- John West
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Re: Dealing with a Scientistic Naturalist
iwpoe wrote:
A says:
I have a metaphysics: All objects are ideal, not made of anything material.
B says:
No for
If all objects are ideal then none are made of quarks, but (as natural investigation reveals to us) some are made of quarks, so not all objects are ideal.
A says:
They are not really made of quarks because the natural empirical realm is merely an appearance, and the ideal is the truth.
B says:
...?
I stipulated what I meant by the words I used at the sentence's end in brackets, for the sake of the example. I'm sure you're using words like ideal in loose and popular senses, but let's stick with what I wrote:
I'm not offering that as an argument. I really did want a case- for my own sake. I'm curious.
Consider some position that implies everything is immaterial (spiritual as opposed to constituted by bosons and fermions). If everything is immaterial, nothing is material. It can be empirically verified that something is material. Hence, not everything is immaterial.
The immaterialist position can be defended by positing massive hallucination—as per Quine’s famous thesis—but this runs into severe counterarguments.
One argument against positing that we're hallucinating to affirm that everything is spiritual is that it severely undermines our ability to trust any knowledge we have of reality at all. But then it's hard to see how we can trust any support for immaterialism. You should be familiar with this style of argument.
Another comes from indispensability-type arguments. One can hardly get through the day without employing a theory such a person would say is literally talking about hallucinations—mere illusions[1]. I'm fascinated that this has all evoked as much response as it has. The point, at bottom, is simply that if metaphysical claims imply anything empirically testable (anything relating to sight, sound, smell, touch, etc), then empirical testing can by modus tollens at least in principle have a say about whether the metaphysical claim is true. This shouldn't be surprising.
Anyway, your interlocutor seems to have vanished, and I think your original questions have been answered.
[1]There's more, too. For example, the immaterialist would struggle to come out with sufficiently explanatory truthmakers for the knowledge in almost every field in the academy.
Last edited by John West (8/20/2015 12:53 am)
- seigneur
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Re: Dealing with a Scientistic Naturalist
The immaterialist position can be defended by positing massive hallucination—as per Quine’s famous thesis—but this runs into severe counterarguments.
Much more reasonable than the wholesale hallucination thesis is the thesis that there are hallucinations on the one hand and clear perception of reality on the other. How is the difference between the two determined? Do you separate hallucinations from "proper" reality *materially*? And when you have done such separation, then that which is left is it entirely material?
The fact is that the work of separation of hallucinations from reality is *purely* (psycho)logical, not material at all. You do not touch the matter of hallucinations in order to separate it from reality. (You cannot, because hallucinations are not material.) At the same time, you cannot say that hallucinations are unreal, because if they were unreal, you would not need to separate them from "proper" reality. Logically, when you separate one thing from another, both are presupposed to be real. So, hallucinations are real, but immaterial.
Further, the work of separation done, is the reality that is left, after hallucinations have been separated, entirely material? Wasn't the entire work purely (psycho)logical? Thus psychology and logic determine reality at least as much as bosons and quarks, if not more.
And there cannot be any argument to the effect that psychology and logic are made up of the same bosons and quarks, because if this were so, then go ahead and show the relevant boson to me. Show me the nerve cell that contains the thought that I am having. If this were possible, then neurologists who study people's brains would be mind-readers, knowing much better from their third-person perspective what people think than people know from their own first-person perspective. Since all this is not the case - and cannot be - materialism/naturalism is not the case.
- iwpoe
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Re: Dealing with a Scientistic Naturalist
I stipulated what I meant by the words I used at the sentence's end in brackets, for the sake of the example. I'm sure you're using words like ideal in loose and popular senses, but let's stick with what I wrote:
I wrote just to get to the specific point where I wanted clarification. Whether I put the initial stipulation of 'there are no quarks only the ideal' in A's mouth or made it a refinement pushed by an interlocutor is immaterial to that end.
One argument against positing that we're hallucinating to affirm that everything is spiritual is that it severely undermines our ability to trust any knowledge we have of reality at all. But then it's hard to see how we can trust any support for immaterialism. You should be familiar with this style of argument.
Yes, it would be a usual approach in phenomenology.
Another comes from indispensability-type arguments. One can hardly get through the day without employing a theory such a person would say is literally talking about hallucinations—mere illusions[1]. I'm fascinated that this has all evoked as much response as it has. The point, at bottom, is simply that if metaphysical claims imply anything empirically testable (anything relating to sight, sound, smell, touch, etc), then empirical testing can by modus tollens at least in principle have a say about whether the metaphysical claim is true. This shouldn't be surprising.
I think the best way to put my concern- the whole reason I've bothered to think about this aspect at all -was this:
If metaphysical considerations (that have empirical implications) can be rejected on the basis of a modus tollens employing propositions from empirical investigation, is that only because further metaphysical assumptions stipulate that empirical considerations must, in some way, be taken into consideration?
I'm not saying that, in this particular case, refusal to accept the senses wouldn't be palpably insane. I'm saying that in this case, as in all cases I can think of, metaphysical considerations take pride of place over empirical ones, since even the claim that 'the data of the senses is trustworthy' is not properly a scientifically empirical finding.
The reason this matters to me is that- and I'm sure you've met this kind of person -there are all sorts of persons who think that there is a realm of sensible scientific knowledge that floats free of *any* extra-empirical assumptions which must be accepted directly because of its lack of interpretative (or whatever pejorative adjective) contamination.
Anyway, your interlocutor seems to have vanished, and I think your original questions have been answered.
I replied to him along the lines of discussion in the first couple of pages, and he hasn't said anything.
Last edited by iwpoe (8/20/2015 8:37 am)
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
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It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
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Thread Starter- John West
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Re: Dealing with a Scientistic Naturalist
If metaphysical considerations (that have empirical implications) can be rejected on the basis of a modus tollens employing propositions from empirical investigation, is that only because further metaphyical assumptions stipulate that empirical considerations must, in some way, be taken into consideration?
Well, it may be a step further back then that, at the level of methodology. But, I worry most methodologies besides the old way of starting with principles and self-evident features of reality that can't be coherently denied (ie. LNC or change), may lead to a regress: the metaphysics methodology, the metaphysics methodology's methodology, the metaphysics methodology's methodology's methodology, ..., with the same question about how to do A repeated at each juncture.
Last edited by John West (8/20/2015 8:51 am)
- John West
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Re: Dealing with a Scientistic Naturalist
Hi seigneur,
And there cannot be any argument to the effect that psychology and logic are made up of the same bosons and quarks, because if this were so, then go ahead and show the relevant boson to me. Show me the nerve cell that contains the thought that I am having. If this were possible, then neurologists who study people's brains would be mind-readers, knowing much better from their third-person perspective what people think than people know from their own first-person perspective. Since all this is not the case - and cannot be - materialism/naturalism is not the case.
There seems to have been a miscommunication:
Consider some position that implies everything is immaterial (spiritual as opposed to constituted by bosons and fermions). If everything is immaterial, nothing is material. It can be empirically verified that something is material. Hence, not everything is immaterial.
The immaterialist position can be defended by positing massive hallucination—as per Quine’s famous thesis—but this runs into severe counterarguments.
The example involved some position implying that everything is immaterial, and at least one thing empirically verified as material. I never meant to argue that everything is material, or that given those premises full-on materialism is true. Likewise modernist matter.
The fact is that the work of separation of hallucinations from reality is *purely* (psycho)logical, not material at all. You do not touch the matter of hallucinations in order to separate it from reality. (You cannot, because hallucinations are not material.) At the same time, you cannot say that hallucinations are unreal, because if they were unreal, you would not need to separate them from "proper" reality. Logically, when you separate one thing from another, both are presupposed to be real. So, hallucinations are real, but immaterial.
Thanks for this.
I'm not sure the act of separation presupposes that both are real. For instance, one might separate fact from fiction in a news report. That does not, however, entail that the fiction is real. The bare fact of someone trying to separate the latter from the former in this instance doesn't on its own presuppose both have ontological status. Some further argument is, I think, needed for stating the fiction has ontological status.
The statement can be answered another way. If we can have hallucinations of material objects, then said objects are at least conceivable. If material objects are conceivable, then they aren’t metaphysically impossible. Metaphysical impossibilities are inconceivable. 2+2 not equalling 4 is inconceivable; being a man and a hippopotamus at the same time, in the same respect, is inconceivable; Euclidean square circles are inconceivable. Hence, if we can have hallucinations of material objects, material objects are metaphysically possible[1].
But if material objects are metaphysically possible, then absent further reason to doubt our perceptions we may as well assume that at least some material objects we encounter actually exist, instead of assuming hallucinations have ontological status qua hallucinations.
I also have a question. Suppose there are two people, Tom and Bob. They both look at the same point, but have two completely different hallucinations. Academic fields dealing in the mind tell us it's possible for this to happen. Would you argue that both their hallucinations have ontological status, or that there is a correct hallucination and that Tom or Bob is hallucinating incorrectly?
[1]Consider also Kantian arguments that the unity of experience requires that the experience be coherent.
- seigneur
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Re: Dealing with a Scientistic Naturalist
Hi seigneur,
There seems to have been a miscommunication:
Indeed there seems to have been. I never thought that you were trying to defend the claim that everything was material. Instead, I saw you citing Quine's illusion thesis as if that were the only kind of immaterialist thesis. All I did was lay out an alternative immaterialist thesis.
I'm not sure the act of separation presupposes that both are real. For instance, one might separate fact from fiction in a news report. That does not, however, entail that the fiction is real. The bare fact of someone trying to separate the latter from the former in this instance doesn't on its own presuppose both have ontological status. Some further argument is, I think, needed for stating the fiction has ontological status.
Looks like you understand "ontological status" as "exists". This is not how I treat the word "real". To me it means "has consequences", "is relevant" or some such. If something has consequences and cannot be ignored, then it is real for practical purposes; it has to be dealt with. Insofar as we deal with things, logically we cannot say they are unreal, can we? "Wait, child, I'll get this unreal fiction out of the way first, then I'll take a look at what you painted."
Reality can be divided in two: Facts and statements about facts. In real life as we spend it, we don't deal with ontic facts or objects alone, but also with statements, propositions, stories. Fiction, falsities and lies are a kind of propositions we live with in real life. Those propositions are about something that is not true or not real, but the propositions themselves exist for practical purposes, don't they? The message on the wall may be about nothing, but the message itself is not nothing.
I also have a question. Suppose there are two people, Tom and Bob. They both look at the same point, but have two completely different hallucinations. Academic fields dealing in the mind tell us it's possible for this to happen. Would you argue that both their hallucinations have ontological status, or that there is a correct hallucination and that Tom or Bob is hallucinating incorrectly?
They are just hallucinations. They may be looking at the very same word too, say "LIE". If Tom is French, he will understand it as "dregs". There's no correct or incorrect between the different interpretations of the word merely because the interpretations are different. Rather, the interpretations are different because we have two different people attributing different associations to the word. The interpretations are correct or incorrect for this or that further purpose, and the further purpose depends on further context that the interested parties will have to additionally conjure up.
As to the ontological status of the interpretations, well, whatever rocks your boat. I don't see how the concept has any relevance here, but maybe you do. For me, everything smaller than the infinite is just a random subdivision of the infinite.
- Dennis
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Re: Dealing with a Scientistic Naturalist
Sorry to intrude in your conversation but...
Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized by James Ladyman, Don Ross and Don Spurrett
Has anyone ever read this book?
"As long as science enjoys significant prestige there will be attempts to pass off as science ideological pursuits, such as intelligent design ‘theory’ (sic) and ‘hermeneutic economics’ (Addleson 1997), and attempts to challenge or undermine the epistemic credentials of science.⁴ We have nothing to add to the contributions of those who have criticized these attempts.⁵ Though we follow the logical positivists and empiricists in concerning ourselves with the ‘demarcation problem’, our concern here is not with populist pseudo-science. It is instead with a sophisticated cousin of pseudo-science, pseudo-naturalist philosophy, especially as this occurs in metaphysics. Espousal of ‘naturalism’ is widespread in philosophy, but explicit criteria for being consistently naturalist are rare. In 1.3 below we provide a new formulation of the naturalist credo. First, in the present section we sketch some of the historical background to the emergence of ‘neo-scholastic’ metaphysics, and in the next section we argue against it.⁶"
If so, I would much like to know what you think. It seems to me that this battle against scientism is going to be a lifelong one, if anyone ever decides to pick this up or give me a message, I'm very interested in seeing what you guys would think.
Last edited by Dennis (8/24/2015 9:55 pm)
- iwpoe
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Re: Dealing with a Scientistic Naturalist
The battle is 2,500 years old, because the intellect is nearly invisible to the thinker.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
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