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The study of atoms in the brain doesn't explain the redness of red;Materialism = FAKE

Giordano said:
More stupid word play from the anti-reality contingent? Is that all they have?

I love art, I love vacations, I love science... Are any of these anything but well established ways of expressing a strong interest in something and that one obtains pleasure from participating in it? I love science. Does that imply some pathology on my part or that I am blind to negative aspects of science? Hardly. I love art too, but I view some art as bad art. I also love my wife, but, duh, I don't love science (or art) in the same way as I love my wife. More news: I love my kids as much as I love my wife, but not in the same way as I love my wife.

Stupid word play that fails to make any point at all.
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Love for your wife does not have the same consequences as love for art. Do you understand this?

Bad art does not have the same consequences as the bad practice of science. Do you understand this?

Well, if you understand it, I don't know what you're trying to argue. Does that I believe that the use of science can have -that is, is having- dire consequences for mankind bother you?
 
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bruto said:
It might have escaped you, but I think you're not the only one in the thread, and it is remotely possible that your understanding of what "we" are discussing is not shared by absolutely everyone.
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Believe me, your observation has me very worried. I thank you for your interest, but I would feel better if you contributed something to the debate rather than worrying about my lack of fans in this forum.
 
David Mo said:
Love for your wife does not have the same consequences as love for art. Do you understand this?

Bad art does not have the same consequences as the bad practice of science. Do you understand this?

Well, if you understand it, I don't know what you're trying to argue. Does that I believe that the use of science can have -that is, is having- dire consequences for mankind bother you?
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You don’t know what I am trying to argue? I don’t buy that. I clearly explained that love of art is not the same as love of my wife. That the word “love” in English encompasses very broad and different meanings. Which in fact is why love of art has different meanings, different implications, different “consequences” vs. love of my wife.

I also clearly explained that my love of art and of science doesn’t mean I can’t see the bad in both.

But this is silly arguing with any one who believes, or pretends to believe, that there is no difference in the meaning of the word love when applied to an enjoyment of art or science vs, the meaning when applied to one’s wife. Absurd, as well as a derail of the thread. Why not just respond to the more relevant posts that actually address and negate your OP?
 
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Even good art can contribute to genocide.

Yet no-one bats an eyelid when when someone talks of their love for art.
 
Robin said:
Even good art can contribute to genocide.

Yet no-one bats an eyelid when when someone talks of their love for art.
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Great point! Some propaganda is nonetheless visually “good” art. “Triumph of the Will” was an elegantly filmed movie that probably help convert many thousands to the Nazi cause.

Of course if one wishes to argue the deeper meanings of art... I hope they don’t do it in this thread.
 
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It's clear to me that you are starting with faulty premises. I'd argue we do know what matter is and we do know what consciousness is. 'Matter' is the label we give to materialistic objects whether it is a gas, a solid, a liquid or a plasma. Consciousness is an emergent property of select types of matter, most specifically an organic brain.

Does this mean we know all there is to know about either? No.

It seems to me, that there is an attempt to dismiss knowledge and understanding simply because we are always limited in both.
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By not knowing , I mean that we can not give a full account of both.

That is, all we can say is that : Matter (and quantum fields ...etc) and consciousness, are, well : matter and consciousness.

What are they? why do they exist? what is their ultimate reality? none of these questions is even remotely answerable or even graspable to our limited brains.

What I mean is that : If you don't know what is the nature of consciousness, and what is the nature of matter, they are still unknowns.


I am a skeptic, that is : I claim that we can never know what the ultimate reality of existence is... I mean it in a logical sense : knowledge is logically impossible.

To know A , you need to know B that contributes to its explanation, meaning, knowlege..etc.

Molecules are aggregations of atoms, we know what molecules are. Atoms are electrons interacting by means of Electromagnetism, protons, neutrons and interactions of them by means of Strong NF... Atoms are interacting particles.

What are particles? disturbances in the quantum fields?

What are the quantum fields? well : this we don't know.

Let's assume that we can know everything , it follows that quantum fields are A, and A is B, and B is C, and C is D... ad infinitum.

So, to know everything is to know an infinite number of elements, which is impossible : therefore, skepticism is true.

Let's assume that all has a meaning, all can be explained, except one thing Z

Y is Z .. but Z is not anything else.

Then it follows that it is possible to know everything, except Z ... Therefore, knowledge is impossible because 1 thing is unknowable , skepticism again, holds true. We are doomed to not knowing what the ultimate reality is all about.

In philosophy, when we say : Matter, we mean it in the sense of everything that is subject to physical laws : The laws of nature.

Quantum fields are "Matter" as far as the philosophy is concerned. What we mean by matter in physics is everything that takes space and time. Thus, energy is not matter in physics.

But in Philosophy, the term extands to anything physical : Energy, Atoms, Particles, Forces, Laws of nature, quantum fields...etc. Anything that can be described by means of its interaction with matter, with respect to physical laws, is matter.

And since we do not know what the Ultimate reality of existence is, it follows that we do not know what physical laws are, we do not know what the physical world is all about, we do not know what matter is all about.

On the other hand, we know what consciousness looks like, feels like, but we do not know what it is its nature or how it is produced , it's a mystery.

hence, two unknowns.
 
Cheetah said:
I’d argue you don’t even have to know what matter really is to understand consciousness.
All you need to understand is how the brain works on a cellular level.
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I agree, you have to understand how come that the brain integrates all the different processing results into one experience. There is this objective/subjective chasm too ... which is in my view irreducible.

But, to create another world, for what one calls a "soul" or "mind" , that is separate from and independent of the physical world, one has to know what matter and consciousness are in their ultimate nature to decide that there is can't be any causal relationship between the two, and to create a separate world for consciousness.

I mean, that we are still trying to understand the physical world, and what is possible and not possible in it. We cannot yet say for sure that matter (brain) is incapable of giving rise to qualia.

That's why all I can say that, it seems that brains are necessary for any conscious experience to exist : simply because all conscious beings have functional brains. Probably, consciousness is what it feels like to be a material brain, while the absence of it is what it feels like to be a chair, a table or a cup of coffee.
 
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MohamedTaqi said:
By not knowing , I mean that we can not give a full account of both.

That is, all we can say is that : Matter (and quantum fields ...etc) and consciousness, are, well : matter and consciousness.

What are they? why do they exist? what is their ultimate reality? none of these questions is even remotely answerable or even graspable to our limited brains.

What I mean is that : If you don't know what is the nature of consciousness, and what is the nature of matter, they are still unknowns.


I am a skeptic, that is : I claim that we can never know what the ultimate reality of existence is... I mean it in a logical sense : knowledge is logically impossible.

To know A , you need to know B that contributes to its explanation, meaning, knowlege..etc.

Molecules are aggregations of atoms, we know what molecules are. Atoms are electrons interacting by means of Electromagnetism, protons, neutrons and interactions of them by means of Strong NF... Atoms are interacting particles.

What are particles? disturbances in the quantum fields?

What are the quantum fields? well : this we don't know.

Let's assume that we can know everything , it follows that quantum fields are A, and A is B, and B is C, and C is D... ad infinitum.

So, to know everything is to know an infinite number of elements, which is impossible : therefore, skepticism is true.

Let's assume that all has a meaning, all can be explained, except one thing Z

Y is Z .. but Z is not anything else.

Then it follows that it is possible to know everything, except Z ... Therefore, knowledge is impossible because 1 thing is unknowable , skepticism again, holds true. We are doomed to not knowing what the ultimate reality is all about.

In philosophy, when we say : Matter, we mean it in the sense of everything that is subject to physical laws : The laws of nature.

Quantum fields are "Matter" as far as the philosophy is concerned. What we mean by matter in physics is everything that takes space and time. Thus, energy is not matter in physics.

But in Philosophy, the term extands to anything physical : Energy, Atoms, Particles, Forces, Laws of nature, quantum fields...etc. Anything that can be described by means of its interaction with matter, with respect to physical laws, is matter.

And since we do not know what the Ultimate reality of existence is, it follows that we do not know what physical laws are, we do not know what the physical world is all about, we do not know what matter is all about.

On the other hand, we know what consciousness looks like, feels like, but we do not know what it is its nature or how it is produced , it's a mystery.

hence, two unknowns.
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Sorry, you can't get there from here.

Saying we don't understand how matter originated, does not mean we don't understand what matter is. We absolutely do. The same is true with consciousness. Just because we don't know everything doesn't mean we don't know a lot and continue to learn.

I understand there are certain questions we can never fully answer because they will always lead to another question. This is the infinity paradox. There will always be something beyond.

Oh well.
 
MohamedTaqi said:
I agree, you have to understand how come that the brain integrates all the different processing results into one experience. There is this objective/subjective chasm too ... which is in my view irreducible.

But, to create another world, for what one calls a "soul" or "mind" , that is separate from and independent of the physical world, one has to know what matter and consciousness are in their ultimate nature to decide that there is can't be any causal relationship between the two, and to create a separate world for consciousness.
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Huh? Seems like you wrote a lot and said nothing.,
 
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Grind a car engine into dust then use the powder to describe how it makes a car move.
You can't? Well, I guess cars must be pushed by magical car ghosts then.

Sometimes reductionism simply isn't the right tool to explain a thing. Patterns and interactions of parts are real things, and they are things which do not always follow from just the raw matter of a system outside of any context. That does not mean that you can go from "you can't explain this using only a pile of atoms" to "therefore magic."
 
If he's that curious about why we see red, he should probably stop reading about atoms (by reading, I mean cherry-picking) and explore all the research done on rods and cones.
 
David Mo said:
No dear, we are discussing what kind of feeling science can provoke in a passionate lover. Don't lose sight of the thing behind the word.
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Are you certain about this? Because I don't think we are limiting our discussion to only what science CAN do, but rather are encompassing what we think it's POSSIBLE for science to do. This is because we are discussing materialism, and the universe isn't only material once science learns to do something. If materialism is true, it was also true yesterday regardless of what science knew, and the same goes for idealism.

So it's therefore pointless to make the claim "science can't make a person feel love, therefore materialism is false" because what happens if 10 years from now by hooking up electrodes to a persons brain they can LITERALLY make that person fall in love with someone else? Where would that leave your argument?

Instead, you would have to make the argument that it's literally impossible to ever replicate the feeling of a person falling in love. Ever. Even 10,000 years from now. Even if our knowledge of the brain was perfect, and we had the equivalent of a full users manual for our brain right down to the neuron level, you'd have to claim that we'd still have no idea what the sequence of neurons firing would need to be for someone to feel love.

Clearly that second one is asking for a LOT more then the first one, and that's why it's important to point this out. We are NOT discussing what we think science can currently do, rather we are discussing what we think science will ever be able to do, even given unlimited knowledge about our universe.

So, are you claiming that science cannot currently replicate the feeling of love (I would agree with this)? Or are you claiming that science will never, EVER be able to replicate the feeling of love (I would disagree with this)?
 
Giordano said:
Imagine some sand. Can it possibly talk to you, even ask questions and respond to your answers, without some sort of magic? Something non materialistic? But extract the silicon from the sand and make a transistor from it. Well, it can control an electrical current but still can't talk to you or answer your questions either! But connect together many transistors in the correct way with the right rules for how to interact (a program). Then hook up the resulting computer to the telephones at your credit card company. Call them up and, surprise, the silicon will answer your call and ask you some questions. It will then respond to your answers. All with a computer with a physical complexity that is a tiny fraction of that of your physical brain.
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This is simply a beautiful analogy. Bravo. :thumbsup:
 
Dave241 said:
So, are you claiming that science cannot currently replicate the feeling of love (I would agree with this)? Or are you claiming that science will never, EVER be able to replicate the feeling of love (I would disagree with this)?
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This may require a high standard - for example, the only way to really know if a thing/being feels love is to be that thing/being. Or, if that thing/being has a structure (biology?) analogous to myself, ie another human or mammal. Or, possibly if we can look under the hood and inspect the 'hardware' - is brain functioning being replicated, or is behavior being mimicked?
 
I like the very practical Turing test of if a machine is intelligent: if a person can’t, by asking questions, tell the difference between a computer and a human being then for most intents and purposes that computer is intelligent.

Frosts the shorts of people who seek more metaphysical criteria, of course.
 
Dave241 said:
So, are you claiming that science cannot currently replicate the feeling of love (I would agree with this)? Or are you claiming that science will never, EVER be able to replicate the feeling of love (I would disagree with this)?
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Oh, wow! I haven't tried to get into such a complicated subject. I was asking a simpler question: Is the love of science a kind of fetishism? Or if "love" is an appropriate verb to define a favorable feeling toward science.

About your dilemma:

I defend the first sentence. But I'm also leaning towards the second. Not because of a difficulty of principle, but because of the extreme difficulty of replicating a human brain. I see Stanislaw Lem's robots as a funny science fiction paradox, parables about humanity, not a real possibility. But it should be clear that I do not make predictions about the absolute limits of science, except for a few contradictions.

Anyway, if these humanoid robots had feelings, they'd be human instead of things. Right? And they would probably have the problem of consciousness and silicon circuits or something.
 
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