Chomsky on consciousness

Chomsky on consciousness

Noam Chomsky is an intellectual giant, who has made major contributions to linguistics, philosophy, and cognitive science. In this episode Keith and Philip will explore Professor Chomsky's views on consciousness and the mind.

See also this commentary by Feser

...For rules always have an explicit content that must be understood before one can apply them.  And to appeal to further rules in order to determine the interpretation of the first set just raises the problem again at a higher level, which threatens a vicious regress.  (See e.g. the discussion of rule-following beginning at p. 174 of Dreyfus’s book What Computers Still Can’t Do.)

Moreover, Dreyfus points out, this computationalist model is an inheritance from the post-Cartesian approach to scientific explanation, according to which explaining a physical event involves identifying the laws by which it follows of necessity from antecedent events, in a manner that might be modeled by a machine.  But this mechanistic model only works when we abstract out of it anything that smacks of the psychological – consciousness, intentionality, and so on.  (This is precisely why Descartes had to relocate consciousness out of the material world and in a separate res cogitans, as Chomsky himself emphasizes later in the discussion with Goff and Frankish.) ...

...Gravitation seemed as “occult” as anything the medieval Aristotelians talked about.  Newton’s work was nevertheless accepted because of the tremendous predictive success afforded by its mathematical representation of nature.  Newtonian physics did not truly explain the phenomena with which it dealt, but carried the day because it described them so well.

In the history of physics after Newton, Chomsky says, the prevailing attitude came to be that anything was acceptable if it could be given a precise mathematical expression.  The predictive success of such mathematical theories is what mattered, and the metaphysical question about explaining why things worked in the way the mathematics described receded into the background.  For practical purposes, “matter” came to be treated as just whatever accepted physical theories happen to say about it.  But, Chomsky notes, as early twentieth-century thinkers like Bertrand Russell and Arthur Eddington pointed out, physical theory actually tells us very little about what matter is actually like.  It gives us only mathematical structure and is silent about what fleshes out that structure...

In the history of physics after Newton, Chomsky says, the prevailing attitude came to be that anything was acceptable if it could be given a precise mathematical expression.  The predictive success of such mathematical theories is what mattered, and the metaphysical question about explaining why things worked in the way the mathematics described receded into the background.  For practical purposes, “matter” came to be treated as just whatever accepted physical theories happen to say about it.  But, Chomsky notes, as early twentieth-century thinkers like Bertrand Russell and Arthur Eddington pointed out, physical theory actually tells us very little about what matter is actually like.  It gives us only mathematical structure and is silent about what fleshes out that structure...

This is something that has puzzled me for a while ~ that the Physicalist can be so confident that they understand the base nature of reality, but have apparently zero understanding of what matter actually is!

So, what is "matter" then? What is that causes the atom? The protons? The electrons? The neutrons? Quarks are a favoured answer by some... but, it results in the same question... the can has merely been kicked down the road.

To be more precise... what is it that gives atoms, subatomic particles, quarks, their respective properties? What is it that gives water its properties? Two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms? What is it that gives these atoms their properties? And so, and so forth...

The only answers I see the Physicalist giving are just... smaller particles. Which seems to logically be leading to the eventual problem of an infinite regress. Smaller and smaller particles needed to explain each layer of particles just becomes very unsatisfying, due to there being no actual answers... only deflections and promissory notes.

There needs to be a base substance somewhere, and it is logically not physical in any way, even ignoring consciousness for the time being. It is an unknown that has zero physical properties, even if it provides the basis for them. It won't be a wave or a particle nor a field or force. It will be something undetectable with the instruments of Physicalist science, because they are limited to detecting physical things.

/ramble

Was listening to a discussion (podcast) today.  Mentioned a famous (was new to me  ) quote from Newton:

I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

Really resonated for me.  Science seems to be only interested in discovering patterns; reliably repeating patterns.  It seems to have little (no?) explanatory power; or interest for that matter.

Science, Mind, and Limits of Understanding

Noam Chomsky

As a serious and honest scientist, Descartes therefore invoked a new principle to accommodate these non-mechanical phenomena, a kind of creative principle. In the substance philosophy of the day, this was a new substance, res cogitans, which stood alongside of res extensa...

...All of this is normal science, and like much normal science, it was soon shown to be incorrect. Newton demonstrated that one of the two substances does not exist: res extensa. The properties of matter, Newton showed, escape the bounds of the mechanical philosophy.

The “new mysterianism” is compared today with the “old mysterianism,” Cartesian dualism, its fate typically misunderstood. To repeat, Cartesian dualism was a perfectly respectable scientific doctrine, disproven by Newton, who exorcised the machine, leaving the ghost intact, contrary to what is commonly believed.

Science, Mind, and Limits of Understanding

Noam Chomsky

....Cartesian dualism was a perfectly respectable scientific doctrine, disproven by Newton, who exorcised the machine, leaving the ghost intact, contrary to what is commonly believed.
C

Does Chomsky establish or explain this remark? It's not clear to me how Newtonian dynamics disproves interactive Dualism.

Does Chomsky establish or explain this remark? It's not clear to me how Newtonian dynamics disproves interactive Dualism.

I read the whole thing without finding the answer (I have the same question).

Does Chomsky establish or explain this remark? It's not clear to me how Newtonian dynamics disproves interactive Dualism.

I read the whole thing without finding the answer (I have the same question).

My understanding may be flawed but from what I've read/watched -> He's say gravity, by showing a causal power that works differently than basic billiard ball contact causation, negates the basic mechanistic conception of how bodies work.

His criticism is with Res Extensa, the material world, because he doesn't think there's a clear definition of what "matter" and the "physical" are.

My understanding may be flawed but from what I've read/watched -> He's say gravity, by showing a causal power that works differently than basic billiard ball contact causation, negates the basic mechanistic conception of how bodies work.

His criticism is with Res Extensa, the material world, because he doesn't think there's a clear definition of what "matter" and the "physical" are.

But physical matter still exists, is part of our reality, both to our senses and to our instruments - it's irrelevant to the validity of interactive Dualism whether or not we understand in some ultimate sense what matter really is, and have a clear definition of it. We know from countless experiences that we in fact interact with the world as some sort of immaterial spirit manifesting in the world through the physical brain and body - hence interactive Dualism.

But physical matter still exists, is part of our reality, both to our senses and to our instruments - it's irrelevant to the validity of interactive Dualism whether or not we understand in some ultimate sense what matter really is, and have a clear definition of it. We know from countless experiences that we in fact interact with the world as some sort of immaterial spirit manifesting in the world through the physical brain and body - hence interactive Dualism.

His point - admittedly made in a confusing way - is how can there by a mind-body problem when the body is something mysterious.

This isn't to say he's an Idealist though he says Descartes' formulation of the Mind was "intact" even if the idea of the Body met with failure due to the necessity of reconsidering causality in light of Gravity. 

It just means he thinks you can't really say there's a problem when you don't even know what the body actually is.

Here's a quote that might clarify things ->

The mind-body problem can therefore not even be formulated. The problem cannot be solved, because there is no clear way to state it. Unless someone proposes a definite concept of body, we cannot ask whether some phenomena exceed its bounds.

  -- Chomsky, Language and Problems of Knowledge

His point - admittedly made in a confusing way - is how can there by a mind-body problem when the body is something mysterious.

This isn't to say he's an Idealist though he says Descartes' formulation of the Mind was "intact" even if the idea of the Body met with failure due to the necessity of reconsidering causality in light of Gravity. 

It just means he thinks you can't really say there's a problem when you don't even know what the body actually is.

Here's a quote that might clarify things ->

  -- Chomsky, Language and Problems of Knowledge

I think he is a Russelian monoist. That was my conclusion.