Materialism - Devastator of Scientific Method! / Observer Delusion

[Dancing David]

When we talk about our minds, we're talking about things: "My mind is made up". When we refer to our minds, we're also referring to places where thoughts occur, where we relive memories, experience emotions, etc. "That just popped into my mind".

those are things, they are processes generally called cognition or perceptions, no need for some kantian metaspace

If our minds are simply brain functionings, then you're going to end up where Nick is at: there is no you, no observer (no thing that observes)- only a bunch of brain functions that we (erroneously) have been categorizing as a thing that physically exists. When someone says "I'm afraid I'm losing my mind" we know what they mean. You would never say "I'm afraid I'm losing my running". If you had concerns about how fast you can run, you would talk about your legs, not "your running". And it's not like we're primitives talking about things we have no clue about. Even with all the knowledge we've accumulated, we still differentiate between mind and brain.

Um we discuss many things which may not have a realistic basis as an object.

there are bodies, those bodies have emotions, perceptions, thoughts, memories and habits.

Pretty simple.

But maybe you can explain Nick's argument to me. why is an 'I' or "mind" necessary for the scientific method?

 

[Dancing David]

That would be fine if we were zombies, but there's that pesky problem of experience. I have no problem with biochemical/neural activity causing mental states, but if you're claiming that my experience of pain is the same as a biochemical/neural state, you've completely missed the point of what pain is. Any definition of pain has to include the fact that pain feels bad. Saying pain is solely neurons XYZ doing activity ABC doesn't cut it.

Why is that perceptions are biochemical events, unless you can show experience absent an organic body.


PS I am a p-zombie

 

[Dancing David]

Gotta side with Fudbucker on this one -- this is basic 3rd person vs. 1st person, outside vs inside, objective vs subjective, in my understanding.

Natural language theory tells us something -- that something exists in the language means that it has seemed that way to people for a long time.

Against Fudbucker, I say -- mind is what brain does works for me.

The master speaks

 

[Fudbucker]

You not liking the answer isn't the same thing as it being wrong. If you hold the opinion that having a logical, real word reason for why you feel pain "cheapens" it that's your problem.

The actual real world reason "doesn't cut it" for you because you add stuff on that really doesn't mean anything.

The reason I don't like the answer is because it's incomplete. If you were trying to describe pain (or any experience) to some alien race, you would have to include the experiential content. You could blather on and on about neurons and nerve impulses, but eventually they're going to ask you what does pain feel like?, and you would have no answer. It's an unanswerable question: pain feels like pain. If you've experienced it, you know, if you haven't you have no clue.

Think of it this way: could you explain to a blind person what seeing is if you limited yourself to just talking about brain states, nerve impulses, biochemicals and neurons? Of course not. A person blind from birth will never understand what is to see unless they experience seeing. That is why your equating mental states with brain states fails. You can talk about brain states until you're blue in the face. The blind person will never have the faintest notion of what it's like to see.

The attempts by strict reductionists to handwave away experience as if it's irrelevant always amuses me. Didn't we used to have some members who would argue they were P-zombies?

ETA: LOL, David. I wrote that last part before reading your post.

 

[MRC_Hans]

The reason I don't like the answer is because it's incomplete. If you were trying to describe pain (or any experience) to some alien race, you would have to include the experiential content. You could blather on and on about neurons and nerve impulses, but eventually they're going to ask you what does pain feel like?, and you would have no answer. It's an unanswerable question: pain feels like pain. If you've experienced it, you know, if you haven't you have no clue.

So what? If an alien race does not know pain (highly improbable), then it is difficult to explain to them. So what? If a Chinese person walks up to me in London and asks for the way to Big Ben and he doesn't speak English (never mind how he managed to ask), then I can't explain the way to him, but Big Ben is just as real.

Think of it this way: could you explain to a blind person what seeing is if you limited yourself to just talking about brain states, nerve impulses, biochemicals and neurons? Of course not. A person blind from birth will never understand what is to see unless they experience seeing. That is why your equating mental states with brain states fails. You can talk about brain states until you're blue in the face. The blind person will never have the faintest notion of what it's like to see.

Same as above. This is completely irrelevant. You also can't explain it with mind states or anything else. If a concept, for whatever reason, is completely unknown to somebody, you can't really explain it to them, period. What the hell is that supposed to prove?

The attempts by strict reductionists to handwave away experience as if it's irrelevant always amuses me. Didn't we used to have some members who would argue they were P-zombies?

Of course it should amuse you. But does anybody do that? (I never noticed anybody do that.) Of course experience is relevant. However, experience is just our brain's ability to recognize patterns it has perceived before. Even a computer can be programmed to do that.

Well, if I say (like Dancing david) that I'm a P-zombie, how are you going to show me that I'm not?

Hans

 

[JoeMorgue]

Someone's gonna use the word "qualia" soon aren't they?

 

[Dancing David]

The attempts by strict reductionists to handwave away experience as if it's irrelevant always amuses me. Didn't we used to have some members who would argue they were P-zombies?

ETA: LOL, David. I wrote that last part before reading your post.

Well as the AHB (Alleged Historic Buddha) asks:
If you pluck out your eye do you see better?

This is about the atman, which is essentially the same thing as you argument, teh atman is the essence of self, and the same argument applies.

If there is this absolute experience, then why do you need a body?

So either you will agree that the experience is part of the organic process of the body or you can argue for duality.

Do you have another option?

 

[tsig]

Someone's gonna use the word "qualia" soon aren't they?

Isn't that what Fudbucker is talking about? That elusive, mystical, magical thing that happens when all the nerves are firing to send the right impulses to the brain.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

The reason I don't like the answer is because it's incomplete.

If you were trying to describe parity errors (or any experience) to some human, you would have to include the experiential content. You could blather on and on about registers and logic levels, but eventually they're going to ask you "what does a parity error feel like?", and you would have no answer. It's an unanswerable question: Errors feel like errors. If you've experienced it, you know, if you haven't you have no clue.

Think of it this way: could you explain to a blind robot what seeing is if you limited yourself to just talking about machine states, sensor impulses, processors and pixels? Of course not. A robot blind from manufacture will never understand what it is to see unless they experience seeing.

Didn't we used to have some members who would argue they were p-zombies?

P-Zombie - a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.

The implied objection is that humans must somehow be more than just a collection of atoms. But why can't consciousness etc. just be the natural result of interactions in a complex mechanism? Some day we will have 'sentient' robots that can tell how us they 'feel' and then this idea will be put to rest.

 

[Fudbucker]

So what? If an alien race does not know pain (highly improbable), then it is difficult to explain to them. So what? If a Chinese person walks up to me in London and asks for the way to Big Ben and he doesn't speak English (never mind how he managed to ask), then I can't explain the way to him, but Big Ben is just as real.



Same as above. This is completely irrelevant. You also can't explain it with mind states or anything else. If a concept, for whatever reason, is completely unknown to somebody, you can't really explain it to them, period. What the hell is that supposed to prove?



Of course it should amuse you. But does anybody do that? (I never noticed anybody do that.) Of course experience is relevant. However, experience is just our brain's ability to recognize patterns it has perceived before. Even a computer can be programmed to do that.

Well, if I say (like Dancing david) that I'm a P-zombie, how are you going to show me that I'm not?

Hans

It's entirely relevant. If mental states are the same as brain states, then knowledge of a brain state would be the same as knowledge of the corresponding mental state (and vice-versa). I.E., if a blind person knew everything there was to know about the physical process of seeing (nerve impulses, brain states, etc.), then that blind person would know what seeing is. I think that's ridiculous for obvious reasons: a blind person will never know what seeing is unless they experience it first-hand.

Therefore, mental states are not the same as brain states. They may be casually connected, but they're not equivalent. See: Mary's Room.

 

[Fudbucker]

If you were trying to describe parity errors (or any experience) to some human, you would have to include the experiential content. You could blather on and on about registers and logic levels, but eventually they're going to ask you "what does a parity error feel like?", and you would have no answer. It's an unanswerable question: Errors feel like errors. If you've experienced it, you know, if you haven't you have no clue.

Think of it this way: could you explain to a blind robot what seeing is if you limited yourself to just talking about machine states, sensor impulses, processors and pixels? Of course not. A robot blind from manufacture will never understand what it is to see unless they experience seeing.

P-Zombie - a hypothetical being that is indistinguishable from a normal human being except in that it lacks conscious experience, qualia, or sentience.

The implied objection is that humans must somehow be more than just a collection of atoms. But why can't consciousness etc. just be the natural result of interactions in a complex mechanism? Some day we will have 'sentient' robots that can tell how us they 'feel' and then this idea will be put to rest.

Why will it be put to rest? Just because something is programmed to tell you it has experiences doesn't mean it actually has experiences. We'll never know if machines have experiences, because the gap between machine experience (if such a thing even exists) and reported machine experience will never be bridged. There will always be the possibility that the machine isn't experiencing anything, despite its reports to the contrary.

 

[Fudbucker]

Well as the AHB (Alleged Historic Buddha) asks:
If you pluck out your eye do you see better?

This is about the atman, which is essentially the same thing as you argument, teh atman is the essence of self, and the same argument applies.

If there is this absolute experience, then why do you need a body?

So either you will agree that the experience is part of the organic process of the body or you can argue for duality.

Do you have another option?

I'm not a mystic. I just don't think mental states can be reduced to brain states. In mathematics, there is a similar problem: do numbers exist and, if so, what is the nature of their existence?
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/platonism-mathematics/

 

[MRC_Hans]

It's entirely relevant. If mental states are the same as brain states, then knowledge of a brain state would be the same as knowledge of the corresponding mental state (and vice-versa). I.E., if a blind person knew everything there was to know about the physical process of seeing (nerve impulses, brain states, etc.), then that blind person would know what seeing is. I think that's ridiculous for obvious reasons: a blind person will never know what seeing is unless they experience it first-hand.

No, its ridiculous for another reason: How would you explain your brain states to anybody? How would even a neurology specialist understand them? We are talking about the dynamic state of million of neurons.

It is simply a version of "when I can't explain it to somebody, it must be something mystic".

Therefore, mental states are not the same as brain states.

You have no idea. You can't even explain what mental states are or how they differ from brain states. It is an entirely arbitrary distinction.

Hans

 

[tsig]

Does materialism spell the end for scientific method? I've been pondering this question for some time. It looks like this...

* At least 99% of modern scientific research into the brain points directly to it being the sole source of consciousness. Pretty much every aspect of conscious experience has now been tracked to brain activity.

* Consciousness emerges from brain activity. It's what neural processing actually looks like, actually is.

* If the brain is the source, or foundation, for consciousness then there cannot actually be an observing self. Though it's a pervasive and convincing phenomena it can't be real, or we'd be back in dualism. If we tell a materialist that they're going to be painlessly and instantaneously killed, and replaced with an identical copy, in theory they should be OK with it. It seems like something is going to be lost - them - but materialist logic dictates that this cannot be so in reality.

* This seeming presence of an observing self is likely therefore some highly favoured illusion resulting from millions of years of selective pressure. It's useful primarily for evolutionarily favoured tasks - finding food, shelter, sex, and avoiding predators.

* If selfhood is merely a highly favoured illusion then what does this say about some of the cornerstones of scientific method, principles and techniques used to determine the truth about things? Surely perspective is finished. Objectivity must be in quite some trouble if there is in reality no subject. Separation - got to be an illusion. Distance - sounds dubious. These concepts, so much the bare bones of our daily existence, must just be artifacts of our hunter-gatherer past, not reflections of reality. Even empiricism, perhaps not blown away, but surely weakened now.

Materialism - could it spell the end of science?

Nick

Yet science goes on regardless of the word play.

 

[Aridas]

As I said to you before, Myriad, it's red pill, blue pill. You have to look for yourself for this one.

If your mind accepts a selfless reality, either as the logical extension of materialism, or as the result of subjective analysis, then it will change. The core program that it's been running from early childhood, running for so long it's unaware that it's just a program, is realized for what it is. It can still run the program, play the game. There's not a problem with that. But a deeper awareness is present also.

Deeper awareness? It sounds like it would be a deeper understanding, at best. More properly, it just sounds like a different perspective to look at things with. One that... doesn't really change much of anything functionally.

What's your position? If you could push a button and be painlessly dematerialized, and an identical copy in that moment created, would you be OK with it? Do you accept that if nothing material is lost then nothing is lost?

I'm not Myriad, but... for me, it'd be situational and based on the actual evidence available. In other words, there would need to be good reason to do it in the first place, likely in the form of some notable gain overall and the method would need to have been fairly well tested already and seem to be safe in a similar way to flying on a commercial airplane is safe.

Separately, it's worth noting that if one does believe in souls and/or other non-material parts of oneself, it should also be quite easy to believe that the non-material can move to the place of the "copy." It's not all that logical to demand that non-material things follow the same rules as material things seem to follow, after all.

Do you want to know reality? Or do you want continue believing there really is someone observing?

What actually counts as "someone?" From what I've seen so far, it sounds like you just want to arbitrarily declare that there is no someone and justifying your declaration by forwarding a definition of "someone" that would be completely irrelevant to the actual issues you're claiming that you want to address.

Myriad,

You want to know what it looks like before you go there. This is the nature of the memeplex-dominated mind. It wants a preview and it wants to negotiate.

But because in reality there actually is nothing it is like to be you, it is simply not possible to get a preview. So, yes, of course it will be your choice.
You can hold yourself hostage, or you can jump...

... Me too!

Advocating blind faith is not likely to get you too far here. Even moreso when your proposition seems fairly useless in comparison to other ones available.

You are the same person. That's materialism.

You are aware of the Ship of Theseus exercise, right? I'd rather suggest that you're inappropriately assuming incorrect things about the philosophy surrounding materialism.

couple of possibilities...

Ruthless materialist investigation into this so-called observing self that is experiencing consciousness.

or

Ruthless subjective investigation into this so-called observing self that is experiencing consciousness

Those are not at all mutually exclusive. Rather, they seem like they'd be complementary. Also of note is that your proposed paradigm sounds like it would neither add to nor even change anything conceptually when it comes to said investigation, which brings one back to the underlying question of "what actual merits do the paradigm that you're pushing have?"

I'm saying the significance of scientific method collapses under materialism. I'm not saying the behaviour of undertaking science changes.

Based on your argument, it sounds more like you're actually saying that the significance of everything relevant to people collapses under materialism, which may indeed be true, to a certain extent, if you're comparing it to some other possibilities. Trying to limit the effects to the scientific method reeks of special pleading, though, and suggests that you're trying to whitewash over the rest of the relevant questions about the meaningfulness of the differences as well, if you had even thought that far.

The basis for this is that there's no scientific proof for it and no scientifically valid method of action. What materialism actually asserts here is that THIS DOESN'T MATTER!

...Materialism doesn't even remotely assert that at all, no matter how much you try to twist and turn to try to claim it. Frankly speaking, your argument seems to be on par with an argument like "Mothers have babies knowing they will die, therefore they are evil beings that want nothing more than to add to the amount of corpses." With such overwhelming inaccuracy, why should anyone even begin to take you seriously?

 

[Kid Eager]

Yet science goes on regardless of the word play.

And nothing can save homeopathy from its own inadequacies, not even a Wookie Defence.

 

[JoeMorgue]

So basically "Since I don't understand how science works, I'm gonna assign you to some Philosophical Fandom based on a distinction I'm the only one making, and assign traits to you based on this Philosophical Fandom to show you live in some sort of meaningless limbo, therefore Woo."

"Oh you don't believe that the moon is made of green cheese? Well I expect nothing less from a post-Calvinist Dualist Postmodernist! And you know what post-Calvinist Dualist Postmodernist believe? That kittens aren't adorable!"

 

[tsig]

So basically "Since I don't understand how science works, I'm gonna assign you to some Philosophical Fandom based on a distinction I'm the only one making, and assign traits to you based on this Philosophical Fandom to show you live in some sort of meaningless limbo, therefore Woo."

"Oh you don't believe that the moon is made of green cheese? Well I expect nothing less from a post-Calvinist Dualist Postmodernist! And you know what post-Calvinist Dualist Postmodernist believe? That kittens aren't adorable!"

How about p-zombie kittens? Do they have qualia?

Wait, kittens and philosophers chase their tails so are philosophers p z kittens with qualia infused?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Your heart pumps blood. That's what it does. And that's where the question ends. You don't have a crisis of faith over why the heart pumps blood. You don't whine about how a rational description of its process ruins the magic of your heart beating and their just has to be more to it. You don't break down into an existential crisis over where the process of pumping is gonna go when your heart stops beating.

Your liver filters toxins. That's what it does. And that's where the question ends. You don't have a crisis of faith over why the liver filters toxins. You don't whine about how a rational description of its process ruins the magic of your liver filtering toxins and their just has to be more to it. You don't break down into an existential crisis over where process of filtering is gonna go when your liver stops.

Your stomach digests food. That's what it does. And that's where the question ends. You don't have a crisis of faith over why the stomach digests food. You don't whine about how a rational description of its process ruins the magic of your stomach digesting and their just has to be more to it. You don't break down into an existential crisis over where the process of digestion is gonna go when your stomach stop working.

Your brain processes information. That's what it does. And that's where the question should end there as well.

 

[marplots]

Gee wiz, I sure hope my doctor doesn't agree that the questions end quite so quickly as that.