Colin McGinn on New Mysterianism

[atlasspike]

Thank You for posting this. I greatly enjoyed it.

[andreaandrewmilne]

Dear Will This Work,

Hmmm, I have my highly distinguished BA (Hons) Philosophy, from a college in the Uni of London, for what it's worth. I spent most of my time flirting in the common room, and discussing gender politics :-)

[wilthiswork]

Hot hot hot... And impressive, but that it's impressive is secondary, of course. I'm afraid my credentials aren't as impressive as yours, though I know you won't use that against me, informed and scrupulous as you are. I obviously spoke too soon about you needing to "go on a philosophy course." Seriously, I've got to hit the books. I promise a valiant effort at refuting your points later.. Stay sassy now.. Or it won't be any fun for me..

[andreaandrewmilne]

Firstly, what I object to is the crappy logic of CMs position. By her supposing that we have good reason for believing that (I) there is a problem of consciousness, but that (II) the problem is insoluble, thus is generated an annoying but vacuous air of profundity. I see little reason to suppose either. Proof of (II), or even proof that (II) is a logically consistent claim, is singularly lacking.

[andreaandrewmilne]

If you read CM in, eg The Problem of Philosophy, youll see a tedious argument by analogy from an initially bad idea.

The initially bad idea is Chomsky's (or at least CMs no doubt utterly impartial rendering of Nim Chimskys notions):

"...With language as his model case Chomsky develops a general conception of human intelligence which includes the idea of endogenously fixed cognitive limits even for conscious reason..."

[andreaandrewmilne]

Says CM by analogy:

"...it is easy to see that limitation theses hold with respect to other aspects of our mental life. We cannot experience every possible type of sensation, nor every emotion; neither can we desire everything that might conceivably be desired... Indeed, it is hard to know what it would be like for a psychological being not to have limitations of these kinds, since such limitations are a direct consequence of having any determinate psychology at all"

[andreaandrewmilne]

However, as my scientifically minded co-commentators soundly suggested, trying to establish a-priori limits to knowledge sounds like proving an unfalsifiable statement in all possible languages, about the computability of all possible statements. Pure tosh.

Where is the proof that such a statement exists, let alone what this statement is?

I suppose someone will mention Gödel statements, but they presume (a) classical bivalent logic, and (ii) that there never can be true contradictions.

[AutodidacticPhd]

"I suppose someone will mention Gödel statements..."

Alas, my understanding of G is imperfect (though I love to throw his name around when drunkenly arguing with the feeble minded)... to my understanding, G only applies to formal systems, and there is no serious material that *I* have encountered that suggests that the universe is a formal system... or more properly, that formal systems are universally descriptive... so I fail to see how G is even relevant.

[andreaandrewmilne]

..... the "belief" component is the possible truth content of the statement, and the "justification" component is the validity of the procedure used to decide a particular truth-value. The "true" component flows from the decided truth value being in some sense "affirmative" rather than "negative", a categorisation that allows for models with N truth values, where N>2.

Sounds good, but the catch is a non-question begging definition of "valid procedure".

Regards, andrea

[andreaandrewmilne]

So, I find myself able to persist in the cheekily confident hypothesis that we will not in fact prove limits to our knowledge, if by limits to knowledge is meant the ability to construct a well-formed sentence in some language, for which we cannot decide even one truth-value.

You will infer that for me knowledge is, most of the time, a procedural facility.

Using the ever-popular Freddie Hot Ayer definition of knowledge as "justified true belief"....

[AutodidacticPhd]

"justified true belief"

Well, like many attempts to neatly categorize and codify the fuzzier concepts in common use, I find this definition of knowledge to be laced with more than a little semantic jiggery-pokery. Generally, if I'm referring to problems of "what CAN be known", I'm talking about knowledge in a collective sense... on an individual basis though, I think the lines between ideas like belief, knowledge, etc are fuzzy at best, and likely to remain so... perhaps for good reason.

[andreaandrewmilne]

There is a tasty entry on Dialetheism in the online Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. The crux of the matter is finding a model of semantic inference that stops trivial inference of all statements from a single occurrence of a contradictory statement. Read the article and see how it might be done.

[andreaandrewmilne]

Dear ADPhd,

Nice point. And Gödel is not my forte either. Now, I don't say the entire world is a symbol system, let alone a formal symbol system, though also I don't say it isn't, just to equivocate :-)

However, I could be persuaded that our "natural language" is formaliseable, at the cost of undecideability or inconsistency. Like those Oz characters, the Dialetheists, Graham Priest et al, I don't wet my knickers at true contradictory statements. So, inconsistency is not inherently fatal.

[AutodidacticPhd]

"However, I could be persuaded that our "natural language" is formaliseable, at the cost of undecideability or inconsistency."

Alas, I hadn't quite considered this, and it does present serious problems. While I can have thoughts which are not perfectly described by language (eg: a description or equation of a sphere is not a sphere itself), if you are a complete material with regards to the brain, then you have to consider the possibility that its activity is reproducible...

[AutodidacticPhd]

...via some form of Turing Complete Machine (however inefficient that reproduction might be), and thus completely bound by Godel. The crux of the matter is how important the analogue aspects of brain function are (it goes without saying that the digital aspects are perfectly suited to electronic simulation), and whether they can be reduced to a discrete approximation without serious loss of functionality... which I would venture is possible.

[andreaandrewmilne]

The more justifiable hypothesis is that, even if there are hardwired limits to cognition (proof anyone?), this is yet no proof that given, eg, AI enhancements to human cognition, we will nonetheless hit a, so-called, limit to human knowledge. Call this a heroic epistemological optimism. Hey, that's me, Andrea the superhuman optimist, though more often expressing it in romance.

Secondly, the reason I don't adhere to (I) is because the philosophy of mind seems a mishmash of:

[andreaandrewmilne]

(a) a thirst for foundationalism, typical, as I often assert, of insecure "masculine" mentalities. "I Can't know anything unless I'm certain beyond possible doubt of the initial propositions and valid rules of inference". Phah, how much philosophy reads like the more ingenious expression of the autistic adolescence of "boys" [ rhetoric warning :-) ]

(b) puzzles over necessary and/or sufficient conditions for personal identity

(c) a theory of knowledge

(d) a theory of semantics

[wilthiswork]

"...insecure 'masculine' mentalities"

"..autistic adolescence of 'boys'"

Oh yea, give it to me baby..

[andreaandrewmilne]

Thirdly, at bottom, smoking my Gilbert Ryle pipe, I don't see deep problems with common sense models about each others sensuous lives. I agree, for instance, common sense is unclear about a model for, eg, dreams, fantasies, and counterfactual conditional statements. But these puzzles belong to truth and semantics. They would remain even if the philosophy of mind was taken off the syllabus, and their solution within the philosophy of mind is just a borrowing from the study of formal languages.

[andreaandrewmilne]

Also, it is a amusing, but hardly profound to say that such common sense is itself a species of philosophy of the mind. That really is desperate job-creation or co-option to a bankrupt enterprise.

You make a particular point I hotly dispute. You say I conflate "knowing the subjective feel of a particular experience (take say, swimming) on the one hand, and epistemologically privileged access on the other; they aren't the same."

[andreaandrewmilne]

Indeed, I do not understand the distinction, because

(α) I dont accept that sensuous experience has anything to do with subjectivity. I hold that all our lives are conducted in a fully objective realm

(β) the correct meaning of subjective is as a property of statements, viz there does not as yet exist a procedure for determining the truth-value of such and such a statement

(γ) I dont accept I have a special type of access to my thoughts and feelings that is a-priori denied to you

[AutodidacticPhd]

"(β)..."

Climb as I might, though I think I see the summit, I have yet to meet someone who has been there. Even if subjectivity is a realm that CAN be conquered, we're sorta stuck with it at the moment... and no matter how hard I have tried, or how hard others have tried at me, no one has come close to understanding me as I do, or showing me how they truly experience themselves. Qualia need not be objective fact for us to acknowledge a current distinction of subjectivity, neh?

[andreaandrewmilne]

I should lay my cards on the table and state:

(A) I dont accept that ones thoughts and feelings have any special "privacy" at all, at least if that means a privacy somehow dis-analgous to that of, eg, my not seeing something because it is hidden round the corner of the wall. Indeed, Im very real world. Privacy is not a philosophical problem, but an issue in politics.

[andreaandrewmilne]

(B) my hypothesis is that with sufficient computing power, we will be able to, for all intents and purposes, put ourselves completely in each other's positions.

(C) in some notable, commonplace circumstances, we do already have common feelings and common perspectives upon such feelings. Erotic intimacy, at its highest, is my favourite example. For minutes, or hours, you and I can literally share our feelings and know them in identical fashion. Ditto for audiences at music of great genius.

[AutodidacticPhd]

"Ditto for audiences at music of great genius."

I would point you at DasAmericanAtheist's videos regarding the universality of music... And I would also contest the perfection of shared experience (erotic or otherwise)... unless I and many of my friends have had fantastically bad luck over these many years.

Now, if, on the other hand, you are painting with a very broad brush... yeahhh, there are some things that set off chemical cascades with reasonable consistency... but 5HT =/= love.

[andreaandrewmilne]

En fin, my initial challenge to you, dear WTW, is to state a substantial problem intrinsic to the philosophy of mind. Try and make it even half as interesting as music or love. In fact, try and make it so interesting you suppose it would prompt me to gently ask my lover to release me from her arms and kisses in order to discuss your puzzle, all this whilst we two were listening to the Adagietto of Mahler's 5th .... Tall order, but I know you are up to it.

Regards and ♥, andrea

[AutodidacticPhd]

"Try and make it even half as interesting as music or love."

Heh, why try to charm me out of the arms of my lover with poems, when my ideal lover would quote Wittgenstein in the throws of orgasm, neh?

While I deplore fuzzy headed philosophy and I do love music of all kinds (primal to modern experimental), I do reserve the highest regard for those who actively explore the realms of thought, even if such speculation pushes them beyond the current limits of investigation.

[andreaandrewmilne]

Am I the only one who finds Colin McGinn pretty smug? The off-hand way s/he dismisses the plausibility of pan-psychism as "a very extraordinary view of course" [at 1:31], as if the very idea of entities having both sensuous, conscious properties as well as more "classically physical properties, were just silly.

[wilthiswork]

But pan-psychism *is* a position within *the philosophy of mind!* And you've said that philosophy of mind is a "silly common-room hobby." So if philosophy of mind is a silly common-room hobby, and pan-psychism is a position within the philosophy of mind, then McGinn *should* dismiss it, right?

[andreaandrewmilne]

Noop....my point was the CM shouldn't dismiss so peremptorily an obvious solution to problems that, I infer, CM maintains are the origins of paradigmatic puzzles in the philosophy of mind. CM doesn't want such an easy exit route from the necessity of philosophical pondering. Plus, you come dangerously close to saying that any half formalised theory about our sensuous existence rightly belongs to philosophy. If you say so, but that is a very rubber-band attitude to the scope of philosophy :-)

[andreaandrewmilne]

Noop, what's daft is this initial schizoid splitting of reality into two realms, judged by some existential or phenomenological or epistemological demarcation. Typical of "masculine" styles of thinking, I observe.

[andreaandrewmilne]

There are no "philosophical" problems in our having deep emotional and attitudinal lives. We all know fairly well what it is to feel "such and such", or to believe "this or that", about ourselves and other people. Nor do most people doubt that their claims about other peoples and their own mental lives are more or less equally well founded. Unless you go on a philosophy course, the sense that one has an epistemologically privileged access to oneself isn't commonplace.

[wilthiswork]

andreaandrewmline,

You're conflating: knowing the subjective feel of a particular experience (take say, swimming) on the one hand, and epistemologically privileged access on the other; they aren't the same. Now, when it comes to an animal whose experience is likely very different, a question such as, "What's it like to be a bat" is meant to evoke issues about privileged access, but again it's not the same. Maybe you should "go on a philosophy course" so you can sort these things out.

[andreaandrewmilne]

Hey, WTW, thanks for the comments. Now, see my postings above for some replies to your replies.

Regards, andrea.

[wilthiswork]

Checked out your channel, and I thought, "damn, she's like Ayn Rand, only much hotter." Now, let's get down to brass tacks. I do ask though, ma'am, your patience on my timing, as I am in the middle of finals. I'll get back soon, maybe even today, hard to predict round this time a year..

[wilthiswork]

Oh wait, you're not that chick playing the guitar? Well she is pretty hot, you have to admit. Anyways, I liked your description of yourself and views, even though we're at laggerheads over this topic.

[wilthiswork]

What did I like about it? Hard to say, it was a sensuous experience, I would bet actually, that you're familiar with it. That you're familiar with what it's like though, does not mean you had access to it.

[AutodidacticPhd]

"as I am in the middle of finals. I'll get back soon, maybe even today, hard to predict round this time a year.. "

I hear you on that one... Cal3 & Neuro for the brain burning win.

[andreaandrewmilne]

The real puzzles are the patterns we have in our feelings and interpersonal lives, especially our half-conscious, half-unconscious models of each other's feelings, beliefs and intentions. That's why the art of conversation and romantic literature, and psychology, especially social psychology, all have great significance .... and why the philosophy of mind is a silly common-room hobby.

[wilthiswork]

"A silly common-room hobby"

You don't a view on the scientific problem of how or if conscious experience is reducible to the brain? Philosophers of mind come with all types of views, and the reductionist one can plausibly be said to be the most common. As recently as the late 50's, a philosopher sparked a revolution in psychology with a journal article, and today the philosophy of mind is laying the framework for what *may* become the ultimate understanding of the human mind/brain.

[AutodidacticPhd]

... eh, I have to agree to some extent with Wilt-his-work... the philosophy of mind is a rather broad arena, and it actually includes a large number of people with serious interest and training in the hard sciences. It's one of those grey areas where you actually find meaningful thought in modern philosophy... though it does get muddied down with the likes of CM.

;-)

[andreaandrewmilne]

Things we can now in advance to be "a-priori" inexplicable by natural science? What is the "intrinsic" nature of something apart from its behaviour? A mixture of Kantianism and pure b*llshit mysticism.

My advice to CM? Go get a real job helping people in Tesco's, to quote a better philosopher :-) Or more campaigning for better treatment of other species, which CM was quite interested in, in the early 90s.

Regards and ♥, andrea

[wilthiswork]

So you don't think pan-psychism should be dismissed, AND you think the intrinsic nature of something is only its behavior? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph..

[AutodidacticPhd]

"AND you think the intrinsic nature of something is only its behavior?"

I think the big problem that those of us who are (at least sympathetic to) empiricalists, is that this concept of "intrinsic" nature seems to be an invented new layer of confusion without real definition, application or relevance to the real world... at least not beyond the mental "exercises" of navel-gazers.

[AutodidacticPhd]

The idea that something is and always will be completely outside the realm of physical and rational inquiry is easily one of the most daft ideas I can imagine. To reasonably make such a statement would require omniscience.

As with most areas of empirical inquiry, electricity is as electricity does, and I have no idea what this other hooey is that he thinks isn't being described. Frankly, it just sounds like he's just trying to invent problems so philosophers will always have a job.

[humanist7117]

Though the mind arose out of the brain, they have evolved different but interelated functions.

The terms should not be used interchangeably.

[simplic10]

Thanks for posting!

He says: "Physics won't tell you the intrinsic nature of electricity."

What possible answer could there be to that question anyway? "Electricity is a bunch of springs"?

Am I crazy in thinking the intrinsic nature of electricity *is* its behaviour?

As Einstein used to say "distance is what you measure with a ruler."

[LennyBound]

Hear Hear!

[AutodidacticPhd]

heh, I knew you were on our side *wink*

BTW, how goes things? I haven't heard from you in forever.

[LennyBound]

Pretty good. Working as a TA at a community college and in the process of applying to grad schools. We'll see if I get in anywhere.

[AutodidacticPhd]

Groovy! Good luck to you... alas, I won't be worrying about grad school too seriously for another year... my damn Math concentration is taking for-bloody-ever to get traction.

[xlxraidersxlx]

@simplic10 but that's what he's saying, our minds cannot grasp certain physical things, such as the intrinsic nature of electricity, so we could not even phathom that question

[23discordians]

Did the lighting guy have the day off for this one? Interesting video though. But I would have thought that the time to declare yourself a mysterian is the end, not the begining.

[almafarag]

there's no way out of human psychology, and there's no way for cognition without some form of an arbitrary grounding or necessary foothold or conceptual coherences, indeed I believe that what we can come to terms with in the end is the "Human" and not the "Universal", ontology remains impossible, always... but that's only an attitude, my attitude, anyway, this is a great video, I haven't heard about new mysterianism so far,

Thanks so much for uploading this!

[Nades129]

Wow, then Im an extremist then. We have to start with the very basic that everything is material

[Epistemofo]

Quite.