What's the point of philosophy any more?

[polymath257]

The problem isn't missing information. The problem is, even when every single piece information is accounted for, something is still missing.

That is the essence of the mind/body problem, and that is the great riddle of consciousness.

Of course, some will say it's really no big problem at all, which is why super empirically-minded folks seem comfortable with functionalism. I'm not one of them though. Something about the mystery of consciousness intrigues me. Looking at it one way, it almost seems more fundamental than any other metaphysical problem. Looking at it another way, its a simple distinction that (if made like the functionalists make it) is really no problem at all.

It is interesting to wonder whether there is a way that it feels to be an X for any organism X whatsoever.  Being able to express what it feels like to be an X as propositions is entirely a different question, of course.  Framing propositions is something (just?) we do to capture and communicate what we are feeling.  But there is a way it feels to be thirsty, to be lost, to recognize from facial expressions how another feels, and so on.

What gives rise to these subjective states?  Why do our brains bother with adding a 'flavor' to so many functions?  Is it because of our capacity for consciously weighing alternative interpretations and actions?  Perhaps the need to form abstractions to represent alternatives for the sake of consciously choosing between them makes our subjective experience distinctive.  Most of us know what it is like to operate more spontaneously, being in-the-moment, as when immersed in a task for which our expertise allows us to just flow.  Maybe my dogs spend more time in flow (lucky bastards) so that, while there is still a way that if feels to be a dog, what that is would never become a subject of wonder or speculation for them.  

We are probably the only organism on this planet to question how/why the brain adds flavor to experience.  The rest of them experience it but don't or can't isolate it as something apart from what motivates what they are doing.  The motivation they experience and the response it engenders may be something we can hypothesize about but is probably not something they themselves can reflect on.  Abstraction and deliberate, strategic planning may be something we alone engage in and our doing so allows us to isolate experiences as subjects which an animal in flow need not be aware of.  There are probably both advantages and disadvantages to that.

Maybe the important question isn't why experience has a flavor, but rather why is this one organism (us) trying so hard to understand what its flavor is, why it arises and why it even interests us?  Is there anything to be gained?

Well, the 'feel' seems to be a combination of the information and the emotional response to that information. The emotional response is the 'flavor'. And it seems pretty clear why the flavor was added from an evolutionary viewpoint: in makes it easier to remember and recall. It also makes it easier to act on in emergencies.

Do you question whether your dog is conscious? Isn't it clear?

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The 'practical' man, as this word is often used, is one who recognizes only material needs, who realizes that men must have food for the body, but is oblivious of the necessity of  providing food for the mind. If all men were well off, if poverty and disease had been reduced to their lowest possible point, there would still remain much to be done to produce a  valuable society; and even in the existing world the goods of the mind are at least as important as the goods of the body. It is exclusively among the goods of the mind that the value of philosophy is to be found; and only those who are not indifferent to these goods can be persuaded that the study of philosophy is not a waste of time.


Philosophy, like all other studies, aims primarily at knowledge. The knowledge it aims at is the kind of knowledge which gives unity and system to the body of the sciences, and the kind which results from a critical examination of the grounds of our convictions, prejudices, and beliefs. But it cannot be maintained that philosophy has had any very great measure of success in its attempts to provide definite answers to its questions. If you ask a mathematician, a mineralogist, a historian, or any other man of learning, what definite body of truths has been ascertained by his science, his answer will last as long as you are willing to listen. But if you put the same question to a philosopher, he will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences. It is true that this is partly accounted for by the fact that, as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science. The whole study of the heavens, which now belongs to astronomy, was once included in philosophy; Newton's great work was called 'the mathematical principles of natural philosophy'. Similarly, the study of the human mind, which was a part of philosophy, has now been separated from philosophy and has become the science of psychology. Thus, to a great extent, the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real: those questions which are already capable of definite answers are placed in the sciences, while those only to which, at present, no definite answer can be given, remain to form the residue which is called philosophy.

I find it interesting that we call it philosophy until we figure out a way to actually test an idea. After that, we call it science. The first is speculation and the second is knowledge.

This is not to say that speculation isn't a useful thing: it most definitely is. But it isn't knowledge.