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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Atheism & Apologetics
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
Is that because the mental / physical divide is an arbitrary one put in place for understanding, but not necessarily that helpful when more information is required?
A bit like early scientific hypotheses that do explain phenomena but the more those phenomena are investigated the more gaps are shown? We still use Newtonian Mechanics as a good approximation to Einstein's Relativity.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by argona:
Going back to the question I asked a little while back, suppose a godless universe that contains no sentient life, though perhaps some trees. By chance, random matter splats onto a surface making what a sentient being, had it existed, might have seen as a picture of a tree. Would it be a picture of a tree?
Yes, of course it would.
(Aside from petty quibbles about whether something can have a name when no language exists, of course. Trilobites were still Trilobites even though nobody invented that name until millions of years after they went extinct.)
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
Is that because the mental / physical divide is an arbitrary one put in place for understanding, but not necessarily that helpful when more information is required?
A bit like early scientific hypotheses that do explain phenomena but the more those phenomena are investigated the more gaps are shown? We still use Newtonian Mechanics as a good approximation to Einstein's Relativity.
That is one issue which seems to come out of this discussion. The split between objectivity and subjectivity has been enormously powerful and productive, in terms of the development of science. However, it seems to have led to this impasse.
However, I don't think the whole of Western thinking is going to be rejigged so that the hard problem has a solution!
But it is worth considering that in other systems of knowledge the duality of mental/physical, may not be as traumatic. Well, maybe it's not really traumatic at all. The trains still run, I watch TV, the cat gets fed. Maybe it's a pseudo-problem.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by argona:
By chance, random matter splats onto a surface making what a sentient being, had it existed, might have seen as a picture of a tree. Would it be a picture of a tree?
No more, I think, that a pattern of random squiggles could amount to writing before there was a language written down like that.
Transforming a pattern of flat pigments into a representation of something is a more convention-governed activity than we usually realise. Think of child's drawings.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by argona:
Going back to the question I asked a little while back, suppose a godless universe that contains no sentient life, though perhaps some trees. By chance, random matter splats onto a surface making what a sentient being, had it existed, might have seen as a picture of a tree. Would it be a picture of a tree?
Yes, of course it would.
Actually, no. Not in the way argona phrased the question. A trilobite is concrete thing, unlike a shape which needs interpreting.
Much like a tree falling in the forest, which, if no creature is present to hear it, does not make a sound.
[ 01. August 2013, 13:26: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Much like a tree falling in the forest, which, f no creature is present to hear it, does not make a sound.
Of course it does. Conservation of energy.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Grokesx
Shipmate
# 17221
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Posted
quote:
Maybe there are religious people who do that, but I can assure you that I try to hold Science only to the standards it sets for itself.
No one has claimed that the hard problem has been solved scientifically, but some here think that it can be and you are arguing against them. That's not a scientific argument, it's a philosophical one, (of the armchair variety, naturally)so the idea of holding science to its own standards is not germane to what is going on on this thread. We are in the realm of speculation, thought experiments, analogies and logical possibilities extrapolated from known, sometimes scientific, positions. In this arena, religion and science can, if fruitful discussion is the aim, be held to the same sort of standards.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
Posts: 373 | From: Derby, UK | Registered: Jul 2012
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
It creates a mechanical wave which is an occilation of pressure. "Sound" is the interpretation of said wave.
[ 01. August 2013, 13:32: Message edited by: lilBuddha ]
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
It creates a mechanical wave which is an occilation of pressure. "Sound" is the interpretation of said wave.
The OED defines "sound" as "vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person’s or animal’s ear".
Can be heard. The waves don't have to be heard before they're sound.
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian
Added to the tendency (not least in parts of the Ship) to place philosophy, let alone metaphysics, on a pedestal.
Given that philosophy is simply to do with what we think about reality - and the entire justification for the scientific method falls within its remit - then I presume you are concerned that thinking itself is being put on a pedestal.
Which poses the question: what's the alternative?
There is no conflict between 'science' and 'philosophy', because science is philosophy, being based on a particular epistemological theory and method. As for 'metaphysics'... well, anyone who makes any claims about reality as a whole is guilty of indulging in same.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
There are threads where we Zen together despite ourselves but this is the first where we Zen apart together and together apart and ...
Nice.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Grokesx
Shipmate
# 17221
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Posted
quote:
That is one issue which seems to come out of this discussion. The split between objectivity and subjectivity has been enormously powerful... Maybe it's a pseudo-problem.
I think it is a pseudo problem. Although I don't think Dennett has totally nailed down the concept of consciousness, I think he is surely correct in his approach.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
Posts: 373 | From: Derby, UK | Registered: Jul 2012
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Truman White
Shipmate
# 17290
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Pre-cambrian:
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
"It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should , and yet it does." Chalmers, Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness.
Maybe then the problem is with philosophy, which is after all limited to the confines of the human mind, and not with possible causations that the human mind is unable to understand or unwilling to accept.
You mean like your atheism being unable to understand, or be willing to accept, that the fundamental first principle of causation is grounded in God?
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Grokesx: In this arena, religion and science can, if fruitful discussion is the aim, be held to the same sort of standards.
But this is what I've been trying to say for weeks! "Science will find an explanation some day" and "There is something here that cannot be explained by Science, which I choose to connect with God" are on the same footing.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc
"Science will find an explanation some day".
A.k.a. "naturalism of the gaps".
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
Posts: 3625 | From: South Coast of England | Registered: Sep 2009
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argona
Shipmate
# 14037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
quote:
Originally posted by argona:
By chance, random matter splats onto a surface making what a sentient being, had it existed, might have seen as a picture of a tree. Would it be a picture of a tree?
No more, I think, that a pattern of random squiggles could amount to writing before there was a language written down like that.
Transforming a pattern of flat pigments into a representation of something is a more convention-governed activity than we usually realise. Think of child's drawings.
Not quite comparable to random squiggles and writing - the shape of the splat might objectively be similar to the shape of a tree. But to be a picture of a tree does seem to require some cultural context in which it could be seen as such, superveniently upon the material composing it.
I was just wondering if the analogy has anything to say about the possible supervenience of mental states upon brain states but I think probably not, because there a first-person account comes into play.
Interesting article and relevant to this thread in the current New Scientist. Sadly you have to pay.
Posts: 327 | From: Oriental dill patch? (4,7) | Registered: Aug 2008
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Andromeda
Shipmate
# 11304
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Much like a tree falling in the forest, which, f no creature is present to hear it, does not make a sound.
Of course it does. Conservation of energy.
Well it depends on how you define sound. If you define sound as sound waves - well obviously it does. But if you define sound to include the experience of hearing it, as is common language usage of the word, then no it doesn't. I think the question intends the latter definition.
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In this world you’ll have trouble. But cheer up! I have overcome the world.
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Grokesx
Shipmate
# 17221
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Posted
quote:
But this is what I've been trying to say for weeks! "Science will find an explanation some day" and "There is something here that cannot be explained by Science, which I choose to connect with God" are on the same footing.
Yes, you have claimed that, but have refrained from exposing your side of the argument to the same scrutiny you lavish on your opponents'. If we are agreed there are not scientific explanations yet, but evidence that can be extrapolated from, logical conundrums to mull over, possibilities to be argued over, grounds for belief to be examined, the questions fall equally on each side of the fence. You seem to think "Something to do with God" is a sufficient position while demanding science grade answers from the other side. Mind you, at least you spotted the irony of a theist labelling emergence as pulling rabbits out of the hat.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
Posts: 373 | From: Derby, UK | Registered: Jul 2012
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Grokesx: Yes, you have claimed that, but have refrained from exposing your side of the argument to the same scrutiny you lavish on your opponents'.
Well, I'm in a debate here, and of course I'm going to point out the flaw's in my opponents' arguments a bit more than my own. I guess that's only natural on a forum like this.
quote:
Grokesx: You seem to think "Something to do with God" is a sufficient position while demanding science grade answers from the other side.
Yes, "something to do with God" is perfectly sufficient for me personally. And I acknowledged a numer of times that if "Science will find an explanation" is personally sufficient for other people, then I'm ok with that. As long as they acknowledge that this is a personal belief, and not a scientific argument.
If the others claim that they're making a scientific argument, then I'll demand Science grade answers. If they admit that it's a personal belief, then my demands lower considerably. I have a lot of respect for other people's beliefs.
quote:
Grokesx: Mind you, at least you spotted the irony of a theist labelling emergence as pulling rabbits out of the hat.
Part of the discussions I've been having in the last weeks were about establishing where Science ends, end where metaphysics/belief/philospy/whatever begins. Some people presented "Science will find an explanation" as if this already was a scientific position. It isn't, and I had to argue a bit strongly sometimes because the line was really drawn in the wrong place.
And to be honest, I'm not convinced that 'emergence' lies on the scientific side of that line. If smacks a lot like "It's here but we don't know where it came from" to me. My way of arguing this a bit more vividly is calling it "pulling a rabbit from a hat".
So, to summarize: after we've established where the line between Science and philosophy lies, we're all equals beyond that line. But I'm allowing myself a somewhat stronger discussion style in establishing that line.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Yes, this is a fascinating aspect of the discussion of subjective experience - is it a philosophical or a scientific problem, or both?
There are so many unresolved issues connected with this, for example:
1. Most people would agree that subjective experience is part of their reality; however, does this mean that science can describe it? It's clear that science does not set out to describe reality.
2. Go back a few centuries, and you find Bacon (and others), saying 'Stop talking so much about Aristotle, start with the senses'. This was a brilliant turn away from philosophy towards empirical method, and led to the explosion of modern science.
3. It also meant that science could observe and describe appearances, without having to worry if they were reality or not - let the philosophers pound their brains out on that one, the poor buggers!
4. Science to a large extent expels subjectivity from its domain. OK, it is not truly objective, but it uses intersubjective methods. It then becomes very problematic to attempt to describe subjectivity, the very thing it has abhorred.
5. Science operates mainly in the third person - yet we live in the first person. But is this a scientificalistic issue?
6. As LeRoc just said, to say that 'science will deal with this one day' is itself not a scientific claim; just as scientism (however you define it), is not a scientific position.
7. Subjective experience can be left as something unresolved, or even indescribable. The philosophers are allowed to break rocks over it, in their own quarry.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
I know this is UK only, but Dara O'Briain's Science Club last night was looking at time - our understanding of time and a lot of things at the edge of this. The previous episode was looking at the mind.
A couple of things that were on the edge of this topic was firstly the working human heart that had been created in the lab and secondly a demonstration of planning in rats. A section showed the brain waves of the rats as they planned their way around a maze. Which suggested that sort of planning is an early evolutionary trait that has been developed further. The link to the discussion here was the demonstration of the working of the mind
The heart had been created using scaffolding from a pig's heart with all the cells washed out, then human stem cells were seeded into the heart. With a bit of teaching to persuade the cells to work in unity, this heart pumped blood. Now nobody really knew why those stem cells had differentiated the way they did, but the structure had triggered it. My thought was if you used God of the gaps, was it God that made this heart work?
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
Posts: 13794 | From: outiside the outer ring road | Registered: Aug 2006
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed...
The heart had been created using scaffolding from a pig's heart with all the cells washed out, then human stem cells were seeded into the heart. With a bit of teaching to persuade the cells to work in unity, this heart pumped blood. Now nobody really knew why those stem cells had differentiated the way they did, but the structure had triggered it. My thought was if you used God of the gaps, was it God that made this heart work?
When I play a game of chess on my chess computer, the programme is working out how to respond to my moves. I know for sure that no chess computer programmer is a "little man in the workings" deciding the moves. Does that lack of a person in the workings therefore prove that the computer was never programmed in the first place by an intelligent person?
The answer is obvious.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Curiosity killed ...: The link to the discussion here was the demonstration of the working of the mind
Correction: a demonstration of the working of the brain. We know nothing about what goes on in a mouse's mind.
quote:
Curiosity killed ...: My thought was if you used God of the gaps, was it God that made this heart work?
In its essence, a heart is just a mechanical thing that can perfectly well be described by physics.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
Posts: 9474 | From: Brazil / Africa | Registered: Aug 2002
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Ha! The medieval theologians used to argue that natural phenomena could be described and explained by natural processes. However, they also cited Aristotle, 'all things work to an end'.
In fact, I think Aquinas argued that there were no gaps in nature!
"In studying nature we have not to inquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have rather to inquire what Nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass."
Albertus Magnus.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed...
But that implies that creating artificial hearts is of God - and that opens up another area of debate.
It doesn't imply that at all. What it implies is that the informational content of the laws of physics and chemistry derives from an intelligent source. Nothing more than that.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
Posts: 3625 | From: South Coast of England | Registered: Sep 2009
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Grokesx
Shipmate
# 17221
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Posted
quote:
So, to summarize: after we've established where the line between Science and philosophy lies, we're all equals beyond that line.
Agreed. quote:
But I'm allowing myself a somewhat stronger discussion style in establishing that line.
I don't give a shit about your style. The thing is, there is another line - between philosophy on the one side and theology/religious philosophy/religious practice etc on the other. My interest is in the area between this line and our science/philosophy line, where the terms of discourse and argument are equal. Where there is no holding sciency arguments to one standard and religiousy ones to another.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
Posts: 373 | From: Derby, UK | Registered: Jul 2012
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Grokesx: My interest is in the area between this line and our science/philosophy line, where the terms of discourse and argument are equal. Where there is no holding sciency arguments to one standard and religiousy ones to another.
Wait a minute, let me get that. Now you are talking about arguments that are 'sciency' but not scientific, is that it? I guess that "Science will find an explanation one day" falls in this category, right? Or are you talking about other arguments?
My reaction to "Science will find an explanation one day" is: it's ok if you believe that, just don't pretend that this is already a scientific argument, or that we can be sure that it will happen.
Are there other arguments that fall into this category?
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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Grokesx
Shipmate
# 17221
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Posted
quote:
My reaction to "Science will find an explanation one day" is: it's ok if you believe that, just don't pretend that this is already a scientific argument, or that we can be sure that it will happen.
I don't care what your reaction to that argument is because I have never made it. And I I'm not sure anyone on this thread has made it either.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
Posts: 373 | From: Derby, UK | Registered: Jul 2012
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LeRoc
Famous Dutch pirate
# 3216
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Posted
quote:
Grokesx: I don't care what your reaction to that argument is because I have never made it. And I I'm not sure anyone on this thread has made it either.
(Sigh.) So, what are your 'sciency' but not scientific arguments?
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
I'm not sure that anybody has made any 'scientific arguments' on this thread, have they? People have made various arguments with reference to science, but then these are philosophical arguments.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Grokesx
Shipmate
# 17221
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Posted
@Quetz
Exactly that.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
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Grokesx
Shipmate
# 17221
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Posted
@ LeRoc
So, to use an recent post of yours for illustration, when you say...
quote:
In its essence, a heart is just a mechanical thing that can perfectly well be described by physics
... you are making a scientific argument that few, I think, would argue with. If I were to respond, "I think the evidence so far suggests that the brain is just a mechanical thing with mind as an output," I would be making a sciency philosophical argument. If we were actually having a proper conversation, this might well lead into various ideas on emergence and analogies with other, known complex emergent systems, drawing on neuroscience, cognitive science, biology, eco-systems, social sciences, meteorology, immunology etc.
On your side, you might expound a bit on what you think it is about that the brain that distinguishes it so fundamentally from the heart. We might note in passing that in years gone by the heart was considered to be the seat of the emotions and wonder if the status of the brain will turn out to be similarly demystified in years to come. And if not, why not.
We might even look at how the role of the brain and the mind sits in a materialist paradigm and compare and contrast it with a non-materialist one. We might at least speculate how a dualist mind/body split actually works, giving an idea of what the non physicalist part is, what its role is, where the demarcation line is drawn between it and the purely physical part.
The possibilities are endless.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Does anyone know Leibniz's Mill? It was an analogy that he drew about going inside a large machine or industrial building, such as a mill, and wandering around looking at the various parts of it. It has been often compared to the brain - imagine a very large one, which you could walk inside and tour. What would you find? Would you find thoughts and perceptions?
Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions. And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill. That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception.
Here is one analysis of this by Ed Feser.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/leibnizs-mill.html
[ 03. August 2013, 09:40: Message edited by: quetzalcoatl ]
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Truman White
Shipmate
# 17290
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by LeRoc:
quote:
Grokesx: In this arena, religion and science can, if fruitful discussion is the aim, be held to the same sort of standards.
But this is what I've been trying to say for weeks! "Science will find an explanation some day" and "There is something here that cannot be explained by Science, which I choose to connect with God" are on the same footing.
Not forgetting that the explanations science comes up with can happily support theists. A century or so ago classical monotheists affirmed the universe had an absolute beginning and had a finite beginning in the past. This was completely contrary to Newtonian physics that held that the universe existed eternally. The Standard theory of the origin of the universe (Hubble, Big Bang ..) changed all that. Add to that the impressive and growing evidence of a universe precision tuned for life from its very origins, and science gives theists plenty of grist to supprt the premise that the universe is designed. Yeah we can debate the conclusions of the evidence and consider other theories but let's not kid ourselves that 'science' only makes theism harder.
Enjoying your banter with the Big G by the way....
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Interesting point about 'the universe is designed'. I was chewing over Aquinas's 5th proof, which is often termed a design argument, yet in fact, it's more an argument about teleology, which is different from design. I suppose it's about the lawfulness of nature; thus, Aquinas argues that there are no gaps in nature.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Grokesx
Shipmate
# 17221
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Posted
@Quetz
As Feser says, Leibniz's Mill is related to the Mary the colour scientist thought experiment. I don't reckon it adds much to the consciousness debate, other than historical interest. For it to be anything more than an argument from ignorance (bolstered by an intuition pump) you need to add extra baggage of your own about simplicity, the unity of consciousness etc as Feser does at the end of his post, or find it in Leibniz's own writings about monads (and for that you'd need to swallow Leibniz's entire philosophy whole).
Otherwise it could be taken as in the same ball park as McGinn's mysterianism and Searle's problem with the first and third person stances, and says little about the nature of consciousness/perception itself. No change there, then.
But I'll offer an intuition pump of my own. I'm out walking the dog, and because I spend so much time on the internet arguing the toss about rubbish, when I spot this in the distance, I haven't got a clue what it is. The appearance of a single, swooping, shifting entity is overwhelming, and when I get my binoculars out I am astonished to find that it consists of thousands upon thousands of starlings.
My head is ablaze with possibilities. How do they move in such a such a rapid, synchronized fashion? Maybe the starlings somehow coalesce into a single entity when they flock, the whole being something greater than the parts. Maybe they communicate telepathically with each other. Maybe they communicate ultra-sonically or have a sense we know nothing about. Maybe there is a transcendent starling dimension that they can tune into that guides them in some unspecified way for reasons no one can fathom.
I get out my amazingly camcorder that can record in super slo-mo because I am in a thought experiment and I can, and I notice that individual birds do not move at exactly the same time, they seem to follow their neighbours, but I still do not understand what is going on.
I go home and a minutes googling brings up this and this.
As per Leibniz's mill, the explanation is not evident in observation alone. I cannot enter the minds of the birds to see what is going on and I know nothing about what it is like to be a starling, but the hard problem of starlings eventually turned out to be not so hard as I thought.
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
Lovely image of starlings, but I'm not sure that that works as an analogy. We can often explain such behaviour by animals; but we can't explain experience itself, except 'this is what the brain does'.
The classic counter-argument to Leibniz's mill is the computer - if you had a gigantic one (well, they used to be the size of a room), and you wandered around inside, would you see the software? Feser has some kind of counter-counter to that, can't remember it. Glued to the cricket now. Life is a game of cricket, and the bowler is Satan, but thank heavens, Jesus is the umpire.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Grokesx
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# 17221
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Posted
quote:
We can often explain such behaviour by animals;
But that's the point. What was inexplicable turned out to be explicable, and the answer was nothing like we expected it to be.
Me looking at the flock in super slo-mo is roughly analogous to where we are now with brain imaging etc. The answer turned out to be emergence, and prior to the discovery, group mind or telepathy was seriously postulated as an answer. How close an analogy do you need ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
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EtymologicalEvangelical
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# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl
Lovely image of starlings, but I'm not sure that that works as an analogy. We can often explain such behaviour by animals; but we can't explain experience itself, except 'this is what the brain does'.
Great article here about mind and experience, in the context of the claims of naturalism.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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Grokesx
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# 17221
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Posted
@EE
The article concludes:
quote:
Physicalism may be a simple theory of the mind, but it is inadequate. A more adequate philosophy of mind will insist that the mind, while clearly related to the brain (and, indeed, to the human body) is far from ‘nothing but’ a complex arrangement of matter. At the very least, the mind has several immaterial properties, such as the intentional ‘aboutness’ of beliefs. It follows that no merely physical explanation of the mind is possible.
I note it was written 2002. Is there a part 2 where the author gives us a "more adequate" philosophy of mind?
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For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. H. L. Mencken
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argona
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# 14037
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Grokesx:
quote:
We can often explain such behaviour by animals;
But that's the point. What was inexplicable turned out to be explicable, and the answer was nothing like we expected it to be.
Me looking at the flock in super slo-mo is roughly analogous to where we are now with brain imaging etc. The answer turned out to be emergence, and prior to the discovery, group mind or telepathy was seriously postulated as an answer. How close an analogy do you need
A better one than that, Grokesx. Looking more closely at a flock of starlings and seeing interactions that are invisible at a distance, is hardly comparable to, eg, looking more closely at a pattern of firing neurons and concluding... "Ah yes, that's me being pissed off with my partner for getting crabby with me, just because our son was crabby with her". (Ok, it's been a difficult evening.) That's not a difference of scale, or of the possibility of data collection, it's a difference of kind.
[ 04. August 2013, 23:35: Message edited by: argona ]
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Ikkyu
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# 15207
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by argona:
A better one than that, Grokesx. Looking more closely at a flock of starlings and seeing interactions that are invisible at a distance, is hardly comparable to, eg, looking more closely at a pattern of firing neurons and concluding... "Ah yes, that's me being pissed off with my partner for getting crabby with me, just because our son was crabby with her". (Ok, it's been a difficult evening.) That's not a difference of scale, or of the possibility of data collection, it's a difference of kind.
But what does "Ah yes, that's me being pissed off with my partner for getting crabby with me, just because our son was crabby with her" look like? Grokesx can defend himself much better than I could. But his example points out that very simple rules can lead to extremely complex results.
People have argued repeatedly in this thread that the pattern of firing neurons in the brain cannot be the same as the mind. That the two things are different. So what are the properties of the mind that cannot be explained as a combination of the interaction of our senses with the "outside" world and patterns in our neurons? What makes it different in "Kind"? How does that work?
What makes the mind work if its not the brain?
I keep hearing people pointing out the fact that the full scientific explanation of the Mind is still a work in progress. But what is the alternative? And how is it a better explanation? I would like to hear more of that. Or is that too much to ask?
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
It's not a work in progress, in fact. It's just not a work.
I see this as happening because you are dealing with two things which are not commensurate. On the one hand - subjective experience, in the first person, thus 'my thoughts', me thinking, me inside myself, my inner life, on the other hand, material stuff moving around, examined in the third person.
How do you move from one to the other? It's possible, I think, that you just can't.
Nagel has the gruesome image of taking someone who is eating chocolate, and removing their skull, and licking their brain. Would it taste of chocolate? Probably not.
Of course, there are all kinds of fancy phrases to describe the leap from neural activity, to me thinking, but if the leap is across a fundamental gap, maybe we will never cross it.
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LeRoc
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Posted
quote:
Grokesx: If we were actually having a proper conversation, this might well lead into various ideas on emergence and analogies with other, known complex emergent systems, drawing on neuroscience, cognitive science, biology, eco-systems, social sciences, meteorology, immunology etc.
That would be an interesting conversation. You're talking with someone who already read Hofstadter when I was 13. But I have some personal stuff to sort out the next couple of days (nothing heavy, but it'll take some time), so I am afraid I don't have much of a mind for emergent materialism (nor for self-defence laws) this week.
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I know why God made the rhinoceros, it's because He couldn't see the rhinoceros, so He made the rhinoceros to be able to see it. (Clarice Lispector)
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EtymologicalEvangelical
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by grokesx
I note it was written 2002.
Meaning? Is there something about the year 2002 that somehow invalidates ideas that were expressed during it?
quote:
Is there a part 2 where the author gives us a "more adequate" philosophy of mind?
Not that I'm aware of. But since falsification is a principle of science, at least we know that naturalism cannot explain mind (unless, of course, you can fault Williams' logic). That, at least, is progress. (Do I detect the subtle - and fallacious - insinuation and double standard that "if you can't come up with an alternative fully explained model of mind, then we have to fall back on speculative and partially explained naturalism by default"?)
Of course, you could actually engage with the article and criticise what Williams has actually said, rather than complain about the year it was written and his apparent lack of a follow up article (although Williams has presented plenty of evidence in this article for an immaterial dimension of reality that explains aspects of human experience)?
How about it?
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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egg
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# 3982
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
People have argued repeatedly in this thread that the pattern of firing neurons in the brain cannot be the same as the mind. That the two things are different. So what are the properties of the mind that cannot be explained as a combination of the interaction of our senses with the "outside" world and patterns in our neurons? What makes it different in "Kind"? How does that work?
What makes the mind work if its not the brain?
I keep hearing people pointing out the fact that the full scientific explanation of the Mind is still a work in progress. But what is the alternative? And how is it a better explanation? I would like to hear more of that. Or is that too much to ask?
This is where Keith Ward starts in “Why There Almost Certainly Is a God - Doubting Dawkins”:
“ The question of God is the question of whether conscious mind can exist without any physical body, and whether that mind could account for the origin and nature of the universe. The relatively sensible (emergent) materialist has to admit that this is a possibility. ... There is really no problem about things existing outside our space-time. And a mind that has no physical body is a very good candidate for something that exists outside (but not, of course, physically outside) any physical space. It exists as pure consciousness.”
The theist must answer Keith Ward’s question Yes. Dawkins, I think, starts from the belief that the answer is No. If the answer is Yes, then there are other candidates for existence outside our space-time: the deceased, for example (of whose existence there is much, though not conclusive, evidence); Jesus (where was he between the first Easter Day and the following Sunday? Where is he now, that enables him to appear to people to-day, as, for instance, he appeared to Bishop Hugh Montefiore and converted him in an instant from being a Jew to being a Christian?
My criticism of Richard Dawkins is that he does not face up to the evidence for the existence of conscious minds outside our space-time, but simply rejects this as incompatible with his notions of science; but I may have missed his doing so.
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egg
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quetzalcoatl
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Posted
Doesn't Dawkins confuse scientific method - which of course studies only nature - with metaphysics - which might say, 'only nature exists'? Of course, that is not a scientific claim.
It seems to me that by saying that God is a scientific hypothesis, Dawkins has muddled up physics with metaphysics.
But then we are suffering from the appalling education in philosophical matters which young people receive today. Thus, we find Hawking declaring that philosophy is dead, before producing a pile of philosophical garbage of his own!
I think some materialists have to believe that mind is material; but this is not the result of any kind of empirical or philosophical investigation, but an ideological requirement, or one might say, fideism.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Ikkyu
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# 15207
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Posted
@quetzalcoatl
Using your example tasting chocolate. What happens when a person tastes chocolate? The piece of chocolate touches the taste buds. These send signals to the brain. Also we smell the chocolate at the same time and that is part of the experience.
Those messages generate activity in the brain. Put all of these together and you taste chocolate. If there is something wrong with your taste buds or your nose the signals that get to the brain are different and so is the experience. If you put something else and not chocolate it tastes different. If you have ever eaten chocolate before or have experienced something similar your memories will interact with the way your brain is processing this information and alter what it feels like.
Where is the need of a non-material component in that? If somebody stimulates your neurons in the same way but you are not really eating chocolate it still would feel the same. What is missing? And what does the missing piece in this description DO. How does the missing piece work?
I'm not asking for a "perfect" fully developed
alternative. Just one that incorporates what we already know. For example, take the neuronal firing out of the picture, they don't happen. Does the person still taste chocolate? Take the taste buds or nose out, ask the same question.
What does the extra missing piece do that these don't? And how does it do it?
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