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Materealism and morality

Neverfly, logical contradiction is of the type of a married batchelor.

Barack Obama flying by flapping his ears is impossible, but because of physics not because of logic.
 
Mashuna said:
If you disqualify my test for running by definition (you can't have running without legs), then I can disqualify your test for mind by definition (you can't have a mind without a brain).
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Honestly, it is hard for me to believe that you are serious.


It is a scientific discovery that you cannot have a mind without a brain. Had we not had science, we wouldn't know it.

Since when we need science to proove things that are true by definition? :boggled:

Do we need science to show that the concept of "running" is meaningless without "legs"? (Running in the sense that Joe used).
 
JetLeg said:
Neverfly, logical contradiction is of the type of a married batchelor.

Barack Obama flying by flapping his ears is impossible, but because of physics not because of logic.
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So what's your point?
The mind without a brain is not possible because of physics and logic.

I don't see how this supports you. At all.
 
JetLeg said:
L The Detective, and Joe, can you explain him what my argument is, or at least support me in saying that he doesn't get it?

(Neverfly, it is not a good strategy to be sure that you understand the argument of a person, when he tells you repeatedly that you don't... )
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Well, you said yourself that what you are arguing is that the mind and brain are different concepts. I certainly believe that this is what you think you are arguing.

However, it seems to me like you are taking it farther than that, perhaps without realizing it. If you are saying that the mind is not a property, that it is a "logically separate thing," then it sounds like you are saying that it is a separate entity. This is what Neverfly is responding to. If he has misinterpreted you, well, try to see it from his point of view... how else is he supposed to interpret it?

You said that if we can conceive of something, it shows there is no logical contradiction. I realize that you're not talking about scientific contradictions, but rather contradictions in the idea itself. So Obama flying by flapping his wings is not a logical contradiction because the idea doesn't conflict with itself, however a round square is a logical contradiction. I get what you're saying, you want us to analyze your idea with pure logic, without using science. I still think the portable hole example is a good example of a logical contradiction for something we can conceive, but that's just me. There's a certain amount of subjectivity in what we can conceive.

And like I said before, I think that's where you're going wrong. You're trying to use what we conceive, which is subjective, to establish a logical point about the nature of brain/mind, which is objective. This is what I believe is the main flaw of your idea, here. If you were arguing that from your subjective point of view, mind and brain are separate ideas, then there would be no debate. But it sounds like you are saying that your subjective viewpoints establish an objective truth, and perhaps that is why people like Neverfly are not addressing your views in the way you expected.
 
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Yes, I see this as a speculative wild goose chase. Let's get to the crux of the matter.

It is also a very old tactic: Introduce an idea as feasible and try to get the opposition to admit it is feasible. Then use it against them later. "But in the other thread, you agreed..."
 
JetLeg said:
Honestly, it is hard for me to believe that you are serious.


It is a scientific discovery that you cannot have a mind without a brain. Had we not had science, we wouldn't know it.

Since when we need science to proove things that are true by definition? :boggled:

Do we need science to show that the concept of "running" is meaningless without "legs"? (Running in the sense that Joe used).
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I admit, I don't know how the mechanism of running would work in my test. Maybe mystical running forces will propel the unfortunately depeditated athlete along the track, with new legs of pure invisible energy. I admit, this would go against much of what we know of physics.

But then, so would your experiment. You don't know how 'mind' exists separate from brain. For example, your experiment of 'seeing' objects on high shelves would require light to register on something that is immaterial.
 
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Actually, I think what Jetlag is more or less trying to say is "if you forget about science, it makes more logical sense that the mind is a separate entity from the brain, rather than a property." Do I have that correct, Jetlag?
 
JetLeg said:
One can use many nonsensical expressions as metaphors. I can say "He is stubborn like a square circle" . But that's a different type of using a word. Metaphorical vs. literal. Logically, there is a contradiction here.


I use the word "to imagine", but it seems I should use another word. I am seeking for something that says "possible to imagine _without_ a logical contradiction".
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Now you're just drawing arbitrary lines, IMHO. Why do you draw the border before "desperation without a mind" but after "mind without a brain". Is there any objective reason?

Why is "love is in the air" or "sadness hung heavy in the air" inherently excluded, but a mind hanging in the air isn't?

The point about self-contradictory concept is that no expirement can be designed that would prove them. Can you think of an expirement that tries to prove that there is a married batchelor?
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No, but I just designed an experiment to prove whether darkness passes through matter and stains it, or whether desperation lingers around places. Why do you exclude those a priori, but then turn around and pretend that the possibility an equally nonsensical experiment proves something about your pet topic?

In your first example, had that been true, it wouldn't prove that desparation "floats", since desparation is not something that can exist without a mind. It would prove something else, though I am not sure what. Perhaps it would prove that there is some "negative energy" that exists outside of the mind, and it does influence the surroundings. Desparation leads to a change in the negative energy of the surroundings.
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And I just objected that your floating mind experiment could prove clairvoyance instead. It seems to me like both are equally flawed.

I don't know enough about physics to understand if there is a self-contradiction in the dark sucker idea. My point is that if sound is defined as "a wavelike change that occurs to a medium", and we design a test to check if there is sound in vaccum, this test doesn't really test if there is sound in vaccum, since it cannot be by definition.
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By definition? No, merely by the physics we know now. The ancient greeks had no problem with being aware of sound long before they figured out that air even exists.

And again, to about half of the millions of people who watched Star Wars it wasn't clear at all that those space combat sounds are illogical BS. And there were plenty of fan posts as to why they think it ought to be possible.

For that matter, if you go back in time far enough, more than one civilization had a concept of "wind" before they had a concept of "air". To me it proves clearly that you can imagine wind without a medium, and you could design an experiment around that too.

Or take fire. For a _long_ time, people thougth there's a fire substance (phlogiston) in wood, and burning it merely releases the fire in it. (Read: until a couple of centuries ago!) Their explanation as to why air in which you already burned stuff, doesn't support more burning, was that it's already saturated with fire. So literally, they imagined fire as a fundamental element, not a process of oxidizing fuel in an exothermic reaction. They literally imagined fire as something not just logically disconnected from fuel, but very much possible to exist after you removed the fuel. Not only it was _possible_ to design experiments to prove or disprove it, but that's exactly what happened: it was disproved experimentally.

Again, if you want to exclude those based on what experimentation showed later, why doesn't the same apply to your mind concept? Just because you want to draw the demarcations that way?

What it really tests, is perhaps whether the vaccum is ideal, or there is some medium in space. Or it tests, whether sound is indeed "a wavelike change that occurs to a medium". But if we agree that sound is "a wavelike change that occurs to a medium", then we don't need science to check if it can occur without a medium, we use logic.
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You're just mixing what you know from experiments, with whether the experiments are even possible. But somehow reject the results of experiments when it comes to the brain, and focus on whether a hypothetical one is possible.

It seems to me like your position is "for A apply X but not Y, while for B you must apply Y but not X". Why?
 
L The Detective said:
Actually, I think what Jetlag is more or less trying to say is "if you forget about science, it makes more logical sense that the mind is a separate entity from the brain, rather than a property." Do I have that correct, Jetlag?
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If you forget about science, phlogiston makes a lot of sense too :P
 
L The Detective said:
Actually, I think what Jetlag is more or less trying to say is "if you forget about science, it makes more logical sense that the mind is a separate entity from the brain, rather than a property." Do I have that correct, Jetlag?
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It's Jetleg.

And - no, not all!

You don't need to forget about science. And you don't need to forget about science to think that the mind is an effect of the brain, though not a property.
 
Joe, there is another argument for you :

P1: Only I can feel my pain, nobody else can.
P2: Therefore, pain is subjective.
P3: All that is material is objective
C : Pain is not material.
 
Joe, there is another argument for you :

P1: Only I can feel my pain, nobody else can.
P2: Therefore, pain is subjective.
P3: All that is material is objective
C : Pain is not material.
 
JetLeg said:
It's Jetleg.

And - no, not all!

You don't need to forget about science. And you don't need to forget about science to think that the mind is an effect of the brain, though not a property.
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Oops, sorry about the name.

Right... but you're not making scientific arguments, you are making strictly logical arguments, am I right?
 
JetLeg said:
Joe, there is another argument for you :

P1: Only I can feel my pain, nobody else can.
P2: Therefore, pain is subjective.
P3: All that is material is objective
C : Pain is not material.
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Pain is a property or function of (some) material.

There are special nerve receptors called nociceptors that translate the mechanical actions into action potentials that go to the appropriate places in the nervous system and are perceived (in the sensory cortex) as the conscious experience of pain.

Yet there is no material--no neuron, no myelin sheath, no anatomy at all-- called "pain". (Do you know why anatomy and physiology has both components? Anatomy is the structure; while physiology refers to functions and processes.)

You're back again to the strawman you started with. Your argument essentially says that if the mental process is not equivalent to some material structure, then materialism is at a loss to explain it and (for no reason) therefore dualism does explain it.
 
JetLeg said:
1) When I say that "running without legs" is a logical contradiction, I mean running in the strict sense.

It was Joe that said that mind is to brain what running is to legs.

And in this context, I mean that running is a contradiction. You can understand "running" as "moving towards a goal", and then of course, you can design an expirement that checks it. But running in the sense that is relevant to Joe, by definition cannot occur without legs.

2) When I say an expirement [sic] that tests it, I mean an expirement[sic] that really tests it. Can there be a married batchelor [sic]? No. Can you design an expirement that tests it? In my use of the term, no, one cannot design an expirement that tests for a self-contradiction. You could claim that one can conduct a survey, ask 1,000 people if they are married, and if they are batchelors [sic]. But that wouldn't really be testing this concept..
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I agree with most of what you say here. I just don't understand why you don't apply the same thinking to minds and brains. A disembodied mind is just as illogical as running without legs.

You claim you can conceive of a disembodied mind, but I insist you really can't. You can think of some sort of ghost body, as I mentioned before, but it really is meaningless to talk of a disembodied mind.

What would that mind be like? It would have no language, no sensory inputs, no name, no gender, no memory, no ability to learn (all of these things we can prove with 100% certainty are dependent on the proper functioning of certain brain structures--even minds still in bodies can lose these mental processes when those parts of the brain are damaged). You could not possibly be in a location (or at least not in one location as opposed to any other).

Can you actually conceive of being a mind like that?

ETA: And I've already shown that you really can't devise a test to prove that a disembodied mind is possible. You'll never get past that same problem of subjectivity. How do you know that what the subject is reporting is true? The fact that they got the right answer could be due to any number of explanations that are no more or less "proven" than the disembodied mind theory (ESP for example, if the tester knows the answers; or precognition, assuming the answers are revealed to the subject after the test).
 
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Even if you claimed ignorance of science (especially neuroscience), your logic is flawed, Jetleg. You can't get from "I can conceive of X" to saying anything meaningful about X. It's the same flaw as the Ontological Argument.

(BTW, I was chatting with my Jesuit friend, and I mentioned Jetleg's argument, and the more conventional, "I can conceive of a p-zombie" argument, and he actually interrupted me saying that it's the same problem as in the Ontological Argument.)

The only think you can conclude from "I can conceive" (or "Cogito") is "I am" ("sum").
 
JetLeg said:
Joe, there is another argument for you :

P1: Only I can feel my pain, nobody else can.
P2: Therefore, pain is subjective.
P3: All that is material is objective
C : Pain is not material.
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P1 is a unsupported assumption, and therefore the entire argument fails.
 
billydkid said:
I'm sorry, I'm not sure what materealism is.
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It was a misspelling of materialism.

One thing about Jetleg's spelling: even when wrong, it's very consistent. So once he is corrected, he then consistently spells the word in question correctly. So I say, good for him. (Though most browsers flag misspelled words as you go, and it doesn't take long to get a correct spelling, what with the interwebs and all.)
 
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