In a recent OP at Uncommon Descent, Vincent Torley (vjtorley) defends a version of libertarian free will based on the notion of top-down causation. The dominant view among physicists (which I share) is that top-down causation does not exist, so Torley cites an essay by cosmologist George Ellis in defense of the concept.
Vincent is commenting here at TSZ, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to engage him in a discussion of top-down causation, with Ellis’s essay as a starting point. Here’s a key quote from Ellis’s essay to stimulate discussion:
However hardware is only causally effective because of the software which animates it: by itself hardware can do nothing. Both hardware and software are hierarchically structured, with the higher level logic driving the lower level events.
I think that’s wrong, but I’ll save my argument for the comment thread.
I think it is relevant, for the following reason. Whether or not there is interlevel causation is a metaphysical question (a question about reality). But I want to focus on the reasons for asserting (or denying) interlevel causation, or reduction, or anything else here.
On my view, every ontological claim must be vindicated by specifying how we could even know that that claim is correct. And this is a principle you yourself have stressed when asking dualists and idealists for the evidence as to their beliefs. I’m doing the same thing: what is the evidence that everything is “in principle” reducible to physics? If it’s going to be anything more than a blank assertion, there has to be some specification of how we know that this is the case — even “in principle”.
The reductive physicalist also faces Hempel’s dilemma: just what exactly is everything being reduced to? If everything is being reduced to what we know right now of contemporary fundamental physics, then one is effectively staking one’s ontology on the assumption that nothing we discover in the future will overturn our current framework. That seems like an unwise bet, no? On the other hand, if we just say that the base level of reality is “whatever physicists eventually say,” we’re not saying anything of content.
It must also be pointed out that we don’t actually have, at present, a single comprehensive theory of fundamental physics. We have at least two — quantum mechanics and general relativity — and three if thermodynamics counts. And we have three or four different interpretations of quantum mechanics, each with distinct strengths and weaknesses. It’s a mess, and quite frankly I think physicalism is in very bad shape, conceptually.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzodiazepine
How much more so that at any time in history? And what is the alternative.?
At its heart, physicalism is not the belief that everything can be reduced to the physics we currently understand, but that there is just one “kind” of existence, and that we can explore its properties systematically.
Talking with Erik and people like him reminds of me of the aliens in Terry Bisson’s short story “They’re Made Out of Meat”: he just can’t bring himself to believe that the thing that is doing the thinking is made of out anything so wet, smelly, slimy, and disgusting as flesh.
Surely, such people want us to think, thinking is something sublime, ethereal, transcendent, eternal, true — it can’t anything to do with all this stuff that has pain, gets sick, and dies (and also enjoys, takes pleasure, orgasms). For of course the eternal and the changeable, the necessary and the contingent, the spirit and the flesh must be distinct! Of course. Is it not “self-evident” that this is so? It is self-evident, and not only self-evident but self-evidently self-evident — except to those poor confused ignoramuses unable to transcend the eyes of flesh and see with the eyes of the intellect.
As I’ve said a few times already, I do think that our best currently available grip on objectively valid phenomena consists in empirically well-confirmed models of relatively stable dynamical structures, paradigmatically causal structures. This is why sociology and economics (and even some degree history) count as genuinely scientific, by my lights. We can get better and worse answers to “what caused the 2008 financial collapse?” or “what caused the Iranian Revolution?” just as we can get better and worse answers to “how do changes in the timing of developmental events affect phenotypic expression?” and “how can we detect gravitational waves?”
I simply don’t think that reducing anything that isn’t part of physics to physics is a viable project, and keiths thinks that it is. That’s what he and I are arguing about.
At the same time, I’m a scientific realist, and Neil thinks that scientific realism implicitly relies on theistic assumptions. That’s what he and I are arguing about.
And Erik thinks that the intellect is some autonomous capacity that has no essential relation to language, history, the body, the senses, life, temporality, and contingency — whereas I think that the intellect is essentially related to all of those, inseparable from them and unintelligible in abstraction from them. That’s what he and I are arguing about.
It all seems to boils down to a fear of dying.
I find the theological stance confusing. I was taught the basic Christian creeds:
Nicine: ” we look for the resurrection of the dead…”
Apostles: “I believe in … the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”
What’s that all about?
Then there’s Job 19:26, which seems to have translators flummoxed.
KJV: “And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God”
American Standard: “And after my skin, even this body , is destroyed, Then without my flesh shall I see God”
Seems to trouble believers.
petrushka,
Fear of death, fear of sex, fear of sensuality, fear of passion, fear of the Other-as-woman, fear of change, fear of loss, fear of pain, fear of pleasure.
I’ll take door number one, Monty.
Wow. Just wow. Where did you obtain your education in philosophy, if you don’t mind my asking, and are they still in business?
You mean about what sorts of ‘things’ actually exist?
That’s one hell of a comment from someone who has never demonstrated any philosophical competence.
Far better, imo, than demonstrating philosophical incompetence.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-categories/
The Categories of Aristotle are classifications of individual words (as opposed to sentences or propositions), and include the following ten: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, situation, condition, action, passion.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/aristotl/
Erik:
You conveniently truncated my answer, which was:
Just as a computer can progress through a series of states, where each state is a function of the prior state plus the environmental inputs, so can a brain.
keiths:
Erik:
Seriously? You think petrushka’s uncle actually remembered that his kids had grown up and married, but that he couldn’t “express” that memory, instead expressing the thought that they were 8 and 10 years old, day after day, month after month, year after year?
He remembered it, but just couldn’t get his mouth to form the words?
That’s ridiculous, Erik.
Trouble remembering is not memory trouble?
And how would physical damage creating “difficulty of mental functionality in general” help your case rather than undermining it?
Possibility in principle doesn’t imply viability in practice, Erik.
You’re not equivocating, right?
What’s the difference between remembrance and recall?
As I mentioned, my mother has dementia. Yes, I believe she has recall but cannot get her mouth to form the words.
Mung,
Though you’d obviously like to change the subject, we’re talking about petrushka’s uncle:
What do you think, Mung? Did petrushka’s uncle remember that his children had grown up and married?
Someone who can remember everything before the vascular accident, and talk lucidly about the previous 35 years, right up to the day before the illness, but wakes up every day thinking his now adult children are still kids?
Can form any words or thoughts, except about things that happened yesterday, or last week, or last month? Can still read and understand the computer programs he was working on just before the illness?
I’m afraid I have no words for what I think of mung.
keiths:
Erik:
That’s a poor definition. Money not only measures value, it has value and can be exchanged for valuable goods and services.
Absolutely! Are you kidding?
The units are arbitrary, but length is a genuine physical property. Are you going to argue that mass isn’t physical because it can be measured using different units??
I’m not making that argument. When you have $6,300.51 in your checking account, you don’t think there’s literally a box at the bank with your account number on the outside and $6,300.51 in cash in it, do you?
Here’s my question again:
Erik:
Yes. On my planet, metaphysics is informed by reason and observation rather than wishful thinking.
petrushka,
I suspect readers have already come up with their own.
You don’t seem to understand that Erik can likewise claim that you are trying to change the subject.
I don’t know and neither do you. I have data stored in the memory of my computer. If my computer cannot access that memory does that mean the memory itself has been corrupted?
Perhaps the memory of them growing up and marrying is somewhere in memory but the wrong area of memory is being accessed. How do you know?
Please tell us.
Mung,
I see you are trying to change the subject again.
How about answering my question?
What do you think, Mung? Did petrushka’s uncle remember that his children had grown up and married?
NewMung exists but retreats at the sight and smell of Guano. OldMung is perfectly willing to get down and wallow in the shit with you and all the other penguins.
Mung, this is not known in detail, but the broad strokes of how long term memories form is well known. And things that can prevent formation are also well kniwn.
I didn’t say that he could not “express” that memory. I say perhaps he could not access that memory. You do understand the difference, right?
That’s why I brought up the case of my mom, who I offered as an example of someone who could access but not express. So I wasn’t changing the subject.
Are you an expert on dementia?
Mung,
How would that help Erik’s case for a non-physical memory function?
Think, Mung.
So keiths is asking why your uncle could not remember something not in his memory. The question answers itself.
Now who’s changing the subject?
Mung,
Dang, you’re slow, Mung.
Erik thinks it is in memory, but that petrushka’s uncle can’t “express” it. That’s ridiculous.
Don’t you agree?
As I said:
Erik,
You make a non-physical distinction. I recognize that personalities, like the other two things we’ve been discussing (economies and money), are ultimately physical phenomena. I continue to await some evidence that they are in fact non-physical.
No, I say that the will itself is a physical phenomenon. See my exchange with CharlieM on this topic.
Many people do operate on that assumption. I think that retributive punishment is pointless, though punishment can have other legitimate functions such as deterrence.
Clive Wearing – The man with no short-term memory
You have stupid beliefs.
I’m sorry for you about your mom. But I can’t imagine how fooling yourself about the nature of her progressing loss of memory and her inability to recall things could be consoling to you.
IF she actually could remember things/events/ideas but just couldn’t get “her mouth to form the words”, that wouldn’t be dementia; it would be some other physical/neurological syndrome. There might not be a cure but there would be therapy to facilitate communication.
All the dementia patients I know can “form the words” perfectly fine. Their problems are that they don’t remember what they started to say, often forgetting from one word to the next what they’ve just said. Much of the time, they talk about NOT remembering things. But anyways, they talk.
As I said, my mother does not speak. Are you saying she was misdiagnosed?
Those who lack competence are also unable to determine whether competence or incompetence has been demonstrated.
A few notes:
(1) it is difficult to see what the exact relation is between Categories and the topics of Metaphysics even within Aristotle’s own texts, so it is hard to see whether or not Aristotle would call those categories “metaphysical”.
(2) “existence” is not one of Aristotle’s categories, so bringing in Aristotle does nothing to help us resolve the question whether or not existence is a “metaphysical” category (as opposed to what? a non-metaphysical category? what’s the difference?);
(3) neither Erik nor myself are Aristotelians, so both of us would need some argument as to why Aristotle’s way of thinking about categories is the right way of thinking about them;
(4) there are some philosophers who I do find quite useful and illuminating when it comes to thinking about the concept of “categories”: Kant, Hegel, C. I. Lewis, and Sellars. Lewis in particular has two compelling ideas (both adopted from his mentor Josiah Royce): “a category is a way of acting” and “everything is real in some category; nothing is real in all categories”. I doubt that Aristotle would approve of either position. Sellars takes Lewis’s Kantian pragmatism and puts it in a Hegelian direction: the categories are revisable. We can and do invent new categories as our understanding of the world changes, and we also — very important for Sellars — revise how particulars are categorized as a result of inquiry. For example: in a pre-scientific culture, the use of the proper and common sensibles are used to describe the properties of objects. But once we understand that our visual consciousness of the world results from how photons causally interact with the rods and cones in the retina, we understand that the proper and common sensibles describe our consciousness of the world, not the properties of objects. Now, I do think that Sellars’s argument here goes badly wrong at a few points, but the underlying idea seems sound: how we categorize the world is not set in stone, and certainly not set in the papyrus written in the 350s BC
So you do know what a category is.
Mung, that’s a foolish question. How could I possibly know? What’s the point of my guessing your specific case beyond the generalities I’ve already mentioned?
You brought up your mother in this thread as an example of a person who still remembers things, but sadly cannot “form the words” to demonstrate her recall — in contradiction to the others’ points that memory only exists in brain physicality and that several kinds of injuries and diseases destroy memory by damaging physical brain.
You say this despite the fact that – since she cannot or will not speak – you have zero evidence that your mother does actually have memories left. Maybe it’s true that she does, and simply can’t express them, but how could you possibly know? You don’t know, you’re just hoping or guessing that she does.
And god only knows why you would hope that.
Meanwhile, back in the real world, people who have noticed that dementia is generally a progressing disease have also noticed that the patients themselves are conscious (in early/middle stage) they’re in the process of forgetting stuff. They tell us that it’s not as if they can still remember it somewhere without being able to quite express it out loud; it’s that the memory is plain gone. They tell us “I don’t remember”.
Then later, if they live long enough for the dementia to get worse, they lose touch with their environment and stop communicating altogether. Are they lost in their own minds wandering through a rich landscape of retained childhood memories? There’s no evidence to support that idea.
What was the actual diagnosis?
Alzheimer’s Disease
Vascular Dementia
Dementia With Lewy Bodies (DLB)
Parkinson’s Disease Dementia
Mixed Dementia
Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD)
Huntington’s Disease
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus
Wernicke-Korsakoff Syndrom
I know that different philosophers have used the word “category” in many different ways and have quite different views about what the categories are.
I don’t know what makes a category a “metaphysical category” as distinct from other kinds of categories.
I don’t know what Erik had in mind when he insisted that “existence is a metaphysical category”.
And I don’t know why Erik thought that saying that “existence is a metaphysical category” was an objection to my claim that metaphysical claims cannot be established by logical proof alone.
More substantively, Erik and I have very different pictures of what logic is and what logic can do, because my training is in modern symbolic logic. Hence I regard logic as the theory of inferential structures considered in abstraction from semantics (meaning) and from pragmatics (use). This is why I think there is a fundamentally important difference between formal languages (logical systems) and natural languages (English, German, Chinese, Russian, etc.).
Erik does not think that there is a fundamental difference between formal and natural languages, in part because his conception of both is not informed by Frege’s work on formal language and Wittgenstein’s criticism of Frege. Hence he thinks that logic and metaphysics are much more tightly connected than I do.
I also think, along with quite a few contemporary logicians, that there is no single correct logical system. There are various kinds of non-classical logic that are fascinating and almost certainly incompatible with each other.
hotshoe_, my mother is able to laugh at a joke. This indicates to me that she understand words and their meanings and their relationships. I have reason to disbelieve that her “memory is plain gone.” There’s more to it than wishful thinking. So it is just not true that “you have zero evidence that your mother does actually have memories left.”
ETA: Including jokes about people she would know about.
KN, as you know, English is not Erik’s first language. It appeared to me that your comment was mocking and dismissive. Just go back and look at all the scare quotes.
No, just go back and look at all the places where quotation marks are in place to identify the term(s) which need to be defined in order for serious discussion to proceed.
Those aren’t “scare quotes”.
Maybe you don’t have the faintest academic understanding of the use of quotation marks, but that’s no excuse for assuming that KN is mocking and dismissive as you say.
You can and should correct your misunderstanding.
I thought the discussion was about memory.
I provided (as did others) an example of a deficit limited to memory.
Not verbalization, not cognition, not rationality, not anything other than the ability to form new memories.
Full ability to understand that something bad had happened, but no ability to carry this knowledge to the next day.
I’m still trying to figure out why Mung thought that distinguishing between memory and recall would help Erik’s case for the non-physical.
Do keep trying.
Doesn’t matter. there is no reasonable way to define memory or recall that isn’t supported by a physicalist model.
Cripes, this has been investigated since the days of William James. Stray cranks are unlikely to think of something that experimentalists haven’t thought of and tested.
But this brings out one of the defining characteristics of a crank. The crank thinks he has thought of some new wrinkle.
keiths:
Mung:
Well, there is one obvious explanation, but I was wondering if there was a more charitable one.
Evidently not. If there were, you would have presented it.
petrushka,
There isn’t a physicalist model for memory and recall.
I know that English isn’t Erik’s first language, but he certainly seems perfectly fluent in it. He’s a much better writer in English than many native speakers I know.
That’s not the problem.
The problem is that he introduced a specific claim as the root of our disagreement — that he thinks that “existence is a metaphysical category”. I simply don’t know what that means, and that’s not a problem due to the fact that English is not Erik’s first language. It’s up to him to explain what he means by that, and to explain why that claim works as an objection to my claim that metaphysics cannot be done by logic alone.
If you understand what “existence is a metaphysical category” means, and how that claim undermines my claim that metaphysics cannot be done by logic alone, feel free to contribute.
.
I trust I don’t need to highlight the relevant terms for you.
Mung,
I’ve read the Metaphysics, as well as the Physics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima. I know Aristotle fairly well and I teach his work on a regular basis.
What I don’t understand is why you think that Aristotle’s views are relevant to the debate that Erik and I are having.
Aristotle might have thought that metaphysics could be grounded in logic alone (though I have grave doubts about that), but if he thought that, he was deeply mistaken.
And whereas Erik has claimed that metaphysics can be grounded in logic alone, he has not yet given us any reasons for thinking that this true. Perhaps he thinks that this is true because of his conception of the intellect and its relation to the senses.
Here lies an even deeper problem: Erik treats his conception of the senses and the intellect as self-evidently true. By contrast, I think it is false because phenomenology, pragmatism, and cognitive science give us a far more complicated account.