Monday, 30th of December, 2002

Here’s an interesting paper by Tamler Sommers (who I’ve never heard of before, by the way) that challenges both the logical basis and the rhetorical power of various philosophical thought experiments aimed at disproving materialism. Assumptions about the concept of “logical possibility” and the related concept of “that which is conceivable” are fruitfully brought into question.

For the uninitiated, materialism in philosophy of mind is a position (one which I hold) that distinguishes itself from dualism in asserting that everything that is(*note), including minds and suchlike, is material. There is no mysterious mind-substance, nor some immaterial (yet existing) soul… There are also no ghosts, spirits, gods, etc. Materialism is often attacked via arguments about qualia, that is, the ineffable yet distinct sensations that we have in our conscious lives. The colour red, the sound of a major triad, and you can go on as you wish, all seem to have real properties which don’t seem explicable in terms of relationships between the elements of a physical system (namely our brain/nervous system/physical body).

Anyone who believes that humans have evolved from other animals, and previously from replicating chemical chains and simple molecules, ought to believe that we are nothing more than matter that has learned to think for itself (so to speak), but a lot of people find something deeply unsettling about being told that their minds are not immortal souls, that there isn’t something transcendent about consciousness and sensual experience. Various terribly clever thought experiments have been devised with the aim of undermining the assumptions of materialism, and I think that the essay I’ve linked to does a good job of explaining what’s wrong with those thought experiments. At some stage when it’s not the day before New Year’s Eve, I’ll add my own thoughts, in particular an argument aimed squarely at Frank Jackson’s “Mary” thought experiment (which will, of course, require telling you just what that little story is first! - and I shall do so with pleasure).

I’ve stuck this blog entry in mainly to remind me to do just that, because I’ve been formulating this particular philosophical argument for a while. It’s not exactly or even closely related to the argument in Sommers’ paper, but Sommers articulates very clearly a problem I’ve had in general with thought experiments for a long while. Sommers’ argument is particularly encouraging in that it strikes quite a blow at David Chalmers‘ “hard problem” argument against materialism.

*note: “Everything that is” is clearly a little problematic. How about abstract concepts? Numbers? Musical compositions (they’re obviously not the same as the paper-and-ink that they’re written down with)? How about “goodness”? “Fairness”? We can go on. However, I think the only people who would believe that there is a concrete embodiment of “goodness” would be religious fundamentalists of some sort… And mathematical Platonism isn’t that compelling even for many (or most) mathematicians. I think it’s fairly clear what I mean by “everything that is”, and I’m willing to debate how these abstractions fit into a materialist picture of the world.
*Additionally, I should point out that being a philosophical materialist in this sense by no means implies being a materialist in the political/economic sense of believing that all that matters is material things - and believing thus that possessions are in effect all that matters. This simply doesn’t follow at all. Of course, pain and suffering exist, of course aesthetic considerations are important and all these other higher-level things are important. This by no means contradicts my insistence that these things don’t have some transcendent existence independent of our materially-existing societies, and the physical people and objects in them, and the memories and personalities physically stored within those people, and finally through the biological and chemical levels to the brute physical existence of inconceivably huge amounts of subatomic particles arranged in inconceivably complicated ways…
*So there. Discuss.

2 Responses to “Philosophers’ Zombies and Jackson’s Mary”

1. alex says:
   January 6th, 2003 at 8:17 am

   intuitively i dislike materialism. it somehow seems too crude, too simple. it seems to reduce everything to objects. additionally it doesn’t really solve any problem. “that we are nothing more than matter that has learned to think for itself ” does not answer the much more interesting question how this giant leap could happen. materialism presumes that there is matter which is not clear at all. i used to flirt with the idealist(ic?) idea that the world only exists in our perception of it. but in any case i have given up on philosophy long ago. i think the only philosophy worth spending one’s time on is a philosophy which has practical consequences. like kant’s categorical imperative for example. anything which tries to explain the world with one concept be it dualism, materialism, idealism or what ever -ism to me seems vain. all those -isms are just different perspectives. none of them is totally right and none of them is totally false. right now my “philosophical stance” would be a modification of socrate’s famous words on knowledge. i’d say i don’t know that i know nothing. i know less than socrate.

2. Peter says:
   January 6th, 2003 at 2:00 pm

   Hm, well I disagree; I think that materialism is the only way to solve the problems of understanding the mind. Dualism solves nothing - it just shunts everything over to “mind-stuff”, and then the _how_ questions are just ignored; just like saying “God created the world” is a convenient way of not answering any questions about origins…

   Admitting you know nothing is all very well but it’s just avoiding the question. Materialism is the only way forward for solving the questions, it seems to me.

   As for “philosophy worth spending time on”, I think cognitive science has plenty of practical consequences; and what’s more, if it’s materialist/scientific-realist in its outlook, it looks to empirical data for its basis.
   On the other hand, Kant’s categorical imperative is a nice idea, but in what way is it practical? If you take it on faith, you’re immediately taking whatever _you_ believe to be morally imperative _on faith_. I’d say a moral philosophy ought to be a bit more open to discussion… And do we take the categorical imperative to be something given to us from on high, so to speak, or just as a convenient way of making us act morally, a construct?

   Anyway, more later.