Philosophy Now Forum

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 12:50 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 11:24 am My free willed vote: determinism.

I'm determined to oppose you, Martin, so I vote for: libertarian free will/agent causation.

: ) One feels that one has free will, dear henry, but looking under the hood/bonnet, once sees so much constraining mechanics, and sealed black boxes. There is a froth of apparent autonomy emergent from the autonomic. Blown seal/gasket probably.

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 1:39 pm

Nah. The meat all by its lonesome can't accounts for personhood (bein' a free will). It, the meat, can't even account for the illusion of personhood. If we were just meat, we'd be just meat machines, and wouldn't be havin' this conversation.

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:20 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 1:39 pm

Nah. The meat all by its lonesome can't accounts for personhood (bein' a free will). It, the meat, can't even account for the illusion of personhood.

Not only that: it can't account for the fact that meat can "think about" personhood, or "know" it's a person, or "believe" in Determinism, if that meat "chooses" to. In fact, Determinism can't describe any cognitive actions at all. It has to reduce them to some kind of meat-matter, at which point, those phenomena all become utterly experientially unrecognizable to an actual human being.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:25 pm it can't account for the fact that meat can "think about" personhood, or "know" it's a person, or "believe" in Determinism, if that meat "chooses" to. In fact, Determinism can't describe any cognitive actions at all. It has to reduce them to some kind of meat-matter, at which point, those phenomena all become utterly experientially unrecognizable to an actual human being.

Yep...

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:20 pm If we were just meat, we'd be just meat machines, and wouldn't be havin' this conversation.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:25 pm It has to reduce them to some kind of meat-matter, at which point, those phenomena all become utterly experientially unrecognizable to an actual human being.

Whatever makes thought work would be like this, whether it's meat or an "agent" or a "soul".

You say it's experientially unrecognisable to explain it in terms of meat, but if you really showed a human being how agents really work under the hood, or how souls really work under the hood, why do you think that would be any more recognizable?

Unless you personally know how agents and souls actually work, it seems like a wild assumption to just assume how they work would be intuitive and make sense and automatically solve the hard problem. You've only swept the problem under the rug by moving consciousness out of the physical realm and into the mystery-soul realm, but you haven't actually solved it.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 3:02 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:25 pm It has to reduce them to some kind of meat-matter, at which point, those phenomena all become utterly experientially unrecognizable to an actual human being.

Whatever makes thought work would be like this, whether it's meat or an "agent" or a "soul".

Not at all. "Meat did it" is not an explanation of anything. It's certainly not a description of volition, or rationality, or morality, or cognition, or mind...

The meat at my butcher's place never even twitches. It does nothing. For meat to do something, it has to have more than meat about it.

You say it's experientially unrecognisable to explain it in terms of meat, but if you really showed a human being how agents really work under the hood, or how souls really work under the hood, why do you think that would be any more recognizable?

Yes, I think so. I find explanations involving such things as mind, volition, choice, agency, rationality, science, truth, morality and such far more informative of cognitive processes than the "meat" explanations.

...moving consciousness out of the physical realm...

Well, the disputed point is whether or not it was ever IN that realm. It wasn't, so I didn't "move" it anywhere. Mind is manifestly not "meat." You might argue that "brain" is, but the only way you can get away from the "mind" component is by denying its entire existence...paradoxically, using your mind and appealing to other minds, in the process of that denial.

As your last answer seems to suggest, the thing that seems to be appealing to you is that the "meat" explanation provides a termination point: all explanations begin and end with "meat." And yes, it certainly does that. "Meat" becomes the explanation of everything. And you're troubled by the thought that a metaphysical explanation would leave some things unexplained. And yes, it would do that: for it would open up much bigger questions, questions for which physics has no leverage, and for which we would have to turn to things beyond mere materials.

But, if I may risk sounding cavalier, so what? If the phenomenon in question is complex, why is a simplistic, terminal explanation "better" than one that opens up the genuine and important questions, even if some of them are hard to resolve? Would an explanation of the word "computer" as "a block of materials" be better than the explanation, "it's an information processor," even if we can't precisely define what "information" entails, or what "processes" are precisely implicated? Is it not obvious that the second explanation is vastly better than the former, and gives us an angle that calling a computer "a block of materials" simply does not?

Just so, "mind" is a much better explanation than "meat." "Meat" does no justice at all to the phenomenon in question. It may as well be "block."

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:20 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 1:39 pm

Nah. The meat all by its lonesome can't accounts for personhood (bein' a free will). It, the meat, can't even account for the illusion of personhood. If we were just meat, we'd be just meat machines, and wouldn't be havin' this conversation.

Dim but dogged, I-bet-a-dime Martini, here. Personhood emerges in meat. No? Is highly constrained by being evolutionarily hard wired, hormonally doped, meat. Ontogeny sure as hell recapitulates phylogeny of human brain. Reptile, monkey. Probably fish. Mind you, I love Eccles was it? The brain is a haunted loom with a billion flying shuttles. From faulty memory. And no, but I like it anyway. It was Sherrington from Myers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enchanted_loom

I feel the analogy, of going too far from gene to group selection, hovers. We haven't exhausted meat?

Damage the meat, damage the personhood. Damaged person(hood), is damaged goods. Psychologically. Habitually. That's mechanical. It can be reset with ECT! LSD micro-dosing.

Why can't meat account for personhood? Even a free willed one (whatever that is)?

If we were meat machines, why wouldn't we be having this conversation?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:25 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:20 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 1:39 pm

Nah. The meat all by its lonesome can't accounts for personhood (bein' a free will). It, the meat, can't even account for the illusion of personhood.

Not only that: it can't account for the fact that meat can "think about" personhood, or "know" it's a person, or "believe" in Determinism, if that meat "chooses" to. In fact, Determinism can't describe any cognitive actions at all. It has to reduce them to some kind of meat-matter, at which point, those phenomena all become utterly experientially unrecognizable to an actual human being.

Why can't meat account for > emergent < intentionality? And no, of course one can't go back, reduce from intentionality to non~, so what?

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:08 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:25 pm

henry quirk wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:20 pm

Nah. The meat all by its lonesome can't accounts for personhood (bein' a free will). It, the meat, can't even account for the illusion of personhood.

Not only that: it can't account for the fact that meat can "think about" personhood, or "know" it's a person, or "believe" in Determinism, if that meat "chooses" to. In fact, Determinism can't describe any cognitive actions at all. It has to reduce them to some kind of meat-matter, at which point, those phenomena all become utterly experientially unrecognizable to an actual human being.

Why can't meat account for > emergent < intentionality?

"Emergent" is not an informative word in this context. It's the sort of dodge materialists use to avoid having to explain any mechanics, even while they continue to insist that if the mechanics of something can't be explained, it can't be real.

"Emergent" just alleges that something (somehow undefined, magically) "emerges" at a certain level of complexity; it does nothing to indicate how such a thing is possible, or what processes are involved...it just asks us to assume that somehow it happened...which we don't know at all, and have no reason to suppose at all.

"Meat" is mere materials. Mere materials don't do things. "Meat" certainly doesn't explain, or ask questions like, "Am I just meat, or something more?"

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 3:35 pm Yes, I think so. I find explanations involving such things as mind, volition, choice, agency, rationality, science, truth, morality and such far more informative of cognitive processes than the "meat" explanations.

But you don't have any such explanation. You don't have an explanation of how a mind works in terms of souls or agents. You have no idea how the soul realm or the agent realm actually works. There isn't a single model of that anywhere.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:20 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:08 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 2:25 pm
Not only that: it can't account for the fact that meat can "think about" personhood, or "know" it's a person, or "believe" in Determinism, if that meat "chooses" to. In fact, Determinism can't describe any cognitive actions at all. It has to reduce them to some kind of meat-matter, at which point, those phenomena all become utterly experientially unrecognizable to an actual human being.

Why can't meat account for > emergent < intentionality?

"Emergent" is not an informative word in this context. It's the sort of dodge materialists use to avoid having to explain any mechanics, even while they continue to insist that if the mechanics of something can't be explained, it can't be real.

"Emergent" just alleges that something (somehow undefined, magically) "emerges" at a certain level of complexity; it does nothing to indicate how such a thing is possible, or what processes are involved...it just asks us to assume that somehow it happened...which we don't know at all, and have no reason to suppose at all.

"Meat" is mere materials. Mere materials don't do things. "Meat" certainly doesn't explain, or ask questions like, "Am I just meat, or something more?"

Emergent is informative for me in this context, as it is of physics from existence, chemistry from physics, biology from chemistry, psychology from biology.

Materialists have no warrant for any other option to using it. Mechanics explains all of it, whether we can understand it or not. Which, being mesoscopic, we can't possibly, ever.

It is the only reason to suppose.

For me.

Mere materials do everything. As they are all there is. Qualia included.

I trust you don't believe in anything, apart from coherent, justified true beliefs, so what am I missing? What doesn't material necessitate? And remember, you must use finger paint, to shift me, my head shakingly thick 'perception'.

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:03 pm

Here ya go, Ratched, sumthin' to nosh on...

https://ia801509.us.archive.org/33/item ... ind%20.pdf

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:23 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 3:35 pm Yes, I think so. I find explanations involving such things as mind, volition, choice, agency, rationality, science, truth, morality and such far more informative of cognitive processes than the "meat" explanations.

But you don't have any such explanation.

Yeah, I do, actually. It begins with the recognition that human beings have minds, and that minds are not mere materials. And that's so obvious that you can't even deny it without using that very entity you say you don't know exists.

You don't have an explanation of how a mind works in terms of souls or agents.

Not a precise one, no: there are things about mind we know, and some we don't yet know -- and perhaps never will. And with a metaphysical phenomenon, that's to be expected: there's no equivalent relation between metaphysics and a science as there is between physical things and physics. Psychology, sociology, anthropology, theology, social demographics, marketing and such related disciplines that attempt to explain or calculate human cognition fail to have the lock-step relation to mental phenomena that physics has to material phenomena. That's no surprise, since physics and such simply fail to describe mind in any terms at all.

But you don't have a precise explanation of how a brain is possible, either, and it doesn't seem to slow you down; so the complexity of the subject or it's difficulties of explanation any objection here. A thing doesn't become not-worth-knowing merely because we find it complicated, can it?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:35 pm

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:23 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 3:35 pm Yes, I think so. I find explanations involving such things as mind, volition, choice, agency, rationality, science, truth, morality and such far more informative of cognitive processes than the "meat" explanations.

But you don't have any such explanation.

Yeah, I do, actually. It begins with the recognition that human beings have minds, and that minds are not mere materials. And that's so obvious that you can't even deny it without using that very entity you say you don't know exists.

The explanation for human minds is that we have minds... Come on man. You can't just explain the thing by referring to the thing you're explaining. That's not how explanations work

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:32 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:20 pm

Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:08 pm
Why can't meat account for > emergent < intentionality?

"Emergent" is not an informative word in this context. It's the sort of dodge materialists use to avoid having to explain any mechanics, even while they continue to insist that if the mechanics of something can't be explained, it can't be real.

"Emergent" just alleges that something (somehow undefined, magically) "emerges" at a certain level of complexity; it does nothing to indicate how such a thing is possible, or what processes are involved...it just asks us to assume that somehow it happened...which we don't know at all, and have no reason to suppose at all.

"Meat" is mere materials. Mere materials don't do things. "Meat" certainly doesn't explain, or ask questions like, "Am I just meat, or something more?"

Emergent is informative for me in this context, as it is of physics from existence, chemistry from physics, biology from chemistry, psychology from biology.

No, "emergent" does not tell us a single thing about HOW a mind can "emerge" from a brain...for two reasons. One is that "emerge" just basically means "jumps out of" without saying how such a thing is possible. And secondly, for the very good reason that "emerging" from complexity is not how it happens at all.

Materialists have no warrant for any other option to using it.

Then they are confessing their failure. For "emerge" doesn't say anything about the brain-mind connection. But if you insist it does, then I offer you the chance to describe this "emerging" process in its stages. Go ahead.

I trust you don't believe in anything, apart from coherent, justified true beliefs, so what am I missing?

You are correct. But that's why I reject materialism, physicalism, and the related cluster of "meat" assumptions. They aren't justifying or even explaining anything, and they're just not coherent. What can one say about theories that require us to believe that mind just magically "jumps out of" ("emerges") from mere materials? It's not even an explanation, since it doesn't explain. It just claims, and says, "shut up" after that. Where's the justification for accepting it? What makes us think it's true? What even makes it make sense?