The relationship between science and materialism

[69dodge]

"Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of a being, like a worm."
"Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them...there is nothing." (Jean-Paul Sartre)

"Being and non-being create each other." (Lao Tse)

"If there were not the nothing, there could not be anything, because this separation between beings and Being is necessary." (Martin Heidegger)

[...]

0 = ∞

Earlier today I was reading Feynman's letters, and I came across one that reminded me very much of this thread. Seeing now this equation of yours, I realize it fits even more perfectly.

You've posted some quotes you admire. I do not understand them. Allow me to post a quote I admire. I hope you will understand it.

A certain Barbara Kyle wrote to Feynman:

To Richard Feynman from an ignorant layman on first hearing (but not yet having read---it's on order) the Messenger Lectures.

What do I understand? That when you go to count which particles through which holes have made their way, the light you shine to let you see, changes the situation and makes them---as who would not---disappear.

I understand that when you want to see how fast they go or exactly what they look like, you alter their speed and change their character.

[...]

The maths give you, you say, infinity when you'd expected (what was it? I didn't catch it) was it zero? Or another number preconceived? If zero---is that so different from infinity? Both of them circles?

[...]

And Feynman replied:

Dear Ms. Kyle,

May I thank you for your letter.

From the list of "What do I Understand" I am very happy to see so much really understood. You get a high grade from the professor---perhaps 90%. Not 100% because you didn't understand why getting infinity from a calculation is so annoying.

Thinking I understand geometry and wanting to cut a piece of wood to fit the diagonal of a five foot square, I try to figure out how long it must be. Not being very expert, I get infinity---useless---nor does it help to say it may be zero because they are both circles. It is not philosophy we are after, but the behavior of real things. So in despair, I measure it directly---lo, it is near to seven feet---neither infinity nor zero. So, we have measured these things for which our theory gives such absurd answers. We seek a better theory or understanding that will give us numbers close to what we measure. We are seeking the formula that gives the square root of fifty.

[...]

I do not know what you are seeking. After all this talk of Neutral and of Zero, of Being and of Nothing, what have you found? That people have brains, and that people are conscious? But everyone knows this already! What purpose is served by saying so, using more---and more complicated---words than that?

Can your theory tell us anything about consciousness, besides the simple fact of its existence? Can it explain why my color monitor works, why red light and green light together look yellow? You complain that materialistic science can say nothing about qualia because it denies that they exist, but you say nothing about them yourself besides asserting that they exist.

(My, do I sound pretentious.
But, on the other hand, I'm right. )

 

[davidsmith73]

Religious people are always trying to equate science with religion--so they can promote the two as being equal for finding "truth". Sure the smooth talking author wants you to believe he has access to higher truths...or that scientists are biased against dualism because (despite what our personal desires might be) that's what the evidence shows--dualism is an illusion. I agree that faith should not be a part of science--but materialism is not a "faith". It's the theory that best fits the facts--

That's the way I used to think. I used to think materialism "fitted the facts" about conscious experience. But if you think about it, "facts about the physical world" require a certain philosphical framework in order to become "facts about the physical world". Specifically, they obviously need the introduction of the concept of physical reality. That comes before you can have any facts about physical reality. So if you claim evidence for materialsim, you are being circular. I'm not proposing faith as an alternative, just pointing out the limits of materialism.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

That example is almost as rotten as Ian's 'radio=mind' example.

I'd try a different example - perhaps color, for example? Let's discuss color. The Sunrise example is just... well.... lame, really.

So who says what about color? Does color really exist? Is it just another term for 'perceived wavelengths of visible light? and so forth.

Discuss.

There's nothing lame about the sunrise example. That's why mercutio offered it in the first place. It is a perfect example of the (potential) elimination of a term.

The trouble with colour is that nobody can agree where the colour is. So nobody is going to agree on the answer. But everybody agrees on the sunrise once refered to and what it now refers to.

 

[davidsmith73]

Mercutio,

I was wondering if you had the time to answer some of my previous questions?

Could you breifly explain how the experience "redness" is an abstraction from learning?

(Please don't shy from using technical terms, I reckon I can follow it)

Thanks

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I've invited some friends over, and we're setup a bar with many kinds of liquor and lots of beer and mixiers. The game is we follow the thread, we have a listed of rhetorical errors and logical fallacies htat we've divvied up among everyone, with points attached. When JustGeoff makes one of youre erros you have to drink. When there's a "trifecta or if there'san error no one can figure out, it's a "social".

I don't hink I can get out of my chair right now.

Erm.....?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I think I see where Geoff is going with this now.

You've now got one or two pieces of the puzzle, Kev. There's a little way to go yet.

He's sliding away from defending the silly claim that "materialists are either really immaterialists (Geoff's reductive materialism) or they believe we have no minds (Geoff's eliminative materialism)". The heat has gotten too much for him to stay on that spot any longer.

Nope....that's still what I am saying, Kev. That's what I've been saying all along: all versions of physicalism are either non-coherent (and not really physicalism) or they involve the denial that minds exist.

So he is sliding towards his retreat position, which will be "All I ever really meant was that if we figured out how the brain works, we would end up using a word other than mind to refer to the things we now call minds. Who could disagree with that?".

Everyone who's not an eliminativist....?

Then the plan is that everyone takes their eye off the ball, and he can go back to claiming that he has proved that materialists must be either Geoff-reductionists of Geoff-eliminativists.

You are beginning to figure it out.......

Geoff is welcome to prove me wrong. He just has to address in plain English for once the issue of how he thinks he has shown that we don't have purely physical minds that exist independently of any labels we choose to stick on them, in exactly the same way that walls have a purely physical existence that is independent of whether or not we know about the atomic structure of walls.

I have no idea what the term "physical mind" refers to.

Perhaps you'd like to define "physical"?

p.s. if you define physical as "everything" then it's not going to help much.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You've posted some quotes you admire. I do not understand them. Allow me to post a quote I admire. I hope you will understand it.

I'm familiar with Feynman - a personal hero for sure.

Can your theory tell us anything about consciousness, besides the simple fact of its existence?

Yes, it is re-arranging the relationahips of certain concepts.

Can it explain why my color monitor works, why red light and green light together look yellow? You complain that materialistic science can say nothing about qualia because it denies that they exist, but you say nothing about them yourself besides asserting that they exist.

p)

The content of consciousness is determined by brain processes. All my theory is supposed to do is provide a logically valid of explaining HOW they can exist at all.

Geoff

 

[Mercutio]

Merc,

Your post effectively compared non-materialists to geocentrists. Do you think this is a valid comparison?

If not, your response to my post is invalid and must be withdrawn
But if so, you've got science confused with materialism, and you've demonstrated the original claim of this thread is true. You are equating anyone who isn't a materialist with a person who simply believes something which has been shown to be false.

QED, again.

Geoff

No, Geoff, it was *your* post that said science was materialistic. I disagreed. Twice. And the point of my post was not to defend materialism, but to demonstrate that your question is wrong, and does (despite your protestations) assume your conclusions.

 

[Mercutio]

Mercutio,

I was wondering if you had the time to answer some of my previous questions?

Could you breifly explain how the experience "redness" is an abstraction from learning?

(Please don't shy from using technical terms, I reckon I can follow it)

Thanks

davidsmith--

I also got a PM from someone else, requesting this (or close enough), some time ago because of an argument on another thread. I'll start another thread on it, rather than burden this one. This is the week my students' rough drafts come in, so I may be a bit scarce for a bit, but it is a fun topic.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Mercutio

You did not answer my question.

Your response to post 1147, at the third time of asking, compared non-materialists to geocentrists. I am now asking you for a second time whether you really believe such a comparison is justified.

Geoff

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

There's quite definately something sunrise once refered to. It's just not a sun rise. It's Earth-turn. Nothing has been eliminated from reality.

Just as there is quite definitely something that pain refers to.

They are IDENTICAL!

They are not identical. Which of the following is the reason to eliminate pain?

(A) Because it is unnecessary, referring only to other things.

(B) Because I do not have any physiological and psychological reaction when you poke me with a skewer.

Neither. They are saying the word "pain" doesn't actually mean anything. They are saying exactly what sunrise-eliminavists are saying. If you think this is obscuring the issue then it means you are finally face to face with the logical problem I've been trying to show you all along.

Which of the above choices do you mean?

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

A summary of the state of play

1) The difference between eliminative and reductive forms of materialism.

Reductive materialism claims that minds can be fully explained in terms of physical things. It does not go further and claim that we will ever be able to eliminate talk of minds or folk psychology. It is merely an ontological claim that physicalism is true – that everything which exists is physical. We are still allowed (even in a technical sense) to talk about minds. Eliminative materialism is a stronger claim. It is the claim made by mercutio in his last reply to me when he repeatedly claimed my argument depended on “centuries-old terminology” and refused to allow my use of the word “mind”. Therefore Merc is explicitly an eliminativist and not a reductivist. Mercutio has given as the example of the sunrise as a means of understanding what is meant by elimination of terms. The sunrise can be eliminated, but we still use it as shorthand for something other than “the sun rose over a stationary Earth.”

2) Eliminative materialism is the logically coherent version of materialism

We can thank Kevin for demonstrating the truth of this claim:

“Any kind of materialism is going to claim that in theory we can replace every single mental/subjective/folk-psychological term with objective/physical/neural terms.
If your answer is anything at all apart from this, then….you aren't a materialist. You're some flavour of immaterialist, dualist, or dualist with nonsense on top (neutral monist).”

This is exactly the case. This is the very reason why eliminativists are eliminativists. They understand that if they allow the sort of definition that the reductionists will allow, that this will result in a logically indefensible position for the exact reasons Kevin explained – it’s calling itself “physicalism” but because it can’t/won’t eliminate the mental vocabulary it ends up being something other than physicalism.

Kevin does have one minor misunderstanding about this:

3) “Eliminative materialism is patent nonsense”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“our version of eliminative materialism IS the claim that every single mental/subjective/folk-psychological term can be replaced with a term which is purely objective/physical/neural, AND that if we succeed in doing this then minds never existed.” You keep leaving that second bit off your explicit statements of your position, because it is patent nonsense, but then you keep sneaking it back in as if you had proven it to be true.

Whilst Kevin does seem to understand that anything that deserves the name materialism should be able to replace (eliminate) each and every mental term with a neural term. Unfortunately there is a problem with this, because it appears to entail the claim that minds don’t exist. At this point we must return to the sunrise example provided by Mercutio. Sunrise-eliminativists (as we all are) do not actually believe that the event that we once believed was the sun rising no longer occurs. Sure it does. We haven’t eliminated anything from the real world. All we have eliminated is a WORD – a word which is no longer needed because we have more accurate terms for it now. So now we can see the claim of the Eliminativists (and Mercutio) for what it is. It is a claim that we can eliminate the WORD “mind” just as we eliminated sunrise.

People end up believing EM because of two considerations. The first is an unshakeable conviction that materialism must be true. The second is a healthy respect for logical consistency. Put these two things together and the result is the claim that one day we will be able to eliminate the word “mind”.

However, there is an even bigger problem with EM. It is quite literally a claim that minds do not exist.

“There never was a sun rise. Only earth-turns.”
“There never was a mind. Only brain processes.”

This is quite literally a denial that ones own mind ever existed. There is no other way to interpret it without returning to reductive (non-eliminative) materialism and we have already shown that such a position isn’t materialism at all.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Nope....that's still what I am saying, Kev. That's what I've been saying all along: all versions of physicalism are either non-coherent (and not really physicalism) or they involve the denial that minds exist.

Okay, so how are you going to argue for this claim?

I have no idea what the term "physical mind" refers to.

Perhaps you'd like to define "physical"?

p.s. if you define physical as "everything" then it's not going to help much.

By "mind", I'm referring to the business going on between our ears that handles ideas, perceptions, beliefs and so forth, and which has all the properties we normally expect of minds. (If we are not woowoos).

By "physical mind", for this purpose I think it's sufficient to mean that this business is carried out solely by atoms going about their business with no component which is in any way immaterial, as opposed to a mind which partakes of immaterial or "neutral" stuff.

Just to head off possible deliberate misunderstandings, I'm putting forward the possibility of things which have all the properties we commonly associate with minds, with none of the non-physical rubbish associated with your version of reductive materialism, and none of the "minds don't exist" rubbish associated with your version of eliminativist materialism.

Your claim has been that you can prove such things cannot possibly exist.

We're all waiting for your argument. We've seen the P1/P2 trick already and that didn't fool us, so I'll be very disappointed if you try that one again.

Similarly, you have run the "circular argument" horse into the ground already, so please don't trot that one out again. I'm not claiming that these physical minds must exist, or even that they do exist just at the moment, I am merely putting forward one candidate possibility about how things might be. I'm not assuming anything about these physical minds to be true, I'm just asking you why you think you can prove they cannot possibly exist.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

There's nothing lame about the sunrise example. That's why mercutio offered it in the first place. It is a perfect example of the (potential) elimination of a term.

The reason it is such a good choice is because the very word itself contains the false assumption: sun rises. This is not the case with mind and pain. What exactly is the false assumption in those words?

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Just as there is quite definitely something that pain refers to.

Paul - perhaps I can help you to see the problem by reminding you you have two seperate understandings of what is meant by "pain". At the moment, because you've got a double-definition of "physical" the word "pain" can refer to ->

pain-M : The subjective experience of pain ("mental pain")
pain-P : C-fibers firing ("physical pain").
mind-M : "subjective experiences"
mind-P : "neural processes"

So not only is there quite definately something that there is something the word "pain" refers to, there are in fact two such things: two referents for "pain".

They are not identical. Which of the following is the reason to eliminate pain?

(A) Because it is unnecessary, referring only to other things.

(B) Because I do not have any physiological and psychological reaction when you poke me with a skewer.

Which of the above choices do you mean?

The answer is (A). The claim is that the term pain-M (or mind-M) can be completely replaced by an elaborate version of the term pain-P (or mind-P, brain process). EM is a claim that we have no need for any terms for pain-M or "mind". These things, it claims, do not refer to anything. It is NOT a claim that there is no physiological reaction, because physiological reactions would be accounted for by a completed neural science. As for psychology, all I can say is that most psychologists I know don't believe you can eliminate folk psychology.

EM is a claim about words. It has other consequences, but these are secondary. It's primary claim is linguistic.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Eliminative materialism is a stronger claim. It is the claim made by mercutio in his last reply to me when he repeatedly claimed my argument depended on “centuries-old terminology” and refused to allow my use of the word “mind”. Therefore Merc is explicitly an eliminativist and not a reductivist. Mercutio has given as the example of the sunrise as a means of understanding what is meant by elimination of terms. The sunrise can be eliminated, but we still use it as shorthand for something other than “the sun rose over a stationary Earth.”

Yet I do not believe that Mercutio would claim that there is nothing for the word pain to refer to. He'll have to correct me if I'm wrong. Until you answer my question about why we are eliminating pain, this summary is incomplete.

“There never was a sun rise. Only earth-turns.”
“There never was a mind. Only brain processes.”

This is quite literally a denial that ones own mind ever existed.

Only for certain definitions of mind.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

The reason it is such a good choice is because the very word itself contains the false assumption: sun rises.

It's also a good choice, because we understand the process by which it can be eliminated.

This is not the case with mind and pain. What exactly is the false assumption in those words?

You tell me! I don't know. It's not me who wants them eliminated. Why don't you ask Mercutio?

There is NO "false assumption" in those words. Eliminative Materialism is a claim that, contrary to all common sense, our belief that we have minds is as false as the belief that the sun actually rose. It is driven by two things:

A) An unshakeable faith in physicalism
B) A sharp enough grasp of logic to know that non-eliminativist versions of materialism are incoherent

Put these together and the only possible conclusion is

C) Eliminative materialism "must be" true.

You are having trouble with it because the truth is that you have a referent for the word "mind" which you cannot concievably replace with anything physical, contrary to all the claims made that minds are nothing but brain processes.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

As I keep saying, the answer is (A). The claim is that the term pain-M (or mind-M) can be completely replaced by an elaborate version of the term pain-P (or mind-P, brain process). EM is a claim that we have no need for any terms for pain-M or "mind". These things, it claims, do not refer to anything. It is NOT a claim that there is no physiological reaction, because physiological reactions would be accounted for by a completed neural science. As for psychology, all I can say is that most psychologists I know don't believe you can eliminate folk psychology.

Then it is incorrect to say that there is no such thing as pain. Eliminativism is eliminating certain definitions of pain; it is not eliminating pain. In particular, since you have no idea of the demarcation between pain-M and pain-P, you cannot even state which definitions are being eliminated. People who have had brain surgery to aleviate tic douloureux have pain-P, some small part of pain-M, but no serious pain-M.

What you have done is state that eliminativism eliminates those portions of folk terms that are dualistically loaded. Then I see no difference between reductive materialism and eliminative materialism.

~~ Paul

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

A summary of the state of play

1) The difference between eliminative and reductive forms of materialism.

Reductive materialism claims that minds can be fully explained in terms of physical things. It does not go further and claim that we will ever be able to eliminate talk of minds or folk psychology. It is merely an ontological claim that physicalism is true – that everything which exists is physical.

A minute ago you were claiming that your version of "reductive materialism" involved immaterial or partially immaterial minds. Can we please keep our story straight on this point?

Whilst Kevin does seem to understand that anything that deserves the name materialism should be able to replace (eliminate) each and every mental term with a neural term. Unfortunately there is a problem with this, because it appears to entail the claim that minds don’t exist. At this point we must return to the sunrise example provided by Mercutio. Sunrise-eliminativists (as we all are) do not actually believe that the event that we once believed was the sun rising no longer occurs. Sure it does. We haven’t eliminated anything from the real world. All we have eliminated is a WORD – a word which is no longer needed because we have more accurate terms for it now. So now we can see the claim of the Eliminativists (and Mercutio) for what it is. It is a claim that we can eliminate the WORD “mind” just as we eliminated sunrise.

Didn't I tell everyone Geoff was going to pull exactly this stunt as his fall-back position?

Geoff, who cares? If the things we refer to as minds that do our mind-jobs still exist and do everything they ever did, it's idiotic to refer to a change of labels as "minds no longer existing".

I could believe this was all a silly misunderstanding if you had not gone on at length earlier about how eliminative materialism was "crazy" because it said "minds don't exist". That was your claim, and you've now retreated from it completely. There's nothing remotely crazy or threatening about replacing the term "mind" with a better or more accurate term. It would have absolutely no metaphysical implications to do so, it would merely be a change of labels.

However, there is an even bigger problem with EM. It is quite literally a claim that minds do not exist.

If I claimed that future technological developments might cause us to call t-shirts something other than t-shirts, would that be quite literally a claim that t-shirts do not exist?

i think we are getting close to completing Wittgenstein's project. We are finally moving out of the fog of complicated nonsense into the open pastures of patent nonsense.

 

[davidsmith73]

Who here does not agree that experiences are qualitative?

Come on, hands up.