Objectivism vs. Materialism and Idealism

[baywax]

Nice try, but the same way I could claim that logic of word processing application is a result of motherboard circuitry arrangement. There is a huge gap in your explanation (if that's what it is)

Let me know when you have shown that conscious awareness occurs without the physiology and (obvious) interactions of neurons. Please browse through the links I left for Hurkyl. Thank you.

 

[Hurkyl]

I have heard some Objectivists mention things to the contrary or at least less fixed as this, but it makes their position in any case not very consequent.
They argue AGAINST the position of Idealism, yet they do in nothing distinguish themselves from that position, if they hold onto this position.

What about this passage?

The Primacy of Existence, otherwise known in philosophy as metaphysical realism, is the premise that says that reality is objective: that the universe exists independently of the mental states (beliefs, desires, etc.) of individual cognizers.​

That seems pretty strongly at odds with Idealism to me.

If existence is primary then consciousness can not be primary at the same time.

Why not? I see no reason why there can't be two kinds of "stuff", each of which cannot be reduced to the other.

Besides, existence is not uniquely defined to mean the material but also includes consciouss thought, and that also makes the position that states that existence is primary to consciousness something obfuscated and not exactly clear.

Honestly, I feel the same way about this entire field of philosophy. But it is clear, at least, that is not how the wikipedia article is using the term "existence".

 

[Hurkyl]

I'd put more time into my reply here but I'll let these references speak for me. I think you'll find the material basically explains what you are looking for.
...

I skimmed the abstracts/introductions, and saw nothing that contradicts my hypotheses #2 and #3. Could you point out a specific passage in the papers that does so?

I disagree with number 3 completely and since it appears to be your idea you might want to back it up with references.

I think you forgot what we were arguing here. Allow me to remind you:

#16 heusdens and I are discussing the basic position of Objectivism, and I state (my reading of) the Objectivist position on consciousness.

#19 You jump in with "Concsious awareness is a result of the material physiology of neurons. How much simpler can it get? ... This has been proven by countless research grants", which I presume was meant as an argument against the Objectivist position.

#24 I ask you to clarify how your statement has been proven -- in particular, what in the scientific research actually contradicts the Objectivist position. (roughly my hypothesis #2) I figured I'd throw in the Idealist/Solipsist position (my hypothesis #3) partly for dramatic effect, and partly because I think it will help elucidate the problem with your assertion.


In summary, you have denied the Objectivist position (and also the Idealist and Solipsist position), so you have a burden to prove your point. I'm not going to let you shift it to me.

 

[arildno]

We are still a LONG, long way from having established a strict bijection between objectively observable phenomena and noumena (i.e thoughts and other phenomena of consciousness).

Even if that bijection were to be established, it doesn't at all follow that conscious phenomena are strictly reducible to material ones.

In order to do that, we really should understand the conditions for producibility of consciousness, and be able to get results to show to others (say, a musing rose-bush)

 

[baywax]

In summary, you have denied the Objectivist position (and also the Idealist and Solipsist position), so you have a burden to prove your point. I'm not going to let you shift it to me.

I've changed my tact and can't disagree with this;

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

 

[heusdens]

Why not? I see no reason why there can't be two kinds of "stuff", each of which cannot be reduced to the other.

1. This contradicts the metaphysical point of view of the Primacy of existence (over consciousness).

2. It doesn't explain what causes consciousness. How did consciousness get here?

3. The "two kinds of stuff" idea is not very sound. Suppose a particle theorists comes up with a totally new kind of matter, consisting of all different kind of particles, but without any known interaction with ordinary matter. There would be no way (even theoretically) to know about this stuff, and therefore no reason to propose it's existence in the first place.
(same like the invisible/undetectable elf in my backyard)

4. The fact that consciousness exists, already means that it interacts with the material world, and therefore must be (ultimately) material itself.

5. Also look at it this way: it is matter that defines space. You can not say that space itself is also something. This is a dualistic approach.

6. Scientific facts: there was a material world before there was consciousness, before there were even living organism. The fact that now consciousness exist must mean therefore: it originated in the material.

7. All known forms of consciousness are in principle detectable at the basis of material phenomena. The assumption (and to a large extent proven) is that nothing escapes the material.

8. There isn't any doubt one needs to have that in light of current scientific understanding consciousness can be satisfactory explained in terms of matter.

 

[heusdens]

We are still a LONG, long way from having established a strict bijection between objectively observable phenomena and noumena (i.e thoughts and other phenomena of consciousness).

Even if that bijection were to be established, it doesn't at all follow that conscious phenomena are strictly reducible to material ones.

In order to do that, we really should understand the conditions for producibility of consciousness, and be able to get results to show to others (say, a musing rose-bush)

How does that in any way make it arguable that any phenomena within consciousness could not be based on material?

Are there thoughts or feelings or whatever phenomena of consciousness that does not require a material brain state?

Please proof it.

 

[whatta]

Let me know when you have shown that conscious awareness occurs without the physiology and (obvious) interactions of neurons. Please browse through the links I left for Hurkyl. Thank you.

I happened to be "true ai is possible" believer, so when it happens, you will know. Unless you'll die before.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

That is correct, but does that mean that consciousness could have aspects that are not entirely material?

Even if we don't entirely know how consciouss works, is there any indication it is not material?

This is very hand waving, and very cut down to bare bones, but I was thinking one day that a personality (awareness, consciousness) is like a song, whereas the brain is like a piano. The piano is material, it came from physical things, but the song, where do songs come from? Of course all aspects of the song are describable by the use of the piano, but the piano doesn't make the song all by itself, a composer must make it (in my perspetive, God is the composer).

 

[heusdens]

This is very hand waving, and very cut down to bare bones, but I was thinking one day that a personality (awareness, consciousness) is like a song, whereas the brain is like a piano. The piano is material, it came from physical things, but the song, where do songs come from? Of course all aspects of the song are describable by the use of the piano, but the piano doesn't make the song all by itself, a composer must make it (in my perspetive, God is the composer).

I never happened to hear any song composed by God, or is He the uncredited and ultimare author of every song?

In one sense you are right. When describing reality, we need other descriptions then basic material reality. That is of course the reason why there are different scientific disciplines in the first place, since otherwise all we should ever have to learn is physics and mathematics, and every other discipline could be reduced to it.

In reality there are things which can not be simply reduced to matter in motion. For example to describe a thing like a school or education system or institute, the approach that would see that as material entities in the form of buildings and chairs and tables and persons, is far from adequate, because although those necessary belong to a school or education system for their proper functioning, they are not in anyway essential to them.
Since the process that is essential the the school or education system is the achievement of acquiring knowledge.

Materialists by the way are not such reductionists, since to a materialist a school system, a society and a state are just as real and as material as an atom. It requires one to perceive of reality in the form of processes and not just material entities on themselves, since basically to understand what for instance a school or education system is, you don't achieve anything by studying the material components of the stones of the school building or the molecules that make up the chairs and tables, books and pencils used in the education system.

If that is what you are trying to explain, then I can agree on that.
But it doesn't involve any entity as God to explain it, just a higher abstraction on material reality.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

So, you mean that songs are composed by material things, not a mind? Songs come from the imagination, is that a material thing? The "place" where the mind works isn't material, it's a place beyond time and space is it not? You can imagine anything you want, so nothing limits your imagination (certainly not time, space, or energy), therefore, the "place" where your mind does its thinking/conceptualizing is not material--one can't find your imagination at work in space-time. When you think of an apple, that apple doesn't exist in space-time somewhere, so it must be somewhere else, call it "thought space", thought space is where your mind is, thought space is imagination, this is where songs are conceived. Songs don't simply write themselves based on interactions in the material world, they're composed by an awareness.

 

[heusdens]

So, you mean that songs are composed by material things, not a mind? Songs come from the imagination, is that a material thing? The "place" where the mind works isn't material, it's a place beyond time and space is it not? You can imagine anything you want, so nothing limits your imagination (certainly not time, space, or energy), therefore, the "place" where your mind does its thinking/conceptualizing is not material--one can't find your imagination at work in space-time. When you think of an apple, that apple doesn't exist in space-time somewhere, so it must be somewhere else, call it "thought space", thought space is where your mind is, thought space is imagination, this is where songs are conceived. Songs don't simply write themselves based on interactions in the material world, they're composed by an awareness.

How the mind works and what it based at are fundamentally material processes.

Different processes, but also material is the processing capacity of your PC's CPU.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

There is a difference between processing capacity and what is being processed. A program is different than the cpu that it commands. Programs aren't created by the cpu, they're created by an awareness.

 

[whatta]

I was just sayin that, Jonny.

 

[heusdens]

There is a difference between processing capacity and what is being processed. A program is different than the cpu that it commands. Programs aren't created by the cpu, they're created by an awareness.

Our mental capacity enables us to program ourself. It is called 'learning' / 'experience'.

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

There are such things as programs that can "learn" new things, they do so by genetic algorithms among other means. Check out some of the aspects of AI. Nevertheless, AI programs were programmed by a mind/awareness/consciousness. One day AI will get so powerful (due to more sophisitcated hardware) that it might become human competitive; but still, all its aspects would still have been concieved by our minds, so they are just an extension of ourselves, an image if you will. You still have the same problem though, the ideas used to render AI real came from our minds, they didn't just will themselves into existence. Software doesn't write itself, and processing capacity really only let's larger programs run--it doesn't compose songs, write novels, paint paintings, or fall in love.

 

[heusdens]

There are such things as programs that can "learn" new things, they do so by genetic algorithms among other means. Check out some of the aspects of AI. Nevertheless, AI programs were programmed by a mind/awareness/consciousness. One day AI will get so powerful (due to more sophisitcated hardware) that it might become human competitive; but still, all its aspects would still have been concieved by our minds, so they are just an extension of ourselves, an image if you will. You still have the same problem though, the ideas used to render AI real came from our minds, they didn't just will themselves into existence. Software doesn't write itself, and processing capacity really only let's larger programs run--it doesn't compose songs, write novels, paint paintings, or fall in love.

I know where your ideas are heading to, but you are wrong:

For the mind there was no designer, and it is just absurd to put forward the idea that the mind must have been designed by an even more complex intelligent mind, since this begs the question: who designed that mind? and so on.

Materialism tries to explain complexity in terms of lesser complex things, not the other way around, since that does not solve the issue, but makes the issue worse.

(It is like teaching someone the basic concepts of simple math, but then using complex differientals to explain it - which already requires one to have the basic concepts of simple math).

And btw. the mind is not really sofware, a neural network would be a better description.

Like computer networks are modeled on several layers of abstraction (application, presentation, session, transportation, network, datalink, physical) in similar terms the mind operates.

Each layer of abstraction has significance, but one has to take in mind, they built and operate on deeper layers, and ultimately they are built on the physical layer.

{Note: I am not stating that there is anything similar between computer networks and the mind, I just used it as an analogy of how one uses several layers of abstraction to built complex functions}

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

I know where your ideas are heading to, but you are wrong:

For the mind there was no designer, and it is just absurd to put forward the idea that the mind must have been designed by an even more complex intelligent mind, since this begs the question: who designed that mind? and so on.

Materialism tries to explain complexity in terms of lesser complex things, not the other way around, since that does not solve the issue, but makes the issue worse.

(It is like teaching someone the basic concepts of simple math, but then using complex differientals to explain it - which already requires one to have the basic concepts of simple math).

And btw. the mind is not really sofware, a neural network would be a better description.

Like computer networks are modeled on several layers of abstraction (application, presentation, session, transportation, network, datalink, physical) in similar terms the mind operates.

Each layer of abstraction has significance, but one has to take in mind, they built and operate on deeper layers, and ultimately they are built on the physical layer.

{Note: I am not stating that there is anything similar between computer networks and the mind, I just used it as an analogy of how one uses several layers of abstraction to built complex functions}

I may have implied that our minds were designed, but more specifically, the attribute that gives our minds their essence is like a "shared" essence of God (in my perspective). It's not a problem for me to postulate that God is the source of consciousness, in other words, he is consciousness--he is the imagination, the space where thought occurs, because all possible thoughts compose thought space and God is always aware of all possible thoughts--and our minds are just images of his essence, but we must "travel" through the imagination and not see it all at once since our minds are finite but God's isn't. That "place" is as real as the physical world to us. For all we know the physical world could just be a thought within the imagination, as you may agree. So, where did the imagination come from? What if I said it's always been there, and it had no designer? I don't know, but I do know it's there because my mind can perceive it. As far as what my mind is, I have no clue, but it has the ability to perceive things in the imagination--not material--so if I make a song, that's where it comes from, the imagination--something non physical. If we make artificially intelligent beings with all the aspects we have in this respect, there still is no problem. We can implement as many ways as we like to achieve that goal, but let's recognize that in our efforts we're sentient beings, and anything we do is done while aware of non-material influences. Whatever we call the mind, it's an analogy, so call it whatever you want, but the brain is something that we can observe, so we can call it a neural network, or an electro-chemical dynamical system or whatever.

 

[heusdens]

I may have implied that our minds were designed, but more specifically, the attribute that gives our minds their essence is like a "shared" essence of God (in my perspective). It's not a problem for me to postulate that God is the source of consciousness, in other words, he is consciousness--he is the imagination, the space where thought occurs, because all possible thoughts compose thought space and God is always aware of all possible thoughts--and our minds are just images of his essence, but we must "travel" through the imagination and not see it all at once since our minds are finite but God's isn't. That "place" is as real as the physical world to us. For all we know the physical world could just be a thought within the imagination, as you may agree. So, where did the imagination come from? What if I said it's always been there, and it had no designer? I don't know, but I do know it's there because my mind can perceive it. As far as what my mind is, I have no clue, but it has the ability to perceive things in the imagination--not material--so if I make a song, that's where it comes from, the imagination--something non physical. If we make artificially intelligent beings with all the aspects we have in this respect, there still is no problem. We can implement as many ways as we like to achieve that goal, but let's recognize that in our efforts we're sentient beings, and anything we do is done while aware of non-material influences. Whatever we call the mind, it's an analogy, so call it whatever you want, but the brain is something that we can observe, so we can call it a neural network, or an electro-chemical dynamical system or whatever.

Your metaphysical position is that of Idealism (consciousness is primary).

It's an explenation which explains nothing.

Scientific explenations can not be grounded on this position.

Consciousness can not exist on itself, without a material reality. It isn't primary.

(and ask yourself: of what can consciousness be consciouss, of there was no objective material reality?)

 

[Jonny_trigonometry]

I'm offering my subjective perception of these topics, you're offering yours. You can't comprehend mine and I don't expect you to because you aren't me. The absolute truth of reality may be different than what either of us think. The objective truth between us is that we think differently and make different assumptions.

I understand that you think idealism explains nothing, but objective truth can't make such a statement because your position can't be proven objectively. If it could be, we wouldn't have this debate because we would know what is true and what isn't. Since we can't know what is the objective truth in this situation, both of our positions aren't scientific, since science won't make claims about things that are unfalsifiable. You're just saying the same thing over and over in the expectation that you'll get a different response: "consciousness must be a property of material things". I'm trying to offer you another way of looking at it, that's all, I'm not claiming it as objective truth. You must understand that these concepts can't be proven objectively, so all we can do is look at them in different ways, which operate on different unfalsifiable claims.

 

[Rade]

So much confusion about Rand's Objectivist philosophy on this thread. Rand held a philosophy against "dualism"--such as the debate here about correctness of Idealism (I) vs Materialism (M). Rand rejected the idea of such "false alternatives". For Rand, (I) and (M) share a common premise, let us call it (O). Thus, just as Idealism depends on (O) to hold true, so does Materialism depend on (O), let us call (O) the Rand Philosophy of Objectivism. Rand both accepted and rejected aspects of (I) and (M), what most philosophers do not grasp is that Rand created a new philosophy that used many sets of dualistic concepts such as (I) and (M)--rationalism vs empiricism, etc. to transcend them to form a new philosophy. I think this aspect of Rand not understood by many philosophers.

Now, to clarify some comments above, for Rand, ontology MUST BEGIN with "axioms", and the two axioms that form the dialectic foundation of all inquiry are Existence and Consciousness. However (because she a realist) Rand affirms a cosmological "primacy of Existence" over consciousness. Rand rejects that existence and identity are aspects of real existents (e.g. the metaphysical given), for Rand, existence and identity form a dialectic that together "are the existents" in a sense of Hegel of "becoming".

 

[baywax]

I happened to be "true ai is possible" believer, so when it happens, you will know. Unless you'll die before.

AI will not happen without the interactions of neurons. Humans build robots. Get the picture? If you're going to tell me that "aware" robots will some day build "aware" robots my statement still holds true in that none of it could, would or can happen without the initial function and interaction of neurons.