contracycle

[QUOTE]Originally posted by boneyard bill
[B]There is no reductive explanation for sentience in spite of contacycle's claim. Even materialist philosophers agree on that. If there were such an explanation, we would no more be debating this point than we would be arguing about the theory of phlogiston. The question would be settled.[/b[/quote[]]

As far as I am concerned, it IS settled.

Accepted. Where is the problem?

Accepted. But I do not claim that sentience is NOT material. It is merely organised matter.

It has, we can observer the brain responding to inputs. Please explain why this explanation is insufficient.

contracycle

Now, extend the analogy.....

contracycle

Sorry, but this is the word game again. To say that time and space are "not matter" may be true in certain senses, but then matter is not matter but merely energy organised in time and space. A materialist approach is to obsevrer what is - not to assert some sort of claim to ancient Greek atomic theory of indivisible parts. So materialism has no problem dealing with time, or space, or energy, because these are all observed to have material, objective, existance external to us. And if I can accept that matter is comprised of time/space/energy, it is EASY to see that MIND can also be so constructed.

contracycle

No, as Wheeler, whom you cite, pointed out matter migyt as well be identifeid as information and vice versa. And if matter is insitinguishable from informaiton, then the brain problem goes away - can an organisation of matter produce information? Of course - it can't not.

Your citation of Wheeler has destroyed your own argument.

Primal

BOneyard Bill wrote:

Because that's begging the question. It also posits a radical new substance instead of an established one from the onset.




Sure it can, as a material process i.e. brain functions.


No it is taken into account by whether or not it makes less assumptions then is necessary in explaning a phenomenon.



No because such an assumption would not be necessary.


Also what scientists knows does matter. If scientists discovered tomorrow a substance wholly unlike matter, then materialism would be disproven and you'd be championing that. If scientists onthe other hand so far find nothing but matter, then materialism remains a reasonable inference when we are supposing the make-up of any paticular thing.


You argument is similiar to saying that if we don't know the specifics of how lets say any given creature or any given organ evolved, we cannot presume it has evolved. Or unless we've been to the other side of the universe, we cannot suppose gravity operates there.

Sure we may not know absolutely, I have already admitted that. But in terms of probability such a belief is far stronger then its counter-parts. Making such a belief more established and considered correct.

You in essence are trying to limit philosophy to pure empiricism, and I'm sorry but there's more to philosophy then the ostensible or basic.

Even if we find an organ that has an evolutionary function or history we are ignorant of now, its still safe to assume that it evolved. Seriously suggesting that it may have just as likely arose from spontanious generation or supernatural creation at this point is absurd.

Likewise is saying that a lack of a perfect understanding concerning the mind is enough reason to entertain pluralism over materialism.

Are you perhaps though, suggesting that materialism has no explanatory power concerning the mind what so ever? Are you saying that materialists have absolutely no way of explaining the mind?

If so then your argument would be valid but I believe your premises would be obviously false.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

You would have to do it in the form of a postulate, but I don't see how Cartesian dualism has any more difficulties in that regard than does materialism.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

You would have to do it in the form of a postulate, but I don't see how Cartesian dualism has any more difficulties in that regard than does materialism.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

You would have to do it in the form of a postulate, but I don't see how Cartesian dualism has any more difficulties in that regard than does materialism.

sodium

As far as I can see, I've given an explanation for how materialism can be consistent with your "vision". Namely, that your brain assigns names to general types of brain states, and that therefore, when you talk about your internal vision of something, you are referring to a brain state. I suspect you assume that if this were true, you would somehow just know it, but I don't see why that assumption should be correct.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

Quoting BB:
if it refers to brain states then matter isn't what we thought it was. It necessarily has a different character. It is mind/matter.

Selby responds:
It really doesn't matter what you call it. You can go ahead and say it still matter. But does that then make materialism still true? That is the question at hand. The logical implications of the this "new characterization" of matter is that materialism is no longer correct.

If matter possesses sentience of some kind of proto-sentience, then that particular characteristic can usefully be applied to many other questions. As I previously pointed out, I don't see how Darwinism could be sustained under such an ontology. Of course you can also still call it materialism as long as you take the broader implications into account. But that becomes, among other things, terribly confusing. When you use the word "materialism" what are you referring to? The old meaning or the new?



Evidently you didn't read the posts where I pointed out that John Wheeler, the noted physicist has said that we don't need a concept of matter. All of physics can be accounted for with the concept of information. Matter is an unnecessary, and unprovable, metaphysical entity.