Okulun ilk gunu, 4 Eylul 2008

Eski bir yazi:



Bugun okulun ilk gunuydu, okulun ilk gunu "caliskan ogrenci"'nin sorumluluklarini bir kez daha hatirladigi, yapacaklarinin planini yapip ardindan heyecanlandigi, bol enerjili, gazli bir gundur iste. Zamanla o enerji azalir azalir azaalir... Bir sure sonra "nereye kacti?" diye bile merak edilmez. Sonra bir gun(yani bugun) 25 yasinizda uzun zamandir alismis oldugunuzun aksine kalabalik bir sinifa girip derse baslayan hocayi dinlemeye basladiginizda o film seridi paradigmasi gerceklesir. Bugun oyle saniyorum ki yuzumde disardan nasil bir goruntuye yol actigini bilemedigim bir ifade, ilk okul birinci sinifi hatirladim. O gun, oyle dise dokunur bir travma yasamisim ki butun cocuklugumun en aydinlik gunlerinden (digeri de begendigim cocuklarla siir okudugum, yan yana oturdugum ya da bir sebepten yarim metreye kadar yakin oldugumuz zamanlar). Okulun ilk gunu: ben fazlasiyla olanlardan habersiz, siyah onlugu gininip icinde tek bir defter ve kalem, tipini bile sorgulamadigim, nerden gelip koluma girdigini bilmedigim bir canta evden ciktik. Yol kismini ve siniflara girisi cok hatirlamiyorum ama o gun icinde oldugum seyin nasil benim disinda gelisip kontrolsuzce beni yonettigini hissettigimi cok iyi hatirliyorum. Olanlara "hayir!" demek aklima gelse, kesin derdim ama hersey oyle hizli gelisiyordu ki: bir taraftan da, ne hizi, ne gelismes... siniflara gecip siralara oturdugumuz an zaman fazlasiyla yavaslamisti. Daha dogrusu, simdiki algilayisima yakin olan zaman kavramiyla tanismistim. Bitmek bilmeyen ders saati, bir tane ardindan bir tane daha, sonra bir tane daha... Orda beklemeyi ogrenmistim, zilin calisini beklemeyi, sonra insanlarin televizyonda baslayacak filmi yakalayabilme endisesi disinda da bos bos zaman geciyor mu diye kontrol etmek ihtiyaci ile saate baktiklarini.

Son dersin heyecaniyla gozlerimizin kacan feri geri donerdi, ama her aksam eve cocuklugumuzdan biseyler kaybederek donerdik. Bisey mi oldu okulda sorusuna, "yoo hep ayni seyler" diyerek gecistirerek. Belki daha iyi ilkokul anilari olanlar da vardir ama benimkiler hayatimin geri kalaninda yasadigim melankolik halleri tek basina aciklamaya yetecek turdendi.

Ilk gun siralara yerlestigimizde ve yanima kim oldugunu bilmedigim bilmek bile istemedigim bir arkadasim oturtulunca, disarda gunes sicakligini yitirirken ve sokak bile olayin ciddiyetini kavramis bizi cagirmaktan vazgecmisken elveda demek zorunda oldugumu anlamistim avare gunlerime. Abimler okulda iken onlarin izleyemedigi cizgi filmleri seyredip, evin ve sokaklarin hakimi oldugum, o gucun getirdigi ozguvenle daha da bir akilliymisim sanip bilge haller icine girdigim zamanlar sona ermisti... Herhangi bir mavi onluklu olmustum iste sayi saymak icin sirasini bekleyen ve "bu duruma ne kadar katlanirim bilmem ama bundan sonra artik boyle yasam, yasadigimzi sey hep guzel olamaz ya!" diye icimden gecriyordum. Aglayan o kadar ogrenciden muhtemelen daha buyuk acilar cekerken tek bir damla goz yasi bile dokmeden sirama oturup yanimda hic tanimadigim bir insanin oturmasini ustune bir de kendine daha genis yer acabilmek icin savasisini normal olmayan fakat dayanilmasi gereken bisey olarak kabul etmistim. O gunden sonra kendimden daha mantiksiz insanlara karsi olgun daha akillilara karsi problem olmaya basladim yasananlardan almis oldugum hasardan olsa gerek.

Ama daha gun bitmemisti: O gun sayi saymistik, yakin zamanda ogrendigim yirmi ve yirmili sayilari soyleyip soylememe konusunda buyuk tereddut yasiyordum, "yirmi" kulaga cok aptalca geliyordu ve abimin beni kandirmak icin uydurdugu bisey olabilirdi, ilk gunden aptal gibi gorunmek istemiyordum ama saniyorum zaten yirmi'ye bile ulasmadan sira diger ogrenciye gecmisti. Sonra "yirmi" nin de var olduna inandirilmistim, hem de ilk gunden; herkes gibi olmustum boylece.

Ogrenmeye direncim takdire sayandi, her turlu bilgiyi redle basliyor fakat sonra direncimi kaybediyordum. Once okumaya direndim, sonra teslim oldum okul dergisinin Ocak sayisina: noel babalar, kardan adamlar oyle guzeldi ki altinda yazilan sifreleri cozmek icin onlarin ogretmek istediklerini bir bir kendim ogrendim, ve sonra okudum butun dergiyi bastan sona, hatta hergun hergun yaptim bunu, utanma dugusunu yitirip her seferinde daha cok zevk alarak, ustune elime gecen her yaziyi ayni hazzi bekleyerek okudum. Sorulan sorulara verilmesi istenenden farkli cevaplar verme isini uzun uzun yaptim, simdi daha iyi anliyorum icinde oldugum "fuzzy" hali, ama sebepler halen muamma.

Eve kis aksamlari yalniz donusum, babamin usuyen ellerimi boynunda isitisi, onlugumu cikarip ertesi gun yapilmadiklari icin basima bela olacak odevleri hemen aradan cikarmaya calismam, belki dort ay kadar hergun ayni huzunle ve tukenen enrjiyle okula gidisim, bilgiye suphe ile yaklasmamdan kaynakli basarisiz halim ve ona bagli mutsuzluk duygusunu erkenden tanimlayisim...iste kazanimlarim..

Women

My understanding of MacKinnon’s Concept of Woman

Catherine MacKinnon defines a woman as follows: A person is a woman if and only if she stands in relation of sexual subordination to men. If we look closely to her definition: a person is not a woman if she is not being sexually subordinated by men or feeling so. This means that being subject to subordination is an essential property. This essence that is shared by the whole women class turns out to be universal. That is, once it is initiated it occurs the same way in each individual member of the class. For a better understanding of concept of universal, let me give an example: If the object A is a triangle it should have three edges no matter where the object is. This property occurs the same way at all triangles and A’s being a triangle does not affect the other objects being a triangle. That is it can be initiated at the same time at different places by different objects, but once it is initiated this property occurs the same way. If we turn back to the universal of "womanness" which is “being subordinated by a man” this is a social one while most universals that are attached to "womanness" also to be mentioned below were considered natural (coming from nature). Universals can be social or natural but MacKinnon’s social universal will be rhetorical in terms of referring to woman identity as a socially constructed one. Here we should note that a group of people sharing a universal does not mean it is also universal of that group. For example: All students taking feminist philosophy class may be females but this does not mean that all people to take the class should be females. All students being female may be a coincidence and so it may not be a universal of the group. On the other hand all universals do not have to be essential for individual beings, which we can be called “inessential universal”. That is, the property which occurs at all members may not be essential in the sense the individual can be the same person even without having that property. For example: Say there is a group of blonde people. Having blonde hair is essential to be in the group but it is not something that changes the way a person is. In other words, your blonde hair is essential to be a member of the group but it is not an essential component of your personality and existence. Clarification of these concepts through examples is important since we will be using them to analyze MacKinnon’s view and some disputes to it.
Her definition seems to be narrow and ignoring many features of women, as it addresses to one property which is commonly experienced by an enormous number of women and we will discuss them at the last part of the paper in terms of objection to her definition. But before that we have better understand the origin of this definition by looking at her paper “Difference and Dominance”. Once we understand the theory behind, we can easily see the significance and its role in feminist theory. She claims in her paper that the dominance came out randomly without any evidence of man’s superiority or female’s inferiority. After the unequal distribution of power, the gender division occurred to maintain the status of men close to power and women far away from it, fixed. That is why she defines the womanness as a social and political concept. There fore woman is nothing else but the name standing for dominated class of people. Another aspect of this definition is that it is alternative to naturalism argument. Naturalism argument believes in the existence of a natural universal of womanness which is mainly inferior, fixed and does not change. Mackinnon’s universals are not natural but they are social ones, so they are not fixed anymore, they can be changed by changing the social set up which causes it.
After understanding her motivation for this definition let us see why it is significant. Naturalism argument is quite anti-feminist in the sense it attributes an unchanging inferior nature to all woman. However, MacKinnon is defining the woman in terms of social universals, in a way that emphasizes on the inequality and as a consequence the injustice in social life. This makes it crucial for the feminism. Once the problem is explicitly mentioned and agreed on, there can come out a motivation for social changes that will give the woman her rights and protect her against subordination of man. Because she believes the subordination continues to happen as the laws which are based on mans needs do nothing to prevent subordination of woman which is only issue of women.
Although MacKinnon has a consistent theory in itself, and serves to feminist theory very well by identifying the problem of women so explicitly and rhetorically, there are objections to her definition of woman. The strongest of them comes from Stoljar by using diversity argument. Diversity argument broadly says that women of different races, cultures, social classes or intersexes do have different kind of "womanness" and face different problems; so it may not be possible to find universals for this diverse class of people. Even if we mange to do so, how can we be sure that they are universals for "womanness". They may be an accidental universal shared by all women. Okay, assuming it is not accidental, that’s they are really universals of womanness, they may or may not be essential for individual beings. Therefore, the point is: Is it possible to find universals of womanness that are also essential to individuals or universals that really matter for well-being of individuals? While these are quite ambiguous MacKinnon thinks of subordination as an essential universal. This means it is common among all women and a requirement to be a woman. Does this mean we should stop calling females who are not subordinated as woman, and focus on this narrow definition and only women it points to? Probably MacKinnon would not disagree with this. Because her theory rejects gender differences, she thinks they are socially constructed notions, and so in her perception womanness is a name for the people who are left at the bottom of hierarchy with respect to distribution of power. Mackinnon’s feminist perspective is about eliminating the power inequality, and her definition for woman aims at saving people who are subordinated. Obviously her definition works efficiently for her ideology. However it is not enough to project all woman identities and their problems in wide understanding of woman.
Instead Stoljar comes up with the notion “cluster woman”. This definition can be said to take its basis from Locke’s resemblance nominalism. Resemblance nominalism, gives the opportunity to classify or define objects with respect to some common properties they exhibit without making universals or tying to come up with the information of individual’s essence. In Alger’s words: Nominal essence is an epistemological essence [Stoljar]. Stoljar observes some main common points (exactly four of them) that are shared by reasonable number of members (not necessarily all) of woman class and defines any person who fulfills at least three of them as a woman. There are no universals of womanness so it avoids most controversies that Mackinnon’s definition invokes.
In addition many people who are called and who would call themselves as woman are referred to by this definition.
To conclude, MacKinnon’s definition of woman “ A is a woman iff she is subordinated to man” is a strong argument since it handles concept of woman as a socially constructed one giving opportunity and hope in a way to stop subordination of woman. On the other hand it makes universals, which are not applied to all woman in general understanding of woman.
RERENCES:
Mackinnon C., Difference and Dominance: Sex Discrimination, CA, Feminist Theory a Philosophical anthology.

A critique of identity theoy

A relatively old essay I have written for my Philosophy of Mind class

A Critique of Identity Theory

Which part of the body is responsible for mental activities? The content of the word “responsible” might need some clarification but given the scientific and technological evidence, it is safe to say that brain states and mind states are related. For example we can manipulate some moods and feelings with certain drugs. Also we can observe that brain damage can lead to loss of some mental activities. For the other side of the correlation, that is the effect of mind on brain; we can use the fact that using FMRI, one can screen the changes in the brain of a body that is engaging in mental activity. A theory that is based on these observations is the Mind-Brain Correlation Thesis, which says that for each mental event M there is a brain state B such that, M occurs to the subject if and only if B occurs to the subject. [Kim, page 82] To explain it better, if there is a mental event, there should be a change in the brain and if the same kind of change in the brain occurs, the same mental event should occur. In other words, we can not expect mental events to happen without any change in the brain. These are called “psychoneural” correlations since they correlate mental (psychological) events to brain (neural) states.
Once we are convinced that there is a correlation, the second step will be asking if it is possible to find out the nature of it. At this point I want to introduce some theories from the literature of mind-brain correlations which attempt to explain this correlation or argue that such an explanation is impossible. I will give a brief summary of these. Descartes as a dualist does not deny the relationship between nervous system and mentality. He says that the immaterial being, which is the mind, interacts with physical body through the pineal gland. Similarly, the physical body interacts with mentality through the same organ. This is called “causal interactionism”.
Leibniz believes in the “pre-established harmony,” which says that mind and body are correlated because God had set our minds and bodies in a harmonious way and then started our beings. Another view which is close to this is the “occasionalism” which claims that at each moment there is an interaction between mind and body, God was there to do it. Another argument which might be more plausible compared to theories above, is the Double-Aspect theory by Spinoza which says that changes in mental and mind states might be results of a common cause rather than being caused by each other. Another theory is “epiphenomenalism” which says everything is a result of a physical status in the brain. It claims that although it seems like our will makes us do something which might be mental or physical, it is just a state of brain that causes the feeling of will. Therefore there is nothing mental that causes something physical. Another one of these mind-body correlation theories is the “emergentism” which mainly says not to try to understand the relationship between neural states and mind states, and accept it as a fact since mental phenomena can have no explanations as biological processes.
After this long but important introduction which shows the difficulty of bringing an explanation to the mind-brain correlations, we will focus on the Mind Body identity theory, which asserts more than the existence of the correlation, but as a pay off can not say enough about that correlation. This theory identifies the mental events and physical events that seemed to be correlated at the beginning of the discussion. Just as lightning is nothing but electrical discharge, mental events are nothing above or over the neural states of the brain. Simply they are two different namings of the same phenomenon, based on different perspectives or understandings of it. For example instead of saying that pain occurs if and only if C-fiber stimulation occurs, we now say: Pain is precisely C-fiber stimulation. Since the attempts to explain the mind-body correlations were very controversial, mind-body identity theory seems to have done a good job of solving the problem without bringing in new immaterial objects to make the connection between consciousness and neural states. That is because there is no need for a connector as they are already connected by being the same thing. The only problem is: has this theory really said enough to be convincing? I think we still need a defense from the identity theory telling us why we should believe that mind states are identical to brain states.
Here is support for the identity theory from J.J.C. Smart. In his paper “Sensation and Brain Processes,” he responds to disputes with arguments based on Occam’s simplicity principles. Occam says that:
i) Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.
ii) What can be done with fewer assumptions should not be done with more.
[Kim, page 89]
I will postpone the discussion of these principles to a later time and first show how identity theory does or does not work well with regards to Occam’s principles. Identification is a direct way of reducing the number of identities. However, we should be careful, since sometimes shrinking the set of identities might not be the inverse operation to multiplication of them. For instance if these two identities which are reduced to one thing are not the really the same things, what has been done is not reducing multiplied identities. If the entities that we collect under the same label and reduce to one thing are not the copies of same entity, then what we have done has nothing to do with Occam’s first principle, and moreover we will be losing information while eliminating some notions by wrong identifications. To be clear, reduced entities should be the same to be able to refer to the Occam’s first principle. Therefore to be able to refer to Occam’s first principle, Mind-Body Identity theory should prove that mind and brain are identical.
A second claimed advantage of the identity theory is that if it is a valid one, it will enable us to talk about mental states with a physical language. Therefore, physical facts and physical language alone will be enough to explain the nature of mind completely. This means that we will use fewer assumptions to understand the world. This seems to be consistent with Occam’s second principle. But first, the theory should prove its validity and after that if there are two valid theories we can favor identity theory since there is minimal number of assumptions and notions. But what is validness, how can two things be valid and say different things? If we are seeking for the “truth” rather then making sentences or constructions which are consistent in themselves, I would call something as valid only after it is proven to be true. Before proving validness (truth), I would be skeptical to favor one theory to the other. That is because we do not know enough the nature of the true information and form of it, to be able to pick the best theory that fits this nature.
The other justification of the theory is that: if we want to explain everything with the physical language, at some point pain should be a given physical interpretation since there is no totally physical word standing for pain and we can’t make a totally physical argument which correlates physical phenomena to pain. Therefore, at some step, one should identify pain with some physical phenomena or leave it as an unexplained fact. If we leave it unexplained rather than identify it with something physical, then there would be infinitely many correlations which can not be reduced to anything else and they will make the world extremely complex, according to Smart.
Since we have mentioned the highlights of the Smart’s paper, we can go into a deeper critique of his ideas and the mind-brain identity theory. First of all, as I promised let’s start with Occam’s razor. I completely agree with the principles but can also see how they might be misinterpreted and used in a wrong way. It is plausible that there is no need for multiplication of entities, since multiplication will not give us anything new. Moreover they might be confusing for those who do not know that these new entities are copies of some previously known concepts. However sometimes we might need to do this for practical purposes. There is nothing wrong with multiplying as long as a person keeps the multiplications made in mind, and at the end eliminates the duplicates. Under the circumstances mentioned, I would not call this operation multiplication of an identity. Having already explained that reduction of notions can be done as long as they are known to be the same things, there is not much left to say about Occam’s first principle and that Smart owes us an explanation about why they are identical. However, the second principle, which is quite plausible, might be misinterpreted by people as it has been by Smart. If you do not need a concept to explain a phenomenon then why to use it? However, it seems that one should make sure to know what “explaining” means. First of all we may feel like we have explained everything concisely with the identity theory, but did we? We just made an assumption which is very controversial and it simplified the problem a lot. Identifying mind and brain is not an explanation unless we know that it is true. Therefore, it is not intelligent to stick to a theory just because it is simple. Occam’s razor says to pick the simple explanation, but there are no explanations as we can not know which one is true or is any of these theories are explaining the real phenomenon that is occurring between brain and mind. Another point is the truth might not be that simple. Hence it might be going beyond our current scientific understanding. Occam’s razor is not saying that the truth should be simple. It just says that if something can be explained with fewer notions, one should do so. Hence, if there are two real explanations to a phenomenon (here real means, an explanation of the truth rather than a theory that stands for an explanation until it is disproven) they will be able to explain each other’s ideas and tools and help to further simplification with the insight gained from these two perspectives. What we have in the end will be two analogous explanations with the smallest number of notions. Therefore Occam’s second razor is really wise. If there are two real explanations they can be simplified in a way that at the end they are analogues and two analogues things will have the same number of notions, and this number will be less or equal to the minimum of the number of concepts of the two theories. However, we should repeat that a theory that stands for an explanation might not really be an explanation of the real phenomena and no matter how simple it is , since it is incomparable with other explanations it can not be favored to them. Unfortunately, Identity theory can not fulfill the assumptions of Occam’s razor and therefore Smart’s arguments fail to be valid and support Identity theory.
Rather than showing how simple the theory is, he should have given us some ideas to support the claim that mind is identical to brain. If identity theorists want to avoid the correlation question, it is fine, but then they should definitely say more about why they are identical, a much more difficult question. And since there is no rule that truth must be simple, they are not allowed to leave this problem just because it is hard to answer and might force them to introduce new, complicated notions.
References:
1) Kim, J. Philosophy of Mind,
2) Heil, J. Philosophy of Mind, a guide to anthology

knowledge from qualia

Knowledge Argument From Qualia

From personal experience of the philosophy readings what I can derive is that there is a conceivable dispute to almost every theory, maybe except to the highly structured metaphysical ones which disables us to use the rules of physics, our physical experiences which are the most, if not all, of what we can know about the world and happenings in it in order to disagree with or falsify it. In this paper, I will explain the knowledge argument from qualia and several possible objections from physicalists to it. Because of the reason I have mentioned above, I will be critical rather than supportive to these theories and I will do my critique from an independent point of view of physicalism. My thesis will be also standing for a critique of physicalism.
After that, I will handle Jackson’s modal argument from his paper “Epiphenomenal qualia” and make a critique based on my main thesis against the knowledge argument from qualia. In short we will be witnessing physicalism versus non-physicalism and something else versus these two. That something else will be the argument I will bring in the story.
Knowledge argument from qualia aims to prove the incompleteness of physicalism. This means that there are truths expressible in the system or implied by the system which can not be explained by the system. (Heil, page# 756). This argument will try to prove that there is something- qualia- that can be experienced in the physical world but can not be reduced to any other physical thing. Therefore physicalism will be incomplete and so will be disproved. First let’s see the example of Mary: Mary is a neuroscientist who is an expert about vision and she has been observing the life from a black and white TV screen since she was born. She knows everything about light, its differing wave-lengths and human-beings’ optical system which lets them distinguish lights of different wave-length and experience the qualia of vision. On the other hand she has no experience of colors and all she is given is the whole physical information of vision process. One day Mary is released from her room or her TV screen is replaced with a color one. The problem is: after being released does she gain any new information from her personal experience of colors? Certainly she gets to know what it is like to see the colors, but is this some new information related to our world? Knowledge argument from qualia says that this is some new knowledge that can only be gained from qualia and was not previously there although there was all physical knowledge about vision. If all premises and their consequences are true this will imply that physical picture is not complete so that physicalism fails to be valid. A good response from physicalist point of view might be that; there is not any knowledge coming from qualia and therefore this example fails to work as an anti-thesis to physicalism. I would also ask for a proof that the qualia, which is subjective component of conscious experience, brings some new knowledge about our world. Unfortunately for a proof, one should first understand or be able to talk about qualia, but it exactly gives trouble at this point, since we do not have any tool to talk about or describe the way we experience colors, tastes, feelings and so on…Moreover, knowing how it feels to see a ripe tomato might not even be the same feeling for every human-being. If it is the case: Is this very subjective feeling knowledge? I feel that main point here is that some of the things that seem to be loaded with the knowledge of world might be failing to carry any information. Like the qualia of experiencing a specific color… Since there is no evidence that this is a shared qualia or whether this experience is essential or contingent, we do not get to know much about it. The feeling of seeing red and feeling of tasting hot pepper might have switched and we do not know much until we know why these experiences feel in the way they do. This is what I mean with the contingency of the qualia. In short, if we do not know why we feel the pain in the way we feel it and if it is the same feeling for anybody who is claiming to be in pain then we do not know enough to say that we gained some information from personal experience of pain.
My main objection to knowledge argument from qualia is that I can not agree with the first premise. First premise says that you can give all physical information about the vision via a white and black screen. Can we translate all the information gained through a sensation into an argument with words or into another sensation that can be perceived by the sensual organs which are not blocked? What if there are physical knowledge’s that can be gained only through eyes and for that physical information to be known to human being it should be able to reach the right part of the brain and the only way for that to go to there is to follow a specific path. For example for a complete physical knowledge of vision the light should follow the path through eyes with the specific destination in the brain. Therefore Mary might be deprived of some physical information because of the TV screen which filters the colors. Another thing is: The information of qualia of colors might be a totally physical one although yet we do not have the words to describe it, and Mary was not given it since the only way to know them might be through seeing and experiencing them as we just discussed. Then this means that her knowledge about physical things was not complete before her release either. On the other hand if there is possibility for qualia to be something physical, at the last step of argumentation one can not claim that there is a non-pyhsical knowledge acquired. Therefore Mary’s example will not prove incompleteness of the phsicalism. We had mentioned our doubts about the nature of qualia and we concluded that if it is a physical one which could not be given to Mary because the only way to attain it was through experience and she was not let to do so, the knowledge argument from qualia fails to say anything. To see the other possibilities, I will let qualia be a new knowledge about vision but then I will insist that there is a possibility that Mary could not get all the knowledge about the physical aspects of vision since she could not use some parts of the brain which are responsible for making that specific knowledge . Moreover it can be the case that this knowledge can not be achieved via any other way but only from the experience that lets the physical input follow the only path that arrives the point where it will be processed in brain. I also want to argue that things might or might not be totally physical but it is possible that they have a physical component or they initiate something physical. For example, qualia of color might not be totally physical but there might be a physical component of it which makes it essential to be experienced for the whole physical knowledge of vision. Or it might be taking role in a physical process which will bring some new knowledge about vision. I am saying this since it seems to me that there are lots of events where obviously physical things seem to be correlated with other things which are doubted to be physical, e.g., mind-body correlations. To conclude, we do not know if qualia has a physical component or not and also we do not know if it is taking role in a physical process and helping the completeness of physical picture. That is why, by preventing Mary to have subjective experience of colors, we might be interrupting some physical knowledge formation processes in her mind. Frank Jackson gives the following objection to knowledge argument from qualia and it is mainly a summary of the doubts that I gave above in this paper,: “..qualia is left out of physicalist story. The polemical strength of the knowledge argument is that it is so hard to deny the central claim that one can have all the physical information without having all the information to have”.
However this is not a defense of physicalism. As it can be seen, we let physical non- physical (mysterious) interactions by letting qualia, which is possibly non-physical, to take a role in a physical process. In the physicalist frame-work we would not be able to do that. On the other hand as it was pointed out in Heil Introduction of chapter nine, physical explanation of most “physical events” still include contingency and can not answer the “why?” question. Physics lets us reduce vey complex truths to less complex ones, but there is a bed-rock where the physic stops contemplation and leaves those less complex relations as brute facts without further explanation (for example, we can reduce lots of things to level of cells and atoms and see how they behave but we do not know why they behave in the way they do). This means that there are also mysteries in the physical frame work. Then, how can we talk about completeness of physicalist story. Despite all these mysterious things going on for physical objects which the physics can not solve, it takes them solved since the objects are physical and the correlations between them or their behavior is likely to be physical. What I want to say is; before coming to qualia problem, physicalists should ask themselves how they can attempt to explain mind body problem without giving reasons why most of the physical objects are behaving in the way they are. It means that physicalist can only claim that mind-body correlation problem can be reduced to interaction of atoms or small physical objects which are easier to observe and understand, but still we will not know why they are behaving so since these are still brute facts for physics. Even after reducing this big problem to level of atoms, we have no clue to believe in physicalism since there is no theory to disable something non-physical to be acting on the most basic level that the physical events are reduced to.
My thesis is that physical things and metaphysical ones might be intervening with each other at different levels. They might be intervened in the qualia so that one can not get the all physical knowledge without experiencing qualia, or even if this is not the case there is still room for metaphysics in the level of atoms. As we said science has been too busy to understand how things happen and now still far away from answering the “why?” question.
As the last thing I want to examine Jackson’s the modal argument. The Modal argument is another argument that aims to disprove the claim that consciousness is something physical. The underlying idea is similar to Kripke’s logic, where we keep every physical thing fixed but construct a world where people have no consciousness. This will imply that consciousness is not physical. However the problem here is whether it is possible for such a world to exist. This is a useful model but unfortunately it does not decrease the difficulty level of our problem. We can not know whether such a world, where human-beings who are physically same as us live but they do not have conscious mental lives, without knowing that consciousness is independent of physicality. However we should note that this kind of transformation helps one to be able to use intuition. But being intuitive does not make it more reliable. I think these arguments are more useful when you want to disprove the possibility of it rather than proving possibility of such a world. This is because it is always easier to find something out of order than to check whether everything is all right. After saying that it is possible for a world to exist with unconscious copies of us, one should prove the possibility by showing that such a world can exist. That is why modal argument can not go beyond intuition if we aim to prove the existence non-physical dimension of consciousness.
References
1. Heil J., Philosophy of Mind.

Can machines think

A Critical approach to Searle’s Chinese room argument

Can machines think, if yes to what extent they can? There are two views about artificial intelligence: one of these is called weak artificial intelligence (AI) and the other: strong AI. The weak AI claims that computers might give some significant information about the human cognition, as we can test our theories on computers effectively, while the strong AI claims that computers are not only machines that can be used for tests but they can have all cognitive states human beings have if they are programmed appropriately. It might be useful to give an example about artificial intelligence and what strong AI says about it. Suppose you have a story: about a man going to a restaurant and ordering a hamburger. The hamburger comes burned and crisp. The man gets angry and leaves the restaurant without paying for the hamburger. Did he eat the hamburger? If you ask a human being to answer this question he would say that he did not eat the hamburger. Schank’s machines are programmed to be able to answer this question in the same way human beings do. In addition to this, the strong AI claims that what a machine has been doing in the above process is not a simulation of human behavior but also
1. that the machine can be literally said to understand the story and provide the answers to questions and
2. that what the machine and its program do explains the human ability to understand the story and answer questions about it.” [Heil, page #236]
Searle does not disagree with weak AI but with strong AI and does not think that Schank’s machines are doing anything relevant to support these claims. He constructs the Chinese room example in order to show that there are some conscious states that human beings can have but machines not. In this paper first I am going to examine his Chinese room argument. After that I will discuss my own objection to Searle’s argument and argue that human beings might not be too different from the computers in contrast to what Searle thinks.
Assume that you know no Chinese and you are in a room with a story in Chinese and a rule book in English which tells you how to correlate the characters in the story and any other set of characters given. If you are given a question in Chinese about the story, you will look at to rule book and know how to respond with Chinese characters without knowing any Chinese character. In this case, what you are doing is not different from what a computer does. If Chinese room set-up is translated into computer’s case, the rule book is the program, questions and the story are input and your answers are the output formed from the input with respect to the rules (program). Moreover assume that the rule book is so good written that your answers are indistinguishable from a native Chinese speaker. Also assume you are in another room where you are given an English text and questions in English. You will be responding to the questions by understanding the story and the questions. So, your answers in Chinese and English will be equally good although in one case you were not interpreting symbols but decomposing and reconstructing sentences according to the directions from the rule book and in the other you would be able to visualize the story and give them the information they are asking for from that visualization.
For the first claim of the strong AI, Searle compares being in a Chinese room and English room (the room where story and questions and answers are English with a native English speaker). He says that there is no understanding of yours in Chinese room while there is in English room, so there is no understanding for computers while there is for us, under some specific circumstances (where there is some understanding for human beings).
For the second claim of strong AI, Searle questions the sufficiency of computer to explain human understanding since as already discussed for first argument computer does not show any sign of understanding.
There are some replies to Searle’s argument. I will be concentrating on the one which says “When I understand a story in English, what I am doing is exactly the same-or perhaps more of the same-as what I was doing in manipulating the Chinese symbols. It is simply more formal symbol manipulation that distinguishes the case in English, where I do understand, from the case in Chinese, where I don’t.”[Heil, page# 238]
Searle’s rejoinder to this opposition is that: even when all the artificial intelligence can be put into him, he could not understand and if understanding was about computations why can he understand in one case and not understand in the other where he has everything for computation.
My argument to Searle will be about the feeling of understanding that comes with visualization and makes him think that he understands it as long as he can visualize it. I will show that visualization is not essential for understanding. As a consequence of this approach I will argue that semantics of a language is useful only to be able to point to specific objects in life and their states but this is also not essential for understanding. To support my claims I will give some examples from math, how we learn it, and what kind of generalizations are there in it which totally abstractify (a made word to say “making abstract” or even more abstract if it is already an abstract concept) mathematical concepts and makes them exist not independently but only with their relations with other mathematical objects. Therefore objects will be a sum of rules defined on it but nothing else. This will say that knowing the rule book, we know everything about the object.
Lets first focus on visualization problem and show that one does not need visualization to understand something. Assume that I am describing something to you as white. It has no other properties except those all white objects have in common. I can not visualize this object since knowing color does not tell me what it is like in shape. As soon as I imagine something for it, I would not be imagining that object since my object will not have any properties of imagined ones except the color. But I can still talk about this object and even tell a story about it, now lets replace whiteness with a more abstract property, say it is xxx. I can still tell a story about it. Let the story be the following: An xxx object can interacted with another object. That another object interacted with another object. This is the story, and it is quite abstract since I have no idea about what being xxx means or what kind of interaction it is. Therefore I can not visualize it, even if I am doing so, this means that I am just assigning something I know for the object, a property I know for xxx, and an action I know for interaction. Notice that this is not visualization of my abstract story but visualization of an illustration of it. Now let us also have a rule telling you that if an xxx object interacts with another object the other object becomes xxx, too. Without knowing anything about these objects or their xxx’ ness I can conclude that the last object appearing in the story is xxx too. Would Searle agree with me that we have an understanding of this story although none of the visualization will be more than an illustration or a simplification of the abstract story given? Moreover I can restrain you from visualizing by saying that it is not the object, property or the interaction you are imagining or you will imagine.
I claim that this story makes very well sense, at least to me. It might be because I am in Math and do not need real life objects or events, states to refer to in order to understand some phenomena. Here comes the crucial question: Is my understanding of such an abstract story different from computers’ understanding of it? I do not think so. The difference between understanding of a computer and me of a story of the type above which does not let visualization is the feeling of understanding that I have but computer does not. That feeling is very likely to be the confidence of internalization of the rule book (referring to the Chinese room). Moreover this feeling might have nothing to do with understanding since many of us at one point of our lives should have experienced that feeling despite misunderstanding or not understanding at all. This feeling has something to do with completion of a process of mind, independent of how successful it was. Let us examine this feeling problem a bit more.
Hypothetically I will assume I am in Chinese room, without knowing any single Chinese character and looking desperately at the story given. I might be given a question in Chinese and spend hours to look through the rule book to find the rule applies to it and from there to form the right answer. I will still feel unconfident although I am able to respond to the question. It is the same feeling I have when I am starting to study a completely new concept in math. When I have to solve a problem about this new concept that is unfamiliar to me, I try to find the theorems that give me results that will lead to other results one of which will be answer to my question. I do not feel like understanding anything at the beginning although I seem to be solving the problem. However as I spend more time on the book reading through pages I start to think that I am learning or understanding it. What am I learning new by reading repeatedly? Or, what do I understand about this super abstract concept? Am I starting to visualize it? No, because they can not be. I am just internalizing the theorems by time and once I am given a question I know which theorems to use because of the familiarity I gained to the subject and this is bringing the confidence which results in the feeling of understanding.
It is the same with Chinese room argument, if the person stays long enough to internalize the rule book, the discomfort coming from not knowing what the symbols are referring to in real life will go away. After a while she will be able to have some feeling of understanding as the story is decoded in light of rules and reduced to something like the following: a is interacting with b, c is in another state, but when all these are together d gains property p… This is what math is about: there are objects and their relations with other objects (story, input) and rules (like rule book, program) that tell you what happens as a result of two or more things satisfying some assumptions together (your response to question asked, output). Like in the first example I gave: an object is xxx, it is interacting with another object, and this other object is interacting with another, and rule book says that each object with property xxx makes the object it interacted xxx too. Do I have to know what this property, or object or interaction is? Not really, there is a subfield of abstract algebra, called category theory which only deals with these kind of stories where objects and interactions are defined in terms of rules and that is all you have about them. Maybe in real life it is helpful to know what we are referring by saying “an object”. For example if I want to buy some bread instead of an elephant it is good to make sure we have the vocabulary that distinguishes them. I might need different words for each object to be able to point to them, but no one can claim that there is no understanding in the case where I left the objects, interactions and properties undefined. By saying an object is xxx, it is interacting with another object, and this other object is interacting with another; I might as well saying either these objects are numbers, interaction is multiplication and xxx is evenness, which would mean: If a number is even and I multiply it with another number the result will be even, and if I multiply this result with another number this third product will be even too. Or I might think off objects as clothes, interaction washing in the same machine and xxx is brownness, this would say that if I wash a brown cloth with another one in the same washer, the second cloth will come out brown and afterwards if I wash this second cloth with another one in the same washer, this last cloth will come out of the washer brown, too. Different semantics might make a difference but it does not disturb the form and our understanding. Semantic just gives an illustration of the abstract story. We are able to understand a sentence of the following form “an object is xxx, it is interacting with another object, and this other object is interacting with another” without visualizing. Understanding is possible without visualization and I do not think we understand more than o computer when the story is as above and we can not use the advantage of knowing the semantics. In this case one can not mention a mental state or understanding that human beings have but computer does not, since they both have the same data and we can not extend this data further as human beings who has some extra visualization skills. Although this is the case one might say that we have more understanding than the computers. I would say that the difference is not understanding, but the feeling of it that we have but very likely computers do not as they do not have the physiology to seat emotions. This feeling is proportional with your confidence, that is why I do not have the feeling of understanding when dealing with a new mathematical concept and rules that apply to it. However this discomfort diminishes as I internalize the concept, that is spend more time on it and assign more brain cells to it. By repeating the definition of this abstract mathematical notion I do not get new information but gain the confidence, which feels like understanding. That is why I insist that understanding is only a feeling which has strength proportional to the amount of brain cells that determines you confidence.
To conclude, Searle’s Chinese room argument intends to show that human beings have more understanding then machines due to knowing the semantic of input, however there is an understanding without knowing the semantic. We discussed that if we exclude the semantic, computers and human beings have equal data. However there is a feeling of understanding which companies human’s mental processes and this comes with confidence. Therefore, there can still be some understanding (with feelings) in Chinese room for a person who does not know Chinese. Since we said that this feeling has nothing to do with understanding but only a result of it, and understanding can happen without visualization, there does not seem to be anything left to differentiate computer’s understanding from human beings”. That is why Searle’s argument, which made sense at first, turns out not to work. And remember that we could eliminate the role of knowing semantics from the picture by thinking off cases where computers and human beings have the same story and there is no possible visualization but there is an extra brain state in human being’s case which is the feeling of understanding but nothing else. To be able to identify that feeling I gave example from my experience in math. I explained how abstract concepts and rules start to make sense to me after spending enough time on them and gain the feeling of understanding from confidence rather than visualization or any extra data known to me but not known or can not be known to a machine. In short, in Chinese room you will not feel that you are understanding the story since you did not have enough time to get familiarity with characters and learn their properties ( what symbols they come together and how they connect to each other, and so on…) mainly to internalize the rule book. You do not have to know what the characters represent in real life to get some understanding like in the case of an abstract story where unspecified things were in states that were not specified either. Therefore, if we eliminate (and can eliminate) the feelings and knowledge of semantics there will be equal understanding for computers and us, and Searle’s argument will lose its significance.

phil math

7+5=12

Kant divides propositions of the subject-predicate form into two groups: the analytical ones and synthetic ones. Analytic ones are those where subject concept involves the predicate concept by definition. The rest -which are not analytic- are called synthetic. According to Kant very few mathematical concepts are analytic and most of them are synthetic. In these cases (when the argument is synthetic), by analyzing the mathematical concept you cannot come up with its predicate and you need intuition to figure out mathematical properties of concepts. For example, to see that the shortest path between two points is the straight line from one point to the other, it is not enough to analyze the concepts: points, line and shortest path but you need some other tools -like perceptual experience- to figure it out. Kant says that mathematical objects are modes of representing individual objects and arithmetic –which is about properties of mathematical objects- can be only known by the intuition that is used to comprehend that individual objects. Analytic argumentation does not give new information while synthetic ones do. This means that intuition is the only way of getting to know anything new. Kant considers most of mathematical propositions saying things that are not part of the definition of the mathematical objects they are referring to and therefore they are saying something new. Then they should be coming from intuition. He also says that this intuition is exactly the way human beings perceive the world. On the other hand he believes that human beings are able to capture a-priori truths via intuition because “pure intuition” is about the forms of possible perceptions and is aware of spatial-temporal conditions that are involved in perception. But I will not go into further discussion of it. When it is in particular, the arithmetic: he considers arithmetic to be a natural result of human’s perception of objects, distinguishing them and counting them. In a more broad way it can be concluded as follows: he says that we do have number concept attached to group of things because our eyes can distinguish between no objects, one object, two objects and so on. Number is a concept attached to a group of objects. Since we get to know about those objects by physical experience we know about their number in the same way. Arithmetic follows from counting- associating a number- to the resulting set after some arithmetical operations. This implies that if concept of number is synthetic and only can be known by means of perception, so is arithmetic.
Now lets see Kant’s claims on the proposition “7+5=12”. Most arithmetical results seem to be analytic since we are so comfortable with them and sure about their truth that arithmetic has come to be considered as part of logical argumentation. However the comfort we have gained- probably by experience- can be deceiving. Kant argues about how we do know that 7+5=12. What kind of properties do numbers 7 and 5 have that they lead to number 12, is there a way of dissecting the left hand side of the equation and obtain the right hand side? What do number 7 mean but 7 objects together and similarly 5? Kant says that one need the intuition of number 7and number 5 so that by adding 5 units to seven units one will get 12 units, number associated to which will be 12. In short Kant says that addition of numbers is bringing together two groups of objects of given numbers and finding the number of resultant set. Since we have to think about sets of objects to do addition, he says that it is intuitive therefore synthetic. However he skips the part about how do we know about numbers, might not it be the case that knowing about numbers of objects involves an analytic process? He says that one needs to think of five and seven objects instead of the numbers 5 and 7, but how does one know that it is a set of five objects but not a set of six objects.
My main opposition to Kant’s argument would be exactly at this point. Do we get to know about all numbers intuitively and can we distinguish between 5 and 6 at one sight? We should be able to do that if we know about numbers only by visual perception, but that is not the case, each time I have to count people in the room, to be able to bring exact many tea cups so that everyone will get one and I will not bring unnecessary cups, although they are sitting in front of me. This means that even there is a good possibility that knowing about number of objects has an intuitive aspect it is not enough to say that the number concept is totally intuitive unless we show counting is intuitive. There might be an analytic process following the intuition and I am not sure whether Kant would call it analytic or synthetic. Another problem with Kant’s argument with the example 7+5=12 is that analyzing concept 5 and 7 and saying that they do not have concept twelve in them does not disprove that this statement is analytic as he is not talking about the addition operation between them. He says that bringing 5 and 7 is nothing but adding 5 units to 7 units, which can be only understood intuitively. But what “+” represents in the context of arithmetic and therefore what 5+7 stands for? Is not “5+7=12” is exactly the representation for Kant’s argument. When we say “5+7 =?” it is asking “what will be the number of units when you bring together 5 units and 7 units?” Therefore problem is not really about going back to five objects when we see the representation “5” but how we add things and the previous problem I invoked: how do I know about number of a group of objects. This says that everything reduces to counting operation. Now we ask: How does one learn about concept of number and counting?
I will try to save Kant’s argument by claiming that we know about concept of numbers and addition operation because we can count by means of the intuition from perception. I know 5+7 is twelve because I can bring five points and 7 points together and then recount them. To do this I need to be able to know one set has 5 points and the other has 7 points. In short, I should be able to distinguish between sets of different number of elements. However once I know how to count I will also know about number concept and be able to distinguish between two sets with differently many objects. To be able to decide whether the proposition “5+7=12” is synthetic or analytic I will try to decide whether counting is an analytic thing or an intuitive thing. As promised, I will claim that counting is an intuitive thing to Save Kant’s argument. From there it will follow that some arithmetical propositions regarding addition and subtraction are synthetic.
How do I know about one object? By my visual skills, which can distinguish one yellow point among a set of black points. Once I know one object I can put another yellow point at a place different than my initial yellow point and now I say I have “2” of them. This is quite possible, as my eyes can perceive these yellow points and their locations. If I continue adding another point in a non-overlapping way with previous points each time, my eyes will lose their sensitivity to distinguish the last picture from the previous but I will know that they are different because there is a new point coming at each step. In the time framework I can order the steps and give a name to each step. These names are nothing but numbers. And the difference between two consecutive steps will be a yellow point that did not exist in the former one. I will give the name “1” to the initial condition, “2” to the one following step 1, “3” to the one following the step called as 2 and so on… Moreover when there is a similar process going on we can rename the steps in the same way. Independent of objects contained and their locations, similarly named steps of two different processes will have something in common which will be called as their “number”. It is also possible to go backwards in this process. Say you are at step 6 and by removing a yellow point (assuming an object is grasped just by intuition no matter how many alike are around). Going forward and backwards will just be intuitively possible since I can add one distinct object and remove one among those given. Now lets assume that I have two number series say A and B, which I was calling as processes at the beginning. Now I want to add 5 to 7. To do this, I will be going one move forwards from step 7 in A for each move to backwards from step 5 in B. When there is nowhere else to move (no objects left to remove in B) I will stop moving forwards in A. The number of step I ended up in A will be the sum of 7 and 5 and it will be 12 (result taken from previously done experiment). I am saying 12 without hesitation, but this is not because I can imagine 7 and 5 objects together and distinguish it from a different number of objects but that addition of any two numbers can be reduced to something else (adding one by one and knowing where to stop) which is conceivable by perception. So, counting is an algorithm where each step follows by intuition.
To conclude, I would hesitate to say that number concept is intuitive because of the worries above (that I need to follow an algorithm that will take me where I want to go). On the other hand I would go with Kant’s claim that there is an intuitive aspect of arithmetic as the objects of concern are to some extent grasped intuitively and arithmetical operations can be reduced to adding things one by one in which there is a lot of intuition involved.


Reference:
Shapiro S. (2000), Thinking about mathematics. (Oxford, Oxford University Press)