I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

[Robin]

One question: If you design a Rube Goldberg device that eventually draws a smiley face and compute that into your register machine, does it also draw a smiley face?

Yes. It may be encoded in the numbers, but yes. By analogy are you saying that the register machine will compute the nausea, but it will be encoded in the numbers rather than experienced as the brain experiences it?

OK, so if the brain is a computing machine like the register machine then why does the same not apply to it?

 

[Robin]

The problem is that if there is no computation that can run on a register machine that will feel nauseous, just as I feel nauseous, then the feeling of nausea, itself, is not a computation.

 

[Lowpro]

Yes. It may be encoded in the numbers, but yes. By analogy are you saying that the register machine will compute the nausea, but it will be encoded in the numbers rather than experienced as the brain experiences it?

OK, so if the brain is a computing machine like the register machine then why does the same not apply to it?

Computes with chemistry seems like the obvious answer to me. If you want to use the word integrate from now on that's usually the more appropriate word in multisensory processing anyways.

If your register machine instead used chemistry and underwent natural selection (again I say this because now I wonder if you put survival pressures on a computer physically rather than within a simulation...just seems interesting but not as a consciousness thing) you just might get a rudimentary brain. Worked well for life. Could be that if brains integrated in a fashion such as the stochastic space I was previously discussing, and evolving associated sensations with those spaces then that acts as a survival mechanism. And then some people called that consciousness mayhaps.

 

[Lowpro]

The problem is that if there is no computation that can run on a register machine that will feel nauseous, just as I feel nauseous, then the feeling of nausea, itself, is not a computation.

Because your register machine doesn't do work in its computation, physically speaking. The brain does; anything involved in chemistry does. Even the register machine must release some kind of heat in its computation. Imagine if that computation actually utilized the heat (going back to the computer that needs to survive).

 

[PixyMisa]

But if it is a computation then the physiology is irrelevant. The register machine version should do exactly what the physiology based version does.

True, but the physiology is really, really complicated. It's doing a lot. So the register machine will similarly need to do a lot. And since the computational mechanisms of brain physiology don't map directly to a register machine (they map, just not directly) it will need to do double a lot.

It's one of those situations where intuition fails. You need to imagine a billion lines of spaghetti code, not something neat and straightforward.

 

[Robin]

True, but the physiology is really, really complicated. It's doing a lot. So the register machine will similarly need to do a lot. And since the computational mechanisms of brain physiology don't map directly to a register machine (they map, just not directly) it will need to do double a lot.

It's one of those situations where intuition fails. You need to imagine a billion lines of spaghetti code, not something neat and straightforward.

But what is happening on a physical level really is neat and straightforward. I know exactly all of the kinds of physical events that will occur.

Why do I have to imagine all that abstract logic? An instruction is executed and it is gone, it doesn't exist any more when the next one starts

 

[PixyMisa]

But what is happening on a physical level really is neat and straightforward. I know exactly all of the kinds of physical events that will occur.

And your brain is made of just protons, neutrons, and electrons. Just knowing the properties of protons, neutrons, and electrons is not enough to understand what the brain does. You must also know how they are arranged.

Why do I have to imagine all that abstract logic?

Why do you have to read the words I'm writing rather than just examine the shade of one of the subpixels on your monitor?

An instruction is executed and it is gone, it doesn't exist any more when the next one starts

If you look at a single proton in the nucleus of an atom in a molecule in a synapse of a neuron in a column in the neo-cortex of a brain, where's the feeling of nausea?

 

[PixyMisa]

Possibly because there isn't one.

Or if there is then neither you nor I seem to be able to think of it.

Whatever the brain is doing, it's a material system carrying out material processes. If those material processes are a feeling of nausea, then the same material processes are always a feeling of nausea. If it's not a feeling of nausea, then the processes have to be different.

 

[Robin]

Whatever the brain is doing, it's a material system carrying out material processes. If those material processes are a feeling of nausea, then the same material processes are always a feeling of nausea. If it's not a feeling of nausea, then the processes have to be different.

I have bolded the operative.phrase. The point is that your physical description does not say that it should be so you are just assuming your conclusion.

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

So, again, please show me the physics or chemistry which demonstrates that this must result in a sensation of pain. It is a simple question. Otherwise show me the contradiction that would ensue if this occurred without there being a sensation of pain.

No, I am looking for an answer to my question.

It's not so much that the physics or chemistry defines that a particular pattern of signals MUST result in a sensation of pain, its that this particular set of signals happens to ALWAYS result in a sensation of pain.

So there is no contradiction possible, because there is a clear one to one mapping. You don't get the pain without the particular pattern, and you don't get the particular pattern without the pain.

And that's what happens, like it or not. It seems that this particular pattern IS the experience of pain. That is simply what that pattern feels like. Other patterns don't feel like it.

 

[PixyMisa]

I have bolded the operative.phrase. The point is that your physical description does not say that it should be so you are just assuming your conclusion.

I'm not assuming anything. I'm laying out the logical argument that you are so studiously ignoring.

It is an observation that the feeling of nausea is something the brain does. From that, we can conclude, if the Universe is logically consistent,* that identical brain processes produce identical feelings of nausea.

* And if the Universe is not logically consistent, you owe me a million dollars.**
** Because in that case I don't need to give a reason.

 

[GraculusTheGreenBird]

I have bolded the operative.phrase. The point is that your physical description does not say that it should be so you are just assuming your conclusion.

That's true, it does not say it has to be so, we don't understand exactly why yet, but nonetheless it always appears to be so.

We observe that those particular material processes ALWAYS produce a feeling of nausea, they never DON'T produce a feeling of nausea.

 

[Robin]

That's true, it does not say it has to be so, we don't understand exactly why yet, but nonetheless it always appears to be so.

We observe that those particular material processes ALWAYS produce a feeling of nausea, they never DON'T produce a feeling of nausea.

That is fine.

But if someone is claiming that this is what we would expect a material world to look like, that does not help.

 

[Robin]

I'm not assuming anything. I'm laying out the logical argument that you are so studiously ignoring.

It is an observation that the feeling of nausea is something the brain does. From that, we can conclude, if the Universe is logically consistent,* that identical brain processes produce identical feelings of nausea.

What is being studiously ignored is the question I am asking

Your claim is that this is what we would expect a material world to be like. I am asking you to support that. I am asking what kind of physical process predicts that it will result in a sensation like nausea.

So, simply saying that this is what we happen to observe to be the case does not answer that at all.

All you are saying is "This is what we would expect a material universe to be like because this is a material universe and this is what it is like".

No, address the question or else drop the claim that this world is what we would expect a material universe to be like. Show that we would expect sensations to result from neural processes, not that we happen to observe this to be the case.

 

[PixyMisa]

I am asking what kind of physical process predicts that it will result in a sensation like nausea.

A computational one.

Show that we would expect sensations to result from neural processes, not that we happen to observe this to be the case.

Sensations are computation on sensory input. If you perform computation on sense data, sensations are what you get. It's not just expected, its unavoidable.

 

[Robin]

And your brain is made of just protons, neutrons, and electrons. Just knowing the properties of protons, neutrons, and electrons is not enough to understand what the brain does. You must also know how they are arranged.

But I do know how the parts of the register machine are arranged and how they work, that is what I have just been saying.

Now one event occurs on this system and then it is done. It does not hang around in some Platonic realm in order to participate in some phenomenon that is about to happen.

It just doesn't exist any more.

Then the next step occurs. And then it does not exist any more.

Understanding the logic of the program will not tell me by what mysterious agency all of these events are going to participate, somehow, in a sensation of nausea. The logic will only tell me what those numbers on the storage mean.

I have no reason to believe that any more is happening on this system than a set of separate events, one after the other and numbers on storage that mean something to someone who understands the program.

There is no reason at all to believe that this system will generate, somehow, a sensation of nausea?

Again, what is the sensation of nausea in this system? Output? The processing?

Why do you have to read the words I'm writing rather than just examine the shade of one of the subpixels on your monitor?

Not sure why this is relevant.

If you look at a single proton in the nucleus of an atom in a molecule in a synapse of a neuron in a column in the neo-cortex of a brain, where's the feeling of nausea?

Not exactly my problems in this context, is it?

 

[Robin]

A computational one.

Just cos you say so?

Sensations are computation on sensory input. If you perform computation on sense data, sensations are what you get. It's not just expected, its unavoidable.

Again, cos you say so?

 

[PixyMisa]

But I do know how the parts of the register machine are arranged and how they work, that is what I have just been saying.

No you don't. You've ignored the program that it runs. That means you are ignoring - to a first approximation - everything.

Now one event occurs on this system and then it is done. It does not hang around in some Platonic realm in order to participate in some phenomenon that is about to happen.

It just doesn't exist any more.

Then the next step occurs. And then it does not exist any more.

State.

Understanding the logic of the program will not tell me by what mysterious agency all of these events are going to participate, somehow, in a sensation of nausea. The logic will only tell me what those numbers on the storage mean.

And now you are ignoring the processing. When we add it up, you are ignoring everything the machine does. No wonder you can't work it out.

I have no reason to believe that any more is happening on this system than a set of separate events, one after the other and numbers on storage that mean something to someone who understands the program.

Brains are computers. Do you need someone else to understand what it is your brain does?

There is no reason at all to believe that this system will generate, somehow, a sensation of nausea?

It is impossible for it not to do so.

 

[PixyMisa]

Just cos you say so?

Because that is what we observe sensations to be.

Your argument is only tenable if you abandon the very concept of evidence.

 

[PixyMisa]

Not sure why this is relevant.

Because that's what you are doing.

Not exactly my problems in this context, is it?

It is exactly your problem.

Your argument is one big fallacy of decomposition.