tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post7146775113629164989..comments2024-03-28T21:43:44.433-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Mindreading?Edward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-30488463822051685052020-12-09T13:48:45.097-08:002020-12-09T13:48:45.097-08:00@S Jilcott,
I know you posted this question 9 yea...@S Jilcott,<br /><br />I know you posted this question 9 years ago, but anyway I thought I'd offer my two cents on the chance that someone else might find it useful. <br /><br />I think of this work that's being done on studying brain patterns as similar to studying a book in a language one doesn't speak. The story is written in a book. Anyone reading the story needs to look at the book, observe the ink on the pages. If you rip pages out of the book, the story will have parts missing. When you listen to someone reading the book, you might detect patterns - "ah, whenever you hear 'shtaim' you see the characters 'שְׁנַיִם'". There's a real and important relationship between the story, the ink and the paper. But it's not the case that the story IS the ink and the paper, and that mastering literature is equivalent to becoming an ink and paper expert.<br /><br />The brain is definitely the organ that is chiefly involved in thought (there's some recent studies hinting that we might think with our whole bodies). But the brain is not the whole story. <br /><br />Hope this helpsHarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02429924294453787944noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-65763486285437464692011-10-13T12:56:01.054-07:002011-10-13T12:56:01.054-07:00There's something I'm still missing here. ...There's something I'm still missing here. It seems like the neuroscientists can still detect which parts of the brain are correlated with immaterial abstractions. For example, some set of neurons fires when presented with a picture of a cow, and a different, non-disjoint set when presented with another cow. Then perhaps the intersection of these sets of neurons contains a representation of the concept of "cow" independent of a concrete cow image.<br /><br />Or if the concept of "cow" isn't enough to engage the intellect, what about the concept of "two". If someone is shown a sequence of images each with two objects, there is some common set of neurons that fires representing the concept of "two". Likewise, when the person performs some reasoning task involving the number two, the scientists might detect this same set of neurons firing. So I'm missing how some intellectual activities can't be grounded in brain activity.S Jilcottnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-45982536902707118732009-01-10T08:48:00.000-08:002009-01-10T08:48:00.000-08:00Ednonymous, you're the one making the rather outra...Ednonymous, you're the one making the rather outrageous and unscientific claim that we do not have sure knowledge of an external world, and that causality is all mind-made and subjective, denying a even something like "proximate cause": in effect even denying Hume's points about the regularity of nature (many (including Popper, probably) have mistaken Hume's points on causality for ultra-skepticism, when in fact it really concerns the difference between the inductive/probabilistic claims of natural science, vs, the axiomatic knowledge of logic and math). <BR/><BR/>And you make the typical scholastic mistake (or is it subtle manipulation) that all arguments are deductive, when in fact even philosophical tradition distinguished between analytic/deductive argument (ie syllogistic ) and synthetic/inductive/probabilistic reasoning. For that matter, per Quine (not far from Hume, in many ways), analytical a priori itself has been called into question. So I think that would apply even to St. Aristotle's categories, but leave it to the theologicalJhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-35146520189743492132009-01-06T13:34:00.000-08:002009-01-06T13:34:00.000-08:00J,Just so you know, philosophy is about arguments,...J,<BR/><BR/>Just so you know, philosophy is about arguments, not assertions.<BR/><BR/>Let me know when you come up with some.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-37363527809930555212008-12-24T17:41:00.000-08:002008-12-24T17:41:00.000-08:00You're the naif here, if not outright vichy machia...You're the naif here, if not outright vichy machiavellian and liar.<BR/><BR/>But we await your proof of a prioricity!Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-33415000178252857812008-12-24T17:40:00.000-08:002008-12-24T17:40:00.000-08:00As I said, the sequence of the "9-11 crime" starts...As I said, the sequence of the "9-11 crime" starts when the plane hits the building, and not until that point. So, yes, there's a point in time when the actual crime starts. That's not merely arbitrary. <BR/><BR/>While induction, and natural science is not formal logic (a rather trivial point, which empiricists from the time of Hobbes have pointed out) <BR/> most useful knowledge--like physics-- (yes, let's play pragmatist if you want) depends on observation, and a type of inductive method: for that matter so did the empiricism of Aristotle (who is hardly consistent on some metaphysical realism, if his texts are even to be held as accurate at all). <BR/><BR/><BR/>As I said, the events leading up to the crime are only relevant because of the actual crime--had they missed the building, it wouldn't have been a big deal. It's not merely Jimbo Smith: it's a crowd of Jimbo Smiths, and departments of physics with Dr. Smiths examining the entire situation--all mostly in agreement with the applicability of Newtonian causality--and the objectivity of phenomena--in regards to macro events like a plane smashing into a building. They determined that the force of impact (impact itself sets out a rather specific point of time) was sufficient to knock down the building. <BR/><BR/>That one cannot deductively establish causality, or even knowledge of the external world means little, except perhaps about the limits of deduction. Hume himself vented about that did he not, and then more or less still says Newtonian physics holds (as it does, except at subatomic levels, or near the speed of light), and that phenomena is regular more or less. That's what experimentalists had said for years: they were against the rigid orthodoxy of Aristotle. For that matter, one can easily turn the same skeptic-lite arguments against Aristotle, or any "realists": prove the supposed a priori nature of Aristotelian categories holds, or even of logic, mathematics itself.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-64093645545905698802008-12-24T14:59:00.000-08:002008-12-24T14:59:00.000-08:00Also, your comments about the 9/11 attacks and the...Also, your comments about the 9/11 attacks and the problem of evil are just asinine. If anything, theologians and philosophers of religion have given <I>too much</I> attention to the problem of evil and taken it too seriously. Presumably you've missed the boat because you assumed when you read some selections from Hume's <I>Dialogues</I> as a sophomore that all the theists left in the world were just dumb, naive bastards who either hadn't read Hume or just dismissed him as immoral? I'd recommend some reading on the subject for you, except that you've proven to us by now that you only read philosophy at the WikiPedia and Short Introduction levels.<BR/><BR/>Get real, dude.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-61546777604768506692008-12-24T14:54:00.000-08:002008-12-24T14:54:00.000-08:00J,The argument that you are trying to resist claim...J,<BR/><BR/>The argument that you are trying to resist claims that even your initial description of events (e.g., 'the plane strikes the building with sufficient inertial force...,' 'a picture appears,' etc.) presupposes that you can identify the causally relevant events in question, but goes on to insist that there are no objective criteria for picking out some one event as the cause and some other as the effect. By 'objective criteria,' the argument understands criteria that do not depend on the interests of the person (in this case, you) picking out and identifying some events as causes and others as effects. <BR/><BR/>So simply identifying some causes and effects doesn't get you anywhere, since the argument you're trying to refute presupposes that you can do that.<BR/><BR/>The argument is not presenting Kantian worries about things-in-themselves, so your references to that miss the point. The argument also doesn't deny that science and law presuppose the objectivity of causation, and the fact that they do so doesn't do a thing to undermine the argument. For perhaps the sciences and law should be understood as pragmatists and other varieties of anti-realist understand them, as interest-relative constructs and not as identifying objective structures of causality, responsibility, or whatever. That's where Putnam takes the argument. He'd be unimpressed if you merely pointed out to him that we talk about causes and effects as though they were objective features of the world. <BR/><BR/>Your attempt to dodge the problem by appealing to the 'proximate' rather than the 'ultimate' cause won't help you either. For the problem remains in any case that you pick out two events of a sequence, and identify one as the cause and the other as the effect. The Popper-Putnam argument challenges you to show that there is something about the way the world is (and not the way that the interests of observers pick out the events) that makes the one event properly 'the beginning' and the other one 'the end.' The fact that the event that causes the event that is its effect was also the effect of some other cause isn't supposed to be the problem. The question remains, rather, why should the plane smashing into the building be identified as the beginning of a discrete series of events that terminates in Jimbo Smith's observing via television the plane smashing into the building? Why shouldn't we pick out, or at least include, a whole bunch of other stuff as 'the cause' or 'the beginning' of the causal chain? The fact that the plane hitting the building was a necessary condition of Jimbo Smith seeing it on television doesn't really help you -- there seem to be lots of other necessary conditions, too, but the only people who pick them out as causes are desperate philosophers. <BR/><BR/>So, if you want to answer the Popper-Putnam argument, you need to show that there are features of the world that make one event the cause (the 'beginning') and the other the effect ('the end') <I>independently of the interests of anyone describing the events</I>. You haven't even tried to do that, so you haven't even begun to answer the argument.<BR/><BR/>You seem pissed off that Edward is a philosopher who is also 'religious' and thinks that his philosophical views are deeply consistent with his 'religious' beliefs. But insofar as you're resisting this particular argument, you aren't resisting religious belief at all. The two most famous defenders of the argument are Popper, who had no interest in religion, and Putnam, who, practicing Jew though he is, emphatically does <I>not</I> believe that his philosophical views can serve as anything remotely resembling a foundation for his religious views. Furthermore, plenty of lesser philosophers follow these two, and they take the argument as a reason to reject, variously, 1) realism, whether quite generally or scientific realism in particular; 2) causal theories of the mind, of any kind. Ed is different, it's true, because <I>his</I> use of the argument is to show that causal theories of the mental don't work <I>unless you abandon the distinctly modern conception of causation in favor of an Aristotelian analysis</I>. It's also true that he thinks his Aristotelianism is essential in defending the rationality of his religious views. But there's no more sense in resisting a particular argument because it plays a role in one person's defense of the rationality of his religious views than there is in resisting, say, Darwinism because the Nazis appealed to it to justify their racial theories (and no, I don't think that Catholicism and Nazism are anything remotely alike, by the way). The point is: argue with what you actually oppose, not with some other thing associated with what you actually oppose. <BR/><BR/>J, your responses here repeatedly show no signs of actually engaging carefully with what you read. Please prove me wrong and actually address the argument instead of spouting off a bunch of <I>non sequiturs</I> and assuring us that processes in the brain are related to mental processes (nobody here or anywhere else has denied this, so get over it).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-33318695660553952152008-12-24T13:33:00.000-08:002008-12-24T13:33:00.000-08:00"""Recall my earlier post about Karl Popper’s crit...<I>"""Recall my earlier post about Karl Popper’s critique of causal theories of the mind: Before we can identify any causal relation between the brain and the external world as having any sort of explanatory force vis-à-vis the mind, we have to be able to identify some particular external event as “the beginning” of the relevant causal chain, and some event within the brain as “the end.” </I><BR/><BR/>X is watching TV, like on 9/11/01. Suddenly a picture appears of a plane flying into a building. The plane smashes into the building, and the building crumbles into flame: X observes all that (or say a few seconds later). The beginning of the causal chain of the WTC's attacks was quite precise: when the plane strikes the building with sufficient inertial force to cause the structure to collapse. While we might play along with a Kant (or Hume) and agree that our perception of the event does not equal the "ding-an-sich" (which is subject to forms of intuition such as space and time, etc. etc.), obviously an external event triggered the perception. Any "normal science" depends on assuming the objectivity of that sort of observational event (and so does the law, really--ah believe they call that proximate cause). <BR/><BR/> The ultimate cause (the terrorists' plans, jihadist conspiracy, revenge, etc.) may not be immediately detected, but that's not the issue. Had the terrorists missed the WTC, there would have been a few reports, perhaps, but it would not have mattered too much. The skeptical doubts (and Popper's point really quite Humean--not particularly religious) may apply to origination, if not to history itself, but the immediate "proximate cause" obviously can be observed, and pin-pointed. <BR/><BR/>We might agree there is a specifically human type of thinking that organizes the perceived event--understanding, consciousness, conception, etc. but one could hardly doubt the event (the crime really) starts with something happening in the external world. <BR/><BR/>For that matter, any theological reading of atrocities such as 9-11 would imply that G*d himself was aware of it and allowed it to occur, and most theologians would probably not care to comment on that; and I doubt even Aristotle would say that a 9-11 was part of some divine plan......<BR/><BR/> <BR/><BR/><BR/>""""(In the case at hand, there is nothing in the bare empirical facts that determines that it is such-and-such brain processes, rather than the image on the retina, or rather than some different event altogether, that counts as the terminus of the relevant causal chain.) Such identifications are interest-relative and thus non-objective – or at any rate they are, I would add, if we assume a “mechanistic” conception of the natural world.""""<BR/><BR/>Again one might grant that the scientists are not reproducing the actual sensation or experience of someone perceiving something (say of watching 9-11 on TV), but it's far more likely than not that a relation holds between what's produced in the brain, and what was perceived. Other studies have established the visual aspects of thinking (images taken from cortical scans of monkeys, etc). MRIs , brain scans may not at this stage show what Karpov does when he's working out some chess combination--that's does not preclude the possibility that they will in 10 or 20 years.Jhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11567400697675996283noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-76477541067821833302008-12-19T00:35:00.000-08:002008-12-19T00:35:00.000-08:00Hi, while I don't address "mindreading" per se in ...Hi, while I don't address "mindreading" per se in Philosophy of Mind, I do get into the related issues discussed here, especially in the chapter on intentionality.Edward Feserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-48105163201132683732008-12-18T20:44:00.000-08:002008-12-18T20:44:00.000-08:00Do you cover all this in more detail in your Philo...Do you cover all this in more detail in your Philosophy of Mind book? I picked up The Last Superstition - I'm still wrestling with some of what you say, but I'm eager to learn more.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com