Even though I'm a supporter of intelligent design, I do not see the point of this movement. How exactly will this knowledge help anyone find "fulfillment in personal life and relationships" This is a game of words signifying nothing.

I hope, for Dowd's sake, that he is not talking about evolutionary psychology.

Actually, I should say there are only 2 positions, because I don't think mysterianism is a real position either. Since consistent materialism does logically imply eliminativism about 1st person properties, claiming that mental phenomena exist and are entirely material, but that we can't understand how, is a sort of nonsensical non-assertion, sort of like saying "unicorns are cows, but I don't know how they are cows" or "It's possible to make a square out of three straight lines, but we can't know how".

Nice.

I would say in defence of the New Mysterians that their trick—-viz., openly admitting that science cannot solve the mind-body problem but insisting its solution, if there were one, would be consistent with a purely material ontology—-is pretty darn nifty.

As far as brass-necked chutzpah goes.

Stunney apparently can't talk about his own field of expertise, philosophy, without distorting it in ways that are childishly easy to see through. He says there are three possible positions:

1) eliminative materialism (there are no mental phenomena)
2) mysterianism (we can't explain mental phenomena)
3) abandoning materialism altogether

Which conveniently omits the position held by roughly all working brain scientists, and a good number of philosophers, which is that mental phenomenon exist but are completely material.

Actually, those are the only three possibilities. A materialist who chooses to keep mental words (such as "belief") in his vocabulary must be a mere ascriptivist about those things. That is, he must hold that "belief" is simply a word that we apply to certain material objects, such as configurations in the brain, based on the physical behavior they produce.

He cannot hold that the material entities we call "beliefs" have anything intrinsically special or different from other material entities in any way, such as having 1st person properties that cannot be viewed and described in the 3rd person like all other material objects, because believing that would render him a dualist by definition.

On the other hand, if he denies that the material entities we call "beliefs" have any 1st person properties that are intrinsically distinct from the 3rd-person observable properties that all material objects have, then he is by definition an eliminativist about those 1st person properties.

So, therefore, anyone who is a materialist must be an eliminativist about 1st person properties of mental phenomenon, which is precisely what we mean when we refer to eliminativists. That they may say that mental phenomena exist, but are material, doesn't save them from being eliminativists, because all they are doing is applying mental terms to material objects, while continuing to deny that there are any special 1st person properties.

It would be similar to if I were to start referring to cows as "unicorns", and then started claiming this as proof that I wasn't an eliminativist about "unicorns" even though I don't believe in unicorns. I could even use cute, confusing dodges like the eliminativists do such as "I'm not saying that unicorns don't exist. I think that unicorns do exist. It's just that they are entirely cows." That I was using the word "unicorn" to refer to things wouldn't change the fact I was an eliminativist about unicorns. Non-eliminativist materialism is therefore a linguistic game rather than an actual position with actual content.

Actually, I should say there are only 2 positions, because I don't think mysterianism is a real position either. Since consistent materialism does logically imply eliminativism about 1st person properties, claiming that mental phenomena exist and are entirely material, but that we can't understand how, is a sort of nonsensical non-assertion, sort of like saying "unicorns are cows, but I don't know how they are cows" or "It's possible to make a square out of three straight lines, but we can't know how".

Your confusion about whether one can be a materialist without being an eliminativist is a confusion about ontology and concepts. An eliminativist about the ontology of the mental does not get to not be an eliminativist just because he's not an eliminativist about concepts of the mental. Dennett is certainly someone who qualifies.

Very impressive stacking up of negations there! Good way to hide a point that is both uninteresting (what counts as an "eliminativist", which is just labelliing) and wrong, if I've untangled your tortured syntax correctly. You seem to be saying, or implying, somewhere in there, that being a non-dualist is equivalent to being an eliminativist. Of course, this hides all the differences between actual eliminitavists like the Churchlands and people like Dennett and all of cognitive science.

In short, you are still trying to sell your idea that being a materialist implies being either an eliminativist or a mysterian. No matter how you try to sneak this in, the facts disagree with you (the facts of how people label themselves, not the facts of the actual ontology of the mind). You may think all of those people are wrong, but please don't pretend that they don't exist or hold positions different from what they actually believe.

Here is Chalmers, a dualist, estimating that philosophers of mind shake out to be "50% materialist, 25% agnostic, 25% dualist". You are conveniently omitting the majority position from your typology.

Can you do me a favor? Point to the bit in my post where I indicated that most philosophers of mind aren't materialists. I ask, because I didn't.

I gave three positions in my typology, only one of which was non-materialist. Without further background knowledge, a neutral non-philosopher reader of my post would estimate that the chances are that 66.66% of philosophers of mind are materialists, dividing equally between eliminativists and new mysterians. So your charge that my typology distorts the field is itself a blatant distortion of what I said.

Your confusion about whether one can be a materialist without being an eliminativist is a confusion about ontology and concepts. An eliminativist about the ontology of the mental does not get to not be an eliminativist just because he's not an eliminativist about concepts of the mental. Dennett is certainly someone who qualifies.

But thanks for the Chalmers estimate. Here it is again, in context:

September 26, 2005
Jaegwon Kim comes out

Jaegwon Kim's new book, Physicalism, or Something Near Enough, was recently published. This book is full of interesting arguments about the mind-body problem. But it is especially notable for the fact that Kim, often seen as an arch-reductionist, comes out of the closet as a dualist. In the last couple of pages of the book, he embraces epiphenomenalist property dualism about qualia, combined with functionalist reductionism about intentional states. The position is not too far from a view that is often attributed to The Conscious Mind, though as a matter of fact I'm much less confident about both the epiphenomenalism (about the phenomenal) and the functionalism (about the intentional) than Kim is. Here's a review of the book by Andrew Melnyk, and here's a sample chapter.

As the title suggests, Kim softpedals his debut as a dualist a little. Here's the last paragraph of the book:

The position is, as we might say, a slightly defective physicalism — physicalism manque but not by much. I believe that this is as much physicalism as we can have, and that there is no credible alternative to physicalism as a general worldview. Physicalism is not the whole truth, but it is the truth near enough, and near enough should be good enough.

(As someone suggested, this calls to mind a counterfactual book called Straight, Or Something Near Enough. With subtitle: I Just Fool Around With Guys on Weekends. "The position is, as we might say, a slightly defective heterosexuality — heterosexuality manque but not by much. Near enough should be good enough.")

Tone aside, this makes at least three prominent materialists who have abandoned the view in the last few years. Apart from Kim, there's Terry Horgan and Stephen White (balanced, of course, by Frank Jackson moving the other way). One still sometimes sees the claim that almost everyone these days is a materialist (e.g. in Peter Carruthers' new book, p. 5: "Just about everyone now working in this area is an ontological physicalist, with the exception of Chalmers (1996) and perhaps a few others"). I don't think one can get away with saying this any more. Apart from the four counterexamples just mentioned, here are a few other contemporary anti-materialists about consciousness who come quickly to mind: Joseph Almog, Torin Alter, George Bealer, Laurence BonJour, Paul Boghossian, Tyler Burge, Tim Crane, John Foster, Brie Gertler, George Graham, W.D. Hart, Ted Honderich, Steven Horst, Saul Kripke, Harold Langsam, E.J. Lowe, Kirk Ludwig, Trenton Merricks, Martine Nida-Rumelin, Adam Pautz, David Pitt, Alvin Plantinga, Howard Robinson, William Robinson, Gregg Rosenberg, A.D. Smith, and Richard Swinburne. There are plenty of others, and then at least as many again agnostics. If I had to guess, I'd guess that the numbers within philosophy of mind are 50% materialist, 25% agnostic, 25% dualist.

[Emphasis added]

But what bringing the fight so publicly into the sociopolitical arena DID do is lend courage to the population of biologists and other scientists who have always considered NDS non-explanatory.

That was definitely an effect, and I'd agree with it as well. Every time I read about a new unexpected development in biology (and it seems fairly common), the most important task for some seems to be to assure everyone that it's all totally compatible with NDS if it turns out to be true. Also if it turns out to be false.

The religious will believe what they believe regardless of what science says today or tomorrow. Always have. The topic of this thread demonstrates they can even take NDS as philosophical support for their beliefs (as TEs have long done). Philosophy is just a way of looking at facts, and the facts can usually be made to fit the philosophy just fine no matter what they are.

I think the religious angle is more complicated than this, honestly. But to select one difference - I agree that philosophy is about how you look at the facts. But I also think that philosophy has been passed off as science for quite awhile, as well as it being recent that many religious have started to look towards the science directly to inform their philosophies, rather than having it filtered. The internet helps with that as well - it's a lot harder to get away with spin unchallenged nowadays.

The NDS die-hards of our own day didn't accept a cease-fire upon legal defeat of the Wedge. Instead they've chosen to wield their own Wedge in an attempt to save their dying materialist metaphysics. Almost as if that's what motivated them all along.

I've said before, I don't believe ID has provoked the fight it has for the reason most opponents tend to argue - that it's stealth-YEC. I'm not sure it's even that they think their materialist metaphysics are dying. It's the idea that other metaphysics can be drawn out of the science just as appropriately, or more appropriately, that seems to be the big threat. It was easier a few decades ago, where the options for most were either accepting both the science and the particular metaphysics as a combo-platter, or ignoring science altogether.

Here is Chalmers, a dualist, estimating that philosophers of mind shake out to be "50% materialist, 25% agnostic, 25% dualist". You are conveniently omitting the majority position from your typology.

As usual, your posts are composed mainly of insults, distortions, and appeals to authority. This indicates to me that you are incapable of making actual arguments. It must suck to have chosen philosophy as a career only to find yourself unable to live up to its rather weak professional standards.

Roots, maybe. But I don't see ID as staying fundamentalist Christian - I know for certain it's getting a lot of talk and attention in Catholic circles, I've read about its promotion in orthodox jewish circles, muslim.. heck, I recall some UD post about ID proponents meeting with some school leaders running a shinto university in Japan.

It was of course inevitable that ID - as a teleological urge in life and evolution - would outlive the 'Movement's' popularity among the biblical literalists who thought they could use it to get around SCOTUS rulings against 'Creation Science'. That was always doomed to failure, as Dover demonstrated.

But what bringing the fight so publicly into the sociopolitical arena DID do is lend courage to the population of biologists and other scientists who have always considered NDS non-explanatory. They've been around pretty much under the radar ever since Darwinism turned up short on the origins end at the turn of the last century. They continued through development of NDS, and still exist to this day. When new technologies are bringing new knowledge about life, and things aren't looking nearly as 'random' as NDS insists they must be on the origins end.

It just opened the door for reporting the many findings from new technologies and new knowledge as a direct challenge to NDS 'orthodoxy' and its several 'dogmas' and 'tenets'. Following the evidence is what science is supposed to do.

It's not purely what was said that's valuable so much as what's been started.

It's been there under the radar all along. I agree that the ID 'Movement' has stirred up the dissent, and that's a good thing.

When I say EAM and Orch-OR can be taken on sympathetically by religious IDers, I mean entirely outside of schools, in a philosophical setting. TP says he's fine with that, and I take him at his word. Again: I'm not concerned about making sure sixth graders or high-school seniors get any kind of public-school philosophical indoctrination, materialist or non-materialist.

The religious will believe what they believe regardless of what science says today or tomorrow. Always have. The topic of this thread demonstrates they can even take NDS as philosophical support for their beliefs (as TEs have long done). Philosophy is just a way of looking at facts, and the facts can usually be made to fit the philosophy just fine no matter what they are.

I think it's a general backlash against materialism that is bubbling up from the crack the IDM's Wedge opened. It was thrown into question scientifically and philosophically when the entrenched 19th century mechanistic view came up against QM. Developments since then haven't made it any less questionable.

The NDS die-hards of our own day didn't accept a cease-fire upon legal defeat of the Wedge. Instead they've chosen to wield their own Wedge in an attempt to save their dying materialist metaphysics. Almost as if that's what motivated them all along.

The trouble with this "argument" is that it is humungously stupid. Much scientific knowledge that we take for granted now used to be humungously implausible.

The trouble with this argument is twofold. First, vast numbers of humungously implausible propositions are false, far more than form the set of humungously implausible true propositions. Second, you have missed completely the point I made, thus demonstrating your humungous capacity for mindblowing errors of comprehension. See, the point of my argument—–and feel free to read my post again and admit your error rather than fire off another tiresome irrelevance because of your inner demons telling you to whenever you see my name—-was not that eliminative materialism is false (though it is), but that whether it's true or false, atheistic evolutionist types for the most part don't like to broadcast or even face the fact that their worldview entails eliminative materialism because of the effect of its implausibility with respect to the culture wars.

Exhibit no. 1 :- mtraven

me: Because physicalism and hence materialism is, er, false.

r: That settles it then. Stunney says so. We can all go home now.

Once again your inability to comprehend is astonishing in its humungousness. The argument mtraven presented was that the wave equation completely describing the universe does not mean human nature is completely explained by physics. And I agreed because I think physicalism is false, which would explain why the wave equation does not completely explain human nature. I at no point said physicalism is false simply because I think it's false. I stated my view that it is false, and that this would explain the fact mtraven had pointed out. But at no point in my post did I even try to argue that materialism is false, since that wasn't the point of my post. My post was about why perceptions of the political impact of certain philosophical positions color the way those positions are treated by the 'evolution as religion' movement.

Which, and I realize this may come as an enormous shock to you, raevmo, is the title of the thread topic.

It's worrying that you make so many errors of reasoning as you do in so short a post and yet are paid to do science. You're probably not typical in that respect, though.