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

[Wudang]

You're not only wrong, but obviously wrong. Ticking is a behavior that is completely absent from the constituent elements of the system. Either agree to that or tell me which constituent part of a clock ticks more simply than a whole clock.



Not as long as you don't understand what "emergent" means, no.

Exactly.

In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own. These properties or behaviors emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole. For example, smooth forward motion emerges when a bicycle and its rider interoperate, but neither part can produce the behavior on their own.

 

[shuttlt]

The fault is probably in my powers of explanation, but I don't think you guys understand what qualia are. Further conversation here is pointless.

 

[Dave Rogers]

The fault is probably in my powers of explanation, but I don't think you guys understand what qualia are.

And several of us are quite certain you don't understand what emergent properties are.

Further conversation here is pointless.

You're probably right.

Dave

 

[shuttlt]

And several of us are quite certain you don't understand what emergent properties are.

I understand the sense it which you are using them.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I understand the sense it which you are using them.

You've repeatedly demonstrated that you don't. Bizarrely, you've then claimed that this lack of understanding is a point in your favour.

Dave

 

[Robin]

Could you recommend a couple of articles on those progress?

Possibly you are misunderstanding my post, I am saying that the progress is often exaggerated.

 

[David Mo]

Possibly you are misunderstanding my post, I am saying that the progress is often exaggerated.

Sorry, my question was actually directed to arthwollipot. I crossed comments.

 

[David Mo]

Most peoples' understanding of neuroscience tends to be at least 10-15 years out of date.

Could you recommend a couple of articles on progress of neuroscience in these dates? Thank you.

 

[LarryS]

If I were to select a movie without you knowing which one, muted the volume and displayed only a single pixel on a monitor, could you tell me what the actors are saying? No. You couldn’t even deduce it in principle because you’d only be looking at a tiny tiny fraction of the whole. You wouldn’t have enough information.

So it is with consciousness. We don’t have enough information.

Maybe you're right - thus the claim we know the brain is sufficient to explain consciousness is hasty.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Maybe you're right - thus the claim we know the brain is sufficient to explain consciousness is hasty.

All claims are provisional, and I think it's fair to say that we do not know the details of a process by which consciousness arises from the functioning of the brain. Having said that, the absence of credible evidence of any form of consciousness in the absence of a brain is consistent with the assumption that consciousness is an emergent property of a functioning brain, and this assumption is more parsimonious than the assumption that there is some other, non-material component to consciousness that is capable of interacting with the material component of a living brain, though with no other form of matter. It is, therefore, the assumption I'll proceed under until evidence suggests otherwise.

Dave

 

[Darat]

All claims are provisional, and I think it's fair to say that we do not know the details of a process by which consciousness arises from the functioning of the brain. Having said that, the absence of credible evidence of any form of consciousness in the absence of a brain is consistent with the assumption that consciousness is an emergent property of a functioning brain, and this assumption is more parsimonious than the assumption that there is some other, non-material component to consciousness that is capable of interacting with the material component of a living brain, though with no other form of matter. It is, therefore, the assumption I'll proceed under until evidence suggests otherwise.

Dave

Don't forget it goes beyond that, we know damage to certain areas of the brain will alter consciousnesses in the same way in different people.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Don't forget it goes beyond that, we know damage to certain areas of the brain will alter consciousnesses in the same way in different people.

No. That tamping rod must of hit Phineas Gage in the soul somehow.

 

[LarryS]

All claims are provisional, and I think it's fair to say that we do not know the details of a process by which consciousness arises from the functioning of the brain. Having said that, the absence of credible evidence of any form of consciousness in the absence of a brain is consistent with the assumption that consciousness is an emergent property of a functioning brain, and this assumption is more parsimonious than the assumption that there is some other, non-material component to consciousness that is capable of interacting with the material component of a living brain, though with no other form of matter. It is, therefore, the assumption I'll proceed under until evidence suggests otherwise.

Dave

Fair enough . . . I also have not thrown in the towel regarding physicalism. However, even a billion data points of coorelation do not add up to causation. For example, just because fish are only found in water, and we can't see a mechanism how fish could come from water, doesn't mean we can claim fish are an emergent property of water.

 

[Dave Rogers]

Fair enough . . . I also have not thrown in the towel regarding physicalism. However, even a billion data points of coorelation do not add up to causation. For example, just because fish are only found in water, and we can't see a mechanism how fish could come from water, doesn't mean we can claim fish are an emergent property of water.

Not a good example. We know a lot about the nature and the origins of fish. Some kinds can be found outside water. We know that removing or modifying part of the water doesn't have an effect on the nature of the fish within it. And it's also misleading to say "because we can't see a mechanism"; we know perfectly well the mechanism by which a clock exhibits the emergent behavior of ticking.

What is rather more important, though, is that there isn't even that correlation to support theories of non-material consciousness. In the absence of proof, all the evidence, however unconvincing some may find it, is on the side of physicalism; this thread is evidence of the mental gymnastics required even to construct an argument that physicalism may not be the complete picture, and even that doesn't begin to offer evidence for any other explanation of consciousness. The argument of the OP seems to take the form "You can't prove conclusively that you're right, therefore I am;" I hope we all see that for the non sequitur it is.

Dave

 

[LarryS]

Not a good example. We know a lot about the nature and the origins of fish. Some kinds can be found outside water. We know that removing or modifying part of the water doesn't have an effect on the nature of the fish within it. And it's also misleading to say "because we can't see a mechanism"; we know perfectly well the mechanism by which a clock exhibits the emergent behavior of ticking.

What is rather more important, though, is that there isn't even that correlation to support theories of non-material consciousness. In the absence of proof, all the evidence, however unconvincing some may find it, is on the side of physicalism; this thread is evidence of the mental gymnastics required even to construct an argument that physicalism may not be the complete picture, and even that doesn't begin to offer evidence for any other explanation of consciousness. The argument of the OP seems to take the form "You can't prove conclusively that you're right, therefore I am;" I hope we all see that for the non sequitur it is.

Dave

I can prove fish are an emergent property of water . . . I can throw a certain bait over there and it will produce a rainbow trout, and this lure over there will produce a musky, and a stick of dynamite thrown there . . . I can probe water thus and thus . . . and so on.
Take the water away no more fish are produced. Fish are an emergent property of water.
(An analogy to demonstrate the limits of coorelations and the 'dangers' of not maintaining a high degree of caution - which surprises me. Folks such as yourself seem to have an above normal quotient of caution but are willing to throw caution to the wind regarding brain and consciousness.)

 

[JoeMorgue]

"Emergent property" is a bad term because it sounds like magic to so many people.

We're talking simple cause and effect. A fully, normally functioning brain produces a working process that is a functioning mind, the same way a clock produces ticking. Like I keep saying you don't take apart the clock hoping to find "the ticking" as some discrete, actual thing that exists in the clock that you can hold up in your hand.

All of this stupid, manufactured existential crisis word salad disappears in a puff if you just accept that "you" are a process, not a thing.

"No because I'm a person and I just have to be more than a collection of parts, there just has to be more to it than that or I'm not special and my life doesn't have meaning" isn't a valid argument, not matter the history and theatrics.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I can prove fish are an emergent property of water . . .

No, you can't prove anything by simply being facetious.

Folks such as yourself seem to have an above normal quotient of caution but are willing to throw caution to the wind regarding brain and consciousness.

Not at all. All the evidence is consistent with the assumption that consciousness is a property of the brain, and no other, better assumption is on offer. The only sensible response is to draw the provisional conclusion that consciousness is a property of the brain until evidence suggests otherwise. If a better option comes along, tell me about it.

Dave

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

I think I am getting the meaning of qualia a bit better, now:

You, I and the augmented blind person all experience red. It's essentially the same experience, because the red we observe is (presumably) the same.

From this each of us gain a memory experience, a quale, of that particular red.

What is meant by the term quale and qualia are the actual experiences of seeing red you all are having when you're having them. If you gain a memory experience and visualize it in your mind's eye, that's also a quale when you are doing the actual visualizing. For example, I can tell someone to visualize blue and they'll visualize blue. Then I can ask them whether it is more of a sky blue or a VISA credit card blue, or a SKYY vodka bottle blue. What we're discussing are aspects of the quale.

Another way to think of it for most people is they feel that they exist somewhere behind their eyes. They call this entity "I" or "me". I think this entity is an illusion of sorts, but that is a digression. So this self has first person impressions and experiences almost as if it's watching a move of reality or something similar. These are what are called qualia. Sometimes we know they're not representative of reality, as in optical illusions or in the case where a 'red' sweater looks a different color under different lighting. Some of us, unlike Darat if we understand each other correctly, can play a made up movie on our own like in the example of blue which i gave above. These are also qualia because we are having the experience of seeing red, but without actually seeing red. In other words, there is nothing red in the external world we are looking at.

If you're familiar with the work of Kant, he referred to the noumenal word (or things as they really were) versus the phenomenal world (things as we directly experience them, mediated by our senses). We know the phenomenal world is not the same as the noumenal world. Not by a long shot.

In most cases you can just use that sense of the word phenomena as an analogue to qualia, with the additional understanding that many of us don't need the external world noumenon to experience the qualia.

Those may be different, as our observation channels (eyes, added technology) are not identical, and we cannot readily compare them.

- In fact methods can be deviced that allow for some comparison of many kinds of qualia, but it may never be an exact science.

I think we may never be able to observe them in principle. Our qualia may be wildly different and it would not matter in the external world. The inverted spectrum thought experiment is only one example of this.

Also, many on here keep insisting that qualia are 'really just atoms' or 'chemical processes' in the brain. I haven't read the entire thread, but there is nothing about using the word qualia that commits or even encourages one to believe in any particular explanation of what they are or represent.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

And several of us are quite certain you don't understand what emergent properties are.

I think I understand them pretty well. The top speed of a car is my favorite example. If I remember correctly, I got that one from GEB.

 

[Dave Rogers]

I haven't read the entire thread, but there is nothing about using the word qualia that commits or even encourages one to believe in any particular explanation of what they are or represent.

The OP, I think, would read "Qualia exist and cannot be explained by materialism, therefore materialism is a false description of reality" if it were more coherently stated. One possible reason why it wasn't is that it's an argument from ignorance in the purest form.

Dave