This probably emerges in some way out of an earlier Nagel discussion but honestly I forget how this came up.
Gene Callahan has apparently closed up shop on this question, and for a very unfortunate reason: he doesn't know how to respond to people that think he makes extremely unusual claims.
I haven't been talking about neurons as much in his comment section because I don't feel like I know enough about brains to go into detail about that. So I've mostly tried to stick to using clunky phrases like "what brains do" or "what brains perceive".
My only question is why Gene leaps from the fact that we have ideas in our brains (we agree on that) to the assertion that those ideas have some kind of independent reality aside from being just the way our brains have organzied the regularities in reality.
And if he can't answer that question and gets frustrated by it I have no idea why he's so decidedly anti-materialist and not more of an agnostic on the issue like me.
Gene writes: "In any case, faced with such manifest irrationality as the claim that animal species are really just patterns of firings of human neurons"
No Gene. That is not the claim (at least not mine). There are regularities in reality. Animal species are one of those regularities. But the way we talk about and classify those regularities is a product of our brains. There are regularities in nature - nobody is saying there aren't. We come up with ideas to help us navigate nature using those regularities. What you have not been able to accomplish is to explain why those ideas about the regularities have any ontological significance to speak of. We all agree the regularities in nature that those ideas are describing have such ontological signifcance. He concludes: "I find myself at a total loss as to how I might proceed without a total waste of my time. Therefore, if I happen to post on metaphysics in the future, I probably will post with comments closed."
That's fine, but recognize what the problem is here: legitimate questions were raised that you get frustrated answering. As far as I know no one's been insulting you (the impetus for me closing comments on military posts, for example). We're just interested in the complete argument.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
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Since the universe is expanding, in a few billion years all (currently known) evidence that we live in an expanding universe will be inaccessible (e.g., other galaxies will be too far away to see, the cosmic microwave background radiation will have degraded below levels we can detect). Reason (and Science) will lead us to conclude that we live in a static universe consisting of a single galaxy in empty space.
ReplyDeleteThe above is a particularly convincing (to me) example of why I don't think Reason or Science tells us True things about Reality. Instead, what we have is something Somewhat Complicated that is Difficult to Articulate. No wonder we have such a hard time arguing about it!
My personal approach is to say that science finds models of reality, and to any attempts to give this a rigorous epistemological framework I reply with a heartfelt "I really don't care".
A bit late to the party, I guess . . .
My only question is why Gene leaps from the fact that we have ideas in our brains (we agree on that) to the assertion that those ideas have some kind of independent reality aside from being just the way our brains have organzied the regularities in reality.
ReplyDeleteBecause Gene isn't a materialist.
Right but Gene not being a materialist is not an argument for the claim! I guess I'm just wondering what compels him toward that answer.
DeleteI'm not a materialist, but at least a materialist can say "I ain't never seen an idea". That's something to work with. I don't even know what inspires people to be emphatic anti-materialists, and Gene is not throwing me any bones.
Maybe I really am just saying silly stupid things, but if that's the case I'd think it'd be easy to give me an answer to the question.
"My only question is why Gene leaps from the fact that we have ideas in our brains (we agree on that) to the assertion that those ideas have some kind of independent reality aside from being just the way our brains have organzied the regularities in reality."
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Gene Callahan, but I know why I make that leap: Nothing about subjective experience can be deduced logically from a set of material conditions. Hence, the fact that ideas supervene on brain states has to be taken as a basic principle of nature in its own right.
We can contrast this with the case of a steam engine or other complicated machine, where the properties of the whole can be deduced from the properties of the parts.