Yes, animal organisms are run by neurophysiological mechanisms.Chili wrote:We all believe that at least to some extent, our bodies and brains function according to physical cause-and-effect.
Rey is one of the very few who expressly endorse eliminative materialism:Chili wrote:Most of the example above can be understood in terms of these physical cause-and-effect chains: the particles of coffee wafting, the olfactory bulb stimulated, other neurological events that we understand well, and then at some point - a question mark. The magic happens: a subjective experience. And then from there, well-understood neurological events happen culminating in the vocal utterance about loving the smell. From the perspective of a scientist who is not just listening to the individual casually in a cafe but also has an assortment of brain-measuring devices, most of what is seen happening may well be in a zombie for all he knows.
"The philosopher Georges Rey once told me that he has no sentient experiences. He lost them after a bicycle accident when he was 15. Since then, he insists, he has been a zombie. I assume he is speaking tongue-in-cheek, but of course I have no way of knowing, and that is his point." - Pinker, How the Mind Works
"I and a few others are prepared to conclude…that there really are no phenomena answering to our usual concepts of qualia, consciousness and experience."
(Rey, Georges. "Better to Study Human Than World Psychology." In: Galen Strawson et al., Consciousness and its Place in Nature, edited by Anthony Freeman, 110-116. Exeter: Imprint Academic, 2006. p. 113)
But:
"If 'consciousness' means conscious experience in the concrete, the proposition 'Consciousness does not exist' shows itself 'absurd and impossible' by the fundamental canons of science, philosophy, and common sense. Either the proposition, therefore, is false, or it entails the most searching scientific revolution ever envisioned, not merely in psychology but in all human concept-systems and all logical and scientific methodology. Such revision, although not impossible, is greater than any attempted by a Plato, a Darwin, or an Einstein. Its positive nature I cannot conjecture, and the behaviorists themselves have shown small interest or aptitude for it. Finally, even if it were accomplished, it must be so complex that no conceivable psychological advantage would warrant its substitution for the current scheme. No living man, I think, ever seriously thought through so recondite a possibility."
(Williams, Donald Cary. "The Existence of Consciousness." In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 23-40. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966. p. 30)
This reminds me of Daniel Dennett and his "intentional stance" (see the quote below!). Although he emphatically denies being an eliminativist about (phenomenal) consciousness, many of his colleagues (such as John Searle) think he is—and so do I.Chili wrote:The true hunt must be for whatever in the observer's mind decides that the coffee-smeller is conscious and not a zombie.
"Materialists, after a lot of beating around the bush, do typically end up by denying the existence of consciousness, even though most of them are too embarrassed to come right out and say: 'Consciousness does not exist. No human or animal has ever been conscious.' Instead, they redefine 'consciousness' so that it no longer refers to inner, qualitative, subjective mental states but rather to some third-person phenomena, phenomena that are neither inner, qualitative, nor subjective in the senses I have explained. Consciousness is reduced to the behavior of the body, to computational states of the brain, information processing, or functional states of a physical system. Daniel Dennett is typical of materialists in this regard. Does consciousness exist for Dennett? He would never deny it. And what is it? Well, it is a certain bunch of computer programs implemented in the brain.
Such answers, I am afraid, will not do. Consciousness is an inner, subjective, first-person, qualitative phenomenon. Any account of consciousness that leaves out these features is not an account of consciousness but of something else."
(Searle, John. Mind, Language and Society: Philosophy in the Real World. London: Phoenix, 2000. p. 50)
"The extreme anti-mentalism of his views has been missed by several of Dennett's critics, who have pointed out that, according to his theory, he cannot distinguish between human beings and unconscious zombies who behaved exactly as if they were human beings. Dennett's riposte is to say that there could not be any such zombies, that any machine regardless of what it is made of that behaved like us would have to have consciousness just as we do. This looks as if he is claiming that sufficiently complex zombies would not be zombies but would have inner conscious states the same as ours; but that is emphatically not the claim he is making. His claim is that in fact we are zombies, that there is no difference between us and machines that lack conscious states in the sense I have explained. The claim is not that the sufficiently complex zombie would suddenly come to conscious life, just as Galatea was brought to life by Pygmalion. Rather, Dennett argues that there is no such thing as conscious life, for us, for animals, for zombies, or for anything else; there is only complex zombiehood."
(pp. 106-7)
"Dennett denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third-person phenomena, not to the first-person conscious feelings and experiences we all have. For Dennett there is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who lack inner feelings, because we are all just complex zombies."
(p. 120)
(Searle, John R. The Mystery of Consciousness. New York: The New York Review of Books, 1997.)
—
"Daniel Dennett advocates an approach to the mind that at first glance might appear similar to Davidson’s. That appearance, as will become evident, is misleading. Dennett’s concern is to further a scientifically informed account of the mind. Like Davidson, he insists on distinguishing practices of propositional attitude ascription from systematic attempts to understand the mechanisms responsible for intelligent action. Unlike Davidson, however, Dennett regards the ascription of propositional attitudes – beliefs, desires, intentions – as constrained only by a weak requirement of ‘rationality’. We can correctly and legitimately ascribe propositional attitudes to any system – animal, vegetable, or mineral – the behavior of which could be construed as rational in light of the system’s ‘ends’. The result is a deliberately ‘instrumentalist’ approach to the mind. (The significance of all this will emerge in the discussion to follow.)
Taking a stance: According to Dennett, a creature’s having a mind is strictly a matter of our usefully regarding the creature as having a mind. This amounts, in practice, to our treating the creature as ‘one of us’: a being with various (mostly true) beliefs about the world and desires for particular states of affairs; a creature that acts reasonably in light of those beliefs and desires. You observe a robin hunting worms in the garden. You explain – that is, make sense of – the robin’s behavior by supposing that the robin is hungry and so seeking food. The robin believes that worms are food, believes that worms are to be found in the garden, and in consequence desires to hunt worms in the garden. The robin, in sum, acts reasonably in light of its beliefs and desires.
In explaining the robin’s behavior by reference to beliefs and desires, you are adopting what Dennett calls the ‘intentional stance’. This ‘stance’ is one we take up in order to make sense of and predict the behavior of any creature. Why is that octopus emitting a black inky substance? Because the octopus believes it has been spotted by a predator, wants to protect itself, believes it can do so by placing a dark cloud between it and the predator, and believes that by emitting an inky fluid it will cause a dark cloud to come between it and the predator. Why is this white blood cell enveloping that microbe? Because the cell wants to destroy invaders, believes the microbe is an invader, and so wants to destroy it. For its own part, the microbe wants to invade a red blood cell, believes that it is likely to find a red blood cell by swimming about randomly in the bloodstream, and so swims randomly.
Do robins, octopodes, and white blood cells really have beliefs and desires? Do such organisms really behave rationally? Or do they merely behave as if they had beliefs and desires (and act reasonably in light of these)? Dennett regards questions of this sort as wrong-headed. Having beliefs and desires amounts to nothing more than being explicable via the intentional stance. If we can make sense of the behavior of a microbe by taking up the intentional stance toward its activities, then the microbe does indeed have beliefs and desires, hence reasons for what it does.
You might object. If this is what having beliefs, desires, and reasons amounts to, then plants must have beliefs, desires, and reasons, too! This elm sinks its roots deep into the soil because it wants to find water and believes that water is likely to be found at greater depths. More startlingly, perhaps, on a view of this sort what is to prevent artifacts – your desktop computer, or even a lowly thermostat – from having beliefs and desires? Your desktop computer is displaying a ‘printer is out of paper’ alert because it believes that the printer is out of paper, and wants to let you know. The thermostat turns on the furnace because it believes that the room temperature has dropped below 21°C, and it wants to increase the temperature to at least 21°C.
You might concede that although we do talk this way on occasion, we do so merely as a matter of convenience. We can see single-celled organisms, plants, and artifacts as loosely analogous to rational agents in certain ways. Thus, we speak of them as if they were like us in those ways. But of course they are not really like us. Their behavior is governed by simpler mechanisms. To imagine that they have – really have – beliefs and desires, to suppose that they have – really have – reasons for what they do, is to confuse the metaphorical with the literal.
Dennett insists, however, that ascriptions of beliefs and desires to single-celled organisms, plants, and artifacts are no more metaphorical than is the ascription of beliefs and desires to our fellow human beings. All there is to an entity’s having beliefs and desires, all there is to an entity’s acting on reasons, is the entity’s behaving as if it had beliefs and desires and acted on reasons. In ascribing beliefs, desires, and reasons to organisms or objects, we take up the intentional stance. The intentional stance enables us to make sense of and predict the behavior of whatever falls under it. But it will do this quite independently of whether those entities have an internal makeup resembling ours.
A view of this sort construes the propositional attitudes ‘instrumentally’. That is, the correctness of an attribution of beliefs, desires, and reasons for action lies not in its corresponding to some independent fact or state of affairs, but in its serviceability. To the extent that the practice of ascribing propositional attitudes serves our interests – enables us to make sense of and predict the behavior of objects with which we interact – it is fully justified. To expect anything more, to take a baldly ‘realist’ line on beliefs, desires, and reasons for action, is to miss the point of the practice."
(Heil, John. Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2004. pp. 155-7)