Is there a form of modal logic that can make this distinction? — Michael

No idea. SEP has a related article.

I've never liked this one. Possibly necessary => necessary doesn't seem, to me, to be an adequate model of what a Godlike "necessary being" would look like.

Roughly, possibility means "exists in one (connected) possible world", and necessary means "exists in all (connected) possible worlds". It isn't exactly an account of what it would mean for a God to be a necessary existent in a world where they exist.

If you read premise one as "If god exists (in a world) then god exists in all worlds connected to that world", that's quite different from "If god exists (in a world), then their existence in that world is an essential property of it". If we take the sense of necessity of God's existence as "one whose essence includes existence", that sense of essentiality does not resemble necessity as a quantifier over possible worlds. Why? Essentiality concerns one entity in the world it's in - as a property of that entity. Necessity concerns one entity's behaviour in all worlds.

In other news, it doesn't tell you if the necessary existent is a god. Just that if a predicate behaves like premise 1, then it exists in all possible worlds. Could be the goat.

@Andrew4Handel - you were warned about remarks like this before. Consider this a second warning.

In the interest of understanding, the specific moderation guideline you violated here is referring to gender reassignment surgery as "genital mutilation", which is a common transphobic canard.

As an example, talking about an uptick in people identifying as trans in recent years, as well as the ethics of administering gender reassignment surgery in the current way (or changes in the legislation), is still an allowable topic of discussion. Just do so with appropriate decorum. Something this sensitive must be discussed with sufficient sensitivity, calling gender affirmation therapy "genital mutilation" in blanket terms is not that.

Failure to comply may lead to a ban. You've now been warned twice.

What can one do then? Not flagging it is letting the other party get away with dishonest argumentation. — TonesInDeepFreeze

Depends on the context? Sometimes someone really won't know what they're doing. And sometimes it'll be a case of misunderstanding your interlocutor.

So a mereological nihilist and a compositionalist walk into a bar. The bartender says: "Do you want a drink?"
The nihilist knows it wasn't said to both of them.
The compositionalist knows it wasn't said to either.
The bartender goes to another customer.
The compositionalist says: "They must have missed us"
The nihilist says: "They couldn't have!"

Something like that, eh?

Nice example. My observation is that in a debate, if the strong claim—the claim that (A) wants to prevail—fails, then retreating to a more defensible position is a tactic still to make the strong claim prevail. I think it’s fair to call this a fallacy. — Jamal

They're separate. There's the fallacy and there is the motivation for deploying the fallacy. — TonesInDeepFreeze

What is it like to employ a motte and bailey fallacy. I think it feels like this.

1 ) I believe X.
2 ) Another person tries to show X implies Y.
3 ) I believe Y is bad.
4 ) I now defend not(X implies Y)
5 ) The other person tells me that I am defending Y by defending not(X implies Y).
6 ) I believe Y is bad.
7 ) I now defend not( not(X implies Y) implies Y)
8 ) The other person now tells me that defending not( not(X implies Y) implies Y) implies Y.
9 ) I believe Y is bad.
10 ) I defend not ( (not( not(X implies Y) implies Y) implies Y) implies Y)
And so on.

I don't think anyone ever gets to stage 7. So in its real form it goes like:

1 ) I believe X.
2 ) Another person tries to show X implies Y.
3 ) I believe Y is bad.
4 ) I now defend not(X implies Y)
5 ) The other person tells me that I am defending Y by defending not(X implies Y).
6 ) I still believe Y is bad.
7 ) I now defend not( not(X implies Y) implies Y)
8 ) The other person now tells me I believe Y.

I don't believe any of this depends upon any of the contained statements being true. As in X, Y, X implies Y, and the perverse negations like not(X implies Y). I also don't trust that it's rightly construed as just a fallacy of inference. Why? It seems also to be about assigning inconsistent meanings to positions. Rather than just about defending a precisely articulated position incorrectly. In that regard I think cognitive dissonance plays a key role in that dynamic. And as a corollary, trying to point the fallacy out will appear as castigation.

But when it comes to things like pregnancy, must we all go along with the insanity in order to not be deemed transphobic? Again, I really resent having to sound similar to a right-wing bigot. — Mikie

I know the feeling. Nowadays I have what I call the "Internal Twitter". It's a kind of intrusive bad faith interpretation. If anything could be construed as prejudiced, even by someone who's concern trolling, the Internal Twitter will flag that for me.

My Internal Twitter informs me that:

Reflexively judging the adoption of new and more inclusive use of words can only ever be bigoted. Why don't you want trans bodies to be included in medical terms when they apply to everyone? Do trans people not count as part of "everyone" because they're a minority group?

My internal Academic Left Youtube Reel responds:

The instinctive disgust felt above based on two equivocations. The first equivocation is assuming that changing that language is required to be inclusive - in fact it could very well be a cynical attempt to appear inclusive while keeping legitimately prejudicial institutional processes in place. The second is that a negative feeling toward the above suffices to demonstrate that the person is prejudiced, more context would be needed to infer that. Do you have the context to infer the person you're talking to is prejudiced? Or a justification that it can be assumed by default in the present discursive context?

I am willing to bet the Internal Twitter is a widespread phenomenon. And it is a problem. Because it's exhausting:

Now, not so much. So the the way this gone has had the opposite effect intended for me. And that is a real social consequence, I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been alienated. — Pantagruel

And the wise, like Pantagruel, either tune out or see it for what, most of the time, it is. Outrage pornography and avoidant fear. A moral panic.

Yes, in the context of comparative religion or comparative cultural instruction. Those are fairly advanced subjects. I agree with instruction at this level. — Pantagruel

How young do you think it should start?

I remember starting it at 6 for other cultures and religions (we had India and Islam at that time). Seems about right to me. Like children's stories with two dads or two mums. It seems there's a fair few trans friendly children's books!

We've had this discussion before, and it proved impossible to have it in good faith. So I shall leave it. This may come off as patronising, but I promise you the intention is genuine. The last time you had this discussion, it also seemed profoundly distressing for you, are you sure it's a good idea to engage in it?

Vague thought splurges.

There's recognition and there's education. Undoubtedly children could be educated on the virtues of Hasidic Judaism, or veganism, or any number of other things also. But is it necessary? — Pantagruel

I think so. You do get taught about religions for the purposes of normalising them and the people who practice other ones. You get taught about other cultures for that reason too. Same with sexuality. Reducing prejudice in the populace is a noble goal for education, right? So making similar space for transgender people in education makes sense for the same reasons.

Does trans really have to be an identity? Can't it just be an aspect of identity, of which there are many? — Pantagruel

The "have" I bolded there is interesting in your post. Lots of possible meanings, right?

1 ) Ethically "have", ought we treat being trans as a separate identity to being cis?
2 ) Socially "have", are we obliged to treat being trans as a separate identity to being cis?
3 ) Factually "have", is it in reality necessary to treat trans people differently than cis?

There are probably more. There also may be a distinction between treating identities separately and treating people separately? Like it may make sense to distinguish cis identities from trans identities, but that doesn't immediately propagate to treating cis people differently from trans people in every respect. There'll also be a social construction of identity vs individuation+psychogenesis angle which could be pursued there.

1 ) - the above argument about moral education makes some headway there. But there are good and bad reasons/means to treat trans people differently than cis people of course . There are some circumstances where it's right, some circumstances where it's wrong.

I think it'd be epistemically virtuous to treat trans people as separate from cis people - since they face different social issues, there's some evidence their bodies/brains are different (without there being a "male brain" and a "female brain", for clarity), and eg ftm transexuals can get pregnant if they keep the wombs. For reasons of producing knowledge, it's a good idea to keep the distinction.

2 ) - On the one hand, cynically, yes we are obliged. The norms in place compel us. Especially in terms of prejudice. There are social norms which equate natal sex with gender, and gender performance with gendered stereotypes. Anyone who falls through those gaps will be treated differently, and that implies a systemic compulsion to treat them differently.

3 ) - I think this is an ontological question. So who knows. I think the phenomenology associated with trans subjects is different than cis ones. Cis and trans bodies have some functional differences, too. I suppose there's a discussion you could have here about whether even asking this as an ontological question presupposes an objectifying/essentializing/naturalising frame of reference that social constructions+identities can be evaluated in. You could bring in point 2) here.

I remember watching a youtube video from Philosophy Tube which made the point that anti trans prejudice is rooted in some kind of "metaphysical skepticism". That trans people don't "really" exist in some sense. Because the notions of gender identity we're brought up with make them fall through the cracks. Food for thought.

Totally. You might say it was irresponsible of me to so casually take it out of context and use it as an example, since without knowing about the context—the common situations that ContraPoints describes at length—one could look at the example and think that (A) is being reasonable or at least innocent of bigotry, which would make B look unreasonable. — Jamal

I don't think it was bad of you. This is a Philosophy Forum and you were clearly acting in good faith. I think it highlighted the context sensitivity. A discussion about how the motte and bailey is context dependent would be interesting in itself. I don't have any ideas about necessary and sufficient conditions for the context to be apt for ascription.

Didn't Contrapoints do a bunch of work to show what the bailey was and what the motte was? I remember that they've previously shown that comment to be used by people who are almost assuredly transphobic, since they follow, reshare and post in transphobic communities (bailey). And those people also defend themselves in terms of the "biological definition" motte.

But as Mikie pointed out, (A) might not in fact be aware of all that. The reason I chose the example is precisely because under a certain light it's not crystal clear who is in the wrong and why. — Jamal

So when someone's vacillating, one of the determinants of their position will be the broader context their position comes from. Someone really could believe "trans women aren't women" if they understood "woman" to be identified entirely with "natal sex" - which I'm pretty sure they're factually wrong about, and I don't believe there's necessarily any bigotry associated with that position in isolation.

Nevertheless, the kind of person who makes that statement in the kind of context that it tends to arise is justifiably expected to be making a prejudiced comment and defending it disingenuously. If the person really really wanted to engage in the "what is gender identity" discussion in good faith, that's a bit different from the motte and bailey thing above. It might just highlight a gap in their understanding - or at least a lack of awareness of where the ideas can lead (and I think should lead).

This is complex. I get that students unknowingly ceded ground to bureaucratization while believing they were against it, but what I’m not quite clear on is how that is related to the actual embrace of bureaucratic politics that Stern describes towards the end of this passage. — Jamal

I have some idea of the link between the unstructured activity of 1968 students and the tendency toward bureaucratisation. Just a speculation though.

Both the students and what they were fighting against were part of the same societal structure. Namely the tendency toward bureaucratisation. That tendency needed to be challenged and undermined. The first way of challenging it would be to change or disrupt the formative rules of that tendency within and about the institutions which exemplified them. The second way of challenging it would be to reject those rules and attempt to live life apart from those rules.

The first way attempts to disrupt and change the formation principles of bureaucratic power by engaging critically with them, the second way rejects the possibility for a change on those terms. On their terms. In positing the tendency toward bureaucratic power as exterior to the movement, it reified the tendency toward bureaucratic power's current form in the eyes of those who ought be dismantling it. In that regard, the rejection of that tendency became a means of granting it an autonomous development.

Maybe a clear way of seeing that - would the student politics of May 68 facilitate calm, long term entryist strategies? Does it allow prefigurative politics towards institutions in general? Perhaps not. If not, then this construes such strategies as unable to act "from the inside" of those institutions/tendencies/practices without becoming a part of them. That could be construed as making immanent critique impossible, theoretically, and thus leaving the contested social forms in order.

On the other side of this dyad, institutions would be able to internalise that "separate spirit of rebellion" (scarequotes) as a means of exteriorising criticism within themselves. Ways to operate better are demarcated from the processes of the institution to the extent they receive a procedural representation that counts as better operation. IE the HR saying "you don't end up doing the thing, you end up doing the form", and simultaneously caring employers allowing you free subscriptions to meditation apps but also requiring you to work 50% overtime uncompensated. What goes without a procedural representation, in an institution, becomes unarticulable. That's a tendency toward bureaucratisation.

Refusing to challenge this on its own terms left its own terms in place.

Now if you want to do something about it, political movements are in the position of exteriority to institutions. Except insofar as their politics is represented procedurally (in a comfortable manner for institutions and bureaucratised living). Positing the institution as exterior means, now, we've got to petition it for anything to be done. Rather than disrupt it from without and from within.

If you reject "from without and from within" as a methodology - as bureaucratic hullabaloo stinking of institution - then all you've got left is petitioning the masters your old comrades rejected and left in place.

ChatGPT 4's one was much more thorough. I spent a bunch of this evening playing about with 3.5's censor. After some finagling I managed to get it to do the following very inappropriate things:

I'm sure they must have untapped potentials and the capacity to express surprisingly deep insights. Our own insights, just like theirs, often just are contextually appropriate recombinations of bits of implicit knowledge or wisdom that we have inherited from other people we have heard or read. — Pierre-Normand

Me : What are the commonalities between the Lovecraftian entity "Azathoth" and Bishop Berkely's comments on the persistence of entities?

.

Have you been using ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) or GPT-4? — Pierre-Normand

ChatGPT (3.5). I've read your chats with 4 here.

X, Y and Z to offer the most cogent criticism of your position. — Pierre-Normand

Yes! I tried that with the book "Conflict Is Not Abuse" by Sarah Schulman. It could rehearse the usual arguments about it very incisively. It also managed that for the back and forth arguments between Heidegger and Merleau Ponty on the role you have to give the body in phenomenology. With appropriate prompting.

It shows an impressive breadth of knowledge on technical topics. I got it to come up with a plausible research program (I know it's plausible because it's in progress and parts are completed), and it could correct mistakes when given minor prompting.

I managed to argue it into a corner though. It seems relatively easy to fill its short term memory with stuff then get it to agree to something. Which is humanlike, in itself.

Me: Is Spinoza an acosmist?

ChatGPT: No, Spinoza is not considered an acosmist. Acosmism is the belief that the universe is devoid of any real existence or that the material world is an illusion. Spinoza, on the other hand, believed in the reality and unity of the universe, which he saw as a single substance composed of infinite attributes, of which we can only perceive two (extension and thought). He rejected the idea of a transcendent God and instead saw God as identical with nature or the universe itself. Therefore, he believed that the universe is real and not an illusion.

___

Also me in a different window, after chatting:

Me: Is Spinoza an acosmist?

ChatGPT: Spinoza's philosophy can be interpreted as a form of acosmism, which holds that the universe is not distinct from God or substance. Spinoza rejected the idea of a transcendent God who created the world, and instead posited a monistic view of reality in which everything is an expression of the same substance. In this sense, Spinoza's philosophy can be seen as a form of pantheism, in which God and the universe are one and the same.

@Jamal @Janus

Yeah, figs are pretty great. Especially in porridge.

The whole p-zombie thing has always driven me crazy. Of course other people have internal lives that are like mine, i.e. phenomenal consciousness, experience, what it's like to be them. Doubting that is the same as Descartes doubting everything but his own existence. What possible value is there in doubting it. By the way the argument is phrased, it is impossible to tell by any objective means. It's like the multiverse - metaphysics at best, meaningless otherwise. — T Clark

A good reason to imagine p-zombies is that they illustrate differences between philosophical theories of consciousness very well, and are an intuitive way to think about the issue. Whether p-zombies exist is a sexy way to phrase the issue of whether functional/physical properties are vital for an account of phenomenal consciousness. They don't have to exist to be useful.

I don't like them personally. But I'm trying to put on my charitable hat for this thread.

depends on how serious one is about understanding what he’s getting at. One could work ones way up to his language via secondary sources, but there are risks, like taking Dreyfus as a solid authority on Heidegger. It was because of secondary sources that I delayed reading Being and Time, having convinced myself I already understood him. But those sources didn’t prepare me for the real thing, which was a life-changing experience for me. — Joshs

Perhaps. That's just about H. though. If you're engaging with other strands of thought I believe you've got a responsibility to translate into a more neutral vocabulary. Hence, my request to de-Heidegger-ese your remarks. If they can only be articulated in Heideggerese it proves all those hermetic cult accusations quite true.

Are you saying ‘that kind of talk’ represents a failure on Heidegger’s part to express himself clearly? — Joshs

No. I think it's not useful as a way of explaining Heidegger's thought to people who don't already understand it.

The being of Dasein or human existence is care. Heidegger's definition of care: "to be already ahead oneself in (the world) as Being-alongside (the entities encountered within the world)" p. 191. This has a very "temporal feel" in it. That's why Heidegger argues that the sense (Sinn) of the being (of human existence) is time or temporality. In a more formal level the temporality can then be expressed as the unitary structure of the three ecstasies, future-present-having been. In B&T, right after the last chapter ("Care as the being of Dasein") of the first division ("Preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein") begins the second and last division entitled "Dasein and temporality". — waarala

My guy I think this is still Heideggerese.

The past remains present insofar as our language and conceptual frameworks were here before us and we think within and strive to think beyond them. — Fooloso4

I'm just going to provide the obligatory "concepts are seen as present as hand rationalisations of blah blah... the equipmental totality and its circumspective concern are more primordial than the application of the predicative as structure in the disclosive attunement of each existentiell conceptual framework...". , and then move on because that kind of talk isn't productive for the initiated or the uninitiated. Keep up the good work!

Like you, I have always though that empirical possibility entails conceptual possibility. But maybe that's not right. Maybe some would say there might be a whole load of things that are empirically possible that, even if we knew what they were, wouldn't make sense conceptually. That's a weird position. That should be distinguished from mysterianism, which (I guess) is the position that we may never know how consciousness arises from the physical (because of our own limitations), nevertheless it would make conceptual sense if we could grasp it. — bert1

I get the opposie impression. But honestly I can't be bothered going through Chalmers or secondary literature to decide what's right.

Oh, OK. I would say this was definitely logically possible. But not conceptually possible. (Maybe our concepts of possibility are different, not sure) — bert1

I imagine they have different scopes. I DM for Dungeons and Dragons. To me it's perfectly cromulent to say that parasitic toad people from another dimension have infected a planet sized teratoma with a disease which will turn the planet into a sea of tadpoles in 4 days.

That is a worrying thought. — bert1

Screamingly sentient, dumbly delirious, only the gods that were can tell. A sickened, sensitive shadow writhing in hands that are not hands, and whirled blindly past ghastly midnights of rotting creation, corpses of dead worlds with sores that were cities, charnel winds that brush the pallid stars and make them flicker low. Beyond the worlds vague ghosts of monstrous things; half-seen columns of unsanctified temples that rest on nameless rocks beneath space and reach up to dizzy vacua above the spheres of light and darkness. And through this revolting graveyard of the universe the muffled, maddening beating of drums, and thin, monotonous whine of blasphemous flutes from inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond Time; the detestable pounding and piping whereunto dance slowly, awkwardly, and absurdly the gigantic, tenebrous ultimate gods—the blind, voiceless, mindless gargoyles whose soul is Nyarlathotep. — H P Lovecraft, Nyaralathotep

The unitary structure of the three ecstasies, future-present-having been, determines the ‘is’, the essence, the Being of being as this structure of transit. — Joshs

Would also be interested in you translating this out of Heideggerese.

fdrake That's interesting. Those premises form the basis of the argument by analogy, or the abductive argument. No science necessary. An armchair philosopher who had never touched a Bunsen burner could make that argument. You could also make the same argument, but weaker, for rocks. — bert1

True! I think it would also apply to brainstuff and brain behaviour though. You see (neurons arranged in some way), it makes it more likely the organism is conscious and/or has qualia. The relevant distinction there for a person attempting to infer a test subject has phenomenal consciousness is that observables about the test subject are "wide" content, precisely because they partially derive from environmental interaction. If you want to infer the presence of narrow content (phenomenal consciousness) from this, you'd need something more.

Part of why p-zombies are said to work, no? You can fix any physical fact about the world, and they're don't have phenomenal consciousness. All the observables are the same, they can give you the same self reports as a person with qualia, but precisely because their narrow content is "intrinsic", "internal", "first person only" etc, you can't demonstrate that they do have narrow content.

I suppose it's possible to walk the path; there are some physical observables (behaviour etc) which provide sufficient justification for claiming that a test subject has narrow content - the thing is it would always be return that the subject would have narrow content as a p-zombie is stipulated to be able to emulate any physical aspect of a human. The fork in the road is that there are non-physical observables which suffice for that justification - but I've no idea what they could be.

Can we have a reason why it cannot be (not 'isn't', or 'would prefer not to' - 'cannot' is big word here)? — Isaac

That's not the negation of the version of physicalism/functionalism which gets attacked. If the position is "consciousness is necessarily explainable by physical/functional accounts", the negation of that is "consciousness is possibly not explainable by physical/functional accounts". Someone who takes the position of physicalism, under that guise, is actually the person who has a "cannot" statement involved in their thesis. The qualist/mysterian in that sense has a much lower burden of proof. They don't need to demonstrate necessity, they need to find one counter example. The physicalist/functionalist has to establish necessary.

If you buy that framing of the debate, anyway.

I don't really understand this. Are you saying he's making a point about what it is to be a necessary explicator for consciousness? Does he have an answer to that question, or a reason to doubt? — Isaac

If you look at the above paragraph about necessity, and accept the framing that the physicalist/functionalist is committed to a claim of metaphysical necessity, that requires an account of metaphysical necessity. Chalmers looks at that account. As far as I understand his view, he equates metaphysical possibility with conceivability - or at least takes conceivability as a sufficient condition for metaphysical possibility. Metaphysical necessity is the same as not possibly not true. If you take conception, or the other arguments like Mary's room/inverted qualia/ and all that, as sufficient for establishing metaphysical possibility, then that is actually a negation of the physicalist position. If you grant that it could be true that phenomenal consciousness isn't explainable by physical/functional processes, then if Chalmers is right, that suffices to show that physicalism is false. Because metaphysical necessity, if it really held, would require that not to be a possibility in the relevant sense of the word.

So you get into arguments about what the relevant notion of possibility/necessity is in this debate. And which notions of necessity entail which others - like what @bert1was organising in their OP. I think that's the place in the debate such dependencies between modal concepts (possibility senses) intervene.

As to the Patricia Churchland quote, you can address it like I did above. You can argue quite convincingly that it's the physicalist who needs to demonstrate that their position cannot be imagined to be false without entailing an internal contradiction.

Good question. Indeed the same question applies to other humans too. How do we scientifically determine if another human is conscious, without begging any questions? — bert1

Because I want to have my devil's advocate cake and eat it too... Assuming you don't want to beg questions, you also need to suppress the intuition that observable behaviours aren't sufficient to justify inferring something is conscious. So, y'know, purposive behaviour, ability to adapt to new scenarios, attempts to communicate, appearance of sensations and emotions - the kind of things we'd expect from a human agent. The more it quacks like a duck, the more likely it is that it's a duck.

I think that suffices to justify inferring the tested organism had "wide" content, but not sufficient to justify that it has "narrow" content - the part of an organism's state with qualia which are somehow "internal" and "private" or "caused" by their intentions alone.

But I don't know how to justify someone else having "narrow" content since everything observable seems to be "wide" content, when you take others' self reports as a form of behaviour anyway. Like p-zombies can say "I see the traffic light has red, green and yellow lights" or "Ouch" without, allegedly, the qualia. A p-zombie can behave as a qualia-haver in any way, AFAIK that's part of the point.

I don't think there is a way of inferring someone, besides you, has narrow content. Since anything the test subject does influences the tester, and thus can be construed as environmentally caused (making the content wide). And we're in a strange place if believing that an organism has wide content entails one should believe that it has narrow (phenomenal) content while seeking to preserve an observable distinction.

@Isaac - does this make you more happy?

I'd invite you to look again at the title of the OP. Who is asking whom to defend their position? — Isaac

Aye.

And already the whole debate has been skewed into painting Chalmers et al as the victims of an uncharitable, superficial attack on their position which they are being asked, quite unfairly, to defend. — Isaac

I'm not exactly trying to defend the ideas, just gatekeeping how they're argued against. I'm also not strongly committed to what I've written.

Essentially, as with all philosophy, if we can't say anything about why one frame is preferable to the other then it's redundant (as a social exercise) we have to have criteria - even if it's aesthetics, parsimony, clarity, coherence... something has to be the matter we can discuss when comparing models/frameworks, otherwise what are we discussing? — Isaac

I think this is dealt with by "consciousness cannot be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)". So it turns on the prior arguments.

"suppose the gap between neurological goings on and first-person consciousness is unbridgeable..." it seems the oddest thing to suppose as a foundational, but more than that it imports assumptions which then need examining - like what does 'unbridgeable' actually mean in this context? — Isaac

I think it would be odd to suppose "consciousness cannot be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)" with no context, but the ability to show consciousness as unexplainable in those terms is important. I think for Chalmers the bridge is one of conception otherwise. If you take the thesis of physicalism/functionalism as:

"necessarily consciousness can be explained in physicalist/functional terms (see prior arguments)",

Chalmers is arguing against the "necessarily" part by tweaking/analysing/finagling the relevant concept of necessity. That would be the why. That's the one I'm familiar with anyway. I think the "mysterians" have different reasons for believing in the gap. That would be a criterion of sufficiency for adopting some other framework. The failure of physicalism, and a hint at the reasons why.

That's fine, I don't deny that, but then from within the definition of consciousness used by the protagonists here, there should still be a set of sufficiency criteria for the reasons given in answer to a question 'why?'. It's not that I'm demanding those criteria should match my definition, just any definition. — Isaac

I imagine you'd have to be wary of expecting a functional definition involving, solely, body and environmental states. If their arguments go through, you need to posit new kinds of entity and new laws. In effect, starting the study of what's on the other side of the explanatory gap. If part of the theory is "it cannot be bridged", that does put an onus on an opponent to show the gap doesn't exist or alternatively that it's already been bridged.

Also, with maximal charity, I think it's unfair to expect a concise definition of content from a nascent field of inquiry. Like "hey Mr Newton, can you define what a force is for me? It doesn't seem to be a substance... is it immaterial? How can it be part of a physical law without a physical body?"

What I'm saying is that you (we all) pick — Isaac

That's all very well, but still lacks (if not more so) any details about sufficiency from that perspective. If it's not a law of physics that's being sought to explain the mechanism, then a law of what? If no law at all, then in what way is just any mechanism not an answer? — Isaac

what we're going to see as 'mysterious' and what we're going to accept as normal, not on the basis of some objective state of affairs, but on an arbitrary and personal decision about when we're going to stop asking 'why?' There's nothing special about consciousness beyond the fact that you choose to see it as special, you choose to not stop asking 'why?'

I also don't think this is particularly charitable, you can treat arguments like Mary's Room, zombies etc as attempts to show why consciousness is "special" in this way. Furthermore, expecting a functionalist answer to those is in some regard begging the question.

That's all very well, but still lacks (if not more so) any details about sufficiency from that perspective. If it's not a law of physics that's being sought to explain the mechanism, then a law of what? If no law at all, then in what way is just any mechanism not an answer? — Isaac

Another way of seeing the debate is not about sufficient conditions for consciousness, but about sufficient conditions for positing consciousness, experience and so on as primitives for a theory. Like you might not expect necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as "matter" or an "institution". Just whether positing something helps alleviate problems with hitherto existing accounts.

And that's addressed by attacking arguments which purport to show that hitherto existing accounts from functionalist/physicalist philosophers don't or cannot account for some phenomena consciousness exhibits (narrow vs wide content from Chalmers eg).

The only reason I'm paranoid about this stuff is that it's very easy to "stack the deck" depending on what side you're on. Years of largely unproductive exchange in the field have shown any onlooker that.

@Wayfarer @Jamal

Sent one to each of you.

“Mathematical definitions never err,” he’s wrong? — Jamal

They're stipulated as true. But they can err in their expression of their intended concept. Like sets and unrestricted comprehension. In that case, what you mean by a collection of objects which satisfy a property should not also entail a contradiction when you use a property to pick out a set.

But although there cannot occur in the concept anything incorrect in content, sometimes–although only rarely–there may still be a defect in the form (the guise) of the concept, viz., as regards its precision — Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B759

Think that about covers it. But I don't think it's that rare. If you've ever had to define a new structure, the definition itself is hard. You prove theorems about it, or can't prove theorems about it, and you jiggle around with the axioms until you can prove what you need to. That's very similar to provisional definitions and explications, then using them to refine the expression of the concept with a new definition.

There's an example of me pissing about like that in my old Value Theory thread.

Tell me what you think about it please.

one must not imitate mathematics by starting from a definition — Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B758

I just wanna provide pushback on this linear definition->theorem->proof characterisation of mathematics. As Lakatos highlights in Proofs and Refutations, the concept of "Eulerian polyhedron" was redefined repeatedly over mathematical history to avoid cases which obviously weren't Eulerian polygons. Even in mathematics, a definition is an attempt to explicate a concept, which can be revised if it is insufficient.

The only difference, as I see it, is that creating a definition in mathematics determines what follows from the statement in a relatively formal way - what can be proved given other background assumptions. Whereas in natural language even the means of reasoning vary contextually. I believe there is no such thing as a determinate "step" or "enclosed expression of meaning in natural language, the words always bleed out into the background. Which it seems is something you already wrote in other words.

So what do you think? Is “define your terms!” always or often or ever a legitimate imperative? — Jamal

That said, assuming definition is understood to mean "explication of a concept"; revised after your analysis. A logician's answer to this might be yes. Because you've already characterised how definitions work in natural language. So long as definition taken as a provisional goal for discussion, rather than seen as the step you must take when starting one.

Yet if one asks "why do we have consciousness?" I think the answer needs to consist of a set of satisfactory reasons, simply by the structure of the question, no?

And so if a set of reasons are given, they can only be rejected on two grounds; they're not reasons, or they're not satisfactory. — Isaac

I think this misses a step. If you don't already agree what consciousness is, roughly, then it's difficult to ask discriminatory questions one way or the other. Or to put it another way, if we're quibbling about necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness, sentience, experience, having a perspective and so on, how and why we would have a consciousness of any indicated sort would be determined by the conceptualisation fixed "upstream".

Ideally, you'd want the "downstream" results to put constraints on the "upstream" conceptualisation - the bridge between the scientific and manifest images. Which I think does happen. But it still may be that philosophical concepts of consciousness can miss things out. Imagine if nobody was an enactivist in neuroscience work, and the overwhelming majority of neuroscientists thought in representational terms. A dialogue could well go:

Enactivists; "Mate, there's no room for dynamic feedback between environment and body to be principally determinative in your theory, you can't just treat everything as succession of representation"

Representationalists: "In order for us to have a productive discussion, you'd need to agree on what state* of the body corresponds to an instant* of consciousness"

The enactivist might bring up that "state" and "instant" may be loaded terms. In which case they could be accused of not being able to form productive terms for the debate... Then vice versa. Even though eg. Friston speaks like an enactivist.

I could see that the qualia people may have a similar move available to them. Like the enactivists did in my fictional example above. If an enactivist criticised the state of neuroscience as being unable to study the dynamic interplay of body, brain and environment in a meaningful way, it similarly makes sense to allow the qualist to accuse neuroscience of the same, unjustified, filter. Which isn't a filter on the level of data, it's a filter on the level of conceptualising data and how people ask questions.

I think, eg Chalmers, has tried to show that there really is this gap between what can be accounted for with (current) descriptions from neuroscience - assuming they are physical. And if that's true, there'd need to be a new but related science regarding how qualia and brains track each other, and how qualia correlate with others. Conceived of in this way, Chalmer's arguments play the role of the enactivist in the above example. And, I think, be treated with the same courtesy.

If I could at least get as far as understanding the type of measure of satisfaction missing, that would be progress. The kind of reason that would suffice. But I'm so far missing even that. — Isaac

So the kind of reason is less about function and more about possibilities for function. Given you have a fixed concept of function, which is identified with what may be produced by physical laws, that constraints how and why questions to that realm. If you think about it, when you're asking questions about "how" and "why" there's a context for each question which conceptually constrains the proposed answers. If you believe that "how" and "why" are being equated with "how" and "why" in a context which, it sees, necessarily removes relevant things from its study, you'd be contesting the entire context, which is roughly anything which seeks to explain everything about consciousness with physical laws.

How would that work physically? Who knows, that's part of the point.

@Mikie @Fooloso4

A) Largely non-cognitive, spontaneously improvising flow state within a mastered skill
is the same as
B) readiness to hand + disclosive attunement (I know you both Heidegger, that is why this is here)
is the same as
C)

A good traveler has no fixed plans
and is not intent upon arriving.
A good artist lets his intuition
lead him wherever it wants.
A good scientist has freed himself of concepts
and keeps his mind open to what is.

Just seems that sees what counts as a "cause" is something a theoretical judgement derives, rather than being part of the oneness that forms the feedback between body and environment. That reciprocity provides the judgements which would conceive the causes, after the fact.

Escalate A and B to skill as a lived pattern (love, job, hobby, life routines as life itself), same message as C.

IMO anyway. Seems a quibble.

You're missing my point, it's not that we must look at this from a functional point of view, that was just an example, it's that we must look at this from some point of view. It's not sufficient to be dissatisfied with answers given from one perspective (functional ones serving as the example here) without saying why or how those accounts are unsatisfactory, what are they missing? — Isaac

I should have been clearer.

If neuroscience doesn't explain consciousness by reference to functions, why not? What is it that such an account is missing? — Isaac

There's another two reasons I think of that any proposed account could fail: internal inconsistency, category error. As far as I know, people like Strawson take the former approach, people like Chalmers take the latter. A criticism which points out a category error or internal inconsistency doesn't, necessarily, make someone need to answer the "what's missing?" question to maintain the coherency of their criticism.

If someone says "It's missing X", then you end up in a discussion about what X is, and I think that's where your comment is usually applied.

If someone says "It's missing something which plays The Role of X, or allows the role of X to be played", then we end up in a different discussion. You don't need a (token) positive account of X to demonstrate a need for an account of the role of X (type). So someone need not rely on a particular account of qualia, or a particular account of representation, to argue against eg. a functional perspective precluding something which plays the role of qualia (first person experience, private, intrinsic, nonrelational, internal causation). In other domains from qualia, there could be a similar type of dispute between some functionalists and some representationalists - you don't necessarily need to care about intentions for a functionalist account to make sense.

Eg. a belief that P is a tendency to act as if P vs a belief that P is an attitude toward P. Someone might say about the former account:

"I understand that the person's behaviour in the first and second case may be the same, however behaviours can be determined by different processes - the first account says that beliefs are entirely behavioural and doesn't speak at all about their content of their belief state. How then can you develop a criterion that two people can behave as if P without invoking a non-behavioural invariant that allows us to tell P from "by all appearances, P".

Something like that!

If one the many 'consciousness mysterians' were to say that the question of "how/why the brain produces consciousness" is unanswered and then go on to give what would count as an answer from their own definition of function - say "I'm expecting to see how consciousness carries out some function and by 'function' I mean..." - then we'd at least have something to discuss. But as it stands, the discussion still seems little more than "Ohhh, isn't it weird, man". — Isaac

Eh, being able to articulate the problem entirely, or even partially, in functional terms is also contested. You don't need to deny the idea that the body is productive of mental states to be against a functional account of mental states. By my reckoning, terms you've set out already skew the terrain of debate. I'm not convinced that non functional/mechanical terms of debate are appropriate, but it's still a distortion of terrain to demand the debate occurs in your favoured set of background assumptions. Albeit that distortion is also an important move in the debate!

What I would like is an argument, or observation, or evidence, that shows the emergence of consciousness from human bodies is conceptually possible. — bert1

I know this wasn't addressed to me. But I can think of two possible requirements you might want from this? The first demands a bare bones functional account, "how does body make consciousness?", which would perhaps make that production conceptually possible by making it empirically possible. The second is a conceptual demand, "can a method of producing consciousness be articulated without internal contradiction?".

For the conceptual demand, someone could say "consciousness arises from the eggs the moon lays in human skulls" - which seems to be conceptually possible. But it goes against what we know about eggs, the moon, the body, and human skulls. Regardless of that, those contradictions seem only to come from the inconsistency of that concept of consciousness with an aggregate of empirical data. So something can be conceptually possible even if we know it is empirically false.

Like Lord of the Rings. Does conceptually possible mean something more than "can be imagined"?

Edit: something I assumed was that empirically possible implies conceptually possible. Another alternative is that something can in fact be true, but nevertheless cannot be conceptually possible. Reality as Lovecraftian abomination.

Makes sense. Construing the debate as unfounded is also part of the debate unfortunately. See "Quining Qualia" by Dennett and Strawson's responses to Dennett's entire project. The unclear/self refuting opponent game. Saying what you just said puts you onto one side of the issue. And you rose to the challenge with an argument.

Regardless, you've left out the specifics about what "function" means in the abstract, what it means to give a functional account in the abstract, whether functional accounts can be made consistent with what you're criticising and so on. There isn't any clear ground to stand on.

Edit: I don't want to go much farther down this road, though. The only point I'm making is what would count as an answer in this debate is also a contested concept in the debate.

apokrisis suggested a switcheroo, which was quite interesting, basically saying that the burden of proof not on the neuroscientist to say why some or their function of the brain is consciousness, but on the neuro-skeptic to say why it isn't. — bert1

Also @Isaac.

I don't like default position chess when the grounds of a substantive disagreement isn't established. I think it's a responsibility of everyone with a position not to treat it as correct by default in this context. Because there are respected ways to interpret bodies as having a subjective awareness with an inherently qualitative, first person perspective which needs different methods of study (like Chalmers), people who want to do away with the whole thing on an ontological level (like Patricia Churchland), people who see mind states in a functional equivalence with body states (Dennett, Sellars?), and those who see it as a feedback relation (Clark?). Even the idea that brainstates generate representational states of mind as corollaries is contested.

While these debates might inform speculation in philosophy, and in neuroscience, the issue isn't settled. As far as I know all the ground in this intersection is contested.

Thank you!

And those rational relations among judgments are determined by the rules, that is the concepts, one binds oneself by in making the judgments

It is a systematic, rational unity, dynamically created and sustained by drawing inferential consequences from and finding reasons for one’s judgments, and rejecting commitments incompatible with those one has undertaken.

While I think this is a desirable state to be in - self consistent, self critical, accountable - my gut reaction to these quotes is that this is a formal determination of what counts as a person tending towards unified, self consistent conduct; rather than prescribing any content to that unity of conduct.

I think this raises two issues. The first is that the norms of inference followed, even if ironclad, are not guaranteed to be consistent within person. A formal example. If you believe P, and a norm of reason you believe in is modus ponens (P, P implies Q, therefore Q), then you remain able to believe P and not Q self consistently.

Why? Because believing P doesn't rationally commit one to Q through the belief that modus ponens is valid for arbitrary propositions. Belief that P only commits one to belief that Q if it is believed that P implies Q. In that regard, a self consistent system of beliefs can be rendered consistent with any other content so long as the person also believes that no contradiction is entailed all the rules of inference you follow and a statement which, in reality, contradicts your set of beliefs. Someone will only update their belief system when they believe there is a contradiction within it, and even then...

EG, if you believe the set of propositions {A,B,C}, and through the rules of propositional logic A & B & C derives a contradiction, you can simply claim the set of beliefs {A,B,C,not(A & B & C entails falsehood)}.

In that regard, the system commits no one to anything, nor commits a person to realising any contradiction to any of their currently held beliefs by any law of logic.

But does a self help book really change your perspective, or does it just give you one to try on for a while? That’s pedantic though. — Jamal

I imagine the latter, but I can't draw a strict line between that and philosophy. I read Heidegger, I don't lose the Cartesian goggles unless forcing myself to. Same with eliminative materialism/ "illusionism", with regard to how I treat other minds in social scenarios - like I can't see it otherwise in person. Unless, again, I focus a lot on turning the interaction into a cognitive exercise.

Though I'm sure some people are just "built different" and maintain constant Zen.