Materialists......

[UndercoverElephant]

You, on the other hand...your "neutral monism" arguments can easily be mistaken for a defense of dualism.

Maybe, but articulett cannot have made this mistake, because articulett doesn't actually read my posts. She merely assumed I was a dualist, just like she assumed loads of other things about me which bear no resemblance to the reality whatsover. I expect to run into resistance in a thread like this, but it articulett has offered no resistance to me. She makes lots of noise, but none of it is relevant to anything being posted. As a result she ends up in that very special category of people who post prolifically on the board, but never actually contribute anything useful to the discussion - such as CFLarsen and the perfectly-named "scribble".

You insist upon dualistic language, to the point of refusing to frame the questions any other way.

If I want to make sense, I must use the language which correctly describes my world. In other words, I use dualistic language because that is my language. It's your language, too. Deny it as you will, you still know what I mean when I say "mind", and so does everybody else. It's nothing to do with insistence and everything to do with practical neccesity. A language stripped of all mentalistic vocabulary is a language fallen into poverty.

"That the world is my world, shows itself in that the limits of that language (the language which I understand) mean the limits of my world." (Wittgenstein).

I think articulett can be forgiven for perceiving you according to your actions.

Rubbish. She doesn't even read my posts, and admitted as much. She isn't even attacking a straw man version of me. She's attacking a straw man version of something-else, apparently a sort of Platonic Form of Christian fundamentalist. If she's failed to realise hammegk isn't a dualist, she's obviously not actually listening to anything being said. What makes you think she's been listening to me any more than she listens to hammegk?

 

[Mercutio]

If I want to make sense, I must use the language which correctly describes my world. In other words, I use dualistic language because that is my language. It's your language, too. Deny it as you will, you still know what I mean when I say "mind", and so does everybody else. It's nothing to do with insistence and everything to do with practical neccesity. A language stripped of all mentalistic vocabulary is a language fallen into poverty.

"That the world is my world, shows itself in that the limits of that language (the language which I understand) mean the limits of my world." (Wittgenstein).

Funny...I would have used that exact Wittgenstein quote as an argument *against* your use of dualistic language.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Funny...I would have used that exact Wittgenstein quote as an argument *against* your use of dualistic language.

Yeah, funny, that.

When are people like you and Paul going to realise that our language is naturally dualistic? I'm not the one trying to rewrite the dictionary. You are.

 

[Mercutio]

Yeah, funny, that.

When are people like you and Paul going to realise that our language is naturally dualistic? I'm not the one trying to rewrite the dictionary. You are.

That natural split is every bit as naturally "public and private" as "objective and subjective". The difference is, the language you choose has had centuries to pick up dualistic baggage that is entirely without evidence. Your arguments rely as much on the baggage as on the "natural" split.

Re-writing the dictionary happens with each new edition. As our understanding of the world changes, basing a proof on a prescientific vocabulary seems utterly foolish.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

That natural split is every bit as naturally "public and private" as "objective and subjective". The difference is, the language you choose has had centuries to pick up dualistic baggage that is entirely without evidence. Your arguments rely as much on the baggage as on the "natural" split.

I don't care if you call it "private" and "public". It's the same dualism. It only stops when pure solipsism co-incides with pure realism.

Re-writing the dictionary happens with each new edition.

Not the sort of rewrite that the eliminativists need.

 

[Darat]

I don't care if you call it "private" and "public". It's the same dualism. It only stops when pure solipsism co-incides with pure realism.

...snip...

Then why isn't "objective" and "subjective" the "same dualism"?

 

[Mercutio]

I don't care if you call it "private" and "public". It's the same dualism. It only stops when pure solipsism co-incides with pure realism.

But you do care. You demonstrated that in this thread. You rejected any combination that did not presuppose dualism in the very definitions of the words.

You can call it "neutral monism", it walks like dualism in a dress.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

But you do care. You demonstrated that in this thread. You rejected any combination that did not presuppose dualism in the very definitions of the words.

I reject things like "concious intelligence" and "mental behaviours" because they are deliberately defined in such a way as they try to mean two different things at the same time, and they are then abused. The result is the sort of nonsense spouted by Paul Churchland where the term "conscious intelligence" is wheeled out every time he wants to pretend there is no mind-body problem. I take it you aren't actually going to defend Churchlands usage?

You can call it "neutral monism", it walks like dualism in a dress.

Apart from when it is being called "idealism in a dress" or "materialism is a bow-tie"......

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Then why isn't "objective" and "subjective" the "same dualism"?

You misunderstood. The difference between subjective and objective is the same as the difference between private and public and the difference between mind and matter and the diffference 1st-person and 3rd-person and the difference between self and other.

 

[Mercutio]

You misunderstood. The difference between subjective and objective is the same as the difference between private and public and the difference between mind and matter and the diffference 1st-person and 3rd-person and the difference between self and other.

Um...no.

You might want to rethink your refusal to read up on radical behaviorism. Statements like the one above show your ignorance.

 

[Mercutio]

I reject things like "concious intelligence" and "mental behaviours" because they are deliberately defined in such a way as they try to mean two different things at the same time, and they are then abused.

I was not talking about either of those. I was talking about perfectly well-defined terms that do not presuppose dualism. You have, elsewhere, claimed that you make no assumptions. In your choice of words, you quite clearly do.

(did you choose your phrases above in part because they are *not* the ones I used? So you can look like you are denying, but technically be saying prety much nothing at all? Just curious...)

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I was not talking about either of those. I was talking about perfectly well-defined terms that do not presuppose dualism. You have, elsewhere, claimed that you make no assumptions. In your choice of words, you quite clearly do.

(did you choose your phrases above in part because they are *not* the ones I used? So you can look like you are denying, but technically be saying prety much nothing at all? Just curious...)

I chose those terms because they were the most obvious examples of this type of dictionary abuse that I could think of. Churchland in particular should be hung, drawn and quartered. It's not just wrong. It's pathetic. Why not just define "Material mind" or "Mental brain"? Perhaps "Subjective objectivity" and "Objective subjectivity? "Hey, I've solved the mind-body problem! We just need to define this term.....Conscious Intelligence." I could think of millions of these. "Behavioural thought", "Private brain processes", "Physical Qualia",...

 

[Mercutio]

I chose those terms because they were the most obvious examples of this type of dictionary abuse that I could think of. Churchland in particular should be hung, drawn and quartered. It's not just wrong. It's pathetic. Why not just define "Material mind" or "Mental brain"? Perhaps "Subjective objectivity" and "Objective subjectivity? "Hey, I've solved the mind-body problem! We just need to define this term.....Conscious Intelligence." I could think of millions of these. "Behavioural thought", "Private brain processes", "Physical Qualia",...

Interesting...your last three choices demonstrate your bias. The first two of them are not at all oxymoronic, unless one presupposes a dualistic reality; the phrases work independently of monism. The last, of course, does not even attempt at neutrality, and is beyond oxymoronic to simply moronic. That you equate them, and dismiss them as equally flawed, shows the strength with which you cling to your a priori assumptions.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Interesting...your last three choices demonstrate your bias. The first two of them are not at all oxymoronic, unless one presupposes a dualistic reality; the phrases work independently of monism. The last, of course, does not even attempt at neutrality, and is beyond oxymoronic to simply moronic. That you equate them, and dismiss them as equally flawed, shows the strength with which you cling to your a priori assumptions.

So what is your solution, Mercutio? Do tell. How does on avoid the pitfalls of "dualistic language"?

 

[Mercutio]

Gee, Geoff, it seems to me I posted a link that you refused to follow, which held one possibility. It may (or may not) be flawed in some way, but you won't know until you read it.

Funny thing...after this thread, I am convinced that you have put more work into maintaining the use of dualistic language than others have put into not using it.

How long did it take for heliocentrism to be embraced? How long has it taken (in some circles, the clock is still running) for natural selection to be embraced? There is a lot of inertia in dualistic language, but the studies on consciousness which are more readily understood without dualism are only fairly recent. I suspect that it will become easier and easier to see dualistic language in the same light as sunrise and sunset. That is, some of the terms will still be used, albeit with a new understanding, and other of the terms will go the way of phlogiston.

BTW, I have just started a book by Weiskrantz, "Consciousness Lost and Found". He is an admitted materialist, and thoroughly versed in the experimental literature on consciousness. I am only on the second chapter thus far, but it amazes me to see how much of what was once deemed impossible to study...is being studied. This "natural dualism" you speak of is becoming a "dualism of the gaps".

 

[Belz...]

BTW, I have just started a book by Weiskrantz, "Consciousness Lost and Found". He is an admitted materialist, and thoroughly versed in the experimental literature on consciousness. I am only on the second chapter thus far, but it amazes me to see how much of what was once deemed impossible to study...is being studied. This "natural dualism" you speak of is becoming a "dualism of the gaps".

Hmmm... "mind of the gaps"...

 

[Jeff Corey]

One thing, Merc. He is not interested in the science of behavior. He was attacking some sort of philosophical school caller "behaviourism", which has nothing to do with the real thing.

 

[chriswl]

We cannot imagine how minds could exist and yet not be causal.

The idea that minds can be causal is pure supernaturalism. Unless we reduce them to purely physical stuff (in which case they are no longer minds) we have no idea how minds can cause physical effects. Science tells us that this does not happen, that physical effects have physical causes.

Epiphenomenalism is also absurd. So, mind can be neither epiphenomenal nor causal, and we don't want to dismiss it as non-existant. Does that leave any other possibility? When you have eliminated the impossible, what remains, however improbable, is the truth. What does remain? The idea that mind supervenes on the physical.

Supervenient minds are not epiphenomenal - any change in a supervenient property implies a change in that on which it supervenes, but not necessarily vice-versa (we can have multiple realisability of minds on a variety of physical subtrates). So anything that goes on in mind is reflected in the physical - minds contain no information that is not already present in the physical word. But supervenience doesn't eliminate minds - they exist as phenomena that we can talk about. It would be ridiculous to try to talk about a persons behaviour without using mind-like vocabulary and concepts. They have explanatory power without representing causal, non-physical entities.

At the very least, this seems to me to be the lesser of all the possible evils here, the least bad explanation, the argument that comes closest to making sense. Smarter people then me seem to agree - supervenience physicalism seems to be almost the standard position in philosophy of mind.

 

[Mercutio]

One thing, Merc. He is not interested in the science of behavior. He was attacking some sort of philosophical school caller "behaviourism", which has nothing to do with the real thing.

Ah, I see.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Gee, Geoff, it seems to me I posted a link that you refused to follow, which held one possibility. It may (or may not) be flawed in some way, but you won't know until you read it.

Funny thing...after this thread, I am convinced that you have put more work into maintaining the use of dualistic language than others have put into not using it.

How long did it take for heliocentrism to be embraced? How long has it taken (in some circles, the clock is still running) for natural selection to be embraced? There is a lot of inertia in dualistic language, but the studies on consciousness which are more readily understood without dualism are only fairly recent. I suspect that it will become easier and easier to see dualistic language in the same light as sunrise and sunset. That is, some of the terms will still be used, albeit with a new understanding, and other of the terms will go the way of phlogiston.

BTW, I have just started a book by Weiskrantz, "Consciousness Lost and Found". He is an admitted materialist, and thoroughly versed in the experimental literature on consciousness. I am only on the second chapter thus far, but it amazes me to see how much of what was once deemed impossible to study...is being studied. This "natural dualism" you speak of is becoming a "dualism of the gaps".

Erm, can't help noticing but you didn't actually answer the question.

Want to try again?

We know you want to "eliminate dualistic talk". You are yet to explain how this can be done, even by you.