• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Does Matter Really Exist?

Mercutio said:
Might I suggest, Randfan, that given the state of knowledge about our sensory apparatus, your position is similar to that of the child who has been cleaning the manure out of a stable, is down to the last cubic foot of horsesh!t, and grows excited at the prospect that perhaps there is a pony in there.

At this point, not only is there no reason to suppose that there is something there, but we know enough about the brain to assert that if there was something there, our accumulated knowledge over the last century is wrong.

Or do you think that television sets still could possibly be receiving X-rays, but we just don't know it? (I leave the "possibly" in to match your position.) We have thoroughly searched that room--time to shut the door and move on. Whether or not we know everything there is to know about it, we do know that there is no mechanism that acts as a consciousness receiver.
Click to expand...
I don't agree but I found the imagery of the pony in a pile of manure rather funny. The point wasn't lost on me I assure you.

However, in fairness to me please note that I have said that at the moment such inquiry is a dead end. I'm not sure what you conclude from my statement that such inquiry is a "dead end" but I would have hoped that it sufficient to dispel any notion that I was jumping up and down with anticipation that we were about to discover some new phenomenon. If that was not clear before then let me now make it crystal clear. I don't think we are about to discover some new phenomenon. Is that clear enough?

On the other hand there is still much we don't know about the mind. I don't think we are any where near to the end of understanding of human cognition and its underpinnings as you suggest. Your "last cubic foot of horsesh!t" doesn't come close to the status of our understanding of the workings of the mind. That being said let me jump up and down and interject that I'm not quick to insert god or anything else into the gap.

So, at the end of the day I reject the kind of absolute you suggest. I think my position reasonable. Sorry if you disagree. I've always found you reasonable so perhaps we'll just have to agree to disagree. I don't see this as any big deal. If you want to see me as some idealistic child looking for ponies in horsesh!t that is your prerogative.

Thanks in any event,

RandFan
 
Tricky said:
I'm sure Mercutio meant no insult, RF. He just hates being wrong. Who doesn't?
Click to expand...
Which is why I make it a point never to be.

Randfan, I did overstate my caricature of your position--I found the metaphor just too tempting. I know you do not expect to find the pony there.

That said...yes, we know very little about the mind. That is because we are still using a prescientific mentalistic vocabulary that hobbles us. Without stating it explicitly, we are looking to explain the Cartesian Theatre...which does not exist.

I was not speaking about explaining the mind. I was speaking about what we know of the brain. And yes, we are learning more and more all the time, but frankly we are at a level of explanation where we can put "consciousness receiver" in the same category as phlogiston. Perhaps Tricky, and maybe you (I doubt it, you seem much more reasonable than Tricky) think we should still leave the door open a crack just in case phlogiston makes a resurgence...
 
I have to agree with Hammegk. If there is a receiver, it isn't receiving some sort of electromagnetic signal in the standard 4D world. There is no consciousness broadcasting station in the center of Abell 2029. Instead, the signals are probably beaming their way through some of the tiny curled-up dimensions of M-theory. In that case, I'm not sure we'd recognize a receiver if we saw it, even if we could see it, which I doubt, because it's really, really tiny.

Perhaps this is the Holy Braille prediction that M-theory is looking for?

~~ Paul
 
Tricky said:
What color is the sky at night? It is black.
What color is the sky at sunset? It is reddish.
What color is the sky during an Aurora Borealis? It is multicolored.
What color is the sky from space? It is transparent (or clouded).

So you see, the things you place your faith in are not substantial. They are based on your own flawed perception. Abandon your dedication to ignorance and learn how things work, Iacchus, and maybe someday you will become a person worth listening to instead of a boring woo-woo.
Click to expand...
More often than not, however, especially at midday on a sunny afternoon, 99.99% of the people who observe the sky will perceive it as being blue. Or, is that too much of a stretch of faith on your part for you to believe this? :confused:
 
bruto said:
Iacchus, I suppose any attempt at arguing sense is an isometric exercise here, but a television set is a very poor analogy for the brain, mind, soul or just about anything else except a television set. A television set is, of course, a purpose-manufactured machine, made for receiving signals that are known to exist, and emitted for the purpose of being received by television sets. A television without the presence of a signal is a useless device, and the signal without receivers is a useless signal. The receiver emits no signal of its own, except for accidental noise. Saying your brain is like a television is uninformative, to say the least, because of course it presupposes the purpose and the signal from without without evidence of either, and says nothing about why one should do so. It also presupposes that your brain does nothing to the signal apart from processing it, and produces no signal of its own. Now, Iacchus, I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility that your brain works in this way, or perhaps as Aristotle thought, as a radiator to cool the blood, but it will take a little more convincing before I accept that mine works in that way.
Click to expand...
No, the brain is an apparatus. Consciousness is not.
 
Last edited:
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
I have to agree with Hammegk. If there is a receiver, it isn't receiving some sort of electromagnetic signal in the standard 4D world. There is no consciousness broadcasting station in the center of Abell 2029. Instead, the signals are probably beaming their way through some of the tiny curled-up dimensions of M-theory. In that case, I'm not sure we'd recognize a receiver if we saw it, even if we could see it, which I doubt, because it's really, really tiny.

Perhaps this is the Holy Braille prediction that M-theory is looking for?

~~ Paul
Click to expand...
And if there is a teapot orbiting the giant gas planet, the third from beta-Sirius, it likely isn't Wedgewood.

Why is anyone taking the idea of "consciousness signals" as worthy of even Tricky's penny? Why not hidden marionette threads held by the Greek Pantheon? Sure, we don't see them, but maybe we just need to look harder--after all, I saw Copperfield pass a hoop clear around somebody who was suspended--so these invisible threads might escape our notice just like these alleged consciousness signals. Or why not little nano-elves, living in our bloodstreams, influencing our nerve signals at a level undetectable at a conscious level? They could easily hide from us--well, at least as easily as consciousness signals have...

There is no problem that is solved by "consciousness signals", and if there were, consciousness signals would not be the solution to that problem. There is no evidence for them, no phenomenon explained by them, no need to consider them as anything more than the product of some mushroom-induced hallucination.

Close the damned door, there's nowt there but a draft.
 
Matter exists insofar as we percieve it to exist (which we do). The arguments about internal / external and material / spiritual etc... are bogus and pointless.

We will never be able to prove beyond all doubt what 'matter' might be. We can only assert that it somehow exists - if we percieve it then it exists (somehow). In short - matter as material collagulations of energy can be just as real as matter as the imagination of God. Our only hope is to percieve it's properties as best we can and draw our conclusions.

Note that this is a fundementally materialist position. We are obervers on reality not its creators.
 
Iacchus said:
More often than not, however, especially at midday on a sunny afternoon, 99.99% of the people who observe the sky will perceive it as being blue. Or, is that too much of a stretch of faith on your part for you to believe this? :confused:
Click to expand...
Yes, blue is the way you sometimes perceive it (less than 50% of the time) from you very self-based viewpoint. (If you knew why the sky appears blue, it might help you understand, but learning seems to violate your religion.) You seem to lack the ability to see things from any other perspective but your own. I suspect that is why you accept "true for you" as objective truth. You really can't tell the difference, one of the hallmarks of solipsism.
 
Tricky said:
Yes, blue is the way you sometimes perceive it (less than 50% of the time) from you very self-based viewpoint. (If you knew why the sky appears blue, it might help you understand, but learning seems to violate your religion.) You seem to lack the ability to see things from any other perspective but your own. I suspect that is why you accept "true for you" as objective truth. You really can't tell the difference, one of the hallmarks of solipsism.
Click to expand...

Precisely. It's amusing how Iacchus thought he dissolved the problem of Inverted Qualia in just one paragraph.
 
Tricky said:
Yes, blue is the way you sometimes perceive it (less than 50% of the time) from you very self-based viewpoint. (If you knew why the sky appears blue, it might help you understand, but learning seems to violate your religion.) You seem to lack the ability to see things from any other perspective but your own. I suspect that is why you accept "true for you" as objective truth. You really can't tell the difference, one of the hallmarks of solipsism.
Click to expand...
No, I am perfectly capable of observing that the sky is blue. Aren't you?
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
I have to agree with Hammegk. If there is a receiver, it isn't receiving some sort of electromagnetic signal in the standard 4D world. There is no consciousness broadcasting station in the center of Abell 2029. Instead, the signals are probably beaming their way through some of the tiny curled-up dimensions of M-theory. In that case, I'm not sure we'd recognize a receiver if we saw it, even if we could see it, which I doubt, because it's really, really tiny.

Perhaps this is the Holy Braille prediction that M-theory is looking for?

~~ Paul
Click to expand...
So, what about the "signals" that the brain picks up with respect to sensory data? Isn't this very much a part of our "conscious experience?" Now, I'm merely proposing that the brain is picking up some "additional" signals from some place else ... No doubt exterior to the brain, however.
 
Last edited:
Iacchus said:
No, I am perfectly capable of observing that the sky is blue. Aren't you?
Click to expand...
I will guarantee that the sky looks different to me than it does to you (and yet, I still call it "blue" at times). I am not color-blind, but I am color-anomalous. My balance of retinal photopigments is quite probably different from yours.

So what if the sky is blue? Your blue and mine are different.
 
Iacchus said:
So, what about the "signals" that the brain picks up with respect to sensory data? Isn't this very much a part of our "conscious experience?" Now, I'm merely proposing that the brain is picking up some "additional" signals from some place else ... no doubt exterior to the brain, however.
Click to expand...
We know both the signal and the receiver for our sensory data. We know neither signal nor receiver for your alleged "additional". This would be vexing, except that no one has ever demonstrated a phenomenon there for us to try to explain via your alleged "additional".

You can propose all you want. When you have data, get back to us.
 
hammegk said:
Er, yes, a quale is a 1st-person-only attribute. :)
Click to expand...
Yup...to me, one of the most beautiful things about the science of visual perception is how (that is, the experimental methodology) we can know some of what we do...while at the same time, how we know that there are limitations to what we can even in principle know. An amazing case history of science at work...
 
Mercutio said:
Which is why I make it a point never to be.

Randfan, I did overstate my caricature of your position--I found the metaphor just too tempting. I know you do not expect to find the pony there.

That said...yes, we know very little about the mind. That is because we are still using a prescientific mentalistic vocabulary that hobbles us. Without stating it explicitly, we are looking to explain the Cartesian Theatre...which does not exist.

I was not speaking about explaining the mind. I was speaking about what we know of the brain. And yes, we are learning more and more all the time, but frankly we are at a level of explanation where we can put "consciousness receiver" in the same category as phlogiston. Perhaps Tricky, and maybe you (I doubt it, you seem much more reasonable than Tricky) think we should still leave the door open a crack just in case phlogiston makes a resurgence...
Click to expand...
So much for that sidetrack. Carry on. :)
 
Mercutio said:
I will guarantee that the sky looks different to me than it does to you (and yet, I still call it "blue" at times). I am not color-blind, but I am color-anomalous. My balance of retinal photopigments is quite probably different from yours.

So what if the sky is blue? Your blue and mine are different.
Click to expand...
Well, yes, I'm sure that we can deny the phenomenon, "the sky," exists (independent of each of our perceptions that is) but, what would be the point to that?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom