A question for scientists: Primary and Secondary qualities

[Loki]

Titus Rivas,

You can't say gravity is really the same thing as consciousness just because they both have an impact on the physical world.

True enough - it was Franko, not I, that suffereed from this confusion.

By the way, Loki, who is this Franko fellow?

Believe me, you don't want to know!!! On the other hand, if you have a spare 6 months or so, and find reading the same post over and over again interesting, you can use the search facility on the Forum to look up some of the 6,000 or so posts that Franko made on the subject.

Unless you see gravity as a force coming from the consciousness of a divinity (which may be less absurd than it seems) this difference cannot be overlooked.

Franko did indeed have a Goddess, responsible for raising us gravitons from the Abyss into this physical world. But this is quite a digression, so I think I'll leave it there (I shoulf never had brought it up!)

By the physical world I mean that part of reality which can be described in exclusively physical terms, without any need for concepts such as subjective awareness or experients.

Back to the topic. Okay, I see that you defining "physical" to mean "anything that can be completely described using only objective terms". I still don't see that has helping you, though. Let me try another approach...

All physical objects interact via one (or more) of the 4 known forces. It seems that you consider these forces to be physical also. Consciousness interacts with physcial objects via which of these forces? Or is it a "5th" force? If you consider it to be "using" one of the existing forces to effect it's interactions, then whihc one, and how? If you consider it to be a "5th" force, then why is it defined as "non-physical" while the other 4 are "physical"?

 

[Interesting Ian]

Titus Rivas,


How do you define "a physical it" that exists in the "physical world"? Isn't the only viable definition something along the lines of "A physical thing is something that affects other physical things"?

You seem to be saying :

Gravity affects the brain.
Consciousness affects the brain.

Gravity is "physical"
Consciousness is "non-physical"

What definition of "Physical" allows you to separate 'gravity' from 'consciousness'?

Huh? Didn't I provide an answer to this one? In order to be classified as physical we need more than the fact that it can affect the physical world. Of course you can choose to define physical in that way. But clearly this would just lead to confusion between what we currently call interactive dualists and what we currently call materialists. Certainly defining the self is physical by simple stipulation wouldn't add any evidence to what we currently define as materialism! In short we have nothing to gain and much to lose in having such a definition.

 

[Mercutio]

Re: Introspection

Mercutio, introspection might be another term which has been claimed so much by a particular psychological tradition that the associations are simply too strong. What I mean by introspection is simply the observation of one's own subjective experiences (or subjective private behavior as you would probably call it). The technique in this sense is still used whenever psychologists and other social scientists study subjective experiences such as are involved in pain, colour perception, illusions, imagery, conscious associations, memory, subjective emotions, etc.

Titus

I'll give you half points for this one...we do not study subjective or private experiences (by definition, we cannot), we study the (public) verbal reports of those experiences. The trick is, of course, that there is not a straight one-to-one correspondence between the private experience and the public report of it, and thus we must use methodologies to try to tease apart the biases of our subjects, or to test their perceptual abilities. As perhaps the most straightforward example, consider the use of signal-detection theory in studying visual perception. We do not merely take the subject at his or her word, but present trials with and without the stimulus, and (depending on the phenomenon being studied) with weaker and stronger stimuli. (For those readers with corrective lenses, you have experienced this when being tested. The "better like this? or better like this? procedure is so frustrating precisely because sometimes you are being asked to choose between two options that are literally identical!) We do this so that we can separate out bias and sensitivity to study each separately. The verbal report of the subject (and arguably, but not provably, their subjective or private experience) is demonstrably biased and inaccurate. Are we relying on introspection? In one sense, yes, but in a more accurate sense we are creating methodologies that allow us to account for the flaws in introspection.

Similarly aimed methodologies address the same problem in social cognition (memory, associations, emotions, etc), where the problem of "telling more than you can know" (I think that is actually the title of one journal article) and "knowing more than you can tell" (ditto) are addressed experimentally. So, once again, I gotta go with introspection itself as a flawed methodology. We can fight the flaws, but we cannot eliminate them.

 

[Interesting Ian]

How do you define "a physical it" that exists in the "physical world"? What definition of "Physical" allows you to separate 'gravity' from 'consciousness'?

[/B]

Loki,

This is my view not Titus's, but I would say gravity does not exist. This is of course not to deny that objects fall and planets orbit around the sun etc. Rather it is to suppose that gravity is not an existent superimposed on reality as it were, but simply a short hand term to refer to what ostensibly are disparate phenomena, but which can in fact be described using the same mathematical formulae.

Our current scientific understanding of gravity that it is in fact a distortion of the space-time continuum, and not a force, approaches this conclusion. It's good to see that science is catching up with what Berkeley told them centuries ago.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Category errors

The brain influences the conscious mind but it doesn't thereby become non-physical either.

Titus [/B]

Hmmmm. Loki, if physical things effect consciousness then what entitles you to call them physical things rather than mental things??

 

[Interesting Ian]

Titus Rivas,

Category Errors? Presumably...


Perhaps this is going nowhere fast...without a definition of "physical world" and (more importantly) "physical terms" then this doesn't help much.


Please define gravity (or any "physical force") for me in "physical terms". I'm not being obtuse here - I can't see how you can define gravity as anything but "something which affects other physical objects". Which leads me, inevitably, to good old Franko - a (now departed) poster who maintained that gravity (well, gravitons) were in fact the source of consciousness.

Franko tried to use the similarities between gravity and consciousness to claim they were in fact, basically the same :

The only "physical terms" that describe gravity are the effects it has on other physical things.
The only "physical terms" that describe (your version of) consciousness are the effects it has on other physical things.

Come on really! Who cares what Franko said?

Look, if we describe the self as envisaged under interactive dualism as being physical, then we will have 2 radically different types of materialists. We will have what we currently call materialists who hold that everything can be described by physical laws, have properties like mass, are subject to entropy, are equivalent to energy and arguably information, and so on. But then we will have a completely different type of materialist, who we used to call interactive dualists. They will believe in radically differing types of physical existent, the type of existent which the other materialists think exhaust reality, and another existent called consciousness which is quite different to all other existents.

Do you not understand how unhelpful and indeed confusing it would be to simply call all existents physical by definition?

 

[Interesting Ian]

Re: Re: Why?

You're not the only one missing this point - and I'm sure Stimpy will step in to say it better than I can, but the reason it's physical then is not quite by definition - it's because we can interact with it. As Ian says, we may find ourselves facing a massless, energyless physical object, but it would indeed be physical and available for us to examine, if only by proxy.

No it wouldn't. If it lacks any attributes of physical things and does not obey physical laws then we cannot physically examine it.

In addition, all shouting to the contrary notwithstanding, modern science seems to suggest it 'multiples entities beyond necessity' - any theory of dualism that is not in denial of scientific facts must admit that some mental processes are physical processes in the brain, -Chris

I think not.

 

[BillyJoe]

Titus,

I caught up with my sister on the weekend.....

It seems she was staying with family in Nijmegen but the coffee shop was actually in Roermond. Sorry. The name of the shop was "De Klomp" in case you happened to know it anyway. It was pulled down to make way for roadworks. I spent tihe first two years of my life in an upstairs bedroom.

BillyJoe.

 

[Interesting Ian]

Has anyone actually mentioned why Ian's boulder rolling down the hill is not "conscious"?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Yes, I did. It is not conscious, because the physical processes which are consciousness, are not present anywhere in the boulder. Next stupid question?

Ah! I must have overlooked your response before. Now why is it the case that some physical processes are conscious but others are not? If we confine our selves to the brain is it the case that all neural activity is consciousness? If not why not?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:

Of course you can choose to define physical in that way. But clearly this would just lead to confusion between what we currently call interactive dualists and what we currently call materialists.

And Ed forbid that we should cause any confusion between the canned definitions of metaphysical adherents! That might lead to the rash conclusion that the definitions are arbitrary.

Rather it is to suppose that gravity is not an existent superimposed on reality as it were, but simply a short hand term to refer to what ostensibly are disparate phenomena, but which can in fact be described using the same mathematical formulae.

Are these disparate phenomena like sub-forces of gravity? Do they exist?

Oh, how much time we waste trying to decide what exists and what does not.

Hmmmm. Loki, if physical things effect consciousness then what entitles you to call them physical things rather than mental things??

Nothing at all. They might all be mental. They might all be snorkial. Pick your favorite word.

Now why is it the case that some physical processes are conscious but others are not?

Loaded wording. How about: Why is it the case that some physical processes result in what we call consciousness but others do not?

~~ Paul

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,

Look, if we describe the self as envisaged under interactive dualism as being physical, then we will have 2 radically different types of materialists. We will have what we currently call materialists who hold that everything can be described by physical laws, have properties like mass, are subject to entropy, are equivalent to energy and arguably information, and so on.

What is this "we" nonsense. That may be what you currently call materialism, but that certainly isn't what any modern materialists would call materialism. Physical processes don't have mass, are not equivalent to energy, etc...

And even if you are only talking about physical objects, nothing about modern materialism claims that our current theories, which describe all physical objects in terms of things like mass and energy, must be true. If we discover physical things which don't fit those descriptions, then our theories will change.

But then we will have a completely different type of materialist, who we used to call interactive dualists. They will believe in radically differing types of physical existent, the type of existent which the other materialists think exhaust reality, and another existent called consciousness which is quite different to all other existents.

You still haven't established why consciousness is so different. What characteristic do all physical processes lack, which consciousness has?

And in any event, interactive dualism differs from modern materialism only in that it arbitrarily asserts that consciousness is, in some completely undescribable way, metaphysically different from anything else. Such a claim is completely vacuous when you assert that consciousness can be described according to natural laws, just like everything else. The distinction is completely arbitrary.

Do you not understand how unhelpful and indeed confusing it would be to simply call all existents physical by definition?

Slightly less confusing than it would be to define "physical" in some incoherent way that arbitrarily excludes consciousness, even though consciousness meets all of the criteria that anything else which is physical meets.

You're not the only one missing this point - and I'm sure Stimpy will step in to say it better than I can, but the reason it's physical then is not quite by definition - it's because we can interact with it. As Ian says, we may find ourselves facing a massless, energyless physical object, but it would indeed be physical and available for us to examine, if only by proxy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No it wouldn't. If it lacks any attributes of physical things and does not obey physical laws then we cannot physically examine it.

The only attributes which the scientific definition of physical claims that physical things have, is the attribute of interacting in some observable way with other things. Likewise, any natural laws which describe observable behavior are, by definition, physical laws.

Yes, I did. It is not conscious, because the physical processes which are consciousness, are not present anywhere in the boulder. Next stupid question?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ah! I must have overlooked your response before. Now why is it the case that some physical processes are conscious but others are not?

That is not what I said. What I said is that consciousness is a specific set of physical processes. Not that a specific set of physical processes "are conscious", or "have consciousness".

If we confine our selves to the brain is it the case that all neural activity is consciousness? If not why not?

Of course not. Consciousness is defined to be our mental processes. That means things like thought, memory, awareness, emotion, personality, and perception. Those things are all physical processes occurring in the brain. Not all physical processes in the brain are those things.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Interesting Ian]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Look, if we describe the self as envisaged under interactive dualism as being physical, then we will have 2 radically different types of materialists. We will have what we currently call materialists who hold that everything can be described by physical laws, have properties like mass, are subject to entropy, are equivalent to energy and arguably information, and so on.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



What is this "we" nonsense. That may be what you currently call materialism, but that certainly isn't what any modern materialists would call materialism. Physical processes don't have mass, are not equivalent to energy, etc...

I was talking about physical things. But leaving that aside, I find it interesting that you consider a physical process, such as an object traveling in a straight line, doesn't have mass or energy. hmmmmmm LOL

And even if you are only talking about physical objects, nothing about modern materialism claims that our current theories, which describe all physical objects in terms of things like mass and energy, must be true. If we discover physical things which don't fit those descriptions, then our theories will change.

All true Stimp, and all wholly irrelevant. It does not have to be the case that the attributes we assign to the physical have to be a literal characterization of reality per se. It simply needs to be profitably ie useful to assign such attributes. It is not useful to say the self has weight ,or is energy, is subject to the 2nd law of thermodynamics etc.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But then we will have a completely different type of materialist, who we used to call interactive dualists. They will believe in radically differing types of physical existent, the type of existent which the other materialists think exhaust reality, and another existent called consciousness which is quite different to all other existents.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



You still haven't established why consciousness is so different.

I don't need to. My argument is simply demonstrating that it would be silly to describe what the interactive dualist understands as the self as being physical.

What characteristic do all physical processes lack, which consciousness has?

Conscious awareness.

And in any event, interactive dualism differs from modern materialism only in that it arbitrarily asserts that consciousness is, in some completely undescribable way, metaphysically different from anything else. Such a claim is completely vacuous when you assert that consciousness can be described according to natural laws, just like everything else.

But I don't. And incidentally I remind you I am not an interactive dualist, nor an epiphenomenalist. I am an immaterialist or subjective idealist.

 

[Dancing David]

Re: Colour perception

How can you be so sure, David? Can you see what Mary is seeing?
As long as she isn't blind or colour blind there is no reason to suppose she wouldn't be able to see the color red just because she hasn't learnt how to label it.
I've read there are cultures with other colour labels. Would you really believe they see other colours than are seen in the West? And what evidence can you provide to show that the differences are based on different qualia rather than different conceptions of qualia?

Titus

How can I be so certain, because of the way the neural network actualy works, there is a process that we go through in childhood, when our brain is growing that allows us to actually percieve. But I am not sure that the ethics comitte would let me raise a child in the black and whire room. The other issue is that her neural pathways will not develop to percieve color and therefore they will atrophy, so it actualy would not be physicaly possible for her to see the color after the lack of exposeure.

Are you aware of what happens to developing children in the abcense of stimulation? Things like language aquisition and the like.

It would be a true test of my theory but highly inethical.

I suppose we could use birds or some other animal, but same ethical issues arise.

And agsin, if you study the way the neural network works you will find that labeling is not part of perception, it is part of cognition.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Ian said:

I was talking about physical things. But leaving that aside, I find it interesting that you consider a physical process, such as an object traveling in a straight line, doesn't have mass or energy. hmmmmmm LOL

I think we need to clarify what a physical process is. An object is not a process.

Stimpy asked:

What characteristic do all physical processes lack, which consciousness has?

and Ian responded:

Conscious awareness.

I think this is circular.

~~ Paul

 

[Interesting Ian]

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was talking about physical things. But leaving that aside, I find it interesting that you consider a physical process, such as an object traveling in a straight line, doesn't have mass or energy. hmmmmmm LOL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I think we need to clarify what a physical process is. An object is not a process.

But an object travelling in a straight line is isn't it? Remember that mass and energy also depend on the relative speed of an object.

Stimpy asked:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What characteristic do all physical processes lack, which consciousness has?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


and Ian responded:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conscious awareness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


I think this is circular.

Not at all!

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Titus

we don't need to change the definition of physical to allow for a causal impact by something non-physical on the physical world.

Agreed. The preferred solution would be to assume that all physical effects have physical causes.

By the physical world I mean that part of reality which can be described in exclusively physical terms, without any need for concepts such as subjective awareness or experients.

I can go along with that.

Besides, there is a lot of evidence for psychokinesis.

This comment reminds me of a scene from the movie, Ghost, where Patrick Swayze's character, desperate to interact with the physical world, takes lessons from another ghost on how to do this (it apparently has something to do with properly focusing the 'Chi' or something). Actually though, he was already able to interact with physical matter. In one scene he jumps aboard a moving subway train, passing easily through the wall of the train, but landing quite solidly on its floor. And we might ask how he was able to see (a process we understand only in terms of physical things like lenses, cones, and rods) and hear (a process we understand only in terms of physical things like eardrums).

If you are suggesting psychokinesis as a medium of exchange between non-physical mind and physical brain, I would answer that if any reliable evidence for psychokinesis is ever presented, the default assumption will be that even these effects must have explanations which are at least in principle consistent with physical laws.

 

[Titus Rivas]

The best tool we have

Mercutio said:

So, once again, I gotta go with introspection itself as a flawed methodology. We can fight the flaws, but we cannot eliminate them.

Okay, but introspection as defined here is still the only way we can learn anything about subjective experiences, whether directly (if we study our own consciousness) or indirectly (if we study that of other people) or by extrapolation (if we use an analogy postulate to be able to ascribe certain subjective experiences to animals, etc.) Without introspective reports, however flawed they might be, we would have no knowledge of consciousness.

Titus

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

This is my view not Titus's, but I would say gravity does not exist. This is of course not to deny that objects fall and planets orbit around the sun etc. Rather it is to suppose that gravity is not an existent superimposed on reality as it were, but simply a short hand term to refer to what ostensibly are disparate phenomena, but which can in fact be described using the same mathematical formulae.

What if we were to suppose that consciousness is not an existent superimposed on reality as it were, but simply a short hand term to refer to what ostensibly are disparate phenomena?

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Ian,

I was talking about physical things. But leaving that aside, I find it interesting that you consider a physical process, such as an object traveling in a straight line, doesn't have mass or energy. hmmmmmm LOL

The object obviously has mass and energy, but the process, which is what the object is doing, does not.

This is true of all processes. What is the energy of computation? How much mass does watching TV have? Those are meaningless questions.

And even if you are only talking about physical objects, nothing about modern materialism claims that our current theories, which describe all physical objects in terms of things like mass and energy, must be true. If we discover physical things which don't fit those descriptions, then our theories will change.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All true Stimp, and all wholly irrelevant. It does not have to be the case that the attributes we assign to the physical have to be a literal characterization of reality per se. It simply needs to be profitably ie useful to assign such attributes. It is not useful to say the self has weight ,or is energy, is subject to the 2nd law of thermodynamics etc.

I agree, because it is a process. It is not useful to say that the self has weight, or is energy, or is subject to the laws of thermodynamics. It is also not useful to say that computation has weight, or is energy, or is subject to the laws of thermodynamics. It is, however, quite useful to describe the self as something which your brain is doing, just as it is quite useful to describe computation as something that your CPU is doing.

You still haven't established why consciousness is so different.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't need to. My argument is simply demonstrating that it would be silly to describe what the interactive dualist understands as the self as being physical.

You have demonstrated no such thing. you have merely asserted it, as usual.

What characteristic do all physical processes lack, which consciousness has?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conscious awareness.

How delightfully circular.

Can you formally prove that it is not possible, even in principle, for a physical process to be self-aware? If not, then your entire argument is based on an assertion that you cannot justify.

And in any event, interactive dualism differs from modern materialism only in that it arbitrarily asserts that consciousness is, in some completely undescribable way, metaphysically different from anything else. Such a claim is completely vacuous when you assert that consciousness can be described according to natural laws, just like everything else.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But I don't. And incidentally I remind you I am not an interactive dualist, nor an epiphenomenalist. I am an immaterialist or subjective idealist.

I know that. The point is that if an interactive dualist claims that such natural laws exist, then his position differs from modern materialism only in that it makes additional assumptions about unverifiable characteristics. And if he claims that such natural laws don't exist, then his position is just plain old supernatural spiritualism, and is not only unverifiable, but completely incompatible with science.

You are an idealist, so none of this applies to you. But the point I was making is that the fact that modern materialism is compatible with naturalistic interactive dualism, does not mean that it is equivalent to it, or that it is a silly or irrelevant position. It is, on the contrary, simply a more parsimonious position. Strip away the unverifiable metaphysical speculation from interactive dualism, and you are just left with modern materialism.


Dr. Stupid

 

[Interesting Ian]

This comment reminds me of a scene from the movie, Ghost, where Patrick Swayze's character, desperate to interact with the physical world, takes lessons from another ghost on how to do this (it apparently has something to do with properly focusing the 'Chi' or something). Actually though, he was already able to interact with physical matter. In one scene he jumps aboard a moving subway train, passing easily through the wall of the train, but landing quite solidly on its floor.

Yeah but the film had to be that way didn't it? I mean really his body was a projection of his mind so it wouldn't really be like that. But apart from that did you feel the film was realistic?

And we might ask how he was able to see

Seeing is non-physical.

(a process we understand only in terms of physical things like lenses, cones, and rods) and hear (a process we understand only in terms of physical things like eardrums).

You might do. Such physical processes allow us to sense whilst our selves operate through our brain. They do not create seeing and hearing ex nihilo!

If you are suggesting psychokinesis as a medium of exchange between non-physical mind and physical brain, I would answer that if any reliable evidence for psychokinesis is ever presented,

What about me picking my nose, or making any other voluntary bodily movement? Is that evidence reliable enough for you?