Idealism is when you think that the world is determined by ideas, materialism is when you think that the world is determined by material. Facts don't care about your feelings! :gun-shapiro:

  • space_comrade [he/him]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Hot take: Dialectical materialism should be rebranded as dialectical monism.

    A purely materialist/physicalist stance on the mind-body problem is untenable, undialectical and leads to all sorts of brainworms.

      • space_comrade [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Sure it is, but by saying that cause and effect are entirely in the physical brain you're denying consciousness in of itself any causal efficacy and are declaring it entirely an epiphenomenon of matter, this is problematic when you consider evolution: https://web.archive.org/web/20210112001208/https://iai.tv/articles/consciousness-cannot-have-evolved-auid-1302

          • space_comrade [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            but its clear that material factors entirely determine what we percieve and therefore how we act.

            This is not clear at all actually. Mainstream neuroscience assumes this often but doesn't really have enough empirical data to back it up or a coherent account to wrap all the data up in a nice package. There's still a whole bunch of processes in the brain that are a mystery.

              • space_comrade [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Not sure where you're going with that honestly. I'm just saying the jury's still out on this one and that mainstream science doesn't have as clear of a view as often presented in popsci publications.

        • CoconutOctopus [it/its]
          ·
          3 years ago

          This kind of takes the "hard problem" of consciousness as a given and pins both your metaphysics and epistemology on it. There's also a pretty broad swath of philosophers (not just neuroscientists) who consider the "hard problem" to be, like a lot of philosophical problems, to be a problem with the philosophical language we use to discuss consciousness, and not a problem relating to consciousness itself.

          Edit to add: For example, if we knew for a fact that qualia weren't produced by purely physical processes, then the existence of "blindsight" (the ability of people who are neurologically blind to respond to visual stimuli they can't consciously see) would be a real poser - the brain damage that causes it would have to somehow also damage something non-physical that produces qualia.

          • space_comrade [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Sounds a lot like panpsychism, which is kinda ill-defined itself because the word could mean a lot of things but I'd categorize most formulations of it as a form of physicalism and by extend it suffers from the same problem described in the article.

              • space_comrade [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Not sure I understand completely, does that mean a hylopsychist is essentially agnostic about how consciousness and matter relate to each other?

                  • space_comrade [he/him]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    Sounds like we might be on the same page actually, what are your views on how your personal consciousness relates to the world? Does your personal consciousness have causal efficacy in of itself or are its contents entirely dependent on the external world, however you define such an external world?

                      • space_comrade [he/him]
                        ·
                        3 years ago

                        Thanks for the answer but I still don't feel as if its a proper response to the article.

                        What you're talking about still suffers from the combination problem (https://philpapers.org/browse/the-combination-problem-for-panpsychism) and it doesn't at all explain why our conscious experience is exactly as it is given what we know about evolution.

                        If all our conscious experience is derived from the material world it doesn't really make sense for us evolutionarily speaking to experience pain when somebody stabs us or pleasure when we orgasm, it seems as if the contents of our experience could very well be reverse in those cases and our bodies would still react the same as before. In a way it also feels like a fine-tuning problem.

                        Why not just give consciousness in of itself causal efficacy and rid yourself of these kinds of problems?

    • thirstywizard [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Yes, that's called vulgar materialism, even old Marx wrote about it. Good modern sci does make a lot of dialectical considerations as part of the scientific method. Engels knew that, wrote it. There was a lot of lib moaning by professors in my upperclassmen classes about how diamat is an incredible tool but 'muh scary politics'. Anti-Duhring was a highly suggested read, but I know my uni experience was rare (that prof was a secret comrade) and I wouldn't go recommending scientists being the sole philosophers any time soon, especially of the fields mentioned in this thread. In the far future? Oh heck yes, breakdown of divisions of labor.

      Neuroscience barely looks at the most common cell in nervous tissue, the humble glia. They aren't sexy enough for funding like neurons are. There are also other neural mesh sites in the body but we focus exclusively on the most obvious organs. Hard to figure how something works when you only look at so much of it, just saying. Then comes the issues of definitions, what is consciousness to the layman is different than that of the philosopher than that of the neuroscientist than that of the anesthesiologist than that of the youtuber psychic, though there are overlaps.

      Idk, the first part of the take afaik would only be hot among Derrida-derived lenses (like Zizek his most popular student) which consider it a pleuralism, imo would only have an argument in idealistic materialism straight out of Hegel's work, though they have a tendency to blanket apply what is to Hegel onto Marx 1-1.

      Edit; On more thought, Lenin might have been like 'technically yes, actually <much words>' since monism/pluralism usually is featured from an idealistic philosophical view rather than material (and if it is it tends to be the metaphysical 'vulgar' sort) and also tends to be very undynamic in expressions of the world so it fails to grasp complexities of the world (which has a history and such). Yes, but not so fast.

      My hot takes since that's fun, Consciousness receptor? No. Consciousness generator? Also no. Damn right consciousness especially of the pop culture type is an illusion, deal with it, and you're a different person every day, every moment, ship of Theseus my fat ass, ship of pure cope. Its just easier to call it that way because of how we process things and the limitations of language-symbolism, psych... As humans. So arrogant to think we're the only ones that are alive, perceive and process in this place. Our other cellular siblings do all those things too, also deal with it, even the so-called 'simple' ones.

      Now what illusions can do vs what we know of the world, hell if I know, we can do a lot by just imagining things especially as children, or even being asleep. I know it's one part our brain (or whatever neural mesh or sensory processor thingy) is an incredible bio computer of sorts doing calcs constantly, the other parts no clue. I do know from historical dev, whatever it is has some material underpinning somewhere, perhaps one day we'll figure it out if lucky. Unfortunately, human tendency is to run into something unknown and be quick attribute mysticism to it or blame some religious figure.

      • sagarmatha [none/use name]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Idk, the first part of the take afaik would only be hot among Derrida-derived lenses

        the trace would be a form of putting back the dualism/pluralism into a monism, with caveats obviously, so the take is Derrida compatible