[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Ant McWatt]

Matt, DMB,

Matt explained the following to Dave Buchanan March 18th:

>I will admit that conversations between Scott and I can spiral into 
>idiosyncracy fairly quickly, but that’s because, in our search to 
>understand each other, we stop playing to the crowd at some point so that 
>we can establish some kind of understanding between each other.  My focus, 
>when writing posts to Scott, isn’t on general conversation at the moment, 
>its on Scott.  The idea is that, if we start out in a general, public 
>conversation, where things aren’t hooking up and making sense, we’ll spiral 
>into a more or less private conversation to figure things out, and then 
>when we think things are settled, we’ll move back out into the public 
>conversation and attempt to hook the more obscure terms we’ve using with 
>terms that are more understandable to others.  It’s just the normal course 
>of inquiry.

Matt,

I understand the thinking behind this explanation but for the benefit of 
newer members and people who haven’t read much Rorty, Davidson etc but are 
interested in the issues being discussed (such as myself!) I think you need 
to be clarifying non-MOQ terms to a greater degree especially considering 
the rate of posts that go through here.   Otherwise, your debates are going 
to be limited to only two or three people.  (I’m also suspicious with the 
quality of understanding of any writer who uses too much jargon though I'm 
sure you properly understand most of what you write!).

>  It’s like popular science books: “Well, I’ve been doing all this 
>technical work in physics, in the professional journals and such, but 
>here’s what I’ve found in terms that are easier for the public to 
>understand.”  You can’t have popular exposition without the technical work 
>in the trenches.  At least not always.
>
>DMB said:
>Consciousness is created is a language game? I’m thinking to myself, don’t 
>we suppose that consciousness is needed to speak any kind of language and 
>to play any kind of game, so how could a language game create 
>consciousness?

I agree with Dave here.  Consciousness first, language games (which are just 
one part of consciousness) second (though see next comment for details).

>
>Matt:
>All that means is that, for pragmatists like Dennett and Rorty, 
>“consciousness” is a stance, the first-person stance.  We attribute 
>consciousness to things that have an individual perspective, like a person 
>or a bat, things that could reasonably say (if they spoke a language), “I 
>seem to be experiencing/sensing/thinking....”

Dennett as a pragmatist?  That’s a new one on me, Matt.  Though I guess you 
must mean a type of neo-pragmatist such as Rorty.

Anyway, this definition of  ‘consciousness’ as “a stance, the first-person 
stance” seems an intuitively false and a limited one especially when it’s 
qualified by assertions on the lines that if bats utilised human language, 
they would be asserting things such as “I seem to be 
experiencing/sensing/thinking....”.

Firstly, this type of assertion is a hypothetical contrary to fact.  
Remember the 10,000 feet comment that Pirsig makes (in my PhD) about flying 
pigs in relation to Chalmers work on consciousness?  Pigs don’t fly, bats 
don’t speak English (or any other human language) either.

Secondly, this Dennett/Rorty type of definition is too reductionist as I 
think Dave is pointing out.  I’ve been reading Timothy Leary’s “Psychedelic 
Prayers” (1966, reprinted 1997, p.40-41) recently and the Foreword of the 
text includes a broader definition of consciousness.  I think this is a 
better one than this “first-person stance” one especially because it can 
take proper account for how non-human language using animals can be 
perceived as having consciousness.

Leary divides consciousness in the following ways:

1. The symbolic mind i.e. the “static intellect” (notice the MOQ-like 
terminology!) “which perceives, discriminates, interprets, remembers learned 
(i.e. conditioned) cues selectively imposed on the kaleidoscope of 
sensation.”

(Matt, DMB, Scott: your present debate seems largely concerned with this 
aspect of human-only consciousness).

2. Neural consciousness i.e. “direct, symbol-free registration of energies 
by nerve endings” such as sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.

(This is the primary sense in which most animals have consciousness).

3. Introceptive sensations.  i.e. sensations produced from the internal 
organs such as breathing, hunger and your heartbeat.

(This is another sense in which animals have consciousness).

4. The “information system” (my words not Leary’s) running at the cellular 
level (such as DNA).

(This is another sense that animals have consciousness and – presumably - 
also plants).

5. The “information system” running at the macroscopic level (such as atoms 
and molecules) “which receive and decode quantum energy” (again, my words 
not Leary’s).

(Again, this is another sense that animals and plants have consciousness.  
Possibly, you could put Scott’s rock in this level as well though I wouldn't 
regard 4 and 5 as processes that humans or animals could be aware of).

A general point.  Leary sees all forms of consciousness as an interaction of 
structure with energy and, finally, it’s worth noting that his “account” 
doesn’t rely on supernatural events either.

--snip—

>Now, as far as I can tell, to be a naturalist as you want to be, and not a 
>supernaturalist, you have to think that all events have microstructural 
>explanations, like the one Pirsig gave.  That’s what it is to dissociate 
>yourself from the idea that God could step in at any moment and change 
>things.  What you don’t think, if you are a pragmatist, a nonreductionist, 
>is that a microstructural explanation _empties out_ the event.  The only 
>way that could happen is if language stopped growing and every possible 
>thing that could be said in the frozen language had been said.  That _was_ 
>the dream of reductionists--to find the language, hopefully small, probably 
>physics, that could explain everything and that _that_ language would be 
>the _only_ one we would ideally need to speak.  But that’s not what we have 
>with static patterns and Dynamic Quality.

I agree with Matt here, at least, in the sense that a “frozen language” 
(even within just the field of physics) is just not possible so providing 
another reason why the logical positivists were well off track.

Best wishes,

Anthony


P.S. here’s an extract from one of the prayers in Leary’s book which made me 
think:


Be respectful and compassionate
But walk carefully when you are among -

learned men
holy men
doctors
government officials
reporters
publishers
professors
religious leaders
psychologists
rich men
social scientists
women with beautiful faces
artists and writers
men who charge fees
city men
movie makers
men who want to help you
men who want you to help them
Christians and Jews

For such as these
However well meaning
Place you on their chessboard
Addict you to their externals
Distract you from the
Tao within

The lesson of the Tao is more likely to be found among -

gardeners
hermits
mountain men
smiling eccentrics
men who build their own homes
children
parents who learn from their children
loafers
amateur musicians
serene psychotics
animals
men who look at sunsets
men who walk in the woods
beautiful women
cooks
men who sit by the fire
wanderers
men who make bread
couples who have been in love for years
smiling men with bad reputations


(Extract from Leary, 1966, 1997, p.115-16)


.

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