John Searle // Seminar: "Perception and Intentionality"
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 มิ.ย. 2013
- John Searle at the University of Cologne
American Philosopher accepts Albertus Magnus Professorship 2013
John Searle is one of the most important philosophers of language of our time. As Albertus Magnus Professor, he will be holding lectures and a seminar on the themes of "Language and Social Ontology", "Mind and Brain" as well as "Perception and Intentionality" from 6th till 8th May, 2013 at the University of Cologne.
John Searle is the ninth personality of international repute to accept the Albertus Magnus Professorship established in 2005. With this invitation, the University of Cologne is also honouring the memory of the medieval polymath Albertus Magnus (1193 -- 1280), one of the intellectual fathers of the University of Cologne (founded in 1388), who oversaw the general studies of the Dominican Order. Professors who deal with questions of general importance relevant not only for fundamental science but also for current public debate in their research are invited to chair the Albertus Magnus Professorship.
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I'm not a philosopher, but I've been lecturing for over 30 years. This Searle is a man who knows his pedagogical craft. Note the timer when he reaches the moment before "the non-trivial question," and he puts down his water glass. You just get the feeling that he innately knows what a two-hour lecture feels like.
He is the most engaging lecturer at Cal. ♡♡♡
Searle rescued philosophy for me. Most of it seemed anachronistic or fanciful before I read Searle and started watching his lectures on TH-cam. Either one had to wade through 1000s of years of superseded thinking that was completely at odds with science before getting onto something relevant; or one had to read plainly idiotic views of humanity or states of affairs - arguments that consciousness doesn't exist or is an illusion, or arguments that consciousness is all that exists. Arguments that one cannot have objective knowledge and so on. None of this gelled with my experience of the world.
Searle cuts through the bullshit and sets out a plausible and useful framework for thinking about the world. It is not a science by any means, but it helps to make sense of science. I don't always agree with Searle, and I look to others to provide better explanations of some aspects of philosophy, but Searle seems to have the right idea and the best overview of philosophy. I'm grateful to Professor Searle for making philosophy comprehensible, sensible, and accessible. This seminar is quite hardcore, but comprehensible with some introductory reading for viewing.
I found the first part on the relation between presentation and object illuminating. And I enjoyed his description of the Bad Argument. I'm pausing at the one hour mark before the "difficult argument", and wanted to express my appreciation and gratitude before making a cup of coffee and continuing on.
Jayarava Attwood good points. Searle seems to have actual opinions of facts rather than the typical relativism we often find in philosophy lectures.
@009blush Searle doesn't dismiss hallucinatory cases. He simply says that the "bad argument" on which the representative realism relies commits a fallacy of ambiguity by using two senses of "aware": "aware" in good cases means one thing; "aware" in hallucinatory means another.
It was a great pleasure for me to welcome Amie Thomasson (University of Miami) to Trinity College earlier. She spoke about the truthmaker approach to ontological commitment in metaphysics. Afterwards we attended John Searle's (University of California) talk about consciousness as a problem in philosophy & neurobiology at Wolfson College, Cambridge. (Jason Wakefield, University of Cambridge).
Searle represents mainstream Anglo-American philosophy on Perception. This lecture gives us an excellent intro to his POV. Perception has been at the foundation of Epistemology and Metaphysics since Descartes. The core issues arise over and over again. Searle is a master of these defining issues.
By way of critique, C. S. Peirce’s work on these issues is worthy of consideration. Peirce advances a genuine alternative to Descartes’ break from Scholastism with the benefit of having learned from Darwin’s revolution. Peirce reframes the core set of Cartesian issues and provides an alternative way out of the problem set. He is an acute student of Kant and offers an alternate solution path from Kant’s starting-point. Peirce is the father of Semiotics (Sign Theory) which was revived by John Deely (Max Fish and many others) from the ‘70’s on. Take a look at Deely’s “Four Ages of Understanding” for a history of semiotics in the context of mainstream Western Philosophy - an excellent and informative read. Deely defines the semiotic turn from Cartesianism as Post-Modern philosophy. Peirce began that turn in America in the 1880’s How his work fell out of favor is another story
I see you know these things so I'll ask you something: how does Searle explains the moving light experiment that founded Gestalt Psychology? Thanks!
edit: I think he's answering my question ...
5:00 "cause I can't understand Hegel" well that explains a lot
Our background ability interprets our reality, perception may change with capacity. Illusion; thus, may be distorted to reality, responding to certain cues. On Higher level perception the depth can be achieved clearer as the hierarchy goes high to the top. Experience therefore offers depth perception seen through knowing i.e knowledge gives the power to interpret the world on it's reality. Thank you Professor John searle.
What's solipsistic about the notion that what you're aware of is nothing more than "sense datum" is its reductionist flattening of organic perception into mechanistic data processing. Our minds are not exposed directly to raw data, what we experience is how our brains engage with our body's interactions with its environment. Our organic senses interpret these interactions in multiple hierarchical stages, each building on the stage below to abstract raw physical sensations into increasingly high-level perceptual concepts. It is these active sub-concious processes that are the foundation of our concious experiences, not the raw sense data, nor the material world itself.
The crucial point that reductionists miss is that your concious recognition of things in the outside world is not merely a passive, stimulus-response reaction to your sensory perceptions. Your mental state is so integrated with your organic senses that it can subliminally affect how those lower level stages respond to physical sensations. Your mind is both perceiving and influencing your sensory perceptions continuously in a feedback loop that operates at the speed of thought.
actually the mere possibility of the "bad argument" shows that there is at least some truth in it: i can only reflect on my perception because i am aware of it.
also, at that moment, my reflection can be the primary "object" of my awareness, the intentional object being my idea/imagination of it. the idea will indexically, like someone at the seminar mentioned, refer to the object. the fact that the intentional object is not the same as the physical object yet there is a referential relationship between the 2 + they are both objects for the awareness (in two different ways) shows that the awareness of the object is not exhausted by perception.
perceiving something is only one way of being aware of it (and the diverse use of the word awareness doesn't seem to me as a coincidence of ambiguity)
his fallacy: i see/perceive the table AND i am aware of the table THEREFORE perception=awareness, or at least perception of an object=awareness of an object.
yet it's the awareness of an object that makes other cognitive operations possible without losing the object form sight so to say.
simply, when i see a table, then close my eyes and make a proposition about it, i am still talking about the table, not about my idea of the table yet in no way are proposition and the table the same thing.
the fact that he doesn't understand continental philosophy yet brags about it is kinda telling. he might actually learn something from those thinker's "starting with H", as he calls them.
Interesting how common it is to leave out the issue of action by analytic philosophers when dealing with perception; good to see the tide is changing with all the 4xE literature.
The distinction between ontologically subjective and ontologically objective is just crypto-dualism. And monist idealism and monist realism will likely reduce to the same thing if the nature of consciousness is ever resolved within either framework.
The argument was that we don’t “see” the representation of physical objects in our mind (as though they were separate from the objects they represent, distinct objects in themselves), but that the representation is really just the act of seeing itself, and what we really see isn’t the representation, but the physical object as it was caused to be seen by our organism (which was stimulated in such a way by a physical object containing within itself certain qualities which were just the type necessary to induce a certain type of experience, so that the experience itself is not “red” and the object itself is not “red”, but has qualities necessary for inducing the experience of redness). At least this is what I think the argument was.
We are not “aware of” the sensation of pressing our hand against a table, but that sensation just is our awareness of the table.
Touch table-> sensation->awareness
But sensation = awareness
So,
Touch table-> awareness
We are aware of the table as our sensation of the table, but we are not aware of the sensation of the table as though it were some separate object to be experienced apart from the table. And so our knowledge of the table is not mediated by sensation, but just IS that sensation.
I do not believe this makes the idea of an a priori structuring set irrelevant to perception, as he said in the lecture, because we still need “background capacities”, and to me this sounds like the mind interprets experience in such a way that our experience isn’t of the object directly, but only how we can’t help but structure the object through our own “background capacities”. But this is not to say we experience a representation, only that reality must in some way be interpreted, otherwise how on earth are we seeing?
I wonder how it is we really SEE the object, though. How does the mind even know there is something out there to begin with?
with a name like yours,I am not surprised your mind produces these thoughts.
Searle is right in NOT rejecting naive realism. And he supports a version related to it - direct realism, Gibson's version (ecological realism). Or at least he has said so in the past...
John Searle on Gibson and Direct Perception
And he continues to support direct realism. "You can't see the seeing."
Perception is driven by influences, these may be other people, but can also be data, laws, values, systems, school books, imagination, analysis, idealism, and/or intuition. This is not an exhaustive list as humanity is infinitely diverse like that.
Ultimately intent steers perception, as intent (and ones ability to keep to it, modify it or let it go) influences to what degree the other influences are allowed to influence, let alone whether it is considered a possible influence. Sorry if that sounds like wordplay, not my intent. This assumes information flows freely and effortlessly.
So true. Thanks
Cats have a wider field of vision than humans (about 200 degrees compared to 180 degrees of vision for humans). This greater peripheral vision aids cats in spotting the movement of prey while hunting. Since they are crepuscular (active during both dusk and dawn), their vision is adapted to aid in this behavior.
If we discriminate between primary and secondary senses (for example: vision, the I will believe it if I see it crowd, vision is then the primary sense), it is primary sense that will pre? define the potential field of perception (which also pre-defines if and what what other senses may or should come into play). it gets a little more complicated when the primary sense is to challenge the senses, as the perception field is not pre-determined. but save for this crowd, most people are comfortable to live by one sense above all else perception of our world today. For example, in the business world, the primary sense is profit and/or income. the rest are variables to play with or at least consider. Maybe.
Did anyone else notice a resonance with the Whiteheadian notions of 'causal efficacy' and 'presentational immediacy' in perceptual experience ?
I'm not a philosopher, but his whole argument against idealism seems completely circular to me. He already supposes the existence of the material object seen in "the good case" (for which there is no proof/argument for why he says the perception is intentional), and the non-existence of said object in the hallucinatory case (where, according to him, we're not intentionally aware of the object). I doubt we can be intentionally aware of anything actually. Anyway, I find this seminar completely unconvincing.
+meriadocbrandebouc Intentionality-with-an-s, i.e., intensionality, is different from intentionality.
Perception is driven by influences, these may be (relationships with) other people, but could also be data analysis, laws, values, systems, school books, imagination and/or intuition. This is not an exhaustive list as humanity is infinitely diverse like that.
Ultimately, intent steers perception, as intent (and ones ability to keep to it, modify it or let it go), influences to what degree the other senses are allowed to influence the otherwise rational mind, let alone whether it is considered a possible influence. Sorry if that sounds like wordplay, not my intent. This assumes information flows freely and effortlessly.
Related thought, what is freewill?
Freewill is the complete awareness of all one's senses and their possibilities.
?
Is there a transcript of this lecture anyone?
The more I learn, the more I (can) see.
The more I feel, the more I (can) experience what I (can) learn?
Vision is the magical sense for humanity, insofar 80% of the population is driven by this sense. 17% are audio-driven and 3% other. At least right now, it may not be permanently so throughout the course of humanity, but its what I see today. These are not exact figures:-), rather my intuitive most educated guesstimate based on a variety of factors. I'm sure this can be tested but I haven't found anything on the topic yet. Which is the sense that ultimately drives us (above all other senses)?
I don't see how Searles account is different from a representational or correspondence theory? I mean, I sort of see it, but it seems like a distinction without much of a difference.
It's so funny that he is wrong about Kant and his epistemology and also that he mixes up the notions of 'seeing something' and 'seeing it as that thing' when he talks about Kant. The case of hallucinations give only raise to skeptical doubts about the later, not the former and Kant and many other saw that. According to Kant we are all focused at things in themselfs, we are seeing them, but we see those only as our phenomena, which are constituted by the thing in themself and our senses. If he denies that, he can't even explain how something like a hallucination can occur. I really wonder how he can be so ignorant. His own few about direct realisms and intentionality is the position of Kant when he is talking about empirical objects - those are only appearances and not things in themself in a transcendental sense.
"I really wonder how he can be so ignorant": get over yourself.
I agree; I also wonder why he throws phenomenology out the window with such confidence when this stream of philosophy introduced intentionality in the first place. One really "bad" argument was stated by himself in the form of the Chinese Room. Also, causal intentionality has its problems.
@@benediktzoennchen I tend to agree. In my opinion intentionality is the fundamental principle of consciousness. Intentionality was introduced by Franz Brentano, who was not a phenomenologist himself. But even that is not totally true. Intentionality was well-known before that. Brentano just popularized it.
It sounds like he's saying there Is no interpretation going on you see things how they really are.
An interesting lecture, and I like the argument, nevertheless it captures the philosophical tradition in a rather shallow way. (Unfortunately a common thing among Anglo-Saxon philosophy.)
I mapped both intentionality and group agreement into an animated flowchart systems language that covers both ecology and economic exchange. Here is the playlist:
th-cam.com/video/gpaPgO0QDr0/w-d-xo.html
Years later the first questioner realized he didn't take default analytical paint me in the corner logical analyses first.
This whole video is just an idea in my mind. Sorry John, I win.
Brain in a vat, thanks for having me.
You are suffering from disjunctivitis, I think.
In 12:50
He tries a no-nonsense approach, but I think he fails to actually explain key points. Maybe I missed it but I can't figure out how he has dismissed mistaken, deceived, hallucinatory experiences. He kinda just does it a couple times in this lecture. He also claims the continuous sensory experiences and yet he can't explain how our mind wanders and attention drifts, while still being aware enough to "auto-drive" which I would gravitate toward saying our experiences, awareness and attention are extremely disjointed and even sometimes not coherently one. In fact, I need to draw from examples that I know. We make predictive models (consequently intentional representation?) so that I can judge the movement of cars while I am looking at houses and estimating their market value. My hands are definitely driving at the same time as my eyes are fixed on a house and my thoughts are weighing money on a scale. I need someone to convince me that my brain is always a collectively focus force on one conscious experience, instead of what I thought to be the case, the amalgam of many different processes combining to form what I perceive as one. Otherwise, I don't think I can follow much of this. Maybe I'm mistaken?
but even when you mind drifts its thinking using the language of sensory data, its using past memories of what we sense and processing it. those drifts may feel random but they are almost always triggered by some specific sensory information. granted that most of the time we don't comprehend the trigger and how its connected to the drifting thought most of the time, but the connection is there even if we are unaware of it.
As far as multiple processes goes yes your brain is capable of processing multiple separate and distinct thought processes simultaneously, but the conscious still can only focus on one at a time. think of a network router. it seems like its able to turn one connection into 4 or more, but what its really doing is switching very quickly between the four to make them appear to be simultaneously connected when in actuality only one is connected at any given moment. Our mind functions in this way in that it can quickly switch between thought processes but can only focus on one.
_but even when you mind drifts its thinking using the language of sensory data, its using past memories of what we sense and processing it._
You know this how?
_those drifts may feel random but they are almost always triggered by some specific sensory information. granted that most of the time we don't comprehend the trigger and how its connected to the drifting thought most of the time, but the connection is there even if we are unaware of it_
Wait. Didn't you just assert "almost always triggered by specific sensory information"? And then "most of the time we don't comprehend the trigger"? Well, which is it?
How are you determining "the connection is there" when you admit we aren't aware of it? How do you read something "we aren't aware of" to be definitively a connection between what "we don't comprehend" and the drifting thought? Our drifting thoughts are (somehow, magically) connected to something we don't comprehend?
_As far as multiple processes goes yes your brain is capable of processing multiple separate and distinct thought processes simultaneously, but the conscious still can only focus on one at a time. think of a network router_
I would submit this is a flawed analogy. Our brain processes don't appear to work as multithreading or multitasking technology processors. In fact, if you really want to push the computer analogy, I have a multiprocessor CPU with a separate multiprocessor GPU. Visual elements sent to my Display are completely detached from other processes being handled by my CPU. Even my "processor" is comprised of banks of smaller processors. Furthermore,
_it seems like its able to turn one connection into 4 or more, but what its really doing is switching very quickly between the four to make them appear to be simultaneously connected when in actuality only one is connected at any given moment_
This isn't the way routers retransmit packets. I worked as a Cisco Router Engineer for several years. I worked on switches, routers, and even bridges (way back in the days). Connections are virtual constructs serviced by buffer queues and eventually many individual interfaces. The router doesn't dynamically make "connections" very fast between networks.
_Our mind functions in this way in that it can quickly switch between thought processes but can only focus on one_
Where did you get this idea? Did you get this idea from working on multitasking computer kernel designs?
Have you seen discussions about the work scientists have conducted concerning split brain patients, experiments with various neurological diseases, disorders and accidents? They are quite interesting. There are plenty of sources, of various kinds, ranging from peer-reviewed journals, to popular science summaries, even many TH-cam videos that highlight discrepancies to those who claim consciousness is a unity. QualiaSoup has one of the most succinct summary of this topic, as well as the broader topic of Substance Dualism. There are some others who also do it too, they aren't hard to find, it's an interesting field, many people like to comment about it, and it has broad implications.
"Well, which is it?" both. you dream each nights, but don't know what you dream about, doesn't change the fact that you dream. We don't know what specific sensory information triggers drifting, but we know its sensory information
"You know this how?" you ask this multiple times. How did kant know what he knew, or any scientist for that matter? observations, try it some time.
"I have a multiprocessor CPU with a separate multiprocessor GPU." GPUs cannot work on their own, try running one without a motherboard/cpu and let me know how that goes. The GPU is totally dependant on and subject to the CPU.
" The router doesn't dynamically make "connections" very fast between networks." I didn't say between networks. The router switches between connections so instead of 4 simultaneous data streams, its one that gets switch very fast as stated before.
if only entertainment equaled philosophy..
When he pushes down on the table, his nerve endings in his hands, elbow and shoulder sends data to the brain where it is processed and compared with previous data over several decades and develops several possible conclusions that his brain then analyzes and then selects the conclusion most likely to be true. That’s not what he’s describing!
at ~1:05 "..the 350 year old Bad Argument."
14:02 lol
Um... if the starlight is reaching you now, then you CAN'T *know* that it ceased to exist 10 million years ago. You haven't received any information that tells you about its demise.
yes!
My head hurts
and we have to hear about it? take a pill.
So far, you can only understand consciousness through Leibniz
If anyone wants to understand consciousness, there is IMHO only one way,
that being through Plato-Leibniz, because only Plato has the universe's singular
Perceiver, and perception must be from a singular point. So from the top
point, topdown, with nothing behind it, The One (Mind).
Continuing, Leibniz has what seems at first to be an overly complicated explanation of perception
and consciousness, but I go along with him because Leibniz's universe is inside of Plato's,
where all causation, including perception and consciousness, is topdown from the top (Mind
with a capital M). So our own minds (small m) are puppets of Mind (the One, capital M).
Thus Mind (the One, the singular point that is monarch of the universe) controls all
cybernetically.
Thus when we "see" something in our minds (small m), it is actually a report of what
Mind sees, the universe of other monads with their individual perceptions,
but from our own perspectives. The report is given to us as an ordered sequence, a series of
updates to our perceptions, of the universe of monads, since we ourselves, necessarily
being individuals, cannot see (monads are windowless) be directly influenced by our environment. And time is not
a variable in plato's tmeless, spaceless Mind. Each update is like a separate frame of a movie
but like a movie we experience our perceptions as if continuous and from our own eyes.
Moreover, because of plato's topdown, cybernetic causation by thought, our minds play our
brains like a violin, not the reverse. Dennett and others who view causation as bottom up
from the brain to mind, have got it backwards. Our minds play our brains like
a violin.
Accordingly, when (as caused by Mind) our brains, in perception send sensory nerve signals
from our senses, Mind (the only operator) converts these physical sensory signals
into mental experiences by perceving them and transmitting them back to our individual
minds in the above movie-like process.
These are called perceptions. But perceptions are only made conscious by our individual
minds indirectly reflecting on them, that is to say, by thinking them--intending them.
Leibniz called this action apperception. Apperception is awareness or consciousness.
Consciousness is thus experiences which are thought on.
Beware of trying to understand Leibniz from the Stanford site on Leibniz, which
refuses to include Mind (capital M) in its explanations of Leibniz..
Dr. Roger B Clough NIST (retired, 2000).
See my Leibniz site: rclough@verizon.academia.edu/RogerClough
For personal messages use rclough@verizon.net
tltr (too long to read). Atavistic too.
I am all that exists. I am God. Hello, now you know what I look like. Have a good day.
If you are indeed all that exists then why bother getting acknowledgement from us unworthy illusions? ;-)
@@Baskerville1000 There's no contradiction here: if he's all that exists, then he does care about relationships with illusions, otherwise why should he have created the world? Getting acknowledgement is another form of relationship, just as eating, drinking, emotions, sex, thinking, etc. (because you need illusions in all cases)
Haha, you are a very funny illusion. :)
Correct me if I’m off base, but isn’t philosophical speculation about how perception works unnecessary and useless, since science will eventually give us the answer?
That is an aspect and any scientist will question results.Scientist will never admit their processes are a philosophical approach since theoretical science doesn't fall into the pureview of experimental science.,
I like turtles....
Guggenheim was not a painter
He meant Paul Gauguin
I can't believe Searle's charlatanism and general obfuscation, giving philosophy a bad bame; did I say "giving"?; as if it didn't already have it? Yankee belligerence, if I'm not mistaken...
***** " If for no other reason because you don't understand what ad hominem is." Please explain?
Of course I was merely being provocative, no doubt he's a fine fellow, though he has the usual American cowboy approach and attitude - that's a different bit of provocativeness :). - It's the way they like to be seen as common sense guys, dealing with something (philosophy) that defies all common sense. Bound to fail, as science itself makes obvious.
But also, the classic idealist/realist dilemma that he gives - when I look at my hand, how do I know if it really is a hand and not just an hallucination (or words to that effect) - seems to be the wrong place to begin because it's circular; the hand is presupposed, negating the dilemma. That seems obfuscatory, though of course it isn't just him doing it.
I got the impression that the entire lecture was based on the hand example, as the classic dilemma between idealism and realism which underpins all of epistemology and is no more resolved now than it ever was. The "bad" argument he refers to throughout, is the idealist one ("we can never know objects because all we have is sense data" etc).
His own resolution to this dilemma, which he presents towards the end, to his credit, with considerable reservation, is just to introduce what is basically a hedging mechanism, a hierarchy of sense data. Which seems a bit disappointing, considering we're talking about life, the universe and everything here.
lawrence mcdonell Good point. The hierarchy thing is fine... but all levels of the hierarchy arise within the 'dream-space' that constitutes the environment that constitutes our experience. Any 'hand' appears within that space. The assertion that there is a 'real hand' outside that 'dream-space' is unprovable, unreachable... where would that 'real hand' be? Try and point to it! And if you end up pointing to your head... well, where is your 'real head'?
So, Searle's discussion and ideas are great, but they effectively assume a root underlying, when it would be better to say that this stuff is enfolded into our 'dream-space' somehow. Regardless, the 'dream-space' is all we will ever experience, and all our thoughts about something external to it will also only ever occur there.
It doesn't matter that "when we cover our eyes the images disappear"; this doesn't prove anything about an outside world. In fact, one can have the experience of still seeing with eyes closed or in the dark, and it seems identical to the 'real experience' (although investigation shows it to be different). When Searle says "he's never had a hallucination in his life", he is wrong. He is in fact doing almost nothing but hallucinating, with minimal inspiration or adjustment from "the senses" at best:
See here for examples:
www.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/comments/2kvdfc/darkroom_vision_chef_hats_dreams/
Triumphant George
Yes, Searle's effectively assuming a "root underlying"; in other words, a hierarchical root ...
but we can't have recourse to an explanation by way of "dream-space" because that reintroduces the dilemma of "how to tell the difference between the dream and the reality", which we set out to resolve. A dream is only a dream in comparison with something real. But that is converse as well, so how do tell if something is a dream, not real?
The Idealist at least allows for an exact answer to that, whereas the Realist, by refusing to accept the finality of his own logic, may be the bigger dreamer by having faith that the "world" will somehow apprise him of the truth, or at least, the facts. Of course, I won't try to define: truth, knowledge, the world, the dream, or reality ...
Mensplaining...
Explaining.