Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Philosophy Club

[Tamminen]

All empirical evidence of consciousness is based upon material. Specifically it is neural material. Without it there is nothing of the kind.
So I think you might want to extend your understanding of matter to include the unique organisations of matter to include such things as information, data, and consciousness.

I think all phenomena of consciousness have material correlates, but this does not mean that consciousness can be reduced to material processes. It is more like an instrumental relationship. And the subject itself has no material correlates.

We can say that the subject and its consciousness of the world is ontologically fundamental, but the material world is the functional basis of the subject's concrete existence.

The concepts of consciousness cannot be reduced to the concepts of physics. Only correlations between them can be found.

[Consul]

I question materialism as well. If materialism is true, then everything can be explained by physical properties.

If materialism/physicalism is true, then all chemical, biological, psychological, and sociological phenomena are physically explainable in principle or ideally/theoretically, but not necessarily in practice. For it may be practically impossible for semantic reasons to translate the respective terminologies or "ideologies" ("stock[s] of simple and complex terms or predicates" – Quine) of chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology, which are employed in their respective theories, into the language of physics. Moreover, such translations may be practically unfeasible for syntactic reasons, i.e. due to linguistic limits of syntactically representable complexity. For example, a microphysical (atom-/particle-level) description and explanation of an ultracomplex neural process involving millions of neurons and millions of neuronal interactions is arguably much too complex to be linguistically expressible or formulizable. However, it by no means follows that ontological materialism/physicalism is therefore false!

"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)

"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/

"[P]hysicalism is not the doctrine that everything is explicitly physical. Physicalism does not say that all descriptions or conceptual apparatus are couched in physical vocabulary or analyzable a priori in physical vocabulary. Physicalists allow that there are domains of thought other than physics. Physicalists do not say that economics, history, and anthropology use physicalistic vocabulary or conceptual apparatus. This is an absurd form of conceptual or terminological reductionism that cannot be equated with physicalism."

(Block, Ned. "Max Black’s Objection to Mind-Body Identity." In Consciousness, Function, and Representation: Collected Papers, Vol. 1, 435-498. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007. p. 472)

[anonymous66]

Consul
How would you define physicalism? How is it different from idealism? Or property dualism? or substance dualism?

[Consul]

@Consul: How would you define physicalism? How is it different from idealism? Or property dualism? or substance dualism?

There are both reductionist and nonreductionist/emergentist forms of materialism/physicalism, but reductive materialism/physicalism is the view that…

"…there is nothing in the world over and above the entities of physics, and that everything operates according to the laws of physics. According to this view, living organisms (including human beings) are very complicated physical mechanisms and nothing more."

(Smart, J. J. C. Our Place in the Universe: A Metaphysical Discussion. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. p. 79)

I would add: "…the entities of physics (present or future)…"

"Ontological reductionism is the thesis that everything in the world is ultimately composed of nothing more than the entities of physics (another way of putting it is that all entities reduce to those of physics)."

(Iredale, Mathew. The Problem of Free Will: A Contemporary Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2014. p. 33)

Footnote: What is defined here is materialistic ontological reductionism, since there is a spiritualistic ontological reductionism (reductive spiritualism) too (e.g. Berkeley's idealism).

So, if reductive materialism/physicalism is true, the respective ontologies of all sciences different from physics (chemistry, biology, psychology, sociology,…) are completely reducible to the ontology of physics, because all (real) entities of sciences different from physics are completely composed or constructed of entities of physics. That is, all "higher-level" entities postulated by the nonphysical sciences—especially by psychology— are nothing more than complexes or systems of purely physical entities.

An ontology—with "ontology" as a count noun—is "the set of things whose existence is acknowledged by a particular theory or system of thought" (E. J. Lowe), or the inventory of entities to which a scientific theory or science is ontologically committed.

By the way, it should be mentioned that there is a minor complication with regard to the above definitions, because there may be unknown physical entities which are not (and perhaps never become) part of the actual ontology of physics, of its inventory of acknowledged entities. So there may be latent or "occult" physical entities in addition to the ones known, discovered, acknowledged, or posited/postulated by physicists.

[Consul]

"…there is nothing in the world over and above the entities of physics…"

(Smart, J. J. C. Our Place in the Universe: A Metaphysical Discussion. Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. p. 79)

Physics is the basic natural science of MEST (Matter-Energy-Space-Time); and physicalism is realistic or non-spiritualistic about its science-specific subject matter or ontology, so a non-realistic or spiritualistic interpretation of it (à la Berkeley) is ruled out by physicalism: Matter isn't Mind!

"Physics—The study of the laws that determine the structure of the universe with reference to the matter and energy of which it consists. It is concerned not with chemical changes that occur but with the forces that exist between objects and the interrelationship between matter and energy."
—Oxford Dictionary of Physics

"The physicalist is the materialist who has learnt the lessons of twentieth-century physics. The most basic teaching of both relativity and quantum physics is that our intuitions are of no help in the scientific quest to understand the fundamental nature of matter. The world, as conceived by modern physics, both in its vastness, as described by astrophysics and cosmology, and in its minuteness, as revealed by the quantum-mechanical Standard Model of particle physics, is so strange, so immensely complex and difficult to grasp, that speculations based on ordinary ideas can contribute nothing to the painstaking practice of science."

(Brown, Robin Gordon, and James Ladyman. Materialism: A Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. Abingdon: Routledge, 2019. p. 121)

The term "physicalism" is nowadays much more fashionable than the good old label "materialism", partly because the former lacks the latter's negative/pejorative connotations. But, actually, metaphysical/ontological materialism is totally independent of and doesn't include ethical or economic materialism, according to which nothing has value except material goods, money, riches, or wealth. Nor does it include a primitive hedonism according to which all that matters in life are sensual pleasures.

"A quite different sense of the word 'Materialism' should be noted in which it denotes not a metaphysical theory but an ethical attitude. A person is a Materialist in this sense if he is interested mainly in sensuous pleasures and bodily comforts and hence in the material possessions that bring these about. A man might be a Materialist in this ethical and pejorative sense without being a metaphysical Materialist, and conversely. An extreme physicalistic Materialist, for example, might prefer a Beethoven record to a comfortable mattress for his bed; and a person who believes in immaterial spirits might opt for the mattress."
—J. J. C. Smart: Materialism in Encyclopaedia Britannica

As far as I'm concerned, I still like and use the good old term "materialism" because…

"[Materialism] was so named when the best physics of the day was the physics of matter alone. Now our best physics acknowledges other bearers of fundamental properties: parts of pervasive fields, parts of causally active spacetime. But it would be pedantry to change the name on that account, and disown our intellectual ancestors. Or worse, it would be a tacky marketing ploy, akin to British Rail's decree that second class passengers shall now be called 'standard class customers'."

(Lewis, David. "Reduction of Mind." In A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, edited by Samuel D. Guttenplan, 412-431. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. p. 413)

"I say 'materialistic' where some would rather say 'physicalistic': an adequate theory must be consistent with the truth and completeness of some theory in much the style of present-day physics. ('Completeness' is to be explained in terms of supervenience.)
Some fear that 'materialism' conveys a commitment that this ultimate physics must be a physics of matter alone: no fields, no radiation, no causally active spacetime. Not so! Let us proclaim our solidarity with forebears who, like us, wanted their philosophy to agree with ultimate physics. Let us not chide and disown them for their less advanced ideas about what ultimate physics might say."

(Lewis, David. "Naming the Colours." In Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, 332-358. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 332n2)

[Consul]

No, you're wrong, because being is independent of meaning. Objective existence is independent of subjective importance/relevance/significance.

Only the subject can make claims about reality. The subject can only make claims about objects within the subject-world relationship. Also claims about places in physical spacetime where there are no actual subjects are made within the subject-world relationship. That such valid claims can be made is not a valid argument for materialism.

Wittgenstein remarked that we can only seek in space. In the same way we can say that we can only posit something in logical space. And it makes no sense to speak about logical space if there is no one for whom it is the logical space to operate in. So the subject is the limit of the logical space where the world exists. Therefore we cannot get rid of the subject in ontology. Ignoring the subject would be going beyond the limits of logic.

You are very wrong! The existence of subjects isn't a "transcendental condition" of the possibility of a world of objects. There is absolutely nothing illogical about a subjectless or subject-independent ontology (set of entities). (Of course, doing ontology as a philosophical discipline requires thinking subjects.)

For example, the physical theory of relativity doesn't say that spacetime exists only relatively to subjects. Of course, physicists are subjects; but physical reality is independent both of physicists and of physical theories representing it.

[Consul]

...being is independent of meaning. Objective existence is independent of subjective importance/relevance/significance.

I did not speak about "subjective importance/relevance/significance". I claim that all being, to be in the first place, must have a subjective perspective: it must mean something for the subject, whatever it means, or lacks all meaning, as long as there is the subject's perspective to being. Without it being loses not only meaning but itself. Note that we have a subjective perspective also to events that we are not conscious of, or which have no physical contact to us.

There is no such thing as the subject, since there are many different subjects (and subjective perspectives); and it just makes no sense to me to equate being with being-meaningful-for-somebody. Nor do I understand sentences such as "Without [the subject's perspective] being loses not only meaning but itself." Do you believe the world as a whole would necessarily cease to exist if all subjects therein ceased to exist?

[Consul]

As for me, I am not worried about this. I presume that one day the lights will go out of my body and I will then enter some other kind of state.

This state is called death. You will then be a dead body, a corpse.

[Atla]

Professional philosophers are faced with a bit of a dilemma.

They could "solve" philosophy by realizing that the mental and the material are one and the same, that these two are merely two ways of thinking. So all ideas based on dualism, like: materialism, idealism, substance/property/aspect dualism, even Western panpsychism are wrong.

But then they wouldn't have much left to do and could lose their jobs.

[Consul]

Professional philosophers are faced with a bit of a dilemma.

They could "solve" philosophy by realizing that the mental and the material are one and the same, that these two are merely two ways of thinking. So all ideas based on dualism, like: materialism, idealism, substance/property/aspect dualism, even Western panpsychism are wrong.

But then they wouldn't have much left to do and could lose their jobs.

Are you alluding to neutral monism?

[Atla]

Professional philosophers are faced with a bit of a dilemma.

They could "solve" philosophy by realizing that the mental and the material are one and the same, that these two are merely two ways of thinking. So all ideas based on dualism, like: materialism, idealism, substance/property/aspect dualism, even Western panpsychism are wrong.

But then they wouldn't have much left to do and could lose their jobs.

Are you alluding to neutral monism?

Well I see Western neutral monism as quite problematic, to some degree it's still based on dualism.

Is "ultimate reality all of one kind"? Basically we could say that that's correct (and it's not a substance), but then it makes no sense to call this one kind neutral between mental and material.

Instead of collapsing the two ways of thinking into one way of thinking (which would have "solved" philosophy), we added a third way of thinking. Now we have neutral, and mental+material. So we try to figure out how the mental+material relate to the neutral.

[Tamminen]

The existence of subjects isn't a "transcendental condition" of the possibility of a world of objects. There is absolutely nothing illogical about a subjectless or subject-independent ontology (set of entities).

It is not illogical when we use logic here in the community of subjects, but we cannot apply logic to a world where there is nobody applying logic. That kind of a world is a pure abstraction, and saying something about it is not within the limits of logic. The subject, or transcendental subject, or metaphysical subject, or subjective perspective, or whatever we call it, is the limit of our logical space, and only within that limit we can say something about the world. A subjectless world is a paradox. If all subjects were removed, nothing would change, except that there would be no world. Therefore a subjectless world is not possible, if by 'world' we mean everything there is, seen as a spatiotemporal totality. This seems to be difficult to understand, perhaps due to the paradox described above, but the situation is indeed not as simple as you say.

For example, the physical theory of relativity doesn't say that spacetime exists only relatively to subjects.

Physics puts the subject into "brackets" because it does not need it in its theories. But maybe some day it has to open the brackets.

There is no such thing as the subject, since there are many different subjects (and subjective perspectives)

The subject is what is common to all indivudual subjects. We can also call it subjectivity. It is what Wittgenstein called the metaphysical subject.

...it just makes no sense to me to equate being with being-meaningful-for-somebody

'Meaningful' here just means the subjective perspective.

Nor do I understand sentences such as "Without [the subject's perspective] being loses not only meaning but itself." Do you believe the world as a whole would necessarily cease to exist if all subjects therein ceased to exist?

It means that the world without subjects is impossible, seen as a spatiotemporal totality. What you say is exactly the paradox I speak about. The "phenomenon" of existence comes with subjectivity, in the same way as your personal existence, i.e. consiousness, appears at some moment of physical time in the physiological development of your body.

This state is called death. You will then be a dead body, a corpse.

I guess you do not see any existential problem with death. Something philosophy should be interested in.

[anonymous66]

Consul
I can accept that reductive materialism/physicalism is false, because it cannot explain the fact that mental states are real, yet also accept that there is a form of physicalism that can explain just how it is that mental states are real. It's just that I have not encountered the idea before. Is there a name for this type of physicalism (the one that can explain how it is that mental states are real)? Just how does one describe consciousness in this other type of physicalism?

BTW, I accept there is only one type of substance- I'm a substance monist.

[Consul]

Are you alluding to neutral monism?

Well I see Western neutral monism as quite problematic, to some degree it's still based on dualism.
Is "ultimate reality all of one kind"? Basically we could say that that's correct (and it's not a substance), but then it makes no sense to call this one kind neutral between mental and material.
Instead of collapsing the two ways of thinking into one way of thinking (which would have "solved" philosophy), we added a third way of thinking. Now we have neutral, and mental+material. So we try to figure out how the mental+material relate to the neutral.

I reject neutral monism, because we don't have any positive conception of the nature of the allegedly neutral entities—unless neutral monism is actually a mental monism: "The most frequent type of objection to the traditional versions of neutral monism is that they are all forms of mentalistic monism: Berkleyan idealism, panpsychism, or phenomenalism." – https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neutral-monism/
Moreover, when the neutral entities are said to be neither mental nor physical, this is what abstract entities are usually said to be; but the neutral ones are regarded as concrete entities.

By the way, in his classification (in Mind and its Place in Nature, 1925), Charlie Broad mentions nine(!) forms of neutralism: http://www.ditext.com/broad/mpn14.html

As for the nature of ultimate reality, there are four possibilities:
1. purely mental
2. purely physical
3. both mental and physical
4. neither mental nor physical (neutral)

[Consul]

@Consul
I can accept that reductive materialism/physicalism is false, because it cannot explain the fact that mental states are real, yet also accept that there is a form of physicalism that can explain just how it is that mental states are real. It's just that I have not encountered the idea before. Is there a name for this type of physicalism (the one that can explain how it is that mental states are real)? Just how does one describe consciousness in this other type of physicalism?

I'm not sure what the difference between "to explain the fact that mental states are real" and "to explain how it is that mental states are real" is. Which sort of explanation do you have in mind?