PLATT:
> The only reason I think you are aware is because you act "as if" you are
> aware. No one has direct knowledge of another's state of awareness.
ELEPHANT:
No, we don't. But it isn't the condition or "state" of another's awareness
that's in question here. It is the *fact* of another's awareness.
The condition of a thing is not to be confused with the fact of it's
existence, unless we start from the assumption that there is nothing to that
thing but our descriptions of it's condition. That, in the special case of
consciousness, is precisely what I reject.
It is true that we do not have direct access to another's thoughts, but the
lack of direct access to precisely what those thoughts are is *not*
equivalent to the lack of direct access to the fact that this is, in front
of me now, a thinking conscious being with an interior life. Indeed it is
the other way around. This mystery about hidden content is a face of the
consciousness to us, directly and immediately. More directly than any
empirical "fact".
I *know* that my mother is conscious. This is not a speculation or a
metaphor or an as if or an hypothesis. It is direct immediate perception.
My beleif does not result from the collection of data or the invention of
theories. That my mother is conscious is *bloody obvious*.
Obvious in her behaviour, you would say? That looks like common sense at
first. But when you analyse it, what is it about her behaviour that makes
this obvious? Is it making tea? No. Is it doing the garden? No. What is
it then? Well, you might say, it is her making choices and having
preferences. OK. But what in her behaviour can tell you that her pattern
of behaviour genuinely results from making choices and having preferences?
I mean, couldn't it just be the upshot of some kind of law, programming,
DNA?
Anyone who seriously thought that was the case would need either the police
or the social services or both, and in short order. *Of course* my mother
has preferences and makes choices. My point is that making choices and
having preferences is not something that can be isolated in behavioural
terms. It is an altogether different kind of concept. That's what's so
special about consciousness. That's why logical positivists got so
insistent that it's a kind of "ghost" and wanted to forget the whole
subject. But I don't think you can forget the whole subject. You can't
forget that you just *know* your mother is conscious, and that washing up
liquid (say) is not.
I think actually that this is an addition that we ought to make to the MOQ.
All the things that RMP says about value being fundamentally real and
directly intuitable apply straight down the line to other minds. Value
comes first, before subjects and objects. Well so do other minds. How so?
For a very obvious reason. "Subject" and "Object" are terms in grammar,
they are intellectualisations of the world through language. Language
exists as a medium of communication between minds. Therefore: direct
perception of other minds must precede language.
And that's no hypothesis - that's the story of every mother and child
relationship.
For a child, it is never "as if" their mother were aware. For a mother, it
is never "as if" their child were aware.
And I really don't think this is a special case Platt. My previous
girlfriends - I knew they were conscious. Bullies back in school: they were
conscious. My freind, his wife, and the new baby: they are conscious.
Direct perception of other minds: this is not an experience of objects or
subjects. Objects and subjects are just what other minds become when we
talk about them, or try to construct "personalities" and roles. Sartre has
a thing or two to say on this.
PLATT:
> Also, you haven't answered my question about how far down the chain
> of being you (or Plato) think entities are aware. Are bears aware? Are
> viruses? Where do you draw the line, and on what basis?
ELEPHANT:
I don't think that we can go *any distance at all* down this "chain of
being" that you are projecting, because you are specifying in this chain are
subjects and objects. The consciousness that I am directly aware of in my
mother (and my cat by the way - did I mention that?) is not a subject or an
object.
I think that what this shows is that it is in principle impossible to pick a
species at random and speculate as to whether such a thing is conscious.
Species are not concsious. Cats are not conscious. Human kind is not
conscious. But I can assure you that my cat and my mother are conscious.
Does that make the question any clearer? This is about particular
consciousnesses, not natural kind terms.
There is no need to "draw the line", as you put it, on a species by species
basis. Aristotle can go hang. Rather than speculate about whether viruses
are conscious, why not do what we normally do, which is to wait until we
come face to face with a thing and then decide. Now obviously I am never
going to come face to face with a virus. I think that rather solves the
problem.
Because consciousness is something one has perception of directly and
prelinguisticly, the question of consciousness is confined to the
encounterable. I cannot *meet* a virus. I can only relate to it through
empirical data and scientific method. That decides the whole question. I
never needed science with my cat.
* * *
Additionally, I may also point out again as I have for months past that
consciousness and language use are intimately related. Even my cat has
language. She has a concept of dinner time to begin with. She recognises
individuals. In fact she does a whole bunch of sophisticated linguistic
things which, if they ever got a robot to do, would lead to civil rights
marches on behalf of Microsoft Office. And of course the difference between
my cat and a Intel chip is that a chip gets data in and puts data out,
whereas my cat gets a whole flux of dynamic quality in and puts out the most
amazingly wide vocabulary of requests both plaintive and insistant,
questions, answers, encouragements, and exclamations of delight or
forsakeness.
Bears? They are dangerous, and I don't invite them to tea on principle.
That would be why I couldn't tell you whether they are concious or not. But
if you know a nice one and would like to introduce me I'd be pleased to make
his or her acquaintance.
PLATT:
> Finally, please explain if you will the difference between "creation" and
> "evolution" as used in the MOQ to explain the development of the
> inorganic and biological levels.
ELEPHANT:
You are inviting me to speak on behalf of the MOQ as if it were a political
movement with elected spokespersons. This offer I respectfully decline.
However I will repeat what I have said once or twice before, which is that
in my exegesis of Lila the levels are not the MOQ itself, but rather an
attempt to show that the SOMists don't have to have all the best tunes: that
MOQ can tell their yarns and play their games of Chess just as well as the
SOMists can. I do not for a minute beleive that for Pirsig the MOQ stands
or falls by the historical accuracy of the picture Lila gives of the
emergence of one level from another, or even as to how many and what kinds
of levels there are. That's just not the way RMP is approaching this stuff,
and quite rightly so. There's no perfect game to be had here, as RMP does
oft repeat. Without, of course, retreating from the certainty which he
attaches, not to the levels, but to the static/dynamic split as the first
cut.
To judge from the last four or five months you aren't very open to my best
shot at persuasion on that one Platt, so, with my bed beckoning and quite
enough ground covered for one post, you will have to excuse me if I postpone
the rematch till tomorrow.
Stay aware,
Elephant
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