EPTIs the mind all chemical and electricity? - Page 97
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Mikau
Netherlands1446 Posts
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
just saying "it emerges!" does not constitute an understanding of emergence. i've been quite fascinated by the entire topic of emergence in several domains of inquiry for some time now and I assure you that nobody has any sort of convincing account of what we mean by this. @tokinho sorry friend i find your post quite impenetrable | ||
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Drake
Germany6146 Posts
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
On August 29 2013 17:00 Drake wrote: when you take away the body in all parts i think you come to 99,9X % of the mass, so there is something missing that no one knows yet ? thats my only hope, otherwise its sadly yes ha! this reminds me of christological debates. i suppose that was partly what they were arguing about. what do you think koreasilver? | ||
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shaftofpleasure
Korea (North)1375 Posts
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
my post above was very brief and does not take on the central problme of the nature of this anxiety directly. it is a problem about how people have differennt represntations and they are incompatible, and not a concern about whether the mind is really physical. but this incompatible representational modality (can't represent music as vibration while still 'hearing' it; can't make sense of 'understanding chinese' by mere mechanical reproduction of syntax) is itself a pretty common situation and not really unique to consciousness. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
On August 29 2013 17:03 oneofthem wrote: anxiety is a technical term describing something being a thing of concern, etc. so yes, you were displaying some anxiety about the problem. ha! well in that case I'm anxious as fuck yo my post above was very brief and does not take on the central problme of the nature of this anxiety, which is a concern about how people have differennt represntations, and not a concern about whether the mind is really physical. but this incompatible representational modality (can't represent music as vibration while still 'hearing' it) is itself a pretty common situation and not really unique to consciousness. another restatement of problem why do people keep telling me that I'm concerned about whether the mind is really physical? I've explicitly denied this several times. anyway, it's not a question of "representational modality" so much as the question of how there is anybody in the first place to be represented TO. how is it "like" something to be me? how do I fit this into my ontology? I have no idea, and nobody has given me a good answer yet, just restatements of problems. adding the term "representational modality" sounds fancy but i don't see what it adds to the discussion edit: actually, give me a single instance of this "representational modality" problem that is equivalent to the problem of consciousness that is not already about consciousness. i don't believe you. I'm willing to believe you can find an analogous case, but nothing nearly so troubling | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
i guess it's not even about different representations, since the idea of "my consciousness!!! feel it!!!" etc is not a representation of mind in the way that a purposefully designed chart of neurofunctions is. feeling 'conscious' is a feeling first, and consciousness as a concept is really very thin without the feeling to which it refers. in other words, in the show-tell branching, consciousness is way heavier on the showing and not so much on telling. sure enough, representing consciousness as a biological process would not be able to replace the actual feeling of 'i'm fucking conscious', but that chasm is not problematic for a biological explanation of consciousness, at least not more than the problem of not being a bat imposes upon bat scientists. | ||
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kwizach
3658 Posts
On August 29 2013 16:50 sam!zdat wrote: not an answer, just restatement of problem. i understand what emergence is. that doesn't make it not a problem It is an answer to the question you were asking, which was how can it be that X works differently than its components Y. The answer to this is what I said, namely that X and Y are different. If your question is "what are the exact detailed physical workings of the emergence of consciousness", then we do not have a definitive and exhaustive answer, even though we're way beyond having no idea, as tokinho mentioned. I wouldn't really consider it a "problem" though, but rather a still quite dark area whose overarching principle can already be understood. On August 29 2013 16:50 sam!zdat wrote: please reread post I address this quite specifically - this is not my claim. i have never denied nor will i deny that consciousness is the result of a physical process. Considering references to qualia are often brought up in attempts to "disprove" physicalism, and you were advising a guy who is disputing physicalism in this very thread to look up qualia, this was a simple reminder, not necessarily directed at you, that what we were discussing did not challenge the physical argument in any way. | ||
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koreasilver
9109 Posts
On August 29 2013 17:01 sam!zdat wrote: ha! this reminds me of christological debates. i suppose that was partly what they were arguing about. what do you think koreasilver? Well, I'm honestly not really a fan of trying to find the mind to be something separate from the material body. Partially because I'm just tired of Cartesian dualism as an ontological and epistemological ground (as most people have been for decades... centuries) but also because I don't think there's anything to be afraid of in the possibility that the mind is wholly materially constituted. I think humanity as a whole is still really stuck on this idea that the human is particularly exceptional from the rest of nature: partially from its theological roots as the human as one closest to God, exceptionally created with a soul, etc. and also from its secular humanist roots that claim the human as the "rational animal" - both roots are entirely logocentric and identify the human characteristic in something non-material. Reducing consciousness or the mind or whathaveyou to its material substance doesn't then suddenly destroy whatever particular value we have for it, and I think at this point it's rather untenable to say that the mind is otherwise from the body. Levi Bryant has given a story in how during his depression he was trying to figure out the roots of his depression in a conceptual and phenomenological manner by examining his history, memories, relationships, etc., but one day he suddenly realized that his moodiness was heavily influenced by some material problem (addiction, withdrawal, chemical imbalance in the body, hormonal imbalance, etc.). Given that people with clinical depression, schizophrenia, alzheimer's, and other ailments that problematize thinking often undergo enormous differences of both mood and conscious clarity with the help of medication, could we really say that the mind and body are not one? The mind is a part of the bodily process and the possibility of the Boltzmann Brain doesn't really change that since such a phenomenon would occur entirely though accidental material events. But even if the mind is matter, or at least becomes possible only through matter and cannot escape from its material grounds, it doesn't then follow straight that there is no will or free will, or whathaveyou. I dunno, I'm really tired of "debates" about the free will and determinism/predestination after the past four years of hearing this nonsense in classrooms. It's pretty much fruitless. But as to the actual thread topic, I don't really think mind-body dualism is really tenable anymore both in a conceptual and natural science way. But as a poster said in the previous page, this doesn't mean that the mind has no value otherwise than just matter and chemical reactions. If we reduce music then it is nothing but a series of vibrations where harmony and dissonance is just mathematical relations of harmonics and tone is wave shape. But this kind of reductive analysis doesn't then destroy the actual art of music. The same goes for the "mind". | ||
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TSORG
293 Posts
On August 29 2013 16:58 Mikau wrote: Seeing as I have no free will anyway I might as well not study for my test tomorrow. Might as well start doing drugs, or killing poeple, or whatever 'a-moral' thing I feel like doing. None of it is my fault anyway, I have no free will. nope because you cannot decide to NOT to go study tomorrow if you have no free will. you might go study or you might not, but "you" dont decide it. The funny thing is, if you have free will or not, nothing would change, as long as you do not ponder upon the subject. | ||
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Rollin
Australia1552 Posts
What does this rather asinine discussion about determinism have to do with the OP's post, which was much more intriguing may I add? | ||
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kwizach
3658 Posts
On August 29 2013 22:13 Rollin wrote: You're all making the (unbased) assumption that determinism excludes choice No, there are plenty of people who have expressed compatibilistic positions in this thread. On August 29 2013 22:13 Rollin wrote: What does this rather asinine discussion about determinism have to do with the OP's post, which was much more intriguing may I add? It's not asinine, and the link is that one's position in the discussion over the existence and definition of free will is usually notably based on one's conception of the relationship between "mind and matter". | ||
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koreasilver
9109 Posts
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DoubleReed
United States4130 Posts
On August 29 2013 16:58 Mikau wrote: Seeing as I have no free will anyway I might as well not study for my test tomorrow. Might as well start doing drugs, or killing poeple, or whatever 'a-moral' thing I feel like doing. None of it is my fault anyway, I have no free will. I as a compatibilist would say you do have free will though "you" is deterministic. | ||
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Shiori
3815 Posts
On August 25 2013 02:31 farvacola wrote: Don't read Sam Harris. He's a bad author. Confirmed. Horrendous author. | ||
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HardlyNever
United States1258 Posts
On August 29 2013 16:58 Mikau wrote: Seeing as I have no free will anyway I might as well not study for my test tomorrow. Might as well start doing drugs, or killing poeple, or whatever 'a-moral' thing I feel like doing. None of it is my fault anyway, I have no free will. Not sure if this is a joke, or just show-casing a complete lack of understanding regarding the argument of determinism. You will still reap the consequences of actions, regardless of free will. If you murder someone and get caught, you will still go to jail. You have to understand that the idea that murder is bad and that there will be punishment is one of the deterrents to stop people from murdering. It doesn't always work, and it certainly isn't the only thing affecting the outcome, it is just one of the many factors regarding how many people are murderers. Also, the traditional concept of "blame" or "fault" sort of gets lost in hard determinism. If there is no free will, then the idea of "responsibility" becomes very tricky, and possibly useless. That doesn't mean there won't be consequences, though. If you murder someone, we still have to lock you up, to stop other people from being murdered, regardless of "fault." Right now I think western society is in that transitional stage of dealing with the centuries-old concept of free-will, responsibility, and "blame," versus the emerging science that suggests these concepts don't actually exist (although basically our entire society was built on the supposition that they do). | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
On August 29 2013 17:19 oneofthem wrote: well, that question is easy to answer, because the organism happens to have a process for 'feeling' as well as a conceptual idea of self. this ability is an evolved capacity due to complexity of le brain. "there's a magic box.. err.. ."process"... that makes it happen! it's science!" let me know when you want to take the question seriously rather than just construct sentences that say "it happens" in more words. you beg the question consistently. edit: koreasilver, i just mean back in the day when people were arguing about whether christ was all man, all man with a little piece of god, all god with a little piece of man, totally god and totally man all at once, etc. I think they were partly arguing about the mind body problem. what that guy said just reminded me of the dudes who said that christ was partly man, but so little in relation to the divine that it was like "a drop of water in an ocean" or something like that. i agree that dualism is a dead end, despite the fact that everyone is misreading me and thinks that i defend dualism. but certainly they didn't feel that way in the 5th century or whenever, and i think the christological heresies and stuff were partly about the same thing we're discussing now. On August 29 2013 17:34 kwizach wrote: It is an answer to the question you were asking, which was how can it be that X works differently than its components Y. The answer to this is what I said, namely that X and Y are different. If your question is "what are the exact detailed physical workings of the emergence of consciousness", then we do not have a definitive and exhaustive answer, even though we're way beyond having no idea, as tokinho mentioned. I wouldn't really consider it a "problem" though, but rather a still quite dark area whose overarching principle can already be understood. no, it's just restating the problem (why are they different? because they're different! you literally just said this and took yourself to be providing an answer. it's just an obvious tautology). I took an entire undergrad course on emergence, I understand what you are saying. If you think that just shouting "emergence" is an answer you are gravely mistaken. all you have done is say that you have faith that there is an answer. fine, but I'm pointing out that we don't have the first clue what kind of an answer that is, which is true. nobody has any sort of account about how strong emergence can occur. it is a fundamental mystery. On August 29 2013 17:34 kwizach wrote: Considering references to qualia are often brought up in attempts to "disprove" physicalism, and you were advising a guy who is disputing physicalism in this very thread to look up qualia, this was a simple reminder, not necessarily directed at you, that what we were discussing did not challenge the physical argument in any way. for the gazillionth time, I am not disputing physicalism. I am claiming that, BECAUSE I ACCEPT PHYSICALISM, our phenomenological experience shows that our understanding of physical reality must be gravely incomplete. jesus christ. | ||
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Shiori
3815 Posts
Also, the traditional concept of "blame" or "fault" sort of gets lost in hard determinism. If there is no free will, then the idea of "responsibility" becomes very tricky, and possibly useless. That doesn't mean there won't be consequences, though. If you murder someone, we still have to lock you up, to stop other people from being murdered, regardless of "fault." Maybe it's me, but how is this not an attempt to have your cake and eat it, too? If there is no free will, and if hard determinism is true, then responsibility isn't the only thing that becomes useless. Agency in general becomes totally meaningless. That means that your hypothetical "if you murder someone, we have to lock you up" is meaningless because all of the involved subjects aren't even capable of making choices. You don't "have to" lock me up; it's just going to happen. Similarly, whether I murder someone or not has nothing to do with my choice (on hard determinism, anyway) so there's no point talking about it. Basically, if you think hard determinism is true, all events simply are, and have no attachment to actual agents, because agents are a fiction. This means that all this stuff about the deterrence of murder or how we should move forward as a society are completely superfluous questions because they imply the ability to pick one course of action over another. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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