Idealists: What does 'physical' mean to you?

[Ichneumonwasp]

Which is what Malerin has been arguing all along. Why is it, then, that given we know that the currency of idealism exists (consciousness, mind, thought), and we can never know whether the currency of materialism exists (mind-independent ´stuff´) that you and most other orthodox JREFers hitch your wagon of faith to materialism and attack idealism whenever it appears?
It has been demonstrated that idealism is a priori in the stronger position, and that materialists must rely more on faith than idealists.
Why go with the weaker position?


What is the weaker position? Do you guys think this argument has never been used before? It was one of Hammy's favorites.

What we know is that thought exists. We know that thought exists because we cannot know anything unless thought exists, knowledge being dependent on thought. Knowing that thought exists doesn't really help us to know the ultimate existent unless you anthropomorphize ultimate reality.

If you want to be consistent with idealism as a monism, then you need to posit a mind that keeps everything we see constant, so that is the mind that is thinking when we say that we know thought exists. To maintain a strictly monistic idealist position, there is exactly one entity. God. Everything flows from God. Everything you see out there in the word exists in the mind of God. And that includes "you". In any monistic position, there is no "you". Everything "you" do, is simply God thinking, in the same way that trees grow and maintain their presence when 'we' turn our backs.

So, beliefs such as "we must raise ourselves to understand the greater mind" are simply illusions themselves. "You" thinking about God is simply God thinking about God.

If you believe there is a separate "you" in an ontological sense, then you are a dualist.

What we argue against is not idealism. If you decide to stick to monism there cannot be any difference between what people label "materialism" or "idealism" since there is only one "thing" and everything must be that one thing. These labels -- "material", "ideal" -- can't be anything but labels because it is not possible for us to know the precise nature of a single ur-substance. If there is one "thing" then we must be discussing the same "thing" and any "controversy" arises only from one or the other group claiming to know something about this ur-substance.

What we argue against is the hidden dualisms that we often find at the core of people who call themselves idealists.

[Ichneumonwasp]

I go with Overmind, Metamind, God, Universal Consciousness..whatever one wants to call it. For this there is indeed thousands of years of evidence in the form of the likes of expanded consciousness, God-consciousness, Theosis, Fana, Nirvana, Samadhi, the Beatific Vision etc etc..
Of course, most JREFers get to dismiss that evidence by hiding behind the usual ´it´s anecdotal´ or ´it´s subjective´ or ´perception can be wrong sometimes´. Well, given the subject matter, how could such evidence not be?




Who has a problem with you "going with Overmind"? I think that's fine. The problems arise with what you do with it. Want to call it God? Fine, no problem. Want to call it Overmind? Also fine.

The only issue I think most would have with it is, are you now going to consistently apply this label and think in terms of a single "substance" or commit to dualism?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

That´s just a massive assumption on your part. If you were to say ´the normal consciousness of the individual human being´ I might agree with you.
You're the one making the massive assumption: that you can get from individual consciousness to a complete model of what we see.


Your alternative is to go with matter, for which there will never be any evidence. I go with Overmind, Metamind, God, Universal Consciousness..whatever one wants to call it. For this there is indeed thousands of years of evidence in the form of the likes of expanded consciousness, God-consciousness, Theosis, Fana, Nirvana, Samadhi, the Beatific Vision etc etc..
That's not evidence of those things. It's just more talk from individual consciousness.

Of course, most JREFers get to dismiss that evidence by hiding behind the usual ´it´s anecdotal´ or ´it´s subjective´ or ´perception can be wrong sometimes´. Well, given the subject matter, how could such evidence not be?
So anything that any raving lunatic utters is now evidence for a metaphysical model of the world?


So you think that a model for which we have ample evidence, and a model for which we´ll never, in principle, have any evidence, are equivalent? How does that work?
There is no ample evidence! You have evidence for one thing: individual consciousness. From that you add on massive amounts of baggage based on no evidence whatsoever, except for the fact that the additional things seem vaguely mind-like to you.


See, here you´re betraying your materialist upbringing. Why would you just assume that consciousness has to be made up of ´building blocks´? Maybe consciousness is Eternally One, but chooses to ´as it were´ (illusorily) divide itself. This is what Hinduism, for one, has been experiencing and arguing for millenia.
You mean the entire universe is one massive fundamental existent? If you think so, then you have derived the entire complex answer in one feel swoop from nothing but individual consciousness. You have made up the answer.

~~ Paul

[plumjam]

Yes, I can. That tree in my backyard is independent of my mind. So if you're going to allow only personal subjective perception to be considered real, you have no obvious explanation for the tree.

But you agree that the tree is independent of you, so then let the baggage-building begin. You're only allowed to use personal subjective perception as the building block of your final model. No tossing in additional concepts, however vaguely mind-like they may be, without evidence.

~~ Paul

see post 250

[plumjam]

You're the one making the massive assumption: that you can get from individual consciousness to a complete model of what we see.
It´s not merely an assumption in the way yours are about the fundamentality of this mythical ´matter´ stuff. Human history tells us that consciousness is capable of becoming deindividuated i.e. transcending egoic consciousness, and merging with Universal Consciousness. There´s thousands of years worth of evidence for my position, in principle there will always be zero for yours.

That's not evidence of those things. It's just more talk from individual consciousness.
You´re assuming individuality of consciousness at the base of this evidence. That´s just a prejudice on your part.


So anything that any raving lunatic utters is now evidence for a metaphysical model of the world?
Strawman. Listen to everybody. See how what they say tallies with their actions, their mode of life, their effects on others and yourself. Some nutters do exist, they tend to be in asylums.


There is no ample evidence! You have evidence for one thing: individual consciousness. From that you add on massive amounts of baggage based on no evidence whatsoever, except for the fact that the additional things seem vaguely mind-like to you.
I can only conclude you haven´t seriously attempted looking into it.


You mean the entire universe is one massive fundamental existent?
No. Again you´re betraying your materialist roots. Whatever is fundamental need not be confined to this Universe.

If you think so, then you have derived the entire complex answer in one feel swoop from nothing but individual consciousness. You have made up the answer.
You are trying to confine my position to the realm of an individual consciousness. Like I´ve been saying, the answer lies in transcendence of the individual consciousness.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

It´s not merely an assumption in the way yours are about the fundamentality of this mythical ´matter´ stuff. Human history tells us that consciousness is capable of becoming deindividuated i.e. transcending egoic consciousness, and merging with Universal Consciousness. There´s thousands of years worth of evidence for my position, in principle there will always be zero for yours.
If you say so.


You´re assuming individuality of consciousness at the base of this evidence. That´s just a prejudice on your part.
Excuse me? What other evidence do you have?


Strawman. Listen to everybody. See how what they say tallies with their actions, their mode of life, their effects on others and yourself. Some nutters do exist, they tend to be in asylums.
I spent three years in the TM movement. No luck finding anyone in a higher state of consciousness.


I can only conclude you haven´t seriously attempted looking into it.
So enlighten me. What evidence have you got for anything other than individual consciousness?


No. Again you´re betraying your materialist roots. Whatever is fundamental need not be confined to this Universe.
Excuse me. You mean the entire multiverse is one massive fundamental existent?


You are trying to confine my position to the realm of an individual consciousness. Like I´ve been saying, the answer lies in transcendence of the individual consciousness.
I know what you have been saying. It's not convincing without evidence.

~~ Paul

[plumjam]

Who has a problem with you "going with Overmind"? I think that's fine. The problems arise with what you do with it. Want to call it God? Fine, no problem. Want to call it Overmind? Also fine.

The only issue I think most would have with it is, are you now going to consistently apply this label and think in terms of a single "substance" or commit to dualism?

Wasp, what is it with you and Monism/Dualism? You seem slightly obsessed.
I tend to avoid the dichotomy because dualism, in particular, can be used to refer to all kinds of things.. mind/matter dualism, life/afterlife dualism, gross matter / subtle matter dualism, body/soul dualism, the dual nature of the opposites of experience, etc.. So I can only see a minefield of confusion.
You also seem to think that if you can paint people as Dualists then (somehow) therefore you´ve won the argument and there´s no point continuing.
Have you considered the possibility that there are many types of ´dualism´ capable of existing within an overall monism? An example might be body/soul dualism.

[plumjam]

If you say so.


Excuse me? What other evidence do you have?


I spent three years in the TM movement. No luck finding anyone in a higher state of consciousness.


So enlighten me. What evidence have you got for anything other than individual consciousness?


Excuse me. You mean the entire multiverse is one massive fundamental existent?


I know what you have been saying. It's not convincing without evidence.

~~ Paul

Start with The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, and Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill. If you´re not willing to accept personal testimony as valid evidence, in a field of study in which, due to the subject matter, personal testimony is going to be almost all you have to go on... then you´ll be stuck where you are for evermore.
The fact that at one time you were in the TM movement suggests you are or were to some extent willing to accept personal testimony as valid. Personally the TM movement isn´t where I´d look. Better to focus on people who make this the goal of their whole life, rather than for 20 minutes twice a day. Contemplative monastic orders in both east and west are a good place to look.

[nescafe]

It´s not merely an assumption in the way yours are about the fundamentality of this mythical ´matter´ stuff. Human history tells us that consciousness is capable of becoming deindividuated i.e. transcending egoic consciousness, and merging with Universal Consciousness. There´s thousands of years worth of evidence for my position, in principle there will always be zero for yours.
Sounds like you are describing ego loss. You can get that with 250 micrograms of LSD, transcranial magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe, fasting, oxygen starvation, the list goes on.

That ego loss can happen (and yes, I have experienced it) is one thing, merging with a so-called Universal Consciousness is another. Is there any evidence beyond self-reported experiences (usually regarding states where you are not capable of critically analyzing your mental state with any degree of rationality) for a Universal Consciousness that goes beyond simple ego loss?


You´re assuming individuality of consciousness at the base of this evidence. That´s just a prejudice on your part. Well, how does the (non-individual) Universal Consciousness work? Please keep your explanation consistent with what we already know about the reality we inhabit, please.

Like I´ve been saying, the answer lies in transcendence of the individual consciousness.Bull. Losing your narrative center of gravity is an interesting experience, but there is no reason to think it is not explainable from a materialist (or any equivalent monisim) perspective, or that it involves group consciousness. You lose your I for awhile, but it always comes back unless you die.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Start with The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, and Mysticism by Evelyn Underhill. If you´re not willing to accept personal testimony as valid evidence, in a field of study in which, due to the subject matter, personal testimony is going to be almost all you have to go on... then you´ll be stuck where you are for evermore.
We've gone from personal consciousness to a baroque metaphysical model based on the contemplations of a few mystics. Somehow introspection has become a good source of evidence.

But let's say we accept their personal testimony. Where do we go from there? When do we start working on a scientific Theory of the Consciousness-Based Universe?


The fact that at one time you were in the TM movement suggests you are or were to some extent willing to accept personal testimony as valid. Personally the TM movement isn´t where I´d look. Better to focus on people who make this the goal of their whole life, rather than for 20 minutes twice a day. Contemplative monastic orders in both east and west are a good place to look.
Trust me, there were plenty of people in the TM movement who made it their whole life. You could tell how long they were meditating each day by how whacked out they were.

~~ Paul

[Nick227]

We said it wasn't counter-intuitive for us. I dunno about pixy, but I am an A.I. programmer. I come up with algorithms to perform human cognitive tasks for a living. So of course a computational model of consciousness isn't that farfetched for me.

Then how do you get around the issue of selfhood, of subjectivity, of the fact that life appears to be happening to someone? How do you recreate this in your computational modelling?

Dennett says that if your theory isn't counter-intuitive it's wrong, and I think he's spot on correct with this.

Even if you are right about that ... so what? Isn't a reformed opinion an implicit admission of prior error?

I don't find it so straight. I mean, it's a drag for my pride to have to admit it when I'm wrong, but I like to do it when I find I learn more through honesty. I find your position hazy, which is ok but then you don't say this. Even in this thread it's like one minute you agree the models must be counter-intuitive and then you don't. For me you don't get to the real issue and if you feel like I'm pushing you there then I become a trouble-maker and you hide behind some judgement or something. This is how it seems to me.



OK Nick, lets play this game again.

You ask for consistent definition of "I" or "self."

I respond with "the entity typing this sentence."

Refresh my memory -- what was your response to that definition? I remember it being some nonsense along the lines of me not fully understanding what "entity" and "typing" and "sentence" were, because "they are all just processes." Am I incorrect? I mean, is 'the entity typing this sentence' incorrect?

I don't recall the exact exchange, but it doesn't sound like something I'd write. Sounds more like Pixy to be honest. He's the one wanting to make personal pronouns into gerunds.

Nick

[Nick227]

You are the annoying soul who is trying to blur everything into uselessness.

You have made utterly useless arguments, such as an assertion that it is impossible to distinguish between material processes.

Have I? Are you sure? Doesn't sound like the sort of thing I'd say.

You have, among other things, asserted that there is no "self" despite the fact (which we have pointed out to you) that the entire field of computer science relies upon the notion of "self."

Well, I've said that the narrative or psychological self, to use Dennett's term, has no material referent. It's analogous to a centre of gravity.

It seems to me your true goal is the complete obfuscation of computer and cognitive science via the denial of agreed upon definitions.

What is the agreed upon definition of self in these disciplines then? Does it match what we know about the human notion of self?

Nick

[Nick227]

Intuition is learned as much as it is genetic.

Unless you are telling me that my intuition about, say, algorithm optimisations is encoded in the 17th chromosome?

I'm saying that the notion of self the overwhelming majority of humans have is created by their brain and that it is inevitably inconsistent with a materialist reality. How it seems cannot be how it is. This to me is Dennett's point.

Severe mental illness aside, you will believe that you are an individual experiencing a world of objects, thoughts and feelings.

No.

So you don't believe yourself to be an individual experiencing a world? Fair enough. I stand corrected.

Nick

[Nick227]

You haven't bothered to read a single post by anyone, ever, have you?

Because if you had, you would know that the entirety of human history is evidence for this.

The entirety of human history is evidence that there is no aspect of thinking which is not material? How so?

I find your statements get more and more extreme as you are backed into a corner.

Nick

[Nick227]

You have evidence of thinking that does not require a thinker? I'd love to hear about it.

To me thinking should not of necessity require a coherent entity in order for it to exist. This is what I meant.

I'm afraid I don't understand. You haven't seen much evidence that if you stimulate nervous tissue in a particular way, you see a particular type of mental activity? Nor the fact that when the brain is shut off that thinking stops?

I meant an explanation for how thinking comes to be experienced in the manner that it is, usually that of an inner voice telling a narrative. This I do not understand in material terms.

As to how thinking translates into physicality, I think you'd better be a little more specific. What precisely do you mean? How thinking can result in physical action? How detailed an explanation do you want?

Well, I'd be happy to hear any materialist explanation. Maybe I can or maybe I can't understand it. How does neuronal activity translate into physical action and does this imply thinking is epiphenomenal or is it purely material and causative?

Nick

[Nick227]

Look at it this way. A thinking entity needs the following:

Input - sensory data of some sort
Memory - the ability to memorise past input and output, and hence to learn
Logic - the ability to make decisions based on a mixture of input and memory
Output - some way of interacting with the world

I call this simple creature (which can be simulated with about 50 transistors) aware, but not self-aware. Dennett describes a thermostat as conscious, but I describ it as merely aware.

To be conscious, one must also be aware of oneself. That is, you need feedback from the logic circuits to themselves. Now we're looking at maybe 100 transistors.

This creature (or circuit) can think and feel and act and learn, and it can reflect on the process by which it does this. Not very much, mind you; it only has about 8 bits of memory, total. But it can do it.

We have a whole bunch more RAM and logic circuits, but self-reference is what makes us different from, say, a clock.

OK, how do you make it see? And then how do you create in it the experience that it is seeing?

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

You just contradicted yourself.


How so? That phenomenal objects (or neumena, if you prefer) continue to exist unobserved does not mean there exists any type of substance. Why would it?

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

No he didn´t. Objects do not equal substance.

Correct. And thank you.

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

Consciousness comes from living brains similar to the way music comes from instruments.


Do you agree with Daniel Dennett that thermostats have beliefs about "too hot", "too cold" and "just right"?

If yes - why?

If no - why?

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

Is music "substance"? Why do you think consciousness demands a more "metaphysical" explanation than music?


For myself, it's because I accept the evidence (e.g. from the Ganzfeld and starting experiments, etc.,) that a low level of psi ability exists in humans.

I've never seen even the slightest hint of evidence that cellular activity generates consciousness.

It's about evidence and nothing more.

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

I am an A.I. programmer. I come up with algorithms to perform human cognitive tasks for a living. So of course a computational model of consciousness isn't that farfetched for me.


But how do you know you're modelling consciousness?

Would your program be conscious if you printed it out on a piece of paper? Why so? Why not so?

Do you think that having it on a hard disk and having an electric current pass though the computer matters somehow? If so, why?

Do you agree with Daniel Dennett about thermostats having beliefs about too hot, too cold and just right?

What if it's a mechanical thermostat rather than an electric thermostat?

~
HypnoPsi

[Nick227]

For myself, it's because I accept the evidence (e.g. from the Ganzfeld and starting experiments, etc.,) that a low level of psi ability exists in humans.

I've never seen even the slightest hint of evidence that cellular activity generates consciousness.

It's about evidence and nothing more.

~
HypnoPsi

Come on now, HP! That's a bit extreme. I mean if we interfere with cellular activity then consciousness is qualitatively affected. This is well accepted. I think you have to be careful not to "mythologise" consciousness into something which will "just never be understood."

Nick

[plumjam]

Sounds like you are describing ego loss. You can get that with 250 micrograms of LSD, transcranial magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe, fasting, oxygen starvation, the list goes on.

That ego loss can happen (and yes, I have experienced it) is one thing, merging with a so-called Universal Consciousness is another. Is there any evidence beyond self-reported experiences (usually regarding states where you are not capable of critically analyzing your mental state with any degree of rationality) for a Universal Consciousness that goes beyond simple ego loss?
Ego loss is not the same as ego transcendence. The ego exists as an organisational nexus within a certain level of the development of individualised mind. It is there to bring experience together in order to allow for intelligent analysis, reflection, planning, creativity and the like.
Mental asylums are full of people who have, for one reason or another, suffered ego loss. They no longer have the ability to intelligently organise, analyse, reflect, or plan upon their variegated experiences. In short, they have somewhat regressed to an animal experience of the world.
In contrast ego transcendence allows for the ´individual´ to merge into Universal Consciousness, yet when they ´return´ their prior ego is still intact in an operational sense. So for example they will still retain their previous tastes in food, music, their same habits of gesture, language, temperament etc. If you read the teachings of someone like Ramana Maharshi it´s clear that his ´centre´ remains in The Self (the Divine), while his ego/body centre goes on operating, as it were, automatically.

Well, how does the (non-individual) Universal Consciousness work? Please keep your explanation consistent with what we already know about the reality we inhabit, please.
With your second sentence you are, perhaps unwittingly, rendering the question unanswerable. It´s like asking an ant to explain how a mainframe computer works, while keeping your explanation consistent with what we already know about the reality we inhabit, please.
You are also making the mechanistic assumption that everything in existence has to bow to the rationale of ¨well, how does it work?¨. This makes the assumption that there have to be interrelated parts, cogs, wheels etc..
If Universal Consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, questions as to how it works would not be valid. Just as if ´matter´was the fundamental nature of reality it would be pointless to ask how matter worked. Matter would just BE.

Bull. Losing your narrative center of gravity is an interesting experience, but there is no reason to think it is not explainable from a materialist (or any equivalent monisim) perspective, or that it involves group consciousness. . You are making another assumption, which is that tripping on drugs, or the like, is the same thing as true ego transcendence. That is not the case, and is illustrated by the fact that so many trippers have ended up in asylums, regressed somewhat to animalistic consciousness.


You lose your I for awhile, but it always comes back unless you die
You were lucky enough that up till now your ego came back. So it always came back for you, so far. That´s all you can say. And do you have recollection of dying before in order to substantiate your last claim?

[rocketdodger]

And the findings, ultimately, are only known via subjective perception. Which is what makes the whole proposition self-undermining.

No.

They are known ultimately via objective perception. There is quite a difference.

It is much harder to be wrong about objective perceptions. For instance, if you see a rock in front of you, it is possible to confirm that sight perception by going up and feeling the rock with your hands. Then if you still aren't convinced you can weigh the rock, or break it apart, or perform any number of analytical tests to make sure this perception of a rock was correct.

You can't do that with subjective perceptions I.E. perceptions of the self. If you feel hungry, you might be hungry. But you might also have some kind of disorder that makes you feel hungry when your body doesn't need food at all. You might be taking a medication that causes such a side effect. There are any number of ways you could be tricked because there is no easy way to confirm your subjective perception.

But you know what plumjam, lets just assume you are right. You are wrong, clearly, but lets pretend otherwise. What now? If the results of such studies are "self-undermining," as you claim, then what? Are we to stick our head in the sand and pretend we didn't see what happened?

[HypnoPsi]

My point was that there are known examples of decisions that an individual would insist were conscious yet are provably not.


Heck, if that's all you're looking for then I can point you to decades of research in advertising and chuck in a few points from schema theory for good measure.

When you go to see a movie, if the foyer is plastered with adverts for Coke or Pepsi on any given day that will probably be the drink that more people on average choose to buy.

What you seem to be missing is that the choice to actually buy a drink (or move a hand) is still the subject's even if they are being influenced into choosing Coke or Pepsi (or to move one hand in particular).

None of this surprises me or really says very much about free will that most people wouldn't already suspect.

99% of the time people are simply working on autopilot allocating more mental effort to decisions that are more important.

If someone has just been paid and walks into a store and sees lots of great clothes and stuff all neatly displayed with cool poster adverts all over the place they'll quite possibly come out with a few things. If it's the end of the month and they've only got enough cash in their pocket for the bus fare home then they'll probably not treat themselves.

And this fact leads to the conclusion one cannot fully trust whatever faculty leads a human to claim a decision was consciously made -- because we have instances where that faculty is wrong.

Of course, but so what? The fact that we rarely choose to excercise a great deal of free will with mundane tasks can hardly be said to demonstrate that free will is an illusion.

~
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

How so? That phenomenal objects (or neumena, if you prefer) continue to exist unobserved does not mean there exists any type of substance. Why would it?
It depends entirely on your definition of substance. The important point is that you have to explain how these substantive objects continue to exist, which requires something over and above personal consciousness, the only thing for which you have direct evidence.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Of course, but so what? The fact that we rarely choose to excercise a great deal of free will with mundane tasks can hardly be said to demonstrate that free will is an illusion.
I agree. Libertarian free will is an incoherent concept from the get-go.

~~ Paul

[rocketdodger]

Then how do you get around the issue of selfhood, of subjectivity, of the fact that life appears to be happening to someone? How do you recreate this in your computational modelling?

Dennett says that if your theory isn't counter-intuitive it's wrong, and I think he's spot on correct with this.

Man... we have been over this ... over and over... in other threads.

Once more: subjectivity is simply identity. Subjectivity is what it is like to be.

Why is human experience like human experience, and not dog experience? Well, that is more along the lines of what Dennet speaks about, and maybe what you are interested in. And I don't disagree with any of Dennet's conjectures on this matter -- they just don't interest me as much as other stuff right now.


I don't recall the exact exchange, but it doesn't sound like something I'd write. Sounds more like Pixy to be honest. He's the one wanting to make personal pronouns into gerunds.


Well, that is how the exchange went. We can start it all over if you would like.

I define "I" as "the entity typing this sentence."

Do you find that acceptable or unacceptable as a definition of "I?"

[rocketdodger]

Have I? Are you sure? Doesn't sound like the sort of thing I'd say.

Yes, I am sure. It was in the context of "self" vs. "non-self." You constantly ask 'who defines self vs. non-self?' We give you logically coherent answers, such as pixy saying 'physics -- if you stub your toe, it is you and not your neighbor who cries out in pain.'

And your responses are similar to what I stated -- that without a "self" somewhere to perceive a difference between you and your neighbor, both of you are simply a process. A response like that implies that there is no way to differentiate between you and your neighbor if there is no "self" to do it. Which is nonsense and doesn't in any way refute pixy's answer to your riddle.

Well, I've said that the narrative or psychological self, to use Dennett's term, has no material referent. It's analogous to a centre of gravity.

Yes, and I responded with "I" is "the entity typing this sentence."

Your counter is that this isn't what people normally mean when they use "I." How do you know what people normally mean? What else could they mean?

What is the agreed upon definition of self in these disciplines then? Does it match what we know about the human notion of self?

Yes. Self is a reference to entity X used by entity X. Like humans, no matter how lost an entity becomes in the sea of information, it can always fall back on self.

Your argument is that there in fact is no self for humans. That is nonsense. It just happens to be very complicated -- but it still exists. If it didn't exist, we wouldn't be able to use it.

[Nick227]

Man... we have been over this ... over and over... in other threads.

Once more: subjectivity is simply identity. Subjectivity is what it is like to be.

Why is human experience like human experience, and not dog experience? Well, that is more along the lines of what Dennet speaks about, and maybe what you are interested in. And I don't disagree with any of Dennet's conjectures on this matter -- they just don't interest me as much as other stuff right now.

I am not asking what is it that differentiates experiences, rather what is it that creates the whole notion of experience? What makes it appear that I am experiencing this room around me, as opposed to their being simply a room and a body?

We can make some inroads into answering questions of this nature, but inevitably it gets counter-intuitive, and that is what I have been saying.



Well, that is how the exchange went. We can start it all over if you would like.

I define "I" as "the entity typing this sentence."

Do you find that acceptable or unacceptable as a definition of "I?"

Well, I don't feel especially drawn into the subject, but since you bring it up...I would ask you how you would reduce the statement "I define I as..." to a more coherent proposition. What is it that is defining this "I?" Simply stating "I am" does not appear to me to be very useful.

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

For thousands of years the debate has been between "mind or matter" (defined as immaterial thought and fundamental substance).

Nobody has ever came up with a third option.Wrong. Information is one. Computation is another.


You're just not getting this at all are you?

Asking what is the ultimate nature of the the information in the universe that is being "computed" is not answered by saying it's information and/or computation.

The difference is between describing something and explaining something.

What is not an option, and never has been, is mind. If the fundamental nature of reality is "mind" in some sense, then that mind gives rise to matter, and the observable nature of reality remains material.


Nope. Matter doesn't exist at all. There is absolutely no substance whatsoever underlying what you call physical reality. Materialism has had a good inning over the past few thousand years but it's worthless now. The most parsimonious theory is that there is some kind of Overmind behind it all and that everything is just as real as thought.

You're welcome to believe in some funky magic powder if you like, of course. But your believing in it doesn't make it real.

You cannot explain minds as we experience them by using "mind" as the fundamental existent, because minds are, plain and simple, physical processes. Every bit of evidence ever collected tells us this.


You keep talking about this physical stuff? I see no evidence for anything except phenomena/neumena.

Even sticking with the neutal term "information" can't you see why your argument makes no sense? Brains are just ultimately information - nothing more. There's no substance underlying them there particles that ultimately make up the brain.

The truth is some type of panentheism. It's the only rational conclusion in a Universe without substance.


NDEs and mystical experiences are fully explained by physical processes in the brain. There is exactly zero evidence that anything else is going on.


Wrong. And very sad that you choose to see things this way. There are no "physical" processes pixie because there is nothing there apart from information which is purely thought from some kind of Overmind.

There is absolutely no substance at all - think about that.

Amaterialism is a much more reasonable approach.


Anecdotes reduced to statistics are still worthless.


Again, anecdote means an "un-written" account. Paranormal experiences are far from unwritten.

~
HypnoPsi

[Ichneumonwasp]

Wasp, what is it with you and Monism/Dualism? You seem slightly obsessed.
I tend to avoid the dichotomy because dualism, in particular, can be used to refer to all kinds of things.. mind/matter dualism, life/afterlife dualism, gross matter / subtle matter dualism, body/soul dualism, the dual nature of the opposites of experience, etc.. So I can only see a minefield of confusion.
You also seem to think that if you can paint people as Dualists then (somehow) therefore you´ve won the argument and there´s no point continuing.
Have you considered the possibility that there are many types of ´dualism´ capable of existing within an overall monism? An example might be body/soul dualism.


Dualism in this sense refers to substance dualism or to property dualism, both of which are seriously sticky philosophical problems.

The issue is really over sticking to a coherent position or trying to fudge and "get something for nothing". When most positions are examined closely, there are hidden assumptions or hidden "substances" that weaken them seriously.

Watch what Nick is trying to do. He is essentially doing the same thing -- tyring to get folks to be consistent. Consistency is a major bear in such debates.


If you end up with any sort of dualism, you've got the problem of explaining how incommensurate substances interact or, in the case of property dualism, how one substance can create several different appearances with different properties.

The minor potential derail into Democritus and Leuccipus previousy mentioned was mischaracterized. What most ancient philosophers tried to deal with was the problem of "many from one". Atomic theory was one approach, since different types of atoms could account for different substances, though everything was at base "atom". Atomic theory accounts for substance plurality, with a single substance (I don't really remember Democritus making a point of what "atoms" really were, though; I think he bypassed the ultimate ontological issue). It wasn't a fight with animism, but with other philosophies at the time. Socrates/Plato's solution was hylomorphism -- a form of dualism in which form inheres in matter, but it suffered from the same problem as other dualisms, namely the interaction issue.

[rocketdodger]

But how do you know you're modelling consciousness?

How do you know I am conscious? What about your friends? Or your parents?

Would your program be conscious if you printed it out on a piece of paper? Why so? Why not so?

It would be processing information in a very different way, so I would say no. But it would still experience, because all things experience. Granted, the experience of being a sheet of paper with ink on it is probably very mundane.

Do you think that having it on a hard disk and having an electric current pass though the computer matters somehow? If so, why?

Yes. Because the information processing being done is now harnessed rather than random, and is thus computation.

One can claim that a sheet of paper processes just as much information as a running computer, but if so it is completely random and not used in any way, and thus is not really computation.

Do you agree with Daniel Dennett about thermostats having beliefs about too hot, too cold and just right?

Given a certain definition of belief, of course.

What if it's a mechanical thermostat rather than an electric thermostat?

Irrelevant.

It just so happens that as the complexity of a machine increases, it becomes laborious and inefficient to keep them purely mechanical.

[Nick227]

Yes, I am sure. It was in the context of "self" vs. "non-self." You constantly ask 'who defines self vs. non-self?' We give you logically coherent answers, such as pixy saying 'physics -- if you stub your toe, it is you and not your neighbor who cries out in pain.'

And your responses are similar to what I stated -- that without a "self" somewhere to perceive a difference between you and your neighbor, both of you are simply a process.

A response like that implies that there is no way to differentiate between you and your neighbor if there is no "self" to do it. Which is nonsense and doesn't in any way refute pixy's answer to your riddle.

Whoa there, RD. That's dualism... a self to perceive? Can you start to see the problem now? All I am saying is that creating an authentic materialist model for conscious experience is not simple. When you make statements like this you're proving it. Dan Dennett will tell you the same. Ramachandran will tell you that we are just starting to scratch the surface of the stickiest issue of all - selfhood. These guys say these things because they have been in this area for decades and they know it's not easy. Guys like you and Pixy hang out on the surface and jibe at idealists. You just don't grasp the issues. To you it's all simple and obvious because you simply don't understand the actual issues.

eta: I was reading Susan Blackmore's series of interviews with consciousness researchers recently. It's an amazing volume. They're all in there - Dennett, Chalmers, Searle, the Churchlands, Crick, O'Regan. Bottom line, if you ask me - they're all pretty mystified still.

Nick

[rocketdodger]

The difference is between describing something and explaining something.


Pixy is asserting that explaining the fundamental existent can't be done -- all we can do is describe it.

You seem to agree with this.

Except you think materialism asserts that it can be explained. Maybe in the past, but as everyone who is a materialist here will tell you, we no longer think like that. We think in terms of "properties of stuff" now, not "stuff." This is what pixy has been trying to explain to you for this entire thread.

If you want to argue further along that line, you should know you are arguing with a strawman.

[rocketdodger]

You just don't grasp the issues. To you it's all simple and obvious because you simply don't understand the actual issues.


You keep saying things like this, instead of responding to what we actually say.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: A human can distinguish their physical self from physical non-self via sensory perception.

[rocketdodger]

Of course, but so what? The fact that we rarely choose to excercise a great deal of free will with mundane tasks can hardly be said to demonstrate that free will is an illusion.


That isn't the issue. The issue is that we choose to exercise a great deal of free will in certain instances, and think we have, when in fact we did not.

The issue is that we now know that our subjective perceptions can be wrong, even for a normally/nominally functioning mind.

You seem somewhat intelligent, so perhaps my zeal here strikes you as odd. Understand that it is only in the context of being able to solidly refute people like plumjam where I consider these findings very important.

People like him can't simply say "soooo many people feel this... so it must be there," anymore. Numbers don't matter now, because we have these studies that show every single human was wrong about a perception of their own consciousness.

[Nick227]

You keep saying things like this, instead of responding to what we actually say.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: A human can distinguish their physical self from physical non-self via sensory perception.

I would agree, basically, though I think it's important to be aware that visual perception alone, for example, does not really allow the organism to self-distinguish. It needs to feel the body also. It's not clear for me why this is relevant when we're considering how a mass of neurons comes to create consciousness, but no doubt you will explain this.

I'm also a bit concerned by your phrase "their physical self," but let's take it that this is just a language issue, and that you're not implying that the body has an immaterial owner.

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

What is it that allows objects to continue to exist when we are not thinking about them? It isn't consciousness. There must be another mechanism that preserves the continuity of the world. Let's call it "substance" or "external reality." Now suddenly the God theory loses its edge.


Absolutely amazing, Paul. Even though there is no substance let's just pretend there is one anyway and then we won't need God anymore. Simple.

How about we deal with reality as it actually is - amaterial.

Consciousness is clearly the only other thing we know of that can store information.

(If there was some secret magic powder stuff underlying phenomenal objects you'd still only have a 50/50 situation whereby the fancy stuff is self-sustaining and self-generating or Created and sustained by God.)

God's Mind/Will being the most parsimonious theory to the existence of the Universe doesn't prove God exists, of course. It's just the most reasonable theory on account of being the most parsimonious.

Significantly more reasonable than pretending that there really is a substance when there isn't just so we don't have cause to bring in the God theory.

You can try to save it by saying that God thinks about the entire universe while I'm not, and that's what preserves the continuity. But then you need a mechanism for God to refresh my memory of a scene when I come back to it. What does that have to do with consciousness?~~ Paul


Why does God need to refresh your memory?

If His/Her/It's laws are happily working away then why won't your house, for example, still be there when you return from work and/or why would you forget it?

~
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Nope. Matter doesn't exist at all. There is absolutely no substance whatsoever underlying what you call physical reality. Materialism has had a good inning over the past few thousand years but it's worthless now. The most parsimonious theory is that there is some kind of Overmind behind it all and that everything is just as real as thought.
What's the difference between saying "stuff is physical" and saying "stuff is Overmind"?


You're welcome to believe in some funky magic powder if you like, of course. But your believing in it doesn't make it real.
Out of context, I couldn't tell whether you were saying this to Pixy or he was saying it to you. The Overmind is magic.


You keep talking about this physical stuff? I see no evidence for anything except phenomena/neumena.
You see evidence for noumena? That is, objects as they appear in themselves, independent of perception? Well then, we agree. There are objects independent of your perception. How do they work?


Wrong. And very sad that you choose to see things this way. There are no "physical" processes pixie because there is nothing there apart from information which is purely thought from some kind of Overmind.
How are these Overmind-thought brain processes distinguished from physical brain processes?


There is absolutely no substance at all - think about that.
What shall we call the substantial external world that this Overmind generates for us?

~~ Paul

[Ichneumonwasp]

To me thinking should not of necessity require a coherent entity in order for it to exist. This is what I meant.

Ah, OOK, with that I agree. But that is not really thought without a thinker. A thinker refers only to some physical thing that does the thinking, on which the thinking takes place. In other words, there has to be something somehere that does the thinking; but that something does not have to be what we would consider a coherent whole individual (don't know how to express that any better, but I think you know what I mean -- it doesn't require an integrated "self").



I meant an explanation for how thinking comes to be experienced in the manner that it is, usually that of an inner voice telling a narrative. This I do not understand in material terms.


OK, right, gotcha. I don't think anyone understands it in detail. We can speak about it in general terms, but the answer is likely going to involve a very complex system that will not be easily explained in simple terms. Essentially, it requires some form of self-reference, as we can potentially see with mirror neurons, though this would require an additional "step-up" of mirrors to mirror neurons -- not hard to build into a system. And it requires the neural structure for story-telling, which no one yet understands. We do have some evidence for it, but we certainly do not have a coherent story yet.



Well, I'd be happy to hear any materialist explanation. Maybe I can or maybe I can't understand it. How does neuronal activity translate into physical action and does this imply thinking is epiphenomenal or is it purely material and causative?

Nick


As to whether or not you consider thinking epiphenomenal, I think that depends on what you call "thinking". It is probably the case that the conscious reflection we engage in is epiphenomenal in a way. I don't think it is directly causitive of any physical action. However, there is plenty of thinking (or information processing) that goes on "under the surface" leading to action.

As with the consciousness story no one has a coherent full account, because it is extremely difficult to study this in detail. We don't generally sacrifice humans for experimental purposes, so much of the information will necessarily come from other models -- particularly from AI research.

What we do know from cortical stimulation is that we can stop certain actions from occurring with stimulation of particular areas of cortex and that we can create certain thoughts, feelings, and actions by stimulating other cortical areas -- but you already know that, I'm sure. Moving from thought to action, however, probably depends on a certain internal "set" so that whatever region is stimulated is allowed to result in a physical action. Simple stimulation studies are never going to reproduce that. This is the case, in large part, because the stimulation studies are performed for other reasons -- they are done to provide localization information for potential surgical planning -- and because these studies are generally performed on epileptics and we don't want to stimulate too much cortex or overly stimulate certain ares for fear of producing a seizure (we elicit afterdischarges all the time).

I'm afraid the direct brain work is going to give only part of the picture. Modelling the whole system is going to have to come through computer work.

The simple answer as to how neuronal activity results in physical action is well worked out for simple systems. I can get you to raise your arm by stimualting the right area of your premotor cortex. The motor neurons there descend through the brain, brainstem, spinal cord (where they synapse on other motor neurons) and through this synapse continue to their terminal bouton, where the "electrical signal" results in release of calcium, which through a complex series of events involving several different proteins causes the release of acetylcholine. Ach traverses the synapse, activates its receptor and with an influx of sodium and calcium initiates another complex series of protein transformations that results in actin and myosin "ratcheting" against one another to produce muscle contraction. We know that part of the story in great detail. It is the complex coordination of different movements that occurs upstream that is the tough bit.

[Silentknight]

Your alternative is to go with matter, for which there will never be any evidence.
Except that we can make repeatable observations about matter and its nature, and different people will get the same results regardless of their perception or bias. If anyone, no matter who they are, where they come from, or what they believe, strikes themselves in the head hard enough with a hammer, their consciousness will shut off, no exceptions. The same cannot be said for the results of thought experiments, prayers, chanting, meditations, touching oneself, etc.

I go with Overmind, Metamind, God, Universal Consciousness..whatever one wants to call it. For this there is indeed thousands of years of evidence in the form of the likes of expanded consciousness, God-consciousness, Theosis, Fana, Nirvana, Samadhi, the Beatific Vision etc etc..
Which are not repeatable or measurable observations, and will vary greatly depending on what the person's preexisting religious inclinations are.

Of course, most JREFers get to dismiss that evidence by hiding behind the usual ´it´s anecdotal´ or ´it´s subjective´ or ´perception can be wrong sometimes´. Well, given the subject matter, how could such evidence not be?
This rationale unwittingly broadens the field of acceptable evidence TO the ravings of lunatics confined to insane asylums. You wouldn't want to dismiss them as anecdotal, or subjective, or misperceived, would you?

On a tangent note, the role of village shaman was in fact where many societies placed individuals suffering severe mental illness to serve a useful function.

So you think that a model for which we have ample evidence, and a model for which we´ll never, in principle, have any evidence, are equivalent? How does that work?
Yes, no evidence except for demonstrable causality and repeatable observation. Pit that against begging the question and special pleading and I don't see how it could possibly compete.

See, here you´re betraying your materialist upbringing. Why would you just assume that consciousness has to be made up of ´building blocks´? Maybe consciousness is Eternally One, but chooses to ´as it were´ (illusorily) divide itself. This is what Hinduism, for one, has been experiencing and arguing for millenia.
Consciousness comes from where then? Magic? If consciousness behaved this way then it could not be destroyed or disrupted, merely displaced. Unfortunately, I think I see where you're going with this now.

[plumjam]

Dualism in this sense refers to substance dualism or to property dualism, both of which are seriously sticky philosophical problems.

The issue is really over sticking to a coherent position or trying to fudge and "get something for nothing". When most positions are examined closely, there are hidden assumptions or hidden "substances" that weaken them seriously.

Watch what Nick is trying to do. He is essentially doing the same thing -- tyring to get folks to be consistent. Consistency is a major bear in such debates.


If you end up with any sort of dualism, you've got the problem of explaining how incommensurate substances interact or, in the case of property dualism, how one substance can create several different appearances with different properties.

The minor potential derail into Democritus and Leuccipus previousy mentioned was mischaracterized. What most ancient philosophers tried to deal with was the problem of "many from one". Atomic theory was one approach, since different types of atoms could account for different substances, though everything was at base "atom". Atomic theory accounts for substance plurality, with a single substance (I don't really remember Democritus making a point of what "atoms" really were, though; I think he bypassed the ultimate ontological issue). It wasn't a fight with animism, but with other philosophies at the time. Socrates/Plato's solution was hylomorphism -- a form of dualism in which form inheres in matter, but it suffered from the same problem as other dualisms, namely the interaction issue.

The thing is, if you define dualism as two incommensurate substances (by that I´m taking you to mean two kinds of stuff which could not in principle effectively interact with each other) somehow mysteriously interacting, then you have already decided the problem, in your favour, via your definitions.
My own position is that there are various types of stuff in reality, which manage to interact effectively with each other, within the (as a nod to your outlook) monism of idealism or Universal Consciousness . Soul, mind and body might be a few examples.
The fact that we don´t, in 2008, understand within our particular society, in a way which can be represented in numbers and mathematical relationships, how this happens, is, to me, of almost no import.
The alternative of a monism of matter, which no one will in principle have any kind of evidence for, would be a case of taking faith too far. And this in a millieu in which faith (at least on this forum) is more or less despised.

[Nick227]

Ah, OOK, with that I agree. But that is not really thought without a thinker. A thinker refers only to some physical thing that does the thinking, on which the thinking takes place. In other words, there has to be something somehere that does the thinking; but that something does not have to be what we would consider a coherent whole individual (don't know how to express that any better, but I think you know what I mean -- it doesn't require an integrated "self").

Yes.

OK, right, gotcha. I don't think anyone understands it in detail. We can speak about it in general terms, but the answer is likely going to involve a very complex system that will not be easily explained in simple terms. Essentially, it requires some form of self-reference, as we can potentially see with mirror neurons, though this would require an additional "step-up" of mirrors to mirror neurons -- not hard to build into a system. And it requires the neural structure for story-telling, which no one yet understands. We do have some evidence for it, but we certainly do not have a coherent story yet.

Thanks. That's pretty much what I thought.

As to whether or not you consider thinking epiphenomenal, I think that depends on what you call "thinking". It is probably the case that the conscious reflection we engage in is epiphenomenal in a way. I don't think it is directly causitive of any physical action. However, there is plenty of thinking (or information processing) that goes on "under the surface" leading to action.

This seems to me somewhat at odds with Pixy's assertion that there is no aspect of thinking that is not material.

As with the consciousness story no one has a coherent full account, because it is extremely difficult to study this in detail. We don't generally sacrifice humans for experimental purposes, so much of the information will necessarily come from other models -- particularly from AI research.

What we do know from cortical stimulation is that we can stop certain actions from occurring with stimulation of particular areas of cortex and that we can create certain thoughts, feelings, and actions by stimulating other cortical areas -- but you already know that, I'm sure. Moving from thought to action, however, probably depends on a certain internal "set" so that whatever region is stimulated is allowed to result in a physical action. Simple stimulation studies are never going to reproduce that. This is the case, in large part, because the stimulation studies are performed for other reasons -- they are done to provide localization information for potential surgical planning -- and because these studies are generally performed on epileptics and we don't want to stimulate too much cortex or overly stimulate certain ares for fear of producing a seizure (we elicit afterdischarges all the time).

I'm afraid the direct brain work is going to give only part of the picture. Modelling the whole system is going to have to come through computer work.

The simple answer as to how neuronal activity results in physical action is well worked out for simple systems. I can get you to raise your arm by stimualting the right area of your premotor cortex. The motor neurons there descend through the brain, brainstem, spinal cord (where they synapse on other motor neurons) and through this synapse continue to their terminal bouton, where the "electrical signal" results in release of calcium, which through a complex series of events involving several different proteins causes the release of acetylcholine. Ach traverses the synapse, activates its receptor and with an influx of sodium and calcium initiates another complex series of protein transformations that results in actin and myosin "ratcheting" against one another to produce muscle contraction. We know that part of the story in great detail. It is the complex coordination of different movements that occurs upstream that is the tough bit.

Thanks for your insights. Always welcomed.

Nick

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Absolutely amazing, Paul. Even though there is no substance let's just pretend there is one anyway and then we won't need God anymore. Simple.
I don't care what you call it, but there is a substantive external reality. Why is the god hypothesis any better than the actual substance hypothesis?


Consciousness is clearly the only other thing we know of that can store information.
What does "other" refer to? Don't computers store information?


(If there was some secret magic powder stuff underlying phenomenal objects you'd still only have a 50/50 situation whereby the fancy stuff is self-sustaining and self-generating or Created and sustained by God.)
What is the difference between those two ideas? What experiment can we run to tell them apart?


God's Mind/Will being the most parsimonious theory to the existence of the Universe doesn't prove God exists, of course. It's just the most reasonable theory on account of being the most parsimonious.
How is "god's will" more parsimonious than "physical stuff"?


Why does God need to refresh your memory?

If His/Her/It's laws are happily working away then why won't your house, for example, still be there when you return from work and/or why would you forget it?
Because I don't have any memory. All I have is consciousness, remember? You're basing this entire model on one thing: personal phenomenological consciousness. All the other aspects of the model, including memory and god and Overmind, are just-so concepts that you think are reasonable to posit because they are kinda like consciousness and therefore don't require any evidence. You have less evidence for being able to derive god from personal consciousness than the materialist has for being able to derive consciousness from brain function.

You have only one kind of card, but have built an entire Victorian mansion from it.

~~ Paul

[Nick227]

I don't care what you call it, but there is a substantive external reality. Why is the god hypothesis any better than the actual substance hypothesis?

Or, why should God be a more reasonable explanation than math? Surely noumena must have mathematical attributes.

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

What's wrong with just accepting it as it is - pure, raw, information?Nothing at all. That's informational idealism.


Okay, you might think this is splitting hairs but I am absolutely not an idealist. I am a phenomenologist (radical empiricist, amaterialist and noteticist).

Idealism is much too focussed on the consciousness of the observer (us). Philosophically I am a realist and pragmatist believing fully in a world that exists independently of us.

The bottom line is I'm a theist.

The Universe is material. After all, I can take a chunk of it and hit you over the head.

No. The Universe is phenomenal/noumenal. And I can just as easily hit you over the head with a chunk of it.

The word material comes from latin (L. materia) and means "substance from which something is made".

There is no substance. It's all ultimately just laws that we perecieve as information and objective phenomena due to their interactions.

The very idea of "matter" (and even "physical"), as the terms are used by atheists, is to denote something, self-sustaining, self-perpetuating; i.e. uncreated. And it does lead people into thinking about some fundamental "stuff" or other.

I object to materialism just as you would object to someone matter of factly discussing "God's laws" - as if it was known to be true.

Whether there is any deeper reality underlying what we observe is the question.

No. Whether the underlying reality is a substance or mind is the question. That it definitely isn't any substance of some kind doesn't prove "God did it", of course. But it is the most parsimonious answer.

The 'kicker' I'm refering to is the question mark over why there is something rather than nothingness?Grilled cheese sandwiches.

If nothing else, at least this means you have a sense of humour.

But why believe in a material essence in the first placeBecause it is parsimonious.

No. Materialists have to fantasize that some type of prima materia substance actually exists before imagining it as being self-sustaining, self-perpetuating, etc.,. Materialists need to believe in an unknown to theorise the final unknown

To be truly parsimonious a theory should only involve theorising the final unknown without bringing in other unknowns.

Theists already know that consciousness exists and can hold information (as thoughts). They're only saying that the final piece of the puzzle is another bigger consciousness.

Nothing is conclusive - and God is far from proven. It's just the simplest explanation (most parsimonious). That's all.

Reality is indisputably material. To assume that it is essentially material as well is the most parsimonious option.


Spoken like a true believer. What do you say to the fact that you have no evidence for any substance of any kind and that science keeps reducing everything to pure information?

Why hold onto this theory (sic fantasy)?Because it works.


Ahh.... now we see. It's a comforting belief then?

Again, what do you say to the fact that physics keeps reducing everything to nothing but information?

Is this then just an inconvenience that you choose to ignore?

Objects are real. Reality is real.

I didn't say they weren't real. An amaterilists universe is objectively no different from a materialists just because the amaterialist is absent the belief in any type of substance whatsoever underlying the objective phenomena they encounter in their day to day life.

Your conscious awareness of reality is just a physical process.


So you keep insisting. But why would anyone believe that pure information can cause consciousness?

Materialism vs. informational idealism makes no difference to science in any way.


Except that "matter" is a fantasy and not real. (Some of us consider that important.)

QLM? Never mind, not important.

That's a typo - it should have been QLG for quantum loop gravity (also known as loop quantum gravity or LQG).

It's just one of the many theories out there that attempts to explain reality at the deepest levels. You can read a fascinating article on it, titled "You are made of spacetime" here:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125645.800-you-are-made-of-spacetime.html

What is important is that F=MA. The law does not change. Physics does not change. Nothing changes.

Why would it change?

At worse it is very misleading in terms of it's historical connotations.It's only confusing if you are utterly determined to be confused.[/quote]


There's no being determined to be confused (utterly or otherwise) about it. The very idea of matter was created to provide philosophers with a way to counter the rampant superstition in the ancient world in regards to the question of why there are things. (Yes, even they noticed that things kept existing when they weren't looking.)

Materialism was an alternative to things like animism and vitalism. It inherently means substance.

You seem to be saying that we should just hold onto the idea because of some fondness for the word; harking back to the good old days when atheist materialists could breath easily placing their faith in an orderly mechanical universe of indivisible little particles and the atoms and molecules that are composed from them.

Let's face facts here. Matter, as a theory, is in direct opposition to the God theory. If it exists and is self-perpetuating and self-generating (i.e. uncreated) then God truly is a redundant idea. Do you honestly expect theists and amaterialists to just role over and accept that it's okay for atheists to spread this faith-based belief in schools and society without providing any direct evidence at all for any type of substance, based only on the most wooly of philosophical excuses?


Metaphysical naturalism says that the Universe behaves as though it is made out of matter. Scientific naturalism adds that this behaviour is consistent throughout the Universe.

No. The scientific method only gethers information and data about objective, phenomenal, reality. Believing there is a substance is an added, superflous belief.

Materialism is a reasonable assumption (but only an assumption) for the underlying nature of reality given this evidence.

No. Physics has reduced particles and energy to the level of pure information. There is nothing reasonable about holding on to materialistic assumptions.


Informational idealism is likewise reasonable.

God is not.


Wrong. Idealism - without God - relies on an unkown and unconscious part of consciousness keeping the Universe and objective phenomena going when we're not thinking about them or aware of them. It is not as parsimonious as God.


If you're saying that matter is an "ideal substance" then I agree. (Though, obviously, I still see it as fantasy.)Yahzi's Bat demolishes this claim.


Why do you keep thinking that amaterialism makes things less real in some way?

How exactly can pure information bring about consciousness? Please be specific in your answer since this is surely not something you expect anyone to believe without evidence, is it?Well, it's clear enough how material processes can bring about consciousness, since this is done by programmers and engineers on a daily basis.

Why would substance lead to consciousness?

Why do you think that programmers and engineers have succeeded in this to the point they now do so "on a daily basis"?

Do you believe Daniel Dennett is correct that thermostats believe in "too hot", "too cold" and "just right"?


Informational idealism is simply materialism with the idea of "substance" removed.


Parsimony.


It changes nothing in the observed nature of reality (nor should it, for then it would be false).


Yet several points you have made seem to read that you think differently. Nevermind.


So that's how information gives rise to consciousness.


So, information interacting with information gives rise to consciousness because you say so?


Why do you think consiousness is a process?Because it is?

Seriously, what do you think it is if not a process?


I have no intention of proving a negative. That consciousness is a process is your claim for which you have provided no causal mechanism or explanation.

We know the material Universe exists. Materialsm simply does not assume that there is something else that exists.


Wrong. We know the phenomenal Universe exists. We no nothing of any substance underlying it and, indeed, physics is heading away from that notion very rapidly.

We observe that consicousness is a material process, and we have gone a long way to explaining the details of that process.


How have you done this with no evidence of material to begin with?

How did God get there? Oh, he's self-causing? So reality can't be self-causing, but God can be? And at the same time, God isn't part of reality? Surely that means he doesn't exist?

God is the uncreated creator. The first cause or prime mover. The laws of the Universe are God's laws. So it would be more accurate to say that "reality" is part of him.

~
HypnoPsi

[nescafe]

Ego loss is not the same as ego transcendence. The ego exists as an organisational nexus within a certain level of the development of individualised mind. It is there to bring experience together in order to allow for intelligent analysis, reflection, planning, creativity and the like.More like the illusion that there is that organizational nexus, but we wander a bit afield here.

Mental asylums are full of people who have, for one reason or another, suffered ego loss. They no longer have the ability to intelligently organise, analyse, reflect, or plan upon their variegated experiences. In short, they have somewhat regressed to an animal experience of the world.Yes, loss of ego can be tramautic of you are not prepared for it or already had a predisposition to mental illness -- but what you are describing sounds like mental impairment rather than ego loss. Where is your evidence that people who have suffered ego loss are the primary occupants of our mental asylums, though?

In contrast ego transcendence allows for the ´individual´ to merge into Universal Consciousness, yet when they ´return´ their prior ego is still intact in an operational sense. So for example they will still retain their previous tastes in food, music, their same habits of gesture, language, temperament etc. If you read the teachings of someone like Ramana Maharshi it´s clear that his ´centre´ remains in The Self (the Divine), while his ego/body centre goes on operating, as it were, automatically.
An when you strip the gibberish about "universal consciousness" and "transcendence", that also sounds like ego loss, except in someone who is able to integrate the experience due to proper priming and having a healthy brain.

With your second sentence you are, perhaps unwittingly, rendering the question unanswerable. It´s like asking an ant to explain how a mainframe computer works, while keeping your explanation consistent with what we already know about the reality we inhabit, please.
You are also making the mechanistic assumption that everything in existence has to bow to the rationale of ¨well, how does it work?¨. This makes the assumption that there have to be interrelated parts, cogs, wheels etc..

No, it is more like asking that your explanation of how a computer works not violate any laws of physics or contain any internal inconsistencies.

If Universal Consciousness is the fundamental nature of reality, questions as to how it works would not be valid.
Well, what is the point of even positing it, then? You posit a thing called Universal Consciousness, call it the fundamental nature of reality, but then assert that questions about how it works are meaningless? Sounds like a useless concept to me.

Just as if ´matter´was the fundamental nature of reality it would be pointless to ask how matter worked. Matter would just BE.
No, how it works is the most important thing to know. Our understanding of how that which we call "matter" (which includes energy) works is pretty good these days and getting better all the time. If our current understanding turns out to just be a special case explainable in terms of some more general understanding, that is fine, so long as that understanding is not tautological.

You are making another assumption, which is that tripping on drugs, or the like, is the same thing as true ego transcendence.

Indeed, I am. The accounts I have read of both from people who are not mentally ill is close enough that I assume they are the same phenomenon.

That is not the case, and is illustrated by the fact that so many trippers have ended up in asylums, regressed somewhat to animalistic consciousness.
Cite some evidence, please.

You were lucky enough that up till now your ego came back. So it always came back for you, so far. That´s all you can say.

Yep. I have no reason to believe otherwise, and it seems that our brains are wired to create a narrative center of gravity unless something has gone wrong, either developmentally or through trauma.

And do you have recollection of dying before in order to substantiate your last claim?Not being dead, I have not had the experience of dying. After dying, I rather doubt that I will be able to experience anything.

[HypnoPsi]

What is it that makes the mass of material in the brain seem to feel, experience, and be aware?Information processing.


What a strange idea. I have a home brew kit here. Ultimately the fermentation is just information processing. Is it conscious?


What IS being aware and why does the matter of the brain seem to experience while other matter does not?Computers do this too.


What an even stranger idea.

Does this require electricity or would a purely mechanical information processor have subjective experiences.

~
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

No. Materialists have to fantasize that some type of prima materia substance actually exists before imagining it as being self-sustaining, self-perpetuating, etc.,. Materialists need to believe in an unknown to theorise the final unknown

To be truly parsimonious a theory should only involve theorising the final unknown without bringing in other unknowns.

Theists already know that consciousness exists and can hold information (as thoughts). They're only saying that the final piece of the puzzle is another bigger consciousness.
Apparently it's materialists vs. theists. That's a new one.

Theists know nothing of the kind. They know there is some sort of inner awareness that can sustain temporary thoughts. This is not sufficient for maintaining the external world, as god is required to do. There is a leap of faith from the temporary to the permanent in both metaphysics.


Let's face facts here. Matter, as a theory, is in direct opposition to the God theory. If it exists and is self-perpetuating and self-generating (i.e. uncreated) then God truly is a redundant idea. Do you honestly expect theists and amaterialists to just role over and accept that it's okay for atheists to spread this faith-based belief in schools and society without providing any direct evidence at all for any type of substance, based only on the most wooly of philosophical excuses?
Wow.


Wrong. Idealism - without God - relies on an unkown and unconscious part of consciousness keeping the Universe and objective phenomena going when we're not thinking about them or aware of them. It is not as parsimonious as God.
You introduce what is literally a god of the gaps argument to explain the external world and then claim it is simpler than some other unknown and unconscious explanation? I don't know god and I am not conscious of him.


How have you done this with no evidence of material to begin with?

God is the uncreated creator. The first cause or prime mover. The laws of the Universe are God's laws.
Bolding mine.

~~ Paul

[HypnoPsi]

If we know that mind exists, then we do have evidence that a substance exists namely "mind". In common philosophical usage mind/thought is one of the substances often mentioned. It is the primary substance behind idealism.


For the record, I don't see any reason to think of mind as a substance.

I don't even think it's a good placeholder term for "phenomenon" or "entity".

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

I don't buy the "computation = consciousness" position; it requires quite a leap of faith, in and of itselfNo leap of faith.


This, in a nutshell, is your problem, Pixy.

You believe so much in computer consciousness that you just can't see how it is so clearly nothing but blind faith.

~
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Do you honestly expect theists and amaterialists to just role over and accept that it's okay for atheists to spread this faith-based belief in schools and society without providing any direct evidence at all for any type of substance, based only on the most wooly of philosophical excuses?
Do you think that only atheists believe there is an external world independent of conscious beings?

~~ Paul

[articulett]

I suspect that's more an opinion of yours, Hypnopsi, that you've developed to confirm your belief biases.

[HypnoPsi]

The way you put it, the idealist is in a better position epistemically (parismoniously) because God (Overmind, as you call it) is simply consciousness to the nth degree, and we know that consciousness exists (and I would argue thought and mind as well).

However, there's still an assumption going on there- just because we have proof of consciousness doesn't mean there's a higher consciousness (God/Overmind). There's quite a big leap to go from "concsiouness exists" to "a higher consciousness exists", and we have no evidence to support the existence of God/Overmind.


Hi Malerin,

That's the point of working parsimoniously. You only do so when you're constructing a theory to explain the facts.

God being the most parsinonious solution to the problem at hand (the existence of a phenomenal Universe with us in it) does not in any way establish God as a fact, and I certainly wouldn't argue such.

On a fundamental level, though, I agree the materialist is in a worse position.

Yes, definitely.

I think it makes more sense to imagine that God has the quality "eternal" or "first cause" than a bunch of physical matter. There's nothing in physicalism/materialism to suggets that matter is either eternal or a cause in and of itself.

Again, yes, this is absolutely correct.

Overall, one of my main points in this thread has been that the reason philosophers have only ever came up with "mind" and "matter" as the only two possible holders/containers of information is because they, quite possibly, really are the only two options (and not simply just they are the only two things two human beings can think up).

Given that there is no evidence of any fundamental prima materia substance, God (Overmind or whatever) is the only option left really.

In otherwords, the God theory remains unfalsified by the matter therory while the matter theory was falsified by physicists of all people.

All the best,
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

HypnoPsi,

The crux and strength of your argument is based on selecting as the fundamental existent that one thing you know to exist: your phenomenological awareness. It is from this one surety that you construct your entire model. Unfortunately, your awareness does not include your memory. Your memory is just another one of those external things played upon your senses by god. It is just a brain function. You don't get to use memory as a basic building block of your model. You must derive it from personal consciousness. You must derive both god and his memory of the world. You must derive the means by which the overmind is split into individual minds. You must specify the reason we all don't have god consciousness all the time. You must carefully delineate what is fundamental consciousness and what is god's illusion. You must explain why god has a special position and how he plays the external world on my senses.

"It's all vaguely mind-like" is not an explanation.

~~ Paul

[plumjam]

I realise from experience it´s hardly worth replying, but here goes..

More like the illusion that there is that organizational nexus, but we wander a bit afield here.
In other words you´d rather not fully adress the point. Probably because it´s the first time it has been presented to you and you have no pat preprepared good materialist response that someone else would have written.

Yes, loss of ego can be tramautic of you are not prepared for it or already had a predisposition to mental illness -- but what you are describing sounds like mental impairment rather than ego loss. Where is your evidence that people who have suffered ego loss are the primary occupants of our mental asylums, though?
The customary lazy appeal for evidence when you don´t have any strong or at least interesting counter arguments to make. Also your misrepresentation of me saying that those with ego loss would be the primary occupants of mental asylums. I never said such.


An when you strip the gibberish about "universal consciousness" and "transcendence", that also sounds like ego loss, except in someone who is able to integrate the experience due to proper priming and having a healthy brain.
In your last post you used the term ´bull´ now you use the term ´gibberish´ . This use of pejorative language indicates you have some emotional investment in your in principle non evidenceable belief in materialism. You may well do better to apply what you learned in school regarding balance, non bias and the like. It´s high school level, I think.



No, it is more like asking that your explanation of how a computer works not violate any laws of physics or contain any internal inconsistencies. To an ant? Clearly you avoid my point. As elsewhere.



Well, what is the point of even positing it, then? You posit a thing called Universal Consciousness, call it the fundamental nature of reality, but then assert that questions about how it works are meaningless? Sounds like a useless concept to me. In what sense would the ultimate nature of reality need to be useful? See, you are already assuming a more or less materialistic (utilitarian) view of HOW THINGS SHOULD BE. You may well be wrong in that. The fact that you keep repeating these prejudices indicates they go pretty deep in you. Most likely on little evidence except what you´ve been raised to believe.


No, how it works is the most important thing to know. Our understanding of how that which we call "matter" (which includes energy) works is pretty good these days and getting better all the time. If our current understanding turns out to just be a special case explainable in terms of some more general understanding, that is fine, so long as that understanding is not tautological.
´How it works´ is not synonymous with understanding. Any understanding you came to of how particular things work would not include how those particular things managed to come into existence and maintain their existence. Thus your approach is flawed.
Ít´s entirely useless to explain the interrealtionship of things if you cannot explain the genesis of the things themselves. So your effort in this regard would always be futile.


Indeed, I am. The accounts I have read of both from people who are not mentally ill is close enough that I assume they are the same phenomenon.
Superficial investigation then.


Cite some evidence, please.
Try my reply to Paul. Not that you will, or treat it evenly.


Not being dead, I have not had the experience of dying. After dying, I rather doubt that I will be able to experience anything
Then why invoke the experience of dying in your reply as some kind of support?[/QUOTE]

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Given that there is no evidence of any fundamental prima materia substance, God (Overmind or whatever) is the only option left really.
There is no evidence for god, either. You have postulated it based on a vague relationship to personal consciousness that appears to please you.

What there is evidence for is the existence of a substantial external world. Perhaps it exists independently. Perhaps god plays it on our senses. Perhaps we are in a computer simulation. Perhaps there is no way to know. But until there are at least two models that describe more or less everything we see in the world, invoking Occam is premature.

~~ Paul

[HypnoPsi]

On a fundamental level, though, I agree the materialist is in a worse position. They have no proof at all for the existence of a physical substanceI can hit you over the head with some if you like.


Here you go again.

Why exactly do you believe that objective phenomena are somehow less real from an amaterialist viewpoint?

The assumption of materialism (the sole assumption) is that matter is what exists.


Don't you see the problem right there? Why assume in the first place that "what exists" (objective phenomena) is "matter" or "material"?


We observe that matter exists; materialism states that everything is matter or comes from matter.


But, by your own admission you have to believe in it first!


consciousness arises from physical matter and interacts with itThis is not an assumption. We know that this is true.


But you just admitted that you had to assume that "what exists" is matter. How do you now get from that position to knowing it's "true" that objective phenomena is composed of "matter" or "material"?


There is more evidence supporting this than any other concept. There is no evidence to the contrary.


What evidence is there for these things you believe in like computer consciousness and cells generating consciousness?

Nobody has ever found a way to observe conscoiusness, so how exactly do you know you're not just imagining that cells and computers do these things?

We know that consciousness is a material process

Again, how can you know that consciousness is a material process when, by your own admission, you have to assume that objective phenomena - or "what is" - is made of material?

This physical matter is what exists.


How did you get from no longer just assuming this to knowing this so quickly?

The nature of the Universe is material. The nature of consciousness is material. It's a reasonable assumption that the nature of reality is material. And necessarily more parsimonious than any ontology containing gods.

Only if you believe in material first.

And you Pixy really are very much a true believer.

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

Pixy, I think you hit yourself on the head too many times trying to prove materialism. Your entire post could be summed up: "Materialism is true, therefore you're wrong".


The thing that fascinates me is how he begins his post by admitting materialism is an assumption about "what is" and then goes on to assert he knows it's true.

I thought we'd established and we can't know the ultimate nature of objective phenomena, we can only speculate?

~
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The thing that fascinates me is how he begins his post by admitting materialism is an assumption about "what is" and then goes on to assert he knows it's true.

I thought we'd established and we can't know the ultimate nature of objective phenomena, we can only speculate?
Your confusion may be due to the fact that when you read "material" or "substance," you insist on thinking of it as some ontological existent akin to a rock or something. I can't speak for Pixy, but when I say "substance" I'm just referring to the stuff of the external world that is independent of my awareness. That's why I use the term physicalism instead of materialism, since it was invented to soften up the idea that everything is just solid physical material.

It's just a question of explaining the external world. You seem to think that god is a parsimonious explanation. I think it's just a baroque fabrication with a tenuous connection to the observation that phenomenological awareness is all we really have.

~~ Paul

[HypnoPsi]

The idealist (and/or theist) has a more convincing story.Until someone asks them, for instance, why an air-conditioner won't work or how to stop their buddy from bleeding out after an injury or where to plant seeds to get the best crops next year. Or any other question that requires a useful answer.

Then the utter uselessness and pointlessness of idealism becomes strikingly apparent.


Utterly and completely wrong. Why exactly would the Universe and phenomenal reality work differently or be less real if someone is an amaterialist (or idealist if you prefer)?

Phenomenal reality doesn't change for an amaterilist. It is solely an absence of belief in any type of prima materia substance underlying reality.

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

I do not claim to know that materialism is true.


You're kidding, right? What about your earlier post where you were spouting off about how you just simply knew it was all true (after first stating it was all just an assumption)?

~
HypnoPsi

[articulett]

HypnoPsi,

The crux and strength of your argument is based on selecting as the fundamental existent that one thing you know to exist: your phenomenological awareness. It is from this one surety that you construct your entire model. Unfortunately, your awareness does not include your memory. Your memory is just another one of those external things played upon your senses by god. It is just a brain function. You don't get to use memory as a basic building block of your model. You must derive it from personal consciousness. You must derive both god and his memory of the world. You must derive the means by which the overmind is split into individual minds. You must specify the reason we all don't have god consciousness all the time. You must carefully delineate what is fundamental consciousness and what is god's illusion. You must explain why god has a special position and how he plays the external world on my senses.

"It's all vaguely mind-like" is not an explanation.

~~ Paul

Indeed. If an organ in the brain called a hippocampus is destroyed, that person cannot form new memories. You can Google "Clive Wearing" on youtube to see the horrific result this has. If a person cannot form a memory without a hippocampus-- then what kind of consciousness would there be without a brain? If consciousness is so severely disabled without a hippocampus, what would it be with no brain at all? Non existent--obviously. The convoluted reasoning to deny this boggles my mind-- but not as much as not having a hippocampus would.

[plumjam]

You're kidding, right? What about your earlier post where you were spouting off about how you just simply knew it was all true (after first stating it was all just an assumption)?

~
HypnoPsi

Hypno,
Pixy is your classic faithful materialist fool. I do not bother to answer him, partly because he cannot see past his own dogma, and partly because if I write a paragraph he will write a reply to each sentence, or part of a sentence, with just a sentence of his own... thus ensuring firstly that anyone willing to reply has to put in about 3 times the effort that he did, and secondly that he never has to break into a paragraph and actually present a coherent or at least interesting argument of his own.
I´ve noticed that others who are not newcomers don´t bother to answer him either.
Hey, Pixy, write a paragraph and maybe someone will make an effort for you sometime.

[HypnoPsi]

Because we know that consciousness, mind, and thought are material processes, and not evidence for any sort of idealism.


Make up your mind, Pixy. You can't have it both ways.;

You wrote:

I do not claim to know that materialism is true.


And in an earlier post admitted materialism is an assumption about "what is".

And now you answer Plumjam's very reasonable question by saying you "know" materialism is true.

How exactly do you know this?

Have we not established that the workings and observation of phenomenal reality ("what is") would not change in anyway just because one guy is an idealist/amaterialist and another is a materialist?

How do you know matter exists? How can you tell?

I'm just absent the belief in it. Why aren't you?

~
HypnoPsi

[plumjam]

Indeed. If an organ in the brain called a hippocampus is destroyed, that person cannot form new memories. You can Google "Clive Wearing" on youtube to see the horrific result this has. If a person cannot form a memory without a hippocampus-- then what kind of consciousness would there be without a brain? If consciousness is so severely disabled without a hippocampus, what would it be with no brain at all? Non existent--obviously. The convoluted reasoning to deny this boggles my mind-- but not as much as not having a hippocampus would.

Arti, you could always try to make the Eureka leap of realising that memory is not the same thing as consciousness. Memory is a content of consciousness.
A stone, itself, may have no memory, yet still be part of Universal Consciousness.

[Silentknight]

You were doing fine until you said this:
You seem to be saying that we should just hold onto the idea because of some fondness for the word; harking back to the good old days when atheist materialists could breath easily placing their faith in an orderly mechanical universe of indivisible little particles and the atoms and molecules that are composed from them.

Let's face facts here. Matter, as a theory, is in direct opposition to the God theory. If it exists and is self-perpetuating and self-generating (i.e. uncreated) then God truly is a redundant idea. Do you honestly expect theists and amaterialists to just role over and accept that it's okay for atheists to spread this faith-based belief in schools and society without providing any direct evidence at all for any type of substance, based only on the most wooly of philosophical excuses?
Come on, the argument from persecution and an appeal to conspiracy theories? The strawman that atheism relies on faith? The demand for an equal share in academia without the slighest shred of evidence?

God is the uncreated creator. The first cause or prime mover. The laws of the Universe are God's laws. So it would be more accurate to say that "reality" is part of him.
Heads up, couch jumping at 12 o'clock.

Where's my facepalm mosaic?

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_2190348a9eef45db41.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=13451)

[HypnoPsi]

First of all, the simple currency of consciousness is not sufficient to explain what we see. It does not explain why the trees in my backyard are in the same configuration when I return from vacation, without having been conscious of them while I was gone. Now we have to start talking about god or the Metamind or some such thing that is a huge leap from individual consciousness.


Huge step or not - the point is that theism involves much less of a step than materialism. (And, by the way, I agree completely with your critique of traditional idealism.)

Look Paul, the most scientific thing to do when constructiong a theory is to base it upon as many "knowns" as possible with as few (preferably zero) "unknowns" as possible.

Yes, the final theory will itself still be an "unknown" but if you use any other "unknowns" to reach the final theory then they act like wildcards making your final theory ultimately useless as it's really two theories and, thus, worse than the original situation.

I as a theist am only theorising the existence of another consciousness that is big enough to "think" the entire universe. I don't know it exists but it's a sound theory because, first, I already know that consciousness exists and, second, in principle, it can be tested should someone come along and prove that matter exists and is self-perpetuation and self-sustaining (i.e. uncreated).

But those are very big "ifs", Paul. You as a materialist have a very long way to go with your theory. Which is why it requires a heck of a lot more faith than theism. You've still got to find your substance and even then you have no way of knowing it's genuinely uncreated.

And then there's consciousness. There is absolutely no reason to believe that complex machines generate consciousness any more than simple machines (e.g. Dennett's thermostat).

Why would little bits of matter hitting off each other cause consciousness? You and Pixy and all other materialists are kidding yourselves if you think you have anything even approaching a materalist theory of consciousness.

From what I can see, all of the solutions offered seem to involve just ignoring the problem in some way or other and/or simply assuming that material interactions cause consciousness - and nothing more.

It all requires a heck of a lot more faith than theism regarless of how much you don't want to admit it.

Cheers,
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

Your alternative is to go with matter, for which there will never be any evidence. I go with Overmind, Metamind, God, Universal Consciousness..whatever one wants to call it. For this there is indeed thousands of years of evidence in the form of the likes of expanded consciousness, God-consciousness, Theosis, Fana, Nirvana, Samadhi, the Beatific Vision etc etc..
Of course, most JREFers get to dismiss that evidence by hiding behind the usual ´it´s anecdotal´ or ´it´s subjective´ or ´perception can be wrong sometimes´. Well, given the subject matter, how could such evidence not be?


You'll notice they don't do this with their own subjective belief in "matter" though...

~
HypnoPsi

[articulett]

Wrong.

It takes exactly has much faith as you need to disbelieve in Scientology, fairies and whatever other woo you don't subscribe too.

It's very easy to disbelieve in things for which there is no evidence.

It's easy to disbelieve in invisible immeasurable forms of consciousness because there is no evidence that such things can exist.

It's as easy for me to disbelieve in the invisible entity you call god as it is for you to disbelieve in the invisible things we call sprites.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Arti, you could always try to make the Eureka leap of realising that memory is not the same thing as consciousness. Memory is a content of consciousness.
No, it isn't. I can recall some memories and poke them around in my consciousness for awhile, but my complete memory is certainly not in my consciousness. In fact, it isn't even reliable over time in whatever storage medium it is stored in.

I'm fine with you folks ragging on physicalism, but at least spend some time analyzing your own model. All you have in evidence before you is phenomenal consciousness. The mechanism of your memory is hidden.

~~ Paul

[AkuManiMani]

Specifically, consciousness is self-referential information processing. As I said in... Okay, looks like I didn't say that in this thread. Oops.

Makes your entire post moot, but that's not your fault. I've gone over this in considerable detail in past threads, but I'm happy to cover it again.

Look at it this way. A thinking entity needs the following:

Input - sensory data of some sort
Memory - the ability to memorise past input and output, and hence to learn
Logic - the ability to make decisions based on a mixture of input and memory
Output - some way of interacting with the world

I call this simple creature (which can be simulated with about 50 transistors) aware, but not self-aware. Dennett describes a thermostat as conscious, but I describe it as merely aware.

To be conscious, one must also be aware of oneself. That is, you need feedback from the logic circuits to themselves. Now we're looking at maybe 100 transistors.

This creature (or circuit) can think and feel and act and learn, and it can reflect on the process by which it does this. Not very much, mind you; it only has about 8 bits of memory, total. But it can do it.

We have a whole bunch more RAM and logic circuits, but self-reference is what makes us different from, say, a clock.

So basically, what you're arguing is that conscious awareness is a relatively simple technical feat. The requisite would have to be the four basic requirements you've listed plus the ability for this computational system to feed back on itself. One could easily construct a present day machine built to the specifications you mentioned above and it would meet your criteria for consciousness, yes?

At first glance these are very reasonable criteria. I think its genuinely sufficient for any reasonable definition of intelligence. I would even go far enough to tentatively accept this as a reasonable criteria for consciousness as well. The only problem is that while it works as a model for cognition and general intelligence it does not work as a definition of lucid experience. There are atleast a couple glaring problems with the definition you gave.

One is that sleeping or otherwise unconscious humans meet the criteria you have set. In fact, every living organism does. Memory, the processing of external and internal feed back, and biological/behavioral response (i.e. output) are all central to living processes and they perform these functions better than any artificial construct made to date. Whether one is conscious or not, their brain and body are performing the actions that you say should define consciousness.

Another major flaw with this definition is that it does not explain the qualitative experience of perception. Its one thing for a system to intelligently respond to, say, different wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum or kinetic vibrations. Its quite another to say that it experiences them as what we perceive as colors or sounds. What is a taste, an emotion, or sensation really? Its already clear that humans and other organisms must continually process information concerning their environments and internal states but, atleast for humans like us, this does not always equate with qualitatively experiencing this information input. Its fairly simple to describe how an organism approaches positive sensory stimuli or retreats from the negative (such at the automatic response to pull back from a hot object) but it does not explain why or how one should qualitatively feel that stimuli as 'pleasure' or 'pain'.

Also, it seems that without realizing it, you have made a stronger argument for idealism than any of the idealists have in these threads so far. If even an inanimate object or system could be considered, in some sense, conscious what possible objection could one bring to seriously dispute the idealist position. If every physical process is computational in nature and even an inanimate object like a thermostat or clock can be described as aware how in the world can you in the next breath seriously argue with the idealists. You positions are essentially identical in everything but names.

[HypnoPsi]

Human history tells us that consciousness is capable of becoming deindividuated i.e. transcending egoic consciousness, and merging with Universal Consciousness. There´s thousands of years worth of evidence for my position, in principle there will always be zero for yours.


The crucial points that materialists like to ignore about mystical experiences is that they are confirmed and apperceived (not filtered through the senses).

The are not the same as the ravings of some poor soul who believes they can see spiders everywhere or whatever while nobody else can.

Mystics across continents and generations have described the same things without ever encountering each other.

The fact that they are apperceived is where things get really interesting though. How can we ever be justified in thinking that information that is filtered through the senses before reaching our awareness is somehow more real than what is intuitively known in Enlightenment?

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

if we interfere with cellular activity then consciousness is qualitatively affected.


And if we interfere with a TV ariel the reception is effected.

So what? Correlation is not causation.

~
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Look Paul, the most scientific thing to do when constructiong a theory is to base it upon as many "knowns" as possible with as few (preferably zero) "unknowns" as possible.
You don't know crap-all about god. You just think he seems like he might possibly be something a bit like consciousness. That's it.


I as a theist am only theorising the existence of another consciousness that is big enough to "think" the entire universe. I don't know it exists but it's a sound theory because, first, I already know that consciousness exists and, second, in principle, it can be tested should someone come along and prove that matter exists and is self-perpetuation and self-sustaining (i.e. uncreated).
You can make consciousness as large as you like, but since the concept is based on human consciousness, it can only focus its attention on a fraction of the total content of its memory. You need an explanation for how the rest of the memory of the universe is maintained. It's gods all the way down.


But those are very big "ifs", Paul. You as a materialist have a very long way to go with your theory. Which is why it requires a heck of a lot more faith than theism. You've still got to find your substance and even then you have no way of knowing it's genuinely uncreated.
First of all, I'm not a materialist. I think that ontology is more or less useless. However, at least scientists are working on theories of consciousness. Who is working on a theory of the Overmind?


Why would little bits of matter hitting off each other cause consciousness? You and Pixy and all other materialists are kidding yourselves if you think you have anything even approaching a materalist theory of consciousness.
Your answer to this is simply to declare the entire universe as one giant just-so story. Yet you don't think you're kidding yourself.


It all requires a heck of a lot more faith than theism regarless of how much you don't want to admit it.
You should try capitalizing this, too. Then maybe we'd believe it.

~~ Paul

[AkuManiMani]

The crucial points that materialists like to ignore about mystical experiences is that they are confirmed and apperceived (not filtered through the senses).

The are not the same as the ravings of some poor soul who believes they can see spiders everywhere or whatever while nobody else can.

Mystics across continents and generations have described the same things without ever encountering each other.

The fact that they are apperceived is where things get really interesting though. How can we ever be justified in thinking that information that is filtered through the senses before reaching our awareness is somehow more real than what is intuitively known in Enlightenment?

~
HypnoPsi

The problem is that all that really does is suggest a common biological cause for the phenomenon.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAywxhVvLU4

I think the only thing that could really confirm 'mystical' experiences like NDEs or out of body experiences as anything more than vivid dreams is if persons actually came back with vertical information that they would not otherwise be able to obtain.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Mystics across continents and generations have described the same things without ever encountering each other.
Which is exactly what we'd expect when they have the same sort of brains.


The fact that they are apperceived is where things get really interesting though. How can we ever be justified in thinking that information that is filtered through the senses before reaching our awareness is somehow more real than what is intuitively known in Enlightenment?
Hang on a mo. Why would you say that the thoughts I have while meditating are not filtered through the senses? Those thoughts are not my consciousness; consciousness is not thought. Those thoughts are played on my senses by god, just like a smell or a visual scene, or the memory of the trees in my yard when I return from vacation. There is no reason to place any special trust in them.

Again, you need to spend some time delineating what is the fundamental existent you can trust by direct experience, and what all the other stuff is.

~~ Paul

[Silentknight]

Argument from incredulity, strawman, and strawman:
Why would little bits of matter hitting off each other cause consciousness? You and Pixy and all other materialists are kidding yourselves if you think you have anything even approaching a materalist theory of consciousness.

From what I can see, all of the solutions offered seem to involve just ignoring the problem in some way or other and/or simply assuming that material interactions cause consciousness - and nothing more.

It all requires a heck of a lot more faith than theism regarless of how much you don't want to admit it.

Cheers,
HypnoPsi

Then you should have no trouble explaining everything about God, including its nature, properties, origins (yes, origins) and the mechanism by which it interacts with reality. Failure to do so would be begging the question, and therefore indistinct from the dishonest tactic of taking what you already believe in and plugging it into gaps in knowledge. The problem with your model is that you're forcing open gaps that aren't even there in order to justify it. For the record, even if we had a complete model of consciousness as an emergent property of the chemical and bioelectric processes of the brain, it would not render God meaningless. Unless one's faith is so weak that one requires intelligent design to be true, but I'm sure this is not the case.


As I've said before, I have no problem with skeptical idealism when used as a thought experiment, a basis for inductive reasoning, or a speculative analysis, all of which are important in science. Descartes was not aiming to doubt away reality solely for the sake of cramming God into the little spaces left behind. His God wasn't even an object of worship to him, which drew criticism of his sincerity from theists like Pascal. Rather, he was aiming to lay a foundation on which knowledge of the world is possible and reality can be closely approximated, in other words, science as we know it today.

[HypnoPsi]

It depends entirely on your definition of substance. The important point is that you have to explain how these substantive objects continue to exist, which requires something over and above personal consciousness, the only thing for which you have direct evidence.

~~ Paul


I agree with this completely, Paul. And these are all extremely good points.

God is not proven by theorising the existence of God. I fully accept this.

(And, indeed, other consciousnesses are not proven just by theorising their existence - though evidence for psi is, to me at least, strong evidence that other consciousnesses apart from my own do indeed exist. Indeed, I've always felt that some degree of low-level psi activity is the exact reason why we're all so sure that everyone else is indeed conscious.)

The point is that it requires a lot less faith to be a theist than all the hoop jumping and theorising left, right and centre about this, that and the next thing that materialism requires.

That's just the way it is.

None of it means that someone is "wrong" to be an atheist or a materialist. God knows (sic) I have lots of questions about "God".

And we've not even touched on all the Buddhists out there who are both amaterialist and atheist. (That one really puzzles me!)

~
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

And if we interfere with a TV ariel the reception is effected.

So what? Correlation is not causation.
Uh, well, it is in the case of the TV.

If poking my brain is not the direct cause of the memory I experience immediately thereafter, then there are some other possibilities:

God noticed that you were about to poke my brain and and played the memory in my consciousness. You were still the indirect cause.

God decided to make you poke my brain at the same instant as playing the memory in my consciousness, just to give the illusion of cause and effect.

My recall of the memory was the cause of your poke, in a stunning reversal of normal temporal cause and effect.

My brain is a receiver for my memories. It normally filters out all memories except for the few I'm curently experiencing. Poking my brain temporarily breaks the filter and receives a random memory.

Just wanted to list those possibilities.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The point is that it requires a lot less faith to be a theist than all the hoop jumping and theorising left, right and centre about this, that and the next thing that materialism requires.

That's just the way it is.
The reason you think that you don't have to do a lot of hoop-jumping is because you just accept your own story uncritically. As Stimpson J. Cat once said:

"In other words, it only seems simple if you actually understand it so little that you have no comprehension of how complicated it actually is. This appears to be exactly the case."

I don't understand why everyone in your club isn't jumping all over the science of the Overmind, getting down with the details. Why are you so satisfied?

~~ Paul

[HypnoPsi]

But how do you know you're modelling consciousness?How do you know I am conscious? What about your friends? Or your parents?

I'm very glad you raised this. Solipsism is a very important thought experiment in philosophy that people overlook far too quickly.

Since I can't even objectively prove that anyone I know is conscious how can someone ever know a computer is?

Again, I believe in the evidence for a low level of psi ability in humans from such experiments as the Ganzfeld and staring experiments.

For me, proof of computer consciousness would have to include computer psi ability.

If that was ever demonstrated then that would really give me a lot to think about!

Would your program be conscious if you printed it out on a piece of paper? Why so? Why not so?It would be processing information in a very different way, so I would say no. But it would still experience, because all things experience. Granted, the experience of being a sheet of paper with ink on it is probably very mundane.


I imagine it's probably non-existent.

Why do you say that "all things experience"? And how do you get experierience without consciousness?

Do you think that having it on a hard disk and having an electric current pass though the computer matters somehow? If so, why?Yes. Because the information processing being done is now harnessed rather than random, and is thus computation.

There were mechanical and hydraulic computers long before there were electric powered computers. They were certainly computing data and not just running randomly.

Do you agree with Daniel Dennett about thermostats having beliefs about too hot, too cold and just right?Given a certain definition of belief, of course.


What definition of belief? Would you say there is "experience" in the sense of some very rudimentary form of consciousness as the thermostat processes information about the ambient temperature in order to make a "decision".

~
HypnoPsi

[Dancing David]

It's the organisation into a self-referencing information processing system.


Wow, that is the closest anyone has come to a one sentence definition. Add self organizing (because of the fuzzy brain logic) and you have got it all.

Fantastic !

[rocketdodger]

I would agree, basically, though I think it's important to be aware that visual perception alone, for example, does not really allow the organism to self-distinguish. It needs to feel the body also. It's not clear for me why this is relevant when we're considering how a mass of neurons comes to create consciousness, but no doubt you will explain this.

It is relevant because 1) you have disagreed with such statements in other threads and 2) it is the foundation for a coherent notion of "self" -- which you deny exists.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I'm very glad you raised this. Solipsism is a very important thought experiment in philosophy that people overlook far too quickly.
That's because it loses its punch with even a cursory look. And we both know why: It has no explanation for the consistency of the external world. :D

~~ Paul

[PixyMisa]

Indeed. If an organ in the brain called a hippocampus is destroyed, that person cannot form new memories. You can Google "Clive Wearing" on youtube to see the horrific result this has. If a person cannot form a memory without a hippocampus-- then what kind of consciousness would there be without a brain? If consciousness is so severely disabled without a hippocampus, what would it be with no brain at all? Non existent--obviously. The convoluted reasoning to deny this boggles my mind-- but not as much as not having a hippocampus would.
Yep.

This is what turned our understanding that mind is brain function from overwhelming correlative evidence to overwhelming causative evidence: Not what the mind does when the brain is working, but what the mind does when the brain is broken.

From ten thousand years of substance abuse, to Phineas Gage, to the blind gentleman navigating the obstacle course unaided, we have been able to map out, piece by piece, what parts of the brain are responsible for what.

Until there is nothing left.

HypnoPsi, Plumjam, Malerin: You do not grasp how much is known today about how the brain generates the mind. There is simply no room left for any rational question here.

Listen to the MIT Introduction to Psychology (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Brain-and-Cognitive-Sciences/9-00Fall-2004/CourseHome/index.htm) lecture series. Listen to all of it. Stop making things up about shared mystical experiences and learn what really goes on in the brain - it is far more exciting and infinitely more important.

[Nick227]

And if we interfere with a TV ariel the reception is effected.

So what? Correlation is not causation.

~
HypnoPsi

For sure, it could be that the brain is just channelling a pure, undifferentiated consciousness, and creating a world of limited form from it. But personally, I still see problems here. I don't buy the 'brain in a vat' argument. It's too complex to set up, as Dennett points out, and actually there's quite a liklihood that there is no Stream of Consciousness, as Blackmore says. I mean, for sure we will never know with any degree of certainty what's really going on. Evolution only answers questions to a certain degree. All other theories do the same. But I think a lot of the propositions that idealist and theist ideologies have been based upon in the past have now been pretty much overthrown.

I buy materialism over deism because deism doesn't matter to me. So what if there's a God and it just doing it's thing? What does it matter? So what if it's there and it can never be proven it's there? If there's a God and it's so feeble it needs this creation of it to believe in it then I say "**** that God," and I can do so wholeheartedly. I refuse to believe in an entity that needs me to believe in it. The Gnostics had this whole scene down pat 2000 years ago. They let go of the demi-urge because they understood that mankind could only lose by accepting its sovereignty.

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

The issue is that we choose to exercise a great deal of free will in certain instances, and think we have, when in fact we did not.


No. That is simply not what any of these studies have suggested. All of these studies rely on subjective judging on the part of the subject in some way or another - usually about timing at the milisecond level.

The experimental design simply cannot control all of the variables necessary to reach the conclusion you have reached.


People like him can't simply say "soooo many people feel this... so it must be there," anymore. Numbers don't matter now, because we have these studies that show every single human was wrong about a perception of their own consciousness.


But that is only to accuse PlumJam of doing exactly what you have ended up doing yourself. The data Libet, for example, gained was all based on the subjects judgement of timing.

It's very interesting but there is no way to know it's truly reliable.

~
HypnoPsi

[Ichneumonwasp]

The thing is, if you define dualism as two incommensurate substances (by that I´m taking you to mean two kinds of stuff which could not in principle effectively interact with each other) somehow mysteriously interacting, then you have already decided the problem, in your favour, via your definitions.
My own position is that there are various types of stuff in reality, which manage to interact effectively with each other, within the (as a nod to your outlook) monism of idealism or Universal Consciousness . Soul, mind and body might be a few examples.
The fact that we don´t, in 2008, understand within our particular society, in a way which can be represented in numbers and mathematical relationships, how this happens, is, to me, of almost no import.
The alternative of a monism of matter, which no one will in principle have any kind of evidence for, would be a case of taking faith too far. And this in a millieu in which faith (at least on this forum) is more or less despised.


OK, but I didn't develop the idea of substance or the interaction problem. We have all inherited it from Plato and Descartes. So, it isn't me stacking the deck. I assume you are familiar with many of the details so we needn't repeat them.

And, again, the issue isn't really that we don't know how differing substances are supposed to interact, as though the mechanism is out there waiting for us, but that the very idea of mechanism implies the sort of stuff we deal with on a daily basis and which is commonly covered by "materialism" (though I don't particularly like that term) -- meaning, simply, rule following.

I don't think it matters what the underlying "stuff" is. You can't know it. I can't know it. None of us can know it. I'm fine with anyone who wants to call it God, Mind, whatever.

What we can know is that thought exists. It is, however, an assumption to move from that epistemic statement that we know thought exists to the idea that thought is the primary existent on which everything is built. That requires a leap itself, so we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that the means by which epistemology is possible equals fundamental ontology.

I'm afraid that radical doubt leaves us with radical doubt minus "thought exists (or thought happens)". If you can provide a means outside that state you would have produced a viable and interesting philosophy. Descartes' solution was to try and prove the existence of God, which isn't a particularly satisfying solution because his ontological proof doesn't work well enough to prove what he wanted.

[Dancing David]

The computational activity of a single living neuron alone is mind boggling.


Not really, the simple models is as follows

Chance of firing = base rate + (potentiation matrix) - (attenuation matrix)

base rate will be effected by various other factors such as how often it has fired and availability of metabolites, presence of chemicals and lack of chemicals. Sodium, potasium and calcium are required for the cell to fire.

Cell C 'remembers' or associates with the cells around it, if cell P fires and then cell C fires then cell C is more likely to fire again in the presence of cell P firing (potentiation). If cell C doesn't fire and cell A does fire then cell C is less likely to fire when cell A fires (attenuation).

So you then have a matrix of association. The value for each input cell is plastic and variable, depending on contingent history it will be part of the potentiation matrix or the attenuation matrix.

This is the base unit of association.

Please note that when I say fire i mean that a phase shift occurs in the cell membrane and that channels open to allow ions to cross the membrane, this is the basis of 'transmission' along the cell IE firing. There is not really an electrical signal, it is biochemical.

The way that cells talk to each other is by releasing neurotransmitter into the post synaptic cleft.

[Dancing David]

On the 2nd point, the idealist is also in a slightly better position. The materialist has no explanation how or why consciousess should arise from a bunch of physical stuff (neurons), while the idealist has some evidence of the interaction of perception, thought, and mind. We all know what it is to perceive something, think about it, and experience those thoughts in our mind. For the idealist, the story gets a little fuzzy on where all the objects we experience come from (group mind, God's mind, one mind), but that is also an objection for the materalist: where did all this physical matter come from? Which leads to the 3rd point:

.

Nope the idealist faces exactly the same issues, how does 'consciousness' arise in different beings composed of bits of consciousness?

Bits of mind, bits of matter, the problems are exactly the same.

[PixyMisa]

Uh, well, it is in the case of the TV.

If poking my brain is not the direct cause of the memory I experience immediately thereafter, then there are some other possibilities:

God noticed that you were about to poke my brain and and played the memory in my consciousness. You were still the indirect cause.

God decided to make you poke my brain at the same instant as playing the memory in my consciousness, just to give the illusion of cause and effect.

My recall of the memory was the cause of your poke, in a stunning reversal of normal temporal cause and effect.

My brain is a receiver for my memories. It normally filters out all memories except for the few I'm curently experiencing. Poking my brain temporarily breaks the filter and receives a random memory.
The last one doesn't really work in detail, though. You have to ignore pretty much everything going on in the brain to pretend that it's true.

What these are, basically, is man-in-the-middle attacks on causality. We observe that when we do A we reliably get B. The idealist or dualist (it's so hard to tell them apart!) says, no, C causes B. There is no evidence for this C. No explanation is presented for the correlation between A and B (except in the case of reversed causality).

The other problem with all these ideas is that A still causes B. Blithely ignoring their tortured metaphysics, the Universe continues on as though materialism were true.

Two choices, guys: Isomorphic with materialism, or wrong.

[rocketdodger]

Utterly and completely wrong. Why exactly would the Universe and phenomenal reality work differently or be less real if someone is an amaterialist (or idealist if you prefer)?

Phenomenal reality doesn't change for an amaterilist. It is solely an absence of belief in any type of prima materia substance underlying reality.

~
HypnoPsi

Huh?

I didn't say anything changed. I just said amaterialism is pointless from a pragmatic standpoint.

Let me ask you this -- is there any advantage to thinking of a boulder as a figment of the universal imagination, or whatever amaterial nonsense one can come up with, rather than simply a boulder? Absolutely not -- unless you are trying to reconcile everything with an assumption that a universal imagination exists, for whatever reason.

And that, right there, is the only reason anyone is an "amaterialist." Nobody starts out that way -- when a human is first exposed to the world, a boulder is a boulder, fire is fire, food is food. Material is material. It is only when people try to rationalize the big sky daddy that they come up with incoherent notions such as "amaterial."

And it is incoherent, because as everyone here who is a materialist has been telling you, being material is simply a property of something. Thats all. You are arguing with an obsolete strawman. And to say that there is a thing that could be without this property is utter nonsense, because we were clever enough to devise the property such that if a human can even speak of a thing it must have this property.

[PixyMisa]

For sure, it could be that the brain is just channelling a pure, undifferentiated consciousness, and creating a world of limited form from it. But personally, I still see problems here. I don't buy the 'brain in a vat' argument. It's too complex to set up, as Dennett points out, and actually there's quite a liklihood that there is no Stream of Consciousness, as Blackmore says. I mean, for sure we will never know with any degree of certainty what's really going on. Evolution only answers questions to a certain degree. All other theories do the same. But I think a lot of the propositions that idealist and theist ideologies have been based upon in the past have now been pretty much overthrown.

I buy materialism over deism because deism doesn't matter to me. So what if there's a God and it just doing it's thing? What does it matter? So what if it's there and it can never be proven it's there? If there's a God and it's so feeble it needs this creation of it to believe in it then I say "**** that God," and I can do so wholeheartedly. I refuse to believe in an entity that needs me to believe in it. The Gnostics had this whole scene down pat 2000 years ago. They let go of the demi-urge because they understood that mankind could only lose by accepting its sovereignty.

Nick
Nick, every part of that post made sense, and indeed, I agree with most of it. (I have a lot more confidence that science will explain all the details of consciousness, though.)

Since we've had some fairly strident disagreements in the past, I just wanted to say that. :)

[nescafe]

I realise from experience it´s hardly worth replying, but here goes..

A bit touchy, are we?


In other words you´d rather not fully adress the point. Probably because it´s the first time it has been presented to you and you have no pat preprepared good materialist response that someone else would have written.
No, my stance on the nature of the self is more in line with Buddhist ideas with a little bit of Dan Dennett thrown in. As far as I am aware, materialism does not have much to say directly about the self, and I do not think it is terribly relevant to the fundamental nature of reality.


The customary lazy appeal for evidence when you don´t have any strong or at least interesting counter arguments to make.
You made the claim, provide the evidence.

Also your misrepresentation of me saying that those with ego loss would be the primary occupants of mental asylums. I never said such.
Then what did you mean by this:

Mental asylums are full of people who have, for one reason or another, suffered ego loss.

Perhaps you can clarify, and maybe provide a bit o' evidence.

To an ant? Clearly you avoid my point. As elsewhere.You introduced the ant, not I. I did not see what the point of that was then, and I do not now -- I just want a decent explanation of what Universal Consciousness is supposed to be or what
it is supposed to explain. You brought up the ant, presumably in some sort of attempt to imply that any answer would necessarily be beyond human understanding. If that is the case, how is Universal
Consciousness a parsimonious concept, much less a useful one?


Well, what is the point of even positing it, then? You posit a thing called Universal Consciousness, call it the fundamental nature of reality, but then assert that questions about how it works are meaningless? Sounds like a useless concept to me.
In what sense would the ultimate nature of reality need to be useful?

My take on it:
The ultimate nature of reality (noumenal reality) is unknowable -- Kant nailed that one. Therefore, any particular metaphysic we happen to explore is useful to the degree it helps us understand the reality we perceive and how well it integrates with the rest of our fields of study.

By far the most useful stance we have when trying to investigate reality is methodological naturalism, which does not imply any specific metaphysic. If I am forced to take a specific metaphysical stance, that stance is naturalism -- it does not matter what the ultimate nature of reality is, only that whatever rules it obey be consistent.

The fact that you keep repeating these prejudices indicates they go pretty deep in you. Most likely on little evidence except what you´ve been raised to believe.
Getting a little personal, are we? Try attacking my argument instead of resorting to amateur psychoanalysis.

´How it works´ is not synonymous with understanding.
It is as close as we can get. Ultimate understanding -- understanding noumenal reality -- is not possible. Even if we happen to stumble across the "right" explanation, we still have no way of proving that it is, in fact, the right one, only that it is correct in all cases so far.

Any understanding you came to of how particular things work would not include how those particular things managed to come into existence and maintain their existence. Thus your approach
is flawed.
Of course it is flawed. It is merely consistent with everything else in my understanding, and is subject to revision in light of new facts, as any good explanation should be.

Ít´s entirely useless to explain the interrealtionship of things if you cannot explain the genesis of the things themselves. So your effort in this regard would always be futile.
We don't have a single widely agreed on explanation of how life originated -- does that make the Theory of Evolution useless as an explanation of the diversity of life, or make biology as a whole useless in explaining how life works right now? Of course not. Try a different line of reasoning, this one does not work.



The accounts I have read of both from people who are not mentally ill is close enough that I assume they are the same phenomenon.

Superficial investigation then.
Yup, just some anecdata from myself and some of my friends (both of the kensho experience and chemical experience), some biographical literature from experienced psychonauts and Buddhist monks. All I have time for, really -- being a sole provider for my family and all that.


Then why invoke the experience of dying in your reply as some kind of support?
I didn't. I merely noted that death is the final ego loss. Sorry you misunderstood.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

The last one doesn't really work in detail, though. You have to ignore pretty much everything going on in the brain to pretend that it's true.
Agreed. But that's what we're doing, right? Ignoring pretty much everything we know about the brain.

~~ Paul

[PixyMisa]

Nope the idealist faces exactly the same issues, how does 'consciousness' arise in different beings composed of bits of consciousness?

Bits of mind, bits of matter, the problems are exactly the same.
Indeed. Idealists are constantly trying to do an end run around this problem and claim victory, but they face exactly the same problem materialists do, because we do not experience mind as a universal substance, we experience individual, separate minds in a shared objective universe.

One of the tricks is to claim evidence of shared minds. There is no such evidence. There's five thousand years of anecdotes, but when put to the test, it always fails.

For many forms of idealism, the idealist is left with trying to explain the apparent shared objective reality too, so those forms of idealism are intrinsically weaker than materialism, special pleading notwithstanding.

[Malerin]

I, for one, am glad no one here "blindly adheres" to materialism. That just wouldn't happen among such a skeptical group of... skepticists.

Am I right, Wasp?;)

[Silentknight]

The reason you think that you don't have to do a lot of hoop-jumping is because you just accept your own story uncritically. As Stimpson J. Cat once said:

"In other words, it only seems simple if you actually understand it so little that you have no comprehension of how complicated it actually is. This appears to be exactly the case."

I don't understand why everyone in your club isn't jumping all over the science of the Overmind, getting down with the details. Why are you so satisfied?

~~ Paul

Just to get this out of the way, the response to that is going to be the tu quoque fallacy that the "exclusive materialist atheists" also fill in the details of their model of reality with heapfuls of faith.

Yep.

This is what turned our understanding that mind is brain function from overwhelming correlative evidence to overwhelming causative evidence: Not what the mind does when the brain is working, but what the mind does when the brain is broken.

From ten thousand years of substance abuse, to Phineas Gage, to the blind gentleman navigating the obstacle course unaided, we have been able to map out, piece by piece, what parts of the brain are responsible for what.

Until there is nothing left.

HypnoPsi, Plumjam, Malerin: You do not grasp how much is known today about how the brain generates the mind. There is simply no room left for any rational question here.

Listen to the MIT Introduction to Psychology (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Brain-and-Cognitive-Sciences/9-00Fall-2004/CourseHome/index.htm) lecture series. Listen to all of it. Stop making things up about shared mystical experiences and learn what really goes on in the brain - it is far more exciting and infinitely more important.
I hate to ask this, but for those of us who can't stream videos (I do have broadband but Flash player murdered my system) would anyone be able to sum up the important points in the MIT lectures? Or better yet, is there a transcript or a place I could read up on this so that I don't have to play the video? Either way, it would be helpful to have it here in this debate.

[HypnoPsi]

What's the difference between saying "stuff is physical" and saying "stuff is Overmind"?


Saying stuff is "physical" (in the sense of materialism) is less parsimonious.


You see evidence for noumena? That is, objects as they appear in themselves, independent of perception? Well then, we agree. There are objects independent of your perception. How do they work?


Again, I don't think we can ever know for sure (at least, not via direct observation) whether objective phenomena (noumena) are sustained by "matter" or "God's laws/thoughts".

My only point is that materialism is considerably less parsinonious and requires a great deal more mental gymnastics and faith than theism.

Surely you must see this by now? Saying "God did it" is always going to be the simplest explanation of all.

How are these Overmind-thought brain processes distinguished from physical brain processes?


There is no distinguishing about it. Amaterialism is simply an absense of belief in some fundamental prima materia substance or other. Not all amaterialists are theists. Buddhists for example are both amaterialist and atheist.

This is only about what is the most parsimonious theory to explain the situation. As you've said yourself, it depends how you define substance.

Stubbing your toe on a bit of reality is still going to get the same result regardless of whether or not it's true essence and ultimate nature is material or 'vitalistic'.

What shall we call the substantial external world that this Overmind generates for us?


There you go sneaking in the world substantial when "phenomenal" would serve much better.

And, I just call the Universe the Universe. The fact that I am absent the belief that their is any substance at the root essence of things doesn't change my interactions with objective phenomena in any way.

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

Except that we can make repeatable observations about matter and its nature, and different people will get the same results regardless of their perception or bias.

Nobody has ever observed matter - ever. We can observe and measure objective phenomenal reality. That's all.

We absolutely do not know that it's ultimate essence is some uncreated, self-perpetuating and self-generating "stuff".

~
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I, for one, am glad no one here "blindly adheres" to materialism. That just wouldn't happen among such a skeptical group of... skepticists.
I doubt anyone does blindly adhere to materialism. I think it's more accurate to say that we blindly adhere to scientific epistemology/naturalism.

What part of "I think two well-thought-out monisms would turn out to be equivalent" is so difficult to understand?

~~ Paul

[rocketdodger]

Since I can't even objectively prove that anyone I know is conscious how can someone ever know a computer is?

By definining consciousness in terms of behavior rather than magic.

Again, I believe in the evidence for a low level of psi ability in humans from such experiments as the Ganzfeld and staring experiments.

For me, proof of computer consciousness would have to include computer psi ability.

If that was ever demonstrated then that would really give me a lot to think about!

You have to assume the existence of "psi" to begin with for the Ganzfeld experiments to suggest it. You haven't heard such criticisms before? I find that hard to believe.

In particular, there is a much simpler and more credible explanation for such results -- since human minds are similar, they might have similar thoughts. As in, if you ask 1000 people what their favorite flavor of ice cream is, a statistically significant portion will report "chocolate." Do you also consider that evidence of "psi?"

Why do you say that "all things experience"? And how do you get experierience without consciousness?

Because the only way my definition of experience can be non-contradictory is for all things to experience.

And experience is not equivalent to consciousness, or even dependent on consciousness. Were you "conscious" of all the little things you experienced while driving home from work on the freeway? Of course not. In my view, "consciousness" is simply the result of reasoning about experience.

There were mechanical and hydraulic computers long before there were electric powered computers. They were certainly computing data and not just running randomly.

This has nothing to do with your prior question or my response.

What definition of belief? Would you say there is "experience" in the sense of some very rudimentary form of consciousness as the thermostat processes information about the ambient temperature in order to make a "decision".

I would not say it is conscious in the same self-aware sense as a human, because even if there is self-awareness (as in Pixy's 100 transistor machine) there isn't a sufficient level of reasoning going on.

But is that what "conscious" means? I dunno. These discussions always prove ultimately fruitless because everyone is using different definitions. Rather than talk about things being "conscious" I prefer to talk about things exhibiting a list of behaviors.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Saying stuff is "physical" (in the sense of materialism) is less parsimonious.

I disagree. You are ignoring the complexity. You refuse to answer the questions I've asked over and over.


Surely you must see this by now? Saying "God did it" is always going to be the simplest explanation of all.
You haven't explained how the universe works. You don't get to employ Occam yet. It's only simpler because it isn't an explanation. Surely you must see this by now.

There you go sneaking in the world substantial when "phenomenal" would serve much better.
I use the word substantial in the sense of:

1b : not imaginary or illusory : REAL, TRUE

My point being that your preoccupation with whether I call your godstuff "substance" is silly. You're attributing complexity to "substance" and trying hard to make sure it doesn't rub off on your godstuff. But you have the same complicated reality to explain.

~~ Paul

[Silentknight]

Nobody has ever observed matter - ever. We can observe and measure objective phenomenal reality. That's all.

Did you read the rest of what I said? I said that our observations and measurements of matter, or rather the "objective phenomenal reality" that we call matter, are repeatable and will be consistent for different individuals regardless of their religious bias. This was in order to contrast it with the observations of the "Overmind experience" which have huge variations depending on who it was and what they already believe, and cannot reliably be repeated in other individuals.

We absolutely do not know that it's ultimate essence is some uncreated, self-perpetuating and self-generating "stuff".

~
HypnoPsi
Which, again, makes absolutely no difference, and gives us no reason to invent a God to plug into the holes.

[PixyMisa]

Agreed. But that's what we're doing, right? Ignoring pretty much everything we know about the brain.
I think that one is broken in a more direct way than the others.

If causality is reversed, and the mental causes the physical, we have a very very weird but entirely consistent picture of a Universe which runs backwards in time.

If you stick God into the middle (or beginning, or end) of every causal chain, you have an entirely unnecessary assumption, but everything works out fine.

But the radio receiver analogy fails to predict what we observe. As Articulett pointed out, a damaged hippocampus prevents the brain from forming new permanent memories (actually, only specific types of new permanent memories!), but existing memories are retained. As you study brain activity in more and more detail, you eventually end up with every neuron being a transmitter and a receiver communicating with an unevidenced entity and producing results that are in all ways identical to what we would expect the neuron to do based on its physics and chemistry.

(Of course, you know that, just presenting the point to our audience. :))

[PixyMisa]

I hate to ask this, but for those of us who can't stream videos (I do have broadband but Flash player murdered my system) would anyone be able to sum up the important points in the MIT lectures? Or better yet, is there a transcript or a place I could read up on this so that I don't have to play the video? Either way, it would be helpful to have it here in this debate.
They're just audio; I downloaded them and put them on my iPod.

There are lecture notes, but no transcripts unfortunately.

[rocketdodger]

No. That is simply not what any of these studies have suggested. All of these studies rely on subjective judging on the part of the subject in some way or another - usually about timing at the milisecond level.

The experimental design simply cannot control all of the variables necessary to reach the conclusion you have reached.

But that is only to accuse PlumJam of doing exactly what you have ended up doing yourself. The data Libet, for example, gained was all based on the subjects judgement of timing.

It's very interesting but there is no way to know it's truly reliable.

~
HypnoPsi

I told you I was not talking about the Libet experiments.

Here: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html

If you can't find the full text, it is summed up in many places, just google the paper title, "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain."

Long story short, they used MRI technology, computer pattern recognition, and a whole bunch of more reliable techniques than the old Libet experiments. And their results showed a much larger time difference as well.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

But the radio receiver analogy fails to predict what we observe. As Articulett pointed out, a damaged hippocampus prevents the brain from forming new permanent memories (actually, only specific types of new permanent memories!), but existing memories are retained. As you study brain activity in more and more detail, you eventually end up with every neuron being a transmitter and a receiver communicating with an unevidenced entity and producing results that are in all ways identical to what we would expect the neuron to do based on its physics and chemistry.
See how useful these unevidenced entities are? They can accommodate everything we discover about the brain.

As Interesting Ian once admitted, there is absolutely nothing we can discover about the brain that is anything other than the neural correlates of consciousness. We will not discover consciousness.

~~ Paul

[tsig]

Yep.

This is what turned our understanding that mind is brain function from overwhelming correlative evidence to overwhelming causative evidence: Not what the mind does when the brain is working, but what the mind does when the brain is broken.

From ten thousand years of substance abuse, to Phineas Gage, to the blind gentleman navigating the obstacle course unaided, we have been able to map out, piece by piece, what parts of the brain are responsible for what.

Until there is nothing left.

HypnoPsi, Plumjam, Malerin: You do not grasp how much is known today about how the brain generates the mind. There is simply no room left for any rational question here.

Listen to the MIT Introduction to Psychology (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Brain-and-Cognitive-Sciences/9-00Fall-2004/CourseHome/index.htm) lecture series. Listen to all of it. Stop making things up about shared mystical experiences and learn what really goes on in the brain - it is far more exciting and infinitely more important.

If they learned anything it would defile their pristine minds and then they would no longer be able to hear the Music of the Spheres.

[PixyMisa]

Nobody has ever observed matter - ever.
Nobody has ever observed anything but matter. The act of observation is itself a material process.

Listen to the lectures, HypnoPsi. They are presented by Prof. Jeremy Wolfe, whose field of research is visual perception, so considerable attention is given to that area. He explains how every part of the visual processing system works, from photons striking the retina to you recognising your mother - possibly incorrectly, and he explains that too.

You can't avoid this; it's as absurd as claiming that aeroplanes can't fly - when you're 30,000 feet over the Pacific.

[HypnoPsi]

I don't care what you call it, but there is a substantive external reality.


There is a real objective phenomenal external reality that we can observe, weigh, measure and interact with. Believing that its essense is some fundamental material substance or other is pure faith born of nothing but speculation.

Why is the god hypothesis any better than the actual substance hypothesis?

Because, for the nth time, it is so clearly more parsimonious. This point has been shown very clearly many times in this thread.

Theism only requries one to theorise another consciousness existing. Since we know that consciousness exists, the God theory is predicated from a good starting position.

"Matter" as the essence of things isn't predicated on anything at all.

Materialism is there therefore not as parsimonious as theism.

Consciousness is clearly the only other thing we know of that can store information.What does "other" refer to? Don't computers store information?

You're confusing levels. Computers are phenomenal objects. We're asking about the essense of those phenomenal objects.

Of course, if someone really wants to believe that reality is some type of matrix-esq construct, I suppose that's up to them.

Why does God need to refresh your memory?

If His/Her/It's laws are happily working away then why won't your house, for example, still be there when you return from work and/or why would you forget it?
Because I don't have any memory. All I have is consciousness, remember?

Nope. Why don't you have any memory?


You're basing this entire model on one thing: personal phenomenological consciousness.

Yes, my theism is predicated on something that exists - my consciousness. "Materialism" is not predicated on anything that exists at all.

All the other aspects of the model, including memory and god and Overmind, are just-so concepts that you think are reasonable to posit because they are kinda like consciousness and therefore don't require any evidence.

What is it with you and memory?

I'm perfectly happy to say that's mainly stored in the (phenomenal) human brain.

You have less evidence for being able to derive god from personal consciousness than the materialist has for being able to derive consciousness from brain function.

Look Paul, there is no absolutely theory or reason why little bits of matter (for which there is absolutely no evidence at all) interacting and bouncing off one and other would cause consciousness to exist.

You don't have any evidence at all that consciousness is derived from brain function and beliving it doesn't make it so. At best you've got mental events and nothing more.

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

Do you think that only atheists believe there is an external world independent of conscious beings?

No.

~
HypnoPsi

[Ichneumonwasp]

I know some of the folks here have actual training in philosophy, so please critique away at this:

Under discussion now, at heart, is the implications of the cogito. Since most people have already realized that the cogito does not prove that "I" exist, but that thought exists we needn't cover the "I" side of the issue.

But, and I'm sure this has been covered in the history of philosophy before, the cogito seems to work because it contains hidden assumptions of its own.

Mathematical proofs work because they simply play out underlying assumptions (axioms), and philosophical proofs seem to do the same.

Knowledge implies thought; it is not possible without it. So, knowledge already assumes the "existence" of thought. The cogito, therefore, simply plays out the trivial issue that knowledge includes thought, or that thought is more fundamental than knowledge.

So, that we know thought exists does not imply that thought is a primary constituent of the universe, it implies that knowledge is not possible without thought.

If we want to postulate that thought is the primary constituent of the universe, that's fine; but it is just as much as assumption as to postulate that the apeiron is the fundamental constituent of the universe.

[articulett]

The crucial points that materialists like to ignore about mystical experiences is that they are confirmed and apperceived (not filtered through the senses).

The are not the same as the ravings of some poor soul who believes they can see spiders everywhere or whatever while nobody else can.

Mystics across continents and generations have described the same things without ever encountering each other.

The fact that they are apperceived is where things get really interesting though. How can we ever be justified in thinking that information that is filtered through the senses before reaching our awareness is somehow more real than what is intuitively known in Enlightenment?

~
HypnoPsi

I think mystics use such garbled language that they can imagine they are describing the same things. Tom Cruise and forum member, Fred car perceive thetans and engrams and and Xenu... Rain dancers perceive rain gods... those who sacrificed virgins to volcanoes believed that this pleased gods... astrologists perceive planetary influences... palm readers perceive lines in the palm as "signs"--

I think we have tons of evidence that people are very good at twisting facts to support what they've come to believe in... I don't think there's any evidence that these people are describing or perceiving the same things. Their descriptions are indistinguishable from people describing drug trips, parietal lobe seizures, and schizophrenic delusions. There is no means of separating one woo claim from another as far as veracity goes. To you it might all sound like they are describing the same things just as all believers in god imagine that people all believe in the exact same immeasurable invisible entity-- but they sure don't sound the same to me.

[AkuManiMani]

Not really, the simple models is as follows

Chance of firing = base rate + (potentiation matrix) - (attenuation matrix)

base rate will be effected by various other factors such as how often it has fired and availability of metabolites, presence of chemicals and lack of chemicals. Sodium, potasium and calcium are required for the cell to fire.

Cell C 'remembers' or associates with the cells around it, if cell P fires and then cell C fires then cell C is more likely to fire again in the presence of cell P firing (potentiation). If cell C doesn't fire and cell A does fire then cell C is less likely to fire when cell A fires (attenuation).

So you then have a matrix of association. The value for each input cell is plastic and variable, depending on contingent history it will be part of the potentiation matrix or the attenuation matrix.

This is the base unit of association.

Please note that when I say fire i mean that a phase shift occurs in the cell membrane and that channels open to allow ions to cross the membrane, this is the basis of 'transmission' along the cell IE firing. There is not really an electrical signal, it is biochemical.

The way that cells talk to each other is by releasing neurotransmitter into the post synaptic cleft.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was taught that the action potential propagating along the membrane of neurons is electrochemical in nature and its at the juncture of the synapses that these are converted into the purely chemical signals via neurotransmitters.

I don't remember exactly where, but I also recall reading about studies concerned with modeling the computational functions of single neurons. I'll definitely have to check it out a bit more and will provide a link if I can actually find the source again :)

[HypnoPsi]

Unfortunately, your awareness does not include your memory. Your memory is just another one of those external things played upon your senses by god. It is just a brain function. You don't get to use memory as a basic building block of your model. You must derive it from personal consciousness. You must derive both god and his memory of the world.


Paul,

You have absolutely lost me with all this stuff about memory.

~
HypnoPsi

[PixyMisa]

Articulett - absolutely. When HypnoPsi says
Mystics across continents and generations have described the same things without ever encountering each other.That just plain isn't true. Not unless you twist all their descriptions until none of them any longer resemble the original.

But from someone who accepts the Ganzfeld experiments as gospel while ignoring all of modern neuroscience, that's hardly a great leap.

[AkuManiMani]

Paul,

You have absolutely lost me with all this stuff about memory.

~
HypnoPsi

I think what hes saying is that w/o memory there can be no perceivable stream of consciousness.

[HypnoPsi]

There is no evidence for god, either.


I have always made it clear that God being the most parsimonious theory is not evidence for God.

My only point is that theism is more parsimonious than materialism for several very clear and fully explained reasons.

Sure, there are lots of unanswered questions left. I never said there wouldn't be.

All I am saying is that it very obviously requires more faith to be a materialist since materialism is not predicated on any known thing unlike the God theory.

That "not being predicated on any known thing" is the crux of the issue as to why materialism has to multiply unknowns and therefore so obviously not as parsimonious a theory as the God theory.

~
HypnoPsi

[PixyMisa]

I don't remember exactly where, but I also recall reading about studies concerned with modeling the computational functions of single neurons. I'll definitely have to check it out a bit more and will provide a link if I can actually find the source again :)
That would be interesting. Certainly a neuron is considerably more sophisticated than a single logic gate; but then, a logic gate can run a million or so times faster.

[PixyMisa]

I have always made it clear that God being the most parsimonious theory is not evidence for God.

My only point is that theism is more parsimonious than materialism for several very clear and fully explained reasons.
All of which are wrong.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Nope. Why don't you have any memory?
The only thing I know I have is phenomenological consciousness. That doesn't include my memory. My memory is a second-order thing.


Yes, my theism is predicated on something that exists - my consciousness. "Materialism" is not predicated on anything that exists at all.
Your consciousness doesn't include your memory. The concept of god is derived from your personal consciousness. Therefore god does not have memory without some additional mechanism to provide it.


What is it with you and memory?

I'm perfectly happy to say that's mainly stored in the (phenomenal) human brain.
Then you cannot attribute memory directly to the god that you have derived from personal human consciousness. He needs his own meta-phenomenal god brain to house his memories, which are maintained by a meta-god. It's turtles, baby.

You are doing something similar to the intelligent design folks. They derive the concept of god as an intelligent designer by analogy to human design. Unfortunately, human designers can only use existing materials to build things; they have no way of creating stuff from nothing. Therefore, by analogy, the god of intelligent design is not the creator of the universe, he is merely an engineer.

You have derived your god by analogy to personal human consciousness. You cannot give the god any additional capabilities without exceeding the analogy and therefore having no foundation for the additional capabilities. In particular, your god has no memory, since memory is not part of personal human consciousness.

All I am trying to point out is that your complete model of reality includes a core derived from the one thing you're sure of (phenomenal consciousness) and a whole lot of additional features that you cannot be sure of because they are not attributes of consciousness. You have some splainin' to do. You need a science of the Overmind.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You have absolutely lost me with all this stuff about memory.
See above.

~~ Paul

[HypnoPsi]

I can't speak for Pixy, but when I say "substance" I'm just referring to the stuff of the external world that is independent of my awareness.

The point is what theory is the stronger regarding the essence of phenomenal objects. Why are they there when, as modern physics has confirmed, they are nothing but information. What sustains them?

I really do think that at the end of the day, if someone genuinely doesn't have any belief in the God theory, then ultimately they really must think that somehow all the phenomena in the universe (gravity, planets, Koala bears, etc.,) are something more than just pure information due to the fact that things do indeed have an existence when we're not conscious of them.

It's that "what sustains things/is the essence of things" when we're not looking that's at the root of the issue.


That's why I use the term physicalism instead of materialism, since it was invented to soften up the idea that everything is just solid physical material.


And I note the way you all use it! I honestly don't see how you can deny that the way atheists explain things really does lead people to believe that phenomenal objects and phenomenal reality are something other than information.

I see it as all being materialism by the back door.

It's just a question of explaining the external world. You seem to think that god is a parsimonious explanation. I think it's just a baroque fabrication with a tenuous connection to the observation that phenomenological awareness is all we really have.

Again, God (theism) is predicated on something known - consciousness. I accept it's only a theory. But it's definitely a much better theory (as in, more parsimonious) due to it being predicated on something "real" and "known". Materialism, in the traditional sense, isn't predicated on anything. It's speculation based upon speculation.

~
HypnoPsi

[Silentknight]

There is a real objective phenomenal external reality that we can observe, weigh, measure and interact with. Believing that its essense is some fundamental material substance or other is pure faith born of nothing but speculation.
Treating it as such however is not a matter of faith or speculation, the way tearing open a gap in which to insert God is. Creationists do this all the time, assuming that the world had to "come from" somewhere in order to designate a role for the God they already believe to be the creator. Regardless of what this stuff we call "matter" turns out to be made of in the end, there's still no reason or requirement for God. A God would require standalone evidence, i.e. claiming that the evidence equally fits all these ass-pulled models of reality does not count as standalone evidence.

Theism only requries one to theorise another consciousness existing. Since we know that consciousness exists, the God theory is predicated from a good starting position.
This is the same error creationists commit. Just as there is a huge leap from human designers to a godly designer, there is a huge leap from a human consciousness to a godly consciousness. The analogy doesn't quite fit, in fact, it isn't consistent at all.

I've repeatedly asked for a demonstration of thoughts that are directly able to alter reality without any intermediaries. Got one?

Look Paul, there is no absolutely theory or reason why little bits of matter (for which there is absolutely no evidence at all) interacting and bouncing off one and other would cause consciousness to exist.

You don't have any evidence at all that consciousness is derived from brain function and beliving it doesn't make it so. At best you've got mental events and nothing more.
Same argument from incredulity. You can slap whatever label you want on it. You can call it objective phenomenal external reality if you don't like calling it "matter." You can call it an illusion, a simulation, congealed thought goop, whatever. Okay fine. It doesn't make one bit of difference. You're still wrong that consciousness cannot be an emergent property of this stuff we call "matter" (again, regardless of what it's made of) when it's arranged into living cells we call "neurons" in clusters we call "brains."

Even if we assume that there's a prime consciousness behind the scenes, it doesn't make any difference. Why is it so necessary to conflate human consciousness with something supreme in nature? Maybe humans aren't all that special, God or no God. If God existed, our individual consciousness would be in no way comparable or analogous to its consciousness, just little farts in the wind.

[Ichneumonwasp]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was taught that the action potential propagating along the membrane of neurons is electrochemical in nature and its at the juncture of the synapses that these are converted into the purely chemical signals via neurotransmitters.

I don't remember exactly where, but I also recall reading about studies concerned with modeling the computational functions of single neurons. I'll definitely have to check it out a bit more and will provide a link if I can actually find the source again :)


That's what DD just said, but he provided a few more details. Biochemical, electrochemical, same.

For the action potential, the primary ionic species involved is sodium entering the cell to depolarize the membrane and potassium extruded to reset the resting membrane potential. The gating mechanisms for the action potential are much more complicated and the selection mechanism for sodium over potassium is elegant and fairly interesting, but that's beside the point.

You've got the basics down quite well.

Kandel did lots of work on the computational properties of networks in Aplysia. There is plenty out there on computational issues having to do with altering of firing rates and dealing with the thousands of inputs for every CNS neuron.

[articulett]

I just want to pop in and declare that I'm a fan of Kandel. I've heard several excellent interviews with him on the Brain Science Podcast and BBC's All in the Mind, I think.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

You're still wrong that consciousness cannot be an emergent property of this stuff we call "matter" (again, regardless of what it's made of) when it's arranged into living cells we call "neurons" in clusters we call "brains."
And if it's not, then what in the name of all that is Overholy is the point of its existence?

Overmind: Okay fellas, what's on the agenda today?

Undermind1: Our plan is to start designing the brain.

Overmind: What's that?

Undermind2: It's the organ that's going to sit in the skull and pretend to be the source of personal human consciousness.

Overmind: Remind me again why we're bothering with bodies at all?

Undermind1: Remember that we decided that a bunch of individuated consciousnesses running around stark naked was going to be a problem?

Overmind: Why?

Undermind1: Because there wouldn't be anything to stop them from merging and re-emerging and conjoining and dissipating and stuff. The body fools them into thinking they are separate, permanent entities.

Overmind: Right, I remember. Why can't we just set things up so those problems don't happen?

Undermind3: That's what we're doing by introducing bodies.

Overmind. Ah, okay. It's a bit of a hack, but anyway. So the brain is going to act like it's producing consciousness in every detail?

Undermind2: Ha! Yes, that's our plan. We'll fool the silly buggers into thinking that consciousness is brain function.

Undermind1: You realize that some people won't be fooled, right?

Undermind3: Sure, but who cares? The rest of the people will beat them into submission with "materialism."

Overmind: What?! Who in hell thought up that word?

Undermind1: We used it last time and it worked pretty well.

Overmind: That last Overmind was an idiot, but if it worked, fine. No reason to reinvent the wheel.

[articulett]

Tis beautiful, Paul

And it was nominated too.

[HypnoPsi]

Pixy is asserting that explaining the fundamental existent can't be done -- all we can do is describe it.

You seem to agree with this.


That would probably be as fair an approximation of the situation as any.


Except you think materialism asserts that it can be explained. Maybe in the past, but as everyone who is a materialist here will tell you, we no longer think like that. We think in terms of "properties of stuff" now, not "stuff." This is what pixy has been trying to explain to you for this entire thread.

If you want to argue further along that line, you should know you are arguing with a strawman.


I disagree. Your own words above seem to suggest that you (like myself) do indeed believe there is a fundamental existent - even though you obviously recognise how difficult it is to discuss the subject.

The point I'm making here is that for atheists/materialists this fundamental existent that you think exists and manifests as objective phenomena (that which you call "matter") surely must be something self-perpetuating and self-generating (i.e. uncreated) due to "God" not being part of the equation for atheists.

Using words like "matter" and "physical" which obviously have a history only tells me that, even though modern physics has forced a shift in your thining (so that you very well probably do mean something very different by the terms than an 18th and 19th century scientist) you are still ultimately claiming the same thing.

As I see it that claim can be summed up as "matter" (whatever it ultimately is) is something that is believed to be self-perpetuating and self-generating - uncreated.

~
HypnoPsi

[PixyMisa]

Using words like "matter" and "physical" which obviously have a history only tells me that, even though modern physics has forced a shift in your thining (so that you very well probably do mean something very different by the terms than an 18th and 19th century scientist) you are still ultimately claiming the same thing.
It is what it is. We have learned better how to describe it.

As I see it that claim can be summed up as "matter" (whatever it ultimately is) is something that is believed to be self-perpetuating and self-generating - uncreated.
Self-perpetuating? Self-created? No, those don't apply. It merely is what it is.

We observe the Universe, and describe how it behaves, and we test our descriptions against further observations. We do our best not to add anything, nor to leave anything out. When we don't know, we say we don't know; when we cannot know, we admit that too.

That is all anyone can do.

[HypnoPsi]

Look Paul, the most scientific thing to do when constructiong a theory is to base it upon as many "knowns" as possible with as few (preferably zero) "unknowns" as possible.You don't know crap-all about god. You just think he seems like he might possibly be something a bit like consciousness. That's it.


Hmmm... where to begin... You do understand that when you work parsinomiously the final theory is still itself just a tentative solution don't you (one that requires testing, etc.,)?

I'm not saying "God" is a known or that I know "crap-all" about Him/Her/It.

What I am saying is that even if modern physics has forced a re-think in materialism about the ultimate nature of things the basic principle the materialist is still left with the belief that the essence of things is something self-sustaining and self-perpetuating (i.e. uncreated).

Whether or not materialists no longer choose to believe that particles, for example, are little solid things or not is completely beside the point.

The real question is what is this belief/claim predicated on?

Materialism - however you define it - isn't predicated on anything that anyone has ever encountered. It relies on multiplying unknowns and is therefore not as parsimonious a theory as theism.

The theist is just theorising that there is another bigger consciousness capable of thinking the Universe, predicated on their own experience that consciousness exists.

None of this proves which theory is right. Either one still could be the case. It's just that materialism requires more faith.

You can make consciousness as large as you like, but since the concept is based on human consciousness, it can only focus its attention on a fraction of the total content of its memory. You need an explanation for how the rest of the memory of the universe is maintained. It's gods all the way down.


No... you're still not getting me with this whole memory lark of yours. I genuinely do not see where you're going with it. Okay, so God is really, really, clever with a big memory. So what?


First of all, I'm not a materialist.


Physicalist then, yes? Either way, if you are atheist (and not a Buddhist) then are you not believing in something existing that is self-perpetuating and self-sustaining (uncreated) that is ultimately responsible for your own consciousness as well as all objective phenomena in the Universe.

That Paul, is basically materialism however you like to dress it up - even as "physicalism".

However, at least scientists are working on theories of consciousness.

The scientists in consciousness reasearch who are working on theories would be the materialistic ones. Because that's all they can do - like Dennett's theorising about thermostats. Materialists are stuck at the drawing board.

Other scientists in consciousness research are actively doing experiments into psi and getting good results.

All we have from materialists is claims that computers/cells are conscious. We don't have any evidence at all. Indeed, everything about materialism is faith, belief, faith, belief and even more faith and belief.

Who is working on a theory of the Overmind?

If anyone is, it's not a materialist.

Cheers,
HypnoPsi

[Dancing David]

Which is what Malerin has been arguing all along. Why is it, then, that given we know that the currency of idealism exists (consciousness, mind, thought), and we can never know whether the currency of materialism exists (mind-independent ´stuff´) that you and most other orthodox JREFers hitch your wagon of faith to materialism and attack idealism whenever it appears?

Hiya, do you actualy read anything or do you just post random humor in an attempt to be funny.

Malerin and others are not saying that materialism and idealism are the same, I am.

So you are wrong on all counts, I am not a materialist, I say that we go with approximate models and that they best predict reality when you assume that there is 'stuff' there. It does not matter if the stuff is matter, godthought or butterfly dreams.

You really are a poseur. i am disappointed.

It has been demonstrated that idealism is a priori in the stronger position, and that materialists must rely more on faith than idealists.
Why go with the weaker position?

It has also been demonstrated a priori that racism is meaningful.

You are just ASSUMING that the alleged problems with consciousness go away for idealism, they are still there and exactly the same.

The two systems matter vs. ideal are exactly the same (in that there is no way to tell the difference between the two). You just make assumptions that magically idealism has a preferred position.

If you were paying attention you would notice that my position is that the debate is meaningless, the universe behaves as though it is made of 'stuff', the nature of that stuff is unknowable. All that can be judged is it's behavior.

[HypnoPsi]

I think the only thing that could really confirm 'mystical' experiences like NDEs or out of body experiences as anything more than vivid dreams is if persons actually came back with vertical information that they would not otherwise be able to obtain.


This page is pretty good:

http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

Why would you say that the thoughts I have while meditating are not filtered through the senses?


If you can smell, touch, feel, hear or see your cognitive sense of self and consciousness that's a pretty neat trick, Paul.

Those thoughts are not my consciousness; consciousness is not thought. Those thoughts are played on my senses by god, just like a smell or a visual scene, or the memory of the trees in my yard when I return from vacation. There is no reason to place any special trust in them.

I dunno. If something was genuinely sent by God, I'd consider that a pretty trustworthy authorty.

Again, you need to spend some time delineating what is the fundamental existent you can trust by direct experience, and what all the other stuff is.

I need do no such thing. In my schema God has created points of consciousness (souls, if you like) and phenomenal reality with a vital essence born of Him/Her/It.

How it all works I have absolutely no idea and there are certainly plenty of unanswered questions. My point has never been that I or any other theist has an answer to everything. (I'll state right here and now that I certainly don't know the answer to everything or how everything works.)

All I do know - very clearly - is that theism requires a heck of a lot less faith than any type of materialism - be that the traditional, good old fashioned, type or the modern trendy "physicalist" type.

~
HypnoPsi

[PixyMisa]

This page is pretty good:

http://www.near-death.com/evidence.html
That page is crap.

Look at the first thing on the list: "NDEs occur while patients are brain dead."

If you are brain dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death), your brain is dead. Dead and starting to smell.

You do not come back from brain death.

[Dancing David]

And the findings, ultimately, are only known via subjective perception. Which is what makes the whole proposition self-undermining.


It cuts both ways PJ, as anyone know, a good sword does.

You and everybody here just assumes that they are having these thoughts and experiences. they just assume that all the time. But as to what the experiences actually are they are still in the same hole as the materialist position, for the same reasons.

there are couple of counters to it however:

a. The p-zombie argument, it demonstrates effectively that there is no difference between a conscious creature and one that just behaves consciously. None whatsoever.

So here is the deal, you can not say that you are having a subjective perception or if you are a creature that does not have subjective perception, you just behave as though you do.

b. Butterfly dreams ( Chuan Tzu); you can not tell if you are the philosopher eating an ice cream cone, or if you are the butterfly dreaming you are a philosopher eating the ice cream cone, when really you are a snail dreaming you are a butterfly dreaming you are a philosopher.

From all perspectives there is the phenomena of the alleged philosopher eating the alleged ice cream cone, but which one is the true subjective perception.

Which is why ontology is a moot point,

all we have is what we have, all we can examine is what we have.

Chained to a mindwall, brains in vats, butterfly dreams, god thought or quanta of energy, they are all the same when you look at them.

there is no way to tell the difference.

Regardless of the ontology, all you can do is observe, so if it is godthought, it is god thought that acts as though it is quanta of energy.

If the subjective perception is true (and all that there is), then will you gouge out your eye to see more clearly? (To quote the alleged historical buddha.)

[Dancing David]

You can´t ever know this because you can´t ever demonstrate the existence of the material (mind-independent stuff).

You also can't demonstrate that consciousness is real or just an empty vessel that looks like it is conscious but isn't.

A good argument cuts all ways.

Trees act as though they are there when no one is looking, even if they disappear and reappear.

there is no difference between materialism and idealism. they are the same.

[HypnoPsi]

Then you should have no trouble explaining everything about God, including its nature, properties, origins (yes, origins) and the mechanism by which it interacts with reality.


I don't know of any materialist or physicalist who is able to explain all these things, do you?

Why would you assume any theist can?


Failure to do so would be begging the question, and therefore indistinct from the dishonest tactic of taking what you already believe in and plugging it into gaps in knowledge.


You should try reading this out to yourself while looking in the mirror.

Whatever you say about any model's scope and use to explain and answer all our questions is meaningless since both theism and materialism have the same problems. I don't think too many would deny this. That matters nothing in regards to the question about which theory requires more faith.

And the theory that requires more faith is, indisputably, materialism.

~
HypnoPsi

[Dancing David]

That´s just a massive assumption on your part. If you were to say ´the normal consciousness of the individual human being´ I might agree with you.


Your alternative is to go with matter, for which there will never be any evidence. I go with Overmind, Metamind, God, Universal Consciousness..whatever one wants to call it. For this there is indeed thousands of years of evidence in the form of the likes of expanded consciousness, God-consciousness, Theosis, Fana, Nirvana, Samadhi, the Beatific Vision etc etc..
Of course, most JREFers get to dismiss that evidence by hiding behind the usual ´it´s anecdotal´ or ´it´s subjective´ or ´perception can be wrong sometimes´. Well, given the subject matter, how could such evidence not be?

the nature of the existance of matter is exactly the same.

the problem is that when it comes to approximate models that explain the behavior of reality:

there is no way to demonstrate the existance of god.

If you have one that is more valid that the current model of neurology, then we can start a thread and examine it.

All models are constructs, validity comes from making predictions about the behavior of the reality.


Your assumption that beings exist which have those experiences or that those experiences are real is exactly the same mistake you accuse the materialists of making. neither can be proved. they are equal and the same.

God models do not explain the double slit experiment however.

BTW you should not use Nirvana in your example above, it shows that you or the person you are modeling it on have not read up on the teachings of the alleged historical buddha.

[HypnoPsi]

I don't understand why everyone in your club isn't jumping all over the science of the Overmind, getting down with the details.

~~ Paul


Silentknight just pretty much said the exact same thing - for absolutely no more good reason than you.

Why, pray tell, just because someone is a theist would they suddenly have no trouble explainging everything about God and his relationshiop to the Universe and us?

I haven't got a clue about the answer to these things. No materialist has an answer either from their perspective. How could they have?

The only thing we can meaningfully answer is which viewpoint requires more faith and/or is more or less parsimonious. And clearly, theism and not materialism/physicalism is the model that is most parsimonious and requiring of less faith.


Why are you so satisfied?


I am not particularly satisfied. I have a million and one questions about God I'd like an answer to - and probably twice as many questions for God should I ever encounter Him/Her/It.

Why are you so satisfied with materialism, or 'physicalism' if you prefer?

~
HypnoPsi

[Dancing David]

Pixy is asserting that explaining the fundamental existent can't be done -- all we can do is describe it.

You seem to agree with this.

Except you think materialism asserts that it can be explained. Maybe in the past, but as everyone who is a materialist here will tell you, we no longer think like that. We think in terms of "properties of stuff" now, not "stuff." This is what pixy has been trying to explain to you for this entire thread.

If you want to argue further along that line, you should know you are arguing with a strawman.

But , but , but , you can't do that!

That is the Materialist in the Straw Castle!

[Dancing David]

Utterly and completely wrong. Why exactly would the Universe and phenomenal reality work differently or be less real if someone is an amaterialist (or idealist if you prefer)?

Phenomenal reality doesn't change for an amaterilist. It is solely an absence of belief in any type of prima materia substance underlying reality.

~
HypnoPsi

Do you think that they are the same essentially?

That is the line I take, regardless of ontology, it behaves as though it has substance?

(Perhaps not , just the appearance thing.)

[Dancing David]

Arti, you could always try to make the Eureka leap of realising that memory is not the same thing as consciousness. Memory is a content of consciousness.
A stone, itself, may have no memory, yet still be part of Universal Consciousness.

So you really are just using the

*insert miracle here* line of reasoning?

How disappointing.

[Dancing David]

The crucial points that materialists like to ignore about mystical experiences is that they are confirmed and apperceived (not filtered through the senses).

The are not the same as the ravings of some poor soul who believes they can see spiders everywhere or whatever while nobody else can.

Mystics across continents and generations have described the same things without ever encountering each other.

The fact that they are apperceived is where things get really interesting though. How can we ever be justified in thinking that information that is filtered through the senses before reaching our awareness is somehow more real than what is intuitively known in Enlightenment?

~
HypnoPsi

Sorry, i disagree here, and quite a bit.

There is huge realm of mystical experience, the montheist victorians and their ilk wanted to see the monotheism every where, and guess what they found it.

Not all mystic traditions lead to the same places as all other mystic traditions.

Some of the concepts are similar but they vary widely in expression and belief.

I am not sure that Vedic fire worship and Bramhanism really equate exactly to the Dreatime of the australian natives. Or that it is comparable to the ritual torture of Mayan priest kings, the toaist by night (I am a vegetarian who eats meat) and confucian by day contains the transcent contradiction in itself .

The only ones that seem to be true for most mystic traditions are
:the gods are capricious
:it is hard to tell gods and devils apart
:be very careful when you take a spiritual journey
:gods, devils and spirits love to fool people


I would love to add;
-all humans are equal, but there are so many mystic traditions that have 'chosen people', 'enlightened beings' and 'divine right of dominance' that I can't say it is true.

[Dancing David]

I, for one, am glad no one here "blindly adheres" to materialism. That just wouldn't happen among such a skeptical group of... skepticists.

Am I right, Wasp?;)

It sure was a struggle for me, but the notion that free will is an illusion was the greatest.

[Dancing David]

Nobody has ever observed matter - ever. We can observe and measure objective phenomenal reality. That's all.

We absolutely do not know that it's ultimate essence is some uncreated, self-perpetuating and self-generating "stuff".

~
HypnoPsi

It sure appears to act that way, with a limit of 13.7 billion years.

[Dancing David]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was taught that the action potential propagating along the membrane of neurons is electrochemical in nature and its at the juncture of the synapses that these are converted into the purely chemical signals via neurotransmitters.

I don't remember exactly where, but I also recall reading about studies concerned with modeling the computational functions of single neurons. I'll definitely have to check it out a bit more and will provide a link if I can actually find the source again :)


We said the same thing, your is clearer than mine, my brain (which may or may not exist) was overloaded by this thread yesterday.

[Dancing David]

Other scientists in consciousness research are actively doing experiments into psi and getting good results.



Like what, who, where, when and how.

data, protocols and papers please?

:)

[Nick227]

The point is what theory is the stronger regarding the essence of phenomenal objects. Why are they there when, as modern physics has confirmed, they are nothing but information. What sustains them?

Well, one idea might be that natural selection dictates that we experience an "object orientated" world. The brain's sensory systems will have been created through evolution and so can be expected to render a phenomenology that best helps the organism to survive and replicate.

eta: relating to this it could of course be that our experience of the world is so driven by natural selection that actually we have no possibility to carry out meaningful science or philosophy.

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

Since I can't even objectively prove that anyone I know is conscious how can someone ever know a computer is?By definining consciousness in terms of behavior rather than magic.


The question is how do you actually know any of it is true and not just pure fantasy?

Why should we describe consciousness by behaviour in the first place? If you think you've got consciousness all worked out then just go ahead and describe your minimal conscious system (Dennett's thermostat, perhaps?) and explain why this minimal amount of Information Processing is necessary in the first place.


You have to assume the existence of "psi" to begin with for the Ganzfeld experiments to suggest it. You haven't heard such criticisms before? I find that hard to believe.


Experiments like the Ganzfeld or Staring Experiment are testing whether or not testimonials about such things as telepathy or whatever are real or not. The data suggests that it is real, albeit at a fairly low and unreliable level. That's all.

So my answer to your criticism is - so what?

In particular, there is a much simpler and more credible explanation for such results -- since human minds are similar, they might have similar thoughts. As in, if you ask 1000 people what their favorite flavor of ice cream is, a statistically significant portion will report "chocolate." Do you also consider that evidence of "psi?"


Nope. And that is nowhere near a description of the randomised and controlled set up used in the Ganzfeld or staring experiments.

Why do you say that "all things experience"? And how do you get experierience without consciousness?Because the only way my definition of experience can be non-contradictory is for all things to experience.


In otherwords, because you feel like it.

That's not an answer.

And experience is not equivalent to consciousness, or even dependent on consciousness. Were you "conscious" of all the little things you experienced while driving home from work on the freeway? Of course not. In my view, "consciousness" is simply the result of reasoning about experience.

What definition of belief? Would you say there is "experience" in the sense of some very rudimentary form of consciousness as the thermostat processes information about the ambient temperature in order to make a "decision".I would not say it is conscious in the same self-aware sense as a human, because even if there is self-awareness (as in Pixy's 100 transistor machine) there isn't a sufficient level of reasoning going on.


What is "reasoning" to a computer/machine exactly?

What you seem to be saying here is that you do believe there is a very primitive form of consciousness in the thermostat. Why is that? And what do you think self-refrencing is in a machine that would make it more human-like?

~
HypnoPsi

[PixyMisa]

Like what, who, where, when and how.

data, protocols and papers please?
Maybe by "good" he means "consistently negative".

Nothing wrong with that. ;)

[HypnoPsi]

You haven't explained how the universe works. You don't get to employ Occam yet. It's only simpler because it isn't an explanation. Surely you must see this by now.


Not in the slightest - and I certainly claim no special understanding for how Universe works.

My only point has been - and still remains - that theism is the better starting point to answer the question about existence than materialism or physicalism - however you define them.

I use the word substantial in the sense of:

1b : not imaginary or illusory : REAL, TRUE


I suppose the long and short of it is that I don't really buy this innocent sounding neutral way that you are describing things.

Either phenomenal reality is created or it's uncreated (meaning it has some property, essence or substance that is self-perpetuating and self-sustaining).

I don't claim to be able to solve any of the mysteries of existence whatsoever. I'm only pointing out that the belief in objective phenomena being somehow self-sustaining and self-perpetuating is predicated on absolutely nothing while God is predicated on the known existence of consciousness/mind.

~
HypnoPsi

[Nick227]

Nick, every part of that post made sense, and indeed, I agree with most of it. (I have a lot more confidence that science will explain all the details of consciousness, though.)

Since we've had some fairly strident disagreements in the past, I just wanted to say that. :)

Thanks. I appreciate it.

Nick

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

No... you're still not getting me with this whole memory lark of yours. I genuinely do not see where you're going with it. Okay, so God is really, really, clever with a big memory. So what?
Please read post #374 where I explained it.


I need do no such thing. In my schema God has created points of consciousness (souls, if you like) and phenomenal reality with a vital essence born of Him/Her/It.
Then you have taken the analogy from personal consciousness and extended it way past the point you can possibly support by your argument that "we know we are conscious."


I'm only pointing out that the belief in objective phenomena being somehow self-sustaining and self-perpetuating is predicated on absolutely nothing while God is predicated on the known existence of consciousness/mind.
Objective phenomena being self-sustaining is inferred from the fact that things remain consistent even when personal consciousness is not involved at all. Somehow you believe that (a) inferring a complex god by analogy from personal consciousness and then (b) injecting him in the world as the sustainer, is a simpler model. I don't get it.

~~ Paul

[PixyMisa]

The question is how do you actually know any of it is true and not just pure fantasy?
We don't.

But the moment we choose not to simply curl up in a corner and die, we have to make a choice of epistemological foundations. And only one choice works.

Why should we describe consciousness by behaviour in the first place?
Because we describe everything by behaviour.

If you think you've got consciousness all worked out then just go ahead and describe your minimal conscious system (Dennett's thermostat, perhaps?)
As I said, I don't consider Dennett's thermostat to be conscious, though I understand his point, and I've noted the minor elaboration I think is required.

and explain why this minimal amount of Information Processing is necessary in the first place.
Because consciousness is entirely about information processing. No information processing, no consciousness.

Experiments like the Ganzfeld or Staring Experiment are testing whether or not testimonials about such things as telepathy or whatever are real or not.
And the answer is "not".

The data suggests that it is real, albeit at a fairly low and unreliable level. That's all.
No, no it doesn't. The analysis of the data shows that the experimenters are not willing to accept negative results no matter how many times they get them.

Nope. And that is nowhere near a description of the randomised and controlled set up used in the Ganzfeld or staring experiments.
Name one Ganzfeld or staring experiment that was both properly controlled and produced statistically significant positive results.

Just one.

Please.

And experience is not equivalent to consciousness, or even dependent on consciousness. Were you "conscious" of all the little things you experienced while driving home from work on the freeway? Of course not. In my view, "consciousness" is simply the result of reasoning about experience.
Yeah, well, my phone does that.

What is "reasoning" to a computer/machine exactly?
It is the same as reasoning to a human being. Exactly.

What you seem to be saying here is that you do believe there is a very primitive form of consciousness in the thermostat.
Yes - or at least in a slightly more sophisticated but still very simple circuit.

Why is that?
Because it exhibits, in a simple form, all the activities that we see in human consciousness.

And what do you think self-refrencing is in a machine that would make it more human-like?
Because humans are self-referential.

[rocketdodger]

I disagree. Your own words above seem to suggest that you (like myself) do indeed believe there is a fundamental existent - even though you obviously recognise how difficult it is to discuss the subject.

The point I'm making here is that for atheists/materialists this fundamental existent that you think exists and manifests as objective phenomena (that which you call "matter") surely must be something self-perpetuating and self-generating (i.e. uncreated) due to "God" not being part of the equation for atheists.

Using words like "matter" and "physical" which obviously have a history only tells me that, even though modern physics has forced a shift in your thining (so that you very well probably do mean something very different by the terms than an 18th and 19th century scientist) you are still ultimately claiming the same thing.

As I see it that claim can be summed up as "matter" (whatever it ultimately is) is something that is believed to be self-perpetuating and self-generating - uncreated.

No. I see what your problem is now. You think you can escape incompleteness somehow, if only you think about it hard enough. And you think others must think this as well.

You are wrong. Real materialists, like Pixy, Paul, and myself (to list a few) fully accept that there is a hard limit to what we can know. Incompleteness proves it, plain and simple. And if you accept mathematics, you must accept incompleteness, because it is a mathematical fact.

When pixy says he does not believe in a fundamental existent that is self-generating and self-perpetuating, he means it. And the reason he doesn't believe in such a thing is because it is fundamentally unknowable to a human. Because the concept of "self-generation" or "self-perpetuation" isn't allowable in our mathematics. A human simply can't conceive of such a thing.

So you are only deluding yourself. You can't begin to fathom what "self-generating" must mean -- no human can. All you are doing is waving your hands and mumbling incantations when you claim God is self-generating and self-perpetuating.

If you want to claim that we should know the answers, that incompleteness shouldn't apply to our knowledge, then you would be swimming against entire history of human mathematics. Are you really that stubborn?

[rocketdodger]

The question is how do you actually know any of it is true and not just pure fantasy?

Why should we describe consciousness by behaviour in the first place? If you think you've got consciousness all worked out then just go ahead and describe your minimal conscious system (Dennett's thermostat, perhaps?) and explain why this minimal amount of Information Processing is necessary in the first place.

What is consciousness? If you are talking about human consciousness, then simply say human consciousness. And then the answer is easy -- the minimal amount of information processing is whatever leads to human behavior.

The point of describing a thing through behavior is that it avoids all the useless stupidity associated with arguments over substance. Kind of like this thread, ya know? If you would just accept that modern materialists think in terms of properties (behaviors) rather than substance you would have nothing to argue about.


Experiments like the Ganzfeld or Staring Experiment are testing whether or not testimonials about such things as telepathy or whatever are real or not. The data suggests that it is real, albeit at a fairly low and unreliable level. That's all.

So my answer to your criticism is - so what?

So what? "what" is that even if such experiments are credible, it is only evidence of something currently unknown. Maybe working neurons set up an EM field that other neurons can pick up on, who knows? The question is, if the results have a physical explanation -- such as an EM field -- are you going to still consider it "psi?" What exactly does "psi" mean?

If by "psi" you simply mean "unknown" then I agree, those experiments would be evidence of psi. But that would be a pretty weak definition.


Nope. And that is nowhere near a description of the randomised and controlled set up used in the Ganzfeld or staring experiments.

I know. But the point still stands -- the result simply suggests an unknown effect and claiming that this unknown effect is in fact the mythical "psi" is jumping to a huge conclusion.


In otherwords, because you feel like it.

That's not an answer.


That wasn't my answer. My answer was "because it makes things consistent."

Because as an A.I. programmer, I cannot for the life of me find a qualitative difference between what goes on in my mind and what I can make an A.I. do. And I don't like to give names to thresholds. Thus, everything experiences.


What is "reasoning" to a computer/machine exactly?


start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence

more specifically:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_chaining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_chaining
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_network


What you seem to be saying here is that you do believe there is a very primitive form of consciousness in the thermostat. Why is that?

It features some conscious behaviors.

And what do you think self-refrencing is in a machine that would make it more human-like?

To start, knowledge about the relationships between itself and other entities in the world. Humans have a ton of that -- far more than any programmer has bothered to give any machine so far, or bothered to let any machine learn on its own.

[rocketdodger]

And experience is not equivalent to consciousness, or even dependent on consciousness. Were you "conscious" of all the little things you experienced while driving home from work on the freeway? Of course not. In my view, "consciousness" is simply the result of reasoning about experience.
Yeah, well, my phone does that.


That was my original statement. He forgot to quote it.

Didn't you wonder why it made a glimmer of sense?

[PixyMisa]

That was my original statement. He forgot to quote it.

Didn't you wonder why it made a glimmer of sense?
Ah. That explains it then. ;)

[plumjam]

No, it isn't. I can recall some memories and poke them around in my consciousness for awhile, but my complete memory is certainly not in my consciousness. In fact, it isn't even reliable over time in whatever storage medium it is stored in.

I'm fine with you folks ragging on physicalism, but at least spend some time analyzing your own model. All you have in evidence before you is phenomenal consciousness. The mechanism of your memory is hidden.

~~ Paul

If memory doesn´t enter into your consciousness it´s not memory, is it. Simple really.

[Malerin]

Speaking of parsimony, I'm glad to see we're all using the commonly understood meaning of the term and not some made-up crap:rolleyes:

Also, speaking parsimoniously, materialism/physicalism makes a huge assumption (nay, leap of faith) regarding consciousess. We are supposed to believe that reality is made up of physical stuff that takes up space and can be observed/weighed/measured/felt, etc. Ok, let's assume that's true. How is it then that a bunch of physical matter can be arranged in such a way as to create a completely non-physical phenemenon- consciousness? Does concsciousness take up space? How much does a consciousness weigh? How many joules does it put out? What does a consciousness look like or feel like? If you break apart consciousness in an atom smasher, what do the pieces look like? Consciousness has none of the properties that physical matter supposedly has. Why should there be anything like consciousness in a purely physical universe?

Consciouesness is totally outside the realm of physicality, and when materialists claim that consciousness comes from matter, they are creating a fairy tale much more unparsimonious than anything a theist can come up with. The theist at least knows the mind exists, and so their claim that God (as a sort of super-mind) exists at least rests on a foundation of mind, however shaky it may be.

The materialist is bereft of even the shakiest foundation. There is no evidence at all that physical matter exists, AND the idea that a non-physical phenemenon (consciousness) can arise from just putting pieces of matter together in the right way is more than a fairy tale, because even fairy tales are logically coherent. It is a completely ad-hoc non-sensical theory that the materialist must believe in order to keep the whole house-of-cards that is materialism from collapsing.

[Nick227]

The materialist is bereft of even the shakiest foundation. There is no evidence at all that physical matter exists, AND the idea that a non-physical phenemenon (consciousness) can arise from just putting pieces of matter together in the right way is more than a fairy tale, because even fairy tales are logically coherent. It is a completely ad-hoc non-sensical theory that the materialist must believe in order to keep the whole house-of-cards that is materialism from collapsing.

Having followed this thread pretty much from the beginning, and quite a few others like it, it seems to me that really it all comes down to one thing... ..Idealists object to anyone telling them they have to curtail their imagination.

A materialist might state that phenomena may be represented mathematically and that there are clear limits on what can be known. An idealist might state that phenomena may be represented mathematically and that there are clear limits on what can be known, but now I'm going to go off on a wild goose chase around the universe.

Idealists, do you feel threatened by creeping materialism? Does it threaten to curtail your wilder theories about creation?

Nick

[plumjam]

I don't think it matters what the underlying "stuff" is.
I find this a bizarre position. I thought we were supposed to be enquiring minds here, trying to understand reality. So it makes no difference at all to you whether the underlying fundamental reality is dead matter or Universal Consciousness?

You can't know it. I can't know it. None of us can know it. I'm fine with anyone who wants to call it God, Mind, whatever.
You are just assuming that it is not knowable. Based on what?
I have been arguing that millennia old traditions insistently tell us that it is knowable, via asensual direct experience. And these traditions prescribe practical systems of life and behaviour which move one towards that experience. People here tend to value practicality, so they should like that.
It is true that this kind of knowing is different from our usual modes of knowing. The latter are made up of parts and their interrelationships, and thus are amenable to language. The former is experience of The Whole and is therefore, in principle, indescribable.
This is exactly what one would expect from a philosophical point of view. It also happens to match with personal testimony of the experience.

What we can know is that thought exists. It is, however, an assumption to move from that epistemic statement that we know thought exists to the idea that thought is the primary existent on which everything is built. That requires a leap itself, so we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that the means by which epistemology is possible equals fundamental ontology.
(Just a nitpick. It is not thought, it is consciousness. Many of the practical systems I alluded to above have the express purpose of emptying consciousness of thoughts, stilling the mind. Thoughts come and go, are impermanent, and have nothing to do with our true nature.)
You make a good point, and I would agree with you if it were not for the evidence from throughout human history, across cultures, that the primary existent is indeed Universal Consciousness, and that it can be experienced. Indeed, the experience is why the whole of Creation was brought into play in the first place.

I'm afraid that radical doubt leaves us with radical doubt minus "thought exists (or thought happens)". If you can provide a means outside that state you would have produced a viable and interesting philosophy. Descartes' solution was to try and prove the existence of God, which isn't a particularly satisfying solution because his ontological proof doesn't work well enough to prove what he wanted.
Again, it´s not thought. I´ve always thought Descartes made a pretty basic blunder in that regard. Does our awareness cease to exist in the gaps between thoughts? To say we are our thoughts is like looking at a movie screen and saying we are the actor(s). We are the observer, the witness consciousness.
As to the proof of God, I tend to avoid such discussions. God either exists or does not, ..constructing a particularly clever argument is not going to move something from non existence over to existence, or vice versa. God is a matter of experience rather than argument, analysis or particular employments of reason.

[nescafe]

Also, speaking parsimoniously, materialism/physicalism makes a huge assumption (nay, leap of faith) regarding consciousess. We are supposed to believe that reality is made up of physical stuff that takes up space and can be observed/weighed/measured/felt, etc. Ok, let's assume that's true. How is it then that a bunch of physical matter can be arranged in such a way as to create a completely non-physical phenemenon- consciousness? Does concsciousness take up space? How much does a consciousness weigh? How many joules does it put out? What does a consciousness look like or feel like? If you break apart consciousness in an atom smasher, what do the pieces look like? Consciousness has none of the properties that physical matter supposedly has. Why should there be anything like consciousness in a purely physical universe?

From a materialist standpoint, consciousness is a process, not a thing. Ascribing the thing-like qualities you do to it is simply inane -- how much does running weigh, again?

Consciouesness is totally outside the realm of physicality, and when materialists claim that consciousness comes from matter, they are creating a fairy tale much more unparsimonious than anything a theist can come up with. The theist at least knows the mind exists, and so their claim that God (as a sort of super-mind) exists at least rests on a foundation of mind, however shaky it may be.

Since matter is capable of supporting universal processes (after all, we can build universal Turing machines out of matter, subject to the information-processing limits imposed by physics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bekenstein_bound)), I do not see any reason that matter cannot support the process we call consciousness.

The materialist is bereft of even the shakiest foundation. There is no evidence at all that physical matter exists, AND the idea that a non-physical phenemenon (consciousness) can arise from just putting pieces of matter together in the right way is more than a fairy tale, because even fairy tales are logically coherent. It is a completely ad-hoc non-sensical theory that the materialist must believe in order to keep the whole house-of-cards that is materialism from collapsing.
Nope.

[Malerin]

From a materialist standpoint, consciousness is a process, not a thing. Ascribing the thing-like qualities you do to it is simply inane -- how much does running weigh, again?

This is a cop-out materialists make to reduce consciouness to a triviality, and leads to bizzare claims that things like thermostats and calculators (or anything that carries out an informational "process") are consciouss. Concsciousness is much more than a "process". It is a subjective phenemenon that non of us can deny experiencing. It encompasses self-awareness and experience.

Let me give you a famous thought-experiment: a group of color-blind scientists spend years figuring out all the physical processes involved in seeing the color red. They know the physics involved, the neurochemistry, which parts of the brain interpret the signals... they discover everything there is to know physically about what it is to see red. All the "processes", as it were. The question is, is their knowledge on seeing the color red complete or are they missing something by being color-blind? Do they actually have to experience seeing red before they can close the book on it?

If you read everything there is to know about riding a bike, but have never actually done so, doesn't the kid next door, on his bike, have a better understanding of it? Of course. Nobody's knowledge of anything is complete until they experience it. You can memorize the most fabulous recipe and you won't have a clue what it actually is until you experience the taste of is.

It is easy to say that love, hate, joy, and all the other emotions we experience are "processes", but that completely ignores the experiential quality that is attached to everything we feel. To know of pheremones, cat scans, and biochemistry pales in comparison to actually experiencing "falling in love". The subjective quality of experience is so anathema to physicality, it prompts otherwise rational people to twist themselves in knots to deny the obvious.

[PixyMisa]

This is a cop-out materialists make to reduce consciouness to a triviality, and leads to bizzare claims that things like thermostats and calculators (or anything that carries out an informational "process") are consciouss. Concsciousness is much more than a "process". It is a subjective phenemenon that non of us can deny experiencing. It encompasses self-awareness and experience.
Yeah. So what? Self-awareness is a process. Experience is a process. All of them perfectly attributable to a variety of physical substrates.

Let me give you a famous thought-experiment: a group of color-blind scientists spend years figuring out all the physical processes involved in seeing the color red. They know the physics involved, the neurochemistry, which parts of the brain interpret the signals... they discover everything there is to know physically about what it is to see red. All the "processes", as it were. The question is, is their knowledge on seeing the color red complete or are they missing something by being color-blind? Do they actually have to experience seeing red before they can close the book on it?
If they know everything there is to know physically about what it is to see red, that includes complete knowledge of the experience of seeing red.

Because experience is a physical process.

Listen to the lectures, Malerin. They explain all this.

If you read everything there is to know about riding a bike, but have never actually done so, doesn't the kid next door, on his bike, have a better understanding of it?
No. Absolutely not.

You now know everything there is to know about riding a bike. The kid next door has some trivial practical experience.

Of course
not.

Nobody's knowledge of anything is complete until they experience it.
You just contradicted yourself.

You say on the one hand that you know everything there is to know about (seeing red, riding a bike). Then you turn around and say that your knowledge is incomplete.

This is absurd, even for an idealist.

You can memorize the most fabulous recipe and you won't have a clue what it actually is until you experience the taste of is.
Irrelevant. A recipe is just a recipe. It is not "everything there is to know about" something.

It is easy to say that love, hate, joy, and all the other emotions we experience are "processes", but that completely ignores the experiential quality that is attached to everything we feel.
That experiential quality? It's a process.

To know of pheremones, cat scans, and biochemistry pales in comparison to actually experiencing "falling in love".
If you're a bad poet, maybe. If you're a neuroscientist, not at all.

The subjective quality of experience is so anathema to physicality, it prompts otherwise rational people to twist themselves in knots to deny the obvious.
Computers - even very simple ones - have subjective experiences. We completely understand every part of the process by which those experiences are formed, and there they are. It is not only not anathema to physicality, it only makes sense when explained by physical processes.

[PixyMisa]

Also, speaking parsimoniously, materialism/physicalism makes a huge assumption (nay, leap of faith) regarding consciousess. We are supposed to believe that reality is made up of physical stuff that takes up space and can be observed/weighed/measured/felt, etc. Ok, let's assume that's true. How is it then that a bunch of physical matter can be arranged in such a way as to create a completely non-physical phenemenon- consciousness? Does concsciousness take up space? How much does a consciousness weigh? How many joules does it put out? What does a consciousness look like or feel like? If you break apart consciousness in an atom smasher, what do the pieces look like? Consciousness has none of the properties that physical matter supposedly has. Why should there be anything like consciousness in a purely physical universe?
Let's try that again:

Also, speaking parsimoniously, materialism/physicalism makes a huge assumption (nay, leap of faith) regarding music. We are supposed to believe that reality is made up of physical stuff that takes up space and can be observed/weighed/measured/felt, etc. Ok, let's assume that's true. How is it then that a bunch of physical matter can be arranged in such a way as to create a completely non-physical phenemenon- music? Does music take up space? How much does music weigh? How many joules does it put out? What does a music look like or feel like? If you break apart music in an atom smasher, what do the pieces look like? Music has none of the properties that physical matter supposedly has. Why should there be anything like music in a purely physical universe?


Consciouesness is totally outside the realm of physicality, and when materialists claim that consciousness comes from matter, they are creating a fairy tale much more unparsimonious than anything a theist can come up with. The theist at least knows the mind exists, and so their claim that God (as a sort of super-mind) exists at least rests on a foundation of mind, however shaky it may be.The problem with this twofold: First, there is no problem once you grasp the fact that consciousness is a process and not an object; second, we know that consciousness comes from matter. The body of evidence for this is mind-bogglingly vast, as you would understand if you just listened to those lectures. Or read anything about psychology or neuroscience, instead of trolling the 'net for fiction about NDEs and failed parapsychology experiments.

The materialist is bereft of even the shakiest foundation. There is no evidence at all that physical matter existsFail.

I hit you repeatedly over the head with a bat.

What do you say to me? Do you say, "You have no evidence that physical matter exists"? Or do you say "Stop hitting me with that damn bat!"

AND the idea that a non-physical phenemenon (consciousness) can arise from just putting pieces of matter together in the right way is more than a fairy tale, because even fairy tales are logically coherent.What problem is there with ascribing consciousness to physical causes? Be specific.

What evidence do you have for your claim that consciousness is non-physical? Be specific.

It is a completely ad-hoc non-sensical theory that the materialist must believe in order to keep the whole house-of-cards that is materialism from collapsing.And yet, I can prove it to be true with the bluntest of blunt instruments.

I can make your consciousness vanish by striking you on the head. What does that do for all your arguments, Malerin? How is your God so easily defeated?

[Nick227]

I know some of the folks here have actual training in philosophy, so please critique away at this:

Under discussion now, at heart, is the implications of the cogito. Since most people have already realized that the cogito does not prove that "I" exist, but that thought exists we needn't cover the "I" side of the issue.

But, and I'm sure this has been covered in the history of philosophy before, the cogito seems to work because it contains hidden assumptions of its own.

Mathematical proofs work because they simply play out underlying assumptions (axioms), and philosophical proofs seem to do the same.

Knowledge implies thought; it is not possible without it. So, knowledge already assumes the "existence" of thought. The cogito, therefore, simply plays out the trivial issue that knowledge includes thought, or that thought is more fundamental than knowledge.

So, that we know thought exists does not imply that thought is a primary constituent of the universe, it implies that knowledge is not possible without thought.

If we want to postulate that thought is the primary constituent of the universe, that's fine; but it is just as much as assumption as to postulate that the apeiron is the fundamental constituent of the universe.

I have no training in philosophy, but for me what needs paying attention to is that the cogito attempts (one presumes) to make a statement about "I." As far as I know it is not trying to make a statement about the nature of the universe. Thus that thought exists does not here presume that the universe is made of thought. One might also say that visual phenomenology, for example, is equally representative of the universe.

Nick

[PixyMisa]

Given what we know of the brain today, the assertion that consciousness is anything other than brain function is more absurd than claims of a flat Earth or the demon theory of disease.

Damage this part of the brain and you are blind - but can still respond to people's facial expressions.

Damage this part and you can no longer form new memories of events - but you retain your prior memories, and you can still learn new skills, even though you don't remember learning them.

Damage this part and you lose the ability to recognise faces, or you can recognise faces but know beyond a doubt that the person you see is an evil imposter.

Introduce this chemical and you see things that aren't there. This one will induce fear and paranoia. And this one will shut down your consciousness, as quickly and completely as flicking a switch.

Stimulate this region of the brain with a magnetic field and you'll have a spontaneous religious experience. Stimulate that region at the right moment and you will instantly forget what happened to you a moment ago. Put an electrode here and you will give up all but the most essential activities and concentrate on feeding current to that electrode.

Thousands of years of study on billions of test subjects, and every time the answer comes out the same. Against this you weigh... What, exactly?

[nescafe]

This is a cop-out materialists make to reduce consciouness to a triviality, and leads to bizzare claims that things like thermostats and calculators (or anything that carries out an informational "process") are consciouss.
In a definitional sense, perhaps. I am neutral to those arguments.

Concsciousness is much more than a "process". It is a subjective phenemenon that non of us can deny experiencing. It encompasses self-awareness and experience.
Oh, so there is an upper bound on how complex a process can be, or that it cannot model itself or incorporate new data? Interesting -- that seems to be an odd limitation.

<snip bits that PixyMisa answered -- they were better than mine>

It is easy to say that love, hate, joy, and all the other emotions we experience are "processes", but that completely ignores the experiential quality that is attached to everything we feel.
No, it seeks to explain it. Big difference.

To know of pheremones, cat scans, and biochemistry pales in comparison to actually experiencing "falling in love". The subjective quality of experience is so anathema to physicality, it prompts otherwise rational people to twist themselves in knots to deny the obvious.
Funny -- I see people who insist that experience cannot be grounded in physicality as the ones who are twisting themselves in knots to deny the obvious.

[Nick227]

Given what we know of the brain today, the assertion that consciousness is anything other than brain function is more absurd than claims of a flat Earth or the demon theory of disease.

Damage this part of the brain and you are blind - but can still respond to people's facial expressions.

Damage this part and you can no longer form new memories of events - but you retain your prior memories, and you can still learn new skills, even though you don't remember learning them.

Damage this part and you lose the ability to recognise faces, or you can recognise faces but know beyond a doubt that the person you see is an evil imposter.

Introduce this chemical and you see things that aren't there. This one will induce fear and paranoia. And this one will shut down your consciousness, as quickly and completely as flicking a switch.

Stimulate this region of the brain with a magnetic field and you'll have a spontaneous religious experience. Stimulate that region at the right moment and you will instantly forget what happened to you a moment ago. Put an electrode here and you will give up all but the most essential activities and concentrate on feeding current to that electrode.

Thousands of years of study on billions of test subjects, and every time the answer comes out the same. Against this you weigh... What, exactly?

The brain is very strongly implicated in the production of consciousness, no doubt about it. There may be a few forum members on this thread who might dispute this, but this seems to me to be taking a bit of an irrational position. It's clear that, however you cut it, the brain is very strongly implicated.

However, this of itself does not to me suggest the level of finality to the whole affair that you apparently ascribe to it. The questions remain...just how does it do it? Why is it so light in here? How does sound actually manifest from physical relationships in the environment? What actually, physically are thoughts? And why does it seem like it's all happening to me?

Now, you can take the systemic perspective and say it's all process, that for example the mind is what the brain does, but this still does not provide a mechanistic explanation for how it happens. There is the basis for a workable hypothesis and that's great. But this has been around at least since Dennett 1991 and it seems to me that there still remain many unanswered questions about just how phenomenology manifests. IMO, you are jumping the gun, Pixy, with the finality of your assertions. Science is more than hypotheses. You need to demonstrate how brain actually creates what we experience. And that ain't easy.

Nick

[Nick227]

Let me give you a famous thought-experiment: a group of color-blind scientists spend years figuring out all the physical processes involved in seeing the color red. They know the physics involved, the neurochemistry, which parts of the brain interpret the signals... they discover everything there is to know physically about what it is to see red. All the "processes", as it were. The question is, is their knowledge on seeing the color red complete or are they missing something by being color-blind? Do they actually have to experience seeing red before they can close the book on it?

If you read everything there is to know about riding a bike, but have never actually done so, doesn't the kid next door, on his bike, have a better understanding of it? Of course. Nobody's knowledge of anything is complete until they experience it. You can memorize the most fabulous recipe and you won't have a clue what it actually is until you experience the taste of is.

These kinds of thought experiments (TE's) can seem pretty convincing but if you look into some of the responses and objections raised by other researchers subsequently you will see that the TE can often be a bit of a loaded dice.

With the famous "Mary the colour scientist" one there are issues with what may be called "knowledge." As Dennett points out, if Mary truly knows "all there is to know about colour" then she must also know her reactive dispositions to colour. This point is still disputed but it does start to weaken the potency of the original TE because if she knows her reactive dispositions to colour then it seems to me reasonable that she does already know red.

Searle's "Chinese Room" one is also interesting but I recently listened to an mp3 of Searle defending his TE against around a dozen objections subsequently raised against it. What I was waiting for was for him to deal with Dennett's objections which were put down in his 1991 book. Searle didn't deign to discuss them, despite as I say dealing with a gamut of weaker objections. I found this telling.

I don't pretend to understand all the ins and outs here, but I think it's fair to say that many of these TE's were constructed to deliberately try and convince the reader of the soundness of one argument - using fair means or foul.

Nick

[AkuManiMani]

Not in the slightest - and I certainly claim no special understanding for how Universe works.

My only point has been - and still remains - that theism is the better starting point to answer the question about existence than materialism or physicalism - however you define them.

You've basically formulated your own custom version of theism and presented it as the necessary solution to a problem that really isn't problematic.

You have basically framed the argument as:

-Materialism posits that there is a fundamental underlying 'substance' and that this 'substance' is what sustains existence

-Your Overmind theism claims that because existence and and phenomenon are informational in nature this strongly implies that it exists within the mind of what you choose to call 'God' and that this 'mind' is what sustains existence rather than 'substance'.

From there, you can kinda wedge in what ever particular theistic position you had from the get go and then claim that its more parsimonius' than the 'substance' explaination. Its like one of those latenight infomercials making the case for a product that you never knew you needed but to solve a problem that you never really had.

The issue with your 'Overmind' postulate is that it assumes a fundamental entity which, itself, would need explaining. The non-theistic position you're arguing against makes no such assumption of an ultimate 'sustainer'. In either case, the regression problem remains but in the case of your 'Overmind' postulate its rationalized away to make room for an entity with no discernable atributes other than its ability to allow you to shoehorn whatever conception of 'God' one might have. The non-theistic position (what you're broadly calling 'materialist') is more parsimonius in that it makes no claim to knowledge of, or inference to, some ultimate or another; it is inherently open to aditional explaination along the path of regressing inquiry. The thing is we don't and, almost certainly, cannot know what the ultimate fundamental of reality is because there really isn't one.

[PixyMisa]

The brain is very strongly implicated in the production of consciousness, no doubt about it. There may be a few forum members on this thread who might dispute this, but this seems to me a bit irrational. It's clear.
Yep.

However, this of itself does not to me suggest the level of finality to the whole affair that you apparently ascribe to it. The questions remain...just how does it do it? We don't know every detail, sure. But we really do know a hell of a lot. (As the lecture series I'm constantly linking to illustrates so brilliantly, if anyone would just take the time to listen to it!)

Why is it so light in here? How does sound actually manifest from physical relationships in the environment?The lecture series goes more into visual than auditory perception, but it does cover visual perception in considerable depth.

What actually, physically are thoughts?Neurobiology in action.

And why does it seem like it's all happening to me?Because it's an enormous evolutionary advantage.

ETA: And because, well, how could it seem to be happening to anyone else?

Now, you can take the systemic perspective and say it's all process, that for example the mind is what the brain does, but this still does not provide a mechanistic explanation for how it happens.No, but we have that. The lecture series only skims the surface - it's a first year general introduction to psychology - but it takes 24 hours to do that.

I'm not saying it's simple. It's simple in principle, but massively complicated in detail.

There is the basis for a workable hypothesis and that's great. But this has been around at least since Dennett 1991 and it seems to me that there still remain many unanswered questions about just how phenomenology manifests. IMO, you are jumping the gun, Pixy, with the finality of your assertions. Science is more than hypotheses. You need to demonstrate how we get from noumena to phenomena. And that ain't easy.Forget "noumena" and "phenomena"; they're terms founded in fuzzy thinking.

As I keep telling you, listen to the lecture series. Prof. Wolfe, who presents the lectures, is a leading researcher in the field of visual perception. He knows this stuff far better than I do, and presents it better as well. In the twenty-five years that I have been learning about cognition, I've come across two sources I recommend without hesitation: Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach; and the MIT Introduction to Psychology (http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Brain-and-Cognitive-Sciences/9-00Fall-2004/CourseHome/index.htm) lecture series.

[Ichneumonwasp]

I have no training in philosophy, but for me what needs paying attention to is that the cogito attempts (one presumes) to make a statement about "I." As far as I know it is not trying to make a statement about the nature of the universe. Thus that thought exists does not here presume that the universe is made of thought. One might also say that visual phenomenology, for example, is equally representative of the universe.

Nick


So, you agree?

[Ichneumonwasp]

I find this a bizarre position. I thought we were supposed to be enquiring minds here, trying to understand reality. So it makes no difference at all to you whether the underlying fundamental reality is dead matter or Universal Consciousness?


You are just assuming that it is not knowable. Based on what?
I have been arguing that millennia old traditions insistently tell us that it is knowable, via asensual direct experience. And these traditions prescribe practical systems of life and behaviour which move one towards that experience. People here tend to value practicality, so they should like that.
It is true that this kind of knowing is different from our usual modes of knowing. The latter are made up of parts and their interrelationships, and thus are amenable to language. The former is experience of The Whole and is therefore, in principle, indescribable.
This is exactly what one would expect from a philosophical point of view. It also happens to match with personal testimony of the experience.

I'm sorry that you find it a bizarre position. It is the natural consequence of monism. All of this is straight from the history of philosophy and the way that monism has been considered, from Anaximader through Spinoza.

I am not assuming it is not knowable. I provided an argument as to why it is not knowable more than once in various threads and once in this thread.

There is a much more extensive discussion/proof at the beginning of Spinoza's Ethics that you can research on your own.

Whatever it is you think you might be experiencing through any mystical state is not the fundamental existent. It cannot be. You can only experience some aspect of the fundamental existent/substance.




You make a good point, and I would agree with you if it were not for the evidence from throughout human history, across cultures, that the primary existent is indeed Universal Consciousness, and that it can be experienced. Indeed, the experience is why the whole of Creation was brought into play in the first place.

An experience is an experience. That experience must be of something and that something to make any sense must be comparable to something else -- the only means by which we understand and can discuss anything (by comparison). We do not experience "things in themselves". So whatever those experiences are, they are not of the fundamental existent.


Again, it´s not thought. I´ve always thought Descartes made a pretty basic blunder in that regard. Does our awareness cease to exist in the gaps between thoughts? To say we are our thoughts is like looking at a movie screen and saying we are the actor(s). We are the observer, the witness consciousness.
As to the proof of God, I tend to avoid such discussions. God either exists or does not, ..constructing a particularly clever argument is not going to move something from non existence over to existence, or vice versa. God is a matter of experience rather than argument, analysis or particular employments of reason.


Descartes wasn't trying to prove the thing that you guys have done with his cogito. His thought experiment is rock solid for a very good reason -- it proves one of its basic assumptions, what all good syllogisms do.

And, right, an argument is not going to move something from existence to non-existence, nor is it going to make something the fundamental existent.

As to God, he exists by definition if you so define it. There is no other proof. If he exists by experience, only if you so define your experience in some way so that it is the case.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If memory doesn´t enter into your consciousness it´s not memory, is it. Simple really.
All your memories are in your consciousness at all times? That sounds really annoying.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I find this a bizarre position. I thought we were supposed to be enquiring minds here, trying to understand reality. So it makes no difference at all to you whether the underlying fundamental reality is dead matter or Universal Consciousness?
I don't think there is any way to know what stuff really is. But if I knew, how would it change my world?


You are just assuming that it is not knowable. Based on what?
Based on the fact that no one can think of an experiment to distinguish all the possible fundamental existents. Unless you consider science a giant experiment, in which case physical stuff is winning so far.

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Let me give you a famous thought-experiment: a group of color-blind scientists spend years figuring out all the physical processes involved in seeing the color red. They know the physics involved, the neurochemistry, which parts of the brain interpret the signals... they discover everything there is to know physically about what it is to see red. All the "processes", as it were. The question is, is their knowledge on seeing the color red complete or are they missing something by being color-blind? Do they actually have to experience seeing red before they can close the book on it?
We've had a dozen threads on the Knowledge Argument.

Is Mary allowed to operate on her brain while in the black and white room?

~~ Paul

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Damage this part of the brain and you are blind - but can still respond to people's facial expressions.

Damage this part and you can no longer form new memories of events - but you retain your prior memories, and you can still learn new skills, even though you don't remember learning them.

Damage this part and you lose the ability to recognise faces, or you can recognise faces but know beyond a doubt that the person you see is an evil imposter.

Introduce this chemical and you see things that aren't there. This one will induce fear and paranoia. And this one will shut down your consciousness, as quickly and completely as flicking a switch.

Stimulate this region of the brain with a magnetic field and you'll have a spontaneous religious experience. Stimulate that region at the right moment and you will instantly forget what happened to you a moment ago. Put an electrode here and you will give up all but the most essential activities and concentrate on feeding current to that electrode.
I working all of these facts into my TV transceiver model of consciousness. It's getting complicated, but I can manage. It reminds me of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bartolomeu_Velho_1568.jpg

~~ Paul

[HypnoPsi]

I told you I was not talking about the Libet experiments.

Here: http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html

If you can't find the full text, it is summed up in many places, just google the paper title, "Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain."


I have been unable to locate the full text - though I have certainly came across this work before earlier in the year.

As you can see from the interview and review on Science Daily here:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm

This experiment suffers from the same design problems (in reference to the conclusions you make from it) as the others. And I would also point out that the authors do not reach the same conclusion as you. Why do you feel justified in going further than them with research you are not as familiar with?


One of the comments posted on Philosophyogbrains.com puts it rather well:

http://philosophyofbrains.com/2008/04/26/unconscious-determinants-of-free-decisions-in-the-human-brain.aspx

"The upshot is that it takes a bizarre view of free will combined with a strange interpretation of the data to find these results threatening to free will. IF our choices could be predicted with much closer to 100% accuracy (rather than the 60% here) AND if it were shown that the relevant brain activity both precedes and is unaffected by any of our conscious deliberations, well, THEN there may be an interesting challenge to our free will."

The point here is that the experimenters only asked the subjects to move one hand of their choice to press a button. What would happen if someone decided not to press the button at all?

You also have to wonder about the questions that were being asked of the subject here. Just asking "When did you decide to press the button with your right/left hand?" isn't enough here. What would the answer be if we asked them when do you feel you first prepared to press the button?

You'll also note that, obviously, the conscious choice to move at all is made just as soon as one is given the instruction. It is only the choice of when to decide to move that is said to be pre-determined (sometimes) by neuronal activity.

So the question is why doesn't conscious choice show up in the brain until so late after being given the instruction?

This research just doesn't say very much about free will at all. It's more about unconscious preferences being predictable sometimes (at a rate 60%).

And, by the way, if you have a copy of the paper, can you explain how they controlled for left-handedness or right handedness?

That seems like a real spanner in the works to me.

Was it easier to predict the decision the subject made when they chose their dominant or non-dominant hand?

Incidentally, were they actually able to predict the decision or was all the data merely mined after the fact?

Long story short, they used MRI technology, computer pattern recognition, and a whole bunch of more reliable techniques than the old Libet experiments. And their results showed a much larger time difference as well.


And as such it's a victim of its own success. These results clearly show that all of these experiments are showing nothing but mental preparedness rather than conscious choice. Every day we're faced with the need to make conscious choices in under 7 or so seconds (whilst driving to work for example).

If this research means what you think it means then every competitive sport from table tennis to soccer would be impossible as the brain simply doesn't have a 7 second window to prepare.

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

Nobody has ever observed anything but matter. The act of observation is itself a material process.


Pixy, by "matter" do you mean something that you believe to be self-sustaining and self-perpetuating (i.e. uncreated and unsustained by any type of consciousness whatsoever - even as pure information)?

~
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

Your consciousness doesn't include your memory. The concept of god is derived from your personal consciousness. Therefore god does not have memory without some additional mechanism to provide it.


If God can think up a Universe I'm pretty sure he can create a memory store for himself.

But, hey, if he knows the current position of all information, it's force and trajectory (which he does, cos he's thinking it up all the time) then all he needs to do to see yesterday (cos He's really, really, clever is God) is just calculate back to where all the information was at that point in time.

Simple. :)

~
HypnoPsi

[Nick227]

So, you agree?

For sure. For me the cogito is not trying to make a statement about the nature of the universe. It's trying to reassure Descartes that he exists! I stress I'm not a philosopher so there could be more to it than this.

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

Creationists do this all the time, assuming that the world had to "come from" somewhere in order to designate a role for the God they already believe to be the creator.


This is where I completely disagree with you. I have never felt that being a theist filled some need as atheists are wont to imagine just must be the case with theists.

My theism has always, for as long as I can remember, been based on my absence of belief in the idea that objective reality is just some self-sustaining thingy or other and my absence of belief that my mind/conciousness is solely down to a couple of pounds of protein in my skull.

Quite frankly, the type of thinking you seem to be following here is the logic that we should all by now have moved away from theism and beliefs about consciousness being a distinct phenomenon and all that stuff.

The problem here is that atheists/materialists are very, very wrong to blame some latent belief in these things in society (as if it is all just sentimental needs people have) on the reason why we're not all living in some glorious atheist utopia like in John Lennon's "Imagine".

We're not the one's doing anything to prevent this. Atheists have failed so much and so completely at showing the Universe to be self-perpetuating and self-sustaining and that consciousness is just information processing or whatever that they've basically given up trying and just prefer to nowadays point the finger at others.

The bottom line is until you do succed at showing the above (and I very, very, much doubt you ever will) then belief in God and Psi and/or the distinction of consciousness isn't going anywhere fast.

This, coupled with good solid research into low levels of Psi ability showing positive results, doesn't put you in a good stead.

~
HypnoPsi

[Nick227]

Yep.

We don't know every detail, sure. But we really do know a hell of a lot. (As the lecture series I'm constantly linking to illustrates so brilliantly, if anyone would just take the time to listen to it!)

Well, I did download it earlier today and I will make a start on it in the car. I noticed that #10 seems to be missing for some reason.

The lecture series goes more into visual than auditory perception, but it does cover visual perception in considerable depth.

The only thing that concerned me was that it was essentially psychology. That to me means that it's going to be looking more at function than actual physical routes of causation.

Can you give a machine actual, experiential vision? Can you give it actual sensational feeling? Or can you truly describe how it happens in the human brain, how it translates physical attributes into sensory phenomena? Not how it might be happening, not why it's happening, but how it actually happens?

Because it's an enormous evolutionary advantage.

I'm aware of the possibilities. I'm concerned about the actual how.

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

That page is crap.

Look at the first thing on the list: "NDEs occur while patients are brain dead."

If you are brain dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death), your brain is dead. Dead and starting to smell.

You do not come back from brain death.


So, in otherwords, just because the author is using the the term brain death to, I presume, mean an EEG flatline (rather than cellular necrosis) you're going to take a sigh of relief and just avoid reading anything from the page that might challenge your earlier statement about these people not, or so you believe, being able to gain information they couln't possibly access via sensory means.

How absolutely typical of a skeptic.

Had you actually bothered to read the page this first entry cites at:

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html

You would see that the state the surgeons introduced really pushed the boundaries.

If the patients brain was generating the NDE then there would have to be electro-chemical activity in tons of locations - and the signature for that occurring of course is, naturally, EEG activity.

Unable to answer this or explain it you ignore it for the most flippant of reasons.

~
HypnoPsi

[Nick227]

You are just assuming that it is not knowable. Based on what?
I have been arguing that millennia old traditions insistently tell us that it is knowable, via asensual direct experience. And these traditions prescribe practical systems of life and behaviour which move one towards that experience. People here tend to value practicality, so they should like that.
It is true that this kind of knowing is different from our usual modes of knowing. The latter are made up of parts and their interrelationships, and thus are amenable to language. The former is experience of The Whole and is therefore, in principle, indescribable.
This is exactly what one would expect from a philosophical point of view. It also happens to match with personal testimony of the experience.

IMO there are also straight materialistic explanations for it. We accept monism. What largely separates egoic self-centred existence from non-dualism is thinking. Thinking creates the sense of a limited experiencer. Most traditional meditative disciplines, as I'm sure you'll agree, attempt to reduce the amount of thinking or the degree of identification with thought. As soon as these factors are diminished there will be a oneness experience, because thinking is no longer partitioning phenomenology into "I" and "not I."

I think it's also important to appreciate that mystical philosophies, good ones that is, are not so much "telling you how it is" but rather giving the mind something to try and lead it to a better place. Universal Consciousness or Dead Matter - does it really matter? To be honest, I find materialism the strongest meditation going.

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

Do you think that they are the same essentially?


No. Essentially, as in the essence of objective phenomena, the atheist believes that reality is somehow self-causing and/or self-perpetuating and self-generating. (This is true even if they believe it's all parent and baby universes all the way down.)

Even if you say it's causeless you are still believing it is self-perpetuating.

That is obviously very different from theism.

~
HypnoPsi

[Nick227]

Pixy, by "matter" do you mean something that you believe to be self-sustaining and self-perpetuating (i.e. uncreated and unsustained by any type of consciousness whatsoever - even as pure information)?

~
HypnoPsi

Yes, I mean, for me there are a whole ton of issues with what "matter," or whatever, actually is, how it got to be here, and more importantly...if it's all the same thing then what principle creates differentiation?

There are heaps of places where God can come in, but when you let this demi-urge character dominate your brain, you stop looking deeper.

Nick

[HypnoPsi]

Like what, who, where, when and how.

data, protocols and papers please?


Go ahead and search on the Ganzfeld and Staring experiments to your hearts content. Then work your way through the journals of the society for psychical research among others.

If, upon doing so, you find you can clearly define where you see errors of design or confounding variables in any given experiment that you can demonstrate would give false positive results you will have my attention.

If you come back with "just not believing it" or expecting me to do your work for you and spoon feed it to you you can forget it. I have neither the inclination nor time to indulge that type of thing.

~
HypnoPsi

[Silentknight]

I don't know of any materialist or physicalist who is able to explain all these things, do you?

Why would you assume any theist can?
I take it that neither you nor Malerin has bothered to listen to the free MIT lectures on neurobiology. Shame on you. No box of brain-shaped chocolates for either of you next Valentine's Day.

You should try reading this out to yourself while looking in the mirror.
You're making the claim, positing a God to explain away everything you don't understand, therefore the burden of proof is on you. Besides, I've clearly stated several times already that I'd accept something if it had its own evidence to stand on. Awareness of our individual consciousness doesn't give us a logical basis to assume that there's a supreme uber-consciousness upon which the entirety of reality is contingent. The most it allows us to do is assume the existence of an equal or lesser consciousness. For those, at least, we do have some evidence.

Whatever you say about any model's scope and use to explain and answer all our questions is meaningless since both theism and materialism have the same problems. I don't think too many would deny this. That matters nothing in regards to the question about which theory requires more faith.
Wrong again. It's not faith if it's demonstrable that breaking the conglomeration of thought goop (to avoid using the term "matter") that we call a "brain" can cause a person's consciousness to change or shut off. Meanwhile, you have failed to demonstrate that the causality works the same the other way, that thoughts can alter or recreate reality.

And the theory that requires more faith is, indisputably, materialism.
For reasons you've stated, which are all false. Then again, if you've used the term "indisputably" then you're probably not going to be open-minded towards any arguments that contradict your established beliefs.

This is a cop-out materialists make to reduce consciouness to a triviality, and leads to bizzare claims that things like thermostats and calculators (or anything that carries out an informational "process") are consciouss. Concsciousness is much more than a "process". It is a subjective phenemenon that non of us can deny experiencing. It encompasses self-awareness and experience.
I hate to break it to you, but you're not that special. Consciousness is not special and it does not make humans the pinnacle of creation we like to imagine ourselves to be. There's no reason to elevate consciousness to the lofty state of a supernatural, transcendant, or godlike substance. As tempting as it is to set oneself above the rest of the universe, as many creationists do in claiming that humans were created in God's image, are the only beings with souls, that the world was created for our sake, etc. it's also exceedingly arrogant.

Furthermore, I don't see how identifying consciousness as a set of physical processes trivializes it. Creationists love to argue that evolution trivializes humans by saying that they're animals that fall under natural laws. Yeah, so what? The only way it diminishes human nature is if one's faith is so weak that it needs to be propped up on toothpicks like creationism or an immaterial consciousness.

It is easy to say that love, hate, joy, and all the other emotions we experience are "processes", but that completely ignores the experiential quality that is attached to everything we feel. To know of pheremones, cat scans, and biochemistry pales in comparison to actually experiencing "falling in love". The subjective quality of experience is so anathema to physicality, it prompts otherwise rational people to twist themselves in knots to deny the obvious.
You say that as if the technical explanation of emotions as physical processes and the personal experience of them as feelings are mutually exclusive or contradictory. What, do you believe that finding a scientific explanation for something "takes the magic out of it" or diminishes the experience? Geez...

Where's my facepalm mosaic again?

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/thum_2190348a9eef45db41.jpg (http://forums.randi.org/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=13451)

[PixyMisa]

Well, I did download it earlier today and I will make a start on it in the car.
Cool! I really think you'll enjoy it.

I noticed that #10 seems to be missing for some reason.
Yes, that's unfortunate. I don't know what happened to #10, but it's nowhere to be found.

The only thing that concerned me was that it was essentially psychology. That to me means that it's going to be looking more at function than actual physical routes of causation.
The coverage of visual perception is particularly thorough. From the retina all the way through the visual cortex, with some very interesting stuff on various types of optical illusions.

Can you give a machine actual, experiential vision? Can you give it actual sensational feeling?
A much better question is, how can you not do this? Once you attach a camera to a computer and program (or otherwise teach) the computer to respond to visual stimuli, what is the human doing that the computer is not?

Or can you truly describe how it happens in the human brain, how it translates physical attributes into sensory phenomena? Not how it might be happening, not why it's happening, but how it actually happens?
Yes. That's in the lectures.

One other thing you might be interested in there is some recent Japanese research: The can scan your brain with an fMRI and actually produce a readable image of the word you happen to be looking at (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16267-mindreading-software-could-record-your-dreams.html). (The title of the article is rather overblown, in typical New Scientist fashion, but the facts are accurate.)

That's from the first level of visual processing, which we already knew was a direct map of the output of the retina, but it gives you an idea of just how advanced our understanding is.

We're still a long way from completely understanding how the brain works, but we know a hell of a lot.

[Silentknight]

This is where I completely disagree with you. I have never felt that being a theist filled some need as atheists are wont to imagine just must be the case with theists.
This doesn't address my objection. I said that your reasoning is analogous to that used in creationist arguments and therefore flawed for the same reasons.

My theism has always, for as long as I can remember, been based on my absence of belief in the idea that objective reality is just some self-sustaining thingy or other and my absence of belief that my mind/conciousness is solely down to a couple of pounds of protein in my skull.
In other words, the argument from personal incredulity.

Quite frankly, the type of thinking you seem to be following here is the logic that we should all by now have moved away from theism and beliefs about consciousness being a distinct phenomenon and all that stuff.
You could not be more off base. My objection is with very specific beliefs, ideas, and arguments that happen to fall under theism, and sometimes I see nonbelievers practicing the same bad judgment. I wasn't making a generalization about theism, I was attacking something far more specific. If you want to appeal to persecution and claim to speak for all theists, go right ahead, but you probably don't need more things to be wrong about.

The problem here is that atheists/materialists are very, very wrong to blame some latent belief in these things in society (as if it is all just sentimental needs people have) on the reason why we're not all living in some glorious atheist utopia like in John Lennon's "Imagine".
Now you're attacking something I never even argued. Typical. When you're done setting fire to those bales of straw, maybe you'd like to consider some of the actual claims on the table.

We're not the one's doing anything to prevent this. Atheists have failed so much and so completely at showing the Universe to be self-perpetuating and self-sustaining and that consciousness is just information processing or whatever that they've basically given up trying and just prefer to nowadays point the finger at others.
What, if anything, does this have to do with anything I said? You're arguing with imaginary voices here. If you're using this as an excuse to turn the strawman on its head and thus blame atheism for hindering progress, an argument I never made in reverse, then you're only digging a deeper hole.

I never said that materialism was devoid of assumptions. I explained several times how these assumptions were reasonable to make, and yes, how the conclusions we draw from them are pragmatic. Whether real, illusory, simulated, or otherwise, it's a very bad idea to, for example, ignore the laws of physics and try to leap from tall buildings. The minor implications may change slightly depending on how one wants to model reality, but the major applications of our knowledge and evidence remain the same. Regardless of what the universe is made of, regardless of God or the nature of reality, the scientific method is the most reliable means of approximating said reality as closely as possible.

The bottom line is until you do succed at showing the above (and I very, very, much doubt you ever will) then belief in God and Psi and/or the distinction of consciousness isn't going anywhere fast.
Your inability to look up things you don't understand is not a verdict against the people who disagree with you.

This, coupled with good solid research into low levels of Psi ability showing positive results, doesn't put you in a good stead.
Oh crap--

Well, now that you know my secret, I guess there's no point in hiding it anymore. I'm implanting an irresistible suggestion that makes my opponents ridiculous--

Whoops, houseplants spontaneously caught fire again. This might take a minute.

[PixyMisa]

No. Essentially, as in the essence of objective phenomena, the atheist believes that reality is somehow self-causing and/or self-perpetuating and self-generating.
No.

We merely observe that reality is. It can hardly not be, after all.

"Self-perpetuating"? What does that even mean? It implies a purpose, which is something we observe in - or at least ascribe to - living things (and complicated machinery). We observe no, and can reasonably infer no purpose from our observations of the Universe.

"Self-generating"? No. We merely observe that reality is. Since reality is all that is, by definition, it cannot have a cause that can be described in terms of reality.

(This is true even if they believe it's all parent and baby universes all the way down.)You're a bit hazy on the whole concept of infinity, aren't you?

Even if you say it's causeless you are still believing it is self-perpetuating.Again, I don't believe this has any meaning in terms of reality itself.

That is obviously very different from theism.No. What you are describing is precisely theism. That's why atheists don't do that.

Take a look at what you are claiming: What caused the Universe? God. Well, what caused God? God doesn't need a cause.

If God doesn't need a cause, why does the Universe?

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

If God can think up a Universe I'm pretty sure he can create a memory store for himself.
But god can't think up the universe! This god is postulated by analogy to individual human consciousness. Humans cannot think up universes. You've endowed your god with one more capability for which you have no evidence.

Don't you see the problem? You're using the absolute certainty of human phenomenal awareness as the assured foundation of your philosophical model. That's great. But anything you add to the model that is over and above the capabilities of human consciousness no longer rests on that assured foundation. The analogy doesn't hold. The stuff is just made up.

~~ Paul

[nescafe]

Yes, that's unfortunate. I don't know what happened to #10, but it's nowhere to be found.

I have it on very good authority (a friend of mine who is doing his postdoc in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT) that lecture no. 10 is the one that explains the mind control techniques that the Evil Atheist Conspiracy uses to control Western civilization. If you stand one smoot away from the northwestern corner of the MIT Press bookstore on campus and incant "the magic words are squeamish ossifrage" 5 times with $73 dollars in 2 and 5 dollar bills in your right hip pocket, the money will be replaced with an MMC card containing an MP3 of the lecture.

Don't tell anyone I told you.

[PixyMisa]

I have it on very good authority (a friend of mine who is doing his postdoc in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT) that lecture no. 10 is the one that explains the mind control techniques that the Evil Atheist Conspiracy uses to control Western civilization. If you stand one smoot away from the northwestern corner of the MIT Press bookstore on campus and incant "the magic words are squeamish ossifrage" 5 times with $73 dollars in 2 and 5 dollar bills in your right hip pocket, the money will be replaced with an MMC card containing an MP3 of the lecture.
Should I be concerned that I actually understood all that?

Don't tell anyone I told you.
Who would I tell? ;)

[articulett]

I'd just like to paraphrase Malerin for my own amusement.

"To know of the chemical make up of LSD pales in comparison to experiencing "the taste of a rainbow". The subjective quality of the LSD experience is so anathema to physicality, it prompts otherwise rational people to twist themselves in knots to deny the obvious. "

[paximperium]

I'd just like to paraphrase Malerin for my own amusement.

"To know of the chemical make up of LSD pales in comparison to experiencing "the taste of a rainbow". The subjective quality of the LSD experience is so anathema to physicality, it prompts otherwise rational people to twist themselves in knots to deny the obvious. "
The synaesthetics who can smell alphabets or taste sounds are confused by why are they being studied by all those the materialistic scientists who "deny the obvious".

[plumjam]

The issue with your 'Overmind' postulate is that it assumes a fundamental entity which, itself, would need explaining..

Just to interject.. this misunderstands the nature of explanation.
We only explain things by invoking other things and their interrelationships. At the fundamental level of reality there will be no further things, plus their interrelationships, which we can invoke in order to provide explanation.
In short, if we can explain something then that something is not fundamental.
What is fundamental will be, in principle, inexplicable.
It just is. All we can do is accept that.

Hmm.. can anyone think of something that is inexplicable in terms of parts, just seems to be, and is undeniable and therefore just has to be accepted?
Here´s a clue, it begins with a C.
And doesn´t rhyme with ´hunt´.

[AkuManiMani]

Just to interject.. this misunderstands the nature of explanation.
We only explain things by invoking other things and their interrelationships. At the fundamental level of reality there will be no further things, plus their interrelationships, which we can invoke in order to provide explanation.
In short, if we can explain something then that something is not fundamental.
What is fundamental will be, in principle, inexplicable.
It just is. All we can do is accept that.

Well one can just stop and be content with accepting that existence just is and leave it at that. But if everyone were to do that there would be progress in scientific knowledge since we would be content to live without any understanding or explanation for anything. It would be the end of all intellectual pursuit.

My point was that there is no true 'fundamental', no final answer. Theres no point at which one can logically say "all reality is explained and there is nothing more to investigate or learn". If one posits an 'Overmind' one would still logically be able to inquire for an explanation for that, and so on. There is no logical end to inquiry for every answer spawns more questions in its wake.

[plumjam]

I'm sorry that you find it a bizarre position. It is the natural consequence of monism.
So now the ´natural consequence of monism´ is that you are left with no interest whatsoever in which particular monism is the case? This is getting a bit Orwellian.
It´s like doing a sum and claiming not to be interested in what the result is, due to the fact that you know it´s going to be a number. Another analogy would involve an ostrich and some sand.

All of this is straight from the history of philosophy and the way that monism has been considered, from Anaximader through Spinoza.
How so? These guys, like you, claimed to have no interest in whether fundamental reality is dead matter or Universal Consciousness?

I am not assuming it is not knowable. I provided an argument as to why it is not knowable more than once in various threads and once in this thread.
Like I said before, in the face of experience, reliance on argument is rather a damp squib. It is bowing to the lessons of experience which gives science its main strength. If people see a Magnificent Frigatebird in the Australian outback then no kind of argument that they didn´t actually see it is going to hold much sway with them.

There is a much more extensive discussion/proof at the beginning of Spinoza's Ethics that you can research on your own.
Spinoza was a philosopher (argumentation), not a mystic (experience), so see my previous reply.

Whatever it is you think you might be experiencing through any mystical state is not the fundamental existent. It cannot be. You can only experience some aspect of the fundamental existent/substance.
More assumptions based only on argumentation rather than experience. Why would anyone who had experienced fundamental reality be swayed by your arguments?


An experience is an experience. That experience must be of something and that something to make any sense must be comparable to something else -- the only means by which we understand and can discuss anything (by comparison). We do not experience "things in themselves". So whatever those experiences are, they are not of the fundamental existent.
Yet more assumptions. The fact that up to now you have personally only experienced ´things´ i.e. parts of reality, in no way prejudices the prospect that it may be possible to experience all of reality.

And, right, an argument is not going to move something from existence to non-existence, nor is it going to make something the fundamental existent.
Likewise your arguments about supposed limits to experience do not bring those limits into existence.


As to God, he exists by definition if you so define it. There is no other proof. If he exists by experience, only if you so define your experience in some way so that it is the case.
Which would apply to all experience, including drinking a cup of coffee and the like.

[plumjam]

Well one can just stop and be content with accepting that existence just is and leave it at that. But if everyone were to do that there would be progress in scientific knowledge since we would be content to live without any understanding or explanation for anything. It would be the end of all intellectual pursuit.
That´s a non sequitur. Accepting fundamental reality as in principle inexplicable in no way stops people from investigating the variegated bits and pieces of reality which are founded upon that fundamentality. It´s simply, and logically, true that any candidate for fundamental reality will not be made up of parts (otherwise it would not be fundamental).

My point was that there is no true 'fundamental', no final answer.
You base this on what?(Aside from just assuming it to be so)

Theres no point at which one can logically say "all reality is explained and there is nothing more to investigate or learn". If one posits an 'Overmind' one would still logically be able to inquire for an explanation for that, and so on. There is no logical end to inquiry for every answer spawns more questions in its wake
You seem to have missed my point about the nature of, and the consequent limits to, explanation. Explanation consists of invoking further parts and their interrelationships. When you get to true fundamentality there will be no further parts, plus their interrelationships, which you can invoke in order to continue in the explanatory mode.. and you will be forced to switch into a mode of acceptance.
If further parts do become available then you know that you have not yet reached fundamentality.

[PixyMisa]

You base this on what?(Aside from just assuming it to be so)
On the blindingly obvious.

We know the Universe acts like it's made of matter.

What does that mean? We don't know.

It's reasonable to say that it means that the Universe is made of matter, but we don't know.

It's possible that the Universe is the dream of a butterfly, but we don't know. All we can do is decribe how it behaves.

It's possible that the Universe is the dream of a butterfly which in turn being simulated in some unimaginably vast supercomputer which in turn is... but we don't know.

There is no way to put a stop to the recursion. But we can say that we cannot know.

[PixyMisa]

Hmm.. can anyone think of something that is inexplicable in terms of parts, just seems to be, and is undeniable and therefore just has to be accepted?
Here´s a clue, it begins with a C.
And doesn´t rhyme with ´hunt´.
Nope. Can't think of anything.

[plumjam]

On the blindingly obvious.

We know the Universe acts like it's made of matter.

What does that mean? We don't know.

It's reasonable to say that it means that the Universe is made of matter, but we don't know.

It's possible that the Universe is the dream of a butterfly, but we don't know. All we can do is decribe how it behaves.

It's possible that the Universe is the dream of a butterfly which in turn being simulated in some unimaginably vast supercomputer which in turn is... but we don't know.

There is no way to put a stop to the recursion. But we can say that we cannot know.
To argue that it is in principle impossible to know what is the fundamental nature of reality, is to assume your own omniscience.. which is a condition you repeatedly state to be impossible. So you´re arguing against yourself.
When and how did you become omniscient?

[paximperium]

To argue that it is in principle impossible to know what is the fundamental nature of reality, is to assume your own omniscience.. which is a condition you repeatedly state to be impossible. So you´re arguing against yourself.
When and how did you become omniscient?
What complete nonsense. Your hypocrisy is so blatant it is most amusing.

Pixy never once said it is impossible to know what is the fundamental nature of reality so your entire line of ad hominem, strawman garbage is irrelevant BS.

All anyone has said is that WE DON"T KNOW. No omnicient needed to make such a statement.

[PixyMisa]

To argue that it is in principle impossible to know what is the fundamental nature of reality, is to assume your own omniscience.. which is a condition you repeatedly state to be impossible. So you´re arguing against yourself.
Try addressing the point for once, rather than just making up patently spurious arguments.

You cannot know the fundamental nature of reality, because you can never know that there is not some more fundamental nature.

Nor do you have to be omnisicient to know that there are things you cannot know. Godel proved precisely that.

When and how did you become omniscient?
See above.

[PixyMisa]

What complete nonsense. Your hypocrisy is so blatant it is most amusing.

Pixy never once said it is impossible to know what is the fundamental nature of reality
I pretty much did.

so your entire line of ad hominem, strawman garbage is irrelevant BS.
But that's still true. ;)

[athon]

To argue that it is in principle impossible to know what is the fundamental nature of reality, is to assume your own omniscience..

To describe the nature of something, it demands a more fundamental context. That's not out of 'omniscience' - it's axiomatic. The very process of describing a 'thing' demands it. Try to describe something without deferring to a more fundamental context; I won't hold my breath that you'll even bother trying.

Hence when it comes to 'the ultimate' foundation of reality, you find you'll simply need something more fundamental in order to describe its nature. In the end, all we can do is describe what 'something' does, without an ability to go the next step down. That's why science gave up attempting to go straight to the bottom, and instead opted for describing each subsequent layer of increasingly fundamental properties without attempting to speculate what any potential 'final layer' might be. It is, by definition, impossible.

That's why materialism currently only goes as far as describing the rules which account for our observations, as if it is all external.

Athon

[Dancing David]

Malerin, here is the deal, you assume, and HammeGK pointed out that this is a mistake, that because you have a thought, that somehow that explains away the issues that arise from thoughtialism. Even if you have a thought based universe 9which looks exactly like a thoughtial one), why do pieces of thought arrange themselves to create consciousness. You just sweep it all under the rug and pronounce ‘because I say so.
The following as much meaning as what you said, if you don’t assume that thought can just magically do what you think it does.



Speaking of parsimony, I'm glad to see we're all using the commonly understood meaning of the term and not some made-up crap:rolleyes:

Also, speaking parsimoniously, idealism/thoughtism makes a huge assumption (nay, leap of faith) regarding consciousess. We are supposed to believe that reality is made up of thought stuff that takes up space and can be observed/weighed/measured/felt, etc. Ok, let's assume that's true. How is it then that a bunch of thought thought can be arranged in such a way as to create a completely non-thought phenemenon- consciousness? Does concsciousness take up space? How much does a consciousness weigh? How many joules does it put out? What does a consciousness look like or feel like? If you break apart consciousness in an thought smasher, what do the pieces look like? Consciousness has none of the properties that thought thought supposedly has. Why should there be anything like consciousness in a purely thought universe?

Consciouesness is totally outside the realm of thoughtity, and when thoughtialists claim that consciousness comes from thought, they are creating a fairy tale much more unparsimonious than anything a theist can come up with. The theist at least knows the mind exists, and so their claim that God (as a sort of super-mind) exists at least rests on a foundation of mind, however shaky it may be.

The thoughtialist is bereft of even the shakiest foundation. There is no evidence at all that thought thought exists, AND the idea that a non-thought phenemenon (consciousness) can arise from just putting pieces of thought together in the right way is more than a fairy tale, because even fairy tales are logically coherent. It is a completely ad-hoc non-sensical theory that the thoughtialist must believe in order to keep the whole house-of-cards that is idealism from collapsing.



Other than that your statement is a bunch of straw waving.

[Dancing David]

I find this a bizarre position. I thought we were supposed to be enquiring minds here, trying to understand reality. So it makes no difference at all to you whether the underlying fundamental reality is dead matter or Universal Consciousness?




Can you tell the difference?
How would you tell the difference?

If not then why does it matter?

[Dancing David]

-Materialism posits that there is a fundamental underlying 'substance' and that this 'substance' is what sustains existence.



Or in the version some of us are promoting

'The universe behaves as though there is a fundamental underlying 'substance' and that this 'substance' is what sustains existence.'

We can not know the ultimate root of this alleged substance, it could be quanta of energy, it could be godthought, individual thought or butterfly dreams. It could all be fairies and monkeys on motor scooters.

[Dancing David]

No. Essentially, as in the essence of objective phenomena, the atheist believes that reality is somehow self-causing and/or self-perpetuating and self-generating. (This is true even if they believe it's all parent and baby universes all the way down.)

Even if you say it's causeless you are still believing it is self-perpetuating.

That is obviously very different from theism.

~
HypnoPsi

How can you tell the difference?

The same applies exactly in the same way to a [i]thea/theo[i].

The thea-ist believes that theo is 'self-perpetuating and self-generating'.

Still no way to tell the difference between the two.

[Dancing David]

No.

We merely observe that reality is. It can hardly not be, after all.



To nitpick, it appears to be.

It could be the Great Trickster and the Fairy Horde, after all.

:)

[Dancing David]

Nope. Can't think of anything.
Chump chimp champ.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Just to interject.. this misunderstands the nature of explanation.
We only explain things by invoking other things and their interrelationships. At the fundamental level of reality there will be no further things, plus their interrelationships, which we can invoke in order to provide explanation.
In short, if we can explain something then that something is not fundamental.
What is fundamental will be, in principle, inexplicable.
It just is. All we can do is accept that.
Possibly so. However, don't go 'round saying that your baroque concept is fundamental without some serious research to determine whether it really is (think atom). And don't go 'round saying it's simpler than some other idea just because you think it's fundamental. Lumping all the hard stuff into a fundamental and then walking away is not a convincing argument.

~~ Paul

[Ichneumonwasp]

So now the ´natural consequence of monism´ is that you are left with no interest whatsoever in which particular monism is the case? This is getting a bit Orwellian.
It´s like doing a sum and claiming not to be interested in what the result is, due to the fact that you know it´s going to be a number. Another analogy would involve an ostrich and some sand.

I don't think you quite understand the consequences. How does it make sense to care about what you fundamentaly cannot possibly know?

Speaking of different types of monism thoroyghly misses the mark. If there is one thing, we cannot know precisely what it is in itself, so it makes no sense to speak of what type of monism it is. There cannot be more than one "thing". If you speak of different types of monism, then you are not discussing the fundamental existent but one of its attributes.


How so? These guys, like you, claimed to have no interest in whether fundamental reality is dead matter or Universal Consciousness?


No, they realized that we cannot know fundamental reality. Calling it matter, consciousness, whatever you want is either affixing a meaningless label to it -- in a confused and confusing process -- or describing an attribute of fundamental reality and not that reality in itself. This is pretty standard ontology-speak.


Like I said before, in the face of experience, reliance on argument is rather a damp squib. It is bowing to the lessons of experience which gives science its main strength. If people see a Magnificent Frigatebird in the Australian outback then no kind of argument that they didn´t actually see it is going to hold much sway with them.

Aristotle might have a bone to pick with you on that, since to him experience was only the fodder for knowledge. Knowledge depends on thought, reflection, argument, and a framework in which we makes sense of experience. As he was fond of saying, animals experience, man knows.


Spinoza was a philosopher (argumentation), not a mystic (experience), so see my previous reply.

Theresa of Avila was a mystic. She said the divine is blue. Was she factually correct? Maybe John of the Cross was wrong and Theresa's concern that the devil was fooling her was correct?

Youcan't seriously be arguing, using reason, that reason is essentially worthless in this situation. Why are you here, then, to gain converts?


More assumptions based only on argumentation rather than experience. Why would anyone who had experienced fundamental reality be swayed by your arguments?

Doesn't matter to me if you bother with reason or not. If your position is that reason doesn't matter, then that's fine. But don't argue it, since you can't be reasonable. You can say only -- I know the truth and you don't, nah, nah.

Unless you might be amenable to the realization that experience is simply experience and must be interpreted within some framework for it to be meaningful. What if you interpret from the wrong framework? That is the proepr place for reason and other experience. Traditionally, that is what is called wisdom.



Yet more assumptions. The fact that up to now you have personally only experienced ´things´ i.e. parts of reality, in no way prejudices the prospect that it may be possible to experience all of reality.

What assumption? I assume you have an argument against Spinoza. I would like to hear it.


Likewise your arguments about supposed limits to experience do not bring those limits into existence.

I'm sorry, but do you know how cognition works? Have you looked at how thought and experience work? Do you know how perception is even possible? If you want to argue that cognition and the ability to experience is limitless then I would like to hear how this is possible. Please provide your argument, along with the critique of Spinoza in your next post if you wish to continue, since you seem to be working under the misconception that he began with wild assumptions. Like anyone who thinks he began with premises. If you want to argue against a thinker, though, it doesn't work to claim -- assumption -- without showing where the problem might lie.

ould apply to all experience, including drinking a cup of coffee and the like.


Um, no. Fundamentals are not equal to the world of attributes of the fundamentals.

[Ichneumonwasp]

You seem to have missed my point about the nature of, and the consequent limits to, explanation. Explanation consists of invoking further parts and their interrelationships. When you get to true fundamentality there will be no further parts, plus their interrelationships, which you can invoke in order to continue in the explanatory mode.. and you will be forced to switch into a mode of acceptance.
If further parts do become available then you know that you have not yet reached fundamentality.


To argue that it is in principle impossible to know what is the fundamental nature of reality, is to assume your own omniscience.. which is a condition you repeatedly state to be impossible. So you´re arguing against yourself.
When and how did you become omniscient?

So, which is it? We cannot explain fundamental reality or we are omnicient if we realize that we cannot fundamentally explain fundamental reality?

We can't know the nature of fundamental reality because to know it (or explain it so that we can say we know it) would require that it be compared to something else. There is nothing else to which it can be compared, so explanation is impossible. That is not a claim to omniscience. It is a claim of limitation.

When it comes to "reality" we describe only the attributes of fundamental reality. That's all we can do. The same is true of our experiences, since experience itself depends on limits that frame the experience.

Accept it or not, but the only other option is "I'm right, you're wrong, and we can't discuss this using reason" which fairly obviously brings an end to the conversation.

[PixyMisa]

To nitpick, it appears to be.

It could be the Great Trickster and the Fairy Horde, after all.
Ah, but even then, reality would be what it is.

That we observe anything at all tells us that there is a reality. Our observations may or may not accurately reflect the nature of reality, but it is indisputable that there is a reality.

I don't even remember now why I needed to make that point... Oh, yes, it was HypnoPsi telling us what atheists really believe. :rolleyes:

[AkuManiMani]

My point was that there is no true 'fundamental', no final answer.

You base this on what?(Aside from just assuming it to be so)

I implicitly know it in much the same way a person knows that there is no last number and no smallest number. One can count indefinitely, divide without end, and not reach an 'ultimate' number. For the same reasons one can deduce and inquire indefinitely and not come upon an 'ultimate' explanation.


You seem to have missed my point about the nature of, and the consequent limits to, explanation. Explanation consists of invoking further parts and their interrelationships. When you get to true fundamentality there will be no further parts, plus their interrelationships, which you can invoke in order to continue in the explanatory mode.. and you will be forced to switch into a mode of acceptance.
If further parts do become available then you know that you have not yet reached fundamentality.

My point is that true 'fundamentality' will never be reached because of one simple word: why. Every answer, every explanation -- without exception -- is tentative and inherently incomplete. The idea of arriving at THE ultimate explanation is as absurd as counting to the 'last' number or catching the horizon.

[HypnoPsi]

The point is what theory is the stronger regarding the essence of phenomenal objects. Why are they there when, as modern physics has confirmed, they are nothing but information. What sustains them?Well, one idea might be that natural selection dictates that we experience an "object orientated" world. The brain's sensory systems will have been created through evolution and so can be expected to render a phenomenology that best helps the organism to survive and replicate.

Nominated.

You know nick. This is are actually extremely good points. During infancy we do indeed go through an important phase(s) of development related to concrete and abstract thinking.

This coupled with the fact that we are evolutionarily primed to be concrete thinkers (you won't have much luck as a tree swinger if you can't judge distances) really does make us all "materialists" whether we want to be or not.

My being an amaterialist on an intellectual/philosophical level makes very little difference to my perception of such things as distance, weight, volume and time being "real" rather than just the mere information that modern physics teaches us - unequivocally - that they are.

eta: relating to this it could of course be that our experience of the world is so driven by natural selection that actually we have no possibility to carry out meaningful science or philosophy.

Nick

As pessimistic as this is, there is unquestionably a grain of truth in it.

Cheers,
HypnoPsi

[HypnoPsi]

You think you can escape incompleteness somehow, if only you think about it hard enough.


Nope. I don't think that either theism or materialism provides any sense of completeness. Instead, both theories only open up new questions and avenues for investigation, as is the way (and some would argue purpose) of the scientific habit of theorising.

Real materialists, like Pixy, Paul, and myself (to list a few) fully accept that there is a hard limit to what we can know.


I never suggested you didn't - nor would I.


When pixy says he does not believe in a fundamental existent that is self-generating and self-perpetuating, he means it. And the reason he doesn't believe in such a thing is because it is fundamentally unknowable to a human.


That is about as far from my point as you can get. Scientific thinking involves considerably more than just being skeptical of the other guys theory. That's the easy part of science. (I could sit here all day poking fun at thinking thermostats and computer consciousness.)

But that is not what makes science a noble pursuit.

The real test of someone's character lies in thesis defence. Which is why, traditionally, it has always been the completion of that task that makes someone a scientist (or, at the very least, recognised as scientific in their thinking).

And, to be concise, that means constructing a theory that is both parsimonious and testable (even if just in principle and not in practice) and actively defending it.

Are you saying you are incapable of this? Why? Are you embarrased about the fact that there is no evidence that the Universe is self-sustaining/self-generating and that there is absolutely no evidence for such things as computer consciousness, etc.,? In otherwords, are you embarrased about the fact that it's all just faith?


You can't begin to fathom what "self-generating" must mean -- no human can.


That is not the point. A theory (a proposition that is maintained by argument), be it presented as a single statement or lengthy tract in a dissertation, wouldn't be a theory if we knew how it worked. It would be "fact".

All you seem to be doing here is trying desparately to avoid being in a position where you actually have to defend some claim or other. That's hardly very scientific, is it?

~
HypnoPsi

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

And, to be concise, that means constructing a theory that is both parsimonious and testable (even if just in principle and not in practice) and actively defending it.
I await your active defense of my objection that you are extending your analogy too far.


Are you saying you are incapable of this? Why? Are you embarrased about the fact that there is no evidence that the Universe is self-sustaining/self-generating and that there is absolutely no evidence for such things as computer consciousness, etc.,? In otherwords, are you embarrased about the fact that it's all just faith?
Why do you keep repeating that there is no evidence for a self-sustaining universe? The trees in my yard are self-sustaining. My consciousness is not sustaining them and either is any perceivable god, except by disanalogy to my own consciousness that is not sustaining them. Your rant against self-generation applies equally to your own model.

You're doing an awful lot of armchair pyschoanalyzing of everyone else.

~~ Paul

[plumjam]

To describe the nature of something, it demands a more fundamental context. That's not out of 'omniscience' - it's axiomatic. The very process of describing a 'thing' demands it. Try to describe something without deferring to a more fundamental context; I won't hold my breath that you'll even bother trying.

Hence when it comes to 'the ultimate' foundation of reality, you find you'll simply need something more fundamental in order to describe its nature. In the end, all we can do is describe what 'something' does, without an ability to go the next step down. That's why science gave up attempting to go straight to the bottom, and instead opted for describing each subsequent layer of increasingly fundamental properties without attempting to speculate what any potential 'final layer' might be. It is, by definition, impossible.

That's why materialism currently only goes as far as describing the rules which account for our observations, as if it is all external.

Athon
This is rather amusing, because it is very similar to what I stated twice in recent posts in this thread to Akumanimani.
Please note that with Pixy I was talking about knowing. Not describing.
Knowing and explaining (describing if you prefer) are two very different things.

[plumjam]

Try addressing the point for once, rather than just making up patently spurious arguments.

You cannot know the fundamental nature of reality, because you can never know that there is not some more fundamental nature.
Again, all you are doing is restating your omniscience. How do you know that you cannot know that you can know something?

Nor do you have to be omnisicient to know that there are things you cannot know. Godel proved precisely that.
Godel was omniscient? Well, just two letters out. Godel was talking about all finite systems having to rely upon assumptions external to the system itself. That would not apply to omniscience.

[Foster Zygote]

I'm a bit late to this thread. Has an idealist yet posited a reasonable argument that matter is an illusion that does not also lead to solipsism?

[Nick227]

Nominated.

You know nick. This is are actually extremely good points. During infancy we do indeed go through an important phase(s) of development related to concrete and abstract thinking.

This coupled with the fact that we are evolutionarily primed to be concrete thinkers (you won't have much luck as a tree swinger if you can't judge distances) really does make us all "materialists" whether we want to be or not.

Yes, I have long felt that the difference between materialists and idealists has little to do with philosophy and more to do with the basic disposition of the individual. Idealists will tend towards abstract thinking and materialists will like to see concrete stuff.

I think evolution dictates that materialism will always be with us, whether we have any idea of what the "final stuff of the universe" is or not.

Nick

[Nick227]

I'm a bit late to this thread. Has an idealist yet posited a reasonable argument that matter is an illusion that does not also lead to solipsism?

I'm not an idealist but I would dispute that the argument that matter is illusory necessarily leads to solipsism. Frankly, in the past I've found it a drag to be accused of solipsism by people who clearly didn't have the much understanding of the differing philosophical perspectives, simply because I didn't agree with their notion of materialism. It has often seemed to me that there are forum members who delight in accusing any non-materialist of solipsism without being able to back this up, rather as a "back door" out of examining just what is being proposed.

So, say I believe that the universe is entirely information interacting according to mathematical laws, how does this necessarily lead to me positing that I am the only being in existence?

ETA: Solipsism happens when you start to slide down the slippery slope created by Descartes with his Cogito. In assuming that selfhood is an innate quality to existence so the ground-rule that can permit solipsism is established. In theory monism overwhelms solipsism, as I see it, but in practice many who consider themselves "monists" or "materialists" still end up looking for some observing entity within the brain. Thus these Cartesian Materialists, to use Dennett's term, could equally drift into solipsism as I see it.

Nick

[Nick227]

Can you give a machine actual, experiential vision? Can you give it actual sensational feeling?

A much better question is, how can you not do this? Once you attach a camera to a computer and program (or otherwise teach) the computer to respond to visual stimuli, what is the human doing that the computer is not?

On a behavioural level, perhaps there is very little difference. But does this account for actual seeing?

If the ventral stream is damaged and the dorsal intact, we still have some of the behaviour of sight without the conscious experience of sight. This has been demonstrated. But what I'm asking is for a physical explanation for the phenomena of vision, not the behaviour of vision. For example, it seems to me at this moment that I can see a monitor screen right in front of me. Is this a phenomenal representation created by the brain and if so is it located somewhere in the brain? Does Prof Woolfe explain this?

Thanks for the other link btw.

Nick

[plumjam]

I don't think you quite understand the consequences. How does it make sense to care about what you fundamentaly cannot possibly know?
Again, you´re making the same assumption (which would require omniscience)as some of the others. That it is not knowable is simply a faith position on your part. Thousands of years of human experience indicates it is knowable. Why simply dismiss such evidence and plump for a position there will in principle never be any evidence for? That´s kind of anti-scientific isn´t it?

Speaking of different types of monism thoroyghly misses the mark. If there is one thing, we cannot know precisely what it is in itself, so it makes no sense to speak of what type of monism it is. There cannot be more than one "thing". If you speak of different types of monism, then you are not discussing the fundamental existent but one of its attributes.
Again, you are just restating your faith position. Like a mantra. ¨Fundamental reality cannot be known.¨ Repeat ad infinitum.
What do you base this belief on?

No, they realized that we cannot know fundamental reality. Calling it matter, consciousness, whatever you want is either affixing a meaningless label to it -- in a confused and confusing process -- or describing an attribute of fundamental reality and not that reality in itself. This is pretty standard ontology-speak.
You are making the same mistake as Akumanimani, Pixy, and Athon.
You are confusing knowing and describing/explaining. The entirely logical and reasonable position that fundamental reality cannot, in principle, due to it being The Whole, be accurately described/explained in terms of parts (language) in no way affects the possibility that it may be known (experienced).
In fact, descriptions of knowing fundamental reality commonly describe it as indescribable, ineffable, not conducive to language.. and the like, which, from a philosophical perspective, is precisely what one would expect.

Aristotle might have a bone to pick with you on that, since to him experience was only the fodder for knowledge. Knowledge depends on thought, reflection, argument, and a framework in which we makes sense of experience. As he was fond of saying, animals experience, man knows.
Well what you are talking about is communicable knowledge. Communicable knowledge only applies to the parts, not the Whole. Not all knowledge is communicable. For example, you know how to recall to memory an image of your first school. Now please communicate to someone else how you did that.
Once you´ve done that then please communicate it to someone who has never experienced long term memory.


Theresa of Avila was a mystic. She said the divine is blue. Was she factually correct? Maybe John of the Cross was wrong and Theresa's concern that the devil was fooling her was correct?
Spiritual development is not an instant flip from a normal life to absorption in Absolute Divinity. There are many variegated finite experiences which will lie between the two. These are commonly communicated to the individual mind in forms which will make cultural and religious sense to that individual mind. Not all mystics or saints reach the same level in any particular lifetime, but it´s clear that the end point is the same.

Youcan't seriously be arguing, using reason, that reason is essentially worthless in this situation.
I am stating the simple truth that experience is almost always more powerful and persuasive than are reason, argumentation etc..
Could someone argue you into believing you were really a pheasant when your experience tells you you´re a man?

Why are you here, then, to gain converts?
Yes, I accept all major credit cards.

Doesn't matter to me if you bother with reason or not. If your position is that reason doesn't matter, then that's fine. But don't argue it, since you can't be reasonable. You can say only -- I know the truth and you don't, nah, nah.
You are strawmanning. Where did I say reason doesn´t matter? Reason has value, within its useful domain of application. It is nevertheless much less powerful than is experience.

Unless you might be amenable to the realization that experience is simply experience and must be interpreted within some framework for it to be meaningful. What if you interpret from the wrong framework? That is the proepr place for reason and other experience. Traditionally, that is what is called wisdom.
Yes, some interpretive frameworks will be better than others. This is where reason can play a part. But it will always be secondary to experience.


What assumption? I assume you have an argument against Spinoza. I would like to hear it.
I'm sorry, but do you know how cognition works? Have you looked at how thought and experience work? Do you know how perception is even possible? If you want to argue that cognition and the ability to experience is limitless then I would like to hear how this is possible. Please provide your argument, along with the critique of Spinoza in your next post if you wish to continue, since you seem to be working under the misconception that he began with wild assumptions. Like anyone who thinks he began with premises. If you want to argue against a thinker, though, it doesn't work to claim -- assumption -- without showing where the problem might lie.
I have some idea regarding cognition etc.. half my degree was in psychology, including cognitive psychology and neuropsychology. The other half was philosophy. I´m not sure why you seem to want to drag the discussion round to Spinoza. I suspect it´s because you are studying him recently, and want to move the subject matter onto safer ground for you.
Well, I´m sorry, due to experience being more important than rational argumentation and syllogistic systems, I have much more interest in what the mystics had to say (even, or perhaps especially, the virtually illiterate and unschooled ones). Spinoza wasn´t a mystic, he was a thinker. You don´t get to fundamental reality by doing a lot of thinking, and then mistaking your thoughts for the truth. If anything, you´re likely to go in the other direction.

[Ichneumonwasp]

Plumjam,

OK, I think I see the problem. I am using the commonly accepted definition of "knowledge", which is "justified true belief". What you are describing is more akin to the common usage of the word "faith", which is belief held strongly (in the same way that we hold to beliefs we call knowledge), with that belief being accompanied by a feeling "this is right".

Experiences do not arrive with justification, though they may arrive with the feeling "this is right". Justification is a process that involves analysis, which involves comparison. There is no comparison possible between the fundamental substance and anything else.

We simply are not speaking of commensurate things, which means that we cannot move forward. We will simply have to agree to disagree.

And, no, I am not currently nor have I recently been studying Spinoza. His name arises anytime one speaks of monism since he provided the best formalized system of thought.

[nescafe]

Again, you are just restating your faith position. Like a mantra. ¨Fundamental reality cannot be known.¨ Repeat ad infinitum.
What do you base this belief on?
For my part, the implications Goedel's incompleteness theorems and the Church-Turing hypothesis have on how accurately it is possible to know anything, and the impossibility of being absolutely sure that any given explanation is in fact the correct one.


You are making the same mistake as Akumanimani, Pixy, and Athon.
You are confusing knowing and describing/explaining. The entirely logical and reasonable position that fundamental reality cannot, in principle, due to it being The Whole, be accurately described/explained in terms of parts (language) in no way affects the possibility that it may be known (experienced).
In fact, descriptions of knowing fundamental reality commonly describe it as indescribable, ineffable, not conducive to language.. and the like, which, from a philosophical perspective, is precisely what one would expect.
And if you suffer from Fregoli delusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fregoli_delusion) you know and have the experience that everyone you meet are really just one or two people perpetrating a massive hoax on you.

Experience by itself cannot be unconditionally trusted.

[Nick227]

You are making the same mistake as Akumanimani, Pixy, and Athon.
You are confusing knowing and describing/explaining. The entirely logical and reasonable position that fundamental reality cannot, in principle, due to it being The Whole, be accurately described/explained in terms of parts (language) in no way affects the possibility that it may be known (experienced).
In fact, descriptions of knowing fundamental reality commonly describe it as indescribable, ineffable, not conducive to language.. and the like, which, from a philosophical perspective, is precisely what one would expect.

They describe it as this because the describer is, I submit, aware that thinking and language do not truly describe reality. They are merely processes like anything else. Yet in order to explain this a philosophy of some sort must be constructed. An example would be the Hindu philosophy, well known in the West, Advaita Vendanta (non-dualism). It is recognised that the existence of self is essentially illusory and so there is no actual point in the universe from which to make an objective statement of "how things are." Yet, in order to communicate this to the individual, a philosophy called Advaita is constructed, even though the adherent will, hopefully, at some point appreciate that all philosophy, including Advaita itself, is meaningless.


Spiritual development is not an instant flip from a normal life to absorption in Absolute Divinity. There are many variegated finite experiences which will lie between the two.

So spiritualists will try and convince you! Spiritual memes are notoriously good at embedding themselves in the mind with all sorts of tricks for convincing the individual that they are on a "path to enlightenment" or whatever.

These are commonly communicated to the individual mind in forms which will make cultural and religious sense to that individual mind. Not all mystics or saints reach the same level in any particular lifetime, but it´s clear that the end point is the same.

I would treat the whole notion of "spiritual progress" as extremely tentative. I did a lot of spiritual stuff and also "direct teaching" - satsang, Advaita, and the like. The two camps do not get on at all. Spiritual pathways invariably purport to be some form of "gradual progressive unveiling" but when you deal with Advaita you find spirituality is almost universally reviled, and treated as a parasitic teaching.

I recommend you really try materialism. It's a stronger meditation in my experience.

Nick

[Silentknight]

Like I said before, in the face of experience, reliance on argument is rather a damp squib. It is bowing to the lessons of experience which gives science its main strength. (snip)

"We cannot trust logical argumentation in the face of experience because... thus... therefore... if, then... Oh hell, just take all your dreams literally, including the flying dreams, daydreams, lucid dreams, wet dreams, and then you'll see what I'm getting at!"

[Ichneumonwasp]

On a behavioural level, perhaps there is very little difference. But does this account for actual seeing?

If the ventral stream is damaged and the dorsal intact, we still have some of the behaviour of sight without the conscious experience of sight. This has been demonstrated. But what I'm asking is for a physical explanation for the phenomena of vision, not the behaviour of vision. For example, it seems to me at this moment that I can see a monitor screen right in front of me. Is this a phenomenal representation created by the brain and if so is it located somewhere in the brain? Does Prof Woolfe explain this?

Thanks for the other link btw.

Nick


No, I'm afraid no one knows the information to that degree of abstraction. My guess is that there are multiple informational streams active all the time (that's an obvious one when you think of it) and the emotional and motivational streams are integrated with pure perceptual streams to give the phenomenal quality to vision. The brain is constructed with a basic diagram of lower levels sending up volleys of info to higher levels with info looping back to lower levels in a continuous oscillating streams. There are many somewhat isolated streams (the two primary means of isolating systems are location and neurotransmitters) that interact also in a variety of ways that also depend on the presence of different neurotransmitter systems -- for instance, the distributed dopaminergic pathways from the ventral tegmentum spread widely through the hemispheres but only affect areas where they ramify and where receptors are in place (and this can be further modulated by the existence of a minimum of five different dopamine receptors that allow variations on the degree of excitation or inhibition).

[PixyMisa]

On a behavioural level, perhaps there is very little difference. But does this account for actual seeing?
Yes.

If the ventral stream is damaged and the dorsal intact, we still have some of the behaviour of sight without the conscious experience of sight. This has been demonstrated. But what I'm asking is for a physical explanation for the phenomena of vision, not the behaviour of vision.
You're doomed to disappointment so long as you keep importing dualist terminology into a materialist Universe.

For example, it seems to me at this moment that I can see a monitor screen right in front of me.
Sure.

Is this a phenomenal representation created by the brain and if so is it located somewhere in the brain?
The representation (note the word I left out) is created by the brain and the process is handled by specific parts of the brain. The representation is not an object you can point to, it's an ongoing and ever-changing process.

Does Prof Woolfe explain this?
Yes.

As I said earlier, we still do not know every detail, but we know a great deal.

Thanks for the other link btw.
The mind-reading one? Yeah, that's fascinating, isn't it?

[PixyMisa]

Plumjam,

OK, I think I see the problem. I am using the commonly accepted definition of "knowledge", which is "justified true belief". What you are describing is more akin to the common usage of the word "faith", which is belief held strongly (in the same way that we hold to beliefs we call knowledge), with that belief being accompanied by a feeling "this is right".
Or to put it another way:

Plumjam, you are confusing the word "know" with the expression "invent a ridiculous story that doesn't stand up to the most cursory examination".

If you could use the latter phrase in future posts, it would clear up a lot of misunderstanding.

[articulett]

I wonder how many lives have been destroyed by someone's "inner knowingness" about "divine truths"?

[Dancing David]

Ah, but even then, reality would be what it is.

That we observe anything at all tells us that there is a reality. Our observations may or may not accurately reflect the nature of reality, but it is indisputable that there is a reality.

I don't even remember now why I needed to make that point... Oh, yes, it was HypnoPsi telling us what atheists really believe. :rolleyes:

Define reality.

;)

[Dancing David]

On a behavioural level, perhaps there is very little difference. But does this account for actual seeing?

If the ventral stream is damaged and the dorsal intact, we still have some of the behaviour of sight without the conscious experience of sight. This has been demonstrated. But what I'm asking is for a physical explanation for the phenomena of vision, not the behaviour of vision. For example, it seems to me at this moment that I can see a monitor screen right in front of me. Is this a phenomenal representation created by the brain and if so is it located somewhere in the brain? Does Prof Woolfe explain this?

Thanks for the other link btw.

Nick

Yes it is sort of in your brain, the visual perceptions are created at the back of your head, but it is not like a bit map image. Much of it is also shared with auditory processing.

But of course this is still in it's infancy as a science, much comes from stimulating brains, more from damage and disease.

[rocketdodger]

I have been unable to locate the full text - though I have certainly came across this work before earlier in the year.

...snip...

If this research means what you think it means then every competitive sport from table tennis to soccer would be impossible as the brain simply doesn't have a 7 second window to prepare.


I don't have the full text, I am going on nothing but anecdote here.

And I am not reaching the invalid conclusions you accuse me of reaching.

My conclusion is simply that there are documented (here) instances of people being mistaken about their own perception of their own consciousness.

That doesn't mean anything other than what it means.

If a person doesn't think they know which hand they will move until they think they have decided, but in fact their subconscious mind has already even partially contributed to the decision, that person is wrong about their subjective perception.

Unless I am totally misunderstanding the abstract and reports of this study.

[rocketdodger]

Nor do you have to be omnisicient to know that there are things you cannot know. Godel proved precisely that.

Mathematics aren't relevant to this thread, dur.

[rocketdodger]

To argue that it is in principle impossible to know what is the fundamental nature of reality, is to assume your own omniscience.. which is a condition you repeatedly state to be impossible. So you´re arguing against yourself.
When and how did you become omniscient?

Are you sure you know what "omniscient" means?

Because last time I checked knowing it is impossible to know the fundamental nature of reality is only a single fact.

Are you going to present an argument that this is somehow equivalent to knowing all facts -- as "omniscience" implies?

[Robin]

Well, it delineates materialism/physicalism from idealism. If reality is idealistic, then nothing can exist indepedent of being perceived or thought of.
So you are claiming to have no existence, apart from these words on a screen?

[rocketdodger]

Nope. I don't think that either theism or materialism provides any sense of completeness. Instead, both theories only open up new questions and avenues for investigation, as is the way (and some would argue purpose) of the scientific habit of theorising.

What questions, other than the who, where, what, why, when of dogmatic scripture, does theism open?

Did you really think about that statement before you made it? I find that hard to believe.


I never suggested you didn't - nor would I.

Yes, you did. Your entire participation on this thread is tantamount to it.

We have told you over and over that we don't know about the fundamental substance. We don't care about it, because we know we can't know it. All we are concerned with is the fundamental properties.

And your consistent response is "but materialists assert matter is all there is, and this is less parsimonious than asserting mind is all there is." wtf? Can you read? This is literally the third time I have told you that you are arguing with a strawman. And everyone else has done the same. When will you listen? Never?


That is about as far from my point as you can get. Scientific thinking involves considerably more than just being skeptical of the other guys theory. That's the easy part of science. (I could sit here all day poking fun at thinking thermostats and computer consciousness.)

But that is not what makes science a noble pursuit.

The real test of someone's character lies in thesis defence. Which is why, traditionally, it has always been the completion of that task that makes someone a scientist (or, at the very least, recognised as scientific in their thinking).

And, to be concise, that means constructing a theory that is both parsimonious and testable (even if just in principle and not in practice) and actively defending it.

Are you saying you are incapable of this? Why? Are you embarrased about the fact that there is no evidence that the Universe is self-sustaining/self-generating and that there is absolutely no evidence for such things as computer consciousness, etc.,? In otherwords, are you embarrased about the fact that it's all just faith?

What are you talking about? I was talking about incompleteness. That doesn't seem to be topic of the above statements. So ...


That is not the point. A theory (a proposition that is maintained by argument), be it presented as a single statement or lengthy tract in a dissertation, wouldn't be a theory if we knew how it worked. It would be "fact".

All you seem to be doing here is trying desparately to avoid being in a position where you actually have to defend some claim or other. That's hardly very scientific, is it?

What are you lying about now?

I posted three properties that I believe all existents must feature. That is the full extent of my position on substance.

You haven't disagreed. You can't disagree, because those properties are logically irrefutable. If you want to claim that my position is so strong that it implies I must have chosen this position specifically to avoid a difficult battle, go ahead. But that is utter stupidity akin to an amazon warrior shaking his spear at a helicopter gunship and accusing the pilot of being a coward -- if you wanted a good argument, you should have built one. Don't get mad at me because your chosen position leaves you wallowing in jungle muck with the rest of the backwards natives.