Do Materialism and Evolution Theory Undermine Science?

[AkuManiMani]

That is not the point. That consciousness may be said to be brain activity or that thoughts emerge from neural substrate is not dualistic. I have not suggested otherwise. The dualism comes when you consider that there exists someone who is interpreting these things, or experiencing these things.

Only if you give 'someone' a supernatural meaning/quality. You're basically shooting yourself in the foot.

There's no need to attribute a "supernatural" quality anything in order to invoke dualism. Its an inevitable consequence of the subject-object structure of language.

 

[thesyntaxera]

The only coherent defintion of self in the unique physical body based upon the contingent history of that ephemeral body.

If that is the only definition that works for you then that is fine with me. I would call that my body, and my personality more a representation of my "self".

Does a severely brain damaged person have a sense of self? Often not.

Which just begs the question:

What point are you trying to make here.

The processes that the brain engages in are not deliniated but a base understanding is occuring.

I know for a fact there is, as you do. I also know it's is not solely being modeled on AI and what can be achieved with that....that is my point. It's not a fully representative method of modeling. Assuming one could create a complete, thinking, virtual brain it would tell us little because we could not actually see how it thinks, hear it's thoughts, or know how it perceives it's self.

Oh really.

Do we have to justify models for science to have predicitive value.

If one is going to argue in favor of such things, then I would say yes, you should have some justification for doing so. Otherwise it's intellectual wankery, and a waste of time. Show me a useful scientific model that doesn't have some justification behind it.

Or do you just reserve this for an undefined term, consciousness?

No, but thanks for asking.

Um, what makes you think that we don't know, the mechanism of perception is getting to be deliniated, and that is the main process other than thinking and memory that people conflate with consciousness.

It is getting delineated...yet the riddle is still mostly unsolved. Big surprise. So what is your point? That we still don't know? Didn't I say that to begin with. There is no answer to the binding problem as yet, and perhaps AI research will reveal something. I have my doubts. Feel free to change my mind with some evidence.

I will ask, what evidence is there that consciousness is not associated with an organic brain?

You can ask. I'm not arguing that, but if you want an answer the best one I can think of is the hypothetical potential that we will fully model a human brain that is conscious. It will lack anything organic most likely.

What I am arguing is that studying consciousness is like looking at an audio waveform on a computer. You can see it, but you can't hear it. You know that it might contain the most beautiful of songs, but until you figure out a way to perceive it directly it will remain just a collection of bits on a spinning magnetic disk.

What you are telling me is that the consciousness or "song" is the bits on a spinning magnetic disk only.

What I am telling you is that it is the song you can't hear, and that it emerges from the bits on the disk, thus it is immaterial.

Or something to that effect.

 

[rocketdodger]

Retranslate it into the 3rd person perspective.

"Consciousness is the behavior of a system S that is caused by the pattern of neuronal firing in system S."

Now look...it's still bollocks.

According to who? You? There is no "you." That implies an observer. For something to be bollocks, there must be an observer, and that is dripping with dualism.

 

[thesyntaxera]

Meh...is it just me or do just about all philosophical debates come down to an issue of semantics?

It appears that our basic language structure is simply ill equipped to adequately deal w/ certain concepts -- particularly such a slippery one like agency/consciousness.

Dude, where have you been all this time? Some one needed to say that like 5 pages ago.

 

[rocketdodger]

Meh...is it just me or do just about all philosophical debates come down to an issue of semantics?

It appears that our basic language structure is simply ill equipped to adequately deal w/ certain concepts -- particularly such a slippery one like agency/consciousness.

Or that certain individuals are simply ill equipped to adequately use our basic language structure to deal with certain concepts.

Which seems a much more likely candidate for this thread, given that we have a single individual insisting that a great number of others, who have demonstrated their intelligence time and time again in other threads, just don't understand their own words

 

[Nick227]

"Consciousness is the behavior of a system S that is caused by the pattern of neuronal firing in system S."

To me that's a long way away from the original statement...

"Consciousness is our individual interpretation of the pattern of neuronal firing in our brains."

I think it's good to pull this stuff up. Maybe Articulett learns something at this juncture. What's wrong with that?

Nick

 

[Nick227]

Which seems a much more likely candidate for this thread, given that we have a single individual insisting that a great number of others, who have demonstrated their intelligence time and time again in other threads, just don't understand their own words

And making such a comment once again infers to me that actually you do not know. To me you're just following group behaviour, RD. "We've all demonstrated our intelligence to each other, we must know." Group behaviour, pragmatism, balance of probabilities - it's BS.

Nick

 

[thesyntaxera]

And making such a comment once again infers to me that actually you do not know. To me you're just following group behaviour, RD. "We've all demonstrated our intelligence to each other, we must know." Group behaviour, pragmatism, balance of probabilities - it's BS.

Nick

Well, as we all know Nick, consensus reality is the real one, right? Maybe if we get enough people here to validate your intelligence others might take into consideration what you are saying?

 

[AWPrime]

No. Once you have "an observer" or "an experiencer", you have duality.

Actually you're haven't presented any good argument for that.

Look, I don't need some pseudo-holistic blather to appease the reality that "I" is the result of autonomous narrative construction. Radical behaviorism neither. I can do holism. I can do behaviorism. I can also just look and call it like it is. I prefer the latter.

But you're not doing that. You merely keep insisting on duality.

 

[rocketdodger]

Group behaviour, pragmatism, balance of probabilities - it's BS.

Yes, it is "BS."

Except when it leads to things like computers and the internet, which you in turn can use to post foolish theories about how it is "BS."

Have you tried simply holding your breath until you pass out? It seems like that is the effect you are going for here.

 

[articulett]

The woo always hide their woo behind semantics and obfuscations, but the rest of the scientific community seems to understand each other just fine with the words we have.

I understand most everyone quite well-- including Dennett, Dawkins, Pinker, Ramachandran, and assorted neurologists and cognitive psychologists who write on this very topic. I can't make sense of Nick227, and it doesn't look like anyone really is. It seems to me that he's imagining flaws in materialism that aren't there-- flaws he's created by his semantic games. He uses so many words, but he doesn't communicate anything at all.

I do appreciate those who came to my defense, but I keep the woo on ignore... it just starts to feel like a commercial of nothingness to me after a while--not a dialogue. When I attempt conversation with a woo, I feel like they are just using me as a sounding board to spin their favorite delusion in their head and convince themselves that they are making sense to someone other than themselves.

I think they post on these forums because it makes them think that their ideas have withstood criticism of the skeptics... but most of the time the skeptics can't even pin down what the hell their point is, much less what evidence they have for their claims (other than the supposed "flaws" in the current scientific paradigm).

 

[articulett]

I don't think scientists are having the problem you seem to have or imagine people having with materialism... your problem seem more to be one of semantics, Nick227--

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN1130147020080911

Julie Steenhuysen

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Scientists who tricked monkeys by swapping images of sailboats for teacups have figured out how the brain learns to recognize objects, a finding that could lead to robots that "see."

"One of the central questions of how the brain recognizes objects and faces is that you never essentially see the same image twice," said James DiCarlo, an associate professor of neuroscience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He said humans have no trouble recognizing a dog, regardless of whether it is running, lying down, wagging its tail or begging for food.

"The pattern of light in your eyes is never the same when you view your wife or your dog, yet you can still recognize that as the person or creature that you love," said DiCarlo, whose research appears on Thursday in the journal Science.

Scientists think people do it by gathering a host of different snapshots of the same object over a short period of time.

"Even though we don't see the same images twice, nearby images in time tend to be images of the same object," DiCarlo said in a telephone interview.

To test this idea, DiCarlo set up an experiment on two monkeys in which the scientists tried to trick them into unlearning their assumptions about an object.

The researchers attached electrodes to the parts of the brain responsible for recognizing objects. They specifically were testing changes in neurons that recognize images of a sailboat.

The monkeys were given treats if they looked at a video screen that contained several different pictures of a sailboat. Occasionally, when they looked away, the researchers switched one of the sailboat pictures for an image of a teacup, but only in one spot.

Eventually, some of the neurons in the monkeys' brains responsible for sailboat images responded to a teacup instead.

DiCarlo said the study in monkeys follows a similar experiment in humans and suggests this is likely how people learn to categorize and recognize objects they see.

He said the finding opens a window into the visual learning system and will help researchers as they attempt to build computers with vision-like systems.

"There's a lot of tasks that are essentially mindless for humans, but that only humans can do," DiCarlo said, such as inspecting things on assembly lines, searching for explosive devices and looking at radiology images.

I think we can all understand this article just fine. We understand that the word "recognize" is a cognitive process arising from a material brain...

I don't see how whatever it is that you believe differently helps us understand what is going on any more than the current model, and I think we all understand this is study based on the material model. If you don't or see an inconsistency then it appears to only be in your head.

 

[Dancing David]

If that is the only definition that works for you then that is fine with me. I would call that my body, and my personality more a representation of my "self".

Does a severely brain damaged person have a sense of self? Often not.

Whichc is where the defintion of a 'self' solely as a process breaks down. People with dementia, alzheimers and brain trauma are still 'selfs', but they often lack a crucial step in the processes. Which is why the unique body (with attendant processes) is the only coherent defintion, so far.

I know for a fact there is, as you do. I also know it's is not solely being modeled on AI and what can be achieved with that....that is my point. It's not a fully representative method of modeling. Assuming one could create a complete, thinking, virtual brain it would tell us little because we could not actually see how it thinks, hear it's thoughts, or know how it perceives it's self.

Well to some extent yes but to other extents no, the processes that are commonly called consciousness are studied as we speak.
And that seems to be mainly a phenomenalogical arguement to me, we can't see the fusion at the core of stars either, but it seems to be likely.

We can appreaciate much of, predict the outcome of some, the processes labels as consciousness.

If one is going to argue in favor of such things, then I would say yes, you should have some justification for doing so. Otherwise it's intellectual wankery, and a waste of time. Show me a useful scientific model that doesn't have some justification behind it.

As I have stated before, science in the construct of approximate models, to think you have described the actual process would be a mistake.

No, but thanks for asking.



It is getting delineated...yet the riddle is still mostly unsolved.

I think not, if you would please explain the nature of this riddle, so far it usually resolves down to some semantics of language and not a reall riddle.

What do you think is happening in 'cosciousness' that is a riddle, I will try to find relevant research.

Big surprise. So what is your point? That we still don't know? Didn't I say that to begin with. There is no answer to the binding problem as yet, and perhaps AI research will reveal something. I have my doubts. Feel free to change my mind with some evidence.

I approach it from psychology and neurology, my point is that the 'riddle' often is not.

What specific are you thinking of?
Which parts of the myriad processes called consciousness are you thinking of?

You can ask. I'm not arguing that, but if you want an answer the best one I can think of is the hypothetical potential that we will fully model a human brain that is conscious. It will lack anything organic most likely.

What I am arguing is that studying consciousness is like looking at an audio waveform on a computer. You can see it, but you can't hear it. You know that it might contain the most beautiful of songs, but until you figure out a way to perceive it directly it will remain just a collection of bits on a spinning magnetic disk.

And again science is about the construct of approximate models, not truely understanding the process.

What you are telling me is that the consciousness or "song" is the bits on a spinning magnetic disk only.

Sort of, but more that the neurological basis is becoming understood.

So what mystery are you reffering to. Song is being fairly well studied in some interesting ways.

What I am telling you is that it is the song you can't hear, and that it emerges from the bits on the disk, thus it is immaterial.

Or something to that effect.

Oh, so it is a phenomenalogical argument, yes you an Ake Mani mani will get along.

I don't like dualism, even when it is dressed up as 'emergent properties'.

 

[Dancing David]

Well, as we all know Nick, consensus reality is the real one, right? Maybe if we get enough people here to validate your intelligence others might take into consideration what you are saying?

No, that would mean that racism is often the real reality, that stereotypes are real.

reality is the one that happens despite our dearly held notions of how it should behave.

If it was a consensus, then here in the Midwest jesus would be walking around a giving tax breaks to the wealthy would have made us all employed.

The deal is this, reality doean't care. it does what it wants, the basis is the same , be it material or idealism, there is no difference.

We can not tell the underlying mechanism, only approximate it's behavior.

 

[articulett]

thesyntaxera cannot distinguish an opinion or belief from a fact and such types are too annoying for me to converse with.

Objective reality is the thing that is the same for everyone no matter what they "believe". Airplanes fly whether you believe they do or not. If it requires an "according to whom"-- it's not objective.

woo talk vs. clear talk http://www.csicop.org/si/2004-05/new-age.html

If you are using obfuscation, semantics, sarcasm and other manipulations or logical fallacies to try and make your point (nick227, akumanimani, thesyntaxera), you probably are wrong and you are not as "clear" as you think you are in your head. (That is, the reality you think you are "creating" is not the one we are perceiving.)

 

[rocketdodger]

He uses so many words, but he doesn't communicate anything at all.

I always think you talk way too much articulett, but there are usually gems embedded in your huge posts. Case in point.

 

[Nick227]

Actually you're haven't presented any good argument for that.

Where is the point of observation? There isn't one, not that anyone has been able to find.

It appears that I am a human being observing things in the world around me, that the locus of awareness is located somewhere behind my eyes. Yet actually, according to for example Dennett, this brain is simply a parallel processor creating simultaneous drafts (from data streams) and there is no place where consciousness is happening. One of the drafts it creates pretty much ongoingly is a little story about what's happening. This little story features the principle character "I," and it seems that this "I" is located somewhere inside the head, that it is the holder of opinions, the haver of feelings, the owner of a car, this kind of thing.

This to me is the typical model for observation or experience, yet we know that it is false. It is also dualistic in that there are immediate infinite regress issues that emerge as soon as one considers the possibility of this self existing within the body, brain, or located in some hypothesized non-physical space.

One might claim that the subject of experience, the observer of things, is the whole organism, even though this is not how people invariably claim it appears to be. This I would consider valid in the sense of addressing the need for "I" to maintain psychological health but to me it is still dualistic in that one is inevitably left hypothesising non-physical entities to explain expressions like "my body."

Happy to discuss more. I find it an interesting subject.

Nick

 

[Nick227]

I think we can all understand this article just fine. We understand that the word "recognize" is a cognitive process arising from a material brain...

I don't see how whatever it is that you believe differently helps us understand what is going on any more than the current model, and I think we all understand this is study based on the material model. If you don't or see an inconsistency then it appears to only be in your head.

Well, if you don't believe me and feel the issue is only in my head, how about we go through some passages from Blackmore's work on this issue? She's well-established as a researcher and skeptic, so I'm imagining you approve of her.

I would be happy to look through Consciousness: An Introduction and The Meme Machine and check out some quotes. Another good possibility might be Dennett's Consciousness Explained.

What do you think? This seems to me an adult solution that could move us along a bit.

Nick

 

[AWPrime]

Where is the point of observation? There isn't one, not that anyone has been able to find.

Here is another problem you have. You have assumptions based upon just your own opinion. Observation doesn't require a point in the way you want it to.


Also I would like to know why you assume that a process is non-physical?

 

[AkuManiMani]

If you are using obfuscation, semantics, sarcasm and other manipulations or logical fallacies to try and make your point (nick227, akumanimani, thesyntaxera), you probably are wrong and you are not as "clear" as you think you are in your head. (That is, the reality you think you are "creating" is not the one we are perceiving.)

Jeeze...what'd I say to get you all flustered this time?