Mind-body problem
Mind-body dualism solved
The mind-body dualism is a problem that ultimately comes back to a wrong categorization. I would like to show this below using a simple equation. The mind-body problem describes an apparent contrast between physis and consciousness, in which on the one hand the physique stands in the form of physical connections, on the other hand consciousness in the form of a philosophical attribution. If you write this down as an equation, then on the left side is the physical connection, in which I disregard the concrete content (as well as the calculation rule), on the right side the consciousness, in which it is just as little about the content. It is neurons A (physics) plus/ multiplied neurons B = consciousness (philosophy). You can see at a glance that such an equation makes no sense, since different languages are used on both sides. It's like saying apple 1 plus apple 2 equals pear.Physicalists get rid of this problem by simply deleting the right side of this "equation" and claiming that there is no consciousness at all. If one asks what sensations are, it is said that these are perceptions that the physique produces, which in turn causes the problem. The same applies to the question of how decisions are made. The common answer is that the physical brain makes decisions and then communicates them to conscious experience, as claimed in the Libet experiment. The entire complex process of decision-making with doubts, considerations, revisions, planning, etc. is simply reduced to a physical process, which as such should already provide the explanation. For understanding: I am describing here an ontological concept of consciousness that answers the question: what is consciousness in principle.
The above equation, if written correctly, should be: Neurons A (physics) plus/ multiplied neurons B (physics) = consciousness (physics). However, this equation would be largely meaningless, since physics deals on the one hand with inanimate nature and on the other hand only provides abstract concepts that cannot be further specified on a physical level. It is precisely this fact that distinguishes Tononi's Integrated Information Theory, whose (physical) concept of information makes no distinction between animate and inanimate nature and thus opens the door to panpsychism.
What about an equation that relates to chemistry? You have exactly the same problems there, but at this level an essential principle of life can be presented very nicely.
A small digression: At the precursor to life, molecules (accidentally!) came together and, with the help of catalysts, generated reaction cycles that reinforced themselves by means of energy exchange with the environment and thus maintained themselves. This is the basis for the self-activity of life as opposed to the inanimate passive object world. Only with the 'encapsulation' as a cell does it act independently in this environment. This also adds a self-control, which makes the pure random walk an 'intended' one. What this 'intention' is, I show below.
Let's move on to biology. There the above equation is: Neurons A (biology) plus/ multiplied neurons B (biology) = consciousness (biology). What can a 'biological' consciousness mean here? If we argue purely biologically, then consciousness must be in a historical series, starting with the first single-celled organisms. Single-celled organisms do not just move in the world by chance, otherwise they would hardly be able to survive. The above intention is nothing more than an orientation system. In single-celled organisms, this takes the form of 'orientation' based on physical and chemical gradients. If one extrapolates this phylogenetically, this means that what can be called consciousness also serves the orientation of the organism, only on the basis of nervous systems. At the same time, these nervous systems generate an excitation or excitement that the individual organism perceives as an experience and which can be measured as an observer.
One can now use different models with which this excitement can be described and concretized. We are still at the biological level here. Thus, the physical theory of dynamical systems could be transformed into a model in which that consciousness could be described as an attractor, the physical concept of information (not Shannon!) in connection with information or structure density describes the same dynamic 'center', or evolutionary graph theory can be described as an orientation (random) walk.
On this basis, neuroscientific approaches could now be classified that can lead to a convergence of the different concepts of consciousness, as a medical term (conscious vs. unconscious), psychological (conscious vs. subconscious) or neuropsychological (attentive vs. relaxed). Without such a scientific-theoretical categorization of consciousness, one moves in the realm of complete arbitrariness and indeterminacy. It also shows that consciousness as well as life in general cannot be described with any physical model. Biological terms are necessary, which form a basis for concretizations of any kind.
I haven't solved the mind-body problem here because, as you have seen, it doesn't exist at all. What I solved is this epistemological misunderstanding.
Incidentally, it should not be forgotten that sensations based on excitability (sensory and neural) naturally gave rise to behavior and hence communication, which was associated with sounds and thus these sounds became associated with meanings. With these patterns of meaning, one has made the world usable for oneself, it has been measured, so to speak. We call these linguistically meaningful sensations thinking.
From this point of view, it becomes obvious that thinking has nothing to do with any cognition of an 'objective' reality. It is nothing more than the (highly differentiated) process of perception of reality, which (for us and not in itself) has produced tools with which we are able to process nature in a highly complex way.
Since life only begins at the molecular level, there is no need to search for life on all the scales below.
Since the philosophy of mind addresses consciousness as an entity in its own right, it fails to present it as an (emergent) consequence of life.
The mind-body dualism is a problem that ultimately comes back to a wrong categorization. I would like to show this below using a simple equation. The mind-body problem describes an apparent contrast between physis and consciousness, in which on the one hand the physique stands in the form of physical connections, on the other hand consciousness in the form of a philosophical attribution. If you write this down as an equation, then on the left side is the physical connection, in which I disregard the concrete content (as well as the calculation rule), on the right side the consciousness, in which it is just as little about the content. It is neurons A (physics) plus/ multiplied neurons B = consciousness (philosophy). You can see at a glance that such an equation makes no sense, since different languages are used on both sides. It's like saying apple 1 plus apple 2 equals pear.Physicalists get rid of this problem by simply deleting the right side of this "equation" and claiming that there is no consciousness at all. If one asks what sensations are, it is said that these are perceptions that the physique produces, which in turn causes the problem. The same applies to the question of how decisions are made. The common answer is that the physical brain makes decisions and then communicates them to conscious experience, as claimed in the Libet experiment. The entire complex process of decision-making with doubts, considerations, revisions, planning, etc. is simply reduced to a physical process, which as such should already provide the explanation. For understanding: I am describing here an ontological concept of consciousness that answers the question: what is consciousness in principle.
The above equation, if written correctly, should be: Neurons A (physics) plus/ multiplied neurons B (physics) = consciousness (physics). However, this equation would be largely meaningless, since physics deals on the one hand with inanimate nature and on the other hand only provides abstract concepts that cannot be further specified on a physical level. It is precisely this fact that distinguishes Tononi's Integrated Information Theory, whose (physical) concept of information makes no distinction between animate and inanimate nature and thus opens the door to panpsychism.
What about an equation that relates to chemistry? You have exactly the same problems there, but at this level an essential principle of life can be presented very nicely.
A small digression: At the precursor to life, molecules (accidentally!) came together and, with the help of catalysts, generated reaction cycles that reinforced themselves by means of energy exchange with the environment and thus maintained themselves. This is the basis for the self-activity of life as opposed to the inanimate passive object world. Only with the 'encapsulation' as a cell does it act independently in this environment. This also adds a self-control, which makes the pure random walk an 'intended' one. What this 'intention' is, I show below.
Let's move on to biology. There the above equation is: Neurons A (biology) plus/ multiplied neurons B (biology) = consciousness (biology). What can a 'biological' consciousness mean here? If we argue purely biologically, then consciousness must be in a historical series, starting with the first single-celled organisms. Single-celled organisms do not just move in the world by chance, otherwise they would hardly be able to survive. The above intention is nothing more than an orientation system. In single-celled organisms, this takes the form of 'orientation' based on physical and chemical gradients. If one extrapolates this phylogenetically, this means that what can be called consciousness also serves the orientation of the organism, only on the basis of nervous systems. At the same time, these nervous systems generate an excitation or excitement that the individual organism perceives as an experience and which can be measured as an observer.
One can now use different models with which this excitement can be described and concretized. We are still at the biological level here. Thus, the physical theory of dynamical systems could be transformed into a model in which that consciousness could be described as an attractor, the physical concept of information (not Shannon!) in connection with information or structure density describes the same dynamic 'center', or evolutionary graph theory can be described as an orientation (random) walk.
On this basis, neuroscientific approaches could now be classified that can lead to a convergence of the different concepts of consciousness, as a medical term (conscious vs. unconscious), psychological (conscious vs. subconscious) or neuropsychological (attentive vs. relaxed). Without such a scientific-theoretical categorization of consciousness, one moves in the realm of complete arbitrariness and indeterminacy. It also shows that consciousness as well as life in general cannot be described with any physical model. Biological terms are necessary, which form a basis for concretizations of any kind.
I haven't solved the mind-body problem here because, as you have seen, it doesn't exist at all. What I solved is this epistemological misunderstanding.
Incidentally, it should not be forgotten that sensations based on excitability (sensory and neural) naturally gave rise to behavior and hence communication, which was associated with sounds and thus these sounds became associated with meanings. With these patterns of meaning, one has made the world usable for oneself, it has been measured, so to speak. We call these linguistically meaningful sensations thinking.
From this point of view, it becomes obvious that thinking has nothing to do with any cognition of an 'objective' reality. It is nothing more than the (highly differentiated) process of perception of reality, which (for us and not in itself) has produced tools with which we are able to process nature in a highly complex way.
Since life only begins at the molecular level, there is no need to search for life on all the scales below.
Since the philosophy of mind addresses consciousness as an entity in its own right, it fails to present it as an (emergent) consequence of life.
Comments (113)
I made a copy of your long post to read at my leisure. But for now, I'll just note that your metaphor of a Mind/Body Equation may have some merit. Personally, I have resolved the Mind vs Body or Physics vs Metaphysics "problem" with a BothAnd approach. Since an equation is supposed to balance out, arbitrarily assigning a value of zero to one side is a cop-out. Instead, we need to take the value of both sides seriously.
For at least 6000 years, humans have assumed that there is an unseen "vessel" that contains their thoughts & feelings. Even though that receptacle, and its contents, are not knowable by the physical senses, humans have a sixth sense (Reason) that produces representations of "things unseen". And we tend to place great value on those imaginary models. So, merely dismissing them as pseudo-science or meta-physics (i.e. mental models) is not addressing the M/B problem at all. Instead, it merely denigrates the public value of those private tokens, while admitting their existence.
For example, Non-fungible Tokens (intellectual property) have no intrinsic value, but only a mutually negotiated innate value. Therefore, to assign a zero value to mind-stuff is simply refusing to negotiate. Which is your prerogative ; but those who do play the game may gain some personal profit from their participation. Even if the token is as trivial as a Donald Trump trading card with buffoonish images, they seem to have non-zero value to some people. :smile:
Innate Value :
Since the word "innate" is defined as; originating in or derived from the mind or the constitution of the intellect rather than from experience
https://www.quora.com/What-is-innate-value
:up:
:fire: Ergo the 'panpsychic' woo-of-the-gaps of (pseudo-scientistic) idealists / anti-physicalists.
NB: Excerpt from an old post ...
Quoting 180 Proof
I think you still have a huge gap to bridge. Physics employs "tensors", you suggest a biological "attractor". Don't you need to show how attractors effect tensors, or vise versa, if you want to set any sort of equation between the two?
My approach says that body and mind are not two sides of the same coin, but that consciousness is a property of the brain and it has the function of orientation, just like the heart has the function of pumping blood. That's a big difference. Nowadays, Spinoza's approach is more represented by the so-called four E's. There one sits on a naïve phenomenalism and squanders the opportunity to analyze the complex levels of regulation and their connection analytically.
:fire: :clap: :100:
A person without a soul cannot know what you know mon ami! :lol:
Jokes aside, I haven't really seen any argument that could at the very least, at a minimum, prove just the possibility of an immaterial mind.
:grin:
Such a model would be interesting. I've played with dynamical systems in the complex plane for years, and have seen only one instance when a theorem I contributed was extended to the realm of psychology (decision making in groups) - and this was done without regard for the technical hypotheses. That's what seems to happen when math is appropriated by a social science. I doubt things would be much better in a quasi-biological setting.
1. The mind-body problem is based on a misunderstanding in which two different languages are related to each other, which can be illustrated with the equation: n neurons (physics) = consciousness (philosophy). It is therefore wrongly tried to explain a philosophical concept physically, which is simply not possible.
2. Since we are all biological beings, it must be possible to explain all expressions of life (including consciousness) biologically. To do this, you have to biologically operationalize what we call consciousness. If you do this, you get the general concept of orientation for consciousness and for this the central nervous system has developed in the course of evolution.
And now one can specify this concept of orientation for all other human sciences.
Actually quite simple, isn't it?
No, because science still doesn't want to or can't understand that life is already a concept of structure, life is structure, because not one of the dead building blocks of life contains life. The phrase 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts' is actually wrong. It should mean 'the whole is something other than the sum of its parts'. As long as you don't understand this, you will always want to reduce biology to physics.
Unfortunately for your OP, this is a nonsense expression. It not actually an equation or even a meaningful sentence. The equations which govern the motion of bodies are quite well known, but there is nothing corresponding to that which explains the nature of thought. End of story.
:up:
The whole is not just the sum of its parts. Neurons, individually, can't do this :point: comprehend, but, together, as a brain, they can. How can a group (the brain) consisting of stuff that can't understand (neurons) understand? :chin:
Quoting Wolfgang
I assume youre talking about 4EA ( embodied, enactive, embedded, extended and affective) cognitive science, otherwise known as enactivism. How does this approach squander the opportunities youre referring to, and what models within cognitive science do you prefer? For instance, Tim Van Gelder relies heavily on dynamical systems theory. Are you familiar with his work on cognition and consciousness?
So embodied mind may indeed be a thing (I think it is). But so is coherent energy. Given that all matter is energy, and coherent energy is real, I see no contradiction in the hypothesis that consciousness is, at some level, just another form of coherent energy, and itself a "deep" feature of the natural universe (i.e. independent of any of its embodied manifestations).
X is the physical universe
x is all physical matter we access
Y are are all the neurons and peripherals that interact with physical matter (x) and support mental content (o)
(o) is mental content
That is the entirety of the basic components.
So our mental experience is the relation,
x <----> Y(o) And this relation exists within the
limits of the physical universe (X).
Mental content should be identified as dynamic
existing only in the physical present.
This Y(o) term acknowledges the emergent nature of mental content in relation to biological brains. Breaking it down this way avoids the pitfalls of the monism/dualism question.
Information always exists in the form Y(o).
Consciousness always exists in the form Y(o).
Hint, hint...they are the same thing at the fundamental level.
:chin:
Quoting Agent Smith
Exactly!
So? Keep on ...
(Maybe you are close to something I would really like to hear. Not only from you but from others too in here ...)
Just as this sentence consisting of individually meaningless letters conveys meaning. :roll:
Emergence.
Why should A emerge from B?
It is very long.
The mystery is when the emergent property is not predictable or when the concept of emergence is applied with no causal explanation attempted.
If I rubbed two sticks together and consciousness emerged that would be an emergent property but it would also be magic and inexplicable like neurons firing creating consciousness.
From the article:" Strong emergence describes the direct causal action of a high-level system upon its components; qualities produced this way are irreducible to the system's constituent parts"
Also from the article:
"Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? "
Equivocating non sequitur. :roll:
The article offers a further reading reference, not an argument. I gave an example of how 'a whole greater than the sum of its parts' is the most ordinary, least mysterious thing (again, such as semantics of a sentence). It's a mystery to me, Andrew, how any numerate person would find emergence nonlinear dynamic (i.e. chaotic) processes or systems "mysterious".
I am in complete agreement with your conclusion, but you don't make any kind of argument for it. But I'll leave you to it, others here seem to see something in it.
Regarding 'emergence', I once attended lectures on Hindu philosophy by a lecturer who used to intone as a kind of principle of Vedanta, 'what is latent, becomes patent', referring to the evolution of the multitude of sentient beings who all actually originate in Brahman. I recall a similar passage in the writings of Swami Vivekenanda, saying that the acorn evolves into the oak because the oak is 'involved' into the acorn. However, I also note that in Hindu philosophy, the principle is that 'life comes from life', it doesn't recognise the possibility of a-biogenesis.
To me the key philosophical distinction is that there is an ontological distinction between the living and inorganic domains. There are also ontological distinctions between sentient and non-sentient life-forms. I believe these distinctions were recognised in Aristotelian philosophy, but that they're generally not recognised by physicalism, for obvious reasons.
So holism i.e. antireductionism? :chin:
Non sequitur.
I give anyone a hard time that claims inanimates are stand alone non-physicals so could you comment on how you think inanimates can exist.
But the property of the whole [brain] - comprehension ability - is not to be found in the parts [neurons]. What sorcery is this? :lol:
That's a good point, but the flavor of strawberries is reducible to strawberry molecular structure. However the same can't be done for comprehension vis-à-vis neurons and brains. Nice try! :up:
How do we explain comprehension with molecules and their structures? There's no chemical/physical principle we can use to do that. This is what I would call the real hard problem of consciousness because the reason why the mind is beyond science is stronger than Chalmers'. :smile:
I guess you didn't run down all these rabbit holes...
Quoting 180 Proof
:up:
I did. I also read the beginning of the homonymous article at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/.
The operation was successful, but the patient died! Meaning that the experiment and the analogy were successful, but they failed to answer the question about how understanding is achieved or at least explain how the brain can actually achieve understanding. (Which of course it can't. And that can be explained.)
It could be a good example though as an answer to people who believe that computers and AI can achieve human undestanding and consciousness, allthough there's a much simpler and faster way to do that: by explaining them what computers and artificial intelligence are and can do. Similarly, about the brain.
(Note: I would have commented about all that to @debd, but his topic is 2 years old. So, I did it to you, who regurgitated it. So, you asked for it! :smile:)
However, one can learn from this pseudo-problem, namely that one must categorize this problem correctly, and that in a uniform monistic language. Physics, which deals with inanimate nature, is not an option for this, but biology. One must then understand consciousness as a biological category in order to establish a unity between nature and spirit.
:100:
Then why do some folk claim, in contrast to the rest of us, that the exact same herb - coriander - tastes soapy?
Taste is not entierly down to chemistry.
The mechanism of taste can be reduced to chemistry i.e. there's a theory (agonist-receptor) which can be used, albeit with imperfections as you pointed out, to explain taste. None exist for consciousness.
No there isn't. Taste cannot be reduced to chemistry. It requires a complicated and imperfectly understood neural network, a complex and evolving language, and a culture in which to embed both those things. Take either away and there'd be no such thing as taste.
Petty much exactly the same is true of consciousness.
Have you tried reading?
Explain.
I have not! Give me some pointers (not on reading, on explanatory frameworks for consciousness).
https://googlethatforyou.com?q=theories%20of%20consciousness
Point me to an theory/hypothesis we could employ to explain consciosuness.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/582454
Can you or anyone suggest an equation or process or notation that fits with physical matter as we know it. I wrote some on a Y(o) notation representing large numbers of neurons supporting mental content and this seem consistent with what we observe.
The whole mind-body problem arose from this hasty category mistake. In the case of the ancient Greeks, this is still understandable, because there was no division into different sciences with their respective conceptual apparatus.
Today, however, it is obvious, but continues to be mixed up, unfortunately also in academia.
I guess it could if you designate it as an abstraction and not a physical state but the abstraction still exists as [brain (abstraction)] and if you want to stay 'scientific' you must limit it to the form that can physically exist.
Really there is no established science if you have a mix of physical/non-physicals as science is physical only as far as the scientific method. The solution is to apply the best mental process you can to the problem.
I wouldn't consider academic psychology a science. How would any scientific precision be claimed for psychology when it can be just about anything from person to person. You would just be applying statistics to abstract ideas.
.
I have the the disposition to be angry but not all the time and only under certain circumstances.
In order to be angry I have to have that disposition available.
Something cannot emerge without a preexisting disposition in nature.
The only way consciousness could come to exist is if reality had it as a disposition. The only way anything could emerge would be through preexisting dispositions or possibilities.
Non-sequitur
EDIT: pointing out that emergence occurs under one set of circumstances says nothing about whether or not it occurs in some other set of circumstances.
This is why I asked.
1) All is physical and body and mind are the same thing.
-problem- How do ideas transfer person to person without a physical transfer of matter? Fail.
2) Brains have the ability to hold non-physicals or mental content. This seems to be consistent with a common view. I'll call it the best option.
Ideas transfer by encoding physical matter by the sender and decoding by the receiver.
3) Brains are physical and mind is something extra-physical that can exist regardless of a physical brain.
-problem-. This would require physically unsupported non-physicals to exist and requires a means of how that could be. Fail.
My point is the best option is the brain holds mental content and at a fundamental level this state is not reducible...or separable.
I'm no molecular biologist or botanist, but off the top of my head:
Broadly, those seem to be the steps.
Exactly this process, which is described here biologically (I know, very simplified), can also be described psychologically or otherwise, namely: I see something, think about it and run away.
Both are exactly the same, only in a different language and through a different perspective.
Would you now come up with the idea of wanting to derive the second description from the first or wanting to see a causality between the two? Of course not. But that is exactly what one does when one asks how thoughts arise from neurons, or more generally: how does mind arise from matter.
Consciousness might just be the emergent effect out of a biological necessity for adaption within nature. Just like some animals have different tactics of defense and attack, we were evolutionary granted an edge through adaptation, we can change and adapt to anything around us rather than being stuck with having to wait for an evolutionary gain. A position in which evolution took a giant leap, just like when molecules transitioned into the first biological cells. Matter became aware, then with earlier intelligent life forms we became self-aware and the latest step was being consciously aware of self, others and the world.
It might be that there's another step of "awareness" waiting for us in evolution. An awareness of reality that we don't grasp yet, just as the animals before us didn't grasp our intelligence. Since evolution is always happening and transitions are slower than people seem to understand, we might very well be within such a transitionary state right now, taking thousands or hundred of thousands of years to reach from this point in history.
But for the sake of the mind-body problem, we still have to look at evolution of life. All aspects of life have been emergent effects out of chemical reactions. Evolution and biology changes the vial in which this chemistry is on-going and directs chemical reactions to adapt against other chemical reactions (other life forms). But we can't see the vial, because the vial and its internal chemicals are one and the same. It's like the vial holds itself. Or that the vial is our entire eco-system of this planet.
Meaning, just because we can visualize and understand the vial, doesn't mean that we are disconnected from that vial. That would basically be us being part of the vial and then by just thinking about our place within the vial we detach from it. None such thing has any rational or logical causality. Just because we are aware of the vial and the chemical systems that produced our consciousness, doesn't mean that our consciousness is now detached from that vial.
And because of this there's no mind/body-problem. Just as we are part of a larger eco-system, so is our consciousness. We have gut bacteria that affects our thinking, emotion and can alter our minds. So does consciousness exist outside of all of that or is it just an emergent effect out of the chemical connection between the gut bacteria and our neurological systems?
The mind/body-problem is a problem that emerged out of humanity's self-delusion over their own intellectual brilliance. We cannot fathom our consciousness being intertwined with our body/chemistry/vial because we "think" it's different from the physical.
But if consciousness is emergent from the chemistry and from the evolution of our bodies, then what we experience is exactly the effect that the evolution of our body and brain "intended for".
We have this evolutionary apex animal trait but it has put us in an intellectual feedback loop in which our experience of thinking about our experience of thinking feeds back a sense of detachment from the biological, from nature. But this is an illusion, just like we have the illusion of free will, we have the illusion of consciousness being detached from nature.
In a sense, we experience a divine sense of consciousness due to how our consciousness functions, and so we have a problem of accepting our consciousness as being an illusion emergent out of the evolutionary trait of adaptation we were given.
I see no body/mind-problem, I only see the body. And the consciousness is an emergent consequence out of the bodies we have. It is what the data and science points towards and anything else is frankly human beings having species-narcissism.
This is why I think the idea of finding alien life or creating artificial intelligence is so scary for so many people. Because it is a threat to the hegemony of humanity and our deep experience of our consciousness.
I for one, actually welcome any kind of separate intelligence, be it aliens or self-aware AGI, because at that stage, humanity might become more humble and let go of that species-narcissism. It might be the stepping stone towards a new level of awareness in evolution.
Some of the confusion may be language like do our brains hold ideas or are ideas the exact configuration of our brains? I think they are the same but you have two ways to state it. I don't see the problem, thinking in terms of held content, if we can get back to an understanding of the physical basis.
or maybe there is some other unknown component of strawberries that gives them their juicy red succulent strawberry qualia...
Described biologically, this means: a stimulus hits my eye, is sent to the brain, associates patterns there, and there is an afferent stimulus that generates a movement.
Described psychologically, this means that I become aware of a danger, my brain activates an escape reflex and releases hormones.
Both times I consciously experience a situation and describe it with different sign systems.
In biology, the psychological/philosophical concept of consciousness means - I'll call it - neuronal excitement or orientation etc., whatever, it's exactly the same.
Nobody would think of seeing the biological description as causal for the psychological description.
But that is exactly what makes the mind-body problem.
You can be complacent and say information is just an abstraction but we can do better. I'm actually on your side here by pointing out that information exists only as our biological brains holding mental content. Brain(mental content).
Information is biology and a contained non-physical component... so information is brain biology only and not all physical matter. We also have limits on the what mental content we can contain. Aptitude, access, environment, time constraints are all limiting how much information we can process and retain.
It's always the same tree. It is only described from different perspectives and with different categorical means.
Just apply that to the mind-body problem and you'll see that it's really a bogus problem.
We are all biological beings - right? Then we must also be biologically describable. If we want to describe consciousness biologically, we should use a biologically usable term for it, e.g. nervous excitability in the sense of an orientation performance or some other terms.
Information is not a biological term, nor is mental.
When information is used in the context of biology, it is more in everyday language to represent complex relationships, but it is not a biological analytical term.
So don't keep mixing biology with psychology/philosophy.
Me too! This mystery must be solved pronto!
If I stick to what I can observe then biological brains support consciousness, consciousness doesn't exist without brains and shouldn't be speculated on in a form separated from the brain.
The category error notion will just detour you from the fundamental relations between brain and mind you should be focusing on.
According to what evidence?
There's a difference in kind between inorganic material and organic beings. Ernst Mayr, one of the architects of the modern evolutionary biology insists that life is fundamentally different from inanimate matter. He says 'The discovery of the genetic code was a breakthrough of the first order. It showed why organisms are fundamentally different from any kind of nonliving material. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program which stores information with a history of three thousand million years.'
The idea that life is chemistry plus information implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry. The strongest argument in support of this claim has come from Hubert Yockey in the application of Shannon's information theory to biology. Yockey shows that heredity is transmitted by factors that are segregated, linear and digital whereas the compounds of chemistry are blended, three-dimensional and analogue (source). Accordingly, there's a difference in kind - an ontological distinction, if you can get your head around that - between crystal lattices and the structures of DNA.
Your claim is simply materialist wishful thinking, with no basis in science or philosophy.
According to the theories of how life started. That's the closest we are to an answer, anything else is extreme wild speculations combined with religious nonsense. There's nothing else than to look at the facts that exist and extrapolate from that.
Quoting Wayfarer
Just stating that there's nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program is pretty much false by its own rhetoric. There's is something in the world that has a genetic program, DNA. Stating that there's nothing in the world like DNA is ignoring that DNA exists as part of this world. This is the type of detachment that we humans do that precedes logic. We categorize stuff based on our opinions first, then we position these categories as unrelated. DNA is most plausibly a result of chemistry out of RNA enzymes, this is what's "up to date" in research. We don't yet know how that chemistry fully functions, or how long it takes to form, but it's still more plausible than any other explanation.
So, the most plausible line of causality is that inanimate matter formed complex behaviors over the course of millions or billions of years based on the right conditions. We don't have a unified theory between quantum mechanics and general relativity yet, but the universe still hangs together and the possible theories are there to explain that link. Just because the link isn't fully answered doesn't mean it's therefore false because there are enough conditions to suggest verified observations.
A fundamental misunderstanding with science is that everything needs to be hard evidence true, but in reality, a theory of quantum mechanics can be partially correct but not be the final theory. Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to use stuff like the flatscreen you're reading this text on. A theory of life does not have to be fully complete to explain the origins of life in the most plausible way possible at this time in scientific history.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, this is separating them after the fact, after it evolved into it. It's like saying that something could never be as it is because you can't combine its current existence with any idea of how it formed because of its current attributes. And it does not mean the formation of it never took place and has a plausible explanation as an emergent event or even a dividing event between information and pure chemistry, only that the current form functions in the way it does. That is just an observation of the emergent attributes we see today, not a theory of actual formation. The pre-Big Bang existence might be extremely abstract to us in this universe, but judging its existence based on the rules, laws and principles of the universe we live within as an argument against any pre-existing conditions that formed our universe is faulty logic. We extrapolate a plausible idea based on moving as close to the event as possible and theorize through concepts that seem to break the laws of physics that we experience. Probability is the only factor we can work with. Observation of attributes a system has does not change probable formation, it only adds to such theories with new information needed to fully explain everything.
A computer's storage system is essentially inanimate but stores complex information. It does not store stuff in a way that is natural to us as humans, but decoding that information makes it possible for us to see an image or read this text. Is this information different from the chemistry/physics of the computer storage? Or is the information just an emergent effect of the state in which the storage chemistry/physics is composed of? How can you tell the difference? The physical changes as we change the information, they're linked in a way in which you cannot remove the other or else lose the whole.
Life, or rather RNA, did most likely form as a molecular system that entered different states depending on its surroundings. Just like the most basic computers in the early days of computing only had extremely basic ones and zeroes only able to form rather simplistic results, the simplistic first versions of RNA structures might have just been able to interact in ways closely similar to basic chemical reactions we see in other chemical mixtures.
But over the course of billions of years, these chemical reactions could very well increase in complexity, just like the increasing complexity in computing through new forms of chemical/physical combinations enabling more interactions and complexities possible. With the increase in complexity of these pre-RNA structures, at some point, some very simple and extremely basic "information" started to be stored and interactions with other molecular structures started forming links or repulsion based on the conditions the structure was in, and in relation to other structures. If structures bonded over the similarity of basic information, those structures could have increased in "computational power" of this "storage".
This would enter the structure more closely resembling the RNA structures we know of, continuously increasing complexity. A kind of singularity of biological "computation" in which RNA linked together in further complex ways.
None of this would dismiss information and chemistry being separated in how we observe these systems today. The division could in itself be an emergent factor, maybe even a crucial point in which the needed complexity for life formed.
Saying "life is chemistry plus information implies that information is ontologically different from chemistry" does not disprove that they both formed from a single point together, especially since they're so intertwined in the compound of what makes up life that they cannot exist independent of each other.
Quoting Wayfarer
How in the world can you conclude that what I say has no basis in science? I'm doing a simple overview in a "short" forum post based on the most plausible extrapolation out of where science is at the moment on this topic. You've selected a specific source that in itself criticizes some aspects of theories, but that's like Einstein's criticism against quantum physics, it doesn't mean quantum physics is wrong, only that there's a part of it needed to be revised or expanded upon to unify theories into a whole.
I'm also very allergic to the result of his argument as it has become a foundation for pseudo-science nonsense by creationist institutes doing bad science to prove against evolution.
I much rather look at the consensus for a scientific topic than use a single topic within it as a foundation for a dismissal of the entire field's conclusions of probable theories. It's like saying that I like one of the String theory explanations and therefore that is the correct one.
The emergent attributes of a system do not contradict the formation of that system just because its evolved nature has differences that might not have been present at formation.
It is not 'false by its own rhetoric' which is a nonsense sentence. There is nothing in the inanimate world that has a genetic program. How that came about is what is at issue. So far, abiogenesis is simply an assumption of 'what must have happened' in the absence of another kind of explanatory framework or mechanism.
That is a better clarification of it. But still just a description of how things are now, not how it formed. If the inanimate evolved into something with a genetic program, you can see the separation between the inanimate of today and the genetic, but that doesn't mean the inanimate at some point and under certain conditions produced a genetic program that today seems disconnected. If we don't know exactly how it came to be, concluding it to be "unnaturally" separate in the way you do, is as much wild speculation, if not more than abiogenesis describes it, which has more logic to it than anything else.
Quoting Wayfarer
It has more foundation in science than anything else. Just because a theory isn't fully explained or solved doesn't mean "anything goes" and anything else is equally plausible, it is not. And observed or calculated aspects that may on surface contradict the theory, usually does not contradict but complement and fine-tune a theory closer to scientifically objective truth.
Quantum physics does not compute with general relativity, which is so tested that there's no doubt it is correct. Does that mean that because quantum physics doesn't compute with general relativity right now, general relativity is wrong? No. Does it mean that all quantum physic theories are equally correct because none of them has been fully implemented into a unified theory? No.
I'm not gonna pick and choose a theory or explanation that I prefer personally, that's just pure bias. I'm extrapolating a possible causality of events based on what is currently the most likely. If the counter argument against that is a more complex and unlikely causal line of events or some wild speculation that has more in common with religious fairy tales, then theres a burden of proof on the one at the higher speculative level. And adjustments to how we categorize separation between information, genetics and chemistry does not equal abiogenesis wrong, it just means we have to incorporate new information into how we form a theory closer to scientific truth.
And we've already been here with so many other scientific breakthroughs in history. Right at the edge of understanding there's a high number of wild speculations in battle with each other and when eventually a proven solution comes along it's usually pretty unspectacular and logical and then people move on. There are so many theories accepted today as just part of how the world and universe works, things that we use in technology and applied sciences and it's just part of "boring reality". This will keep on going as long as we do science.
But I'm amazed every time someone concludes something as "we will never know". Scientists learn new stuff all the time, conclude theories all the time. We're just a few years after proving the Higgs field being real. We've just proven gravitational waves being real. Before that people did the same kind of biased speculation and using the lack of evidence as a foundation for any kind of less plausible theory.
Even if people aren't scientists, they can still apply a form of scientific method when trying to speculate about things around them. How to find facts, how to judge facts, checking sources, checking what quality studies and publications have, do they have meta studies etc.?
What I see as a major problem today is that most people focus more on the conclusions of a single study or a philosophical text than to look at the everything surrounding it. How did it come about? Who are involved? Are there studies of these studies? What's the general consensus, what does the consensus think of studies critical of that consensus etc. etc.
The question I need answers to... why would I not form a hypothetical line of causality based on abiogenesis? Is there a better theory at this time? Is there a better framework to explain it that is respectful of the science behind it? There's a high level of plausible events in abiogenesis that I simply cannot find in other speculations. Even panspermia requires something like it to have occurred somewhere else. Even if we have aliens actively creating life on earth, their own lives requires a formation. The most plausible requires something more plausible in order to be toppled even if everything is on a hypothetical level. Not fully proven does not mean "anything goes".
I think abiogenesis is compelling because it blurs a fundamental distinction: that between life and non-life, or at least, makes it appear less fundamental. Modern naturalism has an implicit commitment to there being only a single substance, that substance being matter (or nowadays matter-energy) from which everything is formed. As a satirical blog post expressed it:
Satirical, but not too far from the truth. There's a deep conviction in modern culture, that because science has displaced religion, then it must provide an origin story, and that origin story has to be seen in physicalist terms. In a way, it also solves the problem of anxiety, by eliminating metaphysical anxiety and providing a sense of certainty (false, in my view.)
But there is growing dissent from physicalism. The biologist I started off quoting, Marcello Barbieri, questions the phyicalist account not from any religious point of view but acknowledging that the 'chemical paradigm' cannot account for the fundamental characteristics of life. (Worth looking at that article What is Information?) For that matter in the emerging field of biosemiotics there are some (not all) who reject physicalism.
None of that is providing any other scientific theory that has its roots in all data and surrounding theories presented in science on the topic. The satire that science acts as another form of religion is only true for those who need to defend their own belief in fantasy/magic/religion. So when someone puts trust in science, not through belief but through trust in unbiased methods and facts, the people who are unable to experience the world through anything but religious or mystical belief, view that trust, wrongly, as just "another belief system".
Disregarding random minorities of nutjobs actually viewing science as a religion, this is not true at all for people actually forming their worldview though a foundation in science.
The problem with your counter-argument is that your premisses only revolve around doubt. A doubt in a current scientific theory with support not through scientific consensus but specific individual doubters. This doubt focuses on a pure observation of how nature behaves right now and through that concluding "truths" about life's formation, even though, for everyone involved in theorizing, there's still a gap in which we don't know the exact processes that happened at the formation of life. So the doubters can only conclude new data on the complexity to solve that unknown event, it's not in any way a dismissal of the validity of abiogenesis as a scientific theory. That's not how science works and that's not what biosemiotics is really about.
"Doubt", in science, is nothing weird or strange, it's a foundational pillar of science. It's part of how to stay unbiased in research and formation of theories. But doubt, in itself, does not prove or disprove anything. It only points towards a part of a topic of study that needs more clarification and explanation. To conclude abiogenesis wrong because there are more differences in how information and chemistry fit together than previously thought, is not how science works. What it does is to add new data or a new perspective that expands the problem that scientists seek to solve.
The consensus still holds abiogenesis as a primary theory for the origin of life, that hasn't changed. And I won't adhere to another speculation just because abiogenesis isn't fully completed yet and biosemiotics does not change or disprove abiogenesis at all. There's enough data and logic to it to be considered the closest to truth we have right now. To use a theory's incompleteness in order to invite extreme wild speculation far from the data and facts that so far exist, is basically a total misunderstanding of science or an inability to actually understand the scientific process due to a world view so biased towards belief in the mystical or magic that the concept of science cannot be understood in the first place. This is exactly the same as quantum physics. There's so much evidence and proof in quantum physics that no one doubts the data and facts on that topic, and it's already used as applied science in things like modern electronics. But there's still not a complete theory, there are tons of things yet to be explained and we don't have a unified theory yet. Does that mean we can dismiss everything quantum because it's not complete? No, so why would we make up some wild speculation instead of abiogenesis when new data is discovered? Not until it's been completely disproven and another theory has more validity in line with all data will something like abiogenesis be abandoned, and the ones who would abandon it in an instance would be the scientists themselves, because they don't act through belief, they trust the data they arrive at because it's cold and hard compared to the fluffy comfortable and unreliable speculations of fantasy.
Science is also the only system and method of understanding actual truths within the confidence of the world/universe as we know it. Disregarding the wild metaphysical speculations like "brain in a vat" type stuff that has no actual impact and application in the world, science, compared to any other biased speculation like the religious, magical fantasy or mysticism, has actual consequences in the world we live in. All of our technology is a result of scientific research.
It's not a question of belief. It is a question of trust in that the science can have applied results. Our expanding understanding of everything is not a comfort blanket, it is an instinctual curiosity and interest in knowledge. Religion and fantasy, on the other hand, is pure comfort. Abandon all unknowns and surrender over to a finite explanation in order to drift through life without fear. So it's no wonder that in a world built upon scientific discoveries, religious people feel threatened and become increasingly biased in their reasoning and opposition against science.
We still live in a deeply superstitious, religious and foolish world and I think that's why there's so much confusion surrounding science. I would argue that it is actually impossible for a deeply religious person to understand a purely scientific mind due to the differences in how those two minds fundamentally experience the world.
The religious mind cannot fathom the pure reason of the scientific mind because that's not how that religious mind process information and form concepts about the world around them. And the deeply scientific mind can never settle on a mystical or magical conclusion to anything because of their distinct perception of the border between fantasy and fact.
But since science has an almost flawless track record of providing truths about the world that can actually be applied in practice, compared to religion and mysticism, there is very little reason to look elsewhere than science for actual answers to complex questions. The problem is rather if the person has a religious or scientific mind; can they actually understand the difference between science and religious speculation? Because whenever I hear counterarguments about how "science works as a religion" whenever someone refers to science as their source in the explanation of something, I just roll my eyes at how deep of a misunderstanding it is regarding how science actually works and how scientific minds actually process information and form concepts about anything around them.
Biosemiotics does not cancel abiogenesis as a theory because it doesn't really focus on the formation of life in the first place. At the moment it's closer to philosophy than science, and is only focusing on the evolution of biological systems, not how life started. Nothing says it didn't form through an abiogenetic formation and was part of life's formation. The field of biosemiotics is not a "counter" to abiogenesis.
What philosophy of mind claims is IRRELEVANT. You will need to study Science, not philosophy in order to understand the ontology of an emergent biological property like Consciousness.
Natural Phenomena are studied by Science, not philosophy.
The set of hypotheses under the umbrella of Abiogenesis are our attempt to identify possible ways responsible for the emergence of biological systems from chemical ones. In my opinion it should be compelling for its epistemic value not just for being able to bring down our dogmas.
Brain information is in the brain only.
Genetic information...I don't think it exists other than a shorthand for the people who study it and a pop culture concept.
Signal information...of the Claude Shannon type seems to reduce to physical matter only.
Physical information...such as distant galaxies, stars and planets having physical information associated with them...shorthand by practitioners but migrated to pop culture.
Dictionary definition of information is an abstract concept. Not very helpful if you are a physicalist.
I'm not trying to get too focused on information other than observing that brain information and consciousness are inseparable.
So my view is brain information is the only information that should be relevant to mind.
It's an interesting and valid area of research for sure, but not at the cost of obfuscating fundemental ontological distinctions.
Quoting Christoffer
There's also a deep and underlying fear of religion which colors a lot of what you're saying.
[quote=Richard Lewontin, Review of Carl Sagan, Billions and Billions of Demons]Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.
Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen. [/quote]
The only fear of religion I have is when religious people force their own preferences and opinions upon the world as if they were facts and truth. Religious people tend to think that when a group operates around a consensus of facts as a scientific source for whatever they're doing -that means they're being forced by "scientists" and "experts" to think in a certain way. These people seem to think that operating on a ground of religious belief is on the same level as operating on scientific facts. And this is what's driving a lot of destructive movements today that function out of anti-intellectual conspiracy theories and whatever nonsense they cook up.
You are using that quote as some kind of idea that someone with a scientific mind is limited in their way of thinking about the world, but as I've mentioned, a truly scientific mind doesn't have that kind of inner conflict that people seem to believe they have.
Only religious minds can fool themselves into thinking the lack of religious or mystic ideas is somehow subpar or limited to the individual. But a religious mind can never have a frame of reference without having a scientific mind. They are doomed to always have these religious thoughts lurking in their minds on any topic that pops up. And those thoughts influence their ability to truly scrutinize a topic in the same way a scientific mind does. Everything starts to boil down to excuses for keeping the religious and the mystic instead of holding back emotions until something is proven.
Only the religious mind thinks the scientific mind is a depressed, emotionally empty void with a lack of wonder. In my experience, the sense of wonder while exploring scientific topics seems to be limitless, while the religious mind just surrenders to one set of ideas and then tries to keep feeding that craving for wonders by framing everything through that religious lens, only to end up being limited by locking themselves into that specific belief.
In the 19th Century there was a kind of popular movement among English intellectuals to portray religion and science as mortal enemies. It's called 'the conflict thesis'. Most of the so-called 'new atheist' authors, and many who preach scientific materialism on the Internet, adopt that view, but it is a very blinkered view.
The sources I actually quoted in earlier in this thread were not 'religious people' at all but biologists and scientists. But those whom I quoted have believe that materialism - the view that there is no fundamental difference between the chemical and organic domains - is insufficient because it can't explain some of the basic characteristics of life, like memory, intention, homeostasis, the encoding and transmitting of genetic information via dna etc. But in your view, to question materialism is to be 'a religious person', meaning, a fundamentalist or science-denying flat earther. In fact the kind of materialism you argue for is a direct descendant of Christian monotheism, in that it allows only one kind of fundamental principle, but now it's matter (or matter-energy). The 'jealous God' dies hard.
Quoting from my paper:
A conceptual space is the set of ideas onto which we normally project experience. The Fundamental Abstraction is a generally useful narrowing of mental focus which can limit our conceptual space. An inadequate conceptual space can create problematic representational artifacts, such as the pre-relativistic notion of simultaneity. While hard to see from within a tradition, representational problems can be identified by comparing diverse cultural, disciplinary and historical perspectives.
...
The human mind has limited representational resources. Eric of Auxerre (841-76) was perhaps the first to recognize that these limitations force the resort to abstract, universal concepts. Our working memories can only maintain 5-9 chunks of information. Unable to apprehend the overwhelming complexity of nature, we employ abstractions attending to features of interest while ignoring others. Thus, natural science begins with a Fundamental Abstraction.
Knowledge is a subject-object relation, entailing a knowing subject and a known object. The initial moment of natural science is the abstraction of the object from the subject our choice to attend to physical objects to the exclusion of inseparable subjectivity. Natural scientists care about what was experienced, not the act of experiencing. Thus, science is, by design and appropriately, is bereft of data and concepts on knowing subjects and their mental acts. Yet, these data and concepts are required to connect physical findings to awareness. Consequently, physics lacks intentional causes and effects not because the physical and intentional are independent, but because we have abstracted their interdependence away in constructing physics.
Of course, but I didn't talk about religious people as much as "religious minds" and the difference of that towards a scientific mind. It acts as a kind of filter when making observations about a concept of reality. When the religious mind comes into contact with a concept of reality, it will always filter information against a presumption about reality. The religious person either lives with such a filter being extremely strong or measured down to extremely weak, where the extremely strong would be an extremist and the extremely weak would be a scientist who personally holds a religious belief.
But my point is that the filter is always there and whenever information occurs that challenges that filter, they will either abandon the religious/spiritual/mystic filter and change into a scientific mind or they will go onto a harder defense to defend the presumptions.
It can be obvious or it could show up as a continuous bias that taint their ability to form valid arguments or research.
A scientific mind doesn't do that. It can form other forms of biases, but the foundation of thinking doesn't have a filter because internalized ideas always come out of the information and knowledge. While both minds are susceptible to many types of bias, the religious mind tends to get stuck into a specific bias that is much more solidified and harder to break through.
Quoting Wayfarer
And this is a strawman of what I described. I don't care about popcorn ideas. The concept I describe has more to do with the ability to have clarity of mind when challenging existential questions in opposition to a clouded mind. In essence, it's about fighting cognitive biases. The scientific method is the most effective and functioning method of reducing the risk of bias, the scientific mind is essentially acting according to similar principles when conceptualizing a topic while the religious mind, however weak in bias, still has the problem of bias.
Reducing cognitive biases is the core of a scientific mind. And reducing cognitive bias is the only way to reach any kind of objective truth or get close to any such concept. If that isn't the goal of knowledge and wisdom, then there's no point in discussing or thinking about anything since there's no point of direction anyone is moving toward in their acts of conceptualizing any kind of topic.
Quoting Wayfarer
I know, it's not their research or points that I object to, but how those conclusions are used as an antithesis to abiogenesis when in fact they don't function as such. They're not about the process of how life began, but how evolution forms and behaves afterward. Life already needs to exist for their concepts to function, they do not describe origin.
Quoting Wayfarer
Once again you strawman things. You change the concept of a "religious mind" into a "religious person" and do not understand the concept I'm describing.
The basic misunderstanding you push is that their concepts disprove abiogenesis. It does not. It only describes how evolution, information, chemistry etc. behaves AFTER the origin of life or it could be that they all formed at the same time, but still does not disprove the essential concept of abiogenesis.
This antithesis against abiogenesis is something you propose through some misunderstanding of their concepts. I cannot conclude whether that is because of some kind of bias or not, but if you want to disprove abiogenesis using their concepts you need to explain why their concepts disprove abiogenesis.
Quoting Wayfarer
Or you ignore what the science actually tells us, or misunderstand it and invent connections not proposed by the people you use as sources for the conclusions you make out of such self-made connections. And when I criticize this type of conjecture you strawman my arguments into being something about calling everyone who doesn't agree with the actual consensus, "flat-earthers".
I question the logic and conjecture in your conclusions based on it actually not being proposed by the people you source. It doesn't have to do with me being materialistic, it has to do with there not being enough data or evidence to counter abiogenesis and the people you source never proposing such either.
Without knowing any other larger context, this sounds like how I described the "scientific mind" compared to the "religious mind". Do you mean that the representational artifacts act as a result of cognitive biases? I.e the inadequate conceptional space is akin to a person having a limited ability to conceptualize due to biases that lead to artifacts in reason and conclusions?
Yes, although the idea of conceptual spaces and subspaces is not limited to science and religion. I'd say that cognitive biases are embodied in limited conceptual spaces and that there is a feedback loop linking them. Because we conceptualize reality in a certain way, we tend to look for evidence consistent with that framework, ignoring or minimizing evidence that would undermine the framework. In the other direction, as selected evidence confirms our conceptual framework, it becomes more embedded in our neural net, and so more habitual and less reflective. The rejection of Wegner's views on continental drift exemplifies the selective use of evidence.
Representational artifacts are structures that must be constructed to bridge the gap between a limited conceptual space and reality. In pre-relativity physics, we have absolute time. In the rejection of continental drift, we have infinite forces holding the continents in place. In the representation of physicality and intentionality, we have dualism with its so-called problems (mind-body and free will). In the supposed conflict of science and religion, we have the constructs of "the scientific mind" and "the religious mind." This ignores the fact that some of the greatest scientists (e.g. Galileo, Newton and Laplace) were faithfully religious, and some deeply religious people (e.g. Bishop Robert Grosstesta, who defined the scientific method, and St. Albert the Great, the greatest botanist of the era) were excellent scientists. Even Darwin believed in God and "designed laws" of nature.
To quote from my paper:
First, I agree that the information we are conscious of is neurally encoded, and so concepts are inseparable from neural representations. Aristotle and Aquinas both recognized that rational thought is impossible without a sensory representation (their phantasm). Galen saw that brain trauma alone could lead to cognitive disease. Still, there is nothing about a neural representation that entails our consciousness of it, and we are unaware of most neural representations. So, while concepts are inseparable from representations, they are not identical. Something needs to be "done" to a representation to make us aware of it -- its intelligibility must be actualized if it is to be known. The aspect of us that does this is what Aristotle and Aquinas called the "agent intellect." Daniel Dennett represents this as a homunculus in his Cartesian Theater, but shows it cannot be physical. That is also the conclusion of Aristotle and Aquinas. It must be non-physical because physics has no intentional effects, and knowing what is represented is an intentional act. So, actually knowing neurally encoded information requires us to have an immaterial aspect, the agent intellect.
Second, if all we knew were "brain information," then external reality could not inform us, and "knowing" would be imagining. Any theory of mind worth its salt needs to show how nature can inform us. The Aristotelian-Thomistic view does. It notes that an object informing our senses is identically our senses being informed by the object. In other words, the sensed object's modification of our neural state is identically our neural representation of the sensed object. So, neural representation is shared existence. It is both the object's modification of our neural state, and our representation of the object. The same is true when we actualize the intelligibility latent in the representation. Our awareness being informed by the neural representation is identically the neural representation (and so the object) informing our awareness.
Thank You
Yes, this is essentially what I meant (in less detail), by the "scientific mind" and the "religious mind". My definitions were made based on previous discussions, so it looks more like I position it in a purely religious vs scientific matter, but essentially my point was that a religious mind has a filter based on presupposed narratives and concepts that makes it harder to reach scientific conclusions since that filter always need to be dismantled to arrive at conclusions without biases. A scientific mind is a mind that is free from such religious filters, but it could also mean anything that filters reality into a presupposed concept for the subjective mind trying to conceptualize a topic. So when you mention ignoring or minimizing evidence that would undermine that framework, that is consistent with what I mean as well in that the "filter" filters out such evidence.
Quoting Dfpolis
And this is I think the consequential confusion that my somewhat poor definitions create. What I mean is more that these scientists, because of their religious beliefs, have a religious mindset, and therefore all of them have to actively fight the filter of religious belief in order for it not to undermine their own scientific and philosophical findings. For any findings and conclusions that require them to challenge their personal religious ideas, that filter creates an unnecessary strain on mental thought that a purely scientific mind would not have to go through. It almost becomes a testament to their brilliance that they were able to pierce through that filter in their mind and reach conclusions that were so fundamental to science as a whole. But I wonder where they would have arrived if their mindset were truly scientific and free from that filter. Some of our great philosophers and scientists had conclusions in which further thinking was just stopped by themselves with the argument "because God". If they didn't have the "filter", they might have kept going with their lines of thought and might have made further discoveries that we had to wait even longer for to arrive in the history of science.
This misunderstands the "religious mindset." Recent scholarship has shown that the medieval church, not merely tolerated, but actively encouraged, scientific inquiry. (E.g. James Hannam, The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution (2011).) The rationale, the doctrine of the "Two Books," was that God not only reveals Himself in Scripture, but also in the Book of Nature. Thus, the medieval religious mind was convinced that a true understanding of nature inevitably led to a deeper understanding of God. This tradition continues in Catholic circles. For example, early on the dominant interpretation of Genesis was literal. (Exceptions included such notables as Sts. Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas.) However, late 19th c. geology convinced theologians that a literal interpretation was wrong, as the actual age of the earth was too great. Consequently, the dominant Catholic interpretation of Genesis became non-literal to better conform to scientific findings.
Darwin did not think it necessary to reject God to do science, but instead followed a line of thought advanced by Suarez, viz. that science deals with "secondary causes." The idea is that God is the ultimate cause, continually keeping everything in existence, but that what is kept in being has real causal efficacy, namely, secondary causality. (Look at the quotations opposite the title page of the 1st ed. of On the Origin of Species.)
This is not to deny the existence of religious literalists. We all know of creationists and so-called "intelligent design" advocates. (ID is really unintelligent design, because it assumes that God is not smart enough to create initial states and laws of nature adequate to His ends.) Still, literal belief is not universal, and so it is not an essential characteristic of a faith commitment.
Quoting Dfpolis
That's exciting! A proper paper on my favourite subject by a TPF user. If I can manage it I might start a thread on it if that's OK with you.
Sure. Let me know.
"If introspection and consequent judgements are unreliable, then our belief that we observed what we believe we observed, as well as our belief that we reasoned correctly in analyzing our observations, are
equally unreliable for these are judgements based on introspection "
Yes, it seems unlikely that we can ever eliminate the fact that we are actually thinking from the analysis of what thought is, doesn't it?
"Either final causality is natural or we are supernatural"
:up: