How to save materialism
Materialism is the world view most fiercely opposed by philosophers since Plato (Aristotle, Leibniz, Kant, Schopenhauer to name just a few great names). They all had good reasons to reject materialism.
However, materialism is still popular. I have found for myself that I need to modify it somewhat to consider it plausible.
These are the requirements:
[b]1. Physical fields have to be "materialized", so to speak.
2. Matter must be interpreted panpsychistically.[/b]
Re 1:
"As we will see later, fields have energy. They therefore are a form of matter; they can be regarded as the fifth state of matter (solid, liquid, gas, and plasma are the other four states of matter)." (Marc Lange - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics)
Matter and field or particles and waves must be ontologically akin. After all, fields can move matter or put it at rest:
"Ordinary matter is held together by electric fields, so if those fields are altered by motion, then it is only to be expected that the shape of the matter will be altered." (Wallace, David. Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction)
In any case, the influence should not be dualistic.
Re 2:
"Do you agree with the materialist philosopher Galen Strawson that materialism implies panpsychism?" (Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion)
Yes, I agree. This is said of Galen Strawson:
"The philosopher Galen Strawson, himself a materialist, is amazed by the willingness of so many of his fellow philosophers to deny the reality of their own experience[.]"
He says:
"I think we should feel very sober, and a little afraid, at the power of human credulity, the capacity of human minds to be gripped by theory, by faith. For this particular denial is the strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought, not just the whole history of philosophy." (quoted from Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion)
And on Strawson again:
"Galen Strawson shares the frustration of many contemporary philosophers with the seemingly intractable problems of materialism and dualism. He has come to the conclusion that there is only one way out. He argues that a consistent materialism must imply panpsychism, namely the idea that even atoms and molecules have a primitive kind of mentality or experience. (The Greek word pan means everywhere, and psyche means soul or mind.) Panpsychism does not mean that atoms are conscious in the sense that we are, but only that some aspects of mentality or experience are present in the simplest physical systems. More complex forms of mind or experience emerge in more complex systems." (Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion)
I think that the points 1 and 2 are sufficient. A hylozoism, according to which matter is alive in a certain way, is unnecessary. There I am simply the opinion of Nietzsche:
"Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is only a form of what is dead, and a very rare form." (Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science: 109 Let us beware. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)
However, materialism is still popular. I have found for myself that I need to modify it somewhat to consider it plausible.
These are the requirements:
[b]1. Physical fields have to be "materialized", so to speak.
2. Matter must be interpreted panpsychistically.[/b]
Re 1:
"As we will see later, fields have energy. They therefore are a form of matter; they can be regarded as the fifth state of matter (solid, liquid, gas, and plasma are the other four states of matter)." (Marc Lange - An Introduction to the Philosophy of Physics)
Matter and field or particles and waves must be ontologically akin. After all, fields can move matter or put it at rest:
"Ordinary matter is held together by electric fields, so if those fields are altered by motion, then it is only to be expected that the shape of the matter will be altered." (Wallace, David. Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction)
In any case, the influence should not be dualistic.
Re 2:
"Do you agree with the materialist philosopher Galen Strawson that materialism implies panpsychism?" (Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion)
Yes, I agree. This is said of Galen Strawson:
"The philosopher Galen Strawson, himself a materialist, is amazed by the willingness of so many of his fellow philosophers to deny the reality of their own experience[.]"
He says:
"I think we should feel very sober, and a little afraid, at the power of human credulity, the capacity of human minds to be gripped by theory, by faith. For this particular denial is the strangest thing that has ever happened in the whole history of human thought, not just the whole history of philosophy." (quoted from Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion)
And on Strawson again:
"Galen Strawson shares the frustration of many contemporary philosophers with the seemingly intractable problems of materialism and dualism. He has come to the conclusion that there is only one way out. He argues that a consistent materialism must imply panpsychism, namely the idea that even atoms and molecules have a primitive kind of mentality or experience. (The Greek word pan means everywhere, and psyche means soul or mind.) Panpsychism does not mean that atoms are conscious in the sense that we are, but only that some aspects of mentality or experience are present in the simplest physical systems. More complex forms of mind or experience emerge in more complex systems." (Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion)
I think that the points 1 and 2 are sufficient. A hylozoism, according to which matter is alive in a certain way, is unnecessary. There I am simply the opinion of Nietzsche:
"Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is only a form of what is dead, and a very rare form." (Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science: 109 Let us beware. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)
Comments (133)
I don't want to be told 'the mind body problem'. I want specifics.
It is the consciousness problem, not the mind-body problem. If I believe in materialism, then I assume that I myself am a complex matter entity that has become evolutionary. When I trace my evolution ontogenetically and phylogenetically, I arrive at some crude organic and inorganic stuff. If I understand this stuff in every respect as without consciousness, then I must nevertheless think about how I myself came to have consciousness. After all, it did not fall from the sky. It is philosophically elegant to assume consciousness already in that crude stuff. One must assume so also no sudden inexplicable jumps of consciousness.
Strawson uses physicalism and materialism interchangeably. The point for him is that his materialism says that the nature of reality is physical, whatever its nature may ultimately be. As for the panpsychism, he thinks that materialists have to consider it a real possibility, on pains that if you reject such a view, you are committed to the view that there is "radical" or "brute" emergence in nature, meaning some wholly new property arises which was not at all apparent in its constituent parts.
But he used to not be a panpsychist, although he always respected this perspective. He would've called himself "an experiential-and-non-experiential monist".
But in all his phases, Strawson has never doubted that experience is the most obvious and certain thing we are acquainted with.
EDIT: I forgot to ask are you the same spirit-salamander from Mainländer's reddit page?
If the 'problem'is something to do with material entities having conscious states, then how does assuming that material entities have conscious states solve that problem?
It doesn't make sense.
What possible reason is there to be a materialist given it has such absurd implications? It's perverse. No evidence it is true and plenty that it is false.
I am conscious. If I then assume - just assume - that I am my material body or some part of it - then I must assume that some complex material stuff has conscious states. As I think that no properties can emerge from that which does not have those properties, I must conclude that the simpler stuff from which my material body is made has conscious states. And as my cupboard is made of that same stuff, it has conscious states too. At what point does one revisit the assumption that one's mind is a material thing? Ever? Is there no conclusion too absurd that a materialist will not embrace it?
According to Strawson's materialism, it does not follow that things need to be conscious. What follows is that the phenomena we interact with in the world are experience realizing or experience involving. In other words objects have those properties which must interact with experience. This does not mean that objects themselves are conscious.
His panpsychist position is such that he thinks that what he calls "ultimates", whatever they may be - quantum fields or even strings - also realize or involve experience. There is no evidence for his view. But there is no evidence against it.
As to the rest of your reply, no. These aren't conscious states. But every time you move an arm or look at a table or anything else, you interact with these things through experience so the objects and your body are intrinsically suited to interact with it.
Mind you, that's his position. Not mine.
You can accept his "real materialism" while rejecting his "realistic monism". The latter includes panpsychism. The former doesn't.
But then again, you may reject both.
I fail to see how they're not conscious. They'd surely need to be in order to avoid having to posit a new emergent property of consciousness? If conscious states can somehow emerge from that which is not conscious, then his panpsychism is unmotivated. If conscious states cannot emerge from that which is not itself bearing conscious states, then everything would be conscious. Just as you can't get something shaped from combining elements none of which have any shape, so too you can't get consciousness by combining that which is not conscious - that's his case, I take it? So then full-blooded conscious states - not some mysterious we-know-not-what - must be attributed to everything.
Quoting Manuel
There is evidence against it: all the evidence in support of immaterialism about the mind. My mind appears to be nothing remotely like a material object. Everything - but everything - our reason tells us about our minds conflicts with the materialist thesis. I don't know of a single good argument for materialism about the mind. I know of about 13 for the immateriality of the mind. Make that 14 if Strawson is correct and a materialist is committed to panpsychism, for panpsychism is manifestly false.
Matter/information is the real dualism, and demonstrates how ontologically distinct entities nonetheless interact. Consciousness is a rarefied and complex species of information (or perhaps a species of information in motion, analogous to magnetism as electricity in motion). And the smallest particle is informational as well as material. No need to resort to implausible panpsychism.
What you say about information seems to me to involve a category error. Information is not a substance, but a property of a thing. So, I have some information, but I am not the information.
I agree, however, that there is no problem of interaction. There is no reason to think that radically dissimilar kinds of thing cannot causally interact. And we have powerful prima facie evidence that they do - for my mind seems regularly to be causally interacting with my body, yet my body is not a mind but something else entirely. And even if there was a problem of interaction, it would not imply materialism about the mind, but immaterialism about the sensible world.
What's at bottom are the ultimates, which involve or realize experience. When these ultimates organize in a certain way, then you get consciousness as you or I would recognize, arising from brains, in a manner that is quite obscure. So for Strawson, you don't need anything else, everything is a configuration of physical stuff. Thus he avoids the emergence problem, it was there all along, just not yet configured in a proper manner.
Quoting Bartricks
That's the idea. It is commonly thought that matter cannot possibly have those properties which we associate with consciousness, such that non experience-involving matter could ever combine to create experience. That's the no-radical emergence thesis.
But for Strawson stuff involves experience at bottom. If this is true, then combining matter in a proper way brings forth consciousness quite naturally.
Quoting Bartricks
And yet, as Chomsky points out in his very insightful essay The Mysteries of Nature: How Deeply Hidden?, this intuition is false. He quotes Joseph Priestley who "culminated" Locke's reflection on thought and matter, as when Locke considers that God could proceed "supperadding" thought to matter.
Priestley says:
"It is said that we can have no conception how sensation or thought can arise from matter, they being things so very different from it, and bearing no sort of resemblance to anything like figure or motion; which is all that can result from any modification of matter, or any operation upon it.…this is an argument which derives all its force from our ignorance. Different as are the properties of sensation and thought, from such as are usually ascribed to matter, they may, nevertheless, inhere in the same substance, unless we can shew them to be absolutely incompatible with one another.”... this argument, from our not being able to conceive how a thing can be, equally affects the immaterial system: for we have no more conception how the powers of sensation and thought can inhere in an immaterial, than in a material substance..."'
Quoting Bartricks
I also think it's false, but would state my view less strongly. I take radical emergence for granted, as Chomsky does too.
But an experience is a conscious state - to be experiencing something is to be in a state of consciousness. Indeed, that's why I can just as well say "I am conscious of a pain" as I can "I am experiencing a pain".
Anyway, the dilemma is this: if 'ultimates' is a name for 'we know not what' then there was no need to be a panpsychist, for consciousness is still emerging from that which is not conscious. On other hand if ultimates are conscious states, then we have everything being conscious, which is absurd and only underlines why the materialist assumption behind all of this needs to be given up (like I say, if one does not give it up at this point, when will one?)
Quoting Manuel
That's question begging. These people 'assume' materialism and so assume at the get-go that any and all intuitions that imply that there exist immaterial things are false.
There's no evidence that our minds are material. None. There's an assumption that materialism is true, that's all. And then there are a lot of philosophers who make this assumption and then note the problems it raises and then try and solve them. Which is a perverse waste of time - these philosophers are cut from the same cloth as those who in ages past would have spilt much ink debating how many angels one can fit on a pinhead.
Rational intuitions are our source of insight into what's what. There's nothing else to appeal to. All of our rational intuitions tell us minds are immaterial, not material. Like I say, I know of 13 arguments for immaterialism about the mind. I don't know of a single one for materialism about the mind. I'm all ears, but I want an argument that appeals to self-evident truths of reason and arrives by means of them at the conclusion that our minds are material without just assuming that they are.
Quoting Manuel
THat's a straw man. THe claim is not that matter cannot have consious states due to conscious states being so very different from other states and thus being incapable of being 'caused' by the material object. No dualist would make such an argument, for they hold that immaterial minds can causally interact with material entities - and so hold that very different things can causally interact.
My reason tells me that it makes no sense to wonder what my mind looks or smells or tastes like. Yet my reason tells me that it does make sense to wonder what something I can see might feel like, or taste like, or smell like. So, my reason is telling me, then, that my mind is not in the business of having properties such as shape, smell, taste, texture. Not, in other words, a material object.
Similarly, my reason tells me - for I am not insane - that it makes no sense to wonder what something I can see or touch 'thinks' like. Hence the manifest implausiblity of panpyschism. Once more, then, my reason is making representations that imply my mind is not a sensible object.
My reason tells me that my mind is indivisible - the very notion of half a mind making not a blind bit of sense. My reason tells me no less surely that all material objects are divisible. Again, then, I am being told that my mind is not a material thing.
And on and on it goes. Note: none of these are arguments from ignorance. That's a myth - teh myth that the only reason anyone was an immaterialist was due to not having done enough science (as if Descartes or Locke or Berkeley would change their positions if they were living today - they would not, as anyone who has read them would know). THey are appeals to rational intuitions.
We could reject all such rational representations as mistaken if they conflicted with some larger body of more powerful rational intuitions. But they don't. What they conflict with is a widespread assumption that materialism is true. That's all.
My point is, if you treat consciousness as informational, then this problem dissolves: matter can manifestly serve as the substrate of information, and so there is no contradiction in informational consciousness coinciding in a material body.
Quoting Bartricks
I agree information is not a substance, it is something distinct from material substance. But calling information a property is inapt, it belies the independence of information from matter. "The wizard of Oz" is the same movie, whether it is stored on a film reel, a dvd, a magnetic tape, a hard drive, or an eidetic brain's memory: all completely different physical media. Certainly when we watch and later evaluate the movie, we consider it as its own thing, not as the property of a specific object.
Yes.
But the claim Strawson makes is that phenomena are experience-involving or experience-realizing. This means that the phenomena we interact with realize or involve our experience. An aspect of the object reacts to experience. If they did not, then his panpsychism would fall apart on that alone.
Quoting Bartricks
Consciousness arises through complex interactions in the brain. The brain is molded matter. Why would this thing consciousness coming out of brains not be physical too? We'd have an interaction problem - substance dualism - that we can do without.
This imples that physical stuff is much more than what we intuit.
Quoting Bartricks
Why aren't tastes, smells, textures and so forth physical things? Why not? Tastes from the tongue, smells from the nose, etc.
I think the problem here is the very common association of materialism with whatever physics says. Or eliminitavism. There's no reason to believe in eliminitavism, or at least, no good reason.
But anyway, this is all by-the-by really. I don't think there is a problem as such in holding that conscious states are states of a material object. Anything is possible. I just hold that we don't have any evidence that conscious states are states of material objects; all the evidence we have is that conscious states are states of immaterial objects.
I also have no problem with emergent properties. So I don't buy the problem that Strawson is invoking panpyschism to solve. When it comes to a thing's properties, one has ultimately to say that it just has them. So I don't see a problem in saying that complex objects could have properties of a different sort from the simpler objects from which they are constructed. Explanations are nice, but they're not always needed and not everything can stand in need of one else nothing could be explained. (And I don't think syaing 'everything is conscious' is really an explanation of how my brain is conscious; it's sort of like me asking 'how does this computer work?' and getting the answer 'all computers work').
I just think there's no evidence that minds are material things - and thus no evidence that consciousness is a property of something material - and stacks and stacks that they're immaterial things.
As I see it, what contemporary philosophers of mind are trying to do is show how it is 'possible' for consciousness to be compatible with materialism. But that's not evidence that our minds are material and that consciousness is in fact a property of any material thing. I'm personally perfectly happy to grant the possibility - I just think there's no evidence for it, and a load against.
My body is capable of being 100ft tall. But it isn't. I have no evidence I am 100ft tall and plenty that I am not. SImilarly, it is possible that my mind could be a material thing, for I think anything is possible. But I have no evidence that my mind is a materail thing and a lot that it isn't.
Quoting Bartricks
Damage the brain, damage the mind. Destroy the brain, destroy the mind. Alter the brain, with alcohol or LSD for instance, alter the mind.
I don't see the relevance of the distinction. For anything to be experience-involving, an experience would need to be realized, surely. And it is that - the realization of a conscious state - by material substances that (supposedly) needs to be explained. And thus to explain it without supposing that conscious states can just emerge from ingredients that are themselves not conscious we would have to suppose that everything material 'realizes' conscious states.
Quoting Manuel
Flagrantly question begging. No it doesn't. Consciousness is a property of immaterial entities called 'minds'. There is no - no - evidence that such entities are material, as I keep saying. There is just a widespread assumption that everything is material. (If you know of an argument that appeals to self-evident truths of reason and arrives thereby at the conclusion that minds are material without helping itself to a materialist assumption, I'll accept that there is some evidence that minds are material, but not otherwise).
Quoting Manuel
Missed the point. The point is that most of us have rational intuitions that represent our minds not to be in the business of having shapes, textures, and so forth. As material objects, by their very nature, are in the business of having those kinds of property, our minds are being represented by our reason to be immaterial, not material.
You could just insist that the representation is mistaken - and it might be, of course - but you'd need countervailing evidence, not just an assumption.
So, your reasoning seems to be that if A affects B, then A 'is' B. Otherwise I don't see how you get from 'damage to the brain damages the mind" to 'the mind is the brain'.
Yet that principle is clearly false: if A affects B, that does not entail that A 'is' B. I mean, by that logic my mind is alcohol. Drinking alcohol affects my mind. Therefore my mind is alcohol! Damaging my brain affects my mind, thus my mind is my brain. Bad reasoning, Sir!
What you are saying is affecting my mind. So it turns out I am you! And you are me. Who'd have thought?
As for your claim that if the brain is destroyed then so too is the mind - a claim I think is not true and begs the question - the reasoning is once more faulty. If I destroy a two storey building's first storey, I also destroy its second, for no second storey can exist absent a first. By your logic that means the second storey is the first storey.
Bad reasoning, Sir!! Yet it is reasoning of the above kind that is all I have so far received by way of 'evidence' that the mind is the brain. It's all I ever get. I am told affecting the brain affects the mind and that, people seem to suppose, is somehow a demonstration of materialism about the mind. Odd. It is no such thing, it is just a demonstration of the way people can be blind to how bad their reasoning is when they are in the grips of a dogma.
Panpyschism is clearly no solution to that problem. For supposing that all material entities have conscious properties does precisely nothing to overcome the intuition that no material thing has them.
The other problem is the problem of getting out what you haven't put in. If conscious properties are thought to emerge from material objects, then one might think that this cannot be unless the material objects already have such properties, for otherwise have a kind of alchemy.
Panpyschism would solve that problem - if problem it be - becuase now everything has conscious properties and so nothing has been gotten out that wasn't there in the first place. It solves it at the cost of insanity, of course: for it is plainly absurd to suppose that every material thing has conscious states.
But note that this would presumably apply to all manner of other properties associated with having consciousness, such as the property of being morally responsible. I mean, that property - the property of being deserving of blame and praise - can surely no more 'emerge' than consciousness can. So it would seem that a well motivated and consistent panpyschist will have to hold that everything is morally responsible. When Basic Fawlty thrashed his car for breaking down, he was giving it its just deserts, it would seem.
This lends itself to long, involved, serious, esoteric, futile discussions.
I don’t see how information does not ‘have’ energy in the same sense that fields ‘have’ energy (as stated in the OP). It seems to me that information at this level IS energy - which is why Bartricks suggests that information is a ‘property’ of matter.
But it’s like you’re discussing information on different awareness levels. For Bartricks, information would be an immaterial property of (the computer as) a physical system in motion. But I understand information as the distribution of attention and effort that ‘drives’ the physical output or ongoing state of the (computer) system. Which is kind of the same thing, just described differently.
Quoting Bartricks
It looks like you’re equating ‘conscious properties’ with ‘conscious states’. The problem I have with this is that static material objects are not the same as physical systems in motion. The main difference is in how energy flows through the system. For an object to have a conscious state is impossible, but it is not so much of stretch for a physical system in motion to imply what we refer to as a ‘conscious state’. Bear with me here - I’m not saying this is evidence of a conscious state, only the possibility.
So, what is a conscious state, and how do we ascertain that one exists? And how is this different from the existence of conscious properties? I think this needs to be clarified, because there is a difference between properties and states.
[i]Property: an attribute, quality, or characteristic of something.
State: 1. the particular condition that someone or something is in at a specific time.
2. a physical condition as regards internal or molecular form or structure.[/i]
* A is B
or
* B is causally connected to A
But if the mind is causally connected to the brain, then by virtue of its causal interaction, it too must be material. But if it is material, then what else can it be, but the brain? There is no room in the skull for anything else. Therefore, A is B, the mind is the brain.
This is an observation of A and B in isolation. Even if the mind is causally connected to the brain, it need not be fully contained within the skull. Therefore, the fact that changes to A result in changes to B does not necessarily mean that A is B. The mind may be probabilistically locatable in the skull, but is nevertheless NOT identical to the brain.
I can't explain it much better than that. Maybe I can bring the problem closer to you by asking you when you believe that consciousness in the sense of feeling or perception or mood experience appeared for the first time in the evolutionary history or natural history of the world.
I take it that you assume such a unique moment of the emergence of consciousness experience. Not to forget, we remain within the framework of materialism.
A non-panpsychistic materialist must think: There was nothing comparable with feelings, drives, moods and perceptions (by these I understand consciousness) in natural history for a very long time, and then suddenly such things appeared.
Anything that appears suddenly and erratically is in itself a problem. But between the non-conscious and the conscious there seems to be an infinite gap.
But because we assume materialism as a precondition, the appearance of consciousness cannot have fallen from "the sky".
Basically, it's simple logic. If the materialist defines matter as in every sense lacking subjective experience and as the only thing existing, but believes that at least with us humans there is subjective experience in whatever sense, then we have a problem.
This is exactly what I want to say: "radical" or "brute" emergence in nature is prima facie a theoretical metaphysical or epistemic problem. Although one can simply accept such things, one must nevertheless acknowledge their mysteriousness, that is, their problematic nature.
Quoting Manuel
Yes, I am the same
To the first sentence. In terms of cultural history, people were initially animists. Therefore, one cannot say that panpsychism is counter-intuitive. Material objects indeed appeared to be in business of having consciousness.
To the second sentence:
I must look at material objects as I look at other people. I assume that another person also has conscious states like me. However, I cannot really make out a place of consciousness, but I assume that the other has consciousness. I can do the same with material objects. I assume consciousness to them, although I cannot find a direct location for it.
Quoting Bartricks
Panpsychists want a change in our intuition. It is not impossible that something like this can happen culturally.
Quoting Bartricks
That is the point I am making in my response to you above.
Quoting Bartricks
One might say that this is just an attitude or stance. This is perfectly fine. But your mindset does not have to be unchangeable within you.
Quoting Bartricks
The panpsychist would say that consciousness has more to do with experience. Intentionality, which makes the feeling of moral responsibility possible, would be something which comes along somewhat later. Your remarks here are somewhat unfair and uncharitable to panpsychism. The panpsychists see it more differentiated.
Yes. It is mysterious and such radical emergence is usually ridiculed by many modern philosophers. They refer to it as "magical emergence". It was taken for granted in the scientific revolution. But for whatever reason, today some people don't like the idea that some aspects of nature simply don't make sense to us.
Quoting spirit-salamander
:clap:
Hey man you've done some amazing work on that thread really really good stuff. It's been very helpful and interesting. Many thanks. :)
Fair enough.
I lost some of the focus of thread, which was presenting Strawson's argument.
Between the non-living and the living there also seems to be an infinite gap. Panpsychism is a modern vitalism.
There's nothing to be said for that premise. It appears false - my mind does not appear to be material, yet does appear causally to interact with things quite dissimilar to it - and even if it were true, the fact my mind appears immaterial not material would mean you should conclude that the sensible world is mental, not that the mental is material.
I also pointed out that this also seems to mean that other properties, such as the property of being morally responsible, would have the same implication. If we can't get out more than we put in, then we can't get moral responsibility out unless atoms are morally responsible too. So now atoms are blameworthy and so is anything made of atoms.
If one remains a materialist despite being driven to these lengths, then I think one has discovered that one's materialism is a faith.
I don't think that formulation captures what Strawson in saying, because if we say that a table is conscious, we would associate it with our own intuitions of consciousness which would make this view completely insane. And whatever one may think of Strawson, he's not insane. Is he wrong? Perhaps, I think he's wrong in some sense, sure.
It would be more accurate to say that Strawson thinks that tables, rocks, pianos, etc., are made of the kind of stuff that, when modified in a specific manner constitute consciousness. But the property of experience is already in the stuff which makes everything up. As would be the case with every other emergent property of nature, once we "go up" from fields or strings or whatever is at the bottom of things.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes. This is true. But as he points out, any metaphysical view is tied to some kind of faith, because we have no way to test these views. We can only depend on reasons and what sounds likely or intuitive to us.
There are those who decide they already know what's true and then go out searching for arguments in support of it. They are just playing a pointless game. And then there are those who follow reason to find out what's true - Plato's definition of the philosopher (the one in whom reason is in charge, rather than appetite or spirit).
There is no reason to think materialism about the mind is true. When faith in a view is widespread, many mistake that for evidence or think that there must be an evidential base for it. But there is no evidential base for materialism about the mind. I have asked to be shown evidence for it time and time again, and in 10 years of asking, no one has provided me with any, just fallacious arguments that won't withstand a moment's reflection.
Back to Strawson. I do not see how you are going between the horns of the dilemma I presented. If conscious states can be wrought from that which is not itself bearing such states, the have emergence of precisely the sort that you say Strawson is opposed to and is using panpsychism to avoid. But if we do not have emergence, then conscious states - not something else - must be fully present in molecules.
Consider shape. We cannot get shape from that which is not shaped. Molecules have a shape as much as the objects they compose. They do not have to have the same shape, but they have a shape. Likewise for conscious states. Consciousness cannot emerge from that which is not conscious. There are as many different conscious states as there are shapes, so there is no need to suppose that the conscious states of the molecules composing my brain are the same in terms of content as those of my brain itself. But what one cannot say is that the conscious states of the molecules are somehow not as real or conscious, for that would be akin to saying that molecules do not really have shapes themselves.
So Strawson must, onpain of inconsistency, insist that everything has conscious states. Not something 'like'consciuos states, but the real deal. Thus my wardrobe is conscious. My hand is. My ear is. A speck of dust is. Properly conscious.
That's insane, of course. Why? Because our reason tells us loud and clear that those things are not conscious. That's what insanity is. A person is insane when they have rationally derailed in some spectacular fashion.
Our rational intuitions - from which all evidence is derived - tell us that conscious states are the preserve of minds and that minds do not have the properties we identify with material objects. So our reason is clear: material objects do not possess conscious states. That's why we attribute minds to matter and not consciousness. We do not think the cat's fur is conscious or that a lump of ham is. We think the cat has a mind - that there is 'a' soul in there or associated with it, and it is that - and not the skin and bones - that has the conscious states (as it is with us too).
I take it as well that Strawson thinks people do die and that when they die that essentially involves permanently ceasing to be conscious?
How's that possible?
Take shape. I can change the shape of an object, but I can't stop it having a shape for a period. So how is unconsciousness possible, then? If an object can go from being conscious to unconscious, then it goes from having a state to not having it. But by Strawson's lights that would be impossible surely, for just as we can't get out what hasn't been put in, we can not fail to get out what we have put in. Same applies. An object can't be shaped at one point and have no shape whatever at another and then resume being shaped once more. For that would involve states coming from nothing and going into nothing. Likewise for consciousness then, on this absurd view.
I can destroy entirely something - I can smash a sculpture, say - but when I do this I do not destroy a thing's shape, but destroy the thing itself. So presumably on Strawson's view my own consciousness will only be destroyed when my brain is demolished. If my heart stops beating, i will still be alive until such time as my brain disintegrates. I mean, my brain has a shape until it no longer exists, right? So it has consciousness too. Presumably Strawson is appalled at our practice of burying people who still have identifiable brains.
At bottom, this is mostly a terminological dispute, not so much of substance. I think that's important to point out. Panpsychism aside, Strawson's materialism claims that everything is physical, whatever the nature of the physical may be.
But if you don't like the term, you can say that everything is immaterial or you could adopt neutral monism. I would even say idealism here too, with the caveat that I don't think that everything is made of ideas, nor is everything in the world the product of a person.
Materialism used to have a distinct meaning and could be counterposed to other views. When it had a intelligible meaning was back in the time of Descartes and Hobbes. When materialism essentially meant mechanistic materialist: the world is a giant machine, like a massive clock. But it didn't reach the domain of mind. Hence Descartes' dualism.
That all fell apart when Newton discovered gravity and proved mechanistic materialism to be false: the world does not work like a clock, there is action at a distance with no direct contact. But with that we lost an intelligible notion of "body". So metaphysical dualism collapsed.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes. That's the intuition. And what Strawson tries to avoid by articulating panpsychism, he wants to avoid "radical emergence" as described in your own words.
I think radical emergence exists, it's what happens in nature. We do get shapes from that which lack shape and we do get consciousness out of non-conscious things, just as we get water from molecules that give no indication at all that they have such properties.
People today call that magic. It was more or less accepted as a brute fact back in 17th and 18th centuries.
Quoting Bartricks
As a property, like electricity or gravity or liquidity, which is inherent in matter. This does not mean that this property is realized in ordinary objects, any more than liquidity is realized in tables. It's the same stuff at bottom, but only different configurations of matter lead to liquidity, which is also not found in tables.
Quoting Bartricks
I've stressed the point several times. I don't know how to express myself more clearly. I'll say it one more time: Strawson is not saying that a table is conscious, nor is a wardrobe. He never says that. What he says is that the stuff tables and wardrobes are made of consists of matter than has in it the capacity to become conscious when configured in a certain manner as in the case of brains.
Again, think of liquidity. It's not found in wardrobes, but it can arise when configured in a specific manner. We don't therefore say that tables and wardrobes are wet.
This does not imply what you keep saying, namely that ordinary objects are conscious. They are not, nor does Strawson ever claim that at all.
Thank you for the appreciation. My intention was to present Mainländer as a legitimate possibility of thought, because he is completely disregarded by academic philosophy and is regarded merely as a philosophical curiosity that is not to be taken seriously.
I describe his view. I present it with a dilemma.
Here it is again: either conscious states are present (so, 'realized'to use your term) in molecules, or they are not and we have emergence.
You then keep telling me that Strawson does not think conscious states are present in molecules.
Er, so? That just shows he is inconsistent then.
You can't get out what you didn't put in. That's the intuition he's trying to respect. We agree on that. So, that means molecules need to be conscious. To get consciousness out, you need to put it in. See? That's the logic of his view. One can't back peddle and decide that no consciousness is realized at the molecular level, for the have emergence by a different name - the very thi g he wants to avoid.
Not sure about your first sentence. That's why I had quoted Nietzsche in my original post:
"Let us beware of saying that death is opposed to life. The living is only a form of what is dead, and a very rare form." (Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science: 109 Let us beware. Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy)
The linguistic distinction between alive and dead could prove to be questionable. Things are rather neither alive nor dead. These features are possibly only human attributions. On the other hand, I could consider all things as dead or all as alive.
The latter is called hylozoism, according to which matter is alive in a certain way. The question is: Is vitalism merely a hylozoism or merely a panpsychism or both?
To your second sentence: I think that panpsychism need not be associated with vitalism. It is only about the sober and neutral attribution of conscious experience to material entities.
I am an idealist. So I think everything that exists is either a mind or a state of mind.
That, I take it, is not Strawson's view.
Materialism is the opposite of immaterialism. There's room to quibble over the precise definition of materialism, but it must not be so broad as to include immaterialism. It must not, for example, simply mean 'the view that is true', for now it is unhelpful and means identifying as a materialist means no more than one believes the true view, whatever it may be, is true. Which is vacuous.
Materialists believe there are objects extended in space. That's a good working definition.
I don't think there are. But even if there are, there's a debate over whether our minds are such things.
Your historical analysis is quite false. Descartes did not just arbitrarily believe that minds were not material mechanisms, he argued that they are not (Hobbes thought they were and they disagreed at the time).
Descartes' arguments have not been refuted and if he were alive today he would still be a dualist and would join me in deriding the stupidity and dogmatism of those who think the mind is material. He didn't suffer fools gladly and he'd have torn Strawson a new one.
Good question. I don't know. I recommend you google Philip Goff, who does a good job of explaining panpsychism. I was just concerned with the basic idea without problematic details.
Now I understand you better. You reject materialism in general. And if you are not argumentatively convinced by the rescue attempt of materialism with the help of panpsychism, then that is completely philosophically fine.
As an idealist, you must consider a materialism without panpsychism even more absurd and insane, no?
If it is not emergent, then we can use it to model what Strawson is saying, yes? If it is emergent, then we can't and it would constitute a counterexample. Agree?
That would no longer be materialism. I wanted to start as a working hypothesis merely from materialism, which can represent in the end actually a wrong view.
I think materialism about anything is false primarily because the very notion of a material object makes no sense as any such thing would be infinitely divisible and I think that is impossible.
Panpsychism can be used to illustrate that absurdity - for there are no basic material units from which larger material objects are made, and thus the panpsychism will have to posit an actual infinity of conscious things - but it is also independently nuts. That is, even if material objects can and do exist, panpschism would be absurd and irrational.
So, material objects do not exist. As minds do, that entails that minds are immaterial.
But even if material objects do exist, minds are clearly not material objects.
Like I say, there is precisely no evidence that minds are material objects and plenty that they are not.
My case against materialism does not depend on immaterialism. One - one - argument for immaterialism about the mind goes by way of a refutation of materialism about anything. The other 12 arguments do not.
The only reason I mentioned my own immaterialism about everything was to demonstrate that 'materialism' can't plausibly be used to refer to any view.
The real problem confronting those who think minds are material is the mammoth pile of rational intuitions that imply minds are immaterial and total absence of any positive evidence that they are material. The problem is not one to do with emergence. That's a problem - if problem it be - after you have provided us with some reason (epistemic reason) to think minds are material.
That's the problem with contemporary philosophy of mind - it's largely dominated by dogmatists who are focused on rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.
For instance, I take it universal Eliminativism is absurd? That is, I take it we can all agree that the view 'nothing exists' is insane?
This thought that I am having right now exists. And a thought is a mental state. So at least one mental state - the one I am in right now - exists.
And it seems about as evident that thoughts require a thinker. Thus i, a mind, exist too.
I can't doubt that there are norms of reason either, as it was by recognizing that I have reason to think thoughts exist if I am thinking that I concluded that a thought exists. That is, to recognize that a thought exists requires having another thought, namely that there is reason to think a thought that is being thought exists. And likewise, to think that thoughts require a thinker is to think there is reason to believe a mind exists if a thought exists. And so in a way, norms of reason exist even more certainly than my thoughts and my mind do, as it was only by first recognizing that I have reason to believe something that I came to believe my thought and mind exist.
So thoughts, a thinker, and norms of reason all exist with the utmost certainty.
Material objects, note, are yet to enter the inventory. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. But that they have yet to enter itself tells us something. Namely that one is being incredibly stupid if one makes materialism the touchstone of reality, for then one is insisting that that which exists more surely should be made sense of in terms of that which exists less surely, and if one cannot make sense of it that way, then one should conclude that the less surely existent things are what really exist. Which is the pinnacle of rational perversion. This was Descartes' point - one of them - though few recognize or live by it. Pity.
Yes, correct. He based that in large part to the creative aspect of language use.
I'm offering Chomsky's version of events. Which I've found to be accurate based on historical and original sources.
Quoting Bartricks
Well if you call quantum fields extended, okay.
Quoting Bartricks
Ah, ok then. :up:
Based on what I've seen thanks to you and YuYuHunter, I can't wait for the translation.
Mostly his epistemic/metaphysical stuff. His pessimism is a bit too strong for me. :grimace:
Like I say, a good working definition is 'extended in space'(it's Descartes' definition). That's good regardless of whether quantum field would qualify.
I don't understand what you said about Descartes. He made several arguments for the immateriality of the mind. They're good arguments.
Then you are working with an outdated notion of materialism. I mean, you can use it if you like. It has no relevance to what's happening now because the notion of materialism used by Descartes was directly based on the science of his day. That science is now outdated.
Quoting Bartricks
Yes he argued that the mind cannot be explained by mechanistic means, among other arguments. And he's right about that to this day.
Note too that as a general rule the mention of quantum mechanics in a philosophical discussion is an admission of defeat.
Now, liquidity - you haven't answered my questions about it. What is liquidity and is it an emergent property or not?
You seem to have said above that what applies to consciousness does not also apply to life. Can you explain why you think that, if indeed you do?
It's identity not consciousness that is lost.
I don't think there's much point in debating this question, since there has never been a unified concept of "materialism." The word has been thrown around for a long time, but its meaning has remained vague. These days, more often than not, materialism is used as a strawman, a word to label ideological opponents to whom you can then attribute untenable and unattractive views that, in all probability, they don't actually hold.
Defining materialism precisely is problematic, and even if you succeed, you will only identify your version of materialism. Defending or knocking it down would not accomplish much, as far as the general concept is concerned, because as I said, such general concept does not exist.
I think it would be more productive to advance or attack specific positions and not bother about isms. If you want to talk about ontology, talk about ontology; if you want to talk about the mind, talk about the mind. Who cares what it's called?
But to comment on a couple of quotes in your post:
Quoting spirit-salamander
This sounds very confused. A field is not a state of matter like solid or liquid. Fields in physics are mathematical models used to describe... physical stuff (let's not get hung up on what "matter" is), in whatever state it may be. Saying that a field is a state of matter is like saying that engineering is a type of car.
Quoting spirit-salamander
Looks like you pulled this quote out of context and misunderstood its meaning, which is precisely the opposite of the point you were trying to make. I am guessing that Wallace here is discussing the rationale behind Einstein's theory of relativity. What he says about electric fields being affected by motion is a counterfactual: as everyone knows, the shape of matter is not affected by (inertial) motion. You didn't need to hunt for a quote to make your point about fields affecting matter though, because that's just what physical fields are: they quantify forces, potentials and other things that affect matter.
ETA: Oh, I see it's now a Bartricks thread. Abandon all hope.
In materialism? Really? To say that quantum mechanics is the study of physical stuff is an admission of defeat? That's surprising.
Quoting Bartricks
Liquidity is defined as "the state in which a substance exhibits a characteristic readiness to flow with little or no tendency to disperse and relatively high incompressibility."
It is an emergent property, of course.
I have not yet been able to justify it properly. Here I have tried. It is still half-baked.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/540768
I think that the question of consciousness is philosophically more pressing than the question of life.
If the historical reality of the cosmic microwave background is accepted, then it follows that all physical properties are emergent.
I entirely agree.
I think you're right here. When I finished my post and got a lot of feedback, I was wondering which well-known philosopher or even scientist could be considered a pure materialist. And no name came to mind.
Quoting SophistiCat
Marc Lange's book is very readable and he tries to make it clear that physical fields must be real things or entities rather than merely a calculational device. At least there are discussions whether fields are something real:
https://www.mathematik.uni-muenchen.de/~bohmmech/Teaching/ontologyofphysics1415/classical_fields.pdf
I like the idea of a field as a form of matter. This avoids dualism in any case, provided fields are something ontologically real. A dualism would indeed endanger a materialism.
Here are some discussions on the ontology of fields:
Ontological categories for fields and waves
https://dl.gi.de/bitstream/handle/20.500.12116/20618/1866.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Waves and fields in bio-ontologies
http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-897/sessionJ-paper24.pdf
Quoting SophistiCat
Well, fields can move particles, again provided that fields are real things, which I assume.
This is the context. I think you can leave the passage I quoted in isolation without the context.
"From the dynamics-first perspective, the fact that clock slowdown requires an inertial frame to define it doesn’t make it unreal: inertial frames are the basis of how we do physics, and it is only natural for dynamical explanations to be carried out in one frame or another. And in any such frame, when we say ‘a moving clock runs slow’—or, for that matter, ‘a moving rod shrinks’—we mean that the physical processes inside the rod—the interatomic bonds that hold the rod together and define its length, the periodic processes that count time inside the clock—are different for matter in motion than for the same matter when stationary. The electric field of a moving charge, for instance, shrinks in the direction of motion—according to the laws of electromagnetism—compared to the field of a stationary charge. Ordinary matter is held together by electric fields, so if those fields are altered by motion, then it is only to be expected that the shape of the matter will be altered. Despite this concrete electromagnetic example, we don’t actually have to study the detailed microphysics of our clocks and rods in order to predict time dilation and length contraction."
(Wallace, David. Philosophy of Physics: A Very Short Introduction)
Wait, you asked me if I though liquidity was emergent. I said yes. In fact, I go so far as to say that it is radically emergent, that is, there is no conceivable way (to us) to understand how it could be that apparently non-liquid molecules could combine to create liquidity.
Strawson on the other hand, thinks these phenomena are emergent, but not radically so. On this "soft emergent" view, liquidity, experience and everything else arise out of the specific combination of physical stuff.
There is a reason as to why this is so, according to him: he says it doesn't make sense to think that experience could arise from something completely and utterly non-experiential, as matter appears to be, because it would be a miracle to have experience if at bottom physical stuff does not poses properties that can give rise to experience. So physical stuff must contain, among its properties, experiential stuff - potential for experience.
So to avoid radical emergence, he postulates that experience and everything else, is already inherent in the base stuff of reality.
The last three paragraphs are his view, not mine.
He has to hold that everything has conscious states. So my cupboard has them. And so do atoms. And so do what they're composed of. And so on.
Don't tell me again that he doesn't think this, for that would just be inconsistent of him or just him trying to disguise the absurdity of what he is proposing.
Don't- as you did - offer liquidity as an example of how it works, when that clearly cannot be how it works, given he doesn't think conscious properties are emergent.
I lack the capacity to communicate this to you, despite repeatedly trying my best.
So, I think this is as far as we'll go.
I can only assume that you think Strawson is not committed to attributing conscious states to everything. Okay. Why not?
Again, consciousness can't emerge - Strawson doesn't think so. So it is not - not - like liquidity.
So consciousness must be present - fully present - in the building blocks. If it is not fully present in the building blocks, then we have something coming out that wasn't put it.
You accept that shape is a good analogy. Well, the building blocks of a shaped thing themselves have shapes. Not potential shapes. Actual shapes. (And the appeal to potential is misleading anyway, as there'd be no reason to suppose it resident potentially but not actualized).
THe building blocks are not 'a bit shaped'. They're shaped. They'd need to be othewise we'd have the emergence of shape, which would be an emergence every bit as radical as that of consciousness.
Because consciousness only arises in quite specific circumstances, such as the configuration of brains found in human beings. And other creatures too, which we think are conscious: dogs, horses, etc.
In a table, matter is not so configured so as to lead to experience. Nor is it configured in this manner in rocks, rivers, dirt and so forth.
Quoting Bartricks
Strawson didn't say consciousness can't emerge, he says that it does. Rather he states that consciousness cannot radically emerge: there has to be something about matter that, when combined in a certain way leads to experience. Like you said, it's hard to make sense of the idea of experience arising out of a combination of non-conscious stuff.
Experience is a property of organized matter, so is liquidity. Both liquidity and experience are inherent in matter, they can emerge given certain specific configurations. There is something about matter that when so configured, we get experience or liquidity.
But if matter does not organize in this specific way, we won't get experience, even if the property of experience is already in matter. That his panpsychism in a nutshell.
Fine.
I'm trying not to defend his views, but to articulate as best I can.
Sometimes I agree with him, so it's hard to keep it in check. In any case, that's his main argument.
Could you explain the reason for rejecting radical emergence?
The idea would be that there has to something about physical stuff that is inherently suited to give rise to consciousness in certain modified states.
If there is nothing about physical stuff that could possibly give rise to experience, then experience would be a miracle. That is, nothing about the nature of the physical could possibly lead to experience, hence in having experience as we have it, is completely inexplicable even to God - if such a being existed.
On this view, there would be no reason, or law, or tendency that could account for something emerging radically.
The example I've been talking about is consciousness, but it can apply to any emergent thing.
Of course, there are several ways to develop this argument. One option would be that there must be something about matter that is inherently suited to give rise to experience, but we have no idea what that something could be and we quite possibly may never be able to understand it. This view is held by Chomsky, for example.
You phrase it is as if I were saying bears and apples could not interact. I am saying that the material and immaterial; better, the physical and non physical, can not interact. This is a simple tautology: if the nonphysical interacted with the physical, then it would be a part of the physical description of the universe, and so be physical.
Quoting Bartricks
Both of these "appears" may be in fact be mere appearances.
Quoting Bartricks
Why should I favor "the physical world is mental, and only appears physical" over "the mental world is physical, and only appears mental"?
Sure. Whether fields are real in some sense is a debatable question, but it's not obviously wrong. What I took issue with is comparing fields with states of bulk matter, which I think is a category error. Bulk matter can be alternatively in a solid, liquid, gaseous or plasma state; it cannot be alternatively, and in the same sense, in a "field" state. Fields are used as mathematical models of continuously distributed physical quantities, but that probably isn't what Lange has in mind (although it can still be asked whether any or all such fields are real things). Perhaps he is talking about something like light, which we are told is an electromagnetic field: shouldn't we be committed to its existence? Isn't it a physical entity? Perhaps, but an electromagnetic field is not a bulk state. In fact, your next quote from Wallace indirectly makes that point where he says that "ordinary matter is held together by electric fields." (Indeed, at an even deeper level, ordinary matter - solids, liquids, etc. - is all quantum fields.)
Quoting spirit-salamander
If I were making an argument that fields are real things, I would put it the other way around: fields are real things because they have real effects.
Quoting spirit-salamander
I see, he is talking about relativistic length contraction. That's not an example of fields moving matter; for that you could just refer to e.g. an electric field interacting with charged particles.
Or, to put it some other ways,
Although it isn't. (See liquidity.)
No serious panpsychist would ever assert that emergence in general is impossible. Of course all kind of properties are emergent, indeed the majority of them presumably. The problem is specifically with consciousness. And difficulties with the emergence of consciousness from severally and prior non-conscious entities and systems is one reason that people turn to panpsychism. This problem does not arise for the idealist of course, and I have some sympathy with that view. Some versions of idealism are also panpsychist. Sprigge was a panpsychist idealist.
Would you like me to explain it more fully?
I accept the force of this intuition. I do think that everything is conscious, and I do not think that the concept of consciousness admits of degree. Shape might be another good example of a property that does not admit of degree, I'm not sure.
That's weak emergence, right? Consciousness would be strong.
Strawson considers liquidity to be weak emergence, as do most other philosophers, I believe.
Chomsky is the exception. Probably McGinn too, but I am unsure.
He thinks liquidity is strong?
"A common objection today is that such ideas invoke an unacceptable form of "radical emergence," unlike the emergence of liquids from molecules, where the properties of the liquid can in some reasonable sense be regarded as inhering in the molecules. In Nagel's phrase, "we can see how liquidity is the logical result of the molecules 'rolling around on each other' at the microscopic level," though "nothing comparable is to be expected in the case of neurons" and consciousness. Also taking liquidity as a paradigm, Strawson argues extensively that the notion of emergence is intelligible only if we interpret it as "total dependence": if "some part or aspect of Y [hails] from somewhere else," then we cannot say that Y is "emergent from X." We can speak intelligibly about emergence of Y-phenomena from non-Y-phenomena only if the non-Y-phenomena at the very least are "somehow intrinsically suited to constituting" the X-phenomena; there must be ''something about X's nature in virtue of which" they are "so suited."....
...It should be noted that the molecule· liquid example, commonly used, is not a very telling one. We also cannot conceive of a liquid turning into two gases by electrolysis, and there is no intuitive sense in which the properties of water, bases, and acids inhere in hydrogen or oxygen or other atoms."
This seems like an empty claim. Whatever its nature may ultimately be? Is he saying that all things are physical but also that he doesn't know what it means for a thing to be physical? Has he fallen victim to Hempel's dilemma?
For him, everything that exists, everything is physical. But he concludes by saying he is not bothered much by what labels he uses for himself, in this respect he is also happy calling himself a ?-ist.
The main point in this is simply to say that there is only one kind of stuff in the world: physical stuff. Or call it "immaterial stuff" or "natural stuff."
Idealism even, would not bother him. His only caveat with this is that if idealism is conceived as "consisting of ideas" and so everything is made of ideas, then there must be someone who is having the ideas.
Neutral monism, as he understands, is the view that the world is neither mental nor physical as we currently understand these terms. But he think it isn't true because in having experience, we are acquainted with - we know - certain fundamental aspects of reality in merely having experience. And since for him, experience is a physical phenomena, then neutral monism would be misleading, because we are not completely ignorant about the nature of the world, by virtue of being conscious.
The basic idea is to reject metaphysical dualism.
His "physical" has nothing to do with Dennett's ideas by the way. They're kind of the opposite.
I'm not sure this makes sense. The word "life" cleaves reality so that some things fall on one side, some things on another. And there are things where the cleaving is ambiguous such as viruses. But you can't say, "well in reality things are neither dead or alive". This misunderstands words, they do not and cannot point to the true nature of things. Rather they carve the world into sets.
Quoting spirit-salamander
I think the thinking which lead to vitalism is identical to panpsychism. In both cases, it is supposed to be inconceivable that life or consciousness emerges out of matter without presupposing an additional element: either vital force, or an elemental psychic quantum, or some such thing.
An ontological distinction - would you agree?
Quoting hypericin
Because 'appears' requires a subject, i.e. an agent to whom something appears. Nothing appears to a rock.
---------------
The issue I see with ‘vitalism’ is actually caused by the impossibility of taking the ‘elan vital’ to be an object or an objectively real existent. There is no literal ‘vital substance’ in the sense that the term implies. An analogy might be looking at neural data for intelligence, or looking inside a computer for the information it contains. There's no literal substance. Intelligence is basically the ability to make distinctions - that goes for even very simple life-forms, but in humans, it is allied with the ability to abstract and remember. But what 'intelligence' is, we don't know, we only see it in its workings.
I wonder if there's an analogy with the way that some elements conduct electricity. That living organisms are 'intelligence conductors' - that they're configured in such a way as to conduct intelligence.
I have not read Strawson on this, so I am relying on your characterisation of his position. But liquidity, you have said, is something Strawson accepts emerges, but he considers the emergence of a feature like this not to be radical. For an analogy, let's say that a rectangular object is, it turns out, made of lots of minute square objects. Well, the rectangularity has emerged for it really isn't present in any of the objects from which it is composed, but we do not have radical emergence here for this kind of property - shape - is not of a fundamentally different kind. Similarly, liquidity might be characterised as a texture or texture and behaviour combo. And although the objects from which a liquid is composed may not have that texture or exhibit that behaviour, nevertheless we do not have radical emergence here for we just have more of the same - that is, more texture and behaviour (even if the texture and behaviour are different).
But consciousness - on his view - is quite different. We're not talking about more of the same. And thus it cannot emerge. It must therefore be present all the way down. I don't see that you've said anything to block this.
No. His point is that consciousness is not a different sort of emergence than liquidity. That's why he denies radical emergence.
Liquidity emerges naturally based on the properties of the particles that make it up.
The only point I want to stress is that experience (consciousness) all the way down can be misleading, because it would suggest that particles or tables are conscious somewhat analogous to the way people are conscious. He doesn't say this at all.
He'd say that experience is an "ultimate" one of several features that are found at the base of physical stuff. Just like liquidity is an ultimate too.
But as found at the base of physical stuff, it isn't configured in a manner that has consciousness as a person would. But being that it is one of the properties of physical stuff, when it is configured in things like brains you do get experience like ours. So experience emerges naturally for him.
I have to repeat that this is not my view. I don't think panpsychism is correct.
Having said all this and explained (or failed to explain) his views as best I could, feel free to attack the view as much as you wish. I don't want to block anything, I just tried to state his views.
EDIT: I forgot to add, this version of his panpsychism comes from his two most cited works I believe, Realistic Monism and Consciousness and Its Place in Nature.
He goes on to expand and elaborate his views, later on, in a manner I can't defend, because I don't understand it and because what I read seems way off the mark to me. So I'm only presenting what I think I understand. Just so you know.
Let's just be clear. Your 'evidence' that the mind is material was initially that doing things to the brain has affects on the mind.
That is a very poor argument. Doing things to A affects B does not imply that B 'is' A. If I pour some water into a plastic beaker, the water will become beaker-shaped. If I distort the shape of the beaker, the water will similarly change shape. Clearly it would be silly to conclude that therefore the water is the beaker.
Yet that is literally how people reason when it comes to the mind and the brain.
You have now claimed that material objects cannot interact with immaterial ones. That is absolutely not - not - a tautology.
It is false. Manifestly. My mind - which remember, you've provided not one dot of evidence is material and gives every impression of being immaterial - interacts with my brain. So, my mind - something immaterial - interacts with something (supposedly) material.
But even if two radically dissimilar kinds of thing cannot causally interact - a claim for which there is no non-question begging evidence - that would not imply that my mind is material, but rather that all material things are in fact mental.
I'm not disputing that he doesn't say this, I am saying that it is the upshot of his position!
Again, return to shape - there's shape and then there are shapes. Different shapes can emerge from the combination of objects that are not that shape. But we're still talking shape here, so there's no radical emergence going on, right?
So, if he wants to say that consciousness 'emerges' in this way, then he'd have to say...well, what?
There's consciousness (analogous to 'shape') and then there are particular conscious states (analogous to particular shapes). So, if he was saying that molecules and what-not have particular conscious states, and that particular combinations of them can give rise to a different conscious state, then I'd agree that what we have here is emergence of the same sort as we had with liquidity. But now, of course, we really do have molecules having conscious states.
If, on the other hand, he's saying that molecules do not have conscious states but they can build things that do, then we have radical emergence. If, for example, a large enough collection of numbers became liquid, that would be radical emergence for numbers are not in the 'having a texture' game at all.
So again, I am not disputing that Strawson would deny my conclusions - I am sure he would - I am simply pointing out that there seems to be a genuine dilemma here. One can't have one's cake and eat it (or eat one's cake and have it, as the original saying was). Consciousness is either so radically different to all else that it must go all the way down - in which case we have a robust panpsychism worthy of the name, but also a conclusion so absurd it warrants rejecting the materialism that led to it - or we have consciousness not being so radically different to other states that a thing can be in, in which case we have no reason to be panpsychists in any meaningful sense of the word.
Ah ok. Then yes. I agree with that and I do think it is problem.
He'd probably say that radical emergence can't happen because every aspect of nature would be a miracle, there'd be no reason, law, habit or anything for why things occur.
Yes, there can be complex conscious states that can be broken down into their more basic component states, but one can't have half a conscious state. Even those conscious states that do admit of degrees - such as desires - can't be halved. One can desire things more or less, and desire something half as much as someone else, but one can't have half a desire.
This is one of the reasons I am an immaterialist, for if the sensible world is made of exactly what it appears to be made of - namely sensations, and thus mental states - we would not get the problem of infinite divisibility.
Quoting hypericin
Quoting Bartricks
You keep referring to these appearances and impressions as if they had evidentiary status .
Quoting Bartricks
Despite your bald assertion, it is in fact a tautology. If a ghost picks up a rock and throws it, by definition this is not the nonphysical interacting with the physical. Rather, by virtue of throwing a rock, the ghost enters the physical realm, and textbooks must now somehow account for the physics of ghosts, or be incomplete.
So in your odd world view, if a meteorite, undetected by anyone, fell from the sky and hit you in the head, in whose mind did this mental meteor exist before it struck you?
You also seem to overlook a basic asymmetry: the mental world is exquisitely sensitive to the "supposedly" physical one: a little electric current, a speck of hallucinogen, a leak in a blood vessel, can have dramatic impact on internal life. But if everything were mental, then you would expect the obverse to be true: powerful acts of mentation should have at least as powerful impacts on your supposedly physical world. But mentate as you like, you cannot alter the trajectory of even a mote of dust with thought alone.
No. You can divide things into groups on any basis whatsovever. These divisions may be more or less relevant, more or less salient, but thats a far as it can go.
Quoting Wayfarer
Ergo, the rock is mental?
I don't follow your reasoning.
Quoting Wayfarer
The issue is that it is redundant. It has no explanatory relevance. Everything that can be explained about life can be explained without reference to "elan vital". The same will likely prove true of consciousness.
Lange mentioned the passage I quoted as the overall conclusion of his book at the beginning. That is, his whole book revolves, so to speak, around the idea that fields are a form of matter. Since I have only skimmed the book and read only single short passages, I cannot go into your objections in more detail.
I was really only concerned with the basic idea. And my thesis was how one could save materialism. Since materialism represents a monism, i.e. assumes that there is only one kind of stuff, namely matter, which makes up the whole world, I must necessarily, in order to prevent dualism, regard physical fields, provided they are ontologically real, as a form of matter.
The following paper at least argues for the materiality of waves. Thus indirectly perhaps also for the materiality of fields. For either fields are nothing but the sum of waves. Or they merely denote the local sphere of action of waves.
"While waves travelling in material media are perplexing, they are much more straightforward than electromagnetic waves such as light waves, where there does not appear to be any material medium involved. In these cases, we will argue that they are themselves material entities, which participate in their own wave processes."
"We have argued that waves are best classified as processes, and that light and other electromagnetic waves are material entities that participate (or are the agents of) their own travelling wave processes."
"Considering our treatment of electromagnetic waves, and that fields are closely related to the waves that propagate them, one way to resolve the issue would be to claim that the field is a property of the material wave, similar to the approach we have discussed for photons."
Colin Batchelor and Janna Hastings - Waves and fields in bio-ontologies
http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-897/sessionJ-paper24.pdf
If fields or waves are closely related, to avoid dualism, one must consider both made of the same stuff.
Quoting SophistiCat
Okay, so matter would be quantum fields in your view. I would have no problem with that. The main thing is that monism is ensured. So everything would be a form of quantum fields. Thus also electromagnetic fields, provided they are ontologically real, what I have taken for granted.
Quoting SophistiCat
Quoting SophistiCat
I agree.
I was inspired by the Shakespeare quote:
"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."
And Spinoza and Nietzsche say something similar.
I only applied it to the distinction living and dead. Perhaps this is not justified.
I agree with you that for the sake of convention and practicality, the distinction between living and non-living can be made without problems or with minor problems (perhaps also major problems regarding organ donation, because one does not know when a person is really dead). Only, nevertheless, the words can mislead us and make us look at the things of the world askew, so to speak.
Quoting hypericin
Wouldn't we say that words of consciousness point directly to a core of our nature? With life words, I didn't see it as being that obvious.
Maybe I can explain it now.
I think I am assuming that for both the organic (life) and the inorganic (death) the principle applies that the parts are for the whole. By parts, I don't necessarily mean reductive parts, but rather sectors in a continuum or continuous whole
I see this principle as a neutral and logical entailment of things.
An example would be a drop of water that I perceive as a whole. Each small water spot or section of the drop is for the whole. With organic beings it is in principle no different, only much more intricate and complex.
The principle I mentioned would stand beyond or above the concepts alive or dead.
The first is Galen Strawson, the second I think is Chalmers. Chalmers wasn't a panpsychist last time I looked, but he's open to it. I thought Strawson's panpsychism did assert that micro-scale systems like an atom or whatever do have experiences. But it's a while since I read Strawson on that.
The problem is we cant directly perceive other minds and can only infer their existence., WE can take a stingy view and say that only things like me are conscious but this seems to go against the whole flow of western science which says "nothing can come from nothing". In other words a more scientific view is that conscious evolved from consciousness and didn't just emerge from nothing. The hallmark of conscious beings is that they are active self movers. Even electrons in today's physics are no longer dead pieces of rock but active agents that seem to make unpredictable quantum jumps. Other minds exist in nature - are they natural in the universe or oddities that emerged out of nothing with no effect on anything? For some speculations see: scientific animism and Panpsychism and Real Mental Causation
Quoting hypericin
Quoting hypericin
Quoting hypericin
:clap: :strong: :fire:
Quoting hypericin
Yikes
Quoting hypericin
Only because we
Quoting hypericin
Both of these books are Strawson's. Maybe Chalmers wrote in the latter book, as it contained many responses by philosophers.
It becomes very strange later on in the last essay, he starts introducing micro-subjects of experience and speaks about the inner and the outrer aspects of experience in ultimates...not convincing.
I do not believe that two ontologically completely different things can causally interact with each other.
When two things causally interact, one must assume that they have something in common, however marginal that commonality may be.
If we do not make this assumption, we have also abandoned a rational conceptual explanation and are at a point where anything goes and nothing is impossible in explaining what happens.
Even Descartes had assumed to his dualism life spirits, which are apparently an intermediate of mind and body, thus containing both corporality and mentality, in order to explain the interaction between mind and body.
With the Occasionalists, God then played the mediating role.
That's why I also assumed that physical fields or waves are a form of matter.
Oh, fair enough. They both must have written something by the same title. Chalmers wrote a (very good IMO) paper Consciousness and its Place in Nature.
Ah, did not know. Thanks for sharing.
Since you are an idealist, how would you answer the following tweeted questions from panpsychist Philip Goff?
"where do distinct subjects come from? what ensures they share a common world of experience? i find these qs easier to answer on panpsychism than idealism."
Here's another reason why panpsychists are panpsychist, again using Philip Goff as an example:
"I argue that the traditional approaches of materialism (consciousness can be explained in terms of physical processes in the brain) and dualism (consciousness is separate from the body and brain) face insuperable difficulties. On the basis of this I defend a form of panpsychism, the view that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of the physical world. It sounds a bit crazy, but I try to show that it avoids the difficulties faced by its rivals." https://www.dur.ac.uk/research/directory/staff/?mode=staff&id=17324
Panpsychists are panpsychists because the alternatives are questionable to them.
From Goff (Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness) comes still practical reasons. In a panpsychism we are in a healthier relationship with nature and can protect her better:
"Dualism can create an unhealthy relationship with nature in at least two respects. Firstly, it creates a sense of separation. Dualism implies that, as an immaterial mind, I am a radically different kind of thing from the mechanistic world I inhabit. Ontologically speaking, I have nothing in common with a tree. There is no real kinship with nature if dualism is true. Secondly, dualism can imply that nature has no value in and of itself. If nature is wholly mechanistic, then it has value only in terms of what it can do for us, either by maintaining our survival or by creating pleasurable experiences for us when we take it in with our senses. There is a worry that dualist thought can encourage the idea that nature is to be used rather than respected as something of value in its own right."
"Panpsychism has the potential to transform our relationship with the natural world. If panpsychism is true, the rain forest is teeming with consciousness. As conscious entities, trees have value in their own right: chopping one down becomes an action of immediate moral significance. Moreover, on the panpsychist worldview, humans have a deep affinity with the natural world: we are conscious creatures embedded in a world of consciousness."
"Few people are aware of these transformations in our understanding of plant mental life, and many would still probably dismiss the ideas that trees talk as hippie nonsense. But imagine how our children’s relationship with nature could be transformed if they were taught to walk through a forest in the knowledge that they are standing amidst a vibrant community: a buzzing, busy network of mutual support and care."
Quoting spirit-salamander
I am an immaterialist on the basis of the evidence. That is, I believe there are epistemic reasons to believe immaterialism about the mind - and immaterialism about everything - is true. Whether there are prudential reasons or moral reasons or aesthetic reasons to think some other view is true, is neither here nor there. For those kinds of reason are not the kind that evidence is made of. As I am sure even Goff would accept, if there are prudential, moral and aesthetic reasons to think God exists, that would not constitute evidence that God exists. Likewise, if there are good prudential or moral reasons to think materialism is true, that's not evidence it is true.
I am not a dualist. I am an immaterialist about the mind. But, following Berkeley, I think everything that exists is made of minds and their contents. Immaterialism is a monistic theory, like materialism. It should not, then, be conflated with dualism - a theory that does no more than add the problems of materialism to an otherwise problem-free immaterialism.
Anyway, he asks 'where do distinct subjects come from?' Nowhere. Everyone has to say that about something. And note, as a panpsychist he would have to say 'nowhere' to the question 'where do the consicous states of the most basic units of existence come from?' So when it comes to the basic units of existence - that from which all else is made - the question 'where do they come from?' is misapplied. They don't come from anywhere, whatever they are. THey just brutally exist.
That's what I say about my mind. It doesn't 'come from' anywhere. It just exists. And that's true of all minds. They just exist. The external world 'comes from' them, or one of them. But they themselves come from nowhere, for they are not in a location and they are not made.
Consider this argument for immaterialism:
1. If an object is material, it is infinitely divisible
2. No object is infinitely divisible
3. Therefore, no object is material
4. If no objects are material and some objects exist, then immaterialism is true
5. Some objects exist (my mind, for instance)
6. Therefore, immaterialism is true
My mind is an indivisible thing - half a mind makes no sense - and thus has no parts (for if it had parts it could be divided into them). If a thing has no parts - is indivisible - it is simple. That is, it is not made of anything more basic than itself. It has no ingredients. As such, if an object is indivisible it has not been created, for there is nothing more basic from which one could create it.
Thus our reason tells us, if we care to listen to it, that we are not created - we are uncreated simple things. Immaterial things.
Goff, then, by asking 'where to subjects come from' shows only that he does not really understand how one might arrives at immaterialism about the mind.
What about the second silly question - 'what ensures they share a common world of experience?'?
Again, he seems not fully to understand the position he's addressing. There 'is' a common world that we are experiencing - he would agree to that, of course. The question is 'what is it made of?'. If we answer that question, that will help us answer his. Well, it is made of mental states. For I am aware of the world via my sensible experiences. But what do I experience? I experience sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures. These are sensations. Thus the world of common experience - the world we each seem independently to be aware of via our own sensible experiences - is made of sensations. Not mine or yours, of course. My sensible experiences give me an awareness of a world, but do not constitute it. He would accept this too, of course, for otherwise what's he asking about? We all seem to be aware of a single, unified world - that is, our individual sensible experiences give us each a partial awareness of a single world of sensations. Thus that common world is not existent in our own minds, but is external to them.
Sensations can only exist in a mind. As the world of common experience is made of sensations - sensations external to my mind and yours - the world of common experience is made of the sensations of a single external mind.
So what ensures our minds share a common experience of that sensible world: well, what else but the mind whose sensations the world is made of?
No, you're just confused. The claim that material entities can only causally interact with other material entities is a substantial (and false) claim.
Why are you so sure you're right, incidentally, when you're clearly not very good at reasoning? I mean, you really did give the woefully poor 'brain affects mind, therefore mind is brain' argument. And that really is a terrible argument. Yet you thought it was good - a zinger, yes?
It is a non-sequitur and needs supplementing with the causal principle to be valid - something I told you.
We're now discussing that causal principle. But it's just odd to me that you should continue to be so confident that you're right and I'm wrong, given that so far you've had a monopoly on being the latter.
Anyway, although this is no doubt utterly pointless as you're so convinced I'm wrong and you're right, 'causation' is a relation between things. So, if A causes B, then A and B are not the causation; causation is the relation that obtains between them.
The claim, then, that if A causes B, A and B must be things of the same kind is the claim that causal relations can only obtain between objects of the same kind.
That's a substantial claim - not a tautology - and it is prima facie false. If we have good evidence that there is a material world, then we experience its apparent falsity all the time - for my mind, which appears not to be material - seems to be interacting with a material world. That's good prima facie evidence .
Also, take another relation - liking. Liking is a relation between things. I like tea. I like the number 8. In both cases we have a liking relation - but one is between me and tea, and one is betweem me and a number. Tea is nothing remotely like the number 8, yet that does not stop me standing in a liking relation to both. It would be odd - perverse - to insist that liking relations can only exist between the same kinds of thing, such that persons can only like other persons and nothing else. Why on earth think such a perverse principle true? Well, the same applies to the causal principle. It's perverse - it is not self-evident to reason - and experience teaches us that it is positively false. Like the materialism that it is wheeled in to support, it has nothing to be said for it and plenty against. No wonder so many materialists appeal to it!
Using my own words against me? Rude!
Re: the Wizard of Oz, I'm not so sure the naming of it is just semantic (I'm also very sure I don't believe everything I say). In the case of lossless media, you can show, with mathematical rigor, that the information content of the movie on dvd, and on hard disc, is identical, bit by bit, in spite of the total dissimilarity of the physical medium. In a sense, the information is not just the same, but it is the same informational "thing" residing in two places simultaneously.
This is in contrast to physical objects, where this assertion of identity simply cannot happen. At best you can say that two things are very similar. And as is familiar, the more you increase the accuracy of this evaluation, the more you disturb the object itself.
This is one aspect of what seems to be a deep divide, which leads me to my own verbal cleavage of the world into matter and information. I assert that mind is far more information-like than matter-like, and so falls on the information side of this split. In order to reconcile mind and brain, one must first reconcile information and matter.
But information is just one aspect of mentality which happens over time. The other aspect is in the present for every conscious being right now has a unique location and private subjective perspective on the sights and sounds of the world from that place.
The wise ones.
Quoting hypericin
Only in the same way that a page of text is identical from one print or manuscript to the next. With or without a coding and subsequent decoding in between.
Quoting hypericin
Why the woo? Why not, here are two different things both classified as "apple"; here are two things both classified as "Wizard of Oz file"?
Quoting hypericin
How?
Quoting hypericin
But you just pointed out that digital identity of symbols isn't affected by their physical diversity, so...
Incidentally, let's distinguish between The Wizard of Oz the set of its plays or screenings (sound-and-light-events) from The Wizard of Oz the set of its recordings on reel or disk etc. The first set is defined by the second: whether what you saw was actually the film depends on whether it was produced from one of the set of authentic reels or files. But only members of the first set are subjected to aesthetic comparisons, with each other and with other films, etc.
Also, none of the first set are "residing in" any of the second.
Quoting hypericin
I did.
...
Yeah, but I feel that saying "there is only one kind of stuff, namely matter" doesn't really say much. All we have to do to "save materialism" in this sense is to extend the definition of "matter" as far as we need.
Quoting spirit-salamander
Also solids and liquids and chairs and cats, etc. That is, if by "matter" you just mean what there is. There are many different ways to look at what there is, fields being just one such way.
No more "woo" to say that two numbers, i.e. "13, 13", are the same number. Two different things, classified as "13"? Sounds woo to me. And consider that, in binary form, the movie is a single (beyond-cosmically large) number.
Quoting bongo fury
Two spatially distinct objects cannot be numerically identical, only qualitatively similar (even qualitative identity cannot be established). Two spatially distinct informational "objects" may be numerically the same object.
Quoting bongo fury
... whereas physical identity is not only completely dependent on physical diversity, but also impossible to establish anyway, and also impossible anyway (for two things to be physiclally identical, they must be coincident, in other words, the same, singular thing).
My point is that information operates under very, very different rules from matter, to support my woo claim that matter/information is the actual dualism in the universe.
Quoting bongo fury
Such events of the first sort are where information interacts with, and drives, the physical, material world.
But consider that the light and sound is the same information as that in the reel or disc, just in another physical medium, and spread across time. This can be seen by the bootlegger who then records this and captures it back to disc, albeit with much information lost. Here you can meaningfully say that the bootleg "wizard of oz" is an object in the same category as an authentic "wizard of oz". But this is not an apt description of an authentic copy. An authentic copy of "the wizard of oz" is the very same "wizard of oz".
I don't quite understand the choice of example, here. Are we talking about tokens of a numeral (or numeral string)? Or are we talking about some abstract number or concrete collection, but either way something (or some things) referred to by such a numeral? Or would that be a pedantic question? *
Quoting hypericin
I'm lost here. Please help.
Quoting hypericin
Good...
Quoting hypericin
Hopefully we can at least agree where we disagree, here: for me, qualitative in this context would mean non-numerical, merely. Non-numerical identity would be equivalence, and only distinct from similarity in the formal respect of being transitive. So qualitative identity of distinct physical objects is as I see it perfectly easily established, as in the example of distinct tokens of a digital signal, or of a notational text.
Quoting hypericin
Sets such as the reliably mutually exclusive ones that are distinct digital signals; or, equally well, notational texts. Ok. But now,
Quoting hypericin
... So, numerically distinct but themselves numerically identical??
Quoting hypericin
Sense of fun appreciated, but please clarify if/how tokens of a type (a text or signal) are numerically both distinct and identical?
Quoting hypericin
This is beginning to sound like bio-semiotics? So, likely mystical about information. And you did warn me. Oh well.
Quoting hypericin
But this is confusing symbol and object. So my first question (*) was pedantic after all?
Quoting hypericin
Not numerically the same: rather, it is a link in some dependably and safely transitive chain of copying, such as the kind of copying known as "digital"; whereby the set of authentic copies is kept reliably separate from the fakes.
This is true in a sense. On the other hand we now know that what we should study is matter and physical stuff, not Gods or angels.
I think it's kind of astonishing that at bottom, there is only one kind of stuff, such that everything is physical. Maybe trivial sure, but also insane, given the world looks so pluralistic.
In any case materialism doesn't need to "saved" any more that "empiricism" or most other "isms". It all depends on what we mean when we say these words.
Materialism cannot be saved because it's logically absurd, while panpsychism and 'many worlds' theory seem to be attemtps to rescue it.
It's odd to see no discussion here of of the Perennial philosophy, for which matter is in consciousness.and consciousness simply is reality. Meister Eckhart describes matter as 'literally nothing', and this would be my view. Materialism looks like a pre-analytical folk-superstition. It cannot survive analysis so is unsaveable. Good riddance. No point in having a theory that explains exactly nothing. . . .
. .
Just consider the numbers "13, 13" as they appear on your screen. Are they two different numbers, both classifed as "13"? Or the same number?
Quoting bongo fury
You are probably aware that digital data is stored as 1s and 0s. These are interpreted as base-2 numbers, which are just like the familiar base-10, except at every digit only 2 values are possible, instead of 10 So, every file on your computer can be interpreted as an enormous number. In the case of a movie, if it is well compressed and HD the file size might be ~4GB. This is 2^32 base-
2 digits, corresponding to a single base-10 number of around 1.2 billion digits!
Quoting bongo fury
But look at the examples you chose. These might be informationally identical. But physically? Is the signal comprised of the same number of elections, with the same energies and relative positions? Is the ink on the page perfectly identical, forming the same shape down to the molecular level? True qualitative identity of distinct physical objects is both statistically impossible and impossible to verify, due to the uncertainty principle. This is opposed to informational objects, where qualitative identity is trivial. Moreover I claim that with information qualitative identity *is* numeric identity. As in the example of "13, 13". Hence the woo assertion that two copies of "The Wizard of Oz" are qualitatively and numerically
the same information expressed in two qualitatively and numerically distinct physical media .
Quoting bongo fury
Not mystical at all (although to a true reductionist, everything must look like mysticism). I'm just taking information seriously, as something with its own nature and laws, and as something distinct from matter. Whether information is something fundamental in the universe, or emergent from (and so reducable to) matter, is up for debate. But either way there is more to be said than
Quoting bongo fury
Quoting bongo fury
Any of them.
"13" might mean the tokens, it might mean the integer 13, it might mean 13th day of christmas, or an order to buy 13 pounds of chicken fat. The meaning is totally dependent on context. This is the power and efficiency of symbolic communication, it abstracts away all the shared context. Information with no context gets you nowhere, the meaning of a message is a function of its information and context:
F(I, C) -> M
F("13", A child's writing exercise) -> The tokens 1, 3
F("13", A math exam) -> The integer 13
F("13", KFC kitchen restock order ) -> Buy 13# chicken fat
F("13", A christmas carol gone wrong) -> 13th day of Christmas
In all these messages, the information is not just similar, it is the same. Only the context varies.
But the context here was as specific as any of those, so I'm not sure why you say "any", here, but not with those.
The question about
Quoting hypericin
isn't any clearer, but let's see if answering it helps.
Quoting hypericin
They are two different tokens of the single numeral-string "13". They both of them "are" that string in the sense better clarified as "belonging to" or "instantiating" or "exemplifying" or "being classified as" that string. Better at least if we risk misunderstanding each other on questions of numerical identity. The string is a type, which is to say, a class or aggregate of its member tokens. The member tokens are numerically distinct. The type or class or aggregate is singular.
The distinct tokens might well be interchangeable in the role of referring to a single number (the numeral's referent, however construed), and I wonder whether you are in danger of confusing equivalence with identity for that reason. It might explain the use of the term "information" to refer to a syntactic object, such as a token. (Not saying there is a rule about that.)
Quoting hypericin
So what do you really mean? Are the asterisks scare quotes? Or are you trying to claim that the two numerically distinct (and even physically contrasting, as you rightly say) tokens of "13" are somehow numerically one, as you do indeed keep seeming to say?
If you know Spanish, there seems to be a full translation at least in the 2014 publication.
(2011) Filosofía de la redención (Antología). Santiago: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
(2020) Filosofía de la redención (y otros textos) Antología. Madrid: Alianza.
(2014) Filosofía de la redención. Madrid: Xorki
If it's of interest to you, here's a debate between an idealist (Kastrup) and a panpsychist (Goff):
Consciousness Live! S3 Ep 17 -Discussion with Philip Goff and Bernardo Kastrup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOykDWGlOxM
Thanks, that was clarifying.
I'm in Portland now, so I can readily imagine a coffee table book for hipsters called "13". In it are a collections of photographs of various forms of the token "13": "13" scrawled on a note, birthday candles in the shape of "13", "13" in gothic font, the sign of The Lucky 13 Saloon, and so on. These tokens are numerically distinct, and members of the same class of "depictions of the numeral 13". And this book reflects your conceptual model of the two "13" tokens on a page in our example.
We can treat other groups of material objects the same way: I have a bag of apples, some are red, others are pink, some are delicious, others are mealy. These are numerically distinct, qualitatively similar, and conceptually unified by the term "apple" (in my terms from before, the word "apple" carves reality in such a way that the contents of this bag all fall on one side of this conceptual cleavage).
This is in general how language, and therefore thought, treats the physical world. How else can we reason about the welter of similar and dissimilar objects that confront us every day? The word "a" betokens this kind of reasoning: by "an apple", the speaker asserts an object which belongs to the class "apple".
And I think we agree that these classes are ultimately human inventions, there is nothing of words in objects themselves. There is no "appleness", either in apples, or as some Platonic abstract, apart from the collection of traits by which apples are distinguished from everything else in the world. Thinking otherwise is the error of reification.
But this is not how we generally think about what I've been calling "informational objects". For these, we don't speak of them in terms of set membership, we treat them as proper nouns. You don't watch *a* "The Wizard of Oz", you watch "The Wizard of Oz". There is only one. This, in spite of the fact that you might have watched it on dvd, and your copy is one of 5 million extant in the world, each qualitatively (at least microscopically) and numerically distinct from all the others. We are not referring to the physical mediums when speaking of informational objects. We are referring to the information itself. Or maybe, the information in it's proper context, its meaning (the dvd in a dvd player).
Information also allows for categories, but across the dimension of informational variation, not physical variation. So, if you watched a copy of the movie dubbed in Spanish, or maybe even a stage production, you might say you watched "A Wizard of Oz". These would fall into the category "versions of The Wizard of Oz".
But, there are not as many "Wizard of Oz"es as there are copies of the movie floating around. If you accept this, then it logically follows that two copies of the dvd contain the same, numerically identical, information. This is not some esoteric, woo belief, it is just our common sense approach.
Yeah, I read the Allianza version. It was far from the full book, probably less than half.
I mean, it was good, but it was missing many arguments you could see many ... in the book.
I know the one due next year if the full version, I want to read his epistemology in detail, not a general outline. The Alizana version is good to get familiar with him.
So your admirable (for me) nominalism, as embraced in paragraphs one thru five (of eight), depends on grammar? Isn't that a tenuous criterion? Couldn't it easily have happened that we referred to apples as "apple" (with no article) even while only ever accepting a (any) whole one as answering to the name? (cf. Quine in Word and Object, "Divided reference".) Would some version of your "informational" exception then not apply?
Perhaps you might refuse the exception on the grounds that apples aren't identified digitally? But notice that what impresses about digital reproduction (in particular) isn't the fidelity of one copy from the last, but the feasibility of an endless chain of true copies. That aspect is achieved as well by an atomic digital symbol as by a composite one. Treat an apple as a character in a discrete alphabet (e.g. of fruits) and the analogy is complete. (cf. Goodman in Languages of Art, "Notations".) Digital reproduction is no grounds for Platonism, under any flag.
Quoting hypericin
Absolutely.
Quoting hypericin
Why on earth not?
Quoting hypericin
But what is that?
Confusing the music with the score would be absurd enough. Confusing it with any kind of recording, even more so.
Quoting hypericin
Sure. But not if you merely studied, however carefully, the digital or analog recordings themselves (literally, as opposed to the sound-and-light events produced from them).
Quoting hypericin
More to the point, there are not as many of the Hollywood artwork "The Wizard of Oz" as there are of the screenings and plays (sound-and-light events) which collectively constitute said artwork.
Quoting hypericin
Nope. Consider the apple. And the numeral.
Quoting hypericin
Sorry. Seems like Platonism to me.
Of course not, grammar merely reflects it
Quoting bongo fury
When referring to a single, definite apple, we say "the apple". The point is, "the apple", once established, may only refer to a singular physical object. Whereas "the book", when denoting a work of art and not a specific copy, may apply to any extant copy, as the information (or meaning), not the physical medium, is the referent.
Quoting bongo fury
I don't follow this argument. A pictogram is a symbol, and so information, not an apple.
Quoting bongo fury
There is no "exception". Matter is one kind of thing, information another. Being different, we think about them differently.
Quoting bongo fury
Because we don't. This is just a fact.
Hypericin: I finished reading my copy of "The Eyes of the Overworld" today.
Bongo Fury: Oh, I just finished reading "The Eyes of the Overworld" on e-book today.
Hypericin: Wow. What are the chances, we finished the same book on the same day.
Bongo Fury: Same book? No we didn't. You read a paperback, I read an e-book.
An observer would conclude either this is your version of humor, or you suffer some kind of brain damage.
Quoting bongo fury
That which is encoded or encodable. That which is isomorphic with a natural number. That which is the same between a paperback and e-book copy of a book.
Quoting bongo fury
But the information itself could be discovered. Context, and therefore meaning, is not deducible from information. If it was, it would be redundant.
Quoting bongo fury
Considering the screenings, they depend on and are completely reflective of the film reels.
Quoting bongo fury
Maybe. But you aren't understanding me.
Please explain?
Quoting hypericin
Ok, so being isomorphic with a natural number means being in a system capable of distinguishing at least that specified whole number of different items? I'd be cool with that.
Then, you are information if you are such an item? Perhaps there is an additional requirement that you and the rest must be symbols?
Yes, so for instance your apple glyph can be encoded with some number [0, N) where N is the number of glyphs in the fruit language. This number would then be an encoding of an encoding. In general by information I mean: Being an encoding or being encodable in such a way that the encoding is representable as a natural number.
Quoting bongo fury
I don't want to include only encodings, I want to include everything encodable. So the informational content of a physical system is the minimum encoding that would permit someone with the encoding and the means to completely reproduce it. Of course you can modulate this requirement with a fidelity. Given an apple, this can range from indistinguishable reproduction, which would be an enormous amount of information, to mere membership of the right fruit class, where a glyph would suffice.