What materialism is

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
I'm not sure I understand this. "Repairs" are neccesary only when inconsistencies are found. So there is no "assumption" required about when it is working and when it isn't. It is working when it is consistent and coherent, and it is broken when it isn't. Where are the "assumptions" in such a model? I'm not sure what you mean by "foundational relationships" either. For the coherentist, all there is is relationships, and none of them are any more foundational than any of the others. The whole point is that there is no foundation. Any part of the system can potentially be the subject of a modification.

I think we need an example. What determines whether two beliefs are consistent? If it is just logic, then I repeat my assertion that you'll end up with some kind of bizarre anything-goes hodge-podge that will be of no practical value. If it is more than just logic, then those extra things are foundational, are they not?

Just because they aren't intimately connected with a foundational assumption of materialism, it doesn't mean they are no longer the laws of physics. There is no reason why all of the established laws of physics cannot be incorporated into the coherentist system. They don't disappear simply because they are no longer foundational. They are still one of the things which needs to be incorporated into the system.

I guess I don't know what foundational means. The laws of physics are predicated on some foundational assumptions of science. The laws themselves are not foundational, but the assumptions are. So if we're tossing out foundations, well, I'm not sure what happens to physics, nor am I sure how to check whether it's consistent with everything else.

I'll read that paper.

~~ Paul

 

[Robin]

I've already said that the prime reason most skeptics find those claims of paranormalism which don't actually contradict science to be "unconvincing" has more to do with their underlying ontological beliefs than anything else.

There would have to be some paranormal claim that could stand up to rigorous examination before this could be true. Can you give an example of a claim of paranormalism that fits this category? From my experience all such claims start to crumble the closer you look at them.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Hi Paul

I think we need an example. What determines whether two beliefs are consistent? If it is just logic, then I repeat my assertion that you'll end up with some kind of bizarre anything-goes hodge-podge that will be of no practical value.

In the end, the only arbiter of what is acceptable or not acceptable to a coherentist is indeed logic. I don't understand how this leads to a "bizarre anything-goes hodge-podge that will be of no practical value." What it should lead to is a knowledge-system which is as free from contradictions and inconsistencies as possible, whilst at the same time is much more flexible and inclusive than most forms of foundationalism.

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Just because they aren't intimately connected with a foundational assumption of materialism, it doesn't mean they are no longer the laws of physics. There is no reason why all of the established laws of physics cannot be incorporated into the coherentist system. They don't disappear simply because they are no longer foundational. They are still one of the things which needs to be incorporated into the system.
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I guess I don't know what foundational means. The laws of physics are predicated on some foundational assumptions of science. The laws themselves are not foundational, but the assumptions are. So if we're tossing out foundations, well, I'm not sure what happens to physics, nor am I sure how to check whether it's consistent with everything else.

It's not easy to give a quick answer to these questions. Rorty is writing in an intellectual environment not really shared by yourself or by most of the people at this site. Specifically, he is keenly aware of a whole series of post-modern attacks on foundations you are currently worrying about losing. Those attacks come from a whole series of different directions, but the most important are

1) Paul Feyerabend's "Against Method" attack on the claim that there is anything such as an ahistorical continuous description of what makes science science.

2) Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions", which effectively destroyed the idea that science is a gradual, rational progression or that what is accepted scientific knowledge at any one time can be seperated from the psychology, beliefs and social factors affecting science.

3) More important than either of the above is what is known as "The Duhem-Quine thesis", or "epistemological holism":

http://diary.carolyn.org/truth.html

Hmmm... The Duhem-Quine thesis (philosophers of science both) goes something like: when an anomolous 'fact' enters our collection of facts, and acts to falsify some one or more of our theories and beliefs, all are at stake. We will work to discard the smaller or easier theories, int he hopes that not all of our scientific collection of 'knowledge' will tumble.

How could it all tumble - let's say that the theory that turns out to be the one we must discard is the theory of how to make observations, or the theory that mathematics can be used to model physical phenomena.

So the Duhem-Quine thesis (around 1920 -1940) scares people.

Here's its schemata (you'll recognize it if you took any logic):

premise Theory of Observations (use of instruments)
premise Mathematics
premise General Reletivity
premise Optics
. etc
.


.
-------- -------------------
conclusion recent observation, call it Fact A

Assume all premises are true. If Fact A is true, everything is cool. If it is false, then it is not deducible from the premises. So what does this mean?? At least one premise is false. But which one?!!! You can to guess. Or run many more experiments (crucial experiments) and try to isolate one of the theories -or one par tof a theory) to alter. Or you could decide to drop one of the big ones. This latter is the most exciting hting you could be forced to do, and yet much of our knowledge would be effected.

Scientists are always sitting beside this guillotine of doubt.

We might yet have to discard the claim that the earth circles the sun... in order to protect some other claim that becomes more crucial! Scary but true!

In other words, from Rorty's POV there isn't much left to defend. He isn't worried about damaging/"throwing out" the foundations that you see as supporting science, because as far as he is concerned those foundations have been so seriously undermined already that they aren't worth defending.

I should stress that the discussion we are having now is very much a live issue in contemporary philosophy of science. If you go searching on Google for things like "epistemological holism" and "the duhem-quine thesis" you will see what I mean.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

There would have to be some paranormal claim that could stand up to rigorous examination before this could be true. Can you give an example of a claim of paranormalism that fits this category? From my experience all such claims start to crumble the closer you look at them.

Yes, Paul and I already had a long discussion about this:

http://www.internationalskeptics.co...age=40&highlight=wiseman schlitz&pagenumber=5

The experiment in question is the Wiseman/Schlitz series on remote staring. If you do a search on those two names you will find all sorts of different opinions on the relevance of these experiments. In the end, how you interpret the result depends on what sort of statistical result you need to achieve. Most skeptics consider that parapsychological phenomena are so unlikely to be real that they would require an extra-ordinarily clear statistical result before they would believe it. In other words, because of their metaphysical bent they "raise the bar" far higher in these cases than they would in less controversial cases like drug testing. Another symptom of this is the following:

If there is only a small statistical positive in a PSI experiment the skeptic will dismiss it as a statistical blip. But as the statistical evidence improves, the skeptic doesn't interpret this as an improved evidence of PSI phenomena, but as an indication that there must have been a mistake or a fraud, even if, as in this case, the skeptic cannot actually identify the mistake or the fraud. It is simply assumed that "something must have gone wrong." In other words, no evidence will ever be good enough, and the reason for this is that most skeptics are metaphysical materialists and materialism tends to make most PSI phenomena look completely inexplicable. Therefore, the skeptic reasons, something must be wrong with the experiment.

 

[Piscivore]

JG, do you realise in your defense of this Rorty person you've used several concepts in common with our Mr. Lifegazer?

In the end, the only arbiter of what is acceptable or not acceptable to a coherentist is indeed logic.

Rorty is writing in an intellectual environment not really shared by yourself or by most of the people at this site. Specifically, he is keenly aware of a whole series of post-modern attacks on foundations you are currently worrying about losing.

In other words, from Rorty's POV there isn't much left to defend. He isn't worried about damaging/"throwing out" the foundations that you see as supporting science, because as far as he is concerned those foundations have been so seriously undermined already that they aren't worth defending.

Thanks Paul. This discussion has pointed out a few things to me I hadn't considered before.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Hello Piscivore

JG, do you realise in your defense of this Rorty person you've used several concepts in common with our Mr. Lifegazer?

I am acutely aware of this, yes. However, whilst LG has indeed correctly understood some of these issues (IMO) he has also made a set of fundamental mistakes in his wider "theories". I have tried explaining Rorty to LG in the past - the predictable result was that LG pronounced that Rorty was a fool - not because of the things that Rorty has in common with LG, oh no - but because of the other things that Rorty says that diametrically contradict what LG says. Rorty's whole project is intended to derail people like LG before they open their mouths. Rorty is the antidote to ludicrous subjectivist metaphysical constructions. He allows in the subjectivism and relativism, but at the same time he makes sure that projects like LG's "philosophy" are already dead before they leave the drawing board.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Piscivore,

I should also point out that I am not really "defending" Rorty. I am just doing my best to explain his position and why he arrived at it. In actual fact I am not a Rortian pragmatist (although I am an anti-foundationalist). Rorty urges us to resist the temptation to practice metaphysics, but I don't always resist that temptation. He'd probably be as appalled by me as I am appalled by LG.

Geoff

 

[Piscivore]

Piscivore,

I should also point out that I am not really "defending" Rorty. I am just doing my best to explain his position and why he arrived at it. In actual fact I am not a Rortian pragmatist (although I am an anti-foundationalist). Rorty urges us to resist the temptation to practice metaphysics, but I don't always resist that temptation. He'd probably be as appalled by me as I am appalled by LG.

Geoff

Okay. I'm still trying to digest the postmoderist edifice that Mr. Rorty has written, so I'll reserve comment further on the merits. I was just struck by how those comments stood out.

I'll have more once I read the entirety of the thread.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
If there is only a small statistical positive in a PSI experiment the skeptic will dismiss it as a statistical blip. But as the statistical evidence improves, the skeptic doesn't interpret this as an improved evidence of PSI phenomena, but as an indication that there must have been a mistake or a fraud, even if, as in this case, the skeptic cannot actually identify the mistake or the fraud. It is simply assumed that "something must have gone wrong." In other words, no evidence will ever be good enough, and the reason for this is that most skeptics are metaphysical materialists and materialism tends to make most PSI phenomena look completely inexplicable. Therefore, the skeptic reasons, something must be wrong with the experiment.

You repeat this sort of statement quite often, yet we're still waiting for the psi experiment where "the statistical evidence improves." Beyond that, we're waiting for the experiment where the hypothesis is based on a theory of psi instead of just the statistical results. Not to mention practical applications of psi.

I agree that is is difficult to come up with a mechanism that would allows events like the ones that psi experiments purport to show. But it's not because I'm a materialist, because all the suggestions from immaterialists about how psi might work are no better than anything else. The "just imagine everything as mind" doesn't do it for me.

Perhaps once Schlitz and Wiseman replicate their experiments a few more times, they will be in a position to suggest a theory of staring and start trying to figure out how it actually works. In the meantime they are trying to figure out why Wiseman doesn't replicate Schlitz, which is certainly a fascinating question.

~~ Paul

 

[hammegk]

JG, do you realise in your defense of this Rorty person you've used several concepts in common with our Mr. Lifegazer?

quote:
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In the end, the only arbiter of what is acceptable or not acceptable to a coherentist is indeed logic.
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What do you, personally, "believe" that is illogical?

 

[Piscivore]

What do you, personally, "believe" that is illogical?

That the universe is understandable.

That logic itself is a useful tool to aid in that understanding.

That logic without empiricism is empty wool-gathering.

That my cat loves me.

That fish are tasty.


That's just off the top of my head.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Sounds much more like holism.

It is related to epistemological holism, yes.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

JustGeoff, could you comment on what Rorty's 'towers' might have as bases -- that do not collapse to one of the two Cartesian viewpoints?

I'm not sure I can. I think maybe the "ship" metaphor was better than the "many towers" metaphor. The whole point of coherentism is to avoid relying on bases in the way that towers rely on their foundations. The two Cartesian viewpoints are the two most obvious foundations that foundationalists choose. I suppose that within my own way of looking at things I do kind-of have two towers corresponding to the two Cartesian viewpoints, but I don't think the same applies to Rorty. I think he'd claim he has abandoned both of them and that all of his beliefs support each other. I'm not explaining this very well.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

To all:

Since I'm making such a hash of explaining this I just re-read the section on Rorty in Blackwell's "The World's Greatest Philosophers". There are 40 philosophers in this book and the other 39 are all dead - which is quite interesting considering that Rorty's contribution to philosophy is to declare that it is also effectively dead.

What follows is largely taken from the entry on Rorty:

I probably understressed the importance of Rorty's anti-representationalism, which is where Rorty is really on a collision course with lifegazer. Rorty describes his anti-representationalism as "not viewing knowledge as a matter of getting reality right, but rather as a matter of acquiring habits of action for coping with reality". He is frequently accused of being an anti-realist, but this is because people have confused anti-realism with anti-representationalism. Both realists and anti-realists are representationalists. Realist here means "believing that most of the kinds of things that exist, and what they are like, are independent of us and the way we find out about them." Anti-realists (like lifegazer) deny this. But anti-representationalism reject the very idea that beliefs can represent realist at all - so they are neither realists nor anti-realists. Instead, they deny that truth is an explanatory property. The sentence "S" is true if and only if "S" makes no claim that "S" corresponds to anything. So they deny the whole "realist/anti-realist" problematic on the grounds that the notion of representation has no useful role in philosophy. With it also goes epistemology and metaphysics and Kant's grand appearance/reality dichotomy.

Some allegedly privelidged types of vocabulary (e.g. physics) are thought by representationalists to accurately represent reality, while other discourses are mired in appearance. But with the demise of representationalism goes the very idea that there is some sort of determinate way that the world is - or any hope of finding a "first philosophy" which acts as a foundation for the rest. There isn't even any sense in which one discourse is "closer to the truth" than another. There are just different forms of discourse answering to different interests.

With the abandonment of foundationalism and with it a Kantian understanding of the key task of epistemology, we also abandon a classical self-image of a philosopher as someone who stands in some privileged perspective and can tell us in all domains, or indeed in any substantive domain, what counts as genuine knowledge. We give up the deceptive self-conceit that the philosopher can know things that no-one else can know so well. There is no possible transcendental perspective where we can say what knowledge is, correct the ways of science or common sense or common life by appealing to some conception of superior philosophical knowledge which enables us to judge commonsense beliefs and science and give the "real foundations of knowledge."

In other words, Philosophy (427 B.C.E - 1981 A.D) R.I.P. What started with Plato ended with Nietschze.

It's no real surprise that lots of people don't like him.

NB: Rorty has actually admitted that his work is "parasitic" on other forms of philosophy.

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

These characterizations of pragmatism in terms of anti-foundationalism (PMN), of anti-representationalism (ORT), of anti-essentialism (TP) are explicitly parasitic on constructive efforts in epistemology and metaphysics, and are intended to high-light the various ways that these efforts remain under the spell of a Platonic faith in ideal concepts and mandatory forms of descriptions.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

This is also relevant:

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

In the mid nineteen sixties, Rorty gained attention for his articulation of eliminative materialism (cf., "Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories," 1965).

Rorty started out as an eliminative materialist. That is why I think he should be of interest to people who have those tendencies themselves.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Geoff said:
Since I'm making such a hash of explaining this I just re-read the section on Rorty in Blackwell's "The World's Greatest Philosophers". There are 40 philosophers in this book and the other 39 are all dead - which is quite interesting considering that Rorty's contribution to philosophy is to declare that it is also effectively dead.

You're not making a hash of it. It's tricky and somewhat self-hashing, I think.

Wouldn't "39 Dead Philosophers" be a good name for a rock group?

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Wouldn't "39 Dead Philosophers" be a good name for a rock group?

For the backing band perhaps.....

"Rockin' Rorty and the 39 Dead Philosophers."

 

[Jekyll]

Foundationism strikes me as a strawman arguement.
If even mathematics must be coherentist rather than foundationalist I dont see how any comprehensive philosophy could be be anything but.

Having said that this 'coherency' smacks of just combining unrelated fields of thought together in order to claim greater legitimecy. Mmmh, synergism.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Foundationism strikes me as a strawman arguement.
If even mathematics must be coherentist rather than foundationalist I dont see how any comprehensive philosophy could be be anything but.

Having said that this 'coherency' smacks of just combining unrelated fields of thought together in order to claim greater legitimecy. Mmmh, synergism.

Maybe there are no "unrelated fields of thought"?

"Patriotism is not enough. But neither is anything else. Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love, nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will really do."

(From the Old Raja's "notes on what's what" in "Island" by Aldous Huxley.)

 

[Robin]

In other words, no evidence will ever be good enough, and the reason for this is that most skeptics are metaphysical materialists and materialism tends to make most PSI phenomena look completely inexplicable. Therefore, the skeptic reasons, something must be wrong with the experiment.

Well I can only speak for myself and this is certainly not true of me (but I assume that this goes for many other skeptics as well). I have never examined the experiment you mention, so I cannot comment, but take for example the Global Consciousness Project. I did not raise the bar for this I simply noted that the impressive statistical significance was acheived by using different statistical methods for each of the events they examined. I downloaded the data and redid all the calculations using a single statistical method which slashed the significance dramatically. Applying some of the other methods to the whole data set returned no significance at all. It is a very reasonable conclusion that they were cherrypicking.

I was not able to examine the PEAR project in such detail but read their web site where they claim it is unreasonable to expect their results to be replicable - in fact they said that science should relax this condition in their case.

Contrary to skeptics wanting to raise the bar, the paranormal researchers (in this case at least) want to lower the bar.

Now I cannot examine each of these claims in complete detail but after a certain point they have cried wolf so many times you have got to just be skeptical.

And I am not just skeptical about paranormal research either. I am dubious about the Dr Persinger's 'God Helmet' experiments as well, which have a completely anti-paranormal conclusion.