EPTUntil I learn of a better definition, I would have to say any substance with mass and which occupies space.
Is the mind all chemical and electricity? - Page 99
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kwizach
3658 Posts
Until I learn of a better definition, I would have to say any substance with mass and which occupies space. | ||
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DoubleReed
United States4130 Posts
On August 30 2013 03:37 farvacola wrote: He isn't saying that arrangement is unimportant, he's saying that gesticulating towards a poorly defined "arrangement" a la emergent consciousness as though it ends the debate on how consciousness works is silly. How is "arrangement" poorly defined???? It's just how the position of things in 3D space! Ends the debate on consciousness? No, I'm saying that consciousness is not some unique thing in this regard. In fact it's true of friggin' everything. It should not be thought of as magical or interesting. It's the norm. Everything is more than the sum of it's parts. | ||
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Rassy
Netherlands2308 Posts
On August 30 2013 03:49 DoubleReed wrote: How is "arrangement" poorly defined???? It's just how the position of things in 3D space! Ends the debate on consciousness? No, I'm saying that consciousness is not some unique thing in this regard. In fact it's true of friggin' everything. It should not be thought of as magical or interesting. It's the norm. Everything is more than the sum of it's parts. The arrangement of neurons (needed to have consciousness as an emergent property) is poorly defined. I think he meant "poorly defined" for this specific situation. | ||
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farvacola
United States18827 Posts
On August 30 2013 03:49 DoubleReed wrote: How is "arrangement" poorly defined???? It's just how the position of things in 3D space! Ends the debate on consciousness? No, I'm saying that consciousness is not some unique thing in this regard. In fact it's true of friggin' everything. It should not be thought of as magical or interesting. It's the norm. Everything is more than the sum of it's parts. Practically the entire field of psychology/psychiatry and the perpetual revision process of texts like the DSM disagree with this out of hand. Edit: and yeah, Rassy's got it. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
On August 30 2013 03:44 DoubleReed wrote: What problem? Why wouldn't that be? You don't like it? i like it very much but i do not understand how it can be so On August 30 2013 03:47 kwizach wrote: Until I learn of a better definition, I would have to say any substance with mass and which occupies space. ok. we can leave aside what "mass" and "space" are. does it feel like something to be it? On August 30 2013 03:49 DoubleReed wrote: How is "arrangement" poorly defined???? It's just how the position of things in 3D space! leaving aside what are "things" and what is "space", how can it be that it feels like something to be an arrangement of things in space? i don't think things feel like anything to be things. i don't think space feels like anything to be space. i don't think positions feel like anything to be positions. if I add a bunch of these things together, how does it come about that it feels like something to be them? the answer is... drumroll... "because they are different." see how enlightening that is? Ends the debate on consciousness? No, I'm saying that consciousness is not some unique thing in this regard. In fact it's true of friggin' everything. It should not be thought of as magical or interesting. It's the norm. Everything is more than the sum of it's parts. fine but explain how that happens | ||
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Rassy
Netherlands2308 Posts
People have not managed to find a good discription of how consciousness actually works, though there are manny hypotesis. We only know that it is an emergent property,If we consider the mind to be all physical, it HAS to be an emergent property almost by definition. That we do not exactly know how this property becomes emergent is due to our lack of knowledge. Manny emergent propertys can be described as simple statistics and laws of nature. You have a huge amount of these small entities together, and they all act according to the laws of nature. Due to the way laws of nature and statistics work, all the small entities together will also have propertys wich they do not have on their own. Manny of thoose "emergent" propertys can be calculated. We can not do this yet for consciousness but that doesnt realy mean annything.Just showing our lack of knowledge in this field. And ya, this is probably what he has been saying before, i am a bit in the dark about what is actually the point of discussion in the past few pages lol, so i just try make sense of it for myself  | ||
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corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
On August 30 2013 03:58 Rassy wrote: You are asking for an answer noone knows yet. People have not managed to find a good discription of how consciousness actually works, though there are manny hypotesis. We only know that it is an emergent property,If we consider the mind to be all physical, it HAS to be an emergent property almost by definition. That we do not exactly know how this property becomes emergent is due to our lack of knowledge. That's exactly what he's been saying for two pages, if I understand correctly... | ||
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DoubleReed
United States4130 Posts
fine but explain how that happens Explain how what happens? Physical locations? I'm sorry, but you can talk to chemists and they can explain how different arrangements of atoms affect molecules drastically. And it's not a magical thing, it's just the fact this molecule fits with that one or that atom has another electron or something. | ||
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kwizach
3658 Posts
On August 30 2013 03:54 sam!zdat wrote: ok. we can leave aside what "mass" and "space" are. does it feel like something to be it? Has your ego been so bruised you feel the need to smugly retreat behind simplistic questions you're getting from a few papers you've had to read for your undergrad classes (Nagel and the likes) in an attempt to stonewall me, or are you actually interested in having a conversation? To answer your question succinctly, only the material aggregates which have physical arrangements (for example, organs) allowing them to reflexively (I use this in reference to the common understanding of "feeling") experience reality "feel like something to be" what they are. This does not mean that any such individual material aggregate will be able to experience exactly what it feels like to be another such individual material aggregate. On August 30 2013 04:00 corumjhaelen wrote: That's exactly what he's been saying for two pages, if I understand correctly... Yes, without noticing that people have already been telling him this from the start - we do not know exactly how consciousness emerges, but we know the answer lies in the physical arrangements of the brain, and we have made some notable progress but have not found an exhaustive answer yet. | ||
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Shiori
3815 Posts
On August 30 2013 03:14 DoubleReed wrote: I have no idea what "hard determinism" is. In the physicalist view, your motives and decisions have physical manifestations. Like if you're going back and forth on a decision, then there is a physical process of you going back and forth on that decision. It's not like your indecision is an illusion. Far from it. It's as real as a basketball. Furthermore, concepts like blame and fault also factor into our decisionmaking as well as our social dynamics with others. I don't see how moral responsibility goes away just because cognition could be calculated by a magic calculator. I agree with you. Hard determinism is the position that determinism is true and that its existence is incompatible with free will. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
On August 30 2013 04:13 kwizach wrote: Has your ego been so bruised you feel the need to smugly retreat behind simplistic questions you're getting from a few papers you've had to read for your undergrad classes (Nagel and the likes) in an attempt to stonewall me, or are you actually interested in having a conversation? you don't seem to see what to me is an obvious problem, and you keep giving me tautologies and question-beggings masquerading as answers. I felt it was time to take a step back. sorry to gadfly you, but i feel you are just being dogmatic and not taking the problem seriously. if nobody's given a satisfactory answer to simplistic questions, I feel that it is necessary either to keep asking the questions or explain why the question is bad. I can't make the question go away, so I feel I must keep asking it. don't take out your frustration at your inability to answer the question with attacks on my ego and what you perceive (incorrectly) to be the sophomoric status of my philosophical credentials. To answer your question succinctly, only the material aggregates which have physical arrangements (for example, organs) allowing them to reflexively (I use this in reference to the common understanding of "feeling") experience reality "feel like something to be" what they are. This does not mean that any such individual material aggregate will be able to experience exactly what it feels like to be another such individual material aggregate. great what's your theory of how this works. what is "reflexivity" and what is your account of how reflexivity gives rise to consciousness? is this reflexivity a sufficient condition for consciousness? surely not. the economy exhibits reflexivity (I understand this to mean "reacts to its own outputs as inputs" but perhaps you mean something else). is the economy conscious? metaphysical speculations about "hidden hands" aside (and as much as this terrifying idea appeals to me in a certain poetic sense), I doubt it. On August 30 2013 04:13 kwizach wrote: and we have made some notable progress but have not found an exhaustive answer yet. i don't believe you've made any progress at all! anyway, I am going to pack up my computer for my upcoming move and I will not discuss this via my phone keyboard. I urge all of you to really ponder the issue and take very seriously the question of whether or not what you present as an explanation is actually just a restatement of the question. On August 30 2013 04:01 DoubleReed wrote: I'm sorry, but you can talk to chemists and they can explain how different arrangements of atoms affect molecules drastically. And it's not a magical thing, it's just the fact this molecule fits with that one or that atom has another electron or something. "consciousness explained"! | ||
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HardlyNever
United States1258 Posts
On August 30 2013 02:27 Shiori wrote: 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. No. There are lots of forms of determinism. Very few (that I've read) simply say events just "are." Cause and effect still very much exist, they just aren't decided by "free will." From my point of view, the argument is largely academic, as the appropriate course of action, regardless in the belief or non-belief in free-will, will be basically identical. It will simply be the reasoning behind WHY the course of action is to be taken that is different. For instance, if a child misbehaves, you punish a child in such a way with the end goal being that they don't do that thing they did again. Someone arguing for free will might say "the child is less likely to chose to do that again, because they don't want to get punished." If you are arguing for determinism, you would say something like "the child is less likely to do that again, because their brain now knows they might be punished, and the brain doesn't like that electro-chemical combination of 'punishment.'" The brain still exists. There is still cause and effect, only the idea of "free-will" is gone, and instead you would say that the punishment has (however slightly) altered the child's brain's' electro-chemical composition to be less likely to exhibit that action again. We might call this "memory" or "behavior" as these are the layman terms we've created to describe human brain activity. I'm not saying we 100% understand the science behind it, as I said it is still emerging (and I won't pretend to understand the forefront of this science). What I'm saying is the the brain is subject to cause and effect just like any other physical object in the universe, just in a more complex and diverse way than we currently understand. Saying there is no agency doesn't really make sense; actions still create effects, it is just the "why" that has changed. You can still alter behavior by influencing the environment in which the brain exists. | ||
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kwizach
3658 Posts
On August 30 2013 05:27 sam!zdat wrote: you don't seem to see what to me is an obvious problem, and you keep giving me tautologies and question-beggings masquerading as answers. I felt it was time to take a step back. sorry to gadfly you, but i feel you are just being dogmatic and not taking the problem seriously. I am taking the problem seriously. In fact, a result of me taking the problem seriously was me pointing out to you what was wrong with your question, what your question with regards to consciousness should have been based on what you were wondering about, and giving you an answer to your general interrogation concerning the state of human knowledge on the emergence of consciousness. You, on the other hand, are so bent on denying the possibility that your original question might have been phrased in such a way that a direct answer to that question was not what you were looking for that you've been dismissing my replies to you with a wave of your hand instead of taking a step back and considering what I've been saying. On August 30 2013 05:27 sam!zdat wrote: if nobody's given a satisfactory answer to simplistic questions, I feel that it is necessary either to keep asking the questions or explain why the question is bad. I can't make the question go away, so I feel I must keep asking it. don't take out your frustration at your inability to answer the question with attacks on my ego and what you perceive (incorrectly) to be the sophomoric status of my philosophical credentials. Again, I was able to answer your initial question, but you weren't able to recognize the answer that was given to you for what it was (the direct result of your question as it was phrased). Then I explained to you why your earlier question was bad, and I still gave you an answer to your broader interrogation: "we do not have a definitive and exhaustive answer to what the detailed physical workings of the emergence of consciousness are". Exactly what else are you expecting as an answer considering we simply do not have the emergence of consciousness mapped out? I do not care about your philosophical credentials. You are the one who brought them up for not other reason than to say "I know what I'm talking about" when you were being challenged on a level which was actually unrelated to the topic of emergence. On August 30 2013 05:27 sam!zdat wrote: great what's your theory of how this works. what is "reflexivity" and what is your account of how reflexivity gives rise to consciousness? is this reflexivity a sufficient condition for consciousness? surely not. the economy exhibits reflexivity (I understand this to mean "reacts to its own outputs as inputs" but perhaps you mean something else). is the economy conscious? metaphysical speculations about "hidden hands" aside (and as much as this terrifying idea appeals to me in a certain poetic sense), I doubt it. You do realize that I answered your question on the emergence on consciousness a couple of pages ago, right? And that I've repeated that answer several times, including in this very post? And no, that's not what I meant by reflexive. Since I'm not interested in an interrogation, though, feel free to reply when you're ready for a conversation. On August 30 2013 05:27 sam!zdat wrote: i don't believe you've made any progress at all! Yes, there has clearly been no progress whatsoever made over the last few centuries in understanding the physical arrangements in the brain that support the emergence of consciousness. I reckon we're about where they were in the Middle Ages with regards to the functioning of the brain, correct? There can clearly have been no progress made until we've found the complete answer - brilliant reasoning right there. | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
I suppose we will have to leave it up the peanut gallery as to which of us is unable to understand the other! I for one am quite convinced that you have offered nothing but dogmas and tautologies but clearly we shall not resolve this issue here! edit: if I've learned one thing studying philosophy, it's that the more you think about something very simple, the less simple it becomes. I'm afraid this might be like that. We can go around saying 'it is different because it is different' as long as we like, but it's unclear to me that this will get us anywhere besides a false security in our own understanding. | ||
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Shiori
3815 Posts
On August 30 2013 05:55 HardlyNever wrote: No. There are lots of forms of determinism. Very few (that I've read) simply say events just "are." Cause and effect still very much exist, they just aren't decided by "free will." If they aren't caused by free will, then human beings have absolutely no ability to consciously act in such a way so as to bring about any cause or effect. Every cause and effect occurs independently of any sort of agency, on hard determinism. From my point of view, the argument is largely academic, as the appropriate course of action, regardless in the belief or non-belief in free-will, will be basically identical. It will simply be the reasoning behind WHY the course of action is to be taken that is different. If you believe that hard determinism is true, and that agency (i.e. free will of some kind) does not exist, talking about "the appropriate course of action" is fruitless, because there can only be one (determined) course of action. It's not like people can continue to go about making "choices" under hard determinism. At best, they'll just be illusory (provided compatibilism is rejected, which is part of "hard" determinism). For instance, if a child misbehaves, you punish a child in such a way with the end goal being that they don't do that thing they did again. Someone arguing for free will might say "the child is less likely to chose to do that again, because they don't want to get punished." Someone arguing for determinism undercuts the possibility of actually choosing to punish the child or not, so it's irrelevant. On hard determinism, whether or not you punish the child is solely a matter of cause and effect and has nothing to do with anything you control. You can still alter behavior by influencing the environment in which the brain exists. Certainly. But you used the phrase "hard determinism" in the quote I initially replied to, which refers to the position that free will & determinism are incompatible, and that determinism is true. On such a view, the use of phrases like "You can still alter behavior by influencing the environment in which the brain exists" are meaningless because "can" implies that there's some kind of option. | ||
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koreasilver
9109 Posts
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HardlyNever
United States1258 Posts
On August 30 2013 07:54 Shiori wrote: If they aren't caused by free will, then human beings have absolutely no ability to consciously act in such a way so as to bring about any cause or effect. Every cause and effect occurs independently of any sort of agency, on hard determinism. If you believe that hard determinism is true, and that agency (i.e. free will of some kind) does not exist, talking about "the appropriate course of action" is fruitless, because there can only be one (determined) course of action. It's not like people can continue to go about making "choices" under hard determinism. At best, they'll just be illusory (provided compatibilism is rejected, which is part of "hard" determinism). Someone arguing for determinism undercuts the possibility of actually choosing to punish the child or not, so it's irrelevant. On hard determinism, whether or not you punish the child is solely a matter of cause and effect and has nothing to do with anything you control. Certainly. But you used the phrase "hard determinism" in the quote I initially replied to, which refers to the position that free will & determinism are incompatible, and that determinism is true. On such a view, the use of phrases like "You can still alter behavior by influencing the environment in which the brain exists" are meaningless because "can" implies that there's some kind of option. We are facing two major obstacles when discussing this concept: 1. We are raised in a society in which we are told free-will is real, we have it, and there are consequences for our choices. Our entire society is built upon this concept, so obviously it is very hard to shake off (we are only beginning to with ideas like "not guilty by reason of insanity" and related concepts.) 2. Relating to #1, our language is very much constrained by concepts of free will and choice. Nothing you quoted me on contains the word "choice" or "choose," yet you implied the concept of choice into almost everything you quoted me on. You even took the word "can" and implied choice. Can. This is how ingrained this concept is into our consciousness and language. Can usually means something along the lines of "physically able to do so." But you took it as "you can chose to do something." That isn't what it means, but that is what you read into it. Probably one of the best words I've discovered when trying to relate this concept is propensity. I think that is an apt description for how the brain works. It will have a propensity to do things, based on what has happened to it, and what it is made out of. What that propensity is depends on a multitude of factors that have occurred up until that point in time. The idea of free will is real. The idea of choice is real. They both will have a certain affect on the electro-chemical object that is your brain. However, you don't actually have free will. Your brain is just a physical electro-chemical reaction born out to a certain result, based on the environment (and I use this term broadly) it has been created and subjected to. If you want to trace back the initial process that would result in your brain exhibiting the physical process that it exhibits, you can go back to the big bang if you want, but that is somewhat worthless, as the number of factors that lead to its existence and behavior up until this point are probably approaching infinity. I'll try to relate this better when I'm not as tired, but think of it like this: If the wind blows hard and knocks a tree over, the tree didn't "chose" to be knocked over. It falling over was the culmination of a multitude of events and processes that preceded the falling over of the tree. There are a large number of factors that created the wind. There are a large number of factors that created the tree, and even causing the tree to be weak enough to fall over. Making a "choice" or exhibiting a certain behavior is a lot like that. Your brain is actually just following through on the vast number of factors that contributed to its current electro-chemical composition at the point in time of that "choice." Even the idea that you have free will or are capable of making a choice, are factors influencing what your brain will eventual do. However, there are many, many others (far beyond my knowledge, but I could list hundreds if not thousands from my limited knowledge). Edit: Basically, if you believe that the brain is truly just a physical object that is an electro-chemical reaction constantly occurring, then there is no way you can insert free-will into the equation. There is no place for "free-will" to exist within that paradigm, as electro-chemical reactions are not capable of the concept of "free will" (man, I've said electro-chemical a lot). If you don't believe the brain is just an electro-chemical reaction, then you can believe in free-will. But basically you are doing that age old thing of hiding behind what we have not yet scientifically mapped out yet, which people have been doing for centuries, until they can't anymore (earth is the center of the universe, evolution, etc.). That idea is eventually doomed, just like all other ideas based on that principle have been (although you probably won't see its demise in our life-time). | ||
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sam!zdat
United States5559 Posts
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tokinho
United States792 Posts
On August 30 2013 07:06 sam!zdat wrote: haha we are clearly at an impasse I suppose we will have to leave it up the peanut gallery as to which of us is unable to understand the other! I for one am quite convinced that you have offered nothing but dogmas and tautologies but clearly we shall not resolve this issue here! edit: if I've learned one thing studying philosophy, it's that the more you think about something very simple, the less simple it becomes. I'm afraid this might be like that. We can go around saying 'it is different because it is different' as long as we like, but it's unclear to me that this will get us anywhere besides a false security in our own understanding. I don't understand why you work your best to offend people, or to attempt to complicate things with ambiguity. I've noticed you basically obscure knowledge and emphasize the confusion that you do with the way you address no particular questions. Any sort of comment someone makes, you retort with question, but how confusing is x, when its not really that hard. Like the comment, "I for one am quite convinced that you have offered nothing" Ever wonder why engineer's get paid more than Psycologists, you dodge explanations and predictions as being to secure in understanding. Go nuts bro, whatever education you have has screwed your head away from measuring reality and basically telling people you don't care about their opinions. Contrary to your statement, the more you think about something simple the less simple it becomes, something I've learned from studying engineering, medicine, physics, and math, is that the more complicated you make things the less it represents reality. I can tell you what matter is, what it does, how to measure it, I can tell you how that build up to a more complex system, I can take that system and predict neurological behaviors, and help people with many different types of neurlogical complications and disorders. I could throw the statement back at you, "I for one am quite convinced that you have offered nothing" but at this point in realize that i don't really care about your infinite abstraction or your constant attempts to ignore elements in the conversation, focusing instead on skepticism and imagining something that doesn't exist. (Epistemology and metaphysics) Have fun in this thread man. | ||
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kwizach
3658 Posts
Of course, every single one of the choices I make will be the only possible choice that can physically be made when it happens, because the physical contents of my body, my brain, and the environment around me, determine the choice that is being made. Yet the choice still originates in the physical mechanisms that happen inside my body, thus it is my choice. This isn't sufficient, though - saying that the choices which are the result of the workings of the physical contents of one's own body (by the way, I say "physical contents" even though "contents" would be sufficient since everything is physical anyway, but I add the word to stress my position) correspond to the exercise of free will would for example imply that computers have free will (which isn't a problem in itself, but would not make for a very interesting definition of free will). Indeed, a computer makes tons of choices based on the contents of its own physical envelope. So I would add to my definition something along the lines of the choices necessitating to be made consciously by the entity who makes them to correspond to the exercise of free will. Ok, it's late and I'm tired, so I've probably expressed this terribly, but I hope it sheds some light on my particular compatibilist stance (I haven't look much into this school of thought, so I don't know to what extent my position is shared among it). | ||
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