How do we know that places like Narnia do not exist?

PixyMisa said:
Look, Ian, your argument, like Berkeley's and Chalmers', runs like this:

1. Consciousness cannot be reduced to the material.
2. Therefore, materialism cannot possibly explain it.
3. But we know consciousness exists.
4. Therefore materialism is wrong.
5. And since materialism is wrong, it is clear that consciousness cannot be reduced to the material.[Edited by Belz...]
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You forgot key arguments:

6. For those who don't understand, you're all stupid
7. I'll explain it someday on my website.
 
Taffer said:
True, although I must point out that many theories about the quantum world, and indeed many 'theories of everything', include or require other universes. It's detecting them that's the hard part. ;)
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To Ian's credit, though, it is possible that one (or an infinity, actually) of those worlds are like Narnia. Sigh.
 
A physical process is a physical chain of cause and effect. Consciousness amounts to more than a chain of cause and effect eg when I get up to get a pint of blackcurrent squash there is, in addition to my behaviour and processes occurring in my brain etc, a feeling of thirst.

So what on earth are people talking about??
 
Interesting Ian said:
A physical process is a physical chain of cause and effect. Consciousness amounts to more than a chain of cause and effect eg when I get up to get a pint of blackcurrent squash there is, in addition to my behaviour and processes occurring in my brain etc, a feeling of thirst.

So what on earth are people talking about??
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If you are feeling thirsty, its just because you body needs water. After receiving the impulses that mean "body needs water" the brain produces the feeling of being thirsty, to make you move to the next step: Get some water and drink. Is there anything non-physical in this?
 
Taffer said:
No, I am willing to say that. Consciousness, if used to mean the way someone behaves and feels, their personality, internal experience, etc, is both dictated by and is the physical processes in the brain. It is not true, however, that these things are completely decided upon with DNA.
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It bothers me to say that consciousness is a bunch of brain processes. I'd rather say that consciousness is a name given to the experiential results of a bunch of brain processes. However, that sounds rather dualistic and thus misleading.

But now I feel as a nit picker wandering in a field of nits, so I shall shut the hell up.

~~ Paul
 
Correa Neto said:
If you are feeling thirsty, its just because you body needs water. After receiving the impulses that mean "body needs water" the brain produces the feeling of being thirsty, to make you move to the next step: Get some water and drink. Is there anything non-physical in this?
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As I keep saying, simply because the physical generates X, this does not entail that X is physical.

If God as an infinite consciousness created (i.e brought into being) the Universe, would it entail the Universe is consciousness?

I'll be explaining all this on my forthcoming website. Stay tuned.
 
Interesting Ian said:
A physical process is a physical chain of cause and effect. Consciousness amounts to more than a chain of cause and effect eg when I get up to get a pint of blackcurrent squash there is, in addition to my behaviour and processes occurring in my brain etc, a feeling of thirst.

So what on earth are people talking about??
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The feeling of thirst is a physical set of conditions that are a partial cause of your getting up to get a pint. Surely, even YOU can understand that?
 
Interesting Ian said:
As I keep saying, simply because the physical generates X, this does not entail that X is physical.

If God as an infinite consciousness created (i.e brought into being) the Universe, would it entail the Universe is consciousness?
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Actually, yes it would.

I'll be explaining all this on my forthcoming website. Stay tuned.
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Yawn, etc.
 
Paul C. Anagnostopoulos said:
It bothers me to say that consciousness is a bunch of brain processes. I'd rather say that consciousness is a name given to the experiential results of a bunch of brain processes. However, that sounds rather dualistic and thus misleading.

~~ Paul
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I don't understand why it isn't dualism. In fact any non-reductive materialist position seems to entail epiphenomenalism so far as I am able to understand these things. But epiphenomenalism is incoherent because we know with certainty that we must have free will.
 
Interesting Ian said:
As I keep saying, simply because the physical generates X, this does not entail that X is physical.
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It certainly does not. For instance, the information contained in this > A < character is not physical. Likewise, "consciousness" could possibly be defined as being not a physical entity, but the emergent property of a series of physical processes.

If God as an infinite consciousness created (i.e brought into being) the Universe, would it entail the Universe is consciousness?
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No, only if God created it that way.

I'll be explaining all this on my forthcoming website. Stay tuned.
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Mmmm, I don't think so, sorry. The idea of you going on unchallenged for as long as it pleases you is a tad too strong for my stomack, I fear.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
Mmmm, I don't think so, sorry. The idea of you going on unchallenged for as long as it pleases you is a tad too strong for my stomack, I fear.

Hans
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No, it's not like that at all. I admit that almost everything out there on the mind/body problem is very partisan towards one view or another. I find it very irritating and crass.



But my paper is going to be very different. It provides an objective appraisal of all relevant arguments both for and against the notion that people are essentially biological machines. It is true that I eventually conclude that we are not essentially machines and that we might even well survive the deaths of our bodies (and that, moreover, certain evidence makes it very likely). But I am being scrupulously fair to the opposing views. Also I'm making it relatively extremely easy to understand (i.e I'm making this very difficult subject as easy as it is possible to make it). You'll need to be intelligent but can be wholly unfamliar with philosophy and the mind/body problem, and still be able to understand it (I hope!). I'll give a link to what I've done so far sometime in the next few days.
 
Correa Neto said:
This also does not mean that X can exist without the physical...
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Well, to be pedantic X could be non-physical, be created by the physical, yet continue to exist without the physical.

But it is certainly possible for something to be non-physical, yet be wholly ontologically dependent on the physical for its existence, yes.
 
Taffer said:
:D Indeed it would, as far as we know. It's that last bit which allows me to accept the possibility of stars created using, as a random example, the Chocolate Strong Force.
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[weenie mode] But if the chocolate strong force behaved exactly like gravity well.... wouldn't it...,you know,......be gravity?[/weenie mode]
 
Taffer said:
True, although I must point out that many theories about the quantum world, and indeed many 'theories of everything', include or require other universes. It's detecting them that's the hard part. ;)
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Right, one of those theories would be Schrodinger's. But I believe that most of the others just require extra spatial dimensions rather than full blown universes.

just...ah...being an pendantic weenie again. :)

Carry on!
 
MRC_Hans said:
It certainly does not. For instance, the information contained in this > A < character is not physical. Likewise, "consciousness" could possibly be defined as being not a physical entity, but the emergent property of a series of physical processes.
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Now we get to the vexed problem of what is meant by "physical". Is what I directly experience physical? Or is the physical simply information and nothing more? But then what about the substantiality of the world??


Science only provides information. The "substance" of the world seems be be provided by our perceptual qualia, but my raw experience of greenness, or the smell of a fart etc, doesn't appear to be able to be derived from information. Thus we have a certain wavelength of electromagnetic light being reflected from an object, entering our eyes, initiating certain appropriate physical activitiy in the brain, then eventually I experience seeing greenness. Note the scientific story is all about information including all the activity in ones brain. But the actual raw experience of greenness -- which the physical activity terminates in -- does not seem to be.

I refer you to waht is known as "the knowledge argument" i.e the argument that qualia cannot be derived from information by considering a neuroscientist (mary) who has been brought up in a black and white room the entirety of her life and who knows absolutely everthing about colour vision. Yet it is argued she would not know what it is like to experience greenness, and on her first time ever of going out of the room, only then would she know what it is like to experience greenness (or any other colour). Thus materialism is refuted.
 
Interesting Ian said:
in addition to my behaviour and processes occurring in my brain etc, a feeling of thirst.

So what on earth are people talking about??
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Ian, a feeling of thirst is not in addition to the processes occuring in your brain, etc. It IS a process occuring in your brain brought about by information received by the brain from your bodily senses. What do you think a feeling of thirst is?
 
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