They’re both nothing-but-isms. And since idealism is the original nothing-but-ism, and the physical is a concept, physicalism might also be described as a form of idealism. It’s a hasty projection of an ideal concept onto reality. — Jamal

:up:

Yes, crude versions anyway of each tend to look like monisms that lose contrastive grip. If all is X, then nothing is. It's up without down, left without right. A wary idealist will notice that the physical is indeed just one concept among others. This is fine until an unwary idealist decides the concepts have private antiphysical / immaterial referents.

Also reminds me of :

478. Does a child believe that milk exists? Or does it know that milk exists? Does a cat know that a mouse exists?
479. Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?” — On Certainty

If we view concepts in terms of social norms for sign use (patterns which can be learned by bots), they aren't any more immaterial than the Charleston or a river that's never the same water twice. Intentions and memories and regrets need not be otherworldly but just relatively complex like the beings to which they are attributed. If a dance is not a ghost, why must a person be ?

On Certainty — plaque flag

And that reminds me of this:

The essential point is that in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing, we are not giving an empirical description of that episode or state; we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says — Wilfrid Sellars

But now I’ve probably veered off topic, not only from this thread and your comments, but from myself.

Since we don't want to derail the thread, I'll just say that Brandom runs with this insight from Sellars and manages to make this 'space of reasons' amazingly explicit. It'd be great to get your take on the quotes shared in the Becoming Whole discussion, which focuses on what a self or subject is within this space of reasons.

Looks like a great topic but I think I’d have to divert my reading plans to contribute adequately (or even inadequately).

Understood. And I just bought more books today myself.

That's not knowledge. I'm talking about (conceptual) knowledge not sniffs and glances. — plaque flag

There's no reason to believe that we happened to evolve into a species that happens to know everything there is to know about the universe. That's simply wishful thinking.

But if you think this is wrong, because we went to the moon, then OK. You seem to believe that we are not creatures of nature. Because if we were, there would have to necessarily be limits to what we can and cannot know. In order to know something, some aspect of reality, one must be ignorant of other parts of it, otherwise, no cognition could possibly develop.

An organ like the brain and a faculty, like our minds, depend on constraints for possibility, otherwise they would have no shape, we would be very much "a blank slate", as Locke argued. That's just not true, we aren't blank slates.

Again, if this doesn't sound at least plausible, then I have nothing more to say, we are too far apart on this topic.

You radically misunderstand me. I find it strange that you seem to project on me some kind of thesis that man is not natural, when that's precisely the view I'm against.

That there are limits to human cognition is an almost empty platitude. Does anyone doubt it ? On the other hand, it's not clear that we can determine those limits. It's arrogant and perhaps envious of us in the present to claim to know what they in the future might achieve. I can think of a few mathematical results that we can apparently safely assume to draw such limits, but they are the exception.

I am happy to drop this issue with you though, as you seem to take it too personally.

It's not that I take the issue too personally, it's that arguing against it - as Dennett does - seems to me to be irrational in the extreme. The point about limits is too trivial, a bit like denying that when we see the sky during the say, it doesn't look blue. That's what I find annoying.

But you grant it as an empty platitude. OK, better than not granting it, no doubt.

There is a fine line between arrogance in terms of saying what we can't achieve, that's correct. On the other hand, it's even more arrogant to think that we can achieve everything, if only we tried enough.

I think it's perfectly clear that we won't be able to learn much, if anything, about free will (and will actions more generally considered). Why do I say something so presumptuous? Intelligent people have been discussing it for over 2000 years without an iota of progress. Now, if someone denies that we have free will, OK.

The idea of matter thinking is one we can make no sense of, how brain matter produces thought seems to me to be a conceptual issue that we cannot understand, for similar reasons as the free-will issue.

There are other issues: in physics for instance, we still have a lot to discover, but we do have to keep in mind practical considerations when it comes to feasible experiments.

But there's obviously still a tremendous about to learn.

There is a fine line between arrogance in terms of saying what we can't achieve, that's correct. On the other hand, it's even more arrogant to think that we can achieve everything, if only we tried enough. — Manuel

:up:

I can't even make sense of 'we can achieve anything.' I don't think we disagree much on this issue. I do think insisting on the mystery of consciousness can be done in an interesting way (forgetfulness of being), but I also think Dennett is right to be frustrated with those who block the road of inquiry. We'll just have to see (if we can endure a relatively honest inquiry) how much consciousness can be further explained.

I think it's perfectly clear that we won't be able to learn much, if anything, about free will (and will actions more generally considered). Why do I say something so presumptuous? Intelligent people have been discussing it for over 2000 years without an iota of progress. Now, if someone denies that we have free will, OK. — Manuel

Personally I think we should look at freedom in terms of what a member of community is held responsible for, and not for some elusive stuff.

I do think insisting on the mystery of consciousness can be done in an interesting way (forgetfulness of being), but I also think Dennett is right to be frustrated with those who block the road of inquiry. — plaque flag

I understand that perspective. But I don't see any contradiction or roadblock here by saying that experience is mysterious for us, in terms of how it arises from matter and letting neuroscientists and cognitive scientists do the hard science.

There are important discoveries to be made in these fields no doubt and even if I think they won't be able to explain the so called "hard problem", they can prove me wrong or find some other way of answering the question.

One last comment on Dennett, he has interesting things to say (outside consciousness), but regarding this question he was once asked about it in relation to other animals, and he replied, roughly, by saying "do monkeys and chimpanzees use English or any language? can they ask questions?"

I take this to mean that if monkeys or chimpanzees were capable of asking questions, then they would be capable of answering. It doesn't follow.

So perhaps you and I aren't too different in perspectives. Maybe different emphasis.

how it arises from matter — Manuel

I guess I just don't accept that we must frame it this way, as something immaterial arising from matter. As mentioned above, there are uses of 'matter' that I find questionable. But I don't want to derail the thread.

even if I think they won't be able to explain the so called "hard problem" — Manuel

To me the hard problem is maybe a diluted version of the forgetfulness of being. Wittgenstein and Heidegger both discussed something like the strangeness that the world (any world) is here. It's not how it is (this way or that) but that it is. If we insist on a Cartesian framework, then beingthere becomes beingfor (as in being-for-a-subject). But what is this subject ? Did not Descartes assume way too much ? This belongs in another thread I guess, but I wanted to show some sympathy with the spirit of the hard problem if not its letter.

I also think Dennett is right to be frustrated with those who block the road of inquiry. — plaque flag

It's not 'enquiry' that is at issue, but subordinating the subject within the scope of the objective sciences. It's intrinsically demeaning to declare that really, humans are confabulations of unconscious processes that only appear to be intelligent due to the requirements of survival.

To me the hard problem is maybe a diluted version of the forgetfulness of being. — plaque flag

There's definitely a connection there - Dennett not only forgets being, but wishes to eliminate it altogether. Which I think is actually the motivation for eliminativism - it's to avoid the responsibility of facing up to what Eric Fromm describes as 'the fear of freedom'. Better to pretend you're a robot or an animal.

Wittgenstein and Heidegger both discussed something like the strangeness that the world (any world) is here. — plaque flag

I've never understood this. How is it strange?

It's intrinsically demeaning to declare that really, humans are confabulations of unconscious processes that only appear to be intelligent due to the requirements of survival. — Wayfarer

What if it is true? I don't hold to this view (or dismiss it) but I don't find it demeaning.

I don't understand how it can't be demeaning. It completely undermines human agency and freedom. Dennett is a Darwinian materialist in his cosmology and metaphysics while also strongly affirming human dignity as well as a progressive brand of liberalism in his ethics and politics. Herein lies the massive contradiction of his system of thought. He boldly proclaims that we live in an accidental universe without divine and natural support for the special dignity of man either as a species or as individuals; yet he retains a sentimental attachment to liberal-democratic values that lead him to affirm a humane society that respects the rights of persons and protects the weak from exploitation by the strong and from other injustices. I don't think he can have it both ways - if we really are robots or blindly-propagating genetic machines, then the only reason to value humanity as such is convention or sentimentality, it has no real basis, because nothing important is at stake.

Finding Dennett's account unappealing is an aesthetic response, surely? Personally, I've not discovered a reason to think humans are anything more than clever animals who use language to help manage their environment. I'm not confident that much of that language maps to anything outside of human perspectives and does not get us to a reality outside of us.

If Dennett is right, it actually appeals to my sense of humour - much ado about nothing - which I generally think summarises most human enterprises. Some of us are so proud of our metacognition and our supposed elevation from the other animals, but what is it? A more elaborate form of pissing against a tree to mark out our territory?

If we really are robots or blindly-propagating genetic machines, then the only reason to value humanity as such is convention or sentimentality, it has no real basis, because nothing important is at stake. — Wayfarer

It matters to us. What better reason do we need? I don't need to affix life to anything transcendent for it to matter. Just as I don't need Great Expectations to be true to be moved and thrilled by it.

I've never understood this. How is it strange? — Tom Storm

You like to ask tough questions. :up:

Can it be said ?

Funny you ask this on Easter. When I was a wee lad at grandpa's house on another Easter when I was maybe 10, I wandered alone down to a creek at the edge of the property. Water was rushing down the slate, madly glistening in the sun, and I was shocked by the thereness of all that beauty, shocked to be alive, shocked that something (anything) was. I had other encounters with this shock / wonder, but they decreased with age. Perhaps it's just a feeling. As Wittgenstein put it, it's fucking nonsense to wonder at a tautology. 'Something is here.'

But it's also 'the mystical.' It's maybe also the uncheckable redness or ecstasy that eludes or underflows public conceptualization. Ineffable feeling, but what then can I mean ?

It matters to us. What better reason do we need? — Tom Storm

What if it doesn't matter to others? What if I am the authority in a one-party state who doesn't recognise human rights? Would that matter to you? What if your comfortable acceptance of subjectivism is the legacy of a culture in which the concept of 'human rights' developed in the first place, largely on the basis of Christian ethical norms which uniquely recognised the inestimable worth of every human soul. If you were part of a persecuted minority group in the PRC - of which Christians are one constituency - the absence of the recognition of the intrinsic worth of every individual might have profound ramifications.

I haven't been able to find any of Chomsky's remarks about Dennett, but I know they'd be natural antagonists. In a review of Dennett's last book, we read:

Dennett is one of those American philosophers of mind, so unlike most of their British counterparts, who is comfortable conversing with and responding to the work of evolutionary biologists and cognitive scientists. His heroes, cited frequently here, are Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins in biology, Alan Turing and Claude Shannon in artificial intelligence and information theory. His enemies are creationists and mysterians in general, philosopher John Searle, polymath linguist Noam Chomsky, and biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin. His aim is to provide a materialist account of the evolutionary origins of the human mind and consciousness by way of an extension of gene-based natural selection into human culture through the invocation of memes. — The Guardian

Water was rushing down the slate, and I was shocked by the thereness of all that beauty, shocked to be alive, shocked that something (anything) was. I had other encounters with this shock / wonder, but they decreased with age. Perhaps it's just a feeling. — plaque flag

Nice. I wonder though why we would need to build a metaphysics on such a transitory experience of surprise. Why pull out this emotional reaction and not the one where we wanted to punch someone? Privileging this account of strangeness or surprise seems to be a post hoc rationalisation for the numinous.

I don't think he can have it both ways - if we really are robots or blindly-propagating genetic machines, then the only reason to value humanity as such is convention or sentimentality, it has no real basis, because nothing important is at stake. — Wayfarer

That's an old argument against atheism too, but how does God safeguard the importance of human doings ? The threat of his wrath ? The toys he gives us ? But those only matter because we already value ourselves and fear destruction, which is just what one would expect from an evolved creature.
Am I to believe you'll stop loving your family if it's somehow proved to you that there is no god and just Darwinian evolution ? It's absurd, right ?Sentimentality includes love. Convention includes the rational norms that make science and philosophy possible. Why can't the higher evolve from the lower ? How does some alien object or postulate whatnot ground all this when we already value ourselves ? What seal need be set on our selflove to make it enough ?

What if it doesn't matter to others? What if I am the authority in a one-party state who doesn't recognise human rights? Would that matter to you? — Wayfarer

Well, all that happens regardless of what we believe or what the truth might be, right? North Korea? Parts of Africa?

But the consequences of an idea say nothing much about whether it is true or not.

I can imagine that Dennett's ideas are shocking because they puncture the vested interests of so many groups. Talk about dangerous ideas in a world still in the thrall of romanticism.

I have no idea if Dennett is right or not, or if something similar to his ideas are right or not. But I have no reason to dismiss them on the basis that they might lead to the dissolution of some established values. The argument from disenchantment doesn't resonate with me.

What if I am the authority in a one-party state who doesn't recognise human rights? — Wayfarer

Just to clarify - humans rights are a construct and we can see them violated all over the West too. Try being an Aboriginal community member in this country. Believers violate others rights all the time, so this isn't a secular versus sacred matter.

The point is humans choose their values and also ignore them and a belief in god or transcendence has never safeguarded rights or preserved the sanctity of human life.

The point is humans choose their values and also ignore them and a belief in god or transcendence has never safeguarded rights or preserved the sanctity of human life. — Tom Storm

The fact that religious institutions routinely violate their own principles is not an argument those principles.

The fact that religious institutions routinely violate their own principles is not an argument those principles. — Wayfarer

Not just religious institutions. People who believe in transcendent meaning do it. It's not a point we can overlook if we are willing to put atheists on notice as leading to murderous nihilism or rights violations.

Am I to believe you'll stop loving your family if it's somehow proved to you that there is no god and just Darwinian evolution ? — plaque flag

It's a simplistic way of putting it, but there are ramifications. Ideas have consequences. I read a thread on some other forum, or Quora, about someone who had really taken on board some philosopher's argument for determinism. He had really come to believe that he had no agency whatever and was deeply unhappy and dissillusioned by it, but couldn't free himself from the idea and it had driven him to despair. We have a current thread about wrestling with solipsism. These ideas do matter. Dennett's most insidious book was called Darwin's Dangerous Idea, in which he says that his form of Darwinism is like an acid that eats everything it touches, including the container it's in. Among its victims are any form of traditional culture and even philosophy itself.

I don't want to defend this or that religious institution but I'm not atheist - my view is that the falsehoods of religions arise from distortions of an originally profound truth. Philosophically, I see enlightenment (not in the sense of the European enlightenment and scientific rationalism) as having cosmic significance, that the Cosmos comes to understand horizons of being that could never be revealed otherwise, through living beings such as ourselves, and that is what the higher religions reflect, although often poorly. So, no, I don't believe we are products of the Dawkins/Dennett dumb physical forces driven by the blind watchmaker. I believe it's an evil ideology masquerading as liberalism.

I also noticed that Chomsky differentiates 'mysteries' from 'problems'. He says that the nature of consciousness is 'a mystery' - not 'a problem' that can be solved. Of course this is anethema to Dennett and materialism generally, whose role it is to drive out of consideration anything which cannot be accomodated in the procrustean bed of neo-darwinian materialism or brought within the purview of the objective sciences.

Sorry, my views sound strange given the philosophers I tend to think are correct. I take it, following Galen Strawson, that consciousness is a wholly physical phenomenon, it arises from configurations of matter. So, there is no "immaterial"-material problem.

Nor a mind-body problem, as these terms are used of today. I agree with Chomsky (and Locke and Hume and Priestley) that we don't know what "bodies" are. Until we know that, we can't formulate a mind-body problem.

Another issue is considering matter as described by modern physics, not much in it is "material" as that word is taken to be associated with "tangible stuff", but that's another conversation...

But what is this subject ? — plaque flag

It's a hard topic, though I agree with Descartes in so far as he takes it that experience is the phenomenon, we are most familiar with out of everything. I drop the dualism, especially the substantive kind.

A self is a "fiction" (as Hume says) of a kind - a very useful one. But is a self a subject? Probably not in all respects.

It's very dense territory.

Have you seen/ read Stuart Kauffman ? From what I can tell as a nonbiologist, he's got some good explanations for the emergence of complexity (complementing Darwin and others) :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWo7-azGHic&t=841s

I wonder though why we would need to build a metaphysics on such a transitory experience of surprise. — Tom Storm

I think (?) the later Heidegger was working on an antimetaphysics, because even I, in my noninitiated state, can see that it slips through all of our conceptual nets -- if 'it' is anything at all, if it's not just nonsense. I just mean (for instance) the radical simplicity of the red of the rose in its redness and thereness, more specifically in the redness and thereness that is not grasped by the public concept, which for just that reason is nonsense, but seems (who could ever tell?) to inspire the hard problem ? What indeed can we hope to build upon that which is more Abyss than Foundation ? But that's perhaps exactly the opportunity, a perverse reversal of the obsession of the clear and the enduring. Risk. Intoxication. The stormy depths. 'Find a girl with far away eyes.'

As you know as well as me, this is great material for working up a cult of personality. We humans love the ineffable, the paradoxical, the esoteric, the grandiose, the mysterious. Give us this day our wizards of the ephemeral and the diaphanous.

Bought his At Home in the Universe a long while back. Neither he nor his ilk are targets of my criticism of neo-darwinism.