White Cat Experiment

[MRC_Hans]

I think we need to ask what property material things have which immaterial things cannot have. Isn't location one of these? If something doesn't occupy a particular location in our Universe, then it must be immaterial, right?

That depends on what you mean by position. What is the position of a photon?

In that case, where are dreams and thoughts located? Not in our brains or our heads, only the physical processes exist there.

Dreams and thoughts ARE the physical processes (as per my position).

What other properties do material things have? Weight, size?

How much do thoughts weigh? How big are they?

They are a (very large) number of electrical impulses. How much do the bits in your computer weight? How big are they?

Another thing that is common to all material things is the ability to be experienced and interacted with by anyone, at least in theory. However, you can't experience my thoughts, and you can't interact with them either.

I can. I can scan your brain and see what you think. At present, only a very rough picture, but still a picture. I can send an electrical impulse into your brain, and make you perceive certain things. Our present knowledge and technology only allows us to interact with brains in a very coarse way, but interact we can.

When I picture a white cat in my head, only I experience it, no one else can.

When my screen-less computer recalls a picture of a cat, nobody else can see it.

Can we say the same about any material things?

There is a stone on a planet on the other side of the galaxy. Nobody can see it, nobody has ever seen it, and nobody will ever see it. Is it not material?

----

I should just add, that I don't think we can even argue that thoughts could possibly be thought of as material things by any stretch of the imagination.

Nevertheless several of us are arguing just that.

I think from the materialist's perspective it's more reasonable to argue that thoughts don't actually exist, but are just illusions, rather than trying to claim they are material.

And, pray tell, what are illusions, from a materialist's perspective ?

Hans

 

[Darat]

...snip...

The most interesting thing about this whole thought experiment is that it demonstrates that we can only truly confirm the existence of the mental phenomena we experience individually. As soon as we take it beyond us and say someone else experiences mental phenomena then we need to be able to prove it somehow and as far as I can tell no materialist I've thrown this out to has been able to give a real comprehensible physical theory that proves mental phenomena to exist.

...snip...

But there is.

You and I both make an assumption that a "real world" exists independently from either of us.

We see and experience other people in this world, we note how they react to stimulus, we compare that against how we react to the same stimulus and on the whole most people react the same way. From that observation it is a reasonable inference that those other people experience the same internal, mental experiences as I do.

It is no more (when considered in these terms) mysterious or needing incredible assumptions then accepting that magnetism is "real". (E.g. something else we can’t experience "first hand".)

We can and do indirectly observe mental phenomena. (Indeed the fact that I am responding to your posts, that we are communicating is again strong evidence that similar processes happen within our heads.)

 

[hammegk]

A better question to ask here would be, how do you know for sure that the person who's brain we 'stimulated' is actually perceiving the mental phenomena they claim? Are you simply going by faith?

Faith? Of course not ... just accepting anecdotal evidence as fact.

The (unverifiable for content) phenomena we claim to be dreaming fits in your category too.

 

[Humphreys]

I think we need to ask what property material things have which immaterial things cannot have. Isn't location one of these? If something doesn't occupy a particular location in our Universe, then it must be immaterial, right?

That depends on what you mean by position. What is the position of a photon?

No one can answer this question at this time, as far as I know.

Doesn't Quantum Physics pose a bit of a problem for materialism at this moment, for this very reason?

In that case, where are dreams and thoughts located? Not in our brains or our heads, only the physical processes exist there.

Dreams and thoughts ARE the physical processes (as per my position).

But surely that's crazy, isn't it?

We can see they are different things. You can observe the physical processes in my brain, but you can't observe my actual experiences - the result of those processes. You can see the physical processes that cause me to experience the picture of a white cat, but you can't actually experience the same white cat that I do just by observing those processes.

The experience must be different from the proccess in this way at least. I can't see how you can say they are the same things.

Had you never seen a white cat in your life, could you learn what a white cat looks like just by obesrving processes in my brain? Of course not!

What you're saying is akin to me describing England to you, and you then claiming you've been to and seen some of England because I told you all about it! No, visiting England is different to having it described to you, and viewing processes in someone's brain is different to experiencing those processes.

When I picture a white cat in my head, only I experience it, no one else can.

When my screen-less computer recalls a picture of a cat, nobody else can see it.

No one else? You're calling your computer sentient now? Your computer sees nothing. It recalls nothing. False analogy.

There is a stone on a planet on the other side of the galaxy. Nobody can see it, nobody has ever seen it, and nobody will ever see it. Is it not material?

It's viewable in theory, so yes. You're being ridiculous now.

Consciousness, however we ever manage to explain it, is like nothing else in existence.

 

[hammegk]

I should just add, that I don't think we can even argue that thoughts could possibly be thought of as material things by any stretch of the imagination.

I think from the materialist's perspective it's more reasonable to argue that thoughts don't actually exist, but are just illusions, rather than trying to claim they are material.

The materialist mindset in a nutshell. Ignore the reality of thought -- the one thing *you* actually know exists -- and propose a non-thinking 'something' as being 'real'.

 

[P.S.A.]

It's viewable in theory, so yes. You're being ridiculous now.

Consciousness, however we ever manage to explain it, is like nothing else in existence.

Incorrect. If we were to allow experimentation upon the human mind to the level we allow it upon animal minds, we'd already be challenging this assumption. Consciousness is only unviewable to others because we are not prepared to open up people's heads and really have a poke around inside.

As it is, we can already artificially stimulate emotion in rats, to the point that they will starve rather than stop pressing the button we've rigged to make them feel ecstasy. And more besides... do a Google search for "rat brain stimulation electrodes" and see for yourself what we can already do.

The next step is to create an interface which allows the data to flow the other way across the connection, so we can recieve information from the brain telling us that it's happy, rather than us telling it that it is. We are starting to approach this now, indeed it's even possible for human beings, even without electrodes shoved into their brains, to direct a cursor across a screen using thought;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4074869.stm

And from there, the next step would be to wire rat to rat so one rat could send out the happiness signal, and the other rat could recieve it and have it's own happiness triggered... And then the second rat would be experiencing the emotions of the other exactly. The problem of linking two rat brains directly will no doubt be solved in the near future.

Thought is just a high order of complexity than emotion, and will take longer to work out the basic mechanisms for. And ethics may prevent us approaching it quite as quickly or brutally for humans as we do to rats and monkeys. But we ARE approaching describing and creating such experiences...
Indeed, the reason why anyone still believes in the idea that consciousness is immaterial is actually one of the most powerful arguments FOR a material basis for consciousness; because until now, the physical evidence of other's thoughts simply wasn't there, and the human brain builds up it's thought patterns from things that it has experienced... or in this case, that it hasn't. Until now, that is, as we start to peel back the barriers between minds, one rat head at a time.

But if you still persist in arguing that consciousness is qualitatively different from material existance, would you care to tell us either how the physical can interact with the immaterial whilst still leaving both distinctly seperate... or perhaps which part of mankind is the immaterial part?

 

[Filip Sandor]

Extend the computer and screen analogy a bit further.

Lets say we just have the black box, no screen. How do we know what is going on inside the computer?

Well we don’t but we can measure some of the signals going into the computer and some of the signals coming out and from that we can start to do experiments e.g. apply a voltage here and this signal out always doubles in value. From those results we can start to make some deductions of what is going on inside the computer even though we have no way to view the computer display.

Perhaps (and perhaps not of course) this is somewhat similar to the stage we are at with our understanding of the human mind (“I”), e.g. we can't see the display ("I") however we can start to make deductions from what happens when I put something in one end and measure what comes out the other. And an even more tenuous perhaps is that in the future some genius might be able to work out how to translate the outputs and hey viola "I" is displayed on the screen.

The problem with the computer analogy is that it assumes the code we assign to the physical processes in it actually exists 'inside' the computer. This is not so, I'll show you another example to illustrate the problem better:

Imagine that two primitive tribes, separated by thousands of miles (so they have no contact with eachother) are in the beginning stages of developing a system of writing using symbols. Undoubtably their symbols will vary, but let's assume that both tribes will use such basic symbols as a circle, square and triangle.

Tribe A defines these three symbols like this:

circle means "young"
triangle means "old"
square means "hut"

Tribe B defines them like this:

circle means "moon"
triangle means "mountain"
square means "dance"

If you walk into Tribe A with a sheet of paper that has three symbols written on it - a circle, triangle and square and show it to someone they will see the words young, old and hut 'encoded' on the sheet of paper.

Now if you take that same sheet of paper and show it to a member of Tribe B they will read the words moon, mountain and dance 'encoded' on the sheet of paper.

But who is right? Are those words really encoded, physically, on the paper... or does the 'code' exist somewhere else?? Does a computer hard-drive really contain a picture of a white cat??

In my opinion the answer is quite plain and simple - there is no complex scientific mumbo-jumbo required here. What is required is a re-evaluation of what we mean when we speak of a physical code.

 

[Filip Sandor]

Imagining a ‘white cat’ is not a phenomenon for which there is no valid physical theory. Still waiting.

I am still waiting too....

Yes - already been discussed in this thread so I'm not going to repeat it.

Ossai

That's funny cause I honestly didn't think you were following the thread that closely, but I already refuted the "computer has images encoded in it" theory. See my last response to Darat.

 

[Filip Sandor]

No contradiction at all. It is like running Excel on a PC and a MAC. The codes are different because the CPUs are different. Both codes are right. The PC code is right for a PC and the MAC code is right for a MAC.

Hans, in my example there is only one code bearing structure.

Nonsense. Since our brains are not quite identical, our codes are likely to be different. Both versions are right.

See above... also see my last response to Darat where I posted a very clear breakdown of why the 'contradiction' exists, if you don't agree with me that there is no physical evidence of this 'code' I hope you agree at least on the last point I made in that post. On the other hand, I would like you to tell me if there is anything about my example to Darat that you don't understand.

 

[Filip Sandor]

Faith? Of course not ... just accepting anecdotal evidence as fact.

Is the evidence physical?

 

[H3LL]

I'm not comfortable with your white cat analogy. So some of my thoughts.

May I suggest a more common experience that I'm sure we all have had.

When reading a book, we all generate our own concept of what the characters look, sound and act like.

Watching a movie of the book, many may comment that the characters were not as they imagined them.

I think it was Mercutio or Dr. A, that commented on this board that members sounded different in real life to how he imagined them speaking on this board. And some, even after meeting them, reverted back to his imagined memory.

None of the concepts are encoded, nor is an image stored, neither does it make the imagined thing real.

I understand that our thoughts are constructed from a tool box of other ideas and experiences, so intricately connected as to be impossible to define the root or beginning.

A white cat is understood by constructing experiences such as:

White
Fur
Small
Animal
Not a dog
etc.

Each of those have their own collection of things from the tool box to define them.

No two tool boxes are the same, and no definitive answer to the contents of the tool box has been found because of this.

White to me may be connected to "Not black".
To you it may be "One of many colours"
To another "The colour of snow"
To another, all of the above.

Studies of people that are deficient in common input mechanisms, such as blind or deaf people have shown they have their own "tool box" very different from other people.

The book "Language Instinct" (Pinder, I think) looks at this concept in some detail and draws many conclusions from other studies that express similar ideas.

No "image" of anything exists in the mind, just collections of concepts drawing on collections of concepts drawing on collections of concepts.

I have even heard it suggested that traumatic experiences, so outside any collection of experience or concepts is what may cause mental shut-down for some people and nothing will connect to resolve an explanation of the experience.

 

[RandFan]

No "image" of anything exists in the mind, just collections of concepts drawing on collections of concepts drawing on collections of concepts.

I agree that the notion of a cat is a concept that has meaning far and above any image. When I was taking computer science at the university and we were discussing neural networks my teachers asked each to define "bird". Difficult since birds range from humming bird to ostrich to penguin to kiwi. After coming up with a working definition that included the major attributes we then tried to move beyond definition and create delineate meaning beyond wings, beak and feathers. Answers included freedom and imprisonment. Why? Because the bird brought to that person the story of the bird man of Alcatraz. But the bird represented freedom to the bird man. Death? The raven and the black bird are iconic of death (see Poe). The Phoenix mythology brought out rebirth and chicks are iconic of birth. Dove for peace and Hawk for war. So we have freedom, slavery, death, birth, peace, war. From there the meaning of bird branched far and fast.

Like the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon one can move from any concept to another in a few short steps. The meaning of bird isn't simply a definition found in the dictionary or even all of the books written by all of the ornithologists throughout history.

The meaning of bird is fluid and diverse and depends on POV. However when I picture a cat I almost always create an image in my mind. I see a tail, the head, feet and whiskers. It is an image that I could transfer to paper and others would agree that my drawing is in fact a cat.

What if instead of cat we suggested an image of a 5 pointed star like the ones found on the American flag. Is there any question that any of us who had seen such a star would not have the same image?

If the above is rambling and incoherent it is because I am posting drunk. I can tell I'm a bit over the limit because my spell check is stopping on every other word.

 

[Humphreys]

Incorrect. If we were to allow experimentation upon the human mind to the level we allow it upon animal minds, we'd already be challenging this assumption. Consciousness is only unviewable to others because we are not prepared to open up people's heads and really have a poke around inside.

As it is, we can already artificially stimulate emotion in rats, to the point that they will starve rather than stop pressing the button we've rigged to make them feel ecstasy. And more besides... do a Google search for "rat brain stimulation electrodes" and see for yourself what we can already do.

This kind of experimentation is irrelevant to the discussion. What we're doing is manipulating the physical processes which cause certain emotions in rats, we are not interacting with, observing, or experiencing the actual emotions themselves.

You can't answer this by saying experiences are the processes, because as I tried to explain before, clearly they are very different things.

The next step is to create an interface which allows the data to flow the other way across the connection, so we can recieve information from the brain telling us that it's happy, rather than us telling it that it is. We are starting to approach this now, indeed it's even possible for human beings, even without electrodes shoved into their brains, to direct a cursor across a screen using thought;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4074869.stm

And from there, the next step would be to wire rat to rat so one rat could send out the happiness signal, and the other rat could recieve it and have it's own happiness triggered... And then the second rat would be experiencing the emotions of the other exactly. The problem of linking two rat brains directly will no doubt be solved in the near future.

Again, how is this all relevant? Now we're passing data between brains, and then we're replicating physical processes in one brain, in another so that they'll experience the same things.

Even so, one rat's experience will be his, and the other rat's experience will be personal to him. We don't even know for a fact that they would be experiencing the same things, because we can't observe experiences themselves!

Let's say we find a way of stimulating your brain to make you see the colour red, then we replicate that physical process in my brain, and I report seeing red too. How do you, or either of us, know that we've actually experienced the same colour? How do we know that my red is the same as your red?

We don't, and we can't, because consciousness, unlike anything else in the world, is not viewable from the outside. We only know that consciousness exists because we're actually conscious.

Thought is just a high order of complexity than emotion, and will take longer to work out the basic mechanisms for. And ethics may prevent us approaching it quite as quickly or brutally for humans as we do to rats and monkeys. But we ARE approaching describing and creating such experiences...

Physical processes, not experiences.

Indeed, the reason why anyone still believes in the idea that consciousness is immaterial is actually one of the most powerful arguments FOR a material basis for consciousness; because until now, the physical evidence of other's thoughts simply wasn't there, and the human brain builds up it's thought patterns from things that it has experienced... or in this case, that it hasn't. Until now, that is, as we start to peel back the barriers between minds, one rat head at a time.

But if you still persist in arguing that consciousness is qualitatively different from material existance, would you care to tell us either how the physical can interact with the immaterial whilst still leaving both distinctly seperate... or perhaps which part of mankind is the immaterial part?

No. I have no idea. I don't have an explanation of my own, but I think I can pretty easily pick gaping holes in yours.

If you insist that consciousness is material, and not any different, in principle, to other material things in the Universe, can you name me another thing that can only be experienced, and not observed?

 

[Filip Sandor]

I'm not comfortable with your white cat analogy. So some of my thoughts.

May I suggest a more common experience that I'm sure we all have had.

I'm not very good at giving examples so I welcome all the help I can get.

When reading a book, we all generate our own concept of what the characters look, sound and act like.

Watching a movie of the book, many may comment that the characters were not as they imagined them.

I think it was Mercutio or Dr. A, that commented on this board that members sounded different in real life to how he imagined them speaking on this board. And some, even after meeting them, reverted back to his imagined memory.

Ok...

None of the concepts are encoded, nor is an image stored, neither does it make the imagined thing real.

I don't know what you're trying to say... can you elaborate?

No "image" of anything exists in the mind, just collections of concepts drawing on collections of concepts drawing on collections of concepts.

What are concepts? Are they just physical processes in the brain?

No offense to you H3LL, but I find it so interesting (actually disturbing is a better word) that materialists feel it is totally ok to super-impose 'concepts' over the physical processes in the brain as a priori simply because "things happen in the brain and the body moves and makes sounds," but they feel that it is not ok for religious people to believe in a God. Interesting indeed.

 

[Filip Sandor]

I agree that the notion of a cat is a concept that has meaning far and above any image. When I was taking computer science at the university and we were discussing neural networks my teachers asked each to define "bird". Difficult since birds range from humming bird to ostrich to penguin to kiwi. After coming up with a working definition that included the major attributes we then tried to move beyond definition and create delineate meaning beyond wings, beak and feathers. Answers included freedom and imprisonment. Why? Because the bird brought to that person the story of the bird man of Alcatraz. But the bird represented freedom to the bird man. Death? The raven and the black bird are iconic of death (see Poe). The Phoenix mythology brought out rebirth and chicks are iconic of birth. Dove for peace and Hawk for war. So we have freedom, slavery, death, birth, peace, war. From there the meaning of bird branched far and fast.

Like the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon one can move from any concept to another in a few short steps. The meaning of bird isn't simply a definition found in the dictionary or even all of the books written by all of the ornithologists throughout history.

The meaning of bird is fluid and diverse and depends on POV. However when I picture a cat I almost always create an image in my mind. I see a tail, the head, feet and whiskers. It is an image that I could transfer to paper and others would agree that my drawing is in fact a cat.

What if instead of cat we suggested an image of a 5 pointed star like the ones found on the American flag. Is there any question that any of us who had seen such a star would not have the same image?

If the above is rambling and incoherent it is because I am posting drunk. I can tell I'm a bit over the limit because my spell check is stopping on every other word.

Thanks for rambling RanFan, I actually found this post quite interesting.

 

[H3LL]

No offense to you H3LL, but I find it so interesting (actually disturbing is a better word) that materialists feel it is totally ok to super-impose 'concepts' over the physical processes in the brain as a priori simply because "things happen in the brain and the body moves and makes sounds," but they feel that it is not ok for religious people to believe in a God. Interesting indeed. [/B]

I'm sorry, I misinterpreted the thread as throwing around ideas in an intelligent way.

How about:

God makes it happen.

I suggest everyone answers the same and the thread can come to an end.

 

[hammegk]

But if you still persist in arguing that consciousness is qualitatively different from material existance, would you care to tell us either how the physical can interact with the immaterial whilst still leaving both distinctly seperate... or perhaps which part of mankind is the immaterial part?

Sorry; no (interactive) dualists here sfaik. The Question is which monism: material(not "conscious"), or not-material("conscious").

 

[P.S.A.]

If you insist that consciousness is material, and not any different, in principle, to other material things in the Universe, can you name me another thing that can only be experienced, and not observed?

Simply restating your beliefs doesn't make for a good argument when the belief itself is wrong. Can I show you something else which can be experienced and not observed...? Why, yes I can: Every single thing in the universe is experienced and not observed, if your understanding is correct

At least have the intellectual honesty to fully embrace all the consequences of the tired old solipsism which makes up your argument. Nothing exists which can be directly observed, if your Red is not the same as my Red... because every single exterior object is not comparable to the internal understanding. You cannot tell me what it's like to be a pig. Or a tree. Or to be brownian motion at work. Or what temperature is. You can only tell me what you experience them as. And I will always experience them differently, because my consciousness will always be seperate from yours.

Holes in my theory? I can just argue that these holes only exist within your perception, and you cannot prove at all that within my perceptual world it all works exactly like I am describing it... or that the external world to both of us acts in any way at all.

I ask you again, where is your theory for how the physical world can interact with the immaterial, or which parts of the brain is immaterial itself...? Because unless you accept that there can be some form of communication between the two, ultimately nothing of worth can be said about anything at all.

And thus ultimately your argument is no more profound than stating that if we put a bag over a cat, then we've created a new, unreachable reality, a self contained universe, because from the cat's perspective, it sees everything through a bag, which those outside the bag cannot. And it remains a wrong idea, even if you don't or won't understand why.

It remains merely the filtered understanding of the cat that is different, not the actual physical nature of that understanding mechanism itself. Both cat, bag and observer are all physical entities... we've not actually changed the nature of the universe at all.

Consciousness is only seperated in our understanding from the exterior universe because we are all born with bags on our head

And we assign value to that bagging, natch because it's all we can ever know. But it's not qualitatively different from anything else in the material world.

 

[Filip Sandor]

I'm sorry, I misinterpreted the thread as throwing around ideas in an intelligent way.

Sorry H3LL, I forgot dualists aren't allowed to add any spice to their remarks.

Are you still willing to write a response to my questions or are you planning on leaving the discussion??

 

[Humphreys]

Simply restating your beliefs doesn't make for a good argument when the belief itself is wrong. Can I show you something else which can be experienced and not observed...? Why, yes I can: Every single thing in the universe is experienced and not observed, if your understanding is correct

What I mean is, material things are objectively accessible to anyone. Take a cup for instance. We may experience the cup a little differently, but the cup is out there for all to see and interact with. Even if we weren't conscious, we'd still have the ability to interact with that cup, in theory.

It's the same with all material things. But not consciousness.

How can we say this consciousness is a material thing when, unlike any other thing in existence, it isn't empirically observable?

At least have the intellectual honesty to fully embrace all the consequences of the tired old solipsism which makes up your argument. Nothing exists which can be directly observed, if your Red is not the same as my Red... because every single exterior object is not comparable to the internal understanding. You cannot tell me what it's like to be a pig. Or a tree. Or to be brownian motion at work. Or what temperature is. You can only tell me what you experience them as. And I will always experience them differently, because my consciousness will always be seperate from yours.

Although we may experience things differently, it doesn't mean that actual material things aren't out there, able to be observed. Something is most likely there. Maybe our consciousness just has to work in a way that allows us to get an accurate enough idea of what's out there, in order to survive. I can't see how the fact that we might experience the colour red differently would imply that nothing is observable.

The real fact here is this: I don't know how you experience the colour red because your consciousness isn't accessible to me, even in theory, unlike any material thing in existence.

I ask you again, where is your theory for how the physical world can interact with the immaterial, or which parts of the brain is immaterial itself...? Because unless you accept that there can be some form of communication between the two, ultimately nothing of worth can be said about anything at all.

I don't have a theory. What I do know is, I can see nothing to refute the idea of idealism, nothing to refute solipsism, and nothing to refute the possibility of dualism.

However, I just can't see how consciousness is explainable, or possible, if materialism is true. It could be that we need to modify the definition of material some how in order to explain consciousness in material terms, but that's just cheating.

Answer me this: If every single piece of material, on it's own, is exactly 0% conscious, and has exactly 0% feeling, how can consciousness and feeling arise?

Where does that consciousness come from?

How do you explain this something from nothing miracle?

It's more likely to think that perhaps each piece of material has some semblance of feeling and consciousness, and when it combines with other bits of material, the feeling accumulates and creates what we know as consciousness. That would warrant a completely new view of what material actually is, though.

stating that if we put a bag over a cat, then we've created a new, unreachable reality, a self contained universe, because from the cat's perspective, it sees everything through a bag, which those outside the bag cannot. And it remains a wrong idea, even if you don't or won't understand why.

Even with a bag over it's head, the outside world is accessible in theory by the cat. Another false analogy.

If you were to stick your cat in a parallel Universe, then maybe your analogy would be a little more accurate. Both the cat's Universe and ours would exist, but interaction between the two would be impossible.

As far as we're concerned though, this other Universe couldn't be thought of as material.