| Saturday, October 05, 2002 | |
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Outline of Paper on Cartesian Substance Dualism
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:08 PM I'm having trouble structuring my paper on Cartesian substance dualism. So perhaps a bit of blogging will get me going. Are minds and bodies essentially different substances that nevertheless causally interact? First, briefly spell out and explicate the basic steps of Ren´ Descartes's argument in the second Meditation for the thesis that he is essentially a thinking thing. Second, briefly spell out and explicate the basic steps of Descartes's arguments in the sixth Meditation for the "real distinction between the mind and the body" and for causal interactionism (you can also use the excerpts from the Passions of the Soul). Third, answer the following question and give detailed reasons for your answer: Is Cartesian substance dualism true? So there are essentially four issues to examine in this paper: So here's my basic game plan: Gilbert Ryle's essay "Descartes Myth" shows the absurdity of substance dualism by painting a clear picture of it as "the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine." Ryle's substantial philosophical arguments in this essay are thin, however, in that they largely consist of the suggestion that to speak of mind and body as a substance dualist does is to commit a category error. (Ryle's substantial arguments for the category mistake later in The Concept of Mind rest upon a behaviorist conception mind and body that need not be accepted in order to reject Cartesian substance dualism.) However, by looking more closely at Descartes' own philosophical premises and methodology, we see that many of the absurdities of substance dualism are the result of two basic problems with Descartes' arguments about body and mind: (1) Descartes repeatedly argues from epistemological premises about what can and cannot be doubted to metaphysical conclusions about what is possible or necessary. Descartes uses these methods to show that he is essentially mind, essentially a thinking thing. As such, he does not even consider the possibility that the mind might be an action or property of the body, such that having a mind would necessarily imply having a body as well. We need not accept the hidden premise of this methodology that we are infallible about what can and cannot be rationally doubted. If we are mistaken about the basic nature of something (as Descartes may be with respect to mind), then we may sometimes be mistaken about the doubtfulness of the existence of those things. With such fallibility established, we cannot accept Descartes' inferences from epistemology to metaphysics. (2) Descartes understands consciousness as essentially diaphanous, without identity. This diaphanous model of the mind is clear in Descartes' definition of mind in terms of what body is not, not in terms of what mind is. As a result, mind and body seem far more ontologically distant than they actually are. Additionally, coherently explaining the causal interactions between a body and a diaphanous mind is nearly impossible. A diaphanous mind could not have effects in the physical world, nor could the physical world have effects on a diaphanous mind. These two basic errors in Descartes reasoning about mind and body substantially contribute to his strange and unscientific account of the relationship between mind and body. |
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| Friday, October 04, 2002 | |
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More on Censorship
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:47 PM Thinking for a moment about the censorship of the ARI by the Canadian government, I'm not sure which aspect of the situation angers me more: Both are revolting, but the second is worse, I think. Anyone with half a brain knows that Canada doesn't have much respect left for individual rights. (According to the article, "Goods that constitute hate propaganda under the Criminal Code are those which advocate or promote genocide or promote hatred against an identifiable group distinguished by colour, race, religion or ethnic origin.") |
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Evil Made Visible: ARI Censored by Canada
By Diana Hsieh @ 4:31 PM One frequently-heard critique of Ayn Rand's politics, even occasionally among alleged Objectivists, is that Rand too-narrowly construed the concept "censorship." Such people argue that the concept should apply to any action of preventing someone from speaking his/her mind to a particular audience. Potentially, a government is the most dangerous threat to man's rights: it holds a legal monopoly on the use of physical force against legally disarmed victims. When unlimited and unrestricted by individual rights, a government is man's deadliest enemy. It is not as protection against private actions, but against governmental actions that the Bill of Rights was written. Later, in the essay "The Cashing-In: The Student 'Rebellion'" in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Rand correctly identified the attempt to broaden the concept of censorship to the actions of private actions as a package-deal. Speaking of "the obliteration of the difference between private action and government action," she wrote: This has always been attempted by means of a "package-deal" ascribing to private citizens the specific violations constitutionally forbidden to the government, and thus destroying individual rights while freeing the government from any restrictions. The most frequent example of this technique consists of accusing private citizens of practicing "censorship" (a concept applicable only to the government) and thus negating their right to disagree. Sadly, Rand has been vindicated in a distressingly personal way to the Objectivist movement, as Arthur Silber blogs and the National Post reports. The Canadian government has confiscated Ayn Rand Institute pamphlets defending Israel's moral right to exist on the grounds that they may be "hate speech." The pamphlets were on the way to the University of Toronto, as Yaron Brook will be speaking on the subject of Israel on Sunday. (I attended this talk in Denver. It was excellent. I only hope that this publicity will bring an overflow crowd to the event.) No person is forced to read this pamphlet or hear Yaron Brooks' speech. Contrary to the claims of some, that's not censorship. No news media is required to report on the event. That's not censorship either. No private organization is required to host the event. No printing company is required to print the pamphlet. No private shipping agency is required to ship the pamphlets. No airline is required to transport Yaron Brook to Toronto. Such things are not censorship. Such actions, if they occurred, might prevent Yaron Brook from gaining as wide of an audience as easily as he would like. But they would not prevent him from expressing his opinions. Only the government can accomplish that vile task, such as by confiscating pamphlets at the border! To equate private acts of refusal of association or refusal of attention with the forcible suppression of speech and thought by the government is to equate the normal actions of everyday life with the most insufferable violation of the human mind possible. It is a monstrosity, a monstrosity that gives the government censors a slippery slope of moral justification for their actions. |
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Binswanger on Philosophy of Mind
By Diana Hsieh @ 12:05 PM Speaking of philosophy of mind, my Binswanger tapes on philosophy of mind and related subjects (ordered from The Ayn Rand Bookstore) arrived mere moments ago. I'm particularly eager to hear his three tapes entitled "The Metaphysics of Consciousness," as the description promises a discussion of "the consciousness-brain relationship" among other issues. I'll post a review and commentary once I've heard them. |
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More Philosophy of Mind
By Diana Hsieh @ 11:52 AM Bob Hanna, my philosophy of mind professor, graciously refused my proposed paper topic. He said that it was paper-worthy, but too big of a topic to tackle in a week. He's probably right, unfortunately enough. Ah well, at least by writing on a standard topic, I'll be able to watch football on Sunday. Are minds and bodies essentially different substances that nevertheless causally interact? First, briefly spell out and explicate the basic steps of Ren´ Descartes's argument in the second Meditation for the thesis that he is essentially a thinking thing. Second, briefly spell out and explicate the basic steps of Descartes's arguments in the sixth Meditation for the "real distinction between the mind and the body" and for causal interactionism (you can also use the excerpts from the Passions of the Soul). Third, answer the following question and give detailed reasons for your answer: Is Cartesian substance dualism true? I'll surely be blogging arguments against substance dualism this weekend that will later magically transform themselves into arguments for the paper. I still would like to look at the issues in my proposed paper topic at some point in the future. But it certainly wouldn't hurt me to have a bit more study under my belt before really attempting to sort out what the Objectivist view on these subjects ought to be! (Next semester, I'll be continuing my studies in the philosophy of mind with a course on mental causation, again with the excellent Bob Hanna.) On motivation for working on these issues sooner rather than later is that I really would love to submit a paper on philosophy of mind for the 2003 Advanced Seminar. The proposal and first draft would be due in late January, so I would have Christmas break to put something together based upon my writings this semester. Of course, thanks to Will Wilkinson and Robert Campbell for their comments! I'll have time to look at the particular suggestions after I complete this paper, which is due on Tuesday. |
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| Wednesday, October 02, 2002 | |
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Philosophy of Mind
By Diana Hsieh @ 7:47 PM I've been struggling to come up with an interesting paper topic for the first paper of my Philosophy of Mind class. The material is fascinating to me, but I'm feeling a bit lost in all of it. The standard topics are simply analyses of the articles that we've read on types of consciousness, intentionality, substance dualism, and behaviorism. None of the topics is grabbing my interest because the questions are so rigidly structured and because the philosophical methodology of the articles is so deeply flawed. The basic purpose of the paper will be to explore whether materialism and dualism exhaust all possible relationships between mind and body. In other words, are dualism and materialism the only possible answers to the question: "How can we explain the existence and specific character of the mind in the physical world?" One final note: The only bigwig Objectivist philosopher who seems to have done direct work in philosophy of mind is Harry Binswanger. I just ordered a bunch of tapes of his on this subject from The Ayn Rand Bookstore. I hope they prove interesting! |
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| Tuesday, October 01, 2002 | |
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Peikoff, Induction, and Method
By Diana Hsieh @ 10:58 PM At Saturday's FROG (Front Range Objectivist Group) meeting, we discussed Leonard Peikoff's course from the ARI conferences this summer, Induction in Physics and Philosophy. Unfortunately, the ARI conferences don't offer the immediate tapes of the lectures that The Objectivist Center does through TOC Live. So the FROG presentation and discussion were based upon the notes of the two people present who attended the lecture. And my comments here are based upon my notes of the FROG meeting. So basically please take my comments on these lectures with a block of salt, as much may have been lost in this game of philosophical telephone. Thus the process of forming and applying concepts contains the essential pattern of two fundamental methods of cognition: induction and deduction. My second objection to Peikoff's basic account of induction concerned his claim that all generalizations (i.e. all inductions) are causal statements because they connect an entity with its modes of action. But not all inductions concern action; some concern attributes or relationships. For example, to say that all zebras have black and white stripes is a claim about the identity of zebras, not about the actions of zebras. Of course, we might say that the entity is "acting" in that those stripes are created by biological processes grounded in the DNA of zebras or whatnot. But this seems to stretch the notion of action and causality beyond usefulness because the generalization concerns the existence of the stripes, not their origin. In short, I can see no valid reason to reduce all generalizations about an entity's attributes or relations to generalizations about the actions of that entity. I also had doubts about Peikoff's strange use of the term "experiment" to mean the explicit methodology of using difference and agreement to establish causal connections. In this way, Peikoff is able to include astronomy amongst the experimental sciences. This seems odd to me, as I would say that astronomy is an "observational" science, but not (at least at present) an "experimental" one. After all, astronomers make observations of the celestial bodies, but do not perform experiments upon them. In this matter, I am simply following common usage of the term "experiment" which primarily refers to a test under controlled conditions. I see no good reason to expand this usage, as Peikoff does, to all investigation of causal relations through similarity and difference. Perhaps we need a new term to designate such investigation, but there is certainly no need to appropriate and thereby confuse a perfectly legitimate concept like "experiment." Additionally, Peikoff placed great emphasis on the role of mathematics in science. But in doing so, he excludes the biological sciences from consideration. This seems like a pretty serious error of induction to me, in that Peikoff is only focusing upon the selected sciences that fit his preconceived notions about the importance of mathematics. Having stated these objections, I wouldn't want to give the impression that I found nothing of interest in these lectures on induction. On many issues, I wish that I had been able to hear Peikoff's full comments, such as: In the Appendix on philosophy of science in Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Ayn Rand makes very similar points about this method in response to questions by Professor M. Prof. M: Would you consider the following method of confirming a scientific principle to be valid? One formulates the principle being guided by one's knowledge of fact. Using the principle, one next deduces how entities under certain conditions should act. Then, if one observes such action and, within the context of one's knowledge can account for it only by the principle which predicted it, it follows that the principle has been confirmed. In summary, one induces the principle, deduces its consequences, and if only that principle is known to give rise to those consequences, which in turn exist, then the principle is confirmed as a contextual absolute. Peikoff also mentioned that we don't necessarily need to be testing hypotheses in science, but that we do need to be asking questions. This makes a great deal of sense to me with respect to the science of cooking that the folks over at Cooks Illustrated practice. In attempting to find the best recipe for a given dish, they start with a clear conception of their end goal, for example, scrambled eggs that are light, moist, and fluffy. That goal then provides them with a clear and definite question: What is the simplest way to create that dish? They might have some hypotheses about what will and will not work based on past experience that inform their testing process. But it is the question that drives the scientific investigation, not the hypotheses. Despite my doubts about Peikoff's emphasis on mathematics in scientific induction, I enjoyed the detail of his explanation of why philosophy doesn't use mathematics. However, I would also like to see an explanation of the methods used in biology and other life sciences -- in other words, a full induction concerning the methods of sciences. 1. Valid concept-formation Peikoff compared these five principles with the five principles of concept-formation, noting the parallels. My notes are jumbled on this list, so here's my best reconstruction. 1. Valid perception The parallels between these sets of principles, I admit, do seem a bit forced. Overall, I have to admit that I was underimpressed with much of the particulars of what we discussed about Peikoff's lectures, due to the errors of definition and method. But I am deeply excited by his inductive approach to philosophical method. Additionally, I heard that the most exciting material was Peikoff's in-depth explanations of the big inductions of physics. (His primary examples in physics were Galileo, Newton, and Maxwell.) I do hope to be able to listen to the lectures myself at some point, as I'd like to know whether both my critiques and praise are well-aimed. |
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| Sunday, September 29, 2002 | |
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The Four Steps of Purposefulness
By Diana Hsieh @ 5:44 PM In reading the chapter on living purposefully in Nathaniel Branden's The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem, I was struck by the insightfulness of his four "core issues" of living purposefully (133-5). Branden argues that to live purposefully, we must: 1. consciously formulate goals and purposes Clearly, we cannot live purposefully without consistently engaging in all four of these aspects of purposefulness. But we should not make the mistake of seeing these four core issues as independent of one another. Rather, they are a progression of steps, such that failures of productiveness are essentially failures to move beyond the first, second, or third step. (In what might appear to be an odd coincidence, but surely is not, in the "Examples" section later in this chapter, Branden's the three examples correspond to the three basic types of failures discussed below.) The Idle Dreamer: Some people stop at the first step of formulating goals and purposes. Those goals, however, are nothing but idle dreams and wishes without a plan of action to translate them into reality. (Of course, if no action is taken as part of step two, then there is no need for monitoring behavior or outcomes in steps three and four.) I remember having this mindset when I was an undergraduate pondering pursuing philosophy professionally. I just expected great things to happen somehow, without any planning or forethought or innovation on my part. That attitude is one of the reasons I'm very glad that I chose to "waste" a few years programming instead of jumping right into graduate school. The clash between my idle dreams and reality would have been quite unpleasant. Barbara Branden makes a related point in Lecture Five of Principles of Efficient Thinking with respect to valuing. She argues that people who claim to value something but exert no effort towards achieving it can hardly be said to value that thing at all. As an example, she cites people who say they want to live in a world like Galt's Gulch, but do nothing to make it real, instead waiting for someone else to make it happen. (People armed with such attitudes can then conveniently blame all of life's failures and miseries on the world and other people rather than on themselves.) As Branden notes: "The man unconcerned with means is the man unconcerned with ends." The Time Waster: A person who only completes steps one and two (by formulating goals and identifying required actions) is certainly better off than the Idle Dreamer. But serious problems still loom because day-to-day actions are not aligned with long-term goals. As a result, time will silently slip away, leaving those goals unfulfilled. My garden suffered from such neglect this summer, as I would only occasionally work on it in exhausting, irregular, and inefficient fits and starts. As a result, my goals of a beautiful, fun, and (relatively) easy-to-maintain garden seemed hopelessly out of reach. After recognizing the problem, I began working on it for a few hours each weekend and was stunned and delighted by the progress I made. If such problems of time management go unnoticed and uncorrected, over time the goals themselves may fade, leaving a person with few meaningful long-term projects to energize and excite them in life. The Misdirected Actor: A person who completes steps one, two, and three (formulates goals, identifies actions, and monitors behavior) but fails to do four (attend to the outcomes) is not yet fully purposeful. Often, we are mistaken as to what actions will or will not accomplish our goals. By failing to notice and change those actions which do not achieve the desired results, we may wander off-course entirely, destining ourselves for failure. For example, in writing papers I sometimes find myself stuck, unable to make progress in my work. Sometimes my lazy work habits are to blame, but more often than not the stickiness results from a structural or conceptual flaw in my work that I must find and correct in order to continue writing. (Unfortunately, my subconscious can remain remarkably tight-lipped about where the problem lies.) In such situations, I become a Misdirected Actor if I ignore the problem and attempt to force myself to keep writing. Only by changing my strategy for a time, by taking time to carefully review my work, can I remain purposeful and effective in my writing. This fourth aspect of purposefulness, attending to the outcomes of our actions, strikes me as the most difficult and subtle aspect of purposefulness. After all, it is often difficult to accurately identify the causes of failure. In my paper-writing example, sometimes stickiness may be the result of sheer laziness, in which case I must simply discipline myself to the task of writing. As a result, I have often wasted days on the wrong strategy: attempting to make myself write through force of will when I needed to take time to identify the problem or vice versa. With time and experience, I will likely become more skilled at quickly and accurately identifying the cause of my writing stickiness, but I may never achieve full and easy mastery. So whatever the goal, identifying the causes of undesirable outcomes can indeed be a difficult task. Although I'm sure that we can fail to be purposeful in ways other than those described here, I suspect that Branden has captured the great majority of common problems with purposefulness in identifying these four "core issues." |
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