"Psychology" without Sentience?

[Chili]

Well, it all depends on the definition of "mind". For example, Descartes thought that mind = consciousness, which equation turns the phrase "nonconscious mind" into a contradiction in terms. And, indeed, the question as to what is genuinely and distinctively mental about nonconscious brain processes or states is a very good one.

Nonconscious mind can be modeled as like something which floats toward and away from the surface of awareness, while being essentially "subjective" (somehow).

For reductive materialists, the mind = the brain, and given this equation the distinction between conscious mind/brain processes and nonconscious ones does make sense.

This is precisely where the dishonest or sloppy step occurs. Scientists always want to define things in terms of measurements of behaviors, but humans always want to use the word "mind" to imply something subjective. (Perhaps less so as time goes on due to scientific literature influencing how humans conceptualize the world.)

If we conceive of the mind as a complex of (nonsubstantial) mental phenomena

Same red flag. mental = subjective, phenomena = objective. Is there a rigorous way to square this circle? It just seems like someone failed to carry a digit in this math.

[Consul]

Well, it all depends on the definition of "mind". For example, Descartes thought that mind = consciousness, which equation turns the phrase "nonconscious mind" into a contradiction in terms. And, indeed, the question as to what is genuinely and distinctively mental about nonconscious brain processes or states is a very good one.

Nonconscious mind can be modeled as like something which floats toward and away from the surface of awareness, while being essentially "subjective" (somehow).

Okay, given the unfortunate ambiguity of "conscious(ness)", one must always mention the distinction between the first-order, "experientialist" concept of consciousness (conscious states/events/processes) and the higher-order, "cognitivist" one: According to the former, a mental state/event/process is conscious iff it is an experiential one, i.e. an experience; and according to the latter, it is conscious iff the subject is (introspectively/reflectively) aware of it.

I use "nonconscious mind" in the first-order sense, i.e. synonymously with "nonexperiential mind".

A subjective experience cannot be nonconscious in the first-order sense of "conscious", because it would then be an unexperienced experience; but it can be nonconscious in the higher-order sense of the term, i.e. in the sense that a subject can undergo an experience without being (introspectively/reflectively) aware of undergoing it.

For reductive materialists, the mind = the brain, and given this equation the distinction between conscious mind/brain processes and nonconscious ones does make sense.

This is precisely where the dishonest or sloppy step occurs. Scientists always want to define things in terms of measurements of behaviors, but humans always want to use the word "mind" to imply something subjective. (Perhaps less so as time goes on due to scientific literature influencing how humans conceptualize the world.).

You're right insofar as…

"The twentieth century set its face against the inner. Psychology and philosophy rejected the idea that mental states are special inner occurrences, sealed off from outside observation, private, known only to their possessor. Thus we have behaviorism (reductive and eliminative, Ryle and Watson), functionalism, Wittgenstein's 'outer criteria,' Quine's rejection of the 'museum myth,' and materialism in its several varieties. These doctrines make the mind a public thing, not something hidden inside—the mind is not something accessible only to the person whose mind it is. Some theorists accept a diluted form of 'first-person authority' or 'privileged access,' allowing for some sort of epistemic asymmetry between subject and observer; others simply abandon such notions, holding that others can know my mind as well as I can. What is rejected is the idea that it is of the essence of the mind to be inner and private. For if that were so, the study of mind would be radically different from other studies of nature: we could only study the mind, as it is in itself, from an introspective point of view; there could be no objective third-person study of mind. That would make psychology radically discontinuous with the rest of science, which deals with what is public and outer. We could only integrate the mind into our general conception of nature if we abandoned the notion of its essential innerness. The mind must be a public thing or be no thing at all. The idea of a thing whose existence and nature is purely inward would separate the mind from the rest of nature, rendering it sui generis and unapproachablc (save from the inside)."

(McGinn, Colin. "The Reality of the Inner." In Philosophical Provocations: 55 Short Essays, 57-61. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2017. pp. 57)

(Historical footnote: Introspective methods were introduced to scientific psychology in the late 19th and early 20th century.)

Reductive materialists would reply that they don't deny the subjectivity of consciousness, but merely that it is only, exclusively subjective in the sense of being externally inaccessible and third-personally imperceptible. According to them, the private(ly accessible), subjective content of consciousness is undeniably real; but the ontological truth about it is that it is composed of or constituted by public(ly accessible), objective physical entities.

(Nested quote removed.)
Same red flag. mental = subjective, phenomena = objective. Is there a rigorous way to square this circle? It just seems like someone failed to carry a digit in this math.

I use the word "phenomenon" in a totally general and neutral sense (like the word "entity"), such that "mental phenomenon" is not synonymous with "objective phenomenon".

[Chili]

Reductive materialists would reply that they don't deny the subjectivity of consciousness,

Red flag here. You've used that heavily biased phrase "don't deny". Why don't you say that they "don't assert" the general subjectivity of consciousness generally?
They certainly would be on firmer empirical footing if they didn't assert any such thing, given that the individual does not have empirical evidence of other minds.
Whatever the philosophical merits of being open to the possibility of consciousness out there - in other people, in animals, in machines - it just isn't empirical science.
They do it because they are people, not because they are scientists.

[Consul]

Reductive materialists would reply that they don't deny the subjectivity of consciousness,

Red flag here. You've used that heavily biased phrase "don't deny". Why don't you say that they "don't assert" the general subjectivity of consciousness generally?

Reductive materialists (as opposed to eliminative materialists!) do affirm and acknowledge the reality of the subjective content of consciousness/experience. What they deny is its (ontologically) irreducible reality—that subjective experiences are not reductively identifiable with (complexes/structures of) objective physical entities. According to reductive materialism, subjective experience is realized by or composed of/constituted by nonsubjective and nonexperiential physical/chemical entities (processes, structures, properties, relations).

They certainly would be on firmer empirical footing if they didn't assert any such thing, given that the individual does not have empirical evidence of other minds.
Whatever the philosophical merits of being open to the possibility of consciousness out there - in other people, in animals, in machines - it just isn't empirical science.
They do it because they are people, not because they are scientists.

Do you deny the possibility of empirical or scientific evidence for other minds/consciousnesses? Do you assert that all analogical inferences from behavior/action or internal neurophysiological structures and functions to (nonhuman) animal minds/consciousnesses are epistemically unjustified in principle?

[Chili]

Reductive materialists (as opposed to eliminative materialists!) do affirm and acknowledge the reality of the subjective content of consciousness/experience.

Do they do this because they are people, or because they are scientists?

You seem not to be getting my central point. Just because a class of people habitually asserts something doesn't mean they have a good professional justification for it.

-- Updated October 21st, 2017, 12:23 pm to add the following --

Do you deny the possibility of empirical or scientific evidence for other minds/consciousnesses? Do you assert that all analogical inferences from behavior/action or internal neurophysiological structures and functions to (nonhuman) animal minds/consciousnesses are epistemically unjustified in principle?

As philosophy or religion or metaphysical speculation, it seems fine. Just don't call it "science".

[Consul]

Reductive materialists (as opposed to eliminative materialists!) do affirm and acknowledge the reality of the subjective content of consciousness/experience.

Do they do this because they are people, or because they are scientists?
You seem not to be getting my central point. Just because a class of people habitually asserts something doesn't mean they have a good professional justification for it.

Armstrong & Smart are speaking as philosophers. Reductive materialism is one of the positions in the philosophy of mind.

However, reductive materialism about the mind is the underlying philosophy of neuroscientific approaches to it:

"In cognitive neuroscience there is a major ontological assumption that, however controversial, guides the day-by-day activities of laboratory researchers as well as those who conjure up new theories of the relation between the mind and the brain. That basic assumption is that, however inexplicable it may be at the moment, the brain makes the mind. Although we do not know how, it is widely accepted that a complete neural explanation is, in principle, possible. Those who labor in the laboratory rarely make this monistic assumption explicit, and yet few cognitive neuroscientists would challenge this fundamental idea.

Nevertheless, the assumption of mind-brain equivalence is without any compelling empirical foundation; none of the required tests of necessity and sufficiency have ever been carried out to confirm it generally or specifically. However likely it may seem, there is no evidence other than plausibility and reason to support this foundation assumption.

This profound foundation assumption comes in two parts. The first part is a general hypothesis, implicitly honored by all cognitive neuroscientists. It asserts that any mental or cognitive activities and processes as well as all of those that control behavior are the functions, the outcomes, or the results of the activities of the nervous system. Herein is the foundation assumption of what ontologists would refer to as monism or physicalism
or mind-brain neuroreductionism.

Only those who believe in some kind of dualism would deny this part of the basic ontological postulate. (…) This assumption links the worlds of the mind and the nervous system into a single inseparable reality; one part is structure, and the other is function. We can no more conceptually separate the two than we can separate the circular motion of a wheel from the wheel itself. This does not mean, however, that the two sciences—psychology and neuroscience—are inseparable empirically. Despite the ontological, in principle, inseparability, practical considerations (e.g., complexity) may keep these two scientific paths separate. Examining this issue is also a part of the challenge faced in this book.

The essential point of the first part of the basic ontological postulate is that the function cannot exist without some kind of equivalent physical structure. Our minds are products of our nervous system, and any idea of the consciousness or mind existing after the deterioration of the brain is without merit. Indeed, without this kind of mind-brain monism the whole cognitive neuroscience enterprise would be meaningless and pointless; we could never be sure that our studies were not contaminated by other forces that were totally out of our control and totally unaccounted for in our experimental protocols.

Beyond the general mind-brain, monistic postulate just described lies the second part—one that is much more specific. It is the hypothesis that our minds are not just functions of our material nervous system (the first part) but that they are the specific result of the cumulative integration and interaction of complex and innumerable neuronal activities that go on in the brain as opposed to other levels of neural activity.

It is this complex and intricate pattern of neuronal activity and interactions that cognitive neuroscientists assert becomes or is mind; it is in the complex network of neurons that memories are stored, that decisions are made, that personalities are forged, and that behavior is controlled. It is there that the physiological actions are transmuted in some mysterious way into all of the many kinds of mental states, processes, feelings, and faculties that grace
human existence. The mind, according to this postulate, arises out of the complex interactions of billions of component parts in ways that we do not now know and possibly may never to be able to know."

(Uttal, William R. Mind and Brain: A Critical Appraisal of Cognitive Neuroscience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011. pp. 4-6)

Do you deny the possibility of empirical or scientific evidence for other minds/consciousnesses? Do you assert that all analogical inferences from behavior/action or internal neurophysiological structures and functions to (nonhuman) animal minds/consciousnesses are epistemically unjustified in principle?

As philosophy or religion or metaphysical speculation, it seems fine. Just don't call it "science".

There is nothing unscientific about evidence-based inferences to other minds.

[Chili]

There is nothing unscientific about evidence-based inferences to other minds.

False. Just think if it was an ecosystem or a computer program - would you just assume that the part you couldn't model was an "other mind" ?

Try to imagine the debate between the informed individual who will say that his neighbor is conscious (sentient) and another person who says that neighbor is not.

What kind of evidence either way shall we ask to be put forth. In the absence of evidence, whose argument will be more persuasive.

[Burning ghost]

Consul/Chili -

How about you both express what you think the other is saying as best you can and then see what the issue is?

Don't doubt you're both making claims that the other is saying something, or suggesting something, they are not.

[Chili]

Consul/Chili -

How about you both express what you think the other is saying as best you can and then see what the issue is?

Don't doubt you're both making claims that the other is saying something, or suggesting something, they are not.

I would hear more about this assertion: "There is nothing unscientific about evidence-based inferences to other minds."

[Burning ghost]

Chili -

Paraphrase it to show your understanding of what is meant by that. Maybe Consul can amend it to suit your impression of what is meant?

Seems like this is going back and forth a bit too much. Just a suggestion.

[Atreyu]

A sentient being is one capable of having (subjective) sensations.

So a "sentient being" is any being which possesses awareness, i.e. can experience things?

[Consul]

A sentient being is one capable of having (subjective) sensations.

So a "sentient being" is any being which possesses awareness, i.e. can experience things?

If by "to experience things" you mean "to perceive things", then, yes, sentient beings are percipient beings, in the sense that (non-hallucinatory) sensations are sensory appearances or impressions of things (the subject's own body or things in its environment). To perceive something (sensorily) is to experience a sensation which is a sense-appearance or sense-impression of it.

-- Updated October 24th, 2017, 12:53 pm to add the following --

When a subject perceives something through its sensations, it is thereby (perceptually) aware or conscious of it.

-- Updated October 25th, 2017, 11:24 am to add the following --

There is nothing unscientific about evidence-based inferences to other minds.

False. Just think if it was an ecosystem or a computer program - would you just assume that the part you couldn't model was an "other mind" ?

Try to imagine the debate between the informed individual who will say that his neighbor is conscious (sentient) and another person who says that neighbor is not.

What kind of evidence either way shall we ask to be put forth. In the absence of evidence, whose argument will be more persuasive.

Human and nonhuman animal consciousness is grounded in and realized by certain neurophysiological mechanisms; so when scientists examine nonhuman organisms and discover neurophysiological structures and processes similar to the ones in human organisms, they are (to some degree) evidentially justified in drawing analogical inferences to nonhuman consciousness. Such inferences aren't infallible and they cannot give us 100% certainty, especially with regard to those lower animal species which are very far away from us on the tree of evolution (e.g. insects), such that the inferences in question cannot go beyond plausible conjecture.

By the way, one such plausible conjecture is that consciousness—in the form of primitive (tactile) sensations—appeared soon after the evolution of animal brains (in worms).

-- Updated October 25th, 2017, 12:40 pm to add the following --

I would hear more about this assertion: "There is nothing unscientific about evidence-based inferences to other minds."

There is neuroscientific evidence for the presence or absence of consciousness in other human individuals, and neuroscientific methods such as neuroimaging can also be used in the search for nonhuman consciousness. For example, here's the latest issue of Scientific American:



Source: https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... ber-issue/