From: David MOREY (us@divadeus.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Thu Nov 27 2003 - 20:53:03 GMT
Matt
"Science is not in the
business of being materialist, they are in the business of coping with our
physical environment. If physics changes its self-conception, which it has
in its past, then intelligent people can only go along. They're the
professionals after all."
Are you sure? listen to this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/science/aheadoftheirtime.shtml
regards
David M
----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott R" <jse885@spinn.net>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Thursday, November 27, 2003 3:26 AM
Subject: Re: MD When is an interpretation not an interpretation?
> Matt,
>
> > Scott said:
> > Another reason to ask "what is real" is because one thinks (as I do)
that
> the view that only the material is real is predominant among intellectuals
> in our culture, and I think that that is a bad thing. And so, when the
> pragmatist also happens to be a materialist (even a non-reductive one),
and
> says "The only reason to ask that question is if you are trying to bite
the
> person with the philosophy bug" then I see that as an attempt to uphold a
> particular ontological viewpoint, and not as pragmatism simpliciter.
> >
> > Matt:
> > What pragmatists don't know is why materialism is so bad. Pragmatists
> think it well of David to say "materialist metaphysics" because us
> pragmatists can all nod our heads in agreement, but the reason we are
> agreeing is because we all want to dispense with _metaphysics_. After we
> become anti-reductionistic, pragmatists are unsure why we should worry
about
> materialism.
>
> [Scott:] Do we (in some interesting sense) survive death? A materialist
must
> answer "no", while a non-materialist can answer "I don't know".
>
> >
> [Matt:]> I see where Scott gets his flame from my answer to "What is
real?",
> but I stand by it. If we answer that question with anything other than
> "everything," I think you start walking the path of Platonic metaphysics,
> which I don't think either David or Scott wants, whatever either attempts
to
> rehabilitate "metaphysics" or "ontology".
>
> [Scott] I think we should revive Platonic metaphysics. We have learned a
lot
> to be skeptical about since then, so it won't bear much resemblance to
> Plato, or even Plotinus, but the general idea that our common sense is a
> false appearance is, in my opinion, salutary. In particular, I think we
need
> to shift from the belief that consciousness developed from with a
> spatio-temporal non-conscious world to the belief that conscious creates
> space and time.
>
> [Matt:]> From what I understand, Scott's ironic metaphysics and David's
> Heideggerian ontology are to be distinguished from the line of metaphysics
> begun by Plato, what Heidegger calls Platonism. So as long as Scott and
> David can answer with me "everything", it doesn't matter to me what they
do
> afterwards in "ontology" because I'll simply read it as differing language
> games in the large, broad attempt to see how things hang together. Or as
> Scott said, as long as we agree with "pragmatism simpliciter," we can
> disagree on other things, but for different reasons.
>
> [Scott:] We can (and do) disagree on things like the above, but I don't
see
> how we can articulate the difference without specifying different
> ontological, and hence metaphysical, beliefs.
>
> >
> [Matt:]> As another attempt to explain why pragmatists are unsure why we
> should worry about non-reductive physicalism (to which Scott and David
still
> refer to as materialism), I first begin with the pragmatist claim that the
> only thing that was worrisome was the reductionistic flavor that was
carried
> by the earliest scientists and philosophers that promulgated it. Working
in
> the wake of Galileo and Darwin, the materialist community worked to
> de-legitamize religion, which they saw as working under the light of
> superstition, rather than the light of reason which they worked under.
> Religious defenders counter-attacked but were increasingly beaten back.
> James was the first to enter this debate from a different direction, a
> non-metaphysical direction. In The Will to Believe, James argued that
> science shouldn't be viewed as an alternative to religion. Rather, we
> should view both religion and science as having different purposes and
that
> as long as those purposes do not conflict, there
> > 's no reason to think that you can have either one or the other. In
other
> words, James was attacking _metaphysics_ and _reductionism_, not science
or
> religion. Pragmatists see the old-school religious defenders and science
> defenders as having reductionism in common. When we get rid of that,
what's
> the problem with either? To sum up, pragmatists are not simply
> non-reductive physicalists. In fact, as Scott suggested, you don't need
to
> be a physicalist to be a pragmatist, you only need to be non-reductive.
As
> pragmatists, we can be non-reductive physicalists, non-reductive
etherists,
> non-reductive atomists, non-reductive Catholics, non-reductive Methodists,
> non-reductive liberals, non-reductive conservatives, non-reductive
> capitalists, non-reductive Marxists, etc., etc.
>
> [Scott:] Yes, but then why the remark above: "After we become
> anti-reductionistic, pragmatists are unsure why we should worry about
> materialism." I worry a great deal that so many intellectuals are
> materialists, and wish to persuade them of the error of their ways. (I
> understand "physicalist" as one variety of the class "materialist".) Where
I
> get bothered is when Rorty says "the pragmatist holds that..." when it is
> his materialism that holds it. I gave an example of this in a post to Sam
a
> while back:
>
> [part of a post to Sam (9/7/03:]
> Here is a quote from Rorty (from the introduction to Consequences of
> Pragmatism):
>
> "What really needs debate between the pragmatist and the intuitive realist
> [non-pragmatist materialists like Nagel] is *not* whether we have
intuitions
> to the effect that "truth is more than assertability" or "there is more to
> pain than brain-states".... *Of course* we have such intuitions. How could
> we escape having them? We have been educated within an intellectual
> tradition built around such claims -- just as we used to be educated
within
> an intellectual tradition built around such claims as "If God didn't
exist,
> everything is permitted"....But it begs the question between pragmatist
and
> realist to say that we must find a philosophical view which "captures"
such
> intuitions. The pragmatist is urging that we do our best to *stop having*
> such intuitions, that we develop a *new* intellectual tradition."
>
> Now I agree, more or less, with Rorty on the "truth is more than
> assertability" intuition (since I don't hold with truth by correspondence
> theory), but I think Rorty is not being accurate with the "there is more
to
> pain than brain-states" intuition, which is what I am dealing with in my
> argument. He is saying that it is the pragmatist who wants to stop having
> such intuitions, but I think he is wrong. It is the materialist who needs
to
> stop having such intuitions in order to continue being a materialist.
>
> This is because it is only the materialist who has to think that "seeing
the
> tree" (or feeling pain) is all and only brain-states. The dualist or
> idealist, or mystic, doesn't have any problem at all with the intuition.
> [End of post]
>
> >
> [Matt:]> I've included positions that typically aren't called
reductionist,
> positions in politics and economics, for a reason. It is to strike up
James
> slogan that the true is what is good in the way of belief. James
suggested
> that our beliefs will change depending on circumstance, that our fall from
> Catholicism will depend on our personal need for Catholicism. For
instance,
> the old saying "if you aren't a liberal at age 18, you have no heart and
if
> you aren't a conservative at age 50 you have no brain." This slogan
strikes
> up the fact that the older you get, the more stuff you typically have and
> the more sedentary your beliefs typically are. The drift of your life is
> found to be correlative to the drift in your political ideology. In
> economics and science, the change is a little different from that of
things
> of a deeply personal nature, like politics and religion. These shifts are
> made by experts (more so for science, less so for economics, where
politics
> is tied in). Follow
> > ing Hayek, the state governed central planning imbedded in the national
> incarnations of Marxism just haven't panned out. In the spirit of Deweyan
> experimentalism, we tried it, but it didn't work out so we move on. In
> science, it was productive to move from thinking that objects had an inner
> telos to thinking they functioned mechanistically. Science is not in the
> business of being materialist, they are in the business of coping with our
> physical environment. If physics changes its self-conception, which it
has
> in its past, then intelligent people can only go along. They're the
> professionals after all.
> >
> > So, when Scott says "If nothing else, I would think that quantum physics
> alone should lead us to re-ask the question "what is real", to question
> common sense more deeply" pragmatists think that yeah, quantum physics
> should lead us to question the common sense that is related to _science_
> (the physical environment), but to draw any other consequences, I think,
is
> to twist purposes, which James and the pragmatists think is
reductionistic.
>
> [Scott:] From quantum phsyics, and from other considerations, I draw the
> conclusion that the non-spatio-temporal is ontologically prior to the
> spatio-temporal. This has big consequences, and not just in science. It
> means, for example, that the usual narrative (Big Bang and nominalist
> evolution) which has become a basic part of our culture is all wrong.
>
> - Scott
>
>
>
>
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