In various threads there have been various discussions about what materialism is, and isn’t, and various definitions have been proposed and cited. In this thread I want to ask a different question, addressed specifically to those who regard “materialism” as a bad thing. William, for instance, has said that “materialism” was “disproven” in the 18th century, yet laments
the spread of an 18th century myth in our public school system and in our culture at large.
So here is my question: if you are against something called “materialism” and see it as a bad thing (for whatever reason), what is your definition of the “materialism” you are against?
What would you say to someone who claims that we cannot know anything unless empiricism is true?
Or are there no empiricists here at TSZ?
Well, folks were talking about what is real and what can be imagined, and what is possible and what is not possible, as if that is the issue. Just exploring the issues using zombies as an example.
It is obvious that zombies are something that can be conceived and understood by the intellect, so what makes them any less real than other concepts? Why are zombies imaginary while other concepts are not imaginary?
Are zombies impossible?
These questions aren’t new, are they, in the history of philosophy?
How did you come by your knowledge of the world around you? Your biology gave you the brain and sensory system but the information you store and process came in via your sensory pathways. There is no other way to acquire knowledge of the outside world – reality. (Not that that reality is separate from the functioning of our brains, bodies and intellect.) The great thing about our sensory perception is that we don’t have to rely solely on its reliability. Being social animals and having language for communication, we can share experience, teach and learn from each other, check out and repeat tests and experiments.
So a great check on what is real and what is imaginary is reproducibility. Miracles have become quite elusive these days.
The thoughts people have when they conceive of “philosophical zombies” are real. The details allowing one to decide the “feasibility” of a zombie are left out.
Mung, you’ve made the same mistake here that I pointed out a few posts ago. Zombies aren’t concepts, concepts of zombies are concepts. Concepts of zombies and concepts of horses both exist, but it doesn’t follow that horses and zombies both exist.
The rest of your post either makes no sense or asks questions that are very controversial because they are hard. E.g., “Are zombies possible?” is an extremely difficult question that requires agreement not only on the definition of “zombie” to be used but on a concept of possibility. But even with those it’s hard because, as indicated earlier, it involves metaphysical questions about essential properties and epistemological problems about other minds.
Why should people here (or anywhere) be able to give an answer to that question that will be widely accepted by all who see it?
Re empiricism. Again, you’d need to define carefully for a precise answer, but, generally, we’re (almost) all empiricists now. Except on religico-hobbyist sites somewhat akin to UD, there are very few Hegelians or Spinozists around anymore.
Well Alan Fox,
If we can only acquire knowledge through our sensory pathways, we are left with no choice but to believe that God is real, since He only got into our heads via our sensory pathways.
That means Christ did in fact raise Lazarus from the dead, did exorcise demons and did in fact rise from the dead.
But, but….I hear the objection that we can be fooled by our senses, since humans can fool others in many ways and humans can also fool themselves in many ways.
But then that would mean that our senses are unreliable. Therefore, we cannot use our senses to determine what is real.
So….. denying God due to the unrealibility of the senses requires us to also deny science due to the unrealiability of the senses.
Does this mean science is on the losing side of The Battle of the Senses?
Oh dear. Long live science!
By the way, miracles happen all the time.
Its just that science , relying on the unreliable, is unreliable in determining the reality of miracles.
My first thought on reading this was that there are so many fallacies in there that it’s not worth bothering to count them, but I had a minute so I did count them. There are four. One in the first paragraph, one in the second, one in the fourth, and one in the fifth. There’s also an implied fallacy in graphs 6-7, but I’m letting that go because I’m nice.
In a word, it’s useful to have some idea how to construct a valid argument if you want to argue with people.
Here’s a case of bad materialism compromising research:
In other words, people physiologically anticipated the correct response even though there was no way to know what the stimulus would be.
Now, check out the bad materialism money quote at the end:
What does she mean by “supernatural” or “paranormal”? Outside of ideologically-committed metaphysics, how can she possibly state that the cause is “undoubtedly” a natural physical process? What are are the limitations of materialism or naturalism? Is there no possibility there can be, in nature, an actual precognitive effect? More, they attempt to find any plausible (read: possible) reason whatsoever for the “clear effect” to be an artifact of some protocol problem even though they themselves have ruled it out to their own satisfaction!
Steve,
You’re making the same reification category error Mung is making regarding the realness of zombies. Just because people have a real concept of something called “god” does not make that entity real itself. You’re confusing maps for actual territory.
So no, it does not follow that if knowledge comes to us only through sensory input, all aspects of that knowledge are real. That’s just silly. I have a very detailed map of Middle-earth by J.R.R. Tolkein that clearly came to him via sensory input. Doesn’t make Middle-earth a real place…
Here’s another case of precognitive physiological responses the experimenters bend over backwards to explain away as some sort of research worker intuitive biasing. Why? Because the data doesn’t conform to their worldview.
B-b-b-bad.
It is not sensory input alone, but the Interaction. What we do plus the feedback we receive. Anyone who has raised a child knows that action precedes perception. We learn to perceive.
Robin said:
Your sensory equipment translates incoming phenomena into a kind of neurological data, which your mind then represents as sensations. All anyone has is a map. Nobody has “actual territory”.
petrushka said:
Is “feedback” not sensory?
Well, yes, that isn’t really appropriate. However it appears to only be commentary. I don’t see an indication that it affected the research.
Note that this is way out of my field, so I don’t pretend to know whether or not this was good research.
How can such “undoubtable” certainty not affect the way in which one develops further testing? How does it not affect how you go forward? If indeed psi effects are real, and as previously discussed intent can affect research outcomes, how would dogged insistence that psi doesn’t exist not help but skew research data?
This is the problem with materialism as a basis for scientific research: reality may not conform to materialist expectations and expected limitations. How one sets up their research, and their intent, may actually affect outcomes if psi exists.
Actually no. It is not.
If it is, then what result do you claim they would have obtained had materialism not compromised their research? A different one to that which they did reach? What?
There is that word “if”. I’ve offered to help you find out if your claim is true, but you are not interested.
No, rather your problem is you are not willing to take even small steps to put science behind your claims. I can write code to test this “randomness affected by intent” that can be peer-reviewed by you and others, and you can make a claim and stand by it and then see how the results pan out.
But you are not actually interested in that are you?
So design an experiment that does not suffer from this. Or, you know, keep taking hotshots from the sidelines from your safe, cosy armchair.
Remarkably well, thank-you, considering the abuse inflicted on my body over the years. Hope you are well, too.
Your use of “if” suggests you know of another way of acquiring knowledge of the outside world. What would that be?
I see Walto and Robin have covered this so I won’t pile on.
And Santa manages to deliver presents to all the good boys and girls on Christmas Eve?
And what is a good way of confirming whether an event is real, illusory or you are suffering from delusions? Shared experience? Repeatability?
I, for one, don’t deny gods, ghosts or ghoulies. I don’t need to as there is no evidence for the existence of such concepts (as yet, if you like).
I’ll let you work that out for yourself.
I guess scientific endeavour will continue as long as people are curious and the results are useful.
Now, here’s an example of doing research that indicates psi, then following it up without a biased insistence that the effect cannot be real. Notice how the researcher more impartially interprets the data, developing the hypothesis that one’s surroundings might indeed affect results either positively or negatively, instead of insisting on fraud or bias as the “undoubted” explanation.
William:
If it weren’t for those meddling skeptics, my psi experiment would have been a success!
I see you quoted this bit but highlighted another part of the quote. Yet this makes the point that results are provisional and subject to verification. Until other researchers can repeat the results, it would be premature to start postulating imaginary explanations rather than a poorly designed experiment or a faulty or biased interpretation of results
Some research is better then other research. Slow hand-clap for William everybody!
Okay. I’ll put you down as a believer that perception is indirect — i.e. as a representationalist.
keiths,
If you read the above links, you’ll see there was success despite the presence of skeptics. If intention affects results, results will depend on how such competing intents interact.
It’s not even clear that this was “undoubtable certainty”. The remark might have been added to satisfy a fussy peer reviewer.
Neil Rickert,
That would be an error. Unless someone is going to make a materialist/empiricist argument that what I outlined is not the case, that is their perspective, not mine. Therefore, none of them have anything but representational maps to work with as per their own worldview.
William,
It’s a classic “get out of jail free” card. If my experimental results are positive, then psi is real. If my results are negative, then psi is real and is simply being thwarted by the “intention field”.
In case you’re wondering: No, this is not how good science is done.
Until other researchers can repeat the results,Since this test verified the results from an earlier test, it would beprematureprudent to start postulatingimaginaryhypothetical psi forces and interactive relationships rather than assuming it was a poorly designed experiment or a faulty or biased interpretation of results just to salvage bad, disproved materialist metaphysics.Fixed it for you, Alan.
Given that there are an infinite number of hypothetical psi forces, on what basis do you select one?
No. There are methods (protocols) that have been developed for accounting for such intentionality effects on the part of the researchers. Also, when the effect occurs even in the presence of skeptics, no “get out of jail free card” is required. The effect has been verified even under the duress of competing intention. That doesn’t mean that will always be the case, it just means that whatever causes the intent variance in results went the way of proving psi exists in that experiment.
OMagain said:
The same way you select a force to account for something like the increasing speed of the expansion of the universe: you invent a force that accounts for the effect (Heck! “Dark Energy” would have been a great name for psi force! And “Dark Force” might get a lawsuit from George Lucas! ), name it, and go on from there.
William, can you provide a video of a spoon being bent without being handled? Say, under a bell jar?
See here for an analysis by a UK experimental psychologist. He goes into more detail here (PDF)
This follows the Rhine approach. Do 20 years of research, then dig through the data for individuals who consistently performed above chance, and call them gifted.
Maybe you should stop telling people what they believe.
Well, I consider myself a pragmatist — but in historical context, pragmatism is basically just Hegelian epistemology without the wacky metaphysics. And Spinoza is my third most important philosopher, right after Plato (#1) and Kant (#2).
Certainly if “empiricism” were to mean any kind of epistemological foundationalism or semantic atomism (as it has in the whole tradition from Locke through Hume to Mach and Carnap!), I would have to count myself as an opponent of empiricism just as much as an opponent of rationalism (and for the same Hegelian-pragmatist reasons, namely, semantic holism and epistemological anti-foundationalism).
What is true in “empiricism” is simply this: with regard to descriptive claims about contingent (non-necessary) but actual states of affairs, our endorsement of a descriptive claim ought to be proportional to the evidence in favor or against it. (“A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence” — Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding Book 10.)
But there are all sorts of important and interesting claims that are not about contingent but actual states of affairs, or put otherwise, there are many more dimensions of language besides descriptions.
In particular, I’ve long thought that the rejection of a priori truths that began with Quine rests on a serious mistake, and that what is really needed is a way of recovering the historical and pragmatic a priori developed, in different ways, by Carnap, C. I. Lewis, Sellars, and Foucault. I think that my emphasis on that point got obscured when I started talking about “epistemological verificationism”, which is restricted to descriptive claims about contingent actualities. (In other words, epistemological verificationism does not cut against or undermine classical theism, since classical theism is grounded in a priori considerations, not empirical ones.)
Alan Fox,
It seems to me more prudent, after positive results have been replicated, to hypothesize a psi energy or force (and all of its apparent interactive qualities) and then conduct experiments based on such theories in order to develop data that either supports or contra-indicates the proposed new energy or force. Concentrating endlessly on possible protocol issues, inadvertent bias and potential fraud, at some point, becomes an exercise in nothing but maintaining metaphysics. Your UK experimental psychologist’s articles are little more than more of the same old same old – a false insistent that some kind of extraordinary evidence is required, and extraordinary protocols be implemented – for what reason? He really gives none other than to protect his particular concept of what reality is and how it works – IOW, metaphysics.
Petrushka said:
I give you peer-reviewed research which shows that psi exists, and you want me to find you a video of spoon bending? Why? Would a video change your mind, but published scientific research would not?
I don’t. I tell them what the logical conclusion is to their stated views. If what empirical, scientific, materialist research & views says is true, nobody has actual territory. All they have are physiologically interpreted representations of neurological impulses – maps. There is no materialist grounds for objective knowledge of territory outside of our brain/mind.
Your logical skills are on par with your mathematical ones.
I see your peer-reviewed research showing that psi exists, and raise you another 1001 peer-reviewed research papers showing you it does not.
Presumably you are also a global warming denier.
I totally agree, though many philosophers seem to agree with Quine.
I see the problem as an over-emphasis on logic. As a mathematician, logic is only one of my tools. Geometry or, more broadly, geometric thinking is another.
In “Truth by Convention”, Quine seems to have only considered logical conventions. He overlooked geometric conventions. As an example, map making by an explorer amounts to establishing geometric conventions. As I see it, geometric thinking, when looked at in logical terms, leads to analytic propositions with empirical significance. And that’s the baby that Quine threw out with the bathwater.
No, you don’t do that. Instead, you tell them what you see to be the logical conclusions from what you assert to be their views.
As I understand it, the claim here is that direct realism is incompatible with the view that perceptual activity is constituted by causal transactions between brain, body, and environment.
Consider this example. Should I accept both (1) and (2)?
(1) I am directly (immediately, non-inferentially) aware of the coffee mug adjacent to the right of my computer
and
(2) My perception of the coffee mug is the result of complex interactions between the photons coming in through the window, the molecules comprising the surface of the mug, the cones and rods in my retinas, and the neurons that project from the retinas through the sub-cortical and cortical pathways in my brain.
I’d like to see an argument for why (1) and (2) are incompatible. As it is, I just don’t see it.
Ahh…but we do have more than jyst sensory input for things that actually exist. That’s where the entire basis of the woo crowd goes ary.
It’s not only sensory. And atoms do not simply behave like billiard balls…
We’ve been through this already William.
As stated, your (2) seems to take perception as being passive. That is, we passively receive photons, then the neural hardware works out what to do about them.
I see perception as active. In my view, your eye is moving in saccades in order to detect boundaries. As the light path crosses a boundary due to the saccade, there is a sharp transition in signal. This makes boundaries easier to locate because of the sharpness of that transition. Incidentally, the supermarket barcode scanner uses a moving laser beam for similar reasons.
A result is that, just as scientific data is said to be theory laden (though some contest this), perception is concept laden. And, of course, objectively speaking there is no such thing as a coffee mug. That an object is a coffee mug is socially/culturally constructed based on how we use that object. So if we directly perceive that coffee mug, then our perception is concept laden.
Neil Rickert,
I accept your criticism with regard to the active dimension of perception, and I should have emphasised it myself And I also accept the role of concepts in perception. But I’m puzzled as to why the fact that coffee mugs are social artifacts entails that they are not objectively real.
There’s nothing preventing anyone from doing whatever research or experimentation they can to establish the reality of a “psi” phenomenon. Do you think there is a conspiracy preventing knowledge of such a phenomenon getting out? Such a phenomenon would be huge news. It would have enormous potential in all sorts of fields, not least military. Perhaps it is the military trying to keep such matters secret.
Nonsense, pointing out flaws in experimental procedures that make results inconclusive is input researchers should be grateful for.
Pure speculation. Neither I nor you have access to the mind of Dr Schwarzkopf. Did you get as far as reading part 13 of the PDF? What he wrote there is at odds with your, shall I say, assessment.
Perhaps not responsive, but I recently had to re-learn to see. My right eye has been functionally blind for about four years. I mean it met the standard for legal blindness, corrected. At the moment it is my only eye, corrected by cataract surgery. Because of the extreme difference between my corrected ey and the one not yet corrected, my formerly blind eye is my only eye.
The first few days were disorienting. I could see and read and navigate, but the visual field was incoherent. I could not play solitaire on the computer; I could read the cards, but interpreting the pattern of the deck was not possible.
After several days, that began to clear up, but it has taken several weeks for sense making to become automatic. This does not surprise me. I have always thought that we construct reality via interaction and feedback.
I think it is sensible to infer there are “real” objects providing the feedback, but our perception is constructed. You can watch this process in infants.
I should buy the book but: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/seeing-in-3-d/
Perhaps what I wrote was confusing. It’s the “coffee-mug”ness that I see as socially constructed, so not objective if we take “objective” to mean independent of us. I’m not questioning the existence of a real object.
The relationship we have with objects is constructed (or evolved).