{"id":580,"date":"2018-12-31T21:35:56","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T21:35:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/?p=580"},"modified":"2018-12-31T21:35:56","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T21:35:56","slug":"a-fifth-force-but-an-acausal-one-reply-to-galen-strawson-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/2018\/12\/31\/a-fifth-force-but-an-acausal-one-reply-to-galen-strawson-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Fifth Force: But An Acausal One… (Reply to Galen Strawson-2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Reply to Galen Strawson-2<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Galen Strawson does a brilliant, heroic job with panpsychism: <\/p>\n

The only thing we know for sure — indeed, with a Cartesian certainty that is as apodictic as the logical necessity of mathematics — is that<\/em> and what<\/em> we feel. <\/p>\n

Everything else we know (or believe we know), we likewise know “through” feeling — in that it feels like something to learn it and it feels like something to know it. <\/p>\n

(It feels like something to make an “empirical” observation. It feels like something to understand that something is the case. It feels like something to understand an inference or a causal explanation.)<\/p>\n

So feeling is certain, whereas physics (“doing,” in my parlance) is not certain.<\/p>\n

But we are realists, trying to do the best we can to explain reality — not extreme sceptics, doubting everything that is not absolutely certain, even if it’s highly probable. <\/p>\n

We are just looking for truth, not necessarily certainty.<\/p>\n

“Experience” is a weasel-word because it can mean either feeling something — which is highly problematic (the “hard problem) — or it can just mean acquiring empirical data (as in: “this machine had the solution built in, that machine learned it from experience”) — which is unproblematic (doing, the “easy” problem).<\/p>\n

So whereas it is true that the only thing we know for sure (besides the things that are necessarily true on pain of contradiction) is that feeling exists, neither everyday life nor science requires certainty. High probability on the evidence (data) will do.<\/p>\n

And although it is true that all evidence is felt evidence, it is only the fact that it is felt that is certain. The evidence itself (doing) is only probable. <\/p>\n

In other words, although they always accompany the data-acquisition (doing), the feelings are fallible. We feel things that are both true and untrue about the world, and the only way to test them out is via doings. It is true that the data from those doings are also felt. But the felt data are answerable to the doings, and not to the fact that they are felt.<\/p>\n

And not only are our feelings fallible, as regards the truth: they also seem to be causally superfluous. Doings (including data-acquisition) alone are enough, for evolution, as well as for learning. Some doings are undeniably felt, but the question is: how and why?<\/p>\n

When we are doing physics (or chemistry, or biology, or engineering) and causal explanation (rather than metaphysics), we have to explain the facts, amongst which one fact — the fact that we feel — seems pretty refractory to any sort of explanation except if we suppose that feeling is simply a basic property of the universe (whether local to the organisms in the earth’s biosphere [Galen’s “micropsychism”] or somehow smeared all over the universe [“panpsychism”].) <\/p>\n

There’s no doubt that feeling exists, so in that sense feeling is indeed a property of the universe. But with all other properties — doings, all — we have become accustomed to being able(in practice, or at least in principle) to give a causal explanation of them in terms of the four fundamental forces (electromagnetism, gravitation, strong subatomic, weak subatomic). Those forces themselves we accept as given: properties of the universe such as it is, for which no further explanation is possible.<\/p>\n

Galen’s metaphysics would require adding something like a fifth member to this fundamental quartet — feeling — with the difference that, unlike the others, it is not an independent force, it does not itself cause and thereby explain doings causally, but rather is merely correlated with them, inexplicably, for some doings. <\/p>\n

And our justification for adding a fifth acausal force? The fact that it is inexplicably (but truly) correlated with some doings (all doings that we feel). If feeling had truly been a 5th force (causal rather than acausal), namely, “psychokinesis” (“mind over matter”), then that would indeed have merited elevating it to fundamental status, exempt from further explanation along with the other four.<\/p>\n

But there is not a shred of evidence for psychokinesis as a causal force (and all attempts to measure psychokinesis have failed, because the other four forces already covered all the causal territory — doing — with no remainder and no further room for causal intervention).<\/p>\n

So all we have, inexplicably, is the fact that we feel. I don’t think that that fact warrants any further metaphysics than that: feeling definitely exists — and, unlike anything else, exists with certainty rather than just probably. It also happens to feel like something to find out and understand anything we know. The rest is an epistemic problem: why and how does getting or having data feel like something (for feeling creatures like us)? <\/p>\n

Neither “micropsychism” nor “panpsychism” answer this question. They just take it for granted that it is so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Reply to Galen Strawson-2) Galen Strawson does a brilliant, heroic job with panpsychism: The only thing we know for sure — indeed, with a Cartesian certainty that is as apodictic as the logical necessity of mathematics — is that and what we feel. Everything else we know (or believe we know), we likewise know “through” … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “A Fifth Force: But An Acausal One… (Reply to Galen Strawson-2)”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3074,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3074"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=580"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":581,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580\/revisions\/581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/skywritings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}