# Wherein SentientMeat tries to convince other-wise that physicalism is reasonable **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 19, 2006, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273 "2006-04-19T09:36:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/1 "2006-04-19T09:36:49Z")
This thread is really for one poster, friend **other-wise** , who is currently making a “last ditch effort to embrace [physicalism](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/)” but still finding it “as _un_reasonable as the alternatives” (solipsism, panpsychism, pantheism _etc._). Now, even one who disagrees with me as fundamentally as **Liberal** still explicitly recognises that physicalism is [valid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity) (_.ie_ that it contains no glaring logical inconsistencies, even if he doesn’t accept its _soundness_ – the truth of premises I set forth). Anyone else can join in, but I probably won’t have time to field your questions here - perhaps the threads at the end will help. So this thread is dedicated to those issues in the physicalist worldview which, through past experience, **other-wise** seems not to accept as “reasonable” because he thinks there are logical inconsistencies lurking therein. What I’m seeking here is to bring **other-wise** into agreement with **Lib** that physicalism is at least a _reasonable, consistent_ position. Like **Lib** , he might well simply refuse to accept some premise or other, but that’s by the by. Anyway, here what I’d suggest are the central premises of physicalism: [ul] [li] There are physical things, such as molecules, rocks, cells and computers. [\*]Processes such as chemical reactions, geological change, biological respiration or digital computation can be explained by reference to these things, and can thus be called _physical processes_.[/li][li]If something (an _explicandum_) can be explained by physical processes, no alternative explanation (_explicans_) is necessary. (This effectively applies [Ockham’s Razor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_Razor) to said explanatory entities.)[/ul]And so, the physicalist goal is to propose explanations solely by reference to these molecules, rocks, cells computers or whatever (to which I’d add _energy, forces_ and _spacetime_, incidentally – this is what distinguishes physicalism from rather old-fashioned _materialism_, since there’s clearly more to the universe than just _matter_). Of course, I’d love to discuss the _plausibility_ of some of those explanations, but we very rarely seem to get that far at all, for reasons I’ll list in a moment. [/li] I’ll also add here a couple of points which reflect my own take on physicalism (which I don’t think _impugn_ it in any way): [ul][li] **If** we _are_ wholly physical “thinking machines” which evolved somewhere in the 13.7 billion years of spacetime, there would be a limit to how “certain” an individual machine _could_ be about anything (or, indeed, [everything](http://www.simulation-argument.com/)), and to how _convincing_ any statement or output from one machine could be to another, because machines can always get things wrong (or so it seemingly[sup]N[/sup] seems to this one!). [/li][li]Again, **if** wholly physical “thinking machines” evolved, their language would make the construction of paradoxes such as “This statement is false” _inevitable_.[/ul]Thus, anyone looking for some kind of “perfect philosophy” which was utterly immune to any critiques or questioning would thus be seeking a mythical philosopher’s stone. Ultimately, there would only be talking apes throwing words at each other, and any argument could _de facto_ be countered with a rude noise. If these are fundamental flaws in my worldview, that’s OK, since I think it applies in equal measure to all of the alternatives. (And I’m in [good company](http://budni.by.ru/oncertainty.html) in this respect, especially on points 15-19 & 35-37. The first physicalist premise above is not _testable_ – it can ultimately only be _accepted or not_, and I have little to say to the solipsist or anyone else who simply _doesn’t_ accept that there are physical objects.)[/li] So, to the progress of **other-wise** in past exchanges. [Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6215842&postcount=277), he finally agrees that life is physical. [Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6215842&postcount=277), he finally agrees that the computations in the silicon device under his desk are physical. Now, the physicalist position is that _“awareness/experience/consciousness/Point-Of-View/qualia/thought”_, or whatever “mental” entity one might point to, ultimately arise from processes in a **living computer** : the human brain and nervous system. And so, it would seem not too great a further step from there to suggest that there is nothing logically inconsistent about the position that _living computations_ are physical. (Yes, I know this is an unbearable clumsy oversimplification but please bear with me– I’m trying to get to where we _really_ disagree, logically speaking, as quickly as possible.) But in that [same thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6232945&postcount=322), we return to the same old roundabout, to do with the evolution of language itself. A useful language must be able to label not only objects (like the _“tree”_), but processes (like the _“sound”_ of the tree) even when those objects and processes aren’t being sensed _right now_ (like the sound of the tree _“when there’s nobody around”_). Language is thus used to label _memories_ (of objects or processes), or ‘averages’ of memories (_ie._ “concepts”), or **configurations** of memories (_eg . spatial._: the cat sat **on** the mat, Australia is **south** of me, or _temporal_: the Ancient Greeks lived **before** me, next Tuesday comes **after** today). **other-wise** seems to have trouble accepting the physicalist description of language (which I would count amongst its _least_ controversial aspects), despite _using words_ like “Australia” and “Ancient Greek” himself. For some reason, he cannot bring himself to describe either _language users_ or _anything he can’t directly experience himself_ (such as the life and computers around _before his birth_) as “physical”, and I’d like to explore why. He also seems to have problems with the rather _arbitrary_ and _inaccurate_ nature of how language and communication works (which I suspect has something to do with my ‘couple of points’ above). Finally, in our [last](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7158612&postcount=102) exchange he made some remarks about “scientific evidence” and the apparently monopolistic influence it has on physicalism (which I’d agree with to some extent – I’d suggest that the significance or utility of “evidence” _is_ measured by its repeatability or verifiability, for example, _ie._ evidence lacking in “scientific-ness” is arguably _not_ “evidence” as such – the plural of ‘anecdote’ is not necessarily ‘data’. Again, this might be just another semantic quibble where we don’t really disagree so much, but I’d like to make sure). So there it is – if I’ve misrepresented anything, I invite correction. Otherwise, **other-wise** , I’ll keep putting words on your screen until my outputs are exhausted of permutations. 🙂 Some useful previous posts/threads for interested observers: [I’m a physicalist, not a reductionist.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7152662&postcount=38) [Nor an eliminativist either, really.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=7081905&postcount=61) [A memory is a physical thing.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=304969&page=1&pp=50) (with relevant [conclusion](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=5931395&postcount=403)) [Find your position: 12 easy questions.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=315717) ---
**Author:** ![Contrapuntal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e274bd/32.png) [@Contrapuntal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Contrapuntal)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/2 "2006-04-19T13:36:17Z")
I would love to join the debate but … you have me convinced. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/3 "2006-04-19T15:00:18Z")
What the hell. > [@](#): > > There are physical things, such as molecules, rocks, cells and computers. > Processes such as chemical reactions, geological change, biological respiration or digital computation can be explained by reference to these things, and can thus be called physical processes. Actually it would be more accurate to say there are processes, all of which are interactions or relationships between other processes, and all processes can be viewed as a noun, but they all actually consist of activity. The physical things can best be explained by reference to these processes. The world is fundamentally interactionist, not fundamentally physical. It may _seem_ more intuitive to you to say “interactions between _what things_, huh?” than to ask “things consisting of what interactions, pray tell?”; and I will not deny that we find it compellingly useful to work with rocks and computers as things rather than as motion and interplay. And yet motion and interplay it is. And so it is, all the way down. > [@](#): > > If something (an explicandum) can be explained by physical processes, no alternative explanation (explicans) is necessary. (This effectively applies Ockham’s Razor to said explanatory entities.) See above, then add: To “explain” something is to reference its _meaning_, and _meaning_ is always manifest in the relationship _between_. Something has meaning only _to someone_, and thus meaning is, once again, interactionist to the core. (An important distinction needs to be made here, between a radical subjective-relativism in which the meaning of something is attributed solely to the someone who perceived the something — which denies any meaningful contribution to that meaning by the something in question — and the fundamental interactionist viewpoint I speak of, in which meaning is neither subjective nor objective but inhers in the relationship between subject and object) > [@](#): > > If we are wholly physical “thinking machines” which evolved somewhere in the 13.7 billion years of spacetime, there would be a limit to how “certain” an individual machine could be about anything (or, indeed, everything), and to how convincing any statement or output from one machine could be to another, because machines can always get things wrong (or so it seeminglyN seems to this one!). > Again, if wholly physical “thinking machines” evolved, their language would make the construction of paradoxes such as “This statement is false” inevitable. No question that absolute certainty is not an available option, but not just because of the possibility of “getting things wrong” but also because, as I just said, meaning is between subject and object. If you and I are discussing something (like “physicalism”, for example :D), we start off spending a good deal of our effort reaching a consensus on whether or not we’re talking about the same thing when we use the words we use! And how _do_ we do that? Well, meaning can be encoded in words, but does not _consist_ of them, and so any meaning that can be encoded in one set of words can be encoded in a different set. And so you and I reencode and reencode, describing and discussing, until we are mutually satisfied that there’s some decently-broad definitional territory where either of us could go back to it and say it in yet a different way and expect the other to nod and say “yep, that’s what we’re discussing, all right”. But where we differ, if I encode that which makes sense to me and you _don’t_ nod, and instead you say “but no, it seems to me that instead www xxx yyy zzz etc”, all I can do is continue to generate new ways of trying to explain, new encodings of the meaning. _ **What I cannot do is establish, with any degree of confidence, that you fully understand what I’m trying to tell you, but disagree with it. In fact, I cannot do it at all!** _. Because as long as the matter at hand still has that meaning to me, the only conclusions available to me are that “if I could just do a better job of getting you to see things as I’m seeing them, you’d see what I see” or else “I am not seeing what I’m seeing because it isn’t like that after all”. And the invisible component here is parallax. You know astronomy, right? The position of an item in the sky is described against its backdrop of other things in the sky around it, but between where the earth is in midwinter and where the earth is in midsummer, the position of an item relatively closer to us may appear to be in a different place against that backdrop. That’s parallax. In fact, for far closer objects in the sky, it could make a difference depending on whether you were viewing in Italy or in Argentina. _Where you are when you observe has an affect on what you see_, that’s parallax. We know there is a “parallax” of sorts with regards to how we see everything; when we’re trying to encode our meanings in language, we do resort to trying to hook in to what we know of the listener’s experience, background, etc. And when communication fails and we’re left sputtering, _still_ convinced that if we could only bridge the gap and lead the other person to see things from our perspective, they’d see what we see, we do attribute that failure to not knowing a sufficiently good point of entry, an initial point of common shared perspective from which to branch them off from their current viewpoint and lead them over to ours. Back to astronomy: Items way the hell-and-gone far away from us have no observable parallax. (We could theoretically see their positions shift against the backdrop if we could shift our own positions back & forth between places a lot farther apart than midwinter and midsummer, but at the maximum distances between the extremes that exist, no observable parallax). Continuing, therefore, with the analogy drawn, things that are not meaningfully different to us observer-folks even between the greatest variations in experience and whatnot — that rock over yonder, for example —we consider to be “objective”. Mind you, it’s meaning still inheres in the relationship between observer and observed, not in the thing itself unto itself, it’s just that switching from observer to another observer to yet another observer makes damn little difference in what gets experienced. IT’S A ROCK. It’s a THING. Its very thinginess, its physical-ness, is in part an attribute of our experience of it as something we all see in common and _expect_ to see in common. But other aspects of reality have a lot more “parallax”. It is what it is _to me_ a sufficiently different thing than it is what it is _to you_, and moreover if I could indeed explain my perspective on it sufficiently that you fully understand how I see it, I will have _changed_ you (the experience of understanding me will be part of your backdrop); moreover, in order to do so, I will have had to understand _your_ vantage point well enough to find that point of entry and do that explaining, and that will have changed _me_, and when all is said and done _neither_ of us may view the topic of interest as I originally did, nor as you originally did. Once again, back to the analogy-board. When one is traveling over land from Amsterdam to Moscow, an awareness of the sphericality of the earth adds nothing useful. It’s simpler and easier to pretend that the land is flat, that you can navigate using only north, south, east and west as coordinates. You could _do_ your travel planning using x, y, z coordinates in 3D space, but why bother? In similar fashion, most of everyday activity (including a great and useful chunk of the hard sciences) is best approached as if the world were a physical one, an objective one, with matter as the bottom-most buildilng block and processes being processes _of things_. But philosophically, as a theory-of-what-is (and how we know it & understand it etc), physicalism & materialism and objectivism & etc are flat-earth oversimplifications that will lead you to insufficient or wrong conclusions about a variety of things. ---
**Author:** ![George\_Kaplin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3e96dc/32.png) [@George\_Kaplin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/George_Kaplin)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/4 "2006-04-19T21:35:04Z")
> [@Ahunter3](#): > > It may seem more intuitive to you to say “interactions between what things, huh?” than to ask “things consisting of what interactions, pray tell?”; and I will not deny that we find it compellingly useful to work with rocks and computers as things rather than as motion and interplay. And yet motion and interplay it is. And so it is, all the way down. I think there are two problems with this. Firstly, the practise of describing objects as _“things consisting of interactions”_ is essentially a process of reduction. An animal can be described as a vast body of interacting cells, and, in turn, the cells can be described as the products of even more complex interactions at the molecular level. I’m not a scientist, but I can imagine this process going on for quite some time. Molecular interactions can be reduced to composites of atomic interactions which, in their turn, may possibly described in terms of quantum interactions. However, this cannot continue indefinitely. Sooner or later the process of interactionist reduction must stop at a physical body (no matter how small). To argue otherwise would be to argue that interactions between physical objects actually _preceded_ the objects themselves, which is (I think) plainly absurd. Secondly, I don’t think you really appreciate the broad scope of physicalism. More than corporeal bodies, it also encompasses the intangible forces which govern all interactions between those bodies (like gravity, for example). The interaction between a golf club and a golfball can really only be described in physical terms, referencing physical forces. These forces themselves are irreducible and cannot be described by interactionism as they _govern_ interactions. Interactionism cannot supplant physicalism because interactions can only arise from physical bodies and interactions themselves can be described in physical terms, which obviously fall under the rubric of physicalism. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 19, 2006, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/5 "2006-04-19T22:09:45Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > What the hell. > > Actually it would be more accurate to say there are processes, all of which are interactions or relationships between other processes, and all processes can be viewed as a noun, but they all actually consist of activity. The physical things can best be explained by reference to these processes. The world is fundamentally interactionist, not fundamentally physical. > > It may _seem_ more intuitive to you to say “interactions between _what things_, huh?” than to ask “things consisting of what interactions, pray tell?”; and I will not deny that we find it compellingly useful to work with rocks and computers as things rather than as motion and interplay. And yet motion and interplay it is. And so it is, all the way down. I’d like to clarify this. Does “fundamental” mean at the string or whatever level? If so, my reading seems to indicate that you’re probably right - at this level interaction is fundamental. The example I saw was a universe with a single thing in it. There is no universe at all, being no observer (by definition) no time, no space, and no interactions. Space is defined by relationships/interactions. If you mean at the macro level, I’d say that only the most trivial of physicalism does not include interactions. Here it is useful to talk about things, but again even the description of a thing involves interacting with it in some way. Is this what you mean by interactions being fundamental? I can’t disagree, but I think that demoting “thingness” too much could be misleading. The interesting part comes when considering interactions between interactions - for example, ideas about ideas. At the conceptual level, you soon lose track of anything traditionally physical - telling stories and analyzing things that don’t exist and never will. However, at the physical level we store referents to these imaginary things in neurons or on paper - so no matter how abstract we think we’re getting, we’re still doing first level physical interaction - at the macro level. Analogy: You can design data structures that manipulate pointers to arrays of pointers to arrays of pointers, to any desired level of absurdity. When executing, each of these things gets stuck in a register and/or memory element, so during execution we’re manipulating one level of data at each step of the process. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2006, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/6 "2006-04-20T04:57:30Z")
> [@George Kaplin](#): > > I’m not a scientist, but I can imagine this process going on for quite some time. Molecular interactions can be reduced to composites of atomic interactions which, in their turn, may possibly described in terms of quantum interactions. However, this cannot continue indefinitely. Sooner or later the process of interactionist reduction must stop at a physical body (no matter how small). To argue otherwise would be to argue that interactions between physical objects actually _preceded_ the objects themselves, which is (I think) plainly absurd. Why? Why is that any more absurd than to posit physical bodies that do not consist of processes running? Examine physics as it applies to the small. You may be in for a shock. ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2006, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/7 "2006-04-20T11:28:30Z")
Well, friend **Sentient** , as I said in my very first [post](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=2821430&postcount=41) to you, context is everything, so allow me to provide some here: > [@SentientMeat](#): > > This thread is really for one poster, friend **other-wise** , who is currently making a “last ditch effort to embrace [physicalism](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/)” but still finding it “as _un_reasonable as the alternatives” (solipsism, panpsychism, pantheism _etc._). Now, even one who disagrees with me as fundamentally as **Liberal** still explicitly recognises that physicalism is [valid](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Validity) (_.ie_ that it contains no glaring logical inconsistencies, even if he doesn’t accept its _soundness_ – the truth of premises I set forth). > > Anyone else can join in, but I probably won’t have time to field your questions here - perhaps the threads at the end will help. > So this thread is dedicated to those issues in the physicalist worldview which, through past experience, **other-wise** seems not to accept as “reasonable” because he thinks there are logical inconsistencies lurking therein. What I’m seeking here is to bring **other-wise** into agreement with **Lib** that physicalism is at least a _reasonable, consistent_ position. Like **Lib** , he might well simply refuse to accept some premise or other, but that’s by the by. I don’t believe I have ever claimed that physicalism as a philosophy is logically inconsistent per se; I have, in fact, defended physicalism when [appropriate](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6814405&postcount=49) . But your interpretation and application of physicalism is the one I’ve had to contend with in our debates, and some of the arguments you’ve put forth _do_ strike me as logically self-defeating. For example, at the end of your OP, you state that you **“agree to some extent”** that scientific evidence has a monopolistic influence on physicalism. I’m glad to see that you’ve mellowed a bit; in the same thread you cite, you voiced your opinion that [“ **When it really comes down to it, we _all_ consider scientific evidence as a cut above other kinds** ”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7159842&postcount=103). In fact, throughout our debates, scientific evidence was not merely your _preferred_ form of evidence, it was the _only_ form of evidence you were willing to give credence. Since there _is no_ scientific evidence that scientific evidence is the only credible form of evidence, I found your stance logically self-defeating. Also, the validity of physicalism will (obviously) depend on what one means when using the word “physical”. In [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=316250) thread I spent several pages trying to nail down exactly what you meant when referring to something as “physical” only to find out that it means you have [arbitrarily pronounced _everything_ to be physical.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6232543&postcount=320) As usual, our friend _Lib_ sums it up best: > [@Lib](#): > > … if physical means everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t, then it doesn’t mean anything at all. > [@](#): > > Thus, anyone looking for some kind of “perfect philosophy” which was utterly immune to any critiques or questioning would thus be seeking a mythical philosopher’s stone. Once again you cast me in the role of Buridan’s ass. As I’ve said [before](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=5511030&postcount=147) , you have every right to voice your opinion about anything, including your favored philosophy. Just as I have the right to refuse to embrace any philosophy, portions thereof or the whole shebang, should I find it unpersuasive. > [@](#): > > So, to the progress of **other-wise** in past exchanges. [Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6215842&postcount=277), he finally agrees that life is physical. Yes, I agreed that life is physical under this definition: > [@other-wise](#): > > **Physical** : Where shit happens _and_ the shit that happens. But then, what _isn’t_ physical under that definition? > [@](#): > > [Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6215842&postcount=277), he finally agrees that the computations in the silicon device under his desk are physical. I agreed to what where now? > [@](#): > > But in that [same thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6232945&postcount=322), we return to the same old roundabout, to do with the evolution of language itself. A useful language must be able to label not only objects (like the _“tree”_), but processes (like the _“sound”_ of the tree) even when those objects and processes aren’t being sensed _right now_ (like the sound of the tree _“when there’s nobody around”_). Language is thus used to label _memories_ (of objects or processes), or ‘averages’ of memories (_ie._ “concepts”), or **configurations** of memories (_eg . spatial._: the cat sat **on** the mat, Australia is **south** of me, or _temporal_: the Ancient Greeks lived **before** me, next Tuesday comes **after** today). **other-wise** seems to have trouble accepting the physicalist description of language (which I would count amongst its _least_ controversial aspects), despite _using words_ like “Australia” and “Ancient Greek” himself. For some reason, he cannot bring himself to describe either _language users_ or _anything he can’t directly experience himself_ (such as the life and computers around _before his birth_) as “physical”, and I’d like to explore why. I do not recognize the viewpoint you have ascribed to me here; in fact, I have no idea what you’re talking about. ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2006, 11:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/8 "2006-04-20T11:31:56Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Actually it would be more accurate to say there are processes, all of which are interactions or relationships between other processes, and all processes can be viewed as a noun, but they all actually consist of activity. The physical things can best be explained by reference to these processes. The world is fundamentally interactionist, not fundamentally physical. I’m actually quite sympathetic to this notion, or at least, to the notion that if one describes reality in terms of the physical, there is no reason to suppose that the physical is somehow _more_ fundamental than the interactionist. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [April 20, 2006, 1:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/9 "2006-04-20T13:37:34Z")
> [@other-wise](#): > > Since there is no scientific evidence that scientific evidence is the only credible form of evidence, I found your stance logically self-defeating. Oh, that’s it? That’s (at least a large part of) why you think physicalism is unreasonable, because it appeals to science without explicitly saying why? That wouldn’t strike me as being a debate about physicalism _at all_, really – it would be a debate about what constituted evidence for **any** statement or proposition. To try and draw some kind of parallel, if I advocated _heliocentrism_ and appealed to “scientific evidence”, would you consider the heliocentric position logically self-defeating because I couldn’t provide scientific evidence that scientific evidence was the only credible source? Understand, I’m trying to focus on precisely what is stopping you considering physicalism “unreasonable”. Or is it **me** , not physicalism _per se_, whose statements you cannot accept? (If so, perhaps it’s better if you pick on the Stanford sites’ sentences rather than mine, or something? I’d be happy to facilitate debate that way too, as best I could.) Believing yourself to be a biological machine does not require you to agree with any _particular_ biological machine’s outputs – I have debates with _other physicalists_ all the time, and I’m happy to be corrected when I _do_ advance inconsistent positions on this or that. If “what counts as evidence” is one such example, well, that’s an interesting debate in which I admit I might be wrong. But that debate regarding _epistemology_ would be a completely orthogonal issue to the confusion you express [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=7137065&postcount=93) (bolding mine): > [@other-wise](#): > > The reason _you_ get so inundated with questions is that you’re the smartest, sharpest, most well-read physicalist I’ve ever encountered, and, after all my layperson study, **I can’t for the life of me understand why the physicalist position is dominant.** > … > I pride myself on being a rational, skeptical, science-lovin’ guy, and it pisses me off that I cannot in good conscience join the physicalist club like so many of my friends. It’s not that I’m looking for some perfect philosophy; it’s that I’d really prefer to embrace physicalism and I’ve been making, with gusto, a last ditch effort to do so. …agreed? If the unfalsifiability of falsification (or however you’d like it put) is your beef, then such a beef applies equally well to _all kinds_ of philosophical positions (and many of their opposites or alternatives, even!). So, I’m happy to discuss science and evidence with you (like I said, I judge evidence in terms of its reliability, repeatability and “content” - in an Information Theory sense of what possibilities it forbids or allows - since this kind of evidence has most [explanatory](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-explanation/) power), and the way I resolve what you consider logical self-defeat has a lot to do with my ‘couple of points’ above. But I think a completely separate thread would be appropriate – would you could do the honours with the OP, or shall I try again if I get time? > [@](#): > > Also, the validity of physicalism will (obviously) depend on what one means when using the word “physical”. In this thread I spent several pages trying to nail down exactly what you meant when referring to something as “physical” only to find out that it means you have arbitrarily pronounced everything to be physical. Well, you asked at the end of that post whether you’d mischaracterised my position, and I think you _did_, actually, as I tried to explain in the [post immediately following yours](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6232899&postcount=321). In fact, that word “arbitrary” introduced so much muddle that I think it was a mistake to bring it up at all without being very clear what we each meant by it, so perhaps it would be better to start afresh on that score – deal? What I mean when I say that a molecule, rock, cell or PC is “physical” is that it is a bunch of particles in spacetime. God is not physical: he’s (supposedly) not in spacetime. The _elan vital_ or [epiphenomenal ectoplasm](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#3) aren’t either – these things are (supposedly) _nothing to do with_ the matter, energy, forces and whatnot. Now, I cannot _demonstrate_ that “physical” is **the** word to describe a molecule, rock, cell or PC rather than another word, any more than I can _demonstrate_ that the land mass south of Irian Jaya _must_ be called “Australia”, the people who built the Acropolis _must_ be called “Ancient Greeks”, or light of wavelength 570 nm _must_ be called “green”. I can only _propose_ such a label, and ask whether you _agree_ that such a label is reasonable. (Note that I’m deliberately avoiding the ambiguous and confusing ‘a’ word here!) If you _didn’t_ agree so, well, I’d have to ask you what _is_ so reasonable about “Australia”, “Ancient Greek” and “green” that you _do_ agree to use them so readily, while you cannot bring yourself to use “physical” similarly. I assure you, all I and physicalism in general are suggesting is that **we’re made of cells** – it really isn’t much more complicated than that at heart (although the debates get complicated, certainly). So long as we agree that there are _some_ physical things (which I’ve never heard you deny despite numerous opportunities, but I’m trying my best not to assume things here), we can go on to explore what combinations of those things might in principle produce. Is that a fair way to progress? > [@](#): > > I agreed that life is physical under this definition: “Where shit happens and the shit that happens”. But then, what _isn’t_ physical under that definition? This, I think, might be why you say you can’t understand physicalism: because it just seems _obvious_ to you that “shit” is _all there is_. Thus, I think it might be the case that physicalism _isn’t_ the philosophy you don’t understand – in fact you understand it very well. It’s _other_ philosophies, like theism or panpsychism, which you don’t understand very well, because they posit entities which **aren’t** “shit” in the context we’re discussing, of molecules/reactions, rocks/geology, cells/biology, chips/computation _etc._ Do you think this is at all accurate (or even _fair_)? > [@](#): > > I agreed to what where now? Sorry, wrong post. It was [here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=6220508&postcount=285) that you agreed that computations were physical (so long as there was something around to _call_ it so, which there tautologically _was_: You!) > [@](#): > > I do not recognize the viewpoint you have ascribed to me here; in fact, I have no idea what you’re talking about. OK, I must have misunderstood, and I apologise unreservedly – that’s why I explicitly invited correction in my OP. I hereby do so again: If an entity labels both life and computation “physical” (a situation which, of course, requires a labelling entity in the first place), can’t the labelling process itself arise from life and computation? I know this sentence is clumsy, but it seems that there is a fundamental blockage to progress between us which is caused by not being able to put a cart and a horse in the right order. I say that evolution yielded a ‘subjective’ labelling ability in highly complex organisms where before there was only rocks and sunshine and simple life. I’m not sure whether you consider this _impossible_ for some circular reason or other. ---
**Author:** ![other-wise](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4bbf92/32.png) [@other-wise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/other-wise)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2006, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/10 "2006-04-22T12:12:57Z")
**Sentient** , since I don’t want this to become primarily a quote/counter-quote exchange (although I realize a bit of that is inevitable), I’m not going to answer your last post point-by-point. Instead, I’m going to try to sweep the table clear and state my reservations about physicalism concisely, a few at a time, starting with the ones that nag me the most. If, in doing so, there is something specific from your last post that you’re still curious about, but I haven’t covered, let me know and I’ll try to address it directly. Before I get started, it strikes me that there’s one thing that might need clarification, just so we don’t go barking up the wrong tree: If you’ll re-read my quote, you’ll see that I don’t understand why the physicalist position is dominant \* in Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind\*. IOW, it’s not that I find physicalism in and of itself unreasonable, just that I find the physicalist philosophical position as unreasonable as the others \*when it comes to Cognitive Science and Philosophy of Mind \*. That said… I think my three head-scratchingest reservations with physicalism in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science (PM/CS) are: [ul] [li]What is meant by the term “physical”[/li][li]What constitutes credible supporting evidence for a given argument or position (there are, of course, other philosophies that I have this same reservation about)[/li][li]Whether physicalism can provide a [sub]_cough_[/sub] “reasonable” explanation for consciousness (i.e., subjective awareness)[/ul][/li] I’d like to tackle “What is meant by the term “physical” first. Understand, my purpose of wanting to dig into this is not so I can barrage you with an endless litany of: “Ok, then what is meant by the term “meaning”?, ““Ok, then what is meant by the term “term”?, “Ok, then what is meant by the term “what”?, ad nauseam. Instead, my rationale for tackling this is twofold: first, because it’s the first question I would explore _regardless_ of the philosophy presented to me, i.e., If someone says they subscribe to a philosophy of “physicalism”, my very first question would be “Physical-ism? Well, what exactly do you mean by the term “physical”?”, just as my first question to someone who says they subscribe to a philosophy of “theism” would be “Well, what exactly do you mean by the term “god”? Second, when you say that “physical” means that something is a bunch of particles in spacetime, I can’t tell what unspoken assumptions you’re making; what forms the foundation of that seemingly simple, straightforward statement. For example, I’ve read works by physicists who appear bemused and slightly horrified that anyone would consider “particles” to reflect reality in any meaningful sense; instead claiming that what we refer to as “particles” are just highly functional mathematical models. To them, a “particle” is a useful fiction, a metaphor that allows us to speak with an easy familiarity about abstruse subjects, much like the way we say that RNA “unzips” DNA even though nothing remotely resembling a zipper is involved. If what _you_ mean by the term “physical” is that it can be advantageous in many ways to look at the world _as if_ it were physical, I guess I wouldn’t argue with that any more than I’d argue with someone who said that it can be advantageous in many ways to look at the world _as if_ it were a manifestation of God. But I don’t think that’s what you mean. So with your indulgence, I’d like to start again at the beginning and ask you to expound on what you mean by the term “physical”, and perhaps more importantly, what _that_ means for our concepts of reality, and the current state of PM/CS. ---
**Author:** ![George\_Kaplin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3e96dc/32.png) [@George\_Kaplin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/George_Kaplin)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/11 "2006-04-23T01:39:46Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Why? Why is that any more absurd than to posit physical bodies that do not consist of processes running? Sorry for the late reply, first off. I’ve been a bit busy. I may be completely misunderstanding you, but it seems to me that you’re arguing that matter, including the most elemental particles, _arose_ from interactive processes. How can there be interaction in the _absence_ of matter? > [@AHunter3](#): > > Examine physics as it applies to the small. You may be in for a shock. I must confess that, when it comes to science, I’m just an interested amateur and, as I intimated in my first post, if we need to take this discussion to the quantum level I may be out of my depth. Do you have any links, preferably written for the layman, which you think could help me get a better handle on your position? ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 8:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/12 "2006-04-23T08:36:14Z")
**other-wise** , OK, that’s a sensible way to progress (but note that I’ll still eventually repeat much of what I’ve already said here). I’ll give a quick (over-) simple sentence answer for each of your Big 3 Questions to start with, and we can then expand and flesh them out at length. Though I should warn you - I think some of that expansion can really only proceed rather by _analogy_ unless I can come up with some excellent new sentences I’ve never tried before in our interactions. Nonetheless, here goes: > [@](#): > > What is meant by the term “physical”? _Sentence_: That which can be characterised as an arrangement in time and space of Matter, Energy and Forces (MEF). _Summary_: Examples of entities which _cannot_ be characterised this way (according to the vast majority of philosophers regardless of whether they ascribe to physicalism or not) are God, the afterlife, epiphenomenal ectoplasm, the _elan vital_, and consciousness under the panpsychic position. Modern physics at the very cutting edge could be said to propose that matter, energy and forces are _themselves_ contingent on **spacetime** (which may itself be far greater in extent than merely 3 dimensions of space coupled with a single dimension of time), and that matter, energy, forces, space and time in our everyday lives are, if you like, a non-weird statistical average over enormous numbers of _individually_ weird entities. However, for the purposes of this thread, it might be useful to forego such esoterics and begin from a mutual understanding of _ **things like** _ molecules, rocks, cells and PC’s. From here, these _spatial_ MEF arrangements can be devloped into _temporal_ MEF arrangements (remember the sentence: arrangement in **time and** space), which we can call “processes”. > [@](#): > > What constitutes credible supporting evidence for a given argument or position (there are, of course, other philosophies that I have this same reservation about) _Sentence_: An ability to provide a logically consistent model of a given phenomena in terms of the aformentioned spatio-temporal arrangements of MEF (STAMEF). _Summary_: The worth of such a model is measured by its ability to provide falsifiable predictions from which to construct “laws”, statistical regularities, causal mechanisms or any other central requirement of what I’d call an [explanation](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-explanation/). This is the criterion which, rightly or wrongly, we apply to positions such as heliocentrism, Darwinism and even certain aspects of Holocaust-Actually-Happened-ism in order to weigh up whether or not they are credible. Physicalism could be said to constitute the consensus in _all_ of these disciplines, in which explanation by physical processes has superceded all other alternatives (_eg._ angels pushing planets and the sun around the Earth, vitalism/intelligent design and aspects of Holocaust _denial_). > [@](#): > > Whether physicalism can provide a _cough_ “reasonable” explanation for consciousness (i.e., subjective awareness) _Sentence_: Strictly speaking, it doesn’t provide such _itself_ – rather, it _points_ to those disciplines where those explanations are to be found _in principle_. _Summary_: Physicalism is the position _that_ consciousness has a STAMEF basis: **cognitive science** is the multi-disciplinary pursuit of the specific explanations for the collection of phenomena we call “consciousness” themselves. What physicalism asks is that cognitive science be treated just like any other science. Biological and computational sciences have particular relevance, both containing significant explanatory gaps as well as theories which are not proven solely by _singular, definitive_ experiments but by a range of results, facts and statistics taken together as a whole. In particular, the goal is not to attain some mythical “absolute” T-shirt slogan which explains every phenomenon in perfect precision, but merely to compete in explanatory power so strongly compared to, say, dualistic alternatives that to even consider the alternatives as _approaching_ the same level of credibility is itself quite a bullet to bite. (To put enough splinters on the fence that only the numbest of posteriors remain there, so to speak.) I consider that the effect on consciousness of certain physical molecules and the enormous correlations between different cognitive functions and different physical regions of brain offal make the alternatives to physicalism _ **as** absurd **as** _ vitalism in biology or the idea that your PC has an afterlife (both of which the extremely numb-arsed might accept with little discomfort.) So, I await your response to point 1) _the meaning of “physical”_, and we can go on to the others in due course - I expect this thread will take a number of weeks, actually. What I will say now, though, is that when you say you just _don’t understand_ physicalism, or/nor why it is dominant, I have to say I have great trouble really believing you. Not that you’re lying or anything, but I have simply **never** come across anyone who was clearly so erudite in the relevant literature but expressed the overwhelming confusion you do, to the point where I think you’re . You complain of being cast as Buridan’s ass, but can you _really_ say that physicalism appears **to YOU** to be just as unreasonable as, say, solipsism given the woeful explanatory shortcomings of the latter? Again I say: I think you understand phsyicalism just fine, and that although we can toss _my specific_ outputs back and forth until we shape them into something you might eventually accept, you still have a good idea of _what I’m trying to say_. I simply understand how a chap as bright as you finds the three premises in my OP and the ‘couple of points’ below them so difficult: they really are as simple as they evidently seem to all your friends. If you plain _disagreed_ with them and offered alternatives, like **Lib** , I can understand that just fine. But saying you don’t _understand_ them? Is that _really_ what you mean? ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 8:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/13 "2006-04-23T08:41:48Z")
_Erratum_: … to the point where I think you’re unsure of your position regarding what you do and don’t understand! ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 8:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/14 "2006-04-23T08:43:18Z")
_Erratum #2_: I simply **don’t** understand how a chap as bright as you finds the three premises in my OP and the ‘couple of points’ below them so difficult. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 10:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/15 "2006-04-23T22:14:40Z")
> [@George Kaplin](#): > > Sorry for the late reply, first off. I’ve been a bit busy. I may be completely misunderstanding you, but it seems to me that you’re arguing that matter, including the most elemental particles, _arose_ from interactive processes. How can there be interaction in the _absence_ of matter? Your assumption here is that interactions must be interactions between bits of matter. I am saying that, while this may seem intuitively correct, there are sufficient reasons to suspect it may be factually wrong. Permission to upend your everyday assumptions just a little bit? Do an Advanced Google search for exact phrase= “vacuum fluctuation” + required word= “universe”. At every level that something can be posited as “matter”, it can be analyzed and understood in more detail as an interactive dance. We’ve known this for centuries (yonder rock consisting of separable compounds; compounds separating into molecules; molecules turning out to consist of atoms; atoms being comprised of subatomic particles…); but at the lower levels, the “bits” doing the interacting are less and less possessed of the types of properties we think of as “matter”. They don’t have “locations” in the conventional sense. They don’t lend themselves to being considered in isolation as readily as larger “particles”. Physicists find it more useful at times to speak of them as having a “tendency to occur” rather than “there is one of them here”. In other words, you start off sliding down a slope in which particles are composed of interactions, which in turn are interactions between smaller particles, which in turn are composed of interactions and so on, but as you get down towards the smallest scale events, it looks like interactions, not particles, are what has primacy. ---
**Author:** ![II\_Gyan\_II](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/bbe5ce/32.png) [@II\_Gyan\_II](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/II_Gyan_II)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/16 "2006-04-23T22:44:43Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > it looks like interactions, not particles, are what has primacy. I suppose the confusion is over this: **inter** -_actions_ among what? ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/17 "2006-04-23T23:07:02Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Actually it would be more accurate to say there are processes, all of which are interactions or relationships between other processes, and all processes can be viewed as a noun, but they all actually consist of activity. The physical things can best be explained by reference to these processes. The world is fundamentally interactionist, not fundamentally physical. I’ve attempted to educate myself about physics as much as I can without going out and enrolling in a physics program, and I haven’t clue what the Hell any of this is supposed to mean. It sure looks like vacuous philosphizing about our ignorance as to what “really” constitutes the basic elements decribed in quantum field theory as particles and their interactions through virtual force carriers. Does any of this statement have any importance at the level of predictive rigor? Does it actually describe anything in any calcuable or observable way? ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2006, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/18 "2006-04-23T23:58:01Z")
> [@II Gyan II](#): > > I suppose the confusion is over this: **inter** -_actions_ among what? Processes. It’s verbs all the way down 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2006, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/19 "2006-04-25T04:33:23Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > If something (an explicandum) can be explained by physical processes, no alternative explanation (explicans) is necessary. (This effectively applies Ockham’s Razor to said explanatory entities.) Isn’t this indefensible, on account of it basically states “if I **can** explain something physically, then it **did** happen physically.”, when in actual fact it might not have? (I don’t see anywhere in the argument that disallows nonphysical things/events; merely statements requring that physical things do exist.) Of course, if you turn around and say that everything is physical, than you actually just said that everything is ploogagabaph. Meaningless. Suppose I come up to you and levitate my check from Randi with my ESP, and there is no explanation of any kind for it. If you promptly define the ESP to be physical (though still unexplainable), then you have accomplished nothing. I also don’t see why a given ‘thinking machine’ _has_ to have become adequetely advanced to smack into Godel’s incompleteness theorem; I also don’t see why a ‘thinking machine’ need either be able to knowingly formulate false statements or contradictions, much less a self-aware uncertainty in its own results. Just because a meaty, wrinkly piece of hardware has the capability to support such an analysis doesn’t imply that it _must_ actually occur, does it? Or is having reached that point a required precondition of being a ‘thinking machine’, rendering all statements of this type meaningless as well? Is the goal here merely to support the claim that mankind’s mental activity could be entirely electrochemical? Of course it could be. That has been adequetely demonstrated for everybody (heh). Or, is the claim that it _must_ be entirely electrochemical? The only way to prove that would be to demonstrate on an actual brain that _all_ mental processes are _observably_ the result of predictable physical processes. (Randomity allows the option that God is deciding the outcome of the dice.) If you actually proved this you would have demonstrated that mankind (or at least the dude you tested) is deterministic. Other than eliminating all debates about morality and ethics, what good would that serve? Maybe I’m not seeing the point here. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2006, 8:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273/20 "2006-04-25T08:52:05Z")
> [@begbert](#): > > Is the goal here merely to support the claim that mankind’s mental activity could be entirely electrochemical? Of course it could be. That has been adequetely demonstrated for everybody (heh). Or, is the claim that it _must_ be entirely electrochemical? Only the former, not the latter. _Unnecessary_ does not mean _impossible_. Like I say, any thinking ape who says “must” could still be _wrong_, regardless fo experimental results (and who said anything about physical processes being _predictable_? Heck, I can’t tell you the weather here next month). If this seems a pointlessly obvious and reasonable position, well, _me too_. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wherein-sentientmeat-tries-to-convince-other-wise-that-physicalism-is-reasonable/353273.md?page=2)