There's two opposing positions in philosophy. On the one hand, our rational investigation of matters give us clear structure on how things should be. On the other hand, there are various ideas that are important to us but don't appear to fit within this structure. So this leaves a contradiction - one of them must be wrong, so which? One example is philosophy of mind. Physicalism is the only coherent metaphysical position. Yet many of our concepts of mind don't appear to follow the concepts of physicalism, and when physicalists try to reduce the mind to physical concepts they end up trying to re-define our mental concepts to something different. So there's others who start out by taking our mental concepts as they are and conclude that if physicalism disagrees then physicalism must be wrong. But physicalism is the only coherent metaphysical position - to deny it ends in self contradiction. Rationalists Vs Empericists in the 17th Century This was similar to the 17th century debate between rationalists like Descartes and Leibnitz and empiricists like Locke and Hume. The empiricists started with empirical sense data and claimed that our concepts must be defined through them. The rationalists started with the concepts that we already have and claimed that our empiricism must be justified through that framework. Both sides had their problems. The rationalists often brought in strange metaphysical concepts into their arguments and it wasn't always clear if they meant anything. Their debates seemed to be a web of weird definitions. The empiricists were a lot simpler, more clear cut and down to earth. But their premises usually led to extreme scepticism of serious common sense and their attempts to explain certain concepts empirically rarely seemed very plausible. It would require re-definition of the matter at hand. What's more, their organisation of sense data pre-supposed some kind of rationalising framework to organise said data into concepts. Kant came up with a solution that took the best of both worlds. His position was that we don't see the 'world as it is'. Instead our understanding of the world is filtered by our modes of understanding. So our empirical mode of understanding perceived the world in one way, our 'rationalist' mode of understanding the mind perceived the world in another, both perceiving truths about 'the world as it is' but neither giving the whole picture. Because they were different modes of understanding, they were alternatives rather than contradictories. Ofcourse, Kant's idea of "the world as it really is" had problems of it's own, but the idea that mind and matter were two separate modes of understanding hit the nail square. Wittgenstein and 20th Century Philosophy By the 20th century, the understanding had come to be seen as closely connected with language. The rules that we use to apply concepts were analogous to our rules of language. Wittgenstein came to the conclusion that to understand a word is to know how to apply it correctly. If you think about how we learn language, we try out words and are encouraged when we apply them correctly, corrected when we use them wrong. We gradually learn the correct rules for using words in the right way, and that's when we're said to understand them. He said that language is like a game. You learn to play the game by learning the correct ways to apply words. One example of a language game is mathematics. We start by counting, "1, 2, 3..." and then carry on by bringing in more complex rules like addition, subtraction... etc. The rules of logic will be determined by the rules of the language game. For instance, the logical law of non-contradiction "X cannot be both A and not A" is basically the word 'not' correctly. Imagine if you said "I am not stupid" and someone said "I agree with you but you're also stupid", the conversation just wouldn't be making sense. It would be as if you'd never used the word 'not' at all. Because we have the word 'not' that we use in our language, we have the law of non-contradiction. The law of non-contradiction is all about using the word 'not' correctly. Where this ties in to philosophy of mind Kant showed the mind and matter are two separate modes of understanding. His difficulty was how to make sense of there being two separate modes of understanding. So Wittgenstein showed that logic and understanding is determined by the rules of the language game we are playing. So now it's quite easy - we just show that mind and physics are two different language games. Physics is when we are describing the world around us, and we follow the rules of the empiricists and come to the conclusion of physicalism. Mind is when we are interacting, predicting and communicating our behaviour to fellow human beings. Our concepts of mind are as the rationalists observed them to be, free will and no determinism on our decisions. Why? Because when we play the language game of 'mind' as we do, the way we apply the words of decision making, the rules that we follow, these rules show that we have free will, that our 'will' is free and not determined by our beliefs and desires. There is an element of spontaneity. Parallels with the debate on religion. I see the debate on religion being similar. Fundamentalists start with their religious practice, find that science disagrees so try to tamper with science. Many atheists start with science, don't see a connection between science and religion so dismiss religion. Then there are the 'moderates' out there who recognise that science and religion are two different practices for two difference purposes. They thereby manage to do science when science is appropiate and follow their religion when religions is appropiate, not worrying if the two seem to contradict. Moderates recognise that science is science while religion is religion. That is, our beliefs about the natural world are one thing and 'articles of faith' are another. You use beliefs about the world to construct bridges and articles of faith to inspire virtue. Beliefs about the world are either true or false. There are clear cut facts and falsehoods and you can learn them by reading a book and listening to what an expert tells you. With articles of faith, it's not such much the truth of what's our there, it's what's "true for you". It's a matter of what makes sense to you, what brings out your virtue, what brings you happiness. When faith and fact is separated like this, they compliment each other. They are the ying and yang of a person's worldview. Evidence for this includes how religious people will usually justify their religion with morality and how it gives their life meaning. Most agree that whether the events really happened as the Bible described is of secondary importance to the spiritual experience itself, their 'relationship' with God. Fundamentalists and what they do wrong What fundamentalists do is fail to recognise the difference. The believe that both should be one, and that trying to separate them are a cop out. This leads to two extremely bad consequences: 1) Articles of faith are justified by our values and their making sense while facts are determined by the reality out there. When the two are merged they leave with no direct way on how to justify 'belief'. What's more, many 'beliefs' will be justified by one and condemned by another. The charlatans wills therefore have the tools at their disposal to fight for anything they want to believe. You will notice that when fundies fight the atheists they accuse their scientific beliefs of being cold and heartless. When the fundies fight against other religions they accuse their opponents of having unscientific beliefs. They basically use a mismash of confusion to make it sound like their points have a validity, when they're actually breaking every single rule in the book. 2) Religion is about 'what is true for you', a journey of self discovery. Science are facts about the world that are either true or false and an expert can tell you which. This is another feature that fundamentalism blurs, to the same effect as before. They use their own journey to justify their unscientific beliefs. They then put themselves forwards as authorities to deny those below them their own journey through religion. They demand that their 'subject' treat their claims like scientific fact and treat their religious beliefs as have the solidality of scientific ones. Things that made the journey of the religious moderate acceptable, that they could trust their intuition and heart, and make up their own mind based on what they knew at that moment in time, the authoritarian fundamentalist tries to throw that all out of the window and tries to control these people into thinking like they do. I'm not saying that there are two clear groups of people, fundamentalists and liberals. What I'm saying is that there are two extremes of religious behaviour, liberal and fundamentalist. Everyone will be somewhere between the two extremes, so no one will be absolutely liberal or absolutely fundamentalist, but some people will clearly have more fundamentalist characteristics and other will clearly be more liberal. Although I say they are both 'extremes', I don't mean to imply that one should balance in the middle. Instead, it should be seen that the liberal has extreme correctness and clarity while the fundamentalist has extreme confusion. The liberals have ideal religion and take the best of both worlds of science and spirituality. The fundamentalist, on the other hand, is full of confusions that threaten to leave them with the very worst of both worlds. Anyhow, thoughts?
Sounds interesting Strafio but I'll have to wait until after mye exams this week to have a proper look. I will get round to it though!
Cool. Saz will probably let Topher back on when his exams are done too! Then it can really get started!
I liked it, though I thought the ending was a bit ropey. your conclusions didn't quite do it for me. It was a bit like a damp squib after what was really an excellent build up. I would have no doubt liked it more if you really socked it to the Fundies that get up my nose! I think what you wrote can be applied across the board and not just religion. It seemed that you fashioned your conclusion to a religious context. Wheras i think maybe it's not so much that.. But that people have tendencies to be moderate, fundie etc. and will be despite context and that gets reflected in whatever subject matter they happen to be operating at the time. I don't really see those tendencies/modes you discussed as being any much different in essence to tendencies to reletavism/ absolutism. Or the two modes R. Pirsig talks about - Romantic/ Classical. etc. It's all the same, we're mostly the same essentially.. Though some of us are more equal than others!
I agree, as I think you know, that there are certain concepts, such as morality, that are meaningful but do not derive their meaning in entirety from the correspondence with an objective, physical reality. However, I think you are being generous, perhaps to the point of being patronizing, in your interpretation of the majority of religious people's beliefs. You seem to be saying "don't worry, they don't really mean what they're saying". The truth is that a lot of religious people make statement that do make positive claims about an objective reality and, furthermore, that any non-literal meanings and concepts that their religious beliefs entail would probably be abandoned were they to lose the belief in the objective god; the religious statements are not just a non-literal picture of certain beliefs, they are a literal justification of them.
You can talk about them in two different 'language games', but nevertheless the fact remains that the mind is caused by, and is contingent on the brain. We may not know how everything works, we may not know the details, but nevertheless we do know that the mind, including decision making, is caused by the brain. Just like we know evolution happens while not knowing about specific factors. As I'm sure you're aware, the mind is not a 'thing'; the mind is essentially the brain, or rather, the processes of the brain. You might be interested in the blog debate between neurologist Dr Steven Novella who argues for a materialist/casual mind and Dr. Egnor who who is a dualist and argues against that proposition. Maybe you've already seen it? Here's the latest entry: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=297 They're discussing a study--which supports previous studies--that shows brain activity for a decision happens before the decision is consciously made: "...the researchers looked at brain function while asking subjects to choose one of two buttons to push. At the same time they were viewing a stream of letters, and they were instructed to indicate with each choice what letter was being displayed at the moment they decided which button to press. The purpose of this was to estimate when the subjects were conscious of their decision. They concluded from their data that subconscious brain activity preceded the conscious decision by about 7-10 seconds. Specifically what the study found was this. With each button push there was activity in the corresponding primary motor cortex and the supplemental motor area (SMA). These are the parts of the brain that execute a voluntary motor action, so this was no surprise, and is consistent with prior studies. Also consistent with prior studies, activity in these brain regions occurred several hundred milliseconds prior to the motor action." ... "The researchers, however, wanted to know about the decision-making process, which they suspected occurred prior to executing the motor action in those parts of the brain responsible for higher cognitive function. What they found is that 7-10 seconds prior to when the subjects recorded they had made their decision there was activity in two other brain regions – the frontopolar cortex and then the precuneus in the medial parietal lobes. Further, which side (left or right) activity in these regions occurred was predictive of the ultimate choice about 60% of the time. While this may not seem impressive, these results were statistically significant." Related posts: http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php?p=283 http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php?p=273 http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php?p=198 Also I know you said you took the Anomalous Monism position, but this is the position DeludedGod takes and as we all know, he completely disagrees with your with your take on this topic. Interesting? Furthermore, Anomalous Monism specifically allows for the mind being casual, which you seem to deny. Edit: Here's the study abstract: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal...l;jsessionid=A6FF82184D4EBAFDE5C389490517BAC0 Here review of the study: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm
You know I agree that there's a connection between mind and brain. However, you then make the leap from there's a connection to the conclusion on a particular kind of connection. This leap is still unjustified. Yes, there is a connection between the mind and the brain. You seem to want to reduce it to an extremely simplistic connection, one that has been tried by a variety of philosophers and soundly refuted in a variety of ways. You seem to have two arguments for this position: a) It's an alternative to metaphysical dualism and other supernatural theories. b) There have been shown to be connections between brain and mind and you believe this explains them. What you don't seem to realise is that your position isn't the only one to satisfy these points. Mine does too, but without all the obvious flaws that reductive physicalism faces. The brain is a thing. You still don't seem to understand my argument or even the position of other property dualists like emergentists. You seem to be stuck in the idea that the only materialist position on mind is reductive physicalism. You also seem to be stuck with the same old stale assumption that the function of mental language is to refer to things, hence your need to continually attach mental concepts to some physical process. I've not been following this particular debate but I'm familiar with this research on the mind. It seems that rather than have "free will" we have "free won't". It's a fantastic argument against those who feel we should always consciously think things through rather than 'let go' and let the brain do what it does without having to feel the need to consciously monitor it all the time. It's very much like the Buddhist idea of "emptying one's mind" and stuff like that. I don't see why you've brought it up here though.
All I'm saying is the connection is casual, and there IS evidence for this. It may be emergent, it may be reductive, bit it is casual. Who the hell is talking about reductionism? That isn't my position! Talk about not understanding!! My position is that somethings are likely to be reductive, some if not most are emergent (particularly consciousness) while others might be eliminative. I would describe myself as both a reductionist and an emergentist, or at least somewhere in between. I made this clear in our previous discussions. Because it's one more bit of evidence that demonstrates that anything other than a compatalist free will is not in fact the case. Furthermore, it shows that our decision making is a casual/physical process, refuting your assertion that it isn't.
Causal implies reductive and rejects emergent. That's the big criticism against emergentism. 'Casualists' accuse it of collapsing into epiphenomenalism because it is incompatible with causal models of the mind. Causal models lead to reductionism via the argument from causal closure and the exclusion principle. 1) The exclusion principle implies that mental events have a unique cause. 2) The causal closure principle (which all ontological physicalists agree to) says that all physical events have a physical cause. 3) Physical events are caused by mental events Conclusion) These physical events have a physical cause, which is a unique cause, so if a mental event caused this belief then it must be identical with this unique physical cause. You get a reduction from mental event into a physical event.
No, it doesn't. Consciousness is not reductive, rather it is an emergent property, but it is caused by sufficiently complex neural systems (i.e. the brain). Take the position that you claim to hold: Anomalous Monism--an emergent theory--allows for causation. "Most contemporary non-reductive physicalists subscribe to a position called anomalous monism (or something very similar to it). Unlike epiphenomenalism, which renders mental properties causally redundant, anomalous monists want to hold onto the idea that mental properties can make a causal difference to the world. The position was originally put forward by Donald Davidson in his 1970 paper Mental Events, and holds that in addition to this principle of causal interaction between the mental and the physical, two other principles can also be granted. One is the "nomological character of causality" - the idea that when two events are in causal relation to one another, there must be a strict law connecting them (i.e. the occurrence of the cause must by law guarantee the occurrence of the effect). Davidson's third principle is the "anomalism of the mental", which states that the kind of strict deterministic law described above cannot apply to the mental events, which can be neither predicted nor explained in a decisively law-like manner. The mental is rather governed by ‘guidelines’ of normativity. These three principles, Davidson claims, are incompatible. We can accept any two but not the third, lest we be led into contradiction. There is only one way to resolve this Mexican stand-off, according to Davidson, and that is to stake an identity claim between mental and physical tokens based on the notion of supervenience (see below). If mental events are identical to physical events, then they can enter into strict law-governed causal relationships, upholding the first and second principles. But since mental properties are supervenient on, and so not reducible to, physical properties, they can retain their anomological status, preserving the third principle." No. Epiphenomenalism states that mental events are caused by the brain, but that the events themselves are casually impotent. I think this might be true for some things. And as Novella writes (his blog appears to be down): "In our latest exchange I first wrote that a recent bit of neuroscience research showed that brain activity comes before any evidence for mental activity. This is not an isolated result of this one study, but is generally what we find when we correlate brain function to mental function – the brain function comes first. This point is relevant to the materialist-dualist debate. One of the lines of evidence for the materialist theory that the brain entirely causes the mind is that brain function correlates with mental function. The dualists employ a tactic of denial by arguing that this is merely correlation and therefore not evidence for causation, and that this correlation could result from the mind causing brain activity. While logically correct (correlation does not prove one specific causation), you can still infer causation from multiple correlations, and they ignore the many independent lines of evidence that suggest the arrow of causation is from the brain to the mind. You're resorting to the dualists denialist tact!
See the argument from exclusion. Quoting philosophers opinions won't win an argument btw. Quoting scientists can hold weight as they are authorities when it comes to fact. When it comes to philosophers, you can quote an argument if you don't want to re-write it yourself but trying to use a philosopher's opinions as an authority/naked assertion just doesn't do anything. Yeah, the bit in bold is me. So do I. But we do so by giving alternative definitions of causation to the strictly physical to physical version, and they certainly wouldn't say that mental properties are caused by the brain. Besides, the reductive physicalists also accuse the anomalous monists of collapsing into a form of epiphenomenalism. (although epiphenomenalism classically describes a position where consciousness is 'caused' by the brain There's another argument from supervenience to reductionism as well. However, it only holds for 'strong' supervenience, like that Davidson holds. I hold 'global' supervenience, which I think people have to nowdays since Putnam's arguments for externalism of mental content, and that doesn't reduce. It also makes difficult the causal connection between brain and mind. Some philosophers have tried to come up with a functionalist explanation of content externalism but I've yet to see a successful one. Not at all. The dualists are using 'correlation' as an excuse to deny connection. I say there's a connection, I just deny that 'cause' is the right concept to describe it. Besides, arguments from authority suck. Who cares if this guy thinks that the connection is causal? He didn't give a logical argument to justify the position. Why should I take his word for it?
This isn't a response to my point! What philosopher was I quoting? Novella is a neuroscientist not a philosopher. Consciousness is caused by the brain*, and is emergent, ergo it refutes your statement that causation leads to reduction. *We may not know the specific details of how consciousness is caused by the brain but there is nevertheless enough evidence to tells us that it is caused. Denying this is much like the creationist denying evolution happens, due to a lack of complete explanation for everything in evolution. No they don't. They do hold there is a connection; they hold the connection is between the physical brain and something immaterial/supernatural such as a soul. We have enough justification for the materialist position of the brain causing mind, they have no evidence for their position, thus all they can do is try to blow holes on the materialists evidence and declare no causation. In doing this they ignore all the various evidence which combined tells us that the mind is caused. This is not an argument from authority; I never said you should accept it merely because this person argues it. You need to read the posts before you say he hasn't made the case. Hopefully the blog will be back up soon.
All that tells me is that while he might be a fantastic neuroscientist, he hasn't quite got the same grasp of philosophy. Well, this naked assertion anyway. I'll be fair and see what kind of argument he has behind it if you show me one. You're using the same argument AGAIN!! "There isn't a supernatural connection between mind and brain therefore it must be causal" It's the same old "There's a connection, therefore it's causal" Sure, the neuroscientist can prove there's a connection. I always agreed there was a connection. That the connection is causal is a philosophical claim further which you haven't justified. You just give further justifications for the connection. Again you're saying "Materialist, therefore causal" Please justify this leap. Please. Fine. Show me the link and I'll give it a read. What it'll be is evidence for there being connection between mind and brain and then taking 'causal' for granted. You cannot have 'evidence' for a causal connection because it is a matter of a priori conceptualisation rather than 'witnessing' a causal connection. The only empirical observations you can make on this issue is how we are inclined to apply concepts. That's why philosophy of mind has always used thought experiments, as it is about showing how we naturally feel inclined to apply concepts. All that can be shown empirically is a correlation between mind and matter. What kind of connection this is is a purely conceptual exercise.
What was his naked assertion? Read it then. No, we're saying the evidence suggests that the brain causes the mind. If it was a mere correlation, then it could be the case that a mental process happens before a brain process. That would be a way to refute the assertion. But is has never happened. The fact remains that the prediction 'if the mind is caused by the brain, then mental process will always take place after the brain process' has always been verified and never refuted. That isn't the argument at all. Your either ignoring, or are ignorant of, the various lines of evidence that demonstrate the mine is caused. I've already given you the links.
Seriously, I have checked up and down the page... Edit: Found it now! (I said 'naked assertion' because you'd quoted a claim without the supporting argument.) Logical impossibility. You cannot draw that conclusion from evidence. Evidence shows correlations, that's it. How to interpret those correlations takes a further conceptual/metaphysical argument. That's one you still haven't given. Well if I'd claimed that the correlation had counter examples then this would have been a great defense... And so would any other connection that explained this correlation... It's a conceptual impossibility for empirical evidence of causation between mind and brain. The evidence shows correlation/supervenience. To interpret that as a causal connection requires a further conceptual/metaphysical claim. Evidence proves correlation/supervenience. How to interpret this correlation is a conceptual matter. There are alternative connections to 'cause' that you haven't ruled out. Heck, I even gave you mine in the last debate. Nothing you have said here refutes my theory of the mind.
Obviously there will be interpretation - that is what theories are about. However the view I am arguing, and indeed the evidence suggests, is sufficient, I would suggest the most sufficient. Furthermore, Occam's razor does away with non-caused theories: When you have a piece of hardware (brain / light bulb) and some output (mind / light) and that output stops when the hardware is destroyed, is altered when the hardware is altered, and depends on the hardware for its existence, then it is reasonable to conclude that the output is caused by that hardware. Studies have never disproved the predictions* of the caused theory of mind. At some point, with enough evidence, we can reliably and rationally infer causation. *"If the mind is completely a product of the material function of the brain then: 1) There will be no mental phenomena without brain function. 2) As brain function is altered, the mind will be altered. 3) If the brain is damaged, then mental function will be damaged. 4) Brain development will correlate with mental development. 5) We will be able to correlate brain activity with mental activity – no matter how we choose to look at it." Maybe that is not the case, maybe it isn't caused, maybe we will never know (see Colin McGuinn's 'New Mysterianism'), but it is sufficient, via Occam's razor and there seems to enough reason to indicate it is the case.
Fair enough. I'll present my alternative position again sometime, but I want to focus on the other thread for now so I'll hold back for the moment.
