Date: Tue, 6 Jan 1998 02:25:12 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: Re: M-TH: about Hugh vs Justin



Responses to jukka l:

> (Hugh:)  thoughts, emotions etc (all
> > perceptible in various direct and indirect ways, hence
> > material in the final analysis)
> 
> JL: Yeah, weird thing to say, Hugh. And how can they even be perceptible?
> Thought or emotion (or intention) as state of mind is one thing, its
> expression another. On the other hand, introspectively they aren't
> perceptible at all, because they are "on this side of senses",
> "inside", internal to mind: they don't come from outside like sounds.

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.

> Justin: "This is ignorant, Hugh. Kant thinks that our concepts are
> constrained by something beyond our heads, namely, what he takes to be
> the necessary conditions of all possible experience."
> 
> Beyond? And I thought that he was in great pains to show that it's
> exactly a question of internal workings of our minds: forms of
> perception (time, space) and transcendental categories are so to speak
> 'immanent' to our minds. Or are you saying that 'head' is just a part
> of 'mind'?

No, quite the opposite. You have to distinguish between the empirical
mind, for Kant, the sort of thing Hugh and I are going on about with
respect to cognitive processes, and the transcendental locus of the
categories and space and time for Kant, which are a priori conditions of
the possibility of experience. They're not mental the way thoughts are.,
They're conditions for having thoughts. They are quite objective. They're
not in the external world: for K the external world depends on them, nor
in the noumenal world, by definition, since the n-world is thew orld as it
apart from these conditions. But they are not in or dependent on our minds
either; the reverse, rather. They are very pecilair things.

> Justin: "We don't think _with_ our minds; our minds _are_ thinking,
> there's nothing else to them."
> 
> Not even emotional states? Are you really collapsing all mental to one
> of its functions? You're also loosing the specificity of thinking by
> 'defining' it co-extensive with 'mind'.

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.

> 
> (Hugh:) Just as objectified arbitrary signs are necessary to hang
> meaning on to in language.
> 
> [Perhaps Hugh isn't referring to 'meaning' as an effect of linguistic
> operations only (Sense/Sinn), but as a combination of it and referent
> (that is, as Bedeutung)? And yes, I know there are more ways to
> 'define sense and meaning' than room for them all in a single post...
> but I can't grasp Hugh's aim in any other way at the moment.]

Well, I can't grasp it at all.

> Well, again you equalise thinking and mental. Amazing how an
> analytical philosopher can be so 'anti-cartesian', if by 'cartesian'
> is meant insistence on "clear and distinct" concepts... How about
> making some necessary distinctions between awareness, (self-) 
> consciousness, and knowing; between thinking and imagination; between
> thoughts, images, emotions, intentions (and other 'stuff' of mental
> activity) in order to clarify the nature of thinking, of knowing etc? 

I can make these distinction when it matters.
> 
> Let's take your cat, for example. Justin is proved to *know* that cat
> is on the mat when he utters that "cat is on the mat", that is, makes
> a proposition.

No, I submitted that to prove that I know that I think the cat is on the
mat. The issue between H and myself here was whether I can know the
contents of my own mind.

> Then, and because I'm not sure about cats, let's take a chimp or a
> dolphin. They are showed to be self-conscious beings: they are able to
> recognise themselves in mirrors. But according to linguists, they
> haven't showed any signs (no pun intended) to master linguistic
> syntax. Therefore we cannot say them to be able to know (provided that
> we accept knowledge to be propositional - I can't think of any
> coherent theory concerning mind, thinking and such without that). 

Well, I've argued that a lot of thought isn't propositional. See Mmy
"Propositional Attitude psycholofy as an Ideal Type," Topoi 1992. 

They
> can manipulate signs (and researchers) by hitting proper sign, for
> example when they want a banana or a fish, but that's not mastering
> language, according to linguists (I'd rely on linguists on that and
> leave biologists' and behavioralists' beliefs to trashcan). There's no
> thinking and knowledge proper involved, yet there's clearly some
> intelligence and mental activity (not only gene-based responses to
> external stimulus).

Sure. Sentience comes in degrees. I think that chimps definitely think and
cats probably do to some degree.

> See, with only a few crucial conceptual distinctions we are able to
> recognize both sameness and differences between animals and humans,
> and clarify the nature of thinking as well as its relations to other
> forms of mental activity. Also we can ground 'higher' mental functions
> to capabilities of living organism without reducing them to biology,
> because language as social factor isn't reducible to biology. 

Maybe. Ruth Milikan has rgued to the contrary very powerfully.

So we
> have natural and social worlds nicely together in/with humans. Ain't
> modern (non-reductive) materialism wonderful?

Well, when I was doing this I was a defender of reductive materialism,a 
position about which, as I say, I am less confident than formerly.

--jks




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