The relationship between science and materialism

[UndercoverElephant]

Does anyone understand the point in this thread yet?

 

[Taffer]

The materialists first, and greatest hurdle to jump, is the emergent property we call "life". Therefor, yes.

Once again, this is your strawman, hamme.

 

[cyborg]

The materialists first, and greatest hurdle to jump, is the emergent property we call "life". Therefor, yes.

What hurdle? Where's the problem?

 

[Taffer]

If you'd read even a quarter of my posts, you wouldn't need to ask the question. Either ask a sensible question or stop posting in this thread. If you don't know why it's a stupid question then read the last three pages again.

I'm sorry, but it is not up to me to understand your position "in the right way", it is yours to make it clear. You have obviously failed to do so, so I suggest you try again.

 

[cyborg]

Does anyone understand the point in this thread yet?

For you to avoid straightforward questions in a sea of metaphysical terminology?

Where's your damn mind detctor?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

But it is only now that I am seeing signs of it actually happening.

Well, I did tell you precisely this earlier and made the distinction between levels of description. Perhaps we should just both bury the hatchet and assume equal responsibility for the miscommunication?

And I kept telling you I agreed, and that the problem was the claim of physicalism and the confusion about the status of "being".

OK, I guess I either did not hear that or it didn't register and for that I apolgize. If you agree that consciousness can be explained at that level of description, not a full description but the type of description of which the level is capable, then we have no problem.

 

[hammegk]

Once again, this is your strawman, hamme.

Perhaps we are discussing the ontology of straw.

What hurdle? Where's the problem?

Accepting that you are a "live, conscious, human" discussing HPC subtleties using emergent property HPC is a large part of the various disagreements and misunderstandings now in progress.

What is one's thinking on the emergent property we call life? Understand that level from your worldview first; HPC just represents the most complex level of emergent property we have identified.


BTW, if Tao is coherent, Atman=Brahman, neutral monism and objective idealism are saying most if not all of the same things. Also, dualism is rendered 100% incoherent by the statement, if it effects or affects 'what-is', it's the same stuff as 'what-is'.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So to go back to two weeks ago...

Why is Husserl's mathematisation of nature important?

Because Husserl is trying to get people to understand the ontological error which is made when you get the noumenal world mixed up with the physical world. In terms of the lifeworld, physical objects are things which appear before us. But because of the mathematisation project of the Greeks, Galileo and Newton we ended up with two conceptions of "physical". Instead of just being what "Physical" is supposed to be - objects in the lifeworld - it also came to refer to "things as they really are". But as I hope some people can now see, it doesn't actually make logical (or linguistic) sense to think of "things as they really are" as being physical.

What is the effect of this mistake?

If you define "physical" to be "things as they really are" then these physical things are neccesarily NOT part of the lifeworld. You are effectively claiming that the noumenal world exists but there is no lifeworld. The lifeworld has got lost somewhere. And then somebody comes along with some sort of logical argument claiming that physicalism must be wrong and it turns out the only way to defend physicalism is to deny that "minds" exist. By now, the eliminativists has eliminated BOTH sides of the lifeworld - the physical things as well as the mental things. The result is he is left with nothing. Which is why it is absurd. In response to this absurdity, well-meaning people come along and claim we need a new word - "qualia" - to describe the "what-it-is-like-to-be" parts of reality. All they are doing is trying to account for the lifeworld that the eliminative materialist has eliminated! Unfortunately this just builds a new layer onto a system that's already got an error further down in it's foundations - so it's useless.

It is the act of defining "physical" to mean "things-in-themselves" as well as physical-proper which eventually leads to dualism-by-mistake. It HAS to do this because it has unwittingly eliminated both mind and matter by claiming that "physical" refers to things-in-themselves and then tries to define mind in terms of the now-non-existent matter!

That is why it is important.

Once this error is cleared up then you no longer have to agonise about whether "red" is a property of apples or of minds. Red is simply a property of physical apples. You don't have to keep bending the dictionary, deny your mind exists or try to find new, ingenious and totally futile ways of assigning subjective=objective, because "Being" has been put in its rightful place. You can't be accused of turning science into a ersatz religion, because you haven't built physicalism and naturalism into the foundation of your belief system. And you might even be able to understand QM in a new way.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

BTW, if Tao is coherent, Atman=Brahman, neutral monism and objective idealism are saying most if not all of the same things.

Yes, but I believe neutral monism is both easier to naturalise and technically more accurate. "Idealism" still carries a hangover of the ontological problem originally made by physicalism. Without physicalism, there would have been no idealism. The noumenon isn't mental.

 

[cyborg]

HPC? I have not found any use of the acronym that seems to be applicable here.

 

[drkitten]

So to go back to two weeks ago...

Why is Husserl's mathematisation of nature important?

Because Husserl is trying to get people to understand the ontological error which is made when you get the noumenal world mixed up with the physical world.

I'm sorry. I must have missed the post where you actually identified an ontological error and provided evidence that it was, in fact, an error.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Correct. Brain processes are neccesary but insufficient conditions for minds.

Because... I think something is missing here.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Because... I think something is missing here.

The whole of this thread has been an attempt to explain what is missing. Brain processes aren't are sufficient cause of anything existing because brain processes are an abstraction of something existing in the world of experience. Abstractions cannot be fundamental existents.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

It might be a mistake to call it a "chair" at all.

Ahhh, there is hope. Now you are getting my point, even if you are not aware of it. You introduce false problems talking about "two" things (P1 and P2) and then stating that they should be different. What if both P1 and P2 are the same thing? This has been one of my points since the beginning. I chose to say that "chair" is the same as the noumena. I havent told you why, of course, because I need to see how much you understand regarding this simple fact about the inutility of language. Normal language this is.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

The whole of this thread has been an attempt to explain what is missing. Brain processes aren't are sufficient cause of anything existing because brain processes are an abstraction of something existing in the world of experience. Abstractions cannot be fundamental existents.

Ok, Im not following. So brain processes are abstractions of "something else"... implicit dualism? Also, would you say that brain processes are physical (whatever that means) but the "something else" is not?

Can you rephrase?

Edit:

I just read it again. Lets see, brain processes are "abstractions" of experiences? Nope, I dont follow.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Ahhh, there is hope. Now you are getting my point, even if you are not aware of it. You introduce false problems talking about "two" things (P1 and P2) and then stating that they should be different. What if both P1 and P2 are the same thing?

They can't be the same thing. The external-to-mind cause of your experiences of a chair cannot be the internal-to-mind experiences of a chair. Think about it.

You are trying to define "physical" to mean two different things. One of them really is physical. The other isn't.

This has been one of my points since the beginning. I chose to say that "chair" is the same as the noumena.

Then you have to invent the word "qualia".

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Ok, Im not following. So brain processes are abstractions of "something else"... implicit dualism?

You're not following, no. You keep mixing up "things-in-themselves" with the contents of human experience. Do you think the contents of bats experience is identical with things-in-themselves? Do you think ultimate reality is made of things that are just like bat-experiences? Of course you don't. So why on Earth do you think they are made of human-experiences?

They aren't.

Also, would you say that brain processes are physical (whatever that means) but the "something else" is not? Can you rephrase?

"Physical brain processes" are something you would see if you cut a hole in your head and sat in front of a mirror.

There is something which is a thing-in-itself which is the cause of you experiencing seeing your own brain in the mirror. But it's not the brain you see in the mirror that causes the content of the experiences - it's the noumenal brain that does that - the one which actually exists.

See?

 

[hammegk]

I'm sorry. I must have missed the post where you actually identified an ontological error and provided evidence that it was, in fact, an error.

Now if you'll just agree 100% eliminative materialism floats your boat, kudos on your ability to take a logical position.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

They can't be the same thing. The external-to-mind cause of your experiences of a chair cannot be the internal-to-mind experiences of a chair. Think about it.

Agreed!!! But it is JUST because you are still using a dualist language to express a monist intuition! The secret lies in the "external-internal" words. I see a chair. Where is "outside" of this? Whats "internal" about it!?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Agreed!!! But it is JUST because you are still using a dualist language to express a monist intuition!

Right. But the problem is that physicalism (and idealism) use part of that dualist language - in your case the part that refers to the physical parts of experience - to describe "the thing which causes the experience of a physical chair". It is physicalism which enshrines the dualistic language in a description of the monist "things as they really are." That's why physicalism is wrong. Remember I am a neutral monist not a dualist.

The secret lies in the "external-internal" words. I see a chair. Where is "outside" of this? Whats "internal" about it!?

It inside your mind, BDZ. The physical chair you see is internal to your mind. Your mind is your subjective frame of reference. "Things in themselves" are neither mind nor matter. "Things in themselves" are extenal to your mind.