Physicalism is improbable

Ave Physicalism is defined as the belief that all entities are physical or supervenient upon the physical. Supervenience refers to a metaphysical and nomological (i.e. physical laws) relationship where higher-level properties are determined by lower-level properties. In order to avoid issues over multiple realizability, where a mental state can be determined by different physical states, I prefer to use John Haugeland’s definition of supervenience as the principal that “any difference between two possible worlds with respect to their instantiated mental properties entails at least some difference in the physical properties instantiated in those two worlds” [1]. In philosophy, there are generally two types of claim that one can make. An ontological claim makes a statement about the way the world really is. An epistemological claim makes a statement about what and how we can know the way the world really is. From the above definition, physicalism is an ontological claim. Pro’s argument muddles the important distinction between epistemology and ontology. When he states that it’s “impossible for a purely physical description of reality to account for our conscious experience”, he is describing an ontological impossibility. However, he switches to an epistemological claim by asserting that “not a single physicist is able to explain how”. He subsequently changes his argument back to the fundamental, ontological difference between physical entities and consciousness. Pro’s muddled contention makes two separates arguments while ostensibly giving one. Interestingly, the physicalist response in Pro’s third paragraph is spot-on. Pro, not the strawman physicalist, is the one operating under the misconception, as Pro is mischaracterizes the debate as ontological rather than epistemological, which it clearly is given that we’re talking about how much science can know or explain the connection between the mind and physical. Pro fallaciously reasons by composition. When one reasons by composition, they assert that because something is true of all of the parts, it must be true of the whole as well. [2] The fact that humans are made up of parts of inanimate matter does not mean humans as a whole cannot be animate (i.e. conscious). In any case, Pro’s reasons for believing that physical entities cannot explain conscious experience depends on a simplification of the so-called “physicalist project”. In relating to the brain to conscious experience, physicalists do not merely invoke a series of electrochemical signals traveling across the nervous system. It may be true that electrochemical signals cannot explain conscious experience, but the physicalist is in luck, because he would never assert such a simplistic answer to the hard problem of consciousness in the first place. Cognitive science, a novel but quickly developing interdisciplinary field that has already discovered major insights into cognition, relates the conscious experience of thought to the representation, processing, and transformation of information in the nervous system, not simple electrochemistry. Whatever one may think about the validity of this project, it’s clear that whatever the results, Pro is gratuitously simplifying the concepts involved. Additionally, Pro’s contention that endorphins, electrochemical signals, and whatever else cannot explain conscious experience is not relevant to a physicalist. A physicalist must only assert that 1) consciousness is physical or 2) consciousness is supervenient on the physical. He is not obligated to affirm that endorphins are sufficient to explain the conscious experience of pain. Indeed, it is entirely possible (and actual) for a physicalist to use purely metaphysical arguments to derive those two contentions, making no reference to our current scientific understanding of the brain. Pro bases a major part of his case on introspection. I frankly confess that I don’t give a damn about what introspection tells us, and neither should anybody else. Introspection has been challenged by experiments conducted in cognitive science. In Libet’s famous experiment on free will, unconscious processes precede what introspection would consider to be consciously motivated. While I certainly don’t agree with the idea that this experiment refutes free will, it definitely demonstrates that introspection can be incredibly deceiving, and we should look beyond introspection alone as a justification for our philosophical arguments. Pro’s argument muddles important philosophical distinctions. It argues against claims that a physicalist does not even have to make in order to affirm physicalism. It simplifies physicalist concepts in an attempt at argumentative soundness, and basis its assertions on sketchy epistemological foundations. For these reasons, the resolution is not affirmed. Vale [1] http://philpapers.org... [2] http://www.nizkor.org... [3] The Fabric of the Cosmos, pg 114-115