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The relationship between science and materialism

Mercutio said:
I have PMed it to a couple of folks who couldn't wait and asked politely. I repeat, your position should stand or fall on its own, not based on any analysis of my own. I am holding off because I don't have the time right now to properly devote to a thread based on my own view, and because I'd rather see a proper understanding of yours first.

You can wait a bit longer before something distracts from your dualism.
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"The Cheque is in the post." :oldroll:
 
Hang on! I have absolutely no idea what it means. I do not know why it is a better definition than Being=kumquats.
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It doesn't mean anything. It's one of those paradoxes like 3=1 or God which cannot be man really is man who is God.

"Being = Nothing" rests on its own.
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You still don't get it. Being = Nothing resting on its own simply means that any system can put that at its core. It doesn't mean that Being really equals Nothing. There is no logical proof of it. Your statement of it is a bare assertion. If you want Being=Nothing, then fine. But don't give Being extra characteristics as does the rest of your "neutral monism" that is really dualism.

What you are calling eliminative materialism does not have Nothing at its core. You are already making an assumption there that Being=Awareness. Naturalism, like everything else has Being at its core. How can it not? Whether or not Being=Nothing is something that you can conjecture and play with, but it cannot be proved. Your problem is that your actual equation is Being=Awareness=Nothing; you have committed yourself to a central unproved assumption. Natural explanations leave out the Awareness bit as synonymous with Being. Being is not awareness it is everything. Awareness arises through natural processes which is Being. We could go back to the examination of those definitions. Let me know when you are ready.
 
I can vouch for Mercutio. No bluffing. Now, do you still want to run away from debate or send your apology to the Churchlands?
 
JustGeoff said:
Mercutio

I think you are bluffing. I call your bluff. Let's have your defendable position.

Geoff
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I knew you would think this; that is the reason I sent it to two people. The cheque is not in the mail, it is in an escrow account.

So please, don't try this tactic again. We can continue to focus on the shortcomings of your position for now.
 
Mercutio said:
I knew you would think this; that is the reason I sent it to two people. The cheque is not in the mail, it is in an escrow account.

So please, don't try this tactic again. We can continue to focus on the shortcomings of your position for now.
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Yep, bluffing. :)

What's the problem, Merc?
 
Ichneumonwasp said:
I can vouch for Mercutio.
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Not good enough.

And I have nothing left to debate with you, Wasp. If you believe the statement:

"Being = Nothing" stands on it's own.

....then there is nothing left to say. That's it. That's the end of the discussion. There's nowhere left to go after that. :)
 
Mercutio said:
Jeremy and Wasp both know better, Geoff. They have seen it. I won't play this silly game with you, Geoff. We both know better; you are merely trying a grade-school tactic.
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Do you think I was born yesterday? :D

This thread is descending into the surreal.
 
JustGeoff said:
Do you think I was born yesterday? :D
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No, I merely think you are trying to distract attention from your defense of your philosophy. Anyone who wanted could PM either of the posters I mentioned--if I am lying, I have left myself open to serious humiliation. So don't worry about goading me.
This thread is descending into the surreal.
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Descending?
 
Geoff said:
In this case there is only a proximal P1 cause (your noumenal brain) instead of there also being a distall P1 cause (a chair).
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And proximal P1 causes are in category P2? If so, category P2 needs a crisper definition.

a) Every single mental/subjective/folk-psychological term has now been replaced with a term which is purely objective/physical/neural.

or

b) Not every single mental/subjective/folk-psychological term has now been replaced with a term which is purely objective/physical/neural.

(a) and (b) are mutually exclusive.
If (a) is true then eliminative materialism is true.
If (b) is true then there must be a non-physical element to mental realm, which means all forms of materialism are false.
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Even without eliminative materialism, materialism already requires us to replace every folk term with one that has only physical references. What is there left for eliminative materialists to do?

(a) They could claim that regular materialists are liars about everything being physical.

(b) They could advance the program that materialism already requires, under the assumption that regular materialists have been lazy about it.

(c) They could make the additional claim that there is nothing for, say, pain to refer to, not even something wholly physical.

(a) is unlikely. (b) is useful but does not distinguish eliminative materialism ontologically. (c) leads to ridiculous scenarios such as the one I presented. Note that if (c) is the case, we should never have noticed pain at all.

So I think eliminative materialism is (b), any statements from eliminative materialists notwithstanding.

The comparison of folk terms to phlogiston is misleading. Granted, there turned out to be no such thing as phlogiston. However, the problem that phlogiston was meant to solve was a real problem, and another solution was found. That solution happened not to be called phlogiston, whereas the solution to the sun appearing in the morning continued to be called the sunrise. There is no deep meaning to this difference. It is possibly due to phlogiston being a noun and sunrise being a verb.

~~ Paul
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
And proximal P1 causes are in category P2? If so, category P2 needs a crisper definition.
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No, I just need to remember whish is which. I meant proximal P2 cause.

Even without eliminative materialism, materialism already requires us to replace every folk term with one that has only physical references. What is there left for eliminative materialists to do?
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Make sure all the people defending incoherent positions like emergentism stop trying to defend them. As the Churchlands are trying to do.

(a) They could claim that regular materialists are liars about everything being physical.
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They claim regular materialists are logically mistaken.

(b) They could advance the program that materialism already requires, under the assumption that regular materialists have been lazy about it.

So I think eliminative materialism is (b), any statements from eliminative materialists notwithstanding.
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They are doing this also.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Even without eliminative materialism, materialism already requires us to replace every folk term with one that has only physical references. What is there left for eliminative materialists to do?

(a) They could claim that regular materialists are liars about everything being physical.
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Which would mean they were interactive dualists and ashamed to say so. And what thinker wants to espouse an illogical position?

(b) They could advance the program that materialism already requires, under the assumption that regular materialists have been lazy about it.
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That's my stance.

(c) They could make the additional claim that there is nothing for, say, pain to refer to, not even something wholly physical.
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I don't see how that could be argued logically.

The comparison of folk terms to phlogiston is misleading. Granted, there turned out to be no such thing as phlogiston. However, the problem that phlogiston was meant to solve was a real problem, and another solution was found. That solution happened not to be called phlogiston, whereas the solution to the sun appearing in the morning continued to be called the sunrise. There is no deep meaning to this difference. It is possibly due to phlogiston being a noun and sunrise being a verb.
~~ Paul
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I'd just call it category error. Phlogiston was intended to be a physical substance like the rest of the physicalist's 'what-is'.
 
Geoff said:
No, I just need to remember whish is which. I meant proximal P2 cause.
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I think you need to remove "external stimuli" from the definition of P2.

They [eliminativists] claim regular materialists are logically mistaken.
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About what?

About emergentism from Wikipedia:
A property of a system is said to be emergent if it is more than the sum of the properties of the system's parts. More rigorously, a property P of composite object O is emergent if it is metaphysically possible for another object to lack property P even if that object is composed of parts with intrinsic properties identical to those in O and has those parts in an identical configuration.
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What does "metaphysically possible" mean? Is this saying that it is possible for two physically identical objects to have different emergent properties?

I'll go right out on a limb now and claim that emergentism is incoherent. I suggest that people find another term, such as unexpected.

~~ Paul
 
Hang on, emergentism is not necessarily a type of materialism, which might explain the magical definition given above. We also have emergent materialism:
In the philosophy of mind, emergent (or emergentist) materialism is a theory which asserts that the mind is an irreducible existent in some sense, albeit not in the sense of being an ontological simple, and that the study of mental phenomena is independent of other sciences.
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Yow!

~~ Paul
 
"Being = Nothing" stands on it's own.
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Yep, I can insert it anywhere. I'm thinking about putting it in cereal boxes and on beer labels for a minimal fee, of course.

Very well, I accept your concession that you define terms to suit yourself, such as Being=Awareness=Nothing. The only thing in that formulation that you collapse is Awareness. Awareness is all = Idealism. Awareness is nothing = your definition of eliminative materialism. It's a silly parlor trick in an attempt to allow you to have your cake and eat it too. Sometimes Awarenss=Being and sometimes Awareness=Nothing. We are supposed to think this is profound or solves anything?

I don't think I've ever seen anyone who reads into what other people write as much as you.

Have a nice life.
 
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Is there some metaphysic where Awareness=pi? Is Awareness=Nothing the same as Awareness={} (empty set)? Would it be profitable to set Awareness=Bugatti Veyron? Hold on, if I set Awareness=half the stuff, I get dualism! This is cool.

Is the fact that I can't grok Awareness=Nothing okay, or am I deficient?

~~ Paul
 
Ichneumonwasp said:
.... Sometimes Awareness=Being and sometimes Awareness=Nothing. We are supposed to think this is profound or solves anything?
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Depends on your perspective, perhaps.

As we discuss this at HPC level of consciousness with the perceptions granted that state of being, rather meaningless in many regards.

Look at t=0 big bang. If you accept a singularity, that I'd say is Geoff's zero. And sfaik, science today concludes that total energy content of 'what-is' is zero, gravity offsetting all other forces. If you don't buy the singularity, something from nothing is the answer, and in total it's still all nothing. ;)

Just my thoughts ... ymmv... :)
 
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If we reject the notion that eliminative materialism means that pain does not exist, and simply take the meaning that our folk psychology terms are all messed up, then we're down to the question of whether brain processes can account for our various subjective experiences. Can we have subjective experiences without an ontologically distinct subject?

Seems to me this is an empirical question.

~~ Paul
 
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