Materialists......

[Ivor the Engineer]

You are massively ignorant when it comes to neurology...I don't anyone who says that a place in the brain corresponds to mind...instead, we know that parts of the brain and the chemical and electrical reactions therein is the basis of what we perceive-- You are the one claiming that materialists are hopelessly mired in dualism per your weasly definitions designed to back up this assertion. Materialists don't seem philosophically confused...nor does Dennet. It seems that it's you who is confused or who imagines them confused--even as you insult us with your philosophy epithets designed to make yourself feel superior without having to examine a single fact or provide one in return.

I think you've been studying at the Interesting Ian school of narcissistic pedantry.

JustGeoff's a "Philosopher" what do you expect I really don't know why you waste your energy . Best response possible:

"Yes JustGeoff, your right. Thanks. Bye."

As for the mind-body problem - everything I've seen and know indicates "brain" and "mind" should be one in the same, and that ultimately free will is just an illusion. It's just that it's a VERY persistant illusion.

Articulett / Mercutio what thoughts do you have on this?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Personally I do not find p-zombies conceivable. A being without qualia who would receive the nerve impulses of a popular song on radio but not "hear" it but would nevertheless have some programming that told it to go to a certain shop and exchange money for a recording that delivers the same nerve impulses.

You still don't seem to understand the point of the paper. In the above paragraph you are not talking about what Nagel (or myself) means when we say that they are conceivable. Instead, you are still just offering empirical reasons as to why you believe they are impossible.

I do not find it conceivable that if we were to suddenly somehow deprive a person of his qualia he would nevertheless continue to behave exactly the same as he had when he still had his qualia.

Ditto, you still do not appear to understand the difference between concievability and possibility. Until you recognise this difference and stop trying to supply arguments against empirical possibility in support of the claim that zombies aren't conceptually imaginable, you aren't going to understand Nagel.

I do not find it conceivable under any metaphysical position.

You shouldn't be inserting metaphysical positions at all. In your case, you don't appear to be able to stop yourself.

That is the problem with conceivability as the basis for a logical argument. It is entirely personal. What you or Thomas Nagel find conceivable, I don't.

Then explain why. And don't offer an explanation from empirical evidence about how they "couldn't really happen.. Remember that Nagel and myself have both stated that zombies can't really happen in real life. ALL of your arguments as to why you find them inconcievable are really arguments in support of their empirical impossibility. You did not understand the paper, not even close.

So you need something a lot stronger than "some people find p-zombies concievable" in order to refute materialism.

For a start, I need you to actually read Nagels paper instead of searching the document for the words "p-zombie", reading two paragraphs, posting some stuff out of the middle of the document without understanding its relevance, and then claiming you read the paper and understood what you posted.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

But what you or Thomas Nagel can conceive, I cannot.

Then you have not understood the word "concieve". All the reasons you gave for the inconcievability of zombies had nothing to do with the concievability of zombies. They were all empirical arguments which made no reference to Nagel's explanation of why zombies were conceptually possible. Since you are obviously incapable of reading six pages of text, I'll post the relevant passage:

The subjectivity of consciousness seems to block all reductionist proposals because, given any physicalist or functionalist description, however sophisticated, it seems logically possible that there should be an organism or system satisfying those conditions but nevertheless lacking any subjective point of view -- a zombie, in current jargon. That is, there seems nothing to bar us from conceiving positively the existence of any kind of physical or functionally organized system, and then conceiving negatively that there is no subjective experience connected with it. The two types of conception are so completely unrelated that the first seems incapable of ruling out the second: All we have to do is imagine the physical system from the outside, and then imagine it from the inside -- as not having any inside in the experiential sense.[color]

I said at the outset that we should be very cautious in the use of intuitions that depend on the first-person point of view, and that includes intuitions about persons or beings other than ourselves that depend on taking up their point of view in imagination. In this case the very disparity between the two forms of conception that gives rise to the strong intuition of conceivability should make us suspicious. The absence of any conceptual connection when
phenomena are grasped by such disparate concepts may conceal a deeper necessary connection that is not yet conceptual because not accessible to us by means of our present forms of thought. I still think we can rely on such thought experiments to refute the most common types of conceptual reductionism, however. Even if there is some kind of entailment of the mental by the physical-functional, it is not analytic or definitional: There is no hidden verbal contradiction in the description of a zombie -- even if in reality a zombie is logically impossible.

Can you please actually respond to the above passage instead of repeatedly offering empirical evidence against conceptual conceivability and thinking you are making a relevant point.

Here is a good example of where your concepts do not match mine. You are assuming here that brains and minds are different things that are connected.

NO I AM NOT!

I don't even believe that, let alone am I arguing it. I said they were distinguishable. I have allowed for the possibility that they are "two different perspectives on the same thing." I have just disallowed the possibility that they are identical in every respect. They differ. That is all.

Again - "your" concepts. Don't speak for me. I don't have a dualistic concept of mind and brain in the first place.

Then you do not have a coherent concept of what a mind is, at all.

If your concept of a mind/body dichotomy leads to the conceptual possibility that there could be a p-zombie then perhaps you should ditch it in favour of a concept where they are just different aspects of the same thing.

Oh boy. They may well be "the same thing". But that does not mean you cannot distinguish between them. Are you utterly incapable of distinguishing between conceptual conceivability and empirical possibility, because it's looking very much like that is the case?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Exactly what I'm saying. Just because you can imagine it doesn't make it logical. A lot of people can concieve of an all knowing all powerful all loving god and the world as it currently exists right now without any contradictions at all......

That is a much more complicated example.

, but well we've discussed that to no end so we already know that being able to concieve of something doesn't really mean it actually makes sense.

It looks like you are comparing this argument to the ontological argument for the existence of God. If so, it is a completely false comparison. That argument is about claiming that a perfect God is conceivable, and that perfection includes existence, so God must exist. This argument has nothing to do with that argument. It bears no resemblance to it.

Let me use my example of the killer above to really point out the problem I see.

The main issue with convicting someone of the crime of murder is that it doesn't FULLY explain the murder! Now I'm not saying the guy they arrested wasn't needed for the crime to take place, I'm just saying they need to go further than that to find the real culprit. I will show that investigation alone isn't enough to explain the phenomenon of the killer and that we need to use philosophy to attain a new method. You see when the investigation starts, all they have is "the killer". This conceptual killer could be anyone, by defition. That's the only logical way they can refer to so many different suspects as "the potential killer". The actual killer they find is different from this concept. They may say "this person is the killer" but it is NOT the concept they originally used. How can it be? They had no idea who that person even was and weren't referiing to him specifically when they started the investigation. I can concieve of the guy who killed seperate from "the killer" of the investigation. This is important! It MUST mean, for some reason, that "the killer" aspect is beyond the person! We must search beyond that person to find the true "killer of the investigation"! Since I can conceive of "the killer" as seperate from "the convicted suspect", then I can easily concieve of a p-murderer, a person who kills that is not "the killer". That person is devoid of that aspect. How can you all not see how amazingly true and perfect this logic is? If we can concieve of "the killer" in the sense of searching for the person who committed the act as seperate from the actual person eventually found and convicted, then there is in fact the possibility, at least conceptually, of nonkiller killers, and so there has to be some other part of the average murderer. The actual person is not the only one responsible for the act, but there's something deeper. I suspect quantum mechanics and the nature of how the observer seems to play a role in that should be involved in a truer understanding of criminal investigations. Why are you all looking at me like that? You're the ones who are crazy!

End scene!

I cannot relate any of that to this argument.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I would just like to know whether the zombie argument is:


or:

Even though the same argument proves that 7 is not a prime number.

Robin, you are a liar.

You never provided the logic showing why your fallacious argument proving 7 is not a prime number has got anything to do with the zombie argument. You made one attempt, which didn't get beyond the first line because you defined the set T twice as two different things. You then provided three lines of a logical argument which didn't correspond to the zombie argument. I have asked you twice to try again. You have not done so. So please stop claiming you've shown that my logic can be used to prove 7 is not a prime number. You've done no such thing. I am very much looking forward to you trying again. After I've posted this, I am going to go back and repost your failed previous attempt.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Here we go.....

First, you accused me of assuming that consciousness was non-physical. You said it was "undeniable" that the zombie argument assumed its conclusion. Here was my detailed logical rebuttal of that claim

Originally posted by Geoff:

Which line do you think contains the assumption? Let's take it one line at a time:

"1. A p-zombie has all the physical characteristics of a human being."

No assumption that consciousness is not physical in line 1. It merely states that p-zombies are physically indistinguishable from normal humans.

"2. A p-zombie is not conscious".

No assumption that consciousness is not physical in line 2 either. It merely states that p-zombies are not conscious.

If there are only two lines and it wasn't assumed in line 1 and wasn't assumed in line 2 then it wasn't assumed at all. What is the case is that once you have accepted lines 1 and 2 then there is a potential contradiction with one of the following:

"3a. Consciousness is physical".
"3b. Consciousness is not physical."

If you accept lines 1 and 2 then line 3a is going to cause a contradiction and 3b is not. You appear to think that this is the same as assuming that 3b is true, yes?

You then tried to claim that the fact lines 1 & 2 will cause a contradiction with line 3a was equivalent to assuming 3b was true. You did not explain why. Instead, you told me that you were definately right and that my lecturers would agree with you. Sorry, Robin, but my lecturers aren't here - so you'll have to defend your claim for yourself.

Unless you can show WHERE in lines 1 & 2 the assumption has taken place, then there was NO assumption.

What has actually happened is that YOU want to assume your conclusion, and that is 3a. You start by assuming 3a, then you read 1 & 2 and claim there must have been an assumption of 3b. You are wrong. The only assumptions was as follows "There are such things as minds, minds are subjective experiences." This is not an assumption of 3b. Stating that minds are subjective experiences is not equivalent to stating that they are not physical unless you have already decided that subjective experiences cannot be physical things. Have you?

Anyway - in an attempt to show the above reasoning was invalid you offered the following, which is a dogs dinner:

Again, set T=the set of all physical characteristics of a human, set T=a p-zombie and a1 is consciousness. So we have:

1. The set S contains all the members of the set T
2. The set S does not contain a1
3. Therefore T does not contain a1

So, using the same logic:

1. The set of p-prime numbers contains all the members of the set of prime numbers
2. The set of p-prime numbers does not contain the number 7
3. Therefore 7 is not a prime number.

The exact same logic and I have just used it to prove that 7 is not a prime number. That is why assuming your conclusion is considered a fallacy. If you allowed that as a valid construction then you could prove anything

At the moment it is useless, because you define set T twice as different things. Please try again. And please remember the actual structure of the zombie argument - as you specified it!

My claim is that the argument :

1. A p-zombie has all the physical characteristics of a human being
2. A p-zombie is not conscious

Specifically, I want you to make sure that when you turn this into logic you do not change (1) from "A p-zombie has all the physical characteristics of a human being" to "A p-zombie has all the characteristics of a human being", because I think that is what you tried to do above. It just wasn't clear because you also misdefined set T and set S.

Please try again, I'm waiting.

 

[Belz...]

Err, I hope not. That would make me a solipsist.

Then what do idealists mean when they say the world is mental ?

You tell me, Belz....

I can't answer my own question unless it's rhetorical. Please answer.

 

[Belz...]

It means you have obviously never understood the position I am defending. My position entails that without a brain, there cannot be a mind. Materialism also entails this. What's the problem? Did you think I claimed minds can exist without brains? Because I never said anything of the sort.

Well, if minds cannot exist without brains, then the only thing distinguishing your position from materialism is the oft-mentionned assumed existence of "mind-stuff" that we can't define, explain or prove. This time _I_ will call Occam.

Zombies only cause a problem for materialism because it has no way of coping with the apparently dualistic nature of our experience of reality.

Uh-huh. But p-zombies don't exist, apparently. So no problem there.

I never made that claim. I never claimed that minds can exist without matter. I said we can distinguish between mind and matter.

Really ? How ?

I'm not saying that at all. All of those things happen. Sunsets happen. They just aren't actually "the sun going down". I can replace "the sun going down" with "the earth turning" and still make sense of the situation. I cannot replace "mind" with "brain process" and make sense of the situation. Until you can explain how this is possible, I'm not going to believe it. You can if you like. Blind faith is not my cup of tea.

Typical argument from incredulity, which I suspect is the whole source of the discussion.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes, in fact practically anything.

Then fix your logic.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I have cleaned up your attempt at a logical rebuttal:

Posted by Robin:

Again, set T=the set of all physical characteristics of a human, set T=a p-zombie and a1 is consciousness. So we have:

1. The set S contains all the members of the set T
2. The set S does not contain a1
3. Therefore T does not contain a1

So, using the same logic:

1. The set of p-prime numbers contains all the members of the set of prime numbers
2. The set of p-prime numbers does not contain the number 7
3. Therefore 7 is not a prime number.

Cleaned up, using more comprehensible terminology:

------------------------
set H=the set of all physical characteristics of a human,
set Z=The set of all characteristics of a p-zombie
set C = The set of characteristics of conciousness
-------------------------

This is the start point of the zombie argument.

So we have:

1. The set Z contains all the members of the set H
2. The set Z does not contain C

At this point I lose your logic, because it doesn’t match the argument. Your version was:

3. Therefore H does not contain C….

Which doesn’t make sense, doesn’t follow and isn’t of the same form as the zombie argument. You then take this nonsensical logic, and claim it can be used to prove that 7 is not a prime number. Given that the logic is totally fallacious, this isn't very surprising. But it bears no resemblance to the zombie argument, even as summarised by yourself.

 

[Belz...]

Hardware is to software what Brains are to.....

A) Minds?

or

B) Brain processes?

The answer is rather obviously (B), not (A).

Obviously, IF we assume that minds AREN'T brain processes.

Yes I do. Yin is not Yang.

Well, they are indistinguishable by the fact that they both don't exist.

 

[Belz...]

What clearer evidence than one's own awareness? I believe that is the issue. We won't find much in cutting up animals' brains, or in brewing up elaborate theories. The "laboratory" is really closer than our noses.

Well, when you come up with the grand unifying theory on your own, you let us know.

 

[Belz...]

You still don't seem to understand the point of the paper. In the above paragraph you are not talking about what Nagel (or myself) means when we say that they are conceivable. Instead, you are still just offering empirical reasons as to why you believe they are impossible.

Is there any other kind ?

 

[Belz...]

Geoff, I'm still waiting for your answer to my post #2277.

Here, let me help you:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1790686&postcount=2277

 

[DreadNiK]

"1. A p-zombie has all the physical characteristics of a human being."

"2. A p-zombie is not conscious".

1 contradicts 2.

My reasoning:

Humans are 'conscious' as we understand the concept of consciousness, precisely because it was a concept designed to describe 'being a human' although it may extend to other animals. We don't really have a coherent defintion of consciousness, but I think what I have said is fairly reasonable and obvious.

There is no evidence for any characteristic of human that is non physical. Therefore, AFAWK, all human characteristics are based on the physical. 'Conscious' is a human characteristic. Therefore either a) humans are not conscious, or P-Zombies are, or humans are p-zombies or p-zombie is a meaningless term (as I have said before) because all it describes is a human other than oneself.

To dispute this, you are forced to make the assumption that consciousness is non-physical, something that there is no evidence for.

Thanks.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Corrected zombie argument, and where Robin goes wrong:

set H=the set of all physical characteristics of a human,
set Z=The set of all characteristics of a p-zombie
set C = The set of characteristics of conciousness

Definition of a p-zombie:

1. The set Z contains all the members of the set H
2. The set Z does not contain C

Conclusion:

3. H does not include C.

This conclusion logically follows from the definitions.

NB: Assumed definition of a human (set H*):

4. The set H* includes the set Z and the set C (human beings are conscious).

Let’s see what happens when we apply this corrected version of the zombie argument to your prime number example.

1. The set of p-prime numbers contains all the members of the set of prime numbers.
2. The set of p-prime numbers does not contain the number 7

This is just false. You already defined the set p-prime to contain all the prime numbers, and this includes 7. Therefore line 2 contradicts line 1. If you think that is the same as line 1 & 2 in the corrected zombie argument, you are mistaken.

You need to look at the actual logic, and you need to do it without first assuming your conclusion. Let’s have a look at what the argument looks like to a physicalist who has assumed his conclusion and cannot think about the logic without doing so.

RAC: Robin’s Assumed Conclusion: Consciousness is physical.

set H=the set of all physical characteristics of a human. NOTE: set H now implicitly includes set C, due to RAC.
set Z=The set of all characteristics of a p-zombie
set C = The set of characteristics of conciousness

Definition of a p-zombie:

1. The set Z contains all the members of the set H. NOTE: Set Z now also includes set C, due to RAC.
2. The set Z does not contain C. NOTE: We now have a contradiction, because we are claiming set Z does not contain C. But the contradiction is not actually with anything in the zombie argument itself, but with RAC.

Please try again, this time without making assumption RAC.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Well, if minds cannot exist without brains, then the only thing distinguishing your position from materialism is the oft-mentionned assumed existence of "mind-stuff" that we can't define, explain or prove.

No, that's not true either. There are a lots of differences between my position and materialism.

Really ? How ?

One is an electro-chemical process in a brain and the other is a set of subjective experiences. They aren't just different, they are completely different. Yet somehow they are also "the same".

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Obviously, IF we assume that minds AREN'T brain processes.

What you meant to say is "IF we FAIL TO ASSUME that minds ARE brain processes."

Rather like Robin, you seem to think that anybody who has failed to assume your conclusion must have assumed theirs. Practically every defence of materialism I have heard on this board in the past five years was dependent on the materialist assuming his conclusion was true. Practically every time I accused them of assuming their conclusion they responded by stating that my position could only be supported if I had assumed their conclusion was false and that my own conclusion was true. I dunno. Maybe materialists just can't cope with logic.

The materialists are assuming their conclusions. I do not assume my conclusion and I do not assume that materialism is false. I am starting from an analysis of concepts.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Is there any other kind ?

Yes. Read Nagels paper.....

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Well, they are indistinguishable by the fact that they both don't exist.

Belz, if this is the level of the comments you are going to leave in this thread, I may stop responding to you. At a critical point in the argument, you have stopped actually thinking about the answer supplied to you and started making irrelevant comments. It does not matter whether or not they exist.