[The following is a brief debate between an eliminativist materialist regarding human intentionality and a realist with some follow up comments from others.]
[...] What really happened when you 'read my comment' is some photons from your monitor entered your eyes, stimulated your retina to emit action potentials that entered your brain, causing a cascade of neurological activity that eventually resulted in some neuromotor activity involving your hands and a keyboard. For the sake of brevity let's call this, as well as actual talking, writing, listening etc language related behavior. The fact that you perceive another thing perform a language related behavior does not in and of its self [sic] prove that that other thing is a person or has qualia or intentional stances. You have perceived your own body performing language related behaviors. You have perceived through introspection that your body is animated by a person or a soul or a spirit that has intentionality. You have perceived through introspection that your language related behavior is made possible by your person or soul or spirit. Therefore you infer that other entities that perform language related behaviors have a person or soul or spirit. That inference is only as good as your introspective self-perception of your own person or soul or spirit. So we come back to the question Scott Bakker asked in the Scientia Salon essay. How good is your introspection?
Even if I grant your introspective access to your own person or soul or spirit you don't have introspective access to the person or soul or spirit of any other entity. All you have regarding other entities is the same sensory access you have to any other physical object. That sensory access allows entities to predict and manipulate the actions of other entities. Nobody denies the utility of this folk psychology within the problem ecology of human social interaction. Whether sensory perception of other humans or introspective perception of one's self is useful for determining if human beings are different in kind from insects or rocks or wisps of gas in interstellar space remains to be seen.
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Source: Michael Murden, January 12, 2015 (8:35 p.m.), comment on Edward Feser, "Post-Intentional Depression," Edward Feser blog, January 11, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/01/post-intentional-depression.html?showComment=1421123719547#c6194622446704249448.
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If the whole argument is going to be based on the claim that intentionality is by nature unperceivable [sic], this needs to be established, not merely stated as if it were obvious; it is not, in fact, obvious, and is actively denied by quite a few positions. The notion that any appeal to intentionality depends entirely on introspection is little more than rhetorical sleight of hand, an attempt to rig the argument without actually putting reasons on the table.
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Source: Brandon, January 12, 2015 (8:53 p.m.), comment on Edward Feser, "Post-Intentional Depression," Edward Feser blog, January 11, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/01/post-intentional-depression.html?showComment=1421124815511#c9071637458603993425.
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What really happened when you 'read my comment' is some photons from your monitor entered your eyes, stimulated your retina to emit action potentials that entered your brain, causing a cascade of neurological activity that eventually resulted in some neuromotor activity involving your hands and a keyboard.
In other words, what happened is that some things happened that can only possibly be known by deliberately designed experiments whose achievement of their ends could be recognized in experience and used as part of causal reasoning to create theories which could be confirmed about the world.
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Source: Brandon, January 12, 2015 (9:01 p.m.), comment on Edward Feser, "Post-Intentional Depression," Edward Feser blog, January 11, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/01/post-intentional-depression.html?showComment=1421125304116#c8577801872991552212.
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[...] Have you ever perceived another person's intentionality? Did you perceive it through your physical senses or through some other modality? If so what was that other modality? I granted Scott's ability to perceive his own intentional states, although merely for the sake of argument. I denied his ability to perceive the intentional states of others. Are you claiming to be able to do so? Are you psychic? Can you read minds?
Regarding the 'read my comment' comment if the light were reflected from a sheet of papyrus in Egypt 3000 years ago the argument would be the same. The question of what happened is separate from the question how one determined what happened. The speed of light in a vacuum is independent of the means used to measure it. A scientist conducting neurolinguistics experiments is just an object interacting with other objects. You can't directly perceive his intentions. You can only infer them from his actions, unless you are psychic. And if you have some other method besides introspection for perceiving your own intentionality what is that other method?
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Source: Michael Murden, January 12, 2015 (10:16 p.m.), comment on Edward Feser, "Post-Intentional Depression," Edward Feser blog, January 11, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/01/post-intentional-depression.html?showComment=1421129811627#c5545533361839985761.
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Have you ever perceived photons, action potentials, neurophysiological cascades, the speed of light in a vacuum? Did you perceive them through your physical senses or some other modality? If so what was that other modality? And why are you repeatedly talking as if Scott said anything about introspective awareness being required?
You seem not to have read my comment very carefully; I didn't say anything about my own views, but pointed out (1) that your assumption is not in fact obvious and (2) that it is quite often actively denied. To take just one example out of a great many, Edith Stein's The Problem of Empathy is a book-long argument that it has to be denied. Thus you cannot reasonably go around pretending that you can get away with just stating it as if it were obvious.
You also seem to have missed the point of my second comment, which is that your claim about 'what really happened' does not in fact address the issue, which is that all these things you are claiming 'really happened' -- that usually means you are claiming that you know they happened, but since you are eliminating intentional language you must mean something else that you failed to state -- need to be reached in an eliminativist way. Most people get to them in an intentionalist way: they take them to be reached by scientific inquiry (both 'scientific' and 'inquiry' are terms appealing to intentionality) using experiments about various things ('experiment' being a term appealing to intentionality) that are deliberately designed ('deliberately' and 'designed' being terms appealing to intentionality) to achieve certain ends of inquiry (which is an appeal to intentionality) so that hypotheses and theories about the world (both 'hypothesis' and 'theory' being terms appealing to intentionality) which can be confirmed or disconfirmed (confirmation and disconfirmation are both forms of reasoning about how theories relate to what they are about, and therefore are appeals to intentionality) by reasoning about the possible causes of experimental effects ('reasoning about' being a phrase appealing to intentionality).
In short, your position commits you to the claim that what everyone calls science, including its complex of intentionality terms -- experiment, theory, hypothesis, confirmation, disconfirmation, prediction, correctness, model, etc. -- is not anything that really exists. So merely talking about neurons, photons, the speed of light in a vacuum, gets you nowhere, since these terms usually are regarded as meaningful and worth using only because everyone else subscribes to intentionalism with respect to scientific inquiry, which the eliminativist is committed to rejecting.
Thus despite your attempt to smear my pro-science view with the term 'psychic', you are the one actually appealing to clairvoyance: things happen in the world, which you can't actually claim to know anything about (because 'knowledge' is an intentional term) and this causes things to happen, which you treat as happening in your brain, that you don't actually know anything about, and your reason for holding this is not scientific (since 'scientific' is an intentional term) but just because things are happening that you don't know anything about and cannot give any reasons for. Unless, of course, you have an eliminativist account of what's really going on in the specific scientific experimentation that establishes all of these scientific concepts you are using, one that does not involve any of the intentionality that permeates how everyone else understands it?
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Source: Brandon, January 12, 2015 (10:49 p.m.), comment on Edward Feser, "Post-Intentional Depression," Edward Feser blog, January 11, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/01/post-intentional-depression.html?showComment=1421131799898#c536722236875251083.
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(1) The EMists position themselves as cutting-edge pro-science. But, paradoxically, actual scientific practices, and anything that gives us reason to scientific theories as reasons for anything (much less EM itself), vanishes completely. Almost everyone, including scientists doing science, interpret scientific practice in terms of intentionality. In the 1990s there was a vehement series of quarrels in philosophy of science that often get described as the Science Wars, between scientific realists and postmodernists. The latter got labeled as an anti-science view. But the postmodernists were doing with science exactly what the EMists think should be done with it: they eliminated all the intentionality-laden terms scientists like to use for what they are doing (truth, consistency, prediction), or else deflated them in various ways, and just talked about patterns of cause and effect. Even some of the justifications for doing this are exactly the same.
(2) The EMists position themselves as pricking any idea that human beings are special. But because they tend to present themselves as seeing through the human illusion, they repeatedly fall into the trap of talking as if they had an immediate God's-eye view of what the universe must be independently of any human perspective. This was part of what I was pointing out with my comments to Michael Murden, whose account kept appealing to what was 'really happening' in terms that are usually only regarded as having any value for describing what is 'really happening' on the bases of reasoning explicitly involving intentionality. (Certainly prediction and confirmation are both always understood to be reasoning appealing to intentionality.) This wouldn't be a problem if they could give a non-intentionality account of how the science works, but they have no model for doing so. Without such a model, they could only know their position is right by a sort of clairvoyance. They see themselves as giving an account of 'what really happens', but cut out any obvious way by which they could actually know 'what really happens'.
(3) This leads to the weird situation that they tend to justify their position on grounds that on their own view they apparently can't treat as justifying anything. And this is where the 'tu quoque' issue that these EMists, at least, seem obsessed with, arises -- of course, people are not, in fact, engaging in tu quoque but either (a) pointing out that EMists haven't given something that they need to give or (b) raising worries about epistemic self-defeat that need to be addressed. Either of these, of course, can only be handled by giving an eliminativist account of the grounds for thinking that eliminativism is true -- which they keep trying not to have to give.
(4) And we see in the comment noted by Jeremy Taylor that at least some of them explicitly formulate their position in terms that eliminates any possibility of taking their position to be true, coherent, or reasonable; and yet they still keep trying to claim that everyone else is engaging in logical fallacies, is saying something false, or does not have reasons for their view.
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Source: Brandon, January 14, 2015 (3:07 p.m.), comment on Edward Feser, "Post-Intentional Depression," Edward Feser blog, January 11, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/01/post-intentional-depression.html?showComment=1421276831305#c5948348892429904358.
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EM (or [Paul] Churchland at least) acknowledges that truth will have to be dispensed with. There must be a successor concept to truth, one that doesn't presuppose intentionality. But until that successor notion is given, what exactly is EM trying to accomplish? Its proponents know that they can't say, "EM is true." So what on earth do they want to say about their theory? If EM has an acknowledged reliance on a replacement of truth, which has not yet been given, how can I hope to make sense of it? I will grant that, if you give me the new concept, I'll attend to it and see if it is adequate. But until then, what do you want me to do? Why are we having this conversation? We can acknowledge together that we aren't so naive as to say that the goal is that I "believe" EM.
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Source: Greg, January 16, 2015 (7:42 a.m.), comment on Edward Feser, "Post-Intentional Depression," Edward Feser blog, January 11, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/01/post-intentional-depression.html?showComment=1421422972531#c2593694274113175137.
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It's as thought one of the easiest arguments against EM is trying to believe it. Because then you realize that you can't believe it and aren't supposed to. So then you look for the alternative: Maybe it's true, even though I can't believe it. But that's not right either, since we need to replace truth. So then we hope: EM is ______ even though it's not true. But what is ______? It's some "nice" relation that holds between EM qua theory and reality. But can it even be a relation, or are relations intentional?
This might be why EM rhetoric relies so much on science posturing and charges of illusion and question begging. It can't be said "This theory is true" or "These true statements provide evidence for this theory". So rather one 'argues' for EM indirectly, without enjoining people to 'belief'. But I can't understand how I could ever "accept" EM. Here is Bakker:
I think this is the most important topic of our day, and not only that, I out and out hate the consequences of my own view!
What are the consequences of EM? There can't be consequences of EM being true. If there are consequences, they are consequences of EM being ______ (to be filled in with truth's successor concept). So without that successor concept we don't even know what the relation is between EM and reality; there are no consequences of which we are aware.
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Source: Greg, January 16, 2015 (8:08 a.m.), comment on Edward Feser, "Post-Intentional Depression," Edward Feser blog, January 11, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/01/post-intentional-depression.html?showComment=1421424511307#c4999321254701894055.
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[...] EM will also have to give an account of just how, if EM is true, "terms" can have "senses" at all.
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Source: Scott, January 16, 2015 (8:28 a.m.), comment on Edward Feser, "Post-Intentional Depression," Edward Feser blog, January 11, 2015, accessed June 30, 2015, http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2015/01/post-intentional-depression.html?showComment=1421425708238#c4000786231632866561.
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