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'll have to show me where I said anything remotely like that. Of course, I didn't. So you'll have to take that up with whoever did.
Why not face the real problem, instead? Ask yourself this. How does sentience "emerge" from non-sentient matter? Try to describe that, even in hypothetical stages...what would it come down to?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:35 pm
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'll have to show me where I said anything remotely like that. Of course, I didn't. So you'll have to take that up with whoever did.
Why not face the real problem, instead? Ask yourself this. How does sentience "emerge" from non-sentient matter? Try to describe that, even in hypothetical stages...what would it come down to?
The whole conversation is about the explanation for minds. I think you lose track of conversations pretty rapidly. It started with an insistence that you can't explain minds in terms of meat because it wouldn't relate to your experience. Then I said if you understood how souls or agents work, it wouldn't be any more obvious how that relates to your experience. Immediately in your next post to me you already showed signs of losing track of what the conversation is about.
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?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:20 pm
"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?
OK. For me, materialism is true. No explanation is necessary, let alone possible. Because it's not possible. It's still so. My not being able to explain it is irrelevant. It's still so. And you, a sigma beyond me in IQ, in analytical, linguistic, intellectual ability, have no rational alternative. What are you unable to explain? I.e. what is it apart from materialist emergence, that you are unable to explain? To transfer? Don't have the concepts for? Just the yearning?
The explanation for human minds is that we have minds... Come on man.
You'll have to show me where I said anything remotely like that. Of course, I didn't. So you'll have to take that up with whoever did.
Why not face the real problem, instead? Ask yourself this. How does sentience "emerge" from non-sentient matter? Try to describe that, even in hypothetical stages...what would it come down to?
The whole conversation is about the explanation for minds. I think you lose track of conversations pretty rapidly. It started with an insistence that you can't explain minds in terms of meat because it wouldn't relate to your experience.
No. It started with the very obvious claim that it wouldn't correspond to ANY human experience, including the one you're having at this moment.
Then I said if you understood how souls or agents work, it wouldn't be any more obvious how that relates to your experience. Immediately in your next post to me you already showed signs of losing track of what the conversation is about.
Somebody lost the thread, perhaps. I didn't. I responded that mind is a better explanation of cognitive phenomena than brain, and I gave reasons. Go back and look if you've forgotten, I guess.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:56 pm
Somebody lost the thread, perhaps. I didn't. I responded that mind is a better explanation of cognitive phenomena than brain, and I gave reasons. Go back and look if you've forgotten, I guess.
That is you losing the thread. Mind is the thing to be explained. The explanation for mind isn't mind. That's meaningless.
Martin Peter Clarke wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:32 pm
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?
OK. For me, materialism is true. No explanation is necessary, let alone possible.
Ah. So you're a "faith materialist." You just believe it because you believe it, and it actually has nothing to do with such values as coherence, justification, or coherence?
My not being able to explain it is irrelevant.
But did you not also insist beliefs should be justified and coherent? Should they not be evidentiary? How else are you going to discern what's true from false, or even a plausible explanation from an incoherent one?
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:56 pm
Somebody lost the thread, perhaps. I didn't. I responded that mind is a better explanation of cognitive phenomena than brain, and I gave reasons. Go back and look if you've forgotten, I guess.
That is you losing the thread. Mind is the thing to be explained. The explanation for mind isn't mind. That's meaningless.
"Mind is the thing to be explained," you just wrote, and then "explanation for mind isn't mind."
No, explanation is explanation. Mind is the thing we're explaining. And "meat" isn't an explanation of it at all.
If mind can't be explained in terms of meat because it's non obvious how the processes of meat relate to our internal experience, then it's just begging the question to assume the same thing wouldn't be true of souls. If you knew how a soul actually worked, to the same degree we know how meat works, how do you know you wouldn't also be thinking "damn, it's incredibly non obvious how that relates to our internal experience".
The hard problem for meat is hard because we understand meat but we don't understand consciousness.
You only think "soul" is a better explanation because you don't understand souls exactly as much as you don't understand minds.
But explaining one thing you don't understand in terms of another thing you don't understand is just... nothing. That's no different from saying "magic". You're not on any more solid ground explaining minds in terms of souls than you are explaining minds in terms of meat. In fact the ground is decidedly less solid.
I posit that if it were possible to understand how the soul realm operates, to the extent that we understand how meat works, the hard problem would naturally reappear. The more we understand something, the harder it is to see how it could possibly produce the thing we call subjective experience. THAT'S the real heart of the hard problem.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:56 pm
Somebody lost the thread, perhaps. I didn't. I responded that mind is a better explanation of cognitive phenomena than brain, and I gave reasons. Go back and look if you've forgotten, I guess.
The explanation for mind isn't mind. That's meaningless.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:42 pm
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.
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.
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?
OK. For me, materialism is true. No explanation is necessary, let alone possible.
Ah. So you're a "faith materialist." You just believe it because you believe it, and it actually has nothing to do with such values as coherence, justification, or coherence?
My not being able to explain it is irrelevant.
But did you not also insist beliefs should be justified and coherent? Should they not be evidentiary? How else are you going to discern what's true from false, or even a plausible explanation from an incoherent one?
It's perfectly coherent to me, absolutely justified and true. How could we possibly explain any of the less than a handful major emergences? I have no faith whatsoever. Stuff does everything, the same, from forever, for infinity. No faith needed. What am I missing? We run out of bandwidth real quick for explaining anything, even three-four sigmas like you. So? What's the problem? What's your dialectical antithesis? Feels like special pleading to me.
Last edited by Martin Peter Clarke on Wed May 14, 2025 5:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 4:56 pm
Somebody lost the thread, perhaps. I didn't. I responded that mind is a better explanation of cognitive phenomena than brain, and I gave reasons. Go back and look if you've forgotten, I guess.
The explanation for mind isn't mind. That's meaningless.
Show me where I said that.
You spent have this conservation talking about explaining other things in terms of mind, while I've been singularly focused on explaining thought / mind itself. Once you get back on the train maybe we can talk more
Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Wed May 14, 2025 5:06 pm
If mind can't be explained in terms of meat because it's non obvious how the processes of meat relate to our internal experience, then it's just begging the question to assume the same thing wouldn't be true of souls.
We’re talking about “mind,” so let’s not change the terms, okay? It will only confuse the issue.
Here’s the difference: the Materialist claims that “materials” are the total explanation. The non-materialist does not claim total explanatory power: just better explanatory ability than is granted by Materialism. And that’s pretty easy to show: the Materialist has to deny the existence of the very phenomenon needed to understand or criticize Materialism. And you’re experiencing using it, right now.
The hard problem for meat is hard because we understand meat but we don't understand consciousness.
It’s worse than that. It’s that the “meat” view cuts us off from any resources to understand consciousness at all, because it denies the reality of consciousness. It’s not just an unhelpful explanation, it’s a crippling one: it denies the very possibility of the question.
Yes, I know you meant “conversation.”