Gurdur

For example, in neurology, on ethical grounds.

Treatment of clinical paranoia and its consequent mental states is done through chemical means; quite materialist.
But it works; so far, no supernaturalist explanation has ever cured a clinical paranoid.

Epilepsy can be cured by operative means; quite materialist.

Except , of course, you offer us only wild analogies.

Why should silicon have as much mind-stuff (if any) as titanium?

[ February 08, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

boneyard bill

turtonm writes:

I'm not defending the supernatural as a good explanation only as a complete explanation. The very problem with it is that it is too complete. You come out of it knowing little more than when you went in.

But who is arguing that the mind isn't amenable to explanation? The point here is ontological and metaphysical not biological. The firing of c-fiber x produces the experience y. There is no argument on that fact. The question is. Is that fact fundamental? I'm saying the evidence suggests that it is. It is a basic, fundamental fact of the universe that certain physical processes lead to certain mental states. That is scientifically verified.

The materialist claims that this fact is not fundamental. The materialist claims that those mental states themselves are nothing but physical states. But the materialist cannot show that they are nothing but physical states so I'm not going to believe him. What's so unreasonable about that?

I think the real problem is that you don't understand the materialist position. Otherwise you wouldn't be giving the kind of references you have. It isn't about the scientific evidence. It's about how we are to interpret the scientific evidence.

boneyard bill

Gurdur writes:

I really don't see what hard neuroscience has to do with it. If a materialist explanation for mind were ever found, it could come from some are far afield of neuroscience. And neuroscience itself doesn't need a materialist explanation.

I've read Dennett and Hofstatder as well as Ryle, Smart, Allen, Searle, Chalmers, and some others that I cannot remember. In fact, I've read Dennett's Consciousness Explained three or four times trying to see how he actually produces a materialist explanation of mind. It just isn't there, and I don't see where he has convinced anyone either.

In any case, if any of these references can produce a materialist explanation, you should be able to present it. So please do. I haven't found one anywhere else.

boneyard bill

Crocodile
Deathroll writes:

Can you tell me what "instinct" means other than behavior for which we have no explantion?

But iron is not baryons. It is something else. Still, all the "stuff" of iron, all the material is present in the baryons. So where is the mind that is an "emergent property" of matter if it isn't in matter to begin with? We say mind is produced by material processes. But we do not say that light is produced by electromagnetism. Light is electromagnetism. The materialist says that mind is material processes. Fine. Show me. What are these material processes that are nothing but mind?

Gurdur

Well, at leats we're getting somewhere.

First off: you claimed there was no materialist explanation of mind at all.
Various people pointed out there were.
You've pointed out that these explanations are incomplete.
Various people have pointed out that incompleteness does not equal absence.

<a href="http://www.aquinasonline.com/Magee/philmind.html" target="_blank">A partial intoductory comparison of theories of mind with attendent problems</a>

Again, I point out to you, Boneyard Bill, that you can only truthfully say that there is no materialist explanation of mind if - by virtue of using the same comparative and judgmental criteria - you accept there is simply no supernaturalist or other explanation at all.

Now back to the 'materialist' position - granted, it's incomplete.
However, treating mental states as the consequence of physical properties and nothing else has proved itself ethically in several areas.

The sheer failure of any competing theoretical direction, as well as the sheer plethora of non-verifiable imaginable ideas, and the successes of the materialist position in several areas, are the edge on the question.

boneyard bill

Adrian Smith writes:

If these books have such a knock-down proof for materialism, would someone please post that proof on this web site? Everyone wants to present their list of favorite books. But this subject has been and is being hotly debated within the academic community. The materialists have been in the ascendency for decades, but they are rapidly losing ground. They were all confident that artifical intelligence would provide the answer. It has failed miserably. They've learned a great deal about how to mimic some human and animal processes, but they haven't been able to reduce consciousness to material processes.

science?

I have tried hard to follow the line of thought of this complicated issue ofmaterialism and "what the mind is" and realized that it is an argument not worth winning. It is obvious from the messages I've read that we've all taken logic courses. Brain damage causes mind damage. Dead individuals don't talk. Wether or not their minds go on after the brain is dead we will never know. Most of this argument is what gives philosophy the sometimes deserved reputation as being frivilous. Talking in circles and arguing over the meaning of words does not help anybody understand our humanity. The more complicated this argument gets the less it makes sense and the thinner it is spread. Good luck understanding each other and let me know how it comes out.

boneyard bill

Gurdur writes:

My question is fully answered in the post that you have cited above. Do you think that asking the question again somehow refutes the point?

Then why don't you summarize the proof and post it here for all of us to see?

Of course mental states are changed through simple changes in neurophysiology. That's why I'm taking the position I am instead of opting for Cartesianism or something like that. The firing of c-fiber x produces the mental state y. But the mental state y is not the same thing as the firing of c-fiber x. You've shown a material cause. But the claim that everything has material causes is not the materialist position. The materialist claims that everything is material. The pain in my left foot is nothing but a material process.

It's the materialist claim that is absurd. I seem to be arguing with people who don't understand this. I stub my toe. This causes a c-fiber in my brain to fire an electrical impulse, and this gives me the experience of pain in my toe. I'm not arguing against that. I'm arguing that my pain and the electrical impulse are not the same thing.

How then do you explain the connection? You simply accept that it is a fundamental fact about our world. This is pretty much what neuroscientists do. They map the brain and note these correlations. They don't care whether you produce a reductive materialist explanation or not. And they don't ask the question, "What does it imply about physics or the nature of the universe that I can make these correlations but can not produce a reductive explanation?"

As for your claim that my position cannot be tested, the same applies to materialism, as I have already noted. All you can do is formulate a test for a specific situation and test that. But the specific case will not necessarily prove or disprove the general case.

You didn't answer my question. How is it begging the question. And what do you mean that I have failed to provide any chain of inference that rules out alternative theories?

Not at all materialist in the context of this discussion. I'm not claiming that physical events don't cause mental events. I'm saying they aren't the same thing.

I have no idea which would have more. That is not the point. If you say that mind derives from matter, you are also saying something about the nature of matter. At a minimum, you are saying that it possesses potential mind. This is a necessary inference from the initial claim. Materialists do not want to accept that inference. The only way out is for them to say that mind is simply the term we apply to material processes. But this places the burden upon them of showing that mind is nothing but material processes in the same way that electricity is nothing but the flow of electrons. Since they are unable to do this, I do not accept materialism. And since I don't accept materialism, I do accept the logical inference that mind exists in matter at least in a potential form.

[ February 08, 2002: Message edited by: boneyard bill ]</p>

boneyard bill

Gurdur writes:

No, that is not the case. Non-materialists do not have the burden of producing a reductive explanation of mind. This falls upon the materialist uniquely as I tried to point out in my last post. The supernaturalist doesn't have to produce a reductive explanation because the supernaturalist isn't claiming that mind can be reduced.

Likewise, the position I'm taking is that the relationship between a physical event and a mental event is a fundamental fact of our existence In other words, it cannot be reduced to material processes. Why do I say that? Because that's what the evidence says.

Again, that's not the question. I'm not arguing that mental states are not the consequence of physical properties. I'm saying they are not the same thing as physical properties. From the sound of this discussion, it may come as a surprise to you that the materialist is saying that they are the same thing. But that is the case.

And why does the materialist make this claim? Because they don't want to accept the ontological consequences of not making the claim. Because if mental processes are not the same thing as physical processes, we have to attribute qualities to matter that the materialist doesn't want to accept that matter has. This is a philosophical question through and through. It isn't about neuroscience.

You're assuming that materialism is the theoretical underpinning of all of our scientific work. That's simply not the case. The underpinning of most of this work was Cartesianism. While it is true that philosophers as early as Hobbes theorized that the mind could be reduced to material processes, it didn't really become a scientific and philosophical pursuit until Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind was published in 1949.

Synaesthesia

The fact that I am stressing that a materialistic approach doesn’t entail any specific theory of the mind has absolutely nothing to do with presuppositionalism.

However natural the idea, independent justification must be provided for your hypothesis. Failure to do so puts your theory squarely on the level with the rain gods and Her Pinkness. I see no justification for believing that an atom or a neuron or a rock have any understanding or awareness at all. It is only when the functional organization, the pattern, is in place that things such as “beliefs” have any meaning.

I agree with you fully but I would like to make an additional distinction, one which you are likely familiar with: Science doesn’t have to explain the self, the mind or the soul. What we need to explain is humans beliefs about the mind and the self and the soul.

What the evidence says is that humans have very strong conceptual difficulties with intuitively reconciling a low-level physical description of the would with a high-level intentional description of the world. Mental events are, however, already being understood purely in terms of physical processes. Do we understand the mind then? No better than we understand the brain, which is to say not very well!

I recently read a fascinating analogy by Douglas Hofstadter that might be of interest:

So Bill, does each little domino have a little piece of 641’s primeness? Although it may be a natural inference to think so, it really doesn’t make any sense. Might I suggest that it is the structure of the domino network, rather than the dominos and molecules and atoms, which manifests that particular truth about numbers and reality?

Regards,
Synaesthesia

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: Synaesthesia ]</p>