Which is different to the image on the cave wall or the digital photograph how, exactly, such that the cave or digital image is physical but the human one isn’t?
Quite so, but sensory input of some kind transferred to memory would cover that: again, there is no fundamental, qualitative difference there either, agreed?
I’m going to explore analytics via processes which are clearly as physical as objects, weather and death. At any point, I invite you to stop me and say, “Ah, but this or that can’t be explained that way”. As my OP suggested, this isn;t really the place to debate whether there are no physical things.
But you said, “The question, scientifically speaking, is: has anyone ever proven that there is a reality beyond what is perceptible to the senses?” (Emphasis mine.)
With the new goalpost, the answer changes. Necessary existence is easily provable with logic.
My OP suggested explicitly that this debate might be had elsewhere - I’d be very grateful if you could start a new thread. What I’m trying to do here is see how far we can get with the physical. Just as I have the to return to my party, it seems people are ready to leave following a comment which some guests somehow find definitive, while I consider that it reinforces the physical nature of memory (and memory access) rather than impugning it in any way, but I’ll do what I can to keep them here nonetheless.
which indicates the possibility of a proof using logic.
(I guess I was not being clear enough, but for me, a scientist would accept as proof not only scientific observations, but any formal proof using logic)
What is the “new goalpost”?
Also, can you provide links to the proof of necessary existence?
That’s not much of a proof.
If you notice the link you provided says that “The proof starts from the Peano Postulates, which define the natural numbers N”. And then it states
So, the “proof” is just plug-and-chug based on the definition of the natural numbers 1 and 2 and the definition of ‘+’ and ‘=’, just as I said in my previous comments.
Sorry if I sidetracked the conversation away from what you were intending.
I will stop posting and let you guys continue.
In any case, I wasn’t trying to hijack the thread, I honestly think that if someone is trying to say that “X is physical”, it is imperative to define what else X could be, and why it cannot be those things.
Thread started. I wish I’d taken more time on rewriting the opening post, but then again that’s going to be a lot easier to do after a bit of discussion anyway.
I’m (obviously) somewhat obsessed with the topic, and may indeed start a new thread… but not right now. While my wife has shown infinite patience and understanding this weekend; my work has not.
(on preview, it looks as if someone has started a new thread. I’ll check it out.)
For now a quick question/clarification: Awareness allows us to make only moral decisions, or any decision that would otherwise overwhelm or confuse our non-conscious decision-making programs?
It sounds as if you’re saying that memory associations must have some physical location in the brain. I’ve already acknowledged this to be the case. But let’s be clear: neural connections are formed, reformed, broken, and morphed all the time. Brains are incredibly complex and plastic; it’s unlikely that neural associations are the only memory associations (e.g., glial cells may be involved) and there’s nothing sacrosanct about the left hemisphere for the location of linguistic modules.
That question was a re-wording of your own question to me. Your first answer to it was location, now you say it’s timing. I’m not following what you’re trying to say here.
I don’t think I can address “physical entities and processes” until you answer the question I asked in Post #230: “Maybe I’m not understanding what you mean by “physical terms”. Does it mean that something is de facto physical if it’s merely associated with the physical?
Shame, I now have the time to respond to your IMO overly hasty conclusion that there are aspects of human memory which are fundamentally different to computer memories, and it seems you’re no longer interested in my replies. Shall I simply begin a thread based on your post from 4 hours ago?
If I’m reading you correctly, it doesn’t. Actually, what you’re describing sounds a lot like what Andy Clark calls “extended cognition”, the idea that we use resources in our environment to support and extend our own cognition (like when we use a pencil and paper to do long multiplication).
(on preview, I see Lib has beaten me to the punch)
All of which I agree with: are we not quibbling over who is providing the most textbook summary of linguistic association here?
Both being spatio-temporal, yes? I’m saying it’s both: the mug in my visual field activates some neurons, not others (“location”). My parents say the sound “mug” at the same time (“timing”).
What I’m doing here is asking you, now practically begging you, to tell me why, how, or in what way you think physical entities and processes are insufficient. You say “information” mightn’t be physical and so I describe memory access and association for you in spatio-temporal entities. You then repeat that it’s not necessarily sufficient. Tell me what hoops I can jump through for you, and I will attempt it. But please, don;t just leave without even holding them up and watching my performance, however clumsy and amusing it might turn out.
Sentient, I explained in post #253, to the best of my ability, why I think physical entities and processes, as I understand them, are insufficient. Repeatedly, I have not only acknowledged but suggested that entities we describe in terms of spatio-temporal properties are necessary for memory access and association.
We’re still disagreeing, so I don’t know what else to do except to try and get a better handle on what you mean by “physical terms”. As I understand it now, “physical terms” seems to mean, as Lib put it, “everything conceivable plus everything that isn’t”.
This has been a most enjoyable and educational thread. I share SentientMeat’s reservations about moving into the metaphysical and would like to continue the debate about that. Unfortunately I, like other-wise, am hard pressed for time; I will not be able to continue posting quite so much but will try to lurk as best I can. I look forward to reading Arwin’s thread, and would like to point out a thread started by FinnAgain that may be of interest. At the same time, I can’t leave without addressing this:
If one starts with a metaphysical conclusion to prove, one can almost always find some set of axioms that will prove it. Some arguments are better than others, some are worse. If you define the purpose of awareness as “moral accountability”, then that’s what it is. You might even start with other, simpler definitions and deduce it through logical steps. However, I see no justification for assigning purpose to the process beyond a vainglorious need to find meaning in patterns. Like the evolutionary process – it just is, no purpose necessary. (Although we certainly often make the mistake of assigning one.)
Spatio-temporal entities let’s say, but let’s put that …ahem…aside for the …cough… moment. We agree that some objects and processes are physical - let’s just see what we can do with them. If I introduce something you question the physicality of, call an immediate halt and we can explore it.
OK, let’s stay here for a while. If at any point it occurs to you that “Hey, maybe physical processes are sufficient”, all I ask is that you tell me so.
That’s correct. A digital photograph encoded under an unfamiliar protocol would also be unknowable to a third party in precisely the same way. The only difference here is the process by which signals from the light-sensitive receptors are sent to memory domains: again, the “key” to that process could literally be a physical, metal key which unlocked a connecting switch, or a swipecard with an electronic encryption key on a magnetic strip. In the human case, the key is altogether more complex: it is the past history of the visual field when it was forming those simple memory elements during childhood. The third party cannot know what objects caused (and gradually reinforced) what neural activity back in Hoodoo’s childhood: the memory is very definitely and very strongly encrypted by Hoodoo’s entire past history!
Now, do we agree that the entire past history of Hoodoo’s environment is still physical, ie. purely and simply different physical locations at different times?
As you’ve pointed out in my posts, it mightn’t be quite this way: The entire neural basis might have ‘degraded’ slightly rather than just a few key neurons degrading terminally. When he says he “can’t remember it”, he’s simply expressing a position of a needle in a continuum rather than a CAN/CAN’T digital switch: his memory has physically degraded past the point where the correlation process returns a signal strong enough to scrape past some threshold t which he’d um and ahh about whether he remembered it or not.
Just as in a computer memory, images might degrade until a correlation returned no greater a positve result than a random image.
I hope that we agree that they would have a fundamentally similar problem with silicon computers from this era, yes?
Again, it mightn’t be quite like that, but I’d suggest that it’s not too important anyway. The problem here is that there is no access to those memories, ad I’ve tried to explain how that’s still a physical difficulty, encryption-wise. Would you agree that the difficulty is fundamentally similar to Hoodoo somehow having a detachable memory module he could unplug from his head and drop down the Challenger Deep?
Thanks for the detailed explaination. I agree that the memory will be sysnthesized by being recalled but like your first example with Joe mentioning Mary in passing, the new associations might be minor. If Mary was a major life event for you (first love or something) then the minor associations may not be recalled the next time you think of Mary. You can be bringing up the “Mary smells wonderful” memory without being aware of how often or infrequently you’re doing so. Childhood memories are often like this, when we try to remember them we get the layered composite we’ve created but when they’re triggered by another stimulus we get a memory with fewer associations.
I’ll follow these discussions to the new threads, there is a lot of interesting stuff flying around here
Sentient, do you honestly expect me to debate with a man — Polerius, wasn’t it? — who doesn’t believe that Peano’s axioms prove 1 + 1 = 2 and that science does? Even after he is shown that he is mistaken? Why would you wish this fate on me?
Yes, and our model predicts that. The brain need synthesize very little if any new memory when consciousness is already prepared to accept the immediate memory as it exists.
The new thread turned out to be more comprehensive than I expected. I’ll monitor it for a bit.
What the…? I did NOT start with any metaphysical conclusion. As a matter of fact, I kept insisting to Other-wise that we specifically avoid such matters and that they are not relevant. I also specifically said that NOW THAT OUR DEDUCTIONS ARE FINISHED, we can discuss them. I mean, do you actually read my posts before commenting on them? Damn. Just plain damn.
No, no, Lib, of course not. He has even opened another thread for that, as I asked him (and, indeed, in which I am divesting him of his mistake).
I wish you to continue your debate with me, since you came to some conclusion you’re very excited about in my absence, and I’d to explore it with you more fully. The last thing I wish to see is you popping up in another thread saying “Well, as you can clearly see here, other-wise and I showed that analytics cannot be explained by physical entities or processes”. Specifically, I wish to convince you that difficulty in accessing or associating memories is no less physical a problem than that of forming them in the first place - see my reply to other-wise above.
I honestly don’t know what to say. I now leave this thread to you and yours…