Do Materialism and Evolution Theory Undermine Science?

[Nick227]

And you still claim you are not an idealist?

This is utter idealist nonsense.

You say there are representations. You say there are thoughts. Yet you claim nobody is actually in possession of those representations or thoughts. That is idealism Nick.

No it isn't, RD. Read some strong AI materialism. Read Dennett 1991. The notion that someone is in possession of representations or thoughts is dualism. No one is watching the Cartesian Theatre, RD.

I've said it before. I'll say it again. When you start to properly examine selfhood, it's gets weird. You have to be able to go with the weirdness, or you will get nowhere.

Nick

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

Well, as I've pointed out before, all "I"'s would say that! It's totally subjective and equally meaningless.

Including you!

Although I would dispute it being completely subjective and meaningless, of course. It is not totally subjective because it’s possible to distinguish behaviour between processes and systems – so, at the very least it’s intersubjective. And it’s not meaningless either for the simple reason that it is the way by which “I” know which mouth to put food in when “I” feel hungry.

"I" is an artifact of thinking. Stop thinking and you stop I'ing.

Or simply go to deep sleep. That doesn’t change the fact that the organism also awakens from deep sleep and a great deal of time spent awake is happening through operations of thinking. There’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The sooner we accept this simple fact, the lesser the weirdness. You managed to post your reply through thinking, didn’t you?

I’m also hungry until I have satisfied that craving by eating. How much tautology must you eat before you’re satisfied?

Your pragmatism is, I submit, an attempt to reconcile the inherited needs of the self, created through evolution, with the need for truth.

I don’t think amateur psychology is quite sufficient here. Defining “I” as I did is pragmatic for the simple reason that it is the way by which we usually refer to the entity doing the majority of its stuff from a first-person perspective. After all, you know when you’re doing something and you can distinguish someone else doing something to you, don’t you?

There are exemptions to this however (when probing deep enough), but in general it seems quite proper (a.k.a. being pragmatic).

I'm skeptical of the ability of pragmatism to fulfil either.

I’m also skeptical about anything fulfilling the need to know more about the universe.

“I” also want to know how stuff outside “me” work. What would be the best way to do that? Gazing inwards or outwards?

 

[rocketdodger]

I find your logic utterly Cartesian. It is not your brain. It is not your body. The notion that these entities have possessors is simply created through thinking.

Duh. So what? all notions are created through thinking.

Everything you are is simply a process, including the process that ascribes possession to all the rest of it.

So what? If process P ascribes possession of system S, then why can't P call S its "own" system? If P communicates with other processes, and they understand that S is possessed by P, why can't they say S is owned by P?

If you knew at all what you were talking about, you would see that. But you don't. As I have said over and over, you are nothing but an idealist woo pretending to argue materialism in an attempt to trick readers.

I'm sorry, RD, but you are utterly immersed in duality here.

You seem to think so. Yet you are the only one who thinks so. Isn't that curious...

In the context of this experiment it is utterly meaningless to try and define yourself. All that happens is just more thought. You interrogate a narrative and get another narrative. So what? It has no meaning in this context, and you will be equally capable of attempting to self-define in this manner after teleportation.

I see two possibilities here.

1) You are so much smarter than me that the above paragraph actually makes sense to you.

2) You have no idea what you are talking about and try to hide that fact with word salad.

Either way, I can't respond.

 

[rocketdodger]

OK. Objectivity has no meaning until you can meditate. Until you can be conscious and also thoughtless there is no context for objectivity, no background. Until the tracks of identification are pursued and broken objectivity is little different from an addiction.

Is anyone else following this conversation? Am I the only one who thinks Nick is a woo?

Over the various dialogues we've indulged in I have repeatedly pointed out to you that the reality of self is weird. It is deeply counter-intuitive. It is really not how it seems. You refuse to believe me.

I refuse to accept "your word for it." I would like something resembling an argument. In a whole year all you have provided is word salad. Provide an argument and maybe someone will believe you.

You apparently refuse to believe Blackmore and Dennett when they say the same thing.

Citation? Can you reference them saying anything resembling the content of your rantings?

You cannot reconstruct objectivity and come up with "a better way." You can only look, really look, really turn around and look, and see what happens.

...ok...

In the meantime, will you burn your computer, because objectivity was responsible for it?

I didn't think so.

 

[rocketdodger]

No it isn't, RD. Read some strong AI materialism. Read Dennett 1991. The notion that someone is in possession of representations or thoughts is dualism. No one is watching the Cartesian Theatre, RD.

Um, no, that isn't dualism, or at least, not the dualism everyone speaks of here, which seems to be the dualism everyone speaks of in general.

I've said it before. I'll say it again. When you start to properly examine selfhood, it's gets weird. You have to be able to go with the weirdness, or you will get nowhere.

So you say. Does anyone in the fields of cognitive or computer science agree with your kooky theories about objectivity? Please provide references.

 

[Nick227]

Including you!

Although I would dispute it being completely subjective and meaningless, of course.

Of course. So would I. All "I"'s would.

It is not totally subjective because it’s possible to distinguish behaviour between processes and systems – so, at the very least it’s intersubjective. And it’s not meaningless either for the simple reason that it is the way by which “I” know which mouth to put food in when “I” feel hungry.

The "I" comes afterward here. You don't need an "I" to feed yourself.

Or simply go to deep sleep. That doesn’t change the fact that the organism also awakens from deep sleep and a great deal of time spent awake is happening through operations of thinking. There’s no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The sooner we accept this simple fact, the lesser the weirdness. You managed to post your reply through thinking, didn’t you?

Look, thoughts happen. Identification with thought happens. No one is managing to do anything in actuality. That is simply a means of expressing, of relating. The articulation of inner states satisfies an evolutionarily-created need for forming social bonds. This does not mean that it can satisfy all needs.

I’m also hungry until I have satisfied that craving by eating. How much tautology must you eat before you’re satisfied?

Food satisfies hunger. Knowledge acquired through objectivity does not satisfy a craving for truth. That is my experience. Or, better, how it might be articulated.

I don’t think amateur psychology is quite sufficient here. Defining “I” as I did is pragmatic for the simple reason that it is the way by which we usually refer to the entity doing the majority of its stuff from a first-person perspective. After all, you know when you’re doing something and you can distinguish someone else doing something to you, don’t you?

I don't dispute that it is healthy to identify with, articulate, and express inner states, and for such activity the "I" is a prerequisite. Else one risks descending into subjectivity, introspection, some slippery slope potentially towards psychosis. But that's it, if you ask me. The "I" exists to integrate thinking processes, to render subjectivity into heterophenomenology, to create psychological health, to fulfil need. But once this is done I believe one will find that a craving for truth cannot be satisfied with this "I" mechanism. This is why I pull up your "pragmatism."

Nick

 

[Nick227]

Citation? Can you reference them saying anything resembling the content of your rantings?

Well, I'm round my girlfriend's house at the moment, but read Susan Blackmore "Consciousness: An Introduction." I seem to recall that it's structured in blocks of 3 chapters. I think she starts in on selfhood somewhere around Chap 7. Otherwise Daniel Dennett, "Consciousness Explained." He tries to sate his desire to lambast fake materialists at pretty much every possible juncture available throughout the whole book. Don't know if he succeeded! Of the two, Blackmore is more clear on selfhood, if you ask me.

Nick

 

[Lithrael]

Yes, you sound promising!

(...) Selfhood is just an ongoing process. The "I" is anyway constantly dying and being reborn. If I consider simply getting on a flight to Thailand it feels a lot less emotionally charged. Yet the "I" that arrives there will have died and been reborn with each thought along the way.

I agree with this, but I don't really think that others in here would really disagree with my stance either. It looks like a semantic, hair-splitting argument to me. RD's caveats amount to little more than 'make sure the teleporter really for sure works.' The nits he picks are just cause nobody knows for sure how careful one would have to be to maintain a 'self' with satisfactory precision. I'm dismissing these nits because you state the question with the machine definitely totally working to satisfactory precision. I mean, if the thing was the same sort of shock to the system as EST I wouldn't be so keen on it either. But the fact is plenty of people do things that alter their 'self' all the time so my nitpick level isn't awfully high, if I get to trade for a great bonus that my 'self' will enjoy.

That other stuff makes no sense to me at all though. People have been meditating at least as long as they've been doing science. I can't say I'm knocked flat by their results.

 

[Nick227]

I agree with this, but I don't really think that others in here would really disagree with my stance either. It looks like a semantic, hair-splitting argument to me. RD's caveats amount to little more than 'make sure the teleporter really for sure works.' The nits he picks are just cause nobody knows for sure how careful one would have to be to maintain a 'self' with satisfactory precision.

Well, I restarted the thread by quoting Blackmore's original question for a reason. That being that all sorts of emotionally-charged dramas usually abound with this thought experiment. She wrote...

The box is 100% safe and reliable. If you won’t go in, this has to be for some other reason than that it might go wrong.

RD's caveats are BS, if you ask me. I don't find him materialist. IMO, he just likes to talk the talk. 'Tis a common thing. But da inquistion continues in da hood.

Nick

 

[rocketdodger]

The "I" comes afterward here. You don't need an "I" to feed yourself.

Then explain how it would be possible to feed yourself (I mean, the collection of atoms that typed post number 4150605) without some type of knowledge of the relationship between yourself (the collection of atoms, or body, that needs the food) and the world external to you (the collection of atoms).

Because that is exactly how lupus and I have defined "I."

 

[rocketdodger]

RD's caveats are BS, if you ask me.

That is because you are completely uneducated when it comes to cognitive science, computer science, and the computational model of consciousness.

I don't find him materialist. IMO, he just likes to talk the talk.

Of course, you are consistently unable to provide a reason for why I am not a materialist when asked... but who is keeping track, eh? You can say whatever you want on a forum, over and over, and if you say it enough times, maybe someone will believe you!

 

[Lithrael]

RD's caveats are BS, if you ask me. I don't find him materialist. (...)

I don't know, it really just looks like a mistrust of the question to me. Like he wants to make sure "all the information from every cell" includes all the ongoing chemical and electrical and what-have-you-I-haven't-read-biology-in-a-while processes. Like I said I don't bring it up because I take 'safe and reliable' at face value, ie, others using it don't find their friends going 'omfg X has sure changed since he teleported to Seattle & back' and suddenly no longer like tea or Brad Dourif.

Seriously though I do not at all follow the 'other avenues' part of this. Many people fail to find satisfaction in straight science and still thirst for 'something more' but lots of people are pretty damn content with it, too. So this search for 'deeper meaning' doesn't seem like an overpowering universal constant to me. More like a powerful predilection. And it just seems like it comes from the basic animal need to feel secure, and feeling insecurity in the fact that science doesn't know everything. It seems like you're proposing there *is* a way to know everything, to which I say again, I'm not all that bowled over by the words of the philosophers, mystics and trippers that spend their lives looking for it.

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

The "I" comes afterward here. You don't need an "I" to feed yourself.

I would say that you pretty much do. Without at least a rudimentary ability to distinguish systems from each other, it seems pretty improbable that you just manage to feed yourself by pure luck.

While you could say that a more structured awareness of an “I” comes later, i.e. as a kind of ‘taking possession of’ events happening, that awareness will have an effect upon what the organism does next – like figuring out where to get more food. In a society this is of course much more elevated because most of us aren’t in direct contact with the food source; we get food by indirect means which require an operating “I”. Most of our daily business consists of figuring out relationships between different “I:s”.

Look, thoughts happen. Identification with thought happens. No one is managing to do anything in actuality. That is simply a means of expressing, of relating. The articulation of inner states satisfies an evolutionarily-created need for forming social bonds. This does not mean that it can satisfy all needs.

Again, it could be foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, on a molecular level there might not be anyone...

I’m skeptical about ever reaching total satisfaction – it would be momentary at best. Total persisting personal satisfaction, whatever that means, might not even be preferable from a collective or survival standpoint.

Food satisfies hunger. Knowledge acquired through objectivity does not satisfy a craving for truth. That is my experience. Or, better, how it might be articulated.

That is your experience and it appears that you have created a kind of preconceived personal standard for how you would feel if you were totally satisfied truth wise. Somehow you think that standard would actually work, and that it is a universal one – I’m quite skeptical about that. I think the whole notion of a universal truth seems to lead to a childish pretension game.

I don't dispute that it is healthy to identify with, articulate, and express inner states, and for such activity the "I" is a prerequisite. Else one risks descending into subjectivity, introspection, some slippery slope potentially towards psychosis. But that's it, if you ask me. The "I" exists to integrate thinking processes, to render subjectivity into heterophenomenology, to create psychological health, to fulfil need. But once this is done I believe one will find that a craving for truth cannot be satisfied with this "I" mechanism. This is why I pull up your "pragmatism."

You have made the craving for truth into a problem of some sort. I haven’t. I think human life is a constant fluctuation between degrees of satisfaction; feelings and states are momentary; the come and they go, until they stop, and we no longer exist. I find the whole dance, as long as it lasts, quite spectacular; the craving itself is kind of fascinating in its own right.

 

[Nick227]

Then explain how it would be possible to feed yourself (I mean, the collection of atoms that typed post number 4150605) without some type of knowledge of the relationship between yourself (the collection of atoms, or body, that needs the food) and the world external to you (the collection of atoms).

Because that is exactly how lupus and I have defined "I."

Well, you can choose to define it as you wish. I consider it an effect created through identification with thought. You can eat without having to consciously manage the process. You can eat without thinking, indeed many people do!

Nick

 

[Nick227]

I would say that you pretty much do. Without at least a rudimentary ability to distinguish systems from each other, it seems pretty improbable that you just manage to feed yourself by pure luck.

But you don't need to think to eat. Animals without any known capacity to think manage to nourish themselves. They develop the instinct. Remember we are talking about "I" here, not the wider range of processes which relate to Selfhood, of which I would consider "I" to be but one aspect.

While you could say that a more structured awareness of an “I” comes later, i.e. as a kind of ‘taking possession of’ events happening, that awareness will have an effect upon what the organism does next – like figuring out where to get more food. In a society this is of course much more elevated because most of us aren’t in direct contact with the food source; we get food by indirect means which require an operating “I”. Most of our daily business consists of figuring out relationships between different “I:s”.

Not really. You don't know whether person is behaving from the "I" perspective until you communicate with them. That an organism demonstrates selfhood does not mean it has an "I." To have an "I" it is going to need to be able to think.

This might seem like a moot point and it no doubt would be in many fields of discussion. But if you are going to really take a look at Selfhood then I think it's necessary. It's needed to examine and distinguish different aspects of selfhood as much as is reasonably possible.

Again, it could be foolish to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Sure, on a molecular level there might not be anyone...

I’m skeptical about ever reaching total satisfaction – it would be momentary at best. Total persisting personal satisfaction, whatever that means, might not even be preferable from a collective or survival standpoint.

That is your experience and it appears that you have created a kind of preconceived personal standard for how you would feel if you were totally satisfied truth wise. Somehow you think that standard would actually work, and that it is a universal one – I’m quite skeptical about that. I think the whole notion of a universal truth seems to lead to a childish pretension game.

You have made the craving for truth into a problem of some sort. I haven’t. I think human life is a constant fluctuation between degrees of satisfaction; feelings and states are momentary; the come and they go, until they stop, and we no longer exist. I find the whole dance, as long as it lasts, quite spectacular; the craving itself is kind of fascinating in its own right.

Well, if truth isn't a problem for you that's how you are. For me I find it quite a driving force these days. I've struggled my way up Maslow's Hieracy of Needs and still enjoy the challenge.

Nick

Nick

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

But you don't need to think to eat. Animals without any known capacity to think manage to nourish themselves. They develop the instinct. Remember we are talking about "I" here, not the wider range of processes which relate to Selfhood, of which I would consider "I" to be but one aspect.

And yet I know it’s me who’s eating and not someone else.

Not really. You don't know whether person is behaving from the "I" perspective until you communicate with them. That an organism demonstrates selfhood does not mean it has an "I." To have an "I" it is going to need to be able to think.

And since most of us live in a society it’s pretty much given that other people we meet also have the ability to think, communicate and make distinctions. If someone demonstrates selfhood, then you might as well conclude that that someone knows he’s he and not you.

This might seem like a moot point and it no doubt would be in many fields of discussion. But if you are going to really take a look at Selfhood then I think it's necessary. It's needed to examine and distinguish different aspects of selfhood as much as is reasonably possible.

What is so remarkable about an organism observing itself and realizing “it” is doing it to “itself”? While it’s true that if probing long and deep enough, momentary fluctuations about how it feels while doing it could be out of the ordinary, most thinking organisms also understand that those fluctuations – perhaps a momentary dissociation from the sense of “I” – still happens within itself and not in someone else.

 

[rocketdodger]

Well, you can choose to define it as you wish.

I told you how I define it. For a self referential system S, "I" is the reference of S, within S.

Thus thermostats have "I", worms have "I", dogs have "I", and humans have "I".

It just so happens that the self-reference of a human mind is much more complex and involved than that of a thermostat mind.

I consider it an effect created through identification with thought.

But you said yourself that "effect", "identification," and "thought" are all just processes.

So there is no "effect," there is no "identification," and there is no "thought," just like you contend that there is no "I."

You can't even communicate with us because, actually, your nouns mean nothing (they are all just different terms for processes), you are just a process, and we are just processes.

You can't even meditate to reach the truth, because meditation is just a process.

If you think anything exists at all, then you are not a real materialist, because the only thing that exists are just processes, and they can't think, so you aren't even thinking when you think you think, because you are just a process processing.

See how annoying it is?

Ever wonder why nobody keeps up a discussion with you?

 

[rocketdodger]

That an organism demonstrates selfhood does not mean it has an "I."

What is the qualitative difference between "I" and selfhood?

To have an "I" it is going to need to be able to think.

Wait... I thought you said "I" doesn't exist....

But if you are talking about it... then....

 

[lupus_in_fabula]

Wait... I thought you said "I" doesn't exist....

But if you are talking about it... then....

That is exactly the problem with discussing the "I". People tend to change the description level at a whim. The common fallacy is then to think one is saying something revolutionary by proclaiming the sudden non-existence of a previously discussed phenomenon, when in fact all that has happened is a change in description level. Thus we can make almost anything into a "non-existing phenomenon" (which sounds kind of weird, doesn't it?).

 

[Dancing David]

Nich certainly has some strange beliefs, most of which are not supported by any research. There is the common self of the body, that is all that there is, Nick227 has some strange beliefs that extend past that. He has some beleif that if you loose you subjective identity , suddenly you life gets better.

Nick also has an obsession with projecting some strange magical beliefs onto others. This is partly because it reinforces Nick making a living through unethical therapeutic treatments that are unfounded and untested.