Aristotelian abstraction

On the Aristotelian account of abstraction, we abstract the forms of things via perception. But here is a problem. First of all, we sometimes have better knowledge of things not perceived than of things perceived. Let’s say you read a detailed scientific book about pangolins, though you’ve never encountered one, while I once saw a koala in a zoo, but don’t much know anything more about them than that they are cute marsupials. It seems quite problematic to say I have the form of the koala in my mind, but you do not have the form of the pangolin. For that would make the mental possession of the form of the thing an unimportant flourish to what really epistemically matters, since clearly you are better off epistemically for reading the book about pangolins than I am for seeing the koala.

Of course, presumably, the author of the pangolin book presumably saw the pangolin. But that doesn’t seem to matter much, either. There are many dinosaur species where the paleontologist knows more about the species than I know about koalas, and yet no human ever perceptually interacted with a dinosaur, but typically only with minerals that have displaced their carcasses.

What should someone committed to the Aristotelian story about abstraction say? Two options come to mind, a modest and an expansive one.

Modest option: It really doesn’t really matter much epistemically whether one has the form of a pangolin or a koala in one’s mind. What matters is the propositional knowledge. However, it is essential to our possession of the propositional knowledge that our thoughts have intentionality, that they refer to the world. And it is crucial to securing intentionality that we have Aristotelian abstraction at the interface between the world and the mind. The triceratops expert’s intentionality with respect to triceratopses is derivative from the causal chain from triceratopses to their corpses to their fossils to the light reflecting from the fossils into the expert’s eyes to (eventually somehow) the expert’s thoughts. Where the causal chain crosses from the world to the mind, we need a transmission of form to ensure intentionality for the whole chain. Maybe the transmission happens when the minerals that have replaced the bones transmit their mineral forms to the expert’s mind, in some mysterious way mediated by the light.

Expansive option: Everything in the world carries the forms of everything nondivine that is causally upstream from itself. The triceratops corpse somehow has the form of the triceratops in it, and so do the bones of the triceratops, and so do the minerals that replace the bones, and so does the light modulated by reflection from the minerals, and so do the electrical impulses in the nerves from the retinal receptors to the brain. It is easier to extract the form when it comes from seeing a live koala than when it comes from seeing fossils, so that a layman can do the former while the scientist is needed to do the latter. Similarly, when you read a book about pangolins, the ink on the page, being causally modulated by the author’s knowledge, carries the form of the pangolin (in addition to any forms naturally contained in the ink, say those of the particles constituting the ink).

Medievals already said something like this about the modulated light, so it’s just a matter of extending the story. And while the problem I am concerned about is one that does not require any science or technology beyond what the medievals had—the medievals knew about the gaining of expertise from books (if anything, they might have overestimated it!)—in a modern setting we it feels like an Aristotelian has to do this. After all, it is hard to deny that one can gain the same kind of knowledge of koalas by looking at them through high-end augmented reality goggles as from directly seeing them with our eyes. Thus, on a form-transmission story, the electrical potentials of the capacitors in the computer memory in the goggles have to somehow carry the form of the koala. But given the many ways that computer memory can be realized (think of magnetized rings versus capacitors versus markings on a CD), it seems plausible that any effect will have to have to be admitted to carry the form of its cause. It is tempting to say the form is only found in substances where there is sufficient data to reconstruct significant information about the causally-upstream object the form is of, but I think is not tenable. Presumably each bacterium is a substance, and we could have a type of biological memory in augmented reality glasses where each bit of information is stored in a different bacterium.

This story coheres very nicely with the essentiality of origins. It is a kind of a reversal of the principle of proportionality of causation on which the reality of the effect is actually or eminently found in the cause: the formal reality of a cause is found in the effect. I think it’s a defensible story. But I also find it hard to believe.

An argument against naturalism from the concept of the numinous

1. If naturalism about our minds is true, then the correct account of intentionality is causal.

2. On a causal account of intentionality, our possession of an irreducible concept is caused by something which falls under that concept.

3. The concept of the numinous is irreducible.

4. Therefore, if naturalism about our minds is true, our possession of the concept of the numinous is caused by something numinous. (1–3)

5. If there is anything numinous, then naturalism in general is false.

6. If naturalism about our minds is not true, then naturalism in general is false.

7. So, naturalism in general is false. (4–6)

What do I mean by “the numinous”? Since I claim it to be irreducible, I had better not try to define it. But I can point to it by means of our experiences of the holy, the uncanny, etc.: see Rudolf Otto’s book on the holy.

I think the best objection to the argument is to say that numinous can be reduced to the negation of the natural. But that objection seems to me to be mistaken. Imagine some simple particle-like thing that doesn’t interact with anything else in a way that is governed by the laws of nature. That thing wouldn’t be numinous. Likewise, not all magic is numinous: quite a bit of the magic in the Harry Potter stories is not numinous at all (there is nothing numinous about the chocolate frogs).

A simple version of the Mary argument

The following cute argument is valid.

1. If physicalism is true, all reality is effable (because it can all be expressed in the language of completed physics).
2. Qualia are ineffable.
3. So, physicalism is not true.

Personally, while I accept the conclusion, I am inclined to deny (2), since it seems to me that it's easy to express a quale: the quale of red is an experience whose intentional object is an instance of redness. (For the same reason, I think the problem of qualia reduces to the problem of intentionality. And that's the real problem.)

The independence of the attributes in Spinoza

According to Spinoza, all of reality—namely, deus sive natura and its modes—can be independently understood under each of (at least) two attributes: thought and extension. Under the attribute of thought, we have a world of ideas, and under the attribute of extesion, we have a world of bodies. There is identity between the two worlds: each idea is about a body. We have a beautiful account of the aboutness relation: the idea is identical to the body it is about, but the idea and body are understood under different attributes.

But here is a problem. It seems that to understand an idea, one needs to understand what the idea is about. But this seems to damage the conceptual independence of the attributes of thought and extension, in that one cannot fully understand the aboutness of the ideas without understanding extension.

I am not sure what to do about this.

Naturalists about mind should be Aristotelians

1. If non-Aristotelian naturalism about mind is true, a causal theory of reference is true.

2. If non-Aristotelian naturalism about mind is true, then normative states of affairs do not cause any natural events.

3. If naturalism about mind is true, our thoughts are natural events.

4. If a causal theory of reference is true and normative states of affairs do not cause any thoughts, then we do not have any thoughts about normative states of affairs.

5. So, if non-Aristotelian naturalism about mind is true, then we do not have any thoughts about normative states of affairs. (1-4)

6. I think that I should avoid false belief.

7. That I should avoid false belief is a normative state of affairs.

8. So, I have a thought about a normative state of affairs. (6-7)

9. So, non-Aristotelian naturalism about mind is not true. (5 and 8)

Note that the Aristotelian naturalist will deny (2), for she thinks that normative states of affairs cause natural events through final (and, less obviously, formal) causation, which is a species of causation.

I think the non-Aristotelian naturalist’s best bet is probably to deny (2) as well, on the grounds that normative properties are identical with natural properties. But there are now two possibilities. Either normative properties are identical with natural properties that are also “natural” in the sense of David Lewis—i.e., fundamental or “structural”—or not. A view on which normative properties are identical with fundamental or “structural” natural properties is not a plausible one. This is not plausible outside of Aristotelian naturalism. But if the normative properties are identical with non-fundamental natural properties, then too much debate in ethics and epistemology threatens to become merely verbal in the Ted Sider sense: “Am I using ‘justified’ or ‘right’ for this non-structural natural property or that one?”

Self-consciousness and AI

Some people think that self-consciousness is a big deal, that it’s the sort of thing that might be hard for an artificial intelligence system to achieve.

I think consciousness and intentionality are a big deal, that they are the sort of thing that would be hard or impossible for an artificial intelligence system to achieve. But I wonder whether if we could have consciousness and intentionality in an artificial intelligence system, would self-consciousness be much of an additional difficulty. Argument:

1. If a computer can have consciousness and intentionality, a computer can have a conscious awareness whose object would be aptly expressible by it with the phrase “that the temperature here is 300K”.

2. If a computer can have a conscious awareness whose object would be aptly expressible by it with the phrase “that the temperature here is 300K”, then it can have a conscious awareness whose object would be aptly expressible by it with the phrase “that the temperature of me is 300K”.

3. Necessarily, anything that can have a conscious awareness whose object would be aptly expressible with the phrase “that the temperature of me is 300K” is self-conscious.

4. So, if a computer can have consciousness and intentionality, a computer can have self-consciousness.

Premise 1 is very plausible: after all, the most plausible story about what a conscious computer would be aware of is immediate environmental data through its sensors. Premise 2 is, I think, also plausible for two reasons. First, it’s hard to see why awareness whose object is expressible in terms of “here” would be harder than awareness whose object is expressible in terms of “I”. That’s a bit weak. But, second, it is plausible that the relevant sense of “here” reduces to “I”: “the place I am”. And if I have the awareness that the temperature in the place I am is 300K, barring some specific blockage, I have the cognitive skills to be aware that my temperature is 300K (though I may need a different kind of temperature sensor).

Premise 3 is, I think, the rub. My acceptance of premise 3 may simply be due to my puzzlement as to what self-consciousness is beyond an awareness of oneself as having certain properties. Here’s a possibility, though. Maybe self-consciousness is awareness of one’s soul. And we can now argue:

5. A computer can only have a conscious awareness of what physical sensors deliver.

6. Even if a computer has a soul, no physical sensor delivers awareness of any soul.

7. So, no computer can have a conscious awareness of its soul.

But I think (5) may be false. Conscious entities are sometimes aware of things by means of sensations of mere correlates of the thing they sense. For instance, a conscious computer can be aware of the time by means of a sensation of a mere correlate—data from its inner clock.

Perhaps, though, self-consciousness is not so much awareness of one’s soul, as a grasp of the correct metaphysics of the self, a knowledge that one has a soul, etc. If so, then materialists don’t have self-consciousness, which is absurd.

All in all, I don’t see self-consciousness as much of an additional problem for strong artificial intelligence. But of course I do think that consciousness and intentionality are big problems.

More on Spinoza on error

Spinoza's main theory of intentionality is simple. What is the relationship between an idea and what it represents? Identity. An idea is, simply, identical with its ideatum. What saves this from being a complete idealism is that Spinoza has a two-attribute theory to go with it. Thus, an idea is considered under the attribute of thought, while its ideatum is, often, considered under the attribute of extension. Thus, the idea of my body is identical with my body, but when we talk of the "idea" we are conceiving it under the attribute of thought, and when we talk of "body" we are conceiving it under the attribute of extension.

But there is both a philosophical and a textual problem for this, and that is the problem of how false ideas are possible. Since presumably an idea is true if and only if what it represents exists, and an idea represents its ideatum, and its ideatum is identical with it, there are no false ideas, it seems. The philosophical problem is that there obviously are! The textual problem is that Spinoza says that there are, and he even gives an account of how they arise. They arise always by privation, by incompleteness. Thus, to use one of Spinoza's favorite examples, consider Sam who takes, on perceptual grounds, the sun to be 200 feet away. Sam has the idea of the sun impressing itself on his perceptual faculties as if it were 200 feet away, but lacks the idea that qualifies this as a mere perception. When we go wrong, our ideas are incomplete by missing a qualification. It is important metaphysically and ethically to Spinoza that error have such a privative explanation. But at the same time, this whole story does not fit with the identity theory of representation. Sam's idea is identical with its ideatum. It is, granted, confused, which for Spinoza basically means that it is abstracted, unspecific, like a big disjunction (the sun actually being 200 feet away and so looking or the sun actually being 201 feet away and looking 200 feet away or ...).

Here is a suggestion how to fix the problem. Distinguish between fundamental or strict representation and loose representation. Take the identity theory to be an account of strict representation. Thus, each idea strictly represents its ideatum and even confused ideas are true, just not very specific. An idea is then strictly true provided that its ideatum exists, and every idea is strictly true. But now we define a looser sense of representation in terms of the strict one. If an idea is already specific, i.e., adequate (in Spinoza's terminology) or unconfused, then we just say that it loosely represents what it strictly represents. But:

• When an idea i is unspecific, then it loosely represents the ideatum of the idea i* that is the relevant specification of i when there is a relevant specification of i. When there is no relevant specification of i, then i does not loosely represent anything.

Here, we may want to allow an idea to count as its own specification—that will be an improper specification. When an idea is its own relevant specification, then the idea loosely represents the same thing as it strictly represents, and it must be true. I am not sure Spinoza would allow a confused idea to do that. If he doesn't, then we have to say that specification must be proper specification—the specifying idea must be more specific than what it specifies, it must be a proper determinate of the determinable corresponding to the unspecific idea i.

An idea, then, is loosely true provided that it loosely represents something. Otherwise, it is loosely false. Error is now possible. For there may not exist an actual relevant specifying idea. Or, to put it possibilistically, the relevant specification may be a non-actual idea.

What remains is to say what the relevant specification is. Here I can only speculate. Here are two options. I am not proposing either one as what Spinoza might accept, but they give the flavor of the sorts of accounts of relevance that one might give.

1. A specification i* of i is relevant provided that the agent acts as if her idea i were understood as i*.
2. A specification i* of i is relevant provided that most of the time when the agent has had an idea relevantly like i the ideatum of an idea relevantly like i* exists (i.e., an idea relevantly like i* exists), and there is no more specific idea than i* that satisfies this criterion (or no more specific idea than i* satisfies this criterion unless it is significantly more gerrymandered than i*?).

I think Spinoza would be worried in (1) about the idea of acting as if a non-existent idea were believed. This is maybe more Wittgensteinian than Spinozistic. I think (2) isn't very alien to Spinoza, given what he says about habituation.

Loose truth and loose representation may be vague in ways that strict truth and strict representation are not. The vagueness would come from the account of relevant specification.

I don't know that Spinoza had a view like I sketch above. But I think it is compatible with much of what he says, and would let him hold on to the insight that fundamental intentionality is secured by identity, while allowing him to say that privation makes error possible by opening up the way for ideas which are sufficiently inspecific in such a way that they have no correct relevant specification.

Content externalist solutions to sceptical problems

A standard solution to general sceptical problems is to move to an externalist account of content. Grossly oversimplifying, if what makes a thought be about horses is that it has a causal connection with horses, then thoughts about horses can't be completely mistaken. This sort of move might be thought to be anti-realist, though I think that's a poor characterization. If this sort of move works, then we couldn't have thoughts and yet have our whole system of thoughts be completely mistaken. And hence, it seems, scepticism is dead.
But it just occurred to me that there is a hole in this argument. Why couldn't the sceptic who accepts the externalist story about content still say: "So, if I am thinking at all, then global scepticism is false. But am I thinking at all?" This may seem to be a completely absurd position—how could one doubt whether one is thinking? Wouldn't the doubt be a thought? Yes, the doubt would be a thought. Hence, the person who doubts whether she thinks would not be able to believe that she doubts. And, of course, the person who thinks she's not thinking has a contradiction between the content of her thought and the fact of her thought, but it's not so obvious that that's a contradiction in her thought (just as a contradiction between the content of an astronomical belief and an astronomical fact need not be a contradiction in the thinker's thought). Besides, the Churchlands think that they have no thoughts, and have given arguments for this.
If I am right in the above, then the content externalist move does not solve the problem of scepticism—it simply radicalizes it. But it raises the cost of scepticism—it forces the sceptic to stop thinking of herself as thinking. And as such it may be practically useful for curing scepticism if the sceptic isn't a full Pyrrhonian, in the way a rose or some other creature that has no thoughts is. However, if the motivation for the content externalism is to solve the problem of scepticism, rather than cure the sceptic, then the motivation seems to fail. (One difference between solving and curing is this. If a theory T solves a problem, then we have some reason to think T is true by inference to best explanation. But if believing a theory T would cure someone of a problem, inference to best explanation to the truth of T is not available. Though, still, I think the fact that believing T is beneficial would be some evidence for the truth of T in a world created by the good God.)

Computers and questions

Consider the following BASIC computer program:

input a
input b
print a+b

I run the program, and it pauses for input. I press "5" and "enter". Then it pauses for input again. I press "7" and "enter". It then displays "12".

Intuitively, the computer has answered the question: "What is 5+7?" But that's projection. From the marks on the screen and one's memory of the input, one can deduce that 5+7=12. But the computer program can be interpreted in a variety of ways. We could, for instance, take the program to answer a different question, the question of what an inscription of the decimal number equal to 5+7 looks like. In this case, the program's answer shouldn't be interpreted as a number, but as a numeral. Or we could take the program to answer the question of what the result of converting 5 and 7 (or maybe the ASCII codes 53 and 55) to binary, then adding the results together, and then converting back to decimal would be. And so on. There is an infinity of questions we could take this program to be answering.

All of these questions are different, and which one we take the computer to be answering is completely up to us. For, in fact, it is not the case that the computer is answering a question. Rather, we are using the computer to find an answer to some question or other, and there is an infinite number of questions we could be using the program to find an answer to. (We could be using the program to find an answer to the question whether the "enter" key works or not!)

It seems very implausible to suppose that there is any way of adding complexity to this program in such a way that it will become determinate which question the program is answering. Therefore computers simply cannot answer determinate questions.