"We should love both: those whose opinion we follow, and those whose opinion we reject. For both have applied themselves to the quest for the truth, and both have helped us in it." St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics, Book XII, Lecture 9.
Saturday Night at the Oldies: Randy Newman
I Love L. A. And his masterpiece sung by Judy Collins.
Consciousness: What Evolutionary Good Is It?
Bear in mind that the word 'consciousness' has several distinct meanings. 'Consciousness' can refer to the state of being awake, to the ability to introspect internal states, and to the phenomenon of attention. But 'consciousness' insofar as it poses a 'hard problem' for physicalists is the subjective quality of experience.
These subjective qualities can be features of sensations, but they need not be. Smashing my knee against a table leg elicits a certain unpleasant sensation. The felt quality of that sensation is an example of a conscious datum in the relevant sense. But so is the shimmering quality of a magnificent Saguaro cactus standing sentinel on a distant ridgeline as viewed in the lambent light of the desert Southwest. Qualia, then, can be associated with intentional objects and not merely with non-intentional states like sensations. Pressing some Husserlian jargon into service, we might distinguish between noematic qualia and hyletic qualia.
But the main question I want to pose is this: What good is consciousness from an evolutionary perspective? Owen Flanagan, Consciousness Reconsidered, MIT 1992, p. 42) has this to say:
What function might sensory or perceptual consciousness serve? Such consciousness could enable an organism to be sensitive to stimulus saliencies relevant to its suvival and to coordinate its goals with these saliencies. Informational sensitivity without experiential sensitivity (of the sort an unconscious robot might have) could conceivably serve the same function. Indeed, it often does. But the special vivacity of perceptual experience might enable quicker, more reliable, and more functional responses than a less robustly phenomenological system, and these might have resulted in small selection pressures in favor of becoming a subject of experience. At least this is one possible explanation for why Mother Nature would have selected a mind with capacities for robust phenomenological feel in the sensory modalities. It is good that reptiles are sensitive detectors of earthquakes. It enables them to get above ground before disaster hits. It is good that we feel pain. It keeps us from being burned, cut, and maimed. . . . Like photoreceptor cells designed for vision and wings for flight, the capacity to experience pleasure and pain is a design solution that Mother Nature has often used in different lineages of locomoting organisms.
I judge this to be a complete failure as an explanation of why consciousness has evolved. All the jobs Flanagan mentions might have been done 'in the dark' by unconscious processing. Yes, pain is good insofar as it keeps us from being burned, cut, and maimed. But pain in this sense is just the sum-total of physical events that play a certain causal role, that of causing the organism to withdraw or protect a part of its body on the occasion of a certain input. Think of a robotic arm equipped with heat sensors. It is designed to retract when the object it touches is at a certain temperature or above. The arm can function perfectly well without feeling anything.
Let's not forget that words like 'pain' lead a double life. 'Pain' is used to refer both to physical events and to their phenomenal manifestation. Phenomenal pain, far from being good, is evil, a form of natural evil. Insofar as it is (instrumentally) good, pain is not felt or phenomenal pain but the physical events that may or may not manifest themselves at the level of consciousness.
Consciousness is real — eliminativism is for lunatics — and so consciousness must be explained. But an evolutionary explanation is inadequate. Such an explanation must specify a survival function consciousness serves that could not be served without it. But what could that be? Thus I think David Chalmers (The Conscious Mind, Oxford 1996, p. 120) is on the right track:
The process of natural selection cannot distinguish between me and my zombie twin. Evolution selects properties according to their functional role, and my zombie twin performs all the functions that I perform just as well as I do; in particular he leaves around just as many copies of his genes. It follows that evolution alone cannot explain why conscious creatures rather than zombies evolved.
Chalmers also points out that
. . . the real problem with consciousness is to explain the principles in virtue of which consciousness arises from physical systems. Presumably these principles — whether they are conceptual truths, metaphysical necessities, or natural laws — are constant over space-time: If a physical replica of me had popped into existence a million years ago, it would have been just as conscious as I am. The connecting principles themselves are therefore independent of the evolutionary process. While evolution can be very useful in explaining why particular physical systems have evolved, it is irrelevant to the explanation of the bridging principles in virtue of which some of these systems are conscious. (p. 121)
This strikes me as an extremely important point. If we think of evolutionary genesis as proceeding 'horizontally,' then the arisal of consciousness can be thought of as 'vertical.' If we want to explain how consciousness arises from its physical substratum, it is simply irrelevant to be given an explanation of how certain traits were selected for. An evolutionary account might explain 'horizontally' how an organism became sufficiently complex to host consciousness, but such an account would do nothing to explain how consciousness arose 'vertically' from the organism.
Anti-Tea Party Bias in the New York Times
The usual left-wing tilt of the NYT's Tea Party coverage is not so egregious in this recent piece. But even when they try to be fair they can't seem to pull it off. The piece opens with the following sentence:
The Tea Party Movement is a diffuse American grass-roots group that taps into antigovernment sentiments.
"Diffuse American grass-roots group" is just right: accurate and ideologically neutral. But then, right on its heels, two pieces of blatant bias.
First, the movement is not fairly described as "antigovernment." To be opposed to an ever-expanding government, one that recognizes few or no limits, constitutional or otherwise, to the extension of its powers, is not to be opposed to government as such. To put it in simple terms that even a liberal can understand: to oppose BIG government is not to oppose government. Tea Party supporters are for the most part conservatives, with a sizable admixture of libertarians. Neither conservatives nor libertarians are opposed to government as such, though they disagree as to its legitimate size and scope. But neither want no government. (The only exception to this is the extreme fringe of the libertarian movement that shades off into anarchism. But these fringe folk are few in number and negligible in political clout.)
Second, it is not "sentiments," feelings, emotion, anger, that are at the source of the Tea Party protests but legitimate concerns based in fact and reason. It is precisely the Tea Partiers arguments that lefties will never address. Their tactic is to deflect attention from the arguments by psychologizing their proponents. And so they go on ad nauseam about voter anger and the like.
The piece I am quoting from is not on the OP-Ed page. It is supposed to be a piece of reportage. But we cannot get through even the first sentence without banging into leftist bias.
Scenes From a Tea Party
The party line of the Democrats and their fellow travellers is that the Tea Party Movement is fueled by racism. The moral scum who make these absurd and scurrilous allegations ought to be ashamed of themselves. I name names and go into details in other posts which you will find in the Race and Leftism categories. But just to verify what I already had excellent reasons for believing, namely, that there is no racist motivation to speak of behind the Tea Party protests, I decided I'd better attend one, which I did today. I visited one of the lesser gatherings of the day here in the Valley of the Sun, one held at Freestone Park, Gilbert, Arizona. The main speaker was Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. There was no racism apparent in the signs, the speakers, or the people I observed and spoke with. No racism, no extremism, no xenophobia, no overheated rhetoric, no incitements to violence. Just trenchant political dissent in the good old liberty- and free speech-loving American style, something that leftists don't understand, laboring as they do under the strange conceit that they own dissent, as if dissent were something inherently leftist. Here are some amateur shots of the event by your humble correspondent.
Fruitful Tensions
Mike Rand e-mails,
I was interested to see your recent correspondence and post on the radical vs the conservative. I couldn't help but notice that there is a potential parallel between this and a common interest of yours [ours?], the productive tension between Aristotle and Plato. A radical may be liable to point out that it because Plato is prepared to build a state upon rational rather than traditional grounds that he is prepared to consider women as equally well qualified to rule the state on meritocratic grounds (a la Mill), a thesis which is well supported in the contemporary world though unthinkable in ancient Greece. They may also contrast this against Aristotle’s impression of women which appears indefensible in the modern era but natural in his own time, and they may also draw attention to Aristotle’s defense of slavery. The conservative Aristotle on these points alone appears monstrous to a modern audience against the radical Plato. In accord with the recent post, we might very well conclude that the conservative is a reality-based thinker (within his own environment), whilst the radical is a utopian (prepared to look beyond his environment). The conservative in reply would of course draw attention to the realistic and practical view of Aristotle on running a state and compare this to the proto-communist authoritarian and elitist Plato who would construct a state, mentally at least, that would appear equally monstrous to a modern audience.
This is very perceptive. Since I am first and foremost an aporetician keen to isolate and sharpen problems under suspension of the natural tendency to glom onto quick solutions, it interests me and indeed worries me that there may be a tension between my tendency to give the palm to Plato over Aristotle and my conservative tendency. As I said recently:
One cannot be a philosopher unless one believes that at least some important truths are attainable or at least approachable by dialectical and argumentative means. Thus there is no place in philosophy for the misologist, the hater of reason, and his close relative the fideist. Reasoning and argument loom large in philosophy . . . .
But now I must add that to the extent that I favor reason over experience and tradition, the universal over the particular, the global over the local, the impersonal over the personal, to that extent I am in some conflict with my conservative tendency. One of the differences between conservatives and their liberal/left/radical brethren is that they are skeptical aqbout the value of reason in the ordering of political affairs.
Antony Flew Dead at 87
Here. ". . . it is clear that Flew’s repudiation of atheism was heartfelt and seems to have been largely rooted in his dislike of polemical atheism. His own atheism was always cautious, nuanced and respectful of Christian tradition. [. . .] Professor Antony Flew, philosopher, was born on February 11, 1923. He died on April 8, 2010, aged 87."
Intellectuals’ Flight From Politics
A 1947 essay by Irving Howe. It is perhaps not unnecessary to say that to link is not to endorse. Remember my motto: Study everything, join nothing.
Wrong Division of Philosophical Labor
The most important questions, the existential ones, should not be left to the sloppiest and least able thinkers. Equally, careful and rigorous thinkers should not confine themselves to unworthy or merely preliminary topics.
For example, some of the best heads in philosophy work exclusively in the philosophy of science. But for a philosopher to be a a mere handmaiden of positive science is an unworthy use of his abilities. Better to be a handmaiden of theology. But best of all would be to be no handmaiden at all. Philosophy is ancillary to nothing, unless it be truth herself.
The Tip of the Iceberg
An aphorism that states its reasons is no aphorism at all. But the reasons are there, though submerged, like the iceberg whose tip alone is visible. An aphorism, then, is the tip of an iceberg of thought.
Consciousness Without Self-Consciousness
Just over the transom:
A friend of mine and I have ongoing discussions about consciousness. Some of his beliefs I have a hard time accepting. He believes for example that his cat doesn't have conscious experience. I can't put my finger on why I have such a hard time accepting this, but I do. One issue that has come up is whether you can have consciousness without self-awareness. In the discussions he has brought up the issue of blindsight, and claimed its an example of perception without consciousness. This doesn't make any sense to me. It seems to me that talk of perception presupposes consciousness. I was curious as to your thoughts on this matter.
There appear to be two separate questions here.
Q1: Are animals such as cats conscious? It would suffice for their being conscious that they experience pleasure or pain. Do cats experience pain? When I inadvertently step on my cat's foot, she exhibits pain-behavior (makes a certain characteristic sound, shrinks back, gives me a certain look, begins licking the foot.) Now that pain-behavior is not identical to the felt pain, if there is one; but it is evidence for its existence. Or so say I. But now we are approaching the problem of other minds which is too intricate to be discussed in this post. In any case, I don't believe this is what you are asking about. For my part, I no more doubt that my cat is conscious than I doubt that my wife is. Both are sentient beings! But how do I KNOW that? This, roughly, is the problem of other minds. Here is an organism in my visual field. I believe it has a mind more or less similar to my own (less in the case of the cat, more in the case of the wife). The problem is to provide the grounds for that belief. The belief goes well beyond what is strictly evident to the senses; so what justifies it? It is an epistemological problem. Not to be confused with the ontological question whether wife or cat could be philosophical 'zombies.'
Q2: Can there be consciousness without self-consciousness? This may be what you are really asking about. Can one be conscious of an object without being conscious of being conscious of it? I would say yes. The following sometimes happens to some people. They have been driving for some time, negotiating curves, braking, accelerating, etc. But then they suddenly realize that for the last few miles they haven't been conscious of doing these things. They've been 'blanked out.' And yet they were conscious of the road, the cars in front of them, etc., else they would have crashed. We could say that they were conscious of their environment and of the objects in its without being conscious of being conscious of all these things.
In a famous passage Kant says that "The 'I think' must be able to accompany all my representations." That is a good way of putting it. It must be possible for me to say 'I am now aware that the light is red' when I see that the light is red, but there needn't be this self-awareness for there to be the conscious perception that the light is red. So I suggest we say this: every consciousness is potentially self-conscious, but not every consciousness is actually self-conscious.
This is a murky topic due to the murkiness of the phenomenology. It is made even more murky when the first-person POV of phenomenology is blended with the third-person POV of neuroscience.
Walter Morris: Bourgeois Bohemian
Walter Morris may count as an early bourgeois bohemian, a 'BoBo' to adopt and adapt a coinage of David Brooks. Morris is an exceedingly obscure diarist, known only to a few, but a kindred spirit. An e-mail from a distant relative of his caused me to dip again into the stimulating waters of his journal.
I have already presented his thoughts on solitude. That post also provided some information on the man and his writings. What follows is part of an entry from 8 February 1947. (Notebook 2: Black
River, limited edition, mimeographed, Englewood NJ, 1949. It contains journal entries from 25 June 1942 to 3 August 1947.)
The Bohemian way of living has its points, but I am unable to appreciate Bohemia at full tilt. I have never had it that way and, except for a very youthful period, I have never much wanted it that way. I like cleanliness of body and living quarters, not a fanatical 100% cleanliness, not a sterile and perfect order, but such cleanliness as is compatible with normal comfortable living. I dislike messy emotional relationships and all kinds of exhibitionism. I dislike vomiting drunks, people with the monkey on their backs, flaunting homosexuality, financial dishonesty, irresponsibility, and puerile minds posing as advanced and liberated. This is the measure of my Respectability and middle-classness. Otherwise — in being devoted to my own pattern, in quietly ignoring some White Cows instead of ostentatiously mounting a rebellion — I don't mind at all being called Bohemian. Our family dish, as a matter of [f]act, could stand a dash of that kind of sauce. (p. 206)
I recall a quotation from Gustave Flaubert along similar lines: "Be regular and orderly in your life like a bourgeois, so that you may be violent and original in your work."
Why I Like Parties
I like parties. I derive considerable satisfaction from not attending them. There is such a thing as the pleasure of conscious avoidance, of knowing that one has wisely escaped a situation likely to be frustrating and unpleasant. If others are offended by my nonattendance, that I regret. But peace of mind is a higher value than social dissipation — which is no value at all.
Partners in Crime
The will suborns the intellect, while the intellect rationalizes the will.
The Conservative Versus the Radical
The following excerpts are from Richard Weaver's 1960 essay, "Conservatism and Libertarianism," reprinted in Life Without Prejudice and Other Essays (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965), pp.
157-167:
It is my contention that that a conservative is a realist, who believes that there is a structure of reality independent of his own will and desire. He believes that there is a creation which was here before him, which exists now not by just his sufferance, and which will be here after he's gone. This structure consists not merely of the great physical world but also of many laws, principles, and regulations which control human behavior. Though this reality is independent of the individual, it is not hostile to him. It is in fact amenable by him in many ways, but it cannot be changed radically and arbitrarily. This is the cardinal point. The conservative holds that man in this world cannot make his will his law without any regard to limits and to the fixed nature of things. (158-159, italicized in the original.)
[. . .]
The attitude of the radical toward the real order is contemptuous, not to say contumacious. It is a very pervasive idea in radical thinking that nothing can be superior to man. This accounts, of course, for his usual indifference or hostility toward religion and it accounts also for his impatience with existing human institutions. His attitude is that anything man wants he both can and shall have, and impediments in the way are regarded as either
accidents or affronts.
This is very easy to show from the language he habitually uses. He is a great scorner of the past and is always living in or for the future. Now since the future can never be anything more than one's
subjective projection and since he affirmed that he believes only in the future, we are quite justified in saying that the radical lives in a world of fancy. Whatever of the present does not accord with his notions he classifies as "belonging to the past," and this will be done away with as soon as he and his party can get around to it. Whereas the conservative takes his lesson from a past that has objectified itself, the radical takes his cues out of a future that is really the product of wishful thinking.
Compressing both passages into one sentence: The conservative is a reality-based thinker, whereas the radical is a utopian.