Is materialism a self-refuting position?

Question

I have been trying to poke a hole in the following apparently naive argument against materialism/physicalism:

The main justification for materialism is that a person doesn't believe in that which doesn't have observable or measurable properties. Hence a materialist doesn't believe in supernatural beings or separate mental substances. And yet for there to be observation in the first place, there has to be perception, and perception is by definition a mental process. The very starting point of the materialist position is a mental event, and the position that "I only believe in that which I can observe" can lead at best (from the materialist viewpoint) to a Kantian Phenomena/Noumena dualism, and at worst to a Berkeleyan "all is in the mind" idealism. Hence materialism refutes itself by the very fact that it requires an idealist starting point.

How can one refute this argument? And how do materialists deal with perception as an event? (Not perception as qualia, but perception as the transition event from an object being just a material substance to being mental sense data?)

Answer 1

Materialism is a fighting term from 19th century. Moreover, the quote builds up a straw man for subsequent materialism bashing.

Nobody advocates to reduce every explanation to the matter concept used in the physics of the 19th century. The modern version of the term materialism is physicalism. It includes all concepts of contemporary physics, e.g., electromagnetism and the more general concepts of fields. Nevertheless, physicalism adopts the maxim: Measure what is measurable, make measurable what not yet can be measured.

But one characteristics of mental processes is information processing. Hence I would concede to the critique that physicalism has to be extended by the concept of information. The extended version, named science, also deals with mental processes. That’s the aim of neuroscience.

There is no obstruction in principle to consider perception a kind of information processing. Taking the input from the sensors of the sense organs, and processing - depending on the internal memory - an integrated result at the level of the cortex.

Notably, science is not a self-refuting position.

Answer 2

The fact that there must be a perception, thus there must be something more than material is only a fact if you assume a-priori that indeed perception is something that can never be described as supervening on matter.

If you are a materialist, the mental state associated with perception supervenes on your physical state of observable and measurable quantities, and there is no issue.

Most materialists recognize that structure, something we can perceive and often measure, is part of reality. No materialist believes a human being and 100kg of raw carbon, oxygen, sulpher, etc. are exactly the same in qualities. The concept of perception may be argued as an encoding of data in neurological structures. That's where they'd say the perception is occurring.

If I were a materialist and you were to continue driving on this line, I could also attack the question of whether the words "material" and "mental" have sufficiently complete definitions for purposes of an extended debate. Trying to discuss materialism vs. dualism vs. idealism too far down the line starts to expose the limits of our assumption that "material" and "mental" are well defined enough for our needs. I'd begin going down the line of demanding the dualist demonstrate that mind cannot possibly supervene on matter, which is an interesting demonstration to try to pin down, and demands a particularly carefully chosen definition of "mind."

Answer 3

This isn't a particularly sufficient answer to what is certainly a considerable challenge for physicalism (a theory to which I'm not even sympathetic), especially compared to the other answers, but I ran out of characters in the comments. Either way, this argument can come in useful in at least mitigating the problem.

I believe the following analogy may be used from materialist Paul Churchland, who was forced to defend eliminative materialism from criticisms of it being self-refuting. In it, 'beliefs' are parallel to 'perception'.

We can draw an analogy between a materialist and an anti-vitalist (someone who doesn't believe that the vital spirit doesn't exist). We generally accept anti-vitalist positions as not being self-refuting. However, if one believes that the vital spirit doesn't exist, then they are not alive. If they are not alive then they can't have beliefs to articulate (beliefs including their anti-vitalist position). Therefore, anti-vitalism is false and we are definitely alive. But, if we invert the argument, the fact that anti-vitalism is supposedly self-refuting can't actually be used to prove that we are alive, simply by justifying it by the existence of 'beliefs'.

Answer 4

Short answer

No. A "self-refuting" claim is one that involves explicitly contradictory logic steps, and that is not the case here.

Elaboration

What you are referencing is an empirical case:

1. Our observations of the world come thru our consciousness, which is therefore apparently causally necessary to any further reasoning based on this data
2. Our consciousness is not just central to our knowledge, but is also central to everything we do with it, as we consciously will our actions
3. Physicalism is a model of our world that declares our consciousness to be at best secondary, a mere property of some other more fundamental reality, and non-causal. This generally is an assertion that consciousness is identical to some material structure, or that consciousness is not actually real at all.
4. This appears to contradict the centrality of consciousness for 1 and 2.

Note for any data, the Quine-Duham Thesis notes that one can always find SOME tweak to a theory that makes it compatible with that data. Apply Quine-Duhem to materialism, and then SOME version of point 3 can present a rationale for why consciousness is only apparently, and not actually central to our lives.

The challenge for materialism from points 1 and 2 is different than this question presumes. It is not one of logical contradiction, this isn't a logic question. It is an empirical question, so the test should be an empirical one.

When we have direct empirical observations of the way things "seem", then for an alternative empirical theory that the way things "seem" is actually wrong, one generally needs two things:

• Significant evidence for the falsity of the apparent observation and for the truth of the alternative
• Predictive success for the alternative, showing for instance for an identity claim that A=B (consciousness = neurology) that whenever we have A, we also have B and whenever we have B, we also have A. Or for an illusion claim, wide recognition that the illusory nature of consciousness has been demonstrated in all cases.

The problem for materialists in general, and the reason that "the hard problem of consciousness" remains, is that while there are multitudes of postulated theories for what point 3 could be, none of them yet have passed either of the tests for empirical credibility. It remains far more reasonable to accept that consciousness is real, central, and causal.

Summary

The logical attack on materialism is wrong -- you can dismiss it by pointing out that this isn't a logic question, as Quine-Duhem will allow you to find some version of 3 that answers any logical rebuttal to materialism.

This answer does not help you as much as you hoped, because the NEXT question is -- how strong is the empirical case for materialism, and that brings one back the longstanding plausibility failure of all the point 3 answers vs. the Hard problem of consciousness.