EPTWhat DoubleReed, others and I have been saying is that we have made progress in our understanding of consciousness and the emergence of consciousness (to give a simple example, we have identified components of the brain involved in the regulation of consciousness, such as the thalamus - surely that's better than having "no clue" about it?), and that this is a research area in which we still have much to discover, rather than some remote vacuum of human knowledge that we have so far been unable to approach.
Is the mind all chemical and electricity? - Page 103
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kwizach
3658 Posts
What DoubleReed, others and I have been saying is that we have made progress in our understanding of consciousness and the emergence of consciousness (to give a simple example, we have identified components of the brain involved in the regulation of consciousness, such as the thalamus - surely that's better than having "no clue" about it?), and that this is a research area in which we still have much to discover, rather than some remote vacuum of human knowledge that we have so far been unable to approach. | ||
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Shiori
3815 Posts
On August 31 2013 06:31 DoubleReed wrote: First of all, bringing a dictionary into an argument is incredibly silly. Dictionaries only give denotation and not connotation. It's not silly at all when you're making an argument which is entirely dependent on the sense in which someone was using the word mysterious. Secondly, everyone knows what "mysterious" means. You seem to think it means magical. Thirdly, why would that be absurd? Unless you're also going to grant that solid-state hard drives, organic chemistry, and jetpacks are mysterious, then why would that be absurd? I think anyone who would describe those things as "mysterious" would be misusing the term. Don't you? You're making the mistake of viewing the adjective as some sort of quantifiable, objective value i.e. how much "mysteriousness" does X possess. The problem here is that mystery is subjective. It's a word for things that we don't understand on so many levels that we can't even fathom how an explanation could look. I'm not sure why you're equating calling something "mysterious" with claiming that it's impossible to ever investigate/understand, but that's not the sense in which most people seem to be using the word. If you showed someone from 3000BC a computer, I think they'd be well within their rights to call solid state hard drives mysterious; don't even get me started on jetpacks. And besides, it's not like something can't be mysterious to someone and then cease to be so. It's a changeable thing. When scientists made their first forays into QM, it was pretty damn mysterious (hell, it still is pretty baffling in a lot of ways). Just because we filled in a lot of the blanks over time doesn't mean that the people who found initial exposure mysterious were misusing the word, or whatever. As for consciousness, I'd say it's absolutely mysterious because it would be too meta for anyone to really comprehend it in a real way (even given a more exact neuroscience) but that's not really a position I care too much about. And yes, saying that something is inherently impossible to understand and is inexplicable is no different than MAGIC! Depends on your metrics. Free will could arguably be intractable, and so could certain aspects of existentialism, depending on your school of thought. That doesn't make them magical. | ||
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farvacola
United States18856 Posts
Repeatedly saying that physical assembly and emergence are the answer and the end of the story when the book isn't even finished is hasty. | ||
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YumYumGranola
Canada346 Posts
On August 31 2013 08:05 farvacola wrote: You ought to reread what he said, because nowhere does he rule out our better understanding of the mind at a later date. In fact, no one has said that. Is the mind and how cognition works mysterious? I'm not sure knowing that chemistry and physical assembly are likely at play rules out a yes to that question. Scratch that, I'm certain it doesn't. You're right, the second part of that post was more of a general response to the people who seem to want to answer "No" to the question posted by the OP. The question being asked by the OP is "is the mind physical?" Even if said mysterious phenomenon you're alluding to is discovered, the answer would still be "Yes" because that phenomenon would be part of our physical world and therefore the mind would still be a physical object. The idea that the brain isn't is fundamentally irrational. | ||
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FallDownMarigold
United States3710 Posts
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YumYumGranola
Canada346 Posts
On August 31 2013 08:30 farvacola wrote: Well I won't fight sam's battles for him, but my responses are directed almost entirely towards the notion that self-consciousness is not special or unique, which has been Doublereed's contention as he repeatedly compares the mind to solid state hard drives without anything more than," they are comparable because they are." Repeatedly saying that physical assembly and emergence are the answer and the end of the story when the book isn't even finished is hasty. Can you please explain (preferably with an example) how any answer we could find would not be "physical assembly" without invoking the supernatural? At the moment all I'm hearing is: "I didn't say it was super-natural, I just said that it's not natural" | ||
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Shiori
3815 Posts
On August 31 2013 08:51 YumYumGranola wrote: Can you please explain (preferably with an example) how any answer we could find would not be "physical assembly" without invoking the supernatural? At the moment all I'm hearing is: "I didn't say it was super-natural, I just said that it's not natural" To me, it'd be kinda like representing, say, Anna Karenina in terms of its "physical assembly" i.e. some representation of the arrangement of atoms and molecules which, together, form pages with words on them, and so on and so forth. Yes, it would be trivially accurate, but answering the question "what's Anna Karenina like?" by handing someone a bunch of physical data about its material composition is probably misguided. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
1. that the physical description is ultimately true 2. this does not contradict whatever mental or conceptual description of the same events 3. the inability for the physical description to stand in place is not due to any fault of the physics or biology or neuroscience etc etc, it is simply a limiting feature of humans trying to understand humans. as far as i can see, if you have a mystery in the way of a magic act, but explain why one feels the mystery as well as reveal the way behind the trick, so to speak, then there is no meaningful mystery except the acceptance of an illusion. | ||
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YumYumGranola
Canada346 Posts
On August 31 2013 09:00 Shiori wrote: To me, it'd be kinda like representing, say, Anna Karenina in terms of its "physical assembly" i.e. some representation of the arrangement of atoms and molecules which, together, form pages with words on them, and so on and so forth. Yes, it would be trivially accurate, but answering the question "what's Anna Karenina like?" by handing someone a bunch of physical data about its material composition is probably misguided. Well you'd also have to give the person all the data and inner workings of the human brain which was interpreting the book. | ||
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Shiori
3815 Posts
the inability for the physical description to stand in place is not due to any fault of the physics or biology or neuroscience etc etc, it is simply a limiting feature of humans trying to understand humans. I'd say that's a pretty foundational limitation, given that physics/biology/neuroscience as we understand them are inseparable from our humanity viz. perception. | ||
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DoubleReed
United States4130 Posts
On August 31 2013 08:30 farvacola wrote: Well I won't fight sam's battles for him, but my responses are directed almost entirely towards the notion that self-consciousness is not special or unique, which has been Doublereed's contention as he repeatedly compares the mind to solid state hard drives without anything more than," they are comparable because they are." Repeatedly saying that physical assembly and emergence are the answer and the end of the story when the book isn't even finished is hasty. No, I am asking you whether you think solid state hard drives are mysterious, because I don't understand why that wouldn't fit the connotation you're using. I'm asking a question, to try to get you to understand the bullshit of the terminology. Explain to me why solid state hard drives are not mysterious. Because I know jackshit about how that works. About as much as I do about consciousness. Shiori says that it's subjective. Fine. So he thinks solid state hard drives are mysterious. What do you think? | ||
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farvacola
United States18856 Posts
On August 31 2013 12:53 DoubleReed wrote: No, I am asking you whether you think solid state hard drives are mysterious, because I don't understand why that wouldn't fit the connotation you're using. I'm asking a question, to try to get you to understand the bullshit of the terminology. Explain to me why solid state hard drives are not mysterious. Because I know jackshit about how that works. About as much as I do about consciousness. Shiori says that it's subjective. Fine. So he thinks solid state hard drives are mysterious. What do you think? Solid state hard drives and the conscious human mind are both mysterious in the same way that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are both good books. | ||
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mozoku
United States708 Posts
On August 31 2013 08:30 farvacola wrote: Well I won't fight sam's battles for him, but my responses are directed almost entirely towards the notion that self-consciousness is not special or unique, which has been Doublereed's contention as he repeatedly compares the mind to solid state hard drives without anything more than," they are comparable because they are." Repeatedly saying that physical assembly and emergence are the answer and the end of the story when the book isn't even finished is hasty. They're comparable based on a probabilistic view with the empirical evidence of all observed phenomena in support of comparability. Not simply because they are. Besides quantum mechanics, all observed phenomena have obeyed the law of cause and effect. Based on this, I think Doublereed (and correct me if I'm misspeaking in your place) is making the argument that it's highly likely (as in ~>99% likelihood), and thus a reasonable assumption to suppose the brain is purely physical. This is the view of a scientist. In a purely logical sense, this doesn't hold because logical statements need to be irrefutably true. So from a logical perspective, it's irrational to to make the statement the brain is purely physical. And since this is a topic in philosophy, the convention is that arguments are logical rather the empirical. This is the view of a philosopher. I think the disagreement here is a result of conflicting approaches to the issue. Which is understandable, since the question is occupies a gray area between science and philosophy. As for whether it's "mysterious," I think that's a matter of how you define mysterious. It's mysterious in the sense we don't understand it, but if we take a probabilistic view, it's reasonable to infer that it's comparable to a solid state hard drive and will eventually demystified (without any revealing any new "mysterious" properties of nature previously unknown). If you define mysterious as "we don't understand it currently," then it's mysterious. If you define mysterious as "contains supernatural properties," then it's reasonable to infer it's not mysterious. Though, we can't know that it isn't with 100% certainty until we fully understand consciousness. EDIT: Judging from your post after mine, I think I misjudged the disagreement. So I'll try and resolve it how I see it now. It seems you would still fit under scientific/probabilistic view, but you're simply less confident that consciousness can be reduced to physicalism? I disagree. Here's a bit of a thought experiment. Think of the simplest organism. A prokaryotic bacterium maybe. Would you say it has consciousness? I'm assuming you'd answer no. It's too simple. How about eukaryotic bacteria? No? Insects? Mammals? While my chronological biology may not be correct, the point I'm making isn't only about complexity. The organisms were meant to be advancing in chronological order that they became "separate" species. At which point in evolutionary history does this nonphysical consciousness suddenly insert itself? The current understanding of consciousness (as far as I'm aware) is that it is a spectrum, rather than a binary quality. Thus, any line that's drawn is going to be arbitrary and human made. But if the "consciousness line" is human made, and all organisms developed through purely physical processes, where does the nonphysical "consciousness" come from? Unless my logic here is wrong somewhere, it seems dualism necessarily breaks cause and effect. Unless you're going to make the claim that early bacteria was conscious, but even then you'd have to make the argument consciousness originated with biogenesis. Which I think is a pretty weak claim (for reasons I could expand upon if needed). | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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farvacola
United States18856 Posts
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DoubleReed
United States4130 Posts
On August 31 2013 13:14 farvacola wrote: Solid state hard drives and the conscious human mind are both mysterious in the same way that Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man are both good books. Okay, as long as you are willing to say that solid state hard drives are mysterious, then fine. I think using the word "mysterious" in that way is kind of bizarre, but that's where we can just agree to disagree. At least you're being consistent. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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farvacola
United States18856 Posts
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MiraMax
Germany532 Posts
In the original problem it was argued that: yes, progress on a functional understanding of consciousness has been made, i.e. we have learned a good deal about how the brain is structured and how signals are processed, but irrespective of any progress there this does not - and could never - further our understanding about the non-functional aspects of consciousness, the "like-ness" of a conscious experience aka the qualia. The claim goes that it were metaphysically or at least logically possible that we would be some form of intelligent automaton (or p-zombie) that would show exactly the same functional behavior, we could think and deliberate, but it would not be anything "like" being us (we would have no quale when feeling pain, but nonetheless show the very same external reaction). It is in this latter non-functional sense of consciousness that pointing to emergent phenomena seems somewhat like question begging since we do not seem to have any other example in the natural world of such subjective status. And it is in this way - or so the claim goes - that consciousness really is special or mysterious or fundamentally different from mere signal processing or computing. Chalmers even claimed to have devised a sound logical proof for his position the success of which heavily depends on your attitudes towards conceivability and modal logic. I was never moved much by most of his arguments, but it might explain the disconnect between Sam, Farv, DoubleReed and kvizach who seem to be arguing on different levels at times. | ||
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xM(Z
Romania5299 Posts
 .people arguing for physicalism work/function better in confined spaces(they need finite quantities to work with) while ones advocating for mystery/unknown work better in open spaces (they need infinities). that being said, this whole discussion looks like someone is trying to win, to show that his innate logic is better, by means using various concepts, self-validating concepts. that's fine, the evolution needs both sides to exist for it to happen. | ||
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