Wittgenstein and pictures

The philosopher Ray Monk has this article about Wittgenstein and his preference for pictures (as opposed to words). There is an exhibit at the London School of Economics with the theme of pictures and Wittgenstein. While I seem to have some disagreements with Monk about his interpretation of the Tractatus (but who am I to disagree with Monk?) and about his view that philosophers don't draw a distinction between propositions, thoughts and language (they do and some would assert that even pictures have propositional content), I am reminded by his article of Jaakko Hintikka's claim long ago that Wittgenstein's notorious struggles with language, his related dogged focus on illuminating the mysteries thereof and his preference for pictorial representation (which is a sensibility he kept throughout his life) was a result of dyslexia.

The extended mind and the self

Some philosophers of mind such as David Chalmers and Andy Clark have defended what is called an extended mind theory (actually there are many kinds of extended mind theories) which claim that our minds are not just physically located in our heads. Some theorists posit that it is a system that is a combination of subsystems such as the brain combined with the rest of the central nervous system and perhaps also combined with the rest of the body (The neuroscientists Antonio Damasio, if I remember correctly, also defended such a view in one of his books). Some others have posited that even the surrounding environment can be included in the whole system which is either identified with the mind or has properties which the mind supervenes. Chalmers and Clark defend a process view which says that the mind extends to the interactive process (not the system per se) between the central nervous system and the immediate environment mediated by the sense organs, etc.

This is troublesome for the brain view of personal identity. I like that view and I believe Jeff McMahon has defended such a view very admirably. I think it is the best view and it justifies many of the medical practices we have today in the US such as our laws regarding brain death and abortion, very important ethical issues.

I wonder if there is a way to keep the ethical benefits of a brain view taking into account the criticisms of such a view from the extended mind theory.

Twins and pain redux

Awhile ago I had a post about Wittgenstein's conjoined twin and pain argument. I argued against W that if materialism is true then he is wrong. Looks like the empirical evidence says that philosophers share that intuition but the folk do not. It's no surprise that W would favor the folk over the philosophers.

The mind, brain and the world

Assume that mind-brain reductionism is true. Assume, as many cognitive scientists, philosophers and neuroscientists and laymen that thoughts are merely structures of actively firing neuronal networks and memories are inactive networks of neuronal networks.

I claim tentatively that this seems to be a limitation on realism. If scientific theories are formal representations of a belief of set of beliefs about the world and beliefs are thoughts, there seems to be inbuilt limitations on how accurate our all theories can represent the world. Our brains are finite. It is composed of 100 billion interconnected neurons. Even if each neuron can be a single thought, our theories might ultimately be deficient or fine grained enough to represent the world if the world is at its most fundamental level, too fine grained, nuanced, sophisticated to be represented by such a neuronal networks. There should be a large but finite number of structures built up from basic thoughts or single neuron firings (2^100 billion(?)).

So if reality is much more nuanced in its structure than the brain is capable of forming structural isomorphisms with, there seems also to be limitations to our understanding of the world. Our theories may approach a perfectly accurate description of the world but never get there even in theory. It will have inherent limitations. If the universe is infinitely fine grained (detailed) and all that detail is interconnected in a way that it matters for an accurate description of it to represent the interconnection and more fundamental levels are required for explaining less the fundamental, then the brain will never represent reality in its essence. Even if the universe is not infinitely fine-grained (considered as gunky) or there are possible representational simplifications that retain complete accuracy but that these are sufficiently so beyond the capacities of the brain's flexibility to represent it, it will still be the case that our theories will always be strictly speaking false and that there is upper limit to how further accurate our understanding of the world can get.

My idea is predicated on a kind of representational theory of mind. The analogy (and it's a rough analogy) is with cameras. The picture resolution of a digital camera is dependent on the number of pixels it fits on a picture. The picture's resolution is limited by that number. Reality is presumably continuous but if there is enough pixels, a picture can approach a representation of some parts of the world (the scene represented in the photo). But there may be things in the world the camera cannot accurately represent due to limitations in the resolution power (for example, very fine print at some distance) and lack of pixels it can fit in a picture. The brain has analogous limitations assuming the assumptions mentioned above is true.

What I'd like to see from XPhi

I've talked about the (de)merits of XPhi here. I mentioned that there are potential philosophically important uses of X-Phi. Here's two relevant questions I'd like to see it answer and I think are of important philosophical relevance.

From what I argued in my previous posts (see here and here) about the knowledge argument, I'd like to see an experiment comparing survey responses of two linguistic groups: a group composed of native language speakers of a language that does not recognize the color red as a unique primary color but a shade of some supercolor such as "dark." The other group does recognize red as a primary color such as native English speakers. The speakers of the language that doesn't recognize red should be from a group that also has not had much influence from western culture or any cultures that partitions the color spectrum in a different way.

Of course that will be hard and in practice no culture is so discrete from the linguistic and cultural influence of others but there still are some cultures that are relatively isolated. Many speakers of the Trans-New Guinea languages are so isolated even today. They would be a good group to sample because as I've mentioned, they only recognize two basic primary colors (dark and light). They would serve as a good comparison group with Native English speakers, e.g. To test their intuitions on the knowledge argument compared to the control group of native English speakers would be a good way, in my view, to see if there is anything substantive and sound about it. Let's say that the non control group doesn't think that Mary learns anything new once she sees the apple for the first time, that would go in some ways in showing that it is conceivable Mary learns nothing new when she sees red for the first time. The knowledge argument, like many arguments in metaphysics and especially the philosophy of mind, are based on conceivability constraints. By showing that our own intuitions are culturally/linguistically biased, it may go in some way to show that it is conceivable that Mary did not learn anything new contra the early Jackson and his supporters.

Alternatively, I also am interested in some of the debate in the notion of civility. The concept and role of civility has taken on some popularity among moral philosophers in the last 20 years.

Brian Leiter has a nice short paper on role of civility in democracy. He argues that civility, or at least the demand for it from all parties in society, though important and justified in many social circumstances, can sometimes get in the way of democratically important process. I share this view. There is something deeply suspect about those who focus on and demand civility in the face of deeper and more important issues. I call these people the "Tone Nazis" or "Tone police" for their preoccupation with the tone of one's message instead of the content. I always felt that, in some sense, these people that demand unconditional civility to all parties, even the most irrational and dogmatic ones, were complicit in processes detrimental for a democratic society. They may also be, despite their good intentions, complicit in furthering some loathsome views by (unintentionally) giving them and their supporters respect they are not due.

Civility is not owed to many people who are obstinately ignorant in the face of reason. We sometimes think that everyone is owed some bear minimum civility but no one has really questioned if this is really the case. Many of us already have intuitions that civility is not owed to certain persons such as Nazis or rabid racists but why should it end there? Certainly there are lots of people that are as obstinately ignorant as Nazis and not owed any civility. Many people in society are probably not owed civility in all circumstances. A demand for civility toward those individuals holding intractable and unreasonable views either by them or those who may disagree but still think those opinions and those who hold them deserve some "respect" may hinder such fundamentally important democratic processes such as sincere and reasoned public discourse. If you take a look at many of the religious right or political rightwing fundies, they are almost without exception, incapable of responding to rational debate. I think that this common belief that we should have "respect" for completely unreasonable people and views even when they are held in the face of overwhelming counter evidence is a sign of a harmful postmodern influence in our society. Not all opinions are worthy of our epistemic esteem. Not all people are worthy of respect especially if those people hold on to their unreasonable opinions in the face of overwhelming counter evidence.

Leiter argues that for people like these, there is no obligation to be civil to them. The question that follows is whether it makes sense from a consequentialist perspective to be uncivil to them. That is, whether or not it will help them to change their ways by being uncivil to them. If it doesn't help them in making them more reasonable people (either not changing them or even making them less reasonable) then despite the fact that we don't owe them any civility, it may not make sense to be uncivil to them. But if it can be shown empirically that being uncivil actually works better in making them more tractable and reasonable, then it follows that we should act in uncivil ways towards them (since we are not obligated to treat them with civility).

I would like to see an experiment testing if uncivil (and there may be lots of indexes that measure uncivil behavior) behavior is more efficacious in getting unreasonable people to change their views in the face of overwhelming counter evidence. There are some studies already done showing that, for example, conservatives actually tend to hold on to their demonstrably false beliefs even more strongly when they have been disabused with the light of reality. See here. In these studies, the evidence is presented in a dispassionate way to test subjects. But if it is presented in a more passionate, direct, and perhaps what some would consider an uncivil medium, I wonder if conservatives would react the same way (that is, with an increased conviction in their original views instead of changing or updating their previous views to accommodate the new evidence). To what degree of uncivil behavior would change their views? Are all kinds of uncivil behavior equally efficacious or equally ineffective?

I suspect that for the most part, in cases where there is one person delivering the strongly or "uncivilly" worded counter argument, it will tend to be slightly more effective than dispassionate or respectfully worded messages of the same content in getting the intractable and unreasonable test subjects to come to their senses. There already some evidence to support this. This may be especially true if the message is repeated in the same tone. I also suspect that if there is a second party, a confederate of the deliverer of the message who explicitly backs up the message in equally a harsh tone, the test subject will be even more likely to change her views in the face of that message (in fact, I think she will be far more likely here than when there is just one person delivering the message). I don't know if any additional confederate beyond two will substantially make it more likely the test subject will change but I suspect that if it does it won't be as much as the increase from one to two. I also predict that this "bandwagon affect" is more pronounced in self-described conservatives than in liberals and that conservatives are more likely to change their views when the message is presented uncivilly than in more moderate or dispassionate tones than liberals.

Some of these last predictions are based on my personal experience so are quite speculative, obviously. I would really like to see if there's any truth to them.

The knowledge argument revisted

In my post on the knowledge argument, one response in the comments section argued that my argument only argued against red qualia (or any color qualia not light or dark since all known linguistic communities have at least these two basic color concepts/terms) and thus not effective against Jackson's argument against physicalism. Her example is that we may think of someone who is raised in an all white environment. Assuming that it is possible to do so without any shades of white such as coming from shadows or from closing of one's eyes etc, I think this approach misses the rhetorical point of my argument.

The argument I made is meant to show that the quintessential example of a color qualia (red in Jackson's example) can be doubted that it has the private property it is alleged to have by culturally relativising red. If red qualia goes by way of relativism, what is to stop all color qualia including light or dark qualia going with it? What makes these more special as qualia that red is not? Now the burden is at least shifted. That was the intended rhetorical point of my argument.

There ain't nothin' about Mary

The knowledge argument purports to show that physicalism is false. The arguments exploits our intuition that Mary learns something new when she sees red for the first time for its rhetorical force. But if we can show that that intuition may not shared for a group with different native linguistic-conceptual color scheme the argument may lose much of its persuasiveness. The linguistic color scheme one employs is a historical contingency. It may have been that one was born into a society that employs a different scheme. If one's intuitions on philosophical issues turn out to be different based on that contingency, that would cast some doubt as to the substantiveness of findings based on that intuition. The argument goes something like this:

Mary is a brilliant scientist who is, for whatever reason, forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor. She specializes in the neurophysiology of vision and acquires, let us suppose, all the physical information there is to obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes, or the sky, and use terms like ‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on. She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal chords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is blue’.… What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not? It seems just obvious that she will learn something about the world and our visual experience of it. But then is it inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had allthe physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and Physicalism is false. (From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article “The Knowledge Argument)

Before I turn to my basic argument, I need to give a little primer on linguistic relativism. It has been known to linguists that many language groups have different color terms than ours. For example, native English and modern Chinese speakers both have the same number of basic color terms and both languages partition the color spectrum in essentially the same way but other languages do not partition the color spectrum the same way.

Similarly, languages are selective when deciding which hues are split into different colors on the basis of how light or dark they are. English splits some hues into several distinct colors according to lightness: such as red and pink or orange and brown. To English speakers, these pairs of colors, which are objectively no more different from one another than light green and dark green, are conceived of as belonging to different categories.[1] A Russian will make the same red-pink and orange-brown distinctions, but will also make a further distinction between sinii and goluboi, which English speakers would simply call dark and light blue. To Russian speakers, sinii and goluboi are as separate as red and pink or orange and brown. (wiki article on color terms. See also wiki article “linguistic relativity and the color naming debate” and “linguistic relativity”)

Some languages such as certain Trans-New Guinea languages only have two basic color terms (dark and light!) and all colors are considered a shade of those two basic colors. Likewise, some languages have more than we do and native speakers tend to speak of, and presumably think of, more basic colors concepts. Keep in mind that it has been shown by anthropologists and cognitive psychologists that people all over the world can see and make color distinctions the same way we do (unless they are colorblind of course). It's the way that they partition and group the colors on the spectrum that is culturally/linguistically distinctive. It should be noted that "color relativism," that is, this notion that color term differences reflect differences in cognitive differences in color concept classification and that this classification is in turn a function of cultural/linguistic norms is still a controversial thesis among linguists, anthropologists and cognitive scientists. But if the relativists are correct, even partially, my argument follows.

My skeptical question as relating to the issue of color qualia is this: let's say that there is someone, call him Larry, who has lived an otherwise normal life except that for whatever reason, Larry has never seen a particular shade of yellow before. This shade only spans one nanometer on the color spectrum and may be a rare shade of yellow so it may not be a big deal that Larry has yet seen such a shade. One day he comes across this shade which we will call 'mellow.' Has Larry learned anything new by perceiving mellow for the first time? Has he learned anything new much as Mary presumably learns upon seeing red?

It seems that most folks would say "no.” If mellow is similar enough to a shade of yellow Larry is familiar with, Larry may not even realize he is seeing a shade of yellow he has never encountered before. It would be a wholly uneventful event for Larry. The “no” answer seems plausible for assume that the answer is yes. Larry gains a new color concept corresponding to the qualia associated with mellow. He has a new color experience analogous to the first experience of seeing red in the original knowledge argument. The color segment of the color spectrum may be divided into shades and these shades may be further divided into sub-shades of those sub-shades further divided and so on perhaps ad infinitum (I'm assuming that the color spectrum is continuous but even if it is not but divisible into very fine sub-shades, my reductio argument follows). So ex hypothesi knowing and experiencing a segment of the color spectrum for the first time, even if a tiny segment corresponding to a shade of some familiar basic color as Larry presumably has in my scenario is to know and grasp a new color concept, then we can ask what happens when instead of seeing mellow, Larry sees a shade of yellow that is also a shade of mellow perhaps occupying half the length on the color spectrum as mellow. If he also learns a new color in this scenario (we will call this sub-shade 'sub-mellow') then we may reiterate the question mutatis mutandis of whether he learns a new color concept and so on. There seems to be no clear line to draw when Larry does not learn of a new color concept from ever so fine divisions of shades of yellow. But if there is no line to draw and the color spectrum is continuous then seeing any shade for the first time of arbitrary spectrum span implies learning an (uncountable) infinite number of new color concepts. That I think is absurd.

Each of us normally sighted individuals may see many new shades of familiar colors everyday. And each of those shades may be divided into sub-shades. But it is preposterous to say that we learn an infinite number of new color concepts on a daily basis. So Larry does not learn a new color concept simply by seeing that shade of yellow for the first time. He simply sees yellow, not gain a new “mellow” color concept.

Now imagine that a tribe of people that makes only the two dark-light basic color distinction and their possible reaction to the Mary though experiment. Will they say that Mary learned anything new by seeing red which presumably they think is just a shade of their super-color "dark"? It may be that they would say "no" much as we do to the hypothetical case of mellow I gave above and for the same reasons we give. For them, red is just some shade in the basic super-color dark. Our intuitions about the knowledge argument seem to be sensitive to the linguistic color scheme we actually employ. If accidents of our birth influences the direction our intuitions point regarding some thought experiment, there may be good reason to be suspicious of insights those intuitions are supposed to offer us.

This so far of course, a limited application of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for color terms to explain qualia. Much as many think that the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a skeptical hypothesis regarding realism of natural properties or kinds, my attempt has been to use the hypothesis as a skeptical attack on qualia. Thus, if my skeptical attack is correct we, under another color schemes may not agree that Mary would learn anything new upon seeing red. She may simply dismiss it at most simply as a perhaps odd shade of "dark" or "black" much we under our color conceptual scheme presumably view the person first seeing the uneventful mellow for the first time.

One possible response to my argument thus far is that it only shows that red qualia (or any color qualia not light or dark since all known linguistic communities have at least these two basic color concepts/terms) does not have the epistemic properties ascribed to it by the knowledge argument and thus it is not effective as an argument against physicalism in whole. Though there are no red qualia, there are still white and black qualia for no known linguistic communities lack these basic color concepts and thus all communities presumably concede that there are qualia corresponding to white and black qua basic colors.

The argument I made is meant to show that the quintessential example of color qualia red can be doubted that it has the private epistemic property it is alleged to have by culturally relativising red. If red qualia goes by way of this kind of relativism, what is to stop all color qualia including light or dark qualia going with it? What makes these more special as qualia that red is not? Now the burden is at least shifted. This is the main rhetorical point of my argument.

Lastly I'd like to see an X-PHI experiment comparing survey responses of two linguistic groups: a group composed of native language speakers of a language that does not recognize the color red as a unique primary color but a shade of some supercolor such as "dark." The other group does recognize red as a primary color such as native English speakers. The speakers of the language that doesn't recognize red should be from a group that also has not had much influence from western culture or any cultures that partitions the color spectrum in a different way. Of course that will be hard and in practice no culture is so discrete from the linguistic and cultural influence of others but there still are some cultures that are relatively isolated. Many speakers of the Trans-New Guinea languages are so isolated even today. They would be a good group to sample because as I've mentioned, they only recognize two basic primary colors (dark and light). They would serve as a good comparison group with Native English speakers, e.g. To test the intuitions on the knowledge argument compared to the control group of native English speakers would be a good way, in my view, to see if there is anything substantive and sound about it. Let's say that the non control group doesn't think that Mary learns anything new once she sees the apple for the first time, that would go in some ways in showing that it is conceivable Mary learns nothing new when she sees red for the first time contrary to Jackson's original claim in his argument.

The modal argument for dualism

Here's what I understand about this argument. Versions of it has been used by Kripke and Chalmers and here by Plantinga to argue that we are not our bodies or brains. The argument goes like this: Imagine yourself without a body. That seems easy enough. Can you imagine your body without its body? It seems not. That would be patently contradictory. Thus, your mind must have at least one property that your body doesn't: namely the modal property of possibly existing without a body. By Leibniz's law, they cannot be identical. That law simply says that everything has the property it has. If A has a property B does not have, they are not identical by that law. Your mind would have the modal property of possibly existing without a body while your body cannot exist without itself.

There are at least two ways to attack this. One may wish to deny Leibniz's law for modal properties; that is, one may wish to assert that it is possible for some things to have some modal properties they don't have. But I don't see this as a plausible avenue. It seems to me that Leibniz's law is true unrestricted, true for all properties, genuine, relational and modal.

So I will concentrate on the other possible objection which I will term the epistemic constraint to modality (ECM). It may seem plausible at first that anything one can imagine being true may be true in some possible world. Your car may be green when it is actually red. We know that your car has the modal property of possibly being green. How do we know that? We just imagine it so and if we can imagine it so, it is possible it is so. That's how we seem to know what is and isn't possible in the broadest sense. I can imagine your car being green when it's red and thus it must have the modal property of possibly green. I cannot imagine your car being green all over and red all over at the same time and thus your car must not have the modal property of being possibly green and red all over at the same time.

But does this kind of epistemic access always cut modality at its joints? Cut it precisely such that the space of epistemic possibility covers the same space as the modal space? Let's imagine we live 500 years ago. We would know what water was. It's that clear, potable, odorless liquid. Can we imagine it not being H2O? Yep, I believe we can. We could imagine it being XYZ for example. But we now know that water = H2O. It could not have been possible that water did not turn out to be H2O because water = H2O is a necessary identity statement. This is a case where our epistemic space over steps the boundaries of possibility. Thus zombies may not be possible though we can (now) imagine them.

Defenders of the claim that epistemic space and modal space are perfectly overlapping can deny that people 500 years ago really can imagine that water = H2O because they are not thinking about water when they imagine it not being H2O. But this doesn't seem like a way to defend that claim because then how would we know we are talking about or believing anything about some putative object when we imagine it being so (having some property) when science may tell us one day that it does not have that property? It doesn't seem that my ability to refer and to think about things are so dependent on contingencies in future scientific discovery.

Intention

The post on copy and original got me thinking about intention. What is intention and does it involve mental states and if so does it involve specific kinds of mental states? Can zombies and machines have intention? Let's say that you think intentions must involve a kind of "what it feels like to intend to do A" or any kind of phenomenal mental state. What if mind-body reductionism or eliminativism is true? That would either mean that the what it feels like or phenomenal quality is just some physical process in the brain or whatever or in case of eliminativism, there is nothing that it is like, just an illusion of what it's like perhaps.

Let's look at mind-body reductionism. If it is true, then there must be some specific physical process necessary if those who think that the "what it feels" is necessary for intention. But that seems implausible. What makes that process any different and special (deserving of being called intention) from a functionally similar process and externally identical one that does the same thing? Indeed, philosophers have definitions of intention that do not include a mental state criterion.

If our brains are just computational devices and our thoughts, emotions, and other mental states are just computations or the results thereof and the Church-Turing thesis is correct then it would seem that "intention" can be captured by a fully functional analysis. Indeed, think of even computers now. An example is a chess playing program. We may term a particular move made by the program as an intention to do something (capture a queen, set a trap, checkmate, etc). It has some of the features of intention such as a goal and decision(s) made among possible options towards that goal, etc, though presumably, no phenomenal mental features

Conjoined twins and pain

Wittgenstein once said that it may be possible for two different people to feel numerically the same pain. His example is that of conjoined twins (PI, SS 253). Consider two attached at the hip. They share a piece flesh joining their hips and associated nerve endings in that region of their bodies. A painful jab in that region should be felt by both twins since the associated nerve endings are shared. W uses this example to show that even something as private as pain is not inherently so. Many philosophers think that pain and other phenomenological experiences are by their very nature private but does W's example prove this view wrong?

It doesn't seem so if reductionism is true. For if pain is just some neuro-chemical activity in a region of the brain, say C1 of the somatosensory cortex, then since the twins have their own brains, they would experience their own pains. Even if reductionism is false, if mental properties like pain supervenes on physical properties such as brain regions and their associated neuro-chemical activities or those of entire neural networks, W's counter example still seems to fail. Consider a neural network composed of the nerve endings both twins share in the flesh connecting their hips together which we'll call N. N is attached to two different peripheral and central nervous systems. Each network only shares one region of overlap, namely, N, but are two different systems because they comprise different parts other than N. Overall activity in both systems would also be different.

So if pain is either reducible or supervenes on these different physical systems, they are not identical to each other.

To my mind, W does not deny the truth of either reductionism or mind-body supervenience. The only way to save W's "counter example" as far as I can see is if pain is severely localized to a single region of the body (where it is actually felt) but that seems highly implausible. Consider phantom limb pain where people feel pain where they once had limbs. People who experience this kind of pain experience it in their "phantom" limbs. The pain is thus "all in their heads." Alternatively, pain for these conjoined twins may be reduced or supervened on both their networks together. But that also seems unlikely.