The problem of universals is difficult to sole because it attempts to reconcile concepts at different levels. If one reduces what is real to indivisible particles (and, perhaps, space, forces, etc.), there is no basis for anything more complex than a particle to exist as a unified thing. This is "reductive materialism," which has difficu…
The problem of universals is difficult to sole because it attempts to reconcile concepts at different levels. If one reduces what is real to indivisible particles (and, perhaps, space, forces, etc.), there is no basis for anything more complex than a particle to exist as a unified thing. This is "reductive materialism," which has difficulty explaining the persistent and stable presence of more complex structures.
However, very few materialistic approaches accept that nothing is *real* beyond particles, although everything is composed of particles (and space, etc.). Nonreductive materialism holds that properties such as structure, sentience, perception, action, and the qualia that often are often posited as universals (colors, shapes, etc.) emerge as experiences of subjects at high levels of organic complexity. One doesn't need, for example, to posit that some divine entity has by fiat created "Red," "Female," "Square," "Male": these complex phenomena/structures can be understood as emerging as real features of the world as experienced from the standpoint of a conscious organism: people.
It's hard to see why it would be a problem to assert that a "collection of chemicals" that constitutes a living, thinking person has rights. People are precisely the objects that the concept of rights was designed to apply to (although many have extended the concept to "collections of chemicals" that constitute dogs, chickens, elephants, and so forth). Our particular "collection of chemicals" has the odd characteristic of being able to speak and hear, to use and understand language. What better collection of chemicals to provide freedom of speech?
Robert: "The problem of universals is difficult to [solve] because it attempts to reconcile concepts at different levels ...."
An interesting and useful concept that I've been puzzling over the last while, not least because it seems to have more than passing relevance to that "age-old question" of "what is a woman?" 😉🙂
Though I think that, as you suggest, too many are making heavier weather out of the concept than is justified, largely because of sloppy or careless thinking. Though I'll concede that there is no shortage of potential pitfalls or traps for the unwary in the idea or its application.
But you in particular might have some interest in that post of mine since much of it is predicated on what I think is an absolutely brilliant insight and analogy by tweeter RadfemBlack (RfB):
RfB: "You gonna tell people they’re 'reducing beings to their bones' next for saying that a vertebrate is a creature with a spine? (obviously you’re not one 🤡💀)."
By that token, "spines" are "universals" -- real things in that case at least -- shared by a great many "objects", the sharing of which justifies their inclusion in the category "vertebrate" -- another universal but an abstraction in this case. The problem there -- as RfB alluded to -- is in turning the abstraction into a real thing: the "sin", the logical fallacy of reification.
> However, very few materialistic approaches accept that nothing is *real* beyond particles, although everything is composed of particles (and space, etc.).
If you mean most materialists make *ad hoc* exceptions to their materialism as a concession to the fact that materialism is false.
> Nonreductive materialism holds that properties such as structure, sentience, perception, action, and the qualia that often are often posited as universals (colors, shapes, etc.) emerge as experiences of subjects at high levels of organic complexity.
Except no one has any idea who to do that for consciousness or qualia, even in principle.
> One doesn't need, for example, to posit that some divine entity has by fiat created "Red," "Female," "Square," "Male": these complex phenomena/structures can be understood as emerging as real features of the world as experienced from the standpoint of a conscious organism: people.
You're conflating materialism and atheism. In any case, if you follow this logic, you'll eventually end up postulating entities and resemble the tradition descriptions of "gods", "angels", or "demons" remarkably well. And assuming you avoid dissolving in a pile of New Age goo, you'll eventually conclude that there is a single Source/Monad/Logos/God behind it all.
> It's hard to see why it would be a problem to assert that a "collection of chemicals" that constitutes a living, thinking person has rights. People are precisely the objects that the concept of rights was designed to apply to (although many have extended the concept to "collections of chemicals" that constitute dogs, chickens, elephants, and so forth). Our particular "collection of chemicals" has the odd characteristic of being able to speak and hear, to use and understand language. What better collection of chemicals to provide freedom of speech?
So do rights apply to collection of chemicals that can't speak or hear language but otherwise resemble the collections that can (deaf people)? What about ones that can speak but lack something that's hard to describe in material terms (talking parrots), what about toddlers, what about the mentally disabled? Good luck describing the differences in material terms.
"If you mean most materialists make *ad hoc* exceptions to their materialism as a concession to the fact that materialism is false."
No, Mr. Nier. I think you may not be familiar with nonreductive materialism: there is nothing ad hoc and it's not a matter of exceptions. Here's a model of the way emergence (or supervenience) theory works. Hydrogen atoms have certain properties, as do oxygen atoms. When they form an H2O molecule, however, they exhibit properties that are radically different from the constituent atoms of the molecule. Those properties are emergent at the level of the molecule, and although H2O is nothing but hydrogen and oxygen, its properties cannot be analyzed into the properties of hydrogen and oxygen atoms outside the moecular structure.
The same phenomenon applies to more complex levels of molecular structures, continuing into organic compounds and simple cells, to multicell organisms, etc. The phenomena that characterize the behavior and experiences of animal species are emergent upon the evolution of diversely complex multicell organic structures including neurons (as well as many other specialized cells, all structured in complex networks). All of these are in the end composed only of protons, electrons, and various subatomic particles, but their characteristics cannot be analyzed as the sum of those particles, because at every level of complexity independent characteristics emerge.
"You're conflating materialism and atheism. . . ."
Only to the extent that I anticipated that your antimaterialism implied an argument for the existence of a deity. I'm otherwise not interested in atheism. I'm not religious, but I have no quarrel with people who believe in a deity. I don't, however, see their beliefs as constituting an argument. (My view is that hydrogen and oxygen, when combined in an H2O structure, unproblematically behave as we see water behave; I don't see a reason to add a deity that decrees they shall behave that way.)
"So do rights apply to collection of chemicals that can't speak or hear language . . ."
I think you are pretending not to understand the force of my argument in order to offer challenges that are distractions. Deaf people speak through signs, if they learn them, and the neurology of parrots explains their ability to mimic speech, etc. The same principles apply to toddlers and the mentally disabled. (And, in fact, we extend some but not all rights to toddlers, and the mentally disabled in light of those neurologically-based differences.) I don't think these are actually interesting lines of discussion, and I'm sure you're well able to answer these sorts of questions without my help.
> No, Mr. Nier. I think you may not be familiar with nonreductive materialism: there is nothing ad hoc and it's not a matter of exceptions.
Sounds like you're reinventing St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of substances.
> I think you are pretending not to understand the force of my argument in order to offer challenges that are distractions. Deaf people speak through signs, if they learn them, and the neurology of parrots explains their ability to mimic speech, etc. The same principles apply to toddlers and the mentally disabled. (And, in fact, we extend some but not all rights to toddlers, and the mentally disabled in light of those neurologically-based differences.) I don't think these are actually interesting lines of discussion, and I'm sure you're well able to answer these sorts of questions without my help.
Oh, I now the answers you want to give, I'm merely pointing out that they don't actually follow from your premises. As a result you're left with no argument when someone wants to give a different answer.
"Sounds like you're reinventing St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of substances."
Then you're not listening very well: nonreductive materialism has nothing in common with Aquinas's theory. And I'm neither inventing nor reinventing. These are not my theories; they are well known in the areas of philosophy of science and philosophy of mind.
"Oh, I [k]now the answers you want to give, I'm merely pointing out that they don't actually follow from your premises. As a result you're left with no argument when someone wants to give a different answer."
I think not, Mr. Nier. You do not seem to have known the answers I wanted to give (and have now given), nor have you shown in any way that my argument doesn't follow from my premises. You may think you have, because you are misconstruing the premises I have stated, either intentionally, in order to make a claim that you have prevailed despite having no means to do so, or unintentionally, perhaps because you do not wish to consider challenges to your beliefs beyond dismissing them without reflection.
By the way, I agree with you that the crude form of reductive materialism you dislike is indeed incoherent. It had its day in the 1930s and 1940s, the heyday of behaviorist philosophy. When you take that type of approach as a proxy for "materialism" in general you are attacking a straw man.
The problem of universals is difficult to sole because it attempts to reconcile concepts at different levels. If one reduces what is real to indivisible particles (and, perhaps, space, forces, etc.), there is no basis for anything more complex than a particle to exist as a unified thing. This is "reductive materialism," which has difficulty explaining the persistent and stable presence of more complex structures.
However, very few materialistic approaches accept that nothing is *real* beyond particles, although everything is composed of particles (and space, etc.). Nonreductive materialism holds that properties such as structure, sentience, perception, action, and the qualia that often are often posited as universals (colors, shapes, etc.) emerge as experiences of subjects at high levels of organic complexity. One doesn't need, for example, to posit that some divine entity has by fiat created "Red," "Female," "Square," "Male": these complex phenomena/structures can be understood as emerging as real features of the world as experienced from the standpoint of a conscious organism: people.
It's hard to see why it would be a problem to assert that a "collection of chemicals" that constitutes a living, thinking person has rights. People are precisely the objects that the concept of rights was designed to apply to (although many have extended the concept to "collections of chemicals" that constitute dogs, chickens, elephants, and so forth). Our particular "collection of chemicals" has the odd characteristic of being able to speak and hear, to use and understand language. What better collection of chemicals to provide freedom of speech?
Robert: "The problem of universals is difficult to [solve] because it attempts to reconcile concepts at different levels ...."
An interesting and useful concept that I've been puzzling over the last while, not least because it seems to have more than passing relevance to that "age-old question" of "what is a woman?" 😉🙂
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_universals
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman
Though I think that, as you suggest, too many are making heavier weather out of the concept than is justified, largely because of sloppy or careless thinking. Though I'll concede that there is no shortage of potential pitfalls or traps for the unwary in the idea or its application.
But you in particular might have some interest in that post of mine since much of it is predicated on what I think is an absolutely brilliant insight and analogy by tweeter RadfemBlack (RfB):
RfB: "You gonna tell people they’re 'reducing beings to their bones' next for saying that a vertebrate is a creature with a spine? (obviously you’re not one 🤡💀)."
https://twitter.com/RadfemBlack/status/1161471915812360193
By that token, "spines" are "universals" -- real things in that case at least -- shared by a great many "objects", the sharing of which justifies their inclusion in the category "vertebrate" -- another universal but an abstraction in this case. The problem there -- as RfB alluded to -- is in turning the abstraction into a real thing: the "sin", the logical fallacy of reification.
> However, very few materialistic approaches accept that nothing is *real* beyond particles, although everything is composed of particles (and space, etc.).
If you mean most materialists make *ad hoc* exceptions to their materialism as a concession to the fact that materialism is false.
> Nonreductive materialism holds that properties such as structure, sentience, perception, action, and the qualia that often are often posited as universals (colors, shapes, etc.) emerge as experiences of subjects at high levels of organic complexity.
Except no one has any idea who to do that for consciousness or qualia, even in principle.
> One doesn't need, for example, to posit that some divine entity has by fiat created "Red," "Female," "Square," "Male": these complex phenomena/structures can be understood as emerging as real features of the world as experienced from the standpoint of a conscious organism: people.
You're conflating materialism and atheism. In any case, if you follow this logic, you'll eventually end up postulating entities and resemble the tradition descriptions of "gods", "angels", or "demons" remarkably well. And assuming you avoid dissolving in a pile of New Age goo, you'll eventually conclude that there is a single Source/Monad/Logos/God behind it all.
> It's hard to see why it would be a problem to assert that a "collection of chemicals" that constitutes a living, thinking person has rights. People are precisely the objects that the concept of rights was designed to apply to (although many have extended the concept to "collections of chemicals" that constitute dogs, chickens, elephants, and so forth). Our particular "collection of chemicals" has the odd characteristic of being able to speak and hear, to use and understand language. What better collection of chemicals to provide freedom of speech?
So do rights apply to collection of chemicals that can't speak or hear language but otherwise resemble the collections that can (deaf people)? What about ones that can speak but lack something that's hard to describe in material terms (talking parrots), what about toddlers, what about the mentally disabled? Good luck describing the differences in material terms.
"If you mean most materialists make *ad hoc* exceptions to their materialism as a concession to the fact that materialism is false."
No, Mr. Nier. I think you may not be familiar with nonreductive materialism: there is nothing ad hoc and it's not a matter of exceptions. Here's a model of the way emergence (or supervenience) theory works. Hydrogen atoms have certain properties, as do oxygen atoms. When they form an H2O molecule, however, they exhibit properties that are radically different from the constituent atoms of the molecule. Those properties are emergent at the level of the molecule, and although H2O is nothing but hydrogen and oxygen, its properties cannot be analyzed into the properties of hydrogen and oxygen atoms outside the moecular structure.
The same phenomenon applies to more complex levels of molecular structures, continuing into organic compounds and simple cells, to multicell organisms, etc. The phenomena that characterize the behavior and experiences of animal species are emergent upon the evolution of diversely complex multicell organic structures including neurons (as well as many other specialized cells, all structured in complex networks). All of these are in the end composed only of protons, electrons, and various subatomic particles, but their characteristics cannot be analyzed as the sum of those particles, because at every level of complexity independent characteristics emerge.
"You're conflating materialism and atheism. . . ."
Only to the extent that I anticipated that your antimaterialism implied an argument for the existence of a deity. I'm otherwise not interested in atheism. I'm not religious, but I have no quarrel with people who believe in a deity. I don't, however, see their beliefs as constituting an argument. (My view is that hydrogen and oxygen, when combined in an H2O structure, unproblematically behave as we see water behave; I don't see a reason to add a deity that decrees they shall behave that way.)
"So do rights apply to collection of chemicals that can't speak or hear language . . ."
I think you are pretending not to understand the force of my argument in order to offer challenges that are distractions. Deaf people speak through signs, if they learn them, and the neurology of parrots explains their ability to mimic speech, etc. The same principles apply to toddlers and the mentally disabled. (And, in fact, we extend some but not all rights to toddlers, and the mentally disabled in light of those neurologically-based differences.) I don't think these are actually interesting lines of discussion, and I'm sure you're well able to answer these sorts of questions without my help.
> No, Mr. Nier. I think you may not be familiar with nonreductive materialism: there is nothing ad hoc and it's not a matter of exceptions.
Sounds like you're reinventing St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of substances.
> I think you are pretending not to understand the force of my argument in order to offer challenges that are distractions. Deaf people speak through signs, if they learn them, and the neurology of parrots explains their ability to mimic speech, etc. The same principles apply to toddlers and the mentally disabled. (And, in fact, we extend some but not all rights to toddlers, and the mentally disabled in light of those neurologically-based differences.) I don't think these are actually interesting lines of discussion, and I'm sure you're well able to answer these sorts of questions without my help.
Oh, I now the answers you want to give, I'm merely pointing out that they don't actually follow from your premises. As a result you're left with no argument when someone wants to give a different answer.
"Sounds like you're reinventing St. Thomas Aquinas's theory of substances."
Then you're not listening very well: nonreductive materialism has nothing in common with Aquinas's theory. And I'm neither inventing nor reinventing. These are not my theories; they are well known in the areas of philosophy of science and philosophy of mind.
"Oh, I [k]now the answers you want to give, I'm merely pointing out that they don't actually follow from your premises. As a result you're left with no argument when someone wants to give a different answer."
I think not, Mr. Nier. You do not seem to have known the answers I wanted to give (and have now given), nor have you shown in any way that my argument doesn't follow from my premises. You may think you have, because you are misconstruing the premises I have stated, either intentionally, in order to make a claim that you have prevailed despite having no means to do so, or unintentionally, perhaps because you do not wish to consider challenges to your beliefs beyond dismissing them without reflection.
By the way, I agree with you that the crude form of reductive materialism you dislike is indeed incoherent. It had its day in the 1930s and 1940s, the heyday of behaviorist philosophy. When you take that type of approach as a proxy for "materialism" in general you are attacking a straw man.