Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Strawson on problems for physicalism
- Thread starter Magical Realist
- Start date
Jerry Fodor, Headaches Have Themselves: ". . . On the one hand, Strawson has the kind of expansive metaphysical imagination that used to be at the heart of philosophy, but which positivism and analysis succeeded for a long while in suppressing. [. . .] Still, all else being equal, whoever gives up least is the winner; so it matters whether Strawson has abandoned more than he needs to. I’m not convinced that we will have to throw overboard as much as he thinks we will. [...] Anyhow, Strawson is right that the hard problem really is very hard; and I share his intuition that it isn’t going to get solved for free. Views that we cherish will be damaged in the process; the serious question is which ones and how badly. If you want an idea of just how hard the hard problem is, and just how strange things can look when you face its hardness without flinching, this is the right book to read."
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Do you see a question mark?
The points are made by Strawson in the video.
I have all sorts of views. The OP however is about the views of Galen Strawson.
To provoke thought in thinkers, and to befuddle those who can't think.
Most threads at least ask for views or pose questions.
They are more than just a YouTube video of someone else's views.
Even if that something more is just a question of "Do you agree with him?"
Do you?
The points made by Strawson are about physicalism.
I am asking you what your point is in posting the video here?
As it stands the opening post IS the views of Strawson.
It is not about them.
Nothing has been asked of them.
You have merely stated his views and then run.
So what do you think of his views?
Do you agree with them?
If you do, why?
If not, why not?
Posting a link to someone else's views takes no thinking.
That is all you have done so far.
You might as well just link to the Bible and say you're "provoking thought".
So are you going to offer more than just a link to someone else's views?
Or is this just going to be a game of posting links?
http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/25286-consc...n-nature-does-physicalism-entail-panpsychism/
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I don't know what you're bitching about. How many threads have you started lately? I start quite a few here, many that don't ask questions but just express ideas. If you can't appreciate that then move on. The OP remains what it is. If you wanna discuss this, then tell me your views. What do you think are the problems of physicalism? See, that's how it works here. OP's soliciting thoughts that other posters express. Not posters bitching and whining about the OP not asking a question. That is no way to engender conversation. Note my consequential disinclination to have much of anything to do with you due to your bitchy attitude.
Despite missing a perfectly valid response in the same vein as the original post (http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/25286-consc...n-nature-does-physicalism-entail-panpsychism/)...
Is that how things are judged here?
I just have issue with threads that do nothing other than quote other people's ideas with ZERO input from the thread starter.
You might post them on twitter or some such like that, to share the joy, but at least have the courtesy here to add some comments of your own to show at least that even you, the thread starter, understands what is being linked to.
So far this thread is getting on for a week old and you haven't even stated your own views.
Even when asked.
That's not discussion.
That's not soliciting thoughts.
That's just advertising the subject of the video.
You have in no way engendered discussion here.
You have not at any point added your own thoughts to what is in the video.
In fact no question until prompted for one.
Yet still no thoughts of your own, even when asked.
Do you even have any of your own?
Perhaps when you actually contribute with something of value of your own I might notice something.
Until then.
:shrug: (in my best impersonation of LG)
Is it a competition to start threads?
Is that how things are judged here?
And that is fine when they are your ideas.
I just have issue with threads that do nothing other than quote other people's ideas with ZERO input from the thread starter.
You might post them on twitter or some such like that, to share the joy, but at least have the courtesy here to add some comments of your own to show at least that even you, the thread starter, understands what is being linked to.
So far this thread is getting on for a week old and you haven't even stated your own views.
Even when asked.
All you did was post a link to a YouTube video.
That's not discussion.
That's not soliciting thoughts.
That's just advertising the subject of the video.
You have in no way engendered discussion here.
You have not at any point added your own thoughts to what is in the video.
In fact no question until prompted for one.
Yet still no thoughts of your own, even when asked.
Do you even have any of your own?
If you don't want people bitching then simply have the decency to contribute to your own threads.
Oh, how my life will be so much worse as a result.
Perhaps when you actually contribute with something of value of your own I might notice something.
Until then.
:shrug: (in my best impersonation of LG)
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Bitch bitch bitch...In the meantime, here's a short clip of Galen Strawson describing HIS brand of physicalism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtDgCQ5vehE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtDgCQ5vehE
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
The physicalist view of minds. Does it make sense to you? Is the mind really just whatever the brain is doing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ja5jb5WeQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0ja5jb5WeQ
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Mind and body: the dualistic approach. How does the mind differ from the brain?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLmN5Bg8nHI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLmN5Bg8nHI
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Frank Jackson's knowledge argument against physicalist accounts of consciousness. Forgive the frustrating robospeech!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMo_Oom5shM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMo_Oom5shM
Who are you aiming this ongoing crusade against physicalism at anyway? All the people who think that matter is nothing more than properties like spin, mass and charge? Because that's about the only sort of physicalism any of the material you're posting does any damage to.
Since you're trying to provoke discussion, you should understand that you're probably not going to get much of a response from all the more philosophically sophisticated physicalists until you post something that actually raises an eyebrow.
Since you're trying to provoke discussion, you should understand that you're probably not going to get much of a response from all the more philosophically sophisticated physicalists until you post something that actually raises an eyebrow.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I just posted several points that should evoke some thought. Ofcourse this requires that you actually venture out and express a belief one way or another. So what is your view on this since you've taken it upon yourself to speak for physicalists? Do you have a physicalist account for the origin of consciousness from unconscious atoms?
I'll have my Youtube channel contact your Youtube channel.
I can't speak for all physicalists because not all physicalists gravitate towards the same sort of physicalism. And that's the point.
No-one can provide a demonstrably factual account of the origin of consciousness, period. Not a physicalist, not a dualist and not even a full-blown metaphysical idealist. Ultimately we all just end up speculating at some point.
What I will say is that I am yet to see a compelling argument in favour of the idea that it's not possible for matter to be phenomenally rich enough to manifest consciousness. All I ever see people doing is reducing matter to nothing more than a collection of simple discrete objects and then declaring it to be inadequate, and that's the sort of strategy that fails to motivate the defense to even bother getting into position.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
What do you mean by "phenomenally rich"? Subjective qualities? Mental properties? A proto-experiential substrate much as the panpsychics advance?
I thought matter WAS a collection of simple discrete objects, namely quarks. Are you saying matter takes on certain emergent properties in its more complex higher-level structures?
Why must the fundamental building blocks (or underlying substrate) of experience be conceptualized as proto-experience? We don't conceptualize the fundamental building blocks of a star as a proto-star. We don't look at a hydrogen atom and say "awww, look at this cute little proto-fusion-reactor and it's proto-emissions of proto-electromagnetic radiation". No, an atom in a brain need be no more like the mind itself than an atom in a star need be like the star itself. In other words, it's already clear on other fronts that we live in a universe that is made out of stuff that when organized into interactive architectures can give birth to all sorts of wonderful emergent phenomena that aren't manifested by any of the individual components in isolation, and explaining why consciousness is necessarily an exception is going to take more work than I've seen done thus far.
If you conceptualize matter as nothing more than the largely mathematical properties that we assign to it for the purposes of modeling its behaviour, which you're in danger of doing every time you hastily extrapolate a metaphysical picture from one of those models, then you're effectively going to end up arguing that consciousness can't emerge from mathematics (even though you think you're arguing that consciousness can't emerge from matter). And who would say that consciousness can emerge from pure mathematics? (yes, there will of course be someone)
Matter is clearly something more substantive than any snapshot of our attempts to understand it would suggest, if we've learned anything at all from the history of science. And this is a position that any reasonable form of physicalism necessarily entails. If that wasn't the case, physicalism would instead constitute the claim that all phenomema in the universe can be explained by current scientific theories, and it doesn't. In fact physicalism doesn't even necessarily constitute the claim that all phenomena in the universe can be explained by future scientific theories either.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Well I think it's one thing to admit the phenomenon of emergence. For instance, the obvious phase transitions in water from a solid to a liquid to a gas simply by changing its temperature. But it's quite another to then call emergence an EXPLANATION for how say consciousness arises from the brain. I don't know that that gets us any closer to understanding HOW it happens. If anything just saying matter can do this..that given a certain level of structure and complexity it can suddenly become conscious of itself and compose symphonies and conceptualize things like quantum theory..is more like the admission of magic in matter, magic defined as an unknown or unknowable cause. Is this the sort of resignation we should expect from science? To just admit the fact of a mysterious change in matter itself that cannot be reduced to the properties of its components and leave it at that?
Is mathematics physical? I take it to be abstract or mental in nature. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say matter EMERGES from math. At this point scientists seem to attribute its origin to an ontic substrate called the quantum vaccum. Or to a singularity state that existed prior to the Big Bang. I guess a singularity is a mathematical/physical entity though. Beyond this I don't know how matter comes into being. Seems we hit a metaphysical brick wall at this point. IOW, are we going to posit a fundamentally eternal and creative substate that is just given or are we going to posit an infinite regression of continuum after continuum each being generated by the one that came before?
Max Tegmark's Neoplatonic physicalism:
http://www.closertotruth.com/video-profile/Why-the-Cosmos-Max-Tegmark-/889
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I agree, and I'm far from the only physicalist who does:
"Think about all the known properties of matter. Feelings don't seem to be electromagnetic radiation or sound waves, or to correspond to anything in the known physical structure of atoms. They're not quarks, they're not electrons; what on earth are they? Vibrating strings? Quantum gravitons? Dark matter?
This is the 'hard problem' enunciated by Chalmers; and, like James before him, Chalmers too has argued that it can only be answered through the discovery of new, fundamental, properties of matter. The reason is simple. Feelings are physical, yet the known laws of physics, which can supposedly give us a complete account of the world, have no place for them. For all it's marvelous power, natural selection doesn't conjure up something from nothing: there has to be a germ of something for it to act upon, a germ of a feeling, you might say, that evolution can fashion into the majesty of mind."
- Nick Lane, Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, Page 252
And to quote myself:
"Occam would suffice if it wasn't for the fact that I have a problem with the idea that cognition and conscious awareness can emerge from a physical system where each element is not already a quanta of the fabric of such an emergence. If the base elements are merely physical in the more conservative sense, then it's effectively an incantation. Get a bunch of particles to do just the right thing and voila, cognition and conscious awareness magically appear at the site of all the activity."
As you can see, at this point at least, we are on the same page. In fact I have actually carried on quite extensively about all this a number of times in this very forum. But contrary to how it might look at first glance I'm not actually adopting pansychism. Confronting the hard problem head-on doesn't require it. Nothing forces me to conclude that all matter must be conscious. At most I am forced to conclude that matter is simply more phenomenal than the physical sciences would currently suggest. But that's not automatically the equivalent of saying that matter has unphysical properties either. It is instead the equivalent of saying that when Thales of Miletus posited that lodestones must have a soul because they attract pieces of iron ore, what he was actually doing was referencing physical activity that was simply beyond his ability to quantify.
With the above in mind, trying to reduce consciousness to the properties of the constituent elements of a brain is essentially no different from trying to reduce the behaviour of a star to the constituent elements of a ball of plasma. In other words, and as I pointed out earlier, it's already clear on other fronts that physical systems can exhibit emergent behaviour, so if we assume that matter does in fact have the correct essential ingredients, in what sense must consciousness be any different?
What I meant is that the physical sciences typically perform such coldly mathematical treatments of reality that it is often inappropriate to draw definitive conclusions about the substantiveness and/or richness of nature from them. This problem is compounded by the fact that there's a really really good chance that there are more things in nature than we even have abstractions for because we haven't even discovered them yet, and many of those things might come to bear in important ways not only on the things we don't yet understand very well, but many of the things we think we do.
If physicalism is the view that all phenomena can be properly explained in terms of such limited abstractions, then I'm not a physicalist, and I'd say that you'd have to be an idiot to be one. If it is instead the view that all phenomena can, at least in principle, be properly explained in terms of the more substantive reality that our abstractions relate to, then I am.
Even without additional modification / tweaking, physicalism almost seems a hybrid of the Greek intelligible / perceptible dichotomy of domains. On one hand accepting an invisible existence (when minus consciousness showing its version) and constructs of quantity and abstract relation, that are grasped by reasoning thought ["noumenal" as originally intended]; and on the other hand empirical objects and their exhibited connections that can be observed. The former being what distinguishes it from vulgar predecessors (nothing exists or is at work / meaningful but extended, solid body stuff distributed in a self-sufficient, what would otherwise be empty, container of space). But the "itself by itself" of the older intelligible tradition is surely scrapped in physicalism.
Hendrik Lorenz: . . . Socrates argues that the soul is like intelligible being on the grounds that it is not visible and, in general, not perceptible (anyhow to humans, as Cebes adds at 79b) [...] There is a separate argument for the kinship of the soul with intelligible being. When the soul makes use of the senses and attends to perceptibles [phenomena], “it strays and is confused and dizzy, as if it were drunk”. By contrast, when it remains “itself by itself” and investigates intelligibles [noumena], its straying comes to an end, and it achieves stability and wisdom. It is not just that the soul is in one state or another depending on which kind of object it is attending to, in such a way that its state somehow corresponds to the character of the object attended to. That would not by itself show that the soul is more akin to the one domain rather than the other (this is the point of Bostock's criticism, Bostock 1986, 119).
To understand the argument properly, it is crucial to note that when the soul attends to perceptibles, it is negatively affected in such a way that its functioning is at least temporarily reduced or impaired (“dizzy, as if drunk”), whereas there is no such interference when it attends to intelligibles (cf. Socrates' fear, at 99e, that by studying things by way of the senses he might blind his soul). The claim that the soul is akin to intelligible reality thus rests, at least in part, on the view that intelligible reality is especially suited to the soul, as providing it with a domain of objects in relation to which, and only in relation to which, it can function without inhibition and interference and fully in accordance with its own nature, so as to achieve its most completely developed and optimal state, wisdom. It hardly needs pointing out, then, that the soul, as Plato conceives of it in the Phaedo, is crucially characterized by cognitive and intellectual features: it is something that reasons, more or less well depending on the extent to which it is disturbed or distracted by the body and the senses.... --Ancient Theories of Soul; SEP
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