Skip to main content

Rejection of materialistic reductionism leads to rejection of physicalism

Reduction occurs when one set of laws that explain a set of facts is recast in terms of another set of laws that explain the same, differently characterized set of facts. This happens when when the latter characterization is concerned with the parts while the wholes described by the former, and when the laws pertaining to the latter are more general than the former. For example, Kepler's 3 laws of planetary motion can be reduced to Newton's laws of motion.

Materialistic reductionism of psychological events to chemical events is thought to be impossible because so many different physical conditions seem to occasion the same psychological event. For example, many people may think that George Bush was a poor decision maker: we may all think the same thought. But there need be nothing identical going on in our brains as we think the same thought. In fact, as I continue to think this thought through time, every part of my brain may undergo very minor changes while I adhere to the same thought. And a Martian who is silicon based-life-form rather than carbon-based may, after having observed U.S. Politics from 2001-2008, agree that George Bush is not a good decision maker, even though the chemical processes going on in his brain are quite different from mine.

So reductionism is undercut both by the fact that the same psychological event may occur when different psychical processes seem to underlie it.

We would have to reject the reduction of Keplerian laws to Newtonian laws if we discovered that something different were going on in planetary motion as understood by Newtonian physicis while the same event was going on as far as Keplerian laws were concerned.

But different physcial states can underlie the same psychological state, so we should reject the reduction of cognition to chemistry.

Digreesion But the same argument that undercuts reductionism might also undercut physicalism. For physicalism asserts that for each physical state there can be only one psychological state.

I need to think more about the latter claim.

In any case, the reason why the first theory breaks down is because it lacks room for intentionality. Intentionality has to do with the "towardness" of cognitive acts. A cognitive act is always directed toward something other than the act itself. By its nature, intentionality requires that cognition and its object be "other" than each other. And in virtue of the fact that the cognizer undergoes different phases of a process while cognizing the same object, it follows that there is a multiplicity of physical profiles which may underlie cognition of the same object.

Comments

Unknown said…
Thomas Dubay once pointed out that materialism is a type of monism. Perhaps that's why a physicalist must conclude that a physical state can correspond to only one pyschological state - otherwise you have two "entities".
12:58 PM
Leo White said…
My (beloved) materialist nephew calls himself a monist... so that's consistent with what you propose. I need to run this problem (of the lack of qualitative multiplicity in neuron firings) by him to see what he says.

The best alternative to monism seems to me to be Aristotle's notion of energeia... I think I might have blogged about that already, not sure (gotta do a search). If I haven't yet done so, then I will.

Thanks for your comments: I hope my reply makes sense enough.
10:38 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

P F Strawson's Freedom and Resentment: the argument laid out

Here is a summary and comments on the essay Freedom and Resentment by PF Strawson.  He makes some great points, and when he is wrong, it is in such a way as to clarify things a great deal.  My non-deterministic position is much better thanks to having read this.  I’ll summarize it in this post and respond in a later one. In a nutshell: PFS first argues that personal resentment that we may feel toward another for having failed to show goodwill toward us would have no problem coexisting with the conviction that determinism is true.  Moral disapprobation, as an analog to resentment, is likewise capable of coexisting with deterministic convictions. In fact, it would seem nearly impossible for a normally-constituted person (i.e., a non-sociopath) to leave behind the web of moral convictions, even if that person is a determinist.  In this way, by arguing that moral and determinist convictions can coexist in the same person, PFS undermines the libertarian argument ...
Post a Comment
Read more

response to friend who suggested that the self is a democracy of neural parts

This is a nice way to try to avoid being cornered re the irreality of the self if you're a reductionist, for you can assert that a pattern obtains at the microscopic level that is not all that unlike the pattern found at the societal level.  No need for the one self that does it all: instead, you have many sub-selfs that compete for dominance or take turns guiding the whole. The problem with this is, however, that the voters/officials are all zombies.  None of them thinks about the whole as such.  And perhaps none of them thinks even about themselves (unless one is a panzoist).  None of them makes a comparison of alternatives. The more this proposed democracy seems like a zombocracy, the more consciousness will be seem to be epiphenomenal. Furthermore, if the oneness of the self is less real than the multiplicity of explanatory neural parts, then why can't each of these neural parts be conceived of as democracy as well?  And why not parts of these parts, et...
6 comments
Read more

interesting article by Jimmy Akin on death before the Fall

http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/did-animals-die-before-the-fall/ Akin below: Aquinas.... writes: In the opinion of some, those animals which now are fierce and kill others, would, in that state, have been tame, not only in regard to man, but also in regard to other animals. But this is quite unreasonable. For the nature of animals was not changed by man's sin, as if those whose nature now it is to devour the flesh of others, would then have lived on herbs, as the lion and falcon. Nor does Bede's gloss on Genesis 1:30, say that trees and herbs were given as food to all animals and birds, but to some. Thus there would have been a natural antipathy between some animals  [ Summa Theologiae I:96:1 ad 2 ].  Aquinas thus holds that it was not  all  death that entered the world through man's sin, but human  death.
Post a Comment
Read more