Materialism is absurd

[Consul]

People like you and Searle, who don't realize that the English word "consciousness" refers to a mix of two (or more) different components, have not even understood what the core problem of philosophy is. Let alone how to solve the problem. This is why Western philosohy is a dead end. You will never understand consiousness before you realize that the two components have basically nothing to do with each other.

People like me and Searle do know the meanings of "consciousness"!

"'Consciousness,' says Professor Ward, 'is the vaguest, most protean, and most treacherous of psychological terms'; and Bain, writing in 1880, distinguished no less than thirteen meanings of the word; he could find more today! The ambiguity of the term seems to be due, in the last resort, to the running together of two fundamental meanings, the one of which is scientific or psychological, the other logical or philosophical. In the latter, the logical meaning, consciousness is awareness or knowledge, and 'conscious of ' means 'aware of '; in the former, the scientific meaning, consciousness is mental experience, experience regarded from the psychological point of view, and one can no more use the phrase 'conscious of ' than one can use 'mental of.' If you think how natural it is to say 'I was conscious of so-and-so,' you will realise that the logical meaning is generally current[.]"

(Titchener, Edward B. A Beginner's Psychology. New York: Macmillan, 1916. pp. 323-4)

1. transitive consciousness = consciousness-of: consciousness = awareness (extrospective or introspective), cognition (knowledge), or perception (inner/internal or outer/external)

2. intransitive consciousness: consciousness = phenomenal consciousness = subjective experience
[This is what I and Searle mean by "consciousness"!]

"Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind."

(Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. 2:1;19.)

This is a classical example of a higher-order definition of consciousness that equates consciousness with introspective/reflective awareness of one's experiences. But the cognitive capacity for introspection/reflection is arguably unnecessary for the capacity for experience.

[Atla]

I've stated the problem many times.
Again: you don't even realize what the core problem of philosophy is, most people don't. You seem to lack the necessary intelligence.

Obviously not.
You seem to lack the vocabulary to state a problem.

I have the necessary vocabulary to state the problem, it's just a simple well-known fact that the problem is beyond most people's grasp. I would say deal with it, but you have no idea what I'm talking about.

[Atla]

People like you and Searle, who don't realize that the English word "consciousness" refers to a mix of two (or more) different components, have not even understood what the core problem of philosophy is. Let alone how to solve the problem. This is why Western philosohy is a dead end. You will never understand consiousness before you realize that the two components have basically nothing to do with each other.

People like me and Searle do know the meanings of "consciousness"!

"'Consciousness,' says Professor Ward, 'is the vaguest, most protean, and most treacherous of psychological terms'; and Bain, writing in 1880, distinguished no less than thirteen meanings of the word; he could find more today! The ambiguity of the term seems to be due, in the last resort, to the running together of two fundamental meanings, the one of which is scientific or psychological, the other logical or philosophical. In the latter, the logical meaning, consciousness is awareness or knowledge, and 'conscious of ' means 'aware of '; in the former, the scientific meaning, consciousness is mental experience, experience regarded from the psychological point of view, and one can no more use the phrase 'conscious of ' than one can use 'mental of.' If you think how natural it is to say 'I was conscious of so-and-so,' you will realise that the logical meaning is generally current[.]"

(Titchener, Edward B. A Beginner's Psychology. New York: Macmillan, 1916. pp. 323-4)

1. transitive consciousness = consciousness-of: consciousness = awareness (extrospective or introspective), cognition (knowledge), or perception (inner/internal or outer/external)

2. intransitive consciousness: consciousness = phenomenal consciousness = subjective experience
[This is what I and Searle mean by "consciousness"!]

"Consciousness is the perception of what passes in a man's own mind."

(Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. 1690. 2:1;19.)

This is a classical example of a higher-order definition of consciousness that equates consciousness with introspective/reflective awareness of one's experiences. But the cognitive capacity for introspection/reflection is arguably unnecessary for the capacity for experience.

That is one of the components of the two I mentioned.
You are not ready for philosophy.

[Consul]

You are not ready for philosophy.

[Sculptor1]

Obviously not.
You seem to lack the vocabulary to state a problem.

I have the necessary vocabulary to state the problem, it's just a simple well-known fact that the problem is beyond most people's grasp. I would say deal with it, but you have no idea what I'm talking about.

Yes, I agree, it seems to be beyond your grasp since you find it impossible to articulate it.

[Hereandnow]

Cosul
The ontological question of what kind of entity I am is a complicated issue, the discussion of which would require a new thread. But to lay my cards on the table, I affirm and defend animalism, the view that I am an animal, a human one. (Being an animal entails being an organism, and being an organism entails being a body.) I also believe that I am essentially a human animal, in the sense that I couldn't have been or couldn't become some other kind of thing such as a horse or a flower.

But this account needs to separate contexts of language use. The term 'animal' is an empirical term, from what Husserl called the natural attitude, and it certainly is proper to call us animals among other things in this mode of thinking. But to step beyond this to foundational terminology, basic questions rise up in philosophical themes that subtend the natural attitude: here, we ask about the conditions prior to putting together empirical ideas. This is ontology, an examination of the structures of knowing, experiencing (as opposed to merely ontic analyses).

[Tertullian]

What if some of my neighbors are conscious and others are not? Certainly, automata are everywhere which mimic a conscious person's behavior's to a greater and greater degree. Everywhere in my neighbor's brain, I will find blind automatic physical chemical reactions. Why would I imagine that adding millions of blind reactions together gives something beyond a blind automatic situation? If particle physics is sufficient to model my neighbor, then why would I imagine there to be agency and/or consciousness there? It's just like the weather. Our understanding of weather at a reductionist physical level got better and better, so that pleading to Zeus to spare us rain & lightning fell out of favor. Occam's razor, really. I am much more certain that I have subjective experiences than that I have a brain. With my neighbor it is vice versa.

You don't innerly perceive your experiences as brain processes, but it doesn't follow that they aren't brain processes.

Why should I doubt that my neighbors are subjects of consciousness too? We're all members of the same animal species (homo sapiens) sharing the same evolutionary history, so how plausible is it that I happen to be the only conscious one among them?

If my parents are nonconscious zombies, why am I not a nonconscious zombie too?

Yes, there are far-fetched possibilities, such as that extraterrestrial aliens secretely replaced my conscious neighbors with nonconscious behavioral duplicates; but I don't have to take these seriously, do I?

Teuton, the fact that you can be aware of the nature of your experiences (as first-person and privately accessible properties) while failing to be aware of the third-person, publicly accessible physical property that it's putatively identical to, seems to show that they're conceptually isolated, and therefore express two distinct properties (and not merely two aspects of the same property).

[psyreporter]

Materialism is absurd

I agree. I am still trying to figure out how the following is possible:

I'm an atheist.

So I'm a physicalist. I'm convinced that the mind is simply brain processes.

I don't at all buy determinism.

1. Do you believe in intrinsic existence without mind?
2. Do you believe that mind has a cause within the scope of physical reality?

Yes and yes. I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist").

A quote by free will sceptics indicates that it is impossible to escape determinism in a purely physical (materialistic) world.

To make a choice that wasn’t merely the next link in the unbroken chain of causes, you’d have to be able to stand apart from the whole thing, a ghostly presence separate from the material world yet mysteriously still able to influence it. But of course you can’t actually get to this supposed place that’s external to the universe, separate from all the atoms that comprise it and the laws that govern them. Your conscious 'I' is just some of the atoms in the universe, governed by the same predictable laws as all the rest.

(2021) The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Why would they do so?
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/a ... n-illusion

I didn't get further than the following:

You are dodging a simple question: how are you able to maintain a belief in free will as being a materialist?

The cited quote by free will sceptics indicates that it is impossible to escape determinism in a purely physical world.

lol - what a jackass.

[SteveKlinko]

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Materialism: a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter

“Everything is matter.” Who says so? I, the subject. And if there were no subject who says so, there would be no one for whom matter matters, and therefore there would be no sense in saying that there is anything at all, because being and its meaning are not separable from each other. Nothingness of meaning means nothingness of being. So there is at least (1) the subject's (2) consciousness of (3) matter, instead of matter only. All three components are necessary to make a satisfactory ontological picture of reality.

That I, as the subject, could be somehow reducible to my objects, or that my consciousness of matter could be somehow reducible to what I am conscious of, is absurd.

Matter matters to me, but nothing matters to matter.

So by doing a simple phenomenological analysis of the being of matter we find that materialism is a self-contradictory position.

Materialism/Physicalism is Absurd, but only in the context of Consciousness and Conscious Experience. If there were no such thing as Consciousness (in other words: Us) then Materialism would be a workable theory. But we do Exist and Materialism can't Explain it (Consciousness). The Absurd part is that Materialism insists that Consciousness will be Explained in a Materialistic context. Ok fine, so what is the Materialist Explanation of Consciousness? Physicalists can only say it's in the Neurons or it's the same thing as the Neuron so long before an actual Explanation is demanded.

[SteveKlinko]

Let me say that last line again so it makes more sense:

Physicalists can only say it's in the Neurons or it's the same thing as the Neurons for so long. Eventually an actual Explanation will be demanded.

[psyreporter]

Materialism is absurd

I agree. I am still trying to figure out how the following is possible:

I'm an atheist.

So I'm a physicalist. I'm convinced that the mind is simply brain processes.

I don't at all buy determinism.

1. Do you believe in intrinsic existence without mind?
2. Do you believe that mind has a cause within the scope of physical reality?

Yes and yes. I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist").

A quote by free will sceptics indicates that it is impossible to escape determinism in a purely physical (materialistic) world.

To make a choice that wasn’t merely the next link in the unbroken chain of causes, you’d have to be able to stand apart from the whole thing, a ghostly presence separate from the material world yet mysteriously still able to influence it. But of course you can’t actually get to this supposed place that’s external to the universe, separate from all the atoms that comprise it and the laws that govern them. Your conscious 'I' is just some of the atoms in the universe, governed by the same predictable laws as all the rest.

(2021) The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?
A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Why would they do so?
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/a ... n-illusion

I didn't get any further than the following:

You are dodging a simple question: how are you able to maintain a belief in free will as being a materialist?

The cited quote by free will sceptics indicates that it is impossible to escape determinism in a purely physical world.

lol - what a jackass.

One more:

"Today it is clear that there is a causality trajectory from the Physical World to the Conscious World and not the other way around."
...
The reality of the situation is that the Neural Activity in the Brain causes or produces in some way the Redness Experience.

I don't subscribe to the Physicalist Perspective.

[psyreporter]

"Today it is clear that there is a causality trajectory from the Physical World to the Conscious World and not the other way around."
...
The reality of the situation is that the Neural Activity in the Brain causes or produces in some way the Redness Experience.

All we know is that certain kinds of Neural Activity results (produces) in Conscious Experience. Conscius Experience does not result in Neural Activity as if the Experience caused the Neural Activity, which is what the Idealists believe.

I don't subscribe to the Physicalist Perspective.

If the material is foundational for 'all there is' (including a cause of consciousness), how can you argue that you are not a physicalist?

Materialism/Physicalism is Absurd, but only in the context of Consciousness and Conscious Experience. If there were no such thing as Consciousness (in other words: Us) then Materialism would be a workable theory. But we do Exist and Materialism can't Explain it (Consciousness). The Absurd part is that Materialism insists that Consciousness will be Explained in a Materialistic context. Ok fine, so what is the Materialist Explanation of Consciousness? Physicalists can only say it's in the Neurons or it's the same thing as the Neuron so long before an actual Explanation is demanded.

When consciousness is to find a cause in the neurons, it doesn't make sense in my opinion to argue that you are not a physicalist.

The 'Conscious World' that you refer to cannot be other than physical when it is to be caused by the physical.

You seem to answer the following two questions with Yes and Yes as well. If so, why wouldn't TP's assertion "I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist")." naturally follow for you as well?

So I'm a physicalist. I'm convinced that the mind is simply brain processes.

I don't at all buy determinism.

1. Do you believe in intrinsic existence without mind?
2. Do you believe that mind has a cause within the scope of physical reality?

Yes and yes. I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist").

[SteveKlinko]

"Today it is clear that there is a causality trajectory from the Physical World to the Conscious World and not the other way around."
...
The reality of the situation is that the Neural Activity in the Brain causes or produces in some way the Redness Experience.

All we know is that certain kinds of Neural Activity results (produces) in Conscious Experience. Conscius Experience does not result in Neural Activity as if the Experience caused the Neural Activity, which is what the Idealists believe.

I don't subscribe to the Physicalist Perspective.

If the material is foundational for 'all there is' (including a cause of consciousness), how can you argue that you are not a physicalist?

Materialism/Physicalism is Absurd, but only in the context of Consciousness and Conscious Experience. If there were no such thing as Consciousness (in other words: Us) then Materialism would be a workable theory. But we do Exist and Materialism can't Explain it (Consciousness). The Absurd part is that Materialism insists that Consciousness will be Explained in a Materialistic context. Ok fine, so what is the Materialist Explanation of Consciousness? Physicalists can only say it's in the Neurons or it's the same thing as the Neuron so long before an actual Explanation is demanded.

When consciousness is to find a cause in the neurons, it doesn't make sense in my opinion to argue that you are not a physicalist.

The 'Conscious World' that you refer to cannot be other than physical when it is to be caused by the physical.

You seem to answer the following two questions with Yes and Yes as well. If so, why wouldn't TP's assertion "I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist")." naturally follow for you as well?

So I'm a physicalist. I'm convinced that the mind is simply brain processes.

I don't at all buy determinism.

1. Do you believe in intrinsic existence without mind?
2. Do you believe that mind has a cause within the scope of physical reality?

Yes and yes. I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist").

I say that the Neural Activity can be the cause but it is not the source of Conscious Experience. I say that Consciousness is Connected to the Physical Brain, but Consciousness is not the Brain. I say the Brain has no Consciousness or Conscious Experience. I try the promote the Connectist Point of View. See https://theintermind.com/#ConnectionPerspective for a more complete explanation of the Connection Perspective of Connectism.

[psyreporter]

"Today it is clear that there is a causality trajectory from the Physical World to the Conscious World and not the other way around."
...
The reality of the situation is that the Neural Activity in the Brain causes or produces in some way the Redness Experience.

You seem to answer the following two questions with Yes and Yes as well. If so, why wouldn't TP's assertion "I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist")." naturally follow for you as well?

So I'm a physicalist. I'm convinced that the mind is simply brain processes.

I don't at all buy determinism.

1. Do you believe in intrinsic existence without mind?
2. Do you believe that mind has a cause within the scope of physical reality?

Yes and yes. I'm a realist and a physicalist (aka "materialist").

I say that the Neural Activity can be the cause but it is not the source of Conscious Experience. I say that Consciousness is Connected to the Physical Brain, but Consciousness is not the Brain. I say the Brain has no Consciousness or Conscious Experience. I try the promote the Connectist Point of View. See https://theintermind.com/#ConnectionPerspective for a more complete explanation of the Connection Perspective of Connectism.

To summarize, you seem to argue the following:

1) Conscious World exists independent from Physical World and is non-physical?
2) A brain in Physical World - out of itself, by neuron activity - connects to Conscious World to causally create subjective conscious experience?

Why would a physical brain know about the existence of (independently existing and non-physical) Conscious World? Why would a physical brain become motivated out of itself to 'connect' to something that is non-physical? It seems to imply a moment of absolute darkness (deprivation of conscious experience) before the connection was made. If that were to be the case, a causal trajectory from the brain to Conscious World seems implausible.

[Sculptor1]

Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

Materialism: a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter

“Everything is matter.” Who says so? I, the subject. And if there were no subject who says so, there would be no one for whom matter matters, and therefore there would be no sense in saying that there is anything at all, because being and its meaning are not separable from each other. Nothingness of meaning means nothingness of being. So there is at least (1) the subject's (2) consciousness of (3) matter, instead of matter only. All three components are necessary to make a satisfactory ontological picture of reality.

That I, as the subject, could be somehow reducible to my objects, or that my consciousness of matter could be somehow reducible to what I am conscious of, is absurd.

Matter matters to me, but nothing matters to matter.

So by doing a simple phenomenological analysis of the being of matter we find that materialism is a self-contradictory position.

But all things can be explained ultimately with matter.
Matter matters to me, but nothing matters to matter. This is just flim-flam, as you are using distinctly different meanings for the word "matter".
Materialism also involves energy as a material fact. So everything is reducible to the physicality of that thing.