Interesting Ian said:
So what evidence do we have for the existence of other minds? I would suggest that we do not see other peoples’ minds directly. If we look into a living brain we will only ever see various physical processes operating according to physical laws. You can of course simply declare that minds are identical or are a function of these physical processes, but still that assertion itself is just a stipulation. The pertinent point here is that we could only know that other people are conscious by literally partaking in their conscious experiences. Which we don't.
Don't does not imply
can't. No, we don't presently have the technology to partake in one anothers consciousnesses. But you have not produced any evidence that this can not be done, and all that we know about physics, chemistry, biology and neurology says that it can.
Nor do we have any scientific evidence that other people are conscious.
If you deliberately narrow the definition of
scientific evidence.
Now people might find this a very surprising assertion. After all many scientific entities are invisible, but we do not dispute their existence. This is because we can infer their existence from their effect in the world. So if minds have an effect in the world, then why can't minds play a role in some scientific theory describing the world?
Yes, why can't minds play a role in some scientific theory describing the world?
The thing about electrons is that we can infer their existence (and other scientific entities) because electrons play fruitful roles in our theories describing the world. Or to put it another way, electrons are physically causally efficacious. They need to be supposed to exist in order to explain some aspect of reality (for the pedants out there I agree this is not strictly true, but I'm trying to make it simple!).
Now being materialists we suppose that the world is physically closed. By this I simply mean that everything that ever happens is wholly explicable in terms of prior physical causes. In particular, there is no non-material mind effecting processes in the brain. Physical processes in the brain, like everything else in the Universe, can be wholly understood as an unbroken chain of physical cause and effect. In other words everything that ever occurs in our brains, and hence by extension all our behaviour, can be completely described with reference to the physical laws of nature.
Correct. (In that this accurately represents the materialist position.)
This being so, minds are not required for an understanding of our behaviour.
Except that in the materialist position,
the mind is what is produced by the operation of the brain. What we are observing when we observe the operation of the brain
is the mind.
To have a scientific understanding of our behaviour it is sufficient that we have knowledge of all facts accessible from the third person perspective. By a third person perspective I mean that anyone with unimpaired sense and instruments could potentially corroborate. This would then include neurons firing in a living brain, but would not include mental states such as emotions.
Observe the neurons firing, and you observe the emotions.
This is because a person cannot literally partake in another person's conscious experiences.
You have not only failed to prove this assertion, you have failed to provide any evidence whatsoever.
So the totality of our behaviour can be explained with reference to third person facts.
Yes. Including the mind.
As an aside this is why minds can never be scientifically explained.
As another aside, no it isn't.
Minds can neither be perceptually sensed
Unfounded assertion
nor play a fruitful role in our theories describing the world
Wrong.
therefore from a scientific perspective they are superfluous.
Wrong.
Thus within any materialist based understanding of the world, it simply has to be arbitrarily stipulated that they are identical to, or are a function of, or are somehow derived from physical processes within the brain.
Not arbitrary at all.
Unproven, in the same way that the Theory of Relativity is unproven.
Sort of like a faith if you will.
Except not at all like faith. Everything we know about the brain indicates that the mind is the result of brain function. Hold still while I hit you with this hammer.
A couple of things to point out here. If we can neither perceptually perceive other peoples’ minds, nor scientifically prove the existence of other peoples’ minds, then what justification do we have of supposing other peoples’ minds apart from our own exist whatsoever? I would simply suggest the obvious answer here. Namely we infer other peoples’ minds by noting that other peoples’ behaviour is very similar to my own. I know in my own case that my behaviour is apparently a consequence of my internal mental states; therefore it is reasonable to assume that other people in turn possess internal mental states. Another point is that simply because minds (defined, if you like, as the phenomenal aspect of physical processes in the brain) are not required to scientifically explain our behaviour
Behaviour is explained by brain function. The mind is also explained by brain function. You've simply put the mind in the wrong place in the explicatory chain.
this doesn't mean that everyday explanations of our behaviour are redundant. Sure, one could explain why I get up to make myself a cup of coffee in terms of purely physical processes occurring in my brain, but we can also provide an explanation in terms of intentions (e.g. I need something to keep me alert). These explanations are not incompatible; rather they apply at different levels.
A related point is that simply because the world is physically closed this does not necessitate we do not have free will. It’s true that our behaviour is wholly determined, or to use a better term, described by physical laws.
Described is indeed a much better term, since physical law is non-deterministic.
But this need not imply at all that we are hapless puppets dancing to the tune of the physical laws of nature.
No, it doesn't.
To suppose this you are thinking of physical laws as somehow necessitating change in the world, where as it is more appropriate to think of physical laws as simply describing change in this world. But once we have adopted this latter view then the physical laws of nature do not compel our behaviour, rather they describe our freely chosen actions! Of course this interpretation of free will, referred to as compatibilism represents a somewhat impoverished interpretation of free will compared to the libertarian interpretation. Nevertheless, in an appropriate sense, it would still be true to say that we have free will!
Yes! Um, so?
Now, having got all the foregoing out of the way, we can at last address the issue of the evidence for the existence of a God.
Yay!
The essential point is this. Just as a complete physical description of the physical processes occurring in someone’s brain and accounting for their behaviour doesn’t necessitate that that person is not possessed of a mental life
The complete physical description etc. tells us that the individual
does have a "mental life"
so does the fact that just because the Universe and all change within can be accounted for in terms of physical laws, this doesn’t mean to say that consciousness is not associated with the physical Universe as a whole.
Yes, it does. It isn't
proven that consciousness is not associated with the universe as a whole, the same way that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle isn't proven, but all the evidence and all the well-tested theory says that if such a consicousness exists it is not
efficaceous, or to put it another way, is a load of twaddle.
Indeed, just as we have differing levels of explanations for peoples’ behaviour in terms of either physical laws, or in terms of the intentions of minds, so it may be possible to have differing levels of explanation for processes in the Universe as a whole, either in terms of physical laws, or in terms of what we might describe as a metamind or “God”.
Or not. The different levels of description in physical law are
mathematically equivalent. To use this argument you need to show that your metamind is mathematically equivalent to the laws of physics. You also need to show in what sense this doesn't mean that your metamind does not exist.
Now of course notice that whether it is in fact legitimate to infer the existence of a metamind will depend upon the character of the Universe as a whole.
Correct. If the universe is of such a character that it possesses a metamind, then it will be legitimate to infer the existence of same. If the universe is not of such a character, such an inference will be illegitimate. So, first you need to determine the character of the universe, which is what the study of physics is all about. Nothing we have seen in physics indicates in any way the existence of such a mind.
But the assertion of every atheist I have ever met is that there is no evidence whatsoever for any “God”.
Correct.
They are indeed quite emphatic in this assertion.
And rightly so.
But this position simply cannot be maintained, as it is clear that the characteristics of the physical Universes as a whole could have been less suggestive of an associated meta-consciousness than what we actually witness.
So, you are supposing an alternate universe where there is less than no evidence for God? I'm not sure that gets you anywhere. Is this one of those
reductio ad absurdum thingies?
We just simply need to consider logically possible Universes.
Oookay.
One might imagine for example that it could have been logically possible for us to have subsisted in a Universe where no physical laws at all pertained, and we found ourselves existing in a bodiless state experiencing a stream of random perceptual experiences through our senses.
No. That doesn't make any sense at all. You are presupposing that mind is independent of of the physical universe and yet interacts with it. And without physical law, you don't get a stream of random perceptual experiences; what you get is nothing and everything happening at the same time, except that there is no time for it to happen in. A universe without physical law is logically contradictory; it cannot exist.
But even if we are to suppose that such a Universe were somehow not logically possible
Yes.
it certainly seems that we could have subsisted in a differing Universe from the one we find ourselves in, but which didn’t exhibit the regularities exhibited by our Universe.
Yes. No, hang on, no. You can suppose a universe in which the laws are deeper and more complicated and harder to define, but a universe
without regularities is a universe without physical law, and gets flushed down Occam's Toilet.
Regularities, don’t forget, which can be captured by our scientific theories written in the language of mathematics, and whose theories, at least in physics, turns out not to depict a literal state of affairs, and are found to be limited in their scope.
Yeeees? Except, no, not in your hypothetical logicall contradictory non-universe.
Notwithstanding this, our theories still work in the sense of accurately predicting the cause of our perceptual experiences!
No. Yes. Hang on, which universe are you talking about now? This one, you your hypothetical contradiction?
One almost gets the impression that the Universe is contrived in such a manner that intelligent sentient beings are just to say able to do this!
Look everyone! Ian's discovered the Anthropic Principle!
After all, we can easily imagine a Universe not exhibiting any patterns
No.
or if it did exhibit patterns those patterns not being amenable to mathematical investigation or being too abstruse for us to discern.
Yes. But this is not the case for our universe, and is not the case you have used in your argument, so I fail to see how this is relevant.
It should be noted that I am not arguing that the existence of a “God” is proved, nor that the existence of a “God” is as likely as the existence of other people, nor even that the existence of a God is even likely.
Good.
What I have just done is to demonstrate that even under a materialist interpretation of the world, it is not only possible to believe in a “God”, but that the characteristics of the world go someway towards lending some evidence for a God.
Except that you have utterly failed to do this.
If I am able to do this by assuming a materialist framework
Which you aren't, or at least have not shown.
then a fortiori I will be able to do this under any other metaphysical interpretation of the world such as for example immaterialism.
A false premise allows any conclusion, Ian.
You're just presupposing what you said before without producing any arguments to back up your position. Why is a Universe which doesn't exhibit regularities logically impossible. (I presume logically inconsistant is the same as logically impossible?)