Sculptor1 wrote: ↑May 26th, 2019, 5:13 pmMaterialism is complicated.Physics is complicated, physicalism is comparatively simple.
- May 26th, 2019, 8:53 pm
#331383
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Location: Germany
- May 26th, 2019, 10:59 pm
#331388
No, materialism/physicalism is not absurd—on the contrary!
"'Naturalism' connotes at least a method and sometimes a metaphysics. As a method, naturalism consists in unequivocal allegiance, down the whole gamut of belief, in every department of life and knowledge, to experience and logic, particularly the scientific logic of empirical inquiry. This need not mean a willingness to accept piecemeal the sciences in lieu of philosophy, and still less does it mean to accept the philosophies of scientists (which are usually mentalistic, mystical, or agnostic). It does mean to assert that no knowledge of synthetic fact is of a higher denomination than the deliverances of the several natural sciences and that if and when the latter are overridden, they must be so, not by revelation or reason, but only on their own terms, by better attested or more pervasive empirical hypotheses.
As a metaphysics, naturalism is what Roy W. Sellars has called 'physical realism.' It can hardly be called 'physicalism' because that name has been preempted by persons seeking a merely semiotic 'unity of science' which explicitly rejects physical realism. The name 'materialism' has been smirched by invidious associations, due partly to its use in moralistic literature to stigmatize piggishness and bad manners, partly to the frequency with which pugnacious materialists have attached themselves to antiquated theories of matter, and partly to a passionate philosophical opposition which has deliberately utilized these circumstances to denigrate the doctrine. 'Materialism,' however, is the most descriptive and venerable title, and I shall hereinafter, for the sake of candor as well as brevity, use it interchangeably with 'physical realism' or 'realistic naturalism.'
Physical realism, or materialism, is the doctrine that the whole of what exists is constituted of matter and its local motions, not Aristotelian 'prime matter' but physical matter, and is hence 'physical' in the literal sense that all its constituents are among the subject matter of physics. Every entity—stone or man, idea or essence—is on this principle a vulnerable and effective denizen of the one continuum of action, and in the entire universe, including the knowing mind itself, there is nothing which could not be destroyed (or repaired) by a spatiotemporal redisposition of its components."
(pp. 212-3)
"The materialist, holding that the world is matter, is not wedded to any one doctrine of the nature of matter. To this conceptual commodiousness there can be two kinds of objection. One is genuinely philosophical, that the new physical categories are less competent than the old to deal with the phenomena. This however, is clearly false. Nobody seriously believes that the concept of atoms and the void is more apt and versatile than the concept, for example, of force fields or space strains. The other objection is terminological: that the new concepts are so different from, and so superior to, the old that the philosophy which utilizes them cannot significantly be called by the same name. The thread of identity, however, which enables us to say that Democritus and the latest physicist are both talking about the same stuff, 'matter', is patent in the facts, not only that they claim to be examining the minute composition of the same macroscopic objects—pieces of bronze or wood—but that the elements which each reports are primarily shapes. Shapes, spatiotemporal configurations, were the only distinctive qualities of Democritus' atoms, as they constitute the whole nature of the matter of modern physics.
What the physical realists of all ages agree on is that every concrete real thing, and its every element or aspect, are located and extended in a single space-time system and can be wholly accounted for by chronogeometrical formulas. 'It is of no relevance whatever whether the space-occupying elements are small, solid, spherical atoms, ...or whether they are unit electric charges or clusters...of electromagnetic waves.' [William P. Montague, The Way of Things, 1940]
Physical realism thus specified is a perfectly meaningful thesis because specific spatiotemporal patterns and the determinable attribute of spatiotemporal pattern in general are plainly discernible among the constituents of experience."
(pp. 220-1)
"While the physicists brace themselves for a more manly account of their categories, the naturalistic metaphysician can sketch in the major design of the world order without declaring more precisely on the nature of the ultimate elements than that they are patterns of action, processes or events completely describable in terms of space-time coordinates, or if not actions strictly speaking, then some sort of structures in four dimensions of extension."
(p. 222)
"As soon as physical realism is set forth with some degree of precision and polish, the same detractors who once charged it with being an odious grotesquerie are ready to charge it with being an obvious truism, having no intelligible alternative. On the contrary, the statement of materialism thus clarified not only means something; it means something distinctive, arresting, illuminating, a thesis so far from empty and obvious that, unfortunately, it has been expressly denied by a great majority of philosophers and philosophasters. It has seldom been wholly without adherents; it is the philosophy taken for granted by a good many educated men, including especially those engineers and scientists who have not been corrupted by mysticism or phenomenalism; but most of the populace of Christendom, and most metaphysicians dignified with livings, lay or ecclesiastical, have emphatically refused to admit that everything in the universe can be ruined or repaired by local rearrangement. They have believed in enormous amounts of nonphysical, nonspatial, and even nontemporal reality, beyond the corruption of moth and rust, either supplementing material reality or supplanting it: minds, soul, spirits, and ideas, transcendent ideals and eternal objects, numbers, principles, angels, and Pure Being."
(p. 224)
"The ideal aim of systematic knowledge is to disclose the fewest primitive elements into which the most diverse objects are analysable and the fewest primitive facts, singular and general, from which the behavior of things is deducible. Metaphysics is the most scientific of the sciences because it tries the hardest to explain every kind of fact by one simple principle or simple set of principles. It is the most empirical of sciences because, by the same token, a metaphysics is directly relevant to and confirmable or falsifiable by every item of every experience, whereas every other science is explicitly concerned with only a few select and abstract aspects of some experiences. Physical realism is the ideal metaphysics, the veritable paragon of philosophy, because its category of spatiotemporal pattern best permits analysis of diverse complexity to uniform and ordered simplicities, is most thoroughly numerable, and so most exactly and systematically calculable. Socratic purposes, Platonic ideals, Aristotelian qualities, Plotinian hierarchies—these are surds in comparison with a system of nature limned in patterns of actions in the ordered dimensions of a spatiotemporal hypersphere."
(p. 227)
"The candid student, in fine, cannot be blamed if he concludes that the only reason that physical realism seems vulnerable at all is that it explains so much more so much better than other philosophies that the imperfections of its explanations are noticeable. As solipsism gains undeserved credit by being so preposterous that its bare possibility looks like evidence in its favor, so materialism suffers by having so few difficulties that one difficulty more or less makes a difference. A blasé public does not expect idealisms and dualisms to explain anything. With innocent cynicism, we appreciate that these philosophies were designed for a different purpose and are doing all that can be expected in a logical way if they avoid contradicting themselves and the obvious facts of experience. The physical realist seems constantly riding for a fall because he is on the only horse really entered in the chase.
It is most excellent testimony to the high confirmedness of physical realism that so many of its competitors renounce confirmation as a criterion. It is a tribute to its power of explaining the appearances that its competitors call it a philosophy of appearances (for we have seen that it is not a philosophy of appearances in any other sense), and that the persons who hate it are preeminently the persons who hate understanding, the mystery lovers. It is a tribute to the scientific advantage of materialism that the application of scientific method in philosophy is so often decried as a begging of the question in its favor and that materialism is called a presupposition of scientific method or scientific method is alleged to be limited to material reality. The logic of science has in sooth no presuppositions and no limitations. It is analytic and a priori, like 'Eggs are eggs', and inexorably germane to any possible world, monistic or dualistic, theistic or atheistic, chaos or cosmos. The hand-in-glove conformity of physical realism and scientific method is no logically preestablished harmony but the empirical fit of a beautifully concordant hypothesis with the facts.
Physical realism is not a foregone conclusion, but it is so lucid and probable that to defend it is, in this day, to defend integrity and understanding. To be loyal to it is to be loyal to philosophy, as to be loyal to philosophy is to be loyal to knowledge and to life. Materialism has often been patronized as a naive and childish philosophy, and this judgment of it is less unjust than most. Materialism is the philosophy of the preschool child as of a pre-Socratic and pre-Sophistic culture. It is the philosophy of limpid minds concerned only to know what most likely is actually the case, not yet distraught by the desire to turn ideation to the uses of compensation, obfuscation, or denial.
For us in America today the contrast between the high-hearted metaphysics of naturalism and all the fine evasions of obscurantism and agnosticism may be literally of epochal importance. The culture of America, by reason of its unique provenance, may choose either to be old or to be young, to be Alexandrian or to be Milesian. Whether we are thus at the end of a career or the beginning or one will in large part depend upon whether our citizens in this century learn their lessons from mystic evangels who would purge us of scientific understanding, from resigned sophisticates who set up languages and toy with thoughts of future possible sensations, or from philosophers who explore the nature of things."
(pp. 237-8)
(Williams, Donald Cary. "Naturalism and the Nature of Things." 1944. In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 212-238. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966.)
"'Naturalism' connotes at least a method and sometimes a metaphysics. As a method, naturalism consists in unequivocal allegiance, down the whole gamut of belief, in every department of life and knowledge, to experience and logic, particularly the scientific logic of empirical inquiry. This need not mean a willingness to accept piecemeal the sciences in lieu of philosophy, and still less does it mean to accept the philosophies of scientists (which are usually mentalistic, mystical, or agnostic). It does mean to assert that no knowledge of synthetic fact is of a higher denomination than the deliverances of the several natural sciences and that if and when the latter are overridden, they must be so, not by revelation or reason, but only on their own terms, by better attested or more pervasive empirical hypotheses.
As a metaphysics, naturalism is what Roy W. Sellars has called 'physical realism.' It can hardly be called 'physicalism' because that name has been preempted by persons seeking a merely semiotic 'unity of science' which explicitly rejects physical realism. The name 'materialism' has been smirched by invidious associations, due partly to its use in moralistic literature to stigmatize piggishness and bad manners, partly to the frequency with which pugnacious materialists have attached themselves to antiquated theories of matter, and partly to a passionate philosophical opposition which has deliberately utilized these circumstances to denigrate the doctrine. 'Materialism,' however, is the most descriptive and venerable title, and I shall hereinafter, for the sake of candor as well as brevity, use it interchangeably with 'physical realism' or 'realistic naturalism.'
Physical realism, or materialism, is the doctrine that the whole of what exists is constituted of matter and its local motions, not Aristotelian 'prime matter' but physical matter, and is hence 'physical' in the literal sense that all its constituents are among the subject matter of physics. Every entity—stone or man, idea or essence—is on this principle a vulnerable and effective denizen of the one continuum of action, and in the entire universe, including the knowing mind itself, there is nothing which could not be destroyed (or repaired) by a spatiotemporal redisposition of its components."
(pp. 212-3)
"The materialist, holding that the world is matter, is not wedded to any one doctrine of the nature of matter. To this conceptual commodiousness there can be two kinds of objection. One is genuinely philosophical, that the new physical categories are less competent than the old to deal with the phenomena. This however, is clearly false. Nobody seriously believes that the concept of atoms and the void is more apt and versatile than the concept, for example, of force fields or space strains. The other objection is terminological: that the new concepts are so different from, and so superior to, the old that the philosophy which utilizes them cannot significantly be called by the same name. The thread of identity, however, which enables us to say that Democritus and the latest physicist are both talking about the same stuff, 'matter', is patent in the facts, not only that they claim to be examining the minute composition of the same macroscopic objects—pieces of bronze or wood—but that the elements which each reports are primarily shapes. Shapes, spatiotemporal configurations, were the only distinctive qualities of Democritus' atoms, as they constitute the whole nature of the matter of modern physics.
What the physical realists of all ages agree on is that every concrete real thing, and its every element or aspect, are located and extended in a single space-time system and can be wholly accounted for by chronogeometrical formulas. 'It is of no relevance whatever whether the space-occupying elements are small, solid, spherical atoms, ...or whether they are unit electric charges or clusters...of electromagnetic waves.' [William P. Montague, The Way of Things, 1940]
Physical realism thus specified is a perfectly meaningful thesis because specific spatiotemporal patterns and the determinable attribute of spatiotemporal pattern in general are plainly discernible among the constituents of experience."
(pp. 220-1)
"While the physicists brace themselves for a more manly account of their categories, the naturalistic metaphysician can sketch in the major design of the world order without declaring more precisely on the nature of the ultimate elements than that they are patterns of action, processes or events completely describable in terms of space-time coordinates, or if not actions strictly speaking, then some sort of structures in four dimensions of extension."
(p. 222)
"As soon as physical realism is set forth with some degree of precision and polish, the same detractors who once charged it with being an odious grotesquerie are ready to charge it with being an obvious truism, having no intelligible alternative. On the contrary, the statement of materialism thus clarified not only means something; it means something distinctive, arresting, illuminating, a thesis so far from empty and obvious that, unfortunately, it has been expressly denied by a great majority of philosophers and philosophasters. It has seldom been wholly without adherents; it is the philosophy taken for granted by a good many educated men, including especially those engineers and scientists who have not been corrupted by mysticism or phenomenalism; but most of the populace of Christendom, and most metaphysicians dignified with livings, lay or ecclesiastical, have emphatically refused to admit that everything in the universe can be ruined or repaired by local rearrangement. They have believed in enormous amounts of nonphysical, nonspatial, and even nontemporal reality, beyond the corruption of moth and rust, either supplementing material reality or supplanting it: minds, soul, spirits, and ideas, transcendent ideals and eternal objects, numbers, principles, angels, and Pure Being."
(p. 224)
"The ideal aim of systematic knowledge is to disclose the fewest primitive elements into which the most diverse objects are analysable and the fewest primitive facts, singular and general, from which the behavior of things is deducible. Metaphysics is the most scientific of the sciences because it tries the hardest to explain every kind of fact by one simple principle or simple set of principles. It is the most empirical of sciences because, by the same token, a metaphysics is directly relevant to and confirmable or falsifiable by every item of every experience, whereas every other science is explicitly concerned with only a few select and abstract aspects of some experiences. Physical realism is the ideal metaphysics, the veritable paragon of philosophy, because its category of spatiotemporal pattern best permits analysis of diverse complexity to uniform and ordered simplicities, is most thoroughly numerable, and so most exactly and systematically calculable. Socratic purposes, Platonic ideals, Aristotelian qualities, Plotinian hierarchies—these are surds in comparison with a system of nature limned in patterns of actions in the ordered dimensions of a spatiotemporal hypersphere."
(p. 227)
"The candid student, in fine, cannot be blamed if he concludes that the only reason that physical realism seems vulnerable at all is that it explains so much more so much better than other philosophies that the imperfections of its explanations are noticeable. As solipsism gains undeserved credit by being so preposterous that its bare possibility looks like evidence in its favor, so materialism suffers by having so few difficulties that one difficulty more or less makes a difference. A blasé public does not expect idealisms and dualisms to explain anything. With innocent cynicism, we appreciate that these philosophies were designed for a different purpose and are doing all that can be expected in a logical way if they avoid contradicting themselves and the obvious facts of experience. The physical realist seems constantly riding for a fall because he is on the only horse really entered in the chase.
It is most excellent testimony to the high confirmedness of physical realism that so many of its competitors renounce confirmation as a criterion. It is a tribute to its power of explaining the appearances that its competitors call it a philosophy of appearances (for we have seen that it is not a philosophy of appearances in any other sense), and that the persons who hate it are preeminently the persons who hate understanding, the mystery lovers. It is a tribute to the scientific advantage of materialism that the application of scientific method in philosophy is so often decried as a begging of the question in its favor and that materialism is called a presupposition of scientific method or scientific method is alleged to be limited to material reality. The logic of science has in sooth no presuppositions and no limitations. It is analytic and a priori, like 'Eggs are eggs', and inexorably germane to any possible world, monistic or dualistic, theistic or atheistic, chaos or cosmos. The hand-in-glove conformity of physical realism and scientific method is no logically preestablished harmony but the empirical fit of a beautifully concordant hypothesis with the facts.
Physical realism is not a foregone conclusion, but it is so lucid and probable that to defend it is, in this day, to defend integrity and understanding. To be loyal to it is to be loyal to philosophy, as to be loyal to philosophy is to be loyal to knowledge and to life. Materialism has often been patronized as a naive and childish philosophy, and this judgment of it is less unjust than most. Materialism is the philosophy of the preschool child as of a pre-Socratic and pre-Sophistic culture. It is the philosophy of limpid minds concerned only to know what most likely is actually the case, not yet distraught by the desire to turn ideation to the uses of compensation, obfuscation, or denial.
For us in America today the contrast between the high-hearted metaphysics of naturalism and all the fine evasions of obscurantism and agnosticism may be literally of epochal importance. The culture of America, by reason of its unique provenance, may choose either to be old or to be young, to be Alexandrian or to be Milesian. Whether we are thus at the end of a career or the beginning or one will in large part depend upon whether our citizens in this century learn their lessons from mystic evangels who would purge us of scientific understanding, from resigned sophisticates who set up languages and toy with thoughts of future possible sensations, or from philosophers who explore the nature of things."
(pp. 237-8)
(Williams, Donald Cary. "Naturalism and the Nature of Things." 1944. In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 212-238. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966.)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Location: Germany
- May 26th, 2019, 11:24 pm
#331389
"Compare now what the neuroscientist can tell us about the brain, and what she can do with that knowledge, with what the dualist can tell us about spiritual substance, and what he can do with those assumptions. Can the dualist tell us anything about the internal constitution of mind-stuff? Of the nonmaterial elements that make it up? Of the nonphysical laws that govern their behavior? Of the mind's structural connections with the body? Of the manner of the mind's operations? Can he explain human capacities and pathologies in terms of its structures and defects? The fact is, the dualist can do none of these things because no detailed theory of mind-stuff has ever even be formulated. Compared to the rich resources and the explanatory successes of current materialism, dualism is not so much a theory of mind as it is an empty space waiting for a genuine theory of mind to be put in it."
(Churchland, Paul M. Matter and Consciousness. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. p. 31)
Consul wrote: ↑May 26th, 2019, 10:59 pm"The candid student, in fine, cannot be blamed if he concludes that the only reason that physical realism seems vulnerable at all is that it explains so much more so much better than other philosophies that the imperfections of its explanations are noticeable. As solipsism gains undeserved credit by being so preposterous that its bare possibility looks like evidence in its favor, so materialism suffers by having so few difficulties that one difficulty more or less makes a difference. A blasé public does not expect idealisms and dualisms to explain anything. With innocent cynicism, we appreciate that these philosophies were designed for a different purpose and are doing all that can be expected in a logical way if they avoid contradicting themselves and the obvious facts of experience. The physical realist seems constantly riding for a fall because he is on the only horse really entered in the chase.Right he is, because when antimaterialists/spiritualists complain about brain/body science not (yet) having succeeded in explaining mind or consciousness in neurophysiological terms, they forget that an antimaterialistic/spiritualistic mind/soul science is a nonstarter. There just is no such science, and there will never be any!
(pp. 237-8)
(Williams, Donald Cary. "Naturalism and the Nature of Things." 1944. In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 212-238. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966.)
"Compare now what the neuroscientist can tell us about the brain, and what she can do with that knowledge, with what the dualist can tell us about spiritual substance, and what he can do with those assumptions. Can the dualist tell us anything about the internal constitution of mind-stuff? Of the nonmaterial elements that make it up? Of the nonphysical laws that govern their behavior? Of the mind's structural connections with the body? Of the manner of the mind's operations? Can he explain human capacities and pathologies in terms of its structures and defects? The fact is, the dualist can do none of these things because no detailed theory of mind-stuff has ever even be formulated. Compared to the rich resources and the explanatory successes of current materialism, dualism is not so much a theory of mind as it is an empty space waiting for a genuine theory of mind to be put in it."
(Churchland, Paul M. Matter and Consciousness. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. p. 31)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Location: Germany
- May 27th, 2019, 3:24 am
#331396
Consul wrote: ↑May 26th, 2019, 11:24 pmthis is a great argument against certain positions, iow ones that would try to reject scientific research and its conclusions. Or to contrast it with some posited anti-material science or research. But the problem is that science isn't materialistic. It is a methodology based on empirical approaches (mainly) with verification procedures. It is not committed to a metaphysics, such as physical realism, since if it turns out that nothing is particularly physical (which I think qm offers a basis for arguing), this would not stop the continued research, observations, data collection, conclusion, repetititon of research etc. The word physical has no meaning in science anymore. There is nothing to contrast it with and the set of things and their qualities (and the qualities these 'things' may lack) has expanded and expanded. As long as the model seems to work and results keep coming up, the metaphysics and qualities of whatever is positied is not the concern of science. yes, many will continue to use what is a metaphorical term, physical, for what would now be considered physical, but it simply means 'real'. We have decided this is real. Spiritualists, say, could argue that what they are positing is real but not yet confirmed via science. Of course they join the debate taking physical and non-physical seriously as terms, rather than say different ends of a spectrum of the real or just dropping the metaphysical framing. IOW they bear responsibility for keeping alive the mess, just as the physicalists hang onto a useless, now placeholder, metaphor, in reaction to dualists or really, in the main, the major religions. We are not them, we plant our flag here. Even though this 'here' keeps expanding and no longer means anything. Let's remember that scientists up into the early 70s punished each other for believing that animals had conscoiusness, emotions, goal orientation, intentions etc. The people who accepted their own direct knowledge of animal consciousness knew better.Consul wrote: ↑May 26th, 2019, 10:59 pm"The candid student, in fine, cannot be blamed if he concludes that the only reason that physical realism seems vulnerable at all is that it explains so much more so much better than other philosophies that the imperfections of its explanations are noticeable. As solipsism gains undeserved credit by being so preposterous that its bare possibility looks like evidence in its favor, so materialism suffers by having so few difficulties that one difficulty more or less makes a difference. A blasé public does not expect idealisms and dualisms to explain anything. With innocent cynicism, we appreciate that these philosophies were designed for a different purpose and are doing all that can be expected in a logical way if they avoid contradicting themselves and the obvious facts of experience. The physical realist seems constantly riding for a fall because he is on the only horse really entered in the chase.Right he is, because when antimaterialists/spiritualists complain about brain/body science not (yet) having succeeded in explaining mind or consciousness in neurophysiological terms, they forget that an antimaterialistic/spiritualistic mind/soul science is a nonstarter. There just is no such science, and there will never be any!
(pp. 237-8)
(Williams, Donald Cary. "Naturalism and the Nature of Things." 1944. In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 212-238. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966.)
"Compare now what the neuroscientist can tell us about the brain, and what she can do with that knowledge, with what the dualist can tell us about spiritual substance, and what he can do with those assumptions. Can the dualist tell us anything about the internal constitution of mind-stuff? Of the nonmaterial elements that make it up? Of the nonphysical laws that govern their behavior? Of the mind's structural connections with the body? Of the manner of the mind's operations? Can he explain human capacities and pathologies in terms of its structures and defects? The fact is, the dualist can do none of these things because no detailed theory of mind-stuff has ever even be formulated. Compared to the rich resources and the explanatory successes of current materialism, dualism is not so much a theory of mind as it is an empty space waiting for a genuine theory of mind to be put in it."
(Churchland, Paul M. Matter and Consciousness. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. p. 31)
- May 27th, 2019, 3:49 am
#331401
Consul wrote: ↑May 25th, 2019, 1:47 pmSince all options of Western philosophy are unsupported or directly contradicted by evidence, all we can do is unlearn fantastical ideas like: dualism, substance theory, thing-ness, subject/object, emergence, fundamental separateness, separate I (and some others). Not really possible to see the other 2-3 options before that.Atla wrote: ↑May 25th, 2019, 1:25 pm All the options you listed are wrong. Reality isn't mental, it's not physical, "neutrality" isn't neutrality between the mental/physical, and neutrality has no actual nature or substance. (Both dualism and substance theory are nonsense.)What additional options are there?
True philosophy points to the Moon
- May 27th, 2019, 4:06 am
#331402
Atla wrote: ↑May 27th, 2019, 3:49 amHowever this leads to a worldview alien beyond our wildest predictions, and many people don't want to go there, it can be too much / no longer worth it.Consul wrote: ↑May 25th, 2019, 1:47 pmSince all options of Western philosophy are unsupported or directly contradicted by evidence, all we can do is unlearn fantastical ideas like: dualism, substance theory, thing-ness, subject/object, emergence, fundamental separateness, separate I (and some others). Not really possible to see the other 2-3 options before that.
What additional options are there?
True philosophy points to the Moon
- May 27th, 2019, 4:23 am
#331404
“What is matter?”, “Why is there matter?”, “Why is there anything?”, I, the subject, ask. “There is nothing”, is of course nonsense, and it is clear that being is a logical necessity without any opposite “state of affairs”. Therefore the being of the subject is causa sui, its “essence” explains its existence. And even if all concrete existence were matter or had material correlates, the subject itself is something that cannot be reduced to anything, not to matter, not even to consciousness. It is the transcendental condition of being in general, and its nonexistence, which would be absurd, would mean nothingness, which would be just as absurd and self-contradictory. I think this should be obvious.
So matter is everywhere, and everything concrete there is has material correlates, so that if matter were removed, nothing would be left, not even the concrete existence of the subject as it is conscious of the material world it lives in. But the transcendental condition of all this being, the subject, cannot be removed. It is there behind all being. It is behind the cogito of Descartes, behind the Copernican revolution of Kant, behind the phenomenological reduction of Husserl, behind Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Therefore none of our great philosophers have taken materialism seriously.
What separates materialists and anti-materialists? Matter is there, and both admit its existence, but materialists think it is something absolute that needs no explanation as to its ontological status. They are not very good in reflective thinking, as were Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Wittgenstein and existentialists. They forget themselves in doing philosophy, and perhaps even think that it is the right thing to do to reach some objective truths like science has done. But philosophy is not science, it must not forget the concrete reality it is part of: the subject's existence in the world. Therefore, as I see it, philosophy is necessarily philosophy of existence. Heidegger remarked in Being and Time that 'philosophy of life' is same kind of a concept as 'botany of plants'.
Materialism and ontological idealism have different metaphysical interpretations of the same material universe. The test of which one is closer to truth is answering the question we have discussed many times here: can there be a world without subjects. Is it a logically consistent idea if we think of it through to the end and try to make a concrete picture of it in our minds?
So matter is everywhere, and everything concrete there is has material correlates, so that if matter were removed, nothing would be left, not even the concrete existence of the subject as it is conscious of the material world it lives in. But the transcendental condition of all this being, the subject, cannot be removed. It is there behind all being. It is behind the cogito of Descartes, behind the Copernican revolution of Kant, behind the phenomenological reduction of Husserl, behind Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Therefore none of our great philosophers have taken materialism seriously.
What separates materialists and anti-materialists? Matter is there, and both admit its existence, but materialists think it is something absolute that needs no explanation as to its ontological status. They are not very good in reflective thinking, as were Descartes, Kant, Husserl, Wittgenstein and existentialists. They forget themselves in doing philosophy, and perhaps even think that it is the right thing to do to reach some objective truths like science has done. But philosophy is not science, it must not forget the concrete reality it is part of: the subject's existence in the world. Therefore, as I see it, philosophy is necessarily philosophy of existence. Heidegger remarked in Being and Time that 'philosophy of life' is same kind of a concept as 'botany of plants'.
Materialism and ontological idealism have different metaphysical interpretations of the same material universe. The test of which one is closer to truth is answering the question we have discussed many times here: can there be a world without subjects. Is it a logically consistent idea if we think of it through to the end and try to make a concrete picture of it in our minds?
- May 27th, 2019, 4:26 am
#331405
mention]Consul [/mention]
First, I have to say that I am not a solipsist, nor a dualist.
I don't even believe people are conscious the way others do. I ask the question what is it that is conscious? To be conscious is to be self aware, but the only self awareness, is knowledge of the idea of self, an imagined idea. And ideas are only some combination of past sensations, they don't go beyond that. Beyond passing sensations there isn't anything, so the only thing to be aware of are passing sensations, but awareness itself is a passing sensation, so what is it that is conscious? Wouldn't it need to be beyond passing sensations?
Don't lump me in with solipsists or dualists, because I don't believe in a mind. A mind requires stability, it requires that a thing remains the same and yet also changes. The reality of a solipsist is faulty because of change. Even ideas, change. The ideas making up reality for the solipsist are formed from memory, which obviously grows fainter every moment, there is no solid ground for an ideal reailty that is always fading, and so I cannot be a solipsist.
You can't say I'm a dualist, because matter only comes in the form of another sensation.
Second, when did materialism, naturalism, and physicalism become the same thing? They certainly are not perfect substitutes for one another, their meanings being completely different, and each one entailing different consequences.
Third, the objections with materialism and physicalism, listed on your source are not ones that I brought up.
Fourth, the materialism you mentioned that ignores the imagined concept of causality, becomes a contradiction because it cannot handle the very real idea or the directly experienced change or temporality being applied to it.
That's a violation of the entropic principle, that there would be a uniform existence that always remains. It's the same idea of a constant as the self, soul or God, but I've said this already and you completely ignored it only to blindly and aggressively post a bunch of sources that don't deal with any real problems.
Materialism is obviously absurd if it cannot handle temporality or entropy.
Fifth, I am guessing that if there is a materialism that ignores causality there is probably a physicalism that ignores causality, and attributes change to spontaneity. But if there isn't I'll say it a last time. Cause is attributed with subjectivity, meaning it posits a do-er, a thing that remains unchanged, but that is obviously false and any theory that makes use of causality has an imaginary foundation.
Materialism is so obviously absurd. To be honest, these are the objections I first raised, and almost all of them are unanswered, the only attemot at answering them was the idea of Heil doing away with causality completely, but since substance then does not answer for change what does it matter?
First, I have to say that I am not a solipsist, nor a dualist.
I don't even believe people are conscious the way others do. I ask the question what is it that is conscious? To be conscious is to be self aware, but the only self awareness, is knowledge of the idea of self, an imagined idea. And ideas are only some combination of past sensations, they don't go beyond that. Beyond passing sensations there isn't anything, so the only thing to be aware of are passing sensations, but awareness itself is a passing sensation, so what is it that is conscious? Wouldn't it need to be beyond passing sensations?
Don't lump me in with solipsists or dualists, because I don't believe in a mind. A mind requires stability, it requires that a thing remains the same and yet also changes. The reality of a solipsist is faulty because of change. Even ideas, change. The ideas making up reality for the solipsist are formed from memory, which obviously grows fainter every moment, there is no solid ground for an ideal reailty that is always fading, and so I cannot be a solipsist.
You can't say I'm a dualist, because matter only comes in the form of another sensation.
Second, when did materialism, naturalism, and physicalism become the same thing? They certainly are not perfect substitutes for one another, their meanings being completely different, and each one entailing different consequences.
Third, the objections with materialism and physicalism, listed on your source are not ones that I brought up.
Fourth, the materialism you mentioned that ignores the imagined concept of causality, becomes a contradiction because it cannot handle the very real idea or the directly experienced change or temporality being applied to it.
That's a violation of the entropic principle, that there would be a uniform existence that always remains. It's the same idea of a constant as the self, soul or God, but I've said this already and you completely ignored it only to blindly and aggressively post a bunch of sources that don't deal with any real problems.
Materialism is obviously absurd if it cannot handle temporality or entropy.
Fifth, I am guessing that if there is a materialism that ignores causality there is probably a physicalism that ignores causality, and attributes change to spontaneity. But if there isn't I'll say it a last time. Cause is attributed with subjectivity, meaning it posits a do-er, a thing that remains unchanged, but that is obviously false and any theory that makes use of causality has an imaginary foundation.
Materialism is so obviously absurd. To be honest, these are the objections I first raised, and almost all of them are unanswered, the only attemot at answering them was the idea of Heil doing away with causality completely, but since substance then does not answer for change what does it matter?
- May 27th, 2019, 8:28 am
#331409
Consul
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).I challenge you, and everybody, to take a critical, reflective attitude to this. It is so easy to think superficially, to be satisfied with the first image that comes to mind, and say that there is no problem with a possible world without subjects: it would be like a desert, except that it would be the whole world. But all deserts are our deserts, whether they are such as Sahara or such as the early stages of our universe. I respect your ability to analyze things and make distinctions, but I am not sure if you have understood the revolutionary ontological impact of Descartes, Kant and Husserl. We must go beyond matter. Matter belongs to the structure of reality, but is not reality itself. The concrete reality is the subject's existence in the world, or consciousness of the world. And, as should be obvious, my consciousness of the world cannot be reduced to what I am conscious of.
- May 27th, 2019, 9:25 am
#331411
Consul wrote: ↑May 25th, 2019, 10:32 am As for the explainability of mind/consciousness in materialistic terms, the neuroscience of consciousness is still in its infancy. There is also the neuroscience of cognition and intelligence (cognitive neuroscience), which already has explanatory success.I'd be interested in reading about mind/consciousness from a materialist perspective- that doesn't suggest that mental states are illusions created by a physical brain.
- May 27th, 2019, 12:07 pm
#331414
You are right though that most materialists are even worse, they are under the illusion of the separate self as well, and unable to solve or even realize the problem, they dismiss consciousness entirely. That's a double wrong.
Tamminen wrote: ↑May 27th, 2019, 8:28 am @ConsulThat's because you are still under the illusion of the separate self, just like Plato, Descartes, Kant and other not-deep-enough thinkers were. You merely came up with another variation on the separate self, with the cosmic-sized subject.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).I challenge you, and everybody, to take a critical, reflective attitude to this. It is so easy to think superficially, to be satisfied with the first image that comes to mind, and say that there is no problem with a possible world without subjects: it would be like a desert, except that it would be the whole world. But all deserts are our deserts, whether they are such as Sahara or such as the early stages of our universe. I respect your ability to analyze things and make distinctions, but I am not sure if you have understood the revolutionary ontological impact of Descartes, Kant and Husserl. We must go beyond matter. Matter belongs to the structure of reality, but is not reality itself. The concrete reality is the subject's existence in the world, or consciousness of the world. And, as should be obvious, my consciousness of the world cannot be reduced to what I am conscious of.
You are right though that most materialists are even worse, they are under the illusion of the separate self as well, and unable to solve or even realize the problem, they dismiss consciousness entirely. That's a double wrong.
True philosophy points to the Moon
- May 27th, 2019, 12:41 pm
#331415
"As soon as physical realism is set forth with some degree of precision and polish, the same detractors who once charged it with being an odious grotesquerie are ready to charge it with being an obvious truism, having no intelligible alternative. On the contrary, the statement of materialism thus clarified not only means something; it means something distinctive, arresting, illuminating, a thesis so far from empty and obvious that, unfortunately, it has been expressly denied by a great majority of philosophers and philosophasters. It has seldom been wholly without adherents; it is the philosophy taken for granted by a good many educated men, including especially those engineers and scientists who have not been corrupted by mysticism or phenomenalism; but most of the populace of Christendom, and most metaphysicians dignified with livings, lay or ecclesiastical, have emphatically refused to admit that everything in the universe can be ruined or repaired by local rearrangement. They have believed in enormous amounts of nonphysical, nonspatial, and even nontemporal reality, beyond the corruption of moth and rust, either supplementing material reality or supplanting it: minds, soul, spirits, and ideas, transcendent ideals and eternal objects, numbers, principles, angels, and Pure Being."
(Williams, Donald Cary. "Naturalism and the Nature of Things." 1944. In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 212-238. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966. p. 224)
2. Yes, there are antimaterialistic, antirealistic, and also antimetaphysical positions in the philosophy of science such as the version of idealism called phenomenalism ("the doctrine that physical objects are reducible to sensory experiences, or that physical object statements can be analysed in terms of phenomenal statements describing sensory experience" [Oxford Companion to Philosophy]) and instrumentalism (the view that scientific "theories should be seen as (useful) instruments for the organisation, classification and prediction of observable phenomena. The 'cash value' of scientific theories is fully captured by what theories say about the observable world." [Philosophy of Science A–Z]).
(FYI: I endorse scientific realism.)
Note that, as opposed to merely semantical or merely epistemological phenomenalism, ontological phenomenalism is anything but antimetaphysical! And…
"One cannot get out of metaphysics. As soon as one admits that something exists—and one must do that—one has to admit that it has some nature or other. For to be is to be somehow or other. And as soon as one admits that it has some nature or other, either one has to hold that one knows what its nature is—in which case one endorses a particular metaphysical claim about the nature of reality—or one has to admit that one might be wrong about its nature, at least in the sense that one might have an incomplete picture of its nature—in which case one admits that there are various metaphysical possibilities, even if one can never know for sure which is correct.
The great flight from metaphysics culminated in verificationist positivism. But verificationist positivists do not escape from metaphysics. For even they grant that there are sense data. And if they go on to say that sense data are all that exist, they adopt a patently metaphysical position—one of the most amazing on record. They may instead say that sense data are all that we can know to exist, and admit that it is, after all, not actually meaningless or incoherent to suppose that other things may exist, things of which we have no conception, things, perhaps, of which we can have no conception. But if they admit this, they must be prepared to grant that in the case of sense data too, there may possibly be more to them than we know, or can know. Either sense data are mere contents with no hidden nature—and this is a form of radical metaphysical idealism—or they are not mere contents with no hidden natures and there is something more to them, in which case some other unknown and perhaps unknowable metaphysical possibility is realized. Either way, one is metaphysically committed. And yet the illusion persists—the illusion that one can be free of metaphysics."
(Strawson, Galen. Mental Reality. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. pp. 78-9)
3. Scientists needn't be metaphysical/ontological materialists/naturalists, and in fact many aren't. Nonetheless, natural science is methodologically materialistic (naturalistic) at least insofar as it doesn't postulate any hyperphysical vital or spiritual beings, forces, or powers. Even modern, scientific psychology started with dismissing the soul(-theory) as "a complete superfluity" that "explains nothing and guarantees nothing." (William James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1., 1890)
Of course, not postulating the existence of something is not the same as postulating its nonexistence; but the best, most plausible explanation of the enormous, unparalleled progress and (theoretical and practical, technological) success of science on the basis of methodological materialism (naturalism) is that ontological materialism (naturalism) is true (about concrete reality at least).
"Ontologically Physicalist: The prime postulate of modern cognitive neuroscience is the physical or material origin of mental processes. That is, whatever mind is, it is a manifestation or product of laws of the singular reality that accounts for all other events, things, and processes in our real world. In other words, cognitive neuroscience is fundamentally monist; it admits of no other separable and distinguishable reality of the kind proposed by some philosophers. To accept any other (some kind of dualism) of a distinguishable reality difference between the mental and the physical would totally invalidate the science; it would require that we accept the possibility of forces that are not controlled by our experiments influencing those experiments. Such experiments, therefore, would invalidate the entire corpus of research in cognitive neuroscience."
(Uttal, William R. The Neuron and the Mind: Microneuronal Theory and Practice in Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Routledge, 2017. pp. 5-6)
4. No, unless you presuppose metaphysical idealism/mentalism, it is not the case that "qm offers a basis for arguing…that nothing is particularly physical," or that the entities of quantum physics are mental, mind-dependent or -determined.
"Was the world wave function waiting for millions of years until a single-celled creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some more highly qualified measurer—with a Ph.D.?"
(Bell, J. S. "Quantum Mechanics for Cosmologists." In Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, 2nd ed., 117-138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. p. 117)
"I am not ready to take lessons in ontology from quantum physics as it is now. First I must see how it looks when it is purified of instrumentalist frivolity and dares to say something not just about pointer readings but about the constitution of the world; and when it is purified of doublethinking deviant logic and—most of all—when it is purified of supernatural tales about the power of the observant mind to make things jump. If, after all that, it still teaches nonlocality, I shall submit willingly to the best of authority."
(Lewis, David. Philosophical Papers, Vol. II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Introd., xi)
Karpel Tunnel wrote: ↑May 27th, 2019, 3:24 amThis is a great argument against certain positions, iow ones that would try to reject scientific research and its conclusions. Or to contrast it with some posited anti-material science or research. But the problem is that science isn't materialistic. It is a methodology based on empirical approaches (mainly) with verification procedures. It is not committed to a metaphysics, such as physical realism, since if it turns out that nothing is particularly physical (which I think qm offers a basis for arguing), this would not stop the continued research, observations, data collection, conclusion, repetititon of research etc. The word physical has no meaning in science anymore. There is nothing to contrast it with and the set of things and their qualities (and the qualities these 'things' may lack) has expanded and expanded. As long as the model seems to work and results keep coming up, the metaphysics and qualities of whatever is positied is not the concern of science. yes, many will continue to use what is a metaphorical term, physical, for what would now be considered physical, but it simply means 'real'. We have decided this is real. Spiritualists, say, could argue that what they are positing is real but not yet confirmed via science. Of course they join the debate taking physical and non-physical seriously as terms, rather than say different ends of a spectrum of the real or just dropping the metaphysical framing. IOW they bear responsibility for keeping alive the mess, just as the physicalists hang onto a useless, now placeholder, metaphor, in reaction to dualists or really, in the main, the major religions. We are not them, we plant our flag here. Even though this 'here' keeps expanding and no longer means anything. Let's remember that scientists up into the early 70s punished each other for believing that animals had conscoiusness, emotions, goal orientation, intentions etc. The people who accepted their own direct knowledge of animal consciousness knew better.1. When physicalists say that everything real is physical, they certainly don't mean to say that "real" means "physical". It doesn't, and there is a clearly discernible contrast between physicalism/materialism, psychicalism/mentalism/spiritualism/idealism, vitalism, and platonism:
"As soon as physical realism is set forth with some degree of precision and polish, the same detractors who once charged it with being an odious grotesquerie are ready to charge it with being an obvious truism, having no intelligible alternative. On the contrary, the statement of materialism thus clarified not only means something; it means something distinctive, arresting, illuminating, a thesis so far from empty and obvious that, unfortunately, it has been expressly denied by a great majority of philosophers and philosophasters. It has seldom been wholly without adherents; it is the philosophy taken for granted by a good many educated men, including especially those engineers and scientists who have not been corrupted by mysticism or phenomenalism; but most of the populace of Christendom, and most metaphysicians dignified with livings, lay or ecclesiastical, have emphatically refused to admit that everything in the universe can be ruined or repaired by local rearrangement. They have believed in enormous amounts of nonphysical, nonspatial, and even nontemporal reality, beyond the corruption of moth and rust, either supplementing material reality or supplanting it: minds, soul, spirits, and ideas, transcendent ideals and eternal objects, numbers, principles, angels, and Pure Being."
(Williams, Donald Cary. "Naturalism and the Nature of Things." 1944. In Principles of Empirical Realism: Philosophical Essays, 212-238. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1966. p. 224)
2. Yes, there are antimaterialistic, antirealistic, and also antimetaphysical positions in the philosophy of science such as the version of idealism called phenomenalism ("the doctrine that physical objects are reducible to sensory experiences, or that physical object statements can be analysed in terms of phenomenal statements describing sensory experience" [Oxford Companion to Philosophy]) and instrumentalism (the view that scientific "theories should be seen as (useful) instruments for the organisation, classification and prediction of observable phenomena. The 'cash value' of scientific theories is fully captured by what theories say about the observable world." [Philosophy of Science A–Z]).
(FYI: I endorse scientific realism.)
Note that, as opposed to merely semantical or merely epistemological phenomenalism, ontological phenomenalism is anything but antimetaphysical! And…
"One cannot get out of metaphysics. As soon as one admits that something exists—and one must do that—one has to admit that it has some nature or other. For to be is to be somehow or other. And as soon as one admits that it has some nature or other, either one has to hold that one knows what its nature is—in which case one endorses a particular metaphysical claim about the nature of reality—or one has to admit that one might be wrong about its nature, at least in the sense that one might have an incomplete picture of its nature—in which case one admits that there are various metaphysical possibilities, even if one can never know for sure which is correct.
The great flight from metaphysics culminated in verificationist positivism. But verificationist positivists do not escape from metaphysics. For even they grant that there are sense data. And if they go on to say that sense data are all that exist, they adopt a patently metaphysical position—one of the most amazing on record. They may instead say that sense data are all that we can know to exist, and admit that it is, after all, not actually meaningless or incoherent to suppose that other things may exist, things of which we have no conception, things, perhaps, of which we can have no conception. But if they admit this, they must be prepared to grant that in the case of sense data too, there may possibly be more to them than we know, or can know. Either sense data are mere contents with no hidden nature—and this is a form of radical metaphysical idealism—or they are not mere contents with no hidden natures and there is something more to them, in which case some other unknown and perhaps unknowable metaphysical possibility is realized. Either way, one is metaphysically committed. And yet the illusion persists—the illusion that one can be free of metaphysics."
(Strawson, Galen. Mental Reality. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009. pp. 78-9)
3. Scientists needn't be metaphysical/ontological materialists/naturalists, and in fact many aren't. Nonetheless, natural science is methodologically materialistic (naturalistic) at least insofar as it doesn't postulate any hyperphysical vital or spiritual beings, forces, or powers. Even modern, scientific psychology started with dismissing the soul(-theory) as "a complete superfluity" that "explains nothing and guarantees nothing." (William James, The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1., 1890)
Of course, not postulating the existence of something is not the same as postulating its nonexistence; but the best, most plausible explanation of the enormous, unparalleled progress and (theoretical and practical, technological) success of science on the basis of methodological materialism (naturalism) is that ontological materialism (naturalism) is true (about concrete reality at least).
"Ontologically Physicalist: The prime postulate of modern cognitive neuroscience is the physical or material origin of mental processes. That is, whatever mind is, it is a manifestation or product of laws of the singular reality that accounts for all other events, things, and processes in our real world. In other words, cognitive neuroscience is fundamentally monist; it admits of no other separable and distinguishable reality of the kind proposed by some philosophers. To accept any other (some kind of dualism) of a distinguishable reality difference between the mental and the physical would totally invalidate the science; it would require that we accept the possibility of forces that are not controlled by our experiments influencing those experiments. Such experiments, therefore, would invalidate the entire corpus of research in cognitive neuroscience."
(Uttal, William R. The Neuron and the Mind: Microneuronal Theory and Practice in Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Routledge, 2017. pp. 5-6)
4. No, unless you presuppose metaphysical idealism/mentalism, it is not the case that "qm offers a basis for arguing…that nothing is particularly physical," or that the entities of quantum physics are mental, mind-dependent or -determined.
"Was the world wave function waiting for millions of years until a single-celled creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some more highly qualified measurer—with a Ph.D.?"
(Bell, J. S. "Quantum Mechanics for Cosmologists." In Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, 2nd ed., 117-138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. p. 117)
"I am not ready to take lessons in ontology from quantum physics as it is now. First I must see how it looks when it is purified of instrumentalist frivolity and dares to say something not just about pointer readings but about the constitution of the world; and when it is purified of doublethinking deviant logic and—most of all—when it is purified of supernatural tales about the power of the observant mind to make things jump. If, after all that, it still teaches nonlocality, I shall submit willingly to the best of authority."
(Lewis, David. Philosophical Papers, Vol. II. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Introd., xi)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Location: Germany
- May 27th, 2019, 12:48 pm
#331416
Atla wrote: ↑May 27th, 2019, 3:49 amSince all options of Western philosophy are unsupported or directly contradicted by evidence, all we can do is unlearn fantastical ideas like: dualism, substance theory, thing-ness, subject/object, emergence, fundamental separateness, separate I (and some others). Not really possible to see the other 2-3 options before that.It would be helpful if you tried to describe those alleged other (metaphysical/ontological) options!
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Location: Germany
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