I find in the Psalms too much praising of a tribal god, and not enough seeking of the hidden God. But both are there.
Inconclusive
The conclusions of the philosopher are — inconclusive.
Evidence and Actuality: A Modal Punch at W. K. Clifford
W. K. Clifford is often quoted for his asseveration that "it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence." Now one of my firmest beliefs is that I am an actual individual, not a merely possible individual. A second is my belief that while there is an infinity of possible worlds, there is exactly one actual world and that this world of me and my world mates is the world that happens to be actual. (Think of the actual world as the total way things are, and of a merely possible world as a total way things might have been. For a quick and dirty primer, see Some Theses on Possible Worlds.)
But not only do I have insufficient evidence for these two beliefs, it looks as if I have no evidence at all. And yet I feel wholly entitled to my acceptance of them and in breach of no plausible ethics of belief, assuming there is such a subject as the ethics of belief.
Consider the following argument that I adapt from D. M. Armstrong, who borrowed it from Donald C. Williams:
1. Exactly one of the infinity of possible worlds is actual.
2. This world of me and my mates is a possible world.
Therefore, very probably,
3. This world of me and my mates is merely possible.
This is an inductive argument, but a very strong one. While it does not necessitate its conclusion, it renders the conclusion exceedingly likely. For if there is an infinity of worlds, how likely is it that mine is the lucky one?
And yet the conclusion is absurd, or to be precise: manifestly false. Is it not perfectly obvious that this world of ours and everything in it is actual? I am convinced that I am actual, and that all this stuff I am interacting with is actual. I am sitting in an actual chair in an actual room which is lit by an actual sun, etc.
But how do I know this? What is my evidence? There are no facts known to me that are better known than the fact that I am actual (that I actually exist). So my evidence cannot consist of other facts. Is it self-evident that I am actual? You could say this, but how do I know, given the above argument, that my actuality is objectively self-evident as opposed to merely subjectively self-evident? Subjective self-evidence is epistemically worthless, while objective self-evidence is not to be had in the teeth of the above argument. No doubt I seem to myself to be actual. But that subjective seeming does not get the length of objective self-evidence. I now argue as follows:
4. If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe anything on no evidence.
5. I have no evidence that me and my world are actual.
6. It is not wrong to believe what is obviously true.
7. It is obviously true that I am actual.
Therefore, contra Clifford,
8. There are some things it is not wrong to believe on insufficient evidence.
This is not a compelling argument, but it is a very powerful one. Not compelling because the Cliffordian extremist could bite the bullet by denying (7). He might say that the ethics of belief enjoins us to suspend belief on the question whether one is actual.
Now this is psychologically impossible, for me anyway. But apart from this impossibility, it is surely better known that I am actual than that Clifford's extreme thesis is true.
There are other obvious problems with the thesis. Any tyro in philosophy should see right away that it is self-vitiating. If it is wrong to believe anything on insufficient evidence, then it is wrong to believe Clifford's thesis on insufficient evidence. But what conceivable evidence could one have for it? None that I can see. It is not only a normative claim, but one stuffed with universal quantifiers. Good luck! If you say that the thesis needn't be taken as applying to itself, then other problems will arise that you can work out for yourself. Why do I have to do all the thinking?
Note also that if you take Clifford's thesis to heart you will have to suspend belief on all sorts of questions outside of religion, questions in ethics, politics, economics, climatology, etc., questions you have extremely firm opinions about. The practical upshot, if one were consistent, would probably be a full retreat into Skeptic ataraxia. At least until the political authorities came to put you in prison. Then you would begin believing that some things are just and some are not, etc., and damn the insufficiency or nonexistence of the evidence for the contentious beliefs.
Our doxastic predicament is a bitch, ain't she? Well, what do you want for a Cave?
The Decline and Fall of American Political Debate
A good article by John Daniel Davidson. Excerpt:
For years it’s been remarked that we no longer have one American culture but many, that we’ve become Balkanized into a dizzying array of interests and identity groups separated by race, ethnicity, religion, and much else.
But we’re also separated, increasingly, by the news and commentary we read and watch. To the extent that it informs us of what’s going on, and why, and what to expect, our fragmentation and insularity has reached a dangerous tipping point: we no longer agree on what’s real.
Davidson illustrates his point by analysis of three recent examples: Ahmed Mohamed the Clock Maker; Carly Fiorina vs. Planned Parenthood; the invasion of illegals from Central America.
But what makes Davidson's article especially good is that he provides historical context by suggesting that the current mess had its origin in 1968 in a rancorous exchange between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal.
Buckley and Vidal met ten times over the course of the two conventions and spent most of their time attacking one another. Much of the debate footage is online, but the documentary plumbs the motivations of each man and the profound consequences of their televised battle. Of Vidal, Heritage Foundation historian Lee Edwards said, “I don’t think he was really interested in conducting a debate about the issues, or about the parties, or about the policies, or about the platforms of the two parties. What he wanted to do was to expose Bill Buckley.” In this Vidal succeeded, but not quite in the way he’d hoped.
The infamous moment came while they were debating the Vietnam War. Buckley compared opponents of the war to Nazi appeasers. Vidal, an opponent of the war, responded: “The only pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself.” Back then, calling someone a Nazi was taboo (unlike today, when it is mostly ridiculous). Buckley lost his temper. He leaned toward Vidal, shaking with anger, narrowed his eyes and said: “Now listen, you queer, quit calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.”
That moment, together with all the rancor and ad hominem attacks that had led up to it, inaugurated a new era in American media: the end of the old, sober centrism and the beginning of open ideological warfare. It didn’t happen overnight, but ABC’s success—the Buckley-Vidal debates propelled them to No. 1—didn’t go unnoticed, and on-air political debates between liberal and conservative pundits gradually became a regular feature of TV news programming: “The McLaughlin Group,” “Capital Gang,” “Crossfire,” and all the rest. The personal, vituperative tone of the Buckley-Vidal debates became the now-familiar register of political punditry.
We are now one step further into the cultural sewer:
Instead of shouting each other down the way they did on “Crossfire,” the new pundits are more apt to sneer and mock in the style of Jon Stewart. There’s little to be gained in arguing with an opponent but much to be gained by mocking him. What this means in practice is that we tend to seek out news and commentary that more or less reflects our own opinions back to us. Reading the news becomes an exercise in confirmation bias.
Related: Pessimistic Thoughts on Political Discourse in America
A Warning
Apropos of my last entry, a warning to those may be thinking of heading for the desert. The following observation from a November 2009 post, "Demons of the Desert."
The desert fathers of old believed in demons because of their experiences in quest of the "narrow gate" that only few find. They sought to perfect themselves and so became involved as combatants in unseen warfare. They felt as if thwarted in their practices by opponents both malevolent and invisible. The moderns do not try to perfect themselves and so the demons leave them alone.
Distracted from your distractions, you may get more than you bargained for, phenomenologically, if not really.
My Time Away: Where I Was and What I Did
A reader sent the following about half-way through my digital fast and blogging hiatus.
. . . I was hoping that when you emerge from it you might have some practical wisdom on how you went about it. What has your daily schedule been like? Have you struggled with the nagging urge to check everything all the time? I have been thinking a lot about the issues you raised both in The Big Unplug post and in your post on Mass Media and Spiritual Deterioration . . . . Thanks for reading this and for the writing you have contributed over the years – it has truly been signal amidst a great deal of noise.
How did I go about it? I got as far away as practicable from the hype and hustle and hyperkineticism of the modern world.
From July 26th to August 30th I lived in a hermitage on the grounds of the most remote monastery in the Western hemisphere in a place of great natural beauty. I have decided not to post any photographs or reveal the identities of any interlocutors in keeping with the monastic spirit of silence, solitude and seclusion.
An average day went something like this. Up at my usual time of 2:00 AM. (The monks arise at 3:30.) Instant coffee. I drank no good coffee for five weeks as part of the self-imposed discipline. Spiritual-philosophical reading until 3:00: Bible, Garrigou-Lagrange, Edith Stein, Theresa of Avila, et al. Formal, seated meditation until 3:30 in the hermitage. Then a 10-15 minute hike through a dark and spooky canyon to the oratory for Vigils at 4:00. This is the first hour of the liturgia horarum, the liturgy of the hours. It lasts one hour weekdays, one hour, twenty minutes on Sundays. Some of the 'little hours' are as short as ten minutes. The liturgy, chanted by the monks, is essentially psalmody with Christian elements interspersed. After Vigils, a light breakfast outside the monks' refectory. Then back to the hermitage for study and writing. I usually attended three of the seven hours per day and meditated on a 'regulation' Zen cushion and mat three times per day. I gave myself the rule, "No pray, no eat." So I attended Vigils before breakfast, Sext before the main meal, taken with the monks in the refectory, in silence of course, with one of the monk doing a reading, and Vespers before supper.
Did I struggle with the urge to check my 'devices' all the time? Not at all. I brought only a laptop computer for writing, but there was no wi-fi at the hermitage. For that I had to hike to the monastery proper where I could tap into a weak wi-fi signal. I did that a grand total of four times in five weeks, and only to check e-mail. The only other device I had with me was a primitive cell phone which was useless to me in the remote location.
From my journal:
Here in the hermitage I stand naked before my own conscience. Its penetrating power is enhanced by the exterior and interior silence.
No Escape. And now it is night. Alone in the hermitage which is itself alone and off by itself under stars undiminished by light pollution. Dead silence. No distractions of the usual sort: other people, pets, television, radio, Internet. Just me, my books, and my past — and the spiritual dimension that the silence and solitude allow to approach. The hour glass of my existence is running out, which is why I am here to repent of my sins and prepare for death. The hour of death is the hour of truth when the masks fall, and evasions evaporate.
Modern man, distracted and diverted by endless self-referential yammering, firmly entrapped within the human horizon, is so deluded and lost as to be incapable of even raising the question, seriously, of whether anything lies beyond that stifling horizon.
If You Come to a Fork in the Road . . .
. . . take it. (Yogi Berra) My favorite Yogism: "Hey Yogi, what time is it?" "You mean now?"
Strawson’s Vacuous Materialism
The Dawkins Hustle
Karl White sends us to this Spectator article and provides this summary:
For $85 a month, you get discounts on his merchandise, and the chance to meet ‘Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science personalities’. Obviously that’s not enough to meet the man himself. For that you pay $210 a month — or $5,000 a year — for the chance to attend an event where he will speak. . . . But the $85 a month just touches the hem of rationality. After the neophyte passes through the successively more expensive ‘Darwin Circle’ and then the ‘Evolution Circle’, he attains the innermost circle, where for $100,000 a year or more he gets to have a private breakfast or lunch with Richard Dawkins, and a reserved table at an invitation-only circle event with ‘Richard’ as well as ‘all the benefits listed above’, so he still gets a discount on his Richard Dawkins T-shirt saying ‘Religion — together we can find a cure.
The website suggests that donations of up to $500,000 a year will be accepted for the privilege of eating with him once a year: at this level of contribution you become a member of something called ‘The Magic of Reality Circle’. I don’t think any irony is intended.
Just as religion is a hustle for some, anti-religion is for others.
Kolakowski on the Catholic Church
I hope the Church is not about to commit 'suicide by pope.' Pope Francis might do well to meditate on the following truths from the pen of the agnostic philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski. The following from an interview:
It would be silly, foolish, to object to the Church on the grounds that it is "traditionalist". The whole strength of the Church is that it is faithful to its tradition – otherwise, what is the Church for? If the Church is going to become a political party which merely adapts its beliefs to changing opinions, it can be safely dismissed altogether, because there are political parties doing such things. If the Church is there to sanctify and bless in advance every change in intellectual and moral fashion in our civilisation, then again – what is the Church for? The Church is strong because it has a traditional teaching, a spiritual kernel, which it considers its immutable essence. It cannot just yield to any pressure from people who think that whatever is in fashion at the present moment should immediately be adopted by the Church as its own teaching, whether in the field of political ideas or of daily life.
I think the Church is not only right in keeping its historically shaped, traditional identity. Its very role, its very mission on earth would become unclear if it did not do that. And so I would not be afraid at all, and I would not take it as an insult, that critics describe the Church as traditionalist or conservative.
There must be forces of conservatism in society, in spiritual life, by which I mean the forces of conservation. Without such forces, the entire fabric of society would fall apart.
[. . .]
In my view, there is no way in which Marxist teaching could be reconciled with Christianity. Marxism is anti-Christian, not contingently, not by accident, but in its very core. You cannot reconcile it.
There is no Christianity where no distinction is made between temporal and eternal values. There is no Christianity where [the word 'where' is wrong; should be UNLESS] one accepts that all earthly values, however important, however crucial to human life, are nevertheless secondary. What the Church is about essentially is the salvation of human souls, and the human soul is never reducible to social conditions.
There is an absolute value in the human person. The Church believes that the world – the social world, the physical world – is merely an expression of the divine, and as such it can only have instrumental or secondary value. Without this, there is no point in speaking about Christianity.
I don't want to hear the pope talk about global warming or capitalism or any other topic he knows nothing about. Let him stick to faith and morals. Let him show that he understands that Christianity is not just another load of secular humanist claptrap. Let him demonstrate that he understands Kolakowski's point that this world has only instrumental or secondary value. Let him preach on the Last Things.
A Note on a Common Misunderstanding of Hypocrisy
I once heard a radio advertisement by a group promoting a "drug-free America." A male voice announces that he is a hypocrite because he demands that his children not do what he once did, namely, use illegal drugs. The idea behind the ad is that it is sometimes good to be a hypocrite.
Surely this ad demonstrates a misunderstanding of the concept of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a moral defect. But one who preaches abstinence and is abstinent is morally praiseworthy regardless of what he did in his youth. Indeed, his change of behavior redounds to his moral credit.
A hypocrite is not someone who fails to live up to the ideals he espouses, but one who does not attempt to live up to the ideals he espouses. An adequate definition of hypocrisy must allow for moral failure. An adequate definition must also allow for moral change. One who did not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses cannot be called a hypocrite; the term applies to one who does not attempt to live up to the ideals he now espouses.
After Jeb Bush admitted to smoking marijuana during his prep school days, Rand Paul called him a hypocrite on the ground that he now opposes what he once did.
This accusation shows a failure on Paul's part to grasp the concept of hypocrisy.
Diana West on Dr. Ben Carson’s Muslim Comment
Here is what Diana West says verbatim:
A reporter just asked me if Dr. Ben Carson was correct to rule out a Muslim in the presidency. Below is my reply — the short version. No caliphate, no jihad, even. First things first.
Is this the first time the media have focused directly on such a question regarding Islam? It feels that way, which, in itself, is an astonishment.
***
Your question: Do I support Dr Carson’s comments on a Muslim in the presidency?
Yes, I do, and resoundingly so — as I assume anyone familiar just with the intractable differences between the U.S. Constitution and the tenets of Islam would agree.
Let’s look at just a couple of the basic contradictions.
1) We have freedom of religion under the Constitution.
Under Islamic law (sharia), there is no freedom of religion. Jews and Christians live as “dhimmi," without equal rights (and with many burdens which may include the “jizya” tax and other humiliations).
Also, renouncing or leaving Islam (“apostasy”) is a capital crime according to Islamic law (sharia).
2) We have freedom of speech under the Constitution.
Under Islamic law (sharia), there is no freedom of speech: indeed, criticizing Islam constitutes apostasy, which, again, is a capital crime in Islam.
To take another stunning example of the differences between Islamic and American law, women and non-Muslims {“dhimmi”) are not equal to Muslim men before Islamic law (sharia).
Thus, if by “Muslim” we mean someone who has not renounced Islamic teachings and laws (sharia), we are describing a person who would be unable to fulfill his presidential oath “to preserve, protect and defend" the U.S. Constitution without simultaneously betraying his faith.
And, more importantly for the country, vice versa. It’s a little like considering the qualifications of a committed pacifist as leader of the armed services; or a vegan as steak-taster. The creed and the mission are diametrically opposed.
Dr. Carson is correct because the teachings of Islam, which define being a Muslim, are not compatible with the presidential oath of office.
The simple fact is, Islam outlaws the very liberties the president is sworn to protect.
Exactly right. Now what would prevent someone from understanding these simple truths? One factor is political correctness which includes the notion that all religions say the same thing and that they are all equally conducive to human flourishing. Obviously false on both counts.
Neologism: A Merton
A merton is a person who doesn't distinguish between studying a subject and writing a book about it.
Cf. The Journals of Thomas Merton, vol. III, 136: "Thought of writing a book on Columbia under Spain . . ..") In his short life Merton published some 60 books, some of them good, some of them but attempts to work his way into a subject.
Memo to Pope Francis: Capitalism is the Solution, not the Problem
I mean if he is serious about reducing poverty. Stephanie Slade in a very good Reason article:
He has been called the "slum pope" and "a pope for the poor." And indeed, it's true that Pope Francis, leader to 1.3 billion Roman Catholics, speaks often of those in need. He's described the amount of poverty and inequality in the world as "a scandal" and implored the Church to fight what he sees as a "culture of exclusion."
Yet even as he calls for greater concern for the marginalized, he broadly and cavalierly condemns the market-driven economic development that has lifted a billion people out of extreme poverty within the lifetime of the typical millennial. A lack of understanding of even basic economic concepts has led one of the most influential and beloved human beings on the planet to decry free enterprise, opine that private property rights must not be treated as "inviolable," hold up as the ideal "cooperatives of small producers" over "economies of scale," accuse the Western world of "scandalous level[s] of consumption," and assert that we need "to think of containing growth by setting some reasonable limits."
Given his vast influence, which extends far beyond practicing Catholics, this type of rhetoric is deeply troubling. It's impossible to know how much of an impact his words are having on concrete policy decisions—but it's implausible to deny that when he calls for regulating and constraining the free markets and economic growth that alleviate truly crushing poverty, the world is listening. As a libertarian who is also a devout Roman Catholic, I'm afraid as well that statements like these from Pope Francis reinforce the mistaken notion that libertarianism and religion are fundamentally incompatible.
I'm a conservative, not a libertarian, but the above is basically on the right track. Read it all. When I say capitalism is the solution, I mean, of course, capitalism under the rule of law. It is curious that neither capitalism nor the rule of law fare well under administrations like the current one in the USA.
Galen Strawson on Zombies and Whether ‘Physical’ is a Natural Kind Term
1. What is a zombie?
You will have gathered that a zombie is a creature of philosophical fiction conjured up to render graphic a philosophical issue and to throw certain questions in the philosophy of mind into relief. A zombie is a living being that is physically and behaviorally exactly like a living human being except that it lacks (phenomenal) consciousness. Cut a zombie open, and you find exactly what you would find were you to cut a human being open. And in terms of linguistic and nonlinguistic behavior, there is no way to tell a human being from a zombie. (So don't think of something sleepy, or drugged, or comatose or Halloweenish.) When a zombie sees a tree, what is going on in the zombie's brain is a 'visual' computational process, but the zombie lacks what a French philosopher would call interiority. There is no irreducible subjectivity, no qualitative feel to the 'visual' processing; there is nothing it is like for a zombie to see a female zombie or to desire her. (What's it like to be a horny zombie? There is nothing it is like to be a horny zombie. Indeed, there is nothing it is like to be a zombie, period.)
2. Where do zombies come from?
Zombies surface within the context of discussions of physicalism. Physicalism is an ontological doctrine, a doctrine about what ultimately exists, what exists in the most fundamental sense of 'exists.' The physicalist 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. 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. This implies that all mental facts supervene upon physical facts. So if a being is conscious, then this fact about it supervenes upon, is determined by, its physical properties. This implies that there cannot be two beings, indiscernible with respect to all physical properties, such that the one is conscious while the other is not. This in turn rules out the possibility of zombies. For, if physicalism is true, once the physical properties are fixed, the mental properties are also automatically fixed.
3. What useful work do zombies do?
If zombies are metaphysically (broadly logically) possible, then physicalism is false. That's their job: to serve as counterexamples to physicalism. For if zombies are possible, then it is not the case that every nonphysical property-instantiation supervenes upon a physical property-instantiation: a zombie has all the same physical properties as its indiscernible non-zombie twin, but is not conscious. The possibility of zombies implies that consciousness is non-supervenient, something in addition to a being's physical makeup. So one anti-physicalist argument goes like this:
1. If physicalism is true, then every nonphysical property-instantiation supervenes upon a physical property-instantiation.
2. If zombies are possible, then it is not the case that every nonphysical property-instantiation supervenes upon a physical property-instantiation.
3. Zombies are possible.
Therefore
4. Physicalism is not true.
This is a valid argument the soundness of which rides on premise (3). Here is where the fight will come. Without questioning the validity of the argument the physicalist will run the argument in reverse. He will deny the conclusion and then deny (3). In effect, he will argue from (1) & (2) & (~4) to (~3). He will deny the very possibility of zombies. He will insist that anything that behaves just like a conscious person and has the 'innards' of a conscious person JUST IS a conscious person.
Now I find that absurd: it is a denial of that subjectivity which is properly accessed only via the irreducible first-person singular point of view. Nevertheless, I will have a devil of a time budging my materialist-functionalist interlocutor. Materialists are objectivists: they think that anything that is not objectively accessible in the third-person way just isn't there at all, or it if is 'there,' is not to be taken seriously.
Can one support (3) in a manner so compelling as to convince the recalcitrant materialist? After all, (3) is not self-evident. If it were self-evident, then we would have a 'knock-down' argument against physicalism. But there are few if any 'knock-down' (absolutely compelling) arguments in philosophy.
Now zombies are certainly conceivable. But it is not clear whether conceivability entails metaphysical (broadly logical) possibility, which is in play in (3). So it is not clear whether the conceivability of zombies is a compelling reason to reject physicalism. The question of the relation between conceivability and possibility is a difficult one. There is some discussion of this in the conceivability category.
Now here is what Galen Strawson has to say:
4. Strawson on Zombies.
It is, finally, a mistake to think that we can know that ‘zombies’ could exist—where zombies are understood to be creatures that have no experiential properties although they are perfect physical duplicates (PPDs) of currently experiencing human beings like you and me.
The argument that PPD-zombies could exist proceeds from two premisses—[1] it is conceivable that PPD-zombies exist, [2] if something is conceivable, then it is possible. It is plainly valid, and (unlike many) I have no insuperable problem with [2]. The problem is that we can't know [1] to be true, and have no reason to think it is. To be a materialist is, precisely, to hold that it is false, and while materialism cannot be known to be true, it cannot be refuted a priori—as it could be if [1] were established. ‘Physical’, recall, is a natural kind term, and since we know that there is much that we do not know about the nature of the physical, we cannot claim to know that an experienceless PPD of a currently experiencing human being is conceivable, and could possibly (or ‘in some possible world’) exist.
This is just blatant question-begging on Strawson's part. We can't know that it is conceivable that zombies exist?! That zombies are conceivable is a very weak claim, and of course we can know it to be true, just by conceiving a zombie, whence it follows that we have excellent reason to think it is true. Strawson simply begs the question by assuming that materialism is true. He also begs the question by claiming that materialism cannot be refuted a priori. If you grant [2], as Strawson does, then what we have is an a priori refutation of materialism.
Strawson tells us that 'physical' is a natural kind term. What a strange idea! 'Water,' 'gold, 'tiger' are uncontroversial natural kind terms. They succeed in referring to what they were introduced to refer to despite our knowledge or ignorance of the nature of what they refer to. The ancient Greeks thought water was an element; Dalton held it to be HO; we take it to be H2O. Water turned out to be a lot different than we thought, without prejudice to the reference of 'water.' So if 'physical' is a natural kind term, then it too can refer to things very different in nature than what we might have supposed. And so Strawson thinks that 'physical' can refer to what is irreducibly mental or experiential in whole or in part. In fact, Strawson allows that the physical — that which physics studies — could be wholly mental.
I don't know what this means. Perhaps Vlastimil can explain it to me.
In Does Matter Think? I wrote:
I now add that I am using 'thinking' in the broad Cartesian sense that covers all intentional or object-directed experiences; but I also hold that non-intentional experiences are unintelligible to us on the basis of current physics. My thesis is that, given what we know about the physical world from current physics, it it unintelligible that the phenomena of mind, whether intentional or non-intentional, be wholly material in nature.
I grant that what is unintelligible to us might nevertheless be the case. But if such-and-such is unintelligible to us, then that is a fairly good reason to believe that it is not possibly the case. A theological example may help clarify the dialectical situation. Christians believe that God became man. Some will say that this is impossible in the strongest possible sense: logically impossible, i.e., in contravention of the Law of Non-Contradiction. For what the doctrine implies is that one person has both human and divine attributes, that one person is both passible and impassible, omniscient and non-omnisicent, etc. One response, a mysterian response, is to say that the doctrine of the Incarnation is true, and that therefore it is logically possible. The fact, if it is fact, that the Incarnation is unintelligible to us — where 'unintelligible' means: not understandable as possibly true in a broadly logical sense – does not show that the doctrine is impossible, but that it is a mystery: a true proposition that we, due to our limitations, cannot understand.
A materialist can make the same sort of move in one of two ways. He could say that our understanding of matter at present does not allow us to understand how conscious experience could be wholly material in nature, or he can say that our understanding of matter will never allow us to understand how conscious experience could be wholly material in nature. Either way, conscious experience, whether intentional or non-intentional, is wholly material in nature, and falls entirely within the subject-matter of physics, whether a future physics achievable by us, or a physics which, though not achievable by us, is perhaps achievable by organisms of a different constitution who study us.
If I understand Galen Strawson's view, it is the first. Conscious experience is fully real but wholly material in nature despite the fact that on current physics we cannot account for its reality: we cannot understand how it is possible. Here is a characteristic passage from Strawson:
Strawson and I agree on two important points. One is that what he calls experiential phenomena are as real as anything and cannot be eliminated or reduced to anything non-experiential. The other is that there is no accounting for experiential items in terms of current physics.
In the Comments Vlastimil V. asked:
It is matter as understood by current physics. And yes, one can know a priori that matter so conceived cannot think or feel. Note that I am not saying that matter anyhow conceived can be known a priori to be such that it cannot think or feel. I admit the very vague, very abstract, epistemic (and perhaps only epistemic) possibility that God or some super-intelligent extraterrestrial or even human being far in the future could get to the point of understanding how an experiential item like a twinge of pain could be purely material or purely physical. But this is really nothing more than an empty gesturing towards a 'possibility' that cannot be described except in the vaguest terms. It is nothing but faith, hope, and hand-waving.
An experiential item such as a twinge of pain or a rush of elation is essentially subjective; it is something whose appearing just is its reality. For qualia, esse = percipi. If I am told that someday items like this will be exhaustively understood from a third-person point of view as objects of physics, I have no idea what this means. The notion strikes me as absurd. We are being told in effect that what is essentially subjective will one day be exhaustively understood as both essentially subjective and wholly objective. If you tell me that understanding in physics need not be objectifying understanding, I don't know what that means either.
As Strawson clearly appreciates, one cannot reduce a twinge of pain to a pattern of neuron firings, for such a reduction eliminates the what-it-is-like-ness of the experience. And so he inflates the concept of the physical to cover both the physical and the irreducibly mental. But by doing this he drains the physical of definite meaning. His materialism is a vacuous materialism.
Strawson frankly confesses, "I am by faith a materialist." (p. 69) Given this faith, experiential items, precisely as experiential, must be wholly material in nature. This faith engenders the hope that future science will unlock the secret. Strawson must pin his hope on future science because of his clear recognition that experiential items are incomprehensible in terms of current physics.
But what do faith and hope have to do with sober inquiry? It doesn't strike me as particularly intellectually honest to insist that materialism just has to be true and to uphold it by widening the concept of the physical to embrace what is irreducibly mental. It would be more honest just to admit that the mind-body problem is insoluble.