Subjectivity and Science

[69dodge]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Originally Posted by John Freestone

Its concsiousness would be internal, not transferable by any means we know to any other being or committee for verification. Now from your point of view, you would no doubt equate behavioural clues with proof, but if you test your own consciousness, do you rely on behavioural data?

Yes.

Originally Posted by John Freestone

I suppose in a Descartesian view you might - I'm thinking, so I am.

Exactly.

The thinking-behavior that you observe yourself doing isn't the sort of behavior that you can observe others doing. So why give the same name, "consciousness", both to your own thinking-behavior (as observed by you) and to others' different behavior (as observed by you)?

[PixyMisa]

Originally Posted by 69dodge

The thinking-behavior that you observe yourself doing isn't the sort of behavior that you can observe others doing. So why give the same name, "consciousness", both to your own thinking-behavior (as observed by you) and to others' different behavior (as observed by you)?

Because the outward signs of consciousness that I observe in myself are the same as the outward signs of consciousness I observe in others. Because the brain activity I measure in myself (with electrodes or FMRI or whatever) during conscious thought is the same that I measure in others during what they report to be conscious thought.

Because, while I am privy to some additional information in one particular case, in every respect that the two processes can be compared, they are the same.

Because everyone experiences it the same way.

That's why.

[Soapy Sam]

A general question:-
We talk of science "explaining" things, by which I suppose we mean rendering hitherto unconnected facts into a pattern comprehensible by a brain.

But whose brain?

Any brain?

Science has explanations for any number of things which I personally find incomprehensible. I lack the smarts. No amount of study will ever help, because I'm too damn thick.

If there are cases where science has a valid explanation which is not understood by even one person, then there must- at least in principle- exist explanations comprehensible to a very small number of people. Perhaps only one person.

Is it so hard to see that there may be explanations NOT accessible to even one person?
In such a case, can science help?
Is this where we turn it over to the machines and quietly step into extinction?

[PixyMisa]

Mathematics has the same problem. There are computer-generated proofs of few theorems that are so long that no-one can grasp the entire proof.

What you do is you break it down into components you can understand. Check each component. If you can show that all the components are valid, and the way the components are put together is valid, then the whole is valid.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by articulett

Ecstasy floods serotonin receptors and long term users often have problems getting the system back to normal. Dopamine flooders (not generally hallucinogenic) create a similar dependency. LSD creates recurring flashbacks in some people. I don't think either of this drugs are being studied much for therapeutic purposes. Ibogaine seems promising.

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I AGREE

I will have to check on the LSD flashback thing, I have known about a hundred people who have used very high doses of LSD. Never met one who had a flashback. I think those are caused by other things.

Then there is the whole comorbidity issue of mental illness and substance abuse. Like 75% of people with bipolar disorder and alcohol and the methapolar syndrome.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Ichneumonwasp

And in Ecstasy's case there is evidence of cell death in target cells of chronic abusers.

I have been talking about that since the eighties, gosh it sure seemed to cause a lot of people a problem. We will see if they get Parkinson's or something like it.

[Soapy Sam]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Mathematics has the same problem. There are computer-generated proofs of few theorems that are so long that no-one can grasp the entire proof.

What you do is you break it down into components you can understand. Check each component. If you can show that all the components are valid, and the way the components are put together is valid, then the whole is valid.

Granted- but if nobody can actually grok the wholeness of the answer, what does it mean to say we understand?

Let's face it, whether the argument is about free will or understanding whatever- human brains do have limitations. We do pretty well considering...

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by martillo

Sorry. I choose not to undertake that task.

You'll have to use your own best definition before you decide apriori "god" cannot be an existent in your worldview.

Hi, not all materialists assume that there is no god a priori. Some are just waiting for more evidence. It doesn't really matter because the defintion of god is sort of vague, so the confounding variable requirement of reductionism is hard to meet.

God can exist under materialism, just like stars could be sentient.

[Nick227]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

What can't science explain? And how do you know this?

Hasn't explained how the experience of "I" arises.

How about why the big bang occurred also?

Nick

[Ichneumonwasp]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

That's a completely different question. We can't know everything. But we can explain everything.

The principle of consistency says that the same explanation for a given process applies everywhere in the Universe. You don't, by any means, need to know everything to fully understand everything in principle.

As with your argument on consciousness, this is confusing parameters with functions.

I don't believe I've provided an argument on consciousness. I only tried to explain BDZ's position on it. That perspective isn't really a confusion of parameter with function except within a given definition of what consciousness is. Change the definition and you change the parameter/function relationship. He is simply using a different definition. I think there is some utility in that approach. In fact, behaviorists view things in much the same way. The separation between 'person' and 'environment' is not concrete when we discuss such interactions. We create strict boundaries so that we can discuss them, but we shouldn't reify those boundaries if this impairs understanding of behavior within a system.

We -- you and I -- are not really saying different things. I think the only difference between us is that you have more confidence in our ability to explain the world than I have. I have full confidence that we can explain consciousness, and it also pisses me off when folks come in and try to say that such explanations are theoretically impossible. That's why I tried to stay out of this conversation.

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This is true. I understand that some mathematicians really can visualise four dimensional space. I certainly can't.

No, not at all. I can't visualize four dimensional space, but I solve problems in more than four dimensions every day. (I'm a computer programmer.)

Then you, more than most, should be able to appreciate that there may be vistas that we cannot reach, working in an area that is hard to conceptualize. Again, there is nothing woo here. We would simply be ignorant of these aspects of reality (if they exist -- and we could only speculate and not argue that they do). There is no way to offer proof of such things, only speculate on them. Is this consequential? Well, obviously not. Really, such speculation is a waste of time, but it might also be true.

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The Mary problem is based on a lie.

Well, of course it is -- that is why it isn't really a problem. But it is the case that Mary's internal sensation of seeing 'red' is new information. The lie is in the original proposition that she can know everything about seeing red without actually having that experience. Bait and switch seems to be a favorite in philosophy of mind.

There are experiences that we are simply not capable of. We can think about them, we can conjecture, but we can't get to them. There are simply things that we cannot know.

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No, that only means the description is incomplete. That's the lie I just mentioned in the Mary problem.

Yes, then we agree on that.

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Subjective experience is a physical process, and there is nothing in principle to limit our understanding of that process.

We are talking about different things here. There is nothing woo about the Mary problem. We can understand what is happening in a subjective experince, but we cannot share that experience -- even if we create conditions to mimic the same internal 'hormonal' environment that constitutes part of what we call 'feelings' (in part, because we are not the same substrate as the person having the experience, so interaction issues would dictate a difference). We can understand those process to the level of Mary understanding 'seeing red' while still in her white and black room (leaving aside the obvious neurological reality that she could never see color in the first place given that weird scenario). We can describe an amazing number of things. But we cannot know everything. I think you probably agree with this.

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That's just silly. We had no reason to think about hydrogen atoms or positrons before we knew they were there either. Then we discovered them, and thought about them, and understood them.

Yes, and there may be strangenesses that we cannot conceptualize in our limitations. Agin, they would be inconsequential because we couldn't know them, but they might be there. They would simply have no impact on us whatsoever. And, yes, I know this is pure speculation.

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It's a nice turn of phrase, and it illuminates the weirdness - relative to our everyday experience - of twentieth-century physics. But it's not an argument.

Of course it's not an argument. It isn't meant as one. It is a caution about our limitations.

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What Godel's Theorem says is that any sufficiently powerful (and arithmetic is sufficiently powerful) formal system contains propositions that cannot be shown to be either true or false using the axioms of that system.

But science is a system for generating explanations of the Universe, and the Universe isn't a formal system. So exactly how, or even if, Godel's Theorem is a limitation on science is not at all clear.

Yes, but a full explanation of the universe would amount to a formal system -- the axioms being the underlying physical constants that determine what is out there.

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No.

I'm afraid I do not share you confidence in our abilities to arrive at final explanations. There is much that we can explain. Consciousness is going to be one of those things -- I am almost certain of that -- since it arises from the workings of matter/energy, which is theoretically explainable at the level we see in our daily lives.

[Ichneumonwasp]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Hasn't explained how the experience of "I" arises.

How about why the big bang occurred also?

Nick

I think you are confusing what science hasn't explained with what it cannot explain.

There actually is an explanation in M-theory for why the big bang occurred. There are theoretical explanations for the experience of "I" also, but that depends on what level of explanation you want.

[Ichneumonwasp]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Elephants can't jump.

Evolutionary theory is a theory, a model of reality. No-one here disputes that. It says so right on the label.

We test it; it works.

All we have is behaviours, and all we have to study those is our perceptions - suitably augmented by our instruments - and our brains - likewise augmented by everything from abacuses to supercomputers.

Since that is all we have, it is futile to argue whether it is "actually real". It can kill you; that is sufficiently real for most people. Dead philosophers raise few arguments with this position.

On that I think we fully agree. Or, as Mercutio once said, "Metaphysics is largely a pantload."

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Once you have seen what it is, for any meaningful length of time, it's bloody hard to go back to objectivity to the degree that you could believe that it's possible to formulate meaningful statements about the nature of reality. It's patently *********** obvious, to be honest, that this can't be done, once you start to grasp the reality of non-dualism.

Um, lived there since about the age of nineteen, so thirty one years. I disagree with your continued use of the word objective.

Objective as used in science is based upon isotropy and reductionism with an assumption of causal relations between events.

there is no need for the subject object devide.

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Of course, if you are in some way addicted to trying to understand the world objectively, and experience a deep need to continue the research, debate, and endless argument with others then this above will inevitably be a highly confrontational statement. If this is so you may comfort yourself with the knowledge that it's "just my opinion."

And there is also a group of people on both sides who think they have special personal information.

they are wrong.

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"That's just your opinion" (actually means - I don't like the look of this!)

Other popular "get-out clauses," escape routes, and general back doors for internet discussion groups include -
- demanding to know the precise definition of either pretty much every word, or one particularly hard-to-define word (actually means - I don't like where this is going!)
- introducing some mind-blowingly complex concept of at best only tangential relevance to the discussion at hand (actually means - I don't like the look of this!)
- or my personal favourite option "well it's all just arising anyway, who's to know?" (actually means - I don't like the look of this!)

Nick

And for the other side
"you have an incomplete model".

Let me make this clear, all human relaity is notional, so what?

All science is an approximation of the behavior of reality.

You still have to deal with the force labeled as gravity, if you think it is partciles of energy or angels. It doen'y matter.

[Ichneumonwasp]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

This and your last post are really helpful. It's wonderful when someone can translate woo into terms normal sceptics can understand! I'm obviously more evolved than an undercover elephant, because I wouldn't doubt evolution for a moment - given the rather paradoxical possibility you explored about a base (non-dual) state. This is very close to Ken Wilber's model, which involves evolution and external matter, but also considers that every holon (person, wasp!, cell, molecule, etc.) has an interior reality as well, which also evolves. Hence, he does not push consciousness down the phylogenetic tree, but sees consciousness as the evolutionary level of 'interior' arising with human beings (and interiors, he says, go all the way down). Also, he gets over the problem of this seeming like a duality, by suggesting that it is just a natural duality - a surface has to have an inside. His scheme relates various internal sensations or functions to their exterior physical forms - including relating different emotional/cognitive capacities to different evolutionary systems of the brain. (Integrative Psychology, 2000)

A behaviorist would say, simply that the difference between objective and subjective arises only in the number of potential spectators. Some behaviors simply can only have one spectator. If monism is the case, the very idea of a spectator is also open for discussion, though.

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My first musings about the evolution of consciousness came from a fidelity to the same principle that seems so important in energy - neither being created nor destroyed - and indeed in our intuitive liking for monism rather than dualism - i.e. it seems odd if consciousness suddenly comes into being in the universe at some point of complexity, when its subjective quality - its qualitative quality (the 'qualia', like pain, anger, compassion, image, thought) are so utterly unlike the stuff you can pick up and stick under a microscope. If that difference and those principles are impressive, it adds weight to contemplations of consciousness being somehow immanent, a deep potential or 'the Ground of Being'. It doesn't have to lead to naive philosophies of God stirring the stars, but it does re-enchant the world that materialism has 'disqualified'.

My answer to that would be that I think the issue arises because of our language. I don't think we have a problem viewing processes as having a beginning and ending. Consciousness, in English is a noun. If it were a verb I don't think we would even be having this conversation.

Consciousness should be a verb. Can you point to "running", put it under the microscope? You can see a relation of parts that we call 'running', but where is the 'running' itself? It's just a verb that we treat like a noun.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Nick227

I'm talking about the experience of personal identity, of identification, of thoughts developing the sensation of "my-ness" - developing a mechanism by which they can be acted upon. This is a different thing from labelling.

Nick

Sorry that is no evident to me.

the sense of 'my-ness' could be learned like every thing else.

You seem to still be promoting the Kanting line that there can not be thoughst about thoughts.

Why not.

Thoughst are patterns of neural association, they are somewhat plastic and defintily effected by conditioning.

If I have a model for dealing with the labels in my head, what is so different about a label for a label?
You have created a dualistic division.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Well, I'm a subscriber to SciAm's MIND magazine and I read it in there last month. If you check online I'm sure you can find it, december edition. The book's called The Neuroscience of Fair Play.

Just because someone states that there is a problem for neurobiology in the discussion of empathy does not mean that there is , cite your evidence. Your claim to support not mine.

Mirror activity could be one possible path for empathy.

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Well, you can call it dopaminergic if you don't like psychiatry. Amounts to the same.

Um, dopamine is part of psychiatry, to just claim that freudian high level concepts that have never been found to have a testable theory and evidence or any sort of predictive value are meaningful is nonsense. they may be a nice form of closed self referencing stuff, but they have no ability to predict the course of behavior.

Does not amount to the same.

Libido, if I recall correctly is the sex drive, it is not as closed a system as you seem to imply with your statement.

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I always find it interesting that if I mention therapy or feelings on the JREF then I get accused of psychobabble.

Some forms of therapy are not, they are psychodrama, counseling or pure mumbo jumbo. You used vague terminology that has no ability to predict the course of behavior, that is why i call it psychobabble.

Feelings have strong basis in the behavioral and biological models as does therapy. But people who think that they are therapists who don't set clear goals and shill people for large amounts of money are chalatans. If they were open minded they would set clear defined goals that should be attained in twelve weeks or less. To defraud people of huge sums of money makes one a chalatan.

You are hiding, why is that?

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How does behaviourism explain the phenomenon of identification? I'm interested.

You have a brain, it develops associatioms and pathways from exposure to the enviroment. There is a phase that starts about the age of two where the language threshold is reached and children begin the intense language aquisition phase. At this point the object/subject usage of language develops along with the continued modeling of individuality. Indivuuation as a conceptual process gets very intense about the age of 12.

here is the deal, from all evidence thoughts are limited to an individual body and can only be transmitted through physical media to other individual bodies.

So regardless, there are individual bodies that partcipate and are part of the world. So scientificaly individual bodies are the base unit of experience.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Hi David,

I cited you papers earlier in this thread. Magic mushrooms contain psilocybin, so it's those ones. I don't know the mechanism of action, or know if it's been discovered yet. BTW, as an aside, it's not necessary to know a drug's mechanism of action to have it developed.

Nick

Um, this is silly.

Sure people can play with psylocibin, great.

But the pathways that it effects is crucial to treatment. Perhaps you should study up on serotonin and the effects of psylocibin and LSD.

SSRis are already there to help people with OCD, and they are not as likely to have the side effects that psylocibin does, like causing more anxiety and panic attacks.

You should study more on serotonin agonsists and antagonists.

[Nick227]

Originally Posted by Ichneumonwasp

I think you are confusing what science hasn't explained with what it cannot explain.

There actually is an explanation in M-theory for why the big bang occurred. There are theoretical explanations for the experience of "I" also, but that depends on what level of explanation you want.

Ah, was it that we had to find something that science absolutely couldn't, presumably ever, explain? I didn't get that bit.

It seems that it would also need to be clarified as to whether creating a possible explanation is enough, or demonstrating that explanation to be true is needed.

What is the theoretical explanation for "I?" I'm interested.

I would suggest also that a possible means of determining whether science does adequately explain everything would be by measuring the amount of belief in God in a culture.

Nick

[martu]

Thanks for trying to answer my question Lupus (btw is your name to do with lupus the disease?) and Zen but your answers aren't helping me so I will choose to bow out.

[Nick227]

Originally Posted by Dancing David

You have a brain, it develops associatioms and pathways from exposure to the enviroment. There is a phase that starts about the age of two where the language threshold is reached and children begin the intense language aquisition phase. At this point the object/subject usage of language develops along with the continued modeling of individuality. Indivuuation as a conceptual process gets very intense about the age of 12.

here is the deal, from all evidence thoughts are limited to an individual body and can only be transmitted through physical media to other individual bodies.

So regardless, there are individual bodies that partcipate and are part of the world. So scientificaly individual bodies are the base unit of experience.

I don't follow how this explains the experience of identification? Can you explain me more?

Nick

[Nick227]

Originally Posted by Dancing David

Just because someone states that there is a problem for neurobiology in the discussion of empathy does not mean that there is , cite your evidence. Your claim to support not mine.

Mirror activity could be one possible path for empathy.

For sure, they seem exciting things, mirror neurons. It certainly could be that in self-reflecting the behaviour of others we experience an emotional reaction and thus subconsciously develop empathy as well as behavioural changes.

I'm not really bothered with reading a book just to get into an argument with you, or a load of papers. I just go with what works, at the end of the day. If you want to believe that you are right because of this it doesn't bother me so much. Probably I would have cared about it a few years back.

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Um, dopamine is part of psychiatry, to just claim that freudian high level concepts that have never been found to have a testable theory and evidence or any sort of predictive value are meaningful is nonsense. they may be a nice form of closed self referencing stuff, but they have no ability to predict the course of behavior.

I seem to recall it was Freud's 150th anniversary last year, or the year before or something. There were quite a few articles around about just how accurate a lot of his theories turned out to be. Of course, people argue about this too. But, not being a neurologist, it still seems to me reasonable to equate our dopamine circuits with libido. Wasn't Freud a neurologist to start with, anyway? I thought he drew models of brain activity based on his researches? Didn't he develop psychiatry just because neurology, at the time, couldn't account for what he was learning from investigating the unconscious of his patients? Maybe I'm mistaken.

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Some forms of therapy are not, they are psychodrama, counseling or pure mumbo jumbo. You used vague terminology that has no ability to predict the course of behavior, that is why i call it psychobabble.

Care to give an example? I'd be happy to explain to you what I meant.

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Feelings have strong basis in the behavioral and biological models as does therapy. But people who think that they are therapists who don't set clear goals and shill people for large amounts of money are chalatans. If they were open minded they would set clear defined goals that should be attained in twelve weeks or less. To defraud people of huge sums of money makes one a chalatan.

You are hiding, why is that?

I'm sure there are charlatans in the trade. There are in most. We work a lot with group process which, incidentally, is not so expensive as a rule. What am I hiding?

Nick

[Nick227]

Originally Posted by Nick

BTW, as an aside, it's not necessary to know a drug's mechanism of action to have it developed.

Originally Posted by Dancing David

Um, this is silly.

Possibly. But it's my understanding that this is the case. I recall because I asked this specific question to a friend of mine called Ken Alper, who's an associate professor of psychiatry at the NY School of Medicine. It was regarding ibogaine at the time. He assured me that you don't need to know a drug's mechanism of action in order to develop it for the market. Of course, it's great if you do know.

Nick

[Ichneumonwasp]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Ah, was it that we had to find something that science absolutely couldn't, presumably ever, explain? I didn't get that bit.

It seems that it would also need to be clarified as to whether creating a possible explanation is enough, or demonstrating that explanation to be true is needed.

What is the theoretical explanation for "I?" I'm interested.

I would suggest also that a possible means of determining whether science does adequately explain everything would be by measuring the amount of belief in God in a culture.

Nick

The theoretical explanation of the 'experience of I' can be found simply in the reality of 'feelings', which have a neurobiological basis, not completely understood, in an individual who is the sole possible spectator. Nothing special there.

We know very little about what used to be called 'the passions' because they were always considered beneath us -- animal, if you will. We know much more about the circuitry involved in perception and calculation than feeling and emotion. Time should help to correct that issue.

One other theoretical possibility emerges from the recently discovered mirror neurons. This is pure speculation, mind you, but we know that mirror neurons exist and if there were mirror neurons that internally mirrored the mirror neurons that concern the outside world, that would constitute circuitry that would create an internal world that examines an interaction of the person with the external world (this would serve the obvious function of allowing us to alter behavior as we see fit in our interactions with the outside world, which is probably the reason we have consciousness in the first place). We also clearly have internal maps to determine our place within the environment and attentional devices that direct awareness toward certain objects in space -- we know this because we can see the effects of damaged systems. These obviously play into the idea of 'self', especially self as embodied.

As to what level of explanation works to satisfy -- we all need to determine that ourselves. Thresholds differ mong us. Personally, I am not yet satified with the level of explanation or the background data; I don't think anyone is very satisfied with it to date. But that does not mean explanations are not forthcoming with a lot of hard work.

I realize that this explanation leaves out one important item that most people do not consider when thinking about how our nervous system works. For the most part our nervous system functions on looping information -- information that comes into a certain area and interacts with information arriving from other regions, constantly updating and comparing. All these loops of info interacting can create very complex experiences. And the whole idea of what constitutes an experience we should certainly think about a bit more. What would a motivation to act be, I mean from the inside? A weighted average of some electrical input -- sure, maybe from the outside. But from the inside it would be a feeling of needing to act. A particular experience. That is probably what the feeling of everything that happens is -- wieghted motivational states and reward systems tied to inflowing information creating this feeling of 'being us'.

[Ichneumonwasp]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Possibly. But it's my understanding that this is the case. I recall because I asked this specific question to a friend of mine called Ken Alper, who's an associate professor of psychiatry at the NY School of Medicine. It was regarding ibogaine at the time. He assured me that you don't need to know a drug's mechanism of action in order to develop it for the market. Of course, it's great if you do know.

Nick

We don't know the precise mechanism of action of several drugs. This is especially true in epilepsy, where drugs are developed based on empirical observation of efficacy in certain animal models, then tried on humans.

How does Neurontin work? We can talk 'til blue in the face about calcium channels and reverse Gaba pumps, but the reality is that we don't really know.

[Nick227]

Originally Posted by Ichneumonwasp

The theoretical explanation of the 'experience of I' can be found simply in the reality of 'feelings', which have a neurobiological basis, not completely understood, in an individual who is the sole possible spectator. Nothing special there.

We know very little about what used to be called 'the passions' because they were always considered beneath us -- animal, if you will. We know much more about the circuitry involved in perception and calculation than feeling and emotion. Time should help to correct that issue.

Thanks for the explanation. Seems bizarre that neuroscientists didn't bother studying feelings because they figured they were beneath them, if this is what you're saying. I'd kind of figured we were more advanced than that!

Personally, just from observation and a little thinking, it seems to me that identification results from an innate drive within the human self-conscious system to become more self-aware. This is why the thoughts people most identify with seem to lead them into situations where they "act out" repressed sides of their personality. I see it constantly in the community I manage, and working as a therapist. Of course, this isn't so neuroscientific, but it also involves feelings a lot.

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I realize that this explanation leaves out one important item that most people do not consider when thinking about how our nervous system works. For the most part our nervous system functions on looping information -- information that comes into a certain area and interacts with information arriving from other regions, constantly updating and comparing. All these loops of info interacting can create very complex experiences. And the whole idea of what constitutes an experience we should certainly think about a bit more. What would a motivation to act be, I mean from the inside? A weighted average of some electrical input -- sure, maybe from the outside. But from the inside it would be a feeling of needing to act. A particular experience. That is probably what the feeling of everything that happens is -- wieghted motivational states and reward systems tied to inflowing information creating this feeling of 'being us'.

Yes, this is correct, I think. Certainly it matches what I experience. I experience a compulsion to act upon certain thoughts, a feeling that if I don't I would lose my feeling of individuality.

Our reward systems seem to have created a phenomenal "I," to manipulate us into certain behaviour patterns which can allow us to become more conscious. Something like that anyway.

Nick

[Ichneumonwasp]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Thanks for the explanation. Seems bizarre that neuroscientists didn't bother studying feelings because they figured they were beneath them, if this is what you're saying. I'd kind of figured we were more advanced than that!

I think it may have been more the philosophers initially (reason is what makes us human in ancient philosophy), but yeah, everyone should share in the blame. It isn't easy to study feeling and emotion anyway, especially since it is so tied into what makes us "us". Ultimately there is only one observer of the 'feeling' and animal models are hard to come by -- outside of torture.

Functional MRI and magnetoencephalography should help, but there are technical problems with using those techniques, at least as far as rapid progress is concerned. We're probably going to move very slowly in this area.

[Ichneumonwasp]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Yes, this is correct, I think. Certainly it matches what I experience. I experience a compulsion to act upon certain thoughts, a feeling that if I don't I would lose my feeling of individuality.

Sort of along those lines, one of the weird things I have noticed when I try to look at decision making is that I don't think we make conscious decisions. We use what we call consciousness to direct attention to ideas and mull them over, but when it comes time for the decision........well, that seems to come from an unconscious well and reach consciousness after the fact where we seem to try it out and see if it fits.

At least, it seems so to me.

[Stout]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

It doesn't matter, Stout, if you don't see it the way I do, but since you asked again what I mean, I'll try to explain again. If we start from the primitive position of humanity looking at the world and wondering what it means, why am I here, what is that glowing ball moving overhead, the way I see it is that we have always come up with schemes, philosophies, pretty much guesses, as to the answers. When some observation doesn't fit, or someone has a better idea, the new ideas take over. This is a property of philosophy.

....snip

John, we can agree to disagree, no problems. I'm not here to bash anyone unless they're claiming super powers...or trying to sell me magic detoxifying footpads.

It's just that I'm relatively new to this whole "science is a belief" idea, as I said upthread I've only ever seen it related to ID vs Evolution and in that context it was more being used as a weapon without any real explanation as to why I should consider it as "fact"

If I were to try and boil your stance down to one sentence and try to relate to science as a belief I find myself coming up with...well...opinion. But I'll try anyway.

Suppose we take Einstein's famous equation E=MC Squared

That basically says that energy and mass are the same thing and I would put your stance as putting more weight to the idea that mass ( material ) is actually energy and therefore science is failing to take this into consideration when it discusses materialism.

From your post, I gather you're taking the opinion that science reduces everything to matter, and completely discounts energy, which, if true, would lend credence to the idea that science functions as a belief system.

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by Ichneumonwasp

The theoretical explanation of the 'experience of I' can be found simply in the reality of 'feelings', which have a neurobiological basis, not completely understood, in an individual who is the sole possible spectator. Nothing special there.

We know very little about what used to be called 'the passions' because they were always considered beneath us -- animal, if you will. We know much more about the circuitry involved in perception and calculation than feeling and emotion. Time should help to correct that issue.

One other theoretical possibility emerges from the recently discovered mirror neurons. This is pure speculation, mind you, but we know that mirror neurons exist and if there were mirror neurons that internally mirrored the mirror neurons that concern the outside world, that would constitute circuitry that would create an internal world that examines an interaction of the person with the external world (this would serve the obvious function of allowing us to alter behavior as we see fit in our interactions with the outside world, which is probably the reason we have consciousness in the first place). We also clearly have internal maps to determine our place within the environment and attentional devices that direct awareness toward certain objects in space -- we know this because we can see the effects of damaged systems. These obviously play into the idea of 'self', especially self as embodied.

As to what level of explanation works to satisfy -- we all need to determine that ourselves. Thresholds differ mong us. Personally, I am not yet satified with the level of explanation or the background data; I don't think anyone is very satisfied with it to date. But that does not mean explanations are not forthcoming with a lot of hard work.

I realize that this explanation leaves out one important item that most people do not consider when thinking about how our nervous system works. For the most part our nervous system functions on looping information -- information that comes into a certain area and interacts with information arriving from other regions, constantly updating and comparing. All these loops of info interacting can create very complex experiences. And the whole idea of what constitutes an experience we should certainly think about a bit more. What would a motivation to act be, I mean from the inside? A weighted average of some electrical input -- sure, maybe from the outside. But from the inside it would be a feeling of needing to act. A particular experience. That is probably what the feeling of everything that happens is -- wieghted motivational states and reward systems tied to inflowing information creating this feeling of 'being us'.

Thanks again, wasp (can't be bothered to spell ich...). That is the kind of thing I was asking for, and I find it quite persuasive. (Also agree that we have our own threshholds of confidence, and I'm still agnostic, but at least you're not just saying you could build it in your garage, then referring me to a book to explain how you'd do it).

If I accepted this, I guess I'd have to change my 'best guess' view from "We are on the threshhold of discovering our true moral (divine) nature" to "We are on the threshhold of discovering how urgent it is we evolve from zombies into human beings with a moral nature, before we hand everything over to robots and stop caring altogether"....but again, that's probably for the politics board.

[hammegk]

Originally Posted by Robin

(PS and ironically if it were ever demonstrated that something were non-arbritary and non-deterministic then scientists would be scrambling to study it).

I'd agree. It would also imply that the classic definitions of materialism have morphed to become idealism.

Originally Posted by Robin

*sigh* it is not rocket science. In the real world when you present a conclusion you are expected to provide a definition of what you are concluding.

This I have done. As for prior analysis I have done decades of it. As I stated before I am willing to defend each part of the definition if you will tell me which you have trouble with.

Mmmkay?

I have no trouble with those "definitions" being used as axioms to allow you to define yourself as The Only Materialist In The Village.

How you are able to square your "100% denial" corollary #1 with your statement I addressed above in this post is what puzzles me, and which I continue to find illogical.

[hammegk]

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Fine. "God" is cheese. "Libertarian free will" is also cheese.

Cheese is compatible with materialism. Therefore you are wrong.

Cheeses of Nazarath!

You aren't the first with that concept.

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Or I will, and you won't like it.

Irrelevant twaddle is irrelevant twaddle.

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

If you have an problem with my definition of consciousness, and you can produce a coherent statement of that problem, you are of course free to do so.

Or, since there is no coherent definition of consciousness, you may choose an axiom system that declares it non-existent.

Originally Posted by PixyMisa

Because the outward signs of consciousness that I observe in myself are the same as the outward signs of consciousness I observe in others.

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Because the brain activity I measure in myself (with electrodes or FMRI or whatever) during conscious thought is the same that I measure in others during what they report to be conscious thought.

And you've already leapt the 1st person / 3rd person problem. Congratulations.

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Because, while I am privy to some additional information in one particular case, in every respect that the two processes can be compared, they are the same.

Is there supposed to be meaning hidden somewhere in that word-salad?

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Because everyone experiences it the same way.

That's why.

Certainly unknown, and likely unknowable, but dream on.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Yes, I agree in a sense. However, there is now the awareness that no individual is really doing this, and that no meaningful point of observation actually exists. You can still be a scientist if that takes your fancy, for sure, or if you think there are good things to be found with science.

Now that just appaers to be an asserion to me. How do you reach the conclusion that "no meaningful point of observation actually exists"?

Show your work and how you got there please.

For a discussion I will present the following framework:

1. There are the world and the things in the world. The ontology doesn't matter.

2. Certain Things In And Of Themselves are able to have experiences. Which have refferents to other TIAOT.

3. Some TIOAT are able to communicate regarding these experiences. Which have referents to other TIAOT.

4. Neither experience or communication are exact in the correlation to other TIAOT.

5. Some thoughts, experiences and communications are apparently subject to isotropy, in that they will approximate the behavior of TIAOT and that they can predict the behavior of TIAOT and that they appear to be consistent in predicting the behavior of TIAOT.

6. Some thoughts appears to have the ability to establish causal relations in the behavior of TIAOT. In that given a set of relations between TIAOT and one changes the set or relations one can predict the changes in behavior of the TIAOT.

7. 'Objective' is a label applied to thoughts that use isotropy and reductionist causal relations to determine causal relations between TIAOT.


So where is it that you can state there is "no meaningful point of observation actually exists" when it comes to the above framework?

[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by Stout

John, we can agree to disagree, no problems. I'm not here to bash anyone unless they're claiming super powers...or trying to sell me magic detoxifying footpads.

It's just that I'm relatively new to this whole "science is a belief" idea, as I said upthread I've only ever seen it related to ID vs Evolution and in that context it was more being used as a weapon without any real explanation as to why I should consider it as "fact"

If I were to try and boil your stance down to one sentence and try to relate to science as a belief I find myself coming up with...well...opinion. But I'll try anyway.

Suppose we take Einstein's famous equation E=MC Squared

That basically says that energy and mass are the same thing and I would put your stance as putting more weight to the idea that mass ( material ) is actually energy and therefore science is failing to take this into consideration when it discusses materialism.

From your post, I gather you're taking the opinion that science reduces everything to matter, and completely discounts energy, which, if true, would lend credence to the idea that science functions as a belief system.

Energy-Matter:
No, misunderstandings gallore, I'm afraid. I was happily discussing the issue of the subject(ive) problem using 'matter' as a shorthand for energy-matter, aware of their interchangeability and also not really considering their dual nature much of a concern. Then along came Dancing David, if I remember rightly (pardon me DD if I'm wrong), telling me in response to my discussion of materialism and the problem of the universe not actually appearing much like matter as normally thought of by ordinary folks that there wasn't any matter, it was all energy, and it behaved as waves everywhere, always, and he hoped that cleared it up for me.

Of course, what it did was introduce a red-herring. I, being relatively ignorant of 21st Century particle physics (understatement of the year), took his word for it and asked what difference it made to the question (which we established was none at all), and also (ironically) asked why materialism was called materialism. If I remember right, I also stated that I had thought that light, for instance, behaved as particles under some circumstances and waves under others, and that there was at least some controversy about what it all meant. This was the state of play the last time I watched Open University, but that might be 5 years ago.

Various other people then lectured me on the understanding that matter and energy are interchangeable, which, as I said, I knew already. Strangely, no-one seems to have argued with DD about there only being energy and it always behaving as a wave. I could also get into questions about whether 'particle physicists' are just using the same kind of shorthand we use when talking about 'materialism'. I might also question whether the idea of quanta of energy and waves are compatible imagery, or whether quanta (packets) are not rather more like particles, but I can't be bothered. It does, however, reinforce the general ignorance science somehow manages to translate into nearly having a theory of everything, so thanks for that.

Science as Belief
I'm surprised this needs explainaing again, but I guess you're actually struggling with it more because of all the red-herrings we've been wading through.

You consider Christianity a belief system because it has certain ideas that define it, most notably the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was the one and only incarnation of God. Science says everything is matter, and that matter behaves according to laws that apply in all circumstances. These, like the incarnation of God, are axioms. One is reinforced by dogma, the other is reinforced by....erm....dogma. Ok, that's harsh, but let's just note how incredibly difficult it seems to be for anyone to raise the question without being labelled insane, having a jesus complex, wanting to preach, being unable to deal with harsh possibilities, and all the rest of the hostility I found here. Old hands even warned me it would come. But it is more complicated than that. It is reinforced as much by habit and the difficulty of inventing another form of science that could possibly look for evidence of non-physical entities. The very idea of looking is wrapped up in physicality. We look because of the light reflected or emitted by matter. So I did acknowledge that the question was unfair in that sense, and belonged not to science, but philosophy. This challenge came up early on, and I reminded us that the board was for philosophy and religion.

Incidentally, it is even more amazing that the scientific-belief-system of the forum as a whole legitimised the scientific-believers on the philosophy and religion forum to bully philosophers and religious people, as if our views didn't belong here. Articulett even told me to 'evolve then join the conversation', as if it were her conversation, her board, her forum and she was talking to me from further up the evolutionary tree. She seemed not to notice that I started the conversation, or to consider whether other people's views should have equal rights to hers.

Anyway, I hope that helps. Science is a belief system because it concerns beliefs that fit its philosophy - its underlying metaphysical assumptions - so your other examples are also scientific beliefs (the firewalking one and this energy-is-matter one). I don't quite see what's so hard to understand. If someone's in a pub and says they're a scientist, I generally know what kinds of things they believe. If the guy next to them says they're a Christian, I generally know what kind of things he believes, and I wouldn't see anything odd about the scientist saying "I'm a scientist. I believe that the only thing in the universe is matter/energy".

The Christian would then say "What? Well explain to me how you're aware then?"

And the scientist would say, from what I understand, "I'm not. I just think I am. I'm a deluded zombie...you throwback moron!"

It is about this time that Buddhists at the next table would politely intervene and clear up all the misunderstandings by chanting and ringing a bell and reminding us what Prince Siddartha said about everything being Void and the importance of being nice to people.

Sorry, I've just lost the will to discuss this sensibly anymore!

[Nick227]

Originally Posted by Dancing David

Now that just appaers to be an asserion to me. How do you reach the conclusion that "no meaningful point of observation actually exists"?

Show your work and how you got there please.

Well, it's fundamental to a non-dual system that you cannot be separated from it. You can experience separation, but it's held that this separation be regarded either as "illusory" or at least in some way intransient.

In order to have a point of observation from which to make an objective statement, it is needed to have separation. There needs to be a clearly demarcated or at least agreed boundary, such that the observing system be regarded as distinct from the observed. A non-dual system can provide the experience of this, but cannot provide the actuality.

Thus, if you were to personally consider the question of "how the world is," you would no doubt make use of your thoughts, experiences, insights, and beliefs, and construct a perspective which you could write down or articulate in some way. However, from non-duality, all of these experiences, thoughts, insights, and beliefs are merely arising in awareness, along with the experience that any of them belong to you. They are happening, but so what? They are simply passing on through.

Nick

[lupus_in_fabula]

Originally Posted by John Freestone

You consider Christianity a belief system because it has certain ideas that define it, most notably the idea that Jesus of Nazareth was the one and only incarnation of God. Science says everything is matter, and that matter behaves according to laws that apply in all circumstances. These, like the incarnation of God, are axioms. One is reinforced by dogma, the other is reinforced by....erm....dogma.

There’s a grave difference between your examples. Jesus being the incarnation of God is the unquestioned point of departure for the system, whereas everything being matter/energy seems to be a conclusion derived from observations, so far (although being temporary in a sense that should evidence against this notion come about, it would change). It’s also possible that it’s neither matter nor energy, but we don’t know that, we don’t know what the “uber-stuff” really is or could be, matter/energy seems to be the best bet so far? Science is susceptible to change its basic assumptions, could Christianity do the same and still be called Christianity?

Look for neutral monism if you want to find a middle ground between the physical and mind, in terms of metaphysics.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Nick227

If you sit and observe thoughts passing through the mind, you may notice that the desire to act on a certain thought is not necessarily proportional to the relevance it has to the situation which caused its arisal. Thus, people constantly make decisions that are if not irrational, certainly not the best of the possibilities they evaluated as options. For example, our means for deciding on which woman or man to go out with often reflects far more a subconscious decision that an aware one.

thanks for your patience in trying to understand what your POV actually is. I think you will find that i do try to understand what you are saying.

When it comes to the decision making capacity, often labeled as judgement or impulse control, I still find the use of the word subconscious to be a loaded value added word.

For example in the sexual or physical attraction area there are a lot of factors that would go into not making a rational choice, and thank goodness, rationality is not an integrated area.

-imprinting through conditioning, there might be phases of life where people imprint (not like ducks but through conditioning) on all sorts of complex behaviors: gender identity, sexual role behaviors and atrraction. I for example have a thing for women who are shorter than I am. I think this is because the first set of women I bonded with were shorter than me, so take intense emotional experience, insert a certain body type and I have attraction
-the chemical thing which is rather poorly studied but greatly hinted at. Certain people seem to be attracted to each other for possible chemical exchanges.
-personality attraction: certain people seem to seek out a partcular type of personality, again most likely conditioning.
-emotional signals : like I think this person is abusing me, I think this person is nice to me.
-learned tolerance and acceptance, i am blind sided by people who use quiet agrresion and passive agression, lots of conditioning there

As you can see I favor conditioning but i feel that there are biological windows and reasons for when and where conditioning occurs.

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Thus, I submit, it's valid to ask, "By what mechanism does this take place?" There are a whole choice of thoughts which I might act on in response to a certain situation, yet I chose this one. Yet, if I really had to look at it logically, I wouldn't have done so. Why should that be?

the simple answer is because we have multiple channels through which we process information and a contingent history, as well as internal stimuli. Logic is a tool and not always the best one. Frequently people ruin their lives by staying with the person they rationalize as being good for them, when their emotions give them other signals. And versa visa.

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If you just watch the process take place in your own mind, you will see that a certain thought becomes acted upon, not necessarily through logical evaluation of its potential, but because it just seems as though it is more my thought. There is a heightened sense of identification present for this specific thought, and this overrides the conscious evaluative process.

Well attachment to self and the dependent attachment to pleasure and avoidance of displeasure are real problems and part of conditioning as well.

However a notion of 'self' and 'future self' are usefull in helping to learn impulse control.

I disagree that the notion of 'my' is soley the poor acting agent. i am a pluralist and see many avenues to which people make poor choices.

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In trying to ascribe a mechanistic pathway to this phenomenon, it seems to me that it is clearly subconsciously driven, and that it is motivated by an innate desire to become more conscious.

Well that is a great asummtion, also one I disagree with. i can see many , many paths being taken, kind of a sum over histories.

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By causing one specific thought to be acted upon, in preference to others which are more logical or reasonable, the individual begins to "act out" the subconscious drama, thus creating the possibility to become aware of it.

Sort of agree there, but I think people act out emotions.

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Thus, it seems to me, there is a subconscious drive to raise self-awareness present in all humans.

yes and no, some people are motivated to avoid self awareness.

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I say the source is libido, to use the classical term, because this phenomenon is clearly subconsciously driven, particularly prominent in sexual activity, and clearly relating to seeking behaviour.

Well, it is just kind of vague and there are almost no hard wired drives in humans, there are a whole lot of learned and conditioned responses. But only a limited set of instinctual behaviors that usually disappear at age 3 months.

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Can you explain to me the mechanistic route of this process in associative networks?

Nick

Sorry I will have to reread the post to answer correctly.

Associative learning works due to the potentiation and attenuation of individual neurons, growth of neurons and the interactions of the shebang.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Nick227

Odd, I figured you might say that! I believe Existential Anxiety is in DSMIV now though. I don't know about the other questions, I'm sure you could contact the authors of the papers. I also know John Hopkins did a study with psilocybin and 60 patients. No doubt it's around on the web somewhere.

Nick

I was just saying that research on the effects of psychoactive substances is not the same as using them as medicines.

[Dancing David]

Originally Posted by Bodhi Dharma Zen

There is no “external” material world outside your consciousness. There are no objects, there is no light, nothing like and earth or stars or galaxies. Consciousness is your world, the only one you know and will know, the only one that exists and will ever exists.

There is also nothing “internal” to consciousness. Feeling, thoughts, sensations, perceptions, language, etc. are also your world. Still, consciousness is merely the tip of the iceberg (notice that I said that consciousness is YOUR world, not THE world).

Consciousness is made of phenomena, yet it is caused by the noumena. As we have seen, phenomena comprehends both the world and the ego, the external and the internal, the objective and the subjective.

The noumena is, whatever it is, outside the reach of consciousness. For convenience we can say that the noumena is physical, made of quarks, quantum states, strong and weak forces, and so on. But we must never forget that such concepts are oversimplifications that serve a purpose (they are like anchors that let us to make predictions) but are not “real entities in themselves”. Particles and waves are ways of describing the noumena, nothing else, and nothing more.

The ultimate nature of what we call the universe is then the noumena, and every attempt to describe it will begin and finish in language. Different languages, different concepts and you might end with a different description. Valid or invalid only in the sense it can accurately predict phenomena, but not “truer” or “more accurate” or “better” outside its predictive capabilities.

Consciousness is all we can experience and I argue not even that.

However it appears that photons react with phototropins to create sensations.

[Robin]

Originally Posted by martillo

I'd agree. It would also imply that the classic definitions of materialism have morphed to become idealism.

No, in order for Idealism to be true there would have to be the possibility of a complex/non-complex entity. I certainly 100% deny that something could be x and not x

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I have no trouble with those "definitions" being used as axioms to allow you to define yourself as The Only Materialist In The Village.

You are just getting boring

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How you are able to square your "100% denial" corollary #1 with your statement I addressed above in this post is what puzzles me, and which I continue to find illogical.

One thing that increases my certainty is that anybody who does not agree cannot find coherent arguments but is forced to rely on desparate, dishonest twitter like the above.

[PixyMisa]

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

Granted- but if nobody can actually grok the wholeness of the answer, what does it mean to say we understand?

And that is a very good question, and something that philosophers have been arguing about for 2500 years.

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Let's face it, whether the argument is about free will or understanding whatever- human brains do have limitations. We do pretty well considering...

All true.