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

[Dave241]

I am a skeptic .. I claim that our understanding of physics will never be sufficient .

NEVER? Then you are arguing that magic exists. Either physics is able to explain a certain process, or that process violates the laws of physics. Right?

Everything is physical (that is, a product or emergent phenomenon of physics) .. But not everything can be known to us.

Oh, well here is our disagreement right there. I claim that there is nothing in physics which can't be known to us. Claiming otherwise is to claim that magic exists.

Tell me, do you really believe that given unlimited advancement we still wouldn't be able to replicate or understand the human brain? Even 10,000 years from now? 10 million? 10 billion? Why?

........To make things simple : even if you have a relatively simple example : an atom, you cannot start from the premise on how an atom works, to conclude that an atom has no subjective experience of itself.

If you properly understand how an atom works, and you properly understand what is required for a subjective experience, then yes you absolutely can. For instance, if we are able to replicate the process of consciousness to such a degree that we can say "a subjective experience requires a minimum of 13 million interactions", and we know an atom has only 4 interacting parts, then that will PROVE that it's not possible for a single atom to have a subjective experience, as it lacks enough parts. In much the same way that we can conclude that a single bit on a computer does not have enough parts to run Microsoft Office. But the only reason we can conclude that is because we understand both of them well enough.

My point isn't that we do understand them well enough to conclude that, but rather to try to get you to admit that your statement of "we can't know if an atom has a subjective experience" is, in principal, a false statement. The only way out of this is to claim that certain laws of physics are literally impossible to know. Again, this is the equivalent of magic.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Oh, well here is our disagreement right there. I claim that there is nothing in physics which can't be known to us. Claiming otherwise is to claim that magic exists

Did you miss all the times physics has shown us things that can’t be known?

Also, no-one really cares or should care about what you or anyone claims. Unless you’re able to somehow present those claim as matching with reality in some way.

 

[Dave241]

Did you miss all the times physics has shown us things that can’t be known?

Evidently I did. Care to explain? (Keep in mind there is a difference between "not currently known" and "can't be known".)

Also, no-one really cares or should care about what you or anyone claims. Unless you’re able to somehow present those claim as matching with reality in some way.

Great. So the claim was that there are things in physics that are literally impossible to know. I was refuting that claim. I also can't see anyway in which that claim matches to reality. So, even after you pointed this out I still feel fully comfortable in refuting the claim.

Also, when you have time could you reply to this thing I asked you? Thanks:

Ok, please tell me the difference between these 2 scenarios. If you can, I think I'll have a better idea of what you think is still missing:

1) A persons eye detects some photons, and based only on the wavelengths and frequencies of the electromagnetic waves it sends a signal to the persons brain. The persons brain then interprets those signals to be an image that their eyes just detected, and they have the experience of seeing whatever their eyes where pointed at.

2) A computer chip detects some photons, and based only on the wavelengths and frequencies of the electromagnetic waves it sends a signal to the persons brain. The persons brain then interprets those signals to be an image that the computer chip just detected, and they have the experience of seeing whatever the computer chip was pointed at.

What is the difference?

 

[Dave241]

Just like trying to use a 3d printer to print itself, the part that is used to print it will never be printed. It will print itself, except that part. That's how I imagine the gap.

https://3dprint.com/63229/dollo-3d-printer-prints-itself/

https://reprap.org/wiki/RepRap


It appears you are wrong about that.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Look at QM, the most empirically tested and verified field of physics. One of many examples is that the conjunction of the position and velocity of a particle cannot be known. Not just can’t be known using our current technology, but cannot be known in principle.

Also if your physics equations can tell me who will win the 2020 Super Bowl and how ticker symbol ADVS will do in the next six months, I’d appreciate it.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

There’s really no difference in the two scenarios you presented except that the natural eye component is swapped out.

You could also have a guy with some probes who looks at stuff. If he sees red, he pokes the probes in a certain way. If he sees blue, he pokes them in another way. So he’s effectively acting as the eyes of the blind person who can now see red and blue.

Theoretically, if you’re just spitballing, you can substitute all sorts of stuff for the eyes.

 

[Dave241]

The claim that science explains everything is an illogical absurdity. Science cannot predict the next word I'm going to write.

Yes it can:

https://qz.com/1569158/neuroscientists-read-unconscious-brain-activity-to-predict-decisions/

Science cannot explain in terms of neurons why my sister is a better poet than I am.

Looks like it can do that too:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191204145758.htm

The claim that science explains everything is an illogical absurdity.

The claim is that science could explain anything, not that science does explain everything. Or rather, I am disputing the claim that you can name a thing that is literally impossible for science to ever explain, even given unlimited advancement. Provided that's not possible to do, then yes anything you can name will eventually be explained by science given enough time.

 

[Dave241]

Look at QM, the most empirically tested and verified field of physics. One of many examples is that the conjunction of the position and velocity of a particle cannot be known. Not just can’t be known using our current technology, but cannot be known in principle.

And what this says is that at the quantum level, those things don't exist as separate entities but rather as one thing that's expressed in the Schrodinger equation. And the Schrodinger equation is something that we can know precisely, and that will give us exact answers as the system evolves forward in time.

This doesn't show a thing that we can't know, rather it shows us that a thing we thought we knew behaves differently at the quantum level. The superposition of position+velocity is something we can in fact measure precisely and accurately describe as it evolves forward in time (or backwards, for that matter).

Also if your physics equations can tell me who will win the 2020 Super Bowl and how ticker symbol ADVS will do in the next six months, I’d appreciate it.

This would be an example of something we can't currently do, and I was asking for examples of things that are literally impossible to do. Can you tell me the law of physics that says "predicting the superbowl winner is impossible"?

 

[Dave241]

There’s really no difference in the two scenarios you presented except that the natural eye component is swapped out.

You could also have a guy with some probes who looks at stuff. If he sees red, he pokes the probes in a certain way. If he sees blue, he pokes them in another way. So he’s effectively acting as the eyes of the blind person who can now see red and blue.

Theoretically, if you’re just spitballing, you can substitute all sorts of stuff for the eyes.

So if there is no difference between the 2, where did we invent the qualia in the computer chip to send that into the persons brain? Or is it possible that it's just electrical signals interpreted in a specific sequence, and as complicated as that sequence is if we could break it down into binary code then we would literally be able to describe red, using that pattern, to anyone with the appropriate hardware to receive it?

How is that anything other then describing red to a blind person?

 

[xjx388]

Look at QM, the most empirically tested and verified field of physics. One of many examples is that the conjunction of the position and velocity of a particle cannot be known. Not just can’t be known using our current technology, but cannot be known in principle.

Also if your physics equations can tell me who will win the 2020 Super Bowl and how ticker symbol ADVS will do in the next six months, I’d appreciate it.

I could predict anything with 100% accuracy if I only knew all the variables and had a way to compute them all. That’s the problem with anything from weather to sports to the stock market.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

I could predict anything with 100% accuracy if I only knew all the variables and had a way to compute them all. That’s the problem with anything from weather to sports to the stock market.

That's what the old-timey physicists used to think (Laplace's Demon), but the modern view calls that into question.

 

[Pixel42]

Because our languages develop in haphazard, unplanned ways so it's inexact and clumsy. It's possible to linguistically form paradoxes and contradictions, it just doesn't mean anything.

Richard Feynman once described philosophers as people who kick up the dirt, and then complain because they can't see.

 

[Pixel42]

I could predict anything with 100% accuracy if I only knew all the variables and had a way to compute them all. That’s the problem with anything from weather to sports to the stock market.

There's a TV series called Devs I'm watching at the moment in which a computer has been built that does exactly that. In the episode I watched yesterday one character challenges another to give an example of an event which is not preceded by a cause and those were the kinds of example she gave, and which were rightly refuted. I kept shouting "radioactive decay" at the TV, but she didn't hear me.

 

[bruto]

I could predict anything with 100% accuracy if I only knew all the variables and had a way to compute them all. That’s the problem with anything from weather to sports to the stock market.

I seem to recall that way back before chaos theory was a thing, Whitehead had a pretty good handle on this. Of course Whitehead was a (gasp, choke) philosopher, so it goes without saying that you should not read him.

 

[David Mo]

Really? How at no point did your brain not stop you from writing that sentence?

Of course, birds are not marine mammals.
And now come back to my subject.

Do you know a universal method applicable to every science?

 

[David Mo]

It would be easy just to support your claim with a single example but you've chosen instead to evade the question by throwing a barrage of questions back at me.

It wouldn't be easy. Every time I have answered a question similar to yours, the opponent has come back with a strange concept of science. It is better to specify what we are talking about, and I will gladly answer the reformulated question.
That is why I ask you to be precise about what you mean by "science". Please continue.

 

[sir drinks-a-lot]

Do you know a universal method applicable to every science?

Seem like there is none. "Science" is hard to define. We usually know it when we see it though. But those borderline cases are tough.

Many people think they can define science, but once you get them to pin down a definition it can either be shown that a lot of stuff they think is science fails their definition, or the converse. See Paul Feyerabend.

 

[David Mo]

This is just a reworded "redness of red".

I don't see the connection. Please explain.

 

[David Mo]

Seem like there is none. "Science" is hard to define. We usually know it when we see it though. But those borderline cases are tough.

Many people think they can define science, but once you get them to pin down a definition it can either be shown that a lot of stuff they think is science fails their definition, or the converse. See Paul Feyerabend.

In my opinion one can give two concepts of science. One is very broad. The other one is more strict. The strict one must distinguish between types of science: natural, human sciences, formal... etc because each have its own method. One cannot speak of a universal method of science, but of something vague like a scientific spirit. Then we go to another concept of science that is very broad and would include things that our lounge positivists do not want to accept. Certain forms of philosophy, common sense and informal rationality.

The problem with our lounge positivists is that they pretend that there is a type of science outside of which there is no salvation, but that doesn't fit with the first sense.

And the funny thing is that they cannot justify that science -in whatever sense they use the word- is the only useful knowledge of reality without using philosophy. Because their theory is called positivism that is a philosophical school that has had its ups and downs in history and is not in its best moment now.

I have to admit that this forum is a lot of fun... sometimes.

Meanwhile, I am waiting for them to define what they understand by science and how they scientifically demonstrate their positivism. That would be curious. But I don't think they'd dare. That would be entering into quicksands.

 

[RedStapler]

I don't see the connection. Please explain.

The "scientific definition of well being" is just woo slinger babble. You are not here to discuss, you are here to make yourself look better. Evidence? Here you go:

In my opinion one can give two concepts of science. One is very broad. The other one is more strict. The strict one must distinguish between types of science: natural, human sciences, formal... etc because each have its own method. One cannot speak of a universal method of science, but of something vague like a scientific spirit. Then we go to another concept of science that is very broad and would include things that our lounge positivists do not want to accept. Certain forms of philosophy, common sense and informal rationality.

The problem with our lounge positivists is that they pretend that there is a type of science outside of which there is no salvation, but that doesn't fit with the first sense.

And the funny thing is that they cannot justify that science -in whatever sense they use the word- is the only useful knowledge of reality without using philosophy. Because their theory is called positivism that is a philosophical school that has had its ups and downs in history and is not in its best moment now.

I have to admit that this forum is a lot of fun... sometimes.

Meanwhile, I am waiting for them to define what they understand by science and how they scientifically demonstrate their positivism. That would be curious. But I don't think they'd dare. That would be entering into quicksands.

A whole "us vs them"-post. You are clearly not here to discuss, you are here to be a victim.