Maverick Philosopher

1. In some deterministic worlds, there are avoiders avoiding harms.
2. Therefore, in some deterministic worlds, some event-types are such that their instantiation is avoided.
3. Whatever is avoided is avoidable or evitable.
4. Therefore, in some deterministic worlds, it is not the case that every event-type is such that its instantiation is inevitable.
5. Therefore, determinism does not imply that every event-type is such that its instantiation is inevitable.

The regimentation is clearly a sound argument: valid in point of logical form and possessing true premises. The regimentation, however, is relatively trivial and uninteresting. Who would contest it?

An interesting argument, and one that would suit Dennett's purposes, would have to issue in the following conclusion:

5*. Therefore, determinism does not imply that every event-token is such that its instantiation is inevitable.

The trouble with (5*) is not only that it is false, but that to get it to follow from the premises, (2) would have to be re-formulated as the incoherent

2*. Therefore, in some deterministic worlds, some event-tokens are avoided.

Why is (2*) incoherent? Suppose I drive carefully and avoid an accident: I avoid backing into a particular parked car at a particular time. The event of backing into that car does not exist. After all, I avoided it! So, given that only what exists can have properties, the event in question cannot have the property of being avoided. It is simply not there to be avoided. What is avoided, strictly speaking, is the instantiation of an event-type. So (2*) is incoherent, hence false, and its falsity is transmitted to (5*).

My point can also be put as follows. The sense in which determinism does not entail inevitability is simply irrelevat to the free will problem. Determinism does not entail type-inevitability, but it does entail token-inevitability. Dennett's discussion is a mess because of this confusion.

Does any competent philosopher "assume that determinism implies inevitability"? My question is not rhetorical; I really want to know. My impression is that Dennett attacks a straw man. I would have thought that determinism is logically compatible with evitability or avoidability.

But it seems we need to make a distinction between type-avoidability and token-avoidability. It seems clear that any number of event-types are such that their instantiation is avoidable. The event-type ankle sprain, for example, is easily avoided if one wears stiff, high-topped boots, uses trekking poles, avoids rocky trails, never hikes with companions above one's skill level, etc. The avoidance of ankle sprain is rendered certain if one resolves to spend the rest of one's life in bed, or more drastically, simply blows one's brains out. You can avoid a lot that way.

Clearly, some event-types are avoided, hence some are avoidable. Being avoidable, they are not inevitable. This fact is not altered by the world's being deterministic. So we can say this:

1. Determinism's being true does not entail that no event-type is avoidable.

But it seems also true that

2. Determinism's being true does entail that no event-token is avoidable.

Suppose determinism is true, and I sprain my ankle. Then, given the actual past and the laws of nature, the painful outcome, though logically contingent, could not have been avoided. That says no more and no less than that the outcome was fixed, determined, necessitated by what went before together with the laws of nature. But since I learn from experience, I can take precautions so that future ankle sprains are avoided. Ankle sprains are not inevitable, not even in a deterministic universe.

One problem with Dennett's Chapter 2 is that he either confuses, or fails to distinguish, (1) and (2). (1) borders on being trivially true. Who would think to deny it? And why does Dennett go on page after page, snowing the reader with all this stuff about Conway's Life World, just to make this simple point? (2), however, is the thesis that is relevant to the free will problem. If no particular (token) action of mine is avoidable, then there is a problem about how the action can be called free. Establishing that (1) is true — as if this needs establishing — does nothing to establish that (2) is false.

I could put my point as follows. The fact that organisms over time, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically, evolve into better and better harm-avoiders has no tendency to show that determinism does not entail inevitability in the sense relevant to the free will problem. That sense could be dubbed 'token-inevitability.'

6. Every mammal has a mammal for a mother.

7. If there have been any mammals at all, there have been only a finite number of mammals.

8. But if there has been even one mammal, then by (6), there have been an infinity of mammals, which contradicts (7), so there can't have been any mammals. It's a contradiction in terms.

The two arguments, says Dennett, "commit the same error." He continues:

Events in the distant past were indeed not "up to me," but my choice now to Go or Stay is up to me becauses its "parents" -- some events in the recent past, such as the choices I have recently made -- were up to me (because their parents were up to me), and so on, not to infinity, but far enough back to give my self enough spread in space and time so that there is a me for my decisions to be up to! The reality of a moral me is no more put in doubt by the incompatibilist argument than is the reality of mammals. (135-136)

It is clear that the 'mammals argument' goes wrong since we know that there are mammals. There are mammals even though there is no Prime Mammal nor an infinite regress of mammals. Gradual evolutionary changes from reptiles through intermediary therapsids led eventually to mammals. Thus mammals evolved from non-mammals. Dennett wants to say the same about events that are 'up to me.' Events before my birth were not up to me, but some events now are up to me since they are the causal descendents of acts that were up to me. Dennett seems to be saying that events that are up to a person, and thus free in a sense to support attributions of moral responsibility, have gradually evolved from events that were not up to a person, and hence were unfree. Freedom evolves from unfreedom.

This is a creative suggestion, but what exactly is wrong with the above consequence argument? I see what is wrong with the 'mammals argument': (6) is false. But which premise of the incompatibilist argument is false? The premises are plausible and there is no error in logic. If the error is the same as the one in the 'mammals argument,' as Dennett say, what exactly is this error? Presumably, the error is the failure to realize that the property of being up to me is an emergent property. So is Dennett rejecting premise (1)?

But the truth of (1) is merely a consequence of the definition of 'determinism.' Since Dennett does not reject determinism, it is quite unclear to me what exactly is wrong with the incompatibilist argument. The analogy between the two arguments is murky, and I fail to see what exactly is wrong with the incompatibilist argument. Which premise is to be rejected? Which inference is invalid? Talk of freedom evolving is too vague to be helpful.

One can believe that a person exists without believing in the person. Plenty of people believe that Saddam Hussein exists, but do not believe in him. To believe in a person involves more than believing that the person exists; it involves trust among other things. But can one believe in a person without believing that the person exists? Well, one might believe in a person without raising the question of whether the person exists; but if one came to believe that the person one believed in did not exist, then surely the belief-in would not survive. Surely there is something absurd in this little speech: "I know that God does not exist, but I continue to trust in his providence." Or, "The Lord is my shepherd even though he is nothing more than an anthropomorphic projection." In sum,

One can believe that a person P exists without believing in P; but one cannot believe in P if one believes that P does not exist.

An analogous distinction can (and ought to be) made with respect to theories and beliefs. To believe that astrology (alchemy, evolutionary explanations of intentionality . . .) exists is not to believe in astrology (alchemy, evolutionary explanations of intentionality . . .) in the sense of believing that the theory is true or has some such lesser epistemic virtue as rational acceptability or plausibility. But if one believes in these theories, then surely one believes that they exist. In sum,

One can believe that a theory T exists without believing in T; but one cannot believe in T if one believes that T does not exist.

We can also apply something like this distinction to such artifacts as compasses and GPS devices. To believe that Seldom Seen Slim has a GPS unit in his hand in not to believe in said unit. I believe that there is a compass in my hand, but I do not trust it, rely on it, 'put my faith' in it for the reason that I am now in the presence of a strong artificial magnetic field.

Or I say to Slim, "Sho nuff, that there's a footbridge spanning the gorge we need to cross, but I wouldn't trust it if I were you."

We can also stretch the distinction to fit some naturally occurrent items. Where there's smoke there's fire, but my belief that there is smoke over yonder is not the same as my belief in it as reliably indicative of fire.

In each of these cases, belief that X exists is distinct from believing in X as veracious, veridical, reliable, etc.

In ordinary English, 'belief in X' often just means 'belief that X exists.' But then 'belief in belief' would mean 'belief that beliefs exist,' and 'belief in the belief in God' would mean 'belief that the belief that God exists exists.' Surely there is nothing problematic about this meta-belief. We all believe, and believe with truth, that concepts and beliefs about God exist. It is obvious that the concept of God is not the same as God. The concept of God exists whether or not God exists. (Note that the truth of what I just wrote requires reading 'concept of God' as a genitivus objectivus.)

But what Dennett means by the belief in belief is something different: the notion that it is good for us to have beliefs, in particular, the notion that it is good for us to have the belief that God exists. (Cf. p. 221) But more on this later.

Ein Buch ist ein Spiegel, wenn ein Affe hineinguckt, so kann freilich kein Apostel heraus sehen. Wir haben keine Worte, mit dem Dummen von Weisheit zu sprechen. Der ist schon weise, der den Weisen versteht.

A book is a mirror. If an ape peeps in, you can be sure that no apostle will look out. We lack the words with which to speak wisdom to fools. He is already wise who understands the wise. (tr. BV)

If the book is the Bible, then the ape is . . . . See here.

Why speak of deformation rather than of reformation, transformation, or refinement? Dennett's view is that the "original monotheists" thought of God as a being one could literally listen to, and literally sit beside. (206) If so, the "original monotheists" thought of God as a physical being: "The Old Testament Jehovah, or Yahweh, was quite definitely a super-man (a He, not a She) who could take sides in battles, and be both jealous and wrathful." (206, emphasis in original). The suggestion here is that monotheism in its original form, prior to deformation, posited a Big Guy in the Sky, a human being Writ Large, something most definitely made in the image of man, and to that extent an anthropomorphic projection.

What Dennett is implying is that the orginal monotheistic conception of God had a definite content, but that this conception was deformed and rendered abstract to the point of being emptied of all content. Dennett is of course assuming that the only way the concept of God could have content is for it to have a materialistic, anthropomorphic content. Thus it is not possible on Dennett's scheme to interpret the anthropomorphic language of the Old Testament in a figurative way as pointing to a purely spiritual reality which, as purely spiritual, is neither physical nor human.

Dennett seems in effect to be confronting the theist with a dilemma. Either your God is nothing but an anthropomorphic projection or it is is so devoid of recognizable attributes as to be meaningless. Either way, your God does not exist. Surely there is no Big Guy in the Sky, and if your God is just some Higher Power, some unknowable X, about which nothing can be said, then what exactly are you affirming when you affirm that this X exists? Theism is either the crude positing of something as unbelievable as Santa Claus or Wonder Woman, or else it says nothing at all.

Either crude anthropomorphism or utter vacuity.

Dennett's Dilemma -- to give it a name -- is quite reasonable if you grant him his underlying naturalistic and scientistic (not scientific)assumptions, namely, that there is exactly one world, the physical world, and that (future if not contemporary) natural science provides the only knowledge of it. On these assumptions, there simply is nothing that is not physical in nature. Therefore, if God exists, then God is physical in nature. But since no enlightened person can believe that a physical God exists, the only option a sophisticated theist can have is to so sophisticate and refine his conception of God as to drain it of all meaning. And thus, to fill out Dennett's line of thought in my own way, one ends up with pablum such as Tillich's talk of God as one "ultimate concern." If God is identified as the object of one's ultimate concern, then of course God, strictly speaking, does not exist. Dennett and I wll surely agree on this point.

But why should we accept naturalism and scientism? It is unfortunately necessary to repeat that naturalism and scientism are not scientific but philosophical doctrines with all the rights, privileges, and liabilities pertaining thereunto. Among these liabilities, of course, is a lack of empirical verifiability. Naturalism and scientism cannot be supported scientifically. For example, we know vastly more than Descartes (1596-1650) did about the brain, but we are no closer than he was to a solution of the mind-body problem. Neuroscience will undoubtedly teach us more and more about the brain, but it takes a breathtaking lack of philosophical sophistication — or else ideologically induced blindness — to think that knowing more and more about the physical properties of a lump of matter will teach us anything about consciousness, the unity of consciousness, self-conciousness, intentionality, and the rest.

This is not the place to repeat the many arguments against naturalism. Suffice it to say that a very strong case can be brought against it, a case that renders its rejection reasonable. Dennett's reliance on it is thus dogmatic and uncompelling. Indeed, when he pins his hopes on future science and confesses his faith that there is nothing real apart from the system of space-time-matter, he makes moves analogous to the moves the theist makes who goes beyond what he can claim to know to affirm the existence of a spiritual reality within himself and beyond himself.

Dennett needs to give up the question-begging and the straw-man argumentation. His talk of the "deformation" of the God concept shows that he is unwilling to allow what he would surely allow with subject-matters, namely, the elaboration of a more adequate concept of the subject-matter in question. Instead, he thinks the theist must be stuck with the crudest conceptions imaginable.

The question of the place of science in human life is not a scientific question. It is a philosophical question. Scientism, the view that science can explain all human conditions and expressions, mental as well as physical, is a superstition, one of the dominant superstitions of our day; and it is not an insult to science to say so. For a sorry instance of present-day scientism, it would be hard to improve on Daniel C. Dennett's book. "Breaking the Spell" is a work of considerable historical interest, because it is a merry anthology of contemporary superstitions.

This is essentially correct, though I would characterize scientism a bit differently, as the doctrine that all genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge. It is easy to see that even if scientism were true, it could not be known to be true by any natural-scientific method. In a word, scientism is not scientific. It is a philosophical doctrine with all the rights, privileges and liabilities pertaining thereunto. As a philosopher, I of course have no problem with the formulation and discussion of philosophical doctrines. Philosophize we must. But we ought to keep straight what is and what is not philosophy and what is and what is not hard science.

Let us not palm off as science what are only loose and woolly speculations and extrapolations that have merely their point of departure in common with science.

But is scientism superstitious as Wieseltier asserts? The answer is not obvious, and it depends on what exactly superstition is. (I take a stab at this question here.) One should be chary of the 'switcheroo' whereby debates like this peter out into finger-pointing and pointless polemics: "You religionists are superstitious! No, it is you scientistic types that are superstitious!"

Today I've got a half-marathon to run, but next week I'll get back to my detailed philosophical dismantling of Dennett's book.

social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. This is, of course, a circuitous way of articulating the idea that a religion without God or gods is like a vertebrate without a backbone.(p. 9)

Since any definition of religion one proffers is bound to contain an element of stipulation, we should perhaps not fault Dennett's definition for failing to accommodate Buddhism which in its pure forms does not avow belief in supernatural agents and yet would appear to count as a religion; nor for failing to accommodate religion as the response of a solitary individual to the transcendent. Let us irenically concede that Dennett's definition is on the right track in that many religions do affirm belief in a supernatural agent.

But what is meant by the crucial term 'supernatural'? The natural, for Dennett, is that which obeys the laws of nature, the laws of physics and biology for instance. (p. 25) The supernatural, therefore, is that which violates these laws. The supernatural is thus the miraculous. (p. 25) So when Dennett says that the participants in a religion avow belief in a supernatural agent, he implies that they avow belief in an agent whose existence and mode of action are miraculous, i.e., in violation of the laws of nature.

But this is seriously problematic. For it is obvious that one who affirms the existence of God need not be affirming the existence of something that violates natural laws. The laws of nature govern the material world. (Or, if you insist, they describe or codify the regularities of the material world.) But God is not a member of the material world, or identical to the material world. (Pantheism is not on the table.) So the laws of nature do not apply to God. But it does not follow that his existence violates these laws unless it is also a law of nature that only material (physical) beings can exist.

Could it be a law of nature that only material beings exist? Equivalently, could it be a law of nature that only nature exists? I say no, but to save keystrokes I won't argue for this (obvious) thesis now. But we should note that if Dennett or anyone thinks that it is a law of nature that only nature (the space-time-matter system) exists, then Dennett's definition rules out the possibility of a supernatural agent. It is surely self-evident that any adequate definition of religion that stipulates that religious believers posit supernatural agents must leave it open whether or not there are any supernatural agents. Otherwise, Dennett's definition of religion would boil down to this:

A social system whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent, i.e, an agent whose existence violates natural laws, the only laws there are.

That would be like defining a theist as one who affirms the existence of a nonexistent being (having certain omni-attributes) and an atheist as one who affirms the nonexistence of of a nonexistent being (having certain omni-attributes). But surely the belief the theist avows is a belief that the omni-qualified being exists. If the theist's belief were of a being that was believed to be nonexistent, then the theist wrould be involved in a sort of performative inconsistency, just as the atheist would be involved in a sort of performative tautology were his belief to be characterized as a belief that a nonexistent omni-qualified being does not exist.

To put it another way, if you want define religion in terms of the beliefs of certain people, then you must characterize those beliefs from the point of view of the believer, and not from a point of view external to the believer.

To say of X that a certain set of laws does not apply to it is not say that X is in violation of those laws. The laws of planetary motion do not apply to abstract object (numbers, Fregean propositions, etc.) but these objects to not violate these laws. On the other hand, the laws of logic do not apply to physical objects -- except insofar as they are described, conceptualized or made the logical subjects of propositions -- but this is not to say that physical objects violate the laws of logic.

To cite another example, the gas laws do not apply to intentional states such as desiring and hoping, but that is not to say that the latter are in violation of the gas laws. Do my thoughts expand in the summer time? They neither expand nor fail to expand: they do not belong to the category of entities for which expansion or the opposite is an 'option.' But that is not to say that my thoughts violate the laws pertaining to expansion and contraction.

Therefore, it is a mistake to say or imply that the existence of a divine agent is supernatural in the sense of being miraculous (natural law violative). Indeed, the divine transcendence insures that God cannot be miraculous in this sense. In plain English, God is not in nature so he cannot violate any law of nature.

It follows that a participant in a religion need not affirm the existence of a supernatural agent in Dennett's sense of 'supernatural.' Dennett's definition is inadequate.

There are two senses of 'supernatural that we need to distinguish, and that Dennett may be conflating. In Dennett's sense, the supernatural is the miraculous, where the miraculous is that which is in violation of physical laws. In the second sense, the supernatural is simply that which is not part of nature, the system of space-time-matter.

God is a supernatural existent in the second sense but not in the first. How can the existence of God violate any law of nature if God is not in nature?

Now let's briefly consider the question whether the action of God must violate natural laws. God can act on nature without intervening in nature. He could sustain it in being without interfering with any of the causal chains that occur in nature. So it is false that God's action must involve the violation of natural laws.

My interim conclusion is that there is something deeply problematic about Dennett's definition. He defines religion in terms of the avowal of belief in supernatural agents. But it turns out that a supernatural agent is one whose existence and mode of action is miraculous, i.e., in violation of natural laws. But surely no sophisticated religionist -- no religionist worth refuting in a 450 page book -- avows belief in the existence of an agent who violates natural laws. The only way the existence of God could violate natural laws would be if God were a part of nature; but that is not what sophisticated theists believe. Dennett's definition is inadequate because it attributes to the religionist beliefs he does not hold. (It is also inadequate because of the conflation of religion with theism, but that is a secondary matter.)

The problem may be due to an equivocation on 'supernatural' as between violative of natural laws and transcendent of the system of space-time-matter.

The Bright Stuff
By Daniel C. Dennett
Blue Hill, ME
July 12, 2003

The time has come for us brights to come out of the closet. What is a bright? A bright is a person with a naturalist as opposed to a supernaturalist world view. We brights don't believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny — or God. We disagree about many things, and hold a variety of views about morality, politics and the meaning of life, but we share a disbelief in black magic — and life after death.

BV: Naturalists need to come out of the closet? Naturalism has been alive and well and represented at major universities through most of the twentieth century. But let that pass. Most groups have a tendency to underestimate their power and influence and overestimate that of their opponents.

Dennett's main point here is that belief in God and in an afterlife are epistemically on a par with belief in the Easter Bunny and black magic. The suggestion is that there cannot be good reason to believe in God and afterlife any more than there can be good reason to believe in the Easter Bunny and black magic. But this ignores the vast amount of philosophical work from Plato to Plantinga — some of it on the highest technical level — in support of God and afterlife. Few philosophers today would claim that that God and afterlife can be definitively proven. But no fair-minded person can deny that there are many powerful arguments in their support, and many powerful arguments against naturalism, and in particular, arguments against Dennett's extreme version thereof.

What Dennett is suggesting, of course, is that religion is just a form of superstition. But although one can make a case for that proposition, one can make a very powerful case against it. It is indeed an open question whether religion is just superstition, and to fail to see that is an open question is to fail to grasp the lay of the dialectical land. It is also quite absurd to suggest that all the intelligent people — the brights — are on one side of the issue. Dennett and Dawkins are very bright, but are they brighter or more well-informed that Plantinga and Swinburne? Let him who has the cojones to make that assertion step forth to have his cojones counted and weighed.

Indeed, if one looks back through the history of philosophy, one sees that the greatest philosophers were theists of one sort or another, and that the atheists and materialists were second-string or worse.

Note that what I have said gives no aid and comfort to any form of alethic relativism. To say that it is an open question whether God exists or whether religion is superstition or whether some version of naturalism is true is not to say that there is no fact of the matter, or that opposing views can be equally true, or any such nonsense. There are people on the Left who think that we conservatives make relativist moves when it suits us in contradiction to our general tendency to take a strong stand against relativism. But these lefties are just confused.

To say that there are open questions in evolutionary biology or any field is just to say that there are questions that have not been definitively answered. It carries no implication that there is no (absolute) truth to be discovered. To claim that neither p nor its negation (~p) have been proven is not to claim that both are true relative to different conceptual frameworks or research programmes or groups of people.

Another point that must be mentioned is Dennett's tendentious and unclarified use of 'supernatural.' What is it for something to be supernatural? It might mean that which is not material or physical, where the concept of the physical is fleshed out by contemporary physics. But then abstract objects would be supernatural: they are, after all, not part of the world of space-time-matter. Think of an unexemplified universal. Whether or not (some) exemplified universals are in the physical world, it is surely not the case that unexemplified universals are in the physical world.

Is the supernatural perhaps that which violates the laws of nature? Is the supernatural the same as the miraculous? This may well be what Dennett has in mind. But God, unlike the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and other Dennet favorites, need not be understood as violating any laws of nature. Think of a God that does not intervene miraculously in the workings of nature, but is merely the sustaining cause of the existence of nature. Then there would be a clear sense in which God would not be a supernatural being. Though outside of nature (and precisely because outside of nature) he would not violate any natural laws. Something not subject to natural laws cannot be said to violate them.

Or maybe the supernatural is that which cannot be explained naturalistically, in terms of natural laws. But then intentionality and qualia are supernatural since it is notorious that no one has ever given an adequate naturalistic explanation of them.

At the very least, we need to know what 'supernatural' means to fully understand Dennett's opposing of the naturalist brights to the supernaturalist dullards. Does it mean nonnatural, miraculous, or naturalistically inexplicable? If Dennett is using it as a bludgeon, as a portmanteau term of abuse, the way lefties use 'fascist' and 'theocrat' to tar their opponents, then that is contemptible.

The term "bright" is a recent coinage by two brights in Sacramento, Calif., who thought our social group — which has a history stretching back to the Enlightenment, if not before — could stand an image-buffing and that a fresh name might help. Don't confuse the noun with the adjective: "I'm a bright" is not a boast but a proud avowal of an inquisitive world view.

BV: Dennett is dissembling. It is obvious that 'bright' was chosen to suggest that the people so identified are intelligent, unlike their benighted anti-naturalist opponents. The implication is that brights are naturalists because they are intelligent, and that anti-naturalists hold their views due to some combination of the following: lack of intelligence, unfamiliarity with modern science, willful refusal to use their intellect and face reality. For example, people on Dennett's side of the fence will often characterize their opponents as faith-based, and themselves as reality-based.

If a bright is simply someone who is inquisitive, then plenty of anti-naturalists are brights.

I would put the point in stronger terms and go Dennett one better. Anyone who thinks that intellectual inquiry has value only if it has immediate or even long-term social utility is contemptibly benighted, and a danger to free inquiry.

One of my favorite examples is complex numbers. A complex number involves a real factor and an imaginary factor i, where i = the square root of -1. Thus a complex number has the form, a + bi where a is the real part and bi is the imaginary part.

One can see why the term 'imaginary' is used. The number 1 has two square roots, 1 and -1 since if you square either you get 1. But what is the square root of -1? It can't be 1 and it can't be -1, since either squared gives a positive number. So the imaginary i is introduced as the square root of -1. Rather than say that negative numbers do not have square roots, mathematicians say that they have complex roots. Thus the square root of -9 = 3i.

Now to the practical sort of fellow who won't believe in anything that he can't hold in his hands and stick in his mouth, this all seems like idle speculation. He demands to know what good it is, what it can used for. Well, the surprising thing is is that the theory of complex numbers which originated in the work of such 16th century Italian mathematicians as Cardano (1501 - 1576) and Bombelli (1526-1572) turned out to find application to the physical world in electrical engineering. The electrical engineers use j instead of i because i is already in use for current.

Just one example of the application of complex numbers is in the concept of impedance. Impedance is a measure of opposition to a sinusoidal electric current. Impedance is a generalization of the concept of resistance which applies to direct current circuits. Consider a simple direct current circuit consisting of a battery, a light bulb, and a rheostat (variable resistor). Ohm's Law governs such circuits: I = E/R. If the voltage E ('E' for electromotive force) is constant, and the resistance R is increased, then the current I decreases causing the light to become dimmer. The resistance R is given as a real number. But the impedance of an alternating current circuit is given as a complex number.

Now what I find fascinating here is that the theory of complex numbers, which began life as something merely theoretical, turned out to have application to the physical world. One question in the philosophy of mathematics is: How is this possible? How is it possible that a discipline developed purely a priori can turn out to 'govern' nature? It is a classical Kantian question, but let's not pursue it.

My point is that the theory of complex numbers, which for a long time had no practical (e.g. engineering) use whatsoever, and was something of a mere mathematical curiosity, turned out to have such a use. Therefore, to demand that theoretical inquiry have immediate social utility is shortsighted and quite stupid. For such inquiry might turn how to be useful in the future.

But even if a branch of inquiry could not possibly have any application to the prediction and control of nature for human purposes, it would still have value as a form of the pursuit of truth. Truth is a value regardless of any use it may or may not have.

Social utility is a value. But truth is a value that trumps it. The pursuit of truth is an end in itself. Paradoxically, the pursuit of truth as an end in itself may be the best way to attain truth that is useful to us.

This is an amazing passage in that it compares the views of distinguished dualist philosophers such as Richard Swinburne to the views of astrologers, alchemists, and flat-earthers. It would be very interesting to hear precisely how the views of Swinburne et al. are in "defiance of modern science" -- assuming one doesn't confuse science with scientism. But let's look at what Dennett has to say in his more substantial (511 page!) Consciousness Explained (1991).

Dennett there (mis)characterizes dualism as the doctrine that minds are "composed not of ordinary matter but of some other, special kind of stuff. . . ," and materialism as the view that "there is only one sort of stuff, namely matter -- the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology -- and the mind is some nothing but a physical phenomenon." (33) "In short, the mind is the brain." (33)

But as I have said before,

A substance dualist such as Descartes does not hold that minds are composed of some extraordinarily thin intangible stuff. The dualism is not a dualism of stuff-kinds, real stuff and spooky stuff. 'Substance' in 'substance dualism' does not refer to a special sort of ethereal stuff but to substances in the sense of individuals capable of independent existence whose whole essence consists in acts of thought, perception, imagination, feeling, and the like. Dennett is exploiting the equivocity of 'substance.'

The point is made very well by the prominent idealist, T. L. S. Sprigge:

It is often difficult to get people to realize that the non-physical mind of which Cartesians speak is not, as some have thought it, 'a ghost in the machine' of the human body, since ghosts and 'spirits' such as might appear in a seance are, in contrast to it, as physical, if made of a finer stuff, as our ordinary bodies. When we speak of the mental we do so mostly or entirely in metaphors (more or less sleeping) of a physical kind: we grasp ideas and have thoughts in our minds. Whatever the real source of this materialism which is endemic to most of our thinking, it is not surprising that there should be a theory of existence which follows its leadings. As thinkers we are subjects, but the natural object of thought is objects and it is only with effort that the subject turns its thoughts upon its own un-object-like nature. (Theories of Existence, pp. 46-47, bolding added.)

Dennett Plays the Interaction Card (Canard?)

Now Dennett trots out the "standard objection to dualism" which to Dennett is decisive. Ignoring non-interactionist types of substance dualism, Dennett tells us that mind and body, if distinct things or substances, must nonetheless interact. But how could the mind act upon the brain? How could a mental state make a difference to a brain state if mental states lack physical properties?

A fundamental principle of physics is that any change in the trajectory of any physical entity is an acceleration requiring the expenditure of energy, and where is this energy to come from? It is this principle of the conservation of energy that accounts for the physical impossibility of "perpetual motion machines," and the same principle is apparently violated by dualism. This confrontation between quite standard physics and dualism . . . is widely regarded as the inescapable and fatal flaw of dualism. (35)

Now any unprejudiced person should be able to see that this "fatal objection" is inconclusive. Notice first of all that Dennett is presupposing that mental-physical causation must involve transfer of energy. For Dennett's objection is essentially this:

a. Energy must be transferred to a physical entity to cause a change in it.
b. No energy can be transferred from an immaterial to a material entity.
Therefore
c. No immaterial entity such as a mind can cause a change in a material entity such as a brain/body.

But why should we accept the first premise? Why should we endorse a transfer theory of causation? Note that to assume a transfer theory of causation is to beg the question against the dualist: it is to assume that the mind must be material. For only a material thing can be a term in an energy transfer. Dennett thinks that dualism must collide with standard physics because he foists upon the dualist a conception of causation that the dualist will surely reject, a conception of causation that implies that there cannot be any nonphysical causes.

The materialist says: mind and body cannot interact because interaction requires transfer of energy, and only bodies can be the transferers and transferees of energy.

The interactionist dualist says: Since mind and body do interact, interaction does not require transfer of energy.

Let M be a type of mental event and B a type of brain event, and let m and b be tokens of these types. Perhaps there is nothing more to causation than this: m causes b =df (i) b follows m in time; (ii) Whenever an M event occurs, a B event occurs. On this regularity approach to causation, Dennett's objection dissolves.

Indeed, on any theory of causation in which causation does not consist in a transfer of a physical magnitude from cause to effect, Dennett's objection dissolves. Therefore, the objection can be made to stick only it is assumed that the transfer theory of causation is true of all types of causation. But then the question has been begged against dualist interaction.

There are two key points here that need to be developed in subsequent posts. One is that the nature of causation is not a physics problem. The natural scientist can tell us what causes what, but is singularly ill-equipped to tell us what causation is. The second point is that it is not at all clear that causation, even in the physical world, is a physical process. It is not all clear, in other words, that the causal structure of the physical world is itself something physical.

Dennett thinks that the incoherence of dualism is so obvious that it doesn't require "the citation of presumed laws of physics." (35). Casper the Friendly Ghost is all the help one needs. He can pass through a wall, yet grab a falling towel. But that's incoherent, since something that eludes physical measurement cannot have physical effects. The mind, as 'ghost in the machine,' is no better off. Only physical things can move physical things. But the mind of the substance dualist is not a physical thing, ergo, the mind cannot act upon the body.

But again, Dennett is just begging the question against the dualist as I have already explained.

1. Original/Derived Intentionality. All will agree that there is some sort of distinction to be made here. A map is not about a chunk of terrain just in virtue of the map's physical and geometrical properties. Consider the contour lines on a topographical map. The closer together, the steeper the terrain. But that closer together should mean steeper is a meaning assigned by the community of map-makers and map-users. This meaning is not intrinsic to the map qua physical object. Closer together might have meant anything, e.g., that the likelihood of falling into an abandoned mine shaft is greater.

So some things derive their referential and semantic properties from other things. What about these other things? I draw you a map so that you can find my camp. I use the Greek phi to mark my camp and the Greek psi to mark the camp of a heavily-armed crazy man that you are well advised to avoid. I intend that phi designate my camp. That intending (narrow sense) is a case of intentionality (broad sense). This is not in dispute. What is in dispute is whether my intending is a case of original or of derived intentionality.

If the latter, then a regress ensues which appears to be both infinite and vicious. But before discussing this further, I need to bring in another point.

2. Ascriptivism Versus Realism. Dennett appears to hold an ascriptivist or projectivist or imputationalist or instrumentalist theory of intentionality: nothing is an intentional system intrinsically or an sich; a system is intentional in virtue of someone's assigning intentional states to it. Thus there is no fact of the matter as to whether or not my computer (when it is running a chess program) has beliefs and desires (e.g., the desire to inflict mate.) But it may be useful to take up the "intentional stance" vis-a-vis the computer in order to explain its behavior. Given the computer's complexity, the physical and design stances are unavailing.

A realist about intentionality, on the other hand, is someone who holds that some systems really are intrinsically intentional: their having beliefs and desires is not a matter of anyone's viewing them as having such states. One way to be a realist is by being a reductive realist. Such a person admits the reality of intentional states but identifies them with something believed to be more fundamental such as brain states. If you believe, with Dretske, that intentionality does not need naturalizing, but already is a natural phenomenon in the natural world below the level of conscious mind, then you are presumably a reductive realist about intentionality. You are saying this: there is intrinsic intentionality, but it is physical in nature.

I'm a realist too, but I hold that intentionality is irreducibly real: it cannot be reduced to, or identified with, anything else. It is what it is and not some other thing. Part of the reason I believe this is because the alternatives are quite hopeless.

3. The Ascriptivist Regress. Suppose one takes the ascriptivist line. Then an infinite regress appears unavoidable. Suppose I ascribe intentionality to my chess playing computer. Quite obviously, my ascribing, projecting, imputing, is itself an intentional state or a series of such states. So if ascriptivism is true, then my acts of ascribing must themselves be ascribed -- otherwise they are intrinsic and the game is over. This launches us on a regress that is obviously infinite since at each level, one can "kick it up a notch." It is also clear that the regress (unlike the truth regress say) is vicious since at no level is the explanation of intentionality complete.

One might think to avoid the regress by embracing a circle: I ascribe intentional states to the computer and it ascribes intentional states to me. But surely this is even more of an absurdity for reasons that needn't be belabored.

The upshot is that pure ascriptivism is incoherent.

4. Adulterated Ascriptivism. Perhaps the solution is to mix some realism in with the ascriptivism. Maybe it goes like this. I have a head full of homunculi. These little men and women, working together, ascribe intentionality to me. But each homunculus has its intentionality ascribed to it by other, stupider, homunculi which are constituents of it. The stupider homunculi, in turn, are composed of even stupider ones, and so on until we get to the level of individual neurons which, as Pollack says, "aren't 'about' anything." The base level homuncuili are so stupid that one could say that they don't even rise to the level of being either stupid or intelligent.

Does this avoid the dilemma of having to choose between a vicious infinite regress and a vicious circle? What Dennett is proposing is a finite regress that terminates with something naturalistically acceptable, namely entities that lack intrinsic or original intentionality.

Admittedly, this proposal gets rid of the infinity of the regress, but not its viciousness: we still have no explanation of intentionality. Consider the base-level homunculi. They are so primitive as to lack all intentionality. How then can they ascribe intentionality to their colleagues one level up? Surely it is obvious that the ascribing of intentionality is itself an intentional act or series thereof.

The point is quite simple. If the regress terminates with base entities utterly devoid of intentonality, then no higher level entities will be intentional. For the higher-ups get their intentionality only from the ones lower down in the hierarchy. If the ones at the very bottom have no intentionality, then they can't transmit it up. But if, on the other hand, the ones at the very bottom possess intentionality, then it is false that all intentionality is derived.

In the final analysis, Dennett is an eliminativist about intentionality. His position amounts in the end to the denial of intentionality. To see this, you just have to think clearly. Dennett is saying that all intentionality is derivative, none is intrinsic or original. But that makes sense only if one embraces an infinite regress. But in this case an infinite regress must be vicious. On the other hand, a regress that terminates either terminates with entities that are intrinsically intentional or entities that are not. If the former, the game is over. If the latter, no intentionality gets transmitted up and Dennett is an eliminativist.

5. Could Intentionality be Continuously Variable? Pollack thinks this is a reasonable assumption. Presumably he means that it is a matter of degree, not of kind. In one sense, this is unproblematic: I exhibit more intrinsic intentionality than my cat does in that my intentional contents are richer that hers are. I see the TV as a TV, whereas she sees it as merely something stable enough to support her weight should she decide to jump up on it. Similarly, one woman can be more pregnant than another if the first is farther along in her pregnancy than the second. But that is not to say that every woman is pregnant. So even if there is a sense in which some entities are more intentional than others, there still must be, on Dennett's scheme, entities that are devoid of intentionality. Otherwise, he must embrace panpsychism.

Now I am sure that Pollack is not a panpregnantist: he does not hold that all women are pregnant with mere differences of degree distinguishing them. I don't think he is a panpsychist either. If he isn't, then he holds that some entities are utterly devoid of mind. But then how are minded entities supposed to arise from them? Surely a mindless entity cannot ascribe intentionality to anything.

Note also that even if intentionality were variable, it is hard to see how it could be continuously variable. That would imply that there are continuum-many (2 raised to the power aleph-nought) gradations between my intentional contents and those of some other actual or possible being. It is not clear what that could mean.

Divide and conquer is one approach to any complex problem: separate out the sub-problems and try to solve them separately. For example, separate the 'qualia' problem — which is part of the first subproblem mentioned — from the intentionality problem.

It might be that there is nothing specifically mental about intentionality at all. Perhaps intentionality is to be found in nature and in artifacts below the level of mind. If so, it may be possible to understanding intentionality at the level of mind by working up to it 'from below.' It may be possible to build a 'gradualist bridge' from mindless intentionality to minded intentionality. One might then come to understand how intentionality in us has 'evolved.'

Now one very serious question is whether intentionality can be prised apart from consciousness and treated separately. This is a question Colin McGinn raises with great skill. I hope to talk about it in a separate post. In this post, however, I will examine a passage from Dennett in which our man, having separated the qualia and intentionality problems, tries to get from mindless intentionality to the minded variety. The passage is from Kinds of Mind, p. 35:

Intentionality in the philosophical sense is just aboutness. [. . .] A lock and key exhibit the crudest form of intentionality; so do the opioid receptors in brain cells — receptors that are designed to accept the endorphin molecules that nature has been providing in brains for millions of years. [. . .] This lock-and-key variety of crude aboutness is the basic design element out of which nature has fashioned the fancier sorts of subsystems that may more deservedly be called representation systems, so we will have to to analyze the aboutness of these representations in terms of the (quasi?) aboutness of locks-and-keys in any case.

If I am thinking about Jude Acers, my thought is about him: he is not about my thinking. Generalizing, we can say that intentionality is an asymmetrical relation: if X stands in the intentional relation to Y, then Y does not stand in the intentional relation to X. (Brentano rightly pointed out long ago that intentionality is not a relation, strictly speaking, but ein Relativliches, something relation-like; but this nuance does not harm my point.)

Now in Dennett's example, is the lock about the key or the key about the lock? Well, there is a sense in which each is about the other. By studying the key, I can infer something about the lock, and by studying the lock I can infer something about the key. Each provides information about the other, and to a locksmith, a great deal of information.

There are many cases like this. Animal droppings on the trail provide information about what manner of critter has been by recently. Bear scat 'means' bears have been around. One sort of footprint 'indicates' that a coyote has passed by, another sort a mountain lion. The paw of a coyote provides information about the type of print it would leave if it were to leave a print, and a footprint provides information about the design of the paw. (Here 'design' just means pattern.)

So in the coyote case as in the lock and key case we have symmetrical aboutness: lock is about key, and key about lock; paw is about footprint, print is about paw. Or consider a compass needle. It is about magnetic North in the sense that one can infer where magnetic North is from the direction in which the the needle is pointing. But equally, one can infer from the location of magnetic North where a properly functioning compass needle will point.

The symmetry of this sort of aboutness — call it aboutness₁ — gives us excellent reason to distinguish it from intentionality, or aboutness₂, which is asymmetrical.

From this one can see that Dennett is completely mistaken in his claim that lock-and-key aboutness is a "form of intentionality." It is not a form of intentionality, and to think that it is is to confuse the the two senses of 'aboutness' lately distinguished. Dennett himself seems to be aware of this since at the end of the passage quoted he shifts his ground and speaks of "quasi-aboutness." This fudge is very telling. No doubt there is some likeness as between lock-and-key aboutness and intentional aboutness, but that proves nothing since everything is like everything else in some respect.

The point is that one gains no insight at all into how intentionality emerges — if it does emerge — by having it compared with locks and keys. Note also that to infer something about the lock from the key presupposes genuine intentionality on the part of the locksmith.

To sum up. To build his gradualist bridge, Dennett looks for a form of primitive intentionality below the level of mind or consciousness. He thinks he has found it in his lock and key example. But what I have just shown is that the symmetrical aboutness in the lock and key case is not, and cannot be, a form or type or species of intentionality — which is asymmetrical. The former merely resembles the genuine article. But if A resembles B, it does not follow that A is a form of B. A decoy duck resembles a duck but is not type of duck.

Only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events could explain consciousness at all. If your model of how pain is a product of brain activity still has a box in it labelled "pain," you haven't yet begun to explain what pain is, and if your model of consciousness carries along nicely until the magic moment when you have to say "then a miracle occurs" you haven't begun to explain what consciousness is.

This leads some people to insist that consciousness can never be explained. But why should consciousness be the only thing that can't be explained? Solids and liquids and gases can be explained in terms of things that are not themselves solids or liquids or gases. Surely life can be explained in terms of things that aren't themselves alive — and the explanation does not leave living things lifeless. The illusion that consciousness is the exception comes about, I expect, because of a failure to understand this general feature of successful explanation. (pp. 454-455)

Dave Gudeman makes a very interesting comment:

Physics may explain solids in terms of non-solids, but that isn't the right analogy. The right analogy is to ask whether physics explains physical events in terms of non-physical events --whether physics tries to explain phenomena of location, momentum and energy by entities that do not have any of those properties. Physics does no such thing, of course, so why should we expect mental events to be explainable by entities that don't have the properties characteristic of mental events?

Dave's point could be put as follows. Some physical explanations explain the macrophysical in terms of the microphysical. But no physical explanations explain the physical in terms of the nonphysical. Therefore, it is not the case that for any F, every explanation of F-items must be in terms of non-F items. What Dennett is calling the "general feature of successful explanation" is no such thing. For if it were a general feature it would apply to physical explanations — but it doesn't.

So why should we accept Dennett's assurance that "Only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events could explain consciousness at all"?

Dennett is employing a double-standard. Conscious events have to meet an exacting standard: if they are to be explained at all, they must be explained in terms of unconscious events. Not so with physical events. They can be explained in terms of other physical events.

The tacit assumption, of course, is that only the physical is ultimately real. But why should we accept that assumption?

Malcolm Pollack makes mention of the

. . ."holistic" phenomenon like heat, which is not a property of any of the individual particles contributing to it, but which is still explainable in terms of the aggregate behavior of those particles. I think it is entirely plausible that mental phenomena might be in such a relation to their physical substrate, the nervous system

Malcolm is alluding to the idea that the temperature of a body or a substance can be identified with the mean molecular kinetic energy of its constituent molecules. Their behavior in the aggregate explains the supervenient phenomenon of temperature. In other words, temperature is not a property of any individual molecule — any more than liquidity is a property of any one H₂O molecule — but a property of a sytem of molecules in motion relative to one other.

But there is an important distinction to be made between the felt temperature — the sensory quale, the Feiglian 'raw feel', the Nagelian 'what it is like' — and the temperature as a purely physical attribute. Physics studies the latter but has nothing to say about the former.

So the analogy is no good. It is not the case that a conscious event such as sensation of heat is to a brain or central nervious system process as temperature-as-physical-attribute is to the constituent molecules of the substance that has the temperature.

Having thought through the matter one more time with a little help from my friends, I come back to my old Searlean conclusion, namely, that Dennett is an eliminativist, a denier of conscious experiences. He does not explain them, he explains them away.

I think my friend Malcolm does not appreciate the difficulty of the issue. Of course we have conscious experiences. We feel pleasure and pain, for example. That's a given, a 'Moorean fact,' a pre-analytic or pre-theoretical datum. The philosophical task, however, is to understand the datum, to provide a theory of it. Given that conscious experiences exist, WHAT are they? So the question is not whether they are, but what they are.

Unfortunately, some theories about what an F is imply that there are no Fs. Call such theories eliminativist theories. For example, if your theory of unicorns is that they are mythical beasts, then that amounts to saying that unicorns do not exist. Likewise, someone who maintains, rightly, that Hamlet is a fictional character is committed to the nonexistence of Hamlet. Similarly, a Feuerbachian who holds that God is an unconscious anthropomorphic projection implies that God does not exist.

So Searle's point and mine is that someone who maintains that conscious experiences are "meme effects of a von Neumann(esque) virtual machine implemented in a parallel architecture" is maintaining a theory that implies the nonexistence of conscious experiences. Such an identification amounts to an elimination. Dennett's explanation of consciousness amounts to an explaining-away.

To appreciate this, I invite the reader to consider carefully the following points:

1. An obvious point to start with is that only that which exists, or that which is the case, can be explained. One who explains the phenomenon of the tides in terms of the gravitational effect of the moon presupposes that the phenomenon of the tides is a genuine phenomenon. One cannot explain the nonexistent for the simple reason that it is not there to be explained. One cannot explain why unicorns run faster that gazelles for the simple reason that there is no such explanandum. So if consciousness is to be explained, it must exist.

2. A second point, equal in obviousness unto the first, is that a decent explanation cannot issue in the elimination of the explanandum, that which is to be explained. You cannot explain beliefs and desires by saying that there are no beliefs and desires. A successful explanation cannot be eliminativist. It cannot 'explain away' the explanandum.

3. Summing up (1) and (2): the very project of explanation presupposes the existence of the explanandum, and success in explanation cannot result in the elimination of the explanandum.

4. Daniel Dennett points out that there can be no explanation without a certain 'leaving out': "Leaving something out is not a feature of failed explanations, but of successful explanations." (Consciousness Explained, p. 454.) Thus if I explain lightning as an atmospheric electrical discharge, I leave out the appearing of the lightning to lay bare its reality. That lightning appears in such-and-such a way is irrelevant: I want to know what it is in reality, what it is in nature apart from any observer. The scientist aims to get beyond the phenomenology to the underlying reality.

5. It follows that if consciousness is to be explained, it must be reduced to, or identified with, something else that is observer-independent. Dennett puts this by saying that "Only a theory that explained conscious events in terms of unconscious events could explain consciousness at all." (454) For example, if your explanation of pain in terms of C-fibers and Delta A-fibers still contains the unreduced term 'pain,' then no satisfactory explanation has been achieved. There cannot be a "magic moment" in the explanation when a "miracle occurs" and unconscious events become conscious. (455)

6. Now if a successful explanation must explain conscious events in terms of unconscious events, then I hope I will be forgiven for concluding that consciousness CANNOT be explained. For, as I made clear in #2 above, a successful explanation cannot issue in the elimination of that which is to be explained. In the case of the lightning, there is a reduction but not an elimination: lightning is reduced to its observer-independent reality as electrical discharge. Now suppose you try the same operation with the sensory qualia experienced when one observes lightning: the FLASH, the JAGGED LINE in the sky, followed by the CLAP of thunder, etc. You try to separate the subjective appearance from the observer-independent reality. But then you notice something: reality and appearance of a sensory quale coincide. Esse est percipi. The being of the quale is identical to its appearing. This is what Searle means when he speaks of the "first person ontology" of mental data.

7. It follows from #6 that if one were to explain the conscious event in terms of unconscious events as Dennett recommends, the explanation would fail: it would violate the strictures laid down in #2 above. The upshot would be an elimination of the datum to be explained rather than an explanation of it. To reiterate the obvious, a successful explanation cannot consign the explanandum to oblivion. It must explain it, not explain it away.

8. I conclude that consciousness cannot be explained, given Dennett's demand that a successful explanation of consciousness must be in terms of unconscious events. What he wants is a reduction to the physical. He wants that because he is convinced that only the physical exists. But in the case of consciousness, such a reduction must needs be an elimination.

9. To my claim that consciousness cannot be explained, Dennett has a response: "But why should consciousness be the only thing that cannot be explained? Solids and liquids and gases can be explained in terms of things that are not solids, and liquids, and gases. . . . The illusion that consciousness is the exception comes about, I suspect, because of a failure to understand this general feature of successful explanation." (455)

Dennett's reasoning here is astonishingly weak because blatantly question-begging. He is arguing:

A. It is a general feature of all successful explanations that F items be explained in terms of non-F items
B. Conscious items can be explained
Ergo
C. Conscious items can be explained in terms of nonconscious items.

(B) cannot be asserted given what I said in #6 and #7. I run the argument in reverse, arguing from the negation of (C) to the negation of (B): conscious items such as pains are irreducible.

10. Recall from #4 that Dennett said that successful explanations must leave something out. But in the case of a conscious item like a pain, what is left out when we explain it is precisely what we needed to explain! For what is left out is precisely the sensory quale, the felt pain, the Feiglian "raw feel,' the Nagelian "what it is like."

11. Amazingly, on p. 455 Dennett retracts what he said on the previous page about successful explanations having to leave something out. He now writes:

Thinking, mistakenly, that the explanation leaves something out, we think to save what otherwise would be lost by putting it back into the observer as a quale -- or some other "intrinsically" wonderful property. The psyche becomes the protective skirt under which all those beloved kittens can hide. There may be motives for thinking that consciousness cannot be explained, but, I hope I have shown, there are good reasons for thinking it can. (455)

Do you see how Dennett is contradicting himself? On p. 454 he states that a successful explanation must leave something out, which seems plausible enough. Then he half-realizes that this spells trouble for his explanation of consciousness -- since what is left out when we explain consciousness in unconscious terms is precisely the explanandum, consciousness itself! So he backpedals and implies that nothing has been left out, and suggests that someone who affirms the irreducibility of qualia is like a lady who hides her 'kwalia kitties' under her skirt where no mean neuroscientist dare stick his nose.

The whole passage is a tissue of confusion wrapped in a rhetorical trick. And that is the way his big book ends: on a contradictory note.

12. To sum up. A successful explanation cannot eliminate the explanandum. That is nonnegotiable. So if we agree with Dennett that a successful explanation must leave something out, namely, our epistemic access to what is to be explained, then we ought to conclude that consciousness cannot be explained. To the extent that Dennett explains consciousness, however, he explains it away.

Dennett therefore, pace Malcolm Pollack, is a denier of consciousness. Searle is right.

According to Searle, only artifacts made by genuine, conscious human artificers have real functions. Airplane wings are really for flying, but eagles' wings are not. If one biologist says they are adaptations for flying and another says they are merely display racks for decorative feathers, there is no sense in which one biologist is closer to the truth. If, on the other hand, we ask the aeronautical engineers whether the airplane wings they designed are for keeping the plane aloft or for displaying the insignia of the airline, they can tell us a brute fact. So Searle ends up denying William Paley's premise: according to Searle, nature does not consist of an unimaginable variety of functioning devices, exhibiting design. Only human artifacts have that honor, and only because (as Locke "showed" us) it takes a Mind to make something with a function!

Dennett's criticism is based on misunderstanding. Searle's point is that nothing has a function except relative to an observer or user or artificer. See here. Thus the wings of an eagle have the function of propelling it through the air only relative to someone who regards them as having that function. A rock has the function of a paper weight only relative to someone who uses the rock as a paper weight. An artifact such as a screwdriver has the function of driving screws only relative to an artificer who designed it and built it for that purpose.

So Searle's claim is not that only artifacts have real functions. Nothing has a real function if 'real' means intrinsic. Searle's claim is that everything that has a function, whether it be an artifact or natural item, has its function only relative to an observer, user, artificer.

John F. Post thinks that Dennett has reduced Searle's view to absurdity with the one-liner: "Airplane wings are really for flying, but eagles' wings are not." But Searle is not saying that eagles' wings are not for flying; he is saying that their being for flying is observer-relative. From the fact that eagles'wings are not for flying intrinsically it does not follow that they are not for flying observer-relatively.

What Searle is saying is that in a world without any observers, users, artificers, things have causes and effects but nothing has a function. (In Aristotelian terms, and adjusting for the differences between Aristotelian and post-Humean conceptions of efficient causality, one can say that in a world without observers there are efficient but no final causes.) But in our world there are observers, users, artificers, and so in our world things do have functions, namely, the functions we assign or impose. Among the things to which we assign functions are both artifacts and natural items. Thus the wings of a bird have the function of propelling the bird through the air in virtue of the fact that we regard them as having that function. Note that they objectively have that function because we objectively regard them as having that function. The imposition of function is not whimsical or arbitrary since it is grounded in values and interests that are not whimsical or arbitrary. Valuing mobility in ourselves, we assign to birds' wings the function of being for mobility. In Searlean parlance, functional ascriptions are epistemically objective but ontologically subjective.

We don't regard the wings as merely display racks for feathers any more than we regard our legs as supports for trousers. We regard our legs as having the function of propelling us over the ground since we value mobility. Like Little Eva, we are into loco-motion. Similarly, we regard the wings of birds as propelling devices for them, engaged as they are in the common project of locomotion. (Nota bene: That my legs propel me over the ground is not because I regard my legs as propelling me over the ground; but that their function is to propel me over the ground derives from my so regarding them. A perhaps clearer example would be the beating of the heart since this is an involuntary process.)

Dennett writes, "If one biologist says they [wings] are adaptations for flying and another says they are merely display racks for decorative feathers, there is no sense in which one biologist is closer to the truth." Now it is unlikely that a competent biologist would make the second assertion since an adaptation is defined as "a property of an organism, whether a structure, a physiological trait, a behavior, or any other attribute, the possession of which favors the individual in the struggle for existence." (E. Mayr, What Evolution Is, p. 149) But the real problem with what Dennett is saying is that he is ignoring what Searle says about epistemic objectivity and ontological subjectivity. Searle could easily say in response to Dennett that it is an epistemically objective fact that wings are adaptations for flying rather than display racks for feathers while also insisting that there are no intrinic functions in nature. In this way, Searle can accommodate what is correct in Dennett's assertion that one of the biologists is closer to the truth.

Note also that, pace Dennett, it is not a brute fact that airplane wings are designed to keep planes aloft. Searle nowhere says this, indeed he implies the opposite. His point, again, is that functions are imposed or assigned. Thus it is not a brute natural fact about an airplane wing that it has the function of keeping the plane aloft, but an observer-relative fact.

Dennett seems bent on misunderstanding Searle. Searle is not saying that artifacts have real or intrinsic functions while natural items do not. He is saying that anything, whether natural or artifactual, that has a function has it relative to an observer, user, or artificer. He is saying that there are no intrinsic functions anywhere, not in nature, and not in anything man-made.

Thanks for the interesting and fruitful comments. There are properties that it makes sense to say are emergent. Consider the property of being a heap. A grain of sand is not a heap. But add 9,999 grains to it and one definitely has a heap. Somewhere between one grain and 10,000 grains the heap emerges, though one will be hard pressed to say exactly where, and why adding one more grain should suddenly make a difference. Perhaps you are saying that intentionality is like this. At a certain threshhold of complexity intentionality emerges.

But note that emergentism is a kind of dualism: what emerges (intentionality) is radically different from its emergence base, mindless matter. Since emergentism is a form of dualism, albeit not a form of substance dualism, it cannot be used to make sense of Dennett's position which eschews as unscientific every sort of dualism, not just substance dualism.

Note also that it cannot be Dennett's view that original (intrinsic) intentionality emerges. For he explicitly denies that there is an original intentionality. (For example, at the end of "Fast Thinking in The Intentonal Stance, p. 337: "There is no such thing as intrinsic intentionality . . . .")

This implies that all intentionality is derivative. The intentionality of smarter systems derives from that of dumber and dumber subsystems until we arrive at subsystems so dumb that they are utterly free of intentionality (like the solitary grain of sand that is 'heapless').

Intentionality is a useful model for understanding the design and behavior of a system, but I think we must be careful not to grant it some sort of mysterious soul-like status. Obviously a stone has no intentionality, while we have it in spades. But I think Dennett has done a good job of showing how intentionality could ramp into existence gradually, once matter has organized itself into primitive replicators. If a simple organism has over eons evolved cellular mechanisms for engulfing food, then we can read intentionality into those new mechanisms and structures (they are "for" eating), though nothing inexplicable or mysterious has happened.

You say that intentionality is a model, and then you say it can "ramp into existence." There is a tension here. If something comes into existence then it is real and not a mere model of the real. Are you perhaps conflating the intentional stance with intentionality?

Suppose we "read intentionality" into some cellular mechanism. No doubt we can do this just as I can ascribe beliefs and desires to my chess playing computer. But it doesn't follow that there is any intentionality in the cellular mechanism or in the computer. Note also that ascribing is itself a case of intentionality. So if there is no intrinsic intentionality, then my ascribing is intentional in virtue of some other entity's ascribing intentionality to me -- which appears to ignite a vicious infinite regress.

In Dennett's view even the mental mechanisms that underlie our consciousness (with all its rich and multifaceted intentionality) are just a logical extension of that process, a synergistic result of the joint efforts of simpler mental modules, which in turn are the result of the actions of bundles of neurons, and so forth. Our fabulously rich high-level intentionality emerges from all of this in the same way that "performance" or "handling" emerges from the parts of a Porsche. Yes, the individual car parts were designed by the intentionality of German engineers — but our mental parts were also designed by natural selection over deep time.

There is no doubt that you understand what Dennett WANTS to say, but the question remains as to whether or not what he wants to say can be coherently said.

Dennett's theory is ascriptivist: nothing has intentionality intrinsically; intentionality is ascribed or imputed or projected into a system from without. But this ascribing is itself an instance of intentionality, and you want to say that this ascribing is the "synergistic result of simpler mental modules" which are in turn the result of even simpler modules which are "designed by natural selection."

There is a deep unclarity here. How can D's theory be both ascriptivist and emergentist? You said a while back that we ascribe intentionality to primitive cellular mechanisms. Fine. But that implies that those organisms have no intrinsic intentionality. How then can enough of them working together -- syn-ergy -- give rise to the intentionality that ascribes intentionality to them?

There is a vicious circle here. X ascribes intentionality to a, b, and c. Apart from this ascription they would exhibit no intentionality. But X's ascribing is an instance of intentionality that results from the synergy of a, b, and c -- which presupposes that there is some primitive intentionality in a, b, and c that is not the result of X's ascription.

There is also the unclarity of "designed by natural selection." Strictly speaking, natural selection doesn't design anything. Designing is an instance of intentionality, and intentionality emerges only way down the evolutionary road. What Dennett does is help himself to, or presuppose, the very thing he is trying to account for, namely, intentionality.

As for a bridge from causes to reasons, why NOT say that the computer's move is forced by reasons? Yes, we can take an extreme-reductionist view and try to determine the computer's move from the state of its constituent particles, just as we might for a human player, but why bother? We know very well that the computer will avoid mate in one because if it doesn't it will lose , just the same as a good human player. Take any decent chess computer (and there are lots and lots of them - I have about seven or eight myself), and set up an avoidable mate-in-one, and the machine will always avoid it, regardless of the particulars of the hardware or software . I think this is amply sufficient to move from "can be viewed as" to "is". Yes, a human playing a child might lose on purpose (I often did as I was teaching my son the game), but that of course is because a human is a vastly more complex intentional system.

You can impute reasons to a computer or a thermostat or a circuit breaker: it has a reason to trip: it doesn't want the house to burn down and it with it. You could say it senses a surge in amperage caused by a short circuit. But of course it senses nothing: it is just a crude mechanical device. So I fail to see how viewing it as having reasons suffices to show that it has reasons for its 'actions' which of course are not actions strictly speaking.

I think your argument that there is something important left to be explained depends entirely on reifying intentionality, quite unnecessarily, into something more exotic than it needs to be.

I plead innocent. To reify is to make into something real that which is unreal. But intrinsic intentionality is real, and is indeed presupposed as real by any affirmation of derived intentionality. What you and Dennett are doing is denying a plain fact because it fails to fit into your preconceived naturalistic schema. And the cost of that denial is all sorts of absurdities: vicious infinite regresses, vicious circles, equivocations, etc.

Dennett was talking about his chess playing computer and a particular forced move that it made. The question arose as to what forced it. We heard him say that "The move is forced by the overwhelmingly good reasons [the computer has] for making it and not any other move." (KM 31, emphasis in original; full bibliographical data in the prerequisite post.) But I smell some flatulence in the air, a conflation to be precise, a conflation of 'is forced' with 'can be viewed as forced from the intentional stance.'

I expect not to be contradicted if I say that 'X is Y' is not the same as 'X can be viewed as Y.' For example, 'The asteroid is a point-mass' says something different from 'The asteroid can be viewed as a point-mass for purposes of calculating its orbit.'

There is no doubt that I can and often do assume the intentional stance when playing chess against my computer: I view it as if it had beliefs, desire and purposes, as if it were an agent acting for reasons. The physical stance and the design stance are too complicated when it comes to predicting the computer's behavior, so I impute to it beliefs, desires, purposes and reasons. I view it as wanting to checkmate me, as believing that a back rank mate is in the offing, etc.

So there is no doubt that a particular forced move can be viewed as forced by reasons that the computer has for making it. But that is not to say that the move is forced by reasons.

But it is precisely this latter claim that Dennett needs if he is to build his gradualist bridge from mindlessness to mind, in particular, from physical causes to reasons. He needs to be able to find intentionality and agency in computers, thermostats, and indeed in self-replicating macromolecules. (KM 34)

In brief, Dennett needs the is, but how does he get to it from the can be viewed as?

The whole conjuring trick seems to require a tripartite conflation of original (intrinsic), derived, and 'as if' intentionality. What Dennett needs to say and apparently is saying is that no intentionality is intrinsic or original, and no intentionality is merely 'as if.' All intentionality is genuine but derivative. And this derivative intentionality is apparently ubiquitous. Even a lock and key is an intentional system since the lock represents the key that opens it. "A lock and key exhibit the crudest form of intentionality; so do the opioid receptors in brain cells — receptors that are designed to accept the endorphin molecules that nature has been providing in brains for millions of years." (KM 35)

One obvious question is this: How could ALL intentionality be derivative? The intentionality of a picture I draw gets its intentionality from me, or my brain. Whence the intentionality of my brain states? To avoid a vicious infinite regress, must there not be some original intentionality somewhere?

Dennett's answer is that ". . . the brain is an artifact, and it gets whatever intentionality its parts have from their role in the ongoing economy of the larger system of which it is a part — or, in other words, from the intentions of its creator, Mother Nature (otherwise known as the process of evolution by natural selection)."

The idea, I take it, is that there is a sort of finite regress to ever smaller and dumber and cruder intentional systems. The intentionality of the smarter systems derives from that of the dumber systems until we arrive at systems so dumb that their intentionality derives from mindless matter.

But then how explain the transition from mindless matter to the most primitive form of intentionality? Or is Dennnett a closet panpsychist who holds that intentionality is ubiquitous?

It looks like a dilemma: either panpsychism or an inexplicable and mysterious jump from mindless matter to primitive intentionality. But if there must be a mysterious jump somewhere, why is Dennett's view preferable to dualism?

If you press down a wrinkle in a carpet in one place only to have it appear in another place, then you still have a wrinkle -- under a coffee table perhaps where it is less visible. Similarly, burying a mysterious transition deep in the evolutionary past may make it less obvious but does not remove it.

On p. 31, Dennett is discussing a chess playing computer. He points out that in some situations,

. . . you can predict its move with supreme confidence. Nothing about the laws of physics forces this move, and nothing about the specific design of the computer forces this move. The move is forced by the overwhelmingly good reasons for making it and not any other move. (Emphasis in the original)

Let's think about this. Suppose the computer's king is in check and can evade check in only one way, by moving to square h8. So the move Kh8 is forced. Now it is true that it is not forced by the laws of physics. But it is forced by the laws of physics PLUS the initial conditions. A Laplacean demon or a special supercomputer monitoring the chess playing computer could predict (in the case of the demon) or 'predict' (in the case of the supercomputer) that the forced move would be made. The prediction would be made with "supreme confidence" if determinism is true, or something very close to it if some quantum indeterminacy enters the picture. Instead of 'forced' we can say 'caused' and then take causation as either detrministic or probabilistic.

Similarly, though it is true that nothing about the specific design of the computer forces the Kh8 move, the move is forced by the specific design PLUS the initial inputs. The design stance involves higher-level description, but the physical and the design stances both allow predictability "with supreme confidence" IF the initial conditions/inputs are taken into consideration.

Thus Dennett's argument is unsound. He is arguing as follows:

1. The move is not forced by the physics
2. The move is not forced by the design
3. The move is forced
ERGO
4. The move is forced by good reasons
ERGO
5. The computer has good reasons and is therefore a mind, an intentional system.

What I have just shown, however, is that (1) and (2) are false.

What Dennett is trying to show is that a computer running a chess program has reasons for as opposed to mere causes of its behavior. If he can show that, then he can show that mind is present in the computer. To make his case he exploits the standard philosophical distinction between reasons and causes and tries to show that since there are no causes there must be reasons. But as we have just seen, it does not work. There are causes both at the level of the physical stance and at the level of the design stance. The availability of causes removes the ground for imputing reasons.