The Mistake about Mary (in the Black and White Room)

[Philip Thrift]

The Mary-Go-Round

Galen Strawson

https://www.academia.edu/31517753/Strawson_The_Mary_Go_Round

"The mistake [in the debate about Mary in the Black and White Room] to think that physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical*."

that is, material, but Stawson I guess wants to be one of the cool kids

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

I am quite amazed he cites Al Ghazali! I think Al Gazhali is partially responsible for the current widespread obscurantism in Islam. He “won” his debate against Averroès, in 1248 (or 1148). 

Al Ghazli defended the idea that Reason must be submitted to the Text, where Averroès defended the idea that the Text must be submitted to Reason. That has transformed the Golden Age of Islam into fight in between different radical versions of some literal reading of the Quran and some haddiths. The christian did the same error around 529. That transforms theology into “the opium of people”. It makes religion into authoritative arguments, and violence.

Strawson argument is not valid, it identifies []p with []p & p, or []p & <>t with []p & <>t & p. Like Lucas and Penrose, in a different context. But I will not develop this right now. This asks to understand well how incompleteness imposes those nuances to the subject. Mary needs the “p” which is not a formalisable notion. Neither in arithmetic, nor in any complete 3p account of the physical reality.

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Philip Thrift]

On Monday, August 26, 2019 at 11:21:28 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 26 Aug 2019, at 10:28, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

The Mary-Go-Round

Galen Strawson

https://www.academia.edu/31517753/Strawson_The_Mary_Go_Round

"The mistake [in the debate about Mary in the Black and White Room] to think that physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical*."

that is, material, but Stawson I guess wants to be one of the cool kids

I am quite amazed he cites Al Ghazali! I think Al Gazhali is partially responsible for the current widespread obscurantism in Islam. He “won” his debate against Averroès, in 1248 (or 1148). 

Al Ghazli defended the idea that Reason must be submitted to the Text, where Averroès defended the idea that the Text must be submitted to Reason. That has transformed the Golden Age of Islam into fight in between different radical versions of some literal reading of the Quran and some haddiths. The christian did the same error around 529. That transforms theology into “the opium of people”. It makes religion into authoritative arguments, and violence.

Strawson argument is not valid, it identifies []p with []p & p, or []p & <>t with []p & <>t & p. Like Lucas and Penrose, in a different context. But I will not develop this right now. This asks to understand well how incompleteness imposes those nuances to the subject. Mary needs the “p” which is not a formalisable notion. Neither in arithmetic, nor in any complete 3p account of the physical reality.

Bruno

I don't know much about al-Ghazālī or much of anything about Islamic philosophers (I did read something of Mulla Sadra once, who is noted as an existentialist in the Islamic context), but  al-Ghazālī apparently was a Sufi, which supposedly is a liberal (in the modern sense) type of Islam, relatively speaking.

But to the core of the paper ...

Below,  wherever Strawson writes "physical" I would write "material". He is attempting to be faithful to "current" physicists definition of "matter", but current physicists - philosophically confused - are wrong on that matter in the first place. He refers to "materialism/physicalism" (he says consistently one word is a substitute for the other), so why not "material/physical". Aside from that inconsequential word substitution argument - which is a bit too pedantic, here is the significant core argument:

Philosophers constantly question things that aren’t seriously in question. 

The claim that something is controversial has zero dialectical force in philosophy, although it’s often made by referees rejecting papers submitted to learned journals. This is because there is as Louise Antony says ‘no banality so banal that no philosopher will deny it’.

[1] everything that concretely exists is wholly physical.

The Mary-carousel rotates round a mistake shared on both sides. The mistake consists in the endorsement of a highly substantive thesis about physics, the thesis that

[2] physics can (in principle) give a full or exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical.

[1] and [2] entail the view I call physics-alism: ‘the view—the faith—that

[3] the nature or essence of all concrete reality can in principle be fully captured in the terms of physics.

One can re-express [3] in a way that matches the wording of [2]:

[3] physics can in principle give a full or exhaustive characterization of the nature of everything that concretely exists.

The mistake, on both sides of the Mary-go-round, is to turn materialism/physicalism into physics-alism by adding [2] to [1] to produce [3]. 

Endorsement of [2] leads to the false identification of [1] physicalism with [3] physics-alism.

On one side of the roundabout we confront the adamantine truth, already recorded, that on leaving the black and white room

[4] Mary learns something new about the nature of concrete reality

in having a red-experience (an indubitably real concrete phenomenon) that has the experiential-qualitative character (an indubitably real concrete phenomenon) it does have. (If you doubt this, ask her.) This couples with the widely agreed fact that

[5] physics cannot characterize the nature of red-experience (colour experience in general) to produce the mistaken conclusion that [6] Mary raises a difficult and seemingly insoluble problem for physicalism by showing that there is an undeniably real part of concrete reality that physics can’t characterize.

On the other  side of the roundabout, [2] couples with the endorsement of the truth of [1],physicalism, to produce the mistaken conclusion that (in some sense or another) [4] is false—that Mary does not learn something new about concrete reality when she leaves theblack and white room.

Two mistakes. The solution is simple. Give up [2]. Nothing in [1], physicalism, requires any attachment to [2], a thesis about the descriptive reach of physics. It’s vital for physicalists to give up [2] because it is certainly false if physicalism is true.  It’s equally vital for those who reject physicalism to give up [2], because their rejection of physicalism can have no real force if it relies on [2]. If it relies on [2] it begs the question: it defines physicalism/materialism in such a way that it can’t be true. What if we replace ‘physics’ by ‘the physical sciences’ in [2], to get 

[2] the physical sciences can (in principle) give a full or exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical? 

...

We have, as remarked, ten propositions (they overlap in various ways, and [7] is a version of [2]):

[1] materialism or physicalism: everything that concretely exists is wholly physical

[2] physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical

[3] physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of everything that concretely exists

[4] Mary learns something new about concrete reality when she leaves the black and white room

[5] physics cannot characterize the nature of colour experience

[6] Mary raises a difficult and perhaps insoluble problem for physicalism

[7] ‘x is physical’ entails ‘x’s nature is in principle fully characterizable in the terms of physics’

[8] colour experience is real, a concretely existing phenomenon

[9] colour experience is wholly physical

[10] physicalism doesn’t entail physics-alism.

I accept [1], [4], [5], and [8]–[10]. I know that accepting [1]—being a physicalist—doesn’t require me to be in any way irrealist about conscious experience because I know that being

a physicalist doesn’t require to me accept [3] that physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of concrete reality. I accept [8] unconditionally, because its

truth is certain, as Descartes observed in his Second Meditation. [1] and [8] entail [9], I take [5] to be beyond serious question, and [1] and [5] entail [10]. One way to put the problem, plainly, is as a disagreement about the meaning of the word ‘physical’. 

I’ve always taken ‘physical’ to be a natural-kind term. It’s a term that denotes a fundamental kind of stuff whose nature we may not fully know, and plainly do not fully know (ask the physicists).

This puts me in conflict with Jackson when he says

that Mary in the black and white room can acquire ‘all the physical information there is to

obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes’ (1982: 130, my emphasis). The trouble is that Jackson equates ‘all the physical information’ with ‘all the information

expressible in the terms of physics, or more generally the physical sciences’, and this equation makes it impossible for someone who is a real realist about conscious experience to count as a physicalist. This is a startling result for a great host of physicalists like myself who are real realists about conscious experience, whether or not they follow Russell when he says (correctly if physicalism is true—see §9) that ‘we know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events’—nothing about the intrinsic non-structural nature of physical events—‘except when these are mental events that we directly experience’ (1956: 153, my emphasis). In other terms: it directly begs the question. 

The flagship materialist or physicalist thesis, in sum, is precisely that consciousness— real consciousness—is wholly physical.

----------

The flagship materialist (or physicalist) thesis, in sum, is precisely that consciousness—real consciousness—is wholly material. 

I realize there is a trend towards immaterialism (by physicists today as well). 

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

On 26 Aug 2019, at 23:08, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Monday, August 26, 2019 at 11:21:28 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 26 Aug 2019, at 10:28, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

The Mary-Go-Round

Galen Strawson

https://www.academia.edu/31517753/Strawson_The_Mary_Go_Round

"The mistake [in the debate about Mary in the Black and White Room] to think that physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical*."

that is, material, but Stawson I guess wants to be one of the cool kids

I am quite amazed he cites Al Ghazali! I think Al Gazhali is partially responsible for the current widespread obscurantism in Islam. He “won” his debate against Averroès, in 1248 (or 1148). 

Al Ghazli defended the idea that Reason must be submitted to the Text, where Averroès defended the idea that the Text must be submitted to Reason. That has transformed the Golden Age of Islam into fight in between different radical versions of some literal reading of the Quran and some haddiths. The christian did the same error around 529. That transforms theology into “the opium of people”. It makes religion into authoritative arguments, and violence.

Strawson argument is not valid, it identifies []p with []p & p, or []p & <>t with []p & <>t & p. Like Lucas and Penrose, in a different context. But I will not develop this right now. This asks to understand well how incompleteness imposes those nuances to the subject. Mary needs the “p” which is not a formalisable notion. Neither in arithmetic, nor in any complete 3p account of the physical reality.

Bruno

I don't know much about al-Ghazālī or much of anything about Islamic philosophers (I did read something of Mulla Sadra once, who is noted as an existentialist in the Islamic context), but  al-Ghazālī apparently was a Sufi, which supposedly is a liberal (in the modern sense) type of Islam, relatively speaking.

I don’t think he was a Sufi, but he has been influenced by them at some period of time. He is mainly the one defending and criticising also Aristotle’s philosophy. The Stanford entry is not too bad, but you need to take account our own cultural prejudice in favour of Aristotle and “matter”. 

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/al-ghazali/

(To be sure, like with Aristotle, it is unclear if they or their disciples are responsible for the simplifications and the misunderstandings. I use dates and philosophers as symbolic markers in the development of metaphysics. 

But to the core of the paper ...

Below,  wherever Strawson writes "physical" I would write "material". He is attempting to be faithful to "current" physicists definition of "matter", but current physicists - philosophically confused - are wrong on that matter in the first place. He refers to "materialism/physicalism" (he says consistently one word is a substitute for the other), so why not "material/physical". Aside from that inconsequential word substitution argument - which is a bit too pedantic, here is the significant core argument:

I agree. I would say that materialism is a form of naive physicalism. Both are incompatible with Mechanism. Tegmark did have defended some form of mathematicalist physicalism at some time. It is the idea that the physical universe is a mathematical structure, with an implicit idea that we have still to assume it, where with Mechanism, even if the universe is a mathematical structure, it has to be derived from the universal machine phenomenology.

Philosophers constantly question things that aren’t seriously in question. 

The claim that something is controversial has zero dialectical force in philosophy, although it’s often made by referees rejecting papers submitted to learned journals. This is because there is as Louise Antony says ‘no banality so banal that no philosopher will deny it’.

[1] everything that concretely exists is wholly physical.

The Mary-carousel rotates round a mistake shared on both sides. The mistake consists in the endorsement of a highly substantive thesis about physics, the thesis that

[2] physics can (in principle) give a full or exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical.

[1] and [2] entail the view I call physics-alism: ‘the view—the faith—that

[3] the nature or essence of all concrete reality can in principle be fully captured in the terms of physics.

One can re-express [3] in a way that matches the wording of [2]:

[3] physics can in principle give a full or exhaustive characterization of the nature of everything that concretely exists.

The mistake, on both sides of the Mary-go-round, is to turn materialism/physicalism into physics-alism by adding [2] to [1] to produce [3]. 

Endorsement of [2] leads to the false identification of [1] physicalism with [3] physics-alism.

On one side of the roundabout we confront the adamantine truth, already recorded, that on leaving the black and white room

[4] Mary learns something new about the nature of concrete reality

in having a red-experience (an indubitably real concrete phenomenon) that has the experiential-qualitative character (an indubitably real concrete phenomenon) it does have. (If you doubt this, ask her.) This couples with the widely agreed fact that

[5] physics cannot characterize the nature of red-experience (colour experience in general) to produce the mistaken conclusion that [6] Mary raises a difficult and seemingly insoluble problem for physicalism by showing that there is an undeniably real part of concrete reality that physics can’t characterize.

On the other  side of the roundabout, [2] couples with the endorsement of the truth of [1],physicalism, to produce the mistaken conclusion that (in some sense or another) [4] is false—that Mary does not learn something new about concrete reality when she leaves theblack and white room.

Two mistakes. The solution is simple. Give up [2]. Nothing in [1], physicalism, requires any attachment to [2], a thesis about the descriptive reach of physics. It’s vital for physicalists to give up [2] because it is certainly false if physicalism is true.  It’s equally vital for those who reject physicalism to give up [2], because their rejection of physicalism can have no real force if it relies on [2]. If it relies on [2] it begs the question: it defines physicalism/materialism in such a way that it can’t be true. What if we replace ‘physics’ by ‘the physical sciences’ in [2], to get 

[2] the physical sciences can (in principle) give a full or exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical? 

...

We have, as remarked, ten propositions (they overlap in various ways, and [7] is a version of [2]):

This is a bit hard to understand for me, but I will try below to clarify the position of the universal machine (after she understand the UDA argument, to be sure).

[1] materialism or physicalism: everything that concretely exists is wholly physical

Here I have a very general problem, which is that a “physical thing” is always an abstraction made from the most concrete thing I can know (may own consciousness, and then the natural numbers). A “material” concrete things needed billions of neurons chatting together to look concrete. The experience of a chair is quite concrete, but typically not material, as it is an experience (and with Mechanism this is related to both a computation and to some relation with Truth, both immaterial things). 

In [1], I am not sure an implicit ontological commitment is not already implicit. A table in a dream seems “concrete” and “hard and solid”, but we know that it is an illusion brought by the brain (accepting some form mechanism of course). Invoking concreteness seems a bit close to the knowing table argument. It is not relevant for “Mary” a priori.

[2] physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of the physical

Physics is the science of sharable first person plural relative prediction. It does not address ontology, a priori.  With QM, “simple" boolean interpretation of matter is no more possible, and physics begun to touch philosophy/theology, at least for those interested in the relation between physics and “reality” (the thing the fundamentalist researcher search, but never claim to have found).

[3] physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of everything that concretely exists

Of course, the machine cannot agree here. Numbers concretely exists (and are the only things which concretely exists), and are used to explain what will become a sophisticated explanation of the origin of measurements and stable results (if it works).

[4] Mary learns something new about concrete reality when she leaves the black and white room

OK.

[5] physics cannot characterize the nature of colour experience

OK.

[6] Mary raises a difficult and perhaps insoluble problem for physicalism

I don’t think so (but with mechanism, physicalism is in trouble for a deeper reason, around the UDA). 

[7] ‘x is physical’ entails ‘x’s nature is in principle fully characterizable in the terms of physics’

OK, but physics itself can become (and do become with digital mechanism) fully characterizable in the arithmetical reality. Note that the full arithmetical reality is not fully or completely characterisable in *any* theory. 

[8] colour experience is real, a concretely existing phenomenon

Colour experience is real. OK. 

Now, if the experience is lived as a concrete thing, that is an illusion (with Mechanism). Seeing red requires many chatty neurons, + some transcendent truth.

[9] colour experience is wholly physical

I would say that it is wholly psychological, but with mechanism, the entirety of physics is wholly psychological. The theory of matters is given by the theory showing what almost *all* universal machine can predict about observation. The physical becomes sharable illusions, a bit like in a video games, except that the core of the video game is not programmable a priori (it is the infinite sum of relative histories).

[10] physicalism doesn’t entail physics-alism.

I don’t understand what you mean here (and above). You might elaborate a bit, perhaps.

I accept [1], [4], [5], and [8]–[10].

I have a problem with the meaning of “concrete” in [1] and [8]. 

I (or the machine) makes sense of [4] and [5].

Your definition of “concrete experience” seems to fit with the machine’s notion of “dreamable experience”, which with digital mechanism is related (but not identified) with an infinity of computations, and in the explicit company, or not, of truth. Incompleteness assures the consistency and necessity of all those nuances. 

I know that accepting [1]—being a physicalist—doesn’t require me to be in any way irrealist about conscious experience because I know that being

a physicalist doesn’t require to me accept [3] that physics can give an exhaustive characterization of the nature of concrete reality.

Is it not in that case that those who want an exhaustive characterisation of the “concerte reality” will need some other theory than physics? Some materialist says so, and invoke Mechanism, but that is the point that the UDA is supposed to debunk.

I accept [8] unconditionally, because its

truth is certain, as Descartes observed in his Second Meditation.

OK, for the certain part of this, but not OK that the experience is concrete. The experience of concreteness is abstract, quite abstract!

[1] and [8] entail [9], I take [5] to be beyond serious question, and [1] and [5] entail [10]. One way to put the problem, plainly, is as a disagreement about the meaning of the word ‘physical’. 

I’ve always taken ‘physical’ to be a natural-kind term.

That is where we differ the most, I guess. And as you seem to endow some form of mechanism (codicalism), you will introduce insuperable difficulties with that naturalisation intent.

It’s a term that denotes a fundamental kind of stuff whose nature we may not fully know, and plainly do not fully know (ask the physicists).

Or asks a mechanist. He knows that the apparent primary stuff is a result of a string indeterminacy on a transcendent reality (arithmetical truth). 

Here, it is important to understand that after Gödel, we understand that we don’t understand what is the arithmetical truth, even if it remains the easiest thing to get some conception of (but that too is an illusion easily explained).

This puts me in conflict with Jackson when he says

that Mary in the black and white room can acquire ‘all the physical information there is to

obtain about what goes on when we see ripe tomatoes’ (1982: 130, my emphasis). The trouble is that Jackson equates ‘all the physical information’ with ‘all the information expressible in the terms of physics, or more generally the physical sciences’, and this equation makes it impossible for someone who is a real realist about conscious experience to count as a physicalist. This is a startling result for a great host of physicalists like myself who are real realists about conscious experience, whether or not they follow Russell when he says (correctly if physicalism is true—see §9) that ‘we know nothing about the intrinsic quality of physical events’—nothing about the intrinsic non-structural nature of physical events—‘except when these are mental events that we directly experience’ (1956: 153, my emphasis). In other terms: it directly begs the question. 

With Mechanism, it is close to the place we abandon the idea of primary stuff. 

The flagship materialist or physicalist thesis, in sum, is precisely that consciousness— real consciousness—is wholly physical.

----------

The flagship materialist (or physicalist) thesis, in sum, is precisely that consciousness—real consciousness—is wholly material. 

But that contradicts the experience I have, and certainly the experience all digital machines have in arithmetic. If consciousness is physical, then it cannot be brought by digital computation, and your codicalism will have to negate the idea that the brain is a functioning, mechanical, entity. You will need to say “no” to the doctor, or “no” to the Church-Turing thesis (which I think you already did).

I realize there is a trend towards immaterialism (by physicists today as well). 

Immaterialism has got bad press, because materialist have seen it as adding some magical stuff above the usual physical stuff, like in the image of a soul leaving the body.

With mechanism, immaterialism retrieve *all* sorts of stuff, and keep non material entity with which we are familiar, like the idea that 2+2=4, or that for all n bigger than 2, there is no x, y, z such that x^n + y^n = z^n (very simple conceptually, despite very difficult to prove).

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Philip Thrift]

A gist of the Galen Strawson, Philip Goff, Hedda Morch "pansychism" is that

- reality has an extrinsic and intrinsic nature 

- the extrinsic nature is the physical (or "physics-ical", in Strawson terms)

- the intrinsic nature is the psychical (or "experiential")

Now both natures are combined in the thing we call matter (or matter+fields+energy+... or whatever is needed to make physicists happy), but it is the "real matter" (as opposed to the extrinsic-only perception of matter physicists have), as that is the common object of science.

@philipthrift

[Bruno Marchal]

But this presuppose something about reality, which it is typically what we have to assume to make sense of our experience.

- the extrinsic nature is the physical (or "physics-ical", in Strawson terms)

With  Mechanism, the simplest extrinsic reality that we have to assume (we can’t derive it from less) is one universal machinery (that is enough to get all universal machines, and all their interaction, emulation, up to the internal statistics.

- the intrinsic nature is the psychical (or "experiential”)

I distinguish the mind or “world of ideas”, and the “experiential”. Both are immaterial, but the mind and the worlds of ideas belongs to 3p, “extrinsic” reality. The experiential is not definable, unless we invoque “the reality” (which the machine can do it for its own theology, but can do for a simpler machine, or for machine which are arithmetically sound "by definition” (a non constructive notion, to be sure).

The mind is []p (for any Turing complete “[]”), the soul obeys to the logic of ([]p & p), which is not definable. In fact, the mind id definable, but the soul is not.

Now both natures are combined in the thing we call matter (or matter+fields+energy+... or whatever is needed to make physicists happy), but it is the "real matter" (as opposed to the extrinsic-only perception of matter physicists have), as that is the common object of science.

With Mechanism, if I am not wrong, it has been shown that matter has to be explained from a mixture of the mind and soul, of 3p notions, like numbers and addition, multiplication, and experience which can partially be related to the machine’s discourse, but only if we include its many silence (axiomatised by G* minus G).

I am not sure I understand what you mean by “real matter”, nor which role it can play for the minds and the souls once we bet on Mechanism. Any evidence that there exists something like “primitive real matter” would give a refutation of Mechanism. (Primitive means “has to be assume” or “cannot be explained by some other things”).

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Philip Thrift]

On Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 9:06:35 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

I am not sure I understand what you mean by “real matter”, nor which role it can play for the minds and the souls once we bet on Mechanism. Any evidence that there exists something like “primitive real matter” would give a refutation of Mechanism. (Primitive means “has to be assume” or “cannot be explained by some other things”).

Bruno

My 'real matter' is just Stawson's "real" 'physical stuff', in

Galen Strawson

Realistic Monism

http://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c2/s0/Realistic-Monism---Why-Physicalism-Entails-Panpsychism-Galen-Strawson.pdf

This paper recasts and expands parts of ‘Agnostic materialism’ (Strawson, 1994, pp. 43–105, especially pp. 59–62, 72, 75–7) and ‘Real materialism’ (Strawson, 2003a) and inherits their debt to Nagel (1974). I have replaced the word ‘materialism’ by ‘physicalism’ and speak of ‘physical stuff’ instead of ‘matter’ because ‘matter’ is now specially associated with mass although energy is just as much in question, as indeed is anything else that can be said to be physical, e.g. spacetime — or whatever underlies the appearance of spacetime.

Nothing more than that. It's a matter of considering matter in the way of the ancient materialists.(from Thales to Epicurus) rather than the way physicists think of it today.

'Matter' is also easier to refer to and use as a term than 'physical stuff' it seems to me. Who the hell walks around talking about 'physical stuff'? 'Matter' is just one word. 

@philipthrift

[spudb...@aol.com]

It seems a smarter path to go on, siding with materialism, as a floor, improving our scientific equipment, all the time, to measure the universe (telescopes, ligo, accelerators), and letting any other conjecture, such as neoplatonism, see if it can fit in, or catch up? We need never dismiss Cartesian Dualism (though he was wrong on lots of stuff), but until we get a wiggle from the great beyond on this, it's kind of a non-sequitur, still.   

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.

[Bruno Marchal]

At the level of generality needed to solve the mind-body problem, there is no problem equating physical stuff and matter/ This comprehend all physical things, including physical time, and physical space, or physical space-time. Later some nuances are brought by the fact that we get three “physical realms” from the arithmetical self-reference, and we can introduce the nuances when they become appropriate. 

With mechanism, there is a (testable) explanation of why we feel, and are locally correct about that, that there is some primary stuff, by its explanation of being the result of the first person indeterminacy on all computations below our substitution level. 

Bruno

@philipthrift

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[Philip Thrift]

On Friday, August 30, 2019 at 11:35:13 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

On 29 Aug 2019, at 20:46, Philip Thrift <cloud...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thursday, August 29, 2019 at 9:06:35 AM UTC-5, Bruno Marchal wrote:

I am not sure I understand what you mean by “real matter”, nor which role it can play for the minds and the souls once we bet on Mechanism. Any evidence that there exists something like “primitive real matter” would give a refutation of Mechanism. (Primitive means “has to be assume” or “cannot be explained by some other things”).

Bruno

My 'real matter' is just Stawson's "real" 'physical stuff', in

Galen Strawson

Realistic Monism

http://www.sjsu.edu/people/anand.vaidya/courses/c2/s0/Realistic-Monism---Why-Physicalism-Entails-Panpsychism-Galen-Strawson.pdf

This paper recasts and expands parts of ‘Agnostic materialism’ (Strawson, 1994, pp. 43–105, especially pp. 59–62, 72, 75–7) and ‘Real materialism’ (Strawson, 2003a) and inherits their debt to Nagel (1974). I have replaced the word ‘materialism’ by ‘physicalism’ and speak of ‘physical stuff’ instead of ‘matter’ because ‘matter’ is now specially associated with mass although energy is just as much in question, as indeed is anything else that can be said to be physical, e.g. spacetime — or whatever underlies the appearance of spacetime.

Nothing more than that. It's a matter of considering matter in the way of the ancient materialists.(from Thales to Epicurus) rather than the way physicists think of it today.

'Matter' is also easier to refer to and use as a term than 'physical stuff' it seems to me. Who the hell walks around talking about 'physical stuff'? 'Matter' is just one word. 

At the level of generality needed to solve the mind-body problem, there is no problem equating physical stuff and matter/ This comprehend all physical things, including physical time, and physical space, or physical space-time. Later some nuances are brought by the fact that we get three “physical realms” from the arithmetical self-reference, and we can introduce the nuances when they become appropriate. 

With mechanism, there is a (testable) explanation of why we feel, and are locally correct about that, that there is some primary stuff, by its explanation of being the result of the first person indeterminacy on all computations below our substitution level. 

Bruno

With mechanism, there is a (testable) explanation of why we feel, and are locally correct about that, that there is some primary stuff, by its explanation of being the result of the first person indeterminacy on all computations below our substitution level. 

I have to say that Bruno and Lawrence rival in producing (to me) the ungrokable.

(Whatever happened to Cosmin?)

@philipthrift