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Peterdjones comments on The raw-experience dogma: Dissolving the “qualia” problem - Less Wrong
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How do you know? If materialism is a scientific hypothesis, it is disproveable, ie it could run into a phenomenon it cannot explain. OTOH, if it is a case of dogmatically rejecting anythign that doens't fit a materialistic worldview, how is that rational?
I could imagine such a thing happening. The fact that it hasn't happened is why we should be firm materialists. As it stands, we have every reason to expect that when we delve into the neurobiology of the brain, we will find a complete, material, physical explanation for the phenomenon of "people talking about qualia." Yes, there's "still a chance" that consciousness may turn out to somehow lie outside the realm of physics as we know it, but that doesn't license you to believe or expect it.
Materialism could be a well-confirmed hypothesis that we should accept fairly firmly, but that does't "clear up" any problems whatsoever. Believing, today, that the qualia will one day have a materialistic explanation does not tell us today what that explanation is.
Yes, I agree. I'm only claiming that materialists should classify the remaining hard work as neurobiology, not philosophy. On the philosophical side, we should realize that the answer to questions like "How do material brains give rise to immaterial qualia?" is "There are no immaterial things; investigate the brain more thoroughly and you will understand the basis of internal experience."
It's not clear who is supposed to be posing that question. The is usually posed without prejudice to the materiality of qualia.
That is an expecation about an answer, not an answer.
This is not clear at all - even though I do otherwise agree with your physicalist premises - because the most detailed evidence about subjective experience has been collected by philosophers, namely phenomenologists. The "hard" work probably encompasses any of biology, physics and philosophy.
Could you taboo "material"/"immaterial". In particular are, say, video game characters "material"?
Expecting the brain to be non-reducible makes you open to magic explanations.
Expecting it to be reducible is not in itself an explanation.
Materialism is neither a scientific hypothesis, nor a case of dogmatically rejecting anything that doesn't fit a materialistic worldview.
So how is the lifting being done? By elimination, as per your other comment?
Could you please rephrase this question?
How does one solve problems by "adopting materialism"?
I do not hold that materialism solves any problems.
Materialism is the useful tautology that everything that is woven into the Great Web of Causality falls under the category of "physics". And that by "physics" we mean "everything in the GWC".
Non-materialism is the non useful statement that some things exist and effect the GWC without being part of the GWC.
I don't see the usefullness. There's a usefull distinction between, for instance,
"everything reduces to the behaviour of its smalles constituents"
and
"there are multiple independent layers, each with their own laws and causality".
I can also see the difference between
"Everything that effects is effected"
and
"There are uncasued causes and epiphenomenal danglers".
reductionism is orthogonal to materialism
uncaused causes are empirically verifiable (we have no clear examples)
Once you clear up all the crap around dangling epiphenomena with the GAZP, what's left has no use.
Maybe. But if you distinguish them, it turns out that the work is beign done by R-ism.
We have candidates, such as the big bang, and the possible disappearance of information in black holes.
I'm still rather unpersuaded that you can solve problems by adopting beliefs. Sounds too much like faith to me.
Likewise. I wonder what you are referring to?
The_Duck wote:
I seem to have translated "accepting" into "adopting"
Can you give a materialist account of this "Great Web of Causality"?
All the things that effect the other things.
Ok, now taboo "effect".
see pearl
So how would I use this description of "effect" to taboo the word in the following sentence?
Or would you argue that the above sentence is incoherent.
It's not incoherent.
I don't know. I don't understand pearl's reduction of causality. I just know it's there.
Mathematical relations like "hydrogen properties are dependent of electron mass" might not fit the causality concept. Or maybe I just can't make the math jump.
Anyways, what are you gaining by these questions? Do you have some grand solution that you are making me jump thru hoops to find? Do you think I have some grand solution that you are jumping thru hoops to squeeze out of me?
I suspect you mean "affects."