{"id":6967,"date":"2015-09-24T16:08:13","date_gmt":"2015-09-24T16:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/24\/strawsons-materialism\/"},"modified":"2015-09-24T16:08:13","modified_gmt":"2015-09-24T16:08:13","slug":"strawsons-materialism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2015\/09\/24\/strawsons-materialism\/","title":{"rendered":"Strawson’s Vacuous Materialism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In Does Matter Think?<\/a> I wrote:<\/span><\/p>\n

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. . . I don't dogmatically claim that matter could not have occult or hidden powers.  Maybe the meat between my ears does have the power to think.  But then that meat is not matter in any sense we currently understand.  And that is my point.  You can posit occult powers if you like, and pin your hopes on a future science that will lay them bare; but then you are going well beyond the empirical evidence and engaging in high-flying speculations . . . .<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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<\/em> 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

A materialist can make the same sort of move in one of two ways.  He could say that our understanding of matter at present<\/em> 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<\/em> 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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: <\/span><\/p>\n

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Serious materialists have to be outright realists about the experiential. So they are obliged to hold that experiential phenomena just are physical phenomena, although current physics cannot account for them.  As an acting materialist, I accept this, and assume that experiential phenomena are "based in" or "realized in" the brain (to stick to the human case).  But this assumption does not solve any problems for materialists.  Instead it obliges them to admit ignorance of the nature of the physical, to admit that they don't have a fully adequate idea of what the physical is, and hence of what the brain is.  ("The Experiential and the Non-Experiential" in Warner and Szubka, p. 77)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the Comments Vlastimil V. asked:<\/span><\/p>\n

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But, what exactly, according to you, is matter in the sense we currently understand<\/em>? And does matter so conceived really exclude, a priori, that it thinks? About this the physicalist would love to hear more details.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It is matter as understood by current physics.  And yes, one can know a priori<\/em> that matter so conceived<\/em> cannot think or feel. Note that I am not saying that matter anyhow conceived<\/em> can be known a priori<\/em> 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. <\/span><\/p>\n

An experiential item such as a twinge of pain or a rush of elation is essentially<\/em> 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Does Matter Think? I wrote: . . . I don't dogmatically claim that matter could not have occult or hidden powers.  Maybe the meat between my ears does have the power to think.  But then that meat is not matter in any sense we currently understand.  And that is my point.  You can posit … Continue reading “Strawson’s Vacuous Materialism”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,238],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mind","category-naturalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}