Certainly, Chomsky should be quite familiar with how academia, religion, and other economic forces sell to direct and enforce ideas for their own benefit. He had been subject to much of these forces as was Descartes. Philosophical ideas are embraced and promoted by big money when it serves it's purposes.

While physicalism had been pretty much destroyed by quantum physics you wouldn't know it from standard academic curriculum.

But Descartes was rich.

That's how you become rich. You do what the money wants you to do and you don't lose your head doing it. Descartes walked the line quite nicely.

It's tough finding really original and forward thinking works of people. Such people are quickly marginalized, ostracized, and banished.

I think Descartes' concept of mind is an inevitable side effect of physicalism. It provides a point of reference.

Mongrel, can you link Chomsky's piece here? I'm guessing this is one thing and not an overview of Chomsky's statements involving Descartes over time.

Yep. Its from a speech.

Yep. Its from a speech — Mongrel

Thanks, it looks fairly long (nearly 2 hours). I'll watch it and write my thoughts later. :)

Cool. I look forward to it. I need to watch it again. I was doing something else while listening the first time.

Okay I watched it. Chomsky was very clear that there is no mental-physical distinction because there is no physical. He gave credence to mechanism though when describing the mind. I think more focus needs to be on what the very definition of a "mechanism" is and what it can't be.
Consciousness always appears singular and so by definition couldn't be a mechanism because it is without parts. The argument from the anthropic-mechanists (Dennett) would be that the appearance is an illusion, although the illusion can have causal effect which in new-mechanism isn't a problem since the produce of the mechanisms can alter them (new-mechanism accomodates system science).
I think the challenge then would be to discover other irreducible things in nature like the holistic 1st person pov, or accept consciousness as a special snowflake (which is close to original substance dualism).

At the end of his paper on Language and Nature, Chomsky grumbles about dualistic language, used to study language and mind using 'non-naturalistic assumptions'. Perhaps, he says, 'our common sense picture of the world is profoundly dualistic, ineradicably...If so, and if metaphysical dualism has been undermined, what is left is a kind of methodological dualism, an illegitimate residue of common sense that should not be allowed to hamper efforts to gain understanding into what kind of creatures we are.'

For myself I see this as in its turn probably mistaken. A way of speaking, writing, thinking is likely not going to come in which such dualism is magicked away. We are pluralist creatures and we like it that way.

So I don't see Chomsky as providing a 'solution' except by trying to ride roughshod over ways of thinking and speaking that are indeed ineradicable.

Cool. Thanks!

We are pluralist creatures and we like it that way. — mcdoodle

(Y) So do you agree that Descartes' dualism was in some ways a response to the scientific revolution? The rise of physicalism brought the concept of mind into sharp relief?

Before I answer, a terminology comment:

"Physicalism" is an unfortunate word, because of its two distinct meanings...a philosophy-of-mind meaning, and a metaphysical meaning. So I've begun to say "Materialism" instead of (metaphysical) "Physicalism", and I'd use a substitute for (philosophy-of-mind) "Physicalism" if there's a suitable one.

Maybe my term "Animal-ness" is a good substitute for "philosophy-of-mind Physicalism".

...or maybe the abbreviation-acronym "pomp".

I'll start using one or the other, or maybe alternating them..

like the way Chomsky sets the stage for understanding Descartes' concept of mind. He says Descartes was firstly a scientist living during the scientific revolution (read physicalism). Descartes made progress seeing humans as machines, but couldn't complete the project due to volition. He could see no way to mechanize it. — Mongrel

Yes, the old "Hard-Problem-Of-Consciousness". ...a nonsensical, non-existent, philosopher-imagined "problem".

If Descartes perceived humans and other animals as purposefully-responsive devices, he was right.

If he thought that that somehow contradicts volition or consciousness, then he was wrong...like a proud tradition of head-up-the _ _ _ academic philosophers who followed him.

As I've explained, there's nothing in our experience that differs from or contradicts or is inconsistent with how our surroundings, feelings, intents and efforts would be perceived by the purposefully-responsive device that we are.

Michael Ossipoff

... the problem [ :) ]facing Descartes. What do you think of his solution?

I can't believe that the blatantly unparsimonious Dualism is still being considered, or the various silly Spiritualist circumlocutions used by some modern followers of his.

Michael Ossipoff

There have been objections to my calling philosophical Dualists "Spiritualists"

All right, I take it back.

It's unfair to the Spiritualists.

At least they usually only express their belief about people after death. ...whereas philosophical Dualists believe in an unparsimonious division of theliving animal into body and Mind, or body and Soul or Spirit.

I've admitted that we are, or closely approach, pure consciousness at the end of lives (or at the end of this life, if you don' t believe in reincarnation), though we're obviously nothing other than the animal during life.

Michael Ossipoff

I think Nagel's book, Mind and Cosmos, has the best overall summary of the problems arising from Cartesian dualism:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. (pp. 35-36)

The problem wasn't really from Descartes, as from the separation of primary (i.e. 'measurable') qualities from secondary (including mental) attributes. The rejection of the mental by consigning it to the internal, subjective or personal sphere, is where the problem lies. But know that all materialists - which in the modern academy is most people - still obtain to this basic view.

Note also that the Critique of Pure Reason puts 'mind' back in the centre of things, because of its role in organising perception and making judgement. Which is why that book is the key antidote to materialism, not that most people get that.

Our thinking is already "dualistic", as expressed ontologically by all things being just themselves, and not anything else, including our (individuated) selves versus whatever else.

As mentioned by , there's nothing contradictory in that, except when messing up anything with anything else, self with other, ...

Maybe "'partitioning' thinking" is better wording, e.g. self-awareness versus not-self/other.

We're still part of the same world, along with whatever else, though.

Gravity was originally presented without any clarity about its essence or composition. So how is the concept understood? By understanding the bigger picture it's a part of.

Same thing with mind? What is Descartes' bigger picture? What is the Cartesian problem?

Our thinking is already "dualistic", as expressed ontologically by all things being just themselves, and not anything else, including our (individuated) selves versus whatever else. — jorndoe

That really has no bearing on dualism, JD. Descartes' model was an abstraction: let's say the world comprises two substances, one extended but unthinking (matter), the other thinking but not extended (mind). These two are exhaustive and exclusive, i.e. everything that exists consists of just these substances and nothing else. God is pure intelligence, matter is pure extension. and us humans are a combination of both. (In Descartes' thinking, animals are purely mechanical, as depicted in this well-known engraving):

You wrote:
.

Our thinking is already "dualistic", as expressed ontologically by all things being just themselves, and not anything else, including our (individuated) selves versus whatever else.

.
Dualistic in the sense that there are all those things, and us, instead of Advaita’s single Fundamental Existent.
.
But, in Western philosophy, doesn’t Dualism have a narrower meaning, and refer only to the separation of us, the animal, into body, and a separate different substance, Mind?
.

there's nothing contradictory in that, except when messing up anything with anything else, self with other, ...

,
.
But I’m not mixing separate things. I’m just not unnecessarily separating, dissecting, the animal (including us humans) into artificially separate body and Consciousness.
.
Our self consists of an animal, the whole unitary animal.
.

Maybe "'partitioning' thinking" is better wording, e.g. self-awareness versus not-self/other.

.
But when it partitions the animal into separate body and Consciousness, then I feel that it’s artificial and unnecessary, and therefore unparsimonious.
.

We're still part of the same world, along with whatever else, though.

.
Quite so. The possibility world that we all live in is the setting for each of our separate life-experience possibility-stories.
.
And it could be asked (Locks implied this question), how is it that all of our life-experience possibility-stories are set in this same possibility-world.
.
Well, why not, and how could it be otherwise?
.
Obviously there must be a species that you’re a member of, and it must have other individuals in your world.
.
There are infinitely-many life-experience possibility-stories. So it’s no surprise that there’s one for each possible being, including every being in the possibility-world that is the setting for your life-experience possibility-story.
.
Of course you don’t experience any other being’s life-experience story, in this world or any other. But it’s obvious that there’s a life-experience story for every possible being, including each of those other beings in the possibility-world that is the setting for your life-experience possibility-story. …including each being on this forum. Intuitively, and by social instinct, you know that each of them is an inhabitant of this world in the same way that you are, and has at least roughly similar experience in it (within the large diversity of human character and circumstances, of course).
.
Michael Ossipoff

I meant to answer one additional aspect of what you said:

As you said, my life-experience possibility-story includes a lot of things other than me, and those things and I are all part this life-experience possibility-story.

But I’m central to my life-experience story, primary to it, and its essential component. It’s about me, and for me, after all.

(But that isn’t egotism—your life-experience story is about and for you, too.)

Maybe, instead of “for”, I could say, “From the point of view of”. But, “for” is alright too, and could be regarded as a more personally-perceived way of saying the same thing.

Why you’re in this life, or any life at all:

Your centrality and essentialness to your life-experience possibility-story means that your own predispositions, inclinations, needs, wants, etc., and your sense of individuality (something reportedly not possessed by the most life-experienced people, who have completed their lives, and completed/discharged all of the above things, and even their sense of individuality) made you someone about whom there could be a life-experience story…and that’s the reason why you’re in a life. …because there’s one about someone who meets your description and is you.

Michael Ossipoff

Quite so. The possibility world that we all live in is the setting for each of our separate life-experience possibility-stories.
.
And it could be asked (Locks implied this question), how is it that all of our life-experience possibility-stories are set in this same possibility-world. — Michael Ossipoff

This is what happens when the reality of dualism is denied, we end up with possibility worlds. Then instead of dualism we have infinitism.

So do you agree that Descartes' dualism was in some ways a response to the scientific revolution? The rise of physicalism brought the concept of mind into sharp relief? — Mongrel

I think 'physicalism' is the wrong word here. I'm sure that 'dualism' was in some ways a response to the scientific revolution. But as I understand it in the 17th Century the belief in the immateriality of the soul was no different from how it had been for many centuries (with views differing about whether the soul survived the human death). Robert Boyle, for instance, only a bit younger than Descartes, was confident of an immaterial realm.

My understanding of physicalism is that it denies the immaterial, and takes non-physical explanations (which tend to be called 'mental', though I'm never clear where the 'social' fits in either, let alone the 'aesthetic' or 'spiritual' or other ways of describing types of discourse) to supervene on the physical. Sorry if this is all obvious to you.

I've just been reading a book by Emmanuel Levinas, and his mid-20th century version of this cleavage is that the scientific/mathematical view is 'totalising', in that it aims for a completion that it believes to be reachable (very like the Adorno/Horkheimer postwar view), whereas the phenomenological view, the I-view, is 'infinite', unbounded and unbound-able by the totalising view, characterised instead by an excess over mathematizing explanation.

Actually I don't understand why some of the qualitative methods of social science can't be used to tackle scientifically supposedly intractable areas like 'consciousness'. A mix of objectivising data with diaries, focus groups and spontaneous remarks by individuals about how things happen from the 'I' - 'my' point of view seems to me perfectly valid, it's how we better understand lots of social phenomena. But the Chalmers' school have a natural-type science in their sights, which feels like a fruitless exercise, although the apo semiotics model is an interesting one. But this is wandering off into another thread :)

But I’m not mixing separate things. I’m just not unnecessarily separating, dissecting, the animal (including us humans) into artificially separate body and Consciousness. — Michael Ossipoff

That was the point (sort of). :)
What choice do we have but the usual local 1^st person perspective? There's no self-escape, no becoming whatever else. We're already, always bound by identity, which sets the stage for "dualistic" (or "partitioned") thinking, like this one:

• self: mind, consciousness, self-awareness, feelings, map-making, ...
• other: the perceived, the modeled, the encountered, the territories, ...

Hence Levine's explanatory gap. The troubles begin when taking this to mean substance dualism:

Watch. I decide consciously to raise my arm, and the damn thing goes up. (Laughter) Furthermore, notice this: We do not say, "Well, it's a bit like the weather in Geneva. Some days it goes up and some days it doesn't go up." No. It goes up whenever I damn well want it to. — Searle

• Source: Our shared condition — consciousness, John Searle, TEDxCERN

Consciousness always appears singular and so by definition couldn't be a mechanism because it is without parts. — JupiterJess

Of course consciousness has parts. When you close your eyes, you are still conscious but have removed part of the conscious experience. People who are deaf, or have lost feeling in certain parts of their bodies have also lost part of their consciousness. When you lose part of your consciousness, you lose part of your awareness of the world.

As I read your last post I got this picture of a problem (for lack of a better word) appearing over and over in different guises. It's like a pendulum swinging or oceanic tides... an on-going dance between some form of naturalism and some form of idealism. Volition, qualia, boundlessness involved in a love/hate relationship with mechanical cause and effect.

In the light of that, the Cartesian problem is a perennial problem. It turns out that it can't be merely in the context of Descartes' challenges that we understand his use of mind. But instead we recognize that he used that word for a reason. Grasping that reason isn't so straight forward because attempting to grasp it, one finds oneself enmeshed in holism.

Chomsky insists that all languages have essentially the same features. In a sense, there is only one underlying language. This fundamental language is not a tool that developed for practical reasons. It's an expression of something basic about humanity. And for this reason, we can have some confidence that if we time-traveled to ancient Sumeria and struck up a conversation about mind with the locals, they would fairly easily understand what we mean, though the problems they deal with are very different from our own.

As I read your last post I got this picture of a problem (for lack of a better word) appearing over and over in different guises. It's like a pendulum swinging or oceanic tides... — Mongrel

Me too, although I'm not sure I'd come to the same conclusion as you :) One thing about the modern era is the idea of 'fact'. I remember when I was just an innocent lamb in the old forum, having a disagreement with Banno about whether one could time-travel to the 16th century and still more-or-less understand one another, or if changes in language and norms would make mutual understanding impossible. To me something hinged on 'fact', invented in the 16th century and not having an ancient equivalent. Chaucer's entire oeuvre didn't know of facts!

I wonder if 'mind' is in the same sort of category :)

As always, it depends on your presuppositions. Chomsky is saying that evidence points to language being an innate capability. That leads him to say there is one fundamental language. So Chomsky would be preoccupied with the way we can work around differences in languages. And (maybe provocatively) it implies that we understand each other because of this shared innate ability. So he owns internalism without qualification.

Isn't that really the more prevalent viewpoint now?

Of course consciousness has parts. When you close your eyes, you are still conscious but have removed part of the conscious experience. People who are deaf, or have lost feeling in certain parts of their bodies have also lost part of their consciousness. When you lose part of your consciousness, you lose part of your awareness of the world. — Harry Hindu

It gets its data from numerous sensory organs, yes, but is "presented" as a single part like a movie.
Movies are themselves illusions which is what eliminativists like Dennett argue consciousness is.

To be more thorough what I meant in my last reply.
I am referring to the phenomenological first person unity (what is known as the binding or combination problem in neuroscience) countered against the (new) mechanistic take on on the phenomena. There is an epistemic description of emergence existing in system science (new mechanism).
Roger Sperry's wheel is a good example of that: "Sperry cites a wheel rolling downhill as an example of downward causal control. The atoms and molecules are caught up and overpowered by the higher properties of the whole. He compares the rolling wheel to an ongoing brain process or a progressing train of thought in which the overall properties of the brain process, as a coherent organizational entity, determine the timing and spacing of the firing patterns within its neural infrastructure."

But ontologically they are just parts acting on each other in extremely complex interdependent ways, yet we (individually) have an ontological experience of unity (combination problem).
It may be possible to diminish consciousness gradually but that won't change the times it did exist as a single thing. Descartes only discovered the separation (mind - body separation) through meditation, not out walking or something.

This is what happens when the reality of dualism is denied, we end up with possibility worlds. Then instead of dualism we have infinitism. — Metaphysician Undercover

There's no reason to believe in the reality of Dualism.

You don't like possibility-worlds? My metaphysics based on possibility-worlds is completely parsimonious. No assumptions or brute-facts.

You can't say that about Dualism or Materialism.

Michael Ossipoff