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I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

LarryS said:
there's much 'woo' going on here - to declare that consciousness and subjective experience is a product of a brute machine, a Turing equivalent computer - I'm not suggesting this is a right or wrong notion, but there's a boxcar load of 'woo' here.
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I am suggesting that the brain is the seat and creator of consciousness, and itr at least appears that way.

Do you have evidence of consciousness absent a brain?
 
annnnoid said:
Tell you what Belz…I’m going to let you in on a little secret. When I (and, presumably, every other human being on the planet) look at a red parrot, I actually see a red parrot. I do not see something that looks like a piece of road kill from a hundred feet away in the middle of a blizzard.

...snip...
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That's because you've learnt what to label your private experiences so that you can communicate your private behaviours publicly. There is no evidence that "qualia" exist, what we do have evidence for is behaviour - both private and public behaviours. And your learning starts long before your consciousness emerges as something we all label as "me". There are folk with terrible brain injuries that have no sense of "me" because some or all of the structures involved have been damaged and/or destroyed. And we know they lack this sense of me because they no longer use the words we've learnt to associate with that "experience".
 
annnnoid said:
Tell you what Belz…I’m going to let you in on a little secret. When I (and, presumably, every other human being on the planet) look at a red parrot, I actually see a red parrot. I do not see something that looks like a piece of road kill from a hundred feet away in the middle of a blizzard.

Your claim was there is a machine that can detect everything that I experience it. That you think that machine is it is beyond a joke.
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The fact that it sees something matters more than the fidelity, you realize that right?

I swear I wanted to qualify the word "detect" for a reason, because for people like you it needs to be qualified.
 
"I demand your science explain a distinction that it doesn't recognize." - Philosophy.
 
Belz... said:
http://gizmodo.com/5843117/scientists-reconstruct-video-clips-from-brain-activity

You're welcome.

Care to retract that last sentence, now ?
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This quote from the above link gets at the heart of it:

"Imagine that. Capturing your visual memories, your dreams, the wild ramblings of your imagination into a video that you and others can watch with your own eyes."

IOW, we still need consciousness to experience the information. Yes the computer can generate images from contents of the brain, and play it back, but without consciousness it's just a movie playing in an empty movie theater.
 
LarryS said:
This quote from the above link gets at the heart of it:

"Imagine that. Capturing your visual memories, your dreams, the wild ramblings of your imagination into a video that you and others can watch with your own eyes."

IOW, we still need consciousness to experience the information. Yes the computer can generate images from contents of the brain, and play it back, but without consciousness it's just a movie playing in an empty movie theater.
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No, the information is experienced by the cones and rods of your eyes, and your ear drum. Your brain interprets the experience, but the information was already there whether your brain was or not.

Even if you weren't in the room at all, the information is experienced by the movement of the air and the photons interacting with the walls of the room.
 
PixyMisa said:
We know where our conscious minds come from
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This is why I say that some materialist skeptics misunderstand the meaning of skepticism. A skeptic recognises belief, theory, conjecture or assertion for what it is. What you claim to know is one of those. If anyone knew where a conscious mind comes from, the hard problem would have been solved.
 
annnnoid said:
Your claim was there is a machine that can detect everything that I experience it. That you think that machine is it is beyond a joke.
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Serious questions. Can you read? Do you understand the difference between possible and currently feasible?

Your constant reiterations of personal incredulity and ignorance are not substitutes for an actual argument. Your entire objection is that current practical limits are an indication of theoretical impossibility. You might as well argue that, because NASA cannot currently get a manned mission to Mars, any space mission outside of a species' home planet gravity well is impossible, even in theory.

It's silly.
 
ehcks said:
No, the information is experienced by the cones and rods of your eyes, and your ear drum. Your brain interprets the experience, but the information was already there whether your brain was or not.

Even if you weren't in the room at all, the information is experienced by the movement of the air and the photons interacting with the walls of the room.
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This is a question of semantics . . . you say that experience is on the photon level, as in the senses experience individual photons (and sound waves), the brain then interprets the myriad of experiences . . . but where does the information come from if not the brain. . . and walls can also experience . . . I've never heard these terms used this way.
 
LarryS said:
This is a question of semantics . . . you say that experience is on the photon level, as in the senses experience individual photons (and sound waves), the brain then interprets the myriad of experiences . . . but where does the information come from if not the brain. . . and walls can also experience . . . I've never heard these terms used this way.
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Essentially everywhere else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory

Lots and lots of information on information if you actually want to know.
 
taygatayga said:
This is why I say that some materialist skeptics misunderstand the meaning of skepticism. A skeptic recognises belief, theory, conjecture or assertion for what it is. What you claim to know is one of those. If anyone knew where a conscious mind comes from, the hard problem would have been solved.
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The conscious mind comes from electrochemical signals in the brain. There is no hard problem.
 
ehcks said:
The conscious mind comes from electrochemical signals in the brain. There is no hard problem.
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There are some here who accept that whole-heartedly, and there are some, like myself, who are skeptical.
 
LarryS said:
I see nothing on that wiki page that would suggest that information can exist without a language processor of some type, human being, whale, computer, cyborg or zombie.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox

I do not believe that there is any language possibly being lost to the universe by our lack of total understanding of black holes.

Among many other things, the frequency and amplitude of a photon is information. It's not a language. It's not a word. It's not from a mind.
 
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taygatayga said:
This is why I say that some materialist skeptics misunderstand the meaning of skepticism. A skeptic recognises belief, theory, conjecture or assertion for what it is. What you claim to know is one of those. If anyone knew where a conscious mind comes from, the hard problem would have been solved.
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The hard problem has been solved, in that it never actually existed in the first place.

People clinging to outdated beliefs exist in every field. This is one example.

Again. We know - not believe, not assert, know - that anything that affects the brain affects consciousness. This means that either the brain is the source of consciousness or some sort of interface for a nebulous "mind", which may be partially or completely external.

But the latter is not what we observe.

Ever.

Literally everything we have ever learned about the function of the brain and of consciousness is consistent with the brain being the source of consciousness. In contrast, every attempt to locate or find evidence for any sort of external mind has failed.

Every one.

The "hard problem", qualia, personal incredulity, everything anyone has posted here as an attempted rebuttal of materialism disintegrates under the weight of that single, incontrovertible fact.

You talk about skepticism, but you seem to forget the most vital part: accepting that which the evidence shows to be true. Continually refusing to accept an idea when the evidence bears it out is not skepticism.

It is bull-headed willful ignorance.
 
Nonpareil said:
Asserting that it's all in your head.../QUOTE]

This is a materialist strawman representation of an idealist or solipsist position. Those two suppose that all reality is in the mind. It is the materialist who assumes that the mind exists inside a head.
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taygatayga said:
Nonpareil said:
Asserting that it's all in your head...
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This is a materialist strawman representation of an idealist or solipsist position. Those two suppose that all reality is in the mind. It is the materialist who assumes that the mind exists inside a head.
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And this is a hilariously shallow attempt to avoid a point made through word games.
 
LarryS said:
There are some here who accept that whole-heartedly, and there are some, like myself, who are skeptical.
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And they are some people who accept that the Earth is round and others that remain skeptical. They are some people who accept that we went to the moon and others remain skeptical. They are some who accept that the Earth is billions of years old and those who are skeptical. The thing is in all of those examples one side is wrong.

That's the great thing about reality. It doesn't give a toss if you agree with it or not.

Your conscious mind and your experiences therein are neurological functions of your physical brain. You can agree with that or be wrong.

You seem to place much, much, much more important on you personally not wanting to accept facts then is warrented.
 
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