Because, again, consciousness is not a physical thing. I am happy to grant that, physically speaking, there are entire organisms, there are atoms, there are neurons and brains, etc. But where in the physical world is consciousness? Answer: it's not there, it is nowhere to be found in the physical world. — NotAristotle
To assume that I am both conscious and just a physical thing and then to conclude that consciousness is just a physical thing would surely be begging the question. — NotAristotle
Because, again, consciousness is not a physical thing. — NotAristotle
...but we're being awfully sloppy here... — J
Just what is 'a physical thing'? — Wayfarer
↪Philosophim To assume that I am both conscious and just a physical thing and then to conclude that consciousness is just a physical thing would surely be begging the question. — NotAristotle
I too think that consciousness is likely a physical (specifically, biological) phenomenon, but we're being awfully sloppy here, in our talk about what "makes" a physical thing. Consider: Is Sherlock Holmes a physical thing? Everything that could possibly be said to comprise him is physical, but what about SH himself? I find it bizarre and counter-intuitive to say that SH, and any other World 3* phenomenon, must be called physical simply because a physical system produces it. — J
What of your own question begging?
Because, again, consciousness is not a physical thing.
— NotAristotle — wonderer1
Thoughts are physical, and this is backed by studies of the brain. — Philosophim
However, physical studies of the brain invariably fail to capture the subjective dimension of existence. In other words, this claim entirely overlooks the original point of this thread. — Wayfarer
Likewise, thought-contents, such as the meaning of propositions, can be represented in many different languages, systems, configurations of ideas, all the while retaining their meaning, — Wayfarer
There is the case of psycho-somatic medicine and the placebo effect, wherein subjects beliefs and emotional states have physical consequences. — Wayfarer
And all of these are physical things. "Hi" and "Olah" both mean a greeting with the physical difference of intonation and spelling. — Philosophim
All of it is physical. — Philosophim
But they're not. A sentence or a proposition is not a physical thing which is not meaningfully explicable in terms of physical laws. Language, for instance, is the subject of semiotics, linguistics, and other disciplines, but nothing within physics addresses any of that. — Wayfarer
When you read these words, you will interpret their meaning and compose a reaction (or not). That reaction has some physical elements - like the keys you depress to type, the appearance of letters on the screen - but the core is negotiating meanings, and that is not a physical process. — Wayfarer
Even if we allow that "a physical thought" isn't question-begging (it seems so to me), we still have to explain how an idea that depends on no particular brain for its instantiation can be called physical. — J
Did the law of the excluded middle come into being as a consequence of evolution? Surely not - what came into being was our capacity to recognise it. And a great deal of the basic 'furniture of reason' can be understood in those terms - they're not the products of biology, but can only be understood by a sufficiently sophisticated intelligence, which h. sapiens possesses. — Wayfarer
To conclude, cooperative anticipatory planning selects for reasoning abilities, which can apply to all domains of thinking, and reasoners urged to follow public norms for thought. With this result, let me return to the issue of deductive logic.
5 Outlook
Given the evolutionary explanation of hominin reasoning just outlined, what about positions like Schechter’s, which claim that there has been selection for deductive reasoning? As mentioned earlier, such positions mainly suffer from a lack of empirical evidence. Imagining “it would be most useful” is not an evolutionary argument. (Perhaps the situation is different with our tancestors—but, again, this is no help in explaining the phenomenon at issue.) So, what real arrangement of things would foster behavior sequences, which could only be planned by deductive reasoning rules? Which kind of entanglement could make necessary truth preservation a prerequisite? As argued in Section 2, there is no theoretical reason to think such a prerequisite was necessarily required during hominin evolution. So far, there also seems to be no empirical evidence for such an artifact in the niches of the Middle Pleistocene hunters. Hence, there is neither evidence for deductive rules as a universal “model” how the human mind works when engaged in reasoning activities nor much reason to believe in deductive logic as a yardstick for reasoning in general.
Nevertheless, we have deductive logic. Why is that? I would propose the following as a probable explanation. If my account is on the right track, the cognitive prerequisites for deductive logic indeed evolved during hominization. To wit, it is being able to reason domain-generally and being inclined to follow public norms in reasoning. However, as also argued above, such norms for reasoning get always established by local circumstances—based on needs but established as cultural artifacts.Footnote15 If true, the norms for deductive reasoning had to be established in a particular niche due to particular demands.
Following one historical exposition, the deductive method appeared late in human history,Footnote16 first invented, probably, by members of the Athenian elite 2500 years before present. It arose as a specific argumentative practice within debates: as dialogues with the element of persuading one another (Dutilh Novaes 2015: pp. 595–597, 2012; Netz 1999). Here, this method is advantageous. Granted both participants of a dialogue agree on a shared set of premises, any conclusion drawn by deductive steps from this set should be regarded as entirely compelling. Given a logically valid form, no counterexample can be given which would show that premises could be accepted, but the conclusion would remain open to being denied. Because no countermove is possible, the opponent must accept the conclusion or should revise one of his premises otherwise.
From this perspective, deductive reasoning is like reading, writing, or calculating a socially learned practice. Deductive reasoning is neither an evolved biological “constant” nor a “universal” of Homo sapiens’ mind. It is a cognitive ability to be inoculated by a certain practice and only open to those members of a population who has been brought to a specific learning environment. Hence, deductive logic must be inherited by a tradition, and only those who have learned it will be able to reason by deductive rules.Footnote17 In this sense, it is like any other piece of mathematical notation. We are not “hard-wired” to use analytical algebra, but once this cultural artifact is there and part of our niche, we can put it to use for all kinds of things. The same goes for deductive logic, as I propose here.
Of course its a physical process. You are physically typing, the physical transfer of binary information across the internet to my TV hooked up to my computer. I will read it with my physical eyes, my physical brain will process the information, and I'll type a physical reply. If I'm wrong, where am I wrong? — Philosophim
What is the non-physical part? A sub-space where my consciousness resides? — Philosophim
Even if we accept the impossibility of recognition of the value of the law of the excluded middle as a result of biological evolution, despite you simply asserting it, here is a paper suggesting it was a matter of cultural evolution. — wonderer1
Unless it is coupled with an independent basis for confidence in reason, the evolutionary hypothesis is threatening rather than reassuring. It is consistent with continued confidence only if it amounts to the hypothesis that evolution has led to the existence of creatures, namely us, with a capacity for reasoning in whose validity we can have much stronger confidence than would be warranted merely from its having come into existence in that way. I have to be able to believe that the evolutionary explanation is consistent with the proposition that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct--not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so. But to believe that, I have to be justified independently in believing that they are correct. And this cannot be merely on the basis of my contingent psychological disposition, together with the hypothesis that it is the product of natural selection. I can have no justification for trusting a reasoning capacity I have as a consequence of natural selection, unless I am justified in trusting it simply in itself -- that is, believing what it tells me, in virtue of the content of the arguments it delivers.
If reason is in this way self-justifying, then it is open to us also to speculate that natural selection played a role in the evolution and survival of a species that is capable of understanding and engaging in it. But the recognition of logical arguments as independently valid is a precondition of the acceptability of an evolutionary story about the source of that recognition. This means that the evolutionary hypothesis is acceptable only if reason does not need its support. At most it may show why the existence of reason need not be biologically mysterious.
The only form that genuine reasoning can take consists in seeing the validity of the arguments, in virtue of what they say. As soon as one tries to step outside of such thoughts, one loses contact with their true content. And one cannot be outside and inside them at the same time: If one thinks in logic, one cannot simultaneously regard those thoughts as mere psychological dispositions, however caused or however biologically grounded. — Thomas Nagel, op cit
And that is where Nagel's critique of evolutionary reductionism is salient. To seek to provide an account of reason, on some grounds other than the rational, is to call into question the sovereignty of reason. — Wayfarer
It's physical in some respects, but the salient point, our understanding of what is being said, the expression of intentional meaning - that is not a physical process. — Wayfarer
The interpretation of meaning. The constant, underlying, subliminal processes of 'this means that', 'this is that', 'this word has that meaning' - otherwise known as judgement. That is not a physical process. — Wayfarer
That is why Thomist philosophy (and Christianity generally) sees the human as a compound of body and soul (or psyche). Not that the soul exists objectively, but as the animating intelligence which makes the grasp of meaning possible. — Wayfarer
I can have no justification for trusting a reasoning capacity I have as a consequence of natural selection, unless I am justified in trusting it simply in itself -- that is, believing what it tells me, in virtue of the content of the arguments it delivers. — Thomas Nagel, op cit
But the recognition of logical arguments as independently valid is a precondition of the acceptability of an evolutionary story about the source of that recognition. This means that the evolutionary hypothesis is acceptable only if reason does not need its support. At most it may show why the existence of reason need not be biologically mysterious. — Thomas Nagel, op cit
It's not an empirical question, but a philosophical one. Although, there's the famous TED talk, My Stroke of Insight, Jill Bolte Taylor. She was a neuroscientist involved in brain-mapping who suffered a major stroke, which resulted in her attaining an insight into what she descibed as 'Nirvāṇa' (her 'stroke of insight') due to the left hemisphere of the brain shutting down. But note that this was a first-person experience - there would have been no way for her to tell, as a neuroscientist, what that experience might be in another subject, without having undergone it.But where is the evidence that its not? I don't mind the declaration, but there has to be evidence. If my brain bleeds do I not have a stroke? — Philosophim
Rationality is a capturing and understanding of the world that allows planning and use of that reality accurately. — Philosophim
Second, are computers not physical then? I can send a file from my computer to another. Does that mean the file isn't a set of physical 1's and zeros on my hard drive? Of course it is. Its obvious. — Philosophim
It's physical in some respects, but the salient point, our understanding of what is being said, the expression of intentional meaning - that is not a physical process.
— Wayfarer
But where is the evidence that its not? I don't mind the declaration, but there has to be evidence. — Philosophim
Does that mean the file isn't a set of physical 1's and zeros on my hard drive? Of course it is. Its obvious. — Philosophim
So your appeal to authority is particularly unpersuasive in this case. — wonderer1
I'm not being dismissive of it, I'm challenging it on the basis of arguments and citations. — Wayfarer
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