Idealists: What does 'physical' mean to you?

[Dancing David]

The computational activity of a single living neuron alone is mind boggling.

Not really, the simple models is as follows

Chance of firing = base rate + (potentiation matrix) - (attenuation matrix)

base rate will be effected by various other factors such as how often it has fired and availability of metabolites, presence of chemicals and lack of chemicals. Sodium, potasium and calcium are required for the cell to fire.

Cell C 'remembers' or associates with the cells around it, if cell P fires and then cell C fires then cell C is more likely to fire again in the presence of cell P firing (potentiation). If cell C doesn't fire and cell A does fire then cell C is less likely to fire when cell A fires (attenuation).

So you then have a matrix of association. The value for each input cell is plastic and variable, depending on contingent history it will be part of the potentiation matrix or the attenuation matrix.

This is the base unit of association.

Please note that when I say fire i mean that a phase shift occurs in the cell membrane and that channels open to allow ions to cross the membrane, this is the basis of 'transmission' along the cell IE firing. There is not really an electrical signal, it is biochemical.

The way that cells talk to each other is by releasing neurotransmitter into the post synaptic cleft.

 

[Dancing David]

On the 2nd point, the idealist is also in a slightly better position. The materialist has no explanation how or why consciousess should arise from a bunch of physical stuff (neurons), while the idealist has some evidence of the interaction of perception, thought, and mind. We all know what it is to perceive something, think about it, and experience those thoughts in our mind. For the idealist, the story gets a little fuzzy on where all the objects we experience come from (group mind, God's mind, one mind), but that is also an objection for the materalist: where did all this physical matter come from? Which leads to the 3rd point:

.

Nope the idealist faces exactly the same issues, how does 'consciousness' arise in different beings composed of bits of consciousness?

Bits of mind, bits of matter, the problems are exactly the same.

 

[PixyMisa]

Uh, well, it is in the case of the TV.

If poking my brain is not the direct cause of the memory I experience immediately thereafter, then there are some other possibilities:

God noticed that you were about to poke my brain and and played the memory in my consciousness. You were still the indirect cause.

God decided to make you poke my brain at the same instant as playing the memory in my consciousness, just to give the illusion of cause and effect.

My recall of the memory was the cause of your poke, in a stunning reversal of normal temporal cause and effect.

My brain is a receiver for my memories. It normally filters out all memories except for the few I'm curently experiencing. Poking my brain temporarily breaks the filter and receives a random memory.

The last one doesn't really work in detail, though. You have to ignore pretty much everything going on in the brain to pretend that it's true.

What these are, basically, is man-in-the-middle attacks on causality. We observe that when we do A we reliably get B. The idealist or dualist (it's so hard to tell them apart!) says, no, C causes B. There is no evidence for this C. No explanation is presented for the correlation between A and B (except in the case of reversed causality).

The other problem with all these ideas is that A still causes B. Blithely ignoring their tortured metaphysics, the Universe continues on as though materialism were true.

Two choices, guys: Isomorphic with materialism, or wrong.

 

[rocketdodger]

Utterly and completely wrong. Why exactly would the Universe and phenomenal reality work differently or be less real if someone is an amaterialist (or idealist if you prefer)?

Phenomenal reality doesn't change for an amaterilist. It is solely an absence of belief in any type of prima materia substance underlying reality.

~
HypnoPsi

Huh?

I didn't say anything changed. I just said amaterialism is pointless from a pragmatic standpoint.

Let me ask you this -- is there any advantage to thinking of a boulder as a figment of the universal imagination, or whatever amaterial nonsense one can come up with, rather than simply a boulder? Absolutely not -- unless you are trying to reconcile everything with an assumption that a universal imagination exists, for whatever reason.

And that, right there, is the only reason anyone is an "amaterialist." Nobody starts out that way -- when a human is first exposed to the world, a boulder is a boulder, fire is fire, food is food. Material is material. It is only when people try to rationalize the big sky daddy that they come up with incoherent notions such as "amaterial."

And it is incoherent, because as everyone here who is a materialist has been telling you, being material is simply a property of something. Thats all. You are arguing with an obsolete strawman. And to say that there is a thing that could be without this property is utter nonsense, because we were clever enough to devise the property such that if a human can even speak of a thing it must have this property.

 

[PixyMisa]

For sure, it could be that the brain is just channelling a pure, undifferentiated consciousness, and creating a world of limited form from it. But personally, I still see problems here. I don't buy the 'brain in a vat' argument. It's too complex to set up, as Dennett points out, and actually there's quite a liklihood that there is no Stream of Consciousness, as Blackmore says. I mean, for sure we will never know with any degree of certainty what's really going on. Evolution only answers questions to a certain degree. All other theories do the same. But I think a lot of the propositions that idealist and theist ideologies have been based upon in the past have now been pretty much overthrown.

I buy materialism over deism because deism doesn't matter to me. So what if there's a God and it just doing it's thing? What does it matter? So what if it's there and it can never be proven it's there? If there's a God and it's so feeble it needs this creation of it to believe in it then I say "**** that God," and I can do so wholeheartedly. I refuse to believe in an entity that needs me to believe in it. The Gnostics had this whole scene down pat 2000 years ago. They let go of the demi-urge because they understood that mankind could only lose by accepting its sovereignty.

Nick

Nick, every part of that post made sense, and indeed, I agree with most of it. (I have a lot more confidence that science will explain all the details of consciousness, though.)

Since we've had some fairly strident disagreements in the past, I just wanted to say that.

 

[nescafe]

I realise from experience it´s hardly worth replying, but here goes..

A bit touchy, are we?

In other words you´d rather not fully adress the point. Probably because it´s the first time it has been presented to you and you have no pat preprepared good materialist response that someone else would have written.

No, my stance on the nature of the self is more in line with Buddhist ideas with a little bit of Dan Dennett thrown in. As far as I am aware, materialism does not have much to say directly about the self, and I do not think it is terribly relevant to the fundamental nature of reality.

The customary lazy appeal for evidence when you don´t have any strong or at least interesting counter arguments to make.

You made the claim, provide the evidence.

Also your misrepresentation of me saying that those with ego loss would be the primary occupants of mental asylums. I never said such.

Then what did you mean by this:

Mental asylums are full of people who have, for one reason or another, suffered ego loss.

Perhaps you can clarify, and maybe provide a bit o' evidence.

To an ant? Clearly you avoid my point. As elsewhere.

You introduced the ant, not I. I did not see what the point of that was then, and I do not now -- I just want a decent explanation of what Universal Consciousness is supposed to be or what
it is supposed to explain. You brought up the ant, presumably in some sort of attempt to imply that any answer would necessarily be beyond human understanding. If that is the case, how is Universal
Consciousness a parsimonious concept, much less a useful one?

Well, what is the point of even positing it, then? You posit a thing called Universal Consciousness, call it the fundamental nature of reality, but then assert that questions about how it works are meaningless? Sounds like a useless concept to me.

In what sense would the ultimate nature of reality need to be useful?

My take on it:
The ultimate nature of reality (noumenal reality) is unknowable -- Kant nailed that one. Therefore, any particular metaphysic we happen to explore is useful to the degree it helps us understand the reality we perceive and how well it integrates with the rest of our fields of study.

By far the most useful stance we have when trying to investigate reality is methodological naturalism, which does not imply any specific metaphysic. If I am forced to take a specific metaphysical stance, that stance is naturalism -- it does not matter what the ultimate nature of reality is, only that whatever rules it obey be consistent.

The fact that you keep repeating these prejudices indicates they go pretty deep in you. Most likely on little evidence except what you´ve been raised to believe.

Getting a little personal, are we? Try attacking my argument instead of resorting to amateur psychoanalysis.

´How it works´ is not synonymous with understanding.

It is as close as we can get. Ultimate understanding -- understanding noumenal reality -- is not possible. Even if we happen to stumble across the "right" explanation, we still have no way of proving that it is, in fact, the right one, only that it is correct in all cases so far.

Any understanding you came to of how particular things work would not include how those particular things managed to come into existence and maintain their existence. Thus your approach
is flawed.

Of course it is flawed. It is merely consistent with everything else in my understanding, and is subject to revision in light of new facts, as any good explanation should be.

Ít´s entirely useless to explain the interrealtionship of things if you cannot explain the genesis of the things themselves. So your effort in this regard would always be futile.

We don't have a single widely agreed on explanation of how life originated -- does that make the Theory of Evolution useless as an explanation of the diversity of life, or make biology as a whole useless in explaining how life works right now? Of course not. Try a different line of reasoning, this one does not work.

The accounts I have read of both from people who are not mentally ill is close enough that I assume they are the same phenomenon.

Superficial investigation then.

Yup, just some anecdata from myself and some of my friends (both of the kensho experience and chemical experience), some biographical literature from experienced psychonauts and Buddhist monks. All I have time for, really -- being a sole provider for my family and all that.

Then why invoke the experience of dying in your reply as some kind of support?

I didn't. I merely noted that death is the final ego loss. Sorry you misunderstood.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The last one doesn't really work in detail, though. You have to ignore pretty much everything going on in the brain to pretend that it's true.

Agreed. But that's what we're doing, right? Ignoring pretty much everything we know about the brain.

~~ Paul

 

[PixyMisa]

Nope the idealist faces exactly the same issues, how does 'consciousness' arise in different beings composed of bits of consciousness?

Bits of mind, bits of matter, the problems are exactly the same.

Indeed. Idealists are constantly trying to do an end run around this problem and claim victory, but they face exactly the same problem materialists do, because we do not experience mind as a universal substance, we experience individual, separate minds in a shared objective universe.

One of the tricks is to claim evidence of shared minds. There is no such evidence. There's five thousand years of anecdotes, but when put to the test, it always fails.

For many forms of idealism, the idealist is left with trying to explain the apparent shared objective reality too, so those forms of idealism are intrinsically weaker than materialism, special pleading notwithstanding.

 

[Malerin]

I, for one, am glad no one here "blindly adheres" to materialism. That just wouldn't happen among such a skeptical group of... skepticists.

Am I right, Wasp?

 

[Frozenwolf150]

The reason you think that you don't have to do a lot of hoop-jumping is because you just accept your own story uncritically. As Stimpson J. Cat once said:

"In other words, it only seems simple if you actually understand it so little that you have no comprehension of how complicated it actually is. This appears to be exactly the case."

I don't understand why everyone in your club isn't jumping all over the science of the Overmind, getting down with the details. Why are you so satisfied?

~~ Paul

Just to get this out of the way, the response to that is going to be the tu quoque fallacy that the "exclusive materialist atheists" also fill in the details of their model of reality with heapfuls of faith.

Yep.

This is what turned our understanding that mind is brain function from overwhelming correlative evidence to overwhelming causative evidence: Not what the mind does when the brain is working, but what the mind does when the brain is broken.

From ten thousand years of substance abuse, to Phineas Gage, to the blind gentleman navigating the obstacle course unaided, we have been able to map out, piece by piece, what parts of the brain are responsible for what.

Until there is nothing left.

HypnoPsi, Plumjam, Malerin: You do not grasp how much is known today about how the brain generates the mind. There is simply no room left for any rational question here.

Listen to the MIT Introduction to Psychology lecture series. Listen to all of it. Stop making things up about shared mystical experiences and learn what really goes on in the brain - it is far more exciting and infinitely more important.

I hate to ask this, but for those of us who can't stream videos (I do have broadband but Flash player murdered my system) would anyone be able to sum up the important points in the MIT lectures? Or better yet, is there a transcript or a place I could read up on this so that I don't have to play the video? Either way, it would be helpful to have it here in this debate.

 

[HypnoPsi]

What's the difference between saying "stuff is physical" and saying "stuff is Overmind"?

Saying stuff is "physical" (in the sense of materialism) is less parsimonious.

You see evidence for noumena? That is, objects as they appear in themselves, independent of perception? Well then, we agree. There are objects independent of your perception. How do they work?

Again, I don't think we can ever know for sure (at least, not via direct observation) whether objective phenomena (noumena) are sustained by "matter" or "God's laws/thoughts".

My only point is that materialism is considerably less parsinonious and requires a great deal more mental gymnastics and faith than theism.

Surely you must see this by now? Saying "God did it" is always going to be the simplest explanation of all.

How are these Overmind-thought brain processes distinguished from physical brain processes?

There is no distinguishing about it. Amaterialism is simply an absense of belief in some fundamental prima materia substance or other. Not all amaterialists are theists. Buddhists for example are both amaterialist and atheist.

This is only about what is the most parsimonious theory to explain the situation. As you've said yourself, it depends how you define substance.

Stubbing your toe on a bit of reality is still going to get the same result regardless of whether or not it's true essence and ultimate nature is material or 'vitalistic'.

What shall we call the substantial external world that this Overmind generates for us?

There you go sneaking in the world substantial when "phenomenal" would serve much better.

And, I just call the Universe the Universe. The fact that I am absent the belief that their is any substance at the root essence of things doesn't change my interactions with objective phenomena in any way.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

Except that we can make repeatable observations about matter and its nature, and different people will get the same results regardless of their perception or bias.

Nobody has ever observed matter - ever. We can observe and measure objective phenomenal reality. That's all.

We absolutely do not know that it's ultimate essence is some uncreated, self-perpetuating and self-generating "stuff".

~
HypnoPsi

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I, for one, am glad no one here "blindly adheres" to materialism. That just wouldn't happen among such a skeptical group of... skepticists.

I doubt anyone does blindly adhere to materialism. I think it's more accurate to say that we blindly adhere to scientific epistemology/naturalism.

What part of "I think two well-thought-out monisms would turn out to be equivalent" is so difficult to understand?

~~ Paul

 

[rocketdodger]

Since I can't even objectively prove that anyone I know is conscious how can someone ever know a computer is?

By definining consciousness in terms of behavior rather than magic.

Again, I believe in the evidence for a low level of psi ability in humans from such experiments as the Ganzfeld and staring experiments.

For me, proof of computer consciousness would have to include computer psi ability.

If that was ever demonstrated then that would really give me a lot to think about!

You have to assume the existence of "psi" to begin with for the Ganzfeld experiments to suggest it. You haven't heard such criticisms before? I find that hard to believe.

In particular, there is a much simpler and more credible explanation for such results -- since human minds are similar, they might have similar thoughts. As in, if you ask 1000 people what their favorite flavor of ice cream is, a statistically significant portion will report "chocolate." Do you also consider that evidence of "psi?"

Why do you say that "all things experience"? And how do you get experierience without consciousness?

Because the only way my definition of experience can be non-contradictory is for all things to experience.

And experience is not equivalent to consciousness, or even dependent on consciousness. Were you "conscious" of all the little things you experienced while driving home from work on the freeway? Of course not. In my view, "consciousness" is simply the result of reasoning about experience.

There were mechanical and hydraulic computers long before there were electric powered computers. They were certainly computing data and not just running randomly.

This has nothing to do with your prior question or my response.

What definition of belief? Would you say there is "experience" in the sense of some very rudimentary form of consciousness as the thermostat processes information about the ambient temperature in order to make a "decision".

I would not say it is conscious in the same self-aware sense as a human, because even if there is self-awareness (as in Pixy's 100 transistor machine) there isn't a sufficient level of reasoning going on.

But is that what "conscious" means? I dunno. These discussions always prove ultimately fruitless because everyone is using different definitions. Rather than talk about things being "conscious" I prefer to talk about things exhibiting a list of behaviors.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Saying stuff is "physical" (in the sense of materialism) is less parsimonious.

I disagree. You are ignoring the complexity. You refuse to answer the questions I've asked over and over.

Surely you must see this by now? Saying "God did it" is always going to be the simplest explanation of all.

You haven't explained how the universe works. You don't get to employ Occam yet. It's only simpler because it isn't an explanation. Surely you must see this by now.

There you go sneaking in the world substantial when "phenomenal" would serve much better.

I use the word substantial in the sense of:

1b : not imaginary or illusory : REAL, TRUE

My point being that your preoccupation with whether I call your godstuff "substance" is silly. You're attributing complexity to "substance" and trying hard to make sure it doesn't rub off on your godstuff. But you have the same complicated reality to explain.

~~ Paul

 

[Frozenwolf150]

Nobody has ever observed matter - ever. We can observe and measure objective phenomenal reality. That's all.

Did you read the rest of what I said? I said that our observations and measurements of matter, or rather the "objective phenomenal reality" that we call matter, are repeatable and will be consistent for different individuals regardless of their religious bias. This was in order to contrast it with the observations of the "Overmind experience" which have huge variations depending on who it was and what they already believe, and cannot reliably be repeated in other individuals.

We absolutely do not know that it's ultimate essence is some uncreated, self-perpetuating and self-generating "stuff".

~
HypnoPsi

Which, again, makes absolutely no difference, and gives us no reason to invent a God to plug into the holes.

 

[PixyMisa]

Agreed. But that's what we're doing, right? Ignoring pretty much everything we know about the brain.

I think that one is broken in a more direct way than the others.

If causality is reversed, and the mental causes the physical, we have a very very weird but entirely consistent picture of a Universe which runs backwards in time.

If you stick God into the middle (or beginning, or end) of every causal chain, you have an entirely unnecessary assumption, but everything works out fine.

But the radio receiver analogy fails to predict what we observe. As Articulett pointed out, a damaged hippocampus prevents the brain from forming new permanent memories (actually, only specific types of new permanent memories!), but existing memories are retained. As you study brain activity in more and more detail, you eventually end up with every neuron being a transmitter and a receiver communicating with an unevidenced entity and producing results that are in all ways identical to what we would expect the neuron to do based on its physics and chemistry.

(Of course, you know that, just presenting the point to our audience. )

 

[PixyMisa]

I hate to ask this, but for those of us who can't stream videos (I do have broadband but Flash player murdered my system) would anyone be able to sum up the important points in the MIT lectures? Or better yet, is there a transcript or a place I could read up on this so that I don't have to play the video? Either way, it would be helpful to have it here in this debate.

They're just audio; I downloaded them and put them on my iPod.

There are lecture notes, but no transcripts unfortunately.

 

[rocketdodger]

No. That is simply not what any of these studies have suggested. All of these studies rely on subjective judging on the part of the subject in some way or another - usually about timing at the milisecond level.

The experimental design simply cannot control all of the variables necessary to reach the conclusion you have reached.

But that is only to accuse PlumJam of doing exactly what you have ended up doing yourself. The data Libet, for example, gained was all based on the subjects judgement of timing.

It's very interesting but there is no way to know it's truly reliable.

~
HypnoPsi

I told you I was not talking about the Libet experiments.

Here: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html

If you can't find the full text, it is summed up in many places, just google the paper title, "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain."

Long story short, they used MRI technology, computer pattern recognition, and a whole bunch of more reliable techniques than the old Libet experiments. And their results showed a much larger time difference as well.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

But the radio receiver analogy fails to predict what we observe. As Articulett pointed out, a damaged hippocampus prevents the brain from forming new permanent memories (actually, only specific types of new permanent memories!), but existing memories are retained. As you study brain activity in more and more detail, you eventually end up with every neuron being a transmitter and a receiver communicating with an unevidenced entity and producing results that are in all ways identical to what we would expect the neuron to do based on its physics and chemistry.

See how useful these unevidenced entities are? They can accommodate everything we discover about the brain.

As Interesting Ian once admitted, there is absolutely nothing we can discover about the brain that is anything other than the neural correlates of consciousness. We will not discover consciousness.

~~ Paul