The relationship between science and materialism

Geoff said:
We aren't doing epistemology. This is ontology.
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I decline to define ontological physicalism. There must be an official definition, or are philosphers doing their usual dance number?

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Yes: The experience of seeing the chair is precisely the brain process.
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So we can eliminate "the experience of seeing a chair" altogether?

They are exactly the same?

Synonyms (brain process IS IDENTICAL TO experiences)?

Who needs that silly "folk psychology!"

Welcome to the world of eliminativism. You have defended materialism coherently. I cannot refute eliminative materialism. It is a coherent position.

:)

Geoff
 
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Any explanation that defines physicalism to be true turn physicalism into something resembling a religion.
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Emergentism doesn't define physicalism to be true. It provides a potential answer to some of these dilemmas and allows physicalism to be true. There is a difference. The fact that there are emergent properties in this universe is simply a fact. That is one reason why your proof fails. You can try again.

I didn;t define the terms.
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You set up this rule that you pull out any time anyone gives you an answer that you cannot counter -- Oh, no you can't use that because it defines physicalism to be true.

Are you going to have a go?
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Hell no. I'm trying to stay out of this debacle. I get to have a few good laughs over it and don't have to circle the drain when everyone trots out the same arguments because you are talking past each other.

I tried to play peacemaker early on until it just got silly. It has moved past silly, leapt over riduculous and is clawing past inane.

I only jump in when I think something has been overlooked.

I didn't define ANYTHING.
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Um, yes you did. You created this rule that physicalist explanations are out of bounds because they seem to define physicalism as the only possiblity. I'm sorry, man, but emergentism just is. We don't know for a fact that consciousness is an emergent property of neurons. We simply suspect it. But the existence of emergent properties means that your proof's use of causality is not exhaustive of the forms of causality. Therefore, you have not proven that physical explanations cannot in theory explain consciousness. The door is still open.

I have no idea what the final answer is. I have my guesses, but I could be wrong. I've been wrong plenty of times before. If you want to claim that you think it is more likely that neutral monism is correct, then that is fine with me. It is the claim that physical/material explanations are impossible that creates so much rancor. I'm afraid that you haven't accomplished that yet.

What option is that then?
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The counter-argument is all ready. Let her rip.

Oh, wait, I remember now. Geoff keeps claiming that he didn't post any definitions. Um, yeah, Geoff, you did. In fact that is what we have been arguing against.

One of those definitions if I remember was that subjective means that which is not observable by an outside observer. But, as Paul mentioned, you already defined calculation as a purely physical process. So that means that when we calculate in our heads, we are performing a purely physical process that is subjective. There can be any number of individual experiences of this, but the calculation that is physical is subjective by your definition. So there is something wrong with your definition of subjective or you should admit that some physical processes can be subjective. Or you can simply special plead that human calculation is completely different from computer calculation.
 
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But earlier you commented that eliminativism is mad, and isn't the definition of mad, in the sense that you are using it, illogical?
 
Jeremy said:
But earlier you commented that eliminativism is mad, and isn't the definition of mad, in the sense that you are using it, illogical?
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I think it's mad. Hammegk thinks it's mad. Lot's of other people don't really want to admit it is their position but it probably is. And a few people who are big names in "cognitive science" think it's a revolutionary new idea which is going to change the world.

What it is it NOT is illogical, and that is the reason why the people who believe it is true believe it is true. It is mad. But it is the only coherent way to defend physicalism, so people defend it anyway.
 
But what then do you mean by mad.

I had assumed that you meant it as illogical. As far as I know, the only other definitions are angry and mental illness (which I suppose would be ironic).
 
Wasp

You set up this rule that you pull out any time anyone gives you an answer that you cannot counter -- Oh, no you can't use that because it defines physicalism to be true.
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Wasp,

Imagine you are trying to explain evolution to a Christian. The Christian can't understand that he needs to look outside the Bible to realise the Bible isn't true. But every time you ask him to do this he keeps going back to the Bible. So you tell him that the only way you can meaningfully talk to him is if he accepts, at least in principle, that the Bible might be wrong. He doesn't like this. He says : every time I try to get you to understand the Truth you pull out this "catch all". You tell me that it's not OK to just accept the Bible is the word of God. That isn't fair! You've already decided the Bible isn't the word of God!

Substitute "physicalism" for "Bible" and you're the Christian:

"You set up this rule that you pull out any time anyone gives you an answer that you cannot counter -- Oh, no you can't use that because it defines Bible to be true."

That's a good rule, wasp. Let's keep it. :)

Geoff
 
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Geoff said:
So we can eliminate "the experience of seeing a chair" altogether?

They are exactly the same?

Synonyms (brain process IS IDENTICAL TO experiences)?

Who needs that silly "folk psychology!"

Welcome to the world of eliminativism. You have defended materialism coherently. I cannot refute eliminative materialism. It is a coherent position.
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That's nice. But, of course, there are other possibilities. The experience of seeing the chair could be a physical thing, but different from brain process. You just have to allow the possibility that it is a physical thing, so as not to beg the question.

Anyway, we could always eliminate the brain function and keep the experience. :D

~~ Paul
 
Jeremy said:
But what then do you mean by mad.
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It works in theory. In practice, only a person who wasn't thinking straight would actually believe it.

I had assumed that you meant it as illogical. As far as I know, the only other definitions are angry and mental illness (which I suppose would be ironic).
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No, it just seems like a fairly odd thing to do to claim that minds don't exist.
 
It works in theory. In practice, only a person who wasn't thinking straight would actually believe it.... No, it just seems like a fairly odd thing to do to claim that minds don't exist.
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To claim that minds are entirely the product of physical processes is not to say there is no mind. Like a computer, which you admit is entirely physical.
 
Again, no. We've already been through this. Just because someone uses physicalism as a basis does not mean that he or she cannot possibly see any other worldview. That is simply wrong. You really do not need to trot out the same tired argument that cannot possibly be correct or we would necessarily all believe the same way. If we were completely enmeshed in our worldviews with no possibility of seeing the world in any other way, then no advancement in science would ever occur. Everyone would be enmeshed in their paradigm. No paradigm shift could ever occur.

I can easily see things from a neutral monistic view. I have dabbled with various forms of monism for years. That I currently seek a natural explanation of consciousness simply means that I seek a natural explanation of consciousness. If that proves to be wrong, then it proves to be wrong. Simple as that.

Your constant whining that everyone who disagrees with you is a fundamentalist has worn so thin the quarks are showing.

Your job, as you have set your task since you insist that physical explanations of consciousness are impossible, is to prove that. You have not provided an adequate proof. You can continue trying or you can retract the absolutist claim that is impossible for physical explanations to work. Simply because physical explanations might possibly work does not mean that they will. It only means that it is a possibility.

Quit the patronizing fundie talk and perhaps we could make some progress. Deal with the issues at hand, not the rhetoric.
 
I get the sneaking suspicion that philosophers think they've done something quite clever when they say "See, you've just eliminated subjective experience by equating it to brain function." Ooh, really? Is that like eliminating computation by equating it to computer hardware executing programs? Or weather by equating it to atmospheric change?

Something has been eliminated, though: A source of obfuscation in the quest to understand how the mind works. Every single aspect of the mind that's tossed out to nonphysical subjective experience is an aspect that is being ignored.

~~ Paul
 
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"You set up this rule that you pull out any time anyone gives you an answer that you cannot counter -- Oh, no you can't use that because it defines Bible to be true."
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Oh yeah, that is the perfect analogy. A group of people who completely distort all meaning and a group who are trying to use rational principles to solve a very difficult problem. Yeah, we are exactly Bible-thumping fundamentalists. Sorry, it just doesn't work does it?

And yes, that is what you are doing -- acting the fundamentalist. You are the one creating this absolute that physicalism cannot be used, as your example above so lovingly demonstrates.

So how about if you stop projecting your own style of thinking on everyone else for the sake of progress?
 
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JustGeoff said:
Anyone want to provide me with a coherent set of definitions for:

Objective
Subjective
Physical
Mental
1st-person
3rd-person
Qualia
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This is why I am a behaviorist and a pragmatist. These questions are part of a prescientific vocabulary that is based on a cartesian dualism. There are any number of definitions...but frankly, complaining about these terms is a bit like complaining about phlogiston. (I know I am in the minority in my opinion, but you can ask Jeff Corey, the behaviorists are right).

Rather than these terms, try natural events (both public and private) and explanatory fictions. All the terms you have up there can be handled with just those. You'll have to learn a new vocabulary, but you will get used to no longer using "phlogiston"...
 
Hey, look at the Wikipedia definition of eliminative materialism:
Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a view in the philosophy of mind that argues for an absolute version of materialism with respect to mental entities and mental vocabulary. It principally argues that our common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology), which eliminativists view as a sort of unformalized theory, is not a viable conception on which to base scientific investigation. Eliminativists believe that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire and that behaviour and experience can only be adequately explained on the biological level. The most radical claims of eliminativism include the challenging of the existence of conscious mental states such as pains and visual perceptions.
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I'm perfectly happy to be called a moderate eliminativist. I don't see anything about denying subjective experience in there at all.

I feel so much better now.

~~ Paul
 
Yeah, the whole "emergentism" thing is really just a way of saying "we think it's all physical but we don't know all the rules yet". It is seen as non-eliminativist, but with enough knowledge it probably collapses into eliminativism.
 
What everyone here seems to be forgetting is that, historically speaking, radianism presupposes the ontological precursors to prevalist intentionology.

You can claim that the conscious experience of objective perception is, a priori, tactilistic. But in doing so, you are completely ignoring what Grimaldi established as the prechandrian imperative.

If I see an apple, then who's to say what that "I" was, or whether what we choose to call an apple is, without respect to a pre-determined symbol system, in any way independently real. To do so, one must appeal to what Krudenski termed "the definitivist fallacy".

I'm not saying that this denies any mentalistic substantiation to what is believed by a subject to be actual experience. But I must insist that there's no objective justification for giving this supposed experience any more atropic credibility -- that is to say "reality" -- than any other non-subjective metaprosthesis.
 
JustGeoff said:
NOTE: If you want to challenge this proof then you must challenge either the premises, the definitions or the reasoning. What you must not do is make some other sort of statement, which depends on an assumption that physicalism is true (thus assuming the proof fails before examining it), and claim that this means the proof is false. Any responses to this proof which take this form will be rejected on the grounds they they have nothing to do with the proof.
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This is my final try to communicate my thoughts to you on this subject.

You are saying that you can prove that "physicalism" is false.

In the proof that you posted you have defined two statements:

  • P1: the experience of an object
  • P2: the external object that causes the experience

Then you ask which one of these is physical. If we continue formalization, we get the two propositions:
  • A = "P1 is physical"
  • B = "P2 is physical".

Then you have the agreed premise: "P1 and P2 are not the same thing". Your proof assumes that we have to formalize this as "not (A and B)". This is the spot where your proof goes awry. Since this is the very thing that you want to proof: that it is impossible for both P1 and P2 to be physical. You are assumming your conclusion! Most of us agree with your premise but not the way how you formalize it.

A better way to formalize it would be to issue a new proposition:
  • C = "P1 and P2 are different objects".
Even though this is better is not good since propositional logic doesn't have enough expressive power to capture the details of concepts like that. However, for reasons that I tell later in this post I won't go through the trouble to use a more expressive formalism.

There are now eight different truth assignments. When listing them I use the notation T(A) to denote that A is true and F(A) to denote that it is false:
  • F(A), F(B), F(C): in this interpretation neither is physical so it immediately rules out physicalism.
  • F(A), T(B), F(C): this is the case (D) of your proof. It rules out physicalism since P1 is not physical.
  • T(A), F(B), F(C): this is the case (C) of your proof. It rules out physicalism since P2 is not physical.
  • T(A), T(B), F(C): this is the case that you have not addressed. That P1 and P2 are both physical but different objects.
  • F(A), F(B), T(C): here P1 is identical with P2 which was ruled out incoherent.
  • F(A), T(B), T(C): again, ruled out incoherent.
  • T(A), F(B), T(C): incoherent
  • T(A), T(B), T(C): incoherent

I don't claim to be able to prove that physicalism is true. I don't claim that I could prove any ism true or false at all. In fact, my position is completely opposite: it is not possible to prove anything outside mathematics. If you search for my old posts, you'll find that I've been telling this for long time to people who think they can.

The problem with proofs outside mathematics is that they depend on our initial assumptions and our way to formalize the statements. And there is no way to know that those assumptions and formalizations are correct. So, any attempt to prove something about the nature of reality using formal logic is doomed to be useless.
 
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