As I said earlier, John R. Searle is a great philosophical critic. Armed with muscular prose, common sense, and a surly (Searle-ly?) attitude, he shreds the sophistry of Dennett and Co. But I have never quite understood his own solution to the mind-body problem. Herewith, some notes on one aspect of my difficulties and his.
Continue reading “On Searle: Irreducibility Without Dualism?”
A zombie is a critter that is physically and behaviorally exactly like a human being (or any being that we consider to be conscious) but lacks consciousness. That is a stipulative definition, so don't argue with me about it. Just accept it. I'll use 'zombie' to refer to human zombies and won't worry about cat zombies, etc.
The Zombies were a 1960's British Invasion rock group that had a couple of smash singles before vanishing into the oblivion whence they sprang. Out and about one Saturday afternoon, surfing the FM band, I came across one of their hits, "She's Not There." I have heard it countless times, and it is probably playing in your head right now, dear reader. (I apologize for the meme infestation.)
Suddenly, after all these years, the song assumed New Meaning, Deep Meaning. The Zombies were singing about a philosophical zombie! The refrain, "But she's not there" referred to the light (of consciousness) being out in the poor lass. (And how do you know that said light was not out in them as well?)
A Heideggerian could gloss the situation as follows. To be there is to be a case of Dasein, Da-Sein. The girl was vorhanden all right, and perhaps even zuhanden (as a tool for sexual gratification), aber sie war nicht da, nicht ein Fall vom Dasein. She was a Black Forest zombie.
To answer this question we need to know what we mean by 'explain' and how it differs from 'explain away.'
1. Is there a difference between religion and superstition, or is religion by its very nature superstitious? There seem to be two main views. One is that of skeptics and naturalists. For them, religion, apart perhaps from its ethical teaching, is superstitious in nature so that there could not be a religion free of superstition. Religion just is a tissue of superstitious beliefs and practices and has been exposed as such by the advance of natural science. The other view is that of those who take religion seriously as having a basis in reality. They do not deny that there are superstitious beliefs, practices, and people. Nor do they deny that religions are often interlarded with superstition. What they deny is that religion is in its essence superstitious.
Continue reading “Questions About Religion and Superstition. Superstitious Materialism”
The thesis of intentionality can be stated roughly as follows: Every consciousness is a consciousness of something. I claim that this Brentano thesis is false because of the existence of non-intentional states of consciousness. Peter Lupu understands and agrees but no one else hereabouts does. So I need to take a few steps back and issue some clarifications. I begin by distinguishing among four uses of 'of.' I'll call them the subjective, the objective, the dual, and the appositive. Once these are on the table one or two impediments to the understanding of my point — which of course is not original with me — will have been removed.
Continue reading “Four Uses of ‘Of’ and Non-Intentional Conscious States”
What follows in purple are two quotations (from separate works) from the Ayn Rand Lexicon.
If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it had to be conscious of something. If that which you claim to perceive does not exist, what you possess is not consciousness. (FNI, 124)
Directly or indirectly, every phenomenon of consciousness is derived from one’s awareness of the external world. Some object, i.e., some content, is involved in every state of awareness. Extrospection is a process of cognition directed outward—a process of apprehending some existent(s) of the external world. Introspection is a process of cognition directed inward—a process of apprehending one’s own psychological actions in regard to some existent(s) of the external world, such actions as thinking, feeling, reminiscing, etc. It is only in relation to the external world that the various actions of a consciousness can be experienced, grasped, defined or communicated. Awareness is awareness of something. A content-less state of consciousness is a contradiction in terms. (ITOE, 37)
This sort of writing is typical of Rand and Peikoff, et al. It is confused and confusing and will be dismissed out of hand by most philosophers. Yet there may be a solid point here that someone like Harry Binswanger could develop and make persuasive. It is clear from the above passages and others that Rand wants to show that there exist entities that are transcendent of consciousness. Indeed, she wants to show that the denial of such transcendent entities is self-contradictory. But how will she achieve this goal?
Herewith, a quotation from John Searle that supports my contention that there are non-intentional mental states:
Now clearly, not all our mental states are in this way directed or Intentional. For example, if I have a pain, ache, tickle, or itch, such conscious states are not in that sense directed at anything; they are not 'about' anything, in the way that our beliefs, fears, etc. must in some sense be about something. ("What is an Intentional State?" in Dreyfus, ed. Husserl, Intentionality and Cognitive Science, p. 259.)
Searle writes 'Intentional' rather than 'intentional' to underscore the fact that 'intention' as philosophers use it is a terminus technicus wider in meaning than 'intention' as when one says, for example, 'Her intention is to retire in Florida.' My intending to run a half-marathon in May is an instance of Intentionality, but so is my noting that the sun is setting — despite the fact that Old Sol's habits don't fall within the purview of my will. I Intend the sun's setting, but I don't intend it. Get it? Now that the point has been made, I will drop the capital 'I.'
The thesis of this post is that there are non-intentional mental states. To establish this thesis all I need is one good example. So consider the felt pain that ensues when I plunge my hand into extremely hot water. This felt pain or phenomenal pain is a conscious mental state. But it does not exhibit intentionality. If this is right, then there are mental states that are non-intentional. Of course, it all depends on what exactly is meant by 'intentionality.' Here is how I understand it.
Rod Serling's Twilight Zone was an outstanding TV series that ran from 1959-1964. The episode "The Lonely" aired in November, 1959. I have seen it several times, thanks to the semi-annual Sci Fi channel TZ marathons. There is one in progress as I write. One can extract quite a bit of philosophical juice from "The Lonely" as from most of the other TZ episodes. I'll begin with a synopsis.
Synopsis.James A. Corry is serving a 50 year term of solitary confinement on an asteroid nine million miles from earth. Supplies are flown in every three months. Captain Allenby, unlike the other two of the supply ship's crew members, feels pity for Corry, and on one of his supply runs brings him a female robot named 'Alicia' to alleviate his terrible loneliness. The robot is to all outer appearances a human female. At first, Corry rejects her as a mere robot, a machine, and thus "a lie." He feels he is being mocked. "Why didn't they build you to look like a machine?" But gradually Corry comes to ascribe personhood to Alicia. His loneliness vanishes. They play chess with a set he has constructed out of nuts and bolts. She takes delight in a Knight move, and Corry shares her delight. They beam at each other.
But then one day the supply ship returns with news that Corry's sentence has been commuted as part of a general abolition of punishment by banishment to asteroids. Allenby informs Corry that there is room on the ship only for him and 15 lbs of his personal effects. Alicia must be left behind. Corry is deeply distressed. "I'm not lonely any more. She's a woman!" Allenby replies, "She's a robot!" Finally, after some arguing back and forth, Allenby draws his sidearm and shoots Alicia in the face revealing her electronic innards. Corry's illusion of Alicia's personhood — if it is an illusion — dissipates and regretfully he boards the ship. The thirty minute episode ends with Serling's powerful closing narration:
On a microscopic piece of sand that floats through space is a fragment of a man's life. Left to rust is the place he lived in and the machines he used. Without use, they will disintegrate from the wind and the sand and the years that act upon them; all of Mr. Corry's machines — including the one made in his image, kept alive by love, but now obsolete — in the Twilight Zone.
Philosophical Analysis. The episode raises a number of philosophical questions. Here are some of them.
Continue reading “Philosophy From the Twilight Zone: “The Lonely””
In an earlier post on hylomorphic dualism, I said that
Aquinas cannot do justice to his own insight into the independence of the intellect from matter from within the hylomorphic scheme of ontological analysis he inherits from Aristotle. His metaphysica generalis is at war with his special-metaphysical insight into the independence of intellect from matter.
To help nail down half of this assertion, the half that credits the Common Doctor with insight, let's look at one of the arguments Aquinas gives for the intellect's independence of matter, the one at Summa Contra Gentiles, Book II, Chapter 49, Paragraph 8:
Also, the action of no body is self-reflexive. For it is proved in [Aristotle's] Physics[VIII, 5, 256a2-33] that no body is moved by itself except with respect to a part, so that one part of it is the mover and the other the moved. But in acting the intellect reflects on itself, not only as to a part, but as to the whole of itself. Therefore, it is not a body.
One will be tempted to dismiss this quaint verbiage as just so much medieval mumbo-jumbo, but I think there is an argument here that has a serious claim on our attention. Taking some minor liberties, I would present the argument as a nice, neat syllogism:
Continue reading “Aquinas on Intellect’s Independence of Matter: Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 49, 8″
