The problem of self under materialism

[Immanuel Can]

Different materials, in different structures, undergoing different processes, have different properties.

So your position would be that what is missing from the non-living materials is a "property"? Like flammability, solidity or durability? Does that sort of thing sound even vaguely like a tidy parallel for "sentience"?

But I think that you see that it does not, and so you add...

Coming back to mind/body now, that doesn't mean that you have to accept that "mind" is a property that some materials,...

So far, so good: but then I wonder why you mentioned it at all, if it wasn't an answer you expected to be plausible.

... in some structures, undergoing some processes has, but it wouldn't make sense to treat the idea that different materials (etc.) have different properties as something with no justification, something out of left field, etc.

Yes. It would make sense to account for it, and to start with at least an analogy that had some chance of being in the ballpark. So we're back to the question: "how do we account for this 'thing'," to which we can now add, "which is not a 'property'?"

And we can ask this: "what makes some materials capable of x, and other materials not at all" about every single property that matter has.

But as you point out, sentience isn't a "property" of the materials. You can have all of the "materials" (as in a dead body) and none of the sentience. That's a very interesting differentiator.

Some materials, in some structures and processes have that property. Some do not. The difference appears to be just what we keep saying--the materials, structures and processes. That's what properties ARE after all. So difference is difference.

Here you seem to go back to the "properties" explanation, which is really no explanation at all: for "properties" just means "material dynamics a thing has." Essentially, your explanation amounts to, "Some things are sentient because things with the property of sentience are sentient."

Whereas we can identify, measure, test and reproduce things like flammability, solidity, liquidity, and so forth, or processes like transpiration or sublimation, good luck trying it with sentience. It doesn't behave like any "property" we currently know. In fact, it does not seem to yield to material analyses at all.

If you think otherwise, please expatiate as necessary.

[Terrapin Station]

So your position would be that what is missing from the non-living materials is a "property"?

Yes. The world is comprised of properties, as properties are material/structure/process characteristics. Those things are non-separable. All materials have structures and are undergoing processes. All structures are of materials and they're always processually changing, etc. And all of those things amount to properties. Sentience is a property of brains (at least human brains, and it seems that brains close to human brains have it, too) via particular structures and processes.

Coming back to mind/body now, that doesn't mean that you have to accept that "mind" is a property that some materials,...

Because I know you do not accept that. But the point of the earlier comments was just that you can't act like property differences are inexplicable when we're just talking about material. Accepting that property differences aren't mysterious wouldn't mean that you are forced somehow to change your position.

how do we account for this 'thing'," to which we can now add, "which is not a 'property'?"

Nothing exists that isn't a property. That idea is incoherent.

But as you point out, sentience isn't a "property" of the materials.

No, my view is just the opposite of that. But you aren't required to have the same view just because you can accept that different properties are the result of different materials/structures/processes. You can add in whatever else you want--supernatural stuff, God or whatever.

Essentially, your explanation amounts to, "Some things are sentient because things with the property of sentience are sentient."

I'm just pointing out that the fact that different materials have different properties isn't mysterious, so let's not pretend that it is.

Whereas we can identify, measure, test and reproduce things like flammability, solidity, liquidity, and so forth, or processes like transpiration or sublimation, good luck trying it with sentience. It doesn't behave like any "property" we currently know.

What does it mean to say that one property behaves like another, different property?

Anyway, we identify, measure, test and reproduce consciousness all the time.

Identification--"911--my friend is/isn't conscious" for example
Measure--https://aberpsych.wordpress.com/2014/01 ... sing-fmri/ for example
Testing--concussion protocols in the NFL for example
Reproducing--well, if you don't know how that works yet, get off the Internet and meet some women.

[Immanuel Can]

Got it.

You answer is that sentience is a "property." Like weight, density, flammability, specific gravity, or whatever. Except we can't measure it like we can those things. And it has no material component we can detect. And we can't describe even one step in the alleged material process by which it "emerges" from non-sentient matter. But it's real, and material, and a property.

Hey, if that answer is good enough for you, what can I say? Carry on.

[bahman]

3) Any subject matter turns into a brain state in order to be experienced

Everything seems fine up until this point. It's not clear to me what this is even saying. You'd have to define how you're using "subject matter" for one. The idea of "subject matter turning into a brain state" seems very wonky to me.

Think of a situation that you are looking at a table (subject matter). Light reflects from the table, enters to your eyes and then hits retina. The retina send a pulse into the brain. The pulse is processed in the brain forming a mental state.

[Terrapin Station]

3) Any subject matter turns into a brain state in order to be experienced

Everything seems fine up until this point. It's not clear to me what this is even saying. You'd have to define how you're using "subject matter" for one. The idea of "subject matter turning into a brain state" seems very wonky to me.

Think of a situation that you are looking at a table (subject matter). Light reflects from the table, enters to your eyes and then hits retina. The retina send a pulse into the brain. The pulse is processed in the brain forming a mental state.

Okay, but in that case it's not that "the subject matter is turning into a brain state." The "subject matter"--the table in question, is still what it was. It's just that you have a brain state that is the perception of the table. (And you have a different brain state (or rather brain states) that is the concept "table," and so on.)

Ah, and I finally made sense of your #4: "This means that the self (brain state) experiences another brain state (subject matter)" --at first I thought you were talking about experiencing other people.

Re your #4, you seem to be thinking that mental phenomena, like the idea of "self," occurs in the whole brain, and it's all that can occur in the brain in question. That's not the case. There are all sorts of different mental phenomena--ideas like a unified "self," concepts, desires, perceptions (like of our table), etc. They obtain by parts of the brain being in particular physical states, and the same or different parts of the brain can be in different physical states, which are different mental states. (Although of course the same part can't be in a different state than it is at the same time, it's just in one state at a time, although that one state could be something like a perception of a table AND an application of the concept "table" to that perception.)

[bahman]

I'll say it again: I am brain, in body, in world.

But we are talking about self. Do you equate brain with self or self with a mental state?

There is not 'self' as distinct entity apart from brain. Self, mind, I-ness is what brain 'does' as legs 'do' walking.

That I understand. I just want to know what self is. That is important because we experience things by our selves.

Would it make sense to talk of walking as an event separate from legs? Of course not. In the same way it makes no sense to talk about self without talking about that which 'does' self.

So what self does in your world view?

Part of your problem seems to lie in language: "What do you mean with "I experience myself"? Do you mean that "I" is your self or "myself" is your self?", for example, asks a nonsense question. 'I', 'myself' both refer to the one using the words, so when I say 'I experience myself' what I'm saying is I self-reference, am self-aware, am aware of that which is me and how it differs from, is separate from, that which is not me.

We are self aware, aren't we? This means that we can experience ourselves by reflecting what we do.

[bahman]

1) Materialism is a system of belief that claims that everything is made of matter or it is matter's state...

4) This means that the self (brain state) experiences another brain state (subject matter) in materialism which this is absurd

For me, this is the most important part of your observation. Can I try to give an example of why I think you're onto something important there?

If we say, "I see a rock,"

We are not saying, "The rock sees me."

It cannot. For it is mere materials. Mere materials cannot "see" or "understand" anything.

But somehow, we CAN say it about "I."

So how is that? If materialism is true, what does it mean to say that SOME arrangements of materials (like rocks) cannot "see" and cannot be expected ever to "see"?

And yet to say that another collocation of mere materials (i.e. "I") not only routinely DOES so, but can be expected to do so?

What is the missing variable, the difference between a rock and me? It's not complexity, for I can make a huge, huge pile of rocks, one even more complicated than my body -- but I have no greater expectation of that complex mass than I had of the one rock. Neither "sees," nor can be expected to -- no matter how I multiply its complexity.

So what is it? If we are merely materials, what makes some materials capable of sentience, and other materials not at all?

There must be some additional factor not present in materials qua materials, but what is it?

Materialist can argue that capability to experience something is the result of processing specific mental state via brain.

[bahman]

Everything seems fine up until this point. It's not clear to me what this is even saying. You'd have to define how you're using "subject matter" for one. The idea of "subject matter turning into a brain state" seems very wonky to me.

Think of a situation that you are looking at a table (subject matter). Light reflects from the table, enters to your eyes and then hits retina. The retina send a pulse into the brain. The pulse is processed in the brain forming a mental state.

Okay, but in that case it's not that "the subject matter is turning into a brain state." The "subject matter"--the table in question, is still what it was. It's just that you have a brain state that is the perception of the table. (And you have a different brain state (or rather brain states) that is the concept "table," and so on.)

Yes, that is what I meant.

Ah, and I finally made sense of your #4: "This means that the self (brain state) experiences another brain state (subject matter)" --at first I thought you were talking about experiencing other people.

Yes, that is the issue that we have in our hand. We experience this and that and we mean that our selves experience something. That is wrong under materialism. We only experience our selves and the things surrounding us separately.

Re your #4, you seem to be thinking that mental phenomena, like the idea of "self," occurs in the whole brain, and it's all that can occur in the brain in question. That's not the case. There are all sorts of different mental phenomena--ideas like a unified "self," concepts, desires, perceptions (like of our table), etc. They obtain by parts of the brain being in particular physical states, and the same or different parts of the brain can be in different physical states, which are different mental states. (Although of course the same part can't be in a different state than it is at the same time, it's just in one state at a time, although that one state could be something like a perception of a table AND an application of the concept "table" to that perception.)

That we know. The problem that we have in our disposal is that the self is only a part of our experiences under materialism and does not have a separate existence. We don't experience things by our selves.

[Terrapin Station]

That we know. The problem that we have in our disposal is that the self is only a part of our experiences under materialism and does not have a separate existence. We don't experience things by our selves.

There's not some "transcendent self" or "transcendent 'I'," right. What's a problem is rather positing that there is a transcendent self or transcendent 'I'."

There's a "sense of a 'unified,' temporarlly-continuous self" that's a mental phenomenon, of course, and there's the fact that your self is experiencing whatever it is in the sense that it's your body experiencing it. You don't need anything other than that (well, unless someone wants to believe in a soul or something like that because otherwise they can't bear the thought of death or something).

[bahman]

That we know. The problem that we have in our disposal is that the self is only a part of our experiences under materialism and does not have a separate existence. We don't experience things by our selves.

There's not some "transcendent self" or "transcendent 'I'," right. What's a problem is rather positing that there is a transcendent self or transcendent 'I'."

There's a "sense of a 'unified,' temporarlly-continuous self" that's a mental phenomenon, of course, and there's the fact that your self is experiencing whatever it is in the sense that it's your body experiencing it. You don't need anything other than that (well, unless someone wants to believe in a soul or something like that because otherwise they can't bear the thought of death or something).

So we don't have any self. This means that self is an illusion in materialism.

[Terrapin Station]

That we know. The problem that we have in our disposal is that the self is only a part of our experiences under materialism and does not have a separate existence. We don't experience things by our selves.

There's not some "transcendent self" or "transcendent 'I'," right. What's a problem is rather positing that there is a transcendent self or transcendent 'I'."

There's a "sense of a 'unified,' temporarlly-continuous self" that's a mental phenomenon, of course, and there's the fact that your self is experiencing whatever it is in the sense that it's your body experiencing it. You don't need anything other than that (well, unless someone wants to believe in a soul or something like that because otherwise they can't bear the thought of death or something).

So we don't have any self. This means that self is an illusion in materialism.

That's not at all what I said. You don't have a "transcendental self." But you have a body (obviously), which is your self in one connotation of that term, and you have a mental sense of self present at times, which is a set of mental/brain states. Neither your body in general nor those particular brain states are illusions.

[bahman]

There's not some "transcendent self" or "transcendent 'I'," right. What's a problem is rather positing that there is a transcendent self or transcendent 'I'."

There's a "sense of a 'unified,' temporarlly-continuous self" that's a mental phenomenon, of course, and there's the fact that your self is experiencing whatever it is in the sense that it's your body experiencing it. You don't need anything other than that (well, unless someone wants to believe in a soul or something like that because otherwise they can't bear the thought of death or something).

So we don't have any self. This means that self is an illusion in materialism.

That's not a at all what I said. You don't have a "transcedental self." But you have a body (obviously), which is your self in one connotation of that term, and you have a mental sense of self present at times, which is a set of mental/brain states. Neither your body in general nor those particular brain states are illusions.

We are talking about self. We experience it all the time yet it doesn't exist. This means that the sense of self is something generated by brain and the self is not real. In simple word self is an illusion in materialism.

[Terrapin Station]

We are talking about self. We experience it all the time yet it doesn't exist.

You don't experience anything all the time. You're not conscious all the time. You don't experience anything when you're not conscious.

This means that the sense of self is something generated by brain

That part's correct, with the clarification that is't not something other than the brain that's generated by it. It's identical to a brain state.

and the self is not real.

That part is not correct. That brain state/mental phenomenon is very real (using "real" in the non-scholastic sense where we just mean that it occurs).

The mental ph In simple word self is an illusion.

You might have an illusion that you experience self all the time. I don't know. I don't have that illusion.

[bahman]

We are talking about self. We experience it all the time yet it doesn't exist.

You don't experience anything all the time. You're not conscious all the time. You don't experience anything when you're not conscious.

This I agree with.

This means that the sense of self is something generated by brain

That part's correct, with the clarification that is't not something other than the brain that's generated by it. It's identical to a brain state.

Cool.

and the self is not real.

That part is not correct. That brain state/mental phenomenon is very real (using "real" in the non-scholastic sense where we just mean that it occurs).

Self is not identical to specific brain state. The experience of self is identical to specific brain state. This means that there exist not a self.

The mental ph In simple word self is an illusion.

You might have an illusion that you experience self all the time. I don't know. I don't have that illusion.

Please read the previous comment.

[Terrapin Station]

bahman, the self wouldn't be an illusion based on your insisting on defining it in a way that describes something that doesn't exist. That would just amount to you having a misconceived idea about what the (non-illusory) self is.