Galen Strawson - Metaphysics vs. Materialism? (Part 1)

Metaphysics asks the most profound questions, then uses sophisticated philosophical analysis to seek the deepest truths. What happens when #metaphysics trains its analytical guns on 'materialism', the claim that only the physical is real? What are the metaphysical arguments for and against materialism?

Galen Strawson holds the President's Chair in Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin's College of Liberal Arts. He studied at the University of Cambridge before receiving his BPhil and DPhil in #philosophy from the University of Oxford.

Closer To Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[uremove]

I like Galen Strawson’s originality! His radical empiricism (and panpsychist materialism) are interesting perspectives.

[TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns]

Misleading title. Materialism IS a metaphysical claim.

I think Kuhn means to say “metaphysics vs science, ” but science itself doesn’t make materialism any more plausible than it would be without science. The question of whether materialism is true CANT be adjudicated via science.

[VaibhavTiwari-wjgi]

Sir's Father (Prof. P.F Strawson) theories have been prescribed in my pg syllabus

[johncart]

Everything is grounded in necessary metaphysics, Science and materialism are based on fundamental metaphysical first principles.

[Dragonface]

I feel like Strawson has somehow articulated the way I've always thought about these things myself. I've always been of the opinion that if you're really a thoroughgoing, non-eliminativist materialist, then you kind of inevitably end up at some version of panpsychism, because if you truly believe that everything that exists is matter, then either consciousness (or the capacity for it) must exist at the level of fundamental matter, or it must be eliminated. Any other option between those two (e.g. "non-reductive materialism" or "strong emergence") just sounds to me like dualism that refuses to recognize itself as such (which is not to denigrate these positions, but at least admit that you're basically abandoning materialism if you advocate them).

[dionbridger]

Materialism = What You See is What You Get.

[jamesruscheinski]

energy of quantum fields measured to form particles?

[VaibhavTiwari-wjgi]

I am Philosophy student.
I will be graceful if someone will be my friend here.
Because to talk a good person is much better than a thousand of book.
Meta ethics, theology and Meta ethics and analytical philosophy are my interested field.

[markuspfeifer]

If the point of materialism was to end pointless discussions on metaphysics, it was a complete and utter failure. It turns out that materialism is just another variant of metaphysics - and a cheap one.

[jamesruscheinski]

could quantum fields be produced by energy?

[henrirauhala]

Mr. Strawson is very correct saying "Anyone who's a materialist has got to accept that feelings and emotions are real." However, Mr. Kuhn is also right pointing out that Strawson's view is extremely empiricist when rejecting that we could know anything about the "intrinsic nature" of matter, limiting our research to structures. However, there's no substance without structure, no content without form: we've seen the scale of structures expanding to both directions, with no end in sight. Therefore each level of matter, as much as any other, reveals something of its intrinsic nature.

[truebomba]

"This leads us to repeat an essential point on which not the slightest ambiguity must be allowed to persist: intellectual intuition, by which alone metaphysical knowledge is to be obtained, has absolutely nothing in common with this other 'intuition' of which certain contemporary philosophers speak: the latter pertains to the sensible realm and in fact, is subrational, whereas the former, which is pure intelligence, is on the contrary supra-rational. But the moderns, knowing nothing higher than reason in the order of intel- ligence, do not even conceive of the possibility of intellectual intuition, whereas the doctrines of the ancient world and of the Middle Ages, even when they were no more than philosophical in character, and therefore incapable of effectively calling this intuition into play, nevertheless explicitly recognized its existence and its supremacy over all the other faculties. This is why there was no rationalism before Descartes, for rationalism is a specifically modern phenomenon, one that is closely connected with individualism, being nothing other than the negation of any faculty of a supra-individual order. "

[daveulmer]

Knowledge and Understanding:

In the domain of Knowledge there are different types: names, facts, questions, distinctions, predictions, contradictions, procedures, true, false, nonsense, and the list goes on.

In the domain of Understanding where the knowledge type 'procedural' is the how-to instructions included in the body of knowledge that makes up the understanding.

You can view your list of understandings by listing all the words you use that end with the suffex ing. Like: Reading, writing, thinking, talking, seeing, believing, typing, tweeting, etc.

Understandings are the program code that runs all the things that you do.

Understandings consume energy (calories) when operating whereas knowledge does not require extra energy just to remain in state.

Its good to know the difference between Knowledge and Understanding.

Knowledge Directs, Understanding Affects.

The brain organizes knowledge into ten knowledge contexts for every issue in its knowledge library. These contexts are: Name, Authors, Purpose, Environment, Language, Configuration, Operation, Owners, Market, and Value. These are the Ten Directors that control the function of any issue. All procedural knowledge that drives understandings are stored in the Operation Director.

You can change your life my meditating on each one of the ten directors individually and doing a house cleaning on the knowledge stored there. Delete the false knowledge and install true knowledge in each of the ten directors. Edit modify and test changes to procedural knowledge in all your understandings.

[jamesruscheinski]

experience in universe by an experiencer?

[eltonron]

If something or someone, is living rent free, in your head, you're talking the reality of the supernatural. They/it, doesn't just come to mind. Your comfort zone is on supernatural Defcon 5.

[theotormon]

Qualia are electromagnetic wave forms.

[daveulmer]

Data Physics:

If you ask someone what their universe is made of? What do you get?

You should get only four words: Matter, Energy, Space, and Time. This is common sense. This is universe that they can see, hear, taste, smell, and touch all by themselves.

All life forms detect data from the universe they live in so they can know at the very least what the difference between food and waste is. You must get food to live and excrete waste.

But in our universe there is one simple quirk about data that may not be obvious. All data requires a carrier of that data to be realizable. If you see an image or a color it is carried to your eye by the energy of light. Turn off the light and you get no data. If you pick up a rock it must take up space to be a real rock so you can say that the data you receive about that rock is carried in the space that is occupies. You can identify this data as MS Matter data carried in Space. In the case of the image you saw, that was SE data Spacial data carried by Energy.

Taking ordered pairs of four things you get 16 different data types that you can detect. SE, SM, SS, ST, ME, MM, MS, MT, ES, EE, EM, ET, TM, TE, TS, TT. As examples SE are images, EE is color, Size is SS and a date is TT. You pronounce these order pairs as the data letter first and the carrier letter second. SE data is Spacial data carried by Energy. TE is Temporal data carried by Energy. I'll leave it to you the reader as an exercise to identify all 16 data types in your universe.

These 16 fundamental data types are the foundation of Data Physics and our Sensible Universe. Sorry about the fact that sensory data is not organized in just the way that you might like it.

[justinbivens]

This may be over simplistic but metaphysics seems like it would be very useful in teaching self help and nothing more....

[zombiesingularity]

Dialectics is superior to metaphysics.

[massanchik]

Metaphysics vs. Materialism? Materialism IS Metaphysics! What a stupid title...