From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 28 Sep 92 16:13:59 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Sep25.184901.555@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>
>Jeff, accusing people of being "in the grips of an ideology", as
>Searle calls it is nothing but sophomoric name-calling. 

I don't agree.  Saying something is sophomoric name-calling _is_
a cheap debating trick, though.  (As is calling something a cheap
debating trick, but one such turn deserves another ;-).

>Why is it more "ideological" to believe that behavior is sufficient
>than to believe that behavior is *not* sufficient?

I suppose one might hold the view that every position is ideological.
But not everyone is equally gripped, nor are all ideologies equally
distorting.  Besides, I think we should try to avoid going down the 
road to "everything is ideology, and hence all views equally good."

>And you are wrong, as I have pointed out many times before, to
>associate the view that intelligence, consciousness, etc. are
>behavioral is identical with verificationism. I am not in any way a
>verificationist.

One thing I am not saying is that the view that intelligence,
consciousness, etc. are behavioral is _identical_ with verificationism.
Indeed, you will have noticed that I said the ideology is _something
like_ a verificationist (or falsificationist) philosophy of science.
I also mentioned a multi-headed beast, I seem to recall.

I am trying to diagnose something I have seen again and again in
these debates, over several years.  People demand a definition of
consciousness that can be tested by a third-person observer or
else, they say, the concept is meaningless.  People defend the
Turing Test and claim that we judge that other humans have minds
using such behavioral evidence.  And so on.

Now, these people do not all agree with each other.  There are a
number of different views involved, and they can exploit this to
attack any attempt to characterize them.  Some of them aren't
behaviorists, some aren't verificationists, etc.  But there is a
persistent bias towards things that can be assessed from the
third-person point of view, and I think this needs some explanation.

If you don't like my explanation, why not suggest another one?

>The problem you are worried about isn't peculiar to verificationists.
>Even if everyone believes that there is absolute right and wrong, and
>even if everyone believes that there are means to establish truth
>beyond logic and empiricism, you are still stuck if (1) people
>disagree about what is true, and (2) people disagree about what is a
>good way to reason about truth.

Sure, but I don't think we should just give up in the face of this.
And what happens if people succeed in disrediting the idea of rational
debate in cases where we don't have some "objective" way to decide?

>Thus your complaint boils down to: there is a problem if people can't
>agree on important things.

Not at all.  There are problems at several levels.  That removing
a problem at one level would leave problems at others doesn't
mean the former problem "boils down to" some sort of general
"there will be disagreement always".

Once again it seems that someone (in this case, you) is trying
to make it seem that if we can't solve some problem completely
(in some sense), there's no point in taking any steps in that
direction at all.  If people are always going to disagree on
some important things, there's not point is getting some people
to agree on some of them.  The same sort of thing happens in
the TT debates: for instance, if looking at functional organization
can't get us all the way to other minds, there's no point in
considering it at all.  And so on.

>>Indeed, I think some people are fortunate that the debate has been
>>focused on the obscure philosophical issue of intentionality rather
>>than on, say, free will, where the moral, ethical, and political
>>issues might be more visible.
>
>The nice thing about philosophical discussions is that you can explore
>alternatives (you can get beyond your natural ideology) without having
>to worry about dire consequences if you happen to be wrong.

That shouldn't stop you from looking at the implications of
being right.

-- jd