The relationship between science and materialism

[UndercoverElephant]

We are poking holes in it. Deflating it.

You have no stick.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Horsecrap.


Nope.

~~ Paul

Then is there a problem with your English comprehension?

What is there to misunderstand about the difference?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

This depends entirely on the definition of mind.

No, Paul. This is where you SPECIFY your definition of mind. This is where your definition of mind actually matters. So it makes no difference what GEOFF means by "mind". The only thing that matters is what PAUL means.

So what do you mean?

Are you comfortable with:

Reductive materialism claims that pain is brain processes.
Eliminative materialism claims that pain isn't brain processes because there are no such thing as pain.

I have no idea what PAUL means by pain at this point. I am waiting for you to tell me! Do you mean subjective experiences of pain or do you mean neural processes?

You are making this far more complicated than it needs to be.

Reductive materialism claims that minds/pains are brain processes.
Eliminative materialism claims that minds and pains aren't brain processes because there are no such things as minds and pains, there are only brain processes.

You CANNOT confuse these two claims. They are completely different.

regardless of how I define pain?

~~ Paul

NO! How YOU define pain is absolutely critical at this point. Why are you unable to define it? Because you now understand the consequences of each possible definition. If you define it as the experience of pain, you're going to end up defining it dualistically. If you define it as mere neuronal firings, you're going to end up being eliminativist. You are trying to avoid both conclusions.

How are you going to define pain?

You want to be able to say "Minds are...." or "Pain is...." but this is incompatible with eliminative materialism. And EM is the only coherent version of materialism because all the others are implicitly dualistic.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

yes

Then we may be able to move foreward definition-wise, since we do have some kind of handle on what constitutes feelings. Now, we certainly do not know any of this info in detail, but we do have several different brain/body systems that account for different types of feelings -- emotion systems, motivational systems, several different somatosensory systems.

I think your obvious reply will be "all that is fine, but it can't explain what it really feels like to see red", but what we know of objective vs. other accounts is that describing an action from the outside does not capture the full essence of any action. The action itself is different from the description of it from the outside. So neuron firings described from the outside do not capture fully what happens when neurons fire.

The act of seeing red must be distinguishable in some way from the act of feeling pain for the brain to do anything with the information. Feelings serve as markers that relay motivational and informational content about experiences. Since we experience these things we cannot quite put a full label on them, which is why I think you had trouble giving a definition of what "quality" is. It seems very ineffable, but that ineffability could simply be the differing "tags" that emotion, feeling, etc. carry so that we can differentiate the information and motivation content of an experience. Does that make any sense?

The best we could ever do from the outside, which is where we are stuck, since there is no way that I can experience your sensations, is build a system and manipulate the parts to see if it acts in ways that are commensurate with differing states in humans. That is the best external type of evidence we could ever get for explaining feelings. We will never do it, I hope, for obvious ethical reasons, since if a computer, for instance, could be made to feel by changing some of its processing, then we would have no right to impose different states on it.

Our only other option is to try and explain the nervous system to a much greater degree.

I don't pretend to say that we have an explanation for how all of this works. I hope only to suggest here that such a project is possible in theory, so it could very well be the case that feelings might be explainable through natural means.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

NO! How YOU define pain is absolutely critical at this point. Why are you unable to define it? Because you now understand the consequences of each possible definition. If you define it as the experience of pain, you're going to end up defining it dualistically. If you define it as mere neuronal firings, you're going to end up being eliminativist. You are trying to avoid both conclusions.

I can define pain as the physiological and psychological reaction to being stuck with a skewer. That does not involve the scareword experience. It is an entirely reasonable definition for a reductive materialist to use. It conforms just perfectly to:

Reductive materialism (Identity theory) claims that there is no independent, autonomous level of phenomena in the world that would correspond to the level of conscious mental states. It also states that the level of conscious phenomena is identical with some level of purely neurological description. Conscious phenomena are nothing over and above the neural level, thus it can be reduced to that level.

You claim this allows for pain in a way that the eliminative materialist does not. It is not an ontological claim, because you have said there is no ontological difference between RM and EM. So what is the substantive difference? What allows you to call RM incoherent while not doing the same for EM?

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Is anybody reading this still willing to define a set of terms and defend a version of materialism which is both of the following?:

a) logically coherent
b) not insane/bizarre/unbelievable

If so, please go ahead. If not, it looks like nobody here is willing or able to defend physicalism as a logically coherent and sane position. That doesn't prove it's false. It just proves that nobody here is capable of demonstrating how it could possibly be true.

Any takers?

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

And as for Mercutio:

There is one position and one position only which you could still use to challenge mine. So far nobody's mentioned it:

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

Should you attempt such a defence, I would probably accept it. But I do not believe for one moment your imaginary position is deconstructionism.

Geoff

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

In other words, who wants to play the Geoff game of forgoing any reasonble discussion of Geoff's position and turn this into a 2000 post thread because it consists of Geoff making statements, then not being able to defend them, then accusing his interlocutors of being numbskulls to obscure his own inadequacies, then throwing out strawman characterizations of whatever stance anyone else takes until no one remembers why Geoff's original proposal was so screwed-up to begin with?

Any takers?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

In other words, who wants to play the Geoff game of forgoing any reasonble discussion of Geoff's position and turn this into a 2000 post thread because it consists of Geoff making statements, then not being able to defend them, then accusing his interlocutors of being numbskulls to obscure his own inadequacies, then throwing out strawman characterizations of whatever stance anyone else takes until no one remembers why Geoff's original proposal was so screwed-up to begin with?

Any takers?

Is anybody reading this still willing to define a set of terms and defend a version of materialism which is both of the following?:

a) logically coherent
b) not insane/bizarre/unbelievable

If so, please go ahead. If not, it looks like nobody here is willing or able to defend physicalism as a logically coherent and sane position. That doesn't prove it's false. It just proves that nobody here is capable of demonstrating how it could possibly be true.

List of people who have responded to this post with an attack, but have made no attempt to defend physicalism :

Ichneumonwasp

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

Lets see, just for the sake of it (remember Geoff, that I see our worldviews are close).

Physicalism states that all that exists is physical.
Minds exist, ergo, minds are physical.

So far so good.

Oh, I hope I will not be in "the black list" for this.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Lets see, just for the sake of it (remember Geoff, that I see our worldviews are close).

Physicalism states that all that exists is physical.
Minds exist, ergo, minds are physical.

So far so good.

Oh, I hope I will not be in "the black list" for this.

So far so good. You don't make it onto the blacklist, but so far this isn't a defence of physicalism. You've stated minds do exist. This is expressly a denial of eliminativism, so your defence won't be insane/bizarre/unbelievable, but it's not allowed to turn into eliminativism. I now need you to check out post #1286 and tell me which version of physicalism you want to try to defend : Reductive or Eliminative. Be aware that I am going to argue that eliminativism is insane and all forms of reductive materialism are implicitly dualistic (incoherent).

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Are you sure your name isn't Troy?

I've had enough of the circularity. Good bye.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Are you sure your name isn't Troy?

I've had enough of the circularity. Good bye.

See you later then.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

So far so good. You don't make it onto the blacklist, but so far this isn't a defence of physicalism. You've stated minds do exist. This is expressly a denial of eliminativism, so your defence won't be insane/bizarre/unbelievable, but it's not allowed to turn into eliminativism. I now need you to check out post #1286 and tell me which version of physicalism you want to try to defend : Reductive or Eliminative. Be aware that I am going to argue that eliminativism is insane and all forms of reductive materialism are implicitly dualistic (incoherent).

What about a third kind? If minds exists (lets concede that we all know what we mean by "mind), then whats the problem in stating, simply, that they are physical. What if the monism is on the other side?

If I remember this would lead us again to P1 and P2. Is this correct?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Is anybody reading this still willing to define a set of terms and defend a version of materialism which is both of the following?:

a) logically coherent
b) not insane/bizarre/unbelievable

First please explain the substantive difference between reductive and eliminative materialism.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

What about a third kind?

There's no third kind. Well, that's not quite true. Paul found a description of something supposed to be "non-reductive materialism". The definition included things like property dualism, so that's a non-starter. Apart from that you've got functionalism, but that doesn't neccesarily imply physicalism at all. This leaves only two positions, which are mutually exclusive : reductionism and eliminativism. There are no other kinds of physicalism.

If minds exists (lets concede that we all know what we mean by "mind), then whats the problem in stating, simply, that they are physical. What if the monism is on the other side?

The problem is that you already have a physical thing which corresponds to a mind : you have a brain process. So you are then in the position of having to explain the relationship between them. One of two conditions must apply. Either every mental term is theoretically replacable with a physical one, or it isn't. If it is then you are an eliminativist. If it isn't, then how are you going to explain why there are mental terms which cannot be replaced with physical terms without introducing an implied dualism? Kevin has already been here. He stated he was very sure that anything that counts as materialism must be able to replace all mental terms with physical ones (at least in theory). On this point, I agree with him.

If I remember this would lead us again to P1 and P2. Is this correct?

Somewhere in that vicinity, though precisely where the logical problem crops up will depend on how you respond to this post.

Geoff

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The problem is that you already have a physical thing which corresponds to a mind : you have a brain process. So you are then in the position of having to explain the relationship between them. One of two conditions must apply. Either every mental term is theoretically replacable with a physical one, or it isn't. If it is then you are an eliminativist.

And also a reductive materialist.

Kevin has already been here. He stated he was very sure that anything that counts as materialism must be able to replace all mental terms with physical ones (at least in theory). On this point, I agree with him.

So do I. We all agree! Yee-haw! So why doesn't reductive materialism count as materialism?

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

First please explain the substantive difference between reductive and eliminative materialism.

~~ Paul

Again?

Last time you asked me this I posted the following response:

Reductive materialism claims that minds/pains are brain processes.
Eliminative materialism claims that minds and pains aren't brain processes because there are no such things as minds and pains, there are only brain processes.

You CANNOT confuse these two claims. They are completely different.

In what sense are you unable to tell the difference between them?

I already explained (several times) that the crucial difference between eliminative and reductive material is a claim about language - not ontology. Ontologically speaking, they are both just physicalism. Reductive materialism allows statements like "Minds are really brain processes". Eliminative materialism explicitly denies that the word "mind" refers to anything. This is a crucial difference because it means that eliminative materialism is invulnerable to being accused of using implicitly dualistic definitions. It rules out those definitions. Every time I say "mind", Mercutio tells me I am defining things dualistically. THAT is an eliminative materialist talking. A reductive materialist CANNOT use such a defence, and it is for this reason I can prove it logically incoherent.

Reductionism:

Allows talk about minds.
But is implicitly dualistic because of this, and thus vulnerable to logical refutation.

Eliminativism:

Refuses any talk about minds, apart from as place-holders for as-yet-unknown neurological terms. This is a true monism, and not vulnerable to logical refutation.

Is there something unclear here? Because I sure can't see what it might be.

 

[Bodhi Dharma Zen]

First of all, Im sorry because I do not have the time to properly follow the discussion, let alone participate in the right manner. That said, I was thinking that someone could argue that, so far, everything points to mind=brain function. And then you can pospone the "definitive answer" stating that nothing indicates that a mind can exist without a brain and so, we have no good reasons to suppose that minds have a clear ontological status beyond brains.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

And also a reductive materialist.

NO!

Not also a reductive materialism. Reductive materialism is not compatible with Eliminative materialism because Eliminative materialism explictly denies that a reduction is possible.

Paul - in order to be able to reduce X to Y you need both an X and a Y.

Reductive materialism : X reduces to Y
Eliminative materialism : There is no X. There is no reduction. There is only Y. X is just a placeholder for Y.

You CANNOT hold both of these positions. And if you were to do so, then your position would be both logically incoherent and insane!

So do I. We all agree! Yee-haw! So why doesn't reductive materialism count as materialism?

Oh boy. <shakes head>

Can I let Kevin answer?

Posted by Kevin, and he was quite certain of it:

Any kind of materialism is going to claim that in theory we can replace every single mental/subjective/folk-psychological term with objective/physical/neural terms.

Any other answer and you're some flavour of immaterialist, dualist, or dualist with nonsense on top

In other words, unless it's eliminative materialism, it's dualism.