Materialists......

[UndercoverElephant]

Does accepting a heliocentric model of the solar system mean "denying that sunsets exist"?

You've raised this before, I responded to it, and you then ignored my response. You bet it does. "Sunset" originally meant "the sun GOING DOWN over the stationary Earth." Accepting a heliocentric model of the solar system really does, in a literal sense, involve denying that there ever was a "sun set". All there ever was was the Earth turning on its axis. We still use the word "sunset", and some people may even sometimes really think about the sun "going down", but all we know perfectly well that the sun doesn't really go anywhere at all.

The successful elimination of "sunset" came about only when we had sufficient understanding of the relationship between the two different ways of looking at the situation. We reached a point where we understood what was going on well enough to be able to see what was really happening, and, critically, to also be able to see precisely why we were originally fooled into believing the sun went down. Unfortunately, not only are we NOT in possession of the necessary information to make the elimination of mind work (we have to believe promises about future neuroscience instead) but it looks like there may be a conceptual problem prohibiting us from ever making this elimination in the future either. Eliminating the sunset required science distinguishing between two quite obviously physical models. But this is not true of mind and matter. Matter is obviously physical, mind is not.

So the answer is that, yes, sunrise has been eliminated but that claiming mind can be eliminated in the same way is both dependent on claims about a future science of mind and dependent on assuming that this problem is not ontologically different to any other problem faced by science - even though science only works for empirical questions. And on top of that, it's silly.

Did you look at the Nagel paper?:

Considered as a form of revisionism rather than analysis, the physicalist-functionalist movement in philosophy of mind might be thought to have had a similar aim, but I believe it has failed because it is too conservative: It has tried to reinterpret mental concepts so as to make them tractable parts of the framework of physical science. What is needed instead is a search for something more unfamiliar, something which starts from the conceptual unintelligibility, in its present form, of the subjective-objective link.

That which appears to be A, when viewed from another perspective, may be seen to be B. Eliminativism does not deny any of your experience at all; it merely eliminates the incoherency of dualism. You seem desparate for a mind to exist no matter what.

Not desperate. Certain. Saying I am desperate for mind to exist is a bit like telling me I am desperate to have two legs.

 

[Belz...]

That is more than enough.

For useless speculation, sure. For figuring out answers to real and meaningful questions, bare possibilities are useless. This isn't "12 Angry Men" where saying "isn't it possible" turns 11 other jurists around.

You can't "imagine" 4-dimensional space-time.

How do you know that?

I don't visualise it.

How can you imagine something without visualising it ?

Eh? I have no idea how you reached that conclusion.

A) It is impossible to imagine a reality without prior experience of one.
B) Under idealism, minds are all that is.
Concl.) Minds cannot imagine reality

That's how.

Too woo for you? That's why I usually stick with "0 = 1 + -1" instead of refering to Taoism.

Also,

(12+(6^2))/24) = 2

No it isn't. Substance Dualism is completely different to this. Substance dualism simply claims that reality is dualistic. NM claims that duality is identical with unity and that reality is monistic. There is a massive difference between them.

You seem to enjoy using contradictory concepts, Geoff. First, something can exist and not exist simultaneously, and now something can be both dualistic and monistic at once.

It's a good thing scientists don't work that way.

Wrong. You can define matter and mind any which way you like. So long as you define mind at all, the materialist is stuffed. It's either a meaningless definition or it's a definition which falsifies materialism.

Hogwash. "Mind", just like "weather", is a very real thing. It's simply made of the same stuff that makes up the rest of the universe. Materialism isn't "stuffed" at the mere mention of the term.

This is now the 2nd longest thread in the R&P database. The 3rd longest was another of my threads where I challenged people to define mind and matter however they d*mned well wanted to, and demonstrated that however they defined "mind", they were in trouble.

I don't see where you're going with this. You've already pointed out the length of the thread several times. I think it just means that this subject makes it difficult to agree on anything.

Unless you can provide better definitions than mine, mine stand. Feel free to try.

Wow. The default assumption is that Geoff is right. That's rich.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

How, when we cannot even agree in a definition for "mind"? I do not accept your definitions (mainly because of the GIGO principle w.r.t using logic to analyze purely subjective experiences), and you do not accept my tenative definitions because they boil down to "placeholder for thing we all apparently have but do not yet have a non-circular or non-tautological definition for".

I can accept your definition. It makes you an eliminativist. Good for you.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

No, because, as you said, the mind is only the sum of its objects of perception.

~~ Paul

Yes, but it is the result of brain + Being. Brain is just brain.

 

[Belz...]

Oh, oh, let me try.

Mind: An ancient and flawed concept created to explain how people are capable of experience, and developed by people that lacked both the base knowledge and the tools to gather the appropriate information to adequetly define such a concept. The term, however, has persisted despite its flaws. It is now used in the realm of science as a convenient way to refer to how the brain processes and perceived signals from a variety of sensory organs and its own internal processes, and in the realm of philosophy it is used as a convenient means for deploying the equivocation fallacy to sustain an argument for no apparent reason.

I'll second that.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

How can you imagine something without visualising it ?

The same way you do: Imagine really intense pain in your left foot.

Perhaps I have a more flexible imagination than you do?

A) It is impossible to imagine a reality without prior experience of one.
B) Under idealism, minds are all that is.
Concl.) Minds cannot imagine reality

Is this supposed to be a logical argument?

I need premises, reasoning and conclusion. All you have provided is one premise I dispute, one premise I don't, and a conclusion which doesn't follow from the premises even I accepted them both. Idealism doesn't say that reality is imaginary. It says it is mental.

You seem to enjoy using contradictory concepts, Geoff. First, something can exist and not exist simultaneously, and now something can be both dualistic and monistic at once.

You're getting there.

It's a good thing scientists don't work that way.

Sure thing. This isn't science.

 

[I less than three logic]

(12+(6^2))/24) = 2

Sorry, just need to point out a small syntax error here. You have a extra ) that doesn't correspond to another (. Confused the heck out of me the first time I tried to solve the problem... came up with 13.5

 

[nescafe]

I can accept your definition. It makes you an eliminativist. Good for you.

And then when anyone who holds a definition similar to mine refers to "mind" or "mental", you...

As soon as you use the word "mental", you've "inferred dualism" (or at least you have opened the door for a dualistic falsification of materialism.)

imply that we are actually closet dualists.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

imply that we are actually closet dualists.

Sometimes I outright declare you to be cartesian materialists, because that's exactly what you are.

...and so long as you continue to reify one half of Descartes dualism you will remain so.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Sometimes I outright declare you to be cartesian materialists, because that's exactly what you are.

We are? I thought a cartesian materialist was someone who thinks that the brain contains a cartesian theatre.

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

We are? I thought a cartesian materialist was someone who thinks that the brain contains a cartesian theatre.

~~ Paul

"Cartesian materialist" is generally an insult, and is applied to anyone who says they are a materialist but who is actually hopelessly mired in dualism. And for all your claims that it is somebody-else's fault, I believe this includes yourself - at least some of the time. It is technically used to describe anyone who thinks there is some place in the brain or some set of places in the brain where there is a load of information which corresponds to a "mind". Dennett seems to use it to describe crude indirect realists claiming to be materialists. There's no shortage of those round here - this board is full of them.

 

[Apathia]

Does accepting a heliocentric model of the solar system mean "denying that sunsets exist"? That which appears to be A, when viewed from another perspective, may be seen to be B. Eliminativism does not deny any of your experience at all; it merely eliminates the incoherency of dualism. You seem desparate for a mind to exist no matter what.

If we start from scratch, we are not "denying a mind exists"; rather, we are examining our experience, and not making up entities that are not needed. If we cannot do without "mind", then that will become obvious in our examination. If, however, we can get along just fine without it, we are not "denying" it, we are simply recognising that there is no need for it.

And if there is no need, why insist upon it? If you can't see why that is silly, then I am not likely to be able to convince you it is silly.

Good point. I was thinking of the sunset analogy myself yesterday evening as a way of framing the elimination of mind as substance or the Substance. Plato had it that Mind was the ultimate reality, the Substance while the physical world consisted of shadows, Accidents. Ironically, it seems Mind is a conglomorate of shadows. It's a more complex bit of business than a sunset or a rainbow, but it has no inherent, ultimate, substantive existance. That's called "The Zen Doctrine of No Mind."

Of course the Mahayana Philosophy Zen is founded upon doesn't restrict its denial of inherent existance to Mind stuff. All that we experience and call the external physical world has no inherent existance. The concept of Matter is as well empty of substance. Matter too has no ultimate, substantive, inherent existance. There is no Dualism then, though we conventionally talk about Mind and Matter, because, not just one, but both of these aren't ultimately real in an ontological sense.

Some other Neutural Substance then is the reality behind the illusions?
No. The Philosophy of Mahayana Buddhism takes the most radical route. There is not ultimate, inherent, real stuff. There is nothing behind the world of experience that includes our experience of Mind and Matter.
What you see is what you get, and if you hold up one finger to express Monism, a Zen master might just cut it off.

"When I embarked on the study of Zen, mountains were just mountains. But soon I learned that mountains weren't mountains. But when I broke through to understanding, I saw that mountians indeed were mountains." Ultimately speaking, reality is Empty. But if the ultimate is Empty, speaking of it being Empty is Empty of significance, so the behind, beyond that isn't drops from view and we see the Fullness that stands before us and is us.
The world no longer needs to be supported by a turtle or an infinte regression of turtle under turtle. Reality is groundless. Call it Void, but since it's an Empty Void, there is no Void to speak of. No Void, no Matter, no Mind, just the Fullness of our experience. That is what is called the "Buddha Nature."

The Zen master asks, "Does a p Zombie have the Buddha Nature?"
The student still doesn't get it so answers, "Yes," thinking that certainly everything has the no-nature (no-essence) of the Buddha Nature.
The Master yells, "Mu!" (a rude way of saying no).

If a Zen Buddhist does physics, does it make any difference? Nope. Not in the least. The emperical goes on business as usual and doesn't miss the metaphysical turtle it never rested on to begin with.

 

[nescafe]

Sometimes I outright declare you to be cartesian materialists, because that's exactly what you are.

Which definition?

• Dennett's? If that is the case, I am most certianly not a Cartesian materialist, as I accept the Multiple Drafts Model as better hypothesis.
• Rockwell's? His statement that only neural activity is functionally essential for consciousness seems to be fairly general, but there are several things to disagree with in it.
• Geoff's? I am afraid I do not have a good idea as to your definition of cartesian materialism.

...and so long as you continue to reify one half of Descartes dualism you will remain so.

Since you apparently need to put me in a pidgeonhole, put me in the one labelled "naturalist".

(ed. formatting errors and snip of text I thought I had deleted.)

 

[UndercoverElephant]

If my definitions are the only ones that stand because I just insist that this is the case, they don't stand. If they are the only ones that can actually be defended, then it is not my fault they are the only ones that stand. Instead of just moaning, why don't you supply some other ones?

 

[Belz...]

I had reached a point where I had come to the conclusion that the only way that something could come from nothing was the same way 1 and -1 come from 0.

You mean, the fact that they don't ? Try all you like, but 1 and -1, mathematically, don't "come" from anything.

 

[Mercutio]

You've raised this before, I responded to it, and you then ignored my response. You bet it does. "Sunset" originally meant "the sun GOING DOWN over the stationary Earth." Accepting a heliocentric model of the solar system really does, in a literal sense, involve denying that there ever was a "sun set". All there ever was was the Earth turning on its axis. We still use the word "sunset", and some people may even sometimes really think about the sun "going down", but all we know perfectly well that the sun doesn't really go anywhere at all.

Great. You understood everything about that but my point. You seem to be saying that materialists must deny that sunsets exist, to the point of saying that the orange and purple hues don't exist, that clouds cannot glow, shafts of sunlight don't illuminate mountaintops, that crowds of people stop what they are doing and look to the west at nothing at all.

Eliminative does not mean that we eliminate the experience, merely that we explain it differently. We are denying nothing at all; we are simply not making up more than what is there. Sunsets do exist. I hope to watch one in a few hours. What is eliminated is the faulty prescientific baggage that went with the word.

The successful elimination of "sunset" came about only when we had sufficient understanding of the relationship between the two different ways of looking at the situation. We reached a point where we understood what was going on well enough to be able to see what was really happening, and, critically, to also be able to see precisely why we were originally fooled into believing the sun went down. Unfortunately, not only are we NOT in possession of the necessary information to make the elimination of mind work (we have to believe promises about future neuroscience instead) but it looks like there may be a conceptual problem prohibiting us from ever making this elimination in the future either. Eliminating the sunset required science distinguishing between two quite obviously physical models. But this is not true of mind and matter. Matter is obviously physical, mind is not.

By definition. Not by evidence. Matter is perhaps physical (but I don't know if hammy will agree with that), but mind is fictional (I mean that in the technically defined use of the word, as in explanatory fiction). You are claiming experience as bedrock. It is as if (and actually, it appears that you do this) you took the etymology of "sunset" as bedrock, then denied the existence of that which we all call sunsets simply because the evidence disagrees with that bedrock. You need to start questioning the assumptions you take as foundations.

So the answer is that, yes, sunrise has been eliminated but that claiming mind can be eliminated in the same way is both dependent on claims about a future science of mind and dependent on assuming that this problem is not ontologically different to any other problem faced by science - even though science only works for empirical questions. And on top of that, it's silly.

Boy, you really do not understand the sunset analogy. That which we call a sunset, by any other name would be a great time to steal a kiss. It does not matter what model explains it, we experience sunsets. Explaining it is not "explaining it away." Your "silly" reaction to eliminating mind is only silly because you appear to think that explaining how we see red things (and not the redness of an image of a thing) means that we will no longer be able to see red! Yes, that is silly! It is also not even close to the truth, nor close to the view of eliminativists. It is your own strawman, so it can be as silly as you wish.

Did you look at the Nagel paper?:

I think I probably understand it better than you do.

Not desperate. Certain. Saying I am desperate for mind to exist is a bit like telling me I am desperate to have two legs.

Well, right now I would say you haven't even got one leg to stand on. You cannot demonstrate an understanding of eliminativism, nor can you articulate your own view, even as to why you insist that there is "one jumble". There just is. Because I said so. So there.

If an eliminativist could account for your private experiences--each one you tick off, one at a time--would you still hold out for "but you have not yet accounted for mind"? It would appear so, since you tell Paul that the purpose of the mind is simply "to be".

There's no "there" there.

 

[Belz...]

The same way you do: Imagine really intense pain in your left foot.

Playing with words again. Obviously, pain beign a touch sensation, you "touchilise" it instead of visualising. But you can't "sensibilise" 4-dimensional space-time, Geoff. No matter which sense you use.

Perhaps I have a more flexible imagination than you do?

No, you're just more skilled at the linguistic game. No points there.

Is this supposed to be a logical argument?

Surely more than 1 + -1 = 0.

I need premises, reasoning and conclusion.

See A) and B), and then Concl.)

All you have provided is one premise I dispute,

You just keep dancing around, don't you ? You've agreed to it two posts ago. Now you say you don't agree.

one premise I don't, and a conclusion which doesn't follow from the premises even I accepted them both.

Then we need a third premise:

Idealism doesn't say that reality is imaginary. It says it is mental.

If all you do is mental, then how ISN'T it in your mind ? And isn't stuff in your mind imaginary ? How is Idealism NOT about the imaginary ? What is "mental", anyway ?

You're getting there.

Oh! How clever. Instead of answering me you simply use word play, again, to assume that my statement about YOUR claims is an agreement.

 

[Belz...]

Sorry, just need to point out a small syntax error here. You have a extra ) that doesn't correspond to another (. Confused the heck out of me the first time I tried to solve the problem... came up with 13.5

Yeah, it's the first "(" that got me. When I read it again, I didn't see the double "))". Happens to me all the time when I'm programming!

 

[Belz...]

Does accepting a heliocentric model of the solar system mean "denying that sunsets exist"? That which appears to be A, when viewed from another perspective, may be seen to be B. Eliminativism does not deny any of your experience at all; it merely eliminates the incoherency of dualism. You seem desparate for a mind to exist no matter what.

If we start from scratch, we are not "denying a mind exists"; rather, we are examining our experience, and not making up entities that are not needed. If we cannot do without "mind", then that will become obvious in our examination. If, however, we can get along just fine without it, we are not "denying" it, we are simply recognising that there is no need for it.

And if there is no need, why insist upon it? If you can't see why that is silly, then I am not likely to be able to convince you it is silly.

Gosh. I really missed reading your posts, man.

It's been a while. Have you finally defeated Iacchus ?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

It is technically used to describe anyone who thinks there is some place in the brain or some set of places in the brain where there is a load of information which corresponds to a "mind". Dennett seems to use it to describe crude indirect realists claiming to be materialists. There's no shortage of those round here - this board is full of them.

I believe it refers to the idea that there is a specific place where resides the data you are conscious of. Dennett calls it the "crucial finish line." The idea appears to be neurologically implausible.

~~ Paul