From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Dualism
Date: 1 Oct 92 19:30:57 GMT
Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

In article <1992Sep29.134929.9271@oracorp.com> daryl@oracorp.com (Daryl McCullough) writes:
>In article <7595@skye.ed.ac.uk>, jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton)
>writes:

[flame exchange re debating tricks and name-calling omitted]

>>>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.
>
>I wasn't saying that at all. I *don't* believe that the Strong AI
>position is ideological.
>
>>But not everyone is equally gripped, nor are all ideologies equally
>>distorting.
>
>I don't know what you mean by "equally gripped", other than "equally
>sure of the manifest truth of their beliefs". Do you really think that
>Searle is *less* gripped by an ideology by this definition?
>
>And what do you mean by saying that an ideology is "distorting" other
>than saying it is false?

I can only suppose you've never had an exchange with a Randroid
(a variety of Objectivist).

As for distortion, Julian Jaynes had something worthwhile to say about
something in this general area when discussing "scientisms" (marxism,
psychoanalysis, etc.) in his _Origin of Consciousness_ (based in part
on George Steiner's account of "mythologies"):

   ... They differ from classical science and its common debates
   in the way they invoke the same response as did the religions
   which they seek to supplant.  And they share with religions
   many of their most obvious characteristics: a rational splendor
   that explains everything, a charismatic leader or succession
   of leaders who are highly visible and beyond criticism, a
   series of canonical texts ..., certain gestures of idea and
   rituals of interpretation, and a requirement of total commitment.
   In return the adherent receives what the religions had once given
   him more universally: a world view, a hierarchy of importances, and
   an auguring place where he may find out what to do and think, in
   short, a total explanation of man.  And this totality is obtained
   not by actually explaining everything, but by an encasement of its
   activity, a severe and absolute restriction of attention, such that
   everything that is not explained in not in view.

Everything that is not explained in not in view.  Wouldn't you say
that's a distortion?

Of course Jaynes is talking about cases that are more extreme, but
it looks like I have to defend the mere possibility of distortion.

(I can also give to some examples from programming language design,
if you like.)

By "equally gripped" (by an ideology) I do not mean equally sure
of the manifest truth of some belief, although that's looking in
the right direction.  But if someone is sure of the manifest truth
of 2+2=4, I don't think they're in the grip of an ideology.  On
the other hand, haven't we all encountered a certain free market
ideology in recent years in which it's claimed that markets always
make things better, against what seems to be fairly clear evidence
to the contrary?  There are some people who can offer good arguments
for this view, arguments that touch some common ground with many,
at least, of those who disagree with them; but there are other cases
where it seems to be something almost beyond argument.  (Things can be
just as bad on the left, of course.)

>People are biased towards the third-person point of view because that
>is where progress can be made. Discussing inner experience doesn't
>seem to get us anywhere. You can say that consciousness *is* inner
>experience, regardless of whether there is any observable physical
>properties associated with that experience. I think most people would
>agree with that. But how does that get you anywhere? How does that
>help to argue that this is conscious and that is not?

I would have no objection if people said: "look, we want to make
progress on getting machines to behave in certain ways, discussions of
inner experience don't help us, we don't think questions about other
minds can ever be definitively answered, and we're just not interested
in that stuff anyway."

But many people don't say "we're not interested and it won't help us
do what we want to do" -- instead they want to discredit the views of
those who are interested.

>Nothing seems to *follow* from first-person experience, and both
>science and philosophy are about exploring consequences of things.

What?  What do you mean nothing follows from it?  It would make
no difference if we didn't have 1st person experience -- if we were
just mindless zombies?

>>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?
>
>Who is trying to discredit the idea of rational debate?

The question is this: how can we justify conclusions?  Does there
always have to be an "objective" test?  I say "no".  When someone
says, for instance, that the word "consciousness" is meaningless
unless there's some 3rd person way to test for it, they seem to be
saying "yes".  In their view, we can't, for instance, reach a
justified conclusion about machine consciousness unless we accept
some objective test.  Reasoning about it just isn't good enough.

Now, either they have reasons why consciousness, or machine
understanding, or Chinese Rooms are a special case -- or they
think the requirement for an objective test applies generally.

So why don't we see some arguments to the effect that these
are special cases?

>>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.
>
>I didn't say that! I didn't *imply* that! I was only taking issue with
>your suggestion that verificationists and falsificationists were the
>bad guys preventing you from trying to address hard problems.

Then what _was_ the point of your "Thus your complaint boils down to:
there is a problem if people can't agree on important things."?
Verificationists and falsificationists are not the only "bad guys",
I agree.  That doesn't make them good guys.

>It seems to me, Jeff, that when people disagree with you, you assume
>that it is for ideological reasons, or because they are
>verificationists, or whatever.

Well, I don't _assume_ it.  I conclude it after seeing what they
say.  My conclusions don't have to be right, of course.  (Whose do?)
But I'm not just making assumptions.  Moreover, I often disagree
with people and don't conclude any of these things.

Of course, maybe everyone is in the grip of some ideology, to some
extent, but if so some ideologies must be much more flexible and
accomodating than others.

>In the cases where there is no objective reasons for believing 
>something, I can still believe something different from you.

Of course.  So what?  People can believe almost anything.

-- jd
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