Summary

Summary

Description

I found this conference very illuminating. I do think that this subject moves more rapidly on the scientific side than it does on the philosophical side. Michael Gazzaniga asked me whether it is really necessary to have a philosophical conference more frequently than every 10 years! Probably not. We are like ageing prize fighters constantly exchanging the same punches. But even that process, given that none of us seems to fall down, may serve some function. This is one of those areas in which the relation between very abstract and philosophical consideration of the subject, and empirical science, has been fruitful for both sides. I am struck by the influence of philosophical controversies over the last 20-25 years on scientific discussions, and vice versa. John Searle says from time to time, ‘I want to get this problem out of philosophy and into science, where it belongs’. My reply would be that in a scientific treatment there is a very important place for philosophical reflection and philosophical disagreement of precisely the kind we have been having. What kind of scientific theory would count as a theory of consciousness will be determined by theoretical considerations that are essentially philosophical. That’s really the nub of the dispute between Dan Dennett and John Searle: what are the adequacy conditions of such a scientific theory. The main question is whether one should be aiming for a theory that contains as primitive terms some variant of the kind of mental concepts we are familiar with, having characteristically linked first- and third-person applications, or whether we should be aiming for a theory which essentially replaces those concepts with a third-person description of the behaviour of those who employ them and to whom they apply, and provides an explanation of all of that. I myself remain convinced that we cannot even talk about consciousness, and therefore cannot have a theory of it, without using concepts that are not just third personal. In general, it makes sense to look for reductionist theories of familiar things, and such theories will not employ all the familiar concepts which we ordinarily use to describe those things. For example, it is true that chairs are composed of atoms. This means you can, in principle, explain the physical properties of any particular chair and what will happen to it under different conditions in terms of physics and chemistry. However, the proposition that chairs are composed of atoms is not itself a proposition of physics, and the concept ‘chair’ will not appear in any of these explanations or theories. Chairs are treated by physics simply as combinations of atomic structures.

Source Publication

Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Consciousness

Source Editors/Authors

Ciba Foundation

Publication Date

1993

Summary

Find @ NYU

Share

COinS