Tearing the Fabric: a Critique of Materialism
Passia Pandora
With special thanks to Prof. Klaus Jahn and Dr. Eric Hochstein
-1- WHAT IS MATERIALISM?
Materialism is the belief that everything in reality, i.e., the stuff of physics, chemistry, physiology and the mind, is nothing but a physical phenomenon.1 The foundation of the materialist argument is based upon the prevailing
worldview that there is an objective, “outside” world that exists
independently from us and that everything in this world is bound by the laws of physics.2
Because our physical reality is a causally closed system, everything in this reality must ultimately have a physical explanation.3
Thus, the mental must be explained in terms of the physical; the mental must be reducible to the physical.
- 2 - THE REDUCTION PROBLEM
One of the primary problems with materialism has to do with the issue of physical reduction.
If materialism is correct, there must be a complete explanation of how the mental reduces to the physical.
There are three different reduction problems to consider: 1) the reduction of mental states to physical states
2) the reduction of mental properties to physical properties (i.e., functional reduction)
3) incomplete reduction
The problem of reduction has not yet been satisfactorily resolved.
A number of philosophers/mathematicians have put forth a number of compelling arguments that call into question whether specific methods of reduction will work.
They include Ned Block, John Searle, Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, Frank Jackson and Kurt Gödel.
Their arguments regarding problems with functional reduction and
incomplete reduction have become ”Classics” in the field of philosophy of mind.
FOOTNOTES & BIBLIOGRAPHY
- 3 - SOME CLASSIC REDUCTION ARGUMENTS
NED BLOCK – THE CHINESE NATION
4(RE: functional reduction)
Block proposed a thought experiment where the physical (i.e., neuronal) processes of the brain could be represented functionally by creating a network of individual people making phone calls to one another.
The calls required no conversations; instead, the calls made were simply
meant to mirror a neuronal “pattern of interaction” that occurs in the brain. Therefore, the cognitive process was being functionally represented external to the brain, expressed through the network interactions of tens of
thousands of people.
Q: Given that no individual member of the population experienced pain (or some other mental state) was it was plausible to argue that the whole
population of China might be in pain? Intuitively, our answer is no.
Block’s thought experiment demonstrates that our subjective experience cannot be functionally reduced.
JOHN SEARLE – THE CHINESE ROOM
5(RE: functional reduction)
Searle asks us to imagine a person alone in a room who follows specific
instructions on how to respond to Chinese characters that are slipped under the door.
Although the person in the room does not understand Chinese, by following the instructions for manipulating symbols and numerals, that person is able to produce strings of Chinese characters that fool the people outside the room into believing that there is a Chinese speaker in the room.
Searle’s original intent was to show that while computers are able to use
syntactic rules to manipulate strings of symbols, they have no understanding of the meaning of those symbols.
THOMAS NAGEL – WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BAT?
(RE: incomplete reduction)
NAGEL suggests that mental states cannot be completely reduced to physical states because the quality of ‘what it is like’ to be a bat (or a human) is left out.6
The physical system cannot account for the subjective point-of-view.
Thus, no amount of physical information can tell us what it is like to be a bat.7
DAVID CHALMERS – THE HARD PROBLEM
(RE: incomplete reduction)
Because the physical is all there is, materialists must explain cognitive functions in terms of physical processes.
While some cognitive functions can be explained as physical processes, some cannot.
David Chalmers distinguishes between these, naming them the easy and hard problems of consciousness respectively.8
The easy problems of consciousness are explaining the various cognitive functions of conscious experiences.9
The ‘hard problem’ is that of understanding why there should be something
it is like to execute these functions.10
FRANK JACKSON – THE KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT
(RE: incomplete reduction)
Jackson suggests that there are certain kinds of perceptual experiences that cannot be accounted for using purely physical information. There is
something missing – qualia.11
Jackson introduces us to Mary.12 Mary is a brilliant neurophysiologist who, for whatever reason, is “… forced to investigate the world from a black and white room via a black and white television monitor.”
As a specialist in vision, Mary knows everything about the physical aspects of sight. But, Mary doesn’t know what it is like to actually see color.
Therefore, even when Mary had all the physical information, it must be that her previous knowledge was incomplete. Therefore, Jackson concludes that physicalism leaves something out.13
KURT GÖDEL – THE INCOMPLETENESS THEORUM
(RE: incomplete reduction)
Patricia Churchland claims that “consciousness is almost certainly a property of the physical brain.”14
However, based upon the findings of his incompleteness theorem (a logical proof) Kurt Gödel determined that, while the physical brain operates
computationally, the mind is something “beyond the brain.”15
Gödel’s finding shows that the mind is not entirely reducible to algorithmic operations.
- 4 - BEYOND REDUCTION
While the Classic Arguments are compelling, they have not succeeded in altering the mainstream materialist view. At the same time, with respect to the materialist stance, unresolved problems regarding the reduction problem remain.
Let’s consider some contemporary arguments put forth by Kim and Dennett.
FUNCTIONALISM - Jaegwon Kim
Kim concedes that qualia resist functional reduction and concludes that “physicalism is untenable”.16
Nevertheless, he does suggest that because qualia are not causally efficacious, the irreducibility of qualia is a minor concern.17
Kim presents his theory as “slightly defective physicalism”, accepting the
limitations because he sees no other credible alternative to physicalism as a world view.18
Kim asks,“But what options are there if we set aside the physicalist picture?”19
WEAK ELIMINATIVISM – Daniel Dennett
Dennett concedes that the task to explain consciousness is “not easy” because any acceptable theory must account for “mind stuff”.20
Dennett writes, “Somehow the brain must be the mind, but unless we can
come to see in some detail how this is possible, our materialism will not explain consciousness, but only promise to explain it, some sweet day.”21
- 5 - FOUR OBJECTIONS
There are four problems with the current arguments put forth by Kim and Dennett, two regarding materialist stance (1 & 2) and two regarding mental reduction (3 & 4):
- 1- The materialist stance is based upon the analogy that past successes in the physical sciences of biology and chemistry lend support to the validity of the materialist theory.22
This analogy is weak. Previous successes in science come from processes that describe the objective, i.e., processes that exclude the subjective, intrinsic aspects, which are the aspects in consideration here.23
Additionally, mental processes have the capacity to be about something (i.e., Brentano’s concept of intentionality24) whereas physical processes do not. The dissimilar nature of the subjective and objective and the differences of intentionality combine to invalidate any comparison.
- 2- Kim chooses materialism because he sees no other plausible option.25
However, a belief that there are no known plausible alternatives is not a valid reason to accept a theory without reservation.
- 3- The logical outcome of the materialist stance requires that the brain is the mind. Therefore, when Dennett claims that “somehow the brain must be the mind”, he is begging the question.
- 4- Functionalists and the eliminativists have been unable to prove the
reduction of the mental to the physical, they trust that the answers will come sometime in the future once more research is done. Here, they are relying on some predictive power of the future; their arguments are not decisive here and now.
- 6 - MY CONCLUSION
Given that there is no decisive result, I argue that we should not rush into a premature conclusion.
The failure of materialist perspectives to explain mind and consciousness is our invitation to take a fresh look at the alternatives.
FOOTNOTES
1. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 33.
2. Dardis. Mental Causation: The Mind-Body Problem, 2. 3. Kim, Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough, 15.
4. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/#2.3, The Chinese Room Argument, accessed August 24, 2018. 5. SEP: Introduction, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/, accessed August 28, 2018.
6. Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” 437.
7. This is Frank Jackson’s summary of Nagel’s argument.
Frank Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia,” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 127 (April 1982): 131. 8. Chalmers, “Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness,” 200.
9. Chalmers, “Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness,” 200.
10. Kriegel, “Chapter 2: A Philosophical Theories of Consciousness,” 36. 11. Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia,” 127.
12. Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia,” 130. 13. Jackson, “Epiphenomenal Qualia,” 130.
14. Grush and Churchland, “Gaps in Penrose’s Toilings,” 10.
15. Penrose, Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness, 128. 16. Kim, Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough, 170.
17. Kim, Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough, 174. 18. Kim, Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough, 174. 19. Kim, Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough, 71. 20. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 65.
21. Dennett, Consciousness Explained, 42.
22. Thanks to University of Victoria Professors Jahn and Hochstein for this observation.
23. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/#IntrNatuArgu, accessed September 23, 2018. 24. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/brentano/#Intentionality, accessed September 24, 2018. 25. Kim, Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough, 71.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Chalmers, David J. “Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness.” Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 2, No.3, (March 1995): 200-219. Dardis, Anthony. Mental Causation: The Mind-Body Problem. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.
Dennett, D. C. Consciousness Explained. 1st ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co, 1991.
Grush, R., Churchland, P.S. “Gaps in Penrose's toiling.” In Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, (January 1, 1995): 10-29. Jackson, Frank. “Epiphenomenal Qualia.” The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 32, No. 127 (April 1982): 127-136.
Kim, Jaegwon. Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Kriegel, Uriah. “Chapter 2: A Philosophical Theories of Consciousness: Contemporary Western Perspectives.” In The Cambridge Handbook of
Consciousness, edited by Philip David Zelazo, Morris Moscovitch, Evan Thompson, 35 – 66, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2007.
Nagel, Thomas. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4 (Oct 1974), 435-450.
Penrose, Roger. Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness. New York, Oxford University Press, 1994.
https://pixabay.com/en/network-social-abstract-3139214/ https://pixabay.com/en/font-chinese-character-china-1190123/ https://pixabay.com/en/take-it-easy-without-having-to-worry-3842473/ https://pixabay.com/en/doctor-research-chemical-observes-3822863/ https://pixabay.com/en/artificial-intelligence-brain-think-3382507/ https://pixabay.com/photos/fantasy-girl-forest-bat-mood-3549684/
