anniemiz

Of Late

The other day, I posted a little about procrastination, especially wrt two late papers.  I had read a very helpful and interesting book about procrastination that discussed motivations for and causes of procrastination, such as failure-based fear and success-based fear, among other motivations and causes.  I had never thought of those things as causing procrastination.  Especially fear of success - who'd be afraid of success?  Don't we all want success, with no reservations whatsoever?  That's kind of like one of those untrue common truths, e.g., Everybody loves seeing every single one of their relatives at the holidays, preferably all at once.  All babies are cute and all brides are beautiful.  All priests are celibate and none are pervs.  Thing is, you aren't aware that you're afraid of success.

The fear of success thing makes sense bc what happens after success?  Success is usually followed by yet another challenge.  Unless you die or retire from life or decide to stop striving for anything.  It's always easier to just stay put, even if that's a dissatisfactory strategy in the long run.  So, yeah, I can definitely see that as a factor after all.

Fear of failure seems like a more natural and obvious cause of procrastination.  And that was probably the more more common cause of my procrastination in the past.  Unfortunately, I think it's played a role in my procrastination wrt these papers.  Fear that they'd really suck, so much that they'd ruin any chance of getting into grad school.  (I'm not saying this fear made sense.)  I also have the inkling that fear of success may have played a part, too.  Fear that they'd help me get in and then I'd have to keep proving myself over and over again throughout grad school and then over and over again throughout my career and gaaaah! until retirement.  (Again, I am so not saying these fears made sense.)  A sort of commingling of opposing fears.  Hmmmm.  It's kind of a bummer to see old bad habits rearing their ugly heads again.  But it happened and I guess the best thing I can do is deal with the bad habit resurfacing, see what I can arrange wrt these papers, try not to beat myself up too much about it and move on.

I tend to be kind of hard on myself wrt this personal development kind of stuff.  I think that I should recognize failings, figure them out/find a rationale for them, fix them and move on, all within a half-hour or so.  After all, what am I, stupid?  See?  I'm even hard on myself wrt how I'm hard on myself.  I forget that, even though there's a rational reason for why I'm doing/thinking some negative practice/thought, there's also psychological or emotional factors at work, too.  And sneaky psychological and emotional factors at that.  All subconscious and whatnot.  Damn that Freud!

Well, peeps, back to working on the current course's paper/breaking the late habit.

Misc

Did some more reading today.  I might write about inferring possibility from conceivability wrt Chalmers's zombie argument.  I intended to write mostly about Nagel's bat paper and maybe take Chalmers's zombies and Jackson's Mary into account.  In reading around the topic, I've gotten interested in this business about whether or not our being able to conceive of Chalmers's zombies means they're possible.  I reckon they're logically possible, but I'll also reckon that's not enough, i.e., that they should be metaphysically possible.  Anyway, I'll settle on a topic today or tomorrow, along with what I expect to say, and start writing on Friday.

Right now I'm just kicking it here at work.  Wednesday is Socrates Cafe night here at the library and, having set up the eats and started the coffee brewing, I'm just waiting to see if anyone comes tonight.  After tonight, we'll take a break for the holidays and start up again after the new year.  I wonder what questions, if any, folks will have tonight.  It's better when people come with their own questions bc then they're more interested in discussing it.  If no questions tonight, maybe I'll bring up this NYT article about people selecting for things that are commonly considered disabilities (via unfogged).

Wanting to have children who follow in one’s footsteps is an understandable desire. But a coming article in the journal Fertility and Sterility offers a fascinating glimpse into how far some parents may go to ensure that their children stay in their world — by intentionally choosing malfunctioning genes that produce disabilities like deafness or dwarfism.

The article reviews the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, or P.G.D., a process in which embryos are created in a test tube and their DNA is analyzed before being transferred to a woman’s uterus. In this manner, embryos destined to have, for example, cystic fibrosis or Huntington’s disease can be excluded, and only healthy embryos implanted.

Yet Susannah A. Baruch and colleagues at the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University recently surveyed 190 American P.G.D. clinics, and found that 3 percent reported having intentionally used P.G.D. “to select an embryo for the presence of a disability.”

In other words, some parents had the painful and expensive fertility procedure for the express purpose of having children with a defective gene. It turns out that some mothers and fathers don’t view certain genetic conditions as disabilities but as a way to enter into a rich, shared culture.

Wow.  This sounds like an obviously bad idea yet, the more I think about it, the more questions it raises.  Is it very different from, say:

• selecting for height, red hair, green eyes, etc.
• selecting for IQ or musical ability
• making other decisions for your child during its lifetime, e.g., religion, schooling, values, etc.

I tend to think it is very different from these.  Selecting for appearance seems shallow, but it is the case that the more attractive people are, the more (of certain) advantages they receive.  Parents making such selections might be trying to offer their children certain advantages.  Of course, they might also think that curly red-haired children w/green eyes are the jam (and they are).  But I imagine many such choices come with disadvantages, too.  I don't know if selecting for red hair and green eyes means you also get the fair skin that often comes with that combination naturally, but fair-skinned, red-haired people are more susceptible to skin cancer.  And very attractive people miss out on certain experiences bc they have things easier.

Selecting for talent or intelligence seems a bit different.  If the child gains a certain talent or high intelligence - and no other thing is lost or diminished as a side effect - the parents are only adding a plus mark to their child's advantage/disadvantage scoresheet.

Given that there are probably relatively few people who use this screening procedure (compared to the number of people who just get pregnant and have their children w/o screening), people probably screw up their kids' lives much more frequently with what they do after the child is born.  Doesn't make those screw ups okay; it just shows that lots of damage can be done to a non-selected baby.

The appearance selections are permanent.  So is the talent and intelligence.  All can be downplayed to varying extents, if the child wishes.  The post-birth disadvantages: Some will be physical (perhaps due to neglect, poor nutrition, lack of health care, etc.) and cannot be reversed.  Some will be psychological or emotional, which will take work to be reversed.  I imagine the more severe screw ups of psychological or emotional nature may never be improved.

It seems like the parents in this article don't see their conditons as disabilities.  I can see how it would be useful, important, meaningful, etc. to them to not see themselves as disabled.  I think someone said 'differently-abled'.  Okay, that works.  But they're still different.  And it's hard to be different.  If it weren't so hard, they wouldn't be so appreciative of and attached to their subcultures, where they receive support, encouragement, friendship, validation, etc.  I find it very hard to believe that they would choose for themselves to be deaf or a dwarf if they'd had a choice.  I know some people say that they're glad they had cancer or some other serious thing happen to them bc it 'woke them up' or made them rethink their priorities or effected some other, positive change.  Okay.  Would they wish that same experience on another?  Probably not.  Not everyone would react or benefit to a serious negative experience the same way they did.  Who knows if it would make their life even worse?

One thing that bothers me about selecting for things like deafness or dwarfism is that it's not adding anything to the child's situation.  It's limiting, rather than broadening.  A deaf/dwarf child will have a difficult time of life in the wider culture.  They might do very well in the more narrow subculture, as their parents seem to have done well.  But why a parent would choose to provide their child with such a pothole in life, I just don't know.  Most parents want their children to do well, to have every advantage in life.  And as much as I understand a deaf or dwarf person not considering their condition as a disability - why would they if they feel they've done well? - I feel uncomfortable with anyone making such a permanent, irreversible choice for another person.  I also feel uncomfortable with disallowing such selections, although I wouldn't help someone make such a selection.

Right now, I'm thinking that, if I think about it some more, I might find some reasons for disallowing it.  There's something that's bothering me that I haven't been able to quite figure out.  I think it's got something to do with the idea (and I'm not saying these parents have it) that, if it's my child, I can select for whatever I want.  First, there's the idea of making such a drastic decision for another person who has absolutely no say in the matter.  Second, there's something about the primacy of the parent-child relationship here that strikes me as close to ownership.  We talk about 'their children' or 'her son' or 'his daughters' or whatever, but that's not shorthand for 'she owns that boy' and so on.  At least I don't think it should be!  And, as one commenter to the unfogged post put it (paraphrasing here), 'just bc people get by without two legs doesn't make it okay to lop them off'.

Anyway, I check out unfogged regularly.  It's a daily dose of, well, lots of things.  I particularly enjoy ogged and Fontana Labs's posts.  I love the way both write and Labs, in particular, provides some comic relief just when you least expect it.  He has the recent post, Philosophy: the little bitch of the sciences, which you might enjoy along with the above-linked post and commentary about disability selection.

While I'm pimping websites, I also enjoy stuff on my cat.  It's pretty straightforward: pictures of cats w/stuff on them.  Sometimes the webmaster's captions are better than the pictures.  Often, actually.  I particularly enjoyed this recent post.  For cat people only, of course; you cat-dissers won't understand.

Well, set me up and knock me down, but I think we've got a taker tonight.  Toodles!

Steady

Whoa.  What a weird feeling.  I woke up today feeling dizzy and it's continued for most of the day so far.  Things were moving that weren't supposed to be moving, e.g., the ceiling, the wall, the newspaper, the counter.  Even with my eyes closed, it felt like things were moving.  Things seem to stay still more when I stay still, so that's what I've done for the last hour or so.  I feel okay, just a little goofy.  Weird.

So Nosey and I are staying still and doing some reading for my POM paper.  I'm writing on Nagel's bat paper; I haven't focused things yet.  Today might not be a good day for focusing!  (I just checked the spelling of 'focusing' and you can spell it w/one or two 's'.  I think I prefer one s; more economical.)  The topic will probably be something to do with imaginability and/or conceivability and/or possibility wrt Nagel's argument for our inability to understand our subjective character of experience.  Maybe take into account Jackson's Mary and Chalmers's zombies.  A little more reading around, a bunch of thinking, make some connections, zero in on a point, some more thinking, some writing, some clarification (in my head and in the paper), some more writing, some more clarification, some more writing and...voila!  A paper is born.

I mentioned before these two other papers, both of which are late.  Very late.  I've been thinking about why I let myself get so late with them.  Why I made so little progress.  I've thought about this on and off for a while now, but I never felt like I got near the real reason.  Like any reason I considered didn't seem like enough to explain it.  Maybe I kind of knew why I was so late, but just didn't want to deal with it.  Anyway, I think my freakin' problem is that I was afraid.  Maybe that's not quite the right word.  Someone once talked about 'paralysis by analysis', analysis being used non-technically here.  She meant the following: thinking about something so much, or worrying about something so much, that you end up not doing much at all.  I think that may have been what I did.  Which is kind of odd bc I thought I'd finished reacting that way a long time ago.

See, many moons ago I had a tendency to put off doing stuff that unnerved me.  At first, I didn't realize I was putting stuff off bc it unnerved me, but I was concerned about this bad habit.  So I bought and read this book about procrastination.  I must admit that about a year passed between when I bought it and when I finally read it!  I wish I could remember the title bc it was very helpful and I'd recommend it to anyone who wants to get rid of that bad habit.  I loaned it to a co-worker with a procrastinator of a daughter who frustrated my co-worker to no end.  They moved to England and I assume the book went with them and I can only hope that they eventually got around to reading it.  Perhaps it's still on their to-do list.

Annnnyway, the book discussed different reasons for procrastinating, including fear-based procrastination.  And that's where I recognized myself.  Fear of the end product not being good enough.  Or, less frequently, fear of the end product being good enough...bc then it'd be on to the next step: another challenge!  Gah!  I guess that latter fear is kind of a fear of being successful.  I recognized that motivation occasionally, but mostly it was the former fear, i.e., fear of failure.

I've got to stop here.  I've got to get ready for work; plus, my battery's dying.  I swear I'm not putting off thinking and writing about my lateness!  Edison the Kitten has his own bad habit: chewing cords.  My pc power cord was working very intermittently all of a sudden.  Then I noticed that when I moved the cord, little sparks came out of it at this one point on the cord: this one point where there were teeny tiny holes the size of and arranged similarly to, oh, say, kitten teeth.  So I've been using battery power a lot more.  I think I've heard it's good to let rechargeable batteries run down and do their recharging thing, so maybe this is good for the battery.  Allright, I gotta shower, dress, beat it outta here or else I'll be late for work now, too!

Same Bat Article

Different bat post.  Tidied up that post about Nagel's bat article.

Sometimes I can see how people end up at my blog.  E.g., recently, I've gotten a lot of hits from people searching for JJC Smart and his 'Sensations and Brain Processes' article.  Also some hits for Shaffer's article.  I summarize and explain readings to myself here, i.e., those posts are here for my own benefit.  If a post helps someone else, great.  I certainly hope no one's relying on what I say here.  I get a large chunk o' stuff wrong.  And I surely don't go back and correct mistakes in the posts (unless they're huge mistakes, e.g., once I summed up one article, but had another title on the brain and kept referring to the one as the other article).  I also wonder how often I've unknowingly done someone's homework or answered someone's essay/test question.  I don't worry about that. I hope that's not the case, but it is so freakin' easy.

BTW, corrections are most welcome.  Always most welcome.  As I mentioned in that post about the bat article, the class paper is on that article, so comments/corrections/etc. on that article are especially welcome.  Either here as comments or via email (in the upper right hand corner of the page).

Nagel's 'What Is It Like To Be A Bat?'

In 'What Is It Like to Be a Bat?', Nagel argues that:

• yer average reductionist explanation of consciousness (the mind-body problem)doesn't succeed and why;
• there's this feature of an organism's conscious experience, the subjective character of experience (SCX), that is what 'it is like to be that organism - something it is like for the organism';
• we don't really know what the SCX is;
• we have no idea what a successful physical explanation of consciousness would be like;
• we can't evaluate physicalism properly;
• so we can't say physicalism is right or wrong, but we also can't recommend it bc we don't know a correct physicalist theory might be

The Problem

The problem with reductionist explanations of consciousness is that they leave an important part of consciousness out of the reduction.  Nagel calls this part the 'subjective character of experience' (SCX).  The SCX is what it is like for a conscious organism to be that conscious organism.  The SCX is necessary iof an organism to be a conscious organism:

'But fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism - something it is like for the organism.'

When a theory reduces consciousness to, say, brain processes, it does so without including the SCX in that which is to be reduced and explained.  Therefore, the reduction is incomplete, at best.

Theories that don't work as an explanation of consciousness:

1. current reductions bco their exclusion of the SCX
2. functional state analysis bc robots/automata could have these w/o experiencing anything
3. intentional state analysis bco same reasons as #2
4. causal roles/relations bco similar reasons to #2

Reductions in other fields that exclude human experience work okay bc the subject matter is not human consciousness.  It's no big deal to reduce water to H2O bc all the elements under evaluation are external to humans.  We can taste water and know what it tastes like, but our experience wrt what water tastes like is not important to knowing what water is.  The SCX is tied to a human point of view.  It cannot be excluded from a reduction of consciousness bc it is a part of consciousness.  Such a reduction would be incomplete. 

SCX and Bats

But what is this SCX?  This is where the bats come in.  Assume bats have experiences, i.e., that there is something that it is like, for a bat, to be a bat.  Humans and bats are both mammals, but there's enough difference between us to preclude humans from knowing what it is like, for a bat, to be a bat (or, as a bat, to be a bat).  One major difference is bats' use of sonar.  Bats rely heavily on sonar iot know where they're going, locate things (food, other bats, other creatures, etc.), communicate with other bats, etc.  Humans do not use sonar (for the most part).  Can humans know the SCX of a bat, i.e., can humans know what it is like for a bat to be a bat?  Can we know what it is like for a bat to fly around in darkness, snooze upside down hanging by our toes, fly in a group, find food via sonar, communicate with other bats via sonar, squeeze in between the clapboards of a house, etc.? Nagel maintains that we cannot.

Can we not know bat SCX via our imagination?  Nope.  Our imagination is rooted in our experience, which is insufficient to allow us to accurately imagine the SCX of a bat.  It only gets us what it would be like for us to behave like bats as best we can.

How about if we morph into bats, gradually or suddenly?  Nope.  That wouldn't tell us as the humans we are now what it's like for a bat to be a bat.  It would tell us as bats what it's like to be a bat.  (Hmm.  What if we became bats and then switched back to humans?)

The most we can do is a schematic picture of general types of bat experience, based on bat structure and behavior.  We might attribute experiences to bats, e.g., hunger, fear, etc., and assume that there's a subjective experience to being a hungry bat.  But we don't know what that experience is like for the bat.  And so we don't know how to explain that SCX, that likeness-for-a-bat, ito a physicalist theory.

What about this attribution of subjective experience to bats, this assuming that bats have experiences?  We don't know what they're like.  How do we know there are facts about bat experience?  Nagel: Other creatures are in the same position wrt humans.  E.g., Martians may be such that they cannot know what it is like for a human to be a human.  We know that there is something for us to be us.  Just bc one type of creature cannot know what it is like for another creature to be that creature, the one creature should not deny a SCX to that creature.

There's a gap between humans and bats.  There may well be a gap between Martians and humans.  There's also a gap between humans, though not nearly so wide as between humans and Martians or bats.  E.g., between a person with fully functional senses and a person missing one or more senses from birth.  The two people will have very different points of view and very different subjective experiences.

Known Knowns and Unknown Knowns

Humans cannot and will not ever be able to understand everything.  There are facts forever beyond the reach of human understanding.  This is in part bc humans are and will continue to be finite creatures and so unable to understand an infinite number of concepts.  We are also and will continue to be structurally unequipped to understand some concepts.  Some such concepts will figure in facts; those facts will be beyond our comprehension. In some cases, we might have an idea of what are some of these facts; in other cases, we're entirely unaware of existent facts that we cannot understand.

Point of View

We're talking about a type of point of view.  Not the business about an individual's private access to their experiences.  Humans are similar enough to each other that we can, to a certain extent, understand another human's experiences.  We know what it's like, for ourselves as humans, to be scared.  So we can know, to an extent, what it's like for another human to be scared.  Humans share access to an experiential point of view.  Bats share access to a different experiential point of view.  So do cats and rats and gnats and...well, maybe not gnats.   Humans, bats, cats and rats do not share any experiential views with another, i.e., they do not have access to any other experiential point of view.  And this is a problem bc...

'For if the facts of experience - facts about what is like for the experiencing organism - are accessible only from one point of view, then it is a mystery how the true character of experiences could be revealed in the physical operations of that organism.  The latter is a domain of objective facts par excellence - the kind that can be observed and understood from many points of view and by individuals with differing perceptual systems.'

We don't know what it's like to be a bat.  So we don't know the facts around what it's like to be a bat.  Since we don't know what these facts are, we cannot know why they are.  If we don't know what X is, how do we know how to explain X?

So much for humans horning in on bat SCX.  What would be a person's objective viewpoint of a person's conscious experiences which are, by nature, subjective experiences?  Objectivity, the removal of the subjective human researcher's pov, usually helps provide a more accurate idea of a thing under consideration.  Reducing substances to their chemical components is a fairly objective undertaking.  There is very little subjectivity on the part of the chemist; perhaps only in reading the results or something along those lines.  The process and verification is, for the most part, external to the chemist.

Reducing to or explaining consciousness ito physical processes is a different story.  Subjective experience is part of human consciousness and should be included in any consideration.  Removing subjectivity from a consideration of human consciousness, iot to achieve objectivity, gives us an incomplete and, therefore, less accurate understanding of human consciousness.  Thing is, maintaining subjectivity disallows us from objectively considering consciousness, i.e., we cannot have an objective point of view when considering our own consciousness:

'If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity - that is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint - does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon; it takes us farther away from it.'

As noted above, it's no big deal to reduce water to H2O bc all the elements under evaluation are external to humans.  We can taste water and know what it tastes like, but our experience wrt what water tastes like:

• is not important to knowing what water is, yet it
• is important to knowing what water tastes like.

Shorter Nagel: So far, no explanation of human consciousness fully explains consciousness bc they exclude the SCX.  The SCX is what it is like for humans to be humans.  Beyond that, we don't really know what the SCX is.  And it's likely we never will.  Unless we do come to know what the SCX is, any explanation of human consciousness will be incomplete bc it cannot explain something of which we don't have an explanation, i.e., if we don't know what the SCX is, we cannot explain it in our theories of human consciousness.

I have some questions and things I need to further clarify, but I'll leave this as is.  My class paper will be on this article, so there'll be more posts on it and I can figure out stuff then.

Armstrong's 'The Causal Theory of Mind'

Armstrong's causal theory is another topic-neutral view.  It focuses on intentional states and the behavior caused by these states.  This view of mental states as concepts allows for the identity theory to be an intelligble theory. Armstrong went along with mental states as concepts bco this result, but believes the theory stands on its own. 

The Causal Theory

The form of a causal analysis of a concept: 'the concept of that, whatever it is, which produces certain effects.'  Bc the causal analysis focuses on causes and effects, it leaves open the future scientific identification of causes and effects.  E.g., in the poison analogy Armstrong uses, it leaves open the possibility that a certain substance may, in the future, be more thoroughly scientifically identified and understood, while poison retains its causal role.  Wrt the mind, it leaves open the possibility that mental states will be identified as physical states.

Causal analysis of a mental concept: 'the concept of a mental state essentially involves, and is exhausted by, the concept of a state that is apt to be the cause of certain effects or apt to be the effect of certain causes.'  E.g., I have a sensation (or mental state) of thirst.  I go look for a drink.  The thirst mental state caused my look-for-a-drink behavior. 

The thirst example is fairly straightforward.  Mental concepts and their causes and effects get a lot more complicated when talking about humans and other higher animals.  Mental states often involve other mental states, such as beliefs, desires, purposes, satiation, etc.  Actually, even the thirst example gets more complicated in this way.  It involves my:

• thirst mental state
• desire for a drink
• belief that there's a diet Coke in the fridge in the kitchen
• going down to get said diet Coke
• perception of said diet Coke
• ceasing to act toward getting a drink once I've enjoyed my diet Coke

Imagine how complicated a larger purpose could get, e.g., getting a degree or having a child.

The different mental concepts, e.g., purposes, beliefs, perceptions, etc., have different causal roles.  Above, my purpose was to quench my thirst.  But beliefs and perceptions serve as our 'mappings of the world.  They are structures within us that model the world beyond the structure.'  We use these mappings (beliefs and perceptions) iot achieve our purposes.  My beliefs and perceptions re: my environment, i.e., my house, kitchen, fridge, etc., allow me to understand my environment and how I can act so that I won't be thirsty anymore.

So beliefs and perceptions OTOH are logically dependent upon purposes OTOH and vv.  This isn't circular, it just means that these concepts occur together or not at all.

Armstrong sees two advantages to the causal theory:

1. If the causal theory is correct, then the dualist claim for immateriality is unfounded bc it's based on the unknown nature ('transparency') of the mental factors that cause us to act in certain ways.  Under the causal theory, these mental factors are defined ito their causal function, so we don't have to posit immateriality to them.  Hmmm, that doesn't sound right.
2. The causal theory may explain intentionality of mental states.  I'm thinking of something, e.g., an idea, that isn't the case.  How is it that I can think of something that doesn't exist/isn't the case?  Armstrong uses the idea of 'pointing' to something that doesn't exist/isn't the case.  E.g., the vet came Tuesday to check out NoseyCat.  He's been losing weight in the last month.  Why?  Right now, neither I nor our regular vet know why he's losing weight.  I may believe that his IBD is getting worse, when in fact his IBD is stable, but now he's hyperthyroid.  Or that now he has renal failure.  I.e., I could believe one medical condition is the culprit, when further testing and/or a visit to the specialist determines that it's actually another condition (or combo of conditions) that's the problem. 

Objection

Armstrong notes an objection to the theory: that a causal analysis is not a synonymous translation of mental statements, i.e., that a causal analysis does not translate the mental statement into a statement synonymous with the mental statement without using the relevant mental terms.  Amstrong does not get into this objection here, although he does suggest that perhaps synonymous statement translation may be too strict a demand on a conceptual analysis.

The Problem of the Secondary Qualities

Armstrong talks a bit about secondary qualities, the phenomenal qualities such as perceptions (e.g., redness, coldness, a floral odor, etc.), bodily sensations (e.g., itches, pains, etc.) and emotions (e.g., fear, loathing, etc.).  Armstrong notes that these secondary qualities may seem problematic for the causal theory bc they are not things 'that, whatever it is, which produces certain effects'.  I perceive my car's redness, but the redness is not something which produces any effect in my behavior.  What to make of secondary qualities that appear in our mental states?

We can look to how we characterize the intentions of mental states and what is intended.  An intention is a mental state, but the intended is not a mental thing.  I think about a red tabby cat.  My thinking about the cat is a mental state.  The cat is not a mental thing, it is the intended object of my thought, and the cat may or may not exist/be the case.  Similarly, we can say that a perception is a mental state, but the perceived is not a mental thing.  This allows the causal theory to handle secondary qualities.  My perception of a red car is a mental state, but the redness that is perceived is not a mental thing, it is a quality of the car, a quality and/or car that may or may exist/be the case.

Sounds good for the causal theory and secondary qualities.  But Armstrong notes that even though secondary qualities are kosher wrt the causal theory, they may remain problematic for materialism and physicalism in general.  Materialists and physicalists aim to work with theories that work with physicist theories of, eventually, everything.  The idea is that materialist/physicalist theories should mesh with the theories and entities posited by physics.  But physicists don't deal in colors, sounds and other mental state types that seem fundamental and unanalyzable.  However, perhaps this is not the case after all, and materialists/physicalists may be able to posit more fundamental entities to secondary qualities, entities that might be acceptable to physicists' theories.

And I'm going to leave it at that bc I've got some other stuff I want to do before class.

Smackdown: Smart versus Shaffer

Okay, so today in class we're to discuss objection 3 in Smart's 'Sensations and Brain Processes'. (This post ended up being finished after class, so some things will be notes from class.)  This objection is very similar to Shaffer's main objection in 'Mental Events and the Brain'.  To recap:

Smart's ID theory:

• Mental States (MSs; sensations) = Brain Processes (BPs; brain states) as strict ID
  • like the way lightning and a specific electric discharge refer to the same thing
• MSs and BPs have physical properties
  • it's easier to ID BPs' physical properties
  • hard to ID/pick out MSs' physical properties
  • but they're a lot like BPs' physical properties
  • so let's say they're physical properties
  • instead of saying they're an other kind of property, mental properties
• MSs and BPs do not have mental properties

Shaffer wrt Smart's ID theory not positing mental properties:

• MSs = BPs in that they denote the same thing
• but it's possible a person could:
  • know they're having a MS w/o knowing they're having a BP
  • notice this MS w/o noticing any physical property of it
  • so the person must be noticing a non-physical property, a mental property, otherwise, how would they notice it?

Questions for Smart:

• MS properties are topic neutral; why be neutral?  why not just say they're physical properties bc what else would they be if you don't want to posit mental properties?
• There's an asymmetry in that there are MSs and BPs that are identical, but there are only physical properties, or topic neutral properties.  Why not posit mental properties to match up w/MSs?  Yes, Occam's razor, but MSs can be fuzzy and vague, yet Smart considers them distinct from BPs.  Why not say that the properties one notices when one notices a MS, w/o obviously noticing any physical properties, are mental properties?  This point probably doesn't amount to much, other than that the asymmetry seems displeasing, bco the usual desire to conform to Occam's razor.
  • In class today, we ended up talking about the idea of the mental being a special case of the physical.  If it's a special case of the physical, it's still physical, so why not just say that things we typically refer to as mental are physical?  And things we refer to as the propreties of these typically 'mental' thngs are also physical in nature?
• That MSs = BPs via strict identity, which means that they have all their properties in common.  MSs are BPs; they are not something 'over and above' BPs.
  • Is this different from MSs being reducible to BPs?  It seems like Smart wouldn't mind MSs being reducible to BPs bc that would fit in w/his idea of increasingly physiological explanations of how beings operate.
  • If they're identical, shouldn't one be able to speak of MSs ito BPs and vv?  Smart's theory doesn't claim that MS statements are translatable ito BP statements and vv.  Why should one give up translatability in Smart's ID theory?  Wouldn't translatability be desirable?  Why aren't they translatable?  Is it bco sensations' fuzziness and their properties' fuzziness, i.e, we don't know how to say one side of the translation?
  • A physical example that was helpful to me (although not exactly analogous): two sides of a single coin.  When might we say they're strictly identical?  When they have all their properties in common.
    • So say both sides are the exact same design, w/the exact same dimensions, depths,etc.  I say, 'There's the back of my coin.'  Or I say, 'There's the front of my coin.'  I'm referring to and identifying the same thing: my coin.  The front could be like the visible lightning, the back could be like the electrical discharge.  But could it?  Bc how would I know which is back and which is front?  What would give it away?  Does it matter since, whichever side I see, I know that's my coin?  If MSs and BPs have their properties in common, should I be able to refer to one thing, say, a BP, the same way I can refer to my coin no matter which aspect (or property) of it I see?
    • Say the sides have different designs.  I can still say, 'That's the back of my coin' and 'That's the front of my coin'.  The front is the visible lightning, the back is the electrical discharge.  I still know it's my coin, but this time, I also know whether I'm looking at the back or the front bc the different sides have different properties.  This sounds more like Smart's theory, in that different properties can lead me to pick out the same thing.  Since I can tell the difference between the front and back, though, they must not be identical.  And that sounds like Shaffer.

Questions for Shaffer:

• Smart's insistence upon the similarity of MSs' properties and BPs' properties to posit that the former are probably also physical properties.  Shaffer's remarks don't necessitate that Smart give up this idea.
• Sensations are often vague and fuzzy; we often don't know why we have a certain sensation.  It could be bco a still unknown physical feature of the experience.
• Scientific explanations of how beings operate are becoming increasingly physiological and less mysterious.  And consciousness is mysterious.  Doesn't mean it's not physical, like the rest of our beings seem to be.  So let's continue w/what's been working so far: the physiological perspective.

Wrt this idea of the mental being a special case of the physical: there was some discussion and, I think, perhaps some confusion and frustration about this idea.  Mainly bco:

• the idea that, if X is a special case of Y, X is Y.  So, if the mental is a special case of the physical, the mental is physical.  Why not just say it's physical?
• the idea of being a special case.  What exactly does that mean?  What makes the mental a special case?  What makes it worth saying it's a special case of the physical and not just say it's physical?
  • Sometimes I wonder if:
    • it's lingering mystery surrounding consciousness that makes some folks think it's special (and not necessarily in the same was as in 'the mental as a special case of the physical', just in an everyday kind of sense of special).  Although we understand more than before about how our minds work, there's still a lot we don't know.  And for most of human history, we knew nothing to very little wrt how our minds work.
    • it's the fact that it's our consciousness, i.e., human consciousness, that makes people think it's special.  It's common for people to think people are pretty special among beings for a variety of reasons, consciousness among them.

Well, that's all for now bc I'm not feeling so great all of sudden so I'll just end here.

Shaffer's 'Mental Events and the Brain'

In 'Mental Events and the Brain', Jerome Shaffer discusses Smart's version of ID theory in 'Sensations and Brain Processes', specifically, the idea that mental states (MSs) and brain processes (BPs) have only physical properties.  There are no mental properties to be had.  In his article, Smart discussed several objections to his theory, including one that suggests that one must posit irreducibly mental properties to sensations.  The example given is the Morning Star and the Evening Star.  They are identical; they are the planet Venus seen at different times of day.  Say I see the Morning Star and Evening Star in one day.  When I see one and/or the other, I have a BP around perceiving it, i.e., whatever my body does when perceiving something (e.g., the stuff about eye receptors, info from the receptors to the brain, etc.; again, I really don't know exactly how this stuff works, but I hope you get the picture wrt what makes up a BP).  I also have a MS around perceiving it, i.e., a sensation of perceiving it.  Given that these stars are the exact same physical object seen at different times of day, how is it that I make the distinction between a Morning Star and an Evening Star?  The thought is that there must be some properties, distinct from physical propertes, that allow for this distinction.  The proposal is that these properties are the mental properties of sensations.

Shaffer agrees with this objection and reconsiders it in his article.  His aim here is to show that mental descriptions (or sensation statements/reports) do ascribe irreducibly mental properties.  Shaffer does some presenting, summing up and preliminary critiquing of Smart's theory:

• a sensation (MS) is identical to some process (BP) going on in the brain, e.g.:
  • my having a thought about my cat
  • my feeling a pinch on my arm
  • my being cold in the library basement
    • all of these examples are identical to some neural goings on that happen when I think about my cat, feel a pinch and feel cold
• but sensations and BPs are not identical in that they're the exact same thing, i.e., sensations are not neural activity
• although an identical sensation and BP 'happen to pick out, refer to, or denote one and the same event'.
  • similar to the way a flash of lightning is identical to a certain electrical discharge
  • Shaffer's not so sure MSs and BPs can be identical, but...
• ...supposing that MSs and BPs can be identical, i.e., assuming the identity part of Smart's ID theory, there's still a problem wrt the nature of the MS and BP's properties

The problem:  Smart's ID theory claims that MSs = BPs 'as a matter of empirical fact'.  But if so, the ways we pick out MSs and BPs must be different; otherwise, MSs and BPs could not be logically independent, i.e., they could not be held to be separate, distinct things.  If Shaffer is right, then a person might pick out a MS bc they noticed a non-physical property of the MS: a mental property.  Such a property would be an irreducibly mental property, just the kind of thing Smart wishes to avoid positing.

When I pick out a MS, e.g., 'I hear a bird chirping', Smart holds that that's shorthand for more fully describing the sensation as (paraphrasing Smart here), 'There's something going on which is like what is going on when I have normal hearing abilities, am awake, and there is a bird chirping within hearing distance of me and the chirping is not drowned out by any other sound, that is, when I really hear a bird chirping.'  This fuller description notes the similarity between what physically happens when I hear a bird chirping and what mentally happens when (or I have a sensation that) I hear a bird chirping.  I may not be able to determine specific points of the similarity between physically hearing a bird chirping and having the sensation of hearing a bird chirping.  But I can recognize that the sensation is, on the whole, very much like the physical experience.

Smart does not prove that a sensation's properties are physical; he does argue that they're similar enough to known physical properties to hold that they're physical properties, too.  This he considers preferable to positing another type of property, the mental property that Shaffer posits.

Shaffer does not care for this similarity-is-enough business, 'At the heart, then, of Smart's Identity Theory is the suggestion that mental events are definable as the concomitants or products of certain physical stimulus conditions or anything that is just like those concomitants or products', and sees a couple of problems with it.

• Such definitions are unlikely to be complete.  Just to talk about seeing an orange requires talk about normal conditions, normal perception, all things being equal, an account of anything and everything that is going on that might impact the orange-viewing.
• But say a complete definition of seeing an orange is made.  Such a definition, or 'translation', would be very complicated due to all the physical stuff a full defintion would have to mention (e.g., 'energy, media, nerves, etc.').  And when I say, 'I see an orange', I don't mean to say (and neither would anyone else mean to say), 'I'm viewing something, wearing glasses that fully correct my vision, with nothing to affect my eyesight, in good lighting, with no barriers between myself and this something, and my optical parts are doing their thing, my brain parts are doing their thing, and the something appears spherical, about yea big, orange in color, a little pitting on its surface, etc.'  I mean to say, 'I see an orange'.

But let's go back to Shaffer's main point: Smart's ID theory cannot avoid positing non-physical properties.  Shaffer offers the example of a person makes a sensation report, say, having a thought.  The person does not notice any physical property, e.g., some external stimulus, that his brain is doing this or that.  But somehow he reports having a thought.  How is he able to report that he has thought X and not thought Y?  Or that he has thought X and is not feeling cold?  If nothing physical allows him to identify his MS (having thought X), it must be something mental that allows him to make the identification.

Okay, so, I say, 'I'm thinking about my cat, Archie.'  I've just reported a MS wherein I'm having a thought about my cat.  According to Smart, I've also just reported a BP wherein my brain is doing what it does when I'm having a thought, bringing up the image of my cat from memory, creating a mental picture of how Archie looked when he curled up in the clean laundry, etc.  What allows me to identify this MS, to say, 'I'm thinking about my cat, Archie'?  Archie, sadly, is no longer among the living, so he's obviously not here with me.  I cannot actually see him.  I don't have a picture of him with me, so I'm not looking at a photo.  I'm not home right now, so I don't see my laundry basket with clean laundry in it.  And I don't see anyone else's laundry basket with their clean laundry in it.  I have no sensation of my brain going about it's thinking-about-Archie business, although I do believe something's going on up there.  I have no other physical sensations wrt thinking about Archie.  It isn't physically painful to think about Archie; it isn't physically pleasurable, either.  I'm just sitting here, thinking about that time Archie curled up in the laundry basket of clean whites (he kindly put himself in the right load of colors).

Soooo, I have this thought, I know I have this thought, I report that I have this thought.  Nothing physical alerts me to having this thought.  So how do I know I'm having this thought?  According to Shaffer, I'm noticing some property about this MS.  But I'm not noticing any physical properties.  So I must be noticing a non-physical property, a mental property.

Shaffer does not hold that such mental properties must be irreducible.  He can see how it's possible that mental phenomena and laws could be completely explained physiologically.  So the mental would be reducible to the physical.  In which case, I suppose, mental properties would be reducible to physical properties.  'The properties would still be different properties, but they would no longer be irreducibly different.'  I'll guess MSs would be reducible to BPs, then, too.

Shorter Shaffer: I can know I'm having a MS w/o noticing a physical property.  I can also know I'm having a MS w/o knowing that I'm having a BP.  If I can know this about many of my MSs, I must notice something non-physical about these MSs: mental properties.

Time to go to work.

Smart's 'Sensations and Brain Processes'

We recently read JJC Smart's 'Sensations and Brain Processes' in POM.  Here, I'll try to explain it to myself.  In the article, Smart aims 'to show that there are no philosophical arguments which compel us to be dualists.'  He argues for an identity theory of mind wherein:

• there are mental states(/sensations) (MSs) and brain processes(/states) (BPs);
• MSs = BPs;
• and any properties each might have are physical properties (i.e., there are no mental/non-physical properties).
• So there are mental and physical states, but only physical properties.

Wrt the identity part of this identity theory, it's a strict identity between an MS and BP. I think of strict identity as meaning that an identical MS and BP have all their properties in common.  What about having parts in common?  What might a BP's parts be?  Maybe the various physical activities that are part of the experience, e.g., if I stub my toe, some sort of nerve message is sent from my poor toe to my brain which registers pain.  I totally made that up, but I hope it's close enough to what really happens in my body when I stub my toe that you get the picture.  What might a MS's parts be?  Maybe the intensity of the pain.  But perhaps he means something else by strict identity.  Although he could mean that a part of a BP is identical to a part of an MS.

What this identity does not mean:

• that the MS and BP are temporally and/or spatially continuous
• MS statements may or may not be translatable into BP statements
• the logic of MS and BP statements may or may not be similar

Wrt sensations, they are states of consciousness, or MSs, e.g.,:

• having a yellow-after image
• hearing a bird chirp
• feeling a bee sting on the skin
• having a backache

If I were to say, 'I hear a bird chirping', I'm reporting my MS (or my consciousness or sensation) that I'm hearing a bird chirping, and this MS is a process 'that happens to be' a BP.  Physically, at this time my body and brain are doing whatever they do to process audible sounds.  Mentally, at this time, I have the sensation that I'm hearing a bird chirping.  Bc MSs = BPs, the physical process (my body and brain's shenanigans) is identical to the mental state (my consciousness or sensation of hearing the bird chirp).

This experience of hearing a bird chirp has properties, which might be things like how loud the bird is, the pitch of the chirps, how fast the bird chirps its chirps, where the bird is in location to me, the chirps being muted by a barrier or another noise, etc.  But whatever properties this experience has, they are physical properties.

Now, how is it that, bc MSs = BPs, I have a BP that's = a MS, yet any properties associated with the BP and/or MS are physical properties and there are no mental properties to be had?

When I say, 'I hear a bird chirping', that's shorthand for more fully describing the sensation as (paraphrasing Smart here), 'There's something going on which is like what is going on when I have normal hearing abilities, am awake, and there is a bird chirping within hearing distance of me and the chirping is not drowned out by any other sound, that is, when I really hear a bird chirping.'  This fuller description notes the similarity between what physically happens when I hear a bird chirping and what mentally happens when (or I have a sensation that) I hear a bird chirping.  I may not be able to determine specific points of the similarity between physically hearing a bird chirping and having the sensation of hearing a bird chirping.  But I can recognize that the sensation is, on the whole, very much like the physical experience.

Sensations do have properties, but these properties are vague, ambiguous in nature and difficult to identify; or, as Smart puts it, 'colorless'.  I'm trying to think what might be a mental property of hearing a bird chirping and I'm not coming up with much besides the overall auditory experience, an image of a bird chirping away in a tree, etc., i.e., I'm not coming up with identifiable individual mental properties.  But that could be due to a lack of imagination on my part.

Just bc we have difficulty picking out a sensation's properties doesn't mean that they must be mental/non-physical properties.  We can identify the physical properties of a BP.  And we recognize the similarity between a BP's properties and a sensation's properties.  This similarity is enough to say:

• yes, sensations have properties;
• it's hard to pick them out/identify them;
• so we don't really know what they're like;
• since we don't really know what they're like we can't say that they're mental/non-physical in nature;
• but we do know that they're similar to identifiable physical properties;
• so, instead of positing that sensations have mental properties, let's posit that sensations have physical properties.

Smart deals with some objections, most notably one which suggests that, even if MS = BP, there must be some properties other than and distinct from physical properties.  I'll go over that objection and his response when I sum up Jerome Shaffer's 'Mental Events and the Brain', which suggests something very similar.  For now:

Shorter Smart: MSs and BPs are identical (i.e., MSs are physical processes).  MSs and BPs have only physical properties.  So, there is no need to posit any irreducibly mental properties to MSs or BPs.  It's all physical, so no need to be a dualist.

Summary: Swinburne's The Existence of God, Ch. 14

In Ch. 14, The Balance of Probability, RS discusses the questions:

• How probable is theism, after considering the evidence?
  • RS: >= 1/2.
• Is theism more or less probable than not-theism?
  • RS: more probable.
• Is theism a good P-inductive argument for the existence of God?
  • RS: yes...theism.

The evidence are the various arguments for/against theism covered in chs. 7 - 13.  The question wrt each chapter of evidence is, 'Is it a good C-inductive argument for the existence of God?'

• a good C-inductive argument = add to the probability of the conclusion
  • good = the premises are considered true, but the conclusion is in dispute
  • correct = the premises make the conclusion more probable than it otherwise would have been
• P-inductive arguments – make the conclusion more probable
  • good = the premises are considered true, but the conclusion is in dispute
  • correct = the premises make the conclusion more probable than not, i.e., probability > ½

His conclusions wrt each chapter:

• 7: cosmological - yes
• 8: teleological - yes
• 9: from consciousness and morality - no; neutral wrt for/against existence of God
• 10: from providence - yes
• 11: problem of evil, featuring God's hiddenness - no; is evidence against the existence of God; poe lowered theism's probability; poe complicates theism by requiring theism to add something to explain why God allows evil; hiddenness had no effect on theism's probability
• 12: from history and miracles - inconclusive
• 13: from religious experience - inconclusive

RS relies on evidence from chs. 7-11 iot arrive at his >= 1/2 conclusion.  Chs. 7, 8 and 10 are good C-inductive arguments for the existence of God.  Ch.  9 is not, but also does not have any detrimental effect on theism.  Ch. 11 is an argument against the existence of God and effectively lowers theism's probability.  The poe requires some kind of explanation within theism wrt why God allows evil.  Any explanation complicates the theistic hypothesis, thereby reducing its simplicity and lowering its probability.

A down and dirty list of the evidence in chs. 7-11:

• there is a universe and it's a beaut
• there are physical bodies
• there are uniform LON
• there are conscious beings w/limited power, knowledge and free will
• there are embodied humanly free agents (HFAs)
  • limited free will alllows HFAs to choose good or ill
  • and affect selves and others
• the universe is well-suited to HFAs and other creatures
• evil
  • yes, there's lots of evil
  • some caused by HFAs
  • some caused by nature
  • but the evil that exists is not endless
  • some evil is necessary if HFAs and some other critters are to have certain benefits

Evidence in chs. 12-13 that RS doesn't use in his >=1/2 conclusion:

• prophets
• religious experience
• revelations
• miracles

RS looked to science, history and other common fields of discourse to see how probability is typically evaluated iot apply those same criteria to theism.  He applied the criteria of simplicity when discussing the justification of personal and scientific explanation.  He maintains that there were not many examples out there in the way of evaluating:

• theories that are on the fence between probable and improbable,
• and universal theories (i.e., theories of everything)

and notes that theistic and scientific theories of everything are equally problematic wrt determining their probability.

Bottom Line

RS emphasizes simplicity as the decisive factor wrt theism's >=1/2 probability:

And, if there is to exist something, it seems impossible to conceive of anything simpler (and therefore a priori more probable) than the existence of God. (336)