From: cash@convex.com (Peter Cash)
Subject: Re: Philosophy and Myth
Organization: The Instrumentality
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 18:50:56 GMT
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In article <1992Apr8.230528.1789@panix.com> jk@panix.com (Jim Kalb) writes:
>cash@convex.com (Peter Cash) writes:
...
>[A quote from Ludwig Wittgenstein:]
...
>>The most valuable thing one can do in connection with such questions is 
>>to examine why one wants to ask them.

>>For example, what is one asking who asks, "What is consciousness?". 
>>What is the basis of this question? What do we mean by "consciousness"? 
>>_Does_ this word have a meaning when it's used like this?

>The connection between the quote and your proposal for dealing with 
>questions like "what is consciousness" isn't clear to me.  In the 
>passage you quoted, LW seems to be suggesting that there is something to 
>such questions ("naturally we don't want to deny [mental processes]") 
>but the way they are phrased is misleading.  You sound somewhat as if 
>you thought such questions would disappear if we could sort out our 
>thought about things more clearly.  The two views seem very different to 
>me.

Well, the passage came to mind in connection with the previous discussion
of how metaphysics creates confusion between conceptual and empirical
questions); though there's a connection between this passage and the
(rather unoriginal) remarks I made about how to deal with certain
questions, I would not have picked this particular passage to support my
remarks.

As the question you raise about the "two views" being "different", I do
think you're mistaken. I believe Wittgenstein is saying that because we
have asked the question in a certain way ("What kind of process is
consciousness?), it looks as though we are _denying_ that people are
conscious if we reject the question. It _looks_ as though we are asserting
that people are always asleep, or some kind of automata. Saying, "there is
no such thing as consciousness" is absurd. 

And of course I am saying no such thing.

>One thought -- if questions like "what is the nature of consciousness" 
>get asked because of a misapplication of concepts that are used in the 
>empirical sciences, it seems that people who lived before the rise of 
>modern natural science would not have asked such questions.  Is that the 
>case?

Good question. Descartes, of course, concerned himself with the relation
between mind and body--but Descartes was already heavily influenced by the
scientific renaissance. (The "mind" is that part of a human being that
doesn't fit in the mechanistic, scientific picture of what a person is. If
you don't have this picture, questions about the "mind" lose their
urgency.)  Before the Descartes, you _can_ find questions like this
(Plato's Phaedo comes to mind), but they are not nearly as sharply
delineated.


-- 
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             |      Die Welt ist alles, was Zerfall ist.     |
Peter Cash   |       (apologies to Ludwig Wittgenstein)      |cash@convex.com
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