Author: Stevan Harnad

You can write a humorous book on laughable language laws, but not on anti-semitism, nor aboriginal rights, nor even on Franco-Canadian grievances and aspirations. Richler’s (now much-dated) book, though it contains some relevant truths and insights, and is no doubt driven by some genuine anguish on the part of the author, is, in the end, an exercise in superficial stereotyping, insensitivity and bad taste. Everything that is true in it could have been said in an uncompromising way without the gratuitous offensiveness (but then it wouldn’t have been good for laughs). But to keep it fun, most of the real core of the ethnic problems of Quebec would have had to be omitted. Perhaps a genuine outsider like Bill Bryson could have written about some of it in a detached, good-natured way. But clearly Mordechai Richler was not up to it. [And no, it does not help the book, nor the author’s understanding, that he cannot speak (only reads) French, hence can only banter with bar-buddies, one-sidedly.]

Yearning, daily,
impossibly,
to feel your presence.
Dreading the day
I can no longer feel
even your absence.

You’ve detoxified death
for me.
Your land was ever my land.
Whither you went
was where I ever meant
to follow.
Nowhere you were
was ever alien to me.
Nor, now,
is where you aren’t.
Alien now
is only here,
where you were,
without you.

All my life —
her life —
near or far
mostly far
wherever I was
I dwelt in her land
motherland
whatever I spoke
spoke in her tongue
mother tongue
my source and fulcrum
her life
gone now
stateless
speechless
jabbering poetastry
but what matters
is not that
what matters
is what is not
no
who is not
the meaning of life
you learn it
when it is no more

Verse: well-spoke banalities
sometimes animated
by heady rushes
of infectious affect

Only now,
that I’ve taken over your maternal duties
meeting your cats’ diurnal needs,
do I see how much that had been exacting
from your shrinking powers and days.
What was left was devoted
to not showing how your own daily needs
were mercilessly growing, unmet.

Nurture — less material than mental, moral —
was in your nature to give.
Not to every mortal, just a select subset:
your progeny,
your progeny’s progeny,
your proteges, your pupils,
your paramours,
your pets.
I was in this elite corps from my very beginning
till nearly your end.

My last fall from grace would perhaps have counted less,
because you had given me enough to sustain countless lifetimes
— but not the loss of yours.
That exceeded even your boundless powers.
And your sense — for once, so far from fact —
of having lost me: No number of lifetimes
could ever atone for having let you leave me
with that.

For me the mourning after
came close enough to nightfall
that I really feel no yearning
for yet another dawn.

But, had the darkness
befallen nearer daybreak,
would the photophilia
have spontaneously resumed?

Empty counterfactuals.

The answer’s in my nature
begot by
and beholden
to yours.
More to do
with meaning
and maternity
than melancholia.

And all of this I know
because I’m not the only one
who misses you so.

Everything hurts,
pleasure and pain.
Pleasure more,
because you’re not.
From my first breath,
hope meant you.
Now it’s just
ruthless awakenings.
Pain’s easier.
Already there.
But not about me.
Not about me.
To express
the ineffable:
It’s not about me.
Hope’s not a state.
It’s a mortal.
You here, I,
a fool,
thought:
It’s about me.
Now I know it’s not,
never was,
nor could have been
about me.
Nor would I ever
have wished it
otherwise.
Wishing I only now understand,
now it’s become unfulfillable,
because not about me.
The cats,
who so miss you, as I do,
knew all along,
and know it still,
that it was not about me.

Jim Stone: “Epiphenomenalism about mental properties isn’t necessarily false but I think the case against it is virtually overwhelming”

The only way to make a case against epiphenomenalism (construed as the innocent plaint that we do not seem to be able to give a causal explanation of how or why we feel) is to give a causal explanation of how and why we feel (without resorting to telekinesis, which is false).

JS: “I focus on qualia.”

I agree with you that “it’s silly to argue about words,” so allow me, for heuristic reasons, to substitute in all my quotes from you, below, my preferred, straightforward anglo-saxon term, “feelings,” understood by all, for the quaint neologism “qualia” favored by some philosophers. I think it helps forestall certain common forms of question-begging:

JS: “1. If [feelings] were black holes in causal space… we wouldn’t know they existed.”

Translation: If we didn’t feel, we wouldn’t feel. Agreed.

(Ontic variant: If there were no feelings, there would be no feelings. Agreed.)

JS: “Of course we do know [feelings] exist and it isn’t a matter of abductive reasoning or inference. We know that [feelings] exist because we are directly acquainted with them.”

I feel (when I’m feeling) therefore I feel (when I’m feeling). Agreed. We owe as much to Descartes (“sentio ergo sentitur“).

JS: “Direct acquaintance, on any plausible account, involves causal powers to affect the mind by the object with which we are so acquainted”

Agreed. I’m just waiting for the “plausible account” of how and why.

(I will let the more equivocal phrase “affect the mind” slip by, though it really just means that gazing at things makes me feel something, namely, what it feels like to see them. In other words, it is just the restatement of the unexplained correlation between functing and feeling. I have no problem with accepting the fact — since it’s obviously true — that the cause of my feeling is something that happens to, and happens in, my brain. But the explanatory gap is in explaining how and why that something that happens is a felt something, rather than just a functed something. The fact that the felt something does happen is not in dispute. Nor is it really in doubt that it is the brain that causes what would otherwise just be optical transduction to become, instead, or in addition, felt seeing, somehow. The part that is not only in doubt but certain is that no one has explained that “somehow” — i.e., how or why the optical transduction is caused to become felt seeing. Moreover, perhaps going a bit beyond what is certain, I add that there are good reasons to believe that it is not even possible to explain it, in the usual causal/functional way that everything else is explained, without resorting to telekinetic causation, which does not exist. The problem is already there in trying to explain how the brain causes feeling, and even more pressingly there in trying to explain how feeling causes doing. There would be no problem at all if all doing and doing-power remained exactly what they are, functionally, but there were no feeling, just unfelt functing.)

JS: “2. It seems perfectly evident that [feelings] play a substantial causal role in our lives.”

Feelings certainly play a substantial felt causal role in our lives. But I hope you will agree that a felt cause is not necessarily the same as a real cause.

It is also true that the (unproblematic) external objects and internal functional states that appear to be the (unexplained) causes of our feelings (via the brain) play a substantial causal role in our lives (felt and unfelt).

But it is the causal status and role of feelings qua feelings — rather than just as the side-effects and correlates of unproblematic external objects and internal functional states — that is under scrutiny here: How and why are they felt? Not whether they are felt to be causal (they are). Not even whether they are caused (they no doubt are, somehow). But how and why they are felt rather than just functed (to the same functional effect)?

JS: “on the face of things the causal role of [feelings] in our lives is is one of the phenomena an account of the mind ought to preserve.”

Indisputably.

But alas, this welcome account is faced with an awkward explanatory gap…

JS: “3. If [feelings] have no causal powers, they couldn’t have been selected for by evolution”.

So one would think.

So explain to me how the Blind Watchmaker (a pure functionalist, if there ever was one!) was able to select the Darwinian survival machines that felt, and reject the ones that only functed: Was he reading their minds? How? Why? (Evolution is surely as non-telepahic as it is non-telekinetic…)

Harnad, S. (2002) Turing Indistinguishability and the Blind Watchmaker. In: J. Fetzer (ed.) Evolving Consciousness. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp 3-18.

JS: “Still [feelings] could’ve been produced by evolution as a side effect of physical features that were selected for. But if that were so… we should expect [feelings] to be a hodgepodge…”

Feelings are reliably and systematically correlated with some adaptive functions. But it is not this correlation that is missing; it is its causal explanation.

Apples fall down, not up, reliably and systematically. Gravitation explains the correlation, causally. No such luck with feelings (without telekinesis).

JS: “Obviously what we get instead is… enormously informative about what’s going on in the world.”

Data are informative. But the burden is to explain why and how data should need to be felt, rather than just functed, in order to be informative. (Information is not a mental phenomenon; it is just data that reduce uncertainty, as in the input and processing of an adaptive robot that needs to do things in order to survive and reproduce. Hence in calling felt data “informative” we are usually just unwittingly smuggling in, unexplained, the felt component that we were supposed to be explaining!)

JS: “As this is what you would expect if [feelings] were selected for, and what you would not expect if they were not selected for, it’s probable that [feelings] were selected for. So they probably have causal powers.”

Probably indeed. (But we are not talking about their probability of being causal, but the probability of explaining their causality!)

So the only thing that’s left to do is to explain how and why feelings were selected for (and distinguished from unfelt functings): What was the functional advantage of felt functing over unfelt functing?

(You will notice that every functional advantage you name will come in two varieties, one felt and one unfelt. And you will never be able to say why the felt one was more adaptive than the unfelt one. And the reason you will be unable to do it is also clear. Because, without telekinesis, there is no purely functional advantage of a felt function over the very same function, minus the feeling.)

JS: “This isn’t meant to be a mathematical proof, but I take the causal efficacy of [feelings] to be as certain as anything there is in the philosophy of mind.”

The felt (i.e., subjective) causal efficacy of feelings, and their close correlation with objective functional efficacy is undisputed within and without philosophy of mind. What is in dispute is the efficacy of attempts to explain how and why we feel rather than just funct.

JS: “Certainly if an account of the mind entails epiphenomenalism, that is a pretty good reason to reject it.”

True or false, “epiphenomenalism” is empty, explanatorily. The “explanatory gap” is epistemic, not ontic: How and why do we feel rather than just funct?

Because they are ubiquitous and inescapable in our waking lives, and because they feel as if they are playing a causal role, it is very difficult for us to see that in reality our feelings are functionally superfluous (unless telekinesis is true — which it is not).

(We have a similar difficulty reasoning about the origins and adaptive function of language, because our brains are so deeply “language-prepared” that it is almost impossible for us to think of an object or state of affairs without “sub-titling” it with a verbal narrative.)

I think that Roger Lindsay‘s tentative attempts to close the explanatory gap, below, are based on inadvertently begging the question, by endowing feeling with a (telekinetic) causal power (unexplained) a priori. (The same mistake is made if it is “reasons” to which you give the causal power. For reasons — though they too are felt — need not be felt: they can be functed, as computations or even dynamics. That reasons are felt rather than just functed is just another example of the problem.) I think you are also underestimating the nature and causal power of computation, and probably of dynamics too.

RL: “your claims about the causal sufficiency of functs are certainly true of neonates [but this] decreases with age [and is] less obviously true of adults.”

I am afraid you may have missed my point, which was definitely about adults! The point is that the full causal/functional explanation is always sufficient to explain our performance and our performance capacity. The only thing it does not explain is how and why any of that functionality is felt.

RL: “I have just touched my nose… It is not likely that my action resulted… from some coincidentally pre-existing causal state… [i.e.] not from Humean causes but from voluntary performance on the basis of reasons… [e.g.] love, or hate, or anger or jealousy?”

Yes, the feeling that I do what I do because I “feel like” doing it — rather than because I am being buffeted about by underlying neurological causes — is the heart of the mind/body problem (hence also of the feeling/function problem, which is the very same problem, more transparently stated). And the lack of a causal explanation for feeling (given that telekinesis is false) is the basis of the explanatory gap.

Feelings themselves feel causal, but hardly rational, except in the sense that “My reason for doing it was that I felt like it!” If I say “I withdrew my hand from the fire because it hurt” I am not explaining why I removed my hand: the explanation of our nociceptive performance and capacity is based on the properties of fire and tissue, the evolutionary history of our species, the neurology of our sensorimotor systems, and our history of experience (including what we have seen and been told about the effects of fire). That’s all functing. The unexplained part is how and why pain feels like something.

By the way, a functional story similar to the one I told about why I withdrew my hand from the fire can also be told about why I pay my debts. I have reasons, of course, some historical some verbal. But the explanatory gap is explaining how and why that reasoning is felt rather than just functed.

RL: “Why are we aware of feelings?”

Here’s a good example of why it is much more revealing to re-cast the problem of “consciousness” (“awareness,” etc. etc.), i.e., the “mind/body” problem as the “feeling/function” problem:

That way it becomes obvious how your statement “Why are we aware of feelings?” is redundant: “Why do we feel feelings?” Isn’t that the same as “Why do we feel?” (“Unfelt feelings” are not only self-contradictory, but they reveal the redundancy and question-begging inherent in the usual way of putting it.)

RL: “so that we can move beyond funct determination”

It’s not about “determinacy” vs. “free will.” (In my opinion, that is a rather sterile question, especially when it turns out that the only way to flesh out “freedom” is by invoking randomness!)

The real issue is about the causal status of feeling: Except if telekinesis is true (which it isn’t). feelings have no independent causal power. They are merely (unexplained) correlates of the functing, which is the real causal power.

RL: “If I am aware of my anger, then it can be included in a calculus (let’s call it a rational calculation) that takes other factors into account, low-level functs can be over-ridden by more humane or longer-term considerations.”

“If I feel, then my feeling can be over-ridden.” Sure, and if you don’t feel, but rather just do the functing that needs to be done, then there’s neither feeling nor the need to “over-ride” it. If feeling angry means feeling inclined to hit someone, and you over-ride it, so you don’t hit, why not just over-ride the inclination to hit (functing), without bothering with the feeling either way?

In a nut-shell, this is how every attempt to assign an independent causal power to feeling (other than telekinesis, which is false) fares, when looked at carefully, and functionally. The feeling always turns out to be redundant, superfluous, and hence unexplained (though it is definitely there, correlated with the functing).

RL: “I guess you will respond that I am just proposing a higher-level funct scenario, and the rational calculation process could all be carried out just as well using a variable list with associated numerical indices.”

Yes, except you seem to be over-simplifying functing, reducing it to trivial digital computations: Functing can be computational as well as dynamic.

RL: “But the calculation involves the evaluation of motives, and whilst you can simulate my desire for sex, for example, by using a number, the size of a number won’t make the real me sign up for a dating agency.”

As I said, reducing it to numbers is a caricature but, yes, the functional basis of anger as well as desire is as insentient as digital computation. Yet that’s all there is to functing, and the accompanying feeling remains inexplicable.

RL: “Take pain as another example. A nuclear plant supervisor might ignore a symbolic hazard signal for all sorts of reasons, but if the hazard signal caused her pain that was proportional to the risk, she would need pretty good reasons not to take action.”

This is again just the anosognosia about the causal status of feelings: To increase the likelihood that the supervisor detects and responds to the hazard signal, increase the likelihood that the supervisor detects and responds to the hazard signal. Interposing another “signal” (pain), is just multiplying entities (and somewhat homuncular), with no explanatory gain. (The story is the same for pain itself, as a “signal.)

RL: “Feelings can be intrinsically motivating, awareness of feelings allows an agent to evaluate and sometimes to over-ride them.”

Translation: “Feelings can make you feel like doing something. Feeling that you feel like doing something can be over-ridden by feeling that you feel like not-doing something.”

Remove the redundant feeling of feelings, and also the superfluous feeling itself, and the functing of the doing or not-doing can do it all. Meanwhile, the accompanying feeling remains as mysterious and inexplicable as ever.

RL: “Might this provide a (non-humean) causal role for feeling”

Only at the cost of pretending that telekinesis is true after all…