Materialists......

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

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.

Then even under eliminativism we have p-zombies. Didn't you just say that we did not?

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

So as long as I can name two distinct concepts, it is logically coherent to assume a world in which one is eliminated.

If idealism is true, then minds without objects of perception should be logically impossible. They aren't, so idealism must be false. (Or is there eliminative idealism?)

If neutral monism is true, then certain combinations of microtubules without consciousness should be impossible. They aren't, so neutral monism must be false. (Or is there eliminative neutral monism?)

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

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

I don't understand.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't understand.

~~ Paul

You were both admitting the existence of mind and admitting it is causally active. Now how are you going to defend materialism?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

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.

So this gobbledygook isn't a metaphysical claim?

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.

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.

I'm fine with that. My annoyance comes with not being allowed to give mind a non-folk psychological definition. But I'm resigned to it.

Note, however, that your statement says nothing about whether eliminative neuroscientists are allowed to invent new terms to refer to subsets of brain functions that produce subjective experiences.

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.

Then I would say that you are being too heavy-handed in not allowing people to talk about things like "subjective experience." There is no folk psychological dualistic implication attached to that term. You appear to insist that any reference whatsoever to inner experience is off limits.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You were both admitting the existence of mind and admitting it is causally active. Now how are you going to defend materialism?

No, I was admitting the existence of subjective experiences, not (dualistic) mind. But apparently you won't let me do that, either.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Then even under eliminativism we have p-zombies. Didn't you just say that we did not?

No, the eliminativist never got to the end of the line of reasoning. He arrived at the sentence "You know what a mind is" and shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and honestly announced to the world that he has no idea what a mind is and cannot provide a meaningful definition of such a thing. "Minds?" he says, "I have no idea what you mean!"

So as long as I can name two distinct concepts, it is logically coherent to assume a world in which one is eliminated.

Eh?

Only if one of them was meaningless to begin with. I can name two distinct concepts:

a) Four-sided pinkel triangles.
b) Rectangles.

We can safely eliminate (a). What is your point?

If idealism is true, then minds without objects of perception should be logically impossible. They aren't, so idealism must be false. (Or is there eliminative idealism?)

No, there is not really an eliminative idealism in the sense that there are a bunch of idealists trying to stop the usage of the concepts of a material world. Instead, there is Berkeleyanism. Berkeleyan subjective idealism admits the usage of materialistic vocabulary but explicitly denies that it refers to a self-existing material world. So it eliminates one of the materialists double-usage of the word "material". It reserves "material" for the material world we actually experience but denies that it has any existence in its own right, independent of mind. You do not need to have an "eliminative idealism" because materialists have already got two usages of the word "material" hopelessly confused and the "eliminative idealist" only wants to eliminate one of them.

If neutral monism is true, then certain combinations of microtubules without consciousness should be impossible. They aren't, so neutral monism must be false.

I argued precisely the reverse in a metaphysics essay defending direct realism (which was marked by Smith). I claimed that BIVs were impossible because it would be impossible to recreate the same state in the microtubules - and that therefore one of two things must follow. EITHER the BIV would know something was fishy because its experiences would be different to veridical perception OR it would be impossible to set up the experiment at all. Either way, the BIV argument then fails to defeat direct realism because one of the premises has been denied. I got a 2.1 for the essay, not brilliant, but competent.

I should add that Smith has claimed that Neutral monism is incompatible with Direct Realism, but I am yet to see his reasoning why this is the case. I asked him twice, and twice he said there was no simple way to answer the question and therefore didn't offer an answer. I also told him at the end of the course that I'd spent the whole two terms trying to resolve his position on direct realism with my own neutral monism (he mentioned neutral monism only in passing, if at all, during the whole course). His response was "I can see that." Which didn't exactly help. I am still unsure why neutral monism is incompatible with direct realism and until I hear a decent argument to the contrary, I will continue to assume there is no problem.

(Or is there eliminative neutral monism?)

No. That would be very silly indeed. Maybe the most extreme nihilists of all could be described in this way, such as Gorgias, who believed the following:

1) nothing exists
2) if anything does exist, it cannot be known, and
3) if anything does exist and can be known, it cannot be communicated

There you have eliminative neutral monism: Nothing whatsoever exists.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Consider this description of the theory change that eliminativism says will occur (Wikipedia):

Eliminative materialists claim that an ontologically radical theory change of this sort awaits the theoretical posits of folk psychology. Just as we came to understand that there are no such things as demons (because nothing at all like demons appear in modern accounts of strange behavior), so too, eliminative materialists argue that various folk psychological concepts -- like our concept of belief -- will eventually be recognized as empty posits that fail to correspond with anything that actually exists. Since there simply is nothing that have the causal and semantic properties we attribute to beliefs (and many other mental states) it will turn out that there really are no such things.

Now consider this objection to eliminativism from the same article:

Many writers have argued that eliminative materialism is in some sense self-refuting (Baker, 1987; Boghossian, 1990, 1991; Reppert, 1992). A common way this charge is made is to insist that a capacity or activity that is somehow invoked by the eliminativist is itself something that requires the existence of beliefs. One popular candidate for this activity is the making of an assertion. The critic insists that to assert something one must believe it. Hence, for eliminative materialism to be asserted as a thesis, the eliminativist herself must believe that it is true. But if the eliminativist has such a belief, then there are beliefs and eliminativism is thereby proven false.

But this is just silly. The eliminativist is saying that we don't have beliefs, instead we have a process, X, that really goes on when we come to accept the truth of something. You can't argue against eliminativism by saying it requires a belief. It doesn't. It requires an X.

~~ Paul

 

[articulett]

Which is the circularity noted before in this thread and many others, which is why:

does not follow. Under materialism nothing is possible except p-zombies, which have the same compatibilistic free will as any programmed machine.

And, presumably all other animals, right? Plants that turn toward the sun are p-zombies...my dog is a p-zombie, Terri Schiavo was a very low functioning p-zombie...because these things don't seem like programmed machines to me...life forms tend to show interaction and adaption to their environment and preferences and tendencies that enhance their survival--machines don't...though we can program them to "learn".

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

No, the eliminativist never got to the end of the line of reasoning. He arrived at the sentence "You know what a mind is" and shrugged his shoulders, shook his head and honestly announced to the world that he has no idea what a mind is and cannot provide a meaningful definition of such a thing. "Minds?" he says, "I have no idea what you mean!"

But if he also shrugged his shoulders to any concept concerning inner experience, then he is just a liar. Rather than assuming all eliminativists are liars, I think I shall assume they are not as radical as you suppose.

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.

So as long as I can name two distinct concepts, it is logically coherent to assume a world in which one is eliminated.

Only if one of them was meaningless to begin with. I can name two distinct concepts:

a) Four-sided pinkel triangles.
b) Rectangles.

We can safely eliminate (a). What is your point?

I'm thoroughly confused now.

No, there is not really an eliminative idealism in the sense that there are a bunch of idealists trying to stop the usage of the concepts of a material world. Instead, there is Berkeleyanism. Berkeleyan subjective idealism admits the usage of materialistic vocabulary but explicitly denies that it refers to a self-existing material world. So it eliminates one of the materialists double-usage of the word "material". It reserves "material" for the material world we actually experience but denies that it has any existence in its own right, independent of mind. You do not need to have an "eliminative idealism" because materialists have already got two usages of the word "material" hopelessly confused and the "eliminative idealist" only wants to eliminate one of them.

How does this refute my logic? Forget metaphysics!

If idealism is true, then minds without objects of perception should be logically impossible. They aren't, so idealism must be false.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So this gobbledygook isn't a metaphysical claim?

Yes, that was a metaphysical claim. This is another form of materialism and in this case it does indeed make an additional metaphysical claim to "everything is material/energy". However, "everything is material/energy" is still the basic claim which is common to all forms of materialism and the only additional claim of eliminativism is a linguistic claim.

I'm fine with that. My annoyance comes with not being allowed to give mind a non-folk psychological definition. But I'm resigned to it.

You can give mind a non-folk-psychological definition, but it then just becomes a synonym for "brain processes", so you've just redefined the word "mind" to mean something it doesn't, with no apparent justification or valid reason for doing so.

Note, however, that your statement says nothing about whether eliminative neuroscientists are allowed to invent new terms to refer to subsets of brain functions that produce subjective experiences.

Oh yes it does, because the last two words in your sentence have no meaning to an eliminative neuroscientist. As soon as you starting talking about "producing experiences" you are wobbling back towards dualism all over again.

Then I would say that you are being too heavy-handed in not allowing people to talk about things like "subjective experience." There is no folk psychological dualistic implication attached to that term.

Of course there is. Folk psychological terms refer to subjective experiences.

You appear to insist that any reference whatsoever to inner experience is off limits.

~~ Paul

Absolutely off-limits to an eliminativist. He must deny there is any such thing.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Absolutely off-limits to an eliminativist. He must deny there is any such thing [as subjective experience].

I can find no description of eliminativism that says this.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Consider this description of the theory change that eliminativism says will occur (Wikipedia):



Now consider this objection to eliminativism from the same article:

But this is just silly.

Absolutely ridiculous, in fact.

The eliminativist is saying that we don't have beliefs, instead we have a process, X, that really goes on when we come to accept the truth of something. You can't argue against eliminativism by saying it requires a belief. It doesn't. It requires an X.

The eliminativist simply denies that the word "believe" means anything. Therefore he does not believe that eliminativism is true......

All the objections to eliminativism end up being just as inane as eliminativism itself. The whole subject area is riddled with abject absurdity, because eliminativism is based on the absurd claim that minds do not exist. Don't bother trying to make any sense of it, you are wasting your time.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

But if he also shrugged his shoulders to any concept concerning inner experience, then he is just a liar.

Or insane. I like to think "insane" is kinder.

Rather than assuming all eliminativists are liars, I think I shall assume they are not as radical as you suppose.

Perhaps they have simply made an error somewhere and ended up defending a position which doesn't actually make sense?

The branch of the debate we are having right now was played out by the early eliminativists themselves, such as Rorty and Feyerabend. As a result of those debates, both of these philosophers abandoned their defence of eliminativism and moved to positions which they could actually defend.

How does this refute my logic? Forget metaphysics!

If idealism is true, then minds without objects of perception should be logically impossible. They aren't, so idealism must be false.

I don't know how you arrived at "If idealism is true, then minds without objects of perception should be logically impossible."

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I can find no description of eliminativism that says this.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

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

Early eliminativists such as Rorty and Feyerabend often confused two different conceptions of the sort of elimination that the term eliminative materialism entailed. On the one hand, these early theorists claimed, the cognitive sciences that will ultimately give us a correct account of the workings of the human mind will not refer to common-sense mental states like beliefs and desires; these states will not be part of the ontology of a mature cognitive science. But many critics immediately countered that this view was practically indistinguishable from identity theories. Even Quine himself wondered what exactly was so eliminative about eliminative materialism after all.

-----------------------------------
Is physicalism a repudiation of mental objects after all, or a theory of them? Does it repudiate the mental state of pain or anger in favor of its physical concomitant, or does it identify the mental state with a state of the physical organism (and so a state of the physical organism with the mental state)" (p. 265)
-----------------------------------

On the other hand, the same philosophers also claimed that common-sense mental states simply do not exist. But critics immediately pointed out that eliminativists could not have it both ways: either mental states exist and will ultimately be explained in terms of lower-level neuro-physiological processes or they do not. Modern eliminativists have much more clearly expressed the view that mental phenomena simply do not exist and will eventually be eliminated from our thinking about the brain in the same way that demons have been eliminated from our thinking about mental illness and psychopathology.

You are trying to go back to defending Rortyian-Feyerabendian "wobbly eliminativism". You keep trying to wobble back to a less extreme position. This is the exact problem which led Rorty and Feyerabend to abandon eliminativism and which leads the Churchlands to explicitly deny the existence of mental phenomena.

 

[articulett]

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.

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......

You are going to have to stretch your thinking a bit here...in science mind does not exactly mean "brain"--brain is used to refer more to the organ itself...mind refers more as to what the organism with the brain is experiencing. Saying your heart is racing...refers to an organ that is beating faster and a state of mind you might call excitement or anxiety. Stimulants act upon brain matter and brain chemicals and the transmission of brain signals causing a state of mind that might be perceived as sharp, or speedy, or that the "mind" is racing--not the brain--mind is what the individual with a brain perceives...just like sound is waves that the brain perceives (via auricles) and translates...in scary movies...this alters the "state of mind"--it's not redundant...you seem to misunderstand the finer points of neurology on purpose to have this notion that "thought" is something "mystical". Sound is just waves--but that is not to say that brains can't interpret them and get meaning and information from sounds. You wouldn't say that the meaning that pavlov's dogs got from the bell (dinner was about to be served) was a "something" that existed outside or independent from the brain. It's not 'mystery" that makes them salivate...it is an assocation in the brain.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You are going to have to stretch your thinking a bit here...in science mind does not exactly mean "brain"--brain is used to refer more to the organ itself...mind refers more as to what the organism with the brain is experiencing. Saying your heart is racing...refers to an organ that is beating faster and a state of mind you might call excitement or anxiety. Stimulants act upon brain matter and brain chemicals and the transmission of brain signals causing a state of mind that might be perceived as sharp, or speedy, or that the "mind" is racing--not the brain--mind is what the individual with a brain perceives...just like sound is waves that the brain perceives (via auricles) and translates...in scary movies...this alters the "state of mind"--it's not redundant...you seem to misunderstand the finer points of neurology on purpose to have this notion that "thought" is something "mystical".

Nothing in this post has actually got anything to do with the post it is supposedly responding to.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The eliminativist simply denies that the word "believe" means anything. Therefore he does not believe that eliminativism is true...

Correct. He Xs that eliminativism is true.

All the objections to eliminativism end up being just as inane as eliminativism itself. The whole subject area is riddled with abject absurdity, because eliminativism is based on the absurd claim that minds do not exist. Don't bother trying to make any sense of it, you are wasting your time.

I believe you missed my point, but this is a dead end anyway.

Perhaps they have simply made an error somewhere and ended up defending a position which doesn't actually make sense?

Perhaps you would care to find a description of eliminativism that demonstrates that you have not constructed a strawman?

I don't know how you arrived at "If idealism is true, then minds without objects of perception should be logically impossible."

Same way you arrived at "If materialism is true, then p-zombies should be logically impossible. They aren't, so materialism must be false." You said we can distinguish between minds and brain function, so it is logically possible to have a creature with a brain but no mind. We can also distinguish between minds and objects of perception, so it is logically possible to have a creature with a mind but no objects of perception. But that should be logically impossible under idealism.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Damn it, Geoff, I can't find one. I'm happy for you to show me one.

~~ Paul

 

[Belz...]

A metaphysical subject is what you call "I". Not your body, not the contents of your mind but the thing which observes your mind.

Bolding mine.

I cannot sense or even conceptualise such a thing. You're going to have to help me out on this.