boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

I realize that identity theory claims to be a materialist theory. I am just claiming that the identity is not proven. And it is this lack of proof that makes it a law-like claim with ontolgical implications.



I have to confess to a certain amount of sloppiness, perhaps, in my language. But no, I realized that the reports are perspectives and the event(s) in question are not.

My point is that if you have to reports of an event then there are two aspects to that event. If someone claims that a house is white and another claims that the same house is yellow and we examine it, we find that one side is white and another is yellow. You are trying to claim that the different reports, somehow, have nothing to do with the event itself. But the morning star and the evening star are reported differenty because the report reflects the different time of the observations. Likewise different reports of a brain event are reporting different aspects of the event in question. The difference isn't just in the observers. The fact that this event has two different aspects has ontological implications. If you ignore those ontological implications, your logic leads to the absurd conclusion that two different reports are the same.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

I thought it should be obvious from the context of this discussion that the correlations referred to are between brain processes and sentient experience.

I've previously noted that correlations do not prove causality much less identity.

That's correct. And if materialists adjusted their ontology to reflect these implications, but for some reason insisted upon retaining the name materialism, I wouldn't be making these arguments.

My view is that mind be accepted as fundamental element of matter that is not reducible to material processes. This argument stems from the fact that no materialist reduction has been successful. So the choice is between a complete theory and an incomplete one. Materialism suffers from the "explanatory gap" as they call it in philosophy of mind. You can close the gap by making mind ontologically fundamental.

Although I have said that I am not arguing for Cartesian dualism, I did defend it at some length. You did not respond.

There's the problem. The phenomena of common experience are not reduced to material processes. Because of this the claim has ontological implications. This is why the identity theory was not proposed decades ago. According to Chalmers, it was considered back in the '50's by materialist philosopher J.J. C. Smart and was rejected for just this reason. It has recently been resurrected by materialists due to the failure of AI to come up with a reductive explanation.

Yes. And I have no problem with postulates. I have a problem with the postulate being implicit. The postulate needs to be stateed overtly. Cartesian dualism postulates two ontological realms and the identity theory postulates two ontological aspects.

ComestibleVenom

Boneyard Bill,
I think you're missing the really key issue here. The fact is that nobody has been able to identify a body-independed consciousness, let alone correlate it with anything in any sense.

Yes, we have correlated physical behaviors with brain activities, but in that case, the causal influences have very clearly been established as originating in the brain. We know for a fact that your strident arguments for non-physicality have physical origins and physical form.

This explanatory gap is a consequence of appeals to private language. In reality, having discarded such contradictory and confusing notions, there is no such gap, because there is no private language to reach over any gap. Once again, the absolute demarcations of armchair philosophers are trampled upon and transcended through that horrid and utterly naturalistic science.

The more resources funneled into the neurosciences, the more lucid our understanding of the mind/brain. Yet any neuroscientist will tell you that the field is naescent, and will likely require centuries to mature. So the argument to neroscience's failure to present for your edification a complete theory of mind is premature to the point of absurdity. It's like declaring the non-physicality of the sun during newton's time.

(You'll recall, I hope, that it took hundreds of years to physically explain the sun, a task we are far from fully completing.)

So your objections are totally off base. Neurosciences have failed to correlate between physical systems and undetectable systems. They have not addressed (let alone solved) problems with no answer. And they have not totally completed the task of modelling the principles behind the mind.

So what? This shows nothing but that more work needs to be done. Your tacit claim that it's time to abandon science is absurd, and will rightly be ignored by those who are actually getting things done.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

But the same data can be show to be possible with any number of theories. I think we are working from two very different perspectives. You seem to be approaching this from the point of view of brain science. I am approaching it from the point of view of philosophy. The question here is about ontology. It isn't about the facts of brain science.

Any philosphical claim that doesn't fit the data is going to be extremely difficult to defend. The philosophical questions concern how the data is to be interpreted. What presuppositions might have gone in to certain interpretations and questions of that nature. Cartesian Dualism fits the data or Descartes wouldn't have proposed it.

When I asked you to "prove it," regarding the identity theory, I knew you wouldn't be able to. My point was that you were going to have to postulate it. In fact, I think I stated that at the time. But a postulate is a claim that certain relations are simply fundamental, and that is an ontological claim.

But that misses the point from a philosophical perspective. Scientists deal with claims that can be tested. But philosophies are constructed to account for all the data to begin with. Scientific observations rarely overthrow a philosophical system because the data a philosopher is dealing with is not specific enough. Aristotelian science has been overthrown, but Aristotelian philosophy has not. Philosopher is looking for presuppositions in a particular interpretation, or contradictions, or the asking what logically follows from this or that claim.

Physical processes are processes that we can detect by definition. A non-physical process, therefore, is also undectable by definition.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

But the same data can be show to be possible with any number of theories. I think we are working from two very different perspectives. You seem to be approaching this from the point of view of brain science. I am approaching it from the point of view of philosophy. The question here is about ontology. It isn't about the facts of brain science.

Any philosphical claim that doesn't fit the data is going to be extremely difficult to defend. The philosophical questions concern how the data is to be interpreted. What presuppositions might have gone in to certain interpretations and questions of that nature. Cartesian Dualism fits the data or Descartes wouldn't have proposed it.

When I asked you to "prove it," regarding the identity theory, I knew you wouldn't be able to. My point was that you were going to have to postulate it. In fact, I think I stated that at the time. But a postulate is a claim that certain relations are simply fundamental, and that is an ontological claim.

But that misses the point from a philosophical perspective. Scientists deal with claims that can be tested. But philosophies are constructed to account for all the data to begin with. Scientific observations rarely overthrow a philosophical system because the data a philosopher is dealing with is not specific enough. Aristotelian science has been overthrown, but Aristotelian philosophy has not. Philosopher is looking for presuppositions in a particular interpretation, or contradictions, or the asking what logically follows from this or that claim.

Physical processes are processes that we can detect by definition. A non-physical process, therefore, is also undectable by definition.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

But the same data can be show to be possible with any number of theories. I think we are working from two very different perspectives. You seem to be approaching this from the point of view of brain science. I am approaching it from the point of view of philosophy. The question here is about ontology. It isn't about the facts of brain science.

Any philosphical claim that doesn't fit the data is going to be extremely difficult to defend. The philosophical questions concern how the data is to be interpreted. What presuppositions might have gone in to certain interpretations and questions of that nature. Cartesian Dualism fits the data or Descartes wouldn't have proposed it.

When I asked you to "prove it," regarding the identity theory, I knew you wouldn't be able to. My point was that you were going to have to postulate it. In fact, I think I stated that at the time. But a postulate is a claim that certain relations are simply fundamental, and that is an ontological claim.

But that misses the point from a philosophical perspective. Scientists deal with claims that can be tested. But philosophies are constructed to account for all the data to begin with. Scientific observations rarely overthrow a philosophical system because the data a philosopher is dealing with is not specific enough. Aristotelian science has been overthrown, but Aristotelian philosophy has not. Philosopher is looking for presuppositions in a particular interpretation, or contradictions, or the asking what logically follows from this or that claim.

Physical processes are processes that we can detect by definition. A non-physical process, therefore, is also undectable by definition.

As you've not put a model on the table, I can only assume from your statements that you're not attempting to cohere the relevant set of observations from scientific and philosophical fields on the matter in order to find a coherent explanation for the 'how' of the interaction.

We're not talking about competing "models," we're talking about competing ontologies. What does the existing model imply about the ontological status of the event? This is why I've said that I'm quite willing to accept what the neuro-scientists say about the data. But if they presuppose a particular interpretation and try to go into there area of metaphysics or ontology then their claims are subject to challenge. I certainly wouldn't challenge a neuroscientist on the workings of the brain. But, unfortuately scientists often do make all kinds of presuppositions in the process of interpreting their work.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

But the same data can be show to be possible with any number of theories. I think we are working from two very different perspectives. You seem to be approaching this from the point of view of brain science. I am approaching it from the point of view of philosophy. The question here is about ontology. It isn't about the facts of brain science.

Any philosphical claim that doesn't fit the data is going to be extremely difficult to defend. The philosophical questions concern how the data is to be interpreted. What presuppositions might have gone in to certain interpretations and questions of that nature. Cartesian Dualism fits the data or Descartes wouldn't have proposed it.

When I asked you to "prove it," regarding the identity theory, I knew you wouldn't be able to. My point was that you were going to have to postulate it. In fact, I think I stated that at the time. But a postulate is a claim that certain relations are simply fundamental, and that is an ontological claim.

But that misses the point from a philosophical perspective. Scientists deal with claims that can be tested. But philosophies are constructed to account for all the data to begin with. Scientific observations rarely overthrow a philosophical system because the data a philosopher is dealing with is not specific enough. Aristotelian science has been overthrown, but Aristotelian philosophy has not. Philosopher is looking for presuppositions in a particular interpretation, or contradictions, or the asking what logically follows from this or that claim.

Physical processes are processes that we can detect by definition. A non-physical process, therefore, is also undectable by definition.

As you've not put a model on the table, I can only assume from your statements that you're not attempting to cohere the relevant set of observations from scientific and philosophical fields on the matter in order to find a coherent explanation for the 'how' of the interaction.

We're not talking about competing "models," we're talking about competing ontologies. What does the existing model imply about the ontological status of the event? This is why I've said that I'm quite willing to accept what the neuro-scientists say about the data. But if they presuppose a particular interpretation and try to go into there area of metaphysics or ontology then their claims are subject to challenge. I certainly wouldn't challenge a neuroscientist on the workings of the brain. But, unfortuately scientists often do make all kinds of presuppositions in the process of interpreting their work.

Primal

So if we see a house from two different positions, inside and outside; we assume there is a radical ontological difference? If we see it from two different angles, we assume there are two houses neither of which is made of the same substance?


"House is made of house."


Your argument looks more and more circular and ad hoc as time goes.


Only if one rejects certain standards like the Principle of Parsimony, once that is done then yes; all we do have is some sort of philosophical relativism.

Definitions are ultimately limited to being taken at face value, circularity or infinite regress.

But meaning is not limited by definition. Ultimately that is merely an appeal to the problem of language. Like pornography, there may be no exact definition of matter but people know it when they see/experience it. I speak of the substance rocks, dirt, etc. are made of. Immaterial substance is something radically different from matter then, something not yet discovered so thrown out as superfluous until proven via bearing the Burden of Proof.



Such immaterial things conceived of were God, souls (what medievals thoughts minds were), spirits, and "vital fluid".

Primal

Primal

Excellent statement concerning materialism made by James Randi:

Found here: http://www.randi.org/jr/072503.html