Philosophy Now Forum

Immanuel Can wrote:Well, I don't know, of course...but it's interesting. If the universe is indeed expanding -- presumably linearly -- then what exactly can we say it's "expanding into"?

So space is not linear. The balloon analogy really helps clarify this question. The universe expands over time, and the direction of expansion of the balloon as it inflates is none of the spatial dimensions, but rather the radial temporal one.

No, it's not threat. If you think I''m wrong about the nada, just say what research I have not encountered. Prove me wrong. That's all.

There are lots of empirical neurological experiments. You've mentioned some. By your definition, they're not evidence of how consciousness works since you know that is beyond poking. But simple evidence is also completely ignored. I sort of see dualism modeled as a video game. Lara Croft is the physical body in the physical tomb world. Sans mind, she just sits there and breathes, but has no experience of her own. A total zombie. The player is the mind, in control. This is sort of how I see dualism, but the model must be wrong. If the connection to physical Lara is lost, the mind-player goes on, suddenly reft of the experience of the tomb. So my model is wrong because this doesn't really happen. Give a physical human a drug that knocks him out and experience goes away as expected, but so does everything else. It should just go into some sort of sensory deprivation mode, able to ponder thoughts still, but temporarily disconnected from experience of the physical until the affected mechanism can be restored. That is huge evidence, yet you declare nada...

My thought would be that "communication" as you are describing it re: plants and human communication are not just different in quantity but too different in quality as well to be embraced by a single term.

So it must be human-like communication? At least the plants and birds agree on a common language. Only humans seem to lack a standard. It's us that has the more questionable communication if you ask me.

Nonsense. I don't deny consciousness. I don't deny it is mysterious. I think about it plenty. Materialism just denies non-physical explanations for such things.

Then explain how physical properties relate to something non-physical, like your ability to process my words at this moment. What material substance are you using?

Don't understand what non-physical thing you refer to. I am using the material substance of me. I am a material thing in a materialist view. Ask the question in an unbiased way.

Now, if you don't know of one, and can't name one, then your Materialism on that point is a faith, not a grounded belief. For if Materialism has no answer at present, how can you assume it ever will, except by faith? And why would you have faith in materials anyway? Do they require that?

Your view, having equal lack of explanation, is faith as well, and more so because you seem to have a hard belief of it , rather than my realist preferences. I am not asserting the view, just asserting the consistency of it. That's not faith.

I try not to close doors either.

Fair enough. But I'm always mindful of C.S. Lewis's comment that too much open-mindedness leads to blindness. He says that the reason to "see through" things is to "see something through them." Our skepticism's value is to remove illusions, not to prevent all conclusions. At the end of the day, we have to be willing to stop and say, "Well, I think I've arrived at something now." Absent that, openness is blindness.

Hence my stance. I find the monist view more plausible, and don't take a totally agnostic position. But I also don't blind myself to alternate views, especially where I see weakness. I seek a holistic self-consistent view of more than just mind. Don't claim to have found one, and I would not declare it unassailable truth if one was found. There are likely several such views.

Nor did they spontaneously generate, or generate their own programs. Every bit of an artificial-intelligence entity owes its existence to a non-artificial intelligence, its human constructors.

Agree. Just saying you owe every bit of yourself to efforts of another. I see little difference. The robot could be made by another robot, and then there is no difference at all.

Well, my parents didn't make themselves either. Neither did their parents. For the origin of all things, we need to go back to an initial uncreated Creator. His intelligence and consciousness is the prototype and origin.

Likewise with the robots.

What is your view on all that anyway? How old is Earth, and approximately when did humanity appear on the scene? You seem to find evolution theory to be an enemy, indicating you probably don't think of Earth being billions of years old with divine guidance of evolution. Funny, since I was schooled in a protestant parochial school which was never anti-evolution like all those Kansas types seem to be. The church at some point decided to be more public with their war against scientific views like evolution and force me to choose. Hence my stance on theism today.

Yes. Hey, have you ever read Searle's "Chinese Room" thought experiment? It's very relevant to how we think about computer intelligence.

Yes, and I find it faulty. The 'algorithm' seems to be an infinite collection of answers to any possible input. Sentience is not a lookup of the answer from a fixed list. The thing would not pass the Turing test for even a minute. That puts the Chinese room on the strawman list for me. But some tweaks might fix that. There is also the China-brain thing that attempts to model a neural network with people. That is closer to reality, and time constraints aside, yes, such a thing could be conscious in my view. I'll look up the Eliza thing, since I've not heard of that one.

People are very accepting of assigning conscious properties to simple mechanical things. They have robot 'animals' that run and jump, pretty much a car with legs instead of wheels. They kick the things to demonstrate its ability to regain balance when thrown off. So the post video of this and all the comments are from people feeling sorry for the poor thing in a way they never would if you kicked a wheeled vehicle.

Your body is not present with me. It can't be doing the work. j Between your squiggles and my brain is a thing called "consciousness." Absent that immaterial thing, your squiggles will do nothing for me.

So the squiggles are perceived by the consciousness first, and the consciousness then passes it to the brain? What does the brain need from the consciousness if the consciousness already has the communication? Where are eyes and ears in this sequence? If I'm in your presence, then it can be pure physical? The squiggles are replaced by air vibrations then, but it seems to still be a physical medium exactly the same way this squiggle-speak is.

In fact, absent anything immaterial, there's no particular "me" to receive anything. I'm not a "self": I'm not a conscious entity, just a contingent arrangement of molecules.

So a rock is just an arrangement of molecules, and needs its own immaterial rockness to be the cup. You said rock was not conscious. What necessitates my molecules not being me, but a rock's molecules allow it to be a rock.
I've said that I consider consciousness to be a process, and molecules (at a given time) seems to make up more of a state. So I (mental-me-ego) am not a state, but rather an interaction process of states. 'My body' is more of a series of those states, and the processes that are the relationships between those states are the material consciousness.

I don't think we disagree that the various means of communication (squiggles and sound and such) are not conscious, but nevertheless serve as the bridge between the two of us.

Say how. How does a squiggle become the thought-content of the message above? It doesn't jump off the screen and perform a physical transformation, so how does it become your ideas to me? (Consciousness, I think you'll find.)

Perhaps we don't agree. It very much jumps off the screen. Screens emit light. Light goes to eyes, triggering (another physical transformation) nerve processes that are part of the thought content of communication and consciousness. Other things find other ways to communicate. Those acacia trees don't have eyes or noses or nerves, but they nevertheless communicate by the actions and senses available to them.
Why do you ask such simple things? Sure, you want this immaterial layer in there somewhere, but surely you didn't think that a material answer would be much different than what I just gave. You stated that a materialist would not consider the body doing the work. I find it totally bizarre that you would say this of a materialist view. Where else would a materialist say the work is being done? And then you deny bias....

Communication is but one activity that requires consciousness.

Disagree, unless consciousness is part of the definition of communication of course, but then if you don't know what is conscious, you cannot know if trees or birds communicate.

Well, that would be odd. For in a Materialist universe, nothing has a "job."

Asking your view, not a materialist one. Stop avoiding the question. What function does the brain have? Hearts pump blood. That's a function and I'm not asking how it accomplishes that. You avoid this question again like you find it to be threatening. I find that interesting.

Perhaps you can be asked why God designed a body with a brain if the mind takes care of all the mental tasks. A creature would be far less fragile without one. Seems a bad design choice if its only purpose is to make you die when it gets damaged.

Speaking not of yourself but of others, I'm always amazed to see the outrageous anthropomorphisms to which ardent Materialists (like Sagan, for instance) fall when they discuss the natural world. They say things like "Nature arranges..." or "Evolution directs..." or "Physical Laws provide..." What arrant nonsense! Their own creed denies that there can be any intentionality at all behind any natural process. Everything is simply a happenstance of how things just turned out -- a mere contingency. And in any kind of rational consistency, they cannot possibly assert anything else.

Agree these things don't have intentionality, but Sagan must engage his public with such language, being ever mindful of ratings. That doesn't imply that I have no intentions, or that my heart serves no function. But it is interesting to probe exactly what is served by that function. Materialism indeed lacks objective purpose that you get with a god. But not sure how the necessity of objective purpose can be demonstrated.

Ironically, nature DOES seem to have a teleology...and this should be just one of the things that alerts them to the fact that it ain't random.

Specifics? I mean the tuning of the universe is amazing and requires response. Life is possible, but only barely. Life would be far more abundant if the universe was really tuned for just that.

Mental, largely. Things like "muscle memory" seem to have a physical component, but I think you'd agree that's pretty far from the kind of memory that enables us to recall our conversation. It's much more vague and related to specific task, isn't it? Learning, cognition, self, reason, identity, personhood, and so on are all immaterial phenomena.

Just checking. This is at least a negative answer to the brain function thing. I was wondering what was left.

So I had brought up the physical shutdown thing above: Why does the immaterial phenomena go away when temporarily deprived of physical input? That seems to be one of two elephants in the room, the other being the interaction between the material and the immaterial. You know, the usual protests... Describe the process of mental intent making its way to physical pressings of keys on your keyboard. Where is that transition done? I was surprised by your description in the other direction, that it went straight from squiggles to mental before ever reaching the brain. That was different.

Immanuel Can wrote:But this much we DO know...one of them's going to be the right answer. Monism essentially rules itself out, because its an "-sim" that evinces disbelief in beliefs, which is incoherent --

Putting strawman words in the mouths of others again I see. How do you defend this?
OK, the monist by definition disbelieves the immaterial mind. What else? I can be a monist and still believe in gods, dinosaurs, unicorns, astrology, ESP, and even reincarnation.

Noax wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:But this much we DO know...one of them's going to be the right answer. Monism essentially rules itself out, because its an "-sim" that evinces disbelief in beliefs, which is incoherent --

Putting strawman words in the mouths of others again I see. How do you defend this?

I didn't say they SAID it. I said it was true whether they said it or not.

Whether or not they know is not consequential to its truthfulness. Once a Materialist Monist has ruled that "consciousness" is a mere epiphenomenon of the material, he can no longer know whether or not he should trust it. Moreover, he has no explanation for how it arises in the first place.

But we have said all that before. It's not news.

OK, the monist by definition disbelieves the immaterial mind. What else? I can be a monist and still believe in gods, dinosaurs, unicorns, astrology, ESP, and even reincarnation.

Not reincarnation: for then you'd have to believe in the transmigration of souls, and by definition a Materialist Monist cannot do that. An Idealist Monist can believe in God, but a Materialist cannot. They can believe in "gods," meaning the kind of superpowered aliens that the Greeks or Norse believed in, because "aliens" could potentially be merely made up of materials. Dinosaurs and unicorns, yes. Astrology and ESP, doubtful without an elaborate material theory of which I am unaware. That is, if you are assuming, as I am, that beliefs should be rational and consistent.

On the other hand, if by "belief" one just means "any fool thing one wants to hold in one's head, including contradictory beliefs," then of course someone who imagines themselves a Materialist Monist can believe anything he wants. Nobody can stop him from contradicting himself. But we take self-contradiction as the clearest sign of the indefensibility of a belief.

Immanuel Can wrote:I didn't say they SAID it. I said it was true whether they said it or not.

Ah. Nonsense then, but not slander.

OK, the monist by definition disbelieves the immaterial mind. What else? I can be a monist and still believe in gods, dinosaurs, unicorns, astrology, ESP, and even reincarnation.

Not reincarnation: for then you'd have to believe in the transmigration of souls, and by definition a Materialist Monist cannot do that.

I figured I'd get your bias goat with that one. It all depends on a definition of what you are, and a physical monist is hardly going to define that as an immaterial soul. Parfit did some pretty in-depth analysis of what comprises ones identity without resort to a dualistic framework.

An Idealist Monist can believe in God, but a Materialist cannot. They can believe in "gods," meaning the kind of superpowered aliens that the Greeks or Norse believed in, because "aliens" could potentially be merely made up of materials. Dinosaurs and unicorns, yes. Astrology and ESP, doubtful without an elaborate material theory of which I am unaware. That is, if you are assuming, as I am, that beliefs should be rational and consistent.

I'm talking about a physical monist (I am a physical/material thing, not that there are not immaterial ontologies). I agree, materialism precludes the universe being created by an immaterial god since it is an assertion that there is no more fundamental ontology. For that reason I am not a materialist. I may consider matter to be fundamental to mind, but I'm completely open to deeper ontologies. A god creating the physical universe is one such potential belief. I say 'a god' and not 'God' because there could be more than one, and 'God' usually refers to one like yours that promises eternal life to its adherents. That admittedly doesn't jive well with physical monism since I've yet to meet anybody who was granted eternal life. Anyway, I am free to explain the existence of the physical universe with a story of an external creator without resort to dualistic explanations of how I fit into that picture. I do indeed have such a belief, but the anthropomorphic vision of said creator doesn't really seem plausible. Does the word 'God' apply if the creator is not a being?

On the other hand, if by "belief" one just means "any fool thing one wants to hold in one's head, including contradictory beliefs," then of course someone who imagines themselves a Materialist Monist can believe anything he wants. Nobody can stop him from contradicting himself. But we take self-contradiction as the clearest sign of the indefensibility of a belief.

Indeed. Take bahman who's finding contradiction in any view considered. Rather than accepting the contradiction, he struggles to find a self consistent story, much like the physicist attempts to find a theory that unifies the forces. I find you to know the answer before any investigation into the inconsistencies. I've learned more from bahman than I have from you. Is my story free of contradictions? I think I've admitted that it is not. Doing my best is all.

Noax wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote:Then explain how physical properties relate to something non-physical, like your ability to process my words at this moment. What material substance are you using?

Don't understand what non-physical thing you refer to. I am using the material substance of me. I am a material thing in a materialist view. Ask the question in an unbiased way.

I am. But think carefully about how you are processing this communication right now. No aspect of my material being is present with you. The black squiggles I type to you mean nothing of themselves -- they would have no meaning to a speaker of Mandarin or Tagalog, and none to a cat or dog...so the symbols themselves aren't doing a darn thing.

But your consciousness is. It's converting these black squiggles into a message. Your physical body isn't doing it: your mind is. A "brain" is basically just a big bunch of meat without it.

Your view, having equal lack of explanation, is faith as well, and more so because you seem to have a hard belief of it , rather than my realist preferences. I am not asserting the view, just asserting the consistency of it. That's not faith.

But it isn't consistent: you mind continues to discuss with mine, while Materialism says neither of us actually has such a thing as a "mind."

It's Materialist Monism, not Dualism, that asserts it requires no faith. If Dualism resorts to faith, that may not be its best move, but at least it's not inconsistent with Dualism. With Monism, however, it is. So faith is permissible for Dualists, who after all believe in more than the physical, but absurdly inconsistent for Materialist Monists.

The robot could be made by another robot, and then there is no difference at all.

But such a thing has never happened. Identify one robot that was not ultimately created by the intelligence of a human being. There is no such thing.

Well, my parents didn't make themselves either. Neither did their parents. For the origin of all things, we need to go back to an initial uncreated Creator. His intelligence and consciousness is the prototype and origin.

Likewise with the robots.

Your conclusion, then, is that ultimately God made robots? I agree: long term, that would be true.

You seem to find evolution theory to be an enemy, indicating you probably don't think of Earth being billions of years old with divine guidance of evolution.

My interest in this situation is very limited. I just find naturalistic gradualism (i.e. "Evolutionism) is unable to explain consciousness. And that argues against Materialism. There my interest begins and ends, at least in the present context.

The church at some point decided to be more public with their war against scientific views like evolution and force me to choose. Hence my stance on theism today.

This is a bit of a myth, actually. It isn't more true for being widely believed, either. It's kind of like the Galileo Story: it's been purged of awkward details and turned into a pure case of religion-versus-science, which was never the way it was.

If you look back into the history, you'll find there was initially quite a bit of receptiveness to Darwinian ideas among religious people. What turned the tide suddenly was its implications for social engineering and eugenics. Darwinism has really unhealthy implications in that area.

So the squiggles are perceived by the consciousness first, and the consciousness then passes it to the brain?

Not good enough. First of all, "perception" is a part of consciousness, so a Materialist cannot account for it. And the brain, why should it help, if it's just another physical item like a deltoid muscle or a kidney? So how is it that the brain can do this amazing stuff no other part of the body can do? And how can it make something out of my black squiggles?

Say how. How does a squiggle become the thought-content of the message above? It doesn't jump off the screen and perform a physical transformation, so how does it become your ideas to me? (Consciousness, I think you'll find.)

Why do you ask such simple things?

Because Materialism's problems are very, very basic. It can't explain the first thing about ordinary things we do every day.

Immanuel Can wrote:]Well, that would be odd. For in a Materialist universe, nothing has a "job."

Asking your view, not a materialist one. Stop avoiding the question. What function does the brain have? Hearts pump blood. That's a function and I'm not asking how it accomplishes that. You avoid this question again like you find it to be threatening. I find that interesting.

I'm not avoiding it. I'm being honest: nobody knows exactly what the connection between the consciousness and the meat it's housed in (i.e. the brain) really is. What we do know is that Materialism has to say it's just an odd, inexplicable by-product of the meat (i.e. an "epiphenomenon" of the brain), which is no answer at all, even on Materialism's own terms..

But not sure how the necessity of objective purpose can be demonstrated.

I think it cannot. "Purpose" is a thing only conscious entities can posit.

Specifics?

About what?

So I had brought up the physical shutdown thing above: Why does the immaterial phenomena go away when temporarily deprived of physical input?

What makes you think it does? At least in some case, we have reason to suspect it may not. For example, there are people born with only a fraction of the brain matter we have in our craniums normally, and yet they are of normal intelligence. That's very weird. Or there is the case of dreaming, where people are physically still, but mentally are ranging all over the place. Then there's communication, memory and identity: why do we attribute significance to those (which we clearly do) if they are mere physical phenomena? And that doesn't even touch on the "spooky" cases, like people who claim out of body experiences, or prophecy, and so forth. There's just a lot we don't know about how the two interact.

What we do know for sure is this: the physical has some important relation to the mental. But we can have all the physical components, and no mental activity (brain death). And there's no unequivocal physical map for brain activity. So we've got some weird stuff going on here.

Noax wrote:I figured I'd get your bias goat with that one.

I think you'll find the word is "biased." It's always so much more impressive when the person who is hoping to be insulting is able to spell his own insult.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Noax wrote:I figured I'd get your bias goat with that one.

I think you'll find the word is "biased." It's always so much more impressive when the person who is hoping to be insulting is able to spell his own insult.

Wasn't going for the ad-hom. It was meant more as 'bias-goat', and I just meant the comment was designed to get a reaction from your biases. Seemed to have worked...
Grammatically, the hyphen should have been there I guess, but it seemed to convey a more hostile message had I written 'biased'.

Noax wrote:it seemed to convey a more hostile message had I written 'biased'.

Yeah, we all love to be called "biased," whatever way you frame it.

Immanuel Can wrote:

Noax wrote:it seemed to convey a more hostile message had I written 'biased'.

Yeah, we all love to be called "biased," whatever way you frame it.

Heck, I am quite aware of my own biases, but I really try to leave them out of my arguments. I am not for instance asserting your wrongness because your interpretation of mind is different than how I 'know' it to be. I simply don't understand. The video game thing is about as close as I get to it.

Immanuel Can wrote:I am. But think carefully about how you are processing this communication right now. No aspect of my material being is present with you. The black squiggles I type to you mean nothing of themselves -- they would have no meaning to a speaker of Mandarin or Tagalog, and none to a cat or dog...so the symbols themselves aren't doing a darn thing.

Don't understand the question then. What does being present have to do with it? Immaterial minds don't have location, so the question seems not applicable, and physical means exist to establish a causal effect from one person to the other regardless of reasonable distance. I am in the presence of said squiggles on the monitor, so I really don't know what you're asking. Those squiggles mean something to me, not to the monitor, but the squiggles very much do a darned thing since without them, we'd not being having this written communication.

But your consciousness is. It's converting these black squiggles into a message. Your physical body isn't doing it: your mind is. A "brain" is basically just a big bunch of meat without it.

Why wouldn't the physical body be doing it in a physical view? (I hate 'materialism' due to problems stated in the prior post). My frustration seems to stem from your inability to disassemble a view from its own assumptions. Here you are asserting that it isn't the body doing the work of the conversion of the squiggles. That's the base premise. Take it as true, and drive that to inconsistency without resort to what you know is really true. I am well aware that our views differ, but that's all you seem to be proving.

But it isn't consistent: you mind continues to discuss with mine, while Materialism says neither of us actually has such a thing as a "mind."

It says I don't have the immaterial mind that you cannot drop for a moment. Yes, thus defined, I don't have it. It says I have a physical mind. So don't use your definition. The materialist asserts that the material mind is quite capable of discussion and conversion of squiggles into a message.

It's Materialist Monism, not Dualism, that asserts it requires no faith.

Absent a good proof one way or another, I think faith is required for belief in any philosophical position. I'm saying my view requires less faith only because I don't assert the incontestable truth of my position, whereas you seem to. Both views seems reasonably consistent, but both have faults. Hence the active debates.

If Dualism resorts to faith, that may not be its best move, but at least it's not inconsistent with Dualism. With Monism, however, it is. So faith is permissible for Dualists, who after all believe in more than the physical, but absurdly inconsistent for Materialist Monists.

Faith is absurd for them why? You mean they're correct so faith is not needed? OK, probably not that. I think you say it is an inconsistent view, but all I get so far is that it conflicts with the truth you know.

The robot could be made by another robot, and then there is no difference at all.

But such a thing has never happened. Identify one robot that was not ultimately created by the intelligence of a human being. There is no such thing.

I think your view similarly states that no human was not ultimately created by the intelligence of a different something. So how are we different than the created robot then?
No, robots are not yet self sustained. Not claiming that.

This is a bit of a myth, actually. It isn't more true for being widely believed, either.

Perhaps. The fundies seem to be getting a lot more airtime lately then.

If you look back into the history, you'll find there was initially quite a bit of receptiveness to Darwinian ideas among religious people. What turned the tide suddenly was its implications for social engineering and eugenics. Darwinism has really unhealthy implications in that area.

Proponents might differ on the healthiness assessment. I agree, dangerous grounds. Human evolution is probably currently moving into selection for tolerance of the modern environment (toxins and such). Eugenics is not a good idea so long as there is disagreement about what traits to select. Control of that is power, and it always leads to breed us, not them. I cannot fathom how it could be implemented in a beneficial way. But the alternative is almost as horrific. Nature has a way of "arranging for" resolution of problems like this in the long run.

So the squiggles are perceived by the consciousness first, and the consciousness then passes it to the brain?

Not good enough. First of all, "perception" is a part of consciousness, so a Materialist cannot account for it.

You have to quit saying that, or state how your view accounts for it in a way that the opposing view cannot. All get it that it happens in that room instead of this other room, and it just works in that room so don't has questions about how.

And the brain, why should it help, if it's just another physical item like a deltoid muscle or a kidney?

Maybe it has a different function than a kidney.

So how is it that the brain can do this amazing stuff no other part of the body can do? And how can it make something out of my black squiggles?

There are machines today that can take squiggles or air vibrations as input and interpret the meaning as commands. Oh sure, "it's not consciousness when they do it", but it is in my view. It just isn't human consciousness, but neither is anything nonhuman. I don't have a requirement that consciousness must be "just like what it is like to be me if I was a robot". So interpretation of squiggles seems not to be the bar. What is missing from the mechanical text interpreter that is not missing from a conscious being. Please don't say it is missing the immaterial component. My example is meant to demonstrate that this amazing stuff you mention can be accomplished with physical matter, not that robots are on par with us.

I'm not avoiding it. I'm being honest: nobody knows exactly what the connection between the consciousness and the meat it's housed in (i.e. the brain) really is. What we do know is that Materialism has to say it's just an odd, inexplicable by-product of the meat (i.e. an "epiphenomenon" of the brain), which is no answer at all, even on Materialism's own terms..

Is it housed in your meat in your view? I.E. does it have location? Most dualists do not give physical location to a non-physical thing. No, it is not epiphenomenal since thoughts and memories and such have causal effect.

But not sure how the necessity of objective purpose can be demonstrated.

I think it cannot. "Purpose" is a thing only conscious entities can posit.

I can buy that. But I wanted it demonstrated, not posited. I have plenty of purpose to all sorts of things. I keep the mosquitoes fed for instance. Purpose seems to be a relationship, not a property.

Specifics?

About what?

Teleology of nature. You said it seems to have purpose, but then say God provides the purpose, leaving nature out of the loop. Anyway, I don't see nature having a purpose being served by anything. I said purpose seems to be a relationship, and I cannot identify such a relationship between nature and something.

And that doesn't even touch on the "spooky" cases, like people who claim out of body experiences, or prophecy, and so forth. There's just a lot we don't know about how the two interact.

There's an interesting one, since they claim sensory input despite the physical means to detect light and air pressure and such. If mind can do that, why bother with the body at all? Seems a preferable arrangement.

What we do know for sure is this: the physical has some important relation to the mental. But we can have all the physical components, and no mental activity (brain death). And there's no unequivocal physical map for brain activity. So we've got some weird stuff going on here.

Agree.

Immanuel Can wrote:

bahman wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote: ...Monism essentially rules itself out, because its an "-sim" that evinces disbelief in beliefs, which is incoherent...

I am not sure what you are trying to say in this part. Could you please elaborate? Needless to say that I think that materialism (subject of this thread), a sort of monism, to me is logically impossible.

Monism is a belief, right?

Well, monism says "all beliefs are just arrangements of materials." Okay. But why should we "believe" any "arrangement of materials"? After all, an "arrangement of materials" is not guaranteed in advance to be oriented to truth, but rather to causality and contingency. So we have no way of knowing that we ought to believe it: for in fact, "know," "belief," "ought" and "we" are all features of consciousness -- and Materialism says they're just contingent arrangements of materials too.

Thus Materialist Monism is just stupid: even if it were true, there would be no reason to believe it, because belief is not guaranteed to be moving toward any truth. There would also be no "self" or "consciousness" that could do the believing anyway.

Why a system of belief should move toward truth in order to be acceptable? There shouldn't be any absolute truth at all at the end.

I don't know what post this was originally from . . . I just saw it in bahman's post:

Immanuel Can wrote:Well, monism says "all beliefs are just arrangements of materials."

Actually that's not correct. The term "monism" doesn't imply material monism. "Monism" just indicates that one believes that everything extant has some property, x, in category C, in common, to the exclusion of other properties in category C, which then makes one an x-monist.

But why should we "believe" any "arrangement of materials"?

The answer to questions like "why should I believe that P" is subjective. It depends on what an individual considers sufficient grounds for believing that P rather than disbelieving that P or simply withholding belief either way.

Aside from that, you're making a scope error here. Materialist monists, in saying that beliefs are materials in particular structures undergoing particular processes, are describing facts (in their view, of course) about what sorts of ontological things beliefs are. They're not saying anything about whether we should or shouldn't believe anything given that such and such. The fact is that we do have beliefs, whether we like it or not--having beliefs is an unavoidable aspect of what humans are like. So the materialist monist is simply describing what those beliefs are ontologically.

I suppose what you're saying here is something more like "Why should any arrangement/process of materials amount to a belief," but that's just like asking, "Why should any arrangement/process of materials amount to a volcano?" Or, "Why should any arrangement/process of materials amount to the Louvre?" The answer is simply that what properties are, ALL properties, is matter in particular structures, typically (if not always) undergoing particular processes. Some of that matter winds up being beliefs, some winds up being volcanoes, some winds up being the Louvre, some winds up being shoes, some winds up being wind, etc. How does it wind up being all that different stuff? By being different matter, in different structures, undergoing different processes.

After all, an "arrangement of materials" is not guaranteed in advance to be oriented to truth, but rather to causality and contingency.

I wouldn't say it's guaranteed to involve causality or contingency, either. I don't agree that there's any reason to rule out the possibility of acausal events, and some events might be necessary, and thus not contingent. Re being oriented toward truth, well, that's when the matter/structures/processes in question are judgments about proposition-relations (since that's what truth is).

So we have no way of knowing that we ought to believe it:

You can't know that you ought to do anything, because knowledge requires truth and "oughts" are not true or false.

Thus Materialist Monism is just stupid: even if it were true, there would be no reason to believe it,

If it were true, it wouldn't matter if you believed it or not. If it were true and you didn't believe it, you'd simply have a false belief.

bahman wrote: Why a system of belief should move toward truth in order to be acceptable?

What do you prefer? A comfortable delusion? A wild speculation?

If there isn't any truth in a belief, there is absolutely no good sense in believing it in the first place. That's certainly a basic assumption of philosophy -- and of common sense, as well

There shouldn't be any absolute truth at all at the end.

Why not? Have you got some kind of prejudice against truth? That would be an odd thing to have. How would you acquire that?

One cannot decide at the beginning of an investigation that "no truth will be found," for then there is no longer any reason to investigate. Rather, one must expect that something truthful will emerge from the search...and ALL truth is exclusive. Once you know of a certainty that 2+2=4, there is no reason to investigate other possible answers. The sum is done. Move on. And once you know the earth is spherical, then only a fool contused to work on the thesis that it's flat. That's unscientific. Accept the truth and move to the next step.

In fact, have you noticed that the modern axiom of Relativism "there is no truth" is itself a contradiction? For it cannot be true statement. If it is, then the axiom is false, because there is at least one absolute truth -- the axiom itself. But if it's false, then it's also false. It's false either way.

Epistemic relativism is thus simply self-defeating. Nobody even needs to bother to invent other ways to refute it, since it does such a superb job of that itself.

Terrapin Station wrote:Actually that's not correct.

I've mentioned the other Monisms several times...most notably, Idealist Monism. But making the caveat every single time takes far too long. Materialist Monism is the big one...few other people subscribe to the others, at least so it seems here. So take this as my final disclaimer on that, and let's move on.

The fact is that we do have beliefs, whether we like it or not--having beliefs is an unavoidable aspect of what humans are like. So the materialist monist is simply describing what those beliefs are ontologically.

This is incorrect. He's not "describing" anything at all. He's arbitrarily attributing beliefs to material causes. He's not working from observations, because he cannot identify a "material" that composes ideas, and cannot empirically observe ideation. He is, in fact, stating his creed. That's all.

I suppose what you're saying here is something more like "Why should any arrangement/process of materials amount to a belief," but that's just like asking, "Why should any arrangement/process of materials amount to a volcano?"

False analogy. Volcanoes are purely physical. Ideas are clearly not.

A better analogy for the Materialist's way of thinking is to ask the question, "How much does a Marxism weigh?" The Materialist might have to answer "Four kilos," since if Marxism is a material, it ought to have a weight. But there would be absolutely no reason to think the Materialist who so answered actually had an answer at all, no matter how definitely he stated it -- in fact, there would be every reason to think he did not understand what the word "Marxism" even meant.

The same with consciousness: how much does it weigh, Mr. Materialist? What is its density? How much space does it occupy in a test tube?

After all, an "arrangement of materials" is not guaranteed in advance to be oriented to truth, but rather to causality and contingency.

I wouldn't say it's guaranteed to involve causality or contingency, either.

Well, a Materialist would have to think it was causality. Rationally consistent Materialists are strict Determinists, by necessity. And someone else might say "contingency." Either way, we have no way to assume "materials" conduce to truth.

So we have no way of knowing that we ought to believe it:

You can't know that you ought to do anything, because knowledge requires truth and "oughts" are not true or false.

Not the moral "ought": the "ought" of physical necessity. They're not the same. Consider the difference between saying, "You ought to love your brother," and "The rain ought to fall tomorrow." Take the latter "ought" and your objection disappears: for it is certainly true that the rain will or will not fall tomorrow. That is a matter of objective truth.

If it were true, it wouldn't matter if you believed it or not. If it were true and you didn't believe it, you'd simply have a false belief.

Exactly right. But when a belief is self-defeating (as Materialist Monism is) it doesn't even get to the gate. It died in transit. It is a stillborn idea. It's got no chance of being true at any point.

Immanuel Can wrote:I've mentioned the other Monisms several times...most notably, Idealist Monism. But making the caveat every single time takes far too long. Materialist Monism is the big one...few other people subscribe to the others, at least so it seems here. So take this as my final disclaimer on that, and let's move on.

No problem with that. I hadn't read every post in the thread.

Like usual, you make me regret replying to you, but I'll attempt doing this one thing at a time again. I'm not providing a launching pad for endless posts. I'm only interested in "getting somewhere" in a conversation:

The fact is that we do have beliefs, whether we like it or not--having beliefs is an unavoidable aspect of what humans are like. So the materialist monist is simply describing what those beliefs are ontologically.

This is incorrect. He's not "describing" anything at all. He's arbitrarily attributing beliefs to material causes. He's not working from observations, because he cannot identify a "material" that composes ideas, and cannot empirically observe ideation. He is, in fact, stating his creed. That's all.

Here are some definitions etc. of "describe," courtesy of thefreedictionary.com and dictionary.com:

* "To give an account of in speech or writing"
* "To convey an idea or impression of; characterize"
* "To describe is to convey in words the appearance, nature, attributes, etc., of something."
* "describe, narrate, recite, recount, relate, report
These verbs mean to tell the facts, details, or particulars of something in speech or in writing: described the accident; narrated their travel experiences; an explorer reciting her adventures; a mercenary recounting his exploits; related the day's events; reported what she had seen."

Okay, so first question, yes or no, do you agree that those are common definitions of "describe"?