That study shows a link between particular facial dimensions and how dedicated neurons respond to changes in those dimensions. It doesn’t explain the intentionality of the electrical transmissions.
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It does demonstrate encoding in the context of mental images, and presumably what is encoded is meant to be decoded. I’m unsure of what you mean by intentionality.
Intentionality is generally described as the “about-ness” of thoughts: Intentionality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The study shows particular neuron responses after changes in visual stimuli. That may be interesting, but it doesn’t address the issue under discussion here. My point is that physicalism can’t account for how those neural responses have intentionality.
Think of it this way; the study talks about how the researchers set up a system to translate the electrical signals within the rat brains into images of faces on a screen. In that case, we have a mechanism for monitoring the neuron transmissions, sending corresponding electrical signals to a computer, and finally causing a screen to display light in a way that produces a facsimile of a face. Except for the end when a conscious observer has to interpret the light on the screen, theses steps are all explicable by physical elements.
Now let’s consider a mental image that isn’t initiated by a visual stimuli. Physically, what do we have? A neuron or set or neurons begin firing off an electrical transmission that does or does not cause additional changes in neurons before finally ending. My experience of that is thinking of the Eiffel Tower, but where is that coming from? There’s no screen to display the image, no physical representation that can be interpreted as representing the tower. So where is it? According to a consistent physicalism, we’d have to say it doesn’t exist.
In my view Occam is overrated.
It’s not about need, it’s about truth claims and world views. My world view is that reality is rational because it is created by a god who is rational. I can’t prove this logically, any more than I can prove the axioms of mathematics. But I have grounds for that belief which to me are coherent.
First, reality is not one-layered. It is complex. Our body is a single object, but it can be analysed as organs, muscles, bones. They in turn can be explained at the cellular level, the DNA level, the atomic level… So the question is not, why do we need another (spiritual) level? The real question is, what possible reason do we have for ruling it out?
Second, as others have said, there are many factors that point to something more than the material. My love for my wife and children. My unshakable conviction that some things truly are right or wrong. The strong impression which suddenly pops into my mind saying I should go over and help the woman struggling with her groceries. The successful application of scientific knowledge which points to the rationality of the world. The cumulative testimony of people from all times and cultures that there is “something more”.
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Perhaps. I have no idea how consciousness works, although I am pretty certain it is not exclusive to humans.
The colors red and green are pretty real conscious experiences, but without consciousness, these colors would have no existence whatsoever in the universe. They exist only in our minds as corresponding to EM wavelengths. I do not see how that could fit into exclusive physicalism.
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As opposed to a supernatural deity with foreknowledge?
None of which means it is wrong. Cf Appeal to consequences.
Also, these are the same faulty objections you have to atheism, and they could apply equally well to many other concepts:
I handle gravity easily. In my mind it is self-defeating. It is also woefully inadequate at accounting for the most important things in life. It does well with mathematical abstractions and provides a framework or skeleton view of things. It provides no value, oughts or meaning to life. In fact, if gravity were true, there is no real reason to discuss it. Or not discuss it. Mindless atoms and brute force fields can never lead to value and meaning on their own. No matter how many bricks you stack in a circle, they will never just become a sphere.
This struck me as an odd phrase to use:
Of course gravity and physicalism are false comparisons here. I accept gravity as a true component of reality, but that’s because it’s consistent with the findings of science, and science is a rational activity in a universe created by a rational God. That’s my world view.
If we are imagining that there is gravity and nothing else, then your statement that gravity is self refuting would actually be true.
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It also isn’t what I wrote.
Anyway, no argument against your claim is needed because you have yet to produce a valid argument for it.
Such a complicated system. I use a handheld pencil to display my mental images.
That something doesn’t fit your world view is not a basis for anyone else to reject it.
Meanwhile:
I accept physicalism as a true component of reality, but that’s because it’s consistent with the findings of science, and science is a rational activity in a universe created by a rational God.
Where’s the flaw in that?
I agree that if we have different world views then we will also differ on particular issues. I respect your freedom to think and believe as you wish.
It’s quite possible that we are talking past each other. But I thought you were challenging the reasoning of another contributor (?Vinnie) by repeating his argument and swapping it out with another word. That seems a very unhelpful approach. I certainly find it unhelpful in your latest example above. To me physicalism is a world view that says the material is all there is. No God. So by swapping words you haven’t proved anything. You’ve just created a nonsense sentence.
But as I say, maybe I have misunderstood the whole thing.
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It’s useful in showing how an argument must be flawed even if the flaw hasn’t been identified. If an argument leads to a false conclusion when applied to a different subject, there must be a flaw in the argument even if that flaw can’t be identified.
If God is, as some claim, outside the universe, then physicalism within the universe is not incompatible with that universe being created by a God.
I agree with the others that this isn’t always a helpful method. Physicalism and gravity aren’t equivalent things to swap out here. They’re different categories of things.
And even if they weren’t, we could do this with many words. Say I had said “I believe in love because acting on it makes the world thrive more.” And following that, someone said, “Well, hold on now. You could say ‘I believe in hatred because acting on it makes the world thrive more.’ It doesn’t make sense, so your sentence is flawed.”
But was the first sentence really flawed?
It seems, to me at least, that the method is more questionable than the argument.
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That’s materialism, I believe. I confuse the two sometimes.
I do actually agree with Roy that physicalism can be compatible with faith, as there are Christians who live with that view. But I am having a hard time doing it myself, as it makes me feel like… almost less than I thought I was before? More distant from God?
Perhaps.
Does acting on hatred make the world thrive more?
Does the person not believe in hatred?
If the answer to both of these is ‘yes’, then the first sentence really was flawed.
You are confusing a part for a whole. Gravity is not woefully inadequate at accounting for the most important things in life. Gravity has nothing to do with them because gravity is not a worldview whereas physicalism/scientism/materialism is. Gravity is a catchall phrase for a broad set of observations that that we are still trying to nail down. Saying what you did would be like saying my fork is woefully inadequate at mowing my lawn. The point I made it that physicalism is 1) self-defeating and 2) does not account for morals, values, ought statements, truth and the like. Physicalism purports that only material processes exist and as I argued via analogy, no matter how many bricks you stack in a circle, they do not magically become a sphere. Mindless atoms and brute forces can’t magically create value and meaning. A world with only efficient and material causes inevitably lacks color. I don’t need to frame it as an appeal to consequences. I can say:
Insofar as a person is not a raving lunatic or suffering from mental health problems, and recognizes purpose, morality, value and meaning as real and genuine features of the world, materialism/physicalism/scientism are inconsistent with it. I have no need or desire to argue with people whose central evangelism rests on telling me and others there is no real purpose, meaning or value in the world. I’m pretty sure Home Depot sells lots of rope. I am uninterested in conspiracy-theory like worldviews that tell us all our experiences are illusions and life has no actual meaning.
I agree the comparison is false and also that monotheism leads to a rational universe and valid science. Gravity is based on everyday common sense observations. Tree branches fall, things, come back down when thrown up, planets move in ellipses around more massive objects (actually their common barycenter ). We don’t really know what gravity is. Newton gave us a mathematical model of it that works well in some conditions but not others and he had to invoke God. Einstein called gravity space curvature and that has proven even more fruitful, but there is still the issue of quantum gravity. To think gravity is real is to say there is some underlying principle that explains our observations and our ability to consistently model them via mathematics.
In my mind, science is dependent on Occam’s razor which is accepted on faith. We can’t know the age of the earth, or that evolution occurred and so on if we can’t know Occam’s razor is true. We can only say, insofar as parsimony is accepted we can know x, y and z. I would say the same about materialism/physicalism/scientism. Insofar as there is color in the world, they are inadequate as worldviews and cannot be correct.
I use scientism, physicalism and materialism interchangeably.
The statement in bold is only true on a Cartesian/Galilean view of matter which claims only the aspects of reality that can be mathematically modeled are real. For those of us operating under hylomorphism where substances are composites of form and matter, color is very real. In fact, it’s the scientific description of color that is lacking. Redness is a real feature of an apple (it is a composite of matter and form). Electromagnetic wavelengths are the quantitative or measurable aspect of color. They are not the whole reality of color and only provide a limited skeleton view of the apple.
The modern physicalist starts with a mechanical view of matter and lives in a black and white universe devoid of qualia. They start by defining physical matter without conscious qualities but then they try to explain conscious qualities with physical matter. For me that is like trying to clean a room by sweeping all the dirt under a rug and then claiming that the dirt is just a property of the rug. And then they have to argue that consciousness simply “emerges” from a complex enough brain. No matter how many bricks you stack in a circle, they will never become a sphere. We cannot generate a subjective quality by rearranging quantitative parts. The same goes for value and purpose and mindless atoms and brute forces. The modern worldview that has removed form and final causality from the world is dead in the water.
Vinnie
But the answer isn’t “yes” to the first. It’s pretty plain to see that hatred does not bring thriving.
I’m having a difficult time understanding what you mean by the second.
Gravity, in my understanding, doesn’t really touch the issue of meaning and value. Most people don’t see it as having implications for those things. But I think physicalism would! It is addressing the very place where meaning and value are comprehended: the mind.
I do understand what you mean by the “appeal to consequences” fallacy. I missed that part. Still, I wouldn’t say that what Vinnie is getting at is totally wrong. If physicalism (or, at least, reductive physicalism) does strip down value and meaning as being nothing ultimately important, then that isn’t a very livable framework—or, at the very least, we would have to live a lie to function as normal. While that may not prove either position, I think it has something to say in the greater discussion of determining truth.
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Oh, good to know!
When referencing physicalism, I’m referring to the idea that our mind is not a separate substance, but either is our brain or directly connected to our brain in some way. Materialism, to me, is the overarching worldview that only material things exist.
I suppose I should have defined the terms to be used here 
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