If these 3 propositions were true they would be substantial contribution and I would tip my hat to the philosophers of mind. While I don't doubt that they may be accepted as true within that community I do not think that they are true statements about the nature of the mind. Or that they are true in a self contained overly formalized reading of the meaning of various words and assertions that while internally consistent and "true" within those constraints are trivial.
Favorite Area of Philosophy?
- Thread starter Fifty
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If these 3 propositions were true they would be substantial contribution and I would tip my hat to the philosophers of mind. While I don't doubt that they may be accepted as true within that community I do not think that they are true statements about the nature of the mind. Or that they are true in a self contained overly formalized reading of the meaning of various words and assertions that while internally consistent and "true" within those constraints are trivial.
I am well aware of the brains plasticity as I am one of the people discovering things about it. The brain is marviously plastic within certain anatomical constraints. There is still highly localized function and specialized circuitry.
Fifty
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What makes you think that?
ThinkTank
RL Addict
Philosophical logic, but only just before philosophy of language. There's a considerable overlap anyway. I am fascinated by the "language and meaning"-family of problems but I prefer approaches that are subject to the rigorous mathematical treatment that you find in logic.
BTW, I'm against the term philosophical logic. There is only one area of logic. I think it goes like this. Logicians in the mathematics department are a marginal group. Their colleagues accuse them of being philosophers. They defend themselves by pointing at the logicians at the philosophy department, and say "no, they are philosophers, we are really doing mathematical logic". Likewise, logicians in the philosophy department are a marginal group. Their colleagues accuse them of being mathematicians - you get the picture I guess.
At Amsterdam university there used to be a time when there was one section of logic and it belonged to both the department of mathematics and to the department of philosophy. That is about right in my view. Unfortunately this situation was incomprehensible for the state officials of the ministery of education.
BTW, I'm against the term philosophical logic. There is only one area of logic. I think it goes like this. Logicians in the mathematics department are a marginal group. Their colleagues accuse them of being philosophers. They defend themselves by pointing at the logicians at the philosophy department, and say "no, they are philosophers, we are really doing mathematical logic". Likewise, logicians in the philosophy department are a marginal group. Their colleagues accuse them of being mathematicians - you get the picture I guess.
At Amsterdam university there used to be a time when there was one section of logic and it belonged to both the department of mathematics and to the department of philosophy. That is about right in my view. Unfortunately this situation was incomprehensible for the state officials of the ministery of education.
Because of my understanding of neuroscience. If this discussion of mental causation is the nature of the field I do not feel it has anything to offer and certainly does not take into account our actual knowledge of the brain.
Fifty
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But I'm asking what, in particular, in your understanding makes you believe that the things I listed are false or whatever? I mean if its just something I can't figure out without having a PhD in neuroscience let me know, but I'm genuinely curious as you obviously know way way way way way more about that stuff than I do!
Narz
keeping it real
Yeah, I'm learning about it all (well not "it all", I'm just scratching the surface), it's fascinating.
Damnyankee
Honest Abe
Why is their no "I don't like Philosophy" option?
Fifty, you were "snappy and evasive" with me, to use your own words, in the other thread when you said that knowledge is not subjective. Can you prove that philosophy has an answer for that?
I don't think anyone is ever going to prove knowledge or existence in absolute terms with the cognitive abilities we have at the moment. I don't care who you are, you're still screwed if you wake up tomorrow and all of a sudden gravity isn't what it was yesterday. Can you prove that it won't be? Can you prove to me that the universe has existed for more than two seconds? What if everything, including you, was just blinked into existence 2 seconds ago, complete with memories (physical arrangements of neurons...not very hard to make if you have the power to create matter) that make you think that you have existed for years? Can philosophy answer that? Is that or is it not what philosophy (or one of the many, many fields of it) tries to answer?
Science is extremely useful as long as we take as given certain base principles. But knowledge is really just faith, because you only react to and interpret the "outside world," not control it. What advancement has philosophy achieved that isn't a "strong suggestion"?
I don't think anyone is ever going to prove knowledge or existence in absolute terms with the cognitive abilities we have at the moment. I don't care who you are, you're still screwed if you wake up tomorrow and all of a sudden gravity isn't what it was yesterday. Can you prove that it won't be? Can you prove to me that the universe has existed for more than two seconds? What if everything, including you, was just blinked into existence 2 seconds ago, complete with memories (physical arrangements of neurons...not very hard to make if you have the power to create matter) that make you think that you have existed for years? Can philosophy answer that? Is that or is it not what philosophy (or one of the many, many fields of it) tries to answer?
Science is extremely useful as long as we take as given certain base principles. But knowledge is really just faith, because you only react to and interpret the "outside world," not control it. What advancement has philosophy achieved that isn't a "strong suggestion"?
QuoVadisNation
keeping your angel alive
And yet, those philosophers call themselves philosophers and Derrida and Lacan still belong to several 'top 100 most influential philosophers of the 20th century' lists. Your definition of philosophy may very well be only self-serving, and does nothing but try to give philosophers more creditability and weight than they actually deserve in this thread.
I think the Churchlands would disagree. In fact, I think numerous philosophers would disagree with all three of those alleged "substantial" conclusions that philosophy of the mind made. Creating a theory that says something without proving it scientifically does not an important contribution make.
Fifty
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What exactly do you mean by "subjective", and what exactly do you define "knowledge" to mean?
Depends on exactly what your standard of proof is.
What advancement has any field of science achieved that isn't a "strong suggestion"?
Lists compiled by whom? Know-nothing Journalists? Know-nothing literature students? Everybody is familiar with the analytic/continental distinction, it's hardly something ad hoc that I just came up with out of nowhere. I completely agree that guys like Derrida are full of it. Pointing to the worst of a field and then using them to say "that field is bunk" is just silly. Does the stupidity of IDers mean science is stupid?
I don't think the Churchlands would disagree, I think their position is more subtle than that.
Evidence?
Why not?
In any case, you've shown again your unwillingness to think carefully about what you say, and have made some errors so egregious that I don't think continuing the conversation with you would be of much worth. I don't want to have to spend 30 pages explaining every elementary flaw in your argument. Now I know that, around CFC, the default stance of the know-nothings is that if you can get someone to do anything BUT spend 30 pages trying to figure out your bizarre rants, that means you win. So congrats, YOU WIN!!!
True knowledge is, well, 100% knowing something. I think the definition of "know" makes it impossible to have perfect knowledge, because it presupposes you as external to that thing. If you really, really "knew" something, you would have to be that thing. All you really know is that you exist in some way (not necessarily as you perceive yourself to).
Non-subjective knowledge in this sense is impossible in my opinion--you would be what people call god--thus I think knowledge is ultimately subjective. Even as I write this, I can only think with some large percentage of belief that what I am writing is English and that in the last 10 minutes my mind hasn't rearranged itself such that what comes out to you is random babbling. Do I know what the difference between "hello" and "hhsfkjdf" is? In everyday terms, yes, I "know," but if you want to start treating knowledge as a science, then not really, no. I only think I know, and act on that belief.
Say tomorrow you roll out of bed and stop signs are all blue for you. Uh oh, what do you do? Do you know now that they won't be, or do you just have a strong hunch? Will you know that they were red before? You can't know that they won't be blue tomorrow, because you would be able to see into the future. You wouldn't know that they weren't red before. Life and consciousness would be fundamentally different things, which is a whole other tangent. Tell me that knowledge is not subjective.
This reminds me of an anecdote about G.E. Moore, I think it was, that said to an audience, "look, I don't need to *prove* to you that there are windows behind those curtains over there. I see curtains, and I know there are windows. So stop with all this skeptical nonsense." And someone pulled back the curtains, behind which there was a wall.
True proof doesn't exist. Even when you prove, "look, the stop sign exists. You just broke your nose running into it, stupid," you are presupposing a lot of things and everything that comes out of your mouth as "proof" is ultimately based on some presupposition. We have to settle with a fluid, subjective notion of knowledge and proof that simply states (and I'm writing this off the top of my head, so bear with me), "this is consistent enough to be agreed upon by a certain critical mass of conscious entities, whom we presuppose to exist and interpret the world somewhat consistently, such that we can use it for inductive purposes for the indefinite future." There are more presuppositions necessary in that statement, but I won't write them all out. For example, I have to presuppose the meanings of the words and letters that I just wrote down.
So, can you prove, without presuppositions, that you weren't just blinked into existence 2 seconds ago? You have to set up lots of conditions and presuppositions. Biology "proves" things with the scientific method because most all biologists take as given certain criteria, like the existence of their nosehairs. But philosophy is putting knowledge itself to the test, and while I feel the study of knowledge is fascinating and useful, I think it is ultimately subjective because you can't reduce it down to something absolute and self-defining. Especially when you ask questions like, "what is the aim of science?" You don't know and you can't call something wrong.
Abaddon
Deity
I dont really understand philosophy to the level of classification.. btu i do ponder about, ay know... stuff
Fifty
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Why should we accept this definition of knowledge?
So by proof you mean "showing something to be knowledge" with the 100% certainty definition of knowledge? My response will depend on your answer to my above question.
Abaddon
Deity
blabla cannot be 100% bla bla... instead use "beyond significant doubt"
I believe we had somewhat the same conversation before. It might be easier if I respond to specific assertions with what I think neuroscience offers as an explanation. Take your first assertion that someone has proved that: mental states are not physical states of the brain. I would like to know what that proof is in order to respond. If I understand the assertion correctly then I would say there is a ton of neuroscience in animals and people to suggest that is not true. The simplest is that you can electrically stimulate the human brain and produce mental states, recall of specific memories, feelings of sadness or joy etc., experimentally changing the physical state of the brain does change mental state.
Or physical brain damage. I wanted to ask you since I've heard of this before; haven't there been cases of people with lesions in the part of the brain that deals with vision that couldn't see the left sides of things? For example, one person would eat only half a plate of rice, or when asked to bisect a line, would divide it into 3/4 and 1/4 segments. Is this true? If so, I think it would be very interesting in that it represents a further dimension of physical-mental linkage, i.e. you don't just lose your sight with brain damage but you might actually see things in a fundamentally different way.
Fifty
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I think I wasn't being as clear as I should have been. Philosophy of mind absolutely subscribes to the view that brain states CAUSE mental states, what they are saying is that mental states are not themselves brain states.
You don't have to. In fact, I don't--I wouldn't be able to live, because I don't have perfect confidence in anything. I already sketched out another, more flexible definition. But, anything less than true knowledge as I stated is subjective. Since that form of knowledge is impossible, I thought of a rough sketch of an alternative definition later in my post. Given my proposed sketch of a definition dealing with justified inductive belief--still a lot of loose ground with "justified" and "belief" in there--the study of knowledge is fascinating to figure out how people "believe" things and "know" things, granted certain presuppositions. But you can't go further than that, and you have to be careful about saying what you "know" or what is "right" because objective standards for those things don't exist on an ultimate level, simply because we aren't god. You only know that you exist in some form because you are you. But you don't know anything outside of you, and you can't be sure about a lot of things about you. Kind of a cop-out, yes, but then again all I ever said was that knowledge is subjective.
I'm not sure if you are going to pull out some nuanced definition of what I said that I don't agree with, but basically, yes. You can't prove we aren't living in the Matrix, or that you aren't just a brain and some organs in a vat being electrically stimulated by a very hi-tech computer to "live" the experiences you are living now. In fact, let's assume that. I'm right outside your vat right now, looking at you. I am reading the posts you are writing for me, produced through your electrical impulses recorded by the computer. I am a scientist that is doing this experiment in order to see if I can make you in the vat renounce your knowledge and belief by convincing you that you aren't real. How can you prove anything to me if I simply tell you that everything you're dealing with isn't real? You don't have access to outside information. You can use justified inductive belief--you're doing it using language--but you don't know things outside of your vat.
This isn't meant to be the annoying skeptic throwing a wrench into everything saying, "but you don't know your face exists! ha!". I'm just saying that we should be more fluid and humble with what we think of as knowledge.
