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[Tamminen]

What I mean by the last sentence is that because there is a conceptual gap between mental contents and brain processes, we cannot find an identity of them in the strict physicalistic sense either empirically or a priori. Instead, we can see a priori the kind of identity I am proposing.

[Felix]

Dachshund: For Place and Smart (and Co) the properties of the subjective, lived, phenomenal consciousness experienced by "John Smith" over the past, say, 5 minutes, are identical to ( i.e. are, strictly speaking, NOTHING OVER AND ABOVE) the properties of the physical neurobiological ( e.g. neurophysiological/ neurochemical/ neuroelectrical, etc, etc) processes that took place in John Smith's living brain over this time. This is what they are proposing. ... this SOUNDS completely nonsensical, but it actually is not.

There is no evidence to support this thesis, it can in no way be demonstrated, so it is indeed nonsensical.

[Tamminen]

What is a substance? For Spinoza it is "something that needs nothing else in order to exist or be conceived". If we take this definition, matter is not substance, because it has no independent existence, nor is consciousness or the subject, for the same reason. What is the concrete reality is: (1) the subject is (2) conscious of (3) the world. This ontological "trinity" is substance by Spinoza's definition.

[Dachshund]

What is a substance? For Spinoza it is "something that needs nothing else in order to exist or be conceived". If we take this definition, matter is not substance, because it has no independent existence, nor is consciousness or the subject, for the same reason. What is the concrete reality is: (1) the subject is (2) conscious of (3) the world. This ontological "trinity" is substance by Spinoza's definition.

Spinoza also defined God as a substance ( a singular, autonomous, self-subsisting substance); for Spinoza what we (human beings) call "matter" and "thought" ( i.e.mind/consciousness) were merely two of God's many different attributes, right ?

Regards

Dachshund

[Tamminen]

What is a substance? For Spinoza it is "something that needs nothing else in order to exist or be conceived". If we take this definition, matter is not substance, because it has no independent existence, nor is consciousness or the subject, for the same reason. What is the concrete reality is: (1) the subject is (2) conscious of (3) the world. This ontological "trinity" is substance by Spinoza's definition.

Spinoza also defined God as a substance ( a singular, autonomous, self-subsisting substance); for Spinoza what we (human beings) call "matter" and "thought" ( i.e.mind/consciousness) were merely two of God's many different attributes, right ?

Regards

Dachshund

Right. He says that the mind is united to the body because the body is the object of the mind, and the mind and the body are the same thing conceived under two attributes: thought and extension. I think this is closer to my views than to the physicalistic identity hypothesis.

[Consul]

Right. He says that the mind is united to the body because the body is the object of the mind, and the mind and the body are the same thing conceived under two attributes: thought and extension. I think this is closer to my views than to the physicalistic identity hypothesis.

There are two identity hypotheses: Token and Type Physicalism

"Token physicalism: For every actual particular (object, event or process) x, there is some physical particular y such that x = y.
…
Type physicalism: For every actually instantiated mental property F, there is some physical property G such that F=G."

These terms were coined by Jerry Fodor (see below!) and have become standard. But I dislike them. For example, the above definition of token physicalism presupposes that properties and relations aren't particulars but universals, which I think is false. Moreover, I think the token-type distinction doesn't correspond to the object/event-property distinction; and it is unclear what exactly types are. Many philosophers reject the view that types are universal properties or properties at all. Some think types aren't universals but classes or sets; others think they are abstract objects (e.g. the letter-type <a>). For more, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/

I prefer the following tripartite classification, which I think is more adequate and more precise:

1. Substance Materialism/Physicalism: all substances (objects/things) are material/physical substances.

2. Occurrence Materialism/Physicalism: all mental/experiential occurrences (events/processes/states/facts) are material/physical occurrences. (= "Token Materialism/Physicalism")

3. Adherence Materialism/Physicalism: all mental/experiential adherences (attributes: properties/qualities or relations) are material/physical adherences. (= "Type Materialism/Physicalism")

("Adherence"—"Adhärenz" in German—is Bernard Bolzano's term for attributes. I use it here simply because I like to have three words ending with "-nce".)

———

"If the bridge laws express event identities, and if every event that falls under the proper laws of a special science falls under a bridge law, we get the truth of a doctrine that I shall call 'token physicalism'. Token physicalism is simply the claim that all the events that the sciences talk about are physical events. There are three things to notice about token physicalism.
First, it is weaker than what is usually called “materialism”. Materialism claims both that token physicalism is true and that every event falls under the laws of some science or other. One could therefore be a token physicalist without being a materialist, though I don’t see why anyone would bother.
Second, token physicalism is weaker than what might be called 'type physicalism', the doctrine, roughly, that every property mentioned in the laws of any science is a physical property. Token physicalism does not entail type physicalism because the contingent identity of a pair of events presumably does not guarantee the identity of the properties whose instantiation constitutes the events; not even where the event identity is nomologically necessary. On the other hand, if every event is the instantiation of a property, then type physicalism does entail token physicalism: two events will be identical when they consist of
the instantiation of the same property by the same individual at the same time."

(Fodor, Jerry A. "Special Sciences (or The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)." Synthese 28 (1974): 97-115. p. 100)

[Consul]

I prefer the following tripartite classification, which I think is more adequate and more precise:

1. Substance Materialism/Physicalism: all substances (objects/things) are material/physical substances.

2. Occurrence Materialism/Physicalism: all mental/experiential occurrences (events/processes/states/facts) are material/physical occurrences. (= "Token Materialism/Physicalism")

3. Adherence Materialism/Physicalism: all mental/experiential adherences (attributes: properties/qualities or relations) are material/physical adherences. (= "Type Materialism/Physicalism")

The important point is that 2 doesn't include 3; that is, to say that all mental occurrences (occurrents) are physical ones isn't necessarily to say that all mental attributes are physical ones. So O-materialism is compatible with A-dualism. (But, of course, O-materialism is incompatible with S-dualism: if all mental occurrents are physical ones, then their substrates are physical ones too.)

[Consul]

What is a substance?

For example, here's Swinburne's (Aristotelian) conception:

"I understand by a substance a particular concrete object: my desk, that person, the photon (particle of light) emitted from this light source which landed on this screen, and so on. Substances may have other substances as parts. My desk has its drawers as parts of it; and it can exist (it is logically possible) independently of all other things of its kind (i.e. all other substances) apart from its parts; and those parts have very many electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. as their parts. Substances exist all-at-once. Whenever they exist, they exist totally. If the desk exists on Tuesday, all of it exists on Tuesday; it’s not that some part of it exists on Tuesday, and another part exists on Wednesday. I shall count anything of the kind just described as a substance, whether or not it is of a kind which features in scientific laws or is of importance in our lives."

(Swinburne, Richard. Mind, Brain, and Free Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. pp. 5-6)

Yes, all substances are concrete objects; but are all concrete objects substances? Swinburne thinks that "substances may have other substances as parts," which is denied by Leibniz and the contemporary philosopher John Heil. They think substances are essentially (mereologically) simple in the sense of lacking proper parts. However, there are different kinds of parts: substantial parts, spatial parts, temporal parts. Swinburne thinks substances have or can have both substantial parts and spatial ones, but they lack temporal ones. Heil thinks they have or can have spatial parts, but they lack substantial parts. And Leibniz thought that substances lack both substantial parts and spatial ones, such that they are 0-dimensional, point-sized objects.

[Consul]

Dachshund: For Place and Smart (and Co) the properties of the subjective, lived, phenomenal consciousness experienced by "John Smith" over the past, say, 5 minutes, are identical to ( i.e. are, strictly speaking, NOTHING OVER AND ABOVE) the properties of the physical neurobiological ( e.g. neurophysiological/ neurochemical/ neuroelectrical, etc, etc) processes that took place in John Smith's living brain over this time. This is what they are proposing. ... this SOUNDS completely nonsensical, but it actually is not.

There is no evidence to support this thesis, it can in no way be demonstrated, so it is indeed nonsensical.

No, it may be false, but it's definitely not nonsensical. There are very good arguments for it to the effect that the postulation of psychophysical identities provides the best explanation of the observed psychophysical correlations.

"All theories of the mind-body relation get involved in a certain amount of difficulty. The thing that we have to try and judge is what sort of theory seems to come off best all things considered. The task is not easy!"

(Armstrong, D. M. The Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999. p. 20)

"Conclusion: 'Perfect Correlation Is Identity'

I conclude that, apart from the dubious advantage that it is less susceptible than is the type-identity variety to empirical disconfirmation, token-identity physicalism has nothing to recommend it over its more robust type-identity rival. Moreover, so far from protecting physicalism from empirical disconfirmation, the token-identity version is itself in serious danger of being sidelined, if not actually falsified, by the emergence in the light of current and future research of the kind of 'perfect correlation' between psychological and physiological measures that according to the originator of the identity theory, psychologist E. G. Boring (1933, p. 16), constitutes identity. What Boring perhaps should have said is that if two measures correlate perfectly and spontaneously without requiring any experimental controls to induce them to do so, we have cast iron evidence that they measure one and the same thing. If, as seems more than likely, future research using the recently discovered techniques of brain imaging will allow us to identify such perfect correlations between mentally and physically specified variables, we shall be in a position to assert with confidence that at least some specifiable type-identity statements involving mentally and physically characterized processes are known to be true. In that case, who will give a fig for token-identity physicalism?"

(Place, U. T. "Token- versus Type-Identity Physicalism." 1999. Reprinted in Identifying the Mind: Selected Papers of U. T. Place, edited by George Graham and Elizabeth R. Valentine, 81-89. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. p. 89)

[Tamminen]

"Conclusion: 'Perfect Correlation Is Identity'

So if we empirically find perfect correlation, the hard problem is solved and the conceptual gap filled? How else can we claim that there is psychophysical identity in the materialistic sense? No, we cannot claim that there is identity in this sense even if there is a perfect correspondence, one-to-one, between mental contents and brain processes. Subjective concepts can be translated into physical concepts, but subjective phenomena are not composed of physical processes. A bricklayer can build a house from bricks, but not a picture of a house.

[Consul]

"Conclusion: 'Perfect Correlation Is Identity'

So if we empirically find perfect correlation, the hard problem is solved and the conceptual gap filled? How else can we claim that there is psychophysical identity in the materialistic sense? No, we cannot claim that there is identity in this sense even if there is a perfect correspondence, one-to-one, between mental contents and brain processes.

The problem with Place's statement is indeed that it is not a logical principle: Perfect correlation is logically compatible with difference. However, even if perfect correlation doesn't entail identity, it may be said to be evidence for identity at least.

Subjective concepts can be translated into physical concepts, but subjective phenomena are not composed of physical processes.

From the perspective of reductive physicalism, it's the other way round: To say that all mental phenomena are physical phenomena is not (necessarily) to say that all psychological concepts or predicates are translatable into and replaceable by (micro)physical ones.

"In taking the identity theory (in its various forms) as a species of physicalism, I should say that this is an ontological, not a translational physicalism. It would be absurd to try to translate sentences containing the word ‘brain’ or the word ‘sensation’ into sentences about electrons, protons and so on. Nor can we so translate sentences containing the word ‘tree’. After all ‘tree’ is largely learned ostensively, and is not even part of botanical classification. If we were small enough a dandelion might count as a tree. Nevertheless a physicalist could say that trees are complicated physical mechanisms."
—J. J. C. Smart: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

"[T]the [identity] thesis does not claim that sensation statements can be translated into statements about brain processes. Nor does it claim that the logic of a sensation statement is the same as that of a brain-process statement. All it claims is that in so far as a sensation statement is a report of something, that something is in fact a brain process. Sensations are nothing over and above brain processes."

(Smart, J. J. C. "Sensations and Brain Processes." The Philosophical Review 68 (1959): 141-156. pp. 144-5)

"Physicalism may be characterized as a reductionist thesis. However, it is reductionist in an ontological sense, not as a thesis that all statements can be translated into statements about physical particles, and so on."

(Smart, J. J. C. Our Place in the Universe: A Metaphysical Discussion. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. p. 81)

[The Beast]

To the title in the OP:

The platonic archetypes of Spinoza contrasted against the nature of consciousness, provide the idea of the definition of consciousness. In P10 of the mind he asserts: “The being of substance does not pertain to the essence of man, or substance does not constitute the form of man.”
It is my idea that Spinoza considers thought separate from that of substance of man. In the case of thought in humans, there is only one type of thinking or experience, but this thought is an extension of Thought and it is not an extension of the substance.
In P11: It is a form of:” I think therefore I exist.”
In P12: the object of the mind is the body, or the mind perceives everything about the body… and nothing else. But his has an intuition of evolution when he compares Thought in objects.
In conclusion Spinoza’s mind and body are two different things. His mind is in the body as an AI would be in a creation of man. Body is separate from AI.
In the properties of Thought there is also Free Will and by extension thought and free will are properties of the mind. This is the basis for consciousness.

[Consul]

No, [the materialist identity theory (MIT)] may be false, but it's definitely not nonsensical. There are very good arguments for it to the effect that the postulation of psychophysical identities provides the best explanation of the observed psychophysical correlations.

Here are some arguments:

1. MIT harmonizes best with the scientific image of the world.

2. MIT is the ontologically simplest, most parsimonious theory with regard to the mind-body/brain relationship; and there is nothing which it doesn't explain, but which is explained by attribute dualism (with or without substance dualism). So MIT is theoretically preferable to dualistic theories with respect to Occam's Razor.

2. Cosmic evolution is an ontologically continuous process that cannot naturally produce anything nonphysical:

"How could a nonphysical property or entity suddenly arise in the course of animal evolution? A change in a gene is a change in a complex molecule which causes a change in the biochemistry of the cell. This may lead to changes in the shape or organization of the developing embryo. But what sort of chemical process could lead to the springing into existence of something nonphysical? No enzyme can catalyze the production of a spook! Perhaps it will be said that the nonphysical comes into existence as a by-product: that whenever there is a certain complex physical structure, then, by an irreducible extraphysical law, there is also a nonphysical entity. Such laws would be quite outside normal scientific conceptions and quite inexplicable: they would be, in Herbert Feigl’s phrase, 'nomological danglers.' To say the very least, we can vastly simplify our cosmological outlook if we can defend a materialistic philosophy of mind."

(Smart, J. J. C. "Materialism." Journal of Philosophy 60, no. 22 (October 1963): 651-662. p. 660)

"[O]ne of the difficulties for Dualism is that it must assign the coming into existence of the immaterial mind to a definite point of time in the development of the organism, although there seems to be no natural point at which such an entity could emerge. The same difficulty holds for the Attribute theory. At what point in the gradual growth of an organism do these new, non-material, properties of the substance appear? ...[O]n the physical side we seem to have no more than a gradual increase in physical complexity without a break at any point that might betoken the emergence of something new."

(Armstrong, D. M. A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. pp. 47-8)

3. The ontological emergence of (structurally irreducible) attributes is impossible, because it is not coherently and comprehensibly conceivable how such holistic attributes adhere or attach to those composite objects/substances whose attributes they are said to be.
As for emergent mental/experiential attributes (especially qualia):

"The final criticism to be brought against the Attribute theory is a very simple one. It is just that the notion of these unique properties is a mysterious one. We are to think of the central nervous system as somehow stippled over with a changing pattern of these special properties. ...Just how do these properties attach to the brain? I, at any rate, can form no clear conception of such properties and their attachment."

(Armstrong, D. M. A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968. pp. 47-8)

4. The problem of mental causation: The natural/physical world is causally closed, such that ontologically emergent (nonphysical) attributes are epiphenomenal, i.e. causally powerless. But why would natural/physical evolution produce and sustain something whose existence makes no difference whatsoever to what happens in the world? The evolutionary appearance of such "nomological danglers" is highly implausible.

If ontologically emergent attributes were non-epiphenomenal, i.e. causally powerful, they would be magical powers that strangely interfere in/with the natural/physical laws.

[Tamminen]

Cosmic evolution is an ontologically continuous process that cannot naturally produce anything nonphysical

No, it does not produce anything nonphysical from itself, but the nonphysical is already there, as a component of the basic ontological structure of reality: the subject's being in the universe by being conscious of it. This structure is the essence of the universe, its "form". All the basic components of physics already contain the possibility, and perhaps the necessity, of building the necessary material basis for the subject's consciousness of the world and itself. And consciousness does not need to have anything that conflicts with the causal continuity of the cosmic evolution. The evolution happens for the subject, and consciousness is how the subject experiences that evolution. Because consciousness is one of the fundamental components of the ontological structure of reality, none of which cannot be removed without destroying everything, it cannot be identical with the brain physically, conceptually or logically, although it refers to the same thing as the brain: the subject's relationship to the material world.

[Karpel Tunnel]

Here are some arguments:

1. MIT harmonizes best with the scientific image of the world.

It is part of the scientific image of the world. I don't think this works as justification. The metaphysics underpinning science is physicalism. Any new phenomenon will be considered physical regardless of its qualities. And phenomenon considered real but whose nature is not understood, will be considered physical. Apart from not being falsifiable, it isn't really saying anything.

2. MIT is the ontologically simplest, most parsimonious theory with regard to the mind-body/brain relationship; and there is nothing which it doesn't explain, but which is explained by attribute dualism (with or without substance dualism). So MIT is theoretically preferable to dualistic theories with respect to Occam's Razor.

Some kind of solipsistic idealism would be much more parsimonius.

2. Cosmic evolution is an ontologically continuous process that cannot naturally produce anything nonphysical:

"How could a nonphysical property or entity suddenly arise in the course of animal evolution? A change in a gene is a change in a complex molecule which causes a change in the biochemistry of the cell. This may lead to changes in the shape or organization of the developing embryo. But what sort of chemical process could lead to the springing into existence of something nonphysical? No enzyme can catalyze the production of a spook! Perhaps it will be said that the nonphysical comes into existence as a by-product: that whenever there is a certain complex physical structure, then, by an irreducible extraphysical law, there is also a nonphysical entity. Such laws would be quite outside normal scientific conceptions and quite inexplicable: they would be, in Herbert Feigl’s phrase, 'nomological danglers.' To say the very least, we can vastly simplify our cosmological outlook if we can defend a materialistic philosophy of mind."

To me this reads as an appeal to incredulity. I don't happen to think consciousness arose at a certain point in evolution, given I am a panpsychist, but the above boils down to: I can't see how this is possible. And again, normal scientific conceptions work from the framework that anything real is physical and anything newly found will be considered physical.

(Smart, J. J. C. "Materialism." Journal of Philosophy 60, no. 22 (October 1963): 651-662. p. 660)

"[O]ne of the difficulties for Dualism is that it must assign the coming into existence of the immaterial mind to a definite point of time in the development of the organism,

Or it was alwasy present. From there it may or may not have increased its functions over time, and these functions may or may not have be connected to complexity in matter. I'm not a dualist, but I don't think this argument works against it.

4. The problem of mental causation: The natural/physical world is causally closed, such that ontologically emergent (nonphysical) attributes are epiphenomenal, i.e. causally powerless.

Who says and based on what necessary laws?

But why would natural/physical evolution produce and sustain something whose existence makes no difference whatsoever to what happens in the world?

As long as it did not damage those organisms enough (or at all) to bring natural selection to bear on them negatively, sure. I see no reason why things that do not harm nor help an organism cannot arise through mutation and then persist.

If ontologically emergent attributes were non-epiphenomenal, i.e. causally powerful, they would be magical powers that strangely interfere in/with the natural/physical laws.

They would have effects we cannot account for by purely referring to what we classify as physical, though these effects would be natural, since they would be real. We do not yet have an account of consciousness, so it seems just on this basis alone the door is still open. Observation seems to have effects without a clear physical component, though I do realize science calls this all physical, I am not sure what physical 'thing' affects observed particles/waves and changes them. That seems to leave the door open.

And while these may seem small - literally in relation to qm - and the blip of awareness in consciousness, we are still not sure how much qm phenomena affect large scale events, since for example qm processes are used by large animals in sensing, but then also in terms of what is happening overall - some of the hypotheses to preserve determinism.

Again, I am not a dualist, though I am not a monist either. I pretty much black box that. I just think that a lot of what seems to confirm there being only physical things is the expanding set approach science has and the presumption that anything real will be physical. I think this infects what end up being circular arguments supporting physicalism. They don't look circular, but they are in practice. There also seems to be speculation posing as deduction. I realize that 'the other side' can seem to be speculating also, but that doesn't change the problem for physicalists.