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Peter_Plato
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Well for one, hylomorphic dualism makes some headway towards explaining the mind and does not, like some of the “competing positions,” attempt to explain AWAY the mind.
Why should a person prefer hylomorphic dualism to competing positions in the philosophy of mind?
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utunumsint
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Seems like a very protestant attitude towards information. Maybe we could call it sola-texbooka
Well, there is no firm evidence that there are formless beings or entities out there. I suppose I will concede I that Aristotle and Aquinas were wrong when they find one. But I’m pretty sure they will not, since it would be unintelligible to us. Perhaps the closest that we could come to it is the concept of prime matter.
But this just illustrates my point. Some ideas are so basic that they are simply presupposed by science. They are pre-scientific. Or rather, meta-scientific. To try to prove them wrong scientifically is tantamount to proving that the universe is unintelligible.
Well, at least this does not involve a self contradiction. I would say this just avoids the topic of prime matter.
Navel gazing… but this is exactly where science takes its creativity from. By reaching beyond the current received notions and exploring new ideas or new ways of looking at reality. For every scientific discovery, there are likely millions of failed scientific theories. And many of our most settled scientific facts today were in the realm of philosophical speculation in the past. And this does not mean that there are no purely meta-scientific questions. There are many disciplines that physical scientists must rely on to do their work. For example, mathematics is crucial to the work of physics and most natural sciences. So is logic. Math and logic are not simply reducible to physical science, but are tools that physical science presuppose. And there are also often unexamined metaphysical assumptions as well that are in play about the nature of reality.
An electrical engineer does not need to do any navel gazing about the nature of mathematics. She just uses it for the ends of her science. The computer programer does not have to think about what their science presupposes to function as a computer programer. And the same is true about neuroscience. Especially one which operates under metaphysical assumptions that all things are completely reducible to physical processes. Because if you go into this field with this as an unexamined assumption, then that is all you will ever find.
I like to read books on audible. I found this one by the same author audible.com/pd/Science-Technology/Surfaces-and-Essences-Audiobook/B00CICRX0I/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1445617347&sr=1-1#publisher-summary
It is interesting that he focuses on analogy as the key to understanding human intelligence. This was also a key concept for Aquinas.
Wow, that is hard on the ears. We had some F-18s do a fly by where I live yesterday, but they are not allowed to go past the sound barrier.
God bless,
Ut
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inocente
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I don’t know any positions which explain AWAY the mind, could you list a few?
I’d also disagree that hylomorphic dualism makes much headway. Does it explain major depression? Alzheimer’s?
Does it explain intangibles such as racism? Evidence-based research p(name removed by moderator)oints which area of the brain processes facial recognition, and the areas involved in further processing. The amygdala activates more strongly for faces of less familiar ethnicities. This fear response is then mediated by other areas, which dampen the response to a greater extent in people who show no conscious racial bias than those who do.
The fear response and how well it is controlled are both learned responses. Simple virtual reality experiments, for instance fooling the brain of a subject who has white skin into thinking he has black skin, reduce the subject’s racial bias (too soon to tell whether this is permanent).
So even at this early stage of neuroscience, a detailed picture is emerging. It explains some of our intuitions, for instance that mixed child playgroups inhibit racism by increasing exposure to reduce the fear response. It is starting to tell us how to teach racists to control their fear.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_and_race
bbc.com/news/science-environment-23709836
It’s by no means perfect yet, but this is only a few decades since MRI scanners first allowed this research. By comparison hylomorphic dualism has been around for 2300 years. In all that time how much headway has it made in explaining the causes and helping overcome racism?
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inocente
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The first problemette being that the categorization into form and matter isn’t used in science and serves no role in any theories. There’s no requirement for it to be presupposed.
A more major problemette is that the world is what it is, however we think of it. If you find the world is more intelligible when you make a distinction between form and matter then fine, but the world isn’t then forced to consist of form and matter as a result.
So I think you are using a circular argument here: the world must be how you think it is otherwise the world wouldn’t be how you think it is.
But a fan of string theory could also make your argument that “there is no firm evidence that there are formless beings or entities out there”. But she has the advantage on you, since she’s simplified your form+matter into form alone. Does that make her theory more intelligible than yours? (In other words, science would come to a stop if it had to answer such navel-gazing questions
.)I think none of these are assumptions though, they’re simply part and parcel of the null hypothessis. There’s no need for metaphysical assumptions. In geology or meteorology, the null hypothesis is that only physical processes are involved, and it will remain the null hypothesis until a phenomenon is detected which cannot be explained by physical processes alone, at which point it will have to be trashed and replaced.
Exactly the same’s true for neuroscience.
I’ve not read that, is it any good? I see it’s about analogy, in the other book he uses formal methods (which he explains) such as Godel’s “sideways numbering” to morph one pattern into another.
I think they’re not here either, but they get a bit over-enthusiastic occasionally.
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SimmieKay
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For me, the biggest problem with hylomorphic dualism is that I don’t feel I understand it. I started out as a reductionist materialist - mental phenomena are reducible to physical phenomena. I then realised I could swap the arrow of reduction around, and easily arrive at reductionist idealism - as the mirror image, or dual, of reductionist materialism. So, in that way, both materialism and idealism make sense to me, although I feel idealism is the better of those two options. And if both materialism and idealism make sense to a person, then substance dualism will make sense too - even though I feel it is inferior to the monist alternatives. I have an intellectual structure into which materialism, idealism and substance dualism fit, which I feel gives me an understanding of them, and an ability to decide between them. But I don’t understand how to fit hylomorphic dualism into this structure, so I don’t feel I can understand, nor do I feel capable of judging its truth.
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SimmieKay
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I don’t agree. In my mind there is a clear distinction between empirical evidence and philosophical analysis, and the former has never been and never will a substitute for the later. You are free to believe this, of course, but I don’t see any good reason for me to believe what you do.
The evidence doesn’t disagree with either of those positions. Of course the evidence shows that there is bidirectional causation between mind and brain, but bidirectional causation and unidirectional reduction are not mutually exclusive. Both reductionist materialists and reductionist idealists agree that bidirectional mind-brain interaction occurs, and that interaction is not incompatible with either position.
(And reductionist monists are not in a similarly problematic position with respect to interaction as substance dualists are - if A and B are radically distinct and mutually irreducible substances, then any interaction between A and B is something that requires a convincing explanation; by contrast, if A is reducible to B, then bidirectional interaction between A and B reduces to the self-interaction of B only, which seems far less difficult to explain.)
Dualism is non-reductionist, in that it says that matter and mind are mutually irreducible, whereas reductionist monists insist that one is reducible to the other (they just differ about the direction in which the arrow of reduction goes).
I’m unconvinced that anything that will be learned over the next hundred years will have any great impact on the philosophy of mind.
In my view, consciousness is not a “folk intuition”, it is something that has a real and objective existence. (I don’t believe it can be “rigorously defined”, but nor do I think it needs to be.) Of course, you may disagree with me about this, but I don’t see any reason why I should adopt any other view of the matter.
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balto
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Several of the popular viewpoints do indeed eliminate the mind. Materialism is one big one. Reductionism is another. Emergentism another still.
It would help if you and your interlocutors could define the term “mind” because, after reading some of the posts in this thread, I suspect there is some equivocation occurring. I am speculating that you are using the term “mind” to refer to the imaginative faculties, whereas utunumsint and Peter Plato understand the term to refer to the intellectual faculties.
Imagination is the process whereby sense data is recalled internally in the brain, such that you can form mental images, produce mental sounds, etc. Aristotelians have always held that this is a corporeal activity so modern science has not “discovered” anything radical here. All it has done is fill in the details.
Intellection refers to the process whereby the human mind is able to really consider and understand universal concepts/essential natures, and perform determinate reasoning. Aristotelians argue that intellection is an incorporeal faculty because matter is by definition particular, so if humans really do understand universals as such, they cannot be understood materially. Additionally, determinate reasoning is not possible within a material framework since the material facts necessarily underdetermine the reasoning involved.
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inocente
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That’s OK unless there’s a conflict between a philosophical position and the evidence, since we can’t force the world to change to fit a philosophical position, and truth cannot contradict truth.
Originally you wrote “why does the existence of such a correlation dictate that the arrow of reduction go in one direction only?”, and it seems we’re both agreed that it doesn’t.
Good point.
The OED has Reductionism - The practice of analysing and describing a complex phenomenon in terms of its simple or fundamental constituents, especially when this is said to provide a sufficient explanation.
So I don’t see how the hylomorphic dualist claim that everything is reducible to matter and form (even before the further categorizations) can be other than reductionist.
Browse through the following SEP articles on consciousness, and notice two points: First, that concepts of consciousness vary with culture:
*"Nonetheless, some have argued that consciousness as we know it today is a relatively recent historical development that arose sometime after the Homeric era (Jaynes 1974). According to this view, earlier humans including those who fought the Trojan War did not experience themselves as unified internal subjects of their thoughts and actions, at least not in the ways we do today. Others have claimed that even during the classical period, there was no word of ancient Greek that corresponds to “consciousness” (Wilkes 1984, 1988, 1995). …]
Although the words “conscious” and “conscience” are used quite differently today, it is likely that the Reformation emphasis on the latter as an inner source of truth played some role in the inward turn so characteristic of the modern reflective view of self." - plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/
“A history of consciousness, in its modern sense, properly starts with Descartes. While it is true that some ancient and medieval philosophers prefigured some aspects of the modern concept of consciousness (see Heinämaa, et al. 2007), a significant shift took place in the seventeenth century, and starting with Descartes in particular” - plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-17th/*
Second, in both articles note all the varied definitions and aspects included in the umbrella term “consciousness”.
For both these reasons I think scientific explanation will have to be based on more rigorously defined terms.
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inocente
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Hopefully I’m using the word as usually defined, for instance the OED has Mind: The element of a person that enables them to be aware of the world and their experiences, to think, and to feel; the faculty of consciousness and thought.
Here you’re using categories created by Aristotle, which rely in turn on further categories defined by Aristotle such as universals and essential natures. Then, having imposed those divisions, you draw conclusions.
But if you had divided up the world and mind into some other set of categories, you would have drawn different conclusions. Your conclusions depend on which scheme you choose, and philosophers of other persuasions don’t agree with those categories, and so don’t agree with your conclusions. I think any analysis based on categories is suspect unless it’s beyond reasonable doubt that the categories exist objectively.
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Peter_Plato
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Would that include your analysis based upon the categories you use?
Aren’t “reasonable doubt” and “objective” based upon their own set of categories?
Ergo, the requirement would be to show that those “other” categories of “other philosophers” are, minimally, far more compelling than the ones created by Aristotle, rather than just implying that those of Aristotle are “less modern” and, therefore, not “objective” but “suspect.”
Or, as you try to do above, make the claim that conclusions from Aristotle are based on categories and categories are, well… “suspect,” which makes them inferior to the work of “other philosophers,” who presumably don’t rely on categories because they are, well…“objective.” As if THAT were an argument in itself.
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balto
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Thank you for providing that. Upon reflection, this is probably the most reasonable definition of mind, but it bundles up corporeal and incorporeal faculties, which is why I think it is useful to distinguish between imagination and intellect within the mind. Although I will point out that if you are committed to some form of reductionism like many contemporary thinkers are, then even consciousness and imagination cannot be material.
Not really, it’s more like I don’t generally question the fundamental operation of reason itself. Reason works by distinguishing between different types of things.
Hylomorphism at its core doesn’t seem to be concerned so much with the set of categories that anyone adopts but instead argues that reality is categorical in the first place. The form alludes to the objective category, whatever it is, and the matter is the principle of individuation that distinguishes different instances of the category.
Well this is a difficult position to maintain. The nominalist claim appears to be self-refuting: “there are no universals” is equivalent to “all things are not universal”, but “all things” is itself a universal. We already know that our thinking is categorical and it is the only way we are able to “make” the world intelligible. Appealing to modern science is not going to help you out here, since scientific thinking is categorical as well (e.g. these are all genes, these are quarks, these are oxygen molecules, etc. these are all categories, natures, essences, whatever their objective status turns out to be). You’re saying the “real world” isn’t like that, or at least that we should doubt the world is like that, and that we just invent these categories to make the world intelligible. But we only know the world through these concepts. The only logical conclusion from this is some form of idealism or solipsism: all I really know is the way my own mind works.
The Aristotelian argues that the world is inherently intelligible and that our concepts do not “make” the world intelligible but discover the world’s intelligibility by means of the forms and natures.
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inocente
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Never said anything about more or less modern, what’s that got to anything?Would that include your analysis based upon the categories you use?
Aren’t “reasonable doubt” and “objective” based upon their own set of categories?
Ergo, the requirement would be to show that those “other” categories of “other philosophers” are, minimally, far more compelling than the ones created by Aristotle, rather than just implying that those of Aristotle are “less modern” and, therefore, not “objective” but “suspect.”
Or, as you try to do above, make the claim that conclusions from Aristotle are based on categories and categories are, well… “suspect,” which makes them inferior to the work of “other philosophers,” who presumably don’t rely on categories because they are, well…“objective.” As if THAT were an argument in itself.
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inocente
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Perhaps the OED is also not a fan of creating prior divisions into corporeal/incorporeal or imagination/intellect
.I guess a substance dualist might regard an imagined paella as made from immaterial substance, while for me it has no substance, so in that sense I’d agree it’s not made of material.
The problem for me is hylomorphism’s claim that reality is divided into its categories. But reality could be divided into some other set of categories. Or our categories might not exist in the world, but only in how we conceive of the world. That last point means that making prior categorizations may just lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. Better imho to avoid all of that and just go where the evidence takes us.
Sure, our minds automatically divide the world into things. But we didn’t start out by proclaiming that a paella must be composed of molecules, which must be composed of atoms, which must be composed of etc. Instead we followed the evidence, and found that the paella is made of things we then decided to call molecules, etc. That’s all I’m saying, that in any exploration we find whatever we find, not necessarily what we expected to find.
But again this is making prior assumptions. Does the Aristotelian have to make more prior assumptions to explain the mind than to explain geology?
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inocente
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Correction - to do with anythingNever said anything about more or less modern, what’s that got to anything?
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Peter_Plato
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This would be the problem, it seems.
The evidence takes us exactly nowhere unless it is seen through some lens or other.
Otherwise, all you have is a series of perceptions with no means to connect them together, since the “connection” is conscious and rational.
The question is which set of categories or which lens (theorem: Greek= “way of seeing”) provides the most complete and reliable way of looking at the evidence.
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fisherman_carl
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hylemorphism uses general categories that apply universally. That is the point of using them. They work in all situations in the natural world. It’s like saying, in the class of all that exists are being, and in the class of that which doesn’t exist is non-being. Being and non-being are general descriptions that work universally for what they describe. They are not arbitrary terms. And, no amount of scientific discoveries will invalidate them.Perhaps the OED is also not a fan of creating prior divisions into corporeal/incorporeal or imagination/intellect
I guess a substance dualist might regard an imagined paella as made from immaterial substance, while for me it has no substance, so in that sense I’d agree it’s not made of material.
The problem for me is hylomorphism’s claim that reality is divided into its categories. But reality could be divided into some other set of categories. Or our categories might not exist in the world, but only in how we conceive of the world. That last point means that making prior categorizations may just lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. Better imho to avoid all of that and just go where the evidence takes us.
Sure, our minds automatically divide the world into things. But we didn’t start out by proclaiming that a paella must be composed of molecules, which must be composed of atoms, which must be composed of etc. Instead we followed the evidence, and found that the paella is made of things we then decided to call molecules, etc. That’s all I’m saying, that in any exploration we find whatever we find, not necessarily what we expected to find.
But again this is making prior assumptions. Does the Aristotelian have to make more prior assumptions to explain the mind than to explain geology?
Similarly, form and matter are two general terms that can be used to describe everything in the natural world. It isn’t a matter of deciding to use an arbitrary classifications of things. Rather, the words describe what is. That everything can be described as form and matter is true. Because the word ‘form’ and the word ‘matter’ is not what counts but the meaning of those words which describes the reality behind them. Even if we called it blues and crinkles as long as the underlying meaning was the same as form and matter then we would be talking about the same thing. Do you deny that everything can be described as a composition of form and matter? Do you deny that things in the natural world are composed of matter? Do you deny that they have a form? How could science every invalidate that?
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inocente
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Surely that doesn’t need to be any different from geology or biology or any other subject. If an explanation fits the evidence beyond reasonable doubt, there’s nothing left for alternative hypotheses to explain.
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inocente
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Sure, and it’s possible to create a large number of similar systems, each of which is also reasonably internally consistent, and each of them might apply to some possible world, but they can’t all apply to the our world. That’s why evidence is key.
btw I’d think that the idea of using non-being as a property is contentious, since only something which exists can possess properties.
Well, there is another speculative hypothesis, known as string “theory”, which claims there is no matter, only form. You’d have to argue that one out with them. In terms of research, answering that kind of imponderable doesn’t stop geology or chemistry, and I can’t see how it could stop the science of the mind either. Do you think it will?
I’d argue it doesn’t get us anywhere. For example, whatever you believe about the wet stuff between your ears, we can agree that as you read this, millions of neurons are firing. We can picture the complex patterns of electricity flowing between all those neurons, patterns which change every millisecond. Most of the matter (the neurons, etc.) doesn’t move, only the electrons move, and electrons always move anyway, just not necessarily in concert, just not necessarily forming patterns. Do hylomorphic dualist philosophers agree on whether the non-moving wet stuff, or the moving electrons, or both, are matter? Do they agree on whether the transient patterns have an (ever-changing) form, or just that the wet stuff has a form? What conclusions do they draw from such an analysis?
My point is that none of that tells us anything at all about what might be going on between your ears. It tells us nothing about the phenomenon, only about the opinions of some philosophers on interpreting their own philosophy.
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balto
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A substance dualist probably would argue that, since for substance dualists usually any kind of qualitative experience is immaterial. An imagined paella is material since it only involves recalling particular material accidents. BTW, I’ve noticed that you seem to have a thing for paellas since they are always your stock example in these discussionsPerhaps the OED is also not a fan of creating prior divisions into corporeal/incorporeal or imagination/intellect
I guess a substance dualist might regard an imagined paella as made from immaterial substance, while for me it has no substance, so in that sense I’d agree it’s not made of material.
.At this point I’m not too concerned on what the categories are. The point is that reality is categorical. Form and matter do not designate categories such that some things are forms and some things are matter. All things are matter and form (I’m obviously bracketing off the discussion about whether pure immaterial forms, i.e. angels, exist since that is a theological issue).
That is idealism, which, if you deny that there are objective categories, i.e. that reality is rational through-and-through, then idealism is the only logical conclusion since we undoubtedly only make the world intelligible through use of concepts and categories. Our understanding of the material world seems to presuppose the mental world, so if you are going to jettison one of them it has to be the material world.
But the evidence is not self-interpreting. You have to analyze it in some theoretical framework, which is to apply some universal nature or category to it. That was Peter’s point. If these categories are not objectively real, then the evidence is not taking you anywhere and all you know is how your mind happens to represent some unknown reality to you. The evidence is not leading you, you are going on some walk to who knows where. The solipsist goes one step further and questions whether existence itself is just a mental representation.
I doubt any pre-modern Aristotelian would be that astonished to know any of that, since they already made provisions for the material cause of a thing, which is what you are describing. A paella is still a paella. It is not a tree or some other kind of thing.
Well if your objection to hylomorphism is that we expected reality to be “made of” forms and matter and, since we didn’t find any forms and matter when we broke things down into their constituent parts, therefore hylomorphism is refuted, then you are still missing the whole point of hylomorphism. Forms and matter are not two “things” that enter into the composition of larger aggregate things. You’re not going to find forms and matter by breaking larger things down into smaller things, since form and matter describe “thingness.” They are not the basic things that comprise larger things.
Well the only assumption seems to be that reality is really intelligible, which would be needed to come to any real understanding of either the mind or geology, so no I don’t think you’d need any extra assumptions for either of those two subject matters, but maybe I am missing something.
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fisherman_carl
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Listen, I’m not an expert on this topic. I am still learning about it. Which is why I haven’t said anything until now. But I can see that you are not open to it or are not willing to understand it. I don’t fully understand it yet but I am willing to learn. I mean if you have a problem with the idea of form and matter do you have some better description to offer us? Or are you just being contentious for the sake of being contentious? You believe in soul sleep right? Is that the real reason you reject any sort of dualism or that anything survives the body?
One other thing I wanted to ask you is if you are not an atheist then why not? The same arguments you are using to convince yourself not to be open to an immaterial mind also can be used to deny the existence of God. I hear atheists all the time talk about how religion is just superstition and that science will explain everything including God as some natural process. Yet science can only give you probability knowledge. It can’t give you certainty.
The reason that form and matter work as descriptors apart from science is because they are obviously true. It’s not like we have to go around scientifically proving that material things can be described as a composition of form and matter. We can know this just by using our intellect. Even science itself is full of basic philosophical assumptions that can not be scientifically proven, yet are held to be true.
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