Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness

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Fooloso4
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness

Post by Fooloso4 »

Belindi:
I have been thinking that the myth of Christ differs from the antecedent god-men as Christ did not use his power to save himself from being tortured to death …
The myth can be taken on its own but I think the fact behind the myth is that he was powerless. He was supposed to be the messiah but his death caused obvious problems. Just another example of how facts can be explained away in order to maintain belief.

(Belindi)But Christ had a contretemps with Satan during which Satan tried to tempt Christ to use his, Christ's own powers to serve himself. Christ won of course , and Christ's final sacrifice on the Cross proved that. The Cross is an integral part of the whole myth of Christ, and I wasn't taking it on its own.
Regarding Bacon and perfectibility via mathematics, if mathematics is deductive/tautological how could it be a way for man to synthesise any perfections except as a tool to help him to learn?
I was mistaken. Bacon proposed an ideogrammatic written language along the lines of Chinese.

It was Galileo who said:
[The universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which means it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word. (Opere Il Saggiatore p. 171.)
(Belindi)I thought of Galileo as a natural scientist not as a metaphysicist.
Belindi:
The tree of the knowledge of good and evil seems to me to be too limited in its application, as stated in my copy of The Bible anyway.(King James) Good and evil are one parameter of relativity among countless others.
I don’t want to get too far off topic but I do not think that good and evil (or bad) are the subject matter, but rather the fruits of knowledge. Knowledge produces both good and evil.

(Belindi)Yes, that makes sense.
Isn't it acceptable to interpret any text so that it has a meaning that is useful to oneself?
I think it is acceptable, but if the text has something to teach me I think it useful to interpret it as best I can in accordance with what the author meant. I attempt to follow rather than lead.The interpretation should connections between the parts that sheds light on both the parts and the text as a whole.

(Belindi)I think we need a whole thread devoted to hermeneutics. What the author meant was embedded in the whole of the author's culture. I view any culture as a source of spare parts for anyone to use.
Gertie
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness

Post by Gertie »

HAN

I don't think we're going to find agreement on this, but here goes...
Gertie
I'd like to clarify an important distinction - science and empiricism can't explain conscious experience itself, but can give a (so far very broad and incomplete) explanation for why we evolved the way we did, ie the character of our phenomenal experience. For example the evolutionary utility of suffering, of altruism, our social/moral predispositions along with our selfish instincts. Strip away the mystique of the language, the awe of existence itself, and a coherent, compelling and easily comprehended story is available. And for now, I'd say that's the best we can do. We can speculate beyond that of course, but not with any authority.
Look at it like this: an artist has a variety of physical media at her disposal, and she chooses, say, marble, then proceeds to sculpt a statue. We can describe the statue in terms what she put into it, we can examine the technique, the way the tool's chiseling surface was applied; we can examine the verisimilitude of the rendering, the symmetry of the eyes, and so forth. But logically prior to all of this there is the stone with its specific nature that has possibilities and limitations that are there providing what can and cannot be done at all with a stone medium. Evolution is the sculptor, and the question of suffering goes to the stone itself. The point is clear: it is out of Being that evolution, as we call it, brought forth suffering, presumably as an advantage of avoidance, but evolution did not determine the possibilities logically or dispositionally there, prior, such that suffering could arise at all.

The same argument could be applied to anything, but here it is critical to understanding suffering and joy not as evolutionary contingencies, but possibilities embedded in Being prior to the first muddy swamp thing with DNA. If you would like to keep the matter about physical science, you could say even at that extraordinary Big Bang moment, ethical value was among the possibilities of the Being unleashed.
It is not with evolution that our mystery lies, it is within the Being itself, that it can DO this thing called the human condition.

If by 'Being' you mean the existence of conscious critters like ourselves, it's self-evident that the potential for us to exist, um existed. If you mean something other than consciousness by 'Being', please explain what as clearly as you can. For instance what qualities belong to 'Being' which aren't covered by consciousness? Any?


As I said, we don't know how the marble/consciousness (by which I mean experiential mental states) arises. Philosophy of mind has come up with some hypotheses, perhaps it's an emergent property of certain states of matter, perhaps it's a fundamental property of the universe and everything within it, or something else. Nobody knows. Including you and me. Nowt wrong with just saying 'I don't know'.
But I don't look at the matter like this so much, because evolution is an empirical science, and this does not deal with absolutes.

Can you define what you mean by 'absolutes'?

I'd agree that empirical science deals with material 'stuff' and forces, and struggles to get a handle on how to explain experiential mental states/consciousness. I'm with Chambers in that I believe this is the Hard Problem, and there is a genuine explanatory gap. I don't know what, if anything, you mean in addition to that by using the term 'absolutes'.
Evolution is not a theory that is a mirror of nature; no theory is.
Agreed, and I gave many qualifiers in terms of it being a limited broad account of how consciousness has been molded by evolutionary factors. But once you accept the principle, you have an explanatory model of why human nature is the way it is. Including suffering, moral social predispositions and so on.
I look elusively at the phenomenon and ask: what is this? I take value as an absolute.

I can get a general feeling of what you're talking about here, and guess, but it would be really helpful if used clearer language, or define your terms for me.

I'd say that conscious experience is inherently qualiative, conscious critters such as ourselves experience a quality of life (unlike say a plant or rock as far as we know), which can be fulfilling or awful, and everything in between, from moment to moment. The explanation for the character of our conscious experiential states being rooted in evolutionary utility. Nevertheless it's this inherently qualiative nature of experiential states which brings meaning and value into a universe of dead rocks, and makes our lives valuable. Hence it matters (to use Goldstein's framing) whether we suffer or are happy, live or die. And hence Oughts.

Strip away the mystique of language, and there is no story. The language IS the story, and it is a pragmatic story, not one that reveals some absolute.

As for the evolutionary 'story', of course it's a rough model, we can't capture reality itself in an explanation. That doesn't mean we can't learn something about reality from an explanation.

But I was suggesting that we try to go for clarity in our language here. It's a difficult topic, and sometimes it's easy to get lost in vague, abstract language which feels appropriately elusive or profound, but perhaps loses some of its sway when pinned down. Of course the counter argument is that some things can't be properly conveyed in precise, mundane language, rather evocative and ambiguous language conveys the sense better. But I'd suggest that's what art is for, where-as philosophical discussion benefits from rigour and clarity.


The only absolute that I accept is very difficult to say. So I just point:there, that gangrenous leg and the agony it makes!But it is not to be said.
I disagree. Everyone understands the feelings you refer to, but a medic can study and use the language of biology to get an understanding of the physical processes, the science, and alleviate that suffering, perhaps by manipulating the action of chemical nerve blockers or somesuch. Morality in action. And if we can understand our evolved biases, it can help us treat others more equitably, morally. I gave the example of our tribal predispositions which evolved when we lived in small groups, when our neurobiological bonding mechanisms developed to work up close and personal,and strangers were a possible threat or competitor for resources. The way our tribalism plays out in our modern globalised world results in no end of conflict and suffering. Understanding it might help alleviate some of the dire consequences of our evolutionary history.


Yes, the explanatory task of understanding why we are the way we are is exactly what evolution is up to. Our evolved reward system is a startlingly obvious explanation for suffering, for example. Our evolved sociality is the obvious basis for the caring and cooperative aspects of human nature, which have become codified into notions of morality. Our knowledge is still crude, but it's getting more detailed as we speak, and the onus is on those who choose to ignore the evidence in favour of speculative alternatives.
Empirical theories tell us nothing of value as such. Value is invisible, so to speak, and yet, there is nothing more striking or profound; indeed, it IS the profundity. This Tikka Masala I made for dinner is amazingly good. What dos this mean? Yes, the spices are well blended and balanced, and the chiken, so tender,and so on; and if you observe my brain enjoying the dish you will see the pleasure centers light up; and you can hear me make yummy noises; and so on. But where is the good??? The good of it, the valuative good of it is simply not observable. This is why Wittgenstein said that in the book of all facts that are the case, there would be no fact of ethical value. Such things are transcendental (my conclusion).

As I said above the qualiative nature of consciousness experience is where value comes in. We care about our quality of life, it has value to each of us. And when I die, the thing I lose of value is that qualiative experience (as far as we know). So if I was on life support but had irreversible brain death, nothing of value would be lost if the machine was turned off and my body died.

Morality comes into the picture if we accept that this confers duties ('oughts') upon us to treat each other well, with consideration for each other's well-being, and our own too. As Harris tidily nails it - 'the well-being of conscious creatures'.

This understanding of ourselves affords us the opportunity to re-think our approach to morality, perhaps create a new consensus rooted in understanding ourselves better.
Once you accept the link between consciousness and materialism, as implied by neural correlation, and once you accept that we are material creatures which evolved, the rest falls into place. It doesn't spill the bounds of the theory. Suffering has evolutionary utilitarian purpose, abhorrence at terrible behaviour too, in the context of living in mutually dependent cooperative group, as do notions of fairness and caring for others. It also explains why we care most for the well-being of our kin and those we know well, less so for strangers, and our in-group tribal tendencies. Of course the reality is incredibly complex and messy, but the broad explanatory picture is clear. Morality is no longer a mystery at odds with evolution, it's a key part of it in the story of our species.
This is very hard to say and be understood. Materialism and the seamless neuronal production of consciousness obviates the need for any terms of distinction. I think it is all of a piece, and the ontology I am trying to focus on is ethical or valuative ontology. I want to ask, not the question of how ethical value is taken up in observation based theory, I want to address the matter at the level of basic assumptions, not unlike asking a question about, say, spatial direction, and not being satisfied until the questions run awash into eternity. The Being of ethical value is the where the transcendental argument begins.
And that's fine. We can each muse on what feels right to us about the fundamental nature of reality based on our experiential states. But doesn't it leave us open to follow our biases without any touchstone to check back to? And if one aspect of us is that our way of thinking evolved for utility, then we're chocka with bias and limitations, and being a human means you're a messy kludge of quick fixes to past problems. The problems you point out with approaches like empiricism don't just disappear.

What evolution does offer is a shared story about a shared humanity, a shared explanation of things we can agree are real (if only knowable in a limited way). It's always possible to question any assumption, you can rightly question the assumption that we know anything is real except our own experiential states. But then there is no common ground for us to share or discuss, shared public territory where can communicate relies on us making some shared assumptions.
I hope, at least, you see that, given that evolution is the current be an end all in popular secularsim, evolution in no way serves up an answer to the explanatory vacuum of ethics. It gives form to ethics, you might say, but cannot say why we are born to suffer and die. It merely accepts this as an assumption. But again, this is where the question begins, not ends.

Science offers material explanations of why we suffer and die, that's its currency. And the one Big clue we now have in linking the material with the mental/experiential, is neural correlation. We don't understand the relationship between the two, but we can observe that correlation. Think about what correlation means. It's the reason we can create an explanation for the nature of our mental states (that we suffer, hate this love that, etc) by looking at how evolutionary change sculpted the physical neuronal part of the mind/body correlation. That's why it's important. If we knew every last neuronal detail of you and I, we'd probably understand why we this differently ;).
These do not explain the phenomenonal experience (consciousness) itself - where it comes from, why it manifests in certain physical entities but apparently not others, etc, nobody knows that. But they do broadly explain why we are the way we are, the nature of the experience. Would you agree with that?
Science and the rest are not of a nature to explain things at the level of basic assumptions. They assume what is given. Here, we do not. We question the given, as we should, when the given, so to speak, has thrown us under the bus.



Okay, but if you're going to be consistent in questioning the given assumptions, then as I say, what common ground are we left with to discuss anything? And don't you in fact pick and choose your own assumptions? That I exist, that when I say suffering and joy you roughly know what I mean, and not the opposite. That if I point to an apple and say it's green, you know what that means, and if I say it always falls downwards because of something we call gravity, you know what that means to me? And if you agree with even those assumptions, you're in the world od empiricism, observation and science and evolution. The difference between objective and subjective, is when I point to an an apple and you agree it's green, that we share a reality we can agree we know things (roughly) about. Our shared agreed ground of assumptions, where we can have coherent communication.
No you misunderstood, that's one of the ways we put our values into practice in our daily 'getting on with life'. Understanding ourselves better through studying our evolved biases (such as the tribalism which is clearly not 'designed' by evolution to work well in our modern globalised, inter-connected world of strangers) must be a good thing.
But the matter is not how to put things into practice.
It is a question gives the human condition its religious dimension. What is ethical value?


In a nutshell I'd say morality is a concept we created to understand our evolved social and altruistic predispositions. Now we understand the actual evolved source of those predispositions, we need a new approach. I outlined my thoughts on what that could be above.

Well that turned out really long and probably repetitive, but I'm too fed up of hearing myself think about it now to proofread it, so sorry if it's a bit messy.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness

Post by Belindi »

Gertie wrote:
As I said, we don't know how the marble/consciousness (by which I mean experiential mental states) arises. Philosophy of mind has come up with some hypotheses, perhaps it's an emergent property of certain states of matter, perhaps it's a fundamental property of the universe and everything within it, or something else. Nobody knows. Including you and me. Nowt wrong with just saying 'I don't know'.
When we are occupied as metaphysical thinkers we presume that we can mentally hover above such ideas as mind defined as a "fundamental property of the universe" and that we are permitted to sort through all manner of propositions about fundamental properties of the universe. As a matter of fact we cannot possibly do this as disembodied consciousnesses without mentality( and more) which pertains to whatever culture that produced one. Despite this I like metaphysics and think it's worthwhile even if if my metaphysical preference is only pragmatically justifiable.

Please excuse me from the remainder of your longish post. I cannot manage more than one idea at a time.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness

Post by Hereandnow »

Gertie

If by 'Being' you mean the existence of conscious critters like ourselves, it's self-evident that the potential for us to exist, um existed. If you mean something other than consciousness by 'Being', please explain what as clearly as you can. For instance what qualities belong to 'Being' which aren't covered by consciousness? Any?


As I said, we don't know how the marble/consciousness (by which I mean experiential mental states) arises. Philosophy of mind has come up with some hypotheses, perhaps it's an emergent property of certain states of matter, perhaps it's a fundamental property of the universe and everything within it, or something else. Nobody knows. Including you and me. Nowt wrong with just saying 'I don't know'.
Oh well, it was just a metaphor. I resort to this only because there is so much resistance to the idea i am presenting. I am on a kind of mission to get people to see this point about ethics because I think brings out clearly something that is lost in philosophical discussion. Philosophy is supposed to break down systems of common belief by examining the assumptions they rest on, but ethics gets dismissed for many reasons: philosophy is supposed to be unflinching in its acceptance of the world's brutalities as a given to demonstrate objectivity, for example; but it is not very objective to fail to look closely at what underlies ethics. Compared to ethics, philosophy of mind or consciousness is a picnic.

By Being, I am looking at the world, firstly, phenomenologically, that is, with attention exclusively put on what presents itself in perception, not to draw distinctions about mind/body or "emergent properties" (which only makes sense if you can talk about nonemergent properties. Good luck with that, given that the language itself used to talk about such a thing would be an emergent property, would it not?). What appears before me is all there is to discuss, but then, what appears before me is certainly not so simple, after all, this is what Kant was doing and he wrote an awful lot about what presence in perception (and the judgment contained therein) necessitates beyond itself.

There is much we do not know, but what does what we do know tell us?

So this is my approach, I will try not be a name dropper, as that can be off putting, and I'll try to be efficient in making ideas clear.
Can you define what you mean by 'absolutes'?

I'd agree that empirical science deals with material 'stuff' and forces, and struggles to get a handle on how to explain experiential mental states/consciousness. I'm with Chambers in that I believe this is the Hard Problem, and there is a genuine explanatory gap. I don't know what, if anything, you mean in addition to that by using the term 'absolutes'.
An absolute, by my thinking, is in the presence of Being here, and I hold this regardless of the interpretative nature of the propositions that would be used to acknowledge presence. This would be along the lines of "being appeared to redly."

But now, the BIg question in my thinking is this: I am very aware that language and its logic and words is essentially pragmatic, or instrumental. To know X is to know what happens when X is encountered. I think what we call knowledge is pragmatic engagement, and saying "the couch is brown" as a descriptive fact is reducible to the anticipatory nature of the encounter, the forward-looking equation that says, when I encounter something like this, I can expect such and such possibilities to manifest. You know, couches are pretty harmless, I can utter the noise 'couch' in English and others will know what I mean, and so on. Pragmatics is problem solving, and I think talk about couches is talk about shared experiences about that kind of thing regarding what can be anticipated when encountering it; it talk that is analyzable in terms of that long shared childhood we as a language community had when we were being introduced to the symbols, phonetic and otherwise, and observed how these symbols were used and how they denoted and connoted the world.
SO: an absolute: there is in the presence of things encountered the presence of these things, and this presence is acknowledgable existentially, as well as pragmatically! That is my dramatic position. And this presence is intrinsically valuative, that is, we do not have value free experiences. Open you eyes in the morning and you are always already caring, interested; such a thing is built into perception itself (Dewey put this best), and the caring I have in mind is,of course, about, say, that spear in my kidney. That presence as a presence is deeply profound,and it is not doubtable, but is an intuitive absolute. Absolutes, to speak loosely, are embedded in experience, because value,though certainly not always so intense, is embedded in experience.
Agreed, and I gave many qualifiers in terms of it being a limited broad account of how consciousness has been molded by evolutionary factors. But once you accept the principle, you have an explanatory model of why human nature is the way it is. Including suffering, moral social predispositions and so on.
Yes, you do. But this explanatory model does not take up ethical value as a theme of investigation. It in interested in the forces of competition in survival and reproduction, but as a typical empirical theory, it merely assumes what is given and does not discuss it at all. Further, it doesn't matter what evolutionary course is historically behind value, it is the nature of what has arisen out of that history of random genetic mutations that is at issue. i am focusing exclusively, as it has been called, the thing itself (not the infamous thing in itself), the pudding of "the proof is in the..."
I can get a general feeling of what you're talking about here, and guess, but it would be really helpful if used clearer language, or define your terms for me.

I'd say that conscious experience is inherently qualiative, conscious critters such as ourselves experience a quality of life (unlike say a plant or rock as far as we know), which can be fulfilling or awful, and everything in between, from moment to moment. The explanation for the character of our conscious experiential states being rooted in evolutionary utility. Nevertheless it's this inherently qualiative nature of experiential states which brings meaning and value into a universe of dead rocks, and makes our lives valuable. Hence it matters (to use Goldstein's framing) whether we suffer or are happy, live or die. And hence Oughts.
Right, it is the quality that is being looked at. I would just repeat, evolution does not take up the issue of WHAT manifests, only how it does so. I am looking at the the what of it, the purely given. (It should be kept in mind that the theory of evolution is brought forth by intellectual endowments that are themselves wrought out of, if you will, evolution. This is one way to put empirical science under suspicion.

As to oughts, here it is the ethical ought (not the ordinary kind, as in, you ought to bring an umbrella if you don't want to get wet. This is a conditional ought. I am talking about a categorical imperative, not a hypothetical one, if you want to use that language)
As for the evolutionary 'story', of course it's a rough model, we can't capture reality itself in an explanation. That doesn't mean we can't learn something about reality from an explanation.

But I was suggesting that we try to go for clarity in our language here. It's a difficult topic, and sometimes it's easy to get lost in vague, abstract language which feels appropriately elusive or profound, but perhaps loses some of its sway when pinned down. Of course the counter argument is that some things can't be properly conveyed in precise, mundane language, rather evocative and ambiguous language conveys the sense better. But I'd suggest that's what art is for, where-as philosophical discussion benefits from rigour and clarity.
I believe that evolution is a proper theory, as is particle physics. But these are not the focus here. I want to look plainly at what we have before us sans the many empirical theories that would make a claim on it, that would tell us what ethical value is. These are suspended, and the stuff of ethics is laid bare.
I disagree. Everyone understands the feelings you refer to, but a medic can study and use the language of biology to get an understanding of the physical processes, the science, and alleviate that suffering, perhaps by manipulating the action of chemical nerve blockers or somesuch. Morality in action. And if we can understand our evolved biases, it can help us treat others more equitably, morally. I gave the example of our tribal predispositions which evolved when we lived in small groups, when our neurobiological bonding mechanisms developed to work up close and personal,and strangers were a possible threat or competitor for resources. The way our tribalism plays out in our modern globalised world results in no end of conflict and suffering. Understanding it might help alleviate some of the dire consequences of our evolutionary history.

Of course, but the treatment, application, these are other matters. They take up the world as a problem to solve, and there is not a doubt this is right (as I said, I think language itself is essentally pragmatic). But the given, the original given is a different matter.

Sorry, out of time for now. Perhaps that is enough?
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness

Post by Belindi »

Gertie wrote:
I'd agree that empirical science deals with material 'stuff' and forces, and struggles to get a handle on how to explain experiential mental states/consciousness. I'm with Chambers in that I believe this is the Hard Problem, and there is a genuine explanatory gap. I don't know what, if anything, you mean in addition to that by using the term 'absolutes'.
Is consciousness the "hard Problem" because consciousness relates only to subjects who are cognitively isolated from one another? If so then if neuroscientist linked two nervous systems and associated bodies proper so that each phenomenon experienced by the one was experienced simultaneously by the other there would be no Hard Problem of consciousness.
If this neuroscientific marvel affected every conscious being there would be no individuals. If there were no individuals there would be no basis for evolution by natural selection and consciousness, and the species that bear consciousness, would have no raison d'etre.
Evolution is not a theory that is a mirror of nature; no theory is.
Agreed, and I gave many qualifiers in terms of it being a limited broad account of how consciousness has been molded by evolutionary factors. But once you accept the principle, you have an explanatory model of why human nature is the way it is. Including suffering, moral social predispositions and so on.
I look elusively at the phenomenon and ask: what is this? I take value as an absolute.
Consciousness has been moulded by evolutionary factors, true. Given the basic Darwinian equation : struggle to live + genetic mutations = evolutionary change, I can presume that the naked forked animal evolved from some environmental and/or genetic accidents which set that genome going on its sapient course which combines culture with genes. If consciousness were not isolated individual by individual evolutionary change could not happen according to the same principle that rules if a universal opposable thumb were common property evolution by natural selection could not happen. In other words there has to be that difference between individuals.

It may be argued that opposable thumbs occupy space and time as conscious minds don't. But conscious minds is a name for the qualia which pertain to space-time entities such as brains or thumbs.

So far I agree with Gertie. However if an absolute means a metaphysical necessity I don't take value or values as an absolute necessity but rather as aspects of culture which is a necessity for the speciation of homo sapiens.


I'd say that conscious experience is inherently qualiative, conscious critters such as ourselves experience a quality of life (unlike say a plant or rock as far as we know), which can be fulfilling or awful, and everything in between, from moment to moment. The explanation for the character of our conscious experiential states being rooted in evolutionary utility. Nevertheless it's this inherently qualiative nature of experiential states which brings meaning and value into a universe of dead rocks, and makes our lives valuable. Hence it matters (to use Goldstein's framing) whether we suffer or are happy, live or die. And hence Oughts.
I agree about the qualitative nature of conscious experience, if this means that each experience is evaluated according to pain versus absence of pain.I also agree about the need for qualitative experience as one of the adjuncts of the individual's survival until it begets offspring. However a peculiarity of humans is that culture occurred simultaneously with physical evolution and values pertain to culture and not to physical evolution. Physical evolution has a hand in values , very often, but not invariably. For instance when we claim as we do that kindness is linked to maternal care for offspring we are linking kindness to physical evolution. But when we enshrine kindness, or conversely callousness, in concepts and their language we are linking to culture. With both of those complementary routes to values there's no need to posit some otherworldly and absolute origin for values.
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness

Post by Gertie »

A bit pushed for time just now, but will reply soon
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Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness

Post by Gertie »

Gertie

If by 'Being' you mean the existence of conscious critters like ourselves, it's self-evident that the potential for us to exist, um existed. If you mean something other than consciousness by 'Being', please explain what as clearly as you can. For instance what qualities belong to 'Being' which aren't covered by consciousness? Any?


As I said, we don't know how the marble/consciousness (by which I mean experiential mental states) arises. Philosophy of mind has come up with some hypotheses, perhaps it's an emergent property of certain states of matter, perhaps it's a fundamental property of the universe and everything within it, or something else. Nobody knows. Including you and me. Nowt wrong with just saying 'I don't know'.
Oh well, it was just a metaphor. I resort to this only because there is so much resistance to the idea i am presenting. I am on a kind of mission to get people to see this point about ethics because I think brings out clearly something that is lost in philosophical discussion. Philosophy is supposed to break down systems of common belief by examining the assumptions they rest on, but ethics gets dismissed for many reasons: philosophy is supposed to be unflinching in its acceptance of the world's brutalities as a given to demonstrate objectivity, for example; but it is not very objective to fail to look closely at what underlies ethics. Compared to ethics, philosophy of mind or consciousness is a picnic.

By Being, I am looking at the world, firstly, phenomenologically, that is, with attention exclusively put on what presents itself in perception, not to draw distinctions about mind/body or "emergent properties" (which only makes sense if you can talk about nonemergent properties.
Consciousness/Experiential States is simply another way of saying Phenomenology/Being/Presence, isn't it? It's a mysterious and amazing thing. And your mission is to examine the phenomenology/experiential states to see what it can tell us about reality and meaning, including ethics. I'm not resistant to that, it fascinates me too. I simply have a different analysis, because I think that if I try to apply some methodology, then I have two options. Rigorous scepticism, which means we can't draw any conclusions about the reality of anything but our own experiential states (including anyone else's existence), and there is no common ground for discussion. Or we make inferences about an external reality based on the nature of our experiential states - make assumptions as you put it. For example that we both exist and are communicating, on an electronic message board.

From all you've said, I can't see why we can't agree on all that.

The difference arises based on which assumptions we're prepared to run with. My mental states give me a vast, complicated and coherent picture of an external world, in which I inhabit a specific pov, moving through time and space. Along with a whole bunch of other people, who seem to experience this world in a similar way. Hence I'm prepared to accept that we can (roughly, limitedly) agree on certain provisional truths about the world, like this message board and this convo exist. Shared truths. Assumptions we agree on.

So where does that lead us? Well the backstory of accepting you and I share a material world we can coherently discuss using electronic devices is vast of course. And it suggests that the universe of material stuff preceded consciousness/phenomenology. Preceded critters with experiential states. And that conscious critters such as ourselves evolved over time, with our conscious reward system being a key feature our survival (eat when hungry, avoid pain,etc) .

So we have this incredibly complex, rough but shared model of the world, and you're right the nature of the model is moulded by our limitations (perceptual, cognitive), our 'design' for utility, by learning, language and and so on. And is changing all the time. But with all those caveats, if we're trying to be consistent with following our inferences, this is the model we get, and in which we can find the common ground of communicating about shared truths. AKA the common ground of empiricism, reason and scientific methodology.

But it offers no answers to phenomenological consciousness itself, no theory of consciousness, so our model is fundamentally incomplete. It gives us an explanation of the utility-based evolved nature of our experiential states, evolution working on physical neurons which correlate with experiential states.

So far so good? Anything you would challenge there? Ultimately it's all a construction of inference upon inference, leading from the character of the experiential states, but it's based on the entirety of what those experiential states are (the profound and mundane), and all follows once you accept you can know anything but your own experiential states. And the 'proof' is it works, it's coherent, makes testable predictions. Until it doesn't, then we adjust the model.

I'll grant it doesn't offer an explanation of why there's something rather than nothing in the first place ('being'), or whether consciousness (phenomenology) is fundamental, emergent, whatev . And I don't believe your approach can tell us either. There are some things we simply don't know, hardly surprising.

My question for you, is what specifically is this account is missing? Which are the unwarranted assumptions, how do you justify cherry-picking which inferences to trust and which to discard if you don't agree with my methodology of inference?

Where ethics fits into this, I've already answered. The inherently qualitative nature of experiential states (the 'nasty and nice' of phenomenology apparently rooted in our evolved reward system) brings meaning and value into the world, or as I'd put it, Mattering. It matters if I have a good or bad quality of life. And it matters if you do too. Hence we should treat other conscious creatures kindly. That's my basis for moral duties, for oughts.


I think that pretty much summarises where I think we're at
Gertie
Posts: 2181
Joined: January 7th, 2015, 7:09 am

Re: Steve Pinker Lambasts American Left for Political Correctness

Post by Gertie »

Belindi
I'd agree that empirical science deals with material 'stuff' and forces, and struggles to get a handle on how to explain experiential mental states/consciousness. I'm with Chambers in that I believe this is the Hard Problem, and there is a genuine explanatory gap. I don't know what, if anything, you mean in addition to that by using the term 'absolutes'.

Is consciousness the "hard Problem" because consciousness relates only to subjects who are cognitively isolated from one another? If so then if neuroscientist linked two nervous systems and associated bodies proper so that each phenomenon experienced by the one was experienced simultaneously by the other there would be no Hard Problem of consciousness.
If this neuroscientific marvel affected every conscious being there would be no individuals. If there were no individuals there would be no basis for evolution by natural selection and consciousness, and the species that bear consciousness, would have no raison d'etre.
An intriguing idea. The term the Hard Problem, as I understand it, refers to something slightly different, the difficulty of a materialist based scientific model of how things work being able to explain or encompass experiential states. It's difficult to see how it even could. What's a unit of consciousness, how big is it, what laws govern it - not the ones which physicists talk about.

I don't think linking two people's consciousness together answers this. And thinking about it, I'd guess it would be a chaotic and perhaps incomprehensible experience. Bear in mind we evolved to have one pair of eyes and ears which link to their subsystems, but if the joined consciousnesses had one set of visual input (eg seeing a desk) and the other pair of eyes seeing what's happening out the window, and this duplicated in many other systems, I think it would be hard to 'process' all this into a unified and coherent model of the world and the self. Then times that by everyone in world, well it would be interesting but crazy! If we'd originally evolved as consciously linked, I suppose we'd be a very different kind of critter.
Consciousness has been moulded by evolutionary factors, true. Given the basic Darwinian equation : struggle to live + genetic mutations = evolutionary change, I can presume that the naked forked animal evolved from some environmental and/or genetic accidents which set that genome going on its sapient course which combines culture with genes. If consciousness were not isolated individual by individual evolutionary change could not happen according to the same principle that rules if a universal opposable thumb were common property evolution by natural selection could not happen. In other words there has to be that difference between individuals.

It may be argued that opposable thumbs occupy space and time as conscious minds don't. But conscious minds is a name for the qualia which pertain to space-time entities such as brains or thumbs.
Discovering neural correlation does lead me to believe that if evolution sculpted our neurons, which isn't controversial, then it inevitably sculpted our conscious experience - and the usefulness of the reward system clearly supports that. You're right to point out the importance of culture too. Our main evolutionary edge as a species is our ability to learn (form new neural connections), and thereby adapt to different environments. And part of that is our socialisation. We have neurobiological mechanisms which make us incredibly adept at picking up nuanced signals, and being a social species has formed our ideas of right and wrong behaviour - morality.
I'd say that conscious experience is inherently qualiative, conscious critters such as ourselves experience a quality of life (unlike say a plant or rock as far as we know), which can be fulfilling or awful, and everything in between, from moment to moment. The explanation for the character of our conscious experiential states being rooted in evolutionary utility. Nevertheless it's this inherently qualiative nature of experiential states which brings meaning and value into a universe of dead rocks, and makes our lives valuable. Hence it matters (to use Goldstein's framing) whether we suffer or are happy, live or die. And hence Oughts.
I agree about the qualitative nature of conscious experience, if this means that each experience is evaluated according to pain versus absence of pain.I also agree about the need for qualitative experience as one of the adjuncts of the individual's survival until it begets offspring. However a peculiarity of humans is that culture occurred simultaneously with physical evolution and values pertain to culture and not to physical evolution. Physical evolution has a hand in values , very often, but not invariably. For instance when we claim as we do that kindness is linked to maternal care for offspring we are linking kindness to physical evolution. But when we enshrine kindness, or conversely callousness, in concepts and their language we are linking to culture. With both of those complementary routes to values there's no need to posit some otherworldly and absolute origin for values.
Exactly.
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