Ian Glendinning stated May 19th:
Ant "asked" ...
>
> Is this the "Hard Question" of David Charmless (I think that's the guy's
> name) you're referring to?
>
"Certainly Chalmers in his Tucson Science of Consciousness activities
popularised the split. He charmed a lot of people."
Ant McWatt comments:
Ian,
As you might have guessed Dr Chalmers didn't charm me (well, at least his work
didn't - neat hairstyle though!). When I read "Explaining Consciousness – The
Hard Problem" for my PhD, it became quickly evident that I had here yet another
contemporary philosopher who hadn't read Northrop though he was a little better
(or at least luckier) than Dennett who hasn't read Northrop either but
conflates his concepts by intuition with concepts by postulation at critical
points (presuming his famous text "Consciousness 'Obscured'" is typical of his
work).
Because, what do we get kids, when we conflate our concepts by intuition with
concepts by postulation?
"If one treats the concepts of Western philosophy, which almost invariably are
concepts by postulation, as if they were empirically given concepts by
intuition, vague rubbish is precisely and inevitably what one will get."
(Northrop, 1947, p.67)
I might seem a bit harsh here (the "Hard Opinion of Dr McWatt") but if you
don't get the fundamentals right in the first place, your conclusions will
end-up being off beam. The trouble is, it's not always apparent with such
philosophers in how they are using certain terminology whether they're talking
about concepts by intuition or concepts by postulation. It all needs careful
unpicking and translating.
Though I found Chalmers was better than Dennett (the "Claire Rayner* of
contemporary philosophy") regarding the conflation of concepts by intuition and
postulation, he's still has some "weird" views about evolution and
consciousness. (I think his assertion in "Explaining (away) Consciousness"
that evolutionary criteria in the development of consciousness should be
dismissed is the fundamental error in his work). For instance, he advances the
argument that if a physical replica of himself appeared a million years ago, it
‘would have been just as conscious’ as his present day self. Well, at least
Chalmers' vacuous example here gave rise to a comment by Pirsig which always
make me laugh every time I read it. Namely (quoting from my PhD):
"How does [Chalmers] know this? There is no way a physical replica of him
could appear a million years ago. This is an hypothesis contrary to fact; like
saying that if pigs could fly they could probably go to 10,000 feet in
altitude." (Pirsig, 2002e)
It's these pigs of Chalmers with their long, flowing locks (a la Miss Piggy)
being blown about by the airstream at 10,000 feet that gets me...
Anyway, on a more positive note, I think the MOQ would say that the connection
between ‘an experienced inner life’ and matter IS
essentially an evolutionary one. Biological value patterns control inorganic
value patterns through key chemical reactions that are the subject of
biochemistry. In turn, social patterns control biological ones through such
institutions as the police and the military while, intellectual patterns
control social ones through government, law and the democratic process. As
Pirsig (1991, p.159) notes, the connection only becomes a mystery when the two
middle levels of biology and society are overlooked:
"The mind-matter paradoxes seem to exist because the connecting links between
these two levels of value patterns have been disregarded. Two terms are
missing: biology and society. Mental patterns do not originate out of inorganic
nature. They originate out of society, which originates out of biology which
originates out of inorganic nature. And, as anthropologists know so well, what
a mind thinks is as dominated by social patterns as social patterns are
dominated by biological patterns and as biological patterns are dominated by
inorganic patterns."
Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that in "Explaining Consciousness"
Chalmers is conflating the ‘connecting principles’ for why consciousness
developed (from physical matter) with the ‘connecting principles’ of how
consciousness and physical matter operate between each other. Yet, in this
text, he is addressing the second question when his ‘hard question’ actually
relates to the first!!!
Consequently, Chalmers confuses the metaphysical obstacles of the connecting
principles between mind and matter with the scientific explanation of their
relationship. Critically, the scientific explanations of consciousness (as
with theories concerning phenomena such as electricity or light) are concepts
by postulation and, as such, open to continual revision. In consequence, it
would be implausible to assume that definitive answers to such phenomena will
ever be achieved; only the discovery of better (though still) provisional
theories about such phenomena is the best we can hope for.
Best wishes,
Ant
(* - Claire Rayner was a rather patronising, if well meaning, agony aunt made
famous by UK TV during the 1980s.)
.
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