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Materialism - Devastator of Scientific Method! / Observer Delusion

MRC_Hans said:
OK, Nick227. Have dropped in on this thread on occasion, for some time now. Still waiting for you to make some sense.

Not holding breath. Hans
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Nick is a Rajneesh member from an OSHO spiritual community in the UK. His blog is probably indicative of where this thread is heading. He is also posting, on this topic at the Skeptic Society Forum.
http://devaraj.org.uk/?p=1

'Science in Trouble"

"OK, it’s simple. You don’t exist. End of story. Under materialism there can be no observer, no experiencer, no one that sees the blue, no one that feels excited, and no one that gets panicky in the corner shop. These are all just autonomous brain processes taking place for no one! There’s a theatre, but there’s no audience. There can be experiencing, and observing, for sure. But no experiencer and no observer."
 
The number of increasingly ponderous, pretentious but equally meaningless ways people keep finding to rephrase solipsism will never cease to amaze me.

No seriously what is it about the old brain in a jar malarkey that makes everyone who encounters it think they are the first one to think of it?

Why do the figments of my imagination keep bringing up the fact that they aren't real?
 
Kid Eager said:
I'm a scientist and I haven't identified myself as an "...ist" of any particular philosophical flavour.

Is that a problem?
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tsig said:
All your measurements are belong to us.
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Impossible! Because reasons that include the words observer, memeplex and materialism.

Now you can do an end-run around the scientific method to claim that woo is real, if you use fractured logic and special pleading.

One of my chakras have gone all potato. Can you fix plz?
 
Nick227 said:
No, I agree. It does it anyway.

But this actually has little to do with what I'm saying here, which is... you can become aware of the process which is making it seem like there's someone writing this, someone observing this, someone experiencing this... and that awareness changes things.
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What things? What does it change, in what ways?

Strict materialism is one way to deduce that we must exist in a selfless reality, however ridiculous such a proposition might, on the surface, sound.

But, as Parfit's Transporter demonstrates, there are actually precious few strict materialists around. Materialism is a philosophy which has a lot of "fair-weather friends!"
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There have been multiple teletransporter discussions here, and the consensus among avowed materialists has been that they would use the transporter. Of those who wouldn't use it, there are some who do not claim to be strict materialists, some who admit their reasons are emotional rather than rational, and some who would not accept the premise that the teletransporter could be completely reliable.
 
'Science in Trouble"

"OK, it’s simple. You don’t exist. End of story. Under materialism there can be no observer, no experiencer, no one that sees the blue, no one that feels excited, and no one that gets panicky in the corner shop. These are all just autonomous brain processes taking place for no one! There’s a theatre, but there’s no audience. There can be experiencing, and observing, for sure. But no experiencer and no observer."
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Exactly my point. It makes no sense. One entity informing another entity that it does not exist makes no sense.

If it is supposed to be a description of materialism, it is false. It is not even a strawman, it is just nonsense.

Hans
 
MRC_Hans said:
Exactly my point. It makes no sense. One entity informing another entity that it does not exist makes no sense.

If it is supposed to be a description of materialism, it is false. It is not even a strawman, it is just nonsense.

Hans
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It did, however, prompt me to spend a few hours studying up on materialism, related monisms, and their implications - so it wasn't a total waste.

Agree OP has created a fairly poor materialism strawman. Whether this is intentional or the result of liberal interpretation of what has been studied (I'm assuming study was involved at some point), I do not know.
 
The Man said:
Who the heck is "TM"? Look if The Man is too bothersome for you I also reply to Dan. Though I still recommend not messing with people's user ID when using the quote function.
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Apologies. Didn't realise it would upset you.

The Man said:
So now that we have explicitly established that you do feel internal communication is significant to research on consciousness, is "I" valid for that internal communication and if not why not?
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It's valid but not necessary. And much confusion arises when the brain starts to believe it's real. I'm not suggesting that we replace it with the third person, or some similar device. I'm saying it's important to appreciate the limitations of the device.

The Man said:
Evidently you still don't.
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I'm saying it's usually not useful to start a theory from an axiom which can be falsified. Of course there are situations where it's valid, but imo consciousness research is not one of them. There's enough confusion as it is. And if you should believe that this is still a valid approach here, then at least the author of the paper should explain why he or she is saying "let x equal y" or whatever somewhere in his introduction.

Direct contradiction is a form of self-inconsistency, while a "phenomenal inconsistency" or an inconsistency with phenomena would be a general inconsistency. A theory or notion can be self-consistent but not generally consistent. It agrees with itself but doesn't agree with what happens. While a theory that can't even be self-consistent can't agree with even just itself.

Now what might appear to be a direct contradict may just be the result of an inconsistent use of language.
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... not "inconsistent use of language," rather language having developed for a purpose, the nature of which you now want to investigate, and language itself having certain problematic ways of tying concepts together.

For example, in our normal usage of English, the term "observation" invariably suggests that there must be an "observer." Yet this is actually not true. It's simply that the brain creates a subject here as an aid to communication.
 
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JoeBentley said:
The number of increasingly ponderous, pretentious but equally meaningless ways people keep finding to rephrase solipsism will never cease to amaze me.
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Solipsism says Everything is You.
Materialism says There Isn't a You.
It's different
 
Ten pages in and still no explanation as to why a mental model of a self emerging from physical processes doesn't count, just bare assertions.

Sure, there is no essential 'me-ness', no immortal soul or anything like that.
But if you're not willing to call all emergent properties 'trickery' or 'not real', I don't see why you'd need to make that exception for the 'I' the brain creates.
 
Porpoise of Life said:
But if you're not willing to call all emergent properties 'trickery' or 'not real', I don't see why you'd need to make that exception for the 'I' the brain creates.
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At the risk of adding fuel to this, I'm not sure how helpful the emergent property angle is if one isn't already convinced. A flame is just a more complicated version of movement, emitting heat, emitting light etc... all of which are clearly things that the stuff it's made from can do. It's similarly fairly easy to see how neural processes emerge from, and are more complicated forms of, simpler interactions that are well understood. I'm happy to assume a real non-pzombie, first person sense of "I" perspective is also an emergent property, but it's less obvious to me what simpler properties that might be emerging out of.
 
Myriad said:
What things? What does it change, in what ways?
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As I said to you before, Myriad, it's red pill, blue pill. You have to look for yourself for this one.

If your mind accepts a selfless reality, either as the logical extension of materialism, or as the result of subjective analysis, then it will change. The core program that it's been running from early childhood, running for so long it's unaware that it's just a program, is realized for what it is. It can still run the program, play the game. There's not a problem with that. But a deeper awareness is present also.

There have been multiple teletransporter discussions here, and the consensus among avowed materialists has been that they would use the transporter. Of those who wouldn't use it, there are some who do not claim to be strict materialists, some who admit their reasons are emotional rather than rational, and some who would not accept the premise that the teletransporter could be completely reliable.
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What's your position? If you could push a button and be painlessly dematerialized, and an identical copy in that moment created, would you be OK with it? Do you accept that if nothing material is lost then nothing is lost?
 
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Porpoise of Life said:
Ten pages in and still no explanation as to why a mental model of a self emerging from physical processes doesn't count, just bare assertions.

Sure, there is no essential 'me-ness', no immortal soul or anything like that.
But if you're not willing to call all emergent properties 'trickery' or 'not real', I don't see why you'd need to make that exception for the 'I' the brain creates.
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Porpoise of Life - I have repeatedly explained why not all emergent phenomena have the same ontological validity. I'm not going to do it all over again. Please read the thread if you're interested enough to know.
 
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Matthew Ellard said:
Nick is a Rajneesh member from an OSHO spiritual community in the UK.
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Yes, it's true.

Are you saying this changes the physical and emergent properties of matter?

... and you accuse me of woo-ism!

He is also posting, on this topic at the Skeptic Society Forum.
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Yes, and what a woeful little forum that is. Dear me! They actually still believe in qualia. Really! Check it out if you don't believe me. It's like a trip back in time.

Kind of like driving on Dartmoor and finding a pub coming out of the mists where it seems nothing's changed for 200 years. I'm surprised the Skeptic Society doesn't have some form of preservation order on it, forbidding anyone to bring up any research which has taken place after 1820.
 
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Nick227 said:
Porpoise of Life - I have repeatedly explained why not all emergent phenomena have the same ontological validity. I'm not going to do it all over again. Please read the thread if you're interested enough to know.
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I did read the thread. You repeatedly assert that 'Observers' cannot be validated, but never support this.
Also, your definition of what constitutes 'someone' (which appears to exclude both the physical body and the mind that emerges from it) is never clearly defined.

Sure, let's say that under materialism my sense of self is a simulation run by a brain. A meta-object, not physically there and perhaps not even completely reducible to the neurological activity from which it emanates. An artefact of observation, like a rainbow.
How does that remove the "Observer" from the observation?
What, according to you, is needed to be able to state that there is "...actually someone there"?
 
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