Materealism and morality

[AkuManiMani]

Or it could be that, after the scientific discovery, it was found that feelings are different interactions of chemicals within the brain.

That's a very nice, terse answer. But it is, in fact, an answer that explains very little.

There are very many questions that arise from all of these observations. What is it about these particular chemical interactions that causes them to have this property of "feeling"? Do they have this quality outside of the context of the brain -- say in an animal without a brain? Does a single cell have any kind of subjective experience? For what is the brain, but a huge collection of such cells working in concert?

Is it just a very specific class of organic reactions that give rise to subjective experience? Does it really matter what chemicals are interacting? Does it come from them simply being organized in a certain way (i.e. context dependent)? Could you, say, have an inanimate object experience pain or some other sensation or feeling? Is the capacity for subjective experience something fundamental to existence or is it purely an emergent phenomenon? What is the subjective experience of feeling, anyway?

The understandings obtained from current neuroscience, while greatly invaluable, are only surface knowledge of a much deeper mystery; it's barely scratched the surface. It's one thing to say that X class of chemical is associated with Y feeling, but quite another to explain why that is so or even help understand how there is such a thing as feeling in the first place. With that in mind, its more that premature to conclusively say that feeling is identical with a certain class of chemical reactions. All we know is that there is a correlation; we don't know if it is a necessary correlation or even if it is a causal relation.

 

[L The Detective]

You're very smart, for a juggler.

 

[JetLeg]

It's a definition. The proof that feelings are physical process is evidence of that definition. A tautology is only when you offer the definition as if it were an argument.

I don't understand what it means.

From my point of view, I don't mind if you distinguish between feelings (the subjective experience) and the physical processes that cause or underly them. That's why I made those grammatically awkward statements like "caused by or even 'is'". It's the same to me as saying that mind is a function or emergent phenomenon of the brain. I'm OK with that.

For the contrary claim, that mind or feelings (the subjective experience) are independent of physical processes, there's a dearth of evidence.

I think about all you've got are things like ghost stories, and NDE/OBE anecdotes. (Both of which can be simulated by drugs nowadays, I believe. I'm pretty sure neuroscience has a pretty good idea of what brain structures are involved in or responsible for the subjective sensation of the location of the "self" with respect to the body.)

I agreee with what you said . I don't think that mind or feelings are independent, like ghosts. I think they are a different substance. It might be that the "substance" of subjective experience cannot exist without brains. But it is still a different type of substance.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I don't think that mind or feelings are independent, like ghosts. I think they are a different substance. It might be that the "substance" of subjective experience cannot exist without brains. But it is still a different type of substance.

Really?

Is there such a thing as "substance" that isn't "matter"?

Frankly, that sounds like an abuse of language--on the order of "incorporeal bodies" or "spiritual bodies".

Are you saying this non-material matter co-exists with the brain? In other words, if you removed all the regular matter that is the brain, bit by bit, would there be something else left behind?

It depends on the brain, but isn't part of the composition of the brain (or an emergent property of the brain)?

 

[AkuManiMani]

Really?

Is there such a thing as "substance" that isn't "matter"?

Frankly, that sounds like an abuse of language--on the order of "incorporeal bodies" or "spiritual bodies".

Are you saying this non-material matter co-exists with the brain? In other words, if you removed all the regular matter that is the brain, bit by bit, would there be something else left behind?

It depends on the brain, but isn't part of the composition of the brain (or an emergent property of the brain)?

I'm guessing from your usesage and the context of the discussion that you consider "matter" and "substance" to be synonymous, yes? If that's the case, would you consider something that's not a substance to be a real entity, or even logically possible?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

You can make a long story short if you just provide a definition of "feeling", using the language of physics.

Translation: JetLeg doesn't understand it, therefore it doesn't exist/isn't correct.

There is a concept where if one has not had a previous experience of something, they truly cannot 'see it'. It has been (falsely I believe) claimed this led some native peoples not to "see Columbus's ships" on the horizon. The concept has meaning in medicine, however, where you cannot diagnose something you are unaware exists.

You are not the first person who has failed to understand the concept of 'thought originating by magic' and responded with less than logical answers to questions of where does morality come from if it isn't part of the physical self? Your answer,

I never used the term "injected". I never used the term "soul". Saying that it is a soul or a function of a physical brain is a false dychotomy.

reflects the fact that you again don't understand the question.

The terms, magic, inject, and soul are of course, my words. That's because you have failed to state your own. I have no option but to use words I think reflect your thoughts.

Let me try again, and so far you and your links have failed to answer my question. Where do you believe morals come from if they are not part of the physical self? How do they get into your brain?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'm guessing from your usesage and the context of the discussion that you consider "matter" and "substance" to be synonymous, yes? If that's the case, would you consider something that's not a substance to be a real entity, or even logically possible?

In the context, he's using "substance" as if it were matter, but from what he's said before, I take it he's not talking about matter. Nor is he talking about properties of matter or emergent properties of matter at various levels of organization.

So I have no idea what he means by the term "substance".

It sounds like it's being used in the sense of a chemical substance (which, of course, is matter), but that doesn't fit with what he's said before.

FWIW: We already covered the question I think you're asking. It's a gross oversimplification of materialism--and inaccurate at that--to say that a materialist denies the existence of anything but matter itself.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

From your link, JetLeg:

Materialists have always had the difficult task of explaining how their materialism can account for such psychological phenomena as thoughts, beliefs, desires, intentions, and sensory experiences—or at least for familiar talk of such phenomena.

Bull! I explained where they came from as have others. Thought processes are purely biological resulting from chemical, electrical, and structural components in the brain. We can demonstrate the evolution of these processes. We can see the effect of brain damage to specific areas of the brain which confirms these are physical aka material processes. We can observe changes in the brain structure which affect memory. We can observe which areas of the brain are activated depending on the thoughts a person generates or the tasks they perform.


And what explanation does the article offer as an alternative to physical aka material brain processes? None. The author apparently doesn't know about the understanding of neuroscience, therefore it must not exist.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The reason I like this thread--I'm learning new stuff too.

I suppose this is the way Jetleg is using "substance":

Substance dualism
Substance dualism is a type of dualism most famously defended by Descartes, which states that there are two fundamental kinds of substance: mental and material.[5] According to his philosophy, which is specifically called Cartesian dualism, the mental does not have extension in space, and the material cannot think. However, some substance dualists, such as Thomas Aquinas and William Hasker, reject this and many other ideas associated with Cartesian dualism. Substance dualism is important historically for having given rise to much thought regarding the famous mind-body problem.[12] Substance dualism is a philosophical position compatible with most theologies which claim that immortal souls occupy an independent "realm" of existence distinct from that of the physical world.

Wikipedia.

I think this is a poor approach that was probably developed just to accommodate traditional ideas of the soul.

Empirically, if mental substance has no extension in space, why don't we have real evidence of disembodied minds?

If this mental substance is totally dependent and attached to the physical substrate of the brain, then I see no reason to treat it as other than a property of the brain.

If you've got a round ball, you can't take the "roundness" out of it and treat it as an independent thing. It's merely a property of the ball. Similarly, if the ball can roll or bounce, you can't take those functions out and have rolling or bouncing without the ball.

ETA: Perhaps most importantly, modern neuroscience has pretty well resolved the "mind-body problem". Remember, in Descartes' time William Harvey had only recently worked out the circulatory system and the function of the heart as a pump.

 

[AkuManiMani]

In the context, he's using "substance" as if it were matter, but from what he's said before, I take it he's not talking about matter. Nor is he talking about properties of matter or emergent properties of matter at various levels of organization.

So I have no idea what he means by the term "substance".

It sounds like it's being used in the sense of a chemical substance (which, of course, is matter), but that doesn't fit with what he's said before.

FWIW: We already covered the question I think you're asking. It's a gross oversimplification of materialism--and inaccurate at that--to say that a materialist denies the existence of anything but matter itself.

Gotcha. Just looked over some of the discussion up till now. Now to wait for Jet to clarify.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

From your link, JetLeg:

That was actually from my link. It's an encyclopedia or dictionary of terms related to the mind. It went on to show how contemporary materialists deal with that "difficult task".

I'm pretty sure the various kinds of dualism have their own entries (which doubtless outline the humongous "difficult tasks" those approaches face).

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

You're very smart, for a juggler.

Thanks.

For the record, I am pretty bright. I was a National Merit Scholar and did very well in college and a bit of grad school (English literature and language), and I read a lot. I worked for 8 years as an interpreter for the Deaf (self taught--no training and no Deaf relatives--no exposure to sign language until I learned it in my late 20s). I mostly interpreted in grad school and professional schools (law school, architecture, and med school, plus a bunch of biology grad school and lecture series over the years). So a lot of my information is what I picked up in lectures and such. (I took A & P on my own besides interpreting the anatomy course for the med school student.)

Philosophy isn't my cup of tea. (Too many "isms" too keep track of!) But I like logic and rhetoric quite a lot.

And now I do schlocky comedy, stunts, balancing and throwing stuff around for a living!
Shameless plug.

 

[L The Detective]

I'm partial to logic and philosophy myself. One of the things I've found myself interested in lately is the logic of moral systems, and the question of whether it's possible to have a system of moral values that is based on pure logic, that makes sense and doesn't have any contradictions or flaws. In other words, "is there a reason to be good." This topic seems to keep coming up in the threads I participate in. Of course it's a purely philosophical topic, and not a scientific one.

I'm not much of a scientist, but I like to analyze and understand the logic behind people's ideas and beliefs. I guess I am a materialist, because I have trouble actively believing in something without evidence... but at the same time, I'm not sure if dualism is that extraordinary of a claim either. There is a certain logic to it, it's just that there is no real evidence, as far as I know. And I don't find it to be a very useful concept. But it's not crazy, either... it's an understandable belief.

 

[AkuManiMani]

I'm partial to logic and philosophy myself. One of the things I've found myself interested in lately is the logic of moral systems, and the question of whether it's possible to have a system of moral values that is based on pure logic, that makes sense and doesn't have any contradictions or flaws. In other words, "is there a reason to be good." This topic seems to keep coming up in the threads I participate in. Of course it's a purely philosophical topic, and not a scientific one.

I'm pretty much of the same school of thought, in the sense that I love trying to investigate whether one can come to a coherent, purely logical, basis for morality. What would I really like to see is a system that does for moral philosophy what science does for natural philosophy; put it on some solid ground to meaningfully progress from.

I'm not much of a scientist, but I like to analyze and understand the logic behind people's ideas and beliefs. I guess I am a materialist, because I have trouble actively believing in something without evidence... but at the same time, I'm not sure if dualism is that extraordinary of a claim either. There is a certain logic to it, it's just that there is no real evidence, as far as I know. And I don't find it to be a very useful concept. But it's not crazy, either... it's an understandable belief.

I've only one real contention with dualism as its normally presented; namely the problem of interaction between two fundamentally different entities. On one hand dualism seems to highlight what appears to be a real distinction between mind and matter, but IMO, it defeats itself before it even gets going. How can mind and matter interact in any way unless they have some common basis?

I think materialism is more along the right track for two reasons: [1] its inherently monist and avoids the interaction problem of dualism and [2] is starts with a concrete, easily observable basis to work from. That being said, it still doesn't fully deal with Descartes' observation that subjective experience (i.e. the mental) seems to be fundamentally different from matter.

I'm not sure if you were around for some other discussions on this forum where Idealism was presented. Its a monist conception like materialism but it considers mind to be the basis of reality rather than matter. The problem is that, as a philosophy, while it succeed where materialism fails it also fails where materialism succeeds.

I've begun to take the view that some form of neutral monism is probably closer to the truth than any of the above ideas. It seems more reasonable to assume that what we consider to be mental and/or material is derivative of something ontologically more basic. I don't think anyone can definitively say what that something is, at this point, but it can be reasonably inferred.

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

I don't think that's a fair description of Jetleg's attitude (here and on other threads). I think he's been open to new ideas and approaches.

For that matter, reasonable minds can disagree, and I personally have enjoyed this conversation.

It was my impression that from post #101 on, he was displaying a very obvious case of denial.

But you are certainly a much more patient poster as I can tell from your previous interactions. So maybe you'll have better luck

If you succeed, I'll give you a Pony

 

[Taffer]

That's a very nice, terse answer. But it is, in fact, an answer that explains very little.

I think it explains a lot, personally. Oh well...

There are very many questions that arise from all of these observations. What is it about these particular chemical interactions that causes them to have this property of "feeling"?

The way they interact with the whole system. A brain is just a computer, and a feeling is a program running on it.

Do they have this quality outside of the context of the brain -- say in an animal without a brain?

Of course not. "Within a brain". The definition of "brain", however, can be quite loose (computer, network, etc).

Does a single cell have any kind of subjective experience? For what is the brain, but a huge collection of such cells working in concert?

No, unless it consists of the required number of connections, feedback loops, and computational components.

Is it just a very specific class of organic reactions that give rise to subjective experience? Does it really matter what chemicals are interacting?

Yes.

Does it come from them simply being organized in a certain way (i.e. context dependent)?

Please clarify.

Could you, say, have an inanimate object experience pain or some other sensation or feeling?

If it contains a brain-like structure, sure. But then it isn't really inanimate anymore, is it?

Is the capacity for subjective experience something fundamental to existence or is it purely an emergent phenomenon?

Simply an emergent phenomenon.

What is the subjective experience of feeling, anyway?

An emergent phenomenon wherein a brain modifies behaviour within itself. Sentience is an emergent phenomenon, as are 'feelings'.

The understandings obtained from current neuroscience, while greatly invaluable, are only surface knowledge of a much deeper mystery; it's barely scratched the surface. It's one thing to say that X class of chemical is associated with Y feeling, but quite another to explain why that is so

Of course it has only scratched the surface. The universe is a complex place. But at least we have knowledge, instead of arm-waving claiming "it's a special thing!".

Also, there is plenty of research which explains why specific chemicals have the reaction they do.

or even help understand how there is such a thing as feeling in the first place. With that in mind, its more that premature to conclusively say that feeling is identical with a certain class of chemical reactions. All we know is that there is a correlation; we don't know if it is a necessary correlation or even if it is a causal relation.

Wrong. We do know that it is a causal relationship. And I never said a feeling is identical with a certain class of chemical reactions, did I?

 

[Taffer]

I am not playing semantics. You need to prove that a feeling is a feedback-loop generated within the brain to modify behaviour. I will ask you for evidence. But before citing the evidence, I am asking you for a definition. Please do not define feeling as the very thing you want to prove it to be.

No, I've indulged you long enough. It's your turn.

You define "feeling". Once you have shown that you can argue in good faith, we can continue.

 

[The Atheist]

No, I've indulged you long enough. It's your turn.

You define "feeling". Once you have shown that you can argue in good faith, we can continue.

Blokes like you give Otago a bad name.

There the real scarfies are, rioting, drinking and thowing up over little old ladies, while you quietly do brainy stuff.

Shouldn't you be at Auckland? Or even Massey, with Ginarley?

Excellent posts. Clear, concise, short. Some people have great difficulty with that.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'm partial to logic and philosophy myself. One of the things I've found myself interested in lately is the logic of moral systems, and the question of whether it's possible to have a system of moral values that is based on pure logic, that makes sense and doesn't have any contradictions or flaws. In other words, "is there a reason to be good." This topic seems to keep coming up in the threads I participate in. Of course it's a purely philosophical topic, and not a scientific one.

I'm pretty much of the same school of thought, in the sense that I love trying to investigate whether one can come to a coherent, purely logical, basis for morality. What would I really like to see is a system that does for moral philosophy what science does for natural philosophy; put it on some solid ground to meaningfully progress from.


Are you guys familiar with Alonzo Fyfe, the Atheist Ethicist? (Desire utilitarianism.) Some day I might go buy his book. He used to have those essays on his blog, but even so, you can get his overall approach through many of the essays that are there.

 

[Taffer]

Blokes like you give Otago a bad name.

There the real scarfies are, rioting, drinking and thowing up over little old ladies, while you quietly do brainy stuff.

Shouldn't you be at Auckland? Or even Massey, with Ginarley?

Excellent posts. Clear, concise, short. Some people have great difficulty with that.

Thank you The Atheist, I appreciate that.

As an aside, I'm no longer at university, nor living in Dunedin. I've finished my degrees, and in fact no longer live in New Zealand.

But I know what you mean.