http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2022/07/problems-for-goffs-panpsychism.html Edward Feser "One of the best contemporary writers on philosophy" National Review "A terrific writer" Damian Thompson, Daily Telegraph "Feser... has the rare and enviable gift of making philosophical argument compulsively readable" Sir Anthony Kenny, Times Literary Supplement Selected for the First Things list of the 50 Best Blogs of 2010 (November 19, 2010) Sunday, July 3, 2022 Problems for Goff's panpsychism [01] Panpsychism is the view that conscious awareness pervades the physical world, down to the level of basic particles. In recent years, philosopher Philip Goff has become an influential proponent of the view, defending it in his books Consciousness and Fundamental Reality and Galileo's Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness. He builds on ideas developed by contemporary philosophers like David Chalmers and Galen Strawson, who in turn were influenced by early twentieth-century thinkers like Bertrand Russell and Arthur Eddington (though Russell, it should be noted, was not himself a panpsychist). Goff's views are bound to be of special interest to many of the regular readers of this blog, given that a critique of the conception of matter associated with Galileo and other early modern proponents of the mechanical world picture is central to his position. The problematic nature of this conception of matter has, of course, been a longstanding theme of my own work. Naturally, then, I think that Goff's publicizing of what he calls "Galileo's error" is an important contribution. But unfortunately, what Goff wants to put in place of that error is, in my view, not much of an improvement. Certainly his argument for panpsychism from the rejection of Galileo's mistake is a gigantic non sequitur. The limits of physics Let's begin with what Goff gets right. Common sense takes ordinary physical objects to have both (a) size, shape, motion, etc. and (b) color, sound, heat, cold, etc. Early modern philosophers and scientists characterized features of type (a) as "primary qualities" and features of type (b) as "secondary qualities," and argued that the latter are not genuine features of matter as it is in itself, but reflect only the way conscious awareness presents matter to us. What exists in mind-independent reality is nothing more than colorless, soundless, tasteless, odorless, etc. particles in motion. Color, sound, taste, odor, etc. exist only in the mind's experiences of that reality. That's the short version of the story, anyway. There are various complications. For example, on Locke's version of the distinction, it is not quite right to say that secondary qualities don't exist in mind-independent reality. In fact, both primary and secondary qualities are really there in physical objects. The difference is that the experiences that primary qualities generate in us really "resemble" the qualities themselves, whereas the experiences that secondary qualities generate in us do not resemble the qualities themselves. On Locke's view, there really is something in an apple that resembles the shape you see in it, but there is nothing really there in the apple that resembles the color you see in it. Influenced by this Lockean way of making the distinction, later philosophers would say that whether colors, sounds, heat, cold, and the like really exist in mind-independent reality depends on what we mean by those terms. If by "color" you mean a surface's tendency to absorb light of some wavelengths while reflecting others, then you can say that color really exists in physical objects. But if by "color" you mean what common sense means by it - the perceived look of red, or blue, or whatever - then the claim is that there is nothing like that in physical objects themselves, but only in our experiences of them. Color, sound, heat, cold, etc. as common sense understands them are claimed to exist only as the "qualia" of conscious awareness, to use what has become the standard jargon. The basic idea is clear enough however these details are worked out. Now, the reason Galileo and the other proponents of the mechanical world picture took this view, as Goff emphasizes, is that they wanted to develop an entirely mathematized conception of nature, and while primary qualities were thought to fit comfortably into this picture, secondary qualities do not. They are irreducibly qualitative rather than quantitative, so that attempts to analyze them in purely quantitative terms always inevitably leave something out. The solution was to hold that they just aren't really part of the natural world in the first place, but (again) only part of the mind's perception of that world. Problem solved! Well, not really. In fact, this move is itself problematic in several respects. One of them is that drawing a sharp distinction between primary and secondary qualities turns out to be much more difficult than it at first appears, as Berkeley famously showed. The Aristotelian philosopher, who defends common sense, would say that this is a good reason to think that secondary qualities are, after all, as objective as primary qualities. Berkeley, of course, drew the opposite conclusion that none of these qualities are really objectively out there. And he made of this claim, in turn, the basis of an argument for idealism or the denial of matter's very existence. The more common approach, however, was to try to make some version of the primary/secondary quality distinction work, and this went hand in hand with a Cartesian sort of dualism rather than idealism. As early modern thinkers like Cudworth and Malebranche pointed out, dualism was in fact an inevitable consequence of the primary/secondary quality distinction. For if color, sound, heat, cold, etc. as common sense understands them don't exist in matter, then they don't exist in the brain or the rest of the body (since those are material). And if they do nevertheless exist in the mind, then we have the dualist conclusion that the mind is not identical with the brain or with any other material thing. The very conception of matter that modern materialism has committed itself to is therefore radically incompatible with materialism. And that is why materialists have had such a difficult time answering objections like Chalmers' "zombie argument," Jackson's "knowledge argument," and Nagel's "bat argument," and solving the "hard problem of consciousness" that such arguments pose for them. Attempting to develop a materialist account of consciousness while at the same time presupposing the conception of matter inherited from Galileo and Co. is like trying to square the circle. It is a fool's errand, born of conceptual confusion and neglect of intellectual history. Now, another lesson, and one especially emphasized by Russell and Eddington, is that the methodology that modern physics has inherited from Galileo and Co. guarantees that physics tells us far less about the material world than meets the eye. In particular, what physics reveals is only the abstract mathematical structure of physical reality, but not the intrinsic nature of the entities that flesh out that abstract structure. Since these are all themes I have been going on about myself for many years, I am, with this much, highly sympathetic. A defense of the structural realist interpretation of modern physics and critique of the mechanical world picture are major themes of my most recent book Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science. These are important parts of the broader case I make there for a neo-Aristotelian philosophy of nature. Goff does not take them in that direction, but he does a real service by making better known the nature and implications of the conceptual revolution the mechanical philosophy set in motion. Goff's errors After this point, however, Goff's argument starts to fly off the rails. His next move is to borrow a further idea from Eddington and Russell, who held that introspection of one's own conscious experiences does reveal the intrinsic nature of at least one physical object, namely the brain. That is to say, when you look within and encounter qualia - the way red looks, the way heat feels, the way a musical note sounds, and so on - what you are directly aware of are the entities that "flesh out" the abstract causal structure of the brain revealed by science. Now, if qualia are the intrinsic properties of at least this one physical object, and we know nothing from physics about the intrinsic properties of any other part of physical reality, then, Goff proposes, we can speculate that qualia are also the intrinsic properties of all other physical reality.^ Physics, he says, leaves a "huge hole" in our picture of nature that we can "plug" with qualia (Goff, Galileo's Error, p. 132). But since qualia are the defining features of conscious experience, it follows that conscious experience exists throughout the material world. To be sure, Goff is keen to emphasize that the conscious awareness associated with, say, an electron is bound to be radically unlike, and more primitive than, ours. He also notes that a panpsychist need not attribute conscious awareness to all everyday physical objects (such as a pair of socks) but only to the more elementary bits of matter of which they are composed. Still, he is attributing something like sentience to physical reality well beyond the animal realm, indeed well beyond the realm of living things. But this line of argument is fallacious, and the bizarre solution panpsychism proposes to the problem of how to fit consciousness into the natural world is completely unnecessary. For one thing, it is hard to imagine a more stark example of the fallacy of hasty generalization than Goff's inference from what (he claims) brains are like to a conclusion about what matter in general is like. Suppose we allow for the sake of argument that introspection of qualia involves direct awareness of the intrinsic properties of the matter that makes up brains. Brains are an extremely small part of the matter that makes up even just the Earth, let alone the rest of the universe (from which, as far as we know, they are entirely absent). They are also the most complex things in the universe. Why suppose that all matter, and especially the most elementary matter, is plausibly modeled on them? Surely the prima facie far more plausible bet would be that most matter is radically unlike brains. A second problem is that Goff's argument takes for granted that what contemporary philosophers call "qualia" really are features of conscious experience rather than of the external objects that conscious experience is experience of. And that assumption is open to challenge. After all, common sense would take it to be obvious that when we learn what an apple tastes like or looks like, what we are learning is something about the apple itself, not about our experience of the apple. And the Aristotelian conception of nature that the mechanical world picture displaced would have agreed. The point is not that what seems obvious to common sense must be correct, but rather that it shouldn't simply be taken for granted that contemporary philosophers' habit of talking about the way an apple tastes, the way red looks, the way heat feels, etc. as if these were features of the mind (and thus as if they were "qualia") - as opposed to features of mind-independent reality - reflects an accurate carving up of the conceptual territory. Goff himself emphasizes that Galileo's treatment of these qualities as mind-dependent was motivated by his project of developing a purely mathematical conception of nature; that this was a philosophical thesis rather than one that has been established by science; and that it created the very problem of consciousness that Goff thinks panpsychism solves. Why not solve it instead by simply not following Galileo in making the conceptual move that created the problem? Goff says that "Galileo took the sensory qualities out of the physical world" and that panpsychism is "a way of putting them back" (Goff, Galileo's Error, p. 138). Why not instead merely refrain from taking them out in the first place? Or, if we're going to speak of putting them back after Galileo took them out, why not put them back in the specific places he took them from? Why instead put them into every other bit of matter, including unobservable particles, when that is not where they came from? For example, Galileo (and the mechanical philosophy more generally) hold that the redness you see when you look at an apple is not in the apple itself, but only in your mind. Goff tells us that, in order to solve the problems this sort of view raises, we should say that the redness you see is in your brain, and that something analogous to it is in electrons and other particles. Why not just say instead that it really is in the apple after all, and leave it at that? Goff's "solution" is analogous to trying to rectify the injustice caused by a theft by giving the stolen money back to everyone except the person it was taken from! It might be replied that to reject Galileo's move in this way would conflict with the findings of modern physics. But again, as Goff himself emphasizes, the move is at bottom philosophical rather than scientific in nature. To be sure, scientific considerations (about the physics of light, the neuroscience of vision, etc.) are relevant. But they do not by themselves establish the correctness of the mechanical philosophy's distinction between primary and secondary qualities, because the scientific evidence is susceptible of different philosophical interpretations. Nor could Goff object that reversion to something like the conception of color, sound, etc. that prevailed before the rise of the mechanical philosophy would be too radical a departure from philosophical orthodoxy. For he acknowledges that panpsychism represents a radical departure from it, and argues that such a departure is necessary in order to solve the problem posed by Galileo's conceptual revolution. Moreover, some mainstream contemporary philosophers would, for reasons independent of debates about either panpsychism or Aristotelianism, defend the "naive realist" view about qualities that was overthrown by Galileo and the mechanical philosophy. I have defended it as well. (See pp. 340-51 of Aristotle's Revenge, which includes a discussion of the relevant contemporary literature.) Goff not only reasons fallaciously to the conclusion that conscious experience pervades inorganic reality, but reasons from assumptions about the nature of color, sound, heat, cold, etc. that his own critique of the mechanical philosophy should have led him to question. A further problem is that the suggestion that there is something analogous to consciousness in fundamental physical particles and other inorganic entities is simply prima facie implausible, and not just because it sounds bizarre. As Aristotelians argue (see Aristotle's Revenge, pp. 393-95), sensation is closely tied to appetite and locomotion, so that the absence of the latter from plants tells strongly in favor of the absence of sensation from them as well. What is true of plants is a fortiori true of electrons and other particles too, to which it is even more implausible to attribute appetite or locomotion. There are simply no good empirical grounds for attributing anything like sentience to the inorganic realm, any more that there are for attributing it to plants. The attribution also turns out to be completely pointless, given other things Goff says. Consider that the panpsychist's attribution to basic physical particles of something analogous to consciousness is alleged to make it more intelligible how the brain could be conscious. For if matter is already conscious "all the way down," as it were, then there should be no surprise that the complex organ that is the brain is conscious too. We need simply to work out how the more elementary forms of consciousness that exist at lower levels of physical reality add up to the more sophisticated form with which we are familiar from our own everyday experience. This is known as the "combination problem," and while Goff thinks there are promising approaches to solving it, he acknowledges that panpsychists have not yet done so. You might suppose, then, that Goff is committed to a kind of reductionism according to which higher-level features of the natural world are intelligible only if reducible to lower-level features, where Goff differs from materialist reductionists only in positing the existence of consciousness at lower levels as well as at higher levels. But in fact, Goff explicitly rejects this reductionist assumption, citing in support the work of contemporary critics of reductionism like Nancy Cartwright. Goff allows that physical objects can have properties that are irreducible to the sum of the properties of their parts. But then, what is the point of positing consciousness at the level of basic particles as part of an explanation of how animals and human beings are conscious? Why not instead merely take the consciousness that exists at the level of an organism as a whole to be one of those properties irreducible to the sum of the organism's parts? That is exactly what the traditional Aristotelian position does. Goff says that there must be something that fleshes out the abstract structure described by physics, and alleges that "there doesn't seem to be a candidate for being the intrinsic nature of matter other than consciousness" (Galileo's Error, p. 133). But in fact there is no great mystery here in need of some exotic solution. We need only to see what is in front of our nose, which, as Orwell famously said, requires a constant struggle. The concrete reality that fleshes out the abstract structure described by physics is nothing other than the world of ordinary objects revealed to us in everyday experience. Physics is an abstraction from that, just as the representation of a person's face in a pen and ink sketch is an abstraction from all the rich concrete detail to be found in the actual, flesh-and-blood face. No one thinks that the existence of pen and ink drawings raises some deep metaphysical puzzle about what fleshes out the two-dimensional black-and-white representation, and neither is there any deep metaphysical mystery about what fleshes out the abstract structure described by physics. The bizarre panpsychist solution is no more called for in the latter case than in the former. Does that mean there is nothing more to be said about the intrinsic nature of matter beyond what common sense would say about it? Not at all, and Aristotelianism provides a detailed account what more there is to be said about it. It is to be found in the hylemorphist analysis of material substances as compounds of substantial form and prime matter, possessing causal powers and teleology, and so on. Again, for the details see Aristotle's Revenge (as well as its predecessor Scholastic Metaphysics, and the work of other contemporary Aristotelians like David Oderberg). Goff is right that a radical solution is needed to the problems opened up by Galileo's error. But it is to be found, not in panpsychism (which ultimately amounts to yet a further riff on Galileo's error), but in a return to the classical philosophical wisdom that the early moderns abandoned. Related posts: The hollow universe of modern physics Make-believe matter Metaphysical taxidermy Materialism subverts itself Aristotle's Revenge and naive color realism Zombies: A Shopper's Guide When Frank jilted Mary Nagel and his critics Sentient plants? Sentient plants? Part II Posted by Edward Feser at 2:28 PM # 18 comments: 1. [blogger_lo] Simon AdamsJuly 3, 2022 at 3:31 PM Yes I broadly agree with this. Goff is essentially just appending consciousness onto the materialist conception of physics. As such it gives no more explanatory power than materialism, and arguably raises even more questions. Panpsychism is a favourite approach for people who are essentially materialists, but can at least see the problem of matter having experience. In fact some previous materialists involved in theories of consciousness (eg. IIT) have adopted panpsychism, and now have serious problems explaining why various objects are not conscious! I do agree that Aristotle has a lot to offer us in terms of recovering an understanding, but we shouldn't forget the Platonic grounding of so much of the best early Christian understanding of things. In fact you could argue that it was the rediscovery of Aristotle in the west that lead to nominalism, as the essences were seen as unnecessary, such that even the substantial form decayed into only matter. In the Augustinian platonic sense, gods divine ideas, the ideal things, fold out into time (and over time) as the multiplicity. So God is at the start of this cone shape, the end of which is the process of the representations (of the ideas) evolving. There is then a returning process where our free will plays a role. Aquinas retained this as far as I can see, but many Thomists seem to want to want to reduce this bigger picture to 'stand alone' substantial forms, in which case evolution, telos and other critical elements of the "classical philosophical wisdom" easy fall apart when applied to what we do know now with the benefits of the one part of the cartesian divide... ReplyDelete Replies Reply 2. [blank] AnonymousJuly 3, 2022 at 3:38 PM Very serendipitous that you posted this when I just finished "Galileo's Revenge". Goff claims that consciousness is the "intrinsic nature" of matter. If this intrinsic nature is physical (as it surely must be), isn't his panpsychism simply a variant of materialism, rather than a third way, as he presents it? And isn't it susceptible thus to the criticisms of materialism that he presents- like that, for example, philosophical zombies that are physically identical to conscious humans but have no consciousness themselves are conceivable and thus in Goff's eyes logically possible, meaning that consciousness is not entailed purely by the physical? If these intrinsic natures are not physical, then a) they're not really the intrinsic natures of matter, but also b) Goff's view faces the problems that he proposes for dualism. I'm sure Goff didn't make such a glaring error, but can someone please tell me where I'm misunderstanding him. ReplyDelete Replies 1. [blank] ComentaristaJuly 4, 2022 at 10:45 AM Hello. I would say that panpsychists are ex-materialists that want to somewhat cling to the much dear to them idea that matter is everything there is. I don't think, though, that panpsychism can be considered a materialist doctrine at all. Of course this will depend on the definition of matter. It would seem that any sensible, historically rooted definition of matter requires that its theoretical smallest undivided constituents are not of a subjective nature . As an undivided conceiver is what humans call a soul, calling panpsychism materialism would require to affirm that materialists can believe in souls, which of course is absurd as long as words are held to have any meaning at all. I don't think that panpsychism suffers from the problem of philosophical zombies. For a panpsychist, a human body is composed of miriads or whatever the conscious, undivided particle is. So a panpsychist is bound to hold that one and just one of these mini-particles is in control of the informational flux of the body (and constitutes the human spirit) and the rest of particles would be both: -Transmitting information in chain till it reaches the human spirit (the particle in control). -Conscious (but God knows what they are perceiving). So basically the human being would be a compound of a miriad of extended souls with one of them in control. I have not thought much about that idea so I ignore whether it has some problematic aspect. One problem I would see for panpsychism (but this is a half chewed idea to which I have not payed "obsessive" attention) is that it would require that the same undivided, fundamental entity has two different natures. To avoid two natures in a single fundamental entity there seems to be two pathways: -To forget about panpsychism, posit a second type of 'substance' called matter and embrace dualism. -To say that one of the two natures is real and the other is a delusion or a "way of looking at it". The mental nature can't be a delusion for delusions are mental, so the material nature would be the only candidate. Only mind would therefore exist and we would have arrived at idealism. I think that a panpsychist would try to avoid this problem by saying "the mental and the physical are not different natures but different properties" or something the like of that. How far that can go would require more thinking and writing. Delete Replies Reply 2. [blogger_lo] AbekJuly 4, 2022 at 11:03 AM Exaclty, in panpsychist world we can imagine zombies composed by atoms of proto-mind without macro experiences. Panpsychism have the problem that materialism Delete Replies Reply 3. [blank] AnonymousJuly 4, 2022 at 3:29 PM Hi Comentarista, I can't speak about panpsychism generally, but Goff himself does not say that there are a myriad of souls- he says that there is one distinct mind formed by the combination of many, many more primitive consciousnesses. With regard to materialism- you are absolutely right that it depends on your definition of matter. But in my eyes, matter is not necessarily non-subjective, so I would say that panpsychism is materialist still. I'm not entirely sure I follow your objection, but it looks like it's on the right lines if it's suggesting that panpsychism might collapse into other positions, like idealism or dualism. As I see it, either mind can be fully reduced to matter, or it cannot. If it can, you have materialism. If it can't, you have idealism or dualism. Panpsychism seems to be an attempt to draw a path distinct from these options that doesn't really exist- either it is physical or it isn't. The only way I think you could try to argue for a separate position would be if you rejected the entire concept of the physical, or rejected the physical-mental distinction. I don't think that position can be made sense of, but it is at least another possible route. Panpsychism is always going to be simply an eccentric variant of one of the traditional positions. Delete Replies Reply Reply 3. [blogger_lo] NormJuly 4, 2022 at 5:40 AM Hey Professor, With regards to the need for scientific theories to accord more with our experience of reality, have you seen the arguments Quantam Physicist Nicholas Gisin has put forth in favour of a common sense understanding of time using "intuitionist mathematics". It might make for a good blog post since it involves both the nature of mathematics and nature of time :) https://www.quantamagazine.org/ does-time-really-flow-new-clues-come-from-a-century-old-approach-to-math-20200407 / ReplyDelete Replies Reply 4. [blogger_lo] Paul D. Van PeltJuly 4, 2022 at 7:11 AM Never thought much of Panpsychism or its' adherents. Don't even know if DesCartes did in his time. Sorry, folks---conscious sub-atomic particles is too much of a stretch for me. ReplyDelete Replies Reply 5. [blank] Vincent TorleyJuly 4, 2022 at 9:43 AM Hi Ed, Thanks for your interesting and thought-provoking article. I think your criticisms of Goff's panpsychist views are mostly justified, but in all fairness, I think you should acknowledge that there are problems with the Aristotelian view of qualia as well. On Aristotle's view, redness is a basic, intrinsic property of apples. This means that it's a fundamental fact about apples (as well as strawberries, tomatoes and rubies) that they have the tendency to make human beings to have the experience of seeing red. In other words, you're imputing a psychic property to physical objects, which kind of blurs the distinction between the two. But let that pass. There's more. Since animals (and presumably aliens, if they exist) see colors differently from the way we do, then you have to impute a host of different psychic properties to one and the same object, to account for its tendency to be perceived differently by different creatures. Very odd. On top of that, the question, "What is it about apples, strawberries, tomatoes and rubies that makes them all red?" is an illegitimate one, on an Aristotelian view. It's just a brute fact that an apple, a strawberry, a tomato and a ruby each possesses the tendency to generate the experience of redness in us, and there's no underlying physical reason why. That strikes me as a "science-stopping" way of thinking. Finally, the question, "What is it about the body of a sentient animal that enables it to have conscious experiences?" becomes profoundly mysterious, on the Aristotelian view. Attempts to distinguish between the sophisticated sensors of plants and those of animals aren't as straightforward as Aristotle believed, and in any case, we now know that the possession of senses doesn't make an animal conscious. Worms have senses but are not conscious. I'll stop there. The point I want to make is that every view of the mind-body relationship has its problems. Cheers. ReplyDelete Replies 1. [blogger_lo] TonyJuly 4, 2022 at 2:30 PM On Aristotle's view, redness is a basic, intrinsic property of apples. This means that it's a fundamental fact about apples (as well as strawberries, tomatoes and rubies) that they have the tendency to make human beings to have the experience of seeing red. In other words, you're imputing a psychic property to physical objects, which kind of blurs the distinction between the two. Saying that it is TRUE of apples that "they are red" is not the same as saying that it is a "basic, intrinsic property" at all, and especially it is not the same as saying that there is no possible room for a further cause of the redness than the mere "appleness". That would be an idiotic view of Aristotlianism, which famously accounts for the fact that an apple can change from green to red, and do so slowly, and do so according to outside influences (light, temperature, moisture, etc). Since animals (and presumably aliens, if they exist) see colors differently from the way we do, then you have to impute a host of different psychic properties to one and the same object, to account for its tendency to be perceived differently by different creatures. Very odd. Only if you require the properties to inhere is an utterly simplistic way. For example, if one very simple animal with only rudimentary eyes sees the apple as "red", and another animal with more sophisticated eyes sees it as a "very specific shade of red, distinct from other shades", that does not imply that the quality inheres in the apple with "different psychic properties". Now, if one animal observes it's skin as "red", and another observes the same skin as "the sound of middle C on a trumpet", that would be odd. But of course, that's not what we have. "What is it about apples, strawberries, tomatoes and rubies that makes them all red?" is an illegitimate one, on an Aristotelian view. It's just a brute fact that an apple, a strawberry, a tomato and a ruby each possesses the tendency to generate the experience of redness in us, and there's no underlying physical reason why. Since that's NOT what Aristotelianism says, happily, they don't have to live with such a "difficulty." Delete Replies Reply 2. [blogger_lo] HeraclitusJuly 5, 2022 at 5:52 AM Why would anyone ever describe the red colour of an apple as a "psychic property"? It's a perceptible quality of apples. It's not a quality of anyone's experience or anyone's mind (minds and experiences are not coloured). The Aristotelian conception is not that it is an "illegitimate question" to ask what makes apples red, or that it is a "fundamental fact" that they are so. It's a perfectly valid question, and can be answered by reference to the colour-pigmentation (in particular, the anthocyanin) in the apple. There's nothing inexplicable about this, any more than there's anything inexplicable about its round shape. Red is not a tendency to make us have any experiences. It is just a colour of things that we can see (just as round is a shape of things that we can feel). Delete Replies Reply 3. [blank] Vincent TorleyJuly 5, 2022 at 8:11 AM Hi Tony, You deny that Aristotelians regard the tendency of an apple, a strawberry, a tomato or a ruby to generate the experience of redness in us as a "basic, intrinsic property," and you cite Aristotle's remarks on apples changing color to support your view. But it was Ed who wrote that on the common-sense Aristotelian view, colors are "in physical objects themselves," which means that they're intrinsic. Moreover, he rejects the Lockean distinction between primary and secondary qualities, which means that on his view, colors are basic. Modern-day scientists might regard the fact that "light, temperature, moisture, etc." can change an apple's color as evidence that it's not a basic property; Aristotle didn't draw that inference. All it establishes is that redness is not an essential property of apples, but I never said it was. On the "common-sense" view, ripe apples (of certain breeds), strawberries and tomatoes have a built-in tendency to make humans see red. That means they have mind-relative properties. Re your suggestion that simple animals might see apples as red, without perceiving the specific shade of red that we do, I'm afraid that won't do. Consider the greenness of a lettuce, or an emerald. Horses don't have green cones in their eyes, and they are unable to distinguish green from red. What's more, birds, reptiles and teleost fish have tetrachromatic vision, while most mammals have dichromatic vision, and among primates, Old World monkeys and apes have trichromatic vision (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Evolution_of_color_vision ). We aren't just talking shades here; these creatures perceive the world in very different ways, which means that objects such as emeralds and lettuces must have a host of mind-relative properties, relative to the kind of animal that views them. Interestingly, a few humans are tetrachromats, too. See here for more: https:// www.extremetech.com/extreme/ 331169-human-tetrachromacy-is-real-heres-what-we-know Finally, you appear to want to ground an object's color in something more basic. I can understand why you think that why, but if you do, then you're already heading down the Lockean path. Cheers. Delete Replies Reply Reply 6. [blank] NLRJuly 4, 2022 at 11:22 AM Does anyone know if there are there any sources that describe how Aristotelians think of things like the soul or qualia in a concrete manner? Here is an example of what I mean. This post (https:// edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2010/04/ id-theory-aquinas-and-origin-of-life.html) talks about prime matter in an abstract manner: "In short, prime matter is not a kind of 'raw material' but the metaphysical precondition of there being raw materials in the first place; and substantial form is not some particular configuration of matter but the precondition of there being configuration, or any other attribute, in the first place." But on the other hand, this post (https:// edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/first-without-second.html) says: "Only someone with the relevant expert knowledge could take oxygen and hydrogen and synthesize water out of them. It would take greater power still to cause the prime matter underlying oxygen, hydrogen, or water to take on the substantial form of a tree." Where prime matter is described as something more like a physical substance (using this word in the colloquial not Aristotelian sense). And then there's a paper by Hugh King called "Aristotle without Prima Materia." King argues against the idea of the prima materia being found in the works of Aristotle himself, but from the way he writes, it seems like many within Aristotelian tradition did think of prime matter as a real form of physical matter. So, the question is, in what way do Aristotelians think of the abstract concepts they refer to? ReplyDelete Replies 1. [blogger_lo] Simon AdamsJuly 4, 2022 at 1:21 PM From my perspective, the equivalent in modern physics of prime matter are the quantum fields. Plato had already referred to it prime space: Timaeus: "a receptacle of all coming to be" (49a5-6): "it must always be called by the same term. For it does not depart from its own character at all. It both continually receives all things, and has never taken on a form similar to any of the things that enter it in any way. For it is laid down by nature as a recipient of impressions for everything, being changed and formed variously by the things that enter it, and because of them it appears different at different times. (50b6-c4)" Delete Replies Reply Reply 7. [blogger_lo] TonyJuly 4, 2022 at 2:21 PM As Aristotelians argue (see Aristotle's Revenge, pp. 393-95), sensation is closely tied to appetite and locomotion, so that the absence of the latter from plants tells strongly in favor of the absence of sensation from them as well. What is true of plants is a fortiori true of electrons and other particles too, to which it is even more implausible to attribute appetite or locomotion. While the post overall is excellent (as usual), this passage might need some heavy qualifiers. It was a somewhat famous problem of (pre-quantum) Newtonian physicists that they were unable to speak of the underlying forces other than in terms such as "urges" or desires, wants, etc. The reason the Earth and the Moon "attract" each other by gravity is that gravity is a force by which two bodies "incline toward" each other. This is all the language of appetite. It rolls forward just fine into common-place experience of plants, in that plants "tend toward" the sun: various flowers will move to follow the sun. It isn't locomotion, but it's clearly a response toward some "desired" good. At least, in some sense or other. I have no doubt that Aristotelianism is capable of coming up with useful clarifications of these, to explain them and explain away the metaphorical nature of the appetitive language used to describe them. But at least on the surface, there IS something to explain away. ReplyDelete Replies Reply 8. [blank] English CatholicJuly 4, 2022 at 2:24 PM Great post, as always. The psychological hold that the primary/ secondary distinction has over modern thinkers and philosophers is immense. Even those who reject it are still playing its game, as this article on Goff shows. It would be fascinating to see an academic study of why this is so. The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science is a very good start -- but IIRC it limits itself to describing the process of the agenda's progress; it doesn't explain it. ReplyDelete Replies Reply 9. [blank] Miguel CervantesJuly 5, 2022 at 12:17 AM Panpsychism is certainly an addiction of romanticism and its political expression, conservatism. The idea of society as a self-referring "person" seems to constantly push it in the direction of common "consciousness", "group think", "group soul" and other nonsense. In the Christian view, societies have a legal personality. If its history is long and glorious, then all the more prestige for it. People are born into a family and into a civil society, giving these societies an emotional and intangible quality that we all need. But both these things can perfectly be established by contract, and both can end. Unlike these societies, a person, with consciousness and will, is utterly distinct from every other, and can never die. The Church, on the other hand, does have a soul and a mind, but that has nothing to do with panpsychism. ReplyDelete Replies Reply 10. [blogger_lo] Julio SiqueiraJuly 5, 2022 at 6:14 AM It seems to me Mr. Edward Feser has good points, but is blurred in his mind somewhat by his religious (catholic) persuasion. I guess all of us are, in our own fashion, to a certain degree. I, for one, came to panpsychism not via materialism, but through, first, being a catholic (ex catholic now), and, second, being a spiritualist (ex spiritualist now...) of the spiritism persuation (from Allan Kardec). Presently, I am still a survivalist (believe in the afterlife survival of our consciousness), but of with a panpsychist flavour (core, actually). Yes. Everthing is conscious. This idea is most likely wrong. But, as Carl Sagan once said regarding another issue, "it is the best we have for now." ReplyDelete Replies Reply 11. [blogger_lo] Julio SiqueiraJuly 5, 2022 at 7:23 AM I think people sometimes underestimate the reasons why panpsychism has become so "popular" in the recent decades. As what happens with so many human enterprises, it is not easy to really identify the reasons behind our choices, actions, and ideological (philosophical and etc) adhesions. Goff's own alleged motivations for his conversion may have some grounds. My own are pretty different from his. For me, the reasons why panpsychism is a must are explained in a text I wrote some years ago. Still valid. Again: most likely wrong. Yet, the best we have for now... http://www.criticandokardec.com.br/essay_on_conscious_water.htm ReplyDelete Replies Reply Add comment Load more... Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) About Me My photo Edward Feser I am a writer and philosopher living in Los Angeles. I teach philosophy at Pasadena City College. My primary academic research interests are in the philosophy of mind, moral and political philosophy, and philosophy of religion. I also write on politics, from a conservative point of view; and on religion, from a traditional Roman Catholic perspective. View my complete profile Followers Main website * edwardfeser.com Books by Edward Feser * Aristotle's Revenge: The Metaphysical Foundations of Physical and Biological Science * Five Proofs of the Existence of God * By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment (with Joseph M. Bessette) * Neo-Scholastic Essays * Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction * Aristotle on Method and Metaphysics * Aquinas * The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism * Locke * The Cambridge Companion to Hayek * Philosophy of Mind * On Nozick Articles by Edward Feser available online * Archive of TCS Daily articles * Archive of Public Discourse articles * Archive of National Review articles * Archive of City Journal articles * All other articles Recommended philosophers' websites * Alexander Bird * Alexander Hall * Alexander Pruss * Alfred Freddoso * Angus Menuge * Brian Davies * Brian Leftow * Christopher Brown * Christopher Martin * Crawford Elder * David Braine * David Oderberg * David Stove * David Twetten * Dennis Des Chene * E. J. Lowe * Eleonore Stump * Francis Beckwith * Gaven Kerr * Gyula Klima * Howard Robinson * J. P. Moreland * J. R. Lucas * James F. 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