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On July 06 2013 21:45 Kickboxer wrote:
Ants arguing about satellites ^_^
Throughout history, the vast majority of great minds - the precious few honest politicians, all the artists, all the altruists and seekers of knowledge before the advent of the scientific method, ironically even the majority of phenomenal modern day scientists (apart from those two crabby crusaders Dawkins and Hitchens who quite obviously have suffered some sort of severe psychological trauma at the hands of religious institutions) - believe(d) there is far more to existence than simple coincidences and biological machinery, and that the true nature of reality is something the rational mind with its pathetically self-limiting instruments will never be able to grasp. Just because.
QFT
User was warned for this post
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On July 06 2013 21:45 Kickboxer wrote:
Ants arguing about satellites ^_^
Throughout history, the vast majority of great minds - the precious few honest politicians, all the artists, all the altruists and seekers of knowledge before the advent of the scientific method, ironically even the majority of phenomenal modern day scientists (apart from those two crabby crusaders Dawkins and Hitchens who quite obviously have suffered some sort of severe psychological trauma at the hands of religious institutions) - believe(d) there is far more to existence than simple coincidences and biological machinery, and that the true nature of reality is something the rational mind with its pathetically self-limiting instruments will never be able to grasp. Just because.
Dawkins and Hitchens? They argue that we may very well never fully understand life but that is no point from which to argue that there is "more to it". It only means that we don't know, and that is the end of it. And on top of that I'd very much like a source on the "scientists today believe we came from more than coincidence", which sounds scarily like an argument against evolution using an argument from authority (problem being that the authority doesn't actually hold the view the argument proposes).
Now we may or may not ever fully understand life or ourselves, but current evidence seems to point to us being exactly that, biological machinery. It's perhaps not a very sexy thought, which is why most people without knowledge in the past have theorized about more romantic origins and explanations. The more we come to know, though, the more we've come to understand that we are not as special as we might want to believe.
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On July 06 2013 17:55 DertoQq wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint) A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream. The Weather / brain analogy is a good one. You're saying that it is not because one is more complicated than the other, how do you know that ? Complexity is something very tricky. Maybe we will be able to create perfect human AI and read mind with 100% accuracy before we can predict the weather. Complexity is not a good argument. We know how a game of starcraft work, but we will probably never (ok maybe someday, never is a long time) be able to predict the perfect way to play (like we can do with games like checkers or tic tac toe), the complexity is simply way too high. Does this mean we don't understand how the game is done ? Or that there is something mystical about starcraft ? We just know for a fact that we don't have the technology to do that. Also, don't underestimate what we know about the brain, unlike everything you might hear (scientists are modest people !), the field of neurology is extremely advanced.
The problem of consciousness is not about complexity. You're completely missing the mark. There are many things about what we ordinarily call consciousness or consider part of it that aren't subject to controversy. Aspects of memory for example are likely explainable with physical language alone. The real problem is why im actually experiencing something when I think of a particularly good moment in my life. There is currently no one who can explain or even give something close to a coherent explanaition of how the qualitative aspects of consciousness (qualia) can exist in a purely physical world. In the end we either end up with a physical world we no longer can make sense of, or we pretend there's no ghost in the machine when there clearly is (eliminativists do this). The problem is there is a ghost, that we cannot doubt, but for all we know there really shouldn't be.
David Chalmers on Consciousness
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On July 06 2013 22:34 Snusmumriken wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 17:55 DertoQq wrote:On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint) A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream. The Weather / brain analogy is a good one. You're saying that it is not because one is more complicated than the other, how do you know that ? Complexity is something very tricky. Maybe we will be able to create perfect human AI and read mind with 100% accuracy before we can predict the weather. Complexity is not a good argument. We know how a game of starcraft work, but we will probably never (ok maybe someday, never is a long time) be able to predict the perfect way to play (like we can do with games like checkers or tic tac toe), the complexity is simply way too high. Does this mean we don't understand how the game is done ? Or that there is something mystical about starcraft ? We just know for a fact that we don't have the technology to do that. Also, don't underestimate what we know about the brain, unlike everything you might hear (scientists are modest people !), the field of neurology is extremely advanced. The problem of consciousness is not about complexity. You're completely missing the mark. There are many things about what we ordinarily call consciousness or consider part of it that aren't subject to controversy. Aspects of memory for example are likely explainable with physical language alone. The real problem is why im actually experiencing something when I think of a particularly good moment in my life. There is currently no one who can explain or even give something close to a coherent explanaition of how the qualitative aspects of consciousness (qualia) can exist in a purely physical world. In the end we either end up with a physical world we no longer can make sense of, or we pretend there's no ghost in the machine when there clearly is (eliminativists do this). The problem is there is a ghost, that we cannot doubt, but for all we know there really shouldn't be. David Chalmers on Consciousness
when you experience something, the most science can do is see the changes in the brain caused by your experience. The experience itself will be forever elusive.
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On July 06 2013 22:34 Snusmumriken wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 17:55 DertoQq wrote:On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint) A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream. The Weather / brain analogy is a good one. You're saying that it is not because one is more complicated than the other, how do you know that ? Complexity is something very tricky. Maybe we will be able to create perfect human AI and read mind with 100% accuracy before we can predict the weather. Complexity is not a good argument. We know how a game of starcraft work, but we will probably never (ok maybe someday, never is a long time) be able to predict the perfect way to play (like we can do with games like checkers or tic tac toe), the complexity is simply way too high. Does this mean we don't understand how the game is done ? Or that there is something mystical about starcraft ? We just know for a fact that we don't have the technology to do that. Also, don't underestimate what we know about the brain, unlike everything you might hear (scientists are modest people !), the field of neurology is extremely advanced. The problem of consciousness is not about complexity. You're completely missing the mark. There are many things about what we ordinarily call consciousness or consider part of it that aren't subject to controversy. Aspects of memory for example are likely explainable with physical language alone. The real problem is why im actually experiencing something when I think of a particularly good moment in my life. There is currently no one who can explain or even give something close to a coherent explanaition of how the qualitative aspects of consciousness (qualia) can exist in a purely physical world. In the end we either end up with a physical world we no longer can make sense of, or we pretend there's no ghost in the machine when there clearly is (eliminativists do this). The problem is there is a ghost, that we cannot doubt, but for all we know there really shouldn't be. David Chalmers on Consciousness
To get the other side of the story you may find Steven Pinker and Daniel Dennet on the same channel.
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On July 06 2013 22:34 Snusmumriken wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 17:55 DertoQq wrote:On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint) A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream. The Weather / brain analogy is a good one. You're saying that it is not because one is more complicated than the other, how do you know that ? Complexity is something very tricky. Maybe we will be able to create perfect human AI and read mind with 100% accuracy before we can predict the weather. Complexity is not a good argument. We know how a game of starcraft work, but we will probably never (ok maybe someday, never is a long time) be able to predict the perfect way to play (like we can do with games like checkers or tic tac toe), the complexity is simply way too high. Does this mean we don't understand how the game is done ? Or that there is something mystical about starcraft ? We just know for a fact that we don't have the technology to do that. Also, don't underestimate what we know about the brain, unlike everything you might hear (scientists are modest people !), the field of neurology is extremely advanced. The problem of consciousness is not about complexity. You're completely missing the mark. There are many things about what we ordinarily call consciousness or consider part of it that aren't subject to controversy. Aspects of memory for example are likely explainable with physical language alone. The real problem is why im actually experiencing something when I think of a particularly good moment in my life. There is currently no one who can explain or even give something close to a coherent explanaition of how the qualitative aspects of consciousness (qualia) can exist in a purely physical world. In the end we either end up with a physical world we no longer can make sense of, or we pretend there's no ghost in the machine when there clearly is (eliminativists do this). The problem is there is a ghost, that we cannot doubt, but for all we know there really shouldn't be. David Chalmers on Consciousness
I was not talking about consciousness, already said everything i had to say about that in the previous pages.
I was only responding to the argument "if science can't predict the brain, then it's probably impossible". There is simply a big difference between not knowing how to do something, not knowing if something if possible to do and not being able to do something.
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On July 06 2013 22:34 Snusmumriken wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 17:55 DertoQq wrote:On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint) A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream. The Weather / brain analogy is a good one. You're saying that it is not because one is more complicated than the other, how do you know that ? Complexity is something very tricky. Maybe we will be able to create perfect human AI and read mind with 100% accuracy before we can predict the weather. Complexity is not a good argument. We know how a game of starcraft work, but we will probably never (ok maybe someday, never is a long time) be able to predict the perfect way to play (like we can do with games like checkers or tic tac toe), the complexity is simply way too high. Does this mean we don't understand how the game is done ? Or that there is something mystical about starcraft ? We just know for a fact that we don't have the technology to do that. Also, don't underestimate what we know about the brain, unlike everything you might hear (scientists are modest people !), the field of neurology is extremely advanced. The problem of consciousness is not about complexity. You're completely missing the mark. There are many things about what we ordinarily call consciousness or consider part of it that aren't subject to controversy. Aspects of memory for example are likely explainable with physical language alone. The real problem is why im actually experiencing something when I think of a particularly good moment in my life. There is currently no one who can explain or even give something close to a coherent explanaition of how the qualitative aspects of consciousness (qualia) can exist in a purely physical world. In the end we either end up with a physical world we no longer can make sense of, or we pretend there's no ghost in the machine when there clearly is (eliminativists do this). The problem is there is a ghost, that we cannot doubt, but for all we know there really shouldn't be. David Chalmers on Consciousness
The appeal to qualia is so misguided; I don't get why this is still a thing. Why can't there be unique states of a system based upon unique inputs? The universe will never be in the same state twice, nor will you or I, first of all because we're different and second for the same reason the universe won't. You make a philosophical hypothetical proposition that qualia could be identified because they could be in principle, and then go on to say that physicalism doesn't handle this. You're right! Why would an impossible hypothetical be manifest in reality? This is no kind of argument against physicalism.
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On July 06 2013 16:44 LuckyFool wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 09:50 wherebugsgo wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
I can easily make the leap regarding devices like computers and a USB stick. I don't need to know all of the workings of a USB stick personally to know what it is. These are devices that humans have made and we know what raw materials went into making them, we know these things can be explained because we've built them. I don't have any problems accepting the complexity of these devices.
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. Actually, by all current evidence we have, they ARE. They're just created through a long and complicated process that we do not actually fully understand. We don't really even understand the final product, either. In terms of matter you can break down almost anything in the universe, including humans, to basic (sub)atomic building blocks. The human brain and its periphery is no different. What you are suggesting is that, because we don't fully understand the brain/human mind, it's possible for there to be something supernatural (if it's not composed of matter, then it has to be supernatural!) involved. The onus is then on you. You've made this claim-now show evidence for it. We don't build human brains. They come to be through an evolutionarily process that we still are very far from fully understanding. Even with stem and embryonic cell research we can only essentially "grow" a brain, not assemble one in a liner fashion the way we assemble a motherboard or a USB stick. I don't think I have to prove my viewpoint either. I'm just saying I'm not comfortable with saying something like a brain is only made up of matter when we are so far from fully understanding how it works or comes to be. We can break a brain down piece by piece and determine what sort of matter it's made out of, the same way we can break a cake down and tell you exactly what physical elements comprise the cake. What we can't do is break a brain down and figure out why a person baked that cake. And that is wherein the mystery lies which I would like answered before we should say matter is all there is. If matter is all there is in the brain, we best start answering some real questions, such as why person A chooses to go left, and why person B chooses to go right or why someone baked a cake. If matter is all there is why can't we reassemble or reconstruct a brain the same way we can take a motherboard apart in a manufacturing plant and put it back together piece by piece, bit by bit? If it's too complicated to do something like this today, why should we assume a brain is as simple as pure chemicals and electricity? I just feel like it's taking a leap of faith to some degree which I find ignorant. I prefer not to restrict things that we don't fully understand. Science has gotten very good at explaining things, but I find people fall into a trap lately where we overstep what we really know, to a point where it could be detrimental to the advancement of some areas. Keep in mind the current president of the NIH and one of the leading researchers on the human genome project is a former atheist converted to Christianity. (Francis Collins, feel free to look him up, he's written some very interesting books on the topic as well) There is a complexity to the brain we aren't even close to understanding, to deny that and think we know better already I just view as an ignorant stance that I would rather not take.
There is no "why," it's more about "how." We don't understand fully how the brain works, but there are numerous fields of science that are working toward that.
We don't make a lot of things, and at some point in the past we did not understand them, but we understand them much more now. For example, we didn't make the stars or the planets or the galaxies in our universe, and the processes that made them are certainly complicated, yet we do understand (for the most part) how they came to be and how they work.
You are the one falling into the trap here. What you're falling into is the trap of the argument from ignorance. It's a logical fallacy to state that simply because we don't understand something, there needs to be something "more" that it contains beyond what we know to be the building blocks of everything else. You're insinuating that there is something supernatural. And again, you have not provided evidence for your claims. The onus is on you.
I also fail to see what a genetics researcher's religion has anything to do with science. Thousands of others are probably not Christian, but that doesn't mean their opinions necessarily hold any more or less weight than this Christian guy by virtue of their religion.
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No serious scientists or people with deeper interest in understanding the brain in structural terms think "we know better" already. What we think is that we can know much more provided more progress, especially into areas of brain structure and activity on a much higher resolution and larger volume scale.
"Why can't we pick apart a brain and put it together" is a very easy question -- because we aren't there yet! The follow up that because it's incredibly complex we should out of thin air assume there's magic at play does not follow
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I rather enjoyed this argument against epiphenomenalism/property dualism/Chalmers:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/p7/zombies_zombies/
It doesn't seem plausible that there is a non-detectable extra property of matter which doesn't interact with the physical universe, yet nonetheless we are able to describe it. Either the brain is the result of chemistry and electricity (seems likely) or there is a consciousness-stuff that changes the world in a detectable way (in which case we'll eventually find it).
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On July 07 2013 03:15 EatThePath wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 22:34 Snusmumriken wrote:On July 06 2013 17:55 DertoQq wrote:On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint) A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream. The Weather / brain analogy is a good one. You're saying that it is not because one is more complicated than the other, how do you know that ? Complexity is something very tricky. Maybe we will be able to create perfect human AI and read mind with 100% accuracy before we can predict the weather. Complexity is not a good argument. We know how a game of starcraft work, but we will probably never (ok maybe someday, never is a long time) be able to predict the perfect way to play (like we can do with games like checkers or tic tac toe), the complexity is simply way too high. Does this mean we don't understand how the game is done ? Or that there is something mystical about starcraft ? We just know for a fact that we don't have the technology to do that. Also, don't underestimate what we know about the brain, unlike everything you might hear (scientists are modest people !), the field of neurology is extremely advanced. The problem of consciousness is not about complexity. You're completely missing the mark. There are many things about what we ordinarily call consciousness or consider part of it that aren't subject to controversy. Aspects of memory for example are likely explainable with physical language alone. The real problem is why im actually experiencing something when I think of a particularly good moment in my life. There is currently no one who can explain or even give something close to a coherent explanaition of how the qualitative aspects of consciousness (qualia) can exist in a purely physical world. In the end we either end up with a physical world we no longer can make sense of, or we pretend there's no ghost in the machine when there clearly is (eliminativists do this). The problem is there is a ghost, that we cannot doubt, but for all we know there really shouldn't be. David Chalmers on Consciousness The appeal to qualia is so misguided; I don't get why this is still a thing. Why can't there be unique states of a system based upon unique inputs? The universe will never be in the same state twice, nor will you or I, first of all because we're different and second for the same reason the universe won't. You make a philosophical hypothetical proposition that qualia could be identified because they could be in principle, and then go on to say that physicalism doesn't handle this. You're right! Why would an impossible hypothetical be manifest in reality? This is no kind of argument against physicalism.
1. How does that have any bearing on the issue at hand?
2. I dont have to make any hypothetical proposition regarding subjective experience, its quite evident to all of us I'd say. To quote Sam Harris, "it's the one thing that cannot be an illusion". There are various reasons for why non-physical explanations of consciousness fail to deliver, but physicalism is just slightly less nonsensical.
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On July 06 2013 21:45 Kickboxer wrote:
Ants arguing about satellites ^_^
Throughout history, the vast majority of great minds - the precious few honest politicians, all the artists, all the altruists and seekers of knowledge before the advent of the scientific method, ironically even the majority of phenomenal modern day scientists (apart from those two crabby crusaders Dawkins and Hitchens who quite obviously have suffered some sort of severe psychological trauma at the hands of religious institutions) - believe(d) there is far more to existence than simple coincidences and biological machinery, and that the true nature of reality is something the rational mind with its pathetically self-limiting instruments will never be able to grasp. Just because.
That's not even close to being true about "phenomenal modern day scientists", that's you trying to bend reality for it to match your beliefs. A vast majority of current actual scientist, and especially prominent biologists, don't believe in what you seem to be suggested with loose language.
As for insulting Dawkins and Hitchens (who's not a scientist anyway), well it's just a cheap way to discredit the people who have beliefs who don't match yours. You're incredibly disingenuous and it's pathetic.
You can defend your position all you want but don't just lie to everyone by telling them that scientists are totally down with your conception of life. You've said some true stuff about our limitations but your approach just seems like you're trying to defend the existence of intelligent design or something and it's just a cheap way of making your case. Those intelligent people that you praise for the wrong reasons knew better than made the same assumptions that you are making.
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On July 06 2013 22:34 Snusmumriken wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 17:55 DertoQq wrote:On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint) A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream. The Weather / brain analogy is a good one. You're saying that it is not because one is more complicated than the other, how do you know that ? Complexity is something very tricky. Maybe we will be able to create perfect human AI and read mind with 100% accuracy before we can predict the weather. Complexity is not a good argument. We know how a game of starcraft work, but we will probably never (ok maybe someday, never is a long time) be able to predict the perfect way to play (like we can do with games like checkers or tic tac toe), the complexity is simply way too high. Does this mean we don't understand how the game is done ? Or that there is something mystical about starcraft ? We just know for a fact that we don't have the technology to do that. Also, don't underestimate what we know about the brain, unlike everything you might hear (scientists are modest people !), the field of neurology is extremely advanced. The problem of consciousness is not about complexity. You're completely missing the mark. There are many things about what we ordinarily call consciousness or consider part of it that aren't subject to controversy. Aspects of memory for example are likely explainable with physical language alone. The real problem is why im actually experiencing something when I think of a particularly good moment in my life. There is currently no one who can explain or even give something close to a coherent explanaition of how the qualitative aspects of consciousness (qualia) can exist in a purely physical world. In the end we either end up with a physical world we no longer can make sense of, or we pretend there's no ghost in the machine when there clearly is (eliminativists do this). The problem is there is a ghost, that we cannot doubt, but for all we know there really shouldn't be. David Chalmers on Consciousness
How can you place consciousness outside the box of physical reality when no one even knows where that box is? It is certainly outside the current box of physical reality, but you can't prove that it always will be.
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On July 06 2013 16:44 LuckyFool wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 09:50 wherebugsgo wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
I can easily make the leap regarding devices like computers and a USB stick. I don't need to know all of the workings of a USB stick personally to know what it is. These are devices that humans have made and we know what raw materials went into making them, we know these things can be explained because we've built them. I don't have any problems accepting the complexity of these devices.
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. Actually, by all current evidence we have, they ARE. They're just created through a long and complicated process that we do not actually fully understand. We don't really even understand the final product, either. In terms of matter you can break down almost anything in the universe, including humans, to basic (sub)atomic building blocks. The human brain and its periphery is no different. What you are suggesting is that, because we don't fully understand the brain/human mind, it's possible for there to be something supernatural (if it's not composed of matter, then it has to be supernatural!) involved. The onus is then on you. You've made this claim-now show evidence for it. If matter is all there is why can't we reassemble or reconstruct a brain the same way we can take a motherboard apart in a manufacturing plant and put it back together piece by piece, bit by bit? If it's too complicated to do something like this today, why should we assume a brain is as simple as pure chemicals and electricity? I just feel like it's taking a leap of faith to some degree which I find ignorant. I prefer not to restrict things that we don't fully understand. Science has gotten very good at explaining things, but I find people fall into a trap lately where we overstep what we really know, to a point where it could be detrimental to the advancement of some areas. Keep in mind the current president of the NIH and one of the leading researchers on the human genome project is a former atheist converted to Christianity. (Francis Collins, feel free to look him up, he's written some very interesting books on the topic as well) There is a complexity to the brain we aren't even close to understanding, to deny that and think we know better already I just view as an ignorant stance that I would rather not take.
The question of your first paragraph: We would've said the same things about, for example, the hearing of the brain years before we researched it. Someone might've said: "Well since we can't construct a device [re:cochlear implant] to replicate the ear like we can with a telephone, there must be more to life and therefore...[insert supernatural/spiritual argument]". The simple answer is we don't yet know how the brain works, and further we don't yet know exactly and completely how matter works. This doesn't mean we can't know, and this doesn't rule out our current knowledge (that the brain uses chemicals and electricity). And just because we don't yet understand the brain's 'complexity' doesn't mean it isn't material.
Second paragraph: Not sure why you point out Francis Collins as an example, as after all his conversion was worse than someone from your first paragraph. You said it yourself, 'we overstep what we really know', so why should we take up supernatural/religious philosophy instead?
I think we agree on the core point, that people rush towards conclusions too fast. I just thought your reasoning was a bit flawed.
On July 07 2013 05:50 SnipedSoul wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 22:34 Snusmumriken wrote:On July 06 2013 17:55 DertoQq wrote:On July 06 2013 17:18 LuckyFool wrote:On July 06 2013 16:26 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 06 2013 07:56 LuckyFool wrote:
Human minds on the other hand aren't being built by humans. We try to mimic them, we create robots with human like minds, capable of reasoning "like" a human, but there's a complexity in the human mind that we haven't even come close to being able to understand, replicate or understand to date. Saying we can be certain it's all just chemical and electricity without fully understanding it, just seems incredibly ignorant to me. I can make the same argument about the weather. The weather is obscenely complex and cannot be predicted with any sort of accuracy outside of a window of a few days. Hell, we still can't tell with much certainty whether or not it will rain unless there's a ton of dark storm clouds coming. We know all the basic laws that govern the weather such as chemical composition of the local atmosphere, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, pressure changes, etc. The only thing we cannot figure out about the weather is how all these things interact because it's simply too complex for us to make a proper model. Is it ignorant to assume that the weather is nothing more than chemicals and thermal energy just because we don't have a complete understanding of it? I see your point but I don't really like the weather analogy. We suck at predicting the weather before it happens, but it's nothing as complicated as the human brain. We can very easily go back and see what happened to cause a weather event to occur. We can't however go back and figure out what prompted a human decision in any way. (Purely from a physical/matter standpoint) A seemingly random shift in the jet stream happens that a forecast didn't account for which changes the weather, we see this and say "well that's why it ended up sunny today!" If only understanding brain activity were as simple as shifts in a jet stream. The Weather / brain analogy is a good one. You're saying that it is not because one is more complicated than the other, how do you know that ? Complexity is something very tricky. Maybe we will be able to create perfect human AI and read mind with 100% accuracy before we can predict the weather. Complexity is not a good argument. We know how a game of starcraft work, but we will probably never (ok maybe someday, never is a long time) be able to predict the perfect way to play (like we can do with games like checkers or tic tac toe), the complexity is simply way too high. Does this mean we don't understand how the game is done ? Or that there is something mystical about starcraft ? We just know for a fact that we don't have the technology to do that. Also, don't underestimate what we know about the brain, unlike everything you might hear (scientists are modest people !), the field of neurology is extremely advanced. The problem of consciousness is not about complexity. You're completely missing the mark. There are many things about what we ordinarily call consciousness or consider part of it that aren't subject to controversy. Aspects of memory for example are likely explainable with physical language alone. The real problem is why im actually experiencing something when I think of a particularly good moment in my life. There is currently no one who can explain or even give something close to a coherent explanaition of how the qualitative aspects of consciousness (qualia) can exist in a purely physical world. In the end we either end up with a physical world we no longer can make sense of, or we pretend there's no ghost in the machine when there clearly is (eliminativists do this). The problem is there is a ghost, that we cannot doubt, but for all we know there really shouldn't be. David Chalmers on Consciousness How can you place consciousness outside the box of physical reality when no one even knows where that box is? It is certainly outside the current box of physical reality, but you can't prove that it always will be.
Wait, how can you be so certain that it's outside reality? Didn't you just say no one knows where reality is?
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On July 06 2013 19:30 Tobberoth wrote:Show nested quote +On July 06 2013 06:28 sc2superfan101 wrote:On July 06 2013 03:50 Tobberoth wrote:On July 06 2013 03:37 sc2superfan101 wrote:On July 06 2013 03:29 Tobberoth wrote:On July 06 2013 03:24 sc2superfan101 wrote:On July 06 2013 03:20 Tobberoth wrote:On July 06 2013 03:16 sc2superfan101 wrote:On July 06 2013 03:14 Tobberoth wrote:On July 06 2013 03:13 sc2superfan101 wrote:
[quote]We're not talking about determinism...
I think I've said that like... 10,000 times.
Doesn't matter what you're talking about. The point is that the meaning of choice is inherently different if you believe in free will or not, without changing the definition because everything the definition depends on is already defined by your perspective on free will. If you're not interested in the subject, I don't understand why you're continuing to argue about it, and I don't understand what the point is of your posts in the topic. You haven't shown how definitions are subjective. I have shown you over and over again that you and I obviously have different opinions on what choice means, even though the definitions support both. Your apparent lack of understanding at this point is something I have little control over, unfortunately. I also find it hilarious how you keep arguing concepts concerning determinism, while vehemently claiming that's not what you're discussing. You haven't shown once how the definition given supports your interpretation of it. You've just said that it does and posted the definition. Stating an opinion is not synonymous with supporting said opinion with reasoning. The concepts of determinism and physicalism often intersect, because physicalism almost always (in my opinion always) implies determinism. But I am not discussing determinism, I am discussing physicalism. And I asked you how it doesn't. The fact that you can't show how it doesn't, proves that it fits. It's that simple. lol. Are you being serious right now? Hmm, still no attempt at showing how the definitions doesn't fit to my concept. Too bad, I expected more. Oh well, mcc understood what I meant, hopefully others did too. My attempts at explaining it to you, have failed. Understood what, exactly? I understand the idea, I think, but I'm not sure as you never provided an argument, you just said that it was so. Then you said that if I could not provide how it doesn't, it must be presumed to be true... I don't think that's the way things usually go, however. Usually the one making the claim needs to support his position. Safe to say, you will find no dictionary showing that my interpretation of choice is incorrect, unless you find a definition which specifically mentions free will. Good luck. The fact that no dictionary shows any indication whatsoever that your interpretation is even considered is pretty good evidence that it's not. How did I not provide an argument. I said, this is what choice means. You said I was wrong. I provided 5-6 definitions from different dictionaries, showing how I was right.
You provided one dictionary, lol. And posting a definition that literally say nothing whatsoever about your personal definition or interpretation is not "showing how you right"
The definitions show I'm correct.
How so? Explain your reasoning.
To put it really simply for you: In your opinion, making a selection between options based on free will, and making a selection between options without free will (so it can be predicted) are two different concepts. The definitions in the dictionary does not make this distinction.
No, I actually said that without free-will there is no "selection between options".
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On July 07 2013 06:22 Roe wrote:
Wait, how can you be so certain that it's outside reality? Didn't you just say no one knows where reality is?
We can't currently explain consciousness with our description of physical reality. Some people take that to mean that it exists outside the physical world.
The point I was making is that if you take the approach that something unexplained by science lies outside physical reality, you have no way of proving whether or not that will always be the case.
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On July 07 2013 06:30 SnipedSoul wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2013 06:22 Roe wrote:
Wait, how can you be so certain that it's outside reality? Didn't you just say no one knows where reality is? We can't currently explain consciousness with our description of physical reality. Some people take that to mean that it exists outside the physical world. The point I was making is that if you take the approach that something unexplained by science lies outside physical reality, you have no way of proving whether or not that will always be the case.
I just want to add, we can definitely explain it. We just can't prove it (and it might be wrong!). The same way Evolution can't/hasn't been proven, but it's still a damn good explanation. (and there are still plenty of people that would bet their life that evolution is wrong)
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On July 07 2013 06:52 DertoQq wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2013 06:30 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 07 2013 06:22 Roe wrote:
Wait, how can you be so certain that it's outside reality? Didn't you just say no one knows where reality is? We can't currently explain consciousness with our description of physical reality. Some people take that to mean that it exists outside the physical world. The point I was making is that if you take the approach that something unexplained by science lies outside physical reality, you have no way of proving whether or not that will always be the case. I just want to add, we can definitely explain it. We just can't prove it (and it might be wrong!). The same way Evolution can't/hasn't been proven, but it's still a damn good explanation. (and there are still plenty of people that would bet their life that evolution is wrong)
Uh, in no sense is the neuroscientific understanding of consciousness as developed/conclusive as evolutionary theory.
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On July 07 2013 06:55 Shiori wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2013 06:52 DertoQq wrote:On July 07 2013 06:30 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 07 2013 06:22 Roe wrote:
Wait, how can you be so certain that it's outside reality? Didn't you just say no one knows where reality is? We can't currently explain consciousness with our description of physical reality. Some people take that to mean that it exists outside the physical world. The point I was making is that if you take the approach that something unexplained by science lies outside physical reality, you have no way of proving whether or not that will always be the case. I just want to add, we can definitely explain it. We just can't prove it (and it might be wrong!). The same way Evolution can't/hasn't been proven, but it's still a damn good explanation. (and there are still plenty of people that would bet their life that evolution is wrong) Uh, in no sense is the neuroscientific understanding of consciousness as developed/conclusive as evolutionary theory.
but there is still an explanation.
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On July 07 2013 07:12 DertoQq wrote:Show nested quote +On July 07 2013 06:55 Shiori wrote:On July 07 2013 06:52 DertoQq wrote:On July 07 2013 06:30 SnipedSoul wrote:On July 07 2013 06:22 Roe wrote:
Wait, how can you be so certain that it's outside reality? Didn't you just say no one knows where reality is? We can't currently explain consciousness with our description of physical reality. Some people take that to mean that it exists outside the physical world. The point I was making is that if you take the approach that something unexplained by science lies outside physical reality, you have no way of proving whether or not that will always be the case. I just want to add, we can definitely explain it. We just can't prove it (and it might be wrong!). The same way Evolution can't/hasn't been proven, but it's still a damn good explanation. (and there are still plenty of people that would bet their life that evolution is wrong) Uh, in no sense is the neuroscientific understanding of consciousness as developed/conclusive as evolutionary theory. but there is still an explanation.
Not really. We're actually pretty naive about how consciousness really works. We understand that certain parts of the brain have something to do with it, and we know that damage/stimulation to these parts has certain effects, but we don't exactly understand how to go from single neuron-->consciousness. We don't even understand in a real way how the consciousness of animals differs from ours or from other animals, even though our brains are WAY different. We can make some conclusions, mainly by ruling out things animals don't seem capable of (self-reflection, for example) but that doesn't really tell us how it feels to be a pig.
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EPT
