The Question of Causation
The idea that there is such a thing as Mental to Mental Causation is an overliberal use of the term 'Causation'.
The term Causation is a physical term that describes types of temporal organisation. Even within the world of physics causation is a quite difficult item to deal with at the extreme ends of the micro and macro scales.
When it comes to then trying to establish a Physical to Mental or Mental to Physical causal route a much bigger problem emerges as we have no grounding for what constitutes a Mental Act and even if we did then we are no doubt dealing with a micro-scale phenomenon under which causal action is hard to discern.
What are your thoughts regarding Mental Actions as Causal Actions?
The term Causation is a physical term that describes types of temporal organisation. Even within the world of physics causation is a quite difficult item to deal with at the extreme ends of the micro and macro scales.
When it comes to then trying to establish a Physical to Mental or Mental to Physical causal route a much bigger problem emerges as we have no grounding for what constitutes a Mental Act and even if we did then we are no doubt dealing with a micro-scale phenomenon under which causal action is hard to discern.
What are your thoughts regarding Mental Actions as Causal Actions?
Comments (316)
-or- mental events happen in some mental spirit realm or whatever, and we apparently have no way of discovering anything about how that realm operates, and mental events trigger physical events which then trigger more mental events, and so on.
And for me, does my mental state cause me to frame my post with certain words, or cause certain words (physical characters) to be printed here?
So there is the question of whether the mental causes the physical at all.
But now your question would seem to be more specific: did you, through the physical medium of words, cause my mental state?
I think you can take my words as evidence of my mental state (Im telling you what I am thinking). And then if you find that my words (evidence of my mental state) are rationally responsive to your post (my evidence of your mental state), then this rational relationship might be called causally related.
In other words (as more evidence of what I am thinking), from your mind, through your words, you communicated your mind to my mind, and now if you see a rational relationship to your mind in MY words, and you see my words as related to a mental state in me, you could see this rational relationship as causal.
You express your mind and I respond to your mind through my own expression and where we are connecting, we have mental to mental causality.
There is the whole free speech political debate. Can someone be held accountable for inciting others to riot? The law says yes, which seems to require that words can cause mental states in others (intentional rioting), so as long as the words were caused by the speakers mental state in the first place, we have mental to mental causality enforced by courts.
Perhaps causation should be more narrowly and technically construed to describe physical to physical contact. So is those post I Like Sushis words banging up against Fire Ologists words, or is it two minds banging up against each other through words? Words hitting words seems to have no meaning but metaphor - is mind hitting mind also metaphor? Maybe causation needs to be taken literally. I think if we did we would have to reeducate everyone because naively, people say other people make them think certain things.
How about lying. There is no physics to support me telling you about the spaceship that landed I my backyard yesterday, so if your mental state is believing a spaceship landed, your mental state could only be caused by my lie. Seems like mental to mental causation is a straightforward way to describe a lie.
What is an example of such an idea? Who holds that there is such a thing?
As for mental causation, what if I were to write something that caused you to become agitated? Would that not constitute an example of mental causation that has physical consequences such as increasing your pulse?
I read this as homing in on a special problem within causation-talk: Whether my thoughts of, e.g., "If p then q" and "p" can be said to then cause the thought "q". But perhaps this isn't where you want to focus? You seem to be addressing mental-to-physical causation, or vice versa, not mental-to-mental.
Go for it! I am kinda of the mind that they both suffer with the same underlying problem of how causation is framed.
- The problem of overdetermination - can an event have both physical and mental causes (e.g. the decision to raise one's arm causes the arm to go up, but so does the purely functional brain chemistry - this is suggestive of functionalism as a solution)
- The physical causes the mental but not vice versa - epiphenomenalism
- The problem that decisions seem to be made before conscious awareness of them is prima facie suggestive of epiphenomenalism
- The strong intuition that experiences do, in fact, play a causal role in behaviour. Consider a jealous person murdering their ex's new partner. Non-mental causation does not seem sufficient, the felt emotion strongly seems to play a causal role.
- Mental causation is the only causation we are acquainted with - physical causation is inferred from correlation.
Panpsychism is a possible solution
Thats what I was saying.
So your OP caused the same mental ambiguity in me and J. Or is cause the wrong word?
Twilight of Idols, By Nietzsche...
Check it or don't, but it will perhaps answer you most deeply here...
Quoting Fire Ologist
This would be a key question when it comes to mental events such as thoughts. Our usage is such a mish-mash that it's difficult to find a place to begin an analysis.
Do I have a reason for thinking X? Let's say the answer is yes. OK, does that mean I have been caused to think X? Well, maybe. Reasons are often referred to as causes of actions, so why not causes of thoughts? But whatever their causative power may be, it isn't much like what happens when a bat strikes a ball -- or so we tend to believe. What the bat does to the ball is going to be seen as necessitating what happens next, and in principle a full account could be given of what the ball's trajectory must be, given the force of the bat's contact. Usually, that's not what we say about the causative power of thoughts, if any. A possible exception is the one I brought up, about modus ponens. Here, it is tempting to say that I'm caused to think the conclusion in much the same way that the ball is caused to do its thing by the bat. But should we resist that temptation?
Howse about you give us a brief summary rather than leaving half a response.
It is not my intention to cause any disruption to your thread, so I will not take this any further.
There are established usages of the word 'causation', both in ordinary language and in specialized domains. Capturing these usages in a single, all-encompassing definition has proven to be difficult. To my knowledge, no one definition works perfectly.
That said, we can note two things:
One is that when it comes to science, particularly physical science, causation does not have much of a role to play. Causation does not appear explicitly in physical ontologies. There is no "law of causation" to be found in our best theories. That was the basis of Russell's attack on causation a century ago, which remains influential to this day.
Where causation does play a role is in informal talk and reasoning. (Philosopher Peter Norton, whose views on causation can be characterized as Russellian, likens causation to folk science.)
With that in mind, I see no reason to deny mental causation as not complying to some pure notion of causation. Causation is very much an impure, informal notion, and mental causation fits comfortably within that informal domain. My intention to perform an action results both in mental and physical effects. Intentions are causal. Communication is causal.
I agree with you, but that's kinda scary isn't it? It's such a fundamentally important concept, to pretty much everything in life, especially philosophy. Without causation there's... nothing. If we didn't live in a causal world, there'd be nothing to experience, sense, or even think. It's so fundamentally important and yet so difficult to even define.
Mind blowing.
Mind itself is just as difficult to define. And here we wondering about mind to mind causation.
How can we not say more after 3,000 years of trying?
Everything blowing
For centuries people thought the "will" and the "ego" were genuine causes, facts about consciousness that explained action and responsibility. This is merely a projection of outdated psychology. Modern insight reveals that what we call "the will" doesn't cause action, motives are mere suruface ripples, and the Ego is a fiction of IT ( the body). Humans mistook these illusions for real quantums of force, and we built our metaphysics based upon them and projected it upon the world, turning the Ego into an ideal models of "being." Resulting in a massive inherited error: believing in the spirit and the mind as if they were causes via the thing in itself...
Mental actions are physical actions. You cannot have a mental action that exists apart from some physical reality like the brain. It is a mistake of category to believe that 'mental' is divorced from physical reality.
:100:
But . . . hold on. Let's rearrange.
"You cannot have a mental action that exists apart from some physical reality like the brain."
OK (so far as we know).
"It is a mistake of category to believe that 'mental' is divorced from physical reality."
OK, if "divorced" is a synonym for "exists apart," above.
"Mental actions are physical actions."
Does not follow at all. How do you get an identity statement out of the first two? Compare:
You cannot have a football game that exists apart from the players and the field.
It is a mistake of category to believe that "a football game" is divorced from the players and the field.
Therefore: A football game is the players and the field.
? - I don't think so. At best, you might conclude that the actions comprising a football game are made by players, on a field, but that's not nearly a good enough description.
Your therefore is wrong. You can only conclude a football game is comprised of players and field. If you have no players or field, you have no existent football game. A football game is a game that comprises players and a field. You cannot have a football game apart from these.
Now lets go back to physical reality which doesn't quite fit your analogy. 'Mental' actions are physical reality. If my brain connects in a certain way, that physical reality is that I feel X. "Mental" is a category of physical experience, but is still physical. There is no 'mental' reality that exists apart from the physical. I cannot grab something non-physical out of the air and say, "That's a mental reality." Mental actions are simply a category of physical actions, and it is a category mistake to think they can exist independently when no one has ever shown this to be the case.
What are the problems with mental causation in an idealist reality? Seems fairly straightforward: your ideas cause me to think a certain way.
You can identify neural correlates of mental events, but correlation is not identity. The fact that a brain state accompanies a mental state doesnt mean the two are the same. Until you can explain how physical processes generate subjective experience, how neurons firing produces the feeling of pain or the image of color, the claim that mental reality is just physical reality remains unproven. Calling it a category mistake doesnt resolve the problem; it just labels it without answering it.
Causation in general is a fraught notion itself. It's been discussed for thousands of years and the theories as to what it is or means still vary to this day. Some even doubt its usefulness in science. Bertrand Russell's famous quote goes so far as to relegate it to the status of folk science, not fit for physics and the like:
No, because the red that the brain sees is not emitted light. Its physical light that is interpreted into a subjective experience of those brain cells.
01100001 Do you see the letter A? Well if this is processed into a visual medium and displayed on a screen, you would see this binary code as A. But if I don't have a screen and am looking at the bits, I have no idea its A. But its still 'A' in the language and process of the machine.
Quoting RogueAI
Correct, if the mental state has some other measurable aspect. But it doesn't does it? Actual neuroscience has demonstrated that altering brain states alter the states of one's experience. Just because we don't have a physical screen to translate that physical experience into something we can see with light, doesn't mean there is some ephemeral non-physical existence. We need some type of evidence for that, and there doesn't seem to be any.
How do you get subjective experience from brain cells? Why do brain cells give rise to subjective experience but liver cells don't?
Oh, OK, so you're assuming this. I thought your post was aiming to demonstrate it.
Causation is a useful everyday notion, but it is perhaps best thought of as a heuristic shortcut, rather than a sharp feature of the world.
If you ask after the cause of a thing or an event, the question won't even make sense without some context. Why are you asking? What specifically do you want to know? What do you intend to do with that information? Causal analysis is very much an applied, pragmatic practice.
Doesn't causation just explain the "why" of some event or substance? We usually think in terms of efficient causation, in which one is identifying the (moving) cause that brought about some effect.
Asking, "What caused it?," seems to be asking what accounts for its existence. Thus in the most general sense you have Aristotle's four causes, which are meant to explain the being of substances.
17-12=
A young woman and young man, early 20s, run into each other at a party. They don't know each other, but start talking. They are stunned when they realize they lived a couple houses apart about 15 years ago, before the girl's family moved away. The young man says he cried those years ago when he heard she had moved away. He says he remembers that she said she liked brand new, shiny pennies, because they reminded her of the sun.
If you now have a certain word, and/or number, and/or scene of a romantic nature, in your head, was it put there physically? I think the medium of my communication, squiggles on the screen, is physical. But the meaning of the squiggles is not physical. And, since I stopped before the word, number, or scene, I certainly didn't physically put them into your head.
Quoting RogueAIIndeed. The neural correlates are locations.
Expert chess players are able to play with no physical board. Grand masters, for instance, will play against 10 opponents simultaneously, sometimes while blindfolded, and still consistently win. What about that situation is 'physical'?
Magnus Carlsen plays against 10 people while blindfolded.
Right, but we don't even need to concede that much. Even a game like football, in which physicality is not optional, cannot be said to be "identical" with the players and the field. There is a mental or conceptual element involved, without which no one could understand what a football game was.
So, analogically, mental activity can't be called identical to physical activity. It might depend upon it -- supervenience, anyone? -- but a purely physical description of brain processes will not get you to the content of a thought. The challenge for a philosopher is to explain, if they can, why this has to be the case; in other words, why this isn't simply a limitation of our current technology. "Imagine what we'll know about brains in 100 years!" the physicalist urges us. "Why, we'll be able to 'read off' any thought you have by analyzing the neuronal activity." But does this make neurons and thought identical? The scientist needs the philosopher to clarify, at this point.
Quoting J
There are very impressive displays of this kind of ability in current technology. Subjects imagine a yacht, and, hey presto, the system displays a yacht uncannily like what the subject has imagined (well, according to the subject.) But then, those systems are 'trained' for hundreds of hours on particular subjects, and 'learn' to associate patterns with images. In other words, a lot of technology and scientific expertise is interpolated between the subject and the display. So I question the sense that this can all be accounted for in physical terms, as the scientific expertise that is used to engineer these systems are also the subject of the experiment. The 'images' aren't simply 'there' in the brain, waiting to be seen, like a astronomical object: they're constructed using the very faculties that the science is seeking to explain. So there's a problem of recursivity.
Yes, in the most general sense, "cause" and "reason" can be used interchangeably, and Aristotle's four causes are better understood as a classification of the types of explanations. Nowadays, when we use 'cause' in a more specific sense, we usually mean something like Aristotle's efficient cause.
But whether you are asking in a more general or more specific sense, the question still requires context to be meaningful. "Why a duck?" asked out of the blue, makes about as much sense as "What's the difference between a duck?" You can ask for the reason of a duck being in this place at this time (if that seems surprising), or perhaps you want to know about its plumage color or its evolutionary history or why it was served for dinner - all potentially sensible questions that can be answered in causal terms (i.e., by reference to how we understand the world to be hanging together). But to ask what accounts for the duck's existence doesn't seem sensible, because there is no way to answer such a question.
But aren't Aristotle's four causes attempting to answer questions such as, "Why a duck?" The explanation for a duck will presumably include why it is in this locale, why its plumage is of a certain color, and what its evolutionary history (and genesis) is.
The crucial question asks whether such causal questions are disparate or interrelated. For example, whether Aristotle's efficient cause and material cause can both be named by the same name (i.e. "cause"). To take a simplistic example, someone might say, "We can't ask what causes ice. We can ask whether ice requires H2O and we can ask whether ice requires low temperatures, but those are two different questions." The answer is that they are two interrelated questions, and that to give the cause of ice we will need to answer both questions (and others as well). One cause/reason for ice is H2O and another cause/reason for ice is low temperatures, and yet they are both causes and they will both be needed to explain, "What accounts for the ice's existence." Surely someone who understands these two things about ice understands what accounts for ice's existence more than someone who does not understand these two things (ceteris paribus).
Quoting SophistiCat
I think that's the question that Aristotle and Darwin were attempting to answer, if in different ways. I don't see why it isn't a sensible question, nor why there would be no way to answer it. After all, the answers of Aristotle and Darwin both go a long way towards answering that very question.
If we hold to anything remotely like the PSR then I think causality is inevitable, because it is what accounts for phenomena (whether in your general or specific sense). Now it is true that giving a full account of an event or substance would be an ambitious project, but I want to say that the notion of cause/reason (aitia) is fairly clear, even if it is subtle.
At some level it's going to be fundamental. There's not going to be a deeper "how" sometimes, eventually it's gonna be "because those are the rules".
Like when one object hits another object and the interaction causes both to change speed - equal and opposite reaction, conservation of momentum - the "how" might not really satisfy you. Are you okay with "because that's just how it works"?
Philosophim
Them. They are physical. Their brain is physical. Again, this is very much like a computer cycling through one's and zero's in the machine. Just because its not emitting light that we can see, doesn't mean that physical processing isn't happening.
Interesting. "Form" does seem to be in the neighborhood somewhere. We could perhaps give an ideal description of a particular instance of a game, noting exactly what happens. It could be perfectly accurate. We would then have something in addition to "the players" and "the field," namely an account of events. But without the rules, we're still unable to give even the crudest story of the game. This somewhat resembles the notion of form, which can encompass both organization and intention.
We could just as well say well, the mind interacts with the body because that's how it is. We can't explain it, but we have literally endless evidence.
I don't think the mind thing is comparable. There are physical facts that are simple enough to be modelled by an equation - that's the perfect candidate for something being fundamental, and therefore the prefect candidate for something being a "brute fact" as it were.
Minds, on the other hand, seem complex and ever-changing - a human-scale mind is nowhere near a brute fact, and if it interacts with a body, there will be a particular way it interacts with a body. For example, it didn't seem to interface with the toes directly, it interacts with the brain and the brain moves the toes. So "the mind interacts with the body because that's how it is" is many steps removed from a brute fact, in comparison to, say, something like the Schrödinger equation, which because of its relative simplicity is a candidate for being close to a brute fact.
Quoting flannel jesus
I do not think causation is one, though. Predictability obtains, sure, but no explanations can be found. We can model effects from causes, but we can't model mechanisms sufficiently low-level to explain the causation. So I take your point that these are separate considerations, but..
We can predict, with 100% certainty, that a conscious thought will alter the body (or, vice verse.. we can't know, or even know if its' a reasonable question at this stage). That we cannot explain this doesn't seem to do much. We can't explain (properly) why momentum of body+another body = movement (inter alia) ). I entirely accept that these are things we can objectively model and that this sets them apart from what I'm suggesting. But I do not think the framework for understanding how to react to these facts changes. We know this thing happens, and we can't access even the right realm to figure out why (i presume you would nneed to not be a human mind to do this). Similar with physical causation, you'd need to be askance from it to explain it fully from without.
Causation itself isn't even in the category of things we're talking about. It's the meta-category of those categories of things. Minds interacting with bodies is a type of causation. Heat causing x or y is in the category of causation.
I think this is a central point, and I would just say that causation is not physical. I am surprised to see that there are a lot of claims within this thread which presuppose that causation is physical.
Quoting AmadeusD
"Heat causes water to boil."
Is this cause, in itself, physical? I doubt anyone would claim such a thing unless they are coming from an a priori physicalist paradigm. What is at stake is a kind of relation between heat and water, and I don't see how such a relation could be construed as physical.
Similarly:
Quoting I like sushi
No, I don't think it is a "physical term." When one billiard ball collides with another and causes it to move, our talk of "cause" is not talk of something that is physically instantiated. Even when we speak about a transfer of kinetic energy, we could be talking about mathematics or physics (i.e. motion), but we are not speaking about a physical entity. Transfers and relations and even motion are not physical entities. They are meta-physical or rather meta-material.
Note too that causation does not merely describe the temporal organization of billiard balls. "At t1 the cue ball had w position and the 9-ball had x position; and at t2 the cue ball had y position and the 9-ball had z position." There is nothing inherently causal about such descriptions of temporal organization. It's rather important to recognize that when Hume talks about causation as constant conjunction, he has redefined the term and is technically equivocating. Hume means, "Given my presuppositions I can't make sense of causation as anything other than constant conjunction; therefore causation is constant conjunction." But causation isn't constant conjunction. That's not what the word means. The Occasionalists who influenced Hume explicitly held that constant conjunction (i.e. Occasionalism) is not causation.
How is it not? How did the fall in temperature not cause the water to freeze, or the corrosion of the main support beam not cause the bridge to fall? If causation is not physical, what is it?
Well look at your own examples. Are you claiming that a temperature reduction is physical? Or that corrosion is physical? Or taking my own examples, are energy and its transfer physical? Is motion physical? Is a relation between two physical objects physical?
Yes. How is it not? It is measurable with a physical instrument, and observable in the effects it has on matter.
There are a lot of assumptions here, but let's take a step back.
You are saying, "?-temperature caused the water to freeze." So even if we grant for the sake of argument that ?-temperature is itself physical, what is in question is the cause. What is in question is ?-temperature qua cause.
Quoting SophistiCat
Would someone list within their physical ontology, "?-temperature caused the water to freeze"? I mean, if causation were physical then Hume would have just pointed to it. It would be a physical thing.
I mostly think they couldn't. They might not use the word "energy," but the words they would use would mean the same thing as energy.
But energy is not physical. It is a property of physical systems. It is a way to account for the interactions that take place within a system.
I think the onus is on you to show why it's in question.
The cause is in question because this is a thread about causality. We are not talking about ?-temperature. We are talking about causality. So to talk about ?-temperature apart from causality is beside the question.
To simplify it a bit, you might say, "The billiard cue was the cause; the billiard cue is physical; therefore some causes are physical." And I would point out that the billiard cue qua billiard cue is not in question. It is the billiard cue qua cause that is in question, and such a thing is not obviously physical. Indeed, prima facie, it is not physical at all. The-billiard-cue's-causing-the-motion-of-the-cue-ball is certainly not physical in the way that the billiard cue is physical.
The transfer of certain particles from heated air (or metal, i guess) into the water, ramping up the potential kinetic energy in the water until it cannot contain the energy, and must "boil" to let off heat which it cannot contain.
That seems a physical causation train. Is that not what you're looking for? Given the Davis quote and your response, I have to say there seems a trapdoor:
No, they couldn't. Without explaining what's happened at the moment of impact, we have no reason to think that a collision would cause movement, descriptively (we obviously do practically). Explaining what's happened at the moment of impact would be something of the form of my (likely inaccurate) description of heat causing water to boil.
Quoting Leontiskos
No, I don't think that's right. ?-temperatured air (sic) causes water to freeze. The air, when in contact with the water reduces the energy in the water to the point that its constituents cannot move rapidly enough to remain fluid. These are all physical. Temperature is a way to notate the complicated relationship between mass and energy, right? Can't see the gap, myself, which you are trying to fill. But I also don't see the explanation I'm looking for either...
Quoting Leontiskos
Not if he was insufficiently resourced to do so. It may be that Hume didn't understand the transfer of energy sufficiently to understand that there are some non-trivial and non-variable ways in which that energy transfer occurs (and temperature seems to be one.. the ratios of mass/energy retention would act as a "cause" in this sense - that could, i suppose, be called non-physical but I presume you see how that's misleading and not what you're after).
To be clear, none of this is particularly intended to support a physicalist account of causation. As noted, I don't understand how it occurs. But it seems to me we can get much further on the physicalist account than you're allowing. I would suggest some of Kim and Chalmers chats about causation in the mind/brain complex could be instructive as they are extremely detailed and minute.
Quoting Leontiskos
Which obtains, solely, in a physical, measurable domain. The premise seems wrong in this light... It is physical. We just can't grok quite how to describe that tension adequately.
Now we could say that the principle of causation which obtains among billiard balls supervenes upon the billiard balls. Thats fine, and it is a second-order consideration. Similarly, if in Euclidean geometry we have a set of points, lines, and curves, it does not follow that distance belongs to the same genus as points, lines, and curves. Distance is a second-order notion, and likewise, the distance between two physical objects is not itself physical. One reason we know this is because distance is infinitely divisible whereas physical objects are not infinitely divisible. So we cannot manipulate distance directly, but only indirectly by altering the points, lines, curves, or physical objects in question. Now someone might say, If distance is not physical, what is it? In the first place I would say that it doesn't really matter what it is, given that my point is that it isn't physical. In the second place I would say that it is mathematical. Of course the physicalist would claim that mathematics is physical, but his is a very unintuitive claim.
I would say that there is an analogy between the second-orderness of distance and the second-orderness of causality.
Quoting AmadeusD
I think that's the sort of thing a physicalist would claim, but I think it involves a lot of metaphorical language and hypothesizing. Likewise, we could say that kinetic energy is transferred from one ball to another, and given that kinetic energy is physical this is a physical phenomenon. The problem as I see it is that "kinetic energy" is a kind of reified formalism - a theoretical entity that is imagined to be substance-like and yet is not held to actually exist, at least not with any certitude.
Beginning with Newton we have become less picky about the presence of such theoretical entities. Newton gave his account of gravity in mathematical terms and simply transgressed the convention which required him to provide the means by which one body acted upon another via gravitational force. His account was therefore criticized for being a matter of "spooky" or "occult" action - a kind of invisible or unaccountable influence at a distance of one body upon another. Newton was nonplussed. He didn't believe that his causal-mathematical account required any theoretical meansphysical or otherwiseto justify it.
Quoting AmadeusD
There is a gap present within, "We do not descriptively but we obviously do practically," and also within, "my (likely inaccurate) description." With Newton we might simply skip the one half, arguing that we have no need to give a description of what happens within the collision if our description will inevitably be inaccurate. Of course I'm simplifying this a bit, but the point is that when we talk about causality we aren't really talking about a physical thing. Maybe the gravitational influence of one planet on another is physical, but maybe it's not. Newton's causal account in no way commits itself to the idea that there must be a physical intermediary between the planets, and I think the same is true for causality taken generally.
Quoting AmadeusD
I would again say that "energy" is a highly theoretical entity, and is not obviously physical.
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay. I suppose I am saying that the proposition that causation is necessarily physical ought to be a conclusion rather than an assumption. Also, I would say that the very fact that we can talk about causation without committing ourselves to physicalism (or to a physicalist account of causation) just goes to show that the concept is not inherently physical.
Quoting AmadeusD
I wouldn't say that "solely" is yet in evidence. Now we are apparently talking about efficient causation, and efficient causation will admittedly be quasi-physical. But things get tricky once we ask whether mathematics is an efficient cause of a particular gravitational force, or whether energy is an (intermediating) efficient cause on the billiard table. It at least seems fairly clear that energy is of a different genus than the two billiard balls.
I would probably say that energy is also second-order in that it is a potentiality. For example, a car with a given engine, weight, and amount of fuel will have a certain amount of potential energy. The energy is not physical; it is potential. It represents a real fact about the car's capacities which supervenes on various physical characteristics of the car.
A more clumsy way to address this issue is to think about a cause in terms of a consequence relation. So in response to a question about the cause of ice we might provide a consequence (or "conditional" if you prefer):
Now supposing the consequence really does represent a cause, is it physical? Is the if-then relation that obtains in reality between water and temperature a physical thing? The water is physical, and the cold temperature is physical, and the ice is physical, but is the relation that describes and accounts for the transformation itself physical? And consider the world in which water never freezes. Surely that world has one less physical thing than our world, given that it lacks ice. But does it lack a second physical thing, namely the causal relation described by the consequence?
Surely. The precise mechanism is very well understood, in terms of molecular dynamics.
Youre right that causality as a principle isnt a material objectbut that doesnt mean causation between physical events isnt physical. The principle may be abstract, but the relation it captures is physically real and measurable. So, if I say the high temperature caused the water to boil, Im referring to a physical state change governed by known physical laws, not invoking an abstract metaphysical principle.
Quoting Leontiskos
The description of the relation is of course not physicalits verbal or symbolic, a product of language or mathematical formalism. No argument there: the sentence cold temperatures cause water to freeze is composed of words, not ice crystals. And likewise, the water is composed of H[sub]2[/sub]0, not phonemes.
But the relation being describednamely, the causal link between temperature and phase changeis a physical phenomenon. It reflects real, observable, and measurable interactions in the physical world. Water molecules slow down at lower temperatures; hydrogen bonds lock them into a crystalline lattice. Thats not a metaphor, thats molecular physics.
So while talking about causation involves non-physical symbols (words, formulas), the causation itself in this casebetween temperature and freezingis every bit as physical as the molecules involved.
But why do you think that a relation between physical things is physical? Why do you think the speed of water molecules is a physical thing? Again, do you think that the world where a molecule changes speed has one more physical thing than the world where the molecule does not change speed? If a molecule's speed is physical then it seems that you must hold this.
Beyond that, Hume's response would be, "You have seen the constant conjunction between slow-moving water molecules and the formation of ice, but where is the cause? How do you know that it is the slow-moving molecules which cause ice?" The cause is itself neither observable nor measurable in the way you suppose.
Quoting Leontiskos
-
Quoting Wayfarer
I think I was pretty clear that I was talking about the "relation that obtains in reality between water and temperature." I did use the word "describe," but within the clause, "describes and accounts for the transformation." So I am not attempting to talk about mere words.
The white ball holds a force (momentum) as a group of atoms, but not from a median point, but as a group as a whole. That force is only a force in that the white ball is moving relative to the red ball. But perhaps the white ball isnt moving, but the red ball, the snooker table and the planet are moving towards the white ball with an equivalent force and the white ball is stationary. In which case that same force is now held by the red ball. So in this case the red ball causes the white ball to move.
This would suggest that the cause of the change in momentum of the two balls could be given to numerous different forces, [I]held[/I] in various different points in the system. Depending on which perspective the observer is coming from.
That seems straight out of Hume to me. And I see his point.
Quoting Leontiskos
But water mixed with cooling temperature followed by its becoming frozen water or ice
Maybe we can say that like we sense water and then sense ice, causality is something we sense over time, its a name for the and then when we mix water with cold air over time. So like the other physical things causality isnt just a mental relationship, but the motion of objects. Causality is a type of motion like icey or liquid are types of water depending on the temperature.
Hume argues that since we never observe causality directlyonly sequences of eventsthen causality must be a mental habit or convention, not something real, as it cant be observed. But Kant says the fact that we can experience sequences as ordered events already presupposes the possibility of causal relationships. What makes experience possible is not just sensory data - as the empiricists argue - but the conceptual framework through which we cognise it.
[quote=Kant Metaphysics IEP; https://iep.utm.edu/kantmeta/#H2] The idea that the mind plays an active role in structuring reality is so familiar to us now that it is difficult for us to see what a pivotal insight this was for Kant. He was well aware of the ideas power to overturn the philosophical worldviews of his contemporaries and predecessors, however. He even somewhat immodestly likens his situation to that of Copernicus in revolutionizing our worldview. In the Lockean view, mental content is given to the mind by the objects in the world. Their properties migrate into the mind, revealing the true nature of objects. Kant says, Thus far it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to objects (B xvi). But that approach cannot explain why some claims like, every event must have a cause, are a priori true. Similarly, Copernicus recognized that the movement of the stars cannot be explained by making them revolve around the observer; it is the observer that must be revolving. Analogously, Kant argued that we must reformulate the way we think about our relationship to objects. It is the mind itself which gives objects at least some of their characteristics because they must conform to its structure and conceptual capacities. Thus, the minds active role in helping to create a world that is experiencable must put it at the center of our philosophical investigations. The appropriate starting place for any philosophical inquiry into knowledge, Kant decides, is with the mind that can have that knowledge.[/quote]
Many people.
A general outline could be someone holds a belief (1) and has an intentional response (2) to said belief.
The most common examples of this are A Believes (mental state) it will rain, does not Desire (mental state) to get wet, and so intends (mental state) to take an umbrella when they go outside.
A Mental State being a non-reductive state: As Nagel and Chalmers put forward.
There are differing approaches to this position obviously. Eliminitivism (something liek Dennett) and Dualism (something like Descartes) are two other different perspectives.
Quoting Wayfarer
That sounds like a physical reduction argument. Some argue that all mental states are physically reducible - then we enter into the Hard Problem of consciousness.
If you push your view to the point you are I feel you are effectively end up arguing for solipsism?
I think there is an issue of language use invovled in what we are saying. When I read philosophical arguments involving the issue of causation, they terms are always framed in a specific manner -- often highly abstracted -- so as to be almost non-appliable to daily human life. Such framing makes perfect sense when it comes to the hard sciences that do not involve biological messiness, but less so when we talk of subjective experience and individual acts.
What bothered me was a reading a while back regarding how a mental state causes me to move my arm. The author framed the mental act as effecting the muscles, yet this is obviously an arbitrary point in the chain of events, as we could instead say 'No! That is too far down the line. The mental act to physical act begins at the neuronal level where the muscles received the signal," and then someone else may say "Wait a minute! The mental to phsyical act happens in the Brain".
The phsyical reductionist argument obvious suffers and it seems that a kind of elimitivism makes more sense from a physicalist perspective.
As for Mental to Mental, my position is we cannot say anything about such as it does not realy exist other than by way of using physical sensory data to progress the thought (real or imagined) as in the case of believing it will rain or not.
My view is that when people talk of Mental to Mental causation they are really talking about some mental state (physical or otherwise depending on your philosophical perspective) connected to another mental state by physical states.
To use a loose ananlogy, as Gazzaniga talked about split brain patients showing that the hemisphere effectively communicated in the physical world through sensory perception completely unbeknowst to the subject of the brain. If you are familiar?
I reject it too. Not that I claim to be a philosopher, it is just something I have had doubts about via my understanding of physics from an early age; and has since been reinforced by whimsical musings and more profound ineffiable experiences too.
I have yet to find any means of framing this in a rational context though :D
Basically I am asking what convinces of this?
Quote from book or essay?
Basic Kantian stuff ;)
The other side hasn't made a single inch of progress in thousands of years.
I know that might sound unfairly dismissive, but I also believe there's at the very least a big dose of truth in it.
Yes please! Complicated concept but a could be well worth getting deep into here :)
The current paradigm is the current paradigm. As long as we are not going backwards.
There is a reason I get aggravated when discussing philosophical ideas and people seem wholly unaware of scientific evidence that can help them refine or rethink the question/s they are playing with.
Note: Philosophically physicalism (as a rational position) does not hold all the answers and it is more than reasonable, in many ways, to take other positions seriously even if they are also left wanting. I am not really in favour of a utilitarian approach that clumsily weighs abstract proofs against physical evidence. I think it this issue that causes the biggest misunderstandings across all fields of human knowledge.
I think there is nothing particularly faulty in planting yourself in a strong physicalist position, but at the same time there are limitations to physical reductionism. No knowing something still leaves the possibility of something.
By this I mean that our concept of the 'physical world' has shifted with broader understanding across human history -- and pre-history no doubt! the physical world used ot be something more about Mass, but now Fields and such have altered what it is we are referring to as 'physical'.
It could be imagined that someone could make the faulty assumption that all white powder is the same because it is white simply because they have yet to discern any difference beyond aesthetic appearences. Once interacted with consistently people can slowly but surely come to understand that beyond appearances things are not always what they seem to be.
Of course the onus is on non-physical positions to help physicalist positions rethink what 'physical' means now and coudl mean under a cognitive paradigm shift.
My interest does extend beyond philosophy of mind, but would like to keep things related to this area if possible.
I think they should be taken seriously too! I'm not implying otherwise.
I do see a lot of people not talking physicalism seriously, which I think is odd and getting even more odd every day now that we live in a world where computer simulacrum of neurons are capable of speaking to us.
One thing that may explain a lot is that Language is an epiphenomenon and we use it to explain its own existence and practically everything else.
Not sure if you get what I mean, but hope to start another thread on this one day once I have hashed it out more thoroughly.
Well I cant think how else something would be caused.
Indeed. You can still have the intuitive 'physical' causation we ordinarily see all the time, say in machines. It's just it would be reducible to the mental causation happening at the micro-level on a panpsychist metaphysic.
Panpsychism might end up in a kind of cosmopsychism, which is arguably a kind of solipsism, but any theory which does not allow for some kind of plurality of points of view I would have thought has gone wrong somewhere. The evidence for other minds is overwhelming it seems to me. One challenge to a panpsychist cosmopsychism is how to account for plurality and privacy of points of view within the overall unity.
I think that's basically right. My point is not that Hume is correct in dismissing causality, but the Humean-like arguments apparently do suffice to show that causality is not physical.
Quoting Wayfarer
Okay, but how does any of that help your thesis which holds that causality is physical? Kant's answer to Hume does not involve the idea that causality is physical.
Sure, I don't have any objection to that sort of claim. :up:
I don't really understand what you are asking. I'd say both are obviously true, and that 99.9% of all people accept both. To give two examples, the first occurs whenever someone forms a mental plan about the physical world and then executes it. The second occurs whenever some persuades someone else. Or if you want a stronger sense of 'cause', then the second occurs whenever a propagandist succeeds.
Quoting I like sushi
What do you mean by "mental to mental causation"?
Quoting I like sushi
Again, 99.9% of people are going to say that the builder's mental plan of the house causes (in part) the finished house. So I think you have an enormous burden of proof to show that mental causation does not exist and that "causation is a physical term."
If causation is the same for mental to mental as it is for physical to physical how can this be proven? There is physical evidence for physical causation but not for mental causation. Physical reductionism either ends in everything being physical or some point where physical acts move to or from mental acts.
The burden of proof is essential the Hard Problem. This is a problem for 100% of people not 0.1% last I heard.
[s]Why do you say such things? Do you have an argument?[/s]
Or rather, the reason 99.9% of people believe that there is mental causation is because there is evidence for it. That there is not physical evidence for mental causation may be true, and is probably a tautology. If one accepts only "physical evidence" then they are effectively a physicalist.
I think the concept of causality can be a very useful one, depending on the situation. At other times, it can be misleading.
That makes sense to me - and makes sense of many intuitions. I think properly, though, the word would simply be a description of a physical process (once fully understood). Currently, it seems to be as you say for lack of an actual descriptive grounding.
Quoting Leontiskos
You're right, it doesn't. But they cannot be left out of the discussion, lest you end up with merely overlapping geometric elements and no shape at all. The distance creates what we're observing as a 'curve' for eg.
Quoting Leontiskos
That seems superficial: distance exists as a relation. The space which the distance describes is physical and reduces quite well into the standard theory. The distance is a ratio of sorts between the the position of the points and the next-considered points. The space which creates that ratio is fully real, in a physical sense. There is no distance without a physical medium. I do not htink it right to consider "distance" as some kind of property in and of itself. "the space between" is probably better.
Quoting Leontiskos
It is, though. It describes the transfer of particles. The cause for your question has been ascertained in physical terms. What, exactly, causes those particles to move from one object to another, i'm unsure of but I understand it breaks down to physical forces we understand pretty well. If I am wrong, we have more to discuss, definitely.
Quoting Leontiskos
I cannot see another avenue to explore, even, so I have to reject this. It begins with light, i suppose, as fundamental. IT just goes upwards from there in terms of density. I am not a physicist, though. I'm not quite sure what gaps you're seeing in the descriptions above. You may have something with gravity, but (unknown to you, clearly) i've always been skeptical about gravity (not in a Bryce Mitchell kind of way, but in terms of "nah, you guys don't know what's going on at all").
Quoting Leontiskos
With this, I definitely agree. I am not entirely convinced against substance dualism, so I need to accept this line.
Quoting Leontiskos
We can also talk about things in totally incoherent terms elsewhere (if that's hte case, I mean). That we can talk about causation without being committed to physical looks to me more like a lack of knowledge. It was a thousand years before we stopped thinking a giant guy dragged the sun across the sky. Or before we dropped the assumption that the Lord interferes, non-physically, in people's deliberative endeavours (changing hearts).
Quoting Leontiskos
I am unsure this is reasonable. Sufficiently dense energy is physical matter, no? They are the same stuff on that account. ice/water/steam.
Quoting Leontiskos
Again, I don't think this is true. With all of that information (and some more whcih I assume you would allow) a correctly-trained physicist could give you the exact amount of force/distance/heat/noise etc... that car could make. It doesn't seem to me many of these objections are, in fact, theoretical.
I think we can make it stronger than "very useful." When an investigation determines the cause of a plane crash, this is of course useful. But I'm confident the investigators also mean it to be true. Is there any reason to withhold that designation, in such a case?
Yes, this is exactly the kind of situation I was talking about - where the idea of causality is useful.
Quoting J
Causality and truth are apples and oranges. An understanding of what caused the crash is useful for figuring out how to keep it from happening again and for figuring out responsibility and liability. In order for that understanding to be useful it must be correct - true.
I don't quite see this. Aren't you saying that the statement "{some set of Xs} caused the plane crash" has to be true, in order to be of use? How then is causality an "apple" in regard to such a statement? The predication seems the same as in any other similarly phrased statement, and would follow the same inferential rules.
I feel no burden of proof.
Through our physical brains.
Quoting I like sushi
Exactly. Can you point something out to me that exists but isn't somehow physical?
I think were just getting tangled in language here. Causality is not the same thing as truth. Causality is a relationship between events. Truth is a characteristic of statements - propositions.
Quoting Leontiskos
First of all, Aristotle and Darwin were not answering the same question. Aristotle was offering a broad and rough classification of different types of explanation, whereas Darwin was proffering a specific answer to a specific question.
Second, explanations, causal or otherwise, are always sought and given within a specific context. The various examples of "explaining a duck" that I gave are not complimentary. Each would separately make sense in its proper context, but this would not make sense at all:
Quoting Leontiskos
There is no such thing as the cause of a thing, simpliciter, with no context of who is asking and for what purpose. This is why the so-called PSR is a nonsensical exercise, language on holiday.
OK.
Though as we've often discussed on this forum:
Is "If P then Q; P; therefore Q" about events or propositions -- or both? It can be given either a causal or a logical construal.
OK, lets be specific. Question - What caused the crash? Thats an important question and its correct answer is useful. Answer - the frange punctured the kambo which severed the gringle cord. Thats a proposition that is either true or false. And it would be true or false whether or not it was useful.
Thats enough here. I dont want to go back-and-forth on this any more. You can give your response and well leave it at that.
I just gave you a whole post arguing otherwise, and in response you've merely begged the question. Do you have any arguments for your position, or just assertions?
For example, you asserted:
Quoting SophistiCat
I responded with the argument:
Quoting Leontiskos
And then in response you just re-asserted your initial assertion, avoiding all argument. So at this point I can see that in your opinion we can never ask, "What accounts for the ice's existence?," and I can see that you have not yet provided any arguments for your opinion.
Consider that descriptions of physical things are necessarily static and structural - they tell us about composition, weight, neural connectivity, biochemical processes and interactions and the like. But a living brain exists in constant flux, generating experiences, meanings, and novel responses that seem to emerge from, but arent reducible to, these physical substrates. To measure them physically - to try and capture the so-called 'neural correlates' of thinking - would be like trying to capture a conversation by analyzing the acoustic properties of the sound waves of which it consists (although orders of magnitude more complex). Even if successful, it would miss the semantic content, the intentions, the meaning being imparted. 'It would be possible', wrote Einstein, 'to describe everything scientifically, but it would make no sense; it would be without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure.'
Most physicalists will unthinkingly say that language, mathematics, abstract thought, and so on, can be explained as being physical, because they are produced by the brain. But the problem with this is how much weight is placed on 'produced by'. How any combination of neurochemicals can 'produce' or equate to an idea or some neural content is currently completely unknown. Many physicalists will just assume that it is something understood in principle, that will be known when the science is sufficiently advanced. But the principles are different to those in other areas of science (such as physics). This gets into the whole area of the explanatory gap and the hard problem, of course.
At any rate, I think the really interesting question is that of mental causation - of how ideas and thoughts can have physical consequences, as they plainly do. I don't think it's an insoluble problem, but I think that the assumption the brain is a physical thing is the wrong place to start.
Answer my question and you will likely know what I think. I do not follow 'physicalism'. I'm simply asking you a question after answering yours.
There is an interesting mathematical model of cause/effect in compositions of functions.
[math]f\circ g(z)=f(g(z))[/math] like a force field where one function starts the movement, then another function causes further movement, etc. Over and over again the process can be written
[math]{{F}_{n}}(z)={{f}_{n}}\circ {{f}_{n-1}}\circ \cdots \circ {{f}_{1}}(z)[/math]. In certain settings (certain Banach spaces) this process approaches a limit as n grows larger and larger, provided there is what might be called a hidden "guiding principle" of each function and that the sequence of these converges as n grows.
I've mentioned before this relates to theology as well, for de Chardin's "Omega Point" might be so interpreted.
Mathematically, this is both a sufficient and necessary condition for convergence to a "final effect".
Perhaps a philosophical idea lurks herein. Otherwise, what I see is an endless word game being played. But pay no mind and continue.
By what means? Its the current scientific consensus.
Quoting Wayfarer
Take an instrument. Take air. Alone they are physical substrates. Combine them together over time and you have interactions. But those actions cannot occur without the existence of the two physical identities.
Quoting Wayfarer
If you don't include the meaning, content, and intentions, then of course they aren't included. If you do, they are.
Quoting Wayfarer
I have no objection to describing things emotionally. Raw science is a careful breakdown to understand how and why it moves at a detailed level. I can scientifically describe a hinge on a door or simply say, "Its so the door swings open." We shouldn't confuse the context of emotional and colloquial language as somehow superceeding the underlying detailed reality we often gloss over. Scientific language does not call for the elimination of poetry, wonder, or emotion. It simply provides a detailed understanding behind it.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is simply not true. Modern medical science and pharmacology would not be where its at if we did not understand the brain at the level we do. The brain being the local of thought is not a belief system, it is the only rational conclusion modern science can make. Until that rational conclusion is legitimately challenged, one can suppose or imagine that the thought comes somewhere else than the brain, but they cannot rationally assert it as a reasonable possibility.
Citations, please. First, your appeal to scientific consensus is misleading unless you specify what kind of consensus you mean. Neuroscience as a practice generally assumes a physicalist framework, because that is the methodological stance required to investigate physical systems. But method is not metaphysics. Many scientists are methodological physicalists for the purposes of doing their work, while remaining agnostic or noncommittal on the ontological status of consciousness.
Moreover, many philosophers of mindincluding those working closely with cognitive sciencedo not regard physicalism as an adequate or complete explanation of consciousness. David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, Galen Strawson, Evan Thompson, and many others explicitly challenge physicalist orthodoxy. So no, it is not a settled consensus unless you simply mean, this is the working assumption in one domain of science. But working assumptions are not metaphysical conclusions.
Saying that physicalism is true because science assumes it is, is like saying that only metal objects are real because metal detectors never find wooden objects.
Quoting Philosophim
This analogy misses the point. Yes, physical material and interaction is required. But what is not explained by appealing to physical substrates is why and how such interaction results in semantic content, intentions, or meaning. To continue with the analogy: you can describe how a violin works in physical termsstrings, bow pressure, air movementbut that doesnt explain what makes a musical phrase evocative, expressive, or meaningful. Nor does it explain the act of composing music or understanding it. You could play a melody on many different physical instruments, but it would still be recognisably the same melody. So the melody is something other than the physical instrument.
Semantic content is not a mere epiphenomenon of molecular motion. Its a distinct order of intelligibility, one that involves interpretation, context, and intentionnone of which are physical properties. They're not found in the particles or interactions.
Quoting Philosophim
This is tautological. The issue is how you include them. To "include" meaning or intention in your description is not to reduce them to physics, unless you're simply smuggling them in and calling them physical. But physical properties are defined in terms of extension, motion, mass, energy, etc.not meaning. So what kind of thing is meaning? Where does aboutness (intentionality) fit into physical ontology?
The problem is not that you forgot to mention content and meaning, but that the physicalist framework cant account for them. Thats what the explanatory gap and the hard problem are actually pointing to: not a temporary lack of data, but a categorical difference between the vocabulary of physics and the nature of conscious experience.
This kind of physicalist reasoning has been subjected to careful critique by philosophers and neuroscientists alike. A notable example is Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience by Max Bennett (a neuroscientist) and P. M. S. Hacker (a philosopher of mind and Wittgenstein scholar - review). They argue that many claims made in the name of neuroscience rest on category errorsparticularly the idea that the brain thinks, the brain interprets, or the brain understands, when in fact it is persons who do these things. The brain is a necessary condition, yesbut not the experiencing subject. Treating the brain as a standalone thinking agent or process is not a scientific theory but philosophical confusion.
Even if it is the case that mental operations are purely manifest in the physical, rather than instigated by physical acts, then I see no reason to also propose atemporality as part of mental acts.
If the mental is simply an unknown physical phenomenon then I see a possible problem with causation depending on the phsyical scale we are likley having to talk about.
When it comes to mental and physical I also see an issue with a conflict between evidence and proof. Meaning, propositional attitudes are tied to mental acts rather than to physical acts.
So when I say that Mental to Mental causation does not exist I see this as stating something akin to saying the rock had an attitude and so rolled down the hill. So if we are talking about the philosophy of mind we need to keep in mind that physical and mental acts are probably not best clumped together under a singular use of the term 'causal'.
I guess I could simply ask what kind of difference (if any) people see between physical and mental causes. If there is a difference then surely when we talk about mental acts causing physical act, or vice versa, then terminological use of 'causal' would necessarily have to shift?
Then there is the question of what you mean by 'exist'. Numbers do not exist and nor does love (physically), and there is a vast array of abstract concepts that have no physical existence too.
Also, historically, phenomenon regarded as non-physical in the past is now called physical - such as time and gravity.
The way I see it is that a human has something extra than anything else in the world. An ability to act in a unique way, free of instinctive, or deterministic patterns. Which other animals and plants, or physical objects do.
This unique ability is like a vast pool of choices. Any choice can be made and there is no way that external influences, or states determine which choice is made. A human is a chooser, a chooser can choose any order of notes when choosing a musical score, Beethoven for example. But to be able to make more sophisticated choices, the chooser needs a more intelligent way of deciding, rather than a random choice generator. In a human this intelligence takes the form of a being developed by having been evolved in a natural world, of plants and animals.
So a human chooser is intimately acquainted with the ways of the world, through evolution. This means its difficult to tease apart the intelligent being from the animal, it evolved in. In a way they are fused together body and mind.
A very common judgement I make for many philosophical arguments. I think sometimes philosophical machinations can be so reductive that they fall prey to becoming so abstracted from any real life scenario that the crux of the matter is lost. That said, it is certainly worth while exploring extreme imagined cases in order to sift out problems that were initially unseen.
Balancing between these extremities -- of real world, severe abstraction and analogy -- is something every philosophical approach struggles with (and so it should!).
Yes and this issue is a good example, its quite a simple issue when one realises that causes regress to a first cause. Unless they are the result of an intelligent mind. In which case in order to regress to a first cause, it would mean that the agency in the first cause had in mind, Beethovens fifth, or Hamlet, (or anything which a mind can produce), when determining to create the universe.
As I have noted previously the demarcation I am highlighting is the use of 'causal' between nomological and metaphysical approaches (to throw in the technical jargon). This is where I see a mistake that may go some way towards identifying pitfalls when trying to articulate ideas around the Hard Problem.
Yes and Im hoping to learn something.
Im not a philosopher so cant use the terminology much and might not be familiar with the arguments.
I would say though, that the problem seems to be in the idea that a human being is both a mind and an animal and how to account for it. I think that some of the approaches have baggage as a result of other philosophical arguments. For example accounting for how it came to exist and whether a mind can exist without a body (idealism), or how a body can have a mind (physicalism).
I come to this from a different direction, where I am interested in what is going on. Not necessarily how it came to be, or how it works. But rather what are we, what are we doing and where are we going.
When I look at a human in this way, I see a being*, in a world, learning, practicing, participating in a world of dense objects (material), where there are a set of very hard constraints and how they adapt and live in such a place. With the goal of becoming proficient, or wise as beings who can act as creators in that world.
*a being, with a highly integrated mind and body, resulting in an agent with the ability to mould their surroundings.
Quoting Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer
Just to clarify -- Aren't the first two examples descriptions in solely physical terms? Understood thus, they would starkly reveal the limits of such description. I'd have expected your point to be that the brain can be described solely in physical terms, but that such a description has to leave out what we think of as the mental.
I think what you mean is that there cannot be a physical brain-description that also describes mental content. Is that close? Or perhaps, the more uncontroversial point that any physical description of a thing may not necessarily tell us what the thing does?
And this is the problem. When I ask you to clearly point out what you mean by something that isn't physical, you instead put the onus on physical. If your idea of 'non-physical' is simply a doubt about the physical, you don't really have an actual testable idea, but a doubt. I'm looking for more than a doubt. Can you try to point to something non-physical that doesn't involve the physical?
No, not this time Wayfarer. You and I have discussed this plenty of times in the past, and I have provided citations. My claim is the norm. Feel free to cite me a brain surgeon that believes the brain isn't physical with evidence pointing to a clearly defined non-physical entity.
Your writing is fantastic by the way. This is not sarcasm, your posts are incredibly high quality and I thought you should know that your hard work in prose and communication have paid off. I'm not interested in deep diving too much with you as we've been down this road before. This is more to see if your viewpoints have evolved as well.
Quoting Wayfarer
And there are scientists who believe in God. That doesn't change the scientific consensus that God's existence is a scientific consensus. Personal belief and hypothesis are not current fact.
Quoting Wayfarer
Going to stop you right there because you probably forgot. I am not a 'physicalist'. That's stupid. I simply note that rational science and fact allow us to know a reality that is physical. I have yet to see someone able to point out with conclusive proof the existence of something that is non-physical that is not simply a contextual language game. Science does not run on the idea that there is some type of non-physical substance out there that we can measure and create outcomes from. Well...I can think of a few but those never seem to come up in our conversations. Which tells me that your arguments are still simply the very human desire to have our beliefs and imagination reflect in reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
Because I'm not including those in the example. That requires a few more additions. Lets hook up a human brain and body to that instrument that dictates how and why the air will be shaped. We can include the physical brain which intends to have an outcome by doing what it does. The sound interacts with their ears again, and they respond. Take a person who lacks the ability to hear and put them on the same instrument. They do not play the same. That is because their physical reality is different, thus their responses are as well.
Quoting Wayfarer
Again, because we didn't include the human in the example. What you are doing is introducing a physical human with emotions. We can evaluate their brain patterns when listening to music, their physical expressions, and sample different music for them. We might find for example that this particular human likes the key of C#. We might find they dislike vibratto and enjoy clear sounds. Dislike heavy metal. Humans are far more complex, but we can evaluate them and come to find patterns.
I think the problem Wayfarer is that you think understanding the underlying reason for why things work the way they are undermines emotion or wonder. They exist in parallel, not in conflict. I personally find that understanding how things works often times increases my wonder. Watching a rocket fire into the sky is cool. Understanding the monumental human effort and difficulties that had to be overcome to fire that rocket is also cool. Me understanding how it works doesn't diminish the awe I feel when I see a rocket, it only enhances it.
Quoting Wayfarer
Really? Can you point to me interpretation, context, and intention that exists somewhere as a non-physical entity? In other words, these things must exist apart from a person. Can you show me where? Of course not. Without the physical human, you can't.
Quoting Wayfarer
And completely correct. Meaning I hope you understand why your point doesn't work.
Quoting Wayfarer
Again this word 'reduce'. You have an issue with thinking this gets rid of emotions. Of course it doesn't. Emotions are digests, compulsions, and energy. Have them. Just don't forget that just because we can talk with intention, beliefs, and emotions, those intentions beliefs and emotions do not override the underlying physical reality that it all exists under. Let me paint a different picture.
Physical reality is the thing you point to that exists.
Non-physical reality is the thing that you would point to if it exists.
Abstractly, the purpose of both is the same, its just we would use a different word for a different category. The problem is that all non-physical categories that are attempted are built upon physical categories that we point to. Its not that I have anything against a non-physical category, it just must not assert that it exists independently of physical categories without clear evidence. Since 'non-physical' is often interpreted as being completely independent from physical reality, its not a good category to use as it lead people into confusion by taking the meaning literally instead of understanding its real underlying purpose and meaning.
Quoting Wayfarer
Right, I have no objection to a different category of terms or logic where we lack detail. Quantum physics is literally built on the idea that our measuring tools impact the outcome of the experiment. But the term in that context of, 'Observation effect the outcome' doesn't mean that if I simply hoist my eyeballs in that direction that I'm affecting the outcome. Just because we don't have a full understanding of consciousness due to the fact we cannot measure subjective experience, means we throw away all of the objective understanding of the brain and consciousness either.
The question for you really Wayfarer, is are you against a physical context because you think its objectively wrong, or is it because you hope that rejecting it gives you hope that things that you want to be real are like spirits, eternal life, Gods, etc. Because if you reject the latter, I don't see much reason to reject the former.
Its an essay.
On The Notion of Cause
https://users.drew.edu/~jlenz/notion-of-cause/br-notion-of-cause.html
In terms of this thread and Philosophy of Mind items like Desires and Beliefs are framed as Mental not Physical States. If you did not understand this mayeb I should have pointed it out more explicitly in the OP, but this is a philosophy forum and when talking about Mental to Physical causation most people who have reasonably braod understand of philosophy know what I am talking about.
So, that is the best I can give you I reckon? If you are asking if I believe in substance dualism, I do not. That said, I am more or less interested in the arguments surrounding this whole topic as none provide a conclusive answer.
Quoting AmadeusD
Okay good, but perhaps I should clarify that by "principle" I do not merely mean a mental construct. For example, the law of the conservation of energy would be a kind of principle operative within nature.
Regarding processes, I would say that processes are causal even though not every cause is a process. Still I don't see why I would call a process "physical," nor what the difference is between a "physical process" and a "non-physical process."
In general I see no reason to claim that causality is physical. Of course if someone is a physicalist then everything is physical, including causality, and so they must be committed to the idea that causality is physical. But if one is not a physicalist then I don't see any grounds for claiming that causality is physical. For example, in these billiard cases we are talking about the transfer of energy, and I see no good reason to claim that energy or its transfer is a physical phenomenon.
Quoting AmadeusD
That's true: distance cannot be left out of the discussion. But explanation and reasoning requires differentiated genera, and the difference between geometric objects and geometric measurements is one example of two differentiated genera that provide us with the power to reason. The way that causality abstracts from objectsphysical or otherwiseand is situated in between objects (in their relationality) is another example of the way that two differentiated genera provide us with the power to reason. If energy were a physical object just like the two billiard balls, then we would have a flat sequence: billiard ball1 collides with energy which collides with billiard ball2. Homogenous genera such as this are incapable of producing understanding or intelligibility. The whole reason energy functions as a principle is because it is different from the billiard balls, and more precisely because it is not itself an intermediating efficient cause (the sort of which physicality is bound up with).
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Even on that conception, "space" is metaphorical not physical, and also does not belong to the genus to which point/line/curve belong. I am thinking of distance as a measurement, and I explicitly identified it as mathematical. A mathematical distance-measurement is infinitely divisible, and yet physical matter is not infinitely divisible, and therefore a mathematical distance-measurement is not physical. Indeed, if distance were physical then we would have the same problem of one flattened genus.
Quoting AmadeusD
But according to what source do you claim that the transfer of energy is the transfer of particles? I don't think this is the standard or predominant view.
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, and gravity is an easier example. Gravity causes planetary movements, and yet it is hard to see how gravity is itself supposed to be physical.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Even apart from mental causation, what would be an argument in favor of the thesis that causality is physical? I think it is something like this:
1. Billiard ball1 causes billiard ball2 to move
2. Billiard ball1 and billiard ball2 are both physical
3. Therefore, the causation that occurs between the two billiard balls is itself physical
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Are you claiming that when someone who is not committed to a physicalist account of causation talks about causation, they are "talking about things in totally incoherent terms"? Because that seems highly implausible. Physicalism has been around for thousands of years, and people have been talking about causation in non-physicalist terms for thousands of years. Indeed, I would say that the majority of talk about causation is in non-physicalist terms.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Those are interesting theories, though certainly not proven. But I wonder if an equivocation on "energy" is occurring here. When we talk about transfer of energy between the two billiard balls, we are generally talking about the energy of the first being imparted to the second, without any material change in the two balls. So if we say that ball1 is energy-bundle1, and ball2 is energy-bundle2, and the imparted motion is energy-bundle3, then we are back to the flat ontological genus where energy is transferred in a purely univocal sense, with no differentiated explanatory genera.
You can do that if you want, but the folks who do it (such as C. S. Peirce) do not generally call the ubiquitous energy "physical" or "material," and thus are not considered physicalists or materialists. That form of ontological flattening is usually called monism, not physicalism. Furthermore, such thinkers concretize "energy" and shift the explanatory or causal burden to other terms, which is why I think this is an equivocation on what we were originally calling "energy" (in the context of the principle of the transfer or conservation of energy).
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Exactly: "that a car could make." It is potential. "Energy, in physics, the capacity for doing work" (Britannica).
FWIW, one kind of Mental Causation is defined in the science of Cybernetics : "Cybernetics is the study of goal directed systems that receive feedback from their operating environment and use that information to self regulate."
In a guided missile or remote-control drone, the "Goal" or target or purpose originates outside the physical system, in the mind of the goal-setter. That Goal, once established in the system, sets-off a chain of cause & effect which guides the missile to its intended target. Likewise, in almost everything that humans do, a mental action (intention or inclination) is what initiates the subsequent chain of causation. It's a future-imagining Self that regulates the system, not necessarily by internally adapting to feedback, but by pointing beyond in the direction of the target, and by defining (setting values) what counts as on-track. :smile:
Petitio principii.
Quoting I like sushi
Petitio principii.
Quoting I like sushi
A single word can describe two unidentical things. For example, "apple" can describe the fruit I bought last week and the fruit I bought today. It can also describe a green apple and a red apple. The same is true with "cause." That one cause is not identical to another cause does not mean that they cannot both be causes.
Again:
Quoting Leontiskos
1. The builder's plan is mental
2. The builder's plan is a cause of the house
3. The house is physical
4. Therefore, the mental can cause the physical
A Substance Dualist would surely have to say there is a problem if we are moving from one substance to a wholly different other kind of substance - given that one of such substances is beyond empirical verification. A strong physical reductionist may state that all is physical and that the Mental Act is a kind of Physical/Material thing so the use of 'causation' is identical and it is just a matter of arbitrary demarcation - which then leads to the problem of how and why such Act are divided?
Do you see what I am getting at now?
Does mental to mental causation present itself to anyone like physical to physical causation does. I would say no. It does not. You can have a desire and think up a plan. Such mental acts have no existence to anyone else, or relevance, if they are not physically acted upon.
Quoting Leontiskos
All philosophical positions do. In this area the Hard Problem is called that because no one can solve it - and perhaps it cannot be solved and the approach is faulty (but no one can prove that either).
Reading your exchange with @Philosophim I was tempted to jump in and mention precisely this book and argument by Bennett and Hacker. But you did.
Hacker's stance in the philosophy of mind is instructive. As it distinguishes what it is that brains do from what it is that persons (who have brains as parts) do, it stresses a sort of Aristotelian duality of form and matter, but not a dualism.
The forms that are intelligibly disclosed when we widen our focus from the material processes that take place in brains to the role that those processes play in enabling normatively structured behavior in the wider context of the life of an animal, or human being, aren't a separate substance. They are indeed the forms that matter (e.g. brains, bodies, ecological niches) takes when it is caught up in normative patterns of self-differentiating living activity. Looking at this activity closely, material causes contribute to explaining how it is enabled. Formal causes (like mental states or principles of physiology or ecology) contribute to explaining why this rather than that higher-level kind of activity (the actualization of a capacity) gets intelligibly exercised in such and such circumstances, and not normally in others, even though both normal and abnormal biological process, and both rational and irrational behaviors, happen consistently with physical laws.
In short, material/physical causation can't fully explain living processes or mental life because this sort of causation fails to disclose any sort of distinction between what should and what shouldn't happen from the standpoint of the organism, or its internal norms/forms of flourishing.
I understand. But if the principle reduces to "certain physical descriptions as between objects and processes are invariable" then it does hte same thing as I'm getting at. And, as I see, it can be reduced this way. Onward..
Quoting Leontiskos
I can't see that it could obtain if not. This is a really weird statement, for me. It's almost like saying "I can't see a reason, in general, to assume that heat causes hotness". I mean, causation happens in the physical world. We don't have other examples (ignoring some "hard problem" considerations that would beg the question on either side).
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm unsure a non-physical entity can be a 'process' which happen in space and time, best I can ascertain.
Quoting Leontiskos
This, also, real weird. It doesn't matter if you're a physicalist: If your thinking, from any angle, gets you no escape from the claim, then there's your bullet to either bite or set aside. You're right that hte physicalist, over others, wouldn't have any discomfort with this. Can't see that as particularlt relevant here.
Quoting Leontiskos
I'm unsure it is, and I don't think physicalists at least would argue this. It is part and parcel of the relation between the objects, not between them. It only obtains upon the two objects (until we talk about physical trains like "hot from x causes particles in the air to heat and ferry that energy across to other particles which come into contact with y and pass on the high-energy particles etc.. etc.. et.etc.. but this would be to either ignore the problem, or solves it on a physicalist account lol). It doesn't obtain "between" the objects, in physical space. It only obtains "between" the objects in thought (like the "relationship" between two corporate entities. In reality, it is the "relationship of them - how the two relate).
Quoting Leontiskos
Hmm. I think this is both instructive, and confused. Energy is not a physical object, and no one claims it is. But this is instructive, in the sense that energy is a property. The concept describes several attributes that can variously be attributed to different physical objects and their ability to, what physicists call "do work". We don't understand this very well (in terms of the underlying establishing principles, but that's not here nor there for our discussion) but everything we have ever done to try to understand it, has reduced to the physical interaction between physical objects trading physical objects (particles etc..) between them. There doesn't seem to be any reason whatsoever to consider a non-physical basis for energy transfer yet. These are properties which we physically observe in physical objects.
Quoting Leontiskos
In light of the above, i think I need an elucidation here. It seems this has been answered adequately above: Yes, they are one-and-the-same but in concert, not considered individually. The energy of one ball is part and parcel of itself, and not something "other". The same true for ball 2. They then interact, physically, and pass physical matter between themselves causing "work" to have obtained. If the quibble is about "what about that matter passing between them causes that transfer to instantiate the result it seems to, then I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding. The matter, itself, is what causes certain excitations in the second ball (it has too much charge, which can be described physically) to stay in one place. Given it was acted on from a particular direction, it moves in te opposite due to its shape, and our medium of air, the felt, the cue tip etc.. etc.. but all can be calculated, as I understand. There doesn't seem to be a mystery.
Quoting Leontiskos
False, as I understand. We do not live in a vacuum. Space is made up of plenty of stuff. When I say space, I am talking about hte actual density of matter between object A and object B. Maybe this is naive? I can't see that though, seems to run in line with how we understand "space" at the highest levels of physics.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is wrong as I see. The division is not physical. The division is artificial and, as you say, abstract. The measurement is entirely physical and rests on the actual physical limitations of point A in relation to point B and the physical space between them, along with our measurement methods which are also physical.
Quoting Leontiskos
IN fairness, this was rough-and-ready and I'm technically misspeaking, even on my own understanding. Different forms of transfer require different descriptions, but something like this seems to work for your example. A version below:
"At the interface where the two objects meet, the faster-moving, higher-energy particles from the hot object collide with the slower-moving, lower-energy particles of the colder object."
At collision, "energy" which is read essentially as head or speed in this context, passes between the two objects, more-or-less replacing the hotter, faster particles in the moving object with colder, slower particles from the stationary object (again, not quite right - but the net effect is this).
An easier example is something like boiling (convection more broadly): less energetic particles are heated, move faster and spread about over a larger area, which causes them to move (as they cannot be as close to other particles when vibrating so fast, lest destruction occur) upwards and transfer that heat as essentially movement, to the more dense, less hot particles which they encounter. There's a purely physical explanation going on there.
Energy is just an assignment of value to the ability for a system to "do work" or affect other systems and objects. It's not claimed to be a "thing". Its a physical attribute, described very different across different media.
Quoting Leontiskos
I don't find it hard. But then, I include certain assumptions about "fabric" being involved in space-time. That there is a finite set of work that can be done within the Universe leads me to understand that all bodies will be affected by all other bodies. This will represent itself in a ubiquitous force exerted by everything, on everything else. I'm unsure its reducible in any way from that.
Quoting Leontiskos
I've made a couple above. And previously. I'll go with your example though:
Quoting Leontiskos
Closer.
Quoting Leontiskos
Nope. I'm suggesting that running incoherent arguments about causation is possible. That's all that was on the table.
Quoting Leontiskos
I agree. I think most of it is doomed to be self-contradictory, empirically untenable or down-right ridiculous (God did it, for instance).
Quoting Leontiskos
I do not think this is the case. This would be "empirically wrong" on the above ideas about people talking about causation in ways that wont work.
Quoting Leontiskos
Physically deducible. If you want to get around this, you have to solve substance dualism.
Yes, here is the language game (in bold), because you are requiring something non-physical to be demonstrated with physical apparatus/experiment.
I can offer a rational argument for an ethereal being, but I cannot show it to you under the microscope. [B]Therefore it is a figment of my imagination[/B]
Here is the argument;
A physical humanity can perform all that is required to live as a human in the physical world without being conscious. (Just like a bat can perform everything required without the power of sight) Consciousness is not required for this, but consciousness is present, therefore it must be required for a different process (purpose). It could be argued, perhaps that it is pre-hensile, or some kind of unintended consequential, in some way. But that would be a bit hand wavey.
This different process is the evolution of an ethereal body, or being. A being hosted, maintained, sustained by the physical body. This ethereal body is a sentient conscious, self conscious entity with a rich experience of a subjective world, real experiences etc. But is entirely dependent on the physical processes in the physical body for its continued existence (in this world). It shares these processes with the physical body. This not only includes the chemical processes, but the processes of mind (x).
Now (x) can perform every mental action required for humanity to live in a material world. Without sentience, without self consciousness. After all, it is all computation. We know that computation can produce an intelligent body, because we have super computers and AI. All the senses in the human body can be responded to computationally without the body being [i]conscious[/I] of them, experiencing them. They can be processed in the usual way, by the mental activity of the brain.
Now I will ask you, is there something that a human needs to do to live in this world which definitively requires conscious sentience to do?
Correspondence Theory is one way of bridging the gap to some extent when considering possible worlds and how the term Water corresponds to chemical elements in all possible worlds.
Thanks, a new word for me. Im of the opinion that this is going on in the human body, as there are layers of complexity. There are lucid dreams and imaginary worlds, which appear to be experienced. But which dont necessarily have a subvenient component. Suggesting that there is the supervenient component, that would be present if there were supervenience.
No, I am simply asking to show something apart from the physical that exists. "I believe in unicorns". "I believe in God." "I believe in non-physical reality." These all have the same thing in common. Its all a mental construct of imagination. None of them actually exist apart from this.
Quoting Punshhh
I have no objection to this. This is simply creating a category, but not denying its a physical process. You remove the physical process, this 'non-physical' thing does not exist independently as something real.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes, that's consciousness. Consciousness does not exist as some independent ethereal thing. Its simply a category of physical process from the brain. Much like music is the combination of an instrument, air, and tweaks to the instrument over time. But music does not exist without the physical process. It is not 'there' in reality apart from physical reality. Until someone can point out "That" over there is non-physical, or existing as completely independently from physical reality, any claims that non-physical reality exists as apart from physical reality is a claim of imagination, not reality.
What proof do you require?
Thats not consciousness, its computation. The brain performs computation, like a computer. Are computers (AI even) conscious? They can perform the same computation as the brain, surely.
Consciousness is something present in organisms which have a very primitive brain, or no brain. In genetics terms we are closely related to trees. They are more conscious than any super computer and yet they dont have a brain.
What requirement does a brain have for consciousness? Computation will do all that is required.
I am denying its a physical process, it has a supervenient relation to the physical. It is hosted by the physical, but is itself not physical.
Perhaps, but the physical being would not exist either, in this scenario, they are joined at the hip.
No. But maybe I don't understand what you mean by imagination. What does that mean to you?
What was your point?
Quoting Punshhh
No, consciousness is simply a more advanced form of computation. We observe consciousness with objective criteria, and subjective criteria. Subjective, or the experience of being conscious itself, is impossible to prove in anyone but yourself as you have to actually be 'that conscious thing' to know the subjective experience of what being conscious is like. Is AI subjectively conscious? Who knows? We never will. Just like I won't know what its like for you to be subjectively conscious as you are either.
As for objective forms of consciousness, yes, AI could be said to be conscious. Not to the level of a human, but more at the level of a bug or fish. We have robots and other forms of AI that have environmental awareness, self-modeling, and learning. Do they have subjective emotional feelings? Don't know. But a robot can have stress detectors and speed up or slow down rapidly to avoid obstacles it would consider it should avoid. Does that entire process gain an overall 'feel' like we do? Who knows.
Quoting Punshhh
This just sounds like you're separating physical matter from 'physical matter in action and process'. If its not physical, what is it? This is always the problem. You have no real definition of non-physical that we can clearly point to that doesn't involve the physical. Can you explain non-physical apart from 'a physical process'?
Quoting Punshhh
Again, sounds like you're ascribing what is non-physical to a physical process.
In fact, we never do ask such a question. That's not a speculative thesis, but an observation about actual causal talk.
You could continue this list ad infinitum, but what would be the point? Causal questions are only sensible and tractable when they are asked for a reason.
You are dismissing the ethereal being because it cant to demonstrated physically to exist.
To the extent, perhaps, that a chemical reaction is a form of computation. But that does not encompass what consciousness is.
You seem to be about to declare that consciousness is emergent from computation alone. That if there is sufficient computation going on in a system, or body, then it will be conscious.
I dont know why anyone would think that AI might be conscious. Perhaps they conflate intelligence with consciousness. They are not the same thing. Take the example of an old fashioned computer, indeed one could be made out of pulleys and rope. If big enough it could perform advanced computation. Would it at some point become conscious, Pulleys and rope?
Its not that difficult, we are near identical. In a sense humans are all clones of a common ancestor. Genetic variation does not alter that to any great extent.
Yes, that all makes sense, but it doesnt capture consciousness, its all within the scope of computation and intelligence. A computer with sensory apparatus (stress detectors) measuring changes in its environment and able to control other apparatus which can perform physical tasks. Can be like a human, or a bug, or a fish. But it is still a mechanical machine, you know levers and rope.
Have you come across the idea of a philosophical zombie? There could be another universe like ours, but without any consciousness. There could be advanced life, indeed humans just like us. But no one is conscious. There would be no other difference.
I dont have a problem, because Im not trying to prove the existence of an ethereal body using physical means and parameters. Thats for you to think about, as thats what you are asking for.
As I said in my rational argument, there is not requirement in the world as described in physical terms for consciousness to exist (do tell me if there is?). Therefore its existence must be for another reason. Which is to evolve a subtle, or ethereal being. Naturally this cannot be measured physically, because its not physical.
Let me suggest a way of looking at this. When life was first evolving, that simple form of computation, chemical reactions, which I mentioned earlier. This developed until there were self replicated units. Primitive cells.
Once they were self replicating,( I am oversimplifying to make my point) they were able to evolve more sophisticated forms. All very well, they were like our philosophical zombie. But then something happened that was due to something in the chemicals, constituting these cells. Something not produced by the computation, but that was present in the materials they were made of. The electrical charge somehow became an electrical field encompassing the whole cell. Some cells adapted to this new phenomenon and found it enhanced their development and rate of survival in a competing pools of new organisms. Then at a later stage, this integrated organism with an electric field and properties became conscious. Not through the computation, but through the electrical activity involved in that computation.
So we have organisms with a form of consciousness based on metabolic reactions, including complex electrical interactions and states, out of which emerges a primitive consciousness. This is not emergent out of information processing. But an electrical metabolic process, where the process is about organising molecules into structures in the cell, so as to self replicate and compete in a competitive pool of organisms.
This would then develop into larger sentient beings, long before they developed brains and information processing like we see in the human brain.
Consciousness came before intelligence. Not the other way around.
No, they coexist in a supervenient relationship.
And our minds are the process of physical brains. Still not seeing a separation from physical process.
No, I'm dismissing it because you can't show that it exists. You need to explain what it is to have a non-physical thing exist, then demonstrate that such a thing actually exists in reality.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes, it is emergent from physical processes alone. No, the physical processes for consciousness must occur to have consciousness. This is why we can put someone under anesthesia and knock them unconscious. We stop the physical process of the brain responsible for consciousness.
Quoting Punshhh
I noted that objectively by some AIs actions, they have very low level consciousness. This is different from a subjective consciousness. A subjective consciousness is the experience of being what is. We can't know what its like to be a complex program, just like I can't know what its like to be you.
Quoting Punshhh
Its incredibly difficult, and part of the hard problem of consciousness. Do you see green the way I do? We have color blind people who don't. What do they see the different colors as? Yes, we're observing the same wavelength of light, but what is that individual subjective experience of interpreting that light? There are people who cannot visualize. I can close my mind and 'see' images and replay experiences. There are some people who close their eyes and all they 'see' is the back of their eyelids. Can I know what that's like to subjectively live and think like that? No. We could perhaps gather objective data by having people of one type solve or think about problems and see how each camp handles them, but we can't know what its like to BE them.
Quoting Punshhh
Can you define what you mean by consciousness? I think that's key to the discussion and if we don't have the same understanding of the definition, we'll talk over ourselves. There should be a definition that handles the objective, and one that handles the subjective.
Quoting Punshhh
True, but that's what we are as well. Your brain is the combination of many individual cells. You are not 'one thing'. You are the combination of all of those processes that results in you having thoughts. One way to think about it is on a macro scale. Imagine a person, now imagine the entirety of a city. A person has an individual function, but when they're in a set of rules and processes like going to a job, going home, etc., the entire massive process can be identified and grouped as something unique from the processes of people. It doesn't mean that it exists apart from people or that its 'non-physical'. Its just the result of physical processes combining together.
Quoting Punshhh
To be clear, without any subjective conscious. Its a fun thought experiment, but its essentially the 'evil demon' argument from Descartes or 'brain in a vat'. What if you're just a brain in a vat and this is all imagined? What if an evil demon is actually making you perceive reality differently? What if there are people who don't have subjective experiences? These are all fun things to think about, but the one thing they have in common is they are unprovable. We have absolutely no way of knowing one way or the other, so the reasonble thing is to say they are outside of what can be known, and the only logical solution is to rely on what can be known.
Quoting Punshhh
We cannot know that. For all we know, there is a subjective experience of being a single cell. Of being even something we don't consider life like an atom. After all, we are composed of atoms, so there is something in matter that causes a subjective experience. We just don't know fully what that is yet. Maybe when a group of cells gets together, there is some new subjective consciousness. Do you think all the cells of your brain know the experience of the group consciousness? Does a person working in the office know the experience of the city as a whole? We don't have the answer to what its like for something else to subjectively experience, therefore it is outside of what can be known.
Quoting Punshhh
A physical process is a supervenient relationship to the physical entities involved in the process. You'll need to explain specifically why its not a physical process.
A physical process is still physical. It doesn't become some type of entity that is separate from what is physical. You can classify physical processes as, "Mental processes" when the physical process of an active brain occurs. But a 'mental process' is a type of physical process.
To demonstrate a non-physical existence, you need to show something that exists independently of the physical. You need to carefully define it, and demonstrate that it exists. If you cannot, then you've essentially created an undefinable word that cannot be experienced. If you cannot do so, then 'non-physical' describes nothing and is nothing.
If you claim you are not talking about physicalism just spit out what you are talking about to avoid confusion if possible. If you are not acquianted with the philosophical jargon someone else can probably point it out for you more clearly and give people a better opportunity to engage.
No, I don't. The problem with ascribing me to one 'genre' is that I have no idea if I ascribe to everything in that genre. What I'm posting is not complicated and can be addressed by normal terminology and logic.
Quoting I like sushi
I already said I'm not. What area are you confused by? I'll try to clarify.
So a process or verb? But a process and verb is an object or set of objects in action.
Quoting Danileo
Feel free to just make the argument, no worry. :) As it stands you run into the same problems. You still have to define what a mind is independent of the physical, so you would still need a clear definition of what is non-physical, then proof that it exists. Using 'mind' as a placeholder concept without understanding its underlying underpinning is fine, but that's far different from claiming, "I know a mind is non-physical, here's clear proof."
I'll let you build out your full argument out first however. No need to rush it.
Note that with this I am not saying that our mind is capable to produce perfect symmetric thinking ( as for that I am not sure ) but at least is close to it.
In this sense claiming that time is deduced from tangible universe is against the sense that the universe is entropic witch is an antonym of symmetry.
I note you didnt answer my question, what sort of proof do you require? You do understand, I presume how hard it is to prove something.
I have put forward a rational argument for consciousness to be present in life forms. A presence which doesnt appear to be necessary if the world is just physical. If the argument has merit, it is inappropriate to dismiss it on the grounds that what it entails cant be proved, prior to an appraisal of the argument.
As I said, it is dismissing a philosophical enquiry on the grounds that it cant be proved to be valid, in the terms of one particular philosophical position, which is generally regarded to be opposed to it, ie physicalism.
I can predict now that whatever I say, it will be rejected out of hand for not meeting these requirements.
Correction, you are claiming that consciousness is emergent from computation alone, arent you?
Saying it is emergent from physical processes is hand waving, because that also includes what a I am saying and which you were denying previously.
Show me that they are conscious? They may be philosophical zombies, ie perfect mimics.
Line of argument is used in discussions of qualia, about differences between peoples qualia due to genetic variation. It doesnt include the fact that 99% of the experience of one person is identical to that of another, with a nuance of difference. If we were not near as dammit identical clones, our social activity would be far more difficult. This is not comparable to the obvious differences between the conscious experience of a mouse and a high spec computer.
Consciousness is a presence of a being and self in the world with all that entails. It is the anima Mundi of living organisms. A dynamic electrical force, field, unifying the whole being, as an entity.
It isnt, it is a serious argument. Can you give me one thing in a zombie world which could not be accomplished by an identical unconscious being, which is accomplished in our world of conscious beings?
Youve just accepted my rational argument. Thats pretty much what I was claiming and you were rejecting.
So why are you dismissing it out of hand one minute and then considering it the next.
This is incorrect, it can be known, we are it. We dont fully know the processes involved, be it is known, we just need to be able to see the wood for the trees.
Im not saying it isnt a physical process, its just a different physical process, an ethereal one in a supevalent relationship with its physical partner.
I was not labelling you I was labelling the position you are expressing. Physicalism comes in many forms. It is not a religious doctrine.
You were expressing that everything we know of, and can know of, is physical which is obviously (for most) associated with a physicalist position. Yet you deny expressing a phsyicalist position and also say you do not know what it means.
What game are you playing here?
Hmm. Either motion isn't physical, or maybe, just maybe, it is your definition of physical that is at fault.
Information is not physical. If it was, it could not retain its identity as it propagates through completely different physical mediums. Information requires a medium, but it is a mistake to conflate information with its medium.
I believe consciousness is informational in nature, not physical. And so like for all informational things, it is a mistake to call consciousness physical, conflating it with its medium, the brain.
If you doubt that consciousness is informational (though I don't see how you can, as you agree consciousness is ultimately computational), reflect how each and every piece of conscious content, every "quale", is telling you something, some piece of information, either about the world (the five senses), your body, your conscious mind (thoughts), or your unconscious mind (emotions).
This is true of items liek 'and' in language. The 'and' does not exist materially, yet it serves a function for describing material items.
I agree with your point here, but I think it is necessary in a discussion about consciousness to delineate consciousness and mind, or mental activity. As I find they are often confused.
Consciousness is the aliveness, sentience of a being.
Mind is information processing and storage.
They are both intimately involved in experience, but are quite different.
I appreciate this, as its not easy to define something you've been casually using for a while. What is the 'tangible' universe? Because 'tangible' as normally defined means real or not imaginary. So what I heard you say is that 'non-physical' are things that are not real or imaginary. But maybe you were thinking of a different idea and we can try to find another term that better fits what you're feeling.
Quoting Danileo
Ok, I think you believe the mind is real and not imaginary, so I'm going to say you do think that something non-physical is tangible. What you seem to be describing as 'the mind' is really the subjective experience of the brain. Rationally, neuroscientists have over decades continually demonstrated that affecting the brain affects people's subjective experience, and consistently. Think about the entirety of psyche drugs and pharmacology. Think about brain surgery. They keep the patient conscious while they stimulate areas of the brain to get consistent results. Go to a brain chart and you can see that different parts of the brain handle different senses and physical responses.
For the subjective experience of the brain to not be a physical reality of physical processes, we would need some type of evidence of subjective experience apart from the physical. For example, lets say I stepped into a particular empty space and suddenly had a vision of a meadow. And anyone of X height who stepped in had that vision. And it didn't matter what we passed through that space, it gave the same results every time. THAT would be an example of something non-physical that is real.
Quoting Punshhh
Oh, I'm not playing a trick here. I'm just asking you to define the word clearly that is not a 'skin' over what is defined as physical, then point to something in reality which objectively matches that definition. If its something close I'll even try to help adjust it if needed. I'm here to discuss, not troll.
Quoting Punshhh
I tried to address your argument and simply noted that you are ascribing consciousness to something non-physical when we already have massive evidence that it is physical. Read my response to Danileo to see where I'm coming from.
Quoting Punshhh
Perhaps we misunderstood each other then. Computation is a physical process. If the brain is active at a particular level, it has a subjective and objective experience we call consciousness. If it does not, it loses objective experience, and even further, seemingly loses subjective experience. Think a deep coma or dreamless sleep that feels like no time has passed on awakening. All of these are objectively understood in neuroscience and can be monitored by doctors and sometimes altered by drugs or treatments on the brain.
Quoting Punshhh
The only way you can claim this is by observing people's actions. Objectively, you have zero ability to claim this is true from a subjective viewpoint. Please think on this for a minute. Do you know that other people think 99% like you because we can know the subjective experience they are having, or is it really an assumption based on people's physical actions and responses? Take being gay for example (or straight if you're gay) You can see a person's actions, but can you actually know what its like to be in their brain when they look at another person? No. No one can.
Quoting Punshhh
I agree with the point that we cannot know if something else besides has a subjective experience. I add that by consequence, we cannot know what its like to have another subjective experience than our own, nor claim with any rational certainty what does and does not have subjective experience. All we can do is observe behavior and assign objective consciousness.
But if you agree with me, this does not prove that consciousness is something non-physical. Because when we talk about some 'thing' having a subjective experience, we are talking about a physical thing in process. It is not a separate thing that floats apart from something physical, it is part of physical reality. It is what its like to BE that physical thing.
Quoting Punshhh
Yes, "Me". You know what YOU have when you subjectively experience. Is there a way in science to hook me up to a screen and see what I see and feel what I feel? When I say, "Ow, I'm in pain," can you objectively know what its like for me to experience that pain, or do you only know from my words and actions? This is the classic hard problem.
Quoting Punshhh
Then we have no disagreement. As long as you're not claiming its something 'non-physical' as in 'an entity that is not physical', then we're both thinking in the same terms.
Don't. Just address my arguments. Trying to attach an entire to theory to my arguments is a straw man tactic. I have a very simple point here. "Clearly define the term 'non-physical' and demonstrate that it exists." Everybody likes to criticize the 'physical' world with this strange term called 'non-physical', and yet no one seems to be able to define what non-physical is or demonstrate that its real. If you want to call an expectation of clearly defined words and a re-examining of assumptions a game, its called philosophy. :)
Quoting I like sushi
There is your key word, 'most'. I clearly told you I don't associate with the physicalist position. You even admit that not everyone does. It should be the end of this point. If it helps, I do not believe that everything we can know of is physical. But I sure can't know what is non-physical if no one can present a clear definition that isn't a skin over 'physical' that can be shown to exist. I'm not saying a God can't exist, I'm just asking for a clear definition and evidence of its existence.
Sure, this is a common mistake. When you 'see' blue, its light entering your eyes, bouncing around and being interpreted by your brain as an experience. But the 'blue light' isn't being emitted by your brain. Lets use a computer analogy.
Right now you're looking at your screen. The computer is processing everything you see. When you type a key, it shows up on the screen. The computer is doing all of the processing, then sends it to the screen to display. The screen of course doesn't know anything about the processing. It just displays the light sequence. But everything that's on the screen, the computer is processing. I can unhook the screen, and all that will still process. I can open my computer up and watch the hard drive spin. Where's the light from the screen? If its processing the screen light, then why can't I see it? Should we conclude that because I cannot see the screen being processed in the computer, that it is not managing the process of the screen? No.
You're making a mistake in thinking that the experience of one type of processing is equivalent to another type of processing. Lets take it from another viewpoint now. All the computer knows is 1's and 0's that it feeds into a processor. It scans memory for more one's and zeros, it interupted by other 1's and 0's, and so on. This is 'its' experience. While part of it is processing the 1's and 0's its sending to the screen, 'it' doesn't know what its going to look like on that screen. Its just processing. Its internal processing is different than the external result when you put it all together.
Now, lets look at the brain. We already know that different areas of the brain process different senses. We have a section of the brain that processes the light from our eyes and processes it into something that we subjectively see. The subjective part of you is the screen. You don't know what's being processes in the sight part of your mind. Its just '1's and '0's. But eventually it gets to the section of your brain that gives you 'the screen'. "The screen' doesn't understand the processor, and the processor doesn't understand the screen. Does this make more sense?
I repeat to people often, "You cannot do philosophy of mind without neuroscience." If you do not understand modern day neuroscience, you are stumbling blindly in the dark.
Of course its physical. Let take music for example. The physical notes I write on a page. The physical intstrument I play it with. The physical ears that hear it. Are you claiming that if we got rid of all of these physical things that the information of music would be floating out in space somewhere? The notes on the page are not the same as the sound from the intrament, and this is not the same as the ears that hear it and the brain that interprets it. All of these are separate physical experiences that we label as 'information' due to the fact we create a process within multiple physical mediums to get a consistent outcome. Please, try to give me an example of a 'non-physical' bit of information that exists.
What arguments. I have provided examples of what people refer to as Mental Acts: Desires, Beliefs, Propositions etc.,.
I created this thread to talk about the different perspectives regarding Physical and Mental Acts and how I believe there is a problem when using Causation at a micro and macro level as well as between nomological and metaphysical positions.
Quoting Philosophim
Yet you cannot express what position you lean towards. Physicalism is a not a dirty word. What I meantr by it not being a religious doctrine was that actual philosophers Explore other philosophical perspectives not bang a drum about their own particular point of view. They provide Proofs not Evidence and this in and of itself leads to problems. It is around this area that I was hoping to examine Causation as an example of how they differ in Proofs and Evidence.
Proofs are based on abstractions (not overtly concerned with spacio-temporal matters) and Evidence is based on empirically measureable events (more overtly concerned with spacio-temporal matters).
Both have differing forms of Causation built in to them as we operate as spacio-temporal human beings that intuitively appear to be grounded in the physical world.
Back to Causal Acts ...
From a physicalist perspective (to repeat, only crazies are dogmatic physicalists in a philosophical sense) the problem lies in infinite reduction unless it shifts to something like Russellian Monism -- but that is spectulative and a cohesive thoery has yet to be crafted there.
Then there is Substance and Property Dualism. The list goes on ...
Just to be explicitly clear. Many of the exmaple and analogies you have given lean toward a physicalist perpsective. You are obviously open to other possibilities and I am still struggling to discern where it is you are coming from (Russellian Monism?), while also trying to guide this back to the OP and question of Causation.
If I were watching a computer play another, which part is physical?
Just the part I see, or would it also include the most significant part, the computations I don't see?
Is data stored in a computer "information," or are you referencing the meaning a conscious being imposes on it?
For example, does the red leaf contain non-physical information that autumn has arrived, or is the red itself physical information?
Certainly not floating in space, but existing in a similar sense that numbers exist. There is no 1, 2, 3, floating in space, these numbers must be instantiated physically to "exist", in your sense. Yet we routinely think of them independently from any particular instantiation, math wouldn't exist if we didn't do this.
Quoting Philosophim
Here, we only identify the notes as information. The instrument is a tool to convert the information contained on the sheet into audible music, and the ears interpret this.
Quoting Philosophim
A song on a vinyl LP that is the same as the song you hear on Spotify. If you grant that it is the same song, this song cannot be physical, as their physical instantiation could not be more different.
The problem with this line of thought is I'm not a computer. There is no tension with breaking down computer "knowledge" (in quotes here because it's not at all clear that computers know anything) to 1's and 0's. A computer does not have a mind's eye, cannot imagine, and cannot experience anything. Your response would make sense if we were all p-zombies.
But we're not p-zombies, and therein lies the problem for your argument. When I imagine a sunset, I'm experiencing the colors. I'm seeing red. You're saying the redness isn't really there, it's just brain activity, but that is easily contradicted by imagining something, hallucinating, or dreaming. When we do that, we create a divide between the causal states behind the colors and the experience of the colors themselves.
Quoting Philosophim
All right, let's talk about that. What is it about the brain that makes experience happen? What's it doing that my heart or gut biome isn't doing? Information processing?
Data on a computer certainly is. I think information and interpretation have to be kept distinct. Note that it doesn't need to be a conscious being doing the interpretation.
Quoting Hanover
That autumn has arrived is an interpretation, it is not latent in the leaf itself. That same red leaf might be red due to a mutation, a response to a parasite, etc.
The red itself is information, though we don't usually think of it that way. Ontologically information is state divorced from substrate. But we think of information as state encoded on a substrate optimized for state retrieval and manipulation. So the leaf contains endless state, including its color and all the subtle variations in its shading, but it cannot be retrieved or manipulated easily. While the information in the leaf's genetic code is very much information in this sense.
Yes, I imagine informational objects, so do many. Using technology these days does that to you. Velocity is typically a property of material objects, but it has an informational analog in data transmission rates.
Quoting I like sushi
"And" doesn't describe a material item. It is a kind of semantic glue that doesn't describe anything in itself, it is used with other words to create meaning, which may or may not refer to material items.
Words by the way are paradigmatic examples of informational objects. Is the 'and' on a paper the same as these 'and's on your screen?
I have a leaf. In list A itemize those parts of the leaf that are information. In list B itemize those parts that are substrate.
A:
The leaf is red.
The leaf has such and such shape.
The genetic sequence is ATATGCA...
B:
(The actual light reflected)
(The actual molecules arranged in such a shape)
(The DNA)
A way to think about the distinction is that state can be exhaustively captured in words. If you write out a map of the color at every point, the exact shape, the full genetic sequence, that is the state, divorced from the leaf's substrate. Whereas no amount of marks on paper can equal a physical leaf.
The medium is physical; the game is formal; the meaning or purpose (like this move is a blunder) is relational or noetic.
A melody can be represented in musical notation or binary code. It can be engraved in metal or copied on to paper. Then it can be played back on different instruments or through digital reproduction. In every case the physical medium is different but the melody is the same. So how then can the melody be described as physical?
Quoting Philosophim
Every post of yours that Ive read assumes physicalism. Maybe because you assume that everything is physical, and dont understand how anything can described in other terms, then you dont understand what physicalism is, because you think there is nothing outside the physical with which to compare it.
It seems that @Philosophim is thinking of information as requiring the physical substrate, while @hypericin believes information is some further item that the physical substrate may instantiate. The analogy with numbers illustrates this: The numeral "3" would be an instantiation of the number 3. Or, using music, both the vinyl and the digital are instantiations of the song.
I don't have any stake in which way is the better way to use the term "information."* I'm just pointing out that, either way, a complete account needs to include both halves of the relation, so to speak. If information is like numerals, then we need to know the status of numbers -- "informational content", perhaps? Or, if information is like numbers, what do we understand numerals to be? I'm calling them "instantiations", but maybe "informational vehicles" is better. Or just "symbols"?
*Unless the "information is like numerals (hence physical)" position entails physicalism. Which it needn't. But if taken that way, I don't think physicalism gives a convincing account of abstracta in general.
I would say there are three terms, not two. Substrate, encoding, and content. Substrate is purely physical, content is purely informational, and they meet in the encoding. "3" encodes the information, 3. Outside the "3" there is a fourth thing, decoder, which interprets "3" by instantiating 3 as a native encoding (synaptic firing pattern in humans, or the electrical pattern 00000011 in a computer)
Note that it might seem that the interpretation is fully a subjective act by the decoder, and that the information (and encoding) are in no way "in" the object. But this is wrong. While this might seem to be the case for "3", imagine taking a pile of sand and decoding Disney's Beauty and the Beast from it. Totally not possible, the information is just not "in" the sand, the way it is"in" the VHS tape.
Can you imagine a non-informational object?
Anyway, I misrepresented what I meant. No problem. Back to the matter that concerns me :)
Are informational objects causally related in the same sense that physical objects are? If so, how. I not how so?
I think the thread is about 'mental causation' - can mind, if it is non-physical, cause physical effects? It seems obvious that it does, but it's a question of great controversy in academic philosophy, because of its commitment to metaphysical naturalism. And naturalism generally assumes a physicalist outlook. 'Non-reductive physicalism' is now popular - it posits that while everything is physical, not all physical phenomena can be reduced to or explained by basic physical laws and properties. It accepts that the world is fundamentally physical but denies that higher-level phenomena, like mental states or biological processes, are merely identical to or fully explained by the fundamental physical level. Donald Davidson who has been mentioned and about whom Banno knows a lot, is an example of non-reductive physicalism.
The alternative seems to be dualism - that mind is one kind of substance and matter another. That is the implication of Descartes' dualism, but it's not much accepted nowadays. Or idealism - that mind is somehow fundamental, which is hardly accepted by academic philosophy at all. But in any case it's a more complicated problem than it seems.
Then I would say that's not causation at all. Offensive gestures do not result in causation, but in deliberation in which a moral agent can think through the situation and decide to ignore the offenses.
There's no causation in any principle of idealism.
Yes, you can look to life as the best example. Genetic code influences other generic code, messenger molecules, large and small scale structure, really the entire informational and physical reality of all life.
Ha ha! Then I have no idea how we got here.
Quoting I like sushi
Mental causes are really physical causes so I see no real difference in them than any other cause. Causation is contextual based on identification and limits. As a basic example, asking "What caused X 1 second ago can be broken down into an infinite number of contexts. .99 seconds ago. .98. Are you at the quantum, atomic, or large planetary scale? What variables do we include and exclude? And so on.
Causation is simply taking in a set of factors that preceded an outcome, but necessarily lead to that outcome.
I explore cause a big in depth here if you're interested. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15722/the-logic-of-a-universal-origin-and-meaning/p1
Quoting I like sushi
Which is why its much simpler when you realize its just a physical act. Quoting I like sushi
Of course, this is because you introduce more variables. At the macro level, there is so much to consider. At the micro level the precision level can get to the absurd where you break a second into pico seconds and generate nothing meaningful after its all said and done. My apologies for hijacking your thread, it was not my intention and I hope this leads back to the points you wanted to address.
Quoting PhilosophimIs there any need for the word "mental"?
Ok, we're in agreement here.
Quoting hypericin
Just because we say they exist independently from instantiation, doesn't mean they do. People say and do a lot to organize categories into easily managed and summarized information. That doesn't mean this simplification or summarization changes the underlying reality.
Math is simply the logic of identities, specifically to quantities. Math could of course apply to 'non-physical' quantities, but I would first need a clear definition of what non-physical is as mentioned before.
Quoting hypericin
You defining it as a category does not make it non-physical. To prove it is non-physical, you must give a clear example of what non-physical is, proof that it exists, then demonstrate that information can exist as this non-physical definition. All I see are physical notes in the page, physical instruments playing, and physical brains processing. DNA is information correct? Is that non-physical, or physical?
Quoting hypericin
No, that is a category summation to process information. It is NOT the same song. One is the song you hear on a record interacting with a record player, the other is a song you hear though the electronics being stimulated correctly by electricity and modern day acoustics. If I play the song on my iphone, and you play the song on your android at the same time, don't they both exist physically as separate songs? Being similar does not mean being identical. Being able to categorize like things together as, 'That song" does not dismiss the underlying specific reality that they are all different physical expressions of a similar song. If all physical ways of expressing that song vanished, 'that song' as the summarative category of all like expressions, would also vanish. It does not exist independently of physical reality.
Absolutely. We can't go around calling everything 'physical' all the time in normal conversation. It is a great way to compartmentalize a certain set of physical existence and processes that are different from other physical sets and processes. We need some type of categorization, and we're not going to change the use of the word anytime soon. The issue is that mental processes are still physical processes. As long as you realize that, talking about mental processes is fine. Its when you start to think they exist apart from physical processes as some independent entities that you run into trouble.
Can you prove that? Can you prove a bug has a mind's eye, can imagine, and can experience anything? Isn't a fruitfly just an organic mechanical object? You do not know what you've claimed, you believe what you've claimed. I already noted that some AIs demonstrate low level objective consciousness. We can't even know what its like for another human being to subjectively experience, much less if a robot has one or not.
Quoting RogueAI
No, you are not experiencing the colors of the sunset when you imagine it. Your brain is giving you a memory or using the image framework it uses to process light and redo it for you as an image. You are not streaming light through your eyes, therefore you are literally not seeing red. This is a rare open shut case of objective truth.
Quoting RogueAI
All of this is also brain activity and not seeing colors, as to see colors you have to stream light through your eyes.
Quoting RogueAI
Neuroscience is a fairly broad field, and you've asked a fairly broad question. At a very basic level, your brain matter and heart matter are two completely different cell structures. I don't think its a stretch to understand that different cell structures of the body do different things.
Start with the basics, a fruit fly. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-unveil-the-first-ever-complete-map-of-an-adult-fruit-flys-brain-captured-in-stunning-detail-180985191/https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03190-y
Here all 120,000 neurons have been mapped. "Previously, researchers had mapped parts of the much smaller brains of a larval marine worm (78 neurons), a larval sea squirt (177 neurons) and an adult roundworm (302 neurons). In a breakthrough last year, scientists published the first complete connectome of a larval fruit fly, featuring 3,000 neurons.
An adult fruit flys brain is much more complex, howeverand most importantly, the small insects share 60 percent of human DNA, as well 75 percent of the genes that cause genetic diseases, per a statement. As such, understanding the flys brain in such detail could hold implications for connections in human brainsand the neural pathways that lead to certain behaviors. Fruit flies, like humans, can get drunk, sing and be kept awake with coffee, suggesting similarities in our brains."
Read up on basic neuron activity. How they communicate, function, grow, etc.
Which nobody can specify.
Quoting Philosophim
They're still physical, but are designated 'mental'. How can that be distinguished from straight-ahead physicalism?
No, the melody is not the same. It is similar, which is a very distinct difference. If I play the song in two different places at the same time, they are not the same. The physical composition of the instrument, the physical composition and actions of the player, and the very air and accoustics the song travels two are different. We summarize them as 'the same song' for convenience and summary in communication. But when we break it down and need to look at it in detail, our summary is not representative of some 'form' that exists outside of physical reality.
When I say a person 'kicked the bucket' in the right context it means, "They died", not that they literally kicked a bucket.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, you assume in every post of mine that I'm claiming physicalism. Quoting Wayfarer
I don't. I've said that almost every time this has come up in conversations with you. :)
Quoting Wayfarer
I am very open to the existence of something non-physical. I am open to a God existing. A magical unicorn. I am not being sarcastic or intending to insult. I LOVE thinking of wonderful things. I want there to be wonderful things Wayfarer. If I say I don't understand what a person means by 'non-physical' it is because they won't clearly define what the term means, nor point to something that objectively exists and fits this term.
I mentioned in an earlier post there are a few things that might be non-physical, they've just never come up. And by this I mean something that cannot be explained at all with physical reality, yet appear to exist. Maybe one day the subject will come up. For now, I want to see an actual definition of what non-physical is, and evidence of its existence that isn't merely a category error of something that is physical.
I've abandoned the word 'complex' a long time ago because I could not make any of my argument stick just by attaching this word. Similarly, I have avoided using percentages of human DNA to strengthen my argument.
If flies cannot evolve and adapt, then they will remain a fly.
Incorrect. The melody IS the same. RIght now, my 10-month-old grand-child is playing with an electronic toy which is playing the song My World is Blue. It is the same melody. There are many arrangements of this song on Spotify and Apple Music which are the same melody but arranged with different instruments and vocalists. If I tried to put out a song with that melody, I would rightly be sued for copyright infringement. This happens frequently, and quite often the similarity is not even obvious.
Quoting Philosophim
The problem is, that is not at all what philosophy of mind believes by the immaterial or non-physical. The fact you can only conceive of alternatives to the physical in terms of magical unicorns indicates a misunderstanding of the subject.
No, by fact it is not the same Wayfarer. Same being identical. Are a pair of twins the same? Similar, but not identical. Again, lumping things into a category is not the same as saying that all the things in that category are identical in reality. I can define sheep, but there is no one sheep that is identical to any other sheep.
Quoting Wayfarer
I am not discussing with the philosophy of mind. I'm discussing with you and others. And I'm merely asking for a clear definition of something non-physical that is not a category error of something physical, that can clearly be shown to exist.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, that indicates either of us having a misunderstanding in answering your question. I was answering your point about me assuming everything is physical and I don't understand how anything can be described in other terms. My point was, I can. I have an imagination and believe that we can discover something that is not physical. But, it needs to be reasonable, not a misunderstanding of physical things.
If your philosophy cannot allow for the existence of a song, and copywright to it, then all I can say is that it has a serious deficiency.
Quoting Philosophim
Regardless, it's different from everything except another sheep. It's not a camel, or a llama.
Quoting Philosophim
Melodies, as discussed. Numbers, laws, conventions, chess. There are thousands of these general kinds of things that are grasped by the mind (but not by 'neural activity').
Good. So the substrate of a numeral would be, e.g., ink on paper.
Where did I say that? You create a definition of a song that follows a general pattern of tone and melody. A copyright, is literally the right to copy a work. A copy, like a twin, is a unique but similar emulation of something else. A 'song' is a category of different similar physical expressions of melody. How similar these physical expressions have to be is what society decides by law. So in one country it could be that a song which is 90% similar in melody is considered the same, while in another country its only 90% similar in tempo.
Quoting Wayfarer
Ok, the examples are good. But where's the clear definition of 'non-physical'? Is it just concepts? Definitions the human brain constructs?
What is physical shouldn't be confusing. What you're confused about is what is 'non-physical'. What is your clear definition of 'non-physical'? Then we can ask your flying question.
Care to elaborate?
Therefore non-physical principles should be different principles from those who are physical, for example I could came up with a law that is claiming that the energy is limited or being generated randomly etc.
One argument for the presence of non-physical principle is why people can end up believing in those principles and transcending them to earth.
Certainly. How I define non-physical is, 'That which is not comprised of something physical.' For me there is a strange notion in science that has not been answered yet. It very well could be that this is an opportunity for something non-physical, but then again it can also be a placeholder until we figure out more.
For me it is 'attraction'. And I don't mean the love kind. Weak force, strong force, gravity...there is something so counter to the idea of what is physical in this. Let me explain.
When two things collide, there is an equal and opposite force against one or both of the objects. So you can apply force to move an object forward and force to slow an object down. But attraction seems to pull an object to another. Yes, these forces do seem like properties of physical objects, so maybe they are a physical force as well. But...there's something so off on this. The best I've ever heard for the reason of attractive forces is that there are smaller particles inbetween causing this interchange. But that seems counter to the idea of equal and opposite force.
In the physical realm force is applied. But attraction seems to be an application of negative force. Maybe its a simple misunderstanding and there is something out there unknown which is actually pushing matter towards other matter and we've misattributed it to pull. I don't know. Its a mystery of science to me that still has the possibility of discovering something completely knew as we continue to learn about reality.
Another is an uncaused reality, and this one I'm much more certain on. This is mostly attributed to a god, but I mean the reality that the universe ultimately, must be uncaused. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/15722/the-logic-of-a-universal-origin-and-meaning/p1 Here for more details if you wish. Something uncaused by definition, has no prior reason for its existence. While something physical could form uncaused, nothing physical caused it to exist. Therefore it meets the definition of non-physical.
Quoting Punshhh
A little ironic considering I've been asking for a clear definition of non-physical and an example of its existence that does not entail the physical. I'm not arguing to just argue, I'm discussing with you and will happily agree if what is being said is clear and logical.
Thank you, this clarifies the stance you're taking. Energy being limited seems to be a physical property, though maybe you mean something else here. Something unlimited would seem a better example of something non-physical. I also agree that true randomness, not inductively concluded randomness, would also be a non-physical property.
Quoting Danileo
But we know from neuroscience that this is all an action of the brain. The brain is not truly random nor unlimited. Consciousness is not truly random or unlimited. Thus I'm not seeing how we can attribute this to a non-physical property.
Also, as Brian Greene writes in [I]Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe[/I], Brian Greene writes:I italicized the two instances of "I don't know" because Greene emphasizes them in his reading of the book. So if a fairly competent physicist doesn't know what a couple of important [I]physical[/I] properties are - properties that we know certainly exist because of the effects they have on things, effects that we have measured with incredible precision - then I'm not going to worry that we can't do more for a non-physical property.
Then if I dream I am flying? How can I dream of something that is not physical if the dreams are a physical product
I don't think we're all that separate from one another. I just view subjective experience as the experience of being physical being over time. In other words, its simply an aspect of the physical, not something separate.
I am curious in terms of motivation, what is the push to make consciousness something non-physical? Lets say for example that consciousness was something non-physical, but it could never be separated from the body and would cease to be forever when your brain dies. Would you accept that? Or would there be an insistence that consciousness had some other aspect that made it last beyond bodily death?
I see. Basically a violation of the conservation of mass and energy would be something non-physical. I can also get behind that.
Quoting Danileo
Dreams are a physical process. Does a dead brain dream? No. I think the real problem is that many people have a hard time understanding that yes, you are a physical being, your thoughts, feelings, dreams, etc. are all physical things. I strongly suspect this is because there is a living desire to never die, and this desire is a primary process of the brain. Actually accepting that you can die and cease to be sets off alarm bells up there, so your brain tries to find a way around it. Even in the face of obvious death people will do irrational things to prolong their existence if there's even the slightest hope it can.
Neuroscience allows no other conclusion at this point in study. Take a screwdriver and swirl it around in your brain, you will not be the same 'soul'. Get brain damage in certain areas and you could lose or permanently damage one of your five senses forever. Even your feelings and thought processes can be altered by messing around up there. You are your brain. Either people are ignorant of the scientific advances made, or this is simply screaming in the face of inevitable death where it worms around the known and obvious to clutch at the subjective and unknown.
Otherwise how do you explain dreaming about flying?
Why does a physical determinant brain produce non-physical products.
The only explanation could be that the mind is independent of the world.
Just a bit of science about it. https://biologyinsights.com/the-neuroscience-of-dreams-what-happens-in-the-brain/
My advice as always with philosophy of mind is do neuroscience first, philosophy second.
Quoting Danileo
This is begging the question. A dream is a physical experience of the brain.
Quoting Danileo
If the mind were independent of the world then we would not be tied to viewing or experiencing the world from our body and perspective. I cannot move my experience of the world outside of my head. I cannot suddenly have a viewpoint of the world through my feet, or from the other side of the room. This should be obvious.
If the mind were independent of the world, then no drugs, illness, or damage to the brain would cause any change to your mind. Yet it does. This is basic medical knowledge and the entire foundation of psyche drugs.
No, the only rational conclusion from decades of scientific research and medical knowledge is that your 'mind' is a process of the brain. Its a physical reality, not something outside of it. A question for you. What is your motivation for it being non-physical? What would that give you that you do not have now? For example, lets say the mind was 'non-physical' but it still died forever once your brain died. Would you be ok with that?
Thanks, Ill give it some thought and get back to you.
Apologies, thats just how you came across to me. I did say that a proof (which is what you were asking for) was not going to be possible, though.
But Brian Greene's point is, the physical properties of an electron can be measured with precision. The alleged 'consciousness' that pan-psychism says is also a property of an electron can neither be measured nor described. Ask where or what it is, you get a shrug, 'it must be there'. Why? Because we're conscious, and we're physical. That's all it is, in a nutshell.
Quoting Philosophim
Not so. A melody can be reproduced in any number of media, but remain the same melody. Not 'similar', not 'like', but 'the same'. Likewise, a story, a recipe, a formula - it can be reproduced in any number of languages or media or formats, but still retain the same information or meaning. This shows that the information being embedded or represented, is separate from the physical form.
[quote=Deacon, Terrence W. (2011). Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter (Function). Kindle Edition. ]The meaning of a sentence is not the squiggles used to represent letters on a piece of paper or a screen. It is not the sounds these squiggles might prompt you to utter. It is not even the buzz of neuronal events that take place in your brain as you read them. What a sentence means, and what it refers to, lack the properties that something typically needs in order to make a difference in the world. The information conveyed by this sentence has no mass, no momentum, no electric charge, no solidity, and no clear extension in the space within you, around you, or anywhere.[/quote]
Quoting Philosophim
The more general a term is, the harder to define. 'Hammer' and 'nail' are easy to define, they have a particular purpose and form. But very broad terms, like physical (or non-physical), will, intention, purpose - these are very hard terms to define. But acknowledging that, doesn't mean they're not real.
As I said, numbers, laws, conventions, principles - these are not physical but they're real nonetheless. Some say they're constructs of the brain, but I say they're perceived by reason. It follows that the rational mind is the faculty which can make distinctions and represent facts abstractly and conceptually. What the physical is, is what resists our will or requires energy to move or change. But among non-physical things are theories of the physical. These include mathematical constructs and hypotheses which are in themselves not physical.
Quoting Philosophim
But what if what we think if the 'physical world' is also an action of the brain? And that this is what makes it non-physical. Within that mind-constructed world, the physical is what resists our touch, what is physically tangible. But the ideas we have about that are not themselves physical. Have a look at this video presentation, Is Reality Real, which features neuro- and cognitive scientists talking about the way 'mind constructs reality'.
Lets be very clear here. 'Same' means 'identical'. Identical meaning. Equivalent means that something is the same besides its existent location. If I had two letter 'a's that were identitical to the pixel, then they would be equivalent. You're going to have to explain to me how the physical variations of the song being played at different locations resolve to 100% equality and not simularity. Without explaining that, your point is simply false.
Quoting Wayfarer
This is also untrue. A perfect translation is almost impossible. Here's a small primer. https://dalgazette.com/opinions/lost-in-translation/
"No one will interpret a book in the same way, and this shows in books like The Vegetarian. Kangs Korean-speaking readers did not read the book as Smith did.
The fact that there are infinite ways to interpret a book makes us wonder if a translation in the literal sense is even possible. Were left with this question of: must something inevitably change in translation?
Yes, something will always be lost or added. "
Nice quote, but it doesn't counter the point I've made. He's claiming it has no mass etc., I am by pointing to the brain, which is matter and energy, being the source. Can you demonstrate a counter that allows meaning to exist apart from a brain?
Quoting Wayfarer
This is a clear indicator that you have a poor word that is often used for general situations and not specifics. General words are typically cultural, emotive, and based on a collective subjective experience and not objective analysis. It being difficult to define does not excuse one from not defining it in a conversation that digs into specifics and attempts a more objective analysis.
Quoting Wayfarer
It doesn't mean that the intent of these words is to point to something real. But many words we use to point to real things are no more than a sign post. "This" is 'that'. What is that? Well 'that' is over there. Again, very useful for general sign pointing and broad ideas. A big part of philosophy is dissecting these generic words down and pariing them down to the core specifics that unify the multiple objects the generic word will lump together. It goes from an emotional indicator, to one of more careful analysis. By consequence, the definition of the word should become more narrow and clear. If one can do so, then they have a valuable word to use in rational communication. If one cannot pare the word down from a generic to a specific, this is evidence that the word needs more work and shouldn't be considered in serious discussion yet.
Quoting Wayfarer
But if you can't define what non-physical is, then all it is, is a general negation word. "Not-physical." If this is all it is, then it is on the person to then clearly demonstrate why something they claim is not physical by demonstrating that it is impossible that it can be physical, and demonstrating its existence apart from the physical.
Quoting Wayfarer
You can't just claim that Wayfarer, you have to prove that. I've asked you several times to demonstrate why these things, by necessity, cannot be physical. I've tried to create several scenarios for you go with. "If there was no human brain to think of these concepts of identity, would these concepts of identity exist somewhere else in reality?" I have never heard you say yes, and then point out where.
The idea of something being physical is falsifiable. I mentioned a few of my own possible non-physical ideas a few posts up. They can work as possibilities because they attempt to show that they are true negations of what is physical. What is physical is matter and energy. Something non-physical would need to defy what matter and energy do. The problem is, is that I have clear examples of numbers, laws, convention, and principles as expressions of matter and energy through brains. I have neuroscience on my side which indicates that thoughts come from a brain, which is made out of matter and energy. Unless you can provide examples of science which indicate, necessarily, that there is something to the brain that involves something that cannot be physical, then you can't claim its non-physical.
To be clear, you could say, "Maybe they're wrong." Perfectly acceptable. You can come up with wild and cool ideas. Perfectly acceptable. But just because you have an imagination or a desire that something is not physical, its perfectly unacceptable to claim that its non-physical without careful proof.
Quoting Wayfarer
And reason is a physical process that attempts to correctly apply representation to reality.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, they are comprised of matter and energy. Again, to my mind the only way you could prove this Wayfarer is to demonstrate that these things would exists without any physical brains. Can I go to somewhere in the universe and say, "Here exists the non-physical mathmatical constructs and hypotheses of reality apart from matter and energy?" Whereas I can point to the brains of individuals, the physical books, etc and show where they exist.
Quoting Wayfarer
I don't follow this. Can you go into a little more depth? If thinking is physical, and we think that the brain is physical, how is that non-physical?
I checked your video link, thank you. They would agree with me on this statement for sure: "Your subjective reality is objectively true." That meaning, the experience of that subjective reality, is real. Your interpretation of that subjective reality to the reality beyond your subjective may of course not be real. I can believe I'll live forever, and objectively, I believe that. It doesn't mean that my belief means that its actually true that I will live forever. I'm not seeing the video negating the points I've made, but feel free to point out if you think they do.
I don't need to respond to a false distinction. Two instances of the same song are of the same song. If you put out a version of a Beetles song that you created in GarageBand, you would be sued for infringing copyright.
This is the question of nature of identity that has occupied philosophers for centuries. But you won't find it in neuroscience, as neuroscience doesn't need to consider these kinds of questions.
Quoting Philosophim
Your response assumes the old identity theorythat mind is what the brain doesbut that view has run into serious problems. To say that meaning is reducible to brain activity is to confuse the physical substrate that enables cognition with the semantic content of thought. That's a category mistake. Neural activity may correlate with thought, but it isn't identical to meaning. Meaning belongs to the realm of intentionalityaboutnesswhich isnt captured by physical properties like mass or charge or ion transmission. Even to say that the physical state and the meaning are 'the same' is to rely on a non-physical concept, as such 'sameness' is an intellectual judgement, not a physical fact (a point recognised in Plato's dialogues).
Consider: The cat is on the mat can be expressed in English, French, Morse code, or binary. The physical forms are completely different, but the meaning is the same. So clearly, the meaning isn't reducible to any particular physical configuration. Its multiply realizablesomething thats deeply problematic for strict identity theory.
And Deacons point stands: meaning isnt a physical property, yet it makes a difference. Thats the real issue, and why so many philosophers have moved away from identity theories altogether. Neural correlates are not the same as semantic contentand neuroscience doesnt claim otherwise. That leapfrom correlation to identityis your philosophical presumption, not an empirical fact. (That's from his book, Incomplete Nature, which attempts to provide an account of how mind emerged from matter, but it's nothing like your form of neural reductionism.)
Quoting Philosophim
Agree for poetry or prose texts, in some ways, which rely on allusion, cultural context, and so on. But a recipe or a specification, for example, has to be consistent across different languages and media. In such cases, the information being conveyed is clearly separable from its physical form.
Tales like Aesop's Fables have been told in hundreds of languages over centuries. Surely, the details vary, a donkey in one version might be a mule in another, but they're still recognizably the same stories. Again, questions of identity - what makes a story unique and particular and recognizably the same story.
Quoting Philosophim
You're right that terms like intention, purpose, or mind are general. But thats because they refer to universals, not particulars. And universals arent vague by naturetheyre abstract because they apply across many instances. Thats their function. Saying tree doesnt point to one tree, but to a kind of thing; just as intention doesnt refer to a lump of matter, but to a particular structure of thought.
You seem to assume that unless a word can be pared down to a physical or operational definition, it lacks explanatory value. But thats a philosophical assumptionspecifically, a nominalist one: the idea that only particulars are real and general terms are just verbal conveniences. That view has a long and controversial history, and its far from the only option.
Much of philosophygoing back to its roots was precisely concerned with the reality of universals: forms, essences, and structures that are intelligible rather than physical. These are not emotional indicators, but necessary for any coherent account of meaning, logic, mathematics, and mind. And many of the hardest problems in contemporary philosophy of mind arise precisely because modern thought has largely abandoned this ontology.
So yes, we should clarify our termsbut not by reducing them to what can be physically pointed at. That would be like trying to explain arithmetic by pointing at pebbles. It misses the level at which the concept operates.
I present these three steps regarding it not being physical.
1)
Chalmers presents the problem in his famous Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, Chalmers says:
2
A couple quotes that I think make the problem a little more clear. From people who I think know what they're talking about.
At 7:00 of this video, while talking about the neural correlates of consciousness and ions flowing through holes in membranes, Donald Hoffman asks:
Quoting Donald Hoffman
In [I]Until the End of Time[/I], Brian Greene wrote:[Quote=Greene] And within that mathematical description, affirmed by decades of data from particle colliders and powerful telescopes, there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate. How can a collection of mindless, thoughtless, emotionless particles come together and yield inner sensations of color or sound, of elation or wonder, of confusion or surprise? Particles can have mass, electric charge, and a handful of other similar features (nuclear charges, which are more exotic versions of electric charge), but all these qualities seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience. How then does a whirl of particles inside a headwhich is all that a brain iscreate impressions, sensations, and feelings?[/quote]
3
What exactly is the, or a, physicalist theory of consciousness?
David Eagleman in this video,
Donald Hoffman in this video,
Donald Hoffman in [I]The Case Against Reality Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes[/I], when he was talking to Francis Crick:We don't have a clue. Even those who assume it must be physical, because physical is all we can perceive and measure with our senses and devices, don't have any guesses. Even if he could make something up to explain how it could work, Crick couldn't think of anything.
Quoting PhilosophimI think proto-consciousness is a property of matter, just like mass and electric charge are. When the body dies, mass and electric charge are still in the particles. So is proto-consciousness. But there is no longer a thinking brain experiencing itself.
Right because the copyright determines the level of similarity to the copyrighted version to say whether you have the legal right to profit off of making a copy. A copyright category does not make them identical songs, and I clearly laid out that the technical term for same in this instance is identical. I have seen no indication that this is a false distinction besides you just insisting that it is. If this is as far as you wish to go on this, I'm not going to agree that you've adequately answered the point I brought up.
Quoting Wayfarer
I wrote an entire paper on knowledge and identity here if you're interested. Epistemology has been my primary focus in philosophy. https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/14044/knowledge-and-induction-within-your-self-context/p1
I mention 'distinctive knowledge' but identity is a form of this.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, the category error is yours. Once again, you need to demonstrate, not simply claim, that meaning can exist somewhere out there in the universe apart from a physical brain. All you are doing here is asserting its not physical, but I'm seeing no example or reason demonstrating that it is necessarily non-physical. I can easily note that thought is physical, meaning is a thought, therefore meaning is physical. As I have evidence of meaning only coming from a physical brain, and not somewhere else not physically, by default you cannot necessarily demonstrate that thought is non-physical.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, this is both a category and vocabulary error. They are not 'the same' in the technical sense. They are different physical expressions of representation, and the intent is to get a person to imagine a similar concept. I noted what 'same' and 'equivalent' meant, and you are simply dismissing those terms without explaining why they should be changed to something else. What you described does not fit the terms I noted. If you would like to talk about social contextual identity, we can. Its a pretty simple issue once you get the basics down. I do not ascribe to strict identity theory, and they still aren't 'the same', but similar within an established identity context.
Quoting Wayfarer
No. It needs to be clear and falsifiable for a philosophical discussion. Meaning "X state is physical. Y state would not be physical." Same with non-physical. "Y state would be non-physical. X state would be physical." One of the main purposes of philosophy is to take words that we take for granted or have unclear meaning, and rationally shape them into clear and meaningful words that can be used rationally with the least amount of induction or uncertainty as possible.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, I never said it had to be physically pointed at. It needs a clear term and demonstration that the term exists in reality. Otherwise you're using made up emotional words that lack rational context. Its like the term 'good'. If I asked you why murder is wrong and you answered its difficult to define why its wrong, then I would ask how you could know its wrong. Its poor philosophy. Poor philosophy is what people go to either in ignorance, or an attempt to hide the fact that when more accuracy is demanded of their term, it starts to fall apart.
Regardless, if you cannot agree that two songs played at different locations are not identical, then we may have arrived at the end of our discussion. That does not strike me as logical, and if we cannot agree on such a simple point, we're unlikely to continue productive discussion. I appreciate your time regardless, I'm sure we'll chat again.
Poor word choice on my end then. "Identify" instead of 'make'.
Completely agree. But lets make sure we're on the same page here. The reason we can't know what its like to experience it, is we have no way of knowing what a 'thing' experiences without being 'that thing'. That doesn't mean we can't learn about its objective function or behavior. It simply means that when talking objectively about something, we can't include the act of being the thing itself.
To clarify even further. If we DID have the ability to experience a thing in itself, there would be no problem at that point. We would have the ability to create controls and variables to test and map out the brain with the experience of being. Its important not to confuse the fact that we can't know what its like to be something, with the idea that this means being a physical thing is not somehow physical.
A great question! But one that does not place doubt on the physical nature of the brain. For that, we would need some type of evidence of consciousness being non-physical. For example, not tied to a physical location. But it seems that when I walk around the room, my consciousness follows me in my head. You have to define what non-physical would entail, and you'll quickly realize consciousness in no way fits this.
Quoting Donald Hoffman
I don't have your video link and I'm not sure how to interpret this out of context.
The answer is simple. We are not the particles. We don't know how to have the experience of those particles without being those particles.
Just a repeat of the same issue I've noted.
Agreed. But does not at all imply consciousness does not come from the brain.
Quoting Patterner
I agree with this. I think that there is at some type of level, the 'experience' of being something. Not like a complex human brain of course. But that 'thing' exists'. It is. There must be some type of feedback of 'being'.
Again, all of these are well known by me, but none of them come even close to indicating that consciousness is not physical. Even though we've reached a limit in knowing what its like to 'be' something else, 'being' is physical. And thus the subjective experience of 'being' is by consequent, also physical.
It is actually about the use of Causation across two different domains and how this may aggravate the Hard Problem even further. I know because I started this thread :)
Look here:
Quoting Philosophim
This is besides the point. It is an IF question. That is, if we assume that physicalism is actually wrong (I know you are familiar with IF questions) and there is something else going on, then the Causal relation between Mental and Mental Acts compared to Physical to Physical may very well be quite different. If so then obviously there is a problem when then framing a Physical to Mental or Mental to Physical causal stream.
Understand? I am not saying I one is or is not correct. I am putting forward a potential problem that has been overlooked.
Absolutely not interested in a back and forth argument about how this or that point of view is right or wrong (no one knows). I am asking people to assume Mental and Physical Acts are quite different and that this could possibly play a part in dissecting The Hard Problem a little further.
So the OP is addressing that IF there is some other obscure substance -- non-physical -- then assuming Causal Acts are the same for both substances could be a mistake. Therefore when talking about Mental to Mental causation we can only assume they play out as and when they manifest experientially, rather than physically (Libets experiments and other like it) which shows a disjoint between Acts where the Physical appears to be a precursor to Mental.
Perhaps the OP was too severely lacking in detail as to where I wanted to take this. I usually do miss things out just to see if someone comes up with something else interesting.
Youre equating sameness with numerical identityi.e., the same thing must mean one and the same physical object. But this confuses the distinction between numerical identity and formal identity.
Two tokens of the same word, say cat typed twice, arent the same instance, but they are instances of the same word. Likewise, two trees arent the same specific tree but they share the same form. Thats what it means for a concept like tree to be meaningful in the first placeit refers not to a particular, but to a universal type, represented by many particulars.
So it's nonsense to say that different versions of the same song are not the same song. They're numerically different instances of the same idea - which is the point!
Quoting Philosophim
Your 'papers' contain no references to any other philosophers or philosophies - yet you seem to believe that they should be regarded as authoritative sources for any reader. But you dont get to define basic philosophical terms in the way that suits your purposes.
Done talking to you.
Thanks for clarifying. I wouldn't even say could be different, it absolutely would be different. Physical and non-physical things, even if we didn't know exactly what they were, would have to be different in the way they exist. It wouldn't be just the hard problem, all of physics would need a readjustment.
No disagreement. But the word does not only represent one instance. It allows a multitude of similarities that pass the bar to fit that label. Different physical expressions of a general identity only have to pass certain thresholds before they are matched. A name does not do this. There is only one Wayfarer, you.
But if you didn't physically exist, there would be no Wayfarer out there to discover. If we can't find one unicorn, we surely can't say 'unicorns' (plural) exist. And even if more than one unicorn exists, it physically exists by similar category, not as some non-physical entity out there.
Quoting Wayfarer
To be more specific in reference to physical vs non-physical. Physically, they are different songs and not the same/identical. We say they are similar enough based on a category that we create that we group them together as 'a song'. But this is a process of the brain, not that there is something out there that does not involve matter and/or energy that is 'the song'. If you like reference to other Philosophers, look up Plato's forms and its critiques.
Quoting Wayfarer
No. They are constructed to be able to be understood by any person without a philosophy background as they are posted on a general philosophy forum that is open to all backgrounds. At one time I did reference other philosophers, and the ideas blew up to hundreds of pages. Eventually I realized anyone with a philosophy background should be familiar with the general themes, and no one was going to read a 200 page novel to get to the point I was trying to make. The point of philosophy is to logically craft language that can be used both rationally and practically in the world. I have attempted to do just that. You should try reading the knowledge paper at least. Maybe you'll find a new perspective, or maybe you'll be able to point out a flaw in the argument and I'll have something new to look at. Either way, we both win.
You do seem to be conveying a Dualist approach in term of Properties, meaning you have stated that there is a good reason to distinguish between Physical and Mental Acts. So maybe looking at this metaphysical delineation would help in expressing how Causation could differ?
I have a decent grasp of Davidson's approach. If @Banno has something to add regarding the possibel descrepencies with the term Causal between Physical and Mental acts I would love to hear. Donaldson's position is especially relevant here so would be nice to hear from someone who has a better indepth understanding of his points.
I think there is something else going on, but that the causal relationships in our experiential world are the way they are because that is how experiential worlds work. That the other thing going on works with that as a vehicle, or structure.
Although, another option might be that our experiential world is an artificial construct. Rather like a play, in which the causal relationships are determined by the narrative chosen by the playwright. Take A Mid Summer Nights Dream for example. Where the world is reinterpreted as a world of fairies and fairylore explains why and how things happen the way they do.
I could use your logic and say that because there are non physical occurrences in the mind and mind is attached to physical world then all the world is non-physical.
Being connected does not give the power to reduce everything to the elements.
It'd require it's own thread. For Davidson, while mental events are identical to physical events, there are no strict laws governing mental events in the way there perhaps are for physical events. It's to do with their being different descriptions of the very same thing. There's a lot of background.
What I find hilarious is how the modal ontologist believe they've revitalized modal ontology... when half of the garbage they say is literally in Aristotle's bit "On Interpretation." Like come on guys thats 2400 years old known already... example: Kripke says "uhh yeah we gotta ground our definitions!" :lol:
But if you need a hint... look to the stars, the trees, the grass, or the poo from your ...
Thought isn't metaphysical. It's not metaphysics.
THIS is the thread for it ;)
The example he gives is a man who details his long life was due to his light diet...
On the other hand Nietzsche details:
We often attribute an effect as a cause due to a belief in free will.
So what causation is, "A prior state which necessarily lead to the current state" itself would not change. But we just don't know how something non-physical would interact with and change the physical. All of physics is built on physical causation at this time.
There's really nothing else to say. You would need to know what non-physical things were, and how they interact with the physical. Causation requires an understanding of consistent and repeatable logical states. Is there something else you were trying to get at? I feel like there is and I'm missing it.
No because you have to have a clear definition of non-physical, and then clear evidence that exists as something not actually physical. We're putting the cart before the horse. Saying the mind is 'non-physical' is not a claim of truth or reality. It is a belief or supposition. Considering you did not answer my question about whether you would still have an interest in seeing the brain as non-physical if it was still permanently destroyed on brain death, am I safe to assume this is a bit of faith or belief system to give yourself hope that you'll survive in some way after death?
Answering the after death stuff, at any case the concept self is pretty much attached to the concept of the actual body, therefore I do not think memories or anything related with my actual life would survive. What I think is perdurable is the mind as the 'tool'
Coming back I exposed how we can have actually non-physical thoughts and asked you why they are formed in a physical determinant brain
A point Quine gets into, the concept of shared stimulation is odd, because as Quine states, there is no homology of nerve endings shared between us, we could see the same thing and be stimulated in vastly different ways.
There is no logical reason why there may not be two substances (Substance Dualism).
In terms of Property Dualism you seem okay with this as you say it makes sense to demarcate between a slap in the face and the desire to slap someone in the face as two different states.
The question is then what makes a Mental State different to a Physical State?
If you say nothing and also say that they are different in terms of Properties only we enter into the issue of Supervenience.
It would then follow that you are saying mental states supervene over phsyical states, meaning if the physical state changes so to must the mental state, but not vice versa.
It then follows that these mental states (you refer to as physical) have no causal effect. So now we have a physical state (neural state of mentality) that is non-causal.
Quoting Philosophim
Get it now?
To jump into highly speculative territory the mental stuff could be atemporal and therefore to talk of 'causation' would make little to no sense.
The only reason why we don't understand that is because we can't know what its like to subjectively experience as that thing. If we had that, we could attempt to figure it out. The scientific knowledge you are positing would need to be an objective analysis of a personal subjective experience. We can't create that objective knowledge without being able to have that personal subjective experience as reference.
To be clear, a person could answer this for themselves. We can stimulate a particular area of the brain and a person states, "I see green." But this is not objective. We have to trust the person is accurately conveying what they are 'seeing'. We could go to another person, stimulate the same neuron set, and they also say, "I see green." Except that we don't actually know if the green the first experiences is the green the second experiences. What are the experienced dimensions? Are there accompanying feelings or othere sensations? The variables are massive. This is why we do color blind tests with objective and measurable tests. We don't actually know what the person sees when they're color blind. But we do know color blind people can't discern differences between colored objects like the rest of us by their behavior.
Does any of this imply in any way that consciousness is not your brain? Not in the slightest. Just go read a bit of modern day neuroscience. To conclude that the brain is not the source of consciousness is a purely imaginative proposal that has no evidence of its actual existence. Just because we can't know what its like to experience their subjective version of 'green' doesn't mean that changes in consciousness and subjective experience are reported when manipulating the brain opposed to other areas of the body, or even outside of the body.
Quoting Patterner
Why does hydrogen and two oxygen in combination at a certain temperature become a water? This question applies to the entirety of existence. Why is a rock hard? Why from carbon can we construct graphite and all living things? Why do electrons bond, or even exist at all? Why is there anything?
That question does not deny what is, it merely asks "Why is". And 'why is', is a fantastic philosophical question, and may not have an answer.
What did you mean by perdurable?
Quoting Danileo
No I haven't seen an indicator that thoughts are necessarily non-physical. Why is water wet? Go ahead, touch some. Why does it flow like that? Why do some thing burn? Why is fire even real? Why is there anything at all? The question of, "Why does this exist?" is a question that we ask of everything and science cannot truly answer. That's a separate philosophical question. But it is not unique to consciousness, it applies to every single thing that you likely take for granted.
Let me ask you another question. If I said, "I can't understand why water is wet, therefore it must not be physical," is that a viable argument against the wetness of water being physical?" Of course not. What actual fact has lead you to believe that the mind is not physical? Not a, "I don't get it, its not like other matter." That's not an argument. I mean a real clash with the laws of physical reality, a clear contradiction between what matter and energy of the brain do and the outcomes of it? Why is it so difficult for you to simply think that subjective experience is the same as the 'wetness' of water?
Actually, there is. We have to be careful to not confuse 'plausible' with logical reason that it exists. First, there needs to be an indication of something occurring that is in conflict with the idea of one substance. There is nothing conflicting with the proposal that the brain is the source of consciousness and that subjective experience is a physical experience of the brain.
Second, there needs to be some evidence of this supposed second substance, and a working idea of how it is different and works. People didn't understand that rain was a simple cycle of physical law. Since they didn't understand it, they proposed an indefinable non-falsifiable proposal, "God did it". We are no different from the unenlightened before us in our strategies and approaches to things we don't fully understand. The only argument for consciousness being separate from the brain as another substance is purely, "We don't understand exactly why." That's not a viable argument.
Logically, there really is no good reason to think there are two substances in the brain. Objective consciousness reflects physical brain state changes, and people usually report that they had no subjective experiences beyond dreams when this unconscious behavior is recorded. It is at best a fun, IF, and I'll happily play along there. Anything more is outside the realm of IF, and has no validity in modern day.
Quoting I like sushi
To make sure there is no misunderstanding if by property dualism you mean, "Classifications and grouping an underlying identity into subidentities," yes. If you mean, "Actual classification of two entirely different comprised substances that can objectively be identified as separate," no. Both the desire and the action to slap someone in the face are physical. But it makes sense to demarcate the type of physical action into words to convey quick communication. We are constantly trying to shorten what we need to say to convey an idea, and one does not have to go through the atomic method each time they want to explain that a pencil uses graphite.
Quoting I like sushi
No, they're both physical states. So they can affect each other. There is no logical reason they wouldn't. Now IF they are two substances, who knows? Maybe its only the mental substance affecting the physical, and its a meat puppet being strung along from something we don't fully understand. Maybe the physical has a one way influence on the mental instead. We don't know. We wouldn't be able to tell because we don't even know how these two substances would interact. We need more.
Quoting I like sushi
No, I don't think that's the way it works. Physical interactions always affect what is being interacted with. What you are describing could only happen if the 'mental' was a substance that violated basic physical law. Fortunately there are many cases of 'mental' imagery and subjective experiences affecting the physical body, once again lending credence to thoughts being physical, and not some other substance with completely different rules.
It's true that I can not exactly tell why a brain can not produce non-physical thoughts, or why would it do that. But my point is that they do exist. And that is a difference from for example exaplaing wetness of water because wetness follow some physical basic notions.
However I agree that my arguments are not a strict proof. But claiming the opposite is also not clear as a cristal.
You quoted Brian Greene:
Quoting Patterner
This is the crux of the so-called "hard problem": how consciousness could possibly emerge from wholly non-conscious components. But note the implicit assumption that a configuration of matter and forces gives rise to inner experience. What if this assumption is itself misguided?
This assumption reflects the standard materialist framework, in which physical entities and causal interactions are ontologically primary, and organic life and consciousness are emergent or derivative phenomena i.e., products of physical complexity.
Panpsychism doesnt abandon this framework but tries to accommodate consciousness within it by attributing some form of proto-consciousness to matter itself. This leads to the position Strawson articulates:
[quote=Galen Strawson]Naturalism states that everything that concretely exists is entirely natural; nothing supernatural or otherwise non-natural exists. Given that we know that conscious experience exists, we must as naturalists suppose that its wholly natural. And given that were specifically materialist or physicalist naturalists (as almost all naturalists are), we must take it that conscious experience is wholly material or physical.[/quote]
But this, as Joshs points out in another thread, is a kind of conceptual sleight-of-hand:
Quoting Joshs
In other words, instead of questioning the conceptual framework that makes consciousness seem alien to materialism, Strawson redefines matter to include it which looks suspiciously like moving the goalposts. That's the sleight-of-hand that panpychism tries to get away with.
The deeper problem, I would argue, is the assumption that only objective knowledge that is, publicly measurable, intersubjectively verifiable data qualifies as real knowledge. But consciousness is not something that shows up in that framework. It doesnt appear as a quantity in equations or an observable in experiments. Its existence is given only in the first-person mode, and this makes it invisible to objectification (the rationale behind 'eliminative materialism').
Hence the various contortions in contemporary philosophy of mind from eliminativism and behaviourism to panpsychism all share a desire to naturalise consciousness, but without challenging the presuppositions of naturalism itself.
To make a broader point: maybe its not that consciousness needs to be shoehorned into a redefined "physical," but that our concept of the physical itself inherited from early modern science is too narrow to account for the kind of being that consciousness represents. And we're still labouring in the shadow of the cartesian division between mind and matter. If that's so, then rather than grafting mental properties onto matter, perhaps we should revisit the metaphysical assumptions that led us to this impasse in the first place.
But this kind of revisiting isnt just a terminological matter. It calls for a deeper philosophical reorientation a kind of conversion, a 'meta-noia'. It means stepping outside, or seeing through, the objectivist framework that assumes reality is fundamentally mind-independent, and instead recognising that our very notions of reality, existence, and nature are themselves shaped by our modes of access to them. Consciousness isnt simply another puzzle to be inserted into a pre-existing picture of the world; its existence requires us to reconsider what it means to be at all.
Phenomenology has seen this from the outset, as made clear in this snippet:
[quote=Routledge Introduction to Phenomenology, ed. Dermot Moran, p144]In contrast to the outlook of naturalism, Husserl believed all knowledge, all science, all rationality depended on conscious acts, acts which cannot be properly understood from within the natural outlook at all. Consciousness should not be viewed naturalistically as part of the world at all, since consciousness is precisely the reason why there was a world there for us in the first place. For Husserl it is not that consciousness creates the world in any ontological sensethis would be a subjective idealism, itself a consequence of a certain naturalising tendency whereby consciousness is cause and the world its effectbut rather that the world is opened up, made meaningful, or disclosed through consciousness. The world is inconceivable apart from consciousness.[/quote]
The question isnt merely how does consciousness arise from matter? but what kind of understanding allows us to see consciousness as a problem in the first place? And from there, we might begin to entertain a radically different vision: not of matter with consciousness as a puzzling add-on, but of a world already shaped by and through the possibility of experience.
[Url=https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1005046]Here[/url] I just posted an incredible description of party of what's going on in our cells, on the molecular level, the explains how we are powered. Beyond fascination, and detailed description of what happens.
We cannot do any of that with consciousness. Nobody has any idea how it can come about from the properties of particles. There's nothing. What does it have to do with mass, charge, the nuclear forces, gravity, or any other physical thing that can be named? There aren't even guesses. Nobody can make any connection.
No. I meant them as both Physical the naming can change to suit you if you wish though. So Physical States supervene on Brain States (or whatever you want). Property Dualism is not Substance Dualism. Here we are talking about Property Dualism only. The Substance for thinking (Mental State) about slapping someone in the face and slapping (Physical State) someone in the face work in the same Physical Substance.
Quoting Philosophim
Well this is the philosophical argument that shows this contradiction. The only way out of this is to deny that there is anything special about consciousness and mental states compared to other phenomena. It is to deny the Hard Problem as an illusion (like Dennett).
Now this is cleared up, the point I am making may possibly get around taking some kind of Eliminative argument to avoid this contradiction (Possibly). So put aside any disagreement with substance dualism and put some thought into what this could mean for the problem at large in terms of different types of causality or the absense of causality. How does this strengthen or weaken more physicalist positions?How does this reframe the problem?
You have to be very careful here. We have tons of information about the brain and objective consciousness. We can clearly see brain states influencing behaviors and responses from individuals that demonstrate altered brain states alter the person's subjective experience. Let me give you an analogy.
We have a box, When we shake it, something rumbles inside. Can shake the box and see bumps on the outside wall, but we can't get into the box. In every way, the thing inside of the box indicates its a physical thing. Can we suddenly claim it isn't? Its not inductively reasonable to.
What do I mean by this? The close inductive reason is to things we know, the more likelihood its going to be correct. Before we landed on the moon we didn't know exactly what would happen. We had theories. And all of those theories were based on things we knew from what we could glean. There was an imagined state that when we landed, aliens would emerge from under the rocks. But that's pretty far from what we know, so was likely an unreasonable induction to make.
Back to the box. If everything about the thing inside of the box indicates its physical, what's more reasonble to induce? That the thing inside of the box is physical, or that it is some hitherto unknown substance that defies all of our notions of physics? Its the former.
The only, the ONLY thing preventing us from being able to fully understand consciousness is the fact that we don't know what its like to have the subjective experience of another thing besides ourselves. Its the thing in the box that we cannot open. But if we're logical and test everything around that we can know about and discover it continuously implies that what's inside the box is physical...its more reasonable to believe its physical.
I wasn't quite clear on what you wanted, so I'll state what I thought you said.
We've seen the results from property dualism, now you want to imagine IF substance dualism exists. I already mentioned that there is absolutely nothing we could glean about causality because we don't know what the properties of something non-physical would be. Would it appear to interrupt physical causality? is it the same? We don't know.
So, lets break down further what you said. Lets first start with an absense of causality. If there is no causality between two substances, they don't have any identifiable interaction. Causality is simply that a prior state necessarily leads to another state. Causality can even be handled inductively with probability. Once we know limits and can measure several limited outcomes, we can at least find a limit and start giving the odds for a particular outcome. No causality at all would eliminate all of that. If the mental affected the physical and vice versa, it would be so random we wouldn't be able to verify whether one actually impacted the other, or it was just a random circumstance that the mental appeared to impact or be impacted, but actually wasn't. If my paper on the logical necessity of a first cause, you can see the logic of true randomness. So no causality leaves us with no objective outcomes and we would never now how the two substances interacted, if ever, at all.
Ok, so that leaves us with 'a different kind of causality'. I have no idea what that would mean. We have regular causality and probability to handle uncertain causality. What else is there? It seems we only have the options of strict causality, probable causality, and no causality. Was I in the general ballpark of what you wanted to think about?
Not necessarily, as I suggested, experiential worlds are and can only be this way. The different kind of something, (if its there) uses the experiential world as a vehicle. Utilises the structure for some reason.
The other stuff could be atemporal* and as you say talk of causation (as we see it) would make little sense. Unless we posit a demiurge training baby demiurges through the experiential worlds. As I suggested in my first post.
* I had a lucid dream in which I experienced time atemporally. Laid out like a series of rooms viewed from above, the past on the left and the future on the right.
As far as I can see, you are talking about how gravity works. Well Einstein gave an explanation, that in the fabric of spacetime there is an effect like a gradient between masses drawing them together. Yes there may be something immaterial about that, but the theory doesnt suggest it.
I understand your thought process here, but I fall in behind Bob Ross and Timothy on that discussion. Although personally I would say how we and the universe came into existence is a deep mystery and its pointless trying to work it out until someone (who knows) comes along to tell us how it works.
This is the problem for Substance Dualism. As I also demonstrated the same kind of disjoint appears for Property Dualism where we hold to physical reductionism without the need for another 'Substance'.
Many fall into the error of reframing Mental States as a kind Brain State but this still tells us nothing about the distinction of the experience of having a brain state, to a brain state causing another state (the Slap example).
For Supervenience -- focusing on the physical stuff of Brain States causing another State -- the problem is the distinction made for different States, with The Mental/Brain State (Idea to Slap) supervenes the Physical State (Motion of Hand to Slap). This means that one state changes the other but not vice versa.
So either the Brain State plays no causal role in this OR this is physical reductionism > Judging your words up to now.
Do you think there is a good reason to distinguish between me moving my hand and me thinking about moving my hand? If your answer is yes, then we have Property Dualism and it needs explaining.
From Libet's we can see examples where in physical causation someone believes they make a decisions at time B but an observer of their brain knows their decision at a prior time A. If we are looking at this form a phsyical reductionist perspective it looks a more like Epiphenomenalism is a reasonable explaination of such Mental States.
Quoting Philosophim
Well, this is where the line of thinking takes us. We cannot say on the one hand Mental Acts are no different to Physical Acts (Causation with one Substance) AND also say that Physical States are indentical to Mental States because one supervenes on the other. There is a difference whether you frame this froma purely physicalist perspective or not.
This is the Hard Problem. My aim is to tryand clear up the language by focusing on the term Causal in order to divulge something that may strengthen the Phsyicalist position a little more and leave the Substance Dualist position more wanting in some ways.
Yes, its possibly physical. But this gradient is entirely theoretical, and to me, still has the 'pullling' problem that I spoke about. Appreciate your viewpoint on it.
Quoting Punshhh
More than fair. Bob Ross in particular really understood the issue well, and I can see his viewpoint.
Quoting Punshhh
True. The attempt wasn't to show how, but establish what is most our most rational claim could be when we don't know. While I might be incorrect on the idea of an uncaused existence, at least you can see an example of something, the uncaused inception itself, as a clear example of something non-physical. Thanks for reading and I hope it was fun to think about.
I may not have communicated this clearly then. No, both states would affect each other. Let me be clear.
Lets say that to get vision A, we have two neurons set themselves into position 1. But then, we have neurons 3 and 4 looking at Vision A. The brain is making judgements about vision A. Now it may be that its simply looking at the state of position 1, but the vision impacts the brain as well. Only in the case of substance dualism is it possible that the vision of the brain does not impact the brain itself. All physical interactions affect one another.
Quoting I like sushi
I'm not a fan of 'reductionism' here, but that may be bias. The 'mental state' IS the physical process. Its not 'reduced' to a physical process. The subjective experience of 'state 1' is a physical thing with neurons actively analyzing the process and coming up with new thoughts.
Quoting I like sushi
Yes, but it doesn't require property dualism.
"State 1" is me envisioning a cat. Two other neurons analyze the message from state 1 and 'analyse it' State 2 for them is 'Continuing to think about the cat' and state 3 is "Stop thinking about the cat". So we can say that neurons 3 and 4 are analyzing the state message that's coming from neurons 1 and 2. We can come up with, the process of "the vision" and "analyzing the vision". Both are physical. The categorization is 'vision' vs 'thought about vision'. This doesn't deny that both are physical processes, but we can categorize them using different language to better understand what's going on besides "Physical thought processes another physical thought".
Quoting I like sushi
Epiphenominalism fails because it is impossible for one physical process to not impact another. Impossible.
Quoting I like sushi
I hope clarifying my point means we don't have to go down this route. In fact, causality is so fully defined, I don't think there can be 'a different kind of causality', and any ideas that lead to this road should use that as an indicator that the line of thinking that lead there is a dead end.
"is utterly different in nature than conscious experience".
"there is nothing that even hints at the inner experiences those particles somehow generate."
"seem completely disconnected from anything remotely like subjective experience."
That it happens in the physical brain is the answer to [I]where[/I] it happens. The Hard Problem is [I]how[/I]. If I rubbed two sticks together and a geyser of water shot out of it, you would ask how that happened. You would not be satisfied if I answered that it came from the wood. That's not an explanation. Neither is brain activity an answer to how subjective experience comes about.
We might be going around a little, and that's fine. Its not been an unpleasant go-around, but we might be coming to an irreconcilable rift in the conversation.
My point is that question is not special. Its the same question you can ask of anything. Its not a question that can be answered by mechanics. "Why is water wet?" is not answered by the molecular structure of water. It answers the 'what', not 'why'. Why isn't H2O sandy for example? Why is it 'water' and not 'dirt'. Because that's how matter is when H2O happens in reality. Why? We don't know.
Why is it that atoms are two neutrons and protons with orbiting electrons? Why does an electron even exist? Why does gravity exist? Why does subjective experience exist? All are the same type of unanswerable question.
Quoting Patterner
They simply don't understand the question they're asking then. Its the same question. Why is water wet when H2O happens? Because it does. Why is a brain conscious? Because it is. We can know the mechanics of H2O. We can know the mechanics of the brain that produce a person stating they have a subjective experience. But we can't know why.
Lets look at it another way. Lets say that there is a physical and a completely different substance called 'mental'. Why? We could even break it down and show the exact interactions that produce mental subjective experience. It still wouldn't answer why. Why does not change the fact of what is. And what is in consciousness is clear and undeniable. Matter and energy, when combined a certain way, at minimal with neuronal states, produce subjective experience. The only way we know this is because we ourselves have some version of subjective experience, and we assume by logical belief that everyone else does as well.
But I mean, its clear. You have subjective experience right? You're made of matter and energy. Everything about your consciousness is like the thing in the box I mentioned in a previous post. Its stuck in the box of your brain, and everything we do to it physically results in generally predictable physical outcomes. There is no actual indicator that your consciousness acts in any manner that is different from a physical process then the fact that you don't know 'why' neurons have subjective experience. The only rational conclusion is that consciousness is simply an expression of matter and energy, just like the wetness of water. It is in no way special or different. Just another form of the wonder of physical reality itself.
Quoting Patterner
Here they're just wrong. Its us. We are physical things, we have subjective experience. Neuroscience has proven our physical brain are the source, physical manipulation of the brain changes subjective experience, therefore the most rational conclusion is simply that water is wet, and brains can have subjective experience.
Quoting Patterner
And H2O seems completely disconnected from hydrogen alone or oxygen alone. Yet magically, actually magically, its wet. No need to posit something non-physical to explain this absolutely mind-blowing marvel. Its just one more aspect of physical reality.
Quoting Patterner
I have never been satisifed with the answer as to why 'water is wet'. It makes no sense. Why does a thing called Oxygen even exist? Why are there electrons, protons, and neutrons? Why is there anything, and why is it 'x' instead of 'y'? There are no answers. Consciousness for me is just the same question wrapped up in different words Patterner. But I don't question that water is H2O because of the science, and I don't question that consciousness is a physical process of brains because of the science. Don't know if that explains my viewpoint, and I'll understand if you disagree. But the way I see the world, consciousness is absolutely nothing special. It all is.
The label not wanting to be owned here is Physical Eliminativism. @Philosophim does not believe there is a Hard Problem. Daniel Dennett is another example of this kind of thinking.
I suggest you use this term (Eliminativism) to describe your position in the future and perhaps look it up and address the arguments against it.
To be clear, there is no clear concensus on this. There is no proof of any of the positions put forward. We just do not know. Some appeal to different people depending mostly upon their intuitions (experience) not merely Evidence (that can be called 'mere' when we are doing philosophy).
Ok, you need to present why you think that. I looked it up briefly and my points don't fit what you claim. Please point out why. I'm also a bit put aback by this. The only reason I could think you would attempt to link me to a philosophy that I hold no claim to is because you are unable to address the points I've directly presented.
Quoting I like sushi
Incorrect. We cannot know what its like to have the subjective experience of another individual, and while this is the case, the hard problem will be unsolvable.
Quoting I like sushi
I suggest you not pull a fast one and try to label a poster as holding a position they clearly do not hold without explaining why. Further, I've been speaking with you specifically to your issues, I do not think you needed to tag other people in this thread. I've been very polite with you and thought we were having a nice conversation. Want to pull back a bit and keep talking with me on the issues I've noted and make sure you understand fully before hoisting a label that doesn't fit me?
Look at my points again and address them as is. Trying to tie me to something without a good reason and ignoring my points is a straw man tactic. Don't be like Wayfarer who acts childish when he realizes he's beat.
Look it up. I am not stating you hold this rigidly (at least I hope not). The point is you need to understand the counter arguments involved.
I am not here to teach you the terminology involved. I have been helpful enough to demarcate your general thoughts into the appropriate area.
If you are just going to get all defensive because you do not understand the contradictions you are articulating -- even when pointed out multi times by myself and probably others too -- then please do leave the thread and start your own.
Does a fish know what its like to be wet?
No, it is not my responsibility to hear a claim from you and do all the work. You provide a claim, you explain with evidence why that claim fits, and then I'll answer your point. You are begging the question by assuming its simply true without a reason.
Quoting I like sushi
It is your job to point out the contradictions in what I'm stating and demonstrate why. I see only accusation, no articulation why. "You're wrong because I say so," does not work.
Quoting I like sushi
I asked you earlier if you would like me to leave the thread because I was worried I had derailed from your OP. You said it was fine. I have answered you specifically on all of your questions and tried to get back to the OP. Now suddenly you're using logical fallacies and saying I need to leave the thread when I'm on topic?
Let's be very clear, the first to use obvious logical fallacies like yourself and not recant or at least try to explain themselves when its pointed out, is the one admitting to the person they were speaking with that they made a point you couldn't counter. You misunderstand. This isn't me being defensive. This is me giving you one last out before I walk away from this discussion as the person with clearly the better points. I get to walk out with class, you don't as it is now.
You don't even have to keep going in the discussion with me. A simple, "Thanks for the discussion. You've made some good points, but I'm going to hold to my end. See you around." is all you have to do. I was holding some genuine respect for you. Should I continue to?
No. I think not.Quoting Philosophim
The problem is I have articulated why twice.
If you hold to there being a difference between Properties of items under discussion AND hold that there is no Substance Dualism then it doe snot logically follow that you can have this both ways due to the condition of Supervenience -- if two causally related items are connected one supervenes the other. In this case the Physical of the Mental Property supervenes the Physical Property. Even if you frame both from a physicalist stance (it is all physical stuff) there is still the matter of Supervenience to explain. Herein lies the contradiction of which the only way out is to opt for a kind of Eliminativism -- the denial of any significant difference and to frame a thought as purely physical while intuitively appearing otherwise in terms of basic day-to-day causally subjective experience.
You cannot have your cake and eat it. EVERY position has this problem.
Do you understand now? This is the third time I have tried to articulate this better. It seems like you are reading what is written but not really READING it. Forget what you believe to be the case and pick out the problem of logical reasoning.
I am assuming you have not solved the Hard Problem ;) ?? Excuse me for being a tad impatient here. It is the nature of this kind of online discussion. All too often one can assume people understand X when they have never heard of X before > That is why I suggested looking at the terminology involved, just like throwing around terms like Neural Priming, Inhibition of Return, Top-Down or Bottom-Up, Libet's Experiment and such may not mean all that much to those with a passing interest mistaken as a full understanding.
@Philosophim Perhaps this will help show the difference?
If you hold an Eliminativist position then Supervenience is almost irrelevant. If you see no instance of one thing supervening another then you are holding an Eliminativist position. There is still an issue here regarding how we intuitively seem to experience one item (Mental Act) supervening another (Physical Act) regardless of there Substance.
This is not a term of insult it is just a fact of the philosophical terminology. Knowing your position helps people better understand what arguments therer are against it and for it.
Edit: I myself am more than a little sympathetic with the Eliminativist position!
Well too bad, I'm going to respect you still for making a good follow up post. :)
I think there might have been a misunderstanding between us. If you recall, you wanted me to explore an IF scenario, and perhaps between me saying, "Ok, lets assume X is true" and my own viewpoints, what was thinking in your scenario vs my viewpoints may have gotten mixed up.
So, supervenience. To my understanding of the word, it is a non-causal dependency relationship. I think you misunderstood, or I did not communicate clearly enough, what was supervenient. I did not mean to imply that mental properties were supervenient to the brain. I meant that mental properties were supervenient to physical properties. In other words, subjective experience is still a physical property at the end of the day, not a brand new separate substance of existence. I say this not because I don't think that there can't exist a non-physical substance, its that I see no evidence that it could be some type of non-physical substance. Its why I've been asking for people to define exactly what they mean by 'non-physical' and present an example of something 'non-physical' existing that wasn't merely a miscategorization of something physical.
To repeat, I don't say mental properties are supervenient on the brain, but physical processes of the brain. I don't think supervenience works very well in regards to the brain because as I noted, physical processes affect other physical processes. Meaning, that IF subjective experience is a physical process, it impacts other physical processes in the brain. We see this in studies as well. The placebo affect. Creating positive subjective experiences can affect the brain's objective state in a positive manner. Supervenience as a description here does not work because these are causal dependency relationships.
Quoting I like sushi
As you can see, I hold no substance dualism, there can still be a difference between subjective experience and objective observation, but we do not have supervenience between the brain's objective actions and subjective physical experiences of the brain are two separate physical processes that affect each other.
The only reason why someone can even propose that the subjective experience of the brain is 'non-physical' as something plausible, is because we cannot objectively identify subjective experience. We cannot 'be' some other thing besides ourselves. Because we cannot currently do this (and maybe never will be able to), this results in the hard problem. How do we figure out the link between our objective knowledge of the brain and the subjective experience of that brain? Currently, we can't.
Even if you sat down and mapped out your specific brain to your subjective experiences, how do you mark that down objectively? "I see green. But you might also feel happy. And might also be thinking of what you're having for dinner." You can describe all of that, but how can anyone else objectively understand that? What do you mean, "You see green?" Is it the same green that I see. What are the dimensions of green. How do you chart mental space in dimensions? What is the experience of being happy for you vs any other person? How do I objectively write down and measure a 'feeling'? Where in your mental space are you seeing green vs thinking about what you're having for dinner tonight?
In other words, we have no objective means of describing and recording subjective experience. The subjective experience of one individual is only inferred by another, never objectively known. As such, we can't even correctly map our own personal subjective experience in a way that accurately captures our own subjective experience, let alone others. That is why its impossible to link the objective mind to subjective experience in specific detail. We lack the measuring tools, concepts, and capabilities to do so.
This has caused some to think, "Does that mean that subjective experience is something non-physical?" A great idea to explore. Whenever humanity is faced with limits, we can still use logic based on what we know to come to at least some reasonable conclusions. Quantum mechanics is completely based around this idea. It is currently impossible for us to measure a quantum state without our very measuring tools affecting the outcome of the quantum state. Despite this, we've made a logical scientific theory that is often used successfully in the real world.
The brain is the same thing. We can approach the brain and ask if subjective experience is non-physical. Of course, we first have to define what physical is, then define what non-physical would be. Then in tests, we would look for results that either fit in with physical results, or outside of expected results. What neuroscience and pharmacology have consistently resulted in over decades is that subjective experience is a physical process. It follows and behaves physical laws. Its tied to a physical location in space. Physical drugs and manipulation of the brain result in rather consistent outcomes like physical laws entail. Subjective experiences affect the brain just like causal interactions between physical things do.
For subjective experience, we would need examples of outcomes which are necessarily non-physical. Thoughts not tied to the brain for example. One way causality. Physical affects on the brain, the location of subjective experience, having consistently unpredictable outcomes on subjective experience.
That, to my knowledge, simply hasn't been the results we've seen. Time and time again, despite not being able to specifically record and detail subjective experience objectively, the outcomes in which subjective experience are broadly generated implies a physical reality, not some other non-physical substance.
So, this is why I'm not a physicalist. I do not assert that everything is physical. I simply assert that subjective experience can be reasonably concluded as physical because there is no indication of subjective experience being non-physical in decades of exploring the brain. Could it be that tomorrow we do find something non-physical about subjective experience? Sure, anything is possible. But asserting that subjective experience must be non-physical does not align with our current understanding of science. It is the far less reasonable conclusion to make, and to my understanding held together by a wish and a hope that our inability to objectively record subjective experience allows that something non-physical could be hiding there. The problem of course with dreams like this, is without any evidence its simply as likely to be physical. With the fact that there is a mountain of evidence that subjective experience is physical, and almost none that it is non-physical, the rational position is to assume at this point that subjective experience is physical.
What does that make me? Just a person who believes the most rational conclusion we can make with the current scientific evidence that we have now, is that subjective experience is physical. No claims in how exactly the brain maps to it. No claims that the hard problem doesn't exist. No claims that we can objectively map subjective experience down. Just noting that when we define physical vs non-physical and look at the tests over the years, the evidence for subjective experience being physical is overwhelming while the evidence for it being non-physical is almost null.
:rofl: You don't understand the criticism that are made of your posts, and then think that your not understanding them is a counter-argument. You don't understand what it is you don't understand even if it's explained to you, as a number of other people have said to you in this thread. That's why I gave up trying. Nothing to do with being 'beat'.
We should be aware that there are many who won't recognize the 'hard problem of consciousness' or who will say it's a pseudo-problem or philosophical sophistry with no real meaning. I'm not one of them.
The 'hard problem of consciousness' is connected to the blind spot of science. This is the failure to acknowledge the primacy of subjective experiencethe fact that all observation and knowledge occur from a conscious point of view, which science treats as external or irrelevant, despite the obvious fact that science is conducted by subjects. This tendency grew out of the fact that early modern science divided the world up into primary attributes (measurable in mathematical terms) and secondary attributes (taste, color, smell etc), and also into mind (res cogitans) and matter (res extensa.)
I've also noticed a pattern - that when I bring this topic up, especially in relation to panpsychism, you will not respond to those posts, even if they're addressed to you. I think this is because you don't understand the point, but I suspect it is also because you don't want to know. Perhaps you can help me out here.
I acknowledge that I can only see what I can experience. This is not interesting though.
Have you encountered phenomenology as a field of study?
Sure, but do I have to be a mentalist to be a phenomenologist?
Quoting WayfarerAnother way of looking at it is that I don't think we have any justification for saying reality contains only the things we have discovered, or can discovered, with our senses and the devices we've built. Consciousness is proof of this, and there's no reason to rule out a building block, as it were, for the consciousness we're familiar with. Everything else we're familiar with is built up from some kind of building block, after all.
Quoting WayfarerHow can it be that thinking consciousness is a fundamental property of reality is not challenging the presuppositions of naturalism?
Quoting WayfarerI don't see it as "grafted", "inserted", or "added on", any more than properties like mass or electric charge are. Everything is just a part of what is. As such, consciousness is not "puzzling." The problem is that we are so used to thinking of things in only one way that it's difficult to consider there might be other ways.
From all the debates over it, apparently understanding it! I jest. The 'Easy problem" could more easily be called "The objective problem" of consciousness. How do we objectively show how consciousness works? We can solve that. We do this because we observe objective behavior along with brain states. Someone can imbibe alcohol, and we can see how this affects the brain and correlates to their behavior.
The "Hard problem" is "The subjective problem" of consciousness. I can give a person alcohol, I can observe their brain and behavior, but I can't observe their internal state of experience. I can hear from them, "I feel buzzed." But I can't objectively identify what the experience of being 'buzzed' is like. Without an objective ability to measure or understand another person's subjective experience, we're a bit stuck in figuring out how the objective states of the brain create a subjective experience.
The hard problem is often a go to for people who desire that there exists some type of mental or soul-like substance. The thinking goes, "Because we can't record it like other physical measurements, it must be something special." And indeed, I do think consciousness is special. I think some people get a little too into their imagination however, and want it to be something different so badly that they ignore the evidence that its probably not. To be clear, this is not necessarily for religious reasons. Much like people want to believe the pyramids were built by aliens, there is a fascination and draw for some people to find wonder or something exciting in exploring the unknown. I don't think this is wrong, a healthy imagination if necessary for progress and to ensure we're not stuck on the wrong path. Its only wrong if we insist it must be true simply because we want it to be.
Quoting Patterner
I think exactly like you on this. The puzzle is figuring out how it works. The 'objective problem' is potentially solvable. We should be able to continue to map deeper and deeper into the brain and figure out how it works over time and careful study. The "subjective problem' is potentially not solvable. Currently the only way to seemingly solve the problem is to 'be' the actual subjective experience. As that's impossible, we're going to have to get more creative and likely find a way to translate subjective experience into some other language, likely based on brain state.
Our objective knowledge of the brain has made leaps and strides, but there's still a massive amount to learn. It may be that we do eventually learn that certain patterns of brain waves or neuronal shifting consistently result in a person's subjective outcome. It might simply be isolated to that person, and we might have to 'calibrate' the outcome to each individual brain. So the subjective problem might not be objectively solved for everyone, but we might be able to have an objective solution for each individual brain.
We have to use words very carefully here. What panpsychism says is that consciousness is a fundamental property of matter. Matter can be studied objectively, via physics and chemistry. But the nature of reality is a different question and a much broader question. The scientific analysis of what can be known objectively doesn't consider many elements that science itself relies on - the reality of natural laws, the reality of numbers and abstract objects, the reality of the wave-function. All of these are philosophical questions rather than scientific, hence also a challenge the pose for naturalism insofar as naturalism is confined to what can be know objectively.
Quoting Patterner
That's what panpsychism does, though. Mass, charge and other physical properties are observable and measurable, whereas the idea that matter possesses properties of consciousness is purely conjectural. Again, it is an attempt to rescue the credibility of materialism by saying it must be a property in all matter - instead of questioning materialism itself. That is explicitly what Galen Strawson says about it, mine is not a straw man argument.
Quoting Patterner
Careful with this 'we'. I've looked at philosophy of mind from many perspectives. The 'one way' that you have in mind, is still very much influenced by early modern science, the division between mind and matter, subject and object. There are many ways to tackle the hard problem other than panpsychism. Chalmers says in various places that a kind of naturalistic dualism is required, that has to acknowledge the fundamental differentness of mind and consciousness while still keeping within the general bounds of naturalism (although I confess I haven't read much about his proposal there.)
At its core, naturalistic dualism says:
There are two kinds of fundamental facts in the world:
And crucially:
Phenomenal facts are not reducible to physical facts.
But phenomenal facts are part of the natural world, so they should be studied by sciencejust not physical science as currently understood. (This part sounds a lot like phenomenology!)
Hence, it's dualism, because it posits two fundamental kinds of properties or facts, but it's also naturalistic, because it's not invoking supernatural entities or a mind outside of nature.
(However, much rests on what 'outside of' means here.)
In regrads to the problem at hand you are expressing an idea contingent to physicalism. That is a VERY broad category though.
Regarding this particular problem I would place myself on the side of physicalism as things stand regarding scientific evidence. The thing is this is a Philosophy forum and while it is certainly worth pushing that those partaking in discussions on Philosophy of Mind -- beyond a mere navel gazing -- have a pretty expansive understanding of the cognitive neurosciences. That said, the reverse is also true. One can have a pretty decent grasp of the neuroscientific evidence and yet be completely oblivious to what the Philosophical side of this is trying to tackle.
This problem is probably most pertinent in regards to questions of consciousness as it is here where the neuroscientific experimentation can provide evidence for differing approaches, but this is not by a long shot anywhere near a logical proof.
A good number of scientists and philopshers alike point out that they are doing one or the other and that it is a category to combine the two. Physical Evidence is not an Abstract Proof and an Abstract Proof is not Physical Evidence. When it comes to questions involving consicousness it is pretty easy to confuse one for the other.
Here is a basic rundown of how things work in terms of the terminology involved >
If an argument denies substance dualism this does not necessarily mean it adheres to physicalism. It does necessitate some form on Monism for the position though!
Physical Monism may be what you are getting at, but this is generally regarded as a kind of Physicalism.
Panpsychism? I do not think you have expressed this at all as far as I can see.
Eliminativism? As you strongly deny what you are expressing is physicalism we have to rule this out. This basically describes Mental Terms as misleading (I am sympathetic towards this approach despite its faults).
Neural Monism is a kind of physicalism too, so we have to rule this out.
Non-Reductive Physicalism would mean you have to face the Supervenience Problem.
Epiphenomenalism would be another option possibly? You in for that?
From all you have said a kind of Reductive Physicalism or some kind of Eliminativism are what you have expressed. This is simply a fact. The issue is you seem to have expressed quite ardently that your approach is not physicalist yet both of the above approaches ARE physicalist and you have said you dislike the reductive approach.
I have no problem with someone holding to contradictory positions regarding more complex problems like this, because the reason it is so difficult is because we are met with contradictions as we follow through on the logical reasoning. I am labelling the general schemata of the ideas being expressed.
Being able to label certain positions and highlight where you do and do not agree with them helps people navigate the discussion and argumentation involved. My exploration was an attempt to focus on the Causal nature of Substance Dualism (which we cannot say much about if anything!?) but which could help to further distinguish faults aroudn the Supervenience issue or Property Dualism.
I can only assume you do not really know the appropriate terminology and therefore this entire miscommunication is due to you not knowing the Philosophical terms being used (not uncommon here, and I have been more than guilty of this myself over the years).
Another example would be physicalism and materialism. People tend to use this as synonyms while others do not. What is important is to clarify your position and use of terminology.
Very true.
Quoting I like sushi
Agreed.
Quoting I like sushi
And this is often a problem I have with broad generalized terms. The general definition of a physicalist is "One who thinks everything is physical." But I don't. I simply note that the consciousness is physical because that's where the science is leading us. But its not a broad claim that 'Everything is physical and will be physical." So defacto I'm not a physicalist.
So we have to invent a new term. None of the terms really fit my conclusion, because terms rarely ever do. What I've learned in my time in philosophy is that 'ideologies' can be useful as general starting points for a discussion to get people in the ballpark. What I've found in practice is the ideologies and terminology get upheld more than the logic being discussed. Its the wrong emphasis. Every single ideology and terminology came to being due to someone's reasoning and logic. The reasoning and logic are what are important, not using the terms themselves.
This being understood, we must be very careful that we don't take ideologies and special terms as holding some special power. They do not. Their stringent and rigid adherence is only appreciated by an academic and rarely useful to creating new philosophy. My point was, "It doesn't matter what I am. It matters if what I think is the most rational approach." A 'label' is not the goal of a good philosophical discussion, only the reasoning of the discussion.
Quoting I like sushi
Also agreed. But they should be an assistance to understanding the argument being made, not something we try to fit the argument into. Its why when asked if I was a physicalist, I'm not. Hopefully that lets a person realize, "Oh, this person believes non-physical things are possible. Let me explore that." Instead, and I'm not saying you do this, it can become a game of, "Oh, but you said that the mind was physical, therefore you have to be a physicalist!" One is an attempt to clarify one's position and spark curiosity and understanding while the other is an attempt at closed minded idealism and used to shut down further exploration and curiosity. In most of my encounters over the years on the general forums, its the latter use that happens. Its because more people are interested in securing the 'rightness' of their position than genuinely exploring others ideas.
Quoting I like sushi
Yes, and I do apologize earlier for losing track of that. That is definitely my fault. It may have been a little rough pivoting back to that, and that's where we both might have misunderstood each other. I do agree that we probably can't come up with any idea of causality with substance dualism, as the secondary substance could do anything. While the possibility is interesting, practically its a dead end for further exploration beyond its plausibility.
Quoting I like sushi
Yes, but not in the way you think. Often times I am aware of the terminology in a formal sense. Sometimes I am not of course, and I'll try to adapt and learn where I can. But what I am almost never aware of in a conversation is how other people define the terminology. I have learned that many people rarely use the formal definition of complex philosophical ideologies or terms. Its often subjectively bent through their own lens, and I am just as guilty of this. Its why I continually asked, "What do you define 'non-physical' as." Because there's a formal definition for non-physical, but that doesn't mean everyone views it in that formal way.
Anyway, thank you I am Sushi. I really did enjoy our discussion and can see you are a thoughtful person. A good thread. I can only hope I added to it and did not detract from your overall goal. See you in another discussion.
>Generally described under the title 'physicalism'. In slogan form 'mind is what brain does'.
Panpsychism?
>Matter has some latent consciousness, Patterner is an advocate.
Eliminativism? As you strongly deny what you are expressing is physicalism we have to rule this out. This basically describes Mental Terms as misleading (I am sympathetic towards this approach despite its faults).
Neural Monism is a kind of physicalism too, so we have to rule this out.
>Neutral monism is not usually desribed as physicalism - it is the idea that at bottom, being or reality is neither mental nor physical but can appear as either.
Non-Reductive Physicalism would mean you have to face the Supervenience Problem.
>Correct. It's probably the majority view.
Epiphenomenalism would be another option possibly?
Usually associated with physicalism> mind is an epiphenonenon that appears in sophisticated beings.
Your list doesn't mention idealism. Bernardo Kastrup is an advocate.
David Chalmer's paper Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness was one of the origins of 'consciousness studies'.
Misrepresetnation of what is being said.
Quoting Philosophim
and again.
Quoting Philosophim
They are not 'ideologies'. Such is to adhere to a form of Idealism.
People on philosophy forums do occasionally actually use philosophical terminology. You can say until you are blue in the face that what you are expressing is not a type of Physicalism, but it is. Just like someone going around killing random people can claim they are not a murderer, it does not stop everyone else from blatantly disagreeing. The murderer could argue that "being a murderer is not eveyrthing I am!" but they cannot rationally argue that they are not guilty of murdering people.
I hold to physicalism in some situation and not others. I can be liberal about one political problem and conservative about another. Neither rigidly defines me as either.
Because you are unwilling to accept that what you are saying adheres to some sort of argumentation from some form of physicalism, and instead repeatedly revert to 'I am not a physicalist!' like it is some harsh insult, you completely miss everything.
Maybe chat GPT can do a better job? Here is its take on your reply:
"Certainly. Here's a clear explanation you can give to this person regarding the philosophical problem they seem to be havingnamely, the confusion caused by adopting a position that seems to commit to physicalism while denying that label, and the consequences this has for coherence in the philosophy of mind debate:
Hi [name],
Thanks again for the discussion. It seems to me that the issue you're running into is a classic one in philosophy of mind, especially when navigating between physicalist and non-physicalist frameworks. Here's the core problem, as I see it, and I hope this helps clarify some of the points raised earlier.
The Philosophical Tension:
You've said you're not a physicalist, because you don't think "everything is physical" in the broad, metaphysical sense. However, you also say that consciousness is physical, because that's where the science is pointing. That sounds like you're committed to at least token physicalism about consciousness (i.e., each instance of a mental event is identical to some physical event in the brain).
But if that's your view, then you're not rejecting physicalism you're accepting a form of it, even if you're uncomfortable with the term.
So the tension is this:
You're trying to occupy a non-physicalist position while affirming physicalist conclusions about the mind.
That does raise confusion because labels in philosophy matter, not to stifle thinking, but to track arguments, commitments, and counterarguments. Without clear reference points (like physicalism, property dualism, emergentism, etc.), discussions risk talking past one another, as seems to have happened here.
The Supervenience Problem:
Now, if you're affirming that consciousness is physical but still not reducible to physical states thats non-reductive physicalism, which relies on supervenience (i.e., mental states depend on physical states such that no change in the mental without change in the physical is possible).
But if you reject supervenience (or leave it vague), you fall into interactionist dualism, and then you're stuck with:
The causal closure problem: How does a non-physical substance cause anything in a physical system?
The pairing problem: Why does a particular non-physical mind interact with this brain?
And yes, the supervenience problem again: If mental states don't supervene on physical ones, then how do we explain regular, lawlike mind-brain correlations?
So even if you dont want to use the term physicalist, your statements imply physicalist commitments. And that matters because the moment you say consciousness is physical, you enter territory with well-mapped problems, arguments, and consequences.
Let me know if you'd like this reworded more diplomatically or conversationally but the goal here is to help your interlocutor see that clarifying terms isn't a pedantic game, it's part of responsibly navigating conceptual terrain."
From Mental Events by Donald Davidson
Apologies for jinky copy and paste (Might be a word or two missing cut so let me know where and I will Edit as needed).
As I mentioned way, way back I was trying to look at the disparity between nomological and metaphysical positions.
How so?
"Physicalism is, in slogan form, the thesis that everything is physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#ReduNonReduPhys
-Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
I clearly pointed to you that I do not believe all of existence is physical. If you read my paper on the Logic of Universal Origin and Meaning, you'll clearly see its a non-physicalist explanation for the universe. Further, if right, proves the very real possibility of non-physical things that could form in the universe that we are not aware of.
If I look at a block of wood and say, "That's physical." am I a physicalist? No. If I look at a brain and consciousness and say, "Consciousness seems to exhibit the signs of being physical, therefore its likely physical," am I a physicalist? No. You're making a mistake of taking my conclusion in one area and broadly attributing the moniker of physicalist to me from that alone.
So unless you are using the term physicalism in a way that is not formal, I am simply not a physicalist.
Quoting I like sushi
No. I'm not a physicalist, as they believe everything is physical. I simply conclude that the brain and consciousness is physical due to years of scientific results that indicate consciousness seems to be physical, while little to no evidence of it being non-physical. Concluding that consciousness is physical does not make you a physicalist. Believing that all of reality is physical and that there can be nothing non-physical does.
Quoting I like sushi
Yes. And you can clearly see from the above that my assertions that I am not a physicalist are true.
I've already said my piece in previous discussions, if there is something unclear or you disagree with specifically, feel free to reference it again.
Because you are obsessed with not being labelled a Physicalist when I am not labeling you as a physicalist. Every post you seem to do this.
I am labelling the arguments put forward in this particular area of philosophy of mind as physicalist because they are.
Quoting Philosophim
Take it up with Chat gpt. Not my words.
All I can suggest is exploring this site further Stanford and beyond the opening paragraph.
Just ensuring the accuracy of terms as you mentioned.
Quoting I like sushi
Just because a physicalist can hold these arguments, this doesn't make someone who holds an argument that consciousness is physical as physicalist.
Quoting Patterner
Agreed. Patterner. At least for me I feel I've reached the end of any important discussion points. You all have a nice day.
Coming back to this but trying to shorten the length a bit...
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
I think this is the central point. If there are no good arguments that causality is physical, then we have no reason to claim that causality is physical. Of course if we ignore the ubiquitous phenomenon of mental causation, then we are closer to a physicalism that would favor physical causality. But at the moment I think we're asking whether causality that does not involve mentality is physical.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
Yes, but even then the relationship between two objects is something that is between the two objects. It is neither one object nor the other nor some third object. Thus to say that causality occurs between physical objects does not seem to prove that causality is physical, unless by "is physical" we only mean, "occurring between two physical objects."
Quoting AmadeusD
Well "basis" is a strange word here. If there is no reason to claim that causality is physical, and there is no reason to consider a non-physical basis for energy transfer, then why not simply abstain from affirming either of those things?
Quoting AmadeusD
Note though that if you think energy transfer is the transfer of physical matter, then it seems that you do think energy is a physical object, even though you said, "Energy is not a physical object, and no one claims it is." This is a large part of the difficulty. The concept of "capacity to do work" (energy) is not physical matter, and yet you think the transfer of energy is the transfer of physical matter.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
I have a hard time with your claim that measurement is physical. I would say that a measurement of distance and the two endpoints belong to a different genus. The spatial orientation of a physical object, especially relative to something else, is not a property of itself. It is a Cambridge property. This is why points can be dimensionless even while line-lengths are not. In Euclidean geometry a line is always qualitative more than a set of points.
Quoting AmadeusD
I agree that the case of boiling water fits your account better than the case of collision. The difficulty here is that if you think every cause is physical, then you will need to defend not only the boiling of water, but also the collision of objects, gravity, etc.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
But I think "fabric" is another metaphor being reified. Does the physicist see the "spacetime fabric" as physical? In what sense is it said to be physical? We can surely stretch the word "physical" far beyond what we ever generally mean by it, but I am not much interested in that approach.
Quoting AmadeusD
Quoting Leontiskos
I still don't see that (4) follows. There is no sufficient reason to believe that the (causal) interaction is itself physical.
Consider:
Or:
This form of reasoning does not seem to be valid. A kind of metabasis eis allo genos is occurring in the conclusion, where the predicate term is of an improper genus. Causation is not human, or phenolic resin, or physical, etc. We can say that what causes the nine-ball to move is the collision with a phenolic resin object, but words like "collision," "interaction," "relation," are also not amenable to the genera in question. Collisions are not phenolic resin, or phenolic resin objects. Collisions can occur between objects made of phenolic resin; or objects made of phenolic resin can collide, but it is still improper to say that the collision is itself phenolic resin.
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
That's not what I am saying. If two physicists are studying billiards and you ask them, "Are you assuming that the collision is itself phenolic resin?," they will tell you, "No, I am not." Or, "Are you assuming that the collision is itself physical?," they will tell you, "No, I am not." Physics by its very nature has always prescinded from the idea that collisions are themselves phenolic resin or that collisions are themselves physical. I gave the reason why earlier, "explanation and reasoning requires differentiated genera." If everything is reduced to the physical (or to any one homogenous thing), then explanation will be impossible, including causality-explanations.
But I think what you say is right when taken with respect to our cultural "religion" of materialism or physicalism. If we just assume that everything is physical, including causality, then we lead ourselves into absurdities. In this case it is the absurdity which makes interactions the same kind of thing as that which interacts. ("The Physical" is the new Ur-explanation)
Quoting Leontiskos
Quoting AmadeusD
"Physically deducible" is a strange and ambiguous phrase. Better to say, "deducible from physical interactions." And there simply is no valid deduction to the conclusion that the interaction is itself physical.
I understand the physical we experience every moment isn't exactly what it seems. However, whatever the explanation for what is not exactly physical seeming to be physical, it [I]does[/I] seem to be physical. How many seeming forms could whatever is really there take? Why did it take this one? It seems bizarre to me that the nature of reality would assume a false nature that is so unlike its true nature that there's no way to detect that true nature within the system of the false nature, and it's impossible to prove that true nature's existence. I must consider that, somehow or other, the physical, imperfect though our understanding of it may be, is, in some sense, true.
But it's not all there is. It's not the full story.
As am I! We can objectively verify if a subject is conscious (well, except in extermely rare cases such as 'locked-in syndrome') and we can tell when people and animals are conscious and when not.
Quoting Patterner
This really gets to the nub of the problem. What I'm saying is that the knowledge we have of our own consciousness is of a different order to the knowledge we have that others are conscious. To be conscious is to know of our own existence, in a direct and unmediated way. I know that I am in a different way to the indirect and mediated knowledge I have of other minds.
Chalmers what-it-is-like-ness is precisely about this direct, first-person givenness. That element the qualitative feeling of being is not captured by any third-person account, no matter how detailed. This is where the irreducibly subjective aspect of consciousness shows itself.
This is why I think the panpsychist move is ultimately a misstep. By trying to objectify consciousness to treat it as a measurable attribute of matter it attempts to assimilate consciousness into the obective mode, from which it is essentially different. The first-person reality of consciousness doesnt appear as an object in the world; it manifests as the point of view from which the world is experienced.
Panpsychism is also subject to the 'combination problem' - the question about how primitive, conscious units of matter are able to combine in such a way as to give rise to the unitary sense of self that characterises actual conscious experience. This is where phenomenology offers a different perspective to both panpsychism and philosophical dualism.
[quote=Michel Bitbol]Phenomenology is not concerned by the combination problem because it bases its enquiry on the present, global, embodied, human experience of the researcher, and not on any hypothetical "elementary form of consciousness". It bypasses the speculative move of attributing consciousness to microphysical entities by focusing instead on the lived, first-person givenness of the world. From this standpoint, consciousness is not a property in the world, but the condition for there being a world at all.[/quote]
Full paper here Beyond Panpsychis: the Radicality of Phenomenology
This is precisely why I favour Husserl's approach to a science of consciousness. He was not at all concerned with the 'existence' of physical objects and bracketed out any difference between a unicorn and a horse. Both are 'objects' of consciousness.
His phenomenology -- whilst problematic -- does offer an interesting way of approaching the problem of articulating consciousness without direct concern with empirical objective measurements.
I think this is entirely wrong. We're looking at something observable, not abstract. We need to look at what actually happens in the world. Causation happens between physical objects, in a physical world with no evidence of any non-physical attribute involved. Philosophers don't seem to even think this is a coherent claim of a possible reality. I again want to bring in Jaegwon Kim and his pretty tireless arguments around trying to ascertain a non-physical mode of causation and landing on Supervenience of something undescribed as the only way out of hte physicalist corner. I tend to think no one has gotten further. I can't understand how you're getting yourself off hte ground, yet, though I find all of the discussions interesting. What we have to 'fall back on' as it were, is not something that points to causality being non-physical. And we don't seem to have much better than a fall-back. I do not know of any example of non-physical causation (mental causation is likely physical, reducible).
Quoting Leontiskos
I disagree with the former, so maybe we are on different pages here. I've not affirmed either, though. There is reason for the first claim, and no reason for the second, both of which support the first. That's as far as I'll go.
Quoting Leontiskos
Its not difficult. I had assumed this would be intuitive.
"energy" is a description of effects gained by the interactions of bits of matter. That "energy" is not an object, or a "thing" at all. But it obtains in the transfer described (i mean, it could be that "charge" is what transfers as, in that way, if its not the particles themselves, we may have more to discuss and might be hte page you're on).
Quoting Leontiskos
The above should sort this out. The capacity to do work is exactly represented by hte physical attributes of the matter in question.
Quoting Leontiskos
Very hard disagree, which should but paid to that part of the discussion. Something's position in space and time are properties of it. An apple has to be an apple at a certain time, in a certain place. It cannot simply be 'an apple'. That doesn't exist, anywhere. If you take away the spatio-temporal description of a physical object, you lose the ability to claim it as extant (on our current knowledge). This doesn't seem at all unusual or controversial to me.
Quoting Leontiskos
This is interesting. I think, yes, they do. I think intuitively, most would. I cannot understand the underlying strata of the universe not being physical. We are in a physical universe. If you're going to posit otherwise, You need to explain how to get from that, to this physical universe. No one can do that. So it doesn't make any sense to me to go down that route (at this time) despite it being interesting, to some degree or another. We don't live in a non-physical universe. Its actually hard to even point to a non-physical thing in it (Though, i understand a few good candidates about). I guess, on similar thinking to some of your replies, I'm not prepared to look at some physical force like gravity and entertain that it isn't physical, yet. We have zero avenue to explain try to explain that. The other option is weird and difficult, but i prefer that currently.
Quoting Leontiskos
There is no reason to think it isn't is my position(and good reason to think it is). It obtains within a physical system, between two physical objects in a physical event with no indication anything else is involved. When you adjust any physical parameter, the result differs.
At the very least, this should be accepted as the best explanation we have. Speculation abound, for sure. But there's nothing here that makes me think its even reasonable to start looking for an non-physical answer (except perhaps impatience, which isn't the worst reason, tbf).
Quoting Leontiskos
Because it isn't. I didn't mention material. I mentioned mode. Theres a gulf between the two "reasonings" you've put up, which are non invalid, but essentially tautological (or self-evident in some other way). The reasoning I gave speaks about mode not content. If the lines in the previous paragraph I've written above about why we have no reason to think about non-physical causation occurring go through, then the content is irrelevant. Any event which can described on that term would adhere to that reasoning. I would want to say calling something "human" is hugely different to calling something "physical". Largely, because in your examples, everything reduces to the physical explanations underlying those words.
Quoting Leontiskos
But that begs the question. I can't quite wrangle something helpful out of this explicative section..
Quoting Leontiskos
Evidenced by this (out of order, sorry) making no sense to me. We don't "assume". We investigate and find nothing but physical interaction surrounding all change we see in the physical world. We are given no material on which we can explore a non-physical basis (descriptively) of causation. We may not have good answers, but we certainly don't have any reason to move off the line currently. Again, it's interesting to entertain and may well at some stage become something we can adequately explore, but we have nothing on which we can do so currently but speculation.
Quoting Leontiskos
I am unsure it is. But its not saying the same thing as calling hte collision physical. They are asking different things. The collision between two balls of phenolic resin is clearly phenolic resin (they are just in contact with each other - changing nothing about the material we're wanting to name). The mode is different, as I see it and requires a different answer.
I think its possible you are just flat-out wrong about what physicists would say about a collision. I also don't think that has much to do with our discussion. Whether a physicist says x y z doesn't quite change anything in the world. Unless you're a total Continental.
Quoting Leontiskos
Not at all. You just picked up something wrong in it. It means to deducible entirely in physical terms, from physical activity, assessed in physical terms against other physical activity. If you want to say the deduction isn't physical (because mental) I put the conversation down, as that's a very different thing for another time imo. Fraught, and something I'm only really getting into currently (that is, why it seems mental causation is a misnomer.
Quoting WayfarerI do not think it is a misstep.
Is it or is it not an objective fact that we're all subjectively conscious? Just because neither of our first-person realities of consciousness appear as objects in the world doesn't mean they don't both come into being for the same objective reason/when the same objective conditions are present.
Two telescopes made on the same machinery, seconds apart, can never have the exact same view of anything at the same time, despite being made the same way, out of the same materials, and working the same way.
We are, obviously, far more complex than telescopes. Our brains and bodies follow the same general plan, but there are many differences between our brains. We also have different experiences, which means different memories, beginning before we're even born. So, while we might argue that we could arrange things such that it's possible for two telescopes to have the exact same view of something at different times, even that's not possible for different people. It's not even possible for one person to have the same experience more than once.
Quoting WayfarerWhat guess about the nature of consciousness [I]doesn't[/I] have to deal with the combination problem? Does it somehow make more sense that consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain, and the activity of these neurons over here are all somehow combined into one subjective visual experience, the activity of those neurons over there all somehow combine into one subjective aural experience, and the activity of both groups of neurons, as well as that of still other groups of neurons, somehow combine into one subjective experience that is visual, aural, and whatever else?
I don't know anything about your idealism. How does that avoid the combination problem?
If my position is correct, then the combination problem is obviously not a problem. No matter what guess is actually the correct one, the combination problem clearly isn't a problem.
But there's a big difference in perspective that you're glossing over there. Objectivity is already a step removed from the actuality of first-person experience. By treating first-person experience in those terms, you're eliding a real distinction. You're basically saying that it doesn't matter.
Quoting Patterner
That 'nothing but' is the essence of reductionism - it's what reductionism means. You've absorbed the accepted wisdom, that the world is 'nothing but' a concatenation of fundamental particles, and brains are just super-specialised instances of the same basic stuff. Which is why you're appealing to panpsychism, which attempts to explain how this model can account for consciousness, by presuming a kind of secret attribute of consciousness in matter.
And saying 'hey, nobody knows what consciousness is, so one guess is as good as another' is, well, not saying anything.
How Phenomenology and Idealism avoid the 'Combination Problem'
The combination problem is how to account for the unity of conscious experience. If each particle of matter (and leaving aside that it is dubious that matter is even really particulate) possesses some tiny sliver of consciousness, how is it that they can combine into a unified whole, which is how conscious experience invariably appears to the subject.
So why doesn't the same apply to organisms, and to subjective conscious experience in particular? Living organisms, unlike collections of inorganic matter, possess a principle of unity from the outset. This principle is not something that needs to be "combined" from smaller parts; it is the very thing that makes the organism a whole in the first place.
A pile of sand is a mere collection of particles. Its unity is an external construct, imposed by the observer who calls it "a pile." If you remove a grain of sand, the pile remains a pile. The grains do not work together for a common end; they do not have a shared life.
An organism, by contrast, is an integrated whole. Its partscells, tissues, and organsdo not exist independently but are organized by a principle that directs their activities toward the maintenance and flourishing of the whole. This is the very meaning of "organism" and "organization". The unity is intrinsic, not imposed (as it is in artefacts, for example).
This view doesn't face the combination problem because it doesn't assume the parts were conscious to begin with. It is an argument about emergence, not combination. The brain and nervous system, with their incredibly complex and integrated organization, are a special kind of matter. When, and only when, matter is organized in this way does the property of unified, subjective consciousness emerge. But then, look at the process which gave rise to organic life on Earth, starting with stellar explosions and the creation of complex matter, through the billions of years of terrestrial formation and so on. Who is to say that this is not the emergence of a distinct and separate ontological order to that displayed by non-organic matter?
Materialism has to avoid this inference, as, for it, there is only one fundamental substance, matter (or matter-energy, post Einstein). Hence it has to graft consciousness on to matter, to explain the explanatory gap or the 'hard problem'.
Phenomenology (and also idealism) don't face this problem, as they don't presume that matter is fundamental in the first place. They start with the undeniable ('apodictic' in philosophy-speak) fact of conscious experience, and seek to understand it as it is, without explaining it in terms of material interactions and neural substrates. The difficulty being this challenges the assumed consensus of materialism, and that requires a considerable re-thinking of fundamental philosophy.
The combination problem is more or less the problem of strong emergence from a panpsychist perspective. Replacing combination with emergence does not really solve much because they are similar issues. You could justbite the bullet on strong emergence as a dualist, but then a panpsychist could do the same with combination problem.
Quoting Wayfarer
Given that we have very good idea about the exiatence of microscopic things, I think idealists either has to resort to some kind of solution that has problems like the combination problem: microconsciousnesses combine together, macroconsciousnesses dissociate; perhaps also some ad hoc hand-waving of something like "brains are just what our consciousness looks like through another perspective". Idealism might have some parsimony in terms of "everything is mental", whatever that even means; but I don't think any of these perspectives the fact that the irreducibility of experience means there isn't really any intelligible explanation available to us to explain why reality would have distinct experiences at different scales, how they emerge from each other whether upward or downward; and if not, why science seems to describe structures like brains which seem to have no reminiscence to our own first person experiences. Just saying everything is mental may in some sense be simpler than materialism or dualism, but I don't think it provides any deeper insights or amelioration to these issues.
You are missing the point. Husserlian Phenomenology is not at all concerned with material existence as it is focused on the experience of consciousness. It is not merely sayign everything is Mental it just does not care about material measurements -- the aim being to figure out an approach that can better ground science in subjectivity.
Husserl started as a physicist so he was not against empirical data at all.
What we are talking about in phenomenological terms is understanding how when we look at any given object of perception it is necessarily 'pregnant' (to use his term) with unseen aspects -- volume, back, bottm, side etc.,. When we look at other phenomena the same makes itself known to us, like with sounds. We cannot think of a sound that has no volume, nor a song that has no melody.
To Bracket Out the general material view we are used to allows us to reframe our experience and categorise it differently. This can then be used once we readopt material data and seek clues to how our subjective experience maps onto neural networks or not at all.
Quoting Apustimelogist
Yes. It is no better than stating something like "I don't know how it works, therefore aliens!" The issue becomes one of reductionism -- something else Phenomenology puts its hand to.
We are talking about consciousness so it makes sense to start at the source rather than shift to what our consciousness constructs (that is a representation of other in the idea of something being something). The question of how we obtain a pciture of a World is where conscoiusness is most readily at work. My conscious being appreciates physics not the other away around.
Pleased to find we have this in common.
I dont know if this has any bearing on any of this, but it plays a role in my thinking.
The idea that each being is a pure consciousness (or spirit) and the world they are born into gives enough structure around them to articulate being and experience. Another way of seeing this is that each human is a consciousness, a pure being. But if this structure werent there no one would be able to determine who was who and where one person ended and another began. Also we would all know each others thoughts all the time. The whole world would just be a chaotic mess.
So the constraining structures in our world play a major role in defining who we are when we are in this world. But also they may play a role in educating us to prepare for a world where these structures are reduced and we need to be able to maintain our defining qualities without them. To anchor these features in spirit.
I was directly replying to mention of the combination problem. If my answer was not coherent with the topic, it is because the combination problem was evoked in an improper context.
Quoting I like sushi
The thing about experiences is that there is nothing much to say about them other than say we are directly aquainted with them and can distinguish them. What else we can do is organize them, relating them to each other, and giving them labels, like what science does.
Conveniently for physicalism, the fact that we have individual brains that are not neurally interconnected with the brains of other people seems to explain this nicely.
If only we could all behave sensibly, we could throw off all this physical stuff we are wearing like an old coat and hang out in peace and harmony. I think theres a word for this.
To me it seems likely that improved and more widespread knowledge of our natures is the best hope humanity has for avoiding the bleakness that the denial of our natures is leading towards.
There's a real problem with the naturalist account of human nature, which is that it doesn't or can't acknowledge the sense in which we're essentially different from other animals. Considerable weight is given to demonstrations of rudimentary reasoning skills by caledonian crows and chimps to press home this point. See? We're just like them! I think we take comfort in the kind of 'one-with-nature' aspect of evolutionary naturalism. But it also gets us off the hook of recognising that we're 'the symbolic species', as Terrence Deacon put it in a book of that name, with capacities and possibilities and also existential plights which they will never have.
But neither evolutionary naturalism nor scientific realism provide us with the moral resources necessary to cope with the human condition. The criteria of biological evolution aren't necessarily meaningful in a context as utterly removed from the natural state. But as many have commented, Darwinian naturalism dovetails nicely with myths of progress and capitalist economics. And with the prestige of science.
Unlike the other primates, we have concepts of nature, we sense ourselves as being different from it in ways they cannot. Acknowledgement of that has to be a part of philosophy, but it's not something inherent within naturalism.
That's just your strawmanning of naturalism. I could talk of all sorts of ways we are different from other animals. Language use and cultural evolution being two important factors.
The only hope that humanity has is the transfiguration of our natures, otherwise we are doomed to become extinct due to the overstretch of resources and resultant conflict.* The fossil record has numerous examples, why would we be any different.
Cause; the self obsessed over use of resources.
Effect; extinction, or collapsed civilisation struggling to survive in a polluted world.
* I remember when I learnt of the plight of the mutinous crew of the Bounty. When they became shipwrecked on Pitcairn island. Rather than cooperate and survive, they killed each other.