What materialism is

[UndercoverElephant]

Dr Adequate fumed:

Let's have a look at who can dish it out but can't take it, shall we?
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What I usually see here is implied materialism dressed up as epistemology. I see epistemology being used as a fig leaf for a metaphysical position which is impossible to defend but believed in anyway.
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Right.....so that justifies you responding to me by going in with all three jackboots and calling me a moron, a liar and a fool, does it?

I did not "dish out" something I could not take. The only person on this forum I "dish out" to is lifegazer, and I only do to him what he himself does to others. I think you saw yourself as one of the people I was talking about, even though I wasn't actually talking about you, Dr Adequate. Hit a raw nerve, did I? Certainly looks like it.

Well, well. JG's whole critique of empiricists is that we don't believe what we're saying, but are using it as a "fig leaf" for other opinions.....

Oh really? I don't remember mentioning empiricism even once. And since empiricism ended up with Berkeley, I don't know what makes you think I am bothered about empiricism anyway. The logical conclusion of empricism is absolute subjective idealism, not materialism. I wasn't even referring to empiricists when I made the above comment, so your knee-jerk jack-boot reaction was to the wrong thing. I was referring to people who know, for one reason or another, that materialism can't actually be defended and who use epistemology as a means of avoiding any further consideration of the subject whilst retaining all the trappings of belief in materialism. What's that got to do with empiricism? What are you talking about?

....which we explicitly say we do not hold --- that is, we must be liars. And these opinions which we (secretly, in JG's imagination) hold are "impossible to defend but believed anyway" --- that is, we are fools.

You put those words into my mouth. I didn't say them. I didn't mean them either.

But of course this is mere raving on his part. It should be quite obvious that we believe exactly what we say --- which has, it seems, no faults in it that JG can identify --- rather than believing a doctrine which we say is stupid and worthless. Therefore, JG is either a fool, and believes his own fatuous conspiracy theory, or he is a liar who comes out with this drivel in order to give offense.

Having a bad day in the office, Dr Adequate? Or do you just have a more general problem keeping your temper tantrums under control?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
Yeah, but isn't the whole problem the fact that nobody can define them and defend them in "non-circular" ways (as you put it)? This sounds like a cop-out to me. You see that all the current formulations are incoherent, but you leave to the door open to the claim that somehow somebody is going to be able to come along in the future and fix them? Do you really believe that?

Not really, no, because I don't think it makes sense to talk about what "stuff really is."

Most people, IMO, who get to the sort of point that you have got to in this debate, also accept that the problems with materialism and idealism are unfixable - ever, by anyone.

Oh, I think they are probably unfixable, but that is different from saying they are wrong.

I disagree emphatically. There are loads of metaphysical implications that come along with physicalism and idealism, and the implications in each case are very different to each other. So whether you state you are a materialist or state you are an idealist has an enormous effect on what else you are likely to believe is possible. This is true to the extent that an idealist is capable of believing in creation by fiat - that the world could simply come into being fully-formed as an act of will, yet to the materialist such things are unthinkable absurdities.

It might have an affect on what I believe, but that does not make my beliefs rational one way or the other. I don't need to have a belief about how the world came into being, except insofar as it can be based on evidence.

We don't experience any "information" - not in the sense we experience mind and matter. I think the best way of answering your question here is to point to mathematics and zero again. Your question translates to: "Why to we have positive numbers and negative numbers but not xxxxxxative numberx?" Why is our number scale dualistically symmetrical around 0 instead of triplicateley symmetrical? Seems like an absurd question to me. 0 = 1 + -1. That is a dualism. Why not "0 = 1 + -1 + %1"? I don't know how to answer you question except to say that most people don't ask it. What would the %1 represent?

Ah, so we're trying to solve a problem related to what we experience. What am I experiencing when I do math: mind or matter?

If there is fundamentally no way to decide then this seems to close the door you left open at the start of this post. If this is true, then nobody can ever "fix" materialism and idealism. And it then follows that you can safely reject them both, yes?

Who cares? I don't see anything better in monism, either. Or at least you haven't explained it to me.

Neutral monism:

Materialism is wrong. The world is not "made from matter". Idealism is wrong. The world is not "made from mind". "The material world" and "the mental world" are human constructions/conceptions with different associated language games. There are information structures refered to in "the language of the material world" which map directly onto information structures which are refered to in "the language of the mental world". Hence brain processes and subjective experiences can said to be dual aspects of the same set of information. They are "both the same thing", but only if you accept that they are neither mind nor matter. Some people naively respond at this point by asking "well, what is it then?". This is a rather stupid question since it is obvious that there is no word currently in existence for this thing, and it doesn't actually make any difference what anybody chooses to call it.

I like it! It's a close to not being metaphysical as a metaphysic can get. In fact, it says virtually nothing. Well, except to claim without substantiation that materialism and idealism is wrong. If this is what metaphysics is going to buy me, I'll just stick with scientific epistemology.

For what reason is that then?

Are you implying that the solution is going to be found through physics. If you are, then my suggestion that you are a de facto materialist is supported, regardless of what a certain troll scrawled in an earlier post.

I see. If I think that the mind/body problem doesn't have an answer except insofar as any evidence we can uncover, that forces me to be a materialist (which I think you've agreed is an incoherent term). What does it force you to be when you make that claim?

In the world of philosophy, everyone shall subscribe to a metaphysic.

~~ Paul

 

[toddjh]

Personally, I've never understood the appeal of concepts such as materialism or idealism. As others have pointed out, they're not capable of being rigorously defined and, to the extent that we have an intuitive understanding of what they mean, they offer no testable hypotheses.

Philosophically, I guess I qualify as a pragmatist. Certainly the notion that reality can be described by mathematics has been demonstrated empirically very thoroughly over the centuries, so I have no problem relying on math and logic as very good tools for studying the universe. But to say that reality is informational in nature at some fundamental level...what good does that kind of statement do anyone? It's merely an unnecessary axiom, and axioms have no predictive power.

Jeremy

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Not really, no, because I don't think it makes sense to talk about what "stuff really is."

OK...so nobody is going to fix it. But I'm not sure what your reasons are for rejecting neutral monism. I don't think it can be rejected in the same way that idealism and materialism are rejected.

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Most people, IMO, who get to the sort of point that you have got to in this debate, also accept that the problems with materialism and idealism are unfixable - ever, by anyone.
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Oh, I think they are probably unfixable, but that is different from saying they are wrong.

If they weren't wrong, then they wouldn't need to fixed!

"Unfixable" implies "broken, with no hope of repair". If you happen to be talking about a metaphysical theory then as far as I can see this means "wrong". "wrong" means incorrect.

I don't understand your position on this.

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I disagree emphatically. There are loads of metaphysical implications that come along with physicalism and idealism, and the implications in each case are very different to each other. So whether you state you are a materialist or state you are an idealist has an enormous effect on what else you are likely to believe is possible. This is true to the extent that an idealist is capable of believing in creation by fiat - that the world could simply come into being fully-formed as an act of will, yet to the materialist such things are unthinkable absurdities.
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It might have an affect on what I believe, but that does not make my beliefs rational one way or the other. I don't need to have a belief about how the world came into being, except insofar as it can be based on evidence.

I think you missed my point. There has been a lot of that happening recently. I was responding to a claim by you that materialism and idealism were "just the same", except that they give different names to the same "stuff". My point was that they aren't the same at all, because they imply different things to each other. You seem to have accepted that they imply different things to each other. Does that mean you also accept that there are more differences between materialism and idealism than just that they have a different name for the stuff of reality?

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We don't experience any "information" - not in the sense we experience mind and matter. I think the best way of answering your question here is to point to mathematics and zero again. Your question translates to: "Why to we have positive numbers and negative numbers but not xxxxxxative numberx?" Why is our number scale dualistically symmetrical around 0 instead of triplicateley symmetrical? Seems like an absurd question to me. 0 = 1 + -1. That is a dualism. Why not "0 = 1 + -1 + %1"? I don't know how to answer you question except to say that most people don't ask it. What would the %1 represent?
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Ah, so we're trying to solve a problem related to what we experience. What am I experiencing when I do math: mind or matter?

No. I am trying to give you an example of why neutral monists talk about reality being experienced as dualistic rather than 13-istic or 3-istic. I am giving you the most obvious example I can think of of this dualism, which is all-pervading. It is dualistic for the same reason that "0 = 1 + -1" makes sense and "0 = 1 + -1 + %1" doesn't.

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If there is fundamentally no way to decide then this seems to close the door you left open at the start of this post. If this is true, then nobody can ever "fix" materialism and idealism. And it then follows that you can safely reject them both, yes?
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Who cares?

Anyone who is serious about finding answers rather than trying to avoid them. Don't you think that a process of elimination is a reasonable, rational and justified means of coming to a conclusion about something? Because I do.

I don't see anything better in monism, either. Or at least you haven't explained it to me.

What is missing from the explanation?

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Neutral monism:

Materialism is wrong. The world is not "made from matter". Idealism is wrong. The world is not "made from mind". "The material world" and "the mental world" are human constructions/conceptions with different associated language games. There are information structures refered to in "the language of the material world" which map directly onto information structures which are refered to in "the language of the mental world". Hence brain processes and subjective experiences can said to be dual aspects of the same set of information. They are "both the same thing", but only if you accept that they are neither mind nor matter. Some people naively respond at this point by asking "well, what is it then?". This is a rather stupid question since it is obvious that there is no word currently in existence for this thing, and it doesn't actually make any difference what anybody chooses to call it.
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I like it! It's a close to not being metaphysical as a metaphysic can get.

Wow!

I'm not sure I'd entirely agree with your statement, but it's certainly as close to being neutral as a metaphysic can get, which may well amount to much the same thing.

In fact, it says virtually nothing.

That's not entirely true either. I think it does say things, it's just that what it says is less easy to poke holes in. It is also a position that was arrived at by a really quite small but diverse collection of people, including Baruch Spinoza, Bertrand Russell, David Bohm and the founders of Taoism.

Well, except to claim without substantiation that materialism and idealism is wrong. If this is what metaphysics is going to buy me, I'll just stick with scientific epistemology.

It's more complex than that:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism

The point of dwelling on the content and the role that these philosophical background assumptions have played in the development of the extant versions of neutral monism is twofold. First, a clear understanding of these assumptions makes it possible to evaluate them as well as the complex neutral monistic doctrines they helped shape. Second, a clear understanding of these assumptions makes it possible to reveal the minimal core of neutral monism by subtracting them from the complex doctrines available in the literature.

Given the present philosophical climate, it seems unlikely that a fuller, philosophically and historically more adequate, understanding of the extant versions of mainstream neutral monism will result in their revival. But for those who remain disinclined toward dualism while having no sympathy for the currently fashionable monisms, neutral monism, stripped of all its extraneous accretions, may afford an interesting framework to explore. Reduced to its minimal core (see the opening paragraph and the “Introduction”), neutral monism carries few commitments and offers great flexibility of development.

Sayre's strictly informational version of the doctrine as well as the ideas recently explored by Chalmers (protophenomenal properties) and Stoljar (o-physical properties) hint at the existence of a great variety of possible hypotheses about the nature of ultimate reality awaiting further exploration. The fixation on the hypothesis of the experiential, given-based, nature of ultimate reality, so characteristic of the mainstream versions of neutral monism, is thereby overcome. The discussion of the notion of neutrality (begun in the section “The Neutral Entities”) provides additional evidence for the belief in the plasticity of the neutral monist framework. As additional notions of neutrality become available the number of candidates for inclusion in the domain of neutral entities may grow. And the exploration of the notions of construction and reduction may prove to be of even greater importance in turning neutral monism into a viable alternative.

In other words - there is actually scope for a way forward here - for those who are willing and interested to explore it.

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For what reason is that then?

Are you implying that the solution is going to be found through physics. If you are, then my suggestion that you are a de facto materialist is supported, regardless of what a certain troll scrawled in an earlier post.
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I see. If I think that the mind/body problem doesn't have an answer except insofar as any evidence we can uncover, that forces me to be a materialist (which I think you've agreed is an incoherent term). What does it force you to be when you make that claim?

You seem to be stating that you are "forced to be a materialist" by the fact that you think the only way it is possible to solve the mind-body problem is via physical science. So you are saying that your epistemological viewpoint has forced you into an ontological viewpoint, even though you think that that ontological viewpoint is incoherent. It suggests to me that there is something wrong with your epistemological viewpoint - since it requires you to accept an ontological position you have agreed is incoherent and unfixable. The problem stems from trying to apply scientific standards to philosophy, which simply doesn't work.

This leads to an extenstion of the debate I tried to have with Stimpson J Cat, but eventually gave up as a waste of time. The real implications of your viewpoint is that anything which can't be reduced to physical science is meaningless. He kept wobbling over whether ethics, aesthetics, economics and psychology were meaningless, unwilling to say that they were and unable to explain why there were not. Metaphysics comes into the same category that Stimpson couldn't really define. It's not reducable to physics, but it's not meaningless either. It simply depends for its meaning on things which aren't reducable to physics. I think your problem is the same as Stimpsons. You want to hold to an epistemological scientism. Yet you also already know that materialism and idealism are incoherent! How do you know this? It's not because science told you, that's for sure. It's because you thought hard about all the concepts involved and realised the theory didn't/couldn't make sense. So why is it impossible to take that process further?

In the world of philosophy, everyone shall subscribe to a metaphysic.

Not quite everyone. I have repeatedly mentioned the name of Richard Rorty. If you want a position which is truly consistent, but aims at where you are aiming, then I think your only option is Rortian pragmatism - a philosphical position which rejects BOTH ontology AND epistemology. It's really quite frustrating for me. I keep posting this link in the vain hope that people like yourself will actually go and read it, but they never do.

http://www.stanford.edu/~rrorty/pragmatistview.htm

 

[Interesting Ian]

Here's a pile of definitions of materialism. Note how they are all circular.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&biw=1094&q=define:+materialism&btnG=Search

My definition of materialism isn't circular.

Traditionally materialism was the thesis that everything that exists is matter. In present times, however, the notion of matter is considered to be a bit restrictive. We might tend to think of matter as stuff we can touch and see. But if matter is all that exists, then it follows that energy, gravity, and various exotic subatomic particles and so on, should also be considered to be matter. Consequently there is now a tendency to say that materialism simply means that everything that exists is physical. Furthermore that all change in the world can be wholly explained with reference to physical laws. Indeed, in acknowledgement of this, the word physicalism is sometimes used in place of the word materialism.

If materialism is the thesis that everything that exists is physical, then what does “physical” mean? Traditionally it has been maintained that it is the fundamental ‘stuff’ of the world. So for example, it is everything we perceive through our five senses, such as tables, chairs and trees. But it is also those things we can only see by virtue of the use of instruments such as microscopes and so on which simply extend the range of things we are able to sense. Finally it also includes those things whose existence we cannot directly see at all, with or without the use of instruments, but whose existence we nevertheless feel we can confidently infer. An obvious example here are electrons. Nobody can directly see electrons, and arguably we could never see them in principle, but we can set up experiments and obtain results that are explicable if we imagine the existence of very small entities with certain properties. These entities we label electrons.

Materialists have also traditionally regarded physical things and processes as having a mind-independent existence. Thus objects exist whether or not we are looking at them, and even if the Universe had never given birth to any sentient creatures, that Universe and all it contains would still enjoy a ‘full-blooded’ existence. This might appear to be belabouring the extremely obvious, but as we shall see in the Perception and Reality section (forthcoming), this commonsensical notion of reality can certainly be challenged.

So if everything is physical, this also entails that our minds are also entirely physical. In other words, that we are no different, at least in kind if not in complexity, from any other physical processes or things in the world.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
You seem to be stating that you are "forced to be a materialist" by the fact that you think the only way it is possible to solve the mind-body problem is via physical science.

I didn't state it, you did:

Are you implying that the solution is going to be found through physics. If you are, then my suggestion that you are a de facto materialist is supported, regardless of what a certain troll scrawled in an earlier post.

So you are saying that your epistemological viewpoint has forced you into an ontological viewpoint, even though you think that that ontological viewpoint is incoherent. It suggests to me that there is something wrong with your epistemological viewpoint - since it requires you to accept an ontological position you have agreed is incoherent and unfixable. The problem stems from trying to apply scientific standards to philosophy, which simply doesn't work.

I don't think my epistemological viewpoint forces an ontological position. That is what you implied up above.

Metaphysics comes into the same category that Stimpson couldn't really define. It's not reducable to physics, but it's not meaningless either. It simply depends for its meaning on things which aren't reducable to physics.

The metaphysical descriptions I read are meaningless to me. Your description of neutral monism isn't too bad because it doesn't say anything much. It seems rather like the null hypothesis of metaphysics.

You want to hold to an epistemological scientism. Yet you also already know that materialism and idealism are incoherent! How do you know this? It's not because science told you, that's for sure. It's because you thought hard about all the concepts involved and realised the theory didn't/couldn't make sense. So why is it impossible to take that process further?

I do. I say all metaphysics is incoherent.

Not quite everyone. I have repeatedly mentioned the name of Richard Rorty. If you want a position which is truly consistent, but aims at where you are aiming, then I think your only option is Rortian pragmatism - a philosphical position which rejects BOTH ontology AND epistemology. It's really quite frustrating for me. I keep posting this link in the vain hope that people like yourself will actually go and read it, but they never do.

I found a readable version of the paper and printed it.

"In this new world, we shall no longer think of either thought or language as containing representations of reality.
...
This description of the history of philosophy should, I think, be replaced by an account on which philosophers, like other intellectuals, make imaginative suggestions for redescription of the human situation; they offer new ways of talking about our hopes and fears, our ambitions and our prospects. Philosophical progress is thus not a matter of problems being solved, but of descriptions being improved."

Weird.

~~ Paul

 

[Dr Adequate]

Right.....so that justifies you responding to me by going in with all three jackboots and calling me a moron, a liar and a fool, does it?

Here, again, you are either a liar or a fool. You are either deliberately lying about what I wrote, or you were too stupid to understand it. Which?

I think you saw yourself as one of the people I was talking about, even though I wasn't actually talking about you, Dr Adequate. Hit a raw nerve, did I? Certainly looks like it.

By which, of course, this fatuous liar/clown means to say that I am one of the people he's talking about, despite the fact that my posts have made it quite clear I am not, and, indeed, that I don't believe that such people exist. How pathetic can you get?

Oh really? I don't remember mentioning empiricism even once.

Spin aside, what epistemological views do you ever see defended around here except empiricism?

You put those words into my mouth. I didn't say them. I didn't mean them either.

My quotations were accurate. If you didn't mean what you said, then you shouldn't have said it.

Having a bad day in the office, Dr Adequate? Or do you just have a more general problem keeping your temper tantrums under control?

Or could there be a third reason why I disagree with you, involving the stupidity festering in your posts? Well, no, of course not. Not in the happy land of JG's imagination. It is just as easy to invent emotions for the people who point out your errors as it is to invent opinions for them.
_____________________________

All this garbage aside, do you have one scrap of a shred of evidence that the rubbish in the post I originally criticised has any relationship to reality? Some tiny bit of factual content? I notice that in your half-baked innuendo, you did indeed name no names, and quote no quotations. And, challenged on this, you have still, for some reason, preferred not to do so.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Paul

Weird.

Weird? Yeah, I suppose lots of people think Rorty is weird. Personally I think he is just very honest, very clever and very consistent. As a result, lots of people don't like him.

I honestly believe Rorty is defending the only position defendable by a would-be materialist who wants to dispose of metaphysics in a consistent way. He quotes Fine:

In support of realism there seem to be only those ‘reasons of the heart’ which, as Pascal says, reason does not know. Indeed, I have long felt that belief in realism involves a profound leap of faith, not at all dissimilar from the faith that animates deep religious convictions….. The dialogue will proceed more fruitfully, I think, when the realists finally stop pretending to a rational support for their faith, which they do not have. Then we can all enjoy their intricate and sometimes beautiful philosophical constructions (of, e.g., knowledge, or reference, etc.) even though to us, the nonbelievers, they may seem only wonder-full castles in the air

A similar viewpoint is expressed by Jonathan Reé:

http://www.philosophers.co.uk/portal_article.php?id=6

'Listen,' Rée goes on, 'everything that the 'friends of science' want to say about the extraordinary achievements and progress of the natural sciences, both in terms of knowledge and in terms of technique, all of these things can be said by someone who describes themselves as a "relativist" and there is no intelligible sense of relativism that would lead you to deny the reality of scientific progress.'

So what then about the absolute structure of the external-world? Does the contextual nature of all truth-claims mean that this structure is always beyond our reach?

'Well,' says Rée, 'I don't think there is anything more satisfactory than invoking the Rorty move that I have already mentioned, which is to say that there is no real difference between talking in an upbeat way about getting to know more about the absolute structure of the world than talking in a more depressed kind of way about the possibilities of including more people in a conversation. It seems to me that they really come to the same thing. So the question becomes: how do the particular discourses of specialised sciences relate to other scientific discourses and to discourses outside science.

'If you're in a conversation with someone who is worried about having the absolute structure of the world taken away from them, then you need to make them see that what they're asking for refers to something that is more than any possible agreement in the future about how to look at the world can deliver. They keep saying that they want objectivity, but they don't actually need it, so the point is to close the gap and to say "You're worried about being deprived of something that actually you haven't got, and you wouldn't know if you had." It's a chimera, this thing that they're worried about having taken away from them.

'Imagine that we're talking with a scientist,' Rée continues, 'worried about his work not being taken seriously - I think that we're paying all the respect that a scientist could dream that we'd pay to the scientific enterprise if we say that relative to human discourses, science improves the knowledge and control we have over things that matter to us. Of course, you can say "Well, it does that because it tells us the truth about the objective structure of the world" - and that's fine, you can say that.'

But if that is what Rée thinks is going on in scientific discourses, that they are telling us truths about the objective structure of the world, then surely that is a realist position, it is not some kind of half-way house position?

'Yes,' admits Rée, 'that is what I'm saying. So rather than "Neither a realist nor an anti-realist be", perhaps I should say, "Neither an anti-realist nor an anti anti-realist be!"'

You cannot escape from the realist/anti-realist debate or the materialist/idealist debate whilst still trying to hold on to one side of the dualism at the expense of the other.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Here, again, you are either a liar or a fool......

And you aren't worth responding to. You are the sort of person who actually provides support for lifegazer's claims about the attitudes of people on this site. It's a sort of sneering superiority, laced with an unhealthy dose of anger and resentment but a complete abscence of any actual arguments.

Fortunately for me I can simply put you on ignore, since there is not much risk that anything you post will actually represent a substantial challenge to anything I post.

See ya.

 

[Dr Adequate]

All this garbage aside, do you have one scrap of a shred of evidence that the rubbish in the post I originally criticised has any relationship to reality? Some tiny bit of factual content? I notice that in your half-baked innuendo, you did indeed name no names, and quote no quotations. And, challenged on this, you have still, for some reason, preferred not to do so.

Well, if I'm going to ask for evidence to support his lies, what can JG do but declare that I am suffering from an "abscence" of arguments, and lie his little guts out by saying that there is "not much risk that anything you post will actually represent a substantial challenge to anything I post", while running whimpering away from the substantial challenge I've posed to his witless post.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Dr Adequate

This person is on your Ignore List. To view this post click [here]

Just a clarification: You went on ignore because of your attitude towards me. I have no intention of reading any more of your posts, because it is almost impossible to do so without being dragged down to your level, and I have no intention of going there. I will allow you a few days to calm down, and then I will take you back off ignore and see whether next time you are capable of challenging me without trying turn it into a pub brawl.

In future, if you actually want to challenge me on a substantive point, and you actually want me to respond to that challenge then leave out the snarling attitude, the jackboots and the personal insults. Otherwise you'll just go straight back on ignore, regardless of whether or not anything you have posted actually deserves a response. I am simply not interested in talking to someone who goes off the deep-end, with little or no provocation, like you did in this thread (BillHoyt syndrome). There is simply no point in doing so.

 

[Dr Adequate]

My definition of materialism isn't circular.

Traditionally materialism was the thesis that everything that exists is matter. In present times, however, the notion of matter is considered to be a bit restrictive ... Consequently there is now a tendency to say that materialism simply means that everything that exists is physical ... If materialism is the thesis that everything that exists is physical, then what does “physical” mean? Traditionally it has been maintained that it is the fundamental ‘stuff’ of the world.

I'm sorry, but I think this is circular. What it amounts to is that a materialist believes that everything in the world is fundamentally made of the fundamental stuff of the world. Well yes. I can believe that a priori --- hey, maybe I am a materialist! --- but only because it's a tautology. I don't see how this would rule out, say, Cartesian dualism --- the soul, too, would be part of this fundamental stuff, just like electrons and quarks and things.

Part of the problem seems to be that you're definining "physical" after the fact. You wouldn't have given an electron as an example of something which was physical if they didn't happen to exist. What you need is some sort of a priori definition of "physical", or "material". But this seems to be difficult: would it be any easier to come up with an "a priori definition" of the word "cat". Can you say what observable properties an thing would have to exhibit for us not to consider it to be made of the fundamental stuff of the world --- whatever that is?

 

[hammegk]

....Can you say what observable properties an thing would have to exhibit for us not to consider it to be made of the fundamental stuff of the world ...

Of course not. Hi, monist.

--- whatever that is?

Unfortunately, that remains the subject being discussed.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
Weird? Yeah, I suppose lots of people think Rorty is weird. Personally I think he is just very honest, very clever and very consistent. As a result, lots of people don't like him.

Consistent? First he says that we should not suppose that thought or language represents reality. Then he suggests that philosophers can offer new ways of thinking about the human condition. I suppose, as long as you don't mind that the new ways of thinking have nothing to do with reality. Seems he's suggesting that philosophers are just intellectual fiction writers.

You cannot escape from the realist/anti-realist debate or the materialist/idealist debate whilst still trying to hold on to one side of the dualism at the expense of the other.

This is the sort of statement I don't understand. How am I holding on to one side at the expense of the other?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Dr. A. said:
What you need is some sort of a priori definition of "physical", or "material".

And another of "mental" or "ideal." Then maybe we could understand the difference. Right now it seems like an arbitrary subsetting operation.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

My definition of materialism isn't circular.

Traditionally materialism was the thesis that everything that exists is matter. In present times, however, the notion of matter is considered to be a bit restrictive. We might tend to think of matter as stuff we can touch and see. But if matter is all that exists, then it follows that energy, gravity, and various exotic subatomic particles and so on, should also be considered to be matter. Consequently there is now a tendency to say that materialism simply means that everything that exists is physical. Furthermore that all change in the world can be wholly explained with reference to physical laws. Indeed, in acknowledgement of this, the word physicalism is sometimes used in place of the word materialism.

If materialism is the thesis that everything that exists is physical, then what does “physical” mean? Traditionally it has been maintained that it is the fundamental ‘stuff’ of the world. So for example, it is everything we perceive through our five senses, such as tables, chairs and trees. But it is also those things we can only see by virtue of the use of instruments such as microscopes and so on which simply extend the range of things we are able to sense. Finally it also includes those things whose existence we cannot directly see at all, with or without the use of instruments, but whose existence we nevertheless feel we can confidently infer. An obvious example here are electrons. Nobody can directly see electrons, and arguably we could never see them in principle, but we can set up experiments and obtain results that are explicable if we imagine the existence of very small entities with certain properties. These entities we label electrons.

Materialists have also traditionally regarded physical things and processes as having a mind-independent existence. Thus objects exist whether or not we are looking at them, and even if the Universe had never given birth to any sentient creatures, that Universe and all it contains would still enjoy a ‘full-blooded’ existence. This might appear to be belabouring the extremely obvious, but as we shall see in the Perception and Reality section (forthcoming), this commonsensical notion of reality can certainly be challenged.

So if everything is physical, this also entails that our minds are also entirely physical. In other words, that we are no different, at least in kind if not in complexity, from any other physical processes or things in the world. [/B]

This does indeed seem to be a description of materialism, and I don't see why it is circular. It just contains a screwy definition of what a mind is, from my POV. I'm not sure that definitions of materialism and idealism are "circular" as Paul says they are. I prefer to describe them as dualistic metaphysics which crudely chop off one half of the dualism. But I probably sympathise more with the sort of idealist position consistently defended by hammegk, which relies on the simple observation that if you have to choose one of these things, you might as well choose the one you are directly aware of, since to me this seems the hardest of the two to deny from an existential point of view, and for me the existential point of view I am actually confined within takes precedence over anything implied by science - which I see as only a subset of a wider set of experiences and sources of information.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Consistent? First he says that we should not suppose that thought or language represents reality.

Yes, he is an anti-representationalist. Whatever thoughts and language do, they are incapable of providing a perfect "mirror or reality". His most important book is called "philosophy and the mirror of nature", and it's point is to claim that no philosophical position can ever provide a perfect model of "real reality". He wants to move to a new era of philosophy which is characterised as "philosophy without mirrors". It's a concept which loaded with multiple meanings.

Then he suggests that philosophers can offer new ways of thinking about the human condition.

That is because the human condition depends on the condition of humanity, and not the ultimate nature of reality. Rorty is a pragmatist. Having spent quite a long time talking to you over the past few years, I think you are naturally also a pragmatist, and I think if you read his book you would like it.

I suppose, as long as you don't mind that the new ways of thinking have nothing to do with reality. Seems he's suggesting that philosophers are just intellectual fiction writers.

No....unless you think that everything which isn't reducable to physics is "fictional".

This is the sort of statement I don't understand. How am I holding on to one side at the expense of the other?

Maybe you aren't. But then you rejected my claim that you should really call yourself a naturalist, which makes me think you are.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Of course not. Hi, monist.

You're missing the point. As usual. The problem is that Ian's defintion of "material" by way of "physical" does indeed seem to be monist --- at the cost of defining "material" more or less as "stuff which exists", at which point (a) materialism is right by definition (b) materialism has no content.

Unfortunately, that remains the subject being discussed.

Since this is philosophy, the question of whether the question is meaningful must also be discussed.

 

[Dr Adequate]

But then you rejected my claim that you should really call yourself a naturalist, which makes me think you are.

Why bother having opinions of your own when JG can invent them for you?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
No....unless you think that everything which isn't reducable to physics is "fictional".

I don't think that, but he just got through saying that we shouldn't think of our thoughts or language as representing reality. Perhaps by "reality" he means "the ultimate ontological reality." If that's what he means, I'm certainly in agreement.

I've read the first few pages of Rorty's paper. He's a good writer and I've enjoyed it so far. It's a tad Postmodern "all ways of knowing are equally valid" for my taste, but interesting nonetheless.

"A fully humanist culture ... will emerge only when the we discard the question "Do I know the real object, or only one of its appearances?" and replace it with the question "Am I using the best possible description of the situation in which I find myself, or can I cobble together a better one?"

This seems the crux of the matter. To me, he's suggesting we discard ontology (real object) and replace it with epistemology (best possible description). However, finding the best possible description is a search for knowledge. This will lead to certain ways of knowing being preferred over others because they result in more universally satisfying descriptions. I don't see how he can avoid either preferred ways of knowing or the utter chaos of every individual having different descriptions (which certainly wouldn't lead to a pleasant humanist culture).

I get the feeling he likes science just fine, but he doesn't want it to have a special status. Trouble is, the reason science works at all is because if its unique way of knowing.

~~ Paul