Incidentally, my physicalist stance is no different to that described in the Stanford link, but I think a little further explanation is necessary to avoid misrepresentation.
I agree that if I were simply to declare that consciousness and metal entities are physical and dust off my hands at a job well done, I would not be saying anything very useful at all. Physicalism is the position I have come to prefer after assessing the current state of cognitive science and, crucially, the alternative positions and their philosophical consequences.
You have occasionally seemed to accept my proposition that the universe and everything in it including consciousness, human or otherwise, ultimately is atoms, wave-photons and fundamental forces in spacetime. You say that this is “useless”. I ask, is anything else necessary? You have characterised the proposition as a “Milquetoast”, timid and submissive, and reference NDE’s, New Age “energy” and the paranormal. Again, physicalism does not simply assert that spiritual experiences do not happen, it seeks to explain them in terms of precisely the same atom-built cognitive modules that produce hallucinatory visions or “significance judgements”. It tries (and presumably in your opinion, fails) to use only the fewest entities necessary to tell the story, rather than merely narrating “Once upon a spacetime there fundamental particles … and they all lived happily ever after”. The question regarding NDE’s, New Age Energy and the paranormal is whether there is really anything to tell a story about which wasn’t covered by the tale of dreams and hallucinations which necessarily formed part of the story of consciousness.
As I say, let us not get too caught up in whether processes involving atoms and waves, such as computations or memory storage and retrieval, are themselves “physical” or not. I wish only to understand what explanatory entities you propose, given that I would seek to minimise the number thereof.
Actually, that link describes quite a few physicalisms. do you mean “Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical.”?
I certainly respect your privilege to avoid abstract metaphysical speculation such as this. However, you seem to be doing what you ask others to avoid.
Right. I’d prefer not to debate the evidence. We all know what that is and where it is. It’s in books, it’s all over the net, and it’s been written up in Lancet and other respectable sources. We’ve debated it here on SDMB many times. I think the evidence is credible, and I interpret it one way. Others here find it not credible or interpret it another. I’d call it an impasse. If there is something to debate on the philosophical side of it (which is interesting in its own right), I’d be happy to talk about that.
I read a stat somewhere that in the history of homo sapiens 145+ billion people have lived, so there really can be no shortage of souls any more. Further, there is no theoretical reason why the same soul/mind could not be reincarnted in multiple bodies at the same time (it is also possible that there are layers of “higher selves”).
I do believe, however, that human souls come about through natural processes. The soul is, in essence, the pattern of the body/mind, not some disembodied wisp of spirit (though the mind can take many forms, not all of them embodied, but all of them patterned). Hence, we retain our bodies in the Afterlife, as that form or pattern is our soul.
Souls are not something separate created by “God” waiting to find a body to dwell in, according to my understanding (though a soul may have to wait to be reincarnated; how that process happens is a mystery).
There is no official definition of “consciousness,” so I don’t want to dis yours. But I don’t think most philosophers would consider a bee “conscious.” I think that concept requires the ability to think about oneself. “Sentience,” on the other hand, could include other-awareness and self-awareness without the ability to think about the self.
We speak of ourselves as being “unconscious” during sleep. Aside from lucid dreams (which I’ve experienced quite a bit), this seems right. We can’t really reflect on ourselves. It is the most ordinary of things, a daily occurance, and yet it seems odd to us. Is thought gone? No. Shake me awake at any time during sleep, and I can tell you what I was thinking or dreaming about. Often theta-state thoughts seem totally other-worldly (maybe they are). Is memory gone? No, because I can remember what I was thinking about, often quite far back, if you shake me awake. I’ve even had the weird (and hard-to-veryify) experience of remembering dreams later that I did not remember directly after waking up.
Based on our experience with dreams alone, we know that there can be many different states of mind. Who knows what a bee’s state of mind is. But it seems doubtful that they are “conscious” if they can’t reflect on themselves.
No, it’s not. This conclusion is extremely far off the reservation.
First, the Sonic character is only superficially lifelike. Why don’t you use the ball from a 1970s “Pong” game in your example? Isn’t the ball trying just as much to survive, etc.?
Every element of the Sonic game is only superficially analagous to features of the real world. For example, if he “eats” something, he is not really eating; his life is continued thereby simply by fiat, the rules of the game.
Which brings us to the next point: The big, large, HUGE difference between the “world” of the computer and our real world is this: Every element of the computer world can be expressed as VERBAL instructions as to what is to happen under any given situation. This includes randomized effects. So, in the Sonic world, if he goes to Level 18, there is a set of background events that can be verbalized explicitly: Let from 10 to 18 leaves fall from the tree with probability XYZ, etc. etc.
The “real world” is not like that. Even if we grant (and I do!) that the world IS such a set of instructions (the rules of pattern and number), they are not OUR instructions, nor are they known to us except insofar as we take the time to experiment and learn them (even then we cannot possibly know whether we have the fine details correctly, as our ability to measure is limited).
But don’t be too quick to agree with me that our world works much like a computer program does. Keep in mind that I believe that the truths/rules of pattern/number are essential, immutable, invariable truths. You don’t.
Here is another point from philosophy: Sonic has no substance. He is an arbitrary, explicitly created thing. A squid is not. A squid is a squid, out there in the ocean doing its thing, whether we think about it or not. There is no comparison between a work of art combined with AI and a living creature.
Computer programs are an interesting case in that their instructions are concrete and explicit. They can be no other than they are, and they are that way because we made them that way. (I realize that exceptions exist: the one that immediately comes to mind is that of the organic human playing the game!)
There is, however, really no fundamental difference between animals and machines. Even the intention of the creation (manmade vs. Nature-made) would not necessarily mean a different result. For example, a machine could be artificial life, and that life could be the same as life that already exists.
It is not a matter of “possibility” in my theoretical perspective; the consciousness of That Which Is is not an object of empirical research but rather something to be intuited and understood. I do not mean, however, that the consciousness of That Which Is is like that of “God,” musing, and brooding, and acting as a unified entity. Rather, That Which Is attains consciousness through its individual pockets of consciousness and the connectedness that exists between them (i.e., cells of Universal Mind).
There isn’t any contradiction. The answer to the question, “Why is there something and not nothing?” is really quite simple. We see that 2 + 2 = 4 must be true in all possible systems, and hence there can’t be a “nothingness” that is not bound by that truth. If it’s bound by that truth, then it has a characteristic, and hence it is not nothing. Whence, then, our concept of nothing? I think it arises from the fact that we can perceive that quantities and qualia can be diminished and increased, and “nothing” is the concept of all quantities and qualia being in their least state simultaneously. And I do think that there is such a state, which exists outside time and space–it might very well have been the singularity of the Big Bang. We can call this state the One. In one dimension, it is that least modified of states. In another dimension, it is That Which Is in any of its permutations. It is all states and all things at once.
I agree. Mind is not a little whirligig set up by “God” to act just so. Rather, it is like water, flowing to achieve being wherever it can. There is mind, intelligence, being in all things. “Consciousness” is one particular mode of this being.
It would take further explanation to see how close we agree, but I don’t have any big problem with this statement. It is a pattern with subpatterns. I am quite certain that the human mind is composed of mental elements and compounds just as much as a cherimoya is composed of elements and compounds. If you don’t have hydrogen, then you don’t have a cerimoya, period. But we don’t have as yet a Periodic Table of the mind, and I suspect we will not for a very long time.
We do have the evidence of the Afterlife, however, that the human mind does not require the matter of this universe in order to “run.” Does that mean it is made of some wispy substance called “spirit,” something totally different? No, it does not. The general interpretation I see out there is that the mind runs on a different network, a different substrate, something like that. I could be that it uses similar nueronal patterns but built on different matter, or it may use a kind of indestructable, pure information-based substrate (the consensus seems to be that no information in the universe can ever be totally lost).
From what I’ve read, that’s not correct. There is no cerebral wave at all. The brain cells are oxygenated and fed, and hence not dying, but there is no wave, no pattern at work. Lekatt has brought up several times the NDE case of the woman whose brain was drained of blood and chilled. No brain wave there.
No, you are not experiencing that extra-acute state right now. Just as you are not experiencing sleep right now or an LSD trip right now.
Agreed.
Actually, I make no distinction between mental entities and non-mental entities except those used in practical, daily life. That is why I have such a problem with your physicalism. It would seem that you are trying to draw a distinction between “this stuff we know exists” and “that stuff we know doesn’t exist.” In other words, you distinguish the physical (exists) from the non-physical (doesn’t exist). Needless to say, there can be no set of things that doesn’t exist!
So, in my view, things arise from processes. The things I informally or colloquially lable “mental” (e.g., my thoughts, concepts, ideas) arise from processes, and non-mental things (rocks, buckets of KFC) arise from processes too. But I do not believe that there are “spirits” or Platonian forms just lightly floating around or interpenetrating “physical objects.” The mind-body problem is no problem at all once you realize that All Things arise from the same set of fundamental principles.
Yes, the cells do it. Life is a set of patterns based on the same fundamental principles.
I don’t think there is any difference other than an arbitrary categorization. Truth is truth.
More fundamentally, they arise from the fundamental principles. If, in fact, mind in our Universe arises from matter and energy patterns (which themselves arises from the fundamental principles), then I have no problem with that. Just so long as it is recognized that all of it must arise from the fundamental principles.
I think it’s linguistically fair to say that I know it. It’s true that I don’t know it in the say way I know that 2 + 2 = 4. The existence of our Universe and the Afterlife have many (seemingly) arbitrary qualities (we can imagine the world to be different than it is). The world appears to us differently based on our approach to it (and on our “daemon” or “vibration”). To a skeptic, the world really is the physicalist’s world, and to the New Ager it is New Agey. I do think it has reached the point, however, that some my side’s New Agey truth is becoming so in-your-face (i.e., achieving a kind of consensus in the mind of the species) that the levy is going to break fairly soon. But we’ll see.
Aeschines, it seems we are not so different after all, really - I think in many ways you are an emergentist physicalist who is merely, but quite rightly, dissatisfied with the explanation of mind and consciousness which cognitive science currently sets forth. I think there are really only a couple of matters of any significance on which we disagree, and would prefer to limit the discussion to those. However, one of those appears not to be up for debate at all…
The absolutely crucial element of all such evidence, ie. the precise timing of the experience, being anecdotal. In the Lancet article (pdf), a nurse is surprised when an old man “knows” where she put his dentures. In the Pam Reynolds case, Pam “knows” the shape of specific medical apparatus and the specific sequence of parts of the procedure.
Now, if these experiences did happen exactly when the brain was temporarily inactive (but, of course, before necrosis), this would certainly herald a sea change in neuroscience and, indeed, the entire natural philosophy of the human race. But the exact sequence of events is crucial, and the slightest mistake or misremembered sequence on behalf of the corroborating conscious observers of the unconscious NDErs places the whole episode squarely back in the ambit of the neuroscience of dreams. We don’t know how much my brain could hear or feel when in a similar state (and incorporate in to a visual dream like it often does to my alarm clock), and I certainly could not tell you the precise time of that dream in terms of synchronising it with a specific period of complete inactivity.
Here we have some stories. The slightest incorrect or overbroadly interpreted detail makes it unnecessary for us to make that vast leap to consciousness after death, the Ockham’s Razor equivalent of going from clean-shaven to growing a 3 foot beard in a instant. Interpret the anecdotal evidence as you will, but I assume that you would be righteously indignant if a court of law convicted you on such a basis.
But those first souls must have emerged from nothing, be they Australopithecine, Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon, Ancient Greek or whatever, yes?
As in the gestation of a foetus in the womb, yes?
If a soul can emerge from nothing via natural processes, why posit such an unnecessary additional process?
Very well, I’d be happy to change my threshold if they required some form of limbic system as in birds, mammals, apes and humans, to produce what might loosely be termed emotion or significance judgement. If self-reflection is the crucial distinction, I might go all the way up to dolphins, say. But I’m asking you about your threshold. Homo sapiens in the daytime is conscious. Neanderthalis? Australopithecus? Chimps, monkeys, dogs, cats, birds, lizards, amphibians, insects…what, as your general guess?
We could then explore what was necessary to make the leap from the thing without it to the thing with it, by exploring its neuroanatomy: compare the dolphin’s brain to the porpoise, say, and examine which cognitive modules are involved in its process of recognising itself in a mirror or the like which are not big or complex enough in the porpoise.
First, I’m not talking about Sonic the Hedgehog the Sega game, I’m talking about a camcorder-Doom player I happen to call “Sonic” - apologies if this has caused confusion. The point is that, in ultra-detailed Doom, the first person perspective player tries to survive in the virtual environment by making all kinds of decisions and employing different strategies: find food, fight or flee, seek helpful companions etc.. I am then replacing the ultra-detailed virtual Doom world with a digital camcorder (not so great a jump if you look at Doom 3, perhaps). In each case, the player is receiving and processing input and working out how to survive in the environment provided by his senses.
Again, I mean the camcorder-Doom player, not Sega’s Sonic Hedgehog - let us ditch Sonic altogether if necessary. My point is that I could load the camcorder-Doom computer into a small, mobile robot having lenses, some means of locomotion and perhaps even eventually a means of replication. He is then a real thing which I can pick up and shake about like a squid, who will continue to “do his thing” when I let him go.
Could we one day, perhaps, build a Doom-player which you would say was conscious, in your opinion?
But, surely, if that other state independent of my brain and its activity, I have got it right now. LSD is a bunch of real molecules which affect only my neuroanatomy. This “other state” is independant of neuroanatomy, and thus must be extant right now?
This, I think, is the second significant disagreement between us - I rather consider it cart-before-horsemanship, strangely similar to the tautological and vaguely solipsistic roundabout which other-wise endlessly circles. “Pattern recognition” is surely how biological computers work? “Patterns” surely only exist, like computer files, in the minds (ie. neurological configurations) of sufficiently evolved organisms? And if so, which came first, the universe or the arbitrary categories which such devices sorted their sensory inputs into? The universe, by around 14 billion years! Such devices then developed linguistics, including the ability to label patterns before their existence.
I wonder, have you read “Where Mathematics Comes From” by Lakoff and Nunez? I do strongly recommend it.
We will indeed. Let us make sure that none of us are wearing the rose-tinted spectacles of wishful thinking.
My preference is supervenience physicalism (which recognises that the pursuit of outright reduction of even, say, molecules to atoms, might well reach an impasse which only evidentially supported induction can scale - ie. sometimes reductionism might only ever be a scientific “best guess” rather than an utterly incontestable explanation).
Of course I label such processes “physical”, and I’m happy to engage in such discussion if necessary. My point was only that I’d prefer to discuss whether things like memory retrieval can be explained by reference to things like the configuration of a substrate, be it digital, analogue, silicon or carbon. I’d suggest our “overall labels” are rather more tomato-tomahto.
The main difference is my considering the fundamental principles primary, not the physical.
It’s been done in other threads. Fully done, roasted. A real rotisserie case. Anyhow, what you call the “paranormal” interpenetrates my worldview fully. It’s not just NDEs. But this is not an easy-going, overly credulous worldview. More on that in a moment.
Those souls arose not from nothing but from the natural processes of life: gestation, growing, learning, experiencing, etc.
I don’t posit it; I believe in it based on the evidence for it. I also seem to remember my own past lives, but it is not completely definite.
Homo sapiens are probably the only fully conscious animals. The trouble is we define consciousness based on our own experiences. In the animal kingdom I have no doubt that there are many states of mind that would blow our own could we experience them for just a moment.
We can already: it’s called sex. I’m not being facetious: building, screwing, otherwise creating–all processes. Would artificial life be a machine? Depends on definition and how you look at it. Could a digital computer be conscious? Don’t know. It may be that the conscious brain/mind system has some “element” (from the Periodic Table of the Mind) that a digital system simply can’t supply. It may be like asking whether, with good enough technology, we could make water out of chlorine and lithium. Then again, it fully digital consciousness may be possible. Time will tell (though we are way, way far away from decent strong AI right now).
Are you asleep right now? Laughing your ass off right now? The reasoning that all possible states must be extant right now is prima facie incorrect.
Meaning unclear. Don’t know what Other-wise says.
Yes, but there are many different kinds of patterns that can be recognized with varying levels of fidelity. For whatever reason, we are able directly to grasp the truth that 2 + 2 = 4. It is a truth that binds all possible patterns. It’s true in every possible universe. It is one piece (large piece? small piece?) of Ultimate Truth.
[quote]
“Patterns” surely only exist, like computer files, in the minds (ie. neurological configurations) of sufficiently evolved organisms?
[quote]
The word “exist” is problematic. It makes it sound as though something is “out” there. Not so. Rather, “outness” and “thereness” are bound by the principle. I think why we humans are able to know things is rather simple: our minds our patterns and thus can literally conform to other patterns. Like clay in a mold. Aristotle seems to have seen it this way, too.
Even so, but the Universe itself was bound by the fundamental principles.
That’s right. The weird thing is that it works.
Based on your previous recommendation I looked it up on Amazon. It looks like an interesting read. If I run into it used somewhere, I’ll pick it up.
But I know I don’t agree with the premise, and dismissing that reasoning can be done in a line or two:
The very act of arguing that there is no Ultimate Truth presupposes the use of modus ponens and other things that we consider to be elements of Ultimate Truth, and is therefore self-contradictory.
Put in a colloquial fashion, the following exchange just makes “A” look really stupid:
A: Mathematics is just us thinking and stuff.
B: No, I don’t think so.
A: C’mon, man! Can’t you see that it’s just the way the brain works, nothing more.
B: Do you have an argument for that?
A: Don’t you know the evidence?
B: Yeah, but why should I care about the evidence?
A: C’mon, man! It’s the Scientific Method for Chrissakes!
If there is anything the Universe seems not to allow, it is ease of thought. Not for the truly open-minded. Everywhere there is contradiction. Entering the New Age mind reveals contradictions, fuzzy regions, problems everywhere. But when I was a hard-core atheist, it was no easier. Things not in the Canon of Disbelief intruded rudely. Moreover, the disbelief provided no relief: Whew! all of that stuff is BS that need never be considered seriously again. Rather, the evidence for it was everywhere.
Wow, that’s quite a distinction. Neanderthalis or homo erectus were not conscious? That first arbitrarily distinct member of our species some 170-odd thousand years ago had this thing we have, but none before him? That being the case, it would appear that we are not ‘conscious’ until well after being born, perhaps as late as our third birthday! And woe betide those whose cognitive functions are impaired such that they slip to the level of a slightly more primitive ancestor, for surely they could no longer be called ‘conscious’ either?
Agreed, but I am glad you consider it possible in principle. If so, would such a consciousness continue after death, or even before its ‘birth’?
But laughter and sleep have physiological correlates. I can most certainly say that the reason I am not laughing or asleep right now is because of what my brain is doing. This “other” consciousness is independent of my brain activity.
I’d disagree, actually. We can indeed cognitively subitise four objects, but thereafter we must simply formulate such rules as “2 + 2 = 4” in the manner of writing a new language. If I wished to start my own “2 + 2 = 5” language I could go right ahead and do so, calling the previous language “false”. It wouldn’t get me very far, of course. But “truth” is itself just one cognitive output of many - your ‘top down’ approach to logic and mathematics does not explain logic and maths nearly as well as a ‘bottom up’ cognitive scientific approach, IMO.
Is it really that “weird” to propose a language having a past tense or other temporal locator?
I agree entirely: that’s how I am suggesting that memory works - a literal, physical configuration of neural variance similar (but with important disanalogies) to how a computer stores photonic images. I am suggesting that this collection and systemization of memories is what we are, and that human “fundamental principles” no more existed for those 14 billion years than did Windows XP.
Indeed it does. Which is why I’d call A a strawman.
When we debate, we are using our frontal lobes to process propositions according to the logical system impressed upon us by our past history of education. It is tautological to say that you can’t talk about maths without effectively doing maths yourself. But cognitive science seeks to exit that endless roundabout by explaining how systems of logic and maths come about in a similar manner to visual recognition systems or emotional significance judgement systems. That does not mean that logic and maths are Platonically out there and our brains finally get around to finding them hiding under the evolutionary sofa. Lakoff and Nunez seek to explain how the universe is (tautologically) the way it is, and these “fundamental principles” and the like are what humans (amazingly! - I will not conceal my wonder and awe at this) construct in their little region of spacetime, just as they write computer games.
As a former theist who even “saw God” on occasion, I can sympathise. I came to recognise that such experiences were simply another Gap in which I was placing God. If I am to find peace of mind, well, theism has had several millennia to provide its explanations. Natural explanation, on the other hand, is making leaps and bounds year on year, especially in the vast interdisciplinary field of how our brain provides “experience”, even religious experience. It is not, as you say, easy to find such solutions. But that is surely the exciting challenge of this millennium! As the Emerson Pugh quote goes, If the human brain were so simple
That we could understand it,
We would be so simple
That we couldn’t.
I meant that homo sapiens is the only current animal that fits the definition. Our ancestors may also have been conscious. BTW, I think the sentience of non-conscious animals is also very valuable. Dogs understand much about the world and are able give and receive love. They just aren’t able to sit and think, “Gee, I’m a dog. This is interesting. I’m a dog thinking about being a dog.” Etc.
Again, conscious does not = good, valuable. Your points here are correct, however: not all homo sapiens are conscious, for various reasons.
Certainly, why not? It’s not so much “life after death” as “persistence of pattern.”
We need to deep six such assumptions. You will have a brain in the Afterlife. And that brain will have cells running the same “program” that they are now, if you will. With some changes.
OK, you’re arguing against the notion of Higher Truth. Any principle of absolute Higher Truth, whether it’s 2 + 2 = 4 or modus ponens or the simple rule that a contradiciton is impossible. That’s untenable, I think.
To argue for Higher Truth is self-resonant, self-supporting. The opposite is self-defeating. For if I argue against you, I get to use the very principles against you that I aver pertain in Reality. Monus ponens, logic, etc. Contrariwise, if you argue against me, the very tools you are using are undermined by your argument. The snake snacks on its tail and doesn’t quite like the taste and feel of that.
I don’t see, however, at base any contradiction between what you are emphasizing and what I am. Cognitive science is indeed important and teaches us much (though I think it’s in its wee infancy). But could cognitive science simply be the study of how the pattern we call “mind” or “brain” matches the larger pattern we call the “Universe” or “Reality”? And in my philosophy Reality or That Which Is derives itself from the fundamental principles, or Higher Truth.
And why wouldn’t you? Simply because your new pattern would not be congruent to the Master Pattern.
I don’t think logic and math can be “explained” in causitive terms. They can be elucidated, but they are not creations.
No fundamental disagreement here, just so long as we keep our minds open to what future research has to tell us.
It is precisely because they are not human that they are fundamental. Believe it or not, they are even more fundamental than even a Bill Gates creation.
I think it not so strawy.
When you ignore the Truth, you have politics. Browbeating. Well, you really ought to believe this way because all of us sophisticated people believe it.
Here is an irony. I assume you believe in Evolution, or more properly, know that evolution happened and is happening. To the Creationists you provide evidence. If they respond with dogma, you say, quite rightly, A study of the evidence is the way to approach this problem; dogma isn’t. You are calling upon a principle, a principle you feel really ought to convince a rational person. You are calling upon Higher Truth, or, more plainly, the belief that certain things are so for a reason and must be so.
You’d consider the Creationists “foolish” for not disagreeing with you, flat-out retarded if you weren’t feeling charitable. At the very least possessed of a gigantic blind spot induced by superstition and dogma.
Yet, when stating your case, would you, indeed, add the following caveat? “But my insistence that we go by the evidence isn’t based on the Truth per se, but on certain reasons grounded ultimately in cognitive science.” I hardly think that would add punch to your case.
So perhaps the Truth is something to browbeat “believers” with when we have a good case against the “paranormal” or religion or something else from the World of Superstition; but not something to consider “really true,” since Higher Truth or any other such name that more or less reflects in fidelity what Truth is smacks, at the end of the day, of the very Superstition we wish to eradicate. It sounds religious, dammit!
Hence, I see skeptics’ aversion to the notion of Higher Truth, Absolute Truth, Fundamental Principles, etc., as political. It just ain’t canon.
Oh, this point is well beneath the level of the Sentient I know and love. We are not Pavlovian educationally-impressed beasts; we intuit 2 + 2 = 4 ourselves. We get it. We see that it is a fact, is true.
Sounds fine to me. I have no problem accepting the fact it is the brain that understands Truth and not some little ghost sitting inside the brain. But it is still Truth.
Well, they are finally getting around to it, but I agree that there is no such thing as a Platonic form. There are no ghosts of truth, which, did they not float about the Universe, the thing they represent would cease to be. Think chiaroscuro. The fundamental principles are not things, they are the boundaries of things. 2 + 2 = 4 does not mean that there are, in fact, 2 things being added to 2 things which total 4 things. It is an immutable, unalterable rule pertaining to all possible patterns involving the patterns of “2” and “4.”
The human element of truth perception is, as you say, amazing and constructed, and, as you imply, limited. We create the symbols and words and perceive Truth in our own meager way. But still we perceive it, not invent it. For, as you know, math and science really work. We’ve built computers and skyscrapers and cured diseases and made beautiful music.
Now, you may counter that we’ve merely invented math to match physical universe. But time and again math has predicted how that physical universe will be; indeed, much of what you believe about the universe is only known through mathematical extrapolition or definition (in other words, math has become the language by which we define the physical, not just talk about it). Then, the kicker is that you still require, as discussed above, a principle, a logical tool to convince me that math is just an inventend system that matches the physical well. How are you going to convince me if not with principles and logic, and what if I doubt you because you told me to doubt them?
But can you sympathize with a former atheist who sees confusion in the atheist-materialist perspective too?
[quote]
I came to recognise that such experiences were simply another Gap in which I was placing God. If I am to find peace of mind, well, theism has had several millennia to provide its explanations.
[quote]
Well, yes, I don’t believe in “God” either. Though there is clearly a power of goodness and love in the Universe that I have no problem with others calling by that name. I call it the Divine.
Umm, me read some. I don’t have a problem with the rearch or even necessarily the conclusions. Just the “just” that enters into the interpretations: “Religious feeling is just XYX.” OK, so the brain allows us to perceive great, trancendental things, just as it allows us to perceive red, salty, orgasm, and earache. Were we to suppose that “salty” was experienced via the brain but “oneness with the universe” was experienced by “holy god-modual uncorrupted by matter”?
No doubt! And what’s going to tickle your funnybone within the next few decades, I believe, is how much you think has been disproved really isn’t. And the Christians and religious will also have fun learning that the new evidence for the Unseen World doesn’t support their worldview either.
Great quote! And thanks for the highly intelligent and polite debate. I’m enjoying it immensely.
Ah, I see - it seems we are now well and truly drawing distinctions between “consciousness”, “sentience”, “awareness” and the like. If “consciousness” requires analytical language, so be it - only humans, trained chimps (maybe) and future computers (maybe) would then be conscious. I would merely feel a little uncomfortable labelling the deaf person who had not been taught to sign as a child non-conscious.
When a computer is turned off? For our future AI, the consciousness is caused by the electrical activity in the silicon chips and memory. Without that activity in those chips and memory, there is no consciousness. We could prove this by turning the computer on and off and asking what it remembered in between, in its periods of activity, yes? Proposing that the inactive hunk of switched off silicon is still conscious veers strongly towards the panpsychism of labelling a rock “conscious”, would you not agree?
I’m afraid I don’t understand. You said before that we may experience “sharpened, increased consciousness” with no brain activity. Are you suggesting that this sharp consciousness happens in someone else’s brain? If so, why can’t I feel it right now?
I agree to use the human language called “logic” to argue here, just as I agree to use the human language called “English”. I could forego using logic, or speak to you in Welsh (actually I can’t, but you get the point), but the utility of such “debate” would be sadly diminished.
Well, we beg to differ and I think that’s that. I consider that they are human creations, invented to deal with the universe we happen to find ourselves in. That the initial framework has such surprising (and even beautiful) consequences as, say, Riemann space or the Mandelbrot set is rather like English being used to write Shakespeare’s plays.
I’d suggest that the continual disagreement over what is or is not “true” is all the evidence one needs that there is no such thing as “ultimate truth”, capitalised or not. We may agree upon a system of logic by which we might manipulate propositions, but still disagree on the truth of the propositions themselves. Almost every debate here and indeed ever is not about the validity of an argument, but its soundness, logically speaking.
Nevertheless, I would add such a caveat if pressed (or if it were particularly relevant). Such shorthand and “agreed starting points” are often necessary for useful debate, in the same way that I might debate politics while entertaining the notion of free will, even though I still consider it to be an illusion.
Yes, I agree, actually, for such small subitizable numbers. 6+7=13 is not so, however - we must employ our frontal lobes according to the counting system we learned as a child.
Brazilian restaurants? [Consults dictionary]. Ah, I see. You must appreciate, I’m rather a Philistine when it comes to visual art!
Again, I suggest that the “things added to things” caused the rule to emerge as a cognitive process, not the other way around.
As has language, I suggest. Galileo predicted, in Latin, “the heavy and light things will hit the ground simultaneously”. Lo, so they did. He could have said the same in maths, not Latin. Again, the maths wouldn’t predict anything any more than the Latin did. It was the computer called Galileo who actually outputted the prediction.
Again, I say that’s no kicker but a tautology: ‘principles’ is how brains work, and I cannot engage my brain in debate with you without invoking ‘principles’. That does not impugn my position that those principles emerged, cognitively, from the sensory inputs to our brains over billions of years.
Of course. But sympathy for, in response to such confusion, growing an instant Ockham-beard and proposing past life memories (in which language exactly , by the way?) or an observing consciousness 6 feet above a bed containing a flatlining brain? Those I find confusing to the point of utter bewilderment, rather like proposing consciousness in rocks and molecules and the like.
I agree entirely: my one-man quest in my lifetime is to replace the “just” in science to “amazingly”. I am not just atoms, I am amazingly, wondrously, upliftingly!, atoms!
Well, no, anymore than we perceive the monster under the bed with a monster-under-the-bed detector: our brains work by permuting and combining memories in a process called “imagination”. The output of our amygdala can affect what we imagine quite dramatically.
As a relevant analogy to tingling my humerus, what would you conclude if we could rig up an electromagnetic helmet which, at the flick of a switch, caused exactly those same epiphanic, cosmic, divine or New Age Energy-type experiences which are proposed as evidence against the standard physicalist position?
As am I, friend, but I think we’re nearing our final game positions. For your evidence of non-brain consciousness, I see only mistakes and dreams. For your primacy of Truth and Principle, I see (if you’ll forgive me) rather old-fashioned essentialism. However, some intelligent and erudite thinkers share your position - no matter how vigorously I might disagree, you are still in esteemed company.
Indeed, Arwin - reliable “bring back” technology could actually be used to test claims of consciousness after death, by checking that the patient truly has achieved zero brain activity and then placing a large card boldly displaying a random word and number on the patient’s chest, which would be clearly visible by the disembodied consciousness observing from above the bed (as NDErs claim), and patients could be asked what it was when they awake. Like any other paranormal claim, a reasonably cheatproof and luckproof test is possible.
I intend no bold claims. It’s a lot of semantics and little science (we do not yet have a Periodic Table of the mind, etc.). But you do seem to conflate “conscious” and “valuable.”
Let’s see what happens once we create that machine and perform that experiment. It may very well claim to have had an NDE. After all, it’s when you “turn off” the human brain that an NDE happens (the brain at this level of matter; I am claiming that the pattern of the brain persists at another level/in another dimension. Also, I doubt that “turning off” the computer in that case will be very much analagous to turning off a modern PC.)
As per my parenthetical above, the pattern of the brain persists at a different level, etc. The Afterlife vibrations are said to be extremely fine and subtle, hence the increased clarity of mind and perception.
Mishmash. The same logic works in any language. Every culture can use modus ponens and math in combination with its language–they work wherever.
If you consider logic a “mere language,” please prove the point. I’ve offered up what logic and math have produced–science and technology–as evidence for my side.
And you haven’t answered the claim that they deal with the Universe precisely because they the principles that underpin it perfectly.
Isn’t just easier to say that the system is “right”? O Ockham’s-razor-lover.
But there is absolutely no disagreement about 2 + 2 = 4 and 6 + 7 = 13! So maybe you ought to concede that that part is True (or true) and the rest is open for debate?
No doubt. That’s because an invalid argument is shot down quite easily and people learn not to make them here. Or the people here are smart enough not to make invalid arguments in the first place. Only helps prove my point: Validity, logic, etc., are things to be respected. They are True.
[quote]
Nevertheless, I would add such a caveat if pressed (or if it were particularly relevant). Such shorthand and “agreed starting points” are often necessary for useful debate, in the same way that I might debate politics while entertaining the notion of free will, even though I still consider it to be an illusion.Sounds like a big concession to me. You agree that all your notions about skepticism and the scientific method–the things you really insist upon on these boards–is just an arbitrary product of your brain, no more True than creationism, Christianity, or flat-earthism? You really want to go there? (Of course, you do insist that you’re “really right” in one thread and that, in threads like this one, you maybe are not. In terms of the 36 Strategies, I’d put this one under ???.)
So, are you willing to concede that at least the subitizing of numbers reflects Truth? BTW, I would also claim that we can get that 6 + 7 is 13, although, as you correctly point out the pathway to such understanding is not the same as the built-in subitizing approach. Are you claiming that 6 + 7 = 13 is mere rote learning, and that 7 + 7 = 13 would seem just as true to someone who was taught it?
I repeat what I said earlier: I’m not a Pavlovian math dog. I really understand those truths of mathematics that I understand. There was no training, conditioning, or coercian involved. (I agree that math facts can be learned by rote, but all of us have experienced that sweet mental click that occurs when we really get it. Haven’t you as well?)
And how would you tell? You are going “meta” on all these things while telling me that you can’t really go “meta” and be really right. You insist with one frontal lobe, while the other frontal lobe tells the first that such insistence is improper.
[quote]
As has language, I suggest. Galileo predicted, in Latin, “the heavy and light things will hit the ground simultaneously”. Lo, so they did. He could have said the same in maths, not Latin. Again, the maths wouldn’t predict anything any more than the Latin did. It was the computer called Galileo who actually outputted the prediction.
[quote]
And why was that computer right?
Another example (that I read somewhere): Einstein predicted that the mass of a particle would increase when it was accelerated to high speeds. They did the experiments, and the math was spot on. That’s how it tends to work in the physical sciences: the mathematical models simply are right.
Yes, it’s the brain. And the brain is really, really correct. Where’s the contradiction? “Real truth” woud somehow have to transcend the brain in order to be “real truth”?
And you’re “meta” again.
And what do you find confusing or contradictory in the atheist-materialist world your brain has chosen? Or is it perfect to your brain?
Not quite. I read somwhere (correct me if I’m wrong), that nary an atom from the you of ten years ago is still in your body. Atoms change, pattern remains.
Bring it on. It sounds like progress. Drugs make for a good analogy here. Many who have tried drugs have said that what they experienced was not a “mere” trip. I think the helmet could be quite informative.
Well then, play for mate, friend, don’t resign just yet.
I’ve got to slam you on this one, buddy. I expected more of you. Throughout this thread, I’ve never once said anything about non-brain consciousness. I’ve also denied that spirit is a little wisp inside the head.
Cite? Arguments? And isn’t that just name-calling anyway? Old-fashioned? Would someone old-fashioned agree with you as much as I have done in this thread?
You went for a quick and dirty attack at the end there, Old Bean. Didn’t work.
Well, I don’t mean to - I suggest only that the complexity of the cognitive modules correlates with gradual levels of “consciousness”, or whatever we call it. And I certainly think that a “Periodic Table of the mind” is a very poor metaphor - there is no Periodic Table of computer science either, yet we can examine computational processes as scientifically as chemical ones.
NDE’s in silicon computers? Phew, OK, but if I may say, that’s one heck of a bullet you’ve bitten there.
Independent of “this level”. So why don’t I experience that brain pattern right now? Right now, I have the consciousness associated with my brain pattern and that associated with this “other” pattern, surely?
Just as every language has a word for “anger” or “dream”. This does not impugn the premise that anger and dreams are cognitive outputs of brains.
I did not call it a “mere” language - it is a powerfully concise language. But as in my Galileo example, what can be said in maths can also be said (more clumsily) in other ways, and science and technology continues apace.
“Because” is the word I disagree with here. Does a flint cut hides because it is the perfect hide-cutter? No, humans created useful tools, fit for purpose, and found that such flints had other consequential uses also. Again, I’m not sure how much further we can go with this - I can only recommend Lakoff and Nunez as setting forth this position more clearly than I.
Well, yes, but “rightness” and “truth” are also cognitive outputs which are not out there but only in here, similar to where our Doom player’s gun resides.
The child disagrees when he writes 7 + 7=13, as might the tribesman for whom such squiggles on a page are meaningless. We agree to the rules and principles whereby 6+7=13, and if I were to assert that 7+7=13, I would be withdrawing my agreement to follow such principles, just as I could start talking to you in Welsh. Neither would be very useful, of course, since utility depends upon our jointly agreeing and moving forward to examine that agreement’s consequences. So I concede that 6+7=13 is true according to those rules, but not that these rules comprise or can show “ultimate” truth, whatever that is (I consider such a proposition to be petitio principii.)
No, you misunderstand. A valid argument is one whose truth would follow from the truth of the premises. It makes no sense to say “validity is true”. We can agree that a given argument is valid (ie. that a certain conclusion would follow if the premises were true) while disagreeing about the truth of the premises themselves. And again, the rules of validity are themselves cognitively selected as being useful by us humans (and similar beings). I certainly respect them - I seek only to explain their origin, and disagree with that of Platonic dualism and its kind.
Yes, truth being itself a cognitive output, indeed being the subitizing process, with no external element (and I don’t really understand your penchant for its capitalisation).
No, no, apologies if I gave that impression (again, Lakoff does this way better than me). Given the cognitive modules which our evolution has equipped us with in order to subitize, place objects in groups, cognize distances along a path and such, and the flexibility of the processing in the frontal lobes (but which, curcially, must be taught), all of this is combined to yield the “principle” of 6+7=13 which “feels right” compared to 7+7=13, and that this feeling becomes so intuitive through our education that it feels like it must be out there. But ultimately, 6+7=13 feels right only because it is cognitively related to the action of taking steps along a path. I realise I am not explaining this too well!
Indeed, and I suggest that it is related to other evolutionary cognitive functions such as ah ha! I’ve found my way back to the cave again!
I agree that the cognitive science of mathematics is but a protoscience as yet. However, I would deny that it is a pseudoscience.
Again, I admit that brains work in “meta”. But that “meta” can still be a cognitive emergence, and calling it really right is itself just a label.
His sentence encoded an arrangement of memories (heavy and light objects + impact + same time) whose correlation with incoming sensory input could produce a high (similar) or low (dissimilar) value. The sensory input + arranged memory correlation modules of his brain returned a high value. This is the physicality of “being right”.
I rephrase it thus: the proposed reality (arrangement of memories encoding a possible future input) yielded high cognitive correlation with the subsequent input, which Einstein’s computer could have output in maths (concisely), English (more clumsily but eventually as correlatably) or Welsh (surprisingly!). The maths didn’t do anything itself.
The brain, really really, does what it does. Call that “really really correct” if you wish, but we’d be interpreting such a phrase differently I think.
I cannot not be, in a debate. That does not impugn my position.
Perfect? Hardly! I find the atheist-physicalist position incomplete, and it is the challenge of the millennium to fill in those huge gaps. Why, if it were perfect, all universities could close their science departments for there would be no more science to do!
Agreed, which is why I always specify the physical processes those atoms undergo and comprise. Indeed, your “pattern” is my “temporal arrangement of fundamental particles in spacetime”. We disagree in that I require there to be a pattern of physical stuff (with mental entities and the mathematical or logical patterns in our minds ultimately being patterns of physical stuff themselves).
To repeat the question a little more specifically, what would you conclude if simple electromagnetic stimulation of the limbic system caused those same experiences?
Apologies - I meant the floating, observing consciousness above the bed when the mushy offal in the bed was utterly inactive. However, I think it is incumbent on you to explain what “brain” that floaty thing inhabits if not the mushy offal one in the bed, since both I and I think our audience find your terminology a little confusing in that respect.
I apologise unreservedly. I asked for your forgiveness in expressing my honest opinion of your position, and do so again. Feel free to be similarly frank about mine - I will not consider it dirty or malicious, and did not intend to be so.
Sorry - my reply made out that I agree with this when I don’t. Tribesmen and 4-day old babies can subitize. They cannot give an answer to 6+7 which would agree with ours. We had to be trained and conditioned to understand such more advanced and “abstract” arithmetic - I might as well say that everyone can really play a guitar like me.
Maybe mammalian intelligence is so; it would be interesting to look at extraterrestrial intelligence and see what they’ve come up with.
I mean this on two levels. As far as cognitive science goes, I don’t think we’ve got anything so rock solid and incontrovertibly useful as the Periodic Table. Two, my guess is that there are indeed algorithms and modules of pattern that go into producing any given mental output. We will eventually start compiling a list of these. And in theory those patterns implemented in a variety of substrates could produce consciousness.
NDEs are strange enough things in people, aren’t they? But I don’t think machine intelligences of the future will seem much like “computers.” I doubt consciousness is even possible on a digital model.
I think the patterns are almost totally alike, but the substrates are different. Some software would run much faster on gallium arsenide than silicon.
Also, when you’re drunk, your substrate is woozy. You dont ask then, “Why don’t I experience that normal state right now?”
Doesn’t prove your point. “Monument” and “gumball” are words, but they are not cognitive outputs. Sure, on on level, those are words. But we also use them to point at the things themselves. Words are cognitive outputs; the things words point to are or are not.
But another thing strikes me: Perhaps we don’t really disagree. The words I choose for my concepts are classic, to you old-fashioned. Your words have a post-modern, skeptical flair. Perhaps this is only a difference in aesthetics, self-identity, and politics.
For, consider this: I have yet to see your model of explanation of things predict anything different than my model would. And if that’s the case, at the end of the day we are agreeing, are we not?
Or, if not so, tell me what your model predicts that mine doesn’t. I see your model as Ockham-confused. Unless it makes mental life easier or more powerful to some degree, I think, “Math and logic are the truth; if you violate them that means you’re wrong,” is a simple precept that never leads to bad things.
OK, I think the above sums up where we’re at. If you think I’m blowing off one of your important points, feel free to repaste it and I will answer it.
Yeah, I know. I meant that you could claim with condience (be “right”) that someone had not proved his/her point with an invalid argument.
[quote]
Yes, but you feel comfortable that the basic skeptical position, despite its lack of completeness, is basically OK, right? The frontal lobes are satisfied?
I would conclude that those experiences are taking place in the brain and can be reproduced or mimicked by directly influencing the brain.
I do think there is a “reality module,” too, however. This is tricky. I’ve had incredible dreams that were not marked as “real,” and some fairly ordinary dreams that were so marked (and thus seemed more than ordinary thereby). I’m not sure that the helmet experiences have the top-level, stake-your-life-on-it “reality marking” that NDErs claim they have. Or they might. (My dreams didn’t have that either.)
That caveat doesn’t change my (and your?) position that all experiences are brain-mediated. Brain being a pattern, in my view. Pattern mediating pattern, makes sense to me.
All I can say is what I say: The body (including the brain) exist after death at a different energy level/vibration/etc. And yes, it will be a while before science figures out how that really works.
So, you’re apologizing but still think I’m old-fashioned, etc.–which is it!
Anyhow, I think most of what we disagree about comes down to politics and aesthetics. So why would I disrespect your position just because the decor or secret handshake is different?
