Materialism and consciousness
If consciousness is not strictly materialist in origin- being nothing more than a complex product of chemical reactions and electrical impulses of cells, then why can we completely alter the state of consciousness/our experience with chemicals, drugs or neurotransmitters.
I understand that this is a reductive way of thinking regarding one of the most complicated phenomena in existence but it just strikes me that if I add Chemical A to experience B I get an altered experience - C. Such effects made by mood enhancers, antidepressants, mood stabilizers or anesthetics, tranquilizers and painkillers.
How do you reconcile these observed medical qualities with ideas such as pan-psychism consciousness is a fundamental force of nature, or inherent to all matter, or that it is something beyond and larger than the brain or part of gods mind or an illusion?
I understand that this is a reductive way of thinking regarding one of the most complicated phenomena in existence but it just strikes me that if I add Chemical A to experience B I get an altered experience - C. Such effects made by mood enhancers, antidepressants, mood stabilizers or anesthetics, tranquilizers and painkillers.
How do you reconcile these observed medical qualities with ideas such as pan-psychism consciousness is a fundamental force of nature, or inherent to all matter, or that it is something beyond and larger than the brain or part of gods mind or an illusion?
Comments (340)
We can change our experiences and our identity by altering our brains, but we can't change our consciousness. We can change what is experienced, and what experiences, but we can't change the fact that experience happens whatever we do.
How do you know that?
I think this is a very reductive take on the relationship between consciousness and the brain. For example; define brain? Can a brain be artificial also? And if so what makes inanimate non biological matter (robots etc) have the capacity to have a brain?
Can it be constructed of much larger systems for example ecosystems and if so why not even larger celestial systems?
Are simple organisms with only neural tissues rather than an organ (ie.brainless) creatures not conscious then? Are jellyfish completely unaware of their existence at all -just an automaton of biological tissue aimlessly reproducing with zero agency?
If the brain is naturally occuring then why could it not be a organ which amplifies and diversifies the behaviour of a fundamental force (consciousness or perceptions, or reiteration of information onto itself, just as the body amplifies and diversifies the behaviour of fundamental units of matter - atoms - to build things that do not have qualities the same as their basic components.
Does the universe not have to be by logical implication a more complex system than the systems within it? (The brain) and therefore your reasoning would point to the universe being of greater potential for awareness than the minute compact system that is the brain.
I think you would find our consciousness very much can be changed by altering our brain. Taking psychedelics -ie adding chemicals to the composition of the brain, being inflicted with brain damage, meditating, sleeping. All of these actions dramatically influence our state of consciousness
Why?
Quoting Vladimir Krymchakov
Why?
They change what you experience, of course. And we can call the content of consciousness 'states' of consciousness. But this sheds no light on what the general necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness (or identity in my view) are in anything other than humans.
If I were to die - i am dead for an hour we'll say - due to severe hypothermia, my metabolism has shut down and an EEG shows no signs of brain activity at all, my heart has stopped. The medics re-warm my body and resuscitate me and luckily I have little to no impairment due to the protection offered by extreme cooling of my body.
If the content of consciousness is 'states' of consciousness and I experience a point at which I died and a point at which I came back to life, is temporary death therefore a state of consciousness?
And if not, then what was I for the moments I was dead and furthermore the moment at which I became alive again? Is my identity completely different if I come to life a second time? Am I somehow now a compeltely new conscious individual or does my consciousness transcend the gap in my living state - in which case death would be a state of consciousness.
If I went on to say that I had experienced during the time when I was dead, or could account for events that occurred while in that state -such as is provided in anecdotal evidence from hundreds of rescucitated individuals what then do we make of death as a conscious state or not a conscious state?
Consciousness is a mental state of entangled, integrated, and unified information.
But consider this:
Is the universe entangled, integrated, and unified?
Dose a black hole entangle, integrate, and unify ( compress )?
Is a rock entangled, integrated, and unified?
Are we entangled, integrated and unified?
Can we do anything other than express our consciousness ( our entanglement,integration, and unification) ? Either physically or mentally.?
It seems consciousness is everywhere under this definition.
What is consciousness then? If you introspect into your consciousness you will find experiences and emotions. Nothing more. Remove the experiences and emotions and your consciousness will be empty.
First of all, we don't know whether other animals have a conscience or not. We're talking about human consciousness and more especially our own.
About sufficient and necessary conditions I suppose you mean 'causes'. About this we have a certain amount of evidence: We do not know of any cases of a brain dead which speak of Cartesianism, of the last Premier League football match or of his unfortunate love for Jennifer Jones. I think it's good evidence that the brain is a necessary condition to produce conscious behaviour.
Besides, I don't know of any case of a chair, a cockroach or an electron that were singing in the rain (you know, Gene Kelly) or similar. It is good evidence to think that a living human brain is a necessary and sufficient condition to have a human consciousness. That is, the cause of consciousness.
Whether my dog has consciousness is another matter. I think so, but I admit I'm not impartial.
I think you should clarify what you mean by conscience. Is it the same as mind?
Your hypothesis of resurrection is quite curious, although not very plausible. I suppose you want to question the concept of mind and identity. So as not to get tangled up in religious preconceptions, I'll give you another example.
In an unlikely future, having mastered global warming -this is the improbable-, human beings can move from one side of the universe to the other by means of a fictitious dematerialization. I mean that the dematerializing machine sends by intergalactic rays the complete data of their body and brain, memory, personality, etc. and a similar machine materializes them in Alpha-Centaur. Then the Earth machine removes your Earth self and that's it. But one day the machine has a problem and does not eliminate the Earth self.
The problem is in the Galactic Supreme Court since years ago because each one of the two Selfs pretends that it must dematerialize the other one and the World Bureaucratic State does not admit that there can be two equal human minds (the inhabitants of the planet Krypton enjoy an exception since the times of the Great Luthor, be his Name always praised).
How would you solve the problem? The Galactic Supreme Court would certainly appreciate it.
I didn't make up the story. It' was conceived by a warm-minded philosopher whose name I don't want to remember.
One that ascribed to panpsychism might argue that in order for any form of awareness to occur, things must appear as though they are external material bodies that lack consciousness in essence, but this is merely a form of consciousness which leads us to conclude that consciousness is in us and not in what we see based on the form of its appearance.
Martin Heidegger was not a panpscyhist, but he is famous for arguing in Being and Time that our the objective analysis gives us a distorted and fragmented view of reality if we take it to be fundamental. What is more fundamental, according to Heidegger, is the holistic and referential totality of meaning consistent with the activity we are normally engaged in in life. In other words, he uses phenomenology as a tool to show that the subject-object distinction is not fundamental to reality, and neither is the idea of an inner and external world.
And what is mental?
If that's what Heidegger says, I find it incomprehensible. Hammer the television. Then hammer your finger. You'll catch a vital difference between inside and outside. How does Heidegger explain that?
To be fair, it is one thing to try and characterize the structure of Heidegger's argument in Being and Time, and another to see phenomenologically how he shows this is the case, and that is what he spends the majority of time doing in his book.
It's much simpler than that. When you hit your finger with the hammer, it hurts. When you hit the TV, it doesn't. Pain is a subjective experience. There is someone who is in pain (you call him the Dasein if you like) and this someone is oneself. The TV is not me. It is something in the world that I share with my mother-in-law. There is also a radically different experience in hitting my mother-in-law with the hammer and hammer the TV. What is it?
I would like if you disagree with my analysis (very phenomenological, by the way) to let me know in order to have a fruitful discussion.
About Heidegger I prefer not to talk too much. Sometimes I find him unintelligible.
It's not too mysterious how consciousness could affect matter and how matter could affect it: there would need to be some direct or mediated coupling between the material world and the conscious realm. The latter might be materialistic in nature, electromagnetic in nature, some combination (most likely), or some new thing unobserved in the wild (the route you're going down): as long as there exists some coupling between it and the rest of the physical world, it falls under the purview of physics, and is amenable to physical study in principle.
For instance, let us posit that consciousness is a soul of divine origin. It might be that, by trial and error, chemists have been able to produce items they don't really understand but are in fact miniature prayers translated into chemical language. You pop a prayer, God listens, numbs the pain. Prayer and whatever it is that God does to affect the physical world would be the coupling. We could then examine that, see if prayer always works, works according to rules, works seemingly randomly, or, in the end, doesn't really work at all. (This has been done.)
Or we could posit that all drugs are placebos, and it is only the belief that the drug will work that impacts the patient, in which case the coupling at least in part is via standard sensory input. That would be and has been attractive to solipsists.
Is there a reason, beyond matters of taste ("I just cannot allow for a material consciousness" or "I just cannot allow for an explanation without God" or "Humans HAVE to be special ALWAYS"), why starting from the assumption that consciousness is completely different from anything else we know about, rather than starting from the assumption that it's explicable in terms of ordinary stuff in principle, is attractive?
You've given the two main options here. In your first two sentences you have identified consciousness with content. And in the last you have described consciousness as like an empty container, which is something more than its contents.
My view is that consciousness is the latter, so that consciousness does not entail content necessarily (it is possible for the theatre to be empty, the ocean to be still, to pick a couple of metaphors). In practice, of course, there is nearly always content.
It is possible to use 'consciousness' to refer to the totality of content, and this is a valid usage (and given in dictionaries). But I don't think this usage is typically what philosophers concerned with the hard problem are talking about. Or at least they are talking about consciousness as abstracted from individual experiences (and this sense is also listed in dictionaries).
I'd like to do a thread on definitions of 'consciousness', as discussions very often end up with haggling over definitions. I think a dictionary could help, as it is a neutral more objective voice in the discussion.
The OP isn't, it's consciousness in general.
Quoting David Mo
Yes, but that only evidences something about humans. And it's not completely clear what theory this evidence supports.
When you alter a brain such that the unified consciousness 'disappears' (e.g. gets KO'd) there's a couple of ways to interpret this. It's consistent with two theories:
1) It's the consciousness that disappears. Consciousness is dependent on certain brain function, and when that brain function does not happen, the consciousness no longer exists.
2) Consciousness is more like mass. When someone's brain function is disrupted, the identity is disrupted. There is no longer a strongly unified human subject which has experiences, but there is still consciousness. The units have changed - other things are conscious, maybe smaller units (if you are a microspychist). Just like with the mass of a car, arranged so it can function it is a car, arranged differently it is a pile of scrap, but the mass remains. The identities are different. That's what I think: when I lose consciousness, I do not remain. The consciousness that remains is not mine, because I don't exist. When consciousness 'returns' it is really my identity that has rebooted.
Yes, such endless discussion is not optional on a philosophy forum, it is mandatory. If you just express opinions without any engagement with arguments to and fro, you are not doing philosophy, and you have ended up on the wrong forum..
I would venture that the two minds, though originally identical, have lived since the botched dematerialization through different experiences on different planetary systems, met different folks, fell in love with different females of different species, all of which made them two different minds nowaday.
M = Only material things are affected by material things
What needs to be proved is that if x is affected by something physical then that x has to be physical.
Well considering alpha- centauri is 4.36 light years from earth, in order to send information between these two machines by any "rays" of the electromagnetic kind which obey the speed of light as a maximum travelling velocity, there would be approximately 4.3 years of time elapsed between the point at which the information was collected and when the retransmission was received in either direction.
I would imagine the process would have some kind of accountability as most travel services do, either a log time for each session or a record in storage of data which was collected during the running of the machines or CCTV footage, identity processing etc. You would also have witnesses -others that travelled from the origin to the destination around the same time, staff that work at the teleportation centre, perhaps a passport security point or other human or robotic contacts that register your travel in some form.
By that fact you could simply examine the records and perform an investigation to see which identity can be previously accounted for within 4.3 years of using the machine both forward and backwards in time. This would determine at the very least the direction of travel which could be used to establish the original being.
On failing this you could take biopsies from both individuals and examine the length of their telomeres in their DNA. With every successive generation of cellular replication a telomere shortens (loss of genetic code). Bearing in mind that the two individuals could not have existed simultaneously for a period of 4 years, the one with the shorter telomeres is the individual whose genetic code has been replicating for 4 years longer while the other was travelling (in a static copied stait of information). Therefore the shorter telomered person would be eliminated as the older "post" travel outdated version.
If this cannot be achieved for some impossibly unlikely reason, without sufficient evidence to identify the original the supreme galactic courts would have no choice but to permit the existence of two separate selves as the prevention of failure of the machine was not the under the direct responsibility of the passenger.
However limits on travel between worlds could be enforced to prevent them crossing paths or residing in the same jurisdiction/ area where they could encounter one another.
I think if I hammered my TV is would be very painful for me. Haha. I would feel the negative impacts, hurt, anguish and frustration of having to go buy a new TV for a start. What impact does the concept of "possession/ ownership" or "functionality" or "value" of material objects to a person have on its ability to register as "pain" or another emotional state or sensation in the subject. I hit my finger it hurts as a location in my body. I hit the TV it hurts- but in a qualitatively less injurious way and more psychologically.
Did you just assume their gender? (/sexual orientation) Haha :p
Define "material". Is this to say things made of "matter" or things that exist. If it is the first than it would be preposterous- clearly forces affect matter. In fact no matter or "material" can influence other material without forces and dimension between them.
But... as you'll find with any matter (material) if you supply it with enough energy (such as speed or heat); first the bonds will be broken, then the cloud of gaseous atoms will be made into a plasma of free flowing electrons and nuclei and then even those will be accelerate into their equivalent under relativity = pure energy. So when is matter no longer a material? Can I destroy matter? Or is energy simply that form of material which is uncertain enough in its state and high enough in its potential to influence matter?
Thank you for pointing this out. It seems I am still somewhat stuck in oldspeak!
I should have written:
" Consciousness is a cognitive state of entangled, integrated, and unified information "
There, no doubt you will now agree :)
Consciousness is what's in between all the brain stuff. Think of consciousness as the "other side", the side that is sealed off by matter in the brain. I believe the brain created a "private zone", and that's where you exist, your thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions (and all the other goodies).
Ideas to consider: The binding problem, and the privacy of consciousness.
Entangled and integrated information gives rise to consciousness.
A cognitive state where information is not entangled, integrated, and unified is ineffable.
There is much more to consciousness, but that it is a state of entangled, integrated, and unified information is certain, and on top of this much can be built - unlike the dead end old conception of mind with perception and consciousness as subsets - so silly! Integrated information is fundamental to all thought, and subsequent action. Entangled, integrated, and unified information describes consciousness - and it is present all over our Goldilocks universe.
I bet no one here (including me) knows what "integrated and entangled information" is. :lol:
2 bits of info.......................to................................gazillions of bits of info.
Thus consciousness could be attributed throughout the universe.
Thus a rock would be conscious - a very simple form of conscious at the bottom end of the spectrum, whilst humanity would be at the higher end of the spectrum.
I would bet all my money that rocks are not conscious.
IIT theory and GW theory are new theories of consciousness. They posit that consciousness is a state of unified information.From an idealist's perspective - everything outside of consciousness is information. When this various information is compressed into a unit it becomes a concept - this process describes consciousness. The question is dose consciousness do this? or dose consciousness arise because of this?
Not conscious in the way humans are - but note humanity is conscious in different ways - on a spectrum.
Animals are also conscious, but to a lesser extent. Ecologists are describing plant consciousness.
Put what do mineralogist say about rocks?
This was a hypothetical suggestion contingent upon accepting that consciousness arises from entanglement, integration and unification. You will accept, I'm sure, that rocks are entangled, integrated , and unified. Obviously they are nowhere near as conscious as we are. But a spectrum of consciousness would be a way to attribute consciousness to them.
The issue is that consciousness is part of the fabric of the universe, so it should be distributed in some way throughout the universe.
I'm not a mineralogist.
Quoting Pop
You make it sound like consciousness is stuff, and I don't believe that consciousness can be accurately be described as "stuff". It doesn't matter how spooky you describe the "stuff", I still don't think it is conscious.
I'm sorry you find it spooky. I don't find it spooky at all. I believe humanity is part of the flora and fauna of the planet, is a complex biological system , but not special. We share attributes with everything else, and everything else shares attributes with us. We have the most complex consciousness of course.
What i posit is highly speculative, and If it dose not resonate with your understanding, i can respect that you wont believe it :)
That's better. :wink:
Quoting Pop
Nothing wrong with speculation. I just get annoyed with all the spooky language, especially when many of us don't know what you mean. But sure it's just me, I don't see anyone else getting annoyed.
Carry on! :victory:
The metaphor of the theater doesn't work with consciousness. You can describe an empty stage. You cannot describe an empty consciousness. Consciousness is literally what happens in consciousness. Nothing more.
The thing is when I have localized anesthetic it doesn't feel like something is missing. It feels like it no longer exists or doesn't belong to me. Like the theatre has been rearranged.
Quoting Vladimir Krymchakov
why organic?
The philosopher said that what you can't talk about is best left unsaid.
Quoting bert1
It is also consistent with the myth of Hades and the Styx lake. But that doesn't mean that we are going to consider all the infinite combinations consistent with the concept of consciousness. We are talking about the one that responds to the facts that we know. And the basic fact is that, with the brain gone, we find no trace of that consciousness anywhere, which (almost) certainly implies that it has disappeared from the world.
How can you separate experience and consciousness?
Consciousness is emptiness! A very strange kind of emptiness.
Correct me if I am wrong, but Heidegger did not identify the Being with any form of consciousness. Therefore, turning to Heidegger to justify that consciousness exists outside the brain doesn't seem helpful. Therefore, I ask you to describe this Being common to all things and to explain what makes you think it is a consciousness that exists outside the human brain. In your own words, if possible.
The below link leads to a video: Making Decisions without Brains.
https://youtu.be/1LyeWQZ7ZR0
The Galactic Court appreciates your efforts to resolve the case but regrets to say that they have not been helpful. The DNA of the two Mr. X's is identical. Impossible to tell them apart. The fact of one's precedence does not resolve their differentiation in the present because, being the exact replica, the problem is not one of precedence, but one of present rights of the person, which are well defined in the Declaration of Rights of the Person and the Animal proclaimed by the Great Luthor in the second year of his Blessed Universal Regency.
We take this opportunity to inform you that the case has been resolved after the declaration of Mrs. X before the Galactic Court, in the sense that Mr. X-Alpha is much more fun than Mr. X-Earth and more affectionate so she doesn't give a damn which one is the original, because she keeps the one of Alpha.
The Court has ruled that, although ideally identical at the moment of conception, the two Mr. X's become different at the 0+1 instant when both begin to have different sensations and emotions. Therefore the Court has decided to condemn the company Calamity Viajes Siderales with a fine of 100,000 neobitcoins to be paid as a wedding gift for the X-Alpha couple.
Do you accept the verdict?
Everyone has their own tastes.
Quoting Benj96
You have just recognized an important difference between the "psychological" and the exterior of the mind. I would add another: in an immediate way, without the need to resort to hammers or other extreme means, you have the intuition that the TV is out there, it is an object of the world. In the same way, you don't hit your mother-in-law with the hammer, even though sometimes she may deserve it, because you immediately recognize her as a human being and, more importantly, you feel recognized as such by your mother-in-law. This recognition takes place especially through the look. All of the lucubrations about solipsism, subjectivity and objectivity, are subsequent to this basic intuitive recognition. Since I find no reason to doubt it, I accept this intuition and it seems to me that it is the cornerstone of my world or my life.
There are a lot of objects that offer entangled, integrated, and unified information. A schedule board, a newspaper page, a puzzle book, my hat tag... I don't think any of them have a consciousness.
You've decided that anything has a conscience because conscience is anything. There's no one there who won't agree with this logic.
But I doubt that the ecologists will agree with you and say that plants have a consciousness. Where have you read this?
As used in this thread the term "consciousness" (as equivalent to "mind") cannot be. Experience is one of the elements that form consciousness.
If you separate it from the experiences, emotions and thoughts. It's nothing, apart from this.
I hate videos. Could it be an article from a specialized magazine?
These are expressions of consciousness
I believe this is a misconception. Conscious beings have experiences, it's not a matter of being attached to them. Experience is not passive, it's a process, an activity.
Indeed: from a human mind that has created them. But they are not minds.
Indeed. And the mind is that activity.
Why can't consciousness be empty then?
I believe consciousness is like the air in a basketball.
No, experience is equivalent to consciousness.
You have a conscious experience.
Experience = Thought + Emotion
Consciousness = Thought + Emotion
When you look into your consciousness you find thought plus emotion - this is your experience.
The below is all confused:
Quoting David Mo
Yet you take instruction from them!
Because to say that a pitcher is empty, you have to describe the pitcher separately from its possible contents. And you can't do that with your mind. Whenever you define the mind, you define the contents, never the container.
Then something that gives me information doesn't have to be a mind. Information is the product of a mind: the mind that gives me information and/or my mind that extracts the information. Without minds there are facts. Only facts.
So: experience=consciousness. Pure logic.
Confused? Try to tell me what is on your mind right now that is not experiences, emotions and thoughts about experiences and emotions or ideas based on experiences and emotions.
We talk about the contents of the mind in a metaphorical sense, but they aren't real stuff. I say the mind is empty.
And I think the container metaphor is wrong. I say the mind is like the air in a basketball, and a basketball isn't a container.
Is the air not contained within the ball? I don't think you can say otherwise.
Where do you place (metaphorically or otherwise) your thoughts on this sentence now? Is it not in your mind? Where does that thought occur? Not in your cousin's, of course.
[s]Somewhere between my mind and my brain. On the borderline.[/s]
The borderline between my mind and my brain.
You are bound to stay confused whilst you continue to use outdated concepts such as mind.
Mind is a state of consciousness.
Consciousness is fundamental. A state of entangled, integrated, and unified information must exist for any thought to arise. It is all ineffable until this happens.
The idea that consciousness is a subset of mind is a nonsense ,as the basis of any thought is a state of entangled, integrated, and unified information ( consciousness )
As far as location is concerned, I don't see the mind having a different place from the whole nervous system (there are neurons in my bowels, also). I don't see my mind thinking from the table or from the back of the room. When my nervous system moves, my mind moves with it.
Old-fashioned? 65 Categories found in PhilPapers. 10 Journals - including the prestigious Mind (over 20,000 articles).
Doesn't seem like a very old-fashioned topic when it has such a large audience among philosophers and psychologists.
Do you establish any difference between mind and consciousness? I'm not clear on how you use the concept of consciousness.
For me there is a difference between being aware of something and thinking about something, but that difference doesn't seem to be taken into account in this thread.
What proposition? I don't find it. Repeat it, please.
Quoting Pop
The defense accepts the verdict (despite the fact that genetically the two individuals cannot be identical if there is an age difference but anyways)
It depends on what you mean by conscience. Sometimes consciousness and mind are used as synonymous words. For example in this Wikipedia definition sense 2 is similar to mind:
This ambiguity permits the mind-body problem be treated in the articles "Mind" and "Consciousness" at once.
If you want to undo the ambiguity of the concept of conciousness in your texts some present confusions in this discussion can be avoided.
The Court appreciates the willingness of the defence.
Case closed.
I will state my case one last time:
Consciousness = thought + emotion
Thought = ( entangled + integrated + unified ) information
Emotion = hard problem
For consciousness to take place a thought must form. The basis of any thought is a state of entangled, integrated, and unified information. Prior to this occurrence all is ineffable - its not possible to state anything about a thoughtless state. As a thought takes form, consciousness occurs. - this is the beginning of any and all thinking.
It follows that consciousness ( a state of integrated information ) is fundamental, as nothing can occur before this dose!
If consciousness is fundamental, then it cannot be part of the set of mind as described below. Mind must be a subset of consciousness.
As a consequence the following wikipedia quote would be misinformation:
" Mind: The mind is the set of thinking faculties including cognitive aspects such as consciousness, imagination, perception, thinking, judgement, language and memory, as well as noncognitive aspects such as emotion."
It is close, but just misses the mark, and the result is a confused understanding..
It should read :
Consciousness is the set of thinking faculties including cognitive aspects such as , imagination, perception, thinking, judgement, language and memory, as well as noncognitive aspects such as emotion.
Please respond to the pertinent part of my proposition : That consciousness arises at the same time as a thought is formed, and that this is the fundamental first step of all thinking.
PS: I would appreciate anybody's input
There is no misinformation in the Wikipedia definition. It is the use that the major dictionaries collect and the use in tens of thousands of psychological and philosophical articles and books. For them, what you call "consciousness" is called "mind". I would say that it is your use of the word that produces some verbal confusion. As I explain below.
Quoting Pop
This is true, if you include in consciousness more than thoughts, as your own definition suggests. That is, "consciousness", in your definition, would be active when some unconscious activities are functioning: desires, emotions, dreams, associations of ideas would be part of this "consciousness" or we would need another word to designate them. Freud called it "unconscious" to oppose it to conscious. In my concept of mind, this would fit in nicely. How does it fit in with your concept of consciousness? Because it sounds strange that there's an unconscious part of consciousness
And if you admit that there are two differentiated processes, the conscious and the unconscious, what do you call the whole of both? Is it not logical to call it mind and talk about the mental in this sense?
What seems clear to me is that the mental world is somewhat more extensive than mere thoughts and is closely associated with brain activities that can be approximately located and even measured in some cases in the form of electrochemical impulses.
That consciousness arises at the same time a thought is formed seems correct.
Once the thought is formed a qualia arises.
The time in between is when the subconscious is dealt with.
This is my best understanding at the present time. Its highly speculative, so thank you for bearing with me and for your valuable input.
You are correct. Heidegger did not identify Being with our current understanding of consciousness, he considers Being to be more basic. He provides justification for something more basic than our current understanding of both the brain, the mind, and consciousness. Our holistic, referential world of significance is what is most basic for Heidegger. It is does not involve awareness, thought, or subject-object duality. This is the same type of holism described by panpsychists. If you think of consciousness as the platform within and upon which everything appears, in other words the essence or background of all things, rather than a mere observer, state of awareness, and so on, then you get a very different picture of consciousness than the one currently considered a property of the mind, brain, self and so on.
The foundational difficulty with all such neuroscientific views, is that inferring what neurological data are or mean, is itself an act of judgement. And you won’t find ‘an act of judgement’ in any kind of data. Certainly you can measure and infer what these data mean, but that act of inference is the very thing you’re purporting to explain with reference to the data. There’s a vicious circularity in that which I don’t think can be overcome even in principle.
It may be a question of terminology, but this does not seem right to me. You can have sensations (called in philosophy impressions or qualia) whether you think about something or not. Not only the reception of sensations, but the formation of perceptions is a spontaneous procedure that can precede or follow the formation of a thought based on them. A simple example: you bite into the fruit, feel a strange taste and at the time or later you think "This cherry is over-ripe". Of course, what there is not is first a thought and then an impression/qualia.
Not that I know much about Heidegger, but the concept of holism does not appear in the texts I have consulted. Neither his nor his interpreters. On the other hand, I would like us to focus on something other than Heidegger because I do not think he is a clear thinker. As far as I know, moreover, the idea that the Being of Heidegger is something like a soul or a mind seems to me incompatible with what I know about him.
Spending time on clearing up confusion is not always productive.
I would like you to defend the idea that the mind is like a spiritual or mental entity, which is what I think panpsychism stands for. That is hard enough for me to find traces of a mind in some of the recent US presidents, but even less so in a volcano or a supernova explosion. I don't see them emitting thoughts, or speaking, or expressing emotions, or any of the properties that are usually considered in a mind.
The idea of a platform I don't know that makes things better. A platform that complains about the futility of life or how much it costs to pour lava through the crater? I don't see it, honestly.
But if the universe doesn't do anything of the things that a consciousness do, why do you call it a "consciousness"?
An empirical inference is not logically included in the data that serve as a premise. It is a knowledge that advances synthetically on those data by providing new knowledge. Because we are not talking about a judgment that proves itself true, but a reasoning based on experience that produces a conclusion where before there was a hypothesis. That synthesis is the discovery of unity from diversity, so to speak.
From the data that we have about the functioning of the brain, we can infer that the mind is its product. Whether this inference is more or less solid is a matter for debate.
It depends on what you mean by mind. If you limit mind to intelligent behavior and abstract thinking, then it is clear that panpsychism is an untenable position. However, if you treat them simply as forms of awareness that are continuous with not only a multitude of forms of awareness but being/existence as well, and you don't assume that the type of reality you experience as most internal, let us call it pure awareness without content, is only internal, then it is possible to see something that appears internal and something that appears external merely as different forms of awareness appearing within the same underlying substratum, a substratum which we tend to assume is hidden within our brain somewhere looking out into the world through the screen of our senses.
There is a logical flaw with Husseri's statement.
If you cannot discern the difference of two materials then you cannot say they are different.
If you know them to be different, then you already posses that knowledge, so there is no need to discern.
Please engage with my consciousness proposition and point out the flaws.
Consciousness = thought + emotion - this I take to be the prevailing understanding. The details, and permutations of how this might work are numerous indeed! There are difficulties and problems for sure.
However, I believe the below statement is true and defendable. On its own it says quite a lot:
Consciousness arises at the same time as a thought is formed, and this is the fundamental first step of all thinking.
Sense input can be substituted for thinking, and this fills our consciousness from the moment we wake. There seems to be many modes of consciusness - environmental awarenes and at the same time focus , and multi focus. There is a difference in individuals - its not all regular. Some people do not posses an internal dialogue, or inner vision. They project their thoughts - they see diagrams and lists, they must speak their thoughts to themselves.
The term 'product' is what concerns me. It is the fundamental assumption of philosophical materialism - that 'mind is a product of brain'. What I'm arguing is that all such arguments rely on the process of reasoned inference, as does all science. You can't put aside, or stand outside, reason and observe it 'from the outside', so to speak. When you're looking at neurological data and interpreting the meaning, then you're using the very faculty you're trying to explain. And that faculty operates on the symbolic and logical level, the level of logical necessity. So consider that a physicalist argument is saying - it’s conflating the physical relations between synapses, with the logical relations between terms. If you think about that, you should be able to see the fallacy.
Quoting Pop
It wasn’t really Husserl’s statement, it was my riffing on what I thought might be the connection between Husserl’s ‘Lebeswelt’ and Heiddegger’s ‘dasien’. But I’ll be the first to admit I haven’t done the hard work yet of reading Being and Time. (Although the Wiki article on the lifeworld seems to me a useful starting point, but it seems to be saying that Heidegger influenced Husserl in this matter, where I’d assumed the opposite.)
Anyway, as regards your assertion, what I was driving at was nothing about ‘materials’. Ideas such as lebenswelt and dasien are not referring to any kind of philosophical substance or even to a concept as such. They’re primarily observations about the human condition, and of being situated in a particular cultural (and even biological) milieu, and how that situatedness determines the way we understand things.
As far as ‘theories of consciousness’ are concerned - that’s really what we’re talking about here - I think we need to situate the whole discussion in relation to some school, approach or domain of discourse, rather than trying to develop an entire system de novo.
In my experience on this forum, the prevailing view of the ‘mind-matter’ question is still largely shaped by Cartesian dualism and its consequences. But I think many of the implications of that have been absorbed by our culture, and therefore by us, without us being necessarily aware of what they mean.
For those materialists out there, how did consciousness emerge from a piece of wood?
LOL :up:
Thats no fun at all!
Re Husseri - fair enough.
I believe the below statement is true and defendable. On its own it says quite a lot:
Consciousness arises at the same time as a thought is formed, and this is the fundamental first step of all thinking.
Believe is different to know.
It requires rigorous scrutiny.
Pls point out your concerns and Ill try to answer them.
This -more or less:
The mind is the set of thinking faculties including cognitive aspects such as consciousness, imagination, perception, thinking, judgement, language and memory, as well as noncognitive aspects such as emotion.
Quoting Mickey
I call this empty substrate that you speak of "consciousness" and it consists simply of realizing my position in the world. I can only directly capture my consciousness and infer other consciousnesses because their attitude is similar to mine. (Some philosophers say that this capture of other subjects like me is immediate. I won't argue with that, if it's not necessary for your argument). If I have to infer a consciousness of the universe it will have to be because the universe acts in a similar way to mine. This is absurd for two reasons:
Because the universe does not have a body similar to mine and cannot gesture its consciousness, as other consciousnesses in the world do.
Because to claim that the universe can realize its position in the universe is a contradiction. It would be like realizing the position I hold within my "I". This proposition is impossible because a position with respect to oneself is an identity and consciousness is a relational term, that is, it establishes a relationship between two types of entity.
I don't think I'm conflating synapses with logic. I'm applying one of the basic forms of inductive logic. If x never occurs when y is missing, y must be the cause or part of the cause of x. That applies with obvious success to a lot of natural events. I don't see why it doesn't apply to the relationship between the brain - or an area of the brain - and the act of talking or getting excited. It would be a similar relationship as when the application of a nerve stimulus produces the movement of the frog's leg. Much more complicated, of course, but the same stimulus-response relationship.
Honestly, I don't see the contradiction.
Point taken, I do not wish to upset anybody. but it is a philosophy forum.
What I state aligns with Integrated Information Theory, and Global workspace Theory - these are fairly mainstream today.
Look at the world around you - do you really think Cartesian dualism / materialism is worth defending?
The method is good for high-level discussions, but in a forum like this it may lead to muddled discussions about whether a certain John Doe really said this. In my experience, it is common in this type of forum for someone to read a web page about John Doe and misinterpret his theories. To avoid these problems it is better to keep what one thinks here. The discussion is more direct and frank.
In my discussions with philosophers (including professionals) I have found that it is not uncommon for them to be baffled if one refuses to speak about what Husserl, Kant or John Doe said and asks them to defend their personal position. I had a rather ironic teacher who said that this happens because today's philosophers are not philosophers but members of Toledo School of Translators (he was a specialist in medieval philosophy, of course).
What I'm saying is that an assumption is being made about things being internal and external based on the way they appear, and that it is possible that these are merely forms of appearance which differ in form not kind. That there is an identity between the seer and what is seen.
You mentioned that the universe does not behave as you internally, immediately do, but how is it that such a relationship (i.e. perception) can exist if there is only difference and no underlying identity grounding the relationship? I think the one who maintains that we represent the world and all its subjective significance internally has a lot of explaining to do. However, if you accept a form of holism with regarding to the things we consider objective and subjective, then it becomes easier to see how it is possible that we merely abstract differences for the sake of thought and so on, and this is reflected within the brains activity, rather than we somehow creating a mental representation and perceived world from within our brains.
It's true that there's a relationship between brain activity and, say, speaking or thinking, insofar as this requires a functioning brain. But it's the philosophical issues involved in making that correlation that are problematical. The reason it seems natural to believe in this correlative relationship, is that it's just assumed that science has an in-principle grasp of the relationship, but if you drill down into the science, it's still just an assumption - the foundational assumption of materialist theory of mind. This is that ‘mind is what brain does’, and that by understanding the neuroscience we’ll understand the nature of mind.
So the argument I’m deploying is that the nature of logical necessity is of a different order to the nature of physical causation, no matter how detailed. In other words, seeking to explain the relationship of ideas, that comprise conscious thought, in terms of the neuroscience, is a category error. Logical causation and physical causation operate on completely different planes.
What a classic! You tell us that you can't use a brain to understand a brain because the faculty cannot analyse itself, and then you proceed to make two assertions about how that faculty works. So what faculty did you use to come up with those two assertions then? What are you using to tell us all about how reason and logic work. It can't be reason and logic because apparently a faculty cannot analyse itself.
Whenever we deploy a reasoned argument, we’re using a faculty that is internal to the nature of reason. And that is not something given in any data, it is deployed to interpret data and to say what it means.
The question is, how do you know that this is the case? How did you find this fact about our faculties and how they work?
You say "it [the faculty internal to reason] is deployed to interpret data and to say what it means". But you must have used it [the faculty internal to reason] to discover this fact, to interpret the data of your experiences and say that it means what you claim. You have used the faculty internal to reason to make a statement about the faculty internal to reason.
Yes, of course I deployed that faculty. The same faculty the Greek philosophers deployed, namely, that of reason. What I’m arguing against is accounting for that faculty in terms of neurological function, as something ‘the brain does’. I’m saying that in order to even begin to explore the neuroscience, you already need to use reason, you need to reason by inference from cause to effect and so on. So in doing that, you’re deploying the very faculty that you are claiming neuroscience can provide an account of. That’s where the circular reasoning or question-begging comes in.
Indeed. Neither you could investigate the functioning of an eye through your eyes, nor analyze speech using language... etc.
That's not a guess. It is the use of an inductive method that has proven itself millions of times. If you want to say that believing that what has been proven millions of times is true is an assumption, true: a very effective assumption.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't know any materialists who think they base their theory on logical necessity. It's more based on inductive arguments. It is another thing to try to disarm inconsistencies in the dualistic or spiritualistic position.
Of course I do not believe that spiritualism can be demonstrated with logical necessity. I'd like to know how this is done.
Yes, I get that. You're doing exactly the same thing. You're saying that it's a problem that we use reason (applied to the evidence from neuroscience) to draw conclusions about the nature of reason. Yet you've waxed lyrical about the nature of reason. And what faculty have you used to draw those conclusions?... Reason.
The very conclusion that reason cannot analyse itself is a property of the faculty 'reason'. How did you discover this property if one cannot use reason to analyse itself.
But in this case, there’s a fundamental difference between the subject of the analysis, and the subjects that have been examined ‘millions of times’. This is that scientific method presumes an objective reality, or an object of analysis, whereas in this particular case, we’re dealing with something that is not only not objective, but which underlies the very ability to decide what is objective. In that sense it’s a misapplication of scientific method.
I use a metal detector successfully to find millions of pieces of metal. But then, I wouldn’t say that only metal things are of value, simply on the basis of that this is what the metal detector is able to find.
You’re still not seeing the point. If you’re claiming that the mind is explicable in terms of neurological data, then you have to show how the brain causes or gives rise to the activities of thinking, such as reasoning, etc. You analyse vast amounts of neurological data - and the brain is the most complex phenomenon known to natural science, with more neural connections than stars in the sky. But to make the inference that the data shows or means that ‘the brain does this’, then you have to use the faculty which you’re wishing to explain. I mean, you can’t actually see ‘reason’ or ‘inference’ in neural data, like you can see traces of hormones in the blood. So you can’t stand outside the faculty of reason, or put it to one side, and demonstrate that it exists literally in the data. It’s only ever ‘there’ by inference.
I’m only arguing against a specific idea, namely, the idea that ‘mind is what brain does’. I’m not arguing against science, or against neuroscience, but a specific philosophical claim, not a scientific theory.
Now why on earth do you feel the need to introduce ‘spiritualism’ to the conversation? ‘Spiritualism’ is Victorian gentlemen in suits listing to table-rapping. The argument I’m advocating is purely philosophical, but the fact that it rings those particular bells might be significant.
Yes, I get your argument against using reason to explain reason. I really do. What I'm asking you is how you are not committing exactly the same fallacy when you declare certain properties of the faculty 'reason' (such as the fact that it must be used to interpret neurological data, or the fact that you can't stand outside of it - these are both properties of the faculty 'reason; which you claim to be the case). What I'm asking you is - what faculty did you use to discover that 'reason' has these properties? If the answer is "I used Reason" . Then you have committed exactly the same fallacy, you've used reason to explain something about reason.
I'm not attempting to disprove your argument. I'm asking how you're not committing the same fallacy. I'm presuming (hypothetically) that your argument is sound, that we cannot draw conclusions about reason from neurological data using reason. If it is true, then we cannot draw conclusions about reason from any data source using reason - the source of evidence or data is immaterial to your argument.
Yet you draw several conclusions about reason, even within this very argument, let alone in your other widely written opinions. So how do you escape the fallacy? How are you able to draw conclusions about reason?
There is no inherent contradiction in trying to understand reason with reason. The difficulty is in explaining reason together with its efficacy, its capacity to understand the world, its agency.
If one uses reason to state: "reason is useless", then there is a contradiction. But if one uses reason's efficacy to understand reason's efficacy, then there's no contradiction.
The conclusion I'm drawing is not about reason, but about the argument that 'the mental world... is closely associated with brain activities that can be approximately located and even measured in some cases in the form of electrochemical impulses'.
Yes, but you used two properties of reason to draw this conclusion. The fact that it must be used to interpret neurological data, and the fact that you can't stand outside of it. I'm asking you how you arrived at those two properties.
Let's try it this way. I say "I do not need to use reason to interpret neurological data, and I can stand outside of reason. I have some other capacity, which I call X, and I use that to draw conclusions about reason from the neurological data". How do you dispute that claim? Because undisputed it completely undermines your argument.
As far as I can tell, the only way you could dispute it is to show that what I call capacity X is, in fact, reason. But to do that you'd need to claim to know some properties of 'reason' (to demonstrate that they are the same). Yet you've just argued that we cannot know any properties of reason, because we'd have to use reason to discern them and that's circular.
Or, another way. Four properties of reason...
1. It is the capacity we use to interpret and find meaning in neurological data.
2. It is the only such capacity (there's no 'capacity X' which does a similar job).
3. It is unique to humans (or uniquely advanced in humans) - a previous claim I've read from you.
4. It is constituted entirely of, and can be reduced to, brain activity.
You seem to be saying there's some non-circular method of deriving the first three, but for some reason we cannot derive the fourth in the same way. I'm asking what that difference is.
And what is panpsychism if not spiritualism or vitalism? A spiritualist doesn't have to be Victorian. There are very modern ones. But equally spiritualistic.
I responded to your argument in a previous comment.
The problem is not the use of reason to support materialism. The argument that Wayfarer is trying to thwart is not "the reason." It is an inductive reasoning that breaks the presumed circularity. If this type of reasoning is invalidated, the reason as a whole is invalidated, including the reasons for denying the reason. Absolute skepticism that would prevent even Wayfarer from speaking here.
No one, at least not me, is advocating reductionism. It is not a question of establishing the equivalence between brain impulses and language units. It is a more general argument of an inductive nature.
I see no contradiction. Using reason to evaluate the consequences of reason does not seem to me to be circular. No more than doctor's eye measuring the diopters of an eye. I would like someone to explain in detail the alleged contradiction in saying that reason proves not to be effective for X.
Scheme:
The first premise is the description of a scientific method.
The second premise consists of the description of cases that include the success of that method.
The conclusion is that the method is effective.
The argument is completed with a sufficient reference to other cases of scientific methods and the stipulation that science is a rational procedure.
Where is the circularity? I do not see that the conclusion is included in any premise, nor that the premises are tautological.
It might help to assert what reason is, or failing that, what reason is supposed to do, before declaring impossibilities or absurdities to it. And while reason can be considered a thing because it is necessarily predicated on brain mechanisms in accordance with deterministic natural law, nothing whatsoever is accomplished by such consideration, because nothing is given by its necessity towards its employment as a faculty. Which, ironically enough, is precisely how those deterministic natural laws came about in the first place.
Even so, I’m in complete agreement on the circularity thesis, it being an intrinsic quality of reason itself and by association, the human condition under which it is necessarily employed. Nevertheless, within the auspices of a logical speculative metaphysics, reason’s intrinsic circularity, manifest in its most fundamental aspect by using reason the faculty to draw conclusions about the very faculty under examination, can be at least recognized and thus alleviated, even if not eliminated entirely. Best way to do that, is stop trying to prove what can only be presupposed.
Stating that “reason is useless” involves a contradiction not because of circularity, but because of inconsistency; for, to use reason to disprove reason already PRESUPPOSES its veracity, in direct opposition to the conclusion that you've seemingly drawn about it, thus this is self-defeating or contradictory.
In other words, asserting apriori that reason is useless can’t, by definition, be proven by experience or empirically, thus reason itself remains to prove it; whereby you’d be using reason to do so, presupposing the very fact of not being useless (thus contradicting or self-defeating the original assertion). Now, retorting that the assertion is advanced aposteriori, & not apriori, e.g., by referring to an instance or instances of flawed reasoning, can’t help you, as this doesn’t actually prove that reason, in general, is useless, but only that someone’s particular reasoning is incorrect.
If you use reason to prove that reason is not working, or useless or an epiphenomenon, then there is a contradiction, the same contradiction than “This sentence is false”.
Consciousness = thought + emotion
But which has the greater weight?
Do we ever conclude a deliberation in a non self interested way?
If you’re interpreting neurological data for scientific or medical reasons, there’s no issue, because that is what neuroscience is intended to do. But recall that we’re discussing ‘materialist theory of mind’ which is not a scientific theory, but a philosophical attitude.
Consider David Armstrong who was a leading advocate of such an approach:
This is the view that I am taking issue with. And he’s right - I’m not taking issue on scientific grounds, but philosophical, because it’s not a scientific matter. (If it is not the view that was being advocated by David Mo, then apologies. But at least this passage makes the issue clearer.)
So the argument that I’m trying to develop is that in order to support the kinds of scientific judgements that Armstrong believes are possible, you have to use the very faculty that you’re seeking to explain, namely, the mind, in a general sense, and reason, in particular. That’s because in the analysis of the brain and the evaluation of whether the mind is an output of the brain, you’re always going to be claiming that the data ‘indicates that...’ or ‘means that...’ or ‘is...’.
Armstrong claims that mind is purely physico-chemical, which is the basic claim of materialist theory of mind. But all such statements rely on rational inference so are dependent on elementary logic, which in turn is dependent on abstraction, at a very fundamental level.
And I’m arguing that you’re not going to see anything that corresponds with reason or meaning or abstraction in neurological data, while you are quite plausibly going to see things that have physical consequences, like hypoglycemia leading to depressed sugar levels leading to coma. That will turn up in the data directly. There are all kinds of things you can infer from the data, which is the specific task of science and which is not at issue. But remember what we're talking about, which is 'mind as a product of brain' - not hypoglycemia or some other objective condition.
And you can’t say, OK then, well, let’s leave reason, abstract ideation and speech to one side, and then investigate the data, because you can’t investigate without relying on those faculties. That's where I'm saying that the circularity comes in. We can’t get outside reason, to treat it as an objective phenomenon; indeed, reason is required to determine what is an objective phenomena.
This is because we're dealing with a philosophical argument, not a scientific hypothesis per se. I’m not saying that ‘reason is circular’ in any general sense. I’m saying there is circular reasoning implied in materialist theories of mind, in particular, which claim that mind (reasoning, thinking) can be understood in physico-chemical terms (as per Armstrong).
Quoting Mww
I'm saying that whenever we engage in rational inference - that 'this must mean that X' or 'because X is so, then Y must be the case', then we're employing reasoning based on abstraction. I’m not trying to define ‘reason’ in a general sense.
Quoting Mww
:up:
Quoting David Mo
A doctor can examine a subject's eye, or examine all the aspects of vision, eyesight, optics, and so on. What is involved in a medical examination is the application of knowledge of the principles of vision and the physiology of sight and optometry and so on. So in that sense, a doctor will see things that another may not, due to factors above and beyond the mere physical act of inspection. Those trained faculties ‘transcend’, as it were, the mere physical act of seeing.
Quoting David Mo
I can see you're trying to grapple with the meaning of 'mind' if it's not something conceived of in physical terms. The implication seems to be that it is spooky ethereal ‘stuff’. That, I contend, is the hangover from Cartesian dualism that depicts the mind as some kind of thing. (‘Res cogitans’ literally means ‘thinking thing’, as the Latin ‘res’ - root of ‘reality’ - means ‘thing’ or ‘object’.)
The problem with all of this, is that mainstream philosophy (particularly English-speaking philosophy) has tacitly adopted a dualistic model of ‘mind and matter’ as a consequence of Cartesian dualism. It leads to certain problems and ways of thinking that make the whole matter unresolvable. So the only answer seems to be, to rely on science and scientific naturalism. It takes a fair bit of work to re-frame it so as to understand the root of the issue.
That is just the fallacy of circularity
"Reason" is an abstraction. There are several methods that we call rational. Logic is a rational method. Analysis is a rational method. Inductive generalization is a rational method. The hypothetical-deductive method is a rational method.
Through a meta-analysis of the results of these methods I can conclude that they are useful in solving certain problems. For example, they are useful in finding the remedy for certain diseases. Or to solve the problem of the origin of the solar system.
Continuing with my meta-analysis I can conclude that reason is a better tool than other irrational resources such as faith or intuition.
I am surprised that you are denying such an obvious thing on the basis of a misapplied abstract logical principle. In any case, instead of repeating over and over again that reason cannot prove the validity of reason, I would like you to tell me where the logical flaw in the previous argument for rationality lies.
So much for my first argument for reason.
The second argument follows.
To claim that reason is not valid as knowledge using reason is an incongruity. The fallacy of circularity is a logical principle. Logic is reason. Then you claim with reason that reason doesn't count. Capital fallacy. Unless you distinguish between various uses of reason. But then, your argument of circularity against reason falls away by itself.
Wayfarer, it would be like the ophthalmologist who observes the eye and concludes that the eye's sight is useless for seeing anything.
All this has been told to you several times already (recently by Isaac [s]or Olivier)[/s], but you do not get out of the vicious circle of your presupposition that lies in the inappropriate use of concepts. The limits of knowledge are the limits of language. There is no way to prove anything other than by rational methods because that's what "proving" means. There is no use of "prove" other than to demonstrate rationally. Your attempt to invalidate reason is an attack on language, which is all we have to reason with and understand the world in a common way. If you attack the principles of language you cannot speak meaningfully. Like you're trying to do here. With little success, in my opinion.
You may try to override the use of reason to solve specific problems. It can be tried. But that would not prove that irrational methods are more successful, but that human knowledge has limits. And claiming irrational knowledge about the whole universe escapes the limits of language and knowledge. It's pure illusion.
Are you telling me that you have to belong to some kind of sect or brotherhood to understand this panpsychism stuff? Or is there some peripatetic academy of panpsychism? Where do you sign up? (Don't get angry, it is a joke)
In the meantime, we're here quietly arguing. If it's impossible to do it, you should have warned us first. And if it's not impossible, let's continue.
If you don't want your panpsychism to be associated with spiritualism you should look for another term to describe your theory. From time immemorial "psyche" has referred to anything related to the anima or immaterial mind. If you are talking about consciousness you have only one alternative: either you describe consciousness in terms that can be related to matter or you separate it from matter. And if you want to say that it's a mixed thing between matter and non-matter you should specify what the properties of that strange entity are that they are neither.
But you don't have a problem with that alone. The problem is that you speak of a universal consciousness that does not manifest itself in a verifiable way. Even the stones are supposed to have something like "consciousness", but it is not seen where this consciousness of the stones resides.
It's all rather esoteric. No wonder you have to resort to some kind of unattainable to simple mortals teaching to understand it.
You've just repeated your argument again without addressing any of the points I raised. If you're just going to ignore me there's not much point in me being on the other end of this conversation, is there?
Disagree. Reason is the faculty that makes abstraction possible. If you didn't have the faculty of reason, which is able to grasp similarities, differences and types, then you wouldn't be able to understand abstractions.
All of your stock examples are ‘reason applied to empirical problems’. They don’t cast much light on the faculty of reason, as such.
Quoting David Mo
I'm reasoning about the specific problems entailed by materialist philosophy of mind.
Quoting David Mo
But I didn't introduce either term to the conversation. You did.
Quoting David Mo
See! That's what I mean. There's a cultural reflex, that if it can't be understood in scientific terms, then it's spooky - it's 'panpsychist' or 'spiritualist'.
Quoting David Mo
I did no such thing. Where did I use that terminology, or say anything like that?
Quoting David Mo
Anything that challenges the assumed consensus might be hard to grasp, but it's not necessarily esoteric. It might be hard to fathom, but there are many references that could be given in support, from contemporary philosophy.
Quoting Isaac
I addressed your points with reference to a textbook example. What you don't understand is that your original criticism never addressed mine in the first place. I still don't think you have.
Among other things. It is also the power to divide problems. Traditionally, the reason is said to be both synthetic and analytical.
I said that "reason" was an abstraction because it is a general term that groups together methods that are diverse and that I listed. They are said to be rational in order to distinguish them from thinking that is not based on logic and observation. Therefore, there is not "one thing" called reason, but a predicate that applies to different yet similar things.
I'm sorry to say, but the rest of your answers seem elusive to me.
This issue has been summarized as follows: any solution proposed to the mind-body problem has to account for the possibility of its own emergence as a true solution. Another way to say it is: scientific theories of the mind must account for the human mind’s capacity to understand the world through science.
Sorry, what's your response to this? :
Quoting David Mo
If reason cannot be shown to be an effective way of solving problems, can it be shown that there is another way? The theory of emergency - which you defend - is not rational?
You swallowed the final part of my remark:
And if you want to say that it's a mixed thing between matter and non-matter you should specify what the properties of that strange entity are that they are neither.
You can use reason to justify reason of course. What you cannot do logically is use reason to debase or disprove reason.
If I have 3 marbles in 3d space connected by sticks so they form a triangle, I can move 1 marble, while the other two remain stationary (they merely rotate but do not move in the 3d coordinates), I can move 1 marble so one of the others has to move as well, but the 3th remains stationary, and I can move one so the other two have to move as well.
Your question presupposes only the latter of the 3 possibilities is a real possibility.
What I'm trying to explain is that the division of 'mind and matter' is often assumed, it's part of modern Western culture, going back to Descartes. (The very first unit of philosophy I studied was Descartes: First Modern Philosopher.) What happened since Descartes is that this presumed split between mind and matter has played out in the intervening centuries but it still has deep consequences for how it is thought about. It's woven into the fabric of how we think about it. So don't think I'm having a go at you.
De-constructing what that means and approaching it from a different perspective is not a simple undertaking.
I'm not talking about 'an entity' of any kind. My argument has been about a specific point, which is criticism of 'mind' as being 'physico-chemical' (David Armstrong's term. ) My argument is that you can't provide an account of reason on the basis of physico-chemical reactions or activities, as a matter of principle. So I’m not positing some ‘spooky stuff’, although the salient point is that this is the way you’re inclined to interpret it!
But the argument is based simply on an analysis of the nature of reason and meaning - no spooky stuff required.
No you didn't. My question was quite clear. Of the four properties of the faculty 'reason' which I gave, your claim is that three of them can be inferred using reason, but the fourth cannot. The question has a simple answer that is not contained (or even referenced) in the text excerpt you quoted. Why can we infer three properties of reason, using reason, but you deny we can use reason to infer the fourth. I want to know what you think the crucial difference is. All your texts and replies so far have done is repeat the view that we cannot infer the fourth property in my list. I'm already very aware that this is your view. I'm asking how it differs from the other three properties I mentioned, because you seem to think we can infer those using reason.
Quoting Isaac
Correct. It is the capacity we use to interpret and find meaning in any data. A datum is 'a piece of information' by definition; it is not regarded as 'information' until it is interpreted, per definition. And it's a further step to an hypothesis.
Quoting Isaac
Correct.
Quoting Isaac
Not relevant to the current argument, but largely true. However, if you want to argue the case, I suggest you start a new thread.
Quoting Isaac
I'm saying that reason can't be accounted for in neuroscientific terms. It belongs to a completely different ontological level - the symbolic level, you might say. That's why I'm saying you can't account for reason in terms of brain science or in terms of 'correlation with electro-chemical signals', which is the point I took issue with.
I disagree: you can (in theory) explain reason in neuroscientific terms as long as you don't explain it away, as long as your explanation accounts for the agency and utility of that symbolic level that it explains. In short: compatibilism is the only logically coherent form of materialism.
Again, I'm not asking for a reiteration of your position. I know you think the first three are correct. I know you think the last one cannot be inferred. I'm asking you why, not for a restatement of the fact that you believe it to be the case. Why do you believe it to be the case?
All four are facts about reason - properties of reason. You're not explaining how the fact that "It belongs to a completely different ontological level - the symbolic level" prevents neuroscience from accounting for it. Simply declaring it to be the case isn't sufficient. When pressed on the matter you said something about the circularity of using reason to infer facts about reason. Hence my question about how the fourth inference differs from the others.
I don’t see how accounting for it can not amount to explaining it away.
I completely accept that h. Sapiens evolved to the point of being able to understand abstract truths of reason. But those truths, such as the law of the excluded middle, are not, on those grounds, the product of that evolutionary process. The law of the excluded middle, and such like, are by definition ‘true in all possible worlds’. So, we’re dependent on the (physical) brain to be able to cognise such ideas, but the ideas themselves are not the product of a material process, rather, they are what must exist prior for any material process to occur (hence ‘a priori’).
The fallacy of circularity involves attempting to justify one thing, or set of them, by means of another thing, or set of them, while also attempting to justify this latter by means of the former, & then cyclically repeating (hence, the circularity of) the procedure.
For example, Y is “iff” X is, for when X was, then Y was too; & strictly since Y is “iff” X is, but only because when X was, then Y was too, & so on & so on ad infinitum.
Yet, this wasn’t what you did, since what you’d tacitly derived, i.e., the utility of reason, wasn’t what you’d presumed or presupposed, i.e., the uselessness of reason, but it was in direct opposition to it; so that your reasoning wasn’t circular, since, again, what you’d derived didn’t justify your presupposition, nor vice versa, but it was in direct opposition to, thus being INCONSISTENT with, your presupposition. Therefore your fallacy was that of inconsistency, not circularity.
Now, I don’t agree that logic is a rational method, for logic is the rational method. These two words, logic & reason, etymologically have ultimately one & the same meaning; the former being Greek in origin, the latter Latin. You actually affirm this, that “logic IS reason,” later in your reply.
Moreover, I don’t agree that logic or reason is an abstraction; as it’s a principle or condition for it, & therefore it can’t follow or be derived from it. This is provable on the basis of no abstraction being able to be in conflict with it; meaning that IF it was a production of abstraction, THEN abstraction could produce it in another way, i.e., whereby X could = -X; yet since it can’t, this should show one that it’s not a production of abstraction, but the condition or principle for it.
Isn’t that exactly part of the overall problem? The materialists will...must...insist reason, tacitly granting there is such a thing, is an abstraction of the cause/effect processes of physical matter. Enter epiphenomenalism and such. Oh...and pineal glands. Don’t forget those mysterious little doo-dads. Point being of course, folks been trying to source reason for many a minute.
Even if reason cannot be an abstraction of the human cognitive process of which it is the founding member, it still doesn’t just appear without causality, without contradicting natural occasions. And to say reason is merely one of two necessary human conditions doesn’t shed any light on its fundamental origin.
Reason the faculty that connects judgement to cognition giving rise to knowledge is not an abstraction; reason the unity of human intellectual apparatus, is.
Let's take an example. Chemistry can explain how DNA is a relatively stable, potentially very long molecule, where variations in the use of some elements (the nucleobases) can be introduced without affecting the molecule structure. This gives you a very long molecule which can be used to encode information, through the use of the different nucleobases as "letters". Biochemistry can further try to explain how DNA is encoded, decoded, expressed, supressed, copied, mutated, etc. through chemical equations, enzymes and the likes.
Does this chemical explanation of the genetic code "explain away" its capacity to support life? No it doesn't. It doesn't say: "DNA is an epiphenomenon, don't you worry about it, it means nothing of use." On the contrary, the chemical argument only supports the conceptual construct of a genetic code, which does all sorts of marvelous stuff. The explanation opens up a new realm, builds up a platform on which many other stuff can develop.
Now, I certainly hope we will one day find a rational, fact-based explanation for how neurones generate thoughts, that describes how biochemistry can open up an entirely new realm (the symbolic realm) and how it makes entirely new things possible thanks to this realm, including the explanation itself.
Just like DNA makes things possible, including the life of the very guys who study DNA.
Absolutely.
Quoting Wayfarer
Understood. Although I would say reason has been defined in a general sense. A cursory search of “reason is” in CPR B alone, gives 99 returns. Even with sufficient exposition of the distinctions in all those returns, still leaves plenty of room to confound one with another, which, as precedent shows, entices arguments concerning reason to traipse off into various metaphysical Never-Lands.
Quoting Wayfarer
We may disagree over whether minds have purely physical causes, but it would be hard, I think, to deny that they have physical effects, and this alone puts them in the domain of scientific study - not that I think these ontological / "proper domain" arguments are useful in cases like this, anyway: ontology bends to fit knowledge, not the other way round.
Quoting Wayfarer
Firstly, note that if this circularity of minds studying minds is doomed to fail, then, despite your assertion to the contrary, it applies to all study of the mind - scientific, philosophical, whatever (actually, even more so in the case of philosophy: neuroscience is minds studying brains, while the philosophy of mind is nominally minds studying minds.) If it is a problem - and I have seen no other argument that it is, beyond the claim that this circularity somehow means that it must be - then the study of the mind will either run into insurmountable problems, or run on interminably without delivering results. This may be so, but your statements do not show that it must be so.
Self-referentiality in logic is indeed tricky, but it can be dealt with when handled with care - or even used creatively to expand our understanding, as Gödel did. Russell's barber paradox was a warning shot across Frege's bows, and what your circularity claim is missing is that sort of argument, showing the problem that this circularity causes.
There's a lot we don't know about the universe in general that we know we don't know. Much more than we even suspect. That makes it possible to write science fiction novels. But the philosophy is more serious. It is not about the possible but about the existing and, at best, about what we can predict from the existing. The horizon of our hopes and their foundation.
Attributing consciousness to material things is like imagining a monkey writing Dante's Divine Comedy in one go. Possible? Imaginatively possible, metaphysically possible and very impossible to have happened. So we'll leave the theory of the literary monkeys to fantasy. Anything else would not be a subtlety but an absolute waste of time.
Aside from this emphatic statement, it would have been nice if you had tried to prove it with a little analysis of my reasoning. You will understand that your proclamation is not convincing to me without some kind of argument behind it.
My starting point is that we call various methods of reasoning rational. The conclusion is that these methods are more effective than the irrational ones.
I don't see any circularity or inconsistency.
Quoting aRealidealist
Excuse me. Logic is a part of rationality. Even the Greeks, who made the first distinction between sciences, like Aristotle, do not place logic as "the" reason. Traditionally, various forms of rational reasoning are distinguished, including science, philosophy, technology and even rhetoric. This is my starting point. "Reason" is said of many things.
Quoting aRealidealist
I don't know if there is any nuance of English that escapes me, but I wanted to say that logic is a form of reason. Not that it's the only form of reason. It's not easy to handle the determined articles in the English grammar.
Quoting aRealidealist
I don't think I said that. Logic is a form of thought associated with philosophy, generally allowing to pass from one statement to another by means of formal rules. There are different types of logic. It is even said that there is a logic of common sense. And a formal logic and a mathematical logic. All this is logic. I don't think it's an abstraction like the concept of reason.
If I wanted to do that I'd be a reductionist and I'm not. I have made an argument that the brain can be considered the cause of the mental. Not that it can be used to describe the mental.
Quoting Wayfarer
At this point I'm not sure if you're advocating panpsychism or not. But what you have said is that making a distinction between the mental and the physical is not acceptable. That means we can't distinguish between an emotion and the molecular behavior of limestone. For example. And that's what I'm asking you for a demonstration, a clue or any kind of argument that can prove such a thing. Because I don't see emotion in limestone, no matter how hard I try. And if you say it's something more subtle, you'll have to risk saying what is this subtle thing between an emotion and limestone.
The opposite would be to go around the subject without specifying anything. Which I'm afraid is what we're doing.
Ideas do not exist before they materialize into a brain and a language. At most, the relationships that those ideas express exist previously. Because the same relationships can be expressed with different ideas.
Firstly, no, I don’t think that’s per se the problem, IF, in the first place, it’s granted there’s such a thing as abstraction/conception.
For, as I’ve stated in my post which you’ve replied to, abstraction/conception, in general, can’t occur without the very principle of reason; again, if otherwise was possible, we could have examples of abstracts/concepts that violate the principle or condition of reason, &, therefore, are inherently contradictory, e.g., such as a square circle. Yet since we don’t & can’t, this suffices to show that reason isn’t an effect of or derived from abstracts/concepts, as they don’t & can’t condition its rules, but vice versa.
Think of it like this, anything that’s an effect of or derived from abstracts/concepts can be altered by them, such as a “pegasus” having wings made of carrots as opposed to feathers; yet whatever abstracts/concepts can’t alter, was never something which was an effect of or derived from abstracts/concepts, such as their inability to alter a square or a circle into a square circle because neither a square nor a circle was an effect of or derived from abstracts/concepts but sensations (which are independent of them); this latter reasoning, again, of what they’re incapable of altering not being an effect of or derived from them, is to be applied to reason itself, thus demonstrating its independence from them (as sensible objects, like a square or a circle, are).
Now what the problem really is, as I see it, is how the materialist can demonstrate the being of abstraction/conception by purely physical means (& not per se how reason arises from the former [so let’s not get ahead of ourselves, as this is something to be explained only after the fact of demonstrating how conception/abstraction arises from physicality]). For, in the context of the mind, induction is an actual thing, i.e., thinking certain things about the future (for example, causal connections [a-la Hume & Kant]), yet no physical thing, such as a set of neurons, can transcend its present state & actually refer to the future in order to make claims about it. So, in my view, the problem of the materialist per se isn’t explaining reason arising from abstracts/concepts, but, in the first place, the latter on a purely physical basis.
Now, moreover, I agree that reason can’t appear to us without causality, yet this doesn’t necessarily mean that reason is an appearance, but only that our initial knowledge of it occurs by means of a conditional application of it to some object.
“And to say reason is merely one of two necessary human conditions doesn’t shed any light on its fundamental origin.” — Sure, but my opposition to the claim that it arises from abstraction/conception isn’t so much about what its fundamental origin is, as what its fundamental origin IS NOT, i.e., conception/abstraction.
Yikes. I don’t know how to respond to that. Just let me say that the proposition is true, if taken from the current empirical state of affairs, insofar as nowadays everybody was initiated into geometric figures by means of sensation....your teacher drew one on the blackboard and told you what name to know it by. Same with all other abstractions used on phenomenal enterprise, from justice to numbers, ideals to universals, and a myriad of other such things.
But there are no natural squares or circles, in the same way bodies are extended in space. If they don’t occur naturally other than an artificial creation specific to a particular instance, one wonders about the first instance of them, and if he wonders long enough, he finds them to be nothing but derived from concepts, or, more accurately, the principles concepts validate. These can arise in no other way than from the intelligence that thinks them, by means of what has come to be known as pure reason.
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Quoting aRealidealist
Agreed.....sort of. Can’t occur at all without functional human reason. Reason here meaning some systematic rational procedure, not the faculty itself.
Not sure what you mean by a principle of reason. Reason in and of itself doesn’t have a principle, but rather, constructs them on its own accord, in conjunction with the domain under which they are employed. Which is why we can’t even think squared circle, much less cognize its objective validity, because such cognition violates the principles reason already supplied. In effect, a square circle is merely a euphemism for an impossible cognition, allowing us to see how irrational we can be.
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Quoting aRealidealist
That is the very problem I mentioned, if you mean the materialist has great trial and tribulation explaining abstracts/concepts from a purely physical domain. But when push comes to shove, everything that happens from a human perspective, is the purview of the brain, which science tells us operates on strictly natural deterministic rules, because it is, after all, just matter. But I don’t care about all that; my brain works, cogito........done deal.
“My starting point is that we call various methods of reasoning rational.” — Rational reasoning is tautological, just as empirical experience would be. The modifying adjective “rational” is thus meaningless as such; yet to say that all reasoning isn’t rational, as one can be “irrational,” & therefore there’s irrational reasoning as opposed to rational reasoning, doesn’t help you, for if one is being irrational then they’re not, in fact, reasoning, & so this, i.e., irrational reasoning as opposed to rational reasoning, would be a false (meaningless) dichotomy from the get-go.
“Logic is a part of rationality. Even the Greeks, who made the first distinction between sciences, like Aristotle, do not place logic as ‘the’ reason. Traditionally, various forms of rational reasoning are distinguished, including science, philosophy, technology and even rhetoric. This is my starting point. ‘Reason’ is said of many things.” — If you can give me the citation where Aristotle specifically distinguishes between logic & reason, this would be very helpful: to my knowledge, no such distinction is to be found in his work. Now, sure, “reason” is said of many things, for it’s applied to different objects; although, the point is that many things aren’t said of “reason,” for its principle remains uniform irrespective of the different objects that it’s applied to.
“I don't think I said that.” — You did, check your fifth post on the fifth page of this thread.
“Logic is a form of thought associated with philosophy, generally allowing to pass from one statement to another by means of formal rules. There are different types of logic. It is even said that there is a logic of common sense. And a formal logic and a mathematical logic. All this is logic. I don't think it's an abstraction like the concept of reason.” — In my view, logic or reason isn’t just what allows the passage from one statement to another, but it’s the very principle that allows for the formation of a statement at all. Now, there are different types of logic not because logic itself is variant, but because of the different types of objects that it’s applied to; which is what I’ve said about reason, that is, reason is said of many things, but many things aren’t said of reason. Yet you distinguish between these two, logic & reason; so can you please, for my understanding, define how you distinguish the two words? This’ll greatly help me to understand your overall position.
Could it possibly be a host to the mental, or a cause of the expression in the host?
Hey Wayfarer!
I'm trying to get up to speed on the discussion...who here is the Materialist?
Yet, the point of there being no perfect circles or squares in the sensible or natural world is ultimately beside the point; for, either way, the point is that abstractions/conceptions can’t alter things which aren’t created by them. Again, if the principle or condition of reason was created by abstraction/conception, the latter would be able to alter it (like it can alter the abstract/concept of a pegasus or a unicorn), such that it could make X = -X; yet since it can’t, it’s obvious that the principle of reason isn’t created by abstraction/conception.
Now, you say that you sort of agree that conception/abstraction can’t occur without the principle of reason; your point of difference is that it can’t occur without “functional human reason,” & not “the principle of reason.” For, “in and of itself,” you say about reason, it “doesn’t have a principle, but rather, constructs them on its own accord,” which, you go on to say, “is why we can’t even think squared circle, much less cognize its objective validity, because such cognition violates the principles reason already supplied. In effect, a square circle is merely a euphemism for an impossible cognition, allowing us to see how irrational we can be.” — I fail to see how reason can “construct” a principle without already presupposing one by which it proceeds in construction? Again, repeating what I’ve been stating over & over but most recently in the paragraph before this current one (it seems as if the cogency of the fact is being overlooked), IF the principle of reason was a construction, THEN the cognition of a square circle would only be impossible within the domain that it itself has created or supplied; so that IF this domain is merely a contingent construction of reason, THEN it should be able to create or supply another domain in which a square circle wouldn’t be impossible to cognize. Yet, again, since it can’t, this only goes to prove that reason doesn’t construct its principle, but proceeds to construct BY MEANS OF it.
Correct. Enter the Aristotelian Three Logical Laws of Thought, from which all principles follow.
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Quoting aRealidealist
Still not sure what a principle of reason is; ALL principles are given from reason, so saying “principle of reason” is redundant on the one hand, and leads to the notion that reason needs a principle to justify itself on the other, which is quite absurd. Reason needs to justify the bounds of its proper employment, but has no need or want to justify its subjective reality.
Anyway.....Mere observation is probably responsible for the creation of the domain of geometry, re: the shape of a bunch of sticks laying on the ground; the way moon looks closer earlier and further away later; the appearance of a spherical rock that from a certain perspective has no third dimension. But from the sticks, the principle “no two straight lines enclose a space” is derived completely a priori; from the moon rising, “perceptual magnitude is inversely proportional to distance”; from the rock, the principle “a sphere is an infinite number of immediately adjacent circles”.
A square meets these principles, a circle meets those principles, all constructed by reason a priori, which is sufficient for squared circle to be impossible, within the domain reason created: synthetic a priori cognitions.
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Quoting aRealidealist
“It” being reason? So you suggest reason could create two mutually contradictory domains? Yeah...no. Not in its pursuit of knowledge as we understand it, and certainly not in the speculative epistemology I favor.
Contingent constructions of reason is possibility. It is irrational to suppose domains using principles for its rules, should operate on possibility, at the exclusion of necessity.
All the contemporary panpsychists that I’m familiar with (including myself) say that it is only the metaphysical whatever that’s necessary to have any first person experience at all that is inherent to everything, and the particular kinds of experiences that particular beings have are completely dependent on their functionality in a way that drugs etc can totally influence.
That information just is the material world.
Dose a computer do this?
Cellular microtubulles look promising :
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm
Quoting Mww
Try this:
Consciousness = reason + emotion
Consciousness - emotion = reason
I do not think we can understand reason until we have a reliable model of consciousness, since it is a function of consciousness. I think, if we had a model, we would see how unreasonable reason can be:
@Banno illustrates this point with: A belief that is not subject to doubt is a certainty.
Delving into consciousness is highly problematic, in many different ways, so I can understand / respect peoples reluctance to do so.
I'm an idealist - peace brother!
And in your case too. It's natural with any language that isn't univocal like science.
Quoting aRealidealist
It's not a tautology, it's a redundancy. To say "rational reasoning" is a redundancy because every argument we want to make for or against something will use reason in one way or another. Therefore, to demand that reason be justified with non-rational arguments is an absurd demand. If it is possible to justify reason, it will always be with rational arguments. Here the irrationalist violates the common use of language by creating a pseudo-problem. Also when he says that reason cannot be justified with reason. Reason is not a method of justifying anything. It is not the method of proving that the current pandemic is caused by a virus. That is demonstrated by one particular method that has proved very effective in detecting the bug. As scientific methods have proved very effective in similar cases. And we call those methods and other similar ways of thinking rational or "reason" for short. And I don't think what I'm saying is inconsistent.In every case, you seem to be unable to prove that it is, because you have avoided rationally justifying your accusation of inconsistency.
Quoting aRealidealist
I haven't seen it. I think you attribute something to me that I haven't said because you identify reason and logic. Don't make me work in vain and quote my exact words, please.
Quoting aRealidealist
Aristotle does not distinguish between logic and reason because these two terms are alien to his terminology. But he does distinguish between the study of the forms of argumentation and categorization (which would be roughly equivalent to today's logic) and the sciences (which would be equivalent to today's reason). According to him logic is not a "science" (it is not included in any of the five sciences mentioned at the beginning of Physics), but a propaedeutic that helps to shape syllogistic deductions so that they are rigorous. That, at least, is the interpretation that the Aristotelians gave to their treatises on logic. What we call "logic" now, of course.
Quoting aRealidealistQuoting aRealidealist
Years ago I took a course in formal logic that made me sweat blood. Although I don't remember everything, some things I did get out of it.
Firstof all, that formal logic (that of predicates is the one I remember most of all) consisted of establishing a series of deductive steps that started from axioms to conclude (demonstrate) theorems by means of a series of inference rules. Logic is therefore a method of deduction that allows us to move from premises to conclusions, from some statements to others. You can call that a method of "formation" of statements, but not hide that this formation is a deductive procedure of passing from some statements to others.
Moving from one statement to another is also the goal of Aristotelian logic (from premises to conclusion), but in the course I learned that contemporary formal logic is not the same as Aristotelian logic, since the latter contained some deficiencies that were overcome by current formal logic, which was very different from Aristotelian logic. Syllogistic logic has remained something that can be used in everyday life and that from time to time is tried to be reformed, but in its pure state it is a thing of the past among today's logicians and mathematicians.
There I was explained the differences between formal logics which were quite a lot. Neither the terms nor the rules of deduction were the same. Especially if we add the inductive logics. Therefore, to say that there is "one" logic (please, note this "one") is an abstraction that we use in ordinary language to talk about or group the different logics. A logician will always specify the branch of logic in which he works.
Leaving aside Aristotle, who is a bit old, I follow the current philosophy that makes a clear distinction between logic and reason, considering logic a part or instrument of rational procedures of thinking. It is a part that deals with the possible ways of passing from one statement to another, the form of deduction or the admissible rules of inference. Say it as you like. But reason (rational methods of thinking) has many other components. For example, valid systems of collecting empirical information, language analysis, rules of interpretation, etc. etc.
Simply put, the concept of reason is broader than that of logic.
I hope I have made my position clear because it has taken me a while.
I don't think we're invaded by a parasite called "mind". We're not in Alien. We're not doing science fiction.
What there is is an exact relationship between the mind, which is the manifestation of certain verbal and gestural actions, and the brain. Remove one, and the other ends. There's no indication of a mental parasite. And if a word has no directly or indirectly observable reference, a word has no meaning.
It’s not so much ‘making a distinction’, as ‘dividing up the problem along those lines’.
I mean, humans really do have minds, mental tendencies, mental problems. If you were a doctor - I’m not, but bear with me - when someone came in with some bizarre behavioural problem, you might ask ‘is this guy under the influence of a substance, or is it a brain injury, or is it a mental illness?’ Some cases have a genuinely physical cause - like a tumour or ingestion of methamphetamine - some seem to originate in disordered cognition. Within this spectrum it seems logical to me to distinguish physical and mental, and there are many other such cases.
But getting back to limestone, or inorganic stuff generally - what it doesn’t convey, or embody, is information. I mean, unless you’re really eccentric, rocks don’t think - actually the thing I don’t like about ‘panpsychism’ is that it seems to suggest they actually do.
So living beings, generally, are obviously distinguished by experiencing sensations, by being self-organising, self-motivated, by being able to heal, breed, mutate and so on. All of that introduces levels of organisation which are not observed in inorganic life. And that level of organisation has its own rules and logic which can’t be accounted for by the same basic laws that govern inorganic material.
Life seems to embody a symbolic code, to embody information on a fundamental level. DNA, which has been mentioned here, is the obvious example. So that general observation has given rise to the discipline of biosemiotics, which ‘ is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, or production and interpretation of signs and codes in the biological realm‘. And many of the exponents of biosemiotics recognise that the laws that govern signs, exist independently of those that govern physical objects, even if in some sense they’re dependent on them.
In the human form, that organisation reaches another level again, that of reason and language, which enables capabilities that other animals don't have (although I'm learning from this forum, that this is a somehow controversial view.)
Semiotics points to another form of dualism namely, matter form (hylomorphic) dualism. I’ve been reading about it, and I find it quite persuasive; it’s grounded in Aristotelian philosophy, and is a genuine alternative to Cartesian dualism. And this approaches the whole issue of mind and body differently - in terms of matter and form, not matter and mind.
Quoting David Mo
It's mainly accepted nowadays that ideas can only exist in minds, which in turn can only exist in brains. The problem you've got, though, is that (for example) Pythagoras' theorem would be true (to quote Einstein) 'whether anyone discovered it or not'. And it's an idea!
I have more examples.
Quoting Olivier5
I'm approaching it from a different perspective: that science does indeed explain many things, in an absolutely marvellous and useful way, but what explains science or scientific laws? I'm not being facetious here. Wittgenstein 'the whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena' (TLP 6.371).
Quoting A Raybould
Oracle of Delphi to Socrates: ‘Know thyself!’
Socrates to Oracle of Delphi: ‘No can do! We don’t have the science yet!’
Quoting Mww
And I would agree, with the caveat that modern philosophy often tends to portray it in terms of an adaptation, which leads to what critical theory describes as its 'instrumentalisation'. You notice the amount of pushback on the idea of the uniqueness of the human faculty of reason; it's 'species-ism', very non-PC.
By the way if you haven't yet encountered the contemporary philosopher Sebastian Rodl, look him up. He’d be of interest to you, I suspect. (Pretty tough read!)
Surely that's trivial to discount. First, it assumes the answer to the question by asserting that "the ideas themselves are not the product of a material process". Second, I can point to quantum mechanics where the law of the excluded middle does not hold (e.g. either the radioactive atom decayed or it did not), and the people dealing with it are fine. The law of the excluded middle worked as long as our experience of the material world fitted in with it. Then it was abandoned by some people for something more general when experience begged to differ.
Did the a priori fact of excluded middles suddenly change? Is it's truth dependent on circumstance? Or did its seeming truth derive from experience and pedagogy?
When Einstein Met Tagore.
I am quite in agreement with this statement, with the caveat that only a rational intelligence is capable of grasping the Pythagorean theorem. It is, therefore, something which is both real, and immaterial. It's a real idea, not dependent on a mind, but only discernible to reason. It's certainly not 'a product'; it's a discovery.
Nope, not buyin’ that. Reason is the ground of everything mental in a rational agent with respect to what is or may be, including the exposition and subjective validity of consciousness.
Consciousness = experience + emotion. Consciousness is the state of my being conscious, the unity of that of which I am conscious. I am not conscious of my reason, but only the manifestations that represent it.
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Quoting Pop
Ehhhh.....all judgements arising from certainty is knowledge, so was never a mere belief to begin with, so yes, a worthy illustration of how unreasonable reason can be.
(To say nothing of the most embarrassing graph in modern physics....)
Yes, it is embarrassing. But this is what I keep telling people who think physics is intellectually difficult: any idiot can do it, you just have to be interested! (And accept 30 timetabled hours a week at college.)
Quoting Wayfarer
What this says is that ideal Pythagorean theorem is a belief, not a fact, that is: the idea itself exists in Einstein's head, not out there somewhere.
“...Aristotle and Kant are the heros of this book...”. (Rodl, 2012)
What’s not to like, huh?? Thanks.
That is more a case of asking whether the present king if France is bald or not. It looks like that must violate the principle of the excluded middle, because there is no present king of France, but technically that just makes the answer “no”; the mistake is in thinking that a “no” answer means “the king has hair”. Similarly, there is no classical state of the particle until observation, so the answer to whether it has decayed or not is “no”; but not in a way that means it is definitely classically undecayed, simply in a way that means it is not classically anything because it’s not in a classical state, it’s in a superposition.
Limiting the question only to times when systems are in classical states is the same as limiting oneself to the sorts of everyday propositions where the law of the excluded middle applies. We know that outcomes of quantum experiment depend on the fact of superposition, not on some pending classical state. In other words, nature itself does not exclude middles.
But that wasn't really my point, which was that there are some of us quite happy with non-binary answers to propositions. It is unusual, because the experience of dealing with QM is unusual. It is usual to see that the law of the excluded middle holds, because it does so in usual experience.
Likewise, “the classical state of the particle is decayed” and “the classical state of the particle is non-decayed” are both false for an unobserved particle, but not because the law of the excluded middle has been violated, rather because there is no classical state of the particle, just like there is no present king of France.
In both cases the apparent violation of the LEM is actually due to making reference to a non-existent referent.
No I got the point. I was going to mention that the reason why the proposition must be "No" for the king of France is because he doesn't exist. The atom, in my thought experiment, does exist. But I focused on the meat.
Superposition is not analogous to non-existence. Yes, you can say "the classical state doesn't exist yet/anymore", but a classical state is not necessary to ask meaningful questions. A classical electron must go through the left slit or right slit, a superposed electron must not. Truth is not postponed until a classical state exists: even then, the fact of superposition between emission and collapse is evidenced. Likewise for radioactive decay.
As I said, limiting propositions to classical states, i.e. to ones that may obey the law, is the same thing as observing that the law of the excluded middle does not apply to systems in a quantum superposition. We, even if you do not, are still able make reasonable propositions (has the atom decayed?) and answer (63% yes, 37% no).
But I do think you miss my point. The point is not interpretation of QM. The point is: there exist people for whom non-binary truth values of reasonable propositions are valid. Even if they were wrong and the "real" truth value is binary and unanswerable or assumed false until measurement (your interpretation of QM), the way they think about truth values is non-binary. They are comfortable with it.
Where is that idea? Out there arguing with the law of the excluded middle? Or in the heads of those comfortable with it?
Yes, but a classical state of the atom does not.
Superposition is not a logically indeterminate answer to the question of what classical state is true. It’s there being something other than any classical state at all.
Just like France being a republic isn’t a logically indeterminate answer to the question of whether their king has hair, it’s there being something other than any king at all.
Yes, but I'm not talking about people who are considering classical states only; I'm not even talking about collapse interpretations of QM. I had in mind more theorists. But even experimentalists after observation can establish facts about superposition.
Quoting Pfhorrest
It's neither, it's a probability amplitude distribution over classical states. When the atom is in a 50/50 admixture, it is not "neither decayed or not decayed" and it's CERTAINLY not "undecayed until classical"*. It is an admixture.
*This would actually make little sense. If the proposition "is the atom decayed" were false until collapse, the would be no quantum entanglement. Cat would never be in a superposition**.
**Not that it would anyway.
If someone asks about the hair status of the king of France, neither “bald” nor “hairy” is true, but not because the LEM had failed, just because there is no king of France to be either bald or hairy.
If someone asks about the decay status, a classical state, of an unobserved atom, neither “decayed” nor “undecayed” is true, but not because the LEM had failed, just because there is no classical state of an unobserved atom to be “decayed” or “undecayed”.
I’m not at all questioning your description of quantum mechanics, I’m pointing out that the same apparent problem of the LEM violation occurs in entirely non-quantum situations too, and in either case can be explained without throwing out the LEM.
There is, though.
|atom> = a*|decayed> + b*|not decayed>
They're on the right. :)
Quoting Pfhorrest
But it isn't the same kind of problem. We can agree on the non-existence of the king of France, and it is his non-existence that makes the question meaningless. There is no extent to which he is bald as he doesn't exist. There is no extent to which he has hair as he doesn't exist. There is an extent to which an atom has decayed or not decayed, right there in the wavefunction. The decayedness or not-decayedness is not an unanswerable question, it just doesn't have a binary answer. Otherwise quantum computing is gonna be screwed.
That is a superposition, not a classical state.
I was talking about a superposition, not a classical state. The classical states are on the right.
Just like France doesn't have a king.
If it makes the analogy better for you, imagine that instead of having one king, or being a republic, France had a council of many co-kings, who all had hair of different lengths, some of them completely bald. Still "the" king of France does not have a specified hair status, because there is no "the" king of France, even though that's for a different reason (more like a superposition) in this hypothetical than in reality.
No fancy quantum anything needs to be invoked to explain how there is no hair-status of the king of France in such a scenario, yet the LEM is still not violated there. The LEM is not violated by superpositions for the same reason.
It is. a = 1, b = 0. There's nothing inherently special about these values. Everything is in an eigenstate of something (Hohenberg-Kohn theorems).
Quoting Pfhorrest
Yes, I can see you're fond of the analogy, however, as I said:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
How can reason be the ground if you re not conscious of your reason, but only the manifestations that represent it? Surely the ground then is that which you are not conscious of - the subconscious?
My understanding is:
Consciousness = thought + emotion
Experience = thought + emotion
Consciousness is equivalent to experience. I assume this is what you meant.
If they are equivalent, then we can swap them out.
If I did this to your last sentence, it would read:
I do not experience my reason, but only the manifestations that represent it
A slight shift in perspective - curious isnt it? Especially when we add emotion to the equation.
Consciousness is a state of (entangled, integrated, and unified) information. Consciousness is personally constructed from information - each individual consciousness is unique and subjective as it is personally constructed, but they all share this characteristic of integrated information.
The input is information, and the output is integrated information. please consider.
( the unity of that of which I am conscious ). - What can this be in mind other then unified information + emotion?
So were we to consider these things we don't know, we would be writing science fiction then?
You can't banish the "alien", because you don't like it. Theology a respectable branch of philosophy would'nt like it if you were to banish the soul, which is hosted by the brain.
Likewise a puppet on a string, or a philosophical zombie. Cut the strings and the puppet doesn't move ergo the puppet must be dead. Unplug the TV and the rendition of Bach's toccata and fugue in d minor ceases to be broadcast. Could, I wonder, the TV have broadcast it absent the signal it hosts?
There is in the puppet and the TV and perhaps if there weren't one in us we would be philosophical zombies.
Does my TV understand the meaning conveyed by Bach's toccata and fugue?
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
We seem to agree on the rejection of the consciousness of the universe and material things.
But you're trying to replace it with the concept of information. I don't agree. There's a big difference between the concept of "bioinformation" and human information, between the information a rock produces and the information the front page of the Washington Post produces. Even in the information produced by a tweet from President Trump, which is the closest thing I know to a rock. The concept of semantics only works in the natural world by analogy. The genetic code is not a symbolic language like human language. There are many differences. For example, human language uses symbols that need a human mind to interpret them. A human symbol is polysemic in itself. A human language has pragmatic means. No natural code is capable of asking a question. There is a controversy among biologists about whether the concept of genetic "code" and information theory is a useful model or an inconvenient one. In either case, there is nothing in the genetic code that involves consciousness, intentionality and abstraction.
Every natural code, so to speak, exists only when there is a human mind to decipher it. In nature there are processes. These processes are read as causal or descriptive laws in a coded language. And these laws do not exist outside the human mind and without a specific human language, be it an ordinary language or a science. Even the Pythagorean theorem (a2+b2=c2) is not an object outside of science. The fact is that Pythagoras' theorem only exists in Euclidean mathematics.
What I am saying does not justify a metaphysical dualism. I'm advocating an epistemological dualism. When we describe the laws of nature we use a language. When we describe the mind we use another language. It is the same that we use a scientific language to speak of macroscopic entities (Newtonian physics) and another one for microscopic entities (quantum mechanics). But the referred objects are the same: be rocks or brains. But they are different languages that serve to speak of different levels of a common reality, which we can call matter. In the case of the human being, all his behavior refers to the nervous system. That's the material substrate that is referred with different languages.
Indeed. Note that Einstein, who knows very well that Pythagoras' theorem does not work in non-Euclidean mathematics, introduces the clause "approximately". That opens the door to anything. If you don't like my principles, I have others.
It is the same clause that appears in any form of current realism. It is stated that human ideas (scientific or otherwise) coincide with reality but "approximately".
I am also a realist, but I believe that a univocal idea (law) - reality relationship cannot be established. It can simply be said that science as a whole must have some real correlation that is difficult to establish on a case-by-case basis.
Theology does not seem to me to be a respectable branch of philosophy. I think Kant put it in its place, that is, outside of all rationality.
The realization that there is something we don't know ends here. Any attempt to give it a name and to elaborate a whole theory about it is pure fiction. Fiction is fine when we use it for entertainment. But it becomes a hoax when we put the label of truth
Music has a merely emotional or aesthetic meaning. It is not knowledge.
Your are not gonna make it great by telling bedtime stories.
Which shows the purportedly mechanical nature of creatures, mysteriously animated by what was to become called ‘the ghost in the machine’. (Gotta love that arrow.)
(This, incidentally, is what also became of God in the modernist picture, but I thought it better to stick with a duck.)
The advantage of the mechanist approach is that it lends itself ideally to solving mechanical and engineering problems. That’s why scientific materialism maybe just is ‘the discipline of engineers applied to the problems of philosophy’.
The materialist approach is generally to frame a problem in terms of some set or system which can be understood in terms of its simpler parts and the principles which govern its interactions - as engineers do. And in that it’s been fabulously successful, let’s not question that. If the world had been run by starry-eyed philosophers, we wouldn't be having this conversation, because the technology behind this forum wouldn’t have been invented by the types of genius engineers who came up with ideas like TCP/IP (like Vint Cerf.)
Furthermore, certainly not all scientists are philosophically materialist. However scientific materialism is unarguably a leading if not the dominant current of philosophical thought in modern global economic culture. It is simply assumed by the secular consensus, and I’m sure is the tacit if not explicit view of most of the long-term posters here.
But let’s note, again, that in this case, that of the nature of the mind, we are what we seek to know. This is the sense in which the problems of philosophy are radically different from scientific problems generally. In those, you have a hypothesis or prediction (left hand side) and outcome or observation (right hand side) and you refer to the latter to refine and inform the former. It’s a very powerful methodology but it doesn’t apply to every subject matter. But I think the conventional attitude is that it is so powerful and so pervasive, that questions that can’t be fit into that framework are regarded as unintelligible. (‘Where’s the data??’)
Critiquing or bringing that mindset to awareness is a serious and difficult philosophical undertaking, requiring adopting a different stance. It’s difficult, because it demands self-awareness, insofar as we’re naturally inclined to embody the kind of attitude that is the subject of the criticism. This kind of approach is found in phenomenology, in existentialism and also non-dualist philosophies that originated in Asian cultures and have begun to percolate through Western culture. All of these require consideration of the human condition (as for example via Heidegger’s dasein) and not just as an attempt to resolve every problem by fitting it into the Procrustean bed of Darwinian materialism, where reason is dictated by the exigencies of survival (‘the success of the phenotype’). They require a different stance or standpoint which can’t be boiled down to the propositions and hypotheses of instrumental reason.
Nevertheless, the Western philosophical toolbox has within it just the kinds of tools that are suitable for this undertaking. It’s just that they’re buried under feet of silt, and nobody knows how to use them any more.
:up: So there may be a sanity clause?!?
Quoting David Mo
That's putting it strongly. Whether scientific ideas correlate to reality is tested. The idea can be wrong, there's no obvious difference in terms of their ideas. But well-tested ideas, yes, are thought to describe something about reality to some (presumably higher than previous) level of approximation.
Quoting Wayfarer
This isn't any different than the usual dualist argument, insofar as it defines mind to be not amenable to scientific method and then claims therefore that therefore science cannot answer questions about it. The end result is that we'll be using the same word to describe two different things, only one of which exists, and you're stuck with the problem of whittling down your definition of mind to exclude anything science can illuminate, i.e. a mind of the gaps.
Quoting Wayfarer
First, modern physics is already phenomenological. There is a gap between how things are modelled and how those models can be found to to correlate to those things. This is true classically although was not always fully appreciated. But these days it's mundane. There was a conference some years ago which tried to agree answers to a set of questions. One of the questions was: What is a photon? The agreed answer was: A click in a photon detector.
Second, this forwards the fallacy that any proponent of one scientific theory believes they can explain everything with that theory. Darwinism explains inheritable biological characteristics with respect to environment. There will be some biological characteristics, that distinguish ourselves from other species, that give capacity for either a mind or an illusion of a mind. If there is an inheritable drive for mind, that too will have a Darwinistic explanation. But it cannot answer questions about what an individual or group will do with those capacities. For instance, if it transpires that language creates mind, the biological bases are valid evolutionary theoretical questions, however the functioning of mind is not, nor does anyone pretend it does without prejudice.
You make it sound like appeal to data was just an arbitrary add-on in materialist methodology, like its a choice as trivial as what colour hat to wear.
The appeal to sensorially derived data is simply to garner some source of valid authority for mutual agreement.
As Peter Van Inwagen said of most philosophy, it is ultimately boils down to claims about the way the world is. If God exists, then that's the way the world is. If 'exist' is not a material existence but some other kind, then that too is some way the world is. If there is no one way the world is, then that too is still some way the world is... And so on.
If I come up with some entirely personal idea about the way the world is, like a belief in aliens, it makes no difference to anyone how I arrived at or justify that idea, but if I want to say to some others that they are wrong, I need to appeal to some authority external to (or mutual to) us both. Otherwise we just disagree about that instead. Sensorially derived data has proven to be the most useful mutual authority, it's the one with the widest base of agreement. We all have a very broad trust that the things we see, hear and feel are mutually seen, heard and felt. Blind people are missing something, it's not that sighted people are making stuff up.
There's no doubt in my mind (nor, I think in most serious materialist) that what we see, hear and feel is not unencumbered, not a pure reflection of the way the world is. Its value is not in the accuracy of the reflection, its in the mutuality of the experience.
No alternative method of investigation can replicate that. Talk of the spiritual leaves many completely cold - it's not even close to being a mutual experience. Rationality is just the same (one person's 'rational' argument is another's nonsense) there's no mutual experience of what is 'rational'.
We can come close if we culturally invest heavily in set rules (like basic maths, or language) where there's a mutuality born out of the fact that we all know the rules, but this doesn't tell us anything about the way the world is, it just tells us what the rules are.
So when we want to know something about the way the world is, as a social endeavour, we look to some method arbitrated by widely shared mutual experience. That's materialism, nothing else even comes close.
I have no argument with those who admit science can’t explain everything.
Quoting Isaac
Not my intent. Simply to make the rhetorical point that it’s the only kind of question a lot of people will think is meaningful.
Quoting Isaac
Sure, again, no argument, but not the point. There are some things that can only be understood for and by oneself.
//ps// further to that, I believe liberal democratic capitalism and scientific methodology provide the best overall framework for arbitrating those ends. I’m not arguing against it but I regard the question as something that is beyond it’s purview by definition.//
That's because for a lot of people, a meaningful question (in a social environment) is one which has an answer in a social environment, and as I've just explained above nothing even get close to sensory data when it comes to mutual social experience of references that can be used to arbitrate disputes.
So, a question is meaningless (to many) if there's no meaningful answer. An answer (for many) is not meaningful as such if it is indistinguishable from a non-answer (or wrong answer).
Consider 1+1=?. The answer 2 is only meaningful if 3 is not also an answer (or 4, or 5 etc). So we have to have some socially mutual means of arbitrating possible answers in order to make the question meaningful.
There's simply no socially mutual means of arbitration anywhere near as useful as sensory data, so questions posed which are not answered using a method which is arbitrated by sensory data is going to be meaningless to many people. Their not wrong about that, they have a perfectly legitimate set of reasons.
As I said, it's not the only socially mutual means of arbitration. There's really widely accepted rules too, like maths, the rules of chess, even basic moves in logic are quite widely experienced in the same way. But beyond that there's nothing to arbitrate between possible answers, so the questions become meaningless.
That is not what I said though. The characterisation of scientists within a field as believing their field explains everything is pernicious. There are examples, usually in the softer sciences, of a refusal to accept the necessity of holistic approaches, but even Skinner didn't believe his nurture-over-nature position explained e.g. the tides.
There are meaningless questions: What time is an apple? What colour is speed? There are scientific questions: How old is the Earth? How is sound created and mediated? There may be meaningful unscientific questions. You are bang on target to say that bridging the gap between philosophy and science, even if it is just to categorise questions as scientific or unscientific, requires casting questions in some mutually understandable way, and phenomonology is a great example of how to do this because it is part of both science and philosophy (as the two do influence one another).
But science already does this. I cannot personally explain why I experience a particular hue of red when I look at my dining room wall -- that is a scientific-seeming question that is unanswered -- but I can explain why that perception persists under fixed lighting conditions -- that is a scientific question that is answered. It becomes a problem in that mutual area to justify why one question is scientific and another not. The obvious and usual recourse is that science has not answered it yet, which is an 'of-the-gaps' argument. A better justification for meaningful unscientific questions needs to be put forward.
Thank you.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I don’t think it does as a matter of course. There might be some scientists who do that, and some scientific areas where it happens, but overall the story in science is ever-increasing specialisation - ‘knowing more and more about less and less’, one saying has it.
Overall, I do agree that science is becoming more holistic and less materialistic, but that is happening, as I think Thomas Kuhn said, ‘one funeral at a time’. It’s also happening because of the ‘greening of culture’ - science is no longer the mechanist/materialist beast of yore, but has a vital role to play in preserving biodiversity, finding alternative energy sources and above all ameliorating the climate crisis, so science is kind of forced into the position of joining forces with the green left in some respects, which naturally has a mellowing influence.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Apologies, it was all I had time for at the moment. :yikes:
Could you be clearer about the two questions you imagine to be here please, because under one understanding of what you are saying the "why" questions both have exactly the same, entirely mundane response: "because it is daylight and your wall is painted red", which would seem to indicate that they are, in fine, precisely the same question.
Quoting Pfhorrest
I think this is more a case of asking whether a beaded curtain is open or closed.
In the same way one can see a thing, without ever being conscious of all the information in that system. In the same way your feet are always on the ground without you ever being conscious of gravity.
Beware mistaking what reason is, with what it is to reason. Reason is a cognitive system according to rules, to reason is the construction and use of the rules. I am not conscious of my system as a whole, but I am conscious of my system at its work.
—————
Quoting Mww
Quoting Pop
Why would you assume I meant something different from what I said, unless you think, apparently without proper warrant, I mean emotion to be merely a kind of experience. I reject that notion immediately; feelings are not cognitions and are a general condition in themselves, but experience is derived solely from cognitions and is always a particular condition in itself.
——————-
Quoting Pop
This is fine for what happens, and may even be developed into a logical theory. As stated, however, nothing about how it happens is given, and, more importantly, what form such information takes. If I don’t know the how of a thing, and the explicit accountability for its parts, it holds no interest for me. The only consideration it’s worth so far, is.....ok, if you say so.
I don't think that's a reasonable point. Science deals with more unverified theory as time passes for no other reason than that these are the hardest questions to answer and will take the longest time. The Higgs boson was speculative until we had the technology to answer it. The speed of light was an easier question because the technology was available sooner. The acceleration of falling bodies even easier. To use the success of science at answering easier questions as a criticism for focusing on harder ones is disingenuous. The trajectory of science is inevitably toward harder questions with more incorrect hypotheses.
Quoting Wayfarer
Considering myriad material phenomena on different scales is not less materialistic, it's just less narrow materialism.
Quoting Wayfarer
Haha no, I didn't mean you, I meant the general discourse. I think your point here was great.
Can you give me a thought that has been proven to be true?
Surely truth needs legs, feet and a rock (emotional or not) to stand on.
Sure, the distinction is between "why this colour" and "why is it always the same colour". The latter is answered by the limited wavelengths of light a material body can emit when illuminated: its emission spectra. This is scientifically well understood. But I still don't know why I see that particular wavelength as that particular colour, i.e. how mental imaging occurs. I know how the brain differentiates colours, I know why it is consistent, but the actual experience of colour for a particular wavelength is unknown to me.
This could just be my ignorance, but tmk the question is not scientifically answered. (If it is answered, just replace with an unanswered one.) It is for consideration then if it is scientifically answerable. Of-the-gaps arguments are of the form: it has not been answered, therefore it is not scientifically answerable, which is not rational. What's desirable from a logical non-materialist's PoV is a schema for determining whether this scientific-seeming question is in fact scientific at all, without relying on what future science will illuminate. And from a materialist's PoV whether there is any reason to doubt that it is. That is, both parties are invested in this endeavour.
OK, I understand, you seem to be of the opinion, shared by quite a few philosophers and scientists it must be said, that every time we see anything, mental imaging is occuring. How would you convince someone who denied this? I mean, suppose someone were to say to you "for me, mental imagery is the kind of thing I might engage in as I day dream, or try to bring to mind the look of that woman I saw yesterday, etc etc but it is not the kind of thing I engage in, or at least not typically, when I just look at a wall painted red". Looking at such a wall might of coure provoke someone into think about some red headed woman, and that might involve mental imagery, but what is the empirical evidence, or philosophical argument, that every time anyone sees anything that there is mental imagery going on? Are you relying on something like the old, and much contested, arguments from illusion or hallucination? Or is there something else you would bring to bear in response to the mental imagery sceptic?
That is an understatement. :rofl: I'm not specifying a means of mental imaging; I simply mean that I see a red wall. It does not preclude images generated without visual stimuli.
Don't read too much into it. It was just a potential example of "a meaningful scientifically-unanswered question". If it is not meaningful to you, or you feel it is sufficiently scientifically answered, feel free to replace it.
Or is your point that this is an example of a meaningless question, as evidence that there are no meaningful unscientific questions?
Thinking implies someone who thinks and that someone is never part of the thought.
You haven't improved matters by taking questions into the realm of metaphysics.
What picture?
There is a metaphysical tenet that says images are the schemata of our representations, the real as things given to us, or merely thought, as things might appear to us if they were real. This is clear, when we consider, e.g., the tickle between the shoulder blades. First is the sensation of a presence, then the image of something from experience which the tickle might represent (a bug, a hair) or from mere thought (a ghost, your friend playing a trick on you).
Ever talk to yourself when tying your shoe? I bet not, but I bet you see yourself doing it. If you didn’t do either one of those things, then the conditions under which you know how your shoe got tied, is missing, and while that’s not very important with respect to tying shoes, the principle holds where the conditions might be quite important indeed.
Mental images are ever-present, but their very ubiquitousness is the causality for them being overlooked. They may not have much impact on the usual life, but you can’t get rid of them, so you have to account for them if you wanna speculate about what goes on between your ears.
If more and more scientific theory is predicated on mathematical proofs, but fails in the empirical proofs that justify the mathematics.......isn’t that ever-increasing speculation? On the other hand, are we not speculating on the hope that the universality of mathematical proofs is always at the same time, necessary? To be totally screwed if they do not hold, is hardly sufficient reason for depending on their certainty, especially when the prime directive of science is that experimental results conform to observation.
Why should more be read into the adage, then knowing more and more about less and less implies nothing more serious than the more we know, the less there is to know about. That doesn’t seem all that disingenuous, does it?
Still, being so obvious implies there might be more to it I haven’t thought about.
I wasn't denying that speculation will tend to increase with time. The response was in the context of:
Quoting Wayfarer
itself in the context of:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
I was denying that this is some kind of retreat from empiricism. Science is empirical, albeit involving a lot of theory work to make empirical predictions. String theorists did look for testable hypotheses. The last scientific question ever answered will be a fricking difficult one, probably requiring technology beyond our imaginations, and will be on the back of a huge graveyard of abandoned and disproven hypotheses, not because science doesn't deal with phenomena, but because easier questions get answered sooner, leaving only the toughies.
The trend has been the other way round in terms of application of phenomenology to scientific propositions, as my "photons are clicks in photon detectors" example illustrated. We've had to become more phenomonologically robust as the objects have study have become less amenable to direct study.
If you put your finger in boiling water, it will burn. I'm sure of it, and I advise you to be, too.
We both messed up; the original from wayfarer was “specialization”, which you transposed into “speculation”, and from which my C & P took its cue.
Specialization lends much more credence to “knowing more and more about less and less”, which you wouldn’t have found unreasonable, eliminating the reason for my comment.
Slap yourself on the wrist for leading me astray, and I’ll slap myself on the wrist for failing due diligence.
Otherwise, I’m finding the dialogue interesting.
Actually, as I'm sure Wayfarer would point out, he did say speculation, but edited it to specialization after the fact. So we both should slap Wayfarer on the wrists, but that might stop him typing which would be no fun.
In actual fact, Wayfarer and I do agree on his point. There does exist a common language to discuss meaningful but not necessarily scientific questions, and this might be improved upon. I think his schema excellent. What doesn't exist yet is a schema by which to identify meaningful non-scientific questions within that schema. I think whoever came up with such a thing would be the next Karl Popper. (Just to reiterate, by "scientific question" I mean a question whose eventual answer is a scientific one.) My gun-to-my-head answer would be: there are no meaningful non-scientific questions.
Is the question of whether there are meaningful non-scientific questions a scientific questions?
Nahhh....let’s just tie ‘em together, be fun to watch over a coupla beers.
————
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Sure; non-domain specific general language for, say, is the glass half empty or half full?
————
Quoting Kenosha Kid
In other words, there are no meaningful questions that don’t have scientific answers? Yeah, well, when I was 12, my dad sure wanted to know why I wrecked the car. And he was quite adamant about obtaining an answer.
It may be the case there are no meaningful questions for science that don’t have scientific answers, but Everydayman isn’t the scientist, and non-scientific answers for him belong legitimately to meaningful questions he himself generates with respect to his own interests.
:rofl: I suspect so, unfortunately. That is the answer we'd wish to avoid: the one given by science if and when it finally gives answers to the others. It's just a gut feeling though, not a belief, certainly not an argument.
I know you were joking, but what I mean is that "why did you crash the car?" would have a scientific answer, not that it's a question for scientists per se, although on a thread about Materialism and Consciousness, I had mental phenomena more in mind. It is a question about historical fact. Science can weigh in on some of it (the effects of alcohol on hand-eye coordination, for instance :p ), but you can explain the presence of the lamppost without nerds.
Why did you crash the car can only be answered empirically when posed as, “why did the car crash?”. But these are different questions, each with its own proprietary meaningfulness.
That's the contention, isn't it. The car crashed because of conservation and momentum and electrostatic repulsion. But why did you crash the car? As I said, my gun-to-head response is that this is also a scientific question, not entirely in a nerds-in-lab-coats way, but in a materialistic, determinist, and ultimately empirical way. In principle.
It was one of those iOS typos, where I mis-typed the word and iOS corrected it to the wrong word, which I only noticed when I re-read it.
Quoting Pfhorrest
No, it’s not. I often think that the difference between science and philosophy is a philosophical distinction and, therefore, a distinction which a lot of the scientifically-inclined won’t recognise. There is no scientific method for discovering the limitations of scientific method!
The whole point of Popper’s falsifiability thesis, is that an empirical hypothesis is one that can theoretically be falsified by empirical evidence. It’s simply an heuristic to distinguish between truly empirical principles and other kinds. It’s interesting now that in the debates about string theory, Popper’s falsifiability criterion is being criticized as being ‘too narrow’, and those who advocate it (generally those sceptical about string theory) are denigrated as ‘Popperazi’.
But on the question at hand, I often refer back to a really interesting OP in the NY Times from years ago, Does Reason Know what it is Missing? It’s about Juergen Habermas’ late-life reconsideration of the role of religious values in public life. It makes this point:
It’s a meaty article, lots in it. But a theme that I have been concentrating on concerning ‘reasons’, is that it was precisely the abandonment of the Aristotelian sense of telos that did away with the sense of ‘things happening for a reason’. In modern physics, which became the paradigm for all the sciences, the only kinds of causes are material and efficient. The broader idea of purpose or reason - telos - was banished from public discourse along with the crystal spheres of Ptolemaic cosmology. That explains a good deal about how the modern world thinks.
In principle, it would seem. Everything happens in the brain, the brain is matter, ergo.......
I’m holding out for the discovery that no matter how hard we try, how far the technology specializes, we’re not going to be able to probe the mass of concentrated neurons looking for the one, or the interconnected plurality, that tells me why I crashed the car.
The one posed in this post about 'the seeing of colors'. It harks back to the Mary's Room thought experiment.
We all are, that's the beautiful journey :)
Quoting Wayfarer
Autocorrect is actually the devil
I was very impressed by your: You can use reason to justify reason of course. What you cannot do logically is use reason to debase or disprove reason.
I have copied it to my notes, I hope you dont mind.
I will not debate this further at the moment.You should have a theory in front of you, so you can attack the weakest points. I hope to put something together soon, so perhaps we can continue this then.
I originally misunderstood what you meant. I think I get it now and can respect your aversion. I'll talk to the admins and see if I can post something somehow in a non confrontational way such that it can be ignored. :smile:
I'm of the impression there is a convergence from many fields around this Information and consciousness issue. IIt and GW have been around for quite a while, Physics and science are probing, Chalmers is pushing for a science of consciousness, so I think it will be mainstream some time this century:cry:
I have an interpretation of it, but I do not know how much of it I can say is mine. I'll compare If / once I put something together. From an idealists perspective one arrives at integrated information naturally - if everything is reducible to information, then so must consciousness be! - figuratively speaking.
The approximation clause is present in (almost) all formulations of contemporary scientific realism. The situation is the same as that of a study that has established that the only cause of train delays is the poor condition of the rails, but it cannot predict exactly which train and how long it would be delayed. The anti-realist insists that there are also some ghosts on the line.
Einstein, who didn't believe in ghosts, introduced the same clause in the relationship of Pythagoras' theorem with reality. He knows that its formulation is an ideal that only works in reality as part of a particular mathematical-deductive system and added rules of correspondence between formal and real entities.
Heisenberg and Russell - in a phase of their philosophy - also defended the reality of mathematics. But Heisenberg was more evasive, and Russell spoke of a mathematical reality as "subsistent" that is not exactly the same as the reality of the world.
I believe that, with relativity and quantum mechanics in sight, strict mathematical realism is impossible. Strict mathematical realism = mathematics describes factual reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
Err. I wrote this, not Mwww, but thanks for the appreciation all the same. :-)
Science is not more or less materialistic because the concept of matter is not scientific. It is true that many interpretations of quantum mechanics are not mechanistic. They introduce chance as a component of the described reality. What this reality is is not clear. But the idea that consciousness is a component of quantum reality is only held by two or three eccentric physicists.
Quoting Isaac
I know the idea may seem strange to common sense, but I am nothing more than what I am feeling or thinking. If you take away my feelings, my sensations and my thoughts, I am left as an empty space. I am strictly nothing. Only a vector towards future.
Surely that must be false. Moral questions, for instance, are not scientific but still meaningfull.
If they thought about it in those terms, they would indeed be eccentric. But they don’t posit consciousness as ‘a component’. It’s the condition for making an observation, and in the case of some of the fundamental experiments of quantum physics, the outcome is observation-dependent. That’s the only sense in which observation is a factor, not in the sense of some ‘spooky mind-stuff’ (again.)
Quoting David Mo
You’re not seeing the way that your thinking conditions even what you consider to be ‘nothing’. The mind is what provides the framework within which all such judgements are made; you can’t ‘take away the mind’ and still have anything whatever to say. What we generally do, is imagine the vast empty universe with no humans in it; but even that conception is still fundamentally human.
I don't think Chalmers' stuff has anything to do with science. I don't think a subjective science is possible. I don't think his "logical" experiments prove anything. We can pit Blade Runner replicants against Chalmers' zombies and we're not out of science fiction. It's simple philosophy camouflaged by four terms that sound to science.
The collapse of the wave function creates reality whilst it is measured. And according to Wigner this is because an observing mind intervenes. I think Von Neumannn is going the same way. True, they are very eccentric and few physicists take them seriously. For very reasonable unscientific reasons.
Quoting Wayfarer
Try to explain what the mind consists of without using terms referring to feelings, sensations and thoughts. You can't. As I said, the mind is nothing substantial, but a vector, a trend, a project. Of course, without it there would be no project. But it is nothing substantially speaking, I insist.
To be perfectly honest, I do not know. I do remember once being amongst a relatively high number of people who bandied around terms like "mental imagery" and "visual experience" as if they were pervasive elements of sight, and then someone pointed out to me that my use of those terms was theory laden, and the theory with which it was laden was not common sense and was based on presumptions not evidence.
Is there an argument for this tenet? Perhaps there is mental imagery involved in my recalling how my shoe ended up tied, but that does not entail that mental imagery is involved as I watch my hands manipulate the shoe strings. Note that I am not denying that there is something called mental imagery, nor that it might be problematic from a philosophical or scientific perspective. I am merely posing the question of what arguments or evidence there is for what you claim to be their ubiquity.
Just so I don't have to reread the thread from page 1 can you define what you take the phrase "a scientific answer" to mean? Can scientific questions have non scientific answers as well as scientific ones? E.g. take the question "Why am I asking you these questions?" Under one way guessing at what you mean by "scientific answer" you might mean by a scientific answer one that is steeped in physiology, neurology, cogntive science etc etc. On the other hand there is the answer "Because I am generally curious about what you might mean". The latter would seem to be a non scientific answer, although that rests on assumptions about what you mean by "a scientific answer", but in all cases it seems to be a perfectly respectable one for all that, and it is also, as it happens, true.
So the materialism must include our mind objects as well.. because they exist..and therefore have placements in existence..
So they context of that was questions formulated into a mutually-comprehensible schema, such as phenomonology, that made both philosophical and scientific sense. Without doubt you can form moral questions without possible scientific answers outside such a schema.
Winger won a Nobel, and Von Neumann is said to have been one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century. Maybe few physicists would know what taking them seriously means. After all we can’t expect them to, few of them are actually philosophers.
Quoting David Mo
Modern realism, generally, has the conceit that it can see the world ‘as it really is’, as if there were no observer. If the lesson of 20th century physics is anything, it is that this is not the case. This was the basis of the debates between Bohr and Einstein that ran for decades (as recounted in this book). And I don’t believe Einstein’s staunch scientific realism won the day. That’s why there are still so many books about the topic subtitled the ‘battle for the soul of science’ or the ‘battle for reality’.
It was probably an incorrect use of terminology on my part (I'm not a cognitive neuroscientist). I just meant whatever the visual cortex does. No spooky "third eye" nonsense intended or anything like that.
Yes, I don't mean an answer that needs a particle accelerator and complex of fizzing beakers and tubes. "How was the Earth created?" is a scientific question with a scientific answer. Most of that answer is historical, that is: given the known physical laws involved, we reverse-engineer similar possible histories that led to the Earth's formation. "Why did I crash the car?" is, I would guess, a scientific question, with more emphasis on the historical than on the laws of physics.
The "why did I...?" questions are likely going to depend on scientific understanding of mental states in order to have scientific answers, if they do indeed have scientific answers. Likewise "Because I am generally curious about what you might mean". This wouldn't be an additional answer, just a way of answering at a higher level. I would want to know why you are generally curious. Not everyone will take up the point. What is the different between you and others? Again, it will take us to history, cognition, neurology, etc.
So if someone takes away your feelings, sensations, thoughts and your body (brain), I would agree with you, that you are strictly nothing.
Let's say you are watching something extraordinary like a pig flying, then you accidentally put your finger in boiling water. I doubt you would have any thoughts about it, all your thinking would be occupied with trying to believe that you were really looking at a flying pig. Your body would take care of its finger while your mind was preoccupied. It is not your mind, or your thoughts, which is looking after your finger.
There could be sighted creatures without visual cortexes, at least that seems possible. So even if you just meant by "mental imagery" "whatever goes on in the visual cortex", you still do not have something that need always be involved in sight. Anyway, that to one side, I am still not clear what you mean by a scientific answer. You've indicated what you do not mean, but not what you do mean.
Well, since your definition of a scientific question is one with a scientific answer, that becomes almost tautologous. I presume you meant to say something substantial, but what the substance is I cannot figure out unless you fill out what you mean by the phrase "a scientific answer".
I wasn't posing an example that involved sight generally. The example was more specific. This is starting to feel a little like sophistry tbh.
Quoting jkg20
A scientific answer is an answer the requires, in principle, only understanding consistent with current or future established empirically-verified scientific models of reality. I'm anticipating the question "What is a scientific model in this context?" whose answer will yield another "What is a scientific X in this context?".
What seems impressive to me is how any scientist would think that human rationality can be dismissed as mere noise or an "epiphenomenon", without dismissing the whole of science, a product of human rationality, as mere noise or an "epiphenomenon" as well. Logic, anyone?
Any scientific theory attempting to solve the brain-mind problem needs to be able to account for the possibility of its own emergence in a human mind or several, as a theory that correctly solves the brain-mind problem. Otherwise the theory contradicts its own existence.
In other words, a correct scientific (human) theory about the human mind must assume that the human mind is capable of producing correct scientific theories...
It's called compatibilism. In this view, minds exist for a reason: because they can solve complex problems involving far more considerations than your basic fight-or-flee response. Consciousness allows to place under consideration not just present stimuli and past memories but also deductions of consequences, and hence planning about the future. It's very useful.
We have minds because we need them, including for science.
It is not the scientist's view that explaining something is the same as dismissing it. A non-materialist may well, due to prejudice against material systems, think it "dismissed", but naturally a materialist would not. As Richard Feynman said, understanding something on another level only increases its beauty.
But the other part of this is interesting, albeit not limited to considerations of consciousness. A scientist may well accept that a human life is a pretty meaningless accident in the scheme of things, and that all human life is a blip in an ambivalent universe. On that scale, I usually find that either scientists would agree that their endeavours are as meaningless as anything else they might fill their time with, or else yield to poetics about the universe being able to learn about itself. This both overshadows and undermines any difficulty a scientist might have in justifying their particular specialisation of emergent material behaviour.
Quoting Olivier5
This wouldn't be science. A theory cannot be proven and is not considered correct; it is considered fit or unfit. The criterion is empirical validation. If it is not testable, it is not scientific.
But surely if it's irrational and illogical, it's not science either.
Quoting Kenosha Kid
That's one point of view. I go with Omar Khayyam instead: the stars and planets are less wise than you are.
I don't think that makes sense. If reason and logic are emergent phenomena, than their modes are reasonable and logical. It doesn't become unreasonable or illogical by lieu of how it emerged.
A house made of bricks is not unhousable just because it is made of bricks.
The stars are hotter than I am, so what?
Maybe not so much an argument as a given condition in keeping with a particular epistemological theory. Mental imagery has been in the game from at least Aristotle, through Anscombe (1965), both as a necessary subjective reality or merely as overly zealous philosobabble. Descartes and Locke called images of perception ideas, Hume called them sentiments or passions. Kant changed the extant predominance of ideas into conceptions present in intuition as representations, changing images of perception into phenomena, relegating those kinds of images to memory. “Been there, done that” sorta thing, such that we know what a kitchen sink is without having one having to stand in front of one.
But that left conceptions without forms of their own (where is it you’ve been, what was it you did) so if somebody says “triangle”, and you need to bring up something that relates to it, and all you have is memory, which includes every triangle you’ve ever experienced...which one do you settle on to relate with? Because his experience of triangles will be different than yours, if you bring up a triangle of your experience, it is impossible to know your two meanings will correspond. And such correspondence is absolutely necessary, in order for the two of you to understand each other. Much simpler to just bring up the general notion “triangle”, any three sided figure enclosing a space, without having to bother with particular ones from memory. These become the form of conceptions, as mental images of the general form of a particular conception, and are the schema of that conception.
The a priori rationality behind all this hoop-la arises form the differences in kinds of perception. A triangle drawn on a piece of paper is as much a phenomenon as hearing the word representing “triangle”, but the triangle drawn has its sides arranged so must be intuited accordingly, but the triangle spoken qua triangle does not, its sides can be arranged in thought in accordance with the principle “a minimum of three intersecting lines is necessary to enclose a space”. Now the fundamental conception must be thought in common to both phenomena, drawn and spoken, but when conditional conceptions are missing, by which a general triangle becomes intuited as a specific triangle, the form of triangle itself, must lay in the conception and not the intuition.
As soon as you say, “I understand what a triangle is”, you’ve already brought up a mental image of one, otherwise you would have no means to justify such a claim. What you don’t do, is bring up the image Mrs. Grady put up on the fifth grade blackboard, because then all you’ve understood is THAT triangle, not any and all other triangles in general.
As for an supporting argument, I use this one (CPR B180, 181), one of the more significant antagonisms belonging to Wittgenstein, 1953, reinforced by Fodor, 1975, both of which took Kantian imagery into a place it was never supposed to be, because they related it to language, hence intentionality, whereas Kant intended it for nothing but the necessary means for the possibility of cognition alone.
“...In truth, it is not images of objects, but schemata, which lie at the foundation of our pure sensuous conceptions. No image could ever be adequate to our conception of a triangle in general. For the generalness of the conception it never could attain to, as this includes under itself all triangles, whether right-angled, acute-angled, etc., whilst the image would always be limited to a single part of this sphere. The schema of the triangle can exist nowhere else than in thought, and it indicates a rule of the synthesis of the imagination in regard to pure figures in space. Still less is an object of experience, or an image of the object, ever to the empirical conception. On the contrary, the conception always relates immediately to the schema of the imagination, as a rule for the determination of our intuition, in conformity with a certain general conception. The conception of a dog indicates a rule, according to which my imagination can delineate the figure of a four-footed animal in general, without being limited to any particular individual form which experience presents to me, or indeed to any possible image that I can represent to myself in concreto. This schematism of our understanding in regard to phenomena and their mere form, is an art, hidden in the depths of the human soul, whose true modes of action we shall only with difficulty discover and unveil. Thus much only can we say: "The image is a product of the empirical faculty of the productive imagination—the schema of sensuous conceptions (of figures in space, for example) is a product, and, as it were, a monogram of the pure imagination a priori, whereby and according to which images first become possible, which, however, can be connected with the conception only mediately by means of the schema which they indicate, and are in themselves never fully adequate to it."...”
Anyway.....food for thought as much as ridicule.
What I am trying to say is: a scientific theory cannot contradict itself and still be worthy of the name "scientific".
(Anticipating @tim wood...hope he doesn’t mind)
Depends on your definitions. Historical precedent for those definitions will certainly falsify your assertions. But then.....maybe you’re right and the precedents are not.
All this talk about human lives being meaningless because of the vastness and indiference of the universe is just wrong footed in my opinion. I don't see how the meaning of our lives depends in any way on whether this universe is large or small, its stars hot or cold or whatever.
Astronomers study the universe for very human reasons: it's an interesting job if you can get it.
And that is exactly what I am saying: one cannot logically use reason to dismiss reason, but one can use it to explain how useful and beautiful it is.
Ahhhhh okay, sorry. Sure! Science is a mode of reason.
Quoting Olivier5
Absolutely! As the editor of New Scientist once said: "We think science is interesting, and if you don't agree you can *&!# off!" :rofl:
But none of that makes an iota of difference to the fact that we're a fleeting fizz at a tiny dot in a mundane part of a giant cosmos. It's an artefact of our biology that our word revolves around us. But it is great being a fizz, so make the most it :)
Quoting Olivier5
Agreed, with the caveat that beauty is not a property of a thing but a feature of our interaction with it. My point was just that scientists are not "dismissing" reason by understanding it as emergent behaviour any more than non-materialist philosophers who describe it as immaterial. In fact, I'd say scientists would be taking it far more seriously. The immaterial world is a vague dumping ground for things not yet understood, which is back to what I said before: if someone had a meaningful non-materialist explanation for consciousness, that would be something to consider. But it seems to me the root if the conflict is not incompatible descriptions of consciousness but rather a matter of taste: "Out of bounds, science!"
Why can't I justify my claim to understand what a triangle is by drawing one? Why do I need to bring up a mental image, rather than a physical one on paper?
Also, how do you see this:
"images are the schemata of our representations."
tallying with this, emphasis added:
"In truth, it is not images of objects, but schemata, which lie at the foundation of our pure sensuous conceptions"
?
On one reading this is simply denying that schemata are images, which of courses raises the question of what schemata are, but it seems that one can accept schemata are involved in all representations and conceptions without accepting that mental imagery is.
I appreciate that the second quotation is lifted out of a very complex work, so perhaps there is somewhere in Kant an argument to show that whilst schemata are not images, they depend on them?
Well yes, if you continue to drop the adjective "scientific" into your definitions of what you mean, in specific cases, by the use of that adjective, then you are inviting all those questions, and maybe more.
A: A scientific answer is an answer the requires, in principle, only understanding consistent with current or future established empirically-verified scientific models of reality.
B: A scientific answer is an answer the requires, in principle, only understanding consistent with current or future established empirically-verified models of reality.
Is there some important difference between A and B?
Thanks for the advice. Personally I wouldn't trade my present condition with that of, say, a galaxy. I'm just finishing making some appricot jam, not the best I've ever done, but better than hydrogen and helium still...
I'm screaming out some tunes at the recording studio to no obvious purpose :)
You can, but the question remains....what informed you as to what to draw?
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Quoting jkg20
What he means is, objects are not the source of our mental imagery. Without going through all the yaddayaddayadda, objects belong to sensibility, conceptions belong to understanding, therefore, if images are the foundation of conceptions, they cannot have anything to do with objects. In short, the imagery of conceptions is how objects are understood, not how objects are perceived.
Part of the problem lays in common sense, which wants us to think objects are just as we perceive them to be, but common sense takes no account of the methodology for arriving there, which is the mistake Hume made. The power of common sense boils down to nothing but time, in that it takes no noticeable, appreciable, time for us to go from perceiving an object, and knowing or not knowing what it is, which is certainly the case. But it does take time, and common sense makes no claim as to how the time is being used.
Another part of the problem lays in the unavailability of a suitable explanation for how images, or schemata, come about. Speculative metaphysics promotes spontaneity in order to alleviate infinite regress, which is entirely sufficient if not entirely satisfying, and science doesn’t have a clue so rejects them as unscientific, which is proper given the predicates of its doctrine.
OK? Make any sense at all?
Yet my original point was that one can’t make an argument against reason, in general, without already presupposing its validity; such that their argument would be inherently self-defeating.
Yet in my view, it is a method, or rather the principle of a method, for justification, namely that which is analyzed apriori; although when experience is concerned, such as the particular aposteriori cause of a pandemic, reason is insufficient, & we must have recourse to observation or perception for obtaining what’s true.
Sure, their contemporary rendering may be alien to his terminology, but the etymological root of both of them, i.e., “logos,” definitely isn’t; which denotes (what in English means) “reason, idea, word.” So this proves my point that a distinction between them is ultimately flawed, because the root of “reason,” which is the Latin “ratio,” derives from the Greek “logos”; & therefore these terms originally have one and the same thing, so that a distinction between them is inadmissible.
Only in colloquial terms can the method of ‘science’ be called “rational,” as its mode of investigation isn’t apriori but aposteriori. Here “rational” can only simply or casually mean something like “prudent” or “judicious.” To call the method of science “rational,” in the formal sense, is a misnomer.
“Reason,” in the original or truest sense of the word, is in no way equivalent with the sciences (as was stated, in my previous paragraph, about the term “rational” [i.e., that which pertains to ‘reason’]), if we understand that etymologically it means “to reckon, think.” Thus science, either currently or in the past, can’t be equated with “reason” or what’s “rational,” since it’s not based purely on reckoning or thought (this would be an awful mischaracterization of it).
This is actually affirmed by Aristotle, in the beginning of his “Metaphysics,” when he states that, “But in fact science and art come to men through experience.” Science, according to Aristotle, is thus derived from experience, & isn’t equivalent either with “today’s reason,” as you’ve put it, or reason in the past, i.e., “logos.”
Now, I agree that Aristotle distinguishes between forms of argumentation/categorization & the sciences; but I want to respond to this point, & some others, in what comes next, after I quote other parts of your post.
This misses that statements themselves are made up of components, which aren’t themselves statements; hence, in the “Categories,” Aristotle asserts, “None of these terms (‘substance’ or ‘quantity’ or ‘quality’ or ‘relationship’ or ‘the doing of something’ or ‘the undergoing of something’) is used on its own in any statement, but it is through their combination with one another that statement COMES INTO BEING.” Now these components are what any statement, let alone the passage of one statement to another, depend on to come about (as was just noted); & the being of these components themselves are subject to a certain principle, without which they couldn’t be formed. This principle is the primary principle of logic or reason, in general, & not only a rule on how to pass from one statement to another; for, again, it’s what allows for the possibility of an initial statement, as to the components of a statement, in the first place.
Thus Aristotle states, in book IV of his “Metaphysics,” “It is clear, then, that such a principle is the most certain of all and we can formulate it thus: ‘It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to belong and not to belong to the same thing and in the same respect’”, “It is for this reason that all who carry out a demonstration rest it on this...; for this is naturally a beginning also of all other axioms.” In other words, demonstration, in general, is based on this principle, i.e., it’s the beginning of it & all other axioms; & therefore the principle of logic or reason doesn’t solely concern the passage of statements to other statements, i.e., premises to conclusions, but it’s the basis of the formation of an initial statement, & its components, altogether.
Now, considering all of this, I fail to see how logic & reason are distinguishable? Since your equating the sciences with “today’s reason” is inadmissible on the grounds that, according to Aristotle, science is derived from experience (“Metaphysics,” Book I), while all demonstration is based on a fundamentally presupposed principle. So, sure, Aristotle distinguishes between forms of argumentation/categorization & the sciences, but no such a distinction is expressed between logic & reason. Also, & again, as your equating of the sciences with “today’s reason” is inadmissible, I’m still convinced that you haven’t actually distinguished between logic & reason, but you’ve only pretended to.
Try to distinguish between different types of logic without having recourse to their different objects of consideration; the inability to do so will show that logic itself isn’t distinguishable, but only the objects to which it’s applied are. Aristotle even states this about science; that is, science doesn’t differ in general, the various types of science only being distinguished by their particular objects of consideration: “But all these sciences have marked out for themselves some particular thing that is, some particular class of objects, and concern themselves with that.” (“Metaphysics, Book IV)
Yet if “today’s reason” isn’t equivalent with the sciences, or experience, as by their etymological definition “reason” & “experience” can’t be synonymous, I fail to see how you’ve distinguished between logic & reason, except by having “reason” to mean “experience,” i.e., except by a word-game? & if we don’t allow reason to mean experience (the latter being what the sciences are derived from), how then are logic & reason different? Well, if we don’t allow this linguistic exception, then it’s evident that they aren’t.
So I don’t see what’s so hard to grasp about the term “principle of reason”? I think that it’s because you claim that “ALL principles are given from reason.” Yet, this seems to put the cart before the horse, so to speak, as reason itself must have a form by which it can possibly give principles, PRIOR TO actually doing so; this form thus IS the principle or law of reason. Which, moreover, isn’t a redundant term (no more than the term the “principle of inertia” would be); for it emphasizes that reason isn’t an object or a percept per se, but a condition for them altogether (as the “principle of inertia” isn’t an object or a percept per se, but a condition for them altogether).
Again, since reason has an intrinsic form, it doesn’t need to go on to justify the bounds of its employment, for the bounds of its possible employment are self-evident in its form already; such that the only thing which needs to be justified is what’s maintained to be bounded in its actual employment, that is, whether such things are in accord or discord with it.
No, I didn’t suggest that reason can create contradictory domains. My point was that your claim that reason “... in and of itself doesn’t have a principle, but rather, constructs them” suggests that, since reason doesn’t have a principle of itself, i.e., a fundamental principle, it should then be able to create ones which contradict each other; for as it has no foundation in itself, there shouldn’t be a SINGLE principle which holds true in all of its constructs. Yet, since it can’t do such a thing, this proves that reason does of itself have a foundation, i.e., a fundamental principle, which pervades or holds true in all of its constructs — contrary to your claim about reason in & of itself.
My point with the square circle goes back to showing that abstracts/concepts can only alter what they’ve created (like being able to alter the features of a pegasus or a unicorn); & if they can’t alter something, it’s precisely because they didn’t create it (such reasoning was to be applied to the principle or law of reason itself). Without sensations, abstracts/concepts couldn’t come to posses any shape, i.e., abstracts/concepts can’t of themselves purely intuit shapes (this admission is enough to satisfy my point). Now, the formation of a square circle can’t take place in any empirical intuition, such that the impossibility of which holds true in abstraction/conception as well & can’t be altered by it; this latter fact shows that abstraction/conception doesn’t determine or create what’s possible or impossible in empirical intuition, but it simply reflect them. So that the same is the case for the principle of reason; in other words, since what’s possible or impossible with reason can’t be determined or altered by abstraction/conception, i.e., abstraction/conception can’t form what’s contradictory, this goes to show that they’re not a creation of abstraction/conception, but it simply reflects them.
Okay, I agree with you. I am also a materialist in a way, but a compatibilist.
Not from where I sit. A law, to distinguish itself from a rule or a directive, adheres to the principle of necessity and universality. In that case, law presupposes the principle, whereas rules presuppose only the contingencies which justify them. It is absurd to think mathematics, and logic in general, is governed by mere rules.
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Quoting aRealidealist
If that is the case, we are at a loss as to how we can be mistaken in identifying an object, or, which is the same thing, not being able to identify some object at all. We are also at a loss to explain how it is we can be irrational, if reason adheres to the universality and absolute necessity of law.
Object and precepts are determined by reason in accordance with a law, but reason is not itself lawful.
But I understand what you’re trying to say, in that reason, to be any real use to us, must act lawfully, must be trustworthy, otherwise....what Can we depend on for our knowledge? Which leads us to the kicker: if reason doesn’t act lawfully, what have we to use to correct it, except reason?
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Quoting aRealidealist
Oh, but it can, and it does. It is the ground of all the differences in human thought: I think the Mona Lisa is an ugly broad because of the principles by which I judge beauty, you think the Mona Lisa is angelic because of....obviously....a different set of principles by which you judge beauty.
Quoting aRealidealist
Ok, fine. What form does reason have, that isn’t assigned to it by reason? How would reason attain its form? If reason has a form just because it inheres in human subjects, then it is no different than being a condition by which the reality of the human qua human rationality, is possible. Which is exactly what it is. A condition being that which makes what follows from it possible.
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Quoting aRealidealist
No argument there:
“....Understanding cannot intuit; intuition cannot think...”
“....Thoughts without content are void; intuitions without conceptions, blind....”
Quoting aRealidealist
Fine. How? How does a concept alter, regardless of the actual reality of that to which they are applied? Bearing in mind a concept represents a thing or a possible thing. An impossible thing is, of course, inconceivable, that is, has no concepts belonging to it at all. The concept of “dog” (“unicorn”) presupposes the object (possible object) dog (unicorn), otherwise, to what does the concept relate? If the thing is presupposed, how in the hell can a concept create it? Now, a thing can be altered, certainly. A dog with a bushy tail is one thing, a dog with a non-bushy tail in not that thing, merely from the different constituent concepts of “tail”. Obviously, if this is true, but if it is true because concepts themselves are the causality for the altering, then we must admit concepts think. Say wha?!?!?!?
Concepts don’t create, they facilitate and that which is facilitated, is understanding. So if you want to say concepts create understanding, I’ll let that slide, to wit: I can cognize what a unicorn would be, whether or not there is one, merely from the concepts my understanding says it must have in order to even be a unicorn. Understanding being nothing but a part of my reason, in the case of unicorns a priori; in the case of dogs, a posteriori.
As for the rest.....you think idealistically, so kudos for that.
“Law” is traceable to the old-English word of “lagu,” which means “ordinance, RULE prescribed by authority, REGULATION”; & “rule” is traceable to the old-French word of “riule,” which means “PRINCIPLE or maxim GOVERNING conduct”; while “principle” is traceable to the Latin word “princeps,” which means “RULER or leader” (the Romans thus called Trajan the “optimus princeps,” or the “best ruler”).
Now, in all of these etymological definitions, there’s an obvious commonality (to the point of where, surely enough, each of the terms include one of the other terms in their very etymological definition [thus their meanings are basically identical & interchangeable]), which is the signification of control (for the lack of a better word). So that all three of these terms, when included within a noun phrase, e.g., the rule of integers (thus “rules” can be said to govern mathematics [which isn’t therefore absurd, like you’ve claimed]), the law of identity, or the principle of inertia, signify, in one way or another, the control or governance, i.e., the regulation, of the object(s) or referent(s) of whatever word which they’re used with in a noun phrase.
The only way one can thus differentiate between these terms, or rather between how these terms are themselves used, is in regards to quantification; in other words, whether it (the “rule,” “law” or “principle”) controls or governs all possible & actual members of a set or class, i.e., in a universal sense, or whether it controls some, as opposed to all, possible & actual members of a set or class, i.e., in a limited sense that’s constrained to a subset.
So the distinction between a “law,” “rule” or “principle” in terms of universality is merely nominalistic & can be overcome if each term is quantitatively qualified in either a common or peculiar way (which is quite possible & permissible).
Not in any way are we at a loss as to how we can experience mistaken identity, granted that the principle of reason is a reality; this is explainable in terms of the subject’s confused or erroneous knowledge, which is rationally distinguishable from clear or veritable knowledge. For example, an impersonator; one may think that they’re looking at the real Barack Obama, although they’re actually looking at an impersonator; which if only they knew all of the qualities constituting the real Obama, would reveal to them that they’re looking at an impersonator instead of the real Obama.
Moreover, being “irrational” is explainable or to be explained in merely in a colloquial sense, in the way of impracticality or improbability; like when one says to a heartbroken friend that they’re being “irrational” by thinking that waiting outside their ex’s house will win them back over, as this is highly improbable or impractical. Though I do maintain that ontological irrationality is an impossibility; so there’s no need to seek an explanation of it, since it’s literally impossible.
Reason is lawful, that is, recognizable by its law or rule, in the same way the apriori forms of sensibility are; objects being subject to their invariant form. Thus reason is lawful because, like space or time, it determines things under a fixed law, rule or condition (which doesn’t change, like the objects that it subjects may).
Reason itself IS THE LAW by which objects or percepts act lawfully.
Apriori, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So I fail to see (no pun intended) how your example here is proof that rational or logical thought can form constructs which are in disagreement with itself? Since the disagreement of your example here pertains to AESTHETICS, rather than to logic or reason per se.
Reason no more attains or is assigned a form than space or time, as its character or form is what it is apriori & isn’t determined aposteriori, i.e., it’s not attained or assigned aposteriori or in time.
Right, as I’ve said in my past replies, it’s the form or condition by which human thought is possible; it being something actual apriori (like the forms of sensibility are), through which the latter (thought) is possible.
It should be noted that the way which I say that one “creates” in conception/abstraction is somewhat similar to how one would “create,” say, a clubhouse. In this way, the materials that are used to create aren’t themselves what are created, but they’re merely assembled, arranged, & joined in a way which they weren’t originally given. So, to be sure, I’m not saying that one’s concepts/abstracts create the materials that they utilize, but that one can create or form artificial objects of thought, such as a pegasus or unicorn, with materials which are already given.
Now, objects that are altogether impossible to form in the sensible world, e.g., a square circle, can’t be created even in abstracts/concepts; & so this impossibility crosses over into abstracts/concepts & can’t be altered by them.
So now the point should be reemphasized: the very fact that one’s abstracts/concepts can only be formed or created in such a way that agrees with what’s possible in the sensible world, & not in a way which disagrees with what’s possible in it, shows that the possibilities & impossibilities of the sensible world aren’t determined by abstracts/concepts; for if they were, then they could be altered by them, like the features of the artificial creations of one’s abstracts/concepts, e.g., a pegasus or unicorn, as that which determines a thing has the power to alter it in some way, e.g., as the relationship of one’s abstracts/concepts have to artificial objects of thought like a pegasus or unicorn. Yet, again, since abstracts/concepts can’t, in any way, alter what’s either possible or impossible in the sensible world, this shows that abstracts/concepts don’t determine them. &, moreover, this same reasoning, is applied to be reason itself; that is to say, as one’s abstracts/concepts can’t alter what’s rationally possible or impossible, e.g., can’t form any contradictory objects, this shows that reason isn’t determined by abstracts/concepts.
Thanks, friend, I do appreciate the compliment.
The brain mind issue is a problem for materialists. For idealists not so . Whether consciousness arises in the brain or foot, or is a whole body phenomena, will not change what it is. It is enough to know consciousness deals with information in order to build some sort of model of it.
Roger Penrose and Co, seem to be on to something with Cellular microtubules, however finding form and location for the material that creates consciousness, will not explain any individual consciousness, though it might give weight to the integrated information view by nailing consciousness to a particular state of quantum permutation / entanglement, and revealing it to be a body wide phenomena - where brain is an organ of extracellular awareness, whilst Liver , heart, etc would be organs of intracellular awareness. - my speculation / understanding.
This would support a model of consciousness, but not give insight into any particular consciousness.
It seems simpler to say a mind empty of information is not conscious!
That is not why they are considered eccentric, but because of their interpretation of the problem of observation in quantum theory. Winger didn't get a Nobel Prize for sticking the consciousness of the observer in the middle. As far as I know.
Quoting Wayfarer
I wasn't talking about the reality of the world, but the substance of consciousness.
Quoting Wayfarer
The problem is the role of observation, not the human soul. This "soul" thing is a sensationalist headline.
I don't know if you've noticed that you're describing consciousness all the time in terms of ideas (of a pig), perceptions (of things), and sensations (of pain). If we don't talk about them we can't talk about any consciousness.
I think you confuse the concept of consciousness as nothing with the concept of non-existence. Consciousness exists, but you cannot define it or describe it with consistent properties. That's why I say it's nothing. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that it is a void. Choose the word you like best.
I don't know what the problem of materialists is, but the problem of idealists is not to have problems. When they can't explain something, they put a ghost in the machine. Or an invisible dragon, if they're Chinese. And it always works!
A science without problems is suspicious.
You don't need a purpose to sing a song, but I find it helps going through life... :-)
The mind is a mental space, and a space is something.
I note that the one attribute you are not prepared to remove in your description of the void of consciousness is the body. So you are secretly relying on it.
You can, it has the property of being alive, it is living. Now prove that things live without being conscious?
This intrigues me, I also have experienced it thus, but I somehow I don't think you mean it the same way.
Living.
From a logical point of view, yes. From a rhetorical point of view, no, because it emphasizes something that should be taken into account. "The cat was advancing with feline steps." "The argument is rational." All cats' footsteps are feline and every argument is rational. But there are those who haven't realized that and it's worth emphasizing.
Quoting aRealidealist
It's not just colloquially. When Kant speaks of metaphysics he adds the term "pure" reason because it claims to be the science of the a priori. But it does not occur to anyone to say that empirical science is not rational. It's just not pure. In any case, empirical reasoning is the opposite of the irrational, which is what we are talking about, I think.
Quoting aRealidealist
I don't think you've realized that rebutting any argument with Aristotle's authority, or pretending that Kant's terminology is "the real thing," is a bit old-fashioned.
You lose sight of the fact that the problem we are discussing is whether you can talk about science as rational knowledge as opposed to the irrational. And we are not opposing, I am not at least, the rational to the empirical in Kant's way.
About the multitude of articles that talk about "scientific reason"; https://philpapers.org/s/scientific%20reason
That works for you?
You can say that if you like. But you risk having some conceptual problems. "Is space a thing or a property of things?" Well, I don't want to deflect the discussion.
To an extent, thanks, but I think what I really need to do is go back to CPR and look again at how Kant distinguishes images from schemata.
They're two different problems.
Reflex acts of the body are independent of the conscious mind, but there would be a lot of talk about the pre-conscious and the sub-conscious. I don't know if you want to reduce the mind to the conscious.
"Living" seems to me a very ambiguous term to define consciousness. A paramecium is also living.
In mathematics, spaces are a certain form of sets, in which the elements can interact through operations. I believe the mind can be understood as a similar kind of space in which thoughts interact.
Prima facie, a compelling argument based on the premise that if a certain type of thing, x, interacts with some other thing, y, then the thing y must of the same type as x.
Basically, if matter interacts with something then that something is matter.
The question then is this: [are there] some things that matter interacts with [but] are not matter?
Light? Radio? EM radiation in general?
C’mon, man. Possibility/impossibility is absolutely meaningless without relation to the agency to which they apply. Which means that which is possible/impossible, from the empirical and rational world alike, is determined by that agency, for that agency. For us to have any idea whatsoever about possibility/impossibility of anything at all, we must relate some occassion for its revelation, to something else already determined as being one or the other.
That there are possibilities/impossibilities contained by the sensible world may be a valid logical premise. Nevertheless, we don’t give a crap THAT there are; we are only interested in WHAT they are, and for the determination of that, reason along with its constituent faculties, is absolutely indispensable, and then, only from deductive principles a priori.
I refer you to the categories, for which you should have already taken account. The categories determine for us, not the possibilities/impossibilities the sensible world contains, but rather the possibility or impossibility of us cognizing what they are. And....guess what? The categories are themselves conceptions.
In addition, I offer James, 1909: “....Abstraction, functioning in this way, becomes a means of arrest far more than a means of advance in thought.....”
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Quoting aRealidealist
Quoting aRealidealist
How do these propositions not contradict each other?
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Quoting aRealidealist
Correct, iff reason is a fundamental human condition, a metaphysical notion used in an attempt to logically thwart infinite regress. Reason the cognitive faculty, on the other hand, the bridge between judgement and cognition, in the description of its normal operation, can only be promulgated and understood from the use of conceptions contained in the subject and predicate of explanatory propositions. Wherein lay the intrinsic circularity of the human rational system: we can only talk about reason using the very thing we’re talking about, and the very purpose of speculative epistemological philosophy is to not make it catastrophically fubar.
Let’s work on that, shall we?
Never a bad idea, given enough interest. I’d listen, if you come up with something.
Matter is coagulated energy. Could we then say that everything is energy?
Or..... maybe something simpler than implying the existence of gods and the supernatural. What if everything was information? Information changes when interacting with other information.
The thing that seems to make minds a different type of information compared to say, a rock formation, is that the mind is a kind of information feedback loop between the body and the environment. In this sense, it might be something "beyond the brain", as a relationship between (meaning, it would consist of) the body and it's immediate environment.
Why not? The only problem I see is that there is no "energy" version of neurotransmitters, neuroleptics, psychotropics, mood enhancers, anesthetics, etc. I know of. The OP claims that the interaction between these various psychotropics and the mind demonstrates the mind's material nature and for that he draws a necessary connection between the possibility of interaction between matter and anything and the material nature of that thing matter interacts. I was simply trying to determine if that bridge is strong enough for us to cross.
Those are all chemicals, made of molecules made of atoms made of other particles that are just excitations of energy fields.
:up:
Well the irony of such a question is that in order to create/ define/distinguish anything - a phenomenon, a material object, a concept... one must say twi things; 1). Yes this thing is that. 2). No those things are NOT that. Ie does matter interact with that which is not matter, of course it has to interact by the mere fact that we can qualify what matter is at all. Its relative to the empty space around it.
Matter could only never interact with that which it is not if the entire universe was composed of matter of a set kind. Any distinction results in a border and borders are where interactions occur.
Considering how hard it is to understand what such things as "matter" or "energy" are, maybe we should just call it "stuff"...
So you are including in mind everything the brain does, is it confined to the brain?
For me the mind is what the brain does in relation to the person, or the self, the acting being.
Not at all, it can have a precise definition if we can bring ourselves to defining it as cellular life. Also it could have caveat that there do seem to be a few more simple forms of life, but these are outliers.
And conscious, being closely related to us. The main difference being that we are each a colony of cells.
Non sequitur.
A possible explanation. The foundation of organic consciousness can be termed "phenomenality" and is divided into features internal or external to the brain. Sense organs perceive properties of aggregate, relatively macroscopic mass such as size, object motion, or additive wavelength in photons, a functionality tailored by evolutionary selection pressures for increasing the efficiency of reaction to a limited array of phenomena that are especially salient for survival of the body, such as an object hurtling towards the head, a growl, scalding hotness, etc., but this apparatus is of course extremely subtle and versatilely reconfigurable.
Qualia are a separate dynamic from what the sense organs do, arising as some kind of additive superpositioning and quantum entanglement of particles (vibrating energy concentrations in motion). The physiological synchronizing, amplifying, orchestrating of qualia is what produces qualitative mental states in organic lifeforms, but this qualitativity as the basis of consciousness is not restricted to biochemical structure, for it can be present in all kinds of matter, both internal and external to bodies. Qualia are a basic feature of matter like size, shape, photon-generated color, and consciousness arises from these qualia being structurally organized in various ways, with organic consciousness only one possible form among many, hence the plausibility of panpsychism (though excessively vague for my taste).
So qualia are an intrinsic feature of particles, including drugs, neurotransmitters, all chemicals, and these substances acquire their relatively mechanistic role in the body by way of effects on the type of emergent qualitativity peculiar to neuromaterial tissues, brains, organic systems, performing molecular functions which may be directly responsible for the substance of phenomenality in many cases, but not necessarily. Particle behavior can be both qualitative and mechanistic, or merely mechanistic. But whether we can ever comprehensively theorize mechanism such that determinism proves to be a cogent concept is in doubt.
yeah I digress. Me off on a tangent... sorry it happens sometimes
Quoting Punshhh
I would prefer to distinguish consciousness ( awareness ) from mind, but these words are used the same in this forum and I preferred not to launch semantic wars.
It seems that the concept of human mind includes some functions of the body, but I will not say so.
Of course, if life=consciousness a paramecium has consciousness. And every cell in our body. Then we are composed of millions of tiny consciousnesses. Why not?
Obviously, because it's not like that when we talk about consciousness.
This is purely imaginative. If you didn't use scientific words it would be like a fairy tale. Where did you get the idea?
I think it is reasonable to distinguish between the management of the bodily functions by the brain and the intellect.
Yes, but have we established that a human is not millions of tiny consciousnesses?
Consider a wave in the ocean, is it constituted of millions of tiny microscopic waves?
So when we talk about consciousness, we know what we're talking about?
I doubt it, we are merely talking about what human discourse has established (informed by science). Which is based around biology, which is reductionist, hence it is deemed to be the attribute of awareness.
But what about what philosophy has to say about it, is idealism nonsense? Or is consciousness just some robotic post modernism?
No problem. Join the club.
Though that’s the very point. The pure or the formal is contrasted, thus not being equivalent, with the empirical, as apriori is contrasted with aposteriori. So that if it’s empirical, it isn’t either purely or formally rational; the latter pertaining to what’s apriori, the former to what’s aposteriori.
This is why scientists can’t claim to have obtained anything absolute; hence, Lawrence Krauss states, “In science, we don’t... claim to know the absolute truth.” He’s also stated, “Not knowing is fine. In fact, it is a central part of science,... nor do you claim to have absolute knowledge.” Richard Feynman, the famed physicist, as well has stated, “All scientific knowledge is uncertain.”
Yet the apriori assertion that “a part isn’t greater than the whole of which it is one” is absolute or certain, for it’s rationally rather than empirically based. Thus “scientific reasoning” is a misnomer, no matter who uses it or in what article, whereby the term “reasoning” should be replaced with “conjectures,” “inferences.” “assertions,” “judgements” or “statements”; that is to say, what’s contingent upon experience rather than what’s based on reason absolutely, either purely or formally.
I think that your claim, which is what’s possible/impossible is determined by our agency, misses a major point... there are different types of causes, e.g., material or formal as opposed to efficient causes. Yeah, we may be the efficient cause of a change, i.e., that which fulfills an actual change, yet, what change is possible, or impossible, in the material or the form upon which we purse to fulfill a change isn’t caused by us, as it’s precisely what allows us, in the first place, to fulfill whatever change that we actually have; in other words, to realize a possibility isn’t what caused the possibility (which is the ground of its realization).
So this is how we’re to view the form of reason or logic, that is to say, the boundary of its form isn’t set, i.e, determined or caused, by the realization of our ideas, but it’s the very ground of them apriori, i.e., through which they’re possible.
Quoting MwwRight, exactly, the logical categories or pure concepts determine, as you’ve just said, “FOR US,” not vice versa; that is, we don’t determine or cause their bounds but are forced to work within them. This is exactly what I’m saying about rational or logical form.
Quoting MwwThey don’t contradict each other because the apriori form of reason isn’t something that we’ve created aposteriori, or at all; in other words, we don’t have a say on how it imposes form onto things. So that’s what was meant, that our volition isn’t what creates the given materials of our aposteriori constructions; unlike a pegasus or a unicorn which it does, with such given materials, according to the form of reason.
Quoting MwwIf the form of reason is taken as an axiom, rather than what’s both derived & presumed, from whence arises the circularity? As we’re not deriving the conclusion from any premise, & then subsequently using, in turn, the former to explain the latter (& so on cyclically).
Quoting Punshhh
Trillions of self-conscious cells? What a scandal! It would be worse than a session of the British parliament.
Excuse me. If metaphysics were merely formal, it wouldn't be a scandal for Kant. The problem with it is that it pretends to be both pure and synthetic. I'm with Kant on this. The only synthetic source of reason is experience. But that doesn't make it any less rational. In fact, the concept of science as a fundamental part of Reason is typical of the Enlightenment, which Kant culminates. A reason that combines the analytical with the synthetic.
Quoting aRealidealist
Nowhere is it written that rational knowledge has to be absolute and synthetic. Logical principles are absolute as long as they are kept to pure formality. When they are applied to experience they may have to transform even their axioms. For example those damned particles that are in several places at the same time or that are and are not wavy.
What modern relativists (Feynman?) mean is that systemic reason cannot reach absolute truth unless it loses all real content. And this does not mean anything in favor of irrationality, but rather of epistemological caution.
When they are applied to experience they may have to transform even their axioms. For example those damned particles that are in several places at the same time or that are and are not wavy.
The advantage of rationality over irrationality is that it is subject to rules that produce results and strategies that allow open confrontation of points of view. A philosophy that does not allow this becomes irrational and dangerous since the first of the conditions of rationality prevents superstition and the second condition of scholastic totalitarianism. These are two important things.
Quoting David MoYet if it wasn’t, that is, wasn’t absolute, then it wouldn’t be rational. I’m going to further inquire about your claim here, in what I ask you in response to what I quote next of your post.
Quoting David MoCan you give me an example of a logical principle that isn’t a pure formality, i.e., that isn’t independent of particular materials altogether?
Quoting David MoRight, unless we lose all real content; that is, unless we don’t refer to any of the materials of experience. In other words, unless we don’t refer to experience at all; hence, experience is inherently contingent & not absolute.
Quoting David MoOn the contrary, this is precisely my objection... assuming that a logical system can be, in principle, i.e., in regards to form & not the particular material(s) employed, constructed in a way which is different from how we can possibly form our own, is exactly to oppose the very principle upon which a logic or reason is conceivable; hence, such an assumption is inconceivable & therefore can’t even be thought, let alone assumed.
Quantum entanglement has been found in photosynthetic reaction centers, tunneling has been suggested by multiple experiments as a mechanism for active site behavior in enzymes, atoms in organic molecules existing in multiple mutating superpositioned phase states simultaneously is the best currently available explanation for apparent rate of intracellular evolution at the beginning of Earth's biological history, etc. Quantum phenomena will probably be identified with most of the life processes that happen too fast or efficiently to be accounted for by thermodynamic chemistry as occurs in the lab within extremely simple macroscopic solutions of bulk aggregate mass.
My hypothesis is that qualia are an emergent property of additive superposition amongst particle entanglements in the brain and body's tissues, a kind of extremely complex quantum resonance. This possibly explains mental images, sounds, touch sensations, all kinds of perceptual phenomena, which might vary according to differentiations in cell type and biochemical composition. The qualitative mind could be a sort of macroscopic coherence field generated by diverse quantum resonance (entangled superpositions) instantiated in matter, measured as standing waves.
What era does your realidealism come from?
What would be your primary referential text?
To what end does your realidealism point?
I need something to study in order to figure out where you come up with this stuff, because my understandings and my reference materials are apparently not up to the task.
This is all fine for a philosopher, but it still doesn't have the capability to explain consciousness, or mind. This is because we don't know the basis of the world of existence we find ourselves in. As I said, we need legs then feet and a rock to stand on, to make any progress.
My point is you, or any philosopher, can't deny that the human brain is a host for a being which is as yet beyond the preview of science, or our understanding. You can call it fantasy, or something, but that would just be name calling. Hence idealism.
Even idealism becomes a straight jacket, because it entertains the immaterial, whatever that is.
Sure, but Kant here has introduced a Copernican twist, as he says. Classical metaphysics has sought to find synthetic principles a priori about things. Kantian metaphysics dispenses with things and explains synthetic a priori principles as conditions of a priori knowledge. For example, mathematics is based on a priori synthetic principles because it does not speak about things, but about the a priori conditions of sensibility, space and time. The same happens with logic, which deals with the a priori conditions of understanding, categories and judgements. Only on the condition that it becomes epistemology does metaphysics become a science. "Formal", as you say.
The only thing that Kant did not justify is that mathematics or logic are absolutely a priori. There are various mathematical and logical systems and this calls into question his theory. And that is why I said that, in my opinion, the only synthetic knowledge, that is to say, that informs something outside of itself, is that of experience. If something else was understood, I apologize.
Quoting aRealidealist
When logic is applied within a hypothetical deductive system or in ordinary life.
The inconceivable is not the impossible. Kant demonstrated that the principles of logic are indissolubly associated with the forms of our intellect. But we cannot be so proud to think that our intellect is the only one possible in all possible universes. Any day an artificial superintelligence can give us a hard time. In any case, Kant believed that the only possible logic for our understanding was Aristotelic. Modern formal logic contradicts him. There are other possible logics. In my previous comment I quoted some of them to you.
What I am saying is that the discourses on the mind and those on the brain run parallel paths many times. That doesn't mean they're different realities. There are well-documented indications that what we call mind is a product of the brain. I have no evidence that there is a thing inside my brain that science can never discover. It's my brain doing its own thing. Some of it I'm aware of. Some I don't. And that's it.
Nice joke about the British parliament being billions of cells all arguing with each other.
Just as it is not given from our intellectual system that there can be no other kind, so too is it not given that the Aristotelian logic our understanding uses, in accordance with the Kantian theoretical exposition, that there can be no other kind.
The common misunderstanding is from the fact he said, “...is apparent from the fact that, since Aristotle, it (logic) has been unable to advance a step and, thus, to all appearance has reached its completion....”, but without considering he might have not have said that, or at least might have re-phrased it, given the kinds of logic in use today. Modern formal logic doesn’t contradict him any more than Einstein didn’t contradict Newton......you know that story.
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Quoting David Mo
Under what conditions would this not be true?
We're going to need a lot of badass brainscan technology to save the star-crossed mice. Anyone know what glial cells do? Could probably be lots of intricate quantum entanglement effects as their chemistry isn't limited to functionality for synapsing.
Not only because of phrases like that but because the whole Transcendental Dialectic in the Critique of Pure Reason is mounted on syllogistic logic. Of course it can be reformulated, but it was not Kant's idea.
It is not a question of contradicting, but of saying things that cannot be said within one logical system or another. So Newton's physics cannot express the theory of relativity and Aristotelian logic cannot say what contemporary formal logics say.
Quoting Mww
It's not about conditions. It's an analytical statement.
There may also be an angel and a devil pulling each to one side of the synapse. Why not?
Quoting David Mo
Make up your mind.
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Quoting David Mo
An analytic judgement can be false. Because “the inconceivable is not the impossible” is false, it is not true under any condition.
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
What is contradicted in the first sentence is the assumption that Aristotelian logic is the only one possible. Not that formal logic contradicts Aristotelian logic, which is what the second sentence refers to. They are two different things.
I'm not saying I can't contradict myself, but not on this occasion.
Quoting Mww
An analytical statement is supposed to be tautological and cannot be false. If what I said is false, it's because it's not analytical. In my opinion, impossible and inconceivable are two words with different meanings and therefore have different meanings. Do not tell me that this "deduction" can be false. It would be chaos.
Momentary lapse of reason (thanks, David!! Not you...the other David) on my part. That which is inconceivable is unknowable, not necessarily impossible.
My bad.
Quoting David MoThe point that metaphysical knowledge is based on form, & not the particular materials or matter of any empirical intuition, taking Kant’s “Copernican revolution” into account, still stands, precisely because everything which is contingently given to us in empirical intuition is conditioned by the form of our subject; so that any synthesis apriori holds good for all possible experiences &, therefore, isn’t limited to either a single subject or instance of empirical intuition. In other words, any synthetic apriori determination stands over & above every particular instance or state & holds good throughout all possible experiences. Hence, “meta”-physics... such sythetic apriori knowledge is “beyond” any particular empirical or physical state, & so its validity is independent of any one altogether.
Quoting David MoTo take your example... the truth of this judgement is independent of any particular instance or state of an actual cat, as it holds good for all possible cats. Such that, even if there were no actual “cats,” it would still hold good because it’s applicable to all possible cats altogether; & so it would pertain to the judgement with hypothetical logical necessity — i.e., “If there’s a cat advancing with footsteps, then they would be feline.”
Quoting David MoHow so? Are you saying that mathematics can be something which is valid only aposteriori, such that it’s possible for its determinations to be valid in one instance of intuition & then change, & not be so, in another? If not, I fail to see, how is it not apriori, i.e., not independent of any one instance of intuition?
Quoting David MoOn the basis of Kant’s claim that our knowledge is limited to the form of our subject, how can you know that the inconceivable isn’t the impossible? For you can’t transcend the form of your subject in order to determine that there are possibilities which violate what’s (logically) inconceivable to us. Thus you can’t know the truth of it; & your claim that the inconceivable isn’t the impossible simply takes the point for granted & begs the question. Either way, even if one is to grant this claim of yours, under Kantian principles, it would be wholly irrelevant; because we could never know of them, i.e., possibilities that are inconceivable, & they wouldn’t apply to us or our knowledge; as we’re limited to what we can know only under the form of our subject, which can never violate the principle of reason or logic, i.e., that of non-contradiction.
Quoting David MoYet never so hard a time as to violate the principle of reason or logic, i.e., that of non-contradiction; & if otherwise were to be the case with an “artificial superintelligence,” in order to for us to know of this, it would have to enter through the form of our subject, which would then make it conform to the form of our subject, such that it couldn’t then violate the principle of reason or logic, i.e., that of non-contradiction.
Quoting David MoLet it be so... yet & still none of them violate the principle of non-contradiction. The self-referential “barber paradox” is no instance of this; for it obfuscates the modality of possibility. A barber who shaves all those who can’t shave themselves, misses that a barber can shave all those who’re capable of shaving themselves (which logically includes himself), even if he hasn’t or doesn’t.
Quoting MwwIs this relevant? Either you accept (the premise of) the argument, my friend, or you don’t — i.e., what’s created by us can be altered or changed by us, if it can’t then it’s not.
The form of the argument is certainly valid (so it’s left for you to grant the premises or not)...
-If X, then Y
-Not Y
-Therefore not X
-If A created B, i.e., “if X,” then A can alter or change B, i.e., “then Y”
-A can’t alter or change B, i.e, “Not Y”
-Therefore A didn’t create B, i.e., “therefore not X”
-If human conception created the law non-contradiction, then human conception can alter or change the law of non-contradiction
-Human conception can’t alter or change the law of non-contradiction
-Therefore human conception didn’t create the law of non-contradiction
If you grant the premises, & also acknowledge the validity of the argument’s form, then I don’t see how you can claim that the principle of reason or logic, i.e., that of non-contradiction, is a product of human conception?
If there's no thoughts there's no way of knowing if you're conscious or not. The only way to know is if your thinking print out "yeah, I'm conscious".
Consciousness as some kind of mishmash of thinking/infinite pure backdrop/awareness etc is just a myth.
So what happens when empirical conditions occur, in which the proof of such logical transformations goes against experience? Shall we then find that this animal, being truly a dog, is also truly not a dog? If so, we can absolutely never know what the animal is, for no matter what its appearance, it can simultaneously appear as not that. Which prevents us ever even conceptualizing said animal as dog in the first place, which contradicts (?) the fact that we do.
Now I understand merely saying human conception can change the LNC,,,,..conceptions are the representations but not the source of change, but ok..... doesn’t imply the actual doing of it. Nevertheless, there can’t be much point in the saying of it, other than.....
“...there lies so seductive a charm in the possession of a specious art like this...that general logic, which is merely a canon of judgement, has been employed as an organon for the actual production, or rather for the semblance of production, of objective assertions, and has thus been grossly misapplied....”