Stimpson J. Cat said:
Rusty,
Surely you are not going to assert that Physicalism claims that everything is information? That the description is the reality?
That position is easily refuted, and you don't need Mary to do it. You are attacking a strawman here. Physicalism only claims that everything can be mathematically described in terms of our perceptions.
No I am not asserting that physicalism claims everythign is information. I am asserting that the reduction process reduces everything to the point where I will call it information. I did this to define information because you did not. This was in response to you claiming that perceivable things are not knowledge.
So things that are mathematically described are not information?
Yes.
Wrong. The memory was not included in the book. A description of the memory was included in the book. You can no more include the memory in the book than you could include Mary's brain in the book. The book only contains descriptions.
Physicalism states that the totality of everything that is the memory can be reduced to a state where it can be perceived. We all of that down and we have written down everything that memory is.
If we cannot write it all down then physicalism is rendered false.
Again, to make it clear, physicalism asserts that everything is reducable to a state where it is perceived.
We can write down everything we perceive.
We can write down everything about that memory. Everything that it is.
Do you acknowledge that there is a difference between a thing, and the description of that thing? Do you acknowledge that Physicalism does not claim that things are equivalent their descriptions? If you do not acknowledge these two points, then we have nothing to discuss.
Physicalism claims that everything can be reduced to the point where it can be perceived. Everything.
So the reduced state (which I am calling information) must be equal to the original state, otherwise we have not included everything!
I understand that physicalism does not claim that things = information. I am claiming that if you have the totallity of information about a thing then it logically follows that you have all the information that there is about that thing.
So how can Mary gain more?
I have already answered this question. All you are doing is phrasing it in a counter-intuitive way, so that it sounds contradictory.
It is really simple. Mary cannot learn everything there is to know about seeing red by reading a book. This fact does not contradict Physicalism, because Physicalism in no way claims that she should be able to. Physicalism only claims that a complete description of the process of seeing red should be possible. It in no way implies that knowing that description is equivalent to knowing what it is like to see red.
Uh, no actually we already agreed that physicalism claims that everything is reducable to the point where it can be perceived. We can write down what we perceive. Everything about red can be written down in the book. Mary learns everything in the book. Mary learns everythng about red.
It's all very simple.
You keep using the word "reduced" as though it somehow implied that the brain state is magically transformed into information, and stored in the book. All it means is that the change in her brain is described in the third book.
Yes, it implies that the brain state is transformed into information. We then store it in the book.
I would say knowledge but you reserved that word for another definition so now I say information.
She can learn it. She just can't learn it by reading a book. The book only contains a description of the brain state. For her to learn it, she must acquire that brain state. Physicalism only requires that we be able to describe the brain state. It does not require that we be able to give somebody that brain state.
No, the book contains all the perceivable information about the memory. All the perceivable information is in the book. All of it. And everything is reducable to perceivable information.
[quote[
Do you understand that for me to perceive Mary's knowledge of what it is like to see red is not the same as me knowing what it is like when Mary sees red?[/quote]
You defined knowledge as the physical state of the brain. So what you are asking me is this:
"Do you understand that to perceive Mary's physical state of her brain when she see's red is not the same as to have the physical state of Mary's brain when she see's red."
Correct. But everything is reducable to perception, and if you have all of that perception then you have the thing.
If Mary's "knowledge" consists of 5 brain dots, and you gain a perception of those 5 brain dots, then you gained Mary's "knowledge". If Mary's "knowledge" is more then the 5 brain dots in any way that cannot be reduced to a perceivable state then physicalism is false.
In the first case, I am able to perceive her brain state. The "reduction" that you are talking about is nothing more than a description of her knowledge of what it is like to see red in terms of that brain state.
Again, you defined knowledge as brain state. So let us re-write your sentance to see what you are truly saying:
"The "reduction" that you are talking about is nothing more than a description of her brain state of what it is like to see red in terms of that brain state."
According to physicalism there can be nothing more then that brain state. So if I fully learn and understand a description of everything there is then how can I learn MORE when I see the thing?
In the second case, I would have to actually have that brain state. This is impossible.
You are attributing things to Physicalism that it does not say, because you are misunderstanding what it means to say that everything is reducible to a state where I can perceive it. This only means that I can, in principle, describe everything in terms of my perceptions.
No we still agree. It means that we can describe EVERYTHING. So we reduce and describe everything about red, memory of red, knowledge Nth of red, etc.. Mary learns and understands it all. She has now learned and understood everything about red etc.. but when she see's red she learns something MORE.
We still agree, you are just realizing that physicalism is false.
This is not what any person who calls himself a physicalist is claiming. You are attacking a nonsensical strawman. No physicalist would claim that you can transform a dog into perceivable information. They would only claim that you can provide a description of the dog in terms of perceptions.
Exactly, a complete description of everything that dog is. So if we replace dog with red and say that we can provide a complete description of everything that red is then Mary learns that description of what red is then how can she learn something more when she see's red.
The things that we perceive objectively exist. We describe them in terms of our perceptions. Those descriptions are information. The things being described are not. Is that clear enough?
The descriptions are information. Correct. As you progress through your rebuttal we agree again.
Mary possesses all the information about red etc.. but see's red and gains something more. Hence we must discard physicalism.
I only objected when you made it clear that by "reduced to a physical fact" you meant something more than just "described in terms of physical facts".
Wait, now you are saying that a description of the physical fact is different from a physical fact? Those two are the same thing.
It's a fact that my toes are yellow.
It's a description that my toes are yellow.
The same.
The fact that my toes are yellow, however, is not the same as my toes.
Different.
I object to your use of the word "reduced". You are clearly using it to mean something different than what physicalists mean by it.
No I mean what physicalists mean.
Reduced = Rendered
Reduced to a state where any human can perceive = Rendered to a state where any human can perceive.
This is clearly going nowhere. From now on, I am not going to use the word "reduced". It is ambiguous and unclear. I hereby deny that Physicalism claims that anything can be reduced to physical facts, in the sense that you are using the term.
You are changing physicalism! Ok, now we need to come up with something that will allow a non-physical "agent".
I, of course, am using physical to mean both caused and causal.
Physicalism only claims that everything can be described in terms of our perceptions. It does not claim that objects can be transformed into perceptions, or that objects are perceptions, or that objects are information.
Yes, exactly. It is the claim that everything can be 'described'. It is described by rendering it to such a state that it can be perceived. We describe the perceptions.
No. Our brains can turn information into abstract knowledge. It cannot turn information into empirical knowledge.
So there are two types of knowledge? Are they both brain-states?
Only into abstract knowledge.
Into abstract knowledge. She only has the abstract knowledge. The only (natural) way for her to get the empirical knowledge is to actually see red. In principle, it may be possible to artificially give her this empirical knowledge, but reading a book isn't going to do it.
If knowledge is a brain state and the brain state can be completely described and placed in the book then she can gain that knowledge by learning and understanding the description in the book.
If you can only gain the knowledge by seeing red then you can not reduce that knowledge to a complete description.
Changing the terminology will not somehow make physiclism true.
Wrong. Physicalism does not claim that anything more than the description can be put into the book.
Exactly.
You are not using the word "reduced" the way it is used in the definition of Physicalism. You are attacking a strawman.
No, you are changing physiclism which is exactly what I want to do. Hooray.
I never agreed with that. I just foolishly assumed that when you gave the definition for physicalism, you actually understood that was meant by it. I cannot imagine how anybody could seriously maintain that Physicalism claims what you say it is claiming. Do you really think that Physicalists are that stupid?
Is the information in that book a dog? Do you think that is what Physicalism implies?
Why? Are you not aware that the word "subjective" is used in both Psychology and Neurobiology the way I defined it, all the time? Who decided that the dualists should be the final arbiters on what constitutes proper usage of the English language?
First two paragraphs have been covered.
Subjective is used differently in philosphy.
Just like I can say we have the
same car if we both drive Honda Civic's but in philosphy that would mean we have the
same identical car. It is the way the word is used. This is a different argument, anyway.
No more tangents, let us redefine physicalism so that the "agent" that does exist can be accepted into our belief structures.
Both of those words mean only what they are defined to mean. Not everybody defines them the way you do.
You use it that way. Not everybody does.
Fine with me. Nothing is subjective. Subjective facts do not exist. This does not change the fact that our only source of information is our experiences.
Yes, physiclism requires that subjective facts do not exist.
I'll tell you what, just for clarity, I will use the term pseudo-subjective when referring to things which exist as processes in the brain.
ok
Just to reiterate. I claim that everything can be described in terms of our observations. I call this claim Physicalism. you can assert that physicalism claims that everything can be transformed into information. I agree with you that such a claim is nonsensical. What I don't understand is why you would assert that this is what physicalism claims?
It is what you are claiming.
Anything + perception = description.
Anything can be rendered into a description.
Descriptions are information.
Anything can be rendered into information.
It seems awfully conceited for you (who are not a physicalist) to be deciding what Physicalism means, and to be telling other people that they are not physicalists because they don't believe what you say they should.
Did it ever, even once, occur to you that maybe you have misunderstood the definition of Physicalism? That maybe the physicalists who wrote down that definition meant something different by it than what you originally thought?
Did it ever occur to you, when you realized that what you thought it meant was incoherent, to ask the physicalists to clarify what they meant, rather than just assuming that they did mean something incoherent?
Dr. Stupid
Yes, we are redefining physicalism. I will continue to press for the redefinition of physiclism until it is such that it will accept the "agent".
