[lit-ideas] Re: "Promissory Materialism" [was: the first lines are the argument referred by]
- From: John Wager <jwager@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 08:14:43 -0600
Donal McEvoy wrote:
. . . . Papineau doesn’t suppose that current science has yet
established any such identity; and while he can “see no reason to
think that such advances need to take us beyond physical theories of
the same general sort as we already have”, he does admit that “it is
possible that our access to such identities will require significant
advances in brain science.” In other words, we accept this materialism
on the promise that it will deliver the necessary advances, however
"significant". [It is also only a promise to claim that these advances
will not need to take us beyond physical theories of the same general
sort as we already have] While Popper makes it clear he does not
assert that “it is /impossible/ that things may happen as the
physicalist says here” [/TSAIB/ p.98], nevertheless “all the
physicalist offers is, as it were, a cheque drawn against his future
prospects, and based on the hope that a theory will be developed one
day which solves his problems for him; the hope, in short, that
something will turn up.”
Here's one way to test this: If scientists succeed in creating a
non-phenomenal way to induce the theory of materialism into the brain
that does not require a logical analysis of an argument, then the theory
should hold true. "Theories" are phenomenal, after all, not material.
So "in theory" if materialism is true, its truth should be independent
of its phenomenal status; it should be possible to "cause" truth by
material changes in the structure of the brain independent of the
arguments proposed for that truth.
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