harnad@seismo.CSS.GOV@mind.UUCP (Stevan Harnad) (01/22/87)
"CUGINI, JOHN" <cugini@icst-ecf> wrote on mod.ai: > ...so the toothache is "real" but "subjective"... > But...if both [subjective and objective phenomena] are real, > then we know why we need consciousness as a concept -- > because without it we cannot explain/talk about the former class of > events - even if the latter class is entirely explicable in its own > terms. Ie, why should we demand of consciousness that it have > explanatory power for objective events? It's like demanding that > magnetism be acoustically detectible before we accept it as a valid > concept. Fortunately, there is a simple answer to this: Explanation itself is (or should be) purely an objective matter. Magnetism, and all other tractable physical phenomena are (in principle) objectively explainable, so the above analogy simply does not work. Nagel has shown that all of the other reductions in physics have always been objective-to-objective. The mind/body problem is an exception precisely because it resists subjective-to-objective reduction. Now if there's something (subjectively) real and irreducible left over that is left out of an objective account, we have to learn to live with that explanatory incompleteness, rather than wishing it away by hopeless mixing of categories and hopeful pumping of analogies, images and interpretations. (In fact, I think that if all the objective manifestations of consciousness -- performance capacity and neural substrate -- are indeed "entirely explicable [in their own objective] terms," as I believe and Cugini seems to concede, then why not get on to explaining them thus, rather than indulging in subjective overinterpretation and wishful thinking, which can only obscure or even retard objective progress?) [Please do not pounce on the parenthetic "subjectively" that preceded "real," above. The problem of the objective status of consciousness IS the mind/body problem, and to declare that subjectively-real = objectively-real is just to state an empty obiter dictum. It happens to be a correlative fact that all detectable physical phenomena -- i.e., all objective observables -- have subjective manifestations. That's what we MEAN by observability, intersubjectivity, etc. But the fact that the objective always piggy-backs on the subjective still doesn't settle the objective status of the subjective itself. I'll go even further. I'm not a solipsist. I'm as confident as I am of any objective inference I have made that other people really exist and have experiences like my own. But even THAT sense of the "reality" of the subjective does not help when it comes to trying to give an objective account of it. As to subjective accounts -- well, I don't go in much for hermeneutics...] > I can well understand how those who deny the reality of experiences > (eg, toothaches) would then insist on the superfluousness of the > concept of consciousness - but Harnad clearly is not one such. > So...we need consciousness, not to explain public, objective events, > such as neural activity, but to explain, or at least discuss, private > subjective events. If it be objected that the latter are outside the > proper realm of science, so be it, call it schmience or philosophy or > whatever you like. - but surely anything that is REAL, even if > subjective, can be the proper object for some sort of rational > study, no? Some sort, no doubt. But not an objective sort, and that's the point. Empirical psychology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence are all, I presume, branches of objective inquiry. I know that this is also the heyday of hermeneutics, but although I share with a vengeance the belief that philosophy can make a substantive contribution to the cognitive sciences today, I don't believe that that contribution will be hermeneutic. Rather, I think it will be logical, methodological and foundational, pointing out hidden complexities, incoherencies and false-starts. Let's leave the subjective discussion of private events to lit-crit, where it belongs. Stevan Harnad {allegra, bellcore, seismo, rutgers, packard} !princeton!mind!harnad harnad%mind@princeton.csnet (609)-921-7771