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Is "scientific materialism" scientific?

Interesting Ian said:
Well I would certainly say consciousness is not material. And neither is the self. I feel most sympathetic towards subjective idealism.
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I don't know if I could agree with you there. It's my stance that any ontological questions remain unanswerable, that we could never know if the conscious mind is the direct result of some set of material phenomena or something else which is not tangible to us. For the umpteenth time, we can only know for certain our own conscious minds. Others, though they may by all outward appearances appear conscious, may not be truly sentient. And if we're going to find something causative of the conscious mind, we'll need more than just one example of that mind. I think this would be a good analogy for this kind of situation: imagine that the only button you've seen was one that opened a handicap door. Could you, from that one instance, extrapolate your experience and conclude with a fair degree of certainty that every button you push will open a nearby door? Of course not. Anyway, that's my take.
 
Ian, I apologize for the apparently rude reference to your alcoholism. I know I lack certain social niceties, such as tact, and that I come off at times being WAAY off-base. Plus, I understand alcoholism is a sensitive subject. So, I apologize.

Now, however, I would like to point out to our Gentle Readers that Ian once again is rejecting established definitions in favor of his own flawed views... :D

BTW, (to the Mods) why was this one reference to Ian's drunkeness noted, but numerous references to Lucianarchy's use of drugs ignored? Seems inconsistant to me... Since I experience neither drug use nor drunken states, I suppose I lack an appreciation for the difference between the two. Both appear to have caused fundamental failures in world-view... but I digress. Just curious...
 
zaayrdragon said:
Ian, I apologize for the apparently rude reference to your alcoholism. I know I lack certain social niceties, such as tact, and that I come off at times being WAAY off-base. Plus, I understand alcoholism is a sensitive subject. So, I apologize.

Now, however, I would like to point out to our Gentle Readers that Ian once again is rejecting established definitions in favor of his own flawed views... :D

BTW, (to the Mods) why was this one reference to Ian's drunkeness noted, but numerous references to Lucianarchy's use of drugs ignored? Seems inconsistant to me... Since I experience neither drug use nor drunken states, I suppose I lack an appreciation for the difference between the two. Both appear to have caused fundamental failures in world-view... but I digress. Just curious...
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Going out for a drink once a week or so does not make one an alcoholic. You really haven't got a clue. This is England. Only drinking once a week makes you virtually a teetotaller.
 
Batman Jr. said:
I don't know if I could agree with you there. It's my stance that any ontological questions remain unanswerable, that we could never know if the conscious mind is the direct result of some set of material phenomena or something else which is not tangible to us.
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Bear in mind that even if consciousness or the self is the result of material processes, this certainly doesn't vindicate materialism. Materialism goes much further than that.

Now if you're talking about materialism specifically I certainly disagree with you. I think that purely by reason we can see that it certainly is not true. The same goes for epiphenomenalism. Addressing the question of whether in a more general sense the brain is the origin of consciousness is much more difficult. It is worth mentioning here though that there is a great deal of evidence suggesting survival ("life" after death).


For the umpteenth time, we can only know for certain our own conscious minds. Others, though they may by all outward appearances appear conscious, may not be truly sentient.
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Umpteenth time? I cannot recall you pointing out this to me before. Anyway, I point out that we overwhelming feel that other people are sentient. It could be that we know other people are conscious through anomalous cognition.
 
Going out for a drink once a week or so does not make one an alcoholic. You really haven't got a clue. This is England. Only drinking once a week makes you virtually a teetotaller.
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This is America. Only drinking once a week makes you virtually a priest! :D

Nonetheless, alcoholism takes many forms. I drink about once a quarter, and consider it a bad habit. I also smoke a pipe - Tobacco, mind you, not Luci's style - and consider that a terrible addiction as well. Luckily, my addiction doesn't kill off brain cells as much as it poisons lung cells.

Didn't mean to come off harshly - I just get a little peeved when people try to argue intellectually under the influence of alcohol, drugs, or infatuation. Generally, the quality of argument is far lower, and sense simply doesn't poke it's head in at all. But ignore me - I'm running on about 1 hour of sleep per day (new baby and all) and probably shouldn't be arguing either. :D

With that in mind, I'm going to practice what I preach - I'll talk at you guys later (a few months) and maybe by then these threads will be back on track? Yeah right!

Best of luck,

Rev. ZD
 
Zaay said:
BTW, (to the Mods) why was this one reference to Ian's drunkeness noted, but numerous references to Lucianarchy's use of drugs ignored? Seems inconsistant to me... Since I experience neither drug use nor drunken states, I suppose I lack an appreciation for the difference between the two. Both appear to have caused fundamental failures in world-view... but I digress. Just curious...
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[pmod=Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]That particular post was reported. Remember, we do not patrol the forums looking for insults.[/pmod]
 
If Ian insists that scientific materialism = materialism, then this thread is uninteresting. I think many of us agree that materialism is not scientific.

Any chance we could talk about the assumptions that modern science actually does make?

~~ Paul
 
Interesting Ian said:
Bear in mind that even if consciousness or the self is the result of material processes, this certainly doesn't vindicate materialism. Materialism goes much further than that.

Now if you're talking about materialism specifically I certainly disagree with you. I think that purely by reason we can see that it certainly is not true. The same goes for epiphenomenalism. Addressing the question of whether in a more general sense the brain is the origin of consciousness is much more difficult. It is worth mentioning here though that there is a great deal of evidence suggesting survival ("life" after death).

Umpteenth time? I cannot recall you pointing out this to me before. Anyway, I point out that we overwhelming feel that other people are sentient. It could be that we know other people are conscious through anomalous cognition.
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I wasn't addressing a vindication of materialism. I was presenting an opposing case to your completely excluding of the possibility of monism.

I've posted this rationale many times over on this board, but never have I expressly directed it toward you.

What reasoning process leads you to reject materialism?

Feelings don't prove anything.
 
Batman Jr. said:
I wasn't addressing a vindication of materialism. I was presenting an opposing case to your completely excluding of the possibility of monism.
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I do not exclude the possibility of monism. Indeed I am a monist. Just not a materialist monist.

I've posted this rationale many times over on this board, but never have I expressly directed it toward you.

What reasoning process leads you to reject materialism?

Feelings don't prove anything.
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Materialism has to deny that we are conscious. Yet we are more certain of our own consciousness than anything else .

Our feelings don't prove anything, but there again we can have proof of nothing regarding the world. Maybe you mean no evidence? Certainly not any scientific evidence, no. It's a hypothesis I'm proposing regarding how we know that other people exist. Maybe it's incorrect, I don't know.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Why does materialism have to deny consciousness?

~~ Paul
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As far as I can tell, it doesn't. What we call consciousness arises from brain processes, which are material processes.
When those processes stop, we are no longer conscious.
 
Interesting Ian said:
Because consciousness cannot be derived. Materialism just leads to p-zombies.
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Why does materialism have to lead only to p-zombies? How can you show that physical processes cannot account for consciousness?
 
Batman Jr. said:
Why does materialism have to lead only to p-zombies? How can you show that physical processes cannot account for consciousness?
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To Ian this is self-evident. He knows that brain processes cannot fully account for those aspects of consciousness that involve feelings and the self. His certainty on this point leads to frustration when debating those of us who think otherwise and hence, sometimes, to his intemperate tone and language (of course, Friday night down the pub is often a factor too ;) ).

btw Ian, you're right about a once-a-week binge not implying alcoholism - still not good for you, though, and I speak as someone who indulged fairly heavily in the past.
 
Batman Jr. said:
Why does materialism have to lead only to p-zombies? How can you show that physical processes cannot account for consciousness?
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How can materialism imply anything more than p-zombies? The physical world only deals with structure and function. Consciousness has to play a fruitful role in some scientific theory describing the world. But it is clear that if the world is physically closed that it can be described entirely from a 3rd person perspective (ie objective perspective).

Here is what I have said on this subject before:

Let me address the reason why I think materialism is unintelligible. What we need to do is take a look at materialism to see if it is internally consistant. Now the particular question I would like to address is why should we suppose that other peoples bodies are "inhabited" by conscious minds (or why phenomenal consciousness is associated with brains). Your argument no doubt will be that materialism stipulates this to be so; it is an axiomatic premise of materialism. But this makes your definition of materialism an arbitrary one. A metaphysic which glosses over awkward facts. Allow me to explain.

It seems to me that materialism should stipulate that the physical exhausts reality. That once we have completely described the Universe in physical terms then we have said all that can be said about the Universe or reality.

But what is the physical? It seems to me that it should be everything, that, at least in principle, can be observed by anyone with appropriate faculties and suitable instruments. In other words all that is objective exists, or to put it another way, all that is discernable from the third person perspective exists. This will also include things which can only be indirectly seen (although strictly speaking I reject the direct/indirect dichotomy). This then includes such entities as electrons, because although they can only be "indirectly" seen they nevertheless play fruitful roles in our theories describing the world ie we need to hypothesise electrons in order to explain certain aspects of reality.

Now there is something peculiar about conscious experience which marks it off from all other existents. It is simply this. It cannot be observed or detected by anyone with appropriate faculties and/or suitable instruments! Thus according to my prior definition of the physical it is not a physical existent. Thus I may have toothache to take an arbitrary example. But you cannot observe that toothache, all you can obseve is the effects of the toothache, the grimace of pain for example. Conscious experiences in other words are irreducibly private.

Now you will no doubt say that by observing the grimace, or at least by observing the neurons fire, then you are observing the toothache since materialism holds that the toothache and its neural correlates are one and the same thing, or at least aspects of the same thing. But an objective examination of this toothache will necessarily leave out the subjective irreducibly sensation of pain. The actually sensation of pain does not figure into the physical facts about the pain according to our prior definition of the physical. Nor can we infer the sensation of pain since, unlike an electron, the (phenomenological) pain does not play a part in any description of our behaviour. The pain per se cannot play a part because pain per se is not part of the objective publically accessible realm. Only the neural correlates of the pain can play any fruitful role in our theories.

In short then either a materialist has to concede his metaphysic is internally inconsistent, or he must arbitrarily include phenomenological consciousness within his world picture. But if he opts for the latter then the whole prima facie plausibility of his world view crumbles away. No longer can he say that for something to exist it must be in principle be directly observable or play a fruitful role in some theory about the world, because this then necessarily precludes phenomenological consciousness. He
has to expand the notion of the physical to even include things that cannot be directly or even indirectly detected, even in principle!

This is what materialism entails and is just one of many reasons why we should reject this metaphysic.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
If Ian insists that scientific materialism = materialism, then this thread is uninteresting. I think many of us agree that materialism is not scientific.

Any chance we could talk about the assumptions that modern science actually does make?

~~ Paul
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Despite claims to the contrary, there are but five axioms of science:


1. There is a real, external universe

2. This universe is rational; A is not equal to not-A.
3. Their are regularities in this universe.

4. The components and processes of this universe can be described by mathematics.

5. The components and processes of this universe can be isolated and profitably analyzed in isolation.
 
BillHoyt said:
Despite claims to the contrary, there are but five axioms of science:


1. There is a real, external universe

2. This universe is rational; A is not equal to not-A.
3. Their are regularities in this universe.

4. The components and processes of this universe can be described by mathematics.

5. The components and processes of this universe can be isolated and profitably analyzed in isolation.
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Yeah that's fine. Except it can be argued that not all processes and components can be profitably analysed. Sometimes understanding might only be gleamed by looking at the whole.
 
Interesting Ian said:
Yeah that's fine. Except it can be argued that not all processes and components can be profitably analysed. Sometimes understanding might only be gleamed by looking at the whole.
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To efectively argue this you would have to demonstrate an instance in which a whole has been profitably analyzed with no such analysis at the next layer down.
 
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