Note that a lot hinges on how you define qualia.
When I say qualia don’t exist, I’m talking about the incorrigible, ineffable, private, directly accessible sort Dennett discusses in Quining Qualia (linked earlier in the thread)
But when talking about qualia in the sense of the 'explanation gap" between our experiences and our ability to convey those feelings, I don’t doubt they do exist.
I said this. But I don’t think other animals necessarily have sentience. They can remain zombies. I can add, as a rule, that only humans get souls in the spiritual world.
I see where you are going with this, and you are asking the right question. What specific physical property determines whether a physical entity gets a soul, therefore granting sentience and moral rights? It is arbitrary so what is it? That same physical property is the basis for morals in physicalism, just cut out the whole soul business.
If some non-physical process or property determines who gets a soul, either I must reduce that to an observable physical property or there is no way for a physical brain to determine who has and does not have a soul. The brain cannot physically calculate morals if it cannot physically determine when they apply. At which point what use are soul-based morals to a physical brain?
It turns out Czarcasm was right to ask about a soul gene, although I would have preferred an explanation into his line of thought rather than the cryptic response he gave me.
I am inclined to say a non-physical process determines who gets a soul, which I cannot reduce to a physical rule. That means a physical brain cannot determine when dualistic morality applies; morality and therefore dualism becomes nearly useless. I am left with physical reality but I still have no basis for morals.
I will need to think about this for a bit, but I might have to admit defeat - in the worst possible way.
~Max
You understand what I mean though, right? I claimed physicalism could not explain consciousness, and you gave me homework to do. That’s not wrong of you and I really do appreciate the reference, but it does put my argument on hold until I finish the homework. That’s what I meant by saying I was shot down.
~Max
You did claim that those were just Psychologists and dismissed those practitioners, as it turned out they were psychologists that checked what biologists and neurologists are finding nowadays. What they find is evidence that dualism in all their flavors is less supported now.
That is nice, it is not what I pointed out, the point was that in that paper they looked at what biologists and neurologists are finding, that are… well, more exact sciences.
‘Because I say so’ is not a convincing argument. What you need is to find support for your views, or realize that you will remain in the minority view.
From: The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences
Why is that always when I see a statement ending in “Right?” the question is a begging one? (that is rhetorical BTW)
Besides being also an argument from ignorance, the issue is that a “soul” that is not part of the mind is as useful as a teapot in orbit around Marsto give us a system of morals. It will be also as if we give someone supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at him!
Good morning! (Though it’s very close to afternoon where I am.)
I have a really, really fundamental problem with the Max S. model of dualism.
In observable reality emotions, thoughts, and the physical body are all tied together. Emotions influence thoughts; thoughts influence emotions. Thoughts move the body, physical sensations influence thought. Emotions cause physical responses (blushing, tears); brain chemicals effect emotions. These things are all observably intertwined and any model that claims otherwise is false.
The Max S. model claims otherwise - it posits that there’s some part of the cognitive process that (for no given reason) cannot possibly occur in physical reality, and while the model claims that something somewhere else is capable of carrying out those tasks, the thing that’s doing the extra stuff is unable to supply the results of those processes back to the body. Or to put it simply, he’s proposing that thanks to unproven statements about qualia or whatever that human bodies must be puppets, and he’s asserting the the puppets’s strings are all cut.
This blatantly contradicts observable reality, and thus the model is false.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to present moral relativity as fact. But it is the point of view I come from, sort of an internal bias borne out by experience. I don’t “know” moral relativity is true but to me, it certainly seems to be.
You and I are in heavy disagreement as to what constitutes a physical law and what the second law of thermodynamics is. I have always thought the second law of thermodynamics was something like “heat shall never pass from a cold body to a warm body without some other connected thing changing at the same time.”
Let me grab the actual definition:
This is very much a physical law and a single contradiction would amount to a paradigm shift in almost every branch of science. This is not statistical by any definition of the word.
Now if you were to say, for example, “heat does not usually pass from a colder to a warmer body”, that is not properly the second law of dynamics. That is a rule of thumb, a heuristic, based on the second law of dynamics. You can’t have a statistical law that describes a physical world with strict causal closure.
At this point a physicalist will turn around and say that may be so, but it just so happens that everything in existance can be described by “prescriptive” physical laws. Sure, you can write normative, statistical laws on top of that - but to act on them is just deluding yourself. Say you “should” do something if you wish, there is an underlying law that says you “shall” do something.
Do you see what I am saying? Physicalism implies determinism and determinism is incompatible with moral agency.
~Max
Proper morals spring from a desire from positive outcomes.
No matter what crazy model one proposes, physical humans observably demonstrate the ability to desire things, and my cognition (which I know exists because I experience it) is demonstrably capable of desiring things. So the ability to desire things provably exists in the physical world. I don’t care what crazy explanation you want to invent for why it exists in the physical world, but it certainly does.
And that’s all one needs to have to establish moral systems in the physical world. If people desire things in the physical world, it’s entirely possible to construct and justify perfectly workable moral systems based entirely on self-serving interest. It may sound counterintuitive if you don’t think it through but I’ve previously explained several moral systems constructed that way.
Again, it doesn’t matter why people in the physical world desire things - these desires can be generated by the physical brain, by a spectral soul, by martian mind-controlling puppetmasters, whichever. As long as people are capable of desiring things moral systems can be constructed.
Last question on this subject, and at this point it’s entirely because I’m curious. What would you say if the drug potentially messes with your decision making?
I would prefer to drop the sex hypothetical because things will get weird, fast. Say there’s a medical operation on your foot and the doctor, with your informed consent, administers drugs that temporarily prevent the formation of memories, paralyze your legs, and makes you super high.
Partway into the operation you start having a bad trip. You think the doctor is a zombie (from the movies) eating your leg. You scream and flail within your restraints, “don’t eat my leg, zombie!”, and other similar incoherent things. It is clear to a bystander with no context that you are a crazy person who does not want to be operated on.
It is still safe for the doctor to pull out. Obviously he sees this sort of reaction all the time - let’s put aside the problem with that for now. What does the doctor do? Does he ignore you and keep going? Does he have nurses sedate you (in which case the sedative has to have been agreed upon before the operation)? Presumably you were informed of the possibility of a bad trip and agreed nonetheless.
~Max
You think it can’t but Kant can:
[QUOTE] [looking at Kant's] most popular ones the first formulation of the categorical imperative is often known as the universalizability principle. And Kant phrased it this way:“Act only according to that maxim which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law without contradiction.”
Okay pretty wordy guy, so let’s unpack what he was saying: A maxim is just a rule or principle of action and a universal law is something that must always be done in similar situations.
So as a Kantian, before I act, I would ask myself, what’s the maxim of my action? In other words, what’s the general rule that stands behind the particular action I’m considering?
[example]
Well, the particular action you are considering - taking a Chom Chom [banana or anything else] from a merchant without paying for it - is stealing. And if you approve of the maxim of stealing, which you’re doing whether you admit it or not, then what you’re actually doing is universalizing that action. You’re saying that everyone should always steal if you should be able to do it, then - everyone should be able to do it. The thing is, this leads to a contradiction - and remember: Kant’s wording specifically says that moral actions cannot bring about contradictions.
The contradiction here is: no one would say that everyone should steal all the time. Because, if everyone should always steal, then you should steal the chom chom and then I should steal it back from you, and then you should steal it back from me, and it would never end and no one would ever get to eat any chom choms. Therefore stealing isn’t universalizable.
So what Kant’s really saying is that ‘it’s not fair to make exceptions for yourself’
[/QUOTE]
The moment you say qualia is physical, it becomes observable loses an important property - privacy. That qualia is no longer necessarily “your” qualia, it is anyone’s who happens to look at it. This goes hand in hand with degrees of self. Indeed, the “qualia” is quite literally copied over when you step into the cloning booth.
I could take a machine that copies qualia in real time from your brain to mine. I could do it retroactively, to an extent, by copying the memories from your brain to mine. Copying memories is not the same as qualia but it gives me the appearance of having experienced something. Much like a new furniture can have that worn look.
Theoretically, with enough knowledge of the physical world a machine could to literally look forwards and backwards in time and copy qualia into my brain from hundreds of years ago or hundreds of years in the future.
Normally qualia is associated with one soul. But if qualia is physical, that means there is never an after-the-fact or final moral evaluation to make. One qualia can be linked to an unlimited number of conscious sentient beings, some in the future and some in the past. It’s too complicated and to make such a disconnect between in-the-moment morality and final morality doesn’t sit well with me.
~Max
Specifically, no physical law may state that physical qualia corresponds to any fixed number of sentient physical beings.
~Max
The argument would have been that the idea of dualism could induce positive behavior. Dualism does not have to exist (anywhere, including nonphysical Soul Society Assembly) for this to be true.
~Max
The explanation gap would be a limitation of language and intuition, not a limitation of physicalism. With enough technology we could theoretically close the gap - for example, a machine that copies the physical memory of qualia from one brain to another. Right?
~Max
I did not claim any part of the cognitive process occurs in the spiritual realm. Not even thinking. I remember admitting to the contrary, physical cognition is entirely self-contained within the physical world.
The only use of the spiritual realm, from the perspective of a physical brain, would be in assessing morality.
You can say the non-physical realm adds nothing, that morality can be assessed just fine without it. But you can’t say it does or does not exist, unless you mean the non-physical world does not physically exist. If the non-physical can never act upon the physical, there will never be physical evidence of the non-physical realm. Its non-physical existence is non-falsifiable.
~Max
I tackled this in another post but “exact sciences” have nothing on the form of dualism I defended in this thread. All of those criticisms that your cites cited from neurologists and biologists have no bearing on my form of dualism. You cannot “solve” the mystery of dualism with hard science because my form of dualism is non-falsifiable.
You cannot prove that my non-physical world does not exist. You can only say it makes no difference. It should be beyond the scope of science.
Even the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences would be wrong if they then claimed, “therefore epiphenomenalism is false”. I started this thread defending a minority view and it was never my goal to convince the majority to convert.
All rhetorical questions are begging, but if you disagree I would much rather hear your rationale. I don’t doubt the utility for a soul as a basis of morals and neither should you, until you say “here is another system of morals that doesn’t need souls and is therefore simpler”.
~Max
I’m going to take this opportunity to admit defeat. My conclusions from this thread are as follows:
[ul][li]Dualism as I defended it, is known as epiphenomenalism.[/li][li]Epiphenomenalism is nonfalsifiable.[/li][li]Epiphenomenalism is of no use, because physicalism is more pragmatic:[/li][LIST][li]If physicalism can provide a system of morals, physicalism is falsifiable and possibly simpler, therefore physicalism is more pragmatic.[/li][li]If physicalism cannot provide a system of morals, neither can epiphenomenalism.[/li][LIST][li]In epiphenomenalism, the physical realm is identical to the physicalist’s definition of existance.[/li][li]Therefore, in order for a physical entity to act morally the physical entity must answer the other minds problem.[/li][li]If the other minds problem can be solved with physical observation, then physicalism can provide a system of morals.[/li][li]If the other minds problem cannot be solved with physical observation, then the other minds problem cannot be determined by the physical entity and neither physicalism nor epiphenomenalism can provide a system of morals.[/ul][/li][li]Either way, physicalism is falsifiable and possibly simpler, therefore more pragmatic.[/LIST][/LIST][/li]
Not surprisingly, I have more questions coming out than going in. Those can wait for other threads. I believe the main topic has been answered with certainty and unless anyone disagrees with my conclusions, I will be bowing out of this thread.
I would like to thank everyone for participating and fighting my ignorance on such a sensitive matter.
~Max
You’ve been back and forth on this, so I’ll restate what position I think you’re currently defending… kind of. Specifically I’ll write it to give you as many things as possible to object to, if you disagree. So, here goes:
The me that I know is completely physical. My mind, my emotions, my memories, my free will, the continuous ongoing sense of self-aware “me” that I experience existence from: all physical. All of it. Because it has to be - any part of that which existed in the supernatural realm I wouldn’t have access to because the supernatural realm can’t causally influence me, which means I can’t perceive it or be influenced by it in any way. So the me that I know can, does, and must exist entirely in the physical world - even if you have a hard time imagining how physical matter can produce things like consciousness, qualia, and free will. Doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it; it’s still all physical.
You also posit that there is (or might be) a supernatural realm, within which exists a soul that is unwillingly chained to me. It has its own mind and free will that is completely independent of mine, except that it might (or might not?) be forced to experience my senses and be continuously informed of my thoughts and feelings. There is a distinct possibility that this soul is a young female soul named Susan that likes long walks on the beach and probably utterly hates me because I am constantly dumping my thoughts and experiences on her (and to add insult to injury, none of those experiences includes walking on the beach!)
So, if I’m reading you right, that’s the model: There’s me over here, and there’s Susan over there, and while stuff I do forcibly impacts her all the time, nothing she does makes the slightest difference to me.
Now on to morality.
Why should I give a crap about Susan? I don’t know Susan. And if I have any impulses that might compel me to care about this weird spirit thing I don’t know anything about, wouldn’t those impulses also be triggered by people that I actually know exist? If I care enough to try and make Susan happy, wouldn’t I care enough to first make my fellow man happy?
And if Susan didn’t exist, wouldn’t I still care enough about my fellow man to be moral? After all the perspective of me the physical human the situations are exactly the same.
The only reason you would care about Susan is if you subscribe to solipsism - your fellow man doesn’t have his own Susan - which I currently refuse to defend as a pragmatic option.
Whether or not Susan exists has no bearing so long as you either think everyone has a Susan, or nobody has a Susan. It is unclear how to determine whether someone has a Susan, so Susanism is not pragmatic.
~Max
I already did. Q.E.D.
So much then for your claim that what I said had nothing to do with your form of dualism.
I can and did say that already. It seems that you Kant. 
Presume for a moment that I assume that everyone has a Susan (as a proper dualist would). Why would this make me more moral? What mechanism would make me care about other people’s Susans, and why wouldn’t that same mechanism make me care about the other people themselves?