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The relationship between science and materialism

JustGeoff said:
Mercutio

You did not answer my question.
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Rather, I showed how your question was flawed.
Your response to post 1147, at the third time of asking, compared non-materialists to geocentrists.
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Only if you equate science with materialism, as you incorrectly do, rather than understand that science is independent of monism. The equating of science with materialism was your doing, not mine.
I am now asking you for a second time whether you really believe such a comparison is justified.
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And once again, I must tell you that you are asking the wrong person. Your question is flawed due to faulty assumptions, you are projecting your definitions onto me yet again, and as a result you are attributing something to me that I did not say.
Geoff
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M
 
Nope, JG - the sunrise example is rotten for a number of reasons. For one thing, we can see what a sunrise is, and what it appears to be. We cannot do that with the mind. For another, a sunrise (or earth-turn) is a readily observable phenom - an objectively experiential phenom - while a mind clearly is not.

The best analogy of all to a mind is a program, as seen by the computer running that program.

From your posts since I last posted, JG, what you are clearly claiming is the mind is an inherently immaterial process. You are starting with dualism or idealism, then trying to show the logical failures of materialism. I've seen this SOOOOOO many times from your camp that it's silly to even count it.

Simply enough, JG, minds are a program of the brain, as observed by the brain running the program. This entails a fully physical description of the mind, and is fully compatible with any form of materialism. We can get technical and start getting into the proper neuroanalysis, etc... but in the end (eventually) this will fully explain the mind - with the minor exception that people like you will insist that there simply must be something immaterial, indescribable, etc. about the mind.

If we have discovered purely physicalist terms to describe each and every phenomenon, in accordance with eliminative materialism, then we will also have an applicable set of descriptions for the mind. There won't be any denying the mind exists; but we'll understand what the mind is, simply enough.

Any claims otherwise are being made by dualists and immaterialists who don't grasp the basic concept that all things are material/physical.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
If I claimed that future technological developments might cause us to call t-shirts something other than t-shirts, would that be quite literally a claim that t-shirts do not exist? :rolleyes:
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No. In the first and second instance you would be refering to the same physical object. But when trying to explain qualitative experience the materialist refers to two different things. In the first instance he must refer to qualitative experiences but the materialist refers to physical processes in the second and pretends that he was refering to physical processes in the first instance. Its absurd.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Yet I do not believe that Mercutio would claim that there is nothing for the word pain to refer to.
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A reminder of some recent claims from mercutio:

Geoff posted : But at the moment we've got a bunch of words that apply from the 1st-person, subjective perspective and a bunch that apply from the 3rd-person, objective perspective.

Mercutio replied: You are already making assumptions here. You equate first-person with "subjective" and third-person with "objective", assuming a dualist view. Go directly to jail; do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Geoff posted : Eliminative materialism is merely a version of the claim that it is impossible for materialism to stand outside itself in order to compare itself to idealism and dualism.

Mercutio replied: Which it needs to do, in order to answer the question about who would win, Superman or Batman. Or that other fictional question you came up with.

Geoff posted: Either way, as things stand, the word "mind" cannot be eliminated and nobody can agree whether it's theoretically possible to so.

Mercutio replied: I bet Jeff Corey and I could agree on it. Or if you mean "everybody", then the geocentrists are going to quibble on sunrise just as easily.
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Mercutio MUST be claiming what I say he is claiming or his position has become unidentifiable. He has been defending eliminativism from page 1. Reasonably consistently, also. But now he has got problems.....

He'll have to correct me if I'm wrong. Until you answer my question about why we are eliminating pain, this summary is incomplete.

Only for certain definitions of mind.

~~ Paul
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Do you mean "only for the definitions of mind which we already identifiable as physical"? Do you mean "and not the definitions of mind which we currently identify as mental?" Because if that is what you mean then we have some progress. It means you are now directly contradicting Mercutio's position: you are claiming I am justified in using "centuries old vocabulary", and it is an explicit rejection of eliminativism.
 
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JustGeoff said:
You tell me! I don't know. It's not me who wants them eliminated. Why don't you ask Mercutio? :D
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Once again, you project my opinion onto me. Where, here, have I ever hinted at such a thing? I have explicitly told Paul that the words can still be used.

Geoff, the words we write are not merely some Rorschach ink-blot, for you to see what you want in them.
 
Mercutio said:
I do not understand the question.
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Then you will never understand the arguments against materialism. Unfortunately, I literally can't explain the meaning of quality to you. I would have to experience for you, if you will. Perhaps you are a zombie! ;)
 
JustGeoff said:
Mercutio MUST be claiming what I say he is claiming or his position has become unidentifiable. He has been defended eliminativism from page 1. Reasonably consistently, also.
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Actually, Mercutio has simply been pointing out the assumptions in your questions. You can take that as defending eliminativism, but it is not. Your ideas should stand on their own. They do not; they are propped up by a raft of assumptions which you refuse to see.
 
davidsmith73 said:
So if you claim evidence for materialsim, you are being circular. I'm not proposing faith as an alternative, just pointing out the limits of materialism.
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Actually you can be completely open-minded about whether the universe is material and still get to materialism easily.

"Stuff that is", for lack of a better term, so far as we know, behaves exactly as if it followed its own rules, and it persists in existing even if nobody is watching it. If stuff vanished when nobody was looking at it, that would be evidence that stuff only existed in our minds. If I could make stuff appear by thinking about it, that too would be evidence that stuff only exists in our minds. Neither is the case however.

Similarly, the universe shows every sign of having existed long before there was anybody around to perceive anything at all.

The conclusion most people draw from this is that the simplest view of "what is" is that "what is" is made up of stuff which exists outside our minds, or in philosophical terms it is material.

Human minds were plausible candidates for immaterial stuff five hundred years ago, but now we have taken them to bits and found out that the stuff that makes up these brains is just the same as all the other stuff, and that damaging the brain damages the mind in predictable and serious ways. So it's now the simplest view of what we are, that we are just more material stuff doing something interesting.
 
davidsmith73 said:
Then you will never understand the arguments against materialism. Unfortunately, I literally can't explain the meaning of quality to you. I would have to experience for you, if you will. Perhaps you are a zombie! ;)
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If you cannot explain it to me, how did you learn it to begin with? The people who taught you the word had no access to your experience (nor you to theirs), yet you learned the word anyway. If you cannot explain it to me, you do not have a definition you can claim for yourself!

This is a problem--you are using words in a question which we all might be defining differently (by your argument). How can you expect answers to this question to be meaningful?
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
Then it is incorrect to say that there is no such thing as pain. Eliminativism is eliminating certain definitions of pain; it is not eliminating pain. In particular, since you have no idea of the demarcation between pain-M and pain-P......
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STOP!

Remember the difference between subjective and objective? Remember that all experiences are subjective and "objective things" come via a line of reasoning? Remember that you agreed there was "no overlap"? We're back at that point in the circle again.

, you cannot even state which definitions are being eliminated.
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I can do so - for the reason just given.

What you have done is state that eliminativism eliminates those portions of folk terms that are dualistically loaded. Then I see no difference between reductive materialism and eliminative materialism.
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Reductive materialism doesn't eliminate the terms, therefore allowing me to use them in proofs that reductive materialism must be false. Eliminativism elimates the terms, preventing me from proving eliminative materialism is false.

There are NO "non-dualistic" definitions of "mental". If you want to be non-dualistic (and physicalist) then you must resist the temptation to define it at all. That's what my seven-line proof demonstrated.
 
JustGeoff said:
STOP!

Remember the difference between subjective and objective? Remember that all experiences are subjective and "objective things" come via a line of reasoning? Remember that you agreed there was "no overlap"? We're back at that point in the circle again.
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Remember that this question presupposes a dualistic view?

I can do so - for the reason just given.
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So, what was only assumed is what is being eliminated?
Reductive materialism doesn't eliminate the terms, therefore allowing me to use them in proofs that reductive materialism must be false. Eliminativism elimates the terms, preventing me from proving eliminative materialism is false.

There are NO "non-dualistic" definitions of "mental". If you want to be non-dualistic (and physicalist) then you must resist the temptation to define it at all. That's what my seven-line proof demonstrated.
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Would hammy agree? (Serious question, if you are reading, hammy)
I tend to agree; as I have said, all the terms you have chosen to use are dualistic. As long as you use them, you end up with your dualism-in-a-dress.
 
Mercuto

Only if you equate science with materialism, as you incorrectly do, rather than understand that science is independent of monism. The equating of science with materialism was your doing, not mine.
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Would you care to explain what a non-materialistic science would look like in a word where all mental terms are meaningless? :D

It's pretty hard to define what a non-materialistic science could be. Trying to do so after eliminating all non-materialistic terms is completely impossible.


And once again, I must tell you that you are asking the wrong person. Your question is flawed due to faulty assumptions, you are projecting your definitions onto me yet again, and as a result you are attributing something to me that I did not say.
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"Faulty assumptions" meaning the use of all "dualistic vocabulary"?

What's your position, Merc? That pinhead you were dancing on has been removed. Your position is suspended in mid air. :)
 
Remember the difference between subjective and objective? Remember that all experiences are subjective and "objective things" come via a line of reasoning? Remember that you agreed there was "no overlap"? We're back at that point in the circle again.
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Remember that a description from the outside does not equal the action it describes? Remember? Hmmm....perhaps it is time to return to the definitions. What do you think?
 
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