[Wittrs] Re: Eliminative Materialism
- From: "SWM" <SWMirsky@xxxxxxx>
- To: wittrsamr@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 04 Apr 2010 17:46:59 -0000
--- In Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Gordon Swobe <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
> --- On Sat, 4/3/10, SWM <wittrsamr@...> wrote:
>
> > Moreover, I will say again: It is no argument against a
> > view to attack its motivation(s)
>
> I think it adds light to understand the motivations for a particular point of
> view. And I repeat: eliminative materialism seems to me motivated by a fear
> of Cartesian dualism, naively understood.
>
It can add light, as you put it, but it cannot and does not substitute for an
argument. Searle's CRA, after all, doesn't proceed by relying on discrediting
the motives of those who think differently! He gives us premises (rightly or
wrongly) to work with.
Moreover, I would dispute your claim about the motivation (since I am a counter
example) but it's really not worth bothering about because it says nothing
about the quality of the argument for a Dennettian viewpoint.
You still have failed to demonstrate, by the way, that to deny "Cartesian
dualism" is really to embrace it as you claimed earlier!
> The eliminative materialist fails to understand that after one truly abandons
> the Cartesian mind/matter dichotomy, one can then a la Searle assign
> properties of mind to matter without transgressing reason.
>
How do you know this is the case? How do you know what the "eliminative
materialist" "fails to understand"? Maybe eliminative materialists think guys
like you "fail to understand"?
Certainly I think you persistently fail to understand that consciousness could
be explainable as a system property in which case Searle's CRA, which relies on
the idea that consciousness can ONLY be a property of certain processes at its
most basic level, fails to sustain a general conclusion about all possible
combinations of the processes found in the CR.
> The eliminativist correctly abandons the unwanted Cartesian concept of
> non-physical mind but then he mistakenly holds onto the false Cartesian idea
> of matter, which on the dualist view can have no subjective aspect, i.e., no
> irreducible first-person ontology.
>
As I have argued before (though not recently here), Dennett, at least in
Consciousness Explained, is NOT making an argument for materialism and is
saying NOTHING about "matter". Dennett's only concern in that book is to offer
a way of accounting for consciousness in a way that explains how physical
brains produce it. He may well be a materialist (I don't know where he stands
on metaphysical theory) but one can hold his position (as I do) without
believing in the ontological irreducibility of what we recognize as matter.
Modern physics gives us a much more subtle and robust picture of the universe
and what underlies what we recognize as material.
Now, if Dennett is not embracing an idea that 'all is matter' as you claim he
is, then you cannot accuse him of hanging onto one half of the Cartesian
dualist picture. (However, I will say that here, at least, you have made an
argument for your position and I appreciate that. Suffice it to say, for now,
that my view is that you are wrongly imputing a metaphysical theory to Dennett.
While I am sure he is a physicalist at bottom, that only means that he thinks
that the account of things that is handed us by modern physics is likely
sufficient to explain all the phenomena we encounter in the universe, including
ourselves and those like us -- even if it is yet considered to be an incomplete
account.)
> The eliminativist doubles his mistake when he, a la Dennett, falsely labels
> those don't fall into the same trap "Cartesians".
>
> -gts
>
Now THAT you need to defend, first, because I think you are wrong in supposing
that Dennett is a metaphysical materialist in any classical sense of that term
(a la Cartesian dualism) and, second, because you need to show why the claim
that it takes a Cartesian dualist to believe in the CRA's conclusion is
"false". As of now you have only asserted it. Yet I have made an argument,
repeatedly, why it is true and not false to say of the CRA that it depends on a
presumption that consciousness is ontologically basic (and I came to it
separately from Dennett -- so here we have two independent judgments concerning
the implicit dualism of the CRA). What is your evidence or proof that it is a
false claim?
Finally, since your claim that to hold a Dennettian position implies one is
embracing some kind of metaphysical materialism is not established and you have
yet to establish it, aren't you prejudging the case by supposing that Dennett
falls into a "trap"?
Frankly, it looks to me as if you have a remarkably non-subtle understanding of
the distinction between being physical and being non-physical. I would suggest,
falling back on Wittgenstein, that these terms do different work in different
contexts and that that is probably a big source of our problem here, i.e., you
are using terms like "physical" and "non-physical" in different ways in
different statements. For instance, one can say of what we label "mental" that
it is "non-physical" in the sense that the features that make it up are not
identifiable as physical objects in the objective world. On the other hand,
that says nothing about whether they are part and parcel of the physical world
because they are derived from it.
If the latter then they ARE "physical" in one very important sense even if we
would not call them "physical" in the sense of being physical objects.
SWM
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