How do we know that places like Narnia do not exist?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

II: How can you be a reductive materialist? How on earth can you derive consciousness from this clock?

Materialist: Just because we cannot figure out how the clock works now, doesn't mean to say that it works by magic. Eventually we will figure out how it works.

II: Yes yes yes, I understand that we might be eventually be able to work out how the hands move and keep time, but what about the consciousness?

Materialist: The hands moving is consciousness.

II: Eh . .you mean that the hands produce consciousness. So it would just be a brute fact about reality that certain physical processes generate consciousness?

Materialist: No I don't mean that. The hands moving literally is consciousness. Once we have figured out how the hands move, then we have therefore reductively explained consciousness.

II: But this is absurd! Look, we can work out that a wheel moves another wheel etc, leading eventually to the movement of the hands, I agree about that. But how can you thereby claim you have shown that we can derive consciousness?? You've done no such thing man! How do we know the movement of the hands is accompanied by conscious experiences??

Materialist
You're begging the question by impliciting supposing consciousness is not literally the process of clock hand moving.

This sounds impressive because you are using the word consciousness in a grandiose manner, as an umbrella term for thousands of mental processes. It is like using the term weather for the many processes that make up the state of the atmosphere. Doing so makes reduction seem hopelessly difficult and thus absurd. It makes it sound as if reduction could never get at what the weather is really like.

If we are going to understand consciousness, it is going to be one process at a time, carefully considering why such a process would evolve. If you still want to say "Well, we don't understand the overall grandiose feeling of consciousness," that's fine, but you should also say the same of the weather.

You could do your thesis a favor by explaining how consciousness actually does work and proposing experiments to test your theory. In particular, devise an experiment that can distinguish between naturalistic and idealistic models of consciousness.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

How do we know the movement of the hands is accompanied by conscious experiences??

How do we know the composition of a rock is accompanied by hardness? We bang our hand on the rock, say ouch, and call it hardness. Likewise, we notice our internal experiences and the behavior of others and call it consciousness. Is there something more magical about consciousness compared to hardness?

~~ Paul

 

[Tricky]

As I said, take the analogy of the clock. We can have snapshots of various internal states of the clock and correlate these to, say, when the alarm goes off. But we don't understand why the clocks innards produce the alarm.

So we have isolated that the alarm only sounds with this particular specific internal state, where all the cogs and wheels etc are arranged in a particular way. We haven't derived the alarm from this internal state because that would require tracing the cause and effect chain leading to the ringing of the alarm.

But the question should not even be "why", but "how". As any parent knows, a young child can answer every single explanation you give them with "why?" without even showing that they've understood your previous explanation.

If I wer able to describe exactly how the arrangements of clock parts result in an alarm, the child could still ask "why" and you'd be diverted into a discussion of the reason for alarm clocks or even for having a schedule, ultimately reducing it to the question of the origin of the universe. That sort of "reductionism" is totally pointless. If you can, in principle, understand how a brain or a clock works, and it requires no immaterial elements, then materialism is unrefuted.

 

[Interesting Ian]

I've had enough of this. I am sick to death of talking about materialism and nobody ever understanding what I'm talking about.

This thread is supposed to be about Narnia!

I'm outta here.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

We changed the subject because you didn't answer our questions about where the wardrobe is. I was ready to go, really I was.

~~ Paul

 

[Bone_Vulture]

This thread is supposed to be about Narnia!

Can you prove the thread isn't about the land of Oz? I want my damn ruby slippers back!

 

[Tricky]

I've had enough of this. I am sick to death of talking about materialism and nobody ever understanding what I'm talking about.

This thread is supposed to be about Narnia!

I'm outta here.

Yeah, but Narnia is such an easy issue, we left it in the dust. We mostly agree that nothing about alternate realities can be proved impossible because they assume different rules that we cannot, in this reality, know. Not much more to say.

But I think a number of people here do understand what you are talking about. We all understand the sensation that something must be true, because it feels true. It is difficult to step back from those feelings and examine our assumptions. And it is possible that in spite of your unfathomable brilliance, people here can understand your logic and yet still disagree with the assumptions on which it is based.

But feel free to stomp off in a huff because the "idiots" don't understand you. We will somehow manage to keep a stiff upper lip through the terrible depression that envelopes us when we don't have your company.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Yeah, but Narnia is such an easy issue, we left it in the dust.

Nobody said anything remotely relevant.

But I think a number of people here do understand what you are talking about.

They're not posting then.

I'm pissed off with this place. No-one ever agrees with me about anything and nobody ever supplies any reasons to remotely justify their disagreement.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian, you're a one trick pony. We finished with that pony two years ago. It's just been repeat theatre since then. We happen to disagree with you, so it appears we disagree with you on everything.

Take another tack. How are we going to make progress? Explain your metaphysic. Suggest a way to distinguish between competing metaphysics. Explain how the Metamind manufactures the external world. Explain why there is consistency from one person to the next. Tell us where the green is. Define libertarian free will.

Try something new!

~~ Paul

 

[Terry]

I'm pissed off with this place. No-one ever agrees with me about anything and nobody ever supplies any reasons to remotely justify their disagreement.

What would constitute an argument that you would consider justifies disagreement?

 

[Complexity]

For once, Ian, do what you say you're going to do...

I've had enough of this. I am sick to death of talking about materialism and nobody ever understanding what I'm talking about.

This thread is supposed to be about Narnia!

I'm outta here.

You said you were leaving.

Get the hell out of here.

 

[PixyMisa]

I'm pissed off with this place. No-one ever agrees with me about anything and nobody ever supplies any reasons to remotely justify their disagreement.

It's all about the ontologies, Ian.

We understand that your ontology is founded in idealism. To us, and to everyone who deals with the real world, that makes everything you say nonsensical. But we understand it. Sometimes we need a reminder.

You, however, just don't grasp materialism. You always, always, always cling to your idealist concepts. That's why you get driven into screaming fits when we point out that, materialistically speaking, we have indeed explained consciousness in such-and-such a thought experiment. Because we have. You can't see it, because you still cling to your immaterial notions of consciousness. I have never once, in about three years of talking to you, seen you follow through a thought experiment to its logical conclusion.

Berkeley suffered from the same afflication, so at least you've got company.

 

[PixyMisa]

I'll add, the problem with idealism is that is mind-bogglingly bad at dealing with the world. It leads almost exclusively to blind alleys. You keep claiming that science is not only possibly under idealism, but that idealism makes a better scientific framework than materialism.

I discussed this with Hammy, who makes the same claim, and asked him how he would construct a system of science under idealism, and he answered that first he would assume that the natural world exists. Which means that he's just going to construct the same old materialist science, and assume immaterialism on the side. Dualism, in other words.

Science is possible under idealism in the same sense that it is possible to push a penny up the side of Mt Everest with your nose: Difficult, painful, and likely to get your head stepped on by a yak, with an end result that is of no practical use to anybody.

 

[Z]

We've heard this before... the only way he can keep from getting banned at this point is if he takes it on himself to 'leave', since staying means, for him, cursing and ranting.

Of course he'll be back, once he calms down a bit and thinks of a 'new' argument for his whacky brand of idealism.

The real problem here, is that Ian is stubborn and assured of his own magnificent brilliance... and we don't share his keen awareness of his own intellectual prowess... His 'intelligence', sadly, is wrapped around his pocket monster, his personal idealism and private notions of what materialism should mean. Unfortunately, it doesn't mean what he thinks it does - many, MANY things don't.

I can't help but notice this comes after being presented with the illusion of green. I'm sure he can't deny that he, too, sees the green dots, yet he also can't deny that there is nothing 'green' on that illusion, and the thought of it boggles his mind to no end. Didn't we see this befuddlement with another illusion - something about two squares of the same color?

Anyway, since we know Ian pretty well, I'll just say 'see ya later, old bean'.

 

[69dodge]

But certainly you can have the experience of seeing green without any actual green being present. That optical illusion sphenisc linked to proved that. By tinkering with your brain directly, you can have the experience of seeing green without any colour being present at all.

I would say that actual green is never present. What's usually present when I have the experience of seeing green is electromagetic radiation with a wavelength of about 510 nm.

But, ok, I understand what you mean.

So the idea that the experience of "greenness" is somehow irreducible, that it cannot be obtained by other means than actually seeing something green, is not just unsupported but obviously wrong.

Is that what Ian means by "irreducible"?

I agree with you, and I suspect he does too, that you would experience the sensation of seeing green if somehow your optic nerve were electrically stimulated and made to send the same signals to your brain as it usually sends when light of wavelength 510 nm enters your eye.

But what scientific theory predicts in the first place that 510 nm light should cause you to see green? How could a scientific theory possibly predict such a thing if it doesn't even have the vocabulary to say "see green," but can only talk about stuff like wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation?

If we have a sufficiently detailed map, we see not only states, but the transitions between states over time. So in fact we have traced the chain of cause and effect.

You've traced the chain of cause and effect only if your theory of consciousness contains among its axioms the proposition that such-and-such a brain process causes such-and-such a conscious experience, in much the same way that the force of gravity explains falling objects only if your theory of mechanics contains among its axioms the proposition that forces cause acceleration.

 

[DreadNiK]

I would say that actual green is never present. What's usually present when I have the experience of seeing green is electromagetic radiation with a wavelength of about 510 nm.

But, ok, I understand what you mean.

Is that what Ian means by "irreducible"?

I agree with you, and I suspect he does too, that you would experience the sensation of seeing green if somehow your optic nerve were electrically stimulated and made to send the same signals to your brain as it usually sends when light of wavelength 510 nm enters your eye.

But what scientific theory predicts in the first place that 510 nm light should cause you to see green? How could a scientific theory possibly predict such a thing if it doesn't even have the vocabulary to say "see green," but can only talk about stuff like wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation?

Surely it wouldn't be so hard. Surely you observe what effects 510nm has on the optic nerve, and reproduce that. I mean, afaik, we're not that close to being able to do that, but then again I could be quite wrong, but surely saying something is green or I see green, means respectively, something reflects light 510nm (or whatever, I'm not really sure of the science or terminology but I don't think I have to be), or I am experiencing the effect of 510nm light on my optic nerve?

 

[PixyMisa]

But what scientific theory predicts in the first place that 510 nm light should cause you to see green? How could a scientific theory possibly predict such a thing if it doesn't even have the vocabulary to say "see green," but can only talk about stuff like wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation?

I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.

What would you expect to see?

You've traced the chain of cause and effect only if your theory of consciousness contains among its axioms the proposition that such-and-such a brain process causes such-and-such a conscious experience

That's not an axiom, that's an inference. From a freakin' mountain of evidence.

in much the same way that the force of gravity explains falling objects only if your theory of mechanics contains among its axioms the proposition that forces cause acceleration.

Ugh. That's not an axiom, that's an observation.

 

[69dodge]

I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.

What would you expect to see?

I wouldn't expect to see anything.

Maxwell's equations, which describe electromagnetic radiation including light, don't say anything about seeing, after all. They just talk about electrical and magnetic fields.

That's not an axiom, that's an inference. From a freakin' mountain of evidence.

Ugh. That's not an axiom, that's an observation.

It appears that we think differently about the structure of scientific theories. Let me try to explain what I mean.

We observe that things fall with a certain acceleration. We observe that the moon orbits the earth once a month. We observe that the planets orbit the sun in elliptical orbits at varying speeds and each with its own period. Etc. (That's oversimplified, but good enough. If we want to be careful, we can at least say that our observations of the sky are consistent with that interpretation.) To help us tie together these apparently unrelated observations, we construct an axiomatic scientific theory, similar to axiomatic mathematical theories. The axioms are things like the inverse square law of gravitation, which tells us what forces are present, and Newton's second law, which tells us how bodies react to forces on them. From these axioms, we can mathematically derive various theorems, for example, that planetary orbits are elliptical. The reason we chose the axioms than we did, rather than others, is of course that the theorems we can derive from them agree with the observations we started with. But still, once we have the theory, it looks just like mathematics, with axioms and theorems.

If just a few axioms suffice to account for many, many observations, we say that we've explained all those observations. But we haven't explained the axioms; we take them simply to be how the world works. If I ask why planetary orbits are elliptical, you can answer that it follows from the inverse square law of gravity and F=ma. But if I ask why gravity obeys an inverse square law or why F=ma, Newtonian mechanics has no answer for that; it's just the way things are.

Now the question is, in a scientific theory of consciousness, what are the axioms and what are the theorems? (If there are too many axioms and not enough theorems, we haven't done a very good job of explaining consciousness; we've just resorted to saying about lots of stuff, "that's simply the way things are; I don't know why.") In particular, is the following an axiom or a theorem: "when such-and-such a brain process occurs in my head, I have the experience of seeing green"? Of course, we can observe that when the particular brain process occurs, I see green; that's not in question. What's in question is the status of that fact within the scientific theory: is it a theorem that can logically be derived from other parts of the theory, or must it be put into the theory as an axiom?

 

[PixyMisa]

I wouldn't expect to see anything.

Why not?

Maxwell's equations, which describe electromagnetic radiation including light, don't say anything about seeing, after all. They just talk about electrical and magnetic fields.

Yes. But you have eyes, which are obviously photosensors, which are wired by great big nerve bundles into the brain. What do you think that's for?

We observe that things fall with a certain acceleration. We observe that the moon orbits the earth once a month. We observe that the planets orbit the sun in elliptical orbits at varying speeds and each with its own period. Etc. (That's oversimplified, but good enough. If we want to be careful, we can at least say that our observations of the sky are consistent with that interpretation.) To help us tie together these apparently unrelated observations, we construct an axiomatic scientific theory, similar to axiomatic mathematical theories. The axioms are things like the inverse square law of gravitation, which tells us what forces are present, and Newton's second law, which tells us how bodies react to forces on them. From these axioms, we can mathematically derive various theorems, for example, that planetary orbits are elliptical. The reason we chose the axioms than we did, rather than others, is of course that the theorems we can derive from them agree with the observations we started with. But still, once we have the theory, it looks just like mathematics, with axioms and theorems.

You have confused axioms with hypotheses. We don't create axioms and build theories from them. We form hypotheses and test them.

If just a few axioms suffice to account for many, many observations, we say that we've explained all those observations.

Not really. Science is about what things do, not about why.

But we haven't explained the axioms; we take them simply to be how the world works. If I ask why planetary orbits are elliptical, you can answer that it follows from the inverse square law of gravity and F=ma. But if I ask why gravity obeys an inverse square law or why F=ma, Newtonian mechanics has no answer for that; it's just the way things are.

The inverse-square law is simply because space has three dimensions. (And for similar reasons, tides obey an inverse-cube law.) As for F=ma, by the definitions of force, mass, and acceleration, we know that F=kma, for some scalar constant k. Experiment shows that k=1.

Now the question is, in a scientific theory of consciousness, what are the axioms and what are the theorems? (If there are too many axioms and not enough theorems, we haven't done a very good job of explaining consciousness; we've just resorted to saying about lots of stuff, "that's simply the way things are; I don't know why.") In particular, is the following an axiom or a theorem: "when such-and-such a brain process occurs in my head, I have the experience of seeing green"?

At present, it's neither; it's an observation.

Of course, we can observe that when the particular brain process occurs, I see green; that's not in question.

Right.

What's in question is the status of that fact within the scientific theory: is it a theorem that can logically be derived from other parts of the theory, or must it be put into the theory as an axiom?

Neither. It's an observation.

 

[69dodge]

Why not?

I'm not sure how to answer that. Why should I expect to see anything?

Yes. But you have eyes, which are obviously photosensors, which are wired by great big nerve bundles into the brain. What do you think that's for?

Well, given everything that I know, which includes the fact that I do see things, I think it's so I can see.

But if I were given just the physics and the chemistry and the anatomy of a brain, without the additional knowledge that owners of brains do consciously see things, I would have no reason to think that that's what it's for.

You have confused axioms with hypotheses. We don't create axioms and build theories from them. We form hypotheses and test them.

I don't believe our two descriptions of science are contradictory. We form hypotheses and test them, but the hypotheses that we form are of the sort that I described, namely, our hypothesis says, if we construct a mathematical theory with such-and-such axioms then all the theorems derived from those axioms are true of the real world. And then the way we test that hypothesis is by deriving theorems from the proposed axioms, and checking whether they are in fact true of the real world.

Science is about what things do, not about why.

I guess it's not about why, if you take a very philosophical, ultimate sort of definition of "why". But it's not just about saying "this does this and that does that"; it's about making sense out of what things do, about tying together lot of different behaviour of lots of different things, about finding some underlying simplicity to the apparent complexity.

The inverse-square law is simply because space has three dimensions.

The inverse square law of Newtonian gravitation? I don't think so. Can you explain why you do think so? What is impossible about a gravity that, for example, isn't weaker far from the Earth, but rather has the same strength at all distances?

This seems slightly off-topic, but it might be useful to discuss it.

As for F=ma, by the definitions of force, mass, and acceleration, we know that F=kma, for some scalar constant k. Experiment shows that k=1.

I'm not sure what definitions you're using. If we are defining F to be equal to kma, we might as well just define it to be equal to ma, I'd think. But this is not very important.

The Feynman Lectures on Physics has a good discussion of the definitional status of Newton's laws in volume 1, chapter 12. Do you have it? Maybe I'll type some of it up, but it's kind of long.

Neither. It's an observation.

I'm not sure how to explain what I mean without just repeating what I've already said. Yes, it's an observation, but is it an observation that someone could predict who hadn't observed it himself but who knew the rest of the scientific theory of consciousness?

If I were told that the force of gravity obeys an inverse square law and that F=ma, I could, if I were a good enough mathematician, predict that planets move in elliptical orbits. I would not have to be told that they do, as an additional fact.

If I were told about all the physical and chemical and biological processes that go on in a brain when 510 nm light is shined into the eye, but I hadn't ever shined 510 nm light into my own eye (or I had, but I didn't know that its wavelength was 510 nm), would I be able to predict that those brain processes produce the experience of seeing green?

I could, of course, shine such light into my eye, or perhaps by some other means cause the appropriate processes to occur in my brain, and then I would know, because I'd see green. But that would be analogous to going outside and looking up at the sky and observing that the orbits of the planets are elliptical, not to predicting the shape of the orbits from Newtonian theory.