The relationship between science and materialism

JustGeoff said:
That's because there aren't any other words for me to use, Merc.
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Well...except that there are. I had asked (admittedly light-heartedly) you to describe my view; you chose not to, which is no big deal. But to now assert that there are no other words for you to use...no, you do not understand my position.
My "IS" doesn't serve the same function. There is no dualism in my system. The dualism exists in the world of experience and the world of language. So I can still use that dualism when I am using language to describe our everyday experience of the world. What REALLY exists is the "noumenal" neutral entity - not mind or matter.
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Thank you for illustrating my point You say the dualism exists in the world of experience. This is your assumption, not any sort of neutral view. The difference between private and public events could just as easily be seen as a simple difference in number of observers. No "mental" and "physical", but merely what is observable by only one person, or by many.

You don't have to agree with that view...I present it in order to show that this "dualism" you say "exists in the world of experience" does not have to lead to your conclusions.
Their "IS" is problematic because of the way they have defined "matter" to be the "external world". It is THIS which sets up the dualism, not anything that I have done. But my position is immune to this problem for the following reason:

I haven't got the materialist's concept of matter.
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But your language here is so full of dualistic languge and assumptions...the concept of matter you have is, it seems, the same one that everybody--dualists and materialists alike--shares. As I have said, the very question you are asking is flawed; the problems with dualism are at a different level than your answer addresses.
So not only is there no "mind-stuff", there isn't any "material stuff" either. No dualism. No implied dualism. In other words the problem isn't ME unwittingly being dualistic - it is the materialists themselves. That is why Dennett calls some of them "Cartesian Materialists".
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Again, I am forced to conclude that the very question you ask, the very problem you identify, is based on an incoherent, tacitly dualistic world view.
 
Mercutio said:
Again, I am forced to conclude that the very question you ask, the very problem you identify, is based on an incoherent, tacitly dualistic world view.
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I'll repeat something now that I put in my last post. If you are going to define "mind" and "matter" at all then you have to define them in terms of the world of experience. I have done this. I keep telling Paul not to be scared of using dualistic vocabulary. I'm using it myself. But whenever I use those words I use them in exactly the same way that an idealist with respect to the physical world uses them. Note : NOT an ontological idealist. But the whole of that description is NOT a description of "what really exists". Unlike Hammegk, I do not make the extra jump and declare that simply because our entire experiences of the world come to us via our minds that this means that minds are the only things which exist. I also take the materialists observation that "everything we observe is physical". Sure is. But I do not make the materialists extra step of then claiming that "everything which exists is physical" because this is no more right than idealism. Most definately of all I do NOT make the double extra-step of claiming that BOTH of them are "fundamental existence".

My language for describing our experiences of reality doesn't imply my ontological position. That is why I am not an ontological idealist.

Clarification:

Ontological idealism is the opposite of ontological materialism and this is not my position.

Idealism with respect to physical objects is a claim that objects exist in minds, which is true of my system. However, since neither objects nor minds are the ultimate reality, it's not ontological idealism. "mind" and "matter" are parts of descriptions of our experiences of reality. They are not "things in themselves".
 
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Ichneumonwasp said:
Are you now admitting that feelings are physical computations?
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Nope.

"Feelings", just like all the other concepts of folk psychology, are dependent upon brain states/processes for their content. Not their existence. So no "ARE" is allowed. It doesn't mean anything. Not the way you are trying to use it.
 
Just for the record, the position I am currently defending (which hasn't got reduction specified yet) might as well be Kant's position.
 
JustGeoff said:
No. It is a process taking place in a physical thing. That process has entirely physically-describable properties. It has no mental properties. It does not resemble a mind in any way, shape or form.
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It [computation] has no mental properties, I never said it did. But its properties are not simply "physically describable" because they can be implemented on a diverse range of physical hardware and yet be the same (turing equivalence).

Yes it does. There are no properties of the process going on in a computer that cannot be described physically.
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Computation is not described in directly physical terms. We can look at the program and the computer and laboriously trace through its behaviour, and so explian it in physical terms. But if we do this we are performing computation. There is no non-computational shortcut.

"Let's just say that like computation, consciousness is a thing in it's own right, but not a physical thing, even though it is dependent on the physical world for its content."
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No, not just its content, its very existence. One day your consciousness will no longer exist. This will be entirely a result of physical considerations. The mental world is utterly dependent on and secondary to the physical world. I suspect your whole philosophy is a doomed attempt to escape from this uncomfortable fact.
 
From Kant:

Transcendental Realism:

The belief we can know the nature of ultimate reality/"fundamental existents". Any claim that we know the nature of the "real world" is a form of transcendental realism. It includes hammegk's idealism and all of the materialist positions that people have tried to defend. As it was specified, it did NOT include neutral monism, because neutral monism wasn't really on offer then, just as it isn't usually offered today. However, since I'm claiming I can reduce mind and matter to a neutral entity, if I do this then I might be called a transcendental realist - but a new type of transcendental realist (to Kant).

Transcendental Idealism:

We cannot know the ultimate nature of the way things really are. We shall just call it "noumenon". It's neither physical nor mental, but that's pretty much all we can say about it. You can think of Kant as a neutral monist who didn't even want to go so far as to call it neutral monism. But his noumenon is my neutral entity.
 
JustGeoff said:
I'll repeat something now that I put in my last post. If you are going to define "mind" and "matter" at all then you have to define them in terms of the world of experience. I have done this.
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Um, no. You have added a layer of interpretation/assumption on top of experience. That is why you still have "mind" and "matter" to speak of. You claim to have jettisoned this language, but you have not. As I said before, there does exist a vocabulary that does not require this.
 
"Feelings", just like all the other concepts of folk psychology, are dependent upon brain states/processes for their content. Not their existence.
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OK, you want to play this stupid dualistic language game......the brain feels. Is that verb describable completely by physical computation? NO equivocating about it being the "mind" that feels and not the brain, just answer the question.
 
chriswl said:
It [computation] has no mental properties, I never said it did. But its properties are not simply "physically describable" because they can be implemented on a diverse range of physical hardware and yet be the same (turing equivalence).
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Sure. They are logically equivalent processes.

No, not just its content, its very existence.
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Sorry, but this is just an empty claim to me. It doesn't make sense and you can't back it up with anything. There's really no point in you keeping on repeating the claim.

One day your consciousness will no longer exist.
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One day Geoff's mind will no longer exist. It's dependent on his brain processes.

This will be entirely a result of physical considerations.
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Correct. Brain processes are neccessary conditions of minds. They are not, however, sufficient.

Just because minds are dependent on brain processes, it does not follow that brain processes are all that is required for minds. It just doesn't follow, logically that is. It only follows if you asserted materalism is true.


The mental world is utterly dependent on and secondary to the physical world.
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Unsupportable claim.

I suspect your whole philosophy is a doomed attempt to escape from this uncomfortable fact.
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....this unsupportable claim.

:)
 
JustGeoff said:
Correct. Brain processes are neccessary conditions of minds. They are not, however, sufficient.
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They aren't? Are you suggesting some brains might not be capable of exhibiting consciousness because they lack some mysterious extra ingredient? And that they might be physically indistinguishable from brains that can be conscious?
 
JustGeoff said:
I'll start with "physical". Since "physical" now definately does not refer to "the mind-external reality", we are free to use it in the natural, dualistic-influenced way that we use it all the time. "Physical" is what the objects of our experience are. When you see a chair - that is a physical chair. But we aren't mixing up the physical chair you experience with any sort of "external physical chair"
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Is that really how most people use the word "physical"? It's certainly not how I use the word. I use it to refer to what you're calling "the mind-external reality". I don't have a word for what you're calling "physical", because I don't think there is any such thing. There's just the real external chair and then there's me seeing a chair. Having the experience of seeing a chair, if you prefer. When you talk about "the objects of our experience", you make it sound like there's something else there besides me and the chair. Is there really? If I close my eyes, where does this object-of-my-experience chair go? Does it cease to exist, just like that? Poof? Does it continue to exist, somehow, somewhere, even though I am no longer seeing a chair?

I think I understand now why you insisted a while back that apples are really red, when I said that the redness was only in my mind. You weren't talking about what I'd call "the physical apple", you were talking about this object-of-my-experience apple. But surely, that exists only in my mind, if it can meaningfully be said to exist at all.
 
JustGeoff said:
Stop resisting the dualistic vocabulary and you will find it very easy to know what I am saying, because it makes absolute, crystal clear, perfect sense, so that anyone not embroiled in this debate would have no problem whatsoever with it.
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I'm sorry, but I'm not "embroiled in the debate", and even I can see you still have dualistic notions.
 
JustGeoff said:
Totally wrong. I made the opposite claim.

I told Paul to bathe in it.

Good night.
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Um...you say you are trying to come at this with no assumptions of monism, no dualism...at the same time you tell Paul to bathe in it. And you wonder why it is that your view is misunderstood?

Your view, sorry to tell you, appears to be incoherent.

Good night, indeed.
 
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