Materialists......

[Belz...]

I mean that from our point of view there IS dualism. And yes, that is accounted for by neutral monism.

How ?

We do not have two physical things which are distinct.

Not sure I follow you, here.

It's not a valid comparison. There is no point in pursuing this line of questioning. It's irrelevant.

Why is it not valid ?

 

[chriswl]

OK, if you are going to accuse Penrose of this, then there is no point in me arguing this with you further. We will just have to agree to disagree. I think you have underestimated Penrose.

Which bit do you disagree with? Are you suggesting he started out discovering weird quantum effects in the brain and then tried to organise them into a theory of how the mind works? That's not how he tells it in his book (I've read his first one and skimmed one of his others). He is quite clear that his starting point is Godel's Theorem and what he imagines the implications are for a mechanistic theory of mind.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Which bit do you disagree with? Are you suggesting he started out discovering weird quantum effects in the brain and then tried to organise them into a theory of how the mind works? That's not how he tells it in his book (I've read his first one and skimmed one of his others). He is quite clear that his starting point is Godel's Theorem and what he imagines the implications are for a mechanistic theory of mind.

Penrose is looking for the Big Picture. He is trying to get people to understand that the confusions surrounding QM and the confusions surrounding conciousness are related. Many other have claimed this before him, but he is probably the first to bring it all together in a proposed theory.

All I am saying is that if you think my views are illegitimate and wrong-headed in this respect, I am in very good company.

 

[Mercutio]

Geoff's prediction: Mercutio's next post will not contain any more substance than this one did. Instead, there will be loud protestations that I "don't understand him". There will be no explanation of what exactly I don't understand.

I am not going to let you off the hook, Mercutio. Not at this point of this thread.

You continue to insist that you are not assuming dualism, while embracing the vocabulary of dualism wholeheartedly. You insist that there is a mind-body split, the evidence for which is a language which differentiates in kind between what I call private and public behavior. You say that dualism is "unavoidable and therefore not the product of an assumption". The language of dualism, though, arises from an observation (that some of our activities cannot be observed by others) that is, as even you have admitted, independent of assumptions about ontology. (You have crowed about this without realizing its implications.) By accepting the language of dualism as an "unavoidable" starting point, and not examining where that language came from, you begin your argument not at a point of "no assumptions", but at a place that assumes "Subjective and objective are widely, normally, generally accepted to be two different things. I am not "assuming" this. If you want to assume the opposite, then the burdern of proof is on you, not me."

So...my claim, that private and public behavior is a division that is independent of ontology, is a problem for Geoff's claim that dualism is "unavoidable". The language of dualism, his starting point, is not unavoidable. It is merely one way to speak of the differences between types of experience and action. In Geoff's view, the differences are dichotomous, mental and physical, two different kinds of stuff. In my view, no such split is required, and the difference is a fairly minor one.

By saying that my split makes no ontological claims, Geoff pulls the rug out from under his own ontological claims. He can no longer claim an unavoidable natural split between mental and physical, if he claims that my interpretation of the same phenomena is independent of monism.

Hyparxis--I don't know that I gave it as much thought as your options indicate; I joined this thread to do more of 1) than of 2), I suppose. Geoff was posting things like "Assumptions are BANNED" [color in original, post 2362], and in the same post, this gem: "Geoff's Premise : We can easily, clearly and consistently distinguish between mental concepts and physical concepts. NO ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT ONTOLOGY HAVE BEEN MADE." I started off here (in this thread, I mean) simply questioning things that Geoff treated as bedrock but which clearly (to me) contained assumptions in their language which did not need to be there and which appeared important to his arguments (for instance, his "only one fleeting jumble" comment).

 

[UndercoverElephant]

How ?

Look up dialectical monism on google.

Belz, you ask lots of questions over and over again. I am getting bored of answering them over and over again. Sorry, but unless you post new/relevant questions, I'll just let them go. I am trying to draw this thread to an end. So far, without much luck.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You continue to insist that you are not assuming dualism, while embracing the vocabulary of dualism wholeheartedly. You insist that there is a mind-body split, the evidence for which is a language which differentiates in kind between what I call private and public behavior. You say that dualism is "unavoidable and therefore not the product of an assumption". The language of dualism, though, arises from an observation (that some of our activities cannot be observed by others) that is, as even you have admitted, independent of assumptions about ontology.

I did not admit this. You are putting words into my mouth. I said that there was a fundamental dualism in our language which is a reflection of the dualistic way we experience reality.

(You have crowed about this without realizing its implications.)

I didn't actually say what you are claiming I said, not that it makes a huge bundle of difference.

The important part is what you are now claiming:

So...my claim, that private and public behavior is a division that is independent of ontology, is a problem for Geoff's claim that dualism is "unavoidable".

Well, it might be, if it wasn't still dualistic. You have not eliminated the linguistic dualism at all. You've just renamed it and claimed it has nothing to do with ontology.

The language of dualism, his starting point, is not unavoidable.

So how come you haven't been able to avoid it?

By saying that my split makes no ontological claims, Geoff pulls the rug out from under his own ontological claims.

Errr..YOU said that your split makes no ontological claims. I neither accepted nor rejected this, since your position collapses in either case.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Mercutio,

I think you need to clear something up, for the benefit of those people trying to understand this exchange.

Are you, or are you not, making a metaphysical claim? Are you trying to argue that we need to get beyond metaphysics, or are you trying to defend materialism? Cos you cannot do both, no matter how desperately you may want to do so. Either metaphysics is bs or materialism is true/false. You can't have it both ways.

You can save the lyrical waffle, I just want an answer please.

Prediction: no answer to this question will be forthcoming, because both answers falsify mercutio's position. He will waffle to avoid answering.

Geoff

 

[Mercutio]

I am not defending materialism. Never was; don't know why you would think that.

What I have been doing in this thread is challenging your assumptions, and your claim not to be making them. You tell me, is this making a metaphysical claim?

As for "lyrical waffle", could you give me an example, so I know what to avoid?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I am not defending materialism. Never was; don't know why you would think that.

Then why have you spent so much time posting in this thread?????

Why not just agree with Wittgenstein and be done with it????

What I have been doing in this thread is challenging your assumptions, and your claim not to be making them. You tell me, is this making a metaphysical claim?

Yes, because of the way you challenge my assumptions. It went like this:

Mercutio: You are assuming dualism, because you are choosing to use archaic terms which are loaded with dualistic assumptions.
Geoff: So what is your alternative?
Mercutio: Behaviour, observable by one and observable by many?
Geoff: Looks like this is the same dualism given a different name, what makes it different?
Mercutio: My definitions do not assume dualism because I have explicitly stated that they are making no claims about ontology.
Geoff: So what has this got to with a zombie argument about ontology?
Mercutio: [Cannot answer the question].

My usage of subjective/objective or physical/mental do not, in fact, make any claims about ontology. But I have also NOT explictly denied that they can lead to conclusions about ontology. In order to defend your position, you need to make an explicit denial that you are making any claims which can be interpreted as ontological or used later in an argument about ontology. If so, you can't use them in an argument about ontology. As soon as you try to use them in an argument about ontology, I will point out the fact that they are indeed dualistic, and that you have now offered them in an argument about ontology - in which case they support my position, not yours, because they are as inherently dualistic as all the other terms. If you take away you ontological disclaimer, your terms are as dualistic as subjective/objective and you've gained nothing. You certainly have not demonstrated that there is no unavoidable conceptual dualism. You've just offered another example of that dualism.

If your sole means of claiming your dualism is different to the others is that it explicitly denies any relevance to ontology, you cannot subsequently then claim it has any relevance in an argument about ontology. It speaks about psychology and behaviour ONLY, precisely because you have explicitly defined them in that way, and you cannot avoid doing so because there is no other way to claim they are different to the other dualisms. In effect, you have assumed your conclusion again (that linguistic/conceptual dualisms do not lead to epistemological and ontological dualisms), but this time I let it go because this time you are assuming a conclusion which also happens to derail your own argument by explicitly disconnecting your claims from having any relevance to ontology.

 

[President Bush]

Then why have you spent so much time posting in this thread?????

Why not just agree with Wittgenstein and be done with it????

You seem to be appealing to an inner state. Mercutio may consider this a fallacy.

 

[Apathia]

Just as it seems to me the Merc's Public/Private Behavior way of speaking doesn't amount to a metaphysical position, UE's first step of agknowledging what is called "Property Dualism," doesn't, as he has repeated many times, equal an Ontological Dualism.

He holds that the Property Dualism is still there even when the Public/Private Frame is substituted for the usual language. The success of the Public/Private Frame, though, depands on it's constant vigilance to avoid associating itself with terms like "Self-Consciouness" that involve more than just the number of observers.

UE asserts that Property Dualism in language is based on the very different way we subjectively experience and the way we objectively experience our selves.
This is more involved than the Private/Public Frame covers, but, again UE doesn't say this variation in the way we experience amounts to Ontologcal Dualism where there is seperate Stuff for Mind and Seperate Stuff for Body.

What he does assert is that this difference is metaphysically significant and must be agknowledged in Ontological considerations as a component in the search for metaphysical answers. It doesn't prove Ontological Dualism, but in his Zombie argument, it indicates a significant weakness if not all out refutation of classical Ontological Materialism. It may or may not have an impact on Hammy's Objective Idealism. Thas hasn't been addressed. It doesn't prove Neutral Monism. In each instance it comes into play as a significant item that must be agknowledged in the process of making a metaphysic.

I don't see that Property Dualism, of itself, or even agknowleging that it has an experiential base, amounts to Ontological Dualism. I do see that it's something that Classical Ontological Materialism must address.

But Classical Ontological Materialism is quite dated. it belonged to the 19th Century. if anything, Science now quite clearly indicates that reality is quite a bit more involved and complex than that old Matter stuff.

 

[Belz...]

Look up dialectical monism on google.

Belz, you ask lots of questions over and over again. I am getting bored of answering them over and over again. Sorry, but unless you post new/relevant questions, I'll just let them go. I am trying to draw this thread to an end. So far, without much luck.

Personally, I'll just assume that you are either unable or unwilling to answer. I still don't know what the hell neutral monism is, and I don't know exactly how it works with apparent dualism.

And I'm still not clear why the flashlight example is inadequate.

But of course, all I have for these is your word.

 

[articulett]

I prefer A-Ism myself.

Orgismic

 

[articulett]

Then why have you spent so much time posting in this thread?????

Because you made this inane claim that materialism is not logical and that we have to posit a separate category acknowledging that we don't know what you think. Plus it's fun to see you dance around trying to maintain your ism as the only logical alternative (and I'm not sure it's logical at all), because you think that your immeasurable experiences fall outside the realm of materialism. They don't. Back to the apples, we can see a basket of apples--if one is bruised that is a single apple that is bruised. We may not know which one--but it is a single bruised apple. And if your feelings are bruised, we may not know what that feels like per your thinking and no one even has to know that your feelings have been "hurt"--but it will be a feeling in your brain responding to the stuff you read--If you feel pain from a literal bruise, we can see the bruise and imagine your pain, but we can't know what exactly you feel--not because it is outside the world of the material, but when it comes to Geoff's brain processes to interpret it. We can estimate it's pain and observe neural paths and the area of the brain feeling that pain--but only the physical being with the brain gets to actually have the experience of feeling it. Not because it's immaterial--but because it's your brain hooked up to your pathways of pain--physical and emotional. It isn't illogical except to philosophers (though not Dennett), the religious, and the woo. It has nothing to do with zombies. Lots of sentient beings--not zombies...but only they (Mercutio's) "single" example can feel what's going on in their bodies/brains--unless that brain isn't working or doesn't exist. (Then you've got your zombie, unconscious entity, vegetable or dead individual.)

In fact you should read about cotard syndrome or capgras syndrome. In the former a person feels like they are dead (there's also a delusion where a part of their body seems dead...or like it belongs to someone else)--in the latter, a person's close relatives or even pets will seem to be imposter versions of themselves. The later is caused by a disconnection from the visual cortex to the emotional part of the brain...and such people will often have no problem talking with their friends on the phone...but the feeling they have when they see the person is that something is wrong--the person is a stepford wife or p-zombie or imposter of some sort. The brain lies to you to make sense of what it perceives.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You seem to be appealing to an inner state.

No. Interstate. Route 666.

By the way, you're doing a great job down there, Georgie Boy, keep at it.

 

[President Bush]

By the way, you're doing a great job down there, Georgie Boy, keep at it.

I found Jesus!


He was behind the sofa the whole time.

 

[Mercutio]

I found Jesus!


He was behind the sofa the whole time.

A lost sock?

 

[Darat]

As admin: UndercoverElephant has been suspended: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?goto=newpost&t=61183

 

[Belz...]

Orgismic

Careful, now...

 

[articulett]

He's gone? And I just had some amazing synchronicity to share. I was at the science and the city website and found this whole mind numbing experience on a podcast about the mind and soul--the "non-materialists" were so, so, adamant, they just wouldn't let anyone suggest that it might be an illusion--but the neurologists were trying to follow and explain why it seems one way, but it is just materialism. I listened closely for an English accent, because I thought it might be geoff...but the guy arguing using QM was yiddish sounding, I think. If you miss this thread, experience deja vu at
this site-- http://www.nyas.org/snc/podcasts.asp (the mind and soul episode). It feels like a stereo experience of this thread. Really. Even the term reductionism and so forth...these philosphy dudes all seem to sound the same, but at least they pepper it or try to with some science--the religious folks were hopeless...and miffed, because, of course, they thought the neurologists were calling them fools (they weren't, they were bending over backwards to get them to understand), but in the end it was a wash. I'm sure each side was more convinced of their own veiw--but the dualists are that way because they NEED their beliefs, and the materialists hold their veiws, because they know the facts.