I think illusionism falls somewhat short. It’s basically the stance that there are no phenomenal qualities- just representational ones- but without an account of representation, it’s not clear that we can make such an appeal without engaging in weird metaphysics. If, on the other hand, we deny representationalism as I have presented it, then it makes no sense to make a distinction between phenomenal and representational properties. There are only phenomenal (aka experiential) properties and these map-like properties happen to represent the physical territory by virtue of our brain being causally connected in the right way to the objects of the external world.
Anyways, my view is that the map-territory picture is correct. Our experiences are totally unlike the external physical features of the world, because they are actually internal physical features of the brain. When we introspect on what an experience is like (e.g. imagining a beautiful sunrise) we are literally made aware of the properties of brain states. Technically, this would mean that instead of saying “what a beautiful sunrise!” we should say “what a beautiful brain state I have!”, but that’s a small price to pay in my opinion.
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Hi Alex,
I’m not an expert on representationalism by any stretch, but I do know there are several types. What you’re describing seems like a weird one that I don’t know many people who call themselves representationalist would endorse. I listened to an interview Papineau gave a month or two back, where he discussed naive realism, which you mentioned above. Papineau described how problematic that view is. Is that what you were describing as representationalism?
The transparency argument seems related, but doesn’t seem as severe as the naive realism one. My understanding is that it argues we can only be conscious of what we’re conscious of, not the experience of being conscious. This is definitional minefield though. And I can see a higher order thought theorists really tearing into this notion.
Anyway, I feel comfortable saying naive realism is not my view, even though I’d broadly consider myself a representationalist. And I’d be surprised to see any of the major illusionists endorse it.
I do think they’d agree (I know I do) that representational properties are causally connected to properties in the world and your map / territory distinction. It’s worth noting that this map / territory distinction is also the one an illusionist would make about our representations of our own mental states.
A strong illusionist would, however, disagree with calling those representational properties “phenomenal”. What you’re describing is more of a weak illusionist / weak realist conception of phenomenal. Strong phenomenal realists and strong illusionists would, I think, agree in disagreeing that it’s sufficient for the adjective “phenomenal”.
Although there’s a good chance they’d disagree about what would be sufficient, with the illusionist leaning on Dennett’s secondary properties: intrinsic, ineffable, private, and directly acquainted. To the point I make in the post, based on my own experience, I suspect the strong realists might take a variety of positions.
All of which is why I try to steer clear of “phenomenal” language these days, except when making these distinctions. Too many interpretations. Although I do my best to interpret what someone else means when they use it.
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Hey Mike,
No, naïve realism is not representationalism. According to the naïve realists, the physical objects in the environment (e.g. real apple) are the same objects that are in our experience (e.g. visual experience of an apple). Particular facts about these objects are the exact same facts of our experience. By contrast, representationalists agree that the objects of our experience are not the same as the objects of the physical world, but they nonetheless assert that the features and properties of the objects in our experience, are the same features (or very similar) to the real object out there in the world.
This is called the worldly properties claim. What are the objects of our experience then, according to the representationalists? They are intentional objects, objects which share the same features as those of the external world, but which aren’t actually instantiated (see Dennett’s example of the flag: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316513753_Illusionism_as_the_obvious_default_theory_of_consciousness). Not all representationalists ascribe to a complete version of the worldly properties claim, but it’s by far the most common mainstream view. See the SEP entry for an in-depth look, in particular section 2.3 (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-representational/#RepCon).
You don’t technically have to believe that all the features of intentional objects are shared by physcial objects, you can be a non-physicalist and think they represent non-physical sense data, or you can be an error theorist and think they don’t represent at all (see section 2.3 above). But all physicalists must agree that at least some properties of experience are worldly (external) physical properties (e.g. primary qualities like shape in particular- as opposed to color which seems less clear). You can’t be a complete error theorist, otherwise there would be no representational properties to talk about.
Either way, if you’re a representationalist, you still have to think that our brain puts us into contact with features or properties that it itself does not instantiate, and that involves a metaphysical claim.
Here is an article by Papineau critiquing this view, and he quotes plenty of representationalists who make the exact metaphysical claim I described above (https://www.davidpapineau.co.uk/uploads/1/8/5/5/18551740/against_representationalism_about_conscious_sensory_experience.pdf). See p.336 in particular.
The point is that we can agree that there are features in our experience. Either these features are internal mental properties, or they are the same features as the external physical objects they represent. In the literature, the former are called phenomenal, and the latter are called representational. Like I said, that’s not my preferred usage, since you can still think that phenomenal properties represent or model the external features, but that’s how the terminology is drawn.
Some think that there are only representational features and no phenomenal features (aka illusionism). Some think that there’s a mix of the two (the Ned Block view), and some think that there’s only phenomenal properties (but that they can still represent in the map-territory way). Now I do agree that the illusionists’ argument against phenomenal properties is itself predicated on the assumption that an acceptance of them would lead to a rejection of physicalism- that any such internal mental properties would have to be intrinsic ineffable etc… But obviously I deny this. I do concede that an acceptance of them certainly seems deeply problematic for physicalism at a first glance, but as you know I think that any tension can ultimately be solved.
Anyways, I would really recommend reading The Metaphysics of Sensory Experience if you can. Papineau talks about how he once considered himself a representationalist, because he thought mental states represented external states, before he realized that this was not at all the way mainstream representationalists used the term. He’s now a proponent of the “phenomenal properties only” view, which I myself endorse.
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Hey Alex,
I might be missing something crucial here. The SEP section seems to discuss a variety of views about representational content, and I’m not seeing what you seem to be in Dennett’s example. Some of his language actually seems antithetical to what you described. But it’s possible I’m completely missing the point here somewhere. I’ll try to read the Papineau paper you linked to. Maybe it’ll make things click.
I did take a look at the book. It’s a bit pricey. I can afford it, but I’ve been disappointed with his writing in the past, which makes me a little reluctant to plop down the money. From the Amazon description, I am curious what in the world “a purely qualitative account of sensory experience” means coming from an ostensible physicalist.
: https://www.amazon.com/Metaphysics-Sensory-Experience-David-Papineau-ebook/dp/B08XJTQRTR/
For now, I’ll say this. I don’t know what it maps to in terms of philosophical categories, but my impression is that the representation is our nervous system’s best guess on what’s out there, its best guess in terms of our affordances, not in terms of strict accuracy or any type of completeness. It’s a set of predictions for particular needs, ones that can be wrong, sometimes spectacularly. And some of those predictions, like colors, can vary between individuals, as everyone discovered with the infamous dress scenario a few years ago.
: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
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Don’t worry about the book Mike. I was hoping you might have a free public library access, but yeah otherwise there’s no point to it. No philosophical book is ever worth paying for in my opinion. As for the SEP entry, the relevant quote in section 2.3 that I was thinking about is this one: “In the previous section, it was assumed that the putative representata are environmental features such as the colors of physical objects.”
So the mainstream view is that the features of representational objects (representata) are the same ones as the physical objects of the world. The section does discuss alternatives though, like I mentioned, but they are not as mainstream. And regarding the version discussed, strong representationalism is supposed to be the view that all the features of experience are representational features (no phenomenal properties), and weak is supposed to be Block’s view that I discussed (mix of both properties).
Anyways, to circle back, if you think that every feature of your experience is a feature shared by external physical objects, then obviously it’s going to be hard to understand what phenomenal realists mean by the mental “phenomenal” category.
And here’s the post by Frankish that I was talking about, where he goes over how he can only distinguish properties like the blue quality of the physical sky (the transparency argument), and doesn’t see anything “extra”. This sounds like he’s saying that the only features of his experience are the features of the physical objects of the world (strong representationalism). Which of course comports well with illusionism.
https://www.keithfrankish.com/blog/a-dialogue-with-ordinary-person-keith/
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Thanks Alex. I’m about halfway through Papineau’s paper. I can’t say I’m convinced he’s giving representationalism fair treatment. I’d be curious to see how an actual representationalist responds. Based on everything I’ve read from them, I find it hard to believe Dennett or Frankish would be onboard with what he describes. It’s definitely not how I interpret what they say in the cases you cite. It seems more likely to me that Papineau’s painting a strawman so his own proposition can seem more reasonable. But maybe I’m just not giving him enough interpretational charity on my end.
In any case, my view remains what I described above, regardless of whether it fits in the mainstream of representationalism within the philosophy of mind. I definitely don’t think every representation is veridical. It is when everything is working adaptively, but that’s not always the case. And not everyone is going to form the same representation of the same perceived objects, due to innate and learned differences. None of which means that representations aren’t what’s happening.
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To be fair to Papineau, his is an attack on representationalism, not illusionism. Illusionism is the story of how we might come to think that there exist phenomenal properties- whereas strong representationalism (SR) asserts that every property of experience is representational. I think Frankish believes that illusionism should entail SR, which I judge from his blog posts and assertions, but there is room for different interpretations for sure.
But yeah I do think that the worldly properties claim (the assumption that the features/properties of our experiences are shared in common with the features of the external physical objects of the world that they are meant to represent) is essential for representationalism. That’s my understanding after doing a deep dive into the topic (for my recent paper). It’s not one you’ll really see spelled out in my places though, as it’s assumed to be so commonsensical and “obvious” that it frequently doesn’t even need to be said. I thought this quote from the SEP entry in section 3.1 I earlier linked is especially telling:
“There are still nonrepresentationalist alternatives. For example, a materialist might suggest a type-identity of Bertie’s phenomenal greenness with something neurophysiological, but it is not plausible to think that a smoothly and monadically green patch in one’s visual field just is a neural state or event in one’s brain. At best, the type-identity theorist would have to do away with the important claim that greenness itself, rather than some surrogate property, figures in Bertie’s experience; the suggestion would be an error theory, and would have to explain away the intuition that, whatever the ultimate ontology, Bertie really is experiencing an instance of greenness.”
By the way, the assumption that certain features of our experience are worldly is common to a lot of non-physicalists as well, for what it’s worth. Many non-physicalists end up adopting a hybrid account (both representational and phenomenal properties) as a result- Philip Goff being an example.
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I didn’t take him to be attacking illusionism, at least not directly. Although I know he’s pretty staunchly opposed to it. Even though in some Twitter discussions he seems to be on the same page as Frankish ontologically. I remember someone egging him to just adopt the label, which he adamantly refused to do. As usual, I see most of this as definitional disputes.
Speaking of definitions, the SEP article appears to be using the phrase “sensory qualities” in a different fashion from classical qualia. In section 5, they refer to the latter as “WIL properties” and criticize philosophers for conflating them with “sensory qualities”. They seem to consider WIL properties to be what illusionists are denying. (Although earlier they talk about Dennett denying their version of sensory qualities. Maybe they consider Dennett and Frankish’s positions to be distinct? Dennett and Frankish certainly don’t.)
Michael Tye, in the SEP article on qualia, seems to reverse that meaning, considering the WIL version to be the lighter one, only attributing the most theory laden version to Dennett and other qualia deniers. Tye to his credit at least acknowledge there are several conceptions of what people mean with these terms.
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I agree in some ways with the definitional dispute assertion, but disagree in others. And yeah the distinction between WIL and sensory qualities is one that is egged on by the phenomenal properties folk, who see it as an argument against representationalism (at least the strong kind).
Basically, they claim that there are WIL features in our experience, but that they can’t be representational. They can’t be the same features as the external physical objects the sensory qualities are meant to represent (i.e. they can’t be worldly). Hence the need to introduce special phenomenal properties to account for them.
My own personal view is that this distinction between sensory and WIL qualities is very artificial. I’m not denying the existence of WIL qualities, as I do think there’s a rich quality or “feel” to human experiences, but I don’t understand what it would mean to say that there’s a sensory quality in our experience without the corresponding feel. If something’s a part of our first-person experience, then it surely must have some “feeliness” attached to it (okay I realize this is a really unhelpful definition- just groove with it baby).
I think I understand why the phenomenal realists want to separate the WIL from the sensory qualities though. If the sensory qualities associated with an experience of an apple are shared in common with the actual features of the external physical apple, and the totality of human sensory experience could be captured with sensory qualities (as the SR people say), then every single apple would have a “feely” apple-like quality inherent to it (some naive realists do actually advocate for this, see: https://philpapers.org/rec/LIUQAT-2). Thus, there has to be something more to human experience (aka phenomenal properties), which isn’t shared in common with the apple.
But this is no problem for my preferred account- which equates every feature of our experience with an inner brain state feature (no representational; only phenomenal). Our experiences of apples share common features with our brain states (because they are identical), but not with real apples, so there’s no issue here to begin with. We don’t have to worry that apples have “feely” features.
And I am guessing I have lost you here given your dislike of the WIL definition. Perhaps it’s time to wrap up the conversation at this point. Thanks Mike!
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On WIL and related terms, yeah, my concern with them is that they’re vague, with different people meaning different things by them. There’s often a grounded interpretation to what’s being said, and a more exotic one.
Responding to the grounded interpretation, I’d agree that any sharp distinction between sensory processing and our reactions to that processing is going to be artificial. I’ve used the phrase “dispositions all the way down” before, to convey that what we call sensory images are themselves dispositions, reactions. And what we’re more comfortable calling “reactions” are just the dispositions later in the causal stream.
As always Alex, enjoyed our discussion.
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I fear that this taxonomy overuses the word “the”. As in, “to think that *the* properties and objects in our perception are worldly.” I suggest dropping the “the” and seeing what can happen.
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Never mind; I see that in later replies you mention Ned Block’s view.
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I started reading this post and thought to myself “this is all about patterns.” And I searched the page and found the only mention of pattern was in your name. 🙂 As I read along I was working up comments I might make. When I got to your reference of Jaycee Reese Anthis, I clicked on the link, and didn’t really remember having read your article on the other end. But I’m getting old and I checked the comments. And guess what: there I find pretty much exactly the discussion of patterns I want to bring here.
I guess I should say that for this discussion, when I talk about patterns I’m mostly talking about the results of pattern recognition. [The topic is worthy of a book, and, Oh Look!, someone has written that book. Ruth Millikan wrote Beyond Concepts. ] I don’t have a coherent way of explaining this. If/when I do I might write it up. Instead, I’m going to throw out a few comments:
We know things via pattern recognizers, aka unitrackers (a la Millikan).
Pattern recognizers are fuzzy, such that a set of inputs can trigger the recognition, but the members of the set can vary. When we as individuals have pattern recognizers that are similar enough to the recognizers of other individuals, presumably because they are learned from the same input data, we can give a name to the pattern, even though there may be variational differences in the actual recognizers. And we can group the names based on some characteristics , which is how we get “nouns”.
For some nouns, there is little variation between individual patterns: see “polar bear”. For others, there is fairly high variation: see “sandwich”. “Consciousness” falls in the latter group.
That’s enough of a mess for now.
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How much pattern recognition is there in my hand hurting because I accidently got it caught in a door? How much in love or sorrow?
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Hi James. When you ask “how much,” are you looking for a quantity? The firing of every neuron is a pattern recognition. There are only certain patterns of inputs that will cause a given neuron to fire. And then some neurons fire in response to patterns of other neurons firing, so there are hierarchies of pattern recognition. When you talk about love and sorrow, are you talking about the constellations of interoceptive patterns we associate with these terms, or the identification of a given constellation which constitutes the specific pattern of one or the other?
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“Every neuron”
I doubt that. It seems more likely groups of neurons work together to recognize a pattern. One neuron by itself wouldn’t constitute a pattern.
Love and sorrow don’t feel much like patterns but more like states.
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It’s always about patterns. 😉
I’m onboard with much, if not all of this. I would just note that another word for pattern recognition is prediction. Or we could talk in terms of dispositions, where a pattern is essentially a triggered set of dispositions, which may go on to trigger more action oriented dispositions later in the causal stream. Or representations. Lots of different ways to characterize the reality of neural firing patterns.
I agree consciousness is in the high variation category of nouns. Which shouldn’t surprise us if we can accept that it’s a complex collection of capabilities. It’s the people who insist that it’s something simple and fundamental who struggle with the high variation thing.
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I don’t think I’m on board with “another word for pattern recognition is prediction”. I understand how they’re associated [he said with a straight face] but can’t equate them. A prediction is the result of a pattern recognition being used to influence subsequent pattern recognitions. Are you saying, instead, that a pattern recognition constitutes a prediction that “something” is “out there”?
I agree there are lots of ways to characterize neural firing patterns, but I don’t think they are equivalent, and I think those using a specific concept of pattern recognition are more useful. When you talk about a triggered set of dispositions, I assume you are talking about the responses to a pattern recognition. But those responses could become the inputs for a further (higher?) pattern recognition. Not sure how you are using “representation”, as I can understand that as a process, or as a sign vehicle.
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Maybe it’ll help if I make clear that the prediction we’re talking about isn’t at the full agent level, but at the sub-agent one. It’s a prediction of the sensory systems. So we’re not talking about a reported prediction (unless the person reports what they’re perceiving).
And the prediction can be wrong, and even shift. Consider mirages, such as seeing water on the road near the horizon. We’ve all come to learn that’s an optical illusion. Yet we still end up perceiving it, while just discounting it. In other words, our sensory systems predict there’s water there. But we ourselves have learned to ignore that prediction.
So when I talk about predictions and dispositions, I’m not talking about something in addition to the pattern recognition (at least not necessarily), I’m talking about the pattern recognition itself. It gets into why we even have pattern recognizing capabilities in the first place, into the adaptive role they play. Same with representation, although the discussion with Alex leaves me more nervous than ever with that word.
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I don’t think neurons are predicting but, in many instances, looking at it from a high-level, the result seems to be a prediction. I think neurons are trying to mimic or imitate in some way the information they have been given.
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In the last comment, I was trying to get at what the rules or principles neurons operate with, not what we think to be the result. Prediction is a possible result. But it seems a stretch to call things like pain or love predictions. Abstract math or appreciating the beauty of painting might have some elements of prediction but they are not exactly predictions either but they do seem closer to pattern recognition. Bottomline is I don’t think this can be summed up in either pattern recognition or prediction without leaving out other stuff.
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I think we can view the prediction as something emergent from the operations of the neurons (in a weak emergence sense).
I think even pain and love are predictions, but it requires some thought to see them that way. In the case of pain, it seems like a prediction about a problem in a certain area of the body, coupled with a desire to do something about it. But that prediction can be wrong. I once related the case of a relative who had phantom back pain due to a opioid addiction. And I’ve had a fair amount of experience this year with referred pain, where it feels like one tooth is hurting but the issue is with another one above or below it, or with the jaw.
But the sense that something is being left out is a very powerful one. The question is trying to identify exactly what that might be, at least without falling back on philosophical jargon that have only controversial definitions.
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With respect to the various versions of representationalism, I think James hit the nail on the head when he mentioned “triggers”. I believe all we can say at present about our perceptions of the world around us (and inside us), is that something from reality (whatever that is: external or internal) triggers a physical response in our brains and possibly other organs that correlate to some degree with what is actually out there (or in here). I would not assume a causal relationship between reality and perception, although I can’t rule that out either. The fact that we (humans) have many perceptions in common with many others is the reason map-makers can make a living drawing maps. As we distance ourselves from the human branch of the tree of life, say, to octopi, for example, it becomes less and less probable that those species perceive reality with the same triggers we possess, but that said, I have little doubt that consciousness spreads throughout most of the tree of life. It seems to me that for anything to survive, from single-celled organisms all the way up to us, there needs to be a consciousness or subconsciousness of me (that is hungry, thirsty, etc) and not-me (that is to be approached or avoided, etc etc).
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I think when things are working right, perceptions are triggered by things in the world, and so have a causal relationship with them. The question is how much of what out there causes a particular perception, and how much of it is our already existing model of what’s being perceived. I like predictive coding theories here, where perceptions are predictions, or perhaps more accurately, collections of predictions.
When viewed that way, it makes sense that those predictions would be in terms of what matters for the organism. So ripe fruit is a big deal for primates, so the color of ripe fruit jumps out to us. Ripe fruit isn’t a big deal for most mammals, so for them it doesn’t. In the same vein, type of flowers matter to many insects, so it’s not surprising that they can perceive many more colors than we can. For us, flowers are just a nice side effect of why we perceive the colors we do, but for those insects, it’s vital to their survival.
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I’ve never liked the “what it is like” definition.
That said, the others that Hoel quotes provide definition similar to mine. It is what we experience when we wake up until we sleep and what we don’t experience in deep sleep or when anesthetized.
It is like Ford. It is a category that lumps a great deal of things together and research will need to determine the degree of commonality they. There is a big difference, however, with “Ford”. Presumably all of consciousness comes from neurons in the brain doing what they do. So, it is likely the different things do have a great deal of commonality. With Ford, the difference between assembly line and corporate management is fairly large.
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It feels like the “what it’s like” definition has become a crutch in philosophy. A lot of people seem to think it’s meaning is self evident, and can get quite annoyed when asked to elaborate further.
The issue I see with focusing on what we experience (with any associated conditions) is that we still need to define “experience”. I have my own thoughts on that, but any answer will likely be controversial.
There is reportedly a huge variety of neurons and synapses. In fact, based on everything I’ve heard / read, I wonder if it makes sense anymore to talk too much about “types” of neurons and synapses, but maybe more about the dimension on which they vary.
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I also don’t like the “what it’s like” definition. I note that Hoel wants to talk about consciousness, not “qualia”. For consciousness, a perfectly good definition – even Keith Frankish agrees! – is Eric Schwitzgebel’s ostensive definition. The fact that Schwitzgebel was trying to define “phenomenal consciousness” and wound up with just plain consciousness, is a happy accident, in this context.
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I certainly enjoyed Mastroianni’s blog post, and since it humorously demonstrates something that I already believe. It illustrates that respected people in the field are essentially wasting time putting on a show meant to suggest that they aren’t wasting time. Thus when cheaters are found out, the removal of their work has no implications to anything else in the field. It’s as if it’s all just bullshit. Nevertheless he loves the subject and concludes “Only new ideas can [bring the field back to life]. Sweet, sweet ideas, ideas that matter, ideas that you can build on, ideas that would take something with them if they disappeared. That’s what I’m going to look for, and fortunately I am good at searching for sweet things and reporting back about their location, because I am not a human at all, but a bunch of bees.”
It’s not a new idea that should fix the field however, I think, but rather an old one. The idea is that feeling good constitutes what’s good for anything which can feel good, with the opposite being the opposite. This is sometimes referred to as “psychological egoism”. Just as electricity is the fuel which drives our computers, I consider this to be the fuel which drives you and I as conscious beings. The field of psychology does not yet found itself upon this or any premise (unlike the much stronger field of economics), and so it’s essentially destined to “fake it” rather than “make it”. And why has economics been permitted to found itself this way while psychology has not? Probably because economics is far enough away from the central science of psychology that it doesn’t overtly conflict with the social tool of morality.
This gets me to the second component of your post Mike. I’m not afraid of using the term “consciousness”, and I suspect that you understand what I mean quite specifically when I use it. If not however then you could always review Eric Schwitzgebel’s innocent/wonderful definition. (For anyone unfamiliar, he presents various positive and negative examples of consciousness to latch on to, and remains agnostic regarding anything metaphysically speculative on the matter.) http://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/DefiningConsciousness.htm
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Describing economics as a strong field in terms of science would be contested by a lot of people. It’s called “the dismal science” because its models rarely seem to be predictive. But I think this is a problem with all the social sciences. When your subject is humans, the complexity pretty much rules out the type of predictions physicists can make. It doesn’t mean that the models produced by those sciences are useless, but the best they can hope for is to make probabilistic statements.
Have you heard Yuval Harari’s definition of consciousness? He defines it as the capacity to suffer. It’s a bit of a revision from his earlier view that consciousness is a useless byproduct of the brain. Of course, the new definition leaves us having to define “suffering”. I think we’re faced with something similar with yours, having to define “feel good” and “feel bad”, or maybe just “feel”. I have my own answer, but it’s inevitably going to be controversial.
Yeah, you know my views on Schwitzgebel’s “definition”. And no Eric, if I didn’t already know many of your views on consciousness and your usage wasn’t clear from the context, I wouldn’t know what you meant by the word. The curse of being too well read in this subject.
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(A second try. Jetpack sucks.)
I suppose that back in 1849 when the phrase was coined, spotty predictability might have made it appropriate to refer to economics as “the dismal science”. I don’t think that assessment stands nearly as well today however. But I also don’t think that this specific parameter should mainly be what differentiates “hard” from “soft” forms of science. Certain things are more difficult to predict than others simply given less perfect information, and regardless of how effective a given model happens to be. Observe that modern economics harbors a vast assortment of models which have earned the credence of economists in general. Here basic ideas have gone on to found more and more extensive ideas that also seem effective. And though modern psychology may have certain ideas that are generally agreed upon, they seem more high level than foundational positions from which to build. In any case modern economics students are treated to a wide assortment of questions that have universally agreed upon right and wrong answers. Conversely modern psychology students are treated to the opposite. I consider this to be an effective way to separate “hard” forms of science from “soft” forms of science. Thus it makes sense to me that psychology endures crisis’ in reproducibility and such, while economics does not.
I’ve never considered it difficult to define “feeling bad” versus “feeling good”. I’ve experience both throughout my life in various magnitudes and flavors, and my understanding comes from these experiences specifically. I suspect it’s the same for people in general. Thus I’d smile if you were to say that your life hasn’t given you an understanding of “feeling bad” versus “feeling good” that’s extraordinarily similar to my own such understanding. But I also think I know you well enough to know why you’d make such a strange claim. It’s because you’ve invested in the quirky but popular belief that consciousness exists by means of algorithms alone. I consider this belief to have all sorts of magical implications, and so obfuscation can be an effective defense. Of course I also know that you’re not some kind of mastermind who understands all this and so has consciously decided to obfuscate. I wouldn’t even accuse Frankish or Dennett of being such masterminds. I’m just saying that long ago each of you accidentally chose a supernatural horse in this race, and the “I don’t understand what people mean when they say “consciousness”” thing, happens to be useful both for defending the position and attacking competitors. Frankish now seems to grasp that acknowledging the sensibility of Schwitzgebel’s innocent/wonderful consciousness definition has hurt his platform, and so has tried to take it back. You seem to have learned from his mistake and so try not to concede what he’s conceded. Your position is vulnerable in other ways as well however. Here you may also be challenged for denying sensible positions.
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(Yeah, WordPress overall has seemed buggier than usual lately. Hope they get these issues ironed out soon.)
It’s probably not worth the effort to get into a discussion about economics. It has a terrible reputation. I think it’s better than that reputation, but the field tolerates a lot of kooks who seem more interested in philosophical posturing than empirical science. But it’s hard to imagine the Federal Reserve’s responses in 2008 and last year would have been as effective as they were without economic models that are a lot better than the ones we have in 1929. Not a popular position, but I think it’s true.
On the same theme, I think psychology is better than its reputation, but still has a lot of work to do. And it also unfortunately tolerates a lot of kooks in its ranks. I think it’s gradual merger with neuroscience is doing it a lot of good. Most of the kooks don’t seem to want to get their hands dirty with that kind of science.
Yeah Eric, from my point of view, with all these accusations of magical thinking, obfuscation, and attacks on “competitors”, you’re more describing your own behavior than mine or the others. It’s painful that every conversation we have these days seems to end up here. I miss us being able to talk without it.
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If we’re going to measure the softness of a science by means of a percentage of its credentialed practitioners that happen to be “kooks”, then we’ll need a reasonably objective way to differentiate them from non-kooks. Sounds problematic. But if instead we were to document the amount of agreed upon understandings that a given field has attained, it seems to me that some sort of metric here might be quantified. I like that! Thus we’d not only be able to effectively rank sciences by means of some sort of “density” score at a given moment, but if continually calculated we’d see progress over time, or a lack there of. Since this would probably validate the position of Sabine H that modern physicists are burning through money with very little to show for it, I bet she’d love such a metric.
Any guesses on what it might yield? If 10 is the top and 0 is the bottom, I wonder if chemistry would beat out physics for the highest score, since physics gets into questions regarding speculative fundamental forces and quantum mechanics? Or maybe chemistry would be classified under the domain of physics? Astronomy might get dinged a bit given measurement difficulty, though there’s obviously plenty that’s understood and agreed upon in the field. Maybe a 7? Astrobiology might earn a 4, with biology itself more like a 6. I’d guess that geology might score about 5, with meteorology similar. Neuroscience might score a 4, that is if cognitive matters aren’t factored in to drop things lower.
I suspect that agreed upon understandings in the field of economics would top it out for all mental and behavioral sciences, with a rating around 5. (I’ve never worked in the field itself, though as I’ve mentioned here before, I did earn a bachelors degree in it.)
Some might suggest that psychiatry is a reasonably hard behavioral science given modern drug expertise. To me that’s more of a medical matter however. Medicine itself might qualify for a 5. Otherwise psychiatry should reside at around the level of psychology, sociology, political science, cognitive science, and so on. I suspect that agreed upon understandings in such fields might earn each of them a score in the neighborhood of 1 or 2. If anyone would like to propose some different scores however, then please do.
On the stuff about magical thinking and vested interests, this is part of my general platform regarding modern consciousness science. I do admit however that no one’s mind should actually change on this basis. Also I certainly don’t mean to inflict any pain! One great way of refuting my platform, I think, would be for McFadden’s theory to legitimately fail my proposed form of testing. If certain chatbots were indeed to become conscious (in the innocent/wonderful sense that many of us consider useful), then I’d need to concede even more strongly. As I recall Mike, you aren’t predicting chatbot consciousness for another century or so however. So this might come too late for us should it be true.
I think a best case scenario would be for McFadden’s theory to pass my proposed test in the next decade or so, and thus institute a monumental paradigm shift. In that case I know you’d concede. Thus I think each of us would continue having fun blogging, though now under an amazing new age of science.
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When it comes to kooks, judgment is always required, but that’s where expertise matters, particularly when there is evidence based consensus in a field the kook is ignoring without good reasons. Kooks also have a tendency to make a lot of methodological errors that competent practitioners in the field can see pretty quickly.
But judging a field solely on the level of consensus requires caution. I’m not particularly interested in whatever consensus cryptozoologists, parapsychologists, or astrologers have reached. There needs to be at least some consensus in the rest of the academic community that the field has some merit. (And that changes with time. Parapsychology enjoyed a period where a lot of people thought it might be competent toward its subject matter.)
On the other hand, I do agree that the pervasiveness of different “schools” in a field indicates a lack of consensus. It can feel very similar to religious denominations or sects at times. It’s not unusual for a field to have a core consensus with different schools on the speculative frontier, which I think describes things in physics and many other sciences. Definitely those schools run much deeper in the social sciences. I’d just note that’s as true for economics as the others.
On inflicting pain, I can tell you from first hand experience that if you’re getting into the motives of people you disagree with, you’re almost always making an argument that will just alienate those people. I know I’ve fallen into that mode occasionally, and almost always regretted it. I try to steer clear of it unless a conversation partner opens that door first. It’s a slippery slope into nasty arguments and damaged relationships. If you think someone is wrong, ask them about the areas you perceive reasoning errors. Or just discuss your own blockers for accepting whatever they’re proposing. No guarantees, but I’ve found it to be a lot more fruitful.
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Excellent advice Mike. In the court of public opinion it’s generally the most likable person that wins. It seems to me that Joe Biden could also use your council right now. Apparently half our country would instead prefer Donald Trump as the leader of the free world! Could these court cases (regarding Trump allegedly raping a woman, stocking unauthorized classified documents all over his house, election tampering, and inciting an insurrection to stay in power after losing), actually propel him to victory?
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Thanks Eric. Yeah, politics is its own set of rules. I’m not even going to try predicting what will happen with Trump anymore. I do think they were right to prosecute, regardless of how the politics come out. If you or I had done any of those things, we’d be under the jail by now.
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Adam Mastroianni borrowed the word “fiction” from Yuval Harari’s ” fictional realities.” Both terms are used as the opposites to “reality.” Neither Adam nor Yuval explained what reality is. And, I think nobody could.
Such a use of words, which are opposites of something unknown, is just a word game and is not much helpful in understanding things.
All the words are inventions of the human mind. And, of course, to study something (which we describe by words), we need to break it down to something more measurable, whether you look into “fictional” Ford company, or consciousness, or hunger.
I am not a realist or representationalist. I would say I am an approximalist. I believe that our words and whatever we imply when researching, discussing, or perceiving something is just an approximation of what is out there. The degree of approximation is unknown and changes over time.
Moreover, the approximation itself depends on our assumptions and postulates, even in so-called hard, precise science. Here is an example. Could you calculate the angle between clock hands at any given time? That is the problem given to my grandson, who is in 9th grade. Of course, there is a solution with a math formula. And you could check out the results by measuring the angle on some big clock. By any means, it looks like some primitive problem in hard science. Let’s say you calculate the angle, and it is 30 degrees. Then, you measure it with a protractor, and it is 30 degrees. But what if, in some countries, people assume that a circle contains not 360 degrees but seven degrees? With different postulates the results would be different.
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“But what if, in some countries, people assume that a circle contains not 360 degrees but seven degrees?”
Wouldn’t the formula be the same?
And that is important because it is description of a relationship rather than an absolute. I am inclined to believe also in approximalism but I do think we need to be fairly close on relationships otherwise we would constantly be banging into things every time we walked.
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In the specific case of that particular clock problem, the formula would differ depending on how many degrees we assume the circle has. However, it is possible to make a more generic formula using one more variable – the number of degrees assigned to a full circle. That would mean we have a more generic set of postulates and, therefore, more generic sets of laws for “clock math.” Now, I see here some analogy with multiverse theory where we have different sets of physical laws in different Universes in the multiverse.
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Yeah, as I noted in the post, I’m not a big fan of using the word “fiction” in those contexts. Harari applies it to things like money, democracy, and a bunch of other stuff. And I get what they’re trying to say with that usage, but “fiction” seems needlessly provocative. But we do tend to remember what they’ve said, so there’s that.
Which reminds me of something I remember Leonard Mlodinow noted in an interview when talking about the book he coauthored with Stephen Hawking. He expressed some concern with the line “philosophy is dead” and wanted to use a more nuanced and accurate statement. Hawking told him that his phrase didn’t have “punch”. When Mlodinow elaborated, Hawking simply repeated that his version didn’t have punch.
“Appoximalist” is a good way to put it. Of course, that assumes being a representationalist means believing the representation perfectly represents the reality in question. I doubt many representationalists actually think that.
Your final point reminded me of this SMBC:
https://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3913
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[guess what? Approximation IS equivalent to pattern recognition.]
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I can agree with the more folksy definitions of consciousness, but let me take a stab at a definition from my new “fragmented consciousness” view.
Consciousness is what happens whenever one part of the brain finds something interesting enough that it notifies the other parts of the brain about it.
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That’s pretty close to global workspace theories and their variants. I’d just say that every region is constantly trying to notify the rest of the brain on what it has, but most of the time the rest is preoccupied with some other region’s content.
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Definitely a slight parallel, in that parts of the brain are notifying other parts. But in “fragmented consciousness” the consciousness arises right on the spot. The notifications and routings don’t have to occur at all for it to exist. It isn’t dependent on information flowing all over.
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As I noted on your blog, a lot of similarity with Dennett’s multiple drafts model. Although it sounds like in your case the individual drafts are themselves conscious, as opposed to Dennett who sees no fact of the matter until the system ends up needing the info from one of the drafts.
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Yeah, I went back and read the section of Consciousness Explained where he introduces the model. Mainly I was looking for what constitutes a “draft”. Maybe he is clearer about it elsewhere but I couldn’t find a clear definition there. Maybe I missed it.
He does spend a little time discussing something that seems to be about false memories where something like multiple drafts might make sense. But most of the section is about the color phi phenomenon which is simply an optical illusion. It’s unclear to me what the multiple drafts are in the color phi example because ultimately in the illusion everyone sees the same “draft”. More importantly there is never really any place for consciousness in the model which prompted Searle to say he didn’t explain consciousness but explained it away.
The most parsimonious hypothesis for the location of consciousness is that it appears in the location where the critical processing associated with the processing occurs. The illusion of consciousness isn’t consciousness itself but the illusion that consciousness is single and unified itself.
Eventually I’ve have a more comprehensive writeup.
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Yeah, Dennett is hard to read in just sections. Short to the point writing is not his thing. You have to go through his entire buildup, which can be tedious as hell at times. He eventually admits in that book that he’s talking about global workspace with modifications, something that I think would have made his explanation much more clear if he’d said it upfront.
But the reason many people think he doesn’t address consciousness is because he doesn’t address the version they’re looking for, the screen or presentation, which everyone says is a strawman, but which they feel the lack of in his theory. Even traditional GWT is a little tainted with it, looking for a definite event when things “enter consciousness”. The reason Dennett spends so much time on the phi illusion is to show why that’s a bad theory.
Anyway, I’ll keep an eye out for your writeup.
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If I understand Mastroianni’s third proto-paradigm correctly, psychology seems to have re-discovered the category mistake. For “Ford,” substitute “university,” and we have Ryle’s classic example.
The category mistake is applicable also to consciousness. When you advise “being clear on what we’re talking about,” you’re in effect asking whether by “Ford” we mean the buildings, and by “consciousness” its physical incarnation, or whether there is another referent of interest. If the buildings don’t provide an adequate definition for what interests you, then you’ve chosen the wrong category by which to understand it.
The confusion arises when someone insists that Ford is “nothing but” the buildings, and that by examining them in sufficient detail, we can understand everything we need to know.
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Whoops, I meant Ryle. These four-letter philosophers!
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Excellent point Jim. This is why I consider Schwitzgebel’s innocent/wonderful definition for consciousness so effective. Here it doesn’t matter how it is that the brain (or whatever) creates it. All that matters is that we have it. And what exactly is “it”? We find that out by means of simple positive and negative examples.
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Fixed. I left this one since Eric replied to it.
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Definitely Ryle’s category mistake. I actually had meant to mention that in the post, but ran out of space.
Ryle’s point is that Oxford actually just is all the lecture halls, dorms, admin offices, etc. (I’d also include faculty, students, alumni, board, etc. for a full picture.) His point was that it’s a mistake to think there’s a “universityness” in addition to all that. And his overall argument is that the same applies to the mind. I often note that, if you’re a functionalist (or behaviorist in Ryle’s case) you see the hard problem as having been solved 45 years before Chalmers coined the term.
Of course if you’re a strong phenomenal realist, then you think Ryle is the one making the category mistake, leaving out a crucial component, the ineffable and private mental paint of experience. To your point about Ford, if we have left out such a crucial component, we may not be studying what we’re actually interested in.
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I don’t think Ryle meant to deny “universityness” or its parallel in (if you will) “mindiness.” After describing “the official theory” of Cartesian dualism as “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine,” he says, “It is, namely, a category mistake. It represents the facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category or range of types or categories, when they actually belong to another [emphasis added]. Later he says, “It is perfectly proper to say, in one logical tone of voice, that there exist minds and to say, in another logical tone of voice, that there exist bodies.” So quite clearly he’s prepared to allow that minds “exist,” in a certain perfectly valid sense of that word. The hard problem, since you bring it up, would be showing that it “exists” in the sense reserved for bodies.
Similarly, a university is more than its buildings after all; it is the place where one encounters the thought of Plato and Aristotle. But as the foreigner might well protest, “You have shown me only a library with books; where is the thought of Plato and Aristotle?”
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Maybe I should have been more careful in my wording. Ryle wouldn’t deny universityness as a concept, just that it exists as something ontologically separate from its components. His book is largely a takedown of substance dualism (the ghost in the machine). He doesn’t deny that mind and body are useful concepts. Just that we shouldn’t let the two concepts lure us into thinking they necessarily refer to two separate ontological things.
I think that’s exactly the mistake Chalmers makes when he lists what he calls the “easy” problems, but then says that’s not what he wants to talk about, but this separate thing called “the hard problem”. We could say there is a hard problem but it’s all the easy problems (including many he omitted) combined.
But again, this is me talking from a functionalist perspective.
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Immediately after writing that “It is perfectly proper to say, in one logical tone of voice, that there exist minds and to say, in another logical tone of voice, that there exist bodies,” Ryle adds, ” But these expressions do not indicate two different species of existence, for ‘existence’ is not a generic word like ‘coloured’ or ‘sexed.’ They indicate two different senses of ‘exist,’ somewhat as ‘rising’ has different senses in ‘the tide is rising,’ ‘hopes are rising,’ and ‘the average age of death is rising.’
This is certainly a denial that universityness exists as something ontologically separate from its components, but it’s more than that: it’s a claim that they do not have the same ontological footing, that they are not ontologically “on all fours,” to use that horrible expression beloved of British analytics.
“It will also follow,” he has written in a preceding paragraph, “that both Idealism and Materialism are answers to an improper question. The ‘reduction’ of the material world to mental states and processes, and the ‘reduction” of mental states and processes to physical states, presupposes the legitimacy of the disjunction.”
I understand him to be suggesting an attitude to ontology that allows for more than one understanding of what is “real” or “exists,” if only to avoid philosophical absurdities. And I understand Chalmers to be suggesting that the hard problem is hard from a certain ontological perspective that has committed to solving it nevertheless.
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Ryle, like Dennett, is difficult to quote. He’s not prone to succinctly summarizing his view, so you have to read a lot to get it. (Which might fit since Dennett was a student of his.) But it’s worth noting that the discussion we’re talking about happens in a chapter titled “Descartes’ Myth”.
And later in the book he mentions this:
Although he does follow this up with a critique of mainstream behaviorism in that period. I called him a behaviorist above, but it might be more accurate to label him an early functionalist.
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I first read The Concept of Mind in the late 197o’s, and for a few decades I dragged the book around from place to place, but finally I gave it away, thinking that I had no further use for it, and perhaps someone else would. At the moment I’m working from an anthology called Classics of Analytic Philosophy, bought around the same time.
In the chapter “On Psychology,” Ryle distances himself from behaviourism. “The early adherents of the methodological programme seem to have been in two minds whether to assert that the data of consciousness and introspection were myths [!], or to assert merely that they were insusceptible of scientific examination.” Their insusceptibility of examination suggested that they somehow existed nevertheless, which proved in the long run to be problematic. All the same, Ryle regards the problematic dualism he is deflating as a sort of progress away from simplistic behaviourism, if only because it allows a distinction between saying and thinking.
He makes the rather interesting statement that “The Newtonian system is no longer the sole paradigm of natural science. Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely, a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man.” You’re right that his thinking is difficult to summarize in quotes, but here he seems to draw on his insights into the Cartesian category mistake to suggest that another paradigm than physical mechanism is required to understand “mind.”
To the extent that functionalism draws on some other paradigm than physical mechanism, Ryle may be moving towards it. But functionalism certainly draws on the idea of mechanism generally, and it seems to me that Ryle’s objection, in this chapter, is to the general assumption that because matter is explicable as mechanism, mind is similarly explicable, if only we appeal to mechanisms of a different sort. “Even if psychologists enjoy no proprietary data [think “private experience,” or “qualia”] on which to found their theories, still their theories themselves are different in kind from those of philologists, camouflage-experts, anthropologists, or detectives. Psychological theories provide, or will provide, causal explanations of human conduct.” It is this attitude that he seems to be mocking. He is content with the causal explanations of “ordinary good sense, or. . . the specialized methods of economists, scholars, strategists, and examiners. But their explanations are not cheques drawn on the accounts of some yet more fundamental diagnoses.”
Given these considerations, I wouldn’t be too quick to claim Ryle for the functionalist camp. His attitude is rather more Wittgensteinian: the attempt to explain mind as a mechanism results from, and perpetuates, a philosophical confusion.
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I do apologize for using the wrong “Reply” box all the time. Even after years of flubbing it, I can’t seem to get the hang of this.
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No worries. Honestly if I’d known about some of the WordPress commenting limitations, I might have gone with sequential commenting when I first set up the blog a decade ago.
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I have to admit that I’ve never read Ryle’s book all the way through, although I have read large portions. I picked up the Kindle edition a while back mostly to follow through on citations and references from other material. I quickly learned that it was seldom possible to read just the cited page for enough context. So you might have more insights into his overall views than I do.
I also just read through his final “Psychology” chapter, and honestly wouldn’t be able to summarize his views, except to say that he thinks both Descartes and Hobbes were wrong, and psychologists and behaviorists get some things right but a lot wrong. He’s definitely opposed to Cartesian dualism, even while admitting “the Cartesian story has been more productive”. But I’m not sure what the nature of his issues with Hobbes are. They might be the issues any modern physicalist might have with him, but I couldn’t find any elaborations.
I shouldn’t have used “early functionalist”. Maybe “proto-functionalist”. But maybe even that is assuming too much. In truth, the only thing I can for certain is anti-dualist.
I wasn’t aware Wittgenstein said that about minds. Is that early or late Wittgenstein? I would expect early Wittgenstein to say that a lot depends on how we’re defining “mind”, and late Wittgenstein to talk about how we’re using that word in the language game. But I definitely haven’t read his very dense stuff all the way through.
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It’s not that Wittgenstein actually said that; rather, it reflects the approach of the later Wittgenstein, on some interpretations at least (including mine). Philosophical Investigations is written in an oblique, one might even say aphoristic way, and in my opinion is often misunderstood to be saying that certain kinds of talk are nonsense. I believe what he’s saying is that certain kinds of talk must not be held to the expectations of other kinds of talk, and I think Ryle nailed it with his “category mistake;” but this too is often misunderstood. P.I. is not hard to read, but I found it absolutely mind-bending (back in the late 70’s), and (based on this recollection) I can’t recommend it highly enough.
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Ah, thanks for the clarification.
I’ve never tried Philosophical Investigations. I did try to tackle Tractatus years ago, got a few pages in, realized I didn’t have the energy for fighting through it right then, and never got back to it. From what I’ve read PI isn’t nearly as exegetical, but there are still differing interpretations. Kind of ironic given what most people take to be his views.
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