I seem to have missed Russell3. Please see comments below in blue 12 bold
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: [email protected];The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee
Group
Sent: 6/19/2009 1:01:24 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Fwd: (Subjective) experience
But recently there's been a Russell3.
No, I don't disagree with what you said. But what do you say to the ethical
issue?
Religious fundamentalists argue that if it weren't for a belief in God and his
commandments we would all behave in what we would all agree is unacceptable
ways. Therefore we must preserve God and his commandments; and more
fundamentally that morality derives from God.
nst --> Well, in a previous post, I argued against this position. I think god
arises from our morality, rather than the other way around. As David Sloan
Wilson has argued, religions are dedicated to creating the conditions that pull
for human group regulated behavior ... that is, for creating circumstances in
which human bodies will perceive an advantage in behaving groupishly.
My position is that morality derives from subjective experience. "Don't do to
others what you would not have them do to you" is based primarily on a desire
not to suffer (subjectively) and not on a rule that we follow that favors
survival.
nst --> Dont get hung up on it, but I want to remind you that I am still
utterly baffled by the notion of objective experience.
It's a weaker stand than that of the religious fundamentalists because I have
to rely in each person individually and take the position that if we were all
sufficiently self-aware, we would all be moral beings--or really that the
behavior we would engage in from this state of complete self-awareness would be
the sort of thing that we would all consider moral. So my ethical theory is
that morality derives from an awareness of subjective experience.
What sort of ethical theory can you construct without the notion of subjective
experience? (Or don't you think it's worthwhile to construct an ethical
theory?)
nst --> I might not, given my proneness to a naturalized ethics. I confess I
am lost, here. Perhaps you could help me by explaining what is meant by an
ethical theory. I realize that there are Kantian and Utilitarian ethical
theories. But they don't really seem to work. They are too mechanical. But
what alternative to you have if you give up self-awareness of subjective
experience?
Simply being aware that a certain action will cause you harm (for example)
doesn't lead to the imperative not to perform that action on another. After
all, what's so bad about harm? As the saying goes, is doesn't imply ought.
The ought it seems to me comes either from external commands (which I don't
think is a good way to proceed) or from subjective experience. Compassion,
empathy, etc., (and not just noticing parallels between things) all derive from
subjective experience, typically of suffering. And suffering is more than just
noticing a mal-function.
nst --> Well, I can imagine a theory that explains why people are designed to
suffer in these odd, derived ways, but that would be a naturalized ethics, and
not an ethical theory in the sense I think you mean. But, I dont see why the
suffering needs to be mediated and not direct. Again, we may have come to the
point where we agree to much to conduct an interesting and useful argument.
I think, perhaps, we have exhausted this topic.
I would like to get back to self monitoring circuitries in electronic systems.
-- Russ
nst --> Nick
-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/
On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Nicholas Thompson
<[email protected]> wrote:
Dear Russell 1
Russell 2 has always been with us. In fact, he is in Australia, where you are
about to go!
The People are going to be Really Angry with us: I can't find anything to
disagree with about what you said. So I, too, have been worrying about the
homunculus.... or the mindunculus.
If we have been agreeing all along, they will KILL us. We better find
something to disagree about quick.
Surely you disagree with this: I see the world; part of what falls within my
field of view is my own body and its actions. From what I see, I construct (in
childhood, with the help of my hypocritical parents) the distinction between an
inner and an outer world, a world in which I can "be" good, while "doing" ill.
This subdivision is enormously convenient to my body's survival in a society,
so it endures, and may even have evolved. .
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University ([email protected])
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
----- Original Message -----
From: Russ Abbott
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 6/19/2009 12:08:48 PM
Subject: [FRIAM] Fwd: (Subjective) experience
I'll admit that I'm now getting lost in all the words. (It's also distressing
that yet another Russell has shown up.)
Here's a bit of an exchange Nick and I had privately. He suggested (and I
fully agree) that we should continue it on the list. Nick asked me to respond
to his earlier comment about Unicorns. So I said,
Regarding unicorns, you raise an interesting issue. You said, I understand what
you mean when you talk of unicorns; that doesn't make me a sneaky believer in
unicorns, does it?
I'm not so sure that works with first person statements (subjective experience,
qualia). How could anyone know what qualia are without experiencing them? It's
like saying I know what you mean by the taste of chocolate even though I've
never tasted it and don't even believe that there is taste such as what you
call chocolate. In that case, how could you possibly claim to understand what I
mean by the taste of chocolate.
You've probably heard the famous thought experiment of Mary the color-blind
scientist.She knew all there is to know about color; she could predict what
anyone would say about color by examining the patterns of photons that entered
their eyes (and perhaps the firings in their brains as those photon hits were
processed). But she herself saw the world in black and white. Then
miraculously, she gained color vision. She has (let's assume) no new knowledge
as a result of her new color vision -- since she knew all there was to know
about color and color vision already. All she has are new experiences of color
-- subjective experiences of color. Has anything changed for her? My answer is
"yes." Is yours "no"?
Nick responded.
She doesn't have a new experience Of COLOR. She sees a colored world. The
world is now from her point of view a colored world. My mary is seeing the
colored world directly; your mary is seeing a color experience. It's the
intrusion of the cartesian theatre that I find distressing. At least. CF
Wittgenstein.
My response.
I'm not promoting a Cartesian Theater perspective since I take a Cartesian
Theater to imply a homunculus, i.e., an internal being (construct) that is
standing back from the "performance/exhibit" ongoing in the Cartesian Theater
and observing it. That clearly leads to an infinite regress: How does the
homunculus itself work? Does it have it's own Cartesian Theater? Etc.
I would also say that it's MY Mary that is seeing the world directly, that she
has an immediate subjective experience of the world, which is what I mean by
subjective experience. If there were a homunculus, it would be seeing a color
presentation being presented in the Cartesian Theater.
Perhaps this has just been a big misunderstanding. When my Mary sees a colored
world, I feel perfectly comfortable saying that she is having an experience of
color and that (tautologically) she didn't have that experience prior to being
able to experience color. You seem to want to reject putting it in those terms.
I don't understand your objection to that way of speaking.
Also, to get back to my question about Mary. I say that something has changed
for her (and I would refer to what has changed as (part of) her subjective
experience). I gather that you agree that something has changed. How would you
characterize the change that's occurred. And recall, we are stipulating that
there is no behavioral difference between Mary before and after she gained the
ability to see a colored world.
I'm now answering my own question and thinking that you will ask whether there
is a neuronal difference. I'll agree that there is and that her way of
processing color has changed. If we took brain scans her brain would be
functioning differently. So from that perspective you could argue (and I would
agree) that there is an externally observable difference. This brings us to the
notion of supervenience. We both agree that there are neuronal differences. I
claim that subjective experience supervenes over neuronal phenomena. You say
that neuronal phenomena are all there are(?). If that's your position (and
perhaps it isn't since I seem to be putting words in your mouth by trying to
answer the question from what I take to be your position), it's very much a
reductionist perspective. You are denying the reality of higher level
constructs because you can reduce them to lower level phenomena. I say (and
that's what my "Reductionist blind spot" was about) that the ability to reduce
things to lower level phenomena doesn't eliminate the reality of the higher
level phenomena. In a word processor, words as entities are real even though
there is nothing in the computer except bits.
But I want to bring this back to ethics. We would agree that pain has
neurologically observable features. But it seems to me that such observations
cannot lead to ethical imperatives unless one associates them with the
(subjective) experience of pain. But I've probably put too much into this
post already.
-- Russ
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============================================================
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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
