So it would seem that from the perspective of those presuppositions eliminativism is demonstrably wrong, but it does not seem to be demonstrably wrong in any definitive, unprejudiced way. — Janus

Agree that we all have our biases, but you're loosing me with this. Other than the prejudice that something ontic is (a topic for a different debate ... but you'll notice it is equally upheld by eliminativism), where is the prejudice in there ontically being a first person point of view (a first person awareness which is debating the issue of whether or not it exists)?

And again, due to there being a contradiction of reasoning, one cannot hold both eliminativism and there being an awareness aware of eliminativism at the same time and in the same way; therefore, at least one the two is necessarily false.

I would presume nothing of the kind. You might infer anything you like, but again, the act of inference is a judgement. Have a look at Do you believe in God, or is that a Software Glitch. — Wayfarer

Well, then it is a "judgment" which can be accomplished via machine-learning algorithms. I suggest that you check out the article I linked to in my discussion with Galuchat for an example of a primitive sort of "mind reading" accomplished via brain scanning (in any event, the "presumption" was under a physicalistic/supervenient picture of the brain, which was the subject of our discussion).

(BTW, it's interesting that the article which you linked to refers to the software making "inferences" based on the data, something which you apparently believe that software is incapable of doing, even though you cite this as a source friendly to your position.)

it is a "judgment" which can be accomplished via machine-learning algorithms. — Arkady

I notice you have to place judgement in scare quotes, to allow for the obvious fact that computers don't make judgements at all. They compute outcomes, which are then judged. Case in point, from the article I cited:

when you divide the brain into bitty bits and make millions of calculations according to a bunch of inferences, there are abundant opportunities for error, particularly when you are relying on software to do much of the work. This was made glaringly apparent back in 2009, when a graduate student conducted an fM.R.I. scan of a dead salmon and found neural activity in its brain when it was shown photographs of humans in social situations. Again, it was a salmon. And it was dead.

Agree that we all have our biases, but you're loosing me with this. Other than the prejudice that something ontic is (a topic for a different debate ... but you'll notice it is equally upheld by eliminativism), where is the prejudice in there ontically being a first person point of view (a first person awareness which is debating the issue of whether or not it exists)?

And again, due to there being a contradiction of reasoning, one cannot hold both eliminativism and there being an awareness aware of eliminativism at the same time and in the same way; therefore, at least one the two is necessarily false. — javra

From the eliminativist point of view the first person point of view is not ontic, but epiphenomenal. This is a form of monism; but it is not neutral monism. From the point of view of subjective idealism the physical or material is epiphenomenal and the subject is ontic. Neutral monism wants to say that the physical and the mental are not substantially different. The alternative is substance dualism. All these positions rely on grounding assumptions; so none of them are definitively demonstrable in the sense of being free of prejudice.

What about the illusions used by carnivorous plants, and flowering plants to attract pollinators. Will you claim that the insects that are fooled are conscious agents? — Janus

Interesting question! And I suppose the answer must be 'yes' - insects are indeed conscious agents, albeit simple ones. Can you think of an analogy in the mineral or inorganic domain?

The question is whether eliminative physicalism/ materialism denies the reality of information. — Janus

No, that's not the question. There's nothing about that in the review to which the OP is linked.

I was trying to get him to recognize and acknowledge his prejudices, — Janus

Do you think that principles are really 'prejudices'?

I notice you have to place judgement in scare quotes, to allow for the obvious fact that computers don't make judgements at all. They compute outcomes, which are then judged. Case in point, from the article I cited: — Wayfarer

I put "judgement" in scare quotes because, insofar as this form of technological mind-reading relies on judgments at all, it is a type of judgment which can be carried out by machine. (The portion of the article you just quoted refers to software making inferences, I will remind you again!)

Interesting question! And I suppose the answer must be 'yes' - insects are indeed conscious agents, albeit simple ones. Can you think of an analogy in the mineral or inorganic domain? — Wayfarer

So you believe that insects do enjoy subjective experience, and make judgements and decisions? I think it's safe to say that this is not required; and that all that is required is a response to signs, to information. Consciousness may indeed be a complex elaboration of information, with reflexive self-consciousness becoming possible only with the ability to employ symbolic language.

The idea that there is a substantial, immaterial self-consciousness could be the epiphenomenal result of the reificatory power of symbolic language. That's why the question as to whether eliminativism denies the reality of information is indeed relevant to the OP.

Do you think that principles are really 'prejudices'? — Wayfarer

Unless a principle is inescapably self-evident to everyone; then yes, it must be seen as a prejudice, in the sense of its being an axiom that is founded on an intuition that is not shared by all. What else could it be?

From the eliminativist point of view the first person point of view is not ontic, but epiphenomenal. This is a form of monism; but it is not neutral monism. From the point of view of subjective idealism the physical or material is epiphenomenal and the subject is ontic. Neutral monism wants to say that the physical and the mental are not substantially different. The alternative is substance dualism. All these positions rely on grounding assumptions; so none of them are definitively demonstrable in the sense of being free of prejudice. — Janus

In my honest (non-belligerent) impression, you are here accusing me of things that I am not culpable of as pertains to the argument I’ve offered. Where is the argument, of itself, flawed?

As to the prejudices you’ve invoked, these are the conclusions you conceive of as a result of various different premises. But I’m not here debating the repercussions of this stated argument in terms of a concluding ontology--so I will not address these various possible repercussions.

If nothing else, lets both at least pretend, with a friendly wink, that we currently are truth seekers attempting to be as unbiased about our own beliefs and concerns as possible.

An ontology described by eliminativism and the ontic presence of an awareness aware of such ontology are mutually exclusive ontic givens; they can’t both be ontic at the same time and in the same way (unless someone would like to propose an ontology in which mutually exclusive ontic givens are also mutually inclusive at the same time and in the same way, this being a so called possibility I'd argue to be invalid). We can discern different alternatives for eliminativism and, hence, possible errors in it (this without going into the specifics). We cannot discern valid alternatives to our ontic presence as first person points of view while we are aware.

Since only one of the two—eliminativism or non-eliminativism—can be true, which do you rationally find to be true (all biases as pertains to repercussions and concerns about them aside)?

Once we can rationally arrive at an answer to this question, then we can take thing further, if desired, in terms of what it might and might not signify. (However, I'm not personally interested in turning this threads topic into one of ontological worldviews.)

OK then - simulating acts of judgement. In this case, the inference was clearly fallacious, as it indicated that a dead salmon's brain was being stimulated by social contact. Which is the point of the critique in that article - it says that 'a study published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences uncovered flaws in the software researchers rely on to analyze fM.R.I. data. The glitch can cause false positives — suggesting brain activity where there is none — up to 70 percent of the time.'

This doesn't mean that fMRI is not useful - it's a clinical procedure, and invaluable in brain surgery and medicine. But what I'm criticizing, is the notion that you can detect anything about the nature of meaning, or logic, or indeed thought, by using such an apparatus. So, no, the machine is not 'making judgements' - it is producing an output, which is then judged by human agents.

So you believe that insects do enjoy subjective experience, and make judgements and decisions? — Janus

To say that insects 'enjoy' anything seems anthropomorphic to me. But they are subjects of experience, albeit primitive subjects of experience. And therefore, in some sense, forever beyond the purview of the objective sciences, as they're not only objects. (As per Core of Mind and Cosmos.)

I am not an eliminativist, and I'm not accusing you of anything other than that whatever perspective you support, it will not, cannot, be free of presuppositions.

Since only one of the two—eliminativism or non-eliminativism—can be true, which do you rationally find to be true (all biases as pertains to repercussions and concerns about them aside)? — javra

I would opt for non-eliminativisn, but I am not going to pretend that my opting for it is free of prejudice; free of subjective feeling and intuition. I also acknowledge that it is possible that my prejudices, subjective feelings and illusions are all epiphenomenal illusions; although of course I don't believe they are.

I would opt for non-eliminativisn, but I am not going to pretend that my opting for it is free of prejudice; free of subjective feeling and intuition. I also acknowledge that it is possible that my prejudices, subjective feelings and illusions are all epiphenomenal illusions; although of course I don't believe they are. — Janus

If you'd like to end it here, that's OK with me. If you'd like to work this out some more, then please specify which prejudice your are addressing within the argument. We certainly aren't here choosing which of our premises are true and which are false based on preformed beliefs about what the true conclusion is, I'm currently believing, for this would be irrational of us to do.

[edited. my bad, a mix of dyslexia and rushing things leading to too many typos]

To say that insects 'enjoy' anything seems anthropomorphic to me. But they are subjects of experience, albeit primitive subjects of experience. — Wayfarer

"Enjoy" was used in sense of 'experience'; I used the former instead of the latter, though, because it seems clumsy to speak of experiencing experience.

Must the "subjectivity" of an insect be anything non-physical over and above its sensitive physical and/or neural nature? Perhaps you believe it is, but is there any absolute reason why it must be so?

An ontology described by eliminativism and the ontic presence of an awareness aware of such ontology are mutually exclusive ontic givens; they can’t both be ontic at the same time and in the same way — javra

Why not? Why cannot the intuition that awareness is ontologically different than physicality be a subjective epiphenomenal illusion? You haven't presented an argument for that yet.

This doesn't mean that fMRI is not useful - it's a clinical procedure, and invaluable in brain surgery and medicine. But what I'm criticizing, is the notion that you can detect anything about the nature of meaning, or logic, or indeed thought, by using such an apparatus. So, no, the machine is not 'making judgements' - it is producing an output, which is then judged by human agents. — Wayfarer

Then your view is at odds with the evidence. I linked to an article study demonstrating just the opposite of what you say. The study found that brain scans could detect what a subject was thinking based on the physical state of his brain. If this isn't detecting the "meaning" of thoughts (in terms of propositional content), then what would constitute such a demonstration? The fact that the machine's output is judged by human agents is irrelevant. (And, lest you think that I'm basing my position solely on one study, this is merely one of several such studies.)

And, yes, psychology has a problem with replication, as do many other fields of science. But unless you're prepared to state that every instance of fMRI gleaning the content of someone's thoughts from the physical state of their brain was some kind of fluke (itself a position which would be going far beyond the evidence), then there is evidence that such a feat is possible. That's the thing about proofs of principle: you only need one success to demonstrate it. If I claimed that faster-than-light speeds were impossible, and you pointed to a raft of studies which detected faster-than-light speeds achieved by, say, electrons in a particle accelerator, it does me no good to say that 61% of such studies failed to be replicated. Even one successful experiment constitutes a demonstration that superluminal speeds can be achieved, and I would be compelled to revise my worldview accordingly.

Why not? — Janus

Because then 1 + 1 will not be equal to 2 at the same time and in the same way that it is equal to 2, and we then ought not prefer one over the other since their both are equally true and are both equally not true ... and so forth/backward.

I have no idea what you are talking about here.

I have no idea what you are talking about here. — Janus

Well, that was the point: allowing for contradictions leads to a ubiquitous rational unintelligibly ... and that is why there being both an ontology of eliminativism and a non-eliminativst ontology at the same time and in the same way would be an invalid possibility.

But that was not what I asked you to provide an argument for; which you will soon see if you go back and read carefully.

But that was not what I asked you to provide an argument for; which you will soon see if you go back and read carefully. — Janus

OK, firstly, you added text to a sole phrase of "why not" which you don't acknowledge editing in the given post or in you're last. Interpretations of this are present in my mind, but I won't mention them.

so to now quote the entirety of the newly edited version:

Why not? Why cannot the intuition that awareness is ontologically different than physicality be a subjective epiphenomenal illusion? You haven't presented an argument for that yet. — Janus

Secondly, the "intuition" you are now addressing is something of which the first person point of view is aware ... so this moving of the goal post doesn't move anything in terms of this now argument.

Apparently I was adding text while you were responding; but be that as it may, you still haven't offered any actual argument. So, unless you do offer one, I am happy to leave it.

The study found that brain scans could detect what a subject was thinking based on the physical state of his brain — Arkady

And that is precisely what the article that I linked to is criticizing. Of course, given huge expertise, predictive algorithms, and the like, then an expert can deduce something about Subject X's brain patterns, based on that data. But, let's take that same expert, and say 'OK - put aside all reasoned judgement. Don't use your capacity for inference in assessing that data and all your expert knowledge of what such things mean. Now - what do you see?' And the answer is, they will see a graphic representation, an image. So they have to rely on the very thing they're attempting to explain, in order to explain the data they're seeing. And you can't evade the inevitable circularity involved in that.

Even one successful experiment constitutes a demonstration that superluminal speeds can be achieved, and I would be compelled to revise my worldview accordingly. — Arkady

But this is a completely different kind of phenomenon, to demonstrating velocity or mass or some other basic physical measurable attribute. Here what is being discussed is the basis of meaning, the nature of thought. So it's intrinsically a completely different kind of question, to what can be measured in relatively simple terms. All of your arguments here simply must be question-begging, because they will always assume the very thing that needs to be proven - you can't argue about the nature of reason 'from the outside'.

Must the "subjectivity" of an insect be anything non-physical over and above its sensitive physical and/or neural nature? Perhaps you believe it is, but is there any absolute reason why it must be so? — Janus

What do you mean, 'absolute reason'? What I will say is that the 'subject of experience' - in whatever form that might be - is not simply, purely or only an object. And that is why physicalism is the dominant paradigm - because it deals purely in objects, in what can be exactly described in objective terms. Heck, this is what Dennett is always on about - he wants to talk only in objective terms. But this doesn't take into account the philosophical insight that 'absolute objectivity' is an impossibility, as all knowledge is culturally mediated and dependent on our cognitive apparatus, the categories of the understanding, and so on (which I know that you know!)

The upshot is, that I say there's an ontological distinction between living and non-living things; and also between 'rational living things' and 'non-rational living things'. They are, if you like, different 'substances', in the classical sense of that word.

(Anyway, MUST sign out for the day, I'm supposed to be working and have a lot to do.)

Apparently I was adding text while you were responding; but be that as it may, you still haven't offered any actual argument — Janus

for what have I not provided "any actual argument"?

Tell you what. Think it over as much as you'd like. I might reply to you some other time.

Here's a blog comment by Evan Thompson summarizing his interest in a post-physicalist science:
"in my own work I follow the trajectory that arises in the later Husserl and continues in Merleau-Ponty, and that calls for a rethinking of the concept of “nature” in a post-physicalist way—one that doesn’t conceive of fundamental nature or physical being in a way that builds in the objectivist idea that such being is intrinsically or essentially non-experiential. But, again, this point doesn’t entail that nature is intrinsically or essentially experiential (this is the line that panpsychists and Whiteheadians take). (Maybe it is, but I don’t think we’re now in position to know that.) All I want to say for now (or think I have grounds for saying now) is that we can see historically how the concept of nature as physical being got constructed in an objectivist way, while at the same time we can begin to conceive of the possibility of a different kind of construction that would be post-physicalist and post-dualist–that is, beyond the divide between the “mental” (understood as not conceptually involving the physical) and the “physical” (understood as not conceptually involving the mental)."

What I will say is that the 'subject of experience' - in whatever form that might be - is not simply, purely or only an object. — Wayfarer

I would say that living bodies, whether plant, animal or human are not merely objects. I mean, what exactly is an object anyway?

Thanks! I had his dad’s book ages ago - William Irwin Thomson ‘Time Falling Bodies Take to Light’. Marvellous book. I haven’t ploughed into his book, it’s a bit too heavily into biology for my interests, but he’s definitely on my Preferred Authors list.

I mean, what exactly is an object anyway? — Janus

‘What is described by physics’, I would have thought. That is the whole attraction of physicalism - that you can say exactly what something is, and predict how it will behave, according to laws.

‘What is described by physics’ — Wayfarer

If a physical object is defined as 'what is described by physics" then that is circular and is really no definition at all.

In the current understanding of physical science the behaviour of 'non-living' entities can be predicted only probabilistically. The behaviour of living organism can be predicted only statistically or 'on average'. The notion of physical prediction as mechanical precision is a ghost of Newtonism.

You can also say that the cause of the pigeon's behavior was its prior training (contrasting it with untrained pigeons). Or the fact that it was awake and hungry (as opposed to asleep or sated). Or the fact that it was there and not elsewhere. And we've only considered the pigeon as an agent or an organism; we could go further into the various mechanical or physiological causes, and so on. There seem to be so many different causes of the same event operating at the same time, one ought to wonder how it is that they don't clash with one another! But of course they don't. — SophistiCat

Yes, those also all are very good example of contrastive explanations of the effect (or 'event') to be explained. What is especially enlightening, and instructive, though, regarding the color example, is that in this particular case there is a breakdown of supervenience of the domain relative to which the cause operates (and its mention is explanatory) over the material specification of the explained 'event'. This isn't something that I had stressed in the message you replied to.

In all of your examples supervenience obtains. If the cause had been different, counterfactually, then the material basis for the process whereby the cause gives rise to the effect would also have been different. For instance, if the pigeon hadn't been awake then its eyelids would have been closed and hence it would not have visually registered the presence of the stimulus... etc.

On the other hand, in the example where the pigeon had been trained to peck at red objects and thereafter pecks at a crimson object, what makes it a cause (and a good explanation) of the pecking behavior that the object was red, while the fact that the object was specifically crimson is *not* a cause (and neither is it a relevant explanation of the pecking behavior) is the fact that the antecedent 'event' (contrastively defined as being subsumed under the general class "materially constituted the presentation of a red stimulus") belongs, indeed, to a general class that that explains not only the behavior of this pigeon at that time but, potentially, its pecking behavior at a later time, or the behavior of other pigeons that would have been (relevantly) similarly trained. But this fact of explanatory class membership isn't something that supervenes narrowly on the present and actual process that exemplifies it.

And that is precisely what the article that I linked to is criticizing. — Wayfarer

No: the article you linked to describes a problem with replication in certain types of studies (including those using fMRI), as well as false positives detected by the use of dubious software. It says nothing about the tout court impossibility of inferring the proposition or conceptual content of bran states from fMRI studies (or from brain imaging studies generally: fMRI is of course not the only such method).

Of course, given huge expertise, predictive algorithms, and the like, then an expert can deduce something about Subject X's brain patterns, based on that data. But, let's take that same expert, and say 'OK - put aside all reasoned judgement. Don't use your capacity for inference in assessing that data and all your expert knowledge of what such things mean. Now - what do you see?' And the answer is, they will see a graphic representation, an image. So they have to rely on the very thing they're attempting to explain, in order to explain the data they're seeing. And you can't evade the inevitable circularity involved in that.

I'm sorry, but this paragraph makes no sense to me. Could you be more specific in where the circularity lies in inferring (or whatever your preferred verb is when computers do it) the propositional or conceptual content of a subject's thoughts from brain imaging data?

But this is a completely different kind of phenomenon, to demonstrating velocity or mass or some other basic physical measurable attribute. Here what is being discussed is the basis of meaning, the nature of thought. So it's intrinsically a completely different kind of question, to what can be measured in relatively simple terms. All of your arguments here simply must be question-begging, because they will always assume the very thing that needs to be proven - you can't argue about the nature of reason 'from the outside'.

Again, I fail to see where the question-begging lies. My example was an analogy of our disagreement here; I am aware that measuring an object's velocity is a "completely different kind of phenomenon" from measuring brain states. My point was only that, problems with replication aside, even a single success constitutes proof of principle (in this case, proof of principle that mental states are physically realized by particular types of brain states, brain states which can be detected via neuroimaging in order to say with at least some reliability what the subject is thinking about).

Could you be more specific in where the circularity lies in inferring (or whatever your preferred verb is when computers do it) the propositional or conceptual content of a subject's thoughts from brain imaging data? — Arkady

What I’m arguing is that when scientists analyse image of neural data, they’re employing the very faculty which they’re purporting to explain. After all, if you’re seeking to explain the nature of thought then you’re going to have to explain how logic operates, are you not? Logic or rational inference is fundamental to human thought and language. So you’re purporting to show how these are represented in the visual data. But even to do that, you’re necessarily saying ‘this pattern of voxels is associated with this area of the brain which we think is mainly engaged with such-and-such aspects of language’. But then you’re relying on the very faculty which you’re purporting to explain. It’s not as if you’re demonstrating that faculty ‘from the outside’ as it were - you can’t literally ‘see’ the act of representation in the data. You’re saying ‘that pattern of data means X’.

That interpretive act, the judgement that ‘this means that’, is fundamental to all rational and linguistic thought. We don’t notice it, I contend, because we’re always operating from inside it. That is why ‘denialism’ seems to be able to deny it. It is ‘invisible’ to us because we’re never apart from or outside of it - it is never present among the objective data of experience. But that’s because it’s ‘transcendental’ in the sense that transcendental idealism understands it - constitutive of, but not visible to, experience. The inivisibilty of the mind to objective analysis is the point of the departure for behaviourism, which was to become one of the main forms of what Strawson calls ‘denialism’ in the essay we’re discussing.

[This kind of critique is also found in Thomas Nagel’s book The Last Word.]