Thank you for coming out tonight. I'm going to have a lovely talk. I'm going to have a feeling of sensation. Before we get into this, I'm going to do a great thank yous to John DiBico, who is so graciously provided this spot for us. So Amanda Carlson, who has a great appearance to put everything together. I'm Andy Beach, the Dean of Critical Studies at CalArts. I'm keeping the NMA together as well as facilitating Nate's trip here to Los Angeles. And also Alicia Manzoni. I would like to say too that for you,
those of you afterwards, Guns N' Roses will play a feature in the law. Sorry, first time since 1993. Now I'm not a good guns and robots fan, but I'm not saying it has anything to do with Ray's trick here. Just to let you know, I think it's about 11, 1130. You know what I'm saying? Huh? Ah, probably. Big Axel is going to hang around you out there. Anyway, so let me read a bit about Ray. He obtained his PhD in philosophy from the University of Warwick in 2001, from 2002 to 2008. He was a research fellow at Middlesex University's Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy.
Since 2008, he's been associate professor of philosophy at the American University of Ben Root. He's the author of Nighill Unbound and Like-Ment Extinction, Art of Great 2007. And the English translator of works by Alan Ben-Hugh and Clinton May-Assume. and is currently working on two books. One is about the American philosopher wrote for the Sellers and is entitled Reasons, Patterns, and Processes, Sellers, Transcendental Naturalism. The other is about the reality of appearances entitled That Which Is Not. It investigates the ontological import of the appearance, reality, and extinction via readings of Plato, Kant, Abraham, Husserl, Heideberg, Adieu, and Sellers. So, without further ado, I'm always in great honor
to present the great last name. Can people hear me okay? So, right, so this talk is basically, I mean, it's really an excerpt from this book, from the working of the sellers. And I'm trying to explain, part of the purpose of the book is to explain why his work is of general relevance, particularly to debates in contemporary contemporary political, although he's usually considered to them.
and the analytic tradition of philosophy. I think that Seltzer's work is replete with extremely valuable lessons for continental philosophy, especially given the resurgence of interest in metaphysics, which we once talked about in continental philosophy. So I think that Settlers shows you how it's possible shows you how it's possible to do metaphysics proper. He is a Kantian metaphysics. And one of the things I want to do is to show why that is not oxymoron. So that the contrast between Kantian critical philosophy on the one hand and metaphysics,
which is an unfortunate consequence in terms of which the contemporary renovation of metaphysics has been invented, is based on a confusion, a misunderstanding of Kantianism, the key insights of Kantianism, and also a confusion about, or rather kind of a caricature of the metaphysical task and what metaphysics should be. So, the topic of the talk is really the relationship relationship between conception and sensation. So I want to begin by talking about psychological
normalism. Psychological normalism can be exemplified. It's really formulated in this thesis. Yes. All awareness of sorts is a linguistic affair. This is the definition, the canonical definition of psychological novelism Normalism given by Sellers in his 1956 lecture, In Crisis on the Falsy of Mind. For philosophers of a realist stance,
psychological normalism understood as a claim that all awareness is a linguistic affair, is of a peace with philosophical behavior, which allegedly denies the reality of consciousness. If psychological normalism is complicit with this denial, which strikes many philosophers of absurdity, Some would say it deserves to be relegated to the dustbin of philosophical history along with its behavior as a sibling. Sellers coined the expression, psychological nominism, and defended the doctrine throughout his long philosophical career. But he also distinguished between two aspects of the mind, thinking and sensing, and laid claim to realism about both.
This distinction between thinking and sensing, which can be traced back to Kant, essentially prefigures David Chalmers' more recent distinction between the functional, psychological, and the phenomenal-slash-experiential aspects of the mind. The crucial difference, however, is that while Chalmers endows phenomenal experiential states with a cognitive authority, equal to it not greater than that of functional psychological states, Sellers reserves cognition for functionally characterized thinking alone. I'll try to explain what that means in the course of the talk. So he reserves cognition for functionally characterized thinking alone and characterizes
sensation as a non-cognitive state that plays a causal but not a justificatory role in empirical knowledge. One of the things I'd like to argue for tonight is that Sarros cannot be accused of downplaying the significance of the phenomenal or experiential aspects of the mind. Indeed, His account of sensory consciousness leads him to make the controversial claim that sensation has a metaphysical purchase insofar as it indirectly reveals a fundamental aspect of physical reality. It's intrinsic qualitative aspects, which as Sellers sees it, cannot be reduced to the extrinsic or dispositional properties of things.
This is again, this is another distinction which I hope will become clear in the course of the lecture. Sellers' Rortian years, in the romantic tradition, have made much of his psychological normalism, but they tend to dismiss his suggestion that sensation has a metaphysical purchase as an aberrant relapse into dogmatic rationality. So what I want to do is argue that Seldes' account of the metaphysics of sensation is not a diplomatic regression because it offers a way of resolving the deadlock between realists whose equation of consciousness with knowledge leads them to embrace dualism. people like Chalmers, who thinks that because experiential consciousness has a directly cognitive valence,
and because it cannot be mechanistically or materialistically explained, conscious properties, the properties of conscious states, are fundamentally different in kind from the properties of material states. dualism. That's one branch of the data. The other is the attempt to reduce consciousness to conceptual awareness. This is the claim, the alternative mood that's made by a sort of like Rorty or Robert Brandon in a certain regard, who wants to say that all there is consciousness is conceptual awareness. They take that to be an exhaustive characterization of the nature of consciousness.
But in doing so, the threat is that they will sever the causal link between mind and nature. So it's because the mind is embedded in nature that we need to explain, first of all, how in a way thinking Conceptual consciousness is irreducible to sensation, but we also need to explain how conceptual consciousness is constrained by sensation. In other words, how the mind is anchored in nature, and this anchoring is causal. It can only be a causal anchoring. Okay. Now, I'm going to use PowerPoints. Because I'm an incompetent PowerPoint user, I tend to put up either too much or too little on the slides.
So I'm going to try and I fear, anyway, I'll try to, most of the content, the essential content of my argument is on these slides. So hopefully even if there's too much information it will be useful. So, first thing to explain is how Sellers wants to, what Sellers is a transcendental philosopher in the Kantian tradition, who wants to avoid the twin excesses of dogmatic rationalism and skeptical impersity. According to dogmatic rationalism, the mind enjoys a priori cognitive access to a mind-independent reality, such that reason can deduce the fundamental features of our reality.
Skeptical empiricism, on another hand, claims that all knowledge is rooted in but limited by sensory experience, so that reason cannot deliver a priori knowledge of a mind-independent reality. And what Celsus claims that both dogmatic rationalism and skeptical empiricism are part of the framework of givenness. They're enthralled in what he calls the framework of givenness, which is the belief that mental states are self-insonating. In other words, that to be conscious is to know what it is you're conscious of. Dogmatism, dogmatic rationalism, takes a correlation between thinking and being as given, as in Descartes.
He thinks that I can deduce my own existence from my own self-consciousness, while skepticism takes the intelligibility of sensory experiences given. For Hume, for instance, what's interesting is that for all his skepticism about the objective correlates of sensory experience, his attempt to decomposition of experience into these units, these elementary units of sensation, he never doubts that sensations can be intelligible in and of themselves, that there are intelligible units of sensations. And this is the other version of what Sellers calls the method of giving.
Sellers then wants to postulate a transcendental difference. In a way to reject the framework of forgiveness is to postulate a transcendental difference between thinking and knowing what is thought, between the act of thinking and the object of thought. And also a difference between sensing and knowing what is sensed. And this can be encapsulated in this Szilard's dictum, the awareness of something is not the awareness of something as something. To be aware of something is not to be aware of it as the something that it is. This is the myth of the category. So all that the word transcendental needs for sellers is simply postulating this difference between sensing and sensing as, between experience and experiencing as.
And this is all that sellers need in a way to gain critical purchase on the relationship between thinking and sensing. So, cognitive awareness for sellers then will be a linguistic affair because it involves being aware of something as something. Such awareness requires conceptualization and concepts are linguistically instantiated rules. we would not be aware, controversially, the claim is we would not even be aware of ourselves as thinking were it not for language. This is Sellers' myth of Jones. Again, this is simply an immediate consequence of the rejection of the framework of givenness.
given us. It follows that if we need concepts to be aware of anything, it's not just that we need concepts to be aware of the objects of thinking or the objects of sensing, it's that we need a concept of thinking to be aware of ourselves as thinking or as feeling. So, the claim is that there's a distinction between consciousness and self-consciousness. Self-consciousness involves conceptual mediation and the claim is that we, the kind of conceptual self-consciousness enjoyed by human beings or characters such as ourselves depends upon language, depends upon linguistic resources.
because language is the medium of conceptualization, at least in some sense. So, if one rejects the premise that thoughts are essentially self-intimating or self-disclosing, or the assumption that to think is to know that one is thinking, it becomes possible to understand the concept of thinking as modeled on the concept of speaking. thoughts then are understood as inner episodes modelled upon overt public utterances. These inner episodes are theoretical entities postulated as structurally analogous to linguistic utterances yet devoid of the physical characteristics of these utterances. They are silent, invisible,
intangible, etc. In this regard then, thoughts are akin to theoretical observables. This is a famous analogy between the postulation, learning to explain the behavior of a sentient organisms in terms of beliefs and desires, or thoughts and sensations, is akin to postulating the behavior of gases in terms of imperceptible molecules. And in this regard, thoughts then, this is a quote from Charles, thoughts are in language using animals as molecular impacts are in gases and not as ghosts are in machine.
Empirical observables are identified with the theoretical observables without the former being the avert manifestation of the lattice covert existence. If you say that water is H2O, you're not saying that water is the manifestation of H2O. It's an identification. You're saying that water is H2O. It shows the microphysical structure of this microphysical phenomenon. And that is not like saying that the mind is this substance that inhabits the body. So it's very important not to conflate the dualism of observational vocabulary and theoretical vocabulary with the dualism of inner and outer. And it's this dualism, the dualism of observable and unobservable, or postulated,
It's not the dualism of outer and inner. You don't say that H2O is in water. That claim makes no logical sense. The claim is that water is H2O, and that it's, you know, the distinction between the macro-physical and micro-physical is not one of spatial containment. And this is the key to understanding psychological norms. So, linguistic utterance then is not the exteriorization of thought, and thought is not the interiorization of utterance. Utterance itself becomes a thinking out loud, just as thinking becomes a silent saying. The theoretical terms acquire an observational role through which they can be used in perceptual reports.
reports. So we learn to perceive each other and ourselves as thinking or believing or hoping or fearing etc etc. Now, Selvius claim is not that thinking depends upon language. This is a metaphysical misinterpretation of psychological knowledge. The Reilians in Selvius' account, the creatures who initially who think but don't yet have the concept of thinking, who are conscious but not yet self-conscious, they're still thinking but they just don't understand or conceive of themselves as thinking beings. What they need is a theory, but they need a kind of vocabulary to be able to, in a way, perceive
themselves as thinking. So they don't think of themselves as thinking until Jones, Jones, Genius Jones and Selger's effect provides them with a concept of what it is to think. Because it's not at all obvious what it is to think. The concept of thinking is the least self-evident concept there is. You don't just tell whether or not something is thinking. It can't simply be an abstract theoretical concept. This is Selger's whole point. By By embracing George's theory of thoughts as inner episodes of saying, the Rylans acquire the concept of thinking as what underlies meaningful actions. They become aware of themselves as thinking.
Once this move has been made, you can give the intentionality of thought is understood to be modeled on the intentionality of language. The concept of meaning to say, of intending, meaning something when one speaks, intention in the psychological and semantic sense, is ushered in with the shift from conscious to self-conscious thought. And this is precisely what Jones' theory of thoughts as inner episodes is supposed to explain. but it entails that the intentionality of public language is the condition for the intentionality of thought. And this is a very controversial reversal. People usually assume it's the other way around. That the intentionality of thought is the condition for the intentionality of language. And Seller says no, it's actually the inverse.
We have to be able to learn to use words properly before we can understand what it means to say something. Here's a quote from Sellers, from Language of Thought and Communication. Instead of analyzing the intentionality or aboutness of verbal behavior in terms of its expressing or being used to express classically conceived thoughts or beliefs, Classically conceived, ultimately means the Ordestinian or even Cartesian conception of thoughts as being ontologically independent attributes of some kind of substance, which cause behavior or cause linguistic activity.
Instead of analyzing intentionality or aboutness of verbal behavior in terms of its expressing or being used to express classically critique thoughts or beliefs, we should recognize that this verbal behavior is already thinking in its own right. And its intentionality or aboutness is simply the appropriateness of classifying it in terms which relate to the linguistic behavior of the group to which one they go. This second clause needs to be explained. What does Sellers mean here? It means that the intentionality of public discourse is a matter of appropriately classifying linguistic behavior according to standards encapsulated by collectively accepted norms. These norms involve the rules of criticism or ought to be's to which speakers are encouraged to conform, as well as the rules of action or ought to do's which speakers are expected to realise.
Since rules of criticism and rules of action are codependent, ought to be's implies ought to do's. So conforming to the former is indissociable from accepting the latter. Linguistic action and linguistic behavior are both non-government. They cannot be opposed to one another since the capacity to conform is the precondition for the ability to act. Again, what Xelos is trying to do is to overcome the binary between action and behavior. Where action involves again an intention, some kind of interior intention,
whereas behavior is merely at the kind of outward manifestation of that intention. He's saying once you dissolve the inside-outside dichotomy, you can understand behavior as intrinsically intentional. So that the ability to behave correctly is evidence of the ability to understand something, to intend properly and vice versa. So if psychological normalism identifies thinking with verbal behaviour, this is not in the same sense in which psychological behaviour, so probably find people like B.F. Skinner, etc., identifies thinking with behavioural dispositions. Verbal behaviour expresses thought only insofar
as thinking is understood as a kind of doing, cognitively modelled or linguistic altruism. So, thinking is a kind of doing because it involves inferring, which in turn involves representing. I'm not going to say much about representing, but it's very important to emphasize the link between these verbs, these adverts. thinking, doing, inferring. Concepts are inferential roles and these roles are defined by networks of implication across waves of linguistic assertion. To say that intentionality is the appropriateness of classifying a
linguistic expression relative to the behavior of linguistic community is to say that intentionality is a functional characteristic. So because thinking is a kind of doing, the intention in a way which is realized in thinking has a function. This is why you can give a functional characterization of intention. And Sellers' dot-quoting device is the exhibition of this linguistic function. It's simply just like a formal device introduced by Sellers, whereby the dot quotes, whenever you dot quotes a linguistic expression, you show its function. You show what it does in a language. This, of course, presupposes familiarity with the dot quoted expression's proper function.
And this familiarity is the background of tacit understanding against which the exhibition of the meaning of particular expressions can stand out as an instance of explicit understanding. exhibiting the meaning of a specific expression is only possible against the backdrop of a language and a form of life within which the use of words is necessarily embedded. In other words, there is no transcendent context in terms of which you could judge the propriety of function, of semantic function. You measure the propriety of function according to a social context, social, historical, cultural context, which is ultimately the manifestation of what Birkenstein calls a form of life.
So at one level you can't, this is why meaning can't be defined, you cannot define what meaning is, you can only show it. Because meaning is about function, and to understand a function you can't give a kind of a propositional encapsulation of the function, you can only show it. And this exhibition or showing, rather than stating a complex rule-governed functioning, presupposes familiarity with the language in which the dot-coding device is deployed, re-imbeds language within a world of practical involvement. Because when you show the meaning of a term, you can only, you know, that exhibition is only comprehensible to someone who understands, someone who knows how the dot-coded term is already being used.
So, consequently, psychological normalism and his claim that cognitive functioning is linguistically instantiated envelops awareness within language only in so far as language itself is enveloped in a world comprising a variety of human practices and purposes. Drawing out those conditions exposes the chain of nested mediation from awareness to awareness as, from awareness as to conceptual role, from conceptual role to linguistic practice, and from linguistic practice to a world of practical involvement. And what is exposed through this chain of mediations is the way in which the content of any single state of awareness
is bound up with a context of significance that includes a whole practical life world. So, psychological normalism is usually a report for denying the reality of mental states. But if anti-realism in this context means denying that mental states belong in the world, then this reproach is misguided. For on Sellers' account, mental states are as real as anything else in the world of which they are a part. The fact that cognitive awareness of mental states is conceptual through and through in no way compromises their reality. since on sellers' accounts this is as true of tables, zebras and galaxies as it is of thoughts and sensations.
Everything is conceptually mediated. All the ontological furniture of reality is apprehended conceptually. So thoughts and sensations would be no different in this regard. If the issue is one of realism, the more fitting reproach to psychological normalism and to the transcendental stance from which it ensues is that realism, whether about mental states or non-mental phenomena, comes at the price of an exorbitant policy, which is obliged to take as given a total context of significance, i.e. a form of life in which the transcendental perspective is necessarily embedded. Why should this be so? On Selv's account, the opt-to-bees and opt-doos which condition over thinking and acting, constitutes the linguistic framework within which we live.
This framework furnishes the resources for all justification and evaluation. Will claims made within the framework be assessed, criticized or rejected? There is no higher authority or court of appeal with regard to which the framework as a whole could be judged by wanting. Then the danger is one of quietism. This is a famous quote from the constraints on certainty. You must bear in mind that the language game is not based on grounds. It is not reasonable or unreasonable. It is there, like our life. If our linguistic framework is simply there, like our life, it is not susceptible of rational revision. It is just something to be accepted as it is.
And Sowers's emphasis on holism, both semantic and epistemic, would seem to point towards a quietest acceptance of the form of life within which we find ourselves as the ineluctable horizon of all thinking and doing. If the rejection of the empiricist and rationalist versions of givenness ultimately entails accepting the givenness of a form of life as the ultimate horizon circumscribing reflection, this may prove too high a price. because transcendental reflection would then find itself constitutively incapable of critically interrogating the legitimacy of the practices, and specifically of the cognitive practices, within which psychological states and conceptual roles are necessarily embedded.
Now, Seligius rejects this whole, so this kind of quietism, and this is really tied to his whole account or his preoccupation with the statements of sensation. Celsus's conceptual philosophy as a theoretical endeavor requiring conceptual construction as well as conceptual revision is opposed to this quantity. The root of this opposition lies in Celsus's bifurcated organism. Our understanding of the world is split into two competing conceptual structures, the manifest and scientific images of man and the world. Both are autonomous categorical schemes, neither of which can be wholly subsumed within the other.
But the bifurcation is in our conceptual grasp of the world, not in the world as such. So Seles' transcendental dualism of images should not be taken to be incompatible with monism. In fact, it's a kind of double aspect theory, of a spinnesist kind. He's not saying that there's the world, there's two different kind of dimensions of reality. There's only one world, but it appears or it's kind of, it's apprehended from two distinct vantage points. And that's from the manifest image vantage point or from the scientific image. Now both those images are connected, as we'll see. Sellers, according to the scientific image, have a peculiar privilege of describing and
explaining why the world appears to us as it does. This is what the manifest image cannot do. Transcendental reflection within the bounds of the manifest image reveals normative practice as the fundamental horizon of understanding, but it cannot explain why the world manifests itself to us as it does, or why we engage in these particular practices but not others. Indeed, such questions make no sense so long as transcendental investigation is confined to the manifest image. However, these questions are perfectly legitimate if one understands the task of transcendental reflection to be that of articulated the two images.
So, for Seller said, ultimately the common sense picture, or the manifest image of the world, in spite of its delicate opinions, poses problems which it lacks the resources to resolve. And the topic of sensation is crucial because it lies at the interface between the two images. It is the juncture between the causal nexus, investigated by science, and the normative space of reasons within which we conduct our daily lives. This is why, for sellers, sensations are essential to the explanation of how we come to construct the appearance which is the manifest world. So in response to the charge that holds and entails quietism, it's worth pointing out that Seltzer's bifurcated holds and makes room for conceptual revision
because it allows for the possibility of diagnosing categorical dysfunction, not only within each image but also across the two images. Categorial dysfunction, because concepts are functions, the functioning of any single concept is bound up with a whole economy of concepts. So if a concept is malfunctioning, that malfunction will ramify across the whole structure. And in fact there are there in a way that the symptoms of categorical dysfunction are simply philosophical perplexity. That's why philosophy in a way tracks categorical dysfunction.
So Sellers' controversial proposal for a metaphysics of pure processes exemplifies its critical or constructive conception of thought to me because it's motivated by concern over the malfunctioning of the category of sensation, not by the dramatic deference towards the epistemic authority of thought, as the argument has been misunderstood as the latter. Since thoughts can be characterized in terms of their functional roles, Sellers insist that, quote, there is no barrier in principle to the identification of conceptual thinking with neurophysiological process. So the conceptual role of, let's say, red rectangular, the
conceptual predicate, is identified through dot-quoting of the metalinguistic circle, door-quote red-rectangular, under-quote. And this linguistic function is at least in principle identifiable with a set of physical states in which its particular tokenings are realized. But although sensation can be functionally characterized as a sensing red triangle, it centers what he calls an verbal theory of sensation, so that the sensation of a red triangle is actually a sensing red triangular of it. And that way you remove the idea that there has to be some kind of object or sensation. Sensation is not object involved. But it has an intentionality. It's about something.
What it's about is not some kind of thing, some peculiar item in the works, which is a sense data. The thing about sensing red triangular is that it cannot be identified with its functional role. So to understand why sensation cannot be identified with its functional role, we must distinguish between the formal and the content properties of objects. Formal properties include all of an object's causal, dispositional, and structural properties. They are conceptual. I mean, causal, you know, what the object's, you know, its its causal powers, what it makes happen, dispositional, its propensities, I mean a pane of glass is a disposition to shatter,
and structural properties. Structural properties can be micro-physical properties. All these properties are charted by mathematical science, they're conceptual. content properties comprise the object's sensible properties in the scripting. Whatever can only be directly seen, touched, heard, tasted, or smelled of an object. So, while the former, the formal properties are categorical features of objects, the latter, the content properties, are purely of current qualities. This is, sellers are the kinds of an occurrence, or the contrast between a current and category of properties.
We do not perceive of the object its causal properties. What we see of it are its occurrence sensible features. This can now be generalized as false. We do not perceive of the object, its character as a substance having attributes, its character belonging with other substances a system of interacting substances, its character as conforming to laws of nature. In short, we do not perceive of the object what might be called categorical features. The reason is that if we could simply perceive the categorical features of objects, we would need science. Theoretical science would be completely superfluous. It's precisely because we can't see, directly
perceive what objects can do, how they behave under certain circumstances that we need to do science. What we perceive are the occurrence, the sensory properties of objects. Through what they look like, what they smell like, what they sound like, what they feel like, or what they taste like. So what we see of an object are its sensible content properties, while what we see an object as are its conceptual or category features. And the latter are intuitive, not sense. So, this is a lengthy quote from Sellers, but it's important because in a way it amplifies this distinction.
and it's why Sellers thinks an account of the word merely in terms of causal, dispositional or structural properties is going to be unsatisfactory and this is where Sellers' account rejoins the concerns of metaphysicians such as proper norquite so this is Sellers it should be noted that if physical objects are genuine individuals They can scarcely have only if-if-y properties, i.e. if and only if properties, causal or dispositional properties. The kinds of properties that are formulated in physical laws. If-if properties, powers, propensities, dispositional properties, and the way.
They must have some non-dispositional or recurrent attributes. But nor, as Whitehead reminds us, will it do to limit their current attributes to such primary qualities as shape and size. For, to use an Aristotelian term of phrase, geometrical qualities are formal qualities and presuppose a content or a matter, thus colour. Things which had primary qualities without content qualities would have vacuous actuality. This is Whitehead's expression. that Whitehead construed the current content of physical objects in terms of feeling rather than color as a symptom of the revisionary character of his metaphysics.
Now, you should try and understand what's going on in this book. Whitehead construes a current content in terms of feeling because he is a pan-experientialist, or pan-psychist, for whom actuality divorced from subjectivity is necessarily factors. In other words, the actuality of any property or feature must be registered in a subject. There has to be a subject of a current sensation. And a vacuous actuality in Whitenant's sense is a non-subjective actuality, an unperceived actuality wholly independent of subjective experience. So at the root of Whitehead's pan-experientialism lies a conflation of sensing with perceiving, or of awareness with awareness as.
Sellers is too Kantian to accept Whitehead's revisionary recategorization of a current physical content as an instance of feeling. He endorses the traditional characterization of the metaphysical task as the identification of ultimate categories understood as summa genera. Categories in general, says Sellers, are classifications of conceptual roles. What does this mean? It means that the metaphysical task is to properly classify, to identify what categories do, what role they play in our understanding and describing of reality. So like Kant, Sellers views categories as ways of classifying conceptual representings
rather than as the attributes of unrepresented things. He removes, you know, Aristotle thought that categories were in things and Kant replaces categories in us, not in things. The categories, the pure concepts of the understanding according to Kant, are in us. And they are the condition of possibility for our experiencing things as being thus and so. Thus, sellers insist that metaphysics must accurately describe our extant category of framework, i.e., our extant ways of representing things before engaging in the revisionary task of postulating new categories or recategorizing entities.
So from the viewpoint of descriptive metaphysics, which Sellers endorses, the category of actuality is not subordinate to the category of subjectivity as species to genus. They are distinct genera. Something can be actual without being experienced. Why would you claim that something's actuality depends upon its being experienced? That's the premise of the Panex-Budientiality, which is a peculiar premise which is unnecessary for a set of states. A current actuality manifests itself to us through sensation, and sensations are a current state of perceiving subject, but they need to be conceptually accrucied, i.e. represented
to be known by the subject who states they are. So now we come to the so-called brain argument. So although current sensations are revealed, although current contents are revealed through sensation, sensation reveals to us the occurrence, contents, the content properties of things. Sensation itself is not the cognitive awareness of occurring content. And this is what prevents sellers from embracing whiteheads pan-experientialism as well as the kind of property dualism championed by charmers and others. It's also why sellers' so-called grain argument for the irreducibility of content qualities is not phenomenological or at least not as that term
used by analytical forces. Sellers' great argument works from, proceeds from what he calls the principle of reducibility, which Sellers formulates as follows. If an object is in a strict sense a system of objects, then every property of the object must consist in the fact that its constituents have such and such qualities and stand in such relations or roughly every property of a system of objects consists of properties of and relations between its constituents. So the properties of a whole can be reduced
to its parts if and only if all the properties of the whole can be explained in terms of and relations over its constituents. It seems relatively uncontroversial. But it presents a problem for giving, for understanding, for giving a reductive account of sensation. Because sensations, according to Sellers, are characterized by ultimate homogeneity. This is another quote. This is Sellers' famous pink-eyed skew. The reason it's a pink ice cube is because he's a devotee of martinis and spent a lot of his life looking through martinis glasses. So that's why the pink ice cube is the example.
The ice cube presents itself to us as ultimately homogenous and an ice cube variegated in color is, though not homogenous in its specific color, ultimately homogenous in the sense to which I am calling attention with respect to the generic trait of being colored. It's my image of the generic trait of being colored. Homogeneity then pertains to the generic, which is to say the categorical trait of being colored, and not to a current pigness as such. The pink is seen as homogenous insofar as it is a color, but homogeneity is not something one sees of the ice cream.
Or more precisely, it is the coloredness of the ice cube that is seen as homogenous rather than its current pinkness. This is to say that homogeneity is not an occurrent content property, but a formal generic property of pink as a species of color. Now it's because of this account of homogeneity that sellers think that we need to forge a new category to be able to understand what sensations are. because sensations can be functionally characterized or they remain there we need to come up with a category that will allow us to account for the homogeneity of sensation
homogeneity of content property. And this is why, this is where the concept of pure processes comes in. This is a quote from Selfish's foundations for metaphysics of pure processes. What is primary in the various senses of the verb to buzz is the concept of the intrinsic character of a certain kind of process which can be identified in terms of its typical causes. The verb to buzz, then, would have a sense in which processes of that intrinsic kind would be buzzings, even when they were not being brought about by one of these typical causes. Thus, in this sense of a verb to buzz, we could say that a buzzing is going on without
implying that some object, e.g.m.e., is buzzing. So buzzing then as an current content quality is irreducible to the formal properties of its constituents, i.e. the activity. And this then means that the concept of an absolute process or a pure process, an absolute process is contrasted to an object-bound process. Once you start understanding buzzing as something that occurs independently of bees, the bees in a way that kind of these activity, you know, we can generate the buzzing, you understand that there's something about the buzzing which is an occurring quality, which is not object
about cellophist term. There's something going on that is not the effect of an underlying cause. So the concept of an absolute process is the concept of an intrinsic quality occurring independently of the properties of objects or relations of nonstop gets. The buzzing is irreducible to the properties of the bees or the relations between the bees, just as the pinkness of the ice cube is irreducible to the properties of the molecules, you know, the ice molecules, the relation between those molecules. This occurring aspect is decisive not only because it allows us to conceptualize content qualities independently of any object that might bear them,
but also because it provides us with a paradigm of an absolute occurring, an occurring that is not attributable to something that begins and ceases to occur. So this is why for sellers in the case of absolute processes we can speak of absolute coming to be and ceasing to be. Because when a sounding, for instance a C-sharping begins, there is nothing which begins in the relevant sense to sound. So by the same token, although we talk about bees buzzing, the buzzing itself, strictly speaking, can be understood to be going on independently of anything that bees have been.
There are three basic characteristics of absolute process. intrinsicity. Each, an absolute process is characterized by an intrinsic quality, a somehow-ness. A somehow-ness is like a current, is the pinkness of the pink, the very pinkness of the pink ice cube in the case of color. It's the very, you know, the buzzing, the very buzzing-ness of the buzzing in the case of, for example, the bees. That's the intrinsicity, it's an intrinsic quality, a currentness, the fact that this is a pure actuality, and finally homogeneity. So what Sellers then does is postulate what he calls sensor as theoretical entities which occur
as the components of absolute processes traversing the nervous systems of sentient organisms without all absolute processes involving senses. So the thing is this, is that sensations can play the causal role that they play in causing certain states of awareness because they involve current content qualities which have an autonomous and independent ontological status. These current content qualities can be attributed or explained in terms of the micro physical components of sentient
organisms. In other words, no matter how hard you look, you will never find anything corresponding to the intrinsic, the quality of the sensation in the nervous system of the organism that is experiencing that sensation. The sensor then, a sensor, the singular sensor, plural, is the theoretical thing, the thing that is being registered by the organism. Now, sensor are components of absolute processes, but not all absolute processes are sensing, they're both sensing. The characteristics of processes are defined without any reference to organisms.
And, you know, because these are the characteristics of absolute protein. Intrinsicality, kernels, homogeneity. There's nothing here that involves a reference to sensors as such. This is why sellers is not white now. So, sensor then and processes are physical, but now we need to distinguish between two different senses of physical, generic and a specific sense of physical to understand how it's possible to claim that sensory processes are physical.
A generic sense of physical, an entity is said to be physical, one if it exists in the framework of space and time. A specific sense in which something can be said to be physical is if it's definable in terms of theoretical primitives, adequate to describe completely the actual states, though not necessarily the potentialities of the universe before the appearance of life. So, what needs to be understood is the relationship then between sensing and processes. And here's another kind of quite lengthy quote which I'll try to unpack.
This is cellars. Whereas the objects of contemporary neurophysiological theory are taken to consist of neurons, which consist of molecules, which consist of quarks, all of which are physical two objects, specifically physical objects. An ideal successor theory formulated in terms of absolute processes, both finds and rowings. What finds and rowings are basically variables, theoretical variables, associated with the pure processes in the generic sense and pure processes in the specific sense. The phi-2ing is something that is called a quarking or an electron. This is a process which is physical too, which applies independently of organic life.
Whereas a rowing is a sensory process. It's an occurrence sensor. So these, like so constitute certain of its objects, I use neurons in the visual context, that they had rowings as ingredients differing in this respect from purely physical structures. So what does this mean? It means rowings are things like reddings, buzzings and C sharpings. These are sensory processes. These would be construed as constituents of nervous systems alongside neurons and the particular entities of which neurons are composed, i.e. molecules and forms. They would be understood as objects abstracted from underlying physical tube processes such
as quarkings and electronics. In the final analysis however, both quarkings and reddings, i.e. both flyings and rowings, these two generic and specific kind of process, would be physical. The ultimate claim would be a kind of physics, a fully developed physics that is capable of integrating the sensory states of organisms. You no longer have this discontinuity between the inorganic and the organic, which plagues a lot of contemporary thought. And in a way there's lots of forces who try to kind of dissolve this continuity, but at the point you can't just do it by fears, you can't just wish it away.
You have to work, you have to generate the conceptual resources to actually to break the gap. To achieve properly an explanatory theoretical solution to the discontinuity between the inorganic and the organic. So, if homogeneity is a structural categorical feature of a current sensation, it need not be attributable to the organism's component parts to be explicable in terms of their properties and relations. And this means that while the reducibility of a current pinkness for a content property requires its attribution to the constituent parts of the object-based property, the reducibility
The reducibility of the homogeneity of a current thing does not. Homogeneity of form does not equal the homogeneity of content. This is why ultimately homogeneity is not a current. Homogeneity is a property of a current property such as sensations, but it is not itself an occurrence property, an intrinsic feature of sensations. To qualify a property as a current is also to qualify as homogenous. Since the property of homogeneity is entailed by the property of a current. But to qualify a property as homogenous is not to say that it's a current.
Now, the point here is that I think that there's a problem with Sellers' analysis, this category of analysis here. In other words, I think that although if we return to the three basic characteristics of processes, intrinsicity, occurrentness and homogeneity, Salazar has made a possible case for the intrinsicity and occurrentness as fundamental characteristics of processes, but not of homogeneity. So I think this is the limitation of his analysis. And this is important because the argument works on the basis of diagnosing a category of dysfunction.
So again, Salazar has been misinterpreted, I think, as someone whose motivation for this metaphysics of pure processes is an unwillingness, is simply a kind of table pounding about the undeniable reality of sensory consciousness. But that's not the structure of his argument at all. I think his argument, he wants to be able to account for the phenomenon of sensation for explanatory reasons. because sensation is what ties us to the world. It's what ties us to the world. And it's also because he thinks that the world
must have content as well as form. You cannot just think, you can't have this dualism of form and content, where mathematical science tracks the form of reality without being able to account for its content. The content remains as something I do not want. So he wants to be able to integrate form and content to be able to, he wants something to have traction upon the content of reality. And I think his account is immensely attractive and plausible, but I think it falters at the level of his analysis of homogeneity. I think I should, I'll stop. I'll stop. okay
And that's a very important piece for Salas. Because in the middle of the beginning, like the middle of the beginning, the process of mind is not the real nature. And so for the modernist thesis, says that nature is not the real thought of mind. With this in mind, I'm apprehensive. I'm curious about just exactly what Salas is doing he makes the analogy between thoughts as theoretical entities an analogy to introduction to the . I think it makes a good sense to explain introduction of thoughts .
Precisely as a kind of . But I think that it is a different thing to say that . have an ontological status for some of us. It is just giving them the thoughts that are not such a structure. If they have ontological content, they would just follow that nature has to give some items to perform. And obviously, it doesn't want to do. I think that the reason that he thinks that this is not problematic is because he says that with regards to thoughts, they are reducible to the universal logical institutions So maybe it's because of that that he doesn't think that also the thoughts and the sensations is problematic.
And I'm not sure about this reduction either. I mean, I mean, the Frostian's kind of, he says that, you know, the reduction of thoughts to the nervous system and problematic sensations has been in trouble with some understanding of the science. I'm not even entirely sure. But in a very sense, it seems clear that possible thoughts, that thoughts can possibly happen. Not me. Unless it would come by . Yes. You're right. There's no community .. It seems to me saying because, in a way, thoughts, thinking as conceptualization,
conceptual thoughts, which is functioning and so it's in thoughts, conceptual states, are realized in the behavior of organisms, but also the behavior of the social dimension that involves a complicated network of articulation of life. In other words, because no organism can think of itself, So whatever state you're in when you're thinking has got to be coordinated with states about your specifics.
So in one sense this makes, so sellers define the kind of classic, classic, sub-strate independence. So I think this same function can be realized in different physical sub-states. And why? Because he thinks in a way that's not... They're not anti-righteous, because in a way, to characterize someone's thinking, or believing in something, is not to give an empirical description, it's to give a norm as description.
So the way thoughts don't belong to the other laws, they're norms are right. Norms are not things in nature. However, at the same time, they're not just, you can't simply, they're not nothing either. They have to be articulated. So that means thoughts have to be articulated. Here, sellers resist the kind of, one side will talk to something like second nature. We don't need to worry about first nature, science tells us what's right, and there's second nature. Second nature can be explained as part of the natural. We, we are rational animals, and our rationality is just because of our second nature.
and then when the client is about explaining, you can't explain all segregation. Everything shouldn't be positive, it shouldn't be discrimination. But Priscilla's in a way wants to be able, doesn't want to think about it. He wants to articulate reasons, even if he's very clear that reasons are not things in the world, which are not things at all. I think that's why, I think, isn't that problematic? and some things called satanity in one way reduced to the mirror as well. So it's a lot of things. Yes. Whereas with sunset, we really need something like that. And I'm not sure, I don't remember the recommended right by Richard, which is a problematic
problematically. But I remember thinking, this was a . Yes. I mean, probably in one sense. kind of a type, you can't just combine multiple types of physical states. Well, yeah, I remember he says that the reason is because there's nothing in the thought state, in the sort of thought that which would, which has any kind of property or attribution, which would be a kind of way. It doesn't seem like that. Homogeneity is a blockage for Sanzib. And he thinks there's no such property or quality that stands to vary for the reduction in the case of policy.
Yes, I think there's something great. I think there's a tension. The tension is that on the one hand, I think he equivocates. He equivocates between the claim that scientific as primarily in order to describe this. And if ontology is understood as just involving research and explanation, then science is the measure of what is and it is otherwise not that it's not. However, a lot of thinking isn't about describing lots of the things that safety lawmakers do isn't just describing things like this, so lots of our doings can simply be recaptured at the level of science.
But here, he wants us to say that they're just a fool. So I think he has a double standard. He wants to be able to say that they, you know, the leave-ins, open-ins, any kind of conceptual thinking state is perfectly real. in terms of the . And he said that's the proper domain of which to turn this reality. We can't, it's a mistake to go across the images, to try to look for something scientifically that corresponds to the thing.
It's like the editing of the two tables. It's just a, you know, confusing, it's a badly posed question of the view. I'm treating two different distinct categories of work. The consequence is that sellers, I think the monocytics work, is that implicit in sellers, is that claim that science itself isn't bound to be an autonomy of objects or the cause of things. And it's trying to get feedback between the mindless and science. Because what is isn't just substance. And you can't understand the reality of the world in terms of the world. The think paradigm, the impact of things that you're not against.
And what I take him to be doing with this metaphysical effect is, this is what he thinks there is a constructive task for philosophy, is to say something about our understanding of what it means to be. This is important in transformation and our understanding of what it means to be, so that we don't identify being with substances, actual substances, objects and substances. Okay. So you spoke about categorical distinction and the role of philosophy and diversity.
And my question is if art is thoughtful, if art is important to philosophy and find what specifically about non-linguistic arts. And that also, by this categorical assumption, is so how would non-linguistic arts be able to do this? I think, in terms of what we're going to say we're going to be very tentative.
It's a very difficult question. I would be inclined to say yes, because in a way, if art is sophisticated, I think, although it's a linguistic problem, it can identify what it is. when an artist says it's not possible to do this in this way the sense that there's a way of doing things a way of playing a way of painting a way of performing that is um that seems to be the kind of
exhaust or it has kind of it's It's a lot of things that are going to be lapsed. You could say that that's a kind of identification of a, not the dysfunction. It's a dysfunction, you need a word other than dysfunction. Because dysfunction in the context in which it's important here means really can understand, describing, explain, understand. But also, concepts of the point aren't simply about describing and explain. They are much more complex than about values.
Also, they're not so dependent upon, upon the economy as a whole, as these kind of cognitive concepts, concepts like sensation. So in a way they have these kind of, you have a kind of a continent or concept, but then they will be getting peninsula, clusters of concepts, which have a degree of reality, but it's only these are even in. If you think of an artistic discourse as this kind of peninsula, conceptual issues, then they're not, the normative constraints there are, need not be those of what's going on in the environment.
That means that there's a, it needs special kind of, special kind of, points of expertise, familiarity with the very kind of specific concepts to be able to identify what's right or wrong about something, So my answer to your question would be yes, but you need to work on the destruction because what are they supposed to do? What you're supposed to be doing when you play or make something art is always a mushroom component.
or the magnitude of the norms of government every day. There's a right and a wrong way to get dressed, to talk, to speak, to eat, to drink, to eat, to eat, but when you get to culture in particular, it just gets faster. and so this function would be the point. The dysfunction is, it implies that everyone already agrees about what the reality is. I have two questions. First one is,
are you talking about function? I'm sorry. My doctor is saying that's how it's a function. Yes. Yes. I mean, okay, so the claim is that words, okay, that any thought that someone expresses has a function. does what it does is So, when you have to understand conceptual function, you have to understand the linguistic.
So, seeing the time in the brain does not play functionally, when you make the scene that may be, can I talk to you? Okay. Yes, but the reason it doesn't play, it plays a functional role if it's considered conceptual. The content, what's going on when you're sensing red triangle, isn't just conceptual. The concepts in a way are just forms. And what's going on in sensation is content. When you're seeing red triangle, there's something, you know, there's an experience,
which is not be there when you use the word triangle. So my second question is can you have conceptless images? Conceptless images or physical sensations? That's a distinction. I was thinking of images of not thinking of sensations from the human eye. I think to have an image would be conceptualization. In order to see something as something, if an image is seeing something, well seeing it, it's going to be conceptual. Seeing all of it is not necessarily conceptual. In other words, so you can see the redness of something without seeing it as red.
and then certain neurological disorders, those two things you can understand. So if you're using the word image as something that has a coherent structure, which you can both see something as, it's moving itself. I don't know how something would be... I mean, I think if you have... if you mean like a retinal... I mean moving that. If I would... my tendency would be to say that it's moving itself. So then some children that are engaged in the actual brain world, in their lives, they're engaged in the second instruction. Yes. Yes. Yes. Thanks for a very interesting talk.
I've never read some of this before. I was looking at these just briefly to verify what sex it is. My understanding of it is that it's distinct from, for example, the concept of breath is a sensation breath, but not the original breath. Actually, okay, yes, I should have explained that. Really, he uses the word sensing. and he then uses the word sensor to take a look at sensor. What he simply means is your sensory state. Your sensory state, sensory state that accompanies any kind of consciousness.
So, what he is saying is that because we don't know what sensory experience is, we can mark our ignorance by using, there is something there that needs to be filled in. Sensa is the placeholder, it's a theoretical posture, it's a placeholder for the concept of sensory experience that we do not yet have, but which needs to be constructed. So a sensor is just, it's another word for sensation. But what we mean by sensation now is kind of confused. We can understand what someone means when they say they're having a sensation.
But it's a profoundly pivotal concept. In order for us to know what sensation is, we're going to have to do work. We're going to refine and revise the concept. and that's what sense is. Sensa is just a technical term for what sensation will also be in terms of being. I want to be able to be clear about what they are. So almost sensation prior to conceptualization or understanding. Okay. And a second question. A lot of who talked today seem to resonate with the practices of education I was worried about what I said. It's not an influence on me.
I think that's what they had, the young man who was a founded by a socialist, a bunch of collective, and a bunch of witches, and a person. But apart from that, no, there's no kind of explicit political valence as well. However, I do think one is that one is basically defending the primacy of conceptualization and of conceptual rationality over attempts to subordinate it to some more fundamental
of non-collegiate relationship. In other words, he goes against the grain of much content of the potty that valorizes the non-collegiate relationship. And then it instrues cognition, representation, conceptualization as a pernicious instrument of life. I think that is a terrible deal. That is politically catastrophic. It's a really good criticism. And so the first time you're playing a game, you're playing a game, you're playing a game,
you're playing a game, you're playing a game, you're playing a game, you're playing a game, And so the first thing you'll say is that once you see that, you don't need the dichotomy between, it's either concepts or either reason is purely contemplative and therefore it is kind of reactionary that is just about withdrawing from the world, seclude yourself in this world, pure ideation. Or reason is purely instrumental, it's just an instrument forgetting what you want but then it's governed by these pathologies pathologies that's like a rationality that's a that's a false dichotomy you can give a count of
rationality which is not neither photonic and no kind of niche and this is what we give So, you can specify thinking as a kind of doing, and it's the most fundamental thing of doing that we do. We do it all the time. And so, if we can understand how we're doing and what's going on, that will affect the really important consequences upon our ability to realize our purpose of our goals. And that's where we put it. The claim is that there's nothing about our experience, or there's nothing about the world that is
inherently refracting to understand it. There's nothing about the world that is inexplicable, unfathomable, etc, etc. Therefore, that means that if you understand something, you can change it. And I see that as a very necessary corrective to the whole papers of incapacity, inability, failure, debility, which are really prevalent rhetorical trope. but the law of contemporary commonality also.
Even in the low-key metaphysics, you get this kind of intensification. It's neither about intensification or disintensification. But then you get a sense that they're important, which are most important. With sellers, you can re-articulate, in terms of conceptual rationality, which understands it as being bundled with history and culture and language, but not simply this kind of, this kind of, on-putting form of non-national agencies.
It defends the autonomy of the potential, or anchoring it. And that I think is very important and it's politically very important. I think it needs to take up the time to market. It's a long term project. I want to articulate as far as your inferentials are going with the brain of accounts, social systems that you get into. It's a missing ring. It's clear to me that this is where this is the obvious necessary compromise something I'm exploring to.
Really what happened in the motion of things was not survived, but in the same period, there is been a place of no-med, no-med is to which we're afraid of. So, in versus way of doing it, there is a most particular animalisation. There is no problem with talking about the last thing that's said. Actually, there are many things that are very constituted as a very very or very very complex, and it includes extended complex. So, it is a deep insight, and it is there, it is an exchange of complex and a certain number of problems are there. But, not in that problem, it's an atmosphere in this,
So my first question for you is what is the concept in Satisfree? And the second question is also, we have a difference. We have a difference. We have a difference. We have a difference. We have a difference. We have a difference. We have a difference. We have a difference. We have a difference. We have a difference. We have a difference. Okay. So, some concepts are transient conceptual concepts. Concepts are basically, you know, they're predicable. However, he identifies concepts
as entrepreneurial, material, and physicists. Where the two questions are, you know, He thinks that concepts are material instances. Concept is material. In fact, he claimed there is that it's material inference that determines content and concept, so that formal inference is just in a second order, or in a meta-level extrapolation from relations amongst assertions.
concept of one of the servers. Now, the concept of the Persever's, there's two things, in one way, he has a thing about a fact. He gives an occurrence of, what he calls animal representation systems. So he thinks that animals can represent the world in conceptual form. He thinks he can characterize something as being this such. So he thinks what he calls, I don't know what, traditional systems,
they can pinpoint, they can refer to something and characterize it, and turn to a certain feature which allows him to track it and re-identify it. But this kind of conceptual form is not yet propositional. It's not propositional form because you're not predicating something of the subject. So he thinks that conceptual form and propositional form are distinct. You need to be able to put the world into something of conceptual form before you can generate propositional form, before you can predicate properties of particular instances.
So does that mean politics receive propositional form? Yes? Is that the concept of the preceding ? They're... You would say, well, I mean, again, they can't... They're not concepts, they're proto-concepts. Anything that has a referring and characterising function. is that's the basic kind of thing you need to be able to refer to and characterize salient features in the environment before you can do anything else. And our ability, obviously, to speak and say things about the world,
we're already going to presuppose this more rudimentary referring and characterize, which is representation. Concepts are not representational. Concepts are not representational because they are simply defined in terms of what he calls material inferences, where material inference is, for example, is it's raining, the streets will be white. The connection between brain and wet streets is not a logical connection. It's a connection that the world inculcates in us. It doesn't matter. I use it in organisms or human association.
They form associations between things and the world. So once you learn to connect two things like rain and wet streets, and the concept of rain is materially involved with the concept of wetness. So that as soon as you think brain, you think web. But the connection between you involves a automatic transition. Inference is not, it doesn't begin logic. So infinite, material difference is not logic.
It's simply something called an association. But that association provides the content that generates concepts. And then logic develops very long process when you develop resources to explain relations of connection, or disconnection or exclusion between thoughts or assertions, contentful thoughts or assertions. So material inference takes precedence over formal inference, and in fact formal inference presupposes.
logic presupposes meaning. There wouldn't be any logic if there was meaning. Meaning involves association. You know, they're exposed to the future of organ action. So my sensation is also fundamental. If you didn't have a nerve work, if you didn't have a nervous system, system, if you weren't hooked up to the world in the right way, you wouldn't be able to acquire concepts. They wouldn't have any content. And in order for them to have content, there has to be something you're looking at. The organism must be capable of registering and regularity to pass in the world.
Then this is not yet conceptual content, because conceptual content needs to be ruled out. And rules then are, in a way, they are, it's a self-consciousness, but to know, to understand what the concept of the brain is, is to understand why anything that is rained upon will be white. To understand the conditions under which something is rained upon won't be white, for instance, if someone is protecting it, etc.
And then that complicated understanding the systematic connections between these things is what it means to master the concept. You would never have the concept in the first place if you get them nervous or something. It's sort of context that says, I'm currently experiencing a little... the world doesn't cause us to propose it.
But there's somewhere in which it combines the basic... the basic platform upon which... because this can be important. In other words, you need to be on the nervous system and to be in the world. They need community. They need it to subject it. I think that's the reason why. That's what makes it better. Once you have a community of speakers, then you have a full group of conceptualization. And he's a great person, obviously, and trying to determine the scope of the results. I think much, I mean, I think he agrees with
for writing to see that it's a really significant over-the-the-art piece. many other things that we can see. I'm wondering how, if you can use this to point out of the issue, what question, how question the audience, is this a particular human construction, or is there some threshold in this past which the students are usually outlived and I think that's really important.
Well, I think... Nothing in this account is probably compatible with the methods of development of machine intelligence, machine communication. Although, this is not a classic kind of attribution function. This is a kind of function, but it's a normative function as opposed to causal functions. And classic computation, famously identifies functions.
Functions are identified in terms of their causal rules. Function is causally defined. And here, because of the influence of normativity, the function is normative. This is why the analogy is over with the games. And the problem then is that it's very difficult to come up with an algorithmic decomposition for normative function.
So, you know, the proprietories that govern any of the concepts we use, but also our social practices, are actually very difficult to break down into a series of discrete steps, which you could then program. So in this regard, this account is more of a more of a more efficient stuff. There's a lot of talk about rules, but the rules for sellers are not like a Turing machine.
Because they walk in a social context, an enormous context. So does that mean? It sounds like a concept. Yes, because I think the claim is that lots of the concepts we use can't simply be broken down into a... can't generate a algorithm for recipes, which is not to say that they are uncomputable.
This is not to say that they are uncomputable, or therefore it's going to be much of a company, and I think it's going to involve something like artificial life basically. Having a new needs, finding a... What Sam is saying is that thinking and sense they don't need to be distinguished. They can't simply be just the only problem of the process. Now, what he thinks of thinking is a useful sense. He doesn't think that thinking can be abstracted from sense. thinking machines. He thinks there's something in our thinking that is bound up for the present.
However, this means that you need to think about and articulate what is happening. And it means that the prospect of machine intelligence, or artificial intelligence, is just more complicated. Just vastly more complicated than perhaps And also because it involves a community that we can be intelligent on your own, meaning in a social context. So that means that you need a kind of complicated social organization. You want to be able to start exercise in your own. So that means it's simply that the kinds of machine intelligence in the chest and computer program premises are different.
More and more. This is not a defeatist effector. It's not a success. This is the development machine intelligence of all systems should be done. But it's, in a way, there's a I'm seeing some such chanting in sections of the language. Watching news or such such, which is a kind of an animal that we're talking about. Robert Brander, who's very important to myself, is a very interesting paper called Why It's also being a scale of cognitive science. So that's a focus variation. He's someone who's seen, who's seen,
artificial intelligence, you know, scientific understanding of what's involved in the world. Centralized, obviously, desirable, but, scientists have been hampered by philosophical preconceptive inheritance preconceptions from the tradition that are in everything that is. Yeah, I also want to know the problem of the sentence and the problem of the discussion
and the relationship between the two questions. And the concept, if you can understand it that way, and you see that particularly, the dream things, the idea of the concept of the relationship between the things, and the reality that the language and the habits can be able to make thoughts and relationship with the action. But how about the physical process? Because if the process is really established, and you said concepts come from the nervous system,
It means like when you're doing it, when you perceive the words, you perceive it based on our interests. Like we have this thought, and based on our interests, which is like it has a frame, like we call it cinema, and we like to just have to perceive that frame, that we know it from now. It's what the animals are supposed to do, like when they perceive things based on their interests. And I want to understand what you're saying here about this physical process, the relationship between the generics of time and also the potential of human births and the important human self.
Like this relationship between the collective forces and the relationship between the idea of the concept and this nervous system, I would say, because for me, the understanding that I have these concepts and the way this is what you want. And I love it. I wonder to understand the sound of this. Sorry for you sticking all over the place, but it's my issue. So, I see. Can you see that? So I'm going to watch it. um
they're not simply tools they're not simply instruments utilitarian to things which are tied to non-conceptual interests. In other words, the claim here, although thinking is a kind of doing, the kind of doing is specific and irreducible. The doing, what you're doing, what you're thinking, can be reduced to what you're doing or you're not thinking. Very simple. That's what I mean. people who say that is, are just wrong. And they don't really understand your thinking. So for instance, they claim that what you're doing when you're thinking can be explained in terms of something else,
something else, some kind of biological or physical compulsion is mistaken. Because thinking as, although it can be shaped by those kinds of extra problems of interests, It has its own transignation and autonomy. And that is shown by the fact that you can have second thoughts. You can reflect, you can ask yourself whether or not you are going to think what is your thinking.
Whether what you think is what you're going to think. And that capacity needs to be explained. You can't just say it doesn't exist. So in this regard, this is why thinking is not simply framing the world in terms of a set of pre-existing irrational interests. That's an instrumental rationality. It says all you're doing when you're thinking is you just want to get something done and... The sense of thinking is just a kind of analog of this non-national.
That's what this whole attempt denies. It denies a lot of people. Obviously, that's a common person in thinking or a kind of always a surprise that anyone would deny this, but it seems to be obvious that it's... However, it doesn't deny that thinking relies on irrational a true irrational impact on your own work. Thinking is something that evolved in the biological history, but then also in the very common ways of culture. The ability to think is a combination of both very peculiar biological questions.
There are apes, apes seem to have a certain kind of very interesting role to try this, unlike those of other kind of creatures. There's all sorts of incredible research about this. At the level of two years, however some of the ability to learn certain techniques can become a ratcheting effect. Where certain people in grade age learn how to do something, they can immediately, because of mimicry, because of imitation, So that skill is not only descendant of the population,
but then starts to evolve. It starts on a lot of translation. So I was in fact trying to non-linguistic point of occurrence played a role in us developing language and the other end of the process. So, but what happens is once thinking is on the scene, once the rationality is on the scene, you can't explain the way, you can't just say it's really this, something else is different. It evolves from things that are non-rational. or the other simply, the understanding of the world, but it's in addition.
In depth, I'm not sure if that's the first time you're afraid. Do you want me to say something about concepts and animation? Well, I'm always in my own serious questions, and also the people that . We're not going to see different questions . But yeah, . Sure. Yeah. Okay, well very good. Let me make one announcement before I'm going to end this. This was an ultimate event in the semester next week. Next Friday we're going to have something called
the stakes of parametricism, architecture and politics with Matthew Poole and Manuel Schwartzberg. So if you're all interested in architecture and in politics in terms of parametricism, we need to stop it, okay? So join me in . Thank you.