[FRIAM] What Are We Monists Moaning About?

Thu Apr 25 23:35:19 EDT 2019

If you read the section of my book entitled "Other 'isms in Philosophy
of the Mind", I examine the theory outlined earlier in the book
(Theory of Nothing) to see how it fitted into Chalmer's 7
classifications of the theory of the mind.

I concluded that actually I held 6 out of the 7 positions simultaneously.

I think it is quite possible to be both a dualist and a monist
simultaneously. Even a hardcore materialist will admit that
relationships between things (eg the angle made by crossing two spears)
are distinctly nonmaterial things.

Of course, YMMV.

As for what a Turing machine may know, you could take a look at Bruno
Marchal's theory, which is developed in terms of modal logic. His book
I translated "Amoeba's Secret" is probably the gentlest
introduction. Not sure what an English major might make of it though
:).

On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 12:45:43PM -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Dear Friammers,
> 
>  
> 
> The subject line is the title of an article I am thinking about writing for the
> Annals of Geriatric Maundering, and I want your help.   If you think that I am
> offering you an opportunity to waste your time, in service of advancing my
> career, you are, of course exactly correct.   Some of you have accused me of
> starting a fight on FRIAM when a good scholar would actually check out large,
> heavy books from the library.  That criticism is precise and apt.  My excuse is
> I have two disabilities for true scholarship: my eyesight sucks, and I am
> lazy.  So, here we go. 
> 
>  
> 
> To be a monist is first and foremost to be NOT a dualist.  The most familiar
> form of dualism is the mind/body dualism, which is so embedded in our language
> that it is hard to speak without depending on it.  According to this dualism,
> there are two kinds of stuff, mind and matter.  Dualists like to talk about the
> interaction of these two kinds of stuff, and are delighted when they discover
> isomorphisms between events in consciousness and events in the brain.  They
> like to discuss such topics as “information” and “representation”.  Dualists
> are fond of the subject object distinction, and are enthralled by the mysteries
> of “inner” states.  They like to talk about inverted spectrums.  They hail the
> Privacy of Mind.   Most of you are closet dualists.  You LIKE to think you are
> materialists, but if you were materialists you would have to be monists, and
> you wouldn’t like that, as you will plainly see.  I should confess that
> dualists, particularly closet dualists, drive me crazy.   Just sayin’.  And as
> I have assured you many times, I love you all anyway.  In fact, probably would
> have died years ago, if you had not kept me active.
> 
>  
> 
> Dualists are flanked on one side by pluralists and on the other by monists. 
> Pluralists are plainly crazy, and, besides, I don’t know any, so we won’t
> bother with pluralism.  Monism is clearly the way to go.  There are two
> familiar kinds of monism: idealism and materialism.  An idealist insists that
> everything real consists of ideas and relations between ideas; a materialist
> insists that everything real consists of matter and its relations.  If you ask
> an idealist about matter and s/he will say, “What is this “matter” of which you
> speak? All we have is ideas about matter.  If you ask a materialist about
> ideas, he will say, “What are these “ideas” of which you speak? Ideas are just
> arrangements of matter”  Of the two, I prefer materialism.  It is easier for me
> to reduce ideas to relations amongst matter than it is to reduce matter to
> relations among ideas. But neither of these forms of monism seem quite honest
> to me, because each implies the other.  To put it bluntly, realists and
> materials are all closet dualists.
> 
>  
> 
> The remaining option is “neutral” monism.  Being a neutral monist is very hard
> because people demand that you answer the question, “Of what does everything
> real consist?”  It is VERY hard to answer that question without becoming a
> closet dualist.  The answer requires some sort of noun (or gerund) and
> therefore, any response implies its opposite or absence, and thus relapses into
> closet dualism. 
> 
>  
> 
> One possibility I have considered is “event monism” .  Everything real consists
> of events and their relations.  I like the concept of event because it does not
> conjure up its opposite or absence quite so relentlessly.  What is a non-event
> or the absence of an event, really?  It’s an event in itself, right?  We speak
> of days when nothing happened, but we don’t really mean it.  Something DID
> happen; it just wasn’t very interesting. On the other hand, it does not
> accommodate “relations” talk very well.
> 
>  
> 
> A extreme solution is to take a kind of mathematical notational approach and
> just go for the relations:  “Everything that is real consists of [   ] and its
> relations”; i.e., everything real consists of [[[[[[[[[   ]…]….]….] etc. ad
> infinitum.  In words, “Everything real consists of relations and their
> relations. 
> 
>  
> 
> Neither of these solutions is very satisfying and both are rhetorically
> ungainly.  By default, have started to call  myself as an “Experience Monist”. 
> When people look at me slyly and ask, “Experience of what?” I say, “Of other
> experiences”.   And when they inevitably ask, “What was the first experience
> of?”, I ask them , “How many first experiences were there?” After they say,
> “One,” I ask. “And how many subsequent experiences have there been?”  And when
> they answer, “Oh, gosh, lots.  Almost an infinite number.”  I say, “Well, then
> let’s deal with the first one after we have dealt with all the others, mmmmm?” 
> You call this cheap sophistry, but I think the line of argument is fair because
> our obsession with “origins” (or “oranges”, for that matter) smacks of
> theology, and I am thoroughly fed up with theology.  “Let’s begin in the
> middle,” I say, “And not spend so much time worrying about the beginning and
> the end.”
> 
>  
> 
> And now we get to the crazy bit, the part where I imagine that FRIAMmers might
> help out.  This conception of The Real always reminds me of a Turing Machine. 
> That I make this connection might seem odd to you.  You might wonder what a
> flunked-out Harvard English major is doing with thoughts about a Turing
> Machine.  Fair question.  So how is it that I imagine a Turing Machine?
> 
>  
> 
> A Turing Machine (in my imagination) is a device that is capable of only three
> operations, punching a tape, moving a tape, and reading a tape.  Uh, oh, I need
> a 4^th.  I need it to be able to punch a tape and move a tape on the basis of
> what it finds on the tape.  Oh, gosh, I need a 5^th.  I need there to be
> punches on the tape NOT punched by the machine itself.  Oh, and a 6^th:  the
> survival of the machine needs to depend on anticipating patterns on the tape
> 
>  
> 
>   OH CRAP!  I THINK  I  JUST BECAME A DUALIST!
> 
>  
> 
> 
> Has anybody written an article entitled, “What does the Turing Machine know?”
> Would a flunked-out Harvard English Major understand it?  Could you give me the
> link? 
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> 
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
> 
> Clark University
> 
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
> 
>  
> 

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