Three divisions of nine months: first, abortion ok, second, maybe ok, third, probably not ok. — tim wood

That's a very good starting-point for developing policy. But, of course, those are lines drawn in a continuous developmental process. The argument against abortion is essentially an argument against the ethical significance of those lines, so they are swept away by a blizzard of slogans and absolutism. Pity.

Can we get some perspective by considering a related but different issue? The idea that contraception is wrong. The abortion argument seems to draw a line at the point of fertilization of the egg and there is a point to that. Still, there are people (some of whom I respect) who believe that that line is not ethically significant. It is true that the causal process does not begin at that point, but is arrived at by means of a causal process which is initiated by the sex act.

There are ethical and legal restrictions on the sex act. So now I want to ask why if it is thought to be so vitally important not to interfere with the development of a foetus/baby/child, it is thought to be ethically acceptable to interfere in any way with the sex act.

Once one has decided that it is ethically important to regulate the sex act, it seems to me that there is no good reason to reject interference with the process at any later stage, until the foetus/baby/child becomes sentient, and even then, when situations arise in which life and welfare
of the baby and mother are in danger and choices have to be made, there is no good reason to prioritize the life of the baby over that of the mother.

My claim is that people who insist on using the term foetus instead of baby can't point out what the substantive difference is, and that they use the term to suggest there is one. A human foetus and a human baby are both human individuals. — Hallucinogen

This is a non-issue. A human foetus and a human baby are the same individuals being described in different ways. The difference is the ethical attitudes embedded in the description. It is pointless to fuss about which description is being applied when what is at stake is the ethical attitudes embedded in the descriptions.
I would argue that there is a significant difference between the descriptions "baby" and "child", although it gets severely eroded in common use. A child is a baby who has grown up somewhat, probably to the point where they can walk and talk. However, there are somewhat different ethical attitudes embedded in those descriptions as well.

That was a very helpful dialogue. The most interesting feature was that it turns out that you agree on a great deal. So I'm going to try and identify more accurately where your disagreement is. You will probably both disagree with me, but I hope we will get clearer about the problem - which is certainly a hard one.

It's not controversial that electrochemical processes cause us to decide to act. — Janus

I'm afraid it is very controversial. The disagreement centres on "cause". There's a definition which circulates in philosophical discussion and this definition itself is, in my view, suspect. After all, it was developed more than 300 years ago and things have moved on since then. Allied to a popular metaphysical view - that the only "true" or fundamental reality is physical/material reality, it is inescapably reductionist. Part of the problem is that the scientific revolutionaries in the 17th century took an entirely rational decision that their physics would not and could not take account of anything that could not be represented as a measurable quantity that could be treated mathematically. There's nothing wrong with that decision, except the illusion that anything that could not be represented in physics was not real.

Do you really believe that when you decide to act or simply act that there have been no prior neural processes (that you have obviously not been aware of) which give rise to that decision or action? — Janus

You've moved away from the troublesome concept of cause to something vaguer, which masks, to some extent, where the disagreement is.
You refer to "when I decide to act or simply act". That seems to posit the possibility of acting without deciding to act, which seems absurd, and certainly won't help the neurophysiologists, who are looking for causes of action. So we need to choose between saying that when I "simply act", there is no decision or the decision is the action and the action is the decision.
All this is hugely complicated by the concept of "intention". We don't I think decide to intend to act, yet intending to act seems to presuppose that I have decided to act. Then the question arises about "simply acting". Does this mean acting without intending to - i.e. unintentionally? I don't think so.
So now we have a rather complex preparatory stage to action - decision, intention, action, and a category of actions that seem to be actions, yet have no visible preparatory stage.
Then we need to think about planning, preparing, trying - where do all these fit in?
Coming back to what I will call - as vaguely as possible - the neurophysiological correlates of action. The neurophysiologists are positing all sorts of mental events - at least that is the language they use - which precede action. They don't seem to allow the possibility of "simply acting" - and if they did, it would mess up their search for physical processes that precede action. In fact, they are in a conceptual space that is closely parallel to the conceptual space of traditional dualism, who posited all sorts of "mental events" that preceded action and seemed to distinguish acting from a simply causal event with an empty gesture at substances. The dualists explained "simply acting" by positing that they took place very rapidly or unconsciously, which I think most people now recognize as hand-waving. Neurophysiologists are doing the same thing. The difference is that they are waving their hands at physical correlates.
It's a mess.

But the 'two competing explanatory paradigms', mental and material, just is the Cartesian division - mind and matter, self and other. — Wayfarer

Well, there is the difference that the distinction is no longer between two substances. But it is not wrong to say that the appeal to explanatory paradigms is a reinscription of Cartesian dualist and repeats the central dualist problem - how to explain the (causal) interface between mind and matter. But the nature of the question is different. That may be progress.

The way to "transcend that division" is to see that they are just two ways of understanding and that no polemic is necessary or even coherent between them. — Janus

Yes. That worked for a while in the late 20th century. But the scientists couldn't leave it alone. So here we are. What puzzles me, though, is why you seem unable to resist positing an interface between them. (Nor can I). Anyway, it is very helpful to know that you are seeing the problem in a Spinozan framework.

The point was that the ‘kettle’ example is a clear-cut illustration of the distinction between efficient (water temp) and teleological (intentional) causation. Using ‘neural activity’ to illustrate the distinction muddies the water by introducing another set of questions, concerning the relationship between neurophysiology and free will which you acknowledge is not at all clear cut. — Wayfarer

It sounds as if you are seeing the issue in an Aristotelian context. Am I wrong?

I was hoping to keep free will out of it at least for the time being. However, my strategy here is to see free will as equating with the proper functioning of my body, including its brain. Then I am able to do what I want to do and able to want what I want to want. But I'm a long way from being able to construct a compelling argument for that.

Ludwig V might find that of interest. — Wayfarer

Yes. I haven't read that book. But I have a lot of time for Hacker and Bennett. The first paragraph is a good presentation of what I want to say.

Moreover, merely replacing the mind by the brain leaves intact the misguided Cartesian conception of the relationship between the mind and behavior, merely replacing the ethereal by grey glutinous matter. The structure of the Cartesian explanatory system remains intact, and this leads to Bennett and Hacker's conclusion that contemporary cognitive neuroscientists are not nearly anti-Cartesian enough. — Wayfarer

That seems to me to be importantly correct, in this context.

So you found an exception or two to the rule. Congrats. — Leontiskos

a-z-animals.com has 7 species and says that " In fact, up to one in three mammal species are known to commit infanticide."

wildlifeinformer.com has 10 species and says that heads its list as "10 examples with pictures". (They aren't pictures of the animals in the process of eating their young). They say of blenny fish that " it is the fathers that eat their babies rather than the mother." Their story is that it is the father that looks after the eggs until they hatch. But apparently they sometimes eat the eggs they are supposed to be looking after so they can wander off and find another mate.

www.livescience.com has 12 species and introduces its list with "many creatures engage in this behavior."

Not as casually with little to no thought about the matter, rather. — Outlander

I would hope that anyone choosing an abortion would treat the matter seriously. Whether they do or not is an empirical question. Proper data, properly gathered is the only serious basis for making a judgement about how many do in fact take it seriously and how many do not.

What if, say, a woman chose abortion and later becomes infertile. Or simply ponders, as she becomes older, the magnitude of the act, or rather begins thinking along the lines of "imagine what could have been", etc. — Outlander

The only way you can answer that question is to talk to women who have made that decision and become infertile (or chosen not to have children, for that matter). Again, proper data, properly gathered. Anything else is speculation, and possibly fear-mongering and propaganda. "What if.." questions are all too often misused.

It's uncontroversial that the brain responds to stimuli and orchestrates all bodily processes and actions. That's what I mean. I've already said that I'm referring to that as modeling but am not suggesting it is any more than a physical process. Take it as a metaphor. — Janus

I'm afraid I missed the place where you said that. "Orchestrates" is a very good way of putting it. A metaphor is just about right for the state of our knowledge - a place-holder for a more detailed account. What I was trying to argue was a misunderstanding. Thank you.

For a species to intentionally kill its own fetuses is exceedingly unnatural. — Leontiskos

I'm sorry but that's just not the case.

Lots of things we do are “unnatural”. But then also killing one’s offspring happens in nature too. There are various species of birds that occasionally kill the weakest baby so that they can better feed the others — Michael

Yes, 5 minutes with Google threw up several lists of different species that will kill (and eat) their young. Hunger is one motive. Preventing a predator getting them seems to be another. Males seem to resent or be jealous to new babies. Killing the young is not particularly common, but there is no basis for calling it unnatural. The same applies to that other great taboo - cannibalism.

"Desperate" is my middle name! — Thales

That makes two of us, then. Let me try to be a bit more constructive.

Can a qualitative difference between humans and other animals be found in what humans "do" differently rather than how humans "are" different? — Thales

..... by reflecting on the question.

I don't rule out the possibility that there may be something that humans do that is absolutely unique in the animal world. After all, homo sapiens is undoubtedly unique in the animal world. So there is a collection of criteria that define it. But the same can be said of any other species.

Suppose that, in the end, there wasn't a qualitative difference between homo sapiens but a number of differences in degree, on a spectrum. (I think that's likely to be the truth of it). Why would that matter?

Moral realism can be true even if moral truths cannot be determined. — Michael

Russell's tea-pot is another well-known example. It was eventually exploded by the Voyager missions.
More seriously, why would indeterminate moral truths be relevant to anything?
Oh, of course. God's judgement.

What do you mean I didn't cover that? That's what I said in the third sentence you quoted. In short, either they're both murder, or neither is. (That is, if the law is consistent.) — Patterner

Sorry. My mistake. At least we agree.

I can't see why an infinite regress would be involved. You haven't actually explained your reasons for those three claims. — Janus

Then obviously I have not understood what you are trying to say. I still don't know what you mean by "modelling". I'm used to people claiming that my brain causes my behaviour, but this is presumably something different. I think it would help me if you could explain what you mean by modelling.

Can a qualitative difference between humans and other animals be found in what humans "do" differently rather than how humans "are" different? For example, humans make tools that make tools. Whereas a sea otter may use a rock to crack open shellfish for food, humans create tools (machinery) to manufacture lobster and crab crackers. This seems to be a behavior that animals lack. — Thales

I have heard of that as a criterion. But then I also heard that a counter-example had been found. Perhaps someone will come up with details.
This kind of argument is very difficult to press home. There was a suggestion at one time that only humans use tools. But that one got refuted. Then the suggestion was that only human make tools, but that one got refuted. Moving on to make tools that make tools looks a bit desperate to me. Given that animals not only use tools, but make tools as well, one wonders how significant making tools to make tools really is.

Well, this is the issue I have with morality in general. I don't think any moral claims are either verifiable or falsifiable. Unlike science and maths there's just no way to prove or disprove one claim or another. We just either accept them or we don't, and then make our choices accordingly, and such choices include whether or not to pass a law to ban abortion. — Michael

If moral realism is correct, then there is. So you need to explain why there is no way to prove or disprove a moral claim.

It would have been helpful if you had stated your view. Some people think that moral claims are purely subjective, but that's over-simplified. Moral claims are certainly not proved or disproved in the way(s) that science or math is. But there are moral arguments - not as crisp or conclusive as science and maths, but there they are. You have to work with what you can get.

.... they will not be convinced by any counter-argument, that points out - for example the horror of a pregnant woman bleeding out and losing her baby in the hospital car park because doctors are too afraid of prosecution to treat her. — unenlightened

I heard about that case. It was indeed horrible. But I'm afraid I'm very much inclined to include the doctors in my disapproval. True, they have a good deal at risk and they no doubt have families to consider. But still, to stand back and watch her die, or worse, to walk away, and not keep her company while she died.... Still, I don't really know what happened beyond the headlines.

I think we should be consistent. If it's murder then so is abortion. If abortion is not murder, then neither is this. — Patterner

H'm. You didn't cover "If it's not murder, ..." Given what you've said, if it's not murder. abortion is not murder. It's vicious nasty crime, but who was killed? No-one. So it's not murder.

His defence fails if consequentialism is false, so to prove that abortion is permissible he must prove that its moral permissibility is determined by the consequences. — Michael

What if there is no proof of consequentialism either way?
Can I assume that anyone who says that abortion is impermissible whatever the consequences is assuming that deontology is true and must prove that?
What if there is no proof of deontology either way?

There's an interesting question of the burden of proof here anyway. Do we have to prove that abortion is impermissible, in which case, lacking a proof, we can assume that abortion is permissible? Or do we have to prove that abortion is permissible, in which case, lacking a proof, we can assume that it is impermissible?

If we lack a proof both of the permissibility of abortion and of its impermissibility, can we just suspend judgement? I suppose we have to. In that case, there will be nothing to prevent people following their own consciences.

There is, at least at present, no conclusive argument available either way. In which case, there is no justification for a law either way and no ground to prevent people following their own consciences.

Unless that philosophical theory is true. If deontology is correct and the moral permissibility of abortion is determined by rules and principles rather than by consequences then abortion may be morally impermissible even if the mother might suffer from not having an abortion. — Michael

You've left out a premiss. If deontology is true and the rules and principles are incompatible with abortion, then abortion will be impermissible. However, before we can assert that abortion is impermissible, we have to know 1) that deontology is true and 2) that the relevant rules and principles are incompatible with abortion. We don't know either of those things, so this doesn't help.

Fair point. A 'pro-lifer' is a member of a tribe, no matter how persuasive an argument might be, the matter is settled for them. — Tom Storm

I think that's true. They seem to take the immorality of abortion as a fixed point in the argument and adjust all the other concepts involved to fit in with that.
Rational argument on its own won't cut it.
But let's not stereotype. One expects that not all "pro-lifers" think in exactly the same way and it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect that some of them may be able to see another point of view as possible. Conceding that is a big step forward, even if full change of mind (and heart) is beyond reach.
But it means that the argument is not just about rationality.

I'm saying that the brain's inscrutable neural processes we can only conceive as 'modeling'. — Janus

What I'm trying to get at it is that what you are arguing seems to me to be exactly parallel to the argument of many dualists back in the day. They argued that the mind was a kind of "homunculus" - an ill-defined being that actually executed all the (mental) operations that the body could not. In the case of perception, for example, it was thought of as a perceiver who did the perceiving that the body could not. But if that's how you explain perception, you have set up an infinite regress, so the model explains nothing. In the same way, if you posit that the brain has to carry out some process - call it modelling - that has to be executed before any action can be carried out - it seems to me that you have created an infinite regress.

To attribute to them a mind of some sort, sufficient for inciting that behavior, but without any means to prove THAT is the sort of mind they actually possess, from which arises causal necessity, or, without any means to prove they have any mind of any sort at all, when his only provision for it is his own experience, is certainly a problem. — Mww

But this is exactly the traditional problem of other minds. So your argument also proves that we cannot know that other human bodies have a mind.

The dog doesn't think about its own expectation. Expectation is belief about future events. — creativesoul

Surely this proves too much. It proves that the dog cannot act purposively.

What I meant is, if she wants to have the baby, and you sneak drugs into her food so it aborts, it's not murder. — Patterner

Oh, I see. Interesting.
So this is part of the argument that "becoming human" isn't a single moment, a single event, but a process. Is that what you were getting at?

In this it doesn't matter when a fetus 'becomes human' what matters is the bodily autonomy of the mother. In other words, no person is morally obligated to use their body to sustain another life against their will, even if that life is dependent on them. Just as one cannot be forced to donate organs to save another person, a woman cannot be compelled to use her body to support a fetus. — Tom Storm

I've seen this argument. I find it very persuasive. But I don't think that a "pro-lifer" would. The analogy with organ donation is not strong enough. And there's always the argument that the future mother has "signed up" when she consents to sex.

Here in Australia, abortion is still technically illegal in some states, but it's never enforced, and it's not nearly so much a matter of controversy as in the USA. — Wayfarer

Yes. On the face of it, it's a very unsatisfactory situation. But in practical terms, it's one way of coping with the difficulty of arriving at a consensus.
Abortion seems to be more of an issue in the USA than anywhere else in the world. It's very odd.

But if we aren't talking about a child, I don't think "parents" is the right word. There is only a pregnant woman. — Patterner

Fair point. But the question whether there is a child or not. I'm trying to prompt "pro-lifers" to think about all this, so it seems best to talk of parents meaning, the individuals who have primary responsibility for the situation.

And, again, sneaking drugs into a pregnant woman's food so that she aborts, as long as it doesn't harm her, is no worse than breaking her window. — Patterner

I don't understand. It doesn't harm her if she want the abortion, so sneaking would not be necessary. But it sneaking is necessary, then it's likely that she does not want the abortion and in that case, it definitely does harm her.

AH! I seem to detect the voice of reason. Thank you.

Many believe a fetus should have the same consideration as a child. — Patterner

.... and many do not. Should not the parents have the right to their own conscience? It's not as if anybody seriously believes that abortion should not be controlled. I don't know if it is universal but many legal systems prohibit late stage abortions except in very exceptional circumstances.

Parents don't have the right and duty to end their child's life. — Hanover

True. So they must have the right and duty not to bring a child into the world. So they must have the right and duty to abstain or use contraception. But all contraceptive methods (including just say no) have a failure rate. So why do people think that they have the right and duty to prevent them using the last-ditch opportunity not to bring a child into the world - early stage abortion? (I'm not saying that abortion is OK, just that it is better than the alternative, which is positively cruel.)

If the brain tells the heart to beat and the lungs to breathe and processes and renders intelligible all sensory input and tells our limbs how to move when performing actions both simple and complex how would all this be possible without prior modeling? — Janus

Do you need prior modelling of the modelling? No? Then why do you need to model the action in the first place?

Apart from all the autonomic functions the brain gives rise to consciousness and creates an overarching model we refer to as the "self". — Janus

Is the brain part of the self or not? Assuming it is, then it has to model itself, including a model of its modelling. !?
Can you tell me the difference between my "self" and "Ludwig" and "I"? I don't perceive any.

We can say the brain must model all our bodily functions and actions and all its sensory input, but its true we don't know exactly what all those neuronal processes and networks are doing simply because they cannot be directly observed in vivo. — Janus

Yes. Exactly. So how do you know the brain is modelling anything?

It may be that I simply don't understand what you mean by "model" and "modelling".

I do have quite a lot on my 'to read' list and nowhere near as much time to read as I would like so there may be a fair bit of time before I can get to it. — Janus

Tell me about it. There's no hurry. It's just that it might be interesting to swop notes as and when. Up to you.

That is, one way women choose to have children is by having sex. It's the most common way actually. Women should have the right to choose to have children, but if they're raped and become pregnant, they were deprived that choice. For that reason, abortion might be argued to be permissible in that instance. — Hanover

It is often argued that incest, under-age sex (both of which are usually non-consensual in legal terms at least), non-viable foetus, risk to mother's own life are often included with rape. I think not to allow those exceptions is inhumane, even cruel. However, the cruelty to both mother and child of forcing a mother to go through an unwanted pregnancy and then expecting both mother and child to cope with a dysfunctional relationship is too often ignored. Children need love - for at least twenty years. You cannot create that by passing a law.

The most common reason for advocating for abortion bans is not acknowledging that this topic is one of competing interests (fetus vs adult woman). Thus any argument that addresses only one side of the topic (such as "abortion is murder") is at minimum incomplete, but usually is intellectually dishonest. — LuckyR

That's a very good point.

Let's make laws against them during pregnancy and child-care, and then there will be little demand for abortions, except for tragic medical circumstances that cannot be avoided by legal fiat. — unenlightened

Absolutely. It's the least you can do for a reluctant mother and for the child as well.

Some think a fetus is a stage in the life of a human being, so nobody should have the right to choose what to do with the fetus' body. — Patterner

That's absurd. Parents (biological or other) not only have the right, but the duty to make decisions about their children's lives. Why should there not be a similar right and duty to make decisions about a foetus? After all, we allow people to make decisions for their relatives when they are ill and unable to make the decisions themselves.

moral value is not determined by benefits, i.e. deontology is correct and consequentialism is incorrect — Michael

The last thing anyone should do is make a decision of this sort based on a philosophical theory - unless, by some miracle, all the theories deliver the same judgement.

Abortion is not a simple yes/no question. It's complicated. For example, there seems to be widespread agreement that late-stage abortions should not be permitted - roughly, at the point when the foetus becomes sentient (conscious). There seems also to be agreement that even those should be permitted when the mother's life is at risk (unless the mother consents to the risk). (I'm assuming that rape, incest, non-viable or damaged foetuses etc. can be dealt with at an early stage.) There is also widespread agreement that infanticide should not be permitted, though mothers should be treated sympathetically. Anything else seems to be hotly contested. Where there is consensus, laws are perfectly reasonable. Where there is not, laws preventing abortion are tyrannical and tolerance (on both sides) is the only option.

That said nothing at all happens without the brain and the neuroscientists tell us that the neural networks in the brain model everything we think and do just prior to our thinking and doing. — Janus

"nothing at all happens without the brain" is not helpful. Nothing at all happens without the legs, heart, etc. When you say that the neural networks in the brain are modelling the action, you are surely(?) going way beyond what we actually know. We do actually know that the brain is active before the action in ways that can be identified as precursors of the action, as well as during it. But we don't know exactly what the brain is doing. Still, it may well be doing something that we would call modelling the action. Such preparatory activity is perfectly comprehensible as part of the action. Preparation is concept that links preparatory activities to the activity, so it is conceptually, not merely causally, linked to the activity.

Thanks, but I'm not seeing how it changes the concept of number beyond just extending the basic concept inherent in counting. — Janus

I should hope not. It's meant to be a foundation, not the actual activity. It certainly represents a big change in the concept if you are a platonist.

By the way I'm not averse to Heidegger. I have read some of his work — Janus

I wondered which side of the divide you might fall when I wrote those comments. Not knowing, I just talked about how I came at it. Perhaps I should have gone into more detail.
Taking on both those very different philosophers is a real challenge, and I respect him for it. But he will obviously be in line for criticism from both sides, who are likely to have different criteria for assessing what he is doing.
Since you are already pretty well read, I shall be very interested to know what you make of the book. I'm very sympathetic to the project.

Most of us can be emotional, empathic, kind, compassionate, generous, curious, spontaneous, insightful, irresponsible, angry, sad, confused, frustrated, ignorant, lazy, careless, spaced out, or off on flights of fancy without becoming irrational. — Vera Mont

Falling in love without becoming irrational?
Surely a rational reason for friendship turns the friendship into something else - a transactional, conditional relationshiop?
What are the rational reasons for generosity? For mercy? For forgiveness? For hope?

I don't think irrationality - thinking contrary to factual information, as in ideological zealotry, or baseless prejudice, or self-destructive delusion - is particularly endearing. — Vera Mont

I didn't mean that all irrationality is endearing. You are quite right about "ideological zealotry, or baseless prejudice, or self-destructive delusion". Surely, the irrational is two-edged - or perhaps, in itself is neither - it all depends on how irrational and what the irrationality leads to.
And then there's Hume claim that "reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions" and his fact/value distinction.

We still live with the reasoning that some people are less than human. — Athena

Yes. I'm not sure exactly what cases you have in mind. One of the most popular ones is the moral cases. We classify people who do seriously outrageous things as "bestial" or "animal" even when they are doing things that no animal is capable of doing or even be interested in doing. Sadistic cruelty, War, Mass murder.

We all need both intensive thinking time and down time. — Vera Mont

Yes. I heard somewhere that Descartes reckoned to do not more than one hour per month of intenseive thinking. Perhaps someone knows the details.

We can be irrational, even though we have language and mathematics, access to information we did not personally collect, and critical faculties that we can engage at will. — Vera Mont

Yes. Our image of a perfectly, or even just excessively, rational person is not a compliment. The complaint would be that they are emotionless, too like a machine, without understanding of those endearing irrationalities that makes us all human.

I don't see that in most cases as a matter of reasoning so much as a matter of tribalistic instinct. I think we are naturally biased towards see US as human and THEM as less so. It takes reasoning to get beyond tribalistic thinking. — wonderer1

Yes, you are right about that. However, I think that part of that is the effect of crowd thinking. When people get swept up in a crowd is a classic situation when one does things that make no sense.

That still doesn't show that rationality is contingent on being correct or knowing the truth. — night912

I'm sorry. I didn't mean to contradict that. Whether p and q and r are my beliefs or not, the rational relations are the same. It is the content of the beliefs that determines what rational conclusions from them are.

I might disagree with Dennett similarly. I consider Dennett's views a mixed bag. Some good stuff as well as bad stuff. — wonderer1

That's about right. It's probably as much as you can ask from a human being. I usually find him worth reading.

By "rational reconstruction" do you mean something along the lines of 'thinking about how things seems to us and then imputing it (in some kind of suitably modified form) to animals' or something else? I have that Braver book on my shelves somewhere, but I've never gotten around to reading it. Would you recommend it? — Janus

Yes, I would. It needs to be read with a certain charity. If you fasten on all the obvious analytic objections to Heidegger, you'll spend a lot of time being angry and not learn much. But your charity will be rewarded - not necessarily by becoming a full-blown Heideggerian, but by some thought-provoking ideas. (I'm particularly taken with "present-at-hand" and "ready-to-hand" and how he develops his argument against traditional philosophy) His exposition of Wittgenstein has a perhaps unusual focus (on grounds and justification and certainty), but I thought it was good and, especially by seeing him and Heidegger as working on parallel projects, it taught me something about him.

There's an entry in the index for "rational reconstruction". You may have to read around the actual passages a bit to see what is going on. If you do read it and want to ask me questions by private message, I would be happy to answer - not that I can answer all the questions, by any means. It's all about the role of articulation (in language or talking to oneself) in thinking and action. So relevant to animals.

Would you be able to elaborate on this a little? — Janus

The roots of this go right back to elementary a language. As soon as you have the concept of an apple, you can identify many apples, so the distinction between one and many is embedded as soon as you start thinking/language. (The ancient Greeks didn't recognize "1" as a number, but as the "source" of all numbers. It makes sense if you think of it in this way.) Some actual languages only have words for "one", "two", "many". But counting has already taken off - it's just elaboration from there on. One can think of counting as sticking a label on each apple in turn which individuates the apple and tells you many there are. You have arithmetic as soon as you can do that, but for true mathematics, you really need to go in for more elaborate calculations, such as algebraic ones and recognize "0". That changes the concept of number, but still grounds it in the relevant activities, not in any objects, physical or abstract.
That's off the cuff. I hope it helps.

I haven't looked into much by Searle, aside from The Chinese Room, but my impression is that Searle isn't so resistant to physicalism per se, but to a naive computationalist physicalism which he is well justified in resisting. [FWIW, some writer on Wikipedia seems to agree saying, "Searle says simply that both are true: consciousness is a real subjective experience, caused by the physical processes of the brain. (A view which he suggests might be called biological naturalism.)] — wonderer1

I may well be wrong. The last thing I read by him was an interview with Dennett in which he insisted that first-person subject experience is real - not an illusion.

it’s the precise nature of the causal relationship that is at issue. Physicalism says it must be bottom-up, but the placebo effect mitigates against that. — Wayfarer

I agree that it is the nature of the relationship that is at issue. But if you say that event A causes event B, you are positing the two events as distinct. So are physicalists positing that the experience or thought caused by a process distinct from the process? That means it must exist independently of the cause. Dualism.
Further, what physicalists forget is that in order to correlate a physical process with an experience or a thought, you need to know what thought or experience you are correlating it with. There's no prospect of deducing what experience or thought a physical process may be correlated with from the physical process alone. Ditto light waves and colour.

But this is why, when you say ‘number is real’, the difficult question comes up ‘what do you mean by “real” or “exists”?’ The analogy of the divided line in the Republic addresses this. — Wayfarer

What I mean by saying that numbers exists is explained by explaining how to count and perhaps to calculate. What is meant by saying that numbers are real is explained by explaining the zoo that has become the world of numbers, especially about imaginary and infinite numbers.

The stock example I’ve always read is, the answer to ‘why is the kettle boiling?’ can be either ‘to make tea’ or ‘because it’s been heated to the appropriate temperature.’ Both answers are of course correct, — Wayfarer

Yes. As far as I'm concerned, as a philosopher, that's a datum.
A neat resolution is to see it as a question of lenses rather than about the world. Wittgenstein's "seeing aspects" is one attempt, and the puzzle picture analogy is, I think, very helpful. Two problems. First, there is a description of the picture as marks on paper - lines or patches of shading. That description "loses" both ways of interpreting it - it couldn't be neutral between them if it didn't.
If, for example, we were to interpret our debate about animals as about two different ways of understanding (representing) them, we would have neat explanation of why we find it so hard to agree. It's a false choice. But then, we would expect there to be a description of them that is neutral between the mechanical, physical explanation and the rational explanation of what they do.

We just have to figure out what the commonality is. Something explains the different modes operating in the same being. — Patterner

Yes. However, traditional metaphysical explanations like dualism resolve the problem by positing two different substances (and then there's the "three worlds" idea, which seems to me to be in the same boat with dualism), which rejects your description of different modes in the same being. Materialism and idealism make a choice within that framework by rejecting one substance or the other and "reducing" one horn of the dilemma to the other. We won't get anywhere down that road.

Generally speaking science since Galileo has attempted to avoid teleological explanations, preferring explanations in terms of preceding causes. — Wayfarer

Yes. "Preferring" is a bit weak - unless you mean it in the traditional sense of "pushing forward" or "promoting". They had a methodological issue as well as all the theology - mathematics. Mental objects appeared not to be capable of being incorporated into that new way of doing science. But, as we are now seeing, that was actually just kicking the can down the road. We can't do that any more, though some people (Nagel, Searle) seem to think that's an option.

The reason I went to the shops was to buy milk. The cause of my going to the shops was neural activity. The two explanations do not rule each other out they are just two different ways of understanding the same event. Their incompatibility consists in their different ways of understanding. It doesn't follow that one is right and the other wrong, — Janus

You are quite right. My problem with your way of putting it is that the cause is a different entity or event from the effect. That's why I want to say that my going to the shops consists of my moving my legs, etc and the neural activity (which, after all, is involved throughout by controlling the movement of my legs.
You can say that the thermostat causes the boiler to switch on and off, because, at that level of description, they are recognizable to two different entities. But if you talk about the heating system, the thermostat controls the system and so is part of it. It doesn't cause the system to switch on and off - the system doesn't switch on and off.

But perhaps there is a paradigm that they both fit within. As opposed to melding the two. — Patterner

Well, there is - Aristotle's four "causes". Actually the word that we translate as "cause" also means "reason", so it would be better to talk about Aristotle's four explanations. But that is lodged deeply in his hylomorphic metaphysics, so that all four explanations apply to everything, which won't do for us - unless we fancy accepting the Supreme Good and the Great Chain.
The problem now is that we do not want to (cannot) apply both explanations to everything. We would be happy to say that some things require causal explanations only and some things require both. Many cases are clear, but others or not - both at the line between living and non-living things/beings and between sentient and non-sentient beings and again at the line between rational and not rational beings. What's worse is that it appears to be an empirical question which things belong in which categories.
Our problem is not helped by the fact that ever since evolutionary theory developed we have had a scientific theory hovers between (combines?) the two - there is a rational explanation for what evolves as well as a mechanistic one. But there is no question that the purposes of evolution are not the purposes of the animals that evolution applies to.

Not at all, a priori/a posteriori was Kant’s summary of a fundamental philosophical distinction, later called into question by Quine in his Two Dogmas of Empiricism. But I still think it’s a valid distinction, in fact I recall it being one of the first things I was taught as an undergraduate, in the class on Hume. — Wayfarer

Oh, yes, it was one of the early bedrocks that I was taught as well. What I don't know is exactly why Kant embedded it in his work. I also know about Quine, but then he wanders off into what he calls naturalism. Wittgenstein didn't exactly abandon it. But he did argue that it was more a matter of how certain propositions were used - a question, if you like, of statements rather than propositions.

When Frege says that 'thought contents' are real 'in the same way' as a pencil, he means, well, real. ...... So he's granting reality to abstract objects, which nowadays is controversial. As regards the empiricist rejection of Platonic realism, it's sadly typical, I'm afraid. — Wayfarer

Now you have opened the door to the world of pain that is reality in philosophy. The meaning of "real" depends heavily on the context of its use.
The essence of the problem is this. When Frege (philosopher) says that all numbers are real, everyone will agree. Mathematicians include all the rational numbers, such as the integer −5 and the fraction 4 / 3 and the irrational numbers (and 0) as real. For Frege, as a philosopher, an unreal number is a number that does not exist. But for mathematicians, there are three kinds of number that are not real - imaginary numbers, infinite numbers and complex numbers. All these most certainly exist. I could multiply examples. Strictly speaking, the philosophical use of real is a figment of the philosophical fantasy that there is a use of real such that it is not context-dependent; I think it is absurd but I think it is now so common that it has to be accepted. But it does not correlate with the use of real in other departments of our language.
I do accept that numbers exist and that they are abstract, which is a category of existents, which means they have a different kind or mode of existence from physical objects. So I'm not with Frege, either. Meinong? Maybe. I haven't thought about that. I think the best short story about this is Quine's slogan "To be is to be the value of a variable". My long story would be about language-games and the different kinds or modes or senses of existence they define.

The simple reason is - and it is simple - that if number is real but not material, then it's a defeater for materialism - and we can't allow that. — Wayfarer

That's their problem. Certainly not mine, and I'm guessing not yours either.

The truth of mathematical platonism would therefore establish that we have knowledge of abstract (and thus causally inefficacious) objects. This would be an important discovery, which many naturalistic theories of knowledge would struggle to accommodate. — SEP

That's fascinating. It's as if the last 50 years of philosophy never happened. Oh, well, that's how the cycle works. One day people will look again and find it was not so awful after all.

Traditionally, this was regarded as a distinction between a posteriori (learned through observation) and a priori (established through deduction), although this distinction has become far less clear-cut than it was in Kant's day. — Wayfarer

Quite so. Looking back, the original clarity looks like an inheritance from Plato. But perhaps that's just me.

I know that 'ready to hand' would suggest Heidegger but it wasn't really meant as an allusion to him — Wayfarer

OK. I just wondered.

Frege believed that number is real in the sense that it is quite independent of thought: 'thought content exists independently of thinking "in the same way", he says "that a pencil exists independently of grasping it. — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge

That "in the same way" is the problem. Even if we grant him the reality of abstract objects, which is true in a sense, it would be hard to grasp what that phrase means.

Thought contents are true and bear their relations to one another (and presumably to what they are about) independently of anyone's thinking these thought contents - "just as a planet, even before anyone saw it, was in interaction with other planets. — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge

That's an interesting quote. I would think it was the ancestor of Wittgenstein's idea in the Tractatus that all possible combinations of atomic propositions are given in advance - which I'm pretty sure he later abandoned.

. It is because of this, that they authority for our thought if it would attain to truth — Frege on Knowing the Third Realm, Tyler Burge

Yes. It looks to me as if something has gone wrong with this sentence. But the general sense is clear. This is the same metaphor that Nagel is appealing to. (What else does one submit to but authority?) But it seems to me that the assimilation of the place of reason in our lives to the place of the law or a tyranny (depending on your point of view) is a distortion - a failure to pay attention in pursuit of a grand universal statement. (Notice how much post-modernist rhetoric turns on attacking this.) Mind you, if one has a creator-God, the metaphor becomes less metaphorical.

— What is Math? Smithsonian Institute

Yes. It's curious that they chose to give such a feeble, illogical argument here. Perhaps they reflected they are addressing a lay audience, which might not appreciate harder-edged arguments.

Well, being is a verb. — Wayfarer

Excellent. If only it was possible to get our software to remind anyone who types the word "existence" or "being" of it.

Yes, much better. Thanks.
(Self dope-slaps. Shoulda got there by myself)
You, too. Nice rendition of the essay. Thanks.
But I reserve self dope-slappin’ here, cuz I might not have got there by myself at all. — Mww

I'm glad you liked it. You deserve a pat on the back for self-criticism.

We have to explain our behavior to others and we do so mostly in terms of reasons, although sometimes in terms of causes. — Janus

In this context, perhaps there is room for a question I mostly shelve, about whether the difference between reasons and causes is also discovered or created. Mostly, philosophers treat it as a given, though explaining it to people learning philosophy or reluctant to recognize it can be difficult. (It's not intuitive). I don't have a crisp answer. It could be either or some combination.

In regard to the last (sc. mechanism, forces and causes) in ancient times some explanations of the natural were also in terms of reasons. — Janus

Yes. Indeed, with some reservations, it would not be wrong to say that for them, teleological explanations were dominant. Which suggests that explanation by causes was developed later, by distinguishing it from the teleological. (Though it would be more accurate to say that it was developed from Aristotle's account of explanation, which gives one model for everything.) It's curious that the non-teleological explanation has taken over and nearly ejected teleological explanations altogether - like a cuckoo.

We have to explain the behavior of animals and we do this sometimes in terms of (imagined and projected) reasons . — Janus

I like the concept of a rational reconstruction for this. (I found it recently in Lee Braver's "Groundless Grounds".)

Note that Burge writes "number" not 'numbers'. I find it to be an important distinction because the quality of number is of course present wherever there is diversity whereas numbers as entities are not. To put it another way, say there are four objects—it seems to me to make sense that the quality or pattern of four, that is fourness, is present, but not the number four as a separate entity. — Janus

I like this. It helps to bridge the gap between counting (as the ground in our practices) and arithmetic.

I think of number as an act rather than an entity. — Wayfarer

That's very helpful.

"Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly;
Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land;
Man got to tell himself he understand.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle — wonderer1

I like that a lot. Vonnegut used to be a great favourite of mine. I don't know why I stopped reading him. It just happened somehow.

What, on your opinion, is meant by the order of reasons? And depending on what it is, can we think of ourselves as submitting to it, but NOT creating it? — Mww

One can make a start by getting a better idea what Nagel meant by the order of reasons. You can get a clue by going back to the beginning of the essay and re-reading the quotation from Pierce at the top of p.2.

I'm assuming that you have a copy. I'm too lazy to type it out. My copy doesn't like me using copy and paste. You can get an idea of what "submit" means by reflecting that I have to submit to the order of the software. Which means that I want something different from what the software provides. Then ask yourself why you would want something different from what reason provides.

Reading Pierce, I'm driven to ask myself what he is trying to do with that stuff about Nature being "great and beautiful and sacred and eternal and real". For me, Nature is as real and beautiful and sacred and eternal and real as a wet Sunday afternoon or washing my socks.

It's that inherent incompatibility that leads me to believe that the so-called "Hard Problem" is a pseudo-problem that comes with failing to recognize this fundamental incommensurability. — Janus

You may have a point. I think the two are different articulations of the same problem. Which I agree is a pseudo-problem, except that I can't spot how the illusion is created - yet.

I thought that as well, but isn’t a syllogism a logical construct in propositional form, which we create? — Mww

As for the ground of reason, obviously a deep question, but I will generally argue that the ‘furniture of reason’, the basic laws of thought, are discovered and not invented. — Wayfarer

We need to get past this opposition between discovery and invention - or construe it in radically different ways.
1.We should recognize (and I do mean recognize) that discovering Neptune is different from Pythagoras' discovery of his theorem or the discovery of the irrationality of pi or sqrt2.
2. Perhaps also a distinction between a theory/hypothesis (invented by Copernicus) and recognizing/proving that it is true (submitting to the facts or evidence). The second phase cannot happen until the first phase has happened. But what made Copernicus invent his theory? Recognising that Ptolemy's theory was problematic because the facts didn't fit.
3. Nagel supposes that our first order of business in life to ask ourselves what to believe and how to live. He was wrong. Our first order of business to learn how to ask questions, and that takes years, by which time we have already begun to live our lives and acquired many beliefs. The questions arrive too late to be fundamental.

Construct, I think, rather than 'create', out of materials ready to hand, so to speak. — Wayfarer

That looks like a false opposition to me. Doesn't all creation use materials ready to hand, but perhaps in new ways. Doesn't construction always result in something new? (BTW Have you been reading or reading about Heidegger?) Did he construct his distinction between present-at-hand and ready-to-hand or create it? I don't think either construct or create is quite right for that case.

:chin: — Wayfarer

I'm really sorry. I can't decode that.

I didn't mean to be dismissive. I have to acknowledge that a new paradigm of explanation is possible, I guess I just don't see it as a likelihood. — Janus

I don't think that what I'm proposing is a new paradigm. It's just a different way of looking at an old paradigm, which better reflects the questions that we ask and dissolves some of the puzzles that the old paradigm seems to generate.

Also, I think it's fairly easy to see the adaptive and survival advantage that reason possesses. ..... Will is also needed. — Janus

Too right. We oscillate between seeing reason as our crowning glory and seeing it as merely the slave of the passions. It all depends how you define it - particularly the place of our values in what we do.

So throughout this passage, he's presenting Nozick's proposal as an example of a naturalised epistemology based on evolutionary biology. — Wayfarer

Yes, that makes sense of it. I might have written a rather different response if I had realized that. I have a feeling that he thinks that refuting that kind of naturalised epistemology in some way supports his view of reason. The vision of reason that he seems to present does not attract me in the slightest. But that's another issue.

Well, that I take to be his point. Basically I read the argument as saying, to rely on scientific or evolutionary justifications for reason, is to undermine the sovereignty of reason. And why? Because it points to factors outside reason itself to ground reason: — Wayfarer

This is where the fundamental obscurity in foundationalism creates unnecessary (in my book) confusion. It's very simple. Question - are the foundations of a house part of the house or not? Well, builders dig trenches and fill them with concrete and they call that putting in the foundations. So the foundations are part of the house. From this perspective, the foundations of mathematics require more mathematics. But the soil and rock into/onto which they build those foundations are the foundations of the foundations and they are not part of the house. So more mathematics just pushes back the question of the foundations. Sooner or later, there must be something analogous to the soil or rock which is not built, but on which a house is built.

Things are a bit different when you come to consider something like a ship or a car. These are self-supporting structures and so, strictly speaking do not need and cannot have foundations. However, the keel of the ship or the chassis of the car plays a role analogous to the foundations of the house. The keel of the ship and the chassis of the car are part of the car. But you can build a car without a chassis - the functions of the chassis are fulfilled by the entire bodywork, which is a true self-supporting structure, without a foundation. (The same applies to ships, but they still need a keel, to give the ship a grip on the water.) But ships and cars do still have a medium, an environment, in which they exist.

I think that what Wittgenstein says about ways of life and practices trades on the first kind of foundation, but the idea is applicable to the second as well. I think a case could be made for counting it as a form of naturalism, but that's only a label, so I do not care much.

Plenty of animals get along just fine without mathematics and science. So appealing to evolutionary principles in support of reason actually has rather the contrary effect of undermining it, rather than strengthening it. — Wayfarer

You must mean "without articulating mathematics and science". The hawk that can catch a rabbit is, in one sense, solving a complex mathematical problem even though it can't solve it in the way(s) that we can; it can also distinguish quite reliably between what it can, with benefit, eat without any (articulate) knowledge of chemistry.
Well, plenty of living things, including some animals, manage pretty well, without or with only very poor vision. Which does not invalidate the idea that vision gives an evolutionary advantage to those animals that have it. It depends on your way of life and whether you can work out some other survival strategy. (Living underground, or developing an effective ultra-sound system) However, an advantage in surviving does not negate the possibility of side-effects which may or may not play into survival.
I don't see how you can argue that evolution does not and cannot validate reason, even if it contributes to survival and argue that evolution undermines reason. If you advance the latter claim, you are accepting that reason might contribute to survival.

The 'something more' is a reason that carries its own authority, which need not and should not be grounded in something else. — Wayfarer

Well, that's an outline. It needs a good deal of unpacking.

I won't go further with it here, other than to note that this is the background to much of this debate, in which 'reason' is now mainly understood in terms of evolutionary adaptation, rather than as an instrument which is able to discern truth. — Wayfarer

I wasn't aware that this evolution business is so mainstream. There's no need to treat it as a dilemma or competition. I think it is quite plausible to say that reason can contribute to survival because it is able to discern truth.

One lurking factor that I've been thinking over is the change in the conception of the nature of reason over history. — Wayfarer

Yes. And that's not merely marginal to understanding what people mean by "reason".

This demonstrates that rationality is not contingent on being correct or knowing the truth. — night912

That's certainly true. But the reasoning you outline starts from "If someone has fired a gun, I might get shot, so I should hide", and then considers a range of possibilities around that. That's the starting-point. Factoring in my beliefs and knowledge amounts to factoring those possibilities in. It's still about the facts.

The fact that we have developed the capacity for reason evolutionarily does not "justify" reason. Reason needs no justification. No justification of reason that doesn't use reason is possible, and this circularity ensures that justifying reason is an incoherent, an impossible, fantasy.. — Janus

No argument here.

All our explanations are in terms of either causes or reasons. It might be imagined that some completely new paradigm of explanation will be found, but I see no reason to think so. — Janus

Well, I thought you might find my suggestion interesting.

Thomas Nagel has an interesting essay I often refer to — Wayfarer

Thanks for sending me the link to this. I realize that everything has moved on in the last three days. But I hope my comments may nevertheless be of interest.

The heart of his argument is the re-evaluation of evolutionary theory. There have been various statements of it in this thread, but I shall quote from this article.

The evolutionary explanation itself is something we arrive at, in part, by the use of reason to support evolutionary theory in general and also this particular application of it. Hence it does not supply a reason-independent justification of reason, and, although it grounds reason in facts independent of reason, this grounding is not accepted by us independently of our reason. — p. 5, apparently quoted from Nozick's 'The Nature of Rationality'.

Nagel goes on to say that

..our finding something self-evident is no guarantee that it is necessarily true, or true at all -- since the disposition to find it self-evident could have been an evolutionary adaptation to its being only approximately, and contingently true.
The proposal is supposed to be an explanation of reason but not a justification of it. Those facts are not supposed to provide us with grounds for accepting the validity or reliability of reason — p. 5

So far, so good.

Now comes his mis-step, in which, so far as I can see, he contradicts what he has just said - continuing from the last quotation:-

... what is it It supposed to provide? It seems to be a proposal of a possible naturalistic explanation of the existence of reason that would, if it were true, make our reliance on reason "objectively" true.... — p. 5

There's no explanation of where this "proposal" came from, nor any account of why anyone would think that such an explanation would justify relying on reason. I wish he had recognized what evolutionary theory does and doesn't justify. But he moves gradually from the relatively harmless point that evolution would settle for pragmatic heuristics as opposed to valid arguments, that is, he ends up equating reason with any old natural process, and that's a mistake.

Reason is whatever we find we have to use in order to understand anything. And if we try to understand it merely as a natural (biological or psychological) phenomenon, the result will be an account incompatible with our use of it and with the understanding of it that we have in using it. For I cannot trust a natural (sc. evolved) process unless I can see why it is reliable, any more than I can trust a mechanical algorithm unless I can see why it is reliable. — p. 10

A natural process is specified irrespective of its trustworthiness and so the question whether it is reliable can be formulated. But an algorithm is a set of mathematical instructions or rules that will help to calculate an answer to a problem: One can ask of a set of mathematical instructions whether it will help to calculate the answer to a problem. But one cannot ask of an algorithm whether it will help to calculate the answer to a problem; the question whether that particular set of instructions is reliable has already been asked and answered. That's why one cannot ask of reason whether it will deliver the truth; that question has already been asked of potential arguments and answered.

If one supposes that human beings have a "rational faculty" - i.e. an ability to reason, - the question of evolution is what contribution such a faculty might make to survival - the question whether we are able to garner information about the world has already been asked and answered. This question does require a justification of reason, not as such, but as something that needs to be explained in the context of evolution. The justification of reason as a practice in its own right is a quite different project, and if that is his point, he is right.

I think that Nagel's critique does not distinguish clearly enough between the two issues. The possibility of evolution settling for something that is "only approximately, and contingently, true" (p. 5), which is a perfectly rational pragmatic practice, is meant to undermine the idea "that our rational capacity was the product of natural selection". But this misses the point. The fact that we have a rational capacity demands an evolutionary account.

The only recourse I have to understand this is wildly speculative. Nagel doesn't even mention Wittgenstein. Yet it is, I believe, common knowledge that Wittgenstein's approach to justifying reason grounds it in our human way of life, our practices, our language-games. If one accepts that, the idea of evolution presents itself as a way of deepening his gestural account and explaining why our way of life and practices are what they are.

But if one accepts Wittgenstein's "This is what I do" as the bedrock of justification, evolution is not required to provide any further justification for rationality. It is asking and answering a different question. On the other hand, if one rejects Wittgenstein's "groundless grounds", evolution may seem to provide another layer to the infinite regress of justification. For myself, I don't see that another layer is required, and would probably argue that evolution doesn't provide it anyway, but that's another matter.

For the record, I don't think that the "refutation" of evolutionary theory is his real business here. He is using that question in pursuit of bigger game, and makes that clear in his final paragraph.

Once we enter the world for our temporary stay in it, there is no alternative but to try to decide what to believe and how to live, and the only way to do that is to try to decide what is the case and what is right. Even if we distance ourselves from some of our thoughts and impulses, and regard them from outside, the process of trying to place ourselves in the world leads to thoughts that we cannot think of as merely "ours". If we think at all, we must think of ourselves, individually and collectively, as submitting to the order of reasons rather than creating it. — p. 10

This is a substantial and even important idea, irrespective of any bickering about evolution. It is helpful to read this passage in the light of his remarks about Pierce at the beginning of the essay.
I would like to comment, however, that our first business when we enter the world is not to ask that, or any other, question but to undergo the years of training required before we are capable of asking questions. By which time, we will have learnt a good deal about what is the case and what is right.

Well, his 'hard problem' paper was the watershed moment. And don't loose sight of the fact that he was a bronze medallist at the Mathematics Olympiad before he got into philosophy. He's really rather a clever cookie. See the interview here, he grew up in my neighbourhood. — Wayfarer

In some ways, it was. It gave people a focus, just as Nagel's bat did. I never doubted that he is a clever cookie. Doesn't mean he's right. I'm not bothered about what he did before philosophy. It is a bit ambivalent, though. I try to listen carefully to physicists when they are talking about physics and mathematicians when they are talking about mathematics. But not necessarily when they are talking about Dualism.

The interview needs some reading. But I will put it on my list. Thank you. BTW, I'm still getting my head round Nagel. An off-the-cuff response based on a skim-read seemed inappropriate.