Materialists......

[UndercoverElephant]

The whole problem with this line of reasoning is that truth is independant of philosophy.

Not true. Without philosophy, you have no idea what you mean by "truth."

 

[UndercoverElephant]

The average guy doesn't think mind includes chairs.* You are allowing the idealist to include them in mind precisely because that's what the idealist needs to obtain one fundamental existent.

Yes. And unlike the materialist, the idealist has got a decent case.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Why do you assume that I am putting the cart before the horse like you do? I am not assuming any metaphysical position. All I am doing is pointing out that there is no reason why the concept of a p-zombie is in itself incoherent, so long as you can distinguish between a brain process and a subjective experience. Which brings us very nicely back to the opening post in this thread.

Distinguish between a brain process and a subjective experience in what way? I believe you need to distinguish between them in a way that allows you to eliminate the experience while keeping the brain processes intact.

No, I cannot do this. It's logically impossible to prove something is coherent under a particular metaphysic with[out] assuming a particular metaphysic. We are back in square-circle territory.

You meant "without", right? So now I'm completely confused. Here you are agreeing that you need to assume a metaphysic to show that p-zombies are coherent under it.

I can prove that p-zombies are coherent in their own right, provided one allows me to use folk psychological terms to define what is meant by "mind".

And implicit in the use of folk psychological terms is the idea that the mind is a separate thing from the brain, so that it can be eliminated.

There is only one metaphysical position which explicitly rules out the use of folk psychological terms, and it is eliminativism. However, the eliminitavist need not defend his position by assuming eliminativism is true. He just has to honestly believe that there is no such thing as a mind.

Since we've never been able to agree on what eliminativists are actually claiming, I'll let this go.


~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Yes. And unlike the materialist, the idealist has got a decent case.

So you will allow the idealist wiggle room in his definition of mind.

~~ Paul

 

[DreadNiK]

I still have trouble with the whole 'p-zombie' thing...

If, as has been said, p-zombies are indistinguishable from a normal human...then surely they are the same thing?

Just because you don't like the idea that we are all p-zombies (or, via the above, we are all humans) doesn't make it incoherent...

As far as I can deduce, p-zombie is a meaningless term, since it is already covered by the term 'human'.

Am I missing something?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

On Kant

Paul

Give us a summary of Kant.

Modern philosophy started with Descartes. Descartes tried to "clear out the rubble" of the archaic philosophy which had been handed down from the Greeks and build something new, based upon first principles. This both worked and didn't work. The thing he built had problems, problems which led philosophers to reject substance dualism. But he did enough to completely change the questions being asked and eventually there were a large number of philosophical battles going on between various groups of metaphysicians trying to find/prove some system which was better than Descartes. There was a battle going on between what we would now identify as materialists and idealists. There was a battle going on between the empiricists (who believed we must start with observations about the world and work towards metaphysics) and the rationalists (who believed we must start with pure logic). The nature of those debates were very much like the nature of the debates in this thread. You seem to be able to prove anything is true by assuming your conclusion, which doesn't help. Assume something else and you get a different result. The arguments go on and on forever, either oscillating between two positions or going round and round in endless circles.

It is important to note that neutral monism did not really get a look-in at this point. It was not present, apart from in the writings of Spinoza. In the same way, neutral monism would not get mentioned here if it was not for me continually defending it.

Then comes Kant. Kant claims that all of the people arguing before him were engaged in "the metaphysics of illusion" and that they were never going to make any progress unless they gave sufficient thought to what they were trying to do and how they were trying to do it. Ultimately, he claimed, they were all asking questions which could never be conclusively answered.

Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" has two parts. The first part is a destructive project, aimed at fatally undermining any attempts at transcendentally real metaphysics. Transcendental realism is the claim that we can know the ultimate nature of reality and all of the arguments we are having about idealism and materialism are of that nature, as were the arguments between Berkeley, Hume, Leibniz and the rest of them. Having shown that all transcendent metaphysics were doomed to fail, he then sets up his positive project - which is an attempt to show that we can approach metaphysical questions by asking questions about the "conditions for the possibility of X".

Most important of all is Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena. He basically agrees with Berkeley. Idealism was correct in claiming that we are trapped in a subjective reality - that solipsism could be true. But in the second edition of the Critique, Kant explicitly refutes Berkeley and makes sure that nobody can mistake his position for transcendentally real idealism. Kant points out that the empirical world, the world of phenomena, the world we experience....is the only world we can ever know anything about. "Things as they really are" are forever unknown to us.

HOWEVER, this all held only until the arrival of QM. On some interpretations of QM, science has given us a glimpse of the noumenal. But it does so in a way which is still compatible with Kant. Unfortunately, the number of people on this planet who are truly academic authorities on both Kant and QM is probably zero.

Neutral monism is technically a form of transcendental realism also, but it is not neccesarily prone to the same problem that idealism and materialism are. That is because it puts itself into the dialectic between the two of them. It's like a pendulum. If you pull the pendulum in either direction, it will be destined to start swinging between the two directions. Only if you put the pendulum right in the middle will it stay put. Neutral monism is attractive to me because it is a post-Kantian form of transcendental realism, unlike materialism and idealism which are pre-Kantian. It is also informed by QM, via people like Bohm and John Bell.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Distinguish between a brain process and a subjective experience in what way?

See OP!

I believe you need to distinguish between them in a way that allows you to eliminate the experience while keeping the brain processes intact.

Which is very easy. That is what the opening post is about, Paul. The truth is that we know what brain processes are - they are processes in squidgy meat. We also know what minds are - they are collections of subjective experiences. PLEASE do not go back to claiming you can't understand what the difference is. That would be silly. See Opening Post.

You meant "without", right? So now I'm completely confused. Here you are agreeing that you need to assume a metaphysic to show that p-zombies are coherent under it.

You are asking a nonsensical question. Why do you have connect "the coherence of p-zombies" with "metaphysical assumption". You do not have to do this. Here:

1) FORGET METAPHYSICS.

2) Admit that you know how to tell the difference between (a) a collection of subjective experiences and (b) electro-chemical processes in brain tissue.

Since (a) and (b) share no properties whatsoever, I cannot understand how anyone in their right mind should have trouble telling them apart, unless they have failed to FORGET METAPHYSICS. In other words, unless they are incapable of resisting the temptation to put cart before horse and assume their metaphysical conclusion is true before approaching (2).

And implicit in the use of folk psychological terms is the idea that the mind is a separate thing from the brain, so that it can be eliminated.

Not neccessarily. Minds do not need to be seperate from brains. That would be back to attacking straw man substance dualism. Minds merely need to be distinguishable from brains. See Opening Post.

Since we've never been able to agree on what eliminativists are actually claiming, I'll let this go.

Argh! It is called E L I M I N A T I V I S M.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

double post

 

[hammegk]

So you will allow the idealist wiggle room in his definition of mind.

The real point being mind is full of "wiggle room; lets say intent"; matter/energy has nothing but predestination or randomness. Pretending the wave/particle problem, Aspect-Bell, delayed choice quantum eraser as the latest 2-slit nuttiness, and basic QM fits the definition of "physical/material", and going with Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of QM could allow a materialist arguing room.

And yes, I also agree Chalmer's p-zombie idea is nuttiness and demonstrates nothing as it is usually presented. HPC is the toughest end of the stick for a "No Wiggleroom" materialist.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So you will allow the idealist wiggle room in his definition of mind.

~~ Paul

No. The idealist has merely opted for the half of descartes dualism which is the hardest to deny the existence of. Just like Kant, I am willing to allow the idealist to claim he has more of a case than the materialist. Also just like Kant, I am going to argue that the (transcendentally real) idealist is still wrong.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I think this is what Geoff is getting at: When you want to show that something is (in)coherent under a particular metaphysic, you do so by assuming the metaphysic to be true and then doing the logic. However, you don't want to assume the specific conclusion you are working on, because that is begging the question. So in the case of p-zombies, we want to assume that materialism is true, but not assume that mind equals brain.

But this is tricky. Let's say we were trying to prove that there is more than one kind of fundamental existent. So we assume materialism is true, but try not to assume the number of fundamental existents. But materialism entails that there is only one fundamental existent, so the whole thing becomes incoherent.

That's a silly example. Let's take a subtler one. We are trying to show that X is separable from Y, so that X can be eliminated in a thought experiment. So we assume materialism, but try not to assume that X = Y. However, it's possible that materialism entails that X = Y, in which case we have a problem again.

Eliminative materialism entails that subjective experience = brain function, so no p-zombies there. I do not understand what other forms of materialism entail, but Geoff seems to think they allow for subjective experience /= brain function, so maybe p-zombies. I guess emergent materialism is one such.

Emergentism:

A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is more than the sum of the properties of the system's parts. More rigorously, a property P of composite object O is emergent if it is metaphysically possible for another object to lack property P even if that object is composed of parts with intrinsic properties identical to those in O and has those parts in an identical configuration.

WTF?

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I still have trouble with the whole 'p-zombie' thing...

If, as has been said, p-zombies are indistinguishable from a normal human...then surely they are the same thing?

No. A dreadnik which has subjective experiences like me and a dreadnik which entirely lacked those experiences would be indistinguishable to anybody else. However, it would make a fairly enormous difference from dreadnik's point of view, because he is a p-zombie then he doesn't have a point of view. He has no mind.

Just because you don't like the idea that we are all p-zombies (or, via the above, we are all humans) doesn't make it incoherent...

It isn't me who is arguing that p-zombies are inherently incoherent.

As far as I can deduce, p-zombie is a meaningless term, since it is already covered by the term 'human'.

Am I missing something?

Yes, your mind.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Since (a) and (b) share no properties whatsoever, I cannot understand how anyone in their right mind should have trouble telling them apart, unless they have failed to FORGET METAPHYSICS. In other words, unless they are incapable of resisting the temptation to put cart before horse and assume their metaphysical conclusion is true before approaching (2).

I have no trouble telling the concepts apart. The question is whether they can be separated in a thought experiment like one about p-zombies.

This brings up the difference between "logically possible" and "naturally possible." If I agree that I can tell the concepts of brain function and subjective experience apart, does that make p-zombies logically possible?

Let's say it does. What then is the proof that materialism is false?

Argh! It is called E L I M I N A T I V I S M.

Sorry, Geoff, but there is much contradictory information about what eliminativists are actually claiming. We're been through it before, but you refused to acknowledge it.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

No. The idealist has merely opted for the half of descartes dualism which is the hardest to deny the existence of. Just like Kant, I am willing to allow the idealist to claim he has more of a case than the materialist. Also just like Kant, I am going to argue that the (transcendentally real) idealist is still wrong.

What does this have to do with the definition of mind? The idealist requires that mind include not only subjective experience, but also the nonconscious mechanisms that make people's experiences consistent. These nonconsious mechanisms have to perform all the functions that materialism's stuff has to perform: The mechanisms have to produce the "external world." No common definition of mind includes such mechanisms, which are normally attributed to the physical.

Preferring idealism over materialism comes down to preferring nonconscious mind mechanisms over the possibility that subjective experience can arise from physical processes. Fine. But just as scientists are attempting to understand the latter, so should idealist-scientists attempt to understand the former. Perhaps they will.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

No. A dreadnik which has subjective experiences like me and a dreadnik which entirely lacked those experiences would be indistinguishable to anybody else. However, it would make a fairly enormous difference from dreadnik's point of view, because he is a p-zombie then he doesn't have a point of view. He has no mind.

Only if subjective experiences are epiphenomenal. Otherwise I could, in principle, detect the difference in dreadnik.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I think this is what Geoff is getting at: When you want to show that something is (in)coherent under a particular metaphysic, you do so by assuming the metaphysic to be true and then doing the logic. However, you don't want to assume the specific conclusion you are working on, because that is begging the question.

You've got it.

So in the case of p-zombies, we want to assume that materialism is true, but not assume that mind equals brain. But this is tricky.

Impossible, actually. If you assume materialism is true then minds already equal brains.

Let's say we were trying to prove that there is more than one kind of fundamental existent. So we assume materialism is true, but try not to assume the number of fundamental existents.

Not possible. Materialism is a monistic form of transcendental realism. It claims there is only one fundamental existent, and it's matter/energy.

But materialism entails that there is only one fundamental existent, so the whole thing becomes incoherent.

You've got it.

That's a silly example.

It worked for me.

Let's take a subtler one. We are trying to show that X is separable from Y, so that X can be eliminated in a thought experiment.

Seperable? OK, we would be trying to prove substance dualism?

So we assume materialism, but try not to assume that X = Y. However, it's possible that materialism entails that X = Y, in which case we have a problem again.

Yes. They breed like rabbits, don't they? Kant is smiling at you.

Eliminative materialism entails that subjective experience = brain function, so no p-zombies there.

Eliminative materialism, by definition, does not claim that subjective experience = brain function. It claims there are no such things as "subjective experiences". So no p-zombies, but not because eliminativism is true, but because there are no such things as minds. Subtle difference, but important. Assuming eliminativism is assuming your conclusion. Denying that minds exist does not assume the conclusion, it just happens to be the case that denial of the existence of minds is also what eliminativism entails.

I do not understand what other forms of materialism entail, but Geoff seems to think they allow for subjective experience /= brain function, so maybe p-zombies. I guess emergent materialism is one such.

Emergentism:

A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is more than the sum of the properties of the system's parts. More rigorously, a property P of composite object O is emergent if it is metaphysically possible for another object to lack property P even if that object is composed of parts with intrinsic properties identical to those in O and has those parts in an identical configuration.

WTF?

~~ Paul

OK, this is likely to take the thread in another new direction. Yes, emergentism allows for the existence of a mind and then claims, via that rather incomprehensible passage you have quoted, that they can "emerge" from brains. All that matters at this point is that this position allows for a meaningful definition of "mind". This is crucial, because once you have that definition of mind, p-zombies are undeniably conceivable.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Eliminative materialism, by definition, does not claim that subjective experience = brain function. It claims there are no such things as "subjective experiences". So no p-zombies, but not because eliminativism is true, but because there are no such things as minds. Subtle difference, but important. Assuming eliminativism is assuming your conclusion. Denying that minds exist does not assume the conclusion, it just happens to be the case that denial of the existence of minds is also what eliminativism entails.

Do you have a definition of eliminative materialism that will convince us that anyone is saying there is no such thing as subjective experience? Really, I know why we're abandoning minds, but I'm suspicious that you're building a strawman eliminativism.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I have no trouble telling the concepts apart.

Good! That is all you need.

1) FORGET METAPHYSICS.
2) You know what a brain is. You know what a mind is. You can distinguish between these two.
3) P-zombies have brains but no minds.

The question is whether they can be separated in a thought experiment like one about p-zombies.

No it is not. The question stands on its own.

You are still conflating two questions:

1) Can I conceive of a p-zombie?
2) Are p-zombies compatible with metaphysic X?

You keep trying to turn (1) into (2), but doing so is to beg the question.

This brings up the difference between "logically possible" and "naturally possible."

Yes, this is a relevant difference.

If I agree that I can tell the concepts of brain function and subjective experience apart, does that make p-zombies logically possible?

It makes them a logically coherent and meaningful concept, yes.

Let's say it does. What then is the proof that materialism is false?

If materialism is true, the p-zombies should be logically impossible. They aren't, so materialism must be false. UNLESS......you deny you have any idea what "mind" is supposed to mean. If you do that then p-zombies become a logically incoherent concept. Without a definition of mind and without folk psychology it is not possible to construct a logically coherent concept of a p-zombie. And if p-zombies are logically incoherent, then materialism has not been shown to be false.

Sorry, Geoff, but there is much contradictory information about what eliminativists are actually claiming. We're been through it before, but you refused to acknowledge it.

I am right on this one. I do not understand why you think the information is contradictory. I think it is crystal clear, and only looks ambiguous to you because of all the other conceptual problems hanging around in this vicinity. I am not surprised you are unclear about what eliminativism entails. The early eliminativists had the exact same problem themselves. That is why the later versions are so explicit in their denial that the word "mind" refers to anything at all.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Only if subjective experiences are epiphenomenal. Otherwise I could, in principle, detect the difference in dreadnik.

~~ Paul

Sure, but there's no way materialism can survive a claim like that.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

On eliminativism....

Paul,

I've explained this before but I will try again. I think I know why you are confused about eliminativism. You seem to be under the impression that there is a metaphysical difference between eliminativism and other materialist positions. There is not. Both eliminativism and reductive/emergentist materialism make exactly the same metaphysical claim : everything is made of matter/energy.

The primary difference between eliminativism and non-eliminative materialism is therefore NOT metaphysical. It is linguistic. The eliminativists make an additional claim on top of the metaphysical claim of materialism, and that claim is a very specific claim about language, namely that the word "mind" and all of the terms in folk psychology which appear to refer to things which resist being reduced to matter, do not refer to anything at all.

That is why I keep insisting I am correct on this one. The people who say they can't understand what eliminativism is claiming, and trying to say they are eliminativists but continue trying to use words like "mind" in debates like these simply do not understand that eliminativism only differs from other forms of materialism because of a linguistic claim, NOT a metaphysical one. It is a claim that other materialists are using words that are redundant, NOT a claim that their metaphysical position is wrong.

WOO! 2000 posts......