The relationship between science and materialism

[UndercoverElephant]

OK Paul

Let's have a look at these definitions of reductive materialism.

First one:

The view that only the material world (matter) is truly real, and that all processes and realities observed in the universe can be explained by reducing them down to their most basic scientific components, e.g., atoms, molecules, and everything else thought to make up what we know as "matter." For example, a reductive materialist would view the miraculous and unexpected healing of a supposedly terminal cancer patient as a random coincidence of solely biological and physiological processes in the person's body. While, on the other hand, some might view the healing as stemming from factors contributing to the biological factors, e.g., prayer or meditation. ---meta-library

This is no different to eliminative materialism. It's exactly the same except for the fact that it's called itself "reductive materialism". "Mind" doesn't actually mean anything. As a result, if you try to defend it you will only be able to do so by defining "mind" to be "brain processes". You will then be unable to provide a meaningfull definition of the thing which "subjective experiences" refer to. In fact, you won't be able to fit ANY subjective/mental words into your definitions unless those words are defined to mean physical things, and therefore no longer refer to the mental things to which they need to refer if you are going to avoid eliminativism.

Go ahead. Try it.

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. ---answers.com

Same answer applies.

reductive materialism/type identity theory: mental states exist and each (type of) mental state is identical to a specifiable (type of) physical state of the brain; talk of mental states/properties can, in principle, be redefined in terms of talk of brain states/properties; i.e., mental states/properties are reduced to or identical to brain states/properties. ---Washington & Lee dictionary

Same answer applies.

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 indentical 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. ---reference.com

Same answer applies.

Paul, you seem to have forgotten what has happened during the course of this thread. You can provide as many definitions as you like, you CANNOT defend any of them. Not if you are going to provide a definition of "mental" which avoids the implications of eliminativism. Try it. As soon as you actually sit down and try to define the following words, you are going to find yourself right back where you were around page 6.

Subjective :
Experiences :
Mental/Mind :
Objective :
Physical :
1st-person :
3rd-person :

Please go ahead and define them. You've had 34 pages to come up with a coherent way of doing it. One of two things will happen:

Outcome #1:

You may try to use one of these words to refer to something actually subjective/mental. If you do so, I will use that reference to prove a contradiction.

Outcome #2:

You fail to define any of the subjective/mental words or you define them in such a way that they explicitly refer to physical things and in no way refer to anything genuinely subjective/mental. I will then accuse you of question-begging, of which you will be guilty. Somebody else will then arrive and say that it was unfair to ask you to define mental terms in the first place, because they presuppose dualism. Eventually, you will be forced to accept that you must either not define mental things or define them in such a way as they no longer mean anything mental and you will be back round to eliminative materialism again.

Round and round and round.......

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I can't think for myself about what philosophical definitions are, can I, you condescending jerk?

~~ Paul

You don't seem to have thought about what the definitions are actually saying. How do they differ from eliminativism apart from the dress?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If you think reductive and eliminative materialism are the same thing, why the hell didn't you say so? Why did you say:

No, this is reductive materialism. And it's either vague or incoherent.

and

1) The difference between eliminative and reductive forms of materialism.

Reductive materialism claims that minds can be fully explained in terms of physical things. It does not go further and claim that we will ever be able to eliminate talk of minds or folk psychology. It is merely an ontological claim that physicalism is true – that everything which exists is physical. We are still allowed (even in a technical sense) to talk about minds. Eliminative materialism is a stronger claim. It is the claim made by mercutio in his last reply to me when he repeatedly claimed my argument depended on “centuries-old terminology” and refused to allow my use of the word “mind”. Therefore Merc is explicitly an eliminativist and not a reductivist. Mercutio has given as the example of the sunrise as a means of understanding what is meant by elimination of terms. The sunrise can be eliminated, but we still use it as shorthand for something other than “the sun rose over a stationary Earth.” [emphasis mine]

and

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.

The reason is because you thought reductive materialism was different from eliminative and so you had refuted it. Now that you find it has no dualistic content and thus can't refute it, it's the same as eliminative materialism.

Would you please list all the other types of materialism that have no dualistic content, so I won't waste my damn time talking to you about them, too.

Gah.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You don't seem to have thought about what the definitions are actually saying. How do they differ from eliminativism apart from the dress?

Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrggggghhhh!

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So reductive materialism has been eliminative materialism all along.

Except when it veers off into dualism.

Then why did anyone invent eliminative materialism and why is there so much discussion of it and why do people distinguish the two?

Right....

There are two sorts of reductive materialist theories. One sort actually leaves enough space for something genuinely mental to exist - but none of your examples fell into this category. Those versions are logically incoherent. The other sort calls itself "reductive materialism" but is in fact logically indistinguishable from eliminativism. The only difference is that the reductive theories introduce a definition of mind along the lines of "minds are brain processes". However, the "ARE" doesn't mean anything. It's not actually explaining the link between subjective and objective. When it SAYS "minds = brain processes" all it is doing is redefining the word "mind" to refer to "brain processes". The result is it is either meaningless, illogical, or both. Try to define your terms and you will see what I mean.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

So you will, of course, find us one of the definitions of reductive materialism that has a dualistic notion of mind, right?

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul,

Let me have another go at explaining what has happened here. You got forced, after 20 or so pages of debating, to accept eliminativism was the only way to go. You then discovered the implications of eliminativism was that your mind doesn't exist - because there was nothing for the word "mind" to refer to. This is intolerable - "something bizarre", you called it. Why? Because when you are using the word "mind" you are refering to your subjective experiences and any theory which denied they existed would be like denying there's day and night - rank stupidity. Now you have gone back to claiming that reductive materialism must be coherent after all - but the critical point is this:

Reductive materialism only saves you from the horrors of the eliminative insanity if it manages to do what eliminativism does not do : to provide you with a word which refers to your subjective experiences. Reductive materialism therefore looks like it can save the day. After all, it allows you to speak about minds. The sorts of reductive theories you are quoting simply don't do this. Sure - they re-introduce the term "mind" but to what end? They aren't using the word to refer to your subjective experiences. They are defining it to be brain processes. So it's an outright deception. It hasn't changed the situation one bit. You still don't have a term to refer to your subjective experiences - all you have is a word that once refered to those things but now refers to brain processes!

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Let me have another go at explaining what has happened here. You got forced, after 20 or so pages of debating, to accept eliminativism was the only way to go. You then discovered the implications of eliminativism was that your mind doesn't exist - because there was nothing for the word "mind" to refer to.

I discovered no such thing. That may be your lament, but it is not mine.

This is intolerable - "something bizarre", you called it. Why? Because when you are using the word "mind" you are refering to your subjective experiences and any theory which denied they existed would be like denying there's day and night - rank stupidity.

But eliminativism apparently does not deny that my experiences don't exist. That's why we agreed it is not ontologically different from reductive materialism. If you can find a site that claims I have no subjective experiences, I'd love to see it.

Now you have gone back to claiming that reductive materialism must be coherent after all - but the critical point is this:

If it's the same as eliminative materialism, as you said it is, then it is coherent.

Reductive materialism only saves you from the horrors of the eliminative insanity if it manages to do what eliminativism does not do : to provide you with a word which refers to your subjective experiences.

I have a perfectly good word: subjective experiences. You can grind up the metaphysics as long as you care to, but that doesn't change reality.

Reductive materialism therefore looks like it can save the day. After all, it allows you to speak about minds. The sorts of reductive theories you are quoting simply don't do this. Sure - they re-introduce the term "mind" but to what end? They aren't using the word to refer to your subjective experiences. They are defining it to be brain processes. So it's an outright deception.

You really ought to tell all the reductive materialist philosophers that they are deceiving all the other philosophers. That's not nice of them.

You still don't have a term to refer to your subjective experiences - all you have is a word that once refered to those things but now refers to brain processes!

Wait, I thought you just said that my subjective experiences don't exist. Now they are brain processes. Can you make up your mind? Meanwhile, I'm happy with brain processes.

In real life, when you let X = Y, it does not mean that X no longer exists.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So you will, of course, find us one of the definitions of reductive materialism that has a dualistic notion of mind, right?

~~ Paul

The dualism isn't in the definitions. It's in the very fact you've introduced the term "mind" at all. The dualism occurs during the interpretation of the theory because you want the word "mind" to refer to two different things. If the word "mind" simply refers to brain processes then there was no point in defining it at all. But, crucially, IF the word "mind" is also supposed to refer to your own subjective experiences (which YOU want it to - that is why you have flipped back to reductive materialism instead of eliminativism) THEN it has dualistic implications. The difference between eliminativism and reductionism as I told you over and over again, is solely to do with language. They are ontologically the same. They differ in one way only : reductive materialism talks about minds. So there ends up being one important difference between the two theories:

Elminative materialism cannot be dualistically misintepreted.

Reductive materialism CAN be dualistically interepreted, precisely because it allows the definition of the term "mind", even though the word no longer means what it is supposed to mean. The dualism creeps in only because the reductive materialist wants to use the word "mind" in two ways, and he wants to do this to avoid admitting to himself that his theory is really eliminativism with a misdefined word in it : "mind".

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul

I have a perfectly good word: "subjective experiences". You can grind up the metaphysics as long as you care to, but that doesn't change reality.

What does your "perfectly good word" mean?

a) subjective experiences
b) brain processes
c) both!

You really ought to tell all the reductive materialist philosophers that they are deceiving all the other philosophers. That's not nice of them.

That's the Churchland's job.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul,

I notice that whilst you are happily claiming to have found a new metaphysical position for yourself you haven't actually provided any definitions of :

Mental:
Physical:
Objective:
Subjective:

How are you going to define them?
Are you going to define them at all?

Geoff

 

[chriswl]

That is because in the context of materialism, mind can only mean "brain processes". It cannot mean anything else. In which case, eliminative materialism MUST BE true. No other position can actually be materialism.

Let's not talk about reductive materialism - this seems to be an old term which is usually taken to be synonymous with "type physicalism", a kind of physicalism in which there must be a physical-world equivalent for every mental property. I don't think anyone still believes this.

The main non-eliminative form of physicalism that modern philosophers espouse is supervenience physicalism, which seems to have been the standard position for over twenty years.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/

We covered this before but you didn't seem to get the idea that something could "supervene" on something and yet not actually be the thing that it supervened on.

Let me give an example of supervenience: human culture supervenes on human biology, which supervenes on biochemistry which supervenes on physics (I'm not considering consciousness here, just the outward appearence of human cultural activity). So, ultimately, human culture supervenes on physics. For example, someone paints a picture, it is hung in an art gallery and lots of people turn up to see it and say lots of things about it. All the activity in the preceding example can be explained by the motion of atoms according to the laws of physics. And yet clearly anyone who then said that all descriptions of human culture that dealt with anything other than sub-atomic particles were invalid would be crazy (in an an eliminativist way). And anyone who claimed that something more than physics was needed to describe the physical world on account of the difficulty(!) of deriving the physical existence of the Mona Lisa from Shroedinger's wave equation would also be a little strange.

A defensible, non-eliminativist physicalist position is the idea that subjective experience supervenes on brain processes. Don't ask me to explain precisely how, I don't know exactly, no one does. Don't ask me to convince you that it is true - I'm not 100% convinced myself, so obviously I'm not going to attempt that. What you have to do is back up your claim that this could not possibly be the case. Assuming you still want to defend that position.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Anyone out there actually willing to defend non-eliminative physicalism, rather than just talk about it in an upbeat way? It's been shown to be logically incoherent.

This thread is now a standing challenge.

The challenge is as follows. Please attempt to define the following:

Subjective
Objective
Mental
Physical
1st-person
3rd-person

My claim is that any set of definitions for these terms will either expose the theory as equivalent to full-blown eliminative materialism or it will lead to a logical contradiction.

 

[Wheezebucket]

I spent all day at work reading every page of this thread and I *still* have no idea what Geoff is playing at.

Is there actually something here to think about, or is this more rambling? Because I gotta tell ya, it looks like a deflated balloon filled with pin holes by this point, but I did get kinda lost around page 20, so I'm not really sure I'm still on track. Can someone try and simplify his point a little bit for those of us who aren't as familiar with all the subjects and topics included in this discussion?

Edit - I just read the post above (that was posted as I type this). Where does this argument stand at this point? I thought definitions were handled many pages back.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

The main non-eliminative form of physicalism that modern philosophers espouse is supervenience physicalism, which seems to have been the standard position for over twenty years.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/

We covered this before but you didn't seem to get the idea that something could "supervene" on something and yet not actually be the thing that it supervened on.

No - that was my objection to a different point. My objection to supervenience theories was that they are logically compatible with my own theory and with the cosmological argument from contingency for the existence of a neccesary being. They aren't really materialism.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I spent all day at work reading every page of this thread and I *still* have no idea what Geoff is playing at.

I'm trying to get people to realise that the only form of materialism which is coherent is eliminativism. I am then hoping they will realise for themselves that eliminativism is absurd. Should anyone reach that point, they might be interested in an alternative.

Edit - I just read the post above (that was posted as I type this). Where does this argument stand at this point? I thought definitions were handled many pages back.

No. Want to have a go? This thread could do with some new action.

 

[Z]

Correct. This statement is a priori false because it is internally logically inconsistent. It is like claiming there is such a thing as a square circle.

Then there is absolutely nothing left to discuss with you.

If you pre-define 'mind' as an immaterial constant, and refuse to allow for changes of definition, then the only answer is that minds, as you understand them to be, do not exist. Thus, eliminative materialism. The problem, of course, is that there is a phenomenon experienced in the first person subjective by just about everyone which is similar in feeling to what you describe as 'mind'. However, as this thing is a purely material/physical extant (and how or why it exists is a thing to be explored by future scientists), it cannot be the 'mind' of which you speak.

If you are going to rigidly apply a dualist/immaterialist notion of 'mind' then the result is one that will always sound bizarre - to anyone not paying close attention to what, exactly, you are saying.

In effect, you're arguing that reductive materialism says 'faerie-dust-powered gidgets' exist, but are reducible to non-faerie-dust-powered terms - obviously illogical; and that eliminative materialism says 'gidgets don't exist at all'... neglecting to remind your readers that you are specifically referring to 'faerie-dust-powered-gidgets', not any other form of 'gidget'.

Well, of COURSE that would sound crazy - luckily, that's not a true reflection of the reality of the situation.

Properly speaking, a reductive materialist would say that minds exist, but can be reduced entirely to physical terms - i.e., there IS NO immaterial component to the mental experience. OR, that the common usage of 'mind' is an incorrect one. Simple enough.

An eliminative materialist would say that minds don't exist - BECAUSE the term 'mind' is defined to include an immaterial component - which is not possible if there are no immaterial components. However, this is NOT saying that there is no such thing as the first-person-subjective experience that we commonly refer to as 'mind'. All it's saying is that what we're experiencing is not equal to what we're calling it. Like... the sunrise.

As a result, neither position is illogical OR insane, actually.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

If you pre-define 'mind' as an immaterial constant, and refuse to allow for changes of definition, then the only answer is that minds, as you understand them to be, do not exist.

I didn't define "mind" at all. Neither did I refuse to allow any definitions....

Thus, eliminative materialism. The problem, of course, is that there is a phenomenon experienced in the first person subjective by just about everyone which is similar in feeling to what you describe as 'mind'. However, as this thing is a purely material/physical extant (and how or why it exists is a thing to be explored by future scientists), it cannot be the 'mind' of which you speak.

Sounds like eliminative materialism.

If you are going to rigidly apply a dualist/immaterialist notion of 'mind' then the result is one that will always sound bizarre - to anyone not paying close attention to what, exactly, you are saying.

I'm applying no such notion. If people think eliminativism makes sense, good luck to them. I cannot prove they are wrong.

In effect, you're arguing that reductive materialism says 'faerie-dust-powered gidgets' exist, but are reducible to non-faerie-dust-powered terms - obviously illogical;

I'm not sure this is illogical, since 'faerie-dust-powered gidgets' isn't a word that normally refers to my mental experiences. But in some ways you are correct. It might as well start from "'faerie-dust-powered gidgets" and equate them to brain processes, because if you are going to define something to be no different to brain processes then there is no point in defining it at all.

and that eliminative materialism says 'gidgets don't exist at all'... neglecting to remind your readers that you are specifically referring to 'faerie-dust-powered-gidgets', not any other form of 'gidget'.

I'm not refering to gidgets at all. I'm refering to my mind (not the fairy-gidget mind of reductionism but my actual mind - which I can still refer to since I'm not an eliminativist).

Properly speaking, a reductive materialist would say that minds exist, but can be reduced entirely to physical terms

Then it might as well say that "fairy gidgets" exist and can be reduced to physical terms.

- i.e., there IS NO immaterial component to the mental experience. OR, that the common usage of 'mind' is an incorrect one. Simple enough.

Depends what you mean by "incorrect". I think you are still trying to slip some dualism in. I think you are still using "mind" to refer to what I mean by mind.

An eliminative materialist would say that minds don't exist - BECAUSE the term 'mind' is defined to include an immaterial component - which is not possible if there are no immaterial components.

Correct. The line of reasoning starts from assuming materialism is true and ends up concluding that non-physical minds can't possibly exist:

Materialism is true, therefore materialism is true.

However, this is NOT saying that there is no such thing as the first-person-subjective experience that we commonly refer to as 'mind'.

Oh yes it is.

All it's saying is that what we're experiencing is not equal to what we're calling it. Like... the sunrise.

Nope. It's saying it's meaningless to talk about "experiences" at all.

 

[chriswl]

No - that was my objection to a different point. My objection to supervenience theories was that they are logically compatible with my own theory and with the cosmological argument from contingency for the existence of a neccesary being. They aren't really materialism.

Do you mean incompatible? I thought Kant killed the cosmological argument with his "existence is not a predicate" argument.

It looks like materialism to me and the philosophers who believe in it consider it to be. Alternatively, I can see how it could be considered to be a clever form of epiphenomenalist dualism that avoids the problems normally associated with that position - that still looks pretty good to me.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Do you mean incompatible? I thought Kant killed the cosmological argument with his "existence is not a predicate" argument.

No, I meant compatible

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#3

Objections to Supervenience theories:

The necessary beings problem

(Cf. Jackson 1998) Imagine a necessary being -- that is, a being which exists in all possible worlds -- which is essentially nonphysical. (Some theists believe that God provides an example of such a being.) If such a non-physical being exists, it is natural to suppose that physicalism is false. But if physicalism is defined according to (2), the existence of such a being is compatible with physicalism. For consider: if the actual world is wholly physical, apart from the necessary non-physical being, any minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a duplicate simpliciter. Since the non-physical being exists in all possible worlds, it exists at all worlds which are minimal physical duplicates of the actual world. So we seem to face a problem: the existence of the non-physical necessary being entails that physicalism is false, but the definition of physicalism permits it to be true in this case.
This problem is not so easily answered as the previous three. Lying behind the problem is a deeper issue about the correct interpretation of necessity and possibility -- the modal notions one uses to formulate supervenience. On one way of interpreting these notions, the existence of a necessary being of this sort is incoherent. A reason is that it would violate David Hume's famous dictum that there are no necessary connections between distinct existences -- the being is distinct from the physical world and yet is necessitated by it. On another way of interpreting these notions, however, there is nothing incoherent in the idea of such a being. The correct way to think about modal notions, however, is a topic that is well beyond the scope of our discussion here. The problem seems to be that the supervenience definition of physicalism in effect presupposes something like Hume's dictum, in that it uses failure of necessitation as a test for distinctness. But this means that someone who denies the dictum will have to find an alternative way of formulating physicalism.

Supervenience is compatible with my own position, it's just my position is clearer. Since supervenience is compatible with the argument for the existence of neccesary being as discussed above, it can't be materialism.

And, no, Kant didn't kill this version of the cosmological argument (which I repeat proves the existence of something like Brahman (Pure Being) rather than the Chistian God). It was the ontological argument he killed.