Tag Archives: philosophy

Philosophy of mind review

Posted on February 3, 2010 | 7 comments

I recently read A Brief Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, a short undergraduate text. I didn’t understand some bits, but I’m not sure if that’s because the book wasn’t that good or philosophy isn’t or I’m not. Here I list them, for you to enlighten me on:

1. It’s apparently standard to use what you do or don’t want to believe as evidence for what is true. E.g. A legitimate criticism of parallelism and epiphenomenalism is that they are ‘fatalistic’. If a theory means that aliens wouldn’t feel the same as us, then it is too anthropomorphic. The problem of other minds implies that we don’t know how others feel, but we tend to assume we do, therefore we do and anything that implies otherwise is wrong. “Externalism, then, opens the door to an unpalatable form of skepticism, and this is reason enough to adopt internalism instead.” Is there some legit reason for this?

2. It’s apparently standard to use the fact that you can imagine a situation where the theory wouldn’t hold as evidence that it isn’t true. E.g. That you can imagine someone with a different brain state and the same mind state is evidence against their coincidence. You can imagine zombies, so functions or brain states can’t determine mental states. It would be correct to say that your previous concept of x can’t determine y if you can imagine it varying with the same y, but it’s not evidence that the concept can’t be extended to coincide.

3. An argument against the interaction between mind and brain necessary for dualism: “..The mind is non-physical and so does not occupy space. If the mind cannot occupy space, there can be no place in the brain or space where interaction happens”. Why does causality have to take up space?

4. Parallelism (the version of dualism where there is no interaction between mind and body, but it so happens that they coincide, thanks to God or something else conveniently external) is not criticized for the parallel existence of a physical world being completely unnecessary to explain what we see if it doesn’t interact with our minds.

5. An argument given against brain states coinciding with mental states is that a variety of brain states produce roughly the same mental states – for instance hearing the sound of bells ringing coincides with quite different brain states in someone whose brain has been partly damaged and the relevant parts replaced by other neuroplastic brain regions, but we assume the experience is basically the same. Similarly, for reasons mentioned in 1 we would like to think aliens with different brains have the same feelings. Apparently, ‘these kinds of considerations have motivated philosophers (e.g., Jerry Fodor) to adopt an idea called the principle of multiple realization. According to this principle…the same type…of mental state, such as the sensation of pain, can exist in a variety of different complex physical systems. Thus it is possible for…forms of life to share the same kinds of mental states though they might have nothing in common at the physical level. This principle…has led many philosophers to abandon the identity theory as a viable theory of mind.’ But the evidence that other people or creatures have similar mental states to you is by analogy to you, and analogy becomes weaker as you know their brains are significantly different – there is no reason to suppose that a different creature feels exactly the same as you. Also you can say brain states coincide with mental states while maintaining that a broad class of brain states correspond to similar mental states. Obviously a variety of brain states coincide with variations on ‘hearing bells ring’ if you can hear bells ring while hearing other things, or after you have learned something, or when you are sleepy. You can say the brain states have something in common without requiring they be identical. There is no evidence that they have ‘nothing in common physically’. I don’t see why there being more than one exact brain state that coincides with apparent pain refutes an identity between brains and minds.

6. Functionalism is put forward as an explanation of consciousness. It doesn’t seem to explain qualia, because someone with an inverted colour spectrum of qualia would presumably behave the same. To which functionalists apparently argue that this doesn’t matter that much and such differences between experiences are probably common by virtue of functions being implemented differently in different brains. But if brain states other than functions characterize conscious experience, it seems you have gone back to some theory where any old non-functional brain states determine mental states anyway. Or does the presence of just any ‘function’ cause awareness, then other things determine what the awareness is of? What classes as a ‘function’ anyway? Something that evolution was actually trying to achieve?

7. To decide whether folk psychology can be eliminated by eliminative materialism, one question given is whether it is a theory (because there is a precedent of other theories being eliminated). The fact that it gives false predictions sometimes and we don’t discard it is said to show it isn’t a theory. “If a scientific theory yields even one false prediction, this is usually reason enough to think it is a bad theory and ought to be abandoned or amended”. True for some theories maybe, but not for theories about likely behavior  of messy systems, such as those in social science and psychology. And why can’t it be eliminated if it’s not a theory? If it’s something like a theory except wrong more often, does that protect it somehow?

8. Supervenience is the idea that mental properties depend on physical ones, but can’t be reduced to them entirely. Arguments given against this: a) Supervenience wouldn’t imply that physical properties cause mental ones – it could still be vice versa. We want to think physical properties are primary for some unexplained reason. Therefore supervenience is unsatisfactory. But if physical properties causing mental is necessary in a theory for some reason, doesn’t that just narrow it down to ‘supervenience + physical causes mental’ theory being true? b) Supervenience doesn’t actually explain anything – it just describes the relationship. But what is an explanation other than a simpler description which includes the phenomena you wanted explained? What would an explanation look like?

9. What determines the content of a mental state? Internalism says the contents of your mind, externalism says your relationships to external things. Seems like a pointless definition question – supplying a label and asking what it defines. You can categorize thoughts according to either. I must be missing something here.

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Who are you?

Posted on January 31, 2010 | 18 comments

There are two things that people debate with regards to continuation of personhood. One is whether edge cases to our intuitions of what ‘me’ refers to are really me. For instance if a simulation of me is run on a computer, is it me? If it is definitely conscious? What if the fleshy bloody one is still alive? What if I’m copied atom for atom?

The other question is whether there is some kind of thread that holds together me at one point and some particular next me. This needn’t be an actual entity, but just there being a correct answer to the question of who the current you becomes. The opposite is a bullet that Eliezer Yudkowsky does not bite:

…to reject the idea of the personal future – … that there’s any meaningful sense in which I can anticipate being myself in five seconds, rather than Britney Spears. In five seconds there will be an Eliezer Yudkowsky, and there will be a Britney Spears, but it is meaningless to speak of the currentEliezer “continuing on” as Eliezer+5 rather than Britney+5; these are simply three different people we are talking about.

The two questions are closely related. If there’s such a thread, the first question is just about where it goes. If there’s not, the first question is often thought meaningless.

I see no reason to suppose there is such a thread. Which lump of flesh is you is a matter of definition choice as open as that of which lumps of material you want to call the same mountain. But this doesn’t mean we should give up labeling mountains at all. Let me explain.

Why would one think there is a thread holding us together? Here are the reasons I can think of:

1. It feels like there is.

2. We remember it always happened that way in the past. There was a me who wondered if I might just as well experience being Britney next, then later there was a me looking back thinking ‘nope, still Katja’ or some such thing.

3. We expect the me looking back is singular even if you were copied. You wouldn’t feel like two people suddenly. So you would feel like one or the other.

4. Consciousness seems like a dimensionless thing, so it’s hard to imagine it branching, as if it could be closer or further from another consciousness. As far as our intuitions go, even if two consciousnesses are identical they might be in a way infinitely distant. What happens at that moment between there being one and there being two? Do they half overlap somehow?

1 is explained quite well by 2. 2 and 3 should be expected whether there is any answer to which future person is you or not. All the future yous look back and remember uncertainty, and currently see only themselves. After many such experiences, they all learn to expect to be only one person later on. 4 isn’t too hard to think of plausible answers to; for instance, perhaps one moment there is one consciousness and the next there are two very similar.

Eliezer goes on to describes some more counterintuitive aspects:

…I strive for altruism, but I’m not sure I can believe that subjective selfishness – caring about your own future experiences – is an incoherent utility function; that we are forced to be Buddhists who dare not cheat a neighbor, not because we are kind, but because we anticipate experiencing their consequences just as much as we anticipate experiencing our own. I don’t think that, if I were really selfish, I could jump off a cliff knowing smugly that a different person would experience the consequence of hitting the ground.

These things are all explained by the fact that your genes continue with your physical body, and they design your notions of selfishness (Eliezer disagrees that this settles the question). If humans had always swapped their genes every day somehow, we would care about our one day selves and treat the physical creature that continued as another person.

If we disregard the idea of a thread, must every instantaneous person just as well be considered a separate, or equally good continuation, of you? It might be tempting to think of yourself randomly becoming Britney the next moment, but when in Britney only having her memories, so feeling as if nothing has changed. This relies on there being a you distinct from your physical self, which has another thread, but a wildly flailing one. So dismiss this thread too, and you have just lots of separate momentary people.

Imagine I have a book. One day I discover the pages aren’t held together by metaphysical sticky tape. They have an order, but page 10 could just as well precede page 11 in any book. Sure, page 11 in most books connects to page 10 via the story making more sense, but sense is a continuous and subjective variable. Pages from this book are also physically closer to each other than to what I would like to think of as other books, because they are bound together. If I tore them apart though, I’d like to think that there was still a true page 11 for my page 10. Shouldn’t there be some higher determinant of which pages are truly the same book? Lets say I accept there is not. Then must I say that all writing is part of my book? That may sound appealingly deep, but labeling according to ordinary physical boundaries is actually pretty useful.

The same goes for yourself. That one person will remember being you and act pretty similar and the rest won’t distinguishes them interestingly enough to be worth a label. Why must it distinguish some metaphysically distinct unity? With other concepts, which clusters of characteristics we choose to designate an entity or kind is a matter of choice. Why would there be a single true way to choose a cluster of things for you to identify with any more than there is a true way to decide which pages are part of the same story?

I’ve had various arguments about this recently, however I remain puzzled about what others’ views are. I’m not sure that anyone disagrees about the physical facts, and I don’t think most of the people who disagree are dualists. However many people insist that if a certain thing happens, such as their brain is replaced by a computer, they cease to exist, and believe others should agree that this is the true point of no longer existing, not an arbitrary definition choice. This all seems inconsistent. Can someone explain to me?

Added: it’s interesting that the same problem isn’t brought up in spatial dimensions – the feeling of your hand isn’t taken to be connected to the feeling of the rest of you through anything more complicated than nerves carrying info. This doesn’t make it just as well anyone else’s arm. If you had a robotic arm, whether you called it part of you or not seems a simple definitional matter.

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‘Clearly’ covers murky thought

Posted on September 22, 2009 | 17 comments

Why do we point out that statements we are making are obvious? If a statement is actually obvious, there should rarely reason to point the statement out, let alone that it is obvious. It’s obviousness should be obvious. It seems that a person often emphasizes that a statement is obvious when they would prefer not be required to defend it. Sometimes this is just because it is obvious once you know their field but a lot of effort to explain to someone who doesn’t, but often it’s just that the explanation is not obvious to them.

But saying ‘obviously’ is too obvious. A better word is ‘clearly’. ‘Clearly’ sounds transparent and innocent. In reality it is a more subtle version of ‘obviously’.

I have noticed this technique used well in published philosophy from time to time. If getting to your conclusion is going to require assuming your conclusion is true, ‘clearly’ suggests to the reader that they not think over that step too closely.

For instance Michael Huemer in Ethical Intuitionism, while arguing that moral subjectivism is wrong, for the purpose of demonstrating that ethical intuitionism is right:

Traditionally, cultural relativists have been charged with endorsing such statements as,

If society were to approve of eating children, then eating children would be good.

which is clearly false.

Notice that ‘false’ seemingly means that it is false according to his intuition; the thing which he is trying to argue for the reliability of. If he just said ‘which is false’, the reader may wonder where, in a book on establishing a basis for ethical truth, this source of falsity may have popped from. ‘Clearly’ says that they needn’t worry about it.

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Dying for a donation

Posted on November 7, 2008 | 10 comments

The most outstanding feature of organ markets is that most people hate the idea. This is a curiosity deserving a second glance. There are organ shortages almost everywhere, with people dying on waiting lists hourly. To sentence them to death based on a cursory throb of disgust is not just uncivilised but murderous.

First I should get some technical details out of the way. An organ market can involve buying from living donors, or selling rights to organs after death, or both. Organs needn’t go to the rich preferentially; like any treatment, that depends on the healthcare system. The supply of organs available won’t decrease – if free donations dropped as a result of sales, the price would rise until either enough people sold organs or relatives and friends felt morally obliged to donate them anyway. A regulated market needn’t lead to an increase in stolen Chinese organ imports. It would lower the price here, making smuggling less worthwhile, while stopping Australians going on desperate holidays to seek organs in the under-regulated Third World.

That they ‘commodify the human body’ is the main objection to organ markets. They certainly do that, but why is commodification terrible? Well, a commodity is generally an object subordinated to the goal of making money. Treating other humans in that way leads to abominable actions. Slavery and organ theft are examples of human commodification that rightly repulse us. This doesn’t generalise however. The horror in these examples is that people are being made miserable because they don’t want to be sold. This is a completely different scenario to people voluntarily commodifying themselves.

After all, if commodifying people is inherently wrong, why allow paid labour? Renting out a portion of your time, mind and body to a company or government is surely commodification in the same vein. Or is selling body parts just too much commodification? It doesn’t seem so to me – you can lose more of your most personal possession, your limited lifespan, working than you would selling a kidney. Regardless of how we personally answer that question, there is no reason for the public to decide where the line on commodification should be drawn rather than the people choosing to be involved.

Perhaps anyone who wants to commodify themselves must necessarily be insane and unable to make good choices. To decide that somebody with an alternative idea must not be of sound mind is a big step. The fact that someone disagrees with your opinions, especially ones without arguments behind them, hardly proves they are insane. To all of those who use their gut reaction of disgust to produce policy, Alex Tabarrok asks, “Is it not repugnant that some people are willing to let others die so that their stomachs won’t become queasy at the thought that someone, somewhere is selling a kidney?”

But can people in desperate poverty be considered to be making free choices? Many say no. So, is the choice between starving and selling one’s kidney really a choice? Yes; an easy one. One of the options is awful. To forbid organ selling is to take away the better choice. If we choose to provide an even better option to the person that would be great – but it is no solution to the problem of poverty to take away what choices the poor do have absent outside help.

A related argument is that even with better choices, poor people will be so desperate as to be irrational. However even if we accept that poor people are irrational, for anyone desperate enough to become irrational, selling an organ is probably a great idea. Given the ubiquitous human aversion to being cut up, poor people are more likely to underestimate the merit of that cash source. Should we intervene there?

Another argument regarding poverty is that organ markets are highly unegalitarian; they’re another way to exploit the poor. However, there are two inequalities involved in this market. People have differing amounts of money, and people have differing numbers of functioning organs. Which of these inequalities is worse for those with less? The most pressing egalitarian action would be to redistribute the organs more fairly. By happy coincidence the most effective way to do this is to simultaneously redistribute wealth as well. If poor people sell organs, all the better; the money is redistributed to them as organs are also redistributed to those with least.

The alternative to a market is ‘altruism’. If a brother needs an organ to live, how can you refuse? Unlike the disconnected poor person who benefits from an extra option, this family member loses their previous option of keeping both their organs and their family relationships. The latter are effectively held to ransom. This system leaves the patient with the stress of traipsing around making such awkward requests. Instead of loving support, they get to watch the family politics as everyone tries not to be left with the responsibility, everyone hiding their relief when their blood type is incompatible. Often people offer an organ, then ask the transplant team to judge them a poor match. This gets them off the hook, but leaves the ill person in a cruel cycle of hope and despair. It’s analogous to telling cancer patients ‘come for chemo on Tuesday’, then refusing them any every week till they die. If the patient is fortunate enough to find a donor, there is potentially the stifling lifelong obligation to them. People have refused organs over this. The troubling emotional dynamics surrounding ‘donation’ led Thomas. E Starzl, a great transplant surgeon, to stop doing live transplants.

My favourite argument against organ markets is ‘it will create a distopic world where an underclass exists to replace body parts of the rich’. This is flawed in a multitude of ways. Most people would be in neither category. It would create as much of a split as ‘people who make donuts’ vs. ‘people who eat donuts’. The exchange of money makes the parties more equal in the transaction than if one is the unfortunate victim of a request they cannot refuse. Individual people can’t be used as organ factories. Number of organs is a hopeless basis for discrimination, due to the effort involved in actually finding out which organs somebody has.

‘Altruistic giving’ is more coercive than a market, unnecessarily cruel to the patient, the donor and their family and friends, and leaves thousands to die on waiting lists. Organ markets can save lives without us having to sacrifice morality and should join the ranks of life insurance and money lending; markets we once thought unthinkable.

Originally published in Woroni.

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Don’t change your mind, just change your brain

Posted on May 22, 2008 | Leave a comment

The best way to dull hearts and win minds is with a scalpel.

Give up your outdated faith in the pen over the sword! With medical training and a sufficiently sharp but manoeuvrable object of your choice, you can change anyone’s mind on the most contentious of moral questions. All you need to make someone utilitarian is a nick to the Ventromedial Pre­frontal Cortex (VMPC), a part of the brain related to emotion.

When pondering whether you should kill an innocent child to save twenty strangers, eat your pets when they die, or approve of infertile siblings making love in private if they like, utilitar­ians are the people who say “do whatever, so long as the outcome maximises overall happiness.” Others think outcomes aren’t everything; some actions are just wrong. According to research, people with VMPC damage are far more likely to make utilitar­ian choices.

It turns out most people have conflicting urges: to act for the greater good or to obey rules they feel strongly about. This is the result of our brains being composed of interacting parts with different functions. The VMPC processes emotion, so in normal people it’s thought to compete with the parts of the brain that engage in moral rea­soning and see the greatest good for the greatest number as ideal. If the VMPC is damaged, the ra­tional, calculating sections are left unimpeded to dispassionate­ly assess the most compassionate course of action.

This presents practical oppor­tunities. We can never bring the world in line with our moral ide­als while we all have conflicting ones. The best way to get us all on the same moral page is to make everyone utilitarian. It is surely easier to sever the touchy feely moral centres of people’s brains than to teach them the value of utilitarianism. Also it will be for the common good; once we are all utilitarian we will act with everyone’s net benefit more in mind. Partial lo­botomies for the moralistic are probably much cheaper than policing all the behaviours such people tend to disapprove of.

You may think this still doesn’t make it a good thing. The real beauty is that after the procedure you would be fine with it. If we went the other way, everyone would end up saying ‘you shouldn’t alter other people’s brains, even if it does solve the world’s problems. It’s naughty and unnatural. Hmph.’

Unfortunately, VMPC dam­age also seems to dampen social emotions such as guilt and com­passion. The surgery makes utili­tarian reasoning easier, but so too complete immorality, mean­ing it might not be the answer for everyone just yet.

Some think the most impor­tant implications of the research are actually those for moral phi­losophy. The researchers suggest it shows humans are unfit to make utilitarian judgements. You don’t need to be a brain surgeon to figure that out though. Count the number of dollars you spend on unnecessary amusements each year in full knowledge peo­ple starving due to poverty.

In the past we could tell moral questions were prompting action in emotional parts of the brain, but it wasn’t clear whether the activity was influencing the deci­sion or just the result of it. If the latter, VMPC damage shouldn’t have changed actions. It does – so while non-utilitarianism is a fine theoretical position, it is seemingly practiced for egoistic reasons.

Can this insight into cognition settle the centuries of philosophical debate and show utilitarianism is a bad position? No. Why base your actions on what you feel like doing, dis­counting all other outcomes? All it says about utilitarianism is that it doesn’t come easily to the hu­man mind.

This research is just another bit of evidence that moral reasoning is guided by evolution and brain design, not some transcendental truth in the sky. It may still be useful of course, like other skills our mind provides us with, like a capacity to value things, a prefer­ence for being alive, and the abil­ity to tell pleasure from pain.

Next time you are in a mor­ally fraught argument, consider what Ghandi said: “Victory at­tained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary’” He’s right; genetic modification would be more long-lasting. Un­til this is available though, why not try something persuasive like a scalpel to the forehead?

….
Originally published in Woroni

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