Motus Mentis

8 Comments

1. Adept says

   The third part.

   1. SOME concepts are not physical things.

   2. ALL concepts are in the mind.

   2 absolutely does not follow 1 in the sense implied. The mind contains no things in themselves, but contains representations of concepts just as it contains representations of the external world, the Pythagorean theorem, the past time, etc. Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is hopelessly confused, but he was right on this point.

   When you acquire or learn a concept, you commit it to memory. Memories are stored in highly complex — but finitely complex — patterns of cells, electrical activity, and what have you. They have a physical basis: Destroy the brain — or a certain part of the brain — and you destroy the memory. This applies not only to conceptual knowledge, but also to acquired physical skills, like the ability to play an instrument. In music agnosia, a condition associated with brain damage, it even applies to the ability to recognize music.

   So the mind doesn’t store concepts as concepts. It stores knowledge of those concepts as memory; moreover, it rarely stores knowledge of concepts perfectly, but typically stores its own imperfect representation of those concepts. This all has a known, if not yet entirely understood, physical/physiological basis.

   Posted September 11, 2023 at 1:38 am | Permalink
2. Malcolm says

   Adept, I must disagree; you are stealing a base when you say “when you learn a concept”, as if a concept is simply a physical thing in the world, rather than something originating in the mind that is passed from one mind to another, often imperfectly, by various physical media.

   Where in the physical world, for example, are “justice”, “wisdom”, or “ineffability”?

   Also, P1 and P2 in the third syllogism are premises, so you shouldn’t expect P2 to follow from P1. (You can refuse to accept the premise, but that’s another matter.)

   Posted September 11, 2023 at 1:30 pm | Permalink
3. Adept says

   Should have said that C3 doesn’t follow from the premises. Apologies for the lack of clarity. In my defense, I was rather sleep-deprived when I wrote that.

   To the point: Where indeed is “justice”? There are so many variations on the concept, one hardly knows where to begin.

   The Greeks had various interpretations. Consider Agamemnon’s sensitivity to both natural law and politics in the case of Hecuba and Polymestor. The High King was cognizant of the “correct” judgment, in keeping with man’s natural instinct for revenge, but he could not deliver it — for, rightly or wrongly, he absolutely could not punish the King of Thrace, who was a friend to many of his own fighting men and allies, to benefit a slave woman. “Hecuba, consider my position.”

   (Though he later turned a blind eye when she took her own revenge, and then refused to punish her.)

   You must read the whole play, but Agamemnon’s concept of justice — which is described in some detail — would be so wholly alien to a modern-day jurist that it beggars belief. And how he would laugh if he could see our courts and our preening, self-important judges! They were infinitely more sensitive to natural law in those old days, to matters of loyalty to one’s people, and to natural hierarchies. In a word, to gnon.

   But there is a vast gulf from Agamemnon to Aristotle’s abstract notions of justice. What Aristotle called justice, also, is far from how a modern jurist would understand the concept.

   Then you can talk to a Qin legalist about justice, and see what Han Fei has to say. “Justice is what benefits the monarch and the stability of the state. There is no personal justice, and, hey, you SHOULD be killed if your cousin committed a severe enough crime.”

   Han Fei would appall Agamemnon as he should appall us. To which he would doubtless say: “650,000 men have just died at Changping. Countless more have died in prior eras of instability. It is impossible for a weak hand to administer a strong and peaceful state. Only the sternest measures will do. When the people fear the King’s justice — which is the King’s prerogative, solely — the realm will be at peace and things can run their natural course. You, Agamemnon, are an elected tribal chief — but the King of Qin rules millions of people, precariously, by the sword. Consider his position.”

   Ultimately, I think that Natural Law is a natural thing — rooted in an abstraction or sublimation of the instinct for self-defense. Beyond that, the concept of “Justice” is usually the sovereign’s prerogative.

   All of this to say that there is no universal concept of “Justice.” There is natural law, there is the Justice of Agamemnon, the Justice of Qin, the justice of Aristotle, the modern common law, and so forth. These are concepts that are, oftentimes, at odds with each other. And they are “passed from one mind to another” typically by decree, example, and written statute; physical phenomena. Subsequently they are committed to memory, just as I wrote above. Nothing that happens in the mind is non-physical.

   In general, as an aside, I’d say that most people don’t have a concept of justice. If they did, the US “Justice” System wouldn’t last five minutes.

   Posted September 11, 2023 at 4:29 pm | Permalink
4. Malcolm says

   Adept,

   Forgive me, but I think you’re rather missing the point.

   That ideas of justice may vary has no bearing on whether “justice” is somehow only a part of the physical world, and not, like other “concepts”, in its essence a non-physical abstraction.

   Posted September 11, 2023 at 4:57 pm | Permalink
5. Adept says

   Any rigorously-defined concept of justice — save only that of natural law, which is perhaps too vague in any case — is in essence no different from a mathematical proof. A proof may be “discovered” and formulated by a man unto himself, or that man might acquire it by reading a paper or textbook.

   Would you say that this proof is “part of the physical world,” or is it a non-physical abstraction?

   In any case, the proof as a thing in itself is not what man acquires. Man acquires a subjective representation of that proof — in many cases as a form of tool or process — which is committed to memory, and all of this has a completely physical basis. Both the discovery or acquisition of the proof, and its subsequent commitment to memory, are in principle understandable neurochemical/neurostructural processes of finite complexity.

   I just don’t see how you’re getting “some things in the mind are not physical things” from the existence of such things as mathematical proofs or concepts of justice. They’re not “in the mind” in themselves.

   Posted September 11, 2023 at 6:10 pm | Permalink
6. BV says

   Hi Malcolm.

   The gist of the argument is that because some concepts are not physical things, but are in the mind, there are parts of the mind that are not physical, so materialism about the mind is false.

   I don’t find the argument rationally compelling/coercive because of the distinction we must make between conceiving and conceived. If I am thinking about right triangles as such and their properties, not perceiving a particular right triangle on the black board, there is a clear sense in which the conceiving is part of my mind whereas the concept conceived is not. The concept conceived is a universal, but the particular conceiving taking place in Malcolm right now is a particular. A materialist will ask: why can’t the conceiving be a complex brain state?

   Posted September 11, 2023 at 10:12 pm | Permalink
7. Malcolm says

   BV,

   Do I understand you correctly, then, to be agreeing with Adept that P2 of the third syllogism can be plausibly rejected?

   Adept,

   BV refers to the concept of a right triangle as a universal, which implies its having an existence independent of any particular triangle, or any conceiving mind. What is your view on the existence of universals? You refer to justice as analogous to mathematics; do you believe that mathematics itself, the ground of your analogy, has any sort of non-physical existence? Or do you believe, as I did during my long attachment to materialism, that nothing really exists except particulars, and brains that struggle, with varying success, to conceive and model their relations?

   The difficulty I now have with the position I just described is that the universals we “abstract from” the particulars of the world, for example mathematical laws, have what Eugene Wigner called an “unreasonable effectiveness” in modeling (and even more puzzlingly, predicting) the particulars of the world. It seems as if the concepts must somehow be prior to the particulars. If this is so, do they not have a non-physical existence? (In what way can a concept such as “truth” have a purely physical existence?)

   That said, a useful question (and one we are busily experimenting with these days) is to what extent a purely mechanical system such as AI can perform these same abstractions. Let’s say it can do it as well as we do, and get the same results. Does this entail a commitment to abstract universals? Is that a “mind”, or is there some residue left over?

   To put all this another, simpler way: does rejecting the premise that “all concepts are in the mind” leave us, nevertheless, committed to their non-physical existence as abstract objects?

   Posted September 11, 2023 at 11:12 pm | Permalink
8. Malcolm says

   Adept,

   A further note: in what sense can something like a “mathematical proof” have a purely physical existence?

   In 2006, when I was still tilted strongly toward physicalism, I took aim at C.S. Lewis’s argument that reason cannot be a purely physical process. Would you broadly agree with what I wrote then?

   Posted September 12, 2023 at 12:32 pm | Permalink