From Patricia Churchland.
The brains in our skulls function as they do largely because they are the product of a long evolutionary history. That fact is, of course, not a fact the brain's biological evolution gave it automatic knowledge of; rather, it is something brains have learned as a result of a long period of scientific evolution. Introspection reveals almost nothing about how nervous systems work, and from an evolutionary perspective, there is no reason why it should. If anything, human brains have a positive tendency to be misled about their nature. They tend to suppose they are not part of the biological order, that they are the result of special creation, that nervous tissue itself is not relevant to the understanding of the mind, and that introspection yields incontrovertible truths about a nonphysical mind, about the nature of free will, experience, knowledge, meaning, and language. What the evolutionary and neurobiological perspective makes evident, however, is that to understand how the brain works, introspection is unreliable. Rather, we must do experiments addressing a variety of levels of organization, and we must engage in real theorizing about how the brain functions
27 comments:
"Worthless"
That means having no worth. But what sort of worth? Absolutely no worth of any sort?
"Introspection reveals almost nothing about how nervous systems work"
The specific claim of the eliminative materialist is not that introspection is, in general, "worthless".
Pretty hard to see how any careful reader would even suggest such.
The claim is that you can learn very little about a nervous system works just by thinking about it.
The proof of this claim is how little people knew about the nervous system prior to modern science. People did not even know there were such things as cells at all, much less nerve cells. Nobody knew about neurons or a great many details of how the nervous system works.
People did have some idea that there was a connection between the brain and thinking, and a few rudimentary ideas about pain and sensation. Relative to modern knowledge that is "almost nothing".
If you read the Churchlands carefully and in context you will have an extremely difficult time reasonably disputing there claims.
The claim heer is that the truth about the mind is found in what we observe in the nervous system of the brain, and now what we recognize as having happened through introspection.
Our common sense is that we weigh reason and evidence to ee if beliefs are supported, but what we see in the brain is neurons goning here and there, and that is what is really happeing, not what we introspect.
What uf the evidence suggests taht no one believes anything, or believes anything based on evidence"
"The claim heer is that the truth about the mind is found in what we observe in the nervous system of the brain, and now what we recognize as having happened through introspection."
I question your use of the word "not" as an accurate characterization of the claims of the eliminative materialist.
The Churchlands in no way deny that we experience our experiences. The point is that we can learn almost nothing about the structure of that which gives rise to our experiences simply by thinking about our own experiences.
"What uf the evidence suggests taht no one believes anything"
A belief is a brain process. So yes, we believe things because we have brain processes and beliefs are brain processes.
What do you suppose a belief is?
That is not Churchland's position.
hurchland believes that beliefs are not ontologically real; that is, that a future, fully matured neuroscience is likely to have no need for "beliefs" (see propositional attitudes), in the same manner that modern science discarded such notions as legends or witchcraft.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Churchland#:~:text=Churchland%20believes%20that%20beliefs%20are,notions%20as%20legends%20or%20witchcraft.
Does he really believe that? :-)
"hurchland believes that beliefs are not ontologically real"
Same thing, just a matter of semantics.
I am sure you realize that Wiki characterizations can lack nuance and depth from time to time.
A belief is not a static thing that can be found someplace in the brain.
A belief is just a name we give to a process of material. The material of the brain exists. A process of material is not itself a material thing. The process is not ontologically an existent object.
On eliminative materialism the material of the brain exists and progresses in real processes that we name, in the case of some sorts of processes, beliefs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzT0jHJdq7Q
"A deeper scientific understanding of folk psychological phenomena does not make the phenomena go away"
7:21
"Paul and I never ever thought consciousness wasn't, real, or course it is real"
Patricia Churchland.
7:32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IVBxmaaGNg&t=23s
Silly blog posts about believing that there are no beliefs might be good for a little chuckle on the part of the writer, but they expose a lack of depth of thought on the subject.
If you want to learn something about eliminative materialism I suggest listening carefully to Patricia Churchland.
Consciousness = belief?
Please consult a dictionary.
And please turn off your camera when you are posting.
Well, if you are going to complain about Wiki, here is the SEP article, written by an eliminativist-friendly philosopher I tangled with at Notre Dame.
"Well, if you are going to complain about Wiki"
I use Wiki a lot, and the posts can be highly informative, but occasionally lack a degree of perspective.
"here is the SEP article, written by an eliminativist-friendly philosopher I tangled with at Notre Dame."
Here where?
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, well, OK...
Care to provide some specific reference?
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/
Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist and have no role to play in a mature science of the mind. Descartes famously challenged much of what we take for granted, but he insisted that, for the most part, we can be confident about the content of our own minds. Eliminative materialists go further than Descartes on this point, since they challenge the existence of various mental states that Descartes took for granted.
And that, if you read on, includes beliefs.
"mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist"
Right, there is no state of belief. Belief is not a state.
Belief is a name we give to a high complex, ever changing, dynamic process.
The common sense notion of a belief state does not exist. That is the claim.
"they challenge the existence of various mental states that Descartes took for granted."
Right, again, the boxology of folk psychology is hopelessly simplistic and unrealistic.
And what is the state of being in the complex ever changing dynamic process. The state of holding a belief.
"And what is the state of being in the complex ever changing dynamic process."
There is no such state, there is only the matter in motion.
"The state of holding a belief."
We name a set of brain processes we are aware of as if it were a state. Actually it is a dynamic ever changing process set composed mostly of processes we are not consciously aware of, and even those we are aware of are not a static state.
Question to the eliminative materialist:
Do you believe that you have no beliefs?
Answer from the eliminative materialist:
Within my brain there are sets of processes that folk psychology would traditionally label a belief. Such processes make noises and express symbols that are interpreted by other brains as meaning that I deny the accuracy of the folk psychology label of belief as a static brain state.
These brain processes of mine, in order to make those noises and express those symbols were able to superficially analyze brain processes within my own brain, and also be dynamically aware that most of the processing in my own brain is not discoverable through introspection because the brain is not structured with sufficient internal sensory pathways that would be needed to discover the majority of its own processes merely by introspection.
A belief is just a name we give to a process of material. The material of the brain exists. A process of material is not itself a material thing. The process is not ontologically an existent object.
On eliminative materialism the material of the brain exists and progresses in real processes that we name, in the case of some sorts of processes, beliefs.
- - -
Right, there is no state of belief. Belief is not a state.
Belief is a name we give to a high complex, ever changing, dynamic process.
The common sense notion of a belief state does not exist.
- - -
“Paul and I never ever thought consciousness wasn't, real, or course it is real"
- - -
Based upon the foregoing, it would appear that beliefs do not exist, but they are real. Then there is the matter of whether priority is properly given to that which is real rather than that which exists.
"The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made"
Conjuring trick? What is this supposed trick?
Guess what, Ludwig, we don't have all the answers, far from it, everybody knows that, no reasonable person asserts otherwise.
There is no "conjuring trick" outside the strawman Wittgenstein asserts.
Michael,
"it would appear that beliefs do not exist, but they are real."
Correct.
"priority"
In what sense?
Change is not itself an existent thing. Change is the alteration in arrangement of existent things.
In response to:
... there is the matter of whether priority is properly given to that which is real rather than that which exists.
StardustyPsyche asked:
"priority"
In what sense?
Priority in the sense of generally being more important, of having more importance. Importance does not exist, of course, but importance is real. A live being, a live self does not exist, yet a live being, a live self is real. Indeed, living occurs (at least predominantly if not entirely) on the level of the real rather than the level of existence/the existent; therefore, the issue can be addressed along the lines of whether that which is real is more important than that which exists. Possible ways of responding to the question of importance are:
1) there is equal importance;
2) one is more important than the other;
3) importance is determined situationally.
The issue can also be addressed along the lines of whether concern with that which is real is more important than concern with that which exists.
So materialists think there are "real" things that don't "exist".
Sounds spooky.
Michael,
Beating (of a human heart, for example) does not exist, that is, there is no existent object in the cosmos called "beating".
The material of the heart exists. Beating is a process of that material.
So, which is more important to you, that your heart beats or that the material of your heart exists?
Beating (of a heart) is a real process. Material really changes arrangement continually or continuously in identifiable patterns. But such beating is not an independently ontologically existent thing.
The total amount of existent material in our observable universe is static, unchanging. Material, so far as we have observed and have established physics descriptions, cannot be created or destroyed.
In archaic Thomistic parlance material is already fully actualized in its existential respect and has no potential to cease to exist.
Order, or the measure of concentrations and structured arrangements of material, seems to be decreasing in the universe overall, but often increases locally.
"Importance" is subjective.
Important to who or what, and for who or what? Is it important to a carbon atom that it is part of my heart, or a lump of coal, or adrift alone in intergalactic space? I very much doubt that a carbon atom cares about anything or finds anything more or less important at all.
It is difficult to assign a relative importance to indispensable aspects of a material object, say, your heart. How does one say that two different sorts of things are equal? I suppose they are of equal importance to me, both being essential, for example, the material of my heart is of no use to me if it stops beating. On the other hand, if the material of my heart were to somehow be transported elsewhere I would find that rather disturbing for a very short time.
StardustyPsyche said:
”Importance” is subjective.
Given earlier entries in this discussion, it is understood that:
*An electron exists.
*A live being, a live self does not exist, yet that same live being - that same live self - is real.
With that as context or background, which is more important? An electron which exists or a live being/self which is real but which does not exist?
Hal said:
Looks like they may be using some stipulated definition for the words 'real' & 'exist'.
Not really. Well, not explicitly. If you take a look at the September 16, 2023 7:29 AM posting, you will notice that I replicated several StardustyPsyche statements or references, and from those I abstracted what I thought might be a distinction upon which StardustyPsyche tends to rely. He confirmed that the exist-real distinction was part of his position. This distinction is rather odd in terms of ordinary language, but language is versatile to allow for imagination, ingenuity, and what not, and it might have been that the on the face of it odd exist-real distinction was employed to make an otherwise inexpressible point or to draw attention to and focus upon a particular emphasis.
"I'm afraid it still doesn't make sense to me."
Material exists. Material is an existent thing.
A process of material is not an existent thing.
For example, running. Running is not an existent object. Running is a generalized description of a sort of process of change for some sorts of arrangements of material.
In the context of eliminative materialism it is common for rather shallow critics to use equivocation and little quips of silly word mangling to assert some sort of imagined self contradiction in eliminative materialism.
If one just wants to have a casual conversation about ordinary events, fine. That sort of word usage turns out to be inadequate for any serious attempt to describe the true nature of the underlying reality.
If you have different definitions for words, fine, there is no god of the English language. Anybody can make up any word they want and it is just as "good" as any other word anybody ever made up.
In the context of eliminative materialism "exist" typically refers to physical stuff that has an existential realization in the cosmos. If a thing exists it has it's own properties such as mass, spin, etc.
A process of material, such as running, a heartbeat, or a belief does not exist in that use of the word "exist". That is not to deny that material does have arrangements and temporal progressions of arrangements that can be broadly measured as being within ranges to classify this or that process as belonging to a set of processes.
Those processes of material are real processes in the sense that material really does have certain relative arrangements and those relative arrangements really do progress over time in certain identifiable ways that we can then assign names to, such as running, heartbeat, or belief.
If you are not willing to engage in that sort of fine parsing of words, fine, up to you, but given how limited human language to communicate about the true nature of the underlying reality is, if you limit yourself to ordinary daily language usage, equivocations, and attempts at humorous puns and plays on words you are not going to get far in any serious analysis on the subject.
Post a Comment