Month: May 2009

Supervenience, Emergence, Mind, and Magic

Peter Lupu has come out in favor of emergentism in the philosophy of mind.  Here is an argument he could use to defend the thesis that mental properties are emergent properties:

1. Materialistic Anti-Dualism: Human beings are nothing more than complex material systems.

2. Anti-Reductivism: Mental properties are not identical to physical properties, nor do the former logically imply the latter.

3. Anti-Eliminativism: Human beings do in fact instantiate mental properties.

4. Anti-Panpsychism:  The basic constituents of the physical world do not have mental properties.

Therefore

5. Mental properties are emergent properties, which implies that there are emergent properties. 

The cases for (2) are (3) are overwhelming, so I consider them 'off the table.'  Peter agrees.  Panpsychism ought to be investigated, but Peter finds it highly implausible, so let's assume it to be false for the sake of this discussion.  The crucial premise — the dialectical bone of contention if you will — between Peter and me is (1).  He accepts (1) while I reject it.  It is worth noting that there are at least three ways of rejecting (1): by being a substance dualist, or an idealist (see John Foster's work), or a Thomistic hylomorphic dualist.  So I would argue from ~(5) to ~(1).  But for now we assume that (1) is true.

Continue reading “Supervenience, Emergence, Mind, and Magic”

Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief?

I coined the phrase 'ego surfari' some years ago. To go on ego surfari is to type one's name into a search engine in order to see what turns up. The results are often surprising. Today I found Does Emergence Help in Defending Religious Belief? by Sami Pihlström, Helsinki. Excerpt:

One of the few recent contributions in which the combination of (emergentist or supervenientist) physicalism and theism is seriously challenged is William Vallicella’s (1998). [Vallicella, W.F. 1998 “Could a Classical Theist Be a Physicalist?”, Faith and Philosophy 15, 160-180.] He rejects eliminativism, type-type identity theory, supervenientism, emergentism, and ”the constitution view” (i.e., the view that persons are materially constituted beings) as five ”theologically useless physicalisms” (163ff.). The argument is largely based on Kim’s criticism of nonreductive physicalism. Regarding emergentism (167- 170), Vallicella points out that even if the human soul were seen as an emergent substance or as having emergent properties, problems would remain, as neither divine nor angelic consciousness can be understood as emerging from matter, upon any Christian construal: ”It is analytic that emergence is emergence from a physical base, and in the case of God and angels classically conceived there is no physical base. Moreover, it is analytic that to emerge is to come into being, and God’s consciousness does not come into being” (169). Vallicella (170) also argues against Stump’s (1995) Aquinian suggestion of combining materialism and dualism (and the possibility of survival), insisting that an emergent property cannot continue to exist after the physical system whose property it is falls apart.

If a reconciliation of science and theism were possible through emergentism, this would constitute an intellectual breakthrough of enormous magnitude. No doubts about the cultural or generally human significance of the notion of emergence would remain. Unfortunately, the research program run by theistically inclined naturalists seems to me hopeless; as Vallicella (1998, 176) puts it, physicalism and theism are ”competing Weltanschauungen”. One problem with views seeking to reconcile them, and with the on-going discussion of emergence and theism in Zygon (and elsewhere), is – as in the systematically philosophical emergence literature we find elsewhere – an unargued commitment to strong metaphysical realism. It is presupposed that both scientific and religious language purport to refer to a fundamentally concept- and language-independent world and that, therefore, religion and science must be coherently fitted into one grand theory of the world, if we if we want to retain both. Against this assumption, a more Wittgensteinian-oriented thinker may argue that religion and science are different human practices (or groups of practices) with their characteristic normative structures. Quite different ”moves” are allowed in these different (families of) language-games; for example, the ”soul” allegedly rendered ”scientifically acceptable” in emergentism would hardly have a place in religious language-use.

Does Substance Dualism Explain Subjectivity? The Nagel-McGinn Parity Argument

In my humble opinion, materialist theories of mind are all of them quite hopeless. All of them founder on the reef of irreducible subjectivity. But is substance dualism in a better position than materialism when it comes to explaining the subjectivity of conscious experience?

Colin McGinn, drawing on Thomas Nagel, thinks that the same problem that afflicts the materialist returns to haunt the substance dualist. Now what was that problem again?

Continue reading “Does Substance Dualism Explain Subjectivity? The Nagel-McGinn Parity Argument”

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some 40’s Proto-Rock

Freddie Slack and Will Bradley Trio (1940), Down the Road A Piece.

If you like to boogie woogie, I know the place.
It's just an old piano and a knocked out bass.
The drummer man's a guy they call Eight Beat Mack.
And you remember Doc and old "Beat Me Daddy" Slack.

Man it's better than chicken fried in bacon grease
Come along with me, boys, it's just down the road a piece.

Ella Mae Morse (1945), The House of Blue Lights.  Shows that 'square' and 'daddy-o' and 'dig' were already in use in the '40s.  I had been laboring under the misapprehension that this patois first surfaced in Beat/Beatnik circles in the '50s.

Classical Theism and Global Supervenience Physicalism

This is a paper I read at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, Massachusetts,  August 10-15, 1998. It explains the notions of strong and global supervenience, notions which will serve as foils in getting a handle on the concept of emergence.

ABSTRACT: Could a classical theist be a physicalist? Although a negative answer to this question may seem obvious, it turns out that a case can be made for the consistency of a variant of classical theism and global supervenience physicalism. Although intriguing, the case ultimately fails due to the weakness of global supervenience as an account of the dependence of mental on physical properties.

Physicalism is popular these days, and to a lesser extent so is classical theism. It should therefore come as no surprise that a number of theists are bent on combining theism with physicalism. But could a classical theist be a physicalist? Is this a coherent doctrinal combination? The classical theist affirms the metaphysically necessary existence of a concrete, purely spiritual being upon which every other concrete being is ontologically dependent. The physicalist, however, is committed to the proposition that everything, or at least everything concrete, is either physical or determined by the physical. To be a bit more precise, physicalism is usefully viewed as the conjunction of an 'inventory thesis' which specifies physicalistically admissible individuals and a 'determination thesis' which specifies physicalistically admissible properties.(1) What the inventory thesis says, at a first approximation, is that every concretum is either a physical item or composed of physical items. As for the determination thesis, what it says is that physical property-instantiations determine all other property-instantiations; equivalently, every nonphysical property-instantiation supervenes on physical property-instantiations. These rough characterizations suggest that theism and physicalism logically exclude one another. If God as classically conceived exists, then the inventory thesis is violated: not every concrete entity is either physical or composed of physical items. And if God exists, it would also appear that the determination thesis is flouted: God's instantiation of his omni-attributes does not supervene on His instantiation of any physical properties: He has none. So at first glance it seems almost crashingly obvious that the classical theist cannot be a physicalist.

But this talk cannot end just yet. For when we get down to the details of formulating precise versions of both the inventory and determination theses, it turns out that there is a way to attempt the reconciliation of theism and physicalism. It is the viability of this way that I aim to explore. But first some background.

Continue reading “Classical Theism and Global Supervenience Physicalism”

Social Utility and the Life of the Mind: The Example of Complex Numbers

Much as I disagree with Daniel Dennett on most matters, I agree entirely with the following passage:

I deplore the narrow pragmatism that demands immediate social utility for any intellectual exercise. Theoretical physicists and cosmologists, for instance, may have more prestige than ontologists, but not because there is any more social utility in the satisfaction of their pure curiosity. Anyone who thinks it is ludicrous to pay someone good money to work out the ontology of dances (or numbers or opportunities) probably thinks the same thing about working out the identity of Homer or what happened in the first millionth of a second after the Big Bang. (Dennett and His Critics, ed. Dahlbom, Basil Blackwell 1993, p. 213. Emphasis in original.)

Continue reading “Social Utility and the Life of the Mind: The Example of Complex Numbers”

Could I Be a Brain-Body Composite?

The upshot of an earlier argument was that I cannot be a soul-body composite. So if I have a soul, then I am identical with it. This is a conclusion that Roderick Chisholm also arrived at:

If we say that (1) I am a thinking being and (2) that thinking beings and souls are the same, then we should also say (3) that I am a soul; and therefore (if we take 'have' in its ordinary sense) we should say (4) that I do not have a soul. ("On the Simplicity of the Soul," Philosophical Perspectives 5, 1991, p. 178)

If this is right, then hylomorphic dualism is untenable as well as any substance-dualist position according to which I am a composite of two substances. If I have a soul, speaking loosely, then I don't have it, speaking strictly, but am identical to it. But why suppose that one either has or is a soul? Why can't one be a brain-body composite? For essentially the same reasons that I gave last time for my not being a soul-body composite.

First an argument to the conclusion that I am not identical to a brain-body composite, then an argument that I am not identical to my brain.

Continue reading “Could I Be a Brain-Body Composite?”

Could I Have Parts?

A strange question, but one to which sense can be attached. What I am asking is whether or not the self can be a composite entity, a whole of parts. Or am I a simple entity? The question has a dualist, a materialist, and an idealist form. Dualist: Could I be a mind-body or soul-body composite? Materialist: Could I be a brain-body composite? Idealist: Could I be a composite of items that are all of them of a spiritual nature? And if one is a dualist, the problem occurs in a compound form: given that both soul and body are composites, how can I be a composite of these two composites?

Continue reading “Could I Have Parts?”

The Consequence Argument Against Compatibilism

Is the will free or determined? This is a crude way of posing the traditional problem of free will and determinism. But the traditional problem presupposes that free will and determinism are incompatible. Since this cannot be legitimately presupposed, the fundamental problem is the compatibility problem: Are free will and determinism compatible or incompatible?

I view them as incompatible, and, influenced by Kant, I see compatibilism as a 'shabby evasion' of the underlying difficulty. But since one cannot shame a philosophical position out of existence, pace Daniel Dennett, I had better present an argument. An argument one finds in the literature is the Consequence Argument. (See for example Peter van Inwagen's An Essay on Free Will.) Here is a version of it that draws upon van Inwagen and also this discussion by Tomis Kapitan.

Continue reading “The Consequence Argument Against Compatibilism”

Five Years of Blogging

Actually, my 'blogiversary' was yesterday.  My inaugural post appeared on 4 May 2004.  My mind drifts back to some of my earliest acquaintances in the blogosphere. I am happy to see that most of them are still at it.  Here is a partial list:  Keith Burgess-Jackson; Gates of Vienna; Mangan's; Bill's Comments; Laudator Temporis Acti.

The erudite Dr. Michael Gilleland of Laudator Temporis Acti credits me with getting him going:

I started this blog just over three years ago, on May 10, 2004. Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, was my inspiration. When I look back at my posts for that first day, I see some themes which I have revisited over the years: Luddism, scatology, and solitude.

Like Mike, I am drawn to the callipygian, but have no interest in the scatological as such.  I suppose every man has his wobble.  One might argue that a blog that does not display a bit of a man's wobble is no blog at all.  What we scribble here is loose and chatty and a little confessional.  Ecce homo! warts and all. One debates with oneself as to the proper proportion of the personal to the impersonal.  Mike strikes a nice balance.  But I note yet another excursus into the scatological in his recent post, An Effect of Fear, which he introduces with a quotation from Pseudo-Aristotle.

And now to all and sundry: Blog on!

Could Freedom of the Will be an Illusion?

Could freedom of the will in the strong or unconditional 'could have done otherwise' sense be an illusion?

Suppose A and B are incompatible but possible courses of action, and I am deliberating as to whether I should do A or B. (Should I continue with this blogging business, or devote more time to less ephemeral pursuits?) Deliberating, I have the sense that it is up to me what happens. I have the sense that it is not the case that events prior to my birth, together with the laws of nature, necessitate that I do what I end up doing. Seriously deliberating, I presuppose the falsity of determinism. Determinism is the thesis that, given the actual past, and the actual laws of nature, there is only one possible future. When I seriously deliberate, however, my deliberation behavior manifests the belief that there is more than one possible future, and that it is up to me which of these possible futures becomes actual. There is the possible future in which I hike tomorrow morning and blog in the afternoon and the equipossible future in which I blog tomorrow morning and hike in the afternoon. And which becomes actual depends on me.

Continue reading “Could Freedom of the Will be an Illusion?”

Weak and Strong Readings of ‘Could Have Done Otherwise’

Determinism is the view that whatever happens is determined by antecedent conditions under the aegis of the laws of nature. Equivalently, past facts, together with the laws of nature, entail all future facts. It follows that facts before one's birth, via the laws of nature, necessitate what one does now. The necessitation here is causal, not logical. Could a determinist have a use for 'could have done otherwise'? Yes, if he gives the phrase a weak or conditional interpretation. No, if he gives it a strong or unconditional interpretation.

WEAK READING. Agent A could have done otherwise than action X =df A would have done other than X had A had a sufficiently strong desire to do other than X (or had a sufficiently strong desire together with a different set of background beliefs, etc.)

Example. A man insults me and I insult him back. Could I have "turned the other cheek" and done otherwise? Yes, under conditions like the following. Had I been a better man, I would have let the insult pass unanswered. If I had not perceived the insult, I would not have answered it. If I had had a desire to impress a bystander with how forebearing I am, I would have remained silent. And so on.

STRONG READING. Agent A could have done other than X =df A could have done other than X even if every factor prior to X had been the same.

I will use 'could have done otherwise' only in the STRONG sense. This will allow me to define libertarian freedom (L-freedom) in terms of 'could have done otherwise': An agent A is L-free in respect of action X =df (i) A performs X; (ii) A could have done otherwise. It is clear that L-freedom is incompatible with determinism. For if I am L-free in respect of just one action, then it is not the case that whatever happens is causally necessitated by antecedent conditions via the laws of nature.