Gelernter on computationalism

People have asked me to comment on David Gelernter’s essay on minds and computers in the January issue of Commentary.  It’s written with Gelernter’s characteristic brio and clarity, and naturally I agree with the overall thrust of it.  But it seems to me that Gelernter does not quite get to the heart of the problem with the computer model of the mind.  What he identifies, I would argue, are rather symptoms of the deeper problems.  Those deeper problems are three, and longtime readers of this blog will recognize them.  The first two have more to do with the computationalist’s notion of matter than with his conception of mind.

Descartes’ “preservation” argument

In previous posts I’ve critically examined, from a Scholastic point of view, some of Descartes’ best-known arguments.  Specifically, I’ve commented on Descartes’ “clear and distinct perception” argument for dualism, and his “trademark” argument for God’s existence.  We’ve seen how these arguments illustrate how Descartes, though the father of modern philosophy, in some respects continues to be influenced by the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition, even as in other respects he abandons it.  It’s the novelties, I have suggested, that get him into trouble.  This is evidenced once again in what is sometimes called his “preservation” argument for God’s existence.

Zombies: A Shopper’s Guide

A “zombie,” in the philosophical sense of the term, is a creature physically and behaviorally identical to a human being but devoid of any sort of mental life.  That’s somewhat imprecise, in part because the notion of a zombie could also cover creatures physically and behaviorally identical to some non-human type of animal but devoid of whatever mental properties that non-human animal has.  But we’ll mostly stick to human beings for purposes of this post.  Another way in which the characterization given is imprecise is that there are several aspects of the mind philosophers have traditionally regarded as especially problematic.  Jerry Fodor identifies three: consciousness, intentionality, and rationality.  And the distinction between them entails a distinction between different types of zombie.

Averroism and cloud computing

The Latin followers of the medieval Islamic philosopher Ibn Rushd or Averroes (1126 - 1198), such as Siger of Brabant, famously taught the doctrine of the unity of the human intellect.  The basic idea is this: The intellect, Averroists (like other Aristotelians) argue, is immaterial.  But in that case, they conclude (as not all Aristotelians would), it cannot be regarded as the form of a material body.  It is instead a substance entirely separated from matter.  But matter, the Aristotelian holds, is the principle by which one instance of the form of some species is distinguished from another.  Hence there is no way in which one human intellect could be distinguished from another, so that there must be only a single intellect shared by all human beings.

Some questions on the soul, Part III

In some recent posts I’ve been answering readers’ questions about the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) understanding of the soul.  One more for the road, from a reader who is unclear about why mind-body interaction, which is notoriously problematic for Cartesian dualism, is not also problematic for A-T.  The reader writes:

[U]nless something like dualist interactionism is true, I don't see how… immaterial thoughts and - in particular - the will - could possibly cause me to do something as simple as typing this e-mail…

Science would seem to say that the efficient cause of this was certain electrochemical reactions in my body.  The material cause would be the physical events happening in my body.  It seems that A-T philosophy would hold that the final cause was getting an answer to a philosophical question, and I agree.  My soul would then be the formal cause, but I guess that notion is incoherent to me… And, unless the immaterial mind somehow interacts with my body (through quantum physics, maybe?), I don't see how my thinking about something in my immaterial intellect could cause my body to do anything.

Do machines compute functions?

Robert Oerter has now replied to my most recent post about his criticisms of James Ross’s argument for the immateriality of the intellect.  Let me begin my rejoinder with a parable.  Suppose you presented someone with the argument: All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal.  He says he is unconvinced.  Puzzled, you ask him why.  He replies that he is surprised that you think Socrates is mortal, given that you believe in the immortality of the soul.  He adds that all you’ve done in any case is to make an epistemological point about what we know about Socrates, and not really given any reason to think that Socrates is mortal.  For though the conclusion does, he concedes, follow from the premises, and the premises are supported by the evidence, maybe for all we know there is still somehow more to men than what the premises tell us.

Oerter on indeterminacy and the unknown

I thank Robert Oerter for his reply to my recent comments on his criticism of James Ross’s argument for the immateriality of the intellect.  Please do go read his reply -- and never fear, he is a much less long-winded fellow than I am -- as well as my own previous post (If you haven’t done so already), before reading the following response.

Oerter repeats his claim that “Ross's argument never gets him beyond epistemological indeterminacy.”  Oddly, Oerter writes: “Oddly, Feser doesn't specifically respond to my criticism.”  What is odd about this is that I did respond quite specifically, and at length, to that criticism, though it appears Oerter has missed the point of what I wrote.  He seems to think that my entire response to the objection in question consists in my calling attention to the fact that Ross, and Kripke (whose work Ross makes use of), explicitly present their arguments as metaphysical rather than epistemological. 

Philip Kitcher, bait-and-switcher

Here’s a thumbnail history of philosophy and science since the early modern period, in three stages.  First, the Aristotelian-Scholastic tradition had by the beginning of this period hammered out a conception of the natural world that is at the same time unified and radically anti-reductionist.  It is unified insofar as to all natural phenomena we can apply the theory of act and potency, the hylemorphic analysis of material substances, the doctrine of the four causes, and other components of Aristotelian philosophy of nature.  It is radically anti-reductionist insofar as it affirms that certain divisions in nature -- between the inorganic and the organic; between the merely “vegetative” or non-sentient forms of life and the sensory or animal forms; and between the merely sensory or animal forms of life and the distinctively rational or human form -- are nevertheless differences in kind rather than degree.

Churchland on dualism, Part V

Paul Churchland has just published a third edition of Matter and Consciousness, his widely used introductory textbook on the philosophy of mind.  The blog Philosophy of Brains has posted a symposium on the book, with contributions from Amy Kind, William Ramsey, and Pete Mandik.  Prof. Kind, who deals with Churchland’s discussion of dualism, is kind to him indeed -- a little too kind, as it happens.  Longtime readers will recall a series of posts I did several years ago on the previous edition of Churchland’s book, in which I showed how extremely superficial, misleading, and frankly incompetent is its treatment of dualism.  Prof. Kind commends Churchland’s “clear writing style and incisive argumentation” as “a model for us all.”  While I agree with her about the clarity of Churchland’s style, I cannot concur with her judgment of the quality of the book’s argumentation, for at least with respect to dualism, this new edition is as bad as the old. 

Eliminativism without truth, Part I

Suppose you hold that a good scientific explanation should make no reference to teleology, final causality, purpose, directedness-toward-an-end, or the like as an inherent and irreducible feature of the natural order.  And suppose you hold that what is real is only what science tells us is real.  Then you are at least implicitly committed to denying that even human purposes or ends are real, and also to denying that the intentionality of thought and the semantic content of speech and writing are real.  Scientism, in short, entails a radical eliminativism.  Alex Rosenberg and I agree on that much -- he defends this thesis in The Atheist’s Guide to Reality and I defend it in The Last Superstition.  Where we differ is over the lesson to be drawn from this thesis.  Rosenberg holds that scientism is true, so that eliminativism must be true as well.  I maintain that eliminativism is incoherent, and constitutes a reductio ad absurdum of the scientism that leads to it.  I responded to Rosenberg at length in a series of posts on his book.

In his paper “Eliminativism without Tears,” Rosenberg attempts in a more systematic way than he has elsewhere to respond to the charge of incoherence.  Rosenberg kindly sent me this paper some time ago, and I note that it is now available online.

Naturalism in the news

On the subject of naturalism, Raymond Tallis opines in The Guardian, Massimo Pigliucci reports at Philosophy Now, and Daniel Dennett is interviewed at 3:AM Magazine.  James Ladyman, co-author of the influential Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, gets a prominent mention in each piece.  Which gives me an excuse for some photoshopping fun (with apologies both to Ladyman and to Tim Meadows).

Mackie’s argument from queerness

In his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, J. L. Mackie famously put forward his “argument from queerness” against the objectivity of moral values.  The argument has both a metaphysical aspect and an epistemological aspect.  Mackie writes:

If there were objective values, then they would be entities or qualities or relations of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe.  Correspondingly, if we were aware of them, it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else. (p. 38)

Mackie’s claim is that we simply have no good reason to believe either in such odd entities as objective values or in an odd special faculty of moral knowledge.  We can explain everything that needs to be explained vis-à-vis morality by analyzing values in terms of our subjective responses to certain events in the world, and Ockham’s razor favors this approach to the alternative given the latter’s “queerness.”

Nagel and his critics, Part IX

Returning to my series on the critics of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, let’s look at the recent Commonweal magazine symposium on the book.  The contributors are philosopher Gary Gutting, biologist Kenneth Miller, and physicist Stephen Barr.  I’ll remark on each contribution in turn.

Around the web

Metaphysician E. J. Lowe discusses ontology, physics, Locke, Aristotle, logic, laws of nature, potency and act, dualism, science fiction, and other matters in an interview at 3:AM Magazine. 

Over at The Montreal Review, Alex Sztuden responds to Leiter and Weisberg’s review of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos.

Frank Beckwith replies to David Bentley Hart on natural law in The Catholic Thing.

Nagel and his critics, Part VIII

Resuming our series on the serious critics of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, let’s turn to Simon Blackburn’s review in New Statesman from a few months back.  Blackburn’s review is negative, but it is not polemical; on the contrary, he allows that the book is “beautifully lucid, civilised, modest in tone and courageous in its scope” and even that there is “charm” to it.  Despite the review’s now somewhat notorious closing paragraph (more on which below) I think Blackburn is trying to be fair to Nagel.

Nagel and his critics, Part VII

Let’s return to our look at the critics of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos.  New commentary on Nagel’s book continues to appear, and to some extent it repeats points made by earlier reviewers I’ve already responded to.  Here I want to say something about Mohan Matthen’s review in The Philosophers Magazine.  In particular, I want to address what Matthen says about the issue of whether conscious awareness could arise in a purely material cosmos.  (Matthen has also commented on Nagel’s book over at the New APPS blog, e.g. here.)

The limits of eliminativism

Eliminativist positions in philosophy are a variety of anti-realism, which is in turn typically contrasted with realist and reductionist positions.  A realist account of some phenomenon takes it to be both real and essentially what it appears to be.  A reductionist account of some phenomenon takes it to be real but not what it appears to be.  An eliminativist view of some phenomenon would take it to be in no way real, and something we ought to eliminate from our account of the world altogether.  Instrumentalism is a milder version of anti-realism, where an instrumentalist view of some phenomenon holds that it is not real but nevertheless a useful or even indispensible fiction.

Nagel and his critics, Part V

Our look at the critics of Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos brings us now to philosopher of science John Dupré, whose review of the book appeared in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.  The review is pretty harsh.  At his kindest Dupré says he found the book “frustrating and unconvincing.”  Less kind is the remark that “as far as an attack that might concern evolutionists, they will feel, to borrow the fine phrase of former British minister, Dennis Healey, as if they had been savaged by a sheep.”

The remark is not only unkind but unjust.  At the beginning of his review, Dupré gives the impression that Nagel is attacking neo-Darwinian evolutionary biology per se.  Dupré writes: 

Darwinism, neo- or otherwise, is an account of the relations between living things past and present and of their ultimate origins, full of fascinating problems in detail, but beyond any serious doubt in general outline.  This lack of doubt derives not, as Nagel sometimes insinuates, from a prior commitment to a metaphysical view -- there are theistic Darwinists as well as atheistic, naturalists and supernaturalists -- but from overwhelming evidence from a variety of sources: biogeography, the fossil record, comparative physiology and genomics, and so on.  Nagel offers no arguments against any of this, and indeed states explicitly that he is not competent to do so.  His complaint is that there are some explanatory tasks that he thinks evolution should perform that he thinks it can't.

Nagel and his critics, Part IV

Continuing our look at the critics of Thomas Nagel’s recent book Mind and Cosmos, we turn to philosopher Alva Noë’s very interesting remarks over at NPR’s 13.7: Cosmos & Culture blog.  Noë’s initial comments might seem broadly sympathetic to Nagel’s position.  He writes:

Science has produced no standard account of the origins of life.

We have a superb understanding of how we get biological variety from simple, living starting points. We can thank Darwin for that. And we know that life in its simplest forms is built up out of inorganic stuff. But we don't have any account of how life springs forth from the supposed primordial soup. This is an explanatory gap we have no idea how to bridge.

Science also lacks even a back-of-the-envelop [sic] concept explaining the emergence of consciousness from the behavior of mere matter. We have an elaborate understanding of the ways in which experience depends on neurobiology. But how consciousness arises out of the action of neurons, or how low-level chemical or atomic processes might explain why we are conscious — we haven't a clue.

We aren't even really sure what questions we should be asking.

These two explanatory gaps are strikingly similar… In both cases we have large-scale phenomena in view (life, consciousness) and an exquisitely detailed understanding of the low-level processes that sustain these phenomena (biochemistry, neuroscience, etc). But we lack any way of making sense of the idea that the higher-level phenomena just come down to, or consist of, what is going on at the lower level.

Nagel and his critics, Part III

In the previous installment in this series of posts on Thomas Nagel’s Mind and Cosmos, I looked at some objections to Nagel raised by Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg.  I want now to turn to Elliot Sober’s review in Boston Review.  To his credit, and unlike Leiter and Weisberg, Sober is careful to acknowledge that:

Nagel’s main goal in this book is not to argue against materialistic reductionism, but to explore the consequences of its being false.  He has argued against the -ism elsewhere, and those who know their Nagel will be able to fill in the details.

Sober then goes on to offer a brief summary of the relevant positions Nagel has defended in earlier works like his articles “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” and “The Psychophysical Nexus.”  As I emphasized in my previous post, keeping these earlier arguments in mind is crucial to giving the position Nagel develops in Mind and Cosmos a fair reading.  Unfortunately, however, having reminded his readers of these earlier arguments of Nagel’s, Sober immediately goes on to ignore them.