Materialism - Devastator of Scientific Method! / Observer Delusion

[Paul2]

So it's been almost 40 pages now. Any arguments that aren't just:

1. Deny that the thing that is demonstratively doing the observer is "the observer" creating a meaningless semantic paradox where observations exists but nothing exists to observe them.
2. Silly word games
3. Meaningless semantics.
4. Just straight up denying that any understand of how the mind works or functions actually exist.

You make it sound like those are bad things.

 

[BadBoy]

Again, I'm assuming you guys don't include plants in this discussion of "every single other LIFE FORM on the planet."



http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150211-whats-the-most-dominant-life-form

Obviously that was partly a throwaway line, but we are all part of a food chain, remember that from high school? Lions presumably would die out because they would not be able to catch anything and the preponderance of Antelope would presumably mean some plants would be eaten to extinction and then the insects and other creatures that depend on that habitat etc etc. chaos would prevail.

But really this is a silly argument and I was being ironic/deliberately obtuse because of course life could have never been able to evolve successfully if it was not able to interact with it's environment/perceived reality as it really exists. I can't prove that of course but it's pretty clear by now that we have adapted to survive in the "real" world we live in.

Of course I guess if we do not actually perceive reality as it really is but have survived anyway, then presumably it's because our perception of our reality is entirely self consistent, in fact it has to be, including how we develop and interpret our scientific experiments. So to all intense and purposes it makes no difference if reality is different from what we perceive as long as our science works consistently.

This is a scientific question and should be approached scientifically and until we find some evidence that what we are perceiving is an illusion (the matrix :0) then its business as usual IMHO.

 

[truethat]

If it was it was stupid. Anyone who treats humans as the superior evolutionary species on the planet is an idiot.

 

[BadBoy]

If it was it was stupid. Anyone who treats humans as the superior evolutionary species on the planet is an idiot.

what? If what was - what are you talking about?

 

[tsig]

If it was it was stupid. Anyone who treats humans as the superior evolutionary species on the planet is an idiot.

I see, you are reading another forum and then answering here, right? That's the only explanation I can find for the fact that your posts aren't responsive to what's posted.

 

[truethat]

Now how did that happen? Oh well. My bad. Sorry guys.

 

[Nick227]

The brain is the observer.



The point is not the issue. That's just optics. The brain processes the information. It observes.

Hans,

It is meaningless to try and reverse-engineer an observer in this fashion. Better to look at the implications, if you ask me, than simply seek a back door.

 

[Nick227]

If our senses did not accurately reflect reality it would be hard to avoid walking off cliffs or being eaten by lions.

tsig,

I am not saying that representations don't help us survive and have sex. That is precisely what they do. That is precisely what evolution has engineered them to do.

But... as Don Hoffman for one has asserted, in situations where you can test fitness against accuracy... fitness always wins. The brain represents according to fitness not accuracy.

Scientists are using a brain that evolved to be highly effective for eating, killing and shagging to try and discern the truth of our existence. And you're saying there's absolutely no need to check calibration.

Allow me to quote an acknowledged expert in this field...

...what we experience as a conscious visual scene is a highly processed image, quite different from the raw input that we perceive from the eyes. We never see the world as our retina sees it. In fact, it would be a pretty horrible sight: a highly distorted set of light and dark pixels, blown up toward the centre of the retina, masked by blood vessels, with a massive hole at the location of the "blind spot" where cables leave for the brain; the image would constantly blur and change as our gaze moved around. What we see, instead, is a three-dimensional scene, corrected for retinal defects, mended at the blind spot, stabilised for our eye and head movements, and massively reinterpreted based on our previous experience of similar visual scenes... bold mine, S. Dehaene 2012

... and he's not even starting in on fitness and adaptation yet...

 

[Nick227]

I don't think most people in the thread actually understand what you are talking about. Hang in there. LOL

Well, I pop back now and again to watch a few skeptics writhing about in their delusional state.

What's the latest I see - representations must be accurate because they help us survive!? A perspective that has been thoroughly mauled itself by Donald Hoffman.

Still, it's nice to see tsig, mojo and others taking time to preserve archaic viewpoints and trying to make sure these memes continue in the 21st century.

 

[Mojo]

Still, it's nice to see tsig, mojo and others taking time to preserve archaic viewpoints and trying to make sure these memes continue in the 21st century.

Or at least it would be if you could see it. The unreliability of observation makes it rather doubtful that you can, for several reasons.

 

[Nick227]

I still maintain if there was a significant difference between what we observe to be real, and actual reality, the human race would have died out long ago, as would probably every other life form on the planet.

Please put the following search term into google and then repost - "Natural Selection Drives True Perception To Swift Extinction - Donald D. Hoffman"

 

[Nick227]

How, exactly, does monist materialism conflict with the concept (or the reality...or the reality of the concept) of 'a point of observation'?

It conflicts with the reality of it.

A system that conforms to monist materialism can't have a point of observation within it. Philosophically it's an impossibility. And, physically, it would need to exist inside the brain and we know it's not there.

But... given that the appearance of a point of observation is favoured, so the brain does the next best thing... it assembles the visual field to constantly suggest that there is a point of observation back behind the eyes. It deceives itself because this deception is favoured. The capacity to deceive itself gives the brain considerable adaptive advantage.

 

[Nick227]

In any case, Nick227 has said that he is quite happy to accept this sort of observation, or even science itself, as reliable for everyday purposes, such as aiding survival or "being used to make human needs more easier to fulfil".

Yes, illusory constructs can have immense functionality. That is why the brain protects itself from conscious realization of the illusion.

Indeed consciousness itself may actually be nearly pure illusion - an apparently coherent awareness, barely any of its supposed qualities real, but offering immense adaptive advantage.

It's just when observation might tell him something he doesn't want to know, such as that homeopathy doesn't work, that he becomes concerned that observation is unreliable.

Well, I leave your little back-door, Mojo, as my daily act of charity.

 

[Aridas]

Hans,

It is meaningless to try and reverse-engineer an observer in this fashion. Better to look at the implications, if you ask me, than simply seek a back door.

Again, this somewhat begs the question of what is actually meant by "observer" before any implications can be determined. "One who sees" is not actually going to help with that all that much, especially when you've tried to claim that processing cannot be what seeing actually is, despite the fact that all forms of observation must be processing of some kind to qualify as observation in the first place. Yes, you've agreed with observing equals processing since, but you've completely failed to state a valid version of how you're trying to use various words both before and after that, much less one that would actually be relevant to the points that you've attempted to make. Nor, for that matter, will you be able to reach the implications for science that you've tried to reach in a valid manner, regardless of what you mean by observer. Sure, there will very likely be some implications and things of some note that will proceed from the verification that fitness is favored when it comes to evolved perception, but nothing of significant note to the scientific method itself or to most fields of science is on the potential table there, quite frankly.

Scientists are using a brain that evolved to be highly effective for eating, killing and shagging to try and discern the truth of our existence. And you're saying there's absolutely no need to check calibration.

As nice as this sounds, when taken alone... that's not a particularly fair or correct representation of what you've actually been pushing, for the most part, which rather lessens any impact you intended to get out of it. Yeah, checking/understanding the calibration is a good thing to do. Effectively suggesting that, when the potential range of values is from 1 to 97.8, it might actually be 150 and thus we should consider implications X, Y, and Z from that possibility being the case as something to take into account isn't going to get you all that far, though. As it stands, either way, a slightly truer version of the first part of the quoted would likely be that scientists are applying certain functions of the brain that are important parts of what makes it "highly effective for eating, killing and shagging" in the ways that they evolved to be effective to try and discern the truth of our existence. Checking calibration is one thing, trying to push implications that cannot theoretically be valid is another, and trying to back such up with nonsensical word usage is yet another.

It conflicts with the reality of it.

Only if it's a nonsensical definition of the term to try to apply in the first place, especially with regards to the implications that you're trying to attach to it, which is one of the reasons you've run into the opposition that you have.

 

[Mojo]

Scientists are using a brain that evolved to be highly effective for eating, killing and shagging to try and discern the truth of our existence.

So are philosophers.

 

[Nick227]

Only if it's a nonsensical definition of the term to try to apply in the first place, especially with regards to the implications that you're trying to attach to it, which is one of the reasons you've run into the opposition that you have.

Aridas,

It is a physical impossibility to have a point of observation in a monist system. It simply cannot be done. The best you can do is make it appear that a point exists by constructing visual representations to suggest this through perspective.

By "observer" I mean someone observing. I mean the notion that someone is looking at this. When Fudbucker writes that only he can see his subjective world, that this is not correct under materialism. No one sees it. I mean that when for example Descartes or Tononi state that "the only thing I can be sure of is that I am conscious" they are actually in error.

 

[Nick227]

Only if it's a nonsensical definition of the term to try to apply in the first place, especially with regards to the implications that you're trying to attach to it, which is one of the reasons you've run into the opposition that you have.

Aridas,

It is a physical impossibility to have a point of observation in a monist system. It simply cannot be done. The best you can do is make it appear that a point exists by constructing visual representations to suggest this through perspective.

By "observer" I mean someone observing. I mean the notion that someone is looking at this. When Fudbucker writes that only he can see his subjective world, that this is not correct under materialism. No one sees it. I mean that when for example Descartes or Tononi state that "the only thing I can be sure of is that I am conscious" they are actually in error.

Neural representations exist. Qualia exist. The illusion of them being experienced by someone is very highly favoured.

 

[tsig]

Aridas,

It is a physical impossibility to have a point of observation in a monist system. It simply cannot be done. The best you can do is make it appear that a point exists by constructing visual representations to suggest this through perspective.

By "observer" I mean someone observing. I mean the notion that someone is looking at this. When Fudbucker writes that only he can see his subjective world, that this is not correct under materialism. No one sees it. I mean that when for example Descartes or Tononi state that "the only thing I can be sure of is that I am conscious" they are actually in error.

Eye see what yo did there.

Who is this "I" that does not exist? Seeing it does not see, observing it does not observe, nothing to nothing and all is nothing.

 

[Navigator]

Eye see what yo did there.

Who is this "I" that does not exist? Seeing it does not see, observing it does not observe, nothing to nothing and all is nothing.

Aye.

 

[Aridas]

Aridas,

It is a physical impossibility to have a point of observation in a monist system. It simply cannot be done. The best you can do is make it appear that a point exists by constructing visual representations to suggest this through perspective.

You may as well say that it is a physical impossibility to have a point of observation under any system that doesn't invoke magic or fallacious reasoning, then, if that's the bar and line of argument that you're using. You've claimed that under dualism, things are magically different, but have yet to demonstrate why your claim would be any less effective when it comes to dualism. For that matter, going by your actual mentioned descriptions, under dualism, the "observer" is even less of an observer by the arguments that you've used to try to claim that there cannot be an observer in a monist system.

In short, your claimed version is utterly nonsensical to use in the first place, both with regards to its nature, itself, and to your attempted application of it.

By "observer" I mean someone observing. I mean the notion that someone is looking at this. When Fudbucker writes that only he can see his subjective world, that this is not correct under materialism. No one sees it. I mean that when for example Descartes or Tononi state that "the only thing I can be sure of is that I am conscious" they are actually in error.

Only when you similarly use nonsensical versions of the relevant words.

Neural representations exist. Qualia exist. The illusion of them being experienced by someone is very highly favoured.

And you seem to have remarkable difficulty with what actually constitutes "someone." The "illusion" you mention is, at very best, only a part of what constitutes "someone," so continually focusing on that and trying to ignore the rest keeps getting you in trouble.