Materialism - Devastator of Scientific Method! / Observer Delusion

[Fudbucker]

Fair enough, it seems a simple answer to me, but I appreciate we're in different situations. I'm delighted to have two young children that I can expect to live until old age, and I'm glad my pregnant sister-in-law doesn't have a high chance of dying in labour.

There are other problems that come with the march of time, and I'm fortunate to be born where I was and have the life I do. My ancestors were pretty much all English or Irish peasant farmers, and I'm far too lazy to do real subsitance work.

I would die in a day, working like they did back then. I love my cushy teaching job.

I just think the answer isn't quite so simple. But this topic's been done to death in those stories where some person thinks life is so much better in "the good old days", goes back in time, and is miserable.

 

[Fudbucker]

On physics, it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established.

Alfred Mickelson, 1894

Wasn't there a patent clerk in the 1800's who thought all the inventions had already been made, or is that apocraphyal?

But to get back to my point, it just doesn't seem likely someone's going to have a Eureka moment and prove that everything we thought we knew about something (say inherited traits) is wrong. DNA has nothing to do with it. It's this totally mysterious thing that everyone missed. Or that fusion doesn't happen in the sun's core, or the age of the Earth is off by orders of magnitude. It just seems like there's too much rock-bottom stuff we know we can't be wrong about, and science is getting more and more tedious.

 

[Nick227]

Why can't the subject in a subject object relationship be the emergent subject from the material brain?

It can... and is. But in this case the way the brain constructs this particular aspect of consciousness - a subject - places it in a class of phenomena that have absolutely zero bona fide existence under materialism. It doesn't emerge in the same way that other aspects of consciousness emerge.

Dennett first pointed to this decades ago, see my earlier post.

Why doesn't observation work if the observer is an artifact?

And, it's not the observer (alone) that discerns truth, it's which particular process the observer uses that will discern or muddy up the truth.

See above.

OK

You can anyway also just use materialism to very obviously conclude that there can't actually be an observer. How can a brain, a bunch of neurons and glia etc, create an actual observer? An actual witness of its processing activity? Of course it can't. The whole notion is idiotic. Even without Dennett's description of a narrative gravity centre, the whole idea of there really being an observational, separated point within the brain can't have any validity under materialism. It doesn't matter how cleverly it emerges, and seems to exist. It doesn't matter how evolutionarily favoured it is. It anyway can't have validity. It's a trick. To conclude otherwise is akin to saying that you know objects can materialise out of thin air because you saw a man in a black suit pull a rabbit out of a hat. As mentioned, it doesn't matter that this observer is an utter charlatan for most purposes. It's just when you start to try and determine truth. Don Hoffman's Interface Theory of Perception introduces us to these kinds of discrepancies and how they can arise. I'm just extending his Evol. Psych perspective into a deeper realm. It's a black hole at the core of the scientific mindset. And the only way to keep yourself this side of the event horizon is to somehow compel yourself to dwell in sustained delusion and ignorance. The instinctual side of the brain knows that somewhere over there, in the dimly lit recesses, a terrifying secret lurks, and it keeps you well away. Best not look there, matey, it says. The secret is that, since early childhood, the human brain has been running an observer program, occupying and formatting neural assemblies to run its software, creating mental constructs and behaviours based on the prog. It's great for eating, great for sex, great for fighting. Just don't start to ponder about truth. Whatever you do, just don't do that.

Better now

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I honestly don't know. Look at how many people kill themselves these days. Do I want to come down with cancer and suffer for years through treatments so I can squeeze five more years out of my lifespan, or would it be better if I broke my neck falling off my thatched roof? Do I want to live now, while we're rapidly exterminating species, and inching closer and closer to turning Earth into Venus, or back in a time when it didn't matter if the family cow burped out a little cloud of methane? Would I rather go through life believing fairies and sprites exist, and that all this hard work will earn me a place in some afterlife, or know we're all in for the eventual inescapable heat-death of the universe? Ignorance can be bliss.

As Louis CK said, "Everything's amazing, and no one's happy". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEY58fiSK8E

For now it is "better" by almost any measure for a very large number of humans on this planet (I'm tempted to say for the vast majority but that is maybe another argument).

PS. Check my sig to see where I am coming from.

 

[Fudbucker]

For now it is "better" by almost any measure for a very large number of humans on this planet (I'm tempted to say for the vast majority but that is maybe another argument).

PS. Check my sig to see where I am coming from.

Well, let me ask you something: would you rather know the truth, and be depressed about it, or believe a lie, and be happy (or at least not depressed) about it? Is knowing the truth so valuable, it trumps any emotional suffering that might result? Based on your sig, I'm guessing you would say yes to both questions.

 

[Pulvinar]

Wasn't there a patent clerk in the 1800's who thought all the inventions had already been made, or is that apocraphyal?

A Patent Office commissioner, yes, Charles Duell or Henry Ellsworth.

And Mashuna's quote was from Albert Michelson.

But to get back to my point, it just doesn't seem likely someone's going to have a Eureka moment and prove that everything we thought we knew about something (say inherited traits) is wrong. DNA has nothing to do with it. It's this totally mysterious thing that everyone missed. Or that fusion doesn't happen in the sun's core, or the age of the Earth is off by orders of magnitude. It just seems like there's too much rock-bottom stuff we know we can't be wrong about, and science is getting more and more tedious.

As Mashuna said, what you're saying here echoes the feelings in the 1890s. They really thought they had the "clockwork universe" almost all figured out.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Well, let me ask you something: would you rather know the truth, and be depressed about it, or believe a lie, and be happy (or at least not depressed) about it? Is knowing the truth so valuable, it trumps any emotional suffering that might result? Based on your sig, I'm guessing you would say yes to both questions.

And you would probably be correct.

The truth is not "valuable". It is just the best information to have in our random walk through the universe of life.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Well, let me ask you something: would you rather know the truth, and be depressed about it, or believe a lie, and be happy (or at least not depressed) about it?

False dilemma.

 

[The Man]

Nah, we ought to just go with whatever ideas that pop in our head, No real need to test them in any way.

I think that's the real rub of it Nay_Sayer, the scientific method doesn't rely on the consistency of self as subjective observer but on the historical consistency of the universe. In that the results of experiments in the past can be used to predict the results of experiments in the future. Other aspects such as instrumentality, calibration and protocols (like double blind) are actually intended to remove affects of the self as a subjective observer (as much as possible) from the experiment.

 

[TheAdversary]

+Fudbucker I second your argument on science getting more settled, and great discoveries getting more unlikely.
It reminds me of John Horgan's The End Of Science.
Interestingly, roughly two unsolvable areas remain :
The hard problem(s) of metaphysics : Why is there something at all? What is 'Existence'? What's its purpose? etc.
The hard problem(s) of consciousness. No satisfactory theory has yet emerged.
Let's take the materialistic position. It resolves the metaphysical problem by pragmatism. We exist in a world,
stuff happens. Deal with it. The problem of consciousness is then assumed to be resolvable in terms of these
real things existing in the world around us without requiring a deeper metaphysical link.
This is what the scientific method (which should be impartial to philosophical issues) tells us, with evidence in
spades. The metaphysical problem however remains as some kind of primordial absurdity, unsolvable.
Something just _is_, must remain as a basic unresolved issue.
You can question whether or not this issue could in principle be solved by materialism as well, and
A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss is where you'd end up then. But I myself think that a good
point came be made for the observation that all of those attempts just end up in infinite regress, ultimately
not solving anything at all.
Hence I believe a point in favour of a non-materialistic position can still be made if, and only if, it
appeals solely to the attempt of removal of absurdity due to infinite regress by intentional act, will, which
is then assumed to exist a priori in some way. The observation here is that intentional act or will posseses
the logical ability to counter infinite regress. At least, there's no other concept that posseses that
particular logical/philosophical quality. There's also no clash with skepticism, since this is exactly the
same concept the appears as an unavoidable remainder of pure skepticism, I think therefore I am, as Descartes
has shown. But it remains a religious conclusion.

 

[The Man]

It can... and is. But in this case the way the brain constructs this particular aspect of consciousness - a subject - places it in a class of phenomena that have absolutely zero bona fide existence under materialism. It doesn't emerge in the same way that other aspects of consciousness emerge.

Dennett first pointed to this decades ago, see my earlier post.



See above.

OK

You can anyway also just use materialism to very obviously conclude that there can't actually be an observer. How can a brain, a bunch of neurons and glia etc, create an actual observer? An actual witness of its processing activity? Of course it can't. The whole notion is idiotic. Even without Dennett's description of a narrative gravity centre, the whole idea of there really being an observational, separated point within the brain can't have any validity under materialism. It doesn't matter how cleverly it emerges, and seems to exist. It doesn't matter how evolutionarily favoured it is. It anyway can't have validity. It's a trick. To conclude otherwise is akin to saying that you know objects can materialise out of thin air because you saw a man in a black suit pull a rabbit out of a hat. As mentioned, it doesn't matter that this observer is an utter charlatan for most purposes. It's just when you start to try and determine truth. Don Hoffman's Interface Theory of Perception introduces us to these kinds of discrepancies and how they can arise. I'm just extending his Evol. Psych perspective into a deeper realm. It's a black hole at the core of the scientific mindset. And the only way to keep yourself this side of the event horizon is to somehow compel yourself to dwell in sustained delusion and ignorance. The instinctual side of the brain knows that somewhere over there, in the dimly lit recesses, a terrifying secret lurks, and it keeps you well away. Best not look there, matey, it says. The secret is that, since early childhood, the human brain has been running an observer program, occupying and formatting neural assemblies to run its software, creating mental constructs and behaviours based on the prog. It's great for eating, great for sex, great for fighting. Just don't start to ponder about truth. Whatever you do, just don't do that.

Better now

How can electrons and circuits create an observer? I work with and around robots and control systems. Some systems just observe themselves and other subsystems, generally it is the subsystems of the subsystems of the subsystems... that do the actual physical interaction (work). So systems controlling subsystems, while they aren't conscious that general layout seems to be reflected in the brain as well. Things like alien hand and a proximity condition I can't recall the name of now, indicate the actions of those subsystems.

Have to go now but will see if I can recall that proximity condition.

 

[John Freestone]

Quite odd, trying to mourn the loss of the self delusion, and pretending that the method that led to this extraordinary enlightenment is somehow threatened by its success!

There's no loss of "distance". My brain can't easily feel it's the computer I'm typing on. It evolved to recognise its position in space. The fact that it's a behaviour rather than a metaphysical not-thing doesn't make it suddenly have to be everywhere. In fact, isn't that what ghosts are supposed to be able to do, float about anywhere?

 

[Myriad]

Consider separation. Seems pretty reasonable, huh? I mean I'm here and well, the laptop is just there. Oh, the wall's over there. Until we remove the subject, I, out of the scenario. Now everything is just object. Everything looks the same but the sense of hard boundaries is dispersing. It's more like a TV screen. Now, a masked gunman has just walked into the room! Ah good, hard boundaries again, instinctual responses override this non-dual spaciness. Glad I learned to fight. That's him dealt with. You get the idea?

I think so. You appear to be engaging in some variety of metrology, suggesting that without an observer, the laptop and the wall are just particles (or quantum fields), and the notion that some of them are part of "laptop" and some are part of "wall" and there's a distance between those two "things" is an arbitrary mental construct that no longer applies.

But there is no need to ascribe any objective reality to the laptop, wall, or distance, in order for those concepts to be a valid part of a useful model of the world. Useful in the sense that it helps our brains survive in that world. That's what our brains do: model the world to help negotiate it successfully for as long as possible (success being defined as keeping the ongoing computation of the model ongoing, in ourselves and when taken up by our offspring).

Can you come up with a more useful model of the world? I hope you can and do, and I look forward to examining it! But no model is not a more useful model than a well-tested but imperfect model, unless you can show that the world actually has no properties to model, which I doubt you can.

 

[godless dave]

* If the brain is the source, or foundation, for consciousness then there cannot actually be an observing self.

Wouldn't the brain, or part of it, be the observing self?

 

[theprestige]

Nick227, let me see if I understand your thesis:

According to one conjecture about the nature of reality, there is no observer. There is the illusion of an observer, and this illusory observer functions really well in almost every way. In fact, this observer functions exactly like a real observer would function, according to some other conjecture about the nature of reality.

The only thing this illusory observer can't do is seek the truth. Somehow, this limitation is a problem for science, even though science is not concerned with seeking the truth. Science is concerned with developing reliable models of the behavior of reality--something this illusory observer is really good at doing.

 

[Loss Leader]

* If selfhood is merely a highly favoured illusion then what does this say about some of the cornerstones of scientific method, principles and techniques used to determine the truth about things? Surely perspective is finished.

Why wouldn't the scientific method be permitted to work within the framework of certain axioms like the existence and continuity of reality for all questions except those? So long as the method produces falsifiable and reproducible results, it would seem to be useful within the universe.

Then, after we've solved everything else, we could turn to examining the objective nature of reality.

 

[John Freestone]

Just fixing my mistake after the editing time:

There's no loss of "distance". My brain can't easily feel it's the computer I'm typing on. It evolved to recognise its position in space. The fact that the self is a behaviour rather than a metaphysical not-thing doesn't make it suddenly have to be everywhere.

 

[Nick227]

How can electrons and circuits create an observer?

They can't and don't. The observer is fundamentally a memeplex (Blackmore 1999). It's a program that occupies layers of neural architecture and starts generating thought narratives with specific content to suggest the presence of an observing, limited self. See Dennett, centre of narrative gravity. As the brain learns to attend to these thoughts, so it develops this sense of mental selfhood, which helps it fulfil its evolutionarily-derived needs, which feels good. It learns to behave as though it has a mental self, an I, a me. All good, until the brain or mind starts to get interested in what is actually real, what is actually true.

 

[The Man]

OK so you’re limiting observer to just a conscious observer. Right now I’m observing systems that observe other systems as well as, at least in part, themselves. While not conscious obverses they do some self-observation and have specific alarms and notifications if they observe a problem with their own operation. Our sense of self and the feeling good you mention is just an extension of such self-monitoring, though more complex and in many ways more subtle in the alarms and notifications generated.

Is the behavior real? Is the assertion that we behave this way true? If so than such behavior certainly doesn’t impinge on what is true and real in that respect. As noted above if such conclusions about our behavior, the structure of the brain, its operation and how that leads to this behavior of self were arrived at by the scientific method. Then the brain or minds interest in what is true and real was actually helped in that endeavor by that very method. So your assertion seems to be that we can find the truth and reality about our own behavior with the scientific method even in spite of that behavior.

 

[Dancing David]

It would be an error to say that the scientific method requires an object/subject , now would that not make this whole thread a fallacy of construction?