In this episode, she, Massimo, and Julia discuss what philosophy has to say about neuroscience, what neuroscience has to say about philosophy, and what both of them have to say about morality.
Rationally Speaking: an archived blog about science & philosophy, by Massimo Pigliucci
Tuesday, June 05, 2012
Rationally Speaking podcast: Patricia Churchland on neurophilosophy
In this episode, she, Massimo, and Julia discuss what philosophy has to say about neuroscience, what neuroscience has to say about philosophy, and what both of them have to say about morality.
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ReplyDeleteThanks, fixed it!
ReplyDeleteBesides Sam Harris, his fellow new-atheist religion-haters Jerry Coyne and Victor Stenger adamantly argue that science shows that Free will is an illusion. Good rebuttal at the end of the podcast.
ReplyDeleteWhilst I am not a so-called 'New Atheist' (a misnomer if there ever was one) and I hate religion, the notion of a 'will' such that such a thing could or could not be 'free' is an illusion insofar as it is conceived of as a contra-causal entity existing either in, or as a par of, the brain. I would go so far as to claim that the notion of a 'will' is ill-formed and rather all 'will' talk should be replaced with talk of self-control, desires, and intentionality.
ReplyDeleteYeah, people in general will go for that. Here we go with the word games. No one claims any 'contra-causal' will or anything, so why bring it up?
ReplyDeleteMikmik,
ReplyDeleteThere are no word games being played here. Though 'free will' is often used ambiguously, it is often employed by many, e.g. libertarians, to signify a contra-causal agency (of some sort).
That aside, by 'free will', what do you mean?
What the vast majority of people mean. Also, I have never met or read a libertarian. This is another red herring.
ReplyDeleteIt is not often employed by many, as you claim, and anyways, 'many' is ambiguous.
If you want stats, which I insist upon if you are going to claim any sort of quantity of people as being relevant, 59 - 83 percent of philosophers conclude we have free will. And no neuroscience has shown otherwise, either.
All attempts at reduction are insufficient to explain our minds and self awareness, so any conclusions that we cannot have the ability to exercise voluntary decision making and behavior must account for that.
I wanted to ask you why you bring up intentionality, desires and self control. They are manifest in our minds, and subject to our thinking. The result of our thinking is what generally causes our behaviors and decision to take action.
Only about 5%, or so, of our brain activity seems to be the result of concentration and thinking, but even given that most processing is unconscious, much of that may be caused by our conscious desires over time.
Don't get me wrong, it mostly seems to me that we can't have any freedom in our will, and I still can question if most, if not all, of my decisions are nothing more than the only one I could make at the time. I am still left wondering, though, why I need to be aware of my thinking and decision making, unless it is for what it appears - evaluating alternatives and having the ability to choose one, or none, as I see fit.
That leaves me with several more questions like why do we have feelings, and what are qualia. For instance, it doesn't seem necessary for us to experience pain when the biochemical processes could just initiate the responses our bodies make. It does not make sense that our awareness and cogitating are just excess baggage.
Oops! I got my stats about the positions of philosophers regarding free will here: http://philpapers.org/surveys/metaresults.pl and I see that 13.7% of philosophers actually are libertarians, and another 12.2% say we have no free will. 14% chose 'other' leaving 59% as compatabilists.
I see the sample size was 198, so I don't know how representative this is. All the methodology and relevancies are available.
Thanks, Mike.
P.P.S.
DeleteRe: "What the vast majority of people mean."
It seems to me "what the vast majority of people mean" by "free will" is not at all clear, but when it is clear, it is either fantastically false or utterly incoherent.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughtful reply.
Re: "Also, I have never met or read a libertarian. This is another red herring."
Not a red herring at all. First, as you cite the PhilPages survey, there are libertarians, and they do publish in the journals, so if you have neither met nor read a libertarian, you should review the literature more thoroughly.
Second, in my initial comment, I wrote: Free will "is an illusion insofar as it is conceived of as a contra-causal entity existing either in, or as a par of, the brain." Thus, my claim that "free will" is illusory does not apply to non-libertarian conceptions of free will. Thus, if you hold that there are other, more tenable, non-libertarian conceptions of free will, that is fine.
Re: "It does not make sense that our awareness and cogitating are just excess baggage."
Whether such cognitive functions are or are not 'excess baggage' is immaterial to the essential point, which is this: Whatever one might identify as higher cognitive functions, said functions precisely are neurophysiological events (complex as they may be), and nothing more.
Re: "I wanted to ask you why you bring up intentionality, desires and self control. They are manifest in our minds..."
In a strict sense, there are no minds-- that is, not if if "minds" are construed as non-physical entities: Desires, intentional states, etc., are properties of certain physical systems-- certain mammalian brains as far as we are aware.
For myself, whilst I am a eliminative materialist, I view "free will" as a forensic term: one relevant to the ascription of economic, legal, and moral responsibilities. But, for the sake of philosophical hygiene, I do believe we ought to efface ourselves of such metaphysically-problematic terms.
P.S.
DeleteAs a point of clarification, when I write "Desires, intentional states, etc., are properties of certain physical systems-- certain mammalian brains as far as we are aware" I do not mean to assert that 'desires', 'intentional states', etc., are emergent properties. Rather I intend to be understood as asserting that 'desires' et al. are identified (in a very strict sense) with brain states.
And I thank you, Eamon, for elucidating. Especially for your second point above, and I apologize for my errant inferences. I suspect that I may really agree entirely with what you say. I can't see this as being any other way, of course!
DeleteYou are really very interesting for me - as a layman to philosophy and science, and only in the last six months have I begun to read any philosophy and talk about it.
Now, you said, "In a strict sense, there are no minds-- that is, not if if "minds" are construed as non-physical entities: Desires, intentional states, etc., are properties of certain physical systems-- certain mammalian brains as far as we are aware."
This awareness v purely physical mental states is still, I think, quite problematic for me. I think I hold the position that while our awareness is the result of, and actually is precisely correlated to brain state, that by having this awareness/brain state, the brain actually is in a process of producing certain desired brain states over other possible outcomes/brain states.
In other words, our awareness IS the actual processing going on in our brains, the running 'program' and not the 'output' of a functioning program/brain.
Actually, I just pulled up the Stanford page on eliminative materialism, and right now, I fail to see much in argument with Mary's room. I think our mind is as self reported/observed, a real thing, and yet that is problematic, too!
At best, I can only put it this way - that our awareness is both an output and an input, at the same time, in the function of our brain, and I find it impossible still, to eliminate this 'folk psychology' description where it implies that our awareness is different from our brain. That only leaves me at the 'hard problem' stage, I know, but I, perhaps and probably naively, am left with an analogues position to fricken wave-particle duality.
I absolutely detest using QM in any 'excuse' for the functioning of our brain, but I still can't shake this belief, lol, that it is a matter of perspective that cannot be unified, but only conjugated. (Key word: analogous!)
I apologize for my lack of clarity and ability to use proper terminology, if I am, and I will go and read now!
Thanks again,
Mike
You philosophers can argue about terms like contra-causal and compatibilist. I am just looking at the claim that neuroscience has disproved free will. And hence that science has disproved religion. Seems crazy to me.
ReplyDeleteRoger,
Deleteyour comment reflects the attitude of people like Harris, Coyne, Rosenberg et al., but I think is too quick. First, science cannot disprove an incoherent concept like contra-causal free will. Indeed, philosophy can do that (because it's a matter of logic). Second, this whole thing has very little to do with religion, because religionists believe in contra-causal free will, which is not the target of this research. Third, there is a danger in uncritically accepting Harris-like sweeping statements about human volition, and that danger is that we throw out human agency, ethics, and pretty much everything that makes us human, quickly leading nihilism (which in fact Rosenberg at least openly embraces).
Yes, I detest this continued insistence, by Harris, and especially by Coyne, to keep harping on how disproving free will will eliminate religion, FFS! Actually, I'm not sure about Harris doing this, yet he is still irrelevant, in my opinion.
DeleteScientifically, rationally, logically, God(Abrahamic) has all but been entirely disproven, or shown to be not feasible already, yet religious practice persists. Vehemently!
Nothing will prove there is no God to the devout, and I wish he would get that through his head. His is a stupid way to think, and I think he shows incredible bias, but that's just my opinion, and not really relevant, I suppose(grudgingly), LOL
Roger,
DeleteThose who advance that thesis (Coyne, Harris, etc.) are more or less philosophically naive. (Harris should know better given that he has a degree in philosophy from Stanford.) There are quite a few theist of whom I am aware who reject either free will (construed as a non-physical "thing") or who accept a broadly materialist view of the mind (e.g. Peter van Inwagen).
Just a quickie on spirituality for you. I would simplify the issue by saying that our base-state is belief. We aim at knowledge, and science continually fails in that aim because even in settled theories variations will be adopted according to the beliefs of proponents. Hypotheses are strictly conditioned beliefs.
DeleteReligious texts are full of belief and little objective knowledge, sadly. Consequently, if our aim is knowledge, we must extend our beliefs more into hypotheses than spirtuality. The base of belief remains open to all, to drive accumulation of knowledge, but one becomes mature at a certain point.
Nevertheless, Atheism is a fallacy. It is illogical to negate beliefs of the private individual, the universal driver. All that can be said logically about God is that He may be outside of knowledge, and if one believes to get knowledge, then to believe one way or the other about God is illogical or lacks Parsimony. One should allow both private beliefs and an objective public world, but value the public world and totally ignore private Gods.
Massimo,
ReplyDeleteI just finished the episode. It sounds as if your discussion with Pat helped remove some of the (possible) misunderstandings you had with eliminative materialism. Some / many / most / almost all of the commenters on the blog seem to have this idea that eliminative materialism is essentially the thesis advanced by Coyne & Harris et al.; it's not.
Eamon,
Deleteour chat with Pat didn't really clarify much about eliminativism because I was sufficiently familiar with it, and we only touched on it during the show. But yes, I agree with you that it isn't (exactly) the same thing that Harris, Coyne etc. are talking about. (Then again, it is hard to say exactly what they are talking about...)
I wish you would have dedicated more of the podcast to the discussion of eliminative materialism.
DeleteI liked this conversation so much that I wish the podcast would have gone for another hour. I'd really like to hear Patricia talk more about the philosophical considerations of eliminativist materialism!
ReplyDeleteMerriam-Webster defines "free will" as "freedom of humans to make choices that are not determined by prior causes or by divine intervention."
ReplyDeleteAlso...
ReplyDeleteMerriam-Webster defines "indeterminism" as "a theory that the will is free and that deliberate choice and actions are not determined by or predictable from antecedent causes."
If our "self" is illusory (as eliminative materialists propose), then what exactly is having this illusion?
ReplyDeleteHi Alastair,
DeleteRe: "If our "self" is illusory (as eliminative materialists propose), then what exactly is having this illusion?"
The brain.
P.S. Do not do philosophy via the dictionary. Lexicographers report the various & most common uses of a word but they do not analyze them for employment in nuanced philosophical discussions.
Eamon, who is doing philosophy by the dictionary? Anyone who hides behind pedantic pretensions is weak, and indicates an insecurity.
DeleteThe question about self addresses the fact that we would have no 'self' if we did not perceive one, thus you are saying that self awareness is illusory while using it to present rational, in your awareness, arguments.
You rely on your 'self' to make sense, so holding the position that self is an illusion necessarily invalidates any usage of it to make arguments as credible.
So, you are either holding the position that you do not know if what you claim as truth is in fact true, because you only hold the illusion that it is true.
Or, you are a hypocrite. The very fact of our ability to plan successfully for the future show that our concept of self is functional and necessary.
How else can I plan for a future, and then finding myself in the future, remember planning for it if I am not continuous.
Any ideas not based on empiricism are effectively useless. How can you possibly hold anyone accountable for their decisions and past behaviors if they are not the same person. If you contest self based on memory being unreliable, then you cannot rely on memory to claim anything happened, including moral violations and crime.
This kind of crap thinking leads to William Lane Craig proving god ontologically.
If our illusion of self is localized to the brain, then you are being disingenuous as well, because the boundaries of the brain, or any physical object, are fuzzy. But of course, you would think that the notion of a continuous brain is illusory, so your snark answer, "The brain" rests on a physicalism that postmodernists deny in the first place.
In other words, the 'perception of self' is just as real as 'the brain' that holds it.
Tell me, who, or what, are you if you are not yourself? Why do you use a name, Eamon? Are you somehow indicating that you are separate from me, and Alastair? What's up with that?
Mikmik,
DeleteThe tone of your comment does not lend itself to civil discourse, hence I will not respond to it.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Delete@ Eamon's Brain
Delete> The brain. <
But "awareness" itself is axiomatic (self-evident). Any attempt to deny it presupposes it. (Some eliminative materialists (e.g. Daniel Dennett) seem to deny awareness itself).
> P.S. Do not do philosophy via the dictionary. Lexicographers report the various & most common uses of a word but they do not analyze them for employment in nuanced philosophical discussions. <
The dictionary definition presented libertarian free will. (This is the form of free will that everyone presupposes in practice even if they deny it in theory.)
Alastair,
DeleteTo clarify, though some eliminative materialists hold the position, eliminative materialism (EM) itself is not committed to viewing consciousness as illusory. Rather, EM is committed to this single claim: Rejecting the ontological status of all mental events which do not have a neural basis.
That said, what is "awareness"?
@ Eamon's Brain
Delete> That said, what is "awareness"? <
If the meaning of the term is not immediately self-evident to you, then there is no point to continue this discussion. (You can't have an intelligent discussion with an individual who does not know whether or not he is presently experiencing subjective awareness.)
Alastair,
DeleteRe: "You can't have an intelligent discussion with an individual who does not know whether or not he is presently experiencing subjective awareness."
The worry here is that you are begging the question. You definitionally stomp your foot and determine that "self awareness" is "self-evident" and "axiomatic" (your comment reminds me of Ambrose Bierce's definition of "self-evident" in The Devil's Dictionary: "self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and nobody else.")
The contention is not that the brain is not "experiencing self-awareness" (whatever that in the end amounts to) but rather that consciousness or "self-awareness" precisely is a series of ridiculously complex physical processes within the brain (which is itself set within a broader biological environment). The eliminative materialist does NOT assert that brains do not think (they do); do not experience the external world via (albeit meagre) sensory stimuli (they do).
P.S.
DeleteRe: "@ Eamon's Brain"
"Eamon" does not have a brain. Rather, "Eamon" is the brain (set within the larger biological system of it's body, etc.).
@ Eamon's Brain
Delete> The worry here is that you are begging the question. <
Correction. The eliminative materialist is the one who is begging the question. In particular, he is begging the following question.
If our "self" is illusory (as eliminative materialists propose), then what exactly is having this illusion?
> You definitionally stomp your foot and determine that "self awareness" is "self-evident" and "axiomatic" (your comment reminds me of Ambrose Bierce's definition of "self-evident" in The Devil's Dictionary: "self-evident, adj. Evident to one's self and nobody else.") <
Merriam-Webster defines "axiomatic" as "taken for granted : self-evident ."
Of course, if you deny the reality of the self, then nothing can qualify as self-evident. This probably explains why you're struggling to comprehend the term "awareness."
To reiterate: It is not possible to have an intelligent conversation with an individual who does not understand the meaning of term "awareness." Attempting to engage in such a conversation would prove to be nothing more than an exercise in futility. And I do not intend to spend my precious time engaging in futile exercises.
DeleteAlastair,
DeleteI think our exchange has reached the point of diminishing returns, so I will end my participation with this comment.
Re: "If our "self" is illusory (as eliminative materialists propose), then what exactly is having this illusion?"
To reiterate: There is no "self" but rather a brain which constructs a world from the impoverished sensory stimuli it receives. In other words, the eliminative materialist contends that there is no thing which corresponds to the word "self". Descartes looked for it, but did not find it; it's time to put away anachronistic concepts & proceed with a genuinely scientific view of human cognition.
Re: Begging the question.
Mind you I am not defining as 'self-evident' & 'axiomatic' the proposition that there is no 'self'. However, you are so defining the 'self'.
My rejection of the 'self' as something other than the operation of the brain is predicated upon, amongst other things, an extraordinarily fruitful methodological maxim: seek a fully naturalistic explanation for any puzzling or mysterious biological phenomenon. Not on some definitional legerdemain.
Allow me to end by saying that I am disappointed with the incivility you and Mikmik have evidenced in your comments to me.
Eliminative materialism is the only consistent form of materialism in the sense that it maintains that only the objective is real. (All other forms of materialism actually presuppose dualism but are too intellectually dishonest to acknowledge it.) That being said, eliminative materialism is completely and utterly irrational because it denies the reality of subjectivity.
DeleteIt seems to me that any scientific evidence (e.g. Libet's readiness potential) that could be employed to invalidate free will could also be employed to validate psi phenomena.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteLet me pitch one. Neurons 'enable' non neuron cells to function with 'awareness'. They perform a dual role, which makes them intricately suited to represent the 'feelings' of non neuronal organs and appendages. Feelings are currents through every site of organ and appendage function, facilitated by neuronal outputs and collected by inputs. They are latent until processed in the brain for 'completion' before awareness is experienced as a 'referral' back to sites (I feel my hand at my hand, even though the event is completed in the brain and referred there as if at my hand).
ReplyDeleteThus neurons, including their extension to, from, and within the brain, are a facility of organs and appendages sites. They are included within them, and represent their feelings on referral. The neuronal current that enables every non neuron cell to function is diversified across vastly different sites (eyes, ears, hands etc) for vastly different 'real' feelings that are latent until referred within the brain.
The key distinction is between 'real' cortices processing the real factual event of vision, sound, touch, versus the 'ethereal' processing shared between all sites. Thoughts attend real factual feelings as ethereal feelings by a flow from the real cortices into many and varied shared cortices. Hormones (I got around to them, phew) are at a level where we can see radical cellular excretions and affects on sites coordinated by neurons, and we might be seduced by being able to see enablement & awareness together at that potent level. The main issue is real to etheral processing, which is the Platonic distinction between Real Particulars and Ideal Universals (real cortices and ethereal cortices).
In fact, I would reduced it down to "thing" and "thingness". A real thing (eg an eye) shares properties of thingness (eg lineness) with other things (eg the lineness of my legs). Thus seeing the line of the table over there enables me to avoid bumping my knee. The table has meaning to the whole of me to that extent, and clearly other extents. Cortically, inputs are radically split after identification in real cortices, for their common properties to be integrated in shared cortices.
Good luck with your site. I wil try to post as much as I can as I believe I can help you to sort things out. Cheerio from Melbourne, Australia.
PS. Libet measured the referral event in the brain, which inevitably follows the feelings of sites that neurons represent faithfully by inputs. It is a cycle, in which outputs prompt every intricate feeling of sites by currents to move them, including the intricacies of thoughts flowing with those feelings. However, as noted, the real feelings and the thoughts they carry require real processing followed by splitting for ethereal thoughts, and are latent until referral. The brain serves manual sites at manual rates of action and thought, and is automatic and rapid in doing so. Libet was guessing and he would probably admit it, and others have failed to grasp the cycle.
Delete