Towards the end of last year, I wrote about eliminativism, which is the idea that all conscious experience is an illusion. It is worth revisiting because there is more going on than just an academic dispute. I believe that the phenomenon of Eliminativism is intimately related to our current situation.
What has always struck me about arguments over eliminativism is how confident both sides are. On the one hand those who argue against eliminative materialism point out that it is self-contradictory. If you ask people to believe a theory that denies the possibility of belief, then how can they follow through with your request? On the other hand, those who argue for eliminativism say that it is so obvious that science has reduced everything to material descriptions that those who believe the mind is the last holdout are either naive or afraid to follow through consistently the implications of science.
Something strange is going on here. At the level of basic argumentation, eliminativism fails; it contradicts itself. But, pointing this out does not convince those who believe in the theory. So why do eliminativists believe what they believe?
The answer is that because the eliminativists do not believe in the mind argument cannot persuade them. Jonathan Swift is reported to have said something like, "You cannot argue someone out of what they were not argued into." Conceptual argument cannot persuade the eliminativists because they do not believe in concepts.
And I think we can go even further. One of Rudolf Steiner's insights is that thinking is spiritual. Thinking itself has spiritual power. In a lecture entitled "Background to the Gospel of Mark: The Tasks of the Fifth Post-Atlantean Epoch" Steiner says:
"We can still
feel that concepts and ideas are in essence supersensible
when we regard their very character as being a guarantee for
the existence of the supersensible world. But only few feel
this. What concepts and ideas contain is for most people
extremely tenuous. And although there is something in them
which can provide complete proof of man's immortality,
it would be impossible to convince him, because compared with
the solid, material reality for which he longs, concepts and
ideas are as unsubstantial as a cobweb. They are, in fact,
the last and slenderest thread spun by man out of the
spiritual world since his descent into the physical world."
This is an important paragraph because it elaborates on the way in which concepts are spritual. Rudolf Steiner also had another idea, which was that in 1899 the world crossed a threshold; after this year materialism would be on the decline. If we look around us, we see that this is not the case, but I think there is still something to this idea. In the 19th century and earlier, materialism was primarily an intellectual doctrine. It was believed because of arguments, which were put forward as inferences from scientific theories. However, especially in the 21st century, very few people hold materialism as an intellectual doctrine. Instead, they believe it because of the increasingly materialistic character of our world.
It is not that their concepts are materialistic, but rather, in the absence of concepts having power over people, they defer to what is around them, which is (especially in the West) a world structured according to the principle of materialism.
I was an 'eliminativist' most of my life, and can remember how my thinking went. It was that science/ technology built the modern world and 'works' everywhere; so that proves its truth. A pragmatist argument.
ReplyDeleteSo my basic attitude was that science was self-evidently valid and superior - and to try and find arguments why this was so.
What I did not realise for a good while was that it was not clear what science actually was; and it seemed to be changing fast. Also that to say science 'worked' was already to take the perspective of science.
What began to break the spell was - strangely- the phenomenon of chosen subfertility in all developed (scientific) societies - which meant that humans were going extinct, the more scientific they became.
More exactly - wealth and health might well have increased considerably since the Industrial Revolution and by means of science and technology; but the single most fundamental *biological* index - reproduction (and I was professionally an evolutionary theorist) - had at the same time been devastated.
Another factor, was that I could find no proximate arguments within science for why I personally should be honest given so many incentives to be dishonest. I always was honest, and it got me into trouble, but it was not possible to justify to colleagues why this applied to all levels, small and large, short and long term - and the requirement for honesty could not be suspended even 'temporarily' (to get grants, or for the Research Assessment Exercise).
I began to see that science was neither pragmatic, not self-justifying; and to notice that the best scientists were all at least raised as Christians (or Jews) - Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment was helpful there.
Thanks for this perspective from the inside.
DeleteOne reason I posted this is because I was in a similar position for a long while in that, due to such considerations as you said: "science/ technology built the modern world and 'works' everywhere; so that proves its truth" materialist or even eliminativist arguments seemed too strong to dismiss. Yet, I saw anti-materialists doing just that.
So, it seemed like there was something else going on beyond the level of argumentation. I have found Steiner's ideas have been helpful in thinking through that.
BTW I think the date for Rudolf Steiner's purported change was 1879 (not 99) - if you mean the time when supposedly Michael took-over from Gabriel at the end of a war in Heaven; and Steiner said that various fallen angels were expelled from Heaven and came to earth.
ReplyDeleteI think that - as often happens when people inhabit social groups - Steiner mistook the spiritual changes within Anthroposophy for a more general cultural change. I would say that culture has got Much more materialistic from 1879 - with only an occasional minority countercurrent.
Indeed, the Anthroposophical Society itself turned out to be highly Ahrimanic (materialistic), once Steiner died; and remains so. The difficulty is that modern Man has found materialistic ways of talking/ writing (endlessly) 'about' spiritual matters, while remaining almost-wholly materialist in thinking.
Steiner's vast and elaborate 'factual' information further contribute to this, since it come across like an educational curriculum with exams (rather than, as he hoped, leading people to spiritual way of thinking)
What has disappeared is not the material part of materialism but rather the -ism. It is no longer, for most people, a specific philosophical stance, consciously held and supported by justifying arguments, but something they just sort of assume without even being aware that there are alternatives. Many a modern is not-a-materialist in more or less the same way an animal is not-a-materialist.
ReplyDeleteThat's a good way to encapsulate it.
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