The language of illusion

We perceive our surroundings via our sight, hearing and other senses. In most situations, perception is a straightforward process. It's raining. We see that it's raining. We reason that we don't want to get wet so we grab our umbrella.

Mistaken conclusions are discoverable and correctable through the same processes of perception and reasoning. This includes mistakes we associate with the perceptual process itself which we identify as illusions.

In everyday language, we describe illusions by making a distinction between the way things appear and the way things are. When we see a pencil partially submerged in water, we say that the pencil looks bent but is actually straight. This useful distinction enables us to avoid any confusion when talking about illusions.

With illusions there is no "bent pencil" that we perceive in our minds (recall that introspection is not a kind of observation) or perceive in the world. The takeaway lesson is that appearances can be deceiving, not that the "bent pencil" has a ghostly existence of its own that we somehow perceive.

I'll finish with a fascinating example of the color phi phenomenon that manages to combine both the illusion of motion and time travel. In the experiment, a red spot is lit for 150ms and then turned off. A short distance away, and 50ms later, a green spot is lit for 150ms and then turned off. Surprisingly, the observers report seeing a red spot moving to the right, turning abruptly green at the half-way point (before the green spot is lit) and then moving to the final position before disappearing. [1]

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[1] "Consciousness Explained", p114, Daniel Dennett. The phi phenomenon is the illusion of movement which, for example, we experience when watching a movie consisting of rapidly changing static images.

A meeting of minds

Having tackled "pain" and "belief" it's time to move on to the big fish, the mind itself. As with the concepts of pain and belief, the concept of mind is a publicly communicable abstraction. It encompasses all the human capabilities that we observe in ourselves and others such as thinking, feeling, perceiving and desiring. Ludwig Wittgenstein captures the concept aptly when he says, "The human body is the best picture of the human soul". [1]

But, you may ask, how about when we introspect? Aren't we also privately observing our pains and beliefs and therefore our own minds? In a word, no. We feel pain and we have beliefs. As such, we can observe them in our everyday behavior. Once we observe and identify our pains and beliefs, we can subsequently reflect on them and examine them. It is from these kinds of everyday observations that we know that we, and others, have minds.

(A possible objection: What if we hide our pains or beliefs? Even if we do, they are still manifested in behavior although of a different kind (e.g., stoic, reserved or deceptive behavior). While hiding your headache pain or political beliefs makes them more difficult to detect, they are still observable in principle. And, importantly, you can easily observe your own behavior here, since it takes conscious effort to conceal what you think and feel.)

So the important thing to note is that introspection is not a kind of observation. Instead, introspection is an examination of one's thoughts or feelings that are observed in one's own behavior. Unfortunately, the belief that introspection is a kind of observation leads to the idea that our mind is a private theater [2] where we observe on the stage the characters of our inner life, such as pains and beliefs, desires and purposes. On this unfounded view, our mind is a ghost in a machine. [3]

It can be a difficult ghost to exorcise. In my next post, I'll look at a scientific experiment that highlights some pertinent issues around consciousness and the mind.

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[1] Philosophical Investigations, Part II, iv, Ludwig Wittgenstein.
[2] "The Concept of Mind", p222, Gilbert Ryle. Similarly, Daniel Dennett calls it the "Cartesian Theater" in "Consciousness Explained", p17.
[3] Gilbert Ryle calls this view the "dogma of the Ghost in the Machine" in "The Concept of Mind", p15.

Beyond belief

(A companion post to a thorny issue.)

What is a belief? Per the dictionary, it is the acceptance that something exists or is true. So, for example, you might believe that it is raining. One reason that beliefs are important is because they guide our everyday actions. So if you want to go outside, you might first grab an umbrella or raincoat. Or you might decide to stay inside until the rain stopped. Everyone from their early years, by observing and learning to identify that pattern of behavior in others and in themselves, becomes competent at using the word "belief" in their everyday communication.

Beyond this everyday usage, there are many philosophical, scientific and folk theories about what a belief (and the mind more generally) consists of, ranging from an immaterial substance through to identification with physical brain states. However, as with the concept of pain discussed previously, the concept of belief is a publicly communicable abstraction. Like Wittgenstein's beetle, whatever it is that "belief" ultimately refers to drops out of consideration as irrelevant in normal conversation.

Suppose it were discovered that our beliefs were the result of a tiny gnome in our heads that records what we see and reminds us about it when it matters. Such a discovery, while surprising (unless you read Terry Pratchett), wouldn't change the everyday meaning and usage of the word "belief" at all. We would still want to grab our umbrella when it's raining.

So what does this mean for theories of the mind? For one thing, it means that theorizers have almost limitless scope for creative exploration while still being able to retain compatibility with our everyday language concepts. For another, it means that theories of mind (in principle at least) will always be publicly communicable since they will expand on rather than replace our existing conceptual framework.

One notable example of this in philosophy is with the perennial question of free will. In ordinary usage, the concept of choice is the ability to select between alternatives. The concept exists because we commonly observe people conforming to that pattern of behavior and we have needed a way to refer to it. But how that abstract concept is actualized, while of philosophical and scientific interest, has no bearing on the existence of that behavioral pattern and its central importance in our everyday activities.

A thorny issue

How do we know what pain means? Well, we experience an unpleasant feeling when we are pricked by a thorn, so it presumably refers to those kinds of feelings. While that seems right, "pain" is not just a word that we use to refer to ourselves, we also apply it to others. But how do we know that others feel pain? We don't feel what others feel, so we must infer it from their behavior (e.g., when they groan or say "ouch" or report that they are in pain).

But why would we associate a feeling that we have with the behavior that others have? The reason is that we also observe our own behavior when we experience that feeling. We notice that our behavior, when pricked by a thorn, is the same as other people's behavior when they are pricked by a thorn. Thus, from a young age, we learn that "pain" is the word that we use to talk about those situations.

Of course we nonetheless also experience an unpleasant sensation associated with our own pain behavior. We understand that that sensation is causing our behavior, and the specific sensation we have when pricked by a thorn is what we mean by pain in that circumstance. However it is the publicly observable pain behavior that leads to the word "pain" appearing and being used in our everyday language.

The curious thing about this is that it doesn't actually matter what the feeling is. If others have a different feeling when they exhibit pain behavior or even have no feeling at all (assuming they still exhibit the same behavior, albeit like a robot or a philosophical zombie), the meaning and use of the word "pain" in our language would be exactly the same. Ludwig Wittgenstein discusses this with his beetle-in-a-box analogy and concludes with, "That is to say: if we construe the grammar of the expression of sensation on the model of 'object and designation' the object drops out of consideration as irrelevant." [1]

Later Wittgenstein says (in response to his interlocutor), "'Are you not really a behaviorist in disguise? Aren't you at bottom really saying that everything except human behavior is a fiction?' — If I do speak of a fiction, then it is of a grammatical fiction." [2]

What Wittgenstein is saying is that even though the sensation of pain (and other sensations) is real, our language does not, and cannot, depend on the subjective and private nature of those sensations. Rather our language depends solely on the publicly observable behavior that those sensations produce.

The concept of pain, then, is a publicly communicable abstraction whereas our painful sensations are particular instances of pain. The only way to meaningfully talk with other people about our sensations, to the extent that we can, is via an agreed language grounded in publicly observable phenomena.

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[1] Philosophical Investigations, §293.
[2] Philosophical Investigations, §307.