In the strictest sense, I interpret that question similar to ‘beyond infinity’.
Axiom works for me.
Arwin, I happen to think that you’re switching the burden of proof a little unfairly in that case, asking people who hold that metaphysical entities and physical entities exist to prove that the former are not the latter. As the excellent Stanford summary says:
It is up to us to provide explanations of those items in terms of physical ones, on the understanding that if those explanations fail they must remain in the metaphysical domain. We cannot simply declare that their nature is different to what it seems.
They’re asking the exact same thing of us, except they want two levels of complexity and we only one. Your suggestion would have been very useful and I would have been very curt, IF we weren’t already on post 343 in this thread and IF I hadn’t already posted a big explanation of awareness in this context, which has it’s own thread now too.
But even then. Say that I make a theory of everything that suffices with 3 dimensions. Say, then, that someone else makes up a theory of everything using 47 dimensions. What am I supposed to do now? Prove the 47 dimension theory wrong, or wait until the 47 dimension theory offers an explanation for something that is more precise, and leads to better predictions than my 3 dimension theory?
I think Liberal understands my position on this now, though, even if you’re perhaps not sure he does.
Just to be clear here SM:
The photograph of a real-life watering can is not imaginary. Agreed? Yes
The photograph of a guy in a Darth Vader costume is not imaginary. Agreed? Yes
The Photoshop combination of the two non-imaginary photographs, in your opinion, is …? Not Imaginary
My visual memory of a real-life watering can is not imaginary. Agreed?** Yes**
My visual memory of a photograph of a guy in a Darth Vader costume is not imaginary. Agreed? Yes
My mental combination of those two visual memories is …? not Imaginary
But, Your mental combination of those two visual memories is not Darth Vader holding a watering can. Darth Vader never held a watering can. He is imaginary, and so is his can.
In that case, Hoodoo, I’d suggest your “imaginary” descriptor comes not from the memories themselves but from the additional categories or properties which we assign to those memories, which is a little more advanced than the basics I’m seeking to establish here. You seem to be suggesting not that my visual memory of a guy in a black costume is imaginary, but that associating that memory with the property “born on the planet of Tatooine” makes it imaginary.
To me, that’s again just further combinations of mental entities, each of which might correspond to some real, massive entity with photons reflecting off it (and of all the known planets, Tatooine isn’t one of them - that’s actually the name of the Tunisian film-location on Earth) but the combination of which does not. That’s why I’d describe Darth holding a watering can as “imaginary”, even if the separate memories are not.
I know it sounds like I’m being picky - I’m just being careful here.
I’ll happily grant that the way computers access memory is not fundamentally different than the way humans access memory. However access to stored human memory is… um… “accompanied”… by awareness. Always. (Of course, I suppose the argument could be made that any physical interaction involves some type of awareness, a sort of panpsychism; but I don’t think that’s what you have in mind.)
It’s relevant because awareness is what we are (Lib’s “essence” notwithstanding).
Let me put it this way: would you rather someone permanently removed your arm or permanently removed your awareness? Why?
Who’s assuming? I’ve demonstrated it in post #253. If I’ve made some mistake with the inferences, please point them out.
It is interesting to hear your interpretation. Now, I would like to hear your answer. 
Is something that is not physical physical?
Well, dandy then! Axiom: God exists. There’s your proof! 
Well, this is interesting. Do you have an explanation of awareness in physical terms?
No pickier than me.
Then the question becomes might the computer’s access to stored memories be “aware” also? If not, we would surely have to look elsewhere in the human brain for this “awareness” thing since memory access is not the distinguishing factor, yes?
No, my question was about purpose: you said that proving that some phenomenon serves no physical purpose was significant for some reason, indeed that we could avoid the baby steps of examining phenomena in terms of physical entities altogether. I don’t understand how this isn’t a non sequitur.
You’ve demonstrated that memories aren’t always accessible, and I can provide a physical explanation for that. Are you contending that because memories aren’t always accessible, human memory access is fundamentally different to computer memory access because it is “aware”? If so, lead me through your steps once more, if you would - I can see several fallacies lurking around therein, and I’d like to make sure we’re avoiding them.
Let us begin thus: There are physical objects. There are also physical processes. “Reflection” is a physical process. Reflections can be stored in memory, this also being a physical process. Memories can (sometimes) be accessed and compared to others, or to incoming sensory memories. The physical (or not) nature of this final step is the topic of debate here. If we agree that it is physical, then it may form the basis of an explanation of “awareness” in this millennium.
Basics: Women are not imaginary. People on the moon are not imaginary. Women onthe moon are imaginary: it is the combination, not the elements, that remove it from the real.
Uh, yes. I suggested that in the post you quoted.
Not necessarily, but you’ve got me curious: if you’re going to go looking for it, how do you propose recognizing awareness when you see it?
Let me try this: As you’ve pointed out elsewhere, the laws of physics have given us thoroughly tested mechanisms for the behavior and properties of atoms, molecules, and brains. But nothing in these laws, behaviors, or properties implies awareness or a mechanism for its occurrence.
Atoms form molecules, molecules form neurons, and neurons form brains. And there it stops cold. “Electro-chemical neuronal activity” is the end of the story, with no awareness anywhere along the line.
I’ve demonstrated much more than that, and frankly, I don’t know what else I can say that wasn’t in the original post and those that followed.
“No” would have been sufficient.
SM, it’s funny. My first post arguing that Darth’s can was imaginary was in response to this statement. (I should have quoted it then.)
I felt that it was an absurdity that no physicalist held, and that he was setting up a straw man. Then you come in defending the physicality of the can. Wha? I believe we now see that our difference was (is?) semantic and not metaphysical.
Sorry I missed this party for so long, although I’m sure you’re thrilled to see me now. 
This has been an interesting thread about cognitive science, though I think it has journeyed far afield of the original question of whether memories are physical. I disagree with that proposition on a number of levels, and I’d like to respond first with philosophical arguments and then build up to an argument that reflects my pantheistic and New Age philosophy.
I.
I think it’s a philosophical error to ascribe to All That Is (the Universe, etc.) a single characteristic or category, inasmuch as, if we grant that All belongs displays it or belongs to it, then the concept cannot distinguish one thing from another and is useless as a concept.
If all is physical, then what does it mean not to be physical? Atoms are physical, light is, neutrinos are, gravity is, potential energy is, thoughts are, memories are. One problem with the OP (and people pointed this out with, “What is the debate here?” etc.) is that it did not take pains to cite or describe the idea that is to be refuted.
Claiming that all is physical reminds me of that old saw, “Every action is selfish.” Oh, but Florence Nightengale did all that nursing out of a charitible spirit; she was selfless. Oh, no, she did it because she found it personally satisfying; hence, her actions were selfish.
This kind of simplistic reductionism is easily refuted. The word “selfish” was originally invented to distinguish certain kinds of behaviors from others. Diving into a burning building to save a stranger is different than slitting his throat and taking his wallet.
Likewise, the concept “physical” was in place to distinguish stones, houses, chlorine gas, and supernovae from concepts, numbers, thoughts, and desires. Primitively put, things that can affect one’s body directly and things that cannot. Chlorine gas can kill you, a memory never could (at least not directly).
SentientMeat, you say that memories are physical; indeed, you call yourself a physicalist and says that all things are physical. There is nothing much wrong with this philosophy other than its mootness. Panpsychism–all is mind–has the same flaw. Patheism, too, without a twist, is also moot (I see it not so much that God is All, but that if one must ask what is God, the answer that God is to be found within the All as a modality of it).
II.
But let’s be frank, dear Sentient. The physicalist position exists not so much as a useful proposition in its own right, but as a tidy way of denying all things theistic, spiritual, supernatural, and paranormal. That’s the agenda.
After all, theists say God is a spirit, something explicitly non-physical. Ghosts, whatever, the afterlife–all purportedly non-physical, all netted and disposed of with the physicalist philosophy.
Again, there’s no big problem with this. But sometimes it seems a little bit like (and I am talking more about various species of atheism that live on this board, and not so much about Meat’s more enlightened creature), Oh, I swat you, bad beliefs! Things not twue, not twue!
Often it seems to me that atheists give those beliefs that they would deny almost a kind of deference through their vigorous or veiled rebuttals. Like a rebellious teen who honks the horn of dad’s car as he drives it off without permission.
III.
If we leave the heights of Mount Philosophy for a moment and get into the nitty gritty of what might be physical and what might not, I barely see any controversy at all. The myriad songs and programs and voices whistling through your body as you read this–I mean radio signals–are patterns usefully mediated by electromagnetic radiation. The pattern exists in those waves, and not even a single clunky atom is required to hold them (but later, yes, to play them).
Now, if you wish to call radio waves “physical,” then by all means do so. A radio wave is about as wispy and insubstantial as something could ever be, but it does follow rules and can be influenced by matter, etc., and if those are the criteria for physicality, that’s good enough for me.
Further, if one wishes to extend that category of physicality to include anything that is mediated by matter or energy, then that’s fine too. One will then have reached, as said above, a philosophical position that has no use, a knife without a blade, but if one is satisfied not to cut and dice, then all is well.
III.
But let’s look again at that bugbear, theism, which seems so addicted to its suppositions of “non-physicality.” I know how the dogmatic faiths go: God is a spirit, Jesus was wholly God and wholly man, and you must think about him just so or you are wrong, sir, wrong.
No wonder the atheists can’t swallow all those commands. I couldn’t either, so I went from Catholic to Buddhist to atheist to the New Ager I am today. Funny thing is, unlike Catholics with their pure, blank, asexual spirit, the spirit of the New Age is something far more down-to-earth and not necessarily opposed to the physical at all.
Surely you’ve heard the New Age talk about “energy”? We don’t say that it is a wholly different kind of energy from radio waves; it is merely less understood. And if calling this or any or all types of energy “physical” helps you to sort things out in your head, more power to you. Unshakled by dogma or the evangelical meme (ie, you must believe as we do, or bad things will happen to you or us), the New Age will let you think as you wish.
Second, there is the evidence from NDEs. A funny thing happened on the way to the Afterlife: people who briefly visited Over There found themselves not to be wisps of spirit, but rather quite at home in fresh new bodies and a world very much like our own. Certainly, the saw sights they had never seen before (colors that don’t exist in our world), heard sounds they had never heard before, and experienced things on an emotional level that they had not words to describe. But they taught us that Over There was… dah dahn!–“physical.” (It should come as no surprise–the pagan religions had always conceived of other realms as being mediated by the same kinds of patterns as our own. Only ultra-spiritual religions like Christianity and Buddhism taught differently; they were not wrong, entirely, but that’s a different topic.)
IIII.
So I have no big problem with the statement “all is physical”; it’s not dangerous or threatening to me. In fact, it’s a wee little milquetoast of a philosophy. It’s in a cardigan and playing a poor, fumbling game of chess.
Because look: On the colloquial level, it means zilch to call a memory “physical.” There is no insight there. Hmm, the brain is made of atoms, atoms are matter, the brain holds memory, memory is therefore mediated by matter and, thus, by my definition of “physical,” physical. But a memory is not something you can stick in your pocket or burn your hand on; hence, in a practical sense, it’s not physical.
On a colloquial, practical and common-sense level, physicalism is useless. On a philosophical level, it is moot. The conclusion is that it’s for kicks only.
Put simply, it’s a pattern of some sort: a part of the mind which is another kind of pattern. And All Things are, at root, patterns. (Yes, this is applying a category to All Things, but this is the one piece that fits the puzzle: a true and useful identity. You can’t, in fact, use this knowledge to differentiate one thing from another, since differentiation itself is a pattern. ALL is pattern; intuitively speaking, it is snap, crackle, pop.)
All the thoughts in this thread are very interesting, but we still must return to one basic fact: We do not understand how consciousness works, and we probably won’t understand for quite a while. For the time being, let’s not take our speculations too seriously.
As a sidebar, the notion that an amoeba is aware is utter nonsense and easily refuted. An amoeba has one cell. A plant has many cells. Do we consider plants to be aware? Of course not. So if a plant with its many cells is not aware, then why would an amoeba be aware?
I don’t think we need properties, which is going to get complicated. The memory is not that thing, and might not be an accurate representation of the thing. In fact, say you dream, and remember that dream. The image you remember is not the tag for any real thing. What you dreamed is obviously not physical, though your internal image of it is, being composed of various neurons firing. Your memory is physical.
The physicality of your memory of a table is physical, and basically it doesn’t matter if the table has actual existence or if it doesn’t. The memory is the same.
I don’t know, it all seems clear to me.
A very pleasant paean to pantheism, Aeschines. Thank you for that. An aside to your sidebar, since I’m the one that brought it up originally:
The notion that a human is aware is utter nonsense and easily refuted. A human has approximately 50x10^12 (trillion) cells. An aspen grove has 325x10^18 (quintillion)* cells. Do we consider an aspen grove to be aware? Of course not. So if an aspen grove with its 325 quintillion cells is not aware, then why would a human be aware?
- – Assuming an average human is 200 lbs and is composed of 50 trillion cells and that the density of cells in an aspen grove is comparable, then an aspen grove of 65,000 tons (from the link) is composed of (50trillion/1human) * (1human/200lbs) * (2000lbs/1ton) * 65,000tons = 325 quintillion cells.
I assume, Digital, that you are not quite serious with your point; it made me chuckle.
You’re quite right that numerous cells is not a sufficient condition for awareness. My point, however, was a little different. I think the original “an amoeba is aware” proposition arose in this thread from a certain kind of naive logic: i.e., an amoeba is an “animal,” or at least acts like one (a protazoon, actually); and animals, since they react to their environments, are “aware.”
At the same time, we typically don’t think of multicellular plants as being aware, simply because they don’t have nerves and brains and whatnot. If we don’t think of a plant as being aware, then we don’t have any reason to think of an amoeba or any other unicellular organism as aware.
We think of humans as being aware because we ourselves are aware; we do not deduce our awareness from the number of cells we possess or, for that matter, the existence of our brainy equippage. We intuit that certain (but not all) animals are aware by means of analogy: they act like us in certain ways, react behaviorly (ie, not automatically or reflexively, like a venus flytrap plant) to their environment, and seem to emote as well. In short, they appear to have minds.
Only insofar as to point out the faulty logic, which you obviously realize.
The original point was to establish why an amoeba is not aware; that is, what are the necessary criteria for which something is considered aware?
Is awareness simply exhibiting human-like behaviors or qualities? If so, woe is to the science of cognitive science.
Again, I think we’ll understand awareness when we understand the how minds, animal and human, arise from matter/energy/whatever (really, when we understand how human consciousness works, and the problem of consciousness includes that of human awareness and presumably that of animal awareness).
We don’t understand consciousness right now, we merely point to it. “Consciousness is how, you know, you understand that you exist; you think and stuff.” Just as we didn’t understand combustion in the year 1720 but could still point to a flame.
If you want to know how ignorant we are about consciousness now, look at the phlogiston/oxygen debate that raged in 1700s and on into the early 1800s. Very erudite men could argue about chemistry all day long, but our understanding of chemistry in 1800 was extremely primitive. Fast forward to 1890. You have a pretty full periodic table, and understanding of atomic weights, and science of chemistry that is by no means shameful. Simply put, in less than a century we went from zilch to rather extensive knowledge.
The study of consciousness today is like the study of chemistry in 1780–if in fact we’re that far along. Our blather about brains and neuron firing and whatever is about as sophisticated as talk of phlogiston and calx. And I’m not saying that those people were idiots–quite the contrary. But they were just entering that first stage when real progress is made: when you start to understand what you do not know. I don’t think we’ve even formulated the problem correctly yet.
I think you’re mistaken here. If you want to push this anology, then we’re definitely beyond 1890. But few people have put all the relevant material together in the context of consciousness. The difference between then and now is that where the periodic table was a great tool, the precision of the data we collect today precedes our understanding of the ramifications of that data. Even then, I’m noticing that many people already have the same theory on what consciousness is, and arrived at that theory independently of each other.
No, a more apt comparison is the discovery of evolution in that same era. Many people aren’t ready for the ramifications of consciousness being a physical thing. Very many people have a desire for the world to be more than just physical, and they have a right to do so, because hope is very important. I predict that in 20 years, the way the brain works will have been uncovered to such a great extent that consciousness is, scientifically, a mystery no more, to the point that we can write schoolbooks about it and teach it in secondary school. But the impact that this will have on society is a lot harder to predict (and something for another thread).
One final point. You’ve said that stating everything is physical is useless, or even reactionary. The one criticism defies the other. Your first would have been right, if the second had been wrong. As long as there are people who don’t take it for granted that everything is physical (which to me, is the same as saying everything is physics), there will be a point in remembering that it is. At the very least within the realm of science.