Materialism

[Guest]

UcE said:
Why do you think so?

~~ Paul

Materialism and the physical notions of the world refer to a physical model we just assert exists, because it seems reasonable to us to do so. We define everything with respect to that model, which we all try to agree on the best we can.

In the mental realm, things do not refer ro that physical model - they refer to a hard-to-grasp thing we instinctively call "I" even though we have no real concept of what it is - instead all our mental concepts exist with respect to it. Materialism tries to attach the mental world to the physical world with superglue, and claims that there is no difference between the brain process and the qualia. If it had a concept of "I" which made sense then the problem would go away, but as soon as it admits the existence of something that is more than the sum total of all the physical facts it stops being materialism. The nub of the problem is that whilst there is a correlate of the qualia in the brain processes, there is no correlate of "I", so materialism is caught in an impossible struggle to explain what the qualia are.

NB : Materialism doesn't need a central 'thing' like "I" because we all have to come to agreement about those physical concepts. In other words all our "I"s collectively agree on the thing that the physical world has meaning with respect to. 'physical' things have meaning with respect to an ABSTRACT thing. BUt YOU aren't abstract. are you?

 

[Win]

Stimpy:

First off, we don't approach these thought experiments "within the framework" of any of the various positions. The Mary thought experiment doesn't have as an implied or explicit step, assume materialism.

Rather, as I've said before, we simply don't assume the truth of any. If Mary learns a new fact, reductive materialism is false, because learning a new fact under the circumstances of the thought experiment is incompatible with the supervenience of the phenomenal on the physical.

That being said:

No. Even under property dualism, she will gain the memory of having seen red. And even under property dualism, that memory is a physical structure in her brain. She is still physically different after seeing red than before. Knowing all the physical facts about red doesn't give her the memory of seeing red.

The point is that the memory should have no factual content that wasn't already known to her. She knows all the physical facts.

Being physically different isn't equivalent to learning a new fact.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

UcE said:

If it had a concept of "I" which made sense then the problem would go away, but as soon as it admits the existence of something that is more than the sum total of all the physical facts it stops being materialism.

Why does the "I" have to be more than the sum of the physical parts?

~~ Paul

 

[ChuckieR]

Have we abandoned the color version of the experiment, realizing its limitations, or are you just trying to convince me indirectly that I am wrong?

Did you notice my deliberate mistake?

If we ask Mary to to write an essay to describe the new knoweldge she gained by finally experiencing the emotional power of music she would not be able to do so adequately. Surely she has learned something new, something indescribable. Something that can only ever be subjective but that is nevertheless very real indeed.

It may be difficult for Mary to express herself in words, but that is not KA. We've already agreed that the description of the music is not the same as the experience of the music (which affects a whole different set of neurons). And I am not saying that I can ever know how it felt to Mary when she heard the music, because my brain is not wired identically to Mary's (i.e., I am not Mary and I am not a copy of Mary).

If the new knowledge cannot be described in terms of the physical model of the Universe then physicalism fails. For materialism to stand you must say that (in theory) it is possible to accurately define the emotional power of music in terms of physical concepts.

Hmmm, I don't think that the KA says anything at all about the difficulty or impossibility someone describing their own emotions in words. I believe it claims that emotions and feelings cannot be explained physically. But, even with our limited technology, we do have some knowledge of how certain stimuli elicit certain emotions, and there doesn't seem to be any theoretical limit to explaining human emotions in more detail.

We can explain how music affects our emotions. We understand that hearing certain sounds excites certain neurons, which can release certain hormones, etc. That is the physical explanation. But it is certainly not the physical experience.

Certainly we could look at Mary's brain wiring before and after she hears the music and note the new connections that were formed (the physical description of the static, stored "knowledge" in terms of Mary's personal neural wiring). We can even examine her brain with our super fMRI++ machine while she is listening to the music, and we can observe how her neurons are affected, and which hormones are being shot out, etc. We can understand the process physically, even though Mary is the only one who can experience it. I don't think that any materialist would ever claim that Mary should be able to "self reflect" on her own neural wiring and figure out what it is w/out any external equipment, yet that is how we physically explain the knowledge.

One last note, the music example is very different from the color example. In the color experiment, we are questioning her ability to even see red at all. With the music experiment, we are now apparently trying to describe the higher level reactions to hearing, not the low level process of hearing itself. So it gets a bit more wishy-washy.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Win said:

First off, we don't approach these thought experiments "within the framework" of any of the various positions. The Mary thought experiment doesn't have as an implied or explicit step, assume materialism.

It does in this statement of it:

http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~philos/MindDict/knowledgeargument.html

and this one:

http://gaffa.mit.edu/philosophy/knowledge-argument/knowledge-argument.html

Being physically different isn't equivalent to learning a new fact.

Wow! It's not? Then please define fact.

~~ Paul

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Win,

No. Even under property dualism, she will gain the memory of having seen red. And even under property dualism, that memory is a physical structure in her brain. She is still physically different after seeing red than before. Knowing all the physical facts about red doesn't give her the memory of seeing red.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The point is that the memory should have no factual content that wasn't already known to her. She knows all the physical facts.

Being physically different isn't equivalent to learning a new fact.

I agree. In fact, in my explanation of the whole empirical vs abstract issue, earlier in this thread, I pointed out that under physicalism she would not gain any new information (facts) about red. All she would gain is the memory of having seen red. Of course, this memory will contain information about red, but according to the assumptions of the experiment, she already has that information. The only new thing that she gains is the actual memory of having seen red.

Does this mean that we are in agreement on this issue?

Incidentally, I would still be interested in hearing your views on the p-zombie version of the experiment. Am I correct in assuming that your response for the p-zombie would be the same as mine for Mary? Namely that the p-zombie gains no new facts, it only gains the physical memory of having seen red?

Also, under property dualism, what facts do you think Mary will gain? We both seem to agree that she will gain the memory of seeing red, but what else will she gain? Clearly under the epiphenomenalistic point of view you have presented, whatever new information she gains must not be accessible to her brain in any way. In what sense would she have learned anything new? Isn't learning a physical process in the brain, even under property dualism?

And a more puzzling question. If she does learn something new, then the p-zombie must think it learned something new, too. How is this possible? Is it possible to think you have learned something new, when you have not? Either way, you must have the new information, right? If the p-zombie has this new information, then by definition it has learned something new, which is a contradiction. But if it does not have the new information, then how could it possibly think it has learned something new?


Dr. Stupid

 

[ChuckieR]

If physicalism is true then we should be able to physically describe the experience of red and the experience of being overwhelmed by music.[/i].

But someone being able to describe their feeling is completely different from understanding the physical process of seeing and hearing.

Just because you cannot describe your own emotions completely does not mean that we can never understand the physical processes involved in your emotions.

From your description of Mary's music, I get the feeling that you think Mary should be able to completely describe how the music affected her, down to the smallest physical atomic/photonic detail. But I don't think that is what KA is saying. It is saying something much more profound, i.e., that no one could ever explain why Mary "reacted" as she did (with "reactions" including all internal neural activity, etc.), or "experienced" what she did.

We can explain it, but we can't experience it.

To the contrary, we can already describe in some great detail why people react to music. With super fMRI++ we may be able to explain specifically why you reacted/felt a particular way when you heard some music. There is no theoretical limitation here and no interesting philosophical issue.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Paul,

Being physically different isn't equivalent to learning a new fact.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wow! It's not? Then please define fact.

In principle, he is right. The issue is not with the word "fact", but with the word "learn". The facts have changed, but Mary has not learned any new facts. She has only gained a memory, and she already has the abstract information about red that is contained in that memory.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Win]

Paul:

It does in this statement of it:

No, it doesn't. It states: If physicalism is true, then ... No one is operating within the framework of materialism in order to do the thought experiment. The argument points out the incompatibility of physicalism (more accurately reductive materialism) with Mary learning a new fact. You don't assume the truth of materialism in order to do this.

Please, stop trying to play "gotcha" with me, particularly with links to web sites you don't understand too well.

Wow! It's not? Then please define fact.

No thanks. It's hard to combine being patronizing with claiming you need the definitions of terms central to the arguments. Pick one mode or the other. Either you understand the positions well enough to call me on my "misunderstanding" or you need some help and therefore shouldn't be so unequivocal in your claims about what your sources say.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Stimpy said:

I agree. In fact, in my explanation of the whole empirical vs abstract issue, earlier in this thread, I pointed out that under physicalism she would not gain any new information (facts) about red. All she would gain is the memory of having seen red. Of course, this memory will contain information about red, but according to the assumptions of the experiment, she already has that information. The only new thing that she gains is the actual memory of having seen red.

Hmm. I think it's odd not to call this memory facts. If Mary dies and we do an autopsy, those memories would certainly be facts. It's probably good to distinguish them from conceptual facts by calling them empirical facts or some such, but facts is facts.

Continue . . .

~~ Paul

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Paul,

Hmm. I think it's odd not to call this memory facts. If Mary dies and we do an autopsy, those memories would certainly be facts. It's probably good to distinguish them from conceptual facts by calling them empirical facts or some such, but facts is facts.

Sure, the fact that she has the memory is a fact. But that is trivial, and not relevant to the thought experiment. After all, even if she had seen red before, she would still gain the fact that she has seen red again. The issue is whether she gains any new facts about red. She does not.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Win]

Stimpy:

Does this mean that we are in agreement on this issue?

Yes. I think it's consistent to maintain that Mary, in fact, learns no new fact.

We disagree on whether she does, in fact, learn a new fact.

Incidentally, I would still be interested in hearing your views on the p-zombie version of the experiment. Am I correct in assuming that your response for the p-zombie would be the same as mine for Mary? Namely that the p-zombie gains no new facts, it only gains the physical memory of having seen red?

Basically, yes. I wouldn't say she gains the memory, I'd say she gains the underlying physical correlate of the "experience" of red. But yes, she learns nothing new. But she thinks she does.

Also, under property dualism, what facts do you think Mary will gain? We both seem to agree that she will gain the memory of seeing red, but what else will she gain? Clearly under the epiphenomenalistic point of view you have presented, whatever new information she gains must not be accessible to her brain in any way. In what sense would she have learned anything new? Isn't learning a physical process in the brain, even under property dualism?

Learning can be a physical process in the brain. What Mary learns, however, is the content of the quale, red, and that's not physical.

And a more puzzling question. If she does learn something new, then the p-zombie must think it learned something new, too. How is this possible? Is it possible to think you have learned something new, when you have not? Either way, you must have the new information, right? If the p-zombie has this new information, then by definition it has learned something new, which is a contradiction. But if it does not have the new information, then how could it possibly think it has learned something new?

Zombie Mary gains the underlying physical correlate of the phenomenal experience, which causes her to believe, erroneously, that she has learned a new fact. The impact of that correlate on other parts of her brain will cause her to say things like: "I have seen red, now, and there is content to the quale, which bears information. This information is what I have learned. But zombie Mary's brain, in fact, contains no new information.

Only when the underlying neural correlate is combined with the associated experience is there any new information. And that information is phenomenally realized, not physically realized.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Win said:

No, it doesn't. It states: If physicalism is true, then ... No one is operating within the framework of materialism in order to do the thought experiment. The argument points out the incompatibility of physicalism (more accurately reductive materialism) with Mary learning a new fact. You don't assume the truth of materialism in order to do this.

Sorry, I misunderstood what you meant by "within the framework." But this brings up another question. See below.

Please, stop trying to play "gotcha" with me, particularly with links to web sites you don't understand too well.

This entire conversation is a giant gotcha, isn't it? I'm not playing a game with you.

No thanks. It's hard to combine being patronizing with claiming you need the definitions of terms central to the arguments. Pick one mode or the other. Either you understand the positions well enough to call me on my "misunderstanding" or you need some help and therefore shouldn't be so unequivocal in your claims about what your sources say.

Okay, I'll include a few more IMHOs. Meanwhile, the neural connections formed when Mary sees red are clearly facts. To say they are not just muddies the water.

So we're not working in the physicalist framework. Then what does the statement "If Mary learns something new, physicalism is false" mean? What does learn mean?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Stimpy said:

Sure, the fact that she has the memory is a fact. But that is trivial, and not relevant to the thought experiment. After all, even if she had seen red before, she would still gain the fact that she has seen red again. The issue is whether she gains any new facts about red. She does not.

I'm not talking about memories of specific sightings of red. I'm talking about the neural connections formed when she sees red for the first time and learns to see red well over time. I think we should call these neural connections facts. It's relevant whether she has these facts before she leaves the room.

Have I lost track of the context? Are we assuming she has the operation before she leaves?

~~ Paul

 

[ChuckieR]

The KA spins not ones ability to learn how to recieve this 'extra information' but on the fact that it only has meaning with respect to the subject i.e. "I".

...and that that meaning can never be described or understood by anyone else. But it can be described and understood in terms of neurons, etc.

So I think we are officially going around in circles now. I had hoped to explain the problem with the color experiment, and get back to my "real" work

I think the circling can be attributed to our having two apparently different views on what KA is saying. I think that it says that if we can't physically describe how and why people experience certain things, then materialism is false. But we clearly can describe how and why people experience things. But, no, we can't "describe in words" the "experience" itself (what it is like to see red).

So then I'm not clear what your version is exactly. Is it that people should be able to completely describe an experience so fully that another person could, just by listening to that description, experience that herself? I think that's probably not it.

Is it that science can never explain how red looks to you? If that's the case, then I have to agree. Science can completely describe how (and why) you will react when you see red. And science would probably say that "seeing red" is part of your reaction to having something red in front of you (a reflex). We can understand and describe the reaction, but we can't "play out" your exact reaction inside someone else's head. Understanding how and why is not the same as experiencing something, but we've been here before.

I guess what KA is saying is that there is more to the experience than can be ever described physically (not just trivially that the person experiencing something can not "completely" describe it to others). Is that roughly the way you might say it? I suppose the scientific reply would be "Show me that there is something that cannot be described", and the philosophical materialist reply might be "Explain the testable implications of how having a physically indescribable experience would affect materialism", and then the circle continues because the non-materialist says that it is not something that I can "show" you because only I can experience it.

Have I demonstrated understanding (if not acceptance).

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Win,

Does this mean that we are in agreement on this issue?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes. I think it's consistent to maintain that Mary, in fact, learns no new fact.

We disagree on whether she does, in fact, learn a new fact.

Great. Now if we could only convince UCE of this...

Basically, yes. I wouldn't say she gains the memory, I'd say she gains the underlying physical correlate of the "experience" of red. But yes, she learns nothing new. But she thinks she does.

Interesting... This brings up the same problems with the idea of p-zombies I have always had, but this thread is not the place to discuss them.

Learning can be a physical process in the brain. What Mary learns, however, is the content of the quale, red, and that's not physical.

So her brain learns nothing new, it just thinks it has. If her brain were altered surgically, to provide the memory of the experience, without ever having had the experience, would her brain still think that it had learned something new? I guess it would have to.

But this raises an interesting question about cause and effect.

The actual process of seeing red is accompanied by the phenomenal experience. If the brain is artificially stimulated in such a way as to cause the brain to think that it is seeing red, is this also accompanied by the phenomenal experience? Is there any situation in which a real person's brain (not a p-zombie) could be made to think that it has had a phenomenal experience that the person has not actually had?

If not, then doesn't this imply that the phenomenal experience is a logically necessary consequence of the physical brain activity, regardless of whether we are able to actually logically determine why it is?

Zombie Mary gains the underlying physical correlate of the phenomenal experience, which causes her to believe, erroneously, that she has learned a new fact. The impact of that correlate on other parts of her brain will cause her to say things like: "I have seen red, now, and there is content to the quale, which bears information. This information is what I have learned. But zombie Mary's brain, in fact, contains no new information.

Only when the underlying neural correlate is combined with the associated experience is there any new information. And that information is phenomenally realized, not physically realized.

Does Mary possess information processing capabilities other than those performed by her brain? Does she possess any way of storing information, other than physically storing it in her brain?

I guess I don't understand what it means to say that the information is phenomenally realized.

Dr. Stupid

 

[ChuckieR]

I'm a bit clearer on your position, yes.

Yes, she has the physical ability to hear sounds, but she has never heard music before. There is a difference between non-musical sound and musical-sound and it has something to do with the subjective state of the musician who wrote the music. When that music is recieved in the listeners mind it also generates something new that non-musical sound does not. When Mary hears music for the first time she learns something totally impossible to describe objectively, but well-known to every music lover.

She experiences something that is totally impossible for her to put into words completely because she does not have direct access to her low-level sensory processes. But that does not mean that her reactions and subsequent changes in her brain wiring are unexplainable physically.

That 'thing' she learns cannot ever be described physically, no matter how much Mary already learned about physics, maths and music theory. This is like the experience of seeing red - you can never objectively, physically describe the experience of seeing red, or of being moved by music.

But we could, conceivably, take a "snapshot" of Mary's brain, dump this to our super-brain-simulator, "play" the music to the brain simulator, then dump the new connections back to Mary. Then she would "have the knowledge of having heard the music" without actually ever hearing it, and we could completely explain how and why the music affected her brain the way it did. We could also make sure that any hormones or other chemical changes that would have taken place while listening to the music are also modified in the physical Mary. What more is there?

The only way to "completely describe" the music "in terms of Mary" is to look at the differences in Mary's neural connections and other physical/chemical makeup before and after she hears the music.

Any description of the physical processes associated with the neural perception of sound will lack the information about the emotive power of music.

We can completely understand the emotive power of music. Only Mary can experience the emotions that Mary will experience.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

This is a sidebar addressed to all. As a humble beginning philosopher, I have a procedural question. Let's say we have something like the KA and we say that we are not operating in any given framework. The argument includes:

If physicalism is true, then Mary can learn all of the facts ...

From which framework do we take the definition of learn and facts? They do not all have the same definitions of the words.

~~ Paul

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Paul,

I'm not talking about memories of specific sightings of red. I'm talking about the neural connections formed when she sees red for the first time and learns to see red well over time. I think we should call these neural connections facts. It's relevant whether she has these facts before she leaves the room.

It is certainly relevant. She will not have those facts before she leaves the room. But since those are not facts about red, it doesn't matter.

Have I lost track of the context? Are we assuming she has the operation before she leaves?

Essentially we have several arguments going on here at once. Win acknowledges that the physical alterations to her brain that occur when Mary sees red do not constitute a violation of physicalism. Only learning new facts about red would do that. In effect, he agrees with us that the thought experiment does not constitute a proof that physicalism is false, although the results if the experiment could actually be performed, potentially could.

It is interesting, though, that any observable result that could falsify physicalism would also necessarily falsify property dualism.

This is a sidebar addressed to all. As a humble beginning philosopher, I have a procedural question. Let's say we have something like the KA and we say that we are not operating in any given framework. The argument includes:

If physicalism is true, then Mary can learn all of the facts ...

From which framework do we take the definition of learn and facts? They do not all have the same definitions of the words.

This is a very important question.

Win, for example, is intellectually honest enough to be willing to discuss the meanings of these terms, which is why He and I were able to resolve the issue of whether the fact that Mary gains the memory of seeing red actually constitutes "learning a new fact about red" within the context of the thought experiment. We have been able to come to the agreement that under physicalism, it does not, and under property dualism, it does.

UCE, on the other hand, refuses to partake in any discussion of the meanings of words. Any word that has a definition under his framework is assumed by him to have that meaning, regardless of whether you explain to him that you mean something else by it. In principle, you could get around this problems by simply making up new words, and providing definitions for them. But when addressing a problem that is phrased in terms of these words, this is not possible. This makes any type of discussion of the problem impossible.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Win]

Stimpy:

The actual process of seeing red is accompanied by the phenomenal experience. If the brain is artificially stimulated in such a way as to cause the brain to think that it is seeing red, is this also accompanied by the phenomenal experience? Is there any situation in which a real person's brain (not a p-zombie) could be made to think that it has had a phenomenal experience that the person has not actually had?

I'm not sue what you mean by "artificially stimulated ... to think it is seeing red." If you mean, say, pressing on your eye near your nose so that a blue spot appears at the opposite side of your visual field (try it, it's cool) without there being a blue object out there in the world, I think you're really seeing blue.

But maybe I'm misunderstanding you.

Looking at it another way, I think it's possible, for example, that I was a p-zombie two minutes ago. So, my brain thinks I was having phenomenal experiences, but it's wrong. Phenomenal consiousness just turned on in the universe right now (of course, I don't think this is so, but it's possible).

If not, then doesn't this imply that the phenomenal experience is a logically necessary consequence of the physical brain activity, regardless of whether we are able to actually logically determine why it is?

Assuming I understand what you're saying, I would say that it implies that phenomenal experience is a naturally necessary consequence of physical brain activity, noy logically necessary.

Does Mary possess information processing capabilities other than those performed by her brain? Does she possess any way of storing information, other than physically storing it in her brain?

Information processing, no. Storing, no.

Briefly, information is physically stored and processed by your brain. That physical instatiation of the information, though, doesn't exhaust the "facts." Every time that information is physically realized in your brain, in fact in any information processing system of a certain class, it is simultaneously phenomenally realized. The phenomenal realization of the information contains a new fact, or perhaps is a new fact.

When I say phenomenally realized, I mean represented within phenomenal consciousness.