Interesting. Then you certainly know more about it than I do. I see the connection with hermeneutics.

This is a little risky on TPF, but I'll go ahead and say that my main reason for standing a bit aloof from the historical-analysis perspective is that I associate it with various pessimistic (and moralistic) accounts of the decline of Western civilization, which I disagree with. ("We gave up the Greeks and we gave up Catholicism and now we're fucked!"). I see the opposite: intellectual and moral progress (often up-and-down, of course), astounding flourishing of the arts, to say nothing of the incomparably higher quality of life and education now available to the average denizen of Western civilization. (And denied, shamefully, to all those millions who are still "below average."). But this is a vast and controversial topic. All I can say is, if I were offered a Rawlsian "original position" lottery, and asked to pick a time and place to be incarnated over the past 3,000 years, while not knowing my sex, ethnicity, amount of economic power, physical health, education, et al., the choice would be obvious to me: right here, right now ("here" being understood as any European country with universal health care and good public libraries :smile: ).

Good, this all provides a much more nuanced view, and helps me understand what you're saying. In particular, you're right that popular views, or assumptions, about what "science says" often lag behind philosophical accounts but are still very influential.

Concerning the Nagel quote, it sounds spot on to me, concerning analytic vs. continental, and of course I respect Nagel's views enormously. But I don't think we should reduce this question to "who's got a religious temperament." That longing for something to replace the religious consolations may be an important marker of those philosophers who aren't satisfied to be "modern" (using that word as I think you do), but it's not the whole story. For me, any philosopher who is unwilling to accept the apparent consequences of physicalism or reductionism, who wants an account of subjectivity that is at least as compelling as our beliefs about objectivity, should be considered part of a long tradition. For every Mill, there is a Schopenhauer. For every Carnap, there is a Cassirer. Point is, chronological analysis seems quite unimportant to me in this story. But as I've said before, I know others find more to ponder here than I do.

I admit I'm congenitally opposed to thinking in terms of what's modern or not, so perhaps there's something to it. But I dunno, "a certain sort of Protestant theology"? (I realize that's Count T, not you.) "Only what can be encountered by the senses (or the instruments that amplify them) can be considered real"? So you're exempting the Fregean/Quinean/Wittgensteinian tradition from modernism? Along with most phenomenology and existentialism? And Cassirer and Popper and Langer and . . . So who's left, the logical positivists and Daniel Dennett? :smile: Oh and maybe the Churchlands too! Besides, if you can include Schopenhauer among those who challenge what you're calling modern, what does that make him, pre-modern?

Well, it's not of great importance. As I say, I realize others get more out of this kind of classification than I do; just a matter of taste, no doubt. The issues, in contrast, are very alive and interesting to me. Most of my favorite philosophers are modern, in your sense, and they all seem to care very much about disputing the "out-there-somewhere-ness" of the objective mindset, as I do myself.

2nd Position Held: "We should bring back man before any extinct animals. — Unnamed

Could you explain this? I don't understand the context.

And so the natural order was seen as a reality already akin to intellect. — David Bentley Hart, The Illusionist

This quote is very important and insightful. I think it expresses an intuition or a longing that motivates most if not all philosophy. So I don't think we should be so rigid about what is "pre-modern" and "modern," especially if modern is understood as "everything since Descartes." Just as a for-instance: What is Frege's philosophy, if not an attempt to demonstrate this very thing, the mysterious "third realm" of thought that underlies all logic and science? Whenever we ask how it can be that reality/appearance, object/subject, are not separate, we're trying to understand the unity of thinking and being. Most "modern" philosophers take that question seriously. It may be that Descartes, in raising the question in the way he does, gave the impression that res extensa and res cogitans were eternally separate in nature, and to that extent I guess that is a chimerical picture, but I don't think it characterizes most philosophy since. Or, at most, it's the starting point from which, being dissatisfied with it, we try to improve and clarify our understanding.

No examination by a human is ever done from the outside, but always and only from the inside, re: himself. — Mww

I might be missing the deeper point here. Couldn't we just as well say that every examination by a human (of anything external) must be done from the outside? "Inside/outside" is relative to whichever point of view we adopt. I can say, "I'm examining this turtle from the outside" meaning "outside the turtle," or "I'm examining this turtle from the inside" meaning "inside myself." Both are true, though the latter is far less common. But perhaps you could say more about why this seems important.

All I meant, in this context, was that it takes more than "being inside a human being" or "whatever we do is done by us" to establish a meaningful sense of subjectivity.

True, but the problem….problem here indicating reason’s aptitude for putting itself between a rock and a hard place….being there is, as yet, no possible way to reduce either to each other. — Mww

Right. I know I make this analogy a lot, but imagine trying, pre-Einstein, to explain how energy and mass are related. If the concepts you need just haven't been discovered yet, you can't get very far.

Sounds good. It's just the word "seeming," which so often implies a lesser way of comprehending experience. But I understand that's not how you're using it.

Why is the "seeming" of a mental process less actual than the "reality" of a neural process?
— J

It isn’t. — Mww

Right. As I said, this is just physical reductionism. There's no required way to reduce either the mental or the neural to each other.

….when they are examined from the outside, scientifically….
— J


Surely you realize the contradiction. To do anything scientifically is merely to do something in a certain way, but no matter what way it is done, it is still only a human that does it. — Mww

This would only be a contradiction if we accept a very stringent definition of "objective" as meaning something like "untouched by human perception and thought." Which would pretty much rule out the concept. If you're saying that there's no such thing as objectivity, that's certainly discussable. But then we'll need a different word for whatever is the stance that science takes -- for there's a marked and important difference between the methods and discourses of science and those of, say, music criticism. Likewise, when we study neural processes, we're trying to do something very different from phenomenology. I'm not super-concerned about validating a particular use of "objective" or "scientific" -- we can even deny objectivity completely, if you really want to -- but the problem of how science is different from phenomenology will remain. "Doing something in a certain way" is, sorry, not nearly enough of a description, nor is it enough merely to notice that everything we do is done in a certain way by us. That doesn't necessarily make the point of view subjective.

By a nice coincidence, I was just reading an essay by Theodore J. Kisiel called "Phenomenology as the Science of Science" and came across this:

This is not to deny that the cognitive acts of representation, judgment, proof, etc. have a psychological origin, but there are more than psychic events involved here. Terms such as "knowledge," "thought," "judgment" etc. are equivocal, referring as they do both to the subjective and objective poles of the process. And the identity of the logical laws of thought with the psychological laws of "thought" serves to perpetuate this confusion. — Kisiel

This is the same distinction we were making between "reasonings" and "reasons" -- between some individual, hence psychological, instance of thinking, and the rational or objective content that it may represent. Kisiel is mainly explicating Husserl here, so we're in good company. (It's also the Fregean difference between "utterance" and "propositional content," I think, translated into thought-talk rather than assertions.)

We are 'blind' to neural processes in vivo, so of course mental processes don't seem to us to be neural processes. I think this "seeming" is what causes all the difficulties. — Janus

I think I know what you're getting at, but . . . if you use a word like "seeming," you're inevitably faced with the question, "Then what is it really?" Do you want to reply, "Neural processes"? Why is the "seeming" of a mental process less actual than the "reality" of a neural process? This sounds like another version of physical reductionism.

Or put it this way: Could we equally well say that mental processes seem to be neural processes when they are examined from the outside, scientifically, but are really mental? If so, then I think we're back on the right track. We need to separate the idea of "seeming" from its cousins such as "illusion" or "appearance." Neither the mental nor the physical is any more actual or fundamental than the other.

So I agree with you that reasons (as distinct from reasonings) are not necessarily correlated with neural processes. — Janus

That's a good way of making the distinction -- "reasonings" for the particular mental events, "reasons" for the content of those events. And yeah, "content" is terrible but let's not get into full-Frege mode. I think we both know what we mean.

"Running in parallel" is close to what I mean by supervenience, though the phrase does suggest that there are two separate processes. I think the truth will turn out to be even weirder than that, but I'm just guessing. If we come to understand the hard problem, we will have some new concepts for understanding what we now call "mental" and "physical," concepts that will probably make us laugh at the idea of "dual aspects".

Again, words like "correlated with" or "accompanying" are OK for now, because they help us be clear that this is not a causal model. As I said in a previous post, the phenomenon of consciousness itself, as a biological thing, may well be caused -- in fact, I'd be surprised it if weren't. But that doesn't mean that an individual thought (or "reasoning") is caused by the brain's wetware. Likewise, we don't have to postulate mental causation as somehow closing the loop and making changes in the neurons.

Objectivity is the criterion for natural science and many other disciplines. Philosophy is different in the sense that in this subject, we are what we seek to know. Continental philosophy recognises this in a way that current Anglo philosophy rarely does. — Wayfarer

Very true. And part of what I think Continental phil is better at, is recognizing that the objective/subjective pair is not nearly as straightforward as we might like it to be. So I would take issue, slightly, with the assertion that philosophy has to have this self-reflexive character, which would remove us from objectivity as commonly understood. There are many ways of doing philosophy, with more, or less, reachable stopping points. Understood as logical or conceptual analysis (a forte of Anglo phil), we can ask for results that are as objective as anything in the natural sciences, I think. But of course philosophy is unique in that, having said this, we can't leave it alone; we have to go on to ask, But how objective is that? And if you want to say that, ultimately, the grounding questions of philosophy take us back to self-knowledge, I wouldn't disagree.

Do you think it is plausible that we could entertain reasons without that being correlated with neural processes? Say one reason or reasoning leads to the next and say the first reasoning is correlated with some neural processes and the reasoning that follows is correlated with further neural processes. Do you think it is plausible that there are causal connections between the neural processes, just as there are logical connections between the reasonings? — Janus

Yes, all this is plausible, because we've allowed ourselves the placeholder term "correlated". But what else can we do? We don't know the right word yet.

The first question, if taken broadly, requires some qualification. I would find it implausible that there is no relation whatsoever between neural processes and reasons (or any other thoughts). But this conceives of a "reason" as a particular event that occurs in my mind at time T1. If the "same reason" occurs to you as well, it isn't actually the same reason, on this understanding, because it's in a different mind at a different time. But the more usual way to think about reasons puts them in a rational world of meanings or propositions, so that you and I do indeed share the "same reason" for X. Taken in that sense, it seems more plausible to me that reasons are not necessarily correlated with neural processes.

That doesn't necessarily mean that whatever "gives rise to" consciousness itself has to be non-causal as well. — J

To say this better: We can talk about what causes consciousness in toto, as a phenomenon, without committing ourselves to the thesis that every individual content of consciousness is caused by some one-for-one physical process. There's plenty of room for reasons.

Also, the so-called hard problem of consciousness seems much more intractable, because it attempts to deal with the question of how processes in the brain, which can be understood in causal terms, can give rise to subjective experience, which, if we are to accept that subjective experience is just as it seems to us, and to phenomenological analysis, cannot be strictly understood in causal terms, but is better understood in terms of reasons. — Janus

Yes, good statement of the problem. When we have a scientific way of filling out the phrase "give rise to," we may be a lot closer to understanding all this. I suspect it'll involve supervenience rather than causality, but we just don't know.

One point: The processes of subjectivity are indeed not strictly causal, often involving reasons. That doesn't necessarily mean that whatever "gives rise to" consciousness itself has to be non-causal as well. Part of what makes all this so difficult and, for now, mysterious, is that we don't know how to describe the relations that might obtain between a (causally governed) physical level of description and a (reason-governed, often) mental level of description. Even trying to write that sentence gives me a headache because it's so terminologically awkward. It's like we're groping for a third mode of activity that is neither causal nor rational, that we can call upon as an explanation for how the first two modes relate. Just words, for now, I'm afraid, and I bet none of them will turn out to be good enough. Imagine trying to understand general relativity before Einstein.

What parts of objective knowledge do you think would have to be given up if it were decided that an objective account of consciousness is impossible? — Janus

I think the nature of consciousness is a largely scientific question, one that we're far from answering. If/when we do answer it, it will be in the same terms that any other scientific question is answered, and with the same degree of objectivity, whatever that may be. The fact that the object of our investigation is presented to us as subjectivity itself, shouldn't distract us from its amenability to being understood objectively. Consider dreams -- we wouldn't say that, just because no one but me will ever experience my dreams, all objective investigation of dreaming is at an end, would we?

So, if this entire model is wrong, it will be wrong on much larger and more troubling grounds. It will be the entire "objective" scientific project itself that turns out to be faulty; objective knowledge about consciousness won't be any harder or easier to achieve than knowledge of anything else, but the whole project may prove impossible. That's what I meant about having to give up a great deal of what we believe counts as objective knowledge. In short, consciousness doesn't present a special case of the failures of objectivity. If it fails, it fails tout court.

One last thing: The phenomenology of consciousness -- how we do experience subjectivity -- is an entirely different matter, one that science is powerless to speak about. For that we need philosophy.

it is a kind of trigger word for yours truly — Wayfarer

:gasp:

Yeah, I see that! I think we need supervenience in our lexicon, but as you say, that's another thread.

I'm not sure Spinoza had the last word on this, but yes, supervenience involves different levels of description. Where it gets tricky is to give an account of why a subjective description has the characteristics it does.
— J

Would an account of why a subjective description has the characteristics it does not simply be another subjective description? — Janus

A huge question, but it boils down to whether there's anything at all that can properly be called "objective." In the conversation about mental/physical, supervenience, the nature of consciousness, etc., I think it's generally assumed that an objective account of all this is possible. If it isn't, then a great deal else that we consider objective knowledge would also have to be given up. This might be the case, to be sure, but to consider it would immediately open a different conversation. For myself, I do think we can talk about subjectivity from a subjective point of view, and still discover truths about it that are general and open to reasonable investigation -- which is all the objectivity we're likely to get.

Are you familiar with the work of Jaegwon Kim? — Count Timothy von Icarus

Definitely. I'd urge anyone interested in supervenience and/or a reasonable version of physicalism to start with Kim.

Do you know Galen Strawson's work in this area? He put out a book called Consciousness and Its Place in Nature: Does Physicalism Entail Panpsychism? that is quite brilliant. It includes dialogues with other philosophers, as Strawson defends his very unusual version of panpsychism.

It's still the case that first-person subjective experience has to emerge as something new from what lacks it. Seemingly, the only way around this (while keeping to the supervenience framing) is panpsychism, which has all the problems noted above, and which also seems implausible. — Count Timothy von Icarus

That's fair, but check out Strawson. He makes it plausible, at least to me.

I think this is what ↪J is getting at. We would like a description of why consciousness is like it is, and this would include the apparent non-conciousness of some things, as well as how and why minds are discrete. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, that's the idea. With my usual caveats about how little we really know about consciousness as a biological phenomenon, I think some kind of dual-aspect/supervenience theory will carry the day. But to do so, it has to dissolve these apparent antinomies between what is physical and what is mental, and explain the enormous variation in how these aspects manifest in the world. We grope for terms like "materialism" or "panpsychism" but it's unclear -- to me at least -- whether these are even good words for the dual aspects.

I'm not sure Spinoza had the last word on this, but yes, supervenience involves different levels of description. Where it gets tricky is to give an account of why a subjective description has the characteristics it does.

What I’m proposing is that reasons operate as causes, not by exerting force, but by shaping intentionality within a context of meaning. This kind of causation isn’t mechanical but rational: it explains action by appeal to what makes sense to an agent, not what impinges on a body. — Wayfarer

Well put. I prefer keeping a boundary between reasons and causes, but I know what you mean. It's just a question of how far we're willing to stretch "cause" to cover what reasons do. Actually, using "cause" language in talking about rationality has at least one advantage, namely that you don't have to coin some new verb to describe how reasons affect intentionality. The downside, for me, is that we also want to preserve the Kantian notion of rationality as freedom, and here "cause" starts to get in the way. (Kant would say that causality only can apply in the "heteronomous" world, not the autonomous world of human action.). But this is all terminological -- I definitely concur with the need to stop trying to get mental and physical items to cause each other, under any description.

Then we have no disagreement. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yay! :grin:

But both would allow that what is more good ought to be chosen over what is less good (i.e. that it is "more desirable" even if we don't currently desire it). — Count Timothy von Icarus

And here too, no problem -- because we're both saying that being choice-worthy depends on something else. We can't use choice-worthiness itself as an explanatory element ("Well, I chose it because it was choice-worthy.") Nor desire either, of course.

Let's try this. Find an online version of the Euthyphro and copy from 10a - 11c. Then replace "piety," "loved by the gods," etc. with the various forms of "good," "goodness," "choice," "choice-worthy," etc. that we've been using. It's easy to do; takes about 10 minutes; and it helps to actually replace the terms on the screen so you can see it clearly. The conclusion Socrates comes to, at 11b, is now "But that which is choice-worthy, is chosen because it is good, not good because it is choice-worthy."

Can you find any way that Socrates is now incorrect, in this passage? As best I can read it, it's the exact same argument, pointing out the exact same flaws. But see what you think.

But I agree that something isn't good because it is choice-worthy. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Then, following Euthyphro, you would have to withdraw your definition of "good" as "choice-worthy." But again, if all you're saying is "Anything that is good is choice-worthy" (a fact rather than a definition; "anything that has X, also has Y"), we have no disagreement. Your original language, "If 'good' is taken to mean 'choice-worthy' as it often is . . ." certainly seems to be definitional, but perhaps you were merely offering a synonym.

Strong OP, thanks. As I thought over your questions, I realized that I don't often use "substance" in my philosophical thoughts because, as you pointed out, it's gotten so entangled with physical substance -- "stuff" or "matter" -- in ordinary usage. But your historical clarifications are excellent. Also a good example of how to use ordinary-language philosophy to bring out important aspects of our conceptual structures.

Sometimes I prefer the neutral term "item" when discussing a putative entity or event or property. This is perhaps the closest non-technical way of indicating "whatever it is that's capable of being talked about in this discourse." At least it avoids words like "thing" or "object", which have those materialistic connotations.

this conception of being as "I Am" carries an implicit first-person perspective—a subjective dimension of being that much of modern philosophy, with its emphasis on objectivity, tends to suppress or bracket out. — Wayfarer

Back to Kimhi and Rodl! I am more and more intrigued by this.

A mental event—like the intention to cross the room—isn’t analogous to a physical force in that sense. It doesn’t cause motion by exerting force in space. Rather, it operates at the level of intentionality and subjective orientation. Treating mental events as if they must function like physical ones is a category mistake (as Ryle points out). The mind isn’t a ghostly thing pushing on the body; it’s a way of being and acting in the world not reducible to physical mechanisms (and so not describable in purely physical terms). — Wayfarer

I'm almost sure we share the same philosophical picture here, but with respect, I think we have to get clearer about our ignorance. A mental event doesn't cause motion by exerting force in space -- very good. But it "operates"? What is that? Isn't this a placeholder term for something we don't yet know how to talk about? The mind doesn't push on the body -- right. But it's "a way of being and acting"? Well . . . OK, but are we really saying anything, by saying this?

As you perhaps can tell from other posts of mine, I think causality is the completely wrong model with which to understand the relation of the mental and the physical. There's only one "item" going on here, which is experienced differently depending on whether you're "it" or not!

Taoism is after all non-dualist in some fundamental way — Wayfarer

And so is the supervenience approach to the so-called mind/body dualism. But I'm in danger of taking back what I said a few paragraphs ago, and acting like we have some real understanding of how all this works! Not yet . . . but we will.

Thank you for this thorough response, and for taking my plea for enlightenment seriously!

I think your argument has two primary thrusts -- first, that some terms, such as "healthy" and "good," refer to general principles that unite many specific instances, drawing out what they have in common. Thus we can call something healthy without, in each case, needing to specify in exactly what way "healthy" applies. And second, that "choice-worthy" is an example of such a term.

In general, I have no objection to the first point. Universals are fine with me. Though we should be careful when we say:

To demand that everything be explained in terms of particulars becomes, at the limit, to make explanation impossible — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure what limit you're thinking of, but the demand for explanation of a given use of a universal or principle is surely OK, isn't it? Perhaps what you mean is that an appeal to particulars as a way of constructing the explanation of a universal is going in the wrong direction. Given a principle, though, we can always ask that its use be explained in any given instance of its application.

My problems arise with the second point. I'm still not seeing how "choice-worthy" is the same kind of principle or universal as "healthy" and "good". If you'll accept some crude definitions:

healthy = conducive to optimum bodily performance or longevity
good = conducive to spiritual growth, flourishing, and compassion for others
choice-worthy = ?

(The first two definitions aren't meant to be clearly correct; they just represent the kind of filling-out we do when we want to use these terms as universals. You can adjust them as you see fit.)

But what about "choice-worthy"? What is the comparable way of indicating the kinds of qualities or features that it means to describe? I'm at a loss to understand how "choice-worthy" indicates anything other than "a good thing to choose" -- and this doesn't add anything to our knowledge about values, in the way that the definitions of "healthy" and "good" do. So I still feel I'm not getting it.

"Choiceworthy" is a particular rendering of the Greek, but I am aware of no major ethics which doesn't equate "good" with "what ought to be chosen," so I don't see the real difference here — Count Timothy von Icarus

So the difference would be that most other ethics don't use "choice-worthy" as a conceptual building block. Sure, a Kantian or a utilitarian would agree that we ought to choose what's good, but that's almost in passing. They might say that the good is choice-worthy, but not that "choice-worthy" defines the good, or can be of any help to us in further understanding what is good. Sorry, but it still sounds like Euthyphro trying to defend his use of "pious."

We mean what is truly worthy of desire, as in "choice-worthy," — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes! But what is that quality which, like "health" or "goodness", we can point to as "worthy of desire"? As far as I can see, it still has to be defined apart from choice, which makes "choice-worthy" akin to "dormative power".

One more shot at explaining my puzzlement:

Anything that is good is choice-worthy.
"Good" means "choice-worthy."

The first statement seems fine. It's not a definition, it's merely a description, a rule, if you like, about how to understand the conceptual connection. The second is a definition, and I can't make sense of it. Now if all you mean is the first, descriptive statement, then my puzzlement is at an end, and I agree. But if the second . . . I still don't get it.

Well, you've spent a lot of time on this, and if you feel you've said all you can, feel free to let it go.

I hope I’m not intruding on the discussion, — javra

Not at all, as far as I'm concerned. It's the agora!

Ethics come into play in the context of whether or not that which we deem to be beneficial to us in fact actually is so or not. — javra

This seems like a good window onto virtue ethics, and the way you go on to elaborate it also makes sense. So could we say that something is "choice-worthy" if it's in fact beneficial to us? I'd be happy with that but, problem is, we've only deferred the question of what is in fact beneficial to us. That's why I'm questioning whether -- or admitting my ignorance about -- how bringing in choice-worthiness helps matters. Why not leave it out entirely and just say what you said, above?

If "good" is taken to mean "choice-worthy," as it often is . . . — Count Timothy von Icarus

I've never understood this. How is it different from the "dormative power" of a sleeping pill? What makes something worthy of being chosen? Isn't whatever that is -- call it X-- what we should be talking about, rather than the fact that X makes something worthy of being chosen?

If I choose to read an interesting book, that book is, arguably, choice-worthy. But why? I honestly don't see how calling out its choice-worthiness gets us anywhere. You can't mean that being chosen is any sort of moral criterion. So how does "good" get brought in here? What is it about the book that would make my choice a worthy one?

It sounds like Socrates and Euthyphro. Is piety whatever the gods love, or do they love it because it is pious? Is something good because it is choice-worthy, or is it choice-worthy because it is good?

Frustrated with my own inability to grasp this, I searched for "choice-worthy" online and . . . well, is there anyone besides Aristotelians who uses this term? I looked at the Nich. Ethics and I find the assertion that "every choice aims at some good." Really? Surely he doesn't mean "good" in the way we're using it. I choose a sharp knife to better cut someone's throat; a good choice, indeed, but hardly germane. And yes, I see how something could be chosen for its own sake -- a "final end" -- but that still doesn't tell us what makes it worthy.

I dunno . . . I would genuinely be grateful if you could explain this.

Maybe he can clarify what he thinks ethics is or under what conditions, if any, it could be coherent. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Sure, didn't mean to butt in. Just a suggestion to avoid getting too hung up on a "proper" use of the term.

He was less circumspect in later talks and seemed to be pushing a notion that could possibly run afoul of Hemple's Dilemma (i.e. if something is real, it is, by definition, included in what is physical).

The difficulty is that "physical," like the "methodological naturalism" mentioned earlier in this thread, is that they can be pushed very far in different directions.
— Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes, exactly so. — javra

Dennett's particular flavor of physicalism is strongly epistemological. He's not so much trying to say that there are no experiences that correspond to "mental events" or "qualia," but rather that everything we think we know about them is wrong. We keep assuming that our privileged first-person stance gives us insight into another realm that must be non-physical, but since there is no such realm, something else must be going on. The experiences we have must be re-thought as experiences of the physical. And of course Dennett is well aware that phrases like "re-thought" and even "experience" also require non-mentalistic reconstructions.

Almost none of that is true, especially about the first-person stance, IMO, but I want to give Dennett a fair hearing so we can see what a sample version of physicalism is up against.

May I make a suggestion? This looks like a classic case of a disagreement about how to use a term, "ethics" in this case. Why don't the two of you agree to retire the terminological dispute, accepting that the term has been used differently in different philosophical cultures, and that both of you can make a decent case for your particular use. Then you can discuss how each of these (Project 1 and Project 2, you could call them) endeavors actually works, and how they might relate to each other. Maybe at some later point, you'll decide to award one of them the prize of being called "ethics" -- or maybe not.

If you don't do this, it seems to me that you will either resume the search for the Great Dictionary that will settle the matter, or keep re-invoking various traditions to support your position. But that's not nearly as interesting as looking at the practices themselves, trying to understand their structure and what they might commit us to.

Exactly how does Coleridge know that the waterfall is sublime rather than pretty?
— J
Considering specific incidents looks like a much more productive approach than discussing the transcendentals, so this is a good question. I'm sure one could conjure up an answer from what he says elsewhere about why the waterfall is sublime. It would function as an ostensive definition. — Ludwig V

I prefer specific examples too. But let me say two things about this one: First, we might indeed delve into Coleridge's life and world to come up with an answer, but that's not quite what I'm looking for. Perhaps I should have bolded "know". Is Coleridge's opinion a justified true belief? Or some other kind of knowledge? This generalizes to anyone with this opinion, of course, not just Coleridge.

Second, I approach this example with a bias. I strongly suspect that the waterfall really is a sublime sight. (Yes, I've changed the terms slightly so as to allow "sight" a role.) So, far from a debunking question, I'm asking for a theory that can confirm my bias: I want to be on firm ground when I say that the sight of the waterfall is sublime, or that the Beatles wrote great songs, etc. But, as I said above, such a theory is notoriously difficult to construct. That doesn't mean we shouldn't keep working on it, though.

Since I take it you've read Dennett first-hand, did Dennett ever get around to defining what "the physical" actually is in his philosophical writings? This so as to validly distinguish it from that which would then be "the illusion of non-physicality". — javra

In the introduction to Brainstorms, an early work, Dennett says this:

Complete success in [my] project would vindicate physicalism of a very modest and undoctrinaire sort: all mental events are in the end just physical events, and commonalities between mental events (or between people sharing a mentalistic attribute) are explicated via a description and predication system which is neutral with regard to physicalism, but just for that reason entirely compatible with physicalism. . . . Every mental event is some functional, physical event or other . . . — Brainstorms, pp xviii-xix

This doesn't quite answer your question, but it was the first passage I came across. I'll try to find some others. It doesn't give us a definition of "the physical," but the context would indicate that so-called mental events are correctly described as brain events, without remainder. To think otherwise would mean postulating something that can have no physical reality, and ergo is illusory.

Notice that this is supposed to be "very modest and undoctrinaire"! In some of his later books Dennett was less modest about the implications of his project, and I think probably changed his mind about whether "descriptions and predications" concerning so-called mental events could remain neutral about physicalism. But even at this early stage of his writing, we can see how the reduction of the mental to the physical is perceived very innocently -- nothing doctrinaire about it, just common sense for us scientists, folks!

And, as to "awareness being an illusion", an illusion relative to what if not to awareness itself? — javra

I think this is the hardest question for someone like Dennett to answer. At best, he can say that awareness is not at all like what we think it's like, or doesn't have the moving parts we think it has, or doesn't lead to the conclusions about reality that we think it does . . . and on and on. But to call the experience itself an illusion does seem to require a viewpoint for which it is illusory. And that viewpoint, in turn, is either non-illusory, or an illusory product itself, in which case we move to Level 3, ad infinitum.

Which is pretty much your criticism too, and I think it's valid.

That said, with someone as smart and philosophically experienced as Dennett, I find it helpful to at least try to see it their way. I believe it comes down, once again, to an unshakable faith in physicalism. What Dennett means by "illusion" is "something that looks like it's non-physical."

Moreover, we can't just say, "Well, you're asking for a scientific explanation and that's not appropriate."

This would depend entirely on how "scientific explanation" is defined. If attempts to provide a metaphysics of knowledge are shot down on the grounds that "a good explanation is scientific" and that "scientific explanations" avoid metaphysics (which normally amounts to just assuming certain metaphysical stances), this seems like it could equally be deemed question begging. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. What I meant was, if we object on the grounds that what's being asked for is a scientific explanation, and that's not appropriate, our interlocutor can reply, "Fine, give me any kind of explanation." And in way, the burden is then on us to explain why what we offer counts as explanatory.

This ties in to your other point, about how to bring in "intellect" as explanatory. You're right that there's a lot more than mere naming going on, and I was too dismissive about that. But I worry about explanations that aren't lawlike (aka objective), to a degree. This is where, for me, hermeneutics comes in. You mentioned the human sciences, which I think are indeed scientific but often by way of hermeneutical understanding. Same, perhaps, with the study of value -- we need a way to legitimate an interpretation as explanatory. Well, a huge topic, so I'll stop.

focus on “a hypothesis’ ability to predict” is, to my mind unfortunately, too often prioritized over “a hypothesis’ explanatory power” – this especially in philosophy. — javra

True, or even in regular life. It's extremely common to confuse correlation with causation, with the result that predictions may be 100% correct but have no explanatory power whatsoever.

to my best understanding it remains the case that the eliminativist will not be able to explain most anything as regards awareness per se. And without awareness, there cannot be any form of empiricism. — javra

The only eliminativist I've really spent much time on is Daniel Dennett, because he's extremely good at discussing science and can almost always put the eliminativist case with vigor and humor. He would, of course, disagree with you. I believe he would say that consciousness and awareness are user illusions -- as is, indeed, the user him/herself! When your materialism goes that deep, it's hard to know what to say in reply. Dennett is able to provide very plausible stories about how these illusions work. I even find his evolutionary explanations for the illusion of consciousness to be logical enough. But his assumptions are such that we can't ask him, "But why does it have to be an illusion in the first place?" Or rather, we can, but I think would say, "Because the material world is the only thing that exists."

Isn't this conclusion you're suggesting, that we allow that we all know almost nothing of consciousness, or some of its most obvious contents (e.g., goodness, beauty, etc.), only reached by granting the eliminitivist his (radical) empiricist premises as inviolable? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I don't think so. I deliberately said that we know "just about nothing, scientifically, concerning the phenomenon of consciousness" because a) I believe it's true, and b) there's no reason we can't meet the eliminativist somewhat on their own ground. Really, my suggested reply amounts to "You're not being scientific, by your own lights." I'm not sure it would do much good to start laying out a phenomenology of consciousness for them, in this context. . . though as you note, we can say a great deal about consciousness phenomenologically, and many believe (as I think you and I do) that the evidence is overwhelmingly on the side of consciousness' not being eliminable.

On traditional accounts, the intellect — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yeah, I know. But does that really satisfy you as an explanation? It doesn't me. As a (very) short cut to what I mean, imagine that we accept the idea of a faculty called intellect which is cognitively able to do all the things we'd like it to do -- recognize values, identify universals, uncover logical principles, whatever you'd like to add to the list. Does this get us one step closer to answering our question? What is this faculty, and how does it do what it does? Just giving it a name doesn't help. Moreover, we can't just say, "Well, you're asking for a scientific explanation and that's not appropriate." What we lack is any real explanation at all, if we try to go beyond mere assertions that "since we do recognize values et al., then there must be a faculty that allows us to do so," which is question-begging.

Lots to chew on here, thanks. I'm mostly in agreement, though less concerned than you are with science/empiricism as a foe of other modes of cognition.

When the eliminativist says, "give me a complete theory explaining consciousness or I am justified in denying it," is this a fair move? — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'll take this as a proxy for several of the arguments you make, and reply, "No, it isn't a fair move." I believe the eliminativist is thinking something like this: "Well, it's very unlikely, according to me, that consciousness 'exists' in the way that non-eliminativists believe it does, so I'd need a complete scientific explanation of consciousness as that kind of existing thing before I could even entertain the idea. And in the absence of such a theory, my agnosticism turns to outright denial." So the reply should be: "Open your mind. We know just about nothing, scientifically, concerning the phenomenon of consciousness. A 'compete theory' may be a long way away. In the meantime, just say you don't know -- neither do I!"

I think it's worth noting though that attacks on the reality of beauty, like those on goodness and truth, tend to also largely rely on debunking arguments. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. For instance, I could have phrased my question about Coleridge and the waterfall in a much more hostile way, implying, "Obviously, a non-emotivist account of 'sublimity' isn't available; Coleridge was merely reflecting the beliefs of his time; so when I challenge you to explain the 'faculty' by which he recognized sublimity, my tongue is firmly in my cheek. Obviously there is no such faculty." Whereas, as I hope was clear, my question was a genuine one: It's very important that we understand how values like beauty and moral goodness are recognized -- and very difficult to give a good account of this. I think you're overestimating the power of the "give me a predictive hypothesis" request, but yes, we do want to be able to say more than "Tradition says so" or "it's empirical too."

On that question . . . is it empirical? You say of Wordsworth, Dante, and Suzuki, "These are all 'empirical reports' in the broadest sense, in that they deal with sensuous experience." Perhaps in a very broad sense -- they are reports concerning things outside our own mind -- but not in a way that's going to help us. If Wordsworth's "a motion and a spirit" is "out there" in the same way that the color of his famous daffodils is, then a number of tough questions are raised. Most of them reduce to the one I posed: We know, more or less, what faculty allows us to see daffodils as yellow. What is the faculty that allows us to see the waterfall as sublime? To ask this question is not to defer to scientism. There's nothing wrong with asking for a reasonable explanation here, as long as we don't pre-certify what sorts of entities and processes will count, as scientism does. In fact, a close reading of the Suzuki passage suggests a possible line of inquiry. Satori and enlightenment may be the highest development of the very faculty we're asking about.

Further to our exchange about music, you may or may not have encountered the classic piece in traditional philosophy for this - Hume - Standard of Taste. — Ludwig V

I don't remember reading this, thanks.