Thoughts on materialism.

(Note: These ideas of mine are not fully developed, but I think they make a point in an interesting direction. But don't hold me to them.)

In his discussion of Type-Identity theory (the most basic flavor of materialism), Ramsey brought up one common objection to this view of the mind. It seems completely obvious that the mind has particular properties that it simply does not share with the physical brain. Two obvious examples are non-spatiality and intentionality-- properties that are attributed to the mind, but which we feel we cannot attribute to the brain.

Ramsey indicated that the materialist might respond by simply redefining some important terms, so that they do in fact mesh with the materialist's point of view. He might say, for example, that the mind actually is spatially located-- it is located wherever the appropriate neurological activity is located. And the brain actually does exhibit intentionality-- if all we mean by "intentionality" is that certain patterns of brain processes consistently correspond to particular external events.

I wonder, though, if this kind of redefinition of terms really gets us any closer to solving the problems we were originally interested in. It certainly allows our concepts of the mind and the brain to grow closer together, and (maybe) ultimately collapse onto one another. But I don't think that answers the questions originally posed by the philosophy of mind.

Originally, we wanted to know how intentionality-- understood in a particular abstract way-- could be achieved by physical matter. The materialist's solution to the problem is to posit that the old understanding of "intentionality" was mistaken. He replaces that old understanding with a new concept, one that easily sidesteps the original problem. But notice that the old problem hasn't gone away. If, in my own thoughts, I revert back to the old meaning, I see that I still haven't been shown how matter exhibits abstract intentionality. The materialist hasn't given any independent reason why his new concept is the "right" one. All it does is avoid addressing the problem. How is that a solution?

In other words, I don't think a mere redefinition of our language actually tells us anything about the outside world. Think of it this way: according to our most recent understanding, the body called "Pluto" is not a planet. We might have treated it as a planet before (with its own, somewhat quirky characteristics), but that was when we had a particular undeveloped concept of what a planet is. Now that the concept has been revised, the quirkiness of Pluto has gone away-- not because its behavior is any different, but because we no longer categorize it in a way where its behavior presents any problems. But really, we don't know anything about Pluto that we didn't know before.

Ask yourself this question: In our redefinition of the concept, and the concomitant disappearance of the previous perceived problems, have we really learned anything about the external world? Or have we simply made things easier on ourselves?