What Are We Monists Moaning About?

[Nick Thompson]

Dear Friammers,

 

The subject line is the title of an article I am thinking about writing for the Annals of Geriatric Maundering, and I want your help.   If you think that I am offering you an opportunity to waste your time, in service of advancing my career, you are, of course exactly correct.   Some of you have accused me of starting a fight on FRIAM when a good scholar would actually check out large, heavy books from the library.  That criticism is precise and apt.  My excuse is I have two disabilities for true scholarship: my eyesight sucks, and I am lazy.  So, here we go. 

 

To be a monist is first and foremost to be NOT a dualist.  The most familiar form of dualism is the mind/body dualism, which is so embedded in our language that it is hard to speak without depending on it.  According to this dualism, there are two kinds of stuff, mind and matter.  Dualists like to talk about the interaction of these two kinds of stuff, and are delighted when they discover isomorphisms between events in consciousness and events in the brain.  They like to discuss such topics as “information” and “representation”.  Dualists are fond of the subject object distinction, and are enthralled by the mysteries of “inner” states.  They like to talk about inverted spectrums.  They hail the Privacy of Mind.   Most of you are closet dualists.  You LIKE to think you are materialists, but if you were materialists you would have to be monists, and you wouldn’t like that, as you will plainly see.  I should confess that dualists, particularly closet dualists, drive me crazy.   Just sayin’.  And as I have assured you many times, I love you all anyway.  In fact, probably would have died years ago, if you had not kept me active.

 

Dualists are flanked on one side by pluralists and on the other by monists.  Pluralists are plainly crazy, and, besides, I don’t know any, so we won’t bother with pluralism.  Monism is clearly the way to go.  There are two familiar kinds of monism: idealism and materialism.  An idealist insists that everything real consists of ideas and relations between ideas; a materialist insists that everything real consists of matter and its relations.  If you ask an idealist about matter and s/he will say, “What is this “matter” of which you speak? All we have is ideas about matter.  If you ask a materialist about ideas, he will say, “What are these “ideas” of which you speak? Ideas are just arrangements of matter”  Of the two, I prefer materialism.  It is easier for me to reduce ideas to relations amongst matter than it is to reduce matter to relations among ideas. But neither of these forms of monism seem quite honest to me, because each implies the other.  To put it bluntly, realists and materials are all closet dualists.

 

The remaining option is “neutral” monism.  Being a neutral monist is very hard because people demand that you answer the question, “Of what does everything real consist?”  It is VERY hard to answer that question without becoming a closet dualist.  The answer requires some sort of noun (or gerund) and therefore, any response implies its opposite or absence, and thus relapses into closet dualism. 

 

One possibility I have considered is “event monism” .  Everything real consists of events and their relations.  I like the concept of event because it does not conjure up its opposite or absence quite so relentlessly.  What is a non-event or the absence of an event, really?  It’s an event in itself, right?  We speak of days when nothing happened, but we don’t really mean it.  Something DID happen; it just wasn’t very interesting. On the other hand, it does not accommodate “relations” talk very well.

 

A extreme solution is to take a kind of mathematical notational approach and just go for the relations:  “Everything that is real consists of [   ] and its relations”; i.e., everything real consists of [[[[[[[[[   ]…]….]….] etc. ad infinitum.  In words, “Everything real consists of relations and their relations. 

 

Neither of these solutions is very satisfying and both are rhetorically ungainly.  By default, have started to call  myself as an “Experience Monist”.  When people look at me slyly and ask, “Experience of what?” I say, “Of other experiences”.   And when they inevitably ask, “What was the first experience of?”, I ask them , “How many first experiences were there?” After they say, “One,” I ask. “And how many subsequent experiences have there been?”  And when they answer, “Oh, gosh, lots.  Almost an infinite number.”  I say, “Well, then let’s deal with the first one after we have dealt with all the others, mmmmm?”  You call this cheap sophistry, but I think the line of argument is fair because our obsession with “origins” (or “oranges”, for that matter) smacks of theology, and I am thoroughly fed up with theology.  “Let’s begin in the middle,” I say, “And not spend so much time worrying about the beginning and the end.”

 

And now we get to the crazy bit, the part where I imagine that FRIAMmers might help out.  This conception of The Real always reminds me of a Turing Machine.  That I make this connection might seem odd to you.  You might wonder what a flunked-out Harvard English major is doing with thoughts about a Turing Machine.  Fair question.  So how is it that I imagine a Turing Machine?

 

A Turing Machine (in my imagination) is a device that is capable of only three operations, punching a tape, moving a tape, and reading a tape.  Uh, oh, I need a 4^th.  I need it to be able to punch a tape and move a tape on the basis of what it finds on the tape.  Oh, gosh, I need a 5^th.  I need there to be punches on the tape NOT punched by the machine itself.  Oh, and a 6^th:  the survival of the machine needs to depend on anticipating patterns on the tape

 

  OH CRAP!  I THINK  I  JUST BECAME A DUALIST!

 

Has anybody written an article entitled, “What does the Turing Machine know?” Would a flunked-out Harvard English Major understand it?  Could you give me the link? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Russell Standish-2]

If you read the section of my book entitled "Other 'isms in Philosophy
of the Mind", I examine the theory outlined earlier in the book
(Theory of Nothing) to see how it fitted into Chalmer's 7
classifications of the theory of the mind.

I concluded that actually I held 6 out of the 7 positions simultaneously.

I think it is quite possible to be both a dualist and a monist
simultaneously. Even a hardcore materialist will admit that
relationships between things (eg the angle made by crossing two spears)
are distinctly nonmaterial things.

Of course, YMMV.

As for what a Turing machine may know, you could take a look at Bruno
Marchal's theory, which is developed in terms of modal logic. His book
I translated "Amoeba's Secret" is probably the gentlest
introduction. Not sure what an English major might make of it though
:).

On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 12:45:43PM -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Dear Friammers,
>
>  
>
> The subject line is the title of an article I am thinking about writing for the
> Annals of Geriatric Maundering, and I want your help.   If you think that I am
> offering you an opportunity to waste your time, in service of advancing my
> career, you are, of course exactly correct.   Some of you have accused me of
> starting a fight on FRIAM when a good scholar would actually check out large,
> heavy books from the library.  That criticism is precise and apt.  My excuse is
> I have two disabilities for true scholarship: my eyesight sucks, and I am
> lazy.  So, here we go.
>
>  
>
> To be a monist is first and foremost to be NOT a dualist.  The most familiar
> form of dualism is the mind/body dualism, which is so embedded in our language
> that it is hard to speak without depending on it.  According to this dualism,
> there are two kinds of stuff, mind and matter.  Dualists like to talk about the
> interaction of these two kinds of stuff, and are delighted when they discover
> isomorphisms between events in consciousness and events in the brain.  They
> like to discuss such topics as “information” and “representation”.  Dualists
> are fond of the subject object distinction, and are enthralled by the mysteries
> of “inner” states.  They like to talk about inverted spectrums.  They hail the
> Privacy of Mind.   Most of you are closet dualists.  You LIKE to think you are
> materialists, but if you were materialists you would have to be monists, and
> you wouldn’t like that, as you will plainly see.  I should confess that
> dualists, particularly closet dualists, drive me crazy.   Just sayin’.  And as
> I have assured you many times, I love you all anyway.  In fact, probably would
> have died years ago, if you had not kept me active.
>
>  
>
> Dualists are flanked on one side by pluralists and on the other by monists.
> Pluralists are plainly crazy, and, besides, I don’t know any, so we won’t
> bother with pluralism.  Monism is clearly the way to go.  There are two
> familiar kinds of monism: idealism and materialism.  An idealist insists that
> everything real consists of ideas and relations between ideas; a materialist
> insists that everything real consists of matter and its relations.  If you ask
> an idealist about matter and s/he will say, “What is this “matter” of which you
> speak? All we have is ideas about matter.  If you ask a materialist about
> ideas, he will say, “What are these “ideas” of which you speak? Ideas are just
> arrangements of matter”  Of the two, I prefer materialism.  It is easier for me
> to reduce ideas to relations amongst matter than it is to reduce matter to
> relations among ideas. But neither of these forms of monism seem quite honest
> to me, because each implies the other.  To put it bluntly, realists and
> materials are all closet dualists.
>
>  
>
> The remaining option is “neutral” monism.  Being a neutral monist is very hard
> because people demand that you answer the question, “Of what does everything
> real consist?”  It is VERY hard to answer that question without becoming a
> closet dualist.  The answer requires some sort of noun (or gerund) and
> therefore, any response implies its opposite or absence, and thus relapses into
> closet dualism.
>
>  
>
> One possibility I have considered is “event monism” .  Everything real consists
> of events and their relations.  I like the concept of event because it does not
> conjure up its opposite or absence quite so relentlessly.  What is a non-event
> or the absence of an event, really?  It’s an event in itself, right?  We speak
> of days when nothing happened, but we don’t really mean it.  Something DID
> happen; it just wasn’t very interesting. On the other hand, it does not
> accommodate “relations” talk very well.
>
>  
>
> A extreme solution is to take a kind of mathematical notational approach and
> just go for the relations:  “Everything that is real consists of [   ] and its
> relations”; i.e., everything real consists of [[[[[[[[[   ]…]….]….] etc. ad
> infinitum.  In words, “Everything real consists of relations and their
> relations.
>
>  
>
> Neither of these solutions is very satisfying and both are rhetorically
> ungainly.  By default, have started to call  myself as an “Experience Monist”.
> When people look at me slyly and ask, “Experience of what?” I say, “Of other
> experiences”.   And when they inevitably ask, “What was the first experience
> of?”, I ask them , “How many first experiences were there?” After they say,
> “One,” I ask. “And how many subsequent experiences have there been?”  And when
> they answer, “Oh, gosh, lots.  Almost an infinite number.”  I say, “Well, then
> let’s deal with the first one after we have dealt with all the others, mmmmm?”
> You call this cheap sophistry, but I think the line of argument is fair because
> our obsession with “origins” (or “oranges”, for that matter) smacks of
> theology, and I am thoroughly fed up with theology.  “Let’s begin in the
> middle,” I say, “And not spend so much time worrying about the beginning and
> the end.”
>
>  
>
> And now we get to the crazy bit, the part where I imagine that FRIAMmers might
> help out.  This conception of The Real always reminds me of a Turing Machine.
> That I make this connection might seem odd to you.  You might wonder what a
> flunked-out Harvard English major is doing with thoughts about a Turing
> Machine.  Fair question.  So how is it that I imagine a Turing Machine?
>
>  
>
> A Turing Machine (in my imagination) is a device that is capable of only three
> operations, punching a tape, moving a tape, and reading a tape.  Uh, oh, I need
> a 4^th.  I need it to be able to punch a tape and move a tape on the basis of
> what it finds on the tape.  Oh, gosh, I need a 5^th.  I need there to be
> punches on the tape NOT punched by the machine itself.  Oh, and a 6^th:  the
> survival of the machine needs to depend on anticipating patterns on the tape
>
>  
>
>   OH CRAP!  I THINK  I  JUST BECAME A DUALIST!
>
>  
>
>
> Has anybody written an article entitled, “What does the Turing Machine know?”
> Would a flunked-out Harvard English Major understand it?  Could you give me the
> link?
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  
>
>  
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
>
> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
>
> Clark University
>
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
>
>  
>

> ============================================================
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove


--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish                    Phone [phone] (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellow        [hidden email]
Economics, Kingston University         http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Nick Thompson]

Russell,

 

THANK you.  Courtesy of Google (and Dodgson)

 

"Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen. "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

 

As for your second point, my understanding of materialism is, “Everything real consists of matter and it’s relations. “ So, your crossed spear, a good example of a material relation, is consistent with diehard materialism. 

 

Remember, I said I was a rejected Harvard English Major.  I made my first materialist stand when I said in that I preferred Dreiser to James.  The tutor, a James scholar, I later discovered, pulled himself up to his full height (which must have been at least 5’7”  and said, “NOBODY who could utter those words deserves to be an English Major at Haaaahvud.”  And that was that.  Had I stayed another year, I might have lost entirely my capacity for scientific thought. 

 

I like the sound of “Amoeba’s Secret” and will try to put my hands on it.   I was particularly tantalized by this passage, gleaned from “Look Inside”: 

 

 

Russell, I wish you could be here to meet with us tomorrow.

 

All the best,

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell Standish
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2019 9:35 PM
To: Friam <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] What Are We Monists Moaning About?

 

If you read the section of my book entitled "Other 'isms in Philosophy of the Mind", I examine the theory outlined earlier in the book (Theory of Nothing) to see how it fitted into Chalmer's 7 classifications of the theory of the mind.

 

I concluded that actually I held 6 out of the 7 positions simultaneously.

 

I think it is quite possible to be both a dualist and a monist simultaneously. Even a hardcore materialist will admit that relationships between things (eg the angle made by crossing two spears) are distinctly nonmaterial things.

 

Of course, YMMV.

 

As for what a Turing machine may know, you could take a look at Bruno Marchal's theory, which is developed in terms of modal logic. His book I translated "Amoeba's Secret" is probably the gentlest introduction. Not sure what an English major might make of it though :).

 

On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 12:45:43PM -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Dear Friammers,

>

> 

>

> The subject line is the title of an article I am thinking about writing for the

> Annals of Geriatric Maundering, and I want your help.   If you think that I am

> offering you an opportunity to waste your time, in service of advancing my

> career, you are, of course exactly correct.   Some of you have accused me of

> starting a fight on FRIAM when a good scholar would actually check out

> large, heavy books from the library.  That criticism is precise and

> apt.  My excuse is I have two disabilities for true scholarship: my

> eyesight sucks, and I am lazy.  So, here we go.

>

> 

>

> To be a monist is first and foremost to be NOT a dualist.  The most

> familiar form of dualism is the mind/body dualism, which is so

> embedded in our language that it is hard to speak without depending on

> it.  According to this dualism, there are two kinds of stuff, mind and

> matter.  Dualists like to talk about the interaction of these two

> kinds of stuff, and are delighted when they discover isomorphisms

> between events in consciousness and events in the brain.  They like to

> discuss such topics as “information” and “representation”.  Dualists

> are fond of the subject object distinction, and are enthralled by the mysteries of “inner” states.  They like to talk about inverted spectrums.  They hail the

> Privacy of Mind.   Most of you are closet dualists.  You LIKE to think you are

> materialists, but if you were materialists you would have to be

> monists, and you wouldn’t like that, as you will plainly see.  I should confess that

> dualists, particularly closet dualists, drive me crazy.   Just sayin’.  And as

> I have assured you many times, I love you all anyway.  In fact,

> probably would have died years ago, if you had not kept me active.

>

> 

>

> Dualists are flanked on one side by pluralists and on the other by monists.

> Pluralists are plainly crazy, and, besides, I don’t know any, so we

> won’t bother with pluralism.  Monism is clearly the way to go.  There

> are two familiar kinds of monism: idealism and materialism.  An

> idealist insists that everything real consists of ideas and relations

> between ideas; a materialist insists that everything real consists of

> matter and its relations.  If you ask an idealist about matter and

> s/he will say, “What is this “matter” of which you speak? All we have

> is ideas about matter.  If you ask a materialist about ideas, he will

> say, “What are these “ideas” of which you speak? Ideas are just

> arrangements of matter”  Of the two, I prefer materialism.  It is

> easier for me to reduce ideas to relations amongst matter than it is

> to reduce matter to relations among ideas. But neither of these forms

> of monism seem quite honest to me, because each implies the other.  To put it bluntly, realists and materials are all closet dualists.

>

> 

>

> The remaining option is “neutral” monism.  Being a neutral monist is

> very hard because people demand that you answer the question, “Of what

> does everything real consist?”  It is VERY hard to answer that

> question without becoming a closet dualist.  The answer requires some

> sort of noun (or gerund) and therefore, any response implies its

> opposite or absence, and thus relapses into closet dualism.

>

> 

>

> One possibility I have considered is “event monism” .  Everything real

> consists of events and their relations.  I like the concept of event

> because it does not conjure up its opposite or absence quite so

> relentlessly.  What is a non-event or the absence of an event, really? 

> It’s an event in itself, right?  We speak of days when nothing

> happened, but we don’t really mean it.  Something DID happen; it just

> wasn’t very interesting. On the other hand, it does not accommodate “relations” talk very well.

>

> 

>

> A extreme solution is to take a kind of mathematical notational approach and

> just go for the relations:  “Everything that is real consists of [   ] and its

> relations”; i.e., everything real consists of [[[[[[[[[   ]…]….]….] etc. ad

> infinitum.  In words, “Everything real consists of relations and their

> relations.

>

> 

>

> Neither of these solutions is very satisfying and both are

> rhetorically ungainly.  By default, have started to call  myself as an “Experience Monist”.

> When people look at me slyly and ask, “Experience of what?” I say, “Of other

> experiences”.   And when they inevitably ask, “What was the first experience

> of?”, I ask them , “How many first experiences were there?” After they

> say, “One,” I ask. “And how many subsequent experiences have there

> been?”  And when they answer, “Oh, gosh, lots.  Almost an infinite

> number.”  I say, “Well, then let’s deal with the first one after we have dealt with all the others, mmmmm?”

> You call this cheap sophistry, but I think the line of argument is

> fair because our obsession with “origins” (or “oranges”, for that

> matter) smacks of theology, and I am thoroughly fed up with theology. 

> “Let’s begin in the middle,” I say, “And not spend so much time

> worrying about the beginning and the end.”

>

> 

>

> And now we get to the crazy bit, the part where I imagine that

> FRIAMmers might help out.  This conception of The Real always reminds me of a Turing Machine.

> That I make this connection might seem odd to you.  You might wonder

> what a flunked-out Harvard English major is doing with thoughts about

> a Turing Machine.  Fair question.  So how is it that I imagine a Turing Machine?

>

> 

>

> A Turing Machine (in my imagination) is a device that is capable of

> only three operations, punching a tape, moving a tape, and reading a

> tape.  Uh, oh, I need a 4^th.  I need it to be able to punch a tape

> and move a tape on the basis of what it finds on the tape.  Oh, gosh,

> I need a 5^th.  I need there to be punches on the tape NOT punched by

> the machine itself.  Oh, and a 6^th:  the survival of the machine

> needs to depend on anticipating patterns on the tape

>

> 

>

>   OH CRAP!  I THINK  I  JUST BECAME A DUALIST!

>

> 

>

>

> Has anybody written an article entitled, “What does the Turing Machine know?”

> Would a flunked-out Harvard English Major understand it?  Could you

> give me the link?

>

> 

>

> 

>

> 

>

> 

>

> 

>

> 

>

> Nicholas S. Thompson

>

> Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

>

> Clark University

>

> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

>

> 

>

 

> ============================================================

> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe

> at St. John's College to unsubscribe

> http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

 

 

--

 

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr Russell Standish                    Phone [phone] (mobile)

Principal, High Performance Coders

Visiting Senior Research Fellow        [hidden email]

Economics, Kingston University         http://www.hpcoders.com.au

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

============================================================

FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv

Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com

archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/

FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove

[Russell Standish-2]

On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 11:22:19PM -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:

> Russell,
>
>  
>
> THANK you.  Courtesy of Google (and Dodgson)
>
>  
>
> "Alice laughed: "There's no use trying," she said; "one can't believe
> impossible things." "I daresay you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.
> "When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes
> I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
>
>  
>
> As for your second point, my understanding of materialism is, “Everything real
> consists of matter and it’s relations. “ So, your crossed spear, a good example
> of a material relation, is consistent with diehard materialism. 
>

Yes - I think that is consistent with Chalmers' use. But contrast this
with physicalism, or eliminative materialism, which denies any sort of
existence to those relations.

But such a materialism is both monist and dualist and
emergentist. Those relations emerge from the matter, and are the dual
aspect. Think of graph vertices and edges as being dual objects
mathematically.

BTW - what we normally think of as matter (eg chairs, tables and so
on) are really more about relationships between charges - ie
electromagnetic fields. The more you drill down into it, eg think
about what an electron is, the more immaterial matter becomes, which
is why I think Chalmers' materialist/immaterialist divide rather dissolves
too.

--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish                    Phone [phone] (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders
Visiting Senior Research Fellow        [hidden email]
Economics, Kingston University         http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove