Euthyphro Dialogue

An essay discussing the nature of piety.

In the Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates sets out to discover the nature of piety, an ancient Greek virtue synonymous with reverence. Socrates is concerned with how one can be pious, and so must first discover precisely what piety is. He questions Euthyphro, a well-known authority on religious matters, about piety, as it is surely something he should know about. After all, he is charging his own father with indictment for murder. This accusation strikes Socrates as morally questionable in that Euthyphro is convicting a member of his own family (a stigmatized action in Greek culture). Moreover, the other Athenians believed that the murder was morally permissible in that Euthyphro’s father killed another murderer. For those reasons, many thought the indictment to be both impious and unjust.  However, Euthyphro claims to be superior in understanding of piousness than his peers, of whom he says, “little do they know…about the gods’ positions on the pious and the impious!” (101). However, as the dialogue continues, the reader quickly discovers that Euthyphro is equally as ignorant as his peers and cannot suffice to provide an adequate definition of piety.

Euthyphro fails in providing an explanation of piety that passes Socrates’ rather rigorous test for definition. When Socrates’ asks a question about what something is, such as, “what is the pious?” – he is seeking an answer that fulfils three specific criteria, namely, the criteria of: coextension, explanation, and information. A definition is coextensive if and only if it picks out precisely the properties that are universal in all cases of piety (or any other virtue) and only those properties. If the definition explains only why some things are pious, it fails in being coextensive. Moreover, these coextensive properties must be intrinsic to piety and not additional or superfluous properties that may be resultant or supervenient on the pious. To be explanatory, Euthyphro must provide a reason for why something is pious. It is not enough to say merely that some thing just is pious. A Socratic definition must explain why it is that the very thing is pious or impious at all. Or, how is it that the object is participating in the pious? And finally, a definition must be informative in that it must give some information about the identity of piety beyond synonymy. For example, it is not informative to say that redness is the experience a normal person participates in when looking at red things. (Unless, perhaps, the emphasis is being put on redness being just an experience.) However, it is informative to say that redness is a particular resultant experience normal people have when light is perceived at a wavelength of 650 nanometers. The latter definition informs us about why one experiences redness beyond just saying, ‘because he does’. As hard as he tries, Euthyphro cannot seem to give an account of piety that satisfies all three of these criteria.

Socrates begins by asking Euthyphro about the nature of the pious. He questions what sort of thing is holy or unholy in not just the case of murder but in all matters. He also asks, is piety the opposite of impiety and is there one characteristic that makes pious things pious and impious things impious? (101d). Euthyphro begins by first proposing that piety is precisely what he is doing, namely prosecuting the unjust. And so impiety is forgoing the prosecution of the unjust. He then compares himself to Zeus to show that the Gods must agree that it is pious to indict one’s own family to preserve justice, as Zeus had done himself in Greek mythology. (102e). Socrates responds that while Euthyphro might be right about his action being pious, he has not yet succeeded to accurately teach him about the nature or essence of piety itself.  That is, this first definition fails to be coextensive. Piety is not exhausted by only those actions of indicting the unjust. Socrates wants not to learn about, “one or two of the many pieties, but rather about the form itself, by virtue of which all pieties are pious.” (103d.) To get at the form or idea of the Pious, Euthyphro is going to have to move away from particular instantiations towards abstraction.

On his second attempt, Euthyphro suggests that the what’s loved by the gods is pious and what’s not loved by the gods is impious. Socrates congratulates him for this proposal – as it appears to satisfy all three of his criteria of definition, at least prima facie. However, Socrates tries to object by claiming that the gods often disagree and quarrel over petty affairs (as the Greek gods were largely anthropomorphic). Insofar as they have disputes in the first place, they must sometimes disagree on what they love. So then, some object can be both pious and impious in that one god may love it and another may hate it. Euthyphro quickly disregards this objection simply by explaining that the gods don’t disagree on what they love (in the case of the pious) and so Socrates lets him have this point, probably as it is difficult to argue about the gods, especially with a religious person like Euthyphro. So the revised definition of the pious is that which all of the gods love.

Socrates then asks about the order of the explanation of piety; if the pious is the god-loved, as Euthyphro proposed; does the gods’ loving an object make it pious, or do the gods love an object because it is pious? In other words, are the god’s affecting an object and thus making it pious or is the piety already in the objects, as it were, consequently affecting the gods so that they love it? Euthyphro mistakenly agrees that an object or act is pious because the gods love it, not loved because it is pious. By posing the question as a sort of duality, Socrates sneakily forces Euthyphro to choose between one of two apparent options. However, Euthyphro might have appealed to a different explanation of why an object is pious, thus avoiding the problems that are to come form identifying the pious with the that which the gods love.

After Euthyphro tells Socrates that the pious is pious because the gods love it, Socrates objects that, “then the god-loved is not what’s pious, Euthyphro, nor is the pious what’s god-loved, as you claim, but one differs from the other.” (107e). At this point, Euthyphro becomes confused (as does likely the reader). Perhaps it will be clearest to formalize Socrates’ argument as follows:

(1)  If the gods love x, then x is god-loved.

(2)  If x is god-loved, it is god-loved because the gods love it.

NOT: The gods love x because x is god-loved.

(3)  The gods love what is pious because it is pious.

(4)  The pious = the god-loved.

(5)  If the gods love what is pious because it is pious, then the gods love

what is god-loved because it is god-loved. (From 3,4)

(6) So, the pious ¹ the god-loved. (From 2,5)

Premises (1) and (2) result from Socrates’ discussion about affection. (107b). Premises (3) and (4) are simply the proposals Euthyphro set forth. The sub-conclusion in (5) fails to be informative in that it defines piety as a property of being god-loved but doesn’t explain why a pious object is loved by the gods other than it instantiating the property of being god-loved or pious. He says that the pious is the relationship the gods have to an object and they have that relationship simply because the object has the property of having the relationship, which is a circular explanation and fails to inform us of anything. And beyond this, Socrates show’s that it just cannot be that the pious equals the god-loved, as Euthyphro claimed, because they’re related in rather opposite ways. This is shown by the contradiction in affection from (2) and (5). It can’t be that the gods love an object because it is god-loved. However, Euthyphro defines the pious simply as the god-loved and also says the gods love an object because it is pious. By substitution, the gods love an object that is pious because it is god-loved, which proves to be a blatant contradiction. Thus the pious must not be the god-loved. Of this, he says, “one is lovable because it’s loved, whereas the other is loved because it’s lovable. (108b). And insofar as this attempt fails to show what piety actually is (rather only that it is not the god-loved), it fails to meet Socrates information criterion.

At this point the dialogue shifts from the idea or form of piety to its relation to other virtues, or more specifically to the Just. Euthyphro puts forth a description of piety as it being a subset of the Just that deals with the gods, while all other just acts are profane. (110e.) So piety is a sort of tending to the gods, as it were.  Socrates questions this relationship to the gods in that it seems strange to think that humans can tend to the gods analogously to how humans tend to horses, dogs and cattle. In all of the latter cases, there are clearly benefactors of the act of tending, namely the animals. But, Socrates asks, “if piety is tending to the gods, does it benefit the gods and make the gods better? Would you concede that whenever you do something pious, you’re making some god better?” (111c).

Euthyphro surely doesn’t mean to say that the gods benefit from our insignificant and human actions by being bettered by us. So he changes his account of piety to the sort of tending that slaves provide to their masters. (111d). Rather than the gods benefiting from this service, they are pleased by pious acts. These services are those “preserve both the private welfare of households and the common welfare of the city, whereas those that are the opposite of pleasing are unholy, and they, of course, overturn and destroy everything”, according to Euthyphro. (112b). However, Socrates is quick to point out that what is pleasing to the gods is so because the gods love these acts. And so now Euthyphro is again saying that the pious is that which is god-loved, a proposal already refuted earlier in the dialogue. And so finally, Euthyphro gives up.

Although Socrates does seem to be the victor in the dispute, Euthyphro certainly did make some noteworthy points. Had he been more prepared to argue, or better trained, he may well have been able to put forth a satisfactory Socratic definition of piety. He seemed to have been close in saying that the pious is that which the gods love; however, he would have had to come up with an explanation outside of the gods themselves to avoid circularity or contradiction. Moreover, it seems that with the description of the pious as maintaining personal and public welfare, Euthyphro could have come up with an explanation of piety outside of those acts as merely being loved by the gods. For example, perhaps those acts are pious because they preserve the creation of the gods, thus paying the gods a sort of thankful reverence for creation or existence itself. The gods then are pleased not just because the acts are god-loved, but rather because they are aimed at preserving the objects of their godly labor. So it at least is feasible Euthyphro could have gotten around Socrates worry of returning to the initial explanatory problem.

A contemporary reader of the dialogue might question the relevance a dispute over piety has in the modern world. There are no longer many religious teachers preaching about piety on the street, as in the ancient Greek world. However, the lesson learned from the Euthyphro can be extended to other religious issues as well. For example, many religious people base their morality on God’s law. For these believers, the rightness of an act depends entirely on the command of God. A similar question to what Socrates posed to Euthyphro concerning the order of explanation can be asked to those who believe in this divine command theory. That is, one may inquire whether an act is right because God commands it, or God commands it because it is right in itself. This is very similar to asking whether something is pious because it’s god-loved or loved by the gods because it is pious. So although the actual case of piety might be somewhat irrelevant today, the lesson learned from the Euthyphro dialogue can be extended to a number of other contingent religious issues. So more than two thousand years after Plato wrote his Socratic dialogues, one can still be puzzled by some of the disputes.

NYU Year 3 History of Ancient Phil.

Lying and Utilitarianism

This is a very brief attempt to show some problems with utilitarianism.

Utilitarian, J.S. Mill, concedes that there are clear cases where lying, an otherwise immoral act one should avoid, is morally permissible.[i] It isn’t difficult to imagine an extreme scenario in which one would lie to avoid causing unnecessary suffering. However, in our everyday lives, these cases occur very infrequently. Instead, I will examine a more realistic case where lying is expedient to an agent and produces the desired results, and yet still appears not to be what we would normally[ii] consider morally permissible. By doing so, I hope to show that the Principle of Utility fails to yield consistently moral acts and beyond that, is highly impractical. First we must get clear on how the Principle functions.

Utilitarianism is a consequentialist ethics, which means that the morality of an act is determined entirely by the consequences (or intended consequences) that result. So then, no act can be considered moral or immoral independent of its effects or consequences. Therefore, Utilitarianism is a subjective ethics[iii] that is highly contextual. Lying (or any act) may be appropriate in one instance but immoral in another, depending on its intended consequences. The Principle states that an act is morally permissible iff there is no available alternative after which the unweighted sum of everyone’s happiness[iv] would be greater. Moral acts should be those that promote the most goodness, which according to Mill, is maximal pleasure and minimal pain.

Perhaps an example will be the best way of understanding how one would weigh the moral significance of his actions. Let us imagine a case where Bob, an adolescent boy, is asked by his girlfriend, Jane, a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question. Jane asks Bob if he loves her[v]. In actuality, Bob does not love Jane.  However, before Bob answers the question, he considers whether or not it would be morally permissible to lie and tell Jane her loves her. Bob knows that in telling Jane he loves her, there will be two immediate consequences: one being that Jane will be very pleased and the other being that Jane will sleep with Bob, say. Both of these consequences are good, according to the Utilitarian, insofar as they produce maximal pleasure. Jane, after all, will be ecstatic to learn that her boyfriend loves her and both will be benefactors of pleasure in sleeping together.[vi]

Moreover, Bob does not intend manipulation of Jane to use her as a sexual object. He does not even consider such perverse consequences. Rather, Bob quite likes Jane and is interested in heightening the intimacy of their relationship. That is to say, Bob does not intend consequences that are selfish or in any way malicious. Let us also assume that Bob does indeed lie and tell Jane he loves her; and Jane does sleep with Bob. Both parties are very happy and there are no negative consequences. In fact, Bob later falls in love with Jane and two continue on and live a very happy life together.

However, it seems absurd to think that an ethical framework that allows for such manipulation to be the basis of our actions. The Utilitarian would have to say that Bob’s act is morally permissible; however, it seems extremely nonsensical to think that it is ever morally permissible to lie to someone about something as serious as love especially out of desire for sex. Our common sense notion or intuition is simply incompatible with the consequences of the Principle. Thus, we can conclude Utilitarianism yields immoral acts and fails as a system of ethics.

One could object and say that it is not the Principle that fails, but rather Bob in that he failed to consider possible alternatives had things turned out not so pleasant. What about the suffering his actions could have caused – feelings such as despair, isolation, loneliness, depression etc.? However, this attack is based on our common sense sympathies toward such deceitful activity and says nothing about Utilitarianism. According to the Principle, an acts morality depends on its believed or intended consequences. Insofar as Bob’s intentions were only good, his act too then is good, or else Utilitarianism is false. It is simply asking too much to have Bob consider not only if his intentions are good, but whether they would be good if he lived in such a world that the consequences would still result in suffering.[vii] This sort of reasoning is far too philosophically complex (especially for an adolescent like Bob) to be the basis of our morality. Therefore, Utilitarianism not only fails but is highly impractical.

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[i] Although in general, not lying is a good ‘rule of thumb’, according to Mill.

[ii] By normally, I mean generally in accordance with our common sense.

[iii] Subjective in that each act depends on the subjects intentions/intended consequences, rather than being objectively moral or immoral in itself.

[iv] Everyone in this case is equal to everyone who is involved in the agent’s act, which may be only a few individuals.

[v] Some might object that this is not a simple yes or no question and that love is too complicated to evaluate in Utilitarianism. However, it is the business of ethics to tell us how to live. So if Utilitarianism is not sufficient to generate an appropriate response, what, then, is it good for at all?

[vi] Mill would say that these two pleasures are not equal of course, as there are different levels of pleasure. The intellectual or emotional pleasure Jane would receive from feeling loved would be much greater than the pleasure Bob receives from intercourse.

[vii] For example, a world in which Jane, instead of falling more deeply in love with Bob later finds Bob to be a jerk (on other grounds) and then is deeply upset about having sexual relations with him. One can imagine many other cases where suffering could be indirectly caused by Bob’s initial act of lying.

Parmenides

In an attempt to update this thing more regularly, I thought I would discuss a really compelling argument I recently read for my History of Ancient class. It is actually three separate arguments that have been strung together.The interpretation of the argument is Matt Evan’s: 

(P1) One cannot think (of) what is not. 

(P2) If one cannot think (of) what is not, then the object of thought is what is.

(P3) So the object of thought is what is. (P1, P2)

(P4) If the object of thought is generated, then it comes to be from what is not; and if it is perishable, then it comes to be what is not.

(P5) Nothing comes to be from what is not, and nothing comes to be what is not.

(P6) So the object of thought is ungenerated and imperishable. (P4, P5)

(P7) If the object of thought changes, then either it comes to be something that it is not, or it comes to be from something that it is not.

(P8) If what is comes to be from something that it is not, then it comes to be from what is not; and if what is comes to be something that it is not, then it comes to what is not. 

(P9) So the object of thought is changeless. (P5,P7 and P8)

There are a number of ways the argument can be interpreted, depending on how one interprets the what/it and the is of the premises. Each of these words has a number of possible readings and the particular meanings consequentially yield different meanings of the argument. 

What (it): the subject of this inquiry (fundamental reality) OR the subject of any inquiry OR the object of knowledge/what is known

(is): existential OR predicative OR speculative predicative (describes essential nature) OR veridical 

So then the three conclusions from the argument can vary greatly (even in truth/falsity) depending on how one reads Parmenides. 

The first conclusion doesn’t seem to be too revolutionary. Parmenides seems to be saying that it is impossible to think of nothing (P1) and if one can’t think of nothing, then one’s thought must be then of something. (P2) This claim seems to be rather intuitive. So the object of thought IS something. (P3) It could also be read that the object of thought/the object of this inquiry is fundamental reality. In which case, Parmenides is giving a positive account of reality as being something which is necessarily not a nothing. Either way, it doesn’t seem that this part of the argument is open to much debate.

The next conclusion is that something cannot be generated from nothing and conversely, something cannot become nothing/nonexistent. This too, seems rather simple for us to understand. One could appeal to conservatory laws of physics to support this claim. (P3) Says that if the object of thought is produced, then it comes from nothing and if it can perish, it comes to be nothing. This seems sounds. In (P4), however, Parmenides claims that nothing comes from what is not and nothing comes to be what is not. And from these two premises it follows that something cannot come from nothing and likewise cannot come to be nothing. This is a revolutionary argument that challenged the ancient world-view. Any claims about reality being created by a Creator have just been refuted in one fell swoop. It’s not clear how a Greek would response to this argument or on what grounds it could be found faulty. It seems that the most weight is on (P5) where Parmenides puts forth that something cannot come from nothing and vise versa, although it is extremely difficult to say what is wrong with this premise (if anything). 

The final third of the argument is by far the trickiest. (P7) basically claims that if something changes, then it becomes something it is not (was not?) or it comes to be from something it is not. In (P8), Parmenide shows that if something/what is comes to be from something it is not – then it necessarily comes to be what is not/nothing. (The only mode of existence other than what is is what is not.) Similarly, if what is comes to be from something that it is not; then it comes to be from what is not. However, Parmenides already showed in (P6) that an object cannot come from what is not nor can it come to be what is not. Thus it follows, that the object of thought is changeless. (P9) 

Perhaps an example would help illustrate the last third of the argument. I’ll give this my best shot. Take for example, an unripe (green) orange to be what is. (P7) If the unripe orange changes (ripens), then either it comes to be something it is not (an orange orange) or it comes to be from something it is not. (P8) So if the green orange becomes an orange orange – in a sense the green orange has become a nothing or nonexistent. Even if one objected and just said that it’s still the same orange, Parmenides would say that the now orange orange came to be from something that it is not, and the only thing that is not what is is necessarily what is not, or nothing. Thus, (P9) the unripe orange is changeless.

This is a strange argument in that it seems like it can’t be right but is difficult to say where the problem lies. I think the problem has something to do with equating nothingness with the orange orange. When the green orange becomes an orange orange, there is a sense that the property of greenness simply changing to orangeness. Parmenides seems to assert that the green orange goes out of existence altogether. So it may just be a problem of putting to strong of a constraint on change playing an overly important role in existence. 

However, if one substitutes the argument with the reading of ‘fundamental reality’ for ‘what is’ – it makes for a more compelling argument in that there is a sense in which fundamental reality is changeless on the grand scale.  This is some pretty impressive reasoning for an ancient greek.

I appologize for the incoherence. Its late and I’m tired.

Block Head Argument

          The Blockhead is a theoretical computer program that simulates intelligence by being programmed to respond to a vast but finite array of inputs (in the form of a conversation, in the case of the Turing Test) with an appropriate preprogrammed response. Any conversation must fall within a finite (although huge) possibility of logically, and grammatically formed sentences based on a finite number of words, thus the program has a complex look-up tree of responses to follow for any input it could possibly receive in an allotted time, simulating a seemingly intelligent conversation.

             The purpose of the Blockhead thought-experiment is to show that the functionalist conception of intelligence being based on behavior is not plausible. That is, there is more to intelligence than merely acting intelligently. The Blockhead may pass the Turing Test for behavioral intelligence, but it has the intelligence of a toaster, argues Ned Block (albeit a very complex toaster). Although the Blockhead replies to input with seemingly intelligible responses, it lacks understanding, which appears to be a fundamental constituent of intelligence. The machine is merely computing its response by means of a complex response-tree that it has pre-programmed. Computation is not understanding. Therefore, the Blockhead neither understands the input nor its own output. This cannot be intelligence, or at least in the commonsensical way we use the term intelligence.

            The basis of the Blockhead argument lies in the claim that intelligence does not supervene on behavior, behavioral disposition, or behavioral capacity. Therefore, two beings may behave exactly alike physically, yet intellectually dissimilar. One may be highly intelligent, while the other has no intelligence whatsoever. By programming a machine with the Blockhead program, a computer is designed only to behave intelligently, perhaps fooling onlookers into thinking there lays some genuine intelligence behind the behavior. However, the program is based on simple algorithms and lacks any genuine cognition. Some functionalists may argue that although the program and machine may not independently be intelligent or understand what it is doing, the system as a whole is intelligent, as exemplified through its seemingly intelligent behavior. However, being a mere conduit of information is in no way analogous to thinking. All of the Blockhead’s possible responses are preprogrammed, or thought out in advanced by computer programmers. So the system as a whole is never doing any real thinking, but merely retrieving preformed responses. It is crucial to understand that the Blockhead lacks any real cognitive capacity and is merely computing based on a simple input-output response tree.

            The Blockhead thought-experiment confronts another issue with the behaviorist conception of intelligence, namely the overlooking of causality on the behaviorist’s part. Being intelligent depends on having thoughts that evolve or are caused in the right way, not simply behaving intelligently. Present thoughts should be caused by past thoughts, and should later cause future thoughts. However, the Blockhead merely processes each stimuli input independently, retrieving an appropriate output from its look-up tree of preformed responses. The Blockhead appears to be static, with no causal dependency on its earlier mental states (for it has none). It simply depends on a stock of responses that have been written down in advanced, to generate the appearance of intelligent behavior. Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson give a more complex version of the Blockhead scenario to illustrate this problem with causality. We are to imagine that a Blockhead clone of Jones is created – a physical duplicate – with a complex look-up tree based on Jones’s mental states necessitating all the output responses to the possible physical inputs one could receive in a lifetime (a larger but still finite number). Because the clone’s look-up tree is based off of Jones’s mentality, they behave exactly alike in every situation they find themselves in. (This intuition pump assumes that it is possible to create a look-up tree modeled perfectly after someone’s mental states.) Moreover, they also would respond exactly the same to every situation they could possibly find themselves in. So their behavior is identical, however, their intelligence is not. The Blockhead twin has no intelligence and is merely an automaton following a preset path based on computing input with the appropriate output on his look-up tree. While Jones’ behavior is based on earlier mental states, perhaps being caused by earlier physical events, the Blockhead is merely processing each input stimuli independently and retrieving its appropriate response with no mentality or choice in the matter. We could say Jones’s behavior is caused in the right way, while the Blockhead is merely caused by mindless computational algorithms. But genuine thinking is much different; what we think depends on previous thoughts in complex ways for it to count as rational thought.

             Although it may not be physically possible to construct a Blockhead machine, this does not discount the practicality in conceiving what such a machine says about intelligence. The string of responses the Blockhead would have to choose from for output is too vast to exist, and of course could never be processed in real time. But such a machine is certainly logically possible. Because the argument is attacking a conception (namely the behaviorist conception) of what intelligence is; a conception of the Blockhead machine will suffice as a response. The Blockhead argument is merely a thought-experiment or intuition pump that serves to challenge the behaviorist conception of intelligence. It need not be manifested to be valid. In all practicality, it makes no difference whether such a machine exists insofar as it would not be intelligent even if it did. It would simply be like any other computer, just running an extremely expansive program. But the sheer volume of the response-tree, if the Blockhead somehow were constructed, would not be enough to generate real thinking. So what matters is that the thought experiment is logically feasible.

            The relevance of the impossibility of a Blockhead machine being constructed perhaps even strengthens the premise that intelligence does not supervene on behavior. Human beings clearly behave intelligently without having all of their outputs preformed in response-trees. It is also physically impossible for a human to be implementing such a ‘program’. Yet somehow the human capacity does appear to be as seemingly infinite as the Blockhead would be. This is because humans go through logical cognition. That is, humans process stimulus input based on past thoughts and experiences, and then generate output that is causally determined from a complex network of these sources. Human intelligence then appears to be more than mere computation of input-output like the Blockhead. Therein lies the distinction between a behaviorist conception of thinking and what we generally think of when we use the word thinking. Behavior (output) cannot be analyzed independently with respect to its input and deemed intelligent. Intelligence lies in the ability to relate early input and mental states. The vast impossibility of creating a machine that can even come close to mimicking intelligent human behavior may be indicative of the infinitely vast impossibility of creating a machine that genuinely thinks in the right way.

            I think most importantly, the Blockhead argument shows that a non-intelligent being can pass Turing’s Test. Thus it follows that Turing’s attempt to redefine intelligence in non-mentalistic terms was a failed project. This is not to say that mentality is necessary for intelligence, but rather that the attempt to separate the two by means of an imitation game was futile. There is more to intelligence than just observable behavior.

             Sophisticated behavior is not necessarily indicative of a sophisticated mind. The Blockhead could clearly pass the Turing Test, but no one is willing to redefine intelligence based on a mere computational program. The thinking humans do is far more complex than just retrieving information from a look-up tree of preformed stimuli response. If we had previously intuited that this is what it is to think, there would have been no need for a Turing Test in the first place. If humans were thought to merely compute input/output responses, it would have been agreed that all computers are thinkers.

            The Blockhead intuition pump also seems to indirectly say something about the importance of the internal mechanism of a thinking agent. A preprogrammed computer chip is not sufficient for thinking. A human brain is sufficient for thinking, however. It is not clear that a brain is necessary for a thinking being, but it will certainly suffice. A computer chip lacks the complex causal dependencies found in the brain. Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson define a node as the combination of input and output response at a given moment. The Blockhead, when stimulated with input responds with the one preformed response it has been programmed to respond with. Dealing with each input independently, machine only ever has one active node. This is what might be called a cheap trick, clearly not thinking. Humans, when stimulated with input, rely on various active nodes – past beliefs, thoughts, inclinations – all of which contribute to the output. Perhaps this causal dependency from complex nodal activity is precisely what gives rise to genuine thinking. So while we may just be a collection of tricks, the Blockhead is just one – and not a thinking one.

(NYU year 2 Minds and Machines)

Properties

An essay arguing that (concrete) reality comprises (or includes) only propertied individuals (or at least, on propertied individual).

          Although we can argue about the fundamental metaphysical aspects regarding the nature of reality, let us assume for the sake of this paper, that the world around us comprises or includes at least propertied individuals or concrete particulars. If it can be agreed that these propertied individuals do indeed exist, the question becomes whether the properties of the individuals themselves exist. The laymen to metaphysical thought, if asked if the property blue exists, for example, would likely respond affirmatively by pointing to blue objects in the world around them. But the question is not if there are blue objects (as we have already agreed propertied individuals/concrete objects exist), but if there is blue, itself, in the world. That is, if blue exists outside the objects or individuals themselves. The idea of existence is complicated and so it must be clear on just what is meant by existence in this case. In relation to their subjects, properties do indeed exist. But for something to truly and fully have existence, it must exist by and in itself, per se and in se.[i] So I would argue that properties have no independent existence because they don’t exist in their own right but only in relation to their objects. Though there are resemblances in objects in terms of their properties, this does not mean that properties exist outside the objects necessarily. Because two individual objects have the property of being blue does not constitute the objects as being instantiations of the property blue’s independent existence (perhaps as universal, for example). To say that property resemblance gives rise to property existence (in its own right) is nothing but mere speculation. I would further argue that reality is comprised only of concrete particulars. Abstracts, particularly properties existing in their own right, are man-made or rather, mind-made. Perhaps an example would be best to illustrate this point.

            Let us assume that there exists two red spheres, or two concrete particulars that that each have the properties or redness and being spherical. We shall call red sphere one x, and red sphere two y. Further, x and y are located ten meters apart. Before continuing with the example, it is important to distinguish the types of properties. Properties can either be intrinsic or relational.[ii] Intrinsic properties are essential to and contained wholly in the individual the property describes. For example, the redness and sphere-shape are the intrinsic properties of each x and y. The two red spheres also have certain relational properties. Internally, the two are related to each other in that they are both red and they are both spheres. So they contain the internal relational property of being interrelated by the similarities in their intrinsic properties. Moreover, they are also externally related in that they are ten meters apart. So x has the external relational property of being ten meters from y, and vise versa.

            The problem of properties existing in their own right arises when we further consider external relations. Internally, it makes sense that x and y are related because intrinsically they both are red and/or spherical. Thus internal relations can be explained by means of commonality between the x and y’s intrinsic properties. It is clearly visible that they resemble each other and are therefore internally related. But what property about x constitutes it being located exactly ten meters away from y? There is none. There is absolutely nothing about x or y independently that explains why they are in that particular external relation with one another. It seems the fact that they are ten meters apart is just that, a brute fact.[iii] So then external relational properties must not exist.

            Perhaps it seems metaphysically lazy to claim x and y are ten meters apart simply because they are. However, there seems to be no other explanation for external relations whatsoever. Although it is true to say they are related in this way, there just seems to be no property that describes why. However, if it can be said that it is a brute fact that x and y are located ten meters apart in space-time, where do we then draw the line with these brute facts? It seems to me that all properties are simply brute facts. If we can conclude there are no external relational properties, we can further that conclusion to include all properties. Therefore, there are no properties, or at least, properties do not exist in their own right.

            One could argue that although there are no external relational properties, there could still exist intrinsic and internal relational properties.  Yet if brute facts can be said to exist, it would be more logical to say that all properties are just brute facts. If not, how is one to differentiate between what simply is one of these brute facts, from what is a property? It appears object x is red and spherical simply because that is the state of affairs. To say anything more about these properties is mere speculation. In allowing there to be brute facts, the burden of proof shifts to demonstrating properties’ existence, not to proving their non-existence. It is not only speculative and unfounded to say, for example, that properties are instantiations of universals, but also meaningless and unmotivated. What need have we for the property red to exist outside of objects? Not only is there no need, there simply appears to be no evidence that properties do exist. Although cognitively we have some idea of what redness is, we can’t conceive redness without some sort of object. There simply is no practicality in this sort of speculative thinking. Our mind speculatively creates universals or tropes so that we can have a false understanding of the abstract. Commonality and resemblances appear to be important for our brains to process and organize sensory information about the world. But that does not in any way point to there being anything more than concrete particulars or propertied individuals in the world. Concrete particulars are all we have but also all we need.

 

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[i] D.C. Williams. “The Elements of Being.” Metaphysics: The Big Questions. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2008.

 

[ii] F.H. Bradley “Appearance and Reality.” Metaphysics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press 2008.

[iii] F.H. Bradley “Appearance and Reality.” Metaphysics. Boulder, CO: Westview Press 2008.

 (NYU year 2 Metaphysics)

In Defense of Dennett

Consciousness is perhaps the most perplexing phenomena left unexplained in the natural world. There is research being done across multiple disciplines – philosophy, psychology, neuroscience etc.– and yet no one theory of consciousness has been agreed upon. While many theoreticians think we are very close to understanding this puzzle, others think it will take a revolutionary shift in the scientific paradigm if we are to ever understand consciousness. Still, others believe we are not sufficiently ‘equipped’ to understand the workings of consciousness in the first place. Whoever is right, one thing is for certain – consciousness is a great mystery that if solved, would inevitably help humans understand their place in nature.

            According to David Chalmers, if we are to come to solve this mystery of consciousness, either we must revise our conception of nature or we must revise our conception of consciousness. I propose it is our conceptual understanding of consciousness that needs revision. For the sake of this paper, I will be defending the eliminativist view of consciousness, namely that the phenomenon of consciousness (as it is commonly understood) is illusory and can be explained in terms of basic, physical, structural and functional processes. I will use Daniel Dennett’s functional analysis of qualia, from his paper “Quining Qualia”, to show that our understanding of the properties of consciousness are greatly misguided, resulting in a conception of consciousness that by its very nature, could never be understood.

            In his paper “Consciousness and its Place in Nature”, Chalmers proposes there are two types of problems one faces in trying to understand consciousness. The so-called ‘easy’ problems of consciousness are the objective issues of consciousness that can be worked out in terms of the underlying physical structure and functional activity. An example of an easy problem of consciousness would be how the human visual system functions perceptually. Importantly, the easy questions can be studied empirically by examining brain activity and other relevant objective data. Science has made great progress in coming to understand many of these structural aspects of consciousness. However, the supposed ‘hard’ problem of consciousness has been largely overlooked or ignored by scientists, while philosophers find it to be the most puzzling. This hard problem of consciousness is how it is that physical matter, when arranged into a particular structure (namely the human brain) can come to have subjective experience. Another way of phrasing this puzzle is that somehow complex arrangements of physical simples can come to have qualitative or phenomenal experiences. It seems that science fails to give an explanation of why subjective experience (the “what it is like to be” something) exists in the natural world. However, the eliminativist holds that the apparent hard problem of consciousness really does not exist, or shall cease to exist once all the soft problems have been settled. 

            Another way of understanding this ‘hard’ problem of consciousness is in terms of what is known by philosophers as the explanatory gap. The explanatory gap states that no matter how far we get in terms of explaining the ‘easy’ questions – the structural and functional issues – there will still be something lacking in our explanation of consciousness, namely the phenomenal character of experience. There is an unexplainable chasm or gap between the physical or biological brain events and the conscious or qualitative experience. This explanatory gap is often used to argue that consciousness is beyond mere physical description and is rather ineffable and mysterious. The explanatory argument goes something like the following:

 

(1)  Physical accounts explain only the structure and function of consciousness.

(2)  Structure and function alone don’t explain the subjective or qualitative feeling.

(3)  There is a gap between the physical accounts of consciousness and the subjective or qualitative properties of consciousness.

(4)  Thus, consciousness must not be wholly physical.

 

The conclusion (4) pushes the epistemological gap to an ontological gap – that is, the limit of our understanding of consciousness necessarily implies consciousness is beyond physical description and thus non-physical. In other words, the explanatory argument concludes that because subjective experience isn’t explainable in physical terms, it must then be irreducible and non-physical. Because knowing all the physical facts of the world apparently isn’t sufficient for knowing subjective experience, experience itself must be fundamentally different than the rest of the physical world.

            Reductive materialists or eliminativists, like Dennett, deny that there is an epistemic gap in the first place, however. Moreover, these materialists believe that the hard problem of consciousness is merely an illusion that will go away when all the soft problems are explained away. Someone like Dennett, who believes that all of the properties of consciousness can be explained physically or functionally, is going to have to deny premise (2) – that structure and function don’t explain qualitative experience. According to the reductionist, qualitative experience just is structure or function, so premise (2) is thus confused and invalid. According to eliminativism, there is nothing special about qualitative experience that moves it beyond the realm of the physical. Dennett thinks it is mistakes like this that lead to an speculative and unfounded view of consciousness as being some mysterious non-physical phenomenon. As a reductive materialist, he wants to show that our common-sense understanding of consciousness is actually an illusion and that the special features we attribute to consciousness can be either be reduced to fully physical terms or shown not to exist at all.

            In his paper “Quining Qualia”, Daniel Dennett sets out to deny our intuitions about specifically about qualia as being a sort of “special property” of consciousness. Qualia are defined as the features of consciousness that are subjective and have a qualitative feeling – namely a feeling of “what it’s like to be like” – for example, what it is like to see red. Dennett does not intend to fully deny conscious experience outright (in this paper; at least); and insofar as everything real has properties – he does not want to deny that consciousness has properties. However, he does want to say that the qualitative features of consciousness – qualia – do not have the special properties philosophers normally attribute to them namely, being ineffable, private, intrinsic, and directly apprehensible through consciousness. Dennett believes that philosophers are intuitively misguided in these assumptions. Commonly, qualia are described as ineffable insofar as we tend to think of our experience as defying expression or description in language. It is largely due to ineffability that qualia are thought to be private. Because we are not able to fully express our phenomenal experience, it becomes impossible for interpersonal comparison. Moreover, it seems that each of us has privileged access to our qualia – a first person perspective that no one else can experience quite like we do. Qualia are believed to be directly apprehensible through consciousness in that we seem to have the power to reflect on our experience, and in doing so – amplify the qualia. And finally, are phenomenal experiences are thought to be intrinsic insofar as they are somehow “atomic”, “simple” or “homogeneous” and therefore unable to get a hold of without direct experience. Dennett wants to show that it isn’t clear that consciousness really has any of these four previous characteristics commonly associated with qualia.

            He believes that many of the supposed mysteries of consciousness are created by dogmatically accepting these intuitions we have about qualia or the “ways things seem to us.” Dennett hopes to shift the burden of proof to those who so complacently appeal to private, subjective experiences as having these special properties. However, Dennett says that to try to eliminate these errors and extrapolate some “lowest common denominator” of qualia – eliminating its ‘special’ characteristics – would be to reify the concept into oblivion. What would be left is a meaningless notion that is “tactically obtuse” and far from what philosophers mean when they use the term qualia. Through a series of thought experiments, or ‘intuition pumps’ Dennett proposes to show that none of the four previously mentioned properties of qualia seem to hold up to scrutiny or analysis. Perhaps most importantly, Dennett wants to deny the existence of qualia because it is often seen as the biggest threat and last defense against functionalism, or more generally materialism, and as he says, any third person objective approach to the world. As a naturalist philosopher, Daniel Dennett wants to explain conscious entirely in terms of the physical and finds that talk of qualia inherently lends itself to unnecessary confusions. And if qualia do exist, then something will have been left out of the functionalist definition of consciousness, rendering it false.

            Through the use of his cleverly constructed intuition pumps, Dennett wants to show that the four properties commonly attributed to qualia are confusions – and in that no such feature of consciousness has all of these properties, there must then be no qualia at all. Dennett attempts to show that upon reflecting on our actual experience, there really is nothing phenomenally concrete as to which we can accurately label qualia. As a functionalist, he wants to say that there are no qualia but rather just the functional roles our experiences play. Of this, he says that we falsely assume that beyond this causal system, there are some qualia to be isolated and compared. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on what seem to me to be the two most compelling intuition pumps, which illustrate that our common ideas of qualia are misguided.

            The Sanborne-Chase thought experiment serves to illustrate just how little of a first-person understanding we actually have of qualia. Both Sanborne and Chase are coffee tasters who at one time loved the taste of a particular coffee, but now no longer enjoy the flavor of that same coffee.  Sanborne says that the flavor is the same, but his judgment of it has changed. Chase says the opposite, namely the flavor has changed, but his judgment has remained the same. Clearly only one of the tasters is right, if the coffee itself has remained consistent. There then must be a forced choice, as to whether the quale has changed or the judgment has changed. Neither man can be sure of which is the actual case and insofar as he is unsure, it appears that the theoretical assumption of privileged-access is false. Both of these men, upon reflecting on their experience, seem to be analyzing it objectively rather than introspectively and at best guessing which shift has occurred within him. Dennett believes that at best, when we introspect we are only theorizing about what is going on in experientially. He also points out that often other people seem to have as good access to our own experiences as we do. For example, we are often fooled by our experience while others can ‘see what’s on our mind” by means of our emotions and behavior. Thus it appears there must be no privileged access property of qualia.

            Dennett uses another intuition pump to show that the assumption that qualia are intrinsic is completely unfounded. People often talk about beer as if it were an acquired taste. However, Dennett points out that you don’t actually acquire a liking for the first sip of beer (for if every sip of beer tasted like the first sip, no one would drink beer), but rather the prolonged drinking of beer creates a later enjoyable experience. The very enjoyment of the experiment should guarantee the taste is no longer the same as the first sip, claims Dennett. So it seems that our very liking of the beer has changed its flavor from the first sip to the most recent sip. But insofar as our reaction or experience itself results in a change in quale of beer (namely the flavor), qualia must not be intrinsic, but rather relational. Therefore, there must be no qualia.

            It turns out that upon reflecting on the subjective experience of beer, it is really just the beer itself we are attending to. That is, it is not the experience (being a property of consciousness) of the beer that we have access too, but rather the flavor property of the beer itself. In attempting to reflect on subjective experience of the beer, we end up failing and focusing on the beer itself. Thus the experience of beer is not mysterious and can be explained in terms of its causal roles. Dennett wants to just explain qualia functionally, in terms of the experience’s causal role. The functionalist says that if you reproduced the entire functional structure of the beer drinker’s cognitive system (including memories, beliefs, desires, innate aversions etc.), you would have effectively reproduced all the mental properties as well, including the enjoyment and pleasure the beer produces. Thus we can conclude that there is nothing to consciousness beyond structure and function as so the hard problem of consciousness must be illusory.

            At this point, one (a qualia realist perhaps) might object that while Dennett might have proven that we don’t have the special understanding we may think privileged access provides us (as demonstrated by Chase and Sanborne); surely Dennett cannot deny that we still have some special or privileged access to our own experience that makes it our experience. We surely must have a special access to what it is like to be us. But Dennett points out that it at least does not seem clear that we have the access to our conscious states we commonly think we have. Dennett thinks that the knowledge of ‘what is like is’ in theory objectively accessible. That is, with the correct research and examination, we can understand what it is like to be anyone just as much as what its like to be ourselves. Dennett thinks we only circumstantially know what it is like to be ourselves because it happens we ‘spend the most time with our selves.’ However, people we are close to often know what it is like to be us (and correctly so) in ways we’ve never reflected upon.           

Dennett argues that a large cause of the confusions about qualitative feelings being mysterious is that every person thinks he or she is an expert on consciousness. Insofar as everyone has conscious experience, each person believes to have some profound understanding of the phenomenon and how it works. However, upon genuine introspection and critical examination, it seems that none of the mysterious properties of consciousness hold up. Thus we are not the experts we think we are – but are merely wrapped up in our own experience, fooled by our own minds. By showing that subjective experiences or qualia are not as mysterious as commonly believe, Dennett hopes to show just how we are fooled about our experience. Reductive materialism is extremely controversial and many philosophers brush Dennett’s theory of consciousness off too quickly for being overly simplistic and counter intuitive. However, as Chalmers pointed out – if we are to ever understand such a complex phenomenon, it is going to take radical change in our current philosophical and scientific paradigm. Perhaps Dennett’s theory isn’t fully correct, but it should still serve as a model on how philosophy of consciousness should be done. It seems correct to revise our conception of consciousness rather than revise our concept of the natural world. Instead of simply waiting for some scientific revolution, Dennett has attempted to deny traditional intuitions and set forth a positive account of consciousness that preserves materialism. 

(NYU year 2 Consciousness)

Bodily Ownership

            In order to answer the question of whether the sense of body ownership is necessarily a conscious awareness or not, one must first distinguish between two bodily representations – namely body schema and body image. Body schema is the proprioceptive representation that accounts for the body’s action. Proprioception can best be understood as an unconscious feeling, from the inside, of the relative positions of the body parts.  Thus, the schema accounts for postural information or body position, as well as sensations of the skin surface. While the schema is multimodal, that is, integrating information from multiple perceptual sources (including vision); it is most dependent on tactile and proprioceptive information, and therefore views the body egocentrically as an agent behind action. Body schema is largely responsible for non-conscious actions such as walking or postural adjustment. Because so much input is being received from proprioceptive and tactile sensors, consciousness could not possibly keep up with the schema. One would be overwhelmed with stimulation if the schema required conscious attendance to all of the body’s simultaneous actions.

            Body image can best be understood as a visuospatial mapping of the body represented mostly by the visual system (although it is also multimodal). Body image accounts for the conscious awareness of the body and consequently views the body as an object (rather than the subject/agent of action). It is through body image that one understands body semantics, or knowledge about the body such as what is causing a localized pain or how to treat the body in response to the pain. Importantly, the schema can become taken over by body image if one puts conscious attention on bodily action (such as walking). However, the schema almost always is unconscious or on a sort of “auto-pilot” One way of understanding the body image is as the conscious representation of not just the schema, but all other information relating to the body.

            Perhaps an analogy would be helpful for getting clear on these functional differences. Vision scientists have discovered that there are two visual pathways through which information is processed – the dorsal and ventral streams. The dorsal stream (comparable to the body schema) is believed to be unconscious and answers the HOW questions of motor action by quickly processing visual input, dealing mostly with distance and orientation of visual input. An example of the dorsal stream at work is in running on a rocky beach, one still manages to avoid stepping on dangerous rocks even without conscious awareness of the rocks. It seems that the runner somehow automatically avoids the rocks. This is because visuospatial information is processed much quicker in the dorsal stream than in the ventral stream. Like the runner avoiding rocks, most bodily action (controlled by the body schema) does not require conscious attention. The dorsal stream is heuristic while the ventral stream is conscious and algorithmic. Also, the dorsal stream is egocentric and generates no long-term memory. The ventral stream answers the WHAT questions of visual input, and like body image, is largely responsible for identification. The ventral stream is slower, conscious, and more precise than the dorsal stream and, like body image, is object-centered. That is, the ventral stream is responsible for object recognition and form representation.

          Now that distinction between body image and body schema is clear, I will argue that the sense of body ownership is grounded in the body schema and is thus unconscious. Body ownership is the feeling of unity or cohesiveness one feels towards the extension of their body and accounts for recognition of bodily sensation as being in one’s body and not external to it. Ownership is a sort of identification with the body as being ‘me’ as opposed to other bodies. The phenomenology of body ownership is a direct result of bodily action, proprioception, and tactile information, and thus is related to body schema rather than the body image. It seems trivially impossible for body image to be the source of bodily ownership, because we can have visuospatial maps of others’ bodies yet we do not feel like the owners of those bodies. Body image is not sufficient for body ownership. The argument of ownership from schema goes something like this:

(1) The sense of ownership is grounded in spatial content and bodily sensation.

(2) The felt spatial content of bodily sensations is part of the body schema.

 (3) Therefore, the sense of ownership must be grounded in body schema.

 

Those who want to disprove that schema accounts for body ownership will most likely attack premise (1), as premise (2) follows from (1) by definition of schema (established in the previous question).

            Important to understand is that the spatial content and bodily sensation are predominantly unconscious phenomenon. Unlike visual perception, tactile perception does not require the agent to do something active to receive information. That is, while visual clues necessarily are required to be looked at to be perceived, our bodies are bombarded with a multitude of tactile perceptions without being actively sought after. For example, to gain visual information about the external environment, one must look around and perceive visual clues – the most salient of which are consciously experienced. However, at the same time, our body is unconsciously informed of many other environmental conditions through tactile perception – such as the temperature of the room, the feeling of the floor against our feet or clothing on our body. These bits of information need not be consciously experienced, yet I would argue are what give us a feeling of owning our body, which is separate from the rest of the external environment. Evidence that our sensation of body ownership is linked to this bodily sensation is in that our phenomenology of ownership is also mostly recessive. That is, we do not need to consciously consider every sensation to know whether or not it is our bodily sensation. In fact, it seems that we only aware of those tactile perecptions in extreme cases such as moments of intense pain or pleasure.

            There is some rather compelling empirical evidence that the sense of body ownership is linked directly with proprioception and action. In the case of the modified rubber hand illusion, test subjects are fooled by a synchronicity between their hidden (actual) hand movement being simultaneously duplicated on the visible rubber hand. The subjects felt a proprioceptive drift toward the rubber hand, that is – they felt that their actual hand was actually located closer in space to the dummy hand than it actually was. It seems that the motor action of actively raising and lowering the first finger being duplicated simultaneously it what causes the illusion – further evidence that ownership is grounded in action. Researchers concluded that action influences the sense of body ownership by unifying the body as a whole and thus the representation of bodily movement plays a crucial role is ownership. The study of bodily integration of prosthesis and tool use also is evidential of ownership being grounded in body schema. Prosthetics can become so well integrated into the body schema that patients actually come to believe the artificial limbs are part of their bodies. By adopting a prosthetic limb into the body schema, patients begin to feel a sense of ownership towards these artificial body parts. There is similar neural evidence that the usage of tools over extended periods of times seems to incorporate them into the body schema. In both cases, it appears that it is through action or usage that the sense of bodily ownership is established.

            One might object that it does not seem plausible that the phenomenological sense of ownership be based on an unconscious representation of the body. That is, it seems counterintuitive that a phenomenology of ownership (or anything, for that matter) to be below the level of consciousness. After all, phenomenology in all other senses requires conscious awareness for there to be phenomenal experience. So how then can the body schema account for a sense or experience of bodily ownership? However, the sense of ownership, as previously pointed out, is not necessarily a conscious experience. For example, we need not be aware of it being our body to feel pain. It seems to be an implicit assumption (based on the body schema) that the pain we feel is in our body. Bodily sensations themselves don’t need to have a first-person component to give a sense of ownership. For example, most of the time there is no phenomenological awareness of one’s legs. However, if one focuses or reflects upon the proprioceptive feeling of what his legs feel like, there is a “compellingness” towards self attribution. So the sense of ownership seems to be not a directly reflexive phenomenology of gazing at or introspecting on one’s body, but is a rather unconscious assumption one makes based on the coherence of mostly proprioceptive, tactile, and kinesthetic clues. As in the case of tactile pain; one need not be conscious or in a mental state of the pain being of his body to feel that the pain. However, the experience of pain implicitly lends itself to a unified and coherent sense of bodily ownership.

(NYU year 2 Minds and Machines)

Quining Qualia – Daniel Dennett

              In his paper “Quining Qualia”, Daniel Dennett sets out to deny our intuitions about qualia as being a sort of “special property” of consciousness. Dennett does not intend to fully deny conscious experience outright; and insofar as everything real has properties – he does not want to deny that consciousness has properties. However, Dennett does want to say that qualia itself does not have the special properties philosophers normally attribute to it: namely, being ineffable, private, intrinsic, and directly apprehensible through consciousness. He believes that philosophers are intuitively misguided in these assumptions. Commonly, qualia are described as ineffable insofar as we tend to think of our experience as defying expression or description in language. It is largely due to ineffability that qualia are thought to be private. Because we are not able to fully express our phenomenal experience, it becomes impossible for interpersonal comparison. Moreover, it seems that each of us has privileged access to our qualia – a first person perspective that no one else can experience quite like we do. Qualia are believed to be directly apprehensible through consciousness in that we seem to have the power to reflect on our experience, and in doing so – amplify the qualia. And finally, are phenomenal experiences are thought to be intrinsic insofar as they are somehow “atomic”, “simple” or “homogeneous” and therefore unable to get a hold of without direct experience. Dennett wants to show that it isn’t clear that consciousness really has any of these four previous characteristics commonly associated with qualia.

            He believes that many of the supposed mysteries of consciousness are created by dogmatically accepting these intuitions we have about qualia or the “ways things seem to us.” Dennett hopes to shift the burden of proof to those who so complacently appeal to private, subjective experiences as having these special properties. However, Dennett says that to try to eliminate these confusions and extrapolate some “lowest common denominator” of qualia – eliminating its ‘special’ characteristics – would be to reify the concept into oblivion. What would be left is a meaningless notion that is “tactically obtuse” and far from what philosophers mean when they use the term qualia. Through a series of thought experiments, or ‘intuition pumps’ Dennett proposes to show that none of the four previously mentioned properties of qualia seem to hold up to scrutiny or analysis. Perhaps most importantly, Dennett wants to deny the existence of qualia because it is often seen as the biggest threat and last defense against functionalism, or more generally materialism, and as he says, any third person objective approach to the world. As a naturalist philosopher, Daniel Dennett wants to explain conscious entirely in terms of the physical and finds that talk of qualia inherently lends itself to unnecessary confusions

            Dennett uses a serious of intuition pumps in hopes to show that our theories about qualia are misguided. Specifically, he wants to show that the four properties he attributes to qualia are confusions – and in that no such feature of consciousness has all of these properties, there must then be no qualia at all. Dennett attempts to show that upon reflecting on our actual experience, there really is nothing phenomenally concrete as to which we can accurately label qualia. As a functionalist, he wants to say that there are no qualia but rather just the functional roles our experiences play. Of this, he says that we falsely assume that beyond this causal system, there are some qualia to be isolated and compared. For the sake of brevity, I will focus on what seems to me to be the two most compelling intuition pumps, which illustrate that our common ideas of qualia are confusions.

            Dennett uses the Sanborne-Chase intuition pump to illustrate just how little first-person understanding we actually have of qualia. Both Sanborne and Chase are coffee tasters who at one time loved the taste of a particular coffee, but now no longer enjoy the flavor of that same coffee.  Sanborne says that the flavor is the same, but his judgment of it has changed. Chase says the opposite, namely the flavor has changed, but his judgment has remained the same. Clearly only one of the tasters is right, if the coffee itself has remained consistent. There then must be a forced choice, as to whether the quale has changed or the judgment has changed. Neither man can be sure of which is the actual case and insofar as he is unsure, it appears that the theoretical assumption of privileged-access is false. Both of these men, upon reflecting on their experience, seem to be analyzing it objectively rather than introspectively and at best guessing which shift has occurred within him. Thus, there must be no qualia.

            Dennett uses another intuition pump to show that the assumption that qualia are intrinsic is completely unfounded. People often talk about beer as if it were an acquired taste. However, Dennett points out that you don’t actually acquire a liking for the first sip of beer (for if every sip of beer tasted like the first sip, no one would drink beer), but rather the prolonged drinking of beer creates a later enjoyable experience. The very enjoyment of the experiment should guarantee the taste is no longer the same as the first sip, claims Dennett. So it seems that our very liking of the beer has changed its flavor from the first sip to the most recent sip. But insofar as our reaction or experience itself results in a change in quale of beer (namely the flavor), qualia must not be intrinsic, but rather relational. Therefore, there must be no qualia.

          Dennett claims to appeal to gustatory experience because he says color-vision is extremely complex and delicate. Where color experience depends on hue, saturation, and brightness of the perceived object; taste is wholly dependent on an object’s basic chemistry. We are also more comfortable with interpersonal comparisons in flavor, where as it becomes more confusing in comparing our visual experiences. People often compare their likes or dislikes of foods with others, but rarely compare their color experiences. Also, we often notice intrapersonal shifts in our gustatory experience. That is, we can remember times we disliked food we now love, and vice versa (such as in the Sanborne-Chase example). If there are intrapersonal changes in our color experience, it is far more gradual and nearly imperceptible for most people.

            Dennett, perhaps less explicitly, chooses to discuss flavor experience because it preserves his functional approach to qualia more intuitively than color. Dennett wants to say that there is no intrinsic property of qualia. Qualia, as it were, are merely experiences that play a particular functional role, generating some behavioral output as a response to some input. So if one reacts aversely to the taste of cauliflower he once enjoyed, the taste/qualia must be different insofar as it is playing a different functional role. Thus, cauliflower-quale have no intrinsic flavor. This point is not as easily demonstrated (if at all) with color experience – making flavor a better choice for Dennett. The question is whether the functionalist can then extend his claims about qualia based on taste to color experience.

      Dennett claims that the evidential power of neurophysiology is vastly limited in examining subjective experience. We can imagine in the case of an inverted spectrum, that it is not clear whether the invert’s qualia are genuinely inverted or rather his reaction, or remembrances of qualia are inverted. Obviously the invert will not know which is the case. Dennett says that the physiological tests, despite of how well developed, will fail to distinguish on which side of memory the qualia lay. The brain does not function in a clearly linear way that makes it possible to pinpoint where any such inversion may take place. The neurophysiologists may have reason for preferring one alternative to the other (qualia inversion to memory inversion), but this will only be to support their own theoretical claims about qualia. Dennett should want to say that this confusion is due to conceiving qualia as having some special, intrinsic nature that can be isolated from our behavioral dispositions.

      It seems to me that Dennett has made some philosophical progress, at least in showing that qualia do not pose a serious threat for the materialist advocates of consciousness. That is, he’s taken a phenomena that is thought to be mysterious and beyond physical explanation, and shown that this conception is merely an illusion based on misunderstanding. In actuality, there are no such qualia that have these “special” properties as Dennett calls them. However, while Dennett has defended functionalism, he has not succeeded in his second goal of proposing computational functionalism is valid. The biological functionalist, who approaches most of consciousness from functionalism, should not be convinced that functionalism is the correct approach to qualia. While Dennett has shown that qualia are not quite the special properties they were once thought to be, it still is not clear that qualia can be reduced entirely to their functional roles (and thus realized on any functionally similar system). The biological functionalist should want to say that conscious experience, namely the experience of qualia, is dependent on our biological structures (our brain system). 

(NYU year 2 Minds and Machines)

Presentism

In trying to conceptualize how space and time are related, we run into some very complicated puzzles. Probably, much of the complications one faces in considering how time and space are related is a result of trying to conceptualize temporality in terms of spatiality. It seems to me that time and space are of two entirely different sorts of concepts and trying to make time out to be a fourth special dimension is an over reification of a difficult abstract we may not yet grasp in order to relate it to the more concrete idea of space. I will thus defend presentism in hopes to show that time progressing spatially or linearly is mere fiction.

            Conventionally, we think of time as being one-dimensional. When we think in terms of time lines, we imagine linear progressions moving from the past, toward the future. We generally think of the present moment as flowing through time, much like a leaf flowing through a river in space. This metaphor, however, I think is metaphysically inaccurate and serves only to confuse us. Looking at the world this way, it is tempting to think of the present moment as a region in which events occur, for example the writing of this paper, The future and past are traditionally thought of as other regions in which other events occur, such as the grading of this paper or preparing to write this paper. However, when we reflect on our experiencing, it seems that all of life events take place in only the present moment. Thus it seems only the present is real. Reality, according to presentists like A.N. Prior, is simply a lack of temporal prefixes. There is a difference in speaking of writing my paper in the future, that it will be the case that I am writing a paper; or the past action being as it has been the case I am writing this paper. Pastness and futurity of an event is not the same as the event itself. However, presentness of an event is just the event and therefore the presentness of my writing this paper is just my writing of the paper. And because the present is the only real region of time, it follows that what is real and true is in constant flux or impermanent. Past or future moments only have existence in their remembrance or anticipation, yet they are only ever remembered or anticipated in the present moment – the only real region of time. So although time may superficially appear to be an endless succession of moments, if examined more carefully it becomes clear that there is only ever this moment.

            This is not to say that time is somehow less real than space, however. Our experience of time may be illusory, however the present moment is just as real as the concept of space. In his famous argument for the unreality of time, McTaggart seems to suggest that it is our traditional conception of time that is unreal. It seems to me that presentism is actually compatible with McTaggart’s argument however. Briefly, McTaggart differentiates two relational properties of time: A properties which are objective and fixed – “past”, “present”, and “future”; and B properties or transitive asymmetrical positions. B properties include relations such as “earlier than” or “later than”.  McTaggart argues that the A properties, however, are incompatible determinations because events cannot take place in multiple regions of time, namely the past, present and future. He argues that temporal exclusiveness is necessary or essential to change and thus time. Yet, McTaggart claims events do seem to have a pastness, nowness, and futurity. Yet these A properties are mutually exclusive and thus do not exist, or at least how we think them to exist. And it would follow that if there are no A properties, there can be no relational B properties. Therefore, time must be unreal.

            To the presentist, however, McTaggart’s argument seems to argue against premises about time that presentism doesn’t make. The presentist says nothing of the reality of future and past, and therefore any relational claims McTaggart is refuting is due to common-sensical misunderstandings of time or misuse of language and tenses. The refutation of these temporal relations perhaps even strengthens the presentists claim that there is no past or future realities. The presentists agree with McTaggart in the sense that it is logically impossible for events to have a pastness or futurity. Thus, only the present is what’s real.

            And if only the present is real, unlike space, it does not appear time is a vast plentum in which events can be spread across. Where as events can occur across a wide variety of points in space, there is only one point in time that events occur, namely the present. Interestingly however, while space seems to be vaster in terms of where events can occur, time is much more accommodating in terms of what kinds of events can occur. Space is very accommodating to physical objects. There are many physical beings spread out across the vast expanse we call space, located at many different points. However, in terms of immaterial objects, very little can be said of spatial location. We say, immaterial souls exist outside of space. However, even the very notion of something existing outside of something else lends itself to another spatial location. Time, that is the present moment, seems to be vastly more accommodating when it comes to immateriality. Even non-physical events, such as mental acts like thinking and feeling, all take place within the present moment. It also seems strange that in terms of space, two events cannot occupy the same point. That is, two physical objects cannot simultaneously occupy the same region in space. However, all physical objects occupy the same region in time, the present, simultaneously. If presentism is true, these differences between space and time are perplexing and seem to point to a fundamental difference between spatiality and temporality. 

(NYU year 2 Metaphysics)

Interactionism

Paper arguing for interactionist dualism. 

Upon reflecting on our daily experience, it certainly feels we have a mental life that directly influences and causes events in the physical world. It seems when we make choices or mental decisions, they often become actualized in the physical world. Conversely, the physical world appears to influence our thoughts and choices. It is for these reasons that interactionism is the most reasonable position for the dualist to hold. The interactionist would like to preserve this common-sensical appearance of two-way causal interaction. The physicalists have many arguments against interactionism, often backing the interactionist into a more inane form of dualism such as epiphenomenalism. However, because interactionism is the ideal form of dualism, I will defend it by examining the most troublesome physicalist argument against interactionism: over-determinism. I will argue that the whole concept of over-determinism is fundamentally flawed and thus poses no real threat to the interactionist.

            The physicalist claims the world is causally closed, because there is sound, empirical evidence that everything that happens in the observable world has an earlier physical cause. Take for example, a man tasting a cube of sugar. Asked what the man experiences, he would answer, “sweetness”. According to the physicalist, this response would have been causally determined first by placing the sugar in his mouth, followed by chemical reactions that take place in special receptor cells called ‘taste buds’, and finally by various complicated neural activities in the brain. The final result is the articulation of the man’s experience of sweetness. Even in complicated situations such as this one, the materialist appears to have no problem showing that all events are determined by earlier physical causes. However, the interactionist proposes that not only is there physical causation, but also non-physical causation. Mental activity becomes actualized in the physical world, thus causing physical events (and vise versa). In other words, the physical world is not causally closed. The dualist believes it is not just the chemical brain activity that causes the man to respond, “sweetly”, but also the mental experience of sweetness. We can conclude the man’s verbal response has two causes: the physical happenings in his brain, and the immaterial or mental experience of taste. However, in response to the  introduction of mental causation, the physicalist claims that many events become consequently over-determined. Instead of events having the one necessary cause, happenings in the physical world thus have two sufficient causes, one physical and one non-physical. The physicalist further believes the mental causation to be superfluous insofar as the world can function merely by physical causation alone.

            But what complications does over-determination cause insofar as the mental causation is always consistent with the physical? The dualist could argue that even if the physical world is causally determined, the mental world does not disrupt this ordering insofar as mental causation coincides with physical causes. So then what is so inherently problematic about events having multiple causes? It is not enough for the physicalist to say that world simply doesn’t need mental causation. Although it is generally good to eliminate unnecessary factors in trying to understand the metaphysical nature of reality, merely stating that mental causation is unnecessary and only complicates the world would not be a compelling argument against the dualist.

             The physicalist might respond by pointing out the strangeness of the world being over-determined on a universally widespread and reoccurring nature. Almost every obscure happening on the human level (assuming humans are the only beings with mental life) would be over-determined if interactionism is true. Every human event that involves some sort of non-physical experience would be over-determined. Not only is widespread over-determination very strange, it is also highly improbable. If, as current physics proposes, the physical world is indeterministic and instead probababalistic, it seems highly unlikely that physical causation should remain perfectly parallel with mental causation for all of time. Further, what force keeps the mental causation parallel to the physical causation, and more importantly, what would happen something disrupted the synchronicity? If our example’s mental life became causally disconnected with his physical life, perhaps he would taste sugar bluely our loudly instead of sweetly? At first glance, objections such as these seem to pose a serious problem for the interactionist.

            I will argue on behalf of the dualist that there is, in fact, no over-determination. Although the physicalists can raise some interesting questions about the over-determination of the world, it seems to me that this objection to dualism essentially misses the point. By intending to show that the world is over-determined, on the interactionist’s theory, the physicalist greatly misunderstands or misrepresents the dualist view. I would argue that by accepting the scientific dogma that the world is causally closed to be truth, the materialists attack on interactionism falsely presupposes the dualist will agree with this premise. In showing the world to be causally closed, the physicalist hopes to convince the dualist there is no room for mental causation. The dualist, however, should defend his view by pointing out that appearance is not necessarily reality. Although it appears the observable world is causally closed, the interactionists claim it is not. Unless the materialist can convince the dualist that the man’s response of sweetness is directly caused only by some chemical happening in his brain (and not the actual experience of sweetness), he fails in proving the world is over-determined. The dualist believes that there must be a soul for experience because there is no substantial evidence that the physical can consciously experience anything, including sweetness. The physicalist’s argument of over-causation ultimately becomes an argument over what it is to experience, and insofar as he is unable to prove that the physical can somehow experience; he fails to convince the dualist of over-determinism. In direct response to the claim that the neural activity is what causes the man to speak, the dualist could simply propose that the brain state is merely the necessary condition for the immaterial soul to experience sweetness, which in turn causes the man’s response. Thus, the brain (physical) satisfies the necessary condition for the experience (mental), which then causes the man to articulate (physical) his experience. We could conclude that not only is interactionism feasible, but also necessary for the world to work. Therefore, the argument for over-determinsim is only compelling for those who accept the physical world to be causally closed, not the dualists.

(NYU year 2 Central Problems of Philosophy)