I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

[Dessi]

Lost interested in this for today, folks. The silliness is a little too concentrated for my taste for now... Will check back tomorrow to see if anyone has ACTUALLY BEEN ABLE TO ADD ANYTHING TO THE LIST!

One interesting item to add to the list: scientists conducted an experiment in which they transmitted words to a human receiver 5000 miles away:

Electroencephalogram, or EEG, recordings are taken by placing a cap of electrodes on a person's scalp, and recording the electrical activity of large regions of the brain's cortex. Previous studies have recorded EEG from a person thinking about an action, such as moving his or her arm, while a computer translates the signal into an output used to move a robotic exoskeleton or drive a wheelchair.

In other studies, a method called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) has been used to stimulate parts of the brain by applying tiny electrical currents to the scalp. This causes the neurons in a certain area to fire. For example, TMS can make a person's muscles twitch or can produce flashes of light in his or her visual field.

In the current study, the researchers linked these two processes, EEG recording and TMS. Four healthy volunteers took part in the mind-messaging experiment. One person, (the word sender) was hooked up to an EEG-based brain-computer interface; the other three people (the word recipients) received the messages in the form of TMS [transcrainial magnetic stimulation], and had to interpret the words based on the flashes they saw.

Using the system, the message sender, in India, transmitted the words "hola" (Spanish for "hello") and "Ciao" (Italian for "hello"/"goodbye") to the message recipients in France, located 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) away. All three recipients correctly translated the message, the researchers said.

This is one of those emerging technologies straight out of scifi. It may change how people communicate with one another in the next 30-50 years.

Also, see the story of Clive Wearing:

On 27 March 1985, Wearing, then an acknowledged expert in early music at the height of his career with BBC Radio 3, contracted Herpesviral encephalitis- a Herpes simplex virus that attacked his central nervous system.[1] Since this point, he has been unable to store new memories. He has also been unable to control emotions (labile mood) and to associate memories effectively.

Wearing developed a profound case of total amnesia as a result of his illness. Because of damage to the hippocampus, an area required to transfer memories from short-term to long-term memory, he is completely unable to form lasting new memories – his memory only lasts between 7 and 30 seconds.[2] He spends every day 'waking up' every 20 seconds, 'restarting' his consciousness once the time span of his short term memory elapses (about 30 seconds). He remembers little of his life before 1985; he knows, for example, that he has children from an earlier marriage, but cannot remember their names. His love for his second wife Deborah, whom he married the year prior to his illness, is undiminished. He greets her joyously every time they meet, either believing he has not seen her in years or that they have never met before, even though she may have just left the room to fetch a glass of water. When he goes out dining with his wife, he can remember the name of the food (e.g. chicken); however he cannot link it with taste, as he has forgotten.[3]

Despite having retrograde as well as anterograde amnesia, and thus only a moment-to-moment consciousness, Wearing still recalls how to play the piano and conduct a choir – all this despite having no recollection of having received a musical education. This is because his procedural memory was not damaged by the virus. As soon as the music stops, however, Wearing forgets that he has just played and starts shaking spasmodically. These jerkings are physical signs of an inability to control his emotions, stemming from the damage to his inferior frontal lobe.[citation needed] His brain is still trying to send information in the form of action potentials to neurostructures that no longer exist. The resulting encephalic electrical disturbance leads to fits.

In a diary provided by his caretakers, Clive was encouraged to record his thoughts. Page after page is filled with entries similar to the following:

8:31 AM: Now I am really, completely awake.
9:06 AM: Now I am perfectly, overwhelmingly awake.
9:34 AM: Now I am superlatively, actually awake.

Earlier entries are usually crossed out, since he forgets having made an entry within minutes and dismisses the writings–he does not know how the entries were made or by whom, although he does recognise his own writing.[4] Wishing to record "waking up for the first time", he still wrote diary entries in 2007, more than two decades after he started them.

On the one hand, you can use using magnetic fields to manipulate the soup of calcium ions between people's neurons, creating novel sensory experiences. Like perceiving words without any sensory input of any sort, just manipulating the brain directly.

On the other hand, you can destroy regions of the brain, and prevent people from every having specific sensory experiences for the rest of their life. Like being unable to perceive the continuity of their life.

The material basis of sensory experience and its dependence on a specific kind of physical structure is well-established. It even appears algorithmic [1]. I'm not sure how one could observe these examples, and conclude that the apparent physical, material basis of experience is neither. It's not clear what your argument is based on.

[1] Algorithmic interpretation is not implausible. Artificial neural nets are inspired from biological neural nets; from my point of view, brains are just a biological implementation of neural net governed by very simple rules, analogous to the way that Physarum polycephalum -- a type of slime mold -- has behaviors similar to Langton automata, or the whole class of ant-colony optimization algorithms emerging from simple rules describing insect behavior, or very simple rules describing flocking in birds.

 

[Wolrab]

Will you accept non-materialistic money for the purchase of your materialistic book?

 

[asydhouse]

Excellent post, Dessi!

But Bernardo claims to have already covered it:

10) Because psychoactive drugs and brain trauma can markedly change subjective experience, it’s clear that the brain generates consciousness.

I predict he'll dismiss it out of hand.


ETA On the other hand, reading that point again, it's only saying that subjective experience is altered by drugs etc. Your examples are of more profound alterations than simply being affected by mood swings or getting high etc. The actual complete alteration of Wearing's reality may be in a different class to what Bernardo has thought of, even though the alteration of a person's personality could be seen to be the same as Wearing's different reality. His personality isn't simply altered, he's literally in a different reality.

If he's seriously trying to extend his list, I think your two examples should be two more items on that list. But I doubt he will see it that way. I think he just wants to generate traffic to his sites, and sell copies of his books.

HEY BERNARD: we all think you are just trying to make money out of us. You could show good faith and promise to PM everyone in this thread a pdf of your book. Then you might get some more responses. Dessi has shown you more respect than most people here seem to think you deserve… given that you've shown no respect to anyone here, I think it's more than you deserve.

 

[Nonpareil]

This thread is a good example of why incorrectly applying philosophical concepts is bunk.

<snip>

A better counter argument is the one suggested by PixyMisa/Dessi (and others I think): namely that Bernardo's Idealism is functionally indistinct from Materialism, and thus pointless.

This, yes.

It's funny how many philosophical issues are just the result of someone not having their terms correctly defined.

 

[taygatayga]

How's this for your list?

The assumption that "Consciousness is the only carrier of reality anyone can ever know for sure; it is the one undeniable, empirical fact of existence." is false and has never been proven.

You're right that it's never been proven that it's the ONLY carrier of reality but it certainly is one or at least a carrier of what we believe to be reality. How would you go about either proving or falsifying the assumption?

 

[taygatayga]

It can be independent of my consciousness or yours but that's not the argument. The question is whether reality exists independent of any consciousness and it obviously can't be proved that it does.

 

[Spindrift]

You're right that it's never been proven that it's the ONLY carrier of reality but it certainly is one or at least a carrier of what we believe to be reality. How would you go about either proving or falsifying the assumption?

Proving it is up to the person making the assumption.

 

[JoeMorgue]

How would you go about either proving or falsifying the assumption?

You can't. Which makes this entire argument completely and totally pointless.

 

[taygatayga]

If any form of idealism is true, then what is the source of this "consciousness"?

Every metaphysical position has an ontological primitive which is a basic assumption that can't be proved and on which all other arguments rest. In materialism the ontological primitive is matter and in idealism it's consciousness.

You could ask the same question about materialism: what is the source of this "matter"?

 

[taygatayga]

You can't. Which makes this entire argument completely and totally pointless.

So do you think Spindrift is unjustified in claiming the assumption is false?

 

[Garrette]

Every metaphysical position has an ontological primitive which is a basic assumption that can't be proved and on which all other arguments rest. In materialism the ontological primitive is matter and in idealism it's consciousness.

You could ask the same question about materialism: what is the source of this "matter"?

Perhaps, but that, at best, makes them equal, and contrary to Bernardo's claims otherwise, parsimony is not the deciding factor here (and if it were, it would not be in idealism's favor).

The two related questions that then elevate one above the other, if it can be done at all are as follows (I admit I may be wording them poorly, but you'll get the gist):

1. What does idealism explain that materialism does not explain at least as well?

2. What does idealism predict that materialism does not predict at least as well?

 

[Doubt]

Every metaphysical position has an ontological primitive which is a basic assumption that can't be proved and on which all other arguments rest. In materialism the ontological primitive is matter and in idealism it's consciousness.

You could ask the same question about materialism: what is the source of this "matter"?

We have seen attempt to answer the question of where matter has come from. We have nothing to go on for the version of consciousness required for the opening post. Also we have no evidence provided for the consciousness assumed to exist. So the question remains about the source of consciousness.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I think all forms of reality denials are hollow, anti-intellecual bunk and professing such copouts will still existing in the world you deny is massively hypocritical.

 

[tsig]

It can be independent of my consciousness or yours but that's not the argument. The question is whether reality exists independent of any consciousness and it obviously can't be proved that it does.

If there's no consciousness then there's no reality?

 

[tsig]

Every metaphysical position has an ontological primitive which is a basic assumption that can't be proved and on which all other arguments rest. In materialism the ontological primitive is matter and in idealism it's consciousness.

You could ask the same question about materialism: what is the source of this "matter"?

Can you show us a consciousness without any matter?

 

[Nonpareil]

It can be independent of my consciousness or yours but that's not the argument. The question is whether reality exists independent of any consciousness and it obviously can't be proved that it does.

For any functional definition of "exists", yes, it can.

I reiterate: most of the common philosophical problems disintegrate if you just define your terms clearly.

 

[bruto]

What it all seems to boil down to is this contention: we only know one thing and that's a lie.

To consider this the first step on the road toward parsimony seems a little odd.

 

[MikeG]

Every metaphysical position has an ontological primitive which is a basic assumption that can't be proved and on which all other arguments rest. In materialism the ontological primitive is matter and in idealism it's consciousness.

You could ask the same question about materialism: what is the source of this "matter"?

Bernardo? Is that you?

 

[Dessi]

The question is whether reality exists independent of any consciousness and it obviously can't be proved that it does.

"Obviously"? No, it's so far from "obvious" that linguists haven't yet coined the word needed to describe how completely and entirely wrong it is.

A case study: rocks colliding with the moon for billions of years, glaciers carving canyons through mountains, deep sea life being in an evolutionary arms race for billions of years. More generally: the entirety of astronomy, geology, climatology, archaeology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, etc.

These things are only observable today because events from the past leave traces on the present, unavoidably implying the existence of events taking place independent of anyone around to observe them.

 

[ehcks]

So do you think Spindrift is unjustified in claiming the assumption is false?

A claim which is unfalsifiable is generally false.