logic and mind

[davidsmith73]

I disagree. Of course they have different qualities, as do all unidentical things, but that does not mean that the "feeling of pain" is anything other than a physical process.

I never said it meant this. All I said was that we can identify the difference between a mental and physical thing. I am then going on to address the nature of the physical thing in terms of the mental. You are looking at the problem in the opposite way, addressing the nature of the mental thing in terms of the physical.

Actually, you are. If you go through that tutorial that Mercutio linked, you'll find that the simple statement that there is a "mental" realm must indicate that it is in some way separate from the body, or physical realm. (I highly recommend that link.)

I don't agree. It is true that a statement that includes the words mental and physical implies separateness. However, I am arguing that physical things exist as and are defined by logical relationships which are mental things. It an argument that tries to do away with the separateness.

You say yourself that logic is a tool and is a product of our physical brains. Does this mean that the logic itself does not exist objectively ? Indeed, using the same reasoning we can see parallels with the "feeling of pain". Pain is a product of our physical brains and does not exist objectively. This effectively forces logic and pain into the same mental category. They are both part of the mental world.
However, logic and mathematics are the very thing that we define all physical processes by. In other words, physical processes are literally made from mental things.

Yes, I understand. My contention is that everything could be, in principle, objective. I am sure we will never get there, but we keep making strides in that direction. The boundary between physical and mental grows more tenuous every day.

What do you define to be the objective ? Would you agree with the statement that objective things are things that obey rules of logic and mathemtaics ?
But logic and mathematics are mental things so objective things must be fundamentally mental in nature.

 

[Tricky]

I never said it meant this. All I said was that we can identify the difference between a mental and physical thing. I am then going on to address the nature of the physical thing in terms of the mental. You are looking at the problem in the opposite way, addressing the nature of the mental thing in terms of the physical.

At present, most of "mental" is subjective or private, but it becomes less so as we learn more. We know, for example that the brain somehow stores memories. If you discovered, lets say, a molecule on which memories were stored and how to decode them, would those memories be physical or mental? Would there be a difference?

My argument is that "mental" is but a subset of physical.

I don't agree. It is true that a statement that includes the words mental and physical implies separateness. However, I am arguing that physical things exist as and are defined by logical relationships which are mental things. It an argument that tries to do away with the separateness.

And I disagree with this. Physical things require no definition and no logic. They simply exist. We are the ones who require logic and definitions to feed that mysterious organ called the brain, yet they would exist even if we were creatures without brains, like George Bush.

You say yourself that logic is a tool and is a product of our physical brains. Does this mean that the logic itself does not exist objectively? Indeed, using the same reasoning we can see parallels with the "feeling of pain". Pain is a product of our physical brains and does not exist objectively. This effectively forces logic and pain into the same mental category. They are both part of the mental world.

I can see that the terms "objective" and "subjective" are going to be blurry here. You can correctly say that logic exists objectively, because it is independant of the observer. But you can also also correctly say that it subjective because it is very much dependant on the observer, since two very logical persons can still reach different conclusions.

Logic and math have been developed by our human brains to try to ensure some consistancy in the conclusions that are reached, but they are far from foolproof. For example, there was tremendous discussion here recently as to whether the sum of positive infinity plus negative infinity was zero. Both sides made impassioned arguments that were, in their minds, logical and mathematical.

However, logic and mathematics are the very thing that we define all physical processes by. In other words, physical processes are literally made from mental things.

No, the definition is not the thing itself. A menu defines the food that is available. Don't eat the menu.

What do you define to be the objective ? Would you agree with the statement that objective things are things that obey rules of logic and mathematics?

As I have said, the boundary is fuzzy. I define the objective as those things which are independant of the observer. By definition, our observations (and definitions) cannot be totally objective, but we can use science, logic and mathematics to attempt to bring them closer to objective. Indeed that is worthy to strive towards.

But logic and mathematics are mental things so objective things must be fundamentally mental in nature.

My subjective observation of this statement is that it is logically incorrect.

 

[Dancing David]

Do not gravitation and quantum jumps obey mathematical relationships ?

1. They do not obey, they demonstrate an observable characteristic which can be approxiamated mathematicaly.

2.They are still illogical in nature, there is very little that matches 'logic' is QM.

3. My point was that 'logic' is a closed semantic system, it has little bearing on the physical world.

 

[Dancing David]

That's your view on the objective nature of subjective experience which can be discussed separately from the characteristics which primarily lead us to identify and label subjective (mental) versus objective (physical) things.
I think that is just ignoring the materailist assumption that all processes are dependant upon the physical. The nature of the 'subjective' is that it is a personal label applied to a personal experience. There is no label applied that is still not an actual physical process.
The division is merely semantic for the materialist there are no 'subjective' experiences that are not also a physical process.
In other words, regardless of whether you think the "feeling of pain" is simply a physical process, you have made it necessary to distinguish to two in order for your argument to make sense.
That is the immaterialst speaking not that materialist, there are thought about things and emotions, these are physical processes in the body. These are physical processes to which we apply coginitive labels(also a physical process.) For the materialist there is no division. there are braion/body events but they are stiil physical events in the objective sense.
You have the "feeling of pain" and you have the physical process. They must have different qualities in order for them to be distinguished.
The division is purely semantic the 'feelings of pain' are equivalent to 'neurons firing and interacting with the central nervous system.

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[Dancing David]

You say yourself that logic is a tool and is a product of our physical brains. Does this mean that the logic itself does not exist objectively ? Logic exists as a paterrn recognised by the neural network, that does not give it any existance outside of the neural network.
Indeed, using the same reasoning we can see parallels with the "feeling of pain". Pain is a product of our physical brains and does not exist objectively.
Pain does exist objectively as a set of neurons firing and interacting with the central nervous system.
This effectively forces logic and pain into the same mental category. They are both part of the mental world. The mental world exists only as a series of relationships in the neural network, that is it's objective state.(Opinion solely)

However, logic and mathematics are the very thing that we define all physical processes by. In other words, physical processes are literally made from mental things.

Show your work, you haven't linked them at all. Logic and math are tools we can use to approxiamate the observations we makes about physical reality.

What do you define to be the objective ? Would you agree with the statement that objective things are things that obey rules of logic and mathemtaics ?
But logic and mathematics are mental things so objective things must be fundamentally mental in nature.

The last part is just the immaterail assumption, the materialist says that they are just relationships percieved by the neural network.

This seems to be neo platonic, beauty is not transcendant, it exists as a series of relationships in a neural network.

 

[davidsmith73]

At present, most of "mental" is subjective or private, but it becomes less so as we learn more. We know, for example that the brain somehow stores memories. If you discovered, lets say, a molecule on which memories were stored and how to decode them, would those memories be physical or mental? Would there be a difference?

My argument is that "mental" is but a subset of physical.

Then you have the hard problem of consciousness. Unless you can solve this problem, your argument falls short of explaining how the "mental" is a subset of the physical.

What you label as objective physical processes are evidently comprised of experienced logic relationships and nothing more. If objective physical processes were not comprised of logical relationships then we would not be able to observe that they behave that way. Since logic is not viewed as an objective entity, these relationships exist as experiences, in other words part of a mental existence. What particular problems are there with this argument ?

And I disagree with this. Physical things require no definition and no logic. They simply exist.

How do you reach this conclusion ?

I can see that the terms "objective" and "subjective" are going to be blurry here. You can correctly say that logic exists objectively, because it is independant of the observer.

This is in direct contradiction to your last statement that physical things require no logic. If it is correct to say that logic exists objectively then it must synonymous with the physical since the physical also exists objectively. Unless you are advocating a dualism between logic and physical.

But you can also also correctly say that it subjective because it is very much dependant on the observer, since two very logical persons can still reach different conclusions.

I don't agree with your interpretation of logic here. Two logical persons can reach different conclusions only because they have taken different paths of logic. The operations that make up their individual steps would be the same. An analogy would be different molecules made from the same constituent type of fundamental subatomic particles.

Logic and math have been developed by our human brains to try to ensure some consistancy in the conclusions that are reached, but they are far from foolproof. For example, there was tremendous discussion here recently as to whether the sum of positive infinity plus negative infinity was zero. Both sides made impassioned arguments that were, in their minds, logical and mathematical.

Again, their different conclusions only reflect different paths taken to reach them. Logical operations can be additive.

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However, logic and mathematics are the very thing that we define all physical processes by. In other words, physical processes are literally made from mental things.
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No, the definition is not the thing itself. A menu defines the food that is available. Don't eat the menu.

I am not saying that an actual logical definition of something, beit written, verbal or simply held in thought, is the physical thing itself. I'm saying that the (physical) thing itself exists in the form of logical relationships. Physical things behave logically. Since behaviour is all that physical things really are (I'm sure Mercutio will agree with that) they must be[/i] logic in their very essence of existence. So logic appears in a definition of the thing and the thing itself. However, they are both different mental experiences.

How do you come to your conclusion ? Furthermore what is particularly wrong with my argument ?

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Are fairies and unicorns in a storyteller's mind physical objects? You and I can visualize witches flying on brooms; do these witches obey the laws of physics?

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Neurons in the brain, and conductors in the TV set can generate deranged phenomena when they are damaged but none would say that the origin of soap opera stems from conductors, since we know that these conductors' interactions are only instrumental for Soap Operas, so how can we be sure that the origin of thought stems from these neurons? Furthermore; The sound waves which bombarding my eardrums from the TV set is not the beautiful music I feel, because beautifulness have no wavelengths, nor does it have any objective existence either, since it is quite possible that my neighbor hate it! So I am wondering about how can such a rigor discipline as science of physics, and its subdivision psychobiology probe such an ambiguous entity known as human Qualia?

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Btw, I am reading the world famous evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker 's book; How The Mind Works, and I am on pages 461, and he has said in the chapter Family Values, on page 449; the 50% of our personality stems from our genes, and 5% from our parents (what parents you have doesn't matter more than 5% as long as your parents are "normal", and thus has given you a normal upbringing), but no one knows where the other 45% of the variation comes from! …. Maybe there is a connection between these elusive 45%, and the elusive phenomenon of human Qualia, as pointed out earlier by me?

I will be back at Monday!

Have a nice day!

 

[hammegk]

What persuaded Pinker to not assign 95% to genetics?

That should agree with the view that "objective, physical, reality -- and nothing else -- exists".

How would science evaluate the question for any non-living computer, what % is hardware, what % software, is firmware hard or soft?

 

[Dancing David]

Posted by DavidSmith73
If objective physical processes were not comprised of logical relationships then we would not be able to observe that they behave that way.

What if they don't behave logicaly at all, as I stated before gravitation is counter intuitive and quite illogical, as is the behavior of energy in general, much less in quantum mechanics.

There is a difference perhaps between predictable, causal and logical?

 

[Peter Soderqvist]

Gravitons and quantum mechanics are logical, though quite counterintuitive!
The logic of quantum mechanics is shown in the wave equation!
According to classical logic, something is or it is not, the middle is excluded!
A quantum object is indeterminate until observed, or measured; the object develops through probability waves described by the wave equation, its indeterminacy do not jibe with classical logic, yet the objects measured value does! The basic mystery in quantum physics is what converts probabilities into actualities?

 

[wraith]

HAHAHA
Tricky and others, you're still the same old fools that I remember.

Then someone has misspoken, or perhaps you misinterpreted. The things we call mathmatics, physical science are our understanding of the universe. But the universe, and math and physics exist whether or not we understand them. That is pretty evident in the fact they have existed far longer than we.

Are you using the word "we" to mean consciousness? Hate to tell you this, but wishful thinking isn't going to get you anywhere, except take you further into your delusion.

The boundary between the mental and physical realms becomes more tenuous every day, as we discover ever more about how our mental processes are the result of physical processes. "Happy" is in the mental realm, but it can be manipulated by "Prozac" which is in the physical realm.

Listen, here you have already assumed that the "physical realm" is independent of observation, as if it were this "hard stuff" floating around the place. Your use of the words "mental" and "physical" are meaningless. How in the blazes can you say something like this:

"Happy" is in the mental realm, but it can be manipulated by "Prozac" which is in the physical realm.???????????

"Happy" to you is physical. If you say that "happy" is mental, then you're forced to admit that the whole reality around you is mental. If not, then you're going to hit contradictions left right and centre.

As for the Prozac, that too belongs to the "mental realm". Just what is "Prozac" when no one is looking Tricky? It came forth from the void like this universe?

But alas, the first sentence is completely wrong. We shouldn't mistake our model of the universe to actually be the universe. There is a succinct cliché for this realization: "Don't eat the menu."

If anything, it's the materialist that's eating the menu. So dependent on your precious matter.

I don't agree to this. I observe that the "feeling of pain" is simply our bodies engaging in physical and chemical reactions. The evidence for this is that you can block certain types of pain by the use of chemicals or by physically removing pathways.

This is a perfect example that you use the terms "metal" and "physical" loosely. Just before, you said that happiness was "mental" now you say this.

This makes no sense to someone who believes that reality is ultimately "mental". As for altering the brain, you are altering the "code"/information. Again I ask you, what is the brain (matter) like when no one is looking?

They could then experience the exact same "feeling of pain", and it would no longer be subjective.

LOL. Do you honestly know just what you're on about?

My argument is that "mental" is but a subset of physical.

....obviously not.....

 

[Gestahl]

Then you have the hard problem of consciousness. Unless you can solve this problem, your argument falls short of explaining how the "mental" is a subset of the physical.

I will throw in here with my latest musings on the subject. HPC seems to stem from the basic problem of experience: i.e. how can matter "experience"? No ever has ever stopped to think the humans are the only things to have ever been able to communicate about it effectively... could this be a basic feature of matter?

Think about it... when an electron is affected by a proton via an EM field, we see no problem with it because the electron follows fairly basic rules (in comparison to some other things). How does the electron "know" to do this? You might say "that's just the way things are, the nature of the thing." That seems very weak to me. (Trying not to get bogged down in anthropomorph whatever here).

My latest thought is: experience is at the root of reality. It is the experience of that EM-field that makes the electron do it's thing. Is the electron conscious? No. It will never be "aware" that it is experiencing things: it has no memory, and no thinking capacity.

In short:

There is no separation between an affect on an object and that something experiencing the affect. They are the one in the same. The experience is what elicits the affect in the object.

Some might think I am just playing semantic games here. I am not (at least in the sense of I mean the actual normal word usage. All philosophy is semantic games).

The difference between us and things that do not seem "conscious" is we have memory. Memory is the basis of consciousness. Memory allows you to use prior experiences, and form patterns that tell us how things are. Our brains are huge chunks of matter that has (mostly) the same qualties as everything else. The only difference is it has internal structure to remember things. This is what allows higher-order consciousness. The real key here is we have a structure that is self-modifying in the extreme, and has the ability to make experience (somewhat) permanent.

I like this way of thinking because there is no separation of mind/body. Matter = mind. The experience *is* the physical process that carry that experience along. It is just that most matter is poorly organized to make use of this fact.

 

[Gestahl]

What persuaded Pinker to not assign 95% to genetics?

That should agree with the view that "objective, physical, reality -- and nothing else -- exists".

How would science evaluate the question for any non-living computer, what % is hardware, what % software, is firmware hard or soft?

Mostly because the things your mind perceives determines what it thinks. And all personality is is the general trends in your thought. I would wonder why more isn't from the parents, as during the formative stage they are the ones with (a lot of) control over what you experience.

I do not understand the second question... are you asking about a non-biologically based computer that is conscious? If so, here are what I would posit...

1) Hardware. Global constraints are enforced by the hardware, making some things easy and some things hard. This is affecting the basic personality as what the computer views as important. However, within this, it is subservient to the software that actually represents the thinking. For example in humans, vision and pattern recognition are "easy". We hardly give it a second thought, and really don't put any effort into it. "Plain as sight" captures this nicely. However, abstract thinking is hard. We devote a lot of effort into it. I think the computer would be the opposite in these respects: abstract thinking would be easy, accumulating, sorting, and making sense of the world would be hard.

2) Software. Within the constraints presented by the hardware, almost all the effect.

3) Firmware. Firmware is programmable hardware that's hard to change. Likely it would not change over the "life" of the computer. If the computer had self-control over it (i.e. if we could control our nuerotransmitter balance), it would be the same as software.