And even if such explanations aren't possible, why can't there be other explanations as to why science cannot explain it than "obviously physicalism doesn't work"? — Benkei

Such as immaterial explanations? I would be willing to consider such an explanation if you have one to offer (or refer to).

No no, it's your turn to answer some of my questions. There needs to be some kind of reciprocity in this conversation or we can stop here. Your choice.

I'm still waiting for citations of explanations of human learning written strictly in terms of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. The reason why this is important was explained in the OP's The Heretic link, to wit:

"If materialism is true as an explanation of everything—and they insist it is—then psychological facts, for example, must be reducible to biology, and then down to chemistry, and finally down to physics. If they weren’t reducible in this way, they would (ta-da!) be irreducible. And any fact that’s irreducible would, by definition, be uncaused and undetermined; meaning it wouldn’t be material. It might even be spooky stuff."

Or, you can provide any other explanation which you think validates materialism. Your choice.

Being reducible is not the same as being explained.

Feel free to cite research which establishes a causal relationship (not just a correlation) between neurophysiology and human learning.

The excerpt sounds like something a 17th century scientist might say about humans never learning how to achieve space travel, or understand the secrets of disease. It's based in ignorance — Harry Hindu
How dare a mere philosopher question the scientific consensus. — Wayfarer

That's funny, Wayfarer, because a few months ago, you said this about those that deny the scientific consensus of global warming:

The other political point I have noticed is a strong correlation between intelligent design and climate-change denial. The main ID website, Uncommon Descent, routinely ridicules any suggestion of human-induced climate change. To me, that shows up their basic inability to correctly interpret scientifically-established facts, or to confuse the same with matters of faith. — Wayfarer

If climate change deniers shows up their basic inability to correctly interpret scientifically-established facts, then how is it that you aren't doing the same thing when denying the useful theories of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology?

This also isn't much different than the religious notion that we are someone separate from, or above, nature. Haven't we learned that this isn't the case? — Harry Hindu


It never ceases to amaze me, the ease with which people seem to assume that 'we're just animals', when the difference between h. sapiens, and every other creature is so manifestly and entirely obvious. It's kind of a cultural blind spot, an inability to recognize the obvious. — Wayfarer

What an odd argument this is. As I was growing up, what I recognized is how similar we are to animals, with all animals sharing many features like having eyes, mouths, hearts, blood, and brains.

Every animal is different from each other. If humans are special because they are different, then every animal is special because each species is different from another.

That's not true. The scientific method is a very specific empirically based method. If two things are interacting, and only one of them can be observed empirically, then "scientific understanding" can only be extended to that thing which can be observed. One could make predictions about how the unobservable thing would influence the observable, and these predictions may or may not be reliable, but since this could produce no statements about what the unobservable thing is, it doesn't qualify as an explanation of that thing. — Metaphysician Undercover

Now you seem to be confusing the term, "observable". How is it that I'm not observing the external influences on my body, which includes my mind? When I observe a bee stinging my arm, I feel it in my mind. Observing is done with eyes looking out on the world and a brain processing that information. Are you saying that you can observe your own mind and that is the only thing you can observe? Doesn't that lead to the infinite regress of the homonculus in the Cartesian theater? What is an "observation"? What does it entail?

The issue of interaction is even more complicated than you might think. Plato proposes a tripartite person, such that interaction between the mind and body is carried out through a third thing, spirit, or passion. This third thing, which is a medium between body and mind, makes it even more difficult for science to get to the mind. Science cannot even get a grasp on the emotions, which are proper to that third thing, the medium, the spirit, because it has no access to the influence of the mind on the spirit. — Metaphysician Undercover

This third person makes it more difficult for science only because this third thing hasn't been clearly defined in order to be falsifiable. Not only that but it is more complicated in general. Proposing a third thing that isn't necessary makes things more complicated and goes against Occam's Razor.

Feel free to explain why it's relevant.

Sure. It would prove that psychology is reducible to biology, wouldn't it?

It would but the absence of such proof isn't proof that physicalism can't be true. As I already said: ... even if such explanations aren't possible, why can't there be other explanations as to why science cannot explain such things other than "obviously physicalism doesn't work"? The state of the start also says rather little about whether it will be possible at some point so it isn't relevant to whether physicalism is absurd or not.

Finally, there is some work on memory and learning and the biochemistry and neurobiology involved. It isn't my field of expertise though but this is interesting:

https://www.ted.com/talks/ed_boyden

and there's the work of David Freedman as well.

Thanks by the way. Not sure I really understand it yet but it's food for thought.

It would [prove reducibility] but the absence of such proof isn't proof that physicalism can't be true. — Benkei

It may be possible at some point in the future to establish causation between levels of abstraction, but third person observation/measurement of subjective experience is not possible (as others have already noted).

Nagel suggests two ways of modifying materialism to account for mental phenomena (i.e., deny that mental is irreducible, or deny that mental requires a scientific explanation).

He concludes: "It makes sense to seek an expanded form of understanding that includes the mental but that is still scientific — i.e. still a theory of the immanent order of nature."

The philosophical term ‘substantia’ is not ‘substance’ as we understand it, but ‘that in which attributes inhere’. — Wayfarer

As I understand it, the philosophical understanding of 'substance' has never been allied to its common understanding as "stuff", so it's not at all clear what you are actually referring to here with your " But it’s all a colossal mistake, a category error, a misreading".

If climate change deniers shows up their basic inability to correctly interpret scientifically-established facts, then how is it that you aren't doing the same thing when denying the useful theories of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology? — Harry Hindu

I'm not denying that such theories can't be useful, but that they often occupy a position of exaggerated importance in the landscape.

Every animal is different from each other. If humans are special because they are different, then every animal is special because each species is different from another. — Harry Hindu

You make my point for me.

As I understand it, the philosophical understanding of 'substance' has never been allied to its common understanding as "stuff", so it's not at all clear what you are actually referring to here with your " But it’s all a colossal mistake, a category error, a misreading". — Janus

What I'm referring to, is the fact that the meaning of 'res cogitans' is often interpreted in line with the vernacular understanding of 'substance' - hence the absurd Wiki quote I posted about 'ectoplasm' - which was derived from the work of actual academic philosophers.

How is it that I'm not observing the external influences on my body, which includes my mind? When I observe a bee stinging my arm, I feel it in my mind. — Harry Hindu

You premise that your mind is part of your body, so you're just begging the question. I can't answer that question because your premise is not something I'm willing to accept. And I do not agree with your use of "I feel it in my mind". Any time a bee has stung me (many times I might add), I have felt it in the part of my body where it stings me, not in my mind. Do you not recognize a distinction between the conclusion you make with your mind, "a bee is stinging me", and the observations which lead you to that conclusion?

Proposing a third thing that isn't necessary makes things more complicated and goes against Occam's Razor. — Harry Hindu

The third aspect is necessary, because it gets us beyond the common materialist complaint, which you have brought up.

What I'm referring to, is the fact that the meaning of 'res cogitans' is often interpreted in line with the vernacular understanding of 'substance' - hence the absurd Wiki quote I posted about 'ectoplasm' - which was derived from the work of actual academic philosophers. — Wayfarer

I can't see this. If you mean to say that the meaning of 'res cogitans' is often interpreted by philosophers (and really who else bothers to interpret it at all?) in line with the common understanding of substance as shown in expressions such as "chemical substance", I just don't think this is right.
For instance if, presuming physicalism, humans are exhaustively physical beings consisting only of structured physical matter, and human beings think; from that it does not follow that matter per se must think. In other words it does not follow that there is "thinking matter", simpliciter.

Similarly, if fire is an exhaustively material phenomenon, and fire is hot, it does not follow that matter, per se. must be hot. Or if water is nothing more than physical matter, and water is wet, it does not follow that physical matter is wet, and so on.

I loved Nagel's 'What is it like to be a bat' and, as a mystically-inclined non-materialist, I have no objection to Nagel criticising neo-darwinist materialism.

But I don't like when the target is extended to include the theory of evolution, and his writing is co-opted by young Earth creationists, intelligent design advocates and fundamentalists to try to support their wacky counter-theories. They imply that to accept the theory of evolution is to be a reductionist and a materialist and that is simply wrong.

If you mean to say that the meaning of 'res cogitans' is often interpreted by philosophers... in line with the common understanding of substance as shown in expressions such as "chemical substance", I just don't think this is right. — Janus

It is indubitable, in my opinion. If you're familiar with Ryle's criticism of the 'ghost in the machine', that is very much based the problem of treating res cogitans as purportedly objective. Husserl said, in the Crisis of European Sciences:

Descartes' revolutionary breakthrough to subjectivity lost its original impetus ...by interpreting the transcendental ego as a thinking thing, res cogitans, or thinking substance, substantia cogitans; Descartes had correctly identified the ego as 'the greatest of all enigmas'. but unfortunately went on to misconstrue it in naturalistic fashion as an objective substance in the world. …

Husserl emphasises Descartes' 'double-sidedness', i.e. the ambiguities inherent in his foundational moves. Descartes is responsible for the 'primal foundation' of transcendental philosophy (the discovery of the absolute evidence of the ego cogito), but he also inaugurates its naturalistic and objectivist misinterpretation.

Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences and Transendental Phenomenology, Dermot Moran, emphasis added.

I don't like when the target is extended to include the theory of evolution — andrewk

According to Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Pinker, anyone who raises even philosophical objections of the kind that Nagel does, must ipso facto be on the side of creationism. There are only two possibilities in their view: materialist or creationist. You either believe and accept the materialist account which they subscribe to, or you've gone over to the other side, even if you profess to be atheist. The 'jealous God' of Christian monotheism dies hard.

According to Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Pinker, anyone who raises even philosophical objections of the kind that Nagel does, must ipso facto be on the side of creationism. There are only two possibilities in their view: materialist or creationist. — Wayfarer

I don't know much about Coyne, but I like and agree with some of Dennett's work, and ditto for Pinker - particularly 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' (again based on secondary sources - TLDR). But I can't agree with them on that. It's not just my worldview that they are summarily dismissing, but also that of the very many religious or spiritual people who work in evolutionary biology. They may be a minority in that field, but there are still very many of them, and they're generally very clever people.

Aesthetically too, I just really dislike that 'If you are not with me you're against me' attitude. It reminds me of George W Bush and the second gulf war. I don't think we need another war.

But the philosophical idea of a thinking substance has never been the idea of a thinking substance, where substance is thought of as in "chemical substance", because to interpret it that way would not be dualistic, but panpsychistic; it would be to say that matter (substance) thinks.

Descartes' notion of a mental substance cannot be thought of to be anything but quasi-analogous to physical substance. Also even Descartes' notion of physical substance cannot be anything like the common idea of " a chemical substance" because a chemical substance is a particular kind of substance. To think that way might be more akin to Aristotelian ideas of substance; where substances are individuals or kinds (according to Aristotle you and I would be substances, for example).

The objectification of human beings is inherent in the whole Western tradition, as I see it; it is not uniquely the result of modern science. It has accelerated and intensified since the Industrial Revolution, due to various influences including explicitly thinking of humans as resources to be exploited (Capitalism) (which is not to suggest that humans were not exploited previous to this) and the rise of commodification and consumerism. It is a massively complex and interwoven dialectic which you seem to want to oversimplify; that is what I disagree with in your approach.

here’s a very deep problem with the way the understanding of Descartes’ ‘res cogitans’ developed. It literally means ‘thinking substance’ and that is the way it has become understood. I guess ectoplasm is pretty near the mark. But it’s all a colossal mistake, a category error, a misreading. The philosophical term ‘substantia’ is not ‘substance’ as we understand it, but ‘that in which attributes inhere’. It was the Latin translation of the term ‘ouisia’, which is nearer to ‘being’ than ‘stuff’ — Wayfarer

Along these lines, I'd stress that "thinking substance" tempts us to think of a being among beings, when far more significantly we have the openness of being itself. Through us the world is. We aren't a thing but 'the there' itself, the field in which there are things.

Ideas like "thinking substance" are themselves entities in this 'there' that they aim at. "Thinking substance" does recognize the "productive-creative logic" of or in the there. Ordinary practical life understands this 'there' as a person in a body among bodies. Descartes' forgets to doubt the sense of being trapped in an individual 'mind' that may or may not be right about the non-mind. He's insufficiently 'behind' the inherited pre-interpretation to get the job done, one might say.

In short, the 'subject' tends to be conceived as a view on the object and neglected as the condition of possibility of the object. But this subject-object distinction itself depends on an opening that it tends to obscure in a greed for correctness. Wanting-to-prove-something is an 'attunement' that may constrain what becomes conspicuous. Aren't the so-called subject and the so-called object given radically together? For the most part I "am" what I look at and do. There's a voice in one's head, too, of course. But isn't it interesting that existence or the presence of the there is overlooked in a focus on this 'voice' and its accuracy?

Through us the world is. We aren't a thing but 'the there' itself, the field in which there are things. — t0m

Through us the world is for us, (where 'world' is taken to denote 'the collection of things and their relations); the world is always already externalized, it is never my living experience, but merely a conceptualization. So, I can't agree that we are the "field in which there are things" because that field is precisely the world; and we are not the world.

As I understand it, the philosophical understanding of 'substance' has never been allied to its common understanding as "stuff", so it's not at all clear what you are actually referring to here with your " But it’s all a colossal mistake, a category error, a misreading". — Janus

Surely Aristotle’s concern for “thaten” does reflect the folk metaphysics search for an ur-stuff. Substance became defined hylomorphically as in-formed matter. So substance is a stuff with inherent properties or potential.

I would agree that there also lurks a more sophisticated reading of Aristotelian substance.

If instead the focus is on individuation, then the substantial can be taken to mean simply the individuated. Substance is about unbounded potential becoming concretely constrained.

So drill down to the root of being and - if existence is pure individuation - then the ur-stuff is the radically unindividuated. The Apeiron.

So there is the conventional definition of substance - the ur-stuff debate that leads to ectoplasmic dualism or panpsychism. Then there is the flip version of hylomorphism where existence is the individuated, and thus quite a different story of constraints on unbound freedoms needs to be told.

Surely Aristotle’s concern for “thaten” does reflect the folk metaphysics search for an ur-stuff. — apokrisis

The problem is that ur-stuff cannot be any particular stuff, because if it were it would already possess some particular form, and so then could not be pure primordial stuff. So, the idea of substance as prior to form seems to be akin to an idea like 'being', which has no form except as it is instantiated in beings. As Hegel pointed out pure being or substance must be thought to be akin to nothingness (no-thing-ness) or your (and Anaximander's) Apeiron.

So, as you say being is indeed the undifferentiated.

the philosophical idea of a thinking substance has never been the idea of a thinking substance, where substance is thought of as in "chemical substance", because to interpret it that way would not be dualistic, but panpsychistic; it would be to say that matter (substance) thinks. — Janus

Well, Descartes himself theorised that res cogitans interacted with the body (which was purely material) through the pituitary gland. So it inevitably came to be thought of as something like a 'spiritual substance', rightly or wrongly (mostly, wrongly.) I’m not saying I think it’s a valid idea, I’m saying it’s a very widespread misconception. That wiki article I found on ‘epiphenomenal ectoplasm’ wasn’t actually ironic or humorous; people, even philosophers, really do entertain such ideas.

(Actually I am very sceptical of the philosophical idea of ‘substantia’ - ‘what stands under’ - right from Aristotle forward. I don’t *think* there’s an equivalent idea in Plato, and that it really came to the fore with Aristotle’s Metaphysics. That is something I need to reseach a bit more. )

Through us the world is. We aren't a thing but 'the there' itself, the field in which there are things. — t0m

That is close to Husserl’s criticism of naturalism.

The objectification of human beings is inherent in the whole Western tradition, as I see it; it is not uniquely the result of modern science. — Janus

I think it is something that coincides with and may be causally related to the modern period, and that this aspect of Cartesian dualism is a pretty central part of it, as discussed in this quote from Nagel’s text. One of the consequences of this development is that the very faculty which makes it possible, namely, the human mind, is itself denied by the science that it has created, as for example in the from of ‘eliminative materialism’. Something similar to biting the hand that feeds you, or sawing off the branch that you’re sitting on.

Through us the world is for us, (where 'world' is taken to denote 'the collection of things and their relations); the world is always already externalized, it is never my living experience, but merely a conceptualization. — Janus

I don't object to "through us the world is for us." But I don't agree that the world always already externalized. We can think of TLP Wittgenstein's 'metaphysical subject.' It is not 'in the world.' It is the world. Anything that you know about you is 'for you,' an object for this subject that therefore vanishes to a point. And yet this point is the 'there' itself, a synonym for the being of beings. The subject inasmuch as it is an entity for itself is no longer the subject. It is 'world' or 'object.' But the subject-object distinction breaks down if all that is left of the subject is the 'there' of all the things within the there that are not the there.

*I don't at all deny the everyday sense of being a body or of carefully steering this body through the world. Somehow the being of the world is tied to a brain within the world. Yet the world remains after others die. A Mobius strip comes to mind.

As Hegel pointed out pure being or substance must be thought to be akin to nothingness (no-thing-ness) or your (and Anaximander's) Apeiron. — Janus

Maybe Hegel missed something, though, when he focused on the what-it-is as opposed to the that-it-is of being. His being is just a pure thing, an entity about which nothing can be said. He images this being 'already there.' So his being is not the being of beings in a stronger sense but only an abstraction of what they all have in common, which is bare or indeterminate unity.

Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing. — Hegel

The 'thereness' of entities can only be 'nothing' in a dry conceptual sense, simply because the that-it-is of an entitiy is not its what-it-is But this that-it-is of entities in the field of the there is the condition of possibility for asking after the what-it-is of entities.

I don't read Hegel as asserting that being is a "pure thing"; rather it is no-thing. This is Hegel's preemption of Heidegger's ontological difference. I also believe Hegel is concerned with the "what-it-is" of being, but rather with unravelling the logic of the concept of being. That-it-is is a given; Hegel would echo Spinoza in declaring that there is no possibility that there could be nothing. Being is no-thing, ( insofar as we cannot say anything really determinate about it) but it obviously is not nothing at all.

I would say that being is certainly not an abstraction for Hegel. In a way Hegel's notion of being equates with his idea of spirit. the world of beings is the dialectical manifestation of spirit.