A Conversation with David

Recently, I received an email from 'David,' asking whether I'd be open to continuing a small discussion we'd had in a thread on Edward Feser's blog. So, this thread is intended to facilitate that. If Gentle Reader has a pertinent question or comment, I have no objection the posting of them.

The converstaion with David was about "wholes" and "parts" and the relationships thereof ... and thus, indirectly, about the concept of 'emergence, belovéd of materialists ... and about "scientific explanations" ... and thus, indirectly about reason and logic and intentionality and rationality.

The first two (lengthy) posts I duplicate below are my comments directed to Mr Feser's original post. I think they're indirectly applicable to the conversation with David.

Ilíon wrote (commenting on E.Feser's post) --

On 'the problem of intentionality' and concepts and symbols --

'Symbols' are inherently meaningless entities (a physical or a non-physical "object") which minds use to stand for (i.e. symbolize) other entities. Among the entities for which a 'symbol' may stand are:
1) other symbols;
2) numbers;
3) logical operations;
4) concepts;
5) states (physical or otherwise);
6) objects (physical or otherwise);
7) pretty much anything at all.

A symbol's meaning is entirely ascribed; a symbol has no meaning apart from that which one or more minds have determined to conventionally attribute or impute to it. A symbol's "meaning" is a pretense by one or more minds; the "pointing to" of a symbol is not in the symbol, it is rather in the mind or minds which are agreed to use that symbol to point to that other entity (which may itself be meaningless).

Thus, two Summerian merchants may use cross-hatchings pressed into clay to symbolize how many sacks of grain the one shall trade to the other for how many goats. Thus, two modern businessmen may use electro-magnetic patterns to represent how many dollars (which are themselves merely symbols) the one shall trade to the other for how many machine parts, and which precise type(s) those machine part are to be.


"As John Searle has put it, the robot’s symbolic representations - like words, sentences, and symbols in general - have only derived intentionality, while human thought has original or intrinsic intentionality."

To say that symbols have "derived intentionality" is imprecise and easily misleading; symbols have "ascribed (or imputed) intentionality" -- all intentionality of a symbol is extrinsically ascribed or imputed to it. By a mind.


"The electrical processes and physical parts of the system [i.e. of the robot] would have had no meaning at all otherwise [than by the design of its builders]. By contrast, the thoughts of the designers themselves have meaning without anyone having to impart it to them. As John Searle has put it, the robot’s symbolic representations - like words, sentences, and symbols in general - have only derived intentionality, while human thought has original or intrinsic intentionality."

A robot may be designed to be a symbol manipulating machine (*), but that's the most it can do: manipulate inherently meaningless objects -- and only so long as the rules by which the manipulations are to be performed can *also* be represented symbolically.

And, every symbol which the robot is capabale of manipulating may itself but symbolize some other symbol. That is, there is no requirement that a robot's symbols symbolize ("point to") any actual meaning or even any actual physical object. There is no meaning in the robot, anywhere -- and the robot understands nothing, and never can understand anything.

In contrast, a thought or concept is not a symbol, but rather is intrinsically meaningful, and cannot by used as a symbol (**).

Now, we obligately use symbols to communicate our concepts/thoughts one to another. This is probably at the root of the difficulty so many have with fully grasping the truth that symbols are utterly meaningless.


(*) And, it seems to me, a machine which cannot manipulate symbols cannot rightly be called a 'robot.'

(**) One may choose to use the symbols one normally uses to stand for some concept to stand for some other concept, but the one concept itself is not standing for the other concept.

Ilíon wrote (commenting on E.Feser's post) --

On 'the problem of rationality' --

"Rather, we are able to go from one thought to another in accordance with the laws of logic. Now, it might seem that the robot of our example, and computers generally, can do the same thing insofar as we can program them to carry out mathematical operations and the like. But of course, we have had to program them to do this. We have had to assign a certain interpretation to the otherwise meaningless symbolic representations we have decided to count as the “premises” and “conclusion” of a given inference the machine is to carry out, and we have had to design its internal processes in such a way that there is an isomorphism between them and the patterns of reasoning studied by logicians. But no one has to assign meaning to our mental processes in order for them to count as logical."

The reason we can design and program a robot/computer such that we can use it to simulate a logical inference is because we can use meaningless symbols to represent not only objects or states or concepts but also to represent logical operations. If the last were impossible, then computers would be impossible.

Yet, the computer is always and only a machine designed for the manipulation of utterly meaningless symbols. The computer does not, and cannot, ratiocinate; it manipulates symbols.

A computer is but a glorified abacus, and symbol manipulation is not thought -- the difference between a robot or computer (which is to say, in both cases, a computer program) and a mind is not a difference of degree, but of kind. Symbol manipulation may be (and frequently is) used by human minds as an aid to clarity of thought, but it is not itself thought.

A computer is but a glorified abacus -- and no one in his right mind ever imagines that an abacus could ever think, or that one could ever be a mind.

Why then does anyone (asserting himself to be thinking clearly) imagine that a computer program could think or could be a mind, if only it were complex enough and/or running on a fast enough machine? Does the design of the physical machine, such that electro-magnetic patterns are used to represent the material beads of an abacus change the nature of symbol manipulation? Does the design of the physical machine, such that no person must be detailed to manually flip the virtual beads change the nature of symbol manipulation? Does the design of the physical machine, such that the sub-machine which flips the virtual beads can do so millions of times per second change the nature of symbol manipulation?


"Of the three, the problem of rationality seems to get the least attention from contemporary philosophers. Fodor himself thinks that this problem is the one contemporary philosophers have most plausibly been able to solve in a way that vindicates materialism, and that they have done so (contrary to what my statement of the problem suggests) precisely by thinking of rational thought processes as computational processes over formal symbols encoded in the brain."

They "solve" the problem with respect to materialism, and in materialism's favor, by wholly misrepresenting the problem, and generally by improperly/falsely conflating symbol manipulation with thought.

Flipping physical beads on an abacus, or flipping virtual beads in a computer's CPU, or the changing of electro-chemical states in the brains of human beings or other animals is not itself thought and cannot "give rise" to thought. But, such physical/material state change is all that materialism has to work with to "explain" all that exists, including thought and concepts.

David wrote --

Ed,
I enjoyed reading the post. For an average guy, there is much to ponder. Hope you take questions from average guys. If not Ilion (“Troy?” Or “ I the Lion?”) seems like a smart guy.

I can bring images to my mind. I can literally see in my mind’s eye my wife when she is not here. I can see her fair skin, blonde hair, her blue eyes, and can concentrate on her high Nordic cheek bones. I can willfully change the image of her from 19 when I married her to today at 41. I can purposefully make the picture of her sitting and reading her Bible or laughing at the stories of my day in business.

What is that image and how does it fit into the categories you mentioned? I’m not asking how the image is produced, but what is that image itself? It seems beyond material, even though I need my physical brain to produce the image.

Edward Feser wrote --

Hello David,

What exactly the image is is a big topic. My only point was that while it seems obviously immaterial on a modern, mechanistic conception of matter -- it doesn't seem like a complex arrangement of colorless, odorless, tasteless particles; we don't observe anything like that when we look in a guy's brain; etc. -- when we reject that conception of matter and think in hylemorphic terms the issue just isn't so clear.

Part of the problem here is that we moderns have a natural tendency to think of a material substance as a collection of basic parts and to think of everything true of it as somehow a truth about the arrangement of those parts. Hence we think: "I don't see how the atoms, or molecules, or neurons, or whatever all add up to a mental image." But that's just the wrong way to think about the issue from the get go. Part of the point of hylemorphism is that we need to break free of this "how does the whole arise out of the parts?" way of thinking.

Related to this, I suspect that many people symathetically encountering A-T for the first time unreflectively tend to maintain an essentially atomist understanding of matter and then think of a "substantial form" as something that gets added to the atoms or whatever. The atoms (or whatever we think of the smallest elements as being) are somehow the most fundamental thing about a material substance ontologically speaking, and anything else ahs to be either constrcuted out of them or added on from outside. But that too completely misses the point. From a hylmorphic point of view, my having a mental image, like my having a stomach and eyeballs, is no less ontologically fundamental than my being made up of atoms. Hence however we characterize "matter," it has to be consistent with that fact.

The bottom line is: Materialists are not only wrong to say that amtter is all that exists. They also don't even understand what matter itself is in the first place. Unfortunately, most moderns work with an essentially materialist cocneption of matter, which means most modern dualists don't understand what matter is either. If we don't see that hylemorphism is a radical challenge to what moderns tend to take for granted, we haven't understood it.

David wrote --

Thanks Prof. Feser for taking the time to answer my question. Thanks also to Ilion (given name or fan of Homer?) for the dry humor and honest response.

I must admit I have a hard time seeing the world as not the sum of its parts. I worked my way through a BS in Chemistry at the CSUF (an average student) because I thought that was a good way to understand the world and a promising way to make a living. When I fix my car or repair my leaking plumbing I think in terms of parts. I think also about this in terms of my theology--God as a Trinity and having certain characteristics.

Can you give me some examples of systems that can't be understood best as the sum of its parts or are best understood without thinking about the parts that make them up?

Forgive me if I sound simple.

Ilíon wrote --

David: "I must admit I have a hard time seeing the world as not the sum of its parts. ..."

One of the parts of a thing -- and which nearly everyone seems to go out of his way to overlook -- is the design or plan or "organizing principle" of the thing. In more A-T terms, this would be its 'form.'

Relatedly, another ignored or overlooked part of a thing is the process (or 'work') by which the various component parts of the thing came to be organized in the particular relationships which hold between them. In more A-T terms, this would probably be its 'efficient cause.'

I think that that silly aphorism, "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" is both a reflection of and a cause of or contributor to this habit of (and sometimes insistence upon) not seeing the immaterial parts of a physical thing.

For example, one may have all the material parts which might comprise a house or a car (or a single brick of that hypothetical house) and still not have a whole house or car (or brick). Or, one may have all the chemicals (down to the level of the exact individual atoms and molecules) which might (or formerly did) comprise an organism and still not have an organism, but rather herely a goo of chemicals (or a corpse).

One seemingly has all the parts comprising the thing -- to be precise, one has all the parts that are visible to a materialistic reductionist mindset -- and yet one does not have a whole house or car or brick or organism.

David wrote --

Thanks Ilion,

I think I understand your ideas. But, when I think of "parts" I also think of the properties they have. I put Sodium metal and Chlorine gas together in a flask and they order themselves as NaCl (table salt) because of the ionic properties of the atoms. So, the design principle was inherent in the properties that make the "parts."

This example doesn't work for a house which takes human forethought and effort to construct. Would you make a distinction between "natural" systems and "human" systems?

If I'm not using all the right terminology, just bear with me. I'm genuinely trying to understand.

Ilíon wrote --

David: "But, when I think of "parts" I also think of the properties they have. I put Sodium metal and Chlorine gas together in a flask and they order themselves as NaCl (table salt) because of the ionic properties of the atoms."

That's one explanation for the observed phenomenon; whether it's the truth of the matter ... well, God knows. We don't, and can't. Mind you, I'm not saying that it's not the truth of the matter, but only that we can't really know that it is the truth of the matter.

That's a weakness of scientific explanations; we rarely, if ever, know that a scientific explanation really is an explanation. And, we can't use science to separate the potentially true ones from the false ones.


Allow me an illustration --

I'm a computer programmer. I currently write PC programs using object-oriented languages; originally, I wrote mainframe programs using assembler. But, even then, there were multiple layers of abstraction between the work I did in writing programs (and in my understanding of what I was doing) and what *really* went on when one of my programs executed.

But, it's 2010 and I've moved on from those days. So, let us say that I have written some program you wish to use. I've given you a copy of it and I'm explaining to you how to use it.

So, I'll say something like, "When you click on this button, 'thus-and-such' will happen."

But, the truth of the matter is that that explanation has no relationship to what really happens, and it has little relationship or similarity to my own "internal" explanation of what happens. I, being the author of the program, and you, being the user of it, care about quite different abstractions or models of the program and what *really* goes on when it executes.

Suppose the buttons used in the program are instances of a button I custom wrote. There are a different ways I might have gone about doing this ... and you likely don't care. You likely don't care that I wrote the code for the button, and you're even less likely to care about the various ways I might have gone about doing so. But, suppose that you do care. How, merely by using the buttons, are you ever going to decide whether I created the button in this manner or that? The answer is, you can't differentiate unless you can swing some deeper level of analysis (say, getting a copy of the source code for the button).

Now, I didn't make a point of mentioning this to you ('cause I didn't deem it important to your use of the program), but you later notice that when you hover the mouse cursor over a button, its appearance changes; and, when you click a button, its appearance changes yet again.

Is this change of appearance of the buttons just "eye candy," or is it functional (and there are at least two modes in which this might be functional)? That is, is the change of appearance somehow necessary for the button to do what it does? Or, is it intended as a visual cue to the user, but strictly speaking is unnecessary to the program's functionality? Certainly, you might explain the behavior in any of these three ways, but which explanation is correct? And, how can you decide between them without, again, managing a deeper analysis than that available to you as a user of the program.


Now, in this program, some of the buttons perform one action when you click them and perform a different (though perhaps related) action when you hold down the shift-key and then click them.

Are these "shift-click" buttons instances of a second custom written button, or are they instances of the button I'd mentioned previously? From your perspective, they're a totally different type of button. But, are they really? And, how can you decide?

And, keep in mind, the descriptions I've been giving really have little, to no, relationship to what really goes on when the program is executed ... including something so basic as speaking of "clicking the button."


Scientific explanations of the world are analogous to the explanations of a program by its users. They may be descriptive, and they may be useful (one certainly hopes so), and some may be more useful than others. But, absent an ability to "get under the hood," so to speak, there is no way to know that they're the truth of the matter.


David: "This example doesn't work for a house which takes human forethought and effort to construct. Would you make a distinction between "natural" systems and "human" systems?"

It appears to us that natural systems or reactions (say, the formation of table salt, or the formation of ice crystals) "must happen" (or "just happen," as some materialists assert these days) given certain conditions. But, we can't know that to be the actual case; what we know is that we haven't observed otherwise and that it has been useful to us to assume it to be the case.

But, even if the reactions must happen ... why must they? Ultimately, is it really that the "rule" by which the reactions happen is itself something that just happened; or, ulimatly, is it that the "rule" really is a rule, that the rule was intended and was designed into the fabric of physical reality? That is, ultimately, are there only causes (as in cause-and-effect), or are there reasons (as in ground-and-consequent) for what happens?