On Sunday 14 September 2003 18:38, Tim wrote: > On Sep 14, 2003, at 5:30 PM, arnoud wrote: > > Hello Tim, > > The other ontological monist stances are philosophical idealism and > > neutral > > monism. But almost nobody holds those theories anymore (not?). > > Materialism is > > by far the most dominant monist position. Like Fodor said: we are all > > materialists now for the same reason Churchill was for democracy: the > > alternatives are even worse. > > > > Physicalism is actually an argument for one type of > > > >> description and one principle mode of knowing based on the idea that > >> it > >> is the most common variety of monism. Basically, it is very loaded. > > > > What do you mean? > > Well, what I mean by this is that materialism presupposes either a > pragmatic epistemology - like what you suggest below that materialism > be judged by the "success of the natural sciences".
I don't think the materialist epistemology is necessarily pragmatic. (However, I am to a large degree. ) Wittgenstein is > actually useful here if we were to look some of his arguments on > following a rule or theorem proving and likening that to scientific > knowledge. If we were to say that the "reason" - i.e. the formula > representation - for X is Y - where Y is a TOE - than is it in > particular "privileged" and a unique reference of "reason." Why do you always immediately go to TOE? And what is the point you are trying to make? I am not > trying to get embroiled in trivialities here - I think it is important > that we recognize that materialism is a ontology presupposition which > has highly prejudicial consequences in invalidating certain modes of > knowing. It's not prejudical, the truth of materialism is established a postiori, after centuries of science. If materialism is true that does not implicate all non-material talk is forbidden, but just that one needs to be instrumentalist about that. I.E. it may be perfectly valid for me to say something like - > "God told me X" and for that phenomenon to supersede the authority of > another large set of observations. This is somewhat the epistemological > position staked out by Reformed Epistomologists such as Plantiga or > others. If you really think that is valid, the bottom falls outof our discussion. I can't think of a more worse epistemological foundation than God. > > Materialism is to say that through test and observation of experienced > phenomenon, when have overriding access to the normative patterns of > the universe we experience. I don't think we speak the same language here. 'normative patterns of the universe'??? What do you mean by that? I don't agree at all with this formulation of materialism, and I've never seen a similar definition. (And is it a grammatically correct sentence?) Since the fruit of this is better > understanding of the set of experienced phenomenon that Materialism > accepts In principle no experience may be excluded, according to the scientific method. And Materialism must stay in that framework. as valid a priori it is somewhat like an incomplete formal > system where the particular set mappings are unknown. What happens on > this, however, is difficult because history has shown that the context > or frame of mapping is continually needing to be extended (that was my > point on the TOE-Information-Religious convergence). I really have no idea what you're talking about. > > To bottom line this, what I am trying to say is that advocates of > materialism make a lot of assumptions about the justification of its > knowledge. Well, you have to have criteria, and those criteria must not be biased towards certain theories a priori. My pragmatist criteria are good prediction of the outcome of experiments and succesful intervention in the world (technology). Theories (in their context of practice) that lead to better prediction of a system and more power to intervene succesfully in a system than other theories (in their context) can be said to be more true than the other theories. They are ultimately reduced to a kind of utility or > pragmatic measure that they take as ultimate. I follow the criteria formulated above, because of - what Wittgenstein called - logical compulsion. There can be no infinite regress of justification. At some point one needs to say: this is simply true. I will deal with the > issues of this below and show why it leads to postmodern drift. > > Now, if we reject the foundationalist interpretation that I am > supposing, it does not really improve the situation, because the > coherence of the of explanatory power in ALL matters of value. Notions > of perceived truth, right, wrong, etc. All have to be satisfied more > readily or simply as a type of network Now you are trying to reduce these concepts to (neurological) mechanisms, I take it. But that is not necessary, elimination outof a final materialist ontology is also possible (like Churchland does). After that, one can still use concepts like 'truth', 'right'... by giving them an instrumentalist status. Maybe you think that is the incoherence. where the lowest complexity > pathway is from the observed idea (or state would be better in this > language) to an accurate projection to the solution space. Even this > methodology is an assumption (now that I think of it) and might lead to > circularity. I don't know if there is a way around this in coherence > theories of truth. I'm not saying one way or another, - just don't > know. > > > I > > > >> think this is some of what you were getting at Ben. Right? > >> > >> It is difficult to see if the Physicalist model (or should I say > >> materialist? - maybe more sincere) is really coherent in any common > >> variety. > > > > This seems very odd to me. What is so incoherent about physicalism? > > > > The Dennett variety is actually rather vacuous in terms of its > > > >> epistemological justification. Most consistent thinkers who start off > >> trying to be good materialist/empiricists within analytic philosophy > >> tend to degrade into postmodern pragmatists (ala Richard Rorty). So, > >> we > >> need either subjective, shared, or objective truth, with the latter an > >> impossibility based on the problem of finite induction. > > > > I don't quite follow this train of thought. Physicalism to me is > > justified by > > the success of the natural sciences with their materialist ontology of > > atoms, > > electrons, molecules and so on. Even the phenomenon of human beings > > that used > > to be thought to be outof the explanatory reach of the natural > > sciences is > > now more and more understood in materialistic terms. Other projects of > > knowing seem to be far inferior, like mysticism, folk psychology, > > phenomenology. > > Where's the incoherence, the tendency to degrade in postmodern > > pragmatists? > > I think what I am suggesting us that the "grounding" of empiricism must > lie "outside of itself." I thought we were talking about materialism not empiricism. This is comparable to some of Quine's > criticisms. Now, the problem of finite induction - i.e. that a finite > number of observations (taken in itself) can never yield a convergence > to a true rule. A Pattern or regularity is only so as it represents a > sampling of set. This set, if unknown (even the essence of it features > as well as their number are unknown) means that no sampling, no matter > how large can converge to a particular function that has predictive > value. If there is no pattern, just random noise, yes, but not in general. If there is a pattern in the observation, and you find that pattern, you can predict future observations by extrapolating from the sample set according to that pattern (and then see whether the prediction succeeds). The real problem of induction is that uncertainty always remains. Induction does not give conclusive evidence, just a best guess (or a few). In the end Materialism is also just a best guess (about what exists), and it will never be anything more. Now, the fact that this process does yield valid prediction and > gives the appearance of progress is suggestive of supplementary > assumptions about the nature of the universe (i.e. remember the > transcendental suggestions :-) ). Regularity of the universe and the > well-formedness of our sensory manifolds to perceive it are necessary > assumptions. No, the regularity of the universe is not an assumption. It's the outcome of scientific experimentation. If there is no regularity of the universe that would have been the outcome of experiments. Of course, these CANNOT be validated WITHIN the > materialist view and its empiricist epistemology. They presuppose it to > have coherence. Of course, this rubs many original analytic > philosopher/empiricists the wrong way because it seems incoherent and > incomplete. To use another Wittgenstein metaphor from On Certainty - > there is a lot of stream, but no bedrock. That was quite an ununderstandable bit of text for me. Bye, Arnoud ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
