Idealists: What does 'physical' mean to you?

[Nick227]

I know some of the folks here have actual training in philosophy, so please critique away at this:

Under discussion now, at heart, is the implications of the cogito. Since most people have already realized that the cogito does not prove that "I" exist, but that thought exists we needn't cover the "I" side of the issue.

But, and I'm sure this has been covered in the history of philosophy before, the cogito seems to work because it contains hidden assumptions of its own.

Mathematical proofs work because they simply play out underlying assumptions (axioms), and philosophical proofs seem to do the same.

Knowledge implies thought; it is not possible without it. So, knowledge already assumes the "existence" of thought. The cogito, therefore, simply plays out the trivial issue that knowledge includes thought, or that thought is more fundamental than knowledge.

So, that we know thought exists does not imply that thought is a primary constituent of the universe, it implies that knowledge is not possible without thought.

If we want to postulate that thought is the primary constituent of the universe, that's fine; but it is just as much as assumption as to postulate that the apeiron is the fundamental constituent of the universe.

I have no training in philosophy, but for me what needs paying attention to is that the cogito attempts (one presumes) to make a statement about "I." As far as I know it is not trying to make a statement about the nature of the universe. Thus that thought exists does not here presume that the universe is made of thought. One might also say that visual phenomenology, for example, is equally representative of the universe.

Nick

 

[PixyMisa]

Given what we know of the brain today, the assertion that consciousness is anything other than brain function is more absurd than claims of a flat Earth or the demon theory of disease.

Damage this part of the brain and you are blind - but can still respond to people's facial expressions.

Damage this part and you can no longer form new memories of events - but you retain your prior memories, and you can still learn new skills, even though you don't remember learning them.

Damage this part and you lose the ability to recognise faces, or you can recognise faces but know beyond a doubt that the person you see is an evil imposter.

Introduce this chemical and you see things that aren't there. This one will induce fear and paranoia. And this one will shut down your consciousness, as quickly and completely as flicking a switch.

Stimulate this region of the brain with a magnetic field and you'll have a spontaneous religious experience. Stimulate that region at the right moment and you will instantly forget what happened to you a moment ago. Put an electrode here and you will give up all but the most essential activities and concentrate on feeding current to that electrode.

Thousands of years of study on billions of test subjects, and every time the answer comes out the same. Against this you weigh... What, exactly?

 

[nescafe]

This is a cop-out materialists make to reduce consciouness to a triviality, and leads to bizzare claims that things like thermostats and calculators (or anything that carries out an informational "process") are consciouss.

In a definitional sense, perhaps. I am neutral to those arguments.

Concsciousness is much more than a "process". It is a subjective phenemenon that non of us can deny experiencing. It encompasses self-awareness and experience.

Oh, so there is an upper bound on how complex a process can be, or that it cannot model itself or incorporate new data? Interesting -- that seems to be an odd limitation.

<snip bits that PixyMisa answered -- they were better than mine>

It is easy to say that love, hate, joy, and all the other emotions we experience are "processes", but that completely ignores the experiential quality that is attached to everything we feel.

No, it seeks to explain it. Big difference.

To know of pheremones, cat scans, and biochemistry pales in comparison to actually experiencing "falling in love". The subjective quality of experience is so anathema to physicality, it prompts otherwise rational people to twist themselves in knots to deny the obvious.

Funny -- I see people who insist that experience cannot be grounded in physicality as the ones who are twisting themselves in knots to deny the obvious.

 

[Nick227]

Given what we know of the brain today, the assertion that consciousness is anything other than brain function is more absurd than claims of a flat Earth or the demon theory of disease.

Damage this part of the brain and you are blind - but can still respond to people's facial expressions.

Damage this part and you can no longer form new memories of events - but you retain your prior memories, and you can still learn new skills, even though you don't remember learning them.

Damage this part and you lose the ability to recognise faces, or you can recognise faces but know beyond a doubt that the person you see is an evil imposter.

Introduce this chemical and you see things that aren't there. This one will induce fear and paranoia. And this one will shut down your consciousness, as quickly and completely as flicking a switch.

Stimulate this region of the brain with a magnetic field and you'll have a spontaneous religious experience. Stimulate that region at the right moment and you will instantly forget what happened to you a moment ago. Put an electrode here and you will give up all but the most essential activities and concentrate on feeding current to that electrode.

Thousands of years of study on billions of test subjects, and every time the answer comes out the same. Against this you weigh... What, exactly?

The brain is very strongly implicated in the production of consciousness, no doubt about it. There may be a few forum members on this thread who might dispute this, but this seems to me to be taking a bit of an irrational position. It's clear that, however you cut it, the brain is very strongly implicated.

However, this of itself does not to me suggest the level of finality to the whole affair that you apparently ascribe to it. The questions remain...just how does it do it? Why is it so light in here? How does sound actually manifest from physical relationships in the environment? What actually, physically are thoughts? And why does it seem like it's all happening to me?

Now, you can take the systemic perspective and say it's all process, that for example the mind is what the brain does, but this still does not provide a mechanistic explanation for how it happens. There is the basis for a workable hypothesis and that's great. But this has been around at least since Dennett 1991 and it seems to me that there still remain many unanswered questions about just how phenomenology manifests. IMO, you are jumping the gun, Pixy, with the finality of your assertions. Science is more than hypotheses. You need to demonstrate how brain actually creates what we experience. And that ain't easy.

Nick

 

[Nick227]

Let me give you a famous thought-experiment: a group of color-blind scientists spend years figuring out all the physical processes involved in seeing the color red. They know the physics involved, the neurochemistry, which parts of the brain interpret the signals... they discover everything there is to know physically about what it is to see red. All the "processes", as it were. The question is, is their knowledge on seeing the color red complete or are they missing something by being color-blind? Do they actually have to experience seeing red before they can close the book on it?

If you read everything there is to know about riding a bike, but have never actually done so, doesn't the kid next door, on his bike, have a better understanding of it? Of course. Nobody's knowledge of anything is complete until they experience it. You can memorize the most fabulous recipe and you won't have a clue what it actually is until you experience the taste of is.

These kinds of thought experiments (TE's) can seem pretty convincing but if you look into some of the responses and objections raised by other researchers subsequently you will see that the TE can often be a bit of a loaded dice.

With the famous "Mary the colour scientist" one there are issues with what may be called "knowledge." As Dennett points out, if Mary truly knows "all there is to know about colour" then she must also know her reactive dispositions to colour. This point is still disputed but it does start to weaken the potency of the original TE because if she knows her reactive dispositions to colour then it seems to me reasonable that she does already know red.

Searle's "Chinese Room" one is also interesting but I recently listened to an mp3 of Searle defending his TE against around a dozen objections subsequently raised against it. What I was waiting for was for him to deal with Dennett's objections which were put down in his 1991 book. Searle didn't deign to discuss them, despite as I say dealing with a gamut of weaker objections. I found this telling.

I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs here, but I think it's fair to say that many of these TE's were constructed to deliberately try and convince the reader of the soundness of one argument - using fair means or foul.

Nick

 

[AkuManiMani]

Not in the slightest - and I certainly claim no special understanding for how Universe works.

My only point has been - and still remains - that theism is the better starting point to answer the question about existence than materialism or physicalism - however you define them.

You've basically formulated your own custom version of theism and presented it as the necessary solution to a problem that really isn't problematic.

You have basically framed the argument as:

-Materialism posits that there is a fundamental underlying 'substance' and that this 'substance' is what sustains existence

-Your Overmind theism claims that because existence and and phenomenon are informational in nature this strongly implies that it exists within the mind of what you choose to call 'God' and that this 'mind' is what sustains existence rather than 'substance'.

From there, you can kinda wedge in what ever particular theistic position you had from the get go and then claim that its more parsimonius' than the 'substance' explaination. Its like one of those latenight infomercials making the case for a product that you never knew you needed but to solve a problem that you never really had.

The issue with your 'Overmind' postulate is that it assumes a fundamental entity which, itself, would need explaining. The non-theistic position you're arguing against makes no such assumption of an ultimate 'sustainer'. In either case, the regression problem remains but in the case of your 'Overmind' postulate its rationalized away to make room for an entity with no discernable atributes other than its ability to allow you to shoehorn whatever conception of 'God' one might have. The non-theistic position (what you're broadly calling 'materialist') is more parsimonius in that it makes no claim to knowledge of, or inference to, some ultimate or another; it is inherently open to aditional explaination along the path of regressing inquiry. The thing is we don't and, almost certainly, cannot know what the ultimate fundamental of reality is because there really isn't one.

 

[PixyMisa]

The brain is very strongly implicated in the production of consciousness, no doubt about it. There may be a few forum members on this thread who might dispute this, but this seems to me a bit irrational. It's clear.

Yep.

However, this of itself does not to me suggest the level of finality to the whole affair that you apparently ascribe to it. The questions remain...just how does it do it?

We don't know every detail, sure. But we really do know a hell of a lot. (As the lecture series I'm constantly linking to illustrates so brilliantly, if anyone would just take the time to listen to it!)

Why is it so light in here? How does sound actually manifest from physical relationships in the environment?

The lecture series goes more into visual than auditory perception, but it does cover visual perception in considerable depth.

What actually, physically are thoughts?

Neurobiology in action.

And why does it seem like it's all happening to me?

Because it's an enormous evolutionary advantage.

ETA: And because, well, how could it seem to be happening to anyone else?

Now, you can take the systemic perspective and say it's all process, that for example the mind is what the brain does, but this still does not provide a mechanistic explanation for how it happens.

No, but we have that. The lecture series only skims the surface - it's a first year general introduction to psychology - but it takes 24 hours to do that.

I'm not saying it's simple. It's simple in principle, but massively complicated in detail.

There is the basis for a workable hypothesis and that's great. But this has been around at least since Dennett 1991 and it seems to me that there still remain many unanswered questions about just how phenomenology manifests. IMO, you are jumping the gun, Pixy, with the finality of your assertions. Science is more than hypotheses. You need to demonstrate how we get from noumena to phenomena. And that ain't easy.

Forget "noumena" and "phenomena"; they're terms founded in fuzzy thinking.

As I keep telling you, listen to the lecture series. Prof. Wolfe, who presents the lectures, is a leading researcher in the field of visual perception. He knows this stuff far better than I do, and presents it better as well. In the twenty-five years that I have been learning about cognition, I've come across two sources I recommend without hesitation: Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach; and the MIT Introduction to Psychology lecture series.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I have no training in philosophy, but for me what needs paying attention to is that the cogito attempts (one presumes) to make a statement about "I." As far as I know it is not trying to make a statement about the nature of the universe. Thus that thought exists does not here presume that the universe is made of thought. One might also say that visual phenomenology, for example, is equally representative of the universe.

Nick

So, you agree?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

I find this a bizarre position. I thought we were supposed to be enquiring minds here, trying to understand reality. So it makes no difference at all to you whether the underlying fundamental reality is dead matter or Universal Consciousness?


You are just assuming that it is not knowable. Based on what?
I have been arguing that millennia old traditions insistently tell us that it is knowable, via asensual direct experience. And these traditions prescribe practical systems of life and behaviour which move one towards that experience. People here tend to value practicality, so they should like that.
It is true that this kind of knowing is different from our usual modes of knowing. The latter are made up of parts and their interrelationships, and thus are amenable to language. The former is experience of The Whole and is therefore, in principle, indescribable.
This is exactly what one would expect from a philosophical point of view. It also happens to match with personal testimony of the experience.

I'm sorry that you find it a bizarre position. It is the natural consequence of monism. All of this is straight from the history of philosophy and the way that monism has been considered, from Anaximader through Spinoza.

I am not assuming it is not knowable. I provided an argument as to why it is not knowable more than once in various threads and once in this thread.

There is a much more extensive discussion/proof at the beginning of Spinoza's Ethics that you can research on your own.

Whatever it is you think you might be experiencing through any mystical state is not the fundamental existent. It cannot be. You can only experience some aspect of the fundamental existent/substance.

You make a good point, and I would agree with you if it were not for the evidence from throughout human history, across cultures, that the primary existent is indeed Universal Consciousness, and that it can be experienced. Indeed, the experience is why the whole of Creation was brought into play in the first place.

An experience is an experience. That experience must be of something and that something to make any sense must be comparable to something else -- the only means by which we understand and can discuss anything (by comparison). We do not experience "things in themselves". So whatever those experiences are, they are not of the fundamental existent.

Again, it´s not thought. I´ve always thought Descartes made a pretty basic blunder in that regard. Does our awareness cease to exist in the gaps between thoughts? To say we are our thoughts is like looking at a movie screen and saying we are the actor(s). We are the observer, the witness consciousness.
As to the proof of God, I tend to avoid such discussions. God either exists or does not, ..constructing a particularly clever argument is not going to move something from non existence over to existence, or vice versa. God is a matter of experience rather than argument, analysis or particular employments of reason.

Descartes wasn't trying to prove the thing that you guys have done with his cogito. His thought experiment is rock solid for a very good reason -- it proves one of its basic assumptions, what all good syllogisms do.

And, right, an argument is not going to move something from existence to non-existence, nor is it going to make something the fundamental existent.

As to God, he exists by definition if you so define it. There is no other proof. If he exists by experience, only if you so define your experience in some way so that it is the case.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If memory doesn´t enter into your consciousness it´s not memory, is it. Simple really.

All your memories are in your consciousness at all times? That sounds really annoying.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I find this a bizarre position. I thought we were supposed to be enquiring minds here, trying to understand reality. So it makes no difference at all to you whether the underlying fundamental reality is dead matter or Universal Consciousness?

I don't think there is any way to know what stuff really is. But if I knew, how would it change my world?

You are just assuming that it is not knowable. Based on what?

Based on the fact that no one can think of an experiment to distinguish all the possible fundamental existents. Unless you consider science a giant experiment, in which case physical stuff is winning so far.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Let me give you a famous thought-experiment: a group of color-blind scientists spend years figuring out all the physical processes involved in seeing the color red. They know the physics involved, the neurochemistry, which parts of the brain interpret the signals... they discover everything there is to know physically about what it is to see red. All the "processes", as it were. The question is, is their knowledge on seeing the color red complete or are they missing something by being color-blind? Do they actually have to experience seeing red before they can close the book on it?

We've had a dozen threads on the Knowledge Argument.

Is Mary allowed to operate on her brain while in the black and white room?

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Damage this part of the brain and you are blind - but can still respond to people's facial expressions.

Damage this part and you can no longer form new memories of events - but you retain your prior memories, and you can still learn new skills, even though you don't remember learning them.

Damage this part and you lose the ability to recognise faces, or you can recognise faces but know beyond a doubt that the person you see is an evil imposter.

Introduce this chemical and you see things that aren't there. This one will induce fear and paranoia. And this one will shut down your consciousness, as quickly and completely as flicking a switch.

Stimulate this region of the brain with a magnetic field and you'll have a spontaneous religious experience. Stimulate that region at the right moment and you will instantly forget what happened to you a moment ago. Put an electrode here and you will give up all but the most essential activities and concentrate on feeding current to that electrode.

I working all of these facts into my TV transceiver model of consciousness. It's getting complicated, but I can manage. It reminds me of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg

~~ Paul

 

[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."

I have been unable to locate the full text - though I have certainly came across this work before earlier in the year.

As you can see from the interview and review on Science Daily here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm

This experiment suffers from the same design problems (in reference to the conclusions you make from it) as the others. And I would also point out that the authors do not reach the same conclusion as you. Why do you feel justified in going further than them with research you are not as familiar with?


One of the comments posted on Philosophyogbrains.com puts it rather well:

http://philosophyofbrains.com/2008/...nts-of-free-decisions-in-the-human-brain.aspx

"The upshot is that it takes a bizarre view of free will combined with a strange interpretation of the data to find these results threatening to free will. IF our choices could be predicted with much closer to 100% accuracy (rather than the 60% here) AND if it were shown that the relevant brain activity both precedes and is unaffected by any of our conscious deliberations, well, THEN there may be an interesting challenge to our free will."

The point here is that the experimenters only asked the subjects to move one hand of their choice to press a button. What would happen if someone decided not to press the button at all?

You also have to wonder about the questions that were being asked of the subject here. Just asking "When did you decide to press the button with your right/left hand?" isn't enough here. What would the answer be if we asked them when do you feel you first prepared to press the button?

You'll also note that, obviously, the conscious choice to move at all is made just as soon as one is given the instruction. It is only the choice of when to decide to move that is said to be pre-determined (sometimes) by neuronal activity.

So the question is why doesn't conscious choice show up in the brain until so late after being given the instruction?

This research just doesn't say very much about free will at all. It's more about unconscious preferences being predictable sometimes (at a rate 60%).

And, by the way, if you have a copy of the paper, can you explain how they controlled for left-handedness or right handedness?

That seems like a real spanner in the works to me.

Was it easier to predict the decision the subject made when they chose their dominant or non-dominant hand?

Incidentally, were they actually able to predict the decision or was all the data merely mined after the fact?

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.

And as such it's a victim of its own success. These results clearly show that all of these experiments are showing nothing but mental preparedness rather than conscious choice. Every day we're faced with the need to make conscious choices in under 7 or so seconds (whilst driving to work for example).

If this research means what you think it means then every competitive sport from table tennis to soccer would be impossible as the brain simply doesn't have a 7 second window to prepare.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

Nobody has ever observed anything but matter. The act of observation is itself a material process.

Pixy, by "matter" do you mean something that you believe to be self-sustaining and self-perpetuating (i.e. uncreated and unsustained by any type of consciousness whatsoever - even as pure information)?

~
HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

Your consciousness doesn't include your memory. The concept of god is derived from your personal consciousness. Therefore god does not have memory without some additional mechanism to provide it.

If God can think up a Universe I'm pretty sure he can create a memory store for himself.

But, hey, if he knows the current position of all information, it's force and trajectory (which he does, cos he's thinking it up all the time) then all he needs to do to see yesterday (cos He's really, really, clever is God) is just calculate back to where all the information was at that point in time.

Simple.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[Nick227]

So, you agree?

For sure. For me the cogito is not trying to make a statement about the nature of the universe. It's trying to reassure Descartes that he exists! I stress I'm not a philosopher so there could be more to it than this.

Nick

 

[HypnoPsi]

Creationists do this all the time, assuming that the world had to "come from" somewhere in order to designate a role for the God they already believe to be the creator.

This is where I completely disagree with you. I have never felt that being a theist filled some need as atheists are wont to imagine just must be the case with theists.

My theism has always, for as long as I can remember, been based on my absence of belief in the idea that objective reality is just some self-sustaining thingy or other and my absence of belief that my mind/conciousness is solely down to a couple of pounds of protein in my skull.

Quite frankly, the type of thinking you seem to be following here is the logic that we should all by now have moved away from theism and beliefs about consciousness being a distinct phenomenon and all that stuff.

The problem here is that atheists/materialists are very, very wrong to blame some latent belief in these things in society (as if it is all just sentimental needs people have) on the reason why we're not all living in some glorious atheist utopia like in John Lennon's "Imagine".

We're not the one's doing anything to prevent this. Atheists have failed so much and so completely at showing the Universe to be self-perpetuating and self-sustaining and that consciousness is just information processing or whatever that they've basically given up trying and just prefer to nowadays point the finger at others.

The bottom line is until you do succed at showing the above (and I very, very, much doubt you ever will) then belief in God and Psi and/or the distinction of consciousness isn't going anywhere fast.

This, coupled with good solid research into low levels of Psi ability showing positive results, doesn't put you in a good stead.

~
HypnoPsi

 

[Nick227]

Yep.

We don't know every detail, sure. But we really do know a hell of a lot. (As the lecture series I'm constantly linking to illustrates so brilliantly, if anyone would just take the time to listen to it!)

Well, I did download it earlier today and I will make a start on it in the car. I noticed that #10 seems to be missing for some reason.

The lecture series goes more into visual than auditory perception, but it does cover visual perception in considerable depth.

The only thing that concerned me was that it was essentially psychology. That to me means that it's going to be looking more at function than actual physical routes of causation.

Can you give a machine actual, experiential vision? Can you give it actual sensational feeling? Or can you truly describe how it happens in the human brain, how it translates physical attributes into sensory phenomena? Not how it might be happening, not why it's happening, but how it actually happens?

Because it's an enormous evolutionary advantage.

I'm aware of the possibilities. I'm concerned about the actual how.

Nick

 

[HypnoPsi]

That page is crap.

Look at the first thing on the list: "NDEs occur while patients are brain dead."

If you are brain dead, your brain is dead. Dead and starting to smell.

You do not come back from brain death.

So, in otherwords, just because the author is using the the term brain death to, I presume, mean an EEG flatline (rather than cellular necrosis) you're going to take a sigh of relief and just avoid reading anything from the page that might challenge your earlier statement about these people not, or so you believe, being able to gain information they couln't possibly access via sensory means.

How absolutely typical of a skeptic.

Had you actually bothered to read the page this first entry cites at:

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html

You would see that the state the surgeons introduced really pushed the boundaries.

If the patients brain was generating the NDE then there would have to be electro-chemical activity in tons of locations - and the signature for that occurring of course is, naturally, EEG activity.

Unable to answer this or explain it you ignore it for the most flippant of reasons.

~
HypnoPsi