Materialists......

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

While I was on my short holiday, I read the paper that Geoff suggested, "The Problem of Perception," here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/

The prefix neuro appears in it exactly once, in a sentence that states that neuroscience is irrelevant to a particular question.

Philosophers are trying to come up with a model of perception that can be stated in two or three sentences. They shall fail, because they are paying no attention to reality. Some of the proposed models are related to some of what really goes on in the brain, but no single model is going to describe the process of perception in toto. The project will generate all the models that are related to some part of perception, along with models that are irrelevant. The project will not converge on a single, simple model.

~~ Paul

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

No, we don't know that.

I'm afraid we do know that. Of course this all depends on how you use the word "know", but we have both positive and negative evidence (evidence of brain activation during acts of will and evidence of the absence of will with brain injury in particular areas) that converge on the same brain region. That is the same evidence that you have used to determine that mind depends on (use suprevene if you so choose) brain process.

Scientifically-compatible definitions? Or can we discuss Sartre, Heidegger, etc....?

Any definition is fine as a starting place. The Socratic method does not accept a definition as true or false based on who gives it or whence it derives, only on if it can withstand scrutiny.

 

[articulett]

Please pull the plug. It doesn't seem to me anybody is getting anything out of it. But then maybe I'm wrong. Pehaps it has inspired some people to think through their worldview assumptions. I hope so. otherwise it seems to me like road kill.

Ah, but you neglect the entertainment value. For example, I like reading what you just read and I like watching how some can only get bits and pieces that fit into their own world view--it's a classic study in confirmation bias. Don't you think it's interesting how justgeoff has convinced himself that since science "can't define mind non-redundantly", materialism doesn't make sense--and because he knows he has a mind, materialism can't be true.

OCD is a disorder of the will--drugs can change it... phen-fen gave people the will to resist food-- depo-provera reduces the sexual urge and curbs pedophilia; So whatever "will" is...it most definitely is tied in with the brain. And whatever "observation" is...it takes sensory input and a brain to do it. (If one is being literal, it takes eyes, as well).

 

[Robin]

Paul Churchland's account of what minds are is absolutely useless, as demonstrated above. It depends on defining the term "concious intelligence" and then using it to blur the distinction between consciousness and intelligence.

Err.. how on earth does any of this support your assertion that eliminative materialists claim that minds dont exist? I am not claiming that Churchland's position is correct, I am pointing out that your definition of eliminative materialism is wrong - which it clearly, unambiguously is.

I can only admire your willingness to defend a hopelessly losing position.

Are you seriously giving me a first year undergrad essay as a counter from a direct definition of eliminative materialism from one of it's leading proponents?

So we have your definition of eliminative materialism, still unsourced:

Eiminative materialism is defined as a doctrine which denies that minds exist.

And a definition given by one of the leading proponents of the theory:

Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience.

Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes
Paul M. Churchland
Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 2 (Feb., 1981) , pp. 67-90

So either you are wrong or Paul Churchland is wrong about what he means by Eliminative Materialism.

So unless you have something of substance to back up your definition the obvious conclusion is that your definition was WRONG!!!

 

[Robin]

Consciousness as an epiphenomena has no causal power. I am not an epiphenomenalist.

Since you have previously argued that mental states such as beliefs are not proximate causes of behaviour, but merely provide a framework, then your own position is pretty close, if not identical, to epiphenomenalism.

In fact you very strenuously argued against my position that the conscious mental state of belief might be a cause of behaviour.

 

[Apathia]

Ah, but you neglect the entertainment value.

Yes, it is somewhat the intellecual's Abbot and Costello.
It's amusing, but disconcerting. Parties entirely miss the meaning of what a party says, no matter how clearly s/he says it, because they assume s/he's saying something else. It's like when I say I'm a naturalist. I don't believe in some other realm outside of nature or some power transcendent to nature.
My self-consciousness, will, and sense of self-transcendance are all natural and require no introduction of a supernatural nature.
One person calls me to task because he says I'm denying the personal and spiritual qualities of my life by being a Reductionist (But I'm not one).
Another pins me as being a Dualist because I value my personhood, volition, and individuality. (I'm not a Dualist.) If I use a woo word, I must be a woo. if I use a Science word in relation to my self, then I must be a Materialist. And some times it's just no use trying to explain to people that being physical doesn't negate having a subjective mental life and that having a mind doesn't mean some seperate thing in interface with my body. Mind and body aren't seperate substances. it's just a way of speaking of two different perspectives in a single dynamic. When I speak of I, I speak subjective self-awareness soulwise. When I speak it in reference to my body, I speak of an observed object. To give credid to Martin Buber, when I speak you, I'm not making you an object of scientific inquiry but addressing and relating to you as a person. These are the natural spheres of who we are. it's not necessary to denigrate one for the sake of another. That's what religion tends to do. A common feature of most religions is to diss on some aspect of human being. You know how some elements of Christianity diss on the body. You know how some Eastern Traditions diss on the rational mind.
I'm afraid some hardcore Reductionists Diss on the spirit.
Nature does far more complex, subtle, and wonderful things than just bang particles together as per 19th Century Science. nature does souls.
People turn to alternative woo in part because the medical profession treats them as merely objects of physical and chemical engineering. This is all fine, but we naturally want to be treated as persons as well.
People turn to woo when they get the impression (alas fostered by many) that Science has no wonder, no imagination, and no inspiration.

Nostrildummass predicts that someone will take it that I'm making an argument for Dualism or trying to sneak woo in the back door. If affirming the subjective life is woo, then I'm guilty. Let it come in the front door then.
But even the most hardcore of this forum's reductionists, including the one who said we are all "merely meat," don't treat their friends and family as classical billiard balls and prime cut. They treat persons as persons and know the meaning of compassion. That satisfies me.

Roadkill? Ok Carrion! LOL

 

[Robin]

Robin, I am perfectly well aware who the logical positivists were and perfectly well aware what they said, and perfectly well aware of how their contribution to philosophy altered philosophy of science.

Well then, why did you imply that nearly all science operated implicitly within the framework of materialism when you know that one of the main threads of the philosophy of science is inherently anti-materialist?

I would have thought that someone who knew their stuff would know that this tradition embraced Mach's position that "the thing in itself" was superfluous.

Why are you completely unaware of the Physicalist stance of some in the Vienna Circle (for example Carnap, Neurath)?

I can see no reason why you haven't provided a definition of materialism and/or physicalism apart from the fact that you cannot do so. You are now compounding this by trying to make out that the reason you will not actually tell the board what your own definitions of these words are is that Geoff hasn't read enough about Wittgenstein and the logical positivists.

If you are unwilling/unable to correct my definitions then you should not have said that they were wrong.

So in this paragraph you claim I didn't give a definition, then in the next you critique the one I gave. Sloppy.

Yes, clearly I gave the definition because you were too lazy to look up the reference I gave you (while expecting others to do the homework you set them).

Now you are making just the kind of kindergarten mistakes that I predicted you would.

For example the following refers directly to the definition I gave you and displays the kind of misconception that I predicted:

Anti-materialist materialism? What the ***** is that then?

*Sigh*.. try to concentrate Geoff. The definition you asked for and the one I gave was for Physicalism not Materialism. So it is anti-materialist Physicalism.

I have told you many times that Physicalism!=Materialism, at least in it's principle usage. It has often been used as a synonym for Materialism last decade or so, why we need such a synonym I don't know.

Are you talking about logical positivism?

No, clearly I am talking about "Physicalism". Why would I say Physicalism when I mean Logical Positivism?

You see? This is just what I am talking about. If you had read, as I suggested, Ayer's chapter on "Physicalism" you would not have this very fundamental misunderstanding.

Physicalism comes from the same tradition as Logical Positivism, but is not the same. Also there are Philosophers (such as Broad) who have been classified Physicalists who are not from the LP tradition.

The Physicalists, accepted the general positivist stance, such as the superfluity of the "thing in itself", and that any statement about an external reality was a meaningless statement. They added that any statement about science is reducible to a statement about an entity in the sense data that satisfied the criteria of empirical verification.

This was the Physicalist definition of a "physical" entity.

Incidentally, if you know about LP, how come you discuss LP with reference to three people who never were Logical Positivists?

And in what sense could Logical Positivism ever be described as "materialist" when it asserts the superfluity of the "thing in itself" and defines statements about the existence of an external reality as meaningless?

Oh, and by the way, it is interesting that you claim Logical Positivism to be irrelevant in the 21st century, yet one of the greatest scientific minds of our times (S J Hawking) is a Positivist.

In fact the practice of Physics in the 21st century is inherently Positivist - Mach would have been proud.

 

[nescafe]

True, but it does not follow that a mind which is causally related to brain processes can be completely defined in terms of those processes. It may also be dependent on something else for a full definition.

May also? Unless there is some compelling evidence (beyond some rather tortured logic and semiotic games), Ockham's Razor says we should not waste our time. You have provided nothing beyond an argument from incredulity to support this point.

But the conclusion goes beyond the premises and the reasoning.

It is one of many possible conclusions consistent with the premise and the reasoning. That it is the simplest answer consistent with the premises and the reasoning is just a bonus.

The subject has no means of storing or exchanging information. Its only means of affecting physical reality, including brain states, is via loading the quantum dice (which is effectively what is happening during entanglement also). It acts by altering the probability of a given quantum outcome in just such a way as to create macrosopic differences in the physical world. The brain is the perfect environment for this to happen.

Pure quantum woo. Penrose/Hameroff style quantum interaction in microtubules is drowned by thermal noise (Tegmark's page on the subject is here (warning -- crappy Website layout with frames), and the others (such as Stapp's) do not appear to be testable (or even make useful predictions). If you have evidence to the contrary, please provide it.

One little change somewhere can trigger widescale changes elsewhere in the brain and ultimately result in different macroscopic outcomes.

So? We do not need quantum mechanics to explain critical depencence on initial conditions. Any non-trivial system which involves positive and negative feedback gets this for free -- we have to work hard to eliminate it. As someone who has programmed (and therefore debugged) computers, you should be well aware of this -- flip one bit in the wrong place, and your system will crash (or worse) start silently corrupting data.

I cannot give you a better answer than that. All I can do is make vague suggestions of how it could be conceivable. Actually finding out the nature of the relationship between neuroscience and quantum mechanics must be left to neuroscientists in collaboration with mathematicians and quantum physicists.

I don't think they will get anywhere by taking the quantum route. I think the question of subjectivity is much more amenable to exploration from an information-theoretic standpoint.

 

[Robin]

Yes, it observes. It also wills.

This thread is going nowhere, Belz. We are like the last two people left at the party when the sun is coming up and there's no alcohol left.

....unless anybody wants to talk about Kant.....

Well since I have conclusively refuted the central claim of your OP and you have not put up any defense other than denying you made the claim in the first place, then I would say the thread is pretty much closed.

Let me sum it up - the central claim in Geoff's OP:

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.

And yet you strenuously deny that you will ever be able to provide a definition of what "physical" means in this context. So your claim resolves to:

"we can tell that x does not have the property p, without first knowing what property p is."

That is a meaningless claim. Since the central claim in the OP is shown to be meaningless then the thread must be considered complete.

 

[articulett]

I don't speak philosophy--and before I studied science, I had a new age bent...so I speak a little "woo". But there are some really great podcasts here:
about the mind as scientifically perceived--justgeoff has me on ignore--and I don't think he wants to know this stuff anyway.

http://www.newscientist.com/podcast.ns

If you are not afraid of materialism and eager to find out what we are discovering regarding the "mind" I recommend the ones entitled:

Tapping into vision, thoughts and dreams
and Language, Brains and Culture
and Born to Believe

I don't know how it relates to philosophy, but scientists do not have this conundrum about mind and semantic games and redundancies and contradictions that geoff and hammy imagine. It's not even that complicated--but it is fascinating. And it is true--we can never disprove dualism--but it does seem superfluous --an unnecessary adjunct at this point--and it's becoming moreso, not less so. I would hope that peoples' beliefs don't keep them from learning the facts.

 

[articulett]

Nostrildummass predicts that someone will take it that I'm making an argument for Dualism or trying to sneak woo in the back door. If affirming the subjective life is woo, then I'm guilty. Let it come in the front door then.
But even the most hardcore of this forum's reductionists, including the one who said we are all "merely meat," don't treat their friends and family as classical billiard balls and prime cut. They treat persons as persons and know the meaning of compassion. That satisfies me.

Roadkill? Ok Carrion! LOL

Yes, I avoid all labels--it seems that those who label want to tell you what you believe or what you are--or just give you the label so they don't have to listen to you. It reminds me of Ann Coulter--and her association between "liberals" and "godless" which she then lumps in to the pile called "evil". I can think of plenty of liberals who are religious (Jimmy Carter) and plenty of Republicans who are godless (Christopher Hitchens) and a whole bunch of people who fall on some other spectrum in regards to one or both of those. But the point of labeling is just to define who to hate or whose views don't matter or who you don't want to read (see how many people dis Dennet or Dawkins though they haven't read them--I have no doubts it's because these men are outspoken atheists). Labels are for those playing semantic games--those who want moral superiority without having to provide a reason.

But no matter the names you call people or the lack of support for ones' views--it doesn't change the facts. Reality doesn't care what you call it or who you hate or what you want to be true.

 

[hammegk]

Originally Posted by JustGeoff :
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.

....the central claim in the OP is shown to be meaningless then the thread must be considered complete.

Is it correct that you aver you cannot tell a difference between your subjective experiences and a process in the 'physical' world?

.....it is true--we can never disprove dualism--...

Your statement makes no sense. It's not a question of disproving anything, although any interactive dualism I've ever heard of makes no, nil, zero logical sense.

My point that you continue to either not understand, or ignore, is that either choice of monism -- mind or matter -- is at least logically defensible, and that epistemological measures do not and cannot address the correctness, or falseness, of either assumption.

 

[Apathia]

Yes, I avoid all labels--it seems that those who label want to tell you what you believe or what you are--or just give you the label so they don't have to listen to you. It reminds me of Ann Coulter--and her association between "liberals" and "godless" which she then lumps in to the pile called "evil". I can think of plenty of liberals who are religious (Jimmy Carter) and plenty of Republicans who are godless (Christopher Hitchens) and a whole bunch of people who fall on some other spectrum in regards to one or both of those. But the point of labeling is just to define who to hate or whose views don't matter or who you don't want to read (see how many people dis Dennet or Dawkins though they haven't read them--I have no doubts it's because these men are outspoken atheists). Labels are for those playing semantic games--those who want moral superiority without having to provide a reason.

But no matter the names you call people or the lack of support for ones' views--it doesn't change the facts. Reality doesn't care what you call it or who you hate or what you want to be true.

Lables are used to rationalize dehumanizing. The way to humanity is shockingly expressed in the Tao te Ching:

Heaven and earth are ruthless, and treat the myriad creatures as straw dogs; the sage is ruthless, and treats the people as straw dogs.

The same intent was expressed by Jesus when he siad that any who would be his followers must hate mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers.

Remove the labels of discrimination and love the individual.

Thank you for your gracious response. I feel more welcome here and less dismayed at the absurdities going on in this thread.

 

[articulett]

Lables are used to rationalize dehumanizing. The way to humanity is shockingly expressed in the Tao te Ching:



The same intent was expressed by Jesus when he siad that any who would be his followers must hate mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers.

Remove the labels of discrimination and love the individual.

Thank you for your gracious response. I feel more welcome here and less dismayed at the absurdities going on in this thread.

Welcome. And I appreciate your contributions. These are old battles you are witnessing...they recur and get heated and then go away for a while. If someone hurts your feelings or seems brusk or unresponsive--chances are that person has a similar affect on others. Jump in. And don't worry about being a peacemaker--I think the participants are enjoying themselves no matter how irate they appear. And I rather like that I can "fight" online and be aggressive in a way that might get objects thrown at me in real life. In fact, I think it makes me tolerate the people in my actual reality a tad better.
Remember, you have as much right to voice your opinion as everybody else!
It's true! (that last line is in reference to a woo member who comes here to promote John Edwards and the like--she spouts a banality and them follows it with a smiley face and "it's true!")

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Well since I have conclusively refuted the central claim of your OP and you have not put up any defense other than denying you made the claim in the first place, then I would say the thread is pretty much closed.

Let me sum it up - the central claim in Geoff's OP:

And yet you strenuously deny that you will ever be able to provide a definition of what "physical" means in this context. So your claim resolves to:

"we can tell that x does not have the property p, without first knowing what property p is."

That is a meaningless claim. Since the central claim in the OP is shown to be meaningless then the thread must be considered complete.

Sure, jump from the first to the last post and ignore the 40-odd pages in between. Nothing like an gross oversimplification to wrap things up.

I cannot be bothered to continue repeating myself over and over and over again, even to respond to this sort of misrepresentation and failure to acknowledge the numerous occasions I have already responded to your point. This thread should have died two weeks ago and I very much doubt anybody else is still reading it. It was a foregone conclusion that this thread would end with a bunch of people claiming to have refuted everything I said. This always happens. Strangely enough, exactly the same thing occurs in the threads I start on creationist forums. It must be me.

 

[Belz...]

Consciousness as an epiphenomena has no causal power. I am not an epiphenomenalist.

I don't care what you're NOT, Geoff. Does the mind have causal power, yes or no ?

Neti, neti.

What the HELL does that mean, anyway ?

 

[Belz...]

Sure, jump from the first to the last post and ignore the 40-odd pages in between. Nothing like an gross oversimplification to wrap things up.

I cannot be bothered to continue repeating myself over and over and over again, even to respond to this sort of misrepresentation and failure to acknowledge the numerous occasions I have already responded to your point. This thread should have died two weeks ago and I very much doubt anybody else is still reading it. It was a foregone conclusion that this thread would end with a bunch of people claiming to have refuted everything I said. This always happens. Strangely enough, exactly the same thing occurs in the threads I start on creationist forums. It must be me.

Yep. Nothing like those gross oversimplifications.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't care what you're NOT, Geoff. Does the mind have causal power, yes or no ?

Yes, of course it does.

What the HELL does that mean, anyway ?

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

In Hinduism, and in particular Jnana Yoga, neti neti is a chant or mantra, meaning "not this, not this", or "neither this, nor that" (neti is sandhi from na iti "not so").

The purpose of the exercise is to negate conscious rationalisations. [...] It is also a sage view on the nature of the Divine, and especially on the attempts to capture and describe the essence of God. In this respect, the phrase succintly expresses the standpoint of negative theology.


In Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, Yajnavalkya is questioned by his students to describe God. He states "The Divine is not this and it is not that" (neti, neti).

Thus, the Divine is not real as we are real, nor is it unreal. The divine is not living in the sense humans live, nor is it dead. The Divine is not compassionate as we use the term, nor is it uncompassionate. And so on. We can never truly define God in words. All we can do is say, it isn't this, but also, it isn't that either". In the end, the student must transcend words to understand the nature of the Divine.

In this sense, neti-neti is not a denial. Rather, it is an assertion that whatever the Divine may be, when we attempt to capture it in human words, we must inevitably fall short, because we are limited in understanding, and words are limited in ability to express the transcendent.

We have spent much of this thread with various people trying to nail down definitions of the source of free will or "the subject". Both of these "things" are aspects of the Divine in Hinduism. It is not surprising that in attempting to nail down those definitions we have merely ended up with a long list of what the these "things" are not. It is not possible to capture the essence of the Divine using conscious rationalisations. Neti, neti, neti......

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Also relevant:

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

Negative theology - also known as the Via Negativa (Latin for "Negative Way") and Apophatic theology - is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation, to speak of God only in terms of what may not be said about God.

In brief, the attempt is to gain and express knowledge of God by describing what God is not (apophasis), rather than by describing what God is. The apophatic tradition is often allied with or expressed in tandem with the approach of mysticism, which focuses on a spontaneous or cultivated individual experience of the divine reality beyond the realm of ordinary perception, an experience often unmediated by the structures of traditional organized religion.

 

[nescafe]

I thought we were talking about the nature of consciousness here, not the nature of the Divine (if there is such a thing). Shoring up your position using theological arguments which are designed to be impossible to disprove is not exactly compelling.