Repost: "Materialism"

In light of others outside this forum who have no clear idea of what contemporary scientific versions of materialist neuroscience means in all its ramifications, it probably shouldn't be surprising some here have not read enough of the research literature or even just thought through the implications of their half-thought out and mostly unexamined materialist outlook.

Contemporary materialism is not a denial of the existence of the soul or an afterlife, it is a more thorough denial. It comes in two main flavors: eliminative and functionalism materialist neuroscience. In both versions, it is not only the existence of an immortal soul that is denied, it is a thorough-going denial of any mental life at all. There is no such thing as subjectivity, inner psychological life or interior life. There is no inner I as my subjective identity, no desires, beliefs, viewpoints, ideas, opinions, inner psychological states of any kind, no first-personal experience, and no consciousness. Death is just a transition from a nonconscious biological state maintaining a biological organism to another nonconscious biological state where the organism breaks down and is assimilated to the eco-sytems.

Contemporary scientific materialism in neuroscience in both its forms agrees with nonmaterialists that a very long history of trying to "reduce" mental states to neural brain states has failed and is probably impossible. So, they deny the existence of any alleged "mental states" that need to be "reduced" to neural states at all (which means death is a nonevent since you were never conscious or psychologically alive in the first place).

Eliminative materialism in contemporary neuroscience is probably most well-known and represented by Paul and Patricia Churchland, authors of the neuroscience textbook The Computational Brain, and who recently retired last summer from the Salks research center in San Diego, CA. They are trained both as neurosicnetists and philosophers.

Functionalism is also known as token-identity theory. It arose because its earlier theoretical predecessor collapsed and was experimentally disconfirmed. Its predecessor was type-identity theory. It asserted that mind states just were neural states (we will get to what identity theorists generally mean when they use "mental" since they deny like the eliminative materialists that "mental" as most people does not exist) and that for every type or kind of "mental state" there was a corresponding type or kind of "neural state" in the brain. This turns out to be experimentally false. Luckily, computer science saved the day for this model. Software states just are hardware states; software processes just are harware processes but they have "multiple realizability". By "multiple realizability", a single computer can on two occasions be in the same computational software state but not in the same hardware state and any two or more computers can be in the same computational software states while being in different hardware states of even have different hardware. This means that every "token" instance of a software state or process is identical to a "token" hardware state even though every type of software state does not have a corresponding type of hardware state. So, the identity theorists revamped type-identity theory in light of these findings into token identity theory. Now, by mental they do not mean what we typically mean about it. They also deny the existence of consciousness, subjectivity, beliefs, desires, any "inner psychological states" (usually referred to in the professional literature as a denial of "inner qualia" or "privileged access" - the last means you have no inner private life only you have access to because apart from your body, "you" don't exist.) Thus, as one of the leading token-identity functionalists has famously put it, we are nonconscious "zombies". "Mental" states as a technical term means nonconscious "software" or "computational" states: just as a computer has more going on than just its hardware's electrical states and processes but is not conscious, so are people. Functionalism holds that the older behaviorism was inadequate because external behavior can't account for the complexity of the input and output conditions in the brain. So, as Heil (in his book on contemporary materialist models of "mind") puts it, functionalism posits "inner behavior" to supplement external behaviorist approaches. Thus, token-identity functionalism is also called "inner black-box behavorism".

Ethical, political, social consequences of these two versions of contemporary materialism in neurscience: if there is no inner private subjective life, no mental life, no personal identity or inner subjective I, then everything that presupposes the existence of such things is to go by the wayside as part of a superstitious "folk theory" that needs to also be eliminated. Thus, there are no ethical concepts (since there are no persons, there are no rights, no responsibility or obligations, no justice nor appeals to justice, no injustice or moral evil -- the Holocaust was not a moral horror but just a population reduction of biounits, heterosexuals and homosexuals have no rights nor has any rights been suppressed or denied by one group for another because there is no such thing,). Politically, since there are no persons and no rights, a cyber-technocracy should be put in place to "program" the biounits, eliminate defective biounits. There is no educational institutions because they maintain and foster the superstitious "folk theory" that there are persons that learn; rather programing of biounits is the replacement. Those biounits with interests in religion, spirituality, arts, social justice, and ethics will either be re-programed or eliminated as defective biounits. No criminal justice systems because they foster and continue the illusion of their being such things as persons, ethical responsibility, and right and wrong. Criminal behavior is defective biounit. Oddly, sometimes this contemporary materialism looks like it is "green" in what looks like a concern with the natural environment but it really turns out that since there are no such things as persons with intrinsic worth or rights, since there is no such thing as having "moral standing", a human biounit does not count for more than a rock or tree. Probably another population reduction of such defective biounits that breed until they are a pestilence on the planetary eco-system and whose activities have toxic side-effects is called for.

Finally, if you happen to disagree with these versions of materialism, or even, have just a comment or opinion, you really don't because there is no such thing as a "disagreement" or "opinion" or "you" you malfunctioning and defective biounit.

A fairly lengthy bibliography is available (except for those who are materialists since there is no such thing as "reading further" or "investigating further" or "learning".

P.S. Of course, if materialism (only matter exists) is true, there also is either no Ahura Mazda (there is no nonmaterial spiritual stuff - only matter exists) or Ahura Mazda is a material and nonconscious "zombie" biounit. But then, the name becomes problematic since "ahura" meaning something like "lord" denotes a social or interpersonal status between superior and subordinate persons, and ex hypothesi, there are no such things as persons or statuses and a nonconscious zombie also would not have another nonexistent property of wisdom, hence the "mazda" part also goes by the wayside since there is no such thing if materialism is true.