I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

[angrysoba]

No, it means exactly what it says.

Okay, then ideas are distinct from science?

 

[Belz...]

Okay, then ideas are distinct from science?

I know you're a smart person, Soba, so I don't know why you're having such a hard time understanding such a simple sentence.

I said that science deals in FACTS, not ideas. I am specifically making a distinction between science and philosophy, where ideas are good enough on their own to reach conclusions.

 

[marplots]

I know you're a smart person, Soba, so I don't know why you're having such a hard time understanding such a simple sentence.

I said that science deals in FACTS, not ideas. I am specifically making a distinction between science and philosophy, where ideas are good enough on their own to reach conclusions.

You demand more of philosophy than I do. Instead of "reaching conclusions," I'd peg it as more like, "Here's an interesting way to think about this question."

 

[Belz...]

You demand more of philosophy than I do. Instead of "reaching conclusions," I'd peg it as more like, "Here's an interesting way to think about this question."

Oh, sure. But a lot of people go one step beyond, and think that, without any sort of evidence whatsoever, an idea they find convincing will lead to some revelation about the nature of all things.

 

[angrysoba]

I know you're a smart person, Soba, so I don't know why you're having such a hard time understanding such a simple sentence.

I said that science deals in FACTS, not ideas. I am specifically making a distinction between science and philosophy, where ideas are good enough on their own to reach conclusions.

Then I think we probably agree, but I was confused by your earlier statement here:

You are creating an artificial, philosophical distinction. Science deals in facts, not ideas.

Anyway, fair enough.

 

[marplots]

Oh, sure. But a lot of people go one step beyond, and think that, without any sort of evidence whatsoever, an idea they find convincing will lead to some revelation about the nature of all things.

Could happen, I just wouldn't count on it. Some of the more interesting ideas have actually been spawned by scientific discoveries. Philosophers have had a whale of a time with quantum physics.

One of the best examples comes by way of "Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics: Collected Papers on Quantum Philosophy," cited some 4,000+ times and written by.... wait for it... a physicist. (You probably know about Bell's theorem, these are the papers of John Bell in a compendium.)

 

[tsig]

You demand more of philosophy than I do. Instead of "reaching conclusions," I'd peg it as more like, "Here's an interesting way to think about this question."

Philosophy: "Here's an interesting way to think about this question."


Science: Here's a way to answer this question.


Philosophy: blather, blather, qualia, blather, seeing red, blather, ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, blather...........

 

[tsig]

Could happen, I just wouldn't count on it. Some of the more interesting ideas have actually been spawned by scientific discoveries. Philosophers have had a whale of a time with quantum physics.

One of the best examples comes by way of "Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics: Collected Papers on Quantum Philosophy," cited some 4,000+ times and written by.... wait for it... a physicist. (You probably know about Bell's theorem, these are the papers of John Bell in a compendium.)

Would there be any quote you'd like to share or any insights that you gained from the paper or is this actually a snipe hunt where we are supposed to figure out what you found meaningful?

 

[marplots]

Philosophy: "Here's an interesting way to think about this question."


Science: Here's a way to answer this question.


Philosophy: blather, blather, qualia, blather, seeing red, blather, ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, blather...........

They aren't really at odds.

 

[PixyMisa]

Could happen, I just wouldn't count on it. Some of the more interesting ideas have actually been spawned by scientific discoveries. Philosophers have had a whale of a time with quantum physics.

And 99.9% of what they've written on the subject has been garbage.

 

[marplots]

And 99.9% of what they've written on the subject has been garbage.

I'll have to take your word on that - I've not read a statistically relevant sample.

What would you estimate is the percentage of scientific effort wasted? Naturally, I'd take an historical estimate, since we can't know how significant any current research will be a few decades from now.

My guess is that a great deal of both science and philosophy don't take us anywhere useful, at least not in retrospect.

 

[dlorde]

The eye sends a signal to the brain that the brain recognizes as red because it previously learned that that signal was red. Is there more?

Yes, there is more. That same signal in a different context might look brown or orange. Colour perception is not a direct mapping of a light frequency (or frequency mix), or a particular retinal nerve signal to a unique perceived colour, it is partially context-dependent.

 

[Belz...]

They aren't really at odds.

Mostly because they keep ignoring each other.

 

[Tanren]

Philosophy: "Here's an interesting way to think about this question."


Science: Here's a way to answer this question.


Philosophy: blather, blather, qualia, blather, seeing red, blather, ontology, epistemology, metaphysics, blather...........

Maybe it was the wrong question and the answer while correct completely useless or the question needs to be clarified and if you got the correct answer what do you do with it and maybe there are questions we shouldn't even ask or look for an answer. This are all things we would miss if we are just answering the question.
Science and Philosophy just deals with different things and they are both needed and equally valid. I don't understand why so many skeptics have problems with Philosophy declaring it useless and completely loosing there ◊◊◊◊ when someone wants to discuss it, whats up with that?

 

[PixyMisa]

I'll have to take your word on that - I've not read a statistically relevant sample.

What would you estimate is the percentage of scientific effort wasted? Naturally, I'd take an historical estimate, since we can't know how significant any current research will be a few decades from now.

To take a datapoint, something like 50% of medical research papers are wrong. And not everything sees publication, so we might estimate that 50% of research produces nothing publishable at all, so that in a sense 75% of research is simply wasted.

If you consider it at a finer level of detail, at least half of the day-to-day work involved in research would be spent exploring false avenues, so maybe 90% of the total effort is wasted.

My guess is that a great deal of both science and philosophy don't take us anywhere useful, at least not in retrospect.

The difference is that science has a baseline - reality - and if your ideas are diverging from reality, science discards them.

Philosophy not so much.

So science asymptotically approaches reality, while philosophy resembles a Drunkard's Walk^WP. That doesn't mean that philosophy doesn't sometimes come up with remarkable insights, it just means that this is not repeatable.

 

[marplots]

I don't understand why so many skeptics have problems with Philosophy declaring it useless and completely loosing there ◊◊◊◊ when someone wants to discuss it, whats up with that?

Most of us have a bias against "woo," and are not well enough schooled in philosophy to be able to detect the difference. To be fair though, much of what we read here isn't from anyone with a background in philosophy, so it likely is reasonably challenged as, if nothing else, questionable and probably BS.

The plethora of bad philosophy on offer both informs and justifies the bias.

 

[marplots]

To take a datapoint, something like 50% of medical research papers are wrong. And not everything sees publication, so we might estimate that 50% of research produces nothing publishable at all, so that in a sense 75% of research is simply wasted.

If you consider it at a finer level of detail, at least half of the day-to-day work involved in research would be spent exploring false avenues, so maybe 90% of the total effort is wasted.


The difference is that science has a baseline - reality - and if your ideas are diverging from reality, science discards them.

Philosophy not so much.

So science asymptotically approaches reality, while philosophy resembles a Drunkard's Walk^WP. That doesn't mean that philosophy doesn't sometimes come up with remarkable insights, it just means that this is not repeatable.

I find myself in the remarkable position of agreeing with you completely. Well stated!

 

[PixyMisa]

Maybe it was the wrong question and the answer while correct completely useless or the question needs to be clarified and if you got the correct answer what do you do with it and maybe there are questions we shouldn't even ask or look for an answer. This are all things we would miss if we are just answering the question.
Science and Philosophy just deals with different things and they are both needed and equally valid. I don't understand why so many skeptics have problems with Philosophy declaring it useless and completely loosing there ◊◊◊◊ when someone wants to discuss it, whats up with that?

The problem is that philosophy doesn't discard failed ideas. Or at least, doesn't do so systematically. Coming to philosophy from science, mathematics, or engineering, the immediate impression is that it's all nonsense.

This is incorrect. It's only almost all nonsense.

 

[tsig]

Yes, there is more. That same signal in a different context might look brown or orange. Colour perception is not a direct mapping of a light frequency (or frequency mix), or a particular retinal nerve signal to a unique perceived colour, it is partially context-dependent.

Sure, the eye cannot sometimes differentiate between frequencies of the light wave, that's a sensor problem not a brain problem.

 

[Myriad]

The differences are very interesting. I think it may be that experiencing reality as "real" doesn't help us much. For example, when I read the letters and words in your post, I don't experience the translation that must occur, I only get the higher level of stimulus - there's meaning attached at some step outside of my awareness.

If I had to do all the hidden work consciously, I don't think language could be as fluid, vibrant or immediate as it is. The situation now, for me, is nearly equivalent to hearing spoken words. I read what you wrote just as fast (or so it seems) and gain some added ingredient because of the lack of barriers.

So, in a sense, it seems important that colors could be "warm" or "cool" instead of 450 nm at X intensity.

For the most part, I agree. I've talked about the elaborate but experientially transparent computations that pre-process your sensory experiences in other threads here, usually in discussions about mysticism. For instance, when you view a scene, it seems so effortless that you can think of the scene as something that's "just there" and always there in the place you're standing. But you're actually creating that image at that moment, and only by prodigious feats of computation, starting with sorting the photons incident upon your eye by which direction they're coming from, which is what the lens of your eye does. That's only the beginning, of course; from the resulting pattern of varying brightness and color, much more computation is needed to perceive shapes, borders, specific objects, distances, and movement. Reading (deriving meaning from) text adds a whole additional layer of processing on top of that.

Not every perception has that much abstraction/computation in its pathway to awareness, though. Sensation of temperature is pretty useful and important to perceive more directly. Some of that computation is even done within your spinal cord without involving the brain; touch something hot enough, and your muscles respond reflexively to pull away from it. We explain such phenomena as the material consequences of a world that is there; a hot coal will burn your flesh whether you think about it or not.

I've said this often enough: "The material universe is all there is, but our experiences of it are all we have." That's why manufacturers make substances (e.g. a cleaning spray) but advertisers sell experiences (e.g. dirt on a stove dissolving away, absolving a homemaker of shame).

That doesn't automatically give materialism and idealism equal stature, though. It did up until a few centuries ago, when people hadn't the slightest idea how material things could think, feel, perceive, remember, suffer illness, repair themselves, take form in utero, or create new forms; no idea even how merely willing a limb to move could make it move. The machinery turned out to be invisibly microscopically small as well as, in most cases, unimaginably complex. The answer that the secret of it all was various kinds of machinery didn't even seem very plausible, although it was occasionally considered. Thus, there were no easy answers to philosophical questions like, "how is it possible to think about an apple, when there is no apple present?," and even the smartest people could end up with answers like "there must be an ever-present apple in an invisible realm of ideas that the material world depends upon" or "it must be an ever-present idea in the mind of God that our own minds connect to."

Ultimately, the relative value of materialism and idealism doesn't come down to philosophical first principles, but to utility. We know a lot about how materials behave, and we know a lot about how conscious beings behave. Knowing the former is useful for negotiating the physical world. Knowing the latter is useful for negotiating human society (and animal matters like hunting, avoiding predators, and husbandry). So when we consider something in the world such as a building or a volcano or a transistor from a material standpoint, we know to ask things like, "What forces act upon it?" And when we consider it from an idealistic standpoint, we know to ask things like "What does it want?" Consistently, when we are dealing with something other than a person or vertebrate animal, we find that treating it as a willful consciousness or as the agent of a willful consciousness is no help. (Even though, our minds being what they are, we're often tempted to try anyhow: "Come on car, just start one more time, and I promise I'll buy you a new battery and a nice tank full of premium gasoline this afternoon.")

If efforts to soothe a forest fire's hurt feelings worked even a fraction as well as dumping water and digging fire breaks at preventing houses from being burned down, or if a stirring patriotic song could help a building stand up against hurricane winds (or the hurricane itself could be bribed to stay away), idealism would still have traction.