Do you not agree that that violates Ockham’s Razor, since no more is necessary?
Why do you assume this? Surely the activity in a (somehow) conscious silicon computer would be fully explained by the activity in the hardware?
Precisely! Like a non-physicalist’s view of consciousness.
And we both assume each other is alive, when the other might be a convincing non-alive robot who cannot grow, metabolise or replicate or whatever.
And to characterise X as Y is to assume X fits the definition Y.
Erratum:Surely the activity in a (somehow) conscious silicon computer fully explains the properties we ascribe to it?
The consciousness itself is necessary.
Precisely the opposite!
Let me illustrate with a somewhat bizzare analogy.
I see various people and wonder what makes some people beautiful and some not. Ultimately, I hypothesize that gene X is responsible. Beauty = life; gene X = elan vital. Now some people may use the rhetoric of ‘gene X is beauty’, but this is just a way of saying that beauty supervenes on gene X.
Onto the modern definition of ‘beauty’. Here the concept of gene X is done away with, but a set of other superficially visible criteria is used to precisely demarcate beauty: ‘perfect symmetry’, ‘right proportions’ …etc. Call this set Y. The advantage of set Y elements is that they can be precisely studied. Then I discover that a few people who don’t seem to look beautiful, also satisfy set Y with similar values as those I deem beautiful. Rationally, I wouldn’t now say that these people actually are beautiful. My hypothesis is wrong and/or incomplete. The decision of whether someone is beautiful or not is based on perception only. Now, if someone is convinced that symmetry/proportion indicates beauty necessarily, then they’ll start labelling all those with these properties as ‘beautiful’ and thus recalibrate what it means to be “beautiful”. Then people will start arguing that beauty theorists mean that “symmetry/proportion is being beautiful”. This is what’s happened with the word “life”. The candidate criteria hypothesized to describe life (‘growth’, ‘reproduction’) have now replaced the original (aesthetic) judgement of life to become the de facto definition of life. This bait & switch should not obscure that whether something is alive or not is a gut instinct or intuition. But if we stick with the modern definition of life (i.e. not synonymous with consciousness), then there’s no gene X to see, since that’s the explanation, not the beauty (life) itself. Set Y is also not an explanation but originally an attempt at delineation, and now fashioned as an explanation (“perfect symmetry confers beauty, no genetic explanation required”).
Now, assume that you know from earlier testing that you have gene A. You also notice that you have blonde hair and have been led to believe that anyone else with blonde hair also has gene A. Except that you don’t have access to a lab anymore. You can’t really test whether your hypothesis is correct. Someone contrives that blond hair is gene A, or more charitably, blonde hair supervenes on gene A. The latter version may, incidentally, very well be true, but you can’t know this because you can’t know if another blonde does have gene A or not. This is the difference between the science of ‘life’ and ‘consciousness’. In the former, the symptom (life) was sought to be explained; in the latter, you are not sure if the data available to you is a symptom in the first place, of the target (consciousness) that you’re after. Even if it is, the symptom (blonde hair) is not what you’re after (gene A).
This should hopefully elucidate quite clearly the disanalogy between consciousness and life.
Of course it’s an explicandum, but having it distinct from the physical processes themselves is not necessary at all.
I’m afraid I don’t see it at all, but thank you enormously for putting in the effort to produce a full and interesting post. I haven’t time to respond until Friday, when I’ll explore this beauty/life/consciousness analogy thoroughly.
After a trip to beautiful Estonia, let’s explore this “beauty” analogy, which I think unnecessarily complicated matters:
[ul][li]Genes are responsible for the particular arrangement of matter which one labels “beautiful” (ie. possessing “beauty”). X=Genes themselves are not beautiful (ie. they possess no beauty) because they are not Y=(perfectly symmetrical). [*]Genes are similarly responsible for the arrangement of matter labelled “alive” (ie. possessing “life”). Genes themselves are not alive (ie. they possess no “life”) since they cannot Y=(grow or metabolise).[/li][li] (My position is that) Genes are similarly responsible for the arrangement of matter labelled “conscious” (ie. possessing “consciousness”). Genes themselves are not conscious (ie. they possess no “consciousness”) since they cannot Y=???. (My suggestion is Y= “behave as though they had processed sensory input in working memory”.) [/li][/ul]
I disagree with this. I think the analogue of the elan vital has not yet been mentioned here. It would require someone to say that the matter as arranged over time by the gene has nothing to do with beauty, ie. that the stuff which ugly people are made of lacks this invisible, ineffable essence which renders the stuff comprising other people “beautiful”. This is called essentialism. We both agree that both life and beauty only require an arrangement of physical stuff, and nothing more. We differ in that I think the same applies for consciousness.
I have no substantial problem with any of this. The precise boundaries of the sets “beautiful” and “alive” are extremely difficult (if not impossible) to mark out to everyone’s satisfaction, and there will always be tricky cases falling on or near any boundary. The same is true for any attempt to define what counts as conscious and what doesn’t, hence this conversation.
No, genes do cause all the symmetry, growth, metabolism, replication in the stuff being studied: genes are still part of the explanation of beauty and life (and, say I, consciousness since the genes grow the brain and nervous system). The “invisibility” of beauty or life is really a mundane linguistic category error: we can only see beautiful or living things. We cannot separate the beauty or the life from the thing and just have a look at that alone. Again, my position is that consciousness is similar: it is a property of that arrangement of matter, and thus cannot be separated from the matter.
Agreed
Disagreed – the genes still explain how that matter came to be arranged either symmetrically or not (or arranged such that it grew, metabolised etc.).
Don’t you mean gene X? I’ll continue assuming so, and invite correction otherwise.
But it’s no difference at all, since the arrangement of matter labelled “blonde hair” is caused by genes, just like the arrangements of matter labelled “living matter” or “conscious brains”. The blonde hair might, indeed, have been caused by something other than genes (eg. peroxide), but the conscious brain might similarly be electronic.
If anything, it strengthens the analogy IMO. We cannot be sure that the blonde hair (or beauty) is genetic in origin. We cannot be sure that the growing, metabolising thing is alive. We cannot be sure that the entity talking to us on the message board is conscious. All we can do is observe and label, perhaps inaccurately.
Again, I think the introduction of genes was a blind alley. We both agree that 1) beauty and 2) life are properties of arrangements of matter, and that there is no non-physical element required in either case (which 1) essentialists and 2) vitalists would disagree with). I consider consciousness to be a property of entities whose complex behaviour depends on processed sensory input, for which no more than physical hardware is necessary. I still don’t really understand why you think consciousness cannot arise in purely physical devices (be they alive or not).
I hope this clearly elucidates the difference in our positions.
Instead of providing a point by point reply, let me say how I should have said it in the first place:
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. So is Life*. There is no such thing as beauty or life “out there”. It is purely an aesthetic judgement. Consciousness, however is experienced i.e. an ontological phenomenon albeit restricted in terms of access. The evaluation of consciousness, is in the eyes of the beholder. This evaluation can be right or wrong. But an evaluation of beauty or life can’t be right or wrong, because it’s a judgement of aesthetics, not of truth value.
*assuming its meaning is not synonymous with Sentience/Consciousness
Of course. There is just stuff doing stuff out there, and we label it one way or another. When I say that a thing possesses “beauty” or “life”, I’m effectively just characterizing it with a word of my choosing. It hasn’t actually got something which is separable from the stuff doing stuff: only an essentialist or vitalist would say that. And I say that “possessing consciousness” is a rather misleading phrase too – just like life and beauty, you can’t have it on its own, separate from the physical processes you comprise.
And life is lived - what of it? What we’re talking about here is what we (perhaps inaccurately) call “alive” (or “beautiful”, or “conscious”) when we observe other entities. My position is that “experience” is itself explained by reference to physical entities, and so drawing the distinction “consciousness is experienced” is tautological (after all, how could you have consciousness which wasn’t?). And beauty is surely “experienced” too, when I look upon something which elicits the gut reaction you posit? It seems that whichever way you turn, your distinctions are no more substantial than their initial letter or number of syllables.
Then how can you and I disagree so fundamentally on whether or not a corpse, rock or photon is “conscious”? That’s every bit as contentious as whether a virus is “alive” or Pamela Anderson is “beautiful” (given that they actually might or might not be alive or beautiful respectively). And is the definition of “aesthetic” not “in the eyes of the beholder”?
a)we don’t know if consciousness can be had on its own, separate from physical processes. That’s an open question, but this point is irrelevant to mine…
b)A conscious Being is conscious irrespective of my opinion of whether it has consciousness, but a Being is neither beautiful nor alive unless I think it is. These latter attributes are purely my judgements, and don’t exist within the thing itself.
And neither do we really know if beauty or life can be “had” on its own, nor can you even know if I “have” it (and vice versa). I’m merely interested in why you draw distinctions for consciousness which you don’t (but essentialists and vitalist do, respectively) for beauty and life.
Again, I don’t understand the distinction: I think corpses aren’t conscious, you think they are, and we can’t both be right. Similarly, we might disagree on whether viruses are alive, or Pamela Anderson is beautiful.
Agreed.
Yes, but neither of us is right or wrong. Either we agree on Anderson being alive or we don’t. Life is not a property of the matter that possesses it, but a concept in the consciousness of the beholder who judges it.
Then the same can be said of our judgement of corpse consciousness: We both happen to agree that corpses aren’t alive (even though they could be if we set our threshold at the bacteria in corpses). Conversely, we both disagree in whether corpses are conscious. Both are ultimately personal decisions to label that stuff doing stuff as one thing or another. I personally don’t understand why you label corpses as conscious given their utter lack of what you might call “analogues to me”, but if you want to go ahead and use such a term, be my guest. You’re not affecting the corpse in any way, any more than calling it “alive” or “beautiful” makes it so. I’m just suggesting that you let people know that you label corpses (or rocks, or photons, or whatever that stuff doing stuff there happens to be) “conscious” early on in any discussion since otherwise they might find you personal terminology rather confusing. After all, if I labelled corpses and rocks “alive” I’d cause no end of confusion in discussions about “death”.
Then so are all properties mere “concepts”: colour, size, motion, symmetry, “analogous-ness”. If they’re nothing to do with the arrangement of matter and physical processes, then solipsism beckons once more. Again, you’re not really setting forth any distinction between third-person judgements of life or consciousness which have much substance or particular relevance. Of course I don’t deny that there are distinctions (such as their number of syllables and qualifying criteria), but your answer to “how is a vitalist view of life different to the non-physicalist view of consciousness?” still seems merely to be “It just is.”
No, it can’t. If you’re conscious, then you’re conscious irrespective of how I label you. Your consciousness exists. Only the choice of labelling you conscious or not is subjective and mine. If I label you “beautiful”, then by definition, for me & me only, you’re “beautiful”. Others may agree or not. If most agree, then you may be established in memespace as beautiful, but this does not make your beauty an ontological property independent of our opinions, but a dependent property based on general consensus. It’s not coherent to say that you’re beautiful irrespective of whether anyone thinks so or not, but it is coherent to say that you’re conscious irrespective of what others think.
And if you’re alive, my labelling doesn’t in any way affect your life or death. We agree that beauty is solely an aesthetic judgement on behalf of third persons here, but essentialists don’t - they think beautiful things do have an actual essence of beauty which exists therein regardless of our judgements of beauty. Similarly, vitalists think that living things do have an essence of life regardless of our judgements of life. My entire point is that you’re saying that some mysterious essence of consciousness exists regardless of our judgements or labels.
In all 3 cases, there is just stuff doing stuff over there. That stuff will do stuff over there whether or not we’re looking at it:[ul][li] If the corpse is symmetrical or whatever, I’d call it beautiful. If not, I wouldn’t, and the two cases are mutually exclusive. The essentialist disagrees, saying that beauty is something the corpse has or not.[/li][li]If the corpse grows, metabolises, replicates or whatever, I’d call it alive. If not, I wouldn’t, and the two cases are mutually exclusive. The vitalist disagrees, saying that life is something the corpse has or not.[/li][li]If the corpse has sensory processing and working memory, I’d call it conscious. If not, I wouldn’t, and the two cases are mutually exclusive. You disagree, saying that consciousness is something the corpse has or not.[/ul][/li]Surely you’re just repeating the point upon which we disagree? You say vitalism and essentialism are just different to your view of consciousness, I say they’re not.
NOT AT ALL!
We have been going through this again & again.
The essence that vitalists believe that alive things have is the FORCE that provides life, not the life itself. It’s just a matter of SHORTHAND to say that elan vital “IS” the life. OTOH, with consciousness, the third-person judgement is trying to guess whether empirical activity visible to a third-party (behavior) corresponds to another empirical phenomenon which happens to be restricted to the self that possesses it. It’s not at all the same thing. This is a pretty elementary point. And you have already conceded it earlier (“We non-solipsists assume “feelings” in others despite only being able to see behaviour”)
No, I don’t think you’re quite grasping what I said here in post #65. The elan vital is in addition to that-stuff-over-there, whatever we happen to be calling the stuff-doing-stuff: a “force” is still very definitely within the realm of arrangements of physical matter (ie. an acceleration thereof). One individual cannot in any way observe, detect or acquire another individual entity’s élan vital: it’s restricted to that entity itself. It is nothing to do with characterizing the stuff as “alive” or not, since it’s nothing to do with the stuff at all. To an essentialist, beauty is the same – the beautiful entity is beautiful whether or not I’m looking at it since it possesses beauty, and another entity cannot access that mysterious essence either. To vitalists and essentialists, the empirical activity is irrelevant to whether a thing actually has beauty or life.
I, elementarily, disagree.
Of course – all I’m saying there is that I’m not a solipsist. And I’m, repeatedly, saying that I’m not an essentialist or a vitalist either: We non-essentialists ascribe “beauty” to faces despite only being able to see light reflected therefrom. We non-vitalists assume “life” in entities despite only being able to see growth, metabolism and the rest of it. I’m merely asking you why you’re neither solipsist, essentialist or vitalist but you do propose “consciousness” in things like corpses and rocks, which don’t display any of the tell-tale signs which have you assuming “feelings” in me despite only being able to see some shapes on a monitor.
Exactly. It’s proposed as an explanatory entity for the stuff-doing-stuff.
This doesn’t pose a problem.
Agreed. After demarcating life from non-life, it is appended ad-hoc to the elements in the former category.
It ‘possesses beauty’ is another way of saying, ‘it is beautiful’. There’s nothing else that exists to see. And the thing is beautiful to me only if I think so. There’s no independently existing ‘beauty’.
Wrong. Organic matter was distinguished from inorganic matter, based on behavior i.e. empirical activity. So is beauty decided similarly, by looking at the face or whatever.
But the beauty is simply a label for certain arrangements of light. Similar for ‘life’.
Have you ever seen the movie Being John Malkovich??
Hmm, again, I don’t think that’s quite true of the vitalist view of life or the essentialist view of beauty: The elan vital is nothing to do with the stuff. It is a nonphysical ‘essence’.
I take it you mean that this is not in any way a crucial distinction (or a distincion at all). If so, great - this ‘privacy’ aspect is IMO just as mundance and unmysterious as encrypted computer files.
Eh? Then I’m not sure what you’re Agreeing to. There is no demarcation of life from non-life based on behaviour to a vitalist. Vitalists hold that everything is alive, even tiny individual bits of matter which don’t look it (eg. little flakes of calcified rock brushed off a sea urchin). It is fundamentally opposed to the emergentism of life, ie. any kind of non-life to life transition. This is why it is so close an analogue to panpsychism.
Again, you’re repeating that you’re not an essentialist. Again, I return a thumbs-up and say Me neither.
No, again I don’t think you’re really getting it. Vitalism and essentialism don’t posit any kind of emergentism - do have a read of those links of you have time.
And, say I, the arrangement of computational processes called “consciousness”.
Yes. The portal between the floors is magic. Accessing the processes in the computer called ‘John Malkovich’s brain’ is impossible due to the unique, strong cryptography of his 40-year environmental sequence.
And I realise a sentence of mine which might have been rather misleading:
I’m not sure the bolded phrase would have any meaning to a vitalist whatsoever, since the anima (as in animism) is immanent in everything.
Doesn’t jive with your statement in #24:
The lan vital - the mysterious and unobservable “vital force” which permeates living things and is absent from dead things
or with the statement in your link in #59:
Stahl believed living matter to contain anima sensitiva (sensitive soul), and therefore to be completely separate in composition from nonliving matter, one of the first statements of a principle of vitalism theory.
& from following the ‘vitalism theory’ link in that link:
The belief dating to around 1600 that matter was divided into two classes based on behavior with respect to heat: organic and inorganic. Inorganic material could be melted but could always be recovered by removing the heat source. Organic compounds changed form upon heating and could not be recovered by removing the heat source. The proposed explanation for the difference between organic and inorganic compounds was the Vitalism Theory, which stated that inorganic materials did not contain the “vital force” of life and lasted until the mid-nineteenth century..
Let’s clear up the thesis of vitalism before I reply to your earlier post.
Yes, I admit I’m not an expert myself given that vitalism has long been consigned to philosophy’s dustbin. I’ve already said I think post #59 was misleading, and I’ll add post #24 to that list. You must remember that Stahl lived in a time when the world and everything on it was thought to have been created in 7 days, such that life (whatever it was) had always existed. Thereafter, scientific evidence for the vast age of the world and an absence of fossils in the lowest geological layers led to the inescapable conclusion that life emerged from non-life, which vitalists rejected. Thus, in order to remain consistent, vitalists had to (and has to) propose life in everything, since if the world was made of inorganic matter, organic matter couldn’t result from it.
That’s my reading of the links I just provided - would you say it was fair?