Materialists......

[Belz...]

From the point of view of philosophy, it is the single most important word in the english language. But in a way, you are right. According to Hegel, pure undifferentiated being is indistinguishable from absolute nothingness. So he sort of agrees with you about the concept of beingness. However, this is a long way from being an irrelevant minor observation. This is crucial for understanding lots of other problems.

Of course. But from a scientific standpoint, explaining what something "is" might not mean anything.

No... my mind is experienced by me.

Which is why you can hardly deny it exists.

Uh-huh. But the universe is ALSO experienced by me.

Any clearer?

Yes. A lot of categorization for nothin', methinks. But clearer.

Empirical realism is the claim that the empirical world is real. EMPIRICALLY real, not transcendentally real. It's real to us.

That does seem true, doesn't it ?

Correct. Materialism is claim about the nature of "ultimate reality". It is a claim that "what really is" is the world of matter.

Doesn't tell us what the "matter" "is", nor does it try to.

Sure.

If SOMETHING must exist, and no proof can possibly give us 100% certainty of anything, we HAVE to make a first assumption. Two obvious choices are about the observed universe. That's all I'm saying : saying that it doesn't really exist causes a great deal of problems, while saying that it does doesn't.

 

[Belz...]

Perhaps it has appeared repeatedly, but didn't get noticed in the heat of the battle going on around it? You can reach the answer, IMO, via a process of elimination. Materialism is absurd because it effectively denies that minds exist. Idealism is absurd because it effectively denies that matter exists. That only leaves one option. Neutral monism recognises both, but resists the temptation to claim either of them are themselves the ultimate reality. This is not absurd.

What's the ultimate reality ?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

materialism: it's all material
neutral monism: it's all foo
idealism: it's all mental

I call equivalency.

~~ Paul

So near but yet so far.......

0 = 1 + -1 !!!!!

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Of course. But from a scientific standpoint, explaining what something "is" might not mean anything.

Agreed. Sometimes it means something, sometimes it doesn't. "Wollemi Pine is a conifer" means something very clearly understood. "Minds are brains" is not so clear - perhaps it doesn't mean anything. Not to science, anyway.

Uh-huh. But the universe is ALSO experienced by me.

That statement can lead to confusion. What you call "the Universe" is experienced by you. But what is actually external to your experiences isn't necessarily what you call "the Universe". It's something, but not the same thing as the thing you experience.

That does seem true, doesn't it ?

Yes, that does seem true. Unless you are lifegazer.

Doesn't tell us what the "matter" "is", nor does it try to.

It claims the matter self-exists. It claims that "matter" is what ultimate reality is made of - so it's not made of anything else. Instead, it claims that everything is made of matter, and matter self-exists.

If SOMETHING must exist, and no proof can possibly give us 100% certainty of anything, we HAVE to make a first assumption. Two obvious choices are about the observed universe. That's all I'm saying : saying that it doesn't really exist causes a great deal of problems, while saying that it does doesn't.

It's not that simple, as I suspect you are beginning to see.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

What's the ultimate reality ?

According to Geoff? Something very like mathematics, with 0 understood in the way Hegel understood Nothingness and Beingness. Hegel, among others, ended up equating these two concepts. Absolute Being turns out to denote absolutely nothing. Being and Nothing are part of the same dynamically intertwined concept. According to Geoff, ultimate reality is mathematics plus this Being/Nothing, which takes the place of Zero in the ultimate reality. This represents the fact that there can be no such thing as nothing.

The above description leaves the question of supernaturalism unanswered. Such a position is compatible both with naturalism or supernaturalism, depending on how you interpret it. Supernaturalist theists will call me a heretic and claim the Zero should be replaced with their God with all its other properties. Buddhist naturalists will be happy with the Zero and say (somewhat less crudely) that the zero doesn't do anything and naturalism is true. Sartre would have said the same thing. In fact Sartre, atheist supreme, says that "Deep inside the very heart of our being, coiled like a worm, lies absolute nothingness."

 

[chriswl]

This board is full of people that think like that, isn't it? People like Dennett and Dawkins have a tendency to go way beyond the bounds of the merely scientific and their views are routinely defended here.

Well, Dennett's business card does say "Philosopher" so he has to really .

 

[hammegk]

What attribute should we assign to zero, that chooses to "be", or to "be not"?

My answer underlies my choice of objective idealism rather than null realism.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Perhaps it has appeared repeatedly, but didn't get noticed in the heat of the battle going on around it? You can reach the answer, IMO, via a process of elimination. Materialism is absurd because it effectively denies that minds exist. Idealism is absurd because it effectively denies that matter exists. That only leaves one option. Neutral monism recognises both, but resists the temptation to claim either of them are themselves the ultimate reality. This is not absurd.

This would be stunning if you actually had a logical proof that materialism denies "mind" and idealism denies "matter." Step 1, as usual, is to define terms.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

0 = 1 + -1 !!!!!

Forget about that. Ponder this instead:

[latex]$e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0$[/latex]

~~ Paul

 

[Dark Jaguar]

Okay this is getting crazy.

What you are saying Giraffe is completely incomprehensible to me.

What on EARTH are you talking about? Are you saying 1=0? Beingness is unto nonexistance? That sounds like some goth poem written by some suicidal "vampire", and also it sounds utterly devoid of meaning.

So, what are you talking about, and what on earth does 0 have to do with anything?

0 = 1 + -1 !!!!!

This is meaningless!

 

[hammegk]

This would be stunning if you actually had a logical proof that materialism denies "mind" and idealism denies "matter." Step 1, as usual, is to define terms.

Choose both, if that choice makes you happiest ...

No one is "denying" anything, just making a choice that best suits them. Some of us can even reach the logical conclusions based on either choice.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Forget about that. Ponder this instead:

[latex]$e^{i\pi} + 1 = 0$[/latex]

~~ Paul

OK. Ponder that instead.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Okay this is getting crazy.

What you are saying Giraffe is completely incomprehensible to me.

What on EARTH are you talking about? Are you saying 1=0? Beingness is unto nonexistance? That sounds like some goth poem written by some suicidal "vampire", and also it sounds utterly devoid of meaning.

So, what are you talking about, and what on earth does 0 have to do with anything?

[/B]

This is meaningless!

This might help to make it less meaningless:

http://www.hedweb.com/witherall/zero.htm

 

[69dodge]

It doesn't make any difference at this point. Both our instruments and our senses are measuring/sensing the same empirical, phenomenal world. All that matters is that it's not the noumenal world. It's not things-in-themselves.

I don't know at all what you mean by "empirical". I think I know what "phenomenal" means, and I certainly wouldn't describe, say, radio waves as part of the phenomenal world. You perceive radio waves?

You keep saying that scientists believe that things are as they appear to us, but they really don't believe that. Radio waves don't appear to us as anything at all, but scientists have discovered enough about them to make radio transmitters and receivers that work.

 

[nescafe]

No... my mind is experienced by me.

Which is why you can hardly deny it exists.

Despite your repeated protestations, materialism does not deny that minds or mental experiences exist -- even elimanitivist materialism just says that our current concept (read: bundle of definitions) of mind is incorrect, and that we need to replace it with a more rigorous concept.

Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist.

Claiming that because our concepts of intent and desire, qualia, mental affect, etc. are deeply flawed (and indeed, the things they describe may not exist), therefore minds do not exist is as silly as claiming that because the concept of philogiston is deeply flawed (indeed, the thing it describes may not exist), therefore heat does not exist.

It does seem, however, that the elimiative materialist stance could use some butressing from an information-theoretic standpoint -- in particular, the claim that mind states are brain states should be cast into more information-theoretic terms.

There is also the problem that everything we are discussing about the nature of mind that is not backed up by scientific research suffers from the flaw that we only know it by using our minds to introspect or reflect on our minds, and (unless your mind is perfectly rational and has perfect knowledge of its own state), any results gained using such methods are results generated by faulty tools using incomplete data. Heterophenomenology seems to be the best investigatory method to use to work round those flaws, but no-one (including Dennet) claims it can completly overcome those flaws.

That the mind exists (in whatever fashion) can be taken as a given -- that we may be able to determine anything about the components or nature of the mind via introspection or reflection cannot. Given the generality of Sturgeon's and Murphy's laws, as well as the GIGO principle, it seems very likely that any information gained purely via introspection or reflection is likely to be incoherent, untestable, and/or incomplete.

(ed: edit edit)

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Despite your repeated protestations, materialism does not deny that minds or mental experiences exist --

You are wrong. Modern eliminative materialism quite explicitly claims that minds do not exist:

http://www.answers.com/topic/eliminative-materialism

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.

...

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.

Today, the eliminativist view is most closely associated with the philosophers Paul and Patricia Churchland, who deny the existence of most mental phenomena, including beliefs, desires and other so-called intentional states, consciousness and phenomological qualia.

Since the late 1960's, eliminativism has gained a wide variety of adherents and proponents, for example scientific behaviourists. Proponents of this view often make parallels to previous scientific theories (such as that of the the four humours, the theory of medicine, the phlogiston theory of combustion, and the vital force theory of life) that have all been successfully eliminated in attempting to establish their thesis about the nature of the mental. In these cases, science has not produced more detailed versions or reductions of these theories, but rejected them altogether as obsolete. Eliminativists argue that folk psychology is headed the same way.

Are you saying this article is wrong?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

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.

The meaning of this depends critically on the definition of mental state. Is a mental state:

(a) Some sort of dualistic, separate, free-floating mental existent

(b) A folk psychological term for a mood or feeling

(c) A name for a brain state


~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't know at all what you mean by "empirical". I think I know what "phenomenal" means, and I certainly wouldn't describe, say, radio waves as part of the phenomenal world. You perceive radio waves?

"Empirical" means "based on experience", as opposed to being based on pure theory or on pure reason. The empirical world is the world we know about because of our experiences of a world. Yes, radio waves are part of the phenomenal world.

You keep saying that scientists believe that things are as they appear to us, but they really don't believe that. Radio waves don't appear to us as anything at all, but scientists have discovered enough about them to make radio transmitters and receivers that work.

The radio transmitters and recievers are things we experience.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

The meaning of this depends critically on the definition of mental state. Is a mental state:

(a) Some sort of dualistic, separate, free-floating mental existent

(b) A folk psychological term for a mood or feeling

(c) A name for a brain state


~~ Paul

Certainly not (c). Not (a) either because you do not need to introduce an ontological position into your description of mental states. You can just talk about them: beliefs, desires, qualia.... (b), yes probably. Mental states are denoted by "folk psychological" terms.

 

[nescafe]

You are wrong. Modern eliminative materialism quite explicitly claims that minds do not exist:

http://www.answers.com/topic/eliminative-materialism

Are you saying this article is wrong?

Well, I would take the definitions and information in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy over answers.com any day for matters philosophical.

(edited to add)
But rather than getting into a war over whose sources are more authoritative, why not address the actual content of my post?