Tag: philosophy

Arthur S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World

“The mind has by its selective power fitted the processes of Nature into a frame of law of a pattern largely of its own choosing; and in the discovery of this system of law the mind may be regarded as regaining from Nature that which the mind has put into Nature.”

He declared that the signifi‭cance of the world could not be ‬
uncovered in science; instead, “we ha‭ve to build the spiritual world ‬
out of symbols taken from our own personality, as we build the scientific world out of the symbols of the mathematician.”

We have a task before us, according to Eddington: “We are
going to build a World—a physical world which will give a shadow
performance of the drama enacted in the world of experience.”The language of the “shadow performance,” here is so distinctively Eddington’s own that it is difficult ‭not to take him at his word on ‬
the dependence of the physical world on the human mind. However
that may be, there is a definite ‭and distinctively nominalistic theme ‬
in Eddington’s notions of world building and the selective influence
of mind. This nominalistic theme ‭is intimately related to Edding-‬
ton’s epistemology and his theory‭ of mind. They are worth some ‬
examination in the present context.

‭The interpretation that is most natural ‬here is that for Eddington, “the mi‭nd” selects particular systems of ‬ “relations and relata,” in the process of world building, so as to include particular laws of nature within the mathematical structure, so generated; and within the favored structure, the implicated laws are simply true by stipulation.

  1. See in particular, Bertrand Russell (1927), p. 226; and the discussion in Steven French (2003), p. 236.
  2. See Eddington (1920) “The Meaning of Matter and the Laws of Nature According to the Theory of Relativity,” ‭Mind, 29, 114, p. 145: “…it is the ‬mind‭ which from the crude substratum constructs the familiar picture of a ‬substantial world around us;” p. 153: “According to this view matter can scarcely be said to exist apart from ‭mind.” See also Eddington, below, e.g., ‬p. 327, “…the world-stuff behind the pointer readings [of physics] is of nature continuous with the mind;” and p. 274, “The realistic matter and fields of force of former physical theory are altogether irrelevant—except in so far as the mind-stuff has ‭itself spun these imaginings.” ‬

Eddington will also be found ‭below to emphasize values and the ‬
value of permanence in particular, in his arguments and in his
conception of the selectivity of mind. “The element of permanence
in the physical world,” he writes, “ … familiarly represented by the
conception of substance, is essentially a contribution of the mind to
the plan of building or selection.”

Arthur_S_Eddington_The_Nature_of_the_Physical_World_An_Annotated_Edition

Philosophy of Mind – Classical and Contemporary Readings – David J. Chalmers

There has been much discussion of whether the mental can be reduced to the physical, where this is understood as requiring more than the mere truth of materialism. Jerry Fodor (chapter 18) argues that in general, one cannot expect that the theories of a high-level “special science” should be reducible to the theories of a low-level science such as physics. Because of the many ways in which a high-level kind can be realized at a low level, the general principles in a high-level science cannot be captured by a low-level science except in a very complex and arbitrary way. This applies especially to the science of psychology, suggesting that one cannot expect that psychology can be reducible to physics, or even to neuroscience. Instead, it will always have a degree of autonomy.

David J. Chalmers, Consciousness Is Just a Feeling

It’s a major point of contention whether consciousness can be reduced to the laws of physics or biology. The philosopher David Chalmers has speculated that consciousness is a fundamental property of nature that’s not reducible to any laws of nature.

I accept that, except for the word “fundamental.” I argue that consciousness is a property of nature, but it’s not a fundamental property. It’s quite easy to argue that there was a big bang very long ago and long after that, there was an emergence of life. If Chalmers’ view is that consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, it must have preceded even the emergence of life. I know there are people who believe that. But as a scientist, when you look at the weight of the evidence, it’s just so much less plausible that there was already some sort of elementary form of consciousness even at the moment of the Big Bang. That’s basically the same as the idea of God. It’s not really grappling with the problem.

https://nautil.us/issue/98/mind/consciousness-is-just-a-feeling

Nano-intentionality: a defense of intrinsic intentionality

I suggest that most discussions of intentional systems have overlooked an important aspect of living organisms: the intrinsic goal-directedness inherent in the behaviour of living eukaryotic cells. This goal directedness is nicely displayed by a normal cell’s ability to rearrange its own local material structure in response to damage, nutrient distribution or other aspects of its individual experience. While at a vastly simpler level than intentionality at the human cognitive level, I propose that this basic capacity of living things provides a necessary building block for cognition and high-order intentionality, because the neurons that make up vertebrate brains, like most cells in our body, embody such capacities. I provisionally dub the capacities in question “nano-intentionality”: a microscopic form of “aboutness”. The form of intrinsic intentionality I propose is thoroughly materialistic, fully compatible with known biological facts, and derived non-mysteriously through evolution. Crucially, these capacities are not shared by any existing computers or computer components, and thus provide a clear, empirically-based distinction between brains and currently existing artificial information processing systems. I suggest that an appreciation of this aspect of living matter provides a potential route out of what may otherwise appear to be a hopeless philosophical quagmire confronting information-processing models of the mind.

W. Tecumseh Fitch