Philosophy Now Forum

Terrapin Station wrote:"there are only two ways a thing can happen: suddenly, or gradually" --which has what to do with answering why you keep talking about things in terms of "evolutionism?"

"Evolutionism" is biological gradualism. They're the same.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:"there are only two ways a thing can happen: suddenly, or gradually" --which has what to do with answering why you keep talking about things in terms of "evolutionism?"

"Evolutionism" is biological gradualism. They're the same.

I don't want to go off on a tangent, but if you're reporting anything there other than how you idiosyncratically use words, there are problems.

What I'm asking, though, that you're still not answering, is why you keep framing the discussion as if I'm campaigning for "evolutionism." That didn't just arise when the discussion focused on whether consciousness appears gradually phylogenetically or not. From the start, you kept reverting to talk about "evolutionism." Why? Why are you framing the discussion in that context?

Immanuel Can wrote:If Materialism were true, it would have to show what material property was absent from such a situation.

Agree here. You call it a property. A property is not a material object, but it is derived from the state of matter.

But we know of no such materials, so Materialism has to run away from the problem entirely or else question itself.

Yes, there is no claimed 'material' that is the 'vitality' property.

For example, 'volume' is a property of a material object (a block of wood say), yet no specific part of the matter is the 'volume' part. Volume is a property, not a thing, so asking "At what point does the 'volume' enter the block of wood?" is incoherent. Must I be a volume dualist that says immaterial volume exists somehow, waiting to inhabit some physical object to give it volume?

You can ask when a biological being becomes alive, and I can only respond with "when it begins to exist" since there seems no point where it exists but is not yet alive. You can ask what distinguishes alive from not-alive, but the material answer is not the presence or absence of an immaterial thing. The materialist must still account for the distinction, but not by resorting to anything immaterial.

Noax wrote:You call it a property...

Not to label it, only to avoid doing so. You try to make too much of my word choice there. We don't know what kind of thing "soul" or "vitality" is, so it makes no sense to place a lot of weight on your definition of "property."

You can ask when a biological being becomes alive, and I can only respond with "when it begins to exist"

When does an infant "begin to exist"? Pinpoint the moment, make your case for it, and maybe you've got something.

Terrapin Station wrote:I don't want to go off on a tangent, but if you're reporting anything there other than how you idiosyncratically use words, there are problems.

Okay, so you're unfamiliar with the term gradualism? Okay, I guess I took for granted you knew it. My mistake.

From the start, you kept reverting to talk about "evolutionism." Why? Why are you framing the discussion in that context?

Because Evolutionism is the Materialist explanation of the origins of things like humans and "consciousness." The OP considers whether or not Materialism is logically impossible. And I'm just pointing out one of its weaknesses.

bahman wrote:

Conde Lucanor wrote:

bahman wrote:
Well, we can today explain the behaviour matter based on its constitutes, electrons, protons, neutrons.

Nope, you can't.

Yes, we can. That is what physicist call it condensed matter physics.

What you're referring to is inanimate matter only. Life is a domain in which matter is organized with such intricate complexity that you cannot explain a particular behavior of a given entity from its basic physical properties at atomic levels. That's why a physicist will not solve the problems that face a biologist, neuroscientist or a simple doctor.

Immanuel Can wrote:When does an infant "begin to exist"? Pinpoint the moment, make your case for it, and maybe you've got something.

Materialism requires an exact definition of when a life begins? More to the point: A view that does not posit the acquisition of some external entity needs to make a case for exactly when that external entity doesn't get acquired?

So why must I designate when an infant begins to exist? What difference would it make (to materialism) if my opinion is different from the next opinion? There are cultures that say it begins on the 1st birthday, and the kid is named on that day. Makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Works even with your view, getting a soul assigned on that day.

What is your view anyway? What is the line between what gets the mind/soul/vitality and what doesn't? Frog? Bacteria? Tulip? Car? Wind?

Noax wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:When does an infant "begin to exist"? Pinpoint the moment, make your case for it, and maybe you've got something.

Materialism requires an exact definition of when a life begins? More to the point: A view that does not posit the acquisition of some external entity needs to make a case for exactly when that external entity doesn't get acquired?

Look at it this way. On an Evolutionary scale, consciousness poses a major problem: how, and by what laws and material dynamics, did the human race move from non-living to living, and from non-conscious to conscious? That's on the level of the race. But on an individual level, we can also pose the same problem: when did you or I become a "living" or "conscious" being? At one time, were we not just random chemicals ourselves? How did we become the conscious, sentient beings we are? When did it happen? That's on the personal level. So whether we pose the question about the race as a whole or about ourselves as individuals, we've got a major problem for Materialism.

Quite simply, how does sentience arise from non-sentient matter?

So why must I designate when an infant begins to exist?

Because you said that that was when an entity could be attributed to have "vitality" or "consciousness" or "soul," or whatever we might call it. You said it would get those things when it began to exist. I just wanted to know what you meant by "began to exist."

What is your view anyway? What is the line between what gets the mind/soul/vitality and what doesn't? Frog? Bacteria? Tulip? Car? Wind?

Here's my view: "consciousness" actually exists. So does "personhood." So does "reason." And we all know it, and we all act like these things exist -- even professed Materialists do, at the cost of undermining their own case. But none of these phenomena have a material cause we are able to find. And we cannot even begin to explain how they came into being, since the prevailing story (Evolutionism) is that we all came from non-conscious, material causes. But how do these wondrous properties spring from dead matter? What miraculous force suddenly turns dead chemical compounds into sentient beings? And if it happens only gradually, by what steps does it happen, and when does it take place? What forces are at play in bringing it about? What physical or scientific laws create consciousness?

There's a great mystery there. And my suggestion is that it implies we didn't come from mere material causes at all. There was more to the story.

What we do know is this: Materialism isn't helping us explain these things. Instead, it is forced to deny there is any problem. Now, when an ideology (i.e. Materialism) is completely failing to describe aspects of reality that we all believe exist, that's a good reason to question that ideology. When we do. we see that all the Materialist attempts to describe "soul" are shabby and reductional. So we need a better theory.

Noax wrote:

bahman wrote: S or S' as it was mentioned are state of matter (configuration of particles) and C or C' are states of mind.

Which is just more matter, so problem solved then. I see no statement of impossibility here.

There is a problem here. Why C', what we expect to happen, should be related to S', what happen? That is true since S' arises from S only.

Immanuel Can wrote:

bahman wrote: the problem of birth, (how a mind could be related to a body), etc.

Yes, that's another good problem for Materialism: at what point does the "person," "life" or "soul," whatever we want to call the immaterial quality that distinguishes a mere body from a living being, enter a baby? Somehow the explanation has to turn out to be by means of some mere materials, if Materialism is true. And that seems implausible.

No that is another problem for dualism. Mind can grow gradually under materialism.

Noax wrote:

bahman wrote: S or S' as it was mentioned are state of matter (configuration of particles) and C or C' are states of mind.

The thread title seems to suggest a discussion of materialism, but all your comments seems to assume some kind of substance dualism. So if you're not discussing dualism, where is this C? What matter is part of C but not part of S? It C the entire living body? A brain? Every 4th nucleus of liver cells? What matter are you declaring causally ineffective to the rest of matter?

You seem to be trying to avoid discussion of known things by assigning these letters, and thus skirting other peoples potential definitions. C for instance seems to be defined sometimes as intent or will, but your choice of C seems to suggest you mean consciousness by it. No matter. Answer the where-is-it questions.

I am not discussing substance dualism since I claim that mind arises from matter, C'=P(S), so mind to me is material entity.

Conde Lucanor wrote:

bahman wrote:

Conde Lucanor wrote: Nope, you can't.

Yes, we can. That is what physicist call it condensed matter physics.

What you're referring to is inanimate matter only. Life is a domain in which matter is organized with such intricate complexity that you cannot explain a particular behavior of a given entity from its basic physical properties at atomic levels. That's why a physicist will not solve the problems that face a biologist, neuroscientist or a simple doctor.

There will be an explanation for Life under materialism if we accept that Life is an emergent phenomena.

bahman wrote:No that is another problem for dualism. Mind can grow gradually under materialism.

Not so. "Gradually" only changes the length of time involved. It's no better than "suddenly".

"It grows gradually" is an unhelpful observation, even if it turned out to be true. For it fails to answer how it "grows" -- by what material forces and dynamics. It's what we might call a "magical" explanation, one that amounts to someone saying to us, "It just happens: ask no more questions."

That's clearly no good. Materialism is failing to explain anything there.

Moreover, we might ask, "What grows?" For "It grows gradually" amounts to admitting a Dualism. The "it" there is clearly "consciousness." And consciousness is clearly not itself material: when I get an idea, it doesn't produce a material entity like a brick or a whale, just an immaterial idea of something. And some ideas (such as values or abstractions) not only involve no manipulation of materials but have no direct reference to material reality at all. So Materialism, to stay consistent, has to reject the idea that there is any "it" we could be talking about: consciousness must be unreal, it says.

So the response you've given, far from supporting any kind of Monism, actually accidentally concedes Dualism.

bahman wrote:There is a problem here. Why C', what we expect to happen, should be related to S', what happen? That is true since S' arises from S only.

No, this is completely false. You are defining S as a subset of matter, and subsequent states of any matter are not a function of a subset of local matter.

bahman wrote:

Noax wrote:I am not discussing substance dualism since I claim that mind arises from matter, C'=P(S), so mind to me is material entity.

You seem to be defining C as some kind of different sort of matter that doesn't obey causal rules of the matter that you group under S. That's substance dualism. That it arises from matter makes no difference. Materialism says all matter states (not just some of them) exhibit the same causal relations, and that means your C is part of the cause of S'.

Immanuel Can wrote:

So why must I designate when an infant begins to exist?

Because you said that that was when an entity could be attributed to have "vitality" or "consciousness" or "soul," or whatever we might call it. You said it would get those things when it began to exist. I just wanted to know what you meant by "began to exist."

Fair enough. I said that. But I also said materialism doesn't need to specify when this happens. It is an arbitrary designation it seems. It seems to hinge on identity, when a single life splits into two lives. That point is the arbitrary designation, and materialism doesn't hinge on where that designation is made.

Look at it this way. On an Evolutionary scale, consciousness poses a major problem: how, and by what laws and material dynamics, did the human race move from non-living to living, and from non-conscious to conscious?

Other views need to solve this problem as well. The evolution model just says something like 'step by step' without declaration that we know what each of those steps were. Consciousness/sentience is not a binary thing. It is very much a scale and we're somewhere on that scale, and not at the top of it. Moving from non-living to living is more of a binary thing. Certainly we have moved to more-living, but it seems to be a discreet scale, not a continuous one. Yes, those steps need accounting for.

That's on the level of the race. But on an individual level, we can also pose the same problem: when did you or I become a "living" or "conscious" being? At one time, were we not just random chemicals ourselves?

No, I was never random chemicals. There is no "I" to be those random chemicals in a view that doesn't posit identity separate from the thing to which the identity was associated. So I did not become a conscious sentient being in my view. That implies a time when I wasn't one.

Quite simply, how does sentience arise from non-sentient matter?

No more remarkable than a toaster arising from not-toaster. I don't see a problem. I'm not worried about exactly when the toasterness entered the toaster. I have a long history of not seeing the supposed hard problem of consciousness. I've not seen a satisfactory description of exactly what is problematic, even if some problems (like origin of life) will probably never be known. Really hard to see such a an isolated event at such a distance.

Noax wrote:What is your view anyway? What is the line between what gets the mind/soul/vitality and what doesn't? Frog? Bacteria? Tulip? Car? Wind?

Here's my view: "consciousness" actually exists. So does "personhood." So does "reason."

You didn't answer this question. You state the problems you find in need of explanation, but I was wondering which of the list of things have the consciousness, or vitality, tuliphood, and thus if those words are similar in meaning. You say consciousness exists, but you don't say what has it, so I have little idea what you mean by the word. What distinguishes the various things in my list?

And we all know it, and we all act like these things exist -- even professed Materialists do, at the cost of undermining their own case.

They might define the word differently of course, so it probably doesn't undermine their case.

But none of these phenomena have a material cause we are able to find. And we cannot even begin to explain how they came into being, since the prevailing story (Evolutionism) is that we all came from non-conscious, material causes. But how do these wondrous properties spring from dead matter? What miraculous force suddenly turns dead chemical compounds into sentient beings? And if it happens only gradually, by what steps does it happen, and when does it take place? What forces are at play in bringing it about? What physical or scientific laws create consciousness?

There's a great mystery there. And my suggestion is that it implies we didn't come from mere material causes at all. There was more to the story.

Understood. How is the existence of these immaterial causes explained? Are they things with identity, or is it 'stuff' without it? The latter is sort of a panpsychic view. My problem with this view is it seems to just shove the problems under the rug where it is immune from scrutiny. Yes, this magic stuff under there solves your problems, and we don't have to explain it since it is declared beyond the empirical realm.

What we do know is this: Materialism isn't helping us explain these things. Instead, it is forced to deny there is any problem. Now, when an ideology (i.e. Materialism) is completely failing to describe aspects of reality that we all believe exist, that's a good reason to question that ideology. When we do. we see that all the Materialist attempts to describe "soul" are shabby and reductional. So we need a better theory.

Indeed I deny a problem since I've not seen exactly what it is. The materialist doesn't attempt to describe 'soul'. Why would he? It is not reductionism to deny a thing.