From: max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (Max Webb)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic
Subject: Re: Brain and Mind (was: Logic and God)
Date: 8 Sep 92 19:58:23 GMT
Article-I.D.: hilbert.1992Sep8.195823.5918
Distribution: na
Organization: Cypress Semiconductor Northwest, Beaverton Oregon

In article <1992Sep7.220009.16992@meteor.wisc.edu> tobis@meteor.wisc.edu (Michael Tobis) writes:
>In article <1992Sep7.181145.29667@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com> max@hilbert.cyprs.rain.com (Max Webb) writes:
>>...
>>Well, let's see. There are the corpus callosum severance experiments,
>>which appear to indicate that in some cases awareness can be divided
>>by a scalpel.
>...
>... [quoted analogy follows:] Images appear on your TV
>screen, and if your TV is damaged, the pictures are distorted. Yet no one
>claims that the images are caused by the TV. 

You didn't respond to the main point of all of my examples. If by damaging
the TV we could cause the _awareness_ of the screen to split in half, and if by
damaging the TV, we could both remove the image and _OUR_AWARENESS_THAT
ANYTHING_IS_WRONG_, and if we suddenly realized that there was no evidence
for a viewer separate from the TV at all, then the most strongly implied
conclusion would be that BOTH the image AND the awareness of it were an
emergent property of the television.

>... I suppose you are aware
>of the "Chinese room" paradox. I find that argument compelling, and take it
>a bit further.

I suppose you must - since Searle himself vehemently DENIES being a dualist.
He merely believes that the brain is a different _kind_ of device. There
are numerous problems with his argument - but a detailed discussion belongs in
comp.ai.philosophy. I think the systems reply quite adequately rebuts that
argument. Searles reply to the systems reply (have the person in the
room _memorize_ the rules) is rebutted by noting that simply memorizing
rules does not guarantee internalization - true natural language includes
mappings to every other mental domain the person has, and when we include
these mappings, the room-dweller immediately acquires a functional (tho
rote) competency in chinese.

> Dennett, in 
>"Brainstorms" at least mentions the dualist hypothesis briefly, but in
> contrast to his usual closely reasoned analysis, dismisses it by saying
> "I am not sympathetic to such an approach"! 

Not at all - most of the book is a treatment of the flaws of the "cartesian
theatre approach", to which you appealed in your initial TV analogy. Now
not all dualism is a cartesian theatre, and not all cartesian theatres
are dualist; nevertheless, the two notions go together like pizza and beer.
The problem with trying to treat dualism in general is that it is a non-theory.

If we were to locate the interaction between (for lack of a better word)
the soul and the brain, it would be treated as a subtle form of physics.
If we were to succeed in following the thread of causality back up to the
soul, and to learn how the soul works - then you would be right back to where
we seem to be now, with everything happening in one unified domain.

>I claim that sentience is something entirely distinct from information
>processing. I claim that it cannot be defined in a scientifically rigorous
>way, and hence its origin "in" the brain cannot be said to be demonstrated.

This is what I mean by dualism being a non-theory. It seems a hope that science
will not be able to accomplish certain things, and is not a theory that
makes testable predictions that prove out. [Dennett makes this point in his
book, and I think it is a strong one.]

When they didn't know how fire worked, they invented 'fire-stuff' (phlogiston).
when they didn't know how sap flowed through plants, they invented 'vegetative'
spirits to push them. Until we understood the chemistry of metabolism and
inheritance, we had Bergson's elan vital.  Churchland quotes a story
about villagers who, upon seeing a car for the first time, supposed that they
contained tiny horses inside of them. Clearly, inventing homunculi and new
kinds of matter are an easy way to invent naively convincing hypotheses -
but the history of that approach is not encouraging. Why should we then
pursue it here, in the absence of evidence to support it?

>That the brain has some function in transmitting information
>to the self is clear.

If the self can be cut in two by severing the corpus callosum, then the
idea of a self separate from the brain is suspicious, to say the least.
Will you next posit that we have 2 souls, talking to each other through
nerves? (guess what my next move would be - subdivide again) Or will you
say that the soul only talks to one half of the brain, the other operating
solely physically[heh]? (but then, if one half of the brain can be aware
without a soul, why not both?)

> My playing "deity's advocate" on the dualism question
>is a tentative opinion, but I find the assumption to the contrary quite
>disturbing, as the assumption is rarely even mentioned.

It sounds like you dislike the assumption that mental phenomena can be
approached scientifically from any angle at all. Unfortunately, the
alternative assumption leads nowhere, so not many scientists interested in
consciousness pursue it.

And I see nothing wrong with that state of affairs. Not to insult you
by association, but there are creationists next door in t.o. that say
that we are not warranted in assuming that the past is anything like the
present. But if we drop that assumption, then there is literally no way
to learn anything about the past (or the present, or the future). All
of science goes bye-bye. [Again, I am not really comparing you to them
- just drawing an analogy between 2 arguments]

If you disagree, why not be bold, and post a prediction that dualism makes
that we can test?

Regards,
	Max G. Webb
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,talk.origins