Subjectivity and Science

[John Freestone]

Hi

I'm probably stepping into the lion's den with this one. Maybe it's been discussed here before. I would like to know what people make of the problem of subjectivity. I could have said 'consciousness', but I said 'subjectivity' to make the point that our experience of consciousness is subjective. While I accept that human consciousness has physical correlations in brain activity, I understand that science has so far failed to make sense of the subjective experience of it.

Let me put it another way: I had a conversation with my sister about 20 years ago when I was putting forward my ideas about spirituality and she was countering them from a scientific viewpoint. All that is needed to explain consciousness, the scientific argument goes, is that dirt and energy slosh about for billions of years until by chance some form of replicating system is formed, which we call life. Then, through random mutation and the interaction of these life systems with the environment, life becomes increasingly complex, and gains greater and greater means of monitoring and manipulating the environment, and the simple brain stem develops more and more systematic processing power until consciousness results, perhaps with the advent of abstraction, symbols, language. She put all that to me, and I understood that it could make perfect sense, no God required.

But, said I, how did one of those resulting consciousnesses become the centre of experience I call my consciousness? How did I get in here, talking to you out there? It is that question that keeps bringing me back to consider different views of the world from the materialist one.

I suspect that many scientific materialists don't consider the mystery of their own consciousness much from that absolute perspective. The more I consider it, meditate and read spiritual philosophies, the more sense a world view makes that includes Consciousness as fundamental, perhaps Cosmic, a priori, given. Scientists are happy to imagine a universe in which matter or energy-matter or space-time are fundamental, and indeed lap up the weirdness of all of that exploding out of a singularity behind which is no past (since time was created) or place (since space was). Yet I have heard no convincing explanation of consciousness that does not describe it in third-person, out-there, functional-material language, utterly missing the philosophical problem of its subjective quality - it is not an it, but an I.

Further doubt about science comes from the reasoning that all of the 'empirical evidence' that is so revered by scientists must eventually be made sense of in the individual consciousness, the nature of which is mostly ignored, perhaps because it is such a mystery. If the observer is not known, any theories about the observed stand on much shakier ground than scientists usually like to admit.

It seems to me, also, that 'scepticism' on this forum is often used to mean 'scientific materialist' (although no doubt some will have other ideas about what it means to them), and I wonder if actually scientific materialism is merely a philosophy - one might even say an atheistic religion, since it has tenets and assumptions, axioms - and rather than 'sceptic' (or skeptic) what is meant is 'believer'. This seems to allow 'sceptics' to assume that their position is natural, and dissenters are either stupid, mad, or at least must show evidence for their belief. No-one seems to expect materialists to prove that material is real, but all manner of 'religious' people (dare I call them mentalists?) are expected to prove that mind is real.

This brings me full circle. Stop for a moment and experience your consciousness. Now which is more absolutely undeniable, you (subject), or all that stuff out there you believe in?

[The Grave]

From above...."No-one seems to expect materialists to prove that material is real, but all manner of 'religious' people (dare I call them mentalists?) are expected to prove that mind is real."

Both are real... what a dumb stand point. If you write a word e.g. 'up', the information you convey is as real as mind or material.

The 'I' referred to is the illusion. We all have a capability to be many-minded, so your 'I' becomes subjective; it's the 'I' you have chosen from those available to you.

[andyandy]

From above...."No-one seems to expect materialists to prove that material is real, but all manner of 'religious' people (dare I call them mentalists?) are expected to prove that mind is real."

Both are real... what a dumb stand point. If you write a word e.g. 'up', the information you convey is as real as mind or material.

The 'I' referred to is the illusion. We all have a capability to be many-minded, so your 'I' becomes subjective; it's the 'I' you have chosen from those available to you.

you have definitive proof of materialism? I'm impressed....care to share it? :)

Solipsism is every bit as valid a position as materialism, more so even, in a truly empirical sense....all we can be truly sure of is our thoughts themselves....

still it's nice to live as though materialism is true...which it probably is ;)

[Roadtoad]

This is the kind of thing that gets into Zeno's Arrow territory, which can actually be kind of fun if you have a few hours to kill, and enough money for the beer and tacos.

Something to consider, John, is where you find the evidence, and what the results from said evidence are. Taking it from there, you can say "What's next?" with a bit more authority. Scientific Empiricism seems to work better in a mechanistic realm rather than a purely spriritual one. Seems to work better in real life, too.

Back to you, Chet.

[PixyMisa]

But, said I, how did one of those resulting consciousnesses become the centre of experience I call my consciousness? How did I get in here, talking to you out there? It is that question that keeps bringing me back to consider different views of the world from the materialist one.
You obviously weren't paying attention to what your sister said, or, for that matter, high-school biology. Consciousness is a function of the brain, of which you have one. You are that particular consciousness because it is generated by the brain you have in your head.

I suspect that many scientific materialists don't consider the mystery of their own consciousness much from that absolute perspective.The question, to a materialist, is trivial. No-one gives it serious attention because it doesn't deserve serious attention.

The more I consider it, meditate and read spiritual philosophies, the more sense a world view makes that includes Consciousness as fundamental, perhaps Cosmic, a priori, given.Mediation Considered Harmful.

Scientists are happy to imagine a universe in which matter or energy-matter or space-time are fundamental, and indeed lap up the weirdness of all of that exploding out of a singularity behind which is no past (since time was created) or place (since space was).
The universe behaves, in every observable way, as though it is made up of matter. Consciousness behaves, in every observable way, as though it is a result of brain function.

Yet I have heard no convincing explanation of consciousness that does not describe it in third-person, out-there, functional-material language, utterly missing the philosophical problem of its subjective quality - it is not an it, but an I.How is this a problem?

Further doubt about science comes from the reasoning that all of the 'empirical evidence' that is so revered by scientists must eventually be made sense of in the individual consciousness, the nature of which is mostly ignored, perhaps because it is such a mystery. If the observer is not known, any theories about the observed stand on much shakier ground than scientists usually like to admit.Not even slightly true.

Science in essence consists of testable predictions. The observer is irrelevant. In these circumstances, this will happen. Who or what you are doesn't matter. Repeat the experiment, and you will get the same results.

Now, if this didn't work, that would say something; in this sense, science is a meta-experiment into the fundamental nature of reality. But it does work. Science is phenomenally successful, where religion and mysticism have utterly failed to produce anything, ever.

It seems to me, also, that 'scepticism' on this forum is often used to mean 'scientific materialist' (although no doubt some will have other ideas about what it means to them), and I wonder if actually scientific materialism is merely a philosophyYes, it is a philosophy.

However, it happens to work.

one might even say an atheistic religion, since it has tenets and assumptions, axioms - and rather than 'sceptic' (or skeptic) what is meant is 'believer'.It is clearly, however, not a religion of any sort, both because it is taken as an assumption and not as absolute truth, and because it is used as the foundation for a system of testable and practically useful explanations.

This seems to allow 'sceptics' to assume that their position is natural, and dissenters are either stupid, mad, or at least must show evidence for their belief.Exactly.

Because science always works, regardless of an individual's personal beliefs, and religion and mysticism never work, again regardless of an individual's personal beliefs, science has special standing.

No-one seems to expect materialists to prove that material is real, but all manner of 'religious' people (dare I call them mentalists?) are expected to prove that mind is real.We don't need to prove that materialism is real, but we have demonstrated that the universe acts as though materialism were real. Or does your computer work by Tantric incantation?

This brings me full circle. Stop for a moment and experience your consciousness. Now which is more absolutely undeniable, you (subject), or all that stuff out there you believe in?All that stuff out there.

I was born. I will die. The universe remains.

And if I pretend that it is consciousness and not matter that is fundamental, I will die just that much sooner.

[Complexity]

Another one.

John, this got tedious a long time a go.

Go off and read better books.

[plumjam]

Hi

I'm probably stepping into the lion's den with this one. Maybe it's been discussed here before. I would like to know what people make of the problem of subjectivity. I could have said 'consciousness', but I said 'subjectivity' to make the point that our experience of consciousness is subjective. While I accept that human consciousness has physical correlations in brain activity, I understand that science has so far failed to make sense of the subjective experience of it.

Let me put it another way: I had a conversation with my sister about 20 years ago when I was putting forward my ideas about spirituality and she was countering them from a scientific viewpoint. All that is needed to explain consciousness, the scientific argument goes, is that dirt and energy slosh about for billions of years until by chance some form of replicating system is formed, which we call life. Then, through random mutation and the interaction of these life systems with the environment, life becomes increasingly complex, and gains greater and greater means of monitoring and manipulating the environment, and the simple brain stem develops more and more systematic processing power until consciousness results, perhaps with the advent of abstraction, symbols, language. She put all that to me, and I understood that it could make perfect sense, no God required.

But, said I, how did one of those resulting consciousnesses become the centre of experience I call my consciousness? How did I get in here, talking to you out there? It is that question that keeps bringing me back to consider different views of the world from the materialist one.

I suspect that many scientific materialists don't consider the mystery of their own consciousness much from that absolute perspective. The more I consider it, meditate and read spiritual philosophies, the more sense a world view makes that includes Consciousness as fundamental, perhaps Cosmic, a priori, given. Scientists are happy to imagine a universe in which matter or energy-matter or space-time are fundamental, and indeed lap up the weirdness of all of that exploding out of a singularity behind which is no past (since time was created) or place (since space was). Yet I have heard no convincing explanation of consciousness that does not describe it in third-person, out-there, functional-material language, utterly missing the philosophical problem of its subjective quality - it is not an it, but an I.

Further doubt about science comes from the reasoning that all of the 'empirical evidence' that is so revered by scientists must eventually be made sense of in the individual consciousness, the nature of which is mostly ignored, perhaps because it is such a mystery. If the observer is not known, any theories about the observed stand on much shakier ground than scientists usually like to admit.

It seems to me, also, that 'scepticism' on this forum is often used to mean 'scientific materialist' (although no doubt some will have other ideas about what it means to them), and I wonder if actually scientific materialism is merely a philosophy - one might even say an atheistic religion, since it has tenets and assumptions, axioms - and rather than 'sceptic' (or skeptic) what is meant is 'believer'. This seems to allow 'sceptics' to assume that their position is natural, and dissenters are either stupid, mad, or at least must show evidence for their belief. No-one seems to expect materialists to prove that material is real, but all manner of 'religious' people (dare I call them mentalists?) are expected to prove that mind is real.

This brings me full circle. Stop for a moment and experience your consciousness. Now which is more absolutely undeniable, you (subject), or all that stuff out there you believe in?

Hi John, that's an excellent post. Nominated.
I'm looking forward to seeing the 'quality' of responses you'll get.

A lot will be attacking. Don't mind them, there are some fools here.
I hope you'll stick around, it'll make for more interesting debate.

[UnrepentantSinner]

All that is needed to explain consciousness, the scientific argument goes, is that dirt and energy slosh about for billions of years until by chance some form of replicating system is formed, which we call life. Then, through random mutation and the interaction of these life systems with the environment, life becomes increasingly complex, and gains greater and greater means of monitoring and manipulating the environment, and the simple brain stem develops more and more systematic processing power until consciousness results, perhaps with the advent of abstraction, symbols, language. She put all that to me, and I understood that it could make perfect sense, no God required.

That's not the scientific argument. That's a straw man version of it.

That said, we have evidence of even the most simple beings exhibiting awareness of their surroundings (else how could scallops escape from starfish). We also have massive amounts of evidence that chordates eventually developed into vertebrates, that some of those vertebrates moved onto the land and developed new regions on their brains. The mammalian brain is very similiar in structure throughout the class. This is true for humans though we tend to have more connections.

Where's the problem for evolution in explaining the human mind then?

[Mobyseven]

Solipsism is every bit as valid a position as materialism, more so even, in a truly empirical sense....all we can be truly sure of is our thoughts themselves....

One cannot even be sure that they exist, if we're going to be strict about this. The only rational position is 'thoughts exist'. Of course, such reductionism is just plain silly when you get down to it - if reality is but an illusion, it remains a very persistent and compelling illusion, and it at least seems to be purely materialistic.

Perhaps it isn't real, but until the time I wake up in a different universe (or disappear into a whisp of thoughts and emotions) I might as well study the illusion, and the illusion seems to follow predictable materialistic rules. After all, it's the only illusion that my illusiory sense of self has even imagined living in.

[UnrepentantSinner]

If this thread is going to take reductionism to its logical or illogical conclusion, can anyone either show me some sort of evidence for a soul existing, or give me a quantifiable measurment of brain activity that differentiates between a soul and brain activity in, say, a human, mongoose, carp or scallop?

One of the reasons I am a weak atheist is that I just don't buy that humans have something, pnumia, ghost, soul, whatever you want to call it, that exists beyond our physical body. If there is a deity out there somewhere and when I die it's game over, why should I care about the will, whims or caprice of said deity?

[joobz]

One cannot even be sure that they exist, if we're going to be strict about this. The only rational position is 'thoughts exist'. Of course, such reductionism is just plain silly when you get down to it - if reality is but an illusion, it remains a very persistent and compelling illusion, and it at least seems to be purely materialistic.

Perhaps it isn't real, but until the time I wake up in a different universe (or disappear into a whisp of thoughts and emotions) I might as well study the illusion, and the illusion seems to follow predictable materialistic rules. After all, it's the only illusion that my illusiory sense of self has even imagined living in.
This is the exact position I take. I find it amusing that the same arguments against materialism with the claim that it can never explain consiousness. It's too bad that science keeps learning more about the organic nature of our consiousness. The whole philosophical question posed in the OP is likely to be found as meaningless as asking what is north of the north pole.

[hammegk]

One cannot even be sure that they exist, if we're going to be strict about this. The only rational position is 'thoughts exist'.
And here I thought we'd never agree on anything! :)


Of course, such reductionism is just plain silly when you get down to it - if reality is but an illusion, it remains a very persistent and compelling illusion, and it at least seems to be purely materialistic.
Er, silly? Not if one chooses to work within the limits imposed by the illusion. What other choice is also rational?

Perhaps it isn't real, but until the time I wake up in a different universe (or disappear into a whisp of thoughts and emotions) I might as well study the illusion, and the illusion seems to follow predictable materialistic rules. After all, it's the only illusion that my illusiory sense of self has even imagined living in.
There. See how easy it is?

Considering the utiility of scientific materialism, we all await the answer. A few hundred years isn't even an eyeblink in time. We have reached the technological stage where a few survivors of the 6,000,000,000 will be back in the stone age should any bad system errors occur, courtesy of man, or nature.

What will the (possible surviving with lifestyles unchanged) Bushmen, a few rainforest tribes, some Andean indians, and other aborigines here and there think of the usefulness of scientific materialism? :confused:

[Darat]

...snip...

Solipsism is every bit as valid a position as materialism, more so even, in a truly empirical sense....all we can be truly sure of is our thoughts themselves....

...snip...

Nope the solipsist is in the same boat as everyone else, we cannot be anymore sure "of our thoughts" than we can be sure of anything else. In other words the solipsist has no way of knowing whether they are the solipsist or not.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Solipsism is every bit as valid a position as materialism, more so even, in a truly empirical sense....all we can be truly sure of is our thoughts themselves....
But then how is the consistency of the oak tree in my yard maintained between the times that I am thinking about it?

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

One cannot even be sure that they exist, if we're going to be strict about this. The only rational position is 'thoughts exist'.
But then how is the consistency of the elm tree in my yard maintained between the times that thoughts exist about it?

~~ Paul

[andyandy]

Nope the solipsist is in the same boat as everyone else, we cannot be anymore sure "of our thoughts" than we can be sure of anything else. In other words the solipsist has no way of knowing whether they are the solipsist or not.

Surely i can be more sure of my thoughts than i can be of anything that exists outside myself? For anything that i think exists outside myself requires that the stimulus is correctly received and interpreted, whereas at least with my thoughts, that external step is not required.....

But then how is the consistency of the oak tree in my yard maintained between the times that I am thinking about it?

~~ Paul

....doesn't this fit into the unsureness of anything outside the self? The oak tree may not exist - that which exists is my thoughts about it....and they don't need to be consistent over time....

[joobz]

But then how is the consistency of the oak tree in my yard maintained between the times that I am thinking about it?

~~ Paul

But then how is the consistency of the elm tree in my yard maintained between the times that thoughts exist about it?

~~ Paul
But then how is the consistency of the species of the tree you posts maintained...... Oh wait.:D

[Ichneumonwasp]

Hi

I'm probably stepping into the lion's den with this one. Maybe it's been discussed here before. I would like to know what people make of the problem of subjectivity. I could have said 'consciousness', but I said 'subjectivity' to make the point that our experience of consciousness is subjective. While I accept that human consciousness has physical correlations in brain activity, I understand that science has so far failed to make sense of the subjective experience of it.



Hi.

What problem of subjectivity?

Science has so far failed to make sense of 'subjectivity' because it isn't properly speaking a scientific problem. It is a thought problem, so belongs to philosophy of mind.

I'm not sure why there is a problem, though. There is simply one observer of the phenomena. The issue of what constitutes the 'feeling of consciousness' or the 'feeling of anything' -- well, that is just another thought problem. And it probably has the simplest of solutions, so simple that it was right in front of us all the time. 'Feelings' are motivational states and/or tags. Think about what purpose they serve -- they give us information about what is 'good' and 'bad' and 'delightful' and 'boring', etc., etc. They tell us what to spend our time on and what to forget. They have to be something to serve that purpose. We just happen to experience them as 'feelings'.

Where's the problem?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

....doesn't this fit into the unsureness of anything outside the self? The oak tree may not exist - that which exists is my thoughts about it....and they don't need to be consistent over time....
But they are! How? It is not your conscious thought that keeps the tree consistent from one observation to the next. There must be something else.

~~ Paul

[andyandy]

But they are! How? It is not your conscious thought that keeps the tree consistent from one observation to the next. There must be something else.

~~ Paul

the matrix? ;)

i agree that we can find evidence to support materialism, and indeed i think there is a material world, and live as though there is.....but if i was asked as to which position i was more sure about - either solipsism or materialism, then i would have to conclude the former - the mind is the only thing i know exists....and even this i'm not entirely sure of ;)

[Lord Muck oGentry]

But, said I, how did one of those resulting consciousnesses become the centre of experience I call my consciousness?

Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious, but you seem to imply that there could be two different answers to the questions:

1. Which person am I?

2. Which person is it whose experiences I experience ( whose eyes I see with, ears I hear with, fingers I touch with, and so on)?


Unless there are criteria by which the answers can be made independent of each other, the question makes no sense.

Dualism is no help to you: if you are puzzled to say how you came to have your body rather than someone else's, you have the same difficulty with the question how you came to have your mind ( spirit, soul, personality or whatever) rather than the next chap's.

[Mobyseven]

But then how is the consistency of the elm tree in my yard maintained between the times that thoughts exist about it?

~~ Paul

Who says that it is? If there is no 'you', and the sense of identity currently posting is no more than the chance coming together of a pattern of thoughts and emotions, then your memories of what the elm tree was like in the past are not actually 'your' memories. It could just as well as been a person who was confused as to what species of tree they have in their backyard - every time 'they' remember checking, it switches between 'oak' and 'elm'! ;)

Understand that I'm not actually advocating this position - after all, what would it even mean to say that this is not the real world that I (or 'I') am living in now? It certainly seems to be the real world, and I have yet to see anything that would make me doubt such a thing. There is limited value, in my opinion, to applying reductionism to such an extreme - the ultimate conclusion of such reductionism is necessary doubt of one's own existence, and such a scenario doesn't really teach anyone anything about the world (it does, however, keep metaphysicists in tenure :p). Maybe it is all an illusion, but to treat it as such is counter-productive. At least, I imagine it is. ;)

[John Freestone]

I'm surprised so few of you seem to have a clue what the question was. Maybe I'm wiser than I thought (compared with this particular population - oooh yes I can do both science and arrogance me).

I wondered how many words I would read before I was insulted, having read a few other threads round here. Six is the answer, when The Grave said "what a dumb stand point". 'Standpoint' is one word, BTW. Matter and mind are 'both real', you say. OK. You're confident. Not only that, but meaning is real, as when I write the word 'up'. Well, 'up' might have a useful meaning in a warehouse, but the universe, for example, doesn't seem to have an up. Hence simple meanings are ok for warehouse workers, not cosmologists or philosophers.

Oh we love this, don't we? This is what we really come to discuss things for: gradual increase in temperature and deeper entrenchment in our separate views towards flame war, whereupon we're all dumped in the relevant archive, having proved that we're clever and everyone else is stupid. At least we've had a good time taking part in an utterly useless battle of the selfish memes.

I think this phenomenon is actually more interesting than my original question. Maybe "Complexity" has an opinion on it Another one.
John, this got tedious a long time a go.
Go off and read better books.Simplicity, I could suggest that you go off and take part in discussions that don't bore you so much that you have to say how bored you are and insult the author (with whom you have not exchanged a word before) by suggesting he read different books (when you don't know which books he's read). I think all you did there was waste everyone's time demonstrating your irrational anger.

Why? Why are there so many angry, insulting people round here, or have I just read too few threads to get an objective view?

And why are so many of you so incredibly quick to make up your minds about stuff, and answer questions no-one asked. I didn't say we have immortal souls. Several of you go from "Hmmm. this is weird...tree falls in forest...?" to "Don't start preaching your God rubbish at me it's all garbage" before you actually understand anything you've read.

PixiMisa (The Illuminator) replies that there is no mystery to my subjective consciousness, since I have a body and a brain (and, incidentally, can't resist insulting me by saying that I didn't listen to the materialist argument of my sister or my high school biology lessons). I can guarantee you'll find that I did listen, and you didn't understand the question.

At least Ichneumonwasp clarifies the issue:What problem of subjectivity?

Science has so far failed to make sense of 'subjectivity' because it isn't properly speaking a scientific problem. It is a thought problem, so belongs to philosophy of mind.

I'm not sure why there is a problem, though. ...snip...Yes, philosophy. This is the philosophy board. This is the syndrome: because it isn't a scientific problem, you can't see the problem anymore, and go back to describing the evolutionary benefits of emotion, things already inside the box.

PixyMisa demonstrates the same lack of imagination The question, to a materialist, is trivial. No-one gives it serious attention because it doesn't deserve serious attention.Yes to the first part. PixyMisa is more sure of the material world out there than his or her apprehension of it, which I find odd. Apparently The Grave seriously doubts his or her existence, so it gets worse. If the CIA were flashing lights in our eyes it couldn't be a better cover-up. The Pixy goes on:Mediation Considered Harmful.So we'll just have to slug it out then. Ok, easy typo, sorry. The fact that meditation might be considered harmful (and you don't say by whom) strikes me as poor reason to ignore it with Three Word Headlines. Meditation is cited in a wide range of traditions as a tool for helping us understand the nature of consciousness. Since many of us here at least have agreed that our experience is subjective, and therefore not within the purview of science, which always deals with objective measurements, I practise it in the hope of shedding some light on what I consider 'problems' or 'mysteries' or 'questions' about my subjective consciousness and existence. Discussion is pretty ineffectual.

Oh but it is sooo enjoyable arguing with strangers. I leave you with another of pixi's gems (speaking as a scientist, presumably): "The observer is irrelevant." Oh God, my sides! High skool rocks. I hope there is a heaven; Einstein will wet himself.

Plumjam, thanks for the encouragement. It made a difference, you posting that. I don't much like myself round here. Just feels like it's meant to be a battle ground and you either fight or flee. I guess that's maybe part of the syndrome.

[PixyMisa]

PixiMisa (The Illuminator)
Just to clarify that, "Illuminator" is just the default label attached to users with, I guess, between 3000 and 4000 posts. It's not a title I chose for myself.

replies that there is no mystery to my subjective consciousness, since I have a body and a brain (and, incidentally, can't resist insulting me by saying that I didn't listen to the materialist argument of my sister or my high school biology lessons). I can guarantee you'll find that I did listen, and you didn't understand the question.No, I understood the question just fine. It's just that, as I said, under materialism it's a trivial question.

Why do I experience my consciousness and not others'? Under materialism, and from a truly immense body of evidence gathered over thousands of years, consciousness is brain function. You have a brain, so you experience the consciousness generated by that brain. Or rather, your experiences are the consciousness generated by that brain.

The materialist position is, of course, an assumption, and to an honest scientist it's a tentative but essential one. As I said, science is in some sense a meta-experiment into the fundamental nature of reality: Assume materialism (or at least naturalism) and then see how far you can get explaining things.

And we haven't found any limits yet.

At least Ichneumonwasp clarifies the issue:Yes, philosophy. This is the philosophy board. This is the syndrome: because it isn't a scientific problem, you can't see the problem anymore, and go back to describing the evolutionary benefits of emotion, things already inside the box.Philosophy uninformed by fact is mere opinion. If you want to talk about what is rather than what might be, you must observe the world and take it into account - which is precisely what science does.

PixyMisa demonstrates the same lack of imaginationNot true; rather, it's a question I've considered for more than 25 years, and I didn't lay out every single step along the way, just the conclusion.

PixyMisa is more sure of the material world out there than his or her apprehension of it, which I find odd.It's a natural conclusion.

Other people clearly possess conscious minds equivalent to my own. I've seen people born, with their minds largely blank. I've seen people die. Everyone has seen this. It always happens, and it's always the same. You're born, you live, you learn, and you die. And no-one and nothing ever comes back.

And that those conscious minds are generated by brains is indisputable. (Not deductively proven; merely indisputable.) No brain, no mind. Poke the brain with electrodes, drown it in alcohol, jolt it with caffeine, deprive it of sleep, gnaw at it with disease, slice it and dice it in unfortunate accidents or life-saving surgery, tease it with any of a thousand alkaloids and opioids, and consciousness changes. Change the brain and consciousness changes.

If consciousness is fundamental, why is its every aspect utterly dependent upon matter?

So we'll just have to slug it out then. Ok, easy typo, sorry.
Yeah, I saw that, but only after the editing period was over.

The fact that meditation might be considered harmful (and you don't say by whom)Me, in this case.

strikes me as poor reason to ignore it with Three Word Headlines.It's a computer science joke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful).

Meditation is cited in a wide range of traditions as a tool for helping us understand the nature of consciousness.Yes. And it doesn't work.

Since many of us here at least have agreed that our experience is subjective, and therefore not within the purview of science, which always deals with objective measurements, I practise it in the hope of shedding some light on what I consider 'problems' or 'mysteries' or 'questions' about my subjective consciousness and existence. Discussion is pretty ineffectual.I disagree with every part of this. The subjective, as we are shown over and over again, is merely a subset of the objective. All you are is the interaction of molecules. We know that. So, necessarily, given that your subjective experience is generated by objectively observable events, the subjective is fully explicable in terms of the objective.

That doesn't mean we know the entire answer, not just yet. It does mean that there is no necessity to bring anything else to the table.

Oh but it is sooo enjoyable arguing with strangers. I leave you with another of pixi's gems (speaking as a scientist, presumably): "The observer is irrelevant." Oh God, my sides! High skool rocks. I hope there is a heaven; Einstein will wet himself.The observer is irrelevant. Relativity works exactly the same whether you are there to make the measurement or not, and whether you believe in it or not. When a discussion of Relativity refers to the observer, what matters is the observer's location and motion and nothing else.

[Mobyseven]

Ugh. Another 'philosopher'. "Philosophy is so deep! I'm so deep you can't even understand me! Look at how deep I am! LOOK AT MY DEEPNESS, DAMMIT!"

[JoeEllison]

Ugh. Another 'philosopher'. "Philosophy is so deep! I'm so deep you can't even understand me! Look at how deep I am! LOOK AT MY DEEPNESS, DAMMIT!"

I think the only people who buy into this sort of "philosophy" are high on drugs. It sounds like the sort of thing that seems really deep and meaningful at 3 AM when you're drunk or stoned, but doesn't mean much at all the next morning. :cool:

[joobz]

I think the only people who buy into this sort of "philosophy" are high on drugs. It sounds like the sort of thing that seems really deep and meaningful at 3 AM when you're drunk or stoned, but doesn't mean much at all the next morning. :cool:
It's rather outdated school of thought. Kind of meaningless to question the utility of science and materialism with people over the INTERNET while ON A COMPUTER.

[JoeEllison]

It's rather outdated school of thought. Kind of meaningless to question the utility of science and materialism with people over the INTERNET while ON A COMPUTER.
Well, yeah, but using actual logic isn't as "deep" as the sort of "philosophy" that most people seem to engage in.

To me, the whole "what if..." philosophical question followed by some attack on science and materialism? My response is that it just doesn't really go anywhere. If you don't have to provide evidence, if you don't even believe in evidence, that's pretty much the end of anything you can say, isn't it? Your little "what if..." question becomes stupid and useless by your own twisted logic, because if everything is completely subjective, nothing can ever be proven or disproved, and anything is possible and equally likely... then frankly, any claim you make past that point makes you a moron and a hypocrite.

Rejecting the idea of evidence doesn't mean that you can claim whatever religion or belief you want. It means you can't claim anything. So, if John Freestone really rejects the idea of evidence, he should really consider shutting up. Otherwise, he's making a claim that he doesn't believe he's allowed to make at all.

[joobz]

Rejecting the idea of evidence doesn't mean that you can claim whatever religion or belief you want. It means you can't claim anything.
Quoted for truth. Nicely said.

[UnrepentantSinner]

I think the only people who buy into this sort of "philosophy" are high on drugs. It sounds like the sort of thing that seems really deep and meaningful at 3 AM when you're drunk or stoned, but doesn't mean much at all the next morning. :cool:

I was sober when I read the OP and am drunk at (almost, but what is time, other than a construct to shackle us) 11pm and JF's meanderings made as little sense to me then as they do now. I don't want to dismiss all philosphy or abstract thought was worthless since I find value in many gedankenubungens, but trying to juxtapose the abstract with the material is a waste of time.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a noise? Of course it does you navel gazing blowhards! It's the same with a beam of sunlight touching a blade of grass being green even if no one is there to see it. When the F did koans, ignorant of physics as they are, become considered scientific?

[Tumblehome]

I'm probably stepping into the lion's den with this one.


Yep. :)


I understand that science has so far failed to make sense of the subjective experience of it.


Wrong. Science has made its own sense of it. You just choose not to accept it.

Science recognizes that my consciousness is a function of my brain, and that because my experiences are limited and different than everyone else's, it is subjective and, therefore, biased. If we're to understand the Universe, we can't rely on my or anyone else's biased view. Acknowledging the bias in our consciousness is precisely why we have the objective discipline of science to filter out that bias.


But, said I, how did one of those resulting consciousnesses become the centre of experience I call my consciousness? How did I get in here, talking to you out there? It is that question that keeps bringing me back to consider different views of the world from the materialist one.


Well, you see, your mother and father loved each other in a very special way, and...then you were born. You became a functioning human being which necessarily includes a brain capable of consciousness. It's not like your consciousness was already there, waiting for you, as you seem to want. It was the result of a purely biological process that didn't exist until you were born.


I suspect that many scientific materialists don't consider the mystery of their own consciousness much from that absolute perspective.


I'm sure they consider their own consciousness, but not the "mystery" of it, because there's nothing to suggest it's mysterious. What is it about consciousness that means it has to be mystical?


The more I consider it, meditate and read spiritual philosophies, the more sense a world view makes that includes Consciousness as fundamental, perhaps Cosmic, a priori, given.


Spiritual philosophies that see consciousness as inevitable take only the warm and fuzzy aspect of consciousness and put it on a pedestal. They don't acknowledge that human consciousness also creates war, child rape, ingenious methods of torture, etc., etc. In other words, they're biased. They're a perfect example of why we can't depend on subjectivity to explain the Universe.


Scientists are happy to imagine a universe in which matter or energy-matter or space-time are fundamental...


Of course. This Universe wouldn't exist if that weren't so.


...and indeed lap up the weirdness of all of that exploding out of a singularity behind which is no past (since time was created) or place (since space was). Yet I have heard no convincing explanation of consciousness that does not describe it in third-person, out-there, functional-material language, utterly missing the philosophical problem of its subjective quality - it is not an it, but an I.


Yes, science laps up weirdness--whenever it's supported by evidence. When weirdness, or normalcy, or anything, isn't supported, it's not accepted.

Your consciousness is an "I" only to you, not to anyone else.


Further doubt about science comes from the reasoning that all of the 'empirical evidence' that is so revered by scientists must eventually be made sense of in the individual consciousness, the nature of which is mostly ignored, perhaps because it is such a mystery. If the observer is not known, any theories about the observed stand on much shakier ground than scientists usually like to admit.


Yes, evidence is interpreted by the individual consciousness, and for that reason, it's accepted only if it passes a bias filter.

Again, the nature of the individual conscience is not ignored; science's intrpretation of it is right there in front of your eyes. The fact that you don't accept it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And again again, there's no mystery to it except for those who feel the need to attach a biased, unsupported metaphysical significance to it.


It seems to me, also, that 'scepticism' on this forum is often used to mean 'scientific materialist' (although no doubt some will have other ideas about what it means to them), and I wonder if actually scientific materialism is merely a philosophy - one might even say an atheistic religion, since it has tenets and assumptions, axioms - and rather than 'sceptic' (or skeptic) what is meant is 'believer'.


Is it a philosophy to believe that the next time I drop a ball, it will fall to the ground? Or is it a conclusion reached by a system of logical deduction that applies to everyone on Earth, regardless of their philosophical outlook?


This seems to allow 'sceptics' to assume that their position is natural...


It certainly isn't supernatural.


...and dissenters are either stupid, mad, or at least must show evidence for their belief.


Do you expect their beliefs to be accepted just on their say-so?


...all manner of 'religious' people (dare I call them mentalists?) are expected to prove that mind is real.


No, they're expected to prove their versions of the mind are real, as opposed to the official, logical version.


This brings me full circle. Stop for a moment and experience your consciousness. Now which is more absolutely undeniable, you (subject), or all that stuff out there you believe in?


Not sure what you mean, but I'll take a stab. As far as I know, I exist. My beliefs will have to change if the evidence warrants it. As a minor example, I didn't like the idea of Pluto being exlcuded as a planet, but when I looked at the reasons for it, I had to agree it was the right thing to do.

[Gord_in_Toronto]

Hi John, that's an excellent post. Nominated.
I'm looking forward to seeing the 'quality' of responses you'll get.

A lot will be attacking. Don't mind them, there are some fools here.
I hope you'll stick around, it'll make for more interesting debate.

Ah. So we have another jejune "mystery of consciousness" poster and thread do we?

Thus I refute Berkeley

[John Freestone]

Thanks. I think there's a lot of strength in most of these arguments within their materialist religious dogma. They have an internal logic. Like Newtonian Physics has within certain limits. What I'm trying to suggest is that philosophy is an attempt (ok, perhaps stupid and fruitless, but attractive to some) to try to approach truth. Science is one method of doing that, but the problems with the 'bias filter' conception of science are:
1) All of it depends on accepting doubtful knowledge. I realise that most of you are aware of this and I'm not disputing that over time science can establish reasonable faith in certain propositions. What I am saying, from a philosophical point of view, is that this is faith, since all scientific discoveries are 'best guesses'. The filter is based on a human invention, confidence (the mathematical variety, I mean, the basis of statistics). If something is 'statistically significant' it is so with reference to some purely arbitrarily chosen confidence quotient. So what this means is that the scientist says, "That'll do, I'll take that as best-guess-reality". Now that's fine, except that it is then transmuted by semi-conscious people into "established fact", and we get the kind of badgering here towards anyone who QUESTIONS its philosophical basis: the facts are in; your conscious experience is evolutionarily useful froth on a material sea of patterned accident.

2) Objective observations might not be filtered through a bias filter so much as distorted by the objectifying, pattern-making habit of our minds (which is why there is so much made of the possible potential of altered states of awareness to open the 'doors of perception' to more truthful apperception of reality, rather than merely being hallucinatory error). Of course, to a dedicated, pious materialist, the problem is solved by default; to a philosopher it is not. Even this I put as "might not be..." because I am agnostic, exploring reason and experience in search of undeniable truth. Those of you who say that materialism is undeniable have failed to realise that you have no way of knowing whether you are dreaming that belief.

The philosopher, perhaps wrongly, perhaps stupidly, recognises that the 'established fact' you lot are so sure of is not fact, but faith, and asks again "What do I actually know?" Andyandy has enough freedom of thought to say that thought is more reliable than the objects being thought about. Those who meditate report that even thoughts can be observed as objects, separate from the witness, the "I" thinking them. Of course, traditionally some of them come to a similar conclusion (or rather, they assert, they aquire direct knowledge) as some of you have been saying here - that the self is utterly illusory (it is one of the tenets of Buddhism). However, it is a very different kind of understanding than what many of you seem to be saying, that facts are just observed, filtered through the magic bias filter of scientific experimentation, appreciated by the clear view of your eyes.

I am not denying the functional usefulness of science and technology, or external reality. I am reminding us that what we observe has already had a cognitive pattern imposed on it by our minds: we call it a chair and sit on it, even though in a natural sense there is no such thing as a chair; 'chair' is an ideal, and you can do the thought experiment of constructing less and less chair-like chairs and find a continuum from 'not-chair' to 'chair' and the dividing line between the two is down to your personal taste in how comfortable you like to be when you sit down. In a similar way, whatever science 'measures' might have already been projected, as it were, constructed, rather than observed in the raw. Am I mistaken in stating that this is one of the uncomfortable discoveries of science itself, that observer and observed cannot be separated (at least in certain realms or dimensions)? Does it not lead many cosmologists and particle physicists to comment on the kind of 'mystery' I am alluding to?

I'm afraid my ability to argue this point is poor because I haven't enough knowledge of these areas, but did I dream Chaos and QM, particles popping in and out of existence, wave-particle confusions... Is it Heisenberg who would have a good laugh about the observer being irrelevant.

Someone summed it up by saying that science has not found any limit. Newton might have said the same about his clockwork universe.

My question was probably rather naive and stupid. Forget it if you like. I just find it stimulating to my curiosity to note that there have been approximately 13 billion human brains through history, but only one of them is supposed to be the 'cause' of 'me'. Annother way of looking at it is to imagine all that mechanistic evolution taking place and questioning whether my hallucinatory perception of a self was at all necessary. Being one of those several billions for a fleeting lifetime is like crawling inside the cosmos somehow, unnecessarily putting it on as a skin. It feels significant and strange to exist or have the dream of existing as a person. I mean, we might repeat the process with AI robots, but if we suddenly found ourselves embodied in one, we'd be dim not to wonder why. And if we did, someone would say "It's obvious, dimwit: you have a frame and a CPU, don't you?"

[Irony]

Thanks. I think there's a lot of strength in most of these arguments within their materialist religious dogma.

If your so interested in this subject, then perhaps you could refrain from hurling insults between spats of patting yourself on the back and actually listen to what others here have said about it.

[Darat]

Surely i can be more sure of my thoughts than i can be of anything that exists outside myself? For anything that i think exists outside myself requires that the stimulus is correctly received and interpreted, whereas at least with my thoughts, that external step is not required.....

...snip...

That's only true after you've made the assumption that you are sure of your thoughts. There is just no way that you can tell if you are the solipsist or just a creation of the solipsist in solipsist metaphysics.

[CFLarsen]

But they are! How? It is not your conscious thought that keeps the tree consistent from one observation to the next. There must be something else.

Don't worry about your bleedin' trees, man!

When you're not thinking about them, I will. Promise!

[JoeEllison]

I'm afraid my ability to argue this point is poor because I haven't enough knowledge of these areas.

The real problem, I think, is that you don't actually have a valid or useful point. You'd like to have one, I'm sure. Since you don't, you're going to keep hitting frustrating roadblocks. The embrace of subjectivity that you seem to espouse is not a path to greater knowledge, but a rejection of the possibility of any knowledge. It is a complete dead end.

Did you actually read and internalize any of the criticisms of your position?

[NeilC]

That's only true after you've made the assumption that you are sure of your thoughts. There is just no way that you can tell if you are the solipsist or just a creation of the solipsist in solipsist metaphysics.

What do you mean by "sure of your thoughts"? Sure they exist or sure that because they exist you must also exist?

[Darat]

I'm assuming that andyandy is using it as in "I'm sure these thoughts are mine".

[fls]

Thanks. I think there's a lot of strength in most of these arguments within their materialist religious dogma. They have an internal logic. Like Newtonian Physics has within certain limits. What I'm trying to suggest is that philosophy is an attempt (ok, perhaps stupid and fruitless, but attractive to some) to try to approach truth. Science is one method of doing that, but the problems with the 'bias filter' conception of science are:
1) All of it depends on accepting doubtful knowledge. I realise that most of you are aware of this and I'm not disputing that over time science can establish reasonable faith in certain propositions. What I am saying, from a philosophical point of view, is that this is faith, since all scientific discoveries are 'best guesses'. The filter is based on a human invention, confidence (the mathematical variety, I mean, the basis of statistics). If something is 'statistically significant' it is so with reference to some purely arbitrarily chosen confidence quotient. So what this means is that the scientist says, "That'll do, I'll take that as best-guess-reality". Now that's fine, except that it is then transmuted by semi-conscious people into "established fact", and we get the kind of badgering here towards anyone who QUESTIONS its philosophical basis: the facts are in; your conscious experience is evolutionarily useful froth on a material sea of patterned accident.

'Statistically significant' had its birth in the 1920's - long after the laws governing physical processes had been elucidated. I don't think you can hold it to blame.

Try thinking of 'established fact' as 'that list of things which must be wrong in order for my idea to be wrong', instead.

2) Objective observations might not be filtered through a bias filter so much as distorted by the objectifying, pattern-making habit of our minds (which is why there is so much made of the possible potential of altered states of awareness to open the 'doors of perception' to more truthful apperception of reality, rather than merely being hallucinatory error). Of course, to a dedicated, pious materialist, the problem is solved by default; to a philosopher it is not. Even this I put as "might not be..." because I am agnostic, exploring reason and experience in search of undeniable truth. Those of you who say that materialism is undeniable have failed to realise that you have no way of knowing whether you are dreaming that belief.

The philosopher, perhaps wrongly, perhaps stupidly, recognises that the 'established fact' you lot are so sure of is not fact, but faith, and asks again "What do I actually know?" Andyandy has enough freedom of thought to say that thought is more reliable than the objects being thought about. Those who meditate report that even thoughts can be observed as objects, separate from the witness, the "I" thinking them. Of course, traditionally some of them come to a similar conclusion (or rather, they assert, they aquire direct knowledge) as some of you have been saying here - that the self is utterly illusory (it is one of the tenets of Buddhism). However, it is a very different kind of understanding than what many of you seem to be saying, that facts are just observed, filtered through the magic bias filter of scientific experimentation, appreciated by the clear view of your eyes.

Instead of patting yourself on the back for having these thoughts, recognize that Science has had these thoughts as well. While Philosophy is stuck on the navel-gazing part of the process, Science has moved on to the 'taking all that into consideration....' part of the process.

I am not denying the functional usefulness of science and technology, or external reality. I am reminding us that what we observe has already had a cognitive pattern imposed on it by our minds: we call it a chair and sit on it, even though in a natural sense there is no such thing as a chair; 'chair' is an ideal, and you can do the thought experiment of constructing less and less chair-like chairs and find a continuum from 'not-chair' to 'chair' and the dividing line between the two is down to your personal taste in how comfortable you like to be when you sit down. In a similar way, whatever science 'measures' might have already been projected, as it were, constructed, rather than observed in the raw. Am I mistaken in stating that this is one of the uncomfortable discoveries of science itself, that observer and observed cannot be separated (at least in certain realms or dimensions)? Does it not lead many cosmologists and particle physicists to comment on the kind of 'mystery' I am alluding to?

I'm afraid my ability to argue this point is poor because I haven't enough knowledge of these areas, but did I dream Chaos and QM, particles popping in and out of existence, wave-particle confusions... Is it Heisenberg who would have a good laugh about the observer being irrelevant.

It's not that the observer is irrelevant, it's that certain characteristics of the observer are irrelevant - that the observer is a life-form and is conscious are two of them.

Someone summed it up by saying that science has not found any limit. Newton might have said the same about his clockwork universe.

My question was probably rather naive and stupid. Forget it if you like. I just find it stimulating to my curiosity to note that there have been approximately 13 billion human brains through history, but only one of them is supposed to be the 'cause' of 'me'. Annother way of looking at it is to imagine all that mechanistic evolution taking place and questioning whether my hallucinatory perception of a self was at all necessary. Being one of those several billions for a fleeting lifetime is like crawling inside the cosmos somehow, unnecessarily putting it on as a skin. It feels significant and strange to exist or have the dream of existing as a person. I mean, we might repeat the process with AI robots, but if we suddenly found ourselves embodied in one, we'd be dim not to wonder why. And if we did, someone would say "It's obvious, dimwit: you have a frame and a CPU, don't you?"

There have been 13 billion license plates through history, but only one of them is VQR 312. You'd be dim not to wonder why.

Linda

[NeilC]

I'm struggling to work out how something which is thinking, even if the creation of a solipsist, can be said to not exist. Surely this the instantiation principle at work?

Are you saying that it's possible for something to hold the thoughts of another? Even then we are still talking about something.

[outofmymind033]

so basically you trying to find the truth to all being by sitting there and letting your thoughts wander.

Bull

Hell, if you ever discover something with your consciousness you shouldn't get the credit, your consciousness should. You didn't do any of the thinking.

Everything the world has discovered has been out of thought and science, Einstein did not have a random epiphany and just say omg, speed of light, e=mc2. He researched these things. That's why you know their names, Newton, Einstein, Galileo, etc.

The only thing meditation does is relieve muscle tension

[Darat]

I was specifically addressing this statement:

"Solipsism is every bit as valid a position as materialism, more so even, in a truly empirical sense....all we can be truly sure of is our thoughts themselves...."

I'm saying that there is no way that you can know for sure whether you are the solipsist or a creation of the solipsist. There is no test you can ever conceive of that can answer that question so when andyandy states that "more so ... empirical sense" it isn't the case since there is no empirical way to make that determination within solipsism. That we "think we think our thoughts" is not evidence that we do in solipsism.

[John Freestone]

Did you actually read and internalize any of the criticisms of your position?

I tried to express that my 'position' was agnostic, but shared some of my personal questions about that and put some of my sincerely held criticisms of science. Which criticisms of my non-position should I have 'internalized', that I'm a moron, or that I reject the idea of evidence and therefore should shut up, or that science has not found any limits to its knowledge, or that the observer is irrelevant...or all of them? And why should that be the point of my discussing things here with people, to internalize their criticisms of my views, even if I defined what they were? What is it about this scientific religion that makes its adherents so evangelical and unable to let others have different views?

I'm happy for you to believe whatever you believe. I have put criticisms of science, or of certain understandings of science that I believe are commonly held and are demonstrated here strongly, but I do not intend to keep arguing them, and I don't demand others 'internalize' them. I hoped that there might be some value in my discussing these things here, but it was a mistake.

I'll shut up. I'm shocked how defensive and dislikable I have become here at JREF. I apologise for any offence I've caused.

[outofmymind033]

you've caused no offence, this is a skeptics forum..... basically whatever you say, they're going to reject, lol

[plumjam]

I tried to express that my 'position' was agnostic, but shared some of my personal questions about that and put some of my sincerely held criticisms of science. Which criticisms of my non-position should I have 'internalized', that I'm a moron, or that I reject the idea of evidence and therefore should shut up, or that science has not found any limits to its knowledge, or that the observer is irrelevant...or all of them? And why should that be the point of my discussing things here with people, to internalize their criticisms of my views, even if I defined what they were? What is it about this scientific religion that makes its adherents so evangelical and unable to let others have different views?

I'm happy for you to believe whatever you believe. I have put criticisms of science, or of certain understandings of science that I believe are commonly held and are demonstrated here strongly, but I do not intend to keep arguing them, and I don't demand others 'internalize' them. I hoped that there might be some value in my discussing these things here, but it was a mistake.

I'll shut up. I'm shocked how defensive and dislikable I have become here at JREF. I apologise for any offence I've caused.

John, please don't shut up.
I found your prior posts in this thread very well thought out and excellently expressed. Unfortunately, the reaction you received from some of the respondents is pretty much par for the course here. It just goes to confirm your apt description of the orthodoxy here being a scientific religion.
When the foundation of their religion is brought into question some here react just as dogmatically as the religious fundamentalists they spend so much time and energy criticising.

Sometimes it's actually fun to witness :D

[Irony]

I tried to express that my 'position' was agnostic, but shared some of my personal questions about that and put some of my sincerely held criticisms of science. Which criticisms of my non-position should I have 'internalized', that I'm a moron, or that I reject the idea of evidence and therefore should shut up, or that science has not found any limits to its knowledge, or that the observer is irrelevant...or all of them? And why should that be the point of my discussing things here with people, to internalize their criticisms of my views, even if I defined what they were? What is it about this scientific religion that makes its adherents so evangelical and unable to let others have different views?

I'm happy for you to believe whatever you believe. I have put criticisms of science, or of certain understandings of science that I believe are commonly held and are demonstrated here strongly, but I do not intend to keep arguing them, and I don't demand others 'internalize' them. I hoped that there might be some value in my discussing these things here, but it was a mistake.

I'll shut up. I'm shocked how defensive and dislikable I have become here at JREF. I apologise for any offence I've caused.

The only reason you caused offense was that (intentionally or not) you lectured the people here on what their beliefs were. The use of terms like "materialist religious dogma" serves no purpose other than to insult, and the fact that you used it even after it was explained how materialists take solipsism into account hinted that you weren't actually listening. I would rather you see this as a learning experience than as a reason to leave.

[Matt the Poet]

I tried to express that my 'position' was agnostic, but shared some of my personal questions about that and put some of my sincerely held criticisms of science. Which criticisms of my non-position should I have 'internalized', that I'm a moron, or that I reject the idea of evidence and therefore should shut up, or that science has not found any limits to its knowledge, or that the observer is irrelevant...or all of them? And why should that be the point of my discussing things here with people, to internalize their criticisms of my views, even if I defined what they were? What is it about this scientific religion that makes its adherents so evangelical and unable to let others have different views?

I'm happy for you to believe whatever you believe. I have put criticisms of science, or of certain understandings of science that I believe are commonly held and are demonstrated here strongly, but I do not intend to keep arguing them, and I don't demand others 'internalize' them. I hoped that there might be some value in my discussing these things here, but it was a mistake.

I'll shut up. I'm shocked how defensive and dislikable I have become here at JREF. I apologise for any offence I've caused.

Regardless of how ‘sincerely held’ your beliefs may be, you’ve put them up for discussion. They are being discussed. A number of points have been raised. I’m not sure that ‘internalise’ is the right word for what it would be at the very least polite to do with them, but ‘addressing’ might be.

And you haven’t. Several posters, for example have made the point that there is no logical reason to consider consciousness, or indeed identity, a more special physical property than any other (you’re on a hiding to nothing with Quantum Physics, incidentally – as far as I understand it a half-silvered mirror could do the job of an ‘observer’ to the satisfaction of all the relevant equations), and beyond a sort of vaguely emotive special pleading you have yet to provide one.

[aggle-rithm]

Surely i can be more sure of my thoughts than i can be of anything that exists outside myself? For anything that i think exists outside myself requires that the stimulus is correctly received and interpreted, whereas at least with my thoughts, that external step is not required.....



Paraphrasing from "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy":

Mouse: We'll give you a new brain and program it so you act exactly as you do now. No one would know the difference.
Arthur: I'D know the difference!
Mouse: No, you wouldn't. You'd be programmed not to.

[fls]

I tried to express that my 'position' was agnostic, but shared some of my personal questions about that and put some of my sincerely held criticisms of science. Which criticisms of my non-position should I have 'internalized', that I'm a moron, or that I reject the idea of evidence and therefore should shut up, or that science has not found any limits to its knowledge, or that the observer is irrelevant...or all of them? And why should that be the point of my discussing things here with people, to internalize their criticisms of my views, even if I defined what they were? What is it about this scientific religion that makes its adherents so evangelical and unable to let others have different views?

If it upsets you to be asked to defend what you perceive to be a misrepresentation of your views, consider what sort of response you should expect when you set out to do the same to others.

I'm happy for you to believe whatever you believe. I have put criticisms of science, or of certain understandings of science that I believe are commonly held and are demonstrated here strongly, but I do not intend to keep arguing them, and I don't demand others 'internalize' them. I hoped that there might be some value in my discussing these things here, but it was a mistake.

I'll shut up. I'm shocked how defensive and dislikable I have become here at JREF. I apologise for any offence I've caused.

I suspect you were shocked at how quickly your insincerity was recognized (you did give us more than a few clues :)). You were still given the benefit of the doubt, though. We're nice about that.

Linda

[andyandy]

That's only true after you've made the assumption that you are sure of your thoughts. There is just no way that you can tell if you are the solipsist or just a creation of the solipsist in solipsist metaphysics.

perhaps i can be sure of my thoughts, just not sure that i'm the one thinking them....:)

[andyandy]

I was specifically addressing this statement:

"Solipsism is every bit as valid a position as materialism, more so even, in a truly empirical sense....all we can be truly sure of is our thoughts themselves...."

I'm saying that there is no way that you can know for sure whether you are the solipsist or a creation of the solipsist. There is no test you can ever conceive of that can answer that question so when andyandy states that "more so ... empirical sense" it isn't the case since there is no empirical way to make that determination within solipsism. That we "think we think our thoughts" is not evidence that we do in solipsism.

true - i think empirical was completely the wrong word to use :)

it depends if solipsism requires that you know of your own existence by the existence of your thought, or the weaker knowledge that your thought exists (regardless of who really is thinking it)....i'd agree that the former position falls into the same uncertainty that besets the materialist position...though the latter weaker claim may still stand....

[aggle-rithm]

What is it about this scientific religion that makes its adherents so evangelical and unable to let others have different views?


Well, it's not a religion, but I suspect you know that already.

Science is aggressively defended by its adherents because it's the only method of understanding reality that consistently works, and it's often under attack by people who claim, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that it doesn't.

However -- and I say this with all due respect -- I think you know that, as well.

[plumjam]

Well, it's not a religion, but I suspect you know that already.

Science is aggressively defended by its adherents because it's the only method of understanding reality that consistently works, and it's often under attack by people who claim, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, that it doesn't.

However -- and I say this with all due respect -- I think you know that, as well.

I'd suggest that John had something more akin to scientism, than to science, in mind when he made that comment.

[JoeEllison]

I tried to express that my 'position' was agnostic, but shared some of my personal questions about that and put some of my sincerely held criticisms of science. Which criticisms of my non-position should I have 'internalized', that I'm a moron, or that I reject the idea of evidence and therefore should shut up, or that science has not found any limits to its knowledge, or that the observer is irrelevant...or all of them? And why should that be the point of my discussing things here with people, to internalize their criticisms of my views, even if I defined what they were? What is it about this scientific religion that makes its adherents so evangelical and unable to let others have different views?

I'm happy for you to believe whatever you believe. I have put criticisms of science, or of certain understandings of science that I believe are commonly held and are demonstrated here strongly, but I do not intend to keep arguing them, and I don't demand others 'internalize' them. I hoped that there might be some value in my discussing these things here, but it was a mistake.

I'll shut up. I'm shocked how defensive and dislikable I have become here at JREF. I apologise for any offence I've caused.
The point isn't to shut up. The point is that you are ignoring what other people are saying, and plowing ahead in defining some of us in stark contradiction to what we're saying to you. When you're criticized, you plow forward with more of this "scientific religion" nonsense, which shows that you're determined to miss the point.

You don't have to agree with what anyone says. It is insulting as hell to ignore what people say while pretending to respond to it.

[aggle-rithm]

I'd suggest that John had something more akin to scientism, than to science, in mind when he made that comment.

I guess we'll never know. Apparently, he's too clever for us to understand what he's saying.

[joobz]

The point isn't to shut up. The point is that you are ignoring what other people are saying, and plowing ahead in defining some of us in stark contradiction to what we're saying to you. When you're criticized, you plow forward with more of this "scientific religion" nonsense, which shows that you're determined to miss the point.

You don't have to agree with what anyone says. It is insulting as hell to ignore what people say while pretending to respond to it.
Ah, but how do you know that's the point? ARe you really sure that there is a point, or a person who's making that point? What if the point is actually a slice of bread and isn't a person's idea at all. What if the slice of bread had a point and was eaten by a grapejelly without knowing reality? Can we really be certain that the reality you think is real or really imposed on the reality of other's is actual?!???

[Ichneumonwasp]

perhaps i can be sure of my thoughts, just not sure that i'm the one thinking them....:)

I think that would be accurate.:)

One of the things that Interesting Ian seems to get wrong is related to this point. While it is clear that our feelings are unimpeachable (that is, that we experience the feelings cannot be denied by anyone), the accuracy of those feelings is not. So, for instance, while I may feel that I am conscious, it is not necessarily the case that I am conscious. It is necessarily the case that I feel conscious, and that you cannot deny me this feeling. I could, however, be wrong in my feeling that I am conscious.

Ian incorrectly conflates the incorrigibility of feelings as feelings with the incorrigibility of feelings corresponding to other realities. Where it gets tricky is in the definition of consciousness. Some people define consciousness as these feelings, or qualia, so it is very tempting to postulate that the feelings themselves all are incorrigible. Unfortunately, they can be denied; just as Descartes postulated much earlier. We cannot be wrong about the fact that we are having the feeling, but we can be wrong about the intention of the feeling, or what the feeling is about.

[JoeEllison]

Ah, but how do you know that's the point? ARe you really sure that there is a point, or a person who's making that point? What if the point is actually a slice of bread and isn't a person's idea at all. What if the slice of bread had a point and was eaten by a grapejelly without knowing reality? Can we really be certain that the reality you think is real or really imposed on the reality of other's is actual?!???

I appreciate your attempt to display how utterly useless the OP's philosophy is. It is more funny to me than you meant it to be... my Psych professor read us a letter from a schizophrenic today, and the similarities are striking! :D

[joobz]

I appreciate your attempt to display how utterly useless the OP's philosophy is. It is more funny to me than you meant it to be... my Psych professor read us a letter from a schizophrenic today, and the similarities are striking! :D
I've been told on more than one occasion that my ability to write and say random jibberish word salad is a little TOO good.

I usually explain that I have MPD, but all my personalities have the same name and the exact same personality. The outside observer doesn't see the difference but in my head there are 100 joobzs all telling me to do the things I would do anyways.

[Darat]

true - i think empirical was completely the wrong word to use :)

it depends if solipsism requires that you know of your own existence by the existence of your thought, or the weaker knowledge that your thought exists (regardless of who really is thinking it)....i'd agree that the former position falls into the same uncertainty that besets the materialist position...though the latter weaker claim may still stand....

Now your thoughts are making my head hurt!

[hammegk]

When did so many of you become idealists? :)

Nah, forget it; just another thought.

[Darat]

...snip...

We cannot be wrong about the fact that we are having the feeling, but we can be wrong about the intention of the feeling, or what the feeling is about.

I think ;) I disagree with this. How can I know that the feeling I think I am having is that feeling and (for example) I'm not just a construct that is programmed to think that it is having that feeling?

[hammegk]

IMO, "feelings" is a lurch into the stuff we name physical. The thought "I am in pain" is not "feeling", which is the pain itself.

[Ichneumonwasp]

I think ;) I disagree with this. How can I know that the feeling I think I am having is that feeling and (for example) I'm not just a construct that is programmed to think that it is having that feeling?

You can't. Perhaps I did not explain myself clearly. I know, you're all shocked.

Thinking about it a bit more, it might make sense to separate this phenomenon into first and second order feelings, much like the separation between first and second order beliefs.

That I have a feeling I cannot doubt (with the provisos below). It is simply there. But I cannot be sure that the feeling is mine or that the feeling correctly relates to an external reality. The initial feeling is the first order feeling, but whatever I may construct about that feeling or think about it -- such that it occurs within "me" or that it relates to some external reality -- is a second order feeling/belief about feeling. I cannot be wrong that the feeling exists (since feeling it is its existence) but I can be very wrong about what the feeling means.

Does that make more sense?

ETA:

in other words, I don't think it is possible to "think you are having a feeling" without someway having the feeling. It is inherent to the thought of the feeling.

Of course, this brings up the very sticky issue of what a feeling is in the first place. Anyone want to tackle that?

[PixyMisa]

Thanks. I think there's a lot of strength in most of these arguments within their materialist religious dogma.
And you wonder the responses you receive are sometimes hostile?

They have an internal logic. Like Newtonian Physics has within certain limits. What I'm trying to suggest is that philosophy is an attempt (ok, perhaps stupid and fruitless, but attractive to some) to try to approach truth.
Well, you're wrong.

Philosophy is the study of thinking. You can only establish truth in relation to something else. If p then q.

Science is one method of doing that, but the problems with the 'bias filter' conception of science are:
1) All of it depends on accepting doubtful knowledge.
That's why one of the fundamental principles of science is to repeat the experiment, to confirm the observation.

I realise that most of you are aware of this and I'm not disputing that over time science can establish reasonable faith in certain propositions.
Nope. No "faith". Nothing is accepted on faith. Does the observation match my own? Do I get the same result when I repeat the experiment? Does the theory produce useful and accurate predictions?

I might trust a scientific theory, but trust and faith are two very different animals.

What I am saying, from a philosophical point of view, is that this is faith, since all scientific discoveries are 'best guesses'.
If you are talking about theories, then this is inaccurate at best. Theories are predictive models of the world, and the thing about a predictive model is that you can test it. As many times as you want. No faith is required, because you can actually check.

The filter is based on a human invention, confidence (the mathematical variety, I mean, the basis of statistics).
Right. No faith required.

If something is 'statistically significant' it is so with reference to some purely arbitrarily chosen confidence quotient.
Not purely arbitrary. We choose the desired confidence for entirely practical reasons. 95% confidence in a single experiment is fine. 95% confidence that a bridge will hold together is not so good.

So what this means is that the scientist says, "That'll do, I'll take that as best-guess-reality".
Baloney. What the scientist says is that given all the factors involved, this is the probability that the result is an accurate representation of whatever we were trying to determine. And then others repeat the experiment.

Now that's fine, except that it is then transmuted by semi-conscious people into "established fact", and we get the kind of badgering here towards anyone who QUESTIONS its philosophical basis: the facts are in; your conscious experience is evolutionarily useful froth on a material sea of patterned accident.
Do you actually dispute that it's an established fact that brains generate consciousness?

And if so, on what evidentiary basis?

2) Objective observations might not be filtered through a bias filter so much as distorted by the objectifying, pattern-making habit of our minds (which is why there is so much made of the possible potential of altered states of awareness to open the 'doors of perception' to more truthful apperception of reality, rather than merely being hallucinatory error).
You can make that argument. You'll be laughed at, of course. For one thing, objective observations (as best we can make them) led to such inventions as the airplane, while "altered states of awareness" simply lead to people walking off roofs believing they can fly.

For another thing, we know, as I pointed out earlier, how drugs screw up the information processing function of the brain. Far from opening the "doors of perception", good ol' materialist science shows us that, as expected, they just mess with your mind.

And finally there's the question of results. Science produces results. Consistently. Your "more truthful apperception of reality" has been experience by countless individuals since the beginning of history and has produced... Poetry. And mostly bad poetry.

Of course, to a dedicated, pious materialist, the problem is solved by default; to a philosopher it is not.
Not "by default". By endless, tedious observation, experimentation and calculation. By hard work, not by pulling the answers out of your butt.

Even this I put as "might not be..." because I am agnostic, exploring reason and experience in search of undeniable truth.
Really?

Those of you who say that materialism is undeniable have failed to realise that you have no way of knowing whether you are dreaming that belief.
Sure I do. I'm not asleep.

Anyway, I don't think that anyone has said that materialism is undeniable. I said that, for example, it is indisputable that mind is brain function, but by that I mean something different. You can deny that mind is brain function, but there is no rational, evidence-based argument, no dispute, that you can bring to support your denial. Any such denial is based solely on faith.

The philosopher, perhaps wrongly, perhaps stupidly, recognises that the 'established fact' you lot are so sure of is not fact, but faith, and asks again "What do I actually know?"
Again, you fail to understand. That question has been asked, and answered, and we moved on. It's just not interesting.

What do I actually know, without the possibility of doubt? Not a whole lot. Okay, let's assume materialism is true and see what happens... Hey, look at that, it works!

Andyandy has enough freedom of thought to say that thought is more reliable than the objects being thought about.
Thought? Reliable? Heh.

Those who meditate report that even thoughts can be observed as objects, separate from the witness, the "I" thinking them.
Yeah? Those who experience high fevers report fairies sitting on their beds talking to them. Those who are recovering from strokes report malevolent ducks hanging around their hospital rooms.

Of course, traditionally some of them come to a similar conclusion (or rather, they assert, they aquire direct knowledge) as some of you have been saying here - that the self is utterly illusory (it is one of the tenets of Buddhism). However, it is a very different kind of understanding than what many of you seem to be saying, that facts are just observed, filtered through the magic bias filter of scientific experimentation, appreciated by the clear view of your eyes.
Science is designed as a process to produce reliable and useful results. The scientific method developed not because someone thought that this was a great way to pass time, but because it turned out that if you checked your ideas, confirmed your results, in this specific way, you made much more progress than if you just noodled around.

I am not denying the functional usefulness of science and technology, or external reality.
Okay.

I am reminding us that what we observe has already had a cognitive pattern imposed on it by our minds: we call it a chair and sit on it, even though in a natural sense there is no such thing as a chair; 'chair' is an ideal
Nope. There's no such thing as an ideal chair.

"Chair" is a category.

and you can do the thought experiment of constructing less and less chair-like chairs and find a continuum from 'not-chair' to 'chair' and the dividing line between the two is down to your personal taste in how comfortable you like to be when you sit down.
There's no such continuum.

In a similar way, whatever science 'measures' might have already been projected, as it were, constructed, rather than observed in the raw.
That doesn't mean much. A measurement is not the thing it measures, nor does any scientist think otherwise. A measurement is an interaction.

Am I mistaken in stating that this is one of the uncomfortable discoveries of science itself, that observer and observed cannot be separated (at least in certain realms or dimensions)?
Yes, you are mistaken.

Does it not lead many cosmologists and particle physicists to comment on the kind of 'mystery' I am alluding to?
Don't know about many. There are some, certainly.

I'm afraid my ability to argue this point is poor because I haven't enough knowledge of these areas, but did I dream Chaos and QM, particles popping in and out of existence, wave-particle confusions... Is it Heisenberg who would have a good laugh about the observer being irrelevant.
No. He'd agree, in fact. Heisenberg showed that it's not that the observer can't simultaneously measure a particle's position and momentum to arbitrary accuracy, but rather that a particle doesn't simultaneously have a position and momentum defined to arbitrary accuracy. The observer isn't the problem; it's the nature of matter that's the problem.

Someone summed it up by saying that science has not found any limit.
That was me.

Newton might have said the same about his clockwork universe.
No.

Science hasn't found any limit to what can be explained. That is, we know of nothing that can't, in principle, be studied and eventually understood by the scientific method. That is not a claim that we know everything.

Newton could have said that there was no known limit to the explicative power of science, and he would have been right, and he'd still be right, even though we've learned an immense amount since his day.

My question was probably rather naive and stupid. Forget it if you like. I just find it stimulating to my curiosity to note that there have been approximately 13 billion human brains through history, but only one of them is supposed to be the 'cause' of 'me'.
Why is this at all remarkable? It's your brain. If it was my brain, it would be generating my mind.

Annother way of looking at it is to imagine all that mechanistic evolution taking place and questioning whether my hallucinatory perception of a self was at all necessary.
It's not a hallucination. It's real. And yes, it does have useful evolutionary function, and the perception of self is clearly present in simpler form in all animals. (The "mirror test" shows this in higher animals. But even a worm will draw itself away from pain.)

Being one of those several billions for a fleeting lifetime is like crawling inside the cosmos somehow, unnecessarily putting it on as a skin.
To you, perhaps.

It feels significant and strange to exist or have the dream of existing as a person. I mean, we might repeat the process with AI robots, but if we suddenly found ourselves embodied in one, we'd be dim not to wonder why. And if we did, someone would say "It's obvious, dimwit: you have a frame and a CPU, don't you?"
Eh?

[Tumblehome]

Which criticisms of my non-position should I have 'internalized'...?


For starters, your continued insistence on calling science a religion. They are completely different animals, each with its own goals and methodologies. By definition, each excludes the other from membership in their clubs. You can't equate the two. They are bereft of equation. If you don't see that, you won't get far with any argument here.

[PixyMisa]

I tried to express that my 'position' was agnostic, but shared some of my personal questions about that and put some of my sincerely held criticisms of science.
We don't care about your sincerity, at least, not much. We care about evidence and logical rigour.

Which criticisms of my non-position should I have 'internalized'
The ones that were actually made, not your straw-man versions of them.

And why should that be the point of my discussing things here with people, to internalize their criticisms of my views, even if I defined what they were?
Because that's called learning.

What is it about this scientific religion that makes its adherents so evangelical and unable to let others have different views?
Three falsehoods and a slur. Pretty good for one sentence.

I'm happy for you to believe whatever you believe. I have put criticisms of science, or of certain understandings of science that I believe are commonly held and are demonstrated here strongly, but I do not intend to keep arguing them, and I don't demand others 'internalize' them.
Since they are wrong, and it's been explained why they are wrong, we don't need to do any internalizing.

I hoped that there might be some value in my discussing these things here, but it was a mistake.
You didn't engage in a discussion.

I'll shut up. I'm shocked how defensive and dislikable I have become here at JREF. I apologise for any offence I've caused.
No need to apologise; you haven't caused any great offence. You just happen to be wrong, is all.

[Jimbo07]

They are completely different animals, each with its own goals and methodologies.

Meh,

I'd argue that one is a methodology. The difference is that the other is a conclusion...

;)

[joobz]

You just happen to be wrong, is all.
This is the part I find quite funny.
Except for the rare exception, scientists aren't afraid to be wrong. They are afraid of being dogmatic. they do not want to be in opposition to observed reality.

Sure a bit of an ego hit might be felt, but being wrong is common and quite helpful. It proves you've learned something.

This seems to be in opposition to most faith/religions, where it seems that being wrong is the ultimate horror. Something to avoid at all costs, even if it means being intentionally deceitful. it's as though the faithful believe the act of admitting errror is the step at which being wrong occurs. As long as they don't admit it, they won't be wrong.

Those who follow a scientific view know that being right or wrong on a subject is a simple truth, which can be externally verified. If you fail to admit that error, taht doesn't make you any less wrong. It simply means that you are both wrong and dogmatic.

[Stout]

PixyMisa...thanks for the translations...I'm not being facetious here when i say I read the OP before there were any responses to it and had absolutely no idea what it said.

I was thinking Intelligent Design.

[PixyMisa]

It helps to have seen the same argument a hundred times before.

It goes like this:

We can't explain consciousness (which isn't really true; we can explain many aspects of consciousness in terms of specific brain function, just not everything) therefore consciousness is the fundamental building block of reality.

Which is of course a non-sequitur. It also leaves you to explain not only why there is a material universe, but also why we only ever encounter consciousness together with very specific material processes. You end up with dualism at best, and more often, simple incoherence.

Anyone who thinks this is reasonable needs to first drink eight glasses of wine and then tell me that it's mind that affects matter and not vice versa.

Conchusnez izza funmendl nacher 'v realty just isn't that convincing.

[Jekyll]

Now your thoughts are making my head hurt!

That's all right, it's not your head. :D

[lupus_in_fabula]

Anyone who thinks this is reasonable needs to first drink eight glasses of wine and then tell me that it's mind that affects matter and not vice versa.

…Or anaesthesia. Having been “put to sleep” numerous times (albeit not with ketamine), one tends to become more humble in one’s view about consciousness not being dependent on physical processes.

[Tumblehome]

I'd argue that one is a methodology. The difference is that the other is a conclusion...


Okay, I was thinking the methodology of religion is to invent a conclusion through fantasy/wishful thinking/acid trips/etc.

[PixyMisa]

…Or anaesthesia. Having been “put to sleep” numerous times (albeit not with ketamine), one tends to become more humble in one’s view about consciousness not being dependent on physical processes.
An excellent point. If consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, why does it have an off switch?

[lupus_in_fabula]

If consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, why does it have an off switch?

Well, I guess some seem to argue that consciousness is not really absent; it’s just a state where one’s subjective experience of consciousness is absent. But then again, why make an assumption about consciousness by referring to the “obvious” subjective experience of consciousness in the first place then? I smell faulty reasoning, like below:

X: "I know consciousness is real, because I can clearly experience it as real."
Z: "There are conditions that prevent you from experiencing that."
X: "Well yeah, that’s just the absence of subjectivity, consciousness remains."
Z: "So, in effect, you’re saying that a dream created in your sleep could also continue to exist, regardless of you waking up from that dream?"
X: "Yeah, because the dream feels so real every time I dream it."
Z: " :boggled: "

[Stout]

Thanks PM

It's a argument I pretty much been familiar with my whole life, or at least variations of it. I think it all started with " Did you ever think that our universe could simply be a speck of dust under a giant's fingernail" or some such attempt to portray reality being different from how we know and love it.

It's not a topic that I've ever experienced in an academic setting ( I studies sciences ) and whenever it comes up IRL it's usually accompanied by a dose of street philosophy or New Age woo like " I'm a being of light who's only temporarily inhabiting this physical body"

Now I settle into the JREF and I see these/this argument presented in a coherent sounding fashion, complete with words I've never heard before ( like materialist) and end up spending so much time googling different words and ideas that I have a hard time determining what I feel I should dismiss, and what I should take as legit.

[hammegk]

An excellent point. If consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, why does it have an off switch?
An excellent point if you consider your consciousness, or mine, as the fundamental nature of reality.

Is that strawman carrying a red-herring?

[PixyMisa]

An excellent point if you consider your consciousness, or mine, as the fundamental nature of reality.
All forms of consciousness that we have any evidence of come with an off-switch, so your quibble doesn't apply.

If you wish to hypothesize some imaginary immaterial consciousness which isn't the consciousness we experience subjectively and study objectively, but some other thing with the same name and zero evidence, then you are free to do so.

If you actually make anything useful out of that, though, you'll be the first.

Is that strawman carrying a red-herring?No. It's a direct reply to the not-claims of the OP.

[Darat]

Quite timely news http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7213972.stm

[Dancing David]

It just goes to confirm your apt description of the orthodoxy here being a scientific religion.
When the foundation of their religion is brought into question some here react just as dogmatically as the religious fundamentalists they spend so much time and energy criticising.




Hi Plumjam,

It might appear that you still just making unsupported assertions and then using them as some sort of proof. You have a trail of unanswered question on the forum. The use of emotional appeal is not very good critical thinking.

[Dancing David]

I think ;) I disagree with this. How can I know that the feeling I think I am having is that feeling and (for example) I'm not just a construct that is programmed to think that it is having that feeling?



That is it in the nutshell, we can't.

We are biological constructs and we have ongoing fuzzy programing.(To all appearnces)

We are the p-zombie.

[aggle-rithm]

An excellent point. If consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, why does it have an off switch?

Another question: If consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, then how did reality manage for such a long time without it?

[Dancing David]

IMO, "feelings" is a lurch into the stuff we name physical. The thought "I am in pain" is not "feeling", which is the pain itself.


Still the thoughts would appear to be a biological formation in the brain. Feelings are cognitive constructs placed upon the body sensations. Unknown to most people feelings are largely thought constructs placed contextualy on the physical sensations.

[Dancing David]

You can't. Perhaps I did not explain myself clearly. I know, you're all shocked.

Thinking about it a bit more, it might make sense to separate this phenomenon into first and second order feelings, much like the separation between first and second order beliefs.

That I have a feeling I cannot doubt (with the provisos below). It is simply there. But I cannot be sure that the feeling is mine or that the feeling correctly relates to an external reality. The initial feeling is the first order feeling, but whatever I may construct about that feeling or think about it -- such that it occurs within "me" or that it relates to some external reality -- is a second order feeling/belief about feeling. I cannot be wrong that the feeling exists (since feeling it is its existence) but I can be very wrong about what the feeling means.

Does that make more sense?

ETA:

in other words, I don't think it is possible to "think you are having a feeling" without someway having the feeling. It is inherent to the thought of the feeling.

Of course, this brings up the very sticky issue of what a feeling is in the first place. Anyone want to tackle that?


Well the data is all we have.

Feelings are learned labels we apply to physical states interpreted by the physical framework of the brain. The difference between sexual arousal, fear and anger is very slim physicaly. It is the set of associative, cognitive and conditioned contexts that help us to interpret our feelings.

And it is very possible to demonstrate the cognitive nature of interpretation, the use of cognitive behavioral therapy allows people to reinterpret the contextual clues and change the perceptions, as well as the patterns of behaviors that support the interpretations.

[UnrepentantSinner]

We are the p-zombie.

I stepped in deep doodoo on p-zombies a number of years ago on this forum, but it simply is unfathomable to me that when so much of the root of philosophy extends back to math and something as basic as A = B =/= B, how something being almost but not quite the exact same as something else, while still being the same thing, isn't some sort of violation of mathematical rules and logic.

But what do I know. I drink beer and notice my mind being effected by physical influences daily, as opposed to those periodic Absinthe drinkers who come up with philosophy. ;)

[PixyMisa]

I stepped in deep doodoo on p-zombies a number of years ago on this forum, but it simply is unfathomable to me that when so much of the root of philosophy extends back to math and something as basic as A = B =/= B, how something being almost but not quite the exact same as something else, while still being the same thing, isn't some sort of violation of mathematical rules and logic.
Yep, that's pretty much it. P-zombies only make sense if your worldview doesn't. Or at least, there's only a distinction between p-zombies and "real people" in that case. Under materialism, people are p-zombies.

[John Freestone]

Hello again. I said I'm happy for you to believe whatever you believe. I have put criticisms of science, or of certain understandings of science that I believe are commonly held and are demonstrated here strongly, but I do not intend to keep arguing them, and I don't demand others 'internalize' them. and PixyMisa replied
Since they are wrong, and it's been explained why they are wrong, we don't need to do any internalizing.Earlier, when I asked why I should 'internalize' others' views put to me, PixyMisa said: because that was called learning.

It is funny that you don't see the relativity of people's views, PixyMisa. These points could be turned round. I happen to believe that your views (e.g. much of what you have said about science) are wrong, I have explained why they are wrong, and you have failed to 'learn' because you haven't 'internalized' them (as was explained, this was meant to indicate something more like 'contemplate' than just take on without question).

This difference in viewpoints, of course, is partly the cause of some of us (including me) getting defensive and dismissive of others' ideas, fail to contemplate them, and thus fail to learn.

I will repeat one point that I think you have failed to contemplate, since your answer seems not to demonstrate an understanding of it: that the scientific method for understanding reality is based on a confidence level and is therefore not able to tell us anything with absolute certainty about reality. You seem to refute this because we can choose a confidence level that suits the needs of our experiment (95% being a common one). That is true; however, my point was, as I said, that this choice is arbitrary (and, as I thought was implied, is less than 100%): hence, if a scientist thinks a result is highly important, s/he can use 99%, if it's less so, 70%...this is the nature of the arbitrariness I was talking about, which makes results of all scientific experiments have some element of doubt).

You seem to argue that such arbitrariness can be overcome by repeating the same experiment. There are a few problems with this, but one is that the repetitions will use the same method, with the same weakness. Thus, while it is reasonable to argue that experiments support a hypothesis, and increasing evidence adds further support, the hypothesis is never proven; it always remains, as many many many scientists will agree - a 'best guess'.

Now, it seems to me that there are many places we could go from there: we could say that that's ok, we're not bothered, we understand that science gives us best guesses, current hypotheses, and get back to the lab to test some more; we could throw up our hands and exclaim "Well, we've nothing better than that!"; etc.

What I find difficult to concede is that we could ignore that conclusion to the point where we say: You are wrong. You have been told why you are wrong. We can point to research that demonstrates that you are wrong. This is precisely the standpoint that I was criticising, the misconception of 'trusted beliefs' as 'fact'.

I understand that getting theoretically closer to possible Truth can be useful. I also understand that the more pure, philosophical or metaphysical questioning that some people have engaged in here (and I am sorry I have got distracted by the scientism rather than engage in it to date) might be pointless and get us going round the same old intangible circles as people have gone round for millennia.

I do not mean to imply, as someone else has said, that I'm so clever that you won't understand me. That would be as daft as saying that you are so clear in your scientific understanding that any other view is away with the fairies. What I do feel, however, is that some people 'get it' - the question, I mean, ignoring the many answers we might find later - the view that there is something problematic about subjectivity. And they seem to me not to be making a retrogressive step into delusion, but waking up to a new perspective, often transcending and including the earlier paradigm, not dismissing all of it.

And it often begins by waking up from the delusion of scientism. Because a string of 95%s doesn't make Reality, no matter how far we iterate it. Sometimes it happens by suddenly noticing how bizarre are the theories science has arrived at, that theoretical hidden dimensions, Time 0, Multiverses, or the graviton are hardly any saner concepts than spirits or reincarnation. This leads to a new, mature mystical contemplation and learning, asking questions like mine here, or wondering whether something, or someOne had to have lit the Big Bang.

[PixyMisa]

Hello again. I said and PixyMisa replied
Earlier, when I asked why I should 'internalize' others' views put to me, PixyMisa said: because that was called learning.
Precisely.

It is funny that you don't see the relativity of people's views, PixyMisa.
Because it's not relative.

Science actually works. Waffle - a polite description for your opening post - does not.

These points could be turned round.
Not if you want to be taken seriously.

I happen to believe that your views (e.g. much of what you have said about science) are wrong, I have explained why they are wrong, and you have failed to 'learn' because