I challenge you: your best argument for materialism

[JaysonR]

Thanks for the format correction; Leumas.

 

[punshhh]

No, I have explained this to you several times already.

Yes and I was not entirely convinced.

1) X interacts with matter. We can detect X through its interactions in principle.

This makes sense, but there is a problem with detection in principle. I see no reason why there could not be aspects of existence which are not detectable in principle by a human, while being detectable in principle by an omniscient being, or the like.

2) X does not interact with matter. We cannot detect X under any circumstances. For all practical intents and purposes, X does not exist for us.

We're not discussing practical intents and purposes. Wer're discussing philosophies.

What other possibility do you see ? I've covered both "does" and "does not".

Well does and does not interact with matter is a bit clunky. For example a god like being might contact a person in such a way that they have a flash of inspiration and invent some new technology. From that moment on, the world of human affairs and consequently that of the planet might be altered. A human descendent might then in a few million years evolve into a god like being, who might in turn contact a newly emerged intelligent life form and evoke a flash of inspiration and alter the course of life on that planet and so on ad infinitum.

 

[punshhh]

Thanks for the format correction; Leumas.

thanks JaysonR, I'll get back to you later, I'm very busy today.

 

[punshhh]

Is it possible to establish or extrapolate the existence of a monad through any mundane experience, or does it take the extraordinary experience, as PSI or NDE, in order to have a glimpse of the monad?

For example, I am sitting here now enjoying my morning cup of coffee. If it feels like I, the person living in my body is enjoying the coffee, would this be a misdiagnosis? Is it really a monad enjoying the coffee?

I wouldn't know, it is not something I spend much time thinking about. Presumably it would occur during epiphany or something like that.

 

[marplots]

No, I have explained this to you several times already.

1) X interacts with matter. We can detect X through its interactions in principle.
2) X does not interact with matter. We cannot detect X under any circumstances. For all practical intents and purposes, X does not exist for us.

What other possibility do you see ? I've covered both "does" and "does not".

How do you know this? Or, are you just asserting/defining "matter" this way?

 

[Belz...]

How do you know this? Or, are you just asserting/defining "matter" this way?

I don't understand your question. Which part of the two possibilities I described do you have an issue with ? Either X interacts or it does not. If it does, we can detect X through its interactions in principle. If it does not, we cannot. What's wrong about that ?

 

[Belz...]

Yes and I was not entirely convinced.

Of course you are not, since you want to believe in another possibility.

This makes sense, but there is a problem with detection in principle. I see no reason why there could not be aspects of existence which are not detectable in principle by a human, while being detectable in principle by an omniscient being, or the like.

That's because you misunderstand what I mean by "detectable" and "in principle". First, everything we detect, we do so through the interactions between two things. When I punch you in the face, you detect my fist by the impact and the bruise it leaves. When you eat chocolate, you detect it through the thing interacting with your taste buds, etc. This is true of everything. We cannot detect something that does not interact with anything, which is why neutrinos are so hard to pick up, as they rarely interact with stuff. Second, "in principle" means that it can be detected, not that we have the ability to do so at the time of this writing. For instance, if gravitons exist, they are detectable in principle, thought we have not detected them so far.

We're not discussing practical intents and purposes.

Of course we are. Discussing things that may exist in another universe but with which we can never interact or of which we can never have any knowledge is pointless. Entertaining, perhaps, but useless.

For example a god like being might contact a person in such a way that they have a flash of inspiration and invent some new technology. From that moment on, the world of human affairs and consequently that of the planet might be altered.

But you forget that the god interacted with the person by contacting them. There is no other way. Even if they used magic to move the guy's neurons around, the fact of the matter is that the neurons were moved, and we can, in principle, detect that.

 

[marplots]

I don't understand your question. Which part of the two possibilities I described do you have an issue with ? Either X interacts or it does not. If it does, we can detect X through its interactions in principle. If it does not, we cannot. What's wrong about that ?

I don't know that there is anything wrong with it. I'm just asking why you think, for instance, it couldn't be that X interacts sometimes and sometimes does not? Or why you think matter has to act that way and how I'd go about proving it.

My purpose was to show that what seemed simple and straightforward wasn't at all so, at least if we are to take idealism seriously. That's why I asked if you were just defining matter to have those properties as a kind of axiom/assertion, in which case, there'd be little point in discussing it.

The larger point, from where I'm sitting, is that we keep getting restatements of what materialism proposes as if they were explanations or justifications for materialism itself. That doesn't seem like a good plan.

 

[Belz...]

I don't know that there is anything wrong with it. I'm just asking why you think, for instance, it couldn't be that X interacts sometimes and sometimes does not?

I think you saw a distinction that I didn't make: particles don't always interact with each other, but the point is that they can and often do, and are thus detectable, which leads us to conclude that they exist. That's my (1).

 

[tsig]

Yes and I was not entirely convinced.
This makes sense, but there is a problem with detection in principle. I see no reason why there could not be aspects of existence which are not detectable in principle by a human, while being detectable in principle by an omniscient being, or the like.
We're not discussing practical intents and purposes. Wer're discussing philosophies.

Well does and does not interact with matter is a bit clunky. For example a god like being might contact a person in such a way that they have a flash of inspiration and invent some new technology. From that moment on, the world of human affairs and consequently that of the planet might be altered. A human descendent might then in a few million years evolve into a god like being, who might in turn contact a newly emerged intelligent life form and evoke a flash of inspiration and alter the course of life on that planet and so on ad infinitum.

So the fleas have little fleas to bite 'em and so on ad infinitum?

Gods aren't real.

 

[tsig]

I wouldn't know, it is not something I spend much time thinking about. Presumably it would occur during epiphany or something like that.

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

 

[marplots]

To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

That's beautiful.

 

[tsig]

That's beautiful.

Left out the link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impossible_Dream_(The_Quest)

 

[punshhh]

"Revelation" and "out of the air" (the idiom referring to the action of picking a final product without verifying its accuracy, or referring to making something up) are functionally the same variable.

This is nonsense, people who have experienced revelation, if that is what it was, had the precise content of the experience burnt into their mind. There was no cherry picking and the subject is invariably the same, with a variation in narrative. Picking a subject for philosophical consideration out of the air is quite different.

It is out-dated in information to consider the sentient self aware identity of the human to be one only reserved for philosophical solution.
It is no longer left to the pondering of "maybe" or "if" and has arrived into the engineering age where it is a matter of "how" in regards to building.

I am not disputing this, all the discoveries of science have only described the mechanism by which the body performs its role. It has not addressed the basis of the existence resulting in our kind of experience. Materialism throws the baby out with the bath water when it concludes that sentient experience is nothing more than a result of chemical actions in the body, (well actually around here it doesn't even go that far, it relies on computation.)

We don't know if the experience we find ourselves in was not fabricated specifically so that a monad could view physical experience through the prism of a human mind. Or numerous other rational possibilities.

Further; considering the "latter half" is exactly what I was highlighting as erroneous considering the axiom is merely an axiom and not rooted in reality.

We might as well write, "if a Teleparthon were whellning, but not pourneth, would it still be considered human?

If one is embarking on a philosophical consideration of existence, it is philosophically/rationally valid, because we know virtually nothing about the processes of existence.

Again, a false question.
It is first being presented, as if it were fact, that human level sentient self aware identity is possible in a physical build differing from the human brain's means of networking.
This would firstly have to be shown as evident - so far; there is nothing anywhere to suggest such is possible and instead all information suggests just the opposite of this; that if you want a specific given sentience, then you need that specific physical design and not another.

Meaning - if you want the device you are in theory building to be like an Iguana's sentience, then you will need to build it like an Iguana's brain network for processing.
If you want it to have a human's form of sentience then you will need to build the network like the human brain's network for processing.

It is an error to assume that sentient self aware identity is something which stands upon itself and is not emergent in dependence upon the entire physical construct of the brain from which it emerges and not one tiny object which can be emulated by a digital automaton.

No; the only way to accomplish human style sentience in a computer will be to build a computer that has a network processing system which is identical to the human brain's network.

I invite you to learn more by learning more details specifically regarding the Blue Brain Project; watch a few lectures and talks by Dr. Henry Markram.
This is a good starting point:

Agreed.

This is also a false question. There is no singular quality of a human which is critical for sentience.

This is conditional upon the experiment.

Human sentient self aware identity is a complex emergence comprised of multiple networks in tandem and simultaneous processing.
It is like asking what quality of a human is critical for dancing.

Aside from the overly simplistic answer of "a brain" or "legs" (neither of which are specific answers) the question is invalid for it assumes the action involved is one in which a singular quality is required; it also creates the error in considering that sentient self aware identity is an object.

It is not a tangible singular object in any more fashion than "dancing" is an object.

If I place an automaton in front of you which can draw and write 200 different productions by the use of over a thousand cams, then the question as to what "quality" is required for it to "draw" (a specific action) is an invalid question due to the physical complexity of the object in question (the automaton) and the inapplicable standing of "drawing" to be considered an object requiring "quality".

Perhaps an even better comparison would be if you were to ask which quality was required for the internet to be monitoring itself, then we would be asking much the same question as your question about the human and in much the same way we would be making the same error.

In the same manner as the internet is not a singular object in which has a singular quality to monitor itself, but instead has mass arrays of NOC(C)'s and a variety of redundant relays and Bandwidth allocations and traffic-flow monitors, amplifiers, SNR regulators, Fiber, Coax, etc... spread throughout, variously, the planet physically; so too follows the human brain in like form.

It is an improper and incorrect question to the object in consideration.
One might as well walk up to a Foreman on a Skyscraper construction and ask them where the quality of "stable" is on the Skyscraper.

This whole attempt to discredit the thought process itself is an irrelevant semantic trick, which various people around here use to rubbish rational consideration of idealism, or spirituality in general. It is perfectly valid and rational to ask questions of agency, ontology and the nature of being in the light of humanity's lack of understanding of the basis of the existence it finds itself in.

It's not that the question is wrong; it is simply inapplicable.


Irrelevant.
If Blue Brain is crafted by human hands or accidentally somehow happened changes absolutely nothing about the nature of how it accomplishes sentient self aware identity.

Deferring to an argument from ignorance regarding the origin of all that exists is simply irrelevant to the question of whether or not the human brain satisfies the full description of sentient self aware identity with its physical construct - it does.

This is the wrong way round, we were already discussing this so called argument from ignorance before you came along and started discussing psychology. I have pointed out numerous times that I am not disputing the scientific understanding and explanation of the brain or body. I am merely considering if said body is being used as a vehicle by a monad.

Again, your comment here is like proposing that since one does not know how New York came to arrive specifically, that one cannot dismiss an entire list of philosophical possibilities for how the Skyscraper achieved a quality of "stability".

In much the same way as the origin of New York is not required to explain the stability of a Skyscraper, we do not require the origin of existence to explain the sentient self aware identity of a human brain.

Again, this is not in dispute(you should have put human mind, not human brain, the brain itself does not have sentient self aware identity).

Let me show you how your comment reads:

I am quite happy to accept your description of a Skyscraper, with stability emerging as a result of the physical constituents in the construction, but I see no reason to dismiss other explanations (for its stability), especially if they are philosophically consistent.

Repetition.

You may want to learn for a while before you begin to offer propositions and you may want to consider shifting fields from PHILOSOPHY to NEUROSCIENCE if your question is in regards to human sentient self aware identity and the perception of the "soul" or "spirit".

It was your idea to delve into neuroscience, not mine. I am not disputing the knowledge of neuroscience.

Just because you can think it, does not make it.
You still need to show it - not in argument - in reality.

This isn't an argument over the quality of beauty, or some other philosophical topic.

Well I suppose to a materialist we need an object to dissect before our eyes. If we were living in an idealist universe, we wouldn't experience anything different to the way we now do. Also we would not be able to compare it to a notional materialistic universe because we would not know what one was like, or if it was even possible for it to exist.

Essentially the materialist position on all this is an assumption, a pragmatic one, but an assumption all the same.

 

[JaysonR]

Nevermind.
You just dismissed everything outright centrally.
You are working from an out dated form of inquiry on the subject.
The amount of error and misconception involved here is too grand for me, considering your want.

One thing I will note, however: psychology is about behavior, neuroscience is biology.
Referring to neuroscience as psychology repeatedly conveys, among many other things - like that we do know the brain forms to experience and not the other way around, that your misconceptions are too vast.
I do not mean this as an insult.

I encourage you to learn much, much, much more about how the brain works if you are interested in this subject.
If not, well...enjoy the mental gymnastics I suppose.

 

[punshhh]

Nevermind.
You just dismissed everything outright centrally.
You are working from an out dated form of inquiry on the subject.
The amount of error and misconception involved here is too grand for me, considering your want.

One thing I will note, however: psychology is about behavior, neuroscience is biology.
Referring to neuroscience as psychology repeatedly conveys, among many other things - like that we do know the brain forms to experience and not the other way around, that your misconceptions are too vast.
I do not mean this as an insult.

I encourage you to learn much, much, much more about how the brain works if you are interested in this subject.
If not, well...enjoy the mental gymnastics I suppose.

I understand all that you have said, it's just not addressing my concerns. Also I didn't refer to neuroscience as psychology, you introduced both areas. As I said, I don't dispute the findings of either discipline.

Thanks anyway.

 

[JaysonR]

Again, misconceptions.

I'm sorry for interrupting your discourse.
*ducks out*

 

[Belz...]

That's because you misunderstand what I mean by "detectable" and "in principle". First, everything we detect, we do so through the interactions between two things. When I punch you in the face, you detect my fist by the impact and the bruise it leaves. When you eat chocolate, you detect it through the thing interacting with your taste buds, etc. This is true of everything. We cannot detect something that does not interact with anything, which is why neutrinos are so hard to pick up, as they rarely interact with stuff. Second, "in principle" means that it can be detected, not that we have the ability to do so at the time of this writing. For instance, if gravitons exist, they are detectable in principle, thought we have not detected them so far.



Of course we are. Discussing things that may exist in another universe but with which we can never interact or of which we can never have any knowledge is pointless. Entertaining, perhaps, but useless.



But you forget that the god interacted with the person by contacting them. There is no other way. Even if they used magic to move the guy's neurons around, the fact of the matter is that the neurons were moved, and we can, in principle, detect that.

Punshhh ?

 

[marplots]

That's because you misunderstand what I mean by "detectable" and "in principle". First, everything we detect, we do so through the interactions between two things. When I punch you in the face, you detect my fist by the impact and the bruise it leaves. When you eat chocolate, you detect it through the thing interacting with your taste buds, etc. This is true of everything. We cannot detect something that does not interact with anything, which is why neutrinos are so hard to pick up, as they rarely interact with stuff. Second, "in principle" means that it can be detected, not that we have the ability to do so at the time of this writing. For instance, if gravitons exist, they are detectable in principle, thought we have not detected them so far.
(snip)
But you forget that the god interacted with the person by contacting them. There is no other way. Even if they used magic to move the guy's neurons around, the fact of the matter is that the neurons were moved, and we can, in principle, detect that.

The problem isn't the detection bit, the problem is what comes next.

We don't just detect, we assign meaning and make theories out of what we find. This conceptualization is how we can also talk about abstracts and things we never detect. More often than not, we aren't just trying to figure out what happened, but what will happen next. Any prediction about the future is undetectable until the future arrives. But we do it, and we do it constantly.

Sometimes, we even make predictions and act to avoid something. If we are successful and that something never happens, we are quite glad never to have detected it at all.

 

[Belz...]

The problem isn't the detection bit, the problem is what comes next.

We don't just detect, we assign meaning and make theories out of what we find. This conceptualization is how we can also talk about abstracts and things we never detect. More often than not, we aren't just trying to figure out what happened, but what will happen next. Any prediction about the future is undetectable until the future arrives. But we do it, and we do it constantly.

I understand that but I don't think you grasped my point about falsifiability and detectability: it isn't about the actual detection, but the ability to detect; the ability to falsify. If you cannot detect of falsify something in principle, something's wrong with your hypothesis. If something interacts with anything in our reality, it is detectable in principle. Punshhh wants to have his cake and eat it by having something interact but be undetectable. That is a self-contradictory concept.