Dualism and Theism are Subsets of Materialism

[Complexity]

I'll refrain from responding except to note the misuse of the term 'subset'.

 

[Robin]

I'll refrain from responding except to note the misuse of the term 'subset'.

No, I think the word subset is quite apposite. If you think that the statement is wrong then you should explain how. If you think that dualism and theism posit any concept distinct from Materialism you should state what the distinction is.

 

[Robin]

But they are not. Nonsensical from a materialist view, but not conjectures within materialism.

Not historically at least.

No one can make sense of dualism -- it's magic -- but that doesn't mean that it is a subset of materialism.

A dualist would probably just say, once again, that you guys are interpreting dualism within a materialist paradigm, which is inappropriate. I would guess that if they wanted to remain consistent they would have to admit that no one could possibly discuss mechanisms for mind-body interaction since a mechanism would imply a material process.

So, they'd be forced to say that it's all just magic.

Or they would be forced to say it was material. And what is magic but a conjecture within Materialism? After all even an invisibility cloak has to operate according to some underlying principle.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Or they would be forced to say it was material. And what is magic but a conjecture within Materialism? After all even an invisibility cloak has to operate according to some underlying principle.

Well, I would certainly say, as I already have, that our concepts depend on our prior experiences and these are all of the material realm (if materialism is correct).

When we get past all the fudging -- like calling energy 'immaterial' -- I'm not sure where any discussion could go.

After discussing things with several dualists (or tripartists, what do you call people who think there are three substances?) my guess is that they would start discussing feelings (which, of course, have a material explanation that we understand in broad outline). That usually works for 20 or so pages. But it never advances the discussion.

But you and I both know that the basic answer is always going to be -- you are being too limiting. You are stuck in your anemic world-view of materialism and I'm not going to listen any longer.

 

[Robin]

Um, no. Dualism is an ontologic position holding that there are two types of substances.

Material monism posits one type of substance.

You have to be careful here, do you know of a Materialist philosopher since ancient Greece or Rome, who has posited one type of substance? In general Materialists posit one underlying order (which is generally understood to be the laws of physics).

Epistemology concerns knowledge of those types of substance, but our knowledge does not determine which ontology is correct.

Materialism certainly views 'the mind' as encompassed within a monistic position. But dualism does not. It posits mind as a completely separate type of substance. That it doesn't make sense is completely beside the point.

No, that is just the point. Dualists posit two substances which interact with each other according to the same underlying order (although they do not actually specify this order as the laws of physics). So by what criteria do they distinguish the subtances apart from the arbitrary labels "body" and "mind"?

So they are stating something within Materialism, that both substances operate according to the same underlying order, but they are conjecturing a distinction which is as yet unspecified.

 

[Robin]

But you and I both know that the basic answer is always going to be -- you are being too limiting. You are stuck in your anemic world-view of materialism and I'm not going to listen any longer.

Very true, but it does not stop us from taking Dualist claims and analysing them.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

You have to be careful here, do you know of a Materialist philosopher since ancient Greece or Rome, who has posited one type of substance? In general Materialists posit one underlying order (which is generally understood to be the laws of physics).

Nope. Most don't speak of substances. The closest I think I've heard is Searle say, "The mistake is to start counting in the first place."

No, that is just the point. Dualists posit two substances which interact with each other according to the same underlying order (although they do not actually specify this order as the laws of physics). So by what criteria do they distinguish the subtances apart from the arbitrary labels "body" and "mind"?

So they are stating something within Materialism, that both substances operate according to the same underlying order, but they are conjecturing a distinction which is as yet unspecified.

The old ones did when they could get away with it. But, for them, they were not doing it from a materialist perspective. They would have balked at the idea. We now know that all the examples they gave -- like weird interaction at a distance, gravity, etc. -- are all part of the materialist paradigm.

Now, if they want to make any sense, they have to just throw up their hands and say, "it's magic". I think that means that their position is nonsensical, not that it is a part of materialism. There is a difference between using metaphors that depend on materialism (we are forced to because of our nature) and the belief that there are two fundamentally different substances. I still think that you could try to hold a belief in some theoretically different substance, but your idea of it will be based on the way that we see material interaction. I don't think that makes dualism a part of materialism -- it is only that our way of conceptualizing how it might work is. How fundamentally different sustances could possibly interact is the dualists unsolvable problem, though.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Very true, but it does not stop us from taking Dualist claims and analysing them.

Ohyes, by all means. I keep asking folks to defend it when it is clear that they are either closet or open dualists. No one seems terribly excited about doing so.

 

[rocketdodger]

I still think that you could try to hold a belief in some theoretically different substance, but your idea of it will be based on the way that we see material interaction. I don't think that makes dualism a part of materialism -- it is only that our way of conceptualizing how it might work is.

I think I see what you are saying.

This is a tautology, actually. Dualism must be a subset of materialism as far as we can know, because if we can know something, by definition it is material.

A hardcore dualist-nutter would claim this does not mean dualism actually is a subset of materialism -- although the fact that we can never know otherwise doesn't bode well for their argument.

So does that mean dualism goes with libertarian free-will, omniscience, and all other concepts that we can't rule out because we can't even know what they mean to begin with?

 

[rocketdodger]

I'll refrain from responding except to note the misuse of the term 'subset'.

Experience leads me to believe that you will also refrain from explaining why you think your criticism is valid.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I think I see what you are saying.

This is a tautology, actually. Dualism must be a subset of materialism as far as we can know, because if we can know something, by definition it is material.

A hardcore dualist-nutter would claim this does not mean dualism actually is a subset of materialism -- although the fact that we can never know otherwise doesn't bode well for their argument.

So does that mean dualism goes with libertarian free-will, omniscience, and all other concepts that we can't rule out because we can't even know what they mean to begin with?

That is why I tried to distinguish in my first response the difference between epistemology and ontology. While we can only know things about the material realm and our language depends on that knowledge, they posit a separate ontological realm, so they would never see it as part of materialism.

And, I think yes, to your question. I find dualism just about as coherent as libertarian free will.

 

[drkitten]

Um... actually, you do. You don't have to tell me, but you must have a definition.

Doesn't follow. If you point at my cat Fluffy and tell me it's a dog, I can know that you're wrong without being able to offer a definition of "cat" or "dog" that would satisify all boundary conditions.

Words are like that. It's in fact more usual for words to simply have "meanings" than to have clear-cut definitions. If you think that's not the case, then please tell me what "warm" means in exact terms of thermometer readings.

Logically, you can't disagree with my definition unless you have your own.

Certainly I can. If you tell me that ice is "warm," or that any temperature above absoute zero is "warm," you're wrong even if I can't put an exact cutoff on the temperatures that are in my usage of the term.

 

[drkitten]

Without a definition of "matter" that statement is totally devoid of meaning.

Simply wrong. See my "warm" example above.

So "eternal persistence" is the feature that distinguishes the material from the immaterial then?

A feature. There are a number of them, and they need not all be eternally persistant --- for example, if "soul" is immaterial, then the "soul's desire for God" is also immaterial (as a property of an immaterial object) even if it is not eternally persistant (for example, it will be satisfied after Judgement Day if you've been a good girl.) The theologians -- whom I'm fairly confident you don't bother to read --- have a whole list of various things that are considered to be immaterial, even though they differ in their properties.

Once again, you're being needlessly reductionistic. What is "the feature" that distinguishes whales from roses? Is it size? So if I managed to breed a rosebush that was as big as a killer whale, it would cease being a rosebush and instead become a whale? Is it photosynthesis? So if I genetically engineered a photosynthetic whale, it would become a rosebush? No, in either case. There are a cluster of features that distinguish whales from rosebushes, and the space in between is empty enough that we've never had to come up with a clear line of demarcation. I can't define either "whales" or "roses" with precision. But I can tell the two apart, and I'm confident that they both exist.

Is there a mathematical model of the soul? Is there a mathematical model of God? Is there a mathematical model of the non-material mind? If the answer to this question is "yes" then these things are physical according to most Materialist philosophers.

If the answer is "no" then there would have to be something to account for why a non-arbitrary entity is inaccessible to mathematics.

Goodness, we already have THAT. Godel showed that provability -- which is non-arbitrary -- is inaccesible to mathematics. Tarski showed that truth -- which is also non-arbitrary -- is inaccessible to mathematics. Turing showed that completion -- which is non-arbitrary -- is inaccessible to mathematics. Chaitin showed that existence -- which is non-arbitrary --- is inaccessible to mathematics. Cohen showed that size --- which is non-arbitrary --- is inaccessible to mathematics.

And now you're wondering why the mind of God is inaccessible to mathematics? That's an immediate consequence of the above. If God is in fact omniscient (as He is defined to be), then he knows the truth. SInce no algorithmic or mathematical process can establish that (Tarski again, as well as Chaitin and Turing), He must be out of reach of mathematics.

And, in fact, Penrose and Lucas have suggested that the merely human mind is inaccessible to mathematics. I admit that I find their arguments less than compelling, but in fact we do not yet have a mathematically tractable explanation of creativity --- and I see so reason to believe that creativity will not end up being another entry on the list of things-inaccessible-to-mathematics.

 

[rocketdodger]

oesn't follow. If you point at my cat Fluffy and tell me it's a dog, I can know that you're wrong without being able to offer a definition of "cat" or "dog" that would satisify all boundary conditions.

A definition implicitly includes all boundary conditions -- just becauuse you don't constantly think of them doesn't mean they aren't there.

When you actually find an instance that lies on a boundary, then you may alter the definition.

Words are like that. It's in fact more usual for words to simply have "meanings" than to have clear-cut definitions. If you think that's not the case, then please tell me what "warm" means in exact terms of thermometer readings.

I didn't say anything about clear-cut definitions. All I said was that if a word has meaning, it must have some definition to the user.

Certainly I can. If you tell me that ice is "warm," or that any temperature above absoute zero is "warm," you're wrong even if I can't put an exact cutoff on the temperatures that are in my usage of the term.

No, you can't. Try it. I claim 138 kelvin is warm. Tell me why I am wrong.

 

[drkitten]

A definition implicitly includes all boundary conditions -- just becauuse you don't constantly think of them doesn't mean they aren't there.

Which is exactly why most words don't have "definitions," merely meanings, and why compiling a dictionary is more art than science.

When you actually find an instance that lies on a boundary, then you may alter the definition.

Or, alternatively, I can do what sensible people do (See the work of Eleanor Rosch for examples) and operate from exemplars instead of definitions. I don't need to alter something that doesn't exist in the first place.

I didn't say anything about clear-cut definitions. All I said was that if a word has meaning, it must have some definition to the user.

Yes. And when you said that, you were wrong.

There's little more that needs to be said. You claim that all meaningful terms have definitions. No competent linguist, lexicographer, cognitive scientist, or cognitive psychologist would agree with you.

No, you can't. Try it. I claim 138 kelvin is warm. Tell me why I am wrong.

You're wrong. You're wrong because that's not what the word means in English usage. A simple sample : of the ten people surveyed, 0% agreed that an object (an ice cube I just fished from my drink, at 273 K) was "warm", or that an object even cooler could be "warm."

Since meanings of words are determined by usage, I could establish (using a larger and larger survey if necessary) the inappropriateness of that use. I could also use something like google and establish that collocations like "warm ice" appear with negligible frequency, showing that "ice" cannot be "warm." I have lots of ways to establish that you're wrong, none of which involve my offering a competing definition.

 

[rocketdodger]

Yes. And when you said that, you were wrong.

There's little more that needs to be said. You claim that all meaningful terms have definitions. No competent linguist, lexicographer, cognitive scientist, or cognitive psychologist would agree with you.

Here we go again -- another trip on the semantic marry-go-round with drkitten.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition

I am not wrong. Saying a meaningful term has a definition is a tautology -- you can't argue with the statement unless you want to define "definition" in some nonstandard way. Is that what you are proposing? Because when I talk about a "definition" I am only talking about a statement of meaning, and I think thats what most people mean by "definition."

You're wrong. You're wrong because that's not what the word means in English usage. A simple sample : of the ten people surveyed, 0% agreed that an object (an ice cube I just fished from my drink, at 273 K) was "warm", or that an object even cooler could be "warm."

Since meanings of words are determined by usage, I could establish (using a larger and larger survey if necessary) the inappropriateness of that use. I could also use something like google and establish that collocations like "warm ice" appear with negligible frequency, showing that "ice" cannot be "warm." I have lots of ways to establish that you're wrong, none of which involve my offering a competing definition.

What on earth do you call this procedure you went through to establish the wrongness of my use of the term? Is that not a definition?

Warm: property agreed upon by a majority of people to not be possessed by ice cubes, .....etc, and used wrongly by rocketdodger on April 2nd 2008.

Any meaningful set of statements about something can constitute a definition -- that is the definition of definition. It might not be a good definition, but it is a definition nonetheless.

 

[drkitten]

I am not wrong.

Wrong again.

Saying a meaningful term has a definition is a tautology -- you can't argue with the statement unless you want to define "definition" in some nonstandard way.

I think you're the one with the non-standard definition of "definition."

Is that what you are proposing? Because when I talk about a "definition" I am only talking about a statement of meaning, and I think thats what most people mean by "definition."

What on earth do you call this procedure you went through to establish the wrongness of my use of the term? Is that not a definition?

Not in the slightest. Are you really suggesting that "something that ice isn't" is a definition of "warm"?

Because if that's the case, then "furry," "imaginary," and "telepathic" would have the same definition as "warm" and therefore be synonyms.

Any meaningful set of statements about something can constitute a definition

Well, in that case, there's an easy "definition" of "immaterial" -- "something that matter isn't, but souls are," that is both meaningful and trivially disproves materialism. It also, incidentally violates something else that you said earlier about definitions:

A definition implicitly includes all boundary conditions

... because it doesn't include boundaries, just a list of positive and negative exemplars.

You can't have it both ways. Either "something that ice isn't" is a legitimate and meaningful definition of "warm," in which case "somethig that matter isn't" is a legitimate and meaningful definition of "immaterial" --- or else you need to have some further constraints on what you consider a legitimate definition.

You can't even fall back on the "prove that something other than matter exists" argument, because you've already accepted that "warm" can be shown to be meaningful without demonstrating that anything other than ice exists.

The only reason you consider this to be a semantic merry-go-round is because you're indulging in circular reasoning and you are unable to justify your epistemological theory from the ground up. There's no way to do it with dictionaries, as is well known.

My theory, however, is firmly rooted. Axiom 1 : the world exists. Axiom 2: entities in the world exist. Axiom 3 : people categorize entities in the world using names, and then (axiom 4) names are extended to cover novel and hypothetical entitles.

Definitions are attempts to define the limits of how far the names extend from the core elements to which they are affixed. But the definitions are secondary to the core elements.

This is not only well-grounded philosophically, but it's also a pretty good description of how semantics is actually acquired by children, of how adults learn new words, and of how words change meanings over time.

Or you could go round and round with your semantic merry go round by trying to look up the definition of "definition" and get out of the dictionary.

ETA: Evidently you don't even read your own Wikipedia entries:

There is a presumption in the classic example of a definition that the definiens can be stated. Wittgenstein argued that for some terms this is not the case.[21] The examples he used include game, number and family. In such cases, he argued, there is no fixed boundary that can be used to provide a definition. Rather, the items are grouped together because of a family resemblance. For terms such as these it is not possible and indeed not necessary to state a definition; rather, one simply comes to understand the use of the term.

 

[rocketdodger]

My theory, however, is firmly rooted. Axiom 1 : the world exists. Axiom 2: entities in the world exist. Axiom 3 : people categorize entities in the world using names, and then (axiom 4) names are extended to cover novel and hypothetical entitles.

Definitions are attempts to define the limits of how far the names extend from the core elements to which they are affixed. But the definitions are secondary to the core elements.

This is not only well-grounded philosophically, but it's also a pretty good description of how semantics is actually acquired by children, of how adults learn new words, and of how words change meanings over time.

Fine, then let us change all instances of "definition" in my posts on this thread to "'core elements' as conceptualized by drkitten."

My assertion is that all of the core elements dualists and theists use in the generation of their names and subsequent extension of those names to cover their novel and hypothetical entities are in fact completely encompassed by materialism.

 

[Robin]

Simply wrong. See my "warm" example above.

Nonsense - you are trying to justify not having a definition at all by citing an example where the definition is relative.

A feature. There are a number of them, and they need not all be eternally persistant

Ah, so now immateriality has shifted from eternally persistent to possibly eternally persistent

The theologians -- whom I'm fairly confident you don't bother to read --- have a whole list of various things that are considered to be immaterial, even though they differ in their properties.

Fairly confident and utterly wrong. In the light of that perhaps we should examine other things of which you are confident.

The trouble with theologians, as I have often pointed out before, is that they are inclined to assume that the "prior art" of theology makes sense. For example Plantinga recently tried to king-hit Dawkins with the idea that immaterial things are defined as having "no parts" and thus cannot be complex.

The trouble is that the "no parts" definition for immateriality is a borrowing from an Aristotle argument in which the prime mover has no parts or magnitude. Since the prime mover argument itself has fallen victim to a more correct understanding of motion there is no reason to accept any part of it as being valid.

But that does not stop 21st century theologians employing this definition as though it was an axiom.

Once again, you're being needlessly reductionistic. What is "the feature" that distinguishes whales from roses? Is it size? So if I managed to breed a rosebush that was as big as a killer whale, it would cease being a rosebush and instead become a whale? Is it photosynthesis? So if I genetically engineered a photosynthetic whale, it would become a rosebush? No, in either case. There are a cluster of features that distinguish whales from rosebushes, and the space in between is empty enough that we've never had to come up with a clear line of demarcation. I can't define either "whales" or "roses" with precision. But I can tell the two apart, and I'm confident that they both exist.

If you had a photograph of a whale and a rose but had never heard of the terms "whale" or "rose" could you still nevertheless label each photograph correctly?

No, clearly not, you would have to have at least some definition to go with the labels - even if it was not absolutely precise, even if it were relative. That is all I am asking.

Goodness, we already have THAT. Godel showed that provability -- which is non-arbitrary -- is inaccesible to mathematics.

Nonsense, in fact Godel's most famous argument depended on the existence of a predicate provable. How would that have been possible if provability was inaccessible to mathematics?

And now you're wondering why the mind of God is inaccessible to mathematics? That's an immediate consequence of the above. If God is in fact omniscient (as He is defined to be), then he knows the truth. SInce no algorithmic or mathematical process can establish that (Tarski again, as well as Chaitin and Turing), He must be out of reach of mathematics.

Show me where Turing has said that the truth is inaccessible to mathematics, or anything even remotely like it.

And, in fact, Penrose and Lucas have suggested that the merely human mind is inaccessible to mathematics.

Again, no. Penrose said that humans are not using a knowably sound algorithm in order to ascertain mathematical truth. That is quite a different thing to what you are saying.

You are kind of all over the place with this answer, but as far as I can see you are defining as immaterial anything that is possibly eternally persistent and subject to certain undecidability results. That could describe anything.

 

[Robin]

You're wrong. You're wrong because that's not what the word means in English usage. A simple sample : of the ten people surveyed, 0% agreed that an object (an ice cube I just fished from my drink, at 273 K) was "warm", or that an object even cooler could be "warm."

By an astonishing co-incidence a friend of mine was recently complaining that one of his university projects was ruined because the conditions inside the refrigerated storage device for his samples became too warm. He will be very pleased to find out that the interior of the storage device was not warm at all. Or perhaps not.