Materialists......

[UndercoverElephant]

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/

"Eliminative materialism (or eliminativism) is the radical claim that our ordinary, common-sense understanding of the mind is deeply wrong and that some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist. Descartes famously challenged much of what we take for granted, but he insisted that, for the most part, we can be confident about the content of our own minds. Eliminative materialists go further than Descartes on this point, since they challenge of the existence of various mental states that Descartes took for granted."

IT DOESN'T SAY that minds don't exist.

Yes it does. It just uses the phrase "some or all mental states". If you only get rid of some of them then you end up back in the situation of having to deal with the problem that eliminativism sidesteps. "Mental states" means "minds".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminative_materialism

"Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a view in the philosophy of mind that argues for an absolute version of materialism with respect to mental entities and mental vocabulary. It principally argues that our common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology), which eliminativists view as a sort of unformalized theory, is not a viable conception on which to base scientific investigation. Eliminativists believe that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire and that behaviour and experience can only be adequately explained on the biological level. The most radical claims of eliminativism include the challenging of the existence of conscious mental states such as pains and visual perceptions."

IT DOESN'T SAY that minds don't exist.

What do you think "challenges the existence of conscious mental states" means if it doesn't mean "minds don't exist"?

Yeah, well I'd like you to at least provide ONE.

I don't have to. You just did it for me!

 

[Belz...]

How could it be otherwise? If there is a time delay between brain process and corresponding subjective experience you are going to have to invent some sort of connecting mechanism to account for the delay. And that would inevitably lead to dualism.

Really ? Well, that's interesting. I've never heard of a physical mechanism that implies dualism.

Please provide one example of instantaneous transmission.

Also, ever heard of Déjà vu ?

Correct. It leaves that specific issue unanswered. It leaves it to be resolved at a later date instead of assuming an unreliable/incoherent/unprovable metaphysical answer.

No, it doesn't. It ASSUMES an unreliable/incoherent/unprovable metaphysical answer, because it assumes that something exists beyond determinism and randomness in order to support your conclusion. It's an assumption that supports another one.

 

[Belz...]

Yes it does. It just uses the phrase "some or all mental states". If you only get rid of some of them then you end up back in the situation of having to deal with the problem that eliminativism sidesteps. "Mental states" means "minds".

You need to read that again:

"some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist"

It doesn't say mental states don't exist. It says that common sense is an unreliable tool for studying the mind.

What do you think "challenges the existence of conscious mental states" means if it doesn't mean "minds don't exist"?

You need to read that again:

"The most radical claims of eliminativism include the challenging of the existence of conscious mental states such as pains and visual perceptions"

I wasn't aware that those included ALL mental states, let alone minds themselves.

 

[articulett]

You need to read that again:

"some or all of the mental states posited by common-sense do not actually exist"

It doesn't say mental states don't exist. It says that common sense is an unreliable tool for studying the mind.



You need to read that again:

"The most radical claims of eliminativism include the challenging of the existence of conscious mental states such as pains and visual perceptions"I wasn't aware that those included ALL mental states, let alone minds themselves.

Now, now--you know he can only make sense of that which doesn't shatter his chosen view. . . and don't you dare let him know about the studies that show how the brain shows recognition or "choice to act" before a person is conscious of such an awareness--and I'm sure the guy in Turkey with brain damage that makes him feel as if he is in a constant state of deja vu will only spoil the magic-- But my favorite and saddest example is Clive Wearing--the british conductor who can make no new memories--he always feels as if he just woke up from a coma--that is the lie his brain tells him because it is the only way he can make sense of his world...He cries every time he sees his children because he missed seeing them grow up--only he didn't...he just can't remember anything for more than 7 seconds. Moreover, those with many impairments of the brain cannot comprehend that they are impaired... Clive can't, because as soon as you tell him, he'll forget. Maybe justgeoff can't comprehend for other reasons.

Oh...and that reminds me--there is some great literature of Tourette Syndrome and "will" and OCD and "will" and how and where these syndromes fit in regards to the brain and the chemistry of that most important organ. Thank goodness, Neurologists don't study philosophy, eh? I don't know where elimitivism and reductionism and all those other isms fit it--but I know the facts. And, they are very interesting indeed.

 

[articulett]

What ? Come on, now. Consciousness = beign aware of your own existence, right ? If you're aware of what you're doing, it seems to follow that you'll have a vested interest in succeeding, more so than an amoeba. Isn't success the whole point ?

Yes, I have definitely noticed that being alive tends to give you a preference for remaining alive--it's that quirky will to live that nature even put in the ugly things like cockaroaches. Having a will to live (and mate) tend to work very well for evolutionary purposes. You don't even have to know much of anything if you have those two basic tendencies--

Of course being aware of your thoughts via language and being able to extrapolate what others might be thinking gives you a leg up on both the survival and mating process--and it's great for spreading memes too--it's even kind of fun at times--never ceases to amuse and is an all round comforter, guilt inducer, esteem enhancing, and manipulation device.

 

[chriswl]

Yes it does. It just uses the phrase "some or all mental states". If you only get rid of some of them then you end up back in the situation of having to deal with the problem that eliminativism sidesteps. "Mental states" means "minds".

But after you have eliminated some of the "folk psychological" concepts of mind you have changed the nature of the problem. What is left to be explained is not the same "mind" that you started with.

The "problem" of consiousness seems impossible to answer because it is a whole bunch of vaguely related questions grouped together along with a request for a single unifying explanation that answers all of them. No such answer is possible, but that doesn't mean that we are denying the existence of everything that comes under the loose heading of "consciousness".

 

[articulett]

Was that directed at me? Somebody said it, don't know if it was you.



I hope you aren't seriously suggesting that consciousness is the result of genetic drift. Genetic drift is responsible for occasionally driving a gene to fixation in a species, or driving it out of existence, usually in relatively small populations of individuals. There is no way it is responsible for conciousness.

I agree that consciousness evolved--and there is plenty of different mechanisms of evolution...just as there are varying degrees of consciousness. Plants, probably don't have anything you or I would call consciousness. Pets do. Dogs will even look where you point which means that they at least have a rudimentary understandig that someone else is thinking... In the past, humans used to think everything was "thinking"--hence sun gods and ocean gods etc... (humans tend to think everything is about them or directed at them for some reason; I guess egoism is a pretty good survival tool--toddlers don't even know there was a world before they were born--or that their parents were once kids...). Infants are not as conscious as children...asleep people are not as conscious as awake people...stoned people and demented people seem to have diminished consciousness (and poorer reflex action too)--Just because it looks all special and mysterious doesn't mean it is. If we can alter states of mind via chemicals, learning, electrical stimulation, hormones, or damage--then it is reasonable to conclued that conciousness is produced by the brain--it's what a brain does. If you damage the language portion of a persons brain, I suspect you would alter that persons consciousness. It is language which gives us the possibility of thinking about thinking with other thinking people--it's really cool--but it's not "immaterial". Science actually has a pretty good grasp on it. Really. Read the latest Scientific American or go to any neurological site. --That is--if you can handle the "materialistic truth"...cue: scary music-- (a little science in your background might be helpful too--and it would help if you didn't need to cling quite so tightly to the magical world of dualism)

 

[UndercoverElephant]

But after you have eliminated some of the "folk psychological" concepts of mind you have changed the nature of the problem. What is left to be explained is not the same "mind" that you started with.

The "problem" of consiousness seems impossible to answer because it is a whole bunch of vaguely related questions grouped together along with a request for a single unifying explanation that answers all of them. No such answer is possible, but that doesn't mean that we are denying the existence of everything that comes under the loose heading of "consciousness".

This is a total misrepresentation of the situation. There is no mystery about what part of "mind" that materialism cannot deal with: the subject itself. That is the one and only thing which is missing. As soon as you introduce the subject then you need nothing else. All your "complication", which are being used as another figleaf, are then no longer complicated. Minds are just brain processes PLUS the subject. Get rid of the subject, or refuse to define it, and you have absolutely no way of ever bridging the objective-subjective gap and you end up with all the materialists problems explaining subjectivity. If there is no subject then the only position which makes sense is eliminative materialism. If there is a subject, it cannot be materialism at all. There is your problem.

 

[nescafe]

Obvious? If it is obvious then why hasn't anyone explained what it is....?

The mechanism that explains it:

• Minds are, however indirectly, causally related to processes in the brain.
• Processes in the brain are patterns of changes in electrical potentials and neurotransmmitter release and uptake in the brain.
• Those drugs change the pattern of neurotransmitter release and uptake via many different mechanisms, among them impersonating neurotransmitters, altering the properties of the synaptic structures that react to neurotransmitters, or changing the reuptake rates of those neurotransmitters.

Since you have changed the patterns of brain activity, you have either:

• Changed the mind that is defined in terms of these patterns of brain activity, or
• Changed the properties of the brain that interacts with the mind (if your stance insists that minds are not reducible to brain processes, or that minds are Something Else), and therefore distorted whatever information exchange mechanism you posit between brain and mind, and are therefore changed the mind by tampering with its information flow.

... and frankly, the first formulation is simpler.

 

[chriswl]

This is a total misrepresentation of the situation. There is no mystery about what part of "mind" that materialism cannot deal with: the subject itself. That is the one and only thing which is missing. As soon as you introduce the subject then you need nothing else.

But the subject isn't necessarily one thing - it always needs an object and there are a great many types of objects it can be aware of and many ways in which it can be aware. The abstraction of a single, unifying "subject" is not an obviously correct move.

Anyway, folk psychology goes beyond merely stating that there is a subject. When Dennett rejects the idea of the "Cartesian Theater" he is eliminating a piece of folk psychology without thereby rejecting the entire notion of consciousness.

 

[nescafe]

This is a total misrepresentation of the situation. There is no mystery about what part of "mind" that materialism cannot deal with: the subject itself. That is the one and only thing which is missing.

Well, then, explaining the essential difference is between a person with "the subject" and an person identical in all respects (including all past and future behaviour) except for a lack of "the subject" in a non-circular fashion should be easy, then.

(ed. to make my terminology match Geoff's)

 

[Belz...]

This is a total misrepresentation of the situation. There is no mystery about what part of "mind" that materialism cannot deal with: the subject itself. That is the one and only thing which is missing. As soon as you introduce the subject then you need nothing else.

I don't mean to sound dense but, are we talking about grammar, here ?

Minds are just brain processes PLUS the subject.

Again, that non-falsifiable, non-deterministic, non-random "thing" that we haven't got a definition for.

Get rid of the subject, or refuse to define it, and you have absolutely no way of ever bridging the objective-subjective gap and you end up with all the materialists problems explaining subjectivity. If there is no subject then the only position which makes sense is eliminative materialism. If there is a subject, it cannot be materialism at all. There is your problem.

No problem. There is no subject by your definition. Unless you're employing circular logic.

 

[I less than three logic]

I don't mean to sound dense but, are we talking about grammar, here ?

I think he is referring to "the subject" more akin to a magical leprechaun in your head that does all the perceiving and thinking than the grammar sense. (Only it's not "in your head" as that would be the wrong ism I think, it exists somewhere else and is linked metaphysically somehow.)

 

[articulett]

I think he is referring to "the subject" more akin to a magical leprechaun in your head that does all the perceiving and thinking than the grammar sense. (Only it's not "in your head" as that would be the wrong ism I think, it exists somewhere else and is linked metaphysically somehow.)

Many people use semantic games it seems to keep themselves purposefully ignorant. Language has allowed humans to ask "why" and then make up answers, get answers from others, etc. Unfortunately, most people do not have the skill to determine a good answer from a bad answer or to determine whether they have the knowledge needed to understand the answer or even if the question is the right one. Very often the question itself is laden with ignorance...suppose I asked, "How far from where I'm standing to the nearest end of the earth?" or "Where does the fire go when you blow out the candle?" Plus, some questions have a breadth of answers that can only be understood in increments--like "where do babies come from?" Human language is the seat of human consciousness--it's a great tool...but it is prone to errors and there is a lot of research about the most common of these errors. Justgeoff is making just such an error and is dancing around with words to avoid noticing this error and to convince others that his argument must be correct. Doesn't it just boil down to--"I am experiencing mysterious stuff that science can't explain--therefore my explanation must be valid"? Of course, he refuses to let science explain, because that would destroy the delusion he prefers. And so it is valid--in his reality. Yet it is not true in my reality. I just see someone who has convinced himself of something that humans have long convinced themselves of--despite all evidence to the contrary. I believe that some people truly believe that they were probed by aliens from another planet--but I also believe they are fooling themselves... Has justgeoff or any "dualist" ever provided any actual evidence (not word games) that support their "intuitive truth". I keep waiting--but despite all the blustery language and self satisfied word games, I still haven't seen anything I can measure. Anyone else? Why are we supposed to take justgeoff more seriously than the alien abductees or the religious zealots or the astrologists again? What is it that he thinks he is teaching all of us simpletons again?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

[*]Minds are, however indirectly, causally related to processes in the brain.

Agreed, but this is a weaker claim.

Processes in the brain are patterns of changes in electrical potentials and neurotransmmitter release and uptake in the brain.

Those drugs change the pattern of neurotransmitter release and uptake via many different mechanisms, among them impersonating neurotransmitters, altering the properties of the synaptic structures that react to neurotransmitters, or changing the reuptake rates of those neurotransmitters.

Again this is fine, because the "causally related" claim in the first statement qualifies what you are claiming in the second and third, which describe brain processes only.

Since you have changed the patterns of brain activity, you have either:

Changed the mind that is defined in terms of these patterns of brain activity, or

Now you have made a much stronger claim by changing the language. Instead of "causally related, somehow" you are now claiming that mind can be defined in terms of the brain processes. This is exactly the claim that the materialist cannot back up. To be consistent with the first three statements you need to restrict this to:

"Changed the mind that is <causally related, however indirectly> to the patterns of brain activity)

Changed the properties of the brain that interacts with the mind (if your stance insists that minds are not reducible to brain processes, or that minds are Something Else), and therefore distorted whatever information exchange mechanism you posit between brain and mind, and are therefore changed the mind by tampering with its information flow.

There is no "interactive mechanism".

... and frankly, the first formulation is simpler.

And fine, provided you keep it consistent with what you said immediately above it.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

But the subject isn't necessarily one thing.....

I disagree totally. The subject necessarily is one thing. There is only ever one of them. You cannot be two minds.

- it always needs an object.....

Agreed. Subjects need an object. But objects also need a subject. Maybe what we call "mind" (the normal usage, no the materialist's usage) and what we call matter are interdependent in a non-symmetrical way. That is maybe mind is dependent on matter and matter is dependent on mind, but the dependencies are different.

and there are a great many types of objects it can be aware of and many ways in which it can be aware. The abstraction of a single, unifying "subject" is not an obviously correct move.

It obviously fixes the problems with materialism. It is the simplest thing you can add to the picture in order to complete it. At this point materialists usually claim that the whole thing is far too complicated to say that, but this is simply not true.

Anyway, folk psychology goes beyond merely stating that there is a subject. When Dennett rejects the idea of the "Cartesian Theater" he is eliminating a piece of folk psychology without thereby rejecting the entire notion of consciousness.

There is no "cartesian theatre".

There is a whole army of materialist-inspired strawmen though. Nearly all of them are variations on "If you are denying materialism then you must be suggesting cartesian dualism".

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Well, then, explaining the essential difference is between a person with "the subject" and an person identical in all respects (including all past and future behaviour) except for a lack of "the subject" in a non-circular fashion should be easy, then.

And so it is: The person lacking "the subject" is a common p-zombie.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't mean to sound dense but, are we talking about grammar, here ?

No, we are talking about a metaphysical subject. The "I" itself. The "thing" which observes your mind and isn't actually a "thing", since things are only things for it and it isn't a thing for anything else.

Again, that non-falsifiable, non-deterministic, non-random "thing" that we haven't got a definition for.

You got it. Neti, neti, neti.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I think he is referring to "the subject" more akin to a magical leprechaun in your head that does all the perceiving and thinking than the grammar sense.

No, it does not do any "thinking". Your brain does the thinking. It may be involved somewhere in perception, but not during the sensory or cognitive stages of perception.

 

[nescafe]

And so it is: The person lacking "the subject" is a common p-zombie.

And so you have correctly described it. However, unless you have a definition for "the subject" that is something more sophisticated than "that which a p-zombie lacks", your definition is circular and therefore meaningless. After all, if you were a p-zombie, you would believe you had "the subject" as well, by definition.

(ed. small yet important grammar change)