Wezentrommel wrote:1. Some features of a thing are intrinsic to it. The mass of an object, for example, is intrinsic to it. What that means, roughly, is that it is not in virtue of a relation to anything else that a massive thing has its mass. By contrast, weight is not intrinsic since the weight of an object depends on the gravitational field it is in: a thing of invariant mass has different weights on the earth and on the moon. The relevant principle here is Newton's Second Law: F=ma. Weight is a force.
Suppose the object is a screwdriver. Its being a screwdriver is not intrinsic but relational: it is only in relation to an observer or user or fabricator that a screwdriver is a screwdriver. Of course, nothing can be a screwdriver unless it has certain intrinsic properties that fit it to play this functional role: one cannot make a screwdriver out of ice or spaghetti. Not even an Eskimo or an Italian could do it. But the property of being a screwdriver is not intrinsic to the object. It is an observer-relative feature. This is not to say that I can make a thing a screwdriver just by wishing it to be one or thinking it to be one. The point is that nothing is a screwdriver apart from a context of tools (ein Zeugzusammenhang as Heidegger would say) which refers necessarily to tool-users, purposive beings such as us.
As Searle puts it, the property of being a screwdriver is epistemically objective but ontologically subjective. (p. 10) Thus it is objectively true that the tool in my hand is a screwdriver, but its being a screwdriver necessarily involves a reference to a subject who uses it as such. Nothing is a screwdriver or a jackhammer or a modem intrinsically.
Here is a rough-and-ready test to determine whether a property is intrinsic or observer-relative: Could the property exist if there had never been any human beings or other sorts of sentient beings? (p. 11) The property of being a screwdriver could not exist (be instantiated) in a world in which there were no sentient beings. This ought to be obvious. A screwdriver is an artifact designed for the purpose of inserting screws by beings who make plans and have purposes. In a world without such purposive beings there would be no tools of any kind. There might be rocks, ponds, fires, and forests, but no paperweights, swimming holes, heaters, or fuel sources.
Wow. Talk about missing the point. Yes "function" is purely a construct of an analytic mind; there is no "function" in nature. Even a screwdriver does not have a "function" in it's noumenal being. It is an elongated object with a larger cylindrical haft at one end, and a narrow, usually metal, shaft terminating in a flattened taper. It can exist from the moment it takes its form in a factory or tool shop until it rusts apart in some junk yard somewhere a century or two hence without ever driving a screw. And it is not "less" a screwdriver in such case.
When we talk of a functional definition or reduction of consciousness we are NOT asserting that there is some intrinsic "function" in nature. We are asserting that human consciousness and intelligence can and will be "reduced" to a structured set of "functions" each of which will be understandable in terms of physically realizable information process and which collectively will have strong explanatory and predictive powers, and which functions will ultimately (when our understanding is complete, but increasingly more so as we augment and correct our functional models) map back to real material structures and processes we will find in the physical brain.
Functionalism is nothing more - and nothing less - than the assertion that the human mind, including reports of internal, purely subjective experiences, is scientifically comprehensible as the product of the likewise scientifically comprehensible physical brain.
Searle is analyzing an epistemology as if it were asserted as an ontology. Of course that doesn't work.
For a final check if the ultimate flaw in Searle's analysis, does a mitochondrian have a function in a cell? Ontologically, no - it just is; rather complex chemistry doing its thing. But epistemologically to minds who want to understand the cell, of course it does. So does the anterior cingulate have a function in the brain? How about to the mind?
So it seems that Searle is dead wrong and completely falsified in this instance. There are "functions" which properly and usefully describe the actions of parts of brains and minds. Those looking for a reason to assert an unbreachable mystery in the workings of minds and brains will have to find a better argument.
-- TWZ
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