Philosophy Now Forum

I overlooked this in the first post of the thread:

"There is however no reason to believe that there exist a relation between C and S' in this framework."

Yes, there is a reason to believe that, if we're talking about materialism. What reason? Well, you said it yourself, bahman:

"Materialism is a . . . belief which claims that everything is constituted of matter"

So under materialism, the relation between C and S' is that C is just a particular S'.

bahman wrote:I have read it somewhere that evolution is feasible because it maximize the use of sun's light. I unfortunately don't remember the article.

Life existed and evolved well before something figured out what to do with the sun's light.
One of the first and most thorough mass extinction events occurred when something first evolved to utilize light.
A similar mass extinction event is going on right now.

Not that that's the only other problem with your initial post (I already commented on the "law" stuff).

Other problems include:

bahman wrote:C is simply the expectation of what S' should be

I've never heard anyone, materialist or not, describe consciousness as "simply an expectation." I have no idea where you might be getting that from.

Materialist believe that C can be derived from S by the following equation C=P(S) where P is the act of experience.

Aside from not knowing what the function of "S" in parentheses is there, again, I've never heard anyone say anything remotely like "consciousness equals the act of experience (modified in some unknown way by some state)." Who is a materialist who believes that? You say, "Materalists believe . . ." Well, which materialists have said anything like that?

We however always observe a fantastic correlation between what we expect to happen, C, and what happens, S'.

Yesterday, I expected that if I rode my bicycle on the pavement, I wouldn't fall through the pavement to the center of the Earth. And lo and behold, that's what happened. How was that a "fantastical" correlation?

This means that we are dealing with a logically impossible situation since C could be anything.

That makes no sense on multiple levels. If C could be anything, it's a "logically impossible situation"??? "Logically impossible" typically refers to something that's logically contradictory--a non-equivocated statement of P & not-P. Why would that be entailed just because C could be anything?

Immanuel Can wrote: That's a material explanation. But it's not a sufficient one. It tells what's happening, but not how or why these are producing what we call "consciousness," if they are.

Do you have a better explanation? We know that we could lose our consciousness under anaesthesia which is nothing more than the use of a chemical. So consciousness is a biochemical phenomena if we lose our consiousness by using a medical.

Immanuel Can wrote: It's reductional. It's like saying "love is endorphins": on one level, it's true -- but it's hardly an adequate description of the whole phenomenon. People who experience "love" are experiencing a whole kind of awareness, a different set of attributions, a different social construct, a new relation to an object, and so forth. All these facts are not embraced in the word "endorphins."

Oh, well, you could be depress and feel happy after taking a certain medicine which is nothing more than a chemical. How you could explain this?

Immanuel Can wrote: So to say "consciousness is brain" is true only on a very rudimentary, material level -- on which, in fact, we're not even sure is true, but is the best that Materialism can offer. It's not a good explanation of the whole phenomenon.

Are you dualist? How do you explain consciousness?

Immanuel Can wrote: More importantly, though, "neurons" are already life. We jumped the key question again. We haven't said anything about how non-conscious materials like gasses and atoms mysteriously came to produce conscious entities.

I already discuss that. Matter could be conscious in a very simple level otherwise how consciousness in such a rich level could arises.

Noax wrote:

bahman wrote: We are talking about person and his/her mind for sake of simplicity. S contains person, his/her mind and grande in your current case.

The title of this thread argues that physicalism is impossible. The argument seems based on this simplicity you state here, that S'=L(S) which is suddenly 'a simplification'. What it is is false. Don't simplify if the simplification is critical to the argument.

My post said <anything>'=L(M), not L(<subset of M>). Under that, physicalism has no contradiction.

There is contradiction in your notation too. Anything (M) consists of matter (S) and mind (C). M'=L(M) where M'={S',C'}. The question is why C', what we expect to happen, should be correlated to S', what should happens.

Terrapin Station wrote: I overlooked this in the first post of the thread:

"There is however no reason to believe that there exist a relation between C and S' in this framework."

Yes, there is a reason to believe that, if we're talking about materialism. What reason? Well, you said it yourself, bahman:

"Materialism is a . . . belief which claims that everything is constituted of matter"

So under materialism, the relation between C and S' is that C is just a particular S'.

Why there should be a relation if we accept that C and S can evolve differently?

bahman wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote: I overlooked this in the first post of the thread:

"There is however no reason to believe that there exist a relation between C and S' in this framework."

Yes, there is a reason to believe that, if we're talking about materialism. What reason? Well, you said it yourself, bahman:

"Materialism is a . . . belief which claims that everything is constituted of matter"

So under materialism, the relation between C and S' is that C is just a particular S'.

Why there should be a relation if we accept that C and S can evolve differently?

S is just a variable for a material state. A materialist doesn't believe that consciousness can evolve differently than a material state.

bahman wrote:There is contradiction in your notation too. Anything (M) consists of matter (S) and mind (C). M'=L(M) where M'={S',C'}. The question is why C', what we expect to happen, should be correlated to S', what should happens.

I've been ignoring your definition that C (mind) is "what you expect to happen". I thought C was intent (or will), and thus C' is a future state of intent/will, or 'mind' as you label it. C' cannot be 'what happens'. That conflicts your (strange) definition of C. C is what I want to happen? Like grab the cup for instance. So I thought S' was the cup being grabbed since that's the subsequent state of something not mental. Anyway, the cup gets grabbed because C is part of the cause of that state. C is part of M, and all effects take their causes from M.

You seem to propose that there are two different states, what should happen by deterministic physics, and what you want (grab the cup), But those are the same thing, not two different things. C is part of the state of matter M (regardless of what you define C to be), so there is only one determined subsequent state of the cup being grabbed. How does deterministic physics spell out a different outcome than the cup being grabbed?

Noax wrote:

bahman wrote:There is contradiction in your notation too. Anything (M) consists of matter (S) and mind (C). M'=L(M) where M'={S',C'}. The question is why C', what we expect to happen, should be correlated to S', what should happens.

I've been ignoring your definition that C (mind) is "what you expect to happen". I thought C was intent (or will), and thus C' is a future state of intent/will, or 'mind' as you label it. C' cannot be 'what happens'. That conflicts your (strange) definition of C. C is what I want to happen? Like grab the cup for instance. So I thought S' was the cup being grabbed since that's the subsequent state of something not mental. Anyway, the cup gets grabbed because C is part of the cause of that state. C is part of M, and all effects take their causes from M.

You seem to propose that there are two different states, what should happen by deterministic physics, and what you want (grab the cup), But those are the same thing, not two different things. C is part of the state of matter M (regardless of what you define C to be), so there is only one determined subsequent state of the cup being grabbed. How does deterministic physics spell out a different outcome than the cup being grabbed?

Ah, maybe he's trying to get at free will issues (but using unusual language for that)?

Re free will issues (and this is directed at bahman):

(a) some materialists do not buy the idea that "strong" causal determinism obtains in the material world. (I'm an example of this type of materialist.)

(b) some materialists do not buy the idea that they really have free will. They see it as an illusion.

(c) some materialists believe that they have free will, but they do not see free will and "strong" causal determinism as incompatible.

Terrapin Station wrote:Ah, maybe he's trying to get at free will issues (but using unusual language for that)?

I think the FW question is fairly undefined in any materialistic ontology. The concept has more meaning to dualism. But yes, bahman seems to be framing this as a FW thing.

(a) some materialists do not buy the idea that "strong" causal determinism obtains in the material world. (I'm an example of this type of materialist.)

I don't think it makes a difference. Materialism says state is caused by prior state, strong determinism or not. (I know the statement was not directed at me)

(b) some materialists do not buy the idea that they really have free will. They see it as an illusion.

I personally see it as incoherent. It implies a conflict between two things (will and reality), and while that may exist (I cannot will to be on the other side of these jail bars), a materialist doesn't really have a second thing that conflicts with a first. There is no determined choice of chocolate that trumps my conflicting will of vanilla. That conflict does not exist. It very well may exist in dualism, but this thread is not about that case.

bahman wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote: That's a material explanation. But it's not a sufficient one. It tells what's happening, but not how or why these are producing what we call "consciousness," if they are.

Do you have a better explanation? We know that we could lose our consciousness under anaesthesia which is nothing more than the use of a chemical. So consciousness is a biochemical phenomena if we lose our consiousness by using a medical.

Philosophers have an axiom: it goes, "correlation is not causality." It means that when two phenomena happen at the same time, it'a all too easy to think the one is the cause of the other. That is often wrong, though.

In this case, I think it's fair to say that our biological being is influential on our psychological being. But that does not mean our biology is the cause of our psychology. The two could be coordinate by a third thing, or our biology could sometimes be causality affected by our psychology.

Oh, well, you could be depress and feel happy after taking a certain medicine which is nothing more than a chemical. How you could explain this?

See above. It's an interesting fact, but not one we can make a firm conclusion out of.

Are you dualist? How do you explain consciousness?

Of a sort, I suppose. More a "trinitarian," though.

Matter could be conscious in a very simple level otherwise how consciousness in such a rich level could arises

.
That would be a form of Pantheism, I suppose. For to attribute even rudimentary consciousness to things like rocks and simple chemicals like nitrogen or helium would surely take a massive leap of Pantheistic faith. And absent a belief that such basic particles have "consciousness," you'd just face the same problem again: when and how do the "non-conscious" elements become "conscious"?

bahman wrote:
The Ohm's law and Pascal's law can be derive from basic laws of nature in microscopic scale considering that we are dealing with many particles. You need to read a little about condensed matter physics to see how the behavior of a system in macroscopic scale can be derive from laws of nature in microscopic scale. In reality you have bunch of electrons, protons and neutrons which interact with each other.

I never said there are no relations between the different systems in nature and that it lacks unity, but the same laws of nature will give you the ice landscape in the North Pole and the tropical rainforest in the Equator, different habitats, different conditions that produce their own processes. For austerity of explanations, it all can be reduced to a "bunch of electrons, protons, etc.", but that won't explain what actually happens in detail.

bahman wrote: Laws of nature is deterministic. What do you mean with indeterminism?

I already explained. There are both deterministic and non-deterministic processes in the world.

Noax wrote: I've been ignoring your definition that C (mind) is "what you expect to happen". I thought C was intent (or will), and thus C' is a future state of intent/will, or 'mind' as you label it. C' cannot be 'what happens'. That conflicts your (strange) definition of C. C is what I want to happen? Like grab the cup for instance. So I thought S' was the cup being grabbed since that's the subsequent state of something not mental. Anyway, the cup gets grabbed because C is part of the cause of that state. C is part of M, and all effects take their causes from M.

You seem to propose that there are two different states, what should happen by deterministic physics, and what you want (grab the cup), But those are the same thing, not two different things. C is part of the state of matter M (regardless of what you define C to be), so there is only one determined subsequent state of the cup being grabbed. How does deterministic physics spell out a different outcome than the cup being grabbed?

I can accept C as what we intended to do. The problem then is why what we intended to do matches to what happen?

Immanuel Can wrote: Philosophers have an axiom: it goes, "correlation is not causality." It means that when two phenomena happen at the same time, it'a all too easy to think the one is the cause of the other. That is often wrong, though.

Well, I think that chemical cause anaesthesia in this case. I don't think that there is any correlation in here but cause.

Immanuel Can wrote: In this case, I think it's fair to say that our biological being is influential on our psychological being. But that does not mean our biology is the cause of our psychology. The two could be coordinate by a third thing, or our biology could sometimes be causality affected by our psychology.

I think that psychological being is caused by biological activity.

Immanuel Can wrote: See above. It's an interesting fact, but not one we can make a firm conclusion out of.

It does make a firm conclusion. Go to drug store to see how our psychological being could be affected by chemicals.

Immanuel Can wrote: Of a sort, I suppose. More a "trinitarian," though.

Trinitarian? what it has to do with you and duality?

Immanuel Can wrote: That would be a form of Pantheism, I suppose. For to attribute even rudimentary consciousness to things like rocks and simple chemicals like nitrogen or helium would surely take a massive leap of Pantheistic faith. And absent a belief that such basic particles have "consciousness," you'd just face the same problem again: when and how do the "non-conscious" elements become "conscious"?

That is different from Pantheism: Pantheism is the belief that all of reality is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent god. Here I just argue that everything is conscious.

Conde Lucanor wrote: I never said there are no relations between the different systems in nature and that it lacks unity, but the same laws of nature will give you the ice landscape in the North Pole and the tropical rainforest in the Equator, different habitats, different conditions that produce their own processes. For austerity of explanations, it all can be reduced to a "bunch of electrons, protons, etc.", but that won't explain what actually happens in detail.

Well, we can today explain the behaviour matter based on its constitutes, electrons, protons, neutrons.