searching for a method by which to make sense of the world around me, i have found that, personally, the best method available is physicalism.
that the things i perceive can be measured and that by using these measurements and inferring things from them, i can come up with some sort of basic, useful description of the universe; that this is the most useful method; and that this method provides a sufficient description of the world around me is, here, taken as granted.
now then: there are an awful lot of words in the previous paragraphs that refer to an individual who has done this or done that. i am that individual, and as i’ve explained, the materialistic view is the one that i have chosen to describe the world around me. this collection of perceptions and analyses that chose this methodology for describing the world without are limited in such a way that i find it impossible to use them to describe the world within. the mechanism that allows me to look around and say “this is how it must be” also looks inside and says “this can be without all that.”
that i would exist in a world that could not be adequately described by materialism, i cannot help but take as granted.
thus we have a problem: if physicalism can describe everything in my universe, it must also describe me. but everything i use to create the lens through which i view the external world indicates that the same lens cannot be used to look inward. must i then view the external world (and thus, every person who seems to be like me) through a different looking glass than i use to examine myself?
i have chosen to use the terms “physicalism” and “materialism” interchangeably. indeed, i believe that eliminative materialism is the proper approach for analyzing the minds of others, but the problem is that it doesn’t seem to apply to me.
Try a mirror.
Also, I’m not sure what you mean by “me”. If you mean that your mind is hard to see, well, it is, in the same way that the computer program that runs the browser you’re looking at is hard to see. Sure it has observable behaviors, just like you, but its “mind” is lurking around in some invisible flow of electrons in a chip, just like your mind is lurking around in the invisible flows of your cerebral electrochemistry. Personally I don’t see how the “me” is less compatible with the physical world than the browser. Can you explain?
it’s not that it’s hard to see, it’s that the apparatus that does the seeing is what’s being looked at. how can we explain ourselves using only ourselves? forming a model for every other “mind” i encounter seems appropriate, but how can i apply that to me? it’s like using a ruler to try and measure itself.
Huh? People explain themselves all the time. That’s kind of what self-awareness is; it’s an internal awareness of your cognitive state.
Of course, there are sort of two ways to view your cognitive state, which can be approximately analogized as the two ways of interptering the following word: “Me”. That is, it’s either a symbol that has abstract meaning, or it’s a bunch of precisely arranged pixels on your computer screen. These analogize to your thoughts and your brain chemistry respecively; they are two different ways of describing and understanding your mind and they are both correct. To examine the former, we have self awareness; to examine the latter, we have cat scans.
If I’m understanding you right, the line of reasoning goes like this: were I some alien entity that’s ignorant of the human condition, I maybe wouldn’t know whether (a) the people on the street were mindless automatons or whether (b) there’s a consciousness behind those eyes. After all, if you look at a computer screen that suddenly flashes I THINK THEREFORE I AM – well, it could be doing that because it’s just now become sentient, or it could be doing that with no more self-awareness than some alarm clock set to ring at a given time.
Be that as it may. You know – first-hand – that you’ve got a mind. Say you meet someone who looks kind of like you, and engages in similar behavior; maybe there’s a mind experiencing the world as you would, and maybe not. If you’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt and hypothesize that he’s got a mind, you can of course “form a model” for one; just figure he experiences the world rather like you do.
But you don’t need a model like that for yourself; you already know what it’s like to see the world through your eyes. If he tells you that he’s color-blind, you maybe have to change that basic model when you’re imagining how things look to him – but the basic model is still what you apply in your own case, because you already know how things look to you.
“You” are a unique collection of memories captured from a unique memory-capturing biorobot (even identical twins exist at different locations in space, making their memory stream unique), and memories are physical things to physicalists.
However, that collection of memories continually changes, with new memories being formed and old ones (somewhat mysteriously, I admit) degrading to become indistinguishable from noise. Are “you” the same as “you” were 10 years ago? You’re pretty much a whole new set of atoms, and largely a whole new set of cells. (Neurons, unlike most cells, seem to remain in situ for life, but the atoms those cells are made of still swap over regularly AFAIK. The only atoms that remain steadfast are those in tooth enamel, I think.)
Fortunately, we are all now familiar with the idea of memories - physical configurations if you like - shifting from one physical apparatus to another while retaining their configuration: Ctrl+C and Ctrl-V (Copy and Paste) peforms this function in a second for electronic ‘memories’. The physical apparatus in my skull continuously turns over, yet its memories are kept in place just as a waterfall remains despite the constant turnover of its physical medium. (I remember mangetout and I once had a long debate with someone who thought that this constituted “transferring consciousness over space”. Not really, we said. It’s more like starting a game of chess, then setting up the current game position on another board in, say, China. One would not say that the game had travelled around the world.)
Whether this “you” is or is not the old “you” is rather a matter of semantics. One could say that “you” are some core set of memories that has not yet degraded to noise. But one could also say that every night “I” die, and someone who thinks they’re me wakes up!
And I admit, I don’t see the problem here. So what if the existence of language-using biorobots necessitates that said robots use slightly different language when describing the phenomena which are only accessible “in their own heads” compared to the mere indications of similar phenomena in other heads?
This is not an example of incompatibility between physicalism and consciousness, but an example of inaccessibility of certain physical phenomena to every other physical being except the one in question. As I argued in this thread, there is nothing unphysical about encryption.
Ah, but that brilliant and no doubt dashingly debonair someone may counter that, while the moves and mechanics of the game are indeed the same here, there or anywhere; and, for all intents and purposes, the game appears identical to both players and viewers alike; it is quite a different game from the perspective of, say, the original King piece here, who, realizing that he is no longer in the game, declares his look-alike in China, le Faux Roi. Even if their “core set of memories” balances out, something is different between the two kings, a self awareness that cannot travel apart from the piece—unless, of course, they are zombies. And, I wouldn’t recommend they go through a Star Trek Transporter, either.
As I see it, you’re repeating the central contradiction in materialism. Let me try stating the problem in a different way.
If you are a materialist, then you believe that everything which every other person thinks, they think because certain electrochemical events in their brain occur which constitute their thoughts. Hence if Al believes that “2 and 2 make 4”, this only means that certain electrochemical events in his brain occur which constitute the thought “2 and 2 make 4”.
In the materialist worldview, it would be theoretically possible that someone could alter Al’s brain, using drugs or surgery or whatever, in such a way that he would start to think that “2 and 2 make 5”. It may not be physically possible to alter a person’s mind with such precision, but the theoretical possibility is there.
However, if you are truly a materialist, then you also believe that the same logic applies to your own mind. In other words, if you think that “the best method available is physicalism”, this only means that certain electrochemical events in your brain occur which constitute the thought “the best method available is physicalism”.
However, it would be theoretically possible that you only believe this because someone or something has altered your brain in some way so as to make you think “the best method available is physicalism”.
And thus you don’t have any reason to trust your belief that the best method available is physicalism.
If our mind is being altered like that then we can’t trust or perceptions, thoughts or memories on anything whatsoever. So without evidence we might as well ignore the possibility, because if it’s true there’s not a thing we can do about it. And it has nothing at all to do with physicalism anyway; there’s no reason to think that some woo-woo based mind would be any more resistant to manipulation or error.
All the evidence we have says that physicalism is true. And the people who say otherwise have a multi-thousand year history of being wrong. I’ll go with materialistic science, the side that has a history of occasionally being right.
If you have about ten minutes, you may find this entertaining, informative, and intriguing. It is a You Tube Video of a doctor whose work it is to study the brain. She also had a stroke and therefore “studied” herself having the stroke. What she discovered was much about the “me” inside her also. She wrote a book about the experience which is called My Stroke of Insight. Her name is Jill BolteTaylor.
Here I think you are entirely missing the point that ITR champion is making. The point is that if the materialist view is correct, if the world runs entirely on physical laws, then there is no room for the individual “me”. If all can be explained by the laws of science, then the brain and its thoughts, since they also are material objects must be described, indeed controlled, by the laws of science also. According to materialism there is no sense is which we are in control of our thoughts. Any feeling that we are is just a result of electrons in our brain and is not real.
Further, if materialism is true then we have no real evidence of anything. For instance it could be said that your perception of history and the “multi-thousand year history of being wrong” is really just again electrons moving in your brain and has no connection to reality. Without any fundamental reason to think that the thoughts of our brain are connected to reality there is no reason to assume that this is true. The problem with materialism is that while on the one hand it assumes that our senses do correspond to reality, yet on the other hand in describing everything in a material way it removes any reason why this assumption should be true.
This is one of the things that amazes me about the “neo Atheists” generally. The scientific positivism worldview that they propose is horribly philosophically outdated. Several non-theistic 20th century movements in philosophy such as existentialism and post-modernism show all of the incoherences in this way of thinking, and yet people still cling to it. Of course all the while proclaiming how “irrational” theists are when they themselves are entirely unaware where their own worldview leads and incapable of thinking critically about it.
Nonsense. All you are doing is arguing that ignorance is profound. Knowing what our brains are made of and having some idea of how they work gives us some idea of how they can be self aware, how we can have memories and thoughts and all the rest. Knowing what our minds are made of doesn’t make them unreal. And postulating that the mind is made up of some undefined fictional . . . stuff that we don’t have any evidence of doesn’t make the mind “more real”.
Nonsense again.The same evidence that tells us that our brain works in a material fashion also details how it is connected to the external world. Nor is there any reason to assume that a “non material” mind would do any better. You are manufacturing a nonexistent problem for the material model of the mind, and assuming that your preferred nonmaterial version solves the problem with no reason to do so.
There’s also the fact that non-materialist models of the mind and everything else all have one common problem: they are ALWAYS wrong. Not one claim of anything beyond the material world has ever held up.
No, materialism has the singular benefit of actually working, and of actually matching the facts. If some philosopher doesn’t like it, then he should go back to the drawing board and fix his philosophy because it’s clearly wrong.
A lot of your argument seems to be “materialism is correct because materialism is correct”. The issue that seems to escape you is that worldview determines how we interpret evidence. You can’t say that a worldview is true simply because it agrees with the evidence as you interpret it through your worldview. It does show that it is consistent, but it doesn’t make it correct. The “evidence” that you present is based on the materialistic premise that our thoughts connect to reality. You can’t then say that materialism is correct because it agrees with the evidence, when the evidence itself pre-supposes that materialism is true. The logic is entirely circular and says nothing of correctness. If true you can show consistency, but not truth.
However, I don’t think that materialism is even consistent, much less true. The issue is not that we understand that mind, but what, according to materialism the mind is understood to be. In a materialist view the mind is 100% a product of the physical brain, since there is no other mechanisms available to produce consciousness. If thoughts are controlled by the brain, in a materialist worldview can thoughts or consciousness influence the brain itself? Is there any sense in which I can control my thoughts in future? In the absense of some sort of telekenisis, the answer is obviously no. The brain is not influenced by our thoughts, the composition of the brain simply evolves according to the laws of physics and chemistry.
Consciousness therefore does not imply any sort free will. In the materialist view of reality people can experience consciousness, but they cannot control it. Consciousness is in effect a roller-coaster ride that we are strapped into. We go where the tracks take us, we have no choice in the path the roller-coaster takes. In the same way consciousness is something that we experience, yet have no conrol over. In a materialist worldview there is simply no way for the consciousness or the “me” of the individual to interact with the physical world. The physical world merely goes on, as it must, according to the natural laws that govern it. We have no control over the laws of nature, and are therefore trapped in this consciousness forced to experience it without having any control.
If you believe there is a “me” that is able to make meaningful decisions, in what way is that ability reflected in the workings of the world? What in the world is there that is not controlled by the laws of science that we can be said to meaningfully influence? It is for this reason I think that materialism is inconsistent. It posits that humans can make meaningful decisions and that there is some “me”, yet at the same time in insisting that the laws of nature govern all completely removes any possible mechanism by which this “me” may operate. The only ways out are to assume that there is more than just the material world, or that the feeling that there is a “me” is just an illusion and that all is ultimately meaningless.
If our thoughts don’t connect to reality, then we have no evidence of anything whatsoever. Including that anyone else exists. Solipsism is a useless worldview that requires a massive amount of arrogance and assumptions to take seriously.
That’s just silly. Are you going to claim that computers require telekinesis to affect themselves too?
Our thoughts are not “controlled by our brain”; they ARE part of the brain. Our thoughts can affect the brain for the same reason I can pinch my own nose.
If true, so what? Define free will, then come up with some evidence it exists.
No, that’s your strawman distortion of materialism, not the reality.
I just typed in a message to the SDMB; there’s one example.
Nothing.
Or that the sensation of “me” is a function of the brain. And if “all is ultimately meaningless”, then that’s the way things are, like it or not; just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean that is an argument against it being true. You, again, are trying to excuse the baseless belief in something besides the material world by making up an imaginary problem.
What I am saying is that you can’t use the assumption that a worldview is true to prove that it is true. That is just circular.
No, because computers are not conscious. The brain is not a computer.
So by what mechanism can you make neurons fire in the brain by thought alone?
Do you pinch your nose because you choose to, or because your brain is moved by natural laws to make you? Do you chose anything or are you destined by the laws of nature to do it?
Then what exactly does the “me” control, if everything is controlled by the laws of nature. If all is controlled by the laws of nature then there is no room for the “me” to act.
I am not making a statement about the way things are. What I am saying is that materialism is an incoherent worldview. Either all is controlled by the laws of nature and there is no “me”, or there is a “me” that exists outside the laws of nature. The materialistic statements that there is a “me” that is able to think and know and that everything operates by the laws of nature are contradictory. To have a consistent worldview you must drop one position or the other.
Why are you arguing? If you are right, I don’t exist and you are wasting your time.
It’s a form of computer. And so what if they aren’t conscious?
By thinking; the firing of neurons is what thoughts are made of.
Same thing. What you seem unable to grasp is that there’s no contradiction between me choosing to do something and natural law.
The “me” probably doesn’t control much; the conscious mind is just a tiny part of the whole. And the idea that there’s some sort of magic noncausal force behind our decisions has no evidence for it and doesn’t make any sense anyway. Our behavior and thoughts very clearly work according to cause and effect.
Nonsense. You attribute impossible and poorly defined powers to the mind, and then pretend that the nonexistent powers that you, not the materialists attribute to the mind prove materialism wrong.
The “contradictions” you claim to see in materialism are nonsense, because you are attributing beliefs to materialists that they don’t have, and because you are making assumptions about what the brain is capable of. Materialists by definition DON’T think there is anything in the mind that “exists outside the laws of nature”. And there’s no reason to think that the brain isn’t perfectly capable of thinking and knowing without any mystical nonsense. It’s just a very complex natural computer.
I get the feeling that this is just as true at either extreme of non-dualism: they meet. Take a Buddhist approach that nothing really exists at all, there is only Mind split into many parts which are not aware that they are in fact all parts of a unity and all living their own illusory little life in their own illusory world. In fact the holographic cosmos theory of quantum mechanics says something very like this. You end up with very much the same position. You can only analyse the system from inside the system but the system is itself a fantasy. If we say that there is only matter, we know anyway that matter is not as we perceive it through the senses, so if we backtrack and say matter is only a form of ‘crystallised’ energy, what really is ‘energy’? It’s an abstraction that doesn’t ‘exist’ in any material sense. The materialist and the mystic may argue like hell about what ‘it’ really is but they probably have far more in common than either does with dualist believers in a creator-god with a (lonely!) super-existence. And if one, why not many and if many, then aren’t they just another part of the natural order?
The truth or falsity of materialism is irrelevant to what I personally believe. I am not saying that you don’t exist. What I AM saying is that materialism is inconsistent.
You do realise of course that computers are deterministic machines. They have no control over what they “think” or “know”. Their initial program determines for them exactly what they do. Assuming that a brain is like a computer proves my point. Computers in no sense have any sort of personality or “me”, and if you think a brain is a form of computer then neither do humans.
Here you just have cause and effect around the wrong way. Neurons firing in the brain, which is determined by the laws of chemistry and physics, causes the sensation of thought. It does not work the other way around. You can’t, by thought alone, make a neuron fire against the laws of nature.
Yes, there is if you insist that choices have any meaning outside the fact that they exist. If all your thoughts are determined by the laws of nature, then there is no “me” that thinks anything.
Let me ask you this then, in the hope of maybe clarifying this. If everything happens by cause and effect as you state, then is anyone responsible for their actions? Is say, the American soldier in Iraq who kills civillians actually responsible for his actions, and can any moral judgement be made of him? If everything just continues on according to the laws of nature, according to the laws of cause and effect, then the soldier has no way of stopping himself from doing what he is ultimately destined to do. And if that is the case is he blameless for his actions, because he has no control over them?
Again I have said nothing of what I believe. I am just saying that materialism is incoherrent on its own terms, without any reference to any other belief. It is like saying there are square circles on the moon. Since “square” and “circle” have contradictory meanings you can know that there are no square circles on the moon without knowing anything of what actually is there. It is the same with materialism, since the concept that there is a “me” and everything follows the laws of science are contradictory. What I or anyone else believes is true is irrelevant.
Again with the computer analogy.
Look, computers only know what they are programmed to know, not what is true. Computers are incapable of deciding truth. I can program a computer to “think” that all sorts of wrong things are in fact true. If we are just complex computers, then what we think is determined by our genetics and our “programming”, not what is actually true. It follows then that we have no reason to think anything we think, including materialism itself, is actually true.
Alvin Plantiga (a Christian, but even in secular circles still considered a world-class philosopher) has an interesting argument where he states that unguided evolution is necessarily inconsistant with naturalism. Basically he states that if naturalism is true, and the brain is the product of evolution, and evoluation selects for survivability, not correctness of thinking, then we have no reason to think that anything we think is true is actually true, including naturalism and evolution itself.
This argument, being made here in several different ways, seems to me be a very silly one. “I” may believe many incorrect things and some of them may be because others have given me incorrect information resulting in changes in my brain that may make me believe the equivalent of “2+2=5”. Happens in politics all the time! The fact that my brain can be set up to believe incorrect information is not a reason to totally distrust any conclusion it comes to. Because I can be fooled even theoretically I shouldn’t believe anything? Silliness is what it is.
SM adequately captures the essence. “I” is an ever changing evolving dynamic entitiy that forms a continually revising model of the universe around it, which in an infinitely recursive manner includes a model of itself as it was right before it was changed by the act of the observation itself. This entity has continuity and a perception of self which in fact be a delusion, but it is a delusion that is required for consciousness and the experience of “free will” to exist.
