Materialists......

[UndercoverElephant]

Well, scientists around the globe seem to think otherwise.

No they don't. Not the ones that have got the first idea about philosophy.

In my book that places the burden of proof entirely on you.

Because of an invalid argument from authority?

Pray tell, what DOESN'T correlate ?

Nothing. That is the whole point. Not only do they correlate, but they correlate "tightly". But a correlation is not an identity. The very fact that they correlate is what logically forces them to be non-identical. The one and only difference is that one is subjective and the other is objective. There is no other difference. So everything correlates.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Uh-huh. Present it.

It depends on critically subjective things. Therefore it cannot stand as evidence for anybody except myself.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

What bugs me about many philosophers is that they seem to pit philosophy against science and claim that the former is "better" somehow, because the latter doesn't provide answers to their personnal questions.

That's just plain wrong. I have not said any of these things and none of them are true. I've repeatedly stated that science is great for answering empirical questions. Philosophy isn't "better" because it can tackle non-empirical questions - but it can tackle them, and science cannot.

 

[Wudang]

http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/c469af92ea9eceac85256bd50048567c/9daaf803ba42305685256bfa0068401a?OpenDocument

Materialism apparently has no problem with holographic storage. In fact from the abstract at the above URL "the second is more like human memory in that it provides recall of only the part of the sequence that follows the keying fragment. Both models require only the three operations: shift, multiplication and addition. "

 

[.13.]

Agreed by everybody. Brains are neccesary for minds. That does not also mean that brains are minds or that brains are sufficient for minds. It simply doesn't follow, logically.

What other necessary conditions are needed for minds to exist?

 

[chriswl]

Because people like Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty were the students/successors of Edmund Husserl, and Husserl more than anyone else in the history of philosophy was an enemy of reductive materialism. Husserl was the person who called the alarm on materialism. Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty followed him and stressed neutrality and the resolution of subjective and objective. The entire movement which the "embodied cognition" people are trying to build bridges to are the phenomenologists, and phenomenology is a branch of philosophy established as a direct reaction to reductive materialism.

Yes, but building a bridge to something (or even stealing some good ideas from it) does not require you to buy into a whole philosophy. Everything in the article I linked to is resolutely physical (sensorimotor responses and environmental influences) as it has to be if it is to be science, rather than philosophy. Engineers couldn't care less whether their creations could be said to have real subjective states or not - what could they do with such knowledge?

The materialist theories of mind end up relegating "mind" to a process in a physical thing. But it isn't. Mind "reaches out".....that is the only way direct realism ends up being true after all....

But, if researchers from the "embodied" school like Rodney Brookes are ultimately successful, they will demonstrate before your very eyes that mind is a phenomenon of the physical world by constructing physical things that do what minds do.

This is what Brookes said of his own research:

"In some circles much credence is given to Heidegger as one who understood the dynamics of existence. Our approach has certain similarities to work inspired by this German philosopher but our work was not so inspired. It is based purely on engineering considerations. That does not preclude it from being used in philosophical debate as an example on any side of any fence, however."

Don't assume that AI scientists are endorsing a particular philosophical position by chosing to build machines in a particular way. I doubt Brookes' views on consciousness are anything like yours.

 

[Belz...]

Which people?

Now you're just dodging. The people working on holographic computers. I guess they don't know what they're doing because, as you've said, such memory cannot be retrieved partially. How useful is that ?

No they don't. Not the ones that have got the first idea about philosophy.

Again, philosophy seems useless to me.

Because of an invalid argument from authority?

I'll take argument from authority over argument from personnal bias any day.

Nothing. That is the whole point. Not only do they correlate, but they correlate "tightly". But a correlation is not an identity. The very fact that they correlate is what logically forces them to be non-identical. The one and only difference is that one is subjective and the other is objective. There is no other difference. So everything correlates.

Thank you. So the mind-brain dependency is complete and utter. So, now. Do you agree that the mind arises from brain functions ?

It depends on critically subjective things. Therefore it cannot stand as evidence for anybody except myself.

Then it is completely useless and unfalsifiable.

That's just plain wrong. I have not said any of these things and none of them are true. I've repeatedly stated that science is great for answering empirical questions. Philosophy isn't "better" because it can tackle non-empirical questions - but it can tackle them, and science cannot.

As I've said, these are non-issues, and tackling non-issues is, well, useless.

 

[Tricky]

I've repeatedly stated that science is great for answering empirical questions. Philosophy isn't "better" because it can tackle non-empirical questions - but it can tackle them, and science cannot.

Yes, you've said that, but let's see how Philosophy is doing:

Who am I?
What am I?
Does life have a meaning?
Why does the Universe exist?
How does something come from nothing?
Is there anything like a God?
Why is the world the way it is? Does it have to be this way?
Do I have free will?

So let's see how philosophy stacks up against science as far as giving definitive answers to these questions.
***
Who am I?
Philosophy: Don't know. Depends on how you define "who" and "I".
Science: Same, except we can use science to make a big list of 'whos' in the world. You can also use it to make a record of your appearance and physical characteristics (such as fingerprints) to help identify you in case you are dead or you have lost your memory.

What am I?
Philosophy: There is no general agreement.
Science: You can use science to answer this in a number of ways, from your chemical makeup to personality analysis.

Does life have a meaning?
Philosophy: We don't know.
Science: We don't know.

How does something come from nothing?
Philosophy: We don't know. We don't even know if it is possible.
Science: We don't know. We don't even know if it is possible.

Is there anything like a God?
Philosophy: We don't know
Science: We don't know

Why is the world the way it is?
Philosophy: We don't know
Science: We don't know

Does it have to be this way?
Philosophy: We don't know
Science: We don't know

Do I have free will?
Philosophy: It depends on how you define it
Science: It depends on how you define it
***
From what I can see, philosophy is no better at answering these questions than science. Worse in fact. The difference is that with philosophy, you can simply accept one answer as correct and call it "the correct answer", even if all other philosophers (and scientists) disagree with you.

So if all you require of an answer to the above questions is something that "feels right for me", then you should definitely look into philosophy as a profession.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Tricky,

You are trying to treat philosophy as if it was science. It isn't. Philosophy provides a set of contrasted and related positions and the "answers" are bound up in the relationships between the positions and between people the positions they hold. Philosophy cannot be judged by the same standards as empirical science. It it could, it wouldn't really be philosophy any more.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Then it is completely useless and unfalsifiable.

I never claimed I could prove anything to you on that issue. I was just answering your question.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

http://domino.research.ibm.com/tchjr/journalindex.nsf/c469af92ea9eceac85256bd50048567c/9daaf803ba42305685256bfa0068401a?OpenDocument

Materialism apparently has no problem with holographic storage. In fact from the abstract at the above URL "the second is more like human memory in that it provides recall of only the part of the sequence that follows the keying fragment. Both models require only the three operations: shift, multiplication and addition. "

I never said it did. I said you cannot isolate data from holographic storage and transfer it in the way Tricky thinks you can.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes, but building a bridge to something (or even stealing some good ideas from it) does not require you to buy into a whole philosophy.

No, but it does require that you've recognised the basic principles of that school of philosophy, what motivated it and it's historical relevance.

Everything in the article I linked to is resolutely physical (sensorimotor responses and environmental influences) as it has to be if it is to be science, rather than philosophy. Engineers couldn't care less whether their creations could be said to have real subjective states or not - what could they do with such knowledge?

Nothing.

But, if researchers from the "embodied" school like Rodney Brookes are ultimately successful, they will demonstrate before your very eyes that mind is a phenomenon of the physical world by constructing physical things that do what minds do.

Brooks isn't a particularly good example of what I meant. His work is older than the new generation of phenomenology-influenced people. He is a stepping stone on the way.

This is what Brookes said of his own research:

Don't assume that AI scientists are endorsing a particular philosophical position by chosing to build machines in a particular way. I doubt Brookes' views on consciousness are anything like yours.

Sure they aren't. Brooks deliberately stated that his work "isn't German philosophy." The same cannot be said of those who came after him and were indeed influenced by German (and French) philosophy. Andy Clarke, for example, who used to be proffesor of Cognitive Science at Sussex (see the stuff on "the extended mind":

http://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/staff/clark/publications.html

His book "Being There: putting brain, mind and world back together" deliberately refers to Heidegger's concept of "Dasein" (There-Being).

I know it is hard for some people to believe it, but what has happened is that cognitive science has in fact discovered the problem I keep trying to get people to understand, and it has already turned to people like Heidegger for a way forward. There is a very good reason for this: the work of Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty was originally designed with the overcoming of the subjective/objective dichotomy in mind. Those philosophers were trying to solve the very same set of problems that the materialists haven't yet had the stomach to admit the existence of but which the leading edge of cognitive science is all too aware of.

 

[Belz...]

You are trying to treat philosophy as if it was science. It isn't. Philosophy provides a set of contrasted and related positions and the "answers" are bound up in the relationships between the positions and between people the positions they hold. Philosophy cannot be judged by the same standards as empirical science. It it could, it wouldn't really be philosophy any more.

Yes, it would actually serve a purpose.

And are you going to answer my other questions, now ?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

What other necessary conditions are needed for minds to exist?

The answer to that is not available until the relationship between subjective and objective has been deconstructed. But it is not deconstructable until that relationship has been properly recognised and understood. And it is not properly recognisable or understandable so long as people keep on trying to defend materialism instead of trying to understand the true relationship between subjective and objective.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes, it would actually serve a purpose.

And are you going to answer my other questions, now ?

I'm not sure I can be bothered, actually. Your position is basically "philosophy is useless". I'm not sure I can be bothered to debate with a person who holds that position. What's the point? Philosophy is useless....

 

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

You know... I was originally joking in this post http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=1684396#post1684396 , but, in hindsight, I think Mel Brooks had it right.

 

[Belz...]

I'm not sure I can be bothered, actually. Your position is basically "philosophy is useless". I'm not sure I can be bothered to debate with a person who holds that position. What's the point? Philosophy is useless....

Well, maybe you could argue as to why I'm wrong.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Now you're just dodging. The people working on holographic computers. I guess they don't know what they're doing because, as you've said, such memory cannot be retrieved partially. How useful is that ?

Because they aren't trying to retrieve partial information in that way. You can still use such a system to, say, recognise faces. You do not need to be able to extract parts of the information stored in the system to be able to use the system to do something useful.

Again, philosophy seems useless to me.

Well, it has been explained by myself and several other people in this thread why that is a rather narrow-minded view.

I'll take argument from authority over argument from personnal bias any day.

That's your funeral, not mine. Personal experience counts, for me. That isn't "bias". If, say, an alien visits you then you have some pretty powerful personal evidence that aliens exist, even if you can't prove it to anyone else and most people think you must have been deluded or you're lying.

Thank you. So the mind-brain dependency is complete and utter.

I didn't say that. I said they were tightly-bound.

So, now. Do you agree that the mind arises from brain functions ?

What does "arises" means? You've just invented another term for the meaningless "is" you still haven't explained. We have "is", "causes", "arises from" and any number of other materialist fictions. None of them means anything. The only two words which correctly describe the relationship are "correlates with" and "supervenes on".

As I've said, these are non-issues, and tackling non-issues is, well, useless.

They are non-issues only for people wearing "materialists blinkers".

 

[hammegk]

Well, maybe you could argue as to why I'm wrong.

You being the person who best understands your own worldview -- or lack thereof -- will be the one who can aid you in that quest.

Secondly, why would anyone here but you care about you being right, or wrong?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Belz,

It's like this: There is more than one way of looking at the world, but there are two main ways. One of them is the first-person, phenomenological perspective of the mind. The other is the third-person, objective perspective of materialistic science. You, and your tribe, only appear to be capable of viewing the world one way - the second way. This is imposed upon you because of an idealogical commitment to things like science, atheism and materialism. The big problem is that this 3rd-person way of looking at things is not the only one that matters. The 1st-person way of looking at things matters just as much, not least because it is our own, personal view of the world - our whole life long. Philosophy matters because it, and only it, can try to ask and answer questions about the relationships between these different ways of looking at the world. Your wish to trivialise philosophy stems from an idealogical commitment to a metaphysical position that I and many other people believe has been shown to be false. In other words, you cannot expect other people to be equally committed to that idealogical position and you certainly cannot expect them to agree with you that the subjective, 1st-person perspective doesn't matter or that philosophy is useless or that there is no point in trying to explain the relationship between subjective/objective, mind/matter in a much more sophisticated manner than the brute and illogical reductionism of materialism.