Any Defenses of Materialism?

[1137]

A fine argument for materialism is that the terms we use to describe behaviors and aspects of mind (even 'mind' itself) are derived from 'folk psychology,' in other words ordinary people looking at themselves and creating terms to describe experiences, and passing those terms on through language and culture. They create these terms on the fly, without analysis or basis, from 'feeling' it out, and without thinking twice about the implications of creating a new term; in other words, without actual reasoning to support the use of that particular term. Most of the terms of mind are metaphoric, using pictures to bring the mind to life, to express everyday experiential living. Said folk might defend it by saying we've no better terms, or even no other terms at all, to depict the tragedy of a broken heart or the genius of bright idea. But the materialist, then, is right to say that that doesn't make them real. Promise and courage are actually put together from circumstances. Choice and responsibility are strung on the strings of a tentative thing called "I," to which no one can properly point. We've no better terms to use to describe these things, but then perhaps (in an ideal materialist world) these are things for which more productive terms could be invented to more properly describe them. This would change our relationship to the world and favour the materialist, but perhaps for the better.

An interesting point. So the terminology is seen as incorrect in the first place. But it seems to me that these terms simply describe something that is actually helping. There's a reason counseling is recommended on top of medication, because things "folk psychology" actually works.

 

[1137]

Quite right.

Seems you are upset because you failed to support your claims against materialism.
You do know that this thread is like the ones in the Evolution vs Creation sub-forum where Creationists think that if Evolution is somehow "destroyed" that Creation magically takes it place.
Doesn't work that way for Creationism.
Doesn't work that way for whatever ism you are trying to promote.

So those who question materialism and ask for support before accepting it are equal to creationists? How could I have been so wrong in respecting you...

 

[1137]

I have one.....
It's useful.
I can't prove it's "the truth", but neither do I claim that.
As evidence, I offer the mind & body correlation.
Consider that the mind is altered or even destroyed
if portions of the brain are damaged. Without the brain,
we don't observe the mind.

Pragmatism doesn't work because religious ideology is often useful and beneficial as well. Correlation doesn't not imply causation, and doesn't suggest it here where no mechanism has been put forth and philosophical contradictions remain.

 

[George-ananda]

I am looking for any defenses of materialism, especially material reductionism in the mind-body problem. I am not here to put forth or support claims, I am asking those who accept materialism to present the reasoning and evidence for doing so. I have yet to seen anything outside of burden of proof games when presenting my own opinion, with not a single materialist I have talked to online or in life being willing to present their evidence or reasoning. Also, I am looking for that which suggests only materialism, as a whole position. It is already understood that there is a correlation between the brain and body, but causation has yet to be shown. I am also looking for reasoning that does not start with the assumption of material reductionism and then fill in the blanks. Of great interest and importance would be physical evidence of the mind and its contents, the mechanism by which the brain creates the mind, how a brain secretes chemicals but a mind feels and thinks, or how we can directly know the mind and the physical world only through that mind.

Thanks in advanced!

To start, I am coming from a non-materialist position myself.

I think to start this discussion you need to explain what 'materialism' is. I believe I know what you mean by 'materialism' but you would be surprised to see how many people don't understand it the way you mean it.

Materialism (from Wikipedia): Materialism is a form of philosophical monism which holds that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena, including mental phenomena and consciousness, are identical with material interactions

Now, in metaphysical discussions there are unfortunately no perfect words that everyone uses the same way. I think the intended meaning is the physical matter that we are all familiar with is all there is and the mind is just an emergent property of the physical brain. This is saying all things like ghosts, souls, astral planes, etc., and basically all the things that fall under the colloquial term 'paranormal' do not exist. Now, people will play games with these definitions until you pull your hair out but what I am saying is what I believe is the intended meaning of 'materialism'.

 

[McBell]

So those who question materialism and ask for support before accepting it are equal to creationists?

Wow.
You do realize your above quoted ridiculousness reveals much more about you than any one else, right?

How could I have been so wrong in respecting you...

You inability to separate what was actually said and what you want to hear is your problem, not mine.

 

[Revoltingest]

Pragmatism doesn't work because religious ideology is often useful and beneficial as well. Correlation doesn't not imply causation, and doesn't suggest it here where no mechanism has been put forth and philosophical contradictions remain.

Materialism offers a better explanation than the alternatives.
The mind body connection is testable.
What religious interpretation works better?

Btw, if your really don't find pragmatism cromulent, then I've nothing else to offer.

 

[McBell]

So those who question materialism and ask for support before accepting it are equal to creationists? How could I have been so wrong in respecting you...

It is most revealing, as well as interesting, how you completely avoided addressing the point of the post you quoted.....

 

[1137]

It is most revealing, as well as interesting, how you completely avoided addressing the point of the post you quoted.....

Your straw man? No thanks!

 

[1137]

Well I suppose this material venue for communication won't be nessessary.

Why? Matter certainly seems to exist, it's just not the only thing that seems to exist

 

[1137]

Materialism offers a better explanation than the alternatives.
The mind body connection is testable.
What religious interpretation works better?

Btw, if your really don't find pragmatism cromulent, then I've nothing else to offer.

I was not suggesting a rejection of pragmatism, but that pragmatism and materialism do not go hand and hand. Many things from meditation to ritual can be powerful, from prayer to simple belief in the supernatural. Whether this "supernatural" exists or not the pragmatic benefits stand.

 

[Revoltingest]

I was not suggesting a rejection of pragmatism, but that pragmatism and materialism do not go hand and hand.

Au contraire!
Pragmatism & materialism go together like bacon & eggs.

Many things from meditation to ritual can be powerful, from prayer to simple belief in the supernatural. Whether this "supernatural" exists or not the pragmatic benefits stand.

Those things are perfectly explainable by materialism.
Even better so than can religion.

 

[McBell]

Your straw man? No thanks!

I made no strawman.
I made a comparison.

One would have thought you had the intellect to know the difference.
Seems I give you to much credit.

 

[sayak83]

My apologies, I misunderstood!

So, to re-iterate. The observation of correlation between mind states and certain classes of neural activity in the brain without exception is evidence for the identity between the mind states and the associates classes of brain processes. Here is how it works.

Let A be a class of mind states and B be the class of correlated brain states. Then if we see on repeated observations that,
1) If A then B
2) If not A then not B
3) If B then A
4) If not B then not A
If repeated observations show all 4 propositions hold then that is excellent evidence for the identity hypothesis A=B. I believe neuroscience has never found an exception so far. That is the evidence for the identity thesis between certain brain states and consciousness.

Let us now look at why the identity thesis fails when we think of internal electronic states of a radio (B) and its supposed identity with the channels heard from it (A).

1) If A then B ( True:- when music is heard the internal electronic states are also observed)
2) If not A then not B (False:- the radio can have the same internal states and be activated and be in perfect condition but fail to broadcast the channel, when for example there is no signal)
3) If B then A (False:- same situation as in 2)
4) If not B then not A (True:- If electronic states have broken then no channel is heard)

Hope the argument makes sense. Note how one does not need to have a full understanding of why exactly the two things in question are identical or not for this argument to succeed. Thanks

 

[1137]

So, to re-iterate. The observation of correlation between mind states and certain classes of neural activity in the brain without exception is evidence for the identity between the mind states and the associates classes of brain processes. Here is how it works.

Let A be a class of mind states and B be the class of correlated brain states. Then if we see on repeated observations that,
1) If A then B
2) If not A then not B
3) If B then A
4) If not B then not A
If repeated observations show all 4 propositions hold then that is excellent evidence for the identity hypothesis A=B. I believe neuroscience has never found an exception so far. That is the evidence for the identity thesis between certain brain states and consciousness.

Let us now look at why the identity thesis fails when we think of internal electronic states of a radio (B) and its supposed identity with the channels heard from it (A).

1) If A then B ( True:- when music is heard the internal electronic states are also observed)
2) If not A then not B (False:- the radio can have the same internal states and be activated and be in perfect condition but fail to broadcast the channel, when for example there is no signal)
3) If B then A (False:- same situation as in 2)
4) If not B then not A (True:- If electronic states have broken then no channel is heard)

Hope the argument makes sense. Note how one does not need to have a full understanding of why exactly the two things in question are identical or not for this argument to succeed. Thanks

I'm sorry, but this still seems to be a case of correction being causation.

 

[sayak83]

I'm sorry, but this still seems to be a case of correction being causation.

No its not. This establishes identity relation. Show me an example of an A and a B that obeys (1)-(4) and yet A Not= B.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

especially material reductionism in the mind-body problem.

Interestingly, mainstream particle physicists can and do subscribe to materialism/physicalism but reject reductionism:

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I believe neuroscience has never found an exception so far.

True, but that's because neuroscience is largely about finding spurious correlations and assuming causes, even if this involves methods that allow one to identify, having asked a dead fish emotionally laden-questions, brain regions in the dead fish that responded to the question stimuli:
"In 2009, a highly remarkable scientific experiment was performed by Bennett, Baird, Miller and Wolford, four American brain researchers. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a brain imaging technique, to determine which brain areas respond to emotional stimuli in a test subject. The subject was shown several emotionally laden pictures and was asked to verbalize the emotion shown. The display of pictures was alternated with rest, and by comparing the brain readings between exposure and rest, the researchers were able to clearly identify a brain area that showed a response to the stimulus offered (Bennett et al. 2011).
What was so remarkable about this experiment? Certainly not the idea of measuring brain response to pictures using fMRI; this had been done countless times by other researchers in the past. Also not the statistical methods used to find the relevant brain regions by comparing exposure and rest states; the same techniques had been used in many influential publications in brain imaging before. The originality of the study lay in the choice of the test subject. This was not, as usual, a human, but an Atlantic salmon. Moreover, the salmon was stone dead, having been bought in the local supermarket on the very morning of the experiment."
(source)
A central issue we've had to deal with in neuroscience is the wide divide between the computational, biophysical models of neuronal dynamics (either of single neurons or of populations) and the neural bases of cognitive processes. The former doesn't yield the latter and the latter is reducible to the former only in terms of very speculative and haphazard uses of correlations.
More generally, I agree that if A and B are correlated, then this implied causation (either A causes B, B causes A, or C causes both B or A). In practice, however, it is too often explicitly or (worse) implicitly assumed that there is no "C" factor if A and B are strongly correlated.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

1) If A then B ( True:- when music is heard the internal electronic states are also observed)
2) If not A then not B (False:- the radio can have the same internal states and be activated and be in perfect condition but fail to broadcast the channel, when for example there is no signal)
3) If B then A (False:- same situation as in 2)
4) If not B then not A (True:- If electronic states have broken then no channel is heard)

I should add that none of this is, strictly speaking, true. At all. fMRI, EEG, and other neuroimaging methods/technologies allow us to correlate proxies for neural activity (e.g., BOLD contrasts via quantum mechanical spin signals in fMRI studies) that averaged in various ways to compare to averaged responses to stimuli (i.e., various brain activity which always differ and are always inaccurately measured are compared against identical stimuli across and among observers) yield neural correlates of conscious processes.
But this isn't sufficient to establish identity, because we NEVER, EVER, observe the "same internal states" even if we ignore the approximations that are humongous at any resolution level at which cognitive processes are studied.

 

[atanu]

Materialism offers a better explanation than the alternatives.
The mind body connection is testable.
What religious interpretation works better?

Btw, if your really don't find pragmatism cromulent, then I've nothing else to offer.

Two points of disagreement:

1.It is not pragmatic to imagine that matter controls mind. In a dead body, the brain exists, but no stimulus can elicit awareness out of it.
2.All testing requires a pre-existing consciousness. One cannot delete that which one is.

 

[atanu]

So, to re-iterate. The observation of correlation between mind states and certain classes of neural activity in the brain without exception is evidence for the identity between the mind states and the associates classes of brain processes.

Even if we do not know how so called neural states lead to certain feelings?

Is the refusal to see the correlation between brain processes and mind states as causation, a presuppositional bias against materialism? After all causation is correlation that has no observed exceptions.

When, in all observations, consciousness is a given. No observation happens by unconscious agents. It is the 'C' in correlation between 'A' and 'B'. But our biases just ignores its all pervading presence.

It is quite clearly to me that a computer also thinks when it does its Logical and Arithmetic Operations. That's what thinking is. It may not be conscious that it is thinking, but it is thinking. So all I need to show are brain systems that are geared towards being informed about what parts of the brain is doing . Correct?

It is quite clear to you. Is it quite clear to the computer? Does a computer ask "Who am I?"