Non-technical anti physicalist concerns

[skywise]

is there any evidence that suggests that consciousness is not the actual cause of physical phenomena?

Well, it seems unlikely that the regularities of the physical world could be explained by 1) any one person's consciousness or 2) a "collective consciousness" that is as split up and disorganized as it seems to be among humans. But, it does seem to be a very common sense view that a conscious experience can cause something physical. For example, "He cried out because he was in pain". It seems like pains can cause the physical event of crying out. But some (both dualists and physicalists) have argued against this seemingly common sense view.

I believe (don't have faith though) that everything is conscious, that matter and consciousness intrinsically go together, and therefore one can go both ways on the cause and effect question, or no ways.

This idea seems different from your first suggestion which I responded to above. A few contemporary philosophers flirt with various forms of panpsychism, but most find it implausible. It's a hard (impossible?) view to either prove or refute. Historically, Spinoza is a famous and interesting philosopher who argued that the mental and the physical are both two sides of a single neutral substance that makes up the universe. I also made a thread on Russell's "neutral monism" which is relevantly similar.

 

[Cthulhu]

Well, it seems unlikely that the regularities of the physical world could be explained by 1) any one person's consciousness or 2) a "collective consciousness" that is as split up and disorganized as it seems to be among humans. But, it does seem to be a very common sense view that a conscious experience can cause something physical. For example, "He cried out because he was in pain". It seems like pains can cause the physical event of crying out. But some (both dualists and physicalists) have argued against this seemingly common sense view.

I reject #1, that really is solipsism (which nonetheless is valuable to consider). To #2, I say that this collective consciousness is not "split up and disorganized." I would probably not use the term "collective," either, to avoid any Jungian connotations, I would just call it "consciousness" as representing the fabric of the universe, along with matter and energy - this is not inconsistent, then, with my second suggestion because if all matter is conscious in some way, then it is silly to ask how physical phenomena cause conscious/subjective phenomena, because both are arising simultaneously. The first question was really just to point out that that view is just as valid although underrepresented.

As far as an individual human having a unique sense of self, an "I," that is cutoff from external reality, I suggest that that is an illusion (nothing novel about that seeing its predominance in eastern thought). I model consciousness visually as being present everywhere and in everything as, say, a tint of light, but as being very concentrated in individual humans (and their brains). This causes a "blotting out" of all surrounding consciousness so that all one senses is his/her consciousness, defined as the individual self. An analogy is trying to hear your own breath while someone's blaring a trumpet in your ear - one sound overpowers another, preventing consciousness of the softer sound.

This idea seems different from your first suggestion which I responded to above. A few contemporary philosophers flirt with various forms of panpsychism, but most find it implausible. It's a hard (impossible?) view to either prove or refute.

It's hard to prove or refute, but with the question you're asking you're not going to get very testable answers. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a very good album, btw :D

 

[ebola?]

>>
Still waiting on this one....

Going by this (and as I have understood you in other threads), it seems like your view is that nothing can be explained in purely physical terms. Given that this is the case, we don't disagree about qualia. We just disagree in that I take physical explanations of water, lightning, etc. seriously and you don't because you think that no purely physical explanations are adequate for any explanandum.>>

Sorry about the delay. I graded 30 papers, revised my masters again, and then went out of town on vacation.
I'm pretty sure we're dancing around some sort of agreement.

It's not just that I think that physical explanations are inadequate.
It's rather that I think that the physical/non-physical delineation... in both ontology and epistemology... is untenable. Scrutinize closely enough, and "matter" is built of qualia, qualia of matter.

Yes, thus far, everything that fits with what we call water points to H2O.
BUT, if we integrate context in our definitional efforts (which I think is necessary for clear reasons), things break down. Particularly, if we allow for alternate universes with different physical laws, there could be H2O that behaves nothing like ours, even on purely chemical terms. Accordingly, there could be the functional equivalent of water that points to a different molecule. Hell, maybe some day we'll find something like this in our universe (oddly Humian...heh).

>>Anyway, as I understand the proofs they don't really apply to the empirical issues I understand you to be discussing here.>>

Mmmm...if we try to construct a logical system that points out to some empirical "stuff", Godel's theorems suggest that our efforts cannot simultaneously describe the interrelations between these "things" adequately and consistently. But yeah, this doesn't say much about which of these "things" should exist.

>>Anyway, read the fucking thread before flaunting your ignorance and posting a bunch of unrelated bullshit.>>

I'll be a memberator here:
you just added what to our discussion?

ebola

 

[skywise]

>>It's not just that I think that physical explanations are inadequate.
It's rather that I think that the physical/non-physical delineation... in both ontology and epistemology... is untenable. Scrutinize closely enough, and "matter" is built of qualia, qualia of matter.

I'm sympathetic to this view, although I don't quite buy it 100%. Clearly there is a phenomenal aspect to every physical investigation. But I don't think it is obviously untenable to hold that the phenomenal aspect is "in us" and not in, say, a brick we see This seems just as plausible to me as the view that qualia and the physical are ontologically intertwined. If there are structural problems with the view that there are physical things and phenomenal things rather than just one physio-phenomenal thing, please share!

Yes, thus far, everything that fits with what we call water points to H2O.
BUT, if we integrate context in our definitional efforts (which I think is necessary for clear reasons), things break down. Particularly, if we allow for alternate universes with different physical laws, there could be H2O that behaves nothing like ours, even on purely chemical terms. Accordingly, there could be the functional equivalent of water that points to a different molecule. Hell, maybe some day we'll find something like this in our universe (oddly Humian...heh).

I think this issue is more of a semantical dispute between us. I think that a substance that exhibits all of the functional properties of water but isn't H2O is not accurately described as water. This is because I think 'water' is an indexical term (or rigid designator) that refers to the stuff in the actual world that plays these functional roles. Likewise, I think the term 'H2O' is an indexical term that picks out the exact same substance in the actual world. When discussing counterfactual situations I think that 'water' and 'H2O' both still refer to the same substance from the actual world, rather than any substance that fulfills the functional roles of water but isn't H2O.

Basically I think that natural kind terms are basically like tags for things in the actual world and always refer to them even when discussing other possible situations. I think proper names and variables like x and y work like this too. For instance, regarding a possible world just like ours except there was never a post office, I think the statement, "Benjamin Franklin (BF) is the first Postmaster General" should be evaluated as true or false depending on whether or not the same man from the real world, BF, would be the first Postmaster General if there were no post office. Contrast with a non-rigid designator 'the inventor of bifocals'. In the context of a world in which Thomas Jefferson invented bifocals and there was no post office, the statement 'The inventor of bifocals was the first Postmaster General' should be evaluated as true or false depending on whether or not Thomas Jefferson would be the first Postmaster General if there was no post office. Whereas 'Benjamin Franklin' refers to the same man in counterfactual contexts, 'the inventor of bifocals' refers to whoever invents bifocals in the possible situation under consideration.

Now, I think this is intuitively true of natural kind terms. Imagine that we discover beings on Mars that look and act exactly like cats. The newspaper headline might read: "Cats found on Mars". Now imagine we that we later discover these "cats" to be made of nano machines and not molecules. Do you find it more likely that the newspaper headline would read: 1) "New robotic breed of cat discovered on Mars" or 2) ""Cats" on Mars not really cats, but robots"?

I for one think 2 corresponds more naturally with how we use the language. Likewise, I think if we found stuff on Mars that functioned just like water but was found to be XYZ rather than H2O, we would more naturally say that XYZ is very similar to water rather than XYZ is a new kind of water. Likewise, I think weird isomorphs of H2O still count as kinds of water.

I mean, think of gold, white gold, and iron pyrite. Gold and iron pyrite both fit the yellowish description implied by the name 'gold' but we don't count iron pyrite as gold, but rather call it "Fool's Gold". White gold on the other hand is missing the defining feature of Gold, but we still count it as a type of gold because it has the same deep structure. Likewise, I think watery stuff that isn't H2O would be considered "Fool's water" and H2O that isn't watery would still be considered a kind of water.

Anyway, I don't see how all of this has any real deep implications for either of our metaphysical views. It's just a claim about how the language works when describing counterfactual situations.

I do have one question about your semantics, however. Even if the phenomenal and the physical are ontologically inseparable, why can't we talk about the phenomenal aspects separate from the physical ones? It seems like my concerns about qualia being non-physical could be "translated" into your system as saying that the qualitative character of the single physio-phenomenal thing is not reducible to the physical part. It seems like the negative criticism of physicalism/materialism (the view that everything is purely physical) is retained either way.

Mmmm...if we try to construct a logical system that points out to some empirical "stuff", Godel's theorems suggest that our efforts cannot simultaneously describe the interrelations between these "things" adequately and consistently. But yeah, this doesn't say much about which of these "things" should exist.

I thought the main lesson from Godel's theorems was that provability is a weaker notion than truth. So, I guess this corresponds to what you said about describing relations "adequately". But I don't follow with the consistency part. I didn't think that the incompleteness theorem's suggested that any system will somehow be inconsistent. Granted I'm not expert on the proofs, so I admit that I may be mistaken.

But, my main thing with that post directed at Fausty's invocation of Godel was that although Godel showed that (logical/deductive) provability was weaker than truth, it's been known for a long time that induction is a lot weaker than a deduction. So even without Godel there are legitimate concerns about causality and any generalization from known empirical facts.

you just added what to our discussion?

Point taken. I suppose that I just have very little patience for those who condescendingly criticize that which they obviously do not understand. I have even less patience when the criticism is full of logical fallacies.

 

[ebola?]

>>I'm sympathetic to this view, although I don't quite buy it 100%. Clearly there is a phenomenal aspect to every physical investigation. But I don't think it is obviously untenable to hold that the phenomenal aspect is "in us" and not in, say, a brick we see This seems just as plausible to me as the view that qualia and the physical are ontologically intertwined. If there are structural problems with the view that there are physical things and phenomenal things rather than just one physio-phenomenal thing, please share!>>

Yeah. I think we're converging here. As I see it, there is an ontologically primary interaction, out of which fall subject and object, both interacting reciprocally and mutually constituting one another-- each may described only in terms of the other.

>>When discussing counterfactual situations I think that 'water' and 'H2O' both still refer to the same substance from the actual world, rather than any substance that fulfills the functional roles of water but isn't H2O.>>

I think we're getting at the minutiae of our very minor disagreement.

What I've been trying to say, and I'm sorry that I'm repeating myself, is that if we actually look to the concrete practice of scientific investigation. H2O as H2O, that is a particular molecular structure, too describes a functional property. When the stuff that often plays the role of molecular H2O plays a different functional role, for example in the description of the mechanics of biological cells, it assumes a different set of properties.

In short, it might be fair to say that I don't believe in rigid designators or "primitive" semantic units that are to be found in the world, "as it is".

>>Basically I think that natural kind terms are basically like tags for things in the actual world and always refer to them even when discussing other possible situations. I think proper names and variables like x and y work like this too. For instance, regarding a possible world just like ours except there was never a post office, I think the statement, "Benjamin Franklin (BF) is the first Postmaster General" should be evaluated as true or false depending on whether or not the same man from the real world, BF, would be the first Postmaster General if there were no post office. Contrast with a non-rigid designator 'the inventor of bifocals'. In the context of a world in which Thomas Jefferson invented bifocals and there was no post office, the statement 'The inventor of bifocals was the first Postmaster General' should be evaluated as true or false depending on whether or not Thomas Jefferson would be the first Postmaster General if there was no post office. Whereas 'Benjamin Franklin' refers to the same man in counterfactual contexts, 'the inventor of bifocals' refers to whoever invents bifocals in the possible situation under consideration>>

This looks familiar, but I'm way rusty. I wanna say Frege.
Anywho, I think that even this example breaks down if we do not take the self as a primitive, indivisible unit. Take Phineas Gage (sp?). A railroad spike goes through his head, in particular the pre-frontal cortex. Is Phineas Gage still Phineas Gage? Let's say that I die. Is my corpse "me"?

>>
I for one think 2 corresponds more naturally with how we use the language. Likewise, I think if we found stuff on Mars that functioned just like water but was found to be XYZ rather than H2O, we would more naturally say that XYZ is very similar to water rather than XYZ is a new kind of water. Likewise, I think weird isomorphs of H2O still count as kinds of water.>>

I could just as easily argue that this is because our particular culture privileges basic material descriptions over other "lenses". I don't think that this is because matter delineates "natural kinds", but it is a useful fiction that allows us to deftly navigate life.

>>It seems like the negative criticism of physicalism/materialism (the view that everything is purely physical) is retained either way.>>

Yup. I have just as severe qualms with reductive materialism as I do with metaphysical dualism.

gotta run...more later.

 

[skywise]

I'm pretty much neutral regarding your metaphysics so I don't respond to them here. However, I want to point two things about the semantic issues we were discussing. 1) Rigid designation does not depend on a particular metaphysical view and 2) The anti-materialist concerns (and even the modal argument for dualism) don't depend on the semantical theory of rigid designation.

In short, it might be fair to say that I don't believe in rigid designators or "primitive" semantic units that are to be found in the world, "as it is".

I think the thesis of rigid designation could still be true on your view, words like 'water' would just refer to the physio-phenomenal stuff we encounter and tag. Whether or not this tagging is just a convenient and conventional way of getting around in the world doesn't make it any less plausible as a view about how certain terms are used.

This looks familiar, but I'm way rusty. I wanna say Frege.

Saul Kripke and Quine's protege Hilary Putnam. But it's worth noting that these ideas have been pretty widely accepted in academic philosophy since the 70s and you could have run into them any number of places.

Anywho, I think that even this example breaks down if we do not take the self as a primitive, indivisible unit. Take Phineas Gage (sp?). A railroad spike goes through his head, in particular the pre-frontal cortex. Is Phineas Gage still Phineas Gage? Let's say that I die. Is my corpse "me"?

Let's start with the simpler second question. In this case you're considering a counterfactual situation in which your corpse exists (in which you are dead). To even ask if it is 'me' you have to be using 'me' as a rigid designator. The truth or falsity of "Ebola is the corpse in this situation" depends on whether or not that corpse is the same man 'Ebola' from the actual world. It's a little tricky with the word 'me' because it's an agent relative indexical but I hope it's clear that your question "Is my corpse me?" depends on using you (from the actual world) as the point of reference for the counterfactual inquiry.

There's a little more going on with Phineas Gage. First, the described situation is actual, not counterfactual. Second, the described case is arguably an indeterminate case of personal identity. And third, there is a metaphorical sense of the question, "Is PG still PG"?

Let's start with the third complication. There is clearly a sense of asking, "Is PG still PG?" that simply means, "Is PG the same sort of man he once was"? The fact that spikes through the head can cause a single person to change isn't relevant to the thesis of rigid designation.

The second issue, I think, is more of a challenge to the view that personal identity is always determinate than it is to the view that proper names rigidly designate. Even if we don't know exactly what makes a person who he is, it can still be true that proper names can and do refer to people from the actual world in counterfactual contexts. If someone asks, "Would PG have become mean if he didn't get that railroad spike shoved through his head?" it seems clear to me that the truth or falsity of the question depends on whether or not a person from the actual world would have been mean if he hadn't been injured in a certain way.

Last, the fact that your example is actual, not counterfactual, suggests that there are cases in the actual world in which we may be unable to decide whether or not a name applies. This still leaves open that proper names rigidly designate when we do know who they refer to in the actual world. That is, it still leaves open that every proper name that determinately refers in the actual world refers to the same person when considering counterfactual worlds.

This has been a bit muddled, but basically I think your example is similar to making up a name – 'kdjfaie2Z' – pointing out that it doesn't refer to anyone, and using this to show that proper names which do refer do not rigidly designate. Sure, when the referent of a name is non-existent or indeterminate, it's just as unclear and indeterminate regarding who counts as that person in counterfactual contexts. But, when a name does refer, it refers to the same person in other imagined worlds.

 

[ebola?]

Dayum...I can hardly keep up.

>>
I thought the main lesson from Godel's theorems was that provability is a weaker notion than truth. So, I guess this corresponds to what you said about describing relations "adequately". But I don't follow with the consistency part. I didn't think that the incompleteness theorem's suggested that any system will somehow be inconsistent. Granted I'm not expert on the proofs, so I admit that I may be mistaken.>>

Off-topic:

As you likely know, the incompleteness theorem posits that:
1. any consistent logical system will need rely on theorems unprovable within that system and
2. any logical system that can express all possible theorems within that system through derivations from axioms (that is, any adequate system) will be inconsistent (that is, allow for the derivation of contradictory statements).

However, formal logic is not my forte, and I feel like there is something...imprecise about how I put number 2. I think that the take-home message is that the logical positivist goal of both rigorously and adequately describing the sum body of facts and their relations (that is, everything) is untenable. And this is not even including the collapse of synthetic and analytic truths (Quine).

>>But, my main thing with that post directed at Fausty's invocation of Godel was that although Godel showed that (logical/deductive) provability was weaker than truth, it's been known for a long time that induction is a lot weaker than a deduction. So even without Godel there are legitimate concerns about causality and any generalization from known empirical facts.>>

Well, yeah. Adding Hume to the mix further constrains what we can say and how certainly we can say it. I would say that Hume shows the problems that the inexorable march of time introduces.

>>I suppose that I just have very little patience for those who condescendingly criticize that which they obviously do not understand. I have even less patience when the criticism is full of logical fallacies.>>

OT:
Yeah. IME, usually fallacies will broadcast themselves. Castigating the messenger usually doesn't do much to establish mutual understanding.

>>I'm pretty much neutral regarding your metaphysics so I don't respond to them here. However, I want to point two things about the semantic issues we were discussing. 1) Rigid designation does not depend on a particular metaphysical view and 2) The anti-materialist concerns (and even the modal argument for dualism) don't depend on the semantical theory of rigid designation.>>

Mmmmm...re: 1: I would say that some metaphysical stances (namely Pragmatism) wouldn't allow for rigid designation. Here, the world is a blurry place, amorphous, indeterminate, and in constant flux, and picking some"thing" out of this world simply cuts out a relatively stable, more clearly delineated "slice" of the flux of being, anchored in a particular context and the goals that guide such "slicing". The question of whether the same thing is delineated in all possible worlds becomes moot when our activity subjects designation to constant (if oft subtle) flux in THIS world.

>>Whether or not this tagging is just a convenient and conventional way of getting around in the world doesn't make it any less plausible as a view about how certain terms are used.
>>

Aha! So have I misunderstood this whole debate because I wanted to explore how language links to...well...stuff that isn't language, while designation is really about how we treat our linguistic constructs as they relate to one another?

>>
Saul Kripke and Quine's protege Hilary Putnam. But it's worth noting that these ideas have been pretty widely accepted in academic philosophy since the 70s and you could have run into them any number of places.
>>

Heh...I just recalled running into Ben Franklin's very bifocals a couple years ago. And I really hope that the discussion remains controversial.

re: the rest:

Either I'm not sober enough, or I need to brush up on some things.

ebola.

 

[Fausty]

But, my main thing with that post directed at Fausty's invocation of Godel was that although Godel showed that (logical/deductive) provability was weaker than truth, it's been known for a long time that induction is a lot weaker than a deduction. So even without Godel there are legitimate concerns about causality and any generalization from known empirical facts.

Err, I don't even know how to respond to your "explanation" of the incompleteness theory. I wonder if you aren't talking about an entirely different proof than the one the rest of refer to as "Godel's theory." The one I've studied has nothing to do with "deduction" nor "induction."

As to "truth," ummm. . . where did that loaded word manage to sneak in?

Admittedly, I come at Godel's work from a mathematical perspective - he was a mathematician, after all. And I see the flowering of his work in large measure in the field of computer science, and in fundamental axioms of computational intractability. It also underlies Shannon's information theoretic framework, and everything flowing therefrom.

If, somehow, it has also inspired non-mathematical philosophers in their own leaps of rhetorical efflorescence. . . well, ok I guess. Lots of things can provide creative impetus for non-scientific cogitation.

Does Godel "say anything" about causality, as such? Yeah, he does - alot. Not directly, but it is all first-order implication of his fundamental proofs. In fact that's sort of the foundational element of Godelian computational approaches. It enabled Turing to model the "universal calculator" (which we now refer to as a "universal Turing engine") and helped him to avoid dead-ends in seeking definitive links in causality relationships within abstracted algorithmic computation. It's all "part of" Godel, though perhaps less sexy when one isn't marinated in the practical implications flowing therefrom.

Heck, you can even trace the line from Godel's basic work to Wolfram's ANKOS in clear and unbroken theoretical trajectory. That's what "we" see in Godel's work - what folks see on the other side of town, as it were, is hard for me to guess. After all, we're taking about using a formal mathematical framework to "explain" fuzzy, human-constructed, human-myopic concepts that have no exogenous/stable reference. That's quite an example of trying to make a sow's ear out of a silk purse.

Godel a Platonist? Well, I'll say only that Godel was a freaky genius. I think I've seen glimpses of the world he was trying to describe and explore, in his work. But, I know very few mathematicians with sufficient genius to make claims of fully understanding what he was up to - and I suspect more than a few of those are just flat-out wrong. So if you've now managed to boil down Godel to one word - Platonist - from outside of any understanding of his mathematical milieu itself, I can only say. . . wow. Perhaps a tad reductionist?

Peace,

Fausty

 

[skywise]

Err, I don't even know how to respond to your "explanation" of the incompleteness theory. I wonder if you aren't talking about an entirely different proof than the one the rest of refer to as "Godel's theory." The one I've studied has nothing to do with "deduction" nor "induction."

From wikipedia: There are two distinct senses of the word "undecidable" in contemporary use. The first of these is the sense used in relation to Gödel's theorems, that of a statement being neither provable nor refutable in a specified deductive system (my emphasis). (entry on the incompleteness theorems)

Godel was a logician (and mathematician, and philosopher) and his incompleteness theorem applies to logical systems which are inevitably deductive. If you don't see the relevance of deduction to Godel's theorem's, I think it suggests a confusion on your part, not mine.

Of course Godel's incompleteness theorems have little to do with induction. That was the whole point of my post. But questions of whether or not every event (or effect) has a cause are problems of induction. Likewise with questions about constitution. So my point was that in appealing to Godel's theorems as showing anything about these inductive problems, you were misapplying his theorems.

As to "truth," ummm. . . where did that loaded word manage to sneak in?

It's widely accepted that the incompleteness theorem's show that there are true propositions that are unprovable by any given system. That's why they are "incomplete". I don't see what your problem is here.

Also note Godel's own discussion of his first incompleteness theorem (from Logical Journey, 1996):

I represented real numbers by predicates in number theory… and found that I had to use the concept of truth (for number theory) to verify the axioms of analysis. By an enumeration of symbols, sentences and proofs within the given system, I quickly discovered that the concept of arithmetic truth cannot be defined in arithmetic. If it were possible to define truth in the system itself, we would have something like the liar paradox, showing the system to be inconsistent… Note that this argument can be formalized to show the existence of undecidable propositions without giving any individual instances. (If there were no undecidable propositions, all (and only) true propositions would be provable within the system. But then we would have a contradiction.)… In contrast to truth, provability in a given formal system is an explicit combinatorial property of certain sentences of the system, which is formally specifiable by suitable elementary means…

Admittedly, I come at Godel's work from a mathematical perspective - he was a mathematician, after all. And I see the flowering of his work in large measure in the field of computer science, and in fundamental axioms of computational intractability. It also underlies Shannon's information theoretic framework, and everything flowing therefrom.

If, somehow, it has also inspired non-mathematical philosophers in their own leaps of rhetorical efflorescence. . . well, ok I guess. Lots of things can provide creative impetus for non-scientific cogitation.

Well, Godel was just as much a logician as a mathematician and even wrote several papers of philosophy. He's not a man easily categorized. But, Mathematical and logical proofs do not show anything about causality, or about the constitution of physical objects. You seemed to suggest that Godel's theorem's do show something about these subjects - so I think if anyone is making "leaps of rhetorical efflorescence" it's the scientists, not the philosophy guy who also has studied formal logic.

Does Godel "say anything" about causality, as such? Yeah, he does - alot. Not directly, but it is all first-order implication of his fundamental proofs. In fact that's sort of the foundational element of Godelian computational approaches. It enabled Turing to model the "universal calculator" (which we now refer to as a "universal Turing engine") and helped him to avoid dead-ends in seeking definitive links in causality relationships within abstracted algorithmic computation. It's all "part of" Godel, though perhaps less sexy when one isn't marinated in the practical implications flowing therefrom.

So, there's nothing in the proofs that directly discusses causality. Yet, the proofs directly make conclusions about deductive systems. And you are claiming that 1) the proofs "say a lot" about causality and 2) have nothing to do with deduction. Let me ask you directly: have you studied the proofs first hand? It's hard to believe that you have when you are unclear about how deduction is related to them.

Anyway, I suppose if you see science as an attempt to create some grand deductive system of the universe then Godel's incompleteness theorems have shown that they will inevitably leave something out. But, long before Godel there were problems with this view of practical science anyway.

Godel a Platonist? Well, I'll say only that Godel was a freaky genius. I think I've seen glimpses of the world he was trying to describe and explore, in his work. But, I know very few mathematicians with sufficient genius to make claims of fully understanding what he was up to - and I suspect more than a few of those are just flat-out wrong. So if you've now managed to boil down Godel to one word - Platonist - from outside of any understanding of his mathematical milieu itself, I can only say. . . wow. Perhaps a tad reductionist?

It's pretty obvious that by saying "Godel was a kind of Platonist" I wasn't speaking reductively. "Godel was a kind of Platonist" is obviously not an identity statement like "Water is H2O", rather 'Platonist' in this sentence is an adjective that means, "someone who thinks Platonism is true". And, taken in context, the Platonism referred to is obviously Platonism about mathematical entities. You can be a Platonist without Platonism accounting for everything that you are.

Anyway, some quotes from Godel:

I am under the impression that after sufficient clarification of the concepts in question it will be possible to conduct these discussions with mathematical rigour and that the result will then be…that the Platonistic view is the only one tenable. (Gödel Gibbs Lecture Published 1995, p. 322).

and listed under "What I Believe" in his published notes dated around 1960:

Materialism is false.
Concepts have an objective existence

See also his lecture: "Is Mathematics a Syntax of Language?" for a defense of Platonism against the view described by the title.

Anyway, your complaint about my claim that "Godel was a kind of Platonist" seems entirely unjustified. Obviously I was not claiming that everything about Godel can be explained by Platonism. Rather I was making a claim as to his defended views about the objective, non-physical nature of mathematical entities (and concepts). This view is properly described as a kind of Platonism and Godel uses the term this way himself. Likewise, your complaints about my use of the word "truth" and "deductive" in describing Godel's theorems seems unjustified. All of this is now much more well supported than anything you have said about Godel in this thread.

 

[vegan]

(haven't read further in the thread so i don't know if it's been commented or not)

At the risk of spreading more goo, hey what if those string theorists are right, and there really are 10 dimensions,

http://www.tenthdimension.com/medialinks.php

just one more time :

there is no connection whatsoever between string theory's dimensions and this 10 dimensions everything that the web site talks about

i only watched the clip once 2-3 years ago, but if i remember, i was not at all convinced by the demonstration. it took very shaky shortcuts in my opinion

 

[Fausty]

Anyway, your complaint about my claim that "Godel was a kind of Platonist" seems entirely unjustified. Obviously I was not claiming that everything about Godel can be explained by Platonism. Rather I was making a claim as to his defended views about the objective, non-physical nature of mathematical entities (and concepts). This view is properly described as a kind of Platonism and Godel uses the term this way himself. Likewise, your complaints about my use of the word "truth" and "deductive" in describing Godel's theorems seems unjustified. All of this is now much more well supported than anything you have said about Godel in this thread.

Your citations from Wikipedia aside (which, incidentally, I'd caution you against as you attempt to move further into academia in our career. . . just some advice), I don't think you have any fundamental grasp of the role of Godel's work in the fields in which I see it expressed. As I said before (and I do seem to have to repeat things for you, over and over - rather tedious), if you receive poetic inspiration from his mathematical work in your own field, more power to you.

Given our discussion this far, I am confident that it is utterly hopeless to attempt a proper exposition here. You're terribly brittle in your way of seeing things, deeply trapped in a small corner of academic discourse and unfamiliar with too many essential concepts out in the rest of the world of thought for me to know even where to begin. You clearly rely on google word searches to bolster your inability to comfortably engage with diverse modes of thought.

I will say this: you don't have any idea, at all, what Godel was about. I don't claim to understand him - or his undecidability work - fully, but I think I've got my fingers under the edge of it, perhaps. In explicitly respecting the deep structural implications of his work, I think I do it justice - much more so than a surface-level glean, and quotes you've picked out of your google search.

In sum, I still find it disconcerting that you somehow feel as if you're the only person ever to read a book. It's. . . aberrant. Do you strike such poses in your "real" work within academia? Do your fellow seminar participants respond in the same way several of us here have - with incredulity, frustration, and eventual acceptance that you're holding a small hammer and only know how to hit things with it? I just have a hard time envisioning it, though perhaps this is an artifact of my own academic background in institutions where such behavior would get one laughed right off campus.

Peace,

Fausty

 

[skywise]

^^^ First of all only one quote was taken from Wikipedia. The rest were cited from Godel's published writings.

Second, changing the subject to "advice" and speculations about my academic work is a lame way of avoiding having to deal with the fact that I've now supported some of my views about Godel which you criticized with cited evidence straight from Godel himself. Talk about playing "hide the pebble"!

As far as your views about me personally, I basically feel the same way about you. With that said, I find our discussion interesting even if it's a bit grating at times.

So - to steer us back toward the world of non-ad hominem discourse:

I challenged your invocation of "Godel's theory" (by which I assumed you meant one or both of the incompleteness theorems) as showing or implying that:

1) It is by definition possible that "science" will fail and we live in a universe without cohesive rules or structure, at some level of analysis
2) Every effect may not have a cause

I also suggested that you were conflating the problem I was talking about, a problem about what things are with these problems about causality and structured laws of nature.

Your reply to this challenge was to assert that Godel's proofs say a lot about causality as a matter of first order implication. You also mention that these implications allowed Turring to come up with his famous Turring Engines (we study these in philosophy too!). But, these are just assertions. You say it is a matter of first-order implication but you never explain how the proofs imply these things you are saying about causality and the failure of science. I'm also very unclear how the relation between the incompleteness theorems and Turring Engines shows that Godel's theorems imply that maybe every effect doesn't have a cause.

With that said: Ebola gave a sketch of how Godel's theorems apply to causality (though not constitution) and if your view is the same as his, then I think I see where you were coming from.

Besides your brief re-assertion of your views on Godel and mention of Turring Engines, you spent a lot of your post criticizing my views on Godel. You suggested my understanding of the theorems was a "leap of rhetorical efflorescence" and to this end made several specific criticisms. You suggested that my invocation of the "loaded concept" truth to explain my understanding of the thoerems was misguided. You also wrote that Godel's theorem has nothing to do with deduction or induction.

In response I quoted Godel, discussing his first incompleteness theorem, and explaining how the concept of "truth" applied to it. I referred you to wikipedia regarding deduction. It's hard to really find Godel saying, "this theorem has to do with deduction!" because it's just obvious that it does. Deduction is as important to proofs as causality is to science.

There weren't many other criticisms of my understanding of Godel. Just rude comments like, "I wonder if you aren't talking about an entirely different proof than the one the rest of refer to as "Godel's theory."

Regarding Godel's platonism:

I only mentioned it because earlier you wrote that the position that there can exist real, yet non-physical objects was "by definition" mysticism.

Yet, Godel believed in real, yet non-physical objects and it seems false that this implies that Godel was a believer in mysticism.

Your only reply to this fact I mentioned about Godel was to suggest that Godel was just too much of a genius and that he is often misunderstood. The implication is that I (and perhaps others) have misunderstood Godel regarding his Platonism.

This is a crappy argument. I've read his works on Platonism, and now I've quoted two passages that are pretty difficult to misunderstand. Rather than face the choice that either 1) Godel believed in mysticism or 2) Belief in non-physical objects is not mysticism, you chose to put your head in the sand, ignore the evidence, and change the subject to a phony concern about my academic citation practices. Pretty immature if you ask me.

Last, you have consciously repeated yourself several times writing, "As I said before (and I do seem to have to repeat things for you, over and over - rather tedious), if you receive poetic inspiration from his mathematical work in your own field, more power to you."

It's not that I don't understand that this is your view. It's that I disagree with your view! Rather, I think that what I've written about Godel's incompleteness theorems is literally true of the theorems. I've also cited primary sources as evidence. In contrast, all you have done is ignored the evidence and repeated your belief that my understanding is just "poetic inspiration" over and over again without evidence or argument of your own.

Also - just in case there was a confusion here. I do not claim that Godel's Platonism is implicit in the incompleteness theorems. Rather, I cited his philosophical works (yes, he wrote in academic philosophy too) which very explicitly argue for Platonism.

 

[skywise]

ebola

Thanks for your discussion of Godel. If Fausty's point about science and causality was the same (or reasonably similar) to yours then I think I see the relevance of the incompleteness theorems to what he was discussing. Although, as you mentioned, it's still true that the theorems say nothing about "which things exist" (i.e. about the existence or non-existence of non-physical regulated entities).

Mmmmm...re: 1: I would say that some metaphysical stances (namely Pragmatism) wouldn't allow for rigid designation. Here, the world is a blurry place, amorphous, indeterminate, and in constant flux, and picking some"thing" out of this world simply cuts out a relatively stable, more clearly delineated "slice" of the flux of being, anchored in a particular context and the goals that guide such "slicing". The question of whether the same thing is delineated in all possible worlds becomes moot when our activity subjects designation to constant (if oft subtle) flux in THIS world....

...Aha! So have I misunderstood this whole debate because I wanted to explore how language links to...well...stuff that isn't language, while designation is really about how we treat our linguistic constructs as they relate to one another?

Well, there are two issues here that I haven't clearly separated. As is often done, I've paired rigid designation with a realist metaphysic. So, I talk about direct reference, picking out H2O in itself, etc. But I don't really have any deep connection to this view, it's just handy when criticizing materialism because materialists generally assume that when they talk of H2O they are talking about some purely physical substance.

The thesis of rigid designation, I think, can be separated from these views. I know for sure that it is compatible with conventionalist views about language and modality. I'm not sure if it's compatible with pragmatism because I'm unaware of the finer details of this movement, but I don't see at present why it wouldn't be. All the thesis of rigid designation suggests is that certain terms (least controversially proper names, indexicals, and variables; slightly more controversially natural kind terms) have the same reference in counterfactual contexts as they do in factual contexts. I think this allows you to be neutral about what is referred to in the actual world (maybe just an arbitrarily cut off part of an amorphous blob) but still allows you to account for the apparent truth that when we say:

1) Benjamin Franklin could have still invented bifocals even if he hadn't been the first Postmaster General

...we naturally mean 'BJ' to have the same reference as it does in a non-modal statement such as

2) BJ, in fact, invented bifocals and was the first Postmaster General.

 

[Fausty]

I appreciate your effort to reach past ad hominem digressions here, and I actually sort of feel like a piece of shit after posting my last response in this thread. If I were a better person, I'd apologize outright - but I'm just not that good of a person. . . yet. Suffice to say that some pressure in my personal life leaked into my response - I could feel it even as I was typing, and regretted it at once. Your ability to digest that and get back to real work is quite impressive.

Yet, Godel believed in real, yet non-physical objects and it seems false that this implies that Godel was a believer in mysticism.

No, I'd say that he is also accepting that something like the "information" you and I have discussed previously is necessary to make sense of the world. And, as you and I have both agreed previously, we don't think that accepting the existence of something like "information" means we're rejecting physical reality - though I personally can't really explain why this feels true, at this point.

In other words, to be a Platonist is not to be, by definition, a mystic. I think both you and I agree on this.

Your only reply to this fact I mentioned about Godel was to suggest that Godel was just too much of a genius and that he is often misunderstood. The implication is that I (and perhaps others) have misunderstood Godel regarding his Platonism.

No - I suggested that I don't claim to fully understand his work! And I suggested this is not an uncommon position to find in the world of systems mathematicians, at the least. This wasn't a criticism of you, except insofar as you seemed to feel you had digested what he had to say and boiled it down to a few concise bullet points. This, I feel is a disservice to the deep structural implications of his findings - and I cited my own very moderate ability to make sense of his writings as an example of how this is intrinsic in the nature of what he was up to. This certainly wasn't intended to suggest you don't understand him, but I do.

It's not that I don't understand that this is your view. It's that I disagree with your view! Rather, I think that what I've written about Godel's incompleteness theorems is literally true of the theorems. I've also cited primary sources as evidence. In contrast, all you have done is ignored the evidence and repeated your belief that my understanding is just "poetic inspiration" over and over again without evidence or argument of your own.

Indeed, I think you're entirely missing the forest for the trees in how you present the fundamental nature of his work. That's the nut of it. In my area, the forest is in a sense the basic point regarding the incompleteness of any understanding of a system that's spawned from within that system itself. The implications of this are wide-ranging, on many levels. And this was a spectacularly revolutionary finding in mathematics, at the time - so much so that it was many decades before it had been digested fully in the field, and even so (for example) Russell was still essentially ignoring his work long after it was published.

This is why I find drive-by quotations of sentences from his work to be. . . less than satisfying. They may be individually "accurate," but they will miss the genuinely important part of his legacy in the field.

Also - just in case there was a confusion here. I do not claim that Godel's Platonism is implicit in the incompleteness theorems. Rather, I cited his philosophical works (yes, he wrote in academic philosophy too) which very explicitly argue for Platonism.

And, to be fair, as I've said many times, I cannot speak how he presents within the field of philosophy. That's not my field - if he has a footprint there, that's well and good. I'm not referring to that footprint, here.

Peace,

Fausty

 

[skywise]

^^^ I'm willing to grant that the forest of Godel's work and it's implications is very large and that we are both acquainted with trees on different sides of it. I see no reason, however, to favor scientific implications of two of Godel's works of mathematical logic as more "fundamental" to his work as a whole than the implication (direct conclusion?) that provability is weaker than truth. You have not mentioned (and I am unaware of) any paper of Godel's that argues for the scientific implications you have been referring to. If there is no such paper, then I don't see how scientific implications argued for by people who are not Godel can be more fundamental to his work than views that Godel himself put into print and that I cited. Maybe the scientific implications you mention are more fundamental to your discipline and/or to a popular conception of Godel, but to the man's body of work itself? You haven't given much reason for me, or anyone who doesn't have a religious faith in your beliefs, to accept this.

In defense of the quotes: Given the nature of message board discussions, about the best I can do to reference someone's work is fairly short quotes. Believe it or not, I'm not just looking for out of context quotes to support my views about Godel. I've used the primary sources I cite in researching and writing a paper and have chosen quotes to copy/paste from online that I think accurately convey his views presented in these representative works.

And, to be fair, as I've said many times, I cannot speak how he presents within the field of philosophy. That's not my field - if he has a footprint there, that's well and good. I'm not referring to that footprint, here.

Although you did say that you don't know how Godel is presented in philosophy, I don't remember (and can't find) any place where you specifically mentioned that you were neutral regarding Godel's philosophical work until now. Rather, you equated philosophical discussion of Godel with "poetic inspiration", "leaps of rhetorical efflorescence", and an attempt "to make a sow's ear out of a silk purse". So, I have to say that despite what you claim here, you have, in fact, said a few contemptuous things about philosophical discourse and claims in relation to Godel.


About the non-physicality of information, numbers and the like: We both agree that accepting the existence of something like information or numbers does not means we're rejecting physical reality. The same is true of accepting the existence of non-physical qualia. If any of these non-physical entities are accepted, physical reality still has its place. It just doesn't exhaust the list of everything that exists.

To quote Godel again (regarding non-physical mathematical entities):

It seems to me that the assumption of such objects is quite as legitimate as the assumption of physical bodies and there is quite as much reason to believe in their existence. They are in the same sense necessary to obtain a satisfactory system of mathematics as physical bodies are necessary for a satisfactory theory of our sense perceptions.... ("Russell's mathematical logic")

A property dualist thinks the same thing is true about non-physical qualia. Namely, a property dualist thinks that it is necessary to assume the existence of non-physical properties in order to to adequately explain experience. Now, of course it's controversial that we need a non-phyiscla property to explain experience. But it's also controversial that we need to posit real non-physical concepts and mathematical entities to explain Mathematics. My main point is that while you should feel free to disagree with views about non-physical qualia -- you shouldn't misconstrue them as mysticism or superstitious belief in spirits anymore than you should misconstrue Godel's Platonism in that way.

 

[ebola?]

>>As is often done, I've paired rigid designation with a realist metaphysic. So, I talk about direct reference, picking out H2O in itself, etc. But I don't really have any deep connection to this view, it's just handy when criticizing materialism because materialists generally assume that when they talk of H2O they are talking about some purely physical substance.>>

Interesting! Yes, I've only ever seen rigid designation paired with realist metaphysics. It seems that this orientation lends itself to the "possible universes" speculation.

>>All the thesis of rigid designation suggests is that certain terms (least controversially proper names, indexicals, and variables; slightly more controversially natural kind terms) have the same reference in counterfactual contexts as they do in factual contexts. I think this allows you to be neutral about what is referred to in the actual world (maybe just an arbitrarily cut off part of an amorphous blob) but still allows you to account for the apparent truth that when we say:

1) Benjamin Franklin could have still invented bifocals even if he hadn't been the first Postmaster General

...we naturally mean 'BJ' to have the same reference as it does in a non-modal statement such as

2) BJ, in fact, invented bifocals and was the first Postmaster General.>>

Ah. Yes, I think that the question of whether a term rigidly designates indeed points to a distinction in our natural use of language. However, stripped of their correspondence to natural kinds, rigid designators do not as readily demonstrate...interesting ontological points.

ebola