This is some of the best writing on philosophy and science that I have seen in a while. I also think it might be my favourite post of yours I have ever read.
I know your an avid reader David. Have you been reading work around philosophy of science or has this synthesized from different sources (which is definitely doable)?
I'm a bit rusty but rereading Bernards post he seems to be leaning into Wittgenstein 1 far more than his later work.
Personally I think as soon as you accept the dynamic relationship of schema and vocabulary you need a different approach. Are you sufficiently calibrated with the other person/position in your understanding of the word and in regards to ideas,like those in cognitive science, is the fidelity of meaning sufficient to justify the conclusions.
An example I mention to friends is that perception is memory and memory is perception or that a tautological argument can be begging the question or definitive proof of something.
Obviously those words mean different things but in that context their relational interplay defines them but only if we can calibrate our focus and therefore understanding.
I think that's one of Bernards points but he doesn't seem to engage with the enormity of the dynamic complexity or the fact this process is changing constantly in our own minds alongside our own concurrent and muliple conflicting associations.
I feel if he did he would need to focus on a much more pragmatic approach, one of which would look like the arguments you where making.
Reason Wittgenstein and many philosophers have some serious mental health issues.🤔
Yeah Wittgenstein would definitely get you there. Rifting off his contempt for the Vienna schools positivism (and pretty much any idea he didn't have or has forgotten was his).
Thank you. Language can be what divides us and clarity is helpful. In my family (of scientists, psychologists, historians and educators) many discussions start with "define your terms"!
Confusion will always result when one operates on the materialistic model that reduces consciousness to a mechanical or computational basis. There will always be a difference between the lived experience of a conscious observer and the speculations tied to a reductive model, a brain function = consciousness model. Efforts to attribute the mismatch to language or other incidentals will always fail, as they do not match or explain reality. A proper understanding of understanding itself will be elusive as long as one operates on false premises. There is sufficient evidence that one can no longer equate consciousness with mechanical brain function. Adherence to such faulty reasoning will always result in confusion and an endless loop of academic chatter. Even the most sophisticated of the "consciousness as computation" models, for example, Wolfram's sophisticated speculations, come up short. Science must now leap past old biases and blindnesses and go with the evidence and actual observation. We have suffered too many decades of stagnant science. Time to shake off faulty assumptions and move forward.
The HUGE body of evidence arising from the NDE is, to my mind, overwhelming and dispositive. However, my argument does not begin and end solely with the NDE (including the OOBE). There is more, much more. But for the sake of brevity we can narrow the discussion to that body of evidence.
As an addition to our discussion... and of value to your Stack... I recommend checking out the YouTube Channel "Theory of Everything" and the new Substack by its host, Curt Jaimongel. His guests are top notch, cutting edge, the famous names, and he, himself, is uber knowledgeable. Good stuff that will augment your inquiries at times.
Yes. We take opposing views on a subject loaded with a fundamental dichotomy: is consciousness a primary state of being from which all substance and form emerges OR is consciousness an emergent property of a material substrate? Materialism vs. Idealism. And we remain friendly, as I totally respect your skepticism. It is important with this topic to retain skepticism and force the answers or solutions to rise out of our passionate observation.
Ah! That would explain why it felt he was arguing something different to the central point you where making in the article. I recognised the arguments but they seem rather off piste as interesting they are.
Ah, one might, at first glance, think my comment differed from the central point; however, I'm not satisfied with surface stuff, but rather viewed the "dispute" and confusion to which he spoke to be rooted in fundamental misunderstandings. The roiling waters at the surface attest to the sea monster thrashing around down under.
Consider me a stand-in for the Roy Scheider character in Jaws. "There is a big fish down there. A really big, angry fish. SHARK! SHARK! Get everyone off the beach." The great truths that threaten the edifice of materialistic science are down there twisting away getting ready to surface.
I admire how clearly and succinctly you define the aims of philosophy and science—I hadn’t considered this distinction previously, and it’s helpful for considering how each individual can approach the same learning situation from a different angle.
Your conclusion is certainly important from a practical perspective. A teacher educating a large group of individuals is holding a lot of approaches and ideas in productive tension. Add learning standards into this, and teachers end up spending a majority of their time focused on even further simplifications, particularly in reading comprehension. Instead of helping students make meaning of a text in conversation with others, they are told to teach how to identify a main idea in hopes that it transfers to another text. I wish teachers and students could prioritize debating what they mean when they say X or investigating how something works but I fear that their focus is on useless distractions and distortions in the US.
I was intrgued by this debate, and motivated to write a blog to join the conversation. I feel that the latest theory(s) in cognitive science, predictive processing / Active Inference, can bridge this gap. In addition I really want to highlight that as an education profession we seem to be ignoring the revolution in thinking in cognitive and neuroscience that has been happening in the last 10 years.
This a very well put together and reasoned analysis.
As a scientist, I’m not sure our primary question is “How does it work.”
Particularly in modern science. There are so many situations where we, as scientists have to ask “what do you mean by that?” For instance, when you talk about an electron, what do you mean by that? You have in mind a particular model of an electron. We can’t have a meaningful discussion about electrons without having some sort of agreement about which model we are talking about.
And also, I think science is more about asking questions than answering them. This is what disturbs me so much about this new vocabulary “the science of…” Goodness we have been studying how people learn since the time of Aristotle. This became more “scientific” in the early part of the 20th century. Now, all of a sudden, we ignore everything that we have learnt before and with great audacity say that we are studying a completely new field that has never been studied before. That is NOT how science works.
This is some of the best writing on philosophy and science that I have seen in a while. I also think it might be my favourite post of yours I have ever read.
I know your an avid reader David. Have you been reading work around philosophy of science or has this synthesized from different sources (which is definitely doable)?
It’s a response to Bernard Andrew’s post on conceptual analysis, so I used a lot of his sources. But I’ve always been a Wittgenstein stan
I'm a bit rusty but rereading Bernards post he seems to be leaning into Wittgenstein 1 far more than his later work.
Personally I think as soon as you accept the dynamic relationship of schema and vocabulary you need a different approach. Are you sufficiently calibrated with the other person/position in your understanding of the word and in regards to ideas,like those in cognitive science, is the fidelity of meaning sufficient to justify the conclusions.
An example I mention to friends is that perception is memory and memory is perception or that a tautological argument can be begging the question or definitive proof of something.
Obviously those words mean different things but in that context their relational interplay defines them but only if we can calibrate our focus and therefore understanding.
I think that's one of Bernards points but he doesn't seem to engage with the enormity of the dynamic complexity or the fact this process is changing constantly in our own minds alongside our own concurrent and muliple conflicting associations.
I feel if he did he would need to focus on a much more pragmatic approach, one of which would look like the arguments you where making.
Reason Wittgenstein and many philosophers have some serious mental health issues.🤔
Yeah Wittgenstein would definitely get you there. Rifting off his contempt for the Vienna schools positivism (and pretty much any idea he didn't have or has forgotten was his).
Love that guy.
Thank you. Language can be what divides us and clarity is helpful. In my family (of scientists, psychologists, historians and educators) many discussions start with "define your terms"!
Confusion will always result when one operates on the materialistic model that reduces consciousness to a mechanical or computational basis. There will always be a difference between the lived experience of a conscious observer and the speculations tied to a reductive model, a brain function = consciousness model. Efforts to attribute the mismatch to language or other incidentals will always fail, as they do not match or explain reality. A proper understanding of understanding itself will be elusive as long as one operates on false premises. There is sufficient evidence that one can no longer equate consciousness with mechanical brain function. Adherence to such faulty reasoning will always result in confusion and an endless loop of academic chatter. Even the most sophisticated of the "consciousness as computation" models, for example, Wolfram's sophisticated speculations, come up short. Science must now leap past old biases and blindnesses and go with the evidence and actual observation. We have suffered too many decades of stagnant science. Time to shake off faulty assumptions and move forward.
Really think you missed the point here.
ToW and I are friendly adversaries (I think that's a reasonable description?)
He's convinced that Near Death Experiences constitute proof that consciousness cannot be physically located. As he know, I reamin deeply sceptical.
The HUGE body of evidence arising from the NDE is, to my mind, overwhelming and dispositive. However, my argument does not begin and end solely with the NDE (including the OOBE). There is more, much more. But for the sake of brevity we can narrow the discussion to that body of evidence.
As an addition to our discussion... and of value to your Stack... I recommend checking out the YouTube Channel "Theory of Everything" and the new Substack by its host, Curt Jaimongel. His guests are top notch, cutting edge, the famous names, and he, himself, is uber knowledgeable. Good stuff that will augment your inquiries at times.
Yes. We take opposing views on a subject loaded with a fundamental dichotomy: is consciousness a primary state of being from which all substance and form emerges OR is consciousness an emergent property of a material substrate? Materialism vs. Idealism. And we remain friendly, as I totally respect your skepticism. It is important with this topic to retain skepticism and force the answers or solutions to rise out of our passionate observation.
Ah! That would explain why it felt he was arguing something different to the central point you where making in the article. I recognised the arguments but they seem rather off piste as interesting they are.
Ah, one might, at first glance, think my comment differed from the central point; however, I'm not satisfied with surface stuff, but rather viewed the "dispute" and confusion to which he spoke to be rooted in fundamental misunderstandings. The roiling waters at the surface attest to the sea monster thrashing around down under.
Was quite a few glances and that roiling water of language is the ocean in which everything sits.
Consider me a stand-in for the Roy Scheider character in Jaws. "There is a big fish down there. A really big, angry fish. SHARK! SHARK! Get everyone off the beach." The great truths that threaten the edifice of materialistic science are down there twisting away getting ready to surface.
It would not be the first time. So, yes, that is possible. But, as described below, I believe there is fruit to be harvested from my comment.
I like bananas too just thought I was eating an apple. 😏
I admire how clearly and succinctly you define the aims of philosophy and science—I hadn’t considered this distinction previously, and it’s helpful for considering how each individual can approach the same learning situation from a different angle.
Your conclusion is certainly important from a practical perspective. A teacher educating a large group of individuals is holding a lot of approaches and ideas in productive tension. Add learning standards into this, and teachers end up spending a majority of their time focused on even further simplifications, particularly in reading comprehension. Instead of helping students make meaning of a text in conversation with others, they are told to teach how to identify a main idea in hopes that it transfers to another text. I wish teachers and students could prioritize debating what they mean when they say X or investigating how something works but I fear that their focus is on useless distractions and distortions in the US.
I was intrgued by this debate, and motivated to write a blog to join the conversation. I feel that the latest theory(s) in cognitive science, predictive processing / Active Inference, can bridge this gap. In addition I really want to highlight that as an education profession we seem to be ignoring the revolution in thinking in cognitive and neuroscience that has been happening in the last 10 years.
https://predictablycorrect.substack.com/p/what-are-we-really-talking-about?r=35dqt
This a very well put together and reasoned analysis.
As a scientist, I’m not sure our primary question is “How does it work.”
Particularly in modern science. There are so many situations where we, as scientists have to ask “what do you mean by that?” For instance, when you talk about an electron, what do you mean by that? You have in mind a particular model of an electron. We can’t have a meaningful discussion about electrons without having some sort of agreement about which model we are talking about.
Yes, of course, but the primary goal of science is to make sense of aspects of the world, no?
And also, I think science is more about asking questions than answering them. This is what disturbs me so much about this new vocabulary “the science of…” Goodness we have been studying how people learn since the time of Aristotle. This became more “scientific” in the early part of the 20th century. Now, all of a sudden, we ignore everything that we have learnt before and with great audacity say that we are studying a completely new field that has never been studied before. That is NOT how science works.
Is anyone saying that? Sounds a bit strawmanish :)
Indeed it is. The trouble is, the more we study the world, the less sense it makes. The bigger point is that it is all about language.
Ah yes, agnotology. Have you read Firestein's Ignorance: How It Drives Science?