Materialism

[Soubrette]

Sou said:
That's not the only big difference. The other is that black and white Mary has never experienced red light entering her visual system. She has not had the physical experience and she knows she has not had it.

~~ Paul

Paul

Do we agree that seeing red is the same as the physical experience of red?

Because I think we're describing the same difference

Sou

 

[AmateurScientist]

Sou said:
That's not the only big difference. The other is that black and white Mary has never experienced red light entering her visual system. She has not had the physical experience and she knows she has not had it.

~~ Paul

That's right. This is also why P-Zombie Win would in fact recognize that he had never experienced anything once he learned the difference between being human and being a p-zombie. This is why p-zombieism is incoherent. P-zombies can't be p-zombies and behave functionally exactly like humans. Behaving functionally exactly like a human is also to have the experience that comes with the behavior.

AS

 

[Soubrette]

Paul

Do we agree that seeing red is the same as the physical experience of red?

Because I think we're describing the same difference

Sou

And just to add - ah now I think I see what I appeared to mean When I said seeing red - I meant the physical experience. Black and White Mary could of course visualise red mentally because she knows everything there is to know about the experience.

Or at least that's how I see it

Sou

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

Hammegk,

And yup, *I* exist, as do *you*. You answer the "what exists" question with "matter"; I answer with "mind". Of course perception tells us that a "physical brain" exists; you say "matter makes consciousness", I choose the alternative.

But that's just it. I don't answer the question with "matter", because that is not an answer. Neither "matter" nor "mind" answer the question. All they do is replace the question with "What is matter?" or "What is mind?".

For me, "matter" is just a convenient label. This is where the primary distinction between materialism and idealism lies. When you ask "what exists", a materialist will answer "matter", and an idealist will answer mind, but without any additional explanation, both of those replies are equally devoid of meaning. You might as well say it is made of Ether.

The difference is what happens when you follow up with "What is matter?" or "What is mind?". The materialist will proceed to give you the best description for what matter is that the scientific method can provide, and will endeavor to continue to improve this description through further scientific investigation, whereas the idealist can only offer vague metaphors and speculation.

Brahman=Atman would seem then most likely, imho. You of course also accept compatabilism as correct; my answer allows reasonable expectation for libertarianism.

I don't see how. The only way to allow for Libertarianism is through the rejection of the idea that the Universe functions according to Natural Laws. You certainly don't need to be an idealist to do that. You just have to give up the idea that there is actually any validity at all to the scientific method.

It also provides a possible "why" that 2nd Law is violated by everything interesting in the "perceived, physical" universe.

Which second law are you talking about?

Dr. Stupid

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

UcE said:

For me it is so d*mned obvious what qualia are I can't really understand why anybody has to ask. Qualia are the 'raw feel' of consciousness. Qualia are what happen in your mind - the redness of seeing red. This is so easily distinguishable from the associated brain process (which has an entirely different description) that I cannot understand the source of the confusion.

I don't see how it's easily distinguishable from the brain processes, because I have no idea how those processes seem or feel. Do you? Perhaps qualia are precisely the experience of those processes.

All operating systems and software work like this. Layer on top of layer on top of layer. It makes not the slightest difference how many layers you add, or how complex they are, all you have are lots of layers of information which refer to each other. If you want to claim that qualia result you have to explain what it is about the brain that suddenly causes this entirely new sort of phenomena to appear. Layers alone do not suffice.

Sorry, but you don't have any idea whether they suffice, because you are not embedded in the operating system. It seems entirely possible that feedback from upper layers of the brain to lower layers might produce "feelings about awareness of brain processing" that we call qualia.

What is it that is having the feelings?

The top layer?

If so, why is the top layer any different to all the others?

The top layer(s) sending input to more primitive layers that handle emotions, for example. Then you might have feelings about higher-level processes, The absence of a layer above the top layer is why we cannot intellectually grasp the experience of this feedback; why it just feels like some kind of fuzzy "consciousness." Perhaps consciousness arises precisely from our own lack of complete understanding of ourselves.

I still see absolutely no reason why qualia should result. I see no reason why the whole shebang you just described would not act like a computer system with lots of software layers, even with the feedback. I don't see what turns it from a zombie into something with qualia. All I see is a mixture of "Consciousness arises out of complexity" and "Consciousness arises out of information", but with no explanation why or how except for self-referentiality and feedback.

Well, since I don't know what the zombie is missing and I don't know what qualia are, I can't answer this. However, I don't think the computer programs really capture the complexity.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Sou said:

And just to add - ah now I think I see what I appeared to mean When I said seeing red - I meant the physical experience. Black and White Mary could of course visualise red mentally because she knows everything there is to know about the experience.

What do you mean by "visualize"? I don't think B&W Mary could see red in her mind like some people claim to be able to do (I cannot). The red portion of the color spectrum in her visual cortex has never been activated by light entering her eyes, so I don't think she could activate it by will. All her book learning wouldn't help her do that, even with perfect understanding of the brain.

Of course, I may be wrong and she could learn to do that with book learning, in which case I think she would also have all the other experiences of redness, including the quale (whatever that is).

~~ Paul

 

[Soubrette]

Sou said:
What do you mean by "visualize"? I don't think B&W Mary could see red in her mind like some people claim to be able to do (I cannot). The red portion of the color spectrum in her visual cortex has never been activated by light entering her eyes, so I don't think she could activate it by will. All her book learning wouldn't help her do that, even with perfect understanding of the brain.

Of course, I may be wrong and she could learn to do that with book learning, in which case I think she would also have all the other experiences of redness, including the quale (whatever that is).

~~ Paul

How could she tell the difference between yellow, red, blue etc then without the physical experience then?



But oh so easily done

Sou

 

[Peskanov]

UCE,

----
quote:
To be fair, "awareness" was always the problem. That is the way the 'Hard Problem' is defined. "Consciousness" and "thought" are ambigious words that cause lots of problems.
----

I agree; but I don't think awareness is much better defined. It the context of this thread, only seems to describe information entering in the subjective realm...However, in other context it refers to the action of acknowledge information (this definition fits in the materialist model without problems).

----
quote:
Well, up till now it has been difficult to formulate the correct questions for understanding mind activity. I believe that to do so we have to understand the relationship between the analytical activities of the mind and the awareness of those activities. I don't think it is possible to frame the correct questions with a materialistic model because materialism forces us to think of consciousness in ways that do not really match up with our experience of consciousness.
----

I fully agree they don't match, but only at intuition level.
The problem is that while you and many others seem to think it is possible to show this mismatch using language, I think it can't be done. I have read many arguments against materialism in this board; free will, qualia, p-zombies, the hard problem...Until now, only the hard problem seems well defined enough to give it a serious debatting.

----
quote:
In my biased way, I believe that the whole body of religious-philsophical literature has as its central goal the expansion of the awareness of consciousness, and the improvement of understanding of how the different parts of consciousness inter-relate.
----

Interesting theory; which part of christianity do you think is specially consciousness related? And what about hebrews?


----
quote:

Your posts always seem to me to be asking exactly the wrong questions. Awareness is passive by its very nature. The agent of awareness, when active, becomes will .
...
Awareness is passive, the agent of awareness is not passive because it is also responsible for will. I don't understand how either of these things make any difference to p-zombies. The awareness need only exist, it need not be passive. A p-zombie has no awareness at all. It has self-referentiality , but then so does a computer program.
----

Difference between self-referentiality and self-awareness? It could be said that self-awareness it's only a complex form of self-referentiality...


----
quote
Now you have lost me, can you re-phrase in terms of my above response regarding will .
----

No problem. It is commonly accepted that awareness receives several sources of information with different degrees of importance. I am aware of my reasonings now, a bit aware of typing on the keyboard, not aware of my breathing, etc...
In most decissions, we only choose between the options we are aware of.
You can see it in 2 ways:
1.-Awareness filters the information, and then the "will" uses the results of this filter. This means awareness has an active role in decissions, because it reduces available options.
2.- Other system filters the information and passes it to the "will" system; awareness is a pasive witness.
Option 1 is a intuitive one accepted by most people...


----
quote:
I said
2.- Does emulation prove anything about the true nature of the emulated object? If pzombies are posible, does it prove materialism is false?
I can use more than 7 different algor. to obtain a circle. If I can make a circle without using the sinus function, does my algor. tell something about the nature of sinus?
----
UCE said:
Yes. The possible of existence of p-zombies is just one of the manifestations of the 'hard problem'. There are many others - and they all lead to materialism being false.
----

You have not argued it....I think my question has more meat than it looks.
A computer example:
A debugger run on top of a program as a silent witness.
If I remove the debugger, the program runs in the same manner. However, it does not prove that the debugger is not a program. In fact, it is.
If awareness is a passive part of the mind, the concept of a human without awareness does not prove awareness has a differente nature that the rest of the mind.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Sou said:

How could she tell the difference between yellow, red, blue etc then without the physical experience then?

I can't imagine how, but perhaps with sufficient book learning she could figure out how to activate specific parts of the color spectrum in her visual cortex. Without feedback, though, how would she know if she was correct? Perhaps other book learning would give her clues about how to tell if she got red or blue or yellow.

No matter how far we carry this, it is still the case that she has never made a connection between her eye and the color spectrum. Some objective data is missing.

~~ Paul

 

[Soubrette]

Sou said:
I can't imagine how, but perhaps with sufficient book learning she could figure out how to activate specific parts of the color spectrum in her visual cortex. Without feedback, though, how would she know if she was correct? Perhaps other book learning would give her clues about how to tell if she got red or blue or yellow.

No matter how far we carry this, it is still the case that she has never made a connection between her eye and the color spectrum. Some objective data is missing.

~~ Paul

That I agree with

Sou

 

[Guest]

Stimpson :

For me, "matter" is just a convenient label. This is where the primary distinction between materialism and idealism lies. When you ask "what exists", a materialist will answer "matter", and an idealist will answer mind, but without any additional explanation, both of those replies are equally devoid of meaning. You might as well say it is made of Ether.

This is correct.

The difference is what happens when you follow up with "What is matter?" or "What is mind?". The materialist will proceed to give you the best description for what matter is that the scientific method can provide, and will endeavor to continue to improve this description through further scientific investigation, whereas the idealist can only offer vague metaphors and speculation.

The materialist will provide oodles of information about how mind correlates with brain, and provide some or other sort of actually meaningless waffle to try to circumvent the Hard Problem. Idealism is not so badly specified as you think it is. Maybe you haven't looked closely enough at it.

The real questions are "If you start with matter, how do you get mind?" and "if you start with mind, how do you get matter?"

The first of these leads to the debate we are currently having, and an endless banging of heads against the hard problem. The second does not. It is very easy to explain how to make a Universe if you have the source of consciousness. Science has told us the Universe seems to behave in a logical manner, its behaviour determined by simple mathematical laws. Stephen Wolfram has written a book claiming that the whole of that Universe can be accounted for by the behaviour of simple iterating algorithms. If numbers self-exist then somewhere in that sea of numbers exists the formula that underlies this Universe - its mathematical blueprint. All you need is logic and consciousness. In other words, if 'Mind' exists all you need to create matter is mathematics, and mathematics is the sole thing we have any reason to argue self-exists.

To summarise :

"Matter makes mind" leads to the Hard Problem, and many other deep mysteries.

"Mind makes matter" leads to a simple and elegant explanation for the existence of the Universe, a simple and elegant way of understanding problems like the Schroedingers cat problem, an explanation for non-locality in physics, an explanation as to why the Universe behaves mathematically and has prime numbers embedded in its basic laws, and it correlates with the oldest and most widely-occuring religious-philosophical system.

Unfortunately this last piece of information, which to me appears to me to be both fascinating and compelling supportive evidence that the theory is correct (as if any more were needed) is also its downfall in the eyes of most materialists, since it directly threatens hard atheism and places a theoretical limit on the ability of materialistic science to explain the non-material parts of reality.

 

[Guest]

I don't see how it's easily distinguishable from the brain processes, because I have no idea how those processes seem or feel.

They don't 'feel' like anything. You don't see a brain process. You see 'red'.

Do you? Perhaps qualia are precisely the experience of those processes.

Of course are! I want to know why there is an experience associated with those processes in the first place.

Sorry, but you don't have any idea whether they suffice, because you are not embedded in the operating system. It seems entirely possible that feedback from upper layers of the brain to lower layers might produce "feelings about awareness of brain processing" that we call qualia.

Why?

How is it possible?

Why is the difference between layer 1 and layer 2 any different to the difference between layer 1 and layer 9,000,000? At what point does there suddenly appear an enttity on the inside looking out?

Does it appear bit-by-bit?

Does it suddenly appear at the 503rd layer?

Perhaps consciousness arises precisely from our own lack of complete understanding of ourselves.

In a way, this is deeply true.

Well, since I don't know what the zombie is missing and I don't know what qualia are, I can't answer this. However, I don't think the computer programs really capture the complexity.

My point is that no amount of complexity can flip the viewpoint from external to internal. The problem is not one of mechanism - it is one of having to account for an entirely new viewpoint on the mechanism.

 

[Guest]

Peskanov :

Interesting theory; which part of christianity do you think is specially consciousness related?

Gnostic Christianity. The original Christianity.

Christian Gnosticism, early Christianity and the mystery teachings

And what about hebrews?

Qabbalism.

http://www.geocities.com/xeroiii/Kab/1KABinRL.htm

Difference between self-referentiality and self-awareness? It could be said that self-awareness it's only a complex form of self-referentiality...

It could, but we would have to examine that claim. The argument ends up boling down to :

Can a finite self-referential system be self-aware?

I would argue the answer is no, since no part of it can ever hold the entirety. However, if the system is Infinite then I would answer differently.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

UcE said:

They [brain processes] don't 'feel' like anything. You don't see a brain process. You see 'red'.

This is a meaningless statement. Again, you have no idea what brain processes might feel like, so redness is a perfectly good possibility.

Why?

How is it possible?

Why is the difference between layer 1 and layer 2 any different to the difference between layer 1 and layer 9,000,000? At what point does there suddenly appear an enttity on the inside looking out?

Does it appear bit-by-bit?

Does it suddenly appear at the 503rd layer?

It appears when one layer watches another. Even more when multiple layers do so. Even more when higher layers feed into lower layers. The internal experience of all of this is what we're talking about.

My point is that no amount of complexity can flip the viewpoint from external to internal. The problem is not one of mechanism - it is one of having to account for an entirely new viewpoint on the mechanism.

The viewpoint is always internal, and your only option is your own internal viewpoint. It's misleading to picture us inquiring into the workings of the brain by standing outside the brain and poking at it. We do that, sure, but at the smae time we also experience the brain using the brain. There is no other experience to compare that to, so I see no reason to be surprised by the experience at all.

The experience of the brain experiencing red is redness. Can't be anything else.

~~ Paul

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

UCE,

The difference is what happens when you follow up with "What is matter?" or "What is mind?". The materialist will proceed to give you the best description for what matter is that the scientific method can provide, and will endeavor to continue to improve this description through further scientific investigation, whereas the idealist can only offer vague metaphors and speculation.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The materialist will provide oodles of information about how mind correlates with brain, and provide some or other sort of actually meanginless waffle to try to circumvent the Hard Problem.

The hard problem does not even exist unless you make the a-priori assumption that consciousness is not reducible to empirically observable phenomena. Such an assumption is a rejection of the scientific method, and renders all scientific knowledge invalid.

Idealism is not so badly specified as you think it is. Maybe you haven't looked closely enough at it.

Idealism is completely and utterly useless, because it provides no reliable method for answering the question "what is mind?".

The real questions are "If you start with matter, how do you get mind?" and "if you start with mind, how do you get matter?"

That's right. And Materialism provides a method which, if the assumptions of the scientific method are valid, should in principle be able to provide an answer. But Idealism provides no such method.

The first of these leads to the debate we are currently having, and an endless banging of heads against the hard problem.

Wrong. The first leads to scientific research. No amount of debate or metaphysical speculation is going to answer either of those questions. And the only thing that leads to these debates is the insistence of some people, in spite of them having no evidence to back it up, that scientific research cannot possibly provide the answer.

The second does not.

The second leads absolutely nowhere.

It is very easy to explain how to make a Universe if you have the source of consciousness.

Unfortunately, it is very easy to provide an infinite number of such "explanations". Unfortunately, it is impossible, within the framework of Idealism, to determine which, if any, of them are correct. Furthermore, such "explanations" don't actually tell us anything useful. They are all ad-hoc, and have absolutely no predictive power whatsoever.

Sceicne has told us the Universe seems to behave in a logical manner, its behaviour determined by simple mathematical laws.

Science has told us no such thing. Science itself is based on the assumption that the Universe behaves in a logical manner. Reject that assumption, and no logical conclusions can be drawn from our observations at all.

Stephen Wolfram has written a book claiming that the whole of that Universe can be accounted for by the behaviour of simple iterating algorithms.

And this is relevant how? Newton was the one who presented the idea that the Universe could be described in terms of differential equations, and it was known even then that any differential equation can be approximated to an arbitrary degree of precision through iterating algorithms. How do you think numerical analysis works?

If numbers self-exist then somewhere in that sea of numbers exists the formula that underlies this Universe

Saying that numbers self-exist is utterly devoid of meaning. The term "exist" has a very specific meaning in mathematics, and that meaning has nothing to do with ontology or reality.

its mathematical blueprint. All you need is logic and consciousness.

I could just as well say that all you need is logic and matter. So what? Neither statement tells us anything about why there is anything at all, or any of the other "deep" questions that philosophers are constantly bothering people with.

In other words, if 'Mind' exists all you need to create matter is mathematics, and mathematics is the sole thing we have any reason to argue self-exists.

This is pure nonsense. How do you conclude that is "mind" exist, then all you need to create matter is mathematics? What is this "Mind"? What are its characteristics? How do you know it exists? How does it create matter? This is exactly the kind of nonsense I was talking about in my post to Hammegk. All you are doing is replacing the question "what exists?" with the question "What is Mind?". And you have already made it clear that you cannot answer that question, nor can you provide a reliable method for finding the answer.

"Matter makes mind" leads to the Hard Problem, and many other deep mysteries.

No, it doesn't. Without the presumption of dualism, there is no "Hard Problem". There is just another complex process which we do not yet know a complete mathematical description for.

"Mind makes matter" leads to a simple and elegant explanation for the existence of the Universe, a simple and elegant way of understanding problems like the Schroedingers cat problem, an explanation for non-locality in physics, an explanation as to why the Universe behaves mathematically and has prime numbers embedded in its basic laws, and it correlates with the oldest and most widely-occuring religious-philosophical system.

It leads absolutely nowhere. You do not have any answers or explanations. All you have are vague analogies and metaphors. You cannot even define the concept which is the foundation of your philosophy.

Unfortuantely this last piece of information, which to me appears to me to be both fascinating and compelling supportive evidence that the theory is correct (as if any more were needed) is also its downfall in the eyes of most materialists, since it directly threatens hard atheism and places a theoretical limit on the ability of materialistic science to explain the non-material parts of reality.

Nonsense. We reject it because it is incoherent and useless.

Dr. Stupid

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

UcE said:

Can a finite self-referential system be self-aware?

I would argue the answer is no, since no part of it can ever hold the entirety. However, if the system is Infinite then I would answer differently.

I think you're asking a loaded question. How about this one instead:

Can a finite self-referential system be aware of 100% of itself?

Perhaps not, but we clearly are not aware of 100% of ourselves.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

This page has a short list of why consciousness is different from other things:

http://www.davidchess.com/words/poc/hard.html

~~ Paul

 

[Guest]

This is a meaningless statement. Again, you have no idea what brain processes might feel like, so redness is a perfectly good possibility.

I have no idea what is doing the feeling.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My point is that no amount of complexity can flip the viewpoint from external to internal. The problem is not one of mechanism - it is one of having to account for an entirely new viewpoint on the mechanism.
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The viewpoint is always internal, and your only option is your own internal viewpoint.

YES...but why is there an internal viewpoint at all!?

 

[Guest]

Stimpson :

What is this "Mind"?

The relationship between infinity and mathematics.

What are its characteristics?

All of them?

How do you know it exists?

I am.

How does it create matter?

It doesn't. Matter is made of mathematics. Mind turns it into a reality, just like the reality it creates when you dream, except refering to a deeper dream in a deeper Mind.

 

[Stimpson J. Cat]

UCE,

What is this "Mind"?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The relationship between infinity and mathematics.

Infinity is a mathematical concept. Or are you referring to this mystical concept you can "Infinity" that you claim cannot be defined?

What are its characteristics?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All of them?

ALl of them? Are you seriously trying to tell me that "Mind" is everything that can possibly be conceived of? What are you trying to say?

How do you know it exists?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am.

Non-sequitur.

How does it create matter?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It doesn't. Matter is made of mathematics. Mind turns it into a reality,

I thought Mind was everything? Does Mind include mathematics? If not, then there are characteristics it does not have. If so, then what does it mean to say that it turns mathematics into reality? And why does it only turn some mathematics into reality? Why is not every logically possible thing real? Why are some logically consistent things real, and others not?

just like the reality it creates when you dream, except refering to a deeper dream in a deeper Mind.

So now Mind is a literal mind, somehow analogous to a human mind, and not everything? What's with the vague metaphors?

This is exactly what I was talking about. Your entire post was meaningless nonsense. You have claimed that Idealism gives a simple and elegant solution, but you cannot even explain it coherently, much less in a simple and elegant way.

Dr. Stupid