A correction: It must have been the long vacation. In lecture 1080 I used the term "materialism", but I should have used the term physicalism. Let's refresh our understanding of the term:
Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical.
The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales's thesis that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley or Bernardo Kastrup, that everything is mental.
The general idea is that the nature of the actual world, the universe, and everything in it, conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical.
Of course, physicalists don't deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don't seem physical such as items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day, such items are wholly physical.
Maybe the two most difficult phenomena for the physicalist are the phenomenon of Life and the phenomenon of the Mind, also known as mental states in philosophical discourse.
The physicalist claim boils down to a prediction concerning reality in two parts. The first part is that physics will never discover a psychological entity at the deeper layers that it explores,
and the second part is that physics will not posit the existence of an entity purely for the purpose of accounting for psychological phenomena.
From a scientific point of view, this means that physicalism can be proven false and an invalid theory about reality.
The second part of the prediction happens to be related to my name "Bergson". In 2005 when making an SL account, you were offered a range of family names from A to Z and Bergson was the first name of a philosopher that occurred.
So I picked that one, which doesn't mean that I also agree with his philosophy. On the contrary, actually, this may be apparent by doing this project on materialism / physicalism.
Henri-Louis Bergson (1859 – 1941) was a French philosopher. He portrays "élan vital" as a kind of vital impetus that explains evolution in a less mechanical and more lively manner, as well as accounting for the creative impulse of mankind. This was called vitalism.
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things.
You will understand that such a claim needs scientific proof if you ask a physicalist. The proof was never delivered by vitalists. End of vitalist story. Later I met a person named Russell. I'd rather had seen me associated with Bertrand Russell too, but you can't change your last name in SL.
Anyway, physicalism has to face the problem of the existence of properties that apparently are not really material. They are either supervenient or emergent.
Supervenience and emergence are two metaphysical concepts that have been used to explain the relationship between different levels of reality, such as the physical, the mental, and the moral.
However, these concepts are not equivalent and have different implications for the nature of reality and causality.
Supervenience is the idea that higher-level properties or facts depend on lower-level ones, but are not identical to them.
Emergence is the idea that higher-level properties or facts arise from lower-level ones, but are not determined by them.
Let's go into detail regarding these two concepts in the next lecture.
Thank you for your attention again.
Main Sources:
MacMillan The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition
TABLE OF CONTENT -----------------------------------------------------------------
1 - 100 Philosophers 9 May 2009 Start of
2 - 25+ Women Philosophers 10 May 2009 this blog
3 - 25 Adventures in Thinking 10 May 2009
4 - Modern Theories of Ethics 29 Oct 2009
5 - The Ideal State 24 Febr 2010 / 234
6 - The Mystery of the Brain 3 Sept 2010 / 266
7 - The Utopia of the Free Market 16 Febr 2012 / 383
8. - The Aftermath of Neo-liberalism 5 Sept 2012 / 413
9. - The Art Not to Be an Egoist 6 Nov 2012 / 426
10 - Non-Western Philosophy 29 May 2013 / 477
11 - Why Science is Right 2 Sept 2014 / 534
12 - A Philosopher looks at Atheism 1 Jan 2015 / 557
13 - EVIL, a philosophical investigation 17 Apr 2015 / 580
14 - Existentialism and Free Will 2 Sept 2015 / 586
15 - Spinoza 2 Sept 2016 / 615
16 - The Meaning of Life 13 Febr 2017 / 637
17 - In Search of my Self 6 Sept 2017 / 670
18 - The 20th Century Revisited 3 Apr 2018 / 706
19 - The Pessimist 11 Jan 2020 / 819
20 - The Optimist 9 Febr 2020 / 824
21 - Awakening from a Neoliberal Dream 8 Oct 2020 / 872
22 - A World Full of Patterns 1 Apr 2021 / 912
23 - The Concept of Freedom 8 Jan 2022 / 965
24 - Materialism 7 Sept 2022 / 1011
The Discussion
[13:14] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): Thank you Herman
[13:15] herman Bergson: Aan idea we sometimes hold is the idea that the whole is more than just the composing parts.
[13:16] herman Bergson: That is an intuition behind supervenient and emergent properties
[13:17] Max Chatnoir: It seems to me that if you can get from physical entities to chemistry and the associated energy changes, you can get from chemistry to consciousness.
[13:18] herman Bergson: The problem here is that wehn you try to replicate this chemistry in full detail.....there does not emerge consciousness
[13:19] herman Bergson: Life as a property is more understandable in terms of possibility to create it.
[13:19] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): what does emerge consciousness then?
[13:19] Max Chatnoir: I'm not sure we can do that in a test tube. Consciousness has to emerge from cellular activity.
[13:19] herman Bergson: We can't do that either
[13:20] herman Bergson: Simple answer Beertje: WE DON"T KNOW (yet)
[13:20] herman Bergson: Yes Max, so we first have to be able to create a single living cell....
[13:21] Max Chatnoir: But I think it is much more difficult to connect consciousness to cells.
[13:21] herman Bergson: We haven't the slightest idea how cells and consciousness are connected
[13:21] herman Bergson: Besides that.....
[13:22] Max Chatnoir: We know something about how neurons work and transmit signals.
[13:22] herman Bergson: here again....we us ONE word: consciousness.....but does that refer to one single , stand alone property?
[13:22] Max Chatnoir: Although I don't think that anybody has built a neuron from scratch.
[13:22] herman Bergson: no
[13:23] Max Chatnoir: I don't think consciousness is a single property.
[13:23] herman Bergson: Just take awareness instead of consciousness......what does it meean?
[13:23] herman Bergson: Indeed Max, like awareness...is that a single property?
[13:23] Bree Birke is offline.
[13:24] herman Bergson: or is it the integrated input of the senses into one property?
[13:24] Max Chatnoir: I would guess that awareness is the ability to detect external or internal signals -- light, sound, etc.
[13:24] herman Bergson: and if so how does this integeration process work?
[13:24] Max Chatnoir: I don't think it's a single property.
[13:25] Max Chatnoir: Like a cell is not made of a single substance.
[13:25] herman Bergson: oh no...it is a super complex machine
[13:25] Max Chatnoir: So isn't consciousness something similar?
[13:25] Max Chatnoir: emerging from simple sensory responses?
[13:26] herman Bergson: I still don't know Max
[13:26] Max Chatnoir: Somebody last Tuesday was talking about slime molds.
[13:26] herman Bergson: There is a lot of research going on and we know a lot of details
[13:27] Max Chatnoir: a super multinucleate cell that has simple properties of responsiveness to its environment.
[13:27] herman Bergson: yes,,,
[13:28] Max Chatnoir: Its behavior is so odd that some people when they observe them think that they are extraterrestrial creatures.
[13:29] herman Bergson: Wonder what the fun is to be on this earth for them :-))
[13:29] Max Chatnoir: :-)
[13:29] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): ツ
[13:29] herman Bergson: One thing I know......from a physicalist point of view
[13:30] herman Bergson: It may be impossible to pinpoint the relation between the physical world and consciousness
[13:31] herman Bergson: but when the physical object, the brain, is gone, consciousness is gone,
[13:31] Max Chatnoir: It's not going to be simple, if anybody does figure it out.
[13:31] herman Bergson: Yes, if we ever will figure that out
[13:32] Max Chatnoir: If consciousness has to be associated with a brain, then it seems simpler to propose that it emerges from the structure of the brain, rather than having something nonphysical somehow inhabiting it.
[13:32] herman Bergson: Oakham's razor :-)
[13:33] herman Bergson: But some claim that consciousness is related not only to the brain, but to the whole nervous system, or even to the whole body.
[13:34] Max Chatnoir: Oh, I might go for that.
[13:34] herman Bergson: I only have come this far up to now: no brain, no consciousness
[13:34] herman Bergson: So there IS a material relation.
[13:35] Max Chatnoir: But the brain is such a regulation center for neural activity.
[13:36] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): i think the brain has needs a body to be conscious..a brain in a jar does not have consciousness
[13:36] herman Bergson: Interesting point, Max
[13:36] herman Bergson: Oh I mean Beertje :-))
[13:36] Max Chatnoir: That makes sense, Beertje.
[13:37] herman Bergson: Well, let's try to figure out in the next lecture whether we should consciousness describe as a supervenient or emergent property of matter....
[13:38] herman Bergson: So, thank you all gain for your participation......
[13:39] herman Bergson: And let's get ready for Thursday ˆ_ˆ
[13:39] Max Chatnoir: Thanks for not finishing last Thursday!
[13:39] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): thank you Herman
[13:39] Max Chatnoir: And thanks for raising this interesting topic.
[13:39] herman Bergson: There is no end to philosophy as there is no end to thinking :-)
[13:40] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): very true
[13:40] Lukkie Sands: Interesting again :-)
[13:40] Max Chatnoir: Yes!
[13:41] .: Beertje :. (beertje.beaumont): zeker
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