But I can both think about and direct my empathy toward fictional characters, can't I? Isn't that one of the very things that makes reading fictional stories so compelling? I think the problem with Putnam's argument is that whether or not the line traced in the sand depicts Churchill is not entirely (or even at all) determined by whether or not the ant intended it to be such a depiction, because it is at least partly dependent on the subjective evaluation of other creatures. Abstract art functions on pretty much exactly this possibility.

In any event, I answered "yes", mostly because I can see how the decisions of my predecessors have both enriched and degraded the world I currently find myself in, and also how those decisions have impacted my own life for both the better and the worse. So in other words, precisely on the basis of my empathy for the denizens of future generations.

You're right, Chalmers and Clark are indeed concerned with cognition rather than consciousness, I should have used the words "mind" and "cognition" rather than "consciousness" (i've updated my post). My apologies for the confusion.

In any event, the main point was really to agree with Jamalrob's assessment and to also say that I find that functionalism offers a rather limited set of explanatory resources with which to approach the particular question being inquired into, and frankly I'm not convinced it's up the task. In that regard I find the paper to be much less ground-breaking and insightful that it could have otherwise been had it brought some other, more powerful explanatory resources to bear on what is certainly a very interesting question. That being said, the paper was written in the late 1990's from a predominantly analytic point of view, so perhaps that criticism is unfair to some degree.

Thoughts?

One might expect them to question the question—e.g., what if the mind is an activity or a kind of worldly engagement, like dancing, rather than a thing in space?—but I'm not sure they ever really do. They argue that the mind doesn't stop at the skull or the skin, but goes beyond it to a definite if uncertain extent. In a nutshell, their answer to the question is that the mind stops a bit further out, depending on the functional role of certain things we happen to use (indicating that we're dealing with a kind of functionalism, which might lead us to wonder if this is another representationalist theory of mind a la computationalism, rather than a more interesting and radical theory of dynamic embodiment). — jamalrob

I agree with this. It seems pretty clear that Chalmers and Clark are working within a broadly functionalist/comutationalist paradigm, and that the "radicalism" of their thesis is therefore hamstrung or confined by the limits of that paradigm. Personally, I'm not convinced that functionalism/computationalism can tell us what cognition "really" is. Functionalist theories seem more like an elaborate heuristic device that can be used to help determine whether or not to treat a given system as if it were cognizant (i.e. bascially an elaborate Turing test), rather than a theory of mind per se. It's been interesting to watch the analytic tradition slowly move away from functionalism, and toward more dynamical system/embodied approaches over the the last couple of decades. There's significant overlap between the work of, say, Rosen, Juarrero, Deacon, Thompson, etc. on the analytic side and the work of, say, Merleau-Ponty, Deleuze, Delanda, Derrida, etc. on the continental side. I think the Chalmers/Clark paper could have been more interesting had it tapped more deeply into some of those other theoretical currents.

This had occurred to me. Fictional worlds imply unknown truths. But look at the statement: "Hamlet's hair-count was 90,000." Is that statement ever truth-apt? The term "reality bubble" comes to me to describe the way we enter fictional worlds, hypothetical situations, and even contemplate possibility. It's a kind of psychological act (to take Ying's inspiration).... to suspend disbelief and accept a fictional world as real. It's when we inhabit the reality bubble that it seems that there are things about Hamlet we don't know. Exit the bubble, and it's obvious that those questions don't have answers. — Mongrel

The problem that I see with this is that exiting the "reality bubble" has the effect of making all fictional claims seem like they are not truth-apt, not just the ones that we can't know the answers to. So at this point I'm not convinced that we can leverage that idea to support the notion that complete knowability is the criterion for unreality.

It's odd that you picked Hamlet. To me, he's a character who is trying to see beyond his reality bubble... which makes it an extraordinary play. I've found that not everybody interprets it that way, though. — Mongel

Indeed. I love that play.

I don't see how it's explained in terms of some ontology. And even if it was, how does explaining it in terms of an anti-realist ontology make it realist? — Michael

The distinction is based on my understanding of the difference between realist and anti-realist theories of reference. The former attempt to explain reference in ontological terms, whereas the latter don't. As far as I can tell, the theory you have presented explains truth/reference in terms of an ontological relationship between entities; namely a coherence relation between propositions or sentences. Unless you are saying that your theory of truth does not require that either coherence relations or propositions actually exist, then I'd say that your theory qualifies as a realist theory of truth/reference.

Things only get confusing when we fail to distinguish the two senses of the word "realist" that are in play here. Ontological realists (which I am here defining in opposition to ontological idealism/anti-realism) often also hold a realist theory of truth/reference that is based on correspondence. However, the correspondence theory of truth/reference is not a realist theory of reference in virtue of its appeal to correspondence, but rather in virtue of the fact that it attempts to explain reference in ontological terms (i.e. in terms of things that are taken to actually exist).

I don't think that their theory of truth commits them to the actual existence of only such things as experiences, ideas, and words, so there aren't two contradictory statements. — Michael

I thought you had appealed to this very fact as a means of demonstrating how the anti-realist can consistently make statements that are apparently realist in the ontological sense. It's hard to see how someone could qualify as an anti-realist in the ontological sense while maintaining that they are committed to the actual, irreducible existence of the very entities that their ontological anti-realism denies the actual, irreducible existence of.

Appealing to the behaviour of rational agents in the physical world doesn't entail realism (as one will take an anti-realist approach to behaviour and physics), so this isn't a problem. — Michael

But to take an anti-realist approach to things like behavior and physics is to attempt to explain those things in terms of some alternative ontology that limits itself to the actual, irreducible existence of things other than what are referred to by the scientific theories of behavior and physics. To accept the actual, irreducible existence of the entities referred to by the theories of behavior and physics is just what it means to be a realist with repect to them. I imagine you will respond by saying that since you are an anti-realist with regard to reference, you don't have to worry about the realist implication of accepting the actual, irreducible existence of such things that are referred to by those theories. But I don't think you really are an anti-realist with respect to reference, as I tried to explain above, and so I think it is necessary for you to explain things like behavior and physics in terms of whatever ontology you actually adhere to.

And coherence between statements consists in one statement following from another (or at least not contradicting one another). It has nothing to do with realism. — Michael

It does have to do with realism if you can't explain coherence without being a realist about the physical world. Again, I think it's important to keep the two different senses of the word "realist" distinct.

I don't think I'd consider it a realist theory of reference. It's effectively a disquotational theory of reference; "chairs" refers to chairs. It's a parallel to the disquotational theory of truth.

Realism and anti-realism only come into the picture when considering the ontological status of chairs (and truth). — Michael

What I am saying is that it becomes a realist theory of reference when you attempt to explain it in terms of some ontology, even if the ontology is an anti-realist one.

I think that's a far too simplistic account of anti-realism. I don't find it at all problematic for an anti-realist to accept the truth of "chairs exist" and "chairs are not experiences, ideas, or words" (e.g. by arguing for the coherence theory of truth and showing that these two statements cohere with some other set of specified sentences). The fact that one is arguing for a non-correspondence account of truth is why it is not realist. — Michael

What you seem to be saying is that the anti-realist can genuinely accept as true, claims such as "chairs actually exist, and they are not experiences, ideas, or words" because their theory of truth commits them only to the actual existence of such things as experiences, ideas and words. I'd be interested to see how you handle the fact that, prima facie, this leads to a situation in which the anti-realist is committed to two claims about what actually exist that don't cohere. It would seem that the anti-realist's own commitment to the coherence theory of truth would necessitate the rejection of one or the other statement.

I'd also be interested to see if you can explain coherence without ultimately appealing to claims about the behavior of rational agents in the physical world. Would you mind offering an explanation of what the coherence between two statements consists in?

Just a quick (and perhaps half-baked) thought regarding this. It seems like we need to distinguish between anti-realist ontologies and anti-realist theories of reference. An anti-realist ontology is typically understood as one that is committed to the actual existence of only "mental" or "experiential" entities such as ideas, propositions, sensations, percepts, emotions, etc. An anti-realist theory of reference, on the other hand, is a theory of reference that can be explained without recourse to any particular ontology at all.

With that in mind, it seems to me that you are running these two senses of the word "anti-realist" together, which is leading to a bit of confusion. It seems like what you are really doing here is arguing for a realist theory of reference that can be explained entirely in terms of your anti-realist ontology.

Thoughts?

I don't think this gets over my objection, that the real is understood by contraries or contradictories, implying there is no real-in-itself. What is the negation of this set of real objects? (I'm temporarily hooked on logical words) Or, to put it another way, I can't imagine a set of objects that is not ultimately justified by appeal to someone's attitudes. — mcdoodle

Your initial post on this thread argued that the word "real" has various meanings depending on what it is being contrasted against. You mentioned real/unreal, real/illusory real/imaginary and real/abstract. My initial thought in response is to deny that these truly designate different senses of the word "real" by claiming that the illusory, imaginary and abstract are simply different categories of the unreal. Claims about the illusory, the imaginary and the abstract all inevitably bottom out into claims about people's attitudes, though they will each do so in different ways. Or least, that's what seems prima facie reasonable to me at this point, without having devoted much serious thought to the matter. Perhaps you could comment on whether or not you agree before I spend more time thinking about it.

You also said above that you can't imagine a set of objects that is not ultimately justified by appeal to someone's attitudes. Sorry if this comes off as nit-picking, but it's the claims about objects, rather than the objects themselves that are/aren't justified. In any event, empirical observation claims are most often presented as the exemplar of claims that do not need to be justified by appealing to claims about anyone's attitudes, because they can instead be justified by appeal to claims about the reliability of the causal mechanisms that produced them.

To put this in terms of "authority" and "attitude-independence", I would argue that empirical observation claims are the class of claims from which our authority is withdrawn by default as a matter of course. In other words, we tend to treat our own empirical observation claims as attitude-independent by default. This is basically the conclusion of Wilfrid Sellars's argument for the priority of "is" with respect to "seems"; we naturally assume that perception is veridical unless confronted with good reasons for thinking otherwise, at which point we might (but don't have to) retreat into claims about how things "appear" or "look", which is a move that simultaneously expands our authority over our claim and retracts its purport with regard to what "is", thus increasing its justificatory dependence upon our subjective attitudes.

In any event, this inevitably raises the question of circularity. Observation claims are justified by appeal to claims about causal mechanisms, but claims about causal mechanism are justified by appeal to yet more observation claims. This obviously won't be convincing to anyone who doubts the veridicality of perception in general. If we accept Sellars's arguments for the priority of "is" over "seems" and also the contention that observation statements form the non-inferential basis for all other "is" claims, then the skeptic's challenge amounts to the claim that we can perform a global suspension of the concept "is". I think that a semi-persuasive argument can be made to the effect that, insofar as the skeptic wishes to demonstrate his conclusion, he will inevitably appeal to claims about what "is" the case, thus undermining his very position.

The point of all that rambling was to try to secure the notion that empirical observation claims can function as the set of claims that do not bottom out into claims about anyone's attitudes insofar as they (1) are treated as attitude-independent by default, (2) can be structured into virtuous circles of justification and (3) can't be thrown into question en masse without engaging in pragmatic contradiction.

Finally, you mentioned finding your "real" feelings while watching Janacek's 'Jenufa', and it's not my intention to deny either the truth or the meaningfulness of such claims. I agree that the word "real" is used in many different senses, and I am not suggesting that there is a single "correct" way to use the word. I am concerned with a particular usage that has been in play as part of the on-going dialectic of Western (and perhaps even non-Western) philosophical thought since at least the time of Aristotle. I'm sure we could get into debate over the extent to which that claim is true, but my point is simply to state that there's a particular concept and associated dialectic that I am interested in, and I don't consider it to be problematic that there are other usages that happen to fall outside of that scope.

Sorry this post was so long.

I would tend toward saying "no", though I think we need to distinguish between laws qua normative standard and laws qua causal entities. Whereas we have authority over the normative content of our laws, it might still be necessary for sociologists to refer to laws qua causal entities in order to explain the dynamics of human social systems. It is in the former rather than the latter sense that I would tend to say that laws are not real.

I was objecting to the use of "empirical" to describe a real object. My point was that "empirical" is a property of justifications for accepting the truth of a statement. Real objects have properties like tiny or red... not empirical. The dark side of the moon scenario i wrote about above is meant to make that point. Agree? — Mongrel

Yes, I agree that "empirical" is not a property of objects. My point was that the real/unreal distinction is better understood in terms of the structure of justification rather than in terms of complete/incomplete knowability. I'm not convinced the latter is viable. For instance, does anyone know how many hairs were on Hamlet's head the moment he uttered "to be or not to be", or what Romeo had for breakfast the day before he died? I think you are on the right track in appealing to that fact that we have authority over the fictional in a way that we do not have over the real. However, I don't think that this authority entails complete knowability, and would argue that this difference in authority is better understood in terms of how claims are justified. To have authority over the truth of a claim is a matter of its justification being ultimately grounded in your attitudes (e.g. whims, prejudices, beliefs, desires, intentions, stipulations, etc.). So what I'm proposing is that we understand real objects to be the set of objects that are referred to by the set of claims over which we do not have such authority (i.e. that are not ultimately justified by appeal to anyone's attitudes). Thoughts?

I don't think this is right. Imagine that someone has made a list of justifications (call this set J) for a statement about something and this suffices to demonstrate that r is real. I can invent a set of justifications (P) that is just J with the last statement "at least this is how it is in my Harry Potter Fanfic". By the assumption on J, P suffices to show that r is real, but r is also unreal by construction. This implies that a set of justifications can suffice to show something is real if some subset of that set shows that it is real - or alternatively, that some subset of the set of justifications shows that something is unreal.

"bottoming out" would correspond to choosing the last element(s?) of this set of justifications, right? Then whether something is real or unreal depends on the last (few?) justifications given for it. — fdrake

Hi fdrake. Bottoming out is not really a matter of selecting which element comes last in a list of justifications that someone has arbitrarily generated with respect to some claim. What counts as justification for any given claim is ultimately determined by the norms governing rational discourse, and the content of those norms is (generally speaking) not entirely under the authority of the particular individuals who happen to be engaged in any given instance of discourse.

For instance, suppose that you were to ask me to justify the claim that water has a boiling point of 100 degrees centigrade, and I were to respond by saying that the United States Congress recently declared the boiling point of water to be 100 degrees centigrade. You might accept my response depending on whatever else you happen to believe about the reliability of the Congress in declaring matters of scientific fact, but more then likely you'd press me to offer a better reason. In other words, you're not willing to let the justification of that claim bottom out in a claim about the decrees of the US congress, and the reason you're not willing to let it bottom out in that way has to do with your understanding of what counts as a legitimate form of justification for the type of claim under question, and that understanding is ultimately based on your grasp of the norms of rational discourse, the content of which you did not determine and do not (personally) have any ultimate authority over.

My point was that the argument you provided must do the very thing it says is not possible. In order to show that metaphysical discourse undermines itself in attempting to do the impossible (i.e. immanently describe the structure of thought as it really is) it must offer an immanent description of the structure of metaphysical and non-metaphysical thought as they really are. Do you disagree?

You seem to be arguing that the structure of language is such that it intrinsically undermines the possibility of what it also intrinsically sets out to achieve. I think the flaw in your argument is that it must ultimately do the very thing that it attempts to demonstrate to be impossible; namely, describe the structure of language as it "really is" in order to demonstrate what it "really is" capable/incapable of achieving. So it seems to me that there is pragmatic contradiction lurking in the core of your argument, and that the proper response to it would be to provide a better description of the structure of language than you have provided above, and do so in a way that also affirms the possibility of what you have set out to deny. That being said, I am not actually going to attempt to actually do that right here :). I just wanted to outline how one might go about responding.

Would you say that empirical is a kind of justification? Statement X is true. The justification is empirical. Statement Y is true. This is justified by reason.

Couldn't both statements be about something real? — Mongrel

I think has more to do with how the justification for a given claim "bottoms out". So, the fact that a claim is not directly justified by appeal to empirical observations does not automatically disqualify it from being about the real. A statement is only disqualified in virtue of its justification ultimately bottoming out in appeals to claims about the attitudes of a particular person or group (or into claims about the structure of attitudes as such). So to give a simple example, justification for claims about Harry Potter will ultimately bottom out in appeals to claims about the attitudes of a particular person (i.e. JK Rowling), whereas the justification for claims about the chemical composition of DNA will ultimately bottom out in appeals to empirical observations.