Why I think there are no such things as languages

(1) If there are things we refer to as languages then it is possible for a language to persist even during periods when every speaker/writer of the language makes no marks or utterances (imagine a national day of mourning with a coordinated minute of silence and motionlessness).

(2) If languages do not supervene over actual token marks and utterances then languages must supervene over dispositions to make marks and utterances.

(3) In reality, there are no dispositions, only dispositional and design stances we adopt towards things.

(4) Therefore, in reality, there are no things we refer to as languages.

Against Money as a Socially Constructed Object

Imagine a pre-modern community the members of which trade goods and services between themselves using stamped gold coins as currency. They do not have a concept of money independent of the value of the amount of gold that constitutes each coin.

Scenario One

An evil scientist from an advanced civilisation in another part of the world kidnaps one of the pre-moderns and implants a device in his brain that causes him to experience his gold coins as he would normally feel them, see them, taste them etc. This hallucination remains consistent as to his manipulation of the coins, their continuity and their number. Having implanted this device, the evil scientist removes all real gold coins from the pre-modern’s purse and returns him to his community. The pre-modern with the implant then gets himself into all kinds of trouble with his pre-modern colleagues as he tries to make them accept his imaginary gold coins in exchange for goods and services. They conclude that he is insane and bore wholes into his skull in order to release the evil spirits… at which point he dies.

Scenario Two

A team of evil scientists from the advanced civilisation in another part of the world places the whole pre-modern community in a deep sleep and implants devices in each of their brains that cause each of them to experience his or her gold coins as he or she would normally feel them, see them, taste them etc. This hallucination remains consistent as to their manipulation of the coins, continuity and number. Having implanted these devices, the evil scientists removes all real gold coins from the pre-moderns’ purses and wake them in the same positions and at the same time of day in which they were put to sleep. This time, with everybody hallucinating gold coins, nobody is suspected of being insane and trade goes on as it ever did (for a time, until they try to make a gold statue).

Is it any less of a hallucination in Scenario Two just because it is a mass hallucination?

Of course, there was a time when people traded in precious metals, or bank notes backed by deposits of precious metals. I want to suggest that the modern move to unbacked money should not be viewed as the creation of a socially constructed object, but as the promulgation of mass error similar to the mass hallucination Scenario Two. The error is the view that inherent value-bearers supervene over small pieces of paper or polymer. I say that the above thought experiment supports the view that it is ontologically irrelevant as to whether or not trade is yet facilitated by such an error – it could be an error nonetheless to consider money to be anything over and above ink and paper or polymer. Combined with a commitment to parsimony, the extent to which money is thought to be a socially constructed object is the extent to which the person regarding it as such is in error.

Property Dualism v. Substance Dualism – Rematch

Back in this post I unsuccessfully argued that substance dualism faired no worse in the face of Ockham’s Razor than property dualism.

I now want to argue that property dualism, in fact, fairs worse that substance dualism given the following two assumptions:

1.    Mental non-ubiquity – fundamental particles, and many other things besides, do not possess mental properties.

2.    Neurological homogeneity – the functional and structural uniformity of the brain is such that, if the whole brain possesses mental properties then there are many substructures of the brain that possess mental properties.

Assumption 1. entails that brain structures cannot possess their mental properties in virtue of composition alone because they have proper parts that do not possess mental properties.

If we assume mereological universalism then, though the brain may consist of an infinite number of proper parts, fundamental particles and their arrangements will not yield things with mental properties by composition alone given that mental properties are not ontologically reducible to the physical. Yet, by composition alone (ex hypothesi universalism), there will be purely physical things composed of fundamental particles and their arrangements that constitute the physical base over which hybrid mental/physical things nomologically supervene. Thus, in addition to the infinite number of physical things that compose the brain, there will be many other hybrid mental/physical things in the brain given Assumption 2.

If we do not assume mereological universalism then there will not be an infinite number of physical things composing the brain. Yet, however many physical things there are composing the brain, there will be a further number of hybrid mental/physical things because whatever primitive unity that ordinary things possess is unlikely to line up on any principled basis with the many ways in which the brain may be cut into substructures that should possess mental properties in accordance with Assumption 2.

Either way, according to property dualism, brains consist of all of the physical things that compose them as well as many hybrid physical/mental things to which the brain gives rise. Whereas, substance dualists can argue that it is only the net causal powers of the brain that are relevant in determining the mind substance to which the brain belongs, so that there might well be only one mind over and above the physical things that compose the brain.

The Futility of the Kantian Project

The Kantian project as I understand it was an attempt to overcome the sceptical problem as to how knowledge is possible given that the external world could be radically different from the way in which it is represented as being at the internal or phenomenal level. Kant’s Copernican revolution was to propose that knowledge could only be achieved, and only needed to be achieved, of the necessary conditions for internal consciousness and that attempts to achieve knowledge of the world as it is in-itself are misconceived. My (probably un-original) reasons for thinking that Kant’s project fails are set out fairly informally as follows:

1. Kant’s epistemological standards are such that we cannot have knowledge that P if it is epistemically possible that not P.

2. An adequate theory of representation allows that a merely represented object may be ontologically indistinguishable from a real or veridical represented object, otherwise a represented object characterised by the wrong properties is represented.

3. Such an adequate theory of representation allows that the phenomenal mind may be the merely represented object of a much less sophisticated representation, i.e. the introspecting Kantian has no way of knowing whether or not they really exist. (Not controversial for a Kantian happy to work at the level of appearances.)

4. There are or can be representations of impossibilia.

5. Not knowing whether or not whether of not they really exist, the Kantian has no way of knowing whether they are an impossibilium.

6. If it is epistemically possible that the structure of the Kantian’s phenomenal mind is impossible then it cannot be known that the structure of the Kantian’s phenomenal mind is possible.

7. If it cannot be known that the structure of the Kantian’s phenomenal mind is possible then it cannot be known that said structure is a necessary condition of consciousness, seeing as knowledge of necessity assumes knowledge of possibility.

8. Thus, the Kantian has no knowledge by her own standards.

This suggests what is obvious these days: our epistemological standards cannot require that is not possible for us to be wrong in order for us to have knowledge. Now, all we need is an adequate definition of knowledge, and that brings me up to the middle of the last century in epistemology.

100 Posts

That last post was my 100th post on this blog site.

That’s an average of just shy of 1 post per week since July 2007 when I started regular posting.

Who said it was just a fad?

Fodor’s Triangulation

In the never-ending quest for effort-free blog content, I reproduce below my comment submitted for moderation here:

Is Fodor’s use of triangulation (a form of which he attributes to Davidson) to solve the ‘Which Link?’ problem for causal theories of perceptual thought (pp. 205-215) also a novelty?

I did not find it very convincing.

The ‘Which Link?’ problem he says his approach solves relates to there being many things along a causal chain terminating in a perceptual thought other than that which we would say the perceptual thought is about: a cerebral cortex at one extreme and the big bang at the other.

Fodor’s account of Davidson’s version of triangulation in a situation of radical interpretation has the field linguist and the native encountering a hairy snake. The referent of the native’s resulting utterance is ‘the one where the causal chain from the world to the speaker (/thinker) intersects the causal chain from the world to his interpreter when the speaker and the interpreter are caused to utter tokens of the same type.’

Fodor’s adjustments to his account of Davidson’s version is to deal in thoughts rather than utterances, and to use a counterfactual counterpart of the same person to achieve triangulation, rather than a distinct speaker and an interpreter. Thus, if I perceive a hairy snake, I have a perceptual thought of the hairy snake – and not the big bang – in virtue of the fact that my counterpart possibly 3 feet to my right also tokens a perceptual thought that is the terminus of a causal chain originating at the big bang, but both causal chains intersect at the hairy snake.

First, both me and my counterpart share a cortex, so it is still my cerebral cortex and not the snake that is the first intersecting link in my causal chain and that of my counterpart. If Fodor wants to claim that it is relevant that my counterpart has a different token cortex because there is no transworld identity then the same condition would apply to the hairy snake, so that should make no difference. Thus, it cannot be the nearest intersecting node in the causal chain that determines the referent of our perceptual thought if we are talking about me and my counterpart.

Second, if proximity of intersecting nodes is not relevant then I do not see how triangulation makes any difference. If me and my counterpart truly are perceiving the same hairy snake (or counterparts thereof) then the hairy snake we perceive should have all of the same causal antecedents in the actual world and in all nearby possible worlds.

So, how does triangulation make any difference to solve the ‘Which Link?’ problem?

One Cheer for Substance Dualism

I’ve recently been rethinking whether or not I should be a property dualist as opposed to a substance dualist.

I am intuitively inclined towards the latter. However, if property dualism is as good as substance dualism in accounting for the phenomena then Ockham’s Razor says that we should side with property dualism (‘we’ being dualists – though, not so-called predicate or concept dualists). Ceteris paribus, property dualism wins. I tried to defuse this view in a recent post by arguing that Ockham’s Razor doesn’t really favour one view or the other, but I soon realised that I was just blowing hot air.

This has lead me to try fleshing out the intuition that pulls me towards substance dualism in the first place. I think that what I’m moved by is that substance dualism has the unity of the mind on its side. Physical structures are divisible down, at least, to the subatomic level. Whatever the physical properties are that mental properties are meant to supervene over at nearby worlds, because the brain is a somewhat homogenous physical system, there will be many, many physical subsystems in the brain that also meet the criteria for lawful correlation with mental properties. The brain is, not only complex, but complex in a way that renders its parts functionally similar to the whole. This should mean that, just as the brain has many more or less distributed parts, so should the mind have many more or less distributed parts.

On the contrary, it appears that the different modalities of consciousness and other mental states possess a fundamental unity. The qualia, beliefs, desires and other mental states are such that one can say of all of them, however diverse, that that are ‘mine.’ There is a primitive subjectivity that binds the whole show together. It also appears essential to these mental states that they are unified in this way, e.g. the same token belief cannot exist in more than one mind, let alone exist without a broader mind of any kind.

In short, though the brain exhibits anatomic complexity, the mind appears to exhibit atomic simplicity, and it seems unlikely that the latter could emerge out of the former given the homogeneity of the former.

Kant thought that unity was one of the necessary conditions of consciousness. However, unsurprisingly, this did not mean for Kant that the mind in-itself – the noumenal mind – was necessarily unified. The phenomenon of unity could turn out to be nothing more than the mere phenomenon – though it is necessary that we see ourselves that way. Indeed, Dan Dennett thinks that the idea of a uniquely consciousness self is such an illusion, instead offering his multiple-drafts theory of consciousness. If we cross Dan Dennett with David Chalmers, we could imagine a property dualist willing to agree with the above assessment of property dualism as resulting in a complex mental life, but who is happy to accept the multiple drafts view of consciousness in place of a simple Cartesian theatre. As Chalmers’ dualism is one of functional/physical and phenomenal properties, and not a broader dualism of representational and physical properties, this does not really seem to be too much of a stretch. Chalmers is already signed up to the extended mind thesis, after all.

Anyway, how do I respond to such a chimerical property-dualist monster? I think that Chimera makes a very strong claim if he denies that persons have a unified mind at any one time. I guess that I am, once more, appealing to my intuitions. However, I can now be confident that I have articulated them and I can be called to account about them. In articulating my intuitions, I am probably making myself vulnerable to counterexamples from thought experiments or findings from cognitive and abnormal psychology, though I cannot imagine how. Oh, well. We all have to come to account at some time.

At least the unity intuition is something to keep Ockham’s Razor at bay, ‘cause all things aint equal no more.

Afterthought

I think that I have been too concessionary to Chimera above.

Chimera is committed to saying that the mind that produces reports of consciousness is always the one that supervenes over the simplest possible functional units of the brain. Otherwise, a mind would report being transparently anatomic and lacking the unity of consciousness. Yet, that the mind that produces reports of consciousness is (almost?) always the one that supervenes over the simplest possible functional unit of the brain seems highly unlikely. Further, it seems unlikely that the simplest possible functional units of the brain, though meeting the criteria for a lawful correlation to mental states, would be anywhere near as sophisticated as is necessary to produce the sophistication of mental states of which reports are received from subjects.

Richard Brown’s Zoombies and Shombies

I have some difficulty with Richard Brown’s zoombie and shombie cases, as discussed by him here.

A zoombie is a creature that is identical to an actual human in every non-physical respect and which lacks non-physical phenomenal consciousness.

A shombie is a creature that is physically identical to an actual human, which has phenomenal consciousness, and which lacks all non-physical properties.

Conceivability in the sense that might support claims to a priori knowledge of possibility lies somewhere between imagining and describing. The case of a chiliagon demonstrates that our ability to conceive passes beyond our ability to ‘picture’ in our imagination. The case of the description, ‘Circular square’ demonstrates that our ability to conceive is surpassed by our ability to describe.

It seems to me that Brown’s version of conceivability is nothing but the capacity to describe and his cases are not truly conceivable.

In both the zoombie and shombie cases, we are asked to conceive of cases in which non-physical properties and phenomenal properties come apart. In the first case, we are asked to conceive of non-physical properties without phenomenal properties. In the second case, we are asked to conceive of phenomenal properties without non-physical properties.

The problem I have is that I do not know what it is of which Richard Brown is asking me to conceive. What are these non-physical properties? I know what physical properties are, well enough, by their role in our best physical theories. I know what phenomenal properties are, well enough, as they are manifest to consciousness. I do not know what properties I am supposed to otherwise be conceiving of as non-physical.

I have doubts as to whether conceivability can ground a priori knowledge of possibility. However, it seems to me that, if it does then the zoombie and shombie cases are not an example of it – or even a good example of the same reasoning used by Chalmers, by way of reductio. This is because I take it as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for conceivability that one can conceive of distinct instances of the same property or the same relevant kind of state of affairs. In the case of the chiliagon, I can conceive of a red one, a blue one, a large one, a small one. I can vary the cases while clearly apprehending a property of chiliagon-ness which remains invariant in each instance.

In talking about non-physical properties apart from phenomenal properties, there does not seem to be any but one way (allowing for paraphrasing) to describe what we are being asked to conceive of. This suggests to me that it is an obvious case of a mere description and nothing of which we may conceive.

To be clear, I am not saying that we can’t conceive of many cases in which things have only physical properties. Of course, we can conceive of entirely physical worlds which, by definition, have physical properties and no others. It seems to me that Brown is asking us to do more than this. He is asking us to positively conceive of non-physical properties and for us to do so without giving us any understanding of them that would allow us to differentiate instances conceived of. In the case of zoombies, Brown is asking us to conceive of something possessing properties of the kind Non-P without providing any guide as to what Non-P is. Granted, in the case of shombies, Brown is asking us to conceive of something that does not possess properties of the kind Non-P. However, there is still a difference between saying that properties of kind P exhaust the properties of a world and saying that the same world does not instantiate properties of kind Non-P. If we claim that a world does not instantiate Non-P then we still have to be able to conceive of Non-P, whereas the former claim that properties of the kind P are all there is merely relies on conceiving of properties of which we can conceive of their multiple instantiations.

Now, it might be thought to respond to this by coming up with some alien, non-physical property, e.g. ectoplasmic non-resistance, and thus provide a non-physical property to conceive of in the zoombie and shombie cases. However, this will not do at all because the dualist never claimed that these trumped-up non-physical properties, in particular, had any relation to phenomenal consciousness. We can all agree that there can be ectoplasmic non-resistance without phenomenal consciousness and phenomenal consiousness without ectoplasmic non-resistance.

Also, I might be wrong about the shombie case and Brown might say that he means that he can conceive of a world that only has physical properties and yet still has phenomenal consciousness. I suppose someone could also claim that they can conceive of a circular square in a flat, Euclidean space. Further, the claim that an entirely physical world could still have phenomenal consciousness is shown by the original zombie argument to be relevantly like the claim that circular squares are conceivable. Remember, Chalmers requires that possible cases are IDEALLY conceivable, which means that some claims of conceivability can be dismissed as irrational.

In conclusion, zoombie and shombie cases are not conceivable and do not hurt Chalmers’ formulation of the zombie argument.

Current Thoughts on Parts and Wholes

I have not read very deeply about mereology, but I feel that I should have a view about such things.

What follows is more a statement of position than an argument.

Some of my requirements include:

(1)    Realism about ordinary objects. This does not mean accepting that ordinary objects survive even microphysical changes, i.e. accommodating a distinction between essential and non-essential change. It just means that the medium-sized dry goods that we treat as wholes really are wholes.

(2)    Respecting de re modality – which I think requires transworld identity.

(3)    Respecting our best physics… mostly.

It seems to me that the best way to guarantee (1) is to allow universalism about fusions. That is, any two things a and b compose a third thing c, regardless of whether or not a and b are immediately, spatially contiguous. We can try primitive composition, but that just seems too ad hoc.

So, you do get the result that my nose and the Eiffel Tower compose a third object. However, I would not say that mereology is as ontologically innocent as David Lewis did. That is, c does not stand in a relation of plural identity with a and b. This is because it is conceivable that a change in the position of a and b alone may result in the destruction of c and the creation of a new whole d. For example, it seems logically possible to cut a man in half, destroying him and yet not destroying any of the sub-atomic particles that composed him. As the distinction between essential and non-essential changes is being ignored (or rather, all changes are taken to be essential), any change of position of parts will destroy the whole they compose on this view.

Given that a change of position destroys a whole, it is suggested that wholes are not only dependent upon their parts, but also on the world that contains them. Thus, a and b are not enough to compose c, c also requires w – the world containing a and b.

This should not be confused with the dependence monism of Jonathan Schaffer, who claims that the only fundamental entity is the whole world. On Schaffer’s view, c is dependent on a token world w as he rejects transworld identity and genuine de re modality (as I interpret him). On my view, any number of possible worlds contain c by virtue of the infinite possible recombinations of regions of the world beyond the immediate spatial region of c. So, c is dependent on a type of world and not a token world.

A further consequence of my view (the view I am settling for and probably not originating) is that only wholes composed of non-contiguous or non-overlapping parts are dependent on the whole world. Wholes composed solely of contiguous or overlapping parts can constitute a world of themselves and for this reason they are not dependent on any type of world. This is important because my initial view was that wholes are dependent on both simples and the world. However, this committed me to the denial of gunk and I don’t want to be so committed. Instead, I can say that wholes are dependent upon their parts generally, but wholes with spatially diffuse parts are also dependent upon the type of world they inhabit.

Lastly, the world itself is dependent upon its parts generally, but not the parts that are dependent upon it. Thus, the world is only dependent upon its simple parts and its parts that are composed of contiguous or overlapping parts.

I am open to suggestions for revision.

Tye on Chalmers’ Argument for Possible Zombies

I just finished reading Tye’s ‘Consciousness Revisited’ (2009) MIT Press whilst making the most of a day at home sick. There was not much in it that I found particularly novel, but there was one argument that sparked my interest.

Tye is attempting to defuse Chalmers’ development of the zombie argument, which he sets out as follows (at p. 151):

Let P be the conjunction of physical truths about the world, and let Q be “Someone is conscious.”

Then

(1)    P & ~Q is ideally primarily positively conceivable.

(2)    If P & ~Q is ideally primarily positively conceivable then P & ~Q is metaphysically possible.

(3)    If P & ~Q is metaphysically possible then materialism is false.

Therefore,

(4)    Materialism is false.

Tye then offers a reductio using the same form of argument as follows:

Where Q’ is “There is a being whose essence includes existence,”

(5)    Q’ (~Q’) is ideally primarily positively conceivable.

(6)    If Q’ (~Q’) is ideally primarily positively conceivable then Q’ (~Q’) is metaphysically possible.

(7)    If Q’ (~Q’) is metaphysically possible then Q’ (~Q’) is true at the actual world.

(8)    Q’ (~Q’) is true at the actual world.

Consequently,

(9)    Q’ & ~Q’ is true at the actual world.

Thus, arguments from ideal, primary positive conceivability are shown to be screwy by reductio.

Now, hold on there. Is Tye really saying that we should accept that existence is a real property – a perfectly normal first-order predicate? Aren’t there well-known problems with such a stance? Would an ideal intelligence really believe it? Couldn’t Chalmers just come back with that old chestnut, ‘Existence is not a first-order predicate’? Couldn’t he turn all Quinean in the face and say, ‘To be is to be the value of a bound variable’?

Oh, but Tye is not finished, yet.

Tye asks us to consider thesis T where T is, “The only entities that have being exist.” I assume that by “have being” here Tye means “are the values of bound variables.” What Tye wants to know is whether ~T is positively conceivable. After all, there are noneists like Graham Priest who hold to ~T. Tye concludes that one must decide whether T or ~T is necessarily true before is makes any sense to talk of either one as being positively conceivable.

The first thing to note about Tye’s treatment of T is that his reductio of Chalmers’ form of argument is entirely dependent on this treatment. If, as Quine would say, everything exists then it is not by some modal accident everything has the property of existence in all possible worlds. Rather, it is because existence just is being a property-bearer. This being so, existence cannot contribute to the essence of a thing, Q is not ideally conceivable and the reductio is not sound.

The second thing to note about T is that it is equivocal. As Lewis pointed out in ‘Noneism is Allism’, everyone agrees with T paraphrased as the tautology T’, “The only things that are in the unrestricted domain of discourse are in the unrestricted domain of discourse,” where “have being” and “exists” are each read as “being the value of bound variables”. Contrarily, the noneist believes that the ordinary language usage of “exists” should not be paraphrased as “is in the unrestricted domain of discourse”, but as corresponding to a certain property possessed by things in the unrestricted domain of discourse. There is then the further question as to whether T” or ~T” is true, where T” is, “The only things that are in the unrestricted domain of discourse are things with the property of existence.”

So, T’ is a logical truth, but we may have a genuine dispute about T”. To which Lewis replies, “I don’t know what it means for something to have the property of existence!” In order to evaluate whether T” or ~T” are conceivable, we must have some clear idea of that of which we are attempting to conceive. Even the concept of a square circle combines two kinds of shape with which we are familiar in order to gauge conceivability in the right kind of way. What are we being asked to conceive of when we are asked to think of things that lack the property of existence? I just don’t know how to begin thinking about it. The noneist has not done enough work to tell me what this property is, intrinsically or even functionally. The closest I can come up with is that existence is the property that makes Ockham’s Razor applicable. Yet, this just raises more questions along the lines of why it should be a good rule of thought to avoid attributing a certain property to things.

So, where does this leave Tye’s reductio?

Q’ was given as, “There is a being whose essence includes existence.” Either, there cannot be such a being because existence is not a real property, or we cannot assess whether an ideal intelligence would find Q’ positively concievable until we are told something more about what it is to exist first-order predicate style. Either way, Tye’s reductio is not obviously sound.