A part of it is, to be sure — expecially the frontal cortex. However, the objectivity obstacle that I raised in my post to Matt does not constrict non-physical entities, since subjectivity is a direct result of the nature of electromagnetism. In other words, a philosophy may be objective if it is ineffable.
Not to speak for Other-wise, but I believe that I understand his question. Pursuing the dictionary analogy, both your dictionary and my dictionary must say exactly the same thing, with exactly the same arrangement of letters and spaces, each of which must have exactly the same meaning to both of us. It is possible that one dictionary could be in English and the other French (or even some proprietary language), but the two definitions of tree must evoke the identical essence. Otherwise, you and I will think of a tree as two different things.
Of course, all analogies are flawed, and the dictionary analogy goes only so far. But in the brain, surely it is the case that the geometry, topology, and geography of our cells are not identical. When I conceive a tree, my neurons will not fire in the identical order as yours. And in fact, mine are not arranged exactly as yours are. Since there is a different arrangement of matter in my head and in yours, how is it that we do indeed recognize fundamentally the same essence that identifies a tree? If, as you have said, physical identity is the ordering of elements in a set, then the fact that there is no one to one correspondence among the cells in our brains means that a physical identity (e.g., of a tree) may exist despite, rather than because of, some ordinal property.
matt, Lib has presented my basic argument far more eloquently and succinctly than I ever could (and, no doubt, with a greater appreciation of its nuances than I currently have).
There’s a chance that Sentient might just get his wish: Maybe I’m an “-ist” after all, specifically; an essentialist.
Lib, two questions, if I may. First, can you recommend any good books on essentialism (or whatever the “philosophy” I’ve been spouting here is called)? Second, could you elaborate on this statement:
I believe this mirrors some of what I’ve been trying to describe in my previous posts, but your phrasing is rather unusual, and I want to make sure I’m not missing anything.
There’s a little slack in languages for expressing the same thing in different ways, I believe!
And here we agree to an extent. Not necessary the identical essence, but close enough that we can communicate fairly reliably.
Lib, have you ever read Godel, Escher, Bach? I think you’d like it. It devotes a chapter or so on the difficulties of language translation, and how remarkable it is that languages can be translated at all. There has to be enough overlap between the concepts in the two languages for translation to be possible.
One interesting example is translations of the poem Jabberwocky into German and French. The point being of course that most of the words in Jabberwocky don’t have any firm meaning, but on the other hand they aren’t random sounds. They are evocative of something, but what? If you’re translating T’was brilig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe into French, substituting meaningless but evocative French words for meaningless but evocative English words, what are you actually doing?
The Universe has taught us both what trees are via our sensory inputs. The fact that different low-level configurations of matter can have similar high-level effects isn’t especially remarkable. Weight-balance scales, spring-balance scales, hydraulic scales and electronic-transducer scales can all “recognise” a kilogram.
You’ve lost me! When did I say physical identity is the ordering of elements in a set? If anything, each physical identity is a set in itself, a set containing the pertinent attributes of the physical entity. A description of the essence of that entity, if you like.
The set of SPOONS contains objects that are spoonlike. Which is tautological because I’m using language for description, and language is tautalogical. But my sensory inputs have taught me what “spoonlike” is - I have visual and spacial concepts of a spoon that come from my life experience.
In the same way that two computers can store the same image using different coding protocols - the “Memory is a physical thing” thread was my attempt to propose how “essence” might be reduced to computational entities.
Again, I’m not sure you have been presenting a philosophy here - rather, your refusal to take certain elementary steps is a kind of “dualism by default”. You seemed just about to agree that teporal arrangements were physical - it would be something of a shame if you gave up on this progression now.
I have your description of Set A (“physical”). Give me a description of Set B (“life”), and I’ll be able to answer that question.
Yes, a temporal arrangement… I said that in the part you quoted next. I’m not understanding why you are placing an emphasis on temporality or how temporality impacts my arguments. (wait a minute: Are you saying that spacetime is physical?)
I think it’s somewhat ironic that you accuse me of solipsism when I’m using your definition of “physical”.
It doesn’t have to be my sensors. As I said, it just needs to be my type of sensors. For anything (even, say, an alien or suitable A.I.) that had something analogous to my sensors and cognitive apparatus, such that it would conceptualize the computer as “Comprising fundamental particles in spacetime” (including equivalent waves and forces), the computer would be “physical”.
The dictionary definition should suffice, on the understanding that there are inevitably some things like viruses (or even fire) which lie on the borderline.
Because a temporal arrangement is a process, which you have previously said is not physical for some reason I have never understood.
Of course. That is surely the very bedrock of physics.
I’m not accusing you of it (yet!), I’m just warning that it beckons if we require a sensor somewhere for anything to be physical.
So if thee were no sensors, like (for the sake of argument) those billions of years after the Big Bang, those fundamental particles in spacetime *are not phsyical[/]i? I don;t understand this at all. I’m not asking for what is necessary for “something to call something else physical”, I’m asking about the nature of the stuff when there’s no “calling entities” around.
Other-wise:
The short answer to your first question on where to read more about essentialist philosophy is everything prior to Sartre and half of everything since Plantinga. 
Essentialism, basically, is the opposite of existentialism, or more precisely, they make opposite implications. Essentialism -> essence preceeds existence. Existentialism -> existence preceeds essence. As Hartshorne has pointed out, a thing may have essence and not exist (such as a unicorn, for example). Therefore, the correct implication is made by essentialism.
Regarding subjectivity and electromagnetism, the idea is this: owing to the nature of electromagnetic fields, no two physical entities can possibly occupy the same space at the same time. Therefore, no two physical entities have ever experienced the exact same perception of the exact same event at the exact same time in the exact same way. Even if you and I were to observe some event standing side by side, arm in arm, and pressing our heads together, our skulls prevent our eyeballs from merging together to see from the exact same angle of view. Hence, every observation is unique and therefore subjective.
As you noted nextwardly, they won’t be identical. In fact, it is safe to say that identical words won’t make identical impressions on the two of us. That is why, for example, the term “fundie” has a different effect on me than it does on someone else. Or why, “She smells like a foot locker” might turn off one person and excite another. Or “cool mature chick” carries a very different connotation from its synonymous phrase, “frigid old hen.”
Yes, I have the book. And I’ve seen the various translations of Jabberwocky. All interesting stuff, to be sure!
But if our knowledge of the universe comes via our sensory inputs, then our knowledge is definitively subjective. And no object will ever weigh the same in two different trials for any number of reasons. Oh sure, it’ll be close, just like meaning will be close. But if we’re dealing with approximations, let’s not use analogies like Sentient’s computers that store identical images. They do not reflect reality.
I misinterpreted your statement, then. I apologize.
Another tautology is empiricism. The universe (your senses) observe the universe.
I don’t think that mirrors reality. People don’t store identical images. We don’t even store images at all, really, but just pieces of images, in much the same way that we don’t observe everything in our field of vision, but only the narrow point of our focus.
I’ve used Merriam-Webster throughout this debate, so I’ll assume it’s o.k. to continue: life: 1 a : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body b : a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings.
Since Set A is :“Comprising fundamental particles in spacetime” (including equivalent waves and forces), and Set B is: a distinguishing quality, principle or force, by what rationale are you designating “B” as a sub-set of “A”?
Ibid: ** pro•cess** 1 a : PROGRESS, ADVANCE <in the process of time> b : something going on : PROCEEDING
2 a (1) : a natural phenomenon marked by gradual changes that lead toward a particular result.
Definition 1a of “process” doesn’t tell us anything (“something going on”), and since your definition of “physical” doesn’t include or imply “leading to a particular result” (which demands the ability to demarcate a process and it’s results), I don’t see any reason to consider a “process” physical.
Physical: “Comprising fundamental particles in spacetime” (including equivalent waves and forces). Spacetime is physical. Physical is in Physical? I don’t get it. If you meant “Comprising fundamental particles and spacetime”, I’d like to know what “fundamental particles” and “spacetime” have in common to justify them both falling under the designation “Physical”.
We can probably concentrate any further effort in our debate on this point; it seems pivotal.
You insist that when there are no “calling entities” around, there’s this “stuff”. And you’re absolutely adamant that this stuff is “physical”. So what exactly is “physical”? It’s what you, a “calling entity” call the stuff. No entity, no “physical”.
Huh… good thing my library card is made of Kevlar.
O.K., that makes sense; it bears some similarity to a “closed consciousness” argument I made in the “memory” thread, however, I’ve never closely considered the idea of subjectivity as a direct result of the nature of electromagnetic fields (I seem to recall something about the Pauli exclusion principle holding that no two particles can be in the same state at the same time, but I thought there were exceptions. I’ll have to look it up).
I’m not sure either of us really regard our philosophies as arbitary; why do we bother to defend our own and test the strength of each others? We are both making value judgements somewhere.
I guess I’m a Physicalist partly because I find it aesthetic. It’s a tidy philosophy. It doesn’t multiply entities needlessly, to borrow from Ockham.
From a Dualist point of view, Physicalism is lacking - a Dualist sees a need for extra entities, and we can debate the truth of that over and over. However, Dualism is unaesthetic to me. For a start it doesn’t really fill the gaps in Physicalism that it claims to - saying a mind is composed of spirit is no more helpful to me than saying it works by magic. I find it nebulous. Although other-wise probably finds the Physicalist concept of conciousness arising from a sufficiently complex configuration of matter equally nebulous, and in that he has my sympathy.
Essentialism is a philosophy I cannot yet judge. I haven’t really digested all its implications.
Agree completely. Subjective is all we can know about the Universe.
Aaaaaarrrrrghhhh!
What does that mean? What’s the point of it? And why do we need an objective philosophy, when subjective is all we can know? What’s wrong with subjective-but-useful philosophies?
That’s food for thought. Thanks!
I’m glad you’ve read GEB. If I only had one book to take to a desert island, that’d be the one.
Ugh, what a horrible definition: it’s 19th Century vitalism through and through!
OK, it seems like I must supply my own in order not to be done in by a dictionary which knows no biology. I will therefore turn to the wikipage and suggest “An entity characterised by growth, metabolism, reproduction, motion and stimulus response”. All of these physical processes are understood biologically in terms of cellular cycles, reduction-division, DNA replication and the like, themselves reductible to chemical reactions, atoms and fundamental particles. There is no longer any need whatsoever to consider “life” as anything dualistic. Indeed, you would be hard pressed to find a vitalist these days in modern life science, ie. one who proposes a fundamental dualism between “life” and the temporal arrangement of cells in an organism.
If I may just say, dictionaries are not bibles, and continual flight thereto is not the way to debate constructively. However, in this case, definition 1a really does say something: ADVANCE in time. The arrangement of fundamental particles in spacetime is not static. This definition definitely does admit my definition of “physical”. Yet again I ask: If the tree in the forest and on the floor and at ever orientation therebetween is physical, which you admit, and this temporal arrangement has measurable characteristics like rate and decibel level, how on Earth can it be unphysical?
A wave being a variation of spacetime, you understand.
Please, look away from the roundabout. Spacetime is what the universe is - it is sometimes useful to consider mass and energy “in” spacetime and sometimes, in more fundamental physics, more useful to consider them as ‘ripples’ of spacetime. Change my definition of “physical” simply to “spacetime” if you wish, but we are getting way off the point in discussing physics at this level.
Then I give you particle physics.
Do we agree that there were no “calling entities” around for those billions of years?
What word would you use to describe the universe of fundamental particles, stars, gas clouds, radiation and comets for those billions of years after the Big Bang?
But what do you call the stuff when there wasn’t any such entity? What do you call the world before you were born, or the tree falling in the forest with nobody around? This is crucial to your exiting the roundabout, one way or the other.
Yes, that which we biological computers commit to memory is the strongly filtered ‘bare bones’ compared to what a silicon computer stores. However, since we each have similar filtering modules, I would suggest that we each store an image which is statistically similar enough that, say, two people can give consistent testimony in court. I guess it comes down to whether or not one considers a picture with a single different pixel (or voxel, or geon, or whatever biological equivalent) is a different image or the same image in that it gives a correlation within a given threshold.
And I was wondering, could you dedicate a thread to this sometime? I could not see how it was not simply an inaccessible memory argument.
Then why on earth do you direct me to them…
… instead of offering your own definitions when asked?
I don’t think so, because I finally have a much clearer idea of what you mean when you refer to something as “physical”. If I’m understanding you, your definition of physical boils down to:
Physical: Where shit happens and the shit that happens.
That probably sounded snarky, but it was not intended to be; it was only intended to be succinct. Seriously, I think it’s a reasonable non-technical summation of your definition, and I’d like to know if you feel it’s unfair or think there’s a problem with it; if not, I’ll use it as my own personal working definition. (And in the summation above, “where”, of course, refers to locations both temporal and spatial.)
By that definition, then yes, “An entity characterized by growth, metabolism, reproduction, motion and stimulus response" is indeed a sub-set of “A”, and life is physical.
I’d like your opinion on the following statement, taken directly from your link:
I’d like to wait a bit before answering the rest of your post. It covers some territory that I think is important enough to tackle separately, and I’d like your feedback on all the above before I do so.
OK, I’ll rephrase: continually asking for definitions is not the way to debate constructively. Again, linguistically bounding a set or category will inevitably leave some elements on the borderline (Creationist: “What is a fossil then, precisely?”) - we ought not as intelligent friends require each other to append each word we use with a bracketed sentence. In any case, I hope I have set forth to your satisfaction the elementary biological fact that life is a mechanism comprising the temporal arrangement of cells, each of which can be understood and explained (although no science can yet be said to be complete!) by physical processes.
Like I say: a temporal, not just a spatial, arrangement of “shit”.
Excellent. This is an important step, and thanks for following through with it. Now, can we agree that computation (and, for the time being, I only mean “silicon computer shit”) is also physical? If we do, we can from that point discuss whether human minds are life+computation, noting that I myself am not fully convinced on this point (whereas I am as certain as one can be that life and computation are physical).
I agree: ‘fundamental’ is itself a rather arbitrary bin to tip this or that entity into. When can we say that something is fully explained and understood in terms of fundamental particles? Why, when there is no more science to do, that’s when!
We live in an exciting, exhilirating time (temporal location!), when there are still all kinds of gaps between fundamental particles (whatever they are!) and atoms, let alone between molecules and life and human consciousness. Scientists the world over are continually throwing ropes across those gaps and devising ingenious experiments to test their strength. Some ropes snap, others hold, allowing stronger supports to be moved into place. We are building the bridge between mind and matter, and when it is “complete” is rather subjective judgement. Is it when a single reckless fool can just about traverse the entire span, sometimes via extremely rickety ropes? Or can we only say “complete” when it is perfect, as not even the theories of evolution or gravitation are yet?
Of course we cannot definitively demonstrate that everything is physical yet, or empirically reduce everything to fundamental particles: That is the challenge of this millennium and likely the next few. But surveying all the options, I see that physicalism is by far the most parsimonious, Ockhamly speaking, and the position which is making progress year on year in everything from particle physics to cognitive science.
I am waving to you, stuck on your roundabout, from an exit road with an exciting view. I cannot compel you to join me. I can only keep waving.
Agreed. I liken it to the atoms, which are not real, but merely comprise an amoral mis-en-scene for a moral play. Despite that the universe is not real, it is compelling all the same, and sufficiently complex that, just as with a great movie, it is easy to lose yourself, suspend disbelief, and behave as though it were real.
But Ockham was a dualist (and conceptualist). He himself worried that his anti-formalism might be carried to an extreme by careless thinkers to the extent that faith always would point one way and reason another. Nevertheless, I believe that you adopt your philosophy for the right reason. Life is all about aesthetics, and God’s entire existence is on account of an aesthetic (goodness).
I don’t think that a mind is composed of spirit; rather, the mind and the spirit are two different entities, one physical and one metaphysical. For me, dualism is necessary not to account for mind and spirit, but to account for objectivity and subjectivity (e.g., eternality and temporality, essence and existence, etc). But if nothing else, at least you do not judge dualism merely on the basis of two versus one, suggesting that one is less complex than two.
It bears heavily on what is being discussed here. For Aristotle, the essence of a thing is its ideal definition. We are talking about all sorts of undefined things here, from life to physical. Until these essences are identified, it is entirely possible that we are all talking about different things altogether. There might be a threshold of similarity, but who knows where that threshold lies without knowing what is essential? Is it sufficient that yellowness and sphericalness are common between a tennis ball and the sun that we can discuss something such that you have in mind the one and I the other?
Nothing at all. My interest in an objective philosophy is solely because of my interest in God. Clearly, She is the objective Being, privvy to all subjective frames. What She might find important, therefore, is definitively important and interests me.
I’d take The Handyman’s Book.
I would also add reality and illusion to what is objective and subjective. I suppose it’s obvious that I’m not a typical dualist. But then, Ockham was not a typical terminist.
Sometimes whether an entity is necessary or not is debatable. I’m sure Ockham’s dualism was not in contradiction to his razor.
I’m forced to bow out now, since I must get some real work done over the next couple of weeks. But I’ve enjoyed this one Lib - many thanks!