It is ‘invisible’ to us because we’re never apart from or outside of it - it is never present among the objective data of experience. — Wayfarer

Conscious experience is never the object of experience in the moment of experience, rather the object(s) of the experience are. In that sense we do not experience our experience; we do not grasp it it as an object. However, phenomenologists, Husserl, Zahavi, Henry, Sartre and others have argued convincingly in various ways that pre-reflective (non-thematic) self-awareness must be inherent to conscious experience. In that sense we do experience our experience, our consciousness and our self-awareness.

It is by virtue of that prereflective self-awareness that self-awareness or consciousness can be objectified 'after the fact' using memory; we do it all the time. If it wasn't possible you would not be able to make any such claim as: "It is ‘invisible’ to us because we’re never apart from or outside of it - it is never present among the objective data of experience".

So, the point is that consciousness is not an immediate object of experience; but it certainly can be objectified in order to learn and understand more about it. And this would hold even if we thought that, ultimately, our pre-reflective self-awareness, our consciousness, is an epiphenomenal illusion; we could still learn about what that illusion is to us, without allowing that it is causally efficacious, which is really the point at issue.

Now, I'm not saying I hold to, or even more or less agree with, epiphenomenalism; but I do acknowledge that it is one of a suite of possible perspectives that are not inherently incoherent or self-contradictory.

the point is that consciousness is not an immediate object of experience; but it certainly can be objectified in order to learn and understand more about it. — Janus

That’s a good point, but not the point.

I’ll rephrase - ‘mind’ is not a visible or tangible object of experience.

This fact bugs materialists, for whom the only real things must be objects or at least ‘objectively real’ [as per the current ‘scientism’ thread.]

There’s a priceless quote from J B Watson which I can’t locate at the moment to the effect that the very notion of ‘mind’ is a ‘superstitious belief’. That’s why I say that the whole motivation of the Uber-materialists - Dennett and his ilk - is actually a dread of the realisation that the nature of mind is forever beyond the purview of science. The very fact of the first-person nature of conscious experience basically overturns materialism. All of this comes out in the debates between David Chalmers and Dennett. I’m sure that it’s why Penrose named his book Emperor’s New Mind.

The very fact of the first-person nature of conscious experience basically overturns materialism. — Wayfarer

I agree with you, but the materialist will say that first-personness is a material phenomenon, which we misunderstand to be an immaterial phenomenon. So it will overturn it for us, but not for them, because their starting presuppositions are different than ours.

However, phenomenologists, Husserl, Zahavi, Henry, Sartre and others have argued convincingly in various ways that pre-reflective (non-thematic) self-awareness must be inherent to conscious experience. In that sense we do experience our experience, our consciousness and our self-awareness. — Janus

You raise a good point. But I find that it doesn’t need to be evidenced by very complex arguments. We know of our own happiness or assuredness—to not mention other examples—strictly via self-referential experience of that which is experiencing—such that, in cases such as these, the object of our awareness is ourselves as the subject of awareness, as the first person point of view (e.g., “I am happy/confident/uncertain/curious/etc.”). In such core experiences upon which all other experiences are dependent upon, the “I” is simultaneously both subject of awareness and object of awareness without there being any experienced differentiation between the two.

This is different from experience wherein a) we are perceiving a percept via our physiological senses, this being the strict realm of modern empiricism (be the percept internal such as a full bladder or else external), or b) perceiving percepts of our own imagination (e.g., an imagined apple), or c) sensing a sensation such as that of a temptation in the form of an emotion we choose to either embrace of shun, or d) understand a meaning to something like an sign or an abstraction (the latter three not occurring via physiological senses but through experiential apprehensions of the intellect/mind by the first person point of view). In all four of these cases, though, there’ll be an object of awareness that is qualitatively other than the subject of awareness which is apprehending.

But again, in cases such as that of being happy/sad, the subject and object of awareness are one and the same given—which, via its perpetually changing being as such, then apprehends percepts, sensations, and understanding as other than itself which perceives, senses, or understands.

Interestingly for me, in this core type of experience, the object/subject dichotomy breaks down, such that it is both and neither. Making it into an object doesn’t fit the bill, for it is not. This non-duality of being might make little if any sense outside of direct experience; yet experience attests to it.

To get back in the main subject of this thread: To deny this experientially evidenced ontic given is to make use of this same ontic given so as to theorize in very abstract ways that it is an illusion, that it doesn’t exist. If this were true, everything else would be illusion by default; not here indulging contradictions of reasoning—for everything else we can be aware of is contingent upon this ontic given being non-illusory … and only secondly upon that which we are aware of—laws of logic included—being non-illusory.

But that’s not to say that there is no physical or that our minds’ processes are not directly correlated with our brains’ activities. Experience, if nothing else, evidences that there is such a thing as physicality and that the correlation holds, irrespective of what causal mechanism might be at work. Worst comes to worst from a materialist’s pov, the physical is what Pierce termed effete mind; doesn’t change the fact that it’s still physical in a common sense perspective of things.

:ok:

you are much more thorough than myself in your analysis.

Thank you :razz: :blush: All the same, interesting research you've pointed out in previous posts, such as that of direct brain stimulation.

Interestingly for me, in this core type of experience, the object/subject dichotomy breaks down, such that it is both and neither. Making it into an object doesn’t fit the bill, for it is not. This non-duality of being might make little if any sense outside of direct experience; yet experience attests to it.

To get back in the main subject of this thread: To deny this experientially evidenced ontic given is to make use of this same ontic given so as to theorize in very abstract ways that it is an illusion, that it doesn’t exist. — javra

The problem I have with what you are saying is that it still subtly presupposes the subject/object dichotomy. We can objectify experience and thus come to experience objects. We are then lead to infer subjects (first person perspectives) and we may then come to presume the primacy of the subjective first person perspective.

So I would say that in pre-reflective experience it is not a matter of the "object/subject dichotomy" " breaking down" but that this experience is prior to any such dichotomy. Also this experience is not an "experientially evidenced ontic given" because that again falls back into the dualistic presumption that something ontic (the object) is being given to something else (the first person subject), and this contradicts the idea that primordial experience is prior to the ontic. This is precisely Heidegger's point with the ontic/ontological distinction.

So what exactly that primordial experience consists in; what the necessary conditions must be for its possibility and for its actuality can become metaphysical questions. Is it fundamentally akin to what we think of as physical: some sort of blind energetic or virtual process that gives rise to this world and the beings that experience it) or is it fundamentally akin to what we think of as mental: a spiritual and/ or intentional process. Or is it somehow both at once and/or neither?

Eliminativism opts for the former view; that ultimately reality is the result of blind forces, and it is this sense alone that they would say that consciousness is an illusory epiphenomenon. Now again, I want to emphasize that I do not hold that view; I am merely pointing out that, once you lose the lingering Cartesian dualist presuppositions, it is not inherently a self-contradictory view, as many of its critics seem to want to claim it to be

What I’m arguing is that when scientists analyse image of neural data, they’re employing the very faculty which they’re purporting to explain. After all, if you’re seeking to explain the nature of thought then you’re going to have to explain how logic operates, are you not? Logic or rational inference is fundamental to human thought and language. So you’re purporting to show how these are represented in the visual data. But even to do that, you’re necessarily saying ‘this pattern of voxels is associated with this area of the brain which we think is mainly engaged with such-and-such aspects of language’. But then you’re relying on the very faculty which you’re purporting to explain. It’s not as if you’re demonstrating that faculty ‘from the outside’ as it were - you can’t literally ‘see’ the act of representation in the data. You’re saying ‘that pattern of data means X’.

That interpretive act, the judgement that ‘this means that’, is fundamental to all rational and linguistic thought. We don’t notice it, I contend, because we’re always operating from inside it. That is why ‘denialism’ seems to be able to deny it. It is ‘invisible’ to us because we’re never apart from or outside of it - it is never present among the objective data of experience. But that’s because it’s ‘transcendental’ in the sense that transcendental idealism understands it - constitutive of, but not visible to, experience. The inivisibilty of the mind to objective analysis is the point of the departure for behaviourism, which was to become one of the main forms of what Strawson calls ‘denialism’ in the essay we’re discussing. — Wayfarer

Sorry for the delay in my response: I've been out of town.

Perhaps I am just obtuse, but I still don't see the circularity here. I understand that there is an inherent circularity in trying to offer a wholesale justification, of, say, our senses by employing our senses, but I see no inherent circularity in employing our cognitive faculties in order to study our cognitive faculties. Moreover, I don't see how a priori philosophical analysis can escape these charges of circularity: we must employ the mind to pontificate about the mind, no?

In case you missed it, Dennett responded: http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/04/03/magic-illusions-and-zombies-an-exchange/

senses, but I see no inherent circularity in employing our cognitive faculties in order to study our cognitive faculties — Arkady

That is cognitive science, but here we’re discussing philosophy, the nature of meaning and of mind.

Strawson 1, Dennett 0.

Imagine the scene, at the Temple of the Oracle of Delphi, when Socrates approaches, and sees the aphorism emblazoned on the Portal, gnōthi seauton, 'know thyself'.

'Can't be done', shrugs Socrates. 'We don't have the technology'.

He walks away. Philosophy never gets born.

Strawson 1, Dennett 0. — Wayfarer

No, as usual with these kinds of debates; they are simply talking past one another. Nothing to see here, folks...

That is cognitive science, but here we’re discussing philosophy, the nature of meaning and of mind. — Wayfarer

"Employing our cognitive faculties in order to study our cognitive faculties" could equally well apply to phil of mind as to cog sci. In any event, you and I were discussing cog sci, specifically the gleaning of the content of mental states from their attendant physical states as detected by brain imaging. You had claimed (following Nagel) that there was some inherent circularity in this endeavor (in that, in doing so, "you’re relying on the very faculty which you’re purporting to explain"), and I said I didn't see it. You then responded that we're not discussing cog sci. I don't find that to be a helpful response.

"Employing our cognitive faculties in order to study our cognitive faculties" could equally well apply to phil of mind as to cog sci. — Arkady

My criticism of examining questions about the nature of mind with reference to brain scans was a philosophical objection, based on an argument about the nature of reason and of meaning. Yes, we must employ the mind to raise such objections. But at the same time, from a philosophical point of view, one can do that without claiming that 'the nature of reason' - for example - is something that could even in principle be understood through the perspective of neuro- or cognitive sciences. In doing that, one relies on reason and logic, as do any of the sciences.

I maintain that there's a kind of category mistake being made in the very attempt, which goes right to the heart of this issue. This is because reason itself, and the ability of the human to grasp meaning and to engage in rational inference, is logically prior to any specifically empirical analysis of what the brain is or does. I explain that already in this post but the fact that you then try and respond on the level of cognitive science, indicates that you're not really coming to terms with the objection.

they are simply talking past one another. — Janus

Not so. They're both well known, published philosophers, discussing a central question in philosophy, on the pages of the New York Times. (Although it is true that once you've accepted the inherently preposterous axioms from which 'the denialists' are arguing, then nothing anyone says will overturn it; it would take something profound, perhaps like what happened to Jill Bolte Taylor. )

Not so. They're both well known, published philosophers, discussing a central question in philosophy, on the pages of the New York Times. — Wayfarer

How would any of this preclude the possibility that they are talking past one another?

The point is that they are considering consciousness from very different, and incommensurable, perspectives, namely phenomenology and natural science. The fact that they each want to extend their conclusions beyond the ambit of the disciplines within which they find their sense, and impose them on their opponent's discipline, is what constitutes the basis of their talking past one another. It seems humans can never be happy until their knowledge is absolutized. As I keep saying, this kind of polemical thinking is the foundation stone of fundamentalism.

My criticism of examining questions about the nature of mind with reference to brain scans was a philosophical objection, based on an argument about the nature of reason and of meaning. Yes, we must employ the mind to raise such objections. — Wayfarer

My objection to your objection was not that one must employ the mind to raise such objections. My point was that phil of mind equally "employs our cognitive faculties in order to study our cognitive faculties," and thus any objection which attaches to that practice must also apply to phil of mind.

But at the same time, from a philosophical point of view, one can do that without claiming that 'the nature of reason' - for example - is something that could even in principle be understood through the perspective of neuro- or cognitive sciences. In doing that, one relies on reason and logic, as do any of the sciences.

I don't think that such research is necessarily meant to elucidate the "nature of reason." The nature of thought, perhaps.

I maintain that there's a kind of category mistake being made in the very attempt, which goes right to the heart of this issue. This is because reason itself, and the ability of the human to grasp meaning and to engage in rational inference, is logically prior to any specifically empirical analysis of what the brain is or does. I explain that already in this post but the fact that you then try and respond on the level of cognitive science, indicates that you're not really coming to terms with the objection.

I don't know what you mean by my "try[ing] to respond on the level of cognitive science." I read your post: you don't need to refer back to it. As I said, I understand there would be an inherent circularity in trying to justify the veracity or reliability of certain perceptual or cognitive faculties by employing those same faculties, but that is not what this type of research is trying to achieve. They are using their minds to study the mind (indeed, what else would one use?); I see no circularity there, any more than it's circular to use rulers to measure the length of rulers.

The fact of the matter is, it has been empirically demonstrated that one can glean the conceptual or propositional content of a subject's mental states based on brain imaging to at least a limited degree, and there's no reason for supposing that this method won't continue to be refined and become more powerful). Your a priori theorizing is simply at odds with reality.

If you wish to assert that this practice entails a sort of vicious circle, then you must explain how philosophy of mind escapes this vicious circle, and not merely claim that it does so (you have a distressing habit of retreating into the "I'm talking about philosophy!" tact when you are challenged, as if scientific claims must somehow be expected to pass muster, but just "anything goes" when it comes to philosophical pontification).

I don't think that such research is necessarily meant to elucidate the "nature of reason." The nature of thought, perhaps. — Arkady

And how do you split them? What is ‘propositional content’ without reason, or language? That’s the whole point.

And how do you split them? — Wayfarer

I think you are confusing "reason" with "reasoning." In any event, not all thought is reasoning. If I ask you to form a mental picture of a hammer, and then scan your brain, you are not engaged in "reasoning" about anything, so far as I can tell: you are just holding a particular concept in your mind. (Which is why I took care to include "conceptual content" along with "propositional content" in describing such studies.)

What is ‘propositional content’ without reason, or language? That’s the whole point.

Again, I never said that one needn't employ reason or language in studying reason or language: I simply denied that there is any prima facie circularity inherent in doing so (though I'm open to being convinced should you care to elucidate it. Perhaps I'm missing something here).

Philosophers likewise employ reason and language in analyzing reason and language: if there is a vicious circularity in doing so for cognitive scientists, why does it not follow that the philosophers' efforts are likewise viciously circular?

In any event, not all thought is reasoning. If I ask you to form a mental picture of a hammer, and then scan your brain, you are not engaged in "reasoning" about anything, so far as I can tell: you are just holding a particular concept in your mind. — Arkady

All human thought relies on language and abstraction, to which reasoning is fundamental. At the very least, abstraction involves the ability to say that something represents or means something else - which is very close in nature to the meaning of 'intentionality'.

You're simply assuming that representational realism stands up by itself. You have a mental model in which the mind mirrors or represents what it sees by generating images - then brain-scanning can essentially de-code the neural activity utilised in such representation - and bingo! We can 'read the brain'. But look at what is already assumed in that picture.

As that NYT article says the processes involved are highly speculative - they involve interpreting masses of data and then hypothesising about 'what the brain is doing'. My argument is that, this very activity of hypothesising, inferring, and saying 'this means that' is the very thing that you would need to explain, in order to show that this 'neural activity' really does amount to understanding the nature of thought. The whole purpose of fMRI and the like, is fundamentally medical - for which anyone who needs such intervention can only be grateful. But when the likes of 'the denialists' then brandish this as 'evidence' that 'science understands the nature of thought', then it's a completely different kind of claim altogether. The fact that this distinction is continually being blurred here makes discussion of it rather pointless, so, I am bowing out for the time being.

And how do you split them? What is ‘propositional content’ without reason, or language? That’s the whole point. — Wayfarer

Agreed. To paraphrase Wilfrid Sellars, for one to characterize a mental state as a state of belief isn't an empirical characterization but rather a matter of locating it within the space of reasons: a space the structure of which is defined by someone's ability to offer reasons supporting what one believes and to appreciate rational challenges to it. A brain scan may display something that counts as the neural correlate of a definite 'state of mind' (such as a belief, perceptual content, intention or motivation) only in the context where the empirical manifestation of this physiological correlate might inform us about a whole network of rational behavioral dispositions of an agent. The structure of this network is irreducible to the empirical-causal structure of the material realization of its nodes ('brain states') for the same reason why rational justifications don't reduce to physical laws. The latter aren't normative in the same way in which the former are, and any attempted reduction or identification would be tantamount to committing the naturalistic fallacy.

No, as usual with these kinds of debates; they are simply talking past one another. Nothing to see here, folks... — Janus

I quite agree that they are talking past one another, but there is nevertheless something instructive to see. The way in which they are talking past one another rather closely resembles the way in which Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris are debating the question of the nature of free will. Interestingly enough, Harris's hard determinist stance on free will is very closely aligned with Strawson's own. In this case, Harris and Strawson are both hard-nosed advocates of reductive materialism and deny the possibility of free will on the basis of the strict identification of practical deliberative processes with the underlying physiology. They also are dismissive of compatibilism on the ground that the compatibilist conception of free will (such as Dennett's) isn't, on their view, consistent with the alleged folk-notion of contra-causal free will: the ability to chose what to do irrespective of whatever process might be going on in one's head. In this case also, Dennett argues that free will exists even though free will isn't what such laymen (or libertarian philosophers) might think it is.

It is rather strange that in the cases of both free will and consciousness, Strawson takes the stance that neither one of those thing can possibly have an essential nature any different than common sense indicate that it must have, and, on the basis of those common sense definitions argues that consciousness must exist but free will must be an illusion! The intuitions that are at play, though, are deeply crypto-Cartesian and rely on a sharp separation between what is conceived to belong to 'the mind' (and thereby be 'directly' accessible to introspection) and what belongs to the 'external' material world and can therefore only be inferred to exist on the basis of both observation and theory.

Dennett questions (inconsistently) this Cartesian splitting of the mental and physical worlds. He also questions the strength of the commitments that ordinary folks have to it, as evidenced by their mundane uses of mental vocabulary and rational explanations of behavior. Unfortunately, Dennett has a tendency to want to have his cake and eat it too. So, he often argues convincingly for a non-reductive view of the mental (and of agency) that is roughly Wittgensteinian is spirit, and which he articulates with the idea of a plurality of 'stances'. But his commitment to physicalism also leads him to contradicts some of his commitments to emergentism and to rather crudely identify mental acts with a quasi-mechanical process of narrative construction of an essentially illusory mental reality. This gives rise to the sort of equivocations that Strawson latches on to convict him of consciousness denialism.

:ok: I was also tempted to mention the Notre Dame review of the Bennett and Hacker text, although modesty compels me to admit that I'll probably never read it. But even the review makes similar kinds of objections to those you mention pretty clear.

That seems like a very informed analysis Pierre-Normand :smile:

It seems you have indeed seen something interesting where I could not. I guess I'm familiar enough with where each of the protagonists is coming from to see that they are talking past one another, but not familiar enough with the work of either to see that there may be something instructive in that.

In any case I can only admire your grasp of these issues, without being able to fully understand its scope. :cry:

In any case I can only admire your grasp of these issues, without being able to fully understand its scope. — Janus

+1

You're simply assuming that representational realism stands up by itself. You have a mental model in which the mind mirrors or represents what it sees by generating images - then brain-scanning can essentially de-code the neural activity utilised in such representation - and bingo! We can 'read the brain'. But look at what is already assumed in that picture.

As that NYT article says the processes involved are highly speculative - they involve interpreting masses of data and then hypothesising about 'what the brain is doing'. My argument is that, this very activity of hypothesising, inferring, and saying 'this means that' is the very thing that you would need to explain, in order to show that this 'neural activity' really does amount to understanding the nature of thought. — Wayfarer

Again, you are fulminating against an empirical demonstration on the basis of a priori arguments. The fact of the matter is that we can, through technological means, "decode" the content of at least a limited number of mental states by scanning their attendant physical states. So, whatever assumptions (pertaining to "representational realism" or anything else) undergird that endeavor have thereby been demonstrated to be correct. You are working backwards from the assumption that such a feat can't be done, and therefore hasn't been done, but this assumption is falsified by the experiment results.

And, if you took my comments to suggest that such studies provide an exhaustive understanding of the nature of thought, rest assured, I meant no such thing. fMRI studies (or brain imaging studies generally) are but a drop in the bucket of understanding the mind. There are an entire suite of experimental techniques brought to bear in this field. At best, they elucidate but a very small part of the nature of thought.

At best, they elucidate but a very small part of the nature of thought. — Arkady

Right!

They are using their minds to study the mind (indeed, what else would one use?); I see no circularity there, any more than it's circular to use rulers to measure the length of rulers. — Arkady

What you describe is a situation in which they are using their minds to study the brain, and making conclusions from this study, about the mind. To make these conclusions requires specific assumptions about the relationship between the brain and the mind. These assumptions are made by minds which are distinct from the brain being studied. Those mental assumptions are the premises upon which the conclusions are based, and these are property of the minds doing the study, not the brain being studied. Therefore the conclusions demonstrate something about the minds doing the study (the fundamental premises employed), and not the mind of the person whose brain is being studied.

BTW, it is circular to use a ruler to measure another ruler, that's why we have a defined object which constitutes the base for any measuring system. If one ruler measures another, and there is discrepancy, we ought to turn to that base definition to judge which ruler is correct. However, the base definition is merely a convention, an assumption, just like the assumptions which are required in the example above, concerning the relationship between the brain and the mind.

BTW, it is circular to use a ruler to measure another ruler, that's why we have a defined object which constitutes the base for any measuring system. If one ruler measures another, and there is discrepancy, we ought to turn to that base definition to judge which ruler is correct. However, the base definition is merely a convention, an assumption, just like the assumptions which are required in the example above, concerning the relationship between the brain and the mind. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, and once the ruler we use for measuring is calibrated against the defined object, we can happily use it for measuring other things, including other rulers. There's nothing inherently circular about that. And when we combine it with the measurements of other rulers, publish our conclusions, and let other measurers study and critique our measuring methodology, we have now have grounds for believing that we've reliability captured a datum about the objects of our measurements.

The point though, is that measuring a ruler with another ruler really is circular. It is the calibration against the defined object which removes the circularity. Then the question is how reliable, for the application, is the defined unit of measurement.

The point though, is that measuring a ruler with another ruler really is circular. It is the calibration against the defined object which removes the circularity. Then the question is how reliable, for the application, is the defined unit of measurement [underlining mine]. — Metaphysician Undercover

Exactly the point I made above:

Sure, and once the ruler we use for measuring is calibrated against the defined object, we can happily use it for measuring other things, including other rulers [underlining added]. — Arkady

Calibrating one ruler by means of another may well be circular, but it doesn't follow that measuring a ruler with another ruler is circular.