8 ms·

>Where is the proof that a thought requires a subject? I'm not sure what you're asking. If the thought is self-referential, then the subject is inherent in the

>Where is the proof that a thought requires a subject? I'm not sure what you're asking. If the thought is self-referential, then the subject is inherent in the self-reference of the thought, namely the thought itself. I am not assuming some kind of conscious subjectivity here. Merely that the content of the thought is instantiated in the case of self-reference. If this were not the case, then the thought could not self-reference. >has a technical meaning for the debate between materialists and antimaterialists I'm familiar with the usual suspects in this debate (e.g. Dennett, Frankish), and I don't find their usage of illusion particularly "technical". They use it to mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist or isn't real. But its this very usage that I take issue with.

naasking 7y ago
> If the thought is self-referential, then the subject is inherent in the self-reference of the thought, namely the thought itself. [...] If this were not the case, then the thought could not self-reference. What property of self-reference do you think entails the properties of a "subject"? Does a self-referential term in a programming language also have a subject? I suspect you would deny they do, so why does a self-referential thought entail a subject when self-reference in other domains does not? Because the only answers I can come up with either amount to special pleading on behalf of thoughts, or admitting a superfluous concept into every self-reference that makes no useful distinctions and conveys no useful properties that I can see. > They use it to mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist or isn't real. And what do you think they mean by "isn't real" or "doesn't exist"? Because in this setting, such a claim to me means that phenomenal consciousness is not ontologically fundamental. That's a pretty technical meaning. Dennett certainly didn't mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist as a concept deserving a philosophical or scientific explanation; clearly it does or he wouldn't have written about it.
- hackinthebochs 7y ago
  >so why does a self-referential thought entail a subject when self-reference in other domains does not? I have a feeling you're taking "subject" to be a far more substantial concept that I am. A subject at its most austere is merely a distinct target of alteration. That is, it is subject to change from external or internal forces. So to have a self-referential thought is to say you are subject to change: from not having a thought to having a thought, thus you are a subject of some sort (the thinking sort). Although a thought itself does not necessarily imply a subject, recognizing one is having a thought (a self-referential thought) entails subject-hood on its bearer. But to address the specialness of thought: thoughts have content. For example, a thought about an apple intrinsically picks out an apple. The thought somehow contains the semantics of the object of its reference. This is in contrast to, say, a bit that gains meaning from the context in which it is used (e.g. night/day, heads/tails, etc). And so a self-referential thought intrinsically contains the necessary structure to entail subject-hood. Self-reference in other contexts do not have this intrinsic content requirement. >Because in this setting, such a claim to me means that phenomenal consciousness is not ontologically fundamental. Frankish is very clear that he is eliminativist about phenomenal consciousness. He is not intending to simply be reductive about phenomenal consciousness, i.e. that it is "real" but reduces to physical structure and dynamics. His claim is that we misrepresent non-phenomenal neural structures as being phenomenal. This can be cast as a sort of reduction as your referring to. But he is clear that this is not what he intends. As far as Dennett goes, he seems to endorse Frankish's project so I would take him to also be eliminativist about phenomenal consciousness. But reading is own work he's a lot more slippery about whether he's eliminativist or not so I'm not sure where he actually lands.
  - naasking 7y ago
    > But to address the specialness of thought: thoughts have content. For example, a thought about an apple intrinsically picks out an apple. The thought somehow contains the semantics of the object of its reference. This is in contrast to, say, a bit that gains meaning from the context in which it is used (e.g. night/day, heads/tails, etc). I don't see any distinction beyond the complexity of the information content. That thought about an apple carries an implicit context consisting of eons of evolution in a world governed by natural laws, ultimately bootstrapping a perceptual apparatus that you've used to accumulate relational knowledge throughout your life. That digital bit you speak of was generated within the context of a program also governed by rules that gives it some meaning within that program, although that context is considerably smaller than a human's thoughts. I honestly can't think of any non-contextual expressions besides axioms, so I don't accept the distinct you're trying to make. And I'm not assuming anything about what you might mean by "subject". If a thought is like any other datum tied to a context, then I don't see that a subject is necessary, unless we explicitly define "thought" and "subject" to be mutually recursive. I just don't see how adding a "subject" in the context of every self-reference makes any meaningful distinctions, and so it appears entirely superfluous in that context. Anyway, as a fun exercise, someone had asked in this thread about a formalization of this argument, so I played with expressing the self-reference and existence proof using Haskell using Curry-Howard. This is what I have so far: {-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification #-} data Exists a = Exists a newtype Thought a = AThought (Thought a -> a) thisIsAThought :: Thought a -> a thisIsAThought this@(AThought x) = x this thoughtsExist :: forall a.Exists (Thought a) thoughtsExist = Exists (AThought thisIsAThought) I don't think this quite captures it, but expressive yet sound self-reference is tricky in typed languages. > He is not intending to simply be reductive about phenomenal consciousness, i.e. that it is "real" but reduces to physical structure and dynamics. His claim is that we misrepresent non-phenomenal neural structures as being phenomenal. This can be cast as a sort of reduction as your referring to. But he is clear that this is not what he intends. This doesn't read as consistent to me. Frankish's paper [1] might be the best bet for clearing this up. The way he breaks it down seems consistent with what I've been saying, that we seem to perceive certain subjective qualities but that these qualities aren't really there, they're a trick, and so we simply need to explain why we think we have them. I admit that my simplified analogies don't perfectly capture the nuance between Frankish's "conservative realism" vs. illusionism, but most discussions don't get so detailed. So this all seems to hinge on the meaning of "real". Phenomenal consciousness is "real" in the sense that it can drive us to talk about phenomenal consciousness, at the very least. But like belief in other supernatural phenomena, it's likely a mistaken conclusion. This seems to be essentially what Frankfish says: > Does illusionism entail eliminativism about consciousness? Is the illusionist claiming that we are mistaken in thinking we have conscious experiences? It depends on what we mean by ‘conscious experiences’. If we mean experiences with phenomenal properties, then illusionists do indeed deny that such things exist. But if we mean experiences of the kind that philosophers characterize as having phenomenal properties, then illusionists do not deny their existence. [1] https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/k0711/kf_articles/blob/master/Frankish_Illusionism%20as%20a%20theory%20of%20consciousness_eprint.pdf https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/k0711/kf_articles/blob/m...
david_w 7y ago
hackinthebochs: Your point seems to be that a thing has to exist- have some ontological status, to have thoughts at all, even if that "thing" is only itself a thought or, more vaguely, a temporary convergence of "something or other." When you say "self" or "I" as in, "I think therefore I am" people drag in a whole load of qualities they attribute to a self or an I. I feel like that is what your interlocutor is getting caught on. I understand and take your point.

naasking 7y ago

> If the thought is self-referential, then the subject is inherent in the self-reference of the thought, namely the thought itself. [...] If this were not the case, then the thought could not self-reference. What property of self-reference do you think entails the properties of a "subject"? Does a self-referential term in a programming language also have a subject? I suspect you would deny they do, so why does a self-referential thought entail a subject when self-reference in other domains does not? Because the only answers I can come up with either amount to special pleading on behalf of thoughts, or admitting a superfluous concept into every self-reference that makes no useful distinctions and conveys no useful properties that I can see. > They use it to mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist or isn't real. And what do you think they mean by "isn't real" or "doesn't exist"? Because in this setting, such a claim to me means that phenomenal consciousness is not ontologically fundamental. That's a pretty technical meaning. Dennett certainly didn't mean that phenomenal consciousness doesn't exist as a concept deserving a philosophical or scientific explanation; clearly it does or he wouldn't have written about it.

hackinthebochs 7y ago
>so why does a self-referential thought entail a subject when self-reference in other domains does not? I have a feeling you're taking "subject" to be a far more substantial concept that I am. A subject at its most austere is merely a distinct target of alteration. That is, it is subject to change from external or internal forces. So to have a self-referential thought is to say you are subject to change: from not having a thought to having a thought, thus you are a subject of some sort (the thinking sort). Although a thought itself does not necessarily imply a subject, recognizing one is having a thought (a self-referential thought) entails subject-hood on its bearer. But to address the specialness of thought: thoughts have content. For example, a thought about an apple intrinsically picks out an apple. The thought somehow contains the semantics of the object of its reference. This is in contrast to, say, a bit that gains meaning from the context in which it is used (e.g. night/day, heads/tails, etc). And so a self-referential thought intrinsically contains the necessary structure to entail subject-hood. Self-reference in other contexts do not have this intrinsic content requirement. >Because in this setting, such a claim to me means that phenomenal consciousness is not ontologically fundamental. Frankish is very clear that he is eliminativist about phenomenal consciousness. He is not intending to simply be reductive about phenomenal consciousness, i.e. that it is "real" but reduces to physical structure and dynamics. His claim is that we misrepresent non-phenomenal neural structures as being phenomenal. This can be cast as a sort of reduction as your referring to. But he is clear that this is not what he intends. As far as Dennett goes, he seems to endorse Frankish's project so I would take him to also be eliminativist about phenomenal consciousness. But reading is own work he's a lot more slippery about whether he's eliminativist or not so I'm not sure where he actually lands.
- naasking 7y ago
  > But to address the specialness of thought: thoughts have content. For example, a thought about an apple intrinsically picks out an apple. The thought somehow contains the semantics of the object of its reference. This is in contrast to, say, a bit that gains meaning from the context in which it is used (e.g. night/day, heads/tails, etc). I don't see any distinction beyond the complexity of the information content. That thought about an apple carries an implicit context consisting of eons of evolution in a world governed by natural laws, ultimately bootstrapping a perceptual apparatus that you've used to accumulate relational knowledge throughout your life. That digital bit you speak of was generated within the context of a program also governed by rules that gives it some meaning within that program, although that context is considerably smaller than a human's thoughts. I honestly can't think of any non-contextual expressions besides axioms, so I don't accept the distinct you're trying to make. And I'm not assuming anything about what you might mean by "subject". If a thought is like any other datum tied to a context, then I don't see that a subject is necessary, unless we explicitly define "thought" and "subject" to be mutually recursive. I just don't see how adding a "subject" in the context of every self-reference makes any meaningful distinctions, and so it appears entirely superfluous in that context. Anyway, as a fun exercise, someone had asked in this thread about a formalization of this argument, so I played with expressing the self-reference and existence proof using Haskell using Curry-Howard. This is what I have so far: {-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification #-} data Exists a = Exists a newtype Thought a = AThought (Thought a -> a) thisIsAThought :: Thought a -> a thisIsAThought this@(AThought x) = x this thoughtsExist :: forall a.Exists (Thought a) thoughtsExist = Exists (AThought thisIsAThought) I don't think this quite captures it, but expressive yet sound self-reference is tricky in typed languages. > He is not intending to simply be reductive about phenomenal consciousness, i.e. that it is "real" but reduces to physical structure and dynamics. His claim is that we misrepresent non-phenomenal neural structures as being phenomenal. This can be cast as a sort of reduction as your referring to. But he is clear that this is not what he intends. This doesn't read as consistent to me. Frankish's paper [1] might be the best bet for clearing this up. The way he breaks it down seems consistent with what I've been saying, that we seem to perceive certain subjective qualities but that these qualities aren't really there, they're a trick, and so we simply need to explain why we think we have them. I admit that my simplified analogies don't perfectly capture the nuance between Frankish's "conservative realism" vs. illusionism, but most discussions don't get so detailed. So this all seems to hinge on the meaning of "real". Phenomenal consciousness is "real" in the sense that it can drive us to talk about phenomenal consciousness, at the very least. But like belief in other supernatural phenomena, it's likely a mistaken conclusion. This seems to be essentially what Frankfish says: > Does illusionism entail eliminativism about consciousness? Is the illusionist claiming that we are mistaken in thinking we have conscious experiences? It depends on what we mean by ‘conscious experiences’. If we mean experiences with phenomenal properties, then illusionists do indeed deny that such things exist. But if we mean experiences of the kind that philosophers characterize as having phenomenal properties, then illusionists do not deny their existence. [1] https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/k0711/kf_articles/blob/master/Frankish_Illusionism%20as%20a%20theory%20of%20consciousness_eprint.pdf https://nbviewer.jupyter.org/github/k0711/kf_articles/blob/m...

david_w 7y ago

hackinthebochs: Your point seems to be that a thing has to exist- have some ontological status, to have thoughts at all, even if that "thing" is only itself a thought or, more vaguely, a temporary convergence of "something or other." When you say "self" or "I" as in, "I think therefore I am" people drag in a whole load of qualities they attribute to a self or an I. I feel like that is what your interlocutor is getting caught on. I understand and take your point.