Materialism

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Please don't introduce p-zombies into this dicussion. It's hard enough to nail the jell-o to the wall without another ill-defined concept.

Win, what is "the experience of memories"? What does it mean to "phenomenally realize" a fact? What is "phenomenal information"?

If Mary is operated upon by Stimpy's robot and then goes outside, exactly what new information does she gather?

Indeed, it's possible to claim that the experience of seeing red isn't a fact, but rather an ability like training your eyes not to counter-rotate with your head.

But, having learned to do that, would you say you've learned a fact?

Oh cripes! Of course you've learned a fact. If this isn't a fact, define fact.

~~ Paul

 

[Jethro]

Stimpy:



Let me break this down a little.

The puppy first. No one claims that a puppy is logically entailed by all the physical facts about a puppy. People do claim that the experience of seeing red is logically entailed by all the physical facts about seeing red.

Then either you are misunderstanding what those people are saying, or those people are stupid and are misrepresenting materialism.

Physicalism does not presuppose that a person can learn absolutely everything about an experience simply by reading a book.

Rather, physicalism would state that learning about "the experience of seeing red" and "experiencing the seeing of red" are two different things. However, they are both physical proceses.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Win,

The puppy first. No one claims that a puppy is logically entailed by all the physical facts about a puppy. People do claim that the experience of seeing red is logically entailed by all the physical facts about seeing red.

The knowledge of what it is like to see red is not logically entailed by the physical facts about the knowledge of what it is like to see red. That is the point.

When we say that the experience is logically entailed by the physical facts about seeing red, we simply mean that the physical process of seeing red logically implies the existence of the experience of seeing red. This does not in any way mean that reading those facts from a book (which is simply a description of the process of seeing red) is going to produce the experience, or the memory of having had the experience.

OK. The knowledge part now. If you know all the physical facts about seeing red, then necessarily you know what it's like to experience red, if experiencing red is a physical fact.

Experiencing red is not a physical fact. It is a physical process. You can know all the physical facts about that process, but this is not the same as actually having the process occur in your brain.

Either you know it by virtue of knowing all the physical facts (and materialism is true), you don't it even though you know all the physical facts (and materialism is false) or the experience of seeing red doesn't contain any information, that is to say, isn't a fact that you can know.

The fact that you know all the physical facts does not imply that you know what it is like to see red. Saying that you know all the physical facts simply means that you have a complete description of the physical brain state that corresponds to you knowing what it is like to see red. It does not equate to you actually possessing that brain state.

Memories are physical, yes. The experience of memories isn't.

But we aren't talking about experience of memories here. We are talking about the memories. Presumably, even under your brand of Dualism, if we were to alter Mary's brain state so that she possessed the memory of having seen red, she would then know what it is like to see red, because she would experience that memory. Under Physicalism, the situation is the same, except that it is also her brain which experiences the memory, rather than something else. The effect is the same though. Either way the knowledge of what it is like to see red is a physical memory, located in the brain. Simply reading all the physical facts about that brain state is not going to cause that brain state to appear in her brain, which is what the Mary experiment is implying should be expected to happen.

From my position, information has a dual quality. The information about the content of qualia isn't physical information, it's phenomenal information. It isn't "contained" in our brains, as it were.

That's fine. The thought experiment is presented within the framework of physicalism, which holds that it is the brain that does the experiencing. The point is that if we accept the premise that the knowledge of what it is like to see red is a physical structure in the brain, then we cannot claim that knowing all of the physical facts about that physical structure is going to cause the physical structure to appear. Thus the argument that physicalism implies that Mary should be able to know what it is like to see red, simply by knowing all the physical facts about, is not valid.

Now, I guess we could ask, what would happen with p-zombie Mary. Emerging from her black and white room, light of the right wavelength will hit zombie Mary's eyes, causing signals to travel along her optical nerves to her geniculate bodies, thence to her visual cortex. New patterns, never before existing in zombie Mary's brain, will cause her to remark, "I can now see red." Those same patterns will create, or perhaps better, are in part, the false belief that she has had the experience of seeing red.

In real Mary, however, those patterns will be accompanied by experience, and the phenomenal information contained in the experience of seeing red is what is not logically entailed by all the physical facts.

Under your brand of Dualism, sure. But not under Physicalism.

You bring up a good point, though. Here is a question for both you and Rusty (since you are both advocating very different brands of dualism).

Imagine that we make a perfect physical copy of Mary. This copy is physically identical to Mary in every way. Several questions:

1) Do you believe this copy would be a p-zombie, or would it possess consciousness?

2) If she does have consciousness, then would she know what it is like to see, or hear, or any of the other things that Mary knows, but which the copy has not yet experienced?

3) If she does know what these things are like, even though she has never had the experiences, doesn't that imply that the knowledge of those experiences (not necessarily the experiences themselves, or the experiences of the memories) is purely physical?

I would assert that under physicalism, the answers would be:

1) She would possess consciousness.

2) She would know what all those things are like.

3) The knowledge of what those things are like is physically stored in her brain.

I would say that this is all that physicalism requires. It does not require that Mary knowing all the physical facts about seeing red, will cause Mary to actually possess the knowledge of what it is like to see red.

Another way to look at it is this. The knowledge of what it is like to see red is not a physical fact about seeing red. Facts are just information. Knowledge is more than just information. Knowledge is a physical state in the brain. It is a physical representation of information.

There are, in fact, physical facts about the knowledge of what it is like to see red. Mary could have those facts as well, but knowing those facts is not the same as having the knowledge, just as having all the facts about a puppy is not the same as having the puppy.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Guest]

Stimpy :

Jesus Christ! Are you people stupid? Let me spell it out for you in simple to understand words:

The above thought experiment was not intended as an argument for physicalism being true.

What part of the above do you not understand?

I completely accept the above. We are all agreed that nobody is trying to prove physicalism is true. Far from it. You are trying to prove that physicalism isn't false.

Rusty has presented an argument that he claims refutes physicalism. I have claimed that his argument assumes that Physicalism makes claims that I do not think Physicalism makes. Exactly how do you propose that I go about explaining this without explaining what I think physicalism does claim?

You can't "go about explaining it" because it is a valid refutation of materialism. You have never quite grasped this. You have never actually taken a step back and thought "Hmmm. Maybe materialism can actually be proven false." All you have done is try to specify the problem under materialistic presuppositions and then declare it to "not be a problem if you assume materialism is true". What I want you to do is actually think about the problem as it is specified. If all you do is explain it in terms of physicalism you are doing exactly what a biblical literalist does when he "explains it like it is in the Bible".

Think about how you would go about explaining this to a Christian. You would have to try to make them see that in order to find the truth about the situation it is no good just redefining the problem according to the Bible, and that you must examine the problem itself! Now think about the reply the literalist gives which corresponds to yours :

"Exactly how do you propose that I go about explaining this [7-day creation] without explaining what I think the Bible does claim?"

Then he goes on to explain that whilst God was making the world the normal laws of physics didn't apply (Christians do claim this). And at the end of the day he is fully confident that provided you assume the Bible is true, there is no problem with 7-day creationism.

edit :

And he is right! If you assume the bible is true then there is no problem with with 7-day creationism. But there sure is a problem with assuming the Bible is true!

Are you guys just not paying any attention to context at all? Could you possibly be this stupid?

We aren't being stupid, Stimp. We just think outside of the box you think inside. There really is a problem here, and philosophers have been writing about it for thousands of years.

What you have done is attack strawman versions of materialism. If materialism really claimed what people like you, Ian, and Rusty, have claimed it does, then it would clearly be false.

It does! And it is indeed false! Maybe the problem here is that it is so obvious that materialism is false that you can;t quite believe that so many people still support it even though it is so obviously false. Do not be fooled by that.

But materialism does not claim those things.

Materialism claims that everything is reducable to material. Really it does.

If I told you that Idealism was false because it implies things that you do not believe Idealism implies, wouldn't you respond by telling me what Idealism really does imply? Indeed, haven't you done exactly that before?

Maybe Stimp. You have claimed that idealism implies solipsism and I have responded that it does not. But I fail to see how materialism does not claim everything is reducable to matter. Idealism has one very conspicuous advantage over materialism, namely that the reality we actually live in is mental, and this is a brute fact. What I think you do not understand is that this brute fact has not gone unnoticed for last 4000 years, and the whole history of philosophy can be viewed as an attempt to reconcile this brute fact with everything else we know. I have tried to encourage you to look to philosophy for a deeper answer. I have told you countless times that Einstein, Schoedinger and most of the founders of modern physics all ran into this problem and all came out of it accepting the falsity of physicalism but nothing I say makes any difference. All you ever do is continue to defend materialism. I have been forced to accept that you cannot understand what I am trying to explain.

Have you completely ignored the argument I have been making?

YES. I have heard it before.

I am agreeing that in the real world, you cannot learn what it is like to see red by reading a book. Where I disagree is the ridiculous assertion that materialism implies that you should be able to!

If the experience of seeing red was reducable to material and properties of material then there is no reason why you cannot book-learn red.

 

[Jethro]

Materialism states that all things are reducible to matter. Yes. But that does not mean that reading about an experience is the same as experiencing it. Learning about something is a pysical process. Experiencing something is a different physical process. They are both physical processes even though they are different physical processes.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

UCE,

Jesus Christ! Are you people stupid? Let me spell it out for you in simple to understand words:

The above thought experiment was not intended as an argument for physicalism being true.

What part of the above do you not understand?
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I completely accept the above. We are all agreed that nobody is trying to prove physicalism is true. Far from it. You are trying to prove that physicalism isn't false.

Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?

Rusty has presented an argument that he claims refutes physicalism. I have claimed that his argument assumes that Physicalism makes claims that I do not think Physicalism makes. Exactly how do you propose that I go about explaining this without explaining what I think physicalism does claim?
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You can't "go about explaining it" because it is a valid refutation of materialism. You have never quite grasped this. You have never actually taken a step back and thought "Hmmm. Maybe materialism can actually be proven false." All you have done is try to specify the problem under materialistic presuppositions and then declare it to "not be a problem if you assume materialism is true". What I want you to do is actually think about the problem as it is specified.

I am going to try one last time to explain this to you. The Mary thought experiment that Rusty presented is already presented within the framework of materialism. The very first premise of the argument is that materialism is true. It is an attempt at an indirect proof. You assume that what you are trying to prove false is true, and then show that it leads to a contradiction.

It is not possible for me to try to refute the argument without phrasing it within the assumption that materialism is true, because the original argument was presented that way!

Is this sinking in at all? Rusty's argument was:

Premise 1: If Physicalism is true, the A is true.

Premise 2: A is not true.

Conclusion: Physicalism is not true.

My response to this argument was that I disagree with premise one. And you want me to present that argument without making the assumption that Physicalism is true? Are you completely daft?

If all you do is explain it in terms of physicalism you are doing exactly what a biblical literalist does when he "explains it like it is in the Bible".

If I try to argue that Biblical Literalism is false by the following methodology:

Premise 1: Biblical literalism implies A.

Premise 2: A is false.

Conclusion: Therefore Biblical literalism is false.

Then it is perfectly reasonable for that literalist to refute my argument by pointing out that Biblical Literalism does not, in fact, imply A.

What you have done is attack strawman versions of materialism. If materialism really claimed what people like you, Ian, and Rusty, have claimed it does, then it would clearly be false.
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It does! And it is indeed false! Maybe the problem here is that it is so obvious that materialism is false that you can;t quite believe that so many people still support it even though it is so obviously false. Do not be fooled by that.

If materialism claims what you guys have been saying it claims, then I am not a materialist. Neither is any other materialist I have ever met. Maybe you should spend less time telling materialists what their position is, and more time listening to them explain what it really is?

But materialism does not claim those things.
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Materialism claims that everything is reducable to material. Really it does.

That is not in dispute.

I am agreeing that in the real world, you cannot learn what it is like to see red by reading a book. Where I disagree is the ridiculous assertion that materialism implies that you should be able to!
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If the experience of seeing red was reducable to material and properties of material then there is no reason why you cannot book-learn red.

We can book learn all of the physical facts about the process of seeing red. That is all. This in no way implies that learning these facts will magically create the process of seeing red in your brain, any more than learning all of the physical facts about a toaster will create a toaster.

You are attacking a ridiculous strawman.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Jethro]

Maybe Stimp. You have claimed that idealism implies solipsism and I have responded that it does not. But I fail to see how materialism does not claim everything is reducable to matter.

It does claim this.

Idealism has one very conspicuous advantage over materialism, namely that the reality we actually live in is mental, and this is a brute fact. What I think you do not understand is that this brute fact has not gone unnoticed for last 4000 years, and the whole history of philosophy can be viewed as an attempt to reconcile this brute fact with everything else we know. I have tried to encourage you to look to philosophy for a deeper answer. I have told you countless times that Einstein, Schoedinger and most of the founders of modern physics all ran into this problem and all came out of it accepting the falsity of physicalism

I'd argue that this is false. There are certainly some who belived this, but Einstein and Schroedinger are certainly not two of them.

If the experience of seeing red was reducable to material and properties of material then there is no reason why you cannot book-learn red.

There is a perfectly good reason. Learning about the material changes of the brain which come about by the process of seeing red involves different material changes than the ones you are learning about.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

UcE, Ian, Rusty: Will you acknowledge that subjective facts acquired through experience are not the same sort of facts that can be learned from books, even though both are facts about red? If you will not acknowledge this, then we might as well pack up and go home.

~~ Paul

 

[Loki]

Win,

There's a very good chance I'm missing something here, but...

(Stimpy wrote) : ...anymore than having all the facts about a puppy would equate to actually having a puppy.

(win Wrote) : The puppy first. No one claims that a puppy is logically entailed by all the physical facts about a puppy.

Actually, I would have thought that a puppy *is* logically entailed if we actually collect and organise matter according to the rules for puppies. Stimpy is saying "I can define a puppy as being 'x' molecules of types 'y', arranged in order 'z'". However, writing down this precise and accurate description on paper does not mean we just placed a puppy on the paper. But if we do indeed collect 'X' molecules of types 'Y', and arrange then in sequence 'Z' then logically we do actually get a puppy.

In the same way, describing the facts and experiences of red is saying "if 'x' neurons of types 'Y' are in sequence 'Z' then Mary sees and experiences red". Mary can read this, and understand it, but it's not until her neurons actually achieve this state than she sees (and experiences) red.

Now, when I read the Knowledge Argument, I interpret "Mary learns all the facts" as meaning "her neurons take on the appropriate state". In this case, she either does see and experience red (materialism is true) or she sees but does not experience red (materialism is false). But since this is purely a thought experiment, why would we draw either conclusion from it?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Loki said:

Now, when I read the Knowledge Argument, I interpret "Mary learns all the facts" as meaning "her neurons take on the appropriate state". In this case, she either does see and experience red (materialism is true) or she sees but does not experience red (materialism is false). But since this is purely a thought experiment, why would we draw either conclusion from it?

Yes, yes, thank you! This is a thought experiment where you can't draw any conclusions even if you do accept that Mary can learn every objective and subjective physical fact about red in that damn room. We need a real experiment.

Do a Google search for 'physicalism definition'. The results speak volumes for the state of term definitions in philosophy.

~~ Paul

 

[Interesting Ian]

Stimp,

Just picking up on a couple of assertions you've made. You said

The fact that you know all the physical facts does not imply that you know what it is like to see red. Saying that you know all the physical facts simply means that you have a complete description of the physical brain state that corresponds to you knowing what it is like to see red. It does not equate to you actually possessing that brain state.

and also

The knowledge of what it is like to see red is not a physical fact about seeing red. Facts are just information. Knowledge is more than just information.

Two crucial points I'd like to make:

a) You're a strict materialist or a reductionist materialist. This being so a "complete description of the physical brain state" when one experiences redness, logically entails the actual raw experience of seeing redness. This then necessarily entails you do not actually have to experience the redness to know what it is like. What say you to this?

b) I'm curious about the remark that knowledge involves more than information. This seems to me to flat out contradict reductionist materialism. Do you have any links that you can supply which backs up your assertion that reductionist materialists think that knowledge involves more than information?

Thanking you kindly.

 

[Jethro]

I would say that the KA does not invalidate materialism because:

&ltthe physical brain state of having knowledge of the physical brain state due to having experienced red&gt is different than &ltthe physical brain state due to having experienced red.&gt

Understand?

 

[ChuckieR]

Chuckie:

Indeed, it's possible to claim that the experience of seeing red isn't a fact, but rather an ability like training your eyes not to counter-rotate with your head.

But, having learned to do that, would you say you've learned a fact?

I would say that I have trained a reflex.

Now, someone could then go into my head and "read the weights" off of my neurons before and after the experiment and see how the adaptation changed the behavior of the neurons (in fact, people do this by monitoring neural firing rates in animals before and after such adaptations).

Then these people could write up a scientific paper about how training the reflex changes the firing of various neurons. Then we would know the facts about how the process works.

But simply knowing the facts does not train your neurons. It would be silly to assume that it did.

 

[Lucifuge Rofocale]

Dammit

I don't know what happened to Stimpy and Paul.

Rusty can be pleased and every idealist here would have the proof they want doing a simple experiment wich really capture the esence of physicalism.

First you Rusty forget the Book about Red you claim is sufficent to experience Red according to physicalism. It is nonsense because the only physicalist requeriment is that a physical neural arrange is necessary and sufficent to experience Red . Not a book wich can or can't arrange the neurone matter in the way needed to experiment red.
So the physicalist experiment to demostrate physicalism goes like this:

You store the brain configu¡ration to experience red in a computer. Then you stimulate the PHYSICAL brain of the subject using ONLY the PHYSICAL information in the computer ans...voila!!! the subject should experiment RED if physicalism is true.

Now, go to google and see some actual experiments in this field with blind people or vision research centers like Caltech.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,

a) You're a strict materialist or a reductionist materialist. This being so a "complete description of the physical brain state" when one experiences redness, logically entails the actual raw experience of seeing redness. This then necessarily entails you do not actually have to experience the redness to know what it is like. What say you to this?

I would say that this is nonsense. A complete description of the physical brain state does not logically entail the actual experience. The brain state itself does. A complete description of the physical brain state only logically entails a complete description of the experience, not the experience itself.

b) I'm curious about the remark that knowledge involves more than information. This seems to me to flat out contradict reductionist materialism. Do you have any links that you can supply which backs up your assertion that reductionist materialists think that knowledge involves more than information?

Try any of those links to neurobiology that have been posted here. Knowledge is clearly more than just information. Knowledge is a physical representation of information in the brain.

Knowing what it is like to see red is not just the information that completely describes the process of seeing red. It is a specific type of physical brain state.

As always, it is important to keep in mind one of the few things that UCE has said that I agree with: It is very important to not confuse the map with the territory.

I can know all the physical facts about the process of seeing red. But that is just a description of the process. It is a map. The territory is the actual process. Simply having the map does not create the territory. Having a complete description of the process of seeing red, is not going to create the experience of seeing red, nor is it going to create the memory of having seen red (which is all knowing what it is like to see red is).

Dr. Stupid

 

[Guest]

Materialism states that all things are reducible to matter. Yes. But that does not mean that reading about an experience is the same as experiencing it. Learning about something is a pysical process. Experiencing something is a different physical process. They are both physical processes even though they are different physical processes.

Jethro,

You are relatively new to this so.....

'Experiencing' something correlates to a physical process. To say it IS a physical process begs the question "What does IS mean?" If it means "is identical to" then your statement is clearly wrong, since the experience itself and the correlating process clearly have completely different descriptions. But if "IS" does not mean "is identical to" then it means they must be different. Materialism must claim that the experience and the physical process are both the same thing and different things. Are they the same process? Are they 'different processes'? The problem for materialism is that they are the same process, but viewed from two completely perspectives, but that this perspective shift is totally unaccountable within materialism.

NB : Paul and Stimpson please do not reply to this I want to hear Jethros response.

 

[Guest]

Stimpson :

UCE :

We are all agreed that nobody is trying to prove physicalism is true. Far from it. You are trying to prove that physicalism isn't false.
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Stimp :

Is that supposed to be some kind of joke?

No. It is a simple statement of the truth. We all know that it is impossible to prove physicalsim is true. You are trying to prove that all the different refutations of physicalism are false. That is precisely what is happening. It isn't a joke.

If materialism claims what you guys have been saying it claims, then I am not a materialist. Neither is any other materialist I have ever met. Maybe you should spend less time telling materialists what their position is, and more time listening to them explain what it really is?

**************Materialism states that EVERYTHING is made of matter or is reducable to matter***********

**************Qualia are not reducable to matter***************

**************Therefore materialism is not true****************

quote:
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But materialism does not claim those things.
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Materialism claims that everything is reducable to material. Really it does.
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That is not in dispute.

UCE:

If the experience of seeing red was reducable to material and properties of material then there is no reason why you cannot book-learn red.
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Stimp :

We can book learn all of the physical facts about the process of seeing red. That is all. This in no way implies that learning these facts will magically create the process of seeing red in your brain, any more than learning all of the physical facts about a toaster will create a toaster.

You are attacking a ridiculous strawman.

I am attacking ***PHYSICALISM***. Physicalism claims that everything....*****EVERYTHING******, including QUALIA, i.e. including "SEEING RED" is reducable to (derivable from) MATTER! You have just used the phrase "the process of seeing red in your brain". Stimp, YOUR BRAIN DOES NOT SEE RED. There is a process in your brain when you see red. The 'process' is explicable by materialism. "SEEING RED", which occurs in your MIND not your BRAIN IS NOT EXPLICABLE BY MATERIALISM.

 

[Peskanov]

A clarification please

Win said:
----
The knowledge argument demonstrates that the full set of physical facts about seeing red doesn't logically entail the facts about the experience of seeing red.

If this is so, materialism is false.
----

I don't get. It simply does not follow...
Can anybody put this argument in a syllogism? Especially to explain the conection between the facts and the "material is false" conclusion.

 

[Guest]

Jethro:

I'd argue that this is false. There are certainly some who belived
this, but Einstein and Schroedinger are certainly not two of them.
quote:

Really? Why would you argue that? Have you read what they wrote on the subject? Can you explain to me how the following Schroediniger quote should be interpreted :

"However strange it may seem to us at first, there is only one consciousness, and it is the only thing which exists."

Sounds pretty clear to me, Jethro. Why do you think he said it?

 

[Guest]

UcE, Ian, Rusty: Will you acknowledge that subjective facts acquired through experience are not the same sort of facts that can be learned from books, even though both are facts about red? If you will not acknowledge this, then we might as well pack up and go home.

~~ Paul

Paul,

Yes they are different sorts of facts. Direct subjective knowledge cannot be described in terms of matter. Everything which is part of the material world - the entire material Universe and all processes and 'facts' connected to it CAN BE BOOK-LEARNED. The reason they can be book-learned is that the entire materialistic edifice is an abstract model. It is a model of we have invented to describe the behaviour of a physical world we perceive to exist.

*************All the problems arise as soon as you claim that subjective experiences are themselves reducable to that physical model.************

If they were actually reducable to that physical model then it MUST be possible to describe those subjective experiences in terms of that model! But you cannot! You have just admitted you cannot! They are "different sorts of facts"! i.e. they are NOT "material facts". They are NOT "reducable to material". i.e. Facts exist which cannot be explained in terms of the material model of the Universe.....

...therefore materialism, as I have been telling you for the last two years, IS FALSE.