On naturalism and consciousness

[Mudhammam]

To me, reason is just an instrument we have to make sense of an otherwise arational universe. It's us who give meaning to the world and find patterns in its chaos.
I really don't see why there should be a reason above and beyond the physical realm. All we know is that the (material) universe exists and it can be explained through reason.

Reason is surely inside our heads; we can't be sure it exists outside of them though.

Doesn't that render everything, even science, subjective as mere consensus opinion?

[Angrboda]

Intentionality : Intrinsic and Derived

Consider the following very simple argument :

• (1) If the intentionality of propositional attitudes is a physical property, then it should be possible to build a computer whose states have genuine intentionality,
  (2) But no computer model that simulates human propositional attitudes will have states with genuine intentionality,
  (3) Therefore: the intentionality of propositional attitudes is not a physical property,

Recall that for a state to have intentionality is basically for it to have meaning or content (or "aboutness") in the sense described above.

The second premise bears the weight of the argument, and it requires a closer look. In its defense, it will be said that however sophisticated the behavioral output of the computer, and however closely it may simulate the behavior of a person, none of its linguistic outputs will really have meaning. To test this claim, suppose there has been built a robot with a behavioral repertoire much like my own, that it is fitted out with sensory receptors for seeing, hearing, smelling, and so forth, and motor effectors. This may require that its internal organization mimic my brain 's organization even down to very low levels, but that is an empirical question to be decided by empirical research. Just assume that our internal systems are sufficiently similar that our behavioral repertoires resemble one another as closely as Popper's and mine do. Suppose also that the robot has a device for emitting sounds, and on a certain occasion after having its visual scanners trained on the morning news broadcast from Houston Space Center, it goes into an internal state identified by "The space shuttle was launched this morning," such that it then wheels into your office and emits the utterance "The space shuttle was launched this morning."

Appearances notwithstanding, continues the argument, the robot's utterance has meaning only because we give it meaning — that is, only because we interpret it as meaning what we mean when we say "The space shuttle was launched this morning." Without our interpretive grace, neither the robot's utterances nor its internal states have any meaning. If we are tempted to say that its internal state was the thought that the shuttle was launched this morning, then we must beware that its so-called thought state represents something about the shuttle only by our so interpreting. Its internal states are mere machine states, representing nothing and meaning nothing. In short, the meaning of its outputs and hence the intentionality of its states is derived from our meaning and the intentionality of our states. In contrast, my thought that the space shuttle was launched this morning has original and intrinsic meaning, rather than derived meaning. That is, the meaning of my internal state is not dependent on or a function of anyone's interpreting it to have a meaning, but is a matter of my meaning something by it. Thus the argument.

This argument has many puzzling aspects, the first of which pertains to what it must be assuming about how the states of biological persons have meaning and intentionality. To clarify this a bit, consider the meaning of my utterance "The space shuttle was launched this morning." What I mean by that, and whether you and I mean the same thing, depends in obvious and intricate ways on what else I believe. For example, if I should believe that a space shuttle is a banana and that to launch something is to put it in the blender, then what I mean is not what Walter Cronkite means when he says "The space shuttle was launched this morning." And what I believe is likewise different. To the extent that your background beliefs are very different from mine, the meaning of the words we use will be correspondingly different. To the extent that we share beliefs, our meanings will be shared. If my background theory of the heavens is Ptolemaic and yours is Copernican, then we shall mean something quite different by "planet." (Ptolemaic theory holds that planets are stars not fixed on the celestial sphere; Copernican theory holds that planets are not stars but cold bodies revolving around the sun, and that Earth is a planet.) What someone means by an utterance depends on the related beliefs that he has, and in turn the content of his beliefs is a function of what he means by certain expressions, in one big ball of wax (Quine 1960). The meaning of an expression for an individual is a function of the role that expression plays in his internal representational economy — that is, of how it is related to sensory input and behavioral output and of its inferential/computational role within the internal economy. Sparing the niceties, this is the network theory of meaning, otherwise known as the holistic theory or the conceptual-role theory. (See Paul M. Churchland 1979. Rosenberg 1974. Field 1977.) Translation is accordingly a matter of finding a mapping between alien representations and one's own such that the network of formal and material inferences holding among the alien representations closely mirrors the same network holding among our own. It is possible that representational economies may be so different that translations are not possible.

Meaning is therefore relational in the sense that what an expression means is a function of its inferential/computational role in the person's internal system of representations, his cognitive economy. This is not to say that an expression has meaning only if someone interprets or translates it as having a particular meaning. However, it does imply that isolated expressions do not somehow sheerly have meaning and that mentality cannot somehow magically endow an utterance with intrinsic meaning. What it does deny is that meaning is an intrinsic feature of mental states and that a state has the meaning it has regardless of the wider representational system. Moreover, it contrasts with a theory of meaning that says that the meaning of a word is the set of objects it is true of and that the meaning of a sentence is to be identified with the state of affairs that makes it true.

With this brief background in theory of meaning, we can return to the central question raised at the outset: can the robot, whose behavior is very like my own, be said to have thoughts with meaning and more generally to have states that represent that p? Now in order to simulate my outer behavior as closely as the premise asserts, the robot will have to have an internal system of representations and computations of a richness roughly comparable to my own. Consequently, it will have elements whose roles have a pattern comparable to the roles played by elements in my internal economy. But if the elements in its internal economy are close analogues of my own, if their roles mirror those in my economy, then what else do they need to have meaning?

To refuse to assign meaning — meaning as genuine as it gets — to the robot's internal states would therefore be to apply a double standard, arbitrarily and to no useful purpose. To bridle here looks like dogmatism. What the robot means by an expression will, as with me, be a function of the role that expression plays in the internal representational economy of the robot. If I can find a mapping between its representational system and my own, then I shall have a translation of its utterances. So much is anyhow all one has to go on in ascribing intentionality to other humans. This is not to say that the robot's internal states have meaning only if I interpret them, for after all, the elements of its representational economy objectively bear the inferential/computational relations that they do to each other, regardless of whether I encounter the robot or not.

If the robot turns out to be a fake, inasmuch as its effects are really produced by a small boy hiding inside, then the intentionality is derived, for the robot has no system of representations of its own in virtue of which inferences are drawn and so forth. On the other hand, if it has a brain of electronic stuff, if its behavioral output is a product of its complex internal system of representations implemented in its brain, then its utterances have meaning in exactly the way mine do.

That the robot looks and smells different from a human, that its "brain" is a structure of silicon pico-chips, is in the end irrelevant to whether or not it believes things, wants things, understands what it hears — in general, whether its states have intentionality. As Douglas Hofstadter has pointed out (in conversation), if simply looking different and having different bodily parts were decisive in determining intentionality, then one could envision much the same argument used persistently by male humans to conclude that females do not have states with original, non-derived, real intentionality. They have merely "femintentionality." Or, obviously, the roles could be reversed, and women could claim that men do not have original non-derived, real intentionality. They have merely "mascintentionality."

Finally, as noted in discussing Popper's argument, the discovery that we humans were actually the product of extraterrestrial intelligence should make no difference to whether we (really) have beliefs, desires, and thought and whether our utterances (really) mean something. The complex inferential/computational relations between representational items in a system are whatever they are, regardless of where the system ultimately came from. But if the antireductionist argument were correct, then such a discovery concerning our origins should make us conclude that we do not have real intentionality after all. Rather, it should make us "conclude," since of course we could not really conclude anything.

Whether a robot has intentional states at all will depend, interalia, on how complex its internal informational network of states is, on its sensory detectors, and on its motor effectors, but it is important to stress two points here. First, there is no criterion for exactly specifying when the complexity is enough and when it is not, or for saying just how the system of representational states must hook up to the world. If the internal informational network is as complex as that enjoyed by an adult human, it is enough, but if it is as simple as that of a sea squirt or a thermostat, it is not enough. The extremes are clear enough, then, but in the middle ground we are less sure. At this stage of our understanding, determining whether something has intentional states is mostly a matter of guessing how like us it is — the greater the resemblance, the more likely we will say that it has intentional states. This is not because we know what it is for a system to represent, but because we don't know, so we proceed with the founding assumption that we are paradigmatic representers. The problem is that in the absence of a robust theory of information processing there can be no precise criterion for exactly how complex an internal network must be and how it must hook up to the world in order to count as bestowing genuine meaningfulness.

Accordingly, the imprecision here is at least in part a function of theoretical immaturity. There are theoretically embedded definitions that specify exactly when something is a protein or an amino acid, because chemical theory is a well-developed theory. Until there is a more developed empirical theory about the nature of representing in organisms, greater precision will have to wait. The fact is, we simply do not know very much about how organisms represent, and what sort of business representing is, or even whether our concept of having a representational system delimits a natural kind. And even when we do know more, imprecision may be our lot, as it is in the case of "species." To force precision by grinding out premature definitions enlightens nobody. Nor, I suspect, will repeated analysis of the folk psychological category of meaning avail us much ...

— Patricia Churchland, Neurophilosophy

There are some caveats that go along with the network theory of meaning (aka Semantic Holism) which bear noting and considering:

Problems with semantic holism

If semantic holism is interpreted as the thesis that any linguistic expression E (a word, a phrase or sentence) of some natural language L cannot be understood in isolation and that there are inevitably many ties between the expressions of L, it follows that to understand E one must understand a set K of expressions to which E is related. If, in addition, no limits are placed on the size of K (as in the cases of Davidson, Quine and, perhaps, Wittgenstein), then K coincides with the "whole" of L.

The many and substantial problems with this position have been described by Michael Dummett, Jerry Fodor, Ernest Lepore and others. In the first place, it is impossible to understand how a speaker of L can acquire knowledge of (learn) the meaning of E, for any expression E of the language. Given the limits of our cognitive abilities, we will never be able to master the whole of the English (or Italian or German) language, even on the assumption that languages are static and immutable entities (which is false). Therefore, if one must understand all of a natural language L to understand the single word or expression E, then language learning is simply impossible.

Semantic holism, in this sense, also fails to explain how two speakers can mean the same thing when using the same linguistic expression, and therefore how communication is even possible between them. Given a sentence P, since Fred and Mary have each mastered different parts of the English language and P is related to the sentences in each part differently, the result is that P means one thing for Fred and something else for Mary. Moreover, if a sentence P derives its meaning from the relations it entertains with the totality of sentences of a language, as soon as the vocabulary of an individual changes by the addition or elimination of a sentence P', the totality of relations changes, and therefore also the meaning of P. As this is a very common phenomenon, the result is that P has two different meanings in two different moments during the life of the same person. Consequently, if I accept the truth of a sentence and then reject it later on, the meaning of what I rejected and what I accepted are completely different, and therefore I cannot change my opinions regarding the same sentences.

[The Grand Nudger]

But is Reason, not the cognitive exercise, but the very principles that cohere any Universe at all, physical phenomena? I don't think so... in fact it seems Reason is in some way a prerequisite for any empirical, intelligible experience.

It's difficult to conceive of reason as a prerequisite, as reason itself is descriptive. Different universe, perhaps we'd have different logical operations. Could that universe contain empirical or intelligible experience? Maybe, but it would be different from our own, sure.

[bennyboy]

Consciousness?

Its an illusion of millions and millions processes of perception and sensory experiences. Brain chemistry. That's all "we" are. Objectively speaking, there is no real "you" or "I", not within the chemical, physical or biological worlds.

But can you point to the area of the brain where you yourself exist, where your 'soul' resides?

Define soul.

I think he just did: "you yourself"

---

To me, reason is just an instrument we have to make sense of an otherwise arational universe. It's us who give meaning to the world and find patterns in its chaos.

Are you mixing monist and dualist worldviews here? In a physical monism, where does this subjective "we" come from who impose meaning on an otherwise meaningless universe?

I really don't see why there should be a reason above and beyond the physical realm. All we know is that the (material) universe exists and it can be explained through reason.

I don't think we know this at all. What I know is that I have experiences, and that some of them seem to be consistent with the experiences of other people, and to be based on a reality of time and space. But if I press to discover what I really "know," it wouldn't go much further than cogito ergo sum. The rest is all interpretation of experience.

Reason is surely inside our heads; we can't be sure it exists outside of them though.

If it doesn't, then what is the benefit of it existing inside our heads? Presumably, all our thinking has been refined through evolution to allow us to deal with the universe. If there are consistencies in the universe to which we can apply reason, wouldn't those external consistencies also deserve the name "reason"? In other words, we can make sense of things because they are sensible.

[FallentoReason]

Ah, Rhythm my main man! Good to see you around this place again.

Well, what about the program tells you it's inherently a belief about curved spoons?

It isn't, inherently. It is a variable that can be defined, and then handled.

Well there you go; the arrangement of particles only expresses a "belief" about spoons merely because an already conscious being is superimposing their *own* beliefs on what those particles represent.

All I hypothetically see are pixels being lit up by electricity that just so happen to spell out possibly what would be a mathematical expression of a curved spoon,

Which is all -I- see with regards to our "beliefs" - "all" implies some sort of negative connotation - and I don;t want it to come across that way because I think it;s awesome that this is even possible, regrdless of whatever is doing "it"

My point was that when you break it down to the elementary parts of this "belief", there is actually nothing there to tell you about this "belief". You're taking for granted the fact that the set of electricity/pixels that you see have to be given meaning by you, the already conscious being.

of which would be completely meaningless

Hardly, p=spoons are curved is nothing -if not- a statement of what p means. It is entirely comprised of meaning..you might even call it...meangful :wink:

Strawman. I said the electricity/pixels are entirely meaningless, not the proposition we defined at the beginning, which obviously by human convention actually means something.

and void of any belief if it weren't for my hypothetical technical skills required to interpret said output i.e. an already conscious being is required in order to connect one set of particles to another in a fashion we would call "belief".

Hardly, unless you think that a string computer is conscious.

I do not think any computer is conscious, which is precisely the point. And therefore, how can we say a computer could even hold a *belief*, if there is no conscious entity to be found?

---

Sure, but all we've ever been able to do is point to the parts of the brain responsible for certain aspects of our consciousness, such as the ones you've mentioned. But can you point to the area of the brain where you yourself exist, where your 'soul' resides?

I think that what we are, our "soul" as you call it, is the memories we have of what we were and what we have done. It's our past experiences that shape our present; it's our knowledge of the world that, intertwined with our ancestral instincts, makes us who we are.

Really? Is that all there is to the 'soul' you think? If we thought of these memories as books at a library, wouldn't you say it feels like there's someone who in fact walks around and reads these books? Or is that just me?

I think that you saying that it's impossible for "particles to be about something " is arguing from ignorance. Of course we still don't know many important things about our brain and our consciousness, but there is no evidence of anything beyond the physical realm "pulling the strings" of our sentience. Saying that "it seems impossible" simply cuts the case clear and does not add anything to what we already know.

I'm pointing to a metaphysical problem; the idea that particles can't make up ideas i.e. arrange themselves so as to be in relation to other particles in the universe as a "belief" or "thought".

This topic reminds me of the time when organic chemistry was considered completely different from inorganic chemistry because most people believed it was impossible for atoms alone to form the complex lifeforms we know and postulated the existence of a "vital force" that made life itself possible. Guess what, the "vital force" didn't exist. Sometimes we like to think we are completely separated from the rest of the universe, don't we?

What I'm considering is any sort of chemistry essentially. It's simply the exercise of putting together what ever particles you like so as to create a belief about other particles in the universe. Can it be done? I don't think so.

---

Meh, particles can clearly be "about something" or else computing would be impossible. Machine language and computational architecture depends upon particles having the ability to be "about something". Having something like programs, or services, or users (I would consider consciousness a service or user or program) enhances that capability, but even without any of those things a PCB is capable of "doing work" - of describing and then handling propositions. All you need to "do work" is an ALU and some inputs. It doesn't matter where those inputs come from, and it doesn't matter what the ALU is made out of, or how it's arranged. As such, it;s not conceptually impossible, or even conceptually difficult...for particles to be "beliefs".

I think we need to be more critical in our thinking here. Computing isn't "about something". Computing is metal, plastic, and possibly more complex materials coming together in such a way, that certain causal relations are able to grab electrons, make them zip through copper strips, and produce an array of pixels on the screen, of which *we* interpret however we like, according to our needs. But a computer never knew "about something". It never held the "belief" that e.g. calculation #12 meant the mining project was at risk of a collapse. All it ever was and did, was simply act as a mega-advanced system of pulleys and levers, crunching out simple logic at speeds conveniently faster than what we can do it at. Nevermind consciousness!

[bennyboy]

So the question is-- what does the brain do that is substantially different than what a very advanced computer could do? What is it about the brain that is connected to awareness, that goes beyond the "pulleys and levers" of a computer?

[FallentoReason]

I don't believe consciousness can be explained by way of a naturalistic account. Why? Because I don't think particles have it in them to act in such a way as to recreate what we mean by consciousness i.e. our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes etc.

Let's use an example; my belief that spoons are curved. So to make things easier, let's call this belief p. Now, how can we possibly arrange particles in such a way that they would express p? How could some physical arrangement *ever* describe p? I don't think it's possible to physically arrange particles in such a way that would then inherently possess the belief that other sets of particles - aka spoons - have the property of being curved.

The first thing to note is that what you have is an argument from ignorance. "I can't imagine X, therefore not X." This is a minor point, so let's move on.

I think I'm actually pointing out how something physical can't become something metaphysical. But anyways.

I note that in many discussions, the meat of the argument rests on a specific theory of meaning. You may not think of it as such, but at bottom, this is a theory about how meaning works. In your theory, if I'm not misreading you, thoughts can "inherently" be about other things, but matter can never have this property of being "inherently" about something else. This reminds me a lot of William Lane Craig's argument about objective morality. His point is that the atheist cannot demonstrate objective morality without God. The question that matters though, is can he demonstrate objective morality with God? Likewise with you, I'd ask what you mean when you say thoughts are "inherently" about other things and how that business works, because I think you've assumed it uncritically.

I assume naturalism whenever talking about consciousness in this thread, and thus show the problems I see. So what I mean when I say "thoughts are inherently about other things" I mean that the chemicals in our brain are arranged in such a way as to metaphysically be in relation to other particles in this universe. Naturalism would state that this is the case when I say "I think these nachos are delicious". But I'm saying that when push comes to shove, naturalism can't actually account for how the chemicals in my brain could be arranged in such a way as to represent the thought "I think these nachos are delicious".

Presuming that you're not a Chinese speaker, suppose I teach you the phonemes "qū xiàn." When you think about it, they're not "inherently" about anything. But they translate as curved. What makes these phonemes not inherently "about" curved objects before I teach you its meaning? Once you've been taught their meaning, do they then magically have a new property that the thought of them in your mind is now "inherently about" curved things? In what way are thoughts "inherently about" things.

I think language is another topic altogether, which undeniably is working from the basis that conscious beings give meaning to certain things. We need to take one step back here and try and account for how matter can even make up these conscious beings in the first place.

As for thoughts being "inherently about" things, I thought this was quite intuitive. If my thoughts about this apple being red and round weren't inherently about the apple being red and round, then what even is my thought? It seems like it would be the null set. To my mind, thoughts are nothing *but* inherently about other things.

Your theory of meaning doesn't only have to account for how matter is not inherently about things,

That would be trying to prove a negative. How can I show you that no matter how you arrange atoms, you won't ever form my belief that "these nachos are tasty"?

it must also explain how thought is inherently about things.

Well, like I stated, I thought it was quite intuitive. I mean, "thoughts" are just that: a metaphysical relation between the 'soul' and some aspect of the universe. If they're not that, then I don't know how we as conscious beings would go about business seeing as this is our *only* way of acting upon this universe.

Until you can do that, you're left with the rather unsatisfying "it just is." If that's all the explanation you have, then I'd suggest that all you've done is push the question one step back. Like dualists who assert that souls "just do" have free will, what you've done is little more than beg the question. You've given a respectable sheen to your argument from ignorance; you've distracted your interlocutor from the fact that you lack as much in the theory of meaning department as she does.

If we have shown that consciousness from matter "just isn't", then what's left on the table?

I'll defer on laying out my theory of meaning just yet, other than to say that I think meaning is a property of systems, not isolated parts. So "qū xiàn" isn't inherently about curved objects, its meaning is a consequence of it being embedded in a system; the word itself has no meaning apart from the system. In short, nothing is "inherently" meaningful or inherently "about" something else. That's an illusion.

Like I said, I think language is a different topic altogether.

---

Consciousness?

Its an illusion of millions and millions processes of perception and sensory experiences. Brain chemistry. That's all "we" are. Objectively speaking, there is no real "you" or "I", not within the chemical, physical or biological worlds.

It's an illusion that is able to question its own identity?

It sounds like you don't agree with Descarte's famous statement "I think, therefore I am", correct?

But can you point to the area of the brain where you yourself exist, where your 'soul' resides?

Define soul.

It's the thing that is able to self-identify, like when I say "I/me/myself".

[Mudhammam]

But is Reason, not the cognitive exercise, but the very principles that cohere any Universe at all, physical phenomena? I don't think so... in fact it seems Reason is in some way a prerequisite for any empirical, intelligible experience.

It's difficult to conceive of reason as a prerequisite, as reason itself is descriptive. Different universe, perhaps we'd have different logical operations. Could that universe contain empirical or intelligible experience? Maybe, but it would be different from our own, sure.

That's an interesting thought but I think it boils down to this: is a physical Universe even logically possible without some conception of space and/or time? (You'll have to correct me if a quantum vacuum state contradicts this but as it currently stands, a non-spacial, non-temporal existence is totally inconceivable to me... except for mental phenomena). And if not, doesn't that already assume the existence of basic rational principles, such as contingency, non-contradiction, mathematics, etc.?

I don't know if consciousness has a deeper tie to the history of the Universe, but that it's fundamental to our conception of reality, and has a functional unity that evolved to possess the key to unlocking the secrets of Nature, is suggestive of something currently not well accounted for by any philosophical position.

[Lucanus]

I think that what we are, our "soul" as you call it, is the memories we have of what we were and what we have done. It's our past experiences that shape our present; it's our knowledge of the world that, intertwined with our ancestral instincts, makes us who we are.

Really? Is that all there is to the 'soul' you think? If we thought of these memories as books at a library, wouldn't you say it feels like there's someone who in fact walks around and reads these books? Or is that just me?

I'd say it's just you as much as it is just me; I'm not qualified to give any definition of consciousness, thus what I think about that has little to no value even to me.

I think that you saying that it's impossible for "particles to be about something " is arguing from ignorance. Of course we still don't know many important things about our brain and our consciousness, but there is no evidence of anything beyond the physical realm "pulling the strings" of our sentience. Saying that "it seems impossible" simply cuts the case clear and does not add anything to what we already know.

I'm pointing to a metaphysical problem; the idea that particles can't make up ideas i.e. arrange themselves so as to be in relation to other particles in the universe as a "belief" or "thought".

But our neurons do it all the time... I don't understand why one should go out of his way and try to special plead metaphysics into existence. So far, the materialistic mindset is the one that gave us all of our understanding of the world. Why should we not even try to explain consciousness with it?

I get the feeling that you are also arguing from incredulity: you can't see how "particles can be about something", therefore it's impossible.

This topic reminds me of the time when organic chemistry was considered completely different from inorganic chemistry because most people believed it was impossible for atoms alone to form the complex lifeforms we know and postulated the existence of a "vital force" that made life itself possible. Guess what, the "vital force" didn't exist. Sometimes we like to think we are completely separated from the rest of the universe, don't we?

What I'm considering is any sort of chemistry essentially. It's simply the exercise of putting together what ever particles you like so as to create a belief about other particles in the universe. Can it be done? I don't think so.

Again, people used to think it was impossible for "particles" to be alive and to form complex life forms and came out with all sorts of concepts like the "elan vital", which have been disproven since the discovery of DNA. Can you see the analogy?

Neuroscience is working on it: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/cours...cience.pdf

[bennyboy]

But our neurons do it all the time... I don't understand why one should go out of his way and try to special plead metaphysics into existence. So far, the materialistic mindset is the one that gave us all of our understanding of the world. Why should we not even try to explain consciousness with it?

You can try to explain anything with anything. But trying to explain consciousness with a model which is almost deliberately designed to ignore consciousness doesn't seem like an approach likely to yield meaningful results.

Also: "materialistic mindset." It's not exactly an oxymoron, but I see some irony in using mindsets as the basis for explaining that the mind is purely physical function.

I get the feeling that you are also arguing from incredulity: you can't see how "particles can be about something", therefore it's impossible.

When you are incredulous because someone thing assumes something with what you consider inadequate evidence, it's not a logical fallacy. It's just critical thinking.

If you think a mechanical explanation is sufficient to explain consciousness, then you have to actually make that explanation. You don't get to just wave at the brain and say, "Well, obviously, it's happening in there somewhere." Maybe it is, or maybe correlation isn't causation.