Monism
[Nothing novel, this is probably deconstruction-lite or dialectics 101, but I'm bored and thought-looping and want to get it out]
If you say that everything is matter
Someone can ask: As opposed to what?
You have to answer this question, because if you don't, then the only thing you're saying is: 'everything is what everything is'
But once you do answer - 'Matter as opposed to [the other thing]'
Then the question is: how do we understand what [the other thing] is?
Now you have to explain how matter produces an understanding of something other than matter.
*****
If you say that everything is Mind
Someone can ask: As opposed to what?
You have to answer this question, because if you don't, then the only thing you're saying is: 'everything is what everything is'
But once you do answer - 'Mind as opposed to [the other thing]'
Then the question is: how do we understand what [the other thing] is?
Now you have to explain how mind produces an understanding of something other than mind.
*****
In both cases, the monistic idea can only be precipitated out of a non-monistic stew. The intent of the monist is always to correct an error, to show how everything is actually one. But that intent can only arise from a situation in which there is, at minimum, a duality. The monist is always required to have some kind of 'fall' story. There was oneness, then there was duality.
Even if you try to fold the duality back into oneness, the monist can't account for the event of the fall itself. The 'illusion' of a duality would constitute its own ontological realm.
All of which is to say: Monism is always a moralistic or aesthetic corrective to a dualism or pluralism it finds itself in. It can't reflect reality. It always has to be a cognitive project driven by some sort of need.
If you say that everything is matter
Someone can ask: As opposed to what?
You have to answer this question, because if you don't, then the only thing you're saying is: 'everything is what everything is'
But once you do answer - 'Matter as opposed to [the other thing]'
Then the question is: how do we understand what [the other thing] is?
Now you have to explain how matter produces an understanding of something other than matter.
*****
If you say that everything is Mind
Someone can ask: As opposed to what?
You have to answer this question, because if you don't, then the only thing you're saying is: 'everything is what everything is'
But once you do answer - 'Mind as opposed to [the other thing]'
Then the question is: how do we understand what [the other thing] is?
Now you have to explain how mind produces an understanding of something other than mind.
*****
In both cases, the monistic idea can only be precipitated out of a non-monistic stew. The intent of the monist is always to correct an error, to show how everything is actually one. But that intent can only arise from a situation in which there is, at minimum, a duality. The monist is always required to have some kind of 'fall' story. There was oneness, then there was duality.
Even if you try to fold the duality back into oneness, the monist can't account for the event of the fall itself. The 'illusion' of a duality would constitute its own ontological realm.
All of which is to say: Monism is always a moralistic or aesthetic corrective to a dualism or pluralism it finds itself in. It can't reflect reality. It always has to be a cognitive project driven by some sort of need.
Comments (175)
Hah!
As opposed to being a final, settled reflection of reality as it is.
But I don't think this repeats the same confusion I was trying to highlight.
Yes, because once you accept the irreducibility, you've come to a place where any rational fixed-point has to be jettisoned. You don't leave monism for a monistic-y anti-monism. You leave the very idea of a rational fixed-point.
There is no problem here. If such is the nature of reality, then such a statement would be perfectly valid. Of course, a more interesting matter would be describing what the nature of that everything is. Any attempt at describing a oneness would inevitably imply a division, however the conclusion that therefore everything cannot be one is a hasty conclusion.
Even though Plato's views cannot be termed definitively monist or dualist, he does account for the aforementioned problem with his assertion that a person cannot directly attain knowledge about the One itself, but only through the imperfect lens of the human experience, resulting in 'the experience of the One', which can be viewed as a form of enlightenment.
Phaedo.
Of course there's differentiation everywhere. And monism is peculiar w/r/t differentiation - a baked-in peculiarity.
The same way we understand what anything is. We encounter a phenomenon of some kind, perhaps a feature or a regularity, and we conjecture an explanation for it. etc.
Quoting csalisbury
We still need to figure out how matter understands matter though. And since "understanding" is not matter, that seems quite a tricky problem in itself.
One interesting implication of thinking this way is that that the order of intelligibility must outrun the order of actuality: we can think more things than there are in the world, and an 'everything' claim is a claim about how we think about the world, placing limits not on the world, but on our thought about it. I suspect the apparent 'paradoxes' of the OP are what happens when claims are made to be about the world itself. Larger point here about how all claims are claims about intelligibility, but that's maybe beyond the scope of this.
You've already assumed dualism is the case in the response to the claim that "everything is matter, or mind". By asking, "as opposed to what?" you've already taken the position that dualism is the case.
As a monist, the correct response to the claim that "everything is mind, or matter" is "So what?" Why do we have to name the "everything" anything at all? What difference would it make unless we knew how "matter" behaved as opposed to something else (which would be imaginary)? There is the way that things are, and there are (a plurality of) ideas about how the way things are. There is only one way to get it right and an uncountable number of ways to get it wrong. Even when you get it right it's still just an idea, but an idea that is in sync with the way things are.
I don't like to use the terms "matter" or "mind", as they seem to imply dualism. I think "information", "relationships" or "process" are good terms to use.
Quoting Inis
Quoting csalisbury
No they don't. The claim was "everything is "matter/mind" ". That means that understanding is "matter/mind".
My answer to that is, "I don't, and I'm not at all convinced that anyone does, but nevertheless, people keep forwarding it."
At any rate, I say that everything is dynamic relations of matter, or you could say there are three things in my view--matter, relations, processes--although I wouldn't say they're really separable.
Quoting csalisbury
It arises from a situation where people claim something else. That's different than there being something else.
Think of it this way. You hand someone a deck of cards. They say, "Ah, you've given me a deck of cards interspersed with spludgemuffikins!" The mere fact that they've said this doesn't imply that it's not just a deck of cards, and especially if you can get no coherent account of what spludgemuffikins are and how you also handed them to the person, you'd probably say, "No, it's just a deck of cards."
It's important to remember that people can be confused, delusional, etc.
Replace the reliance on conception with one of interaction. So substance in III becomes the logical space of all interactions of indeterminate types, attributes in IV become isolated domains of interaction of determinate types (like thought/extension), and modes in V become interactions within a given domain (like chains of reason in thought or chains of cause in extension).
The 'isolation' of the domains is present in Spinoza, eg it's used in:
in the logic of its proof:
so thought and extension in Spinoza are independent domains of interaction set up a-priori through the apprehension of substance. I rather want to invert this to get a conception of substance out of the modes. We have that chains of influence/interaction, like billiard balls pushing each other or inferential relations, must have something in common; some shared interaction; just when they are not in an isolated domains with respect to eachother.
So if we start from the billiard balls and chains of thought, and posit that two things are of the same order/attribute just when a relation obtains between one and the other, substance then becomes stratified as the relational closure of each domain. However, thoughts and actions, matter and mind do relate, eg through desires and technology, so are of the same domain because relations obtain of the entities within them. Projecting this 'blending of attributes' back to substance offers the conception that substance is that which is characterised by relational closure tout court. This is close to a traditional monism, having one domain of interaction, when there is but one closed set of interacting entities; when there is one domain of interaction. It behaves like a pluralism when there are multiple closed sets.
Observing relations between entities then allows their categorisation within the same domain, and substance's conception is made to be dependent upon its unfolding rather than its independence from all other domains ('that which is conceived only through itself'). So we switch the logical priority of substance>attribute>mode to mode>attribute>substance, and the method of analysis from (synthetic) contemplation alone to (synthetic) contemplation of observed or conceptual interaction.
This is exactly what I've been trying to say regarding my complaint with Schopenhauer's monistic metaphysics between Will and representation or any monism. However, this argument can be used against anyone who claims, for example, that mental events are subsumed in the material.
They may say, "The mental is an illusion".
Then you will say, "What then is this illusion you speak of"?
And then ensues their inability to tidily account for the illusion in anything other than a duality.
But most people are discussing how mind and matter are the same or different, not just how mind projects itself into the world. The hard questions of consciousness would not accept this, but perhaps a theory of cognition in the easier questions realm would.
I don't think it makes sense to consider how mind and matter are different without looking at how mind and body project themselves into the world, or indeed how matter projects itself into the mind and body. The confusion arises when considering the domain of conception as different from what it concerns, positing a 'here' and a 'there'; isolated domains; which nevertheless, and now problematically, interact.
How does, let's say, "my desire for food" (desire interaction?), or "the ability to use a computer" (technology interaction), answer the question of how matter and mind are connected other that indeed the mind can think of technological thoughts and have desires.
How they interact is a different question from whether they interact. Noticing such an interaction evinces that they indeed do. Approaching this with the framing that an exegesis of how they interact is required to establish that they interact is an artificial imposition; similar to the idea that two objects could not collide and transfer momentum without the calculus in Newtonian mechanics.
Granted. I think these are two different questions. Yours might help in answering the solipsism question, "Can mind and matter interact?". But I think the main question here is, "How can everything be considered the same thing, when one cannot neatly be subsumed by the other?"
I would answer the question with a question; does it make sense to consider two things as being entirely distinct and non-related when they interact? I have a craving for ice cream. This expresses a relation between me and ice cream; my desire isn't extended or capable of temperature except in a metaphorical sense, it isn't the motion of a body nor is it at rest, nevertheless if I were to indulge and satisfy my desire, I'd eat the ice cream and satisfy my desire. It makes as much sense to separate desire and its objects through some prior stratification of being as it does to separate my mouth, the ice cream, and its taste.
Why should we grant logical priority to an intuition of separation when we can establish they are not separate through our acts?
The ice cream has a molecular structure- explained through chemistry. Desires have perhaps a molecular counterpart (interactions of the brain), but it would be odd to say, "my desires are molecular" (other than trivially/metaphorically). Rather, your desires have a psychological aspect, that is to say, it is explained through psychology rather than chemistry. It is these type of distinctions that the interactions of the psychology on the material that you are describing, do not answer simply because of its interaction.
Quoting csalisbury
In both cases, there have been some presuppositions applied: the monism of the statement is based on the monism of the speaking subject (and vice versa); so it is possible to differentiate between the two kinds of the monisms. Another difference can be found in the relation between the two ones. Further, the unity of the speaking (thinking) subject can also be questioned: the process of thinking has not been a simple indecomposable thing - it implies time. The most fundamental difference undermining monism is time.
Being the subject of a different set of investigation techniques doesn't say anything about the constitution of what's considered. Calculus doesn't have to overlap with anatomy, and on this basis we should not conclude that the entities of mathematics aren't related to those anatomy studies. How surprising it is that the impact of a fall has effects on the body, and that falling often leads to pain. Surely pain, falling and bodies are made of different substances, then. Philosophy should really deal with the interaction problem of falling down and the pain of grazing knees.
More simply put, stating that everything is matter isn't the same as stating that everything relates to matter one way or another.
It was just an example, but how it is that all material is mental or all mental is material is the hard question. The OP mentioned that often one or the other will call the other side of the duality an "illusion", but the illusion itself must be explained as "something" which makes it a de facto duality again. Physical objects seem to be of a different fundamental constituent than mental phenomena. Thoughts, experiences, qualia, cognition, etc. seem wholly different than chemicals, matter, physical objects, etc. It gets even stickier when we realize that in order to understand one, you need the other, otherwise understanding itself isn't even possible. But just the fact that the two interact, does not say much about the fundamental nature of each.
I'm trying to undermine the distinction. All is matter? Then what are thoughts, social structures, history made of? All is mind - then what are tables, rocks, vortices made of? So I tried to situate both in an indeterminate substrate in which interactions of both interact, so that we need not draw the distinction and be confused by its consequences.
Really though, I think stratifications of being don't neatly track stratifications of substance, precisely because we end up with things like emergence and multilayer dependence of things which are supposed to have an independent nature. Nature is more aligned with interdependence and transformation acting over all and intermingling all ontological registers, than a stratification into separable mediums of variation.
These are problems that arise from the hard problem of consciousness. These are the (practically) intractable, ever-debatable problems and hence the more interesting question, in my opinion.
Quoting fdrake
Of course this itself is a claim that needs its own justification. The fact that you mention ontological registers, means there is a substantive difference. What are these differences is the question I am posing.
My taste differs a lot. I see intractable problems, most of the time, as resulting from confused questions. With appropriate framing, what's intractable usually becomes irrelevant.
Quoting schopenhauer1
I don't see it that these differences apply over ontological registers - as this posits a priori distinctions between different mediums of variation. Rather, I see it that differences should be worked out immanently and in relation to some topic of study (or relationships between study topics); the distinctions which obtain of ontological registers depends upon which perspective you view them from. EG, a spider cares little for Brownian motion or the theory of pressure waves, but it absolutely cares about whether movements in its web are localised and relatively extreme or dispersed and relatively minor. This would transform questions like: 'how do organisms relate to pressure waves?' or 'how is it possible to get information from pressure waves?' provisionally into localised versions, which can then have commonalities synthesised from them. There's no guarantee, though, that the synthesis reveals a global truth about being.
So, a deflationary answer; ontological registers can have distinctions from each other, but these distinctions depend upon topicality and relevance. It is rare that such broad ideas can subsume all of their details, rather they serve as orientations for thought in a scoping circumscription of relevance that unfolds along with the questions we ask.
They are connected causally.
Would you have eaten ice cream if you had not the desire to do so prior to eating it? Does eating the ice cream cause satisfaction to occur? I should point out that imagining eating ice cream doesn't satisfy the desire to eat ice cream as much as actually eating ice cream does. How can a desire cause a physical action that then causes another mental state (satisfaction) if they all weren't the same kind of thing?
The same thing goes for how minds communicate. It takes time to communicate. It takes the intent to project an idea to another mind to cause words to get typed onto a screen and submitted for other minds to read at their leisure. Those scribbles can then invoke a version of the original idea in the mind of the reader. The only way minds can communicate is by using matter as the medium for sharing ideas. If we had telepathy then minds could communicate directly, but we don't so we have to use matter to communicate. And to get at the meaning of the scribbles is to get at the intent of the author (the cause). This is the case for all material things and what science attempts to explain - the cause behind the effect - which then allow us to make more accurate predictions - including how people will feel in the future if a certain event were to occur. When you get down to asking what people mean by "matter" and "mind" you find that they are so much alike that they can't be considered different things.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Indirect realism solves the dualistic problem. The world isn't as it appears. This is why we experience illusions.
A mirage still looks the same (like a pool of water). The only difference is that I don't believe that it's a pool of water. The straw still appears bent even though I know it's not. So an illusion is only an illusion when you misinterpret what you are seeing. You are seeing light, not objects. You see objects indirectly through the behavior of light. Matter is the result of how your visual system interprets and categorizes the information it receives from the light entering the eye. Everything is information, not matter and/or mind. It is the use of those terms ("matter" and "mind") that cause one to think dualism is the only way out.
But these illusions are happening in the bigger "illusion". Everything that takes place, is a priori taking place in the illusion (of representation, of consciousness, of experience, etc.). That is to say, it grounds all other things we might analogize to it, and thus eludes the analogy in a big way.
But if you start from the modes, and work back to substance - this whole issue (if there is one) vanishes.
I think I understand your broader picture, but I'm not totally sure because I'm not familiar with the term 'relational closure.' Googling it is bringing me to a lot of math-y articles I'm not sure I'm capable of understanding without a lot of work. Is it possible to summarize the concept?
This makes sense to me, especially the emphasis on constraints and limits. I still have a reflexive distrust of the idea that any positive claim can be made that would apply to all things outside of some circumscribed domain.
Like all that can be done, on the 'everything' level is an indefinite 'carving' out of reality, chiseling away through statements of the type 'there is no x such that...'
Though maybe you could have a positive claim along the lines of what fdrake's saying, if I understand him. Like maybe the one thing that you could say is that everything that is is capable of having an effect.
Quoting ?????????????
Drawing from Streelight's post. I think what I was trying to say, before losing the plot, is that silence or 'everything is as everything is' is really all you can do at the 'everything' level. Ideas like monism, dualism, pluralism etc are products of the mind's capacity to totalize gone haywire, metastasizing.
Quoting csalisbury
Except this lingering conception that stuff has to be 'made of' stuff.
Quoting csalisbury
I'm using it in a mathy way. The concept is quite straightforward in maths. A set is closed under some operation or function or relation just when you can't take elements of that set to some element outside of that set using the operation.
So, the set {1,2,3} is not closed under addition, since 1+3=4 and 4 isn't in the set, but the set {0} is closed under addition, since 0+0 is 0. If we abstract a level to functions, say f(x) = x^2, then the first set is not closed under the function since f(2)=2^2=4, but the second set is closed under the function since f(0)=0^2=0. Abstracting a level again to relations, which are like functions that can map one thing to many things, and defining the following relation R on the set {1,2,3,4}:
0->1
0->2
1->1
1->2
2->2
3->3
3->4
4->3
then the set {1,2,3} isn't closed under R, since 3 can be sent to 4. Neither is the set {0} closed under the relation, since 0 can be sent to 1 and 2. The relational closure would then be the smallest set of all elements that we can't 'get outside' of using the relation. For R this is {0,1,2,3,4}.
Abstract again to some collection of objects X and quantify over a set of relations {R,S,T}, then we can say a set X is closed under R and S and T if and only if it is closed under each of them in the above sense. Now imagine the set of all objects and the collection of all relations (taking any set as its substrate). We can say that the collection of all objects is closed under the set of all relations just when it is closed under each of them. This invites considering the relations first and characterising their substrate as the smallest set they are closed under, similarly to treating modes/interactions first and synthesising to attribute/substance later.
In my example of desire to Schop, we have that desire is a relation of an object to a state of mind, thus whatever the relational closure is must contain both states of mind and objects. This translates mathematically to applying the set of all relations to a set of objects, then applying all relations to what the relations have sent all the set of objects to, and aggregating all elements which are produced in this procedure into one giant set. This set then satisfies the property that all the relations can only send stuff to within the set, in the jargon making a closed category, which I'm identifying with substance through a massive sleight of hand (there are still a pre determined collection of individuals to be transmitted through the relations, and it also construes 'everything' as expressible through mathematics).
And in terms of your OP, when you say 'as opposed to what', this connotes with the domain of the application of a property or concept an exterior domain which does not include it; which must exist on the condition of possibility for the sense of the concept or property. By constructing the above object, we also construct an incredibly generic characterisation of everything, 'it is in the set', but this expresses nothing more than that it, in some sense, is.
[hide=notes]calling it a set isn't right, as this collection would also contain the set of all sets which didn't contain itself, making it an inconsistent object, it's rightly construed as a class or 'large' category since it fails to be a set despite having structure. Moreover, restricting this 'transmission' concept to relational closure assumes that we only have binary relations, relations which take two terms like 0 and 1 and consisting of items like 0->1 as in the worked example, full generality includes closure under relations of arbitrary arity, so sending 0 to both 1 and 2 at the same time as the same instance of the relation would be allowed, and would be distinct from sending 0 to 1 and 2 individually as two instances of the relation as in the worked example.
It's also possible that the whole thing consists of non-related parts, but non-relation can have an inverse relation attached to it (we relate which items were not under any given one), so being of one type follows from quantifying over all relations[/hide]
This might be a naive question, or else betray my misunderstanding, but how does this work time-wise? If we have relational closure tout court isn't that a kind of 'freeze' - as in, doesn't that preclude, by definition, the coming-into-existence of anything new? Since, if something new did come into existence, it would have to be the case either that the 'giant set' did not have relational closure or else that something had been left out?
Yep. There's no special emphasis on becoming in this picture, transformation is done 'in advance' as the sending of an object to another. There's no becoming separate from its products, held pristine forever in a glorified relational database, an accountancy of being;, an ontology for the insensate, the stubborn and the puritan.
Sometimes you just gotta go ham.
This analogy doesn't work because cards are a very small subset of everything. If we weren't able to differentiate cards from other things, we wouldn't be able to identify them. Fortunately, for us card-enthusiasts, both differentiation and identification, in this case, is easy. No need to countenance the objections of spludgemuffikin-holders.
The other ontic choice is to motor past dualism to arrive at the irreducible triadic complexity of a developmental or process view of "existence". You arrive at a better rational fix-point that either monism or dualism.
The problems with dualities - like mind vs matter - is they don't meet the formal criteria of a dichotomy. Therefore they never really convince.
But a full metaphysical strength dichotomy meets the definition of being "mutually exclusive/jointly exhaustive". You end up with two poles of being that are formally complementary. They are in fact mathematically reciprocal and thus mutually justified.
Take a classic like discrete~continuous. And understand them as complementary limits of what could be the case - so processes which are about heading in directions rather than states of existence.
To be discrete would be rationally defined as 1/continuous. And to be continuous would be similarly defined as 1/discrete. Each is the measure of the other. The more definitely you have the one, the more definitely you don't have the other. But you always still have to have both to have anything!
So this is the trick which gets you past mere duality. You have a triadic story of a separation into two extremes that is the third thing of an interactively self-defining process.
To be discrete is to measurably lack any evidence of continuity. And so a state of discreteness can only be as definite as that pragmatic metric. You might claim discreteness "for all practical purposes". And that rational position then harbours within it the "other" that is the continuous - rendered now as vague or indeterminate possibility.
So - as CS Peirce said - the full logic of existence is developmental. And it starts with a "monism" of the completely vague or indeterminate. It then breaks rationally towards matched and reciprocal poles of being. Then step back from that and you can see how the whole forms a system, an interacting structure of being, a sign relation.
The familiar duality of matter and mind just doesn't cut it. It compares apples and oranges. Matter is supposed to be talking about the fundamentally simple. But so is mind. And we know that mind is better understood as a complex embodied semiotic process - a modelling relation. It ain't another species of substance - a psychic stuff to rival the material stuff, setting up a disconnected duality of monisms.
However if we want to get at some basic duality that works as a formal dichotomy, we can find it in the modern contrast between entropy and information. One stands for uncertainty or indifference. The other stands for certainty and meaning. And physics finds them to be reciprocal in a way that can be measured. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other. And at the Planck scale, they become fused. Order and disorder look like the same thing. It is indeterminate which you have.
So monism equals ontological reductionism. And dualism arises by recognising that any ontic distinction - no matter how universal - has to arise as a dialectical contrast to its "other". If you individuate in some ontic direction, you also - reciprocally, measurably - have to be just as definitely leaving some other place behind.
Is everything stasis? Well, can't see any flux right now. Is everything chance? Well, can't see any necessity right now. Etc, etc.
So symmetry breaking involves moving towards a metaphysical limit by demonstrably leaving behind its metaphysical other. Limits can only exist if they are opposed. And being opposed, they have to be the third thing of holistically related. That gives reality a perfectly rational irreducible complexity. You have to have a triadic, or hierarchical, story to give an intelligible account of existence.
This is a very fixed point. :)
But it includes your own epistemic distinction of the one vs the many. Pluralism is just another complementary extreme. If the whole is defined by achieving the limits of cohesion or integration, then the parts are defined by achieving the counter limit of being incoherent or differentiated.
This again will seem a problem. The instinct remains to protests it has to be either all about the integration or the differentiation.
But instead, a triadic worldview says what we should hope for is a functional balance. States of affairs can only exist if they persist. And they can only persist if they find a complementary balance. The global cohesion and the local differentiation must be in some sense forming a feedback loop. The more of one results in the more of the other. You have a system that essentially freely grows to become both more unified, and more diverse, at the same time, due to the very relation causing their existence.
And again, maths and science now give us robust formal models of exactly this - which match what we observe in nature. We have all the maths of fractals, dissipative structures, scalefree networks, constructal theory, etc, that tell us this triadic/developmental ontology maps to the world as we know it.
Triadicism has won. Structuralism is in again. The news is just taking a while to filter out.
That's fair. I should have been saying 'substance monism' or 'substance monist' not 'monism' and 'monist'
Hats off to Triadicism then.
I don't know what you mean, really.
Off of this
[quote=me]This might be a naive question, or else betray my misunderstanding, but how does this work time-wise? If we have relational closure tout court isn't that a kind of 'freeze' - as in, doesn't that preclude, by definition, the coming-into-existence of anything new?[/quote]
[quote=fdrake]yep[/quote]
I guess there's also a silent presence here. I tried, over a half-decade ago, to understand Badiou, and I didn't. I know you've read him. When we bring set theory, oneness, novelty, Spinoza etc together, that makes me think of Being and Event, and that the inconsistency of the 'giant set' is somehow relevant. I wish I understood Badiou better but the feeling in my bones is that B&E is dealing with something problematic in the account you presented.
Nah. I think it's a result of bad framing. It's an interesting failure though, I think fundamentally it doesn't work very well because the operation which creates the fuckoff big object, just as in Spinoza, is a relatively unmoored conceptual operation taking little inspiration from more local problems. So in one breath I was criticising him for a focus on intellection in grasping an eternal and infinite substance, in another I derived a similarly inert and timeless material solely through reason. Sometimes it's fun to be a hypocrite.
Quoting csalisbury
Badiou was in my mind when I was writing that post, I think the relevant distinction he has is between 'counts-as-one' and 'non-all'. Counts-as-one is a intellectual/practical operation which treats something as a unity; an intelligible whole; which stands out against the inconsistent/intelligibility resistant real; the non-all.
The departure point of my account creates a ghostly intelligibility where in fact there is none; to be real becomes equated with membership in a gigantic constructed set; precisely what Badiou uses Russel's paradox to highlight the flaw in. Moreover, the distinction between counts-as-one and non-all is roughly a distinction between intelligibility and the real; the former an operation which synthesises unities given a circumscribed context (and indeed circumscribes those contexts), and the latter that which disperses all such syntheses.
Hah, alright. I couldn't tell to what extent you were endorsing those ideas.
Quoting fdrake
I think this is more or less how I'm thinking of things at the moment. I think its close to what Street is saying too.
Are you able to identify "everything"?
I don't see how that helps. What is a "substance"?
I don't know what this means. I don't think you know what it means either as you put "illusion" in quotes.
I explained that an illusion is a misinterpretation of sensory data. It's actually a miscategorization of sensory data. The straw isn't bent. The light is. Seeing a bent straw is exactly what you would expect for animals that use light as a source of information about its environment. There is no illusion once you categorize your sensory data properly.
You seem to be saying that the sensory data itself is an illusion. What does that even mean? Effects are not their causes. To imply that the mind is the world, and not an effect of the world, is the illusion - that category mistake I spoke about.
Yeah, it's pretty delicate, and my use of positive/negative isn't quite on the mark, because a constraint can well be understood as a positive claim anyway. Perhaps a better distinction might be something like nominal vs. operational - as in, it's all very good to call something a substance out of which everything 'is' (Mind, Matter, res extensa etc), but the meat of any such distinction is what such a substance can do that another substance can't. This is the usual: what difference does the difference make?
With respect to the conversation between you and @fdrake, part of my initial response was motivated by trying to rephrase Lacan's logic of the ('feminine') not-all: 'there is nothing which is not...'; which is set against what he calls the 'masculine' logic of universality: 'everything is...'' - the latter being a claim of identity (X=...), while the former leaving the identity of X somewhat indeterminate, and simply 'qualifying' it in some way. Also, as I was reading a bit to formulate this very paragraph a bit better, I realized I more or less borrowed wholesale from a Zizek discussion of this very topic (I kinda had this at the back of my mind when I wrote the initial response, but only dimly! ... Went searching and hey -) :
"The statement "material reality is all there is" can be negated in two ways, in the form of "material reality is not all there is" and "material reality is non-all:' The first negation (of a predicate) leads to standard metaphysics: material reality is not everything, there is another, higher, spiritual reality. As such, this negation is, in accordance with Lacan's formulae of sexuation, inherent to the positive statement "material reality is all there is": as its constitutive exception, it grounds its universality. If, however, we assert a non-predicate and say "material reality is non-all;' this merely asserts the non-All of reality without implying any exception - paradoxically, one should thus claim that the axiom of true materialism is not "material reality is all there is;' but a double one: (1) there is nothing which is not material reality, (2) material reality is non-All.'" (Less Than Nothing)
:cool:
Do you think you could indulge a selfish request? How is a unity male and a multiplicity female? I can never get past my WTF barrier with Lacan.
I don't know, you mentioned everything is information, not matter or mind- which causes dualism, or something like that. I thought you were saying that mind is an illusion, like the illusion of the bent straw, but maybe you weren't. My point with the illusion thing was that some people (maybe not you), like to say that mind is an "illusion", just like X illusion (a mirage perhaps), and thus, wipe their hands and think they are done. The ground of understanding anything in the first place though, would be this "illusion" that is the very thing to be explained. By the fact that it grounds everything else that we know, makes the idea that it is an illusion silly. Illusions happen within the general framework of cognition, the very thing that is first necessary to say it is an illusion. Illusion needs the general backdrop of cognition to understand that this particular phenomena is an illusion. What is the general backdrop of cognition but itself?
Now, more sophisticated versions of this "illusion" (non-answer) is the idea of information. Language bootstraps matter into a logic that has many feedback loops that become "experience" or "consciousness". There are so many holes in this, it doesn't hold water. Language may be a big part of the equation as to how cognition functions (if you are inclined to believe computationalist models of sorts), but how it bootstraps matter into awareness, is not explained without assuming the very thing it is explaining.
The only avenues I've found that grant me some semblance of understanding, though it's probably very different to a true psychoanalytic exegesis, are through Beauvoir and, ashamedly, Jordan Peterson. Though I've not read much primary literature on either, which is a shame in the first case but a mercy in the second. So this is probably butchery.
So Beauvoir locates women as occupying the position of the other. In order to partake in the play of symbols that constitute discourse, a woman has to forsake that otherness and speak with their stolen tongue; within a symbolic system whose condition of intelligibility and usual function excludes sexual difference as something to be negotiated linguistically, as already incorporated, rather than perturbed through sexual difference from within; femininity is only ever a linguistic trope rather than a regime which organises intelligibility. In this sense, femininity is a void buttressed on all sides through elision; an annihilation, through exclusion, of sexual difference. That this difference remains unarticulated is constitutive of the role of the other, despite the nascent intelligibility it can obtain through phenomenological and literary analysis, as with Beauvoirs' writings. To think the feminine then requires bending your mind orthogonally to the usual social, normative and philosophical modes of variation; it requires opening a space in which femininity can dwell and thus express itself through the articulation of sexual difference. In essence, femininity is not metabolised through discourse, it is skimmed over through already articulated concepts. Though whether this otherness, being as it is an interpersonal category rather than a ontological one, can be equated or treated as exemplary with the indifference of multiplicities to intelligibility/synthesis rather than analogised to them makes me pause for thought. It looks like a greedy generalisation, filtering too much and saying too little of the domain of concepts Beauvoir was working in.
And Peterson, where to start in this philosophical/psychological pot-luck? Masculinity is order and logos, femininity is disorder and pathos. For Peterson, the feminine is necessary interruption in the masculine, a never sated problematic and the impetus behind every life project; the dragon of chaos is the snake beckoning from the tree is taste of the apple. These are the inverted mirror of masculinity as anima and animus, a never fully integrated limit point which completes the mind through its inclusion, which spurs order forwards through its incompletion. This conception of the feminine as an interruption connotes the event as a motivating force for change which is never fully articulated, and thus multiple.
I can kind of see where transposing these concepts into ontology might lead, but I'm hesitant to brand them as anything but errors (my errors) in context recognition.
Fair.
Exactly. You didn't really read what I wrote and went about making an argument against something that I never said. This is a very common occurrence on these forums.
Quoting schopenhauer1
Well, what is an illusion? When we experience an "illusion" for the first time, we don't call it an "illusion". We believe that what we experience is real, or has a cause external to the mind. It doesn't occur to us that we are experiencing an "illusion".
When we know that it is an "illusion" and aren't fooled by it any longer, is it still an "illusion", or is it something for which we simply have a the correct rule for interpreting sensory data (this is bent light, not a bent straw)? It is no longer an "illusion" when we understand that we see light, not objects. Seeing bent straws is exactly what we're suppose to see.
I don't see how you can say, or question, how language "bootstraps" matter into awareness when you don't even know what matter is and how it differs from awareness, or mind for that matter. The only way you know of matter is through awareness. What I've been saying is that matter and mind aren't illusions, rather they are types of information.
Then this obviously needs to be fleshed out in order for me to agree or critique it. The question at hand is what is mind. The hard part is the very awareness that mind provides is needed to investigate itself and anything else, thus making it different than analogies which live inside the awareness, if you will.
I agree. And fundamentally, they are types of empirical data.
I don't think so? I'm not sure what that would mean exactly though.
I disagree with the OP. That a defense of monism has to start with the reconciliation of some ontic plurality doesn't mean reality itself necessitates plurality, it just means it necessitates non-monistic metaphysical systems which stand in contrast to and give sense to the term 'monism'. But a metaphysical system is not identical to reality, it's just a set of beliefs. The fact of the matter about whether reality is composed of one substance or not shouldn't depend on conceptualizations.
Also I am unsure why one can't simply 'fall' for pluralism by mistakenly raising a category or other distinction to the ontic level. An otherwise non-ontic distinction becomes a distinction between substances by face-value observation of difference. Why not it simply become apparent, upon analysis, that the face-value difference is not fundamental or ontic?
In other words, for anything someone points to, literally or figuratively, directly or indirectly, it's part of everything. That shouldn't be difficult for you to identify.
So, someone points to a piece of chalk, you can say that it's part of the set of "everything," right?
And if someone points to the emotion of love, you can say that's a part of the set of "everything," too. And if they point to Brownian motion, and so on.
You should be able to identify each thing as part of the set of "everything."
I agree with this. The 'fact of the matter' is surely independent of conceptualization. But to determine whether our metaphysical ideas correspond with reality (if such a thing is possible), we have to figure out what we're saying. What does 'reality is composed of one substance' mean?
What I'm suggesting is that, if you break down the concept, you see that its not about the world at all. It's a conceptual operation that has overstepped its bounds. My interest in this topic corresponds exactly to my feeling 'the fact of the matter' shouldn't depend on conceptualization.
(We could also say the fact of the matter about whether reality is large shouldn't depend on conceptualization. That's true, I think. But it's not really clear what it would mean. It seems to be mixing something up. )
Quoting aporiap
What does 'fundamental' mean?
Is face-value difference fundamental?
Why or why not?
I'm somewhat familiar with this idea, but I think you drew out very well how it applies here.
But still (and ofc, this is Zizek and not you, but -
I don't really see what it means. Like, ok, there's no secondary 'spiritual' realm. No positive ontological reality that mirrors a positive ontological physical reality. Two positive orders. Not that. But what does this way of saying 'not that' really mean, effectively, other than that you can be a materialist, without having to ever say firmly what that means? And with the permission to add whatever kludges you want without having to forfeit your 'materialist' mantle?
[a bit more provocatively. If you read much about Lacan, this historical guy, there's a lot about him doing really clearly abusive stuff, and his followers charitably interpreting these actions, building on his ideas. Jacked therapy prices, aborted meetings, hard put-downs, attacks on other prominent figures, consistent inconsistency etc etc. All happened, all were interpreted as intentional on Lacan's part.
To do a conceptual 'short-circuit.' Let's say you have one guy who says he'll try to do his best to make sure everything he does is in service of building a 'healthy relationship.' Everything I do is 'healthy relationship stuff.' Then you have another guy who says 'Well, I can't say that. But I can say that nothing I do isn't in service of building a healthy relationship.' Cool, so there's no way to identify what's healthy. But there is the infinite interpretive space available to you to rework what seemed unhealthy in order to say how it actually is healthy 'if you only understood him.'
Historically, that seems like exactly what happened with Lacan and his followers.
Metaphysically ----I'm not sure? It's a pleasing conceptual difference, the masculine exception and the feminine not-all, but I don't see how it works out when you apply it.
Two points to make I guess. First is that I invoked the 'not-all' Logic to diffuse the general question of monism asked in the OP, irrespective of the 'content' of that monism ('mind', 'matter', etc). I think you're cool with this. The second point bears on Zizek's more specific argument w/r/t materialism and the answer to this is that the fact that reality is not-all is the 'content' of Zizek's materialism: for Zizek, to be a materialist is to claim that reality is not-All ('ontologically incomplete', as he puts it sometimes as well), or in yet a third formulation, that there is no big Other.
This answer is 'Zizek specific' btw, insofar as his particular brand of materialism is premised on 'short-circuiting' both form and content. A different brand of materialist would probably have to answer your charge of 'ok but where the positive content?'; Zizek, because he simply identifies the not-All with reality as such, isn't compelled to do so in the same way.
"Many thinkers have argued that the traditional dichotomy between
the world "in itself" and the concepts we use to think and talk about
it must be given up. To mention only the most recent examples,
Davidson has argued that the distinction between "scheme" and
"content" cannot be drawn, Goodman has argued that the distinction
between "world" and "versions" is untenable, and Quine has
defended "ontological relativity." Like the great pragmatists, these
thinkers have urged us to reject the spectator point of view in metaphysics
and epistemology. Quine has urged us to accept the existence
of abstract entities on the ground that these are indispensable in
mathematics, and of microparticles and spacetime points on the
ground that these are indispensable in physics; and what better justification
is there for accepting an ontology than its indispensability
in our scientific practice? he asks. Goodman has urged us to take
seriously the metaphors that artists use to restructure our worlds,
on the ground that these are an indispensable way of understanding
our experience. Davidson has rejected the idea that talk of propositional
attitudes is "second class," on similar grounds. These thinkers
have been somewhat hesitant to forthrightly extend the same
approach to our moral images of ourselves and the world. Yetwhat
can giving up the spectator view in philosophy mean if we don't
extend the pragmatic approach to the most indispensable "versions"
of ourselves and our world that we possess? Like William James
(and like my teacher Morton White) I propose to do exactly that.'
Yeahh. I guess all I'd say is here is what a million people before have said -which is - why is this 'materialist'?? I'd say it isn't, really, and its a kind of 'what are you gonna do about it?' rhetorical move.
I do think the 'non-all' approach is right, overall.
So how would that work if differentiation is necessary?
You said earlier that if we weren't able to differentiate x from other things, we wouldn't be able to identify x.
But in this case, no differentiation is possible--anything we point to is part of "everything." Yet we can identify it all as part of everything.
Quoting Terrapin Station
What do you mean here? How do you point at something without differentiating it from other things?
They're not differentiated in terms of being everything. They'd be differentiated in being say, a Grateful Dead CD and another copy of the same CD. Just like two cards would both be cards, even though they might be different cards.
No one is supporting a monist postion--say materialism--where they're denying various things, they're just saying that all of those different things are material things.
Are you trying to say that anything that exists has being? Everything that is, is?
I'm trying to say that in terms of being everything, you don't need to differentiate anything ("the stuff that's not part of everything") in order to identify it as part of everything.
Hence, differentiation re property ? is not required to identify something as property ?.
What does 'being everything' mean?
I think it's in the meaning of that where the objection of the OP fails away. What can be everything? If we are considering an individuals of the world, it would seem the only answer can be nothing. To be an individual supposes distinction from everything else. If I am an individual, I am one who is not any other. I am absolutely not everything.
We might think this is the nail in the coffin of monism. If a thing is never everything, how could everything be one? How could it all "be mind?" Or all "be matter?" Or any other singular notion we might consider? It would seem a thing is incommensurable with belonging to everything.
If we were only to think about things, that might be the end of the matter. I don't think we always do. It would seem that a monism isn't even talking about things in the first place. If I think "matter" or "mind," I don't have a definition of any individual. If I think "God," I don't have a definition of an individual. If I think "human," I'm not describing any particular individual. Same with "man" or "woman." Any time I use a category on its own, I'm not speaking about an individual or thing at all. (it would so seem that your objection in the OP would also apply to dualism, since it's claiming everything belongs, just to two categories rather than one).
I think the monist (or dualist. Or triest. Or... ) gets around the OP's objection because they are talking about no individual at all. They are just referring to some sort of shared meaning which might be of an individual (in the case of the dualist or greater a collector) and is of all individuals (in the case of the monist).
In this respect, I think the monist is more than just a reaction to dualism. We could state the monist perfectly on its own: "Every individual shares the meaning of existing," for example.
Probably. I've seen a lot of people use a notion of monism which tries to speak on a level of a certain kind of state, whether it be an atom or an experience. To that, I would say I don't think it is really a monism (or even a dualism, a triism. etc.) because it really talking about individuals. The idealist who's says "everything is an experience" or the reductionist who says "everything is atoms" have an position that the world is constituted only by certain individuals.
I think they are the same. When a reductionist says "There is only matter" they literally mean everything is consistuted in the individuals which are matter, e.g. "Your thoughts are just brain states."
They aren't making any distinction between the individuals and the catergory they belong to. It seems they are arguing being an individual is no different than a group catergory.
Everything is a term for all objects, all phenomena, etc. Anything that occurs, appears, etc. in any manner.
It sounds to me like what you're saying would boil down to treating existence as a property, which is a notoriously fraught idea. But the phrase 'being everything' is strange enough I may be misunderstanding.
You keep bringing up existence. I'm not saying anything about it.
I already answered this above.
Let's try this: what part of this sentence do you not understand?
"Everything is a term for all objects, all phenomena, etc. Anything that occurs, appears, etc. in any manner. "
Do you understand any of those words? Any of them in conjunction with each other? If you don't understand any of those words, or any of them in conjunction with each other, you sure do not need to be on a philosophy board. You need to be taking remedial English or getting some other kind of rudimentary assistance.
The elaboration of what "everything" refers to is this: "a term for all objects, all phenomena, etc. Anything that occurs, appears, etc. in any manner."
What words there do you not understand?
Everything is a term for all objects, all phenomena, etc. Anything that occurs, appears, etc. in any manner.
Do you understand the sentence above?
What does "being everything" mean?
How about explaining why the answer I'm giving you doesn't count as an answer in your view? If you don't know the answer and I do, then how would you know that what I'm saying isn't the answer?
[quote=TerrapinStation]They're not differentiated in terms of being everything[/quote]
'Everything' is, of course, a word I'm very familiar with. "being everything" is a phrase I've never heard, and it's very strange, and I don't understand what it means at all.
Obviously there's no difference in my usage. "Being everything--x is part of what I just defined as everything"
So, why isn't that an answer?
Just to make sure I understand.
In your usage "being everything" means 'being a part of everything"?
I'm not making a technical point whatsoever, so stop trying to interpret it like I'm writing a computer program. "Being everything" = "everything" as I defined above is fine.
But alright. Are you saying that, in you usage, 'being everything' and 'everything' can be substituted for one another? I assume that's what the equals sign means. If it isn't, what does it mean?
Are you seriously not trolling? It seems incredibly difficult for you to understand something really simple.
Ditto
Again:
Are you saying that, in you usage, 'being everything' and 'everything' can be substituted for one another? I assume that's what the equals sign means. If it isn't, what does it mean?
Again: Are you seriously not trolling? That's not a rhetorical question. I want you to seriously answer.
Are you saying that, in you usage, 'being everything' and 'everything' can be substituted for one another? I assume that's what the equals sign means. If it isn't, what does it mean?
Seriously, are you trolling?
I'm probably not going to talk about anything else until you answer that, no? You could ask again, as if that might make me not think that you're trolling, lol
Are you saying that, in you usage, 'being everything' and 'everything' can be substituted for one another? I assume that's what the equals sign means. If it isn't, what does it mean?
You're either trolling or you're unbelievably dense.
“W. T. Stace nicely summarizes the matter :Neutral monism appears to be inspired by two main motives. The first is to get rid of the psycho-physical dualism which has troubled philosophy since the time of Descartes. The second motive is empiricism. The “stuff” of the neutral monists is never any kind of hidden unperceivable “substance” or Ding-an-sich. It is never something which lies behind the phenomenal world, out of sight. It always, in every version of it, consists in some sort of directly perceivable entities – for instance, sensations, sense-data, colours, smells, sounds. […]” From Wittgensteins Metaphysics, Chapter Two John Cook
“In the philosophy of mind, neutral monism is the view that the mental and the physical are two ways of organizing or describing the same elements, which are themselves "neutral", that is, neither physical nor mental.[1] This view denies that the mental and the physical are two fundamentally different things. Rather, neutral monism claims the universe consists of only one kind of stuff, in the form of neutral elements that are in themselves neither mental nor physical” Wikipedia Neutral Monism
I am familiar with the classical monisms, especially materialism or physicalism and idealism. The more interesting form of monism for me is neutral monism. A philosophical notion entertained or adopted by a number of famous philosophers including James, Russell, Wittgenstein and Whitehead.
I have perused most of the preceding discussion in the thread and frankly, I can’t make sense of the majority of it. I feel I do understand the above quotes on neutral monism.
I am drawn to the notion of neutral monism, because I am drawn to the notion of the universe as One, as Unity. In some ways I suppose that is a religious notion and in other ways a unified explanation seems more intellectually and scientifically satisfying than pluralisms. I find both idealism and physicalism as monisms to be inadequate to the realm of experience.
My current view is aligned with the type of monism that arises out of process philosophy. The fundamental units of nature are events which take place in the medium of spacetime. Events have both physical and experiential aspects, attributes or poles. In its basic conception I have yet to find a superior formulation of neutral monism and for me the process approach is superior to physicalism or idealism as a conceptual framework to explain all of our experience of the world. That is the goal of speculative metaphysics, conceptions to explain or help us try to understand our experience of the world.
I don't know all that much about neutral monism, I'll admit. But, from what I do know - and based on the quotes you've provided - it certainly strikes me as a step beyond either material or idealist monisms.
My stumbling block, here, is the difficulty I have understanding what it means for everything to be 'one' or 'unified.' I have difficulty understanding this concept except through visual metaphors (such as an all-encompassing sphere.)
There is a conception in classical philosophy of "independent objects" with "inherent properties".
In truth no "object" exists independently of the world in which it arises and on which it depends. Properties are always relations and not independent or inherent. So the world is already much more unifed, interactive, and interdependent than our typical language and operational conceptions suggest.
What do you mean?
Ever read about Indra's net? Schopenhauer liked some Eastern religious conceptions.
Since monism is the claim, then yes, duality is part of the one.
I like neutral monism because it is consistent with Aristotle's notion of substance (hylomorphism), which I find useful to retain for other reasons. For example, human substance is a unity of organic mass-energy and mind, arranged according to the Laws of Nature and Intentionality, respectively; consisting of objects and events (constituting systems) which may be abstracted as "physical" and/or "mental".
What is Indras net?
Often it is just easier to look things up, google or wiki, than to request someone write them out. In any event the conception is similar (more developed) I would say than your description of Schopenhauer's notion.
@csalisbury
Why would there not just be a strict dualism then? This might be the way we are using language but if there is the One and there is illusion, then there is no longer one, as the illusion still "exists" in some fashion (even if just as an illusion). Thus, the illusion has to be accounted for itself. Wherever/whatever the illusion "is"- call it mental space, mentality, experience, this is what is to explained.
Well, there are a couple of approaches. One is to think of the body, you have fingers, toes, ears, organs, they are all talked about separately, functions described separately but we know they are all part of a unified, integrated, system or process. The other example would be concepts like Gaia or the earth as an integrated, interdependent system. The scale is just larger but the principle is the same. Oneness does not mean uniformity, it means relations, interdependence, interaction.
The 'illusion' is only parsed as an illusion from a monistic, material perspective. "Dualism", here, is a response to materialism, a rejection of that standpoint. But it seems like reality is so much richer!
An example makes this clearer. Take a 'scene' in some city or region or era. Beat culture or grunge or fin-de-siecle modernist literature or vaporwave or cyberpunk. It's extremely difficult to reduce these to either material 'stuff' or consciousness or both.
(sorry for late reply)
I suppose I could give you Zizek's answer or I could give you mine. Zizek's is a whole thing about the subject, and how it the not-all bears witness to the inclusion of the subject into any picture of reality etc etc. I could go into exegesis but that's less fun. So, my take-away: I think the not-all enables us to think in terms of a 'non-reductive' materialism. To explain: what I'm always looking for is something that avoids two poles, a kind of scylla and charybdis thing: (1) No privileged ontological stratum (atoms, simples, 'stuff', out of which everything else is made, and is 'epiphenomena' in relation to that stuff); (2) No 'higher reality' over and above 'this' one: no Ideas waltzing in from heaven to in-form all the passive stuff lying around in wait for it.
To borrow the vocabulary of Graham Harman, I neither want the world to be undermined (from below), nor overmined (from above): it want it 'such as it is', and no more (or less). The not-all gives me this, or rather, helps fulfil both conditions. That’s ‘my’ understanding of materialism at any rate: the effort to give ontological heft to each and every thing, such as it is, without ideal-izing any part of reality or ‘beyond-reality’ over and against another.
It seems like a hangover from a soviet thing where you have to appeal to the big Other, while actually saying something different. Yes, yes, I'm a materialist of course, but...
Which is not to say that it isn't a rhetorical device or even a provocation - only that it's not only those things. And then there's that part of me which is suspicious of any 'beyond X and Y', which smells a bit too much of 'third way' politics, which always ends up being one of the previous offerings in disguise.
**It might be fruitful to ask this question of idealism in order to triangulate positions here - and I think, if asked of it, the answer has to be 'no': the whole point of idealism (in my understanding of it), is that it by definition aims to idealize one part or parts of reality over others (or, using a different topology, aims to idealize an extra-reality over reality). Which leads a bit back to the question of monism - if idealism and materialism both need to 'exclude' something to define themselves by, idealism 'excludes' parts of the world in favour of others (undermining/overmining), and materialism excludes attempts at exclusion, which is why the logic of the not-all, the double negative ('there is nothing is that not...') fits nicely I think with a materialism (part of what I'm trying to do is set up an 'asymmetry' of exclusion - both exclude, but in different ways).
Does that work for you?
This doesn't seem to answer the hard question of consciousness. We are always stuck with a thing leftover. Does a baby have raw experiences of qualia like green? Some posters here have suggested babies have no experience at all. They have taken a hard stance to ensure that experience is built from interaction with the world only. Anyway, the question is, "WHAT/WHERE is experience?" Materialists tend to explain it away, by making it a synonym- "You see, experience is just internal modelling". Then we must ask, what is internal modelling that makes it experiential? It will always beg the question. That doesn't mean, de facto, idealism is thus true, I am just giving why accounts from materialism are unsatisfactory, other than the easy problems that can be solved by observations in neuropsychology and behavioral/mental correlates of such phenomena.
Eliminative materialism excludes in exactly the same way monistic idealism does. Materialism and idealism are mirror images of one another.
Whatever fits one fits the other.
Not at all difficult.
These are products of culture, which is the collective mindset of a social group; products which may be physical (e.g., spoken or written language, music, books, cuisine, fashion, etc.) and/or mental (e.g., social relationships, norms, roles, statuses, institutions, etc.). No verbal gymnastics required; just observation.
— StreetlightX
Of course if one defines "matter" broadly enough to include mind and experience i.e. one attributes experience to matter; then one is redefining our typical notions of matter and using language to avoid the problem.
True, so what's your view?
Well as I stated earlier, I am a neutral monist of the process philosophy type. The fundamental units of nature are events in spacetime and such events have both material (physical) and experiential (mental) aspects. Language is always a problem and post modern language is especially a problem.
I think we all agree that there are events and that events are somehow related. If there is a psychic aspect to an event, how does that work?
Doesn't materialism, by definition, exclude that which isn't material?
But even if you stretch it, so it doesn't mean that, and means something like 'the material is fundamental', or 'determinant in the last instance', or something - well, can't you very easily find parallel (tho of course inverted) forms of idealism? (and even you couldn't, wouldn't it be a cinch to construct them?)
Trying to get a better grasp on what work 'materialism' is supposed to be doing, when it doesn't mean what 'materialism' usually means. I feel like I'd want to focus on this:
[quote=StreetlightX]the whole point of idealism (in my understanding of it), is that it by definition aims to idealize one part or parts of reality over others (or, using a different topology, aims to idealize an extra-reality over reality[/quote]
& ask:
1)What do you mean by 'idealizing one part of reality over others?'
2)What makes something 'extra-real'?
I have not read much Chalmers but a brief scan indicates there are some similarities. I am more familiar with Strawson arguments about physicalism and panpsychism. My basic position is reality is more (much more) than external observation and empirical measurement can reveal, exactly how that works is available only on the basis of rational speculation and analogy to our own internal experience.
In truth I am more a fan of A.N. Whitehead process philosophy and David Ray Griffith panexperientialism. There is some subjective (mental, experiential, choose your term) aspect to all events (miniscule for say quantum events) but very significant for complex integrated, unified systems such as ourselves. We should start with what we cannot deny (experience) and work down from there. The assumption that creatures such as ourselves are built from particles of matter which are themselves entirely devoid of any experiential, mental of psychic quality seems much less likely than the reverse assumption.
I wanna say that exactly how these are cashed out depends on the idealism in question. A certain reading of Plato, for example, reserves what I called 'ontological heft' exclusively for the Intelligible Forms, with the sensory world just being kind of like a derivitive run-off (idealization of forms - 'overmining', forms as 'extra-real'); or, on the flip side, you get certain 'materialisms' that reserve such heft only for 'atoms' or some kind of fundamental stuff, with everything above that scale similarly being just so much ephemera (idealization of simples - 'undermining', atoms as 'more real' than everything else).
This can also be cashed out at other, less explicitly philosophical levels at well (Politics: there is only the individual; Biology: the gene is the only thing that matters). All of these are just so many variations on an (idealist) theme. So the point is that there's no 'one way' in which something is idealized or designated as 'extra-real'. Perhaps you can call the above 'schemas' for idealisms.
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As an aside, I have no interest in letting questions of 'consciousness' - a cosmic party trick of disproportionate interest - overdetermine this conversation.
That makes sense, but if we back up and look at the concepts utilized in that scenario: isn't there a strict opposition of material/immaterial built into it? What are you saying if not that the two mingle? Is it an old picture, just un-deified? If so, that's ok, but why does it count as monism?
"what it is to be like".
Well this a speculative philosophy discussion about ontology (being) and so you will not get definitive truth or proof. It is about developing concepts and language which you help you explain or approach all of your experience of the world which encompasses both the physical and the mental or experiential.
This is no finality of statement to be achieved.
For me the world is not composed of the static or the inert but is process, change and flux it is a continuous creative becoming, not a being.. There are no independent objects with inherent properties but societies or organisms with interactions and relations to the rest of the world. The entire world is an integrated, interactive system of relations. The choice between monistic materialism or physicalism and monistic idealism, is a false choice, the world is both (not as separate substances but as one substance with both properties). As to what the nature of fundamental units or substance of nature are, they are events (quantum events) not enduring particles (which are only repetitive events).
(I)
If idealism is taken to refer to any metaphysics reliant on either overmining or undermining - if eliminative materialism, physicalism etc can be considered forms of idealism - and, if 'materalism' simply means 'not idealistic in this sense', then you don't even have to ask 'why not materialism?' or whether theres's room in the materialist 'house' to accomodate reality as it is.
(a) The materialist house has plenty of vacancy, since all of its long-time tenants have been evicted.
(b) 'Is there no room in this house for the class of guests defined as those for whom there is room in this house? '
If I understand our last few exchanges, it seems like you were accepting, at least for the sake of discussion, that the Zizekian approach - the identification of 'materialism' and the logic of the 'not-all' - doesn't provide an intrinsic justification of this identification (or, at the very least, would require too involved an exegesis- which I think is fair. There's a lot of moving parts when it comes to Zizek).
And so you'd shifted the terrain of the discussion. Instead of asking why the non-all should be considered materialism simply by virtue of being non-all, you asked what about materialism bars it from incorporating this logic. But in explaining why it isn't barred, it seems to me that you've just repeated the Zizekian approach.
(II)
In response to the whiff of 'third-way' politicking - a rhetorical move that draws much of its power from its anticapitalist resonance - I'd counter that this cuts both ways. There's also the gentrification of concepts. A bar with a long history in a once-vibrant neighborhood - say Greenwich village or Haight-Ashbury etc - is bought out, but the new owners do their best to uphold the facade of fidelity to the original spirit.
If its true that the old is often presented, deceptively, as new, its also true that the new is often presented, deceptively, as continuous with the old. You can furnish examples of either of these, which are pro or anti-capitalism( pro or anti-anything for that matter)
(III)
You may not want to talk about consciousness, because such discussion always stalls out in the same place, and I sympathize with this sentiment.* But you could also imagine the new owner of a bar who's not interested in discussing whether their incarnation of [bar x] is faithful to its history, because such discussions always tend toward the same bitter, irresolvable dispute.
Consider: a materialism that only excludes two things:
(1) exclusion itself
&
(2) the very mention of the thing its usually taken to exclude.
This is a kind of schema in its own right.
One variation:
Here, we don't try to exert power over anyone, except
(1) those who want to exert power over others
&
(2) those who want to talk about the people we're usually accused of exerting power over.
Supplement this last part with a barbed and contemptuous dismissal, indicating that bringing up the unspeakable reflects poorly on the character of those who bring it up.
(IV)
If you define 'idealism' through a linguistic maneuver by focusing on a particular meaning of 'idealize,' certainly it would be fair for someone to make the not- controversial point that materialism suggests something like 'everything is matter'?
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* There's a way of dealing with this without barring discussion. You can treat it as something that inherently stalls discussion, for a reason, and then incorporate it as that kind of thing, without either
(a) orbiting endlessly around it
or
(b) ignoring it
All that said, I feel like I mostly agree with you, content-wise. It's the name, or label that throws me.I just don't like the 'materialist' thing.
Prima facie a small quibble. Still, I think it touches on something I feel is less-small - & that's the thing of insisting that this or that course of thought is tied to this or that political stance*. I think they should be separated. Not because we should ignore politics. But because we shouldn't pretend doing theory is in any way political. You can make any theory fit any politics, easily, with a little rhetorical facility.
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*'materialism' as its used by Zizek et al, seems like a political, more than a theoretical, distinction.
Such a great post. I'm also anti-realist but carry along a working scenario. I stress things you don't.
Speaking of events, I happen to be walking today looking up at the bare tree tops. They're these huge old oaks. While walking, the whole scene moved and I noticed that the repetition of branches, crossing one another, was like music. When I stopped and stared it was visual art. So in-time vs eternal, another opposition?
I am not sure I would classify as an anti-realist but I am interested what you mean by the term, what things you stress and your working scenario for dealing with "reality".
As for time (a complex subject), I strongly reject the block universe (eternalism) interpretation of general relativity. Time is change nothing more, and change is the most consistent feature of reality, not fixed or static being.
Quoting prothero
That oppositions seem to be essential to conception. Implied is a unity beyond our grasp. Or if we can grasp it, it would require a different way of thinking.
Quoting prothero
Recognition of change requires a fixed reference point. Either you must be stationary or some other point must be (if you're the one who is changing.) Not to derail the thread.
A system is a dynamic composite object, and a process consists of sequential and/or simultaneous events. In ordinary language, nouns denote objects, and verbs denote events.
Whether or not there are physical and/or mental actualities (having part-whole hierarchies) is an empirical question. As is whether or not all actualities have physical and mental properties, as opposed to physical and/or mental properties.
From observation, some actualities (e.g., certain organisms) have both physical and mental properties. This fact suggests a neutral (neither only physical, nor only mental; so call it: organism) substance which entails property dualism.
What, if anything, these properties have in common beyond comprising organism essence is a philosophical question. As is what set of mental properties comprise mind.
Also from observation, some actualities (e.g., rocks) have physical, but not living, or mental, properties. This fact suggests a particular type of inorganic (call it: rock) substance which entails property monism.
Obviously, objects (e.g., organisms and rocks) change over time, and substance (essence, nature, or code+matter) explains object persistence through change.
I am unsure how it's just a conceptual operation. To say reality is composed of one substance means something. You assert that all objects are decomposable or analyzable into fundamental units which, at a certain level, are indistinguishable and interchangeable with one another. Take a carbon atom from joe and a carbon atom from the tree outside your window, and, if you look at them, you will find no fundamental difference, no individual footprint. Take the electron from carbon 1 and you can replace it with the electron from carbon atom 2.
In a multi-substance ontology, the parts are not interchangeable, you loose something by taking out one 'non-matter' part [e.g. a 'spirit'] and replacing it with a matter part.
Fundamental means not decomposable. A quark or boson, more fundamentally -- the properties which define 'quark' or 'boson'. These properties -charge, mass, etc.], would be fundamental.
Face-value difference is not fundamental. On face value, a tree and banana look completely different - different sizes, shapes, colors-. But the components of these objects are fundamentally the same -physical particles.
Here's the philosophical 'gotcha'. But I think it's legitimate. The challenge then is to decompose the face-value difference itself. Trees and bananas are, obviously, composed of physical particles, differently. No 'face-value' differentiation required. So how do you decompose the difference between the face-value difference of trees and bananas - and trees and bananas with no face-value difference.
You seem savvy, so I'm sure you anticipate this kind of thing. Nevertheless - how?
I don't think their different arrangement should matter that much. Spatial and bonding relations, which serve as the basis for difference between objects, are not fundamental or substantial, they just are ephermal states. e.g. You have a bunch of lego blocks and build a bridge and man out of it. Sure, they look different -on face value- and that's because of how you've arranged the blocks, but I don't think anyone would say the man or the bridge are their own separate substances, no the substance is the thing which is invariant and composes them.
What I’m trying to say is that the difference between saying there’s a difference and saying there is no difference is that, in one case, you’re giving ontological status or significance to relations between parts and in the other you are not- and only give ontological status to the parts themselves
If you say that is a conceptual operation - applying ontological status to a feature of the world- then your critique would apply to any metaphysical claim
I think you're right - and that anyone would agree that both were composed of legos. Both the bridge and the man are decomposable, in the sense you mentioned. But what is the face-value distinction - the 'looking different' - composed of? And is it decomposable? What is the 'ephemeral'?
Quoting aporiap
What I'm saying is that the 'relations between the parts' is doing a lot of metaphysical work. And that's worth digging into - because are relations fundamental?
My critique - but it's too shoddy to be dignified by that title - is a 'critique' of any philosophical operation that tries to find some way of characterizing 'everything.' I think that any feature of the world is capable of having an ontological status applied to it.
Yes, but only some things possess the ontological character of being (or at least of being thought of as) compositional elements.
They look different because their atoms are arranged differently and are bonded in different ways. I don't think relations [e.g. spatial and bonding relations] are reducible, but I do think they are entirely dependent on and caused by the relata, which must share properties in order to interact. If you don't have two atoms with the property of charge, you cannot have an electrostatic interaction. If you don't have two atoms with spatial locations, you cannot locate them relative to each other or some external reference. Secondly, relations don't outlive the interactors - it's the interactors [as bundles of properties] which can form relations with other entities. I believe it's fundamental properties, which cause relations. This makes relations not fundamental
Regarding 'ephermalness' - One thing I am implicitly assuming in my understanding of substance is the importance of invariance and generality. Aside from being non-decomposable, a substance should presumably be present whenever and where-ever there are objects -- it should be time and location invariant . Specific relations are neither time or location invariant and so they cannot be fundamental substances. That isn't to say they don't exist or don't play an important role [they differentiate things for crying out loud].
I read through the OP again to just clarify why this is an issue [finding some way of characterizing everything] and it seems like the reason you focus in on monism here is essentially because of the plainly clear plurality we experience. But I also think it's plainly clear that commonalities underpin pluralities; and these form the basis for the search for unifying principles and substances.
Also I don't think it's an arbitrary process - the feature must be constrained by what it means for something to be an ontological substance and that is something which I think people generally agree [or at least there's a convergence of thought] that fundamentality and invariance are the defining features of an ontological substance. It could be that two things have those properties or maybe 3 or 4 or just 1. I think it's then a matter of empirical study to limit the possibilities.
I'm curious as to why the mind-matter dyad can't be considered in this light.
All of it considered as an information-process and continuum: At one end matter: Matter understood as a constraint or limitation on the mind - assuming the mind is in play in the experience of objects - and mind considered a constraint or limitation on the "practical efficacy" ("it's ability to appear to a mind" - for lack of a better expression) of matter.
At the other end, mind: Supposing a dream to be as pure as mind can get: Even a dream is constrained by the idea of matter - in the sense that we dream of matter - though the laws of physics can be broken.
So we have an information-process-centered mind-matter mix at each end of the continuum.