[MD] Experience, essentialism, physicalism

Wed Apr 5 07:26:21 PDT 2006

Sorry guys, I'm only slowly catching up on this thread, having ignored
most of it due to "having a life" in recent weeks - but it looks
interesting :-)

Wayback, Scott offered some definitions of physicalism - one from
Rorty (which is too old hat, too ignorant of physics) and one from
wikipedia which included -

"the term "physicalism" is preferable [to materialism] because it does
not have any misleading ethical connotations, and because it carries
an emphasis on the physical, meaning whatever is described ultimately
by physics -- not just matter but energy and whatever else our best
physical theories might talk about."

FWIW that's exactly what I mean when I claim the label "physicalist" for myself.
ie Physics is "whatever", by definition. (Theoretical physics is
actual metaphysics - as I may have quoted before.)

Moving on, I'm slightly puzzled how the end-game has turned into Ant vs Matt.

I'm a big fan of Dennett, as an evolutionary scientist and
philosopher, he's more aware of the limitations of SOMist scientific
thought than the arrogant Dawkins say, but unlike say Blackmore (and
Pirsig and Northrop), he hasn't caught the Zen bug.

(But I do find Searle, Dennett (and Pinker) much closer than most
people typically characterise them, but then I'm always looking for
synthesis in difference, rather than conflict.)

The thing I agree with Ant on here, is that the remaining mystery of
consciousness (and remaining belief in the illusory nature of
free-will) is simply the dualism inherent in the SOM starting point. I
found Dennett's more recent "Freedom Evolves" and "Sweet Dreams" a
great improvement on "Consciousness Explained", which clearly he
hasn't, yet.

Although Chalmers is scrupulously being "scientific" avoiding anything
"mystical" I find he is working very hard to avoid reductionist causal
assumptions implicit (but not explicit in reality) in physicalism. He
may eventually get there - I'm still getting to grips with him. (The
pro / anti-qualia debate is a red-herring, for the basic reason that
there is no mystery to explain - Ant's point ?)

Ian

On 4/5/06, Ant McWatt <antmcwatt at hotmail.co.uk> wrote:
> Matt,
>
> Here are a few more answers and a lot more questions…
>
> I mentioned Northrop's concepts by intuition and postulation as they put
> more detail in Chalmer's criticism of Dennett's conflation of 'seem' in the
> psychological sense and 'seem' in the phenomenal sense.  You appear to brush
> this criticism off by stating that "Dennett and some others do sometimes, in
> their less careful and more scientistic moments, sound like they are using
> the distinction and saying the latter psychological 'seem'" but, as far as I
> remember, Chalmer's thought this conflation largely undermined Dennett's
> theory on consciousness especially as it appears in a critical part of
> "Consciousness Explained" i.e. Chapter 12 where Dennett is trying to
> "disqualify" qualia (or what you portray as an explanation of "_why_ we
> believe in qualia").  I'd also say that it is wrong-headed to think that you
> can "believe in qualia."  It's an inane project as "_why_ we believe that we
> breathe" and is no doubt an 'epiphenomenon' of an SOM frame of mind.
>
> Even before you get past the first page of "Consciousness Explained",
> Dennett asserts that there is a mystery to be explained about why Cartesian
> mind substance can "fit in the same world with the nerve cells and molecules
> that [make] up my brain".  And, of course, the answer is……
>
> (drum roll)
>
> …there isn't a mystery unless you're buying into SOM (or at least some of
> its assumptions).
>
> F.S.C. Northrop ("The Meeting of East & West", 1946, p.452-53) explains the
> difficulties with the "mystery" below:
>
> "The concatenation of factors which is an awareness of a rose as red is not
> a result of an unaesthetic material substance by some mysterious activity
> jumping out of space across a metaphysical gulf to act upon an equally
> unaesthetic blank mental substance which in some mysterious way projects out
> of itself the color which is observed, as a mere appearance; instead all
> occurrences in human awareness and in human knowledge are a result of
> natural relations between entities which in their aesthetic character and in
> their theoretic character are in the same world of discourse."
>
> "The color of the rose is, to be sure, a function of the observer, but it is
> equally surely a function also of the character of the rose…. it is a
> function, not of any hypothetical mental substance with which the observer
> is supposed to be identified, but… of the observer's bodily sense organs….
> for it is not by altering the mental substance but by altering the effect
> upon the rods and cones in a normal person's eye that he can be made to see
> a different color upon the rose than the one he normally sees."
>
> The "Cartesian mystery" can only be avoided by Descartes' assumptions
> concerning mind and matter being dropped completely (which Dennett isn't
> doing!) and by employing a completely different ontology such as that found
> in Taoism or Mahayana Buddhism.  I think you not only avoid the unlikely
> conclusions of behaviourism etc with such systems, you get better accounts
> of how qualia and consciousness relates with other aspects of reality.  The
> real mystery – in this regard - is the length of time it took Western
> philosophers to catch-up with their East Asian counterparts.
>
> Unfortunately, if one does not become familiar with East Asian philosophy
> before approaching the usual analytic suspects (such as Dennett, Putnam,
> Sellars & Quine) found in the contemporary Anglo-American philosophy
> department then you're usually heading for a metaphysical mess (and a
> headache).  The "analytic game" is already loaded within a particular
> physicalist/behaviourist frame of reference so solutions based on East Asian
> philosophy don't get a look in unless you bring them in yourself.  From what
> I've read so far, John Searle is probably the best of this "bunch" but even
> he is miles away from where Northrop and Pirsig are coming from.
>
> Anyone with some interest in the philosophical background of Pirsig's work
> will know that Northrop's ontology is also based on the East Asian tradition
> rather than, for instance, a Kantian one (though Northrop's concepts by
> intuition and by postulation, of course, aren't a feature of the MOQ).  As
> such, I do suspect that Quine's attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction
> and Sellars' attack on the Myth of the Given (that you mentioned), are both
> attacking some forms of Cartesian SOM and, as such, are irrelevant to
> Northrop's conceptual framework.   (However, if you do think their
> respective critiques dismiss the Tao/Dynamic Quality altogether, it would be
> interesting to hear why).
>
> An explanation of why you replied "I can accept it looking like hubris" to
> David E. Cooper's point that there is the issue of hubris that philosophers
> such as Rorty and Dennett are engaged in denying (or at least, denying the
> importance of) the non-linguistic source of all (static) things would also
> be of interest.  Are you saying that a correct recognition of the Tao in a
> philosophical system is not a desirable thing?  Or are you declaring that
> Dennett's and Rorty's work only appears to be implying this?  I'm also not
> sure the "worshipping of mystery" should be just discounted without
> explanation.  I'm not saying that I necessarily disagree with your sentiment
> but I do wonder where your dismissal is coming from.
>
> I do think philosophers should at least be concerned with mystery though not
> the "Cartesian mystery" which Dennett thinks (on page one of "Consciousness
> Explained") is the last genuine one remaining!   Rather, I think the central
> mystery remains the aesthetic component found in the world and human nature.
>  As Northrop (from "The Logic of the Sciences & Humanities") discusses in
> the following:
>
> "[For instance], the primary task of poetry, arising out of art in its first
> function, is to convey the aesthetic component of reality in and for itself
> apart from all postulated doctrine and theory. Put more concretely, it must
> keep men continuously aware of the freshness and the ineffable beauty and
> richness of the immediately apprehended.  This is a function which must be
> provided. Otherwise we lose the riches and values of life which are
> immediately before our senses."
>
> "One of the most deadening influences upon human living arises out of the
> need to move on beyond the aesthetically immediate to postulated
> common-sense objects for the purposes of practical life and to postulated
> scientific objects and philosophical systems for the satisfaction of our
> intellectual curiosity and the attainment of more complete and manageable
> human knowledge. Both of these movements are necessary and good.
> Nevertheless, by themselves they tend to cause us to treat the ineffable
> beauty and the soul-sustaining freshness of the aesthetically immediate
> merely as a means to an end, thereby overlooking the contemplation of it in
> and for itself. As we hurry down the street of an evening the worries of
> practical living so overwhelm us, or, - if we are more scientifically and
> philosophically minded - we become so engrossed in our theories of the
> internal molecular constitution of the stars that we do not see and become
> refreshed by the beauty of the sunset which is immediately before our eyes.
> Unless we are protected by poetry and the other arts functioning purely in
> and for themselves, reality in its theoretical aspect is sought at the cost
> of losing its equally real aesthetic component, and the mind of man becomes
> overstimulated while his spirit dies."
>
> "There is a factor of the nature of things which can be known only by
> science and by theory with its recourse to concepts by postulation, and
> there is another important part pressing on the very threshold of our senses
> denoted by concepts by intuition which is equally essential for calm and
> complete living. The tragedy of the neglect of poetry and its sister arts
> treated in and for themselves is that we lose those riches of life which are
> available to everybody, rich and poor alike, immediately before our ears and
> noses and eyes. It is as if a man has part of the riches for which he is
> searching, present in his own yard and being so concerned about what is on
> the other side of its fence, goes off seeking in a far country."
>
> "The character of anything immediately apprehended merits more meticulous
> examination. Any item which is immediately felt or sensed is ineffable. One
> can look at a blue for hours and not quite intuit all its depth and
> richness. Also, if one's friend has never sensed a blue, no amount of
> discourse by the poet or the scientist can convey that datum to him. This is
> the character of anything immediately apprehended that it has to be
> immediately experienced to be known. If to be unstatable and hence ineffable
> is the characteristic of the mystical, then, contrary to popular opinion,
> the mystical and the ineffable is not off in some far distant speculative
> heaven, but in immediately apprehended fact directly before our eyes."
> (Northrop, 1947, pp.175-77)
>
> Northrop also discusses the aesthetic component of reality in some depth in
> "The Meeting of East & West" and emphasises here that it is important that
> we take proper account of it in learning to deal with the different
> (intellectual and social) values held by the various cultures in the world.
> Northrop argues that since the creation of nuclear weapons this _isn't_ a
> luxury that can be conveniently divided from other philosophical concerns.
>
> "First, the aesthetic component is an irreducible and essential component in
> man's nature.  Second, this aesthetic component is in part indeterminate…
> As cultivated by the Orient, the indeterminate aesthetic continuous
> component in man's nature and in the nature of all things has demonstrated
> itself to be a factor which pacifies men, giving them a compassionate
> fellow-feeling not merely for other men but for all nature's creatures, and
> serving to keep them more at peace with each other, rather than to send them
> off on wild, ill-considered and ill-grounded aggressive private,
> nationalistic, or religious military escapades."  (Northrop, 1946, p.471-72)
>
> As such, it sounds like a good idea that everyone should become Zen
> Buddhists or Taoists with strong interests in fine art, nature conservation
> and politics as soon as possible.  What do you reckon?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Anthony.
>
>
> www.robertpirsig.org
>
>
> "[Santa Claus] and I think alike – and of course we are both, by our own
> accounts, fictional characters of a sort, though of a slightly different
> sort."  (Dennett, 1991, p.411)
>
>
> .
>
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