Quote:
''There are a number of reasons why I feel that modern philosophy, even analytic philosophy, has gone astray - so far astray that I simply can't make use of their years and years of dedicated work, even when they would seem to be asking questions closely akin to mine.
The proliferation of modal logics in philosophy is a good illustration of one major reason: Modern philosophy doesn't enforce reductionism, or even strive for it.
Most philosophers, as one would expect from Sturgeon's Law, are not very good. Which means that they're not even close to the level of competence it takes to analyze mentalistic black boxes into cognitive algorithms. Reductionism is, in modern times, an unusual talent. Insights on the order of Pearl et. al.'s reduction of causality or Julian Barbour's reduction of time are rare.
So what these philosophers do instead, is "bounce" off the problem into a new modal logic: A logic with symbols that embody the mysterious, opaque, unopened black box. A logic with primitives like "possible" or "necessary", to mark the places where the philosopher's brain makes an internal function call to cognitive algorithms as yet unknown.
And then they publish it and say, "Look at how precisely I have defined my language!''
It's not difficult, folks.
The state of the brain is not chosen.
The non-chosen state of the brain determines thoughts and actions taken. Entailment is not choice.
''When it comes to the human brain, even the simplest of acts can be counter-intuitive and deceptively complicated. For example, try stretching your arm.
Nerves in the limb send messages back to your brain, but the subjective experience you have of stretching isn't due to these signals. The feeling that you willed your arm into motion, and the realisation that you moved it at all, are both the result of an area at the back of your brain called the posterior parietal cortex. This region helped to produce the intention to move, and predicted what the movement would feel like, all before you twitched a single muscle.''
Well, if you like, the description of choosing could be reduced to the motion of the quantum particles in the restaurant. But here's the thing, it would still be choosing. There would still be the particles that move together, walking in, sitting down, picking up the menu, considering the options, and telling the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".
The human brain, being of limited size, has already reduced reality to a symbolic collection of meaningful objects and events. And it manipulates these symbols to imagine what is likely to happen next, and to coordinate the body's actions to deal with internal and external events. The inference engine, in the left hemisphere, provides a verbal description of what is going on, explaining the brain to itself and to others, in a useful and meaningful way, using a vast collection of meaningful concepts, like "hunger", "restaurant", "menu", "choosing", "things that can happen", and "things that will happen".
While the state of the brain is affected by sensory data, it is also the case that the state of the world outside the brain is affected by what the brain chooses to do about what it sees and hears. There is an interaction between the two, the brain and the world, and each affects the state of the other.
The state of the brain is constantly changing, and it can change itself by its own deliberate actions. It can open a book or a newspaper and acquire new information. It can hop in a car and go grocery shopping, choosing what foods to buy, and noticing new items that the store has added.
In order for the brain to make sense of the world, and what it is able to do in it, it needs the notion of "reliable causation". "If I do A, then X will happen. And if I do B, then Y will happen", is the basis of its ability to control of what happens next. To accommodate multiple options, the brain also needs the notion of "possibilities", things that it "can" do whether it "will" do them or not.
These two notions, reliable causation and possibilities, are used together as the brain goes about its business of deciding what we will do. To set them at war with each other, to insist that only one of them may exist, undermines rational thought.
