Re: BHA: the materialisms

[John Mage <jmage@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ruth wrote citing Marsh citing Mervyn:

> >> 3. Ontological materialism - asserts the unilateral dependence of social
> >> upon biological being, and of biological on physical being, and the
> >> emergence of the former in each case from the latter. I'd say Roy's now
> >> an ontological idealist, who substitutes 'spiritual' for 'physical'.
> >
> >This sounds like reductionism to me. Can't one be a ontological materialist
> >and simply hold that social, biological, and physical being objectively
> >exist and cannot be reduced to ideas or spirit?
>
> I wouldn't have thought that "dependence" implies "reduces to," necessarily.
> I read it as describing the relationship of emergence in reverse.  The part
> that I be careful about is the dependence of "biological" on "physical
> being."  That that might be where the reductionist, or physicalist, sense is
> seeping in.  So Mervyn did you formulate it that way because in your view
> there is something about the concept of "biological being" that is
> ontologically ambiguous with respect to materiality?

I'd agree with Ruth's first point; emergence - i.e., social being cannot
be predicted from (a prior state of) biological being - precludes
reduction. Then "unilateral dependence of social upon biological being"
only asserts a first principle of any materialism. Quoting Sidney
Morgenbesser: "Never matter...no mind." If there were no humans (human
society) there could still be life. Not the other way around.

But then Ruth questions whether asserting the unilateral dependence of
biological upon physical being is parallel. Could you have a materialist
vitalism? If vitalism asserts the existence of a force that could exist
independently of matter and material forces, i.e. that there could be
life and no physical being, then this doctrine could hardly be
materialism. But if it is only asserted that biological processes could
not be predicted (and therefore no 'reduction') from physical ones, then
"emergence" of the biological from the physical covers the case. Ruth,
do you have a problem with the formulation "if there were no life there
could still be physical being, but not the other way around."?

john mage


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