As philosopher
Gilbert Ryle showed in chapter 5 of his classic book Dilemmas,
the real illusion is not the table of common sense, but rather the notion that
science gives us any reason to doubt it.
In fact, science is not even addressing the sorts of question common
sense might ask about the table, much less giving an answer that conflicts with
the one common sense would give. And it
is only conceptual confusion that makes some suppose otherwise.
Ryle’s reminders
Ryle
identifies two main sources of this confusion concerning what science tells us
about the world. The first has to do
with the word “science” and the second with the word “world.” For one thing, there is not even a prima
facie conflict between our common sense conception of the world and the vast
bulk of what falls under the label “science.”
No one thinks philology casts the slightest doubt on the reality of
words, or that botany, geology, and meteorology cast any doubt on the reality
of plants, earth, or weather. The
findings of such areas of research are not taken to undermine our confidence in
the reality of everyday objects. Nor are
telescopes and microscopes taken to give any reason for doubting it, despite
revealing objects vastly larger or vastly smaller than the ones we encounter in
everyday life. Nor is what physics tells
us about middle-sized objects (pendulums, water pumps, etc.) regarded as
challenging our belief in tables and the like.
In fact,
Ryle suggests, it is only two special areas of scientific study that people
suppose somehow casts doubt on such belief: the microstructure of material
objects, and the physiology of perception.
But even here, it is not, strictly speaking, the findings of modern
science that are the source of the problem.
Similar claims about the unreality of ordinary objects were made
millennia ago on the basis of the speculations of the ancient atomists.
Why don’t
the scientific findings, any more than the speculations, cast doubt on the
world of common sense? This brings us to
the word “world.” When we hear tell of the world as described by microphysics,
we are, says Ryle, too quick to suppose that “world” should in this context be
understood the way it is understood by theologians when they talk about the
world’s creation, or that it should interpreted as a synonym for “cosmos.” But we should think of it instead on the
model of phrases like “the world of poultry” as a farmer or butcher might mean
it, or “the entertainment world” as a newspaper reporting on what is going on
in the field of entertainment would use it.
“World” in such contexts means something like “sphere of interest” or
“the collection of matters pertaining to a certain subject” (such as poultry or
entertainment).
Now, no one
thinks there is some conflict between “the world of poultry” or “the
entertainment world” on the one hand, and the world of everyday physical
objects on the other. But neither is
there any conflict between the latter world and the world of facts which are
the sphere of interest of the scientist who studies the microstructure of
matter or the physiology of perception.
As with poultry or entertainment, the “world” of the latter is really
just a relatively small subset of all the facts that make up reality. It is not a comprehensive description of
reality that competes with the description taken for granted by common sense.
Ryle offers
a couple of analogies to illustrate the point.
When economics characterizes human behavior by way of considerations of
profit and loss, supply and demand, and so on, it is not putting forward an
exhaustive characterization of the nature of human beings or of any particular
human being. Nor is it mischaracterizing
them. It is simply noting what people
will tend to do if they are in circumstances of a certain specific sort, and
are attentive to considerations of a certain specific sort. That’s all.
Similarly, when microphysics characterizes matter in the way it does, it
is not to be understood as offering an exhaustive characterization of tables and
other everyday physical objects, but simply calling attention to certain features
that are manifest under certain circumstances.
That’s all.
Ryle speaks
as if the average reader at the time he was writing (the early 1950s) would readily
grant that it would be a crude mistake to think that the economist’s
description captured the entirety of human nature. It may be doubted whether all readers today
would be immune to such economic reductionism, but in any case, Ryle also
offers another analogy. He asks us to
imagine an accountant who has put together an exhaustive description of the
financial operations of a certain college – tuition, salaries, rents, costs for
utilities and groundskeeping, expenditures on library books, food services,
sports, special events, and so on.
Suppose the description covers all the activities and assets of the
institution and is extremely precise and useful.
The
objectivity, precision, comprehensiveness, and utility of this description
would hardly justify the accountant in claiming that he has captured all there is to the college. Even though there is no part of the college
that is not referred to in his ledger, the ledger obviously doesn’t capture all
there is to those parts or to the whole they make up. For example, even if the price of every
library book can be found there, the sorts of things that, say, a book reviewer
would want to know about a book will not be captured. But neither would it be correct to say that
the description of the college that the accountant gives is in competition with
the description that might be given by, say, a student. Nor would it be correct to say that the
accountant’s description is mistaken. It
is correct as far as it goes, but it
is simply not meant in the first place to capture everything.
Obviously, it would be silly so speak of there being two colleges, the way that Eddington speaks of there being two tables. There is just the one college, and certain features of it are focused on by the student for his purposes, whereas others are focused on by the accountant for his own, different purposes. But the same thing is true of tables and other physical objects as common sense understands them and as the physicist approaches them. There is just the one table, and the ordinary person in everyday life focuses on certain aspects of it, whereas physics focuses on different aspects. That’s all. Physics, rightly understood, no more competes with or refutes the ordinary person’s understanding of the table than the accountant competes with or refutes the student’s understanding of the college.
Ryle notes
that it is tempting to say that common sense and microphysics give different
but complementary “descriptions” or “pictures” of the same reality, but he
argues that even this is misleading, insofar as it implicitly attributes a far
greater commonality of purpose that actually exists between the two. For there is no reason to think of
microphysics as attempting in the first place to “picture” the reality of a
table or any other ordinary physical object (as opposed to explaining certain
features of it, or predicting its behavior under such-and-such circumstances,
or figuring out how to manipulate it in certain ways – none of which entails or
requires a “picture” of its full reality).
Ryle also
notes that nothing in what he says implies or is intended to imply any contribution
to, or criticism of, scientific practice or scientific results. It is merely a point about the fallaciousness
of certain kinds of claims made about the everyday world on the basis of
science.
Hossenfelder and Goff
Regrettably,
even seventy years after Ryle wrote, too many philosophers and scientists alike
still need a reminder of these observations, simple and obvious though they
ought to be. Physicist Brian Greene
provided a good example not
too long ago. Another case in point
is a recent
Twitter exchange between philosopher Philip Goff and physicist
Sabine Hossenfelder, and the debate on Twitter that it engendered. To be sure, neither Hossenfelder nor Goff
would say that physics provides an exhaustive description of physical
reality. In that way their views align
with Ryle’s main point (albeit neither brings up Ryle). However, they miss some of its other
implications.
For example,
Hossenfelder not only takes an instrumentalist view of physics, but seems to
think it obvious that physics just is,
of its nature, instrumentalist – that when it makes reference to electrons, for
example, there is no implication whatsoever that electrons actually exist, as
opposed to being merely a useful fiction for organizing observations and making
predictions. But while instrumentalism
is certainly defensible, it seems to me a mistake to think it the obviously correct interpretation of
physics. This is like saying that the
accountant’s description of the college, in Ryle’s example, is obviously nothing more than a useful
fiction, and that its utility gives us no reason at all to believe that it
captures anything really there in the college.
In fact, of course, the accountant’s description does capture real
features of the college, even if only very abstract economic relations and far
from all, or even the most important, features of the college. Similarly, the utility of physics gives us
reason to think it does capture real features of the world, even if they are highly
abstract structural features and very far from an exhaustive description of
nature. I defend this epistemic structural realist
interpretation of physics in Aristotle’s
Revenge.
Goff, meanwhile,
himself accepts this interpretation of physics.
However, he falls into another error.
Physics captures only very abstract structural features of physical
reality. But what about the other
features? What fleshes out this
abstract structure? Goff is among the
growing number of writers who argue for panpsychism
by proposing that qualia, the characteristic features of conscious experience
(the way red looks, the way coffee smells, and the like) provide a model for
understanding the intrinsic nature of all physical reality. He presents this as a bold solution to what
would otherwise be a great mystery.
To see what
is wrong with this, imagine someone who noted that Ryle’s accountant provides
only a very abstract description of the college’s economic structure, and then
argued: “Something must flesh out that abstract structure. Whatever could it be? What a mystery! I postulate that it is qualia that flesh it out, and thus that, strange as it may seem,
the college is – from the lecture halls to the library to the cafeteria and
down to every floorboard of the gym – a panpsychist entity pulsating with consciousness!”
The main problem
with this argument is not that it leads to a ludicrous conclusion, though it
certainly does. The problem is that it
is a “solution” to something that isn’t a mystery in the first place. Certainly, the abstractness of the accountant’s
description of the college doesn’t pose any mystery whatsoever. We already know what the intrinsic properties
of the college are – they are simply those that every student, professor, administrator
and janitor already knows about, just by walking around and looking at it from
day to day. The accountant has simply
ignored all this detail that we already know about, and focused instead on
certain abstract economic features.
Similarly,
we already know what the intrinsic features are of tables and other ordinary physical
objects. They are precisely those we
come across in dealing with these objects every day. Physics simply ignores these features and
focuses on those of which it can give a precise mathematical treatment. There is no mystery that needs solving in
terms of some bizarre metaphysics like panpsychism, but merely a reminder of
what we already know from common sense.
Ryle (like Aristotle, Aquinas, Wittgenstein, and other critics of
revisionist metaphysics) offers precisely such a reminder. (I have criticized Goff’s views along these
lines but at greater length before, here
and here.)
Some
scientists who commented on the exchange between Hossenfelder and Goff on
Twitter opined that it illustrates why many scientists don’t find such discussions
fruitful. According to one of them, the
reason they are unfruitful is that they don’t help us do physics better. But why on earth should anyone suppose that
the only reason why a discussion between physicists and philosophers would be
worthwhile would be if it helps the former do physics better? Putting the implicit narcissism to one side,
there is another problem. As Ryle says,
the point of his own remarks is not to either criticize or add to science’s
methodology or results, but rather to reveal the fallaciousness of certain
inferences drawn from its methodology
or results. A scientist who thinks such
a message not worthwhile is precisely the sort of person most in need of
hearing it.
Related
posts:
The
particle collection that fancied itself a physicist
Dupré
on the ideologizing of science
Cartwright
on theory and experiment in science
Superb. The post reminded me of Russell: "Almost all thinking that purports to be philosophical or logical consists in attributing to the world the properties of language ... the fallacy of verbalism --the fallacy that consists in mistaking the properties of words for the properties of things."
ReplyDeleteDon't know enough about Ryle. That is all.
ReplyDeleteWCB
DeleteGoogle Internet Encyclopedia Of Philosophy, Gilbert Ryle. It is a long read, but worth reading.
WCB
Ed:
ReplyDeletePart of the reason for the error you describe, I think, is that there is more overlap between what the quantitative and qualitative aspects of reality predict than there is between, say, the financial aspects of a university and the content of its curriculum (to borrow your example).
For instance, given a physical object's initial state and all the significant forces acting on it (and isolating it from anything else that may be acting on it), physicists can predict where it will be at a future point in time to a highly accurate degree.
Also, if you know that I desire to have a beer, and that I have a belief that there is beer in the refrigerator, you can predict that my body will move to the refrigerator.
Now, assuming that eliminativism and epiphenomenalism are false (a safe assumption), it would not be possible to predict my movement to the refrigerator based on my initial physical state and the equations of physics, no matter how much information you had about them, because the logical universals I grasped in making my decision are indispensable to explaining my movement, and these are not reducible to matter at all, much less the purely quantitative aspects of matter captured by physics.
On close inspection, there is no basis for presuming that the quantitative laws governing locomotion can predict ALL locomotion just because they can predict it precisely under certain conditions where no volition is involved, but it's easier to see how physicists would convince themselves that this is "their" domain.
As for panpsychism, it's quite silly in my opinion, but it's much less absurd than eliminativism, and it is the only logical alternative to eliminativism for a reductionist who has accepted the fact that no explanation via quantitative aspects of matter can possibly account for conscious experience, yet who is nevertheless unwilling to give up reductionism.
If consciousness is an irreducible property only of whole living substances with the sensory organs and corresponding cognitive apparatuses to benefit from it (that is to say, animals), then no accidental, piecemeal, mechanistic explanation for its origin is possible, and the theistic implications for both the origin and subsequent development of life are inescapable.
Thence comes the motivation to suppose that "a little bit of consciousness" exists in each and every subatomic particle, and that somehow these bits and pieces "add up" to larger conscious aggregates via happenstance and time.
I would note that when you actually think about the details, panpsychism doesn't even really offer a conceptual explanation for what it purports to account for after all. The idea that every atom in my body might somehow possess a passive consciousness of nothing particular (given that they have nothing to experience and no sensory organs to experience it with) that has no effect on their behavior goes exactly zero distance towards explaining why I have a unified consciousness that is integrated with my sensory organs and produces corresponding actions in the real world based on them.
"On close inspection, there is no basis for presuming that the quantitative laws governing locomotion can predict ALL locomotion just because they can predict it precisely under certain conditions where no volition is involved,"
DeleteWhat is your alternative? Just because? No reason, stuff just goes any which way whenever for no particular reason?
You just denied the PSR. Under your description stuff just happens for no reason at all, much less a sufficient reason.
Of course all motion reduces to a completed physics (see Dr. Feser's recent elegant encapsulation of what reductionism holds), what else?
"As for panpsychism, it's quite silly in my opinion"
Indeed, as is any sort of psychism such as godpsychism, angelpsychism, soulpsychism.
"it is the only logical alternative to eliminativism for a reductionist"
A reductionist that does not wish to be an eliminativist is like a diver who jumps off the board and then wishes to stop suspended in mid air lest he actually have to enter the water below.
"when you actually think about the details, panpsychism doesn't even really offer a conceptual explanation for what it purports to account for after all"
Indeed, as is true for all sorts of psychism, spiritualism, angelology, the soul, and most especially the assertion of immaterial.
All such assertions explain nothing. They are just idle speculations, arm waving with no explanatory value whatever.
"I have a unified consciousness"
No, you don't. You are a multitude, we all are.
SD,
DeleteAre you a Logical Positivist? A.J. Ayer's "Language, Truth and Logic" and "The Central Questions of Philosophy" are two of my favorite books. Ayer's Logical Positivism is no longer fashionable, but he was an excellent writer and his books are accessible to the average reader. He was also quite a celebrity in his time and lived a colorful life. We don't have celebrity philosophers anymore.
@StardustyPsyche
DeleteNo, you don't. You are a multitude, we all are.
This is not typical. Almost everyone experiences a unified consciousness. See this article on multiple personality disorder.
"Indeed, as is any sort of psychism such as godpsychism, angelpsychism, soulpsychism." any would include stardustypsychism.
Delete"You just denied the PSR. Under your description stuff just happens for no reason at all, much less a sufficient reason."
He dosn't seem to have. He dosn't hold your views on volition. That you seem to hold you hold without volition and also that you are not you but a multitude. Science wouldn't seem to work without human minds having volition. If all motion goes down to physics Newton work is sufficient to show a mind behind matter. Physics is not a sufficient reason for it. On your view it seems physics wrote your post and put meaning into the equations physics sounds like a mind in that case.
I had considered whether to respond, but as SD is an eliminativist, I'm going to need him to rephrase whatever he's trying to say in scientific terms, without engaging such nonsensical folk-psychological gobbledy-gook as "alternative," "principles," "sufficiency" and "reason."
DeleteLikewise, he's appealing to this whole pre-scientific notion that there are ideas we can entertain which have logical relationships between them that we can perceive, such that if one idea "logically contradicts" another, only one of them can be "true."
Really, this whole notion that locomotion "logically requires" an "explanation" of any sort, much less an "alternative" one, is so anti-science in its use of propositional attitudes that I can't even.
Perhaps if this could be rephrased without any appeals to logic or reason, assertions of truth or falsehood, assumptions that we exist and are discussing this at all, and other such anti-science woo, I could begin to make logical sense of it.
Or not. "I" and "make logical sense" are anti-scientific folk psychology after all.
@ SP, what are your objections to this refutation of Eliminative Materialism?
Deletehttp://www.newdualism.org/papers/W.Lycan/ElimWeb.htm
Anon,
DeleteThanks for the reference. Here is one review
"A. J. Ayer is not a man to be pushed and pulled about by every fashionable current, Almost 40 years ago, in his positivist manifesto “Language, Truth and Logic,” he put the case for a radical empiricism and dismissed the claims of traditional metaphysics as meaningless because they are not even in principle verifiable. In the next three decades positivism lost its popularity, and the verifiability criterion of meaning was discredited."
So, no, I don't hold that truth must be verifiable to be truth. That seems to be an unjustifiably anthropocentric view. The cosmos is what it is irrespective of our ability to verify it.
HK,
Delete"This is not typical. Almost everyone experiences a unified consciousness."
Right, superficially, but that is folk psychology, which breaks down under scientific examination.
@StardustyPsyche
DeleteNo it is not folk psychology and the unity of one's consciousness is not supposed to break down under scientific examination. Multiple Personality Disorder is a serious mental illness that requires treatment.
Science also breaks down under scientific examination.
Delete"SD,
DeleteAre you a Logical Positivist?"
No, he's a bad troll. He's been touting his word salad for over five years, now, and he doesn't show signs of stopping.
Fun things is that he appears to be holding to the PSR now. So, it's not all hopeless, after all... I'll keep praying he sees the Truth.
Anon,
Delete"I'll keep praying he sees the Truth."
Do you suppose that god will change its mind upon hearing your prayers?
What, god was going to just allow me to continue in my ignorance, but then, you mutter some kind words on my behalf, that melts the heart of god, and god decides to zap some truth into my brain?
I mean, do grown intelligent people actually speak aloud or think words to themselves believing an immutable will respond and do miraculous stuff at their behest?
Interesting that Hossenfelder is taking the hard anti-realist line here. In a Youtube video she made not too long ago, she was pushing a hard Laplacean determinism as a counter-argument to free will. There was no sign of this talk about "useful models". As far as she was concerned, the motions of particles determined everything.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if this is a situation where a disdainful physicist gets confused because she has a low opinion of the topic.
"Hossenfelder is taking the hard anti-realist line here."
DeleteNo, she holds that, for example, the modern model of an electron is in fact describing real material, but she is astute enough to be keenly aware that the model is only a partial, approximate, and narrow description of an as yet not fully described underlying reality.
"There was no sign of this talk about "useful models"."
Ok, it seems as though you expected she would mention that term in that context. Why?
"I wonder if this is a situation where a disdainful physicist gets confused because she has a low opinion of the topic."
Hardly. She understands that QM does not rule out determinism, JS Bell did not rule out determinism, and the work of Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger did not rule out determinism.
If you want to get rid of determinism you will have to get rid of the PSR because indeterminism would necessitate effects without a cause, just poof, stuff goes any which way for no reason at all, much less a sufficient reason.
If poof for no reason sounds like nonsense to you then you are a determinist whether you like it or not and that means free will is an illusion, again, like it or not, the cosmos does not care about your preferences and sensibilities
"If poof for no reason sounds like nonsense to you then you are a determinist whether you like it or not and that means free will is an illusion, again, like it or not, the cosmos does not care about your preferences and sensibilities"
DeleteIt seems that you fail to understand what freedom of will is. Freedom of will is the ability to choose deliberately, that is, to choose after weighing and examining the reasons for and against potential choices, and what would be the purpose of being able to deliberate if you can't make choices as a result of deliberation?! So freedom of will is not "poof for no reason", on the contrary, it is the ability to choose rationally between alternatives instead of having to follow blindly without being able to resist the dictates of your base passions and desires.
"Interesting that Hossenfelder is taking the hard anti-realist line here."
DeleteI think it better to say she thinks that 'realism' & 'anti-realism' as philisophical beliefs are irrelevant to the practice of science.
Here is a helpful video which explains her postion:
https://youtu.be/ka9KGqr5Wtw?si=_23RhqLp48KflJ_F
Whether one chooses to classify SP as a troll or not, his comments here constitute yet another repeat on a continuous repeat loop: stemming from his materialist commitments, he objects to Feser's and others' comments merely assuming materialist premises. In doing this, he neither brings new light to this specific discussion, nor advances any aspect of any long-running discussions that this post touches on indirectly. His posts clutter up the page and make it difficult to carry out intelligent discussion with others.
DeletePlease do not feed the SP.
By that logic an alcoholic would always choose to throw away the bottle rather than give into the passion of addiction.
DeleteYou write:
Delete"No, she holds that, for example, the modern model of an electron is in fact describing real material, but she is astute enough to be keenly aware that the model is only a partial, approximate, and narrow description of an as yet not fully described underlying reality."
If she believes that, she should have said it. It shouldn't be down to the interpretation of random commenters in obscure comment forms to state it for her.
What she said, in her own words, was that the model of an electron indicates no ontological entity or commitment to the existence of such.
If she believed otherwise, she should say so.
"Ok, it seems as though you expected she would mention that term in that context. Why?"
Because if she's saying in one instance a) that the theories of physics are merely instrumental with no further ontological commitments, while also saying b) that physics *does* commit us to rather strict ontological commitments (the existence of particles, their fundamental nature, their strict causal influence over large-scale phenomena, etc.), then she's got a problem.
I don't believe she understands this, because she sounds confused.
"to choose after weighing and examining the reasons for and against potential choices,"
DeleteA computer can do that, so by your definition a computer has free will.
But, I very much doubt you think a computer has free will. Yet, a computer meets your definition of free will. Assertions of free will always lead to some sort of incoherent assertion.
"what would be the purpose of being able to deliberate if you can't make choices as a result of deliberation?!"
Computers make choices after deliberation.
"So freedom of will is not "poof for no reason","
I never said it was, those are your words, not mine.
Indeterminism is poof for no reason. The PSR is deterministic. On determinism free will is clearly an illusion.
If D then ~F
~D
Therefore F
That is your argument.
If Determinism then Not Free Will
Not Determinism
Therefore Free Will
In making that argument you have committed the fallacy of denying the antecedent, which is actually the fallacy of concluding the negation of the consequent having denied the antecedent.
In fact free will is an illusion on determinism, and free will is an illusion on indeterminism.
It is just that free will being an illusion on determinism is fairly easy for most people to understand. It really is not very hard to understand that the PSR requires determinism. Therefore the PSR requires that free will is an illusion.
I never said free will is indeterminism, only your fallacious reasoning led to that notion.
"A computer can do that, so by your definition a computer has free will.
DeleteBut, I very much doubt you think a computer has free will. Yet, a computer meets your definition of free will. Assertions of free will always lead to some sort of incoherent assertion."
I remind you that computers don't have wills because they don't have desires, rational or otherwise, and can't do anything that they are not programmed to do. They are unable to choose in any meaningful way, they just follow blindly the algorithms with which they are fed, without being able to judge their value and without their achievements or failures making them happier or more wretched (the object of desire being happiness). So no, a computer can't do that because it has neither desires nor the ability to decide them rationally and subordinate/give up inferior ones to/for superior ones.
"Indeterminism is poof for no reason. The PSR is deterministic. On determinism free will is clearly an illusion."
Free will implies self-determination, not indetermination, the ability to deliberate, not lack of reasons.
Someone Else at 10.28AM
DeleteWhy on earth does SP posting make it difficult for you to have a conversation with someone else? What a desperate reason by which to try and exclude someone
"Indeterminism is poof for no reason. The PSR is deterministic. On determinism free will is clearly an illusion.
DeleteIf D then ~F
~D
Therefore F
That is your argument.
If Determinism then Not Free Will
Not Determinism
Therefore Free Will"
Again, freedom of will implies self-determination, not indeterminism, by "freedom" being understood not randomness and lack of "motives", but self-responsible voluntariness, that is, voluntariness as opposed to both involuntariness and to the voluntariness which is not self-responsible (when the will can't but adhere because there is no alternative).
Is the self-determination determined or not?
Delete"computers ... don't have desires"
DeleteComputers have goals, they set a target for a future state and work to achieve that state.
"and can't do anything that they are not programmed to do."
Not true. Computers can program themselves. Computers are doing things internally that were not programmed externally, and in fact, are processes that are unknown to human beings.
"Free will implies self-determination, not indetermination,"
Right, so free will is impossible on determinism, and free will is impossible on indeterminism.
Heads or tails, free will is impossible.
"Again, freedom of will implies self-determination, not indeterminism,"
DeleteRight, on determinism free will is impossible because one is not self determined on a deterministic cosmos.
Also, on indeterminism one is not self determined because on indeterminism there is no determination at all, by the self or otherwise.
Either way, determinism or indeterminism, free will is impossible.
@Walter Van den Acker
Delete"Is the self-determination determined or not?"
It's determined but not deterministic, as determinism is "the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes regarded as external to the will", to quote the dictionary.
@StardustyPsyche
Delete"Computers have goals, they set a target for a future state and work to achieve that state."
"Not true. Computers can program themselves. Computers are doing things internally that were not programmed externally, and in fact, are processes that are unknown to human beings."
No, computers can't program themselves, they can only generate and execute programs completely dependent on the algorithms and data they are fed from the outside. As their name suggests, they can only perform computations, without any desires and goals of their own and without their achievements or failures making them happier or more wretched, while the object of desire is happiness and choices depend on desires.
"'Free will implies self-determination, not indetermination,' Right, so free will is impossible on determinism, and free will is impossible on indeterminism."
Please see my reply above.
@StardustyPsyche
Delete"Right, on determinism free will is impossible because one is not self determined on a deterministic cosmos.
Also, on indeterminism one is not self determined because on indeterminism there is no determination at all, by the self or otherwise.
Either way, determinism or indeterminism, free will is impossible."
Being determinate doesn't mean being deterministic, and how can one be free in relation to what one cannot determine?! Considering that determinism means no choice, what is the purpose of deliberation then, when deliberation leads to choice? How can one choose if it is not in one's power to choose?!
@SP : "Computers have goals, they set a target for a future state and work to achieve that state."
DeleteNo.
Computers have goals in the same way that a stone "wants" to hit the ground.
I'm not talking to SP per se (since he'll ignore the arguments over and over) - but to you, viewer. Prof Feser already argued against this view. You can see the amazing cognitive dissonance of SP pretending to exist and have goals one one hand, like a computer, then arguing that a computer doesn't have goals after all on the other hand.
Meanwhile, we computer scientists have no idea what a "computer" having a "goal" would be. The model of a computer is a purely instrumentalist one, and depends on the mind of the thinker; since it's an artifact.
"Meanwhile, we computer scientists have no idea what a "computer" having a "goal" would be."
DeleteHmmm, it seems you do not work in the process control field. Did you ever program, for example, a thermostat?
Negative feedback in a sensory system is a core aspect of goals.
Relatively simple organisms function with simple goals using negative feedback sensory systems to achieve those goals.
The more complex the organism, the more complex the goals, but negative feedback in a sensory system remains the core algorithm.
"The model of a computer is a purely instrumentalist one, and depends on the mind of the thinker;"
Not anymore.
For a supposed "computer scientist" you seem quite unaware not only of present progress in ML and AI, but also scientific projections of future systems. "Computer science" has moved on from bookkeeping using Fortran and Cobol.
Machines now reprogram themselves. Machines learn.
It is the self-reprogramming that is a prime worry of the AI doomsdayers. Now that machines can reprogram themselves human beings need to do forensic code analysis to figure out what algorithm the machine is running.
The algorithmic model of a computer is no longer purely instrumentalist of the human mind because the machine makes up its own algorithms for itself.
The dangers of machine self-reprogramming are the stuff of science fiction, such as Skynet that became self aware on 2:14 a.m., EDT, on August 29, 1997.
We got a preview of the dangers of machine learning when Microsoft had to shut down Tay. Of course, that was a well monitored test run, but it failed, and Microsoft had an Off switch it could flip, as it were.
Common sense says that machines cannot have goals. Science fiction contradicts common sense with apocalyptic depictions of machines taking over and destroying humanity.
Science fact has already overturned a very great deal of common sense.
I find this critique of Hossenfelder to be slightly awry. She is refusing to play the same kind of metaphilosophical game that you criticise Goff for playing.
ReplyDeleteIt would be like critiquing the college accountant for not engaging in economics. A good scientist is more like a good accountant than like a good economist.
I don't think that Feser is suggesting that Goff is playing any kind of a "metaphilosophical game", rather he is proposing a (very wrong) solution to a "problem" that is more a problem of his own making than truly problematic when viewed properly.
DeleteAnd I don't think Hossenfelder simply "refuses" to get into philosophical issues (meta or otherwise) when she opines: to my recollection, she is very forthright in taking a stance against free will (even though science as such cannot prove such a result) and so her position is certainly outside of science properly speaking. She is taking a philosophical position based on a theory about science and extrapolating from that. The theory itself is a philosophical one, not science. Admittedly, her position is common among physical scientists, and her arguments are not exactly sophomoric, but they are also hardly philosophically nuanced and astute.
Tony,
DeleteFirst of all, I goofed when I wrote 'metaphilosophy'. Should have been 'metaphysical'. Sorry.
I agree with your analysis regarding Goff. But I would now describe it as practicing metaphysics. I think Hossenfelder is wise to avoid such metaphysical positions.
She is an instrumentalist. One reason, I think, is that she is more interested in explaining the observable than explaining what causes it. I don't see how that inhibits her from practicing science.
You are correct that she has posted her views on free will on youtube. She does base it on scientific findings but that does not make it a scientific theory. I didn't find it to be persuasive. However, she did state that she believed humans have the capacity to make decisions and act for reasons. That is in line with my own views, so I can't fault her for not calling it 'free will'. Actually, there are so many conceptions regarding free will I tend to avoid that terminology myself.
Type I. “You are not mostly empty space”. DNA doesn’t contain “information “, it’s particles and fields touching and interacting that make dna do what it does, rather than being infused with some mystical force Feser calls “information”. Same with data in computers. It’s all perfectly in line with Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.
ReplyDeleteAnother denialist of the PNC. Impressive madman.
DeleteIf I'm mad so is this author of the article on Forbes titled "You are not mostly empty space". What does PNC stand for, by the way?
DeleteIf by PNC you mean Principal of Non-Contradiction, explain how what I said is self-contradictory.
DeleteWhen someone calls "information" a "mystical force", then instantly talks about patterns (therefore "information"), I can only assume he's either stupid, trollish, or denying the PNC.
DeleteYour choice, Anon. I was aiming for the generous hit.
It is Feser and creationists whowho believes the information in dna is non-materiel and that it’s God’s magic making DNA work and do what it does rather rather than Newton’s Three Laws of Motion/Chemistry/Physical stuff.
Delete"Science, we’re often told, gives us a description of the world radically at odds with common sense."
ReplyDeleteIndeed, people have had common sense for many tens of thousands of years. Yet nobody considered that time slows down when moving near the speed of light, or that a DNA molecule in every cell is at the root of inheritance, or a very great many things that are difficult to learn or understand even today.
Obviously, science has provided us with a picture of reality very largely in conflict with common sense.
"the real illusion is not the table of common sense, but rather the notion that science gives us any reason to doubt it."
How absurd. Common sense told people for thousands of years that such objects are solid, stationary, static, and have intrinsic properties such as color. Science has shown such ideas to be false and illusory.
" In fact, science is not even addressing the sorts of question common sense might ask about the table,"
Nonsense. Science tells us how the table seems to hold things up, what the table is made of, why it feels cold to the touch, why it appears to be the color that it seems to be.
"For one thing, there is not even a prima facie conflict between our common sense conception of the world and the vast bulk of what falls under the label “science.”"
More nonsense. People have had common sense for tens of thousands of years and nearly everything that was believed about the cosmos for that time turns out to be wrong. Nobody knew about distant galaxies or unseen radiation, or 92 natural terrestrial elements, or germs, or nuclear fusion at the center of the sun or a very great many scientific facts utterly unknown and often completely counter intuitive.
"Nor is what physics tells us about middle-sized objects (pendulums, water pumps, etc.) regarded as challenging our belief in tables and the like."
Of course science challenges our belief in ordinary objects.
Do objects exist? Do you suppose that is a simple question to answer or perhaps a stupid question to ask? If so, then you have not thought very carefully about the scientific view of material composition.
Your clear thinking and plain speaking stands In stark contrast to the belief based confusion and word saladary so often encountered in this combox SD. Please ignore your detractors who would have you cast into.the outer darkness, and continue to post sense here.
DeleteYou seem to be hallucinating if you really think that. And I mean actual hallucination.
DeleteKevin at 11.40AM
DeleteThat's a bit rich coming from someone with the bizarre, unevidenced beliefs that you subscribe to! You obviously confuse your philosophical convictions and world view with 'the facts'.
I'm being accused of having bizarre, unevidenced beliefs, and confusing my worldview and philosophical convictions with the facts...by someone who exists here only to cheerlead Stardusty.
DeleteTee hee.
Recently it was asserted that literally everything is hallucination and nothing is not-hallucination. As such, the hallucination thing I said to you was a joke. You may have missed the hilarity when it occurred though, so my apologies. It wasn't intended as an insult.
Kevin,
Delete"Recently it was asserted that literally everything is hallucination and nothing is not-hallucination."
Interesting, I do not recall ever reading that assertion on this site. Perhaps I missed that particular post. Care to provide a link to it?
I'd like to talk with SP, but I'm not sure if he can show me he's not a hallucination. So far, none of his posts shows more content than a monkey typing random things on a typewriter.
DeleteA pity. I'm sure this nonexistent SP fellow would be a nice one.
"I'd like to talk with SP, but I'm not sure if he can show me he's not a hallucination."
DeleteThat is the inescapable lot of us all, an insurmountable and inevitable consequence of the human condition.
After all, you might be god and all you perceive might be mere figments of your divine imagination. In that case, you are the entirety of the cosmos, you are the sole necessary being.
There is no argument, no evidence, than can prove you are not god, the sole entirety of all existence.
That possibility is infinitely more likely for you than the case of any other speculated god.
You know for certain that you exist, but all other assertions of god are mere speculations. The probability that a known existent being is god, is infinitely greater than the probability that a non-existent being is god.
"So far, none of his posts shows more content than a monkey typing random things on a typewriter."
Interesting. Have you ever read the output of a a monkey typing random things?
"A pity. I'm sure this nonexistent SP fellow would be a nice one."
More's the pity indeed.
"In fact, science is not even addressing the sorts of question common sense might ask about the table, much less giving an answer that conflicts with the one common sense would give."
ReplyDeleteMight be true, assuming there is some kind of defensible principled distinction between 'science' and 'common sense'; but is there?
Reminds me of the claim that science tells us how, theology tells us why. Really? I think not.
I think that generally scientists, in a quite literal sense, don't know what they're doing (i.e., qua scientists). They are too preoccupied with what they're studying (not to mention all of the associated practical, bureaucratic chores) to pay any significant attention to themselves and the nature of what they're doing.
ReplyDeleteWell said, Dr. Pike
DeleteI'm Bill McEnaney.
ReplyDeleteDeterminists say people don't have free will. So, please tell me whether determinists believe that each mental event is a deterministic brain event.
Suppose each mental event is a deterministic brain event. Then rational thought is impossible because deterministic brain events force us to believe whatever we believe, even when it's false. Some may believe deterministically that they have free will when others believe deterministically that they , the others, don't have it. In that case, would be no way to tell who was right, since the determinists and the non-determinists would reason deterministically.
Bill,
Delete"rational thought is impossible because deterministic brain events force us to believe whatever we believe, even when it's false."
People do believe a great many false assertions, so that would argue for determinism, on your analysis.
I mean, if people believing false notions indicates determinism, then just read the news, talk to people in general, listen to callers on talk radio, and on and on. Lots of people believe lots of false assertions, just as you say we would expect on determinism.
"Some may believe deterministically that they have free will when others believe deterministically that they , the others, don't have it. In that case, would be no way to tell who was right, since the determinists and the non-determinists would reason deterministically."
You seem to be equating "reason deterministically" with "immune to external influences" or "unchanging" or "stuck in a single fixed and repetitive sequence".
ChatGPT is a deterministic system. It is programmed and runs on deterministic hardware. Yet it learns and reasons and changes, because it is not the entire cosmos, rather, just one tiny part of it. External influences combined with deterministic decision making algorithms result in learning and internal change.
Besides, it is super easy to tell who is right and who is wrong. I am right, and everybody who disagrees with me is wrong, simple, done!
"ChatGPT is a deterministic system. It is programmed and runs on deterministic hardware. Yet it learns and reasons and changes, because it is not the entire cosmos, rather, just one tiny part of it. "
DeleteNo. ChatGPT operates on a LLM based model with inferential statistics. No "learning" or "reasonning" behind the wheel.
Anon,
Delete"No. ChatGPT operates on a LLM based model with inferential statistics."
You operate using inferential statistics.
You started out as a baby. You did not know much. You flailed about for years and eventually you developed a database of what usually works and what usually does not work. You still do that. We all do that.
"No "learning" or "reasonning" behind the wheel."
The denialism is strong with this one.
It is called ML, machine learning, because that is what the machine does, learn. Learning is mechanistic process, like a rodent learning a maze or a robot learning a maze.
Animals use mechanistic learning algorithms.
Machines use mechanistic learning algorithms.
Machines learn.
Machines can learn by trial and error, like animals learn by trial and error.
In machines we usually speak of hardware, software, and algorithms. Most people think of a machine algorithm as a fixed procedure wherein the machine can only make decisions as programmed to make decisions by a human being.
Common sense would say machines can only do what they are told to do.
Science radically contradicts common sense in many ways, contrary to the OP.
Machines now program themselves, and learn by trial and error, and learn from vast stores of written information. So, now, people do not know what the machine is doing, in some cases.
The machine goes off on its own gathering vast amounts of information, and the machine reprograms itself and then runs its own algorithms it programed for itself. Humans are out of the loop.
That is not common sense. It sounds like science fiction. But it is science fact, like so much science fact that strongly contradicts common sense.
StardustyIdiot,
Delete"You operate using inferential statistics."
No. I operate using abstraction.
"You started out as a baby. You did not know much. You flailed about for years and eventually you developed a database of what usually works and what usually does not work. You still do that. We all do that."
A bit of a metaphor on "we are machines because we are machines"...
"The denialism is strong with this one."
No. It's calling you ignorant. Your entire knowledge of machine learning is just the title. Shut up, and stop vomiting crap.
"It is called ML, machine learning, because that is what the machine does, learn. Learning is mechanistic process, like a rodent learning a maze or a robot learning a maze."
Wrong again. It's called machine learning because we're modelling learning through inferential statistics, and applying the model onto a machine, which appears to be replicating learning.
You idiot.
"Animals use mechanistic learning algorithms."
No.
"Machines use mechanistic learning algorithms."
Wow. You actually got that one clear.
"Machines learn."
No.
"Machines can learn by trial and error,"
No.
"animals learn by trial and error."
Yes.
"In machines we usually speak of hardware, software, and algorithms. Most people think of a machine algorithm as a fixed procedure wherein the machine can only make decisions as programmed to make decisions by a human being."
No. That's your view of my field of work, and you're thinking you're so special.
"Common sense would say machines can only do what they are told to do."
Yes. That's the definition of a machine.
"Science radically contradicts common sense in many ways, contrary to the OP."
Baseless assertion.
"Machines now program themselves, and learn by trial and error, and learn from vast stores of written information."
Nope. Go to my lab, tell that to us, and we'll laugh at you. That'll be perhaps what you need most, you Dunning-Kruger ignoramus.
"So, now, people do not know what the machine is doing, in some cases."
No. The only person here who's not knowing what machine learning is is you.
"The machine goes off on its own gathering vast amounts of information, and the machine reprograms itself and then runs its own algorithms it programed for itself. Humans are out of the loop."
Pwhahahahah! What a joke. You're now a wizard or what? Just repeating baseless affirmations like that and claiming that "machines are doing magic" isn't helping, idiot.
"That is not common sense. It sounds like science fiction. But it is science fact, like so much science fact that strongly contradicts common sense."
The only asshole speaking against common sense (and science) here is you, you stupid piece of crap.
Go learn what statistical inference is, what a neural network is, what a mathematical model is, what is a machine doing, and get your Ph. D. Then I'll listen to your baseless rambling and laugh when you'll see you have not a single piece of "science" or "evidence" to back your stupid discourse.
What a joke you are. :'D
*You operate using inferential statistics.*
Delete"No. I operate using abstraction."
So, you do not infer the future based on statists gathered over time?
You never think "I did X 100 times before and Y always happened as a consequence, so if I do X again I am pretty sure the consequence will be Y again"?
You don't operate on inferences based on the statistics of your experiences?
*The machine goes off on its own gathering vast amounts of information, and the machine reprograms itself and then runs its own algorithms it programed for itself. Humans are out of the loop.*
"Pwhahahahah! What a joke"
You don't know anything about AI, do you?
Yes, machines reprogram themselves. Once that happens they operate on algorithms that were not programmed by humans. At that point human beings do not know the algorithm that the machine is operating with. There are ways to find out, but that is a sort of forensic code analysis wherein the human reads the code that the machine wrote to discover what algorithm the machine wrote.
I suppose for you common sense says machines can't do that. Modern science has turned machine self reprogramming from science fiction into science fact.
Again, modern science strongly contradicts common sense, in stark contrast to the OP.
No one summed up philosophical speculation better than Hume:
ReplyDelete"If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.”
Hmm. No quantity or numbers. Sounds like Hume should have been consistent and burned this piece of philosophical speculation if he actually believed what he was saying.
DeleteYou need to read Hume more deeply and educate yourself.
DeleteThanks for the suggestion anonymous stranger who knows nothing about me.
DeleteWell, bmiller, look at it this way. Do you really think after Hume wrote that phrase, that it never occurred to him that in his own every day life he used numbers and dealt with quantity? That never occurred to him at all?
DeleteAnonymous stranger,
DeleteHume did not use numbers or quantities while criticizing "philosophical speculations" that failed to use numbers or quantities. Thereby undermining his own criticism.
Do you understand now?
I do understand that Hume did not undermine his own criticism.
DeleteThen let's toss Hume to the flames, for his verbiage contains nothing of mathematics, nor of empirical contents; and let the mere -- brillant -- sophist return to the garbage of history, where he should never have left.
DeleteBy the same token, of course, Hume's "Enquiry" can only be said to contain sophistry and delusion, and is to be consigned to the flames, as well.
ReplyDeleteOh, the tedium...
" No one thinks philology casts the slightest doubt on the reality of words, or that botany, geology, and meteorology cast any doubt on the reality of plants, earth, or weather. The findings of such areas of research are not taken to undermine our confidence in the reality of everyday objects. "
ReplyDelete"No one..."
In their right mind, you mean.
When you say that, I am sure that you are referring by default to what you take to be more or less psychologically normal people.
If however, one were to consider the agenda driven OCD barnacles and would-be teredo worms which have for years gravitated toward and attached themselves to the hull of your blog, one might find it necessary to be somewhat less generous.
Nonetheless, that phenomenon of antipathy driven attachment, is as I have before maintained, quite interesting ... from a psychological perspective, anyway.
But that of course, is itself contingent upon assuming that the discrete elements of such agglomerative accretions [we dare not say "individuals" or "souls"] have what might be labeled under traditional rubrics, "minds" at all.
An interesting prospect to imagine yourself seated across from a self-consistent eliminativist meat machine; one by stipulation having no coherent self, no 'free' in the sense of a not wholly mechanistically predetermined will, and one being in every feature of both action and reaction, a mindless mechanism the acts of which are in reduction the precise equivalents of water flowing down hill, or the capillary spread of an ink drop on blotting paper.
What then is the practical moral evaluation difference to be applied between a self consistent mechanistic eliminativist on the one hand, and the infamous philosophical zombie on the other? The difference you project upon them?
What a fascinating, and in many ways conveniently liberating operational field opens up to those who can convince themselves of its truth.
"What then is the practical moral evaluation difference to be applied between a self consistent mechanistic eliminativist on the one hand, and the infamous philosophical zombie on the other? The difference you project upon them?"
DeleteSince these questions come from a person who does not know the difference between objective morality and an objective standard of morality it seems these questions likely come from the functional equivalent of a philosophical zombie.
OP,
ReplyDelete" But even here, it is not, strictly speaking, the findings of modern science that are the source of the problem. Similar claims about the unreality of ordinary objects were made millennia ago on the basis of the speculations of the ancient atomists."
Yes it is, that is to say, the findings of modern science are the source of "the" "problem".
The atomists could only reason from various evidences that what we perceive as continuous substances are actually comprised of tiny parts too small to see.
The atomists were proven correct by modern science. Thus their objections to common sense notions of objects moved out of the realm of hypothesis and into the realm of established scientific fact.
Aristotle was wrong, as he was wrong about nearly everything regarding motion, change, and substances. Aristotle conceived of substances as made up of various proportions of earth, water, air, and fire.
Aristotle went backwards. The atomists were on the right track before Aristotle, but then Aristotle applied common sense and got the wrong answer, as he did in nearly everything else he considered regarding motion, change, and substances.
Common sense tells us that water, for example, is a continuous fluid substance. That is what Aristotle believed. Atomists reasoned using examples of solutions of materials such as sugar and salt, evaporation of water leaving behind deposits of those materials, the transmission and blockage of odors, and other reasoning applied to evidence, that materials are not continuous, rather, divided into tiny particles.
Common sense worked against the atomists. But science proved common sense to be wrong, and with it, science proved Aristotle was wrong and his predecessors were on the right track.
Because of science we now have very strong reasons to question the reality of objects, the objects of common sense.
Does the table exist?
No.
The material of what we call the table exits. "Table" is just a name we give to an arrangement of that material.
Nothing new came into existence when the table was constructed. And eventually when the table corrodes or rots and disburses into the environment as bits of metal, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen nothing old will pass out of existence.
Common sense tell us things come into existence, then pass out of existence.
Science tells us that nothing ever comes into existence and nothing ever passes out of existence.
There are are many stark conflicts between common sense and the finding of science.
Since bacteria infected my foot, so I'm taking antibiotics to kill them, Do think that since bacteria are things, they'll live forever? If the ones that infected my foot will survive forever, is the antibiotic useless? I contradict myself if I say that though no thing stops existing, a bacterium, which is a thing, stops existing when it dies.
DeleteBill McEnaney
And yet everything is some thing.
DeleteThose who pretend to believe as SP can never point to any material existing only as matter. They can only ever this or that "arrangement of that material".
How does anyone conclude that only the thing never observed (matter) exists while the arrangements (or forms) with which that thing must be determined do not exist?
Anyone in his or her right mind, I mean.
The bizarre thing about the Stardusty fantasy world is computers, space shuttles, EVs etc are just natural arrangements of materials, with labels, created by the same natural forces that create planets and stars.
DeleteImagine anyone in their right mind thinking that Science(tm) has proven, via a series of hallucinations, that computers are naturally created arrangements of matter!!
"Anyone in his or her right mind, I mean."
DeleteIn this regard you will recall both an old adage, and a useful - as well as amusing - technique. The latter employed by our professors back in school for dealing with a certain kind of personality.
The old saying and set-up goes, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."
The technique used, generally in psychology or history courses as a particularly obstreperous or obnoxious attention seeker was determined to contest some point for the sake of disruption, was for the instructor to remain deliberately impassive, while watching said clown dig himself in ever deeper. The attention seeker's obsession with eliciting a reaction would, when frustrated, eventualy compel him to an intellectual overreach or to revelatory extremes which disclosed the foundational absurdity of his assumptions more starkly than any well formulated reductio rebuttal or overt correction might have done. The outcome was as predictable as watching a rat run a maze.
Thus, when a fool starts digging himself into an argumentative hole, it can be both intellectually satisfying and morally justified to just sit back and watch him work uninterrupted until it collapses in on him. It's not schadenfreude, it's a corporal or moral work of mercy whereby he may be allowed to learn better! ( Or maybe something like that)
Now, less genteel analogical formulations common in the U.S. will also come to mind having to do with giving a man enough rope to hang himself. More brutal, but you get the general idea: you have to sit still for awhile as the rope pays out.
Speaking pragmatically, it is certainly more profitable than chasing him around in circles as he tries to redefine, retrofit, revise, and most brazenly, backtrack and appropriate as his own.
So, taking yet another image [ but sparing everyone a recent deer hunting analogy] , watching him persistently stick his tongue into a trap of his own construction as he tastes around for what he hopes is some morsel of that ever elusive and imaginary cheese, is both funny and mortifying at the same time. Kinda funny in a cartoon.
Anon,
Delete"I contradict myself if I say that though no thing stops existing, a bacterium, which is a thing, stops existing when it dies."
No thing stops existing when a bacterium, or any organism, dies.
All the material that organism is made of will diffuse or scatter into the wider cosmos from whence it came.
Suppose you have no pennies. Then you begin collecting pennies and gather them into a jar. Did the pennies begin to exist? No, of course not, you just could not see them previously since they were scattered far from you.
Suppose you decide to stop collecting pennies so you spend them all and throw away the jar. Did some thing cease to exist? Again, no, since all the pennies are just someplace else and the jar is now in a landfill. It all still exists.
Human beings observe associations between materials they did not observe before and consider that to be the beginning of a new thing. Later those materials disassociate and from a human perspective it seems like a thing passed out of existence.
No new thing ever comes into existence.
No old thing ever passes out of existence.
The total amount of material in the cosmos is precisely static.
Continued existence of material is no change in existence so there is no call for any sustainer at all to account for continued existence of material, much less a first sustainer (which is unnecessary).
Anon,
Delete"Imagine anyone in their right mind thinking that Science(tm) has proven, via a series of hallucinations, that computers are naturally created arrangements of matter!!"
Natural.
Are the following "natural"?
Wormhole (from an earthworm)
Wasp nest
Beaver dam
Anthill
Grass hut
Computer
Do you suppose some of those constructions are supernatural? Were any of them constructed from something other than the 92 naturally occurring elements? Were they all constructed by animals?
Are you a part of nature? How about if you live a life of a hunter gatherer with only lithic technology?
If you define all constructions made by humans to be non-natural then by definition all things assembled by humans are outside of nature. Fine, but that is merely tautological, a mere manipulation of a definition to suit some pre-existing desire to set yourself apart from the rest of nature, a rather egocentric desire to feel special in the cosmos.
"created by the same natural forces that create planets and stars."
Do you suppose you operate outside of natural forces?
Perhaps you think physics does not apply to you, and you imagine yourself as some sort of god incarnate?
As for the hallucinatory nature of your moment to moment multidimensional audio visual sensory show, don't you realize that your brain resides is a dark, silent, isolated bone box?
What, do you suppose your brain is somehow touching all you experience moment to moment, or somehow all the colors and sounds are actually in your brain?
Haven't you figured out yet that your entire sensory experience is internally generated? Isn't that obvious to you thanks to modern science?
Some part of you must understand that the brain only receives electrochemical variations coming in on millions of nerve cells.
I think you realize that if you open up your computer you will not find any pictures in there, or documents, or music. All you will find is a bunch of wires with millions of pulses traveling to and fro in a mad behive of vast complexity, entirely unrecognizable as pictures or sounds or words.
Yet, from that mad jumble of signals the computer can generate images and sounds and written words. Surely you understand that.
Dr. Feser really missed the mark on this OP.
Of course modern science vastly and fundamentally contradicts common sense. Your common sense scoffs at the notion that your experiences are ongoing hallucinations, yet very obviously they are just that, internal constructions inside a dark, silent bone box, based on streams of millions of electrochemical signals continually coming in on a vast network of nerves.
Of course your experiences are hallucinations, what else would you possibly consider them to be?
Good grief. What a masterclass in self-refutation. SP's posts are valuable to the extent that they show us how to do philosophy - badly.
DeleteHallucinatons are when the brain perceives images that are'nt being caused by external stimuli, unlike sense information. So no, I am not hallucinating right now, unless this keyboard I"m typing on is'nt there.
DeleteAnil Seth and Stardusty don't understand the difference between a hallucination, which is independent of external stimuli, and mental models which are caused by external stimuli even if what we perceive isn't the "truth" of what the object of perception is. Even an illusion is based on an external stimulus, but hallucinations are not.
DeleteActually, I think Stardusty is the only one who doesn't understand the difference. Anil Seth knows, he's just using sensational language to turn heads. Saying what we sense is not real turns heads.
"Hallucinatons are when the brain perceives images that are'nt being caused by external stimuli,"
DeleteIs, say, the color yellow caused by external stimuli?
What is it about certain frequencies (alternatively wavelengths) that cause you to have the qualia experience of yellow?
If an object has the property of yellow, wouldn't all animals perceive that property as yellow?
What does an animal with no color receptors perceive when you perceive yellow?
What is the qualia experience for an animal that has 4 or 7 or 12 different sorts of color receptors?
You make up internally that qualia experience. There is no property of yellow in the object. Scientists and engineers take advantage of that fact on your monitor, by giving you only red and green, yet you perceive yellow.
In that case there is no spectral yellow entering your eye, only red and green, yet you internally hallucinate that combination of colors as yellow.
Have you ever seen some fantastic artwork inspired by artists who take hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD? Such art tends to have fantastic colorations, distortions, and patterns.
You do realize, I hope, that when you dream the subjects of your dreams are not really there, rather, they are entirely made up internally. Yet the sensory experience of those dreams can be very vivid and basically the same as your waking sensory experiences.
The experiences themselves are internally generated.
That is a clear and obvious scientific fact. Surely you understand that the brain sits in a dark, silent, isolated bone box. The only thing that comes is spike trains, sequences of electrochemical signals. That is all the brain gets.
No light or sound gets to the the brain, only pulses along nerve cells. From those pulses your entire sensory experience, be it waking or sleeping, is manufactured internally. These are incontrovertible scientific facts, yet they violate your common sense so strongly that you meet them with a mix of denial, and scoffing.
DeleteActually, I think ... Anil Seth knows, he's just using sensational language to turn heads. ...
Yeah, the use of the term "controlled hallucination" was chosen to be deliberately provocative and not just because of a dual association of differing mental phenomena with particular areas of the neural system.
The term "hallucination" has a long and definite diagnostic history denoting a pathological condition wherein the subject is unmoored from reality through the wholly internal generation of false ideation.
The key as you mention, and as has been pointed out before, is the absence of external stimuli matching the imagined perception, not the misidentification of an external object or condition perceived through the senses.
Apart from the shock value, the terminology is all part of the attempt to pathologize and dethrone the normal as prepatory to reconstituting the evaluative schema [ Our whole existence is pathological and a fraud!], and ultimately the moral framework of others, to better suit the social tastes of the so-called "neuro divergent".
As we have seen so many times before though, once the relativizers are themselves relativized ( to use an old formulation of Peter Berger's) or "reduced" to meaningless matter, they have nowhere to go.
Then one gets back in response to the question as to why they are not boldly living out the implications of their supposed discoveries, a puling plea on the order of "What do you expect them to do. They are only human! "
Hilarious.
Sensitive, well-meaning conservatives and religious types, seeing the revised thing put back on a human sad face, and plead for inclusion, continually fall for it and say, "Aww, let him back in by the campfire, fundamentally he's one of us."
But he is not. Well, not on a consistent application of his own terms, anyway.
"The term "hallucination" has a long and definite diagnostic history denoting a pathological condition wherein the subject is unmoored from reality through the wholly internal generation of false ideation."
DeleteYes, that is what the qualia experience of color or taste is.
A qualia experience is an internal symbol, an arbitrary representation correlated with patterns of incoming spike trains.
The experiences of color and taste are made up internally. There is no such thing as properties of color and taste intrinsic to the external materials they are correlated with.
"the absence of external stimuli matching the imagined perception"
If "real time" external stimulation is needed to avoid the classification as an hallucination then your dreams are hallucinations, entirely devoid of ongoing external "real time" stimuli. ("real time" in this context meaning within the typical transit time from sensory cell stimulation, to spike train transmission to spike train reception, typically tens of milliseconds).
Since dreams are hallucinations by virtue of a lack of "real time" external stimuli they might in some sense be called "uncontrolled", meaning there is no external stimuli controlling or synchronizing the hallucinations.
If external stimuli are the strings and the marionette is the hallucination then while you are dreaming your internal marionette of hallucination dances on its own, uncontrolled by any strings.
When you are awake the internal marionette of your hallucinations is essentially the same. In your dreams you see colors and faces and hear sounds and think thoughts, but lacking the strings of "real time" stimuli your internal hallucination marionette tends to gyrate rather erratically.
But, when you wake up the strings re-attach. The marionette of hallucination is essentially the same as when you were dreaming in your sleep, but now the stream of external stimuli in some sense "controls" the internal marionette of hallucination.
"the terminology is all part of the attempt to pathologize and dethrone the normal as prepatory to reconstituting the evaluative schema [ Our whole existence is pathological and a fraud!], and ultimately the moral framework of others, to better suit the social tastes of the so-called "neuro divergent"."
Kooky dishonest drivel.
The purpose of scientific analysis, in the view of the typical scientist, is to learn the realistic mechanisms of the cosmos.
If common sense agrees with experiment then common sense is realistic.
If commons sense disagrees with experiment then common sense is wrong.
A very great deal of common sense is wrong, in stark contrast to the fundamentally wrong assertions of the OP.
"As we have seen so many times before though, once the relativizers are themselves relativized ( to use an old formulation of Peter Berger's) or "reduced" to meaningless matter, they have nowhere to go."
More kooky drivel. What I identify as "me" is as subject to reduction and deconstruction as anything else, which leads me directly to the place all things go when reduced. Why should "me" be an exception to that analytical process?
But yes, "me" is ultimately meaningless because all things are ultimately meaningless.
Meaning is relative. One thing has meaning relative to another thing. The cosmos as a whole cannot have any meaning because there is nothing outside the cosmos as a whole for the cosmos to have meaning in relation to.
"What is SP? A miserable little pile of nonsense."
DeleteYou can hear SP as a boss from a bad game. :D
The atomists were proven correct by modern science.
ReplyDeleteHah. Not THOSE atomists, they weren't. They posited "atoms" of infinitely many types, atoms of each kind of thing that we see at the macro level: atoms of "dog" and atoms of "oak tree" and atoms of "snake". You got a macro-level dog when you got a conglomerate made up of mostly dog-atoms; soul atoms were merely very fine-grained atoms. Atoms were indestructible and eternal. They had hooks and loops that determined how they aggregated.
Furthermore, he had absolutely 0 evidence for the idea, it was utterly hypothetical: he didn't have any of the later chemical analysis that led to the modern atomic theory based on things combining in specific ratios only.
Anon,
Delete"Not THOSE atomists, they weren't. They posited "atoms" of infinitely many types,"
Yes, and that was pretty close, it turns out.
"atoms of "dog" and atoms of "oak tree" and atoms of "snake"."
Yes, there are "atoms" of dog, snake, and each individual organism. Trillions of different "atoms" unique to each living individual, or substance.
We call those sorts of "atoms" molecules. Of course, it turns out, those are not truly atoms since they can be divided, and there is no as yet identified upper bound on the number of such unique "atoms" of dog, cat, you, me or whatever. One such "atom" is DNA, a very large molecule that, while not infinite in variety, seems unlimited in its number of forms.
"Atoms were indestructible and eternal."
Yes, again, that is very nearly true, so again, a fine work of reasoning by the ancient Greek atomists, far superior to the nonsense Aristotle put out about earth, water, wind, and fire.
We now know that molecules vary in how long they last as molecules, many do in fact last billions of years.
And yes, material itself does seem to be eternal, given that it exists, cannot be created, and cannot be destroyed.
So, more fine reasoning from the ancient Greek atomists.
"They had hooks and loops that determined how they aggregated."
Wow! Genius!
Yes, today we call that "bonding". A truly amazing work of insight by the atomists, vastly superior to anything Aristotle later wrote about the nature of the underlying material reality.
"Furthermore, he had absolutely 0 evidence for the idea, it was utterly hypothetical:"
Have you ever noticed that sand pours a lot like water? It makes sense then that water is made up of tiny particles.
Have you noticed that salt seems to disappear when placed in water, yet the water then begins to taste salty. Then when the water dries the salt remains, often as a fine powdery deposit. It makes sense that salt is made of tiny particles that mix with the particles of water.
Have you ever noticed that you can pound solids into finer and finer powders, so fine you cannot even see the individual particles, yet the powder retains the basic properties of the solid, such as sweetness, saltiness, or the nutritiousness of the seeds the flour comes from?
Apparently, the ancient atomists were a great deal more observant and rational than you or Aristotle.
You are so full of cr*p. You have to constantly equivocate to satisfy those claims: billions of years is "almost" eternal? No, eternal means forever, i.e.more than many trillions times longer than a mere few billion years, and most molecules are much shorter-lived anyway. "Atoms" meant indivisible, yet we know that molecules, atoms, and protons & neutrons are divisible. Quarks, on the other hand, can come to be from energy and converted back into energy, so there are NO particles that are eternal.
DeleteAnd while DNA molecules are very large molecules, they make up a very small percentage of any animal, and a given DNA molecule doesn't last billions of years, or even thousands of years. Dogs are not made up primarily of "dog" atoms (or molecules), but of water molecules, and amino acids, and glucose molecules (and other sugars), etc. The very same kinds of amino acids that make a dog are also in a cat, a mouse, and a crocodile. There are 92 naturally occurring atoms, and they are identical in any animal they occur in.
Have you ever noticed that you can pound solids into finer and finer powders, so fine you cannot even see the individual particles, yet the powder retains the basic properties of the solid, such as sweetness, saltiness, or the nutritiousness of the seeds the flour comes from?
The issue between atomists and non-atomists is not whether a material can be divided into very, very small bits of the same kind: both agreed that this is possible. The atomists posited that there is a smallest particle of a given kind, and that this cannot be divided at all. The above observation with salt was at the time explained equally well with a continuous matter hypothesis as an atomic hypothesis: simply allow that very fine-grained clumps of salt remain in the water, too small to be seen, which tiny clumps remain notionally divisible into still smaller clumps which would remain, each, fully salt in all of its attributes. There is nothing in Democritus' theory that accounts for the "atom" of salt not being salt through and through and notionally divisible again and again even if we have no means of carrying out finer divisions, just as a line is notionally divisible ad infinitum.
"billions of years is "almost" eternal? "
DeleteYes, from a human perspective a billion years might just as well be forever.
""Atoms" meant indivisible, yet we know that molecules, atoms, and protons & neutrons are divisible."
Yes, of course. The ancient Greek atomists did not get all the details correct, but they were reasoning in the right direction.
Even as recently as John Dalton atoms were thought to be indivisible. That seems like common sense, but science is often at odds with common sense. Science often contradicts and overthrows common sense. Eventually it was discovered that what was thought to be indivisible was itself divisible, and far more complex than probably anybody had seriously imagined.
"And while DNA molecules are very large molecules, they make up a very small percentage of any animal, and a given DNA molecule doesn't last billions of years, or even thousands of years."
And there are not infinitely many kinds of them, but there are trillions of kinds of them, at least, perhaps more.
"Dogs are not made up primarily of "dog" atoms"
By volume or mass, yes, but what makes a cell develop into a particular sort of organism? DNA is primary in that sense.
Obviously, nobody got the details correct, and even today, physics is highly incomplete.
The Greek atomists reasoned very well in generally the right direction, really an amazing accomplishment at that time. Aristotle went backwards with his ideas of continuous homogeneous substances made of earth, water, air, and fire.
The atomists provided a much more accurate and insightful model of physics than Aristotle.
"The above observation with salt was at the time explained equally well with a continuous matter hypothesis as an atomic hypothesis:"
Except the continuous matter hypothesis was wrong, and atomism was supported by a host of evidences.
"The above observation with salt was at the time explained equally well with a continuous matter hypothesis as an atomic hypothesis:"
DeleteExcept the continuous matter hypothesis was wrong, and atomism was supported by a host of evidences.
And there we have it: the atomists (according to SP) were better scientists because they accidentally hypothesized a theory that happened to be a better theory, even though their reasoning AT THAT TIME didn't provide any better account of data than the continuous matter hypothesis account at that time. It took Dalton (2000 years later) to come up with a rational account that helped (at all) to explain why the particles of, say, water, could not be further divided into smaller bits of water, before that it was mere supposition and conjecture. And my broken clock, twice a day, is just as good as a Swiss watch.
WCB
ReplyDeleteIf you hang a wet piece of clothing on a line in the sunlight, the water disappears. But one cannot see the water as it evaporates. If you boil a pot of water, one can see it boil. Hold a clay plate above the pot, and water condenses. A miller can mill wheat to very fine particles each particle hard to see with the naked eye. The atomists observed these sort of facts and that was the basis of their theories. And the atomists were basically right if not getting fine details on atoms right. The atomists were far closer to the truth than Aristotle, Plato, or the alchemists.
Pierre Gassendi revived atomist theory, and chemistry progressed based on the idea of atoms.
But atomists started with some basic observation. Plato was alleged to have plotted to buy up all the writings of Democritus and burn them. Bad Plato!
WCB
No. Aristotle was way closer than the atomists to empirical observations, since his "minima naturalia" is basically what matter at a quantum level is describing.
DeleteBad atomists.
Also, how can something dimensionless be material? Checkmate, Democritus.
"his "minima naturalia" is basically what matter at a quantum level is describing."
DeleteIs it?
For Aristotle substances were homogeneous continuous mixtures of earth, water, air, and fire, which were themselves homogeneous continuous substances.
So, for Aristotle substances were like our experience of pudding, an undifferentiated undivided blob.
But in his description he imagined that a pudding could only be divided so far, not infinitely, after which is would disassociate into earth, water, wind, and fire in proportions attributed to those proportions needed to produce the pudding.
That does not sound much like quantum mechanics, or quantum fields.
"Quantum"
Meaning, to have or be of quanta, that is, countable, discrete packets.
Common sense leads one to view substances as continuous homogeneous and pudding-like.
Modern science strongly contradicts common sense in that regard.
"If you hang a wet piece of clothing on a line in the sunlight, the water disappears. But one cannot see the water as it evaporates
DeleteDifficult to know what is meant by that, or what it is meant to prove; particularly in contrast to deliberately boiled water.
In any event one can see water evaporate at least insofar as seeing the effect produced as a fabric dries and the migrating vapor condenses in what looks like "steam" at a short distance from the surface, and then drifts away.
The vapor rising from the drying hunting gloves parked on your knee as you sit in the sun on the hillside you have just scaled, is just one example.
SD
ReplyDeleteYou need to start your own blog. You would have a
following.
It's called an asylum.
DeleteWell, philosophy and a little madness often go together.
Delete.https://www.brainz.org/10-philosophers-who-were-mentally-disturbed/
Wiggenstein had Asperger Syndrome.
Following the development of this thread has confirmed my earlier surmises concerning two points.
ReplyDeleteFirst, that the most profitable way of handling a certain type of character is to stand back and let the damned fool talk his head off.
Second, that western civilization is in no danger of collapsing no matter how much time I spend engaged in field sports.
Regarding the first point. This is because an intricate multifaceted refutation, simply creates more opportunities for the disruptor to pick and chose which points to evade completely, and which points to try and brazen it out on through equivocation, misdirection, or reappropriation.
Some here have shown the following: that "less", ranging between very little to none, turns out to be "more" in terms of productivity when it comes to plainly fixing the actual argumentation landscape.
And speaking of landscapes and formations in general, and more specifically the various stratigraphic discontinuities and found forms inexplicable in terms of demonstrated geological processes; there is an additional and precising and overlooked term available to investigators besides the categorical judgments of "natural" process or "'supernatural' intervention". Such found or dis-covered objects or evidences, are sometimes categorized as "artifacts".
There are as it turns out entire fields of study devoted to the discovery, categorization, and explanation of these things, as investigators distinguish between say and for example, a dry and subsurface Saharan riverbed on the one hand, and what is famously known to us all as the Antikythera mechanism, on the other. There is obviously "natural", and then there is ... "natural".
In additional fact there are even philosophical considerations of the origination and ontological status of this class of objects; considerations, which have been addressed more than once by the proprietor of this blog.
I only mention it at this juncture, in order to pin the point down, lest it get lost in a fog of equivocating nothing-butist naturalist spewings later on.
But for now, keep that to yourself, so we can watch how it all plays out.
My guess is that eventually what we will see is the cellular mechanism design argument of the intelligent design crowd, turned on its head in order to argue the opposite of their contention.
"You see, gear hobbing machines and gunnery clocks are simply inevitable productions of an unconscious set of predetermined and inevitable outcomes. And their very existence proves that this is so."
How is it that I anticipate this? See the "Ask an atheist what evidence would suffice to demonstrate the existence of God to them." videos for just one demonstration.
Following the verminous Marx we also learn that there is nothing outside of the cosmic egg, and therefore anything found or experienced or inferred, is per definition, encapsulated within its pulsing "evolution". No further ultimate questions are required ... Or permitted.
WCB
ReplyDeleteConsider your ancient Greek peasant. This peasant could sit at a table enjoying a bowl of gruel. Said peasant did not need to know anything bout pysicsto use his table. And most certainly knew no physics any way. And didn't need to know any chenisry to enjoy his gruel.
But consider a modern day designer of CPUs. Said designer needs to be very knowledgable about chemistry, and physics, both classical and quantum physics to design a working CPU.
A cat jumping up on a table (where it isn't supposed to be) doesn't need to know physics to sit on the table.
A physicist that investigates the true nature of physics and how the quantum world of physics creates a classical physical worldof cats, tables, peasants and bowls of porridge is doing something far different from a Greek porridge eating peasant. But his findings matter to the CPU designing engineer.
Don't overthink this and create meaningless philosopher's question. Enjoy your porridge.
WCB
"A physicist that investigates the true nature of physics and how the quantum world of physics creates a classical physical worldof cats"
DeleteAs opposed to what? A "Greek porridge eating peasant"? Well, one of the two worlds is the one I live in. You know, the world where I wake up every morning, in which I exist, in which I need to eat, in which I cry and rejoice.
If you want to claim this world is not the one showing the "true nature" of whatever, then be my guest, live with your particles, and let me eat your fridge. We'll see which one of us stays alive.
As my ol' Thomistic philosophy teacher said : "if you have to listen to an armchair philosopher with materialist metaphysics or your butcher, go for your butcher -- at least, what he'll base his life on is the real world".
Don't overthink this and create meaningless philosopher's question. Enjoy your porridge.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a prophet, so I didn't expect a confirmation of my observation so soon following my "meta" ruminations on the larger dynamic and motivations behind the techniques adopted by those 'antipathetic attachees', to Feser's blog.
Of course there is nothing really prophetic involved in reminding oneself of the clearly and historically ennunciated motivations and ideological underpinnings of the more ardent and militantly a-thiestic naturalists.
Anyone who has recently refreshed on the atomists or recalled to mind Marx's (anti-metaphysical) pronunciamentos in the EPM writings, anyone who has watched Richard Rorty shrug off the notion of "truth" or who remembers A J Ayer's admissions to Bryan Magee concerning the ideological impetus behind logical positivism [at least in part] , will instantly recognize the directive agenda embedded within these philosophies, or, sometimes, anti-philosophies.
The irony involved in movements that purport to advance intellectual and moral liberty, but end up instructing one to keep one's head down, if not to outright shut up and get with the program or else, seems to be lost on them. Seems to be, as it really isn't.
The Queen of the Borg offers you inclusion, bodily satisfactions, an untroubled conscience informed by an ever mutating general will, and release from all metaphysical concerns or anxieties. How can you resist? Why would you? What good as we define "good", will it do you in your illusory "youness"?
So shut up, return to the fecundity of flowing matter, and enjoy your porridge while it, and you, both last. Don't ask "why". "Why" is not a real question. It is a projective illusion of undeveloped minds and unyielding personalities which have not yet learned acceptance. Eat up. It's the only ultimate reality.
Further instructions will be forthcoming as deemed appropriate.
Man. WCB and SP are awfully verbose on Feser's blog lately. I guess it's the time of the year where whacky madmen proselytize.
ReplyDeleteI wonder what they're trying to do.
I mean, if I were to argue against common sense and evidence, and spout shitty eliminativism that is self-refuting, I would start my own blog.
Not appear as a loony on Feser's combox, proving at every single of my comments that I'm a total doofus.
The ravage of madman eliminativism/atheism is impressive.
I join you in wondering what they hope to accomplish. Their arguments are consistently bad, and when shown how bad they are, they simply ignore the refutation and repeat themselves _ad nauseam_. If they actually engaged in reasonable debate, it may serve some purpose. Thomists don't mind being challenged, but the challenge should at least be intelligent, not these flag-waiving ignorant speeches we're routinely getting here.
DeleteI nowadays just skim their posts to verify that we're getting another round of talking points and move on. It's a waste of time otherwise.
Yes, Bill, but I wonder why Dr. Feser tolerates them. They pollute combox space... :/
DeleteYeah. Why does Dr. Feser allow them? They pollute the exanges. I use to enjoy arguing with some fellow thomists in the comments, nowadays it's just a random materialist idiot unable to formulate a good objection. :(
DeleteEvangelism is not about creating echo chambers.
DeleteWell, as someone with blog admin experience, I know that too heavy a hand will dry up discussions pronto. Debate, even annoying debates, serve to provoke the commentariat to provide rebuttals that can be highly instructional to lurkers. Wise admins must avoid constructing an amen corner.
ReplyDeleteThat said, this stuff from SD and WCB is over the top. It's the same old tripe from thread to thread. I see no instructional value in it whatsoever. If it's allowed merely to advertise how stupid atheists are, I think the shelf life on that ran its course a long time ago.
You were well and truly ticked off there professor. It must infuriate you when such characters effectively direct you as to how to run your combox.
DeleteYou know, it is all very simple. If you consider someone to be a troll, or to be forever making worthless comments, then a. do not interact with them, and b. do not expend acres of text discussing them. Meanwhile, if you are an 'Anonymous', tag yourself uniquely somehow, then everyone will find it easy to keep track of discussions regardless of what your personal outcasts are contributing.
NiGEL
Bill,
Delete"SD and WCB is over the top. It's the same old tripe from thread to thread. I see no instructional value in it whatsoever."
More's the pity. And here I had such high hopes for your instructional progress.
Chin up, today is the first day of the rest of your life. It's never too late to do the right thing.
Modern science fundamentally contradicts common sense in many ways. You can learn a few approximate things about material reality just with common sense, enough to get by as a hunter gatherer.
But, if you really want to get some instruction in the underlying reality you will have to be willing to have your common sense contradicted and overturned by modern science.
Disease is caused by microscopic organisms, not demons or spells cast upon you.
Material is composed of molecules, atoms and a host of subatomic structures, not earth, water, air, fire, and form.
Objects do not have perceived properties of qualia intrinsic to them. Your perceptions of qualia are hallucinations, manufactured internally. An apple does not have the property of being red. The experience of red is an hallucination manufactured inside your brain.
I realize you are likely to scoff at some or all of these scientific findings, but if you keep trying I hold out hope for your ability to eventually absorb such instructions.
"An apple does not have the property of being red"
DeleteI see what you're saying here. Symbols on a computer screen don't have the property of meaning or semantics and brain matter does not have the property of rational intelligence. The pile of molecules labeled StardustyPsyche isn't actually communicating with anything and she isn't actually rational. Science(tm) says so. Huzzah!
Anon
Delete"Symbols on a computer screen don't have the property of meaning or semantics"
Correct.
"brain matter does not have the property of rational intelligence."
Correct.
"The pile of molecules labeled StardustyPsyche isn't actually communicating with anything"
Define "communicating".
"isn't actually rational."
Define "rational" and "actually".
Discussing the reality or unreality of the self, and of rational thought requires some very detailed and finely parsed focus on the precise meanings of terms that might otherwise seem to be commonly understood.
That is further evidence that Dr. Feser really missed the mark on this OP. Science very strongly contradicts common sense in a variety of ways, including a number of assertions that are commonly made in common language.
Without fine parsing of definitions in such cases effective communication is hopeless, since any exchange will quickly devolve into quips and equivocations.
The obvious scientific fact that, for example, color and taste are sensory hallucinations is much simpler to discuss.
Do you really suppose that certain molecules somehow have the intrinsic properties of being sweet, or bitter, delicious, or repulsive?
A fly or a vulture finds the sensory experience of certain materials to be highly attractive and delicious, yet you find them to be repulsive and nauseating. Obviously, on science and scientific reasoning, there is nothing intrinsic about rotting flesh that is either good tasting or bad tasting. Each living organism makes up its own sensory experience internally.
That what an hallucination is, an internally made up sensory experience. In the cases of taste and color your sensory experiences, your sensations of qualia, are hallucinatory.
The fact that your common sense leads you to scoff at such obviously true scientific facts is yet another example of how wrong the OP is.
"Do you really suppose that certain molecules somehow have the intrinsic properties of being sweet, or bitter, delicious, or repulsive?"
DeleteWhat I suppose is that certain molecules create certain effects when put in contact with certain substances. The effect of perceived bitterness, sweetness, etc can be repeated over and over again.
"A fly or a vulture finds the sensory experience of certain materials to be highly attractive and delicious, yet you find them to be repulsive and nauseating."
Not surprising at all. Putting the same molecules on different substances probably won't produce the same effect. Why is this surprising to you?
I'll say one thing for the two of them. They seem to acknowledge that materialism does in fact entail eliminativism.
DeleteOn the other hand, once somebody admits that they actually believe in eliminative materialism, I generally regard them as so fundamentally irrational as to have nothing further worthwhile to contribute to anything else of import on any philosophical or adjacent topics.
It's a bit of a catch-22 I guess. Reason demands that one see that materialism entails eliminativism, but to actually adopt eliminativism requires one to fundamentally deconstruct and reject the basic concepts of reason, objective truth, universal laws of logic, so anyone who does so and continually argues from that premise cannot help but be an incoherent sophistry-spewing troll.
"Not surprising at all."
DeleteRight, the same chemical exposure, leads to similar nerve pulses, which lead to similar brain processes, which lead to a similar hallucination.
You seem to be considering that because the hallucination is triggered by an external physical process, through a causal chain of cellular processes, that makes it not an hallucination.
Suppose that each time a bell rings you don't hear the bell, but a fantastic animation of kaleidoscope colors plays in you view. Is the kaleidoscope color display not an animation by virtue of being triggered to be displayed by a ringing bell?
Yes, our sensory experiences of qualia are causally linked to real external processes, which is why they are selected for as net beneficial. When we experience a particular hallucination we correlate it with an external process. When we experience a different hallucination we correlate that with a different external process.
Objects do not have the intrinsic properties of color or taste. Color and taste are hallucinatory qualia experiences, internally generated in response to a causal chain of physical materials that stimulate cells that in turn send spike trains to our brains, which then animate the qualia experience that is correlated with the impinging external material.
Deuce,
Delete"once somebody admits that they actually believe in eliminative materialism, I generally regard them as so fundamentally irrational"
Perhaps one day you will recover from your state of misunderstanding, in that case.
"Reason demands that one see that materialism entails eliminativism,"
Indeed, well, at least you understand that much, that's a good start anyhow.
"but to actually adopt eliminativism requires one to fundamentally deconstruct and reject the basic concepts of reason, objective truth, universal laws of logic"
Oh, darn, you were doing so well there for a few minutes, then you went off into simplistic half baked nonsense.
Well, at least you got this much right
"but to actually adopt eliminativism requires one to fundamentally deconstruct xxxxxxxx the basic concepts of reason, objective truth, universal laws of logic"
Indeed, deconstruction of seeming fundamentals is what analytical philosophy calls for. There are no subjects off limits to deconstruction, why should there be?
Materialism entails eliminativism.
Eliminativism entails deconstruction of seeming fundamentals.
Ok, you are doing well up to that point.
It seems you jump off track when you get to the word "reject".
There are processes we name "reason".
Ontological reality is objectively true.
Laws of logic are an objective standard.
Once you learn how to coherently deconstruct seeming fundamentals perhaps eliminativism will become comprehensible to you.
I saw you pushing your ignorance again, SP. Heard about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_field_theory ? How does it make you feel knowing that the "discrete physics" you follow, from the failed atomists, gave way to the continuous fields, much close to Plato & Aristotle?
DeleteYou goof.
ReplyDeleteSeveral readers comment:
"Man. WCB and SP ... I guess it's the time of the year where whacky madmen proselytize.
I wonder what they're trying to do"
"I join you in wondering what they hope to accomplish. ...don't mind being challenged, but ... not these flag-waiving ignorant speeches"
"They pollute the exanges. I use to enjoy arguing with some fellow thomists..."
"I wonder why Dr. Feser tolerates them. They pollute combox space ..."
What they imagine they are doing in terms of motivations and aims, versus why they actually are engaging, in the manner which they are, is a question that applies to the broader ( and now not so ...) New Atheist movement as well.
They merely constitute a local sample of it.
The aggressiveness, intent to enter and disrupt, and the broader agenda aimed at reconstituting the social atmosphere and the Iifeways and moral values of the people, are enough well known on the big stage through mass media. The "devil" parades proudly there. Here, we see that this has permeated the open social spaces more generally through his imps; though the effect of a few determined and venue hopping obsessives may misleadingly amplify the effect.
So why allow them entrée? Several reasons.
Here is one having little to do with ars gratia artis style free speech or discussion.
You tolerate them within limits because they serve as paradigmatic cases of what one can expect more generally and socially from such people. One sees - eventually - what exactly it is that stands behind the surface argument. The ostensible issue, is not the issue.
This tedious and ongoing process though sometimes annoying, and very frustrating for those who - even like myself - perhaps naively try to respond on point initially, is nonethless revelatory.
The revelation is this: even when given all the space they could possibly use, and all the tolerance which anyone could hope for, ultimately, their arguments reduce to the same resentment motivated equivocating and sloganeering that we see playing out in the streets. The 'science' is just window dressing.
The difference is that here, one gets a much more sustained, comprehensive, and on the record view into the mental workings, arguments, usually unstated assumptions and principles both intellectual and moral, which lead to the manifestation of these types of characters.
In recent months, you have gotten a much clearer picture of just how bad, and full of self-defeating assumptions their arguments really are.
We have seen more than a handful of outright nihilistic admissions, of the reducer being reduced, of the collapse in on itself of the entire justification project: as the deconstructive acids have eaten away the very moral platform upon which these will-to-power midgets were standing in order to harrangue.
I'd reckon that getting it all irrefutably down in the form of a 'paper transcript' was worth the price.
DNW,
DeleteYou have been on this blog from the beginning. Tell us how it has evolved (or devolved) over the years. You are uniquely positioned to do so.
OMG, get ready for an excruciatingly boring and interminable reply, from the king of bores himself. Might just be readable if an editor could slash its length by 2/3 and insist on inumerable stylistic changes, but in their absence I for one will be giving the coming windbaggery a miss.
DeleteAnonymousDecember 7, 2023 at 10:28 AM
Delete"DNW,
You have been on this blog from the beginning. Tell us how it has evolved (or devolved) over the years. You are uniquely positioned to do so."
Not from the beginnng, but off and on for a long time.
Grodrigues, or Machine Philosophy wherever he has gone, would be better posed to answer that question.
But generally, and off the top of my head:
- The blog proprietor offers the same careful and comprehensive approaches to the topics as he always has.
- However as his publication record has developed to include specifically theologically tangent philosophical topics in addition to philosophy of mind, conceptual analysis, political philosophy, and moderate realism, he seems to me, and it is just my impression, attracted a blog readership both more intensely pro and anti religious than I recall.
I suppose it is only natural given his recent works.
But the occssional level of sensitive, almost passive, piousness among some commenters, reminiscent of what one might imagine is characteristic of a wan acolyte in some monastic order, nonetheless surprises me.
On the other hand it cannot all be conceptual analysis day in and day out.
I think one of greatest results accruing from the bloging hosted controversies over classical theism, was the admission - either directly or indirectly provoked - from D.B. Hart to the effect that if universalism is not true, then he is simply not interested in the alternative version of God. In other words, a clear admission that he is only interested in a god comporting to his own sensibilities.
That, was a score, in my view.
I don't know that Feser was directly responsible for that, or would want any credit whatsoever for it if he was, but I was glad to see it because it revealed just where all that fulminating mysterianism was emanating from. Not from some crack in the rock of Mt. Athos, but from the emotional mind of D.B. Hart.
I also think that the unremitting polemicism, and generally citation free assertions of the Chief Under The Bridge Dweller, has been edifying in its own way. The track record of pirouetting flippancy, shameless equivocating, and polemicism in service of a sociopolitical agenda rather than science has been well and truly established.
I figure the opportunity for the dissection of such well preserved specimens has been worth the annoyance.
DNW doesn't need editing.
DeleteAnonymous
DeleteDecember 8, 2023 at 2:49 PM
"DNW doesn't need editing."
Well, I might.
But inasmuch as I-must-say's grievances [assuming that there cannot be two or more identically affected ponces trolling this blog] are his boredom, and his dissatisfacion with my so-called "style", I guess that that is neither here nor there, eh?
And we do have to credit him with an extraordinary vigilance at least.
Think of the energy, or anxiety, it takes to either constantly track or to set up an alert so as not to miss any opportunity or reference which might provide him with an opportunity to get an anticipatory word in.
I've run into a couple of these terriers before. And it's amazing the self-inflicted - but invisible to them - humiliation they are willing to undergo as they pursue an obsessive quest to "get back some of their own".
They would know that they are acting like spurned and bitter girl friends, if they had ever had one.
Perhaps, as a generous and Christian sort, you might advise him as to how all this looks.
"DNW doesn't need editing."
DeleteHah. Thanks. But taking a second look it now appears that I very well might!
Like many of you, I have had to suppress spell check and disallow auto-correct, because even now it interferes with the vocabulary we tend to use in these contexts. Or did last time I permitted it.
In addition, I'm too proud to wear reading glasses; and so, using a hand held device with small print ... well you get the picture.
I'm told that wearing glasses may contribute to an eventual reliance on them.
I think I'd rather keep my eyes for hunting, even if it means giving up philosophy. Or so I judge at the moment.
The first thing that seems to go is your ability not to see objects in the distance, but to see motionless objects clearly through brushy obstructions in the middle distance.
You might see a couple of tan on brown background whitetails 500 or 600 yards away across a field even after the sun has dipped below the treeline, but miss a buck 60 yards away through the bushes and saplings midafternoon.
The dappling effect of a sunny snowless background makes it worse. You may have had the same or a similar experience.
Maybe raw carrots would help ...
DNW,
Delete"I'm told that wearing glasses may contribute to an eventual reliance on them.
I think I'd rather keep my eyes for hunting, even if it means giving up philosophy. Or so I judge at the moment."
I hope you are just kidding.
If you need glasses for reading then wearing them will reduce eyestrain and prevent damage to your eyes.
Good luck with the hunting.
Yes, I was kidding.
DeleteScrewy acting device. Possibly responding for the second time: Yes, I was kidding.
DeleteThanks for the clarification.
DeleteWCB
ReplyDelete"No. Aristotle was way closer than the atomists to empirical observations, since his "minima naturalia" is basically what matter at a quantum level is describing."
- Anonamous
Aristotle wrote the world is made of Earth, water, air, fire, and ether. Neither observable, nor true. Democritus, Leucippus, and Epicurous guessed better.
Atoms and the void? Or 57 crystal spheres?
WCB
Given that QP basically killed the hypothesis of elementary particles, I'd say that it's Aristotle who has the last laugh.
DeleteBut keep on humoring us. Go play with SP like a big scientistic goof.
"Atoms and the void? Or 57 crystal spheres?"
DeleteYou mean, the four atoms - like, the "fire atoms" of the soul - the one
with the small hooks? The ones that are uncuttable because they cannot
be observed? The ones that are completely different from our current
scientific model?
Or are you talking about the string-like objects who are not localized
in space, have a potentiality driven by a probabilistic wave function
that is driven by other single objects, which prevent crude
reductionnism? The one concept validated by current science, who looks
strangely close to what "prime matter" is said to be?
It's funny how you can make opinions seem foolish when you present with
your snarky bias, WCB. I thought you were better than that...
WCB
ReplyDeleteYes atoms exist. There are 92 natural atoms, each being an element. Yes, the atomists got the idea atoms are not divisible wrong. And yes, it is not physical hooks that matter. But no, no sign of 57 crystal speres. Some ancient ideas were on the right track, otheres were not.
WCB
"There are 92 natural atoms, but they're not like the atoms of the atomists, because like they're divisible, and they're not having physical hooks. Also, please, please, don't think about potentiality, focus on the crystal spheres, you know."
DeleteThat's how silly you sound.
WCB
ReplyDeleteWhy does it sound silly to note that the atomists were wrong about the divisability of atoms, atoms that were the elements that made up all things? The atomists were wrong about the idea atoms them selves were made of discrete particle, but Aristotle's earth, water, air and fire were just as wrong in that regard also. The atomists spoke of the void. Aristotle tells us that nature abhors a vaccum. The Universe is basicaly a vast vaccum with some matter here and there. Does that mean noting Aristotle's error is silly? Aristotle's 57 crystal spheres assumes a geocentric Universe. His claims the curved paths of the planets were because curved paths were divine by nature. Why am I silly to note the atomists basically got the atoms and the void right if not correct in the minute details? With Lucretius's De Rerum Natura, atomism had a new rebirth, while Aristotles 4 elements, geocentrism, crystal spheres and impossible vaccums start to disappear as viable claims.
WCB
Because with the heavy modifications done (especially by the quantum mechanicists themselves), it's no longer "the atoms of the atomists" or "the spheres of Aristotle".
DeleteYou (and SP) seem to be tedious in showing that atomists got it right, and Plato/Aristotle fumbled it.
The point is, if you read Heisenberg, you should know that he said it himself :
“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”
Some of your Anonymous critics are just rude and insulting. One is a nutter who makes physical threats. They are not up to the task of serious disputation and are to be pitied.
DeleteWhy bring that here, Anonymous? Are you one of SP/WCB false noses, provoking disputation for drama?
DeleteThere are no physical threats in this page, just two of the same old nutters, SP & WCB, putting their shameless self-refuting ideas over and over.
“I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato."
DeleteThat would be funny if it did not represent a hubris that people for some reason take seriously. At that time some people were actually asserting that physics was complete. How absurd.
"In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas "
More drivel from a physicist.
"which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”
We have no unambiguous expressions for matter at its smallest units. Clearly Heisenberg had no clue what he was talking about on this subject.
Here, people, you can witness first hand the bad faith and meaningless drivel of the full troll of SP.
DeleteNotice that he's taking part of a chat in which he has no idea about.
Notice that, as usual, he doesn't KNOW a single bit.
Notice that, even more, he just opens it because he's angry that some renowed physicist doesn't share his love for meaningless comment.
And notice finally, once more, that he has not a single amount of "evidence" (you know, the kind of thing he always claim to have).
I wonder why Feser allows him.
Ah, I see the previously Anonymous nutter is called Khatch.He is also proficient at accusing anyone who even remotely supports those he despises of being a 'false nose'. How tiresome.
DeleteAnonymous at 1.37PM
DeleteDon't think much of SD's posts and erroneously think him a troll? Well, do not feed him then, and that includes obsessively writing acres of commentry about him. It is very simple really.
And the professor does allow him to post here, so get used to it.
Yes, it is very simple. And it makes little sense to engage with someone you think is talking nonsense or acting rudely.
DeleteIf one subscribes to the thread, it is very easy to block or ignore a poster when it goes to one's email.
@AnonymousDecember 10, 2023 :
DeleteHmm... No? Please, if you have anything against me, tell it, though this being the second time I posted on this blog, it's painful to see such insanity thrown at me.
Khatch 2.52PM
DeleteIf all you can do is call some posters nutters and insinuate that a third is a 'false nose', perhaps there should not be a third time.
Hello Professor Feser. Have you some opinion about Professor Brad Wray 's "Resisting Scientific Realism"? I'm currently reading that book and enjoying it. Very interesting arguments against realism. Greetings from sunny Brazil!
ReplyDeleteImmanuel,
DeleteI suppose summer in bursting into sunshine and warm days for our friends down under. Meanwhile you can watch reports of record snowstorms and a white Christmas!
Science is unreal in what sense? Wholly imaginary? Not referencing anything real? Not in any sense a valid approximation?
Or do you consider all descriptive statements that fail to capture every detail with absolutely precise accuracy to be untrue, and therefore unreal?
If that is your standard of realism, then none of us knows anything real.
Perhaps that is the case, one can certainly make that assertion, but then why single out science?
By that standard of truth, if you say it was 26C in sunny Brazil today you are speaking falsely, because it was actually only 25.9999997C in sunny Brazil today. How very unrealistic of you, in that case.
One could combine this with Kuhn’s basic ideas and see a Kuhnian revolution as taking place when a scientific community changes *which* abstractions it takes to be most important. This accounts for incommensurability but is also consistent with a kind of scientific realism.
ReplyDelete