The relationship between science and materialism

[UndercoverElephant]

I wasn't asking about them. Your idea should stand on its own, not be presented solely as an alternative to these.

Yes, it should stand on its own. But I think people need to understand why I rejected materialism and idealism before they'll take my system seriously. People also keep confusing my system for the other systems, so I have to contrast them.

On the bright side, I think I am beginning to understand your point of view a bit better. I just think it is no improvement whatsoever. You are taking an appearance of dualism in the world as more or less a given. There is no need to do this, and it weakens your stance.

In what way?
It means I don't have to redefine the dictionary. That's a bonus, not a drawback.

You are making an assumption here, although you do not actually state it. The appearance of dualism is, quite arguably, a function of our language. You are trying to jettison the language as meaningful (fine), but trying to keep the "appearance of dualism" as fundamental (not fine).

The language is perfectly meaningfull. It just doesn't say anything about the ultimate nature of reality. It DOES say something about the way we experience reality.

I do think we agree more than we disagree, but your choice to attempt to describe X in language that was intended to describe Y&Z only is a bad move.

But I haven't described X in that language. If by "X" you mean the noumenal world or my "neutral entity" then I have NOT used the the language of Y&Z to describe X. I invented new terms to describe X. I use the language of Y & Z to describe Y & Z!

How can that not be an improvement?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Yes, it should stand on its own. But I think people need to understand why I rejected materialism and idealism before they'll take my system seriously. People also keep confusing my system for the other systems, so I have to contrast them.

Perhaps we are. So could you continue describing your system so that we can see?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm sorry, but that is just passing the buck. What I am getting at is what is the essence that distinguishes a mind from a physical process that, for want of a better term because we don't have the language for it, "has feeling going on"?

Physical processes don't have "feelings going on". That's why you don't have a term for it. You, in particular, should be locked up for crimes against the english dictionary. Brain processes do not "feel". Subjective is not objective. Minds aren't matter. 1st-person is not 3rd-person. Not ever. Not linguistically. Not in reality.

If you get to the heart of it, isn't feeling at the core?

No. Subjectivity is at the core. The Subject is at the core.

Your anaesthetic and valium example simply means that you don't understand what actually happens when such drugs are given. There is still feeling going on if you are still conscious.

No, wasp, I understand anaesthetics just fine. When I had my tooth drilled last week, there wasn't any feeling going on.

In other words, you have a homonculus at the center of your system. OK, let's hear the explanation of how.

The homonculus isn't a thing. It's what I called Being/Zero.

I expect that the interation you will attempt between your clearly dualistic framework......

YOURS is the dualistic framework.

is through the "fact" that mind and matter are aspects of the neutral substance. After all that is what neutral monism largely consists in. But, of course, I could be wrong. There are several problems that arise from that, but I'm sure we'll get to them.

What problems?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Why on Earth would she think that?

Because her objection was not that humans are fundamentally different from computers, but that the very question "what is it like?" is nonsense. Therefore it is nonsensical to ask it of humans.

Regarding your description of neutral monism: I'm done being treated like a child. Stop asking me whether I'm on board. Either continue or don't. You're not going to clear up the current arguments without continuing.

~~ Paul

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

When I had my tooth drilled last week, there wasn't any feeling going on.

There wasn't any pain somatosensation going on. That is not the same thing as no feeling going on. Local anaestetics do not eradicate all somatosensation, so even from that persepctive there is feeling. We have many more feelings than that. Valium itself produces a type of feeling. It is simply different from native feeling without the drug.

You, in particular, should be locked up for crimes against the english dictionary.

Look, you can rail against me all you want. I was quite clear that the language we use to discuss this issue is inadequate. We all use dualistic language. What I am describing is not dualistic. It is almost impossible to describe adequately because of our language. That is why I am trying to impart the concept of it. You have to see past the language and begin to see "brain processes" not as the noun clause that it is but as a verb.

The homonculus isn't a thing. It's what I called Being/Zero.

Go on. Explain. Could we leave the invective at the door in the future please?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

OK,

I'll now try to re-explain the opening post of the other thread. Hopefully this time it won't be quite so incomprehensible

I need to specify:

a) the nature of the neutral entities
b) the relationship between the neutral entities and "mind"
c) the relationship between the neutral entities and "matter"

Here goes:

a) The nature of the neutral entities.

Kant says we can know nothing of the noumenon. I disagree. I think we can know that it's behaviour is mathematical in nature. This we can infer from the fact that all of it's physical manifestations behave in ways that can be described by mathematical laws. That is why I called the neutral system "0-mathematical" - because it seems to be mathematical and there is Zero/Being holding it all together. Beyond that, there's really no point in calling the neutral entities anything other than neutral entity/entities (or noumenon/noumena). Other systems which map onto mine may well wish to make more claims about the neutral system. I'm not going to do so here.

b) What “mind” is.

Whilst the parts of the neutral entity (NE) do not directly correspond to physical reality (they aren't "physical objects"), they do indirectly correspond (they are the causes of experiences of physical objects). There is potential for confusion here. There seem to be two ways we can talk of what "causes" our experience. There is the NE-chairlike-thing, and there is a brain process. The relationship between NE-chairlike-thing and brain process is NOT the same as the relationship between brain process and the mental experience of a chair. We don't "observe" brain processes in the way we observe physical chairs. We can only observe brain processes by cutting a hole in our head and sitting in front of a mirror. So, corresponding to the two physicalist uses of "physical" we have two mixed up uses of "physical brain". But now we can clear up the confusion. The physical brain, according to my system, is the brain in the mirror - NOT the noumenal-brain-like-thing which is the proximal cause of mental experiences. So we have to restate the relationship between brains and minds. Subjective experiences are NOT "brain processes" because brains are phenomenal, life-world, "physical" things. Instead, the content of subjective experiences is being determined by the state of the noumenal-brain-like-thing i.e. that ACTUAL noumenal "brain" that really exists and NOT the brain in the mirror. But the noumenal brain-like-thing isn't sufficient on it's own to produce the mind-and-matter experience of the world. We also need Being. "Being" takes the place of the homunculus. It is the subject. It is YOU. YOU ARE.

 

[Darat]

I'm going to take this step by step so when I come to something I don't understand I will stop and ask about it.

...snip..This we can infer from the fact that all of it's physical manifestations behave in ways that can be described by mathematical laws.

...snip....

Is this one of your worldview's givens or can you prove it?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Darat,

Science suggests this is true. You should already know that.

Geoff

 

[chriswl]

Correct. Brain processes are neccesary but insufficient conditions for minds.

Which, even if it were true, still doesn't refute my point that the mental is entirely dependent on the physical for its existence. There are physical constraints that must be satisfied for mind to have any existence at all i.e. the "necessary conditions". The reverse does not apply - there could be matter but no mind. Until evolution invented sentient beings this was in fact the case.

I don't remember suggesting that [there could be brains that are not conscious, even though they are indistinguishable from brains that are]

But the logical possibility that they could exist is implied by your statement "Brain processes are neccesary but insufficient conditions for minds." Observing a brain and its brain processes does not tell us that it is conscious, those observations are "insuficient" to tell us that, agreed?

Of course we both agree that actually all properly functioning human brains are capable of consciousness. But what makes them so? I believe it is because consciousness is nothing more than brain processes, so obviously brains are conscious, by definition. How do you explain that brains that might conceivably have been just non-conscious machines have actually been imbued with consciousness? A benevolent God perhaps?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Which, even if it were true, still doesn't refute my point that the mental is entirely dependent on the physical for its existence.

It does if you know what "neccesary" and "sufficient" mean.

There are physical constraints that must be satisfied for mind to have any existence at all i.e. the "necessary conditions". The reverse does not apply - there could be matter but no mind.

WRONG.

Of course we both agree that actually all properly functioning human brains are capable of consciousness. But what makes them so? I believe it is because consciousness is nothing more than brain processes.....

Sorry, but....

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Why is it simply not the case that we use two very different words for the same type of "thing" (yes, I know this is dualistic language again)?

Observing the brain by opening it up and looking at the neurons firing is a third person account of the process. But those neurons are doing something. From the inside, the same "observation" is what we call experiencing. Yes, I know this is dualistic again because it implies an observer, but I already provided a neural system that in its functioning works as an "observer" (the use of which word is obviously misleading).

 

[Darat]

Darat,

Science suggests this is true. You should already know that.

Geoff

So to be clear you say it is not a given but "proved"?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Why is it simply not the case that we use two very different words for the same type of "thing" (yes, I know this is dualistic language again)?

In a way, we do. That isn't really the mistake that is made by physicalism. The mistake made by physicalism is to claim that this "thing" is physical - i.e. to claim that one half of Descartes dualism is true. They are one and the same "thing". Your logical problems only start when you claim that this "thing" is physical i.e. when you assert physicalism as an ontological truth. Read my post describing the correct relationship between minds, physical brains and noumenal brain-like-things.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So to be clear you say it is not a given but "proved"?

I said it was SUGGESTED. "Proof" is hard to come by.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Wow, too much all at once.

Is there a noumenal chair? If so, what is its basis? Is it the same basis as the noumenal brain?

What does it mean for Being to experience when it is not a thing? And if it does experience, how can you say it's the same category of thing as the Neutral?

~~ Paul

 

[Darat]

I said it was SUGGESTED. "Proof" is hard to come by.

I understand that proof is hard to come by (that's why I quoted it originally).

However if someone could prove this was not the case then your worldview would be shown to be wrong? I am pressing you on this point because I need to understand the underpinnings of your worldview before I can even try to understand it.

For the sake of progress can we sum it up as: "This is one of the assumptions I make (e.g. it's an axiom of my argument), however I believe there is evidence that indicates that assumption is correct"?


(I'm not playing games by trying to get you into a pre-determined position where I can shout out "But what about THIS!?!" just trying to understand your explanation.)

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Darat

In the materialist system, naturalism is built in to the structure. It's defined to be true before any evidence of any type is actually assessed. In my system it is defined to be unknown and you can never prove it is true because in essence it is an attempt to prove a negative. You cannot prove that supernaturalism is not true. All you can do is say that none of the clear and undisputed empirical evidence available up till this point indicates that supernaturalism is true, and that therefore is a justified and reasonable belief, informed by science, that supernaturalism is not true.

But you cannot prove this.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I am pressing you on this point because I need to understand the underpinnings of your worldview before I can even try to understand it.

My system is underpinned by nothing. Literally.

 

[cyborg]

No. Unlike the cartesian materialists (which is the position being defended by ALL the computationalists in this thread), I have no need of the concept of P-zombies.

Nor do I. If anything the p-zombie concept shows how conciousness cannot be a fundamental property of reality - it's something we bestow upon other beings as we see fit, much as we would attribute something else courage and much like concepts like it we could construct similar c-zombies and the like.

Your mind nonsense only continues to confuse this matter.

Does a chimp have a mind? You may not argue it's not concious but then how do you know that? How do you know there isn't a mind hiding in there? After all the brains of lower orders of life are no more fully understood than our own. You've already told us computers can't because we understand their computational processes, no matter what their appearance might be. Does the mind disappear from a human if the brain is damaged so conciousness stops? What about human development? At what stage from fertilization to development does the mind enter the child?

Have you got a mind detector on you? You still haven't answered this question and without a decent explanation of how you arrive at the conclusion as to what does and does not have a mind you're engaging in more ontology than you can shake a stick at. Like I said earlier you might as well replace mind with soul because the way you're using the concept they're interchangeable.

 

[Taffer]

Physical processes don't have "feelings going on". That's why you don't have a term for it. You, in particular, should be locked up for crimes against the english dictionary. Brain processes do not "feel". Subjective is not objective. Minds aren't matter. 1st-person is not 3rd-person. Not ever. Not linguistically. Not in reality.

Ghost in the Machine.

Ghost in the Shell. Also, False Dichotomy. Also Sentence Fragment. (As were those ).

Oh dear, this is embarrassing. Ghost in the Machine. That's what I get for manga-posting. It'll be the death of me yet. I'm on the wagon, honest.