Am I a Physicalist?

Clark: Physicalism isn’t defined by which perspectives one can have since, as Brandon notes, non-reductive physicalists believe that 1st person cannot be reduced to 3rd person perspectives. Physicalism is the view that all there is is reducible to physics in the end. In the theory of mind, it is the view that everything is ultimately describable in terms of physical causes whether they be non-reducibly biological or physical.

Further, I found this statement interesting coming from a person who had just affirmed a belief in universals: “What I do believe is that anything to be real must have an effect on the universe and thus change what the universe is. Thus a real relationship to be distinguished as such must make a difference in the universe. (Roughly the state of things in the universe) So I don’t allow abstract relations to be real if they don’t make a real difference.”

What difference do the universals (as you affirm them) make? What is their causal input? If universals aren’t abstract relations, then what the heck to you mean?

Finally, I am stunned that you would attribute to me a view that the kinds of relations that I have spoken of related to LFW don’t make a difference in the states of the universe. I explained at least a half-dozen times how the data (actual states of the universe) are different as a result of acts of free will. Somehow this part of what I have explained is just being missed by you. What more do I have to do to explain how data are organized differently due to the active powers of the will that synthesize data differently than they would be if they were merely random?

I would understand by the term “physicalism” simply the assertion that there can be no mindedness without embodiment, or that the two can not be meaningfully pried apart and assigned to separate domains of existence, rather than involving any necessary claim about the reducibility of the one to the other. Asserted as a principle, physicalism actually says very little, except to perhaps rule out some logically possible or arguable alternatives, such as substance dualism, or, more ambiguously, a hylo-morphism of the soul. In Analytic philosophy, it is often taken to follow from the assertion of a “scientia mensura” principle, but when Quine, for example, says something like, minds or persons are material objects, whose properties are due entirely to modifications or effects of the states of physical micro-particles, he actually doesn’t have any idea of what he’s talking about, or proffered account of how that might at all “work”. Less “austere” accounts usually evade the “scientia mensura” and rely on other bases for attempting to render accounts, by genuflecting that a future science might fill in the causal details. Or formal-functional computationalist accounts of “mind” as a proxy for scientific explanation are constructed, but such accounts strike me as artificial and at some considerable distance from how the actual natural physical bases of “mind” might work and entailing very foreshortened conceptions of its agency in terms of “adaption” and “representation”. But, aside from their limited success or possible distortions, such attempts to “cash out” physicalism in terms of natural science are not necessary to the minimal assertion of the principle itself, which is not specific to Analytics, and which simply states something fairly obvious, that any adequate account of mental experience must take account of its embeddedness in, subtention by, or relational basis to physical reality. But then, aside from “mind” and “matter”, there is a third “stuff” that needs to be taken into account, without aligning unambiguously with either of the two, “information”, and accounting for that, with all its complications and levels, is an exceedingly tricky business.

Even in addressing religious issues, it’s not at all clear that physicalism rules out much or functions prohibitively. Arguably, physicalism, in contrast to idealist-dualist accounts, would be more in line with scriptural emphases on the creatureliness of human beings, including even passages, much involved in doctrinal disputes, concerning “resurrection”.

Blake:

That might be how “physicalism” is “standardly” defined in AP, but it is not all that might be said about the issue. “Standardly”, AP arguments over LFW are posed in terms of a presumption of naturalistic explanation and what that might entail, with the vague implication that LFW would violate those terms, which results, often enough, in an acceptance of that implication by AP proponents of LFW, inspite of the fact that the naturalistic accounts of “physicalist” explanation can’t fully “cash out” their terms. But, classically, e.g., Spinoza might be considered a “physicalist”, though I think his account is stranger and more complicated than is often acknowledged,- (and I just won’t venture into the extreme nominalism of Hobbes),- and there is at least a strong physicalist impulse in phenomenologists, such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, inspite of the anti-naturalist implications of the “epoche”. Wittgenstein, who, I think, is a “continental” devolving from Kant, and, in some sense, is attempting to demonstrate the “essential” impossibility of AP, in the form he received it, would be another instance. Whitehead, as I understand him, certainly wanted to uphold the rationality of the fullest extent of physicalist explanation possible, without thereby succumbing to its alleged reductionist implications. And Peirce, to whom Clark recurrently refers, though he might have passed on a few precipient logical distinctions to AP, remained largely outside its “orbit” and, until latter days, unacknowledged within it, clearly wrestled with such issues. There is just a wide variety of positions that might be so characterized by the term, which occur outside AP, as well, which is part of why Clark says the term is “messy”, and I say its minimal.

Blake:

My understanding of Whitehead is that he allows for the “freedom” of each particular from all other such particulars, but that would involve that each such particular “decides” for itself, which would require that it is already comprised of relations or composite. And that would involve all such “quantum” particulars, from the minutest particle to “God” hisself. That would comprise the account of the “mental pole” in Whitehead. Whether that is especially “Platonic” or not, I don’t know how to say. That there might be a “scholastic realism” to such “universals”, which might perhaps always remain to be “filled out”, but that also such “causal” explanations always would involve “more than the sum of their parts”, is I think part of what Whitehead is getting at. I’ll readily admit that I’ve never read Hartshorne, as not according with my lines of interest or inquiry. But I can readily see how the various relata that Whitehead lays out in his analysis might be pushed in an idealist direction, if not taken as referent to reals, inspite of his obvious and proclaimed anti-Hegelian intention.

As for your “controlling” Clark’s views, I generally don’t make it my policy or part to try to control what is said on inter-tube threads, since the anonymity of the medium both frequently leaves one with a self-incurred sense of “bad faith” and doesn’t allow for a sense of just what “game” is being played, whether “chess” or “poker” or “badminton”, etc. I recently typed some 1400 words, in a thread concerning a minimal definition of “atheism”, in which dogs, babies, and agnostics were grouped together, as all lacking such belief, but not atheists, in which I protested the obvious absurdity of such an “existential quantification”, but was told that life was simply to short to make out my account. So be it. (AND, YES, I’M TALKING TO YOU, ANNE, OVER AT “THE ECONOMIST’S VIEW”. THOUGH I OFTEN CAN CONSTRUE YOUR POLITICO-ECONOMIC POINTS AND SOMETIMES AGREE, GETTING ALL WHINY WHEN SOMEONE DOESN’T COME FROM YOUR PRISTINE ACADEMIC ENVIRONMENT AND ACCUSING THEM OF VILENESS WON’T DO, WHICH IS ACTUALLY MORE VULGAR AND UNINFORMATIVE THAN WHAT YOU LAUNCH YOUR ACCUSATION AGAINST!) There, now that I’ve lost my ass’ ears amongst the river reeds, my point is that, though Clark can often seem cryptic and overly precise in guarding his views, that might be precisely part of his views, and I don’t think that one can dictate to him, what precisely his views are, nor “control” for them, prescinding from any internecine Mormon dispute that might be going on.

I’d meant to get back to the “core” issue at dispute in the below thread.

Clark: You’re right. I think the fact that I accept that there are data organized as a result of intelligent and purposeful choice is different than mere self-organizing chaos. This is a dividing line between us. My belief in an emergent mind allows for such a distinction. However, I am at a loss to see how you avoid the conclusion that all human conduct is merely a result of either pre-fated determinism or chance. Perhaps you don’t.

This distinction between organization resulting from intelligence and free acts and mere chance is one that divides us. You don’t believe there is a difference in data that originates with an intelligent mind working for teleological ends and mere self-organizing chaos that has no purposeful conduct. I do. That is why I believe in LFW and you apparently don’t. While there is self-organizing chaos, I don’t see it as teleological — it doesn’t organize to achieve some purpose. In fact, I believe in evolution, but in theistic evolution. That is, evolution driven by purpose and intelligence.

What is the difference between simple naturalistic evolution which is atheistic and the kind of purposeless evolution you seem bound to espouse? Yes, I find some of the intelligent design arguments to be tantalizing and some even persuasive. I don’t believe that our universe happened by chance. I don’t believe that they are proofs because it takes openness to see evidence for intelligence in the first place. But if we find a spaceship on Mars that looks like a Mars probe, the best explanation is an intelligent mind that designed it for a purpose and not mere chance or self-organizing chaos. If we find something analogous in nature, the inference is the same in my view. Whether we find something like that is open to interpretation of the evidence so far.

So are you saying that there is no difference between purposefully made decisions, like going to the store to meet a friend, and mere chance meeting of a friend at the store?

Am I a Physicalist?

I don’t know, are you? (gnothi seauton, good enough for the Greeks, good enough for me)

Clark: “The point is that your position requires the denial of an real ontological chance.”

That’s just nonsense. There are chance meetings. There is chance in chaos that isn’t directed by intelligence. There just isn’t a free act that organizes data based on intelligence that looks like chance to an all-knowing being.

How do the particular circumstances relate to the universals except by some inductive method? How could one arrive at what one should or ought to do based upon examining how people in fact act? I’ve asked it before, and I still don’t see anything remotely approaching a response. Now maybe you just need more space to elucidate your views. But I cannot see how the universals could possibly be derived from looking at consequences unless you already have some idea of what to look for and how to judge what is good and bad. But that means that what is good and bad is prior to the investigation because you must have some idea already prior to looking.

But Blake, I know it’s nonsense. That’s the whole point. You’re commitment entails nonsense. I’ll spell this out in a post in a few minutes. I’ve just been very busy this week.

I should add that you’re conflating ontological randomness with coincidence. They are quite different. One is ontology the other epistemology. (I note that it appears you are conflating these quite often in your arguments - is there some basic stance in process theology that entails this approach? In other words, is there some premise you’re taking for granted that needs spelled out to progress the dialog?)

I recognize that’s what you’re trying to argue (that I can’t know with my ontology) but you’ve not come close to establishing it. That’s why I asked about some premise you are holding that perhaps isn’t self-evident.

Regarding chance, if you are talking ontological chance then I confess I find several of your comments even more mysterious.

There is chance in chaos that isn’t directed by intelligence. There just isn’t a free act that organizes data based on intelligence that looks like chance to an all-knowing being.

Now there are two ways of seeing this. Either God knows by direct intuition what relations hold between events and does not know via events and their effects. However when I offered that choice to you you didn’t take it. Instead you said that the effects of a free choice are different from the effects of a random choice. That is their effect in the universe can not be identical. But that means that randomness is inherently limited in what it can produce - i.e. any state achievable by LFW.

To make a loose analogy consider a die on a table. I can pick it up and place a number or it can be rolled. Now the only states that randomness can pick are those not accessable to LFW (as this is required for the distinction you raise). But then means that there isn’t any randomness in this situation at all.

Leaving free will out of the equation for the moment: suppose I flip a coin, and it comes up “heads”. Is that chance, or did God cause it to come up heads? If it is chance, did God know in advance it would be heads? Is there any meaningful way to speak about “chance” or “randomness” if one believes in a (reasonably) omnipotent and omniscient God?

To add, I think that in classical “absolutist” Christianity that God has the power to make something he can’t know. Indeed that is necessary if God can create free will. The Calvinists, who reject LFW also reject that he can do this. Although this to me points to a certain ambiguity in the meaning of omnipotence regarding as logical omnipotence.

Interestingly I have a post coming out hopefully later today that is half finished responding to an Evangelical philosopher critic of Mormonism on this very point.