Materialists......

[UndercoverElephant]

On begging the question and the definition of physical

I have many times claimed that the root of this problem is naive realism, and that physicalists are usually trying to defend naive (direct) realism without understanding the implications and difficulty of actually doing this. This is also why I accuse them of being pre-Kantian (and pre-gazerist), because they do not appear to have reaced the point where they've realise there is an important difference between the world-as-we-percieve it and things-in-themselves. The problem, therefore, is that the materialist has two difference usages of "physical" interposed:

P1) He wants to use physical to mean "the objects of perceptual awareness". He wants that keyboard in front of him - the one he actually sees - to be physical.

P2) He also wants to use physical to mean "the self-existing perception-independent world", that thing that Kant called "noumena".

This problem is compounded by the question-begging problem. What the materialism really wants to do when asked to define what "physical" means is respond with "everything". But he can't do this. Why not? Because that leaves him in a position where the only way he can defend materialism is to question-beg. His definition of materialism is itself one giant example of question-begging. He wants to add the premise "Everything is physical" to each and every debate for the simple reason that he's got no other way of defining "physical" at all, for the above reasons.

So what is physical/materialism going to be defined as?

A) Everything is physical.

Disallowed because it's always going to be question-begging.

B) Physical things are the objects of perception.

Relegates physical things to a subset of mental things and leads to idealism.

C) Physical things are the external self-existing things.

Physical now means "noumenal" and we have no word for the objects of perception, legitimising the invention of the word "qualia" or the zombie definition of the word "mind", which leads to a falsification of materialism.

D) The objects of perception and the external self-existing things are identical.

This is an explicit claim that direct realism is true. Direct realism is very hard to defend. The only defence of it I know of which I can't refute (A.D.Smith's) leads to a position called "intentionalism" which is not materialism-friendly.

So it looks like the materialist cannot even define "material" or "physical" in such a way that it is both logically coherent and avoids begging the question.

Where does that leave materialism?

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Could you please link to where you got this Stimpy quote? I must have very much misunderstood him; it does not sound like my understanding of him at all, and yet you have it in quotes. I'd like to see it in context.

I suspect the relevant quotes predate the current database, but I will have a look. He said this many times to me.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Could you please link to where you got this Stimpy quote? I must have very much misunderstood him; it does not sound like my understanding of him at all, and yet you have it in quotes. I'd like to see it in context.

Ok, this is one of the original UcE threads, although it comes up as a deleted account. I wonder if it is possible to merge that account with mine? Probably not. Darat?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3948&highlight=subjective+objective

First, we have a Stimpson example of the question-begging fallacy about zombies:

Geoff: In fact all I have done is claimed that qualia exist , and that they differ from brain processes [i.e. zombies are conceptually possible]

SJC: You have defined [zombies] in such a way that there existence is impossible under materialism. Thus your claim that they exist presupposes that materialism is false.

Here is he is denying that the linguistic dualism which supports the zombie argument is valid. He doesn't actually explain what's wrong with it, he just "re-iterates" (insists) that it is invalid:

Let me reiterate once again. You cannot use the way the dictionary defines words as evidence that materialism is false. This has got to be by far the most irrational argument you have ever attempted to present. I am not even going to argue with you about it again. If you still honestly believe that such an argument is valid, then you are clearly too irrational for me to hope to have an intelligent discussion with anyway.

Here he is retreating back to eliminativism:

Then the word doesn't refer to anything that actually exists. Next issue?

If you read the first pages of that thread you will see that Stimpsons position is "Either subjective (mental) things are actually objective (physical) OR they don't exist". He wobbled between both positions.

 

[Belz...]

Well' it's been an interesting weekend, I see.

Yes, that's one, but still fairly transparent. How does one distinguish a valid conclusion from one that was assumed? Can it be done mechanically?

Well, I suppose sometimes it can be packaged in a way that makes it hard to spot, because a premise may sound valid but be loaded with prior assumptions. No example comes to mind.

Yeah. I don't know what "private behaviour" means. I know what behaviour means, but it's always public.

Thinking isn't behaviour ?

Yes, that is the crux of the matter. What is this "subjective experience" that others cannot, even in principle, see?

I'd have a hard time answering that, considering I don't believe that exists.

Read "Brave New World".

Typical. Ask me to read something instead of answering the question.

I look over and I see my dog lying on the carpet, emiting odors. According to you, I also observe myself looking over and seeing my dog... Which might lead one to ask whether I also observe myself observing myself looking over and seeing... and observe the observation of observing myself looking...

That's a good one, actually. Hadn't thought of it that way.

 

[Belz...]

It seems to me that (1) contains the assumption that minds are nonphysical. That is why I'm asking questions about question begging.

You're absolutely right, Paul. It does assume that minds are non-physical. No manner of mental gymnastics will change that.

What if I am given a drug which totally paralyses me, but leaves me fully aware of everything that is happening. There are recorded cases of this happening when a general anasthetic goes wrong. Such people are completely incapable of doing anything at all. There is no more "behaviour" occuring than there is in a corpse, or in a person under general anasthetic. Do you think a person who is under a general anasthetic has "behaviour"?

Of course he does, and it you check out his brain activity you'll be able to tell.

 

[Belz...]

Yes, of course he is. The only difference is that this time the behaviour has bypassed his motor nervous system. You've replaced biological machinery with electrical/mechanical machinery.

So, basically you ignore any and all attempts at "reading" into the brain as irrelevant. But, in order to ACT, your "mind" has to have some form of interraction with the brain. Isn't it logical that this interraction could be detected, empirically ? Isn't THAT behaviour ?

Important conclusion: It looks very much like the dualism inherent in our language is a neccesary consequence of the way we actually experience reality.

You should stop putting so much weight on language limitations.

 

[Belz...]

Hey Belz, if you're still reading....

Someone's found that fossil you were talking about - the one that falsifies evolution!

http://www.evolutionfairytale.com/articles_debates/elephant.htm

"Elaphantavianicus Bigfairytalicus."

Sounds like a good screen name. I wish I'd kept "UndercoverElephant". Can I change it back please?

Very funny, Geoff.

 

[Jeff Corey]

P1) There is a fundamental conceptual/linguistic dualism between mental and physical concepts/predicates/attributes...

This premise is derived from "natural language", if I understand you correctly.
How does this make it true in any sense? If it did, the geocentric theory would be true because natural language talks about sunrise and sunset.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

This premise is derived from "natural language", if I understand you correctly.
How does this make it true in any sense? If it did, the geocentric theory would be true because natural language talks about sunrise and sunset.

Ah yes, this is true. The difference in that in the case of sunrise and sunset we have both ends of the elimination in place. We know how to replace those terms with another set. With mind and brain not only do we not have the explanations which would allow a legitimate elimination, but there are strong reasons for believing we never will.

The long answer to the question is in here:

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/courses/consciousness/papers/WHYPDAW.html

(WHY THE PROPERTY DUALISM ARGUMENT WON’T GO AWAY)

NOTE TO ALL: If, given recent developments in this thread, you are thinking of challenging the claim that we can easily tell the difference between mental and physical properties, then the above article will be the next port of call. The article isn't actually about zombies, but it provides all the support that is needed for linguistic/conceptual claims at the start of the zombie argument as I specified it.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Ah yes, this is true. The difference in that in the case of sunrise and sunset we have both ends of the elimination in place. We know how to replace those terms with another set. With mind and brain not only do we not have the explanations which would allow a legitimate elimination, but there are strong reasons for believing we never will...

Mind is eliminated because the science of behavior has replaced it with "private events".

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

None of this is begging the question. P1 does not assume C. I am guessing that the temptation to question-beg is still strong and the materialists reading this want to respond with:

I was talking about the second half of the argument:

(1) Humans have minds.
(2) A zombie has all the physical characteristics of a human, but has no mind.
(C) Minds are nonphysical.

Given all that I've read about question begging in the past two days, this comes as close to begging the question as you can come without explicitly stating your conclusion as a premise. Given the zombie articles that I've read, I think people would call question begging.

The interesting part of this argument is the part where we go from some kind of vague linguistic distinction to the conclusion that zombies are logically possible.

~~ Paul

 

[hammegk]

Mind is eliminated because the science of behavior has replaced it with "private events".

I see. How do you know one exists, yet the other doesn't?

Or are they the same?

 

[LW]

Computationalism implies (2) because it attempts to equate consciousness with behaviour.

Which brings us to another weak point of Bringjords' formalization: he demands in (2) that there is an equivalence between the two concepts: whenever brain causes consciousness it has to also cause the external behavior.

You yourself present a scenario where this doesn't hold: the anesthesia case where consciousness remains but body is paralyzed. It would be absurd to claim that this situation contradicts computationalism because it can be explained as the anesthesia blocking the output of brain, but not input (roughly, I'm not a biologist). But yet, under Bringjords' formulas it does.

And the equivalence doesn't hold in the other direction, either, since external behavior may happen without the involvement of brain: you can stimulate muscles by administering electric shocks.

So, using equivalence to denote the conceptual connection between mind and behavior is flawed. There is also the weakness that Bringjords' formalization doesn't make the distinction between cases where the external behavior is caused by something else than brain and where the behavior doesn't exist at all.

Furthermore, I'd like to point out that the words "there is some sort of connection" sound uncomfortably much like they should be modeled using second order logic, something like:

[latex]$\Box \exists R \forall x \forall y. (M(x) \land E \rightarrow R(x, y))$
[/latex]

The intuitive meaning is that there exists some sort of relation R such that if x causes mind and y causes behavior, then they are in the relation with each other.

However, I can see one very good reason to not use this formalization. It is because you are then using a quantified non-monadic second-order modal logic. Non-monadic second-order predicate logics already have serious issues (you can represent Russel's paradox with them). Quantified first-order modal logics have issues (but not as serious, there just isn't one correct way to define what we are quantifying over). Putting them together is just asking for troubles. So, it seems to me that Searle has formulated the text of (2) so that it can't really be exactly formalized with the logic that Bringsjord is using.

The formalised version does indeed seem to say “There is A brain where……” I am guessing the reason he is doing this is because there is only one brain that any particular person can be sure causes conciousness – his own. And one is enough.

Thus the formalization does not correspond with the natural language version of (3). And note that the tables can be turned: if one believes that consciousness is never the product of computation, then finding just one brain where it is so is enough to falsify that position. So, here the zombist wants to stack the deck in his favor by demanding that the computationalist proves his position 100% certainly correct while he is not willing to prove his own to that same degree. Both (2) and (3) should have "necessarily for all" in the beginning.

Do you have a reason for rejecting this view?

Yes. It is equivalent to adding a new inference rule to the proof system:

[latex]Rule of Possibility (RP): If $\neg p$ is not a theorem, conclude $\Diamond p$.
[/latex]

(Similarly to Rule of Necessitation (RN) that allows us to conclude box p whenever p is a theorem).

The difference between RN and RP is that RN is sound. It preserves validity in all frames. No matter which of the standard modal semantics we are using in which collection of frames, we can't make errors with it. Everything that we conclude using it holds.

RP is not sound. It is trivial to construct a model where it does not hold and applying it leads to incorrect conclusions. It is not easy to see what is the class of frames for which it holds, or if there even exists one. Not to mention that if we are using quantified modal logic, it is undecidable to check if p is, indeed, satisfiable. We have no real reason to suppose that RP holds in the real world (or, more precicely, in a completely accurate formalization of the real world). If I open my window and jump out of it, I will fall to the ground. I have no reason to believe otherwise. But RP would allow us to conclude that I might be able to start flying.

So, including RP in the proof system means that we are probably making it unsound. An unsound proof system is worse than no proof system at all.

Computationalism/behaviourism imply that minds should be conceptually/logically inseparable from behaviour. They aren’t, so computationalism/behaviourism is false.

NB: I’m still thinking about this, I may have made a silly mistake. Do you think this summary of the argument is fair?

I don't think it implies that. As loathe as I am to use thought experiments to support anything, I can come up one example where mind and behavior could be separated without causing problem for computationalists: Suppose that some mad doctor did a brain surgery where he cut every nerve that connects the brain to the other parts of the body. Then he would add a computer containing an AI that simulates the person. He would then add duplicators to all input signals and attach one branch to the AI box and the other to its original place, and connect all output signals to the AI box. Then the person's original brain would get the same inputs as before, but his external behavior would be controlled by the AI. I don't see why this would be a problem for computationalism.

The thing is that we live here in the one single world. That we can imagine that there might be a world that works in a different way doesn't change how our world really works. Applying RP is unsound. It may lead to erroneous conclusions so it is not safe to use it.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

NOTE TO ALL: If, given recent developments in this thread, you are thinking of challenging the claim that we can easily tell the difference between mental and physical properties, then the above article will be the next port of call. The article isn't actually about zombies, but it provides all the support that is needed for linguistic/conceptual claims at the start of the zombie argument as I specified it.

So, are these mental properties causally efficacious on the physical?

~~ Paul

 

[Belz...]

Not true. He's perfectly relevant because he demonstrates the ease with which we can imagine something that is indistinguisable from a human in terms of looks and behaviour, but which cannot possibly be conscious.

I think we can safely say that, within the show's setting, the character of Rimmer is assumed to BE conscious, so your example fails.

 

[LW]

Thank you for your logic lecture, but I got a High Distinction in DM and and A in digital electronics so I don’t need it.

That's nice, but someone other might have found it useful.

If we accept p0 as given it says “if a being could exist that had all the physical characteristics of a human being and did not have consciousness then consciousness would be non-physical”

Otherwise agree but I'd use "does exist" instead of "could exist", at least while we are still staying in classical logic.

It is really a very trivial statement.

Which is a really good indicator suggesting that the formalization is abstracted to the point of uselessness.

Please be more specific.

You appear to be saying that my version of the argument is invalid because noses are physical and that Geoff’s is valid because consciousness is not physical.

Have you been reading my posts at all?

I'd like to believe that I have been quite consistent in stating that all the p-zombie-proofs that I've seen have been abstracted down to the "garbage in, garbage out" level (including the one that I presented -- it was intended to be an example showing a key feature that the original one left out and I wouldn't even dream claiming that it is accurate enough to capture the real situation). Your argument is every bit as valid as was the Geoff's argument. Meaning that the conclusion is really a logical conclusion of the assumptions but the assumptions themselves have no relevance to the Real World.

I have also been quite consistent in stating that my personal belief is that consciousness is physical. But I don't confuse my personal beliefs with logical proofs.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

LW, could you comment on the definition of begging the question? If the premises explicitly include the conclusion, we are begging the question. What about if they "almost include" the conclusion, as I believe this does:

(1) A zombie exists that is physically identical to a human-with-mind, but does not have a mind.
(C) The mind is nonphysical.

I don't think I can accept the premise without already having accepted the conclusion.

~~ Paul

 

[Mercutio]

Ok, this is one of the original UcE threads, although it comes up as a deleted account. I wonder if it is possible to merge that account with mine? Probably not. Darat?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3948&highlight=subjective+objective

First, we have a Stimpson example of the question-begging fallacy about zombies:

Here is he is denying that the linguistic dualism which supports the zombie argument is valid. He doesn't actually explain what's wrong with it, he just "re-iterates" (insists) that it is invalid:

Here he is retreating back to eliminativism:

If you read the first pages of that thread you will see that Stimpsons position is "Either subjective (mental) things are actually objective (physical) OR they don't exist". He wobbled between both positions.

Did I miss the quote you used? Or is it not in the thread? I only ask because there is a world of difference between a Stimpy quote and a Geoff paraphrase of Stimpy. If it is your paraphrase of your understanding of Stimpy's position, please say so.

 

[Cuddles]

I haven't read this entire thread, so forgive me if this point has laready been argued.

Nope, ZD, he's not even entitled to claim that. Doesn't matter what kind of brain process you are talking about, it is still distinguishable from the experience of seeing red. It does not matter how long you go rummaging around in a brain, you will not find any experiences of seeing red. Even if you find the very same bit of brain process that corresponds to seeing red, you'll still see no red (edit: apart from some blood, perhaps, but that would not be the experience of red associated with the brain in which you were rummaging, it would be yours instead). Understand?

Stop asking me to believe sunday-school-level ridiculous nonsense. The experience of seeing red is perfectly distinguishable from ANY and ALL physical processes in a brain, even if you think that, ultimately, they "must somehow" be the same.

The claim you seem to be basing this argument on, is that looking at every detail of the brain will not show the experience of "red" at any point. Until you can detect and analyse every single particle and every electrical impulse in the brain, work out exactly what every one means and show that none of them are the same as experiencing red then this assumption is entirely unfounded and your whole argument falls apart.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I haven't read this entire thread, so forgive me if this point has laready been argued.

The claim you seem to be basing this argument on, is that looking at every detail of the brain will not show the experience of "red" at any point. Until you can detect and analyse every single particle and every electrical impulse in the brain, work out exactly what every one means and show that none of them are the same as experiencing red then this assumption is entirely unfounded and your whole argument falls apart.

Super! 3000 posts into the thread, somebody posts this.

Cuddles, you'll need to work a lot harder than that. That doesn't even remotely resemble the argument I am currently defending. But since I've only been defending it for past 2100 posts, you'll have to get 900 posts through the thread before you find out how the argument starts. The opening post merely establishes that it is absurd to claim that you cannot tell the difference between a brain and a mind.