harnad@seismo.CSS.GOV@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) (01/22/87)
MINSKY%OZ.AI.MIT.EDU@XX.LCS.MIT.EDU wrote in mod.ai (AIList Digest V5 #11): > unless a person IS in the grip of some "theoretical > position" - that is, some system of ideas, however inconsistent, they > can't "know" what anything "means" I agree, of course. I thought it was obvious that I was referring to a theoretical position on the mind/body problem, not on the conventions of language and folk physics that are needed in order to discourse intelligibly at all. There is of course no atheoretical talk. As to atheoretical "knowledge," that's another matter. I don't think a dog shares any of my theories, but we both know when we feel a toothache (though he can't identify or describe it, nor does he have a theory of nerve impulses, etc.). But we both share the same (atheoretical) experience, and that's C-1. Now it's a THEORY that comes in and says: "You can't have that C-1 without C-2." I happen to have a rival theory on that. But never mind, let's just talk about the atheoretical experience I, my rival and the dog share... > My point was that > you can't think about, talk about, or remember anything that leaves no > temporary trace in some part of your mind. In other words, I agree > that you can't have C-2 without C-1 - but you can't have, think, say, > or remember that you have C-1 without C-2! So, assuming that I know > EXACTLY what he means, I understand PERFECTLY that that meaning is > vacuous. Fine. But until you've accounted for the C-1, your interpretation of your processes as C-2 (rather than P-2, where P is just an unconscious physical process that does the very same thing, physically and objectively) has not been supported. It's hanging by a skyhook, and the label "C" of ANY order is unwarranted. I'll try another pass at it: I'll attempt to show how ducking or denying the primacy of the C-1 problem gets one into infinite regress or question-begging: There's something it's like to have the experience of feeling a toothache. The experience may be an illusion. You may have no tooth-injury, you may even have no tooth. You may be feeling referred pain from your elbow. You may be hysterical, delerious, hallucinating. You may be having a flashback to a year ago, a minute ago, 30 milliseconds ago, when the physical and neural causes actually occurred. But if at T-1 in real time you are feeling that pain (let's make T-1 a smeared interval of Delta-T-1, which satisfies both our introspective phenomenology AND the theory that there can be no punctate, absolutely instantaneous experience), where does C-2 come into it? Recall that C-2 is an experience that takes C-1 as its object, in the same way C-1 takes its own phenomenal contents as object. To be feeling-a-tooth-ache (C-1) is to have a certain direct experience; we all know what that's like. To introspect on, reflect on, remember, think about or describe feeling-a-toothache (all instances of C-2) is to have ANOTHER direct experience -- say, remembering-feeling-a-toothache, or contemplating-feeling-a-toothache. The subtle point is that this 2nd-order experience always has TWO aspects: (1) It takes a 1st order experience (real or imagined) as object, and is for that reason 2nd-order, and (2) it is ITSELF an experience, which is of course 1st-order (call that C-1'). The intuition is that there is something it is like to be aware of feeling pain (C-1), and there's ALSO something it's like to be aware of being-aware-of-feeling-pain. Because a C-1 is the object of the latter experience, the experience is 2nd order (C-2); but because it's still an EXPERIENCE -- i.e., there's something it's LIKE to feel that way -- every C-2 is always also a C-1' (which can in turn become the object of a C-3, which is then also a C-1'', etc.). I'm no phenomenologist, nor an advocate of doing phenomenology as we just did above. I'm also painfully aware that the foregoing can hardly be described as "atheoretical." It would seem that only direct experience at the C-1-level can be called atheoretical; certainly formulating a distinction between 1st and higher-order experience is a theoretical enterprise, although I believe that the raw phenomenology bears me out, if anyone has the patience to introspect it through. But the point I'm making is simple: It's EASY to tell a story in which certain physical processes play the role of the contents of our experience -- toothaches, memories of toothaches, responses to toothaches, etc. All this is fine, but hopelessly 2nd-order. What it leaves out is why there should be any EXPERIENCE for them to be contents OF! Why can't all these processes just be unconscious processes -- doing the same objective job as our conscious ones, but with no qualitative experience involved? This is the question that Marvin keeps ignoring, restating instead his conviction that it's taken care of (by some magical property of "memory traces," as far as I can make out), and that my phenomenology is naive in suggesting that there's still a problem, and that he hasn't even addressed it in his proposal. But if you pull out the C-1 underpinnings, then all those processes that Marvin interprets as C-2 are hanging by a sky-hook. You no longer have conscious toothaches and conscious memories of toothaches, you merely have tooth-damage, and causal sequelae of tooth-damage, including symbolic code, storage, retrieval, response, etc.. But where's the EXPERIENCE? Why should I believe any of that is CONSCIOUS? There's the C-2 interpretation, of course, but that's all it is: an interpretation. I can intepret a thermostat (and, with some effort, even a rock) that way. What justifies the interpretation? Without a viable C-1 story, there can be no justification. And my conjecture is that there can be no viable C-1 story. So back to methodological epiphenomenalism, and forget about C of any order. [Admonition to the ambitious: If you want to try to tell a C-1 story, don't get too fancy. All the relevant constraints are there if you can just answer the following question: When the dog's tooth is injured, and it does the various things it does to remedy this -- inflamation reaction, release of white blood cells, avoidance of chewing on that side, seeking soft foods, giving signs of distress to his owner, etc. etc. -- why do the processes that give rise to all these sequelae ALSO need to give rise to any pain (or any conscious experience at all) rather than doing the very same tissue-healing and protective-behavioral job completely unconsciously? Why is the dog not a turing-indistinguishable automaton that behaves EXACTLY AS IF it felt pain, etc, but in reality does not? That's another variant of the mind/body problem, and it's what you're up against when you're trying to justify interpreting physical processes as conscious ones. Anything short of a convincing answer to this amounts to mere hand-waving on behalf of the conscious interpretation of your proposed processes.] Stevan Harnad {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet (609)-921-7771