Tamminen wrote: ↑June 21st, 2019, 9:20 amConsul wrote: ↑June 21st, 2019, 1:45 am
The materialists can tell a coherent and plausible natural story of the origin and place of mind&consciousness in the world that doesn't invoke ghosts and magic.
Maybe so, but as usual among philosophers, they have stopped at the half-way inn, thinking that everything is clear now.
Not everything is clear in the materialistic worldview, because there are still scientifically unsolved problems and two major explanatory gaps concerning natural evolution, which are getting smaller but haven't been closed yet, because the scientific explanations are still incomplete:
abiogenesis (the evolutionary transition from nonliving matter to living matter) &
apsychogenesis (the evolutionary transition from nonconcious/nonexperiencing living matter to conscious/experiencing living matter).
(Of course, from the point of view of panpsychism, there was no apsychogenesis, because there were only transitions from fundamental, primitive consciousnesses to increasingly complex higher forms of consciousness.)
As I said, not everything is clear in the materialistic/naturalistic worldview, there being quite a few natural/physical mysteries waiting to be solved by natural/physical science; but in the antimaterialistic/antinaturalistic worldview
everything is not clear. Its adherents don't have any better scientific explanations of anything. Actually, there isn't even such a thing as an alternative
supernatural/hyperphysical science of the world (that is really a
science and not pseudoscientific bogus).
Tamminen wrote: ↑June 21st, 2019, 9:20 amThey see only matter when they look around, and make the conclusion that everything there is arises from matter, even themselves.
Materialists don't "see only matter"; they see a whole
matter-energy-space-time system called the natural/physical universe.
Tamminen wrote: ↑June 21st, 2019, 9:20 amMatter in itself is a mystery. Its being has no rational basis. The subject's existence is not a mystery. Its essence explains its existence. The subject's nonexistence would be self-contradictory. And because the subject needs matter for its existence, also the being of matter gets a rational basis.
Matter is everywhere, but without the triadic ontological structure I have suggested it is a mere abstraction without concrete existence.
Philosophy, as I see it, starts from the self-evidence of the subject's existence, and asks questions like: why is the subject's existence such as it is? why is there so much suffering in the subject's existence? is there any meaning in the subject's existence? or just diversity? and so on.
To sum up, the existence of matter is a problem that the existence of the subject solves.
"What is mysterious, according to me, is how consciousness relates to matter. Indeed, we can only appreciate this mystery if we already have a good idea of what consciousness intrinsically is: if we grasped it purely functionally, we would have no deep sense of mystery. So my view, in sum, is that matter is a mystery and the relation of matter to mind is a mystery, but mind is not itself a mystery (in the special sense intended here). Consciousness, I say, is a nonmysterious thing mysteriously related to a mystery."
(McGinn, Colin. "Two Types of Science." In Basic Structures of Reality: Essays in Meta-Physics, 142-164. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. p. 157)
I don't know how "the existence of the subject" solves "the mystery of matter" unless you're defending subjective idealism/phenomenalism or panpsychism.
"Physics is structural, and it can get by without entering into the question of what matter ultimately is. As many have argued, physics leaves a blank where the intrinsic nature of matter lies, though it succesfully describes the mathematical laws that govern the behavior of matter. …There is an epistemological gap here—a descriptive lacuna. How might we fill in the blank?
The problem has not gone unnoticed: Eddington and Russell, among others, were much preoccupied with it. Physics is incomplete, they held, precisely on the question of what matter ultimately and intrinsically is. Physics consists of mathematical models, detailing relations between physical magnitudes, but it is mute about the intrinsic nature of the entities whose interrelations it maps. It is purely 'structural'. Into this descriptive void they therefore inserted a bold theory—that the intrinsic nature of matter is mental. This is the doctrine of panpsychism, offered as an account of what physics leaves unsaid: the essence of matter is consciousness, and the physical world bottoms out in mind-stuff. On this theory, or one version of it, the primary qualities of objects are sandwiched between two sets of mental properties—the secondary qualities. constituted by relations to sense-experience, and the intrinsic, unobservable mental properties that give matter its inner nature. Only the primary qualities have an inherently nonmental nature: mainly, physical objects are mental in nature, because of both their type of constituting stuff and their manifest secondary qualities. Panpsychism is often proposed as a solution to the mind-body problem, but in the present incarnation it is intended as an answer to what we might simply call the 'body problem'—the problem of what matter is. The indexical term 'matter' turns out to designate a natural kind whose underlying essence is consciousness, according to panpsychism. Bodies are selves, in effect, since consciousness always requires an 'I' as subject. And we know what selves are, don't we?
Now I have no wish to defend panpsychism as a solution in the body problem, but I think it is illuminating as a metaphysical theory that attempts to fill the gap I have identified, following others. It really does fill that gap (truly or falsely), and the interesting question is why. It is because mental concepts are not functional or operationalist or extrinsic or merely structural: we do know what consciousness is, and hence we know what is being said when matter is declared to have a mental nature. We know this because we are acquainted with consciousness in the first person. The theory contrasts with the type of theory discussed in the previous section, namely that matter can be defined as extension or solidity or shape. We want to ask what has these qualities, since they are clearly not the end of the ontological line; but with panpsychism we are told the answer to this question in no uncertain terms—con- scious states are the intrinsic essence of matter. They are the meat of the matter—the ultimate stuff of the world. Indeed, since experiences require a subject of experience. we can say that it is conscious subjects that have primary (and secondary) qualities. There is no sense that this answer only postpones the question. If consciousness constitutes our nature, and knowably so, then it can also constitute the nature of the universe in general—it is the kind of thing that can make something what it is.
This theory implies that a complete physics would not conform to the 'absolute conception', since there is something it is like to be conscious, and such subjective facts are not accessible from an objective point of view: but this is a consequence that might be swallowed if the pill were sufficiently ameliorative. At least if we follow the panpsychist we know what matter is! The basic stuff is mind-stuff, and mind-stuff is completely evident to us. If matter seemed like a kind of cosmic mystery meat, then panpsychism removes the mystery by telling us exactly what kind of meat matter is made of—mental meat. Here we see the deep epistemological appeal of idealism in all its forms: it removes the ontological mystery from the world, by projecting our own nature as conscious beings outward. To be is to be experiential—subjectivity rules. In the case of physics, idealism has taken two basic forms: panpsychism and extreme empiricism—physics is either about alien subjectivities or about our own subjectivity (Eddington and Mach, respectively). In either form it is concerned with familiar realities—the operations and content of minds. The gap has been filled.
It is worth observing that panpsychism need not necessarily regard matter as inherently sensory in nature; it might, following Schopenhauer, take the will as ontologically basic. Particles would be less like perceivers than agents, on this view: they don't have sensations, but they do engage in acts of will. This might fit the active nature of matter better, with its forces and movements. The intrinsic nature of matter is therefore volition, which again is evident to us from our own case. It is not that sentience is everywhere; decision is (or at least 'proto-decision'). When bodies move it is because they will to. In either case, we have an answer to the question of the intrinsic nature of matter. We have an answer because, to repeat, we know what mind is: our conception of it is not merely indexical or functional or extrinsic. If you like. mind is the 'categorical ground' of the other properties of matter, transparent and familiar. Whether the usual primary qualities are deemed supervenient on this ground or logically independent of it, matter bottoms out in something of the right metaphysical category. Just as I know what it is like to be you, because we share our mental nature, so I know what it is to be a material body because it shares my nature too. And even if the mental nature of matter is alien to me—like that of a bat—still it is the kind of thing to which I stand in a privileged epistemic relation. Matter is rescued from the noumenal or merely structural by being declared phenomenal.
Panpsychism is illuminating because it is a good example of what it would take to fill the descriptive gap; it is a theory of the right conceptual type. But it is unlikely to attract many disciples (me included); so we must ask whether anything less extravagant could do the job."
(McGinn, Colin. "What is a Physical Object?" In
Basic Structures of Reality: Essays in Meta-Physics, 58-73. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. pp. 60-3)