See also: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/12417

1. Are there "deep" arguments that I don't understand?
2. What is Chomsky's real motivation for adopting mysteryism?
3, Is Chomsky really a mysterianist, or he hides something? — Eugen

Apparently, quite a few deep thinkers have concluded that human Consciousness is an impenetrable mystery. David Chalmers famously called it the "Hard Problem", and he is not even on the list below*1. I don't know what Chomsky's motivation was, but he explains his reasoning in the extensive article linked by Manuel in another thread : https://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/ChomskyMysteriesNatureHidden2009.pdf

I suppose the roadblock to understanding Reason by means of Reason is fundamental. It's like seeing the retina of the eye with your own eye. But there are ways around that physical obstruction. Unfortunately, examining Consciousness with the scope of Consciousness is a meta-physical problem, that can't be circumvented by using a mechanism, or another consciousness, to do the "seeing". So, the "mystery" is merely due to the intrinsic limitations of a Subjective perspective on Objective reality.

For my own purposes though, I have simplified the Brain/Mind problem by showing that they are merely two forms of the same fundamental cause : Information (power to enform, to create)*2. This may be solving the problem by redefining a Dualistic difficulty in terms of simplistic Monism. But there are good scientific & philosophical reasons for that equation*3. I'm not nearly as smart as the thinkers on the list below, who publicly renounced the Mind Mystery, as insolvable by scientific methods. "But the new mysterianism is a postmodern position designed to drive a railroad spike through the heart of scientism" (Owen Flanagan) . :cool:


*1. New mysterians :
*** William James,
*** Carl Jung,
*** Colin McGinn is the leading proponent of the new mysterian position among major philosophers.
*** Thomas Nagel, American philosopher.
*** Jerry Fodor, American philosopher and cognitive scientist.[citation needed]
*** Noam Chomsky, American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, and political commentator/activist.
*** Martin Gardner, American mathematics and science writer, considered himself to be a mysterian.
*** John Horgan, American science journalist.
*** Steven Pinker, American psychologist; favoured mysterianism in How the Mind Works, and later wrote: "The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside. This is where I place my bet, though I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius—a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness—comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us."
*** Roger Penrose, English physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science.[citation needed]
*** Edward Witten, American string theorist.
*** Sam Harris, American neuroscientist, has endorsed mysterianism by stating that "This situation has been characterized as an "explanatory gap" and the "hard problem of consciousness," and it is surely both. I am sympathetic with those who, like ... McGinn and ... Pinker, have judged the impasse to be total: Perhaps the emergence of consciousness is simply incomprehensible in human terms."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_mysterianism

*2. What is Information ? :
The power to enform, to create, to cause change, the essence of awareness. . . . .
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page16.html

*3. Brain/Mind Paradox :
Empirical Science treats the human mind as an integral function of the physical brain. But we intuitively put the mind in a different category. That's why it has traditionally been associated with a non-physical Soul, which requires a dualistic notion of humanity. The Enformationism paradigm though, is ultimately monistic, viewing Information as the single "substance" of reality. But that primordial stuff has two aspects : an active verb form, EnFormAction (energy), and a passive noun form, Information (matter). The brain is enformed stuff, which converts stored Information (memory) into non-physical ideas, images, and feelings.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html

It seems to me that "is the brain the source of consciousness?" is not a mysterious question. The answer is either yes or no. We should be able to figure it out. Or someone else (aliens or Ai) could solve it and just tell us the answer.

2. What is Chomsky's real motivation for adopting mysteryism? — Eugen

What, in general, may (?) motivate the adoption of 'mysteryism' ?

Man distinguishes himself from Nature. This distinction of his is his God: the distinguishing of God from Nature is nothing else than the distinguishing of man from Nature. [Feuerbach]

Chomsky’s really not a mystic or “mysterian.”

He’s saying there’s not been a technical notion of matter/material since the 17th century, so the mind/body problem can’t be answered (since we don’t know what “body” is).

There do seem to be some mysteries in the world. Either they will be discovered one day, or will be something like how rats simply can’t run a prime number maze— some things are just beyond the scope of human beings. History gives us some clue as to which is which.

some things are just beyond the scope of human beings. — Mikie

So ‘man know thyself’ was a furphy?

:up:

He’s saying there’s not been a technical notion of matter/material since the 17th century, so the mind/body problem can’t be answered (since we don’t know what “body” is). — Mikie

Reality, existence, consciousness, and many other things have no clear definition or "technical notions". Still...

*1. New mysterians : — Gnomon

I see that list is drawn from Wikipedia. I don't trust the provenance of that article and I'm sure few of those names would be willing to be described with that name. I'm sure Nagel shouldn't be on it. The only one who willingly adopted it was McGinn afaik.

Besides what would it be to 'explain' consciousness? The whole idea might be a red herring. Of course it is true that psychology is not a precise science, but then you're dealing with the subject of experience, not objects whose properties can be precisely specified.

Reality, existence, consciousness, and many other things have no clear definition or "technical notions". Still... — Eugen

“Still” we go on babbling about them, getting nowhere.

There’s a new article on this site every other week about consciousness or some grand unifying theory of existence, and they all make the same mistake: if only we define a word this way or that, it’ll “solve” the mystery and everything will fall into place.

It’s a silly waste of time.

A Russian guy once told me: "You know what your problem is? You don't have enough problems."

I'm sure Nagel shouldn't be on it. — Wayfarer

I took his famous Bat essay as being suggestive of mysterian inclinations.

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable. Without consciousness, the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness, it seems hopeless.

Has he ever qualified the word 'seems'?

Chomsky is a skeptic in the original sense of the term - one who inquires but does not know. But this is not to say he is a member of any school of skepticism. He simply doubts that the universe is intelligible to us given the limits of the human mind.

avoiding the topic in an obvious way. — Eugen

He does not avoid the topic, he puts it in a larger framework. In part it can be summarized by the saying, "shut up and calculate". Kuhn thinks that we get closer to the truth. Chomsky thinks we develop intelligible theories that predict what will happen, but our theories always leave something unexplained.

The failure of the mechanistic model, he points to gravity, means the failure of intelligibility. We do not know what is going on, how it all works together. This is not to say that the world is not intelligible but that it is not intelligible to us. If the world is not intelligible to us the mind and consciousness is not intelligible to us.

Put differently, the more you know the more there is to know.

I see that list is drawn from Wikipedia. I don't trust the provenance of that article and I'm sure few of those names would be willing to be described with that name. I'm sure Nagel shouldn't be on it. The only one who willingly adopted it was McGinn afaik.
Besides what would it be to 'explain' consciousness? The whole idea might be a red herring. Of course it is true that psychology is not a precise science, but then you're dealing with the subject of experience, not objects whose properties can be precisely specified. — Wayfarer

I have only a superficial knowledge of the New Mysterian appellation. So I'll let you argue with the Wiki editors, and Dr. Owen Flanagan about what names should be on the list of thinkers, who have punted on the quest to answer the ancient Mind/Body question. The only one I know something about is polymath Martin Gardner, who labelled himself as a Mysterian*1 in a Skeptical Inquirer article many years ago. But then, he was actually referring to the God question : essentially admitting to being an Agnostic instead of an Atheist.

Your question, "what would it be to explain consciousness" is evocative of Nagel's "what is it like to be a bat?" In both questions the subject is Subjectivity. We know our own minds intimately, but other minds have always been somewhat of a mystery*2. I suppose that what "annoys" may be its rejection of the Myth of Objectivity*3 inherent in the faith of Scientism. I don't know what motivated the "deep thinkers" on the New Mysterian list, but I doubt that it was a desire to drive a stake "into the heart of scientism"*4. Instead. More likely, it was merely the realization that some Qualia questions are not susceptible to the empirical methods of Quantitative science, nor to the reductive methods of Analytical philosophy.

I wouldn't call the Consciousness conundrum a "red herring", but the mystery may be a product of how you frame the question. Since human awareness has been traditionally associated with a non-physical
Soul, it would be, by definition, eliminated from the subject matter of Science, and reserved for the purview of Religion. However, in my Enformationism thesis, I postulate that Consciousness is merely a highly-developed form of fundamental Information*5.

So my frame is closer to clarifying Science than to mystifying Religion, in that the emergence of Mind from material evolution was simply a product of eons of information processing*6, instead of instantaneous creation. But one minor mystery remains : who or what programmed the evolutionary Logic (mechanism) and Data (initial conditions) into the Singularity that went "bang", to begin the long procession from mindless matter-melding to mind-driven thinkers asking unanswerable questions? :smile:


*1. I Am a Mysterian :
I belong to a small group of thinkers called the “mysterians.” It includes Thomas Nagel, Colin McGinn, Jerry Fodor, also Noam Chomsky, Roger Penrose, and a few others.
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400847983-003/html?lang=en

*2. Problem of Other Minds :
in philosophy, the problem of justifying the commonsensical belief that others besides oneself possess minds and are capable of thinking or feeling somewhat as one does oneself.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/problem-of-other-minds

*3. The Myth of Objectivity :
The problem of objectivity centers on the question: What can we Know about reality The dominant epistemology (theory of Knowledge) underlying most accounts of cognition begins with the assumption that the world, i.e., objective reality, exists independently of we who observe it. Thus, the logical imperative for the philosopher, psychologist, or neurophysiologist is to account for how we perceive and Know about such a world.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4613-0115-8_2

*4. Scientism : excessive belief in the power of scientific knowledge and techniques.

*5. Is ‘Information’ Fundamental for a Scientific Theory of Consciousness? :
Arguably, information could even be the fundamental brick with which physical reality is built (Wheeler’s ‘It from Bit thesis’).
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-5777-9_21

*6. What is Information ?
The power to enform, to create, to cause change (e.g. energy); also the essence of awareness : to create Concepts from Percepts.
http://bothandblog6.enformationism.info/page16.html

His point is really not hard to understand and the opposite view, that we can in principle know everything if we "learn enough" is anti-scientific in the extreme. I won't use his words, because apparently, they aren't clearly stated.

Either we are natural creatures, or we aren't. If we are natural creatures there are things we can do and things we cannot do. We cannot fly like eagles, we don't have the visual acuity of a mantis shrimp, we don't have the capacity to smell as much as dogs and so on.

Continuing with the case of other animals, suppose someone says "dogs will learn how to use laptops, it's just a matter of "learning more" and eventually they will understand it".

That is a silly argument.

Likewise, we as human beings, while possessing properties and capacities which are unique in the whole history of life (as far as we know), are still creatures of nature. Like the dog never being able to use a laptop, there will be things we will never be able to do or understand.

We won't learn to breathe underwater like fish, nor can we understand how it is possible for matter to think. We know it can, but we don't see how it's possible. Likewise, we cannot comprehend the idea that the universe is as large as it is. Sure, we can draw a symbol representing infinity or alternatively, a very large number, but our brains quite quickly "shut down" when we start contemplating galactic distances.

But there's no reason why another, intelligent being somewhere else in the universe would have any problem understanding how matter thinks or have any issues contemplating gigantic distances.

Either something like this is true, or we are completely separate from nature and possess powers given to us by God, or whatever supernatural explanation you would like to invoke.

A Russian guy once told me: "You know what your problem is? You don't have enough problems." — frank

Nice quote !

Like the dog never being able to use a laptop, there will be things we will never be able to do or understand. — Manuel

This is plausible but somewhat useless ? Who can say ahead of time what we can manage ? How many times must the 'impossible' be achieved to make us doubt our doubt of ourselves ? Wittgenstein used going to the moon as an example of the impossible once. It was 'obviously' impossible, right ?

But there's no reason why another, intelligent being somewhere else in the universe would have any problem understanding how matter thinks or have any issues contemplating gigantic distances. — Manuel

To me there's a semantic issue here. What can we mean by saying Neptunians understand something like "how matter thinks" unless we also understand ? It's like God knows.

Nice quote ! — plaque flag

True story.

The failure of the mechanistic model, he points to gravity, means the failure of intelligibility. We do not know what is going on, how it all works together. — Fooloso4

Perhaps. But do we really understand pushing and pulling ? Or is it just something so familiar we are numb to it ? And isn't making a telephone call action at a distance ? My wife asks me to swing by the store on the way home for some potatoes. I do that. Magical ! And it is. And it isn't. That there is a here here at all is 'magical' and yet the statement is devoid of content.

Besides what would it be to 'explain' consciousness? — Wayfarer

One way to approach 'explaining consciousness' is maybe as getting clearer about it, becoming less confused. In my view, progress has been made over the years, though it's hard to imagine us finally being satisfied, especially if one posits that current conceptual norms are necessarily unstable, always falling forward (Brandom's take on Hegel).

What would we expect from an explanation? It seems to me the motive of a great deal of the theorising about consciousness is to dispell any lingering notion that it is something mysterious or inexplicable. After all it's right at the centre of your existence, so the suggestion that something this obvious and fundamental might be at the same time irreducible to the categories of the natural sciences can't be allowed to stand. So I suspect that a lot of attempts at explanation are motivated by that itch.

As for Chomsky's idea that we have no definition of the physical, he seems correct about that. Physical models are subject to constant revision and besides the 'standard model' of physics is known to be radically incomplete. I dispute that there is anything that can be described as purely or only physical. As an heuristic, it is useful for the description of the attributes and behaviours of 'medium size dry goods' but it can't be seen as anywhere near comprehensive or complete.

The term physical is just kinda like an honorific word, kinda like the word 'real' when we say 'the real truth'. It doesn't add anything, it just says 'this is serious truth'. So to say that something is 'physical' today just means 'you gotta take this seriously'. — Noam Chomsky

What would we expect from an explanation? It seems to me the motive of a great deal of the theorising about consciousness is to dispell any lingering notion that it is something mysterious or inexplicable. After all it's right at the centre of your existence, so the suggestion that something this obvious and fundamental might be at the same time irreducible to the categories of the natural sciences can't be allowed to stand. So I suspect that a lot of attempts at explanation are motivated by that itch. — Wayfarer

I do see an itch in some to demystify it, which has its pros and cons. Demystification can be good if it clears the path for inquiry. Mystification can sometimes look like a KEEP OUT sign.

It's worth noting though that Wittgenstein and Heidegger puts this mystery at the center, but in terms of the problem of being, which is arguably a deeper question (less Cartesian baggage which preinterprets beingthere, the being of the there, as a screen.)

:clap:

Great post.

I predict that dogs won't understand laptops for at least 1000 years. Why? They currently don't have such a capacity. Maybe by then they will be a different species who can use a laptop, but they won't be dogs anymore.

Still, we should be skeptical, we do have good evidence that ever since humans domesticated with dogs 15,000 years. In those 15,000 years, the only evidence of change in the species is one of phenotype, not one of cognitive capacities.



If such a being exists, it would know. Not a semantic issue. Dogs understand/know/are familiar with smells we cannot, that's just a biological fact. Same with Cats and night vision.

It sounds semantic because there are no other animals that possess symbolic representations associated with language use, therefore we use the best words we can to approximate what they do that we can't.



Thanks!

I dispute that there is anything that can be described as purely or only physical. — Wayfarer

:up:

So do I, and, for basically the same reason, I also dispute its shadow : the purely or only mental.

Hiya. I find it strange you addressed the dog analogy when I was clearly talking about the difficultly of us establishing our own limits.

Who can say ahead of time what we can manage ? How many times must the 'impossible' be achieved to make us doubt our doubt of ourselves ? Wittgenstein used going to the moon as an example of the impossible once. It was 'obviously' impossible, right ? — plaque flag

If such a being exists, it would know. Not a semantic issue. Dogs understand/know/are familiar with smells we cannot, that's just a biological fact. Same with Cats and night vision. — Manuel

That's not knowledge. I'm talking about (conceptual) knowledge not sniffs and glances.

What can we mean by saying Neptunians understand something like "how matter thinks" unless we also understand ? — plaque flag

I'm a fan of Chomsky, for what it's worth, but this little streak of his work is hard to endorse.

We know it can, but we don't see how it's possible. — Manuel

Also, for what it's worth, I don't agree that this claim should be taken for granted. I don't doubt that a number of thinkers locked in a certain conception of mind and matter are mystified by their relationships, but that may be because of their bad metaphysical assumptions. Variants of dualism are not the only options.

So do I, and, for basically the same reason, I also dispute the purely or only mental — plaque flag

They’re both nothing-but-isms. And since idealism is the original nothing-but-ism, and the physical is a concept, physicalism might also be described as a form of idealism. It’s a hasty projection of an ideal concept onto reality.

See this is the kind of content this site and frankly the world needs. Just got done watching the first video. I'm sure much of it went over my head, as did the interviewer's. However.

What intrigued me (from what I can recall, will definitely be rewatching it again soon):

"You can't answer what it's like to be a bat. You can't answer what it's like to be me. These are non-questions."

"You can't describe what it's like to watch a sunset".

"I look at the screen and I see what looks like a person but it's really just points of light."

"When you speak to me my brain can formulate and understand language. When my wife speaks in Portuguese all I hear is noise."

Why can't we? Any and all of these would be great points of discussion. He does seem to - from my limited understanding - appear to explain away consciousness as something fundamentally "unanswerable". The Mary in the black and white room thought experiment. Would she gain new knowledge? His answer was "sure if she was some sort of super intelligence able to formulate any and all formulae in a single glance, sure." implying we as humans will forever lack such ability? Or something. Really great stuff. Give it a watch if you haven't.

I like how we share a similar mentality on things "some things are unanswerable and so they are non-questions" or as I would say non-issues.

The bat question seems answerable but he overlays it with the assertion (and biological fact) one human's mind is not the same as this specific hypothetical bat's would be. Sure I can eat an insect and describe it. We know what it's like to fly. To sleep at night. We could hang upside down and get the sensation.

What I would ask him is to explain in more detail why we cannot, in his words "not describe what it's like to watch a sunset". An unanswerable and therefore "non-question". He continues to say "sure someone with more literary talent than [ I ] could write a book about it. But you can never describe it". Fascinating.

Really thought provoking. You guys should try to get him on here. Though the man is quite in his older years, has a family, and surely has more pertinent and desirable things to do before, what happens to all men. If only he wrote more books. Amazing to know there are still living legends among us.