Some thinking (iudgment) is determinate in a way no physical process can be. Consequently, such thinking cannot be (wholly5) a physical process. If all thinking, all judgment, is determinate in that way, no physical process can be (the whole of) any judgment at all. Furthermore, "functions" among physical states cannot be determinate enough to be such judgments, either. Hence some judgments can be neither wholly physical processes nor wholly functions among physical processes.
10 comments:
Victor,
" Some thinking (iudgment) is determinate in a way no physical process can be. Consequently, such thinking cannot be (wholly5) a physical process."
Is that supposed to be some sort of "argument"?
I suppose it has the superficial form of an argument, but it is just begging the question. An assertion is made and from that the assertion is concluded.
Judgement is just a comparison of probability estimates based on experience and predictive models of the future.
Computers can be programmed to make judgements, often on sparse information. Fuzzy logic is a way to code for variabilities and uncertainties.
The referenced paper is just a series of unsupported assumptions about what cannot possibly be done, yet it is done by purely mechanistic systems.
Victor,
"The conclusion is that no physical process or sequence of processes or function among physical processes can be adding, squaring, asserting, or any other thinking at all.
JAMES ROSS"
See, this sort of thing is what has me casting about some sort of comprehension of the disjointed thinking that would even write something like that.
I employ physical processes that add, square, assert...every day. What in the world is James Ross even trying to say? Why would anybody take him even slightly seriously for more than about 10 seconds?
A physical process cannot add? Really? Has James Ross ever used a pocket calculator? Does he imagine there is a ghost inside crunching all the numbers?
"A true judgment, "someone is knocking on my door," requires for its physical compliant reality a situation with an infinity of features not contained (or logically implied) in the true judgment. Thus, an infinity of determinate but incompossible physical situations could make the same statement true. (2) Any physical-object truth requires its truth-making
reality to overflow the thought infinitely in the detail of what obtains. "
James Ross apparently has no concept of a correlation score or a threshold or of human mistakes.
I judge whether somebody is knocking at my door by correlating stored patterns of confirmed knocking sounds with the contemporaneous pattern of sounds. If the correlation exceeds a threshold I consider it to be a knocking on my door.
Sometimes I am wrong, as it turns out the sound was really just an acorn that a strong wind blew against my door. There is your "overflow" that supposedly defeats materialism, people do in fact make wrong judgements, just as one would expect on materialism.
Victor, you object to my "trash talk"? Yet you post links to nonsense.
James Ross is using absurdly simplistic and uninformed "arguments". Anybody familiar with these subjects can read the text and immediately point out the errors.
That is how it goes every time, I mean every single time, without exception.
These so-called arguments against materialism are DOA inane nonsense. What you call "trash talk" is just a plain language description of the utter worthlessness of all arguments on offer against materialism.
When it comes to arguments against materialism the plain fact of the actual state of affairs is that there's no there there.
Victor,
Here a typical example:
"In Miracles, Lewis himself quotes J. B. S. Haldane, who appeals to a similar line of reasoning in his 1927 book, Possible Worlds: "If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."[19] "
First, it's a non-sequitur, just a baseless assertion:
"If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true "
Why? Why can't atoms determine truth?
Truth is what comports with reality.
On the notion that atoms are real, why can't real things determine the reality or other real things?
Haldane's incredulity might be common, but it is simply baseless.
"...I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true..."
Ok, so beliefs are not always true.
How is that not obvious?
Does Haldane suppose that materialists must account for how atoms can always form true beliefs? Well, the answer is simple, they don't.
So, where is the "argument"? It is just the combination of a couple assertions that can easily be identified as erroneous.
Real things can determine the reality of other real things. Why not?
Some of the determinations of real things are wrong.
On materialism this is all totally coherent.
Where is the supposed self contradiction in materialism?
I can't find a description of one that rises above question begging or non-sequitur assertion.
StarDustyPsyche,
>An assertion is made and from that the assertion is concluded.
It's not an assertion, it's an argument, namely:
1. Some thoughts are determinate
2. No physical process is determinate
3. Therefore some thoughts are not physical
If you want to keep your materialism, you need to show how one of the two premises is false.
>Computers can be programmed to make judgements, often on sparse information.
What computers do is not determinate, because they are physical. As Ross points out, you can have two mutually exclusive descriptions of what a physical system is doing as far as information processing, and neither one is "correct" apart from convention.
To take a simple example, consider an abacus. The beads far to the right are the "ones," the second column from the right are the "tens" and so on. But the columns could also represent "ones," "twos," "fours" etc, if you are using base 2 instead of base 10. These are two mutually exclusive descriptions of what the abacus represents. Thus, it is indeterminate what it is doing: there is no fact of the matter about what it represents, aside from convention.
Conversely, some thoughts are determinate. Your thought is "materialism is true" and if someone said "StarDustyPsyche thinks immaterialism is true" they would be wrong. There is a fact of the matter about what your thoughts are.
Ergo, some thoughts are not a physical process.
StarDustyPsyche,
>A physical process cannot add? Really? Has James Ross ever used a pocket calculator?
Yes, but those physical processes are compatible with mutually exclusive descriptions, with only the "correct" interpretation being by convention. As I explained above with the abacus. A calculator only "adds" insofar as we designate that the symbol "+" means "add" and the symbol "5" refers to the number five and so on. If you change the meaning of the symbols, the calculator would not be adding. And the meaning of the symbols comes from us, externally to the machine. As I said before, in a purely material world, an arrangement of particles only refers to something else if there is some intelligent agent that deems them so.
StarDustyPsyche,
>Anybody familiar with these subjects can read the text and immediately point out the errors.
It's clear you have not read the text, because you completely miss Ross's point and don't even seem to understand his argument. If you wish to refute an argument, you first have to FULLY understand it, to the degree of being able to defend it as if you were a supporter and not an opponent. That's what the Scholastics did: they were required to argue two different sides of a subject.
StarDustyPsyche,
>Why? Why can't atoms determine truth?
Because a belief that is held due to the motion of particles is not rationally inferred. If I told you that I believe that Christ was resurrected because I placed "Christ was resurrected" and "Christ was not resurrected" on a six sided die, and rolled it and "Christ was resurrected" came up, you'd think I was daft. Why? Because my belief was formed from the motion of particles, and not from premises leading to a conclusion.
Martin,
"you'd think I was daft. Why? Because my belief was formed from the motion of particles,"
Wrong.
I would think you are daft because there is no causal link between the supposed even and your decision making process.
When I reason from premises to conclusion there are causal links between the motions of particles that my premises are formed from and the motions of particles that manifest as my conclusions.
Ross's argument from indeterminacy of meaning is analogous to the argument from 'derived' intentionality. The intuition pumping examples are all physical processes external to the mind-brain. But just as physical structures within the mind-brain can acquire intentionality by causal connection to the external world, as I argued earlier, so can physical processes within the mind-brain acquire determinate meaning.
Post a Comment