Is Chomsky's View on the Mind-Body Problem Redefining Materialism?

[PhizzicsPhan]

bohm2, seek Skrbina's great book, Panpsychism in the West for detailed responses to the critiques you list, but here's my quick response to each:

2. The Unconscious Mentality Problem. It would be easier to believe in an all pervasive mentality if we didn’t have to swallow the extra implausibility of this being conscious mentality. But then the generation problem is back with full force. What is the secret ingredient that turns certain combinations (see the first problem) of utterly unconscious mental elements into complex states of consciousness? There seems to be no escape from the requirement that panpsychism posit some kind of ‘micro-consciousness’.

There is no need to escape "micro-consciousness" as this is the very point of most versions of panpsychism: the world consists of micro-consciousnesses that occasionally combine into macro-consciousnesses. The "secret ingredient" is the right kind of organization/coherence, which may come about only in cell-based life (or non-cell-based life also perhaps).

3. The Completeness Problem. The physical world view as presented by and in fundamental physics seems to be causally complete. But a truly irreducible, basic feature of the world ought to make a causal difference to the world. Thus panpsychism would seem to threaten a plausible doctrine of physical causal closure.

Panpsychists generally make the lack of completeness and lack of causal closure a key point of their arguments. Emergence and epiphenomenalism often go hand in hand and this is a major argument against emergence/materialism.

4. The No Sign Problem. There appears to be no direct evidence whatsoever that every element of reality has an associated mentalistic and in fact conscious aspect.

To the contrary, there is abundant evidence of rudimentary mentality. Dyson describes explicitly how what we call random behavior in electrons is better described as choice. So where today's science so often posits chance as an explanation, panpsychists see free choice. Obviously, there is even more abundant evidence of mentality in the domains of life, from bats to bacteria.

5. The Not-Mental Problem. Even supposing there was some evidence for a fundamental, non-physical property that pervaded the world and had some kind of causal influence upon events, why would we call it a mental property? (In particular, why not call it a new kind of physical property?)

Because the point of the mind/body problem is a recognition that there is a fundamental difference between experience/feelings/consciousness and objective descriptions of matter. One is interiority, the other exteriority. Physics focuses currently entirely on exteriority. Tomorrow's physics will focus also on interiority by recognizing that every object is also a subject and vice versa.

 

[apeiron]

apeiron, I think you let the last thread trail off without much resolution :).

Yes, probably not unconnected with the fact that I went off on holiday for a few weeks at that point.

With respect to essences and emergence, the process philosophy version of panpsychism holds that there are no essences.

..which would seem to conflict with...

All is process and this process is inherently experiential because each "actual entity" oscillates between subject and object.

Talking about processes is good as it makes plain the structure of the causality that is claimed. You can understand why a process has the results it does.

But "oscillating between subject and object" doesn't really give any real view of a causal structure. There is no reason why it should be happening and have the results it does. It is just a claim about a pair of properties that are inherent in an alternating fashion. Why? How?

Peirce was certainly a process philosopher. But I don't see the justification for calling a panpsychic approach a process one. It claims experience as a property inherent in all material events. There is no actual process producing the property.

Again, a systems-focused ontology cannot explain consciousness even in principle unless it admits that some degree of consciousness exists in all the constituents that comprise the systems at issue. That is, unless one is fine positing miracles/magic - older names for radical emergence.

Again, a systems approach does not demand a world in which the local materials come first. Instead, the claim is that there is an organic interaction between local materials and global forms. A system involves also top-down constraint which has the effect of forming up the local materials, giving them the properties that appear to inhere.

So perhaps you don't understand the systems ontology yet? The local properties are part of what emerge in the development of a system. They don't have to be crisply definite prior to anything as you suggest.

As for "something it is like to be a rock," I'm saying (with most of today's panpsychists) exactly the opposite: there is not something it is like to be a rock. That's my point by saying that the constituents of the rock have some degree of experience but not the rock itself because it lacks the right kind of organization/coherence.

OK, so what defines a constituent here? Is it the crystals, the atoms, the wavefunctions?

And how do we demonstrate that they indeed have this claimed property? How are we measuring it?

As for falsifiability being the hallmark of a scientific theory, this is an overly narrow view that even Popper denied. Falsifiability is the gold standard of scientific theories, but it is not the only standard. Popper himself discussed criticizability as another standard and in philosophy the relevant standards are generally held to be adequacy to the facts and logical coherence.

So you agree that you are spinning a hypothesis that is unfalsifiable?

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

apeiron, I urge you go back through our last lengthy discussion because I've addressed all of your questions previously. "Process philosophy" is the term used to describe Whitehead's philosophy and there are journals and countless books on process philosophy, all of which are panpsychist. Whitehead did not deny substance (for what else could be the subject of process?) Rather, he tried to strike a more appropriate balance between process and substance as an antidote to the substantialism of the modern era, which stresses the importance of substance over process. Whitehead is generally a Heraclitean trying to mitigate Parmenidean tendencies that are still deeply rooted in our culture.

Here's the digest of my version of panpsychism, heavily inspired by Whitehead and others, but breaking some new ground also:

- time is quantized (chronon) and the universe is constantly changing from chronon to chronon
- each basic constituent ("actual entity", "simple subject," "occasion of experience," etc.) emanates into actuality from the pure potentiality of the "ground of being" or what Whitehead calls "creativity"
- each basic constituent of the universe oscillates with each time quantum between subject and object
- this oscillation is built into the "creative advance" of the universe, which is the flow of time and the laying down of reality in each moment. This laying down of the universe proceeds through the oscillation of each actual entity from subject to object, which results from the actual entity "prehending" the universe around it and choosing how to manifest based on that information
- actual entities can compound into higher order actual entities given the right energy and communications flows, which allows information to flow through a broader spatial extent than would be possible without these energy and communications flows. The broader spatial extent of each actual entity is perhaps synonymous with forms we call 'life,' which may be characterized by increased energy storage and improved energy flows

As for falsifiability I'm still thinking through approaches that may allow for falsification of panpsychism or materialism for Part 2 of my paper.

One possibility for falsifying materialism - or at least the epiphenomalist version thereof - from my armchair: why do we feel pain if epiphenomenalism is true? Isn't it enough that a reflex prompts us to move away from things that cause us harm? Why is pain (sometimes extreme pain) necessary to deter harmful behavior?

 

[Gold Barz]

As I said, the semiotic view is also the systems' one - essences emerge.

Apeiron, can you elaborate on this, what do you mean by essences?

 

[apeiron]

"Process philosophy" is the term used to describe Whitehead's philosophy and there are journals and countless books on process philosophy, all of which are panpsychist.

Yes, and I was commenting that this seems false advertising as things end up back with essentialism rather than with a true process view.

Whereas Peirce, who came before Whitehead and arguably influenced many people in a roundabout way, was really a process thinker IMO.

One of the things that came out of that last discussion was a better understanding of all the currents or thought that were swirling at that time. Peirce, of course, was a loner and embittered crank for much of his career, not publishing and so only an indirect influence. Yet I think that the vogue for neutral monism seen in Russell and James, the rise of holism, and then the success of Whitehead, shows that at least the thinking was quite adventurous back then.

By contrast, we are now in an era that is again relentlessly materialist and reductionist. So I have no problem considering panpsychism on its merits. But I am very critical of its inability to model the actual causality of reality. It does more to conceal than reveal when you get down to brass tacks.

Whitehead did not deny substance (for what else could be the subject of process?) Rather, he tried to strike a more appropriate balance between process and substance as an antidote to the substantialism of the modern era, which stresses the importance of substance over process. Whitehead is generally a Heraclitean trying to mitigate Parmenidean tendencies that are still deeply rooted in our culture.

Agreed, but then that does not go far enough from the Peircean perspective. The dichotomy is not between substance and process but substance and form (or local constructive actions and global downward acting constraints). And it is that totality which is the process.

So the process is about how the substance constructs the forms and the forms produce (via constraint) those very same substances. This is the radically emergent view of nature.

Applied to the mind-body issue, this means that we would call "mind" the process. And it emerges via that interaction between the local and global, between substance and form. And matter - the material world usually described by micro-physics - is also a process. It also emerges via the same kind of synergistic, systematic, interaction.

So mind is emergent, the material world is emergent. Both are levels of development of the same general process. (Peirce called it semiosis. Systems scientists today might call it hierarchy theory, or dissipative structure theory, or cybenetics, etc).

You keep saying that we have to believe in panpsychism because nothing essential can emerge from something that wasn't already there as an essence. It seems a plain logical fact to you (and many others).

But Peirce is precisely an example of switching the game around. Now the logic is that everything that exists (or rather persists) and so appears to have an inherent or essential character is in fact radically emergent. It is the result of a process of self-organising development. This applies as much to the universe as our own minds. So there just is no fundamental problem about the essential emerging. Even if there is of course still the issue of making working scientific models of a universe that emerges, or a mind that emerges.

Here's the digest of my version of panpsychism, heavily inspired by Whitehead and others, but breaking some new ground also:
- time is quantized (chronon) and the universe is constantly changing from chronon to chronon
- each basic constituent ("actual entity", "simple subject," "occasion of experience," etc.) emanates into actuality from the pure potentiality of the "ground of being" or what Whitehead calls "creativity"
- each basic constituent of the universe oscillates with each time quantum between subject and object
- this oscillation is built into the "creative advance" of the universe, which is the flow of time and the laying down of reality in each moment. This laying down of the universe proceeds through the oscillation of each actual entity from subject to object, which results from the actual entity "prehending" the universe around it and choosing how to manifest based on that information
- actual entities can compound into higher order actual entities given the right energy and communications flows, which allows information to flow through a broader spatial extent than would be possible without these energy and communications flows. The broader spatial extent of each actual entity is perhaps synonymous with forms we call 'life,' which may be characterized by increased energy storage and improved energy flows

Again, there is a reliance here on essentialist statements such as an oscillation between two states - the objective and the subjective - as a fact. What is it that makes these states different?

Now in QM, you do have a definite appeal to process here. You have the state of the system pre-measurement and post-measurement. OK, that then appears to require an observer. Or you can try to make a no-collapse interpretation seem ontologically sensible (and fail). So there are difficulties still. But the process is modeled mathematically in very clear fashion. And has been well tested. Something critical about reality has been captured to many decimal places.

But your subject/object oscillation just appears a play on words. It sounds a little like QM-speak and so piggy-backs on that theory's credibility. But there is nothing really that connects you to "experiential". The process needed to create that aspect of things is just not outlined in a way it can even be checked for logical rigour, let alone measured in practice.

One possibility for falsifying materialism - or at least the epiphenomalist version thereof - from my armchair: why do we feel pain if epiphenomenalism is true? Isn't it enough that a reflex prompts us to move away from things that cause us harm? Why is pain (sometimes extreme pain) necessary to deter harmful behavior?

Pain is a well studied story in neuroscience. The nervous system has a hierarchical structure so that it can handle reality at the most appropriate level. We have hardwired spinal reflexes so we react to things (like a hand on a hot stove) before the signals would even have time to travel up to the brain. Genes have hardwired in an immediate response because millenia have proved its worth.

But more complex brains can make more complex negotiations. So pain signals may be routed to a lower part of the brain, like the periaqueductal gray, and remapped to a higher part, like the anterior cingulate. The higher brain can then make choices. It can ignore pain - suppress it top-down - because some goal is more critical. Or in contrary fashion, it can amplify pain (bad backs are often an example of over-attention that perpetuates a signal of tissue damage that in fact is no longer there).

This hierarchical design also allows for new sources of pain as a motivating signal. We can feel the psychic pain of an interior decorator entering a badly done room. Or less jokingly, the empathetic pain that is basic to social animals.

So pain is a reaction to what it harmful. It drives a response. Simple creatures feel simple pain (there is something that it is like to be a live lobster chucked in the broiler ). And complex creature are able to feel complex pain (there is something that it is like to be to be into S&M too).

And we can explain the difference in process terms. We can point not just to some simple raw measure of complexity, but an actual structural logic that is plainly there in brain architecture. And which is functional in terms of an explicit ecological context. There is no mystery about the reason for things being this way.

So epiphenomenalism has no place here. We have a process that can result in experiences of pain as the result of some often complex negotiations.

We don't really need pain to drive a reflexive action (so we don't need to feel too guilty about lobsters perhaps). But we do need pain nagging on us to do things like protect a damaged limb until it has healed.

That is why complex brains evolved areas like the periaqueductal gray to keep us factoring the fact of inflammation into our ongoing decision making. And then areas on top of that like the anterior cingulate that can both chose to suppress knowledge of a damaged limb (because we really need to use it for some goal), and also connect more complex kinds of choice making (such as those of a socially-intelligent animal) to this "pain circuit", or central choice-making part of the brain.

So you can ask the question of why a pain has to hurt, just like you can ask about the redness of red. Why doesn't red look blue or gruen, etc? Once you get down to a certain level, you run out of counterfactuals and so any way to talk about how things could be reasonably otherwise.

But that is a tautology rather than a legitimate question really. The right kinds of questions are why is pain such a dominating sensation? What is its ecological function? What is its neural architecture? Why does it have such a variety of psychic sources? Why do the drugs work sometimes and not others? What is the placebo effect? What is a phantom limb?

There are a bunch of questions about pain as a process that can have answers. But that is because there is a context (containing counterfactuals) that allows there to be a real question.

If you insist on reducing the scope of the discussion to a question like why does pain have to hurt, then you are not falsifying materialism but instead putting the whole discussion beyond the falsification of any theory, as all real theories must outline a process. They must make counterfactuals available so that "what is" can be contrasted with "what is not".

And, as I say, where are the counterfactuals with panpsychism? Where is the model of a process that is open to falsification? Even just in the terms of logical argument, let alone scientific observation? If you can't say why a chronon is experiential in one phase of its oscillation by virtue of some explicit process, then you have shut off any genuine engagement here. You have assumed a conclusion without demonstrating any working out.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

PS. Apeiron, can you point me toward a good (hopefully brief) exposition of the systems theory approach to consciousness that you like?

 

[apeiron]

PS. Apeiron, can you point me toward a good (hopefully brief) exposition of the systems theory approach to consciousness that you like?

Yes, this is the best current neuroscientific paradigm in my opinion. It contains all the important ingredients of the systems approach, and it is fully detailed.

http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/The free-energy principle A unified brain theory.pdf

The New Scientist did a popular account too, if you want to start with something simpler.

http://reverendbayes.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/bayesian-theory-in-new-scientist/

 

[Gold Barz]

That New Scientist link was a very good read, pretty interesting theory by Karl Friston but I didn't really read anything about consciousness though just the brain itself.

 

[apeiron]

That New Scientist link was a very good read, pretty interesting theory by Karl Friston but I didn't really read anything about consciousness though just the brain itself.

A serious neuroscientist like Friston doesn't claim to be solving the riddle of consciousness because that would be treating it as a thing rather than a process. The idea that consciousness is some particular kind of substance or essence is exactly what we are trying to get away from here. Instead what we want is a general theory about mind-like processes.

But as I keep saying, if a brain has anticipatory states, then it doesn't seem a big jump to feeling that there should be something that it is like to be that brain (as opposed to some similar lump of matter that is not forward modelling the world).

 

[Gold Barz]

So the free energy principle is a mind-like process?

Also, are there any other theories that you like that fits in with the whole systems approach? I'm in the mood for some reading

 

[apeiron]

So the free energy principle is a mind-like process?

No, that would be the general material basis for the theory. So out of thermodynamics as a physical-level description of reality, we have a bunch of robust mathematical models that are to do with symmetry breaking, dissipation, and these kinds of processes. We also have the concepts of information and entropy as a measure of what is going on. So you have that general material paradigm that gives you the set of tools, then you build your model of the brain from that.

Contrast this with the old computer science approach where the attempt was to use computational theory as a basis.

Or indeed the dynamical systems approach which tried to tap into chaos and non-linear dynamics for a source of modelling tools.

This free energy story is a sort of hybrid of these two. But the computational aspects are more like neural network modelling and the dynamical aspects are more based on dissipative structure principles than chaos theory.

And both these things are moves away from straight reductionist thinking (cogsci and deterministic chaos) towards a systems view (hierarchical and self-organising neural nets and dissipative structures).

So you can see it as a hardening up of the view of the correct modelling language to describe the brain/mind as a system. But then you still have to build the model.

 

[bohm2]

As for Bohm...Another way of saying that is that everything material is also mental and everything mental is also material, but there are many more infinitely subtle levels of matter than we are aware of."

He's kind of forced to throw in russian dolls downwards because of the properties of his quantum/guiding/pilot wave, since it has unusual properties (e.g. non-local and propagates not in ordinary space but in a multidimensional-configuration space)

Bohm argues that this isn't like other force fields but is an "active information" field:

We therefore emphasize that the quantum filed is not pushing or pulling the particle mechanically, any more that the radio wave is pushing or pulling the ship that it guides. So the ability to do work does not originate in the quantum field, but must have some other origin...Such a notion suggests, however, that the electron may be much more complex than we thought (having a structure of a complexity that is perhaps comparable, for example, to that of a simple guidance mechanism such as an automatic pilot.

Hence the russion dolls...

Some have criticized this "radio wave" metaphor:

The radio metaphor is worrisome for a number of reasons. First, there is the concern about where the electron (or other particles) are getting the energy to put the information they receive to work. Radios have batteries or some other power source to draw on. Metaphorically speaking, where are the electron’s batteries? Second, the radio metaphor suggests that just as radio waves are too weak to move a ship, so too the force given by
taking the appropriate partial derivative of Q is too weak to move an electron (or some other particle). But this is false (and Bohm knew that). The quantum potential is such that when the appropriate partial derivative is taken, we arrive at the required force to move the particle.

http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~mdt26/local_papers/guarini_2003.pdf

 

[bohm2]

I found Stoljar’s epistemic “solution” to the "hard problem” of consciousness interesting (this is a summary of U. Kriegel’s review):

1. There are phenomenal facts-these are supported by direct introspection

2. If there are phenomenal facts, they are necessitated by physical facts because

(i) apparently everything else is necessitated by the physical facts and
(ii) facts cited in the manifest image are generally necessitated by facts cited in the scientific image

3. But there are phenomenal facts, that are not necessitated by physical facts-this is supported by stuff like Chalmers’ conceivability argument and Jackson’s knowledge argument, etc. (i.e. conscious experience involves “non-physical” properties)

Stoljar denies 3 above because he argues that we are ignorant of a whole class of facts about “matter”. These unknown facts about matter, in combination with the known ones, do necessitate the phenomenal facts. But because

(i) we are ignorant of them and
(ii) the facts of which we are not ignorant do not by themselves necessitate the phenomenal facts, the phenomenal facts seem unnecessitated by the physical facts.

Why are we ignorant of certain “physical” facts?

(i) as a natural, evolved system, there is no reason to expect the human intellect to understand all the facts about our universe or its physical makeup, let alone understand them especially at this time in our history
(ii) tremendous philosophical and empirical difficulties surrounding consciousness occur because of the ignorance hypothesis: physics can tell us only about the dispositional or relational properties of matter, but since dispositions ultimately require categorical properties as bases, and relations ultimately require intrinsic properties as relata, there must also be categorical or intrinsic properties about which physics is silent. Yet these are properties of physical objects and thus are physical properties in one central sense. Instantiations of such properties would therefore constitute physical facts of which we are ignorant, as per the ignorance hypothesis
(iii) intellectual and chemical facts (respectively) that were not necessitated by physical facts in the past turned out later to be frustrated by thitherto unknown physical facts (e.g. unification of chemistry with physics didn’t happen until the physics changed via quantum mechanics)

If we are ignorant of a certain class of facts about matter, then the conceivability and knowledge arguments fail. So phenomenal facts seem not necessitated by the physical facts even though they are. He then goes on to argue that in the future when we go on to discover a previously unknown but otherwise quite ordinary set of physical facts when combined together with the familiar physical facts it will necessitate the phenomenal facts.

http://ndpr.nd.edu/news/25270-ignor...temic-origin-of-the-problem-of-consciousness/

http://www.uriahkriegel.com/downloads/slugfest.pdf

This seems like a more detailed argument proposed by people like Russell, Eddington, Chomsky, etc. Chomsky makes that point when he argues:

It has been common in recent years to ridicule Descartes's "ghost in the machine" in postulating mind as distinct from body. Well, Newton came along and he did not exorcise the ghost in the machine: he exorcised the machine and left the ghost intact. So now the ghost is left and the machine isn't there.

But, do we really need to know the intrinsic properties of matter to truly understand qualia/the experiential? Since the intrinsic properties of matter are likely forever beyond scientific inquiry, is the hard problem "chronic and incontrovertible"?

 

[apeiron]

But, do we really need to know the intrinsic properties of matter to truly understand qualia/the experiential? Since the intrinsic properties of matter are likely forever beyond scientific inquiry, is the hard problem "chronic and incontrovertible"?

Stoljar sets up his argument to preserve reductionism. He presumes something in the microscale must be the secret, we just haven't found it yet.

But we already know from biology that ontology is more complex. In particular, Pattee's epistemic cut shows that semiosis - symbols, memory, computation - stands as antithetical to material causes.

http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/pattee/pattee.html

9. The irreducibility of the epistemic cut

The concept of constraint is not considered fundamental in physics because the (internal, geometric reactive) forces of constraint can, in principle, be reduced to active impressed forces governed by energy-based microscopic dynamical laws. The so-called fixed geometric forces are just stationary states of a faster, more detailed dynamics. This reducibility to microscopic dynamics is possible in principle for structures, even if it is computationally completely impractical. However, describing any bridge across an epistemic cut by a single dynamical description is not possible even in principle.

The most convincing general argument for this irreducible complementarity of dynamical laws and measurement function comes again from von Neumann (1955, p. 352). He calls the system being measured, S, and the measuring device, M, that must provide the initial conditions for the dynamic laws of S. Since the non-integrable constraint, M, is also a physical system obeying the same laws as S, we may try a unified description by considering the combined physical system (S + M). But then we will need a new measuring device, M', to provide the initial conditions for the larger system (S + M). This leads to an infinite regress; but the main point is that even though any constraint like a measuring device, M, can in principle be described by more detailed universal laws, the fact is that if you choose to do so you will lose the function of M as a measuring device. This demonstrates that laws cannot describe the pragmatic function of measurement even if they can correctly and completely describe the detailed dynamics of the measuring constraints.

This same argument holds also for control functions which includes the genetic control of protein construction. If we call the controlled system, S, and the control constraints, C, then we can also look at the combined system (S + C) in which case the control function simply disappears into the dynamics. This epistemic irreducibility does not imply any ontological dualism. It arises whenever a distinction must be made between a subject and an object, or in semiotic terms, when a distinction must be made between a symbol and its referent or between syntax and pragmatics. Without this epistemic cut any use of the concepts of measurement of initial conditions and symbolic control of construction would be gratuitous.

"That is, we must always divide the world into two parts, the one being the observed system, the other the observer. In the former, we can follow up all physical processes (in principle at least) arbitrarily precisely. In the latter, this is meaningless. The boundary between the two is arbitrary to a very large extent. . . but this does not change the fact that in each method of description the boundary must be placed somewhere, if the method is not to proceed vacuously, i.e., if a comparison with experiment is to be possible." (von Neumann, 1955, p.419)

Or more is different, as Philip Anderson famously put it. The fundamental laws of physics are shaped to describe the symmetries of nature. And fail to describe how those symmetries are broken. And complexity is all about systems that are living/mindful because they have gained local control over certain symmetry breakings (via semiotic mechanism).

http://robotics.cs.tamu.edu/dshell/cs689/papers/anderson72more_is_different.pdf

So the flaw is always to presume everything must reduce to microscale physical laws. You first have to get past the arguments that essential aspects of life and mind are irreducible in this fashion.

If symmetries get broken from the top-down (by information acting as constraint), then you can inspect those fundamental microscale symmetries forever and not discover any brokenness. The cause just does not lie within them, but without.

 

[bohm2]

Stoljar sets up his argument to preserve reductionism. He presumes something in the microscale must be the secret, we just haven't found it yet.

But we already know from biology that ontology is more complex. In particular, Pattee's epistemic cut shows that semiosis - symbols, memory, computation - stands as antithetical to material causes.

I'm guessing these authors would ask: What is Pattee's definition of "material"?

 

[apeiron]

I'm guessing these authors would ask: What is Pattee's definition of "material"?

Did you not read the paper? The whole point is that "all is material". But causality is both micro and macro when it comes to complexity.

So to use the Aristotelean frame, material and effective cause are "down there" at the level of micro-physics. But formal and final cause are the "up there" as the global material constraints.

Pattee defines the bit you mean as material as "the rate dependent dynamics of construction". It is what reductionists would like to believe is the whole of materiality. But Pattee shows how non-holonomic constraints are also part of material reality.

This is important because the conventional computational view of symbols is "physics-free" as Pattee says. There is something obviously right about computationalism (which is why it seems central to scientific theories of mind), but as a discourse it is not actually grounded in the physical, in the material. Instead it floats free in a rather Platonic fashion that leads to all kinds of familiar philosophical problems (like Searle's chinese box).

So that is why I single Pattee out here. He is a strict materialist (though his background in QM would already make him say the material is not so simple). And he shows how more is different. Materiality has this hidden face of semiotic control lurking within it.

You can see Pattee arguing against the other side - those who fail to ground the computational in the material - in his paper, Artificial life needs a real epistemology.

http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&so...2OH9Cw&usg=AFQjCNHYxZCLgUMfAu5Yrcj9cbrQaKm7cA

 

[Q_Goest]

Hi bohm,

I found Stoljar’s epistemic “solution” to the "hard problem” of consciousness interesting (this is a summary of U. Kriegel’s review):

1. There are phenomenal facts-these are supported by direct introspection

Does Stolijar’s solution suggest that phenomenal consciousness is epiphenomenal? If so, how can phenomenal facts be supported? Have you heard of the “knowledge paradox”?

3. But there are phenomenal facts, that are not necessitated by physical facts-this is supported by stuff like Chalmers’ conceivability argument and Jackson’s knowledge argument, etc. (i.e. conscious experience involves “non-physical” properties)

Stoljar denies 3 above because he argues that we are ignorant of a whole class of facts about “matter”. These unknown facts about matter, in combination with the known ones, do necessitate the phenomenal facts. But because

(i) we are ignorant of them and
(ii) the facts of which we are not ignorant do not by themselves necessitate the phenomenal facts, the phenomenal facts seem unnecessitated by the physical facts.

Why are we ignorant of certain “physical” facts?

How does Stolijar define “physical”? Is he using the term as others would use the term “natural”? Or does he use the term to refer to objectively observable phenomena such as the interactions of molecules, etc… ? If he’s using the term physical to mean the latter, then does he (or anyone else you know of) try to come to grips with how additional physical information in the form of phenomenal facts, might somehow be missing from a complete description of these objectively observable interactions? I keep hearing folks suggest that “we are ignorant of a certain class of facts about matter” but if some day we have a complete description of all the objectively observable interactions then what more do we need? Why even bother talking about phenomenal facts at that point? At the point we can accurately predict the interaction of all of matter, any additional theory about phenomenal facts would appear to be superfluous.

 

[bohm2]

This is the part that confuses me. I understand that wholeness or top-down and down-up (synergistic) relationships/causality is likely required to explain "real systemic or emergent properties" (e.g. the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts, etc.). This is suggested even the micro-level (e.g. Bell's experiments, QM, etc.). But even if one assumes some level of wholeness or top-down (synergistic) relationship/causality to explain emergence, novelty, etc. is that sufficient to spit out the mental/qualia from the non-mental? It seems that even this 2-way macroscopic/microscopic synergetic stuff only spits out more non-mental stuff (up to this point in our history of science)?

 

[Ferris_bg]

I think physicalism last hope is causal overdetermination. In fact it's a choice between overdetermination and epiphenomenalism, with both facing huge problems.

If we discuss the 3 materialistic theories - reductive physicalism, reductive functionalism and non-reductive physicalism, we see that none of them can successfully account for both mental causation and qualia, if we abandon causal overdetermination.

The 2 reductive theories - reductive physicalism and reductive functionalism - imply that the mental (M) can be reduced to either a physical (P) or a functional (F) state. So we have a kind of identity (M = P) or (M = F). And here comes the two huge problems for the reductionists known as http://www.iep.utm.edu/qualia/" .

Frank Jackson gives the argument its classic statement (in Jackson 1982 and Jackson 1986). He formulates the argument in terms of Mary, the super-scientist. Her story takes place in the future, when all physical facts have been discovered. These include “everything in completed physics, chemistry, and neurophysiology, and all there is to know about the causal and relational facts consequent upon all this, including of course functional roles” (Jackson 1982, p. 51). She learns all this by watching lectures on a monochromatic television monitor. But she spends her life in a black-and-white room and has no color experiences. Then she leaves the room and sees colors for the first time. Based on this case, Jackson argues roughly as follows. If physicalism were true, then Mary would know everything about human color vision before leaving the room. But intuitively, it would seem that she learns something new when she leaves. She learns what it’s like to see colors, that is, she learns about qualia, the properties that characterize what it’s like. Her new phenomenal knowledge includes knowledge of truths. Therefore, physicalism is false.

Putnam’s argument can be paraphrased as follows: (1) according to the Mind-Brain Type Identity theorist (at least post-Armstrong), for every mental state there is a unique physical-chemical state of the brain such that a life-form can be in that mental state if and only if it is in that physical state. (2) It seems quite plausible to hold, as an empirical hypothesis, that physically possible life-forms can be in the same mental state without having brains in the same unique physical-chemical state. (3) Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the Mind-Brain Type Identity theorist is correct.

These two arguments point that the non-reductive physicalism is the best materialistic choice. We can have P1 and P2, so that P1 is not identical with P2, but both generate the same mentality M. We say that the mental state supervenes on the physical state, but is not identical with it. We can't reduce M and qualia is still there. Everything looks good until the famous "Supervenience Argument" from Jaegwon Kim appears.

The Supervenience Argument incorporates three central assumptions. The first one specifies that the physical world is causally closed:
Closure: If a physical event has a cause at t, then it has a physical cause at t. (Kim 2005: 15)

The second one stipulates that mental properties supervene upon physical properties:
Supervenience: If any system s instantiates a mental property M at t, there necessarily exists a physical property P such that s instantiates P at t, and necessarily anything instantiating P at any time instantiates M at that time.

And the third is an exclusion principle expressing the prohibition of systematic overdetermination:
Exclusion: If an event e has a sufficient cause c at t, no event at t distinct from c can be a cause of e (unless this is a genuine case of causal overdetermination).

According to Kim, if we further assume that mental properties are neither reducible to not identifiable with physical properties, what results is a set of propositions inconsistent with the causal relevance of mental properties:
The problem of mental causation: Causal efficacy of mental properties is inconsistent with the joint acceptance of the following four claims: (i) physical causal closure, (ii) causal exclusion, (iii) mind–body supervenience, and (iv) mental/ physical property dualism—the view that mental properties are irreducible to physical properties.

The reasoning behind this contention is as follows. Suppose we wish to identify a mental property instance, M, as the cause of a subsequent physical property instance, P. By Supervenience we know that there must be some physical property instance upon which M supervenes and by Closure we know that if P has a cause at a time t, it has a physical cause at t. Let us suppose that P has a cause at t and that the physical cause of P (at t) is P0, and let us assume that P0 is the physical property instance upon which M supervenes. By Exclusion we know that P has no cause other than P0 unless this is a case of genuine causal overdetermination, which, we will assume, it is not. From this it follows that M is the cause of P only if M = P. But given that no mental property is identical with or reducible to any physical property, it follows that the putative mental cause, M, is not in reality a cause of P. Since there is nothing special about M, P, or P0, the argument generalizes to show that instances of irreducible mental properties do not have physical effects, so that nonreductive physicalism entails epiphenomenalism: ‘That then is the supervenience argument against mental causation, or Descartes’s revenge against the physicalists’ (Kim 1998: 46).

Basically the "Supervenience Argument" shows that if we does not assume that causal overdetermination is possible, than antireductionism entails epiphenomenalism.

They could (a) deny the causal status of mental types; that is, they could reject Mental Realism and deny that mental types are genuine properties. Alternatively, they could (b) reject Physicalism; that is, they could endorse the causal status of mental types, but deny their causal status derives from the causal status of their physical realizers. Or finally, they could (c) endorse Mental Realism and Physicalism, and reject Antireductionism.

Kim than favors the reductionist approach and believes that we can have scenario in which "intentional/cognitive properties are reducible, but qualitative properties of consciousness, or 'qualia', are not" (see "Physicalism, or Something Near Enough"). However he was strongly criticized for this, because such variant will separate the http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-unity/" .

So physicalism is faced with a hard choice between overdetermination and epiphenomenalism, and we are back at the beginning.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

apeiron, I'd like to be able to go through all the replies and counter-replies and respond in detail but I just don't have time. I did, however, go back and review our old thread discussing pansemiotism, panpsychism, and Pattee. I detailed the problems in Pattee's thinking there and won't bother to repeat them here.

Rather, I'll point out that I think, again, that pansemiotism and panpsychism are essentially the same thing - but you've gotten stuck on some contradictory notions within your own version of pansemiotism.

Pansemiotism cannot hold that "all is material" unless we re-define material to include meaning/mind. The traditional meaning of material is the opposite of that which holds meaning. it is inherently non-meaningful, inherently without mind.

So, again, any systems theory that seeks to explain mind must have some plausible mechanism by which mind emerges from non-mind, or make clear that there is no emergence and that mind is there from the beginning.

You wrote in post #109 in this thread https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=485718&page=7:

"Either you are a reductionist and believe that everything reduces to stuff - the local properties of substance - or you are a systems thinker and believe that everything develops, everything emerges from pure potential by way of an interaction between the local and the global, between local construction (the substantial causes) and global constraints (the formal causes).

Panpsychism takes the reductionist approach. Reality is made of a stuff that has material and psychic properties inherently.

Pansemiosis is a systems approach. Reality starts beyond stuff. It starts out as a raw potential. Then stuff emerges as a bootstrap process of self-organisation."

We're actually very close in our positions, terminology aside. My version of panpsychism does not proceed as you describe, however. Rather, it's much closer to how you describe pansemiosis - emergence of stuff (which is both mind and matter, from inside and outside, respectively) from the realm of pure potentiality. That's why I describe my version of panpsychism, when I am obliged to be technical, as "panexperiential neutral monism." That is, there is a neutral substrate, which is neither mind nor matter, from which matter/mind emerge (thus "panexperiential").

So I think we're saying much the same thing at the end of the day but you have yet to see the difficulty with your position in terms of the emergence of mind (and life, as we previously discussed). Your position would be stronger and more consistent if you recognized that neither mind nor life "emerge"; they are there from the very initial emergence of stuff from the realm of pure potentiality - and as stuff complexifies so mind and life complexify.

 

[apeiron]

is that sufficient to spit out the mental/qualia from the non-mental? It seems that even this 2-way macroscopic/microscopic synergetic stuff only spits out more non-mental stuff (up to this point in our history of science)?

The problem here becomes the expectation that mental/qualia is a valid output to be spat out.

A qualia is imagined as a fundamental atom of experience. An irreducible smallest jot of subjectivity. You can take the redness or smell of a rose as an isolated substantial entity that stands alone, without reference to a context.

And a systems view is that no such thing exists in this fashion. If you focus in on just the experience of redness at some particular instance, there is still in fact everything else that is going on that is the global part of this act of conscious attention (such as all the other potential experience being actively suppressed).

If instead you are talking about the mental as the whole of this material activity, then this makes more sense. But now you are also treating as "mental" all the other activity that is involved - including that non-experience of activity being suppressed. The not-A which is the context forming the A.

What were we saying in another thread on Kuhn? Paradigms suggest the nature of their own evidence. What I would call evidence for a systems approach is not what you would call evidence for a reductionist approach, and vice versa. The two paradigms continually talk past each other.

 

[apeiron]

So I think we're saying much the same thing at the end of the day.

Oh no, we're definitely not.

Your position would be stronger and more consistent if you recognized that neither mind nor life "emerge"; they are there from the very initial emergence of stuff from the realm of pure potentiality - and as stuff complexifies so mind and life complexify.

But why would I recognise positions for which you have failed to provide support because you are "too busy"?

And anyway, as I keep pointing out, saying stuff is conscious because consciousness is stuff is no form of explanation at all. It is an evasion of explanation.

Pansemiosis describes a general process (global constraints breaking local symmetries, as I have argued). So it is specific about the way the same (the symmetric) becomes the different (the broken). And it connects with a lot of modelling tools (hierarchy theory, self-organising criticality, modelling relations, epistemic cut).

So yes, the pan- would be justified in this approach as something that is there from the very beginning. But it is semiosis as a general causal principle that is there from the start. Not life(!) or mind, which are meant to be the explanandum here.

It is really annoying that you keep trying to make a false suggestive connection between pansemiosis and panpysychism, just as you do between panpsychism and QM.

Pansemiosis would be a general theory about the process of emergence and self-organisation.

Panpsychism is the claim that the mental (and living apparently!) is a fundamental property of stuff.

As I have pointed out in posts which you are too busy now to rebut, this is not a theory but merely an animistic belief.

 

[apeiron]

So physicalism is faced with a hard choice between overdetermination and epiphenomenalism, and we are back at the beginning.

Not really because Kim is again just restating the consequences of a reductionist paradigm.

If you believe that all causality is atomistic and constructive, then you will run into paradoxes. You are giving yourself no language with which to talk about global, downward acting, constraints.

So Kim proves that reductionism is inadequate to the task of fully accounting for systems. But we knew that.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

apeiron, for an obviously bright guy you don't read very closely. I've mentioned at least three times that my version of panpsychism does NOT hold that mind is a property of matter. Not. Rather, mind and matter are dual aspects of all actuality. There is not "stuff" that has mind. There is only actuality, which bubbles up from potentiality, and this actuality has mind-like and matter-like aspects, from different perspectives (inside and outside) and that oscillate with each moment in the creative advance.

I've also explained many times how my version of panpsychism goes far beyond a mere assumption.

I enjoy the dialogues with you, but how about this: I'll go back and read and respond to your detailed points if you do the same and don't simply ignore what I write?

More later...

 

[Ferris_bg]

So Kim proves that reductionism is inadequate to the task of fully accounting for systems. But we knew that.

You should re-read the post, his argument is against non-reductionism. I already explained it in details in a https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3202969#post3202969" and told you that the system view, which you support, is a type of NRP.

As for the pan-topic, there is a slight difference between the three, which apeiron summed up in the https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=523765" (which was again not related to panpsychism, that's why I asked this thread to be separated, but it looks like mods can only close threads, so I ask you PhizzicsPhan to make us all a favor and open a special thread related to panpsychism only).

Apeiron wrote:
Panexperientialism believes Q --> C
Panpsychism believes Q = C
Pansemiosis believes C --> Q

PhizzicsPhan replayed "Cognition is just complex qualia. That's it."

Basically the difference I see is that for panpsychism, since you have M (C + Q) present in all particles, you are not commit to strong emergence to solve the combination problem. While by the other two you need to involve strong emergence to make the step from C/Q to M.

 

[apeiron]

apeiron, for an obviously bright guy you don't read very closely. I've mentioned at least three times that my version of panpsychism does NOT hold that mind is a property of matter.

Again, what I pointed out was that this is still saying that there is a "stuff" which posesses properties. So it is a claim about substance and essence. Neutral monism (in this reductionist version you are advancing) is still saying the same thing, except that instead of the fundamental stuff being matter, it is something else (that is still matter-like in conception in being fundamental, essential, possessing inherent properties, etc).

Saying that both matter and mind are the essential properties of some further unspecified stuff buys you nothing in terms of explanation here. It just pushes reductionism back another step into the mysterious and unexplained. It hopes to push the need for a causal explanation at the crucial juncture out of sight, where with any luck, critics won't bother to follow.

It doesn't matter how much you talk in handwavy fashion about oscillation and prehension and actuality and creative advance. You have failed to articulate the nature of the causal link between matter and mind. You have simply claimed that they are the same stuff (but then somehow not the same thing). And I am asking for specifics on how they are not the same thing if they are properties of the same stuff?

You may reply, well they just are. Even if I don't know how. At which point you demonstrate that there is no theory here.

 

[PhizzicsPhan]

Ferris, I think I will start a separate panpsychism thread at some point but I think the discussion is working well enough for now.

With respect to your breakdown I don't think you have panexperientialism right. To me, panexperientialism and panpsychism are exactly the same (and pansemiosis, for that matter) because they posit that mind (whether we call it experience, psyche, consciousness or fried eggs) is fundamental to actuality. Whitehead and Griffin do make a distinction between experience and consciousness, but it's not a qualitative distinction; rather, it's just a matter of degree. It's also a matter of salesmanship. To many, it's more palatable to suggest that some type of experience is present in all things than to say that consciousness is present in all things. But these terms reduce to the same thing in their fundamental mind-ness, as opposed to non-mind-ness.

 

[apeiron]

To me, panexperientialism and panpsychism are exactly the same (and pansemiosis, for that matter) because they posit that mind (whether we call it experience, psyche, consciousness or fried eggs) is fundamental to actuality.

If this is what you believe, can you now provide a source to back it up?

Where does Peirce posit that mind is fundamental rather than the process of semiosis?

Take for example...

http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=...&resnum=6&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

[bohm2]

Does Stolijar’s solution suggest that phenomenal consciousness is epiphenomenal?

No

How does Stolijar define “physical”? Is he using the term as others would use the term “natural”?

Stolijar (see his article on “physicalism” in link below) considers himself a physicalist but he defines it so broadly that it could be compatible with just about anything :

The theory-based conception:
A property is physical iff it either is the sort of property that physical theory tells us about or else is a property which metaphysically (or logically) supervenes on the sort of property that physical theory tells us about.

The object-based conception:
A property is physical iff: it either is the sort of property required by a complete account of the intrinsic nature of paradigmatic physical objects and their constituents or else is a property which metaphysically (or logically) supervenes on the sort of property required by a complete account of the intrinsic nature of paradigmatic physical objects and their constituents.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/

Even panpsychism is compatible with physicalism as he defines it. I think, like Chomsky, he doesn’t think we can unify the “mental” with current science because of our (current) ignorance of the physical.

I keep hearing folks suggest that “we are ignorant of a certain class of facts about matter” but if some day we have a complete description of all the objectively observable interactions then what more do we need? Why even bother talking about phenomenal facts at that point? At the point we can accurately predict the interaction of all of matter, any additional theory about phenomenal facts would appear to be superfluous.

I think that depends on how one defines a “complete description of all the objectively observable interactions”. I think any theory that doesn’t somehow explain how the experiential fits into nature will not be a complete description . Some like Strawson demand quite a bit. He writes (see "The Impossibility of an Objective Phenomenology" on p. 62-65):

My claim is not that non-experiential or N properties cannot in fact be paired with experiential or E properties in correlation statements of the form ‘[N1→E1]’. It consists of two main points.

1. Even if we attempted to put forward correlation statements of the form ‘[N1 → E1]’, we could never hope to verify such statements across a human population by checking independently on E1 and N1 and thereby establishing the correlations, because we could never check independently on E1. If we somehow knew some of the correlation statements to hold true in the case of a single individual, we could perhaps take their general truth to be guaranteed by the truth of the supervenience thesis, but it is unclear whether even this would be acceptable, given the extent of our ignorance of the nature of the physical. Further, even if some statement of the form ‘[N1 → E1]’ were somehow known to be true, the only people who could know for sure what ‘E1’ referred to would be those who had been shown to have N1 and had been told which of their experiences was specially correlated with, or realized by, N1 (‘It’s whatever visual experience you are having...wait...now’).

2. We could never make a start on testing interpersonally applicable correlation statements of the form ‘[E1 → N1]’, because we could never be sure that we had distinguished the same experiential property in the case of two different people, even if they fully agreed in language about what experiences they were having. It is plausible that ‘[E1 → N1]’ correlation statements would have to be of the form ‘[E1 → N1 ∨ N2 ∨ N3 ∨... ]’: they would have to be disjunctive and open-ended on the righthand side, because of the possible “variable physical realization” of any experiential property. The present point, however, is that even if one could identify exactly which nonexperiential neural goings-on were involved in the occurrence of a particular type of experience in one’s own case, and at a given time, one could never fill out the disjunctive right-hand side of the correlation statement by including other people, because one could never know that one was really dealing with the same type of experience in their case.

http://books.benjibear.com/mind-info/MIT.Press.Mental.Reality.2nd.Edition.Nov.2009.eBook-ELOHiM.pdf

 

[apeiron]

I already explained it in details in a https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?p=3202969#post3202969" and told you that the system view, which you support, is a type of NRP.

I tried to explain how it wasn't. Your claim was based on a few misconception as I outlined.

https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3203487&postcount=311
https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=3203901&postcount=318

Apeiron wrote:
Panexperientialism believes Q --> C
Panpsychism believes Q = C
Pansemiosis believes C --> Q

Sorry, in which post did I write this?

What are Q, C and M here?