White Cat Experiment

[Filip Sandor]

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As far as the image goes, it would have no external reality that could be 'proven' to another other than during the process of imagining the cat, there might be detectable changes that would occur within my brain, but nothing I could hold up to another's eyes. The image itself probably exists only for me. If they still don't believe me, I must allow them their doubts.

Hmph.. interesting.

You should know that materialism doesn't seem to agree entirely with your point of view, that others might not be able to provide physical proof that you are perceiving your thoughts. From what I understand of materialism, according to what people have told me mostly, it basically states that the physical activity in your brain constitutes proof of your thoughts, it also states that your thoughts in themselves are physical; however, materialism also does not make any distinction between 'thoughts' and the physical processes that accompany them, which I find kind of strange since they are distinctly acknowledged as separate things.

Materialists often state that mental phenomena are a 'result' of the physical activity in the brain, thereby suggesting a definite, physical link between the two, but they don't seem to have any explination for why scientists give specific labels such as thought or emtion to the different parts of the brain. I find this very peculiar in light of the fact that they are claiming the existence of something that is actually invisible to the naked eye and they are claiming it without knowing any physiological explination for it.

The purpose of science is to analyze data and infer information from it, logically. Materialism in this case seems to go against science; apparently it doesn't see the need for a scientific explination of some things, just as long as everyone else believes in them. It almost has a relgious ring to it eh?

 

[CaveDave]

Hey CaveDave,

What do you mean by 'perceptions' being 'stored' in the brain?

What is a perception? How is it stored in the brain?

When I use the term perception, I mean a totality of all the sensory impressions and any 'coloration' added by the individual brain's past experiences and preconceptions (emotional responses, etc.), associated together to form a unified whole.

As to storage method, I am ignorant of the details, but it seems to involve changes in electrochemical potentials and possibly rearrangement of dendritic associations between neurons in complex ways.

I do not consider our lack of total understanding of the detailed processes involved or the encoding methods used to negate the assertion that there IS memory, thought and imagination.

Dave

 

[Filip Sandor]

I do not consider our lack of total understanding of the detailed processes involved or the encoding methods used to negate the assertion that there IS memory, thought and imagination.

Dave

Neither do I and I have never implied it.

 

[CaveDave]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: White Cat Experiment

Hmph.. interesting.

You should know that materialism doesn't seem to agree entirely with your point of view, that others might not be able to provide physical proof that you are perceiving your thoughts. From what I understand of materialism, according to what people have told me mostly, it basically states that the physical activity in your brain constitutes proof of your thoughts, it also states that your thoughts in themselves are physical; however, materialism also does not make any distinction between 'thoughts' and the physical processes that accompany them, which I find kind of strange since they are distinctly acknowledged as separate things.

Materialists often state that mental phenomena are a 'result' of the physical activity in the brain, thereby suggesting a definite, physical link between the two, but they don't seem to have any explination for why scientists give specific labels such as thought or emtion to the different parts of the brain. I find this very peculiar in light of the fact that they are claiming the existence of something that is actually invisible to the naked eye and they are claiming it without knowing any physiological explination for it.

The purpose of science is to analyze data and infer information from it, logically. Materialism in this case seems to go against science; apparently it doesn't see the need for a scientific explination of some things, just as long as everyone else believes in them. It almost has a relgious ring to it eh?

Filip:
This brings to my mind: Do I exist (as a concious being) because I think, or do I think because I exist? To my (evidently limited) thinking, this is mental thumb-twiddling, because one seems to require the other.

Pardon my obtuseness, but I don't quite see the distinction between thought and emotion: they appear to me to both be manifestations of various regions of the brain, even though the areas responsible may have evolved due to different needs and at different times; I see them as inextricably linked.

I find that many things can have a religious ring, but I just ignore that and move on. ;-)

Dave

 

[Filip Sandor]

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Filip:
This brings to my mind: Do I exist (as a concious being) because I think, or do I think because I exist? To my (evidently limited) thinking, this is mental thumb-twiddling, because one seems to require the other.

Pardon my obtuseness, but I don't quite see the distinction between thought and emotion: they appear to me to both be manifestations of various regions of the brain, even though the areas responsible may have evolved due to different needs and at different times; I see them as inextricably linked.

Do you also see them beind "one and the same"?

 

[Piscivore]

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Hmph.. interesting.

You should know that materialism doesn't seem to agree entirely with your point of view, that others might not be able to provide physical proof that you are perceiving your thoughts. From what I understand of materialism, according to what people have told me mostly,

I guess you didn't understand what I was telling you, because what follows is a straw-man so well developed it's ready and able to dance and sing all the way to Oz with a girl from Kansas and her little dog, too.

it basically states that the physical activity in your brain constitutes proof of your thoughts,

No, it doesn't. Show me a materialist that so stated.

it also states that your thoughts in themselves are physical;

Again, no. "Thoughts" are not physical in that "thoughts" are a process, not a thing.

however, materialism also does not make any distinction between 'thoughts' and the physical processes that accompany them,

That's because there is no distinction. The former is a descriptive term for the interactions of the latter.

which I find kind of strange since they are distinctly acknowledged as separate things.

By whom, other that yourself and your fellow mystics? Can you show a single materialist that has stated so? This is categorically wrong, and no part of "materialism".

Materialists often state that mental phenomena are a 'result' of the physical activity in the brain,

Wrong. They are the interaction of the physical processes.

thereby suggesting a definite, physical link between the two,

Not "two".

but they don't seem to have any explination for why scientists give specific labels such as thought or emtion to the different parts of the brain.

They (scientists) don't. They will indicate areas of the brain where they believe such interactions take place, but no (reputable) scientist will point to a chunk of cerebellum and say "Thut there's thinkin, ah yup." as you seem to suggest.

I find this very peculiar in light of the fact that they are claiming the existence of something that is actually invisible to the naked eye

Like "wind"?

and they are claiming it without knowing any physiological explination for it.

I gave you a physiological explanation. I am willing to admit I'm not a neurologist so I may not have the detatils correct, but I believe I do. In any case, correct or not, it was a "physiological explanation," so now you're just fibbing.

The purpose of science is to analyze data and infer information from it, logically.

No, Iacchus... er lifegazer, no sorry, Filip. You have it exactly backwards. The purpose of science is to first logically infer a hypothesis, make relevant experiments, and then analyze that data to find out if the experiments confirm or disprove the hypothesis.

Materialism in this case seems to go against science; apparently it doesn't see the need for a scientific explination of some things, just as long as everyone else believes in them. It almost has a relgious ring to it eh?

Seems like you are wrong about both materialism and science. The Lion and the Tin man called, they want their scarecrow back.

 

[CaveDave]

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Do you also see them beind "one and the same"?

Filip:
Thought and emotion? They can be difficult for many individuals to distinguish, and they are definitly part of the ME that I experience, but as I thought I wrote, they seem to be generated by different brain regions, for different survival purposes.

I must apologize for jumping into this thread without knowing the direction it was going: I only recently joined the JREF forum, and had not spent enough time reading this topic to realize that there might be less physics and more metaphysics. I must not quite be cut out for debate of such subtleties as the chicken and the egg because it seems self-evident to me that NEITHER could have come first; they arrived in paralell. I seem to recall Ayn Rand writing (maybe not original to her) 'When confronted by a paradox, examine your premises: one of them is mistaken' (or words to that effect).

I will now respectfully withdraw until such time as I think I have something usefull to add.
Dave

 

[CaveDave]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: White Cat Experiment

Do you also see them beind "one and the same"?

Filip:
Thought and emotion? They can be difficult for many individuals to distinguish, and they are definitly part of the ME that I experience, but as I thought I wrote, they seem to be generated by different brain regions, for different survival purposes.

I must apologize for jumping into this thread without knowing the direction it was going: I only recently joined the JREF forum, and had not spent enough time reading this topic to realize that there might be less physics and more metaphysics. I must not quite be cut out for debate of such subtleties as the chicken and the egg because it seems self-evident to me that NEITHER could have come first; they arrived in paralell. I seem to recall Ayn Rand writing (maybe not original to her) 'When confronted by a paradox, examine your premises: one of them is mistaken' (or words to that effect).

I will now respectfully withdraw until such time as I think I have something usefull to add.
Dave

 

[Filip Sandor]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: White Cat Experiment

Filip:
Thought and emotion? They can be difficult for many individuals to distinguish, and they are definitly part of the ME that I experience, but as I thought I wrote, they seem to be generated by different brain regions, for different survival purposes.

Actually I wanted to know if you view the parts of the brain associated with the thoughts or emotions as the thoughts or emotions themselves. Do you see the thought or emotion as something distinctively different than the areas of the brain it corresponds to or do you see them as simply being two ways of looking at one thing??

I must apologize for jumping into this thread without knowing the direction it was going: I only recently joined the JREF forum, and had not spent enough time reading this topic to realize that there might be less physics and more metaphysics. I must not quite be cut out for debate of such subtleties as the chicken and the egg because it seems self-evident to me that NEITHER could have come first; they arrived in paralell. I seem to recall Ayn Rand writing (maybe not original to her) 'When confronted by a paradox, examine your premises: one of them is mistaken' (or words to that effect).

No apology is needed; though I think you should expect to encounter some metaphysics in a Religion/ Philosophy Forum. (it would be surprising if you didn't )

Now as for the chicken and the egg arguement, if you really want to boil (pun intended ) down what happened, it was actually the DNA that came first. It was the DNA which then evolved into a single celled organism and took it's own hereditary course along the evolutionary chain until it became something that more or less layed "eggs" or some form of embryos probably in a soft-coated shell originally. This creature kept evolving until it evolved into what's now known as the common "chicken" so biologically speaking it would have been the chicken that came first (although it was not yet a "chicken" and didn't lay eggs).

I will now respectfully withdraw until such time as I think I have something usefull to add.
Dave

I respect your decision Dave, if you don't want to answer those last two questions I don't mind, but I am curious to see what your answers might be like.

 

[CaveDave]

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Sorry for the double posting: after posting, I used the BACK button, (hoping to return to the point before I started the reply) which seems to reiterate any past functions one backs over (I would consider that broken code, but who am I to complain). ;-)

Actually I wanted to know if you view the parts of the brain associated with the thoughts or emotions as the thoughts or emotions themselves. Do you see the thought or emotion as something distinctively different than the areas of the brain it corresponds to or do you see them as simply being two ways of looking at one thing??
[/B]

[/b]

Filip:
In my understanding, the thoughts and emotions are inextricably dependent upon the underlying brain structure of the individual being: a damaged or dysfunctional brain would be expected to have thoughts and emotions that were not within the normal range of the population under similar circumstances; Likewise, an otherwise normal brain, given nonrational and contradictory inputs long enough, could be expected to display physical neuronal and electrochemical changes from it's original state apart from those due to normal devolopment.

No apology is needed; though I think you should expect to encounter some metaphysics in a Religion/ Philosophy Forum. (it would be surprising if you didn't )
[/B]

OK... I should have. My bad.

Now as for the chicken and the egg arguement, if you really want to boil (pun intended ) down what happened, it was actually the DNA that came first. It was the DNA which then evolved into a single celled organism and took it's own hereditary course along the evolutionary chain until it became something that more or less layed "eggs" or some form of embryos probably in a soft-coated shell originally. This creature kept evolving until it evolved into what's now known as the common "chicken" so biologically speaking it would have been the chicken that came first (although it was not yet a "chicken" and didn't lay eggs).
[/B]

Weeeell, I must disagree with that last part. The egg would tend to faithfully develop into whatever was encoded for in it's genetic (chromosomal) makeup, or die; whereas the egg layed (laid?) by the proto-chicken would be subject to intermingling of genetic traits from the fertilizing male (we are discussing sexual reproduction, aren't we?), along with any survivable changes induced by ionizing radiation, viruses, environmental chemical exposure, or just plain old transcription error, into the chromosomal material before or after fertilization. Therefore egg barely before chicken, if we must make that distinction. (Applies only to an individual; if the mutation is beneficial it might expand to a full-blown new trait, a new sub-species, or even a new species).

I respect your decision Dave, if you don't want to answer those last two questions I don't mind, but I am curious to see what your answers might be like. [/B]

Yeah, dang your eyes, I can't seem to resist responding.
Hope these answers satisfy you, but somehow I suspect you'll ask for more.;-)
Dave

 

[Filip Sandor]

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Filip:
In my understanding, the thoughts and emotions are inextricably dependent upon the underlying brain structure of the individual being...

Sorry Dave I must have wordeds my question wrong. I didn't ask you if you thought the mental phenomena were dependant on the underlying structure of the brain, I agree that they are, but I want to know if you think they are different from the underlying structure of the brain. In other words, can you distinguish between the mental phenomena and the underlying brain structure?

Weeeell, I must disagree with that last part. The egg would tend to faithfully develop into whatever was encoded for in it's genetic (chromosomal) makeup, or die; whereas the egg layed (laid?) by the proto-chicken would be subject to intermingling of genetic traits from the fertilizing male (we are discussing sexual reproduction, aren't we?), along with any survivable changes induced by ionizing radiation, viruses, environmental chemical exposure, or just plain old transcription error, into the chromosomal material before or after fertilization. Therefore egg barely before chicken, if we must make that distinction. (Applies only to an individual; if the mutation is beneficial it might expand to a full-blown new trait, a new sub-species, or even a new species).

It depends on how you look at it Dave.

If you view the chicken as a creature evolving throughout time and trace back into it's distant past, it didn't originally come from an egg. The chicken is essentially a genetic variation of all the 'pre-chicken' creatures in it's blood-line, which all trace back to single celled organisms.

Yeah, dang your eyes, I can't seem to resist responding.
Hope these answers satisfy you, but somehow I suspect you'll ask for more.;-)
Dave

I like to ask questions that make people think, which probably means you're a thinker since you can't resist answering.

 

[Roboramma]

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Hey Filip, sorry about the long post lag. I stopped responding because I didn't think you and I were likely to come any mutual understanding, and were basically just saying the same things to one another over and over again. Let me know if you were offended by my leaving.
Anyway, this little side bit interested me, though, and I thought I'd get into it:

It depends on how you look at it Dave.

If you view the chicken as a creature evolving throughout time and trace back into it's distant past, it didn't originally come from an egg. The chicken is essentially a genetic variation of all the 'pre-chicken' creatures in it's blood-line, which all trace back to single celled organisms.

I think first you need to know exactly what a chicken is. One definition of a chicken is that it can sucessfully breed and produce fertile offspring with other chickens.
Now, if you imagine you have a time machine and can go back in time to test whether each chicken can breed with some other chickens you bring along with you - this'll take a long time, but if you could instead just sample their DNA and had enough knowledge to determine from that if they could produce fertile chicken offspring it just might be feasible...
Anyway, if you did that, you would probably find a generation where there was an individual proto-chicken that couldn't produce fertile off-spring with modern day chickens. The problem is that it's mother or father might be able to.
So you go back in time even further until you find the first chicken that no 'chickens' of this generation, or any previous generation can produce fertile offspring with modern chickens.
Then you go forward again to find the first chicken that can. There, that's the first chicken, by this definition.
But if you follow this chicken's life backward in time, you find that it was an egg before it was a chicken, and therefore the first chicken was an egg before it was a chicken, so the chicken came first.
But this is all rather silly anyway. This chicken's parents are therefore not chickens (necessarily it had to happen based on our definition of chicken) and it's children might not be either. Also, it's no different from the proto-chickens of it's day than are modern chickens from each other.
The whole problem here is what Richard Dawkins calls 'the tyranny of the discontinous mind'. Any definition of chicken will produce this odd senario at some point, but that's a problem with the definition, nothing else.

On the other hand, I like thinking about things like this too...

 

[Filip Sandor]

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Hey Filip, sorry about the long post lag. I stopped responding because I didn't think you and I were likely to come any mutual understanding, and were basically just saying the same things to one another over and over again. Let me know if you were offended by my leaving.
Anyway, this little side bit interested me, though, and I thought I'd get into it:

Hey, don't worry I'm not offended that you left. The problem I fear with this whole white cat experiment, is that it's too simplistic. I've noticed that debating this subject gets very complicated and becomes almost impossible for me to maintain because of all the varying and sometimes similar views, I just can't keep up. By the way, sorry for not posting a comprehensive example of logic gates, but it doesn't matter, I think you know what they are too, they're basically switches who's outcomes are predetermined by the way we organise them - all this occurs very quickly thanks to electricity. This enables us to communicate ideas or process information much faster than if we were to do it with a pen and paper.

Remember how I was saying that we give meaning to the states of the logic gates in a circuit and that on their own they don't actually contain the information we assigne to them? Do you agree with that part? That the states of the logic gates in a circuit don't actualy contain any meaning inside them, but rather, that we are simply correlating the states we observe, to the meanings we defined?

The extension of this is ony that we can align many logic gates in a way that the meanings we give them are logically coherent as represented by their states; if we were to give them different meanings, the entire circuit wouldn't be logical anymore even though the same physical processes would occur. This is what I mean when I say there is no information in your computer. The information or meaning we interpret from pixels and text on our monitor exists only in our minds.

One might say at this point that all information basicaly exists in our minds and therefore, physically in our brain, but wait. We know that certain physical processes in the brain correlate to certain mental phenomena because we observe the correlation in the behaviour of the subject to the activity we see in the brain; this is no mystery to us. The problem is that we are taking their behaviour as an indication that mental phenomena is there rather than any physical evidence of it (unless you consider the sounds and words coming from someone's mouth to be the mental phenomena, in which case we can see they're mouth moving an record the sound vibrations, which would constitute 'physical evidence'). Now what if the subject is having a dream and not moving or making any sounds or verbalizing they're perceptions. How do we know any 'mental phenomena' exists in the brain?

The answer is we don't. But why? It is physical afterall, shouldn't there be some physical signs of it? Remeber, the person is asleep, they are not telling us what they are dreaming, so (having not done any tests before) what are the physical signs of mental phenomena. The answer is there are none and for this reason and this reason alone, we must depend on the person's testimony that they are experiencing mental phenomena... without it, we have no proof.

So the question is, why can we know with 100% certainty that mental phenomena exists if we have no physical proof of it?

P.S. By the way if you're too sick of this topic to continue feel free not to reply. I'm personally getting bored of it myself.

 

[CaveDave]

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Sorry Dave I must have wordeds my question wrong. I didn't ask you if you thought the mental phenomena were dependant on the underlying structure of the brain, I agree that they are, but I want to know if you think they are different from the underlying structure of the brain. In other words, can you distinguish between the mental phenomena and the underlying brain structure?[/B]

Maybe I fail to understand your questoin, Filip.
Do you intend distinctions such as 'Is there a difference between the silicon, dopants, SiO2, & metal and the stored information within these structures?' or 'Is there a difference between a capacitor's structural elements and the electrostatic charge it holds?' or 'Is there a difference between space and the fields (electromagnetic, gravitational, etc.) it supports?' , then I would have to answer a qualified 'yes'.

[/b]

It depends on how you look at it Dave.

If you view the chicken as a creature evolving throughout time and trace back into it's distant past, it didn't originally come from an egg. The chicken is essentially a genetic variation of all the 'pre-chicken' creatures in it's blood-line, which all trace back to single celled organisms.[/B]

I think Roborama gave about the same answer I would have, assuming that the line:
'therefore the first chicken was an egg before it was a chicken, so the chicken came first.'
was a typo, and he intended to write that the egg came first.

But ultimately, the egg IS the chicken, at an earlier stage.

Originally posted by Filip Sandor

I like to ask questions that make people think, which probably means you're a thinker since you can't resist answering. [/B]

Dave

 

[Filip Sandor]

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Maybe I fail to understand your questoin, Filip.
Do you intend distinctions such as 'Is there a difference between the silicon, dopants, SiO2, & metal and the stored information within these structures?'
--snip--
...then I would have to answer a qualified 'yes'.

In that case, my question to you would be, how do you distnguish between the two?

 

[CaveDave]

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In that case, my question to you would be, how do you distnguish between the two? [/B]

Filip:
Do you mean between the silicon, et al, (which, though I forgot to identify it as such, was intended to be some non-specific integrated circuit, such as memory, processor, analog, etc.) and the information (this could be voltages, currents, time varying signals, etc.) it stores?
I would mark the distinction as being between the permanent arrangement of the atoms, molecules, and crystal lattices which exist even after erasure by ionizing radiation on the one hand, and the fluid and transitory presence, magnitude, or absence of free electrons or holes, or the flow of these, that exist in an ordered, coherent manner only when power is applied and the circuit is functioning, on the other.
On another level, the location of the various atomic particles relative to each other within the structure is, in itself, information. I guess this could open a whole new can-o-worms.
Does this help?

Dave

 

[Filip Sandor]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: White Cat Exp

Filip:
Do you mean between the silicon, et al, (which, though I forgot to identify it as such, was intended to be some non-specific integrated circuit, such as memory, processor, analog, etc.) and the information (this could be voltages, currents, time varying signals, etc.) it stores?
I would mark the distinction as being between the permanent arrangement of the atoms, molecules, and crystal lattices which exist even after erasure by ionizing radiation on the one hand, and the fluid and transitory presence, magnitude, or absence of free electrons or holes, or the flow of these, that exist in an ordered, coherent manner only when power is applied and the circuit is functioning, on the other.
On another level, the location of the various atomic particles relative to each other within the structure is, in itself, information. I guess this could open a whole new can-o-worms.
Does this help?

Dave

Yes, we are starting to dig deeper now, this is where I think it gets interesting.

Personally I don't see the difference between the arrangement of atoms and patterns of energy in the brain and the physical processes in the brain; are we not talking about the same thing?? This definition represents the common materialist assumption that mental phenomena are the physical processes in the brain including physical states, electrochemical activiy, etc. Of course, this gets very confusing when you talk about mental phenomena being a 'product' of the physical activity in the brain (another common materialist definition), yet most materialists don't seem to have a problem with this contradiction in terms.

I should make note here of the rather important fact that based on the definitions above the term mental phenomena does not follow logically from any observation of the brain. That is not to say it doesn't have a logical foundation in our language, it does, but based on the above definitions it doesn't refer to anything more than "the physical activity in the brain".

However, if you go back to the start of this thread and redo the experiment you will be able to perceive, as clear as day, something that is qualitatively very distinct from the physical processes in your brain no matter what angle you look at your brain from or how close or how far you look at it from, you won't be able to find it in your brain.

The same can be said for computers, there is no evidence of the JREF forum inside a computer, the JREF forum we perceive is only possible because of the mental matrix in our minds that logically connects what the computer displays to the reality we know.