Philosophy Now Forum

OuterLimits wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Yeah but there might be no such thing as you and your game. It might just be part of the "matrix" programme that we are all hooked up to.

For me it's about going with your gut vs claiming that science justifies some statement when it does not.

What if your gut tells you that science justifies some statement?

Terrapin Station wrote:

OuterLimits wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote: Yeah but there might be no such thing as you and your game. It might just be part of the "matrix" programme that we are all hooked up to.

For me it's about going with your gut vs claiming that science justifies some statement when it does not.

What if your gut tells you that science justifies some statement?

Then they would be evolved guts.
Does the sentence "talking about the sex of angels" mean something in Enlgish?

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

OuterLimits wrote: Neuroscientific evidence - correlates the activity in the brain with various behaviors. If the laws of physics account for all of the behaviors, then what does consciousness "do" ? And if that person's consciousness isn't doing anything, then how and why are you concluding that it is even there?

Yeah but there might be no such thing as neuroscience. It might just be part of the "matrix" programme that we are all hooked up to.
Yeah but there might be no such thing as physics. It might just be part of the "matrix" programme that we are all hooked up to.
Yeah but there might be no such thing as another persons consciousness. It might just be part of the "matrix" programme that we are all hooked up to.

I think he is making a very good point.

Terrapin Station wrote: For me it's about going with your gut vs claiming that science justifies some statement when it does not.

What if your gut tells you that science justifies some statement?[/quote]

That is precisely what science is NOT. At least, in theory.

There is a scientific *method*. It is defined and followed. To do so is pretty much the opposite of just going with your gut.

OuterLimits wrote:

For me it's about going with your gut vs claiming that science justifies some statement when it does not.

Terrapin Station wrote: What if your gut tells you that science justifies some statement?

That is precisely what science is NOT. At least, in theory.

There is a scientific *method*. It is defined and followed. To do so is pretty much the opposite of just going with your gut.

I'm not asking you what science is or what the scientific method is. I asked you a question you didn't actually answer. What if your gut tells you that science justifies some statement? Do you go with your gut in that case or not?

Terrapin Station wrote:I'm not asking you what science is or what the scientific method is. I asked you a question you didn't actually answer. What if your gut tells you that science justifies some statement? Do you go with your gut in that case or not?

I "go with my gut" in a more general way, just like you do. For instance, you "go with your gut" when you decide that other people have experiences.
Actually, this is not at all a scientific result. Science would have other people's behaviors strictly to be the result of physical cause and effect. There is certainly no "experience" in that. This seems hard for you to understand. That's ok. G'day.

OuterLimits wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:I'm not asking you what science is or what the scientific method is. I asked you a question you didn't actually answer. What if your gut tells you that science justifies some statement? Do you go with your gut in that case or not?

I "go with my gut" in a more general way, just like you do. For instance, you "go with your gut" when you decide that other people have experiences.
Actually, this is not at all a scientific result. Science would have other people's behaviors strictly to be the result of physical cause and effect. There is certainly no "experience" in that. This seems hard for you to understand. That's ok. G'day.

The fact that other people have experiences is from the fact that other people describe experiences, act on them and learn from them the same way that you do. If you experience things, and you are human with a normal functioning human body and you read and learn from people who describe their experiences to you when you cannot read and learn from them, you understand that other people have experiences too. When you go "hmmmmm" when you eat a delicious chocolate cake and the person next to you also goes "hmmmm" you understand that the other person experienced something similar to yours. The data that you yourself have that other people have experiences is so vast that you don't need to go with your gut for it.

That is like saying that it is your gut that other people are actually talking or seeing or reading or singing.

bahman wrote:

Hobbes' Choice wrote:

OuterLimits wrote: Neuroscientific evidence - correlates the activity in the brain with various behaviors. If the laws of physics account for all of the behaviors, then what does consciousness "do" ? And if that person's consciousness isn't doing anything, then how and why are you concluding that it is even there?

Yeah but there might be no such thing as neuroscience. It might just be part of the "matrix" programme that we are all hooked up to.
Yeah but there might be no such thing as physics. It might just be part of the "matrix" programme that we are all hooked up to.
Yeah but there might be no such thing as another persons consciousness. It might just be part of the "matrix" programme that we are all hooked up to.

I think he is making a very good point.

"He" meaning OT?
Maybe but he undermines every thing he says with his childish solipsism.

OuterLimits wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:I'm not asking you what science is or what the scientific method is. I asked you a question you didn't actually answer. What if your gut tells you that science justifies some statement? Do you go with your gut in that case or not?

I "go with my gut" in a more general way, just like you do. For instance, you "go with your gut" when you decide that other people have experiences.
Actually, this is not at all a scientific result. Science would have other people's behaviors strictly to be the result of physical cause and effect. There is certainly no "experience" in that. This seems hard for you to understand. That's ok. G'day.

For some reason there seems to be a "generation" (in quotation marks because I think it's actually just a generation of folks whose only exposure to this stuff has been online, in forums like this, plus the little bit of reading that the forums prompted them to do) who believe that physicalism is necessarily eliminative materialism. Of course, a lot of this has to do with the fact that Daniel Dennett is one of the few recent philosophers who has a lot of crossover appeal, who has concentrated on writing popular books, etc.

However, the view that physicalism is necessarily eliminative materialism is sorely mistaken--sorely ignorant, really.

Now, it's simply a matter of whether you're truly interested in educating yourself, so that you learn about a wider scope of views, or whether your aim is simply an apologetic one for which you'd rather take the simplest, most sound-bitey route that will tend to be effective in more or less preaching to the choir in your chosen venue(s)--Internet message boards such as this one.

Terrapin Station wrote:Now, it's simply a matter of whether you're truly interested in educating yourself, so that you learn about a wider scope of views, or whether your aim is simply an apologetic one for which you'd rather take the simplest, most sound-bitey route that will tend to be effective in more or less preaching to the choir in your chosen venue(s)--Internet message boards such as this one.

No links. No references. Just simple proof through assertion, with a sprinkling of insults.

Thanks for sharing your fine beliefs, unsupported though they may be.

OuterLimits wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:Now, it's simply a matter of whether you're truly interested in educating yourself, so that you learn about a wider scope of views, or whether your aim is simply an apologetic one for which you'd rather take the simplest, most sound-bitey route that will tend to be effective in more or less preaching to the choir in your chosen venue(s)--Internet message boards such as this one.

No links. No references. Just simple proof through assertion, with a sprinkling of insults.

Thanks for sharing your fine beliefs, unsupported though they may be.

You're asking for references for there being physicalists who are not eliminative materialists?

Terrapin Station wrote:

OuterLimits wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:Now, it's simply a matter of whether you're truly interested in educating yourself, so that you learn about a wider scope of views, or whether your aim is simply an apologetic one for which you'd rather take the simplest, most sound-bitey route that will tend to be effective in more or less preaching to the choir in your chosen venue(s)--Internet message boards such as this one.

No links. No references. Just simple proof through assertion, with a sprinkling of insults.

Thanks for sharing your fine beliefs, unsupported though they may be.

You're asking for references for there being physicalists who are not eliminative materialists?

Sure. Pick a favorite. Much of that stuff turns out to be a lot of hand-waving.

OuterLimits wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

OuterLimits wrote:
No links. No references. Just simple proof through assertion, with a sprinkling of insults.

Thanks for sharing your fine beliefs, unsupported though they may be.

You're asking for references for there being physicalists who are not eliminative materialists?

Sure. Pick a favorite. Much of that stuff turns out to be a lot of hand-waving.

Here's a Stanford Encyclopedia article on this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

Terrapin Station wrote:

OuterLimits wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:You're asking for references for there being physicalists who are not eliminative materialists?

Sure. Pick a favorite. Much of that stuff turns out to be a lot of hand-waving.

Here's a Stanford Encyclopedia article on this: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

Not seeing anything here which answers my "other minds" objection - maybe science is fine for explaining all of a person's behaviors, in which case, there is no "consciousness" to be explained.

As far as non-human phenomena are concerned, would we ever dream of not being "eliminatist materialists" ? Not if we were "scientists".

OuterLimits wrote:Not seeing anything here which answers my "other minds" objection

?????

I mentioned that not all physicalists are eliminative materialists.

You grumbled about not giving references.

So I said, "You want a reference to philosophers who are physicalists but who are not eliminative materliaists?"

You said yes, you wanted that.

So I gave you an article about a type of physicalism that's not at all eliminative materialism, an article that mentions many philosophers who hold non-eliminative materialist physicalist positions.

And now you're saying something about it answering objections to "other minds"?????