Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Steve3007]

So, to return to this question of yours:

Aside from that, is the idea here that we're dealing with someone who has no grasp at all re what "physical" might refer to, so we need to find a synonymous phrase that they might have a grasp of, where we are dealing with someone who also has no grasp of what "material," "relations" etc. refers to?

As I said, the answer is, no. We're not dealing with someone who has no grasp at all re what "physical" or "material" might refer to.

How have they gained a grasp of what those terms refer to?

[Gertie]

So you claim physical brain cells causally interacting create a separate thing called experience, which is not reducible to brain activity.

Why isn't it reducible?

How do you explain how that can be?

Phenomenal experience is distinguishable from brain activity, but not "separate" from it. It exists only in conjunction with (certain) brain activity (as far as we know), but it may also be produced by non-biological systems with a similar architecture. The two phenomena are intimately connected, just as an EM field is intimately connected with an operating electric motor, but is distinguishable from it.

But "Why isn't it reducible?" is the interesting question. It isn't reducible because qualia and other "mental" phenomena cannot be described in any informative way, and because they are not accessible to public inspection. When that is the case then logical deductions from physical laws to the "mental" phenomena can't be carried out, nor can an extensional equivalence between the terms in the two vocabularies ("mind talk" and "brain talk") --- the bridge laws to which Faustus referred --- be shown. In short, science can't reductively explain non-public phenomena.

And there is another reason, I've suggested before. Our scientific understanding of ourselves and the world is a conceptual model we've constructed over the centuries; it is built upon a cognitive model our brains construct automatically, to integrate all the data being delivered constantly over sensory channels into some coherent whole --- that is the world as we experience it.

So when asking for a reductive explanation of mental phenomena, we're asking science to model the very mechanism by which conceptual models are created. But the mechanisms for creating models must always be more complex that the models it creates. So there will be aspects, features, processes, in play in that mechanism which cannot be captured in any model it creates. It could only be modeled by a system larger than itself.

In other words, scientific theories can't fully explain the mechanisms or processes involved in creating theories. Ouroboros, but the snake can never quite manage to bite its own tail.

Good post, I agree with the problem re reducibility and how this is potentially a way out. (Tho I don't think we can assume it will never be resolved).


The How can you know question still applies. And I think is only exacerbated by (rightly) accepting that all we have is a necessarily limited and flawed model of our own making to work with.


That aside, the question remains of how brain matter can generate experience, what is it about brains in certain states that does it and why. And how does generated experience feed back information to brain matter. Conversely, I don't think this necessarily precludes this generating of experience being a universal aspect of all matter.

[Terrapin Station]

What you seem to have done so far is effectively say "What a stupid question! Everyone knows what matter is!" and to further say that anyone who tries to suggest that we learn what things are by seeing them is obsessed with epistemology. Seems odd to me.

Actually, what I was doing was saying, "I don't define it in either of those ways" (as appealing to physics as such or in some colloquial "can I see it/touch it" etc. sense), and I gave the alternate way I define it instead. The idea wasn't supposed to be that we then pretend to not know what I'm referring to. I didn't address the appeal to physics or the colloquial senses by pretending to not know what they're referring to, as if that would have any usefulness.

(And yeah, I have both kids and grandkids.)

[Atla]

Can't be detected? Of course they can be detected; if they couldn't we wouldn't be discussing them. You can detect your qualia, I can detect mine, but we can't detect each other's. And, yes, they can be explained, but not reductively, and not described.

Again: physics can't detect qualia. According to physics, qualia doesn't exist. That's the problem.

Covered already. Correlations never "point to identity." They may suggest a causal relationship between two things, but not an identity between them. And, yes, I reject identity "because of semantics." "Identical" means something specific, that certain criteria are satisfied. If you're not using common words per their common semantics then you're uttering gibberish.

It's literally called the 'Mind/Brain identity theory'. And here, the mental and the physical are thought to correlate. All common semantics.

But it is an issue. It is implicit in the concept of dualism.

The idea of substance is implicit in substance monism, subtance dualism, substance pluralism etc.
Anyway, your view is probably dualism (substance or not) as long as you can't explain what qualia are, when physics can't detect them.

[Steve3007]

I guess I'l answer my own question then.

How have they gained a grasp of what those terms refer to?

By living in the world for probably several decades, and thereby seeing lots of examples of matter. Just like when my kids were little and I pointed to cats and said "Look! Cat! Look! Another cat!".

We can define loads of words that refer to real things in terms of other words. (e.g. physical = matter and its inter-relations) but ultimately, obviously, if it's going to be anything other than an abstract word/classification game, the chain of definition leads to patterns in sensations. And since physics is about spotting patterns in sensations, it's not unreasonable to define "the physical" as "the kind of stuff that physics studies". This doesn't somehow mean that we're elevating the status of physics. It doesn't somehow make us self-centred or solipsistic. It doesn't somehow mean that we're claiming that the only matter which exists is that which we and our friends can see. Using empirical evidence to construct our ontology doesn't amount to mistaking or conflating epistemology with ontology.

[Terrapin Station]

I guess I'l answer my own question then.

How have they gained a grasp of what those terms refer to?

By living in the world for probably several decades, and thereby seeing lots of examples of matter. Just like when my kids were little and I pointed to cats and said "Look! Cat! Look! Another cat!".

We can define loads of words that refer to real things in terms of other words. (e.g. physical = matter and its inter-relations) but ultimately, obviously, if it's going to be anything other than an abstract word/classification game, the chain of definition leads to patterns in sensations. And since physics is about spotting patterns in sensations, it's not unreasonable to define "the physical" as "the kind of stuff that physics studies". This doesn't somehow mean that we're elevating the status of physics. It doesn't somehow make us self-centred or solipsistic. It doesn't somehow mean that we're claiming that the only matter which exists is that which we and our friends can see. Using empirical evidence to construct our ontology doesn't amount to mistaking or conflating epistemology with ontology.

Wait--so first, you know that GE Morton explicitly gave two different senses of the term "physical," right?

[Steve3007]

So how would you say they've gained a grasp of what those terms refer to?

[Steve3007]

(i'm not really up for all this distraction stuff. I'd rather just follow through on this point.)

[GE Morton]

Can't be detected? Of course they can be detected; if they couldn't we wouldn't be discussing them. You can detect your qualia, I can detect mine, but we can't detect each other's. And, yes, they can be explained, but not reductively, and not described.

Again: physics can't detect qualia. According to physics, qualia doesn't exist. That's the problem.

"Physics" doesn't detect anything. WE detect things. Physics -- a conceptual model we've invented --- tries to explain some of what we've detected. That model does not embrace qualia because they are not publicly observable phenomena. "Physics" doesn't deny that qualia exist; it is silent on the matter. And, no it is not problem that physics doesn't embrace qualia. There are entire realms of phenomena physics doesn't explain, or even attempt to do so (law, economics, art, games, ethics, etc.).

It's literally called the 'Mind/Brain identity theory'. And here, the mental and the physical are thought to correlate. All common semantics.

Yes, it is so called. But that is a misnomer. The two things are clearly not identical, per the common definitions of that term. The "Mind/Brain Correlation" theory would be more apropos.

Anyway, your view is probably dualism (substance or not) as long as you can't explain what qualia are, when physics can't detect them.

Does the fact that physics can't explain economics also imply dualism? If so, then we are all dualists.

[Atla]

Again: physics can't detect qualia. According to physics, qualia doesn't exist. That's the problem.

"Physics" doesn't detect anything. WE detect things. Physics -- a conceptual model we've invented --- tries to explain some of what we've detected. That model does not embrace qualia because they are not publicly observable phenomena. "Physics" doesn't deny that qualia exist; it is silent on the matter. And, no it is not problem that physics doesn't embrace qualia. There are entire realms of phenomena physics doesn't explain, or even attempt to do so (law, economics, art, games, ethics, etc.).

It's literally called the 'Mind/Brain identity theory'. And here, the mental and the physical are thought to correlate. All common semantics.

Yes, it is so called. But that is a misnomer. The two things are clearly not identical, per the common definitions of that term. The "Mind/Brain Correlation" theory would be more apropos.

Anyway, your view is probably dualism (substance or not) as long as you can't explain what qualia are, when physics can't detect them.

Does the fact that physics can't explain economics also imply dualism? If so, then we are all dualists.

Trying to draw a parallel between the physics vs (law, economics, art, games, ethics, etc.), and the physics vs qualia issue. You are completely confused.

[GE Morton]

So how would you say they've gained a grasp of what those terms refer to?

Heh. Good question. TP has a problem with his understanding of meanings. He claims the denotative meaning of a word is "something in people's heads," rather than the things-in-the-world to which that word refers, which it denotes. But since "things in people's heads" are necessarily private, Alfie can never know what Bruno means by the word "dog." Hence communication of information via speech is impossible --- a reductio ad absurdum. He confuses knowledge of a meaning with the meaning.

[Steve3007]

Heh. Good question. TP has a problem with his understanding of meanings. He claims the denotative meaning of a word is "something in people's heads," rather than the things-in-the-world to which that word refers, which it denotes. But since "things in people's heads" are necessarily private, Alfie can never know what Bruno means by the word "dog." Hence communication of information via speech is impossible --- a reductio ad absurdum. He confuses knowledge of a meaning with the meaning.

I just don't seem to be able to get him to acknowledge what seems to me to be the plain and obvious fact that we ultimately define terms such as "matter" by looking at examples of stuff that we've decided to give that label. I get utterly irrelevant replies like this:

Again, not everything is about epistemology to everyone. Not everything is about us to everyone.

One of his longstanding obsessions (along with the old one of telling people that they're reifying abstractions) seems to be some kind of idea that people are secretly solipsistic and/or that they can't separate ontology from epistemology. As soon as you start trying to talk about how we use empirical evidence to create an ontology, presumably as opposed to creating an ontology by just thinking about it, that accusation seems to surface.

It's as if saying "I decide how the world is by looking at the evidence of how it appears to be" is misinterpreted as "the way the world is is dictated by how it appears to be to me."

[Terrapin Station]

So how would you say they've gained a grasp of what those terms refer to?

I don't care about that at the moment. I was simply giving an alternate definition in contradistinction to the two he gave.

[GE Morton]

The How can you know question still applies. And I think is only exacerbated by (rightly) accepting that all we have is a necessarily limited and flawed model of our own making to work with.

We can't know that the cognitive model theory is "right," i.e., true or false. It's just a theory, and theories are never true or false. They're only good or bad, sound or unsound, depending upon how well unify and render coherent some set of phenomena, suggest future observations, and correctly predict their results. They're explanatory constructs.

That aside, the question remains of how brain matter can generate experience, what is it about brains in certain states that does it and why.
And how does generated experience feed back information to brain matter.

Well, that sounds like you're asking for a reductive explanation, which, for the reasons given --- per that theory --- will be forever unobtainable.

Conversely, I don't think this necessarily precludes this generating of experience being a universal aspect of all matter.

That is another theory. But if there is no way to test, to determine, whether or not rocks (for example) have experience, then the theory is vacuous. It will not lead us to any new knowledge.

[evolution]

What is the word 'it' here in relation to, EXACTLY?

Philosophical analysis of propositional knowledge.

Yes.

But this may be due to the fact that the way you define some words is completely opposite of how I do.