The Problem With The Supernatural

[drkitten]

An illusion is still a thing that requires an explanation though.

Exactly.

 

[tsg]

... and equally nothing to suggest it.

Sure there is. Electromagnetic radiation of a specific wavelength strikes receptors in my eye which emits signals to my brain which causes a physical response. That physical response excites areas of my brain that store memories of previous experiences of that response. I have learned to associate that response with the word "red" which is itself a collection of responses to certain sounds (hearing the word spoken) and visual patterns (seeing it written down). The "what it is like"-ness of my perception of red is composed entirely of my previous experiences of perceiving red. That is, the physical response of seeing the color red is linked to the physical response of hearing and seeing the word "red". That perception is the result of physical and chemical processes in the brain.

Add to that the fact that no system known to be "purely physical" can be observed to exhibit qualia, and your assertion becomes even more shaky.

No system outside of ourselves can be observed to exhibit qualia, so that we can't observe it in a "purely physical" system is unsurprising and not meaningful.

 

[drkitten]

Electromagnetic radiation of a specific wavelength strikes receptors in my eye which emits signals to my brain which causes a physical response.

Yup. But since the experience of "seeing red" is not a physical, but a mental response, that's neither adequate nor, frankly, even relevant.

In fact, we've even got cases where the physical and mental responses can be clearly separated, as in "blindsight" patients.

That physical response excites areas of my brain that store memories of previous experiences of that response.

Again, you're confusing the physical storage in the brain with the mental experience of the memories; they're not identical, as the blindsight experiments have shown.

No system outside of ourselves can be observed to exhibit qualia, so that we can't observe it in a "purely physical" system is unsurprising and not meaningful.

Half right. It's unsurprising, but it's deeply meaningful.

 

[tsg]

Yup. But since the experience of "seeing red" is not a physical, but a mental response, that's neither adequate nor, frankly, even relevant.

In fact, we've even got cases where the physical and mental responses can be clearly separated, as in "blindsight" patients.

You are going to have to explain to me what that is.

Half right. It's unsurprising, but it's deeply meaningful.

We can't observe qualia in systems that are known to exhibit it. How is not being able to observe it anywhere else meaningful?

 

[drkitten]

You are going to have to explain to me what that is.

Delighted. There's a Wikipedia article on it, too, if you need further information.

Basically, though -- people with particular kinds of damage to their brain lose the ability to "perceive" information in (parts of) their visual field, even though they can still process and act upon that information. They lose the awareness (qualia), but not necessarily the information-processing ability. For example, somene who loses the right half of his visual field might be shown two pictures of near-identical houses, one of which has flames leaping out of the right half. The subject will swear himself blue that there is no perceptible difference between the two pictures, but if you put him in a forced choice situation with question like "which house would you prefer to live in," he will pick the one that isn't on fire. You can show him a piece of paper that he swears is unmarked, but he will guess (correctly) what the image on the right side of the paper is. And so forth.

He's not lost the ability to process information, but he's lost the awareness; specifically the qualia.

We can't observe qualia in systems that are known to exhibit it.

How do you know a system other than yourself exhibits qualia?

 

[tsg]

Delighted. There's a Wikipedia article on it, too, if you need further information.

Basically, though -- people with particular kinds of damage to their brain lose the ability to "perceive" information in (parts of) their visual field, even though they can still process and act upon that information. They lose the awareness (qualia), but not necessarily the information-processing ability. For example, somene who loses the right half of his visual field might be shown two pictures of near-identical houses, one of which has flames leaping out of the right half. The subject will swear himself blue that there is no perceptible difference between the two pictures, but if you put him in a forced choice situation with question like "which house would you prefer to live in," he will pick the one that isn't on fire. You can show him a piece of paper that he swears is unmarked, but he will guess (correctly) what the image on the right side of the paper is. And so forth.

He's not lost the ability to process information, but he's lost the awareness; specifically the qualia.

I found the Wiki article after I had posted. I'm not a neuroscientist but it seems to me this phenomenon is adequately explained by physical processes. Some areas of the brain are being triggered by the stimulus while others, that should be, are not. That this is caused by damage to the visual cortex supports that. In other words, awareness of perception of a stimulus in a healthy brain is adequately explained by a physical response in the brain. The absence of awareness the stimulus is also adequately explained by the absence of a physical response in the brain.

How do you know a system other than yourself exhibits qualia?

I can't, and that's the point. I can't observe it in others, I can only assume that they experience similar responses to stimuli that I do. That they are capable of communicating that experience to me in some fashion is the only evidence I have. I assume they do because they tell me they do. But that doesn't mean the assumption that other systems don't because they don't, or can't, tell me they do is valid. That is, my failure to observe it where I believe it should be makes my failure to observe it where I don't know if it exists meaningless, the same way my inability to observe microbes on my skin with the naked eye doesn't mean they aren't there.

 

[Senex]

DrKitten is responding to everyone but me on this thread I see. That's OK. I'm wearing my grass skirt and I am just about to perform my woo dance against DrKitten's soul. First he will lose his ability to have an erection hehehehe.... He can PM asking me asking me where he can deposit money in my account to remove the curse. I may or may not help him out.

That's the problem with owning woo like a soul. You are vulnerable to anti-woo measures like the performance I'm doing that makes me type with one hand right now. Who am I kidding. I always type with one hand. That info isn't going to make your next sex partner any happier

 

[The Atheist]

I don't believe in souls -- Let's get ready to Rumble...

Sorry to drop in so late, but I think that Drkitten may believe, similar to me, that there no evidence for souls, but private evidence for "consciousness".
Why are some of you accusing the Good Dr of believing in wooish things?

And I unsubscribed from the thread, inadvertently, but here I am to battle back into the fray!

Such as it is.

Senex. It all depends upon what label you wish to use, if indeed, you wish to use one. "Soul" or "consciousness", call it what you will, but do you agree that humans have "something" extra than animals?

My own opinion is that there is a difference, but how subtle the difference is needs to be defined first.

 

[The Atheist]

If you suggest that 9.1 was conscious, but 9.0 wasn't, then presumably there's something that happened in between, something that we can point to as the cause of consciousness, and
we've got the unsolved and potentially unsolvable problem of how qualia (such as consciousness) can emerge from the purely physical.

Surely, the leap is no further than that from plants to animals, just different versions of the same thing; Jimbo's 16:32 bit. I don't quite get why qualia should be unsolvable. You say this, in another post:

I believe not only that I don't know, but that you don't know -- and that you cannot know

I'm interested to know why you think that way.

Try this:

Human emotion is simply an upgraded version of self-preservation and evolutionary instincts for the survival of the species.

No matter which way you look at it, consciousness, cognition, qualia - what are any but the brain's response to stimulus of one kind or another. No stimulus = no activity. Would a human baby, deprived of as much sensory input as possible, no colour, light, sound, contact, develop "consciousness" as we understand it?

Why does there need to be a dividing line? Seems as though we could be tricking ourselves into looking for something which isn't actually there. Just like god. To me, there is little difference in me "knowing" that the earth revolves daily on its axis and a tree "knowing" it's autumn and time for all the leaves to fall off. They are both the result of observable and measurable processes.

Yup. But the flip side is the implication that if we can't create an artificial "soul," then it has a supernatural aspect. Obviously, we can't prove inability to do something. But the longer we work on something without success, the more likely its impossibility becomes. Most scientists are currently convinced that we can't build perpetual motion machines....

Poor comparison, I think. PM requires changes to the laws of physics, finding physical evidence of a "soul" might be one discovery away from reality.

 

[articulett]

Well, you were talking about evidence,meaning what's evident. And complaining about special pleading earlier.

Most people, seeing a car totalled in accident, don't go off looking for a loophole by saying "maybe it's essence of carness is floating around somewhere".

Exactly. I think that what is evident is that people have been making up entities that are invisible and immeasurable for eons... including souls. I think consciousness can't imagine not existing, and so it is ready to believe in the afterlife... and then religions tells you that you can suffer forever, but they have the key to save you...

I hate to agree with The Atheist... but neurological studies do find that our sense of selves has very much to do with the language portion of our brains... we evolve to narrate our lives, so to speak... and when things don't make sense, we confabulate answers. We've learned a lot about this through people with brain damage and split brain studies.

Moreover we have no evidence that any kind of consciousness of any sort can exist absent a brain-- not a natural or supernatural consciousness. We've had eons of belief and eons of testing and hopes for it to be "true"--

I think the growing consensus is that souls are an illusion of the brain. It took humans a long time to realize they are their brains... that intellect and emotion and memory reside there-- 100 years ago, we did not know about DNA... now look how much we know. If souls existed as anything material separate from a living brain-- I think we would have discovered some key clues by now. Instead, just like DNA confirms evolution, repeated studied and imaging and testing of the brain shows that consciousness evolved from the brain because it gave the species that have it, a survival and reproductive advantage. Just having a simple "will to live" and/or fear of death is a good means of keeping a creature going when the going gets tough.