The relationship between science and materialism

Piggy has an important point, although this still leaves dualism on the table. As for LW's logic, we clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing, depending on the author, and this multireferential, multidimensional machinic catalysis. The symmetry of scale, the transversality: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded middle and reinforce us in our dismissal of the ontological binarism we criticised previously.

~~ Paul
 
Jeremy said:
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.
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The computer is entirely physical. It has no mind.

Actually, you should be careful to distinguish between "is" and "is the product of". These are very different claims.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Yes: The experience of seeing the chair is precisely the brain process. If you will not accept this or some other such explanation as a possible explanation, then you are assuming that the experience of seeing the chair is nonphysical, and therefore you are begging the question.

~~ Paul
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All through this thread people have been assuming THEIR conclusions, whilst accusing me of doing the same even though I have not done it even once!

It's not that I won't accept this as a possible explanation. It is that this so-called "explanation" isn't an explanation - it is eliminitavism. Eliminating something is not the same as explaining it. I don't give a monkey's nuts what you eventually end up defining "physical" to mean. Unless, that is, you define it to mean "everything" in which case you have quite literally assumed your conclusion.

Basically, every time you accuse me of "begging the question" what in fact has happened is that you want to get away with doing exactly that yourself. Unless I allow you a starting position which allows for no possibility of a non-physicalist conclusion, you accuse me of "begging the question"! Who is really "begging the question"? You, Paul. Not me.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
I decline to define ontological physicalism. There must be an official definition, or are philosphers doing their usual dance number?

~~ Paul
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The "official definition" is "Physical reality is the only reality." If you won't accept this definition and won't define it as something else then it logically follows that it is impossible for me to refute it. I cannot knock down a non-existent target.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
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.
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This is a new one. Definately original.

You just have to allow the possibility that it is a physical thing, so as not to beg the question.
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I have done. I don't know why you think I haven't. All you have to do is provide a definition of physical which covers "the experience of seeing a chair", without doing one of the following things:

a) Defining the brain processes to be IDENTICAL to the chair
b) Defining "everything which exists" to be physical

(a) is eliminitivism and (b) is defining your conclusion to be correct.

So far, you haven't offered a definition of physical which satisfies this critieria. See, no question-begging from this end.
 
Ichneumonwasp said:
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.
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You appear to be unable to conduct this debate without using physicalism as the basis of your argument.
 
Geoff - quickest way out of this is to define your "neutral monism" in the same manner as you did the P1, P2 example.

Then people can see if it is at least logically coherent.
 
Ichneumonwasp said:
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?
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It works perfectly. The fact that you can't see it just confirms my accusations are valid. You are now claiming that your Bible is better than their Bible. There is nothing rational about defining your conclusion to be true.
 
LW said:
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.
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I am saying that if anybody tries to give me a coherent set of definitions for the words then I can use them to prove that their version of physicalism must be false. The only case in which this is not true is if that person fails to define any of the "mental" things at all, or defines them to be identical to physical things - and therefore unneccesary terms.

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
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Those terms were chosen by Paul. Let's retrace our steps. I asked Paul whether he understood the difference between two different senses of "physical" that physicalists like to use.

1) The experience of seeing an object
2) the external (mind-independent) thing which is the (distal) cause of 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.
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OK, I understand the objection. Looks like I need the physcalists to define physical for me.


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.
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Ah, but there are three, not two things that you want to include of the list of objects.

Thing 1: The external (mind-independent) cause of the experience of a chair
Thing 2: The brain process
Thing 3: The experience of seeing a chair.

I never mentioned (thing 2) in my proof. If you introduce (thing 2), then claim it is identical to (thing 3) then you are an eliminativist. If you say they are not identical, then I can construct a new proof.

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.
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You can prove, given a set of definitions and pure logic, that the definitions are a coherent set or an incoherent set. At the end all you have done is prove whether or not somebody is using a set of terms which are self-contradictory or not. My claim is that all non-eliminativist physicalists are using a set of self-contradictory terms to talk about reality. It is only in this sense that I can prove their position is incoherent. And I already admitted that I cannot prove that eliminativism is incoherent.
 
JustGeoff said:
I am saying that if anybody tries to give me a coherent set of definitions for the words then I can use them to prove that physicalism must be false. The only case in which this is not true is if that person fails to define any of the "mental" things at all, or defines them to be identical to physical things - and therefore unneccesary terms.
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The terms themselves are dualistic. You are assuming your conclusion. One cannot use inherently dualistic terms to support a monism (John. B. Watson tried, and failed, within behaviorism, as one example); therefore, your use of them to prove physicalism false is a foregone conclusion.

It's an understandable mistake, because it is the language we are accustomed to using, but it is a non-problem.
 
Mercutio said:
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.
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Well, all except "qualia" may be. And actually those terms predate even Descartes.

But your point is quite interesting with respect to the original point of this thread. You are saying that in order to answer this problem (which is philosophical, with wide-reaching implications) you want to use "post-scientific vocabulary" only. In effect that means "materialistic vocabulary only", in which case you are confirming the accusation made in the opening post. You want to use the language of scientific materialism to solve a philosophical problem.

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).
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That is just scientism in action. "Anything which is meaningless outside the vocabulary of scientific materialism is completely meaningless." You are defending the position of the Churchland's : we must eliminate the "non-scientific" (= "non-materialistic") vocabulary.
 
Geoff said:
Basically, every time you accuse me of "begging the question" what in fact has happened is that you want to get away with doing exactly that yourself. Unless I allow you a starting position which allows for no possibility of a non-physicalist conclusion, you accuse me of "begging the question"! Who is really "begging the question"? You, Paul. Not me.
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Okay, I'll take a deep breath here.

So that neither of us begs the question, the proof has to cover multiple cases, as you are trying to do. The problem is that we don't agree with your formulation of one of the cases. To fix it, you suddenly introduced brain processes in between the chair and the experience of the chair.

This is a new one. Definately original.
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It's not logically impossible that brain processes and subjective experience are two different physical things.

But perhaps it doesn't matter. If all you are doing is showing that one path leads to some sort of monism where things aren't "physical," and another path leads to some sort of monism where everything is "physical," then I'll just stipulate that your proof is valid. After all, there are no other choices. I was somehow operating under the delusion that you were going to prove that neutral monism must be the answer.

This brings us to eliminative materialism. Poking around a bit, I find definitions that are entirely reasonable. They don't even appear to define eliminativism as an ontological position, but just address the question of folk psychology terms. Is there supposed to be something more to it, or is this going to be a situation where people accuse me of "the absurdity of denying subjective experience" when that's not what eliminativism does?

~~ Paul
 
JustGeoff said:
...snip...

That is just scientism in action. "Anything which is meaningless outside the vocabulary of scientific materialism is completely meaningless." You are defending the position of the Churchland's : we must eliminate the "non-scientific" (= "non-materialistic") vocabulary.
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Or another way of looking at it is to say we should adapt our vocabulary to match the evidence rather then trying to adapt the evidence to our vocabulary.

(ETA)

And by that (just as an example of the type of thing I mean) it could just be that our word "mind" describes something that just doesn't exist (as it is defined), much like as our knowledge of the world increased we realised the word unicorn describes something that doesn't exist (as it is defined).
 
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Geoff said:
But your point is quite interesting with respect to the original point of this thread. You are saying that in order to answer this problem (which is philosophical, with wide-reaching implications) you want to use "post-scientific vocabulary" only. In effect that means "materialistic vocabulary only", in which case you are confirming the accusation made in the opening post. You want to use the language of scientific materialism to solve a philosophical problem.
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What do you mean when you say it's a "philosophical problem"? It may be a problem that philosophers have tackled, yet it may have no philosophical solution, as I suspect it does not. The solution may lie in having the patience to see what scientists uncover.

~~ Paul
 
Darat said:
And by that (just as an example of the type of thing I mean) it could just be that our word "mind" describes something that just doesn't exist (as it is defined), much like as our knowledge of the world increased we realised the word unicorn describes something that doesn't exist (as it is defined).
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This is almost surely the case, since the definition of mind is as squirmy as a box of frogs.

~~ Paul
 
Darat said:
Geoff - quickest way out of this is to define your "neutral monism" in the same manner as you did the P1, P2 example.

Then people can see if it is at least logically coherent.
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I don't think that would be a quick way out. I think it would additionally complicate things. I may do it later.
 
JustGeoff said:
Well, all except "qualia" may be. And actually those terms predate even Descartes.

But your point is quite interesting with respect to the original point of this thread. You are saying that in order to answer this problem (which is philosophical, with wide-reaching implications) you want to use "post-scientific vocabulary" only. In effect that means "materialistic vocabulary only", in which case you are confirming the accusation made in the opening post. You want to use the language of scientific materialism to solve a philosophical problem.
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No, you are quite mistaken here. I am not a materialist, and in fact the materialist vocabulary you are trying to put in my mouth is a dualistic vocabulary. You are as much a victim of this problem as those you are trying to teach here.
That is just scientism in action. "Anything which is meaningless outside the vocabulary of scientific materialism is completely meaningless." You are defending the position of the Churchland's : we must eliminate the "non-scientific" (= "non-materialistic") vocabulary.
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No. You are seeing what you want to see, and not what I am saying. It is, once again, understandable--you are unable to see past your assumptions because you are constrained by the language you have chosen.
 
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