Best Arguments for Physicalism
This is a survey thread. Whether you're a physicalist or not, what do you think the best arguments for it are? If you are a physicalist, what convinced you? Or is it just the grounding of your thinking?
Quick definition of physicalism:
Quoting SEP
Quick definition of physicalism:
Quoting SEP
Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don't deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don't seem physical items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical.
Comments (1044)
Consider me as one of those physicalists that wont deny that the world might contain, as you say, many items that at first glance dont seem physical.
Can I be a metaphysical physicalist? At least until convinced I cant be?
:up:
So it's just the grounding for your worldview, right? You don't need an argument for it.
Seems to me these kinds of views seem most useful when you have something to contrast them against like dualism.
I wonder if these views, rather than a metaphysical view, maybe could be seen as closer to like a loose grouping of scientific hypotheses about the absence of certain type of things like extra mental substance and against things like parapsychology, cryptozoology, pseudoscience (pseudoscience maybe just being more like a label applied to certain ideas that are considered false but are still discussed as true in some fringe communities). Arguably the same denouncements could be said applied to methods too.
I think it would follow from this that physicalism is essentially monism, since there's no clear distinction between it and idealism, or Thales' theory that it's all water. So you agree with that?
Quoting Apustimelogist
I think the distinction comes out of the history of ideas: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Physicalism is specifically the antithesis of idealism, which once dominated the western world. Would you agree with that?
Even idealism, where it differs, is at bottom, an issue of semantics. For one can say, all that exists are minds and ideas, but very few would deny that ideas come from brains in human beings.
That, or your a substance dualist - and then you have the traditional problems of interaction and unification.
Nevertheless, one should be careful, because physicalism does not (or should not) entail phyciSalism, the idea that everything can ultimately be explained in terms of the stuff physics says. That seriously distorts the purview of physics.
So yeah, not a bad term, but these metaphysical views often boil down to semantical problems.
Yes, this is a good point which always gets me thinking.
I guess this is an open question depending on how someone conceives phenomenal experiences.
I am not familiar with this Thales thing but I would argue maybe things like this add extra things (extra scientific hypotheses) to the world beyond what is in current science. I suspect many idealists and panpsychists would also add extra things or at least extra explanations which are beyond what is in current science.
Maybe some idealists or panpsychists wouldn't be so ornate. But then again, isn't the idea that the world itself is just consciousness also an extra scientific hypothesis? If this notion of physicalism I brought forward is just about the rejection of certain hypotheses then having physicalist beliefs doesn't add any scientific hypotheses in the same way. I guess this view of physicalism would be kind of minimalist metaphysically.
I think maybe I would also say that without some additional distinctive structure beyond current scientific hypotheses then the metaphysical idea that everything is mental is just as vague and empty as the idea everything is physical.
Quoting frank
Very few things can be proven to exist with 100% certainty, only existence itself and a few other concepts. However, physical objects and laws are high up there in the 99%. If you want some meat on your worldviews, you can't go wrong with physicalism!
How strong are they, in fact? By now, my reply may be familiar: Theyre only as strong as the accuracy of our understanding of the terms physical, mental, and emergence, and probably a few other key terms as well. I believe were like children, playing with conceptual building blocks that look increasingly unlikely to correspond to anything foundational in reality. I would bet $1,000 (not that Ill be around to collect!) that in, say, 500 years, our arguments for physicalism will be quaint artifacts of an era before science and philosophy and religion made up their differences and presented a unified world-view. And then theres the next 500 years oh boy!
If Hempel's dichotomy is accurate and if no physicalist believes that our current theories amount to a Theory of Everything then it must be that physicalism is true by definition. But of course that makes physicalism trivially true and not a substantive theory.
But out of curiosity, if you had to give an argument for physicalism, what would you say? I guess you'd have to bypass the semantic issue.
Quoting Apustimelogist
:up:
Quoting mentos987
It this coincides with this:
Quoting J
Wouldn't you have to argue that physicalism itself is successful? Is that possible?
In the whole world.
Who are you asking? And what is the question? If you are asking me then you need to rephrase, because I understand nothing ^^
I'm not well suited for presenting such an argument. For me it seems like it would requiring writing a book that I would never get finished with. Fortunately, I don't have to make the argument.
But, I'll add what has been sitting unposted in the reply box overnight...
Quoting frank
As grandiose as it may sound*... The weirdly prophetic perspective that has resulted from being willing to seriously consider physicalism.
*It's fucking weird to consider saying this out loud here. Not sure if I'll hit Post Comment on this one.
:blush: Thank you.
What is it? What is that perspective like?
I would just modify one thing. I would state that everything that we've discovered so far is physical in origin. It does not mean that everything is physical, as we have not looked at everything yet. I also wouldn't even say this is a philosophy, this is just the fact of the known universe at this time. Finally, this does not preclude the use of terms such as metaphysics, ideas, or words that are not necessarily associated with 'the physical'. The point is to understand that the origin of everything so far known is physical, and shouldn't imply more than that.
All the advances in science are consistent with idealism. Science doesn't do metaphysics. It doesn't tell us that an electron is fundamentally a mental or physical object. It just describes its behavior, no? Why would we expect an idealistic electron to behave any differently than a physical one?
Except,
https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/
If everything is mental, and all minds disappeared, the universe would disappear. But if everything is physical and all minds (brains) disappeared, the universe would continue to exist, jus without any brains in it. That doesn't seem "vague and empty". The two theories are making very definite claims.
It would be very general, and the semantic issue can't be completely taken away. But it would be something like there is at bottom, one kind of stuff in the universe. Why is it one kind as opposed to two or many?
Because if they don't share the same nature, our intuitions tell us that they cannot interact even in principle. Dualism as a metaphysical view is problematic, pluralism would be a nightmare: many different kinds of stuff making up everything there is, doesn't make sense.
So, choosing monism as a necessity, all that's left is to call whatever remains something, and here we just choose, I think "physical", rightly understood, is less problematic than mental or ideal.
If not, then "natural" might even be better. But the issue of the scope of science cannot be under-emphasized, by "natural" or "physical", reductionism should not be entailed such that if we say either of these words, we are merely pointing out to metaphysical "substance", not to view that physics or nature explains everything. It doesn't.
Does this follow from an argument? Or is it an assumption?
:up: Nice.
How long does that hold true? Suppose a thousand years from now, there are still raging debates about the Hard Problem and no consensus. Is physicalism still "less problematic" than idealism or dualism?
I wouldn't like - at this moment anyway - to repeat what I've said too many times before. I don't believe that the "hard problem", should be considered uniquely so.
I think there are good historical reasons to be suspect of believing that there is such a thing as "the" hard problem, I think there are many (hard problems), and highlighting one at the expense of others shows how little awareness there is on the history of this topic, which was debated by Descartes, Gassendi, Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Priestley and others.
I was going to share my Chomsky thread, but just saw you participated in in.
So, if people are still debating the "hard problem" a thousand years from now, that would just be the utter death of the field.
Which field?
Show me something that doesn't originate from matter and energy. What third type of substance would it be?
Energy isn't a substance, though:
Gravity for one. If we didn't have gravity, we would not have neuroscience, compute science, philosophy, etc.
Electromagnetism too, if we didn't have that, we wouldn't have a universe, or at least, nothing with life or of any interest would be around.
Oxygen is another important one, which would also render everything we adore obsolete, nitrogen too. Iron.
Mutations: no mutations, no speciation. Plate tectonics.
And on and on and on.
Philosophy is the main field we are talking about.
I am using energy as understood by E=mc^2.
"On the most basic level, the equation says that energy and mass (matter) are interchangeable; they are different forms of the same thing."
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/einstein/lrk-hand-emc2expl.html#:~:text=%22Energy%20equals%20mass%20times%20the,forms%20of%20the%20same%20thing.
In the body doesn't in some way "produce" the mind, then why does ingesting certain chemicals so radically affect our cognition? Aren't traumatic brain injuries and dementia powerful demonstrations of this fact?
Against the view that an immaterial soul somehow "pilots" the body and that the body being broken simply break this connection somehow, we can consider our own experiences if we've ever been concussed, drunk, etc. and how these physical causes radically affect all aspects of mental life.
Metaphysical physicalism is harder to advocate for. The most convincing argument might be that "physicalism is what science says is the case. Science has given us atom bombs, GPS, the internet, antibiotics, etc. The proof is in the pudding. What other system is so useful at predicting the future or increasing our causal powers? If the world isn't made of atoms, why do nuclear power pants successfully light out homes? If we aren't composed of chemicals, why does biochemistry help heal us from illnesses? Physicalism, in its reductive variety is intuitive, and seems to work extremely well."
I will allow that this is a bad argument, subject to many objections, but on the face of it, not having heard those objections, it seemed convincing to me.
The proposition that information is as fundemental as matter and energy is not uncommon in physics. There is also the proposition that information is more fundemental than matter and energy, and that the latter emerges from the former ("it from bit.") Being substrate independent, it seems difficult to reduce information to matter and energy, although some people do think it's possible. Sort of an issue of open debate.
But this isn't really a challenge to physicalism, since plenty of people who would claim that information is ontologically basic would also go with Landauer's principle, "information is physical." It might point to Hemple's Dilemma though, the idea that if "physical" = anything we have reason to believe exists, the term become vacuous.
Technically, its not substrate independent, we just minimize the differences to create a more manageable identity in our head. I'll use music as an example. You can play the same tune on a piano and a harp. While the 'notes' are the same, the expression is different because of the different medium. Meaning that the song on a harp and a piano are actually different, we just find a way of packaging certain information of actions that can be attempted on multiple mediums.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Yes, I'm keen on avoiding that as well. Perhaps there is something that exists that cannot be boiled down to energy and matter at its foundation. But, this would need proof of existence before it became anything more than speculation.
Is there a Hard Problem of Oxygen? Is the nature of Oxygen deeply mysterious? Is there a lack of consensus about what Oxygen is, or whether it's an illusion or doesn't exist at all?
Well, there is historically a hard problem of motion, that was made worse when Newton discovered gravity, which to his dismay made no sense to him.
I think an appropriate way to look at these things is to see that they are all at bottom mysterious. As Schopenhauer said:
"The tendency to gravity in the stone is precisely as inexplicable as is thinking in the human brain, and so on this score, we could also infer a spirit in the stone. Therefore to these disputants [between 'spiritualists' and 'materialists'] I would say: you think you know a dead matter, that is, one that is completely passive and devoid of properties, because you imagine you really understand everything that you are able to reduce to mechanical effect. But you are unable to reduce them If matter can fall to earth without you knowing why, so can it also think without you knowing why If your dead and purely passive matter can as heaviness gravitate, or as electricity attract, repel, and emit spark, so too as brain pulp can it think."
I think that is accurate perspective. Or take Locke:
Whether Matter may not be made by God to think is more than man can know. For I see no contradiction in it, that the first Eternal thinking Being, or Omnipotent Spirit, should, if he pleased, give to certain systems of created senseless matter, put together as he thinks fit, some degrees of sense, perception, and thought... it is no less than a contradiction to suppose matter (which is evidently in its own nature void of sense and thought) should be that Eternal first-thinking Being...Body, as far as we can conceive, being able only to strike and affect body, and motion, according to the utmost reach of our ideas, being able to produce nothing but motion; so that when we allow it to produce pleasure or pain, or the idea of a colour or sound, we are fain to quit our reason, go beyond our ideas, and attribute it wholly to the good pleasure of our Maker. For, since we must allow He has annexed effects to motion which we can no way conceive motion able to produce, what reason have we to conclude that He could not order them as well to be produced in a subject we cannot conceive capable of them, as well as in a subject we cannot conceive the motion of matter can any way operate upon?
(Bold added).
I could add more from Hume, Priestley even Leibniz, and others.
So yeah, I think there is a deep mystery as regards to oxygen, gravity, mutations, liquidity, and virtually everything, on equal footing with consciousness.
Odd then, that physics can't even explain how traffic lights work.
What about logical necessity? How is that 'necessitated by the physical'?
What about Hempel's dilemma? If we define "physical" as what is currently understood by physics, the dilemma arises because our current understanding of physics is likely incomplete and may change in the future. As a result, the claim that the mind (for example) is 'physical' might be false simply because our current physics does not fully capture all physical aspects of the universe. And If we define "physical" as whatever a future, complete physics will include, the dilemma arises because this definition is too vague and open-ended. We cannot currently know what the future physics will encompass, making it difficult to make meaningful claims about the mind being physical based on this definition.
I disagree. The rise of Ai isn't going to compel people to think about "oxygen, gravity, mutations, liquidity". It's going to compel them to ask the very basic question: are these a.i.'s conscious? As the a.i.'s continue to improve, and achieve human level AGI, people are going to look to the sciences to provide answers to basic questions: are these AGI's conscious? What rights do they have? How should we treat them? These questions will then become the most outstanding problems in science.
Where do you disagree with that?
What is the alternative to physicalism? The only alternative I can think of is idealism. What are the differences between them? The former says that there are mind-independent existents, and the latter says there are not. Which seems the more plausible? To me physicalism seems more plausible because it can explain how it is that we and the animals (judging from their behavior) all perceive the same world, without positing a god or universal mind.
So, for me, I tend towards physicalism as being the inference to the best explanation for the world as we experience it. At the same time, I don't deny that there is a semantic or semiotic aspect that is inherent in physicality, so a kind of pan-semiosis, which becomes all the more evident as biological life has apparently evolved into ever more complex forms.
Quoting RogueAI
To me it doesn't matter how much AGI may look like human intelligenceI'll consider them conscious when it becomes obvious that they actually care about anything.
Quoting Banno
What do you think is missing in the physical explanation of the workings of traffic lights?
Because that is one of the goals of the developments of AI, so of course questions about consciousness are going to rise.
I didn't say that AI is going to cause us to marvel about gravity or mutations. What I am saying is that without these two, we wouldn't be alive to try to make sense of experience, nor would we be around to create such machines.
On that basis alone, these things merit much more wonder that they often do. But we are much more ignorant about them then we are about consciousness.
My main disagreement is the emphasis in which consciousness is held to a problem, over and above anything else, it's a very recent and narrow focus in philosophy. There's a lot more to say, but it's late here so I won't go into detail now, tomorrow (or whenever) sure.
Certainly, Locke and Schopenhauer cared about consciousness (Locke's "ideas of sensation" and "ideas of reflection", and Schopenhauer's "representations"), hence hey wrote entire books dealing with how it is we come to acquire knowledge. But they did not see consciousness as more problematic than other properties of the world.
Well arguably these are not analogous scenarios in the respective worlds.
On what basis?
Well, first set out for us "the physical explanation of the workings of traffic lights".
Then we'll be able to tell you what's missing.
SO explain, using only physics, why folk stop at the red light.
So, you're not asking about the physical workings of traffic lights but about human behavior. Of course, people don't always stop at red lights, so the question is inapt.
In any case physicalism does not necessarily entail that everything must be explainable in terms of physics, although of course that may be one interpretation of the meaning of the term.
Quoting frank
Sorry, Frank - I've flipped the thread to "what is the best argument against physicalism"...
Oops.
Quoting Tom Storm
I'm just giving a concrete example of Hemple's dilemma. But further, physicalism is itself not a physicalist doctrine, and hence denies itself.
Quoting Janus
Then give us a physical explanation of why folk sometimes do not stop at the red light. And what often happens next.
That's probably the best way to see what physicalism has to say for itself. Thanks!
I get the performative self-refutation part. What's the Hempel's dilemma aspect of the traffic light e.g.? I understand that all non-black things are non-ravens.
In case you failed to notice this:
Quoting Janus
That said, human behavior may be explainable in neuronal, that is physical, terms, but it does not follow that neurology is reducible, in the explanatory, if not the ontological, sense, to physics.
Quoting Tom Storm
contemporary physics cannot provide an adequate description of the function of a traffic light. So it falls back on the claim that some future version fo physics will be able to provide that explanation (see ). It amounts to an act of faith.
:wink: I think it will add a few pages to your thread.
Albino ravens are apparently a thing.
The brain-as-receiver or brain+consciousness=mind models would solve this as the changes are occurring in hardware/wetware receiving mind data from elsewhere; the experiential changes are in many senses not related to the consciousness per se but the representative exprience of it which can be devolved to an ersatz experience because of damaged or aberrant hardware/wetware
I'll give a physical account where it is appropriate; but not if they are asking about why folk stop at red traffic lights.
Edit: Oh, and Hempel's paradox is different to Hempel's dilemma.
Quoting Janus
Worth a mint too I imagine. I think I prefer albino blues guitarists.
What do you mean by "idealism which flavor of it?" Why does this "consistency" with "advances in science" matter?
"Science doesn't do" poetry or sports either, so what's your point, Rogue? And how are "all the advances in science", as you say, "consistent" with a metaphysics like "idealism" if "science doesn't do metaphysics"?
Quoting frank
To paraphrase W. Churchill:
IME I've found that physicalism is the worst methological paradigm for explaining modeling aspects of the natural world except for all those other non-physical or anti-physical paradigms tried from time to time.
The latter are probably even rarer than albino ravens, so they should be worth even more than a mint.
Is the OP question regarding the metaphysical/ ontological or the epistemological notion of physicalism?
Naughty boy...paraphrasing war criminals!
:yikes:
So the only choice is between the irrationalism of physicalism and the irrationalism of mysticism and fundamentalists?
i don't think so.
I'm late seeing this but I'll give you my best argument for physicalism (or first attempt). We start from our mental worlds because that's the mode of our brain function. So for me the idea that the physical world is primary is an assumption, not a proven fact at least not on the first attempt. Also, if you assume the world is physical and everything is based on physical matter then you do have the problem of how do 'non-physicals' exist. For me that is the logic problem at the heart of philosophy. Is it monism or dualism?
Well, we shouldn't just take a guess, so where to start? Okay, assuming physical matter really exists then non-physicals should definitely not exist. Non-physicals are by definition non-existent. That's logical right? But we deal with non-physicals all the time in our mental worlds.
Zero, the past, the future, numbers, theories, ideas, words ....and once you see the pattern in all the easy things you can arrive at the conclusion that all mental content is non-physical. But the thing is it's based on physical brain state. A brain is always present, in physical location and physical time, when this perception of non-physicals is occuring so that is the basis of claiming (the ability to deal with non-physicals is a special ability of our biological brains). The logic is we see the components coming together in a physical way that makes the non-physical a tenable proposition. As opposed to a logical impossibility a paragraph ago.
So back to the argument of does physical matter exist. Now you have the logical conclusion that physical matter must exist because the mental worlds we experience could not exist without a physical basis.
So to call it monism or dualism is a linguistics problem that should be postponed until you understand these relations.
I would say all is physically based but our brains have this ability to deal in the non-physical realm.
There is an extremely good application of this principal in the field psychology and psychiatry in solving psychosis and schizophrenia (not endorsing the terminology, it's archaic). The assumption has been these condition are biologically based (strict physicalism) but the evidence points strongly to non-physical mental content driving these unfortunate conditions which are then treated with forced medication.
Or here in Minnesota, forced enrollment in clinical drug trials for the pharma industry leading to the suicide of the patient. No small matter but nowhere near the end of the problems of getting it wrong.
It was a joke. A summary of what we often seem to find in these threads... Hence the :razz: emoji.
See 's considered post. So many different ideas that need to be teased out in order to make sense of what is going on. The result is often confusion.
Here's a thought: why not use different sorts of explanations for different things.
There's a hidden assumption that there can be only one sort of explanation. An epistemic monism.
Can you provide some references or details for this?
:up:
This is why I say 'aspects of nature' and not 'everything'. Epistemological pluralism (e.g. N. Goodman's irrealism) makes the most sense to me.
What will be fun to watch here is the pragmatists who will insist on there being only one explanation.
The most annoying thing here, and one that I doubt will be addressed, is the knowledge argument, since it uses qualia, which I dislike, to show that mind is not (just) physical, which I do like.
And this is where I find myself in some agreement with @Wayfarer.
I was referring to the Dan Markingson case at the University of Minnesota.
All the symptoms that were reported publicly are consistent with mental content driving his condition. For example he self reported hundreds of coded messages and a specific reference I remember from the court records was an unusual reaction to seeing an unusually shaped carpet stain in his California apartment.
That is just some of the symptoms I can recall.
My impression was it was a case of runaway mental content without an ability to recover on his own.
:gasp:
Yeah, I know.
Also his mom was actually using a false identity on the internet to contact him so he may have had some basis for suspicion or paranoia. My impression was it was an unusual series of events he was reacting to, the best he could.
That SEP article also contains a section on the argument from abstract objects, which is also a killer argument in my view.
And
[quote=Ed Feser] Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning thats how they are able to impart it to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes.[/quote]
Ok. I think it mush the same as the intentionality argument, actually. Numbers and abstracta are something we do. Bits of grammar. Otherwise, Plato was right, and nobody wants that.
That made me laugh.
I agree with Mww, but add that it's grounded by the fact that (IMO) physicalism is an inference to the best explanation for the known facts of the world. Most every aspect of the world is physical, the one possible exception being the hard problem of consciousness (which actually can be accounted for, but depends on a bit of hand-waving). But alternative metaphysical theories depend on more ad hoc assumptions.
Truthmaker theory (as explicated by David Armstrong, the patron saint of Physicalism) provides a grounding for logic.
Quoting Wayfarer
A physicalist metaphysics is not dependent on what is known, or will be known. It is based on the axiom that everything that exists is physical. Physicalists accept this axiom because it is indeed all that's needed to account for everything known to exist - i.e. it's the most parsimonious ontology.
Inference to a best explanation is nothing if not a metaphysical process, right?
Seems like this could just as well be an argument against reductionism/smallism, rather than an argument against physicalism per se.
I'm not sure if that solves the issue though. If we're physical, how can we "do" things that none of our more basic, better understood physical components can do? The problem does not seem like it can be waved away with weak emergence, so it leaves us with either a non-physical mind, or strongly emergent conciousness.
Arguably, strong emergence might also be fatal to physicalism, at least as it is commonly framed. That would make the mental physical, and not through some sort of superveniance relation, but rather because the mental is a fundemental, irreducible, aspect of the physical. It would make all the arguments about the causal closure principle moot, because it would turn out that mental events have causal powers, full stop, and there is no possible translation of them into non-mental processes.
My suspicion is that this is why panpsychism doesn't seem to sit well with physicalism, even though physicalism doesn't seem to necessarily preclude panpsychism. If you have panpsychism, then causal closure also seems irrelevant, unless you tack on epiphenomenalism.
Well, that's what people believe they are demonstrating in their papers. In any event, the converse isn't decisively demonstrated.
Anyhow, spacetime is not mass energy. But if all physical reality did reduce to one thing, spacetime a metric field within a field of fields, the would also be a problem for physicalism. If there is only one thing that everything reduces to, then the concept of substance that physicalism emerged from ceases to do any explanatory lifting at all. Everything is explained by process within the monosubstance. It's unclear how, given a single undifferentiated process that produces mental life and everything else, allows idealism vs physicalism to be a useful distinction. The monosubstance being mental (idealism) or physical doesn't seem to make any difference, the label would lack content.
This is exactly what idealists claim, in favor of their own position. No one has ever observed the noumena, it's impossible. Every empirical observation ever has been phenomenal. No one has ever had an experience outside of subjective first person experience. Not one datumn has informed a scientific paper anywhere that wasn't experienced in the mind.
Thus, everything is mental. This is equally parsimonious, perhaps more because it doesn't need to explain why there seems to be a different sorts of stuff, mental life and physical stuff. Science, so the claim goes, is our empirical study of how mental stuff, phenomena, works. Nothing that is not mental has ever been observed. Claiming otherwise would be to claim that one has perceived something without their mind, seen without their vision, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I don't see how that position is anymore ad hoc. All the evidence that is used to support the claim that "everything that has been discovered to date is physical," could equally be used to support the claim that "everything discovered to date has been mental." What such evidence actually amounts to seems to be more a refutation of dualism than support for either position.
But the fact that such evidence can't decide the issue makes me question how useful the distinction is in the first place.
I'm not sure to which "issue" you refer.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
So, by way of an instance, we can count, but there is no purely physical explanation of how or what counting is. hence physical explanations are useless here. Hence there are things that are not explained by physics. Some claim that somehow counting emerges from the physics of the brain, but it remains that so far no account can be found of how this happens, still less how it is that this counting enables international credit ratings and so on.
My suspicion is that panpsychism is bunk, and that somehow counting is the result of physical interactions. But I don't know how, and I do not have to take a stance on this.
Hey a new word. Dont much like it, but that might just be my holism.
Sorry, I think I was misreading you. I was thinking counting being something we "do" was somehow supposed to resolve what I see as the crux Wayfarer's quote, re the physical nature of the mind, not the status of abstract objects. Abstraction being something we do makes a lot of sense to me.
The proliferation of types of abstract objects has always made me skeptical of them.
Ok.
What is passed off as physics around here is dreadful. But not quite as bad as what is supposed dot pass for philosophical insight. I'll agree with you that idealism vs physicalism fails to be a useful distinction.
Mechanistic explanations are digital and deterministic, whereas it seems that reality, the physical, is most plausibly analogue and non-deterministic.
Sure.
As you approach a red light, you physically move your eyes through nerve signals that allow waves of light that enter into your eye and bounce against the nerves at the back. These electrical and chemical signals are sent to the brain, where they are processed as 'a red light'. Your brain accesses memory through dendrite signaling, to know that a red light means stop.
Further processing results in a 'decision' to hit the brakes. Electrical and chemical signals are sent to the calf and leg muscles to coordinate muscle contraction in such a way that your foot depresses on the brake to stop the car.
Quoting Wayfarer
Current discoveries in neuroscience and medicine. To my knowledge, we have not discovered anything that exists apart from matter and energy.
I just wanted you to know that I think you're making fantastic points. I do understand that some people believe this, but I have not seen any success in this regards. Also yes, just because our best understanding today is that consciousness is from the brain, doesn't mean that tomorrow we could find something new which would change this. My point is that currently, the idea that consciousness does not come from the brain is speculative, and speculation cannot overrule the facts that we have today.
Yeah, we have. Traffic laws.
Where did traffic laws come from?
Can you point to a physics text that shows how to derive "stop on the red" from first principles?
Are you going to answer my question with a question, or answer it? This isn't a one sided conversation. Where do traffic laws come from Banno? Once you answer that, I'll answer any follow up questions you have. If you're going to avoid answering, I see no reason to continue discussing with you.
Answering a question with a question is answering...
Quoting Philosophim
It's your argument. I'll not put it together for you.
Bye Banno.
Maybe you can be 's foil in a game of Socratic irony? I suppose he wants to construct a regress of some sort.
The starting point, for a physicalist, is the basic, innate belief in a world external to ourselves, one that we perceive a reflection of through our senses .
What's the starting point for an idealist? Don't you have to adopt a position that is contrary to our innate noetic structure?
...and even worse for those trained in philosophy. I'm taking as a rule of thumb that the physical is the stuff they talk about in physics books.
Cheers concerning the grammar thing. Pretty much stolen from Wittgenstein I'm afraid.
It's an epistemological process.
I prefer it because physical is one of the few descriptions of being that is harmonious with the sensual evidence. One doesnt even need an argument to come to accept it. Everything else is discordant and muddled.
This is an excellent post. I have always argued here that, in light of the Hard Problem, idealism is the most parsimonious theory. I think that that parsimony will only increase as science continues to fail at the Hard Problem and the question of machine consciousness takes on ever greater importance.
Sherlock Holmes?* The Pythagorean Theorem?
*Holmes was invented, but someone could certainly read the book and "discover" Holmes, all the other delightful characters, and the fictional world they inhabit.
The topic here was about a snippet from the source article, in which I made my own addendums.
Quoting Philosophim
Feel free to point out an issue with my proposal. If you feel one of the points in the article would be a good criticism for it, feel free to reference why it would.
Yes, these are physical in origin too. Sherlock Holmes does not reside in a separate subspace or as a separate material from matter and/or energy. It was created by the physical brain of Arthur Conan Doyle. It was then written with physical ink on physical paper. Printed by a physical machine, and read by physical eyes and brains.
The Pythagorean Theorem is based off of a physical construct we call a triangle. We studied its physical properties, and came to the conclusion that the physical properties logically lead to certain consistent conclusions. It was communicated with physical speech as the air bent to philosopher's tongues. A physical feather written on physical parchment.
If you don't believe these things are physical in origin, then what are they made of? Where did they come from? In what space do they reside?
Regarding red lights, suppose I'm full of rage and want to run a red light so's I can smash into a particular car because it belongs to the man who's cheating on my wife. Let's say you describe all that rage and red-light running in purely physical terms and then showed it to an alien who didn't know if humans were p-zombies or not. Could the alien figure out, from that purely physical description of my rage-induced red-light running behavior, that I am not a p-zombie? If no, then the physical explanation is not explaining everything. It's leaving out the fact that a mental state was involved in running the red light.
You could turn that around and say that given a physicalist understanding of human beings, the alien would conclude that you are a p-zombie, and it would be correct in doing so. Accounting for your phenomenology would be not just impossible but also redundant.
Fictional characters and mathematical theorems and numbers are not physical. Picture Holmes in your mind right now. Is the Sherlock Holmes you're imagining physical? Is there a little physical Sherlock Holmes in your brain? Now, you might say neurons xyz are doing their thing when you think of Holmes, but that does not entail that Holmes IS a collection of neural activity and brain states. That would be a fantastical claim. Who lives at 221 Baker Street? A guy with a pipe and deerstalker hat? Or a neural/brain state pattern?
Fictional characters and mathematical theorems and numbers are mental objects. This is another reason I think idealism is more parsimonious: it nicely maps on to our intuition that the things we imagine and think of are mental things and not physical things.
We don't know what an alien would say, as they may have a greater understanding of the universe then us. We don't need p-zombies either. Lets just separate consciousness into two parts. Behavioral consciousness and subjective consciousness. Currently, the only way we understand objective consciousness is through behavior. Currently, the only way we understand subjective consciousness is through our own personal experience.
In other words, science has never attempted to define objective consciousness through subjective behavior. That's because its impossible to know what its like to be another subject besides yourself. Did you know that some people do not have an inner monologue, while others cannot visualize a single thing? How can your or I ever objectively understand what that is like without experiencing it ourselves? We can't. Its beyond human knowledge.
A p-zombie is a 'pointless zombie'. We've never used subjective assessments of consciousness to objectively describe conscious behavior. So its irrelevant what a zombie subjectively experiences, its how a zombie behaves.
What we can do is tie behavior to the physical brain. Neuroscience and psychiatry are proven fields with real results in managing consciousness with medications, anesthesia, and brain surgery. Mental states are physical states. The subjective experience is the experience of being the brain matter. We can see the brain matter and watch your behavior. But we cannot know what you are feeling while your brain matter is responding with the behavior. And in no way does this discount that your subjective experience is also physical in origin.
In my physical mind? Of course. My brain is matter, and its a cacophony of electrical and chemical processes all letting me experience my individual subjective experience of "Sherlock Holmes".
Quoting RogueAI
And aren't mental objects an experience of a physical brain? Do mental objects form in reality outside of brains? Do they exist in a subspace? What is a mental object made out of? I'm not trolling, I'm cracking your indoctrination. This is philosophy where we are supposed to freely think. Really think on it.
It would be wrong in doing so, since I'm not a p-zombie. Are you saying it would be correct in making the move to conclude from the purely physical description that I'm a zombie? Possibly, but only if it doesn't have mental states of its own. If the alien is not a zombie, it would know mental states cannot be expressed in purely physical terms. It would continue to have an open mind about whether I'm a zombie or not. In fact, it will never know if I'm a zombie or not. It will always wonder. No amount of brain scanning and physical descriptions would clue it in to the fact that I have a mind. It's Mary's Room all over again.
Quoting goremand
There's the rub. I'm not a zombie, but it is impossible for me to conclusively prove that to anyone other than me. There is nothing I can say or do or write down that will convince anyone else that I'm not dead inside. It's a uniquely insolvable problem. The scientific method is useless. Only through some type of direct knowledge we don't have access to and can't really imagine can we really know if another is conscious or not.
The grammar is doing the heavy lifting. The grammar states that the noun represents a person, place, or thing, and apparently this is enough to conclude that this noun refers to something extant. But because they cannot find it or point to it, it must be non-physical. Its quite a common methodology, but in the end its talking about words like Sherlock Holmes, which the last time I checked are physical.
You are, given a physicalist view of human beings. Insisting that you are not is just question-begging.
Quoting RogueAI
Would you call everything which lacks phenomenological consciousness a zombie? Are rocks zombies? Why would you assume that an alien had phenomenological consciousness?
A simulation? It means material is reality RogueAI. It doesn't strike me as absurd at all that this is how we work. Ever seen a bisection of the body? Seen the veins, muscle, viscera? You can come away with two opinions. Either its gross and unseemly, or you realize its a magnificent triumph of matter.
Yes, if someone messed with your brain, they could turn that joy off. Why should you believe such nonsense? For the same reason you should know that a bear can eat you. That if you want to continue to have joy with your kids, you have to treat your body and brain well. Eat well, don't drink alcohol beyond moderation, don't smoke, exersise, etc.
Even further, if you start having memory loss or strokes, you can go to the doctor and get treatment to fix or minimize the issue. That 'nonsense' is why we can treat brain disorders like schizophrenia, suicidal depression, and a whole host of other psychological issues. Because understanding reality gives you power to make it better instead of being completely at its whims, or worse, creating problems through choices of ignorance.
Then physicalism is wrong, since I'm not a zombie. I cannot be wrong about not being a zombie. Do you think you're a zombie?
"I cannot be wrong", that sounds extremely dogmatic.
Quoting RogueAI
Sure, why not? At least it is worth considering.
If materialism requires one to be open-minded to the idea one is a p-zombie (or materialism somehow makes the idea that one is a zombie palatable), that is a giant red flag. Physicalism/materialism is in massive trouble if it can't find a way to get out of p-zombie open-mindedness.
Indeed, and yet a necessary condition for denying the existence of my mind is the existence of my mind.
Being open-minded is a red flag? Why is that? Usually I find dogmatism to be a red flag.
Quoting RogueAI
Not really, you can talk to chatGTP and it will deny having a mind.
Thales saying, that "everything is water" is wrong. He didn't say that. What he said was, that the origin of the world is water. To say everything is water doesn't make sense, and misinterpreting Thales.
Quoting SEP
The word "Physicalism" itself is a concept, which is not physical, but an idea. Therefore saying "everything is physical" is a self-contradiction. If everything was physical, then the proposition itself must be physical. No proposition is physical. It follows the claim is a non-sense.
The fact that knowledge of the world comprises the synthesis of ideas and sensations.
Quoting Philosophim
That it is exceedingly vague. As pointed out by me above, and by the SEP article, at issue the question of what constitutes the physical. This is 'Hempel's dilemma': if physicalism is defined by reference to contemporary physics, then it is false after all, who thinks that contemporary physics is complete? but if physicalism is defined via reference to a future or ideal physics, then it is trivial after all, who can predict what a future physics contains? It might include what we now consider to be mental. After all scientific ideas of the physical have changed enormously over history, and are changing even more now. The century before last nobody had the vaguest clue of electromagnetic fields, nowadays the atom is only seen as a point within them. Who knows what 'the physical' might turn out to mean in future?
In effect, and this is the way you use it, 'physical' amounts to a general deference to science as an arbiter of reality. To you, this is obvious, as you frequently say, never mind that a great deal of philosophy comprises questioning what is generally thought to be obvious.
There are different flavors of idealism, but in general they have the same starting point as physicalism. The external world and other minds exist. This would include modern forms of idealism, e.g. Kastrup, or Hegelian absolute idealism. They simply claim that the external world is made of mental substance. Or , in the case of absolute idealism, they claim that the physical and mental are both subsumed in the larger category of the Absolute, but that we can work across these boundaries because both emerge from the same rational structure. Platonic idealism would be another example where there is no denial of the external world. These would all be types of "objective idealism," if you will. I don't find Kastrup's proposed ontology very convincing, but his attacks on physicalism in the "Idea of the World" are pretty good, even if they aren't novel.
There are indeed versions of idealism that do radically diverge from our intuitions about the external world. Berkeley would be the canonical example here; "to be is to be perceived." This would be a "subjective idealism."
Arguably, objective idealism does less to mess with our intuitions than some popular versions of physicalism. Because many physicalists embrace a sort of Kantian dualism and indirect realism, such that we don't ever "experience the world," but experience only "representations of the world." But this leaves us with the whole problem of debating which facets of the world only exist in our map of it, versus which exist in the territory of the world itself. Is the world intelligible, rational, and law-like, or is this something our minds project onto the world? Is a sort of logic/Logos at work in the world, or is any such rationality the product of the mind, and if the latter, how does the mind create something (rationality) that doesn't exist in the world it emerges from?
Donald Hoffman's "The Case Against Reality," goes into this pretty well. Our senses evolved to deliver information about fitness payoffs, not truth. This is why we have such a hard time conceptualizing very large (relativity) and very small (quantum mechanics) things. Our intuitions and senses are only designed to work with medium sized objects and don't equip us to know the world "as it is." Perhaps, he suggests, even our entire view of three dimensional space is an illusion.
I would argue these varieties of physicalism have a bigger problem than idealism. If we can't be sure that what is in our "maps" is also in the "territory," then it seems that our physicalism might reveal itself to actually be subjective idealism. All knowledge turns out to be about how the mind represents the world, not the world itself. It is impossible to know anything about the noumena, the world in itself. But then why posit the noumena in the first place? It seems to be a position based solely on intuition and dogma. But our intuition continually turns out to be bad, the world isn't flat, etc. Plus, the noumena's existing or not makes no real difference for us.
Yet if we get rid of the noumena then we don't have a way to explain why all minds should work the same way, and if they don't work the same way and we can't know the intervening noumena, then we are basically all locked in our own seperate worlds. Or maybe we lose grounds for other minds existing entirely?
Idealism avoids this whole can of worms, and to be fair, some flavors of physicalism do as well.
However, I wouldn't end there. Once brains have a sufficiently powerful ability to manipulate non-physicals we have a situation were mental content can drive the physical world. It's a special case of physically supported non-physicals driving physical matter.
So I would focus on driverism not reductionism.
And it has physical results in our physical environment that are obvious.
Ill grant the best explanation is a condition of the epistemological process, in that some knowledge is either affirmed or denied by it. But the query asks about the inference to, not the explanation for.
If Physicalism is all about saying "Everything is physical", then it is just a non-sense. If they say
that some objects in the world are physical, then maybe it could be acceptable.
For me, the physical is something that requires matter or energy to exist. I don't think its honestly all that detailed, its just an answer like: "What makes up molecules? "Atoms". The answer doesn't answer every question we have. It doesn't tell us how atoms can combine or be built into a world of humans. Its just noting the building blocks that everything fundamentally has at its core.
It also does not deny language that has arisen like 'mental', 'subjective' or 'feelings'. Its just important that while using different terminology that we don't forget that its all based in physical reality at the end of the day.
Quoting Wayfarer
Hempel's dilemma is an issue of epistemology. Replace 'physicalism' with 'anythingism' and Hempel's dilemma still applies. All Hempel is noting is that what we know today may not be known tomorrow. As an epistemological problem, its trivial. Of course this is the case. That doesn't mean we dismiss what we know today for today. If we did, then we would be stuck in Hempel's dilemma every tomorrow as well. As such its a point that helps us understand epistemology, but does nothing about the issue of physicalism, idealism, or any other ism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes. I refer to what is known today. We always keep the possibility that what we know tomorrow may invalidate the knowledge of the day. But the only rational choice is to take what we know today and do our best with it. It doesn't mean we can't speculate! As I've noted many times, speculation is fun and can lead to some interesting ideas. The problem comes in when someone is so enamored with speculation, that they believe it must be true, and invalidates what we know today. This can never be the case.
Quoting Wayfarer
A great deal of philosophy is conjecture, fanciful ideas, and speculation. Many people love to think their viewpoint is obvious, but it must be proven, not assumed. All of these ideas are fun for sure, but its our job as philosophers to weed out philosophy that strays too far from logic and reality and begins to assert itself without proof. Philosophy is a giant brainstorm amongst multiple people, and most ideas will be wrong. Its why we study logic, logical fallacies, and means of thinking that have been proven as rational and air tight. Its so we can sail the storm to find the rare island of truth.
Please, keep brainstorming. Keep poking and prodding at what is known today. That is the only way we make progress and find things that have been missed. But a poke and a prod that does not reference what is known today, cannot demonstrate a valid and clear flaw in today's knowledge. A want, a wish, and our imagination may be desired as true, but that alone does not make it true.
It's worth pointing out that Kim himself says his arguments seem to shut the door on a non-reductive physicalism grounded in substance metaphysics. He allows that a process metaphysics could allow for a non-reductive physicalism.
Bickhard makes a compelling argument that we we should be looking at substance metaphysics anyhow. The story of science, so he says, is the story of the idea of sui generis substances being discarded and process explanations adopted in their stead. Heat turned out to be process, not the substance caloric. Fire turned out to be the process of combustion, not the substance phlogiston. Life turned out to be definable as a far from equilibrium thermodynamic process, not in terms of vital substance. "Fundemental" particles revealed themselves to have beginnings and ends, vacuum a seething sea of virtual particles. Thus, apparent substance seems to be revealed to simply be longer term stabilities in process.
The litany was compelling to me at least. Terrance Deacon cites some similar arguments in "Incomplete Nature." But I'm not sure exactly how this relates to physicalism, since I'm not sure if the term would mean in a process view, where causal closure and superveniance no longer seem relevant.
It's just an excuse to rehabilitate behaviorism to show it is wrong again, and to paint consciousness as magic, whereas everything else in the world is just normal "expected stuff".
It is not a-priori evident that non-conscious things with complex behaviors should be evident or obvious at all.
But it's conceivable. The fact that they show up in sci-fi demonstrates that. This means a reductionist can't shift the burden to a non-reductionist. The reductionist has the burden of proof.
Ok. Thanks.
I mean, if we are talking about conceivability, it's also conceivable that the mind of supreme being exist, absent anything else, that is, no matter, no physics - no "material substrate".
Reductionism is of limited use.
Could you give a little more detail on why a reductionist would have the burden of proof?
And if they do is it proovable?
Sure. The conceivability of p-zombies demonstrates that a functionalist like Dennett (assuming he qualifies as a functionalist) is only providing possible scenarios. He isn't providing an argument for functionalism. In order to do that, he'd have to actually show how phenomenal consciousness works.
Very interesting post!
I disagree that "all knowledge turns out to be about how the mind represents the world, not the world itself". Our internal representations are just the starting point. Fundamental physics (e.g. quantum field theory; general relativity) are well beyond our intuitive frameworks and the success of this science is a basis for confidence that these models are a good approximation. Any ontology is speculative, but doesn't it make the most sense to extrapolate from such science rather than to abandon it?
Physicalism is coherent: if we are produced from a world that is natural and physical, then our survival would require successful interactions with the actual world- thus implying our representations are functionally accurate- so it's a perfectly reasonable starting point to explore the world and to explain it. It's all about explaining the world to ourselves, so the starting and ending points are on the same basis. What I'm seeing in idealism seems somewhat defeatist:
[Quote]Yet if we get rid of the noumena then we don't have a way to explain why all minds should work the same way, and if they don't work the same way and we can't know the intervening noumena, then we are basically all locked in our own seperate worlds. Or maybe we lose grounds for other minds existing entirely?[/quote]
An ontology is a model of the noumena, is it not? So we aren't at all getting rid of it. Physicalism explains why all human minds work the same: they have the same physical construction, the product of the same evolutionary history- shaped by successful interaction with the world as it is.
If I'm a functionalist, I would tell you that there is no hard problem. Phenomenal consciousness is fully explained (or explainable) by science in its present state. So I'm telling you that it's wrong to try to separate phenomenal consciousness out as a separate item to be explained.
The conceivability of the p-zombie shows that we can't assume that functionality covers phenomenality, because we can conceive of the former without the latter. To make the functionalist case, I'll have to demonstrate exactly how phenomenal consciousness is generated. Science hasn't done that yet.
Which he denies exist. Saw an extended interview with him the other day. His views on consciousness are frankly embarrassing to me. It's as Galen Strawson says you need to be trained to believe in this eliminitavist lunacy.
I have to say, too, that the whole notion of "non-reductive physicalism" (nrp) is somewhat confusing to me. So it's difficult for me to parse it in process terms or in any terms.
NRP seems to stand in opposition to, as an alternative to, reductive physicalism.
I thought maybe he'd eventually come out of it and join the rest of us.
I have no issue with that at all. Great explaination.
At his age, it's not very plausible, he likely thinks every other person is serious deluded. Oh well.
It is hard for me to communicate, because a key aspect of my perspective results from being somewhat autistic and somewhat savantish. But to take a stab at it...
37 years ago I was a young electrical engineer who had studied information processing in artificial neural networks and I was desperately in love. So I got intensely focused on issues I have with communicating and considering how my brain might be weird in some ways. (I didn't know anything about autism or Asperger's at this point, and it would be a couple decades before I was diagnosed with Asperger's.)
Long story short, I came up with an extremely speculative hypothesis about how my brain might be wired differently from those of a lot of people, and this hypothesis seemed extraordinarily powerful in explaining a wide variety of idiosyncratic things about me, in addition to explaining aspects of human thinking more generally. Since that time I have had a lot of insight into psychology and neuroscience in the sense of recognizing a lot of psychology and neuroscience as bollocks that would be replaced by a view more consistent with my understanding given time. And psychology and neuroscience has gradually evolved to be more in line with what I recognized as being key aspects of human thinking.
In fact here's a scientific finding that is a great fit with the sort of thing I would have expected to find based on my speculations of 37 years ago. I recognized the two systems view of Kahneman years before Thinking, Fast and Slow came out.
So an aspect of what it has been like is being ahead of my time, but on the basis of an intuitive 'picture' I wouldn't know how to communicate very well to someone without a background in electrical engineering. Fortunately a substantial number of people have caught up, and are surpassing my understanding by leaps and bounds these days.
Another aspect of being willing to seriously consider physicalism is understanding that we are all social primates here, although that was a more gradual process for me.
I think I've only ever seen one kind of argument for it, and it is fallacious. They all depend entirely on setting up definitions about the world so as to define any non-physical phenomena out of existence. That's question begging and that's irrational.
As one who defends idealism on this forum, I have to take issue with this. I've read (and listened to) quite a bit of Kastrup, and I don't think he says that, although it you could provide a citation supporting the idea I would consider it.
Kastrup himself, describing his own philosophical development, says this:
Quoting Bernardo Kastrup, magazine interview
Now I think that is different from saying that 'the external world is made of mental substance'. I think that use of the term 'substance' arises from the translation of the original Greek 'ouisia', which was found in both Plato and Aristotle, into the Latin 'substantia', and thence into the English 'substance'. 'Ouisia' is a form of the verb 'to be', and accordingly the original word now translated as 'substance' in philosophy (and as distinct from 'substance' in ordinary language') meant something nearer to 'being' (This article discusses the translation of 'ousia'.)
Whereas the phrase 'mental substance' carries the notion that there is some literally 'thinking stuff', or alternatively imbuing matter with mental qualities, as panpsychists such as Goff and Strawson do. And I know for a fact that Kastrup is severely critical of their form of panpsychism (see this post for instance.)
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Any examples of physicalists of that type? I had thought most of them, like those who post here, were naive or scientific realists (=mind-independent world.) I know that John Locke is classified as 'representative realist' but then, I don't know if we would call John Locke a 'physicalist' (although that term had not been coined in his day.)
Talk of mental substance, when everything we know tells us that mental phenomena are entirely dependent on this energetic foundation seems to me to be incoherent. We may not fully understand the idea of physical substance, but we have no idea at all of what mental substance could be.
I find the attempt to dismiss physicalism on the grounds that it entails the idea that everything should be explainable in the terms of fundamental physics to be a red straw herring.
Interesting. I can't quite see the distinction so far. I got from Kastrup that he believes there is only mentation. All of reality is mind-at-large (his version of Schop's Will) and we are all dissociated alters springing from that cosmic consciousness, the way tributaries spring from a river.
As I said earlier, I don't believe there is a coherent distinction. And I received no answer from @Wayfarer in the way of an attempt to explain it. So, I am left thinking that he cannot explain it.
Which is a shame.
That's a bit misleading I think. I agree with you that Kastrup, while interesting in some areas, goes off the wall with attributing "dissociated boundaries" to objects, this is an extreme extrapolation.
But I think we have a pretty decent idea of what mental substance, if one wants to use that term is, we have it with us all the time, it's what we are best acquainted out of anything. Which is why we can read novel, participate as jurors, pass laws, create art, etc.
The nature of the non-mental physical, is rather stranger. We only understand 5% of it, from a theoretical standpoint, even here, we have plenty of problems understanding this 5%, it's the other 95% of the universe, that we know almost nothing about, save that it needs to be postulated in order to make the 5% we do know, work.
2) Monism is true
Therefore: 3) Everything is physical
:up:
According to this belief we're embedded in an economy, and that economy is material, and that it takes priority to the mind-body problem in determining what's real.
If it's dialectical materialism, where is the immaterial part?
:rofl:
In order for it to be dialectical, there has to be an opposition. That's what "dialectical" means in the Marxist sense. Where is the opposition?
I don't think so.
If indeed there were 'a mental substance', and if 'substance' is taken to mean something that actually exists, then why doesn't science detect that property in such a substance? What does 'mental substance' mean?
It's not a hard question to ask of physical substances, as they have objective and measurable attributes. The natural sciences as we all know have made great strides in the analysis of matter. So why can't any progress be made with respect to the purported 'mental substance?' I'm saying that the very simple reason is, that there is no such substance, but I also don't think that Kastrup defends any idea of 'mental substance' (which is the claim I took issue with).
Quoting Tom Storm
As I said in my essay on mind-at-large, this is very similar to mystical theology and to Advaita Vedanta (indeed recently listened to an absorbing dialogue between Kastrup and Swami Sarvapriyananda of the NY Vedanta Society on this topic.) But again, I don't believe that you can legitimately posit the existence of any such super-mind. At best it is an analogy or metaphor, but I think it's a grave error to 'objectify' any such conception, it leads basically to dogmatic beliefs which can never be adequately demonstrated. Essentially you fall back on 'belief in God' and have obtained no philosophical insight whatever.
Quoting Janus
'Before there were any minds' is an idea that only a mind can entertain.
I think that's a good way to characterise it. I think the clearest dividing line is between emergentist and non-emergentists regarding mind. When materialists or physicalists identify as such, what they usually end up meaning is that they don't think any consciousness or intentionality was there at the start.
Galen Strawson possibly bucks this trend as he claims to be a physicalist panpsychist.
I wonder if there isn't some merit to the concept, if reframed in terms of us being elements of a social species, whose thoughts are very much a function of of our encounters with conspecifics.
I did a dive once to try to understand what Marx's ontological outlook was. I read that he was into Feuerbach, so I read about him. I looked into the way Marx was supposed to have used Hegelian dialectic. Once I came out of the dive, my conclusion was that Marx had no coherent ontology. That's just not where his focus was. Calling him a materialist just doesn't mean much (to me, anyway). Does it mean something to you?
Oh, very good. Ignoring the idealists, this brings it down to how we fill out (2).
Manuel mentioned earlier: if dualism is true, we can't figure out how the two substances interact with each other. Monism solves that problem.
Except for the traffic lights.
And so finally we arrive at supervenience. Now it might get interesting.
But others would say that this reality is not material, which is why I think you need Marx to call this a kind of materialism.
I did a thread on that!
What I hear you saying is that Marx was a materialist, except we aren't using the meaning usually associated with that term in philosophy. Ok. That's fine.
You're saying there are multiple meanings to "materialism." That's cool.
Descartes, however infamously, wanted mental substance to be that to which certain attributes are known to belong, in order to distinguish from extended substances to which very different kinds of attributes are known to belong.
See P.P. 1. #51-55 or so. You know .philosophy done in an orderly way. In 1644. Which is some cause for concern in itself.
The whys and wherefores dont matter, but if hed thought a little more about it, he might have said attributes known to belong to a certain thing are themselves mental substances.
Six of one, half dozen of the other: attributes of a certain kind are mental substances, or, mental substance is that to which certain attributes belong.
And a good thread it was, too. But perhaps inconclusive. And certainly folk hereabouts missed it.
Link?
I was just trying to understand the term. I still am.
What aspect(s) are you still trying to understand?
Ok. What is the meaning you're referring to? Can it be spelled out?
The whole thing. :razz:
Me too.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14613/philosophical-jargon-supervenience/
So if I go to Alaska, build a hut and live by hunting moose for ten years, did I lift off from reality?
Thanks.
What about our ancestors who all lived in huts and hunted moose? I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I just don't understand what you're saying.
The economic form was different then so reality was different then.
The part that gets weird is before humanity, if you want to think of this in a common-sense way. For Marx I'd say that the dialectic plays out in nature as well, or at least this what I think is consistent in reading him. The economic is invoked because of our species-being.
The notion of a species-being is something which I think separates Darwin from Marx, though they also have some similar parallels. But come to think of the titular question Darwin is a good justification for materialism, I think: what was formally thought to have a spiritual force was reduced to the mechanisms of nature.
So what? It certainly doesn't follow from that obvious truism that nothing existed prior to the advent of mind. It might follow that nothing was experienced, but that is not the same thing.
Yes, I think that's rightthe idea is that the Universe was not planned or intentionally created and that mind emerged much later in the picture.
It's a philosophical point, not an empirical hypothesis, although I grant it might be a difficult distinction.
My point was only that it does not logically follow. We are well outside of anything that could be empirically tested with this topic. Consequently, I see it as being merely an imaginable possibility that there was nothing prior to mind, but in the face of everything we experience and know, it seems implausibleto me at least.
Yes, I agree.
Quoting Manuel
All those 'mental' things are not independent of the physical, whereas there seem to be many physical things which are independent of the mental, and it's on account of that that it seems (to me anyway) more plausible to think that the physical is fundamental than that the mental is. And I think that's what substance in the philosophical context, at least, means "that which stands under" or something like that.
Quoting Manuel
Yes, we posit dark energy and dark matter to make our theories about what is actually observed consistent with the math. But I'm really not referencing cosmological or physics theory, I'm just going with the more basic fact that everything seems to be constructed of energy in its manifold configurations and conditioned by energy exchange and entropy. We don't know of anything that escapes those conditions.
If one does. I'm saying that 'substance' is a poor choice of words, for the reasons I gave. I'm not denying the reality of the mind.
That seems to me to be a uniting theme on materialism -- something, be it qualia, intentionality, mind, or spiritual things, is somehow reduced to or explained away as a physical, material, or natural process of things. (I'd include supervenience as a kind of reduction, so I mean that term broadly)
Aristotle himself made use of the term ??????????? (hypokeimenon) and demarcated it in the following way:
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypokeimenon#Overview
The term "hypokeimenon" can well translate into fundamental, or else metaphysical, substrate - which could be interpreted to be synonymous to substance as it's now commonly used but avoids the issues which youve addressed in regard to the latter terms technical philosophical meanings.
Of additional note: the Wikipedia page specifies "material substrate" but, going by Aristotle's definition alone, one could also conceive of a mental substrate - or else some other type of metaphysical substrate as might be the case with neutral monism.
As to usage (this as most will commonly interpret things nowadays): Mind - or else, maybe, something mental, such as consciousness - is the metaphysical substrate in idealism; matter is the metaphysical substrate in materialism; and both are metaphysical substrates of equal importance in Cartesian dualism.
Do you see any flaw with the term metaphysical substrate as its just been made use of?
Edit: in my haste, I replaced "substratum" with "substrate". But they are synonymous, and the second does sound better to my ears (so far at least).
Seems fine to me. I'm just calling out what I see as the obvious difficulties posed by the idea of 'mental substance' or saying that the world is 'made of something mental'. I'm not claiming any expertise in Aristotle, metaphysics, or Greek (none of which I have. The article I linked to was the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Aristotle's Metaphysics, by Joe Sachs, who is apparently well-regarded, specifically on the meaning of 'ouisia' which is what became translated as 'substance'.)
Quoting Moliere
It's pretty clear isn't it? Evolutionary biology replaced the Biblical creation mythology, but it also elbowed aside a great deal of philosophy which had become attached to it as part of the cultural milieu. So it seems obvious to anyone here that mind evolves as part of the same overall process through which everything else evolves. And it's then easy to take the step that the human mind is a product of evolutionary processes in just the same way as are claws and teeth. Easy! What could be wrong with that? (That's why I'm an advocate of 'the argument from reason', although it's about as popular on this forum as a parachute in a submarine.)
Nice. Can I borrow this?
I'm more interested in whether we can get an idea of how the definitive argument from physicalism would work with which it could be demonstrated to be true.
But more than an argument it would actually be an operation. The operation would consist of an effective reduction of all the contents of the world objectified by the sciences [biology, economics, psychology, sociology, logic, mathematics, phenomenology, philosophy, etc.] to phenomena, terms, relations, correlations, operations and demonstrations of that specific science that is physics.
For example, a physical theory of supply and demand that reduces it to relationships between, so to speak, their masses and their covalent bonds. A physical theory of the Pythagorean theorem that reduces it to relationships between atoms of some element, etc.
Is that something impossible? If it is impossible then we need another ontology. A more pluralistic ontology that can identify genres and irreducible categories. But also an ontology that identifies how these genres and categories of what exists are related to each other.
There's an element of that, it's hard to think so otherwise, but even taking this to account, I don't see how this expands to objects being "disassociated boundaries", with people you could say that, but I don't see how this entails creates Kastrup's idealism.
Quoting Janus
Ah - ok. Yes, this is reasonable. I believe that the mental is another aspect of the physical though, so it's not an opposition, but your point is well taken.
Quoting Janus
Energy yes - as far as I know, I think this applies. Entropy is tricky though, is the universe an open or closed system? What is order and what is disorder? Ben-Naim has written about this, it's quite interesting.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, substance is problematic and dated. But if qualified, it can be used, though it can lead to confusions.
No, I don't see it as supporting Kastrup's idealism, however I can see how Kastrup's view could be an expression of his recognition of the distributed nature of evolving human understanding, in terms that make sense to him. I think Kastrup engages in magical thinking, but in an attempt to explain something real that he observes.
It seems to me that supervenience is all about existential dependency. As someone mentioned earlier, the difference between emergentists and non-emergentists may prove helpful.
Oh, no, I wouldn't say it's clear. It seems to me that there are materialisms, even though there's a theme that runs through them. So instead of evolutionary biology replacing Biblical mythology we could say that the industrial revolution enabled human beings to recognize economic relationships in all things be it the church, state, or work -- just to contrast the two materialisms that I'm thinking through here.
With respect to the mind-body problem what makes it unclear is what that reduction is between, I think. It's not only hard to specify the relationship, it's even hard to specify what the relationship is between. Further we have a temptation to rely upon our own experiences when thinking about minds, but this has been shown repeatedly to be false, so on top of the ambiguity there is our own weakness in thinking through difficult problems that makes it a little unclear, at least.
Though if the theme holds that might be the beginnings to some clarity.
It's a matter of facing the way things are in reality as compared to being in denial. Brains are a somewhat important aspect of our biology. Why would brains be any less shaped by evolution than other biological organs? So "What could be wrong with that?", aside from your dislike of the idea?
Do you have a scientific explanation as to why minds/brains would somehow be excluded from the effects of natural selection, sexual selection, etc?
I think you're echoing Chalmers, but going beyond asking for a theory of consciousness to asking for a theory of abstractions (like math) as well. He said we should start with just proposing phenomenal consciousness as a thing to be explained by science, similarly to the way gravity was added, with no insistence that science as it is has to be able to answer it. It could be that we have to wait for more quantum theory answers? Or maybe a type of physics that we haven't thought of yet.
I don't think it's about dependency. It's just that two things that track together: "There cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference."
I think this is the most popular view today, right?
This is the ontology he lays out in "The Idea of the World," which is a collection of essays from different times, so it might very well be he has changed his ideas since the. It is in his arguments against physicalism, not in his positive claims for his own substitute, that he talks about how "all the evidence for a physical external world is just as much evidence for an external mental world."
The positive ontology is based on claims that such objects are essentially "composed of mentation." They are ideas/thoughts in a cosmic mind and we, individual minds, a disassociated parts of the universal mind. It's not a process metaphysic where change is fundemental. It doesn't really draw much on the old idea of ousia except in that the focus is on some "thing," the universal mind and its mentation, being fundemental, not change and process as in a process metaphysics. That's all I mean by "substance," here, that there is an ontologically primitive type of thing that exists, whose interactions produce the apparent variety and change we see around us (with or without strong emergence, but probably without given Kim's arguments), as opposed to flux and process being fundemental. Substance is the "substrate" or "prime matter," a concept that seems necessary to make superveniance or causal closure work, at least in forms I am familiar with.
He sort of discusses this here: https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2022/01/reality-is-nothing-and-everything-at.html?m=1
Also relevant, is that, IMO, Rovelli's ideas probably would qualify as a process metaphysics, and that seems to be the difference he is highlighting. When reading Rovelli's Helgoland, it occured to me that his "entanglement is necessarily a dance for three," idea could easily be adopted to pansemiotic theories. "Relations are fundemental," for Rovelli, and these are always in flux, a process; which would be the same if we conceptualized them as semiosis, which is also a process.
No, I'm afraid I've never heard the name before. The guy who does Coursers courses and teaches at Erasmus University? (Found that through Google)
:up:
It about being able to talk about the same thing at two different levels of abstraction, what is viewed as the emergent level and the pre-emergent level.
I think so, yea.
I think you're right, but this has at times been identified as a flaw in superveniance that needs to be corrected. What many physicalists would like to say is that the physical facts underlying any mental facts are more essential, and that the physical in some way causes the mental. This shows up in some formulations of the causal closure principle. If they just track together, then there is no reason for us not to talk about mental events having causal efficacy and driving physical events, and no reason to think of one as fundemental. But this would cut against "all causes are ultimately physical."
Granted, I think a great deal of people with this more aggressive view would still say it's fine to talk about mental causes as pragmatic short hand, but they are still supposed to be not only reducible to the physical, but in some way dependant on the physical in a way that the physical is not dependent on the mental.
If you abandon the idea of the physical being fundemental and the mental being caused-by/emerging from the physical (and not vice versa) then it appears like the monosubstance from which all things emerge being "physical" doesn't really explain anything.
It seems to me constrained by the burden of the physicalist presupposition though, which is why I didn't attempt to actually construct the argument. I don't disagree with the general characterization, as far as it goes. I just don't see where it is going to.
I think that just comes out of being conservative. At least in the anglo-american world, physicalism has been an assumption for a good while.
But multiple realizability means it may not be possible to identify that kind of causal chain. Supervenience becomes the default.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
True. So maybe physicalism has never been an explanation. Maybe it represents a certain mindset? A way of problem solving? One of the outcomes is that if a person is struggling emotionally, they're likely to be piled high with medications meant to support them. To the extent that doing that works, that's the argument for physicalism.
I think there are probably various different ways and extents of conceptualizing reduction too. I would actually speculate that not much actually outright reduces to something else without needing to invoke some kind of prior assumptions about how different theories connect. Maybe not everything can be satisfactorily explained in physical terms because different fields can have very different conceptual and empirical reference frames and then we have things like emergence and multiple-realizability. But if you accept the models that have held up in science then I find it very difficult not to accept that the objects and structures you find everywhere in your theories about the world in principle depend on, are constrained by, supervene on the structures we find in fundamental physics. You see that their behavior is enacted in or realized within the dynamics of those fundamental physical entities when looking at it from the lense of physics and the scales it operates in. Nothing additional in principle is involved in determining those dynamics even if we may want a more amenable higher-order description / explanation of those dynamics. Even if our fundamental theories are incomplete or cannot pragmatically do all the work on their own, it seems reasonable to suggest that we can describe things in the world at various different scales but the resolution at smallest scales will always produce distinctions that are more fundamental to which others can be decomposed, given the assumption of placing our models within spatiotemporal contexts where there is inevitable nesting.
I'd say something more along the lines of physicalism is a label suggesting recognition of the sort of explanations that seem likely to be reliable. You might tell me that the only reason that you don't jump over tall buildings is that your witch doctor told you not to. I'm going to go on respecting the reliability of physics for an explanation.
In any case, physicalism is a philosophical label not an explanation.
Quoting frank
There is something to that. I'd say it does require developing a rather nontraditional conceptual framework in order to consider things from a physicalist perpective.
The question is whether physicalism should be founded on knowledge. Founded on the knowledge provided by our sciences. Otherwise, ironically, physicalism would be anti-scientific. At this point we can ask ourselves if the multiplicity of sciences can give us an idea or evidence of how the world is constituted. No longer taking each science separately but all the sciences as a whole, and taking irreducibility as evidence.
And of course this evidence must be explained: Why can't we reduce mathematics to physics? And most importantly: How is it that without the need for this reduction we can access truths, demonstrations, correlations, empirical verifications, and so many other scientific validations?. Physicalism, consequently, when put into practice, restricts us from knowing many things and knowing many truths about the world. In this sense I think it can be said that physicalism is scientifically false.
Can you support this?
Yes: without the need for this reduction we can access truths, demonstrations, deductions, correlations, empirical verifications, and so many other scientific validations through other sciences.
Maybe.
I think a supervenience relationship of A upon B is a bit weaker than being able to talk about some A phenomenon/property in terms of some distinct set of B phenomenon/properties. All you need to say that A supervenes upon B is that there can be no A difference without a B difference - you don't need to know a correspondence between A and B, just provide an existential guarantee.
How you flesh out the "cannot" in "There cannot be an A difference without a B difference" is also very important. Since, say, if cannot means "physically impossible", it could still be logically possible that there can be an A difference without a B difference. So an established supervenience relationship in terms of physical possibility could still allow a failure of supervenience relationship in terms of logical possibility between the same A and B to fail.
The argument style I find most persuasive for physicalism is causal closure. If you find that A causes B, it's hard to explain how phenomena of type A could impact phenomena of type B without type A and type B having shared causal structure. Like brain lesions and memory, serotonin and happiness, or light and magnetism.
There's lots of wiggle room in setting up a type, lots of wiggle room in what it means for two types to have an interstice, and even more wiggle room in how you could ensure that all types have such an interstice.
Though such an argument doesn't provide a positive characterisation of the physical, just says that whatever the physical is, it's the only big jumble of everything which exists.
Maybe. I just don't see how physicalism differentiates itself from the wider umbrella of naturalism in that case though. I can't think of any reason why objective idealists, dualists, or physicalists couldn't overlap completely on methodology. "Methodological physicalism," seems like a misnomer to me. It seems like it would just be naturalism + a certain set of theory laden ideas. The difference isn't in the methodology, but in contents of the theory ladenness.
This is a good point. I suppose if you have faith in some sort of superveniance relationship where biochemistry reducibly causes mental life, then maybe pharmaceutical treatments seem more plausible. But the way such treatments are selected generally rests on an ontologically neutral set of methodologies.
Plus, I always like to distinguish between physicalism as a philosophy of mind versus physicalism as an ontology. As a philosophy of mind, I think physicalism has some killer arguments that suggest it gets at least some crucial details right. Physicalist philosophy of mind also doesn't have the same need for reductionism to be coherent, minds don't need to reduce to brains, embodied cognition still works, etc. Physicalism as an ontology seems to have significantly larger issues, both with evidence and coherence.
I think you get a lot right here, especially in terms of people not really having taken that much time to consider the issue deeply. That said, I wouldn't underestimate the degree to which reductive physicalism is the default view of the public, and seen broadly as what "science says the world is like."
If I get into debates about free will and people embrace fatalism or are simply afraid fatalism can't be overcome, 9 times out of 10 the reason they think fatalism is true is because:
1. Minds are caused by brain activity.
2. Brains are made of atoms and everything they do can be explained in terms of how atoms act.
3. Atoms lack intentionality.
4. Ergo, intentionality is in some way illusory.
And this is also why compatibilism doesn't seem appealing to them. The problem isn't just that the mind is determined by what comes before any volitional act, it's that mental life has no causal efficacy because real causal power rests with the atoms and molecules. Often I also see a conflation where "if determinism is true then reductionism/smallism is also true," so that evidence for determinism (strong in some contexts IMO) becomes evidence for smallism (weak IMO).
I also found this view to be dominant in neuroscience when I was in school, far more than I have found it to be dominant with physics writers themselves. I think part of the reason for this is the fact that, as mentioned above, physicalism re philosophy of mind is more convincing then physicalism as an ontology, but it's easy to conflate them and take evidence for the former as being evidence for the latter.
I don't think physicalism is anti-science. It certainly can be, but so can idealism or dualism. Dogma and presuppositions invariably affect science, theory ladenness, etc. Physicalism is a philosophical standpoint, and it's key exponents are generally quite aware of this. But I do think you get at a real phenomena where it is possible to conflate physicalism with science, and this can have deleterious effects for how people view or practice science.
I don't see much distinction between physicalism and naturalism, other than in usage. My impression is that "physicalism" is just the word more commonly used in the context of discussing philosophy of mind. For example, the question on the 2020 Philpapers survey is, "Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?". If "physicalism" was replaced with "naturalism" would it make a difference?
A number of writers make a distinction between physicalism and naturalism on the basis of the inclusion or exclusion of the role of subjective point of view in the determination of the object.
Evan Thompson writes:
I think Joseph Rouses distinctions are helpful. He distinguishes between orthodox, liberal and radical naturalisms.
:up: Thanks for the clarification. Much nearer to how I understand it also.
Quoting wonderer1
Because evolutionary biology is not philosophy, per se, and never set out to address issues of epistemology and metaphysics. Also because of the role that evolutionary biology occupies in culture as a kind of secular religion. And because of its place in the materialist polemics of new atheism where it is presented as a philosophical perspective when its clearly not.
[quote=Evan Thompson]The very idea that our cognition should be nothing but a re-presentation of something mind-independent consequently has to be abandoned.[/quote]
:100:
Quoting Joshs
Just checking is this Thompson? I always thought this quote was credited to Dan Zahavi, (2008) Internalism, Externalism, and Transcendental Idealism. Synthese 160:355-374
Quoting Tom Storm
Youre right, the first two paragraphs are Thompson and the last two are from Zahavi. Good catch ( didnt think anyone was paying attention).
I think the terms do overlap for philosophy of mind. It's in ontology when I see more room between them. In ontology, physicalism is normally packaged with ideas about supervenience, causal closure, and to a lesser extent, smallism, that I don't see as being essential to naturalism. Plus, if they were to become synonyms then what do we do about all the idealists who claim to be naturalists but not physicalists! (Or the physicalists who appeal to non-natural, eternal propositions to explain language)
This too.
As to Thompson, this is a good description of the sort of backdoor dualism that can creep into physicalism, and substantial problems with popular versions of it. I'm very sympathetic to realist intuitions, but I think there is a serious problem in trying to define realism in terms of entities' "mind-independence" when the very fact that we are thinking of them shows they are, in a crucial way, not independent of our minds. The only realism that would seem to work to me would be a realism that wraps around/contains the subjective/objective distinction, rather than trying to reduce one to the other.
That's a non-sequitur. How about a more substantive response? Why would brains be any less shaped by evolution than other biological organs?
Philosophy doesn't need to be the sort of anti-intellectual activity you would have it be.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting from your link:
I am asking a scientific question. The only religion involved, is the religion you bring to the question and the only times you object to science being brought up on TPF is when it challenges your religious beliefs. Can you put your religion aside and suggest a scientific answer?
Physicalism can't explain how traffic lights work. There simply is no physical description of why it is that the traffic stops at a red light, and proceeds on the green. Any suggestion otherwise amounts to wishful thinking.
The statement that "only physical statements are true" is not a statement in physical terms. It is neither falsifiable nor demonstrable.
On the other hand, when one does physics, one must look only for physical explanations. Methodologically, physicists must restrict themselves to only physical explanations.
Notions such as idealism and panpsychism bring with them their own conceptual issues, at least as dubious as physicalism.
The solution is to accept that there are different ways of talking about different subjects, that we do a range of different things in the world.
To borrow an example from Ryle, a watercolour of a mountain is not poor geology, and a stratigraphic map is not a poor piece of art. They are doing very different things, and are associated with very different ways of talking.
"Supervenience" is not an explanation so much as a description of patterns between physical descriptions and the many other descriptions we use to find our way around.
For a bit more from Ryle, take a look at Chapter Five from Dilemmas
I don't disagree but can I ponder this with you for a bit?
My understanding of physicalism is that it tends to deny the existence of non-physical substances or entities and proposes that all phenomena, including mental states and consciousness, can be reduced to or explained by physical processes.
Quoting Banno
Perhaps not when seen from one perspective, but is it not the case that traffic lights and the convention that we stop can be explained by physical processes? Behaviors are physical. A code of conduct (which is what traffic lights amount to) is surely reducible to physical processes?
The physicalist sees a "dead" universe, so to speak. Scientists don't consider the possibility that the universe is alive or developing according to psychological rules. If an idealist looks at the world that way, then yes, that idealist is basically a naturalist.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Embodied cognition just aims to explain some features of functionality. But I admit that the term kind of irritates me. It's not like we overlooked the relationship between mind and body as we went about discovering how the body works.
How? Show your working. In terms only found in physics.
Your suggestion takes the convention of stopping for red as a non-physical behavioral convention, right?
But how is this different to a dog being trained to bark for food? Isn't the causal chain which lead to the behavior determined by physical processes which can be explained by physics?
Perhaps you are saying that intentionality can't be explained by physics?
Isn't that like asking someone who wrote a program in python to write it instead in machine code? Possible but a pain in the ass. Not that I know anything about programming.
Can you quote anyone calling herself a physicalist saying anything remotely like that?
Yes, I can see that, though I also think maybe the general public might not really know what reductive physicalism means their views might be still quite vague even if they lean toward reductive physicalism. And I think its possible to lean or are drawn toward reductive physicalism even if they don't actually hold the view. I think I am probably in that category. I don't think I am actually a reductive physicalist at all but there is this kind of gravitational pull tugging at my intuitions. I don't know if it just has something to do with how compelling a person finds science, or something like that.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think I know what smallism is but tbh I don't find compatibilism that compelling for reasons like these.
That is hilariously mistaken but neo-darwinist materialism is a different topic so I wont pursue it here.
Yes, it's a matter of perspectiveI see it more as a case of those being better understood as physical, material or natural processes than as being "reduced to explained away" by that understanding. It doesn't seem to me that anything important is being lost or diminished by thinking that way.
Quoting Tom Storm
Cheersbut, I cannot loan what I never owned.
Quoting Manuel
I agreeI tend to see 'mind' as a verb not a noun, and I see mental functions as one kind of physical function. The tricky part is that the physical aspects of mental functions are well-hidden from us; we don't so easily feel the physical aspects of mental functions as we might, for example, with digestion. We don't feel our brains, I mean that's why they can be operated on without anaesthetic.
Quoting Manuel
Right, entropy is a complex and hard concept to pin down, but I was referring just to the way everything seems to "run down" over time. the way heat disperses and things in general are dissipative structures. Thanks for the text reference; I''ll check it out,
Quoting Manuel
I think some of the confusions comes with thinking that only objects or entities exist. This may be a spin-off of substance thinking. I see minding, like digesting or running as real functions and "the mind" as a reified container metaphor.
Quoting Tom Storm
Well, there is that bit...
I'm guessing that the way the brain works when someone stops at a traffic light is not the same as the way a dog salivates at the sound of a bell. Stopping at the red light is understood from childhood, I'm thinking that few driving instructors have to explain it to their students, but instead move on to the "how" of when to press the brake and when to drive through.
But there's more here than an individual brain. The lights will fail if other folk do not also follow the procedure. SO you and I also follow the procedure on the understanding that others will do likewise - there's a group intentionality involved.
And then there is the planning that goes in to implementing this system, from the light factory to the urban planner to the magistrate and parliament.
Yet stoping at the red light is a relatively simple social institution.
The supposition is that this is
Quoting bert1
but that is an algorithmic process, and it is far from clear that brains, let alone minds and social institutions, function in such an algorithmic fashion. Some supose that the "supervenience" is still algorithmic, that
Quoting frank
is a shorthand for a physically causal link, such that B is emergent from A. But human behaviour is more complex than that. You could right now lift your arm, but will you or won't you? Which will you choose, and once you have made your choice, will you enact it or change your mind? And now that I have said that, will you change your mind again? The recursion and iteration involved in your deciding whether to raise your arm or not place it well outside any calculable algorithm.
So physics is not capable of giving an account of the simplest social interactions.
Yet even if it were, if some algorithm could set out such a situation, what we would have is what we already have in our folk descriptions of how traffic lights work. Nothing would be gained.
Quoting wonderer1
The suggestion cuts out the interminable fluff of substance versus materialism versus naturalism and so on seen here.The stuff found in physics texts serves to tie down the term"physicalism".
I probably agree with you, I was just putting a counter-argument. But if I adopt a reductive bottom-up causality position, I'm not convinced you have shown me I am wrong. They may not be more than the individual brain and its model of the social world. And the model is itself, the argument will go, is nothing more than a stupendously complex brain process. But yeah, I don't find that plausible either.
I've mostly seen the distinction come up in the context of scientists saying they practice methodological naturalism as scientists but are not metaphysical naturalists. I'm not in a position to speak very exhaustively about what some philosophers may say. :wink:
Why do you ask?
Quoting bert1
Idealism denies the first premise, which is what several folk here are doing. I'm working on the second, pointing out that physical explanations are inadequate for many, many of the things we do, and that we use other explanations that work in these situations.
Quoting bert1
I've also taken issue elsewhere with the overly simplistic notion that physical explanations are "causal", the image of A causing B causing C and the folk hereabouts who think this an adequate description of the world. "Cause" isn't a term used in physics, having been replaced by maths since Galileo. But it lingers in meta-physics and in pop philosophy of science.
Just that for physicalists (and secular humanists) I know, they would argue that they hold to methodological naturalism and not philosophical (or metaphysical) naturalism. The latter being a truth claim about reality they believe is unwarranted, the former being a more (shall we say) pragmatic approach to philosophical enquires. I'm pretty sure AC Grayling puts it similarly although he calls himself a naturalist rather than a physicalist.
Yes, that's really interesting, I noted your post about that with interest. Worth a thread perhaps. The place of causality in nature, if anywhere,
Is that so? In making predictions, doesnt physics implicitly appeal to causation? Isnt causation implicit with every use of because?
What Galileo dispatched was telos, not causation as such.
So are you saying it's a rhetorical ploy? Attempting to manipulate people into seeing things as you wish?
Feel free to explain, but I'll take that as a, "No.", to my question "Can you quote anyone calling herself a physicalist saying anything remotely like that?"
Do you believe there is a meaningful distinction between a physicalist and a naturalist?
The naturalist, presumably has a broader scope than a physicalist and will point to the notion that everything can be explained by natural laws and phenomena (as opposed to the supernatural), not necessarily limited to the physical - other disciplines beyond physics which would incorporate social interactions and codified behaviors, rituals, anthropology, biology, etc.
I guess the upshot of this might be that if we can confirm that there is an afterlife or a Platonic realm, then these become known as natural.
Oh, there's . It may be too late to move causation to a new thread.
Quoting Wayfarer
ok, so we have something to work with, what would be an example? Here's a nice description of the physics of billiards, using formulae for conservation of momentum and so on. Nary a mention of cause - doesn't that seem odd, if physics is about A causing B causing C....? Does making the "implicit" explicit give us any advantage?
You're familiar with Russell's take on this.
Smallism is a neat term for the idea that "facts about large things are reducible to facts about smaller parts." Wholes are defined by their parts, rather than vice versa. Whatever is fundamental
in the universe must exist on the smallest scales. It preferences "bottom-up" explanations over "top-down" ones.
For example, consider explaining why balloons take on a spherical shape. We could explain this in terms of the fact that the roughly spherical shape will best equalize pressure, a top-down explanation. Alternatively, we could describe it solely through a description of molecules bouncing off one another. Smallism would tend to preference the latter, and that might very well be the right approach in that example, but bottom-up explanations don't always seem possible (e.g. the heat carrying capacities of metals).
On the face of it, parts being defined by the whole of which they are a part seems like it could be equally valid. However, I can certainly see why smallism is popular. One of the best ways to figure out how something works is to break it down, and narrowing your focus can also make a problem more soluble. So, I think the popularity of the idea stems from how successful decomposition has been as a research method.
I think problems crop up when this tendency graduates from being a general approach to figuring things out to a metaphysical position about the nature of reality. For one, there are some phenomena that we have good reasons to think might not be reducible to their parts (e.g. molecular structure). The whole idea of fundamentality adds another wrinkle (e.g. fields that fill the entire universe in some ways appear more fundamental than particles.) There are good arguments that computation isn't decomposable this way either, and there is a lot of support for pancomputationalism in the physics community, which would entail that smallism is simply a flawed position.
I think that might be right in a way. A lot of scientific knowledge comes from breaking things down, which lends credence to the smallist account. That said, a great many scientists don't buy into smallism and a lot of our best explanations come in top-down forms, so I could see how it might depend on exactly which science you delve into the most. Neuroscience tends to be very bottom up, particularly because we lack good top-down theories for major phenomena like consciousness. Physics tends to have a lot of top-down explanations.
My $0.02 is that smallism itself is a speculative proposition, and if chemists, working in a field as mature as any, are still debating if molecular structure is reducible, then it isn't on particularly solid ground.
True. Although I've considered before that if you accept computational theory of mind, still the most popular theory in cognitive science, then nothing necessarily precludes the entire universe from being conscious or becoming conscious. Not panpsychism, but a "cosmic mind" having very slow thoughts, the stuff of click bait articles to be sure, but possible!
Yeah, I don't love it either. And it seems like common sense, but when it comes to debates about compatibilism, etc. it is nice to have a set of ideas summed up in one term, expressing how people aren't just brains, and how our actions are constantly changing the environment, so that identifying the "will" in time and space gets rather tricky.
More like
Quoting wonderer1
...removing the unnecessary emergent stuff. Physics does not make substantive use of the notion of substance... (see what I did there?)
Physicists look only for physical explanations.
:lol:
Yeah, I see what you did there on multiple levels. However, the person you quoted looks at things at various level including physics, chemistry, biology neuroscience, psychology, etc. So unfortunately you still haven't come up with a quote to support your claim. Care to try again?
Thats a weird and messy way to understand it, in my opinion. Much of physics is theoretical and abstract. Not even physicists believe theyre true.
The root word gives it away. Its not physics or physicism or any sort of positivism. Its physicalism. Its much simpler and cleaner to understand it as the thesis that everything is physical.
I think your dismissal of the idea of causation as being relevant in physics is overly simplistic. One of the issues with thinking in terms of local efficient causes is that it ignores global conditions, which produces a false impression of strict linearity or "causal chains" instead of networks of energetic influences.
Causation can broadly be understood as energy exchange, without the elimination of complexity, an elimination introduced by simplistic "efficient" notions of causation, and this understanding in terms of energy would seem to be compatible with physics, with the rest of science and with the understanding of everyday events in general.
What I did was to suggest that we could simplify the issue of what "physicalism" is by sticking to physics.
It's not obligatory. But if physicalism is not about the sort of stuff that goes on in physics books, then what?
At the least, physicalism has something to do with physics.
It involves the evidence of offered by physics, surely, but also some other sciences as well. Given its relation to philosophy of mind, its also about biology and chemistry, for example.
I think reifying "physicalism" as you seem to be doing is kind of silly. The word "physicalism" is a label people use for a set of perspectives some people have.
You seem intent on setting up a strawman, rather than deal with the perspectives of individuals who find it to be a useful label.
Banno embodies a jester. Once you realize that his posts are easily understood.
Sure. Physicalism supposes biology and chemistry are variations of physics.
How is what I said a reification of physicalism? What could that mean?
Directly to the personal attack. Nice.
But what I've said here does negate the possition you have take over your last few threads, especially the causal necessity stuff. I'm not surprised that you feel the need to resort to this.
Well, a fucking brilliant jester, and I enjoy a lot of what he has to say. So I'll leave that there. :wink:
I'll leave you to think about it.
It doesnt? From the article: When a body is subjected to a force, the second principle of dynamics asserts that its acceleration and speed change. When one body collides with another, momentum is created. The collision causes the momentum to be created. You dont need to use the word cause to convey that, which is why I said it is implicit.
Quoting Banno
Well, when youre out of ammo, youll resort to throwing anything.
Quoting Janus
Thats the difference between classical physics and more recent science, systems theory, biosemiotics, complexity sciences and so on. They all take into account context in a way that Newtonian physics does not.
Quoting Banno
Maybe, but I've always thought that both physicalism and materialism were theories of mind, as usually discussed anyway. I'm not at all sure what one has said about something when one says it is physical, but typically people don't mean 'has a mind' or 'is conscious'. But some think it's fine to include mind in the conception of physical.
I didn't mean it as an insult, only a description. Jester's are entertaining after all.
If I link to this image, I'm not using it, I'm advertising Madden's web site...
Perhaps physicalism is the belief that these texts not only can, but should serve as a basis for metaphysical theses.
Instead, define physicalism as everything that is physical AND identify that physical brains can deal with non-physical subject matter. That accounts for everything and gives some insight to why matter and mind are different in kind. And doesn't resort to a supernatural.
Certainly what I have said is close to what Chalmers thinks. Although I would not go so far as to talk about the mental, the mathematical, etc. as something fundamental in the sense that simple fundamental particles exist. I would simply say that there are phenomena that are given. And we are fortunate that to the extent that we work with these phenomena, other things appear: laws, relationships, correlations, demonstrations, and certain epistemological closures (or categorical closures) that make a set of phenomena and objects something exclusive to a science. : Physics does not have language as its object of study, nor the rational actors of the economy, nor the Pythagorean theorem, etc.
Something that generally happens to reductionism when it fails to carry out a reduction is that it tries to proceed by presupposing semantically, phenomenologically, and practically what it intends to reduce. To take an example: If we imagine that thanks to some kind of super advanced experiment we can associate a certain experience (say, seeing a dog) with some quantum determination in the brain, we have to talk to our guinea pig in terms different from those of physics so that we can carry out the association: "Think of a dog", or "see this picture of a dog" we say to the subject of the experiment. But without the semantic content of those words and the knowledge of what an experience is (without using terms from physics) we would not be able to carry out the experiment or any association between the experience and "brain physics."
As result these things that appear to us in scientific practice (relations, correlations, discoveries, demonstrations, principles, laws, etc.) are also literally reduced to nothing if we carry out a physicalist reduction. The result is that we have a poorer, reduced and scarce knowledge of the world.
I agree nothing is lost. Though I want to highlight the possibility of eliminative materialism. This is where the use of texts will become a little tricky, and controversial: if we were to set up a gradient between positions from the eliminative materialist to the non-reductive physicalist, what does the eliminative materialist eliminate? My thought is the non-reductive physicalist would accept at least some anthropology as worthy of ontological thought.
So you think numbers are phenomena? I had thought they were [i]intelligible objects[/I] and, as such, distinguishable from senseable phenomena.
Agree with your second point.
I agree that there is a difficulty for physicalism in dealing with metaphysics, including its own.
Is metaphysics some third thing?
Matter, mind and metaphysics.
Seems like matter and mind are all you need.
There is wiggle room on what a reduction consists in.
EG, from the linked SEP article, one version of reductionism is:
If you could provide a theoretical guarantee that, eg sensation type properties require changes in neurone type properties in human bodies, that would be a supervenience physicalism without expressing any particular correspondence between sensation type properties and neurone type properties.
As an example, you can derive Coulomb's Law from Maxwell's equations - deriving point charge behaviour from electromagnetic field behaviour. That's a "bridge law" reduction.
But you perhaps can't derive society behaviour from chemical behaviour. Even though you can argue persuasively that every societal change must be associated to a change in the chemical constituents of entities within that society... And if no constituents changed there could have been no societal change. That's an absence of a "bridge law" reduction, but within the scope of a supervenience physicalism.
Lost me.
I think that it's the generally desired path, but that in terms of science texts that relationship is still being worked out. Not that it's an unreasonable belief that they cohere, even -- but there's no deduction of natural selection from physics, at least, so we'd have to specify this coherence in spelling out a physicalism.
Quoting fdrake
Nice. That's very clear.
That is, physicalism would be paradoxical.
Okay, got it.
I have my own categories.
I'm not sure what you mean by this. I read a lot of popular physics and physics articles and cause is mentioned frequently. There is, for instance, all of Wheeler and Penrose's work on retrocausality.
If "cause" had been removed from "physics" back in Galileo's day then why was Russell's argument against cause novel and influential (for a time) in physics proper? Causal eliminitivism ala Russell is a decidedly [I]minority[/I] opinion, while the rejection of causal relations is probably safely in the majority, making the status of cause nuanced. Which is why you still see books being published with titles like "Causation and Its Basis in Fundemental Physics."
Questions of causation, like eternalism, are properly part of metaphysics, but that doesn't stop physicists from writing about them, even in popular science books. Which is why it so easy to get the idea that "physics says eternalism is true," when in fact it's:
A. Hard to see how this could ever be empirically tested.
B. The popularity of eternalism with physicists is largely grounded in [I]philosophical[/I] arguments, also with Russell being very prominent there, that have become part of the physics literature through osmosis. E.g., when Davies discusses why eternalism is the case, all his arguments have their origins with philosophers.
"Cause isn't in physics," would seem to me something like "physics shows eternalism to be the case," except at least in the latter case eternalism is at least widely popular, whereas eliminitivism on cause is not.
And while I assume my reading could be biased, I hope specialist reviewers would keep stuff like this out of abstracts if I was that far off.
There remains the disconcerting ideas of Ratcliffe and the like. But would that amount to physicalism? I'm not sufficiently familiar with the argument. I could see a connectionism running alongside a folk account of intentionality, but again it is difficult to see how there could be causal links between them.
Paul Churchland's work has been very interesting.
I've had an eye out for a few years, using test searches and the like, and while it appears occasionally in more philosophically oriented articles, its appearances in physics texts appear overwhelmingly incidental. It would be wonderful to run my suspicion through Google Ngram Viewer, or through Wolfram, to get something firmer.
What I would like to draw attention to is the different way "cause" is used in talk of scientific method and metaphysics, to how it is used in science texts. The descriptions of the movement of billiard balls mentioned above use equations of conservation of momentum, because they are far more nuanced than "A causes B". Talk of causes in physics is usually shorthand or folk talk for something far more useful.
So my ancient and now decrepit copy of Sears Zemansky and Young doesn't mention "cause" in the index. Nor does Penrose' index in The Road to Reality.
So much for it being a key concept in physics.
Aye. Though I don't think this is required for physicalism to be true. There existing a reduction to the physical is a much different claim than the existence of a supervenience relation between the physical and another property type. Reduction seems to be a specific type of supervenience, insofar as "X is F iff X is G expresses a bridge law" has "X is F iff X is G" as a constituent, and if that is true then an F change is identical to a G change. It would also be a supervenience relationship the other way around, because also every G change is identical to an F change.
Quoting Banno
Then it would seem anomalous monism, as you've construed it, is consistent with physicalism. Anomalism seems much more tied to the behaviour of reductive explanations than on the dependence of property types upon each other, but please correct me if I'm wrong.
Quoting Banno
If you're speaking about Ratcliffe's account of intentionality, it isn't folk. Folk theory of intention for Ratcliffe consists of equating each intentional state with a propositional attitude. He rejects that theory of intention.
Quoting Banno
You could get causal links without expressing a bridge law maybe. eg taking absurd amounts of testosterone can be a direct cause of violent intrusive thoughts, so "I wanted to kill the person in front of me because I've been injecting a lot of steroids recently" perhaps works. You could also have a really patchy network of reductive explanation connections between property types, with perhaps it being in principle possible to give them, while there being a total connection of property types through the supervenience relation... Even if those supervenience relations don't all point at the physical.
Don't the supervenience relations all point at the physical for Davidson?
Well, yes, it is; hence the "monism"... But I would flip this and say that if monism must be true, then the only possibility is anomalous monism, hence preserving folk psychology.
Quoting fdrake
From what I've understood, I'm not in disagreement with Ratcliffe here. If the theory of intention is that intentions are somehow coded into neural networks, I very much doubt it. I don't think it likely that an MRI will one day identify the neural network for "Banno believes tea should be black". Quoting fdrake
If I've understood this, I'm not sure i'd count such things as casual - wouldn't they be closer to a neural version of "correlation does not imply causation"?
This is all a bit speculative, of course.
Uh, even the Neo-Russelians admit that they have a major problem with how much scientists appeal to cause: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1093/bjps/axl027?journalCode=bjps
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://prce.hu/w/teaching/HitchcockRussell.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjwyqPR48KDAxVEjYkEHbtcCgMQFnoECBoQAQ&usg=AOvVaw3v878Do8RSObSgYqoN9Rpb
And these are the supporters of Russell saying the elimitivism case is DOA (although able to be resurrected in some respects).
This seems relevant since it seems like you are saying that something like Russell's argument is the cause ( :wink: ) for the lack of cause in the sciences? Or physics anyhow. The special sciences are always going on about causation.
Hmm. I've no access to the article, I'm unable to see any data from the abstract, so why do they "admit that they have a major problem with how much scientists appeal to cause"?
The Hitchcock article makes much the same point I am making.
At the very least we might learn from Anscombe that cause is more than pattern, and acknowledge the place of intention and agency in our casual descriptions.
I mean phenomena in the sense that they are objects that are presented and prepared for scientific work. These objects, however, may be the product of a historical construction, but at some point in their history they are given in an epistemological cut from which they are presented as a category in the process of closure and establishment of sui generis circular relationships. In general, when we try to learn a science that is already historically established and solidified, the objects we learn are also solidly established. These objects are not given to us as something dependent on a more fundamental reality (say, physics) but as sui generis objects, arranged in a body with a certain autonomy and ontological discontinuity with respect to other objects of a different kind. When we learn mathematics we do not learn "the neurochemical composition of numbers", nor is it necessary to do so to access its scientific nature: We access demonstrations, laws, necessary relationships, etc. given in a gnoseological and ultimately ontological discontinuity.
(And :100: for the first poster Ive ever known to use gnoseological in a post. :party: )
Sure, it is an account that may sound persuasive to some, but I do appreciate him attempting to sketch out a framework of our mental activity and I do sympathize with his focus on trying to provide an alternative to scientism (which he calls "materialism", which I don't think necessarily follows at all).
Quoting Janus
Very tricky yes. I mean, I agree that at least some important non-mental physical aspects are not felt by us, and obviously some parts of the brain play a role in experience which as parts, are not felt as experience.
But then we do know, from the inside, what a brain is "like" by having experience, given that experience must arise from this organ. The issue is, what parts of it are we experiencing? That's very hard to know at this stage.
Hitchcock does not agree with you. He says Russell's premise re "cause being irrelevant because it is absent from the advanced sciences," (e.g., physics) is demonstrably false and also, not even good grounds for the idea that "cause is unscientific." Go check out where he covers Suppes after Cartwright.
Suppes 1970 writes:
Hitchcock writes:
[Quote]
Since Suppes wrote this almost forty years ago, I conducted a quick and unsystematic internet search of the Physical Review journals (a series of 9) from 2000 to 2003 and found 76 articles with cause, causes, causality, or some similar term in the title. Here are the first three examples listed: "Tree Networks with Causal Structure (Bialas et al. 2003), Specific-Heat Anomaly Caused by Ferroelectric Nanoregions in Pb(Mg[sub
1/3]Nb[sub 2/3])O[sub 3] and Pb(Mg[sub 1/3]Ta[sub 2/3])O[sub 3] Relax-ors (Moriya et al. 2003) 'Observables in causal set cosmology (Brightwell et al. 2003)
So Suppes observation remains true in 2003.[/quote]
And it's easily demonstrable today that "cause" is not absent from the "advanced sciences," if this is to be defined as physics, because it is particularly frequent in discussions of quantum foundations.
So a key premise of Russell's argument, is simply not true. And I've seen other people look back to his era and question if it was [I]ever[/I] true, or just something he pronounced without anyone really calling him out on it. After all, that premise mattered less when he advanced his idea a century ago, since the almost 200 year old definition of "the law of causality" as framed by Mill was the key target.
The argument against Mill and Kant is mostly successful. The premises that "cause" is incoherent, and not useful because it is not used in the advanced sciences, is not.
In the bigger picture, it seems like another example of the larger problem that Russell and some of his associates had of thinking that "if I can't understand something or formalize it then it doesn't exist, is a 'pseudo-problem,' or is 'meaningless.'" But the failure of thinkers to produce a widely agreed upon, philosophically adequate explanation of a term cannot entail that it is meaningless, else we have to allow that Dennette is correct and that we cannot be concious due to the lack of a widely agreed upon explanation of the term (and we probably can't meaningfully be communicating in a thing called "language" either, since language would also be "meaningless").
Hitchcock also summarizes why Cartwright and others give us good reason to believe that problems with causation are particularly acute in the most general/universal settings (e.g. cosmology, Russell's original example of gravitation) for [I]epistemic[/I] reasons. Whereas these issues tend to be less acute when we can remove observation from the frame of reference, which would explain why cause is much more common in some areas of physics than others, and remains very popular in the special sciences.
I'd just add that pancomputationalism is extremely popular in physics, which has built in a ready made explanation of how past states dictate prior states that could be used to understand cause, granted in a way that doesn't line up with naive views exactly. People advocating for some form of pancomputationalism would include Vedral, Lloyd, Tegmark, Deutsche, Davies, etc.
AFAIK Ratcliffe's rejection of a folk theory of intention is much different than trying to replace it with neural network behaviour. But that takes us elsewhere.
Quoting Banno
Sorry for my lack of clarity. I had imagined a big network, not a neural network, of all different events and properties. Between those events and properties are links. If type X is reducible to type Y, draw an arrow from X to Y. If everything is reducible to the physical, you could travel from every property to the physical properties in that network, following the arrows. That's what "everything reduces to the physical" looks like, it's a network of everything with the physical as a sink, drawing everything in.
Do the same procedure for supervenience. Make a second network. If everything ends up pointing to the physical in that one, that's physicalism.
Those networks don't need to be identical. In fact, the reducible explanation network could be very unconnected - we might just be crap at explaining things in the grand cosmos -, but everything supervenes on the physical regardless.
I take the anomaly in anomalism to be referring to the possible paucity of connections in the explanation network. An event with property type X occurs and it serves as an explanation of property type Y... That doesn't need to happen with most pairs of property types. But also it can happen with any pair. Making the network of explanations look patchy, but potentially can be filled in. Whereas you can draw a line to the physical from any starting point in the network of supervenience.
I would posit myself as a physicalist emergentist. What type is still up in the air since that's a realm depending on yet unproven scientific theories.
The reason is simply that it has the most verifiable evidence in science, which in turn is arguably the best way for humans to form conclusions about anything. If we have a gradient between pure abstract fantasy and hard rigorous facts, then it doesn't matter if someone tries to argue for something like "brain in a vat" since it only produce an "anything goes" scenario that renders philosophy and reality totally meaningless to even pursue. Even with such a possibility we are required to form a framework that functions for our thinking, something that we can both theoretically handle and practically apply. And that means turning down the side of the gradient that leans towards abstract fantasy and turn up the gradient closer to hard rigorous facts. In essence, in order to even begin to think about the world and try to explain anything, we require a framework for which we operate in. And since the most effective and functioning framework is science, then we might be required to operate in physicalist emergentism as its the the realm of thinking that is closest to the evidence found in science.
Other theories quickly falls back into abstract fantasies. Most often related to a sort of arrogance of our species, putting humanity on an arbitrary pedestal because of our ego and extrapolating metaphysical concepts out of it. This egocentric framework generates everything from detaching consciousness from reality and religious claims. But there's very little evidence for any of those frameworks other than the pure will of our ego to put ourselves in the center of the universe. Forming a rational and logical explanation of reality requires a detachment from ourselves and our ego, we must kill our ego before analyzing reality, otherwise we apply all sorts of emotional and arbitrary values to a subject before even attempting to theorize about it. And we are utterly irrational, emotional beings with so many instinctual tendencies that guide our biases that we absolutely, brutally, must kill our ego before trying to explain anything. Or else we doom ourselves to be just as irrational as the hunter/gatherer who dance around the fire ignited by a lightning storm.
Why physicalist emergentism? Because it seems to be the most holistic concept that resonates between almost all fields in science and our conceptual understanding of reality. Almost every field in modern science seem to point towards physical nature producing complexities that form separate higher emergent properties. And in this framework it becomes clear that most of the counter arguments pointing out the gaps in scientific theories mostly just point towards the gap between low complexity and the emergent properties that forms out of higher complexity. Forming a counter argument that uses the mismatch between them as the entire foundation for calling it wrong. I strongly believe that this is the main reason we don't have a theory of everything yet, because we desperately try to match up two sides of the same coin without accepting them being two separate sides. We try to combine the low complex state with the high complex state believing we would find an explanation for the emergent properties. It's why this inability to find a theory of everything so closely resembles our inability to explain consciousness, because it operates on the same principles; we observe consciousness and try to explain it with neurons or specific parts of the brain and body, yet unable to connect between them to fully explain. But if consciousness is an emergent property that appears out of an almost infinite complexity that is the result of an extreme amount of simpler parts interacting with each other, then it is impossible to just draw a simple line between the two. And in order to explain it we require a better holistic framework and therefor combining the physicalist perspective with emergentism.
This is found in everything, in theories of consciousness, physics, biology, math etc. Chemistry is entirely built upon working with these emergent properties by disregarding much of the details in physics and operating on primarily the emergent properties of matter, forming new emergent properties. In math it explains the infinity of decimals in constants, which might not even be infinite, only that the geometrical precision ends at the Planck scale leaving us with such an undefined point of last decimals that not only is the number too long for us to calculate, but also ending up being a variable if able to. That since the number of decimals is so long, the complexity is so vast that we require a computer as complex as reality itself to compute it. And fundamentally makes math a blunt tool to calculate reality for us and therefor we have problems connecting low complexity with emergent properties.
So if these phenomena and observations are so common everywhere, so ingrained in everything around us, why, in the name of Occam, would we argue for any other explanations; primarily operating out of our arrogance as humans, our ego and will to be special? We have no evidence for ourselves being that special, so why would we begin with such an unproven starting point which so many other theories operate from?
Why not instead operate through a framework that rhymes with what we actually can observe almost everywhere around us? It is at least the most viable framework that exist at the moment and we should always use the sharpest tool we have, regardless of how much it might hurt our ego.
Extraordinarily well stated.
If I understand correctly, you are referring to something similar to Kant's categories. In this case to the quantity category. Well, I'm not a big fan of nativism. Although I consider that there is certainly a disposition of consciousness that allows access to mathematical knowledge without many problems. That is, consciousness is not primarily a tabula rasa but is already in a certain continuity with a differentiated world (here differentiation would be a genesis of the category of quantity). The mathematical knowledge that we learn as children shapes this disposition of the human intellect to the point that we can conceive a mathematical object in itself and in its ideality. I speak of an objective and historically rooted constructivism.
Now, the history, this history since I am born and molded to the point of being able to conceive mathematical objects in their ideality and objectivity cannot be described in terms of physics. It is like founding epistemology from quantum physics. That doesn't make any sense. In this sense the whole is more than what we believe its parts to be. Even the idea that we talk about a whole and its parts seems to falter. We may have to talk about different realities in relationship where no reality is more fundamental than the other. This would be a materialism, but a materialism of the Platonic Symploke without substance and without fundamentalism in order to respect the relative autonomy and irreducibility of the dimensions of reality evidenced by the sciences.
I cant say Ive heard this statement. Maybe a quote is in order. But, given that all statements are produced by physical beings, are etched or spoken into physical mediums, and non-physical statements cannot be shown to exist, it does check out.
This is sort of what Wittgenstein is saying in the Tractatus, right? It doesn't get the attention it deserves because it spoils all the fun. :razz:
I think that's similar to saying gravity is an explanandum in its own right. We're just saying it's a given.
I don't mean given in the sense of something given once and for all without the need for explanation. I am referring to something given in a historically validated scientific field. When you learn mathematics you access demonstrations, laws, necessary relationships and so on that you can practice without having to think about a supposedly more fundamental reality (let's say physics). That it is unnecessary is proof of an autonomy of the sciences and of the discontinuity in knowledge as a whole.
For me supervenience is an epistemic tool I typically use in what I'll call a visuo-intuitive sort of way, without seeing a need for a logically rigorous definition. It is more an essential perspective in the high accuracy measurment instrument design that I do, that involves cognitively zooming in and out between a closer to fundamental physics perspective and higher level design concept perspective.
It seems to me that skill at using such an epistemic tool develops mostly subconsciously in people who consider systems in an indepth manner, due to the limits of human cognitive faculties that simply aren't capable of considering the workings of a complex system in fundamental physics terms. I'd think that most who have developed such cognitive skills have never heard the word "supervenience" and wouldn't see much value in a rigorous definition of something they do intuitively.
Anyway, logical possibilities are for marketing. Engineers get stuck with disabusing the marketing people of their logically possible fantasies, and designing within the vastly more restrictive realm of the physically possible.
Sorry, that's what I meant. "Explanandum" was changed to "explanation" by my autotext. Fixed.
Yes, I think it makes sense that we cannot and maybe sometimes should not go for the most reductive explanations. I don't think of science as having a goal toward explaining things in increasingly reductive or decomposed ways.
But I do think, insofar as we have a spatial conception of the world, there is still this asymmetry of larger scales depending on the small in that kind of supervenience sense, which maybe is quite weak (too weak for decomposition? not sure, need to think about that) as opposed to a full blown reduction (Again, I think probably there are various ways of construing reductionism so its about strength of reduction). But then it has to be weak because then manner in which our models are incomplete and give different conceptual and empirical perspectives / reference frames, the taxonomy of our models and theories do not neatly match up at all to our ideal vision of a world full of objects with rigid boundaries organized at different levels. They may never match up to that ideal, even in principle, because we only can have insight into reality vicariously. We kind of blindly prod at reality and it prods us back, and obviously the prods we feel shouldn't be conflated with the cause of the prod. At the same time, maybe physics shouldn't be conflated with scale since physics works on all scales and some physics applies across multiple scales.
Now let's set up a standard - "mass" is certainly a central term in physics. Wolfram has it as occurring once in every 12,987 general written words. My search found it in 9,257 titles, giving it a ratio of once in every 77 titles. It's clear "mass" is a key term in physics.
Now let's do "cause". Wolfram has it as once in every 7194 written words. It occurs 137 times in the journals searched. that's about once in every 5500 titles. No where near "mass"
So in standard written English text, "mass" occurs once in about 13,000 words, but in the titles of physics texts, it occurs about once in every 77 titles. "Cause" appears once in every 7000 words in standards written texts, and about once in every 5500 titles in physics Journal titles.
Of course these results are tentative. But...
I agree, but how or why you can then go on to maintain that this is a materialism, I dont understand, but please dont feel any obligation to provide further explanation.
Quoting Christoffer
That would be something like Poppers promissory materialism, would it not? Popper coined this term to critique a particular stance within the philosophy of mind. This stance holds that physicalist explanations for all mental phenomena will eventually be found, even if current scientific understanding falls short. Popper saw this as a kind of "promissory note" a belief in future explanations based on physicalism, despite a lack of current evidence or understanding. It is difficult to disentangle from scientism, the view that empirical science constitutes the most authoritative worldview or most valuable part of human learning to the exclusion or marginalization of any other perspective. Like promissory materialism, scientism assumes that science will eventually provide answers to all questions, including those traditionally addressed by philosophy, the humanities, or religions.
The cardinal difficulty with both views is that it neglects or ignores a fundamental starting axiom of scientific method, which is limiting the scope of enquiry to the realm of objective fact, and in so doing, also disregarding the role of the scientist in choosing which questions to pose and how they should be posed. And that cant be dealt with by the idea of emergence, because in that paradigm, the very faculty which poses the questions is supposed to be the outcome or effect of some prior and presumably physical causal chain, by some unknown means - which well work out in future, promise!
I agree, and don't even understand why it gained traction. Quoting Banno
But they're also meaningless. Just because the term 'cause' doesn't appear, doesn't mean that it's not a central premise in physics. That's why I said it is implicit in physics, which you seemed to regard as some kind of sophistry or wordplay. But it's not! When a billiard ball strikes another, it causes it to move in a certain direction with certain velocity, as per your proferred example, even if it avoids the use of that terminology. All of science is concerned with causation - viruses cause illnesses, vaccines cause them to be cured, lift causes airplanes to fly, its absences causes them to stall, and so on.
I suppose that's a nonstandard use then.
Right, we may generally feel our thoughts to be centered in our heads, but we don't, without being told or seeing someone's head opened up, even know we have a brain. Our senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and our most sensitive organs of touch are all clustered on our heads, so we have the intuitive sense that the head is central to our experience. We have absolutely no sensation that is intuitively identifiable as neural activity.
I'd suggest replacing "authoritative" with "reliable". Authority doesn't really have anything to do with it.
Tosh. Science builds continually on previous findings which constitute a body of knowledge. Newton 'stands on the shoulders of giants'. That constitutes authority, albeit one that every individual scientist is expected to question as well as to accept. But here the discussion was about science:
Quoting Christoffer
Notice the scope of that claim - not about those things which are objectively measurable and about which we may arrive at inter-subjective agreement, but anything. So here science is being presented not only as an authority, but as a moral authority.
Maybe (as I suspect) that's a claim that scientists themselves would not make, regardless it is true that science is looked to as the 'arbiter of reality'.
I think you misinterpret. I read that statement as an expression of humility, and recognizing the role of earlier thinkers in Newton being able to achieve what he did. I've never heard anyone suggest it is a claim to authority.
Quoting fdrake
Now I find it still a bit unclear what you are suggesting here - of course if we find that A causes B, then by that very fact type A and type B having shared causal structure. But if you are saying that all we need to find, in order to assert causation, is a pattern such that A occurs and B occurs, then I very much disagree. And not just because correlation does not imply causation, but because cause is a very much more complicated issue than this - and I'd refer you to Anscombe's paper for details. What causes what is very much an issue of how we chose to describe events, not just of correlations.
I also do not think that intentional accounts provide a theory of how brains function. I think it pretty clear that there will be no structure found in one's brain that corresponds to one's belief that Sydney is in Australia.
As a consequence I do not think that propositional attitudes are reducible to any sort of brain structure.
But if I've understood you, you seem to think that some similarity in structure between a network of propositional attitudes and brain structures would imply a causal connection, that is, intentions would be reducible to brain structure.
And this seems to be where we differ.
I'm not really trying to imply any of that. We can just leave the reduction issue for later, I think.
Quoting Banno
What I'm saying is that you can establish that type X entities have causal relations with type Y entities without necessarily finding a specific type X entity which has a causal relation with a type Y entity. As an example, societies and the bodies of people living within them.
They're different types of entities, a society can be a democracy but a person cannot. They have different predicate classes which may apply to them.
An argument would go:
1 ) If a societal change impacted a person, it would impact their body's state.
2 ) All societal changes impact persons.
3 ) All person changes impact bodies.
Conclude 4 ) All societal changes impact some bodies
Just assume this argument is sound for illustration purposes. It would show that societal changes supervene on bodily changes. without showing that any particular societal change depended upon any particular body change. It'd just be bloody weird if all the people's bodies stayed the same if, say, a country went to war. The people would move places, people would get stressed and die... Those require bodily processes to work.
That argument also doesn't express a bridge law (unless there's a suppressed premise), since there's no societal property which ensures a bodily property or vice versa.
I think what this illustrates is that if property class X supervenes on property class Y, that can hold without it being established that there is a particular property P in X and a particular property Q in Y such that such that:
some (x) [ (x is P iff x is Q ]
IE, supervenience without establishing bridge law.
At this point I'm trying to talk about supervenience and reduction in general, rather than about propositional attitudes and brainstates. I also agree that propositional attitudes don't reduce to brainstates.
Well, it seems not, since you go on to talk of bridge laws and supervenience.
Anomalous monism amounts to denying that there are bridge laws between brains and intentional attitudes.
My inclination is to agree with this. But I'm not sure if you agree, or not.
I agree that there aren't bridge laws between brains and propositional attitudes. I'm not convinced the latter exist in the way they're purported to.
I have no doubt that if you search biology journals the term "eyes" would appear far less frequently than the terms "cells" or "genes." But would this entail that biology has eliminated the concept of eyes?
I'll just throw out there that even the Neo-Russelians, people who have committed a substantial part of their careers and thus their lives to trying support the general thrust of Russell's argument, don't think the "appeal to use in the advanced sciences," premise is either true, or that if it were true that it would support Russell's conclusion.
Consider also how speculative arguments about the role of information in physics and metaphysics go back quite a long way. But through Russell's era, and a good deal after, one would have been hard pressed to find many references to "information" in physics journals. Now the term is everywhere, information theory a major component of the field. And yet information theory itself was developed in the special sciences, with Shannon drawing heavily of philosophical work that had been done earlier.
Sure, I gave you the links, go ahead and type them in and see what you get.
The result is much the same: "cause" occurs about two orders of magnitude less often than other key terms in physics.
Two orders of magnitude. If "cause" is a key concept in physics, it's one that's scarcely mentioned.
It's not the people doing physics making use of "A causes B" in their work, but the folk who talk about what physicist do: the methodologists and philosophers. And it's a gross oversimplification. As can be seen in your short list of examples.
And I'm not sure how they are purported to exist. Another thread, sometime.
It's a perfectly valid English expression, obfuscated by Betrand Russell in support of his own philosophical agenda.
'Don't mention the cause....' :worry:
Quoting Apustimelogist
I feel as though something needs to be said about physical reductionism and it's place in culture. One of the quotations I often fall back on is from Thomas Nagel's 2012 book, Mind and Cosmos.
[quote=Mind and Cosmos, Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, Thomas Nagel, Pp35-36] The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them.
Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop.[/quote]
This 'poweful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality' comprises the basis of what is generally described as the modern scientific worldview. Although science itself has already overflowed those bounds on many different fronts, it still retains considerable if not always obvious influence in philosophical discourse: that what is real are the objectively-measurable attributes of the kinds of entities that science is able to analyse. 'The subject' was bracketed out of this reckoning at the very outset. (The quotations that @Joshs provided in this post both diagnose and remedy this issue from the perspective of phenomenology and embodied cognitive science.)
This view is at the back of many of the arguments in favour of physical reductionism, as to admit an alternative philosophy is to have to defend some form of dualism or philosophical idealism and their attendant metaphysical baggage.
Meh. You have no argument.
Just to be clear, my target is the sort of thinking found in 's Op, and in simplistic suppositions in this thread that mind is caused by brains. the way causation is treated in science is way more sophisticated than such accounts imply, and even more so in our accounts of our everyday actions. The notion of non-reductive supervenience only gives a rough outline of what might be going on. The outcome is hopefully an account of mind in a physical world that does not rely on the nonsense of idealism.
So yes, it is in your face, Wayf. As in, it runs against what you have been proposing hereabouts.
Quoting Banno
As long as an organizing contribution of a subject can be detected in the description of physical phenomena, then a species of idealism is at work.
:up:
My guess is there is some rather complex mental architecture going on that can project and modify non-physical objects.
An example of a problem would be how your brain encodes the number 5 and the number one million. There doesn't seem to be a proportional increase in the mental effort so how is it done.
I'm not arguing for science able to prove everything, just as it is impossible for you to say that it won't. Your argument kind of requires science to not be able to, which in itself is equally absolute in its claim. With how, through the history of science, breakthroughs often were preceded by claims that science would never prove a thing that then got proven, the probability of science answering something still lies in its favor based on its previous history compared to anything else.
But outside of that, as I said, I'm not arguing that it will prove everything, I'm saying that it is by far the best probability to work path for any kind of searching for answers about reality. If you were to choose a path to go in search of truth and answers, why would you choose something that relies on less than the rigor that science provides? It looks more like you try to force any argument in favor of science to fall under dogmatism in order to conclude it wrong.
It may be, as I wrote in my argument, that we may never be able to measure or find answers that directly links between low complexity and emergent properties. It may be that because how extreme the numbers get, there can never be anything more than a holistic conclusion of emergentism through the holistic observation of all systems in nature.
So I'm not saying that "the answers will come", I'm saying that the reason I position myself as a physicalist emergentist is because it finds most of its roots in verifiable science while acknowledging an observation about reality that can be found everywhere we look.
If we did find an answer, some equation that defines just how a growing complexity eventually form emergent properties, it may be part of a fundamental understanding that expands from answering how reality works, to consciousness, to complex mechanisms in biology and so on. But that's not the same as saying it will definitely happen.
But equally the evidence for emergent properties are not entirely unknown, they're observable everywhere. It's just that drawing a deterministic line between the parts and the properties haven't been done and might not be able to be done based on how complex it gets.
My central argument is simply to argue that science holds the most valid ground for finding answers to these questions. And I question how anyone can position other methods as better systems to reach those same answers. If you ask a question about reality, why would you use an alternative method? Why would you present a theory with less observable parts? Physicalist emergentism draws from what we actually observe everywhere, in almost every field of science there's observations of these phenomena.
Remember, physicalist emergentism is not really reductionism. Just so you understand that difference. And physicalist emergentism is closer to modern science than reductionism, which was closer to how science functioned in the past. More and more scientists today incorporate emergentism into their framework, rather than a reductionist one.
What would you suggest be a better position?
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, in order to find answers to questions about why reality is what it is, how consciousness functions and so on, what method would you go by? What would your strategy be? What position would you use as a framework of thought?
You argue in a way that feels more like an attack on science because it works too well for answering these kinds of questions. But it does not change the fact that if you attempt to answer them in any other way, you deviate from knowledge that functions as universal for all.
I can see that you don't like how well it works, but what would you replace it with? What's the alternative in your book?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebbian_theory
Supposing science uses cause, that does not then in turn mean that causation is real. Further if cause is real then that could even be read as a strike against physicalism given the Transcendental Idealist interpretation of causation -- even if cause is real it could be that physicalism is false.
Yes, neural networks seem the right direction.
I have some reservations though, a puzzle piece but a lot more is going on.
I'm not agreeing that the brain does it like a computer does it. Something seems really off.
Maybe it is okay. On large scales you can have things like feedback and loops. Don't know...
Sure. There is lots more to look into, and our technology is crude next to the complexity to be understood.
But that is the very essence of 'scientism' (link to wikipedia.) Note the sinister overtones of 'deviating from knowledge'.
I think your arguments are influenced by what Thomas Nagel describes in his essay, Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion. (Nagel is not a religious apologist, and that essay is written from the perspective of analytical philosophy. I can provide a reference to it if need be.)
I think I follow - can you say some more?
ALL IS ENERGY.
I liked Nagel's book, but it occured to me that the problem goes back even further, to Plato and the Pythagoreans. Way back with the Republic, we get the idea that the knowledge of mathematics is of a higher type, the standard to which all knowledge must aspire.
Because mathematics hadn't been successfully applied to the world yet, Plato decided there was simply something wrong with the world. That wasn't a fatal problem, because we could still get to the mathematical truths through our mind.
The modern period is defined by the success of applying mathematics to the world, and over time Plato gets inverted. Now there is no problem with the world, it exemplifies perfect mathematical beauty, but with the the mind.
Plato, on some readings, ends up quasi-elimintivist on the world. It is, in a crucial way, less real. Modern thought ends up quasi eliminitivist on the mind in the same way. Even Hume's matters of fact/relations of ideals (roughly Kant's synthetic/analytic) mimics Plato.
The history is instructive in that I think Plato, and later Plotinus, Porphery, Proclus, Augustine, etc. resolve this idea with their principle of non-dualism and unity, elements of Platonism that do not appear in the inverted modern views as much.
We don't need to suppose that "science," as a whole, uses cause. One cannot get through a science degree without having heard the mantra of "correlation does not entail causation," hundreds of times. Compare that to the idea of constant conjunction.
Take Cartwright's example of TIAA, some life insurance provider for teachers. Members of TIAA tend to live longer. This is because of traits that teachers tend to have, the fact that the job is not particularly dangerous, that they are less likely to smoke, etc.
You can't tell me that there is not a scientific explanation for why filling out a form for TIAA does not cause people to live longer in the way that their quitting cigarettes will cause them to live longer on average. Or that there is no difference in the way effective medical treatments such as antibiotics cause infections to clear up, versus how snake oil works.
The problems with cause become acute precisely in those situations where one want to make absolutely global descriptions that have no external frame and engulf the description itself. This is why it was so intuitive for 19th century thinkers to make "natural laws," external Platonic entities that act on the world from outside it. But we have good reason to believe these problems might be broader conceptual issues not even specific to cause, but to self-reference. This is why they are a problem for Hume, because he's primarily thinking of the broadest aspects of natural philosophy.
As with the concept of "truth," I think people have been far to quick to say "if we can't currently formalize it and figure out problems with it, if old theories have holes, then it doesn't exist/is meaningless/a pseudo problem." If we did this with other areas of inquiry we'd have long since decided life, mind, spacetime, etc. all don't exist.
As for Hume waking us up, I've always thought Hume was too good for his own good. If I take all his arguments seriously, I have to allow that some force me to reject others, and that I actually have absolutely no good reason for thinking Hume can teach me anything about anything, or even that a person named David Hume ever existed... or that I exist... If Hume is right, then I shouldn't believe him.
Not first thing in the morning
Perhaps a relevant aspect of the inversion - I'd say contra Plato's anamnesis, that we are all born ignorant and we are all going to die only somewhat less ignorant.
(Not that I know much about Plato's thinking that hasn't come from secondary and tertiary sources.)
@Fooloso4
No energy until coffee.
Quoting Wayfarer
I was talking about general explanations appropriate to their respective scales of being as opposed to mind-physical reduction.
I don't have the same issue as put forwarx in your quote because I simply don't believe that subjective experiences can be explained and so they don't really have a role in any of our explanations anymore than they already do in psychology. The only explanations we have are the kind of functional ones that cannot apply to experience.
One thing you have to understand is that because of the hard problem, it is impossible for there to be an intuitive connection between how brains work in a mechanistic manner compared to how we experience the world.
I think its less about trying to explain what minds are doing as we directly experience them and toward just finding neuronal architectures and objective functions that will lead to reasonably realistic replications of behavior that humans can do. The most you can do is correlate neural behavior and experiences or behaviors. There is no assumption of some kind of interaction with non-physical things. Obviously, many people will find this unsatisfying but for me, replicating complex behavior, finding information information processing principles is enough. We can't do more than that.
No, it seems that you fear science more than I fear religion.
The reason I don't think religion has merits for factually describing anything is primarily due to what psychology tells us about biases and our pattern seeking functions. We are absolutely slaves to pattern interpretations in everything around us. Even our vision is mostly based on interpreting between slow input data rather than functioning as a camera. We form an interpretation of our sensory information and we generate not only perception through this, but also ideas. Without externalizing our methods of gathering factual information, a logical summery of data we collect and logical rationalization through math and secondary observations, we are absolute slaves to emotional interpretations and imagination that blurs our ability to form actual truth about the world around us.
This is what form religious explanations about reality; attempts to explain something without the tools to disconnect from our pattern interpretations and biases, and that generates absolute bias through our emotions, absolute skewing of our ability to rationally reason.
But that still doesn't make me fear religion because religion is part of our psychology. Humanity has just not matured out of mixing together factual statements with the psychological needs in religion. In my opinion, religion should focus on building rituals, traditions, meditation, emotional exploration etc. and get rid of any attempts to explain how reality functions because it has had no observed positive result of ability to do so throughout history. Whenever I observe someone trying to produce conclusions through a religious lens it is so absolutely crystal clear how that reasoning acts through their biases, through their emotional need for something to be a certain way and how all the logic is constructed around defending that belief rather than accepting reality for what it observably is. It is basic psychology that drives it and the lack of insight into these psychological processes seems to be responsible for making it impossible to explain anything outside of their realm of thinking due to them being fundamentally driven by those personal needs and perspectives.
In order to try and understand your viewpoint I read through your essay on philosophical idealism and it seems that your antagonism against any argument in favor of science is rooted in verifying this philosophical stance. It seems that you cannot accept what I say because that would negate your conviction about philosophical idealism. This is why you effectively strawman all I say about science into framing it as a dogmatic belief system rather than reading my actual points. And it seems you look at only a fraction of research, through a summery that all science is just reductionism.
But the process of science, the methods, the framework and praxis are not the same as only one field or philosophical position, and it is not defined by any bad actors throughout the history of science. Just as I explained about religious perspectives above, people in science can fail just as much because, as I mentioned, all people follows human psychology. And bad players in science will skew and produce similar religious dogmas around their perspectives as well. That does not equal the framework and method being the problem, that is culture, not science, and just summarize it as a "culture of science" and attaching a negative framing around it just forms a guilt by association; since some acts as zealots of science, science itself is the problem. That is the core problem in reasoning I spot when interpreting your counter argument to what I write.
It's like the waiter blaming math for you not able to count your money correctly when trying to pay for dinner, it makes very little sense.
But to adress the argument you've made for idealism in order to contextualize further:
In your argument you start off with a thought experiment about the inability to picture a landscape in all perspectives at once. But this is not anything that counters physicalist perspectives. We don't argue that what we observe with our senses is the all there is to describe reality. Observations simply means all that can be registered about reality. If we use measurements of microwave data from space, that is nothing we can ever perceive but it's still part of our perspective in understanding reality. Scientists do not require our human based perception to understand the abstract answers data gives us.
You can look at it as how we've discovered that when you use a hammer, our brain manifest an extension of our body to incorporate the hammer into our motor control; we essentially manifest extensions of our existence into whatever tool we handle. This extends to our thinking; if you understand the data, the tools to picture reality outside of our human perception, you do not think about reality in the same way as someone not learned in those mental tools. Why else do you think that theoretical physicists are able to come up with their concepts? All of the notable ones imagined and pictured reality far beyond the realm of human perceptions; they didn't start with math, they view the world in a different mindset which guides them towards how to formulate math to prove it. Simply focusing on our human perceptions of our surrounding reality, how we relate to reality, dismiss the ability of some to think in abstract ways about the reality that others aren't able to by their lack of similar "mental language". The fact that we have people who did just this and then verified the logic of their thinking with math after the fact, proves the ability of us to extend our perception beyond mere Gestalts.
Yet it is. You argue only for human perception, observation through our senses and how that forms our instinctual mental projection of reality. A musician does not observe music in the same way as a non-musician. A painter does not view the world in the same way as a non-painter. The ability of abstract thinking beyond the bounds of a mind dependent on Gestalts, depends on the "mental language" tool that extends it. What we know about reality is not limited by our perception programing if we then acknowledge the limitations we have. Our perception programmed mind is not equal to an inability to picture reality for what it is, it is just a limitation of direct observation. So we can construct methods that extends our ability to understand reality beyond anything based on Gestalts.
This is false. Science does the exact opposite. Our biases and our basic human perception of reality is included within research as negative properties to exclude when forming objective conclusions. The inclusion of such human perspectives are there to pinpoint where are limitations are so as to not skew the objective conclusion that's made. It's one of the most important parts of research in any field.
But it's easy to form such an argument seen as how discoveries are shaped in the form of Gestalt-based concepts. But this is done to simplify initial introductions to scientific discoveries. It's how it's explained initially to other scientists in order to form a basic guide and reference before they head into the actual details. It's also there in all journalism reporting on scientific discoveries. It is, however, not in the trenches of actual research. When you act within research itself, there are no Gestalts because the aim is to reach objective truth, not the simplified interpretation aimed at communication of the ideas. Those are two distinct different things. But the public, non-scientists, misinterpret science as only being these wild simplified and expressive conclusions. Just like how the atom is drawn everywhere in this simple graphical drawing with defined object features (Gestalts), while the real thing features quantum properties that cannot be visualized outside their inherent abstractness, which is what scientists are actually doing in research.
Meaning is irrelevant to explain reality. Meaning is applied out of desperation for it, it is not part of how I view reality when utilizing facts outside of my limited perception and mental projection out of such perceptions. The act against incorporating "Gestalts" is part of good scientific research and practice. The meaning you refer to is what I described above, about simplified communication found mostly outside of science, where people not versed in scientific thinking, not versed in the "mental language" of understanding abstractions rooted in data, are required to understand the abstract concepts being presented. This is not science, this is pop-science and how the public understands it, not science itself and not the methods themselves. You mix these two together thinking Gestalts are required for understanding reality. They're only required for people not versed in science.
Which is why I argue for physicalist emergentism and not reductionism. Your critique against neuroscience, using this quote from Pinter, only focus on a reductionist principle. The modern and increasingly used explanation for our mind forming out of our physical being is rather rooted in a emergentist perspective, as I've explained. In essence, you get nothing from brain scans, you cannot get data on emergent properties as they require a full map of the complexity, which may or, more likely, is impossible to map due to computational limitations.
The problem is that arguments that use the lack of answers in science through criticizing its reductionistic approach, ignores that science in itself extends beyond just reductionistic perspectives. Emergent properties cannot easily be reduced to root causes, instead a shift in approach is required for science to research through an emergentist lens.
Science does not depend on it. And in a physicalist emergentist perspective it's no more different from other observations of reality. How for instance biological ecosystems exist as complex entities in themselves, but cannot be considered a thing in of themselves as they lack properties of what we constitute as "a thing". The mind therefor acts accordingly, as an emergent property that we can define as existing because of its consequences onto reality, but yet not able to be defined as a thing. That failure does not mean physicalism fails when working from a emergentist approach, since it acknowledge the existence of a featureless category of something as a result rather than some object. The idealist counter argument depends on the physicalist stance to only accept "things" as objects, which the emergentist approach does not. Going further, we could argue that everything is an emergent property based on fundamental probability rooted in mathematical starting points; that all steps of relations between physical processes from the Planck scale and up just form different scale levels of complexities that in turn form different scale levels of emergent properties that in turn form new complexities. That the reason we don't find clear connections between small and large scale physics is because we are unable to calculate the result of an emergent property with the individual parts that forms its necessary root complexity. Yet, I need no Gestalts to form an understanding of this concept. There's nothing in my human perceptional-trained mind that functions to formulate an idea about reality by my human standards, yet I perceive it anyway because I understand the language of its abstract nature.
Basically, understanding reality does not require objects as we perceive them and the non-material nature of the mind does not conflict with this understanding of reality. It's merely a standard of perspective. Maybe some are more versed in it than others, but I believe it to be trainable, just like becoming versed in a musical instrument.
Such divisions aren't necessary and not all science treats it as such. This reads more like a simplification of science and especially ignores the emergentist approach in which there's no such type of divisions present.
"mind creates the world" becomes more of a dismissal of just one type of theory in science, or philosophical approach, rather than a definitive perspective. It's merely pointing out how we are limited in our perceptive perspective and how it limits our instinctive ability to understand reality, but it dismiss all the examples of when we are able to extend our thinking beyond our limited sensory formed internal projections. While ignoring that there's further versions of physicalist approaches than just the reductionist one, only using a limited perspective on science to prove a point that isn't really a point that argues against science, only pop-science interpretation of it.
Essentially, you argue for idealism, but when I try to find answers in your argument as to what would replace our scientific methods and approaches, all I can find is a simplification of science to make a point about our limited human mind. Something that in real scientific work is included for the exact reason of not skewing our answers by our limitations.
So once again, what other approach are you proposing we use to find answers about what reality is? If I argue that the physicalist emergentist approach seems to point at the most valid framework to think and experiment about reality because of how it relates to so much in science and of observations between different fields. Then what is your alternative to that?
Because painting science as some dogmatic field that somehow abuse its moral power onto the world, while having an idealism argument in which I couldn't find support for such ideas about abuse either, and also not providing any alternative to what I proposed as being our best method in pursuit of answers, and instead just form an argument that primarily dismiss what I say as scientism linked to a form of abuse of moral power over others in the world... just doesn't work. It just sounds like a desperate attack on science lacking actual substance to it.
It only proves that there's an emotional desperation of alternatives to science, to the point of trying to paint it as a moral power system used by people like me to control the world. It's almost a conspiratorial reaction to a simple claim that science, by its own merits, proves itself to be the best method in pursuit of answers. Especially since its very focus is on dismissing human biases and our simplistic understanding of reality. Features you focus on in your idealism argument. And with a physicalist emergentist approach, much of those plot holes you point towards in science as reductionism goes away, replaced by a better holistic perspective that features an internal logic. Science isn't just about experiments viewed through the lens of Gestalts, it's also about forming abstract frameworks and theories that guides the experiments, verifying ideas about reality that demand projecting past our limitations. In essence, the verifications layer into new understanding, further and further forming an understanding far beyond the limitations you argue about. And none of it features any promises of "future answers", all of what I'm talking about focus on the value of the method in practice, the approach of seeing past the limited perception of reality that we have as humans. A solution to the problem you describe, not affected by those limitations.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Thats a little simplistic, dont you think? The point of the passage from Nagel that I quoted is really rather simple: the separation of the observing mind and the world, and the seizing of the mathematically-quantifiable aspects of the world as the only real attributes. That is the basis of both Humes is/ought problem, and the problem of consciousness (which are two facets of the same underlying issue.)
I kind of agree.
I sometimes slip and use the term non-physical.
What I mean and how someone else might interpret it could be different. Mental subject matter might be better words. It explains how things that cannot physically exist can exist in a brain state. The way brains handle the number pi for example. And endless other things.
The big picture is that mental content has the ability to drive physical matter, which is a special case in a universe of physical matter.
No, you just don't seem to understand it. You seem to just understand a pop-science media caricature of what science is, and it has formed your entire defense of idealism. But neither does your argument succeed in countering what you aimed to criticize in science, since you ignore how scientists actually conceptualize their perspectives and just bluntly position them as having to frame everything through "Gestalts". You also lump together all science approaches into purely reductionism, which isn't a perspective that's very active in scientific communities. The fixation on objects becomes an irrelevant critique since emergentism doesn't view the mind as an object.
In the end you have a simplistic counter to physicalism that only functions against reductionism specifically, have a simplified insight into what the experience actually is for a scientist conducting research and you still don't provide an alternative that disprove my initial claim that science is the best method to explain reality, which was what you objected against. What's your alternative? That was what I asked and have yet to hear from you? If you can't produce an alternative method that functions better in the pursuit of knowledge about reality, then you can't say I'm wrong when I'm positioning science as the best method for it. That just comes off as desperate defense of some belief system because you don't like it. As if you've studied the history of science, seen some shit and then just lump together that shit with the methods and system of science. Like I wrote in the argument:
Quoting Christoffer
Details in the post you ignore.
Since I was flagged I'll jump in. Much is made of the Forms, but they are posited as hypothetical, and inadequate as explanations. They are safe and ignorant (Phaedo 105c). An adequate explanation is in need of physical causes as well.
So why does he make such extensive use of them?
The problem is that one who does not allow that for each thing there is a character that is always the same" will destroy the power of dialectic entirely (Parmenides, 135b8c2). Something like the Forms underlies (hypo - under thesis - to place or set) thought and speech. Perhaps Plato intends here to reconcile Parmenides and Heraclitus.
Socrates references Anaxagoras, who says that it is Mind that directs and is the cause of everything. In Socrates' discussion of this he shifts from Mind as prior to what is ordered to how his own mind makes sense of and orders things.
Nice try! Much appreciated by myself, but wooists gonna woo.
Main problems I feel are: Framing science as some kind of simple one-note group functioning under religious dogma, which is false. While there are bad actors who act like that both within and outside scientific research, it's not representative of science as a whole, especially not the methods used and the way conceptualization are actually performed by specialists in a specific field. A theoretical physicist does not look upon reality with a simplified reductionist perspective that only sees "objects" through the reference of how a human experience reality. There's a reason why the line "can you hear the music" is in the movie Oppenheimer. "Hearing the music" is closer to how the experience is, a kind of transcendent elevated conceptualization that does not feature forms by vision, sound by waves etc. but a form and shape that feels undefined by normal perception. This is because the practice of thinking through it is training the mind to conceptualize out of abstract concepts like math rather than relating it to perception based concepts. It's only when the conclusions gets published and reported on that we get these simplified visualizations of physics that are found in our school books and in science media. If that's all you use as the source of criticizing science through an argument of perception limitations, then it renders an argument simply not correct.
The main other problem is that I still haven't heard an actual argument for an alternative method in the pursuit of knowledge about reality. If someone criticizes science and calling it some dogmatic power over the world, then provide an alternative that function better. Because structuring the world based on anything other than modern scientific conclusions requires a level of result that I've yet to see any other method or system produce. Quite the opposite, it's within realms of using belief systems that just follow human biases where we find the most horrors. Notice that I'm saying modern science. Because I have heard again and again the same old arguments about how science in the past led to horrors of its own. But science has evolved with the conclusions; the rigor and practice has evolved and been sharpened to function past old non-functioning practices.
The ability to bypass human biases is better than ever and we are still bettering its ability to be the best method for knowledge. People who study the history of science usually gets lost in the malpractice of old sciences, and are unable to see how things function today, unable to see how good it has become and is still evolving. I dare anyone who think they can trick some bad conclusions into scientific consensus to try and do that today. Compared to spreading misinformation beliefs through the usual channels of human bias.
What I wanted to ask you is, can you say more about "emergent physicalism?" Is it roughly the same as "process physicalism" (my thesis here is that consciousness just is a physical process) ?
In a somewhat less robust formulation, I maintain that physical processes give an adequate explanation of consciousness.
ALL IS COFFEE - NotAristotle (c. 2000 - 2200)
Notice the difference between "smoking causes cancer" and "The assassination of Franz Ferdinand caused World War I" What is the same between these such that we should say that they're both using "causation"?
There's a difference between making a distinction between correlation and causation, which I agree with, and making the metaphysical case for the reality of causation. One is a bit of scientific pedagogy that points out that it's too easy to see patterns so make sure you get a good one (and what a good one is depends upon the particular science, experiment, task). The other is the philosophy of metaphysics. I think that it's a good thing to look at science in thinking of metaphysics, but we shouldn't assume they are one and the same. We'd need some basis of judgment to go from science to metaphysics.
Hume's argument regarding causation should be understood to put it in the place of custom and habit as opposed to saying we cannot use it. It's not that we cannot use causation -- as a human we have no choice but to think this way. It's just not a demonstrative science where the rules are certain and infallible. Rather we are accustomed to believe in causation, but our fallibility makes this an uncertainty. Further the only means which we have to correct belief is the same means we had in forming the belief -- an appeal to reason or the senses. But since our reasoning is fallible even this correction can be incorrect, and so we are forced to concede that cause -- being a non-demonstrative science, but a case of probabilistic reasoning -- is a habit of thought that cannot be justified to the level of necessity we are habituated to think it has.
Also I'll reiterate the point that even if we grant causation as a metaphysical reality that this won't secure physicalism given the Kantian frame for causation -- if causation is necessary and universal then that could be seen as a reason to believe in Transcendental Idealism.
I'm sympathetic to the idea of something like "physicalism without reductionism," but as is discussed earlier in this thread, I'm not sure such a thing currently makes much sense with how physicalism is generally defined. Physicalism might have to become just a vague commitment to naturalism and metaphysical realism to deal with strong emergence (which, to be fair, I think that's how many people colloquially use the term).
I would say with high confidence that most scientists do not spend much time focused on the ontology of physicalism, problems related to supervenience, the causal closure principle, etc. Kim's argument against the possibility of strong emergence, given a substance metaphysics, seems very strong. Given that, strong emergence doesn't seem to be an option for physicalism.
To be sure, I've seen theoreticians who do end up having to consider things like Kim's work suggest a move to a process metaphysics. But this move probably requires jettisoning a lot of what makes physicalism "physicalism."
It's an example of Hemple's Dilemma, I guess.
It's definitely overly simplistic, but I didn't want to get into a long analysis. I still think the idea that we have, in some respects, an inversion of Plato in the modern period holds water though. Maybe it just shows an overall tendency to want to reduce things we don't understand to things we (think we) understand.
:up: , it's definitely very much the opposite with early empiricist tabula rasa
I agree with all that, particularly that cause alone cannot act as support for physicalism. The question of science re Hume as a whole is sort of interesting, as his attack on induction would seem to cut the legs out from underneath the entire scientific project.
One of the things I've considered about Hume's position on cause is that it seems to be somewhat guilty of begging the question. If one billiard ball really does cause another to move, then watching them collide is observing cause. His position on cause then ends up being heavily reliant on his position on induction holding up.
I'm not sure why that is so. Unless by process metaphysics one is arguing that only processes, not the physical constituents involved in the process are real? If that is what is meant, that's starting to sound like some kind of idealism in my opinion. In any case, that is not what I mean by "process physicalism."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Can someone spell out to me what is being reduced and why this is a bad thing? (Because if the answer is subjective experience, I don't see in what sense physicalism is a "reduction").
Off the top of my head, all things pertaining to laws of thought and to all aspects of value theory (including the metaethics of what good is) is in physicalism reduced to the physicalthis when laws of thought and value per se (such as ones valuing of truths or of correct reasoning or of objectivityor else not) are prerequisites of arriving at any conclusion whatsoever, including that of physicalism wherein everything is reduced to the physical. Moreover, a clear definition/demarcation of the physical is wanting to begin with. Its worse than circular reasoning: its reasoning that the cart pulls the horse forward. Im a great supporter of the scientific method, but science (when thus understood) cannot address these issues in principle.
I expect a transition from concern with induction, to greater recognition of pattern recognition as naturally occurring as a matter of our neurology. I.e. a more naturalized epistemology that more accurately capture what really occurs in our thinking than the idea of induction does.
Not that I think this will keep a lot of philosophers from allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, but I think worrying about induction is barking up the wrong tree. People tying themselves in philosophical knots isn't going to stop scientists from making progress using the cognitive tools we have, so scientifically it's a pseudoproblem.
Why would it trouble us if everything was reducible to the physical?
Seems to me that all those thoughts are just physical processes.
I get the sense there is something about physicalism that has not been articulated that you are concerned is problematic?
I'm not sure it's worth debating, merely provided you with an answer to your initial request. But as to this second question, I have addressed it here:
Quoting javra
... where the cart is the ill-defined "the physical" and the horse is the very laws of thought and value-structures previously addressed which are prerequisites for any conclusion.
I think, maybe, its because we retained the elements of Platonism that are useful for science and engineering (book of nature written in math) but discarded the ethical perspectives (the One, the Good) mainly because of their absorption into, and rejection alongside, Christian philosophy. Also simplistic, but Im sure with a grain of truth.
Excellent post.
I'm interested in your take on emergence. From the SEP:
Quoting Supervenience
Can you offer any clarification?
If that goes only one way; that is if there can be a B-difference without and A-difference then A could be said to be dependent on B.
Quoting Joshs
If the object is defined as 'the object as perceived' then of course it is trivially true that the subjective point of view would be a determinant. But if the object is defined as 'that which interacts with our senses resulting in perception' then the subjective point of view would be a result, not a determinant.
Of course, but this says nothing about the "mind-independent something'. It seems obvious that our cognitions are the result of interactions between minds (or embrained bodies) and that which is other to the embrained bodies.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think the idea that everything should be explainable in terms of fundamental physics is essential to physicalist views per se, although that might be a defining feature of some reductive physicalist views.
Quoting Joshs
I don't think this is right. Of course, Ideas can be detected as organizing contributions in the descriptions of phenomena, but it does not follow that the phenomena are pre-cognitively organized by our ideas. In other words, you seem to be conflating descriptions of phenomena with phenomena.
As I have already noted, it seems to me that the most parsimonious characterization of physicalism is simply the view that the Universe existed before there were any minds, or in other words that there have been, are, and will be existents which are not dependent at all on minds. This would not be to deny that there are potentially semantic and semiotic aspects, attributes, relations or functions of physical existents. Naturally that potential cannot be actualized without an interpreting mind.
The argument that claims that because it is a mind which says that there are existents which are mind-independent, it follows that there can be no mind-independent existents, is a very weak argument which trades on conflating what we say with what actually might exist independently of our saying. As far as I can tell this impoverished argument (in the West at least) comes from Schopenhauer.
The congenital problem with idealism.
Cool.
Another way to read him is to say that if both Hume is right and science works, then science must not proceed by induction.
I don't think he's guilty of begging the question, though yes I think that his position on skepticism follows from previous positions in the book -- he doesn't start with skepticism but ends the first part of his treatise with it.
But what vindicates him is that we do, in fact, change our beliefs about causation as we learn more, especially in the sciences. The overturning and re-overturning of belief gets along with his epistemology, at least insofar that science has anything to say about causation.
I don't think science needs to claim that what appear to be the invariances of nature must of necessity forever remain invariant. As far as science knows they have up until now remained invariant, so it can proceed on the basis of "if such and such law remains invariant, we can expect to observe this and that or whatever".
:up:
Even if the laws remained the same forever and ever it's always the case that there could be some other intervening cause or a conjunction of causes that's unknown and grouped under a single name to the effect.
While I eschew falsificationism I think Popper captured something in positing it as a criteria for science which is that while we have some good beliefs what makes them scientific is that they can be defeated by evidence rather than supported by evidence -- there's always the possibility of finding something later which undermines our theory. So rather than assuming that laws are invariant I think the more common assumption is that they are good enough for now until someone comes along and points out where we messed up, and on and on the scientific project will go.
It's not that everything is reducible to some amorphous and expansive idea of "the physical" but rather that everything is reducible to physics. I see three distinct problems here.
1. One problem is the adequacy of the types of explanations that physics offers. Can physics, in something like its current form, adequately explain the experience of seeing a sunset, of tasting coffee, etc.?
It's hard to see how the qualities of first-person experience could be adequately expressed by physics. Even if it is conceivable that physics could tell us why coffee tastes the way it does, it seems perhaps impossible that it should tell us what coffee tastes like. But if there are facts about things like "what coffee tastes like to Bob," then it appears that physics cannot describe all facts about the world.
This is, IMO, the smallest problem. You could argue that this is simply asking too much from an ontology.
2. There is no reason to think reduction must necessarily be true. We might ask: "is there even good empirical evidence to support this hypothesis, or is it just popular because it is intuitive?"
Consider that even basic phenomena have not been successfully reduced despite decades of efforts. Molecular structure is an example. Chemistry is not a new field. It is on the very low end of the complexity scale, just above physics. Yet, if I recall correctly, a small majority of chemists don't believe their field can be successfully reduced (which is meaningful given the popularity of reductionism writ large). That doesn't mean chemistry can't be reduced to physics, it just means that we should consider if reduction should be the "default" assumption and considered highly plausible despite more than a century going by since the heyday of reductionism. There are also plenty of physicists who think their own field has examples of strong emergence, which adds yet another wrinkle.
One of the things that would caution against reductionism being the "default view" would be just how ancient and venerable the idea is. It's an idea that is popular because it's intuitive; it's "neat." From the birth of philosophy on, people have been speculating that all the variety in the world can be reduced to just one thing (e.g. water, fire) or just a handful of things (Empedoclean elements). It's the type of idea we naturally gravitate towards. Particularly, it's appealing when it can be framed as "little balls of stuff make up everything," as it often has been going back to antiquity. I suspect this might have to do with how our senses of sight, touch, hearing, and the vestibular sense all work to build a model of 3D space, meaning that aspect of experience is intrinsically "cross-checked" for veracity more than color, taste, etc.
This is not to ignore all the evidence of successful reduction. However, that not all things are strongly emergent is not evidence that nothing is. IMO, there is a problem in how the burden of proof sometimes get framed, as if strong emergence must be convincingly demonstrated to show that reductionism isn't true, but not vice versa.
3. The problem of showing how first-person subjective experience emerges from nature (assuming pan-psychism is not true) without strong emergence.
A related problem here would seem to be that, if reductionism and the causal closure principle is true, then mental events have no causal efficacy. If mental events have no causal efficacy, then we have to ask why natural selection should result in producing phenomenal experiences that are anything like the real world? Why should pain be unpleasant if whether or not you take your hand off a burning stove has nothing to do with the subjective experience of pain?
The problem with epiphenomenalism in particular is not quite as bad IMO. It isn't really a challenge to reductionism as much as current formations of the causal closure principle, such that mental events are causally ineffective. But that's just a subproblem within 3, although relevant to physicalism because causal closure is often used to define physicalism.
Sort of, but not really. Bickhard's "Systems and Process Metaphysics" is a good intro, but I can't find it without a paywall. The idea is that "objects" what we've evolved to focus on, are actually just long-term stabilities in physical processes. Even "fundamental" particles appear to have a beginning and end.
I'm still not entirely sure whether you mean some kind of dualism or just that something like math is obviously not a physical concept. The way I see it, all our categorizations are just high level abstractions of sensory input. Something like a dog is such an abstraction. Math is abstraction in the exact same way imo, only that it is so abstract that it doesn't pick out any specific physical object in the world. We can then make abstractions of abstractions, systems of rules for these abstractions in and of themselves in which we learn to manipulate content and then even superimpose onto other concepts (like when creating a mathematical model of empirical phenomena).
But when you say mental content drives the physical, this sounds like dualism.
I'm not sure I understand this. How is science supposed to work if we can't count on past observations to tell us anything about the future? We've been testing Newton's laws for centuries, but can we accept them now as, in some imperfect way, describing how the world works and will work in the future? We can't if Hume is right (and then he has the whole part about burning all the books that claimed to have knowledge based on past observations, which I did think was a good joke on his part).
You are correct. I can't think of the right term for it. But I can frame it in a question to Hume: "what would it look like to observe causation?" There are all sorts of complex, nuanced issues with causation that have cropped up since Hume's day, but let's ignore those and just focus on billiard balls bouncing or dominoes falling or what have you. When we see one domino topple another, Hume says we aren't seeing cause. But what conceivable observation would qualify as "observing cause" in those cases?
It seems to me that, if one domino hitting another really does cause the second domino to fall, what we see is exactly what cause might look like.
Hume's argument against induction would appear to apply to past events as well though. So inductive arguments about the past get the axe too. "The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776," or "lunar eclipses have been predictable" are the types of statements we believe because we trust the source that is telling us them or because we remember the past events. However, why should we think any source of information is reliable? It certainly can't be because they have been reliable in the past. Why should we think our memory is reliable? If you cannot demonstrate that you have a reliable memory using only deduction, it seems to me like you are SOL.
I think one of the great think Hume demonstrates is the absolute poverty of what can be demonstrated without inductive inference.
Of course, the guy doesn't argue that we should take him too seriously. The book burning thing is clearly a joke. But if he was truly right, it would seem to make science completely irrational.
Short version: Not only can we count on past observations, we can't not think in terms of causation by our very nature.
Quote from Hume:
But any more would just totally derail the thread, I think.
Popper is worth bringing up in relation to the topic of physicalism because that's another philosophical position which would divorce metaphysics from science.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think I'd say that I see a domino hitting another domino, and that is real -- it's the bit when we start saying cause that gets funny.
But, also, since we've agreed causation doesn't support physicalism, I think I'd say this is worthy of another thread. Causation has been popping up.
Schopenhauer agreed. He called it the law of explanation.
What does the way we are bound to think have to do with the way the world is?
Schopenhauer wanted to answer that by way of Kant. Wittgenstein says we can't have an answer to that question.
:grin:
Are causes in the world or in the way we describe the world?
Though I think if causation is real it would be a relation rather than a thing, if I'm going to be picky.
Indeed. Not unlike the way we use proper names.
Quoting Moliere
Well, yes, cause is a relation, and causation a philosopher's pet.
Yes, I think this is pretty much the right picture.
This doesn't touch my physicalism, because I don't see everything as reducible to physics. I don't know of any physicalist, who if given the choice, would say that they believe everything reduces to physics, as against everything reduces to the physical. Now I could easily imagine a physicalist saying in a sloppy way that everything reduces to physics, but I would simply intepret that as a figure of speech that is commonly used to refer to the physical (at least in some crowds).
I see us as forces of nature. Something like godawfully complicated tornados that interact with the world they progress through, and most interestingly to social primates like us, interact with their fellow forces of nature in complex ways. I don't know of any good reason to think that consciousness can't be a characteristic of such complex forces of nature.
Personally, I see strong correlations between the way our minds work and the physical structures they supervene on, but that is not something one gets to recognize well, without a fair bit of study. I don't expect others to have the same recognition, because few have studied the diverse relevant fields with an eye towards developing such understanding for the last 37 years. It's not something I claim any particular credit for. It's just the way things turned out in my case.
I think the biggest impediment to accepting physicalism for most is incredulity. I simply don't have the incredulity that many people have. When I was younger I did, so I can understand being incredulous towards physicalism. But it just so happens I've had the weirdass life experience that I have had, resulting in me not sharing that incredulity.
I also recognize that many would find it emotionally challenging to consider physicalism in a charitably credulous way. I can understand that as well. I've had a long time to get emotionally adjusted to this view.
Still argument from incredulity and appeal to consequences are fallacious as bases for rejecting physicalism, so folks might want to take that into consideration.
Very good quote. Of course Hume didn't have the opportunity to understand this, but the quote suggests at least intuitive recognition on Hume's part, of how deep learning is manifested in human thinking.
I don't think this follows, because all the documents we have point to nature behaving in the past as it does now. For example, if we have documents stating that Lunar eclipses were observed on particular dates and if those dates accorded with the dates that we would today retrospectively calculate to be the dates when lunar eclipses would be expected to have occurred then we have some corroborating evidence that the laws have not changed. Add to that the fact that if we have no documents recording observations of violations of what we have come to think of as the laws of nature, then that also supports the belief that nature has not changed its behavior.
The other point is that induction is not so far from deduction if we frame the thinking in terms like "iff the laws of nature have not changed or do not change, then this is what we could expect to observe". The certainty of this deduction is only as strong as this premise is true.
:up: The point about deep learning is well taken; what is often ignored is the fact that the sciences present a whole interrelated network of knowledge and understanding based on observations, hypotheses and experiments which is enormously complex and consistent, and obviously that much more so today than it was in Hume's time.
The objection is well said.
I understand you to be objecting to the reduction to physics on three grounds which I will now summarize: 1. incomplete explanation, 2. potentially untrue, 3. raises questions.
To your first point, I think what I am looking for if I were looking for a physicist's explanation of tasting coffee, is whether we can describe the experience in terms of atoms and so on. Given that there seems to be a level of analysis at which the tasting of coffee can be elucidated in terms of atoms and laws discovered by physicists, I am content that that analysis is adequate, if not complete from the subjective perspective.
If we are talking about human behavior, I do not think physics can adequately describe that, but given that physics is supposed to acquire knowledge about atoms and planets and such, I don't think human behavior is the right domain for physics.
What's the purely deductive argument that secures the premise "documents we possess are a reliable record of past events?"
I think you're right. The driving rationale behind "everything reduces to (a complete form of) physics," would appear to be to avoid the charge that the claim that "everything is physical," is a vacuous statement. If the term "physical" is defined loosely, in an open ended manner, such that "if science/other valid methodologies provide good support for x's existence, then x is physical," the claim becomes the hallowed out "everything that exists is what exists." Or, "physicalism" just seems to be scientific realism with extra ontological baggage attached that is associated with the term.
Reduction wed to causal closure are good for physicalism in that they do seem to set some solid limits on what would qualify as non-physical.
So the problems with reduction are not necessarily problems for physicalism, I agree there. There could be another good way of defining what it means for something to be physical, and maybe that's what the ontology really needs and someone will find it. But reduction is a good candidate for defining "what is physical " precisely because it would seem to entail, barring panpsychism, that mind is not a fundemental, irreducible aspect of the universe. And, while definitions of "fundemental " are debated, being strongly emergent would seem to make something fundemental in key ways.
"Mind is a fundemental, irreducible element of reality that interacts with the mindless, physical world in a causally efficacious manner," seems like a summation of dualism, but would seem to be consistent with physicalism with strong emergence too. What's the difference then?
And this could lead into other problems like "are abstract objects emergent from mind," and if so, wouldn't abstract objects now also be "physical."
For my part, I see the problems with getting the term firm enough to have sufficient omph behind it as a much larger problem than general plausibility.
BTW, I think the most flexible/plausible versions of idealism begin to have an extremely similar problem.
I haven't claimed there is such an argument, but documentary evidence is all we have to go on when it comes to the past. And as I said if there is cross-referential corroboration across various documents concerning observed events then we have reason to feel more confident in their veracity. And even more so if the observed events recorded are in accordance with what we would expect based on our current understandings and the calculations based on them.
I think these kinds of criticisms are based on the claim that we cannot be absolutely certain, and I think this is a strawman since it is uncontroversial that absolute certainty, if it is possible anywhere, belongs only to rule-based formal systems.
Why focus on whether there is a purely deductive argument? Logic is at best as good as its inputs, and the inputs to our logic are our intuitive deep learning. It is pattern recognition that has resulted in our recognition of the pattern of documents being reliable records of past events.
whereof one cannot speak...
I was trying to be clear that I think everything is based on the physical. There is the question of what non-physicals are. They come up often.
So when non-physicals come up you can observe they are always in the form of mental content so obviously not entirely non-physical but just as a mental abstraction (and our physical brains support that). I would classify that as physicalist because everything is accounted for based on physical matter.
Just to be clear, I agree with you 100%, and Hume obviously had a pragmatic sense about this too. I'm just saying that if you accept his argument about induction being unjustifiable and irrational, it strips away almost everything. You have to focus on if there is a purely deductive argument because induction, all induction, can only be justified by using induction itself. It can't be deductively justified.
Only a priori deductive arguments are valid (and we can even question if those exist). You can't justify a belief in documentation of past observations or your own memories.
From the SEP article on the "Problem of Induction"
What's funny is that these is an inverse problem, the "Scandal of Deduction," where you can also show that deduction generates absolutely no new information. If we take these conclusions seriously (we shouldn't, but they are worth investigating and fun), then we're left with nothing. I can't believe I'm going to say it, but I agree 100% with Russell on this one, if you're wed to a foundationalist, non-pragmatic, non-fallibalist epistemology (which I am not, partly because of this).
I just thought of a good description of process philosophy from a physics article in Spring Frontier's "It From Bit or Bit From It."
The author, who I don't recall, uses Plato's cave analogy. Physicalists (and idealists) they are concerned with objects. These objects, in the case of physicalism fundemental particles, are the shadows on the walls of the cave. The reality is the field, and the field is inherently process, flux. We can, of course, abstract the conception of any process back into an object, but this is in fact a mistake because it gives us an illusion of permeance and underlying substance. Something like that.
I agree, deduction is not induction and induction cannot be deductively proven. Our faith in induction, we might say, is expectation based on habit, and also on the seemingly total lack of counterexamples. Kant distinguished between pure and practical reason. He believed that we have pure reasons to believe certain things, some of which are not merely analytic. This is controversial today, and I think a radically skeptical argument can be mounted to question our faith in almost anything you can think of.
But it doesn't seem to me to follow that just because anything, or almost anything, can be questioned on the grounds that it cannot be absolutely certain, therefore justification is impossible. I say that because we can have practical or pragmatic reasons, justifications, for holding to certain beliefs.
So, I would say that I don't agree with Russell's idea that unless we are silly enough to believe that induction should be deduction, or that there are no such things as more or less plausible ideas.
The other point is that actual deductions themselves never deductively prove their own premises, so they can hold no context-free certainty in any case.
I'd say we should take the problems seriously and recognize that our intuition and logic both have weaknesses, but they can be used synergistically. One of the most epistemically valuable things we can use our deductive abilities for is to find flaws in our own intuitions, and in recognizing flaws in our intuitions, become open to new more robust intuitions.
Utilizing that synergy, along with paying attention to nature, seems to me, a key characteristic of scientific thought.
LOL
You are one skeptical dude yourself Wayf. You just haven't developed the knack of turning your skepticism towards your own intuitions.
Quoting Janus
Have you heard of Object Oriented Ontology, or Speculative Realism? They compose a diverse group united by the claim that philosophy since Kant has been in the the thrall of correlationism, which makes what objects are in themselves beholden or secondary to their relation to a perceiving subject.They argue that this amounts to an anthropocentric smothering of the real. The OOO alternative assigns to objects intrinsic attributes hidden from perceiving subjects. Lee Braver compares this with other approaches to the real, and prefers what he calls Transgressive Realism.
If you follow Transgressivee realism rather than Kant, I think it commits you to a different view of the nature of reality beyond our schemes and theories You will hew closer to Kuhns notion of scientific progress through revolutions than to Poppers appropriation through falsification.
Yeah, they're synergistic for sure.
I had this idea of turning deduction / induction into a Hegelian negation type deal, and trying to see if there was some sort of "negating the negation," that would produce a synthesis.
I have never been successful in thinking this through. I can't even decide which would come first. Induction and pattern recognition I think, because you can't do deduction until you have terms and axioms, and those would exist in sheer sense certainty. But is the exercise really meaningful if it doesn't reveal some new, third type of analysis? And even if there is one, am I going to discover it? Unlikely.
But maybe something like:
>Induction comes first
>The negation is Hume's problem of induction, induction turns out to be hollow, which leaves us with deduction
>Deduction reveals itself to also be empty, because of the scandal of deduction (or maybe it reveals itself just to be induction ala Mill, Quine, etc.)
>synthesis, abduction -> synergistic synthesis
Pragmatism born of Hegelian dialectical. Wa la! Needs work. :rofl:
I know next to nothing about Hegel, so I don't have any thoughts about the sort of third type of analysis you are speculating about.
I do think there is are important things that we can do to improve the results of our thinking, based on understanding the neurological processes our thinking arises from. One thing of relevance is the deeply subconscious basis for our intuitions, and the fact that those aren't something that we can turn around overnight. Taking the long view is important.
Of course training our neural nets with a diverse training set is of great value. I.e. getting a well rounded education. But it's pretty clear you've got that covered. :cool:
I see the hubris as theirs, as they tout a perspective outside or beyond the human and then disparage Kant for acknowledging the inherent limitations of human reason, as if they alone are capable of seeing past it.
Theyre known as sa?skara or sankhara in Indian disciplines:
[quote=Wikipedia] According to various schools of Indian philosophy, every action, intent or preparation by an individual leaves a samskara (impression, impact, imprint) in the deeper structure of the person's mind. These impressions then await volitional fruition in that individual's future, in the form of hidden expectations, circumstances or a subconscious sense of self-worth. These Samskaras manifest as tendencies, karmic impulses, subliminal impressions, habitual potencies or innate dispositions. In ancient Indian texts, the theory of Samskara explains how and why human beings remember things, and the effect that memories have on people's suffering, happiness and contentment.[/Quote]
Direct insight into sa?skara is obtainable through insight meditation (vipasyana) and other meditative disciplines. No brain scanner required!
So it is believed by someto others it is but the augmentation of dreaming.
Quoting Wayfarer
I recognize that around the world, and through much of recorded history, people have had a degree of insight into this aspect of how our minds work, but rather "through a glass darkly" I think, by comparison with having a practical understanding of the nature of Hebbian learning in neural networks.
I see Zen as containing the rudiments of an intuition readjustment 'technology', with the Zen master engaging in "direct transmission" that results in students experiencing a breakdown of their old intuitions and replacement of discarded intuitions with new more robust intuitions. In some cases it involves a sudden dramatic epiphany - satori.
Of course Zen too is seeing "through a glass darkly" but it gave us, "If you see the Buddha on the road kill him.", which is a plus.
How so?
You tell me how so. :grin:
https://www.lionsroar.com/if-you-meet-the-buddha-on-the-road-kill-him/
This is mostly rambling.
Do you think you can articulate a physicalism without a cause concept?
I'd like to think it's possible, since I don't like causation as a concept very much, but I don't know how to do it. I don't tend to like it as a concept because the individuation principles of events seem very ideal, whereas what they model is very material. If you've already got a system which is very well specified, it seems to make sense to think of causation as one change influencing another, because the state of a system is defined... So what counts as a change in a system's state was already specified.
There's an interstice between the above ambiguity and the supervenience discussion we're having. Supervenience isn't explicitly causal, is it. It's about necessary changes. Perhaps that could occur with a necessary correlation rather than a cause.
As an example, if someone has binge eating disorder, that could cause diabetes and damage to their teeth. Assuming that the only thing that influences that person's diabetes and teeth damage is the binge eating disorder, then you would have no diabetes changes without teeth damage changes, and vice versa [two supervenience relations], but no causal relationship between diabetes and tooth damage for that person.
Those two phenomena have a common cause as the stipulated only influence on their behaviour, though. If you lived in a world where you haven't seen the common cause [the binge eating disorder], you could still perhaps see that that person's tooth damage changed only when their diabetes changed. So those two would still have an establish-able supervenience relationship without establishing a causal intermediary.
But I suppose that's different from obviating the requirement of the existence of a causal intermediary for that supervenience relation...
Or concepts in general.
The arguments for physicalism as the OP asked are best when we simply limit the definition of existence to only something material. Concepts, language, ideas, mathematics, logic, all of that can then simply be said to be something else. Perhaps true and logical, but not something that exists.
Of course some can argue that this just is circular reasoning and isn't very useful as we do need all those concepts, models etc. to say anything relevant about what does exist materially in our universe.
Quoting Janus
You may have a more definite view without being aware of it. Thats why I mentioned the split between Kuhn and Popper on how whats out there impacts our scientific knowledge. This difference reflects a difference in understanding the nature of reality in itself. I imagine you have a preference between these two philosophies of science.
I'm familiar with that 'koan'. In reality Zen/Ch'an is highly regimented and disciplined and is generally conducted in an atmosphere of strict routine and observance of rules and hierarchy. Have a read of Harold Stewart's take on Westerner's interactions with Japanese Zen. (Stewart was an Australian poet and orientalist who lived the last half of his life in Kyoto.)
:D -- that's when we're digging into the good stuff, in terms of a conversation at least.
I gave it a thought and I can't do so -- but I can imagine the possibility.
Quoting fdrake
I think it's interesting to introduce a time-dimension to ideas of supervenience -- the A-level and the B-level can be differentiated time-wise (and note how "time-wise" can mean 1 second, 1 minute, 2 hours, etc.) -- but my understanding of A-level and B-level supervenience is more with respect to objects I think? Moving a plate also moves the number of atoms it's comprised of (though surely at least one atom of silicon or calcium carbonate we had considered "the plate" also rubs off onto our palm? ... the oddity of attempting to use scientific statements in philosophy...) -- but does a moment supervene on the next moment? Maybe, but it seems different. (also I must admit to still struggling with supervenience)
The problem with that is, that physicalism is supposed to be true of everything that is real. Even idealism acknowledges that physical objects exist, but physicalism is the idea that everything is reducible to the physical. For that reason, the most coherent form of physicalism was atomism, which held that indivisible point-particles, combining in endless arrays and combinations, were what was ultimately real. Well, that was until quantum physics and the wave-particle duality and electromagnetic fields came along. Now physicalism usually amounts to scientism - hey, we don't know what everything ultimately is, but if we're going to find out, then science is the way to do it.
I view things to go deeper than that.
Question: In what way can the basic laws of thought either rationally or empirically be evidenced to not in and of themselves be basic laws of nature writ largesuch that that which is logically impossible is then deemed to be part and parcel of physical reality?
If laws of thought govern all that is physical, then it is irrational to hold that these very laws of thought emerged (via supervenience or otherwise) out of that which is physical. Instead entailing that the physical itself is contingent on the occurrence of laws of thoughtwith laws of thought being commonly taken to not be in and of themselves physical unless they were to emerge from the physical.
This then directly points to some form of idealism (an omni-this-and-that deity not being in any way required for its occurrence).
(Quantum weirdnesssuch as the delayed-choice quantum eraseris no mans land in terms of proper interpretations. And these interpretations commonly regard what is metaphysically possible rather than logically so. So quantum weirdness in itself will not evidence what Im here asking for.)
Generally, I like physicalism, but I think you miss a lot by stopping at reductionism. Maybe physicalism just gets us to our mental worlds and then we can move on from there
You once said to me:
Quoting Mark Nyquist
I think I know why you say that - I think it's because Western culture has abandoned or rejected ways of thinking that provide an alternative to physicalism. Physicalism seems rational and scientific. Would that be about right?
It seems reasonable to think that the world as experienced and understood is an aspect or function of the "in itself' (which of course includes the 'human in itself'). But I think that's as far as we can go, because we have no way of determining just how our experience and understanding relates to the in itself, except to think that it must somehow do so. That's what I mean by eschewing definite views beyond the context of human experience and understanding; it might be plausible to think that the way we experience things is related to the nature of the in itself, but there seems to be no way that we could parse that relation in terms of rational or empirical justification.
So, I don't think science has anything much to say here, as I see all of science as dealing only with things as they appear to us. I don't see the Popper/ Kuhn "split" as a significant polemic; I think the views of each can be accommodated within the views of the other.
Sounds like something I would say.
I remember you warning about reductionism and I take that seriously. Actually, how we mentally interact with matter is what seems the most interesting to me. And for some it's the person to person thing so some of that also but I tend to be more physically oriented.
Suppose we question taking as axiomatic that there are laws of thought?
Might there be no such things as laws of thought, and what we conceptualize as laws of thought are actually incorrigible intuitions about how language tends to relate to reality? Intuitions arising from pattern recognition applied to observation of the way language is used and relates to regularities in reality. Intutions that began developing in our minds at an age too young for us to even remember.
Is there a way we could distinguish between laws of thought being laws of nature, and 'laws of thought' being incorrigible intuitions related to language and regularities in nature, that have developed in us from a young age?
I will answer yes: rationally. If laws of thought develop from physicality, then, prior to their development, physicality would not be in any conceivable way bound by them. I'm here primarily thinking evolutionarily. This would then differentiate them from laws of nature.
Yet, in favor of the point I intended to initially make regarding some form of idealism, we nevertheless require that physicality in total be intelligible via laws of thought in order to infer that laws of thought in any way develop from physicality.
What sort of thing is this requirement, that physicality in total be intelligible via laws of thought?
An understanding of biological evolution gives reason to recognize that we wouldn't be here without some regularities to events in the universe. So from such a perspective it is fairly unsurprising that a combination of biological and cultural evolution resulted in truth conveying human language use having regularities which have a correspondence with regularities to events in the universe.
However what mandates a "total" intelligibility?
Furthermore, why think laws of thought are even sufficient to reach a total intelligibility? Suppose instead of laws of thought we consider digital computation? Digital computation is only up to the task, of simulating things to some level of complexity. Is there reason to think application of the laws of thought can do, what digital computation cannot?
It is physical but not in the way of the reductionist interpretation. Emergent properties functions as a result of increasing complexity. The gist of it is basically that you might start with basic systems, like particles, and they, as a collective form higher complexities that produce new properties that cannot simply be linked back and explained just by looking at the fundamental particles and their functions themselves. In such systems, the initial mathematical state and starting point, govern and directs how the complexity grows and will define the properties that emerges.
It's a bit more complicated than that, but in essence, when thinking about something like the mind; neurons can be measured to govern different systems of the brain. We can measure how they function and how they control different systems of the body, how memories form etc. but we've yet to explain the holistic nature of the entire mind. We have these separate systems that we can define, but we do not know how they relate to the entirety of our experience existing as a conscious being. But in the concept of an emergent system; all functions in the brain and body collectively increase the complexity and produce a holistic system that operate in new ways. The combination of all produces the result that is our mind.
These behaviors of systems can be found in other areas of research like withing an ecosystem that is extremely complex but cannot be defined by any individual specific animal, plant, insect or bacteria, and cannot be traced up through the ecosystem and be explained by simply those individual parts. We can see the result of the ecosystem functioning as a balanced system that moves and flows in a way that is highly complex and its own thing, but never define it as a thing in its own when viewing its parts. It simply "becomes" out of the complexity it generates.
As an example, people who experienced near death experiences have described that when they get revived and slowly return to consciousness; the ability of understanding the reality around them kicks in step by step, at different levels of understanding, connected to what specific brain system that receives oxygen through blood first. When they go through it, they experience different levels of conscious understanding of their surroundings. They can see and hear, but not understand what anything means, they can see clearly, but do not have a the ability to form those visuals into spatial three dimensional understanding of reality until such systems "turns on" again and all of a sudden; they can perceive reality just like everyone else. They can hear sounds, but make not sense of it, until more systems comes alive and they are able to hear in context again. The more all complex systems start to act in sync and increase in numbers, the more the half-functioning brain that produce only a rudimentary shell of a consciousness, becomes a normal human consciousness.
Of course, these concepts are yet to have full empirical evidence to back them up, even though the science and observations of it leans towards this understanding of consciousness. Many similar types of emergent systems appears all over in nature and they holistically converge many research fields into a general understanding of reality. Basically, there are so many systems in our reality that follows these behaviors that this holistic perspective hints at a fundamental corner stone of how reality functions.
Quoting Janus
The Kuhn-Popper split is one of philosophy rather than science, and the two views definitely cannot be accommodated within each other, any more than postmodernism can be accommodated within realism. They both talk about the allegedly same world outside of our schemes, but in terms sharply different from each other.
Naturalism is just the broader idea that rejects the supernatural. In that sense, yes, I'm a naturalist as well. I do not think there are any supernatural elements to reality, I think that such things stems from human desperation, that our fears generate the need for supernatural elements to exist in order to cope with reality. Any notion of supernatural in my perspective would be things and beings that exist outside of the physical laws of reality, in essence, if there's a multiverse or higher universe outside of this and it is populated with such beings or existences, then that could be called supernatural. However, in the common terminology, supernatural refers to the fantastical that defies our reality and there is not a single fraction of evidence for any of it and all the witnesses expressing their fantastical anecdotal descriptions of them, when understanding human psychology, technology and physics, can easily be countered. People are generally prone to find patterns and make up imaginative explanations of what they don't understand, it's the foundation of how any religion starts out. Naturalism rejects all that and focus on what is, not what is believed.
Physicalism is part of naturalism, but focuses more on the metaphysical specifics. Especially when it comes to the mind and consciousness, or the nature of reality in terms of physics.
Emergentism generally focus on the scientific observations and theories of emergent properties of complex systems. Since it's found in so many areas of research, it forms an entire sub-category in physicalism. And it generally somewhat counter-argue against reductionism as it specifically points out the problem of direct links between the emergent properties and the less complex parts of the system. That it is problematic to try and quantify the math of that link as it may become too complex for any computational system to summarize it holistically. We may be able to in the future, but we also might not and need to simply conclude that we can't compute it, only understand that it happens.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Strong or weak emergence depends on what we can prove in the future. As I said, it may be that we can't provide an understandable link between the parts and the emergent property (strong emergence), but we can't rule it out and we may be able to compute and observe it some time in the future (weak emergence). As of now we cannot conclude either to be true, but we can conclude that there's observed phenomena that functions by the principles of emergence.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Physicalism only pinpoints that explanations boils down to physical systems. Emergence co-exist and functions within it through acknowledging such physical fundamentals; but expands them into emerging results that become "extra-physical", or "transcend" the classical definition of "objects".
In terms of Hemple's Dilemma, I'd say that emergence isn't an explanation but rather an observation of a type of behavior of reality. The nature of the behavior differs in each system based on what is producing the emergent properties and in what form it exists. Much like we don't treat a dimension in physics as some specific entity, but rather a general system that's part of defining reality. Emergence, as it seems, has some general attributes that can be found all over our reality and it may be part of how reality itself functions. Therefore I don't think the Hemple's Dilemma applies as it is both very specific in nature, and at the same time a general description of how reality functions. The problem lies in that the research into emergent systems is still pretty modern as a broad description, and still lacks enough empirical evidence to have common appearance in science media reports (some have), and it's just pretty much cutting edge right now that we're looking into it more seriously, coming out of previous purely and classical reductionist approaches. There's a lot of observations already concluded, so it's not as speculatory as many seem to believe, but it's not yet enough to find its way into fundamental parts of theories as frameworks.
However while these examples demonstrate physical and chemical emergence, they do not adequately address the unique challenges posed by consciousness. The emergence of physical properties like the transparency of glass or the liquidity of water can be (and have been) completely explained through physical and chemical processes. These are objective properties that can be observed and measured from an external perspective.
Consciousness, on the other hand, presents a different kind of problem. It's not just about the emergence of new properties but about the emergence of the capacity for subjective experience. This includes what it feels like to see, feel pain, or taste. This subjective quality is what is not observable or measurable in terms of objective properties of chemical substances. And that is by design, as by design, scientific observation excludes the subject.
Even if we fully understood the brain's physical and biological attributes - and we're a very long way from that - we might still lack an explanation for how these attributes give rise to subjective experience. There is an incommensurability involved which is not bridgeable in terms of more data. This gap in understanding leads us to question whether the concept of emergence, as understood in physical sciences, is sufficient to explain consciousness, or whether it is, at best, just another analogy or metaphor (or straw to grasp at).
Oh dear. Correlationism. Yet another Kantian catastrophe!!!!
Fascinating, innit? To save ourselves from ourselves, we should understand its entirely appropriate to ask Whats it like to be a computer, or a microprocessor, or a ribbon cable? .
Sounds an awful lot like the seepage from the rot of Kantianism explicitly being denied, to even suggest that question has any relevance. I mean .from whence should one expect to be answered?
Thanks for the interesting read. Small wonder, methinks, that I voluntarily neglect modern thought.
Emergence is.
Me too. I think of it, paradigmatically, in terms of classes of properties which apply to objects. So...
Plate class macroscopic properties supervene on chemical structure level properties.
I guess strictly speaking all the events at moment 12:00 could supervene on the set of events at 11:59. If you think of classes of events and objects as properties of the stratum of events and objects which exist at a moment, you would get collections at 12:00 only changing if collections at 11:59 had changed. So assuming the collections are properties, I think that follows.
But there is something a bit iffy in taking those properties to be extensional? As in, the macroscopic properties of the plate seem specified by understanding a (defining?) intension toward it as a macroscopic object; manipulability, colour, texture... On the level of configurations of atoms and structure. Whereas the "structure" of a moment is just that it is an index.
If monism and evolution are true, emergence must happen.
We need to define physical fundamentals first. We can argue that all existence is composed of smaller parts and that the sum complexity produce emergent properties that we then apply the definition of "an object". Calling something a physical object is just a terminology by us humans to define reality easier, it's part of the simplified language we use to function in day to day life. But "objects" are only accumulations of different other systems and the reason they accumulate and produce separation from other objects, like me as a human being not just vaporizing into an equilibrium of the space I'm in, is due to fundamental forces that bind and define these sets of things that make up me as a material entity. We could argue that these forces are either emergent properties themselves of other fundamentals, or they are part of the defining entities that mathematically steer sets to form certain types of higher complexities.
What I mean is that for a system to produce emergent properties; pure randomness cannot work on its own due to simple chaos theory. It's only when something has enough initial defining guiding principles that randomness start to form into a higher complexity that produce emergent properties. And it is in our math equations of reality that we can spot these guiding principles. If we zoom out and back to the beginning, before the big bang, going by the inflation theories of our universal bubble forming by randomness into a stable mathematical balance (like the fine structure constant) produces a stable rising complexity out of whatever we formed out of. In the theory it's proposed that there can form other inflationary universes that has its constants being different and therefor something like the fine structure constant are unable to balance the electromagnetic forces against other forces and the inflation of those universes fizzle out before being able to form any further higher complexities. It may be that we live in a universe in which these forces have found a mathematical equilibrium that stabilizes the progression of entropy and thereby enables enough of it to generate further higher complex outcomes, i.e emergent properties.
Whether or not these forces and the mathematical balance are emergent properties themselves or functions as the guiding principles are up for debate. But the fact that we have such probability chaos in quantum randomness and with virtual particles, yet still generate balanced bonds of matter and energy that doesn't immediately cancel itself out or break apart speaks to reality, as we experience it, to be a probability luck that occurred when our reality began. We wouldn't exist without all those forces ending up in a functioning relation to each other and we wouldn't exist if these forces didn't act as guiding principles for how higher complexities behave, leading to emerging outcomes and new levels of complexities.
In essence, everything is in relation and acting on each other, there are nothing defining the borders between anything other than the fundamental forces producing such borders by their fundamental interactions. Without their mathematical balance, nothing would be, at all.
Quoting NotAristotle
Yes, in a sense this is how we can define it. A single water molecule, H2O, does not have itself the property of a specific state of matter. When you heat up a water molecule it becomes more kinetic and that energy soon overcomes any intermolecular forces. These forces bind together many atoms and only when they act in a larger amount do we see these kinetic behaviors act upon each other and the intermolecular forces binding low kinetic atoms. So only when atoms form molecules that then bonds with others do we see matter and only through different levels of energy do we see this matter behave in certain states.
Scaling up from that we find more complex interactions between different states of matter, different matter reacting on other types matter and their states interacting etc. and we're off to form even higher levels of complexities. Nothing of this is a straight line, but what we observe are cutoff points in which interactions pool into some new function that interacts as if the whole system could be defined as one single entity, this is the emergent property.
But, physicalism generally focus on topics like consciousness and in terms of that we focus on the brain/body, its physical processes, the neurological parts of the brain, and how they function and what I'm arguing for, consciousness appearing as an emergent property out of the complex bonds between singular biological functions. A form of hallucination that gets produced by a specific balance of these parts interactions with each other. Therefore we cannot simply draw a line from one part of the brain to a resulting behavior in our sum consciousness without understanding the guiding principles and how they steer the path of the complexity.
Quoting Wayfarer
And it's here that I ask, why would our entity as humans be separated from the rest of the universe? We see the emergent properties throughout our reality, acting on different scales and in different sets of interactions, with cutoff points in which we can observe the emergent properties appear and that we then simplify in language by defining them as "objects". But we aren't bound in language to only call simple bonds and interactions "an object", we also call sets of complexities as "objects". A solar system, an ecosystem etc. When speaking of an eco system as a whole it produces a behavior as a single entity when zoomed out and we can zoom out further and further and see more emergent properties arise from its parts.
"Consciousness" is as undefined as a physical object as an "ecosystem". And in similar fashion both systems produce problems for us to define their behavior by just studying its parts. Just like consciousness we have problems explaining the behavior of the whole of an ecosystem by trying to draw lines from its parts. It's like something "clicks into place", a cutoff point in which new behaviors emerge. It's this abstraction that produce a problem for scientists to just explain consciousness by the neurological parts alone. The interactions between all systems and individual neurons increase so quickly in mathematical complexity that we lose our computational capability to verify any meaningful causal links other than trivial ones that formed our knowledge of how different parts in the brain are linked to basic and trivial functions of our consciousness. But the holistic entity that is our consciousness shows functions that we don't understand by these trivial links we experiment with. And they disappear as through a cutoff point when we remove more and more interactions and interplays between functions in the brain, as I defined when writing about the near-death waking up-experiences.
Quoting Wayfarer
Because they are simple for explaining the principle. Increasingly complex systems become harder to quantify in their emergent properties, yet we see them. Talking about matter is only there to make a simple example of the principle, but in relation to consciousness we reach a level of complexity and emergent properties that become harder to explain and test, and it's why we've yet to conclude it true. This is what much of modern sciences attempt to achieve. But as I explained with my example of the constants in physics having "infinite" decimals, it could be possible to explain these extreme complexities if we had the computational power to reach the end of such constant's string of decimals, seen as the geometrical resolution should predictably break down at some point, changing a constant to a variable as we reach the smallest functional resolution at the Planck scale and enter pure randomness. What I mean by that is that the complexities of higher emergent phenomena require such extreme level of computational precision that we may never be able to simply formulate a map of how consciousness appears. The numbers go through the roof if we brute force it.
It's basically similar to modern AI systems, even though they are extremely rudimentary in comparison; with the increasing complexity and amount of information, the guiding principles of the system forms emergent properties in the models behavior that was not directly programmed in, yet, they're there. Like how an LLM start to function in another language that was not programmed in as a function. And in similar fashion to other complex system producing emergent phenomenas, the computer scientists working on these models simply cannot explain how it happens, leading to the black box problem which echoes the problems we have in science to explain consciousness.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why would billions of years of evolution not be able to form a certain emergent property based on necessity? We see highly complex systems all over in nature; that emerged through evolution. The only reason you apply consciousness some magical special treatment is because of our emotions as the conscious being thinking about it. It produces a feedback loop of experienced paradoxes that stirs up emotions and start to play into our cognitive biases. It quickly becomes supernatural and religious in nature, in which we protect our sanity by looking at consciousness as something uniquely special compared to the rest reality itself. That's what I call the human arrogance bias as we form theories not based on a universal logic, but instead by applying a higher value to ourselves skewing our ability to theorize correctly.
So, there exist no reason or evidence, other than religious needs and wants, to separate consciousness as a function from the rest of the natural world. The emergent property all of this is about is that specific subjectivity you mention. And the evolutionary necessity can simply be boiled down and explained through the human species starting with the evolutionary trait of adaptability, the need for it. Humans are highly adaptable in nature when speaking of only our basic body functions. Adaptability is an extremely powerful evolutionary trait, especially for animals that move over large distances and climates. It is not far fetched that the whole reason we developed our level of consciousness is due to this adaptability, a function that makes us able to plan and change behaviors according to the environment. This increase in complexity developed through evolution would then, just like other emergent systems of high complexities, produce new functions that weren't part of the intended simple function. That in order to be adaptable, we developed systems to recognize, memorize and formulate visualized scenarios in order to be able to plan our next moves. These systems together would be able to produce a new level of complexity which may be the reason why subjectivity occurs.
Our only problem is that we cannot quantify that complexity as the number of interactions between systems reach levels far beyond what's computationally possible by brute force.
Quoting Wayfarer
There's enough to assume it plays a part. But we don't know if we can produce a model that maps how it functions. And what I'm arguing for is that instead of looking at each part, each interaction and trying to brute force it, search for the underlying guiding principles. These are essential for emergent systems to produce properties that functions as their own entities, and finding these principles should be possible.
Basically, it becomes a trial and error research, setting up starting points (principles) that guide the generated complexity as we look for and analyze the emergent properties and if they show behaviors of subjective agency. It's basically what the AI research is doing, but without having that business as the main goal. Their approach is just higher functionality and all focus has been on the shenanigans that appears out of capitalist goal, but there's a reason why AI is considered instrumental as a tool for scientists researching consciousness. Because it enables testing complexity in a new way, and these tools in research is only just now being used.
Consciousness, in my view, is just part of the same coin as anything else. Maybe the best description would be that both mind and matter are part of the same thing, but an emergent property that functions as a fluid abstract system rather than a set object could be viewed as an abstract while a defined set object that emerge would be called an object. And these are bound to what scale they're defined under. A set of objects can emerge an abstract. Whether a set of abstracts can form an object however is probably closer to religion, but an abstract could form emergent properties of another abstract, as we can see in behavior science and sociology studying the psychology of masses of people, when speaking of primarily human consciousness. But one idea of an object formed out of a mass abstract complexity could be something like a Dyson sphere, a production of objects that becomes physical out of the abstract system of the masses.
If the 'subjective quality' of experience(or experience if you prefer) emerges, then a lack of experience within or regarding the more basic elemental constituents is exactly what would be required and expected, not by design so much, but rather by necessity(existential dependency and elemental constituency).
Apple pies are not found - cannot be found - by looking at apple trees.
That's not a flaw. It is a feature.
:100:
:100: :up: to your whole post...
...and this paragraph especially is brilliantly said.
Greetings Christoffer! Your contributions to this thread have been interesting. They've captured my attention.
It seems to me that not only are mind and matter "part of the same thing", but that they are part of a plurality of things, all of which 'emerge' as more complex entities.
And yes, consciousness must be taken into account in a fluid spatiotemporal manner. The problem currently - it seems to me - is the apparent inability for the sciences to draw the evolutionary bridge between language less creatures' and language users'. There are also inherent issues with the origins of meaning, which is required for all cases of consciousness. The experience must be meaningful to the creature, at the time.
Seconded. It seems to me that methodological approach deserves attention. Earlier, perhaps your first post in this thread, you set out much the same reasoning I've agreed with elsewhere(a nod to methodological naturalism and Occam's razor).
Where were you when I was talking about definitions in philosophy? :smile:
Quoting frank
One can always reduce things of non-physical nature to something physical.
For example, morality has to do with survival; and since survival refers to the body, life, our existence as such --some even say that survival is the main, of not the only, moral goal in life-- it can be judged to be physical in nature. But this reduction is a fallacy. Because it assumes that one can exist only as a body; that it suffices to be alive. It does not include existence as a father, as a friend, as a citizen, as a human being, in general. It does not include well-being, conscience, the sense of freedom, the need for recognition and being respected, and all kind of emotional and mental states that are irreducable to matter.
Our reality, our view of the world, what we think about everything, is based on physical things and concrete ideas as well as on non-physical things and abstract ideas.
This doesn't give me the impression that you really thought about that quote I posted. What does what you posted have to do, with Zen having rudimentary technology for dealing with human intuitions?
Have any thoughts on what that quote itself said?
For me, best when listened to with closed eyes:
Sorry, but this makes no sense.
Quoting Christoffer
Again, a very, very long post, which unfortunately shows no insight into the fundamental plight of existence, which is precisely the sense of separateness and the accompanying anxiety that this produces. But, of course, that is dismissed on account of it being 'religious'.
I totally get that.
Sure. This part:
Very true. The reason I answered with that piece by Harold Stewart was just to point to the broader social context in which Zen/Ch'an is usually situated. In the modern west, it's very much an individualist attitude, but the cultures in which it is practiced are very different to that. But it's a digression from this thread.
When you attend any Buddhist ceremony or meditation centre, you will notice theres a lot of bowing. You bow to the Three Jewels Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. One of the things I learned from Buddhism was the significance of bowing, in acknowledgement of the wisdom of the teachings, practitioners and teacher. There is a Pali text, the Parable of the Raft, in which the Buddha likens the teaching to a hastily-constructed raft built from twigs and branches, used to cross the river, but not to be carried about once the river is crossed. That is the same point that Lin Chi/Rinzai is making. But there is still a river to cross.
Yeah, no surprise. In order for it to make sense, one must be thinking about what it would take in order for consciousness to be an emergent result of evolutionary progression. We must first do a bit of arm chair reasoning.
We would not look for it at the level of chemical compound. Those are necessary elemental constituents.
But the problem is, youre still regarding it as a phenomena, as something that exists. But consciousness is not something that exists, it is the ground of experience. Now, certainly, consciousness can be treated as a phenomena, as something that can be studied and understood - that is what cognitive science and psychology deal with. But I think the hard problem argument is not addressed to that - it is about the meaning of being (what it is like to be .), which is not an objective phenomenon.
Nah.
The problem - here and now - is that I have someone whom I've respected for decades attempting to tell me what my viewpoint is, and they're dead wrong in very important ways. You're right in saying I regard consciousness as something that exists. The rest is inapplicable, a false description. It does not match up to my position on consciousness, particularly regarding its emergence.
Sorry, as this is entirely off-topic, but what... Do you know each other IRL, or have been following each other across the internet since the Nineties? (genuinely curious - seems anomalous here)
Nah. Just me overstating more than a decade of time between my first reading of Wayfarer's posts. :blush: Not plural.
Saying that a long post is a reason for "no insight", makes absolutely no sense. I've taken what you say into consideration in order to write out a detailed answer to what you brought up. This constant focus on the "length" of my writing is a rather dishonest point really. This topic is extremely complex and requires extremely detailed descriptions, in that perspective, my writing is rather short actually.
We're fundamentally talking about functions of our reality that I'm arguing extends beyond mere consciousness and therefor require further exploration. It's key to the understanding as a whole since a core part points out that our consciousness is as much a part of the natural world as anything else, and therefore functions according to how the rest of reality functions.
My point of religious reasoning mainly focus on when someone fail to acknowledge where evidence and actual observed phenomena exist. I've read your idealism argument and you do focus a lot on actual scientific research, but where I think it fails is to connect to any actual alternative and separate conclusion that answers beyond the scientific research and reasoning I'm building out of. It essentially produces a caricature of scientific perspectives and I don't know why.
That's why I continue to ask the question; where's the alternative? What's the alternative theory, position and perspective that's able to follow what's already been proven as well as what has been observed and being observed in scientific research today?
If you argue for idealism, what is it that you are arguing for? And are you just using the lack of final evidences as your foundation for your argument or do you have a foundation for idealism that is able to supersede what science and emergence theories provides?
I cannot dismiss your argument as "religious" until I know how you argue for it and counter-argue against what I've written. So far you're only focusing on dismissing everything, without real explanation for a different counter perspective.
I'm not sure how to interpret what you wrote there because it generally looks like you are after answers to reality in the form of comfort, something that reduces the anxiety of our existence. For me, that is an irrelevant point as it has nothing to do with what's true about reality. Those are two different aspects of existing as a human being. I am interested in answers to what reality is and how consciousness functions, but I don't really care in that sense about any meaning to it, because "meaning" is arbitrary, it is a trivial thing in this topic. "Meaning" is something I can create with what I have, it's something I can work on separately. We don't get meaning out of these theories and answers, we only get answers to the questions. Meaning is something we have to build out of the truth we find and if we believe there to be meaning elsewhere, that is the religious aspect I pointed out in my argument being inventions that ignores actual search for truth.
I believe these were intended as two separate attributes.
It is long. And it provides no insight. Could be wrong, but that seems the case to me.
That is a good question and I will come back to it.
I tend towards dismissing your arguments in the same spirit that you trend to dismiss a vast range of philosophical spirituality as religious fantasy. You strike me as a highly intelligent and articulate atheist with cast-iron convictions. Consider:
Quoting Christoffer
Whereas I see philosophy (and in some ways, religion) as being precisely the concern with what Victor Frankl called mans search for meaning. But you dismiss it as an infantile search for comfort, as being like thumb-sucking. Thats how it comes across to me.
And the reason I tend towards being dismissive is because I couldnt say anything inside what you consider valid terms of reference which could hold any sway. What youre asking for is a scientific explanation of what is outside the purview of scientific explanations. Whereas I feel youre saying, if something is outside the purview of science, then how could it be worth considering?
In respect of alternative frameworks to scientific materialism which still respect science perhaps this essay might be a starting point https://aeon.co/essays/the-blind-spot-of-science-is-the-neglect-of-lived-experience
We both were members of the predecessor forum to this one, and possibly the one before that. But youre right, none of us know each other personally, it is purely a medium for the exchange of ideas.
I think on your very, very long post you went off the rails in your very first paragraph.
A physical object is always going to be primary and it's definition will be secondary. If there is any ambiguity about what the parameters of the physical object are they should be resolved by setting parameters on the physical object.
If the definition of the word you are using doesn't match the physical object.then you are using the wrong word.
Oh, interesting. As a new addition i had no idea there were prior iterations. Neat! What a great little community.
It seems to me that the changing of paradigms could, at least in practice, if not sociological theory, be mapped onto falsification.
:up:
I suppose you mean that modern Physicalism is more inclusive than ancient Materialism (Atomism). It's intended to include the full-range of modern science : especially chemical substance and dynamic causation ; hence covers the major categories of empirical Science : Chemistry (matter) and Physics (energy), along with their sub-categories : biology, geology, astronomy, etc. So, anything "opposed" to Physicalism would be implicitly classified as Pseudoscience. Yet, the "hard" sciences do omit the "soft" sciences of Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology, and Politics. All of which are closer to Philosophical (theoretical) than to Empirical (experimental) methodologies. Are they also pseudosciences?
On a philosophy forum, the Physicalism label is usually contrasted with Idealism or Spiritualism, or Pseudoscience-in-general. The primary distinction is that "Physics" is Natural Science, whereas "Spirit" is Supernatural Superstition. Yet in reality the line between them is blurry. For my own discussions, I prefer dualistic Physicalism to monistic Materialism because it is more inclusive : tangible Matter and invisible Energy. Unfortunately, the physical concept of Energy is also acceptable to modern Paranormalists, Spiritualists and Ghost Hunters, who seek for evidence of their spiritual quarry with technology designed to detect physical energy and spooky forces. Is that what you mean by "doesn't have a good definition anymore"? :smile:
Physicalism :
This includes not only material objects, but also energy, forces, and physical laws. In summary, while materialism asserts that everything is made up of material substance, physicalism goes further to claim that everything can be explained by physical entities and their properties.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-materialism-and-physicalism
As you implied, the key to your differences with is in divergent definitions of "To Be / To Exist". A typical dictionary definition says that "To Exist" means Objective Reality, which seems to exclude Subjective Ideality. Reality is taken to be what the physical senses sense, and implicitly denies what metaphysical Reason infers, often by analogy, not experiment. Yet physical science could not function without inferences of that which is not apparent to the 5 senses, including invisible Energy, known only by deduction from its effects on matter.
I suspect (infer) that Kant coined the term "Noumenon" with such to-be-or-not-to-be debates in mind. The term tries to make Ideas seem like merely a different kind of Phenomenon, which exists in a nonphysical/metaphysical sense. That's also why I have recently been emphasizing the scientific relationship between causal Energy and intentional Mind. But it still sounds like non-sense to some. :smile:
But can anyone set out clearly what emergence is?
The first is the rejection of physicalism in its entirety, the attempted denial of all things physical.
The second is that not only do we live in a physical world but that physical explanations are to be preferred to any other sort of explanation.
Each respondent defends one or the other, few taking as extreme a stance on either, preferring a little nuance. Each seeks to provide a single overall account of how the world works.
But that's not how the world works.
Folk should be familiar with this image:
And the accompanying text:
What you have in your thread is somewhat like two teams looking at this diagram, the one insisting that the Numbers explain what it is about; while the other insist it is the Colours that allow us to understand. Their error is to think that there must be one explanation. Their argument is as a result interminable, and doubtless will go on long after I post this. (See PI§402)
There's more, of course, since this initial error leads one to compound one's mistakes. The idealists, when held to account, find that they are unable to give a simple account of error, or even of their not being alone. The physicalist uses words like "reduction" or "emergence", waving a hand in the air when asked what such things might actually be.
The alternative to both is found most explicitly in that grandmother of philosophy, Mary Midgley, but can be seen in other Oxbridge philosophers from the middle of last century. It's simply that we use different types of explanation in different situations, that we need not, indeed ought not, commit to there being a single monolithic explanation of everything.
The world is far too interesting for that.
:100:
Best explanation I've ever heard. Thank you, my friend. :up:
There's my weeks delve.
Anyone else you'd append for someone to explore?
Maybe Christoffer can articulate it in a way that I can't see how to at the moment, but I can point to examples. For instance, suppose I have designed a voltmeter. When an instance of such a voltmeter is powered, it has the emergent property of displaying a number corresponding to the voltage applied to the input terminals. That emergent property supervenes on the particular properties of components within that specific instance of the voltmeter design.
Another instance of the same voltmeter design might have a different emergent property due to having different specific components. For example, voltmeter A may be more accurate than voltmeter B. Because the emergent accuracy of voltmeter B supervenes on B's components, changing the emergent accuracy of voltmeter B would require a change in one or more of the specific components of B that the emergent property supervenes on.
In other words, then, there are no good arguments for physicalism, insofar as it is presumed to be a monistic explanation (i.e. that everything that exists is, or is reducible to, the physical.) Agree that Mary Midgley is an effective critic of that, notwithstanding her school ma'amly prose.
Quoting Banno
Similar to 'supervenience' - a convenient term the meaning of which can be adapted as required to fill the explanatory gap.
Quoting Gnomon
I have long felt there ought to be a distinction made between what is real and what exists, the latter being a subset of the former.
User
what is the best way to explain emergence and supervenience to philosopher
ChatGPT
To explain emergence and supervenience to a philosopher, you can describe emergence as the phenomenon where complex systems exhibit properties or behaviors that cannot be straightforwardly deduced from the properties of their individual components. Supervenience, on the other hand, is the idea that higher-level properties are dependent on, or supervene upon, lower-level properties.
For example, consider the mind-brain relationship. Emergence suggests that mental phenomena, like consciousness, arise from the complexity of neural networks in the brain, but you can't predict consciousness just by examining individual neurons. Supervenience, in this context, emphasizes that mental states depend on the underlying neural states.
In essence, emergence highlights the unpredictability of higher-level phenomena, while supervenience emphasizes the dependency of these phenomena on their underlying components.
However,there is also such a thing as top-down causation which mitigates against purely physicalist explanations of consciousness. This concept becomes evident in phenomena like the placebo effect and other instances of psychosomatic medicine. Then there's also the discovery of neuroplasticity. as highlighted in Norman Doidge's book "The Brain That Changes Itself," demonstrates the remarkable ability of the brain to change in response to various kinds of training and stimuli. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's capacity to reorganize its structure, functions, and connections in response to experiences, learning, and environmental factors.
Doidge's book explores numerous case studies and examples that illustrate how the brain can adapt and transform itself throughout a person's life. Some key points regarding the implications of neuroplasticity include:
Recovery from Brain Injuries: Neuroplasticity has shown that even after traumatic brain injuries or strokes, the brain can rewire itself to compensate for lost functions. This provides hope for rehabilitation and recovery in individuals who have experienced such injuries.
Learning and Skill Acquisition: Neuroplasticity supports the idea that the brain can continually learn new skills and adapt to changing circumstances. It challenges the notion that learning is limited to specific developmental periods.
Cognitive Rehabilitation: The concept of neuroplasticity has led to the development of various cognitive rehabilitation techniques for conditions such as dyslexia, autism, and other neurological disorders.
Changing Behaviors and Habits: Neuroplasticity implies that individuals can change their behaviors and habits by rewiring neural pathways through conscious effort and practice. This is relevant in fields like psychology and addiction treatment.
Mental Health: The book also explores how neuroplasticity plays a role in mental health and emotional well-being, offering insights into the potential for rewiring negative thought patterns and managing conditions like depression and anxiety.
In summary, the discovery of neuroplasticity, as presented in "The Brain That Changes Itself," underscores the brain's remarkable adaptability and capacity for change throughout a person's life. It challenges traditional views of the brain as a static organ and offers hope for a wide range of applications in rehabilitation, education, and mental health.
So the question I would ask, is when does the ability of volitional activity to mould the structure of the brain and other organs commence, exactly? Might it be possible to consider that volitional action, in the broadest sense, is present in organisms of all kinds, even very simple organisms? Which again mitigates against a purely physicalist explanation.
Thanks also to ChatGPT for some input and formatting.
There certainly is the term "top-down causation". However simply assuming top-down causation occurs is begging the question against physicalism. Now if you can provide some empirical evidence demonstrating that top down causation occurs then you could falsify physicalism. However simply asserting that top-down causation occurs isn't good enough.
Do you have incontrovertible empirical evidence of top-down causation?
Neuroplasticity is not problematic for physicalism.
I dont believe the substance of this exchange can be explained in physical terms. If I say something that affects you it might increase your blood pressure. Yet nothing physical would have passed between us, unlike if I had administered a medicine. Thats an example.
Even if you really really really believe it, it doesn't falsify physicalism.
Quoting Wayfarer
I'm awfully confident that you physically used a computer input device to compose your post so that it was physically sent over the intenet to the TPF server. Then when I reopened the thread my Kindle was able to receive the data representing your post, as a result of that data having been physically transmitted from the TPF server to my Kindle.
You being unaware of the sequence of physical events in the causal chain, does not constitute evidence that nothing physical passed between us.
Of course. In each transition, the physical constituents of the information change and also the underlying media. It's translated between electrical pulses, pixels on the screen, then you might even write it down. But the substance of the information stays the same. So how could that be physical?
Emergence of individual minds from, and their supervenience on, the physical can be in principle explained just five via certain versions of idealism, such as that of Peirces objective idealism.
But I here want to mainly illustrate that this emergence and supervenience route of argumentation is a red herring avoiding the very issues concerned in respect to what physicalism is:
There is no logical reason why spiritual realmsreplete with forest and house fairies, ghosts, angels, and less than omnipotent deities that can thereby conflict with each othercannot all be hypothesized to exist via emergence from, and supervenience upon, that realm of reality consisting of corporeal consciousness, awareness, and mind applicable to life in generalwith the latter itself being affirmed to emerge from and supervene on physical particles, fields, and the like ultimately from and upon the omnipresent quantum vacuum state.
Yet, point being, this supposition would be antithetical to physicalism for tacitly maintained reasonssomething to do with an aversion to spirituality as expressed. Physicalism though it would yet technically be given the premise of emergence and supervenience.
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As to rejecting these here hypothesized apparitions on grounds that they are not empirically verifiable, neither are consciousnesses (the philosophical problem of other minds attests to this), whose reality no one here is debating. So lack of empirical proof isn't much of a rational argument against the deity-inclusive physicalism just expressed.
On the other hand, asking me "how" and "why" questions regarding this hypothetical is akin to me asking any physicalist "how" and "why" questions regarding gas atoms (two hydrogen and one oxygen) comprising a liquid when a grouping of H2O molecules are at room temperature. I have no good answer to give, no more than the physicalist does.
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No psychobabble here included or intended, but if by this presented argument one would want to project upon me some laughable fear of annihilation upon death or of some such other physicalist proposition, Ill then duly project upon the stated physicalist the phobia of an afterlife together with psychologizations of the deeds in their life which might make this fear so potent.
I'm hoping replies to this post, if any, dont lower themselves to such speculative and ad hominem rebuttals. If replied to, I'd much rather be rationally evidenced wrong in the argument just made.
You are assuming the mental content in my mind as I read your post is identical to what? Do you think it was identical to the way you were mentally modelling me interpreting it when you wrote it?
I think what happened is you wrote based on your intuiton as to how I would interpret it. I read the pixel based form of the data and my intuitions generated the interpreted content that occurred for me. It is clearly naive however to assume identical content for both of us associated with the digital data. If such verbatim content transfer occurred, I wouldn't be so frustrated about people here not understanding emergence and supervenience. :rage: :razz:
Argument from authority. So what?
Well, I slogged my way through a decent amount of:
..and it actually [I]reduced[/I] my confidence in "emergence," being any sort of magic wand for difficulties in forming an ontology that is both plausible and strongly framed. The arguments in Kim's "Physicalism or Something Near Enough," are a doozy.
The problem is that "what constitutes emergence," is deeply tied to metaphysical considerations that lie upstream of the concept, and how dependence is framed. Emergence is an old concept, but it seems many classical formulations of it are dead in the water.
I understand why people think we need emergence. My intuition though, is that a lot of attempts to build a definition of emergence are being built on top of prior assumptions that simply preclude the possibility of such a thing.
"How do you combine a bunch of building blocks and get something completely new that wasn't in the blocks to start with?" Intuitive answer is you simply don't. Same as how you don't get an ought from an is.
I've decided that ontologies are a lot like impressionist paintings. They look better from far way. :rofl:
I understand what you're saying, but I don't agree with it. The point is, however, that we speak the same language and can convey ideas through text. That is what I say is not meaningfully reducible to the physical.
Combine enough blocks and you get a black hole, which wasn't in the blocks to start with.
The problem is not in finding examples of phenomena that might exhibit emergence. There are plenty of those. It's in framing what emergence [I]is[/I] in a way that meshes with the overall ontology (which would generally be physicalism since the overwhelming amount of work on emergence is in that context).
The blocks example is about our intuition a metaphor.
I was wondering what your view of information is.
This is actually a good example of where physicalism and reductionism used as tools can keep you out of trouble.
So a principal of physicalism is that everything can be reduced to physical matter and you just questioned how information can be physical. Anyone who projects information as something existing outside of brains is going to run into trouble here. Physical signals with information piggybacking along for the ride.
The better view is information exists as brain state which is reduced to physical matter and communication is possible by physical signals. No brain external information.
What's the sitch when the information is in transit?
Bringing in reducibility is shifting the goal posts, and I understand that you don't agree with it, but can you give me a reason to think that your disagreement is not simply a matter of biased intuitions on your part?
How many words do you think it should take, to explain "what emergence is" for all cases of emergent properties? Are you sure this should be considered a serious question?
Just encoded physical matter that will be decoded by the receiver.
For my part, I applaud this sentiment. :grin:
You're welcome. It's just me sorting stuff out.
Quoting AmadeusD
Chapter five here is worth a read. Thanks, @Ludwig V.
Quoting Wayfarer
On the contrary, physicalism is exactly true, if what you are doing is physics. That's the methodological point made way back in the second post here. Physics has no place for explanations that are not physical, but in turn it has to restrict itself to not presenting explanations of things from outside its purview.
Trying to slip spirituality or Zen into physics is like trying to win Chess by presenting a full house.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus As with causality, it doesn't seem to stand up to close inspection.
Looks like you are active here but relatively new.
This information question is nothing but trouble...round and round stuff much worse than this thread.
Very active, and will continue to be. But yes, very new I've recently found out :P I am also, for 'context of me' starting my Philosophy BA as a conjoint with an LLB (bachelor of Law) that i'm part-way through this year.
I shall take note.
Thanks mate. Ryle is about half-way down my hit list currently - Just jumped a few spots.
The point is that physics is based on the quantitative analysis of physical particulars - spin, vector, velocity, and so on. The whole genius of Galileo's method was to strip out all of the antiquated Aristotelian notions of teleology and the like, and to reduce physics to the study of just those kinds of simple properties ('simple' as in not compounded from something else) of physical bodies. Allied with the newly-emerging mathematical sciences, this has been the backbone of the enormous strides made by physics since the 17th C.
But that revolution had a crucial starting point: it involved excluding all mental aspects such as consciousness, meaning, intention, or purpose from the study of the physical world.
We humans are part of this universe, physically composed of the same basic elements as everything else. Because our mental experiences are clearly linked to our existence as physical beings, particularly the functioning of our central nervous systems, it might seem reasonable to assume that such physicalist explanations would ultimately provide an explanation for the mental aspects of reality as well, if they were to be a comprehensive theory.
Nevertheless, this possibility is undercut by the fundamental principles that have characterized the physical sciences from their inception. While the physical sciences can describe organisms like us as elements of the objective spatiotemporal orderour structure and actions in space and timethey are incapable of elucidating the subjective experiences of these organisms or how the world appears from their unique points of view. While it is possible to offer a purely physical account of the neurophysiological processes that generate an experience and the associated physical behavior, such a description, no matter how comprehensive, will fail to capture the way it is perceived by its subject. Without this subjective perspective, it cannot truly be considered a comprehensive account. Hence, despite their remarkable success within their own realm, the physical sciences inevitably leave a significant aspect of nature unexplained (per Nagel).
I maintain that this perspective is so deeply ingrained in modern culture that we adopt it without being aware that we are doing so. That's why I referred before to the article 'the blind spot of science' which elaborates this idea.
Quoting Banno
The discussion is about physicalism, not physics. Physicalism is a philosophical doctrine.
:up:
If it wasn't cases of complex causation that we are discussing, we wouldn't bother discussing supervenience and emergence. So I don't see the relevance of the word "simple" in your statement.
So if we drop the "simple", you are saying the problem is that it looks like causation?
I'm not seeing how the way it looks to you is supposed to be a problem for physicalism.
:smirk:
I suspect you just lost @Wayfarer @Gnomon et al.
Quoting Wayfarer
Told ya. :roll:
There are countless examples of emergence in nature. Why should we think that particular arrangements and complexities of matter/ energy cannot produce novel qualities? For a start, think about chemistry. How reliable do you believe your intuitions are on this?
Well said.
The problem with emergentism is that nothingand certainly no thingcan be shown to emerge. Nothing of any sort appears or arises, especially wherever we use such language. Were left with nothing to work with or even think about.
Thats the problem with consciousness and mind in general. They cannot point to what they are talking about. That these words are noun-phrases and occupy the subject position in a sentence does not entail their existence.
I get it but properties are too abstract. They emerge only from thinking and discourse and various other analysis. What matters in the case of consciousness is the thing that is conscious, what it is we analyze and ascribe with various properties. That is consciousness by any measure.
Yeah my bad. I was trying to argue against the assertion of neuro-science as kind of a pre-requisite for insight but it was a digression.
It seems like you can make a strong case that it is not, that it is more akin to mathematics. Consider digital information. Two digital objects are identical iff their sequence of bits is identical. Sequences of bits are just (potentially enormous) binary numbers.
What is constant as information moves from one media to another is numerical. Everything that is not constant is physical.
The thing or things we ascribe properties to can be observed. To observe the property boiling point, for example, we have to observe something boil. With an activity its the same. If we want to observe a standing ovation we need to observe people stand and clap. There is no observable distinction between one or the other, the thing and its properties.
Emergence is a giant red herring in this discussion. Emergence is a description, not an explanation. If a complex phenomenon manifests properties that are not present in its components, and could never have been predicted by studying the components, these properties can be described as emergent. But this doesn't explain anything at all.
If physicalism is true, conscious is undoubtedly emergent from neural activity. But so what? This just characterizes the relationship between consciousness and neural activity. You still have to explain how consciousness can emerge from neural activity. Emergence itself is totally incapable of doing this. In all other emergent phenomena the explanation is known at least in principle, "emergence" is never an explanation.
Is Donald Duck real? No. Is the Walt Disney cartoon character Donald Duck in pictures, cartoons and in costumes made depicting the duck real? Yes, in the pictures and cartoons there is the cartoon character Donald Duck. With a few pence strokes a cartoonist can create the fictional character.
What is real or true depends from the questions we ask and the context we make our questions.
Quoting javra
Well, Donald Duck was first drawn by Dick Huemer and Art Babbit and the immature character was developed by Dick Lundy. From there on many cartoonists etc have contributed to the character, like Carl Barks. Hence the physicalist could reduce everything about to basically molecules and atoms and acts what cartoonists and drawers have done.
Yet I think the real question is how fruitful is the assumption of reductionism itself? I view physicalism as one general answer to reductionism. The physicalist is happy to stop somewhere and waive off else in philosophy as near nonsense. Brush everything else off with accusing others of talking about spirits. Or at least something that isn't so important. Has this consequences?
Basically naive reductionism leaves us to ask about the foundations of everything from physicists, as if they somehow would have the cradle of knowledge about everything. Yet the fact is that even if a complex system is a sum of it parts, just looking at those parts individually don't answer much about the operations of the complex system itself. A metallurgist just looking at scraps of metal cannot answer how a jet aircraft flies, just as a microbiologist looking at cells has a hard time to explain our current societies.
Just to be clear, my argument here is not that there aren't plenty of good candidates for emergence or many powerful arguments for why something like emergence is necessary to adequately explain the world. There clearly are. My earlier post in this thread was all about how the empirical evidence for reductionism is actually quite weak, and how it seems possible that it is an idea that only has currency because it is "neat/tidy" and fits our intuitions.
My point is about whether or not other assumptions upstream of emergence, assumptions that have been key to defining physicalism in something approaching a rigorous manner, seem to simply preclude emergence in any sort of a strong form.
My actual position on this would be that this shows that something is probably deeply flawed with the concepts of superveniance and causal closure. With causal closure in particular, I think a lot of unwarranted assumptions get smuggled in.
As mentioned before, I think process views represent a potential resolution to these difficulties. However, I will allow that it is possible they only look promising because they have yet to be subjected to anything like the same level of analysis and critique, being less popular. In such views, there simply isn't superveniance, but the partially analogous idea of superengrafment. I think I quoted Bickhard earlier on the idea that process "allows for strong emergence," but this isn't exactly accurate. It simply doesn't need emergence. More is fundementally different.
(Note: most process philosophers would say the world is composed of fundementally "physical" processes, but this seems to me to be more a broad commitment to metaphysical realism than anything else. Such views represent a radical departure from mainstream physicalism in that physical 'stuff/thing's are not fundemental.)
[Reply="wonderer1;870186"]
It's not "explain how every incidence of emergence works," but rather "explain how any meaningful emergence can possibly exist in the context of superveniance/causal closure?" How do we get something new and irreducible, with real causal powers, and [I]not[/I] have that new force impinge on the causal forces at work in whatever the emergent phenomena emerges from? If something is emergent, isn't it, in a very important way, "fundemental?" But if we have all sorts of sui generis fundemental forces, why has demonstrating downward causality been such a flop?
Epiphenomenalism solves this problem by having conciousness be emergent, but causally non-efficacious. There are significant problems with epiphenomenalism. For one, if epiphenomenalism is true, there is no reason for natural selection to give us perceptions that in any way represent the world accurately, and there is no reason why pain should have to "feel bad," etc. I don't think anyone moves to epiphenomenalism because it sounds like an appealing position. They end up there because of the significant problems both with causally efficacious emergence and with the plausibility of a physicalism without emergence.
They are between a rock and a hard place; dealing with the plausibility problems of physicalism and the coherence problems of meaningfully defining it.
I have considered that, if only mind is truly emergent, there is actually a fix here. If you accept the Wigner-Von Neumann interpretation of quantum mechanics, then mind, being strongly emergent and thus fundemental, absolutely has quite observable causal effects on the rest of the world. Collapse/decoherence is the emergent effect/downward causation. But this ends up looking way more like dualism than physicalism (and people have made the argument that "physicalism with strongly emergent, irreducible mind," is actually just what is generally proposed by science-oriented dualists.) There are many reasons this is unappealing. I don't buy it, but it does seem to work.
The blocks argument is supposed to be an analogy. Superveniance and causal closure essentially give you wooden cubes to work with. You then sit down to make something like a steel sphere. You're never going to get there because the materials you started with preclude your ever being successful. Either emergence has to go, at least in any strong form that would seem to resolve the issues it is supposed to resolve, or the things used to build a definition of emergence and the physical would seem to need to be rethought significantly.
Sure, but the same could be true of physicalism itself, all but the most neutered definitions of truth, the concept of information, objectivity, etc., including conciousness itself.
IMO, one of the biggest missteps of modern philosophy is to decide that if a concept is hard to frame or explain it must entail that the concept is meaningless, should be eliminated, or is somehow related to a "pseudo-problem."
Truth is a prime example in that it clearly seems to assert itself, even if it is hard to define.
That said, I will grant that the problems with emergence are particularly acute, but that only makes sense when it's a concept built on top of other concepts with similar issues.
Certainly. Paul Davies' article introducing "Information and the Nature of Reality," is titled "From Immaterialism, to Materialism and Back," trading off these sorts of intuitions.
Quoting AmadeusD
But it sounds more like: being long, therefore it has no insight.
Quoting Wayfarer
The "cast-iron" convictions might be because I root them in more rigid world-based reasoning, evolving them from what seems most likely out of what we scientifically know, without projecting my emotions onto the world as extensions of anxieties.
Quoting Wayfarer
If man's search for meaning leads to skewing truth about reality, then what meaning is actually extrapolated other than some fictional invented comfort? What depth and importance would such fabricated meaning really have compared to actually knowing truth and form meaning on more truthful grounds?
If we end up converging some kind of discovered universal meaning with the actual truth about what reality is, then I'm all for it, but I cannot believe such universal meaning exists before having proof that it does. And the burden of proof remains on those arguing for meaning to find and prove that meaning and not to argue for a meaning that there's no evidence for.
While they seek for meaning, I'll seek truth without the expectation of meaning.
Quoting Wayfarer
If something falls outside the current limitations of science, it requires a rational and levelheaded philosophical approach that still takes into account the science and facts that do exist. The problem is that many take advantage of the "unknown" to form the most outlandish philosophical theories rather than try to build out from what we do know and be careful of any wild and extreme leaps.
There are also those who form theories out of either a total misunderstanding of a certain science, a misunderstanding of the scientific methods that exist or who's only researched one single point of reference and not all parts of a certain field.
Not sure which paragraph you are referring to, but I think you can find in my argument that an "object" is not as easily defined as traditional understanding describes it.
If everything in nature is a set of smaller parts, formed by guiding principles (physical laws) into a complexity that generate an emergent holistic existence that we through our language categorize as an "object", then what exactly is "primary"? Reality as a whole is a rather messy ocean of emerging systems that behave and interact based on physical laws, an "object" is only relevant in language for us humans to communicate about reality easier. But an "object" is not clearly defined outside of our experience other than through borders between compounds. Therefore we need to treat and examine reality as a system beyond our perceptual limitations, as a whole system operating on levels of emerging functions rather than how we define objects traditionally.
This is part of the a fundamental difference between reductionist thoughts and emergentist thoughts. Reductionists generally view reality as being made up of objects in the traditional sense, while emergentists view it as a scale-based complexity gradient that has cutoff points where functions become defined.
But if you quote the paragraph and explain further it might clear up my confusion as to what you meant.
Quoting Banno
I think I've explained it many times in this thread. Emergence is rooted in how a chaotic system (for instance a bunch of elementary particles) operates by some guiding principles (physical laws, constants etc.) and at a certain point the complexity it generates produce an emergent property that we define as an "object" and/or as I described consciousness an "abstract".
Emergence is all over nature, from basic physics and chemistry, to large scale systems like consciousness, ecosystems, sociology, economics, solar systems, galaxies etc.
The problems with idealism is that it focus mind over matter, that the mind has center stage. My objection to that is that idealism really only point out our limitations of human perception and somehow believes that scientists and physicists only operate by those limitations when in fact they operate on the principles of calculating outside them. The abstract nature of what's beyond our human perception isn't closed off to us, especially when the language of this kind of research, like math, works in dimensions of understanding that goes beyond our perceptive limitations. We can in fact study abstract concepts and what we cannot see, hear, touch, smell or taste; and for the well versed in such research, their minds operate on radically different levels of thinking formed out of using such "language". But that's only addressing the kind of soft idealism that people like Wayfarer seem to do. Then we have the idealists who treat mind over matter as a form of source for reality, that our consciousness is some form of special entity that is responsible for creating reality and this is the religious realm I'm objecting against.
Quoting Banno
I'm not really a fan of this. The whole reason to try and figure our reality, with science and philosophy is to reach a form of truth. If the pursuit for the best method of doing so is met with some kind of "everyone is right in their own way", then everything breaks down into nonsense.
What I've mainly argued in here is that science generally should be preferable to researching reality and that things like our consciousness should be considered part of the natural world, and therefore also a point of study in science. Any argument against that requires an alternative method that is better than science to explain how reality functions as well as position consciousness as something extra special outside of reality. A claim that functions mainly in the realm of religion and spirituality and does not hold much water against what we do know already.
Using scientific knowledge as the foundation for theories and arguments should be an obvious thing to do. There's no other foundation for truth we can stand on without it becoming a realm of pure fiction.
Quoting wonderer1
In a sense that is an emergence, but I'm focusing on more fundamental aspects in nature.
Like, a good example as an analogy would be a photograph in a newspaper. The print dots themselves do not have any features other than shades of black and white, zoomed in they just look like white noise, grainy and nothing special. But the guiding principles that exist (the data of the photograph) makes these dots flow in and out of their shades in a pattern. When we zoom out we start to see an emergent form and when the complexity of those dots become many many thousands we don't see the dots anymore, we see a photograph, an emergent form out of that underlying chaos.
The emergence appears out of a chaotic system in which a set of principles or laws govern how the chaos generally behaves. In nature these are the physical laws of our reality. And each level of emergence forms new "objects" that in themselves -together with similar others form a new scale of complexity that can be further zoomed out from. Each system is part of of a larger system and so on. Fundamentally governed by natural laws of physics, and on larger scales they can take forms of complex systems acting together, forming new emerging systems that are even more complex, like our consciousness. There are some evidence of this in neuroscience that focus on more holistic measurements rather than reductionist methods just looking at the parts.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I see it as a respect for a complexity of reality that traditional human hubris in understanding reality lacks.
It requires researching the guiding principles of a system rather than all of its parts. If you find those principles, laws or math, you could possibly be able to replicate an emerging property. It's basically what we do in chemistry, disregarding the individuality of atoms in matter and instead focus on the emergent properties and in what ways we can control their progression.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You look at the blueprint.
I use to come back to the concept of the commercial drone you can buy in a photography store. The design is made to be perfect for balance and air flow. But the designers didn't invent the design at all, they couldn't find the optimal design that included all aspects and it was too expensive to try and brute force it. Instead they set guiding principles that governed how the shape formed around the physical facts of its function as a flying drone. Then they let a computer run simulated trial and errors for millions of runs before it ended up with the most optimal design for the drone. No one designed it, it emerged out of the guiding principles and out of the chaos of randomness that flowed by those principles it formed an emergent shape and function.
What this is all about is an underlying chaos in all things and systems which forms new properties not by will, but by outcome of guided chaos. If we want to understand it we can't look at the chaos, we need to look at the guiding principles and how they direct how the chaos flows.
Quoting wonderer1
Yes, this is my main problem with many counter arguments to physicalism. That some strong belief manage to somehow support truth? No, they're just beliefs. If I argue for physicalist emergentism I'm doing so out from the science and observations that already exists. It points towards a likely concept that explains many parts if not all parts of reality itself. The difference is that I know where the science ends and my speculations begin, but I always have my foundation rooted in what we already know and what scientists theorize about. I never pick a comforting belief I have and use that as my foundation and if there were proof tomorrow that emergentism is definitely false I would abandon the idea instantly, which is how knowledge should be treated. Too much I'm seeing people sticking to their preferred theory, regardless of evidence against it. I'm sticking to emergentlism because it is, today, the most holistically solid concept about how reality and consciousness functions, in respect to what hasn't yet been proven but logically speculated.
The main problem with your argument there is that it introduces elements that does not follow out of the science. We do not have any evidence for any of these things you mention, and I don't understand how you mean that emergence as I've described it leads to such scenarios.
Emergence is chaos by guiding principles. In our reality those are our physical laws which has defined how chaos evolved from the start of entropy up until today. The physical laws that exist are the limitations that both guide and prevent events and there's no provable link to magic and supernatural elements, which means there can't emerge such properties as all levels of emergence still follow the laws of reality. Causation and causality still apply; a cause is required for an outcome. "Magic" has no cause and if so, what would that be?
Emergence doesn't mean "anything goes", we don't see a pool of bacteria spontaneously conduct magic because such emergent property "just happened", we still see it as a causal line of events, but engaging in extreme complexity. The emerging property is still dependent on the composition of the underlying systems and parts and limited by their physical composition. Such limitations may also play into the emergent properties.
:up:
As I tangentially alluded to in another post, were reductionism to be a valid means of explaining - and thereby gaining knowledge of - all that is, we then ought to be able to explain all that is via strict analysis of the omnipresent quantum vacuum state in and of itself. As in, I'm currently motivated to write this post because the quantum vacuum did this and that. One then could even neatly replace the "God did it" answer to everything that explains nothing with a "the quantum vacuum did it" answer to everything that explains nothing.
Just want to second your observations with this. And of course there's other means of approaching the issue of reductionism.
:up:
Quoting NOS4A2
Why is that special? There are countless of systems that emerges in nature that are extremely complex and almost impossible to understand how they appeared. We only think consciousness to be this extremely special thing because we are arrogant about our existence. We attribute our consciousness an arbitrary value that in relation to anything else in nature does not really have that value outside of our emotional attachment to our own existence.
I value my hand over the paw of an animal, because its my hand, I like it and I feel its special because its part of me. But it's just one type of meat in an ocean of biological creatures.
Our consciousness might be the most complex emergent property in nature, when only looking at it in comparison to others, but we're also just a last point in a gradient of intelligence among animals. We can see their consciousness as emergent phenomena as well and the further down the gradient we go, the more simplistic consciousness get. At what point is that emergent mind phenomena in animals so rudimentary that you can accept it as just another emergent phenomena? Where is the line drawn? Between us and primates? Us and dolphins? Us and elephants? Between elephants and dolphins? A mouse and an ant?
More plausible is that, as I've described earlier in this thread, that multiple complex systems have between them formed a higher complexity and emergence that might not have fully occurred in other animals. When patients who died and get survived slowly wake up, if the part of the brain that gets oxygen first are responsible for memory generation, they are able to remember the process of waking the other parts up. The recollections these people give is that when all their conscious understanding of reality, their perception but more importantly their understanding of those perceptions click into gear, they go from them unable to make any sense of anything, experiencing the world drastically different than they do as a normally functioning human mind into finally functioning normally. If the area responsible for three-dimensional spatial understanding kicks into gear after the visual cortex, they don't understand and comprehend the visuals that the visual cortex process, they describe it as an almost abstract painting, like a cubist Picasso nonsense of inability to understand spatial relations.
What this shows is that our experience as conscious minds require these subsystems that are complex in themselves to act together, otherwise our consciousness breaks down. The sum of the parts produce consciousness, it... emerges as a system out them all.
It's not that the visual cortex is responsible for what we consider eyesight and what we see. It's that how we experience "seeing" requires other functions to form this understanding of seeing. It's an outcome of all parts and it's probably why we cannot boil consciousness down in reductionist terms.
Right now, this is part of the most likely explanation for what consciousness is, and it is truly remarkable. Yet, I don't treat consciousness as special in relation to the rest of the natural world, it is part of it and I think we need to be humble about its place in nature, rather than attribute it some magical status. We might not be that unique, even though we think so.
The occurrence of consciousness doesn't follow out of the science either. Unless one here wants to deny the reality of consciousness on these very same grounds, then this problem you here express is in no way an impediment to the logically valid supposition of a deity-inclusive physicalism, one accordant to laws of nature both currently known and unknown.
It should also be mentioned that - while the scientific method is contingent on the occurrence of a singular, universally existent, physical reality - the scientific method is in no way contingent upon physicalism. As previously noted, one can logically maintain the same singular, universally existent, physical reality within the objective idealism of C. S. Peirce - for one example of an idealism that supports the physical, replete with its natural laws.
Quoting Christoffer
In respect to emergence, one cannot via current knowledge predict novel cases of emergence. The stipulation of emergence is in no way predictive - but, instead, is always an ad hoc (to the purpose (of accounting for)) explanation for that which is observed or else postulated to be real, and this always after the fact of said observations and/or postulates (hence always also being post hoc).
If emergence is accepted, there is then nothing about the intrinsic properties of emergence that preclude realms of emergent reality wherein deities dwell resulting from supervenience on the consciousness of humans and lesser life forms. (As one can claim that science shall one day figure out consciousness, one here can just as validly claim that science shall in the further future still some day figure out the workings and operations of such corporeal-consciousness-emergent incorporeal deities.)
-----
As I initially wanted to illustrate, physicalism endeavors to rationally conclude tacitly maintained convictions - but the proposal of emergence as a physical account of (some aspects of) reality does not of itself successful confine physiclaism to that which is tacitly maintained. With the case in point being a logically valid metaphysical possibility of a deity-inclusive physicalism.
For all the reasons just mentioned, emergence is then a red herring in the attempts to validate physicalism as it's commonly understood.
I'm just using the brain itself for convenience in explanations. Researchers at the moment see the body as a pretty instrumental part of our identity as a conscious being, so there may be more parts that make up our consciousness, but they may only be partly responsible for things like emotional differences in behavior and not responsible for our experience as a conscious mind. The evidence for that is simply that someone who's paralyzed from the neck down still has hasn't changed their consciousness, even though emotional life might be changed.
I would say that consciousness itself probably resides in the brain, but our identity and personality and emotions rely on all the hormonal balances, chemistry and functions in the rest of the body.
Just like when we hold a hammer and researchers have noticed that our mind expands our understanding of our body to include the hammer as part of it, just by "attachment" to our body. We may speculate that if we are able to put a consciousness into a perfect simulation of their body, they would continue to function normally by just extending their conscious understanding of their body to the digital representation. But we won't know that until we could test such a concept out fully.
A further question would be: would we consider our personality and identity as emergent aspects out of the complexity of our consciousness in terms of memory and actions as well as the chemical interactions from our hormons in our body? Is the sense of identity or agency, personality and way of using our consciousness an emergent phenomena itself, abstraction out of abstraction?
What is it about the brain that makes it the seat of consciousness?
We do not yet know if it is impossible to predict or merely that the prediction is too complex for us to compute it. If it were, would that then be an explanation? It only becomes a description if we can conclude it fundamentally impossible to be predicted. But then we also have the guiding principles that govern how a complex system evolve into a new emergent entity. And the explanation should reside in the relation between the complexity of a system and what the guiding principles are.
In terms of consciousness, in neuroscience, finding these key guiding principles which directs the chaos is probably even more important than just witnessing chaos forming something new. Since it directs the outcome that emerges.
If you mess with it, you mess with consciousness. If you were to separate the head from the body and do it in a way that kept giving oxygen to the head, it will eventually die, but still be conscious with the same feeling of paralyzation from the neck down.
So far we've only asked a few short lived heads:
Yes, I understand that, but what is is about brains that makes them conscious? There must be something about brains that makes them necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness. What makes brains so special?
Three things I think necessary for any information processing:
1 Nodes that perform some mathematical/logical function on inputs and produce an output.
2 Channelled transmission of outputs to the inputs of other nodes.
3 Amplification of signals.
Here is an example, see if you can recognize those three elements:
Then consider the neural networks in brains and the relative lack of neural networks in hearts.
FYI, in Terrence Deacon's book Incomplete Nature, he discusses Emergence and Downward Causation. He explains, "downward causation . . . is in this sense not causation in the sense of being induced to change . . . but is rather an alteration in causal probabilities". He also says, "supervenience is in many respects the defining property of emergence, but also the source of many of its conceptual problems".
One way to think of Supervenience is to note that Emergence follows a series of changes as an unforeseen development, due to statistical Uncertainty (probability), as in Quantum theory. That may be why erroneously assumes that you are denying physical Reality, when you are merely asserting the existence of non-physical Ideality --- as supervenient upon reality --- and noting that --- perhaps due to human intention*1 --- causation can flow both ways. :smile:
*1. Entention : An intention is a mental state in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action.
"The natural sciences must exclude ententional explanations, whereas the so-called special sciences*2 cannot" ___ Deacon, Incomplete Nature
Note --- Philosophy is, in this sense, a Special Science.
*2. Special sciences :
Special sciences are those sciences other than fundamental physics. In this view, chemistry, biology, and neuroscienceindeed, all sciences except fundamental physicsare special sciences.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_sciences
Their composition of neurons and regions of complex systems that together make up our consciousness. That's why they are special, but they're not more special than other animal brains, only special to us and maybe because it's the highest advancement of consciousness that we've observed in nature.
But that's not really the question you ask, the "why" relates more to how did we got here. The reason the brain became what it became and evolved how it evolved is something I briefly wrote about earlier in this thread. A plausible line of causality for why it evolved in this direction:
Quoting Christoffer
And the reason why it is so extremely complex as a system is probably because of iterative changes that have occurred over the entire evolutionary timeline. We can ask this about any complex natural phenomena among animals. How are birds able to sense the magnetic lines of the earth to guide them during seasons? Because of that need pushing evolution in that direction.
The most remarkable thing I think is how plants mimic insects to lure them towards them and spread pollination. These plants do not have eyes to spot how these insects look, but those who survived the best had flowers closer to the insect's form and color. Without being able to see, it still, over the course of thousands, if not millions of iterations of mutations arrived at almost an identical shape and color as the insects that exist in symbios with their existence.
Right, that's how I understand supervenience. "The plate" is the object with A-level properties, and "Chemical structure", including relative position, is the set of objects with B-level properties.
Quoting fdrake
... Yeah, nevermind. Moments do not supervene upon moments. I was sort of thinking that one might work out causation this way, but then the more I thought about it the less sense I could make of it. Causes are events which preceed and necessitate effects -- themselves also events. Perhaps some two-level structure within events could have supervenience, like wars supervening upon soldiers, but there aren't two levels between moments -- they're at the same logical plane, and the before-after structure is an ordering of events to an index rather than a two-level structure.
... which is still too general to make a decision either way about physicalism. :D
Thanks for the responses.
No, why would it? The only thing at stake would be whether the term 'emergence' would be used, which is not super rigorous.
Quoting Christoffer
It is only ever a description. Name one physical phenomenon where emergence functions as an explanation.
I think this is what maters. We are what McKenna called 'the moving wave-front of eternity'.
We're at the front of the line, and as such, we are somewhat obligated (i don't actually think this - im being poetic) to be astute about how we bring the universe forward in time. In that sense, the nature of our consciousness is a key to understanding what's going on there. If we are the top of that hierarchy, and that our consciousness has developed most recently compared to other, less complex kinds - it is special and we're well-supported in treating our consciousness as special.
What do you think of this definition?
On this understanding, chemistry and even consciousness is reducible to physics. Although, physics would not be reducible to chemistry.
In terms of a complete explanation of something, I think what is problematic is not that chemistry or consciousness are irreducible, but that physics is itself incomplete. I think this may not be a problem with reductionism on its own terms (as I have defined it), rather it is a problem with the field of study that some other field is reduced to.
I've always been skeptical of that. People pass out from far lesser interruptions to cerebral blood flow than the total catastrophe of beheading. More likely it was some involuntary muscle contractions, fancifully interpreted.
The conscious thing is that which we observe when it comes to consciousness. The phenomena we call consciousness is exactly identical, in fact one-and-the-same, to the conscious thing. In our case, its our bodies. In the case of bat consciousness, its the body of the bat. Consciousness is the organism, as you yourself imply. But we neednt go any further than that. We neednt reduce or expand consciousness in any other direction, to some other organ or substance, simply because no other organ or substance can be shown to be conscious.
Consciousness doesnt emerge as a property any more than unconsciousness does, or happiness, or sadness, or anger. I do not think that its possible to show someone acquires more properties, or different properties, should she shift her emotions from one to the other, or when he falls asleep. The properties required for any state of emotion, consciousness, feeling, or mind are already present. No such thing emerges. Rather, the body changes in ways that are observable.
Moreover, we can abandon the noun consciousness entirely from philosophy of mind and lose nothing. For me, consciousness appears as the last refuge for those who wish to rescue the doctrine of the soul.
Trouble is of course that emergence is used in different ways. Roughly, it sits amongst other terms such as supervenience, reduction, dualism and causation generally.
Here's one way to use the terms, that attempts to set out some of the differences. Folk do use the terms in other ways. This is offered as a starting point.
The paradigm of causation are things of the same type - billiard balls crashing on to each other and so forth. In casual explanations, A ? B, where A and B are described in much the same terms.
Causal descriptions become problematic when they are of different types; so explaining a twister in terms of the movement of individual particles, or minds in terms of electro-chemical processes; where we have two very different descriptions of what is perhaps the very same thing.
Supervenience is used sometimes as a general term for when A and B are described in quite different terms, and yet A and B are supposed to be the same thing.
(Just to be clear, the "?" is not a logical implication nor necessarily a cause - read it as "leads to" or something equally benign. It might be dealt withe later)
Reductionist explanations take one of the descriptions to be "nothing but" the other - the twister is nothing but the movement of particles, mind is nothing but an electro-chemical process. In reductionist explanations, A and B are described in quite different terms however A ? B where there is nothing in B that is not also found in A.
Emergence differs in that there are things described in B that are not found in A, but "emerge" somehow, and in a way that is not reducible. A and B are described in quite different terms, however A ? B, yet there are things about B that are not found in A. The snowflake's symmetry emerges from sublimating water molecules, consciousness emerges form a neural network...
Now I do not think this account is adequate to differentiate reduction and emergence. I would like someone to do better.
An alternative opts for two distinct descriptions, A and B, that use different terms to talk about the same thing. This is sometimes called dualism, sometimes supervenience. This is not unproblematic, but may be preferrable to the confusion of reduction and emergence.
Perhaps we could ask, how is emergence not simply reduction, backwards?
Can consciousness emerge from a computer running a simulation of a working brain?
It seemed to me to be reinforcing a simplistic intuitive view, since blocks aren't something we typically think of as interacting with each other in any very interesting way.
However, substitute dominos for blocks, and see the video I posted earlier, and you can observe the property emerging from the dominos being structurally arranged in a certain way.
I'm a ways back on your dominoes video and am wondering if it could be misleading on how computation is done. I agree dominoes can do it like computers. Possibly based on the Turing machine principal (but I have forgotten all the details of that). But I don't think human brains are doing the same thing. Brains actually use consciousness to do math that isn't present in computers. My sense is that brains really do contain and manipulate 'non-physicals' but computers do it mechanically and have no awareness. Two very different processes.
Now I remember...Turing machine is a punch tape that goes back and forth reading and writing but the principal is that one type of mechanical computer can mimic another type.
And humans don't have a fixed method of doing the math and first tries are trial and error.
I'm just really curious if anyone else thinks there is some discrepancy. Or is it just that brains are so advanced the consciousness developed at high levels of complexity.
"You see, everything a computer does can, in principle, be done with pipes, pressure valves and water. The pipes play the role of electrical conduits, or traces; the pressure valves play the role of switches, or transistors; and the water plays the role of electricity. Ohms Lawthe fundamental rule for determining the behavior of electric circuitsmaps one-on-one to water pressure and flow relations. Indeed, the reason why we build computers with silicon and electricity, instead of PVC pipes and water, is that the former are much, much smaller and cheaper to make. Present-day computer chips have tens of billions of transistors, and an even greater number of individual traces. Can you imagine the size and cost of a water-based computer comprising tens of billions of pipes and pressure valves? Can you imagine the amount of energy required to pump water through it? You wouldn't be able to afford it or carry it in your pocket. Thats the sole reason why we compute with electricity, instead of water (it also helps that silicon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth, found in the form of sand). There is nothing fundamentally different between a pipe-valve-water computer and an electronic one, from the perspective of computation. Electricity is not a magical or unique substrate for computation, but merely a convenient one. A wooden tool called an 'abacus' also computes.
With this in mind, ask yourself: do we have good reasons to believe that a system made of pipes, valves and water correlates with private conscious inner life the way your brain does? Is there something it is like to be the pipes, valves and water put together? If you answer yes to this question, then logic forces you to start wondering if your houses sanitation systemwith its pipes, valves and wateris conscious, and whether it is murder to turn off the mains valve when you go on vacation. For the only difference between your houses sanitation system and my imaginary water-based computer is one of numbernamely, how many pipes, how many valves, how many liters of waternot of kind or essence. As a matter of fact, the typical home sanitation system implements the functionality of about 5 to 10 transistors.
You can, of course, choose to believe that the numbers actually matter. In other words, you may entertain the hypothesis that although a simple, small home sanitation system is unconscious, if you keep on adding pipes, valves and water to it, at some point the system will suddenly make the jump to being conscious. But this is magical thinking. You'd have to ask yourself the question: how, precisely, does the mere addition of more of the same pipes, valves and water, lead to the magical jump to conscious inner life? Unless you have an explicit and coherent answer to this question, you are merely engaging in hand waving, self-deception, and hiding behind vague complexity."
https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2023/01/ai-wont-be-conscious-and-here-is-why.html
Maybe we are thinking about the same thing.
Quoting RogueAI
Bravo Kastrup. Has also jumped my hitlist, along with Ryle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAB21FAXCDE&ab_channel=TheoriesofEverythingwithCurtJaimungal
I was wondering if this was going to come up. I'm curious too.
Imagine a sphere in front of you (tennis ball size) at arms length. Now bisect it vertically and examine the two halves.
Can you do that? Easy right. The way your brain does it is nothing like a computer operates.
Good point. I've noticed that. We shouldn't assume everyone has the same abilities. Like some people don't know left or right or compass directions ever.
That might constitute a argument for physicalism -- but to establish supervenience it'd have to be universal (or, for science, pretty universal-ish looking), and we're just too ignorant at this point to be able to make that inference with respect to human being.
I dont get it.
Why cant everyone do it? Whats the catch?
Ahhhh, ok. Thanks.
You mentioned causal tendencies. I don't have any idea how it's done but we can do a black box sort of observation and say a physical brain can do it. So I don't think it's an exception to physicalism.
Some might quivel.
... causal correlates, abilities, tendencies...
Thats the kicker, huh? Why can't everyone do it. Same with internal dialogues..
I think discussing the claim that the next moment supervenes upon this moment could branch in a lot of directions. It doesn't make sense at face value, I agree. But I think you can make some sense of it. In terms of A properties supervening on B properties, there's probably a wiggle room for calling objects zeroth order properties.
There's a wiggle room there too I think. The type of ordering between moments is like "less than or equal to", so a reflexive, transitive and asymmetric relation. So presumably any collection of property classes with a supervenience relation (which is comprehensible), if that supervenience relation is reflexive, transitive and asymmetric, is an example of a supervenience relation which is precisely the type of order between moments.
An example of that would be { biological (supervenes on) chemical (supervenes on) physical }. That's reflexive - no biological changes without biological changes. Asymmetric - every element has a unique predecessor. And transitive - the biological also supervenes upon the physical.
To be sure, it's possible there are supervenience relations which don't behave like orders, but that is one which does behave like an order.
So if you wanted to make the claim that {moment 1 (supervenes on) moment 2 (supervenes on) moment 3}, it's the same order relation as {biological (supervenes on) chemical (supervenes on) physical}. So it can't be disqualified on that basis alone.
Another rejoinder would be that "moments aren't properties", but you can modify the sequence to explicitly make them properties:
{properties at moment 1 (supervenes on) properties at moment 2 (supervenes on) properties at moment 3}
Which seems to parry that.
And as for supervenience changes necessarily being causal? The supervenience relation is reflexive. You get no changes in type A properties without changes in A type properties, but a given change of an A type property is identical with that change, not a cause of that change.
There might be an angle of criticism regarding the sense of possibility. What are the "possible worlds" for moments which the modal necessity of supervenience would be tested upon? Something I'm still pondering.
It's the "I don't have any idea how it's done" part that raises doubts. Imagining can be made to cohere with physicalism, but coherence isn't exactly persuasive to anyone who disagrees with physicalism. So is it a good argument for physicalism?
Well, if I posted the right video, it discusses how logic gates are implemented in domino structures. So the domino structure is crudely isomorphic to a subsection of a small part of a microprocessor. But what do you expect from dominos? :smile:
No, it is not much like what goes on in the neural nets in our brains, other than that the domino system and neural networks both exhibit the three key elements I mentioned earlier. (nodes, channels, amplification)
The computational capability of our brains is qualitatively different, in that it is massively parallel distributed processing with dazzlingly complex processes going on.
Haha....the term hand waving will come up but what is the alternative? Another kind of hand waving probably.
So the mind-body problem can be made to cohere with physicalism, but what is a persuasive argument such that those who disagree with physicalism will feel the need to respond?
Thats a bit of a jump. Slowly and carefully.
Anyone that gives you an answer to that is pulling your leg.
Or their own... which i find to be the case with those types of answers. Tail chasing.
I liked the video.
My perspective is that computers use something like the definition of Shannon information and our brains use a type of information connected with our consciousness. So that was why I commented.
Quoting wonderer1
Yet characterised by an overall subjective unity of consciousness, for which there is no current account.
Quoting Christoffer
'They' being 'philosophers'. Seeking facts, would be the better description, 'truth' is too polyvalent a term.
I get your point, but it cant be a dialogue. Its just the brain keeping you informed that its still working.
Wont ever let you know how it does what it does, but at least you know its doing something.
I'm not quite sure what you're addressing 'internal dia/monologue' is definitely a metaphor - but many people are unable to form sentences in their mind at all https://www.iflscience.com/people-are-weirded-out-to-discover-that-some-people-dont-have-an-internal-monologue-54881
Im addressing the difference between what you said, and whats in the title of the link.
Awesome, thank you! Getting it to while i work. Very long, so don't expect me to come back any time soon - or at all LOL
The epitome of emergence is perhaps the Lorenz strange attractor, with ? = 28, ? = 10, and ? = 8/3, by magic a butterfly emerges...
Now the attractor is defined by
So which is it: is the butterfly reducible to the equations, or does it emerge from them...?
Isn't emergence no more than Emperor Reduction in his new clothes?
(@jgill, any thoughts?)
He demonstrates scientific ignorance with the last sentence there, showing his scientific understanding to be highly questionable. At least that is what he shows me.
No, not if you can look at things from a more holistic perspective, and recognize the interactions that occur within the world. I could provide a link if you can't think of recent examples you have seen on TPF or in real life.
Cool. I get that. I wonder though, if they cant use language .or if they dont do what seems to be congruent with the use of language .what do they use?
Never really been that into math.
Do you have an understanding of the sort of interactions I was referring to?
Doesn't sound like you are interested in thinking about it.
I'm unsure I grasp entirely what you're asking... But from what i can tell, thinking in images OR words is required for meaningful cognition. What else do we have? I do both, at different times.
Quoting wonderer1
I said I could provide a link if you can't think of recent examples. Do you need me to point out an example of the sort of interaction I was referring to?
THATS what I hoped to hear. I might insist images or words, or the irreducible seeming of them, just IS cognition, presupposed in meaning.
Bu this is hardly a best argument for physicalism, per the thread title, so lets agree and leave it at that.
What I meant was, if we were finally able to compute or make predictable emergent systems ourselves, would that provide enough explanation? Meaning, if we were to accurately predict all parts of a system and their relation up to a corresponding area of the emergent system. Or, would it simply be enough for us to conclude something as a cause if we can produce emergence out of testing guiding principles for complex chaos until it produces the intendent emergence, even though the direct correlation between smaller entities and the corresponding area of the emergent system is not measurable?
And when it comes to consciousness, if we were to find evidence for consciousness being an emergent property out of the complex links between all subsystems of the brain (a possibility in the research), would that not be just as definable for consciousness as how we conclude ecosystems and other emergent systems in nature to be the result of its parts, but in which we also cannot draw predictable lines from its parts to the corresponding areas of emerging systems?
The support for emergence is found in its strong appearance all over nature and how they all function in similar manner and with similar difficulty to quantify between the parts and the emergent systems. But we're still able to conclude criticality in these systems, and that can't be ignored.
Quoting hypericin
Sure, but my point was still that a separation from the body mainly remove the flow of nurture, oxygen, hormons and other chemicals to reach the brain. Those are the foundation of its biological mechanics. While there's no denying that the perception and senses affect the mind and the body's reaction to different stimuli affect the chemical flow to the brain, there's little to point out a fundamental dependence on the body for our consciousness. We can argue about if we can remove all those chemical systems and still retain personality, but that is different from the question of consciousness.
Quoting NOS4A2
Consciousness is not personality or behavior, it's the entity that is aware and has agency. The things you mention are features of the emergent system, not the emerging systems. Or, we could argue that personality, identity, our sense of self are emerging out of the complexity of consciousness itself, but that consciousness is about what's forming through the interplay of parts of the brain under a state of criticality.
Quoting NOS4A2
The "doctrine of a soul" has nothing to do with consciousness. Religious views and people's emotional need for supernatural explanations give rise to their personal justifications for conflating "soul" with "consciousness". However, in science its just the main term for the awareness of a living being, their ability for agency and their level of self-aware subjectivity. If we ever solve consciousness we might coin new terms that define its mechanics, since that would be a new paradigm in need of its own definitions. Until then, I don't see a problem with the term.
Quoting Banno
I would say that everything is reductionistic within a system that hasn't reached emergence. Seen as we could define each scale level from the smallest to the biggest scale as systems forming and generating new behaviors. Within each level it's all reductionistic, the previous emergent system is the smallest reductionist step we can measure until we need to define it as a fundamental emergent system of its own reductionistic composition. However, it's also possible that emergence happens out of the complex interplay between simpler systems that still are emergent. That was why I tried to coin something like "object" and "abstract". Water flows and has interactions with other systems like the variability of the matter in the river bed, the air molecules and their turbulence flows, the temperature fluctuations of the climate and all functions together to produce a remarkable path finding system that cannot be an emergent "object", but an "abstract" system that has an impact on the world, but isn't definable with a "location" or material. In the same way it is like the mind, our consciousness. We cannot conclude its existence as a "thing", but as an "abstract" system that still acts upon the world.
So, we would need reductionism to explain deterministic interactions between points of emergence at lower scales and larger scales, as well as "object" and "abstract" emergence, as well as simple and multisystem emergences based on either single system (consisting of one entity forming complexity) or multisystem (consisting of systems forming complexity).
But duality separate the physical and mental in a way that feels too religious for my taste, and it's very outdated by what we actually know scientifically about the body and mind.
Quoting Banno
It might be, or simply, emergence is the defining point, the critical point in which a complexity reach a form of singularity and introduce extreme differences to its state before. Check the video on criticality above.
We also have to include the guiding principles. A chaotic system require nudges in its forming complexity in order to reach higher states. Fundamentally, those might just be our laws of physics, but may also be part of larger systems and their interplays.
Quoting RogueAI
Yes, but how would you put that together? It may be that the physical form of our body and brain is such a delicate evolved system that any flaw in an attempt to replicate it might lead to extreme differences between us and the functionally equivalent version of us.
There are plenty of horror stories with such themes.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
While I don't argue for modern AIs to have consciousness, and this video is more marketing than a scientific test of the functionality, it's still clear that this type of actions are still reproducible in computing right now.
Quoting Wayfarer
Sure, but my point is that I don't seek meaning in relation to scientific topics. I do, however, philosophize over what meaning we can form with the reality that we have. I have one foot in art and one in science and that balance is actually functioning very well since I believe to have acquired a good sense to spot where concepts border between fantasy and reality, fiction or fact.
Do you mean attractor? I'm also not good at math, but thank bigbang I can try and apply conceptualizations with AI and produce a code for it. Are you looking for something like this? Put it into https://jsfiddle.net/ and run
The gist of it is the Lorenz system having deviations that occur at a rate of 10% probability and when that happen a split produce another shape.
Basically, a simple guiding principle for deviations that follow the system but produce another level of complexity. If it produces a deviated shape at a certain probability, maybe that's what you're after?
But I'm not sure what you aim for with the Lorenz system in relation to emergence? So I'm just guessing.
But it's fun playing with the math :sweat:
I suffered DiD for several years. Kastrup's analogy is absolutely incredible to relate to.
I'm simply asking if the attractor is an example of emergence, and if so how it differs from reduction...
So I guess the question is, why do the red dots count as "emergent"? Are emergent events random?
What you have here is a visualisation, not an accurate rendering.
That equation was just some messing around with the system. Emergent events are what emerges out of the chaos, not the chaos itself. If it forms a balanced shape that keeps appearing based on initial principles that kicks the complex chaos towards that form, then you have an emergent phenomena. Not a complex one but in principle. But that would require a huge amount of manual trial and error.
But finding an equation that function as a foundation for all emergent phenomena would be a monumental discovery and messing around with the Lorenz system wouldnt lead to that. Such a discovery would be on par with the Lorenz system itself or rather even rival the most important equations we have since it would enable us to manufacture emergence in any system we like.
I highly doubt such an equation exists or is easily attainable though, seen as we only just started decoding things like criticality recently and we dont know if each and every emergent system is unique in how it produces its emergent phenomena. If theyre all unique for their own composition then there wouldnt be one single mathematical solution but unique ones per each and every emerging system.
But we can also argue that things like the fine structure constant functions as a guiding mathematical principle for complexity, shaping fundamental physics of our reality forward into emergent new forms. Depending on how essential emergence is in nature, if it is an integral part of everything, then finding a holistically governing equation would be like finding the equation to end all equations.
It's not the holisitically governing equation some may dream of, but we can certainly make a psychologically called shot based on scientific understanding, on occasion.
I'm just looking for what it is that makes something emergent. Mainly as opposed to reduction.
The SEP article attempts to articulate it in terms of dependence and autonomy, giving modal rendings of weak and strong emergence, but as the detail seems to make it more of a magic wand rather than less. See especially section 4.1.1
if it is going to be central to a physicalist account, one might hope its nature can be set out clearly.
Not a lot. I can only refer to my own "creations", that are observable in the complex plane. By the way, I program from scratch in BASIC, being old with little time to waste on a plethora of languages, several of which (Fortran, Pascal, . . .) I have used in the distant past.
There first is a defining mathematical procedure giving a point in the complex plane for each point in play. The procedure can be very simple or very complex. In both cases one paints pixels in the plane corresponding to some aspect of the resulting point, like size of its modulus. Point by point the process paints a picture.
Philosophically, one can rather easily go from the procedure to the picture, obtaining a visual account of the feature you are describing, like size. But, it is virtually impossible to start with the big picture and deduce the mathematical procedure. Viz. the image above. So the imagery emerges from the mathematics.
Sometimes the math leads to chaos upon iteration. Other times interesting patterns emerge. So, images emerge from math, but not the other way around (usually). I don't see reductionism in play here.
The Lorenz attractor is a case where patterns are affected by attracting fixed points or sets of such points. In much of the math I have done infinite compositions - infinite causal chains if you wish - take points toward attracting fixed points. There are also repelling fixed points where you can guess what happens by the title of the point. And of more complexity there are indifferent fixed points that both repel and attract.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Doesn't that intuition depend on a specific interpretation of "completely new" and "in the blocks". Other interpretations are available. The house that you build from scratch with the blocks is completely new, and it wasn't in (or outside) the blocks before you built it.
I don't remember enough about Midgeley to comment off the cuff. But this drives me back to Anscombe's multiple descriptions of a single action and Ryle's categories.
There's an ancient puzzle about how an object can be a bundle of properties and a single object at the same time. It's easy to point out that it is the arrangement (structure) of the elements (the blocks) that makes the house. But then one has to hastily specify that the arrangement/atructure is not an additional element of the house. It is in a different category.
But the house is a physical object.
I can't see how it helps to say that the house emerges from or supervenes on the blocks - except as the name for a mystery that isn't really a mystery.
By the way, you don't get an "ought" from an "is" by deduction. That doesn't rule out getting one's "oughts" from "is's" in other ways.
To be fair, weak emergence doesn't have the "magic" problem. Weak emergence doesn't preclude reduction, and can be explained in terms of "data compression." But weak emergence, so defined, then fails to actually address any of physicslism's plausibility problems, i.e., the idea that it seems impossible to imagine how physics explains facts like "how coffee tastes," or how you can keep adding complexity to a computation until it spontaneously begins tasting coffee.
Strong emergence fixes the plausibility problem at the cost of making the coherence problem far worse. After all, if mind is strongly emergent, and thus a fundemental, irreducible force with sui generis causal powers, how is that not what people generally mean by dualism? E.g., Wigner-Von Neumann QM where strongly emergent conciousness is what [I]causes[/I] all collapse seems like it could be framed as dualism or even a sort of idealism, since it is irreducible mind that actualizes histories (you'd probably wed the idealist version to the retrocausal crystalizing block universe).
This gets at an adjacent problem with coherence, that quantum foundations is an absolute zoo of theories, and some do not sound very "physicalist." E.g. Mermin: "the Moon is demonstrably not there when no one is observing it."
Such a house built with the blocks is reducible to the blocks. You can compute the "possible houses," and their properties from knowledge of the blocks alone. The structure of the house would be analogous to some sort of "weak emergence." Strong emergence is irreducible, and thus "physically fundemental." If substance metaphysics, causal closure, and superveniance are your starting points, "like magic" is often how strong emergence is defined.
This has obviously been a bad analogy and I regret using it. The blocks weren't supposed to stand in for "physical stuff" but rather the starting points of substance ontology (the world is fundementally things/objects that interact), superveniance, and causal closure. The idea is that you don't get those blocks to form a sphere, etc. unless you radically alter the paradigm, the equivalent of pulling out a Sawzall and some wood glue and tearing your blocks apart.
Well, this is the main question. If you reach an answer then let everyone in the scientific community know because that's the key to all of it. We know and observe emergence everywhere in contemporary science because that's where we've ended up through our constant exploration of reality. I think that through the history of science it's logical that we've used a reductionist approach because we started off with these questions about reality when we could only use our perception binding those questions. The tools of research has developed along the line of our understanding and discoveries and for the majority of the history we've always been able to "zoom in" further.
Then we reached a point in which zooming in more lead to more questions than answers. It's basically like we've worked on a fractal form and it looks defined and smooth but when we zoomed in it just kept going and the fine structures seem to form further complexities and soon our understanding and math breaks down into such large numbers that it seems infinite and chaotic instead of understandable by our minds.
It behaves as if reductionist systems act in logical sync with our ability to understand until a form of singularity of complexity happens in which the parts just become the sum of it all and we can only view it as some kind of new system or object. But it keeps going and we can extrapolate these complexities in every dimensional direction which makes it hard to pinpoint a defined point of reference as it's not intuitively easy to do so. We can only talk about these things in terms of simplified communication, but the complexity folds and twists throughout reality in ways not easily defined, all parts are included, nothing is outside of anything.
The major problem is that we humans think in these terms, we recognize patterns and categorize everything. It's part of or maybe even governing all of our psychology and we may be entirely dependent on this categorization in order to function.
We ask ourselves why computers aren't more complex than our mind, but computers does not work in categorized forms. It brute forces "all particles" into its calculation of its reality, which quickly overloads its computation capacity.
A good example of this is how video games and rendered CGI differs. In a blockbuster movie that uses complex physics simulations and 3D rendered graphics, those are calculated more by brute forcing the simulation of how reality functions in terms of light bounces and kinetic movements of objects. But such calculations can take hours for each rendered frame in a sequence of 24 frames per second. In a video game, the goal is to reach the same level of fidelity, but rendered in 60 frames per second. So in order to do that, all the physics calculations, light bounces and simulations of natural phenomena requires improved efficiency. By categorizing each system with more broadly defined principles, they still sell the illusion, but function with less computational demand by lumping together things like light bounces into millions of less photon paths that gets evened out mathematically instead of using the precision of higher numbers. The result becomes less realistic, but much more efficient.
They categorize and group together the calculations just like how our mind categorize and makes the ability to comprehend reality more efficient than detecting all parts of the systems around us.
I believe this to be what Wayfarer also points out in his idealism argument, that a big problem in science is the inability to research past this categorization perspective. But that's what needs to be done in order to progress further; we can visualize emergent phenomena with these visual math examples, like @jgill demonstrated here, but that's only through the visual categorization that we are psychologically bound to and its good for communicating the idea, but may not be where more advanced forms of emergence occurs.
Emergence demands us to look closer at interactional bonds, how systems flow in sync and how those synced properties generate larger consequential behaviors in the emergent system and how those larger behaviors form the mechanics of the larger set. It is more gradual; a gradient in which the categorization of an emergent phenomena does not equal something we can easily perceptually categorize. It may therefor be that we have emergence everywhere in reality, but we don't notice it easily because we are categorically bound to only notice what is obvious to us through our psychological limitations.
Basically that we are fooled by easy to observe (because of our limited psychology) phenomena when the actually meaningful emergence happens outside of such psychological categorizations.
As we can see in how criticality functions, it doesn't directly show any easy to observe reasons, even if we can measure emergence happening in the a larger complex set. It's only when we measure the system mathematically where we can find the root causes for emergent behaviors. So, in order to find the causes and the links between the parts and the emergent behavior we need to view past our categorization psychology and view these systems more as an ocean of complexity that flows through our entire reality and that mathematically ends up in focus points of mathematical balance and stability forming new behaviors affecting other systems that in turn builds new formations and so on.
Basically, we need to somewhat brute force our calculations to spot how it works, which is why our computational ability right now may be too slow to be able to do so. If we ever solve quantum computing properly, this may be one of the key areas we can use it for. As it, theoretically, would be able to handle such extreme computations and reach a simulation of a system to the point where it knows all individual parts and can trace them in a complex system that reach a point that spawns emergence. Being able to map that complexity would give us the answers, but we can't get them through normal categorizing explanations. It needs to retain its inherent complexity in the explanation itself.
This is why I'm skeptical to the notion that we are never going to be able to map this or explain it. Because its a problem of computational power. Compared to something like studying the Planck scale with particle colliders, that is a problem of energy in the collider reaching the size of the galaxy. But computing criticality and emergence only requires an extreme increase in computational power that seems attainable with what is researched on in computer science. There's a good change that we will solve quantum computing this century and the algorithms already used with normal computing power right now almost function on the edge of the ability to simulate rudimentary emergence. Me saying that we might never be able to is only in respect to the scientific scrutiny of never projecting absolutes as statements of truth.
I think so too. I think the plausibility of my house's plumbing being conscious is about the same as the possibility that I'm a zombie: nonexistent. Yet, when you make Kastrup's point to materialists, they shrug and say, "Well, the brain is conscious, so I guess a bunch of pipes, valves and pumps could be conscious too". They don't want to entertain the possibility that there is no physical brain, that idealism might be the case. They're so opposed to idealism, they will seriously consider they might be zombies or "there is something it's like to be a sewer system".
This is just an argument from incredulity and a wheat field's worth of straw manning.
It's unfortunate that so many who consider themselves to be critics of physicalism have nothing much more than cheerleading for their tribe.
Is it possible for any system of pipes, valves, and pumps to be conscious? Or for consciousness to emerge from such a system?
Although wonderer1 and Christoffer may disagree with me, I think it is not possible. And I think it is not possible because of the kind of history that is needed, specifically a biological history, for consciousness. This may be more of a local, as opposed to a global explanation, of why one system is conscious but not another, but I think a historical explanation is adequate.
I am of the opinion now that consciousness may be fundamentally physical, at least I have no qualms with that being the case.
So no machine consciousness then?
I don't see any issue with biting this bullet. I already bite the p-zombies one.
We're kind of at first principles here. I don't see a good reason why I should entertain the possibility that consciousness can emerge from water and a bunch of pipes, valves, pumps (or ropes and pulleys as some have argued). Doesn't that seem kind of magical to you?
The idea that a system which mimics hte brain can result in conscious experience seems to comport with the fact that the brain does either produce, or receive consciousness. What's special about hte brain?
I realise, that is the question to some degree - I just have no reason to think it is yet.
Quoting NotAristotle
No, I'm not disagreeing with this. The idea that any system can form consciousness is closer to Panpsychism. But as you say here with "history" is what I mean by guiding principles, something that affects a system to form complexity in a certain way. Such principles seem to be either fundamental as in physical laws, but also systems acting further on the formation of other emergent systems, such as consciousness. As I described in how we can theorize why humans developed this type of consciousness that we have. An evolutionary path that directed towards a certain goal for us, in my example, an evolutionary trait of adaptability.
Just like my example with the flower forming to a shape and color it cannot see, but still develop, so can our brain and body develop info a form that acts according to the need of adaptability.
Going further, it may be that our minds evolution has to do with predictions only. That our consciousness only acts as a predictive system. That every need, want and behavior that we do is fundamentally linked to prediction out of the need for adaptability, even if we do not perceive any of those driving forces for our psychology. But if you break down the behavior of a human to each and every part. The reason to have memory, the reason we act based off it and handle our emotional world, it seem to be driven purely by a predictive nature. Much of a child's psychology in their development phase seem to focus on forming a functioning mental capacity for predictability of actions they do. Starting off with the fact that they cannot predict or visualize your existence if you hide your face. The extreme amount of growing neural connections during this phase would suggest that the complexity that forms around this simple function may contribute to much more advanced forms of internal computation with that as its core driving force. As a grown up there are constant advanced predictions in which we plan long chains of behaviors for a certain goal and that goal rewards us in some manner. Comparing it to nature, rewards and punishments within natural systems guide both evolution and behaviors of animals and plants and through the context of this, it may be that our consciousness has a much simpler basic function that in its emerging complexity forms all this chaos of human behavior and thought processes.
But that's another story and its own topic that focus more on psychology and evolution than purely emergence and consciousness as a system.
"guiding principles" "to form" "goal" I don't mean to be overly critical - do you mean these terms metaphorically or literally?
Literally. But I'm not saying they are "decided" by something (read; someone). I'm talking about it like with the example of the flower. The guiding principles that push the flower's evolutionary mutations into replicating an insect it cannot see comes out of the binary chaos of an insect landing on it or not, defining which flower that gets to be part of the long lines of pollination through their evolutionary development. That is a guiding principles for their chaos. Same goes for the physical laws in the universe; they are probably only randomized constants that appeared at the start of time, math that ended up causing the entropic progression to be stable enough to form what we now observe in the universe and on this planet. That if our universe is one inflation among an infinite amount of others, there might be others where, for example, the fine structure constant is different and reality quickly breaks down.
So, these principles are formed and they inform how chaos grows and what properties emerge. Either as basic principles like physical laws for matter and reality, or as more complex systems acting on systems like evolution guiding how the plant is able to produce a shape and color that replicates something it cannot see out of a binary reward and punish-contact with that object over time.
Quoting Christoffer
HI Christoffer,
Don't think we've interacted before, so Hi :)
Why would these preclude an identical systematical object producing consciousness? Surely an 'artificial' system which is based upon the current iteration of the human brain, in all it's complexity, would include all of the results of that developmental period, thus providing a commensurate system that 'takes into account' the goals which its development 'pushed toward'?
I'm not tied to that, so my question then becomes: How does the 'history' change the actual 'formula' which results in consciousness? Is this a meld of physical and non-physical properties? Unless the conception of 'evolution' is somewhat woo woo I'm not quite understanding what is 'present in' the brain, whcih would not be 'present in' the almost-identical artificial system?
How do you create a brain without the history forming it?
Yes, if you copy a brain exactly and place that copy into an exact replica of the body it came from, then it would start to act in the same way. But it has to be exactly the same, otherwise it would probably break down completely, just like a person with brain damage.
Consciousness in us develop from our childhood, through life up until death. Neuroplasticity does not stop and the formation is part of developing everything about us. We need that development history to form a human mind. Just turning on a brain that has no history and is just a bunch of neurons that has no developed relations in terms of formed memories etc. will only lead to a hallucinating mess of a person.
That consciousness forms is one thing, but that it forms into a human mind requires the development to be identical to a human brain developing. How else do you differentiate between a human and any other life form? Our genetical programming that decides the developing cellular formation into the brain is based on evolutionary history and it decides "how we start" in life, but a newborn child is rather stupid, even compared to a modern AI system. It takes time for consciousness to form but it also needs the trajectory based on our evolution, which can be seen as another guiding principle.
If you were to copy a human consciousness, you might need to simulate the entire life. Starting with a newborn perfect copy based on some evolutionary template of a person in real life. Then let that simulation and perfect copy, within a simulated body, grow as a normal child until being grown and only then will you see a simulated human mind in action and fully functioning. That's the only way to go from scratch.
Im not quite sure i understand this question.
Is this suggesting that previous 'versions' of the brain influence the current 'version'? Cause i'm just not seeing what would be missing from the artificial 'brain'. What is the 'history' you're noting, and where is it located in the 'real' brain?
Quoting Christoffer
Yes, I agree, but that's just because the brain keeps existing throughout that time. No reason to think the same wouldn't happen in an almost-identical system allowed to exist over time. Although, perhaps that's the 'magical' bit we can't quite explain yet.
Quoting Christoffer
Is this your conception of a new-born? At what point in gestation did the brain become 'populated' enough to avoid this problem? How is the development of memory in an artificial (but materially identical) brain-computer system different to that in the brain? I agree, that a brain/mind with no concepts would be an absolutely nightmarish substrate for experience. I just don't see how there's a difference in development between the two - Or, at least, I want to know what you think makes the difference.
Quoting Christoffer
Why? What's the special part that makes it a human consciousness? Or a human brain? I just cannot see what property is making a difference. Using the term 'human' doesn't seem to help, and a materially identical brain would be.. human..
Quoting Christoffer
Why are you looking for a fully-developed adult consciousness? Why aren't you looking for a new-born consciousness? It may be that i agree with this assessment, and have no idea why this wasn't the intention to begin with. I suppose this goes to other questions though.
If you could merely simulate the experience of a life for that artificial consciousness, would it have the same effect? And if so, are we accepting that a simulated life is materially equal to a non-simulated one, in terms of brain/conscious development?
But why is it a simulation? If an artificial brain is inserted into an artificial body and let develop in the same temporal way a human develops, why wouldn't it develop the same way?
We might be talking past each other a little bit.
My point is that "emergence" in itself offers no explanations. Nothing happens because of emergence. Rather, emergence describes a situation where nontrivial dynamics between simpler components produce surprisingly complex effects. This situation happens all over the place in nature, but "emergence" doesn't explain anything. It merely describes. You still have to understand how it can be that the complex effects can emerge from the simpler inputs.
Lacking explanatory power, I don't really see what emergence has to offer in this thread's argument. It does nothing to bridge the explanatory gap. If a crude dualist argument were offered, that "like must come from like", emergence could be deployed against that. But I don't see anyone doing that. Therefore, afaict emergence just seems to cloud things with a false veil of mystification.
Me too, which is why I think idealism is more parsimonious.
It would. Functional equivalents to working organic brains should be conscious, no matter what they're made out of.
Well, it's the best way to put the consciousness issue to rest: there it no matter for consciousness to emerge from!
Quoting RogueAI
I would think easiest... But that opens up much more difficult questions, like what is consciousness, if not an emergent property? Not aht this is news, but like with Kastrup we end up with 'there's one mind'. Ok, but why, what for, what's its basis, what even is it, how could it reflect on itself etc... I see idealism the same way I see God. "Oh, well, it's just the way it is.."
I think it's the unconscious desire (and pardon the irony) to avoid the burden of existence.
Quoting Christoffer
As I've noted, this conditions a lot of what you write. Hence, 'the blind spot'.
I see weak emergentism as most reasonable, and in the context of weak emergence the emergence is only epistemic. So on this way of looking at things there is nothing for emergence to do, except provide cognitively limited being like ourselves with conceptual frameworks that are manageable.
Perhaps this should have been spelled out more clearly earlier in the thread. In any case, I don't know if Christoffer shares this view.
I expect you know that idea is about 300 years old. Berkeley articulated and defended it. It drove people crazy then. Nothing changes. Curiously enough, he also re-inscribed dualism back into his system.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Or you could make your blocks a slightly different shape.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't know enough about these concepts to make a sensible comment. Apart from wondering why people want to start from those starting-points, given that they create problems, rather than resolving them. I guess I'm just a dinosaur.
Perhaps the history doesn't change the formula; the formula changes the history.
Perhaps there are just different kinds of matter (a-matter) and (b-matter). b-matter happens to be able to arrange into conscious brains, a-matter cannot. Nothing is necessarily non-physical in this explanation of consciousness. And I don't see why different kinds of matter is controversial or anti-scientific; after all, if you accept physics you would already believe there to be variations in matter such as protons and neutrons and electrons.
Wouldn't that be a big step forward?
There's the difference between a house and a home, perhaps, to rub the point in.
Emergence, if it is to help us here, has to be akin to "seeing as", as Wittgenstein set out. So once again I find myself thinking of the duck-rabbit. Here it is enjoying the sun.
The duck emerges from the rabbit?
I like this, and agree there's no real obstacle. But i still want to know what differentiates a-matter from b-matter.
Would this also assume we could not mimic b-matter? If the case is that the difference is in the type of matter, why not just construct the artificial brain from b-matter? What property precludes that?
But it is as absurd to claim it is not there when not observed as it is to say that it is there.
The issue here reduces to a simple problem of truth. You put the dish back in the cupboard and close the door. Is the dish in the cupboard? Is "The dish is in the cupboard" true?
I'll say yes, because that permits simply acts such as asking you to fetch the dish from the cupboard. If it ceases to exist when not observed, then how can I ask you to fetch it?
Idealism adds the unneeded ontological complexity of things winking into and out of existence, and the logical complexity of a trivalent logic.
Does this mean you abstain from deducing existence of anything? If this is way off, just explain yourself - It will not help to just tell me I don't understand. I'm trying to.
Quoting Banno
I agree.
It would, to a large degree - but invokes a sort of 'matter/anti-matter' dichotomy that seems to be more trouble than its worth :snicker:
There's a third type of emergence, more psychological than physical. The cat emerges from the single line:
... and we find ourselves able to talk about the tail ands the ears rather then just the line's length and width; whole worlds come into being just by seeing something differently
I'm not clear on what you are asking.
What does this mean? One might deduce the existence of the moon from the tides...
Well, your claim is that it is equally to absurd to posit that the Moon does not exist, as that it does. Im asking whether this precludes you from noting anything exists.
Though, I am now seeing it's likely I missed that this is meant to illustrate the position when one is not observing the Moon rather than some metaphysical line.
At any give time, either the duck emerges as a perception, or the rabbit emerges as a perception.
It is a function of how your brain is processing the data from your eyes from moment to moment.
Quoting jgill
Am I right, and I seem to recall your saying something like this earlier, that you choose the images that appeal to you aesthetically, from an infinite (indenumerable?) list of mathematical possibilities? So in a way of speaking, the images emerge form some, but not all, of the equations?
Quoting fdrake
I have had many thoughts on this, and it seems to come down to how we want to parse a logic of time.
I want to say that the ordered set of events does not rely upon supervenience in ordering those events. Further, in order for a supervenience relationship to hold then there are usually two kinds at work -- the mental supervenes upon the physical, the chemical supervenes upon the physical. What we'd have to do for moments is ensure that the supervenience relationship is between two kinds which still hold.
I thought about the difference between the A-series and the B-series of time and how, perhaps, the A-series could be claimed to supervene upon the B-series, and also that this would be a kind of support for physicalism. But how that maps -- I'm not sure.
But I think what I'd say is that the events in the moment defined from 1200 to 1201 do not map in a supervenient relationship to the events in the moment defined from 1201 to 1202. Supposing the same indexical reference then the events could be ordered as before and after, but if moment 1 is the A-properties across all of existence and moment 2 is the B-properties then it seems fairly obvious that if something changes at moment 1 that does not necessitate a change in moment 2, and also it's worth noting that because of the indexical being the same these are the same "kind" of time.
But that's about as far as I've been able to take it in a day. So I think where I'm still at is that the ordering relationship between moments in the same set of moments will not have supervenient relationships to one another, but something like "is before" on the same index.
(EDIT: Though it's worth noting that the sets which are within a moment could have supervenient relationships to one another or also to future versions of the same set. It's only the moments themselves, as an object with properties, that I think do not supervene)
This assumes psychological is other than physical.
In any case, neural network pattern recognition is highly fault tolerant, and that is why we are able to 'recognize a cat' when looking at that line.
There is always an image arising in the manner I have described. Even an empty frame. I never know what will materialize from a mathematical procedure ( I don't do fractals or other well-known imagery). The math procedure I use is not one others use to the best of my knowledge. Mine is intimately connected to cause and effect chains. Not simple iteration of a complex function.
Look at my icon carefully. I could not have planned it and then created the necessary math, in my wildest dreams.
There is a way that such reductionism is stupid...
Quoting Online etymology
Of course it is your brain is processing the data from your eyes. But it's still a cat, and it's still just a line. Thinking that the cat is no more than a bit of data processing misses its place in the artist's creation, the web page's design, the post I just presented and the argument about emergence.
Indeed, thinking of it as nothing more than your brain processing the data from your eyes is exactly the error that this thread is about.
By a moment of time do you mean a duration of time?
To me a moment could be an instant or a duration. An instant can physically exist but a duration is more of a mental construct.
Also from a physicalist perspective the past and future don't physically exist. I use past and future as known non-physicals. I think it's an argument that supports physicalism because brain state existing in the physical present can support the ideas of past and future .
I'm still working on understanding your argument. Not saying you are wrong.
A duration of time physically would be a sequence of physical instants. Not off limits or anything.
What are the axes of your drawing?
I'm used to thinking of (1,0j) as on the right hand side. I assume that is rotated 90° from my accustomed orientation. Is that correct?
I was hoping "moment" wouldn't come under question :D -- purposefully ambiguous, at this point, though inspired by Hegel. Moments have a structure -- they are populated with both members and relationships between the members and between the relationships. But how we go about defining these things in concrete instances, I think, will become controversial as we work out their implications so I don't want to make a definition just yet.
I don't think moments have to be uniform, even within the same set of moments -- so some of them could be instantaneous, and some of them could be for 1 minute, or we could also rigidly apply a 1-minute-per-moment definition From the Beginning, and numerate all moments by the minute for as far back as we are able and call that moment 0. As long as we understand one another in a particular instance that's good enough.
Also moments don't have to be numerated. "Alex walked to the mailbox. Alex waved to the neighbors" -- the logic of stories makes it to where the first sentence precedes the second sentence. It's understood that time passes, and it passes in a manner which is not numerated but sensible. I would include examples of narrative time like that, if we're to work out a logic of time.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
I can see the perspective for the future, but I'm inclined to think that the past physically exists from a physicalist perspective -- noting a difference between existence and presence.
Hence the mind-created world.
:ok:
What you say there is just you jumping to the conclusion that my view is much more simplistic than it actually is. I responded to you with a focus on the cat, because you yourself brought up the cat specifically.
Of course, I understand that we can associate a wide variety of things that we might wish to talk about, with the image. (And that is just another thing that is quite understandable, given a connectionist perspective.)
You seem to have a rather, "Don't look at the man behind the curtain." thing going on here. And your comment seems more gotcha rhetoric, than something I'd expect from a person willing to consider that he might have something to learn.
I'm lost. How does the past physically exist?
Just a word problem?
Past tense sort of existence?
I do not hold to this view. I am not a physicalist, I don't think.
Fossils are a good example. Did they just happen to form, or are they present because they have a material past?
I believe many things about the past -- the before now -- which are about the physical world. So I figure that must be physical, even if not present. (That dodoes existed, for instance)
Well I didn't sign up either. It has its uses though.
You are missing the fundamentals. Or I think you are. Not going to argue with you.
Any suggestions on that front? No promises... too many interests and all that. But I'd like to correct myself if I'm missing fundamentals.
Not really, it comes from me evolving my ideas from what is known and what is likely, not what is desired or believed. The idea of mind and body(brain) being two different things have no actual foundation outside religious ideas and spirituality.
I could stretch it to be a descriptive idea that aligns with me saying that consciousness acts as an "abstract" system and not an "object", meaning, a system that is an effect, much like a force in nature that doesn't exist as a tangible "thing", and instead something that acts upon, reacts upon and happens due to something. A consequence and a force that leads to other consequences.
But even so it appears out of and is linked to the body/brain, being a function by it and integral to it, and in every sense a part of it as a whole.
Calling it a blind spot is just as religious as when theologs use first cause arguments for God, pointing out that because science cannot explain the first cause, therefor it is as they say. Separating mind and body in the literal sense and not in a descriptive one, produces a similar predicament; a claim that something has transcended the natural world order of physical laws on grounds that cannot be explained or proven how or why. While a nondualist position points to a rational and logical unity of the mind and body, due to the massive empirical evidence that already do exist for what we know up to this point in research about evolution, our brain and body, the dualist has no actual empirical evidence that even hints at a duality between the mind and body exist, yet call out the nondualist to have a blind spot.
I would categorize that as a belief until there's actually anything to even hint in that direction. So far the evidence hints in the other.
Quoting Wayfarer
I've read the entirety of your argument and it mostly just points out the limitations we have as humans in that our perception seem to block certain ways of understanding of reality. But that does not mean the mind and body are separated in the dualist sense, or that scientists are limited in the way you've argued (as I've counterargued earlier in this thread), it simply points out a limitation in our perspective and perception. A limitation that's built on externally observing scientists methods without insight into their active perceptions, perspectives and use of methods. As I wrote a few pages back; a mathematician or physicist well versed in math do not think about reality in the same way as people not versed in it. They structure concepts and ideas with other conceptual structures. We extend beyond our limitations and we can also not know what limitations can be overcome with future technology. Because of that those conclusions in your argument doesn't work. And pointing out that our perception is the source of how we believe reality to be isn't a revolutionary argument, it is true for those people who doesn't dwell on these things but that doesn't mean it is true for those who do, and it ignores the facts and operations that we use to control reality around us, facts that relate to what is actually there outside of our perception and which can be theorized, understood and controlled without us ever perceptually witnessing them. And the more knowledge one has of the physical laws of reality, the theories and how they play together, the more conceptually vivid it becomes and in such abstract ways that they do not reflect mere perceptually defined concepts.
We seem to have broad agreement. It is misguided to look for an algorithm that explains emergence; any such algorithm will simply be the reverse of a reduction.
Emergence is seeing something as..., as in the single-line cat drawing shown previously. It permits new terms to be used, and so greater complexity.
So I'll differ to you this quoted piece, since I don't think it's a question of computation.
Just what the physics profession thinks is the state of physical matter. I think quantum physics says matter exists in a somewhat fuzzy present 'moment'.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Christoffer
If you mean, scientific discoveries are made, then the answer is, of course! But the philosophical point about the inherent limitation of objectivity remains.
On a perdurance view you would be a four dimensional being, with one of those dimensions being the time dimensions of spacetime. So from such a perspective, yes you have temporal extension.
And so World War 1 does not physically exist?
I recall a quote from a philosopher of science along the lines of facts being constructed like ships in bottles, carefully made to appear as if the bottle had been built around them.
It fits well with General Relativity as well.
If, by 'laws of reality' you mean 'natural law' or 'scientific law', are these themselves physical? I think that is questionable. The standard model of particle physics, for instance, comprises an intricate mathematical model, or set of mathematical hypotheses. But are mathematics part of the physical world that physics studies? This as you know is a contested question, so I'm not proposing it has a yes or no answer. Only that it is an open question, and furthermore, that it's not a scientific question.
Furthermore physics itself has thrown the observer-independence of phenomena into question. That, of course, is behind the whole debate about the observer problem in physics, and the many contested interpretations of what quantum physics means. I know that is all a can of worms and am not proposing to debate it, other than to say that both the 'physicality' and 'mind-independence' of the so-called 'fundamental particles of physics' are called into question by it.
If Christoffer responds to this and tries to correct your misconceptions, do you consider it likely that you will be inclined to tell him that his response was too long?
If so, it would be considerate to say so now.
I don't think it was too long. I made that remark in a different context where I felt it appropriate.
You haven't seen his response yet. :chin:
It seems obvious to me that there is no duck or rabbit until a mind observes the drawing and attaches meaning to it. This then leads me to think there is no information in a string of 1's and 0's unless a mind attaches meaning to the string of digits. For anyone who thinks information can exist independent of minds, where am I going wrong? IS there a duck or rabbit even when no one is looking at the picture? How does that work?
Wouldn't it be more accurate to say memories of the past exist in minds?
I don't see any reason to think such a system couldn't in principle be conscious, but it would be an extremely low temporal resolution sort of consciousness, and would require an enormous input of energy to power the pumps. This is related to what I pointed out Kastrup showing ignorance about, with his claim that the relationship between fluid flowrate and pressure, is the same as the relationship between voltage and current expressed by Ohms law.
So your conciousness detector would need to be able to detect a consciousness, for which one of our years was but a moment.
Hmm, a good point prima facie. I'm not sure what a memory is, exactly, so I'm unsure how to couch this, but... It seems it's a representation of something (the past state of affairs being recalled) received as empirical data, in the past, so I can't see the 'real' difference between the past, as experienced, and the memory.
If we're saying the past is mind-independent and that 'the present moment' is what constitutes the physical, in totality, it's a serious issue.
Maybe 'time travel' is confined to an approximation around memory though viz. you could have a 'conscious experience' of the past, such that it is the same, phenomenologically, as the present moment, but is in fact, a pale shadow.
Might it be a bit more palatable to say that the past exists in past minds..? Or does the mind endure?
What's the catch there? I don't really understand the correlation, so I can't pick out the problem.
Ohms law is v=i*r where
v represents Voltage
i represents electrical current
and r represents electrical resistance
So for any given resistance, the relationship between voltage and current would be graphed as a straight line at some angle.
Fluid flow is much different with something more like p=r*q^2 where
p represents pressure
q represents flow rate
and r represents something crudely analogous to electrical resistance we can call "pipe-resistance".
Graphing p vs q for a given pipe-resistance (according to this simplistic equation) would result in a parabolic curve.
Fluid flow is actually even more complicated than that, so keep in mind this is merely a crude approximation. However, an aspect of the situation with fluids, is that the energy required to move fluid through pipes tends to go up as the square of the flow rate.
Have another look at Mind and the Cosmic Order. It is a book that has quite a lot to say about just this point.
There are a few Here, and you can see what the math looks like.Quoting wonderer1
Like the standard Euclidean plane. Vertical (imaginary) axis in center and horizontal (real) axis across the middle. Sometimes I shift my focus to a small section of the complex plane. I did this to isolate and magnify my Quantum Bug icon.
One can say that a citizen is composed of cells, but it is difficult to say that cells can be fellow citizens of each other. That seems like a categorical error. I think that emergentism gives an explanatory power to composition that it really does not have and that it constantly proves not to have as soon as we try to explain an increasingly larger whole from the parts. Thus falling into constant fallacies of division and composition. What remains in doubt is that we are actually talking about a whole in which each of its parts share a common property that, however, seems too specific and that can be applied less and less as we increase the focus to see a larger reality and greater content. And not only that, but the rule of unidirectional construction from the smallest to the largest is called into question. This is why I am not a substantialist (physical substance monism in this case) but instead advocate insubstantial pluralism.
There is the architectural metaphor. It tells us that there are building bricks from which structures and objects such as buildings are formed. But when I ask myself what are the building bricks of, say, computer language, ethical and moral values, mathematics and many other things (that at first do not seem physical to us) I feel like we are talking about how a joined bricks of a building explain the functions of the company that operates in that building.
That's new to me!
Quoting Moliere
The philosophy I'm interested in recognises the empirical reality of past events, the pre-history of life before man and so on. But the reality that is imputed to them, is still imputed by an observing mind - yours, mine and whomever else considers the matter. The question is, is temporarility itself truly independent of any observing mind? And if the answer is yes, according to what scale or perspective is it so? Time - the measurement of duration - seems to me to depend on scale or perspective, and that is what it provided by the observing mind. None of which is to deny the reality of the fossil record.
If the problem with explaining apparently emergent phenomena is just that you need a "lot more computational capabilities," then what you have is merely 'weak emergence,' and reduction still works. However, I don't think appeals to mind boggling complexity do anything to deal with the conceptual problem of how it is that we keep adding functions to some computation and then, at some indefinite point, our computation begins having first person subjective experiences (the plausibility problem).
Relevant to this first problem would be the argument that the information carrying capacity of all baryonic matter in the visible universe appears to be inadequate for computing even simple forms of life. If these sorts of arguments bear out, then the problem can't be resolved by more efficient computational methods.
The other problem with "weak emergence only," views (essentially the reductionist view) is their plausibility given problems related to the most basic phenomena we study. The problems with proposed instances of emergence vis-á-vis quantum mechanics itself, spacetime itself, holographic universe conceptions, molecular structure, etc. don't seem resolvable simply through greater computational power (see the quote below).
Your post seems to blend two ideas though. That our conceptual framework is fundementally lacking, and that we simply lack computational power adequate to "brute force," our way through these issues. I would just ask if these are the same position vis-á-vis emergence?
With the former view, I do think it's quite fair to ask if superveniance and thus "emergence" are even framed in the right terms, using the right categories. This is in line with process-based critiques of the entire problem, that it rests on bad assumptions baked into science that go back as far as Parmenides. The "lack of computational power," explanation seems like a different sort of explanation.
From the SEP article on emergence:
Somewhat creepily, the video below was suggested to me by Youtube last night.
Cool video though, if you are into such nerd stuff.
Time seems as independent as anything else in empirical reality, but if we're talking about transcendental idealism, for instance, then it seems the answer is both yes and no -- time is independent of my observing mind in the sense that I can have incorrect judgments about the form of our intuition, but it also just is a part of our mental structuring of the world (so it wouldn't even make sense to claim dependence as much as identity).
I don't know, though, and I remain uncertain how one might go about deciding such a thing. It seems like a question we can ask but that doesn't have much of an answer if we want to claim to know.
It remains mostly just as a remark of an obvious observation on human perception, but it fails to lock down limitations as actual limitations of knowledge. We cannot see all wavelengths of light, but we know about them, we can simulate them, we use them both in measurements and in technology. Understanding reality doesn't require limitless perception, nor is it needed.
To pose that we must have limitless perception in order to understand reality downplays our actual ability of abstract thinking.
And it also produces another question; would unlimited perception of reality actually produce perfect understanding or would it just scramble the ability to understand everything by the lack of defined perspectives? That without a specific perceptive perspective and clear categorization while able to do abstract reasoning that relates to those perspective, it may form better understanding than the unlimited. A being that, for instance, would see all wavelengths of light, may not comprehend light any better than us due to the absolute visual noise it would produce. In that scenario there wouldn't be any actual ability to see matter easily and, therefor, that being would of course see more than us in terms of photons, but it would see less than us due to photons interacting with matter drowning in the sea of the wavelengths we don't see.
So to pose that our limited perception is limiting us isn't a strong conclusion because we could also argue that our perception strikes the perfect balance of perceptive observation that makes reality able to be navigated and understood more easily while we further have the ability through abstract thinking, mathematical calculations and building external tools to extend our comprehension.
As an analogy, in art, there are clear examples in which an artist had unlimited means to make whatever they wanted, without any problems with funding, equipment or inspiration and yet they were only able to produce something that people felt became worse than when they were stuck with limitations. We cannot conclude perceptive limitations to be equal to an inability to fully understand reality, not when incorporating our other mental abilities and capacity for creating technology to extend our abilities, as well as realizing how limitations in perceptions can make understanding cleaner. Absolute, limitless perception might just become an incomprehensible mess that renders a clear picture into white noise and "objective conclusions" lacking even more details. So when would a being be able to understand the universe fully? Because limitations in perception doesn't seem enough of a defining criteria based on this.
Quoting Wayfarer
Carl Sagan? He emphasizes the idea that sometimes people construct their beliefs first and then selectively choose or interpret facts to support those beliefs. Which is why modern scientific methods are rigorously focused on bypassing such biases. The ship in bottle-analogy refers primarily towards those conducting pseudo-science, empathizing the need for rigorous critical thinking, evidence, and scientific principles. Which is what I'm standing by as well when I say that my philosophical speculations are extrapolated out of science, not out of a belief first that I'm then searching for evidence to support. I did not focus much on emergentism before many scientific fields started to form similar conclusion in their analysis of extreme complexity. While the concept of emergence has been around for long in philosophy, it's only recently, with progression in things like criticality, that it starts to lean into the most probable position. And as I've mentioned, if it turns out to be false due to new discoveries, then I will simply have to shift my perspective to something that's more probable. I will not, however, change my perspective into something that relies on belief alone and cause just because it feels good or present me a sense of emotional meaning.
Quoting Wayfarer
The laws of reality or physical laws are the mathematical principles that guide processes in physics. Mathematics are just our way of extrapolating an understanding of the unseen. The equations we have is a language for interpretation and extending such interpretation to prediction has proven to guide how we test physics, and in turn successfully proven physics to a point in which we can act upon and manipulate it, which is why we have most of the technology we have today.
So are they part of the physical world? Math on a board and in our head, no, they're just the lens for which we see these underlying rules of the physical world. But they correlate, and something like the fine structure constant; its mathematical calculation is extrapolated out of the phenomena we observe and through that we can measure its impact beyond our perception.
The standard model is what's proven, the hypotheses part is what we extend out from it, theories that tries to breach into a theory of everything. For instance quantum electrodynamics is one of the most accurate theories in all of physics. Even if we found out that it is something else or part of something else, the math of its function remains and exist as a physical phenomena. Science does not prove something "wrong" with new discoveries, they prove a new relation and perspective that put previous knowledge in new light and a new framework. It's a slowly forming knowledge, like a statue that's forming by water droplets, slowly coming into shape. It's not a finished statue that's demolished and rebuilt from scratch with new discoveries. And math is the reason why, because the answers in math cannot be changed, only understood better.
String and M-theory are one of those areas where the only reason why it keeps existing is because the math works. If proven wrong, the math will still stay and have to be incorporated into what is proving it wrong.
Quoting Wayfarer
The "observer" in quantum physics has to do with any interaction affecting the system. When you measure something you need to interact with the system somehow and that affects the system to define its collapsing outcome. This has been wrongfully interpreted as part of human observation, leading to pseudo-science concepts like our mind influencing the systems. But the act of influence is whatever we put into the system in order to get some answers out. A photon launched at what is measured, for the purpose of a detector to then visually see what's going on; will have that photon affecting the system being measured. It's not that our mind does anything, it's that we have to put something in to get information out and the only way for the system to keep a superposition is to not have any influence, which means it is in suspended and dislodged from reality until defined.
Quoting wonderer1
:lol: This is more accurate than any prediction in physics
Quoting Wayfarer
:lol:
You ask questions and write about complex physics; it's like asking how an airplane function expecting a short answer, but if my answer is "it flies", that wouldn't be much of an answer really.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
That's why in my very first post in this thread I said this:
Quoting Christoffer
The question is still if it is possible and I cannot conclude either. But weak emergence and reductionism are not the same. Reductionism heavily focuses on clear basic interactions of the parts and direct relations to the higher sum property, while weak emergence still focus on how the interactions create levels of changes that propagate up to an emergent phenomena. The difference is that reductionism draws clear lines from the actions of the parts towards the effect, while weak emergence is a "slowly mixing liquid" where all steps in its progression becomes further part of the final emergence. You could still, if possible, calculate the progression with enough computing power, but it will not show clear causal lines, but instead a trace of the progression of changing operations within the system over time from initiation to emergent outcome.
Quantum entanglement is a misunderstood concept. It simply means that a particle set in a relationary superposition with another particle and those particles are separated and then one particles spin is measured will give you information on what the other particle has in its spin since they are in relation. It doesn't mean we can directly affect a particle over long distances as a form of "sent information", only that the superposition when measured gives us information about the other distant particle.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It's about acknowledging the missing parts. We don't know if we can calculate or not, because we don't have the computational power yet. When we do, this will be a testable part of physics. So we cannot conclude our knowledge-relation to emergence yet, even if we can see it happening. Much like how we can see both general relativity working as well as quantum mechanics, but not have a theory combining them at this time. I'll speculate that we might even find clues to such a bridging theory of everything within emergence theories, seen as they focus on the shifting relation between smaller chaos into larger deterministic systems.
The way collapsing wave-functions happen sure do resemble the emergence from high complexity, if that complexity comes from things like virtual particles. Or it may just be that the collapse is based on superpositions dancing between probabilities until they're settling in one or the other direction, similar to a drop of water between two other drops of water pulling on its tension and then randomly ends up in one or the other. Meaning, there may be a fundamental randomness of existence at the Planck scale, in which mathematical and universal constants define where the random existence and non-existence forms and in what way. And some of this randomness ends up in a condition where it locks into place by attaching and guiding the ones already locked in place, and which causally scales up to collapsing into such a locked position which defines moment to moment reality. A form of fundamental emergence that flows like a fluid with an increasing ability for causality through scale; from extreme randomness to slowly solidifying into more and more defined states at higher and higher scales. If that's the case, it might be that at the largest scales, scale levels of the entire universe, there's no emergence happening, forming a boundary where reality cannot progress further and that the only thing expanding our universe is the underlying emergence pushing reality larger, explaining both the increasing speed of the expansion and maybe even dark energy.
But that's just some pure speculation at the edge of my mind, so grains of salt required or course.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
What are the right categories? These categories are just frameworks for further thought, accumulating the broad grouping of ideas in order to communicate better the position being discussed. I personally do not like the labeling and use of labels in philosophy because I think they limit thought down to people throwing balls with labels on them, defined, and for some, unmoving and unchanging concepts that when someone extends a label outside of its "comfort zone" people rebel and proclaim it not correct according to said label. Physicalist emergence is just a starting point for me.
It's probably why philosophical debates goes on for so long. Most people don't use the ideas of previous philosophy as a springboard, they simplify it down into labels and use them as hammers. I can find ideas in Wayfarer's idealism argument that I fundamentally agree with, but not with the conclusion, so does that make me a pseudo-idealist? No, it's only about following where the ideas lead based on rational thought and logic. Emergence as I'm talking about it, is referring to the underlying behavior of nature and our universe to assemble into further concepts that act with functions not possible to be defined by their parts, and further what that means and how it acts upon reality. So trying to purely define ideas based on how well they fit into categories is part of the limitations in Wayfarer's idealism argument that I agree with; that we cannot progress knowledge by only acting out of predetermined categorization. If emergence as I argue about it, produces new positions not able to be defined, then maybe a new category is needed to define it?
You got me thinking about what time is.
For our brains we might have a special case because we perceive events and construct time lines. Past, present and future with the present being physical. That's my generalization of how we perceive time. It might not be the case physically. Matter doesn't flash in or out of existence based on clock time. Look at anything of matter and it has a stability and presence that doesn't come from a timeline or follow a clock. So look out as far as you can and as closely as you can and that might give you the best understanding of what physical matter is.
Of course for us we remember things in story form, events, calendar and clock time. If you think of a time line you have the past to the left, the physical present in the middle (an instant) and the future to the right. I think most people view past and future as physically non-existent but maybe that is my bias.
I think, for myself, I use different models of time based on the context and even can consider time as not a real thing....more a view that it is forever the physical present.
I'm not talking about the limits of knowledge. There is no end of things to discover. I'm talking about the limitations of objectivity as a mode of knowing.
Quoting Christoffer
I looked it up - facts as being like 'ships in bottles' was from a philosopher called Jimena Canales, mentioned here some time back, link here. The point is, facts are always embedded in a context - theoretical, historical, social, and so on. The point about classical physics was that its calculations and predictions were not dependent on context in the way that higher-level and less straightforward sciences are. They are universally applicable, within a range. Physicalism generally wishes to extrapolate that method to knowledge in general.
Quoting Christoffer
Not according to Brian Greene:
Quoting Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos
It is a fact that when the measurement is taken (or a registration is made) then the previously 'spread-out' nature of the 'particle' suddenly assumes a definite position. That is the (in)famous wave-function collapse the nature of which is still a matter of contention. It was what lead Wheeler to say that 'no phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered phenomenon'. This is the sense in which quantum physics definitely mitigates against physicalism, and why you are compelled to dispute it.
The indeterminacy is affected as much by the geiger counter as a human (or cat) eye/brain complex and collapses the wave-function in the same way. So, there's not really anything mysterious in the box anyway
But perhaps I am misinterpreting it.
As you know, the 'wave-particle duality' is one of the fundamental oddities of quantum mechanics. Bohr said, as I understand it, that you can't see whether it 'really is' a wave or a particle - that whether it appears as wave or particle depends on the way you set up the experiment ('nature exposed to our method of questioning' was another pithy aphorism.)
But the reason I posted it, was in response to the claim that there's nothing mysterious about the whole wave-function collapse business, we just change the object because of interfering with it. That really overlooks the greatest philosophical conundrum of modern physics. Not claiming that I can adjuticate it or have the definitive interpretation, so much as pointing out that (1) nobody can and (2) there isn't one.
I'm not sure I have starting-points as such. I'm just interested to understand what's going on here. I guess you're telling me that emergence only exists within a quite tightly defined context.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think that's a very good point.
Quoting wonderer1
I only meant that providing ourselves with conceptual frameworks that are manageable is quite an achievement and well worth having.
Quoting Banno
I think the devil is that is in those little words "just" and "is". Do we need any more that multiple descriptions in different contexts?
Quoting Banno
I have very little idea what emergence is, but I'm thinking of it as a kind of analysis in reverse.
But what is the probability wave, other than a distribution of probabilities? The answer to the question where is the particle just IS the equation, right up until the time it is registered or measured. So the answer to the question does the particle exist is not yes or no. The answer is given by the equation. So you cant unequivocally say it exists - you can only calculate the possibility that it might. (This torpedoes Democritus atoms and the void by the way.)
So - does that mean yes it is? - lets ask @noAxioms.
Second point - this is one of the questions I asked on Physics Forum - it is well-known that if only one particle at a time is fired in the double-slit experiment, a wave interference pattern still occurs. But the intriguing thing is that even if you increase the rate, you still get the same pattern (up to a point). I posited that this indicated that time (rate being a function of time) was not a factor, meaning something like a timeless wave - which was declared gobbledygook by my interlocutor (ref).
So I dont think of the wave function as a physical wave, but a pattern of degrees of likelihood. So the wave is in the fabric of reality itself, not the fabric of space-time.
But I know Im on thin ice.
And that returns to the question of at which level of perception an objective understanding, a knowing, is preferable. The one which is in the middle, seeing clearly past the absolute noise but with the ability to abstractly understand beyond? Or the one who sees all, but becomes blinded by its noise?
I agree that we have limitations in our perception and that a new perception could drastically change our emotional experience of how we experience reality and the universe. Much like when people saw the first images from Hubble, it changed the emotional experience of knowing the universe. However, that's only emotional experience. Objectivity in knowing, requires a humble and unbiased relation to the knowledge we have, respecting the data that forms a deeper understanding past our perceptive limits. And we have another tool for knowing; in form of the collective. All who are versed in how biases affect us knows that the more there are who observe without bias, the more objective we can be about reality.
Let's say we have a white room, evenly lit. In this white room there's a white podium with a red apple. Outside the room there's a person who do not know what's in the room. You let another person into the white room to observe and then out to describe and draw what they saw in the room to the first person. That wouldn't lead very far in his objective understanding of the apple and how it looks. But it will increase with more people that enters the room, giving their descriptions. At a certain point, the first person will have enough understanding of the red apple to predict exactly everything there is and be able to imagine the red apple in its entirety. Now, this looks an awful lot like another version of Mary and the black and white room. And that's intentional because when Mary steps out into a world of color she experience it emotionally. But the question is then, are we describing simply emotional experience? A purely human perspective that should not really be a foundation for objective understanding. To understand the universe, we do not need an exceptional emotional experience of it and fundamentally we are already doing something like that through art.
There's a beautiful expression of this in the Oppenheimer movie; in the montage after he gets asked the question by Bohr: "do you hear the music?" -Oppenheimer battles through the theory and there's a shot of him deep in thought in front of the Picasso painting Femme assise aux bras croisés. Art has been instrumental for experiencing beyond mere perception, and it is worth asking the question if the interpretation and honest imagination of information is more clear and objective in understanding than the being who can observe everything as everything is. Because, as I said, seeing all would blind you maybe even more than not seeing all due to your limitations.
What is an objective understanding then? Especially when reality seem to fluctuate in a away that makes the objective in objective understanding; a variable entity at that level of absolute perception. Understanding may very well be more clear with some limitations and so the conclusion that we cannot objectively understand becomes a very undefined conclusion.
Quoting Wayfarer
That was just a segment on the uncertainty principle. What causes the collapse is still about how any detection introduces an interference that collapses the wavefunction. And our mind does not affect the collapse because any measurement we use in order to witness it introduces an observable event long before our mind. Much like our eyes do not see by spraying out photons, the photons have already interacted with any surface and we only observe with our eyes after the photons already acted upon the world. Any interaction is a type of observer, because "observer" in physics has to do with interaction, relation. Anyone who uses the Von Neumann interpretation misunderstands a large part of physics and believes that they can isolate a physical phenomena in their lab without their equipment affecting the measurement. There's a reason why the Von Neumann interpretation is considered the worst of the interpretations, because even among physicists there are people who don't understand quantum mechanics. As Richard Feynman said; "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics".
Quoting Wayfarer
Physicalism also points out that physical processes are causes. The problem is, as I mentioned in my last post in my answer to Count Timothy von Icarus, that philosophers gets addicted to labels. It becomes hammers to battle with rather than positions to extrapolate out from. If I present an argument that uses physicalist emergentism as a springboard into my philosophical ideas, then the label is only the starting point. If all I said gets reduced back to rigid descriptions of these labels, then you are acting out of the same criticism you've given for how scientists can only observe through pre-conceived categories.
It's why I usually never use these labels when talking about different topics, because it collapses people's ideas back into a box that makes it harder for them to read what I actually write. It's also fascinating that when we read philosophy, all these labels and terms get invented by the notable philosophers in history, but when people discuss philosophy and operate on expanding on ideas, they mostly become puppets of these labels, using them as tribalist positions. But true philosophy is about understanding the ideas and work out from it. Since it seems that physicalist emergentism as a label is boxing in my argument in a framework that is limiting, I think I need to coin my own terms for it. But since the science of criticality is still in very early stages I want to wait until there are more of a foundation for emergence theories.
I began to notice differences in conceptions in time when I started getting into historiography. As you note there are many models of time.
I believe past events must at least exist. What is non-physical about the Earth forming in the distant past? Or weather events? It seems to me that the mountains of today were physical yesterday, or at least as physical as they are today. Would time rob them of that physicality because we've moved past them, or do they remain physical even though it was yesterday?
The probability of measuring some part of a system can be computed from the wave function. I've not heard the result of that computation being referred to as a 'wave', but I'm sure it is somewhere.
Does the particle exist? That's a counterfactual, so there is only a yes/no answer given an interpretation that posits counterfactuals. Quantum theory would simply give a probability of measuring it here or there, or not at all. You can confidently say about some proton that it 'exists' mostly because outside of the sun, protons are pretty stable * and don't just cease existing, so it exists but you don't know exactly where it will be next measured.
I was asked if 'yes it is' is correct, in reference to: Quoting jgill
No it is not. The wave function of the particle describes its quantum state. The probability of where it might be computed from that wave function, but the wave function itself is not a 'probability wave'.
Right. This shows that the interference pattern (from a continuous beam say) is not due to the photons interacting with each other.
Up to a point? What happens if you go beyond that point, other than the slits melting or something? Got a citation?
* [sup]15[/sup]O (with a half-life of a couple minutes) decaying into [sup]15[/sup]N is an example of an everyday non-violent end of a proton that might be observed in a lab here on Earth. A PET scanner apparently uses exactly this reaction to study oxygen / blood flow.
This quote raised a strange & confusing possibility in my mind, that may or may not be provable. Greene's illustration of quantum Uncertainty*1 notes that the "particle" being sought is not in any particular place, but "spread out" throughout the universe. In other words, non-local. So, it seems that the fundamental problem is not a mental state (uncertainty) in the mind of the observer, but a Holistic state (eternity) in the really-real world. Ironically, the reductive scientist is looking for a particle where there is nothing particular. This sounds like the drunk looking for his lost keys under a street light, because that's where the light is.*3
From direct sensory experience with the human-scale macro world, we have learned to expect things to be local & particular & changeable. But, when scientists experiment with the quantum foundations of the world, their artificial sensors return the appearance of a non-local & holistic & a-causal BlockWorld*4. In such a world all reasoning would be circular (non-linear). So, which is true : our common-sense ever-changing linear-logic reality, or an eternal state of Potential from which we sample statistical contingencies? What does this possibility say about Physicalism? :smile:
*1. Quantum Uncertainty :
[i]Philosophers of science have long associated the claim that observations or experimental results in science are in some way theory-laden with a logical/epistemological problem regarding the possibility of scientific knowledge: reasoning from theory-laden observations may involve circularity. . . .
Measurement results depend upon assumptions, and some of those assumptions are theoretical in character. . . . . Our analysis shows how the evaluation and deployment of uncertainty evaluation constitutes an in practice solution to a particular form of Duhemian underdetermination[*2] that improves upon Duhem's vague notion of good sense, avoids holism, and reconciles theory dependence of measurement with piecemeal hypothesis testing.[/i]
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0039368120301886
Note --- Theories tend to become beliefs to be verified, or if not provable, to be accepted as ever-pending facts. Accepting quantum Uncertainty as a brute fact of life, allows us to "avoid" the logical conclusion of Holistic (non-reductive) foundation of Reality.
*2. Underdetermination :
In the philosophy of science, underdetermination or the underdetermination of theory by data (sometimes abbreviated UTD) is the idea that evidence available to us at a given time may be insufficient to determine what beliefs we should hold in response to it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underdetermination
*3. Why quantum mechanics favors adynamical and acausal interpretations such as relational blockworld
We articulate the problems posed by the quantum liar experiment (QLE) for backwards causation interpretations of quantum mechanics, time-symmetric accounts and other dynamically oriented local hidden variable theories. We show that such accounts cannot save locality in the case of QLE . . . . In contrast, we show that QLE poses no problems for our acausal Relational Blockworld interpretation of quantum mechanics, which invokes instead adynamical global constraints to explain EinsteinPodolskyRosen (EPR) correlations and QLE. We make the case that the acausal and adynamical perspective is more fundamental and that dynamical entities obeying dynamical laws are emergent features grounded therein.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1355219808000592
Note --- This source is over my head. But it seems to be arguing that Einstein's hypothetical timeless & changeless & placeless Block Universe may be more real (in some strange sense) than the dynamic particular world that our senses interpret as Reality.
*4. EINSTEIN'S ETERNAL BLOCK WORLD
This is where we disagree. I don't see a compelling reason to think the needle of the consciousness meter would move at all if we pointed it at a conglomeration of pipes, pumps, and valves. Science, so far, has not come up with a compelling reason why I should think there's something it's like to be New York City's sewer system. There's been plenty of research establishing brain-consciousness correlations (if one assumes materialism is true), but nothing so far on the causal front. I think Kastrup is clearly correct here.
It's also kind of head scratching that the same people who shout "Woo!" at the drop of a hat would entertain the notion that plumbing might be conscious.
No one has suggested the possibility of NY sewers being conscious, so that is just a strawman.
I'm well aware of your ignorant incredulity towards physicalism. No need to tell me where we differ.
So it's impossible for certain conglomerations of plumbing to be conscious? Which systems of valves, pipes, pumps, etc. are possibly conscious and which aren't and how do you know?
Why would I want to waste any more time, trying to explain the physical working of things, to someone who denies there is any physical working of things?
I am not the one claiming that some assemblages of valves, pipes, etc. are possibly conscious and some are impossibly conscious. I think it's all impossible. When you claim that this heap of matter over here is possibly conscious, but it is impossible for that heap of matter over there to be conscious, that begs certain questions. You don't want to answer them, OK. But that weakens your case.
We observe the entities in order to derive their properties, relations, and activities. I suspect I lack the necessary abilities to abstract a property from that which it is a property of, but I do not see how they can be distinct from one another. One cannot measure the mass of a thing without measuring the thing.
The Schrödinger equation's solution is called a wave function. If one simplifies the equation considerably it has the form dQ/dt=kQ, which has solutions involving e^it=cost+isint, giving it repetitive or wave-like characteristics.
I apologize if I have misinterpreted your comment.
Very many deep questions here. Again a large part of scientific method is in the reduction of observables to their measurable attributes, and the integration of the observable results into an over-arching hypothesis. My claim is that whilst this has been an incredibly effective method, there is something that it leaves out as a matter of definition. It provides what philosopher Thomas Nagel calls 'the view from nowhere', which attempts to understand the world independently of any personal or subjective perspectives and experiences, aspiring to a form of understanding that transcends any particular individual's perspective. It is scientifically effective, but philosophically barren, because in reality we are subjects of experience, we're not really standing outside or separate from our lives or existence as a whole. And that is very much the thrust of phenomenology and existentialism.
Quoting noAxioms
Thanks for your response! As I mentioned before, I ran the idea past Physics Forum, where I was told that:
Quoting noAxioms
It's the nature of that existence which is the philosophical conundrum. It's not as if it's precise position and momentum is unknown, but that it's indeterminable. It will be found whenever it is observed, but the sense in which it exists when not being observed is what is at issue.
OK, should have thought of that. I was kind of thinking photons, which don't interact with their neighbors nearly as significantly as something like a charged particle. So I pictured a laser weapon aimed at the slits...
The moon was measured. It's still there despite it not being measured at the moment (like it's possible to ever not measure the moon from anywhere as close as Earth). The proton is like that, but with not quite as many 9's to express the probability of it still 'existing'.
The conundrum of which you speak seems to be that the proton in fact hasn't an objective location/momentum at all between measurements. The moon, being classical, isn't like that. But quantum theory doesn't say that the particle doesn't 'exist'. A few interpretations say it does in fact have these properties at all times, but they're just interpretations. The others might still say it 'exists', in the manner of say energy, charge, baryon & lepton number conservation. It can't just not-exist. It just lacks objective properties that put it in a specific state.
Note that if I say something different from the physics-forum guys, they trump me. There are some really solid experts over there, and I don't often respond to questions for fear of putting my foot in my mouth.
Another note: I've not been reading this thread, so not sure how the non-classical nature of QM has to do with 'best argument for (or against) physicalism'.
Quoting jgill
Thanks for the clarification, which was mostly about the terminology. Yes, it definitely has wave-like characteristics.
One would hope, only in the minds of those as subject to fallacious thinking as you are. But what ya gonna do? :chin:
E pur si muove.
I often bring up the famous rhetorical question that Albert Einstein asked his friend on an afternoon walk (I think it was Abraham Pais): 'Does the moon continue to exist when we're not looking at it?'
I think the answer is obviously 'yes' but the question I would like to ask is, why did he feel compelled to ask it in the first place? Why did it bother him?
Quoting noAxioms
They give philosophical questions very short shrift. To all intents, they're banned. So these questions fall between the planks - Philosophy Forum says 'hey, this is a physics question, it's not a matter for philosophy', and on Physics Forum, philosophical questions are not encouraged. I should know - I brought up a question about Platonic realism in mathematics, and it was deleted, with a polite note from a mod saying that nobody there had the expertise to answer it.
Quoting noAxioms
Where I think it's philosophically interesting is because it introduces just this question of degree or kinds of existence. You know - it kind of exists. Because in most other contexts, 'existence' is a univocal term - something either exists, or it doesn't.
The quip was said in the early days of quantum theory when what is now known as the Copenhagen interpretation was 1) pretty much all they had, and 2) was strictly an epistemological interpretation, concerning what was known about a system and not what was. Ontologically, only the Wigner interpretation (leading to solipsism) suggests that human observation has anything to do with what is.
So Einstein perhaps was vocalizing some of the apparent implications of quantum experiments, that one cannot know the state of a system (moon in this case) between measurements. And indeed this is true. The moon is not in a specific state relative to anybody on Earth since it is over one second away and any measurement of it is quite old. That statement is wrong if one presumes counterfactuals.
Quoting Wayfarer
That they do. Wrong forum to ask that sort of stuff. But most of the forums that do allow it don't have the sort of expertise found there. I mean, I'm a mod on one of them, and apparently 'top dog' on things like relativity and maybe QM, which is pathetic since I would utterly fail a college level exam on either subject. I learned enough to glean informed implications of both theories on philosophical topics, but not enough to actually do the higher mathematics.
I dabbled in mathematical Platonic realism (especially as it applies to Tegmark's MUH) and found it lacking in explanatory capability. The kind of ontology that makes sense to me simply does not apply to most mathematical structures functionally different than our own. I'm of course not 'most other contexts'.
So many of the actual philosophy forums suffer from a lack of posting standards, resulting in a negligible signal to noise ratio.
Quoting noAxioms
I've never understood that expression about 'counter-factuals'. What does it mean, exactly?
I guess there's part of the issue with bringing with bringing quantum mechanics into it ... interpretations are so controversial because everyones got very different opinions. Then again, its hard to ignore because if the quantum mysticists are correct then it does have possibly very big metaphysical implications. Big implications no matter who is correct I guess.
Precisely! The enigmas of quantum physics are Ontological, not Physical. Waveforms & wavefunctions are subjective metaphors, not objective things. They offer material analogies (water waves) to symbolically represent unseen causes of observed effects (wave-like behavior in aether-like empty space).
Some posts in this thread focus on scientific Physicalism beliefs about quantum queerness, and miss the philosophical Metaphysicalism notions about the fundamental nature of Being. Obviously, an objectively observable material form is necessary for Real existence. But beliefs & ideas having no physical form, can only be "observed" by imagination, and possess only Ideal existence.
The worldview of Physicalism (matter + energy) seems to deny the existence & meaning of immaterial Ideas (mind) that don't seem to be either of those types of real things. Perhaps a perspective of BothAnd Meta-physicalism could combine Real & Ideal into a single monistic über-Ontology, where the prefix doesn't mean "Supernatural", but "Beyond" or "Holistic" or "Comprehensive" : more-than the sum. For example, a quantum particle is both Real (physical) and Virtual (mental or mathematical). :smile:
Physicalism, Dualism, and Idealism :
The debate between physicalists, dualists, and idealists is often presented as an ontological onea debate over what exists. Very roughly, physicalists hold that everything is physical, dualists hold that some things are physical, and some are mental, while idealists hold that everything is mental.
https://academic.oup.com/book/26763/chapter-abstract/195671674?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Seems to me that these concepts transcend the division between subject and object - which you actually posit here:
Quoting Gnomon
That book looks absolutely splendid, by the way. I will search around for it. Noted this quotation from the Notre Dame review of same:
Bullseye!
On my view emergence makes the most sense when used to refer to a naturally occurring(evolutionary) process that began long before language use emerged.
Consider a specific example of knowledge...
It is only from the recognition of causality, that a capable language-less creature will learn and thus come to know that touching fire causes pain. A creature incapable of attributing meaning to the behaviour and the fire will avoid the danger nonetheless, because fire damages biological material regardless of whether or not the biological entity in question is capable of acquiring the aforementioned knowledge in the aforementioned way. So, to be clear, avoiding the danger does not always require knowing that touching fire causes pain. Very simple biological organisms do it just fine despite not having what it takes to correctly attribute causal relations between different things.
Emergence is how the recognition of causality results in knowing that fire hurts when touched. Knowing that fire hurts when touched emerges from correctly attributing(recognizing) the aforementioned causal relations.
Knowledge of biological machinery and physics results in knowing how fire hurts when touched.
Emergence is what's going on when such knowledge is being formed.
Knowing that fire hurts when touched - as set out directly above - is existentially dependent upon more than just the fire and the biological creatures' behavior regarding that fire. The knowledge is not contained within, nor possessed by merely the elemental constituents, nor is such knowledge possible without all of them. Without the fire, the behaviour cannot happen. Without the behaviour, the attribution of meaning cannot happen. Without the attribution of meaning, the knowledge cannot be formed/acquired. Without the capable creature, the meaningful attribution of causality cannot happen. Without the meaningful attribution of causality, the formation/acquisition of that bit of knowledge cannot happen.
Other notably emergent things include truth(all senses of the term) and meaning(all senses of the term).
Of course, although I'm not certain, I would strongly suspect that not much of this, if any, aligns with current academic notions of "emergence".
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Earlier you asked what the difference was between emergence and 'backwards reduction', or something to that affect/effect. Why does that question matter to you? Keep in mind what I just roughly outlined above.
The concepts & language in Explanation, Idealism, and Design may be way over my head. So, I only read the Abstract. But you may be able to make sense of it.
When I said a sub-atomic particle is both Real and Virtual, I wasn't making a counter-factual or profound statement. It was just an expression of my personal BothAnd philosophy, wherein both material objects and mental concepts are included in my Holistic worldview. I suppose you could say that it "transcends" our conventional divisions between mental & material Reality, as in Brain/Mind categories.
For example, I accept the scientific/mathematical definition of sub-atomic particles as a practical tool for understanding physics. Yet the waveform itself is not a particle, but a metaphorical representation of a particle's mathematical properties. Ironically, if taken literally, Physicalism might omit philosophical metaphors from its definition of Reality. Which is OK by me. I simply put such non-things into the category of "Ideality". Is that a legitimate word? :smile:
PS___ I don't think UFO's are alien spacecraft in Reality, but I accept that the notion of alien visitations is a popular belief in Ideality.
Both/And Principle :
[i]My coinage for the holistic principle of Complementarity, as illustrated in the Yin/Yang symbol. Opposing or contrasting concepts are always part of a greater whole. Conflicts between parts can be reconciled or harmonized by putting them into the context of a whole system. . . .
This principle is also similar to the concept of Superposition in sub-atomic physics. In this ambiguous state a particle has no fixed identity until observed by an outside system. For example, in a Quantum Computer, a Qubit has a value of all possible fractions between 1 & 0. Therefore, you could say that it is both 1 and 0.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page10.html
I think an oft missed distinction here is between the idea that "every [I]thing[/I] around us is physical" and the broader claim that "all facts can be explained in terms of facts about physical entities." Abstract objects are more of a problem for the second claim.
The idea that "all the things around us are physical," doesn't seem particularly at odds with some forms of "idealism," particularly Platonism or Absolute Idealism.
The argument that knowledge of mathematical facts is "caused by a physical brain," fails to be a conclusive argument in favor of the stronger claim that "all facts reduce to facts about the physical." The facts underlying X's knowledge that 7 is prime seem like they should be different than those underlying "7 is prime." It seems quite possible that it could be true that we need our brain to recognize mathematical facts and for it to be true that mathematical truths cannot be reduced to some set of facts about physical entities.
If it is claimed that mathematical facts are actually facts about "relations between physical entities," then it still seems like abstract relations exist, and these relations just happen to be equivalent to our original mathematical facts, in which case, it still seems like mathematical facts cannot be reduced properly.
Emergence is a Holistic concept, that doesn't make sense from a Reductive perspective, such as Physicalism. Hence, it is sometimes dismissed as anti-science, although Emergence is essential to the 21st century sciences of Systems and Complexity. :smile:
Emergence :
Emergence is a continuous process that appears to be sudden only because the mind reaches a tipping-point of understanding between an old meaning and a new meaning, causing a conceptual phase-change from one logical category to another.
Holism, reductionism and emergence :
[i]Emergence is the opposite of reduction. Holism is the opposite of separability.
The difference is subtle, but emergence and reduction are concerned with concepts, properties, types of phenomena, being deducible from other (lower level) ones, while holism is concerned with the behaviour of parts being independent from relational aspects, or their pertaining to a whole.[/i]
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/21419/holism-reductionism-and-emergence
Note --- Holistic properties are top-down phenomena that emerge from collective interrelations within an integrated unified System. :smile:
A Test of Emergence :
This chapter illustrates how the concept of emergence has become a great attention grabber due to the striking behaviors demonstrated in artificial life experiments. Emergence has been called upon conveniently whenever the unexpected intrudes into the visual field of the experimenter, consequently requiring or justifying an economy of explanation. This abuse of the term will eventually devalue its significance and put the concept of emergence itself under a bad light.
https://academic.oup.com/mit-press-scholarship-online/book/13765/chapter-abstract/167404766?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Note --- Unexpected results may result from erroneous expectations. Physical Emergence happens regardless of your presumptions.
Yes. Everything we know via the five senses is physical. But we know some abstract concepts via the sixth sense of Rational Inference. We typically call sensory knowledge "Facts", and theoretical conclusions "Beliefs". Facts can be proven, but Beliefs can only be argued. :smile:
Note --- Of necessity, philosophers have developed Rules of Argument, which are themselves moot.
As if all emergence results from a tipping point between an old meaning and a new one.
There is no good argument for Budweiser. Unless we want to say that reality is one and that everything has both a Michelob and a Budweiser aspect to that. The primacy of Budweiser is possible but still inferior to the primacy of Michelob.
Did that make sense to you?
I could give time perception, past and future that don't exist in physical matter but that resolves itself as mental content (brain based and physical) that only exists in the physical present.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/time/
Okay.
Presentism,
Growing block,
And eternalism.
Are those the choices?
Presentism works.
I don't think our best physics even addresses the other two. Is it in the math or something?
Presentism does work.
So do the others.
How do we decide?
We have direct access to the present.
It would be the easiest to defend.
How do you prove past or future matter exist.
And their origin is in your brain not a physical observation.
We have direct access to the present. In the present I pick up a history book which tells me something about the past. Was JFK physically assassinated, or was he only assassinated in my brain? JFK's assassination took place in my brain just now, but I believe it took place in past material reality.
Today I can look at a history book. What is its relation to the past?
We can imagine time lines in our brains but we can't physically get out of the present. Two things are at play, the mental and the physical.
I agree here. So we're at least equally confused.
I disagree that physical matter is its physical presence. But I also agree with:
Quoting Mark Nyquist
I hope nothing I've said suggests that we can, physically or otherwise, get out of the present.
Okay, that's basically what I think.
Could I say a property of physical matter is its physical presence? I'm just getting lost in the words.
But, also, I'll note we're getting into some of the topics outside the topic :D -- I'm not sure where to go, though I'm still interested in arguments for physicalism. Time, causation, meta-metaphysics, metaphysics of physicalism?
The one thing I want to avoid in making another thread is the mind-body problem because that's what this thread is :D
I should correct your grammar.
Yesterday the mountains were as physical as they are today.
Isn't that the correct grammar?
Interesting that you used are instead of were.
What works for me is setting things into a universal form like this:
Physical brain; (mental content)
Physical brain; (time perception)
Physical brain; (thought)
Physical brain; (knowledge)
Physical brain; (mathematics)
On and on.
It recurs often enough that we should expect it to be a universal form of our mental worlds.
It's also useful to understand information physically exists in this form
So information is physical brain; (mental content)
That's my view of how physicalism deals with information being physically based.
If you deny relativity.
Presentism works for relativity as I understand it.
What am I denying?
The only thing I can think of is different rates of time passage measured by two clocks. It's still a physical present anywhere.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/presentism/#RelaPhys
Are you saying STR and growing block theory are compatible? No they are not. Whoever was arguing that was wrong. Seems like you left out a lot of context just to give a quote.
The only claim I am making is that presentism isn't compatible with STR. Yes, there is a lot of context to consider.
Okay I did a little deeper look into what you are saying. A Google search says STR and presentism are incompatible. So you have company.
What I'm seeing is a complete ignorance of the past and future existing as physically present brain state. They just haven't developed their philosophy enough. Past and future existing as brain state in the physical present is compatible with presentism. So I'm sticking with what I wrote earlier.
There is a lot to this....
In the physical world we should use presentism
The physical world is the basis for our mental worlds.
In our mental worlds we should use eternalism. (Or growing block if needed).
Philosophy isn't always clear or you have to look closely to see what applies and context.
Being a physicalist monist, the idea of a mental world independent of the physical world doesn't resonate for me.
I recognize that we are apt to have deeply engrained presentist intuitions, and for practical purposes we more often than not make use of a presentist perspective. However there are practical cases where the STR needs to be taken into account, such as GPS technology.
I guess I don't know how to make sense of your statement here.
They are in a 'present' related to their reference frame, but that is a subjective notion of "present" that breaks down when trying to understand the bigger picture.
And no, I haven't been considering time travel, other than the time travel we are all doing continuously, as far as I can tell.
Was I physical yesterday?
I'm not a committed physicalist, though it's in the territory of my thinking, but I believe if I am physical today then I was physical yesterday. In terms of physicalism, at least, this is a problem for presentism: how or why does physicality not apply to the computer I was typing on yesterday?
Yeah, I would say*, you and the computer you were typing on yesterday have extension along the temporal dimension of spacetime.
* Well, in a philosophy conversation anyway. :wink:
Not necessarily "all" transformations. The quoted phrase was not referring to the physical Emergence, but to how it appears to the observer. The "tipping-point" trope is about an epistemological event in the mind, not a physical occurrence in the world. I assume that most physical emergences (e.g. phase changes) occur unobserved, unremarked, and unrecorded, hence unsurprising. :smile:
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, the awareness of physical emergence usually comes as a surprise, due to its suddenness and unexpectedness. The intermediate steps between before & after states of phase change may be masked by "Noise" (chaotic information), giving the appearance of a causal gap. To some observers it may seem to be magical ("presto!"). For example, exponential Cosmic Inflation in 10?33 seconds from nothing to something could be described as a surprising "Phase Transition", or as a "Miracle". :gasp:
Tipping Point in Physics :
In discussions of global change, the term tipping point has been used to describe a variety of phenomena, including the appearance of a positive feedback, reversible phase transitions, phase transitions with hysteresis effects, and bifurcations where the transition is smooth but the future path of the system depends on the noise at a critical point.
https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0705414105
We're working from very different linguistic frameworks. For one, you're drawing a distinction between minds and the world in such a way that minds are not in the world. On my view, there is no emergence without some physical elemental constituent(s).
Yes, but an emergent immaterial function (Mind) from a mundane material substrate --- after 10B years of lifelessness & 13B years of mindlessness --- is a novel & unique phenomenon in the evolution of the near-infinite cosmos ; hence worthy of philosophical & linguistic distinction. If the phenomenon of Mind was not in & of this mundane world, I would not be here to talk about it. So, the metaphorical "distinction" is between the clay and the sculpture ; not between this world and one of many alternative universes.
Moreover, it's the job of philosophers to study the software, not the hardware or wet-ware ; the cathedral, not the stones or the scaffolding. Hence, my use of language appropriate for a philosophical forum. I'm sure you can find neurology forums that will use the linguistic framework you prefer. :wink:
Understanding complexity in the human brain
The human mind is a complex phenomenon built on the physical scaffolding of the brain
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3170818/
On my view, there are no purely immaterial things(although I may be able to be pursuaded to see things otherwise). On your view there is. It's a matter of methodological approach. The differences between our two views are so stark that we may not even be talking about the same things despite using the same words.
For example...
When you use the term "mind", what are you referring to such that it does not consist - in part at least - of biological machinery?
For my part it's not that a purely physical explanation ought be, or is, preferred, but rather that the explanation and the entities referred to within it ought be made amenable in terms of evolutionary progression to/from purely physical entities.
Assuming monism is true, evolution always happens, and methodological naturalism is the best approach...
Quoting Banno
Again, for my part...
Consistency/coherence within and of one's own worldview requires the ability(explanatory power) to provide different but commensurable explanations/accounts regarding how different sorts of more than just physical entities/things emerge.
Bolding mine
I agree with the overall sentiment of this post. If emergence is a naturally occurring process, then it all boils down to the elemental constituency and existential dependency of the candidate under consideration. We've briefly talked about that in my thread by the same name.
Could you elaborate on some of the prior assumption that preclude the possibility of emergent things/entities? I personally do not find that the notion of emergent property is capable of taking proper account of all emergent things/entities.
As you implied, we seem to have different vocabularies : e.g. materialistic Scientism & wisdom Philosophy. But, I haven't said anything about "purely immaterial things", yet you seem to interpret the word "Mind" as-if it refers to a Soul or Ghost*1. For the record, I have no experience of a Mind without a Body (ghost). Instead, I define the human Mind as the primary Function of the human Brain. Technically, a "function" is not a thing-in-itself, but a causal relationship between inputs & outputs, as in the information processing of a computer. The biological Brain is a machine, but the psychological Mind is a process, a function : the creation of Meaning.
You may also interpret my use of Aristotelian "metaphysics" in terms of Catholic "theology". Philosophically, the Brain is physical (objective quantifiable matter + energy), but the Mind is meta-physical (subjective qualitative matterless meaning). That's a philosophical distinction --- Quanta vs Qualia --- going back to Aristotle*1. But you may be influenced by the anti-philosophy notion that "Metaphysics" means "religious beliefs". For me, it merely means "non-physical" or "immaterial" (i.e. mental)*2. Can you see or touch an Idea or a Feeling? If not, that's because it's Meta-physical (read -- non-physical). Philosophers don't study material objects, but they do examine the immaterial functions of material brains.
You won't understand my philosophical language from a scientific perspective. But that doesn't mean it's anti-science. Instead, my thesis returns "Science" to the broader meaning of the ancient Greeks : both Physics and Metaphysics. Both Material and Mental. Both Objective Things and Subjective Ideas about Things. The common denominator is Generic Information. Not the empty meaningless 1s & 0s of Shannon's data-containers (registers), but the intellectual content of communication.
Metaphysical Ideas, feelings & beliefs are indeed immaterial, but they are not "pure", because they are inextricably linked to a material substrate. Just as information processing requires a biological or mechanical computer, meaning-making and self-knowing requires an information-processing organ. But Generic Information is both Biology & Life and Brain & Mind. That statement won't make sense without an understanding of General Metaphysics*4 and Generic Information*5.
For philosophical purposes, I do study Mind as a separate topic from Brain. But I've never seen a Ghost walking around without a Body, or a meaningful Mind functioning without a mechanical Brain. Could you be persuaded to view the Mind/Body problem from a Philosophical perspective? :nerd:
*1. Mind/Body Problem :
Philosophers and scientists have long debated the relationship between a physical body and its non-physical properties, such as Life & Mind. Cartesian Dualism resolved the problem temporarily by separating the religious implications of metaphysics (Soul) from the scientific study of physics (Body). But now scientists are beginning to study the mind with their precise instruments, and have found no line of demarcation. So, they see no need for the hypothesis of a spiritual Soul added to the body by God. However, Enformationism resolves the problem by a return to Monism, except that the fundamental substance is meta-physical Information instead of physical Matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page15.html
*2. Special Metaphysics :
The philosophical science of Metaphysics is essential to my worldview, because, unlike Physics, it allows us to study the immaterial aspects of our reality, such as Qualia (properties) and Ideas (meanings).
https://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page74.html
*3. Physics & Metaphysics :
Two sides of the same coin we call Reality. When we look for matters of fact, we see physics. But when we search for meaning, we find meta-physics. A mental flip is required to view the other side. And imagination is necessary to see both at the same time.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page14.html
*4. General Metaphysics :
General metaphysics, also referred to as Ontology, is the study of being or existence and is in line with Aristotles conception of metaphysics. Special Metaphysics, on the other hand was divided into three disciplines; cosmology, rational psychology, and natural theology. While general metaphysics was concerned with being at a broad, fundamental level, special metaphysics addressed more specific questions concerning existence. Topics addressed within special metaphysics included such things as immortality, freedom of the will, and the mind body problem.
https://academyofideas.com/2013/06/introduction-to-metaphysics/
*5. Generic Information :
Originally, the word information referred to the meaningful software contents of a mind, which were assumed to be only loosely shaped by the physical container : the hardware brain. . . . . So now, Deacon turns the spotlight on the message rather than the medium.
http://bothandblog4.enformationism.info/page26.html
Your number 5 reference (just above here) is interesting. Information, the word, seems to have morphed and diverged a huge amount since it's origin.
Common usage now seems to be an abstraction that has no physical basis so I think the original meaning is more true to physicalism. And the ancient philosophers wouldn't have had the word or the current ideas of what information is. I just think its current usages (the word information) conflict and cause confusion
Thanks for bringing that up. For me, it is relevant to physicalism.
Yes. That's why I have to provide my own non-dictionary definitions*1, whenever I mention my Information-centric thesis. After the early 20th century, two terms --- "Information: and "Computer" --- radically changed meanings. Before, both referred to flesh & blood humans*2. After, both terms now refer to abstract Data and bloodless Machines.
Terrence Deacon noted that Shannon chose the wrong word to describe the physical nature of his novel notion of Information*3. Unfortunately, the physical term "Entropy" (negation of energy) is misleading. And the more appropriate term "Negentropy" (negation of the negation of Energy) is still confusing. Yet, it relates mental Information with physical energy. And that is the basis of my Enformationism thesis.
However, as Deacon notes below : "information is neither matter nor energy" in a physical sense. Instead, it is an elemental pre-cursor of both, in the philosophical meaning of Creative & Causal Power (Potential ; power to transform Possible into Actual). In a practical evolutionary sense, Information (EnFormAction) is both causal physical Energy and the Matter formed from its creative power : (E=MC^2). But in an Ontological philosophical sense, Information is the meta-physical contents of a Mind. Those who limit Physics to fundamental Materialism cannot grasp the relation between abstract intangible causal potential and concrete tangible actual stuff. They tend to equate natural mental Metaphysics with supernatural spiritual Ghosts. :nerd:
Note --- Aristotle defined "Potential" as the ultimate source of Actual things. Similar to Plato's notion of Ideal "Form" as the source of all Real Things.
*1. Information :
Knowledge and the ability to know. Technically, it's the ratio of order to disorder, of positive to negative, of knowledge to ignorance. It's measured in degrees of uncertainty. Those ratios are also called "differences". So Gregory Bateson* defined Information as "the difference that makes a difference". The latter distinction refers to "value" or "meaning". Babbage called his prototype computer a "difference engine". Difference is the cause or agent of Change. In Physics its called "Thermodynamics" or "Energy". In Sociology its called "Conflict".
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
*2. What did it mean to be a human computer?
Before there were actual computers, they were people. At NASA, women had to do all the math and science calculations for aircraft and space missions. From 1935 to 1942 more women began to work at NACA because many men volunteered to be in the war. The women that worked for NASA were often called "Human Computers".
https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu amst_humanc...
*3. Terrence Deacon on Information :
[i]Deacon introduces a second triad he calls Shannon-Boltzmann-Darwin (Claude, Ludwig, and Charles). He describes it on his Web site www. teleodynamics.com. I would rearrange the first two stages to match his homeodynamic-morphodynamic-teleodynamic triad. This would put Boltzmann first (matter and energy in motion, but both conserved, merely transformed by morphodynamics). A second Shannon stage then adds information (Deacon sees clearly that information is neither matter nor energy); for example, knowledge in an organism's "mind" about the external constraints that its actions can influence. . . .
Confusingly, John von Neumann suggested that Shannon use the word entropy for his measure of information. Then Leon Brillouin coined the term negentropy to describe far-from-equilibrium conditions in the world epitomized by information.[/i]
https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/scientists/deacon/
I always thought Shannon Information was a poor choice of a word. It's a technical specialty that's made a huge impact but isn't good science or philosophy just because of that.
I might sometimes look like I'm defending physicalism or be some how attached to it but I'm not. It just gets us to the point where we do what we do with our brains which really is the interesting part. And not just in philosophy.
Since our brains/minds seem to be capable of believing anything, true or false, having some grounding in the physical basis might keep us from getting off track.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
I keep saying this, but the problem is that culturally, we've rejected or destroyed many frameworks for thinking about the issue other than the physical. Because metaphysics generally is associated with religion - we've already seen this association made numerous times in this thread - then you're left with only the physical as an explanatory framework.
I'm someone who avoids the word metaphysical.
Maybe I don't use it enough to be comfortable with it. It seems more of a word for academics and like you say might be a negative to some.
Also, I focus on just certain areas of philosophy and try to have a general background.
You're far from alone in that.
:up:
From Descartes...explanation at the neurophysiological level will be in terms of efficient causation.
Once the Cartesian paradigm took hold, it fell to neuroscientists to work out its implications at the experimental level.
The book is Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, Bennett, Hacker, 2003
The review looked good.
For example:
This applies equally to a lot of what is written about the so-called 'neural correlates of consciousness'.
Descartes idea of efficient causation is worth taking a look at. Mental circumstance can be traced to brain state but any change in mental circumstance will change brain state. So mental circumstance is driving brain state. It's a difficult idea to explain. Anyone, please take a try at it if you can do better or explain if you think it's something else.
Another related issue is holding true or false ideas.
My view is that it's very possible to hold false ideas without it being the fault of brain biology.
Some could wrongly take the position that false ideas can be traced to failed brain biology.
In practice failing brain biology.and holding false ideas have very different characteristics.
I might be drifting away from physicalism but if you take physicalism as the basis for what exists then these side issues follow.
Shannon was an engineer, not a philosopher. So, he was interested in getting measurable physical results (communication data throughput), not in exploring the metaphysical meaning of his term "Information". That's OK though, others have taken-up that task. My interest in Information was piqued by physicist John A. Wheeler's philosophical concept of "it from bit". Together, these two thinkers gave us new insight in the broader significance of mental ideas, by linking those incorporeal "bits" with real-world changes in material things (its). In other words, en-formation is causation. In my thesis, mental Information (useful knowledge) is merely one of many forms of General Causation, that I call EnFormAction.
If you were a working scientist, Physicalism --- nothing non-physical --- would be an appropriate belief system for your profession. But for philosophical thinkers, there is more to the world than just tangible things (materialism). Philosophy is concerned with non-things like Ideas & Opinions & Beliefs, that can't be dissected with a scalpel, and can't be reduced down to Atoms. Physicalism implies that there is only one way to exist : Reality. But, in his essay The Ligatures of Reason*1, discusses the Ideal existence of "universals", such as number, math & logic. Scientists study particular things, but Philosophers study general & holistic concepts. That approach is what came to be known as "Metaphysics". Literally, "in addition to physical Reality" (i.e. Ideality), not necessarily super-natural, or un-real. Unfortunately, Catholic theology tainted that aspect of Philosophy by association with dubious religious dogma.
So yes, as amateur philosophers, we should be held accountable for the "grounds" of our reasoning. But material Science is not the only valid foundation for philosophical interpretations & conclusions. For non-rational animals, the physical facts may be all they know. But, us rational humans share ideas & opinions that can't be accepted at face-value. Instead, philosophers have developed Logical rules and Rational methods for sifting the grain from the chaff. Whereas, Physics uses Reductive & Deductive means to determine reliable facts, Philosophy uses Holistic & Inductive reasoning to learn what is universally true. Unfortunately, some posters on this forum hold the materialistic worldview of Scientism, which dismisses Metaphysical reasoning as groundless. Instead, I have adopted a BothAnd policy of combining bare Facts with logical Reasons. :smile:
*1. The Ligatures of Reason : logical, not physical, connections
[i]This insight lead me to ponder what it means to say that number and phenomenal objects exist
in different ways. Until this time, it had never occurred to me that there might be different ways of existing; I had thought that things either exist, or they dont. . . .
But then, I wondered, in what domain or sense do numbers exist? Where are numbers? How can they be real? Perhaps, came the thought, they exist in an intelligible domain, of which cognition is an irreducible part,and so, accessible only by reason.[/i]
https://medium.com/@jonathan.shearman/the-ligatures-of-reason-66b775d443d1
If the worldview of Scientism dismisses metaphysical reasoning as groundless then I'd say that physicalism is groundless, since physicalism is a belief arrived at by metaphysical reasoning.
As such it would be a poor argument for physicalism.
I believe that comment is based on the review I mentioned, which says
Quoting Review of Phil. Foundations of Neuroscience
I believe the point here is that Descartes pursued and encouraged the study of cause-and-effect relationships in medicine and anatomy, which is relevant to neurophysiology and visual theory; like others of his day, Descartes was a polymath, with very broad interests, including medicine. But just above that passage, they also make the point 'Descartes reconceived the soul not as the principle of life, but as the principle of thought or consciousness (p. 26), a thesis which led to the idea that the mind was separate from the body in all respects." This is what they believe has had negative consequences, which I agree with; it reduces the state of being to a 'thinking thing', the very existence of which is impossible to demonstrate objectively. Yes, I know that I am, because I am; but what am I, an ethereal thing somehow attached to the body?
Whereas the Aristotelian idea that was displaced, was that the soul was like the animating principle of the body (literally 'the soul is the form of the body' where 'form' is like 'principle'.) It's a very different kind of metaphor, a different kind of consciousness, even.
Quoting Gnomon
Thanks for the mention! That essay is yet to get any kind of attention (a solitary clap) but I felt it needed saying.
This division is a consequence of the cultural dialectic between reason (so-called) and faith (so-called). Deep historical currents percolating beneath the surface which underlie the culture wars we're experiencing. I still say that many earnest advocates of scientific reductionism are animated by the fear of religion, which is why I refer to Thomas Nagel's essay on that topic so frequently.
Catholic theology absorbed much of what was profound and noble in the ancient tradition, and then tied it to the oath of fealty to the Church, so that with the rejection of the Church, much of ancient philosophy is rejected along with it. Hence the flatland of secular culture, dominated by relativism, scepticism and instrumental utility. Reconciling that has been my major interest.
Ironically, all universal -isms --- including Materialism, Physicalism, Naturalism, and Idealism --- are beliefs based on Metaphysical induction. And they are groundless, in the sense that universals are not empirically derived. So, their value is only in that they distinguish one philosophical worldview from another.
Hence, Physicalism is differentiated from Materialism in that it implies more than one fundamental element : matter and energy. The essential rock of Scientism is the empirical scientific method, which grounds Physics, but not Philosophy. Idealism is founded on the mushy terrain of Concepts, which distinguishes that belief system from those grounded on Percepts. The non-empirical -isms can only be justified by pure logical reasoning, which Kant identified with Metaphysical Philosophy. :smile:
"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." ___ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason
His initial arguments for the soul not being caused by the body in the way that a lyre causes a harmony all have key weaknesses. But given Plato has just had Socrates give a warning to the effect of "don't despise wisdom just because it turns out that some arguments you thought were good actually turn out to have huge flaws," I am pretty sure Plato leads with bad arguments on purpose (you always find new stuff in these).
Socrates' last argument is that the soul/mind cannot be like a harmony because the soul sometimes rules over the body. That is, mind sometimes causes the body to act. But how can a harmony cause an instrument to act a certain way? Simple answer: it can't. A harmony cannot cause the strings to vibrate different ways because the harmony is the vibration of the strings. In the terms of modern physics, we would say that any effect on the lyre caused by the sound waves it generates (the harmony) can ultimately be traced back to the strings itself. If the analogy were true, the harmony/mind must be causally inefficacious.
This is a killer argument. It is really just variants on this argument that leads to physicalists having to posit epiphenomenalism or eliminativism. But for Plato (and most people) it is prima facie unreasonable to say the mind has no causal powers vis-a-vis the body.
This argument still seems very relevant today because I would think that most people who embrace computational theory of mind or integrated information theory very much would like to compare the mind to a harmony or melody. It is an "emergent informational process." But for that emergence to be causally efficacious, you need some sort of "strong emergence" that gets around Plato's trap, and that is hard to come by.
"Here he comes to save the day!" It's super-mensch to the rescue of dystopian society! :joke:
Mensch : a person of integrity and honor.
Perhaps a heroic philosopher?
Super-mensch the Reconciler?
Unfortunately, you seem convinced that you know what my position is. It's a shame that that's the case, because I do not think that you do. I've ignored, and I will continue to ignore the sentences that prove that clearly... to me, anyway. I'm just not interested in that sort of 'discussion'. Nor am I here to deliver a scathing critique of your contributions(which could most certainly be done). Nah, I'm much less likely to do such things in my 'old age'. I do not really see the point anymore, most of the time anyway. I'd much rather attempt to make headway. There is some agreement between us. That being said...
This needs attention...
Quoting Gnomon
There, you were spot on. That seems an unbridgeable divide between Way and myself. He insists that consciousness does not exist, and to me... that makes no sense. On my view, everything spoken about exists. It's just a matter of how. Simply put: That which has an effect/affect exists(is real).
Quoting Gnomon
Here, you said "yes", but did not understand what you were agreeing to. I was claiming that that bit of knowledge was an emergent entity/thing. That was all I was saying at that time.
The following could prove fruitful...
Quoting Gnomon
So, we seem to agree that minds are existentially dependent upon brains.
I'm curious to see if you'd be willing to unpack that last sentence. Notably, the last bit about "the creation of meaning". I ask, because it has long been my contention that academia has gotten that wrong, and that the academic (mis)conceptions of meaning(current conventional understanding regarding theories thereof according to the SEP) have led or helped lead to many a philosophical conundrum.
It's relevant here I think.
I get it, I really do! I'll have another go at it. What I'm saying, and it's an important qualification, is that consciousness does not exist as an object. We can, of course, speak of it as an object in the metaphorical sense - an 'object of discussion' - but the mind itself is not an object in the sense that all the objects we see and interact with are objects. I say that is why the 'eliminative materialists' can't acknowledge its reality - precisely because it's not objectively existent.
(There's another distinction that I make between 'what exists' and 'what is real', but it's a very difficult distinction to unpack. But what got me started on that was the distinction between intelligible objects, such as numbers and logical principles, and empirical objects, such as apples and chairs. I think that is preserved in the distinction between a posteriori and a priori knowledge although it's very much fallen out of favour in Anglo philosophy.
I'm of the view that there was at least an implicit distinction recognised between empirical and intellectual objects in pre-modern philosophy. So, empirical objects are phenomenally existent - that is, they appear as objects of sense (bearing in mind that 'phenomena' means 'what appears'.) But logical principles, numbers and the like are not 'phenomenal objects' in that sense - they are 'objects of thought' (which is nearer the original meaning of noumenal, pre-Kant). I'm of the view that this is an important epistemological distinction that has been lost in the transition to modernity. But it's the first point that is most relevant.)
It should be kept in mind that Socrates, as he is about to die, is trying to convince his friends not to fear or despair death. It is significant that he does not avail himself of an argument used in the Apology - that death is like a endless dreamless sleep or annihilation. Here he argues that a good life will lead to a good death. The problem is that if the soul is the harmony of the body then the destruction of the body is the destruction of the soul. This I think is the main reason he rejects it.
For an in depth discussion of this and related issues see my threat on the Phaedo.
Socrates argues that the soul cannot be an attunement if the tuning existed prior to what is tuned. But there is an argument that Socrates neglects to pursue. The tuning of a lyre exists apart from and prior to any particular lyre. The tuning, the harmony, is an arrangement of frequencies that exists even when a particular lyre is not in tune. Although the tuning of a particular lyre does not endure once that lyre is destroyed, it does not follow that the attunement, the Harmony, is destroyed.
The same distinction holds for the soul. It does not follow from Socrates' argument for the imperishability of Soul that his soul or any other soul is imperishible. A body is alive when there is a proper harmony or arrangement of its parts. When that balance gets too far out of harmony life cannot be sustained.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
When the lyre is in tune it vibrates in a way that it does not when it is out of tune. With the proper tension it acts in a certain way that it does not when it is not in tune. In the same way a body that is out of tune will not function in the way it does when it is in tune.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The harmony is not the vibration. The strings will vibrate whether they are in harmony or not.
The harmony or ratio of frequencies is what causes the vibration of the strings to function in a certain way.
Is that a Freudian slip? ;-)
That's a good point.
Also a good point. But I was speaking mainly in reference to his third argument, that the mind appears to control the body (at least to some extent), while a harmony can't control a lyre. I don't see in what way a harmony played on a lyre could be said to cause the lyre to change. The type of change going on in the lyre defines the harmony in its entirety. That's the part that ties back to physicalism best IMO. The comparison of an "in tune harmony," to an "in tune (virtuous) soul," is a red herring a think.
I do also think Plato weakens Socrates' argument by having him work with an analogy where the harmony/tuning is only analogous to "the proper way to tune a lyre." You can tune stringed instruments to many different keys, and this wouldn't have been news to the Greeks. But Socrates' earlier arguments re souls varying in degrees of virtue has to assume that there is only one "true" tuning. I assume this is an intentional weakness though. I am pretty sure the Pythagoreans also likened the soul/body relation to a melody, and that analogy doesn't run into the first road blocks Socrates throws up against it, since obviously melodies can vary in the qualities from one another.
For Platonists it could be.
At the research level there currently is a lot of cross disciplinary collaboration going on. Something new that I noticed was something called interventional psychiatry. I don't really know how to link it but if you search YouTube for UMN Interventional Psychiatry you should get a short video on that.
Minnesota has some big medical device makers in the state so this might be something we hear about more than most.
Sounds about right to me. I'm neither a fan of object-oriented frameworks, nor of the object/subject distinction. I also find very little sensible use for the objective/subjective distinction, although Searle has recently convinced me that it may be rightfully applicable in certain contexts. There are several historical dichotomies that I've found lack the explanatory power necessary to take account of that which is neither one or the other, but rather... consist of both(and more when it comes to emergent things).
Quoting Wayfarer
Yup. That's another set of pairs that I reject. I understand the taxonomy you're setting out enough to say that I'm not claiming that your use of "consciousness" and claiming that "consciousness does not exist" is incoherent. Seems to make sense according to your own taxonomy. I just lean towards Occam here and hold that everything that has an effect/affect exists. Consciousness causes both.
Quoting Wayfarer
"Object of thought" is exactly what come to my mind while reading the first paragraph of this reply.
I think we both hold that some things are physical. We also may agree that there are other things that do not seem to be physical in elemental constitution. Perhaps we may also agree that some things consist of both physical elements and non physical elements.
So, by my lights, that is to say that the dichotomy of physical/non physical is inadequate...
I don't quite see how you think that "strong emergence" gets around Plato\s trap. Can you explain what you mean here?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Foolos4 simply equivocates with "harmony". The primary definition of "harmony", the one Plato deals with is "the simultaneously sounded musical notes to produce chords and chord progressions, esp. as having a pleasing effect".
But Fool implies a "harmony" could exist without the instrument which plays the notes, by referring to "harmony" as if it meant a general principle of "tuning". This allows Fool to say that the "harmony" as the general principle by which the lyre is tuned, precedes the playing of the lyre. But this is a different meaning for "harmony" from the one that Plato is using, which is the common definition of "harmony", the simultaneously sounded musical notes having a pleasing effect. "Harmony" in this sense requires that the lyre be tuned already, and Plato is arguing against the soul as harmony, not as a principle of tuning.
I find the distinction between object/objective and subject/subjective quite intelligible. The main issue in the context of the discussion of physicalism is the emphasis on objects and objectivity, and also on what is measurable. The basis of scientific method is the identification of the measurable attributes of objects. That is what has been referred to as the 'supremacy of quantity'. Whereas states of being are qualitative by nature - they're characterised by feeling (among other things).That is the whole 'hard problem' issue in a nutshell. I don't think it is unclear.
Harmony or melody is not really an adequate metaphor, and as you say it implies epiphenomenalism. A much better one I have seen is virtual machine. Mind is to the brain as a virtual machine is to the underlying physical hardware. When the virtual machine is running, it is in control of some or all of the operations of the computer, even though everything it does is causally reducible to operations of the underlying hardware.
Strong emergence would show the analogy is simply wrong, as Plato is arguing, although it would be wrong in a different way. With strong emergence, we would have a new, fundemental and irreducible force in play. Such a force would seem to be causally efficacious, and so it shouldn't be a problem to say the mind causes the body to do things in the way that it appears to be a problem for a harmony to "cause" changes in the instrument that generates it.
But conceptually, I would argue this doesn't appear to make sense. The analogy breaks down because a lyre/harmony relation seems like a reducible one. That it is conceptually hard to see how this could ever work is sort of the point. Strong emergence isn't at all intuitive and this would seem to suggest that either something is fundementally wrong with the concept, or the concepts it is built on top of (substance/superveniance), or that there is something wrong with our intuition.
Either way, something seems wrong with our intuition. Both strong emergence and the idea that the mind is causally inefficacious both seem unreasonable, but we seem forced to choose one or the other (or reject the analogy).
For me, this is tough because I think the analogy is probably in some ways a good one, although "melody" would work better. But I would tend to want to locate the problem back at basic ontological distinction between things and processes being basic (putting Heraclitus over Parmenides).
Is that so? I had noticed that the Center for Hellenic Studies text keeps a lot of the Greek original terms to avoid the connotations they have gained in English. It translates "harmonica," as "tuning." And Socrates certainly seems to use the term like it refers to a (specific) "tuning," rather than just a any harmony.
I don't know enough about the Greek to know if this is how the term was used. I have to think it isn't, simply because you can put any stringed instruments in tune in different ways, but maybe not. So, I think Fool's response is in line with how Socrates uses the term. The problem I see is that it seems possible that Plato is having Socrates use the term in a very limited and argumentatively weak way on purpose.
Given the advice that comes before, I think we are supposed to pick up, examine, and discard each of the first two (arguably three) reasons he gives for discarding the analogy, until we get to the last argument that parallels the problems of strong emergence. Likewise, Plato seems to save his best overall argument for the immortality of the soul for even later in the dialogue. I don't think this argument works, but figuring out why it fails required innovations in logic that weren't around for a very long time.
In any relational environment, such must be the case. In order to dismiss the distinction, the conditions by which it is necessary must be dismissed, in which case there remains, regarding human intelligence, nothing.
Has there ever been a sufficiently explanatory thesis, in which human intelligence is not predicated on relations necessarily?
There is more than one such distinction, between object and subject, because these words have multiple meanings. Consider the following:
Quoting Wayfarer
The use of the phrase "object of discussion" is strictly speaking, incorrect, because what you are saying is really "subject of discussion". This type of sloppy usage is what leads to the problem you speak of, where consciousness is considered to be an "object", because it is taken to be an object of discussion rather than a subject of discussion.
This problem is actually pervasive with many modern logicians who prefer to ignore this subject/object distinction. In a common predication there is a subject and a predicate. The subject cannot be taken to be an object without category mistake. Some people will say that the word names an object, and so the proposition concerns the object. But this is false, because the word itself is the subject in this case, and there is a further correlation between the word and the object named. The reality of this separation must be maintained to maintain the possibility of mistaken identity.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Is this "fundamental and irreducible force" 'the soul', as defined by Aristotle, 'the first actuality of a body having life potentially within it'?
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
By this "strong emergence", is it the case that the material body is actually emergent, from that "force"? This would be consistent with the immaterial soul being prior to the material body, as the force from which the body emerges. Therefore it must be immaterial.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I believe that the simultaneity of the parts of the "harmony" is an important aspect, which ought not be replaced by "melody". It is very important to the concept of the material body of the living being, that the various parts exist in a unity of simultaneity, and this gives us the intuition of being "present". Being "present" is a very difficult but real aspect of being, and the difficulty manifests as the uncertainty principle in the Fourier transform when we try to break a harmony into its constituent parts at the present moment. The way that different notes coexist at the present moment is very perplexing, each requiring a different length of time to perceive due to differing wavelengths, and this is indicative of the difficulty in understanding the reality of passing time.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Actually, I admit that Plato is ambiguous with this term, translated as "harmony", and uses it in different ways in that text, depending on the translation, which is also very critical. Probably in his time, "tuning" was the more common usage for that word. However at the point when Socrates dismisses or refutes the idea that the soul is a harmony, it is very obvious that he uses "harmony" in the way which is more common to us, the way I defined. Obviously, that's what makes the argument work.
@Fooloso4 is very quick with quotes, so I'll wait for some reference then I'll show the ambiguity in Plato.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
In my opinion, Plato is having Socrates demonstrate the ambiguity of the term. People in that time would have claimed that the soul is like a harmony (I believe that's a Pythagorean principle). For those individuals who would believe that the soul is a prior "force" (like you describe in strong emergence) causing the unity of the body, as a sort of tuning, then this interpretation is apt. However, the physicalists/materialists of the time would have argued that a harmony is something produced from the "tuned" body, in the way I defined "harmony" above. So the principle, 'the soul is a harmony' is lost to ambiguity. It is a meaningless principle, because some would believe that this means that the soul is prior to the body as that "force" which produces the parts co-existing in harmony, while others would interpret "harmony" as what is produced by the tuned body. Therefore the stated principle supports two opposing perspectives, and requires analysis of the ambiguity in order to produce an adequate understanding.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I've read the passages a number of times, but my memory fails me now. If I remember correctly, Plato builds up to the argument with numerous mentions of "tuning". Then at the point of dismissing the position he argues against "harmony" (in our common usage as simultaneous notes produced by the instrument). This really leaves the aforementioned "tuning" unaddressed.
I would say the most compelling reason to be a physicalist is methodological and not ontological. We simply have only one valid methodological approach: naturalism.
Every advancement we have made into the truth has been empirical, even if it be done from an armchair, and never by educated guesses that are not grounded in empirical evidence. Likewise, it seems, historically speaking, that we assume something we don't understand is supernatural and then learn later it is perfectly natural--which I think counts in favor of methodological naturalism.
It might help to back up a bit to see what is at issue. Socrates defines death:
(64c)
The framing of the problem is the problem. Body and soul are treated as if they are two things, with the former dependent on the latter. The attunement argument calls this distinction into question. The cause of life is not the soul. The cause of death is not its separation from the body. The soul is not some separate thing acting on the body, but rather a condition of the body.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
A lyre that is not in tune cannot play a tune in tune. The harmony is not what is played on the lyre it is the condition of the lyre, the proper tension of the strings in ratio to each other that allow it to play in harmony. A body that is not in tune cannot function properly. When it is far enough out of tune it cannot function at all.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Socrates final argument for rejecting the soul as an attunement is not an argument based on reason.
He uses Homers authority in support of his argument against attunement on the grounds that the soul controls or rules over the body. But the passage cited (Odyssey XX 17-18) is not a case of the soul controlling the body, but of the soul controlling its own anger. It is not a matter of one thing, a soul, acting on another, a body, but of one thing, self,control, a man directing his action toward himself.
I doubt that many posters on this forum are quite so simple-minded as that. Our personal vocabularies contain categorized beliefs encapsulated in "key words". But the purpose of a discussion forum is for us to open-up those capsules in order to learn about other beliefs, and to add new terminology to better define our own beliefs. A few may assume these threads are legal arguments intended to reveal The Truth as God intended. But mostly, we are satisfied to get a step "Closer to Truth".
Key words, especially "-isms", encapsulate complex belief systems into simple generalizations, that we use to avoid Talmudic verbosity. Yet, they also allow us to quickly see the "key" (salience) to our disagreements. Then, we can explore the implicit meanings behind the symbolic words, looking for areas where our beliefs may overlap or divide. With logical leverage we may be able to open a path to reach some philosophical detente, if not total agreement. :smile:
Quoting creativesoul
No, I am not convinced of your position on Physicalism, because such a universal concept includes a plethora of unstated assumptions, that we need to work through in order to reach a more specific understanding. For example, Physicalism, Materialism, and Naturalism are related worldviews, that differ in a few details. If none of those terms are close to your position, is there another label that you would accept?
My own worldview does not fit into any of the traditional categories --- such as Realism or Idealism --- so I have coined new words & phrases & labels, intended to suggest a novel way of looking at the world. On this forum, to establish my own position --- without excessive verbiage --- I provide links to expand upon my brief remarks in the post. After only a few interchanges, do you think you "know my position"? Are you open to further communication? :cool:
Quoting creativesoul
I don't know where you got the idea that denies the existence of Consciousness. He does deny that Awareness is a physical object, but I assume you would agree with that. Your definition in terms of causation may be closer than you think to his, and to my own, understanding of both Physical and Metaphysical existence. Check-out Way's essay linked below, for his musings on "to be or to know". :wink:
*1. The Ligatures of Reason : logical, not physical, connections
[i]This insight lead me to ponder what it means to say that number and phenomenal objects exist
in different ways. Until this time, it had never occurred to me that there might be different ways of existing; I had thought that things either exist, or they dont. . . .
But then, I wondered, in what domain or sense do numbers exist? Where are numbers? How can they be real? Perhaps, came the thought, they exist in an intelligible domain, of which cognition is an irreducible part,and so, accessible only by reason.[/i]
https://medium.com/@jonathan.shearman/the-ligatures-of-reason-66b775d443d1
Quoting creativesoul
I was agreeing to your reference to an action (what's going on) that results in the "knowledge" (awareness ; conceptualization) that something novel has emerged from the transaction. Your emphasis may have been on knowledge as a "thing" (objective or subjective?), but mine was on the emergence as a transformation of one "thing" into another "kind of thing" (subjective Idea). :nerd:
Quoting creativesoul
Yes. As I said before, I am not aware of any free-floating minds (ghosts) in the real world. But, I do see the logical necessity for the Potential-to-evolve-Minds in the original "seed" of our contingent universe : popularly known as Big Bang, or Singularity, or God. However, you may not agree with that universalization of Mind Potential --- not as an entity, but as a Creative Cause. :grin:
Potential : the power to change statistical Possibility into physical Actuality
No, I think it's fundamental. The reason it seems so opaque is because modernity is so thoroughly embedded in 'the objective consciousness' that it is hard to see it. That is one of the main points of phenomenology, of which Kant was one of the primary sources.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Well, kind of, but the meaning of the general category of 'object' is still abundantly obvious.
Quoting Bob Ross
A great many scientific discoveries are owed to empiricism, to be sure, but the sense in which that constitutes or amounts to 'truth' is a different matter. I think your sentiment would have been better expressed, 'scientific and technological progress has been grounded in empiricism'.
I don't think emergence can be well understood in either casual or evolutionary terms, but that rather it might better be understood as a different way of talking about something. See this post.
But it's not clear to me from what you have said, whether you accept or reject a preference for monolithic explanations.
SO I'm not at all sure where this leaves us.
How can you say this in light of what I presented? If "object" is supposed to have the same meaning when referring to a physical thing which we can sense, pick up, move around, etc., and also when referring to a subject of discussion, like 'the weather' or 'American politics', which you metaphorically call an "object of discussion", then how would "object" be defined, in an abundantly obvious way?
Suppose we say an "object" is something apprehensible, either through the means of sensation, or directly to the intellect. This could formulate the general category "object". But you know as well as I know, that there is a huge separation between these two types of objects, outlined in Plato's Republic by the categories of the divided line. Now Kant came along and said that one of these two types of objects is not even apprehensible to the mind anyway. So the proposed definition, "something apprehensible" is rendered unacceptable by Kant's metaphysics, and what was supposed to be abundantly obvious is now very confusing and unintelligible.
The tendency is to ignore Kant's metaphysics, and assume that an "object" is apprehensible. But this places the two distinct types of objects together in the same category. The problem is that some objects are inherently unknowable, while others are inherently knowable, and we've denied, or ignored the metaphysical principle which would distinguish between these two. This produces a significant epistemological problem. Mistakes inhere within our knowledge due to the fact that some objects are inherently unknowable. But the knowable and unknowable have been so thoroughly mixed to together through the use of this "general category of 'object", that the skeptic must doubt all supposed "objects of knowledge" to expose where the elements of unintelligibility are hidden.
:up:
The Platonic concept of Body/Soul integrity, as a harmonious interaction, is new to me. So I googled it. As an analogy to pleasing musical synchrony*1, such essential consonance is posited by most religious & philosophical traditions : e.g Taoism. But from the perspective of modern Physicalism, such non-mechanical notions may be dismissed as romantic nonsense.
However, while my own personal worldview does not use the obsolete term "Soul" --- in the sense of an independent ghost --- the unity of Body & Mind is implicit. So, I see now that "Person"*2 can be described in terms of Body/Mind harmony, as defined in the 20th century sciences of Holism*3 and Systems theory*4. A System is a collection of independent parts (holons) that work together, in harmony, to form a new unity, with new functions. Hence, the human body/mind is an animated & enminded system that can't be separated into parts without killing the Life and extinguishing the Mind. Since Life & Mind go together like a flock of birds, eliminating one or the other will not result in a philosophical zombie, but in a corpse. :smile:
*1. What is Synchrony in music?
Musical synchrony increases a sense of shared intentionality and decreases the experience of self-other distinction [21,22,23,24], and can relate to a sense of communal identity
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8946180/
*2. Person :
A person is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness,
Note --- That the "Being" --- more than a Thing --- is also a physical body is implicit, but not stated explicitly in the definition.
*3. Holism ; Holon :
Philosophically, a whole system is a collection of parts (holons) that possesses properties not found in the parts. That something extra is an Emergent quality that was latent (unmanifest) in the parts. For example, when atoms of hydrogen & oxygen gases combine in a specific ratio, the molecule has properties of water, such as wetness, that are not found in the gases. A Holon is something that is simultaneously a whole and a part A system of entangled things that has a function in a hierarchy of systems.
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page11.html
*4. What is holistic science? :
Holistic Science is a new and emerging science of systems and wholes, qualities and values. It allows us to look at the social, economic and ecological issues of the 21st Century in a new light. It helps us to come to understandings that go beyond the limits of our current scientific paradigm.
https://www.masterscompare.co.uk/masters-courses/holistic-science-23096/24594/
A HARMONY OF BIRDS
Sympathetic vibration tells me this isn't the whole story.
Instruments have been designed in a way (John McLaughlin's 13-string guitar when playing with Shakti comes to mind) specifically so that a harmony in the strings played, causes the strings not played to vibrate sympathetically. I believe sitar behaves this wY too.
But Berkeley paired empiricism and idealism. Augustine advised methodological naturalism in that he advised people to look first for natural causes before claiming miracles. Augustine was a hardcore idealist like most intellectuals of his day.
Just to clarify though, the body/soul - instrument/harmony analogy is Pythagorean, not Platonic. Plato has Socrates argue against the analogy in the Phaedo. It's in the context of Plato's arguments in favor of the immortality of the soul. Plato doesn't like the analogy because it would imply that the soul (harmony) must disappear when the body (instrument) is destroyed.
My thoughts exactly. Though Frank raises good counter-examples.
I saw that. I tend to agree with the general thrust. We can discuss that in greater detail if you want to.
Originally, I became interested in this thread by Christoffer's first post, which reminded me very much of the reasoning behind my own methodological naturalist bent. I adopted that underlying method a very long time ago, and it was key to me 'shedding' much of the beliefs and 'reasoning' behind them that I adopted between the age of 4 and teenage years... whew, talk about hard work!
However, if my own grasp of his subsequent posts was accurate enough to be indicative, it seems our agreement was limited to preferring methodological naturalism as a philosophical method of approach.
The argument that some things are physical, monism is true, and hence physicalism is true is enticing, but I do not believe all things are physical even though I find it most likely that those things are existentially dependent upon physical things.
That makes two of us! :wink: It's not clear to me either.
Earlier you mentioned anomalous monism, which - if you're referring to Davidson - I have been wanting to understand his notion. Although I've watched and listened to several videos of Davidson regarding that, I do not have a good grasp of it at this time, although I do remember finding the notion very interesting, and a bit compelling. I want to review, listen, and watch again in the near future.
Searle's stuff seems relevant too... regarding emergent things(obligation for instance).
I'm not sure where this leaves us either, but if you have something in mind that you'd like to discuss, I'd be glad to join you.
Mahalo!
Yeah, I understand that that's how you talk about this stuff. I understand that I'm in the minority as well. So, sure... they are perfectly intelligible. People use them all the time. I'm just saying that it seems to me that the subject/object and subjective/objective distinctions, despite their popularity, look like a big part of the problem from my vantage point.
Not everything fits into one or the other category. Cognition, metacognition, meaning, truth, social institutions, and other things quite simply are neither one nor the other. Many things consist of and/or are existentially dependent upon both, and thus are neither. That is the problem I see with those language constructs, in a nutshell. The inherent inadequacy of the linguistic framework to be able to take proper account of such things.
Right! Agree with that also. They transcend the subject-object distinction.
I do not know what transcending a language construct could possibly mean.
If you reject the subjective/objective dichotomy the hard problem looks very different.
In order not to get too far off topic I will only say that Plato also gives us reason to doubt the argument provided.
Thanks. But it's a useful metaphor anyway. I may have to disagree with Plato though, on the immortality of the Soul. I tend to think of it, not as a ghost, but as the immaterial (mental ; metaphorical) Self-Concept/Personality of a self-conscious being/body*1. Hence, they are harmonious in the sense of an abstract/concrete duet. But when the concrete aspect dies, the duet does not automatically become a perpetual solo, but perhaps could "exist" as a vague memory in another mind. Besides, how could that which was never visible "disappear", like the fictional Cheshire cat? On this topic, you could classify my compromised position as a Physicalist/Metaphysicalist or Realist/Idealist duet. Not exactly Strong Emergence, but co-existence.
On the other hand, I do agree with Plato that a hypothetical First Cause/Logos must have logically existed, in some abstract or metaphysical sense, outside of space-time and all secondary causes. Hence, eternal. That's because, according to expert cosmologists, our space-time world is not eternal, but somehow suddenly emerged from unreality into reality. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing what ideal eternal existence would be like (Nagel).
As an amateur philosopher though, I can use mind-made words to represent unreal concepts such as Zero, Infinity, Eternity, and Soul. Likewise, words like "God" can point-toward an imaginary eternal Mind that continually imagines (sustains) our own Reality. Sadly, such self-reference boggles the mortal mind, and can lead to circular thinking.
The human intellect has imagined a variety of immaterial abstractions --- e.g. numbers ; metaphors --- that seem to be logically necessary or philosophically useful. Such non-things may be figments of imagination, but they are "persistent illusions" for philosophical thinkers. So I take them seriously, as challenges to any hardline physicalist worldview. :smile:
*1. Soul/Body and Mind/Body pairs "exist" in different senses. Life, Mind & Soul/Self are subjective processes/activities, not objective things. For example, when the engine of a car dies, its transportation function (process) dies with it. Yet, a physical machine can be repaired and restored to its proper function. But AFAIK, a "disappeared" Life/Mind has never been resurrected --- except of course as an ongoing metaphor/belief in other body/minds.
If your point is that people with views which do not impede some areas of their naturalistic investigations can still contribute to our knowledge even if those views cannot, then I totally agree.
My point was that physicalism isn't entailed by empiricism and naturalism.
Quoting Fooloso4
Simmias says, 85e-86d:
[quote=Plato, Phaedo]One might make the same argument about harmony, lyre and strings, that a harmony is something invisible, without body, in the attuned lyre, whereas the lyre itself and its strings are physical, bodily, composite, earthy and akin to what is mortal. Then if someone breaks the lyre, cuts or breaks the strings and then insists, using the same argument as you, that the harmony must still exist and is not destroyed...
If then the soul is a kind of harmony or attunement, clearly, when our body is relaxed or stretched without due measure by diseases and other evils, the soul must be immediately destroyed...[/quote]
Socrates' refutation of 'the soul is a harmony' (92-94) consists of three distinct arguments. Each one argues a slightly different principle. Each argument is aimed against the idea that the soul is a composite thing, it is composed from the elements of the body coexisting in a specific tension, resulting in a "harmony". From the elements of the body, the harmony is composed last, and first destroyed in corruption of the instrument. In modern terms we might consider this "harmony" to be a balanced state of existence, or equilibrium, of the composite material parts.
The first and third argument attack the fact that the harmony is posterior to the bodily composition which produces it, yet common understanding of "the soul" puts the soul as prior to the bodily composition. These are simple arguments but rely on the common notion of "the soul" for their effectiveness. That is what Foolos4 rejects with "The framing of the problem is the problem. Body and soul are treated as if they are two things, with the former dependent on the latter." But this dismissal is unacceptable because proposing that the soul is a harmony, already in itself, as a primary proposition, assumes this body/soul separation, as "the harmony" is expressed as something distinct from the material body which produces it (described by Simmias above). So this rejection would only be acceptable if we remove the primary proposition 'the soul is a harmony', but then there is nothing to argue. The point to argue might then be 'there is no soul'. But Socrates' argument is against the Pythagorean position that 'the soul is a harmony'. So it is the Pythagoreans who have already framed the argument in this way.
The second argument is more complex and difficult, involving the difference between "equilibrium" (as the harmonized state), and "equality", as what all equilibriums might have in common. The argument seems to be that a harmony is an equilibrium, and all physically existing equilibriums partake of varying degrees of equality. That would dictate their stability. The soul on the other hand is more like "equality" itself, that which all equilibriums have in common, as an order state of being.
So in the first argument, Socrates appeals to another principle, 'knowledge is recollection' and shows how this is inconsistent with 'the soul is a harmony'. Knowledge is a property of the soul, so if the knowledge which an individual will have, pre-exists the person's bodily existence, then so does the soul. This is inconsistent with the soul being a harmony which arises from the well-tuned elements of the body. In modern terms we can think of the preexisting knowledge as innate knowledge, intuition and instinct, knowledge which is supported by genetics and DNA. If this is a type of knowledge which an individual has, and knowledge is the property of a person's soul, then the person's soul must precede the person's body.
The second argument concerns the various degrees of tuning which are possible. We can say that an instrument is better tuned or worse tuned depending on the amount of dissonance inherent within the harmony produced. Each bit of dissonance which exists within the harmony is a degree of unharmony. Since a harmony is never absolutely perfect, there is always various degrees of dissonance within the occurring harmony itself, and this is a case of the opposite of the thing, occurring, or inherent within, the named thing, Due to a lack of perfection, there is always some degree of 'not-harmony' within the harmony. As analogy we could consider instances of "hot". Each hot thing still has some degree of cold inherent within it, unless it is the absolute hottest possible thing.
If the soul was like this, admitting to various degrees of "soulness", harmony and dissonance, then we'd have to say that an evil person has less of a soul than a good person. But this is not the case, we say that all souls are equal, as souls, and the evil person has no less of a soul than the good person. Furthermore, all the living creatures are equal in the sense of having "a soul", and despite the vast variety of difference that we notice amongst the living creatures, one is not more in tune than the other, as is the case with the difference between harmonies, one having more dissonance than another. All the souls of living creatures are equal, as souls.
The third point is that the soul is said to rule the various part of the body, making them do, at times, what is contrary to their very nature. If a man is hot and thirsty yet the water is known to be bad, the soul prevents the man from drinking. Likewise with food. If the soul was a harmony, it could do nothing but follow the plucking of the strings, the soul would be directed by the affections of the body, following them, never being in opposition. But this is not the case, we see that men, with the power of will, are capable of inflicting all sorts of punishments on their bodies in many different ways, directing the parts in ways very contrary to the nature of the part. It is impossible that a harmony could do this, directing the activities of the composite parts of the lyre, as this would alter the tuning, corrupting the harmony which is "the harmony"'s very existence.
Quoting Fooloso4
Can you show me the reasons given by Plato, to doubt the arguments presented by Socrates, as paraphrased above.
Short answer begins here
A more adequate long answer here
It is clear from that thread that you disagree with my interpretation. If you wish to pursue this further please reopen that thread or begin a new one.
Phaedo is one of my favorite philosophical works. I also disagree with your interpretation, and indeed your whole take on Plato. But there's always room for diverse views. It creates dynamism in discussions.
Yes, it does. But out of respect for your present thread on physicalism I am trying to not veer too far off topic with a discussion of Phaedo and the problem of interpreting Plato in this thread.
Thank you.
Agreed. I never meant to the contrary. My original post was supporting methodological naturalism, not physicalism.
I can't speak for , but I doubt he means to go beyond human limits into the realm of divine omniscience. Instead, perhaps we can "transcend" a common dictionary meaning of a word, simply by looking at its context from a different perspective. Philosophers do that all the time. For example, Nagel transcended the commonsense notion of human-animal differences (ensoulment) by asking us to imagine that we see the world from that animal's perspective. That's how we can "know" the mind of a bat. It's called a subjective "thought experiment" as contrasted with an objective "empirical" experience. :smile:
Quoting creativesoul
Yes, but. Gods are supposed to be above the subjective/objective limitations of humans. So, for omniscient-objective divine beings there is no "hard problem" of the relationship between body & mind. Therefore, to be completely objective, you would have to "know the mind of god"*1.
Empirical Science aspires to complete objectivity, by "rejecting" personal values & opinions in favor of directly observed & recorded Facts. Unfortunately, it's not that easy. A double-blind experiment would, in theory, reveal the "mind of god" on the problem in question. Yet, in practice, one man's Fact is another man's opinion*2.
Consequently, Empirical Science gets the "easy" questions, that have simple singular factual answers : it is or it ain't. But, it leaves the messy, value-laden questions to argumentative Philosophy : says who?. Hence, science may be the court of last resort for questions of objective Facts, but not for Subjective Meanings.The worldview of Physicalism is not a "hard" physical fact, but a "moot" metaphysical opinion*3. Hence, this thread. :cool:
*1.a. A. Einstein :
"I want to know how God created this world. I'm not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts; the rest are just details."
*1.b. S. Hawking :
" If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reasonfor then we would know the mind of God."
*2. Why science isnt objective :
We think of science as being an objective account of the world, free from the influence of political and other biases. But things arent that simple. Evidence alone doesnt tell you when youve had enough evidence to support a claim, so scientists sometimes have to make judgements that rely on ethical and political values. This realisation shatters our understanding of scientific objectivity as value-free.
https://iai.tv/articles/why-science-isnt-objective-auid-1846
*3. Metaphysical Physicalism :
In philosophy, physicalism is the metaphysical thesis that "everything is physical", that there is "nothing over and above" the physical, or that everything supervenes on the physical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicalism
Note --- Only God would know "everything". Which is why religions turn to their gods, instead of to scientists, for answers to "hard" questions about universal facts & absolute values. Yet, philosophers put their trust in human reasoning to obtain approximate answers to "value" questions.
Oh, I see. I thought you were saying they're the same.
Your quoted passages in the "short answer" are all before 92 in the text, which is where the argument against 'the soul is a harmony begins'. The issue I am addressing here is not whether Socrates provides a good argument for the immortality of the soul, as presented in the The Phaedo. Neither is the issue whether Plato believes that he or Socrates has provided a good argument for the immortality of the soul. The issue discussed here is whether or not Socrates provides a good argument against the theory 'the soul is a harmony'.
This position, 'the soul is a harmony' is very much similar to the modern physicalist position which apprehends ideas, concepts, mind and consciousness in general, as something distinct from the physical body (as the harmony is distinct from the lyre), but insists that these are dependent on the physical body as properties of it, or emergent from it, like the harmony is dependent on the lyre.
I believe Plato provides a very good refutation of this theory 'the soul is a harmony'. Regardless of what you think abut Socrates' arguments for the immortality of the soul, do you agree with me that the refutation of this theory is a sound one? If not, why not?
This is where it begins. Reading Plato as if the dialogues are reasoned arguments surrounded by extraneous filler is a mistake. Most recent scholars have come to this conclusion.
Once again:
Quoting Fooloso4
I'm uncertain about essential rocks, properties of universal -isms, and processes by which we come to think of universals.
Scientism, at least in a useful expression, should be understood as a mistake. Not many would say they are scientistic, though they exist. What it really means isn't clear, and so we can't reduce it to a notion of empiricism vs. philosophical knowledge. It's not that easy. Where it is easy is in saying things like science makes philosophy or religion or art or whatever no longer relevant -- scientism is more of a chauvinism than it is a proper philosophic position.
So I suppose I mean to say that it's worth noting as a bad way to go about arguing for physicalism.
Beautifully said! :pray:
I'll add this:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/brain-waves-synchronize-when-people-interact
Since you did not answer the question, I take it you agree with me then. The three arguments found at 92-94 provide a very good refutation of the theory of 'the soul as a harmony'.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I do not think that the argument that begins:
(92a)
and goes on to ask:
(92c)
provides the foundation for "a very good refutation".
But you want to ignore this:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
and evaluate the arguments by ignoring the premise on which they rest.
The first refutation:
An attunement does not lead or follow the elements. The attunement is the condition of those elements. For the lyre this means the proper tension of the strings. For a person this means being healthy. The limits of the analogy are obvious, a lyre cannot tune itself. But we can act to maintain or improve our mental and physical health.
Socrates then resorts to a bit of sophistry:
(93b)
A lesser attunement is still an attunement. One soul might be more in tune than another but both a well tuned and poorly tuned soul is still a soul.
(93c)
They are like health and sickness, well tuned or poorly tuned, and in harmony or out of harmony.
(93d)
No, that is not the case. It is well tuned or poorly tuned, and this allows for degrees.
(94b)
This is deliberately misleading. On the premise that the soul is an attunement then it is not one element of the attunement that rules, but rather the relation between those elements, the ratio and harmony of those elements that rules. When the person is well tuned, balanced and in harmony, he or she will rule themselves well, and if not then poorly.
(94e)
This begs the question. Socrates treats the soul and body as two separate and different things, the very thing the attunement argument denies. The passage from Homer is about Odysseus controlling his anger. Where is anger located within this separation? Is it an affection of the body or the soul? According to the division set in the Republic the source is the spirited part of the soul not the body.
If Odysseus is his soul then the example is not about being led by the affections of the body.
The arguments fail. In the middle of them, and in fact at the numerical center or heart of the dialogue Socrates raises the problem of misologic, that is, a hatred of reasoned argument that arises from an excessive love and unreasonable expectation of what reason can accomplish (89d). This is prefaced by Echecrates:
(88d)
Earlier Socrates warned:
(84c)
Certainly, when one goes through the arguments sufficiently, it becomes clear why we should not accept them.
Your entire argument seems to be centered around a misinterpretation of the theory, "the soul is a harmony". Clearly, the "harmony", or what you are calling "attunement" is something distinct from the material instrument itself. That is very clearly expressed by Simmias in the passage I quoted.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You might continue to insist that the "attunement" is not something distinct from the instrument, but clearly Plato's arguments are directed against the idea of a "harmony" as such. And, the harmony exists as something separate from the instrument, as produced from the instrument. This is clearly the idea that Plato argues against, and is more consistent with modern physicalism. Your use of "attunement" only creates ambiguity between "attunement" as the general principles by which an instrument is tuned, and "attunement" as a specific condition of a particular instrument.
Quoting Fooloso4
OK, so you dismiss the first of the three arguments, because you do not believe in the theory of recollection. This theory is meant to account for the reality of the innate knowledge which a person is born with, the capacity to learn, intuition, and instinct.
Are you saying that this type of know-how does not qualify as "knowledge", or does not even exist? Or what is the basis of your rejection of the knowledge that a person is born with, knowledge which a person has, which precedes the existence of one's body, so that the person is born with it?
Quoting Fooloso4
Clearly, the lyre exists prior to being tuned, therefore the attunement follows the elements of the physical composition. And' the harmony follows from the attunement. The very fact which you cite, that a person can act to improve one's health, or improve the attunement, demonstrates that the attunement is posterior to the physical body. That the attunement of the instrument, and therefore the harmony, is most readily changed is the reason why it is last coming into being in generation of the instrument, and the first thing lost in the corruption of the instrument.
The theory, "the soul is a harmony", as expressed by Simmias, very explicitly states that the harmony is something distinct from the physical instrument, strings and wood. And, the harmony, as something distinct, is produced from the instrument.
Quoting Fooloso4
Plato's argument is not sophistry, it is just complex and difficult to grasp. You demonstrate a misunderstanding of it, and that's why you call it sophistry. Your dismissal of it is what is really sophistry. Look.
First, do you recognize that it is the bodily instrument which is either well tuned or poorly tuned? Therefore you cannot say "both a well tuned and poorly tuned soul is still a soul" to be consistent with the argument, because the body is analogous to the instrument, and is what is tuned; it is not the soul which is tuned. That is your bit of sophistry. In the theory "the soul is a harmony", the soul follows from the body, like harmony follows from the instrument according to the attunement. This is just like in modern physicalism, mind follows from body, and concepts follow from the mind. Remember the statement by Simmias which expresses the theory that the soul, is a harmony. The harmony itself is invisible, without body.
Next, do you agree that if the instrument is not well tuned there will be some degree of dissonance, and that dissonance is inconsistent with harmony? And, since there is a multitude of strings, some may be in harmony and others dissonant. Therefore the same instrument may produce some harmony and also some dissonance at the same time, depending on the tuning. But "soul" by the theory, can only be harmony, it cannot be dissonance.
Now, the problem which Plato elucidates. The same soul can have degrees of both goodness and evilness at the same time due to the various elements within, just like the tuned instrument can have harmony and dissonance at the same time. However, according to the theory, the soul can only be harmony. Dissonance is contrary to harmony which is, "soul", and the soul cannot consist of aspects of 'nonsoul'. Therefore the theory must be wrong, the soul is not like a harmony, it also has dissonance as well.
Quoting Fooloso4
You seem to misunderstand this argument too. The premise "the soul rules" is proposed as a true proposition, validated by the evidence explained. And, it is specifically proposed as inconsistent with "the soul is a harmony". There is nothing deliberately misleading here.
So you point out the inconsistency between the two ("the soul rules" and "the soul is a harmony"). However, since "the soul rules" is demonstrated to be a true premise by the evidence given, then logically we must reject the inconsistent premise "the soul is a harmony", which is proposed as an hypothesis rather than supported by evidence.
Quoting Fooloso4
This is not true, it's clearly misinterpretation. The "harmony", or what you call the "attunement", is explicitly stated as something distinct from the instrument. Refer to the passage quoted above, what is stated by Simmias.
Quoting Fooloso4
The "spirited part" is the third part, the medium between body and mind. It is not the source of anything, only the medium between, which may act with one or the other. Either the the source is the mind, if the soul is healthy, or the body is the source if the mind is ill. So "anger" is good and healthy when the mind is exercising control over the body, and "anger" is bad and unhealthy when the body has affected the mind. Therefore your objection here has no relevance.
Quoting Fooloso4
It has become very clear why you reject the arguments. You straw man them. You do not represent "harmony" as something invisible without body, which follows form the attuned instrument, as clearly stated in the text. Instead, you claim that the "attunement" is a part of the body of the instrument.
If we were discussing the "attunement", then we'd have to consider the intentions involved in the act of tuning, which produces the attunement. This would involve the complete design and manufacture of the instrument to ensure proper tuning. All that intention involved is prior to the manufacture of the instrument, and the tuning of it. If we were to represent "the soul" as the creator of the instrument, in this way, then the argument would be completely different. However, it is very clear that Plato is arguing against "the soul" as hypothesized to be something which follows from the body, as "the harmony" follows from the instrument.
I like that, although it's not a slam dunk for physicalism. It's an excellent expression of the physicalist vibe.
I guess I particularly appreciate it because I've gone back to reading Nietzsche. He has to be taken the same way. None of it amounts to a rigorous argument, but it's more like the truth you find in poetry or maybe even music.
Maybe physicalism is first and foremost a form of life in Wittgenstein's sense. And he's another who seems to speak truth without rigor. We're in the land of metaphor.
But then the land of metaphor can express literal truths, too. And what is the relationship between these predicates?
Which, while I can see that it felt off-topic, is why I started in with the economic form of physicalism: say what you will about the formal relationships between classes of objects, as long as you have a job. In a way it brings home what matters to us -- if economic physicalism is correct then work-life is what ends up defining these concepts that we're using. So it's not so much that our work-life "generates" reality, but that the concepts we are using come from a physical work-life that's hard to deny because we all have economic needs, and surely that influences how we think.
Well I kept having this feeling that there's something wrong with creating a logical argument for physicalism, though I couldn't put my finger on it. But I think you're pointing to it: it's foundation problem. Let me try to put it in words:
A physicalist believes interaction with the world is primal. Logic is a realm of pure abstraction and universality. The physicalist says that realm is abstracted from our constant communication with the world. We ask the world questions, like what do I need to do to ease my hunger? Then I listen for the answer. What is my purpose? I listen for the answer, hoping I'm clear eyed enough to see the truth amidst the wishful thoughts and fears I give life to everyday.
Physicalism has to do with the truth. Give me the answer that has nothing to do with my fantasies. And to find that, I appreciate a little logic, but that's not the final source of truth because logic can also be manipulated to rationalize my fond stories. Look to where the rubber meets the road. That's the beginning of it all. Let the metaphors flow from there.
I think you hit the nail on the head the first time. :grin:
@Banno would be proud.
Attunement is how Horan translates it. It is how Sedley and Long translate it. It is how Brann translates it. It is how many others translate it as well. The Greek term is ??????? (harmonia) and is transliterated as harmony.
As I said above:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A specific instrument is in tune when the tension of the strings correspond to a ratio of frequencies that are not dependent on that instrument .
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The myth of recollection is fraught with problems. If we start with the premise that knowledge is recollection then there would never be a time when knowledge was learned. But it cannot be recollected if it had not at some time first been learned.
In the Phaedo the soul might in the next life be that of an ass. In that case an ass has the same innate knowledge as a man. While I cannot accept this, it does seem that some men seem to possess no more knowledge than as ass.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To improve does not mean to bring into existence. One cannot improve something that does not exist.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Right, it is not the soul which is tuned. The soul is the attunement, the arrangement and tension of the parts of the body, not what is tuned.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Heraclitus says:
(Fragment 51)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
When the instrument is in tune the strings are in harmony to each other.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The more harmonized the soul the less its dissonance. A soul that is in poor health, a soul with a great deal of dissonance, is still a soul.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
A soul that is well attuned, a soul that is in harmony and balance, rules well. One that is in discord does not. Harmonized means that there is not one element of the attunement that rules.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The attunement is the condition of the instrument. Your being in good or bad health is not something distinct from you, but you are not the condition you are in.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Where does it say that the spirited part is the medium between body and soul?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The source of Odysseus' anger is not his body. He is angry at the suitors but controls himself.
It treats them as though they are constituted by a separate entity, but they are not.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What I claim is that the attunement is not apart from the body, not that it is a part of the body. It is not some part in addition to the parts.
The particular word used is not relevant. What is relevant is how Plato describes what is being talked about. We have the passage from Simmias which I quoted, "a harmony is something invisible, without body, in the attuned lyre, whereas the lyre itself and its strings are physical, bodily, composite, earthy and akin to what is mortal". Replace the word translated as "harmony" with "attunement" if you will, but that does not change the description presented.
Then we have Socrates' description at 92c, "...the lyre and the strings and the notes, though still unharmonized, exist; the harmony is composed last of all, and is the first to be destroyed." Go ahead, replace "harmony" with "attunement". This does not change the thrust of the argument because the context provides the meaning.
Quoting Fooloso4
This is nonsense. Yes, it is true that the principles by which a lyre is tuned exists apart from any particular lyre. But "the tuning of a lyre" is the tuning of a lyre, and that means that a particular lyre is being tuned. This is your sophistry. When Plato talks about a particular lyre, a bodily composite of elements, wood, pegs, and strings, which is tuned to produce a "harmony" or "attunement", you claim that he is talking about the general principles by which a lyre is tuned.
The context clearly indicates that you are wrong in your interpretation. First, in Simmias' statement, the harmony or attunement is something which exists "in the attuned lyre", it is not a separate principle by which the lyre is tuned. Then in the context of Socrates' statement, "the harmony is composed last of all". Obviously this "harmony" or "attunement" is not the principles by which the lyre is tuned, because that would be prior to the attunement, and not "last of all".
These statements in Plato's Phaedo are very explicit, and completely contrary to your interpretation above.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes "recollection" is fraught with problems, as it leads to eternal objects of knowledge, commonly known as "Platonism". But the problem of preexisting knowledge, knowledge which preexists the individual, which shows up within the individual, as instinctual know-how, and the capacity to learn, which the theory of recollection was designed to resolve, still exists if we deny the theory of recollection.
Quoting Fooloso4
Put this into context though. To improve would be to bring harmony from dissonance. This very clearly indicates bringing harmony into existence.
Your final statement, "One cannot improve something that does not exist" represents the exact point of Plato's argument. To improve an evil person is not to bring harmony to dissonance, because that would imply that the evil person, being dissonant, does not even have a soul. Being dissonant means the harmony does not exist, and therefore neither would the soul.
But that is not the case in reality, the evil person does have a soul, and so do all sorts of other living things. Therefore improving on the attributes or properties of the soul, may be described as bringing harmony to something dissonant, but the soul cannot be the harmony because it exists even when there is dissonance, prior to the harmony.
Quoting Fooloso4
Now you are being ambiguous with your use of "attunement". Each body, or musical instrument, has parts and an arrangement which are particular to that body or instrument. You've said already that the "attunement" in your peculiar interpretation exists prior to the instrument, as the set of principles by which the instrument might be tuned. Now, you cannot turn around and say that the attunement is "the arrangement and tension of the parts of the body", and pretend to be consistent. That arrangement and tension is particular to the individual body, and is therefore posterior to the existence of the body.
Quoting Fooloso4
Again, you are playing your equivocation.
Quoting Fooloso4
You are not getting the point. The soul is harmony, attunement. That is the theory. It cannot be more or less harmonized, or in any way dissonant or else it would not be a soul. That is the precept of the theory, the soul is harmony. Therefore, by the precept of the theory a soul cannot have "a great deal of dissonance", because this is contrary to harmony, and by the theory the soul is harmony. The proposed "great deal of dissonance" would indicate a supposed soul with a great deal of non-soul, but that is contradictory.
Quoting Fooloso4
If the soul is a harmony, or attunement, then every soul, necessarily, is well tuned, by definition. By this theory, "the soul is a harmony", there can be no such thing as a discordant soul. That would be contradiction.
Quoting Fooloso4
Again, you are equivocating with "attunement". By what you said at the beginning of the post, "The tuning of a lyre exists apart from and prior to any particular lyre", the attunement is not "the condition of the instrument". It is something separate from any particular instrument, as the principles by which an instrument might be tuned.
Your equivocation allows you to blatantly contradict yourself. First, the attunement is apart from and prior to any particular instrument, and now it is "not something distinct", it is "the condition of the instrument".
Quoting Fooloso4
Read "The Republic" please.
Quoting Fooloso4
Hmm, the final part of the post directly contradicts the beginning of your post. This is due to the equivocation I pointed to. Do you proof read? That could help you to avoid embarrassment. Look, this is the top of your post:
Quoting Fooloso4
By your new statement "the attunement is not apart from the body", do you agree with what Plato has Socrates say, that the attunement is posterior to, as dependent on the body? It is last to be produced, and first lost at corruption of the body And do you agree that an attunement is not random, but according to some principles which constitute "harmony". So if the soul is supposed to be a harmony, or attunement, the tensions of the bodily elements must exist in this specific way in order for that body to be endowed with "a soul"? That is the position which Plato is arguing against. And I suggest it is much the same as modern physicalism
You skip over the first part:
These consequences do not follow if one does not assert that the soul exists before in enters the body. Simmias' argument is a refutation of this assertion, but poor Simmias has become as confused as you are.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The tuning of a lyre, that is the frequencies to which a lyre is tuned, and the process of tuning a lyre are not the same. A particular lyre is tuned to those frequency ratios which exist prior to it. A lyre is well tuned when it comes close to matching those frequencies and poorly tuned the more it deviates.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Simmias' first statement is:
The relation is between attunement and a lyre. A relation of the one to the other. The tuned lyre is one in which the proper ratio of frequencies is achieved.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
To improve would be to lessen dissonance. Again, it is a matter of degree not either or. Analogously, the circles we find in the world are not perfect circles, but they are circles nonetheless.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
One soul might be more in tune than another but both a well tuned and poorly tuned soul is still a soul.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is not a set of principles, it is a ratio of parts. In the case of a lyre it is the ratio of frequencies of the vibrating strings. Those ratios exist prior to the lyre. They are mathematical relations and can be heard. It is this ability to hear them that allows someone to tune a lyre.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is entirely consistent. In the case of the lyre it is the arrangement and tension of the strings. In the case of the human body it is the arrangement and tension of its parts. In Simmias' words:
(86b-c)
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It is not as if the human body comes into existence and is then arranged and tensioned. In this way it is not like a lyre. As I said in a prior post, this is where the analogy with the lyre breaks down.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
That is Socrates objection. You take it to be decisive, but it is not. The fact is, an instrument can be more or less harmonized, more or less in tune. It is a matter of degree and falls short of perfect harmony. There is an old saying about tuning a guitar: "Close enough for rock and roll".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I am not equivocating. What is confusing you is that you are conflating the process of tuning with the standard by which the instrument is tuned. The tuning of a lyre is that set of frequencies that determine that some particular lyre is in tune. The lyre is tuned, the strings tightened and loosened, in order to come into accord with those established frequencies, that is, the tuning of a lyre.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If you took your own advice you would know that the tripartite soul is not divided in this way. Spiritedness is said to be the middle part of the soul, not something between the soul and the body.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It does not. It is two sides of the same coin. What is at issue is the question of whether the soul is an attunement. The question cannot be addressed without establishing on the one side what an attunement is and on the other the body it is said to be an attunement of.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The body is not endowed with a soul. The soul is, according to the argument, just that specific way in which the elements of the body are arranged, combine and function.
Sorry I don't see the relevance. What I pointed to was Socrates' description of "harmony", to show you that it is inconsistent with your description of "attunement". By Socrates' description, "harmony" is the last composed and first destroyed. You had said attunement is prior to any particular instrument.
I was not talking about any "consequences", only showing the discrepancy between Socrates' description of "harmony, or "attunement", and your interpretation.
Quoting Fooloso4
If you were familiar with string instruments you would know that this is not true. An instrument is not necessarily tuned to any specific frequencies. There are ratios between the different parts of the instrument which must be upheld to produce harmony, but there is no necessity for specific frequencies. Furthermore, any string instrument can be tuned in a multitude of different ways. The ratios of the different tunings may be said to be understood, and preexist, but these are principles of music theory, they are clearly not "the tuning of a lyre". We might call it some sort of instructions for tuning a lyre, but "the tuning of a lyre" is the act of actually putting the instrument in tune.
Quoting Fooloso4
No, this is not the case. The tuned lyre has properly tensioned strings according to the size of the strings. The tuned lyre has the required relationship between its parts to qualify as being in tune.
Quoting Fooloso4
You're still not getting the point, or else simply denying it. A poorly tuned instrument does not have "harmony", or "attunement". If the soul is "harmony", the body cannot be poorly tuned and still be a soul. "Harmony" or "attunement" is a good tuning, not a poor tuning. The soul is defined as having a good tuning "harmony" or what you call "attunement". If the body is not properly tuned (poorly tuned) there is not harmony nor attunement, therefore there would be no soul. But this is inconsistent with the evidence. We see that some people are evil, and some are good, yet they all have a soul, while "harmony" or "attunement" is only proper to a good tuning.
Here's an example which may help you. Let's take the concepts of "understanding" and "misunderstanding", and compare them to harmony and dissonance. Suppose a person understands, and this is like a harmony in the person. However, it's also possible that the person misunderstands, yet believes oneself to understand. If we say that understanding is a descriptive property of the person's soul, we must also allow that misunderstanding might also be a property of the person's soul. Understanding is the good, and misunderstanding is the bad. Likewise, harmony is the good, and dissonance is the bad. We cannot restrict "the soul" simply to the good property, harmony, because this is inconsistent with observed reality, the soul also has the bad property, dissonance, just like it has both understanding and misunderstanding.
Quoting Fooloso4
But the soul is a matter of either/or. That's why there is an incompatibility between "soul" and "harmony". To make "harmony" compatible with "soul" we have to make it a matter of either/or, because that's the way soul is, either a body has a soul or it does not. Now, either the instrument has harmony or it does not, to be consistent with a body either having a soul or not. But then dissonance is excluded from soul, if soul is harmony, and this is inconsistent with the evidence. The evidence indicates that the soul has both the contraries, bad and good, not just the good, harmony.
Quoting Fooloso4
Exactly! That's why "soul" is inconsistent with "harmony". A poorly tuned instrument does not have harmony, yet a "poorly tuned soul is still a soul".
Quoting Fooloso4
This makes no sense. You do not hear "a ratio of parts", nor do you hear "mathematical relations". You hear sounds, harmony and dissonance.
Quoting Fooloso4
An instrument can be more or less harmonized, but a body does not have more or less a soul. That's why the theory "soul is a harmony" fails. A body might have more or less of whatever quality you define, but this is not the case with "soul". That's why soul cannot be a property of a body, like "attunement", or "harmony".
Quoting Fooloso4
You can define "the tuning of a lyre" however you want. The problem is that the way you describe it is not consistent with the way that Plato does, as "composed last of all and the first to be destroyed". So whatever arguments you make, based on your definition, are irrelevant to what Plato wrote. Plato is using "the tuning of a lyre in a completely different way, the common way, the act of tuning a lyre. As such. it is the aspect of the instrument "composed last of all and the first to be destroyed". And if you insist that your argument, which uses a different definition, is relevant, that is equivocation.
Quoting Fooloso4
As I said, you can define what "an attunement" is however you want, but if it is not consistent with what Plato has presented your definition is not relevant.
A human being is not a lyre.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Socrates is not describing "harmony". He is arguing that:
This is true in so far as a human being, unlike a lyre, is not crafted, strung up, and tuned. But the pitches to which a lyre is tuned do not come into existence after the lyre is made. The musical scale to which the lyre is tuned exists before the lyre that is being tuned.
What Socrates does not say, and what you cannot see, is that the attunement of a lyre is like a preexisting soul. Musical harmony exists prior to the lyre.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
And by putting it is tune you are matching the frequencies of the strings to the preexisting musical scale.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The size of the string determines how tight it must be tensioned to produce a desired pitch, but it is the pitch and not the size of the string that determines whether or not the lyre is in tune. Those pitches are not determined by the lyre.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The harmony of an instrument is always imperfect. Dissonance is not eliminated. There is always some degree of dissonance. Compromises must be made to compensate. It is called "musical temperament"
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If the soul is the harmony of the body it is not either/or.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This begs the question of what the soul is.
You believe that you have found the answer to that question in the pages of the Phaedo. I am in agreement with those scholars who recognize that the question is not answered. The dialogue ends in aporia.
As I said, you do not at all understand the tuning of a stringed instrument. It is not necessarily tuned to any specific pitch. The notes which the instrument makes must be in tune relative to each other, not relative to any specific pitch. So the base note could be 180 hertz, 160, 175, !90, whatever. The particular pitch does not matter. So long as all the strings are properly tensioned in relation to each other the instrument will produce harmony, and can be said to be in tune. Not only that, but stringed instruments have a wide range of possible tunings. This is why your interpretation of "attunement", or "the tuning of a lyre" as a standard which needs to be adhered to when tuning a lyre, is simply incorrect. There would have been many different ways to tune a lyre in Plato\s time, and nothing specific as "the way".
Anyway you've gone off on a tangent and refuse to address Plato's argument, insisting that "attunement" is something other than the way that Plato described it. Maybe you are correct, and the true description of "attunement" is as you say, and not as Plato said. However, this is irrelevant because Socrates' arguments are directed against "the soul is an attunement", by the description of "attunement" presented in the text, not the one presented by you.
So your dismissal of the arguments seems to be based on a claim that Plato does not properly present what "attunement" is. You think that Plato does not actually refute the Pythagorean theory that the soul is a type of harmony because he makes a strawman of "harmony", and refutes that instead. I believe it is you who has made the strawman, by not following the conventional translation of "harmony", which has a clear meaning consistent with Plato's description, and opting for the more ambiguous "attunement" instead. The ambiguity allows you to produce the strawman.
Yes, you did say that. But it is not true. I have played string instruments for most of my life. I have put in the time to study music theory and harmony. I have also set-up guitars and have the specialized tools to do so. Including cutting nuts, adjusting neck relief, and setting intonation I also play upright bass which does not have frets. Here playing in tune requires more precision to get the length of the stopped string right.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Right. This is what I said near the beginning of this exchange:
Quoting Fooloso4
And this:
Quoting Fooloso4
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Right again. But those ratios existed prior to the instrument being in tune. The harmony produced is
something that had been produced countless times before by various instruments. The harmony exists prior to this instrument.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I used the example of standard tuning so an not to confuse you any more than you already were. But you have come around. What must be adhered to is the ratio of frequencies from one string to another. The ratio of frequencies, exists independently and prior to the instrument. Both standard and non-standard tuning must adhere to those preexisting ratios.
Again, here is the argument:
Quoting Fooloso4
It says nothing about adhering to standard tuning. What is at issue is the preexistence of harmony. This harmony exists whether the instrument is in standard or alternative tuning.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Here again is Simmias' description:
(85e-86a)
The attunement is not the tuning of the lyre. It is not the tightening and loosening of the strings. For that is physical. It is something that is present when the lyre is in tune. But, as Socrates points out, a man differs from a lyre. To take the analogy further is misleading.
It continues:
(86b-86d)
The attunement of the human body is the proper mix and measure, the harmony of its parts.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No. I think he corrects certain mistakes as to what it means for the soul to be an attunement, for the body to be in harmony.
This is how Socrates concludes his objections:
Then, my excellent friend, it is not at all appropriate for us to state that soul is an attunement, for it seems we would be disagreeing with the divine poet Homer and with ourselves. (94e-95a)
Why would disagreement with "the divine poet Homer" be decisive? Are we to take the side of the poets in the "ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry"? (Republic 607b) Socrates defense is a defense of Homer and the beliefs of the city educated by him. An education in shadows. (Republic 514a - 515c)
The weaknesses of Socrates' arguments in defense of a separate soul that enters and leaves the body are the weaknesses of the traditional beliefs of the city of Athens and others about the soul as taught by Homer. But it is not the belief described by Simmias of Thebes.
:blush:
A glimmer of clarity in the gloom...
Then you obviously know that the instrument does not need to be tuned relative to any specific pitch, pitches, to be "in tune" and produce harmony. And, only if it has to be played along with other instruments must a particular "pitch" be chosen. Furthermore, you must also know that there are numerous different possible "tunings" for the same instrument.
However, I do not think that this is really relevant.
Quoting Fooloso4
Sure the ratios are pre-determined and pre-exist, but not the tuning, nor the "attunement" , which is a property of the instrument. The fact is, "attunement", as well as "harmony" require an instrument. That is why "the soul is a harmony", or "attunement" is a materialist/physicalist position which Socrates is arguing against. The attunement is the last thing to be created and first to be destroyed.
The predetermined ratios which are used in the process of tuning, are not part of the argument, and are irrelevant to the theory "the soul is a harmony". The materialist/physicalist does not even accept that there must be a hand (mind)-that-tunes the body, if a soul is to emerge, They don't even want to consider the requirement of pre-existing ratios being applied in the artificial construction of harmony, they want to say that attunement/harmony (mind/soul) arises naturally.
That is the position Socrates is arguing against, the materialist/physicalist argument that attunement arises naturally from a body. That is why it is described as the last to be produced, and first to be destroyed. The issue of whether an attunement could be naturally created without a hand(mind)-that-tunes is not even considered.
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes,, we agree that the ratios pre-exist as principles by which an instrument is tuned. Where we disagree is on the relevance of this (can we call it a fact?). I say that this is not at all relevant to Socrates' arguments. He is arguing about the attunement, or harmony itself, as a property of the instrument. Look again at Simmias' statement. The attunement is "in" the instrument. Look at Socrates' statement, it is the last composed and first destroyed.
This is what Plato is arguing against, the materialist/physicalist position that the soul is like a harmony, which arises from an attuned instrument. I believe it is important to recognize that Plato refutes this materialist/physicalist theory "the soul is a harmony" without appealing to the requirement of pre-existing ratios and a hand(mind)-that-tunes. These are metaphysical principles unacceptable to the materialist/physicalist, and principles which you seem to recognize, cannot really be proven. So Plato refutes the materialist/physicalist theory on its own terms, that the soul is like a harmony which emerges naturally from a well tuned body.
Quoting Fooloso4
That's right. Now do you respect the statement that the attunement is "in the lyre". And, as you say, it only exists "when the lyre is in tune". Therefore the attunement is completely dependent on the material existence of the lyre. That is why it is a materialist/physicalist theory. It is not something which preexists the lyre as a set of ratios or anything like that, it is something which only exists when the body is properly tuned. The harmony emerges from the tuning of the body.
This is what Socrates demonstrates, with the three arguments, is a faulty theory. The most convincing is also the most difficult to understand, and that is the middle argument about degrees of existence. If the soul only emerges from the body when the body is properly attuned, then there must be a boundary which is crossed, a point when the soul emerges. This is because it is inconsistent with evidence to say that something has a partial soul, or is partially alive. So the body either has a soul or it does not, it is alive or not. This implies that if the soul is a harmony or attunement, it is a sort of perfection to the tuning, there is a point where the tuning is perfect, and a soul/life appears. But this is completely inconsistent with observed evidence, souls exist with all sorts of imperfections. Therefore it is logically impossible that the soul is like an attunement or harmony which is the result of (emerges from) a body becoming well-tuned.
Quoting Fooloso4
That is absolutely false. It appears to be the result of a biased or prejudiced interpretation. The "pre-existence of harmony" is not at all presented even as a possibility. What is stated is that the harmony is a property of the well-tuned instrument and it is the last aspect of the instrument to be composed, and the first to be destroyed. That is the materialist/physicalist (Pythagorean derived) presentation of "the soul" which Plato is arguing against. The concept of "the preexistence of harmony" is not at all a part of this materialist/physicalist presentation, and therefore cannot be considered at all. Plato refutes the materialist/physicalist theory on its own terms without the need to appeal to a preexistent harmony. The closest he comes is in Socrates' first argument where he appeals to "recollection".
Quoting Fooloso4
Notice "in the lyre". The attunement is the product of the tuning of the lyre. That is the materialist/ physicalist principle, the mind/soul is like a harmony which arises, or emerges, from the well tuned body. The materialist/physicalist principle pays not respect to the fact that the composition of the instrument is artificial, and there is a hand(mind)-that-tunes, simply assuming that the well-tuned body could arise naturally. So Plato refutes the principle without even appealing to the need for the preexistent principles of tuning, thereby refuting the materialist/physicalist theory on its own terms.
Quoting Fooloso4
You, it appears place far too much emphasis on Plato\s reference to "the divine poet", without actually taking the time required to understand the arguments. All he is saying, is that the refutation provided by "ourselves: is consistent with the position presented by "the divine poet Homer". This merely supports 'the logical way of thinking' provided by Socrates. It is not the argument itself, but a reference to a similar way of logical thinking in an authority figure.
Quoting Fooloso4
This is way out of context and completely irrelevant. The belief described by Simmias of Thebes, that the soul is a sort of harmony, is decisively refuted by Plato, through the three arguments presented by Socrates. The idea of "a separate soul that enters and leaves the body" is a completely different belief, and is completely irrelevant here.
We have a fundamental disagreement regarding how to interpret the dialogue. I will leave it there.
While the importance of harmony can be confidently ascribed to Pythagoras, many other ideas are on shaky grounds. This SEP article gives a brief account of the centuries of dispute of who was or was not a Pythagorean. This is particularly a problem regarding the views of immortality and reincarnation being addressed in Phaedo.
When Aristotle discusses these matters, the role of what might be immortal or not is seen through the problem of agency and movement.
In the context of the mind/body distinction you made above, Aristotle is saying it is the "Pythagoreans" who devalue the 'body'.
I understand that most 'evidence's for physicalism amount to mainly evidence that mental states are 'intertwined' with, or 'closely related to' neural activity.
Is this not, though, a slippery way to state that evidence? If it only presents correlation of close relationship, this seems to leave most positions except Absolute Idealism alive?
I say the following as a physicalist: most positions, including absolute idealism, ARE alive. The evidence for physicalism doesn't push the probability of those other ideas to 0. That's okay, the available evidence doesn't have to push other ideas to 0 - I, as a physicalist, have no problem with that. "The probability that I am wrong is above 0" is not a particularly hard thing for me to say here.
What are you saying, I'm a physicalist but I'll own up to the possibility that physicalism might be wrong? I'm a physicalist and I don't mind admitting that the probability that physicalism is right is about .999...?
I would think that "physicalism" is quite strict, not allowing for the possibility of an open door. Isn't that what physicalism is, saying that there is no possibility of anything other than the physical? Opening the door would be rejecting physicalism.
From my perspective, anthropomorphizing physicalism, as something that can be "strict" seems weird.
Perhaps it is because I come from a more science based perspective, but I would expect a physicalist to be open to physicalism being falsified, as a matter of intellectual integrity. I don't see any problem with leaving the door wide open for evidence which might falsify physicalism. Having left the door open for a long time, and never having seen any evidence falsifying physicalism walk through the door, is why I am a physicalist. That and the explanatory power of relevant scientific understanding.
To me you just said that all the evidence in the form of our experience (I presume in our minds) points to mind-independent existents. That seems like a contradiction.
I don't see the logic. If it is compatible with non-physicalist ideas, then it is not evidence for physicalism because it's equally evidence for non-physicalism.
Quoting wonderer1
Do you understand what "evidence" is? Evidence consists of facts which support the hypothesis. Evidence doesn't walk through the door, it must be sought. That's why experimentation is a significant aspect of the scientific method, through experimentation we seek evidence. If you are happy with your physicalism you will not seek evidence to falsify it, and the evidence will never walk through the door. Real scientific understanding recognizes that evidence does not walk through the door.
Yeah, I much prefer my beliefs being based in evidence. Can you point out any good evidence for a mind existing sans an information processing substrate? I mean, I can't say I've looked on the moons of Jupiter for evidence of brainless minds, and I think that would be asking a bit much. So do you have any reasonable suggestions?
The reality of time is good evidence for the existence of non-physical aspects of our world.
Why do you think so?
Time consists of three parts, past present and future, none of which is physical.
I suspect you would have a hard time finding physicists who agree with that assertion.
In any case, do you have an argument for the claim?
My take on this time perception problem is to think of mental content in universal form.
Brain; (what the brain supports)
Brain; (time perception)
Brain; (past)
Brain; (present)
Brain; (future)
Looking at it this way we need to take a dualist view about the present.
The present is in two categories. The physical present that exists as physical matter and mental content that exists as a non-physical.
I think you'd be surprised by what some physicists believe about time. I happen to know a few.
Quoting wonderer1
It's very simple. No part of time, past, present, or future, nor the passing of time itself, is perceived by any of the senses. And physics does not describe time in any way, it is something which is taken for granted in that field.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
I tend to look at mental content as consisting of two parts, our relations with the past (memories), and our relations with the future (anticipations). The brain, existing at the present, is what relates these two in the act of thinking.
The mind can understand past occurrences as memories, and future possibilities as anticipations, but the physical presence of the brain at the present is somewhat incomprehensible to it. It is incomprehensible because the mind does not know how to adequately represent the division between past and future. We tend to reduce this division to a point in time, for the practical purpose of measuring, but this leaves no time at the present. That creates a problem because nothing can be known to exist without temporal extension, so the physical presence of the brain at the present become incomprehensible.
To me, it seems amazing how brains manage in past, present and future. Present awareness being the most critical as it has physical consequences.
I know some physicists as well. This guy owes me a beer I never collected, for troubleshooting some problems in a Bose-Einstein condensate experiment of his, which wasn't working right.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Einsteinian space-time is a concept which is well over 100 years old, and has been tested in all sorts of ways. Perhaps your physicist friends just don't consider challenging your closed-mindedness to be a good use of their time?
Concepts do not have physical existence. And the fact that a concept is useful does not imply that there is anything physical which corresponds with the concept. In fact, the reverse is true. The more useful a concept is, the more general it is, and being general means that it is designed to relate to many different things. The more general the concept, the further it is from having any physical thing which corresponds with it. Take the numbers for example. The same is the case with Einsteinian space-time. It is a very general, and useful concept, "general relativity", but being "general" implies that there is nothing particular, i.e. a physical thing, which corresponds with it. The physicists I've spoken to about this issue completely acknowledge that "space-time" is a conceptual structure, and not a physical thing.
The point was that the following statement of yours is false.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Physics describes time as one of the dimensions of space-time. Furthermore, it is not merely taken for granted. As I said, the concept has been tested in all sorts of ways.
And of course you are merely begging the question against physicalism in saying, "Concepts do not have physical existence." You need to show that concepts can exist apart from any sort of physical instantiation. Good luck with that.
The argument that everything is or supervenes on the physical is arguably falsified by the fact that things have different modes of existing.
For example, abstract objects such as numbers and mathematical structures have a mode of existing that is different from the physical mode in which thought exists. Thought is supervenient on brain events, but numbers are not.
Is this something that you think you can demonstrate?
The idea of numbers gets to the core issues of physicalism. A physicalist can argue that numbers only exist as brain state. That would be my position and it's defendable.
Numbers existing outside of brain state?...does that have a defense?
Physical brain; (one)
Physical brain; (two)
Physical brain; (three)
Perhaps, see below.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
We could start with the intentionality of conscious states. A thought is not just a thought, it is about something, which means that there is a reference relation between the thought and what is about. We can think about anything, regardless of the nature or ontological status of those things. We can construct fictions as well as facts, but we can also discover abstract things and facts.
Granted that some things are dependent on thought. Money, for instance, has a mode of existing that depends on our beliefs, and in this sense money supervenes on the physicality of out beliefs. Money is a human construct, but numbers are arguably discovered.
From the fact that thinking is physical it doesn't follow that all of the things we think about are physical.
Finding a murder suspects DNA at a crime scene is often evidence that they committed that crime. However, finding that DNA is still COMPATIBLE with the idea that they did not commit the crime. A bayesian understanding of evidence clears this up quite cleanly.
I agree that thoughts must form to subject matter. I don't see how the subject matter must preexist. It's more of a mental discovery process.
Must an unknown number preexist in the same sense that, say, an unknown galaxy preexists before its discovery? The galaxy is actual, the number is potential. Both are objects that we can discover, but they have different modes of existing.
Good point. Our brains handle things that are physical and non-physical by the same mental process.
You mentioned we construct fictions which is an area of interest for me.
Disorders like psychosis can be modeled in this universal form I like to use:
Brain; (secret messages)
Brain; (code)
Brain; (language manipulation)
Brain; (use of multiple languages)
Brain; (numerology)
Brain; (pattern recognition)
Brain; (pattern manipulation)
Brain; (conspiracy theories)
Brain; (false beliefs)
Brain; (religious delusions)
Brain; (political delusions)
And what accompanies these is racing thoughts that amplify the problem followed by emotional reactions often seen as symptoms..
So in trouble shooting psychosis cases the professions should be looking at this relation between physical brain and mental content. Just by looking at the symptoms listed as mental content we should suspect that most psychosis cases are mental content driven.
That's not the case. The treating professions are biology oriented and drug treatment oriented and often do horribly at treating these patients.
On the subject of physicalism, I take this as an example of physicalism gone wrong. The training given...many years of medical school...engrains a biological cause to these psychosis cases because of the odd behavior patterns with no concideration of the role of mental content. Mental content is always present in these cases. I've mentioned the Dan Markingson case here in Minnesota where Mr Markingson was coerced into a drug study and months into it died by suicide.
That is not a description.
Quoting flannel jesus
You are not providing the relevant information in your example. That the DNA is evidence of the person committing the crime is dependent on context, where and how it was found for example. The context of the item (the DNA) is what is relevant, and either supports or does not support (constitutes evidence for or against) the suspect. It cannot be evidence for both without contradiction. You simply make it appear to be evidence of both by removing the relevant context, thereby making it evidence of neither. In this case it is not evidence at all.
If you think that the Bayesian method provides for the very same thing to be evidence for two contradicting hypotheses, then please explain how you arrive at this conclusion.
I didn't say it was evidence for both. You decided to say that. I said it was evidence for one, and COMPATIBLE with both. I even put compatible in all caps so you would be more likely to take special note of it.
Are mental content oriented treatments doing any better? I'm asking, because I don't know psychiatry.
I scrolled through this article at SEP. Seems that committment to an underlying physical structure is not so important after all. And why would it be important? Treatment of mental illness is a practical matter, no?
Regarding the relation between brain and mental content, the term 'mental content' is, arguably, misleading, because far from all content is mental.
For example, when you see a tree, there is a brain event in your head that really is the seeing, but the tree that you see is not inside your head. Your brain is not constructing a mental replica of the tree. Nor is the brain event sufficient for seeing the tree. There has to be a tree, and from its appearance in your visual field arises the conscious mental state of seeing it. The brain event is constitutive for having that mental state, but it is not constitutive for what happens to appear in your visual field.
The assumption that your brain would somehow construct mental replicas of every single thing that happens to pass by the visual field is obviously false, yet surprisingly common. Perhaps because there are other kinds of things that the brain does construct, such as imagined trees, or fictions composed of memories or fantasies or hallucinations.
One more thing regarding numbers and mathematical structures. As potential things they're arguably not physical. But when they actualise in thought and application, they appear not so unlike the actual things that pass by one's visual field.
The point though is that physicalism, by definition denies the possibility that non-physicalism is correct. That's the point of physicalism. Therefore contrary to what you claim, if the evidence is compatible with non-physicalism, it is not evidence for physicalism. Compatible means that the two can coexist without conflict. If there is no conflict between the evidence and non-physicalism then this is clearly evidence against physicalism.
Likewise, if the DNA evidence is COMPATIBLE with the person person being not-guilty, then it is not evidence of the person's guilt. Evidence must support the thing which it is supposed to be evidence of, and nothing relevant can be COMPATIBLE with both of two opposing statements.. If the supposed evidence is COMPATIBLE with the opposite of the thing which it is meant to support, then it is faulty and therefore not evidence for that thing, but evidence against it. This is why I said that it is the context of the found DNA which determines whether it is evidence or not. Whether the DNA is COMPATIBLE with the person being guilty or not-guilty is determined by the context. If the context of the DNA is COMPATIBLE with both then it is irrelevant, evidence of neither.
It's a useful description for a lot of people. I'm not sure there is much I could do about it not being a useful description for you.
It is useful, but It's not a description. Spatial concepts, geometry, dimensions and such, are all like this, very useful, as mathematical axioms are, but they are not descriptions. These postulates are a priori, while descriptions are a posteriori. There is no physical thing being described.
From my perspective, "thing" seems like a strange category to try to put time into. So I'm not really seeing a problem with not describing time as a thing.
Exactly, that's what i said, time is not physical.
Not exactly. "Not a thing" isn't equivalent to non-physical. For example, a process doesn't need to be a thing, in order to be physical.
You can elect to define words in such a way that physicalism can't be coherent under your usage of the words. However, that doesn't allow for you to make any cogent argument against physicalism. It just keeps you from understanding what you are arguing against.
My understanding is psychiatric treatment is standardized within countries. Generally the patient would be diagnosed then prescribed medication based on the diagnosis. So the assumption is drugs can correct something that is physically wrong with the brain. Or if not that, that drugs might do better than nothing.
I don't think considering mental content is even done other than to document symptoms.
I looked at the SEP reference you gave and I think the issue for me is the psychiatric medical model which is basically physicalist. I don't think they know the causes of psychosis or even claim to know. It's like they are sure it must be physical but they can't show the mechanism.
On the philosophy of physicalism, we should look at how physical brains extend into this area of mental content.
Very simply, can you imagine a scenario where you have evidence for X being true, while unbeknownst to you, X is actually false? Can you imagine any scenario at all like that? If yes, what is it?
I see there is a need to distinguish between "process" as a particular process, a particular event which is happening to a particular physical object, or objects, and "process" in the sense of a generalized, or universal, type of event which may happen with objects. The former is a physical event, the latter is not, being conceptual and applicable to many different physical events, in a descriptive way. If "time" is said to be a sort of process, it is the latter, a generalized or universal conception, and therefore not physical.
Quoting flannel jesus
In that scenario, whatever is "unbeknownst" to me, is irrelevant to my judgement. Do you recognize that whether or not something is "evidence" is a judgement? I judge the object, as evidence for X, therefore I judge it as incompatible with not--X. Whether X is actually true or false is irrelevant to my judgement, my judgement is based on the things I apprehend as evidence, and I do not ever apprehend the same thing as evidence for X and evidence for not-X because that would be contradictory.
Therefore your example is simple trickery. You add "while unbeknownst to you, X is actually false" as if it is relevant to my judgement of whether or not the mentioned thing is evidence for X. But it cannot be relevant at all because it is stipulated as |unbeknownst". If I knew X was actually false, I would not consider the thing as evidence for not-X. I would have to be skeptical first, but this would negate my knowing.
It appears to me. like you do not understand the nature of "evidence". You seem to want to make it a property of the thing being judged, rather than accept that it is a judgement. When you come around to understand the true nature of evidence, that "evidence" is a judgement, then you might understand that it is inconsistent, contradictory, to judge the same thing as evidence for X and evidence for not-X. In this case we'd have to dismiss the thing as non-evidence.
So I'll ask you in a straight forward way, do you understand that "evidence" is a judgement?
Gettier case?
Simply asserting that conceiving of a universal is not the outcome of a physical process is unpersuasive in light of understanding things like this:
Let's compare psychiatry with cosmology. Currently only 5% of the known universe is sufficiently explained by the standard cosmological model. It might seem like a bad result, but the subject matter is huge, and partly beyond reach. Under these conditions 5% is probably a reasonable result, and now the James Webb telescope might help us improve that result a bit. I don't know if some non-physical approach could help, but some say that the universe is fundamentally mathematical.
Okay, I'll quit with the psychiatry/psychology theorizing. A bit off topic.
The idea is that physicalism needs to extend into our mental worlds, or else we should abandon physicalism.
However the form,
Brain; (mental content)
works for me. All the abstractions we have get pinned down to brain state in time and location and physicalism holds. And I don't see anything that is a counter example to disprove it.
I think I'm running with MU's line - I understand that what you're saying is that the evidence isn't 100%. Sure. No evidence is, really. My point was that, even if the evidence available points to 'mind being closely intertwined with neural activity' which would satisfy current "physicalist" accounts, surely all this rules out entirely is pure idealism (i.e, no connection between mind and (physical)brain). I'm trying to sort out how the 'evidence for physicalism' is actually for physicalism, and not just evidence against pure idealism.
You're running with MUs line because you and he share a conclusion, or because you like what he has to say about evidence?
That's probably true, but I would think it inaccurate to claim that as evidence for Physicalism. Its just information that doesn't negate it - whereas, it has specific application in negating whatever criteria that constitute the conditions in whcih Absolute Idealism could be true.
Like, if there's nine of waiting for a draw of some kind, and it goes from 10-1 with the last-pulled winning a prize - as each number is pulled, and they are all the other guy's number/s up to (2)...It doesn't say anything about whether yours will be pulled as the prize-winner. It only means those guys can't win now. It doesn't mean you're more likely to win when the winning number is pulled.
You could say "well, no, less systems in the running ipso facto make the remaining systems more likely true" to which I would just say, why? THey could be wrong.
Quoting flannel jesus
I like that he seems to grok my issue with using unrelated findings to go toward confirming physicalism to some degree or another.
How about the relationship between books and stories. In what sense is the meaning of a story contained by a book? Is it physical in the sense that the ink and paper is physical?
The way I do it is information (the story) only exists as,
Brain; (information)
So the book would be paper and ink.
The process is,
Book ---->Eyes --->Brain; (Information in the book)
We encode and decode matter to communicate brain to brain.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
Just like that, eh ;-)
You got me thinking about psychosis again.
You mentioned stories.
One of the symptoms of psychosis that comes up is self referencing when hearing a story or watching a movie. Instead of getting the normal messaging it's possible to decode a parallel secondary message specific to an individuals circumstances.
It's not a biological failure but an information processing quirk.
How does a bunch of neurons firing release* the information from the book? Or was the information already in the book to begin with?
*I know that's really imprecise language, but I can't think of a better word.
The person who wrote the book is the source of the information (in his brain). He encodes it into a book. The book is encoded physical matter. The person reading the book hopefully decodes the book in the way it was intended.
If you think the information is in the book, travels through the air, your eyes, your optic nerve and arrives in your brain fully formed and unaltered from it's origin....well that's not necessary. The image is just decoded in your brain and that's where information is reformed.
Your question is simple trickery as I explained, like the old example 'have you stopped beating your wife?' Answering it would be to agree to your terms which demonstrate a gross misunderstanding of the nature of "evidence".
So, are you now admitting that you do not have a clue what the word "evidence" means? Do you agree that "evidence" is a judgement, and that it is incoherent to claim the very same object to be evidence both for and against the truth of a particular statement?
Quoting wonderer1
I was not asserting that conceiving of a universal is not the outcome of a physical process. I was claiming that the thing conceived (time in this case) is not a physical thing regardless of whether it was conceived by a physical process. Would you say that fictitious things created by the imagination are physical things just because they are the product of a physical process?
But your description is simplistic and vague. There are many unknowns in all phases of this process. What the relationship is between the physical activities of the brain, and the symbolic forms that characterise language and logic, is not at all understood. And furthermore, they belong to completely different kinds of description.
An example I often give is that an idea (like a formula or a recipe) can be represented in all kinds of different languages and symbolic forms without loosing its meaning. The representational medium, paper and ink, or physical bits on a hard drive, is different in each case, but the meaning stays the same. So how can the meaning be something physical when it can be transformed into different physical media and symbolic systems? The form changes, but the meaning remains constant through such transformations. And I say that challenges a physicalist account.
Quoting wonderer1
That's a good video, and a good source, but I would question the sense in which neural networks are a purely physical process. Such systems are reliant on human invention and programmed by humans to produce outcomes. They reflect and embody human intentions. Surely all of those processes are instantiated in physical systems, but the overall process is intellectual rather than physical, as it relies on ideas. Saying that it 'proves' or 'shows' that intelligence is physical begs the question, by assuming that the computing process can be wholly understood in physical terms, when an intrinsic foundation of the process is mathematical in the first place. And it's far from settled that mathematics can be reduced to the explained in physical terms. In fact it seems rather the contrary, as physics itself is highly dependent on mathematical abstractions.
I got busy with my taxes so can't give a long answer.
I'm guessing public education taught you wrong and you just need to reset.
I've at least bothered to read some books on it.
Quoting Mark Nyquist
That is an ad hominem argument.
You think the finding is unrelated? The finding in question seems very very related to me.
Literally any other person would be able to answer the question with ease. It's not trickery, you're just weird.
Please don't talk to me if you're going to keep being dishonest. I've explained to you before that I did not say this. I've told you explicitly that I did not say this. Don't lie, don't be dishonest. If you think I've said this, find me a quote where I said this. If you keep putting these words in my mouth when I've explained that I didn't say this, don't talk to me at all please, it's dishonest and exhausting. Please grow up.
I'll explain what I did say again one last time and allow you a fair chance to be more honest next time you post to me: what I said was not "it is EVIDENCE for and against a claim", I said you can have something that is evidence for one claim and COMPATIBLE with another claim. If you want to know the difference, feel free to ask.
This is simple denial of the trickery you employed. If you do not address the issue that I mentioned, which exposed your question as trickery, I will continue to assert that you are simply denying the trickery employed.
Do you agree that "evidence" is a judgement? And if so then please stop talking about evidence as if it is some sort of independent object.
Quoting flannel jesus
Look flannel, "EVIDENCE" is a judgement made concerning the object, that the object supports the truth of the statement. "COMPATIBLE" means consistent with. Whatever object is consistent with S is not consistent with not-S, by way of contradiction, unless the object is completely irrelevant. If the object is completely irrelevant it is not evidence. If the object is judged as consistent with S, (supporting S, is evidence of S), then it cannot also be judged as COMPATIBLE (consistent) with not-S without contradiction.
You lack imagination, or you don't know what evidence means.
Yeah, I actually literally woke up in the middle of the night and answered this better than I did before...
What I was trying to illustrate was that evidence against someone else's "something" simply not being evidence against your 'something' is, I don't think, claimable by your 'something' as relevant to its legitimacy.
Quoting AmadeusD
So, this began my little line here. If there was some previous that was relevant, I'm, unsure what that was. I came in and noted the comment i've quoted from there was unrelated to previous discussions - but what's quoted is the crux of what I was getting at.
From what I understand, all of the pieces of evidence put forward for Physicalism are actually bits of evidence against other positions. And yes, in terms of probability, that necessarily increases the likelihood of Physicalism obtaining - the same way my Raffle example works. Meaning, those pieces of evidence are not for physicalism but against other positions.
And, in terms of the specifics such as the close, but not particularly great, neural correlates to certain mind-states, those pieces of evidence seem to function better, and more relevantly as evidence precluding Absolute Idealism (well, that's what I was positing, anyway. Doesn't have to be restricted to that conclusion).
I'm not really trying to notice any benchmark for evidence - more that the function of the particular information used in this way seems to not quite be 'evidence for'.
As i say, the quote would only serve to preclude certain other positions. The idea that mind states are 'closely linked' with brain activity obviously goes toward physicalism in some way - But again, only in the way the Raffle example works. Its incidental, imo. Though, i guess my position is taht i think Physicalists are wrong for making the cliam you're making.
It isn't anything specific to Physicalism. A 1:1 would have me agreeing with your sentiment above. If We have 'direct' correlates, I'd say that's exactly what Physicalism would predict. Not weak, likely indirect correlation. This seems to me to put a tiny amount of daylight between the facts and physicalism. If its not 1:1, its highly unlikely the mind state arises from the neural activity, imo.
You start out with some probability that pure idealism is the case, you get this new information that says pure idealism isn't the case, and you then distribute the probability you gave to pure idealism amongst the other options. Every option is thus more probable than it was before receiving this information, which is exactly what evidence is - information that makes claims more or less probable.
I think we would, if Physicalism were any more likely than other positions that aren't Absolute Idealism. If a 1:1 match can't be found, that, to me, is a direct knock to physicalisms probablitily.
Yeah, I don't disagree witht his methodology - But I return to my actual gripe(edited for spelling):
Quoting AmadeusD
Every (other) option being more probable because of preclusive evidence in another position, isn't evidence for any of them, imo. It's just a position - there's no real argument to be had here I don't think.
So you don't think information that raises the probability that a statement is true is evidence for that statement?
If there's 100 positions.
We find a piece of 'evidence' which precludes one of them.
I cannot bring myself to pretend that's evidence for the other 99. Seems really misleading and silly to me.
Well, in the Court context, it means that the evidence being presented isn't actually about the matter at hand, but is incidental to it, and goes to 'propensity'. Is it more likely, in light of this unrelated evidence, that the other thing is the case?
The answer could be yes (in fact, for the most part propensity evidence isn't even admitted unless it goes to show something reasonably helpful to the judge or jury), but that isn't evidence for the thing itself having happened. It evidence that makes it less likely something else happened.
I see the inference from weak neural correlation to be similar. It isn't evidence for physicalism, but incidentally, it removes other possibilities. It just makes no sense to me to read over from "This piece of evidence precludes X" to "This piece of evidence goes to proving Y" unless it actually does, and incidentally precludes X. Tricky, but i suppose parsing different types or relevance is part of my job.
And in just the question of evidence against other things being evidence for some other competing idea, I think the Monty Hall problem is a great example of that. Once you rule out one option, it changes the odds for the remaining options - there's nothing even controversial about stating that.
To me, its not this. Maybe that's the issue. It indicates we're not going to get a 1:1. It counts against the physicalist expectation. But that's more fact-specific, and may be hte underlying bias i'm expressing in the reasoning. But i also can't quite grasp how my point isn't fairly clear....
Quoting flannel jesus
To me, it is essentially the only way to read it parsimoniously.
Quoting flannel jesus
Facts-wise, I think it's worse :snicker: But you're not losing me, either. I hear you.
Quoting flannel jesus
Agreed. But its not evidence for them. Not sure what's not getting across there - to be clear, it's something about which we can just plum disagree and there's no implication. I think its a bad use of the concept of 'evidence'. It's supposed to make something evident.
Quoting flannel jesus
Compatible? Sure. That's why i'm accepting a weak correlation or some other similar statement about it. I don't think its evidence beyond the 'propensity' type. That's where i felt MU got my point.
And, I don't agree with is conclusions, best I could tell. I feel he got my point that information which reduces the possibility of other outcomes, isn't evidence for any of the remaining outcomes. I wouldn't go so far as to say a piece of information can't be multiply inferential.
Of course I agree here. Evidence for X can obviously be compatible with not-X unless its totally conclusive. This goes to hte heart of why 'indirect' evidence is such a shaky claim.
It doesn't really put paid to anything. I thought of an example... You're tracking animal prints. There are four Big Cats it could be in your area.
You have a cast of only one paw from the four possibilities.
You come across a print. The cast does not fit. It is not the animal from which the cast came.
It is not evidence for any of the other three being the culprit. You could say "it's evidence for all of them" but thats not sensible imo. It isn't evidence for any of them. It increases their likelihood given we have only four possibilities. But it provides nothing by way of evidence for any of them.
Good. That's what meta was disagreeing with me on. He was not correct about that.
Thanks to this discussion, I now think I understand the faulty logic which persuades you of physicalism. Stuff which you judge to be compatible with non-physicalism, you illogically judge as evidence of physicalism, by appealing to ignorance.
I'm afraid this is indicative to me, of you not knowing much about the evidence. The scientific evidence is rather overwhelming. But then most people don't put a lot of effort into apprising themselves of the scientific evidence.
I know the evidence and disagree its particularly convincing. As do millions of others. If you're partial to/leaning to/prefer physicalism as an explanation, then that will colour your reading. As will my neutrality on it (its always going to be more interesting if physicalism does not obtain). If you could, perhaps, put forward some element of 'the evidence' you either find convincing, or more particularly, you assume i must have missed.. More than happy to 'appraise'.
At risk of sounding salty, as a general comment, I do not appreciate seeing or receiving assumptions about education based on differing conclusions. There are millions of people, including professional philosophers, who hold my position in light of the evidence. I could be wrong, sure, but this assertion is.. bad faith, to my mind.
There is no scientific evidence for physicalism. Rather, physicalism is an operating assumption on the grounds that science proceeds in terms of what is objectively measurable, which is best conceived of against an assumption of physicalism. But physicalism itself is actually a metaphysical axiom, not a scientific theory as such. Furthermore many aspects of current science cast doubt on materialism or physicalism as it was traditionally conceived.
The second point is more cultural than philosophical. It is that secular culture has abandoned the kinds of frameworks of belief within which alternatives to physicalism are meaningful or intelligible. That parallels the ascendancy of science over religion as a kind of over-arching cultural narrative. But this forgets that science principally deals with falsifiable hypotheses, not claims about broader questions which include ethics and the meaning of existence. Scientifically-oriented people will often put aside or shelve such questions as imprecise, but that is just further evidence of the presumptions under which science generally operates.
But mostly, it's just an assumption about 'the way things are', with science being held up as the arbiter of judgement about such matters.
:ok: I feel this is accurate. Though, it doesn't really go to my rejection of Physicalism per se as my point is that i accept the evidence, and its not good. But still..
Do you seriously think there is no scientific evidence that minds are a result of physical neurological processes?
Even a lot of Christian fundamentalists don't go that far in their science denial. Of course you do reject evolution. Do you think there is no scientific evidence for evolution as well? How about heliocentrism?
Wayf, I have interacted with so many people who are in denial of scientific evidence in order to maintain their religious beliefs, that statements such as the quote above might as well be an announcement of invincible ignorance on your part.
Philosophim asks me that all the time. I don't think you, or he, have any background in philosophy of mind, or why philosophy of mind is different to neuroscience. So it just strikes you as preposterous that anyone can question that.
Quoting wonderer1
It might also be evidence that you don't understand the arguments. Most people nowadays simply assume the meta-scientific narrative, in which evolutionary theory has supplanted the religious creation mythology, but without really considering all of the philosophical implications of that.
So, again, with respect to science: what would scientific evidence of physicalism look like? What branch of science would you look to, in particular, to prove or to show that everything is, or reduces to, the physical?
Again, it might help if you can point to some section of the SEP: Physicalism article to show what you have in mind.
Pretty typical religious science denial, with hoops to jump through thrown in. I'm not really interested in doing much more at this point than pointing out that people who deny there is any scientific evidence, for what are matters of scientific consensus, are mostly fooling themselves.
I can find young earth creationist to argue with all over the place. There are much more interesting discussions to spend my time on here.
Do you accept the fact that there are situations where when you have evidence of X, that evidence can still be compatible with not-X? And have you learned that "compatible" is not a synonym for "evidence"?
https://chat.openai.com/share/db2ac20a-cb37-45cd-8f22-95e9
Sure, and if I had written something along those lines myself, you would have said it is too long.
I surely disagree with this. Let me present my evidence, in no way is it compatible with "my disagreement with you wasn't about physicalism".
Quoting flannel jesus
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting flannel jesus
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting flannel jesus
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It was your attitude about what constituted "evidence for physicalism" which interested me.
Quoting flannel jesus
No, I would not accept that, it's what I insist is illogical. If the object is judged as compatible with not-X it is illogical to judge it as evidence of X. Only things judged to exclude the possibility of not-X can be judged as evidence of X. If it is judged as compatible with not-X it cannot be accepted as evidence of X
That kind of illogical thinking, which you demonstrate very well, produces an arrogant self-deceiving certitude which inclines one to aggressively assert "X is true because all the evidence supports X", all the while knowing that all of the so-called "evidence" is actually compatible with not-X. That all of the supposed "evidence" is compatible with not-X means that it is not really evidence of X at all, and there is no evidence of X. It is simply an illogical way of judging what counts as "evidence of X" which produces self-deception by way of confirmation bias. The "logic" of a closed mind apprehends everything as evidence for what it believes, and shuts out every other possibility as improbable.
I do not think that GPT has been adequately dealt the capacity to judge what counts as "evidence". GPT has not been trained in critical thinking. It will just cite things which people like flannel jesus, who judge evidence illogically, state is "evidence".
https://chat.openai.com/share/c5d5be26-4ed6-461b-9dcd-bf6771ec9008
Okay, you disagree with both me and on that point. Would you like to know why we disagree with you? Would you like to know why Bayesians disagree with you?
Can you think of a situation where you have evidence for a claim, but the evidence does not leave you certain that the claim is true? Please describe that situation, the evidence, and why you're not certain the claim is true even after finding that evidence.
If you can't think of a situation like that, let me know.
In the meantime, while I appreciate the game you're playing, I'm specifically asking - do you feel that inconclusive evidence is incoherent as a concept?
Ok, I will try to put myself into that imaginary scenario, so we can proceed. I am considering the truth or falsity of a claim. Someone presents me with something said to be evidence of the truth of the claim, or perhaps I simply find something which I would like to judge as to whether or not it is evidence of the claim. Is this consistent with the imaginary scenario you suggest?
If so, let me continue. To judge it as evidence for the claim being true, I would be obliged by due diligence to ensure that it is inconsistent with, or incompatible with, the claim being false. If the potential "evidence" is apprehended by me as compatible with the claim being false, I could not judge it as evidence of the claim being true. So to continue with your imaginary scenario, let's say I judge it as indicative of the claim being true, which implies that I have also judged it as incompatible with the claim being false, and so I label it "evidence" of the claim being true.
The degree of certitude which I have concerning the truth of the claim, following the judgement that the item is "evidence", is irrelevant. I may be highly certain, somewhat certain, or still very skeptical. This would depend on how indicative the evidence is, how much other evidence there is, and the relations between the evidence.
So let's proceed in the way you suggest. I have judged the item to be "evidence" of the claim being true, and this implies that I have judged it as incompatible with the claim being false, as warranted by the obligation described above. However, I am still uncertain as to whether the claim is true or not, because the evidence is insufficient to thoroughly convince me.
Is that what you mean?
I'm a jury member on a murder trial. The prosecution has show me
Just a simple example. Doesn't have to be murder, could be evidence that you have milk in your fridge, or that your doctor got their medical degree from Yale, or that your shoes were made in China. Just a simple example of a scenario where you have evidence, but despite seeing that evidence, you're still not sure. Can you come up with an example like this? Please share it if you can.
Did you not read my post? I answered that question already, here:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Clearly I said that I judged the item as 'evidence" of the claim being true, without being certain of the truth of the claim that it is evidence for.
Why do you not agree with me that to rationally consider the item as evidence that "the person committed the murder", or that "the milk is in the fridge", it is necessary to judge that the item is incompatible with "the person did not commit the murder", "or "the milk is not in the fridge". Why would you dispute this?
I think it would be illogical to judge the item as evidence for the truth of "the person committed the crime" or "the milk is in the fridge" yet also believe that the item is compatible with the falsity of the statement. How could you honestly say that the item supports the truth of X, while you believe that it is compatible with not-X? The two, X and not-X are clearly incompatible, they cannot be consistent with one another, and everything consistent with X is not consistent with not-X. Clearly it is illogical to judge the item as consistent with not-X, yet also supportive of X, as "evidence" of X.
And why do you think the degree of certitude is at all relevant? Something can be accepted as evidence without the requirement that it produces certainty.
The request was for you to come up with and present a specific scenario. You haven't done that. Nothing in your post was a specific scenario.
Here's what I said:
Can you think of a situation where you have evidence for a claim, but the evidence does not leave you certain that the claim is true? Please describe that situation, the evidence, and why you're not certain the claim is true even after finding that evidence.
I do not see a description, from you, of any of that stuff. Do you understand what I'm asking for?
OK, if you don't want to come up with your own example, here's something nice and simple for you. I'm standing on the street and I see something at a distance. I think that it is a person approaching, and I think that it is John, so I conclude that what I see is evidence that the claim "John is approaching" is true. I'm not certain that it is John approaching, yet I conclude that what I see is evidence that "John is approaching" is true.
Does this suffice?
So, you have information that you rationally interpret as evidence for the statemnt "John is approaching".
However, that information you have, that evidence, is COMPATIBLE with the statement "John is not approaching", isn't it? You're not certain John is approaching - the only reason you're not certain is because you know there's a way where you could experience seeing what you're seeing, while it's simultaneously true that John is not approaching. So the statement "I see what I think is John approaching" is completely compatible (but not evidence for, just compatible) with the statement "John is not approaching" - compatible because they can both be true at the same time.
If they couldn't both be true at the same time, then you would be certain John was approaching.
Make sense?
Either "John is approaching" is true or "John is not approaching" is true.
This doesn't entail that I am certain that "John is approaching" is true.
No, of course not! Why would I judge it as evidence of "John is approaching" if I thought it was compatible with "John Is not approaching"?
Quoting flannel jesus
I am not certain because I know I might be mistaken. I do not in any way think that "John is not approaching" is consistent with what I see, or else I would be inclined not to judge what I see as evidence of "John is approaching". That "I might be mistaken" is a completely distinct judgement, a recognition of my underlying fallibility. It is not a judgement that what I see is compatible with "John is not approaching".
Quoting flannel jesus
That statement is a strawman. The correct representation is "I judge what I see as evidence that John is approaching". When you acknowledge the proper representation you ought to see that if I judge what I see as evidence of X, there is no way that I can consistently claim that I also judge it as compatible with not-X.
Quoting flannel jesus
Not at all, you use a strawman to make your point. When you say "I see what I think is..." you incorporate the judgement about the fallibility of my judgement, about what I see, into that statement. The fallibility is implied by "what I think is...". But this statement represents the conditions posterior to the two distinct judgements. That is to conflate two distinct judgements, that I judge what I see as John, and that I judge my judgement as fallible, incorporating them into one statement.
Obviously, if I couldn't recognize the thing I saw, as John, I could not claim that it is evidence of John. And that is what makes your representation plainly wrong. I must recognize what I see as John, judge it to be John, and incompatible with not-John, or else I have nothing that would indicate that what I see is evidence of John. There are two distinct levels of judgement which must be respected if you want to properly understand the situation. Each is a judgement of "is" which excludes "is not". I judge what I see as John, excluding is-not John. And, I judge my judgement as fallible, excluding is-not fallible. If I in any way allow doubt into my judgement as to whether or not what I see is John, I have no warrant to "evidence of John".
So, let's look at the situation properly. I know myself to be fallible, that is an underlying attitude. I see something which I judge to be compatible with "John is approaching" and incompatible with "John is not approaching". Since I know my underlying fallibility, I conclude that what I see is "evidence" of John approaching, rather than certainty that John is approaching.
Make sense?
Do you believe that John is approaching?
Yes.
Why? What's your evidence?
I see someone that looks like John approaching.
That evidence, clearly, is compatible with the statement "John is not approaching". That's why you're not certain.
I know it makes sense to you, because as I've already mentioned you think, in an illogical way. Some study of critical thinking may be useful.
Quoting flannel jesus
You demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of "evidence". Evidence is a judgement that the object supports the hypothesis. However, you begin with the assumption "you have evidence", without reference to the required judgement. Therefore you have prejudice, you believe that the object supports the hypothesis prior to the judgement, because it is taken for granted as "evidence".
This prejudice is clearly evident in your reference to physicalism. You seem to think that the occurrence of a physical reality, and the scientific understanding of it, are evidence of physicalism, without the requirement of a judgement against these objects which are supposed to be the evidence. They are received as "evidence". So you seem to say, it could still turn out to be the case that physicalism is wrong, but I'll adhere to physicalism until someone proves to me that physicalism is false. In the meantime, I will not review the evidence because it has already been granted the status of "evidence".
Quoting flannel jesus
It's not outlandish, just prejudiced, which unfortunately is the norm.
A box contains 100 balls. Either all 100 are blue or 1 is blue and 99 are red, determined by a fair coin toss. A ball is picked at random from the box and it is blue.
Do you believe that the box now contains 99 blue balls or 99 red balls?
The probability of the first ball being blue is 100% if the box contains 100 blue balls and 1% if the box contains 1 blue ball and 99 red balls. As such, given that the first ball was blue, it is much more likely that the box now contains 99 blue balls.
The first ball being blue is strong evidence that the box now contains 99 blue balls. However, the first ball being blue is compatible with the box now containing 99 red balls, i.e. the first ball being blue does not prove that the box doesn't now contain 99 red balls.
What? YOU'RE the one who told ME it was evidence. If I'm prejudiced by granting that it's evidence, SURELY you are too, right? YOU told ME it was evidence.
In fact, that's the entire reason why I asked you to come up with a scenario and an example of evidence instead of providing one myself - I was predicting exactly this sort of thing from you. I present a scenario, I say such-and-such is evidence, and you find some weird reason to decide "that's not evidence". I thought I'd sidestep that by letting YOU choose the evidence, so you can't find some silly reason to deny that it's evidence afterward. Apparently I underestimated your ability to ... do whatever it is you're doing.
The "evidence" points to one thing being the case, but it's not certain, and you can always conceive of ways in which you would have that eviddence, even if that conclusion is not the case. Fingerprints - a person can be on trial, and have evidence be submitted that their fingerprints are at the crime scene, and nevertheless they didn't commit the crime. It's possible for your fingerprints to be somewhere and you still did not commit a crime there? Those two things are... compatible.
Testimonies are evidence, but someone could testify against you and it still be the case that you didn't commit the crime, can't it?
The rest of the world treats the word "evidence" in a similar way to what I'm saying here. Evidence is not synonymous with proof. A piece of information may be evidence, and still be *compatible with the opposite conclusion*. Perhaps you don't like that the rest of the world talks about evidence in these terms, but language is there for mutual understanding, and if you want to have mutual understanding with other english speakers, it would help you to understand what the rest of us mean by 'evidence'.
First thing that presented itself to me was, the compound judgement in the form, I see something coming, subsequently complemented by . I think that it is John.
The first is a general empirical judgement grounded in a perception alone; the second is a discursive judgement grounded in antecedent experience, insofar as the thought of a particular object approaching wouldnt be represented as John without it. Pretty clear, really I see (something) ., followed by I think (John).
With respect to evidence, it follows that the evidence for the primary judgement, being a mere perception, cannot be contrary to the approach of something, insofar as the evidence just is the approach, in the form of motion over time.
As for the evidence of the complementary judgement, consequential to perception, insofar as the thought of the approaching object already has a representation belonging to it, such evidence is experience, which, given only these conditions, cannot be contradictory, for otherwise the thought that the approaching object is John, would not arise at all. To call it John presupposes all that is necessary for John to be that thought.
The only logical permission for the evidence to not support the approaching object as being John, is upon the instantiation of additional evidence in the form of different empirical qualities derived from subsequent perceptions, but not of the same evidence by which the representation was determined. It is by the analysis of these different qualities, and those of sufficient disparity from the antecedents, that the thought of the approaching object cannot in fact be John, which is, of course, a significantly distinct and entirely separate judgement in itself.
Rhetorically speaking. For what its worth.
Quoting Michael
The only thing I can say here is that maybe probability does not actually qualify as "evidence" in a strict and proper sense of the word. I'd like to dismiss your example, because it is manufactured,. The scenario must be staged, two boxes, with the right coloured balls must be produced, and then the person who doesn't know which is which, must choose a blue one and make the judgement. So I'd say your example, and therefore the evidence of what you are trying to prove, is manufactured. In other words, you've manufactured evidence to support flannel jesus' claims.
So let me offer a different example. Take my example of seeing something approaching on the street. Now suppose that since I've seen John approaching everyday at about the same time for the past month, I apply this probability as "evidence" that what I see is John approaching. This supposed "evidence" is not directly related to the thing being judged, but related through some general principles of inductive reasoning. So the problem which Hume demonstrated is relevant. I agree that the observations of John at all those other times, and the resulting probability is still "evidence", as it still supports the truth of the claim, but it is a slightly different sort of "evidence". Rather than being directly related, it relates through a logical inference. So we can categorize two distinct types of evidence. Isn't this other type of evidence what is commonly known as "circumstantial evidence"?
The same principle would apply to your box of balls example. Even though the example is structured so that you can assert "strong evidence", nevertheless, it is still circumstantial evidence, not being directly related to what is in the box, but related by some form of inference.
Quoting flannel jesus
That's exactly the point. You ought not take someone else word for it, when they hand you something and say "this is evidence of X". You need justification, and this allows you to make the judgement yourself as to whether or not it is evidence. Otherwise, someone will hand you many different items saying these are all evidence of X, and you'll come away thinking X must be true because there's a mountain of evidence for X. That, I propose is the way that you behave toward physicalism. Someone else makes the judgement "X is evidence of physicalism", and since it's consistent with the hypothesis you already believe (physicalism), you accept "X is evidence" as true.
That is prejudice, no judgement of what is claimed as evidence, by you, because it is claimed to be evidence of what you already believe. Then more and more people may claim it as evidence in that prejudiced way, while the originators of that claim die off, until there is a small percentage of those who believe that it is evidence, who have actually judged whether the supposed evidence is evidence or not.
Then "X is evidence of Y" could become the bias of convention. And, we could have a large percentage of the overall population claiming "X is evidence of Y", and only a small percentage saying "X is not evidence of Y", solely because "X is evidence of Y" is the bias of convention. But if we look only at the people who have actually judged for themselves, whether X is evidence of Y or not, it could turn out that the vast majority of them believe X is not evidence of Y.
Quoting flannel jesus
If you cannot defend you judgement "X is evidence" by justifying this claim, then I suggest that there is something wrong with that judgement. If you are simply saying "X is evidence of Y", because you have a prior belief in Y, and someone told you that X is evidence of Y, then you are prejudiced.
Quoting flannel jesus
I already pointed out to you, that context is the key factor to evidence, so this type of example is simply useless. Just because a person's fingerprints are at a crime scene doesn't mean that those fingerprints are evidence against the person. So this type of example is pointless.
Quoting flannel jesus
You are not understanding what I am saying. In no way did I say that evidence is proof. This is because the judgement of "evidence" is subjective in the way that I described. And, the opinion of a subject does not constitute proof. That is why I need to justify my claim of "evidence", and you ought not take what I claim to be "evidence" as evidence without justification.
As I said, an individual knows oneself, and also knows one's own judgements to be fallible. So when I recognize what I see down the street as John, I take this recognition as evidence that John is approaching. However, I am in no way certain that John is approaching because I also recognize the fallibility of my capacity to recognize a person at such a distance.
Quoting Mww
What about the factor I mentioned though, an underlying doubt, or attitude of uncertainty, recognition that my judgement may be mistaken? I think that this would have a source other than empirical evidence. So as much as I believe that the approaching thing is John, I am uncertain because I know that my eyes are not good, and this uncertainty would be circumstantial evidence supporting the approaching object as being not-John.
If the evidence you have for John approaching wasn't also compatible with John not approaching, you would be certain. You are not certain, so it must be compatible. In other words, it's not difficult to imagine a world where you have the evidence you say you have, and yet John is not approaching.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I mean, you're saying it yourself here. You take the recognition as evidence, and yet you're aware that the recognition is compatible with a world in which it's not John. You are literally saying all the words required to agree with me, so I'm not really sure why you don't.
But it's not equally compatible with the hypothesis "The box contains 100 blue balls". For example, OJ's DNA found at the crime scene is compatible with "he did it" AND "the police framed him" but it is only confirmation for "he did it".
To use the "approaching John" example, if I see evidence that is equally compatible with John approaching and John not approaching (e.g., it's a blurry figure approaching me that might or might not be John), my probability that John is approaching won't change. The evidence can't move the needle unless it's more compatible with one hypothesis over another.
You have demonstrated that you have no interest in discussing the judgement by which something is labeled as evidence, not even agreeing with me that a judgement is required to label something as evidence. Discussion is pointless.
Thats experience talking. Youve been wrong before, so, given only so much evidence, you might very well be wrong again. Here, though, you havent the evidence to falsify the initial judgement youve made, re: I think it is John.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Sure, no doubt. With the evidence limited to perception of an approaching object alone, youre not yet at the point of certainty regarding what the object actually is. If you were, youd not be limited to I think it is John.
Im not comfortable with the notion that evidence supporting an affirmative judgement is at the same time circumstantial evidence supporting its negation. You just confuse yourself if you say this evidence allows me to think its John, but it also allows me to think it isnt. Rather arbitrary methodology, I should think, whereas, given some initial evidence, you would be perfectly justified in thinking it is John and at the same time not knowing it is.
As for your eyes ..the weather, the crowd, youre being intentionally tricked, a whole menagerie of incidental evidence .. each is the content of an individual judgement, the compendium of which determines the experience youre going to have, affirming your thought, in which case you know the approaching object is John, or negating it, in which case you know the approaching object isnt John.
In the interest of critical though, then, just as it is impossible to determine an object by a single conception, it is also impossible to obtain an empirical certainty with evidence only sufficient for determining a single judgement. Hidden in that little tidbit, is the formal distinction between belief and knowledge.
I don't have to write paragraphs and paragraphs about the minutiae of the philosophy of judgement, all I have to do is point to a couple plain facts that you've agreed with, and what I'm saying pops out cleanly and nicely.
It looks to me like you want to write paragraphs and paragraphs about the ins and outs of judgement as a way to avoid looking at the simple, straight forward argument I'm making. Don't avoid it, look at it. Look at it directly.
So this is the doubt which flannel jesus is obsessed with. Flannel seems to think that the doubt created by all that "incidental evidence" implies that when I judge my experience of the empirical object, either "evidence of John", or "not evidence of John", I am assuming that the one judgement is compatible with the opposing judgement.
As this appears to be illogical, then how does a person actually relate to this incidental evidence, doubt, which is contrary to one's actual judgement? I believe this would be a psychological issue and the answer would vary between one person and another, and even within the same person, from one situation to another, depending on the type of doubt involved.
So, consider this example. The object is approaching at a distance, and my eyes are not very good (incidental evidence), so I'm hesitant to make the judgement call. However, I am expecting John (incidental evidence), so I am inclined to make the judgement that it is John. Now we have two distinct types of incidental evidence, my past experience of weak eyes inclining "do not judge", and my anticipation, intention to meet John, inclining "make the judgement".
Notice what I've done. I've classed the incidental evidence as influencing whether or not the primary judgement is actually made. I believe that is the proper representation of "doubt". When an individual is in doubt, judgement is suspended. Some forms of incidental evidence remove doubt, increasing certitude, (like @Michael's example), and incline "make the judgement" while others increase doubt inclining "do not judge".
So, when we go back to look at the primary judgement, the object is approaching at a distance, and I am considering whether my experience of seeing that object is evidence of "John is approaching" or not. Some incidental evidence will incline me toward a hasty judgement, and some will incline me toward a tardy judgement. A hasty judgement is a feature of an underlying attitude of certitude (I'm expecting John, it must be him), and a tardy judgement is a feature of an underlying attitude of doubt (my eyes are weak I ought not judge). The same person will have certitude in some respects, and be doubtful in other respects, depending on how the individual apprehends one's own strengths and weaknesses. And in some situations, like if my eyes are weak and I am expecting John, the two attitudes will be conflicting.
Quoting flannel jesus
Strawman. I said:Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Quoting flannel jesus
That is why I am disinterested and have designated discussion with you as pointless. I'm here for the philosophy.
Absolute baloney lmao! It's not a straw man at all! In addition it to it being an obviously fair paraphrasing of what you said, especially given the reply to it, you've been replying to me for many posts now where I've said that's your evidence, and not once in all of your replies to my posts did you say "that's not my evidence", until now. If it was really a straw man, you would have clarified right away instead of pocketing it for some convenient moment later. When someone misunderstands me, I try to correct them as soon as I notice. You didn't do that, so I very much doubt I misunderstood you.
And you ended that post with " I conclude that what I see is evidence that "John is approaching" is true."
Don't give me this straw man Baloney, be honest please.
I don't know with any precision how you think of "judgement" in this context, but it seems unlikely to me that your view of what happens in such scenarios as seeing John approaching is a matter of consciously making judgements.
The discussion we had awhile back, about the ability to read text with scrambled letters, is of relevance. It seems more likely to me that you recognize John approaching as a matter of subconscious pattern recognition, rather than as a matter of conscious judgement. Just as the neural networks in our brains yield fault tolerant recognitions of words, other neural networks in our brains yield fault tolerant recognitions of people.
Why think, "judgement is required to label something as evidence", is true? (As opposed to, " We subconsciously categorize perceptions as evidence for seeing John approaching, when perceptions sufficient to trigger the relevant pattern recognition has occurred.)
A relevant anecdote... Early in my first semester at college, I came back to my dorm room and recognized my roommate 'Dan', said, "Hi.", (to which 'Dan' responded as he typically did) and sat down to read.
However, I had a nagging sense that something was off. I looked up at 'Dan' and he had an amused smile for no reason apparent to me, but I couldn't figure out why something seemed off, so I went back to reading. Still I was bothered and looked up again, at which point 'Dan' introduced himself as Dave, Dan's identical twin.
It seems to me that in that case I had intuitive recognition of evidence that it wasn't actually my roommate that was in my dorm room, even though I had no conscious recognition of what that evidence was. What role (if any) do you think "judgement" played? And why not think that we can have recognition of evidence without judgement?
Yep. The autonomous workings of the mind are often neglected here in this forum, as are considerations/accounts of how simple thought begins and complex thought becomes autonomous.
I think what he's been implying but not saying directly is that when he "judges something as evidence", it might not really be evidence. Like, to him, it's only REALLY evidence if the thing it's evidence for is also true. It can be judged as evidence, but only mistakenly, if it's not true.
But to everyone else, there's no difference between judging something as evidence, and evidence. Those mean the same thing.
Like, if you say "I believe X" and I say "why? What's your evidence?" you might say "my evidence is this this and this, but I'm still not certain" while his vocabulary would force him to say "I have judged this this and this to be evidence, but I'm still not certain". Nobody else needs to add the word "judged" in there, it's already implicit.
Perhaps another way to phrase it is, for him, "evidence" can only be objective (evidence can only be objectively true signs of objectively true facts), so if he wants to talk about subjective reasons for believing something, he has to add the word "judged" in to subjectivify it. But to everyone else, "evidence" already has that subjective nature implied.
And of course it already has subjectivity baked in. Objective truths don't care about objective evidence, evidence is how imperfect human beings share ideas about their uncertain beliefs. The only reason "evidence" is a word at all is because it's useful in cases where humans are sharing their judgements about their uncertainties, and to convince other people of their conclusions. We don't need to add words to subjectivify "evidence", it's baked in.
Courts say 'present your evidence', not 'present what you have judged to be evidence'. To native English speakers, "what you have judged to be" is redundant.
Assuming Ive understood what you mean, and from the perspective of critical thought, Im not sure how much sense it makes to grant compatibility to opposing judgements. I think the approaching object is John, judgement A, has nothing to do with judgement B, but my eyes aint so good no more. A relates a perception to a representation through experience, re: John, but B relates to a representation to its relative quality, so while both relate to the same representation, they dont relate to each other. Dunno how compatibility has anything to do with it.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This incidental evidence relates to your eyes, not to the approaching object. The former is a judgement with respect to the quality of a given representation, the latter is a judgement with respect to the validity of it. The former is contingent in accordance with physiology, the latter necessary in accordance with rules.
So what judgement call are you actually hesitant in making? That the approaching object is John? Havent you tacitly made that call already, by not thinking it is any particular object at all, insofar as your proposition makes no mention of what you think the approaching object may or may not be? In effect, youve thought it unjustifiable to name the approaching object, which your proposition in fact represents. Another way to say youre hesitant in making a judgement call, is to say you just dont know. Which is fine, of course.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I understand and can accept most of that, with the exception of suspending judgement. From the perspective of critical thought, to think is to judge, from which follows suspension of judgement is impossible.
Anyway .not much more I can add here.
Yes, a topic I am quite interested in. It would be a good thread topic I think.
Go there! It's more interesting than most stuff on here currently.
The parts of the experience that might lead you to think John is approaching
are hard to consider evidence that John is not approaching.
But in in a situation where you are not sure John is approaching, but you think he is, the overall experience you are having contains evidence that he is not approaching. There is something about the entire experience that leads to doubt.
If there was nothing about the experience, nothing at all, that gave any indication this might not be John, well, that's a different situation.
So, there must be elements of the experience that FIT with it not being John approaching.
(and for what it's worth, it seems to me FJ has been fairly patiently trying to get his point across and felt it was important that you come up with the scenario and also that the scenario had specific features. I certainly could have missed things, but it seemed like your reactions included some negative assumptions about his attitudes and intentions which did not help the discussion. )
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, I brought up young earth creationism as an example of science denialism, not to say that you have the same view as a YEC. There are all sorts of science denialism, such as AGW denialism.
It seems that you are avoiding looking at, whether the following statement of yours is indicative of science denialism.
Quoting Wayfarer
I was hoping you would start the thread. :wink:
I'm better at riffing off things others have said. It's not clear to me how I would start such an OP without it becoming much too long and meandering.
The judgement I was speaking of was whether or not the approaching object is John. But I think I see your point, this implies that I've already judged that it is a person, and for some reason, or reasons, I've singled out John as the person it may be. This would be what is at issue, the reason why I've decided it may be John, because this would be the "evidence " which I am considering, what justifies naming the approaching object with that name.
So the situation is, that the name "John" has come to my mind as possibly the correct name for the thing I already have judged as an approaching person. And "John" I associate with a particular individual whom I am acquainted with. Since the name "John" has come to my mind, and is the name I am considering, I ought to conclude that there is some thing, or things, which I have already judged as evidence of John. We have distinguished two types of evidence, direct evidence, as the consideration of the visual image, and the indirect, incidental, as things like the quality of my visual capacity, and the fact that I am expecting John.
It appears to me, like as @Michael pointed out, the incidental evidence is actually much stronger than the direct empirical evidence. The direct evidence in this case relies on making an association between the immediate visual image, and the memory. But this association must be allowed to be overruled by the incidental evidence. This means that direct, immediate, empirical evidence is at a low level in the scale of reliability. Incidental evidence, prior knowledge, like knowledge about the fallibility of the senses and memory, and in this case knowledge about John's habits and intentions, must be allowed to overrule direct empirical evidence.
In relation to arguments for "Physicalism", I would say that this is strong evidence against physicalism. Physicalism is mostly supported by the idea that direct empirical evidence is the most reliable. However, it is now quite clear that direct empirical evidence places very low on the scale of reliability. We must allow that logical arguments based in prior knowledge are far more reliable as evidence for or against physicalism. And the logical arguments which have stood the test of time are mostly against physicalism.
Quoting Mww
I think that the exact relation between thinking and judgement is a very difficult issue. And, depending on how one would define each, both being somewhat ambiguous in general use, would dictate the relationship established. But if "judgement" occurs on a multitude of different levels, then some thinking would be prior to some judgements and posterior to other judgements. Any way, if you feel inclined, I'd like to see the principles from which you draw that conclusion: " From the perspective of critical thought, to think is to judge, from which follows suspension of judgement is impossible."
Quoting Bylaw
The simple claim "the experience is compatible" is simply meaningless without clarification. Experience is meaningless without some sort of interpretation of it, and this would require a description in words, or at least some form of association. How we choose the words, such as "John" in the example, as a form of association, is a form of judgement. So talking about "experience" without judgement makes no sense. There is judgement inherent within any sort of reflection on experience.
Quoting Bylaw
As Mww has (I believe) accurately described above, these different judgements are completely distinct judgements. "The thing looks like John", and "my eyes are faulty" are not necessarily related at all. Even distinct judgements of the visual impression itself are not necessarily related. "The coat looks like John's", "The type of walk does not look like John's", for example. Without the question "is that John", the individual parts of the sensual experience are unrelated, "red coat", "favours the right leg". Then, upon the question "is that John", the incidental evidence also becomes very important, "I am expecting John", "my eyes are bad so the visual sense experience is not reliable", etc., are now very important aspects of the overall experience.
The doubt, is dependent on how the various distinct judgements, direct empirical, and the indirect incidental, which are all part of the overall "experience", are related to each other. So, we must apply a further formula, or system of judgement to classify the distinct judgements as reliable and unreliable. And, as I showed above, direct empirical judgement needs to be be classed as low on the level of reliability.
Quoting Bylaw
FJ refused to separate different judgements which are very clearly distinct, as Mww shows. "That coat looks like John's coat", "my eyes are not very good", and "I am expecting John at this time", are all very distinct, and fundamentally unrelated judgements. FJ refused to separate these very distinct judgements, conflating them as one self-contradicting judgement. That is what my scenario shows, that FJ conflated very distinct judgements into what was claimed by FJ to be one judgement, which was demonstrably a self-contradicting judgement if it was actually one judgement.
Oh absolutely. Definitions, relationships and whatnot are generally predicated on a specific theory, and that theory establishes an understanding for how all that stuff works together as a system. Still worthwhile to bear in mind the talking about the system is to reify its components, the cardinal sin of proper metaphysicals itself on the one hand, but necessary for metaphysical discourse on the other. So were screwed from the get-go, with regard to obtaining sufficient agreement on much of anything.
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Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Pretty much, yeah, under the assumption physicalism is the be-all, end-all of whatever one can think of. Which seems self-contradictory from the start, insofar as thinking quite literally is a non-physical activity. So .screwed again.
Because you're not getting the distinction between an empirical theory and a metaphysical stance.
I'm afraid that a lot of time spent in these sorts of dicussions has taught me to interpret statements like that as you sticking your fingers in your ears and saying, "La, la, la, I can't hear you!"
Quoting wonderer1
It's taught me that you have little insight into or knowledge of the subject matter of this forum.
Is that what non physicalist generally believe? That there's no possible test or experimental data to demonstrate non physical phenomena?
The reality of non-physical actuality is demonstrated by logic, and the logic proceeds from premises derived from physical activity. The aspects of physical activity which lead to the conclusion of the non-physical cannot be understood by "physics", so the non-physicalist concludes that these aspects of reality can be approached through other processes of understanding, metaphysical principle which allow for the reality of the non-physical.
The physicalist metaphysics however, renders these aspects of reality as fundamentally unintelligible. So for example, we have everything within the realm of science which gets designated as "random" (random mutations of genes and abiogenesis, random fluctuations of quantum fields and symmetry-breaking), being rendered as fundamentally unintelligible by physicalism, whereas the non-physicalist would argue that such things are actually intelligible, if approached through non-physicalist premises.
This is good and I agree, in principle. Might I suggest one small change, re:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Insofar as the perspective is from logic alone rather than typically scientific experimentation, just seems fewer eyebrows would raise just before requiring you to prove the reality of, e.g., the abstract objects or ideas that ground principles a priori.
Just sayin ..
That is the heart of the issue. With logic, we might demonstrate the "validity" of the non-physical, but if the logic is sound, it would also demonstrate the truth or "reality" of the non-physical. The physicalist would argue that valid logic does nothing to prove the non-physical because so much logic proceeds from fictitious, fantasy, or imaginary premises, and such is the claim to a priori.
The task of metaphysicians then, is to ground the a priori in sound principles. Sound principles are derived from the way that we "experience" reality. Principles consistent with experience are considered to be sound. Now "experience" must be allowed to extend beyond simple sense observation (the trap that empiricism gets looked into), to include the inner most experiences of being, as phenomenology does for example. In this way the metaphysician brings the validity of the arguments for the non-physical into the position of being sound as well. We just need to escape the empiricist trap, which is a metaphysical belief that sound principles of "experience" can only be provided by sense observation.
And if the physicalist argues that all experience is simply a response to sense stimuli this is demonstrably false.
While I might agree with the notion of escaping the empiricist trap, Id still ask whether a pure empiricist could have a metaphysical belief. At least from Hume, even the suggestion of metaphysical constructs of any kind are considered either absurd, impossible, or merely reckless.
Any supernatural event or miracle could be explained by physicalism in the guise of simulation theory. Maybe if there were messages hidden in Pi from God, it would count against physicalism. The one data point that I think defeats physicalism (or makes it very unlikely), is the fact that I'm conscious. Physicalism cannot explain that and most likely never will.
Can you provide any reason to think that you aren't making an argument from ignorance?
If there was progress to be made explaining consciousness, science would have made it by now. There are also reductio absurdums at play. Bernardo Kastrup talks about one of them here: https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2023/01/ai-wont-be-conscious-and-here-is-why.html
What theory of consciousness do you subscribe to?
This just shows your ignorance of the technological challenges in the way of gaining detailed information about neurological processes. So it doesn't do anything to dispel my impression, that all you have is an argument from ignorance.
https://www.durham.ac.uk/research/current/thought-leadership/2023/10/consciousness-why-a-leading-theory-has-been-branded-pseudoscience
I expect more of this in the future. Physicalist explanations of consciousness are all pseudoscience. It just hasn't sunk in yet.
To support my claim, I will reframe the problem of consciousness in the way I see it. The problem is to explain how qualia interact with non-qualia in a way that reflects its qualitative content. For example, why do aversive qualia (e.g. suffering) cause aversive physical reactions?
There are three possible solutions. One is to explain away qualia, as illusionists do. Another is to explaim away non-qualia, as idealists do. The third is to explain the bridge between qualia and non-qualia, as most people try to do (e.g. dual-aspect monists, panpsychists, orchestrated objective reduction theorists, information integration theorists).
For lack of a better alternative, I am drawn towards illusionism, which sees qualia as cognitive illusions. We are all in fact philosophical zombies, but our cognitive apparatuses couldn't possibly believe that on an intuitive level. Qualia are just our cognitive judgments about ourselves and the world around us. I find the arguments in Dennett's work elucidating in this aspect, although they are not decisive (cf. "Quining qualia" and "Time and the observer").
If the physicalist/materialist has to make this move to salvage their ontology, they've lost the game.
The entire field of consciousness is pseudoscience. At best it's folk psychology; at worst it's superstition. I wager that physicalist explanations will come to this conclusion before non-physicalist ones.
It is too soon for anyone to be justified in calling something a scientific theory of consciousness.
However, speculation plays an important part in how scientific understanding develops.
So while in my opinion the IIT crew is being pretentious in calling IIT a theory, I wouldn't call it pseuoscience, so much as speculative hypothesizing that serves a useful role in science.
But you haven't responded to the issue of you making arguments from ignorance. Why do you consider yourself competent to judge what the state of science should be at present? Surely it is not a matter of you considering yourself scientifically well informed. Right?
As with most age-old philosophical questions, any answer to the problem of consciousness will be deeply counter-intuitive; otherwise, it wouldn't have resisted solution for so long.
For reasons we could debate, idealism, dualism, panpsychism, emergentism, and non-reductive physicalism all face serious issues in connecting qualia to the functional properties of physical objects.
Illusionism is deeply counter-intuitive in that it explains away what seems to be the most given; but that is not to be rejected apriori, but only upon theoretical and empirical reflection. There might be conceptual and empirical reason to think that qualia are incoherent posits. Here is an argument outline.
Our ability to perform conscious judgments are strongly connected to our brain processes. What happens to our brain affects our attention, object detection, object identification, object tracking, pattern detection, similarity judgment, distance judgment, duration perception, proprioception, and so on.
This is evidenced by perceptual impairments caused by brain damage, such as hemispatial neglect (seeing but ignoring objects without noticing), cortical blindness (unconscious seeing), visual anosognosia (denial of blindness), prosopagnosia (no detection of faces), akinetopsia (no detection of motion), mixed transcortical aphasia (where a person can sing but not talk), and the effects of psychedelics in perception, proprioception, ego fragmentation, and ego dissolution. The work of Oliver Sacks and the work of V. S. Ramachandran are very interesting in this regard.
From the above, some conclude that qualia are just brain processes (reductive physicalists), where others conclude that they are caused by brain processes (non-reductive physicalists, dualists), and still others believe that they partially constitute brain processes (panpsychists, dual-aspect monists, idealists). Either way, we must accept that the mind and the brain are deeply connected.
Having said so, here are some direct motivations for illusionism.
1. Consciousness seems unified, but it is not. Our brain processes are temporally and spatially distributed. There is no tiny interval in spacetime where our brain perceptual judgments coalesce so as to possibly form a unified conscious state. I like Dennett's multiple drafts hypothesis on this regard, which receives empirical support in his paper "Time and the observer" (cf. color phi phenomenon, cutaneous rabbit pheomenon). There is also something to say about the unity of consciousness when reflecting on split-brain patients; more on this in the succeeding item.
2. Our access to conscious states seems infallible, but it is not. Access to conscious states requires a physical process connecting qualia to memory, action, and speech, but such a physical connection coud aways fail. We could form false memories or simply forget what we just felt. We could feel something but not be able to think about it, act based upon it, or talk about it. This happens with split-brain patients: the right hemisphere is able to detect objects alright (and even draw them), but it cannot *talk* about it. What's worse, the right hemisphere does not notice that it cannot talk about anything. How does that conscious state (or "soul") function? Was the person's soul divided?
3. There is even an argument from the philosophy of time. The standard Minkowski interpretation of Einsteinian relativity in terms of a 4D spacetime seemingly entails eternalism that there is no objective present and that time does not objectively pass. Reality is static; time is a static relation between static events; the flow of time is an illusion. Yet, conscious states seem intrinsically dynamic, although they are in fact static.
These statements show that conscious states might not be what they appear, contradicting Berkeley's principle "esse est percipi". And if there can be a partial cognitive illusion about qualia, why not a complete cognitive illusion?
I think it is, even after reading Dan's elucidative posts, a really hard sell that Dennett even gets off the ground in reducing qualia to something other than qualia. The idea that "unification", "access" and "temporality" of conscious states is amenable to change doesn't at all infer, to me, that qualia are not qualia as currently understood. Its not just counter-intuitive, but counter possible-experience. In that way, even if it were true, I don't think its actually reasonable to expect a human mind to discuss the fact of its non-existence - given we operate via qualia at levels from sense experience to thought.
It may not be virtuous to be dismissive, but I do think it's virtuous to not waste time discussing something that, at it's base, appears to be not possible.
Quoting AmadeusD
I agree with this. There are some things that are so obviously wrong, they (and the people that support them) can be justifiably dismissed out of hand: flat-earthers, YE creationists, phrenology, palmistry, etc. Is anyone here going to spend much time arguing with a breatharian?
Am I a zombie? No. Ah, but what if you rephrase the question? Is my conscious experience and mind and subjective experiences some kind of illusion so that in effect I'm actually a zombie? No. I think a winning move in a debate with people like Dennett is to ask them to smash their finger with a hammer and then say qualia doesn't exist or is an illusion. Intense pain is probably the best rejoinder to the claim, "we're all zombies"*. When my back flares up... if only I were a p-zombie!
And I get being dismissed out of hand. My own pet theory, idealism, is taken seriously by very few. It is a very hard sell. But I sense a change in that. Panpsychism is on the rise. People are even seriously discussing plant consciousness. The materialist paradigm is teetering. That doesn't mean idealism will win out, but any loss of faith in materialism is going to translate into some gain for idealism. Bernardo Kastrup has a following. As science continues to flail away at the hard problem and more bottles of win are won by philosophers, I see my position as only getting stronger.
*Note that this is not like Johnson kicking the rock. Rock-kicking is consistent with immaterialism. Intense pain, on the other hand, directly contradicts any notions of zombiism.
Compared to someone like Christof Koch, I'm a scientific ignoramus. But is that your point? So what? Does that make me wrong? 100 researchers haven't accused me of pseudoscience. I didn't lose a humiliating bet to David Chalmers. I would gladly have taken some of Koch's wine too, if he had been inclined to bet me. So who's ahead of the game, me or the integrated information "experts"? It was very entertaining when that j'accuse! pseudoscience letter was published.
At least we can agree on that.
And it is like you don't recognize that your ignorance makes your opinion on the matter uninteresting, and tedious to respond to.
Thanks for the walm welcome. Illusionism is indeed a hard sell. It is, however, at least conceivable that there could be cognitive machines (functional minds) outputting false beliefs about there being ineffable experiences. This makes some sense when we consider that conscious experiences involve numerous cognitive judgments, rather than being (purely) some form of raw feeling. It is this feature which gives me hope that perhaps consciousness is just a cognitive illusion. However, like you, it does not fully convince me either.
It is alright to be dismissive with an inept interlocutor. Flat-earthers are very bad at physics, for instance. Illusionists, on the other hand, bring arguments and insights from cognitive science on the table, equipped with contemporary analytic philosophy of mind. They are not denying scientific evidence. What they are denying is that we have introspective evidence of qualia, and they do so by providing a somewhat detailed cognitive theory of how that comes about. I think their case is sufficiently well-argued for us to take them seriously.
At any rate, thank you for the cordial exchange. I enjoyed reading your first-hand account of what it is like to be an idealist. I have already consumed some of Kastrup's work, it is interesting indeed.
I assume you're taking it in good humour, but i am sorry. I should've been more cordial in a first comment!
Quoting DanCoimbra
I suppose to me, that is true, but its not worth pursuing given we haven't got started as to how to attempt to move toward bringing it about, really. But you're right - it is conceivable and imo, logically possible. I bite the p-zombie bullet as it is atm
They're clever. They know their facts. I just think it's an obvious dead end. I notice that in the 2009 Philpapers survey, non-physicalism regarding the mind was at 27%. In 2020, it exploded to...32%. Still, if these trends continue...
I was not jesting at all! Sorry, I had the mistaken memory that you had explicitly welcomed me, because this has happened too often (people here are very welcoming). Then I thought your welcome to be warm because you paid attention to my remarks and also said they were elucidative. :-)
Welcome to the forum Dan :) I can see you're going to really contribute a lot here. Unfortunately, my interests and proclivities aren't around mathematics or modal logic per se so we may not interact too much - but very glad to have you here, from what i've seen :)
If you describe the human being as a non-physical spirit with a body, the physicalist must say that the thing being identified as a non-physical "spirit", is really a supervening moment necessitated by a conscious brain.
Certainly seems plausible. At the very least, there is the physical. There is no real reason to deny the presence of the physical. Physicalism appears an elegant solution to a sensing, bodily being.
Thanks to Plato and Kant, we have to admit there are serious difficulties with really saying what a physical, individuated thing is in itself. So, though I think we have to admit the omni-presence of the physical, we haven't yet really satisfied ourselves that we have any actual explanation of physical things.
After searching round and round the cave under all of its physical, fleeting manifestations, being unsatisfied, what real use is it to introduce non-physicalism for more explanatory power? We don't even know what matter is, and so to insert something non-physical seems like a naïve way of introducing another unexplainable substance, adding confusion, making things worse.
But do we just need more science of the physical then, to really explain what an individuated, moving thing is? Though the physical is always there, I don't agree that the physical alone can account for my experience. We can't do what we are doing right now, namely, passing ideas from one mind to another through words, or, in other words, communicating, without the non-physical. Meaning is not physical. I mean, I know you are familiar with meaning, and use it every time you speak. We are submerged in meaning, because we are human beings.
I can say "you know what I mean" or I can say "you catch my drift" - these are different physical things, but with the same meaning, so we have three "things" here: my first phrase, my second different phrase, and the meaning of each, which happens to be the same meaning...if you are following me and digging what I'm laying down here. To make use of words, we make meaning, apart from the words. Same meaning, different words, means words and meaning are different. Meaning is the non-physical part, and only there when fabricated in a mind.
We, human minds in communication with one another, meaning things, become the bookends on the physical. We are the limit of the physical. Only from here, in the attempt to communicate meaning across the abyss of the physical, standing somewhere/somehow outside the physical, can we ask about the physical and physicalism. There is no question in the necessity of the purely physical, yet here we are, communicating our wonder over this experience.
Another way to say what I mean: the physical is tied to necessity, but if something is said to "supervene on" the physical, it must not be physical, or it would not be supervening, and it would remain part of the chain of necessity. There is no supervening on the physical without something non-physical. Somehow, we alone are that supervening, saturated in a world of immateriality.
Now whether this meaning matters, that is another question. (Yes I said "matters" as applied to "meaning" and meant "matters" in the sense of 'means anything to you' - and yes, I meant to make a pun of the words 'matter' and 'meaning'; the pun, where meaning makes a mockery of the matter/words.)
But for physicalism to mean that meaning can be fully reduced to the physics, does not seem to account for this very conversation, if any of us have meant anything here, or if any of us 'see what the other is saying', or might say "I understand." You feel me? Physics just doesn't cut it, at least not deep enough.
On your post directly above you question if meaning can be reduced to physics. Probably not in the sense we could find out the exact mechanism but it's still a likely guess that holding meaning actually is possible because the physics supports it.
Another question in the same area and I think a little more focused is can our physical brains conform to specific subject matter? I really enjoy the infinity discussions going on here now (other threads) and by that evidence I say yes and we do it very well. The opinions we form don't always agree and often disagree but for individuals it is a problem of matching mental capabilities with an inflexible subject matter. Some do it better than others. In areas of specialty... capabilities are built up over years and years. In other cases insights come quickly.
So meaning doesn't reduce to physics but brains can conform to specific subject matter. More of a reaching out and capturing than a reducing down it appears.