A few questions

[Jimi]

Some questions about the "Mind At Large" idea that I find confusing...

1. Do objects exist when no-one (human or other animal) is perceiving them? If no, how does the mind make it look as though they exist?

2. Why is the brain (or life?) an image of dissociated consciousness instead of being a non-conscious object within consciousness? In other words why isn't the brain merely an experience within the mind in the same way as non-living things are?

3. Why does the mind split into many separate ones instead of being only one mind?

[Peter Jones]

On Saturday, 17 September 2016 04:50:35 UTC+1, Jimi wrote:

Some questions about the "Mind At Large" idea that I find confusing...

1. Do objects exist when no-one (human or other animal) is perceiving them? If no, how does the mind make it look as though they exist?

They would not truly or metaphysically exist in either case. They would have only a dependent or relative existence.  

2. Why is the brain (or life?) an image of dissociated consciousness instead of being a non-conscious object within consciousness? In other words why isn't the brain merely an experience within the mind in the same way as non-living things are?

Not sure I understand the question. Everything would be an experience in the mind except for what is truly real.  

3. Why does the mind split into many separate ones instead of being only one mind?

So that God can live infinite lives and play in the world of Maya. Infinity is a long time to sit on your ass.

They say that God watches every sparrow that falls.There's only one way that this could be possible. He's sat in your house reading this post right now.

 

 

[Jimi]

lauantai 17. syyskuuta 2016 12.58.54 UTC+3 Peter Jones kirjoitti:

On Saturday, 17 September 2016 04:50:35 UTC+1, Jimi wrote:

Some questions about the "Mind At Large" idea that I find confusing...

They would not truly or metaphysically exist in either case. They would have only a dependent or relative existence.

Are their existence dependent on the observer?

Not sure I understand the question. Everything would be an experience in the mind except for what is truly real.

I think Bernardo is saying that life is not only an experience in consciousness, but that life is also an image of dissociated consciousness, namely that there is something it is like to be a living being. What I don't get is this: if this is not true of non-living things (there is nothing it is like to be a non-living thing), then why would it be true of living things?

 

[MrBeezweez]

Our brain is a non-conscious object in our consciousness. We don't experience what it is like to BE our brain. Our whole body is just an image of how we structure our disassociated mind relative to the rest of reality. We have the experience of having a body that we can interact with(metabolism is key here) but we don't experience being just our body, although it may seem that we do. What we really experience is thoughts of our body, feelings of our body, the sight of our body, etc. It's just an elaborate hoax.

[SKS]

1. Yes. Whether you're a materialist or absolute idealist, there's a cause behind you seeing a physical object which exists outside your mind. But the map is not the territory, only analogous to it. Under materialism, a physical object does not have really have a colour, for example, only a reflection spectrum of light wavelengths that the mind represents as colour and shading in a sort of simplified, cartoon model of the world (though it tries its best to fill in the details within its limitations). To a materialist, the true object is an abstract form outside mind, which can only be described using mathematics (which, itself, is a mental construct!). Instead, as idealists, we are saying that physical objects are images resulting from mental causes.

2. Two ways to interpret this question are "Why do idealists reject panpsychism?" and "Why aren't we zombies being used as puppets by MAL?". We reject panpsychism for two reasons. The first reason is that we can't draw a boundary around physical objects. Is a thermostat conscious? We could ask the same question about the whole room that the thermostat's in. Is a rock conscious? We could ask the same question that the mountain is a part of. But this would be like asking whether your kidneys or your hippocampus have a consciousness that's independent of your own. The second reason is that we can't imagine any way of combining small 'bits' of consciousness (like subatomic particles) to make human minds.

Okay, so why aren't we zombies or puppets being controlled by MAL? For that to happen, MAL would need to be dreaming up a world, like in old-fashioned Berkeleyan idealism, containing a bunch of lifeless human-shaped objects that act like humans, yet don't have any first-person point of view. This doesn't make sense, because the idea that there's objects that go around and do stuff is a product of our first-person human perspective, not something that MAL shares.

3. Well, life is what happens when MAL splits, but we don't know how life began. It could be a very rare accident resulting from natural causes, or more likely, there are deeper principles behind why life emerged. If you're asking why it's possible for MAL to split at all, just think of a human mind as a bundle of mental processes that think they're separate from everything else.

[RHC]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m7BxlWlvzc&index=15&list=PLE_DQdH4_ZkTd3ILbuLUZUDMgCcFPdlgi

[Peter Jones]

Jimi

---"Are their existence dependent on the observer?

Um. Perhaps it would be right to say they would exist to the extent the observes exists. Existence would be co-dependency of dualities. Observer-observed, experience-experiencer, subject-object and so forth. The Ultimate Being, State or Phenomenon would transcend all such distinctions. It cannot be said to exist or not-exist. If ti existed it could not have come into existence, and it if it did not exist we wouldn't be here. It;s the word 'existence' and out concept of it that causes this muddle, and this would be why the semiotics of C.S. Peirce are so relevant to this.

Do you know what you mean by 'exists'.? It's not an easy question, and how do we know out idea matches up with the real thing? .      

Legend has it that the Holy Grail has the power to dissolve all distinctions. Lao Tsu says that the world as a whole is in no case this or that. Jesus says (from memory) 'Blessed are those whose end is before their beginning'. These remarks are all about nonduality, the resolution of all opposites, which are conceptual, in a non-conceptual real world accessible to us all through practice and self-exploration. You don't have to guess, you know it all already.        

----"I think Bernardo is saying that life is not only an experience in consciousness, but that life is also an image of dissociated consciousness, namely that there is something it is like to be a living being. What I don't get is this: if this is not true of non-living things (there is nothing it is like to be a non-living thing), then why would it be true of living things?"

Your wording confuses me. Life would require both association and disassociation. Everything needs its opposite for its own existence. We would have to be human and divine. On the topic of whether all matter and energy is sentient I would follow Aurobindo. He suggests, if I remember right, (Don will know), that what we call matter is an extreme state of consciousness, one which may not become properly sentient until the end of the universe when matter, according to the Gospel of Mary, will 'resolve into its own roots'. 

Heady stuff.

[Peter Jones]

That should have read "Perhaps it would be right to say that they would exist to the extent the observer exists.".

[Peter Jones]

Hmm. That last comment can't be right. Matter would return to God, but sentience wouldn't be the right word. Pardon me, that was all a bit scrappy.

[Jimi]

lauantai 17. syyskuuta 2016 16.11.20 UTC+3 SKS kirjoitti:

1. Yes. Whether you're a materialist or absolute idealist, there's a cause behind you seeing a physical object which exists outside your mind.

If the perception of matter is caused by already existing matter, how does it differ from Berkeleyan idealism in which reality exists in God's mind?

 

Okay, so why aren't we zombies or puppets being controlled by MAL? For that to happen, MAL would need to be dreaming up a world, like in old-fashioned Berkeleyan idealism, containing a bunch of lifeless human-shaped objects that act like humans, yet don't have any first-person point of view. This doesn't make sense, because the idea that there's objects that go around and do stuff is a product of our first-person human perspective, not something that MAL shares.

 

Why couldn't it share it? When there were no life at all, did MAL share the idea that there are non-living things?

[Bernardo]

A good idea might be to actually read the philosophy you're criticizing and asking very basic clarifications about. A discussion forum is not a replacement for reading at least one or another book, where the answers and laid out clearly. It's redundant and, frankly, unfair to expect people here to reconstruct a whole philosophical system answer by answer.

[Jimi]

I'm not expecting answers that would replace reading an entire book...

[benjayk]

But it seems likely you might not be satisified with those answers, or won't understand them as intended.

I think there is no need to make it so complicated.
Personally I feel the fine details of Bernado's system are not necessary to get the main point.
One can always endlessly discuss details. Personally I find questions like that confusing, too.

The important question as I see it is "Do you believe in the basic tenets of materialism, and why?".
If you do then materialism will obviously seem superior, and you will probably have a hard time making sense of anything falling outside of that.
That's just the nature of accepting any thought system.

If you don't - or if you have doubts - and you're genuinely curious you might question those tenets, and inquire into alternative ways of looking at things.
One way of doing that could be reading Bernado's books. But there are obviously countless ways.

Another way is to look at it more practically and try out meditation, lucid dreaming or other ways of exploring consciousness.
They won't provide you with another metaphysical system but they might provide perspectives beyond what you usually experience (including the assumptions you normally make)...

[dollar coin]

On Sunday, September 18, 2016 at 11:36:46 PM UTC+3, benjayk wrote:

The important question as I see it is "Do you believe in the basic tenets of materialism, and why?".
If you do then materialism will obviously seem superior, and you will probably have a hard time making sense of anything falling outside of that.
That's just the nature of accepting any thought system.

(My questions are not directly to you. I ask them to idealist people here.)

Materialism makes sense, I don't know how to look at it so it feels as if it doesn't make sense.

Can you give few examples what doesn't make sense to you in materialism, because here its commonly used term "materialism doesn't make sense", how it doesn't make sense, explain please?

With that assumption of materialism we have all those tech. and science. If it was nonsense why we were able to achieve that success? The result shows clearly that it makes sense to the most of the world.

To me it seems you only have consciousness to play with and creating big things out of it which grow beyond the consciousness itself (as I know my consciousness only).

1. What if it is not a thing that exists on its own, do you consider that possibility really or believing in non falsifiable makes you feel better?
   
2. Why I don't feel conscious when I'm born and I develop it later? Doesn't this show it's dependent on matter?
   
3. Why do you think what is called non-consciousness is also consciousness but non reflective (or obfuscated consciousness)? What's your proof?
4. Regarding the acrobacy in making non-consciousness -> consciousness why you don't think that the computers are also consciousness but not self reflective or have obfuscated consciousness, while according to you they are also dissociates of MAL?
   What prevents a dissociate to now have experiential side?
   Since it's not possible to prove something is conscious empirically what stops you from making that claim for computers and all other dissociates of MAL? 
5. What's the difference of your position in believing to god?
   
6. Can idealism be constructed to not entail god?
   
7. Can you give falsifiable examples regarding the reality of idealism? Experiments that when give some result will render idealism false.

[Sciborg]

Why materialism doesn't make sense is covered in another thread:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/metaphysical-speculations/iwL5sReWWXE%5B26-50%5D

[SKS]

Materialism makes sense, I don't know how to look at it so it feels as if it doesn't make sense.

Can you give few examples what doesn't make sense to you in materialism, because here its commonly used term "materialism doesn't make sense", how it doesn't make sense, explain please?

Here's some of the reasons that I find most compelling, in no particular order:

1. Materialism does not offer any viable solution to the hard problem of consciousness, which itself has created. That is, why do I have a first-person point of view, but a camera or a thermostat does not? Consider the immense difficulty of locating a conscious observer within an atom-level description of the world.

2. Materialism struggles to explain the 'aboutness' or intentionality of thought.

3. Materialism implies either that an arbitrary computer, such as a clockwork difference engine, could be made conscious like a human, or that there is no ontologically-objective fact of the matter about whether a physical system is conscious or not.

4. Materialism tends to rely on the concept of computation to explain the mind, but this is not well-defined. For example, any physical system can be interpreted as a computer by mapping physical states to logical states.

5. Materialism makes it harder to understand modal statements. There is no way to establish the difference between a 'real' atom and a 'non-existent' atom that does not make reference to a conscious observer.

6. Materialism does not explain why mathematics, a human construct of thought, should be capable of modelling the physical world so effectively (in terms of physical laws described by equations).

7. Materialism is unintelligible. It uses a collection of ontological primitives that are not logically-necessary, have no intrinsic properties except the relationships between them, and must be taken as brute facts.

I wouldn't expect everyone to abandon their deeply-held metaphysical beliefs at the drop of a hat. If you prefer a concrete metaphysics that you can poke with your fingers, then idealism may not be your cup of tea, though I'd warn you that naive realism appears to be going out the window thanks to modern scientific discoveries. However, I do think alternative theories should be taken seriously, rather than derided as 'woo-woo nonsense' (as Jimi put it).

With that assumption of materialism we have all those tech. and science. If it was nonsense why we were able to achieve that success? The result shows clearly that it makes sense to the most of the world.

 

No. A scientific model describes a set of causal relationships between natural phenomena, which technologies can exploit to do useful work. It doesn't make any metaphysical statements.

To me it seems you only have consciousness to play with and creating big things out of it which grow beyond the consciousness itself (as I know my consciousness only).

The use of fewer assumptions is a strength, not a weakness.

What if it is not a thing that exists on its own, do you consider that possibility really or believing in non falsifiable makes you feel better?

That's a slightly patronising comment.

Why I don't feel conscious when I'm born and I develop it later? Doesn't this show it's dependent on matter?

How can you possibly know whether babies have conscious experiences?

Why do you think what is called non-consciousness is also consciousness but non reflective (or obfuscated consciousness)? What's your proof?

There is a continuum between 'conscious' and 'unconscious' cognition. There are many examples of this. As you concentrate on this text, you're not fully aware of what's in your peripheral vision. You can probably feel the material of your clothes, and are somewhat aware your own breathing, yet these are not fully 'conscious' to you until your attention is drawn to them. You can think and dream in your sleep, but you're not fully aware then. You can have hunches or emotional responses that you don't know the reasons for. You may find yourself reminded of something, except the memory stubbornly remains 'at the tip of your tongue'. A ship doesn't suddenly vanish when it goes over the horizon. Likewise, we have no reason to expect there's a sharp line after which mental activity stops consisting of thoughts, and suddenly starts consisting only of non-subjective, non-qualitative, physical patterns of electrical activity instead.

Regarding the acrobacy in making non-consciousness -> consciousness why you don't think that the computers are also consciousness but not self reflective or have obfuscated consciousness, while according to you they are also dissociates of MAL?

All physical objects are caused by mental activity within MAL, and yes, that includes computers. But the form of those mental activities is unknown. They may not involve self-reflection, may not be dissociated from the rest of MAL, and may not have semantic content in the way we'd normally think of it (a stop sign is also created by a thought within MAL, but probably does not carry any semantic content about stopping, independent of the observer; note that the mental image of a stop sign does not need to have any such semantic content, either). As they are non-living things, we cannot rely on an analogy between computers and ourselves to infer that they can be conscious. I would not say it is impossible, and it may be an interesting field of discussion in a less combative context, but we have no proof either way.

What's the difference of your position in believing to god?

If you mean the God of the Old Testament, there are an awful lot of differences.

Can idealism be constructed to not entail god?

I don't know what you mean by that. It depends on what you consider to be 'God'. It can be constructed in a minimalist, naturalist, sceptical framework, or it can be constructed in a complex, teleological, spiritualist framework.

Can you give falsifiable examples regarding the reality of idealism? Experiments that when give some result will render idealism false.

If you're a very staunch positivist and empiricist, I'm not sure why you're discussing metaphysical theories at all. At best, you can produce experimental results that appear more likely or less likely from a particular metaphysical standpoint (e.g. brain injuries weaken the case for mind-body dualism). You could try disproving Bernardo's speculations about psychedelic drugs, I suppose, or you could try to prop up mind-body dualism by studying ghosts or something. But your best bet would be addressing all of the logical arguments against materialism and sketching a materialist theory of consciousness.

[Jimi]

1. The hard problem of consciousness would only be a problem for materialism if materialism predicted that the hard problem of consciousness should not exist. I don't think it does. If consciousness was a physical process carried out by the brain, you would expect the immense difficulty of locating a conscious observer within an atom-level description of the world.

4. Not all physical processes could be interpreted as conscious though. Consciousness means processes that analyze each other. For example, in the brain consciousness is created when neurons receive data from sense organs and analyze it. Not all processes work that way.

6. Why shouldn't nature be describable by mathematics?

7. Why should consciousness be logically necessary either? And under idealism it would be unintelligible how a change in the physical brain can change the non-physical mind.

"The use of fewer assumptions is a strength, not a weakness."

By assuming that only consciousness exists you are also assuming that there's no possible way to explain why it exists or what causes it to exist. Parsimony is good for formulating scientific models, but it's not good to suppose that a model doesn't have potential to be falsified. It's better to be unparsimonious in that regard.

[Sciborg]

Materialism predicts consciousness shouldn't exist. And I don't just mean subjectivity, I mean your thoughts about things. But don't take my word for it listen to these guys:

1. New Atheist Sam Harris on why materialist explanations of consciousness are nonsensical:

"To say “Everything came out of nothing” is to assert a brute fact that defies our most basic intuitions of cause and effect—a miracle, in other words.

Likewise, the idea that consciousness is identical to (or emerged from) unconscious physical events is, I would argue, impossible to properly conceive—which is to say that we can think we are thinking it, but we are mistaken. We can say the right words, of course—“consciousness emerges from unconscious information processing.” We can also say “Some squares are as round as circles” and “2 plus 2 equals 7.” But are we really thinking these things all the way through? I don’t think so."

2. Materialism Alex Rosenberg, author of the Atheist's Guide to Reality on why thoughts don't exist:

"Now, here is the question we’ll try to answer: What makes the Paris neurons a set of neurons that is about Paris; what make them refer to Paris, to denote, name, point to, pick out Paris?...

The first clump of matter, the bit of wet stuff in my brain, the Paris neurons, is about the second chunk of matter, the much greater quantity of diverse kinds of stuff that make up Paris. How can the first clump—the Paris neurons in my brain—be about, denote, refer to, name, represent, or otherwise point to the second clump—the agglomeration of Paris?...

A more general version of this question is this: How can one clump of stuff anywhere in the universe be about some other clump of stuff anywhere else in the universe—right next to it or 100 million light-years away?

...Let’s suppose that the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way red octagons are about stopping. This is the first step down a slippery slope, a regress into total confusion. If the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way a red octagon is about stopping, then there has to be something in the brain that interprets the Paris neurons as being about Paris. After all, that’s how the stop sign is about stopping. It gets interpreted by us in a certain way. The difference is that in the case of the Paris neurons, the interpreter can only be another part of the brain...

What we need to get off the regress is some set of neurons that is about some stuff outside the brain without being interpreted—by anyone or anything else (including any other part of the brain)—as being about that stuff outside the brain. What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff.

Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort..."

[dollar coin]

An atheists never says everything came from nothing. Theists say god created everything from nothing.

Can you show me what do you see around you that came from nothing? Nothing!
Observations show that all come from something, they just transform from something to another something. There is no such thing as nothing.
That something is called matter or energy (E=mc^2).

Materialism doesn't predict anything, people predict based on the knowledge they have. Someone's prediction doesn't prove or deny anything. Empirical is what proves or rejects. All other is bla bla.

If there is something unexplainable it first means we don't have enough knowledge to explain what's going on. Like it was hundreds of years ago. Slowly as our knowledge grows we start to have explanations.

The confusion lies in the definition of matter. Matter is not that clump. It's that external thing, whatever it is, that enforces itself to you. That makes you experience it. Call it energy, field, quantum wave, etc. Anything that you can get information from is matter.

To say matter doesn't generate consciousness or consciousness can not be explained by materialism is only because of lack of knowledge about matter and it's behavior.

If time travel was possible and we showed people of 300 years ago a computer which could identify their sound and recognize their faces they'd think it's a human or there is a human soul inside. It's only because they don't know what an organization of matter can do.

I think that's our position now. We think consciousness is some magical thing like those old people who think computer is human soul.

[Sciborg]

Sorry Dollar but your whole post seems completely irrelevant to mine?

If you could specifically show where Harris is wrong about materialism being nonsensical, or where Rosenberg is wrong about materialism leading to the conclusion that our own thoughts are illusions, please do so.

[Jimi]

"Materialism predicts consciousness shouldn't exist."

How do you know that material processes can't produce consciousness?

"1. New Atheist Sam Harris on why materialist explanations of consciousness are nonsensical:"

The fact that it's impossible to conceive consciousness as a material process doesn't mean that materialism is nonsensical.

"2. Materialism Alex Rosenberg, author of the Atheist's Guide to Reality on why thoughts don't exist:"

Certain information in the brain can be about Paris, because when we think about Paris, our brain reproduces the neurological processes that are produced when we experience Paris.

[Sciborg]

Sorry Jimi,

 But those are just hand waving explanations. What's the actual refutation of the arguments presented against materialism explaining consciousness or thoughts?

 You're just claiming the very something-from-nothing miracles Harris & Rosenberg - New Atheist & Materialist respectively - argue against.

[Jimi]

1. The conclusion that consciousness is not identical to a physical process only makes sense if you commit a masked man fallacy. For example, it only makes sense to say that the morning star and the evening star are separate entities if you don't understand that they are both Venus. We don't necessarily get full understanding of what consciousness is just from knowing what it's like to be conscious.

2. When we experience Paris, our brain receives information about Paris in the form of certain neurological processes. That information is being stored in the brain as thoughts about Paris. When we have a thought about Paris, the brain simply reproduces those processes. So certainly thoughts can exist if materialism is true.

[Larry Schultz]

I assume that 'consciousness' and a 'physical process' are the morning and evening star in this story . . . if this is the case, neither are a premise so I don't see what you are saying.

I get the feeling that you just bumped into the term 'masked man fallacy' and are dying to use it.

If I got it wrong, what is the fallacy?

[Larry Schultz]

Re your 2nd point about thoughts of Paris - Yes what you suggest is true except for the 'we' part, in a Materialist model thoughts of Paris can exist, but there is no one to experience them.

On Tuesday, September 27, 2016 at 8:42:09 PM UTC-5, Jimi wrote:

[MrBeezweez]

He thinks thoughts ARE consciousness, but then how would one go about thinking about thoughts.

[SKS]

On Wednesday, 28 September 2016 02:42:09 UTC+1, Jimi wrote:

1. The conclusion that consciousness is not identical to a physical process only makes sense if you commit a masked man fallacy. For example, it only makes sense to say that the morning star and the evening star are separate entities if you don't understand that they are both Venus. We don't necessarily get full understanding of what consciousness is just from knowing what it's like to be conscious.

Ah, so you're a property dualist or neutral monist, not a materialist! By your analogy, materialism would be tantamount to saying that there is no morning star, only an evening star.

 

2. When we experience Paris, our brain receives information about Paris in the form of certain neurological processes. That information is being stored in the brain as thoughts about Paris. When we have a thought about Paris, the brain simply reproduces those processes. So certainly thoughts can exist if materialism is true.

That's a subjective interpretation of the physical system, though, not an objective property of the physical system itself. To illustrate what I mean, if you wrote about Paris, the paper would receive information about Paris in the form of certain ink patterns. Another person could make copies of those ink patterns to produce more books about Paris. Still, if you gave the paper to a super-intelligent alien, they would be unable to learn anything about Paris as long as they don't know how to assign meaning to the ink patterns. But the brain is supposed to be the subject, so it must be the brain that interprets its own neurological processes, yet a self-interpreting brain would require an infinite regress of interpreters. That's what Alex Rosenberg is arguing.

They might sound stupid, but his concerns are actually at a higher calibre than you can wave away casually. You could try talking about mutual information (maybe the book does 'pick out' the city, somehow, if you're smart enough to see it?) or the extended mind (maybe the book and city need to be taken as part of a single system?), but these sound more like excuses than anything else.

[Jimi]

"I get the feeling that you just bumped into the term 'masked man fallacy' and are dying to use it."

The inability to conceive consciousness as a physical process is really a property of the person trying to conceive it - not a property of consciousness. That's why it's fallacious to conclude that consciousness cannot be a process based on the fact that it's impossible to conceive it as a process.

[Jimi]

"But the brain is supposed to be the subject, so it must be the brain that interprets its own neurological processes, yet a self-interpreting brain would require an infinite regress of interpreters."

But the neurological processes are not like a code that needs to be interpreted. If materialism is true, "Paris" is just what we call the neurological processes that are produced when we experience Paris.

[SKS]

On Wednesday, 28 September 2016 22:25:23 UTC+1, Jimi wrote:

But the neurological processes are not like a code that needs to be interpreted. If materialism is true, "Paris" is just what we call the neurological processes that are produced when we experience Paris.

Hm, well. I think you're talking about symbol grounding. How do you connect a symbol, an arbitrary physical pattern, to its real-world referent? Of course you can stick a camera in front of the symbol system, add some visual recognition software, and lo! the symbol for 'teapot' is activated when you put a teapot in front of the camera. But again, the symbol system is a set of arbitrary physical patterns, so the fact that a symbol can be 'activated' by a stimulus (i.e. some physical changes happened) doesn't give it any meaning unless you interpret it as having such. All you have is a rather fragile causal link between the presence of a teapot and the activation of the symbol. If a freak cosmic ray struck the machine running the symbol system and activated the 'teapot' symbol, you wouldn't say that the machine is 'thinking about teapots', because you're using your human judgement to interpret the symbol system sensibly. You're interpreting it so that only some causal connections are meaningful. So causal connections cannot be sufficient to give meaning...

This is all just a way of re-hashing John Searle's Chinese Room argument, which is meant to illustrate how symbol systems are meaningless in intrinsic terms, unlike human thought. The neural patterns in the human brain can be read as a very complex symbol system by slicing up the state space appropriately. John Searle argues that this shows the human brain has a special, unexplained capability to assign meaning to symbols. Alex Rosenberg argues that neural patterns, being symbols, cannot have any intrinsic meaning to them, which means our belief that we have meaningful thoughts must be a delusion. I am not actually sure what an idealist interpretation of meaning would say, but since idealism takes thought as an ontological primitive, it doesn't look like so much of a problem.

[RHC]

>The inability to conceive consciousness as a physical process is really a property of the person trying to conceive it - not a property of consciousness. That's why it's fallacious to conclude that consciousness cannot be a process based on the fact that it's impossible to conceive it as a process.

What!!!!!   LOL 

Jimi this is really simple,  there is no way, even in principle to describe how well understood electro-chemical physical processes in the brain can produce something categorically different and unrelated to this functioning.  This would be true of ANY physical process, to claim otherwise is to deny the entire empirical thrust of Science.  Correlation IS NOT causation.  This is fact its not open to question, which is why the mainstream materialist position taken most seriously among materialists these days is that there is no consciousness, its some kind of illusion.  This is absurd but at least its not instantly disprovable.  

[Sciborg]

I don't think Jimi has actually addressed Rosenberg's argument that thoughts have to be illusory under materialism.

Unless he's trying to say there is a pattern of matter that just intrinsically represents Paris in which case he's sneaking in Platonism.

[Larry Schultz]

I am not aware of anyone suggesting that consciousness is a physical process as much consciousness emerges from a physical process.   IOW, no one thinks that consciousness is the actual firing of neurons, bio-electrical pulses and etc. - but consciousness emerges or is produced by said processes.  To put another way, consciousness is an abstraction of a physical process.

Contrasted with the above, Bernardo (and others) suggest that consciousness is an entity or being.

If you were to inspect your own experience as a human being, including the mundane what you are experiencing right now as you look about, which of the two POV's above more accurately describe your experience?

Are you a flimsy abstraction of what is real, and what you see, hear, touch and smell a running calculation occurring inside your skull - or, are you real, substantial and integrated with reality?  If you accept the latter explanation that does not mean you believe in a soul or the singing of holy angels, it just means you accept the findings of your own experience above beliefs.

[Jimi]

An image for instance can have information that represents a teapot, so why couldn't neural processes have as well?

torstai 29. syyskuuta 2016 1.17.06 UTC+3 SKS kirjoitti:

On Wednesday, 28 September 2016 22:25:23 UTC+1, Jimi wrote:

But the neurological processes are not like a code that needs to be interpreted. If materialism is true, "Paris" is just what we call the neurological processes that are produced when we experience Paris.

[Sciborg]

The image doesn't represent a teapot unless there's a mind looking at it.

There is no "teapot-ness" in the image, and really I've never understood what people mean by "information" divorced from actual minds.

[Jimi]

It still represents visual information of that teapot.

[SKS]

On Thursday, 29 September 2016 19:18:29 UTC+1, Jimi wrote:

It still represents visual information of that teapot.

What about a cloud that's coincidentally shaped like a teapot?

[Jimi]

What about it? It would represent a shape of a teapot.

[Jimi]

"Contrasted with the above, Bernardo (and others) suggest that consciousness is an entity or being."

It's really a series of events rather than an entity. An entity could exist without being in flux which is not true of consciousness.

"If you were to inspect your own experience as a human being, including the mundane what you are experiencing right now as you look about, which of the two POV's above more accurately describe your experience?"

Functionalism seems to describe it the most accurately, because it says that consciousness is a property of physical events as opposed to being irreducible or a being of some kind. This is introspectively apparent. I can't be conscious or hold a thought for less than about 90th of a second (nor can anyone else). If qualia were really irreducible, you would expect that it could exist in arbitrarily short time intervals, but that seems to be impossible. Also, I don't find consciousness to be anything more than a sequence of thoughts/perceptions. If I try to remove thoughts, I don't find an entity or a being who makes/has those thoughts. That why the self appears to be an illusion.

[Sciborg]

So if no one was around, and no one had ever made a teapot, the pattern of atoms in the image would still represent at teapot?

That's Platonism, or at the least an Aristotilean take on Forms. It certainly isn't materialism.

I also don't know why you suggest thoughts are apart from consciousness. I'm the first-person POV having thoughts, and my thoughts are intrinsically about their subjects. Nothing in matter is intrinsically about anything - which is why the materialist Rosenberg said all thoughts are illusions.

Regarding critiques of Idealism...not an Idealist but we should first acknowledge materialism is obviously & absolutely wrong before we worry about which paradigm is correct.

[Sciborg]

To add to my just last post, I don't even get the connection between holding a thought and the fundamental nature of qualia. Nothing about the time frame of qualia is an indicator that materialism is true.

Functionalism is nothing but ascribing mental phenomena to moving processes rather than stationary patterns. It's still an invocation of Forms given the claimed isomorphism between these patterns "summed" across intervals and what they represent.

[Jimi]

"So if no one was around, and no one had ever made a teapot, the pattern of atoms in the image would still represent at teapot?"

No, only the shape of a teapot. It doesn't represent an actual teapot unless there is someone to make the connection between the two.

"Nothing in matter is intrinsically about anything"

Why not? How is an image of a teapot not "about" the visual information of a teapot?

"Nothing about the time frame of qualia is an indicator that materialism is true."

But it is an indicator that qualia are physical processes.

"Functionalism is nothing but ascribing mental phenomena to moving processes rather than stationary patterns."

I didn't mean that kind of functionalism. I think the certain moving processes constitute mental phenomena.

[Sciborg]

Sorry, how is the time frame of qualia suggestive that they are physical processes? 

As for the teapot, the only reason there are teapots is b/c there are minds. So to claim there is visual "information" of any sort is assume minds exist.

[Jimi]

"Sorry, how is the time frame of qualia suggestive that they are physical processes?"

If qualia were not physical processes, you would expect that they wouldn't require 1/90 of a second in order to exist.

"As for the teapot, the only reason there are teapots is b/c there are minds."

How come? But even if that was the case, it wouldn't need to be human minds.

[Sciborg]

I still don't understand what this 1/90 of a second is?

As for "information" existing on its own, just look at the alphabet. Those are just scratch marks without the communion of minds.

[SKS]

On Friday, 30 September 2016 13:20:12 UTC+1, Jimi wrote:

If qualia were not physical processes, you would expect that they wouldn't require 1/90 of a second in order to exist.

You're talking about the relationship between time and mind, right? And you're saying that our stream of consciousness consists of discrete frames, with a temporal resolution that's coarser than the timescale of many physical processes (e.g. the time it takes for a ray of light to cross the room). Therefore, you claim, it must emerge from a continuous medium, or at least a much finer-grained medium, which is more fundamental (i.e. matter and energy). I suppose the first question is whether our stream of consciousness does consist of discrete frames (consisting of unified subjective experiences). I'm iffy about this claim, because it means you'd need to be able to say when one frame ends and another frame begins, but there is no apparent 'clock' to define them (unless you go with Orch-OR theory, in which case it's the frequency of objective collapse in the microtubules). How do you draw the line between the conscious moment X and conscious moment X+1, such that if your brain were instantly destroyed during the transition, anything that happened in the interval would have no effect on your subjective experiences? This may be part of why Daniel Dennett, as an eliminative materialist, has gone with denying that there are any unified conscious moments at all (multiple drafts model).

Aside: I'm wary of the word 'qualia' at the moment, because I feel that thinking about the mind-body problem in terms of 'things' gets you into the wrong mindset. What matters is subjectivity itself, not whether 'redness' or 'blueness' can be broken down into more fundamental units, whether it is purely qualitative, whether it can 'dance' and 'disappear' without the subject noticing, or whatever. These topics seem like distractions, and then you get people going, "Oh, they can't prove anything about qualia, so let's fall back on materialism.".

[Jimi]

"How do you draw the line between the conscious moment X and conscious moment X+1, such that if your brain were instantly destroyed during the transition, anything that happened in the interval would have no effect on your subjective experiences?"

So you're asking how do I draw the line between a conscious process and a non-conscious segment of a conscious process? Well, I can't really. There's a gray area between a process that has the property of certain qualia and a process yet to have that property. So the question of whether the transition would have any effect on subjective experience would be inside that gray area (kind of like the question of whether viruses can be considered to be life forms). How would that be a problem?

"What matters is subjectivity itself, not whether 'redness' or 'blueness' can be broken down into more fundamental units, whether it is purely qualitative, whether it can 'dance' and 'disappear' without the subject noticing, or whatever."

But isn't subjectivity made of some kind of qualia? Subjectivity comes from thoughts and perceptions and it seems that thoughts and perceptions are always in the form of some kind of qualia. In other words they are always associated with some of the five senses.

[Sciborg]

Beyond the five sense there's also the sensation of running late, the sensation of being bored, all the varied emotions.

Even to hold beliefs means there's something it is like from the 1st Person PoV to hold beliefs.

[Jimi]

"As for "information" existing on its own, just look at the alphabet. Those are just scratch marks without the communion of minds."

If information just means a sequence of symbols, the scratch marks are information.

"Beyond the five sense there's also the sensation of running late, the sensation of being bored, all the varied emotions."

Feelings still require a period of time so they can exist. They are states of being in flux.

[Sciborg]

How are scratch marks information? Then every overlapping pattern you can project on to matter is "information" which then renders the concept behind the term meaningless. You still need a mind to make scratch marks of a particular form an alphabet.

As for feelings being in time, sure. That's actually the whole point of Bergson's "phenomenal experience of time" which contradicts some physicists' idea of a frozen universe.

In fact physicist Adam Frank recently made note of this:

Was Einstein Wrong?

http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/02/16/466109612/was-einstein-wrong

"But when science reaches the hairy edges of our experience, when it reaches outward to the boundaries of our abilities to describe the world, is there something else coming along for the ride? Together with the powerful, abstract mathematics and the ingenious instrumentation, is there something beyond "just the facts" requiring special attention when physicists make their grandest claims about the cosmos?

To be exact, is there a philosophy — a "metaphysics" — that goes beyond what the math and the data support? And, if such background metaphysics exist, could it be wrong even if the theory itself is right in terms of experiments and data?
This question is at the heart of a fascinating book I've been reading called The Physicist and the Philosopher by Jimena Canales. It's a story about Albert Einstein (who needs no introduction) and Henri Bergson (who probably does)."

On Friday, September 16, 2016 at 10:50:35 PM UTC-5, Jimi wrote:

Some questions about the "Mind At Large" idea that I find confusing...

1. Do objects exist when no-one (human or other animal) is perceiving them? If no, how does the mind make it look as though they exist?

2. Why is the brain (or life?) an image of dissociated consciousness instead of being a non-conscious object within consciousness? In other words why isn't the brain merely an experience within the mind in the same way as non-living things are?

3. Why does the mind split into many separate ones instead of being only one mind?

[Jimi]

"How are scratch marks information?"

Usually information is defined as anything that can be given meaning to, not something that necessarily has a meaning.

"You still need a mind to make scratch marks of a particular form an alphabet."

Yes, but thoughts don't need to be "about" other things in the same way as scratch marks are about alphabet. A thought of a teapot is not "about" a teapot in that sense, but rather it is a replay of neurological activity that occurred when you encountered the teapot.

[Sciborg]

"Yes, but thoughts don't need to be "about" other things in the same way as scratch marks are about alphabet. A thought of a teapot is not "about" a teapot in that sense, but rather it is a replay of neurological activity that occurred when you encountered the teapot."

This is the same thing as saying there are intrinsic patterns of matter that correspond to specific thoughts. We're back to Platonism.

In fact this very idea of replay of semantic knowledge is very questionable, as noted by neuroscientist-philosopher Raymond Tallis in Philosophy Now.

 

[Jimi]

"This is the same thing as saying there are intrinsic patterns of matter that correspond to specific thoughts. We're back to Platonism."

How is that different from materialism?

"In fact this very idea of replay of semantic knowledge is very questionable, as noted by neuroscientist-philosopher Raymond Tallis in Philosophy Now."

Tallis's mistake is to think that thoughts have meaning about other things. They don't. The "aboutness" of thoughts is a relation between concepts and sense data. It's not a relation to anything external.

[Sciborg]

Except we have thoughts about more things than that which is account for with sense data.

Heck, just by bringing sense "data" you're really talking about subjectivity & qualia.

On Platonism vs Materialism -> The problem for the materialist is what philosophers call the problem of intentionality. Alex Rosenberg and other materialists who are honest accept that thoughts have to be illusory because for thoughts to be directly correlated to a pattern is Platonism. It's an isomorphism that supercedes all the other infinite ways you can interpret a pattern.

To repeat Alex Rosenberg's words from an Atheist's Guide to Reality:

“A more general version of this question is this: How can one clump of stuff anywhere in the universe be about some other clump of stuff anywhere else in the universe—right next to it or 100 million light-years away?

…Let’s suppose that the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way red octagons are about stopping. This is the first step down a slippery slope, a regress into total confusion. If the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way a red octagon is about stopping, then there has to be something in the brain that interprets the Paris neurons as being about Paris. After all, that’s how the stop sign is about stopping. It gets interpreted by us in a certain way. The difference is that in the case of the Paris neurons, the interpreter can only be another part of the brain…

What we need to get off the regress is some set of neurons that is about some stuff outside the brain without being interpreted—by anyone or anything else (including any other part of the brain)—as being about that stuff outside the brain. What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff.

Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort…

…What you absolutely cannot be wrong about is that your conscious thought was about something. Even having a wildly wrong thought about something requires that the thought be about something.

It’s this last notion that introspection conveys that science has to deny. Thinking about things can’t happen at all…When consciousness convinces you that you, or your mind, or your brain has thoughts about things, it is wrong.”

[Jimi]

The "problem of intentionality" has the erroneous premise that thoughts have meaning about other things. When we say that a thought or a perception has meaning about something, what we are really doing is relating sense data to an act of conceptualizing those sense data. Thoughts only have meaning in the sense that they relate to concepts that are produced by organizing the sense data.

[SKS]

On Thursday, 6 October 2016 20:19:17 UTC+1, Jimi wrote:

The "problem of intentionality" has the erroneous premise that thoughts have meaning about other things. When we say that a thought or a perception has meaning about something, what we are really doing is relating sense data to an act of conceptualizing those sense data. Thoughts only have meaning in the sense that they relate to concepts that are produced by organizing the sense data.

Arguably, that's transcendental idealism, not materialism. If your thoughts have no relationship to objective reality (i.e. you cannot know the thing-in-itself), how can you make statements like 'only matter exists' and 'the mind is the activity of the brain' with any degree of certainty? Another way in which eliminative materialism becomes self-refuting.

[Jimi]

"If your thoughts have no relationship to objective reality (i.e. you cannot know the thing-in-itself), how can you make statements like 'only matter exists' and 'the mind is the activity of the brain' with any degree of certainty?"

Because noumena can be represented by phenomena even though it's impossible to experience noumena.

[Sciborg]

Except we can have thoughts about things that don't exist in the present moment or exist at all.

What's the sense data around the meaning of the Universals (logical and mathematical statements)?

Heck even "Paris" is just a concept to someone who has never been there.

[Jimi]

"Except we can have thoughts about things that don't exist in the present moment or exist at all."

That just means that we can conceptualize things which don't exist.

"What's the sense data around the meaning of the Universals (logical and mathematical statements)?"

I can only think about logical and mathematical statements in terms of sense data. For example numbers describe quantities which relate to sense data. Even if I think about concepts like infinity, I can only think about them in terms of something that is conveyable through sense data.

"Heck even "Paris" is just a concept to someone who has never been there."

Their concept of Paris would refer to some experience from which they learned what Paris is.

[Sciborg]

The Universals transcend sense data - we conceive of lines & circles without experience them in nature.

This attempt to claim thought is just sense data seems like an assertion that the materialist Rosenberg already disproved above. I mean it's ultimately saying some swirls of atoms (or quantum foam, or whatever is at the bottom) are thoughts and some aren't.

 

[Sciborg]

Just to further critique physicalist explanations for thought here's Goff's paper:

Does Mary know I experience plus rather than quus?A new hard problem

"There are well known difficulties facing the physicalist wanting to give an account of raw feels. The aim of this paper is to show that there is a further, quite distinct challenge for the physicalist wanting to given an account of cognitive phenomenology. A commitment to the existence of cognitive phenomenology brings with it severe, perhaps insuperable, difficulties for the physicalist.In the first section I will build a prima facie case for a commitment to semantic phenomenology ,for the view that perceptual experience represents words as having specific meanings; perhaps the most plausible form of realism about cognitive phenomenology.

In the second section I willtell a new story about Mary, intended to illustrate the difficulties involved in accounting for semantic phenomenology physicalistically. In the third section, I will give the moral of the tale."