Materialists......

[Robin]

WRONG

Err.. do you have some sort of argument to back your assertion? Or is it simply "cos I say so"?

Clearly there are two threads to eliminative materialism:

1. Minds are stuff
2. The things we think of as minds are stuff

Since I clearly refer to the thing I think of as a mind as "a mind" then we can simplify the second as:

"Minds are stuff"

 

[DreadNiK]

This is going nowhere....

You obviously failed to notice the negative Gs from deceleration a while back...there was still plenty of noise I guess, though.

I'm guessing you finally looked out of the window?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Err.. do you have some sort of argument to back your assertion? Or is it simply "cos I say so"?

Clearly there are two threads to eliminative materialism:

1. Minds are stuff
2. The things we think of as minds are stuff

Since I clearly refer to the thing I think of as a mind as "a mind" then we can simplify the second as:

"Minds are stuff"

Eiminative materialism is defined as a doctrine which denies that minds exist.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You obviously failed to notice the negative Gs from deceleration a while back...there was still plenty of noise I guess, though.

I'm guessing you finally looked out of the window?

No. But I've got a new housemate moving in tomorrow, sweet young thing from Spain who has just moved into town and doesn't know anyone. So I think that shortly I might be able to find some more interesting entertainment than this.....

 

[DreadNiK]

No. But I've got a new housemate moving in tomorrow, sweet young thing from Spain who has just moved into town and doesn't know anyone. So I think that shortly I might be able to find some more interesting entertainment than this.....

I'm sorry, there's been a terrible misunderstanding...you seem to think I'm interested in your life

*sarcastic envy mode off*

 

[Soapy Sam]

I've just read Geoff's list of "-isms".

It seems odd that philosophers require so many "isms" , many of them contradictory, to describe (not to answer) questions so simple that most non philosophers do not see them as problems at all. I feel this list could be drastically pruned by the production of some evidence .

I'm 51. Until I started dipping into some of jg's threads, I had not heard of most of these isms and had no idea even that I was a materialist, except in the sense of having 300 CDs.

I do not consider language to be an adequate tool with which to investigate reality. Language is an extra somatic extension of human minds and it's logic reflects this. Any answers it gives are human answers. These may simply be inapplicable. Yet all of this long thread keeps coming back to language. Define A. What exactly is meant by B? How many different types of free will are there? What does "is" mean ?

It seems to me that philosophers need to sort that first. Fix the language.
Then frame the question. And look at the evidence.

I try to read a thread like this and am repeatedly struck by a couple of simple questions-
1. What actual value does any of this have? What use is it?
2. Where is the actual research evidence to support these theories? (Apart from materialism , which has an abundance).

 

[Belz...]

This is going nowhere....

Geoff.

From what I've seen so far, your stance on consciousness seems to merely stem from two factors: argument from incredulity, and what I can only interpret as a religious belief in spiritual "stuff".

If these prevent you from even considering positions other than your current one, then no debate on this subject can possibly convince you of anything save your pre-conceived view.

On the other hand, if you are genuinely interested in finding out how consciousness works and what it truly is, then I suggest you critically re-evaluate what you have, so far, believed to be self-evident.

 

[Belz...]

Eiminative materialism is defined as a doctrine which denies that minds exist.

Maybe you don't understand these terms as well as you think. Aside from you, I've never seen a definition of that term that claims that minds don't exist. Instead, they deny the more "common-sense" concepts of mind and mental states.

 

[Robin]

Eiminative materialism is defined as a doctrine which denies that minds exist.

Err.. Geoff, you are the one that claimed that we can tell the difference between a physical process and a subjective experience without even having a clue what the concept of physical means.

You are the one that attempted to defend this clear contradiction by attempting to claim that you never said "physical" when you clearly did.

So isn't it me who should be displaying the headbanging icon?

Or are you attempting to depict the secret behaviour that gave rise to such mental confusion on your part?

Not that I distrust the "Geoff says so" definition, but let's get a definition from one of the leading eliminative materialists - Paul Churchland:

Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience.

Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes
Paul M. Churchland
Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Feb., 1981) , pp. 67-90

"commonsense conception of psychological phenomena". Or in other words - "what we think of as minds" - will be displaced by completed neuroscience (which deals with stuff).

So "the things we think of as minds are stuff".

And since I find it a lot easier and space saving to refer to "what I think of as my mind" as "my mind" then this can be expressed as "minds are stuff".

I can't seem to find an icon to depict the frustration of attempting to educate a philosophy undergrad that thinks he knows it all, so you will have to imagine one for yourself.

 

[nescafe]

Stoner nitpick: More than likely inhalation of THC rather than ingestion...although ingestion isn't an uncommon option. As for any others, depends what they are...

In Geoff's case, it was DMT, IIRC.

In my case, the ones I have experimented with that have conscious effects beyond what I would consider a purely placebo effect are (in approximate order of potency) salvinorin A, lysergic acid diethylamide, dextromethorphan hydrobromide, THC, ethanol, phenibut, and caffiene. The mechanism by which all of these act in the brain is known except for LSD.

Given that these tiny molecules can cause subtle to drastic shifts in consciousness, I find it hard to deny the causal link between brain processes and consciousness. How the materialist stance explains this causal link is obvious, how other stances which assume that consciousness (or qualia) is a fundamental concept (in the same sense that tiny bits of interacting stuff are considered as fundamental in materialism) is less so.

 

[I less than three logic]

I try to read a thread like this and am repeatedly struck by a couple of simple questions-
1. What actual value does any of this have? What use is it?

It opens the back door for woo beliefs, the supernatural, things that can happen that science can’t explain. Seems to be the only purpose or value I can see in this metaphysics mess.

2. Where is the actual research evidence to support these theories? (Apart from materialism , which has an abundance).

It appears to be part of the definition that these things cannot have empirical supporting evidence. Also, I’m sure they’ll disagree about any evidence whatsoever for materialism, as per definition there can be no evidence.

Just my

 

[Robin]

Why can't you just tell us?

Because any short statement about Physicalism will be more or less meaningless unless you have some background in the philosophical environment in which it grew up, from Mach, Frege, Russell, Whitehead and Wittgenstien and the Vienna Circle.

Your comments about the philosophy of science in the OP demonstrate that yo have no such background. So you will be better suited to read a complete treatment of it by someone who was involved in the Vienna Circle and who is a very accessible writer.

If you want the quick version it might be summed up as an anti-realist, anti-materialist logical empiricism that asserts the unity of science.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Because any short statement about Physicalism will be more or less meaningless unless you have some background in the philosophical environment in which it grew up, from Mach, Frege, Russell, Whitehead and Wittgenstien and the Vienna Circle.

Your comments about the philosophy of science in the OP demonstrate that yo have no such background.

OK...so you won't tell the board what is so wrong about my definitions because you think I don't know anything about the logical positivists?

Robin, I am perfectly well aware who the logical positivists were and perfectly well aware what they said, and perfectly well aware of how their contribution to philosophy altered philosophy of science. I can see no reason why you haven't provided a definition of materialism and/or physicalism apart from the fact that you cannot do so. You are now compounding this by trying to make out that the reason you will not actually tell the board what your own definitions of these words are is that Geoff hasn't read enough about Wittgenstein and the logical positivists.

If you are unwilling/unable to correct my definitions then you should not have said that they were wrong.

If you want the quick version it might be summed up as an anti-realist, anti-materialist logical empiricism that asserts the unity of science.

Anti-materialist materialism? What the ***** is that then?

Are you talking about logical positivism? Because if so, it was an "ism" that wasn't even on my list. It's not the same as materialism, and is almost irrelevant at the start of the 21st century. The positivists agenda has already failed...not least because of the later work of Wittgenstein himself.

Wittgenstein, just like Rorty and Feyerabend, started out trying to defend a sort of objectivist, positivist, science-based materialism. With Wittgenstein it was logical positivism and with Rorty and Feyerabend it was eliminativism. All three of them ended up doing a U-turn. Feyerabend eventually argued for anarchistic science where "anything goes", Wittgenstein argued that everything you say only has meaning with respect to the language-game in which it is uttered and Rorty ended up attacking philosophy itself, utimately claiming that epistemology, metaphysics and science all needed to disabuse themselves of notion that they are prilivedged forms of knowledge.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I've just read Geoff's list of "-isms".

It seems odd that philosophers require so many "isms" , many of them contradictory, to describe (not to answer) questions so simple that most non philosophers do not see them as problems at all. I feel this list could be drastically pruned by the production of some evidence .

Unfortunately, this is not possible. They are names for philosophical positions. You cannot get rid of them. They disappear only when they cease to be useful because nobody defends that position anymore. Even then they still hang around as examples of position nobody defends (like vitalism).

I do not consider language to be an adequate tool with which to investigate reality. Language is an extra somatic extension of human minds and it's logic reflects this. Any answers it gives are human answers. These may simply be inapplicable. Yet all of this long thread keeps coming back to language. Define A. What exactly is meant by B? How many different types of free will are there? What does "is" mean ?

It seems to me that philosophers need to sort that first. Fix the language.
Then frame the question. And look at the evidence.

That's exactly what the philosophers have done. All those isms are the result of attempts to "fix the language". You have answered your own query - the reason all these words exists is precisely because normal language has no words for these things.

I try to read a thread like this and am repeatedly struck by a couple of simple questions-
1. What actual value does any of this have? What use is it?

It helps people to think about the problems more clearly.

2. Where is the actual research evidence to support these theories? (Apart from materialism , which has an abundance).

There is none. Materialism is no more supported by evidence than idealism is. This is possibly the most widely-believed myth at the JREF. Hundreds of times I have heard this claim. It is completely wrong. There is NO evidence to support materialism. None at all.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Maybe you don't understand these terms as well as you think. Aside from you, I've never seen a definition of that term that claims that minds don't exist. .

....and the Stanford Encyclopedia.
....and Wikipedia.
....and every other definition of eliminative materialism that you will be able to find, anywhere.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Not that I distrust the "Geoff says so" definition, but let's get a definition from one of the leading eliminative materialists - Paul Churchland:

"commonsense conception of psychological phenomena". Or in other words - "what we think of as minds" - will be displaced by completed neuroscience (which deals with stuff).

So "the things we think of as minds are stuff".

And since I find it a lot easier and space saving to refer to "what I think of as my mind" as "my mind" then this can be expressed as "minds are stuff".

I can't seem to find an icon to depict the frustration of attempting to educate a philosophy undergrad that thinks he knows it all, so you will have to imagine one for yourself.

Well, I have actually read Churchland's book "matter and consciousness". He is one of the worst offenders. This is what Churchland gets wrong, stripped from a first-year essay:

Some people who are currently seen as arch-defenders of science e.g.
Paul Churchland (Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of California) have become vulnerable to accusations of producing pseudo-science on the grounds that their own conclusions are being driven by ideological biases rather than an attempt to discover the truth. Throughout Churchlands 1984 book "Matter and Consciousness" there is an indiscriminate and ambiguous use of the three terms "consciousness", "intelligence" and "conscious intelligence". Most of the time Churchland uses "conscious intelligence" as a compound noun that is never clearly defined. The word "consciousness" does not refer to the same thing as "intelligence". "Intelligence" refers to a sort of behaviour and decision-making ability. Consciousness is a term encompassing many more things, the essential component of which is subjective awareness. Churchland implicitly acknowledges this by using "consciousness" and "intelligence" correctly as single nouns in many places in the book, but each time there is a critical point where he really means "intelligence" but wants to be able to say "consciousness" he uses the term "conscious intelligence". For example, on page 5 he writes: "To what extent can we recreate the features of conscious intelligence? Answer: to a very impressive extent". Here, "conscious intelligence" has to mean "intelligence" because the only elements of "conscious intelligence" we have recreated is intelligence. At this point Churchland is referring to the impressive but limited successes of computer-based artificial intelligence. Then, on page 10 he writes: "The properties of Property Dualism are described as properties of having pain, having a sensation of red, of thinking P, of desiring Q. These are the properties of conscious intelligence". This time, "conscious intelligence" can only mean "consciousness" because the properties of property dualism are specifically the properties of subjective awareness. These properties have nothing whatsoever to do with the aforementioned successes of computer-based AI. Both statements together amount to a claim by Churchland that the properties of property dualism have been recreated by AI technology, a claim which is somewhere between unsupportable and demonstrably false but which helps to support the ideologically-driven notion that consciousness does not provide any unsolvable problems to materialistic science. If pseudo-science is the ambiguous confusion of science and metaphysical/political/religious ideologies then Churchlands work looks suspiciously like pseudo-science, and it is potentially more dangerous than other forms of pseudo-science since in this case it is "inside the walls" of science.

Paul Churchland's account of what minds are is absolutely useless, as demonstrated above. It depends on defining the term "concious intelligence" and then using it to blur the distinction between consciousness and intelligence.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

In Geoff's case, it was DMT, IIRC.

In my case, the ones I have experimented with that have conscious effects beyond what I would consider a purely placebo effect are (in approximate order of potency) salvinorin A, lysergic acid diethylamide, dextromethorphan hydrobromide, THC, ethanol, phenibut, and caffiene. The mechanism by which all of these act in the brain is known except for LSD.

Given that these tiny molecules can cause subtle to drastic shifts in consciousness, I find it hard to deny the causal link between brain processes and consciousness.

What would be more accurate to say is that it is hard to deny that consciousness supervences on brain processes. If you say "causal link" you are implying empirical causality which would require a time delay between brain processes and corresponding conscious experiences. No such time delay exists - they correlate instantaneously.

How the materialist stance explains this causal link is obvious......

Obvious? If it is obvious then why hasn't anyone explained what it is....?

, how other stances which assume that consciousness (or qualia) is a fundamental concept (in the same sense that tiny bits of interacting stuff are considered as fundamental in materialism) is less so.

My position claims that consciousness supervenes on brain processes. This allows for several things

1) It explains why ingesting brain-altering drugs changes mental contents.
2) It avoids making any unsupported metaphysical assertions.
3) It avoids a strictly innaccurate usage of the word "cause".

Gepff

 

[Belz...]

....and the Stanford Encyclopedia.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/

"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. Descartes famously challenged much of what we take for granted, but he insisted that, for the most part, we can be confident about the content of our own minds. Eliminative materialists go further than Descartes on this point, since they challenge of the existence of various mental states that Descartes took for granted."

IT DOESN'T SAY that minds don't exist.

....and Wikipedia.

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

"Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a view in the philosophy of mind that argues for an absolute version of materialism with respect to mental entities and mental vocabulary. It principally argues that our common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology), which eliminativists view as a sort of unformalized theory, is not a viable conception on which to base scientific investigation. Eliminativists believe that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire and that behaviour and experience can only be adequately explained on the biological level. The most radical claims of eliminativism include the challenging of the existence of conscious mental states such as pains and visual perceptions."

IT DOESN'T SAY that minds don't exist.

....and every other definition of eliminative materialism that you will be able to find, anywhere.

Yeah, well I'd like you to at least provide ONE.

 

[Belz...]

What would be more accurate to say is that it is hard to deny that consciousness supervences on brain processes. If you say "causal link" you are implying empirical causality which would require a time delay between brain processes and corresponding conscious experiences. No such time delay exists - they correlate instantaneously.

Instantaneously ? You know this how ?

My position claims that consciousness supervenes on brain processes.

Well, given your definition of supervenes, I'd say you're right. But that says nothing of your stance that minds are not entirely explained by or dependent upon brain processes. That elusive third source (determinism, randomness and "?") is still undefined by you, merely asserted.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Instantaneously ? You know this how ?

How could it be otherwise? If there is a time delay between brain process and corresponding subjective experience you are going to have to invent some sort of connecting mechanism to account for the delay. And that would inevitably lead to dualism.

Well, given your definition of supervenes, I'd say you're right. But that says nothing of your stance that minds are not entirely explained by or dependent upon brain processes.

Correct. It leaves that specific issue unanswered. It leaves it to be resolved at a later date instead of assuming an unreliable/incoherent/unprovable metaphysical answer.