Philosophy of materialism and self-preservation instinct

[joft]

This is my latest philosophical dilemma. I believe materialism to be the most accurate ontological theory/philosophy. I believe that because the "puzzle" of existence seems to me to be completable without any supernatural forces or entities. There are questions that have not yet been answered (such as the problem of "first cause"), but I do not think that religious concepts are needed to explain them until they become explanable by science, or if they never do, then forever.

A little background reading on materialism:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductive_materialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism

To summarize what exactly I'm referring to, "materialism" is the philosophy that all that can be said to "exist" is material and physical. In the area of the philosophy of mind, in answering the question "What is a person?," materialism is the rejection of ideas such as a "soul." I think that the notion of synergy is simply a failure to take into consideration all of the factors which actually do affect the outcome. The "mind" is only the sum of its parts, a human is only the sum of its parts.

I think that the logical conclusion of materialism is that our notions of "self," "personhood," the autonomous "I," etc, are all misconceptions at best. A brain is nothing more than an arrangement of certain types of cells, it can be programmed by the state of the cells changing in the same way that the state of cells in a silicon chip can be changed to program a computer. The brain is, in effect, a very comprehensive and adaptable Turing machine (or computer). For reference, this is sortof known as the "Computational Theory of Mind," which you can read about here http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/

I'm being a little redundant in focusing on the brain, we could just as easily talk about the cells of any other "organ" of your "body" and draw the same conclusion. It just seems to have a greater effect to me to speak of the brain, as we have a notion that the brain is the center of our "being." We think of things like a computer as inanimate, lifeless, but we ourselves as living, and for that reason we have a hard time thinking that the brain could be reduced to a lump of matter with a certain composition that is acted upon by outside forces (receiving input) and reacts to those forces (by performing computations) in the way that a lifeless object of a sufficiently complex structure (like a Turing machine) could. But I think that there is no reason to believe that the brain is anything more than this, aside from superstition.

I think this challenges the concept of "life." Substances that people most likely wouldn't say were "alive," chemical substances, can react to other chemical substances and even cause changes in their surroundings. I think it only takes some further inquiry to come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as "life." So, if there is no such thing as "self" and no such thing as "life," why do I have a self-preservation imperative? Why do I want to stay "alive?" To illustrate my dilemma, consider this scenario:

You are asleep in your bed. Aliens come through your window, inject you with something to keep you asleep, cut upon your skull, scan your brain, transmit the scan of your brain to their replicator machine, replicate an exact copy of your brain, remove your brain, put the replica in your skull, connect it to everything, put your lid back on, and incinerate the brain that they removed. Are "you" still "you?" Everyone would think you were, including you. The replicated brain would have all of your memories up to falling asleep and even your dreams up to seconds before they made the switch. I personally would be paranoid that "I" died with the incinerated brain, but why? What if they didn't just replicate the brain out of nothing, but harvested the cells from another part of your body and altered them, and altered your brain into the state of the cells; making a brain out of a foot and a foot out of a brain. You would still be composed of all the same cells. But I would still be unwilling to go through that procedure, even though I honestly don't think that I would lose my "soul" or anything like that. But why? Why is "life," which doesn't exist, biased toward preserving "itself?"

The obvious answer is that this is a law of nature. To me that is a little arbitrary; why is it a law? Now we're back at another basic ontological question, which I think the logical answer to is, "Why not?" What other option is there that anyone is aware of that is possible other than the way things are? Again, arbitrary. But maybe existence is allowed to be arbitrary, so everything that exists is allowed to simply exist without having to have a "cause" for existing (maybe that is the answer to the problem of "first cause"...)

I had another theory while I was writing this that I am unaware of whether or not it already exists and has been named. But the idea is this, what if all matter, every physical component of the universe, is subject to the same darwinian-like self-preservation law of nature? I guess the idea is that not only organisms are subject to natural selection, but all matter is. Organisms are, after all, composed of matter (and nothing else if you believe in materialism). So matter doesn't "live" or "die" in the process of natural selection, but undergoes structural transformations. There could be a threshold of resistance to change that factors would have to reach in order to cause the matter to change from its current state, and that threshold could be the "self-preservation instinct." Just as organisms are resistant to undergoing the transformation of death. And maybe that resistance is time itself, or no, maybe time is the force that causes change and matter itself is inherently resistant.

Ah well, for a minute there I thought maybe I was on to something. But I'm sure someone has already thought of it, named it, etc, and that it's just another entry in Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy by now.

[coffeezombie]

That theory is an extension of Dawkins' "selfish gene" theory, that states that basically the gene controls everything as a means to replicate and survive, and that lifeforms are merely receptacles.

Your "self" is a bunch of cells and neurotransmitters. If they can all be copied, then it is still your "self," although copies are usually inferior to the original, which is a bit scary.

Two of "you" could exist at the same time, conceivably, although the nanosecond after the copy started living, it would be different than the original.

[waxwing]

Fascinating study, joft.

This is my latest philosophical dilemma. I believe materialism to be the most accurate ontological theory/philosophy. I believe that because the "puzzle" of existence seems to me to be completable without any supernatural forces or entities. Would your theory discredit all forms of dualism, or can we accept a sort of materialistic dualism (i.e. Taoism --> yin and yang)?



To summarize what exactly I'm referring to, "materialism" is the philosophy that all that can be said to "exist" is material and physical....The "mind" is only the sum of its parts, a human is only the sum of its parts. Like concentric circles, perhaps. The sum would be both the outer circle and the contents therein. Each part would be a "slice" of the circle or another set of concentric circles, depending on how you looked at it.



I think that the logical conclusion of materialism is that our notions of "self," "personhood," the autonomous "I," etc, are all misconceptions at best. A brain is nothing more than an arrangement of certain types of cells, it can be programmed by the state of the cells changing in the same way that the state of cells in a silicon chip can be changed to program a computer. The brain is, in effect, a very comprehensive and adaptable Turing machine (or computer). Would you suggest a hierarchy of matter, then?



...I think this challenges the concept of "life." Substances that people most likely wouldn't say were "alive," chemical substances, can react to other chemical substances and even cause changes in their surroundings. I think it only takes some further inquiry to come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as "life." So, if there is no such thing as "self" and no such thing as "life," why do I have a self-preservation imperative? Why do I want to stay "alive?" Yes, I see what you mean. What I struggle with, though, is ridding myself of these "concepts" that seem to me to be natural outgrowths of the matter itself. If we set up an opposition (life versus matter) for example, which I must do in order to decide whether or not life exists, then aren't we setting up a dualistic paradigm? If so, haven't we already gone against the theory that all that exists is matter? How about explaining the concept of life in terms of matter as well? Is this possible? The self-preservation question is difficult and intriguing. To be logically consistent only with the theory you present (internally coherent), I'd say that a "self" or a "life" can be the "sum" of the parts of the matter that makes it up. No doubt, our notions of life and self are skewed and anti-material at best, but still I need help seeing why we could not redefine them as sums of parts.



But why? Why is "life," which doesn't exist, biased toward preserving "itself?" Why can't there be an inherent self-preservation mechanism? Why do we have to think of it in terms of bias? Couldn't it all be part of the material ?



But maybe existence is allowed to be arbitrary, so everything that exists is allowed to simply exist without having to have a "cause" for existing (maybe that is the answer to the problem of "first cause"...) Perhaps, but I'm not willing to admit that. If existence is allowed to be arbitrary, then doesn't the existence of mental states and frameworks have to follow suit? Where would you draw the line with "existence is allowed to be arbitrary"?



But the idea is this, what if all matter, every physical component of the universe, is subject to the same darwinian-like self-preservation law of nature? I guess the idea is that not only organisms are subject to natural selection, but all matter is. Organisms are, after all, composed of matter (and nothing else if you believe in materialism). So matter doesn't "live" or "die" in the process of natural selection, but undergoes structural transformations. There could be a threshold of resistance to change that factors would have to reach in order to cause the matter to change from its current state, and that threshold could be the "self-preservation instinct." Just as organisms are resistant to undergoing the transformation of death. And maybe that resistance is time itself, or no, maybe time is the force that causes change and matter itself is inherently resistant.

Ah-ha. I should have read the entire post before starting to reply. Consider my previous comments as foreshadowing. :)

I think that seems like a natural progression of thought. I wonder if you can clarify your final few sentences though, the statements relating to time?

I think that "life," "death," and even the concept of "self" could each be particular "thresholds," as you put it, and in that case, then the entity of materialism could still be plausible without completely discrediting the "sum" (concentric circles I envision here) and the oppositional forces/matter in "part." Well, not necessarily oppositional, but....ACK...I see that I get stuck trying to analyze this without setting up some sort of dualistic framework. Does that pose a problem?

[indie]

Up and down, in and out, everything we perceive is understood only for a "second" and after that second has passed, we must reconstruct what we have perceived in a different environment, latching onto the only material "handles" we have, whether they are in our minds or our hands or ears or an invisible "sense" that we are not able to understand because we do not have the capabilities. Perhaps humans perceive their minds as "advanced" in that they are able to create an equilibrium between those "seconds" (and who the hell really knows what a second is, any way) in some sort of construct of interpretation and share it with other humans in a detached way of observance.

But bees. . . bees and wasps and fishes and birds and turtles understand something that we don't . . . something about re-creating a precise time and space in which to gather, that time to lay eggs or migrate or find the perfect environment in which to flourish as a species. . . there is a subtle pattern to it all, a pattern that is not "material" or "nonmaterial" but merely self-perpetuating?

Or something. Electricity has something to do with this, I'm sure it does.

[joft]

I'm not sure if you meant it that way, but, materialism isn't "my" theory. It's unimportant but I just didn't want it to seem like it was an idea that I thought of. I mean it was, but I wasn't the first, it's been around forever

I used to think of some things in terms of dualism, but for whatever reason I just don't anymore. It might have been once I concluded that opposites such as existence/non-existence are impossible because non-existence doesn't exist, at which point I decided that I think everything is inconsistent, paradoxical, and absurd, including existence itself. (This philosophy is known as Absurdism, founded by Albert Camus)

I don't really see the concentric circles idea, at least I don't envision it that way. To me thinking that something is not anything more than the sum of its parts is simply a matter of not making the effort to assume (wrongly) that there is anything more to it than what it is physically made up of.

I think a heirarchy of matter would be subjective; I think it is relative. But I think it is also reasonable and logical (as I think both reason and logic and entirely subjective and relative also).

I also feel kind of silly now that you've suggested redefining "life," yes, that seems obvious to me now. "Life" can simply refer to the arrangement of matter occupying a certain general area that exhibits enough of a certain amount of traits to put it over a threshold of definition. It becomes problematic when you try to be more specific about it, like, is my fingernail alive? Is my blood alive? If I am cut and bleed, does the blood that leaves me die? So just for the sake of quickly referencing it I think it's fair to refer to it in the general and vague sense.

As for an inherent self-preservation, that is what I'm questioning. If it is an attribute of the matter itself, as I surmised in my last paragraph that it is an attribute of all matter, then why? I'm basically questioning why an apparent law of nature is, how did these laws of nature come about and why? One can answer (as my mother does), "because that's the way God made it." I suggested that it is arbitrary, that it just is that way and there is no other way for it to be and that that may be all we are ever capable of deducing.

As for my comments on time, I vaguely remember having seen some theory about time (in a thread on this forum I believe) that time could only be measured by changes in the state of matter (atomic clock), and that therefore time itself may just be the process of change. I may have "subconsciously" drawn from my memory of that post when I tried to make sense of this idea. But I'm suggesting that matter itself has an innate property of resistance to change, and that innate property is some sort of "preservation." And maybe time is a physical force that acts upon all matter to cause it to change. Our intuitive notion of a chronological timeline is paradoxical anyway, leading to the problem of first cause and/or the problem of infinity. Or maybe change is a force that time is one of the attributes of, and the relativity of time and motion may have something to do with motion being the other attribute of change- though I think they may be shown to be the same thing.

Anyway, it's all pointless blind speculation. I'm going to bed.

[Architectonic]

(such as the problem of "first cause")

Why is that a problem? Why does there even need to be such thing as a "first cause"? Doesn't it seem more logical that there is no "first cause"?

There are no real hard rules about anything. Rules are just approximations that can be useful in given situations. Matter may indeed have an inherent self-preservation nature about it, but that is still slightly different, to, say the self-preservation instinct of a sentient being.

[waxwing]

I'm not sure if you meant it that way, but, materialism isn't "my" theory. It's unimportant but I just didn't want it to seem like it was an idea that I thought of. I mean it was, but I wasn't the first, it's been around forever. Yeah, I understand that.



I used to think of some things in terms of dualism, but for whatever reason I just don't anymore. It might have been once I concluded that opposites such as existence/non-existence are impossible because non-existence doesn't exist, at which point I decided that I think everything is inconsistent, paradoxical, and absurd, including existence itself. (This philosophy is known as Absurdism, founded by Albert Camus) Right, I see. I do not believe in dualism, but find myself trying to set up problems in that way, if that makes any sense. That itself is a paradox, I realize.



I don't really see the concentric circles idea, at least I don't envision it that way. To me thinking that something is not anything more than the sum of its parts is simply a matter of not making the effort to assume (wrongly) that there is anything more to it than what it is physically made up of. I simply see it as a picture of the sum of parts. I'm not sure I understand what you mean, though, starting with "...not making the effort to assume..."



I think a heirarchy of matter would be subjective; I think it is relative. But I think it is also reasonable and logical (as I think both reason and logic and entirely subjective and relative also). Yes, it is. If everything is matter, though, then it seemed a logical question. I basically can't believe in materialism unless there is a hierarchy of matter. Or rather, if this [sum of matter] "dies," then this higher/greater sum does/does not die. A sort of ratio, perhaps.



I also feel kind of silly now that you've suggested redefining "life," yes, that seems obvious to me now. "Life" can simply refer to the arrangement of matter occupying a certain general area that exhibits enough of a certain amount of traits to put it over a threshold of definition. It becomes problematic when you try to be more specific about it, like, is my fingernail alive? Is my blood alive? If I am cut and bleed, does the blood that leaves me die? So just for the sake of quickly referencing it I think it's fair to refer to it in the general and vague sense. Hm. So, I don't see a problem with the first question in itself (fingernail alive?), but I see where the problem arises in my mind. It seems that you are talking about determining the degree to which the fingernail possesses life in relation to the rest of the material body. Like, what would be the status of the blood shed and the blood remaining and the entire sum of matter (what we know as "life," but in a material sense)? Perhaps I didn't see before what you meant by the sum of the parts, or was too hasty in responding to that idea. Perhaps everything that potentially possesses life on its own (the fingernail for example) is subject to the life of the entire body and the life of the other parts. I think that makes sense, but again would require some hierarchy, which also makes sense given the fact that certain organs are "alive" but would not end the life of the entire body, or even the organ itself, when transplanted to another body.



As for an inherent self-preservation, that is what I'm questioning. If it is an attribute of the matter itself, as I surmised in my last paragraph that it is an attribute of all matter, then why? I'm basically questioning why an apparent law of nature is, how did these laws of nature come about and why? One can answer (as my mother does), "because that's the way God made it." I suggested that it is arbitrary, that it just is that way and there is no other way for it to be and that that may be all we are ever capable of deducing. I apologize for not reading your entire original post before beginning to reply. Now I see more clearly your question of inherent self-preservation. The possibility of laws of nature being arbitrarily formed doesn't sit well with me, but I honestly do not see an objective way of determining. I go back to your example of losing blood. Let's say someone is having a kidney transplant. Now, technically she doesn't need her second kidney to live, but there are other complications here. If during surgery she loses x amount of blood, she could die. It is possible that she dies while the kidney lives in another body. An interesting paradox, really, that an organ can be saved, or even have an instinct to preserve itself, while the "life" cannot at times, or seems to lose the ability to self-preserve. I don't know what I deduce from that at the moment. This is where the hierarchy of matter question comes into play, I think....well, among many other questions.



As for my comments on time, I vaguely remember having seen some theory about time (in a thread on this forum I believe) that time could only be measured by changes in the state of matter (atomic clock), and that therefore time itself may just be the process of change. I may have "subconsciously" drawn from my memory of that post when I tried to make sense of this idea. But I'm suggesting that matter itself has an innate property of resistance to change, and that innate property is some sort of "preservation." And maybe time is a physical force that acts upon all matter to cause it to change. Our intuitive notion of a chronological timeline is paradoxical anyway, leading to the problem of first cause and/or the problem of infinity. Or maybe change is a force that time is one of the attributes of, and the relativity of time and motion may have something to do with motion being the other attribute of change- though I think they may be shown to be the same thing. Need to think on this. The one thing I'd say now is: If matter itself has an innate property to change, which seems to be something axiomatic to this discussion, then I don't see why it couldn't have an innate property of resistance to change. I can't give a scientific answer right now, but intuitively, that makes sense. The time aspect, well, it's baffling.