[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

[Ant McWatt]

Matt,

Many thanks for the reply.  The Leary definition of consciousness was just 
given in passing as it happens to be a text I’m reading at the moment and I 
noticed you and David were apparently discussing the same subject.  Anyway, 
regarding your last post, I could follow it properly until I reached the 
phrase:

“Pirsig, with his distinction between ‘frontal truths’ and ‘lateral truths’ 
(which parallels Kuhn's distinction between normal and revolutionary 
science)…”

In Pirsig’s work, I think there can be construed a static intellectual truth 
(corresponding to the pragmatists’ “what works is true” idea) and a Dynamic 
artistic truth.  However, these ideas of “frontal and lateral truths” are 
“foreign imports” from somewhere which I’ve never heard of and I think might 
confuse newer members.  Are you saying ‘frontal truths’ correspond to static 
intellectual truth while ‘lateral truths’ correspond to Dynamic 
“revolutionary” truth?

If that is the case, it can be considered that “the idea that marking 
something as ‘intuitively false’ is a good idea” in the context of the MOQ 
because it points to a Dynamic artistic truth (such as Hawking’s initial 
reaction to his student’s mathematical proof that time can run backwards 
which was shown later to have a fatal error hidden in it) or fine cuisine 
(where a bad reaction to a particular dish might be because of too much of a 
particular ingredient has been included).  In other words, this Dynamic 
reaction is an initial litmus guide towards what is good and what is false 
while it is static intellectual truth which seeks to explain later in detail 
why a particular positive or negative reaction has occurred (e.g. for the 
two above examples, it could have been because a minus sign is where a plus 
should have been or there was too much pepper!).

Regarding your definition of consciousness as the first person stance, I 
note in your post that you glossed over the hypothetical contrary to fact 
(about bats speaking human language) that I pointed out.  From what I 
remember from reading William James, a radical empiricist world view such as 
the MOQ shouldn’t be containing any relationship or thing that doesn’t exist 
and your limited definition of consciousness seems to be doing just this.  
In other words, in your explanation of consciousness, something doesn’t seem 
to scan right.  Maybe it’s simply because some explanatory material is 
missing which is in your previous posts to David and Scott or maybe it does 
indicate that there is actually a problem with the definition itself.

>Anthony said:
>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....”.
>
>Matt:
>The first thing I would want to do is clear out the idea that marking 
>something as "intuitively false" is a good idea for a Pirsigian.  For one, 
>I would think Pirsig, with his distinction between "frontal truths" and 
>"lateral truths" (which parallels Kuhn's distinction between normal and 
>revolutionary science), would be quite against the idea that there are 
>brute "facts" given to us, which is how I read such a rebuttal.  But two, 
>if we tone down what that claim might mean, such that it isn't so much a 
>rebuttal as it is pointing out that X goes against our common sense, the 
>"intuitively false" just are those "lateral truths" that might expand our 
>imagination and give us new tools.  This doesn't mean that everything that 
>grates against our intuitions, our common sense or the way we are used to 
>seeing things, is going to bring about something useful.  Philosophy is 
>surely about balancing new, intuitively false things with our older, 
>intuitively correct things.

I’m also not convinced that this idea of marking something as “intuitively 
false” in the Dynamic sense I gave above should be conflated with 
“common-sense” which (using Einstein’s understanding of the term) are simply 
the static social and intellectual prejudices we develop (are given?) before 
adulthood.  Isn’t pragmatist philosophy about replacing our older, 
statically false things with new, intuitively true things which, in their 
own time, often become the static truths replaced by better world-views?

>The second thing I would want to do is clear out the "reductionist" charge. 
>  If it doesn't mean essentialism, as you agree that I don't mean at the 
>end of the post, then all it means is that I'm being narrow, but I'm not 
>sure what the problem is with narrowing your sights.  As my last post 
>intimated, I'm not too concerned about debates in what we call 
>"consciousness" or how we define it.  It doesn't matter much to me whether 
>we use a narrow definition or a wide definition, just so long as we explain 
>the area in question enough.  I was explaining one narrow thing by 
>"consciousness," Leary was explaining a larger set of things.  It doesn't 
>matter to me much which route one goes.

I think if you were taking a psychedelic trip it would be quite important.  
Leary’s definition is designed – I think partly – to provide a guide to what 
a “Dynamic explorer” should be looking out for during a psychedelic trip.  
Not only is the first-person stance of consciousness too narrow to be much 
use for such an experience, it’s actually something that can disappear 
during one!  :-)

>But with the Dennett/Rorty idea, its simply the idea that one of the common 
>sense ideas behind consciousness is that it is a first-person report.  Like 
>Nagel's famous paper, "What is it Like to be a Bat?"  To save that 
>intuition, but shed the idea of incorrigible qualia (which gives the notion 
>of privileged epistemic status more power than it should),

I didn’t really follow what you were saying here.  Before I make any further 
comment about the reminder of your post, could you clarify in what sense 
that you are using this notion of privileged epistemic status in the context 
of qualia?

Best wishes,

Anthony.


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