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Response to Experiment 49: The Hole in the Sum of the Parts

4/8/2016

6 Comments

 
Picture
♫ ...three of these boxes are not like the other... ♫
This week's thought experiment seems simple and obvious on the face of it, but it actually introduces us to a very important philosophical concept. It's a concept, introduced by  Gilbert Ryle, that was "seen to have put the final nail in the coffin of Cartesian dualism." That's quite a big deal! So let's take a look at the experiment and then I'll unveil the concept and show how it applies it to a couple of foundational problems.

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     Barbara and Wally jumped into the taxi at Oxford station. "We're in a hurry," said Barbara. "We've just done London and are heading to Stratford-upon-Avon this afternoon. So please could you just show us the university and then bring us back to the station."
     The taxi driver smiled to himself, set the meter running and looked forward to receiving a big fare.
     He took them all round the city. He showed them the Ashmolean and Pitt Rivers museums, as well as the botanic gardens and the museums of natural history and the history of science. His tour took in not only the famous Bodleian library, but the lesser known Radcliffe, Sackler, and Taylor libraries too. He showed them all thirty-nine colleges as well as the seven permanent private halls. When he finally pulled up at the station, the meter showed a fare of £64.30.
     "Sir, you are a fraud!" protested Wally. "You showed us the colleges, the libraries, and the museums. But damn you, we wanted to see the university!"
     "But the university is the colleges, libraries, and museums!" replied the indignant cabbie.
     "You expect us to fall for that?" said Barbara. "Just because we're American tourists doesn't mean we're stupid!"

Source: Chapter 1 of The Concept of Mind by Gilbert Ryle, 1949.

Baggini, J., The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten, 2005, p. 145.
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This experiment isn't so much a question as it is a cunning demonstration of how many philosophers have been as dumb as these American tourists. Baggini, explains this very well and clearly, so let's turn the big reveal over to him. In his discussion of this thought experiment, Baggini said:

"[This is] a striking example of a form of fallacious thinking that even the smartest minds fall foul of. Barbara and Wally have made what the Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a category mistake. They have thought of Oxford University as though it were the same kind of thing as the colleges, libraries, and museums which comprise it: an institution housed in a specific building. But the university is not that kind of thing at all. There is no one place or building which you can point to and say, 'that is the university.' ... But that does not mean that the university is a ghostly presence that mysteriously unites all the colleges, libraries, and other parts of it. To think that would be to make another category mistake. It is neither a single material nor immaterial thing. We should not be misled by language and assume that because it is a singular noun it is a singular object."


From this origin of the category error term, we can see how clearly it applies to the differences that exist between abstract titles used for a group of things versus those concrete individual things themselves. I should point out, however, that philosophers have since extended the usage to also apply to any scenario where "a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property." Metaphors are easy examples of this further usage. When we say something like, "the day flew by", that too is literally a category error since days aren't physical objects that move. Of course, we allow those figurative figures of speech because they aren't literally meant to be literal.

Anyway, an important application of this for philosophy comes when considering the dualism of Descartes, who, as I explained in my post on him, laid out the mind-body problem thusly:

Descartes...suggested that the body works like a machine, that it has the material properties of extension and motion, and that it follows the laws of physics, whereas the mind (or soul), on the other hand, was described as a nonmaterial entity that lacks extension and motion, and does not follow the laws of physics. Descartes argued that the mind interacts with the body at the pineal gland. This form of dualism proposes that the mind controls the body, but that the body can also influence the otherwise rational mind, such as when people act out of passion. Most of the previous accounts of the relationship between mind and body had been uni-directional.

That pineal gland conjecture turned out to be pure nonsense of course, but the rest of Descartes' idea was punctured by this week's thought experiment too. Once again, Baggini does a nice job of explaining how:

Ryle thought that the most common way of thinking about the mind made a similar category mistake. Again, we have a singular noun—the mind—and so we tend to think there must be a singular thing which the noun labels. ... [But] the mind is not a single object at all. To say something has a mind is to say it wants, desires, understands, thinks, and so on. Because we do all these things we say we have minds. But that doesn't require us to identify any object as being the mind. ... It's a neat solution to an age-old problem.

I'm inclined to agree with this. For me, such a demonstration of the category mistake is a highly illuminating solution to the mind-body problem. I also think that the Hard Problem of consciousness can be dissolved away by this method, but let's leave that discussion for another time. To wrestle with that long topic now would probably be a "blog category mistake"...
6 Comments
John Johnson link
4/8/2016 07:44:22 pm

I quite agree that the mind, like the university, can not be reduced to a singular thing, and to attempt to do so would be a category mistake. Does anyone really try to do that? And it is not clear how the recognition of mind as not one singular thing punctures dualism or solves the hard problem of consciousness. I'd like to see some elaboration.

I would also like to see a discussion of moral skepticism's position that moral pronouncements are not truth-apt, so attempts to describe moral claims as true or false is to make a category error. I can see how moral propositions could be judged as true or false if one uses a narrow definition of morality as "that which generally promotes life" (which is your position if I remember correctly) or "that which promotes human flourishing" (which is Sam Harris's position). But are these definitions really what most people mean by "moral?"

Reply
@EdGibney link
4/10/2016 09:00:35 am

Thanks for the questions, John! It's always good to hear what someone wants more of. I often struggle knowing where to cut these off, as it depends so much on what type of reader I'm targeting. Many times it just comes down to how much free time I have to devote to elaboration! So, let me see what I can say further.

I think your questions about punctuating dualism and whether anyone really sees the mind as a single thing are related. Dualists probably see the mind as a collection of things, but for them that collection also makes up one single thing that is somehow separate from the body and immaterial. They believe in minds / souls that exist (and sometimes persist) without the body, whereas monists (like myself) believe in a more physicalist view where the mind rests on the body and goes away when the body goes away. The story of the category error illustrates how monists' believe the dualists are in error. We think they have taken a label and breathed life into it. Does that answer your question?

As for the Hard Problem, I'm of the opinion that consciousness is another label we use for something that emerges from a collection of mental properties. I'm forming a theory at the moment about which properties evolved in what order that collectively led minds along a continuum from simple awareness to complex consciousness. For example, I think plants are sensitive or "aware", but they don't have the neuroanatomy to be "conscious". I'd like to have a bit more time to flesh that out, however, and put it in a blog post where it makes more sense. I know Thomas Nagel's "What is it Like to Be a Bat" is coming up soonish so I'm targeting that thought experiment for this discussion. I will be using the category error there as an illustration of what I'm talking about so I just wanted to prime the pump, so to speak, by mentioning the Hard Problem here. I hope that's enough for you for now.

Finally, there's your question about morality. I'd first take issue with your description of my and Harris' definitions as "narrow." They are more broad and fundamental than that, in ways that are intended to allow the "width" of all the specifics to be derived from them, as any good basis for morality must be if it is truly to be basic. I've already written why Sam Harris' definition is flawed (you can see my draft response to his Moral Landscape Challenge for details http://is.gd/IzLP3e) but essentially his definition is not objective. Harris defines good subjectively, as acting towards well-being, without defining what well-being really is. That's a tautology, barely distinguished from saying something is good because it is good.

Now, for your broader question, is this what most people mean by "moral"? No, it's not. And that's why I bother to write. Current camps of morality fall into: 1) utilitarianism, 2) virtue ethics, 3) deontological rule-based systems, or 4) nihilism. 1 and 2 are relativistic, relying on social conventions of what "the greatest good" means or what "virtues" mean for different realms of society. Most rule-based systems are religious, but those have no real basis and their rules have been found to be flawed and mutable. Kant's Categorical Imperative is the most famous secular attempt at a rule for morality, but that too doesn't work. (See my post on Kant for more: http://is.gd/BU7srX.) I've put my own rule forward in my published paper, which you've summarised well enough, but it's definitely not been accepted. Yet. : ) So that leaves 4, nihilism, for the moral skeptics out there who believe morals can't be "true" (are not truth-apt as you say) and they believe anyone who says so is making a category error. I happen to think my objective rule for morality is the one that is true for living things in a natural universe where natural selection is the ultimate arbiter, and that's the perspective I take with my own philosophising, but sure, others think they're systems of thought are internally consistent as well.

Hope that does it. Let me know if that still wasn't clear or if you want more. As Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough," so I do strive for that!

Reply
John A. Johnson link
4/10/2016 05:41:20 pm

Thank you for your reply, Ed. I probably asked too many questions in my response to be answered to my satisfaction by one reply. The hard problem of conscientiousness needs a more thorough examination, so I am glad that you are going to write on that topic soon.

I am a monist who literally cannot understand why anyone would be a dualist unless they were indoctrinated to think that way as a child. There are extremely reliable changes in mental states that we can create by altering physical states of the brain (with electrical stimulation, drugs, etc.). So I am not defending dualism when I question whether recognition of the mind as not one singular thing really punctures dualism. You suggest that dualists probably see the mind as a collection of things that makes up one single thing. So are they really making a category mistake? Is it a category error to see the university as a collection of buildings, people, etc. that makes up one big thing, the university? I'm not sure that dualists are making a category error. Rather, I think they are simply making an error about the nature of the mental and the physical worlds.

I think that the topic of morality is too large to discuss here. I only brought it up because I know that moral skeptics think that moral statements are feelings and/or exhortations and are therefore neither true nor false. I actually see potential in Sam Harris's proposal (if he defines well-being more carefully) and your proposal (if you spell out in more detail what it means to "generally promote life"), but only if these two proposals can be connected to common sense intuitions about morality and if they can account for the major camps you describe. I understand that I am asking for a lot!

@EdGibney link
4/11/2016 11:03:43 am

I agree with you that the dualists are making an error about the nature of the mental and physical worlds, but It seems to me they are doing so making the exact same mistake as the tourists. The tourists hear the word "university" and think it exists as something specific that can be seen. The dualists hear the word "mind" and think it exists in the same way - as something separate from all the individual mental processes. It's hard to say for sure what "dualists" think though--I don't think they're such an entirely generalisable group--but this is the way I see the category error applying to at least some of them.

As for morality, you are asking for a lot, but it's also exactly the right thing to ask for. Integration of competing hypotheses and fit with actual data are both required for new hypotheses to be accepted. Harris' proposal is nothing more than watered-down utilitarianism to the professional philosophers I've read on this (and I agree entirely with that pronouncement). My proposal is merely the stated objective goal of morality that all ethical systems must meet. The virtue ethics and common sense intuitions we've developed about morality (some of which are enshrined in religious rule-based systems) *mostly* all work to drive us towards that goal (they wouldn't have survived this long if that weren't true), but until we acknowledge that the survival of life in general over the long term actually *is* the goal that has an objectively measurable outcome, then our moral intuitions and more formal systems are ultimately rudderless in the case of the most difficult decisions. Otherwise, we're left to arbitrate with some competing hierarchy of values that are subjective and changing. There will be more in my next novel about this, but happy to discuss here or elsewhere whenever it comes up.

Reply
John A. Johnson
4/11/2016 12:35:40 pm

Ahh, I see now. Your response has greatly clarified my own thinking. Many thanks!

Reply
@EdGibney link
4/11/2016 01:58:34 pm

Great! Your questions helped me to think and write more precisely too.

And I'm going to add your last comment to the list of quotes I have to take out of context and use as persuasive blurbs about my writing. ; )

(Just kidding, I don't have such a list.)

Reply



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