Non-Essentialist Physicalism

Non-Essentialist Physicalism1 Abstract: physicalism is generally understood as an essentialist approach towards the world. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, comparing “physicalism” with “Methodological Naturalism,” tells that “Physicalism is not methodological naturalism because physicalism is a metaphysical thesis not a methodological thesis.” I want to show that this is not necessarily the case. Physicalism can be meaningfully described as a Methodology of research without being faced with what is called Hempel’s dilemma. Introduction Hempel’s dilemma is formalized by Carl Hempel; he says if physicalism is defined with reference to the contemporary physics then it is obviously false; there are many questions contemporary physics cannot answer, and if it is defined via reference to future or ideal physics then it is trivial and not useful. In order to define what non-essentialist physicalism is I should at first solve this dilemma. The basic strategy to solve the dilemma is to understand that the dilemma is based on some misunderstandings. The dilemma has two horns. Consider the term “physics can explain any aspect of the world.” If we consider the term “physics” as what physical science is in the contemporary world then this claim is simply refuted. If we consider the term “physics” as what physical science will be in future or an ideal physical science then it will be trivial and not very useful information can be deduced from this formalism. Here raises a very important question; should we really understand “physicalism” in traditional sense as monistic approach to the real world in order to give a meaning to the phrase “physics can explain any aspect of the world”? Science as an open game The core idea in this part is that science is just a game; like a logo game. Each game has some rules and the rules of game are continually changing as the same way that the rules of the simple games like chess and football change over time. What is going on in science is that there are some events out there in the real world, science is a game to interpret what is going on and to give a pattern called model of those events. There are of course other games people play; religion 1 - This is a subsection of the first chapter of the book I am writing which is concentrated on the very subject of making a conscious chess-player machine and using this model as a new tool to understand the evolution of human culture. Any comment is really welcomed. is another game people play, art is another game we play. We cannot use the rules of one game in another game as the same way we cannot checkmate in football. This is not because of the limits we put for the games and this is not because some metaphysical properties we consider for the outside world when we are setting some rules for our games. The end of the game is not to achieve something in the outside world, but it is just play the game and the reason we change the rules of the games is only and only to have a better game. Another important matter here is that I will not consider humankind as an agent who changes the rules of the game but I am considering the rules of the game being evolved as the result of the internal dynamics of the game itself and the interaction between the game and the outside world. There are some mutations taking place from time to time and mutations are by principle random events. Science is an especial game in the process of which it wants to produce an exact model of the real world; the model which works as the real world. In fact science wants to produce a picture of the world which is in a oneto-one relation with what is reality. In the process of the game there is a two sided dynamism between the game called science and the real world. Real world has effect on the structure of the game and the game gives always interpretation of the outside world and even defines what reality is. Many failed scientific projects show that the power of the game called science in order to define reality is not absolute; that is to say, this game cannot impose everything it wants to the outside world. If it was possible then it would have been possible for Jesuit Girolamo Saccheri to prove that rejecting the fifth principle of Euclidean Geometry results in contradiction. His unsuccessful trials in his entire life are a hallmark of a very important result; it is not science that is defining everything just arbitrarily and imposing its definition to the real world. It is not science that is making its own claims true. If something is impossible no matter how much one tries to make it true, it will not be. There is a two sided relation between science and real world but this two sided relation is really two sided; the real world puts serious limits on the domains science can really impose its ideology on it. These limits make the game called science to change its rules if it really wants to make a real model of the outside world. That is why this game is open. Inappropriateness of Dualism Every idea claiming that there are some essentially non-physical properties not explainable based on physical laws of nature not only is an essentialist view but is very arrogant. In contrast physicalist approach is not necessarily essentialist and it is very humble; that is to say, it does not necessarily contain any claim about the structure of the future physical science. Here is the core part of the misunderstanding I discussed in introduction about Hempel’s dilemma. The most important essentialist claims are concentrated on the problem called mind-body problem. From Descartes it is understood that there is an essential difference between physical and mental. Physicals are spatially extended while mental are introspectable and they are not spatially extended. The most important problem here is that the terminology used here to define what is called as essential difference between mental and physical is not the terminology scientists are using and this fact, as we will see, has very serious effects on what “physical science” is in Hempel’s dilemma. A scientist when faced with this philosophical claim will ask “so what?” Claiming that mental is introspectable does not prove anything about its non-physical entity. If it is introspectable and if it is not accessible to others then how could we know that our computers have no mentality. That they cannot report their mentality is just because they have no means to do it. They have no output because we have not designed any output for them, this does not necessarily mean that our computers have no mentality. If this idea seems bizarre we should pay attention that the idea that computers have no mentality is bizarre also. If mentality are nonphysical what prevents computers having them. If it is logically possible to have pain even without any body why we should accept that computers do not feel pain? After all, dualists believe that feeling pain is not dependent on physical properties. The only way to exit these nonsense ideas is to have really a well-based nonmaterial theory of mind and explain every aspect of our mental life based on that theory and then show that this theory is essentially nonphysical; that is to say, to show that physical science can never absorb that theory in its body. This is the job one really needs to do to prove that something is essentially nonphysical. The only serious project proposed based on this background is David Chalmers’. In his Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness2 he suggests very strange projects which is a hallmark of the basic misunderstanding of his and many other dualists. He suggests that because consciousness is nonphysical we should add it as a new entity to the physical entities really existing in physical science. He compares this with what Maxwell has done adding the properties of electric charge and magnetism to the body of physics and calls this strategy naturalistic dualism. The core of the misunderstanding is that what Maxwell did was not a naturalistic dualism. Maxwell did not really introduce these to physical properties of matter but he just based a theory of electromagnetism. Electric charge added by physicists to the body of physical properties of matter was a new detectable and measurable entity. If there is really such a property as consciousness, there should be some methods to measure and detect it if one wants to add it to physical properties of matter. But after doing this one cannot claim that it is nonphysical. It will be absorbed in the body of physics as every other property in the history of science. However, claiming that some property is essentially nonphysical is very arrogant idea because it is based on some very basic positive assumptions. This idea claims that there are some questions which can never be answered by physical science. For example consider the question “how our mentalities are produced by the matter of our brains?” A dualist claims that this question will never be answered by physics because mental is essentially non-spatial in contrast to physical. But this is not the full story. The main assumption behind this idea is that the structure of that entity is really well understood and this understanding will never change. Now consider one of the most important questions of the medieval ages. Is the moon made of eternal 2 - David Chalmers, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, in Explaining Consciousness: The Hard Problem, Edited by Jonathan Shear, The MIT Press, 1997, pp. 9-30. or temporal matter? This question has never been answered not because it was out of reach of physical science but because it is not a really meaningful question. In the course of progress of our physical science we have understood that many questions we had asked were not really wellformed questions and we have just eliminated them from the list of the questions waiting to be answered. Many questions have really been answered and many questions were just deformed in the light of new science and then were answered. Dualist approach is based on the presupposition and assumption that what we know and what we have formalized about the structure of our question is fixed forever. It assumes that what we consider as physics is fixed forever and then issues the judgment that explaining some properties based on physical laws is impossible. These assumptions are what I described as the deep arrogance existing in dualist approach. Non-Essentialist Physicalism In contrast to dualistic approach, physicalism is not necessarily based on any assumption about the outside world and even about the structure of the questions. Physicalism is in fact the rule governing the game called science. Using analogies sometimes is very informative. Let’s consider science as a language trying to describe the real world, and then physicalism is in fact the grammar of this language. As the same way that grammar of our language does not imply anything about the structure of the real world physicalism does not imply any property for the real world. Again as the same way that the grammar of the natural languages evolves in the course of history just because the newer and newer terms and words are added to the language in the result of new matters and events appear there to be described and in the result of the internal dynamism of the language itself which generally appears as the domains of some arts like poem, the grammar of science called as physicalism also changes and evolves continually as the result of the newer situation appear in the course of our research. From another point of view, physicalism can be seen as a negative approach to the world and not necessarily positive. A positive approach towards the world is an approach which attributes some property to outside real world. A negative approach is an approach that denies ascribing some property to real world. Physicalism in this way is just a denial to dualism and does not imply ascribing any characteristics to real world; it is not necessarily a monistic approach. It is just a denial to dualistic approach and a denial to dualistic approach does not necessarily imply monism. Dualistic approach implies the duality of essence of the world but physicalism can be interpreted as a denial to any kind of essentialism. Then it will not necessarily imply any essentialist approach to real world. Conclusion The second horn of Hempel’s dilemma is traditionally understood as a positive claim about what physical science will be in future, but it is not necessarily the case. Considering physicalism as a negative and not positive claim will dissolve the structure of dilemma completely. That is to say, no dilemma remains to be solved at the first place. When we say that every aspect of the world can be explained only by physical laws of nature we mean that there is no convincing argument and no solid evidence to accept the dualistic approach and cease our scientific research programs. That is why scientists are completely ignorant to what philosophers are claiming about impossibility of their research programs and history shows us that finally science will find its way to bypass every obstacle philosophers thought exists in front of scientific research programs. The reason why scientists are ignorant about these arguments is that generally terminologies philosophers are using is not able to formalize even the real scientific questions. Just imagine what Galileo and then Newton have done in making modern physics. They did not reply many questions philosophers of mediaeval ages had formalized and instead they completely dismissed a huge body of the terminology and methodologies these philosophers had produced. Galileo, instead of considering what was the essence of motion and defining it based on Aristotelian methods of defining the objects of the study, just considered very simplistic approach based on which motion was the change of the position of the object with respect to some origin and with respect to time. This approach for many philosophers of the medieval ages was just a simplistic approach unqualified for that research, but it worked. This approach helped us to pass the borders which were specified as essentially intractable frontiers between temporal and eternal worlds. This should be taken as a serious warning for dualists because physicalism is not necessarily based on any kind of essentialist approach towards the world.