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Is meaning located in the brain?

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One of the clearest and most compelling arguments against materialism is that it is unable to account for the simple fact that our thoughts possess a meaning in their own right. As philosopher Ed Feser puts it in an online post entitled, Some brief arguments for dualism, Part I:

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.

The argument seems especially convincing when we consider abstract concepts. Consider the famous line, “Honesty is a greatly overrated virtue,” from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It seems preposterous to suppose that a concrete entity like a set of neurons, or even a neural process, could mean “honesty,” “virtue,” or any of the other words in that memorable quote.

Now, however, the materialists are fighting back, and attempting to locate meaning in the brain itself. A team of cognitive neuroscientists claims to have identified the areas of the brain that are responsible for processing the meanings (and not just the sounds) of specific words. Their findings were presented at the 2012 Society for the Neurobiology of Language Conference in San Sebastian, Spain. Presenting the team’s research findings, Joao Correia of Maastricht University told the conference that his team had decided to address the vital question: “How do we represent the meaning of words, independent of the language we are listening to?” A report in New Scientist magazine entitled,
“Mind-reading scan locates site of meaning in the brain”
(16 November 2012) by Douglas Heaven, takes up the story:

To begin the hunt, Correia and his colleagues used an fMRI scanner to study the brain activity of eight bilingual volunteers as they listened to the names of four animals, bull, horse, shark and duck, spoken in English.

The team monitored patterns of neural activity in the left anterior temporal cortex – known to be involved in a range of semantic tasks – and trained an algorithm to identify which word a participant had heard based on the pattern of activity.

Since the team wanted to pinpoint activity related to meaning, they picked words that were as similar as possible – all four contain one syllable and belong to the concept of animals. They also chose words that would have been learned at roughly the same time of life and took a similar time for the brain to process.

They then tested whether the differences in brain activity were related to the sound of the word or its meaning by testing whether the algorithm could identify the correct animal while the participants listened to the Dutch version of the word.

The system was still able to identify which animal had been named, despite being trained with patterns generated for English words. For example, the word “horse” and its Dutch equivalent “paard” gave rise to the same brain pattern, suggesting that the activity represented the word’s meaning – the concept of a horse…

“This type of pattern recognition approach is a very exciting scientific tool for investigating how and where knowledge is represented in the brain,” says Zoe Woodhead at University College London, who wasn’t involved in the study. “Words that mean the same thing in different languages activate the same set of neurons encoding that concept, regardless of the fact that the two words look and sound completely different.”

As resolutions in brain imaging improve, Correia predicts that a greater number of words will be predicted from brain activity alone. In principle, it might even be possible to identify whole sentences in real time, he says…

So, have Correia and his team located the meaning of words in the brain? Summing up their research findings, Correia et al. wrote in the Abstract of their report (delivered on Friday October 26th, 2012, at 2:20 p.m., at Slide Session B; see p. 12 of the Conference Report):

The results of our discrimination analysis show that word decoding involves a distributed network of brain regions consistent with the proposed ‘dual-stream model’ (Hickok and Poeppel, 2007). The results of our generalization analysis highlights a focal and specific role of a left anterior temporal area in semantic/concept decoding. Together, these distributed and focal brain activity patterns subserve the extraction of abstract semantic concepts from acoustically diverse English and Dutch words during bilingual speech comprehension.

I had never heard of the Dual Stream model until I came across this report, and I suspect most of my readers won’t have heard of it, either. Professor Greg Hickok helpfully explains the model in a post entitled, Dual Stream Model of Speech/Language Processing: Tractography Evidence (Wednesday, December 3, 2008), on a blog called Talking Brains – News and views on the neural organization of language which he and co-author Professor David Poeppel moderate:

The Dual Stream model of speech/language processing holds that there are two functionally distinct computational/neural networks that process speech/language information, one that interfaces sensory/phonological networks with conceptual-semantic systems, and one that interfaces sensory/phonological networks with motor-articulatory systems (Hickok & Poeppel, 2000, 2004, 2007). We have laid out our current best guess as to the neural architecture of these systems in our 2007 paper…

[A diagram illustrating the model is included in the post.]

It is worth pointing out that under reasonable assumptions some version of a dual stream model has to be right. If we accept (i) that sensory/phonological representations make contact both with conceptual systems and with motor systems, and (ii) that conceptual systems and motor-speech systems are not the same thing, then it follows that there must be two processing streams, one leading to conceptual systems, the other leading to motor systems. This is not a new idea, of course. It has obvious parallels to research in the primate visual system, and (well before the visual folks came up with the idea) it was a central feature of Wernicke’s model of the functional anatomy of language. In other words, not only does the model make sense for speech/language processing, it appears to be a “general principle of sensory system organization” (Hickok & Poeppel, 2007, p. 401) and it has stood the test of time.

The abstract of Hickok and Poeppel’s original 2007 paper, The cortical organization of speech processing (Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 8 (5), 393-402 DOI: 10.1038/nrn2113) is even more succinct:

Despite decades of research, the functional neuroanatomy of speech processing has been difficult to characterize. A major impediment to progress may have been the failure to consider task effects when mapping speech-related processing systems. We outline a dual-stream model of speech processing that remedies this situation. In this model, a ventral stream processes speech signals for comprehension, and a dorsal stream maps acoustic speech signals to frontal lobe articulatory networks. The model assumes that the ventral stream is largely bilaterally organized – although there are important computational differences between the left- and right-hemisphere systems – and that the dorsal stream is strongly left-hemisphere dominant.

So much for the theoretical background. What we need to ask ourselves now is: what have Correia and his team actually established?

The research findings of Correia et al. certainly lend support to the idea that the left anterior temporal cortex is involved in decoding words in sentences in a way that assists with identifying the meanings of these words, rather than their sounds. However, I think it would be an unwarranted leap to conclude that this part of the brain plays a special role in identifying the actual meaning of a word. Instead, what I would propose is that this region plays a subsidiary but nonetheless role, preparatory to the activity of locating the meaning of a word.

What I am tentatively suggesting is that the left anterior temporal cortex may store collocations (or frequent co-occurrences of words), by means of neural connections whose strength corresponds to the relative frequency with which two words are found to occur together. In other words, this part of the brain doesn’t store the meanings of words, but the frequency with which a word having a certain meaning (whether in English or Dutch) is likely to be used with certain other words. If you can identify one word in a sentence, this part of the brain would definitely help in identifying the other words that it is likely to be used with – irrespective of how those words sound in the two languages. That’s why it’s so useful for semantic decoding.

Even when individuals are only exposed to single words (as in the experiment conducted by Correia et al.), their brains would naturally search for related words, because human beings are, after all, creatures who are designed to seek meanings. We can’t help it – that’s what we do, as rational animals. Moreover, we habitually tend to communicate with each other in whole sentences, not one-word utterances. So it is not surprising that the left anterior temporal cortex of these individuals was still activated.

By the way, for those who may be wondering, here is how Wikipedia defines a Collocation:

In corpus linguistics, collocation defines a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, collocation is a sub-type of phraseme. An example of a phraseological collocation (from Michael Halliday)is the expression strong tea. While the same meaning could be conveyed by the roughly equivalent powerful tea, this expression is considered incorrect by English speakers. Conversely, the corresponding expression for computer, powerful computers is preferred over strong computers. Phraseological collocations should not be confused with idioms, where meaning is derived, whereas collocations are mostly compositional.

I should note that English and Dutch are very similar languages – they’re practically sisters. What I would be interested to see is the results of research conducted on individuals who are bilingual in English and Japanese – whose grammar, collocations and idioms are very different from each other. It is doubtful whether researchers would observe the same neat one-to-one mapping between the meanings of English and Japanese words as they discovered between English and Dutch words.

To sum up: it is simply nonsensical to assert that the brain, or any other material entity, could possibly store the meaning of a word – particularly an abstract word. Meaning is not a physical property as such. It is perfectly reasonable, however, to claim that the brain contains centers that not only decode sounds into the words of our mother tongue (or a second language), but also enable us to predict, from having heard one word, which other words it is likely to be associated with. It is not surprising, either, that closely related languages like English and Dutch would generate much the same pattern of predictions regarding what word will come next, even if the word sounds different in the two languages.

Well, that’s my two cents. But I may be wrong. What do readers think?

Comments
keiths creates 'islands of function' by poofing water into existence. No wonder he's confused about ID.Mung
December 10, 2012
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Yeah Mung, bravo- hopefully you took a shower before coming back here. Have their "arguments" shown you the way? Or has it gone pretty much as you expected?Joe
December 10, 2012
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Alan Fox:
If you can observe something, no matter how remotely or indirectly, then it’s real. If you can only imagine it…
Exactly why your position is not science, Alan. It relies on imagination and says the heck with observations and experiences. Thank you for finally admitting that for all to see.Joe
December 10, 2012
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PS @ mung, Sorry I missed your first delurk at TSZ. Hope you find time to visit again.Alan Fox
December 10, 2012
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Mung, In the vain hope that you are asking a serious question, the act of imagining is indeed a real process. The brain activity that results in the thought of something imagined is real. The "thing" imagined may, however, be imaginary. You may be able to imagine an invisible pink unicorn but that does not mean it is real. In my view, that is similar to creating the concept called "Intelligent Design" and imagining it to be real.Alan Fox
December 10, 2012
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Is anything real absent an observer? By imagining something, I am observing it, therefore it is real, however indirect that observation may be.Mung
December 10, 2012
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Oy, such a mess!
It's only when you start qualifying reality that you get into trouble. If you can observe something, no matter how remotely or indirectly, then it's real. If you can only imagine it... Of course, our skill and discernment at observing improves all the time, so reality isn't fixed.Alan Fox
December 8, 2012
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May I suggest dispensing with the words “natural” and “supernatural” and using instead “real” and “imaginary”. It just makes the difference between things we know of and things we make up so much clearer.
You may certainly do so if you wish, Alan, but that wouldn't work for me. For one thing, invoking the real/imaginary distinction is a big can of worms in itself -- a can of worms that much troubled Meimong, Russell, Husserl, Carnap, Sellars, Quine, and quite a few others. It's just as problematic, if not more so, than the natural/supernatural distinction, and a real head-ache once you try getting into the details. For example, to rehash an old problem, my thought of a unicorn. Are the contents of my thoughts not real qua the contents of my thoughts? Should we follow Descartes in saying that the unicorn has "objective reality", even though it has no "formal reality"? And then how do we solve the problem of the external world and deal with the correspondence theory of truth? Oy, such a mess!Kantian Naturalist
December 8, 2012
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Imaginary things are real. Even imaginary numbers are real!Mung
December 8, 2012
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HTML error real! Keyboard fault imaginary!Alan Fox
December 8, 2012
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>blockquote>...my conceptions of natural and supernatural simply don’t apply to ancient Greece, or to the Hindu pantheon, or to animistic world-views. May I suggest dispensing with the words "natural" and "supernatural" and using instead "real" and "imaginary". It just makes the difference between things we know of and things we make up so much clearer.Alan Fox
December 8, 2012
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Wouldn't a mechanist almost by definition believe in an underlying order? otoh, an atomist, stuff bumping into other stuff willy-nilly.Mung
December 8, 2012
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Hi Kantian Naturalist, Let me just say briefly that I agree with Wittgenstein's view that meaning is social. Because social acts are public acts (e.g. wedding vows, the signing of contracts, initiation ceremonies and funerals), someone might argue that they are meaningful in their own right. Nevertheless we can still ask: what is it about these acts and ceremonies that makes them meaningful? (A visiting alien might find them utterly meaningless.) And in the end, the only satisfactory answer we can give is: (i) the cultural fact that within our community, we all agree that these acts are meaningful (which presupposes an mental act of assent on the part of each and every one of us), coupled with (ii) the psychological fact that the participants are capable of the requisite mental acts needed to perform these acts properly (for instance, someone who is getting married must be capable of understanding the nature of the marriage contract, and of publicly affirming that he/she is acting freely). Thus it seems to me that even an account of meaning which ascribes meaning primarily to public acts still presupposes the occurrence of mental acts which possess meaning in their own right, and which are irreducible to physical acts.vjtorley
December 8, 2012
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Hi nullasalus, You asked:
Can you describe what the the difference is between matter and the material world, as conceived by mechanists, and matter and the material world as conceived by Aristotelians?
A mechanist is someone who (i) holds that the fundamental properties of matter are its measurable (i.e. quantitative) physical properties, (ii) thinks that the properties of wholes can be reduced to those of their constituent parts, and (iii) views only efficient causal and material explanations as ontologically basic. An Aristotelian is someone who (i) maintains that qualitative properties are just as fundamental as quantitative, and that an object's (active and passive) powers are more fundamental than either of these, (ii) thinks that the properties of wholes cannot be reduced to those of their constituent parts, and (iii) views four kinds of explanations as ontologically basic: efficient causal, material, formal and finalistic. Indeed, if pressed, an Aristotelian might even say that (iv) finalistic properties are the most basic, as an object's efficient causal, material and formal properties are contained within and explained by its built-in tendencies. However, the term "materialist", in modern usage, is far broader than the term "mechanist". A materialist is willing to accept built-in tendencies, provided they can be scientifically quantified and measured by some instrument. A materialist is not committed to reductionism. A materialist may well view an object's efficient causal, material, formal and final properties as mutually complementary, but would insist that an object's final properties cannot be spoken of in isolation from the other properties, and that these finalistic properties are inherently measurable and quantifiable. Finally, a modern materialist would hold that the language of mathematics can be used to describe the whole of reality. That's how I would classify these schools of thought. That's also why I don't think that materialists would be fazed by an Aristotelian's insistence that object's have built-in tendencies, although the classical mechanists of the 17th century would have been.vjtorley
December 8, 2012
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For one thing, as a quite general point, I don't see what the problem is with saying that all of our natural-language terms are revisable, empirical as well as metaphysical. I mean, isn't that just true? But the revisions aren't arbitrary or sudden -- the revisions have be grounded in reasons for why some conceptual framework should be modified or abandoned. As for the various counter-examples offered: (a) my conceptions of natural and supernatural simply don't apply to ancient Greece, or to the Hindu pantheon, or to animistic world-views. I'm trying to solve the content problem for the modern conception of nature, not for all worldviews there ever have been, are, or could be. As I said, a permanent ahistorical matrix for inquiry is not amongst my concerns. (More emphatically, I think any attempt to set up a permanent ahistorical matrix for inquiry will run afoul of Sextus Empiricus' Dilemma of the Criterion.) (b) as for vampires and werewolves, that's why I introduced the concept of "preternatural," just like the Hulk or whatever. If new laws of physics were discovered (that is, not merely posited or conjectured, but received solid empirical confirmation) which showed that, yes, indeed, it is possible for extradimensional particles to turn a human being into a wolf in a matter of minutes, then sure, whatever. Let's just say that I'm not going to hold my breath. (c) I don't know what to say about Mormonism, except that it suggests an interesting case of "naturalistic gods" -- which could have some interesting connection with how distinctively American it is. More than that, I cannot say.Kantian Naturalist
December 8, 2012
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I’m trying to avoid Hempel’s Dilemma by putting the emphasis on the relationship between psychological and biological properties: naturalism claims that everything that has psychological properties must also have biological properties, and supernaturalism claims that at least some entities with psychological properties have no biological properties.
Well, no. You didn't specify merely 'biological properties' alone - if you did, your argument would be dead in the water anyway given common naturalist speculations about conscious machines. You specified 'biological and physical' - but by including physical, Hempel's dilemma comes right up. Indeed, it would likely come up even if you did specify biological alone, since 'biological' is sectioned off by 'life' - and 'life' has its own definition problems. On the flipside, no, 'supernaturalism' does not claim that 'at least some entities with psychological properties have no biological properties'. The greek pantheon (and countless others)? Mormonism? Vampires? Werewolves? You can bite the bullet and say all these things are 'natural'. But that was part of my initial criticism anyway.
I do accept the traditional view that scientific concepts, and empirical concepts generally, are a posteriori, and metaphysical concepts are a priori. But this distinction pertains to methods of justification — it’s a distinction in epistemic status. It does not mean that metaphysical notions are immune to revision; it means only that the reasons for revising (or rejecting) metaphysical concepts are different in kind from the reasons for revising (or rejecting) empirical concepts.
And I point out, again, that it does have the effect it has on the historical view of the discussion. It's also odd to talk about metaphysical distinctions being 'a priori' and scientific concepts are 'a posteriori', when you're admitting that the changes in metaphysical concepts come about due to scientific discoveries. Now, if you want to maintain talk of 'natural' and 'supernatural' while admitting those terms are going to be under what amounts to constant revision, and that they've been constantly revised throughout time, then go for it. But there are obvious, tremendous pitfalls in doing so, which ultimately add up to naturalism hardly being a thing to take very seriously. It will be whatever it needs to be.nullasalus
December 8, 2012
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Nullasalus, You raise several important issues here, not the least of which is the bearing that Hempel's Dilemma has on my view. I'm trying to avoid Hempel's Dilemma by putting the emphasis on the relationship between psychological and biological properties: naturalism claims that everything that has psychological properties must also have biological properties, and supernaturalism claims that at least some entities with psychological properties have no biological properties. So I don't think I need to worry about defining physicalism, as Hempel did. "The laws of nature" or "the laws of physics" are not central to my conception of naturalism. A more general worry that you raise here concerns the relation between metaphysics and science. In response to my point that conceptual revision is central to the history of science, you said:
Because you’re not dealing with science, but with philosophy and metaphysics. A tremendous amount of the talk about science’s steady advance against the supernatural becomes utter bunk on this view.
This suggests that conceptual revision, which is 'at home' in science, doesn't apply to metaphysics. I disagree quite strongly. I do accept the traditional view that scientific concepts, and empirical concepts generally, are a posteriori, and metaphysical concepts are a priori. But this distinction pertains to methods of justification -- it's a distinction in epistemic status. It does not mean that metaphysical notions are immune to revision; it means only that the reasons for revising (or rejecting) metaphysical concepts are different in kind from the reasons for revising (or rejecting) empirical concepts. The revisability of metaphysical concepts is grounded in their semantic character, and in that regard metaphysics is on a par with science, insofar as both are "synthetic" rather than "analytic." Being synthetic, they are open-textured and context-dependent in just the same way that all natural-language terms are. I don't see it as objection that the question "does Aristotle have a concept of nature?" is as difficult to answer as "was Callicles a homosexual?" In other words, I don't think of metaphysics as being, to use Rorty's delightful phrase, "a permanent ahistorical matrix for inquiry" -- though of course I don't deny the historical importance of that particular conception of metaphysics. If one insists that that's just what metaphysics is, then I suppose I'm not doing metaphysics at all. However, I think I am doing metaphysics in a more general sense. If one thinks of science as being about "what is," then metaphysics is about "what 'what is' is." And that clearly has roots in how Aristotle thought of the relation between the Physics and the Metaphysics. But my conception of metaphysics is not a conception of metaphysics as a permanent ahistorical matrix of inquiry; it is a conception of metaphysics as a comprehensive system which aims to do neither more nor less satisfy Hegel's vision that "philosophy is its time, held in thought". In other words, metaphysics endeavors to raise to the level of explicit self-understanding the categories that implicitly guide and structure a particular historical period. But on my view, that's just what Aristotle was doing in his Metaphysics, and the same should be said for Spinoza's Ethics, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, Dewey's Experience and Nature, and so forth.Kantian Naturalist
December 8, 2012
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vjtorley, Rather than an exhaustive reply, I'll ask you a simple question. Can you describe what the the difference is between matter and the material world, as conceived by mechanists, and matter and the material world as conceived by Aristotileans? Before any questions of human minds and consciousness are considered. If your answer is "nothing", then I think there's an understanding issue in play here.nullasalus
December 7, 2012
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That these terms wouldn’t have made any sense in ancient Greece isn’t a problem for me, because I’m not trying to lay down exact definitions that cover all possible cases.
It's not just that they don't make sense in ancient greece - it's that they don't make sense for us now, when we talk about history. The history of science becomes a history of naturalists proposing theories (which everyone thought was natural but turned out to be supernatural) being replaced by other theories (that were themselves supernatural until they were proven, then they were natural). Right now it turns out that various theories of ours are supernatural and we don't know which - and of the supernatural ones, some of them are probably natural, and again we don't know which.
Which entities actually count as one or the other is left open, and of course is open to revision. But that’s just true of all terms in our language, not just these under examination.
There comes a point where there's so much open to revision that the attempted word tends not to mean anything. It's like Hempel's Dilemma.
I don’t see why this kind of categorical revision in light of new discoveries is a problem for my view — that kind of thing happens in the history of science all the time.
Because you're not dealing with science, but with philosophy and metaphysics. A tremendous amount of the talk about science's steady advance against the supernatural becomes utter bunk on this view. What's more, again, you say 'phenomena X isn't consistent with the known laws of physics'. But again, 'known laws of physics' is shorthand for 'laws of physics we've thus far proposed'. For any given phenomena, you can propose a new law on the spot if you so choose. Or a hundred. Are the laws in conflict with each other as you described them? Say that you're working on that part.nullasalus
December 7, 2012
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I would argue however that his original point, that inherent meaning (in the semantic sense) cannot reside in material objects, holds whether or not one believes in immanent finality. Having a behavioral tendency is one thing; having a semantic meaning is a very different thing. I conclude that semantic meaning is not something that could possibly be located in the brain, even if one accepts the reality of final causes in the natural world.
I agree that semantic meaning doesn't reside "in the brain," but I don't think that the only (or best) version of naturalism requires that it does. All that naturalism forbids, on my reading, is Platonism about meanings. And I think that "Platonic heaven or cortical processes?" is a false dichotomy. The more attractive view, what John McDowell has the temerity to call "naturalized platonism," is that meanings are essentially and fundamentally social. The meaning of a word consists in the rules for its use, to paraphrase Wittgenstein (perhaps badly). And those rules are necessarily social, for the reasons that Wittgenstein gave against the intelligibility of a private language. Now, qua naturalist, I do think that an adequate explanation of meaning will require a thorough understanding of the relevant cortical and sub-cortical processes -- and much else besides! -- but that won't tell us what meanings are. A more general issue that's relevant here, I think, concerns "scientism" (which I generally abhor) and its connection with naturalism (which I embrace). Here I'd like to make a distinction between strong scientism and weak scientism, because these conversations often run aground due to a certain 'sloppiness' about terms such as "knowledge". So:
Weak scientism holds that empirically grounded inquiry about matters of fact is the best kind of explanation.
Strong scientism holds that empirically grounded inquiry about matters of fact is the best kind of explanation, and that explanation is the most important kind of cognitive practice
(One could also entertain what might be called "hyper-strong scientism," which holds that explanations are the only important kind of cognitive practice.) So, weak scientism is consistent with regarding as important, and perhaps even more important, other kinds of cognitive practice, such as normative justifications (both epistemic and ethical), conceptual explications, phenomenological elucidations, aesthetic creations, political criticisms, and so on. Whereas strong (and hyper-strong) scientism puts all that on the back-burner, if not taken off the stove entirely. There is a very deep connection between naturalism and weak scientism, though certainly not a necessary one. (One could hold one without the other, and neither is entailed by the other.) I'm willing to say that I accept weak scientism and oppose the others. (Here I think Alex Rosenberg is a good example of someone who accepts strong, or maybe even hyper-strong, scientism.) A nice slogan for weak scientism, properly conjoined with pragmatic fallibilism, would be "science doesn't explain everything, but nothing else explains anything." But that should be construed as a gloss on how limited "explanations" are, in contrast with other cognitive practices that are of vital interest to us as rational beings.Kantian Naturalist
December 7, 2012
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Nullsallus, Thank you for those incisive criticisms! By way of response: Firstly, I'm not trying to provide conceptual analysis, of the necessary-and-sufficient condition sort. I'm trying to provide what might be called explications, which articulate meanings-in-use, as used today, in order to clarify what's at stake for us in these conversations. That these terms wouldn't have made any sense in ancient Greece isn't a problem for me, because I'm not trying to lay down exact definitions that cover all possible cases. (In fact, I think that trans-historical, necessary-and-sufficient-condition analyses only make sense for the purely formal concepts of logic and maybe mathematics.) Secondly, these terms are, as I conceive of them, intensional rather than extensional. That is, I'm just trying to explicate what we mean by "natural" and "supernatural." Which entities actually count as one or the other is left open, and of course is open to revision. But that's just true of all terms in our language, not just these under examination. Thirdly, yes, if we were to discover new laws of physics, it's quite possible that werewolves would be "natural." Or, to take another example from the world of comic books, consider the Hulk. In his human form, Dr. Bruce Banner, he weighs about 140 lbs; in his Hulk form, he weighs about 1040 lbs (though reports vary). No known laws of physics can account for a 740% weight increase over a few minutes (or less). (Where does the extra mass come from?) So the Hulk is certainly preternatural, by my lights. But if we discovered further laws of physics -- extradimensional particles or whatever -- then yes, the Hulk could then be natural. I don't see why this kind of categorical revision in light of new discoveries is a problem for my view -- that kind of thing happens in the history of science all the time.Kantian Naturalist
December 7, 2012
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Hi nullasalus and Kantian naturalist, I have to say that I disagree with Ed on the question of whether someone who thinks that intrinsic teleology is real can be a materialist and a naturalist. (Inherent meaning is another matter; if you believe that's real, you can't be a materialist.) On Ed's definition, immanent finality (or intrinsic teleology) simply means: a property of natural causes which he defined as their inherent tendency to "point to" or be "directed at" their characteristic effects. Indeed, Ed even states in his book Aquinas that having an object's having an inherent disposition or tendency of any sort (such as the tendency of salt to dissolve in water) is enough to endow it with immanent finality. I'm sure most materialists, if you asked them, would agree with Ed that salt tends to dissolve in water. According to Feser, living things are characterized by immanent causation – i.e. causal processes that begin and remain within the agent itself, and which typically benefit the agent. An example would be the process of digestion, or the mechanical and chemical breakdown of food into smaller components that are more easily absorbed into an animal's bloodstream. This occurs within the animal's body, and it also benefits the animal, as it helps it to stay alive and grow. In non-living things, by contrast, causation is always directed outward, at an external effect. The example of a magnet picking up a nail illustrates this point. This kind of causation is called transeunt, as opposed to the immanent causation found in living things. Once again, I can't see anything that a materialist would object to in principle, here. It's true that modern materialists deny the existence of finality or teleology as a basic feature of objects, for the most part. But it's also true that when materialists talk about finality, they mean something a lot stronger than Feser does. However, in his discussion of the Fifth Way, Feser ramps up his definition a little: he argues that natural causes are directed at the production of future effects. For my part, I think it is doubtful whether there exists a single clear-cut case of future-directedness, in the inorganic world. Instead, we see causes which are oriented towards their present effects – like a ball breaking a window. Nullasalus, you mentioned the rock cycle as an example of future-directedness in the inorganic world. But even here, it is doubtful whether we need to invoke future effects in order to determine which causal processes belong in the rock cycle and which do not. It is enough to say that some currently occurring processes (involving heat and pressure) transform the rock in a way which helps it move from A to B, while other changes (e.g. changes in the rock's color) are not, by virtue of their definition, related to the movement of rocks as such. Moreover, if we track the currently occurring processes related to the movement of rocks, we find that their overall effect is to conserve the total amount of rock in the earth's crust, which is why we can legitimately refer to the set of all these changes as a cycle. In any case, it really does seem rather odd to speak of rock as having an in-built tendency to not only melt when heated (a current disposition), but also a future-directed tendency to go round in a cycle: to turn from igneous rock into sediments, and then into sedimentary rock, and after that into metamorphic rock, which is transformed into magma, and finally back into igneous rock – as if rock had a "life cycle" of its own. To begin with, the very circularity of the cycle means that we cannot speak of it as future-directed as such: past, present and future are all contained within it. But it gets worse: the rock cycle doesn't go in one direction, but in multiple directions. Both igneous rock and metamorphic rock have a tendency to melt into magma when heated. Both igneous rock and sedimentary rock have a tendency to turn into metamorphic rock when subjected to heat and pressure. Thus the rock cycle contains arrows that point both forwards and backwards. Where, I ask, is the future-directedness here? It is true that there are unmistakable signs of future-directedness in the world of living things. But it is also true that the future-directed biological properties of living things, which are indeed irreducibly teleological, supervene upon their underlying physical and chemical properties: anything that has the same chemical make-up as an E. coli bacterium (atom for atom) necessarily is an E. coli bacterium. A metaphysical spoilsport could argue that even future-directed biological changes, such as the growth of an E. coli bacterium until it is ready to divide, or the development of an acorn into an oak, supervene on the present-directed finality of their chemical constituents. Regarding the metaphysical puzzle of intentionality, broadly defined as "the mind’s capacity to represent the world beyond itself," Feser thinks it can be solved by "showing that natural objects and processes are by their natures inherently directed towards the generation of certain other natural objects and processes as an 'end' or 'goal.'" He adds that this requires a commitment to Aristotelian substantial forms and final causes. I think he makes a much better argument for the latter than for the former. Establishing that objects have natural powers doesn't necessarily commit you at a belief in substantial forms. So far, I don't think Feser has said anything that a sophisticated materialist could object to, let alone a naturalist. I would argue however that his original point, that inherent meaning (in the semantic sense) cannot reside in material objects, holds whether or not one believes in immanent finality. Having a behavioral tendency is one thing; having a semantic meaning is a very different thing. I conclude that semantic meaning is not something that could possibly be located in the brain, even if one accepts the reality of final causes in the natural world.vjtorley
December 7, 2012
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InVivoVeritas, You write:
Let's then paraphrase this: Are we humans: a. A body with a soul? OR b. A soul with a body? To this: Are we: a. A brain with a mind, OR b. A mind with a brain This is the question
I would answer: c. An embodied person with a brain, where by "person" I mean "a rational agent", and by "embodied" I mean "being an organism".vjtorley
December 7, 2012
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Eric,
Saying an intelligent being has a body is quite different from saying that an intelligent being is a body. In that sense, it isn’t really any different from how most religions would view, say, angels. Or any different from how we might view ourselves right now.
Sure, but mormons are, metaphysically, very much in line with physicalism/materialism anyway. It's one reason why matter and god are co-eternal on mormonism. Likewise with Zeus. Zeus was born - he did not exist prior to his being born. Body and all. I recall reading that mormons/ex-mormons are disproportionately represented among the transhumanists and so on. If you read up on their theology, it starts to become clear why that's the case.nullasalus
December 6, 2012
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Meanwhile, the gods of mormonism are entirely naturalistic in principle – which is exactly what mormons happen to believe anyway . . .
Saying an intelligent being has a body is quite different from saying that an intelligent being is a body. In that sense, it isn't really any different from how most religions would view, say, angels. Or any different from how we might view ourselves right now. Anyway, I know that wasn't your main point, so apologies for the side track. Just wanted to clarify.Eric Anderson
December 6, 2012
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'Cant argue with that.' Actually Graham you never do honestly address a argument. For instance, you have absolutely no answer as to why my mental choices will 'instantaneously' effect material states even into the past, as the experiment I highlighted by Zeilinger illustrated. You response was to say: "You seem to have a cartoon-simple idea that if quarks can do it, we can too." Without ever actually honestly addressing the point as to why my choices should do this to material particles. You simply, as a atheist, have no answer as to why it should happen and for you to offer smug comments that you have the 'materialistic' answer when you in fact have no clue, is beyond ridiculous. ,,, Moreover, as somewhat alluded to before, quantum entanglement is now found in molecular biology on a massive scale, whereas humans have extreme difficulty entangling just a few particles together, and as one reference I cited earlier states: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” Now Graham, I know you will probably attack the man rather than the argument as you usually do, but, if you were sane in your argumentation, you should rightly consider quantum entanglement on a massive scale within molecular biology very solid evidence for the existence of a eternal soul within man for there is, as far as the best evidence we have states, "no story in space and time can describe them'bornagain77
December 6, 2012
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What Dennett fails to see is that, although intrinsic intentionality cannot be a property of the brain, it can be — and indeed is — a property of the whole organism.
So intrinsic intentionality is alright, so long as you reject reductionism for holism while you're at it? Really, this sounds pretty much exactly like what Feser himself advocates. To say it's not a popular 'naturalist' view would be an understatement.
This solves the content problem by specifying just why it is that naturalism does not countenance anything supernatural or preternatural.
Not at all - you've just shifted the problem to what counts as 'physical' properties, and redefinitions of physics. In fact, you see the problem immediately when you try to flesh it out.
So, on this definition, the following would be supernatural: God, gods, angels, demons, disembodied souls.
So, on this definition, the following would be preternatural: dragons, unicorns, fairies, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc.
Right away your problem is that the 'known laws of physics' are not fully known, can never fully be known with certainty, and are always open to revision. Modern physics violates the 'known laws of physics' of the past - so, I suppose, quantum physics is supernatural. "But wait," you say. "We updated our view of the laws of physics. It's natural now!" Wonderful. And you can, in principle, do it for gods, angels, werewolves, etc. So the 'minimal claim of naturalism' isn't much of a claim at all. It's particularly bad when looked at in a historical light - suddenly the greek pantheon was a naturalistic hypothesis (They were embodied, and there were no 'known laws of physics' for them to be in violation of.) Meanwhile, the gods of mormonism are entirely naturalistic in principle - which is exactly what mormons happen to believe anyway, since supernatural v natural powers are differences of degree, not kind. And on and on it goes. It's especially bad once you start allowing for properties that are intrinsic and kick in in a holistic or emergent sense.nullasalus
December 6, 2012
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Bornagain77: ... such a deep lack of determinism may provide some of us a loop hole when they meet God on judgment day. ... thus making God’s final judgments on men’s souls all the more fully binding since man truly is a ‘free moral agent’ as Theism has always maintained. I give up. Cant argue with that.Graham2
December 6, 2012
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Dennett arguably would. So would Alex Rosenberg. The list wouldn’t stop there.
If "naturalism" is "what Alex Rosenberg thinks" then I'm definitely hostile to it! The question whether there's any "kinder, gentler" naturalism has been much debated, but generally speaking, I'm sympathetic with the "liberal naturalism" defended by Hilary Putnam, John McDowell, Richard Rorty, and Huw Price. Dennett, I'm funny about. I like his work, actually, a lot, though more so when he's explicit about what he owes to Ryle and Sellars. But I think he's just wrong about denying intrinsic intentionality, though he's right that intrinsic intentionality cannot be a feature of the brain. (So in that regard I side with Dennett against Searle.) What Dennett fails to see is that, although intrinsic intentionality cannot be a property of the brain, it can be -- and indeed is -- a property of the whole organism.
See, the problem here is – and I have a sneaky suspicion you’re aware of it – ‘naturalist’ doesn’t mean much of anything anymore. Rather like how ‘materialist’ used to mean something very particular – a commitment to the good ol’ classical, Laplacian model of the world – right up until that model was junked. (Not to mention numerous changes that happened prior to and since that time.) I’ve argued about this on here in the past. Go look up naturalist in the SEP, and the whole thing starts off with ‘Yeah, well, there’s not really any good definition of this aside from a commitment to atheism and a dislike of religion’.
Oh yes, I'm quite aware of the problem! I call this "the content problem" of naturalism. But I think I have a solution to the content problem, inspired (ironically, no doubt) by Alvin Plantinga. Here's how he puts it:
I take naturalism to be the thought that there is no person as God, or anything like God. (Where the Conflict Really Lies, ix)
Of course, "anything like God" is pretty flimsy. But I think I can improve on it, a little, by emphasizing the concept of person and the concept of animal. A person is anything that can (i) form perceptual judgments; (ii) make inferences from those judgments; and (iii) act on the basis of judgments, inferred and non-inferred. (This could be refined, but it's OK for now, I think.) An animal is any living thing that has intentionality, consciousness, and desire, and that can respond in habitual ways to motivationally salient objects and relations within its perceptual fields. Now, with those (provisional) definitions in place:
Naturalism holds that there are no persons that are not also animals, and that all the persons there are (or could be) are animals. Put otherwise: nothing has psychological properties without also having biological and physical properties
This solves the content problem by specifying just why it is that naturalism does not countenance anything supernatural or preternatural. To continue:
X is supernatural if it has psychological properties (consciousness, intentionality, desire, rationality) but has no biological or physical properties
So, on this definition, the following would be supernatural: God, gods, angels, demons, disembodied souls.
X is preternatural if it has psychological properties and biological properties and/or physical properties, but (i) the biological properties are traits cannot be located within the natural history of life or (ii) the physical properties violate the known laws of physics
So, on this definition, the following would be preternatural: dragons, unicorns, fairies, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, etc. Naturalism, thus construed, is the minimal claim that there isn't anything supernatural or preternatural -- but, this definition solves the content problem by making clear that what's really at stake here is the relationship between psychological properties and biological properties. Hopefully this will at least make a bit clearer where I'm coming from when I describe myself as a naturalist.Kantian Naturalist
December 6, 2012
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as to: "what is the connection between entanglement and consciousness?" Well,,,, not that you really care to be fair and objective, as is evident in your last few posts, but the following should be interesting for any unbiased readers who are not dogmatically committed to atheism as you apparently are graham: In the following video, at the 37:00 minute mark, Anton Zeilinger, a leading researcher in quantum teleportation with many breakthroughs under his belt, humorously reflects on just how deeply determinism has been undermined by quantum mechanics by saying such a deep lack of determinism may provide some of us a loop hole when they meet God on judgment day. Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3ZPWW5NOrw Personally, I feel that such a deep undermining of determinism by quantum mechanics, far from providing a 'loop hole' on judgement day, actually restores free will to its rightful place in the grand scheme of things, thus making God's final judgments on men's souls all the more fully binding since man truly is a 'free moral agent' as Theism has always maintained. And to solidify this theistic claim for how reality is constructed, the following study came along a few months after I had seen Dr. Zeilinger’s video: Can quantum theory be improved? - July 23, 2012 Excerpt: Being correct 50% of the time when calling heads or tails on a coin toss won’t impress anyone. So when quantum theory predicts that an entangled particle will reach one of two detectors with just a 50% probability, many physicists have naturally sought better predictions. The predictive power of quantum theory is, in this case, equal to a random guess. Building on nearly a century of investigative work on this topic, a team of physicists has recently performed an experiment whose results show that, despite its imperfections, quantum theory still seems to be the optimal way to predict measurement outcomes., However, in the new paper, the physicists have experimentally demonstrated that there cannot exist any alternative theory that increases the predictive probability of quantum theory by more than 0.165, with the only assumption being that measurement (*conscious observation) parameters can be chosen independently (free choice, free will, assumption) of the other parameters of the theory.,,, ,, the experimental results provide the tightest constraints yet on alternatives to quantum theory. The findings imply that quantum theory is close to optimal in terms of its predictive power, even when the predictions are completely random. http://phys.org/news/2012-07-quantum-theory.html What does the term "measurement" mean in quantum mechanics? "Measurement" or "observation" in a quantum mechanics context are really just other ways of saying that the observer is interacting with the quantum system and measuring the result in toto. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=597846 So just as I had suspected after watching Dr. Zeilinger’s video, it is found that a required assumption of ‘free will’ in quantum mechanics is what necessarily drives the completely random (non-deterministic) aspect of quantum mechanics. Moreover, it was shown in the paper that one cannot ever improve the predictive power of quantum mechanics by ever removing free will as a starting assumption in Quantum Mechanics! Henry Stapp on the Conscious Choice and the Non-Local Quantum Entangled Effects - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJN01s1gOqA of note: Needless to say, finding ‘free will conscious observation’ to be ‘built into’ our best description of foundational reality, quantum mechanics, as a starting assumption, 'free will observation' which is indeed the driving aspect of randomness in quantum mechanics, is VERY antithetical to the entire materialistic philosophy which demands that a 'non-telological randomness' be the driving force of creativity in Darwinian evolution! Also of interest: Scientific Evidence That Mind Effects Matter – Random Number Generators – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4198007 I once asked a evolutionist, after showing him the preceding experiments, “Since you ultimately believe that the ‘god of random chance’ produced everything we see around us, what in the world is my mind doing pushing your god around?” Of note: since our free will choices figure so prominently in how reality is actually found to be constructed in our understanding of quantum mechanics, I think a Christian perspective on just how important our choices are in this temporal life, in regards to our eternal destiny, is very fitting: Is God Good? (Free will and the problem of evil) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfd_1UAjeIA Ravi Zacharias - How To Measure Your Choices - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Op_S5syhKI You must measure your choices by the measure of 1) eternity 2) morality 3) accountability 4) charity of related note: Sam Harris's Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It - Martin Cothran - November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state -- including their position on this issue -- is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn't logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.htmlbornagain77
December 6, 2012
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