> On 1 Jan 2020, at 01:37, Philip Thrift <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > On Tuesday, December 31, 2019 at 5:25:38 PM UTC-6, Brent wrote: > > > On 12/31/2019 12:06 PM, Philip Thrift wrote: >> >> from ‘The Self’ – Galen Strawson, Journal of Consciousness Studies (1997) >> <https://www.academia.edu/18112359/_The_Self_> >> >> In the 1990s many analytic philosophers were inclined to deny that the >> expression ‘the self’ referred to anything at all. Others said that its >> meaning was too unclear for it to be used in worthwhile philosophical >> discussion. A third group thought that the only legitimate use of ‘I’ and >> ‘the self’ was its use to refer to the human being considered as a whole. >> This paper rejects these views. It makes a proposal about how to endow ‘the >> self’ with sufficiently clear meaning without taking it to refer to the >> whole human being. One needs to begin with phenomenology, with >> self-experience, with the experience of there being such a thing as the >> self. One can then approach the questions about metaphysics of the >> self—questions about the existence and nature of the self—in the light of >> the discussion of the phenomenology of the self. >> … >> >> Genuine, realistic materialism requires acknowledgement that the phenomena >> of conscious experience are, considered specifically as such, wholly >> physical, as physical as the phenomena of extension and electricity as >> studied by physics. This in turn requires the acknowledgement that current >> physics, considered as a general account of the nature of the physical, is >> like Hamlet without the prince, or at least like Othello without Desdemona. >> No one who doubts this is a serious materialist, as far as I can see. Anyone >> who has had a standard modern (Western) education is likely to experience a >> feeling of deep bewilderment—category-blasting amazement—when entering into >> serious materialism, and considering the question ‘What is the nature of the >> physical?’ in the context of the thought that the mental (and in particular >> the experiential) is physical; followed, perhaps, by a deep, pragmatic >> agnosticism. >> >> Even if we grant that there is a phenomenon that is reasonably picked out by >> the phrase ‘mental self’, why should we accept that the right thing to say >> about some two-second-long mental-self phenomenon is (a) that it is a thing >> or object like a rock or a tiger? Why can’t we insist that the right thing >> to say is simply (b) that an enduring (‘physical’) object—Louis—has a >> certain property, or (c) that a two-second mental-self phenomenon is just a >> matter of a certain process occurring in an object—so that it is not itself >> a distinct object existing for two seconds? >> >> I think that a proper understanding of materialism strips (b) and (c) of any >> appearance of superiority to (a). As for (c): any claim to the effect that a >> mental self is best thought >> of as a process rather than an object can be countered by saying that there >> is no sense in which a mental self is a process in which a rock is not also >> and equally a process. So if a rock is a paradigm case of a thing in spite >> of being a process, we have no good reason not to say the same of a mental >> self. >> > > This is specious and disingenuous. It's another version of the rock that > computes everything and Strawson must know better. >> But if there is a process, there must be something—an object or substance—in >> which it goes on. If something happens, there must be something to which it >> happens, something which is not just the happening itself. This expresses >> our ordinary understanding of things, but physicists are increasingly >> content with the view that physical reality is itself a kind of pure >> process—even if it remains hard to know exactly what this idea amounts to. >> The view that there is some ultimate stuff to which things happen has >> increasingly ceded to the idea that the existence of anything worthy of the >> name ‘ultimate stuff’ consists in the existence of fields of energy — >> consists, in other words, in the existence of a kind of pure process which >> is not usefully thought of as something which is happening to a thing >> distinct from it. >> >> As for (b): the object/property distinction is, as Russell says of the >> standard distinction between mental and physical, ‘superficial and unreal’ >> (1927: 402). >> > And Russell proposed neutral monism in which the world consists of events > which can be ordered into either the mental life of persons (and animals) or > ordered into physical evolutions, i.e. world lines. Matter would a subset of > the physical orderings. It wouldn't be the fundamental ontology and so the > "neutral" in "neutral monism" meant it was neither mentalism nor materialism. > > Brent > >> Chronic philosophical difficulties with the question of how to express the >> relation between substance and property provide strong negative support for >> this view. However ineluctable it is for us, it seems that the distinction >> must be as superficial as we must take the distinction between the wavelike >> nature and particlelike nature of fundamental particles to be. >> >> Obviously more needs to be said, but Kant seems to have got it exactly right >> in a single clause: ‘in their relation to substance, [accidents] are not in >> fact subordinated to it, but are the manner of existence of the substance >> itself’. >> >> ---------- >> >> >> @philipthrift >> -- > > > > I talk about the dialectics of language and matter - but still matter is > everything there is, or in the terms it's expressed in Wikipedia in [ > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism> ] ... > > but neutral monism [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_monism > <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral_monism> ] (however it's presented) has > always seemed like complete hogwash to me. > > Happy New Year!
Happy new year! Mechanism leads to a transparent neutral monism. What is real are the numbers or the “numbers” (i.e. the object intended by the terms of any Turing-complete theory without induction axioms). To assume more makes the appearances of matter incomprehensible in the frame of Mechanism, and pseudo-religious in the non-mechanist frame (by lack of evidences). Bruno > > @philipthrift > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Everything List" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to [email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b05ffacc-dbb4-40b2-910a-80e3ad52513e%40googlegroups.com > > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/b05ffacc-dbb4-40b2-910a-80e3ad52513e%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer>. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/9D60663D-04CF-42F7-993B-CF01317EEC91%40ulb.ac.be.
