6 ms·

> You seem to be engaging in difficult philosophical concepts and jumping over important steps (like rigorous definitions or showing why something “must be”).

> You seem to be engaging in difficult philosophical concepts and jumping over important steps (like rigorous definitions or showing why something “must be”). Yeah, sorry, I bashed that out too quickly. I'll try to slow down a bit, though I can't promise a full treatise :) For a thought to be about reality, there must be something about that thought that makes it about reality. How this might be the case is one thing, but the fact that it is the case is nonetheless necessary. And for the thought to be about the reality, there must in one way or another be similarity between thought and reality. Again, the 'how' may be extremely complex, but the existence of the similarity seems necessary. To put it in opposite terms, if a thought is not similar to reality, then it is not about reality, and therefore can't constitute knowledge about reality. Do you agree thus far? If so, let that be premise 1. I'm obviously talking about the concepts we use to think about reality, not about the words we use to describe it. I will assume that we agree that thoughts can be about reality (even though they're obviously sometimes not) as premise 2. So, given our two premises, suppose Bob is thinking about a tree. With materialism, where is the likeness between Bob's mind and the tree? It cannot be the neurons or the physical structure of his brain or body, because these things don't have similarity with a tree. The atomic structure of a brain, in any state, is different from a tree's. That much is clear. And likewise, a tree doesn't somehow appear in Bob's brain. Given our premises, this is a problem for materialism. If the likeness is not physical, and it clearly isn't, then what is it? We can discuss the idea of a tree as 'emergent' from the matter&state. But honestly, I struggle with this concept. Every time I've heard the word used, it seems to be a way of restating the problem rather than solving it. Perhaps you could explain in a bit more detail how this overcomes the 'similarity' problem I've outlined above? ISTM you still get the problem that a bunch of neurons is not a tree, regardless of their arrangements. Either the neurons in some sense 'cause' you to think about a tree, in which case you need to ascribe to the neurons an ability to cause immaterial effects, which again seems a problem; or it is simply a way of saying "we don't know how it works". Again, so ISTM. On computers: very briefly, a computer doesn't 'know' anything about a tree, or anything else. A 'tree' on a computer is a bunch of magnetic states on a hard drive, or transistors in particular states, or what have you. The meaning of a computer's output (that is, the link between the computer and reality) exists only in the mind of a human being. An LLM's text about a tree is no different in principle from the binary for the word 'tree' on an hdd, or a jpeg, or whatever. An LLM gives the illusion of knowing, but no more than that. Again, I realize this is a pretty summary treatment, but I think the tendency to describe the mind as a computer is misguided for this reason. You face exactly the same problem with the computer as you do with the mind. For my part, I simply reject premise 2 as far as a computer is concerned. Anyway, very simply, if materialism is true, a thought cannot be about reality, and it cannot have a similarity with reality. Therefore, we can't know anything about reality. But we can know about reality (premise 2), therefore materialism is false.

mannykannot 2y ago
There are a number of points where this thesis needs considerable work. Perhaps the first is that you appear to be ambivalent about what you have in mind by 'similarity'. When you first discuss it, you say "...there must in one way or another be similarity between thought and reality. Again, the 'how' may be extremely complex...", but then you go on to say "...where is the likeness between Bob's mind and the tree? It cannot be the neurons or the physical structure of his brain or body, because these things don't have similarity with a tree..." - so this similarity could be extremely complex, yet you dismiss the possibility of it being anything physical without offering the slightest justification. You might find that convincing, but you have not said anything that presents a challenge to anyone skeptical of this claim. You do not help your case by continuing "The atomic structure of a brain, in any state, is different from a tree's." This suggests that while you recognize that this similarity could be extremely complex, you do not completely grasp how complex a similarity between a physiological structure and something external to the body could be. This impression is reinforced by your comments on emergence, which you appear to want to dismiss on the grounds that you struggle with it. Again, this is unlikely to be persuasive to people who do get it. For what it's worth, here's my go-to example of emergence: in the theory of evolution, fitness is a key concept, yet you will not find an organ of fitness by dissection - it is an emergent property of an organism's physiology in relation to its environment. Much of the rest of your comment is in this vein, and it is rather like saying "how can music be recorded on a compact disk? CD burners use light, not sound." There is no point in belaboring this further, so let us instead return to your starting point - "for a thought to be about reality, there must be something about that thought that makes it about reality." A physicalist could respond by suggesting that there is a a chain of physical causality running from the outside world to brain states via sense organs. When we recognize that sense organs do not capture complete information, and also that brain states may be influenced by previous brain states, this view accommodates the fact that we can have incorrect thoughts about reality. How this works is opaque to us at our current state of knowledge, but that does not mean that it does not happen - in fact, it would be quite hard for an anti-physicalist to deny that it does. The bottom line here is that the correspondence between mental states and reality is not the problem for physicalism that you think it is.
- 2y ago

mannykannot 2y ago

There are a number of points where this thesis needs considerable work. Perhaps the first is that you appear to be ambivalent about what you have in mind by 'similarity'. When you first discuss it, you say "...there must in one way or another be similarity between thought and reality. Again, the 'how' may be extremely complex...", but then you go on to say "...where is the likeness between Bob's mind and the tree? It cannot be the neurons or the physical structure of his brain or body, because these things don't have similarity with a tree..." - so this similarity could be extremely complex, yet you dismiss the possibility of it being anything physical without offering the slightest justification. You might find that convincing, but you have not said anything that presents a challenge to anyone skeptical of this claim. You do not help your case by continuing "The atomic structure of a brain, in any state, is different from a tree's." This suggests that while you recognize that this similarity could be extremely complex, you do not completely grasp how complex a similarity between a physiological structure and something external to the body could be. This impression is reinforced by your comments on emergence, which you appear to want to dismiss on the grounds that you struggle with it. Again, this is unlikely to be persuasive to people who do get it. For what it's worth, here's my go-to example of emergence: in the theory of evolution, fitness is a key concept, yet you will not find an organ of fitness by dissection - it is an emergent property of an organism's physiology in relation to its environment. Much of the rest of your comment is in this vein, and it is rather like saying "how can music be recorded on a compact disk? CD burners use light, not sound." There is no point in belaboring this further, so let us instead return to your starting point - "for a thought to be about reality, there must be something about that thought that makes it about reality." A physicalist could respond by suggesting that there is a a chain of physical causality running from the outside world to brain states via sense organs. When we recognize that sense organs do not capture complete information, and also that brain states may be influenced by previous brain states, this view accommodates the fact that we can have incorrect thoughts about reality. How this works is opaque to us at our current state of knowledge, but that does not mean that it does not happen - in fact, it would be quite hard for an anti-physicalist to deny that it does. The bottom line here is that the correspondence between mental states and reality is not the problem for physicalism that you think it is.

2y ago