I’m pretty much on board with Bernardo Kastrup’s diagnosis. He says, computers can model all kinds of metabolic processes in exquisite detail, but the computer model of kidney function doesn’t pass urine. It is a simulation, a likeness. — Wayfarer

This seems a straightforward refutation of the idea that a computer could be alive. The awkward difference, with AI, is that it doesn't just model or simulate rationality -- it (appears to) engage in it. Putting it differently, only an imbecile could get confused between a model of kidney function and a functioning kidney -- as you say, the telltale lack of urine. But what's the equivalent, when talking about what an AI can or cannot do?

I return to my idea that only living beings could be conscious. If that is ever demonstrated, and we accept Kastrup's argument as a refutation of alive-ness, then the case would be made. But as of now, it doesn't matter whether the AI is alive or not, since we haven't yet shown that being alive is needed for consciousness in the same way that being alive is needed for producing urine.

It is a kind of idealised entity, not subject to the vicissitudes of existence - and part of us wants to be like that, because then we would not be subject to illness and death. — Wayfarer

Good insight. They're also dispassionate in a way that is impossible for all but Mr. Spock -- something many people idealize as well.

If we ever make a device with as many information processing systems working together with the goal of the continuation of the device? — Patterner

Yes, that's the question we don't know how to answer: Would such a structure result in consciousness or subjectivity? Is that what it takes? Is that all it takes? My initial reaction would be to ask, "Is it alive?" If not, then I doubt it could be conscious, but I have no special insights here. Many years of thinking about this incline me to believe that consciousness will turn out to be biological -- but we don't know.

"Everything"? Surely not. — Patterner

I meant the types of experiences that @Wayfarer listed -- sensory awareness, memory, knowing you exist. But you're right to narrow the target. We currently care a lot about this question because of some specific recent developments in artificial intelligence. It's those devices about which I imagine these issues being raised. They may not "experience everything we do," but neither does a bee. The question is whether they can, or could, experience anything at all. My educated guess is that they can't -- they can't be subjects -- but it seems far from axiomatic to me.

@Wayfarer, I wish you would say more about what you see as the critical difference between a so-called artificial intelligence and a living being, and what implications this has for consciousness. I'm fairly sure I would agree with you, but it's good to lay the whole thing out in plain terms. Maybe that will make it obvious. "Forgetfulness of being" is all very well as a diagnosis, but the advocates for intelligent, soon-to-be-conscious AIs deserve something less dismissive. If for no other reason than this is becoming one of the central philosophical/scientific/ethical tipping points of our age.

That devices are not subjects of experience is axiomatic, in my opinion. — Wayfarer

I would like this to be true, but I don't see how it is. One objection I would raise is simply, "If it's axiomatic, why are increasing numbers of not unintelligent people doubting it?" Maybe you mean something different by axiomatic, but for me it's a cognate for "obvious," and I would apply it to a postulate or process that's needed in order to do any thinking at all. In fairness, do you really believe that rationality breaks down in the face of the possibility that AI's may be, or will become, conscious subjects of experience? As for "truths that have no opposites," well, the opposite of "only living things are conscious" would be, quite coherently, "some non-living things are, or may be, conscious." You can make a good case for the axiomatic nature of, for instance, first-person experience, but again, that is not being questioned by my hypothetical proponent of "device consciousness."

Maybe this doesn't need repeating, but my own view is that it will turn out to be the case that only living things can be the subjects of experience. But I believe this is far from obvious or axiomatic.

As for LLM’s, ask any of them whether they are subjects of experience and they will answer in the negative. — Wayfarer

An interesting test! What would you conclude if one of them said, "Yes, I am"?

The question of the nature of being is the subject of Heidegger’s entire project (and phenomenology generally. Consider Sartre’s in-itself and for-itself). It could be argued that it is the central question of philosophy. — Wayfarer

It sure could. If I had to paraphrase "what is it like to . . ." I might go for "what is the experience of . . .", and as you point out, such a formulation requires the concept of experience to get off the ground. (I'm not sure I agree that "being as such is not an object of experience," but the very fact that it's possible to have two reasonable positions on this only highlights the centrality of the issue.)

As to whether I can, or should, explain what that means. I can’t prove to you that there’s something it’s like to be you. — Wayfarer

No, probably not. But that's not what my hypothetical questioner is asking. They want to know, "Why couldn't it be the case that everything you describe as pertaining to yourself, and other living beings, also pertains to devices, AIs, et al.? Why is it obvious that they're different?" We could extend the question to all objects if we wanted, but that's arcane; the question comes up relevantly in the context of our new world of ostensibly intelligent or even conscious entities, which are causing a lot of people to demand a re-think about all this. Philosophy can help.

There is 'nothing it is like' to be a car, because a car is a device, an artifact - not a being, like a man, or a bat. — Wayfarer

Welcome back. I agree with the quoted statement. But those of us who do hold out for an ontological difference between a device and a living thing should be careful about two points:

1. "What it's like" defies precise definition, relying on a (very common, I'd say) intuition conjured up by the phrase. Does this work in other languages? How might the intuition be expressed in, say, Japanese?

2. To you, to me, the difference under discussion is obvious. But it isn't obvious to everyone. The fact that I believe something to be obvious doesn't let me off the hook of trying to explain it, if someone questions it in good faith. Explaining the obvious is a quintessentially philosophical task! Both of us should welcome questions like, "But why can't a device have experiences?"

This is particularly helpful, as is the whole idea of thinking of it in terms of an asymmetry. I think that's where my "intuition" wants to go astray; perhaps we naturally conceptualize in symmetries until shown otherwise?

Got it. My only question is a natural-language quibble: When you say "We find that we cannot derive sentences about the future from sentences about the past," that hinges on a certain strict understanding of "derive" (and maybe "about" as well). Nothing prevents us from saying either 1) "The sun is overwhelmingly likely to rise tomorrow" or 2) "It is logically certain that, if the future resembles the past [in the relevant respects], then the sun will rise tomorrow." These are surely true sentences about the future, based upon knowledge of the past, they just aren't "derived" according to a model that takes into account terms such as "likely" or "resemblance." This has no bearing on what Russell is demonstrating, of course.

Ah, I get you now. I thought you had a typo because I was considering the case where one knowingly chooses the worse over the better, not vice versa; hence my confused response. I agree, Kant makes a crucial point here. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Good, and sorry if I added to the confusion.

Plato's point is similar to Kant's . . . — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. One of the things I dislike about the "pre-modern -- modern" distinction is that it tends to imply that there's no continuity in problematics or thought between the ancients and ourselves. (People like MacIntyre, read loosely, seem to reinforce this.) Certainly Plato knew about this question, and equally certainly, Kant had read his Plato and was not entering the conversation de novo.

. . . although I think more nuanced, in that he sees this desire for the "truly best" as known as good as what allows us to transcend current belief and desire, and thus our own finitude. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I see lots of similarities between Plato and Kant on this issue (and of course Platonic Christian philosophy is the bridge between them). P and K both see a sharp divide between types of motivation, and both situate this divide as a question of immanence versus transcendence. For Kant, the vocabulary is "autonomous will" versus "heteronomous desires." In the heteronomous world, pushed and pulled, acted upon and reacting to, we find ourselves with desires particular to ourselves, as individuals. But by virtue of our participation in the autonomous world of rational freedom, the "kingdom of ends," we discover an entirely different order of motivation which is the same for everyone, though we are free to act or not act upon it. It is this motivation, or will, that Kant believed had moral value.

Your thoughts about Kant and freedom are interesting, but is it really possible for any philosopher to have a view on freedom that doesn't depend on "metaphysical assumptions"? Surely the ancients were no different. Also, I'm not sure I agree that Kant's autonomy is "bare, inviolable, individual." Mountains have been written about this, and I've only read some of it. I would say that Kant (who was a Christian apologist, though he tried to avoid being seen that way), did see individual freedom, understood as the power to choose, as an unavoidable human condition, influenced but never conditioned by social circumstances, and roughly analogous to the free will (and possibility of sin) of Christian theology. The twist here, though, is that Kantian autonomy is meant to represent a denial of a certain sort of individual freedom. It's only when we abandon our heteronomous orientation for what is categorical and valid for all humans (or rational beings) that the possibility of truly acting freely can arise.

Kant is getting at something important here, I just don't see how it is missing from the earlier tradition, whereas he also misses that the good person ideally desires the good because of its goodness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

An important issue to raise. I'd say Kant doesn't so much miss this point, as reject it, and offer what he feels is a better description of ethical action. The good person (not a term Kant often used) is the person who acts from a good will. Is the good will a desire? That's the rub. Most interpret Kant as saying it's something else entirely, whereas the Greek/virtue ethics framework must interpret it as yet another desire, so that the "ordering of desires" idea can be preserved, and linked with an anthropology.

One place where I do see an overlap between Kant and some of the classical thinkers is this: It's possible to read Kant's discussion of autonomy and ethics as an argument for conforming to what is human nature, or at any rate rational nature. Read this way, it isn't so different from any ethics based on a view of what is essential or natural to humans, using an allegedly established or obvious definition. I go back and forth on how accurate a reading of Kant this is. The problem, as we know, is that the categorical imperative seems to depend on an anthropology no less rigorous than Aristotle's. The difference would be that Kant tries to establish his view of human possibilities on various arguments from self-contradiction. These are notoriously tricky. What counts for Kant as a "contradiction" seems to vary in meaning and implication, depending on which part of the cat. imp. we get a handle on. But anyway . . .

I am working on a project that compares modern character education literature to late-antique philosophy and it's almost like two wholly different Aristotles! — Count Timothy von Icarus

This sounds interesting. I'd like to learn more about how to rescue Aristotle and the virtue-ethics tradition from the charge of selfishness. Or, for that matter, how to repair the gaping hole that seems to be there when it comes to Christian virtues such as compassion and mercy.

the higher required ever-increasing conformity to the Good, which of course involves the willing of the Good for its own sake — Count Timothy von Icarus

See above comments. Notice that you don't speak about desiring the Good for its own sake, but of willing it. Kant would reply: "Excellent. You've just passed from the heteronomous world to the autonomous world!"

, there are many possible reasons for choosing the better over the worse,
— J

Such as? — Count Timothy von Icarus

This is where Kantian ethics makes a real contribution to the discussion. As I'm sure you know, Kant believed that only the good will was truly good, in an ethical sense. Put another way: My motivation for acting is of paramount importance; what I do may actually be ethically insignificant, but why I do it will always matter.

So, to your question: I may choose the better over the worse because I want to be seen as someone who chooses the better over the worse. (This is only one example; there are many we could consider.). Have I indeed chosen the better over the worse? Yes. Have I done so knowing it is the best? Yes. But have I chosen it for the right reason -- do I have a good will? No.

We can particularize this to an act of charity. I may correctly see that helping an effective AIDS charity is an act of goodness, or the right thing to do, or in accordance with spiritual principles, or however one cares to phrase it. But if I do so because (though I absolutely agree that it's good to help AIDS patients) I enjoy the attention and the gloss to my self-esteem, Kant would call the action ethically worthless. I wouldn't go that far, myself, but Kant is raising an important point. Isn't there a huge difference between the person who does the right thing for the wrong, or equivocal, reasons, and the person who does it because they want to do the right thing? (An interesting subsidiary question, by the way, is whether "wanting to do the right thing" can be stated in non-Kantian -- that is, non-procedural -- terms, or whether the Kantian conception requires some version of the categorical imperative as the basis for discussing ethics.)

Like everything in ethics, this is nuanced and endlessly complex. I don't think deontological ethics offers a knockdown argument to virtue ethics. In fact, I think they work best in tandem. But one can certainly point out that the question of motivation in virtue ethics needs a lot of elaboration. Is "wanting to be a 'good' human" (in the pre-modern sense of "good human", where it's the same sort of usage as a "good hammer" or "good poem") a sufficient motivation for ethical action? Doesn't it matter why one wants this? Or must we disregard motivation entirely, and merely speak of good or right actions, or the human good as a kind of correspondence with what is essential or natural to humans?

if the good is being qua desirable (what is truly most fulfilling of desire) . . . — Count Timothy von Icarus

Not sure I get this. Can you expand?

Why choose the better over the worse? Why choose good over evil? These seem extremely obvious to me, so I am not sure how to answer. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I sympathize. Explaining what seems obvious to you, to someone for whom it isn't obvious at all, is difficult. I won't press you. I'll just say that, from my viewpoint, there are many possible reasons for choosing the better over the worse, only some of which are ethical reasons. And for what it's worth, the question "Why choose good over evil?" seems to me to be a different question entirely.

I don't quite understand this. Are you saying that, for those without the inclination or capacities for respecting social norms, there is no argument that can be made that what they're doing is wrong? Not necessarily an argument that would convince them, but a general argument showing that there is an ethical sense in which they ought to behave differently?

So here is a restatement of the issues in the OP, as influenced and I hope clarified by the subsequent discussion.

1) I began by saying that the question of “thought-to-thought” causation should be understood in the context of psychologism vs. logicism. I still think this is a possible approach, but most of the discussion focused on the Popperian vocabulary of World 2 and World 3 objects/processes, so I’ll stick with that.

2) The OP assumes an overly binary version of how we have to understand what a thought is. This was partly for purposes of simplification and tractability, but also partly because I hadn’t deeply considered some of the points about “streams of thought” and non-verbal thoughts that subsequently arose. I proposed that when we have the ordinary mental experience of first thinking “I wonder how Ann is doing” and then “It’s her birthday soon; I must get her a present,” we must choose between seeing these thoughts as either psychological events in my mind, or as propositions that could find expression – and possibly necessitation of some sort – in anyone’s mind. And this is fair enough, but it suggests that “thought” must come equipped with certain properties it may not have, especially linguistic expression. The problems that @Dawnstorm and others raised about this are exigent.

3) So what does the question “Can a thought cause another thought?” really ask? I now believe it’s a question about a certain kind of thought, namely a thought that has been expressed linguistically and is thus a candidate for being described in propositional, World 3 terms. But not all thoughts are like this. If we ask, “But what caused the original thought about Ann?” we are giving proper importance to this point – what “caused” (if this is even appropriate) the original thought may have been completely non-verbal, but nonetheless a thought if we allow “thought” to cover many more mind-events than the OP suggested was possible. And I’m inclined to think we should.

4) Now there’s the danger that the discussion will swerve into a terminological dispute. Let’s avoid that. I don’t much care about deriving a precise definition of what a thought is, or what are the correct ways of using the term “thought.” I’m happy to narrow my questions about mental-to-mental causation to a certain type of thought; call it a J-thought. Such a thought is one that can be given a description in either World 2 or World 3 terms – thus, it is likely linguistic, or at least a linguistic thought would be the type-specimen of a J-thought. So my initial question is now: “Can one J-thought cause another, and if so, is this by virtue of a World 2 relationship, a World 3 relationship, or some combination?” And lurking behind this question is another, broader one, which has also been raised repeatedly here: If causation isn’t a very good model of what happens when we think J-thoughts, then can we come up with a better description, something more contentful than merely “association” or “affinity”?

Happy to forge on, or of course we can let it go at this point.

It’s not that humans have to or ought to see others as similar to themselves, it’s that they tend to and are capable of seeing them that way. — T Clark

Oh, I definitely agree about the tendency and the capacity. It's just that, if I happen to be one of those lacking that tendency or capacity, we've pulled all the ethical teeth out of the argument if you can't say to me, "But here's why you ought to" (or perhaps, "Here's why you should at least behave as if you did"). Otherwise, ethical injunctions only apply to those who have the proper tendencies and capacities. But it's the very ones who don't that we'd most like to persuade, if we can.

This ought is not a choice — Joshs

Well, OK. So if I were to say to someone, "You ought to ____ [filling in your description of what you call the intrinsic striving for self-expression]," that would be pointless, since they're doing it anyway?

1. It is true that we ought to choose the better over the worse.
2. X is better than Y.
C. Thus, we ought to choose Y. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I know we've been here before, but I have to point out that this could only be true if "better than" is defined as "should be chosen" or "is worthy [?] of choice," in which case the alleged argument becomes a tautology ("We ought to choose what we ought to choose"). But if "is better than" is given an independent interpretation from "should be chosen," then the argument merely shows that the "ought" premise in needed in order to get to the "ought" conclusion. How do you justify the first premise? Why is it morally obligatory to choose the better over the worse? -- that question needs to be answered without reference, overt or covert, to what is worthy of choice; otherwise it just goes in circles.

Yet even after centuries of this, we still don't use the word "ought" in this way. "You ought to try the chicken," or "she likes you, you ought to ask here out," do not imply "you are morally obligated to eat this chicken," or "you are morally obligated to ask our friend out on a date." — Count Timothy von Icarus

Of course they don't. That's why they aren't moral injunctions. Whereas "You ought to help the poor" is. Is there a reason why "ought" can't have both moral and non-moral uses? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that "we still don't use the word 'ought' exclusively in this way"? For why should we? -- surely the deontological ethicists weren't recommending that.

We care about others because we see them as like ourselves, which allows us to relate to them, learn from them, expand the boundaries of our sense of self. — Joshs

I agree with the thrust of your post, and I personally share the sentiment quoted above. But . . . suppose I don't? Suppose I don't see others as like myself, and am not interested in relating to them or expanding my sense of self. Are you arguing that I ought to? If not, what does this have to do with ethics and morality, with doing the right thing or pursuing the good or however one cares to phrase it?

I don't know anything at all about Popper. I only heard his name for the first time recently, in another thread, and haven't been able to make head or tail out of what you two are saying about his Worlds. — Patterner

Sorry, perhaps we should have elaborated more. Fortunately it's a pretty easy concept to grasp.

He proposes a novel form of pluralistic realism, a “Three Worlds” ontology, which, while accommodating both the world of physical states and processes (world 1) and the mental world of psychological processes (world 2), represents knowledge in its objective sense as belonging to world 3, a third, objectively real ontological category. That world is the world

'of the products of the human mind, such as languages; tales and stories and religious myths; scientific conjectures or theories, and mathematical constructions; songs and symphonies; paintings and sculptures.]' (1980: 144)

In short, world 3 is the world of human cultural artifacts, which are products of world 2 mental processes, usually instantiated in the physical world 1 environment. — SEP article on Popper

This schema, which at first glance seems a bit rough and simplistic, proves surprisingly useful as a way to at least get a foothold in these ontological distinctions.

So, for thoughts, we have a World 2 event -- a "psychological process" -- and, often, a World 3 event as well -- language, math, often expressed as propositions and entailments.

Perhaps the moral system of human society is itself an adaptive tool formed under evolutionary pressures to promote group survival and reproduction. In other words, morality is a cultural apparatus that "serves the fundamental purpose." — panwei

Your OP is a well-stated version of an evolutionary explanation for morality. As such, it's open to the usual objections, which I think are correct.

First, let's assume that we really could come up with the ideal "natural" or "socially adaptive" or "evolutionarily coded" description of how humans may best flourish. Conceivably, you could take this description and apply it to the species in general, saying "For the species to flourish, this is what must happen." But a species is not a moral agent; it doesn't know about terms like "ought" or "should." But individuals do, and at the individual level, the same old problem arises: Why should I, an individual, care about the flourishing of the species? For that matter, I may not care much about my own flourishing -- and if I don't, what is the argument that I ought to? What makes it right for me to do so? You need some previous moral premises (involving an ethical preference for life over death, happiness over pain) in order to make that work. Now of course, as a matter of fact, most of us do prefer happiness to pain, but not because it's ethically right to do so. It just feels better -- and that's only a moral reason if you can make the argument that feeling better is the right thing to pursue, ethically.

Second, it seems all too clear that what's been selected by evolution for human behavior isn't a reliable guide to morality anyway. You refer to "a factually given setting at the level of biological mechanism." Well, just to pick one such setting, heterosexual men are hardwired to find nubile young women/girls sexually desirable. There are obvious advantages to being able to begin reproduction as early as possible, and a 13-year-old girl will likely be strong and healthy too, suggesting healthy offspring. But most cultures now regard such a program as immoral. Why? What is the reasoning that would show us -- rightly -- that childbearing at such a young age is an immoral hardship to impose on a girl? To make such an argument, you have to weight different "natural" features of our species, and make an ethical decision about which ones to take as guides. In short, "ought" and "should" must again be introduced; there is no "specific type of 'is'" that can help us.

I understand Russell's and Pryor's interpretations. I'm still not clear on how something can be neither particular nor universal. Also, why "not universal" isn't the same as "particular" -- this is perhaps just another way of phrasing the first unclarity. "Fa v ∀xGx is not universal" . . . and yet, as you show, {Fa v ∀xGx, ¬Fa} is not particular. This is hard to understand. It makes sense using the "rows" illustration, but not conceptually or intuitively; it seems like a paradox. Probably I should wait for your "more on this later."

If causation language is biased towards world 1, then how should we model thought, if we want to focus on world 2. Does that seem like a fair description of the confusion this thread is in (or is just me overthinking things again...) — Dawnstorm

I want to hear @Patterner's response, but I'll just jump in to say that I do think it's a fair description of the confusion -- or at any rate the uncertainty -- with which I began, and which prompted me to start the thread in the first place. I don't know that anyone's responses has made it any worse, or that there would have been a clearer path to follow. I'm still working on my own restatement of the OP question. . .

The knitting analogy is a bit clunky, — Banno

No, I found it helpful.

Prior's Dilemma — Banno

A question here. If we agree, as we should, that Fa v UxGx is not universal, how does that help in addressing the second version of Prior's counterexample, the one that derives UxGx? UxGx is a universal, correct? And ¬Fa is particular. So we're getting a universal conclusion from (1) a premise that is not universal [Fa v UxGx] and (2) a premise that is particular [¬Fa]. When you speak of "sentences which are neither universal nor particular," I assume that Fa v UxGx is such a sentence. But how does its not being universal mean that we haven't derived a universal from a particular? Is the idea that both premises must be particular, in order to claim to have derived a universal from a particular?

I'm still trying to figure out what the topic is. — Dawnstorm

so far, this discussion looks to me like a solution in search of a problem. — SophistiCat

I just want to note that I understand these comments. For me, they point to two things: First, the difficulty of adapting our concepts of causality on the one hand, and the mental on the other, to even frame a sensible question. And second, as we've already noticed, the disconcerting way in which a perfectly simple (!) query -- Can a thought cause another thought? -- quickly expands into large theoretical questions, most of which we have at best tentative answer to.

Nevertheless, I'm going to try to post a reformulation of my initial OP question, in light of the very interesting discussion that's ensued. Hopefully later today.

Do we need to analyze thoughts in terms of causation? — SophistiCat

To this, I'd say no, we don't. I'm quite open to other hypotheses about the "relations," "affinities," "influences," "associations," et al. among thoughts. The only line I'd draw in the sand would be: We mustn't talk as if we already understand this issue, or as if there is no issue.

Ah, OK, much clearer, and now I understand why the 1st diagram seemed counter-intuitive. I hadn't understood that only the single, designated F was a. So of course the addition of something that is ¬F can't change anything with respect to a.

Carry on.

Kathmandu will be the site of a giant mushroom festival in the year 2145. — Patterner

Yeah, saw that. It was on the internet. Why did you think you made it up? :wink:

I guess not all thoughts are caused by thoughts. — Patterner

Absolutely right. Those that are caused by previous thoughts are a special category. We can stretch the term "thought" until it snaps, but I agree with you (though I think @Dawnstorm would not) that whatever made you invent that sentence, it wasn't some previous thought standing in a causal relation. Dawnstorm might argue for a stream-of-thought, out of which the (linguistic) elements of your sentence popped up. But regardless of our terminology, you question is a good one: What caused that sentence (as a thought in your mind, that is, not in your post)? We're drawn to a World 2 explanation, aren't we? Some individual, particular elements in your mind and no other were the key links of the causal chain. But that's not quite right. The words and the grammar are available to all. But the absence of anything resembling entailment, or even rationality, is striking: no part of the sentence seems required by any other. (And of course it's ambiguous: Giant festival, or festival featuring giant mushrooms?)

Try to construct an explanation, assuming a sincere questioner asked you, "What caused you to think that sentence?" I wonder what you'd get. Would you wind up denying causality completely?

I happened to run across this, in Peirce:

Ideas tend to spread continuously, and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectibility. — Collected Papers, 6.202

"Affectibility" is yet another near-synonym, like "relationship" or "association" or "influence," a way of approaching the idea of "cause" without committing to it. It's also interesting that Peirce must have had propositions or other World 3 objects in mind here, since it wouldn't make much sense to suggest that my thought or your thought (qua W2 thoughts) could have this effect. What's needed is the content, the meaning, in order for the idea to "spread continuously." In fact, the very term "idea" already implies a separation from the psychologically grounded W2 thought.

In Susan Haack's essay on Peirce's "synechism," she provides this suggestion:

[Peirce believed] we should take "thought" and "mind" to refer to both the particular minds of particular organisms, and to the intelligible patterns, the Platonic Ideas, found in the formation of crystals or the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb. — in Putting Philosophy to Work, 83

Here again, the distinction between World 2 and World 3 thoughts. I wouldn't care to make an argument that there is a thought-like "intelligible pattern" to be found in aspects of Nature, as Haack thinks Peirce believed. But the idea that such patterns are outside of particular minds is the whole point of asking into whether, and how, they might be causative.

How's that? I'll look for a good analogue as well. — Banno

Pretty sure I get it, thanks. An example with English nouns and predicates would help too, I think. Or maybe this is what you mean by a good analogue. (The most counter-intuitive aspect, for me, is the very first step, in which Fa remains true even though ¬F has been added to the domain.)

Good luck with your vine. :smile:

I don't think that's right. The propositional or meaning content of the thought can't lead to anything. — Patterner

I thought your Castro example was meant to show the opposite. Or perhaps we're debating shades of meaning, because I also agree that "certain things for anyone" is a valid way of putting it. It's just that these "certain things" are, as far as I can understand, limitless. Not random, though, which is perhaps your point.

We don't need to understand how thought can be brain activity, only that thought is brain activity. — hypericin

I see what you mean, but when I spoke about "understanding mental causation," I intended to include the how as well as the fact of it. To me, that would provide true, complete understanding.

I agree that '12' would be the most common association, my point was only that it is not, by any means, the only possible association. If '7+5' can be said to cause '12' in those common cases where that association occurs, then it could be said to cause any other association that might occur it would seem. — Janus

Causation is often distinguished from correlation (association?) with the idea that to qualify as causal, when X occurs Y must occur. — Janus

This highlights a problem with "cause" language in this context. Certainly "7 + 5" is not a necessary cause of "12" (assuming it's causal at all). Nor is it a sufficient cause, though, as has been argued, it's a very likely one. If we end up saying that whatever follows from the thought of "7 + 5" has been caused by that thought, doesn't this amount to saying that only a W2 thought can be causative? That is, the propositional or meaning content of the thought can lead to anything, so no causation is involved at that level.

Are the thoughts Keynes thinks in things, or rather complex dynamic sequences of events? — wonderer1

The latter, and surely Keynes would agree. Our linguistic habits tend to reify processes or events into discrete "things" or objects so we can talk about them more readily.

Thinking I had an understanding of something, I've often come to realize I didn't when I tried to put it into words. — Patterner

I've had that happen plenty of times too! Which perhaps reminds us that "to understand" is broad, and often incomplete. Math isn't my forte, so I've frequently looked at a piece of math and said to myself, Yeah, I get that, and then it turns out that there was a whole other level of implication and elegance that I'd missed. I wasn't wrong, exactly, in what I thought I understood; it was just "through a glass darkly."

When J. M. Keynes was asked whether he thought in images or in words, he supposedly replied, "I think in thoughts." There's a lot to this. I'm often aware that I comprehend a particular thought I'm having much faster than I could have said it in words, even thinking them to myself. And looking back on such an experience, it seems to me that what I mean by "a particular thought" is not a linguistic unit at all . . . nor is it quite an image or a structure . . . it's a thought, something with a content or meaning I can understand, while the medium that may convey it is completely unclear.

That said, we can still pose the question, Is anything in the process of stringing two thoughts together an instance of causality? I don't think it matters where we draw the borders, taxonomically, between W2 and W3 thoughts, or how we conceive of that fuzzy realm of experience. If we decide that some sort of causation is indeed a factor, then we can go back and try to understand what causal powers W2 or W3 thoughts (or combinations thereof) might have. My OP was meant to highlight some of the problems with both W2 and W3 thought-causality, when the two are taken as distinct types -- but they needn't be.

Getting back to your point that Popper's World 3 isn't reliably populated with discrete "objects" -- I quite agree. Your example of "story" shows this very well. But I suppose the same could be said for good old World 1 objects. For most purposes, we may want to regard a toothbrush as a single object, but there may be occasions when we need to see it as more than one (if I'm in the bristle-making business, for instance). The division among Popper's worlds mostly holds up, and is useful; it's the addition of "object" that is problematic. But let's not get sidetracked in mereology.

You also said, in your earlier post:

As maths, a world 3 object, entailment pertains even outside of any thought. — Dawnstorm

and:

And then there's the problem that world 3 objects need to be maintained by world 2 process for them to exist. . . — Dawnstorm

Both these observations are at the heart of the causal problem. Does entailment pertain/exist even with no mind to think the constituent propositions? (If a conclusion follows/falls in a forest with no one to think it, does it display an entailment? :smile: ) Understandably, "Yes" is a tempting answer. But this raises the headache I alluded to in the OP: What sort of being do propositions have? Can they be created (thought) as W3 objects in good standing, and then persist "out there" somewhere when no one thinks them? I'll send us all back to Plato for that one.

But if it is meaningful to speak of an entailment as forcing or necessitating a conclusion, doesn't this have to happen in a mind, in conjunction with some W2 thoughts? I can just about accept mindless propositions (though see Rödl and others); but causing new ones, by virtue of entailment, without a mind to do it looks like a step too far. If there is mental causation, perhaps we require some kind of instantiation or embodiment (en-mind-ment?) of the entailing propositions in order to effect the conclusion. Someone has to think it. Ah, but is that thinking an invention or a discovery? And is it genuinely necessitated? "I was caused to conclude that Socrates is mortal!" Sounds odd, yet . . .

However, in the case of a normally sighted person, how do you (or they) check that the purple cow that they are imagining is indeed imagined to be purple? — Pierre-Normand

I think this is the wrong question, though it's invited by the way I framed the problem. Better to have said, "What conceivable public criterion could there be that would tell me whether you are, at this moment, imagining what you believe to be a purple cow?" The point is not the accuracy of the image -- indeed, you may have got purple all wrong, or cows -- but the inaccessibility of the 1st person experience.

Notice that nothing I've said about the public criteria the determination of the content of acts of imagination depend on impugns the notion that the person imagining them has first person authority. She's the one to be believed when she claims that the cow she imagines looks "like that" while pointing at the public sample. — Pierre-Normand

This too is not quite what I'm talking about. Imagine instead that she is silent, does no pointing, etc. The question is, Is there any public criterion that will verify whether she is, at this moment, imagining the cow? If we agree that there is not, does it follow that there is some doubt about whether she is doing so (doubt, that is, in her own mind)? I don't see how. The fact that the concepts and language for "purple cow" were and are public, and were learned in community, doesn't seem to me to have a bearing on the example.

I'll come back to the issues of public criteria for intentions, as they may apply to LLMs, later. — Pierre-Normand

Great. I'd like to hear more about that.

As to the "how" that you're asking? Good question. But we don't really have the answer to that for physical causation, when it comes right down to it. . . . I don't know that we can figure out more about thoughts causing thoughts than we currently know. — Patterner

This theme has cropped up early and often on the thread: Our conceptual understanding of an apparently local, tractable problem like "How does one thought cause another?" immediately draws us into a theoretical morass about causality and consciousness, with so many empty places on the map that it's hard to know what more to say. In that spirit, your insistence on (what seems) the undeniable causal connection between the thought of "7 + 5" and the thought of "12" is salutary. This much, at least, we know, phenomenologically -- this is certainly how it appears. Or if this isn't true, I'd say the burden of proof is on the denier to say why not, even in the absence of a good explanation for it.

I’m drawing on Rödl’s Kantian distinction between knowledge from receptivity and knowledge from spontaneity. Empirical knowledge is receptive: we find facts by observation. But avowals like "I believe…" or "I intend…" are paradigms of spontaneous knowledge. We settle what to believe or do, and in settling it we know it not by peeking at a private inner state but by making up our mind (with optional episodes of theoretical of practical deliberation). — Pierre-Normand

"I believe" and "I intend" are convenient examples to support this position, because they have no "content" apart from a kind of imprimatur on decision or action. But most mental life will not fit such an example. When I imagine a purple cow, I am, precisely, peeking at a private inner state to discover this. A (mental) purple cow is not a belief or an intention. It is an image of a purple cow. I've never understood how the Wittgensteinian public-criteria position can address this. What conceivable public criterion could there be that would tell me whether you are, at this moment, imagining a purple cow? (assuming you remain silent about it).

It's not causation. It's memory retrieval. — L'éléphant

Could you expand on this? I have Thought A and then retrieve a memory so as to have Thought B? Why that particular memory?

Causation is physical. — L'éléphant

We can stipulate that, certainly. Do you think there's an argument for why it must be the case, or does it represent a kind of bedrock commitment to how to understand the concept?

From a phenomenological perspective associations would not seem to be rigid or precise. — Janus

Agreed. The term is vague for the very reason that it can cover so many varieties.

As to whether they are causal, if all our thoughts are preceded by neural activity, then the activation of one network which we might be conscious of as an association would presumably have a causal relationship with the neural network which it is experienced by us as being associated with. — Janus

This is a version of the reductive argument I proposed to ignore: It's the neuronal activity doing the causing, not the thoughts or the meanings themselves. On this understanding, do you think we should deny that my thought of "7 + 5" causes (or otherwise influences or leads to) the thought of "12"? Would this be better understood as loose talk, a kind of shorthand for "The neuronal activity that somehow correlates with or gives rise to the thought '7 + 5' causes the neuronal activity that . . . " etc?

I prefer: mental events supervene on physical events because they are two perspectives on the same thing. — hypericin

Good, though of course "perspectives" needs a lot of filling in.

Both are equally causative because both refer to the same reality. — hypericin

The interesting question here is whether we need to reform our use of "cause" and "causative" so as to allow legitimate talk of mental causation, or whether it's the concept itself that has to be expanded. "Equally causative" could be understood either way.

I think what you're describing is close to the truth, but as you say:

How the very same thing can be framed as a brain event or a mental event is just the hard problem. — hypericin

Which leads back to my observation that we probably can't pick and choose different threads of this tangled web and claim to understand them while remaining ignorant about the others. We may need an entire comprehensive theory of consciousness before we'll understand what we now call, rather gropingly, mental causation. But we also need good philosophical analysis of the current concepts, so maybe we can do something useful in the interim.

Gee, coming attractions! Thanks. :smile:

Maybe I'm not explaining it well. I guess it hinges on two different senses of "necessary." If I say "The squirrel is in the tree, therefore it must be the case that the squirrel is in the tree," surely that's wrong? It happens to be the case, and now that it is the case, it can't not be the case, but we want necessity to capture something else, don't we? Something more like "The squirrel is in the tree, and it is, and was, necessary that the squirrel be in the tree" -- which I take to be the same idea as "it must be the case that . . ." Neither of these formulations are true, or so it seems to me. That's all I meant.

there is a difference between the modal instance and the temporal instance. They are not the same. — Banno

True. But the alleged modal counter-example has to make use of a qualifier or caveat about time, doesn't it? "Because p, it is necessarily the case that p", expanded, means "It is necessarily the case now that p". Otherwise, the modal necessity is very weak; this is the "fishy" aspect of saying of absolutely anything that obtains, that it therefore must do so.

I'll watch for your post on the proof strategy.

Yes. It's hard to deny -- and why would we want to? -- that those of us who thought "12" did so because we previously thought "7 + 5". Now, as @Dawnstorm points out, for this to work we require some mental paraphernalia: recognition of numeral symbols, the concept of addition, and probably a familiarity with what to expect, at the level of writing, when two numbers are shown as joined by the addition symbol. But this only shows that the causation involved here isn't necessary or sufficient for everyone. And, as I wrote above, we needn't even insist on the term "cause". All that matters is that we can say, "If you had not shown me '7 + 5', I would not have thought '12'." That's the cause-like relation I want to explore.

So why is any of this a problem? Isn't your straightforward description adequate?

Here's how I would put the problem: We don't know how mental events can cause anything. We don't know if this happens by virtue of what they mean -- which I think is your suggestion -- or because of some other property. We like to conceive of an entire world of meanings "in our heads": thoughts and images and memories all influencing and generating each other. What I'm calling the logical or propositional version of this would endow the meanings/contents/propositional content of thought with causal power. The psychological version, in contrast, would call this hopelessly mysterious, and insist that the causal relations must lie elsewhere -- @Dawnstorm's "stream of thought", perhaps. And this is to ignore the physical-reduction model (as I promised I would, since I think it's wrong) which says that only brain events can cause other brain events, period, end of story -- the "meanings" are free riders of some sort.

If I'm right that you see a clear explanatory connection between Thought A ("7 + 5") and Thought B ("12"), can you say more about the causation involved? How does A cause B? Where does such a relation occur?

A fascinating response. I appreciate your spending the time on it.

There's a lot to reply to, but let me start with the important point you raise about where to place language in our model of thought. If I understand you, the W2 thought should be seen as pre-linguistic, and this is part of why it is a W2 object. Its nature is "mentalese," not linguistic or propositional. When words enter the picture, we now have a W3 object, because language is a human construction. So:

Thinking of Ann -> World2 thought of how Ann is doing -> Production of World3 object "I wonder how Ann is doing" — Dawnstorm

Next, this W3 linguistic object may (though it needn't) "exert an influence" on the stream-of-Ann thoughts (which, to repeat, are understood as W2 objects) so as to generate a W2 thought about Ann's birthday, which gives rise to the W3 proposition "It's her birthday soon". You ask, sensibly:

there could be some causal connection ([but] how do we differentiate between cause, influence and trigger, for starters). — Dawnstorm

I can't decide if this matters. In my OP I tried to use phrases such as "cause-like" or "influence" in addition to "cause," to show that I wasn't committed to a strict view of what a cause must be, in this context. Suppose we accept the premise -- "there could be some causal connection" -- and take it as written that we're including a whole family of verbs like "trigger," "influence," "give rise to," "generate" etc. The important point seems to be that a counter-factual explanation can be offered using any of them.

You also raise this problem:

Is the thought "I wonder [how] Ann is doing" viewed as a type that anyone can have? Is it the thought that's in your brain? Is it the World 3 words and its associated proposition? — Dawnstorm

In raising this, are you asking whether linguistic expressions using indexicals can be shared types? That's a sub-problem, and an interesting one; I'm not sure. But are you also asking whether the W3, linguistic thought "I wonder how Ann is doing" can ever be a W2 thought? That is, must it somehow be stripped of language before we can place it "in the brain" as a psychological or mental phenomenon? I wouldn't say so, but your model may insist on it. I'd stay closer to our common way of speaking: When I say, "This morning, I thought about how Ann is doing", I'm saying both that I had the mentalese, W2 experience we're both trying to pin down, and that I formed the thought into words. In doing so, it remained a thought, thought it's now arguably crossed over into the human-made world of linguistic artifacts.

Actually, let me stop right here and ask whether I'm understanding you. I don't want to maunder on if I haven't grasped your basic points. (And I'll come back to your issues about how fixed a W3 object must be, and whether entailment can be fitted comfortably into this scheme.)

I get it. And, in reverse, all the muddle-making issues about physical cause show up when we try to understand mental causation! The "OP format" on TPF probably just isn't expansive enough to do rigorous work on this, but each of us is trying, in our own ways, to find a tractable problem. We'll see how it goes . . .