Strawson, Galen - Real Naturalism

01/18/2013

Proceedings and Addresses of the APA, Vol 86 Issue 2 Nov 2012

Author starts by claiming that author is a thorough-going naturalist. But what is the substantive conception of the natural? For author, it is that all reality is entirely physical. So this makes author a physicalist or materialist naturalist (pg126). Author takes there to be a conflict, however, with other sorts of physicalists/naturalists when it comes to the philosophy of mind. The problem is that humans are directly knowledgeable about experience, and only indirectly knowledgeable about non-experiential properties of physical objects. Author thinks the move in 20th century philosophy to question whether experience is real when compared to other physical properties has been a wrongheaded evolution, going from a methodological commitment to behaviorism to a ontological commitment against experience (pg127). Author highlights Quine and Smart here.

In section 2, author treats the term "physical" as a natural-kind term, one that denotes a natural kind, and one whose content we can be wrong about. Author briefly discusses the persistent ignorance about the world that plagues physicalism, but also acknowledges that equations like f = ma are likely good approximations of the truth. But the problem with such equations is that they are structural descriptions, where content still needs to be cashed out (pg128-130). Author considers the structural and mathematical elements of the physical sciences to be their strong suit, not because humans know so much about the world, but because they know so little. Author distinguishes between the "intrinsic nature" of reality and its structure, and that logico-mathematical representations of the world do not illuminate its intrinsic nature. In other words, physics has structural descriptive content, and even structural transcendent referential content, but does it have structural transcendent descriptive content? (pg130) If a self-professed physicalist/naturalist is tempted to say "yes", then author objects that physicalism, thus far, has left out consciousness, or qualia, from it description (pg131-2). So, the dilemma is as follows: (1) admit that physics only has Purely Logico-Mathematical Structural Description (PLM) and thus misses the non-structural intrinsic nature of reality, or (2) argue that the Causal-Spatio-Temporal Structural Description given by physics is all that remains to reality and thereby deny that experience is part of reality.

 Author briefly summarizes the points made: that physicalism doesn't escape the Locke-Hume-Kant arguments about not knowing the thing-in-itself or understanding causation only by constant conjunction (pg133). Author considers those who think physics is the full fundamental description of the universe to be "not serious ... physicSalists". (pg134) Author uses the concepts of ignorance and knowledge-- what humans are ignorant about and what they know about-- in this discussion. The first and most certainly generally known fact is that there is experience. Naturalism must be "realistic", in that it must include this known fact (pg135). Author discusses prototypical examples of pre-philosophical understandings of experience: the kind of stuff you have when you're 6 years old: in short, having an experience is the knowing of the experience. (pg135-6) Author argues that there is no is/seems distinction when it comes to qualia, and that there are no arguments that can destroy the "real realism" of experience (pg137-8).

Interestingly, author claims that a "reduction" for the identity theorist, who claims that experiential states are identical to brain states, isn't reducing two entities to one in the ontological sense, just the epistemological one (pg138-9). The next discussion changes from defense to offense: is it known that anything non-experiential exists? To assume it does is unwarranted, according to author (pg140-1). Here, physicalism is compatible with panpsychism, which author explores (pg141-2). In conclusion, author asserts that if indeed this was widely accepted by philosophers, panpsychism would be widely acknowledged as a real possibility, which does not seem to be the case (pg143). Author runs through the arguments against false naturalists and finishes by asserting that it is not theoretically or ontologically cheaper to postulate the fundamental constituents of reality aren't experiential; it's either more expensive or, at best, equally pricey (pg146).