The Hard Problem of Consciousness

ashurbanipal said:

Hmmmm...science as it is currently practiced began in the 16th century with Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, Pierre Gassendi, and Galileo (well, those are the "big names," anyway). The first three are classified as philosophers usually unproblematically, and the fourth should be called a philosopher by anyone who has read the Two Systems of the World. Newton, Leibniz, Pascal--all philosophers. Indeed, the vast majority of people we call "scientists" from that time understood themselves as philosophers, thought they were doing essentially what other philosophers were doing, and got their ideas to do what they did on philosophical grounds.

Why think, for example, that the world might be consistent? Science depends on it; Plato thought the world could not be consistent, while Aristotle (another philosopher) thought it might be. This issue was fought out in the medieval period by such philosophers as Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Peter Abelard.

Why think that observation could tell us anything useful? Science again depends on the idea that it can, and it was once again philosophers who developed this notion. Ditto such concepts as nature and natural law, the existence of matter and substance, etc. etc.



Scientists do the same thing. There are intellectual fashions in science just as there are in philosophy, and factions among the fashionable.



One thing I would say is this: only about a quarter of contemporary philosophers ever learn the true lesson of philosophy, which is odd because it's usually one that is presented in the first semester of instruction: intellectual humility. But that's a lesson that ought to benefit everyone.

I agree with your statement as it literally reads. I doubt you and I would agree about what counts as useless and pretentious twaddle. If you think it's useless and pretentious to wonder about the nature of consciousness and its place in the domain of what exists, that strikes me as arrogant. Plenty of really smart people have devoted their lives to philosophy; the notion that they can all just be dismissed by calling them useless and pretentious twaddlers is probably hubris.

Click to expand...

They were called natural philosophers. They studied nature and the physical universe.

Sweden said:

Several posts back I said that Philosophy faculties might been closed down in about 1850 without loss. This someone random date was chosen to exclude from condemnation such as those in your first sentence and, in particular those who brought about the Enlightenment.

Click to expand...

OK, sure, but then the point seems to carry, namely, that philosophers invented science.

Sweden said:

Yes there are fashions in science. But they come up against a hard reality: that scientific statement is one which can be disproved.

Click to expand...

I don't think that's the case. It's always possible to set one's assumptions such that any theory can be saved, whatever the observations. Indeed, arguably, science adopts such assumptions at least occasionally.

Anyway, there's no scientific test of your claims here, as far as I can tell, so it seems you have to be doing philosophy to arrive at your conclusions. Scientists in general do philosophy all the time. Usually, the scientists I converse with are quite interested in and open to philosophy, and don't take it badly when I point out that they have to do philosophy to do their jobs. There was a lot more animosity in the 80s and 90s, but that isn't the case right now. Sometimes some work has to be done ot get scientists and philosophers talking on the same page.

This is not to say that there isn't something that "pushes back." Rather, it is to point out that philosophers deal in a domain of reality, just as do scientists.

Sweden said:

This is not a test which constrains the philosophers, who can maunder on for a hundred turgid pages without once writing about anything so mundane as a fact.

Click to expand...

I'm curious what you mean by this. Can you cite an example?

Sweden said:

As is so often the case one must recognise exceptions. For example A J Ayer, the only phlosopher of any note that I have ever met. In the early sixties we had a conversation that may have lasted as long as ten minutes. Ayer's interest was logical positivism - and the 'verification principle' which means that statements for which here is no objective evidence are worthless.

Which of course proves your point.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I used to like Ayer until I started checking his sources. He apparently made up quotes from F.H. Bradley, for example. I got a copy of the latter's Appearance and Reality, same edition Ayer supposedly quoted, and found nothing remotely like the sentences he was holding up for ridicule--not merely on the pages he referenced, but anywhere in the entire work. There could have been another edition and maybe Ayer just didn't cite it right or something, so I didn't chase it all the way to ground. But it looked to me like he just made up some nonsense-sounding sentences, perhaps as a rhetorical device, and then attributed them to Bradley. The problem is that it distorts, or outright lies about, what Bradley was saying, and serves ultimately as propaganda, not open and honest debate.

Anyway, as I'm sure you're aware, Ayer himself came to repudiate logical positivism, on grounds that it was basically false. To the extent that positivism was an attempt to do away with as much philosophy as possible, its failure is instructive.

Sweden said:

Meanwhile I fear that I will, sometimes, continue to over-generalise on DP for effect. This is not, for better rather than worse, an academic forum where words must be carefully weighed.

Click to expand...

Point taken. I do the same thing.

Sweden said:

Btw plenty of smart people have devoted their lives to theology. Every life, without exception, totally wasted. Freddie Ayer would agree with me on that - if he was still around.

Click to expand...

The problem I'm pointing out to you is that those very smart people wouldn't think so, and might even think you're wasting your life for believing what you believe and doing whatever it is you do. But given that you and they are roughly equally intelligent and educated, it raises the question whether such judgments (theirs as well as yours) are jumping the gun. Perhaps those theologians know something you do not, and it's such as makes all the difference.

ashurbanipal said:

Sure it does. Suppose, for example, every measurement of the speed of light turned out to be radically different, such that the speed of light itself seemed to vary randomly. Suppose every observation that had supported, say, the laws of thermodynamics suddenly stopped exhibiting any predictable pattern at all. Suppose such were the case with all natural laws, and that not only was past behavior unreliable, everything just behaved randomly. There would obviously be no science then.



What do you mean by that, exactly?



Prove it.



Hmmmm...this gets things exactly backward. In science, there are certain things you have to accept--for example, that there are such things as natural laws, that the experimental method is worthwhile, that the subject matter of physics is real, and so on. Question those (and similar) points seriously enough, and you can no longer be a scientist.

On the other hand, in philosophy, there are no questions that are off the table (including whether philosophy is worth anything or not). There are literally thousands of papers and books written by philosophers questioning some of the most basic ideas of philosophy. Here's one full of papers by philosophers considering whether metaphysics is a valid area--whether such questions as "what is real?" or "how do we account for change over time?" are meaningful or valid questions:

https://www.amazon.com/Metametaphys...id=1512154715&sr=8-1&keywords=metametaphysics

Here are two by philosophers questioning whether the entire history of epistemology has been mistaken:

https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-Pu...12172326&sr=8-3&keywords=Kvanvig+Epistemology

https://www.amazon.com/Knowledge-It...1-1-fkmr2&keywords=Timothy+Williams+Knowledge

Here's one asking if a fundamental concept in philosophy of language isn't contradictory:

https://www.amazon.com/Semantics-Re...-1&keywords=Has+Semantics+rested+on+a+mistake

Here's one questioning practically all of previous philosophy (including whether there are any "big questions"):

https://www.amazon.com/Language-Tru...2689&sr=1-1&keywords=Language+Truth+and+Logic

And so on. These are just the ones I could think of in a few minutes. This last one, incidentally, was in a certain strain of philosophy known as logical positivism. There were quite a few logical positivists, and one way to phrase their program was to do away with about 90% of philosophy: metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics (sorta), epistemology (mostly), and about half of political philosophy. It turned out they couldn't do so, because the attempt was inherently contradictory. Logical positivism finally died in the 1960s after several valiant attempts to save it, and that's why you won't find many philosophers today embarking on such a radical critique of philosophy itself. We went down that road. It didn't work.

Click to expand...

If everything behaved randomly, that is what science would observe as a fact. Science does not need certain results because science is not a philosophy, but a method of studying that which actually exists and how it actually functions. Philosophy, by its nature tries to make things fit into a particular philosophical viewpoint. Just because you can ask any question does not make the any question worth asking. And if all it leads to are word games and arguments then you have nothing. Being able to put together words to make a point is not the same as using evidence which is independent of your words. Science doe not rely on words, but evidence made up of facts that are impervious to philosophical argument.

ashurbanipal said:

OK, sure, but then the point seems to carry, namely, that philosophers invented science.



I don't think that's the case. It's always possible to set one's assumptions such that any theory can be saved, whatever the observations. Indeed, arguably, science adopts such assumptions at least occasionally.

Anyway, there's no scientific test of your claims here, as far as I can tell, so it seems you have to be doing philosophy to arrive at your conclusions. Scientists in general do philosophy all the time. Usually, the scientists I converse with are quite interested in and open to philosophy, and don't take it badly when I point out that they have to do philosophy to do their jobs. There was a lot more animosity in the 80s and 90s, but that isn't the case right now. Sometimes some work has to be done ot get scientists and philosophers talking on the same page.

This is not to say that there isn't something that "pushes back." Rather, it is to point out that philosophers deal in a domain of reality, just as do scientists.



I'm curious what you mean by this. Can you cite an example?



Interesting. I used to like Ayer until I started checking his sources. He apparently made up quotes from F.H. Bradley, for example. I got a copy of the latter's Appearance and Reality, same edition Ayer supposedly quoted, and found nothing remotely like the sentences he was holding up for ridicule--not merely on the pages he referenced, but anywhere in the entire work. There could have been another edition and maybe Ayer just didn't cite it right or something, so I didn't chase it all the way to ground. But it looked to me like he just made up some nonsense-sounding sentences, perhaps as a rhetorical device, and then attributed them to Bradley. The problem is that it distorts, or outright lies about, what Bradley was saying, and serves ultimately as propaganda, not open and honest debate.

Anyway, as I'm sure you're aware, Ayer himself came to repudiate logical positivism, on grounds that it was basically false. To the extent that positivism was an attempt to do away with as much philosophy as possible, its failure is instructive.



Point taken. I do the same thing.



The problem I'm pointing out to you is that those very smart people wouldn't think so, and might even think you're wasting your life for believing what you believe and doing whatever it is you do. But given that you and they are roughly equally intelligent and educated, it raises the question whether such judgments (theirs as well as yours) are jumping the gun. Perhaps those theologians know something you do not, and it's such as makes all the difference.

Click to expand...

It isn't so much about wasting your life as it is about the subject matter. Theology is no different from literature and the arts. It is all about human expressions regarding life and how we feel about it. In the end, we all do what we want to do and mostly what we enjoy doing. There is no greater or lesser meaning to any of our lives based on what we may pursue. The only absolutely true philosophy is nihilism. But none of us really go there because there is something built into us makes us keep living as a whole as a species which is beyond our control.