Patricia Churchland on Neurophilosophy

[KnowKnot]

@vsaluki  Largely because your imagination is bound by tradition.

[KnowKnot]

@kasaduhallo Qualia. Get off it. Go back to Chalmers if you need to choke on that. The "problem." which well may be an illusion, is "unsolved." But, as was the case when the sun circled the earth, or flies were generated spontaneously, reality is defined by neither superstition nor limited by limited imaginations.

[KnowKnot]

@Trailer1220 No need to feel sorry. (Which is belittling, thanks much.) I am my body, my small self on this small earth. And the breadth of my love for my children, my joy in other's faces, depth of shared suffering, and sense of awe at everything that is defies your pity. Defiantly and absolutely.

[mentalphysicalism]

Simply because the dominant object of our consciousness is usually from our

outer senses does not mean that physicality must be our only point of reference.

We are also conscious of our inner self called a mind so we can also use the mind

as a point of reference. Mind and brain are both givens so neither has to come from

the other as they are both aspects of one single entity.

[Trailer1220]

"That which is not comprehended by the mind but by which the mind comprehends.. That which is not seen by the eye but by which the eye sees.. That which is not drawn by the breath but by which the breath is drawn.. Thus is the inexpressible, invisible, inaudible, and unthinkable ground of all existence."

I just feel sorry for those that have missed the only source of meaning; the ineffable, immaterial quality of conscious experience. Energy does not exist in a wire, it simply travels across it.

[HomuncuIus]

Wow! An intelligent woman!

[therebelwaltz]

Did anyone else think it seemed like he was talking about his own feelings for Patricia Churchland at 1:35? :D

[Alexdurrant7]

Something in the interviewer's voice reminds me of William F Buckley...

[cunnidvd]

wrong

[kasaduhallo]

I agree,she isn't explaining anything really.It is a bad rhetorical trick.It gives no explanation to how qualia exists.There would have to be something in the structure of the brain which creates consciousness.At one point you would have a brain without consciousness,right?And at one point it came about?WHY??

[4Dmetricology]

@kasaduhallo

now that is funny.



[souciance]

Extremely weak arguments. What possible difference does 1000 neurons make to 1 neuron? There is nothing we have seen that seperates them that suddenly says...magic now you have reached the limit and can feel an emotion..

[4Dmetricology]

@souciance

this is a scientist not a philosopher.

She is not giving an opinion, like you yap on about. She is describing what the Method has shown.

And do learn to respect your betters. Dr. Churchland would make you piss your pants in public were you to meet her.

[MrNikodemus2]

physicalist reduction like this, basically central state materialism, suffers from many fatal defects, mostly summed up in the question "what is it like to be a bat"?. 

[TeedRockwell]

It's interesting that when Churchland says that the Mind is the brain, Moyer's only reply is some sort of Dualism. I've argued that the Mind is neither Brain nor Ghost, which is the title of my MIT press book. Google it and Check it out, it you're interested.

[mike10121996]

@TeedRockwell Heidigger opened pandoras box by asking the question of what makes a "being". He points out that we don't even know what constitutes "beingness" ontologically. Is a computer a "being" is what a computer does "consciousness"? While interesting, and certainly firing up AI over the years we have to understand that we just don't understand.

[mike10121996]

I'm not saying her thought process is defunct or illogical merely pointing out that she begins her thoughts on the mind and brain as they ARE the same thing. That is profoundly different than demonstrating or proving that indeed they ARE the same thing.

[mike10121996]

At :30-40 sec she points out her basic assumption. In other words this is what she is assuming to be true. She makes this very clear from the beginning. It is assumption ground zero. The problem is that at the end of the video she pretends that her assumption has been proven to be true. When in fact she said, that is what I'm assuming. None of the rest of the video proved her assumption but merely talked about the consequences OF her assumption If this is true than that is true.

[WHOPULLEDMYFINGER]

Just keep doing the science and if we are lucky things will reveal themselves - duh!

[sleepcity]

I love both of these people.

[deductionism]

I found some of her arguments quite weak.

[mistermoen]

I'm not gay but sometimes I want to kiss Bill Moyers.

[coldarc]

earth is the symbolic center of the galaxy. pyramids was built to represent stars of constelations around the planet, like constelations around the galactic center. thats the metaphor for stars moving around a center that has ben literallly interpreted as earth being in the center of the galaxy. 6000 years ago they knew earth was round and revolved around the sun that moved in a constelation with the galactic center.

the flat earth myth was made by priests that favored relgion.

[coldarc]

as long as consciousness is a body divided in parts, and each part is not aware of being parts of a whole, each part will have individual conciousness because as long as the parts are never aware of beeing one being they can never achieve sameness that is symmetrical. if the whole become symmetrical consciousness ceases to exist. as long as you have parts within a whole unaware of being one and same you have infinite variations of conciousness, and the whole evolve infinitly asymmetrically.

[JesseHerriott]

I don't agree with that Ms. Churchland..what about Dr. Amit Goswami, Fred Alan Wolfe, Fritjof Capra, Hans Peter Duer who have all supported that the parts do not explain the whole. Consciusness is not an epiphenomenon, but it is the the phenomenon by which everything else is produced. How can the brain cannot secret consciousness that does not make sense. What about the Measurement problem then; how can that be explained?

[PointDeLight]

How do we define death, without an idea of a life force? In other words, how do we define death in terms of chemistry of DNA?

[lucasbenjaminsantos]

the word limit on youtube comments is a restriction on my ability to comment thoughtfully. i edited my last post what seems beyond comprehension

[lucasbenjaminsantos]

agree: Church-land speaks regarding ancient/modern people. linguistic evolution from basic to complex life descriptions. disagree: one interpretation more/less correct, they merely differ. 'Life-force' description of ancients useful/accurate understanding life at basic level. describe universe by presence/absence of life-force or by physiology. former covers MANY areas of introspection, latter, less areas with specificity; macro to micro shift in perception.

[lucasbenjaminsantos]

testing 1 - 2

[versus79]

I don't think I've ever seen so much bullshit in one video; not even most materialists take Churchland seriously. There's not one single materialist theory or model that explains how consciousness is possible, and this is because materialists are trying to deny the existence of something that can't be denied.

[Alexdurrant7]

Why can't consciousness just be an emergent property of a machine as complex as the brain?

[tazzy755]

Why does Patricia Churchland reject mind/body dualism?

[DocHarder]

Because there is none?

[dobrovol]

Kind of hard to bield a moral system on the idea that we are just blobs of molecules that randomly appeared in the middle of nowhere.

And why would Aristotle not understand non-Euclidean geometry? That's simply a geometry on a saddle or a sphere (negative or positive curvature, resp.) He wouldn't know tensors or diff. geom., but the main ideas like the sum of a triangle's angles being different from 2pi, or measuring curvilinear lengths (just put a thread on the surface) he'd find obvious.

[4Dmetricology]

she is so young.

[deductionism]

@4Dmetricology

Not anymore....

[sentstuff05]

Thanks for posting these videos. Very interesting. I heard her on CBC radio Ideas once (I think it was her).

[Waranoa]

She is unnacurate at 1:20 (but necessarily so) when she says that there is nothing other than 'molecules' etc. There is nothing physical or substantial, but the informatian relating to the position and state of molecules in our brain does not tell us much about our consciousness. It is not the molecules themselves but their organization that matters, and the organization of that organization into more complex fysiological systems. It is full of emergent information, not just molecules.

[RobertoCha]

That is one position... but for some emergentism is not valid. I am not sure about Churchland position in this topic... but i suppose she would be against that...

[Waranoa]

Funny to hear that it now has a name :) What are the arguments the opponents use?

[frattydan]

I find it interesting that this aspect of the mind, the subjective, qualitative part, is now getting so much attention, when in the past it was the analytical and computational part of the mind that was held up as special and unique.

[Huesos138]

I have to go off topic for a moment and ask: is Mrs. Churchland an epistemological naturalist as well?

[LennyBound]

Yup.

[bdeaner]

Patty, Patty, Patty -- you can't brush off the hard problem of consciousness with an appeal to Aristotelian physics. Lame.

[mach1man22]

Why the thumbs down? This dude is right. Okay Lenny, you gonna write me off for this?

[LennyBound]

Haha, I don't "write people off" because they hold intellectual positions contrary to my own.

With that said, if you are interested in a detailed description of why Pat Churchland denies that the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" is really a genuine problem look up her essay "The Hornswoggle Problem." It's available online and a simple Google search should bring it up.

Hope that helps. :-)

[vegtam1]

Well there are other problems even when we decide to kill Cartesian dualism. Some apparently purely physicalist/materialst philosophies ironically *seem* dualistic in that they don't seem to agree internally in a formal, ideal sense. In other words they ultimately don't seem faithful to reality.

As a formalized philosophy of mind, anomalous monism seems best to address these things.

[vegtam1]

People like Steven Pinker do a much better job by dealing with analogy.

[vegtam1]

*she misses an opportunity when moyers says "are we just"

[jonobrow]

She's gorgeous!

[SvR2011Storylines]

@jonobrow you cant be serious

[imbalancingact]

Great stuff, Lenny.  Thanks.

[bigguy200]

Patricia Churchland is making assumptions here first that we already have figured out the origin of life which were not even close. Also that mind brain dependency is production not permissive or transmissive. Which would allow for an immaterial soul.

[LennyBound]

She doesn't make any comment on the origin of life nor does the origin of life have any bearing on her position; she just points out that the biological sciences have shown us that to be alive is merely to possess specific mechanical functions (i.e. to metabolize, reproduce, etc.) and is nothing "over-and-above" those functions.

[LennyBound]

As science proceeded we had to deflate our common-sense ontological notion of what being "alive" really meant, and she suspects that a similar thing will happen to our pre-scientific conception of what constitutes consciousness.

Also, the conceptual problems that come about when attempting to defend Cartesian substance dualism are simply staggering.

[vegtam1]

While I think I agree with her positions, if she maintains the positions that I think she does, she is not the best at explicating them.

[humanist7117]

I disagree. The mind arose out of the brain but they have evolved different though interrelated functions.

[LennyBound]

If by "arose out of" you mean that the mind is something nonphysical while the brain is physical, then how do the two seemingly interact with one another?

[JohnHasSeriousQ]

Moreover, how does a mind of a host evolve differently than the brain of its host? A human mind seems to generally have similar mental capabilities of other functioning human brains inasmuch as the mind of tables seem to generally have similar mental capabilities of other functioning table brains. In other words, a human brain has certain mental capabilities, a dogs brain has certain mental capabilities, and so mental phenomena seem to BE the physical mechanisms being mental.

[robotaholic]

she looks cool

[Nykytyne2]

I love the Churchlands.

[Xenophanes21]

can I favorites this twice?

[robotaholic]

i am irritated by uneducated persons criticizing her-

just because you have a subjective experience of mind- you don't get to be an expert- get some cred bitch

[zencat01]

She fails. Vision is just in the brain? Vision is a process of the eyes and brain, mostly talking to itself in a dynamic system. This is knee jerk reactionism to the failures of Cartesian thinking.

[LennyBound]

You know what she meant. She was obviously referring to the qualitative phenomenal experience of color vision rather than "vision" itself.

[robotaholic]

you are wrong- she doens't hold the cartesian idea of mind- she is a materialist and doens't agree with cartesian dualism- she's a scientist with fucking repeatable experiments

[robotaholic]

I think she looks better now than she did years ago- Thank you for putting this up! She's so interesting.

[jonarnon]

if you go to time 2:04 you get the feeling this person might not have a lot of friends

[ShalloeThought]

pointless

[SaintCog]

People, people, people! Look at the shoulderpads, and the hairdo, this is the 90's! Neurophilosophy and Churchland has moved on since then. A good rearview mirror clip.

[somor98]

Excellent. Is there more of this interview? Thanks!

[LennyBound]

The whole interview is around 30 minutes long, however on the whole I didn't find it very interesting except for this part.

If you want me to send you the whole file just send me a private message and I'll get you the file through e-mail or something. :-)

[2bsirius]

Churchland is interesting, but she dismisses the idea of emergence very lightly...There are more to support the concept of emergence. Emergence is in no way metaphysical. She's part of the old paradigm. In many ways she reminds me of those who refused to acknowledge heliocentric. For an in depth of the Dali Lama's thinking, Owen Flanagan is a much better source for understanding that the dogmas that the Dali Lama does still still cling . Not many, but some. Thanks for this, Lenny. Interesting!

[somor98]

We ALL dismis the idea of emergence very lightly!! ; )

[2bsirius]

A lot of research biologist and otehr are coming to disagree with dismal statements like yours, solmor98. There is a lot of serious work being done in this area right now. There are two kinds of emergency theory: epistemological and ontological emergency. Epistemological emergence is the idea that complex systems cannot be described, as a matter of practice, in terms of their component units because of our epistemic limitations, that is our inability to do the computations.

[2bsirius]

According to ontological emergence, on the other hand, a full understanding of complex systems in terms of their components is not possible in principle, not just because of practical considerations, because new levels of causality appear at higher levels of organization.

If you looked into the recent research on this you'd might not be quite so dismissive.

[somor98]

I think I would be dismissive. This sort of research sounds a lot like philosophy and not like empirical science. You are basically talking metaphysics. However, only materialism is coherent with a scientific study of the mind/brain.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Somor, science need not assume materialism. Science only demands that certain features of the system being studied are regular enough for general laws to be abstracted from its activity.

[somor98]

Well, that leaves the question of what consiousness is, if it is not material.

[2bsirius]

OMG the typos in these two comments...Sorry....Cant type when I'm thinking fast. ERRATA:

A lot of research biologist and OTHERS are coming to disagree with blanket statements of DISMISSAL like yours, solmor98. There is a lot of serious work being done in this area right now. There are two kinds of EMERGENCE theory:

Just wanted to make the comments comprehensible.

[2bsirius]

Emergence does NOT necessarily entail the denial that consciousness is in some fundamental way material. It simply questions the idea that strict [some would say dogmatic] adherence to reductionism will really lead to valid explanatory outcomes.

Emergent properties are those properties arising from non-linear, non-additive interactions among the component parts of a system (as the popular refrain goes, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, because there is something due to the...

[2bsirius]

....multiplication or other mathematical operations among parts). The advantage is that one can then measure the degree of emergence quantitatively, for instance using statistical tools like the analysis of variance.

I used a very interesting article by Massimo Pigliucci from July 2008 for some of the details I've included here.

[EverettsVLOG]

i still dont see how 'emergence' can be describing as anything more than the sum of parts and the interactions among those parts... be they linear or nonlinear. certainly reductionists are not supposing them to be necessarily linear...

[2bsirius]

Try to find the book 'The Re-emergence of Emergence' by Clayton [Oxford University Press, 2006]. Two good essays in it which address this are the ones by Jaegwon Kim and David Chalmers. They take different views, but they both take issue with the idea that it is obligatory to reduce consciousness to a completely reductionist process...Jaegwon is of course more sympathetic to that idea than Chalmers...Also Trenton Merrick's book Objects and Persons [2001] is good background.

[Censeo]

lol, "Or my falling in love"? said the interviewer looking deeply into her eyes :)

[Censeo]

1:34

[RowanFortuneWood]

I am unconvinced by this 'type physicalism' just as I am unconvinced by the idealist monism of the past. Reductionism is not the answer to complex philosophical problems.

Interesting stuff about the Dalai Lama though.

[leawardseif]

She isnt a *type physicalist*.

Eliminativists are rather sceptical about mental types in general and thus dont seek to identify them with physical types.

[RowanFortuneWood]

Thanks for informing me; I find myself even less impressed with Churchland.

[LennyBound]

Haha, awesome.

[0ThouArtThat0]

"[Materialism] will be a coherent position if its advocates tell us what counts as 'physical' or 'material.' Until that is done we cannot comprehend the doctrine, let alone such derivative notions as eliminative materialism and the like." -Chomsky

I'd have to echo Chomsky. That "life is a function of the organization of matter" is clear enough. But since Newtonian physics collapsed, it has been unclear exactly what the ontological status of "matter" might be.

[0ThouArtThat0]

Also, the "organization" of this matter in living organisms may not be reducible to simple, linear mechanisms. Even granted the fact that "there is nothing other than cells and the way they are put together," a living being, as Kant pointed out, is both cause and effect of itself. The discovery of DNA certainly sheds light on evolution and speciation, but not so much on the origin of living organization itself. That, I think, will require materialist biology catch up with 21st century physics.

[RowanFortuneWood]

0ThouArtThat0: out of curiosity, what do you think about neutral monism?

[0ThouArtThat0]

Certainly neutral monism is a step beyond both dualism and reductionism, but I think we need to get out of thinking the universe is made of "stuff" of "substance" because it neglects the dimension of time. I prefer a process ontology such as A. N. Whitehead's panexperientialism. Still a sort of monism, you could say, as mind and matter are both features of the coming to be of an actual occasion (W. sees events as the most fundamental components of reality, not things).

[RowanFortuneWood]

Interesting. I don't know much about Whitehead, could you recommend one of his books that addresses these issues?

[0ThouArtThat0]

Science and the Modern World is a good book to start with.

[RowanFortuneWood]

Thank you.

[leawardseif]

Maybe Im dim witted, but I cannot see why the modern synthesis fails to explain the organisation of living things.

I just dont see the need to resuscitate animism, or to evoke quantum indeterminacy as a deux ex machina in order to save our souls.

Just dont get it :(

[0ThouArtThat0]

I'm not interested in saving our souls or in reviving some sort of dualism. I am interested in adequately account for the emergence of life from non-life. The modern synthesis helps us understand how species change over time. It leaves much else unexplained, such as how life originated and why it should, at least in the long run, not only change over time but complexify in both structure and intelligence (ie, why orthogenesis?).

[leawardseif]

This was your passage which caught my eye.

*The discovery of DNA certainly sheds light on evolution and speciation, but not so much on the origin of living organization itself. That, I think, will require materialist biology catch up with 21st century physics.*

What escaped me is why physics and chemistry are supposedly inadequate foundations for evolution, given that genes are DNA replicators; and why evolution is supposedly an inadequate explanation of the emergence of life?

[0ThouArtThat0]

17th century physics (ie, the source of standard materialism) is inadequate if we hope to account for the origin of life. Quantum physics opens up new possibilities, as does complexity theory.

The theory of evolution says nothing about the origin of life. It offers a mechanism operating to change species over time and so assumes life already.

I think what 2bsirius has brought up concerning emergence is a crucial area of study in terms of the origins of life. How do parts become a whole?

[somor98]

How are you going to study emergent conciousness, if there is no evidense?

Pray tell: What does quantum theory has to do with the origin of life?

Complexity theory is just retarded creationist BS.

[0ThouArtThat0]

The evidence of consciousness is your own 1st person experience, which is also the basis of any scientist's study of the natural world.

Quantum theory gets us out of the trap of having to account for life in a Newtonian, clockwork universe, which thinkers like Kant recognized was difficult if not impossible because of the teleological element of living organization.

Complexity theory is the most significant scientific advance in the last 30 years, imho.

[0ThouArtThat0]

It allows us to model the non-equilibrium dynamics that are undoubtedly involved in the emergence of life. This does not mean our account of life will cease to be naturalistic. On the contrary, it opens the door to explaining the emergence of life and consciousness whereas a standard reductionistic approach leaves us spellbound.

[somor98]

'The evidence of consciousness'

No, scientists do not study the world on the basis of 1st person experience, but on the basis of evidence.

No, as Hume noted there is no evidence of consiousness from 1st person experience. When I look into myself all I see are bundles of perceptions.

Your answer on Quantum theory explains nothing about consiousnes.

Your answer on complexity theory even less.

[0ThouArtThat0]

All our scientific knowledge begins with our direct experience of the world. What makes scientific knowledge better than common sense is that it is refined with logic and subject to intense experiment and peer review. Without consciousness to bind our perceptions and logical operations together, there can be no scientific knowledge. Hume may be right about the lack of a substantial ego when we introspect (an insight of the Buddha's as well), but consciousness is not reducible to ego.

[somor98]

'All our scientific knowledge begins with our direct experience of the world. '

Actually no, a zombie or a very sophisticated computer would be able to do scientific research.

'consciousness is not reducible to ego'

No, nor does Hume presume that it is. In fact, Hume is sceptical of the existence of the ego.

[0ThouArtThat0]

How is a programmed computer ever going to accomplish the total reconceptualization required of a paradigm shift, something science is always going through? Such conceptual shifts are always accompanied by a corresponding shift in worldview or in the underlying metaphor guiding scientific research (ie, in developmental biology, metaphors have ranged from crystals, to machines, to organisms, each leading to its own particular research orientation).

[0ThouArtThat0]

Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree here, somor. From my perspective, science is based in experience, but is nonetheless capable of going beyond immediate experience via induction. But it all begins in experience and remains subject to the supreme authority of experience. Aside from that bit about the validity of induction, this is quite a Humean position.

[RowanFortuneWood]

"When I look into myself all I see are bundles of perceptions." - somor98

What is this I that looks into yourself and sees a bundle of perceptions? Perhaps it is the same I that, as 0ThouArtThat0 says, is, 'the basis of any scientist's study of the natural world.'

[somor98]

'What is this I that looks into yourself`'

The 'I' does not have to be something in itself. The 'I' is simply a word we use in order to place our bodies in place and time.

No, it is the the same as the basis of the scientists study of the natural world. As I have argued, this study could be done by a robot etc.

[leawardseif]

I was taught that evolution can say something about the originating conditions of life: i.e. all that is required in order to get the bio-ball rolling is multiplying replicators with less than 100% fidelity, whose continuation is subject to selection pressure.

[leawardseif]

Furthermore, I cannot see why certain *possibilities* glimpsed at physical extremes of scale, speed or complexity need play a special role in setting up such conditions; but I can see how a rich variety of life forms could eventually emerged from them without something complex ever having to intend to manufacture something simple.

[0ThouArtThat0]

The RNA world hypothesis that you are here referring to is intriguing, but I don't think it accomplishes the task. Nucleic acids require proteins to act as catalysts in order to replicate with any fidelity at all. Otherwise they just fall apart. I prefer a membrane-first approach like what Stuart Kauffman has suggested. It requires taking emergent phenomena seriously, and also requires we accept that the self-production of a cell logically precedes its ability to reproduce.

[0ThouArtThat0]

In other words, the free-living cell is the paradigm case of living organization. If we want to account for life, we need to account for cellular organization. Genetically mediated reproduction is a secondary phenomenon in this respect. Life is first a process of self-production, only subsequently is it a process of reproduction.

[leawardseif]

I wasnt specifically referring to the RNA world hypothesis; although I think there are replies to your catalyst objection. However, the originating conditions could have been in a pre-RNA world, like a PNA world, or a TNA world, or a PAH world, etc... There are numerous hypotheses for inception of exclusively evolutionary/adaptive biology.

[leawardseif]

Of course the autopoietic finger of a ceaselessly creative universe that knows where it is going is also a possibility, as it was with all the previous gaps that were eventually filled without its intervention. I guess its just a matter of what you think is more likely; more of the same or an extraordinary reversal of continuity :)

[robotaholic]

why don't you just say 'goddidit' and get on with it-- that's basically what you're saying right- *yawn*

[leawardseif]

No it isnt :(

[2bsirius]

Leawardseif, I'm confused about how the modern synthesis even fits in here since it's a a refinement of Darwin's evolutionary theories which was developed by Julian Huxley, Ernst Mayr, et. al. and doesn't really address the emergence of consciousness at all. I'm also mystified about why you think emergence requires "resuscitate animism, or to evoke quantum indeterminacy"...It most certainly doesn't.

[leawardseif]

I was responding to 0ThousArtThat0s objection to Pat's claim that vitalism is unnecessary in order to explain life. I agree with her claim; but only thanks to the hard work of Darwin, Mendel, Fisher, Haldane, Wright, Mayr, Watson and Crick, Hamilton, etc. without their insights, it would certainly look like a vital spirit is necessary for life!

In its weak form emergence is compatible with reductionism, but not with holism; in its strong holistic form it seems indistinct from magic :)

[2bsirius]

OK...Sorry to have gotten in to the conversation..And, yes, I agree with you that strong holistic forms of emergence can fall into the trap of making claim unsupported by data....But I still don't quite get your point that the Modern Synthesis has a direct correlation to the emergence of consciousness. I just don't!

[leawardseif]

Youre more than welcome into the conversation 2bsirius; You-Tube dont always make it clear who is responding to what :)

I suppose my point, although its Dan Dennetts point rather than mine, is that the natural phenomena of consciousness may have emerged gradually and in a piecemeal fashion; as befits a product of evolution by natural selection.