The relationship between science and materialism

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Not bothering? Sorry man, I have read most of the thread and certainly almost all your posts... if that doesn't show you interest I guess you are falling in the trap Ian's fall (and I have told you before in this very thread).

So, is this about understand each other positions or about you you you? Its your thread, so I guess you have the right to just tell me to go away. I guess.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Not bothering? Sorry man, I have read most of the thread and certainly almost all your posts... if that doesn't show you interest I guess you are falling in the trap Ian's fall (and I have told you before in this very thread).

So, is this about understand each other positions or about you you you? Its your thread, so I guess you have the right to just tell me to go away. I guess.

I am sorry. It's just very frustrating for me that people keep mis-identifying my position as idealism or dualism. It's neither, and it's not vulnerable to the criticisms those positions are vulnerable to. But most of the people here as so accustomed to arguing with dualist Christians or idealists like Ian that they continually try to rebutt my position by using arguments that might work against dualists and idealists but do not work against neutral monism.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

BDZ

Where I say neutral entity, you might just as well read "Tao". Does that help?

I haven't even defined "mind", so far (this time round), so I don't see how you could object to this.

Geoff

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Now wait a second. I didn't accuse you of dualism or idealism just then. I asked a simple question which you did not answer. If there is nothing wrong with viewing the universe as devoid of something called minds, while seeing the universe as filled with people whose brains function and that functioning is "minding", then there is nothing wrong with our position, so it is not impossible for mental function to be accounted for by natural means. If that is your position then I have no quarrel with you at all. My only interest and role in this whole thing was to oppose the idea that natural explanations of mental processing is impossible.

I will sit quietly back and wait for the rest of the explanation.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Where I say neutral entity, you might just as well read "Tao". Does that help?

I haven't even defined "mind", so far (this time round), so I don't see how you could object to this.

Geoff

What Im trying to point out is that this "neutral entity" is outside our conceptual panorama. We can call it "the unknown" or whatever we like (its irrelevant). Thats why I dont see the point in trying to reach a reasonable position. Every concept and every theory is wrong, our language limits what we can think.

That said, it is important to note that, even if you are not giving definitions of "mind" you still asume that it is there. So, if you are fast in saying that assuming materialism to defend materialism is wrong, you have to be aware about you are assuming your neutral monism, even if you decide not to make explicit the entities you need to asume in order for your possition to be "more correct" than materialism.

Do you see my point?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul,

Another way of explaining it.

Language is naturally split into subjective things and objective things, into mental and physical. If we allow this dualistic language when defining our terms for the purposes of these arguments then, as we have seen, this leads to logical problems. There are two strategies currently being employed to get out of the logical problem. The first strategy is eliminativism, which effectively chops off the subjective half of language, and all the terms which naturally belong in that half. This works logically, but involves the outright denial of the existence of mind and claims half our language is excess to requirements. The second strategy is to tell a fancy story about how "minds ARE brain processes" and hope nobody notices that the the "ARE" doesn't actually mean anything at all. So the problem with the second strategy is we have an unexplained and apparent inexplicable "IS". Now - think back to my system. What's in it? We don't have any mind or matter. But what we do have is something called "Being". "Being" is another form of "is" - they are both parts of the verb "to be". So in actual fact the "extra thing" in my system that you might say isn't needed is another manifestation of the meaningless "IS" which invoked by the non-eliminative materialists. But there is a difference. Their "is" doesn't mean anything and mine does. Theirs is in the wrong place and mine is in the right place. All I am doing is re-arranging the components of the system so things have the correct relationships with each other instead of the incorrect ones.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Geoff

What Im trying to point out is that this "neutral entity" is outside our conceptual panorama.

Kant would have agreed. I think we can do better. Call me a hopeless optimist.

We can call it "the unknown" or whatever we like (its irrelevant). Thats why I dont see the point in trying to reach a reasonable position. Every concept and every theory is wrong, our language limits what we can think.

You are welcome to give up if you like.

That said, it is important to note that, even if you are not giving definitions of "mind" you still asume that it is there.

How do you know that? I haven't got there yet.

So, if you are fast in saying that assuming materialism to defend materialism is wrong, you have to be aware about you are assuming your neutral monism, even if you decide not to make explicit the entities you need to asume in order for your possition to be "more correct" than materialism.

I have not "assumed" neutral monism. So far, all I am doing is explaining it.

Do you see my point?

Not really.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

All we get is an entirely meaningless "IS".

Wait a second again. THe only "is" used was when we were trying to use the short-hand dualistic vocabulary that we all use. That is our vocabulary. But I explicitly told you at the outset that the whole idea of "mind" as a noun was wrong. The solution has nothing to do with using a non-referential "is". The problem is that mind is a misconception as a "thing". We don't need any "is" relationship when we speak properly about the processes of the brain. The brain functions, it "minds" -- that thing we call mind is not anything but the action, the verb. There is no "is" involved in that view.

We would all be better off using verbs for all the processes the brain "does". The brain calculates. The brain experiences. The brain thinks. The brain perceives actively. Etc. Once you introduce this "is" -- again it was used initially only for ease of communication -- you imply a correspondence between two things. One of them is a thing, the other action.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

That's easy. As already explained Being/Nothing/Zero/Everything isn't a thing. It has no identity. It lacks the defining characteristics of a "something". Therefore there are not two fundamental types of existent. There is the neutral entity, and there is existence itself. This can be restated more simply as:

A neutral entity exists.

Do you see why that is monism and not dualism?

So if something exists, there must be the concept of existence. Got it. Or is it more than that?

Language is naturally split into subjective things and objective things, into mental and physical. If we allow this dualistic language when defining our terms for the purposes of these arguments then, as we have seen, this leads to logical problems. There are two strategies currently being employed to get out of the logical problem. The first strategy is eliminativism, which effectively chops off the subjective half of language, and all the terms which naturally belong in that half. This works logically, but involves the outright denial of the existence of mind and claims half our language is excess to requirements.

You're mixing up two things, as people have already pointed out.

The second strategy is to tell a fancy story about how "minds ARE brain processes" and hope nobody notices that the the "ARE" doesn't actually mean anything at all. So the problem with the second strategy is we have an unexplained and apparent inexplicable "IS". Now - think back to my system. What's in it? We don't have any mind or matter. But what we do have is something called "Being". "Being" is another form of "is" - they are both parts of the verb "to be". So in actual fact the "extra thing" in my system that you might say isn't needed is another manifestation of the meaningless "IS" which invoked by the non-eliminative materialists. But there is a difference. Their "is" doesn't mean anything and mine does. Theirs is in the wrong place and mine is in the right place. All I am doing is re-arranging the components of the system so things have the correct relationships with each other instead of the incorrect ones.

So Being is some thing? I thought it was just a concept. Someone who was being careful wouldn't say "minds are brain processes." They would say "the word mind is a label for a set of brain processes." Note what Wasp has been saying.

Anyway, maybe things will be clearer when you continue.

~~ Paul

 

[Darat]

Paul,

Another way of explaining it. ...snip... The first strategy is eliminativism, which effectively chops off the subjective half of language, and all the terms which naturally belong in that half. This works logically, but involves the outright denial of the existence of mind and claims half our language is excess to requirements.

...snip...

No it doesn't Geoff.

Let me go back to the unicorn analogy - when we acquired enough knowledge to know that the original definition for unicorn was inaccurate, i.e. that it didn't reflect reality it didn't mean the word had to be dropped we just had to learn to use it it in a different way that better matched reality.

Another analogy is to consider Newton's laws - which are wrong since we now know they do not describe reality accurately, however that doesn't mean we still can't make use of them when they are good enough for the task in hand. The difference is now we know they are not good enough for some tasks so we can make an informed choice when it is appropriate to carry on using them or not.

If the eliminatives are correct "mind" could still be a handy word to keep around and use however when wanting to speak more accurately about certain topics we'd need to drop it, just like we drop Newton's laws when we need to be that little bit more accurate.

 

[chriswl]

If the eliminatives are correct "mind" could still be a handy word to keep around and use however when wanting to speak more accurately about certain topics we'd need to drop it, just like we drop Newton's laws when we need to be that little bit more accurate.

Exactly. There are folk who don't find the language of "folk psychology" adequate. They include neuroscientists, psychologists, cognitive scientists and some philosophers. That doesn't mean they have to talk of the mind exclusively in terms of neurons, any more than we talk of life exclusively in terms of proteins. Biology is full of higher level concepts (reproduction, metabolism, symbiosis, evolution, photosynthesis) without ever fundamentally being more than chemistry. We will discover meaningful, higher level ways of understanding minds, in fact we already have some e.g. the computer metaphor and the intentional systems approach. We will develop better theories, this is just the start.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Wait a second again. THe only "is" used was when we were trying to use the short-hand dualistic vocabulary that we all use.

Wrong. You use it as the CRUX of your argument. And you NEVER explain what it means.

The brain functions, it "minds" -- that thing we call mind is not anything but the action, the verb. There is no "is" involved in that view.

Wrong again. Here' why.

Look at the following statement:

"The computer functions, it "computes" -- that thing we call computing is not anything but action, the verb. There is no "is" involved in that view."

This statement is correct. The computer computes. But in the case of the computer, there isn't a mind. So there isn't any need for an IS. We can just use "computes". This time there really isn't any "is". No worries about mental vocabulary for computers. "Computation" here refers ONLY to behaviour in a machine. No meaningless "IS" required, because the entire problematic half of the dictionary doesn't get a look-in. You are not saying that the computation "IS" anything else. It's just a computation. The computer computes. No minds. No "IS"! Happy with that?

Your problem is that you want the statement you made to work in exactly the same way. You want me to accept that what computing is to computers is exactly the same as what minds are to brains. This is either going to end up being eliminativism or there will be an abuse of the word "IS".

The brain functions, it "minds" -- that thing we call mind is not anything but the action, the verb. There is no "is" involved in that view.

What is the point in using the word "mind" here? All you have done is replace the word "computing" with the word "mind". "Brain's compute." Well, yes, in a way that is what they do. There appears to be something going on in the physical brain. It could be thought of as computing. You can call it "minding" if you like but your problem is that the thing you have now labelled "mind" doesn't have any mental properties!

So this time you have avoided the abusive use of the word "IS" but at the cost of sliding back into eliminativism. All you have done is taken one of the words from the mental side of the linguistic divide and use it describe physical activity on the other side of the divide which has no identifiable mental properties. You've included the word "mind", but it is meaning-free. It doesn't convey any more meaning than the word "compute" does. So this time you have a meaningless use of the word "mind" instead of a meaningless "is". You've removed the "is" but the logical problem has immediately resurfaced somewhere else.

We would all be better off using verbs for all the processes the brain "does".

You mean "the brain computes".

The brain calculates.

"The brain computes"

The brain experiences.

OOOPS!!

Sorry. You were fine when you were using the computing analogies. Let's see...

"The computer experiences."

Nope. I don't think so, Wasp. I don't think my computer is experiencing me typing this sentence.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Definitions, definitions. There is the problem. Yours depend on your worldview, we cant "see" them unless we can completely understand your worldview (which is an impossible task unless we were you).

What if the computer can say "hey you are writing a sentence". Would it be experiencing your typing?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul

So if something exists, there must be the concept of existence. Got it. Or is it more than that?

The thing you claim to have "got" didn't have anything to do the quote you were responding to, so it doesn't sound like you "got it", no.

I asked you if you saw why this was monism and not dualism. You didn't answer. So here it is again:

Being/Nothing/Zero/Everything isn't a thing. It has no identity. It lacks the defining characteristics of a "something". Therefore there are not two fundamental types of existent. There is the neutral entity, and there is existence itself. This can be restated more simply as:

A neutral entity exists.

***Do you see why that is monism and not dualism?***

Language is naturally split into subjective things and objective things, into mental and physical. If we allow this dualistic language when defining our terms for the purposes of these arguments then, as we have seen, this leads to logical problems. There are two strategies currently being employed to get out of the logical problem. The first strategy is eliminativism, which effectively chops off the subjective half of language, and all the terms which naturally belong in that half. This works logically, but involves the outright denial of the existence of mind and claims half our language is excess to requirements.

You're mixing up two things, as people have already pointed out.

Sorry, must have missed that one. What exactly have I "mixed up"?

So Being is some thing?

Look, this isn't an understanding failure. It is a basic failure to read what I am writing. How many times do I have to explictly tell you that Being isn't a thing before you stop asking me whether Being is a thing?

I thought it was just a concept.

It is more than a concept. Are YOU just a concept?

Someone who was being careful wouldn't say "minds are brain processes." They would say "the word mind is a label for a set of brain processes." Note what Wasp has been saying.

That's just an expanded version of the meaningless "IS", Paul. It hasn't introduced the missing meaning. The meaning-content of

"the word mind is a label for a set of brain processes."

and

"minds are brain processes"

is the same.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

What if the computer can say "hey you are writing a sentence". Would it be experiencing your typing?

No.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I don't think my computer is experiencing me typing this sentence.

You really don't get this, do you? You really do not understand it. Who said anything about current computers and brains being the same, functioning in the same way? Computers do not have motivational systems, emotional systems, feeling systems. Of course a computer does not experience the same way as a brain does. It does sometning very different -- just computation. Brains do much, much more because of their structure. How do you not comprehend that?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul,

I think I may understand why you are having a problem with this. Being is not a concept. But it is not a "thing" either". You therefore can't figure out what it is. But your problem is that you are trying to figure out "what isness is". You can't even ask the question "What is Being?" because you have to use the word "IS" to ask the question! So it's not a thing. But it's not just a concept either. The reason it manages to exist (in some sense) without being a thing is because of what I said before about it's lack of identity. When we ask the question "What is X?" We are asking "What is the identity of X?" or "How do we define this thing X in terms of all the other things?" But you can't really do that with being because the only answers which make sense - the only "things" we can provide that might be the identity of Being are everything and nothing. But these are the "things" which don't have any individualised identity. They apply to all things and no things respectively.

Any of that help?

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You really don't get this, do you? You really do not understand it. Who said anything about current computers and brains being the same, functioning in the same way? Computers do not have motivational systems, emotional systems, feeling systems.

**** Computers do not have minds ****

Of course a computer does not experience the same way as a brain does.

Oh my God. A "true believer".

How do you not comprehend that?

It's incomprehensible.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Look, this isn't an understanding failure. It is a basic failure to read what I am writing. How many times do I have to explictly tell you that Being isn't a thing before you stop asking me whether Being is a thing?

You have to stop writing things like this:

But what we do have is something called "Being". "Being" is another form of "is" - they are both parts of the verb "to be". So in actual fact the "extra thing" in my system that you might say isn't needed is another manifestation of the meaningless "IS" which invoked by the non-eliminative materialists.

Emphasis mine.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Any of that help?

It may help as we continue, which is what we should do. Act like a teacher, not a preacher. I'm happy to say you're describing a monism as long as this Being thing doesn't actually serve any function.

It's incomprehensible.

You give us all this crap, yet you will not admit that there may be something it is like to be a computer. Pfffft.

~~ Paul