Fair point. A lot of Wallace' Victorian prose is pretty hideous in today's terms, specifically all the references to 'savages', but I still think the argument that such faculties as mathematical and artistic abilities can't be accounted for in terms of the theory is sound. And also the fact that the guy credited as co-discoverer of natural selection had such divergent views on those matters to Darwin.

I am not (only) appalled by Wallace's ranking of different societies. Darwin did not fill in the cultural development dimension that Wallace does. Maybe that silence counts for something.

I have never heard the term ‘scare quotes’. You used ‘exist’ so think of it in those terms. I was being cautious with your possible interpretation of what ‘exist’ means.

I would like you to explain what you mean by ‘true belief’ if you have the time. I have a feeling you do not wish to dive into any epistemic issues here but given that what I said makes no sense to you there must be something I failed to take into account?

My general point is that rationality is applied to experience. I felt like there was an error with mixing abstract and real.

mathematical and artistic abilities can't be accounted for in terms of the theory — Wayfarer

We're the only critters we know that have math and art, and we are the way we are because of natural selection, so evidently it does account for math and art.

As someone somewhere on this forum once said, the answer to "How long would it take monkeys to compose the complete works of Shakespeare?" is about 300,000 years. That experiment has already been run.

Question: how important to the argument from reason is your unusual interpretation of human evolution?

:up:

:up: :up:

This is because it is my dogmatic belief that matter does not act, but is only acted upon. — Wayfarer

If "matter does not act", then "matter" "is only acted upon" by what? Please cite an example.

If "matter does not act", then "matter" "is only acted upon" by what — 180 Proof

Say if I suggested 'mind' or 'consciousness' as a hypothetical answer - how could you go about defining that in objective terms? You can't ever cognise mind as an object - it doesn't appear to us, it appears as us.

I would like you to explain what you mean by ‘true belief’ if you have the time. I have a feeling you do not wish to dive into any epistemic issues here but given that what I said makes no sense to you there must be something I failed to take into account?

My general point is that rationality is applied to experience. I felt like there was an error with mixing abstract and real. — I like sushi

The term 'scare quotes' is used to refer to the use of quotes to indicate that a word is being used in an ironic, referential, or otherwise non-standard sense.

In respect of 'mixing abstract and real', I can see what you mean but the type of argument that it is does not appeal to empirical validation.

"How long would it take monkeys to compose the complete works of Shakespeare?" is about 300,000 years. That experiment has already been run. — Srap Tasmaner

Really? They must have started a long while ago!

Question: how important to the argument from reason is your unusual interpretation of human evolution? — Srap Tasmaner

My view is that whilst h. sapiens evolved in line with the understanding of evolutionary biology (subject as it is to frequent revision) that the faculty of reason, and other specifically human attributes and powers, can't necessarily be accounted for in Darwinian terms. With simpler life-forms, the issue is not applicable, as they are occupied wholly and solely with survival and procreation. Only when species evolved to the level of h. sapiens, did living beings who possess the kind of rational self-awareness to question the nature of reality and existence appear. With that ability comes existential dread and much else besides. I feel one of the unfortunate consequences of popular Darwinism is that it has lost sight of this. It doesn't really do anything to address the human condition on the philosophical level. Evolutionary materialism, such as Dennett/Dawkins, amply reinforce that impression by being so utterly, philosophically tone-deaf. (Not nearly so much the continental philosophers.)

Fair enough. It is solely an abstract inquiry then I am not that bothered by abstract justification. I would also say that belief is not at all relevant for such argumentation either as what is true is true and demonstrable by abstract means.

A purely rational argument (viewed as wholly abstract) against naturalism/materialism/physicalism is waste of everyone’s time due to the obvious cross contamination.

I would still be interested to hear what ‘true belief;’ is in the context of your views here?

Say if I suggested 'mind' or 'consciousness' as a hypothetical answer - — Wayfarer

By "mind or consciousness" you're claiming, in effect, that matter is only acted upon by immateral entities or processes – is that right?

I'm sure that whatever way we try and conceive of as 'an immaterial entity or process' will miss the mark. It requires, as one of the earlier contributors to this thread was wont to say, 'a paradigm shift'. Explaining all of the implications of that would take a lot of time. But one of the essays I've mentioned makes this point in respect to the differentiation between organisms and the inorganic domain. The context is that the author is arguing that an appeal to something other than physicalism doesn't necessarily imply an acceptance of some spooky 'elan vital'. He wishes to abide within the constraints of naturalism, whilst questioning mechanistic materialism. He writes:

The scientist observes meanings at play in organisms, and appeals to them in biological explanation. Anyone who construes this appeal as conjuring unacceptable vital forces needs not only to torch almost the entire biological literature, reconstructing it upon some new and as yet unknown basis; he also puts himself in an untenable position regarding the human being. For at least some of what we do, we do because we consciously think and intend it. If invoking this because of reason — this play of meaning and idea — in the explanation of human behavior is to rely on vital forces, then virtually everyone (in daily life, if not within their cocoon of theory) is a vitalist. If, on the other hand, we grant meaning to the human being without trying to make this meaning an expression of vital forces, then we can hardly voice the charge of “vitalism” when we observe meaningful activity in less conscious forms — for example, in the activity of cells and lower organisms.

So, no, we don’t need vital forces. If the organism as an expression of meaning requires us to recognize a different sort of order from that of inanimate nature, science offers no presumption against this. Our knowledge of some thought-relations in the world — for example, those of mathematized physical law — does not tell us what other thought-relations we might discover in various domains. The mathematical order, however, does tell us that there must be other principles of order. For mathematics alone doesn’t give us any things or phenomena at all; numbers are not things. Whatever the things may be to which our mathematical formulations refer, they either have a qualitative character that we can consciously apprehend in a conceptually ordered way, or they must remain unknown and outside our science. And that qualitative conceptual ordering cannot be predicted from the mathematics. Rather, the qualitative order is the fuller reality that determines whatever we abstract from it, including mathematical relationships. — From Physical Causes to Organisms of Meaning, Steve Talbott

There's another book that was mentioned by @Pierre-Normand a while back, Rational Causation, by Eric Marcus. I think it is compatible with this general line of reasoning. The abstract says:

We explain what people think and do by citing their reasons, but how do such explanations work, and what do they tell us about the nature of reality? Contemporary efforts to address these questions are often motivated by the worry that our ordinary conception of rationality contains a kernel of supernaturalism—a ghostly presence that meditates on sensory messages and orchestrates behavior on the basis of its ethereal calculations. In shunning this otherworldly conception, contemporary philosophers have focused on the project of “naturalizing” the mind, viewing it as a kind of machine that converts sensory input and bodily impulse into thought and action. Eric Marcus rejects this choice between physicalism and supernaturalism as false and defends a third way.

He argues that philosophers have failed to take seriously the idea that rational explanations postulate a distinctive sort of causation—rational causation. Rational explanations do not reveal the same sorts of causal connections that explanations in the natural sciences do. Rather, rational causation draws on the theoretical and practical inferential abilities of human beings. Marcus defends this position against a wide array of physicalist arguments that have captivated philosophers of mind for decades. Along the way he provides novel views on, for example, the difference between rational and nonrational animals and the distinction between states and events.

Bolds added. This is where the argument appears to converge with the argument from reason, although I haven't laid hands on the book yet.

Let's keep things simple and clear, Wayfarer. I'm interested in your dogmatic statement about matter and have questioned you here
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/817594
and again in my last post. Either you can answer the question I have asked or you can't. Quoting walls of other people's texts without answering my questions comes across as telling me to "fuck off". :brow:

Shall I paraphrase?

Shall I paraphrase? — Wayfarer

Given that I'd addressed your statement, sir, please "paraphrase" what you think, not what others think. You do think for yourself, don't you?

@Jamal

Does that make any sense? — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not finding much time to dedicate to TPF right now, except for posting photos of my lunch. I'll try to come back to it.

I'm sure that whatever way we try and conceive of as 'an immaterial entity or process' will miss the mark. It requires, as one of the earlier contributors to this thread was wont to say, 'a paradigm shift'. — Wayfarer

The reason why we miss the mark is simple. We have no knowledge or experience of any immaterial entity of process. Absent evidence, reasoned argument that such may or must exist is idle speculation and leads nowhere. We start with material or physical entities and make the misguided move of imagining the entity or process minus what is essential to it as if nonessential.

We have no knowledge or experience of any immaterial entity of process. Absent evidence, reasoned argument that such may or must exist is idle speculation and leads nowhere. — Fooloso4

:100: :up:

….the fact that in thinking, your mind is identical with the form that it thinks, means (for Aristotle and for all Platonists) that since the form 'thought' is detached from matter, 'mind' is immaterial too. — Lloyd Gerson

The arguments in Aristotle do not follow this line of reasoning. The "identity" with the object is not a simple correspondence of "forms". Aristotle goes to great pains in his Metaphysics to distinguish between the relatively easy task of grouping beings by kinds from understanding causes. The often repeated maxim is that "we move from what is known by us to what is known by nature." Toward that end, we can establish some principles by analogy and others through experience. Gerson consistently overlooks the importance of this distinction when discussing substance (ousia) in Aristotle's writings. The idea of intellect as a pure process is presented as something we will never be able to directly experience for ourselves:

And in fact there is one sort of understanding that is such by becoming all things, while there is another that is such by producing all things in the way that a sort of state, like light, does, |430a15| since in a way light too makes potential colors into active colors.363 And this [productive] understanding is separable, unaffectable, and unmixed, being in substance an activity (for the producer is always more estimable than the thing affected, and the starting-point than the matter), not sometimes understanding and at other times not. But, when separated, this alone is just what it is.365 And it alone is immortal and eternal (but we do not remember because this is unaffectable, whereas the passive understanding is capable of passing away), and without this it understands nothing. — Aristotle

This idea of a self-sufficient process is closely bound with a very messy material set of conditions:

A problem might be raised as to how, when the affection is present but the thing producing it is absent, what is not present is ever remembered. For it is clear that one must understand the affection, which is produced by means of perception in the soul, and in that part of the body in which it is, as being like a sort of picture, the having of which we say is memory. For the movement that occurs stamps a sort of imprint, as it were, of the perceptible object, as people do who seal things with a signet ring. That is also why memory does not occur in those who are subject to a lot of change, because of some affection or because of their age, just as if the change and the seal were falling on running water. In others, because of wearing down, as in the old parts of buildings, and because of the hardness of what receives the affection, the imprint is not produced — Aristotle, On Memory, 1 450a25–b5

While I don't think we can demonstrate that reason can't be arrived at through natural processes, I'd be interested to learn where this is heading.

Let's say that reason can not be explained by naturalism.

What follows from this, for you?

(I know this argument is a central platform in presuppositional Islamic and Christian apologetics - that the very possibility of intelligibility can't be explained by materialism and therefore materialism disproves itself.)

For you, I imagine this reasoning is foundational to idealism, right?

These arguments seem to get messy - if idealism is true than presumably it belongs to naturalism. The natural then being an ontology of consciousness? Discerning precisely what is meant by materialism, physicalism or naturalism can seem tricky.

We have no knowledge or experience of any immaterial entity or process. — Fooloso4

My claim is that the perceived dichotomy between material and immaterial is a consequence of Cartesian dualism. Recall that Descartes posited mind as 'res cogitans', literally a 'thinking thing'. This leads to the problem of how the thinking substance interacts with 'material substance' and the so called 'ghost in the machine' argument. It is foundational to the modern mind-matter conceptual division, based on the premisses that physical sciences must provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time and specified in terms of the primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were relegated to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world. This is the basis of the modern 'mind-matter problem', and what the argument from reason is aimed at. And within that paradigm, there are no immaterial entities as a matter of definition. That's why I said that whatever we try and conceive of as an immaterial entity will miss the mark , as it will invariably interpreted in those terms, which I'm sure you're doing.

But the question was actually this:

This is because it is my dogmatic belief that matter does not act, but is only acted upon.
— Wayfarer
If "matter does not act", then "matter" "is only acted upon" by what? — 180 Proof

In order to try and illustrate the alternative way of approaching it, I provided text of a couple of readings, apparently too long. So to try and paraphrase what I think the first reference is getting at: the non-material or non-physical factor involved is life itself. Living beings, even the very simplest beings, display attributes and characteristics that actually can't be accomodated in the mind-body duality that is embedded in the modern worldview. Steve Talbott's biological philosophy is that organisms are expressions of meaning. They're not mechanisms to which we have to attribute a spooky 'elan vital' to account for the uncanny abilities which life manifests. As soon as life begins to manifest, then we have the emergence of an order which can't be reduced to, or explained in terms of, only physical processes; organisms have their own reasons for acting as they do. At the very beginning there is the appearance of the 'epistemic split' of self-other, the beginning of cellular memory and genetic inheritance, and a very primitive form of subject-hood. So the subject, the mind, is not the accidental by-product of a material process, but way in which agency appears in the earliest forms of life. And, to appeal to Indian philosophy, tat tvam asi, 'thou art that'.

And in a broader sense, many of our intellectual processes rely on immaterial entities, such as numbers, ratios, laws, and so on. Humans are situated between two worlds, so to speak - the physical world, governed by the laws of physics, but also the world of ideas and reasons, 'the space of reasons' as it has been called. That is the argument of the second book, Rational Causation by Eric Marcus. I don't know if that book talks about the argument from reason as such (haven't had the chance to read it yet) but it seems to operate from similar premisses.

So by 'immaterial' I don't mean spooky ghosts in machines, or some 'ethereal realm of ideal forms'. But as soon as physicalism is questioned, that is what comes to mind, isn't it?

The arguments in Aristotle do not follow this line of reasoning. The "identity" with the object is not a simple correspondence of "forms". — Paine

Sure, you might be right. But in context, Gerson's point was this: 'when you think you see—
mentally see—a form which could not in principle be identical with a particular, including a
particular neurological element, a circuit or a state of a circuit or a synapse, and so on. This is so
because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally. For example,
when you think ‘equals taken from equals are equal’ this is a perfectly universal truth which you
see when you think it. But this truth, since it is universal could not be identical with any
particular, any material particular located in space and time.' Which makes perfect sense to me.

Let's say that reason can not be explained by naturalism.

What follows from this, for you? — Tom Storm

The crux of this whole thread was an un-answered question:

I can see you have not been persuaded by the argument thus far and probably won’t be, until you can see a reason why you should accept. At that point, you might typically say 'I see'. So - what is it that you see? (Or in the other case, what is it you’re not seeing?) Whatever it is (or isn’t) it won’t be seen as a consequence of anything physical that has passed between us.

What do you make of that?

The crux of this whole thread was an un-answered question:

I can see you have not been persuaded by the argument thus far and probably won’t be, until you can see a reason why you should accept. At that point, you might typically say 'I see'. So - what is it that you see? (Or in the other case, what is it you’re not seeing?) Whatever it is (or isn’t) it won’t be seen as a consequence of anything physical that has passed between us.

What do you make of that? — Wayfarer

Yes, I read that earlier. I have no expertise in this subject. The best I can say is that intelligent, well informed people are 1) persuaded and 2) are not persuaded.

As someone somewhere on this forum once said, the answer to "How long would it take monkeys to compose the complete works of Shakespeare?" is about 300,000 years. That experiment has already been run. — Srap Tasmaner

Interesting! Do you have a link to that experiment? How many monkeys involved (n=?)? Does it assume that the monkeys bang away randomly, or have they been taught to type purposefully --- as they do when pounding nuts with rocks? Compared to feckless philosophy, unfettered Science gets results. Oh, did the experiment begin 300,000 years ago, or did they use a Black Hole to accelerate time? :joke:

FWIW, here's what Wiki has to say on the Infinite Monkey Theorem : a thought experiment. :smile:

Infinite monkey theorem :
The theorem can be generalized to state that any sequence of events which has a non-zero probability of happening will almost certainly eventually occur, given unlimited time. . . . .
Even if every proton in the observable universe (which is estimated at roughly 1080) were a monkey with a typewriter, typing from the Big Bang until the end of the universe (when protons might no longer exist), they would still need a far greater amount of time – more than three hundred and sixty thousand orders of magnitude longer – to have even a 1 in 10500 chance of success. To put it another way, for a one in a trillion chance of success, there would need to be 10360,641 observable universes made of protonic monkeys.[g] As Kittel and Kroemer put it in their textbook on thermodynamics, the field whose statistical foundations motivated the first known expositions of typing monkeys,[4] "The probability of Hamlet is therefore zero in any operational sense of an event ...", and the statement that the monkeys must eventually succeed "gives a misleading conclusion about very, very large numbers."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem


A RATIONAL INTENTIONAL MONKEY times infinity

I have no expertise in this subject. — Tom Storm

C'mon. What expertise is needed? Either you see a reason or you don't. What I'm asking you is that if I persuade you to accept something - not even the argument at hand, but anything - has anything physical passed between us?

I'd really appreciate it if you deleted that inane graphic.

Discerning precisely what is meant by materialism, physicalism or naturalism can seem tricky. — Tom Storm

They are only "tricky" for idealists like @Wayfarer who prefer to torch strawmen – mischaracterizing a speculative paradigm such as naturalism as an explanatory theory – which is far easier to do than to demonstrate that idealism is a less ad hoc, less incoherent, less subjective paradigm than naturalism, etc. Naturalism does not explain "consciousness", yet idealism – which rationalizes folk psychological concepts (often ad absurdum) – conspicuously explains "consciousness" even less so.

And in a broader sense, many of our intellectual processes rely on immaterial entities, such as numbers, ratios, laws, and so on. Humans are situated between two worlds, so to speak - the physical world, governed by the laws of physics, but also the world of ideas and reasons, 'the space of reasons' as it has been called. — Wayfarer

Unwarranted, question-begging, substance dualism as well as a reification / misplaced concreteness fallacy (à la platonism). Abstractions themselves do not "act upon matter" because they are not evental (or causal); rather instantiations (encoding / patterning) of abstractions (from matter) in matter act upon matter (e.g. typing on my keyboard these sentences you're reading on your screen), which refutes your dogma, sir, that "matter does not act but is only acted upon" (as if Newton's 3rd Law & conservation laws are violated, or miraculosly suspended, by "ideas"). :eyes: :roll:

... has anything physical passed between us? — Wayfarer

Of course, information (i.e. instantiated patterns).

Of course, information (i.e. instantiated patterns). — 180 Proof

Of course you will assume that information is physical, given that everything must be.

(as if Newton's 3rd Law & conservation laws are violated, or miraculosly suspended, by "ideas"). — 180 Proof

The apparently inviolable constraints of physical laws have been transcended many times in the history of science. We have been able to discover hitherto unknown attributes and properties of the world through the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematical physics. But you continue to enjoy your procrustean bed, although I think it must be an awful fit.

Either you see a reason or you don't. What I'm asking you is that if I persuade you to accept something - not even the argument at hand, but anything - has anything physical passed between us? — Wayfarer

What 'I see' is not really relevant. I see words on a computer screen typed by a person (I assume) who has beliefs/thoughts. I see nothing so far that is not physical. Are thoughts physical? Can we demonstrate that thoughts do not originate from physical brains? Isn't this where the expertise comes in?

They are only "tricky" for idealists like Wayfarer who prefer to torch strawmen – mischaracterizing a speculative paradigm such as naturalism as an explanatory theory – which is far easier to do than to demonstrate that idealism is a less ad hoc, less incoherent, less subjective paradigm than naturalism, etc. Naturalism does not explain "consciousness", yet idealism – which rationalizes folk psychological concepts (often ad absurdum) – conspicuously explains "consciousness" even less so. — 180 Proof

Yes, it's hard for me not to agree with this.

What 'I see' is not really relevant — Tom Storm

It's highly relevant. When you say, 'ah, I see' - what is it you're seeing?

Are thoughts physical? — Tom Storm

That is indeed the point at issue. In the physicalist view that is the subject of the argument, everything that exists, does so as a consequence of physical causation, due to the causal closure of the physical domain. So in that view, your thoughts are likewise determined by physical causes, that can be understood in terms of neurobiology or physiology. Mind is an output or consequence of matter. That is exemplified by Daniel Dennett's theory that what we experience as consciousness is really the consequence of millions of physical processes giving rise to 'unconscious competence'.

The counter to that is that when you see causal relationships between ideas, that this is distinct from the mindless processes typically invoked by physicalism. You're seeing the connection between ideas. That is a different process to that of physical causation.

Furthermore, if I write something that perturbs or upsets you, that will have physical consequences - blood pressure, adrenal reaction, heart rate, etc. But what has affected you, is not a physical influence, like my giving you a tablet or striking you. Your metabolic condition has been affected by a perception of meaning. That is an example of 'top-down' causation that I think generally supports the argument.

Sure, you might be right. But in context, Gerson's point was this: 'when you think you see—
mentally see—a form which could not in principle be identical with a particular, including a
particular neurological element, a circuit or a state of a circuit or a synapse, and so on. This is so
because the object of thinking is universal, or the mind is operating universally. For example,
when you think ‘equals taken from equals are equal’ this is a perfectly universal truth which you
see when you think it. But this truth, since it is universal could not be identical with any
particular, any material particular located in space and time.' Which makes perfect sense to me. — Wayfarer

If I am correct, then Gerson has misunderstood Aristotle. I recognize that you want to use Gerson to leverage an argument against reduction in the context of the scientific method. I don't have a clear understanding of those matters and am loath to put forward an exact definition in the style of the SEP.

But I have read enough text to question Gerson's assertions and look forward to challenging anyone who would champion his position as a scholar.

The counter to that is that when you see causal relationships between ideas, that this is distinct from the mindless processes typically invoked by physicalism. You're seeing the connection between ideas. That is a different process to that of physical causation. — Wayfarer

So you think this process undermines or disproves naturalism?

Furthermore, if I write something that perturbs or upsets you, that will have physical consequences - blood pressure, adrenal reaction, heart rate, etc. — Wayfarer

I need a bit more than this to take a view that naturalism isn't a plausible account.

As I said, we need real expertise to determine how thought or 'mind' comes from bodies or brains. I don't think anyone has resolved this and some subscribe to mysterianism.

But I have read enough text to question Gerson's assertions and look forward to challenging anyone who would champion his position as a scholar. — Paine

That's very interesting. What do you think his project is, then? Is he a tendentious advocate of Platonism at the expense of fidelity to Plato? His name comes up a lot amongst enthusiasts of Platonism.

Gerson is a devoted student of Plotinus. Plotinus had his own view of the limits of Aristotle in relation to what he thought Plato was saying. To some extent, I think Gerson is reverse engineering what Plotinus assumed to be the case.

I don't charge Gerson with some nefarious purpose. Some of his commentaries on Aristotle are very interesting. But I am not on board with the Ur Platonism argument.