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Re: Behaviorist Federal Judge

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Nick Thompson

Re: Behaviorist Federal Judge

Wow! I never thought I would see the like of it!

[I changed the subject line; even an exhibitionist has his limits.]

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email]

Sent: 6/21/2009 2:14:29 PM

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Nick and dishonest behavior

Bringing something from a P.S. up to the front:

Nick's ethical stance would be based on treating things that act in certain ways as equal to all other things that act in certain ways, and it wouldn't get much more prescriptive than that. The acts he would be interested in would be very sophisticated actions, or combination of actions - such as "contributing to the conversation". This may seem strange, but again, it is really, really, really, not that different from a stance that treats all things that "experience in a certain way" as equal.

----

To elaborate that, it cannot be the case, pragmatically speaking, that we let other people live because they have an inner life. We all know this cannot be true (Russ included), because one of the axiomatic assumptions for these conversations is that you cannot directly know someone else's mental life. If you cannot know whether or not someone has a mental life, you can't decide whether or not you can kill them based on their having a mental life. Is there any way to make that more obvious?!?

The way this is problem is normally dealt with is for people to say that we can gain insight into people's mental lives by observing their behavior. The logic goes 1) we see people act a certain way, 2) we infer that they have a mental life, 3) we decide that we cannot kill them (barring them being jerks or believing in the wrong god). Now, the irony of a dualistic philosophy is in step 2, where their inner life somehow comes to be entirely in our heads, not in theirs! Its crazy talk. Philosophers have spent millennia trying to connect steps 2 and 3, and getting no where. Much better to just look at the part of the equation that is actually observable, steps 1 and 3 - the relation between the actions and the ethical decision. When you do that, you see that we aren't allowed to kill people who act in certain ways. That's what its always been, despite all the smoke and mirrors created by point 2. The obvious, but totally unasked, empirical question is "What are the ways that people act that distinguish whether or not we can kill them." We just don't need to talk about inner lives at all to have that conversation. We just don't! The same applies to all sub-categories of interest. We judge someone a "murder" based on some aspect of their actions and the circumstances within which the actions took place. Period. It cannot be that we judge them a murder based on their inner-mind.

Thus, while Nick's position does have something to say about the form of rules in moral systems (i.e., that they relate behavior to consequences), it does not have implications for what the content of the rules should be. In that sense, it IS morally neutral. Whether or not people have inner-lives has never, at any point, effected ethics in practice. Certainly Nick could elaborate his own moral views, by suggesting some rules, but that is completely tangential to this point.

This may seem terribly abstract, but it is not to be taken lightly. Judge Posner (appellate judge for the Federal 7th Circuit) has an excellent book, and quite a lot of legal precedence arguing that talk of an inner mental life adds nothing to law, and in fact seriously detracts from it. Here are two quotes from him:

"Obviously most adults and older children can and do speak without vocalization (that is, can "conceal their thoughts") and form mental images. But this barebones concept of mind, which essentially equates mind to consciousness, is different from the idea that there is a something, the "mind", which is the locus of intentions, the invisible puppeteer, the inner man or woman. It is that idea which may have no consequences for law and shou! ld perhaps be discarded, despite the law's emphatic... commitment to it."

"Our understanding of the mind may improve - maybe we will learn to read minds. But maybe there is nothing to read, or maybe we are not interested in what the murderer was thinking when he pulled the trigger. If we take seriously the actor's adage that no man is a villain in his own eyes, we can expect to find, if we ever succeed in peering into the murderer's mind, an elaborate, perhaps quite plausible, rationalization for his deed. But so what? We would punish him all the same."

Eric

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 01:49 PM, Russ Abbott <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick,

I'm still curious about your answer to a challenge you raised. You wrote,

As one of my graduate students used to [cheerfully] say, "but Nick, if you don't have an inner life, it's ok to kill you, right?"

Now, my wisest response to this line of argument would be to go all technocratic and to deny that I have any ethical dog in this fight at all. One can, after all, be a moral naturalist and assert that reasoning and argument only come into play when people are trying to violate their ethical impulses and that, on the whole, people are designed by nature so that they don't kill each other. Just as I don't think it makes any difference whether you believe in evolution or creation whether you are a good person, I don't think it makes any difference to being a good person whether you believe others have an inner life or not. Thus, I escape the argument by asserting that it has no MORAL consequences. I reassure Russ that my absence of an inner life does not make me dangerous, and, once he takes that reassurance seriously, he doesn't have to kill me. Peace is re-established.

It seems to m that you didn't answer your graduate student's challenge. Is it ok to kill you?

The implication of the challenge is that murder is a moral issue only when it is performed on a being with an inner life. Simply terminating the functioning of something (like a robot) is not murder. We use the term "murder" when the thing murdered is understood to have an inner life like our own.

It may be as you say that we have evolved to have that perspective. (I think that's correct.) But so what? Do you have any (moral) grounds for objecting to your graduate student killing you? Given your statement "it has no MORAL consequences" apparently your answer is that from your perspective there is no moral reason for him/her not to kill you. Is that correct?

-- Russ

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Russ Abbott

Re: Behaviorist Federal Judge

See below.

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

it cannot be the case, pragmatically speaking, that we let other people live because they have an inner life. We all know this cannot be true (Russ included), because one of the axiomatic assumptions for these conversations is that you cannot directly know someone else's mental life. If you cannot know whether or not someone has a mental life, you can't decide whether or not you can kill them based on their having a mental life. Is there any way to make that more obvious?!?

I see four problem.

The argument mixes epistemology with ontology. It's one thing to discuss what we can and cannot know -- which tends to change with technology and our level of sophistication. It's another to discuss what is. Unless you want to take the position that one cannot talk about what is and can only talk about what can be known, these two should be kept separate.
An argument can be made that nothing can really be known. After all, what is it to know something? No matter what one does, one can never be sure.
To know something implies a knower, which relies on a mental life.
Simply making the argument and expecting someone to understand it makes no sense unless one assumes a mental life in the speaker and the listener. Without that, all we have are photons generated by a CRT or bits stored in a computer, etc.

Nick Thompson

Re: Behaviorist Federal Judge

In reply to this post by Nick Thompson

Russ,

Actually, I didnt write what you are countering, here, but I will defend it anyway.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email];[hidden email]

Sent: 6/21/2009 4:18:52 PM

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Behaviorist Federal Judge

See below.

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

it cannot be the case, pragmatically speaking, that we let other people live because they have an inner life. We all know this cannot be true (Russ included), because one of the axiomatic assumptions for these conversations is that you cannot directly know someone else's mental life. If you cannot know whether or not someone has a mental life, you can't decide whether or not you can kill them based on their having a mental life. Is there any way to make that more obvious?!?

I see four problem.

The argument mixes epistemology with ontology. It's one thing to discuss what we can and cannot know -- which tends to change with technology and our level of sophistication. It's another to discuss what is. Unless you want to take the position that one cannot talk about what is and can only talk about what can be known, these two should be kept separate. nst -->I thought that Russ's position was that one cannot IN PRINCIPLE know what is truly in another's mind

An argument can be made that nothing can really be known. After all, what is it to know something? No matter what one does, one can never be sure. nst --> Yes, but such sweeping arguments are without force; since they apply to all knowledge, they dont give one any information about any special features of consciousness, or anything else for that matter. More over, they self distruct, since they apply to themselves.

To know something implies a knower, which relies on a mental life. nst --> Just to re-iterate that our argument is not about the existence of mental life; it is about what we actually are talking about when we talk about mental life. I think we are talking about third person things, or things that a third person could in principle "see".

Simply making the argument and expecting someone to understand it makes no sense unless one assumes a mental life in the speaker and the listener. Without that, all we have are photons generated by a CRT or bits stored in a computer, etc. nst --> Again, I disagree. What is "mental" adding, here? Without LIFE, all we have are photons etc.

Russ Abbott

Re: Behaviorist Federal Judge

Sorry. I knew it was Eric. My mistake. But this time it really is Nick I'm responding to.

nst --> I thought that Russ's position was that one cannot IN PRINCIPLE know what is truly in another's mind

Russ: No. I don't believe that. In fact, I expect that with advanced enough technology we will be able to experience what another experiences.

nst --> Just to re-iterate that our argument is not about the existence of mental life; it is about what we actually are talking about when we talk about mental life. I think we are talking about third person things, or things that a third person could in principle "see".

Russ: I'm not sure what that means. I've been talking about the existence of mental life. If you aren't denying the existence of mental life, I have no idea why we had this conversation. I thought I was defending its existence against your arguments opposing it..

I have not been talking about third person things. Mental life is by definition first person. And when I said above that I expect that we will be able to experience what another experiences, I mean that by hooking us up appropriately, my first person experience will be very much the same as yours.

I think we really have exhausted this conversation. Or probably more accurately, it has exhausted us -- or at least me.

-- Russ

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 9:03 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Russ,

Actually, I didnt write what you are countering, here, but I will defend it anyway.

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,

Clark University ([hidden email])

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

----- Original Message -----

From: [hidden email]

To: [hidden email];[hidden email]

Sent: 6/21/2009 4:18:52 PM

Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Behaviorist Federal Judge

See below.

-- Russ Abbott
_____________________________________________
Professor, Computer Science
California State University, Los Angeles
Cell phone: 310-621-3805
o Check out my blog at http://bluecatblog.wordpress.com/

On Sun, Jun 21, 2009 at 2:56 PM, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

it cannot be the case, pragmatically speaking, that we let other people live because they have an inner life. We all know this cannot be true (Russ included), because one of the axiomatic assumptions for these conversations is that you cannot directly know someone else's mental life. If you cannot know whether or not someone has a mental life, you can't decide whether or not you can kill them based on their having a mental life. Is there any way to make that more obvious?!?

I see four problem.

The argument mixes epistemology with ontology. It's one thing to discuss what we can and cannot know -- which tends to change with technology and our level of sophistication. It's another to discuss what is. Unless you want to take the position that one cannot talk about what is and can only talk about what can be known, these two should be kept separate. nst -->I thought that Russ's position was that one cannot IN PRINCIPLE know what is truly in another's mind

No. I don't believe that. In fact, I suspect that with advanced enough technology we will be able to experience what another experiences.

An argument can be made that nothing can really be known. After all, what is it to know something? No matter what one does, one can never be sure. nst --> Yes, but such sweeping arguments are without force; since they apply to all knowledge, they dont give one any information about any special features of consciousness, or anything else for that matter. More over, they self distruct, since they apply to themselves.

To know something implies a knower, which relies on a mental life. nst --> Just to re-iterate that our argument is not about the existence of mental life; it is about what we actually are talking about when we talk about mental life. I think we are talking about third person things, or things that a third person could in principle "see".

Simply making the argument and expecting someone to understand it makes no sense unless one assumes a mental life in the speaker and the listener. Without that, all we have are photons generated by a CRT or bits stored in a computer, etc. nst --> Again, I disagree. What is "mental" adding, here? Without LIFE, all we have are photons etc.