Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 21:39:26 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: about Hugh vs Justin


On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, j laari wrote:

> " I'm with Hugh here. I think thoughts are something like perceived by
> having them. That's how we know what we think, when we do. "
> 
> I don't get. First, "something like perceived" isn't exactly the same
> as "perceived", so what do you mean? 

I mean known directly without inference, the way we know that something
red is red when we see it. 

Secondly, If 'perception' means
> the act by which we gain information from 'external world'
> then how we can apply the concept of perception to 'inner experiences'
> (because we don't gain information about our thinking through our
> senses but directly, by introspection, or by 'intuition' perhaps)?

If you define it that way, or define it as knowledge gained by the senses,
then you can't, in the ordinary run of things, perceive your thoughts.
What you can do is know them without inference and--this was the point of
the discussion with Hugh--with less worry about whether what you know is
accurate, because in the ordinary course of things thinking you think
something effectively guarantees that you do think it. Not always, but
more often than thinking you perceive something out there.

> I don't get. I don't find anything peculiar with trans. categories.

Well, you must have a deeper understanding or a much shallower one. I
think they're very odd.

> You're splitting the mind into two: empirical and transcendental? And
> empirical mind is subjective, transcendental objective? Haven't found
> such a formulation in Kant so far. 

He doesn't put it that way. But he does distinguish between the empirical
self, the locus of thoughts, and the transcendental unity of
apperception, the locus, apparently, of the tr conditions of experience,
the I which has all of my experiences. I am deeply mystified about what
sense of "mental" that might be.  

Seems like you're somehow
> restricting mind to thoughts, as if they were co-extensive? Or rather:
> you're restricting mind into our everyday awareness and experience of
> our own mental activity. 

I'm saying that's a sense of mind I understand.

Thereby you're forced to claim that
> trans.cat's aren't "in the same place" (so to speak) with rest of
> mental. Yet they are "here and now" all the time.

Yes, it's vey puzzling. I do think taht K thinks they are in some sense in
the same place, in the same way taht empirical objects and Things in
Themselves are in the same "place" and are in fact the "same" things. How
that can be is hard to understand.

 Kant wasn't able to
> give them precise theoretical status and genesis - otherwise we all
> would be kantians - but surely he thought that they are in mind but
> not of mind. They aren't dependent on our empirical minds, of course,
> except in a sense that there has to be a mind in order there to be
> transcendental categories...

Hm. Means what? Mind in what sense? The tr unity of app expresses the
operation of the categories, K says something very like that. But they
aren't dependent on the empirical self; rather the reverse.

> About the objectivity of trans.cat's: Yes, Kant surely aimed at idea
> that they are objective, but he wasn't able to provide a theory for
> that. So strictly conceptually they remained subjective ones.

They're objective in that we can't get away from them, we can't have
experience that evades the categories and isn't in time (and maybe space).
> 
> " I think emotional states are cognitive. They have content. I fear
> that I may run into trouble. I love being with my children, Etc. A
> better counterexamplea re qualia, pain, sensastions of color, which do
> not appear to have content. I would still say that having these states
> is thinking, at least sentience. They are not conceptual, fair enough.
> The emotions are conceptual, however. "
> 
> Now you got me interested in your concepts of cognitive (and
> cognition) and sentience: how do they relate to that of thinking on
> one hand, and to language and conceptuality, on the other?

I think thinking is a matter of degree, Cognitive states are
conceptual.They require, but are not necesssarily reducible to, language.
But there can be sentience without cognition. The nonand pre-linguistic
have thoughts and experiences that they don't conceptualize and can't
express in language. Below that there is lower level intentionality that's
not even sentient, as a plant indicates the presence of the sun or a
thermostatic system the temperature.

> For example, animals can be in a state of fear without being able to
> express their fear conceptually (due to their lack of linguistic
> skills): for them fear is plain fear, not a meaningful state, though
> they can be aware of it.

Yes.

> 
> With humans it's different. We can not only be aware of our emotional
> states but also articulate them conceptually. But surely you aren't
> saying that this (in a loose sense) cognitive surplus is somehow part
> of the emotion?

Absolutely. As Rousseau points out, it's a peculiarly human ability to be
able to have emotions about things that we could even grasp without
language, such as, the worry about gloabl warming leading to ecodisaster
or the concern that one's spouse will find out about one's lover.

 And besides, what about emotional states that we
> 'repress' into 'unconscious' and let their energy or force enter
> consciousness only as modified or transformed? How the original "real"
> emotion can be conceptual if we cannot be aware of it?

Therea rea  lot of difficulties with the notion of the unconscious. How
can be have mental states at all of which we cannot be aware?

Discussion about sense and reference snipped; couldn't follow what point
JL was making.

> the mat. The issue between H and myself here was whether I can know
> the contents of my own mind. "
> 
> And my concern are the questions: Is it really *knowledge* and
> *knowing* when we are *aware* of the contents of our minds? 

Why not? Maybe your thought is that it's different to havea  thought than
to know I have a thought. But I am aware taht I have a thought, I have
that much self-consciousness about my inner state, what's the problemw ith
saying that I know I have it, if I do have it?

Is it
> really a question of knowing to be aware of some present thought in
> one's own mind? Can it be "false knowledge" or untrue proposition?

Sure. No knowledge of anything empirical is incorrigible.

 How
> it can be proved to be true? 

Normally that sort of belief is self-verifying. ASk more pertinently, how
can it be proved _false_? Here's an example. Say I think I love my work.
But it's pointed out tome that I shirk, come in late, leave early, spend
all my time at work reading the mail and playing computer games, etc. It
can be reasonbaly inferred taht my belief about my love for my work is false.

See, our *knowledge* concerning some
> state of things in reality and our *awareness* of our own states of
> mind aren't exactly of same nature - or are they? According to your
> conception they are?

Well, make out the difference for me.

> " Well, I've argued that a lot of thought isn't propositional. See Mmy
> "Propositional Attitude psycholofy as an Ideal Type," Topoi 1992. "
> 
> Unfortunately Topoi isn't available here. You don't happen to have
> your article as a file...?

I could send you a copy. Send me your snail-mail address.
> 
> " Maybe. Ruth Milikan has rgued to the contrary very powerfully. "
> 
> OK, I try to find some of her works.

I think it's Millikan, two ls. The main book is Language, Thought, and
Other Biological Categories.

--jks




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