More on Materialism and "Aboutness"

Commenter BeingItself asks: "If I was to draw a picture of my girlfriend, would that drawing be about my girlfriend? Surely a drawing is material. What is it about brains such that their patterns cannot be about anything?"

Good question! I've examined the James Ross article on this blog a few times, but it's always good to revisit this basic idea from different angles. This problem is an interesting one that materialists ought to grapple with, but too often they misunderstand it or just wave it aside.

Think of the Big Dipper. In the West, it looks like, or represents, a soup ladle.



But does the Big Dipper itself, apart from our interpretations, have anything whatsoever to do with soup ladles? Is it really about soup ladles, outside of our interpretations that we apply to it? Of course not. Soup is a salty liquid food, and a ladle is a metal spoon for scooping it up. The stars that make up the Big Dipper are enormous balls of hydrogen gas. Nothing relating to soup or ladles at all. Hell, in other cultures the Big Dipper is supposed to look like a big bear, hence it's official name: Ursa Major.

But what if we had the technology to create and move stars around? And what if we filled in the details of the Big Dipper, complete with pouring soup, so that it looks even MORE like a soup ladle than it does now?



Is it really about soup now? No, still not. It's still just a bunch of balls of hydrogen gas arranged into a patter that we interpret as a soup ladle, but apart from us is not about soup ladles.

Now let's say that the technology is not there yet to move stars around, so instead we use some small clumps of glowing electrons on a glass screen. We arrange the glowing electrons the same as before, first like the Big Dipper, then fill in more details. Again, are the glowing electrons about a soup ladle? Again, apart from our ability to apply a pattern onto something, the electrons are not about soup ladles. They are just electrons that are glowing, that have certain charges, and that's it. We've just arranged them into a patter that we call "soup ladle."

Of course, what I'm talking about here is a computer screen. Materialists often think that an easy counter to dualist claims is to point to the existence of computers, saying that computers are about things and there's no problem there, so why should there be a problem with explaining the aboutness of our thoughts? But computer output is no different from the Big Dipper above: just arrangements of glowing electrons that we apply meaning to. Without us around to give meaning to the symbols, the output on a computer screen has no more aboutness than the Big Dipper does.

And the same goes for graphite marks on a piece of paper, as BeingItself's original question pertained to. The objective physical situation involves some carbon molecules sticking to wood molecules (which are also carbon), and that's it. The physical situation, apart from BeingItself's interpretation, has nothing whatsoever to do with "girlfriends", anymore than the Big Dipper has to do with soup ladles.

The problem could be phrased like this: for a symbol to have meaning, there must be two ingredients: the physical shape/structure of the symbol + something else.

In the case of BeingItself's drawing, the "something else" is his intentions applied to the otherwise meaningless bits of carbon. In the case of the Big Dipper, the "something else" is our interpretations of an otherwise meaningless grouping of stars.

But in the case of our thoughts, what is the "something else?"

The Indeterminacy of Physical Symbols

Consider the following symbol:

Does this symbol represent a pie from which one piece has been eaten? Or does it represent the last piece of pie? Or does it represent 10:00? Or how about a geometry problem concerning segments? Planetary motion? A teepee? What does it represent?

Let's say that the only information you have to go on are the physical properties of the symbol. It's height and width, circumference, segment lengths. It's color wavelength, and the charge, spin, and mass of the particles that it consists of. The only information you have is physical information. But none of this information tells you what the symbol represents.

This holds true for computers as well. If we find an alien computer, we can't assume that the electrons pulsing through it's circuits represent "1" and that the lack of a pulse represents "0". Perhaps the opposite is true. Or perhaps they are using something other than binary, such as base 12, and an electron pulse means "12", the lack of a pulse means "0", two pulses together means "1" and so on. The point is, from the physical properties alone, it is indeterminate what these symbols represent.

But if one is a materialist, then all that exists are physical properties, and hence nothing has any determinate meaning, including thoughts. And hence, the thought "materialism is true" might just as well be the thought that "there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is His prophet". As with the symbol above, neither meaning is "more correct" than the other!

"Immaterial Aspects of Thought" - James Ross

A rundown of "Immaterial Aspects of Thought", by James Ross, which can be read here

I. The Indeterminacy of the Physical

Let's consider an exotic color called "bleen". This color is blue before January 1st, 2050, and green thereafter:

Consider now something that is colored blue:

 It is impossible to tell if it is blue or bleen if the current date is before January 1st, 2050. Nothing in the physical state of affairs gives us the correct answer. The physical states of affairs is consistent with both blue and bleen, and both states of affairs are mutually exclusive.

Next, consider these physical points:

There are any number of curves that are compatible with these points, each of which are incompatible with each other:

Which curve is the "correct" one, among these incompatible curves? None. They are all "correct", as they are all compatible with the physical points.

Now consider an alien adding machine that was discovered on, say, Mars. We figured out that it is an adding machine, because you can input two digits in the form of binary, and out pops the correct answer:

It appears to give the correct answer every time, so you deduce that it is an adding machine of some kind. However, when you input 257 and 429, suddenly the answer is 2:

Huh? That can't be right. The answer is wrong. Eventually, you find out that every number input between 250 and 500 gives the output "2", but any numbers above that again begin giving the correction answer as if it were addition. Clearly, the machine must be performing some exotic mathematical function other than addition. So it was never performing addition at all; it just appeared to be doing so. So perhaps it is performing the following function: if x, y >249 and <501, then 2, otherwise x + y. So now you've at least figured out what function it is performing, right?

No. Because it could be that it gives some other output, say "3", when numbers between 400,000 and 600,000 are input. Or it may be that it gives some completely different answer yet again when the input numbers are so large that it would take longer than the lifetime of the universe to type them in. There is no way to know what function the machine is performing.

There are many different functions, incompatible with one another, that are consistent with the physical process that is occurring.

And this supports Ross's premise: no physical process is determinate as to what function it is performing. Because, as shown, there are many mutually exclusive functions that are compatible with what the physical facts are that any physical system is doing.


II. The Determinacy of Formal Human Thought

But now consider human formal thought processes. "Formal" thought is thought involving math, logic, and like concepts.

When you are adding two numbers in your head, you better know what function you are performing, otherwise your answers may be incorrect. To be sure our conclusions in science are true (based on our best ability to judge the evidence, anyway), when we perform a logical function such as modus ponens ("if we share genetic info with chimps then we share a common ancestor, we share genetic info with chimps, therefore, we share a common ancestor"), we need to be actually performing that function and not some other function, otherwise we don't know if our conclusion really follows from our premises or not, and we know nothing we think we know.

When you add 2 and 2 to get 4, you really are adding and not performing some other exotic mathematical function. Or conversely, if you are performing some exotic function (such as the one the alien machine might be performing), then you really are performing that function and not addition. If we are not really performing the mathematical and logical functions we think we are, then everything we think we know goes out the window. Our reasoning abilities

In fact, this premise cannot be coherently denied, because if you are denying it then you are reasoning in the form of an argument, but whatever function you are reasoning with may not actually be the function you think it is.

This supports Ross's other premise: formal thought is determinate. Because if it isn't, then everything we think we know, science, math, everything, is gone.

III. Therefore, no Formal Thought is Physical

And the conclusion follows logically: no formal thought process is a physical process.

A Quick Primer on Philosophy of Mind: Materialism

This is a brief summary of materialist, or "physicalist", theories of mind.

Reduction

Says...
The mind is just brain activity. Talk of mental events (pain) can be swapped out with talk of physical events (firing of C fibers) on a one-to-one basis.

Why?
The success of science in explaining everything else in terms of matter/energy.

Problems
There could be other intelligent creatures, such as aliens or artificial intelligences, that have minds but a completely different brain structure. They could be able to feel pain but instead of C fibers they might have some other cells that fulfill the same role. This naturally leads to...

Non-Reduction

Says...
Mental events can be realized by many different types of physical systems. Pain could be C fiber firings in humans, and gamma firings in aliens. Talk of mental events cannot be swapped out with talk of physical events, since those physical events might be different in different species.

Why?
It is highly plausible that mental events can be realized by many different types of brains, as we see even with different animals here on Earth.

Problems
Can first-person subjective experience be accounted for or explained if the mind is nothing more than a program or functional algorithm?

Elimination

Says...
There is no mind. There is only brain activity as described by neuroscience.

Why?
Talk of events like beliefs, desires, fears, and other mental events is like a folk theory, and it is fruitless. Therefore, this folk theory should be eliminated and we should say there are no such events as beliefs, desires, fears, etc.

Problems
Can we really accept that there are no beliefs, desires, fears, or other mental events? Is that at all plausible?