Materialists......

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I don't percieve happiness in the way I percieve objects. I perceive the happiness to be "internal". It's not "out there". But I percieve objects to be "out there" - seperate from myself. So the two cases are not the same. Equating perceptual objects and happiness is a false equivocation.

I'm not sure this is so cut and dried. There are various types of brain damage that can mix this up so it's not clear at all. For example, there is a certain damage that causes nociception to be disconnected from emotion, so that pain is still felt, but is not unpleasant. Now this makes it clearer that the source of pain is external to the brain, just as the chair is.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You seem to have answered your own question.

Perhaps you did not notice the shoe sticking out of my mouth, as in "what the hell does this gibberish mean?"

~~ Paul

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm not sure this is so cut and dried. There are various types of brain damage that can mix this up so it's not clear at all. For example, there is a certain damage that causes nociception to be disconnected from emotion, so that pain is still felt, but is not unpleasant. Now this makes it clearer that the source of pain is external to the brain, just as the chair is.

~~ Paul

I don't understand how you think happiness can be external. We are talking about perception of external objects, not internal emotions like happiness. If you are trying to equate (apparently) external objects with things like happiness it sounds awfully like its going to lead to Berkeleyanism.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Perhaps you did not notice the shoe sticking out of my mouth, as in "what the hell does this gibberish mean?"

~~ Paul

That is not what "foot in mouth" means round where geoff comes from. To put ones foot in ones mouth is to say something you later realise was silly. You asked a question about how intentionality related to ontology/metaphysics. You then provided the answer........

Since you seem to be saying that you don't have a better answer, perhaps it isn't gibberish after all? Why do you think it is gibberish?

I should add that the term "intentionality" has been abused by people like Dennett so as to obscure its original meaning and try to make it mean something else which nobody is quite sure what actually is. That is a major reason why I find Dennett incomprehensible.

I should also add that it is to the work of Brentano and Husserl that the new generation of cognitive scientists, faced with the barrage of problems they have inherited from their predecessors, are now turning.

 

[Robin]

But this is exactly what is necessary - or at least there must be some sort of struggle going on where your will/soul is try to cause yiu to do one thing and your brain is trying to cause you to do the other.

Of two contradictory actions I can only do one.

Yes, only one of them can win the struggle. It's usually the brain.

And let's just point out that you are assuming your conclusion that brain/soul are different things.

Most of the time when you say "I" you are referrring to both your ego (brain) and your "soul".

I only know the "I" I experience. I have no way of knowing it's "true" nature. For the purposes of my question it does not matter.

I've already explained that will has both a deterministic (result) and non-deterministic (source) component.

You did not answer the question. Was there a reason I did one thing and not the other?

Yes, in a counterfactual sense.

No, in a real sense. There are many causes for a wave - they are all causes.

I already accepted this. I have been arguing for several pages that without a moral framework there can be no meangingful free will.

No, on the contrary you explicitly denied that belief is a cause of an action. You said : "No. It is not the belief which causes the action. It is will. Belief just provides the framework for deciding which action is moral."

The reverse is true. If the act was purely the result of a rational, deductive, deterministic process then it can hardly be called voluntary. What you have described is compatibilist free will.

So if I plan to do something and carry out my plan precisely then that is an involuntary act?

But if I plan to do something and then find that for no reason I can see I have done the opposite then that is a voluntary act?

Is that what you are saying?

No.

I have already explained this over and over.

You have not answered the question even once.

Materialists use the word "material" to refer to two things ....

I have to stop you right there - I did not askn what materialists meant by "material". I asked you what you meant when you used the word "physical".

Maybe, then, we should shift the discussion to a discussion about direct realism instead. It's easier and clearer to define.

If you want to change the subject, start a new thread. But don't start a discussion on direct realism unless you are prepared to explain what you mean by the term.

And don't expect it to be easier to define. For example suppose I am a brain in the bottle and the source of the tree I perceive is a computer model made up of billions of electronic charges. Suppose then that I am a biological entity and the source of the tree that I perceive is a bunch of particles, or strings, or membranes or waves or whatever. In what sense is the electron tree less "real" than the particle/string/membrane/stuffon tree?

And what precisely would "direct" perception of a material object consist of? Would the matter in my brain have to have direct contact with the matter in the "real" object? Or would you allow that there might be some intermediary medium such as photons and nervous system, or perhaps a SCSI cable?

I absolutely do not defend the claim that science has absolute borders. That's why I started a thread which defended the opposite position. Science is just a set of ideals/principles aimed at maximising objectivity.

You say this and then ...

Very much so. The MBP concerns the relationship between subjective and objective. Science can't solve it because science cannot stand outside the subjective/objective divide and analyse it - precisely because science only works by attempting to eliminate subjectivity.

You completely contradict yourself by saying that science does have borders.

Yet your assumption is that subjectivity cannot be studied objectively. You would have to show this.

As I pointed out before, if we can make a testable prediction about a purely subjective experience then we can study subjectivity objectively.

I cannot do this. I cannot fix the physicalist's double definition....

And again, I did not ask you to fix anybody elses definition. I asked you what you meant when you used the term.

Here is your central claim for the post - with my emphasis:

The real situation, whether you are a materialist or not a materialist, is that we can indeed tell the difference between a physical process and a subjective experience.

If this were true then you must be able to define what you mean by physical when you use it within this sentence. What materialists of physicalists might mean by it is irrelevant.

What do you mean by physical when you use it in this sentence. If you cannot answer then the claim you make is false.

We cannot tell the difference between a physical process and a subjective experience if we do not have a coherent definition for "physical".

QED.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I don't understand how you think happiness can be external. We are talking about perception of external objects, not internal emotions like happiness. If you are trying to equate (apparently) external objects with things like happiness it sounds awfully like its going to lead to Berkeleyanism.

I was simply trying to point out that the internal/external dichotomy is, like most of this stuff, no dichotomy at all.

That is not what "foot in mouth" means round where geoff comes from. To put ones foot in ones mouth is to say something you later realise was silly. You asked a question about how intentionality related to ontology/metaphysics. You then provided the answer...

I know. We need a smiley that means "lots of crud emitted from mouth, but none of it makes sense."

Since you seem to be saying that you don't have a better answer, perhaps it isn't gibberish after all? Why do you think it is gibberish?

I don't understand a word of it. What is immanent objectivity, intentional object, intentional inexistence?

I should add that the term "intentionality" has been abused by people like Dennett so as to obscure its original meaning and try to make it mean something else which nobody is quite sure what actually is. That is a major reason why I find Dennett incomprehensible.

Then what is an intentional object? What does it mean for the feeling of pain to be an object?

This subject is pretty much cooked, just like the last time we discussed it. There is so much categorization in philosophy, it's almost impossible to get a straight answer to a question. If I say the brain contains maps of the information it receives from the senses, is that direct realize with sensory intermediates or is that indirect realism? If I say pain is a process, what is its object of perception? If I say that perceiving a chair and perceiving an hallucination are clearly different, am I a disjunctivist?

~~ Paul

 

[69dodge]

I don't understand how you think happiness can be external. We are talking about perception of external objects, not internal emotions like happiness. If you are trying to equate (apparently) external objects with things like happiness it sounds awfully like its going to lead to Berkeleyanism.

I don't know what Berkeleyanism is.

I don't think that happiness is external. Nor do I think that your objects-of-perception are external. Yes, they seem to be. Why do you consider this a very good argument? Lots of things aren't what they seem to be.

I honestly don't understand your point of view. You can make all your objects-of-perception disappear in the blink of an eye. Literally. Is it really useful to think of such fleeting perceptions as actually existing objects? It seems to me more productive to think of them, not as objects in their own right, but simply as your perceptions, caused probably by real external objects but possibly, if you're a brain in a vat, by the artificial stimulation of your nerves. Your perceptions have no existence independent of your act of perceiving, so it can only confuse matters to talk about them as if they do.

You don't perceive "them". You just perceive. "They" aren't there, unless you are perceiving.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Belz- to be strictly fair. There are no bricks in that wall either. The essence of drystone walling - and I've built a few - is to use the inherent irregularity of the stones to provide the binding forces which mortar gives to a wall of regularly shaped bricks. Tools to trim stones are rarely used in the British tradition of drystone walling.
The Inca tradition involves the use of (mostly) medium- coarse grained , rather isomorphic igneous rock which they trimmed back at the edges to obtain a weatherproof joint at whatever point the rocks happened to be in contact. Hence those lovely pseudo random lines. Nowt random about it.

Bloody impressive it is too.

Meanwhile, back at the thread...

 

[articulett]

Gotta love those.

Geoff, this is the wall I was refering to. I DO believe there's no mortar involved:

You rock!

 

[articulett]

This is all a complete jumble precisely due to philosophers thinking of awareness as being aware of a thing, rather than thinking of awareness as a process.

~~ Paul

Indeed. The thing itself doesn't change--others don't see your hallucination--it has no matter to it--it can't blow up or burn down or die or speed up--

Not all perceptions are equally valid. I one does not understand higher math--that does not invalidate it and someone can really really think they are possessed and be absolutely wrong. While a hallucination may be the same inside the head of someone (particularly a schizophrenic someone), that illusions or perceived meaning is not there in actuality. You can kill all the imaginary people you want in your dreams or hallucinations--but if one kills a real person, he will suffer real consequences in a real jail cell...where he can philosophize his days away.

 

[articulett]

Yes, this area of philosophy makes the problem of what minds are very clear. Because it starts by trying to explain the "feelings and images we obtain through experience" it is very difficult to then simply pronounce that such things "do not exist", based solely on an argument from scientists which depends on assuming materialism is true. We cannot deny they exist. Not if we are sane, anyway. So we need to call them something, and "brain processes" isn't going to cut it this time. We already have something else called "brain processes" - brain processes. So we need to give the objects of perception a different name, and as soon as we do that, you know what happens next.

Does anyone else get the idea that only he seems to have an unclear definition of the mind? He seems to be using a lot of words to describe some sort of logical dilemma--but, to me, he just sounds utterly deluded--but, neverthless, very self righteous. Even little kids understand "pretend". They don't think the pretend world exists somewhere anymore than they think little people are running around inside a television. I feel like justgeoff talks in circles--like he's saying--"yes, but you can't tell where the light went when you turned it off!--that's the true dilemma you can't admit to as a "materialist"!! "Your relatives deconstrivism monism anti dualism darwinism makes you unable to understand the true dual nature of light!"

And I see Paul and Belz trying to pin him down or stick with a definition but then he throws in another term or link or smug platitude. He has me on ignore, so I shant' feel guilty making fun of him. But, as a woman, I have to say, it's very enlightening to see how strongly a guy will stick to his beliefs no matter how wrong they are. I mean, I know that is a normal part of human nature (confirmation bias)--but justgeoff is so blatant.

My field is genetics where creationists use other dishonest and silly arguments to keep the people worshipping them--but here is someone on a skeptic forum relentlessly trying to get others to see what he sees so clearly--he is so sure that he's right--he has absolutely no evidence--he could easily invalidate his own argument (testing the null hypothesis), but he has such conviction--that no matter how much he is bludgeoned with facts he still keeps trying to convert others without the slightest clue of his own vast areas of ignorance.

Wow.

 

[articulett]

Well, the brain in a vat wouldn't have the ability to tell the difference. Much like, when dreaming, we often have difficulty telling if it's a dream or not, though often some obvious discrepancy tips us off. The brain in a vat doesn't have that ability to make a comparison. We do.

And the brain in a vat is not hooked up to eye or ears or other sensory inputs necessary for actual visual perception--(which is an actual brain process--associated with a particular area of the brain.) If there were an outside observer conducting a petscan or eeg on that brain they would get some idea of what that brain could experience--is memory active? recognition? Brain dead people are called brain dead for a reason. The brain in a vat is a weird analogy--because it's sort of like a computer processer in a vatr--it needs to be hooked up to input to function-- If the brain had memory, and the hippocampus was not distroyed--you would still expect to "see" remembering going on if the brain was "remembering"

Justgeoff keeps making this bizarre analogies to try and prove a point. I understand that he believes that there is something separate from the brain doing the analysis or thinking or remember or feeling--but he also must know that these can all be altered by drugs or electrical stimulation or brain damage. If you've ever spent any time with brain damaged people, you get a very strong inkling about how the ugly old brain ought to be getting the glorification reserved for the imaginary "soul".

It is language which allows us to lie to ourselves and others. We have evolved to explain things to ourself so it makes sense. We fill in our blind spot while "seeing" automatically. Language is pretty good way to spread memes. Other animals can be deceptive. My dog pretends there's someone at the door so that the other dog will bark and drop the chewy--then she steals it. Apes hide goodies from others who want it. Humans just take it a lot further--and there are a lot of studies that indicate that it is our language centers that are spinning this idea of a separate self.

Justgeoff is confusing the stories he tells himself with the facts that can be measured and seen by all. Philosophers may have problems with "who" is doing the "choosing' etc., but I don't know of anyone in biology that does. It's not even that hard to understand given the vast amount of research out there--unless of course, one has a personal interest in remaining ignorant.

I just have a bad taste in my mouth for dishonesty dressed up in scientific terms. It's misleading. And it's still woo.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Of two contradictory actions I can only do one.

And let's just point out that you are assuming your conclusion that brain/soul are different things.

Robin, if I don't assume something along those lines then libertarian free will disappears off the radar completely. It is not as simple as traditional dualism, but yes, of course, there must at least be two different potential outcomes, two different sorts of causality. The only thing I would quibble about would be the claim that souls are "things".

I only know the "I" I experience. I have no way of knowing it's "true" nature. For the purposes of my question it does not matter.

For the purposes of your question, it is absolutely critical. Put crudely, there is an "I" you experience and an "I" which does the experiencing.

You did not answer the question. Was there a reason I did one thing and not the other?

Yes. You felt one of them was your moral duty and the other was not.

No, on the contrary you explicitly denied that belief is a cause of an action.

This is empty word-play. If you want to argue it that way, then pretty much everything is a cause of pretty-much everything-else. Change the position of one atom one-hundred years ago and everything today is different. What is your point?

You said : "No. It is not the belief which causes the action. It is will. Belief just provides the framework for deciding which action is moral."

So if I plan to do something and carry out my plan precisely then that is an involuntary act?

You are trying to oversimplify everything. Specificially, you are wantonly mixing up concepts from compatibilism with concepts from libertarianism.

"Voluntariness" is the buzzword of the compatibilists. They say a free action is a voluntary action, in the sense that nobody/nothing external was compelling you to take that action. But voluntariness on its own is not enough for libertarian free will. Libertarianism also requires co-creation in the sense that there was a specific point where an act of will was capable of changing future events.

It would be really helpful for the future clarity of this discussion if you would make it clear whether you are asking me about libertarianism or compatibilism because at the moment you seem to be mixing them up all over the place, and then attributing the confusion to me.

But if I plan to do something and then find that for no reason I can see I have done the opposite then that is a voluntary act?

That isn't voluntary. That's just irrational.

Is that what you are saying?

You have not answered the question even once.

I can't answer your questions because I don't know what you mean half the time because I don't know whether you are assuming compatibilism when you ask questions about free will. You appear to be assuming the only coherent type of free will is compatibilism and then asking me questions about libertarianism under an assumption of compatibilism. Not surprisingly, I am having trouble knowing what you are actually asking me.

I have to stop you right there - I did not askn what materialists meant by "material". I asked you what you meant when you used the word "physical".

I have repeatedly responded to that question in the only way possible. I cannot use "physical" consistently because the physicalists themselves do not use it consistently. You can ask me the same question fifty more times and you will get the same answer.

If you want to change the subject, start a new thread. But don't start a discussion on direct realism unless you are prepared to explain what you mean by the term.

I had no choice but to start talking about direct realism because it is the physicalists failure to understand what direct realism is and how hard it is to defend that leads them to overload the term "physical" in the first place.

And what precisely would "direct" perception of a material object consist of?
Would the matter in my brain have to have direct contact with the matter in the "real" object?

There are potentially two uses of the word "matter" in the above questions. Plus, sophisticated (as opposed to naive) direct realism is a non-material theory anyway.

Exactly how one justifies the "directness" of direct realism depends on the form of direct realism. The central job of the theory is to provide some justification for the word "direct".

Or would you allow that there might be some intermediary medium such as photons and nervous system, or perhaps a SCSI cable?

The SCSI cable would seem to rule it out.

You say this and then ..

You completely contradict yourself by saying that science does have borders.

That is not a contradiction. Saying that science has fuzzy borders does not imply that science can cover every question which is askable. The solar system has a fuzzy border, but it still doesn't include the Andromeda galaxy.

You have a tendency to assume I mean something I do not mean and then claim I have made a contradiction I have not made.

Yet your assumption is that subjectivity cannot be studied objectively. You would have to show this.

If your conception of science is "activities guided by principles/ideals aimed at maximising objectivity" then it follows that science cannot be asked to analyse the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity. From the point of view of science, that issue is always going to be a meta-issue, one step removed from science itself.

As I pointed out before, if we can make a testable prediction about a purely subjective experience then we can study subjectivity objectively.

How could we ever objectively test a prediction about a subjective experience? We would always depend on the subjective assessment of the subject in order to determine the result of the test.

And again, I did not ask you to fix anybody elses definition. I asked you what you meant when you used the term.

Here is your central claim for the post - with my emphasis:

If this were true then you must be able to define what you mean by physical when you use it within this sentence. What materialists of physicalists might mean by it is irrelevant.

What do you mean by physical when you use it in this sentence. If you cannot answer then the claim you make is false.

We cannot tell the difference between a physical process and a subjective experience if we do not have a coherent definition for "physical".

True. But at such a point, physicalism has disappeared off the map. If "physical" can mean "something entirely external to us" then it has just replaced the term "noumenal". If "physical" now means "noumenal" then you might as well call me a physicalist!

Do you see the problem?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I was simply trying to point out that the internal/external dichotomy is, like most of this stuff, no dichotomy at all.

Only if you are a Berkeleyan.

I don't understand a word of it. What is immanent objectivity, intentional object, intentional inexistence?

"Immanent" means "directly in front of you". It originally meant "to exist or to remain within". So it sort of means "not external" or "not indirect". "Immanent" is generally used as the opposite to "transcendent". Knowledge of an external/noumenal world would have to be transcendent because it transcends "the veil of perception". Knowledge of the objects of perception is immanent because there is no veil to be transcended - they are directly in front of you. They are immanent. The word is also used to apply to God. If God is immanent then God is directly present in the world in front of you.

"Immanent objectivity" means "concerning objects which are immanent". "Intentional objects" are immanent objects.

"Intentional inexistence" is a Brentano-specific term which has been argued about, largely because there is more than one way to translate it from its original German:

http://members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/Definitions/Intentional.html

I did actually point out that the link you provided gave the historical origin of the term "intentional object" and not necessarily exactly the same as the current versions.

Then what is an intentional object? What does it mean for the feeling of pain to be an object?

You do not have to consider pain to be an object. We are talking about perceptual objects, not pain.

This subject is pretty much cooked, just like the last time we discussed it. There is so much categorization in philosophy, it's almost impossible to get a straight answer to a question. If I say the brain contains maps of the information it receives from the senses, is that direct realize with sensory intermediates or is that indirect realism?

Unless you have some clever way of justifying the term "direct", it is indirect realism. If the question is being asked in the context of materialism, it is hard to see any way of justifying the term "direct" so its indirect realism. If something other than materialism is true, then there may be some other way of justifying the word "direct".

If I say pain is a process, what is its object of perception?

If you say pain is a process, I have to ask you what sort of process you mean. A physical process? A noumenal process?

If I say that perceiving a chair and perceiving an hallucination are clearly different, am I a disjunctivist?

No, you're just wrong. The whole point about perceiving an hallucinated chair is that it is indistinguishable from perceiving a real chair. You would be a disjunctivist if you claimed that these two clearly identical experiences were different even though they seemed exactly the same to you.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't know what Berkeleyanism is.

Subjective idealism. Invented by Bishop George Berkeley, and claiming that everything is subjective - everything which exists is mental. It's all "in here". There is no "out there".

I don't think that happiness is external. Nor do I think that your objects-of-perception are external. Yes, they seem to be. Why do you consider this a very good argument? Lots of things aren't what they seem to be.

This is an argument for Berkeleyan idealism.

I honestly don't understand your point of view. You can make all your objects-of-perception disappear in the blink of an eye. Literally. Is it really useful to think of such fleeting perceptions as actually existing objects?

No. That is why I personally called them "intentional objects". That is why Brentano called them "intentional inexistents". That is why A.D. Smith refers to hallucinated objects as "merely intentional objects".

It seems to me more productive to think of them, not as objects in their own right, but simply as your perceptions, caused probably by real external objects but possibly, if you're a brain in a vat, by the artificial stimulation of your nerves. Your perceptions have no existence independent of your act of perceiving, so it can only confuse matters to talk about them as if they do.

When you say "think of them as" then you are trying to defend materialism. But "think of them as" isn't strong enough at this point. It's too vague an answer. It is fine to say "think of them as" if you are a scientist and trying to avoid getting ground down in a debate like this because you have something else to investigate. But right we are specifically discussing the ontological nature of the objects of perception so "think of them as" isn't very helpful. This time we are asking "what are they actually?", when we are not just "thinking of them as something else".

You don't perceive "them". You just perceive. "They" aren't there, unless you are perceiving.

They are "intentional existents"......

 

[Belz...]

I don't percieve happiness in the way I percieve objects. I perceive the happiness to be "internal". It's not "out there". But I percieve objects to be "out there" - seperate from myself.

I disagree. I don't perceive happiness to be "internal" so much. Emotions seem imposed on "me" as well as perceptions.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I disagree. I don't perceive happiness to be "internal" so much. Emotions seem imposed on "me" as well as perceptions.

All I can say about this is that it is not a position I have seen defended before and I am not sure what you mean by it. The monitor before me is definately external to me - or at least it seems that way. But I cannot understand the notion of happiness being external to me. Sure, the cause my emotions may be external, and therefore imposed, but not the emotions themselves. So I'm not sure I understand you.

 

[Belz...]

You rock!

Belz- to be strictly fair. There are no bricks in that wall either. The essence of drystone walling - and I've built a few - is to use the inherent irregularity of the stones to provide the binding forces which mortar gives to a wall of regularly shaped bricks. Tools to trim stones are rarely used in the British tradition of drystone walling.
The Inca tradition involves the use of (mostly) medium- coarse grained , rather isomorphic igneous rock which they trimmed back at the edges to obtain a weatherproof joint at whatever point the rocks happened to be in contact. Hence those lovely pseudo random lines. Nowt random about it.

Bloody impressive it is too.

Meanwhile, back at the thread...

Yeah. I know they're not bricks, but the point remains. Also, some garden walls are built with bricks that are made to fit into one another without mortar, again. The point is that Geoff keeps saying that bricks isn't enough to build a wall, or rather, that we are more than the sum of our parts, which is clearly wrong.

 

[Belz...]

Robin, if I don't assume something along those lines then libertarian free will disappears off the radar completely.

Yes, but unlike some other assumptions (solipsism, for example), it doesn't prevent you from studying the universe and reaching conclusions, so I don't see how it's a useful assumption, unless you really WANT libertarian free will to exist...

And Geoff, maybe it'd be best if we stopped using all those philosophical sub-category terms like compatibilist, Berkeleyanism, dualist, monist or whatnot. Too many terms get too confusing for the laymen.

 

[Belz...]

All I can say about this is that it is not a position I have seen defended before and I am not sure what you mean by it. The monitor before me is definately external to me - or at least it seems that way. But I cannot understand the notion of happiness being external to me. Sure, the cause my emotions may be external, and therefore imposed, but not the emotions themselves. So I'm not sure I understand you.

It's actually quite simple. I couldn't, for the life of me, be able to tell you what's "interior" and what's "exterior" as far as my mind is concerned. Everything, including emotions, seems "out there" to me.