Of course whatever is is. It's false that 2 + 2 is 4 by nature, since "equal" never occurs in the mathematical sense in nature [if nature here means things one can point to]. Equal means a mathematical unit, not something in the world we can point to. Equal, properly so-called, is only in the mind. In a similar way, of course one is against many behaviors, but to say they are bad as such is not cogent. One doesn't like, one feels it is wrong, some action, that is cogent.

Consider the abortion issue, is it not readily predictable that a person's upbringing will alter their views on the issue whether the fetus is primary, or the right of the woman? Expand that to the whole of evolution and reality, one's views of morality may be causal. In any case, it is not simply cogent (questions about the ultimate status of what we are long used to calling morals), as are the spontaneous feelings and views about liking or not liking particular actions.

human thoughts (where our math, morality and fiction are developed) map to physical entities in our mind through neuron patterns and such, and thereby exist in the ontological sense. — Read Parfit

I think a cogent objection to this argument has been articulated by Feser:

Brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, the motion of water molecules, electrical current, and any other physical phenomenon you can think of, seem clearly devoid of any inherent meaning. By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity. Yet our thoughts do have inherent meaning – that’s how they are able to impart it to otherwise meaningless ink marks, sound waves, etc. In that case, though, it seems that our thoughts cannot possibly be identified with any physical processes in the brain. In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes.

Furthermore, if you were to try and ascertain the sense in which 'neuron pattersn and such' constitute 'human thoughts', then this would require interpretation and judgement: that this pattern of data means or equates to such and such a thought. But the nature of meaning, and the nature of judgement, is precisely what it is, that such an analysis is intended to explain. So such a judgement can't help but be circular or question-begging.

Parfit argues that we can ask if claims are compatible with the laws of nature. — Read Parfit

You ought to consider that any "laws" are just human constructs. like any other concepts If you think that the "laws of nature" are some independently existing laws, then how would we know whether the humanly constructed laws are a proper representation of the independent laws, or "fictions"? We'd have to ask, are the humanly constructed laws compatible with the independent laws. But all that we have to go on is the world we perceive, the humanly constructed laws, and logic and reason. So it's quite clear that Parfit's suggestion doesn't solve the problem of distinguishing fictitious ideas from non-fictitious ideas.

I cannot tell if you distinguish between ontology and metaphysics. Ontology is about what it means to be, and presupposes a being for whom the question is an issue, who can approach the question. Metaphysics is about what is, in the sense of an object. Nor should "to be" be confused with being. In short, ontology pays no attention to metaphysical claims, not because they're lesser claims in any sense, but because ontology and metaphysics are about different things.

The notion that thoughts have metaphysical being is problematic, it seem to me. There are brain waves & etc. But these are problems for metaphysicians. Ontologically one can ask what it means to have thoughts, and proceed along whatever lines open up. The question of what thoughts are doesn't arise. This is only to say that the two, metaphysics and ontology, are different, and it can be more than a little tricky to avoid confusing them.

While studying this question I ran across Parfit who argues, roughly, that human thoughts (where our math, morality and fiction are developed) map to physical entities in our mind through neuron patterns and such, and thereby exist in the ontological sense. — Read Parfit

This use of "ontology" for example, looks like it should be "metaphysical." This goes back to your example of Pegasus: in metaphysical terms, talking about Pegasus is nonsense. There is no Pegasus. But clearly and obviously there is, and he comes with a long history. The way out of this contradiction is to recognize that it is not a real contradiction. Metaphysically, no Pegasus. But "Pegasus" is meaningful name. One simply asks, what does "Pegasus" mean, and then what it means for there to be such an idea as Pegasus - and so on.

If you think that the "laws of nature" are some independently existing laws, then how would we know whether the humanly constructed laws are a proper representation of the independent laws, or "fictions"? — Metaphysician Undercover

By conducting experiments, for example, by rolling two spherical weights of different mass down an incline to see whether the heavier one accelerates more quickly. Other examples also come to mind.

@Wayfarer

In the Feser quote you posted, he asserts that “thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes.”. He theorized that physical brain patterns like what would represent the number 1 in our head, “By themselves they are simply meaningless patterns of electrochemical activity.”

I must admit I am scratching my head a bit by his use of the word “with”. Brain scientists use gadgets to identify brain processes, all we can do on our own is experience them.

Moving on to his larger point, I suppose if you isolated a group of electrochemical states “by themselves’’ you could argue they are meaningless in that sense, but I think the shortcoming of his reasoning is that these states are not isolated. Instead, they are subset of the larger thinking apparatus given to us by Evolution. These states are an important part of the same apparatus we use to ponder the concept of ‘meaning’ in the first place.

I am curious. Do you subscribe to the theory that Evolution made our brain, and the brain produces thoughts solely through some physical process? If so, the fact that we can think about abstract concepts implies those concepts exist in some physical form in our mind?

Furthermore, if you were to try and ascertain the sense in which 'neuron pattersn and such' constitute'human thoughts', then this would require interpretation and judgement: that this pattern of data means or equates to such and such a thought. But the nature of meaning, and the nature of judgement, is precisely what it is, that such an analysis is intended to explain. So such a judgement can't help but be circular or question-begging. — Wayfarer

The only thing I am defending is that when when someone ‘discovers’ or ‘learns’ an abstract concept like the number 1, that concept then takes a physical form in our brain. Once this concept is physically in our brain, this physical entity deserves an ontological status; it will have causal effect in future physical thinking events within the larger apparatus.

Parfit argues that we can ask if claims are compatible with the laws of nature.— Read Parfit

You ought to consider that any "laws" are just human constructs. like any other concepts If you think that the "laws of nature" are some independently existing laws, then how would we know whether the humanly constructed laws are a proper representation of the independent laws, or "fictions"? We'd have to ask, are the humanly constructed laws compatible with the independent laws. But all that we have to go on is the world we perceive, the humanly constructed laws, and logic and reason. So it's quite clear that Parfit's suggestion doesn't solve the problem of distinguishing fictitious ideas from non-fictitious ideas. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, the laws of nature are a human construct, but that does not change the fact that they are the best reference for whether or not some other claim is compatible with how nature works.

Yes our perceptions are flawed at best, but the rigorous methods, evidence and peer review required for a theory to reach this scientific designation provides an important standard to sort out less rigorously established and conflicting claims about how nature works.

I must admit I am scratching my head a bit by his use of the word “with”. Brain scientists use gadgets to identify brain processes, all we can do on our own is experience them. — Read Parfit

Well, you did say that thoughts, language and reason 'exist in an ontological sense' as brain processes. But now you say that 'all we can do is experience them'. So - does the nature of first-person experience need to be understood in terms of brain processes, in order to understand them? Are they really physical or neurological in nature? That question is the basis of the well-known 'hard problem of consciousness' first articulated by philosophers David Chalmers.

Moving on to his larger point, I suppose if you isolated a group of electrochemical states “by themselves’’ you could argue they are meaningless in that sense, but I think the shortcoming of his reasoning is that these states are not isolated. Instead, they are subset of the larger thinking apparatus given to us by Evolution — Read Parfit

I'm dubious about treating evolution as an agency. The expression 'given to us by Evolution' seems to me an example of the way that modern culture tends to attribute to biological evolution the agency that was previously attributed to God (especially because Evolution is capitalised.)

It is nowadays commonplace to believe that science has an in-principle understanding of how human cognitive faculties evolved and that this provides an account of the nature of the ability to reason and so on. But without wishing to detract from the science, the problem is that such thinking is reductionist insofar as it wishes to understand reason, language and abstract thought purely through the lens of the biological sciences. But biological science is not directly concerned with such faculties, except for in a secondary sense; the point of the theory of evolution is to explain the origin of species, not to solve complex problems of philosophy of mind.

And again, identifying language and reason with neural processes begs the question of where reason receives it warrant. If it is indeed only a matter of successful adaption to the environment, then in what sense could it be said to be true? This actually is a very deep question, and is the subject of many philosophy texts.

The only thing I am defending is that when when someone ‘discovers’ or ‘learns’ an abstract concept like the number 1, that concept then takes a physical form in our brain — Read Parfit

But, concepts are not physical. If you had a brain injury - God forbid - your brain might have to vastly re-organise its activities so as to compensate. In such cases, the part of the brain that is normally associated with one aspect of cognition can be re-purposed to deal with another, in order to compensate. (This is one of the findings of neuroplasticity.) So, if the process was only physical, then this couldn't happen, because changing the matter, i.e damaging the brain, would stop you from being able to count or understand numbers (which in some cases it would.) But in cases where the brain successfully re-configures itself to be able to count, then the cognitive requirement is actually changing the physical configuration. It's 'top-down causation' in this case.

Whether knowingly or not, your general approach could be described as being in line with scientific materialism - which is of course a very influential attitude in modern culture, but which I think ought to be questioned.

Once we grant thoughts themselves an ontological status, the next question becomes, can we apply objective criteria to the claims expressed by these thoughts? — Read Parfit

I'd point out how this all stems from analytic philosophy taking a Newtonian view of ontology. And that sets things up for an odd dualism that is at the heart of your OP.

So the assumption is that everything ontic can be reduced to states of affairs - some collection of particular individuated things. And then all these things have simple Newtonian relations. Each is an element of reality with some inherent property. You have then a calculus of relations where each element affects any other element in a fixed, determined and mechanical way. It is a world of straight lines of action with no deviations possible.

And so it is a world of logical operations too. Happily for AP ontology, physics is computational. One state of affairs maps onto the next state of affairs in utterly predictable and deterministic fashion because all causality is merely syntax. There are laws that set the rules. There are elements with properties that have to obey those rules. And that's it. Get computing.

Thus AP ontology is dualistic. Physics and logic are mirror images of each other in that both are about syntax determining what is possible in terms of reality. If you have A, it is going to give you B - so long as you know the rule that applies to your world of elements.

This is why AP winds up in modal realism. Unicorns might not exist in our world, but they could have evolved in some other world with the same natural laws. So they are a definite possibility. On the other hand, solid gold planets are impossible objects in worlds with our laws. Their gravity would collapse them into black holes.

It all does sort of makes sense.

But also it doesn't. And @Wayfarer is right to highlight how it is all about syntax, and semantics gets left out.

AP just really struggles with semantics - just as classical Newtonian physics really ended up struggling with its story of a world of concrete observables that left out any physical account of the observers making sense of their observations. Not to mention how Newtonianism created a mystery in regard to how the laws could exist in a fashion where they did determine every state transition of a collection of material elements. And the leaving out of the observers who discover the laws, and the manner in which laws might be properly real, were of course a connected problem.

So AP ontology leaves you with this weird thing where all that seems to be going on when a brain is having thoughts is some collection of physical events. You have a bunch of neurons "firing". Something energetic is happening at synapses. If it is energetic, it must obey physical law - the standard universal syntax of Newtonian physics.

But also - dualistically - the physical pattern of activity is being caused by a second logical syntax. There is some kind of computational program being run. The brain is doing information processing. The physics now just instantiates the pattern. It gives the software some hardware.

However - from the AP point of view - the story is still safely Newtonian. There is some system of rules in play which determine each step of any transition from one state to the next. The ontology is mechanical in exactly the way classical physics imagines ontology. So the logical level of reality seems to safely parallel the material level of reality in this fashion. And then AP tries to get on with business without mentioning the gap.

Syntax is syntax after all. And physics is treating the material world as a logical pattern - rule-bound computation acting on elements with predicates. So why not believe the reverse? All possible logical patterns could be materially real. And so - in some sense - all logical patterns are real. If a brain imagines a unicorn or Pegasus, then that gives these individuals an ontological-strength claim to existing. They exist as a logical pattern in some set of circuits. The idea has happened materially.

Again, it sort of makes sense. Yet clearly, it is all rather out of whack. There is a dualism that is getting fudged. You have a realm of matter and a realm of form, with nothing properly connecting them.

In the Newtonian view, the laws provided the rules, and so the form of any material change. But where do these laws live? How do they act on the material?

In the computational view, the algorithms provide the rules, and so the form of any informational change. But why does it take such an atypical state of materiality to allow that to be the case? You just won't find computer circuitry appearing naturally in nature. A set of digital circuits wouldn't appear in any world just left on its own without the intervention of some human-scale imagination and a machine constructing culture.

A brain of course evolved. But brains are not machines or computers.

So we have this AP ontology that reduces existence to the syntactical. Everything is a logical pattern. Even physics - because, hey, Newton told us that back about 400 years ago. Thus to exist is this thing of being a material state of affairs - a collection of elements arranged in a pattern and deterministically controlled by a syntax. And then even a logical state of affairs exists as something real because it too is a collection of syntactically-controlled elements - that is thus always implementable as some material state of affairs. And so - the fudge arriving - the gap between the informational version of reality and the physical version of reality can be ignored.

Any blueprint for a machine could be turned into some actual machine. And thus the gap between the logical or informational, and the material or physical, is a fairly theoretical one that ontology can afford to ignore.

It sort of works as a rough approximation of reality. Both Newtonian physics and Turing computation are really great ... for building a world of machinery.

But science of course has moved on, both in physics, but especially in biology. And this is returning us towards a more sophisticated Aristotlelian "four causes" ontology. AP feels so last century now. You are dealing with a historical curiosity is all.

While studying this question I ran across Parfit who argues, roughly, that human thoughts (where our math, morality and fiction are developed) map to physical entities in our mind through neuron patterns and such, and thereby exist in the ontological sense.— Read Parfit

This use of "ontology" for example, looks like it should be "metaphysical." This goes back to your example of Pegasus: in metaphysical terms, talking about Pegasus is nonsense. There is no Pegasus. But clearly and obviously there is, and he comes with a long history. The way out of this contradiction is to recognize that it is not a real contradiction. Metaphysically, no Pegasus. But "Pegasus" is meaningful name. One simply asks, what does "Pegasus" mean, and then what it means for there to be such an idea as Pegasus - and so on. — tim wood

Thanks for this. I hadn’t read Parfits section on ontology in a couple of years so I re-read it this morning, and I now realize Parfit did not make the exact argument I am making. That is just how I had remembered it at the time I wrote the original post, so I am just going to have to defend this on my own.

As I understand it, to exist in the narrow ontological sense, something needs be made of matter. Qualifying ‘somethings’ would include rocks, birds, brains, neurons and chemicals Non qualifying things include abstract entities like numbers and logical truths and Pegasus.

If Pegasus was actually comprised of matter and did romp around outside our brains, then Pegasus would exist in the ontological sense? The fact that Pegasus does not meet these requirements pushes the concept of Pegasus into the broader metaphysical realm that includes abstract entities and fiction?

All of this discussion is leaving out the physical processes in the brain that gave birth to Pegasus in the first place. When Pegasus was first thought of, the concept took physical root in someone's mind as a configuration of matter therein. When that person then talked of Pegasus and wrote of Pegasus and drew Pegasus, they implanted that concept in other people's brains. I am arguing that the place that Pegasus lives in our brain deserves ontological status, regardless of whether an actual Pegasus is romping around outside of our minds.

Yes, the laws of nature are a human construct, but that does not change the fact that they are the best reference for whether or not some other claim is compatible with how nature works. — Read Parfit

So this is what you call our "best" approach to avoiding the cited problem. It doesn't avoid the problem though, so we ought to keep looking for a better way.

As I understand it, to exist in the narrow ontological sense, something needs be made of matter. — Read Parfit

But that is, I'm afraid, common or garden-variety materialism; in other words, only materialism accepts that.

The basic problem here is indeed one of ontology. It's worth reflecting on the origin of the word ontology. It is 'from Ancient Greek ὤν (ṓn, “on”), present participle of εἰμί (eimí, “being, existing, essence”) + λόγος (lógos, “account”). So it is an account of being - not necessarily an account of objectively existing things; after all, in English, the present participle of the verb 'to be' is 'I am'.

Look at it this way - an arithmetical statement, or syllogistic argument, comprises the relationship of ideas. They can be represented physically, as they are in books, on blackboards, and in pixels. But 'what is being represented' is not essentially physical in nature. Of course that is a contentious point, but it is the basic argument against materialist theory of mind.

And also - don't get diverted by the apparent reality of fictional and mythical characters. Pegasus, Father Christmas and Bugs Bunny all exist in some sense, but mainly on the basis of social convention and culture. (But then, I suppose, there's an additional layer of complexity, because mythical figures embody archetypes, and archetypes embody aspects of reality, so it's not totally cut and dried.) But it's best to consider the question of the ontology of abstracts in terms of mathematics, language and logic, because they are arguably real in their own terms, i.e. not only because they're physically represented or instantiated, but because they're 'the same for all who think'. (I hesitate to describe them as 'objective' as that opens another can of worms, but they're certainly 'true for all comers'.)

Rationality, and concrete acknowledgement, is a tool for survival. When we seek the prolific awareness of each studied discipline, be it teleology, ontology, or mathematics, we fall into stereotypical schematics. In the considered bounds of those morbid and most arduous problems, we so often encounter the steadfast issue of abstraction and toiling nuances of each intricated concept. Those very obstacles serve as a lesson in divisions between the various realisms, these being the tangible, the noetic, and the undiscovered. I have frequently read speculations that we are not designed to comprehend contradictory topics to our quotidian survival, such as quantum mechanisms, individual possibilities rather than broad schemas about groups of humans, and certain mathematical concepts. While I prefer the impossible or paradoxical to sensory experiences, there is a certain sospitality to the solid and external which may be shared with our kith. It is anthrocentric to project our noumena as being obcetive realities. We wish to transform our cities, monuments, and selves in a manner which will continue beyond our quietus. If our ideas were impotent, what then would we know from the depths of each inequity and each disaster, without a defense of developing a larger goal?

In those endless surges of the unthinkable, such as in the Minotaur, Teatro Grottesco, or supernatural spectacles, there comes a strife which becomes paramount. How can we control concepts which are so ceaselessly and surfeitingly uncontainable by tools, roads, or words?

I suspect that many persons would lack the mental wherewithal to distinguish between an idea which is based upon a combination of realisms- in example, a supernatural and sempiternally replicating House is constructed upon our knowledge of rooms and moveable objects- and actual entities. However, it is more than accurate to state that the extraterrestrial, angel, or imp have their own form of existence as concepts.

Well, you did say that thoughts, language and reason 'exist in an ontological sense' as brain processes. But now you say that 'all we can do is experience them'. So - does the nature of first-person experience need to be understood in terms of brain processes, in order to understand them? Are they really physical or neurological in nature? That question is the basis of the well-known 'hard problem of consciousness' first articulated by philosophers David Chalmers. — Wayfarer

I expect science will figure out many more specific details related to the physical processes behind how our brains work. They already have crude devices that can monitor physical brain activity, and in a controlled experiment can determine what button someone is going to decide to press before before they are conscious of what they decided. That is why I think scientific gizmos will be the ticket to identifying where we store abstract concepts in our brains and how they are used when we reason. There is much we can learn from contemplation, meditation and other self examination, but I don’t think discovering the physical location of where we store concepts is one of them. Also, the claim I am defending gets nowhere close to a full theory of consciousness.

I'm dubious about treating evolution as an agency. The expression 'given to us by Evolution' seems to me an example of the way that modern culture tends to attribute to biological evolution the agency that was previously attributed to God (especially because Evolution is capitalised.) — Wayfarer

I don’t know why you are dubious about treating evolution as an agency. We could get hung up on the definition of agency, but evolution was definitely the process that guided the transformation from bacteria to us, including our brains. We know that from the fossil record and DNA analysis that can identify evolutionary descendents with the same accuracy it caught the Golden State Killer. In 2018, I don’t see the point of someone (not saying you) trying to maintain some definition of God that requires denial of evolution That version of God will continue to be buried in a an ever growing mountain of fossil and biological evidence.

But without wishing to detract from the science, the problem is that such thinking is reductionistinsofar as it wishes to understand reason, language and abstract thought purely through the lens of the biological sciences. But biological science is not directly concerned with such faculties, except for in a secondary sense; the point of the theory of evolution is to explain the origin of species, not to solve complex problems of philosophy of mind. — Wayfarer

I believe evolution hardwired humans to reason in the same way it produced long necks in giraffes. So yeah, evolutionary science has a critical role to play in philosophy of the mind, but not the only role by any means. I’m not someone who thinks science has the answer for all things. Even if science discovers exactly what we are and how we function, there is still the looming question of ‘now what?’, which is where philosophy should still play a critical role. But even the question of ‘now what?’ needs science, because most matters of public importance require understanding how nature actually works to sort out real from imagined threats, and to get predictive results from our actions when we decide the ‘what’.

And again, identifying language and reason with neural processes begs the question of where reason receives it warrant. If it is indeed only a matter of successful adaption to the environment, then in what sense could it be said to be true? This actually is a very deep question, and is the subject of many philosophy texts. — Wayfarer

I’m not that into worrying about the ramifications of our ability to reason, being produced by evolution. One can choose not to believe it, but we can’t choose what happened over the last 4 billion years. If one believes evolution made our brains, I don’t see it changing 'reason' receiving a 'warrant'. We just say we received it from evolution, and move on with our daily lives like we always have.

But, concepts are not physical. If you had a brain injury - God forbid - your brain might have to vastly re-organise its activities so as to compensate. In such cases, the part of the brain that is normally associated with one aspect of cognition can be re-purposed to deal with another, in order to compensate. (This is one of the findings of neuroplasticity.) So, if the process was only physical, then this couldn't happen, because changing the matter, i.e damaging the brain, would stop you from being able to count or understand numbers (which in some cases it would.) But in cases where the brain successfully re-configures itself to be able to count, then the cognitive requirement is actually changing the physical configuration. It's 'top-down causation' in this case. — Wayfarer

I agree that concepts are not purely physical. Excluding the possibility for advanced aliens :), there are, no doubt, many concepts that have not yet been discovered, but have the ‘potential’ to be discovered. Parfit argues that these exist in a wide non-ontological sense. I’m not so sure exists is a good fit for these things, and the ‘wide non-ontological sense’ is another way of saying ‘do not yet exist’ to me. But this is just parsing words. For me, life forms that can reason are required for advanced abstract concepts to exist in the physical world. And on Earth, I think these concepts first take physical form inside our brains.

I am very close to a person who had a large non-cancerous brain tumor removed. After his operation he had to relearn basic motor skills and had entire childhood years removed from his memories. I think these symptoms provide support for memories and concepts residing in physical locations in our brains. In keeping with what you described, he was able to relearn his motor skills and relearn about events he no longer remembered, but I suspect this stuff took up a new physical home elsewhere in his brain.

Whether knowingly or not, your general approach could be described as being in line with scientific materialism - which is of course a very influential attitude in modern culture, but which I think ought to be questioned. — Wayfarer

Yeah, I do identify with scientific materialism, but there are many camps under that tent, and I am not quite sure where I fit. I also think everything should be questioned.

I believe evolution hardwired humans to reason in the same way it produced long necks in giraffes — Read Parfit

Well, I disagree with that on so many levels that it's pointless to continue. But thanks for taking the time to reply.

@apokrisis

After a few days of digesting your post, combined with some internet searches, I think I now understand you points.

My motivation for the post was to take on Quine on his own turf. The camp of philosophers that say things like ‘How can we talk about Pegasus?’ are not really my cup of tea. My immediate answer (in my head) when I read something read something like that is “You just did. What is your point?” or “ We talk of it as fiction?” But snarky responses leave open the question about how the concept of Pegasus, or some number, might exist in his ontological framework. After thinking about it, I concluded that any concept produced through thinking (numbers, Pegasus, whatever) must have a physical backing in neurons, and even under Quines limited definition, the concepts themselves exist in this physical sense. They can later be put in other physical forms like books and art. These concepts may or may not or may not describe something that is compatible with the laws of nature, but the concepts still exist in a physical way. That is my entire point. I am not saying that is the most important story about the meaning behind the concepts, nor am I arguing a straight line from there to a fully analytic or deterministic view.

Having said that, I do have some views on topics you covered.

This is why AP winds up in modal realism. Unicorns might not exist in our world, but they could have evolved in some other world with the same natural laws. So they are a definite possibility. — apokrisis

Now that I have read up on some possible world theories, I think I fall into the Abstractionism camp in that non-actual possible worlds are theories about how the world could be or could have been. If this committee had chosen that set of blueprints the world would have been different. I suppose in some theoretical possible world where evolution took a different turn, a non-magical unicorn might have existed. Still, I find possible world theories most useful when thinking of the impact of our actions. I may be missing something, but I don’t see the point of attempting to describe these worlds through using formal modal logic unless it is for an AI project or something.

A brain of course evolved. But brains are not machines or computers. — apokrisis

Our brain is our brain, and any attempts to describe it in 2018 will be a rough approximation at best. Having said that, I think the term biological machine best fits my understanding. I am also a compatibilist when it comes to free will and do not see that as a contradiction. In theory, even if, as some experiments indicate, we have parts of ourselves that mechanically decide an action in a moment prior to our being conscious of the decision, we can later, mechanically evaluate the outcome of that decision mechanically change a belief about how we should have acted. I think changing a belief changes how we subconsciously processes information. That belief change does not guarantee the subconscious decision aparitus will react differently the next time, but I think it does increase the chance that it will.

But science of course has moved on, both in physics, but especially in biology. And this is returning us towards a more sophisticated Aristotlelian "four causes" ontology. AP feels so last century now. You are dealing with a historical curiosity is all. — apokrisis

I think Aristotle's system better as well. A vaguely remember him having written 'the question isn't if something exists, but how it exists.' In my view, Quine ignored that wisdom.

These concepts may or may not or may not describe something that is compatible with the laws of nature, but the concepts still exist in a physical way. — Read Parfit

The key question you might need to ask is whether the meaning of a mark is physical, even if the mark itself is surely physical, and furthermore, marks are essential to there being instantiated states of meaning.

So sure, every concept exists as a pattern of neural activity. It is a set of physical marks. But where in your physicalist conception of this situation is the meaning of the marks? I see only syntactical operations - the mechanics. I don’t see physicalism accounting for any semantics, any interpretance.

Concepts have to exist as a set of marks, but also as a set of marks understood to mean something, and so likely to result in actions that speak to the sense of what was meant.

To incorporate the semantics of symbols, you need a larger version of physicalism than materialist mechanics can provide.

Biology of course is all about that larger story.

So sure, every concept exists as a pattern of neural activity. It is a set of physical marks. But where in your physicalist conception of this situation is the meaning of the marks? I see only syntactical operations - the mechanics. I don’t see physicalism accounting for any semantics, any interpretance. — apokrisis

The argument I am making in the OP is that concepts in our brain deserve the ontological status of physically existing. We do not question whether marks on a paper exist, even if they are devoid of any meaning.

I don't see how viewing the brain as purely physical gets in the way of semantics. The brain is obviously capable of storing, retrieving and crunching these patterns in ways that are meaningful to us. Isn't that where to find the semantics and interpretance?

I don’t see the point of someone (not saying you) trying to maintain some definition of God that requires denial of evolution That version of God will continue to be buried in a an ever growing mountain of fossil and biological evidence. — Read Parfit

Actually I will add one point. For someone whose spirituality was never built around the literal truth of biblical creationism, the fact that it's not literally true doesn't have a great deal of significance.

I have never had the least interest in any kind of Biblical creationism, or even Biblical spirituality for that matter. But the upsurge of pop-sci-philosophy promoted by the Dawkins of the world that evolution 'proves that religion is false' changed my view. That attitude is also a kind of fundamentalism; it is based on trying to interpret Biblical mythology as a kind of primitive form of science, which modern science has replaced. What it doesn't understand is the symbolic nature of such traditions and the kinds of truths they tell. So it's not a matter of literal truth or falsehood, but symbolic and allegorical truths about 'the human condition' and what it means.

Obviously pre-modern outlook contained a mix of mythological thinking, received wisdom and historical fact. But there’s another factor which, being so deeply embedded in our current cultural worldview, is hard to recognise. There is a sense in which science has moved into the role previously occupied by religion - as the kind of court of appeal for what ought to be considered real, the ‘umpire of reality'. And that shows up as physicalism, the attitude that 'whatever can be known, can be known by means of science'. And so much of that is shaped by the reaction against religion - not just on the individual level, but on the social and cultural level. There's an underlying current of 'anything but God' which flows strongly through modern secular thought, often unconsciously, without even fully understanding what it is that it doesn't believe in. So, it *must* be the case that the nature of mind is in the province of neurobiology, because, after all, us moderns know that science has replaced (obsolete) metaphysics, right?

I vaguely remember [Aristotle] having written 'the question isn't ifsomething exists, but how it exists.' — Read Parfit

That is the point behind my argument about differentiating brain processes from the content of thought. Sure, brain processes are the exchange of ions across synapses and so forth - no contest. But what it means is a completely different matter. Even to derive the meaning from a physical process, requires the very faculty that you're attempting to explain. If you're a neuroscientist, you're inferring on the basis of data - but that 'process of inference' is the very thing you're wanting to explain. And you can't step outside that, you can't see it objectively - the capacity of abstract reasoning is the very 'substance of thought', it is what is required to say that 'marks mean this' or 'the brain does that'. We're always operating 'inside' that domain of reasoning and abstraction - we have no choice, as human beings.

If you say 'thought is physical', that 'is' is itself an abstraction: it is taking two very different types of content, namely, data about neurology, on the one hand, and logical and semantic content on the other, and asserting their equivalency. But that act of abstraction is itself an intellectual act, it is internal to the processes of the mind. And so much of modern philosophy assumes that it understands this, when in fact it doesn't. As Jacques Maritain says 'what the Empiricist speaks of and describes as sense-knowledge is not exactly sense-knowledge, but sense-knowledge plus unconsciously-introduced intellective ingredients -- sense-knowledge in which he has made room for reason without recognizing it.' 1.

Now, I know that you will have a tacit belief that science has an account of how thought 'evolved' - namely, according to roughly the same means by which everything else evolved - hence the 'giraffe's neck'. But that, too arises from regarding reason as an evolved organ. But it's not. The 'law of the excluded middle' and the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 did not come into being as a consequence of anything Darwin discovered. What evolved, was the capacity to understand such things; that's what 'reason' is. And as soon as h. sapiens became able to reason, to use language, to ask abstract questions, then her capacities could no longer be understood solely through the lens of biological sciences; she has 'transcended biology', as it were. So to categorise every kind of question in biological terms, is the essence of 'biological reductionism'.

There's a current book about, The Human Instinct: How We Evolved to Have Reason, Consciousness, and Free Will, Kenneth Miller. He is a biologist who accepts neither 'intelligent design' nor scientific materialism. That kind of approach is useful, I think.

The brain is obviously capable of storing, retrieving and crunching these patterns in ways that are meaningful to us. Isn't that where to find the semantics and interpretance — Read Parfit

You are doing what I described - telling me all about the computational syntax and nothing about the semantics that are the only reason a system of marks means anything to anyone.

I guess if you can’t see the problem here, you just don’t see it.

But it is a core issue in the life sciences and philosophy of mind - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem

it is a core issue in the life sciences and philosophy of mind - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbol_grounding_problem — apokrisis

Interesting wiki article, thanks :up:

@apokrisis

Theoretically, as thinking creatures we are able to physically manipulate components in our brains so that they abstractly map to something. When I look at this book on my desk, my brain theoretically makes some physical neuron mapping of that book that can be referenced when I think thoughts about the book being on the desk. If I work at it, and it helps to close my eyes, I can also imagine Ant Man on my desk waving at me. Theoretically, when I do this my mind physically manipulated components in my brain to make a model of Ant Man. My only point in the OP is that the model of the book and Ant Man both physically ‘exist’ in an ephemeral way in my brain, and therefore qualify as existing and can be "talked about" as conceptual models, even under Quines inadequate, one-dimensional, semantically poor, matter specific view of ontology that is largely lacking in meaning.

I think what you are saying is that I do not get my OP is looking at this through an inadequate one-dimensional, semantically poor, matter specific view of ontology that is largely lacking in meaning. To that I agree, and reply that was all I was attempting. I read the symbol grounding problem link that you referenced, and agree it is an interesting problem, I just do not think it is unique to the discussion of brain patterns.

If some gizmo were able to identify the model of Ant Man in my brain and wrote that as 'kdhfh' in a language called Braineze, the definition of 'kdhfh' would be ‘The model of Ant Man on a desk inside Read Partit’s brain.' In this case, the word would have the same status of any other word in relation the the signal grounding problem. I agree if I was just shown 'kdhfh' without the definition, I would have no way of interpreting it, but that is also the case any word where the definition is withheld. In the case of Braineze, we figured out the definition through the use of the theoretical gizmo to identify the pattern and assign it a word the first place. Also, since Braineze is a symbolic representation of the physical model in my brain, my brain can bypass Barineze through accessing that model in its own native way, something another person would need braineze to do.

I actually have some thoughts from the physicalist view related to the signal grounding problem, but I need to let them grind a while in my head. I am also curious if my explanation conveys to you that I get the problem.

If some gizmo were able to identify the model of Ant Man in my brain and wrote that as 'kdhfh' in a language called Braineze, the definition of 'kdhfh' would be ‘The model of Ant Man on a desk inside Read Partit’s brain.' — Read Parfit

But aren't you just deferring the essential issue by creating another reader of another pattern of marks? You keep refocusing on a set of observables and therefore never account for how they get understood in a meaningful way.

So sure, it is true that every thought, concept or image does get instantiated as a material pattern in the brain. Neurons fire. Something physical happens.

But the problem then is say how this results in feelings of meaningful experience. You can't just keep pointing to the marks and offering a "definition" of what they mean, as in itself, that is just pointing to more marks.

To explain "Ant Man" as a "Marvel comic book character" is to introduce four more words in want of a definition. You are offering up marks for interpretation without ever explaining how interpretation gets done.

So there is something horribly one dimensional about claiming a concept exists simply because some pattern of marks is physically instantiated. A concept is canonically an act of interpretation, an act of making sense, an acting of appreciating meaning. To point to its physical footprint is not to point to the bit that matters.

Quickly, the way out of this bind is semiotics. Signs are the way that habits of conception or interpretance relate to a dynamical world. So marks mediate a regulatory relation. A picture of Ant Man or a verbal description of Ant Man are symbols or tokens that stand between a "me" and an "it". I will act in certain ways given an understanding of the world in terms of these signs being present.

So this is the whole story rather than the one dimensional story. The marks do a job of connecting. And it is the whole relationship that is semantic or meaningful.

The mistake would be to take the dualistic representational view where the simple display of some set of symbols, some array of data, is enough to create a modelling relation with the world. It needs to be a triadic relation where the symbols are embedded in a context of interpretation, and that is then secured by the pragmatic effects that has in terms of achieving some embodied purpose. There has to be feedback from the world which says a sign interpreted in that fashion is really working to get things done as wanted.

Think of genes. They code for proteins. So a gene being active is a sign of the organism wanting something materially useful getting done.

The missing part of your story is the purpose, the Aristotelian finality, that gives a pattern of signs their meaning. So clearly brains have a developmental structure that encodes some set of purposes, some habits of intentionality. And that purpose then gets expressed as a set of material effects out in the world. Things get done because that purpose exists. Then in the middle - doing the mediating - are a set of marks that connect a purpose to a world.

The marks are important. But they are only one aspect of the whole story. So talk about concepts existing just because a set of symbols exist is inadequate. The marks have to be interpreted. And that takes a context of intentionality which itself then exists within the third thing of a world of possibilities.

There is a sense in which science has moved into the role previously occupied by religion - as the kind of court of appeal for what ought to be considered real, the ‘umpire of reality'. And that shows up as physicalism, the attitude that 'whatever can be known, can be known by means of science'. — Wayfarer

Nothing is perfect, but in my view science is the best ‘umpire of reality’ if you mean accurate reference for ‘how nature works.’ I can broadly be described as a physicalist, and know quite a few others that belong to my local Humanist organization. From this perch, I have not met a single person who has said 'whatever can be known, can be known by means of science'. What we do tend to agree on is that denial of scientific facts, whether for economic self interest, religion, conspiracy thinking or ignorance, is a dangerous way to go about making decisions related to matters of public importance.

The 'law of the excluded middle' and the fact that 2 + 2 = 4 did not come into being as a consequence of anything Darwin discovered. — Wayfarer

Long before we had formal math, I can imagine the Darwinian advantage of a band of humans learning to communicate that first 2 tigers went into that cave, and then 2 more went into the cave, then 3 came out.

I get your point that our ability to reason lead us to many discoveries not directly tied to survival of the fittest, but that fact does not mean that the hardware we use was not invented through evolution.

Regardless, I am going to give up on making my point about Quine, and my next post will just plunge in to semantics, because that is clearly what you guys want to talk about, and it is pretty interesting.

That Miller book looks interesting too, I will have to add it to my list.

From this perch, I have not met a single person who has said 'whatever can be known, can be known by means of science'. — Read Parfit

It is on the last page of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy (which I read immediately before commencing philosophy formally). The expression is also in Frederick Copleson's chapter on positivism. What I'm objecting to is scientism. I am not the least hostile to science in matters of public policy and education - climate science, and evolution, for example. But a prime example of 'scientism' is uncritical reliance on Darwinian theory as a philosophical argument, which takes us to the next point.

Long before we had formal math, I can imagine the Darwinian advantage of a band of humans learning to communicate that first 2 tigers went into that cave, and then 2 more went into the cave, then 3 came out. — Read Parfit

Crows and monkeys can do that. And once you start to rationalise intelligence in terms of 'how it provides a survival advantage' then you can come up with all manner of 'just so' stories; you can 'imagine' all kinds of things. (See It Ain't Necessarily So, Antony Gottlieb). I again assure you, I carry no brief for ID or creationism. It's more that many unwarranted assumptions become attached to evolutionary biology as a kind of stand in, or replacement, for the Christian creation story - a rationale for 'how everything came to be as it is'. But the principle of 'the survival of the fittest' (and I know it was coined by Herbert Spencer rather than Darwin, but Darwin later adopted it) is not a replacement for, or an equivalent to, the 'myth of the Fall'.

One way out of the dilemma is to discard the idea that there is a sharp divide between objectivity and subjectivity, and replace it by the recognition that we all assign different degrees of belief to different propositions. We tend to call those propositions in which we have a high degree of belief 'objective' and those with a low degree 'subjective'.

It does not mean that the hardware we use was not invented through evolution. — Read Parfit

Again - there is an implied agency in this sentence. I often notice nowadays reference to the amazing things that evolution has done. But evolution doesn't do anything. Natural selection acts like a filter by eliminating variations that don't provide a survival advantage. All well and good. But what is actually driving the process? The only admissible answer to that is that it is the drive of living things to pro-create. I don't suppose we can ask 'why do living things have the drive to procreate?' as that is not really a scientific question, is it? Nor are we really entitled to speculate that the evolutionary process leads to anything other than reproduction. So - evolution is not an agency, it doesn't actually 'invent' or 'do' anything whatever. And to it is strictly non-PC to believe that there is any kind of drive towards anything other than reproductive success, lest one fall into the error of vitalism or orthogenesis.

In fact there is something like this in the Origin, where Darwin writes:

It may be metaphorically said that Natural Selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being.”

(1876 ed., 68-69) [emphasis added]

And though he acknowledges that this is only a 'metaphorical' description, the 'merely metaphorical' agency actually has rather a lot to do in this picture. This same language is scattered throughout his theory, so much so that Stanley Edgar Hyman, in his book The Tangled Bank, observes:

Darwin starts by insisting that nature is not a goddess but a metaphor. As soon as he begins to talk about nature, however, she is transformed into a divinity with consciousness and will.

And this tendency is often visible in modern discussions of nature and evolution. I am tempted to say that what it amounts to is that the earlier cultural forms which assumed a 'divine intelligence' have not really been abandoned, so much as transformed, in such a way that 'nature' and 'evolution' are now imbued with the abilities of agency and intelligence that were formerly attributed to God. But that that way of thinking has become so embedded in modern cultural discourse, that we fail to notice the inherent explanatory gap that is implied by it; it is simply assumed, in much the same way, and for many of the same reasons, that the preceeding religious account was.

“It does not mean that the hardware we use was not invented through evolution.”
— Read Parfit

Again - there is an implied agency in this sentence. — Wayfarer

Webster Dictionary: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/agent

something that produces or is capable of producing an effect

But evolution is not that ‘something’. It is not an actor. At best it is an illusion of agency.

All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker. — Richard Dawkins

Through the microscope of molecular biology, we get to witness the birth of agency, in the first macromolecules that have enough complexity to ‘do things.’ ... There is something alien and vaguely repellent about the quasi-agency we discover at this level — all that purposive hustle and bustle, and yet there’s nobody home.
...
Love it or hate it, phenomena like this exhibit the heart of the power of the Darwinian idea. An impersonal, unreflective, robotic, mindless little scrap of molecular machinery is the ultimate basis of all the agency, and hence meaning, and hence consciousness, in the universe. — Daniel Dennett

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.

That is why Dennett's books must insist that there really is no mind, and that humans are not actually beings. If you're going to be materialist, that is what it takes to make it consistent.

But what I'm arguing is that, in effect, culture attaches to 'evolution' the agency that was formerly attributed to God, so that when we say 'evolution does such and such', we're unconsciously appealing to an actor. But really, there's no actor or agency. So in those quotations, Dennett and Dawkins are simply expressing the logical implications of materialism.

Rather than paraphrase Nick Lane, I'll quote him from "Life Ascending, The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution."

There is no inventor, no intelligent design. Nonetheless, natural selection subjects all traits to the most exacting tests, and the best designs win out. It is a natural laboratory that belittles the human theatre, scrutinising trillions of tiny differences simultaneously, each and every generation. Design is all around us, the product of a blind but ingenious process. Evolutionists often talk informally of inventions, and there is no better word to convey the astonishing creativity of nature. To gain an insight into how all this came about is the shared goal of scientists, whatever their religious beliefs, along with anyone else who cares about how we came to be here.

When I use the word invention to describe the evolutionary process that produced our brains, it is in this context that I use the word. And Nick is right, there really is not a better word to describe the making of all the components that we are comprised of. Evolution is a newly discovered phenomenon in terms of human understanding. It is not surprising or inherently wrong that culture adopt some of the language that we used in older belief systems that asserted how we came to be here.