Doubting personal experience
Certainly Descartes' cogito seems to be undeniable. If you think, then you are. It would not make sense to be able to think but not exist in any way, shape, or form.
The cogito can thus be seen as a personal experience that cannot be doubted on pain of contradiction.
But what if we doubt the accuracy of other personal experiences?
For example, it seems like most of the time I have conscious control over what I do. It seems like I have free will. This is an experience that is very close and personal. Yet there is scientific evidence and philosophical theories that place free will into doubt. What this means is that something that I have a very clear experience of having (free will) is actually illusory, and this is known by means of evidence that is not as close and personal as the experience said to be illusory.
In other words, if we deny the veracity of things like free will, or the Self, or the mind in general, etc by appealing to things like scientific data, we immediately end up pulling the sheet out from under us. For scientific data is only recognizable by observation and deduction, things that are not as close and personal as the aforementioned things placed under doubt.
There needs to be a justification for why we ought to doubt something that is so close and personal and accept something that is further away from our immediate experiences. If we're not willing to believe in our most close experiences, what reason do we have to believe in things that are further away?
The cogito can thus be seen as a personal experience that cannot be doubted on pain of contradiction.
But what if we doubt the accuracy of other personal experiences?
For example, it seems like most of the time I have conscious control over what I do. It seems like I have free will. This is an experience that is very close and personal. Yet there is scientific evidence and philosophical theories that place free will into doubt. What this means is that something that I have a very clear experience of having (free will) is actually illusory, and this is known by means of evidence that is not as close and personal as the experience said to be illusory.
In other words, if we deny the veracity of things like free will, or the Self, or the mind in general, etc by appealing to things like scientific data, we immediately end up pulling the sheet out from under us. For scientific data is only recognizable by observation and deduction, things that are not as close and personal as the aforementioned things placed under doubt.
There needs to be a justification for why we ought to doubt something that is so close and personal and accept something that is further away from our immediate experiences. If we're not willing to believe in our most close experiences, what reason do we have to believe in things that are further away?
Comments (110)
What Peirce wrote about Cartesian doubt seems relevant here.
Even more fundamental than the cogito, is the fundamental law of logic: the law of non-contradictions. If a proposition is self-contradictory, then is it necessarily false, then its opposite is necessarily true. Let's apply it to the cogito: I think "I don't exist" is a self-contradiction because I cannot think "I don't exist" if I don't exist already. Therefore the opposite thought "I exist" is necessarily true.
Let's now apply it to the case of free will: the proposition "I don't have free will" is not a self-contradiction, because it is logically possible for a being to say this without having free will. EG: if a computer says it. Note that the opposite proposition is also not a self-contradiction. Therefore neither propositions are as certain as the cogito. There are arguments for and against free will, but they are not as strong as using an argument from non-contradiction, because they are based on premises, which need to be proven by other premises etc.
In order to be fallible and something to doubt the experience would have to represent something. There is no point to treat the experience as fallible except under the assumption that it would be a representation, like a description, picture, or a model of what you experience. But I think this assumption is false; experiences are not representations.
An experience is what it is: the conscious awareness of some object or state of affairs under such and such conditions of experiencing it. Then it is neither right nor wrong, just how the object or state of affairs is experienced under such and such conditions, as a matter of fact. Nothing is then represented in a right or wrong way, but presented in your experience.
But this is only a problem if perception and conception are conflated.
You have an idea that you have freewill. But that is a folk psychology concept - a theory you use to account for the observable phenomenology, like when you suddenly decide to clap your hands together in demonstration.
Then science might offer a different conceptual framework. And that may in fact address the phenomenologically observable rather better by stressing how much we don't have to consciously plan for useful motor actions. Most of the detailed timing and execution can be (in fact must be) left to learnt subconscious habit.
So what you really have are competing explanations for your experience.
There is the familiar cultural script where we are all meant to be "observant selves", personally responsible for our impulse control and our individual actions. The fact that we are largely always acting through established habits is not treated as much of an excuse. Society operates on the principle that we are in ceaseless charge of our thoughts and actions.
Then there is the more neuroscientifically realistic account where "consciousness" is attentional priming of a state of mind - a setting up of expectancies. Then subconscious mechanisms pull it all together in a fluid and integrated fashion. The role of attention in the moment of action is not to will anything in self-conscious fashion. That is just an extra load on the mind sure to fuck things up. At best, attention is there at the last split instant as "free won't" - ready to put the brakes on if a motor response is coming out wrong for some wider reason.
So neuroscience gets under the covers of the motor act and can explain the phenomenology in much greater detail. If you try to attend to the exact moment you decided to push some experimenter's button, neuroscience says the first time "you" concretely knew about it was when a reafference message was broadcast across the brain in a fashion that would allow your self-caused motion to be subtracted from the resulting lurch in your general perceptual state. If you turn your head to look at something, you want to know that was you turning and not the world. And even then, only so you could in fact ignore the very fact that you acted and so actually continue to experience "a stable world" as you bumble about doing stuff.
So the neuroscience view explains in fact why you have such a sense of a stable world in which you can then freely act. Conception and perception are the complementary possibilities that arise by this neural trick of distancing "a self" and "a world".
If you wave a videorecorder about (as kids untrained in camera work do), then the resulting images are like a mad crazy collage that makes no sense. Yet that is what our eyes do all the time. But "we" don't notice because all the motion is cancelled out at a preconscious level.
And in the same way, we have this social fiction of being individual observers acting out of freewill or conscious voluntary control. And the fiction works because the brain really does learn to divide our impressions of the world in a way where there is just an "us" that has an intention, and a world that then co-operates with any wishes in fairly predictable fashion. The less we have to think about, the more in control we feel.
But that then creates this clash of theories when it comes to folk psychology vs neuroscience. The folk psychology - as pursued by Descartes for example - wants to argue for some actual dualistic split between a perceiving soul stuff and a perceived world. Consciousness can't be this neuroscientific account of benignly pragmatic neglect - a refusal to sweat the detail. No. Consciousness must be in charge the whole time, all the way through, start to end ... otherwise there is no self, only automaton!
But as I say, freewill, the self, the mind, consciousness, experience, whatever ... these are all social constructs - conceptions used to organise our understanding of who "we" are. And society doesn't need us to have a deep theory about that. The aim from society's point of view is only to inculate the general habit of being attentive to what we do and self-regulate in a socially productive fashion.
However once we start to philosophise about mind, that is when a folk psychology level of conception can really screw us over. We are chasing a social fiction essentially.
This is another advantage of Peirce as a philosopher of mind. He had students like Jastrow as well colleagues like James. He was right in the thick of early psychology where the role of habits in the "machinery" of consciousness was a hot topic. So his semiotics incorporates that basic insight.
The OP had less to do with free will per se although I appreciate your input anyway. The point I was trying to get across was that we can't "get around" that correlation between "the world" noumenon and "what we actually perceive" phenomenon.
I'm reminded of eliminative materialism, the doctrine that denies the existence of minds. How could I be so incredibly wrong about the existence of my own mind? I am my mind, aren't I not? It seems like a non-starter.
If you tell me that mind does not actually exist and it's just an illusion, I'm gonna wonder what else I'm hallucinating about. And so if you tell me that I am mistaken and that I have no free will, despite what I immediately perceive to be the case, what reason do I have to trust anything else? If you're telling me to discard something I have a clear experience of having, what reason do I have to accept what you're providing as an alternative? How can "further away" knowledge refute closer-at-hand knowledge without putting itself into doubt?
So when someone says "you have no free will", they are asking me to question something that I have a very close-to-home experience of having. There of course could be explanations and plausible theories as to why I experience what I experience, but the fact is that these theories rest on a "secondary level" of knowledge, for lack of a better term. What I experience immediately, up front and close, is the best information I have. A crude analogy would be an amateur telling an expert they're wrong about something - there's a possibility the amateur is actually right but the epistemic judgment clearly favors the expert. Am I not the expert of my own experiences? Do we not gain epistemic fallibility the further away we get from our most personal experiences?
Denying things like free will has the potential to put the whole project of science under doubt unless a plausible epistemology can be provided. I'm not saying it's inevitable or that it's impossible but I haven't the best idea as to how it can deal with this issue.
(Y)
You can only imagine a possible action and try to act upon it. Actual outcome is entirely dictated by unfolding duration. The future is entirely unpredictable but there are choices that one can make as to how to direct will.
So how should we treat them when used in an argument for or against something that does involve representation.
Like jkop I feel there's nothing to doubt about my personal experience. It happens...it happened.
As soon as it's in the past some doubt can reasonably set in. This might be the moment of waking: Ah, that was a dream. But then, it's just that a new experience clarifies the (memory of the) old.
And for me, any 'me', my own first person testimony will always trump scientific explanation, however much of a scientist I am. That's just the way a human is made. 'I don't care what your man Libet said, I know when I decided something.'
It's been a perplexing area for me, studying more 'metaphysics of mind': that a lot of the waffley sounds-like-science from Chalmers et al imagines that only third-person testimony, or a certain view of science, is going to 'explain' consciousness. There are perfectly good ways of thinking about first-person experiences in a scientific manner. They come from social science, however, and there's a certain strain of physical/biological science folk who just disregard social science.
Anyway: I think that as I've got older, I've become more and more aware of how 'I' inhabit a creature who often seems to be deciding things for me while my mind is busy with other things. There is a first person way of looking at the sorts of things apo cites. But experience loses its most personal meaning if we re-express it all in the third person for the sake of purported explanations.
This is an interesting point, consistent with Peirce's observation that only our future conduct is subject to self-control - obviously not our past conduct, and really not even our present conduct. How should this inform our whole approach to ethics? Perhaps that question belongs in its own thread.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Peirce seems to have shared these sentiments:
By distinguishing one's personal experience as a fact from one's personal belief about its meaning or interpretation.
For example, I taste a sip of coffee, and the experience lets me know, directly, what it tastes like. Now I may form a belief about it, predict what the next sip might taste like, under other conditions etc.. My belief can be right, or wrong, because it represents a probable taste of the coffee. The experience, however, doesn't; it gives me direct access to what the coffee is like, its taste is not represented but presented in my conscious awareness. There is no ultimate coffee-taste "in-itself" which each sip would somehow represent more or less successfully (not to be confused with an intended taste that a barista, for instance, might want to achieve as s/he prepares the coffee).
The idea that experiences would be representational is utter nonsense, yet persistent in thought about perception where it is fueled by bad arguments, such as the argument from illusion.
So with freewill, society promotes the notion of a self that is in complete control, whereas science would say the "self" doesn't describe any particular functional unit, it is the name we give to the functional unity that can be observed over time. The self is an illusion in that sense.
Likewise having a conscience seems to be a big deal for some societies. But that is a very socially constructed thing as you can tell by cross culture comparisons.
So perhaps calling things illusions sounds too strong. We do construct actual habits and patterns of thought that answer to their folk psychology conceptions. If you push me on the existence of freewill, I will demonstrate it by lifting my hand without a problem when "I" decide.
But we also know from science that all phenomenology is a kind of illusion. Roses look red and smell sweet, yet the material reality is that there is some balance of reflected radiation and floating molecules whose bonding shape excites a particular interpretation in the nose.
So in a sense, eliminativism seems to want to talk about "real illusions". And the objection then is the degree this becomes a rather negative and paradoxical framing of the situation. It has a dismissive and scientistic ring - as if science can already explain things through its computational analogies in particular.
I of course say that computationalism - the mainstream paradigm - is itself just more folk psychology. The brain is not a machine like that. Which is why I instead take the neuro-semiotic view as the way to eliminate the general air of mystery. The idea of the mind as a modelling or sign relation is a more accurate theory in not seeking to reduce all reality just to material causes.
However as a general project, eliminativism makes sense. We have to strip away the socially constructed notions of what a mind should be to start to understand the mind from a more objectively and empirically founded point of view.
It seems to me like I have some control over what I do, but it's by no means comprehensive or complete. I am also subject to appetites, wants, emotions, cravings, and so on, over which I have varying degrees of control. I certainly don't doubt that I exist, but recall the very disciplined argument that Descartes built from, in order to arrive at his notion of what constitutes a 'clear and distinct idea'.
It's worth recalling that Augustine anticipated Descartes 'cogito' by centuries:
Augustine, On the Trinity 10.10.14
Quoting apokrisis
Dennett's new book is basically a re-hashing of this idea. The analogy he gives is that consciousness is like the desktop operating system that allows us to function and navigate in the world, whereas the real work is being done by code and micro-processors that we have no idea of. However the reviews still say that he is trying to do away with, or explain away, the apodictic reality of first-person experience.
The basic objection I have is this: that even scientific judgements are still judgements. And judgements always have a qualitative aspect. We rely on saying that something 'is like' or 'is not like' something else - and that judgement is not a physical process. We even rely on such judgements to ascertain what 'a physical process' is. So whatever account is given of the neurological and evolutionary processes that apparently give rise to consciousness, also rely on judgements which are themselves imposed on those accounts. (I think that is the meaning of the 'transcendental nature of judgements'.)
So when eliminativism says that the 'socially-constructed notions' have to be 'stripped away', then why should the neurological and so-called scientific accounts of consciousness have any more weight that what has been stripped away? Don't you think that is the essence of 'scientism' - that it privileges the scientific account of the nature of mind, over the first-person appraisal or insight into the nature of mind?
Quoting apokrisis
Why do you think that the elimination of mystery is a requirement? Humans are after all subject of experience, and you may never know what it is that makes another subject 'tick'. You can't write a specification for a person. I think the impulse or desire to scientifically explain the nature of the mind really is a form of scientism, whether you want to call it biosemiotic or whatever.
Exactly the metaphysics of presence.
I discount Dennett as a serious voice. Frankly I find him all over the shop. Early on he was saying good things about intentionality and even the socially constructed nature of "self". But then he seemed to lose it with the popular success of Consciousness Explained. I couldn't extract a coherent position from that and haven't bothered reading his stuff since.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yep. The semiotic view of life and mind says it is "judgments" all the way down. Nature is perfused in sign. Even the receptors studding a cell wall are making semantic interpretations in deciding what gets in.
Sure, there is something syntactical or mechanical about being a biological switch. But the switch is always acting with lived meaning. It matters to "someone" - the organism - what it does.
And that sure ain't the case with hardware and software ... unless there is a human just off to the side making sense of all its hurried electronic switching activity.
Quoting Wayfarer
But the whole notion of "first-person appraisal" is a linguist social construction. The first mistake about being a mind is to think we "just need to look to see what is really there".
As I say, even an animal might be phenomenal - there would be something it is like to be a bat - yet that is a still a biological construction. This is why pioneering semiologist Jacob Von Uexkull tried to imagine the 'Umwelt' of a bee - the world as it would appear as a pattern of signs serving a bee's purpose. See pix at http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock/175316new/lecture_notes/lecture_16/lecture_16.html
So we see "red" or smell "sweet". But to think of those as "mental qualities in themselves" is a very particular way of parsing experience. It is a habit of thought that every philosophy of mind student sure learns to pick up as a social necessity. However psychological science would like to talk about how its not really an ecologically-valid construct.
Our awareness of red is always the awareness of something red. There is an embeddedness that gives the experience a meaning and purpose. It is then a philosophical version of scientism - let's call it idealism :0 - to suppress the always interpreted nature of experience and just try to talk about the uninterpreted "bare particulars".
Qualia talk gives unjustified realism to "sensory impressions" just as much as scientific materialism wants to talk too substantially about "the material world". It is all part of the strong causal dualism at the heart of Western thinking. And that is what Peircian semiotics in particular tries to get away from.
Quoting Wayfarer
Maybe I am just more curious than the average dude. I like to know how everything works.
But scientism is different in that it is a self-satisfied reductionism. You know that my semiotic approach talks only of minimising vagueness or uncertainty. So it builds in a notion of its own proper epistemic limitations. It accepts that it might in the end only be a sophisticated form of instrumentalism. And that more closely fits any philosophy of science definition of scientific inquiry.
Plus why should we think the mind is so beyond explanation given the vast number of things we now understand very well and are no longer a mystery?
I know your approach is considerably different to Dennett's but the fact that Dennett is so widely read, and so uncompromising in his materialism of mind, makes his work a useful reference point, at the very least.
Quoting apokrisis
Because it mistakes where science is in the hierarchy of understanding. Science deals with what can be explained, objectified, measured, analysed, from minute to galactic scales. But naturalism is based on a stance, namely, that of observer and object of observation. First Kant, and then phenomenology, actually tries to 'turn the light around', to look at the very act of observation itself. And that is a different kind of stance to naturalism. An implication of that, is that it requires that we give up some precision and definiteness, in return for an intuitive grasp of the nature of the workings of mind. The instrumentalist approach must always be to objectify the mind, to turn it into the purported object of investigation. That then situates mind within the domain of phenomena. And as I argued at length in the thread on panpsychism a couple of weeks back, I think that is a profound mistake. Dennett, in particular, is desperate to 'de-mystify' the nature of mind and life - to say 'at last, science has unravelled the mystery'. You see, I think that is in some sense pathological - I think it's driven by the actual fear of the mysterious nature of life and mind. It is instructive that Dennett, Dawkins, and the like, are always obliged to deny or obfuscate the mysterious nature of life and mind. Robert Rosen, I suspect, would never do that.
A quote from the New Yorker article on Dennett:
Science is not omniscience- it is not all-knowing. In fact, I'm starting to realise that it isn't even all-knowing with respect to those things which it thinks are utterly amenable to scientific explication. (I mean, look at the 'standard model!') It is pragmatically indispensable but it is limited in scope by the very assumptions it starts with. Really what that amounts to is an admission of humility - which is the very thing lacking from 'scientism'.
I prefer Max Planck's take:
[quote]Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.
Interesting quote. You may be aware that a family of theistic arguments (generally, the argument from reason) make the claim which Peirce here rejects, i.e. that beings whose mental processes are wholly governed by naturalistic or material forces thereby have cause to doubt the reliability of their ratiocinations.
That is why you constantly seek out the worst examples of scientism you can find. You need its blatant folly to spare your blushes.
But quite plainly the semiotic approach to epistemology takes the observer seriously. The whole point is that the "observables" of any theory are not objective facts but only "reasonable signs" that mediate a relation with "the world".
You have to keep forgetting that semiosis builds in the observer so you can keep strawmanning me as just another bloody materialist. It gets tiresome.
I don't believe it. I try to avoid beliefs, as far as possible. But it pushes your buttons because you can't fit what I say into your biosemiotic schema, at which point you invariably resort to ad homs.
//ps//
Quoting apokrisis
Besides, I don't 'reject naturalism in any form'. The question was asked, 'why should we think the mind is beyond scientific explanation?' and I responded to that question, with reference to Kant and phenomenology.
Also, I'm not 'comparing you to Dennett', in fact, I acknowledged that 'your approach is considerably different to Dennett's'.
The thing about the cogito is that it is really a doubting and rejecting of experiences themselves. We have more experiences than just the cogito.
Red, the movement of an arm, the approaching truck, the dragon bearing down, are all undoubtable experiences too. Their presence is what allows Descartes to about their accuracy. We can't speculate about whether we really see a dragon if there is no sight of a dragon. "I think therefore, I am " is mistaken. It should read: "I experience (whether that be self, red, a moving body or dragon," therefore I am having that experience." Descartes makes the mistake of abstraction our present self away from our experiences, such that the presnece of all an individuals experiences are beyond doubt. Our thoughts and self are actually present in the same realm as anything we are are aware (e.g. the present experience of a dragon shows a real dragon bearing down) or not aware of (e.g. when the experience of a dragon is an "illusion" and the person cannot see what's really there)
This error of abstraction has dire consequences when talking about things like self, free will or the mind. They all become abstracted out of the world we experience, as if the world we see around us had nothing to do with our self, free will or mind. We form this notion observation, awareness or measurement of the world are incomparable with self, mind and free will. It creates the "hard problem."
If we avoid the mistake of abstracting the mind out of the world, the sorts of problems you are talking about never arise. To measure and report data about, for example, the reactions of the body doesn't violate free will, self or the mind. Since free will, self and the mind are all, themselves, material they are not mutually exclusive with measurements or observations of them world.
Free will is an excellent example. How exactly are you going to decide what to have for breakfast without your body? It's literally impossible. If you are going to move to the pantry, get out the cereal rather than the bread, pour it in a bowl, immerse it in milk, you need your body-- there must be observations, measurements, chemical actions, electrical signals in the body, etc. if you are to make that choice. All those are undoubtable experiences that constitute the making of the choice to eat the cereal.
This is exactly what substance dualism does and how the myth of the "hard problem" is created. It denies our personal experiences, of body, of measurement of the world, which undoubtably occur with out awareness of self, mind and free will. Unwilling to believe these close experiences, the substance dualist is then caught denying anything further away (i.e. other states which casually relate to the existence of our minds) and, finally, our minds themselves (i.e. that minds just don't "make sense," that they are a "mystery," that they have nothing to do with world).
Keep in mind that Peirce was a self-described objective idealist who held "that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws" (CP 6.25, 1891). In other words, he believed that mental processes and material forces are only different in degree, rather than in kind, and that the former are primordial relative to the latter. "Accordingly, just as we say that a body is in motion, and not that motion is in a body, we ought to say that we are in thought, and not that thought is in us" (CP 5.289n1, 1868). Therefore, I suspect that he would have agreed with the argument from reason that our beliefs cannot be fully explained in terms of non-rational causes. Furthermore, he was himself a theist who argued that the reality of God is a highly plausible hypothesis - a spontaneous conjecture of instinctive reason, just like any successful scientific theory in its initial formulation.
It's nonsense to claim that these experiences are undoubtable. Why not doubt that what you see is really "red", that what you are doing is really "moving your arm", or that what you perceive is really an "approaching truck"? You may argue as Wittgenstein does in "On Certainty", that it is unreasonable to doubt such things, but if, out of the thousands of times a day that an individual makes such assumptions, there is but one instance of error, then it is reasonable to doubt all such assumptions, because without doubting them one will never know which ones are mistaken.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
That personal experiences occur without an awareness of self is itself a highly dubious proposition, most likely false. That an experience is "personal" implies that it is proper to the person. How could a person have an experience, that experience being property of that person alone, without having an awareness of one's self? Isn't having an experience which is proper to yourself alone, itself an awareness of yourself?
To "experience" requires an awareness, and to experience something personal requires an awareness of the person. By saying that the experience is proper to yourself alone, you indicate an awareness of yourself. If you assign such an experience to something else, you indicate that this something else also has an awareness of itself, or else it is not undergoing the same type of experience. If it is not the same type of experience, then by what principle would you call it an experience which is proper only to itself?
That's a strawman. My point was the presences of the experiences are undoubtable. One may still doubt the content of experience is true. Here the point is not that our knowledge or experiences are always accurate, but that they are present. Such experiences are a required object before we even approach the question of whether they show as what is true or not. Just like the presence of oneself and experience of oneself, the presence of any other experience cannot be doubted. They are present before we get to the question of whether an experience shows what is true.
Experiences without awareness of the self are not dubious. They are common. Indeed, most of our experiences are exactly that. We don't go around saying: "I am" all day. That's only a specific experience we sometimes have, particularly when we are reflecting (which is why philosophers often mistake it for the extent of our awareness. They get caught thinking we must always be reflecting philosophically). Most of the time, what we are aware of does not include ourself at all: red, car, tree, ball, toast for breakfast, "GOALLLLLLL!!!!!," "Mum!," "Dad!," "Hungry," pain, etc. Having the experience of being one person alone, of the self, is actually fairly rare. Not because it is wrong or somehow mistaken, but rather because we are most often interested in other things.
No doubt there is a person having all these experiences, but it is not realised in the given experience. To be aware of the self, to think "I am," is a different instance of experience. To have an experience which is your own is not necessarily awareness of yourself.
Only people like substance dualist using Descartes' cogito make the error of thinking being a person must amount to awareness of oneself. Why? Well... the presence of anything except the self experience ( "I think, therefore I am" ) is rejected. To them, it incoherent to consider the presence of a person without such an experience, for personhood and mind are equivocated with an experience of self-awarness. There literally can't be any people or minds unless someone is thinking about the presence of their self.
Are life and mind any more "mysterious" than matter? The problem with the idea of 'mystery', is that it suggests something hidden, something occult, that might be somehow uncovered, rather than just the simple fact that matter, life and mind are thinkable in their temporal, finite senses, but as ultimate, absolute, infinite and/or eternal, cannot be fully grasped by a finite mind.
With the experience of doubting them one will never know which ones are mistaken. Knowing is not something that can be warranted by some other criteria. As Spinoza suggests, before you can know that you know, know that you know that you know, know that you know that you know that you know, and so on to infinity (this being the supposed skeptical challenge to the possibility of knowing anything) you must first know.
Can you arive at an understanding of them on the basis of the physical sciences? Are they physical?
Quoting John
What you do mean by 'thinkable'?
The physical sciences deal with the physical; i.e. matter. The life sciences (biology for example) deal with life, and the sciences of the mind (neuroscience, psychology for examples) deal with the mind. Physics alone cannot lead to an understanding of climate. Is climate a physical phenomenon?
Quoting Wayfarer
Well, we know what the terms mean, don't we? You know what it means when I say that something is material, or that something is alive, or that a person changed their mind, don't you?
And where does philosophy fit into all that? Do you think philosophy of mind will ultimately be a matter for neuroscience and neurobiology? Is it just a matter of time until they 'crack the nut'?
As for 'thinkable', it is too vague a term to serve any purpose.
What do you think could possibly be understood philosophically speaking about mind, matter or life that is not informed by the various sciences? This is not to say that there are not (in-finite) aspects of mind, matter and life that will never be understood; either scientifically or philosophically, simply in virtue of the limitations of finite intellects.
Such "aspects" are, I believe, like the ideas of infinity and eternity themselves, best "understood" apophatically, metaphorically, allegorically, by allusion, by "intimation", imaginative intuition, and so on; but this is not the same as rational, scientific, or philosophical understanding, because it cannot be explicated or positively determined.
And "thinkable' is no more vague that many other terms such as 'explicable', 'determinable', 'comprehensible' and so on. I have no doubt that you know what it means very well.
Right. That's similar to my response to Apokrisis (the paragraph about 'where science is in the hierarchy of understanding), although perhaps not so clearly stated. But in any case, if that is your view, then there's nothing to take issue with.
I'm not sure whether you mean my response or yours was 'perhaps more clearly stated"; but in any case that doesn't matter. :)
We seem to have returned full circle, and I think that perhaps what we would still disagree about is the philosophical status, significance and what might be the implications of the ultimately "mysterious" nature of mind (and matter and life).
Quoting John
As John points out, there is a difference between expecting the mystery to be cleared up in some radically different way (revelation? poetry?) and accepting that science - as the refined form of rational inquiry - is a finite exercise. (Or even, as I always argue, pragmatically myopic in that it seeks control over reality much more than it seeks any "truth" of reality.)
Quoting Wayfarer
This was the bit where you had a go at scientific inquiry as refusing to acknowledge its epistemic limits when really, even these arch-reductionists would see themselves as being anti-occult explainers. So they don't pathologically fear "a mystery" - your suggestion of some personal foible. They quite sensibly oppose "unnecessary mystification" - and so express a communal standard that rationality seeks to apply to the scope of speculative hypothesis.
If it ain't testable, it ain't in the game. And that is a deliberate choice that arises from accepting practical limits to making models of the world.
Of course I then agree that Dennett, Dawkins, the usual candidates, play a part in the great dichotomising cultural war of Enlightenment monadic materialism against Romanticism's dualising transcendence. So outside of the formal boundaries of science, you have this other big show going on as a folk metaphysical battle.
But I like to keep the two things separate.
Right. We have basically different interests - I'm commenting on the 'culture wars', 'science v religion', and so on, and you're commenting on the new developments in biosemiotics and biological sciences.
Biosemiotics, as you say, offers a model which much better reflects the nature of mind and life, because of its basis in language and signs. That is not really what is at issue in the debate about the significance of first-person understanding and its relationship with science.
Quoting apokrisis
I think if one accepts science as a finite exercise, then one is indeed exercising the humility that I was referring to in the previous post - kind of a Socratic humility, 'all I know is that I know nothing'. I'm sure plenty of scientists - maybe even most scientists - are like that. But would they then be interested in the task of trying to 'reverse engineer the soul', do you think?
And, you see, the reference to 'folk metaphysics' really does put you more towards the reductionist end of the spectrum, I'm afraid; after all, it is the elminativists that speak of the mind in terms of 'folk psychology'. (Those old-fashioned superstitious types, who believe in the elusive nature of the soul....)
Quoting apokrisis
No, it's deeper than that. It's no coincidence that Dennett in addition to describing humans as 'moist robots', is also an evangalising atheist who sees himself locked in a battle of (rational) science vs (superstitious) religion. These writers exemplify what Nagel - professed atheist though he might be - identifies as 'the fear of religion':
Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion (in The Last Word 2006).
But I would be a weak eliminativist in that I am only arguing that there are models that are better or worse in the light of some purpose.
So folk models are those that may be actually good for what they are meant to do - produce a conformity of thought targeted at the creation of an enduring social system. While scientific models are meant to serve a different purpose - talk about the world at the level of abstract, globally invariant, "objective" formalisms.
So my epistemology recognises the part that purposes play in the production of models or paradigms. A basic "subjectivity" in this regard is built into the pragmatic position. Whereas you are talking as if this is a competition between rival objective truths. That is why - in attacking scientism the way you do - you come off as championing the alternative objectivity of the occult.
Quoting Wayfarer
Or is he a blowhard that likes the thrill of public controversy and big publishing deals?
I find it hard to think he actually takes himself that seriously. He actually seems smarter than that. But also his ego shines through. So its his way of having fun.
And yes, it is also legitimate for rationality to be in a fight with religion. Immanent naturalism is up against transcendental discourses that want to leave the window open to creators, miracles, dualism and other kinds of supernatural goings-on. Naturalism's point of view is that it has gone around closing all those windows and so is creating a picture of nature which is self-organising or closed for causality. The idea of a unified Cosmos makes sense. So to now make a case for transcendent causes, you can't just talk about "the essential mystery of it all". To be playing the rational game, you have to come up with rather more concrete evidence of something that naturalism seems to have missed.
So it is not that there isn't a subject matter. However where I personally part ways with the reductionists is in taking a systems or holistic point of view. And that in turn brings me back towards some fairly "religious" sounding metaphysics.
It's complex. :)
Yes, there's a mob of them on the street outside, trying to burn down a library. I should go and intervene.
Actually, on a more serious note, the problem is that some religious ideas are taboo in modern academic discourse. My belief about that is, that it's a consequence of the history of how such ideas were dealt with in the West. Mainly, it's because of the unbearable amount of pressure brought to bear against heresy, and conversely, the importance attached to orthodoxy.
I formed the view, when I studied History of Religion, that this went back right to the formation of orthodoxy in the Western tradition. There was a sense that certain 'articles of faith' were compulsory - you had to believe particular things in a certain way. That is what 'orthodoxy' came to mean.
There used to be a passage floating around on the Web, of the original charter of the Royal Society, which was the first truly scientific association in the world. A big part of that charter was 'keep away from anything the churchmen are interested in'. That was understandable on a lot of grounds, at the time, considering the constant wars and conflicts of religion that had gripped Europe for centuries.
So I think that led to the parting of the ways - the division between what would be considered the natural sciences, and matters spiritual.
So now that has lead to certain kinds of ideas being effectively taboo in modern culture - but the reason why they're taboo, or what drove them underground, is itself forgotten. And that drives a lot of the debate in this matter,
Same with research into meditation, OOBs, homeopathy and anything fringey. I talked with a lot of those researchers.
So I agree that scientism is alive and well and not willing to listen. But on the ground, there are a lot of believers who actually hold down research positions and who get to publish what the heck they like in journals or at conferences.
Frankly cranks abound in science. I've met a heap of them. And science - as a social institution - can afford to be pretty tolerant of "heresy" because it can trust in the overall rationality of its process. It is self-correcting in the long run and doesn't need to impose its authority on every idea.
Of course when it comes to public funding, attitudes tighten up. But really I never saw any general attempt at suppressing way out ideas so long as they were in some way "science" in being in at least some sense prospectively testable.
Quoting apokrisis
I was attempting to pinpoint the origin of that division, of the supposed barrier between the natural and supernatural, and why some ideas in particular are categorised with the latter.
Quoting apokrisis
Interesting to consider the treatement that is regularly meted out to Rupert Sheldrake. He claims his ideas are capable of experimental validation, and yet from his very first publications his ideas have been derided as scientific heresy. John Lennox, in his review of Sheldrake's first book, A New Science of Life, declared it 'a book for burning' in Nature magazine, of which he was then Editor. Later, in a BBC interview on why he used that phrase, he said:
Note that it's heresy because of its subject matter - not because of the methodology. Sheldrake is an experimental scientist and subjects his theory to experimental validation. What appears to be at issue, is whether the perceived effects he claims to demonstrate are caused by the factors other scientists are willing to acknowledge, or whether they are caused by the novel idea of morphic resonance. It is that idea which Maddox calls 'heretical'.
I concur with the point you're making here (shocking, I know). I believe it's misguided to define "pseudoscience" solely or primarily by its subject matter, as opposed to its methodology. (I don't necessarily believe that there's a hard-and-fast line between the two, but there are no doubt unambiguous cases which drop out on both sides of the line).
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/
In his otherwise sober book Consciousness and the Brain (which, fair warning, is somewhat tough going even for a "pop" neuroscience book; actually I'm not sure if it's all that "pop," as it's packed with technical details. But I digress...) author Stanislas Dehaene derisively refers to those conducting experiments to detect out of body experiences (by placing cards containing certain symbols near the ceiling in operating rooms, where they could only be seen from a vantage point near the ceiling, looking down) as "pseudoscientists."
That bugged me a bit because those investigators' methodology seems prima facie perfectly sound from a scientific perspective, eliminating as it does certain confounding variables, such as the possibility that whatever information the subject acquires during his supposed OOB came from subconsciously hearing chatter in the OR while coming into or out of consciousness.
Perhaps the notion of OOBs is completely spurious (or perhaps not), but one should not dismiss the possibility out of hand, lest science fall into the dogma and close-mindedness which it decries in other spheres of human thought.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_and_the_Brain
It's no strawman, every aspect of experience can, and should be doubted, therefore the "presence" of experience, or that experiences are "present" is dubitable as well. Time is understood to us as a combination of past time and future time, your assumption of a "present" is a highly dubious assumption.
You seem to want to allow that all the content of experience is dubitable, but there is something else, other than the content which is not dubitable. But experience is just that, content, so to make your point, you need to demonstrate that there is something more to experience than content. What would that be?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I've never ever had an experience without an awareness of myself. I've tried to do this through meditation, but all that does is heighten my awareness of myself. An awareness of myself is even highly evident in my dreams, and this is not even a conscious experience. If you are going to make such a bold assertion, that experience, without awareness of self, is common place, then you need to explain what you're talking about, and tell me how to get myself out of my experience. Otherwise, I believe you're just making up fiction.
Quoting John
I think you're flat out wrong here. We always doubt before we know. First, one might think that one knows, or you might believe that you know, but this is not really knowing, it's just an attitude of certitude. But it's an unjustified certitude, a false sense of confidence. True certainty is only produce by doubting, questioning your believes, and from this real knowledge is produced.
That what you say is false is demonstrable from the fact that there was a time on earth prior to any knowledge. Therefore knowing emerged from not-knowing, so it is impossible that knowing is first, as you claim. Not knowing is prior to knowing, and with not-knowing exists uncertainty and doubt. Therefore doubt is prior to knowing.
I find discussion of parapsychological research a bit uncomfortable, because it's often heated, and because the subject matter too often seems like a carnival sideshow. But I think, overall, the assertion that 'nothing has ever been found' is unwarranted. When I looked into some of the literature about it, it is packed with statistical arguments about what constitutes a significant deviation from the mean, which makes it both boring and hard to understand.
The sceptic attitude is that, because claims of PSI are 'extraordinary', then these 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. This attitude is what drives all the debates about significant deviations for the various trials that were done over the years. But I recall reading one of the professional sceptics (Richard Wiseman) saying that, had remote viewing been non-controversial, then it would have been considered proven, but the 'extraordinary evidence' requirement could be invoked to declare that in this case it was not. Very handy being able to move the goalposts as required.
(The best short account I read was Parapsychology and the Skeptics: A Scientific Argument for the Existence of ESP, Chris Carter, http://a.co/avLzrxb.)
But I think the interesting philosophical question is: why PSI is considered 'extraordinary' in the first place? In a debate I watched between Sheldrake and Massimo Pugliucci (whose writing I have a lot of respect for), the latter said that if PSI were shown to be true, it would 'overturn the basic facts of physics and chemistry'. Sheldrake countered that it would do no such thing, it would simply indicate another type of causality over and above those understood by the hard sciences. I mean, it may not actually contravene any physical laws - it might simply suggest that there are forces or fields other than those known to the physical sciences.
If, for example, there were biological fields that could propogate information - as Sheldrake claims - this might explain a great deal. After all, electro-magnetic fields weren't discovered until the mid-19th century. And how would a biological field effect be detected? Why, it might manifest itself in the form of the phenomena that PSI attempts to study.
I don't see how this undermines science at all. What I think it does, is undermine materialism - and that's why it is considered a taboo.
Not to mention the profitability of the casino industry.
How can true certainty be produced by doubting? Thinking that one knows is not knowing. If we know anything at all we know it with absolute certainty. If there is to be any such knowledge, real knowledge which is truly distinct from mere belief, then it must be impervious to doubt, by mere definition. How could you ever know when your process of doubting is rightly ended? Certainly not by means of doubt!
Nothing I said is contrary to the idea that lack of knowledge precedes knowledge, or that less knowledge precedes greater knowledge. The point is that knowledge, if it is truly knowledge, cannot be subject to doubt. If it is merely belief, then of course that is a different matter.
So, your assertion that not-knowing is prior to knowing is irrelevant because it is not contrary to what I have been saying. I have been saying that once we have knowledge as opposed to mere belief, if we ever do have it, then that knowledge cannot be subject to doubt, and also that that knowledge cannot have originated in doubt, since doubt can only lead to more doubt, Perhaps you could explain how you think it is that the absolute certainty of knowledge could ever proceed from the state of doubt, and how it is that you could ever know from within your state of doubt, that all doubts have now finally been put to rest.
If they cannot be known via empirical means then how could we ever decide that they are "forces and fields"? We would be in the position of being unable to show that 'something', 'we know not what', exists. Of what use could that ever be for philosophical enquiry?
On the other hand if I could regularly and reliably experience for myself what PSI claims, then of course I would have good reason to believe. But I have not regularly and reliably experienced such things at all. Have you?
I also viewed the same video quite some time ago. No great revelations other than they were quite polite to each other. But the point you made here was actually the major point of the debate. Suggesting wave patterns such as Morphic Fields that guide physical development explains a lot and only upsets materialists who have lots to lose, in much more ways than just loss of face. Materialism is a huge industry. The biggest on this earth.
Sheldrake's description of morphic resonance:
Morphic fields can't be detected through the same instruments that detect electromagnetic effects because they're not electromagnetic fields.
As regards the philosophical implications: this thread is about the nature and signficance of first-person experience; what is the nature of the experiencing mind? That is a subject about which there is great diversity of views, from 'no significance whatever' to religious theories of an immortal soul. As you have already acknowledged, many of these questions are beyond the scope of the empirical sciences, or at least the 'empirical sciencs' as construed by materialism. So perhaps it is a subject where the consideration of alternative perspectives is relevant.
Quoting apokrisis
I can't say that I do, but I also don't think that the possibility ought to be ruled out. Sheldrake's page on morphic resonance contains some of his published papers, and some refutations of the conclusions from his opponents.
Although my view is that from the perspective of philosophy, the question ought to be treated hypothetically - i.e. if there is such a form of causation, then it is something not acknowledged by current science.
However I will note in passing that Sheldrake's view that the so-called 'laws of nature' are in fact habits, is not miles away from the idea that 'matter is effette mind'.
I understand the idea of morphic resonance. I read Presence of the Past more than 20 years ago and it is still on my shelves somewhere. I thought it is a nice, elegant, imaginative idea, but the problem is, I am not convinced, as Sheldrake seems to be, that the idea can be adequately tested. If anyone can explain to me how it could be adequately tested. then I would be happy to grant that it might have scientific, and hence philosophical (as opposed to merely literary), significance.
So, God develops new habits and then incorporates then into His practice?
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1550830710000820
No, Consciousness does which is precisely what it is doing all of the time as a definition of life. I do it all of the time when I'm studying any of the arts. This is why anyone who wishes to explore the c nature of nature might want to consider studying, for a long period, the nature of creativity and the arts. It is a way to experience the nature of nature from personal experience. It is different from thinking and reading. It is creating.
But to talk about causes, first you have to be able to demonstrate the reliable existence of an effect (so something more than coincidences, accidents, randomness, etc).
That hasn't been the case in parapsychology labs (or at least, only believing researchers are able to report significant results). And in the real world, casinos can set the odds on their slot machines with decimal precision.
Though I guess morphic resonance is the kind of non-theory that could explain the non-existence of negative casino profits. The psychic memory of failed gambling must hang over these places in a way that ensures a steady statistical level of loss on their games of chance. The casino owners think they win because of the mechanical design of their pokies and roulette wheels. But in fact it is this alternative psychic force.
You can see why science as an institution does roll its eyes when you have jokers that can't show there is some effect in want of a theory, then invent theories anyway that apply no matter how the world behaves. It might sound like science to the uninitiated, but it breaks the philosophy of science on at least those two basic counts.
Well, yes, but you also have to acknowledge that there is a self-reinforcing tendency even amongst the intelligentsia. In the video interview I mentioned, Piggliuci said there had been only two PSI research labs, and they had been shut down. (This is actually incorrect.) Sheldrake pointed out that the so-called 'sceptic associations' have tens of thousands of members who agitate against proposals to fund any such efforts. There was, or is, a group called PSICOPS (I think the name was changed) - Paul Kurtz, Michael Shermer, and many others of that ilk. They have been an effective activist lobby in all such matters. And of course they carry the supposed mantle of scientific authority.
And of course it should be mentioned that there are far more lucrative career prospects than challenging the philosophical outlook of the mainstream. The reception to Thomas Nagel's book, Mind and Cosmos, is an indication of what happens when you challenge the mainstream.
So we're dealing with a consensus model of reality, of the kinds of things that respectable scientists ought to study, and the kinds of things they ought not to. There are whole subject areas, like past-life research, PSI, and so on, that are simply categorised as pseudo-scientific because they challenge the mainstream view of materialism. To even put a research proposal forward is to risk ostracism - because 'everyone knows' it's 'just pseudoscience'.
Another interesting philosophical point is that what is now called 'scepticism' actually usually amounts to a defense of scientific realism. Because of the way empiricism is understood nowadays, the kinds of things that are considered to be evidence have to meet certain criteria of reproducibility (not even mentioning the 'replication crisis'.) Whereas the original scepticism doubted even 'the evidence of the senses'. It would seriously contemplate the possibility that sensory experience was itself delusional in some sense.
Now you see this crop up in forms such as - is the Universe a hologram? A simulation? and in sci-fi films llike Inception and the Matrix. And in those cases, 'scientific types' are quite willing to consider the possibility that 'the sensory domain' is really a kind of illusion - because simulations and holograms sound at least scientifically respectable. But if you were to ask those same people whether this possible illusion could be described in terms of 'the veil of M?y?' - the answer would be, of course not, that's an ancient superstition! That's religion, it's not science - don't want any of that around here!
So what we see 'scepticism' nowadays doing, is the exact opposite of what scepticism set out to do, namely, it nowadays defends the consensus reality of scientific realism, which determines the bounds of what reasonable people are supposed to think in the way religion used to do. And that is precisely the point where it morphs into scientism.
(A Peircean definition for example does focus on triadic or hierarchical organisation - the maths of thermodynamic complexity. And it is a physicalist metaphysics in that it extends causation to formal and final cause by embracing the materiality of symbols, or sign relations. So the notion of universal habits means something specific in natural philosophy.)
Sure. Scientists are human too. They have investments in belief systems. They have social boundaries to mark. They like fame and fortune as much as the next guy.
So what makes a difference is the institution of science. If that is strong, that is what shines through in the long run.
If psi exists and evidence for it is being suppressed, that would be bad news. But why shouldn't science as an institution suppress psuedo-science?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yep. Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal. Now called CSI - Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. http://www.csicop.org/
Quoting Wayfarer
And what's wrong with a consensus view? Isn't that the whole bleeding point of rational inquiry into nature?
And when it comes to the careers of "respectable scientists", they don't have research careers unless they are at the fringe pushing for something new. The difference is that the existence of a consensus is what defines that fringe mostly. Scientists know where the next profitable place to dig is located.
Quoting Wayfarer
So what you are describing is first the scientific mindset being born and now it being able to look back in satisfaction with all that it has achieved. Yah, boo, sucks to all the mystics out there.
Sure there is scientism - that excessive confidence in materialistic explanation. And yet it is within science that you find the best resources for also criticising that overly-reductionist viewpoint.
Sheldrake had zero impact on the state of consensus within theoretical biology. Yet holism and semiosis are alive and well in those same circles, building up their mathematical muscle.
Is there anything of interest in this so-called 'third way' of evolutionary theory that I've started to notice?
I was reading about the eels that live in ponds in a park in the middle of Sydney. Once a year the adults return to the ocean, which nowadays means negotiating their way across some areas of open ground and drains. They swim to a deep trench near New Caledonia to breed - around 1800 km. The elva then float around the coral sea for the first six - 12 months, and then they return to Botany Bay Sydney's coast, thence the ponds from which their parents had left - across drains and open fields.
It seems they remember the route - even though they themselves have never traversed it.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/conservation/a-very-fast-drain-to-the-south-pacific-20111105-1n11j.html
For me, instincts are nothing more than habits that continue through duration. They may be shared our v personal. The personal type (personal memory) may be considered evidence of transcendental life. Shared instincts (memory) would be an example of a hierarchical? morphic resonance fields. It is entirely plausible since fields exist everywhere and have "memory". Magnetic fields pointing to the North Pole would be an ideal example.
Consciousness is precisely what everyone is experiencing throughout their awake state of living. Nothing more and nothing less. It is only mysterious if one wishes to make everyday living mysterious, which it certainly isn't for me.
What is a mystery is Unconsciousness and how Unconsciousness moves into Consciousness (the sleep/awake cycle) which would be somewhat analogous to the death/life cycle.
What could that even mean?
But yes. If we were talking of mindfulness down at the level of simple creatures like sea slugs, then the habituation of neurons does become a relevant and unmystical framing of the discussion - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation
I know all about habituation and how science classes are designed to indoctrinate and create habituatual thinking. What I am most interested in is what you think neurons can do? In your own words if it isn't too much trouble? Feel free to copy. I've already read standard definitions - which are a hoot if I am permitted to editorialize a bit. Sleight of hand that is all. I've only had an undergraduate education so feel free to amaze me with what advanced education buys you.
Great. So tell me what you find so anthropomorphic about the neuronal machinery of habituation. The more usual criticism is that it is a tad mechanistic. But I'm really excited by this prospect of you pouncing. Here's the diagram you want.
BTW, all see in this very fancy diagram is a few 2nd grade shapes (nicely colored in), a few fancy made up words, and some adjectives normally associated with human actions. Are those fancy words and little shapes suppose to be little humans? Besides inhibit, sense, and excite, what else can those little shapes do? Can they love each other? Or is loving just an intense form of exciting? I mean, can neurons get over excited?
Cool. They couldn't fool you, eh?
This is anthromorphic:
This is a bit misleading. As you are no doubt well aware, although you have adopted and adapted many of Peirce's ideas in developing your version of physicalism, he explicitly rejected metaphysical materialism and characterized his own position as objective idealism. Furthermore, it remains controversial among Peirce scholars whether his philosophy is properly characterized as naturalist, especially since he himself was a theist.
Just backing up a bit to this exchange on the page before this one.
What is the 'materiality of symbols'? A symbol is effective (I had thought) because of the meaning it conveys, and the meaning it conveys (or imparts) is not dependent on the matter from which the symbol is made.
'Sign relations' generally only operate in the the context of life and mind, don't they? I mean, biosemiosis shows how many of the processes of living beings are language-like, rather than mechanical. I had thought this is one of the main advantages of biosemiosis over mechanistic reductionism. And, if that is so, then I am finding it hard to understand the sense in which it is physicalist. Because, again, a sign operates at a level different to the purely physical level - it operates at the level of meaning. So it has a different kind of causal power, than the causal power of purely chemical reactions, doesn't it? That is how the 'formal and final' causes come into it, or so I would have thought.
Good question. In Peirce's terminology, a symbol indeed represents its object only in so far as it will be interpreted as doing so. Furthermore, a symbol is a legisign or type, which must then be embodied in a sinsign or token. Of course, words are paradigmatic examples of symbols; between what I quoted from you and my response, there are four such replicas of the one word, "symbol" (now five).
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but according to Peirce, matter is effete or partially deadened mind - "matter is not completely dead, but is merely mind hidebound with habits." As such, sign relations are also operative in matter, albeit in a degenerate way - "inveterate habits becoming physical laws," which are often dyadic rather than triadic.
Symbols have to be physical marks. So they have materiality in that sense. Something needs to be scratched on a surface for it to endure as a sign.
And then the flipside is that semiosis - as acts of interpretance - must always be engaged in some world. There has to be an interaction going on - a modelling relation which is doing something physical in the end (like entropy production principally).
Quoting Wayfarer
Well they definitely apply there. And the speculative metaphysical project that most interests me is pan-semiosis, where semiosis is generalised to the non-living or physico-chemical sphere. So even the Universe is explained in terms of a sign relation.
And that's not particularly mystical because it is all about regular self-organising condensed matter stuff - symmetry and symmetry breaking. Every symmetry breaking creates local information. Some kind of gradient or asymmetry is left to mark a direction in the world.
But it does mean that we can talk about everything from the mind to the cosmos in terms of a single unifying metaphysics.
Quoting aletheist
And you claim as your Peirce the non-scientist.
So I'm not that bothered about a notion of "the consistent Peirce" as clearly he was pulled in several directions quite powerfully as a thinker prepared to just go for it. And I can't imagine Peirce in the end making much of an impact on theism with his particular version of it (maybe you can see something different?), while with biosemiotics in particular, a lot of scientists are getting that aspect of his work.
It is not about "my Peirce" or "your Peirce" or even "the consistent Peirce," but about faithfully representing the man's actual views as expressed in his voluminous writings. You wish that he had gone farther in the direction of physicalism, and I wish that he had been a more traditional Christian theist; but he was what he was, and we both have drawn significant insights from his thought.
I have long practiced several of the arts myself (and a few crafts as well), so you're not telling me anything I am not already well familiar with. It is not the formation of habits by consciousness that is being discussed here. I fail to see any salient point in what you've said, to be honest.
I couldn't see any relevance at all in what you linked. But then I was only able to view the synopsis. Perhaps you could explain the guts of it briefly in your own words?
So I do see him making a foundational contribution to what I would generally call the organic, or systems, or holistic vein of metaphysical thought in the Western tradition. But I don't apologise for sticking to a naturalistic reading of Peirce.
What about mental arithmetic? or mental operations of any kind? And even if symbols are physical, the physical material they're made out of, is different to their meaning. That is why you can make the same sign in different materials. The material is different, but the meaning is the same, so how could the meaning be physical?
Quoting apokrisis
But I do see anything like 'signification' in the inorganic domain. A word or sign signifies an idea as interpreted by an observer; in biology, DNA is language-like, and it has morphological consequences, i.e. it expresses or causes forms. How does that apply to inorganic matter?
(Sheldrake says that 'nature forms habits' e.g. when a new crystal is synthesised for the first time, it takes much longer than on subsequent occasions when it is formed again. This is becuase the initial formation has started to form the 'habit'. I can't help but think this is related to Peirce's ideas of how regularities are initially formed out of "tychism".)
Habits are just another form of repetitive learning and memory which can also evolve. This particular point good to Morphic Resonance mentioned by Wayfarer in her discussion of Sheldrake.
What is sometimes called doubt, is a feeling one may get when there is a conflicting memories (experiences). So I may feel doubt when my brother tells me something different about my early life. A new memory is formed which is in conflict with a another memory. Both experiences or memories are real, they both exist in my consciousness but in some manner may conflict causing doubt. In other words, it is our real experiences and memory which causes a feeling of doubt.
It is impossible to doubt memory. Doubt itself is s memory (experience).
That's why you need networks of neurons. To mark a state. When you had to learn your times tables, a whole lot of neural connections grew to fix the patterns in your head.
Quoting Wayfarer
Of course. That is how symbols get their power. They are as little physical (in an entropic sense) as it is possible for them to be.
You could chisel your thoughts on stone. But soft and erasable wax is easier. Then pen and parchment. Then word processor.
So symbols have to be material marks. But the more immaterial they can be, the more useful they actually are.
Quoting Wayfarer
A river tells the water which way to go as a mark on the landscape. No need to over-think it.
Conduits do not create or interpret information. They are simply conduits. Nothing more. You have defined neurons perfectly. They are rivers of energy. Exactly what is described in Chinese health theory. It's when you attribute them with human characteristics like marking, learning, inhibiting, exciting, etc. that the hand waving begins.
The discussion had turned towards, for example, the laws of nature understood as habits that formed due to morphic resonance. That was what I was addressing when I said that I could not see how such a notion could be tested.
Well, a riverbed doesn't signify a river, unless there's an observer who makes that interpretation ('see that? It's a riverbed. Means that water must flow here sometimes'.)
The Physics of Symbols
I am trying to put my finger on the part that explains how the second level (exemplified in living systems) relates to the first (i.e. physical laws). So I think there is an implicit kind of dualism:
Design and Information in Biology: From Molecules to Systems, J. A. Bryant, page 80. This passage then mentions Pattee's definition of symbols, and says (page 83) 'life is matter with meaning'. That 'meaning' is what I'm having trouble identifying with respect to non-living matter, like rivers and riverbeds.
One can embrace morphic resonance fields or not , but if rejected then it hardly helps matters by imbuing human qualities into neurons and labeling the former as hand waving and the latter as "science".
Both theories are quite equivalent - i.e. energy fields are being given the attributes of consciousness. I just happen to feel that morphic resonance explains much more. Neurons are simply a manifestation (subset) of the field.
So, what is the field a "subset or manifestation" of ? And you still haven't explained how the purported field might be tested for. Do you perhaps think 'morphic field' is another term for God?
No, morphic resonance is Consciousness as are neurons. No matter what sleight of hand or magic is performed by any science, inevitably Consciousness will be imbued into any "explanation" for consciousness. It is unavoidable and irristible because it is consciousness. Neurons are consciousness as is Morphic Resonance fields. It is a simple hierarchy. Sheldrake explains this all though I don't think he actually labels it as consciousness.
I'm sure if he meant to say that, he would have said it.
http://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/part-i-mind-memory-and-archetype-morphic-resonance-and-the-collective-unconscious
As to the OP in question, we cannot doubt our experiences (memory) because we are quite literally memory. It defines everything about us. Doubt is a feeling created by conflicting memories. Different people will doubt differently depending upon the conflicts that memories inspire.
I don't even want to touch the idea that neurons are doubting themselves. That is how mysteries are created.
You seem to be starting from the false assumption that human beings have "true certainty". There is always the possibility that a human being may be mistaken, therefore human beings never obtain absolute certainty. We assign that to God.
Quoting John
You have a false impression of what knowledge really is. Since it is always possible that we can be mistaken when we claim to "know" something, then the thing which we refer to as knowledge is fallible. That's simply reality, human knowledge is fallible. You seem to represent human knowledge as some ideal, infallible form of knowledge, but that's not what human knowledge is. We reserve that ideal for God, if there is such a being. If there is no God, then all knowledge will always be fallible.
Quoting John
You have just refuted your own position here. You say "...once we have knowledge as opposed to mere belief, if we ever do have it...". So you now allow that it is possible that we never really have this "true certainty", which is essential to your position. Now you have cast doubt on all of knowledge, and allow with me, that all so-called knowledge can be doubted. Therefore it is impossible that certainty is prior to doubt, because you have allowed the possibility that no such certainty exists.
If by "synthesized," Sheldrake is referring to a man-made crystal, one hardly need appeal to morphic resonance to explain why it may take longer to synthesize it on the first occasion than on subsequent occasions. In science, as with most other areas of human endeavor, feats generally become easier with practice, and with the collective practice of the scientific community. It's not nature per se (in the sense of the laws or regularities which govern the behavior of naturalistic entities) which is changing, but only the investigators' expertise.
Sheldrake writes:
That was written in 1987 - whether there have been developments, I don't know.
Here is Sheldrake's reply to the question 'what is consciousness'?
So - I concede the point!
You are failing to make a proper distinction between knowledge and belief. The certainty of knowledge consists in the absence of genuine doubt. Do you know how to drive a car? Is it possible you could be mistaken and that in fact you do not know how to drive a car? Do you know the street number of your house, your wife's name, that she is female, that she is human, what makes her happy and what annoys her, how many children you have, what kind of dog you have ?
There is no possibility of genuine doubt about any of these. Sure, there is an in extremis, artificial 'it's logically possible that I could be wrong about any of these'. You wife might be a transsexual, or a machine disguised as a human, and so might your kids and your dog. You might be part of a top-secret government project researching into how far people can be deceived in what they believe. Your whole life might have been a dream, and so on with any stupid scenario you can possibly imagine. But all of this sort of imagining would be a bullshit kind of doubt; it has no real force (unless you are psychotic).
If you want to be consistent in saying that everything is subject to doubt, then you should not assert that humans have any knowledge at all, but only beliefs. To know something is to know it beyond doubt. To know something is to experience complete confidence. Anything you cannot have complete confidence in cannot be knowledge; it's that simple.
And you still haven't explained how, magically, the certainty of knowing that you say will be achieved through questioning absolutely everything, will somehow emerge out of your state of universal doubt.
I know how to drive a car, but I am not so certain of my skill to know that each time I drive I will not have an accident. Therefore despite my knowing there is still doubt. And with all the other instances you mention there is still a degree of uncertainty. The city might change my house number. If I have a wife, see may have just left me, etc..
Quoting John
Speak for yourself. That's the thing about knowledge, what you refuse to doubt, someone else might. But just because you feel a huge degree of certitude about some things doesn't mean there is no possibility of genuine doubt concerning those things. There is no possibility that you would doubt them, but others might. As I said, everything is doubtable. You doubt that, but I'm not surprised, because what I say, like everything else, is doubtable, and you're just demonstrating that fact.
Quoting John
What do you mean by "it has no real force"? What type of force are we talking about here? How would you distinguish between doubt which has force, and doubt which has no force?
Quoting John
If you are going to insist that "knowledge" implies absolute certainty, such that it is impossible that any particular aspect of knowledge could be wrong, then I agree that humans do not have any knowledge at all. But I think you should accept the reality that sometimes when we claim to know something it turns out to be wrong. This is the way that knowledge exists, in reality, despite the fact that I claim to know X, X might still turn out to be incorrect. The "ideal" knowledge might exclude the possibility of mistake, but the thing which we refer to when we use the words "knowledge", and "knowing", always contains the possibility of mistake.
Quoting John
Have you never noticed, that when you doubt something, you check it to confirm it? That's how we build certainty through doubt. If someone says to you, it's raining outside, you might just take this for granted, as truth, claiming to know that it's raining out. But certainty is lacking here, because this knowledge is based in hearsay. If, when someone says this to you, you doubt it, and therefore check to confirm, you obtain a much higher degree of certainty. Through doubting knowledge we produce new ways to test and confirm things, thus obtaining higher degrees of certainty. From doubting, we test and confirm, that's the scientific method. Certainty is derived from doubt.
None of your irrelevant objections carry any force at all for me. If you have a wife now you know you have a wife, and you know she is female ( if she is female of course), you know you can drive a car ( how well you can drive it is irrelevant), you know what your house number is now ( if it hasn't been changed) and so on.
Certainty is not derived form doubting; how could it be? If everything is doubtful then there can never be a situation in which everything will cease to be doubtful. I agree with you that anything we count as a belief may be doubted: and this goes for everything concerning the future, since we don't know at all what will happen. But when it comes to what has happened we can be as certain as we are of our own memories. For example you know you can drive a car, because you remember driving cars in the past, even this morning, say.
So your position is, I remain convinced, based on a conflation of belief with knowledge, and its great weakness is that you have no way of explaining how any certainty of knowing anything could come out of your standpoint of universal doubt. I believe your doubt like Descartes' is artificial; it is not genuine, heartfelt doubt, it is faux-doubt; and that is why I say it carries no force.
In other words, I know these things, unless I'm wrong, then I don't really know them. OK, how does that make me certain of them?
Quoting John
You're not making any sense John. First, I explained how certainty is derived from doubting. Doubting leads to checking and confirming, this is the scientific method. All you do here is repeat your assertion, and ask the same question again, "certainty is not derived from doubting, how could it be?". Well, I explained how it is. It's quite obvious to me, doubt leads to questioning, trials, experimentation, and confirmation. But for some reason, you just overlook the whole scientific method and restate your question, "how could it be?".
Then you agree that every belief can be doubted, but you imply that a memory cannot be doubted. How is a memory not a belief? And we all know that memory often fails us, especially as we get older. So it's utter nonsense to claim that we cannot doubt our own memories. I find my memories to be highly dubious, and to be often engaged in discussions as to who is remembering correctly.
Quoting John
I wonder what faux-doubt would be. Does that mean that a person believes oneself to be uncertain, but the person is really certain? How would that work? I could deceive myself into thinking that I am uncertain when I am really certain? Or do you think that I am trying to deceive you, saying that I am uncertain, but hiding the certainty behind an image of uncertainty? Do you think I'm omniscient? If not, then why don't you believe me when I say that I am not certain about anything? To be certain about any particular thing, wouldn't it require that you know absolutely everything about that thing? Aren't all things related to one another by some means? So wouldn't it require omniscience to know absolutely everything about anything? How could I be completely certain about anything if I didn't know absolutely everything about that thing? And that would require knowing how that thing related to everything else.
I really admire the confidence in your assertions, your claims of certainty and all that, but I really think that it's you who is putting up the deceptive façade of certitude. Sometimes people like to create that impression of confidence and certitude, to hide the fact that they really don't know what they're talking about.
Your methodology of argumentation consists in distorting what your interlocutor has said, and then writing reams of objections based on this distortion. It's simply not worth the effort of responding to, because whatever I say to correct your copious misreadings will just be distorted again into further misreadings.
That what you say may be distorted, in the way that you claim I distort it, indicates that I cannot even have certainty with respect to the meaning of what has been said. How can I have any certainty with respect to the truth or falsity of what is said, if I cannot even be certain of the meaning of what has been said?
There's no point wasting any further time then.