"andy-k" wrote in message
news:nW59k.67928$GF6.35553@newsfe27.ams2...
>> There are no mechanisms, airplanes, guided missiles, etc., for a
>> solipsist. There are only ideas of them. And the notion that one idea
>> is communicating with another is but another idea. (There is no
>> communication going on within a movie --- only moving patterns of
>> light which we construe as characters communicating).
> I can't say I recognize that variant of solipsism. What I would say is
> that the first-person subjective perspective upon a world ('this'
> phenomenal perspective that "I am", encompassing other people and the
> words they use) necessarily excludes anything that might lie 'beyond'
> this perspective. Admittedly this perspective encompasses the
> *inference* that a postulated 'beyond' exists (in the form of our idea
> of "the real world"), but just like our belief in other minds, this
> inference is not testable by any appeal to sense data (since sense
> data are 'internal' to it). Only if one insists on the view that the
> phenomena of airplanes are "not really" airplanes (i.e. only the
> postulated 'external' airplanes are 'real') can one say that there are
> no airplanes for a solipsist. But even then, airplanes, linguistic
> references to airplanes, and communications about airplanes will still
> be arising within this domain, and the postulated 'real' airplanes
> remain just another *idea* within it. 'Reality' is a treacherous word.
Yes it is. Which is why I avoided it. :-)
The thrust of my comments above was that we conceive of such things as
airplanes, etc., as being things existing outside and independent of our
knowledge or thoughts of them. That is, we distinguish between airplanes and
the idea of airplanes. Solipsism collapses that distinction.
>> How do we decide when something which appears to be a human being
>> is not, after all, a human being? Are there some criteria we bring to
>> bear on that question?
> E.g. if it's skin is made of polycarbonate then we decide that it is
> not, after all, a human being. We first respond and then recognize our
> error.
The salient point being that our instinctive responses are subject to error,
and therefore we must have some means of recognizing those errors. I.e., we
must have some criteria we can apply to sort out correct responses from
erroneous ones. What are those criteria?
> The response precedes any reasoning about it.
In many cases it does. But that is irrelevant. Since those responses can
often be misguided or gratuitous, we can't rely on our response itself as
conclusive evidence for the the nature of the stimulus, or even that there
has been a stimulus.
The questions here are, "How do we know when someone else is in a subjective
state, and which subjective states he is in?"
You are trying to answer that by saying, "Well, we instinctively respond to
him *as though* he is in a particular subjective state (pain, etc.)" But
that is all but worthless, by itself, as evidence of those states, since we
also respond the same way to things we agree are not in that subjective
state, or indeed in any.
BTW, did you notice that imputing subjective states to Alfie does indeed
have empirical consequences, even on your theory? Namely, that we and others
respond is certain ways if Alfie is in those states? And I'd agree that
qualifies as evidence (but it falls far short of conclusive evidence).
>> Apparently my argument that B <--> C is a biconditional didn't
>> persuade you. "Consciousness" is defined only for certain systems ---
>> systems which behave in certain characteristic ways. Hence "If not B
>> then not C" is not denying the antecedent from the premise B --> C;
>> it is a *modus tollens* on the other half of the biconditional,
>> C --> B.
> If that were the case then the logic would indeed be modus tollens,
> but what I'm calling into question is your claim that consciousness is
> defined only for systems that behave in certain characteristic ways --
> this completely misses the first-person case. I don't *conclude* that
> I'm conscious because I behave in certain characteristic ways but
> rather there is a private recognition wherein awareness becomes
> *reflexive*.
What you conclude is that the terms "blue," "pain," "cold," etc., which you
learn by observing how others use those terms in your speech community (to
what things they are applied and in what circumstances), apply to certain
internal states you experience when in similar circumstances. You also learn
that those internal states of yours correlate with your own behaviors in the
circumstances in which you experience them, which are similar to the
circumstances and behaviors of others when they are described (or describe
themselves) as being in pain, feeling cold, etc. In other words, you learn
to relate certain private sensations with certain public concepts, and thus
with their truth conditions.
You need not know those concepts, or even to be lingual at all, in order to
*have* those experiences. But you will have to have acquired those concepts
and know their truth conditions in order to relate those terms to any
internal states you experience, i.e., to be able to describe yourself (or
even think of yourself) as "being in pain," "feeling cold," and so on.
> Subjective states are not "theoretical constructs imputed to certain
> things for theoretical reasons" -- they are *instinctively* imputed to
> certain things without involvement of the rational faculty. We
> 'arationally' (not 'irrationally') regard them as having a causal role
> in the behavior of other people. So "the criterion for deciding to
> which things they should be applied cannot rest on making
> straightforward observations" (agreed). The explanatory advantage
> gained by applying them to various things lies not in our instinctive
> propensity to afford them a causal role in behavior but pertains
> rather to our hypotheses concerning the origin of subjective states.
Think I covered this above. That we may instinctively impute them to others
is not compelling evidence that those others actually have them. And those
imputations, even if "instinctive," still depend upon tangible empirical
cues, namely, appearance and behavior (we don't instinctively impute
consciousness to rocks). (I put that "instinctive" in scare quotes because I
doubt those imputations are "built-in" to our wiring. I think it more likely
they are conceived and then imputed as explanatory hypotheses for the
observable behaviors of certain systems, in the same way that gods, demons,
evil spirits, and the like are postulated to explain weather, seasons,
disease, and so on. What we seem to have an instinct for is contriving
nonobservable entities to explain observable phenomena. :-)
Your last sentence there puzzles me. " . . . pertains
rather to our hypotheses concerning the origin of subjective states." How
does the "instinctive" hypothesis illuminate or explain the origin of
subjective states?
> What is being multiplied needlessly here is the number of categories:
> entities that are associated with subjective states, and entities that
> are considered entirely devoid of subjective states.
You think that distinction is superfluous? You don't think there are
differences between the things commonly regarded as conscious and things not
so regarded, or that those differences are important?
> This commonplace caricature of panpsychism always makes me smile.
> I haven't come across a version of panpsychism that claims that rocks
> can be happy, unhappy, or talented :-) Rocks need not be considered
> to have a unified subjective perspective of their own, but rather they
> might be considered to consist of a multiplicity of entities (e.g.
> atoms) each of which has a unified subjective perspective of its own
> (rather like a crowd of people might be considered to have no unified
> subjective perspective of its own).
It doesn't matter whether subjective states are imputed to rocks or atoms.
The same objections apply: how would we distinguish a happy atom from an
unhappy one? Or an atom having any other subjective state you may wish to
impute from an atom not in that state? In what way would the world be
discernibly different if all atoms had such states vs. if none did, or only
some did?
> I agree that magnetism is a non-observable hypothetical construct
> postulated to explain some observable phenomena. The idea
> of consciousness, however, does not fall into this category.
> It is a private recognition grounded in our instinctive propensity
> to afford other people similar subjective states to one's own.
Covered above.
> It's a modus ponens only if you start out by stipulating that
> subjective states necessarily entail testable consequences,
> but then it becomes a case of begging the question.
Covered in the short posts.
>> You can simply deny the major premise, of course, so that subjective
>> states have no testable consequences. But then you've rendered the
>> property S noncognitive.
> Does 'noncognitive' encompass 'instinctive'?
Noncognitive means a proposition for which no means exists, in principle,
for determining whether it is true or false. Noncognitive propositions are
usually formulated in such a way as to guarantee that result ("the universe
and everything in it is doubling in size every second").
That we may respond to certain things *as though* they have certain
properties is not compelling evidence that they actually do have those
properties.
