Can mankind transcend the fabric of space and time?

[Crosson]

We don't know what thoughts are or how the brain works exactly, but the mind clearly is a process of the brain in some way... sounds like you now hold another nonsensical dogmatic belief about the mind. And how does being a physicist make you an expert in AI and neuroscience, anyway?

Admittedly, I don't know the true origin of thoughts. But getting rid of my dogmatic self-contradictory beliefs about materialism was a first step in the right direction.

It doesn't matter that I am a physicist, I have degrees in physics, mathematics, and philosophy, and more importantly, I have thought deeply about the nature of computation, materialism, mind-body duality, and the locus and nature of thoughts. Credentials are truly worthless in this world, but I at least hope you can see that I have considered your materialist position very carefully in my life.

 

[Crosson]

6. It is quite evident that the combination of the various facilities of the human brain can give rise to experience. What do you experience when you are un-conscience?? It seems to me that you need to spend more time read a psych 101 book rather than all that philosophy. Do you realize that the human mind is capable of approximately 100 trillion synaptic operations per second?? Does it not seem that a physical system capable of that many complicated operations every second of every day may be capable of giving rise to something like consciousness?

7. The scientific method is the logical argument that uses electro-chemical activity of the brain to attempt to explain the origin of consciousness.

No, any logical argument that uses electro-chemical activity of the brain to attempt to explain the origin of consciousness must use mathematics. Anything less is mere hand waving, which doesn't pass the muster in science (except for this one issue, about which I find scientists to be dogmatic).

In other words, show me the mathematical model that allows brain states to be mapped onto thoughts. Let B be the set of brain states, and T be the set of thoughts, then any materialist scientific theory of the brain must construct an operator:

O:B -> T

That maps any brain state b to its corresponding thought t. Now the elements of B could be vectors representing the classical state of the particles in the brain, or they could also be smooth vector fields, or maybe something else. But I don't have a clue what mathematical structure would satisfactorily represent the elements of T, perhaps they are infinite-dimensional vectors?

Anyway, I know there is no such model, and although I must admit that I cannot rule out such a possibility in the future, you must also admit that as long as there is no model of the kind that I described then there is no logical materialist explanation other then hand waving.

I don't know why you think anything that goes outside of current scientific theories is necessarily "magic" or "supernatural." As far as I can tell, this is just name calling, and the same thing was done to Newton over his theory of gravity.

 

[Crosson]

Now, I've worked with some people who {I feel} could possible have an empty cavern instead of a brain, but that comment is ridiculous.

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/is_the_brain_really_necessary.htm

 

[JoeDawg]

1. I fail to see the empiricality of any philosophy involving the workings of the mind. However, nueroscience seems to be doing pretty well...

Empiricism is a philosophy.

4. I completely agree with you that we should always ask 'what is going on'. That does not mean that we should assert that there is something magical going on.

Well said.

 

[robertm]

No, any logical argument that uses electro-chemical activity of the brain to attempt to explain the origin of consciousness must use mathematics. Anything less is mere hand waving, which doesn't pass the muster in science (except for this one issue, about which I find scientists to be dogmatic).

In other words, show me the mathematical model that allows brain states to be mapped onto thoughts. Let B be the set of brain states, and T be the set of thoughts, then any materialist scientific theory of the brain must construct an operator:

O:B -> T

That maps any brain state b to its corresponding thought t. Now the elements of B could be vectors representing the classical state of the particles in the brain, or they could also be smooth vector fields, or maybe something else. But I don't have a clue what mathematical structure would satisfactorily represent the elements of T, perhaps they are infinite-dimensional vectors?

Anyway, I know there is no such model, and although I must admit that I cannot rule out such a possibility in the future, you must also admit that as long as there is no model of the kind that I described then there is no logical materialist explanation other then hand waving.

I don't know why you think anything that goes outside of current scientific theories is necessarily "magic" or "supernatural." As far as I can tell, this is just name calling, and the same thing was done to Newton over his theory of gravity.

I would also like to see the mathematical model that can be applied and measure and predict in a system so complex as the human brain. The fact that we do not have such a model does not mean that I am relegated to hand waving, were as philosophy itself could be considered the definition of 'hand waving'. How can you negate the entire field of neurology? I don't know how much you know about psychology, but it becomes quite obvious that there is something physical going on even with a basic knowledge of modern psychology. I have my own ideas on where and how the conscience arises, but it will take quite a while for me to write it out here (not to mention it is getting late). If you would like to hear it just let me know.

I have nothing against theories beyond the present scope of knowledge, I gave my opinion on your ideas of conscious not arising from the physical processes of the brain, and the OP's lack of a well formulated question. I never said anything else about any other fringe theory.

Do not mistake, I love philosophy. And I love reading and studying philosophy just like I do physics. However, I will never try to explain a physical phenomenon with a philosophical mind set. That is not the method of science nor will it lead to productive science.

 

[g33kski11z]

http://www.flatrock.org.nz/topics/science/is_the_brain_really_necessary.htm

Anthony Smith The Mind New York Viking Press, 1984, page 230
Roger Lewin "Is Your Brain Really Necessary?"Science 210 December 1980, page 1232

.. anything more current? Maybe something in a medical journal? Seriously, that did not convince me.

.. or even a better idea, let's open your head and see what's inside.. { joking of course..}

 

[eextreme]

A question related to this one. Why can we control our thoughts and movements but not others? And how did our consciousness came into existence?

 

[Moridin]

Cronos, so you prefer religious mythology over scientific fact? You are also contradicting your own position, since religious mythology cannot be expressed mathematically. Moreover, religious mythology makes empirical claim that are by definition untestable and therefore anti-science and that type of creationist propaganda is by definition hand waving. Your position is based on a constructed dichotomy between mind and matter. Please provide evidence for this, or the dichotomy falls. Remember that your argument from incredulity and persecuted genius complex, where you compared yourself with Newton like many other cranks besides you do, is not evidence.

Feel free to address the massive amount of evidence from cognitive neuroscience conclusively demonstrating the materialist position.

Thanks.

 

[Crosson]

Cronos, so you prefer religious mythology over scientific fact? You are also contradicting your own position, since religious mythology cannot be expressed mathematically.

No, you are falsely attributing a self-contradictory position to me. In general, you should try to understand your opponent's position by assuming that it is consistent.

Your position is based on a constructed dichotomy between mind and matter. Please provide evidence for this, or the dichotomy falls.

No, that is not the basis of my position. Go back to my previous post and you will see that my position is based on the problems with defining an operator:

O: B -> T

Specifically, no one has put forth a reasonable candidate mathematical structure that can be used to represent the elements of T. The set of all thoughts that a person could possibly have, is that set even finite? Because we know that the set of brain states in finite, and so if the set of possible thoughts is infinite then those two facts alone make a cardinality argument against there being a one-to-one correspondence between thoughts and brain states.

Remember that your argument from incredulity and persecuted genius complex, where you compared yourself with Newton like many other cranks besides you do, is not evidence.

I'm not sure you even understand the language well enough to know that you called me a crank, since you don't even have sufficient perception to read my name correctly, but I have presented more of an argument then you have, so you are the one who apparently holds dogmatic and religious positions.

Tell me what evidence is there that a specific arrangement of particles in my brain corresponds to a specific thought, such as imagining the color red. If you can't tell me, then face the fact that you are being dogmatic.

Feel free to address the massive amount of evidence from cognitive neuroscience conclusively demonstrating the materialist position.

Why don't you feel free to present some of it? Or are you too lazy and illiterate to argue for your own position?

In general I feel that neuroscience does a fine job in understanding the brain as a physiological process, but miserably fails when it is paired with social science methods from psychology to try and understand the mind.

As an analogy, we cannot determine the information content in a computers processor cache without some way to decode the transistor states back into information. It is ludicrous to say that the transistor states are the information, since they could be interpreted in infinitely many ways. Similarly, it is ludicrous to say that brain states are thoughts, since each brain state could be interpreted in infinitely many ways. My question for materialist is "where and by what mechanism are brain states decoded into thoughts i.e. information?"

I want you all to stop attacking me on grounds that I am a mystic. All I have done is to suggest that the materialist explanation is incomplete, I have not suggested any alternatives. I am a critic, not a crank. Why don't any of you consider the that the failure to find a mathematical materialist theory of the mind may be indicating that this cannot be done? I don't like to hear about "the theory of everything" when physics has failed to explain the fundamental mechanism of the mind; or if you prefer, physics to date has not found any elementary constituents of matter that could possibly be construed as constituting thoughts, according to the reasons I have given above.

 

[shamrock5585]

I never said that Einstein was wrong, I just pointed out that he is far from being "the greatest mind we have ever known." You must have low perception if you think I said he was wrong.

As for your comment about Hiroshima, if you knew about the history or science behind the first atomic bomb you would know that the splitting of the uranium nucleus was first accomplished by German chemists who were not using special relativity in any way. Einstein's only role in the creation of the nuclear bomb was to urge president Roosevelt to construct one, in a 1939 letter. About this I am almost certain that the residents of Hiroshima would say "Einstein was wrong."

ok thanks for critisizing my comment and saying i didnt perceive you correctly when you missed my point completely... the reason i said ask the people in hiroshima is because the atomic bomb is direct evidence of E=mc^2 being correct. even still we see in fusion that the missing mass is converted into massive amounts of energy. Einstein was correct before we could even do an experiment to prove it. I also find it funny to say a person that came up with some of the most ground breaking and complex theories of our time is "far from the greatest minds we have ever known" haha

 

[robertm]

Crosson, would you agree that when you experience a thought you are able to experience it through a limited number of means,

i.e... Images, sounds, feelings (including emotion and kinesthetics), tastes, and smells;

the combination of which gives you the full experience of conscience? I do not think you are proposing that we are able to do anything extrasensory with our thoughts, please correct me if I am wrong.

If you agree, then how would you explain the fact that everything and every way we can experience is a product of physical input?

There are no facilities of the brain that can yield an experience that is beyond what our sensory perceptions can deliver to our brains from our physical environments.

Though there are many, I think that one fact is the biggest whole in your logic.

 

[Moridin]

Crosson, you are still requesting a type of mathematical formalism you yourself cannot provide, so I'm afraid your position is still utterly contradictory and self-detonates on deployment. Yet, despite being aware of this fact, you continue to assert it. That is intellectually dishonest. However, then you go on to state that we should just assume that your position is consistent and ignore any contradictions. Since mathematics is just another language, it is just as irrational to demand difficult mathematical formalism as demanding that all claims be in Spanish or else just labeling it as mere "hand waving". It reminds me of the neocreationist William Dembski's bold claim that all critics that where not applying rigorous mathematical formalism could be ignored with a similar reference to "hand waving".

You then go on to assert that your position is not based on a dichotomy between mind and matter. However, that is materialism by definition, so don't see what you are trying to pull with your crankery here. Your entire argument seems to be based on an argument from incredulity, that is, no one has yet perfectly understood everything there is to know about the mind and brain, so therefore, that which we do not currently understand must be magic. We do not understand everything there is to know about the formation of snowflakes, Does this mean that the formation of snowflakes requires that clouds have supernatural powers? Before we continue this discussion, describe to me exactly why arguments from incredulity are invalid. If you do not understand this simple fact I'm not sure that a rational discussion is possible, since your religious dogmatism is getting in the way of evidence-based reasoning.

You then arbitrarily claim that the set of thoughts a human can have is somehow "infinite" and that this disproves materialism, yet fail to provide any evidence at all for this outrageous and untestable claim. It seems entirely reasonable to think that the mind is limited in its function and capacity. The burden of proof here lies in your corner. Moreover you utterly fail specify what you mean by "infinite" and why and how such a concept can even make sense outside of mathematics. David Hilbert, perhaps the greatest mathematician of this century states, "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea."[1] Naturally, you cannot define "infinite" as "not finite", since that only tells us what "infinite" isn't, but nothing about what "infinite" actually refers to. If I say that X isn't a banana, then that gives us no information at all about what we mean by X. The same reasoning applies to the concept of 'immaterial'.

I hold neither a dogmatic nor religious position, since my position is based on the clear findings of cognitive neuroscience. I need not present a shred of evidence since my position is self-evident. All the findings of science as well as our everyday experience has confirmed that we live in a completely material universe. However, in the null zone of religious dogmatism, everything goes, apparently. Thus, you have the burden of proof to demonstrate that something more, in this case something you have described as "magic", exists. If not, your position fall. Since you so vitriolically reject scientific materialism, you are immediately faced with a long list of serious problems.

(1) If thoughts are not material, what are they exactly? How can thoughts be magical? What do they consist of? What is the fundamental unit of this 'immaterial' substance and how do you know?
(2) How does the interaction between the immaterial mind and the material brain occur? How do you know? It is self-evident that the material world can influence our thoughts but how does this occur? How can material processes influence something that you claim is not a material process and vice versa?
(3) How does the interaction between two immaterial mind work? How do you know?
(4) Where did this 'immaterial' substance come from? How do you know? Claiming that it came from another 'immaterial' substance is not an answer.
(5) Exactly when in our evolutionary history did organisms start to acquire 'immaterial' minds? What selective advantage can an 'immaterial' mind have for an organism? How do you know?
(6) Do other organism besides H. sapiens have 'immaterial' minds? Do bacteria or trilobites have 'immaterial' minds? Dinosaurs? How about chimps? Do they have 'immaterial' minds? Did H. Habilis have 'immaterial' minds? How about A. afarensis? How do you know?
(7) Where do these 'immaterial' minds go after the material part of you decomposes? How do you know?
(8) How are these 'immaterial' minds attached to the brain? Why do they not float away when you move your head? How do you know?

etc.

The answer to the analogous questions for scientific materialism are clearly explicable and, I dare say it, has already been pretty much solved or just about. However, on the magical position, it is abundantly clear that these questions are in principle unanswerable and unsolvable was well as requiring mountains of shaky and unjustified ad hoc postulates. Not only does there not exist exist a set of valid methodologies for gaining knowledge about these 'immaterial' minds, there also exist no epistemology to figure what would constitute knowledge.

(9) What methodologies are valid for gaining knowledge about these 'immaterial' minds? How do you know?
(10) What epistemology or what set of epistemologies are valid for separating knowledge from mere predjudical assertion when it comes to 'immaterial' minds? How can you separate truth from falsehood when it comes to statements about 'immaterial' minds? How do you know?

Your question only pushes the problem back into a world of make-belief where, epistemically speaking, everything goes.

(11) What specific arrangement of this 'immaterial' substance corresponds to a specific thought, such as imagining the color red? How do you know?

Tell me what evidence is there that a specific arrangement of particles in my brain corresponds to a specific thought, such as imagining the color red.

It would argue that thoughts and experiences are processes or sequences of specific arrangement of particles and their interactions, rather than just a specific arrangement of particles. This is further supported by the fact that both the physical and mental processes in the brain are spatiotemporally smeared (Libet 2002, Dennett 1991, 2003, Pinker 1999 etc). In this sense, experiences are emergent properties of physical processes in the brain, so they key here seems to be emergence, rather than greedy reductionism. The electromagnetic radiation hit the eye and is transformed by light sensitive cells into electrochemical processes, which is what we mean by experience of "red". Now, when we remember something, we always remember in images, words, sound, touch or taste. For example, experiments have been done where a neurosurgeon found a particular location in a patient's brain, that if stimulated, a song would start paying in the patient's mind. Every time that same location was stimulated, the same song would play (Sacks, 1998). This makes perfect sense on materialism, but is inconsistent with magic. Chimps routinely out-perform humans on memory tests[2]. How is this even possible if materialism is false? Do they have 'immaterial' minds or is a material brain all they have? Yet again, you must appeal to even more
shaky theological ad hoc postulates to rescue your worldview. The positive evidence from mapping cognitive features of the mind to the brain alone is overwhelming in its support for materialism. There are plenty of good popular books on the topic such as

"Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain" by Antonio Damasio
"Synaptic Self: How Our Brains Become Who We Are" by Joseph LeDoux
"Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind" by V. S. Ramachandran
"Soul Made Flesh: The Discovery of the Brain--and How it Changed the World" by Carl Zimmer
"Evolutionary Cognitive Neuroscience" by Steven M. Platek (eds)

I could go into more specific arguments later when you are done with the content in this post.

[1] David Hilbert, "On the Infinite", in Philosophy of Mathematics, ed. with an Introduction by Paul Benacerraf and Hillary Putnam (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice–Hall, 1964), pp. 139, 141
[2]

 

[Crosson]

Crosson, you are still requesting a type of mathematical formalism you yourself cannot provide, so I'm afraid your position is still utterly contradictory and self-detonates on deployment.

No, I am pointing out that your confidence in your own claims is ill-founded because you do not have at this time a mathematical model for them, nor can you (correct me if I am wrong) even describe the structure of the set of thoughts.

This is akin to the situation in physics not at the time of Newton, when the dynamical laws were discovered, but before the invention of Cartesian geometry when we didn't even know how to describe positions in terms of coordinates!

However, then you go on to state that we should just assume that your position is consistent and ignore any contradictions.

My position is that science has not even demonstrated that the materialist mind is a viable possible explanation.

Since mathematics is just another language, it is just as irrational to demand difficult mathematical formalism as demanding that all claims be in Spanish or else just labeling it as mere "hand waving".

Irrational to demand mathematical formalism? That's what science is! Anything else is just correlated observations without understanding. If you don't believe me, believe them:

"Mathematics is the gate and key to the sciences." -- Roger Bacon

"Mathematics is the science of definiteness, the necessary vocabulary of those who know." -- W. J. White

"No human investigation can be called real science if it cannot be demonstrated mathematically." -- Leonardo da Vinci

"The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can be a science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration." -- Leonardo Da Vinci

"Numerical precision is the very soul of science." -- Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson

"One factor that has remained constant through all the twists and turns of the history of physical science is the decisive importance of the mathematical imagination." -- Freeman Dyson

I am sure you could find many quotes to support the importance of spanish language as well

It reminds me of the neocreationist William Dembski's

Oh yeah, well you remind me of various mathematically illiterate psychologists!

We do not understand everything there is to know about the formation of snowflakes, Does this mean that the formation of snowflakes requires that clouds have supernatural powers? Before we continue this discussion, describe to me exactly why arguments from incredulity are invalid.

I am not using the argument from incredulity to deduce anything other than that you simply are making claims that are unsupported. As I have said many times, my only claim is that there is no support for materialism, and in fact there is ample support against it.

I didn't want to do this, but I am also going to bring up the issue of free will. The materialist model of the mind is incompatible with freewill, because the materialist's think that motion and matter is all that there is and according to all known physics the motions of matter are always determined necessarily. The point is that all of our experience suggest to us that we have free will, and yet the materialist can only say "free will is an illusion" which is an intellectually dishonest and self-contradictory opinion.

your religious dogmatism is getting in the way of evidence-based reasoning.

And your name calling is tiresome. I'm not religious in the slightest degree, and I'm not sure you know what dogma is in this sense, so I will explain that these are beliefs that are never questioned.

When's the last time you seriously questioned your belief in materialism?

You then arbitrarily claim that the set of thoughts a human can have is somehow "infinite" and that this disproves materialism, yet fail to provide any evidence at all for this outrageous and untestable claim.

No one has proposed a mathematical structure that corresponds to the set of thoughts, so we do not know if it is infinite, or even if it has a larger finite cardinality then the set of brain states. I retract this statement, which was only meant as food for thought.

Hilbert says "The infinite is nowhere to be found in reality. It neither exists in nature nor provides a legitimate basis for rational thought. The role that remains for the infinite to play is solely that of an idea."

And according to the materialist position, that idea exists in reality, identical to its brain state.

I hold neither a dogmatic nor religious position, since my position is based on the clear findings of cognitive neuroscience. I need not present a shred of evidence since my position is self-evident.

Neuroscience can never rise above meaningless correlations, since it does not even attempt to explain the mechanisms by which definite brain states correspond to definite thoughts.

I also find it ironic that you "are not dogmatic" about your "self-evident" position.

(1) If thoughts are not material, what are they exactly? How can thoughts be magical? What do they consist of? What is the fundamental unit of this 'immaterial' substance and how do you know?

I don't claim to know what thoughts are, you do! You claim that they are brain states, and I am merely pointing out that the evidence to date does not support your position, and that you are making logical errors in thinking that it does.

Ironically it seems that you are apply the argument from incredulity, since as far as I can tell your deductive process is similar to this:

Premise1: Anything that is not material is magical, mystic, religious, and I hate it.

Conclusion1: Therefore, thoughts are material.

(2) How does the interaction between the immaterial mind and the material brain occur? How do you know? It is self-evident that the material world can influence our thoughts but how does this occur? How can material processes influence something that you claim is not a material process and vice versa?

I agree, none of these things are possible. The mistake is your implicit premise that asserts the primacy of the physical world.

(3) How does the interaction between two immaterial mind work? How do you know?

I don't know what you mean here. Do you mean telepathic communication? I don't know if that's possible.

(4) Where did this 'immaterial' substance come from? How do you know? Claiming that it came from another 'immaterial' substance is not an answer.

Can you explain where the substance in your materialist viewpoint came from?

(5) Exactly when in our evolutionary history did organisms start to acquire 'immaterial' minds? What selective advantage can an 'immaterial' mind have for an organism? How do you know?

Probably at the same time, in the same degree, that a neuroscientist attributes thought to those organisms.

(6) Do other organism besides H. sapiens have 'immaterial' minds? Do bacteria or trilobites have 'immaterial' minds? Dinosaurs? How about chimps? Do they have 'immaterial' minds? Did H. Habilis have 'immaterial' minds? How about A. afarensis? How do you know?

It depends on whether these creatures have thoughts, I do not know.

(7) Where do these 'immaterial' minds go after the material part of you decomposes? How do you know?

Since immaterial minds wouldn't exist in space, I don't think it would make sense to ask where they go. If you are asking whether a person's mind persists after the end of their body, I think this is unlikely.

(8) How are these 'immaterial' minds attached to the brain? Why do they not float away when you move your head? How do you know?

Anything that interacts with physical substance is by definition physical substance.

The answer to the analogous questions for scientific materialism are clearly explicable and, I dare say it, has already been pretty much solved or just about. However, on the magical position, it is abundantly clear that these questions are in principle unanswerable and unsolvable was well as requiring mountains of shaky and unjustified ad hoc postulates.

Is any undiscovered physics considered by you to be magic?

Are you open to the possibility that the workings of the human mind may involve vast amounts of fundamental physics that has not been discovered to date?

If so, then we agree. If not, then this reaffirms my purpose which is to show you that current materialist physical theories cannot account for the human mind. I am most interested to see how you address the problem of free will, since all of our physical theories are deterministic and leave no possibility for conscious choices. If you choose the "free will is an illusion" route, then please address the criticism that this is an intellectually dishonest self-contradiction.

Soon I will address the specific findings of cognitive science that you have brought up.

 

[robertm]

Soon I will address the specific findings of cognitive science that you have brought up.

Great! That is exactly what I am interested in. A systematic denunciation of an entire scientific field of evidence. Not just the specific ones brought up, you really have to create an entire new field of study to back up your claims.

Actually I am a bit confused, you still have not presented your own ideas in a concise manner and I am not sure what exactly it is that you believe, or have you not come to a conclusion yet yourself? Are you just denying the evidence and theories stated here, or do you actually have an alternative system of belief?

Oh and please do tell how you can possibly explain the hole in your logic I pointed out a couple post ago. The fact that thought cannot be experienced in any way other than through the same mechanisms of the physical senses. The ability to 'think' in the human sense most certainly arose after the ability to perceive physical sensory input.

So far there has been a lot of speculation and philosophy (mostly on your part ), I think it is time we get to some actual science...

 

[Moridin]

I will critique the rest of you post when you have finished yours.

And according to the materialist position, that idea exists in reality, identical to its brain state.

Fallacy of equivocation. Idea exists in reality, but what they represents may not exist in reality. The idea of a pink elephant may exist in reality, but that does not mean that pink elephants exists in reality.

Can you explain where the substance in your materialist viewpoint came from?

I'm not a substance dualist, so the question does apply not to materialism.

Anything that interacts with physical substance is by definition physical substance.

P1: Anything that interacts with physical substance is by definition physical substance.
P2: The brain is physical substance.
C1: Anything that interacts with the brain is by definition physical substance.
P3: The mind and thoughts interacts with the brain.
C2: The mind and thoughts is by definition physical substance.

Now, even though we do not know everything there is to know about how thought and the mind can be physical, this allows us to justifiably claim that they are as knowledge. Does this mean that materialism wins?

I am most interested to see how you address the problem of free will, since all of our physical theories are deterministic and leave no possibility for conscious choices. If you choose the "free will is an illusion" route, then please address the criticism that this is an intellectually dishonest self-contradiction.

My prediction seems to have come true, in that you tried to invoke another mythological concept as ad hoc in order to rescue the first. I'm a compatibilist and hold that all the freedom worth wanting and moral responsibility is compatible with determinism. I wrote a brief response in the free will thread. I most likely disagree with any definition of 'choice' you have.

 

[Moridin]

might be of interest

Computer Model Reveals How Brain Represents Meaning

ScienceDaily (June 2, 2008) — Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have taken an important step toward understanding how the human brain codes the meanings of words by creating the first computational model that can predict the unique brain activation patterns associated with names for things that you can see, hear, feel, taste or smell.

Researchers previously have shown that they can use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect which areas of the brain are activated when a person thinks about a specific word. A Carnegie Mellon team has taken the next step by predicting these activation patterns for concrete nouns -- things that are experienced through the senses -- for which fMRI data does not yet exist.

The work could eventually lead to the use of brain scans to identify thoughts and could have applications in the study of autism, disorders of thought such as paranoid schizophrenia, and semantic dementias such as Pick's disease.

 

[Crosson]

Computer Model Reveals How Brain Represents Meaning

One of the most complex mysteries that humanity has ever unraveled is the mystery of the night sky.

Ptolemy was able to record the position of the planets and to predict their position at later times. This is analogous to knowing which parts of the brain light up with which thoughts, although the level of precision with which we can specify a thought is more analogous to "the star is in the east" then to "42 degrees declination, etc".

Being able to relate the time of year to the precise precision of the planets is a major feat of observational correlation. This is analogous to what neuroscientist are doing, and they are succeeding. Essentially they are making a long list of which brain states go with which thoughts:

B1 T1
B2 T2
B3 T3
.
.
.

And then it is likely that they will find a system of deferents and epicycles to organize their observation.

But the real understanding of the motions of the planets came from Newton's dynamical theory of gravity. Finally we had an answer to the question of why the planets move in the paths that they do, along with an incredible variety of other interesting answers to questions that we didn't even know to ask before Newton.

Even in the heyday of Ptolemy's geocentric theory there were always the dissidents that dared to ask "why do the planets move this way?" but these questions were ridiculed as foolish and a waste of time. But eventually history showed that these were the only questions truly worth asking, while knowing the actual positions of the planets is more of a waste of time. That's why I continue to ask for a dynamical theory of how brain states correspond to thoughts, since a list of observations can never really prove anything, even if someone organizes them into a predictive model. We will only really gain understanding when we can start from basic dynamical principles and derive the known observations.

P1: Anything that interacts with physical substance is by definition physical substance.
P2: The brain is physical substance.
C1: Anything that interacts with the brain is by definition physical substance.
P3: The mind and thoughts interacts with the brain.
C2: The mind and thoughts is by definition physical substance.

Now, even though we do not know everything there is to know about how thought and the mind can be physical, this allows us to justifiably claim that they are as knowledge. Does this mean that materialism wins?

No, because the conclusion is so absurd that it forces me to reject premise 2. This is a valid philosophical position:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idealism

Anyway, the only reason that I did not have energy to defend the dualist views that you ascribed to me is because I find those views repulsive, contradictory, and incoherent, as it seems you do as well.

Do you understand why idealism allows mankind to transcend space and time?

 

[Moridin]

However, I take it that you agree that whether or not materialism is true is a different question from the specifics of how materialism could is true? Furthermore, arguing using Ptolemy is incompatible with idealism, since it presuppose the validity of the senses and realism.

So you rather descent into the murky waters of idealism than to accept the truth of the materialist position? As you know, with you affirmation of comes (depending on which type) the rejection of realism, empiricism, the validity of the senses and ultimately science itself. Are you really prepared for the consequences of such a worldview? Since I'm sure what form of idealism you subscribe to here, all my arguments may not apply to your position.

Enter Richard Davis' argument from existence.

P4. Either the noumena exists or it does not.
P5. If noumena does not exist, then there are only phenomena, in which case the categories apply to things-in-themselves, for there would be no distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves.
P6. If noumena exists, then surely the category of reality would apply to the noumena, in which case the categories do apply to thing-in-themselves.
C3. Therefore, the categories apply to things-in-themselves (from P5&P6).

If the above is sound, this seems to a first approximation be a defeater for Kantian idealism.

P7. If the senses are valid, the brain is physical substance.
P8. The senses are valid.
C4. Therefore, the brain is physical substance.

P7 seems reasonable, since if the senses are valid, we can use empiricism to gain knowledge about the natural world, which includes gaining the knowledge that the brain is physical substance through science experimenting. Now, in our discussion, the validity of the senses cannot be denied with resulting in a contradiction, because such an assertion would implicitly presuppose the validity of the senses, thus stealing the concept. Therefore, any argument that is based on the invalidity of the senses is self-feating on deployment. If I come up to you and assert that I do not exist, my thesis automatically self-destructs. If I can communicate to you that I do not exist, then clearly I exist. If I assert that all language is meaningless, then I have also contradicted myself. In order for me to verbally communicate that language is meaningless, language must have at least some meaning. If I tell you that the senses are invalid then my argument also self-destructs, since I am using your vision to communicate to you that your sense of vision is invalid. If I can successfully communicate my argument to you, then your vision must be valid. Thus I must assume that your senses are valid in order to convince you that your senses are not valid, which cannot stand. In a similar fashion, trying to deny the validity of your own senses also fails. If I am nothing more than a mere hallucination or a figment of your imagination, it would be completely irrational to engage in a rational discussion with me, sort of arguing with yourself in the mirror and expecting a meaningful discussion.

We could add Wittgenstein's private language argument as well. How does your idealism handle that? I guess you could, as a final act of desperation, deny logic or argue that all knowledge are mere prejudicial assertions or arbitrary social constructs, but I doubt you would stoop to that level.

 

[Crosson]

Furthermore, arguing using Ptolemy is incompatible with idealism, since it presuppose the validity of the senses and realism.

Do you mean that as an idealist I cannot refer to Ptolemy? Or do you mean that I must reject his method? I don't see how idealism has any bearing on the analogy I presented.

As you know, with you affirmation of comes (depending on which type) the rejection of realism, empiricism, the validity of the senses and ultimately science itself.

As I see it, I only reject science in the sense that we all know renormalization in QFT is stopgap procedure, a reflection of an incomplete theory. Idealism implies that science is incomplete.

But if you are a fan of Kuhn (I'm not) then you think progress in science comes through a series of revolutions rather then incremental improvements, and in this sense I agree that idealism ultimately rejects the science of today.

Enter Richard Davis' argument from existence.

P4. Either the noumena exists or it does not.
P5. If noumena does not exist, then there are only phenomena, in which case the categories apply to things-in-themselves, for there would be no distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves.
P6. If noumena exists, then surely the category of reality would apply to the noumena, in which case the categories do apply to thing-in-themselves.
C3. Therefore, the categories apply to things-in-themselves (from P5&P6).

I think this is a very good argument, but I scrutinized it closely because the conclusion is absurd. I came to suspect P4, and indeed I find that it presumes that the category of quality (affirmation, negation) applies to noumena.

The use of the law of the excluded middle is also suspect. Following the intuitionists, the statement A or B is true only if one of A or B can be proven, which is explicitly not the case for the existence of noumena.

P7. If the senses are valid, the brain is physical substance.
P8. The senses are valid.
C4. Therefore, the brain is physical substance.

Sorry, I don't agree with these premises. I don't find much value in empiricism (I argue against it below).

If I am nothing more than a mere hallucination or a figment of your imagination, it would be completely irrational to engage in a rational discussion with me, sort of arguing with yourself in the mirror and expecting a meaningful discussion.

Not that I think you are a figment of my imagination (naive idealism), but isn't it true that parts of our dreams can seem as independent of ourselves as anything in waking life? Specifically, if I am flying a plane in my dream then there is an artificial distinction between my dream-body and the dream-plane. According to your logic, is it irrational to feel this distinction in our dreams?

We could add Wittgenstein's private language argument as well. How does your idealism handle that?

What problem does the private language argument pose for idealism? Clearly there are many conscious people out there to develop language with.

I guess you could, as a final act of desperation, deny logic or argue that all knowledge are mere prejudicial assertions or arbitrary social constructs, but I doubt you would stoop to that level.

No, I will not do that, unless you count my intuitionist suspicions and interest in topos theory as "denying logic."

Since I answered each of your critiques, I have two of my own.

1) How does a materialist solve the Wittgenstein rule-following paradox?

An idealist can use a line of argument similar to that found in Plato's Meno dialog, where the job of the teacher is to remind the pupil of the eternal ideas that he/she has temporarily forgotten.

2) Why do we take empiricism seriously if all sense impressions are private objects?

As we know from Wittgenstein's arguments in PI, such objects are impossible.

 

[Moridin]

Concerning the argument from existence presented earlier, your two objections where (1) skepticism against the application category of quality to the noumena and (2) skepticism against the use of law of the excluded middle. Now, it seems to me that if affirmation or negation does not apply to the noumena, then this implies that claiming that the concept exist is not meaningful as such, or relevant, since that would presuppose that a category of relevance or meaningfulness applies to the noumena. I would like to argue that the notion that the application of a category of quality to the noumena is a necessary presupposition in order to hold the concept of the noumena as meaningful in the first place. Naturally, a meaningless concept, such as 'jaxyplonk' or 'dangfrasd', cannot by definition refer to anything that exists. A similar argument can be made against your second objection, either because noncognitivism is enough to disprove a concept or because the asserted inability to prove or disprove a concept render it meaningless as well? Naturally, a rejection of law of the excluded middle leads to the rather absurd conclusion that even if you could show that it was true that materialism was not true, this would not necessarily imply that materialism was false. If we allow that something can be true and false at the same time, then by the principle of explosion, everything goes, including

P9. \exists x: x \wedge \neg x
C5. Materialism is true (from P9)

Since you reject the conclusion as absurd, it seems to me that you must also reject any skepticism against the use of law of the excluded middle.

Not that I think you are a figment of my imagination (naive idealism), but isn't it true that parts of our dreams can seem as independent of ourselves as anything in waking life? Specifically, if I am flying a plane in my dream then there is an artificial distinction between my dream-body and the dream-plane. According to your logic, is it irrational to feel this distinction in our dreams?

Yes, holding such as distinction would be irrational if one hold as knowledge that any such a distinction is false. Do you dispute the validity of the senses? Do you reject the position that the senses are epistemically infallible? Or do you hold some form of restricted representationalism?

What problem does the private language argument pose for idealism? Clearly there are many conscious people out there to develop language with.

How can an idealist commit to realism about other minds and at the same time don't find much value in empiricism? Seems like a rank contradiction to me.

1) How does a materialist solve the Wittgenstein rule-following paradox?

I'm not sure that anything more than a straight solution is required. Now, I'm no Wittgenstein scholar, but didn't W. himself rejects the paradox as based on a misunderstanding and point to a distinction between interpretations and 'graspings' as the key to dissolving the paradox? I honestly do not see a threat to a classical realist account of meaning? Also, I'm not sure that I understand your prosposed idealist solution. Can you expand on it a bit?

2) Why do we take empiricism seriously if all sense impressions are private objects?

What makes you think that all sense impressions are private objects, or that sense impressions are somehow fundamentally different from the objects they represent?

 

[octelcogopod]

Can mankind go beyond the limits of spacetime?

First off, this is an extremely vague and difficult question, like robertm pointed out.
But I will try to answer from my own perspective nevertheless.

First off, defining timespace is not that easy. We could define it as everything observable, but this brings numerous issues like the issue about subjective perception.
But let's say for arguments sake we define it as everything we can observe, and by observe I mean touch, see, hear, and also observe in the laboratory like with a hadron collider.

In that case, it gets a bit more easy. For one, humans cannot move their bodies into a dimension or spatial object that is not compatible with our senses and our bodies, so in the physical sense, if we can go there, we can 'transcend' to it.
But that of course brings the issue if we are even transcending, and if it's not just another dimension of reality.

Speaking of transcending too, the word of course implies that we change in order to enter this new reality, which could imply that we could create technology that fits with the new reality, but that our bodies originally do not fit.
If such is the case, the new reality would still need some tangible or other connection to the current reality, otherwise /nothing/ from our reality could enter into it.

And lastly, there is the subjective standpoint on the question.
The problem of awareness is that once humans are aware of something, we automatically get a choice.
So in the ultimate sense, if we become aware of our own inner workings, we should in theory be able to make a choice outside of physical reality.
Right now we are not aware on any level the inner workings of our brain, and most likely this is impossible, but if it isn't, maybe we can 'transcend' our brain, and become aware on a much deeper level, but that is only if the mind is capable of altering matter, but this is too complicated of an issue to get into here, and most likely it's not true either way.

 

[robertm]

Here is some science for you Crosson:

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/2005%20Skeptics%20Society%20Annual%20Conference/"

A very lengthy symposium on the Brain, Mind, and Consciousness. From 2005 I believe. Includes the likes of:

Michael Shermer executive director of the Skeptics Society,

Roger Bingham of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the U.Cal.,

Christof Koch Professor of Cognitive and Behavioural Biology at Caltech,

Alison Gopnik a proffessor of Psychology at the U.Cal. at Berkley,

Harvard Psychologist Richard McNally,

Terry Sejnowski Director of the Computational Neurobiology lab at the Salk Institute in San Diego,

Susan Blackmore a one-time paranormalist turned skeptic,

Caltech Neurologist John Allman,

Paul Zak professor of economics at Claremont Graduate University,

Hank Schlinger a psychologist at CSU, Northridge, and

Ursula Goodenough professor of biology at Washington University, St. Louis.

I believe most if not all of these people would disagree with you Crosson, and they have evidence to back it up. Do you have any counter evidence to present? Or just 'counter philosophy'?

 

[octelcogopod]

I will ask Moridin a simple question, about this immaterial mind, and then we can go from there.

When I look at a red surface, I see the color red. This color is manifested in physical reality as a set of frequencies in the visible electromagnetic spectrum.
However, no science/math/physics can calculate what a red color looks like.
Unlike a sphere, or a cube, which both can be described mathematically, the colorful appearance of neither object can be described.
There is then an immaterial property, the color red, which exists only as waves, but not as the color red.

To me this is the core of the discussion, because not only color is 'immaterial' in this sense, but also all other sensory perception.
Can math or physics describe how much it hurts to cut off an arm? Can it describe how good it feels to eat a chocolate bar?
No matter how much neuroscience pokes in the brain, there is at /a minimum/ a lower level (read quantum physics and beyond) set of rules that we must calculate and predict to understand these phenomena.
We could create a complete map of brain states, and the feelings/thoughts that arise from them, but the entire subjective side of it is still missing.

 

[Crosson]

Here is some science for you Crosson:

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/2005%20Skeptics%20Society%20Annual%20Conference/"

This is worse then I feared, these scientist's are prematurely biased towards their desired conclusion. Far from showing me evidence, they are instead just repeating their conclusion over and again, as if the identification between brain states and thoughts was a fact of the language. At the very least this shows that they are too crude in style to present a deductive argument without shortcutting instantly to their conclusion every five minutes.

Also, that audio-visual has too many irrelevant anecdotes, I would prefer manuscripts that are as dense and to the point as possible.

I believe most if not all of these people would disagree with you Crosson, and they have evidence to back it up.

I don't care how many confused people disagree with me. What you see as evidence, I see as misguided and biased interpretations. Frequently they assume much more then they claim to show; they are not delicate enough in their use of concepts to be able to handle these issues.

Do you have any counter evidence to present? Or just 'counter philosophy'?

The grammar of your use of 'just' indicates that you think science to be somehow superior to philosophy. Philosophy is concerned with concept development, and science goes astray when its concepts are poorly understood. All the evidence you could present doesn't change anything if it involves premises that are stronger than its conclusion.

Concerning the argument from existence presented earlier, your two objections where

(1) skepticism against the application category of quality to the noumena

I would like to argue that the notion that the application of a category of quality to the noumena is a necessary presupposition in order to hold the concept of the noumena as meaningful in the first place.

But this presupposition is the same as your conclusion C3, that categories apply to things-in-themselves.

I disagree with you, and think that the concept of noumena is meaningful without it belonging to the category of quality. It's meaning is it's use (L.W.).

A similar argument can be made against your second objection, either because noncognitivism is enough to disprove a concept or because the asserted inability to prove or disprove a concept render it meaningless as well?

Noncognitivism is hardly a disproof of anything, this is a form of the appeal to incredulity.

A concept which cannot be proven or disproven (in a particular system) is called undecidable. Mathematical logic has succeeded in proving some theorems to be undecidable within it's standard framework, e.g. the continuum hypothesis, and Godel's incompleteness theorem asserts that any logical system of reasonable complexity will contain undecidable statements.

Furthermore, undecidability cannot make a concept meaningless, because it's meaning is it's use.

Naturally, a rejection of law of the excluded middle leads to the rather absurd conclusion that even if you could show that it was true that materialism was not true, this would not necessarily imply that materialism was false. If we allow that something can be true and false at the same time, then by the principle of explosion, everything goes, including

Your first sentence is true, but your second sentence does not necessarily follow from the first.

If we let go of the law of the excluded middle, but maintain the law of non-contradiction, then we are forced to let something else go and the prime candidate is the double negation law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionism

You may also want to read about the developments in mathematical logic that go beyond the law of the excluded middle. A good starting point is the theory of smooth infinitesimal analysis (not to be confused with Robinson's nonstandard analysis):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smooth_infinitesimal_analysis

Yes, holding such as distinction would be irrational if one hold as knowledge that any such a distinction is false.

I am a lucid dreamer, but even if I know that it is a dream-plane this does not make the feeling of separation go away. Remember that according to Wittgenstein knowledge is ultimately grounded in forms of life that stem from primitive reactions, and no amount of 'knowledge' is enough to rationally conclude that the dream-plane is a part of myself. We cannot hold 'rational' beliefs that are in discord with the way we go about our actions in the world!

Do you dispute the validity of the senses?

The fallacy of the loaded question, e.g. "have you stopped cheating on your wife yet? Yes or No?"

What do you mean by 'the senses', and what does it mean to say that they are valid or invalid?

Perhaps you mean "do you think that analyzing sense impressions is a valid way to learn about the world." If so then I agree, provided that 'the world' is short for 'the world of sense impressions.' And less you think this is an empty statement, I am merely asserting that the world of sense impressions has enough structure or logos that it can be organized to at least some extent in terms of concepts, as science has done to date.

How can an idealist commit to realism about other minds and at the same time don't find much value in empiricism? Seems like a rank contradiction to me.

I might have made a bad word choice, I didn't mean to fully assert realism towards other minds. For an idealist to deal with LW's private language argument we only need to assert the apparent existence of other minds.

I'm not sure that anything more than a straight solution is required. Now, I'm no Wittgenstein scholar, but didn't W. himself rejects the paradox as based on a misunderstanding and point to a distinction between interpretations and 'graspings' as the key to dissolving the paradox? I honestly do not see a threat to a classical realist account of meaning?

I agree with your highly accurate account of Wittgenstein's views towards this paradox, but as much as I admire his work I do feel that it was left unfinished.

Instead I am referring to the rule-following paradox as it struck Kripke:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kripkenstein

All the both LW and Kripke himself eventually backed away from their paradox, I do not see it as satisfactorily resolvable in a materialist system.

In the idealist philosophy of Plato or Liebniz, there is an admittedly mystical connection to the eternal ideas, but here I only use mystical to mean 'not rigorously described' which applies exactly as well to the materialist connection between the mind and brain, the lack of the mathematical operator I suggested earlier.

What makes you think that all sense impressions are private objects, or that sense impressions are somehow fundamentally different from the objects they represent?

No two people in the room have the same point of view, they do not share each others sense impressions. If I smell a rose, you cannot see the sensation of how it smelled to me, that is a private sense impression.

 

[Moridin]

On the meaningfulness of the concept of noumena

If noumena does not belong to the category of quality, what possible meaning can it have? If it isn't possible to talk about affirmation or negation in regards to the noumena, what possible relevance can it have? Furthermore, I would argue that noncognitivism could be a successful approach in that it seems absurd to discuss the existence or validity of what a concept refers to if it cannot be given primary attributes. If I claim that 'jaxyplonk is dangfur', then it seems that you would inquire about the meaning of the terms before asking me to justify the claim? If I then cannot explain what I mean in a satisfactory way, we can stop right there, without going into justification of the statement, because we know that if a concept cannot be shown to be meaningful, then it cannot be shown to refer to anything that exists in reality. Surely, this is not an argument from incredulity?

I would like to argue that if a concept is meaningful and truth exists, then it is necessary for coherent propositions that include the concept to be true or not true (that is a weaker form, since even if there is a third truth value excluded middle can still hold, though bivalence will fail). This applies to undecidable propositions as well. Naturally, they cannot both be true and not true, since it violates the principle of non-contradiction as well as rendering the concept of truth void, since there would be no difference between a proposition that has the attribute of truth and lacks it.

P10. Truth exists.
P11. If a concept is meaningful and truth exists, then it is necessary for coherent propositions that include the concept to be true or not true, even if they are undecidable (if something is possibly true, it is necessarily true or not true).
P12. The concept of noumena is meaningful (if it isn't, it cannot refer to anything that exists in reality or make sense to talk about).
C6. It is necessary for coherent propositions that include the concept of noumena to be true or not true.
C7. If it is necessary for coherent propositions that include the concept of noumena to be true or not true, then surely a category of truth would apply to all coherent propositions that include the concept of noumena, in which case the categories do apply to thing-in-themselves.

Now, this argument may be a little bit shaky, and it does presuppose that a category of meaning apply to the concept noumena, but I've tried to argue that it is a necessary to hold the concept as meaningful in the first place.

Undecidability makes the positions that (1) the concept can refer to something that exists and (2) the concept cannot refer to something that exists in principle irrational, which in my book makes all discussion on the topic of whether or not the concept can refer to something that exists or not meaningless.

On the private language argument and idealism

You state that 'we only need to assert the apparent existence of other minds' in order to avoid it. The conclusion of the argument is of course that a 'language' that is only intelligible to its originating user is impossible in principle. The reason for this is that such 'language' would be unintelligible to its creator as well, since he would be unable to establish meanings for its putative signs. It seems to me that an assertion of only the apparent existence of other minds would not be enough and that the actual existence of other minds is necessary. If you just think that you share language with other minds does not mean that you actually do? A requirement of community agreement for meaning seems to remove the possibility of private language immediately and point to realism about other minds?

On the dream world

That seems completely contradictory. Surely, you cannot both hold as knowledge that there is a distinction between you and the dream world, and that you are the one generating the dream world? Moreover, to be justified that you are indeed experiencing a dream, would you not require to have something real (read: not part of the dream) to contrast it against? If you not, how would you know that you are, in fact, dreaming?

On the rule-following paradox

Could you please describe what you feel is unsatisfactory resolvable here? There seems to be somewhat of a controversy over interpretation on the issue.

On the senses

No two people in the room have the same point of view, they do not share each others sense impressions. If I smell a rose, you cannot see the sensation of how it smelled to me, that is a private sense impression.

Now, what would it take to be justified that sense impressions are private? Well, it would require you to take your own sense impressions and compare them to the sense impressions of others and note any discrepancies between them and check to see that they do, in fact, not share them with you. However, the moment you do this, sense impressions are no longer private, since you have access to the sense impressions of others and presumably vice-versa. So to argue that sense impressions are private presupposes that sense impressions are not private, and therefore, cannot stand. I have no problem conceding that interpretations of sense impressions may vary between people, but surely, sense impressions and the interpretations of sense impressions are not the same?

Also, if sense impressions are private, then yours' and mines' sense impressions of this discussion is different, i.e the sense impressions of that which you type is different from the sense impressions of that which I read. If you know that what you type is not what I read, it seems irrational for you to continue to argue in the same way it is irrational to argue with a television set knowing full and well that the television set does not share your sense impressions and cannot make any relevant responses.

 

[robertm]

This is worse then I feared, these scientist's are prematurely biased towards their desired conclusion. Far from showing me evidence, they are instead just repeating their conclusion over and again, as if the identification between brain states and thoughts was a fact of the language. At the very least this shows that they are too crude in style to present a deductive argument without shortcutting instantly to their conclusion every five minutes.

That was a conference specifically set up to allow each scientist to present his/her theory. Why would they not tell you their conclusions and try and support what they think to be the case? Also, remember this was an event hosted by the Skeptics Society, not just a bare-bones neurology lecture.

Also, that audio-visual has too many irrelevant anecdotes, I would prefer manuscripts that are as dense and to the point as possible.

Again, this was not a lecture series, each person supplied information to delve more correctly into the information. I agree that manuscripts and published works are preferable. I choose to post this because it gives a wide array of potential explanations for a materialistic consciousness. If you want manuscripts, just look them up.

I don't care how many confused people disagree with me. What you see as evidence, I see as misguided and biased interpretations. Frequently they assume much more then they claim to show; they are not delicate enough in their use of concepts to be able to handle these issues.

I am stumped at how you can believe in something there is not a single shred of evidence for, and then deny any attempts to describe what is going on with evidence. Even if every one of those people are completely wrong, their stances are better than yours.

The simple fact that there is no evidence for anything transcendent of spacetime of any kind anywhere, is enough for me to conclude with a very high percentage of probability that the universe (including this thought) is materialistic. I can not deny your position, but what I can do is say with almost absolute certainty, that it is incorrect.

The grammar of your use of 'just' indicates that you think science to be somehow superior to philosophy. Philosophy is concerned with concept development, and science goes astray when its concepts are poorly understood. All the evidence you could present doesn't change anything if it involves premises that are stronger than its conclusion.

At least there is evidence instead of empty words, when you use the methods of science. Even if it is interpreted incorrectly, the evidence exist independent of the observer.

The concepts of philosophy disappear in the absence of a human observer.

I am a lucid dreamer, but even if I know that it is a dream-plane this does not make the feeling of separation go away. Remember that according to Wittgenstein knowledge is ultimately grounded in forms of life that stem from primitive reactions, and no amount of 'knowledge' is enough to rationally conclude that the dream-plane is a part of myself. We cannot hold 'rational' beliefs that are in discord with the way we go about our actions in the world!

Through what manner do you experience your dreams? Any dream could be simulated through the direct control of the input from the senses to the brain i.e. virtual reality.
Your dreams can be explained in a materialistic manner through the use of the scientific method.

Perhaps you mean "do you think that analyzing sense impressions is a valid way to learn about the world." If so then I agree, provided that 'the world' is short for 'the world of sense impressions.' And less you think this is an empty statement, I am merely asserting that the world of sense impressions has enough structure or logos that it can be organized to at least some extent in terms of concepts, as science has done to date.

Are the measurements made be scientific instruments sense impressions? If so then there is no way to refute or confirm whether the universe is more than the impressions of senses, or whether the universe is the world of sense impressions. If not, then the scientific method should be able to determine which is the case.

I think this point is integral to the question.

No two people in the room have the same point of view, they do not share each others sense impressions. If I smell a rose, you cannot see the sensation of how it smelled to me, that is a private sense impression.

If we could measure (in the way that Christof Koch described) the biological activity of all the neurons in your body, I could see exactly what you think of the smell.

On a simpler plane, how do you explain the ability of lie detection devices to be around 80% correct? What about the new facial contraction detectors with the ability to detect slight muscle contractions that can point, fairly accurately, to a lair?

 

[robertm]

At least there is evidence instead of empty words, when you use the methods of science. Even if it is interpreted incorrectly, the evidence exist independent of the observer.

The concepts of philosophy disappear in the absence of a human observer.

I would like to clarify my position on philosophy.

I think philosophy is wonderful. It is a magnificent mode of critical analysis and harsh revision of logic and reason. It promotes excellent intellectual discourse, and can lead to truly great realistic boons (democracy, equality, secularism, humanism).

However, the domain of philosophy does not extend beyond the human. Meaning philosophy is a human creation and can deal only with questions arising from human life.

So when one tries to apply a philosophical methodology to a problem in the universal realm, it can not and does not work. What discovery in the nature of the universe has ever arisen from philosophy? Or any scientific discipline for that matter.

Ethics, morality, aesthetics, metaphysics, epistemology; none of these exist if there are no humans to apply them. Whereas the nature of matter is independent of the existence of life.

 

[Moridin]

Everything's philosophy.

 

[robertm]

Philosophy can be applied to everything (maybe not successfully though). Atomic nuclei are not philosophy. Neither is light. Or rocks. Or the sun. Or neuroscience. Science is something quite different.

 

[Moridin]

What do you mean by "sun"? :D