Time Go Bye

Wow. It has certainly been a while. I will spare us all, or rather, my self, from the cliche of promising to post more often since it is more than likely that I will wait another six odd months before I post again.

My first term of grad school over and done with. It is awesome that we get to, you know, think about, like, stuff, all day...and...yeah. Oh me: articulate as ever.

One modest observation. Today in class I mentioned, somewhat jokingly, that I am never at loss for criticism of a paper. Except, of course, if it is one of my own. My friend responding, said stated that she doubted that was true of my own work: I had to agree. Sure enough, today I gave up on a paper I wanted to get published because I decided it was garbage. To think once upon I thought it was actually OK...pfff!!!

The Argument from Structure

Here are some thoughts. Maybe there are some arguments here, and some good ideas, but nothing well worked out. I just thought I would write these ideas out:

I was reading "Consciousness and Its Place in Nature" by Chalmers the other day, and I was struck by what I take to be his main argument against the position he calls "type-C" materialism, which is the view that, roughly, while philosophical zombies are conceivable now, eventually through science (or some other a posteriori means) we will determine that they are not. To use some of Chalmers terminolgy: under type-C materialism zombies are only prima facie conceivable, but they are not ideally conceivable. That is, after idealized rational reflection, they will not be conceivable.

What we have is an epistemic gap, which the type-Cer thinks we can close. Chalmers thinks otherwise. Here is what I take to be his argument (pages are from the draft on his website):

(1) "Physical descriptions of the world characterize the world in terms of structure and dynamics" (p.23)

(2) "From truths about structure and dynamics, one can deduce only further truths about structure and dynamics". (p.23-24)

(3) "Truths about consciousness are not truths about structure and dynamics". (p.24)

I take it that this is supposed to show that consciousness is not physical, in the sense that it means we can not determine phenomenal truths from physical ones. I am willing to grant (1) and (2), since what I will take issue with is (3). (actually, if I am right, (1) and (2) would probably have to be revised, but I am interested for the time being in his defesne of (3) )What does Chalmers say in defense of it?

He makes an appeal to the usual reasons, namely Jackson's Mary example, the lesson of which is: someone who knows all the physical facts cannot deduce from them the phenomenal facts. But what about the other direction? Does anything of any consequence follow when we worry about deducing physical truths from phenomenal ones?

Ignore Mary for a moment. Here is something we don't want to hold in order for (3) to come out true:

(P) all truths about conscious states are phenomenal truths.

Surely (P) is false. It is not a "phenomenal truth" of my conscious experience of the Rickard's Red bottle sitting in front of me (alas, empty) that it exists. That my conscious experience exists is a "phenomenal truth" in a trivial sense (it is a truth of a phenomenal state) does not suffice to make it a phenomenal truth in the sense that, say, my experience is of red is a phenomenal truth: existence is not a phenomenological truth. It is a metaphysical truth, in this case, about a phenomenological state. Another example. Clearly the fact that my experience happens at time t and continues till t* (when I look away from the bottle) is a temporal, and not a phenomenal truth of my experience. So (P) is false. What about the following:

(P*) All truths about conscious states are introspectable.

Surely (P*) is false. Perhaps, in principle, for someone with infinite knowledge (P*) is true, but for us mere mortals with our limited epistemic abilities it is false. I can sit here, and quiet easily, introspect the truths that my experience of the bottle in front of me exists, and that it occurs over a certain period of time. Thus, I can introspect these existence (so to speak) and temporal truths about my experience by simply having other experiences that have these truths as their content.
However, consider truths, seemingly legion in number, that one might not be in an epistemic position to introspect. Before he learns the awful truth of his situation, as Oedipus looked at the Sphinx it would be a truth of his visual experience that it was the experience of the son of Jocasta. But he cannot introspect this truth, not yet anyways. When he does learn this truth, it seems he has learned physical truths: namely, that he is the son of Jocasta. So, not all truths of our consciousness can be introspected, not, at least, without looking at the world, and learning physical truths about it!

What is the point of these two principles? Well, they are supposed to draw two morals, which I think are better understood when we think of things in terms of properties, and not "truths": (1) not all properties of conscious states are phenomenal properties, and (2) not all properties of conscious states are introspectable (independent of knowledge of the world). Both of these relate to what truths about conscious states we can deduce from the first person perspective. That is, there are some truths, properties etc. the knowledge of which we can only deduce from learning truths about the world.

Sit in the armchair as long as you like, and you will find that not all properties of conscious states are phenomenal, similarly introspect as much as you like and you will find that there are some properties of your conscious states you need to look at the world to learn.

Thus, neither (P) nor (P*) can provide support for (3). We cannot reject the type-C assertion that truths about consciousness are not truths about structure and dynamics for these reasons. This is because the falsity of (P) allows that conscious states can have non-phenomenal truths, so that allows, at least in principle, for conscious truths to be structural or dynamic. The falsity of (P*) allows that there can be some truths about consciousness we have to peak at the world to discover. Thus, in principle, conscious truths might be structural or dynamic even if we cannot introspect the structure or dynamic nature of consciousness without looking at the truths of the physical world.

But wait? the claim was that we cannot deduce phenomenal truths from physical ones, not the sorts of proposals I have made.

This is true. But here is the rub: if you go along with me and reject (P) and (P*), then why be convinced by things going the other way around? Here is, what I take to be, the analogous position to take in response to Chalmers actual defense of (3): one needs to know physical AND phenomenal truths in order to deduce the latter from the former. Just as you submitted that we need to know third person, PHYSICAL truths to know all the truths about consciousness, so too in order to know all the physical truths we need to know first person, PHENOMENAL truths as well.

Thus, (3) is false because of:

(4) we can deduce truths about consciousness from physical truths, but this requires knowing truths about consciousness as well.

I am not sure how original this idea is. It seems somehow obvious, and simplistic, in its attack. But as I said at the beginning, I was not promising any well thought out (or defended) view. Just some arguments and stuff.

Lazy

I had a blast at the SPP. What is more fun than drinking with philosophers at a sports by I ask you? Nothing.

Trying to get an apartment in Maryland has been a total pain in the ass.

SPP

So,

The CPA was a lot of fun. Road trips, in of themselves, are always fun, and when the travelling party is made up entirely of philosophers road trips are that much better!

I leave tomorrow morning for the SPP. Should be fun. Here is a photo from Saskatoon, which I like to call "Philosophers Drinking":

Spring Conferences

So, this spring I will be conferencing it up conference style at some conferences. I am driving from Winnipeg with some other Manitoba people to Saskatoon for the CPA where I will be presenting a paper on natural kinds and the special composition question titled "Lions, Tigers and Chairs". That is next weekend. Mid June I am flying to Toronto for the SPP where I will be doing another poster, this time titled "Distinguishing Learning from Long-term Memory".

I am a little excited to present both papers. The former, because I have never presented a paper outside phil mind/cog sci before, the latter, because it is not as tight as I would like it to be, and there will be lots of people at the SPP who probably know lots more about the topic than I do. Thus, both are outside of my comfort zone a little bit. It will be interesting to see how things pan out.

I got into Maryland

So, this morning I received an offer from Maryland. While I applied to 13 schools, received 11 rejections (one app was fouled up by accident) this make me no less happy to receive it. I imagine Maryland ranked rather high for me relative to most applicants, and not just because a good friend of mine from Winnipeg started there last year.

It certainly came down to the wire, but I was rather surprised that I was never really that anxious after I found out I was on the wait list. Perhaps all those stoic texts I have been reading have started to pay off.

But more than anything, I am glad to now have the chance to prove myself as a philosopher. Last year when I applied and was rejected, and this year as I received repeated rejections, I kept saying to myself something along the lines of "I just need one shot". As many know, the process is far from perfect (the expression "crap shoot" is often thrown around in my experience), and this makes it especially tough coming from a place like Manitoba, which does not so much have a bad reputation but is rather lacking one. This is not to detract from the school (I can think of few places in Canada that are better for doing philosophy in-my-humble-opinion), of course, but only to point out the difficulty of applying to American programs when coming from such an institution.

Hopefully I have more to post as I find out more information.

Representationalism and the Evolution of Consciousness

For a while now I have been wondering if the following two theses in the philosophy of mind are compatible:

(1) Representationalism: necessarily, the phenomenal content of our conscious experience (the qualia, what it is like etc.) is identical with the representational content of such experiences.

(2) Consciousness is evolved: it has been selected by nature to meet a certain adaptive function.

Before continuing, one caveat: I AM NOT well versed in evolutionary biology. At least, not enough to know whether or not the things my argument relies on are, in fact, true. So, what I am suggesting is conditional on me being, roughly, right, about so stuff about evolution.

Now, most of what I have been wondering is about what we say modally about consciousness if it is evolved. More specifically, what we say about consciousness if we want to claim that it meets some evolutionary function. Evolutionary function isn't like how we assign functions to things we make. Take the classic example of the Panda's thumb, versus a clamp. A clamp is made the way it is, with the two opposing sides, in order to hold two things together tightly. Thus, in all instances of clamps, they have the function of clamping (this is not to say, of course, that only clamps are the only things that can have this function. I could get my brother's dog to bite down hard on whatever I had in the workshop, but it would probably be a mean thing to do!).
Compare this with the Panda's thumb, which is not, anatomically, a thumb at all, but a part of the wrist bone that has the function of stripping the leaves and branches off of bamboo so that it can be eaten. How did the Panda's wrist bone get like this, how was it selected for this function? Well, here are two stories that are sometimes told and it isn't important which is true for our purposes: (a), over countless generations this particular bone has gradually gotten larger, since having a larger wrist bone provided an advantage: it made it easier to eat bamboo. (b) during, say, a couple of generations there was a drastic mutation that caused individuals to have rather large wrist bones, and this was of such a huge advantage that within a couple of generations all Panda's had this particular anatomical feature. It is my impression that some think (a) is true, others (b), and others sometimes (a) or (b). It does not much matter for us, but I will go along with (b), because it provides an easier example.
Take the hypothetical "first" generation of panda's with large wrist bones. Do we say that, already, this bone has the function of stripping bamboo? No. It is just a mutation. It is an incredibly useful one as it turns out for these panda's (far more useful than the mutations of the panda's with the extra large ankles, nose or chin bones, for example), but still, it is a mutation. Since it provides a survival advantage Panda's with this mutation propagate at the expense of those without it and we say that panda's thumbs of following generations have the function of stripping bamboo. But the key here is that before something is selected for by evolution it is just a mutation, and many mutations are of absolutely no advantage to survival: the function comes after a mutation has shown how useful it is. So, there are instances of Panda's with wrist bones that do not have the function of stripping bamboo.

How does this relate to consciousness? Well, people who are physicalists and naturalists might think that consciousness evolved, a la (2) above. But if the above is right, like anything else consciousness must have been a really advantageous mutation at some point or another (I am obviously oversimplifying. It is doubtful consciousness evolved "all at once"). More specifically, phenomenal consciousness must have been a mutation. If the above account of evolutionary function is correct, then there must have been some generation(s) where individuals had phenomenal consciousness, but we would not say it had a function, not yet.
What is more, representing the external world, or just representing at all, seems like a function something has. It even seems like a function that conscious experience has (leave aside what kind of representations are unique to consciousness).

So here is the problem:

(i)representationalism claims that necessarily representational content and phenomenal content are identical.

(ii) if phenomenal consciousness was selected for by evolution then there was some time where we cannot properly say it had any function (not yet).

(iii) So for any (evolutionary) function of consciousness f, there was a time t during the course of evolution where consciousness did not have that function.

(iv) Representing seems like an evolutionary function of consciousness.

(v) If consciousness has the evolved function of representing certain content, then there was a time during the course of evolution where it did not have that function. (from iii and iv)

(vi) therefore, there is some time where conscious experience did not represent anything.

Now (i) and (vi) are incompatible. If (i) is right, then there is no possible individual who has a particular conscious experience, particular phenomenal content, without a particular representational content. But (vi) provides a counterexample of an actual set of individuals taht seem to contradict this. Thus our modal claim which the evolution of consciousness seems to lead to: denying the necessity claim of representationalism. Thus, if consciousness evolved, it seems that representationalism is false, and if it is true, then consciousness is not an evolved trait.

Now, I happen to think we should deny representationalism, but then, I never liked representationalism in the first place. The person who, I hope, is going to have a hard time of it is the representationlist who is a fully blooded naturalist and thinks that to represent is a evolutionary function, and who think consciousness is an evolved trait. I can see why many fb-naturalists are gonna wanna have it both ways, and this seems like a problem for them. That is, (1) and (2), which we started with, cannot both be true.

(Again, the caveat: I am not that confident about what I saw about evolutionary function)

Link

Wow,

So a friend of mine (hat tip Mark Barber) pointed out to me yesterday that I am linked to at the following website: http://gfp.typepad.com/intro_to_philosophy, which is the website for a really well known intro to phil textbook edited by John Perry, Michael Bratman and John Martin Fischer. What is rather amusing is that the previous edition of this text was MY intro textbook when I took the course at Manitoba! Ah memories.

Thus, if anything is going to motivate me to post more, this should be it, lest the shame of people being disappointed by my blog (more so) consume me and eventually doom my feeble existence. So let me post something immediately following this post that actually tries to say something, and hopefully, even something true.