- Dualism implies some kind of transcendentalism, as in supernaturalism, the existence of something of a kind ontologically different from the sort of stuff that can be empirically observed. — Pfhorrest

That's a strawman. Dualism only implies that he who does the empirical observing recognises said observing to be 1) fundamentally different from the observed thing; and 2) important or even critical to one's knowledge of the observed thing.

If you believe in 1 and 2, then you have a dualist mind set. The rest is strawmen banging heads.

No, I am not a panpsychist. Panpsychism is a form of idealism; doesn't cut my cake.

You said that dualism can be proven false a priori. Would you mind trying to do so?

Have you considered that, if better or worse brain structures makes for better or worse thinking as you were arguing above, it could well be that your brain structure is deficient, making it unable to properly understand dualism...

Thanks. It's a pretty obvious point I am making. Either people can see the obvious or they can't. Luck has nothing to do with it. The critical factor is the amount of prejudice and belief invested by the audience in their monist nonsense.

I am actually arguing against materialism, aka the idea that ideas don't exist.

The spontaneous appearance of living organisms in some sort of inanimate chemical soup would constitute pretty definitive evidence of abiogenesis, I think. Pending that, it's all theory.

No one here has called minds an illusion or mere noise. — khaled

I asked why we find it so hard to accept that our subjective feeling of it might be different from the reality of it. — Isaac

Yes, minds exist. No, they're not immaterial. That's the position. — khaled

If minds matter, then mental events are important and potentially effective. They are not necessarily illusions or mere noise. The role of neuroscience is therefore to use mental events as a way to investigate how come mental events are so useful and powerful, and how we can make them even more so. The role of neuroscience is not and can never be to replace minds with another "realer" reality. Isaac does not even understand what his job is all about.

I know, you keep failing to see things. Even when you deny the reality of your own thoughts, you fail to see the contradiction. I think your condition is related to the blind spot problem I was alluding to upthread: minds unable to see minds. The problem of poor reflexivity.

A scientist does not have to trust all thoughts in order to trust any thoughts. They do not have to assume all the universe is understandable in order to assume some of it is. — Isaac

Not completely or all thoughts, of course. But a scientist must believe in the capacity of the human mind to understand something about the world. Otherwise he is in the wrong business. Science is fundamentally dualist. It's about minds trying to understand things.

My point is simply that science is a form of human thinking about the world. Science happens in the human mind. It is dualist by nature. Therefore a logical form of scientism would include due reference and respect to the human mind as the home of science.

A scientist who doesn't trust the human mind's capacity to understand the universe would drop science altogether, and try bar tending instead. Therefore, all scientists actually trust the human mind quite a lot, even those who are not consciously aware that they do.

conserved — khaled

I suppose that's the draw of substance dualism: contrary to a process or an activity, a substance is conserved over time. So substance dualism implies the immortality of the soul, whereas process dualism implies no such thing.

You are quite good at avoiding questions. I repeat: Are you denying the reality of your subjective feelings? Yes or no?

Consider that, if you cannot trust the reality of your feelings, you cannot trust the reality of your thinking either since thinking is in part feeling, sensing, etc. If you cannot trust the reality of your thinking, you cannot trust science.

So I have a new question for you: Is science more than just neurons firing?

A.

I don't think anyone denies this. — Isaac

You'd be surprised.

B.

I asked why we find it so hard to accept that our subjective feeling of it might be different from the reality of it. — Isaac

Are you denying the reality of your subjective feelings? See point A above.

Hence all you've said it that you think the mind cannot examine itself. We knew that. — Isaac

You asked a question: why is the mind so hard to understand, and I answered you. Now you say that you are in agreement with my answer. But that makes you angry somehow.

See my caveat in the post above: it is not totally impossible for the mind to understand itself in my view, just hard to do. A prerequisite, I would think, is for the mind to acknowledge itself...

Not at all. A metaphor is simply an illustration, a comparison. It is not to be taken literally.

Do I really need to explain such ultra basic literary notions? What's wrong with you brains?

I was going to say use a mirror, but the point is the same. — Isaac

I didn't mean to say that it is absolutely impossible for the mind to see the mind, just that it was difficult for some minds to see themselves. (You are a case in point.) And this poor reflexivity in my view accounts for the difficulty of science to study and understand the mind.

It was a metaphor... :groan:

Dualism can be known false a priori, — Pfhorrest

How would your brain know that?

What I don't wholy understand is why we have so much trouble reflecting on it. — Isaac

Science happens in the mind. This may be why science finds it difficult to look at the mind, or even to conceive of it. The eye cannot see itself.

Better or worse structure and thus function of the really complicated systems built out of them. — Pfhorrest

Ok so bad thinking comes from bad thinking structures. You presumably have your own brain in mind.

So dualists just have a poorly functioning brain? Is that what you are saying?

It could be the opposite though: monists could have some brain damage or deficiency making them unable to understand the world correctly... :-)

Are you saying that your gluons can think better than mine?
— Olivier5

Nope — Pfhorrest

What I wonder is where does your distinction between good and bad thinking originates from? If them gluons (or neurotransmitters for that matter) make all the thinking, what makes for good or bad thinking? Bad gluons?

sometimes they may be unaware of it. — Fooloso4

Yes of course, the process of adopting a new idea is often subconscious, especially when the conscious person comes with an attitude, a negative a priori that tends to reject any new incoming idea.

I guess what I am saying is: don't treat your ideas as if they belonged to you. They don't. Chances are you adopted them from someone else in the first place, even if you remain unaware of your intellectual debt. Pass them forward the best you can, but respect them more than you respect yourself. Ideas have a strength of their own.

To convince other people, do not try and prevail personally over them. Rather, some of 'your' ideas may convince some people, if you describe them well, without boasting too much.

(this said, I am often the first one to boast )

But if you are not convinced that there is something in what is said worth stealing you wouldn't.

As I see it, it is not so much a matter of convincing others but of making an argument that is convincing. It seems curious to me if someone were to make an argument they did not intent to make convincingly. — Fooloso4

Agreed. If you write a post, try to make it convincing. But don't assume that anyone will actually be convinced, at least immediately. Even if they are, they will probably not tell you about it.

People don't like to publicly concede a point, in general. They take it as humbling or humiliating. Their first reaction
to a new idea (new to them) is generally to appear to reject it. It doesn't necessarily mean that the idea is actually rejected. Often what happens is that a good idea will "germinate" in an open mind. It will need some time to "grow" in this new ecosystem: the mind newly exposed to it. In my experience, this process takes a minimum if two weeks.

If you need to convince someone of something you think is true, don't yell. Don't push too hard. Just plant a seed, gently and firmly. If the idea is a good one, if it was well expressed, and if the person is not a complete idiot, chances are that it will grow in his or her mind, slowly. Give it some time. And come back to it once in a while. Bis repetitas placent.

Ultimately you might note that the people who initially rejected your idea start to defend it. If that happens, don't tell them "I told you so". Just say: "yes, I think I agree with you."

I know, but that's a bit of a detail. It doesn't alter the argument.

I am not personally in the business of trying to convince others, but more into trying to understand what they say, whether it means anything, whether it is internally coherent, and what I can steal from it for my own use.

There is no burden of proof in metaphysical discussions, though.

Are you saying that your gluons can think better than mine?

All this talk of getting old
It's getting me down, my love
Like a cat in a bag waiting to drown
This time I'm coming down
And I hope you're thinking of me
As you lay down on your side

Now the drugs don't work
They just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again

But I know I'm on a losing streak
As I pass down by your street
And if you wanna show,
Then just let me know
And I'll sing in your ear again

Now the drugs don't work
They just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again

'Cause baby, oh
If heaven falls,
I'm coming too
Just like you said
You leave my life,
I'm better off dead

All this talk of getting old
It's getting me down, my Lord
Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown
This time I'm coming down

Now the drugs don't work
They just make you worse
But I know I'll see your face again

Etc.

I don't know about you, but I'm certainly not a gluon...

:-)


The world was on fire
And no one could save me but you
It's strange what desire
Will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you
And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you

No, I... don't wanna fall in love
(This world is only gonna break your heart)
No, I don't wanna fall in love
(This world is only gonna break your heart)
With you
(This world is only gonna break your heart)

What a wicked game you play,
To make me feel this way
What a wicked thing to do,
To let me dream of you
What a wicked thing to say,
You never felt this way
What a wicked thing to do,
To make me dream of you

And I... wanna fall in love
etc.

The world was on fire
And no one could save me but you
Strange what desire
Will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I'd love somebody like you
And I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you

No, I... wanna fall in love
(this world is only gonna break your heart)
Nobody loves no one

reasoning has not been done well. — Pfhorrest

If reasoning is an activity of gluons, that'd be their fault, not ours.

More precisely, scientists operate on the assumption of an objectively real physical universe, understandable by human minds.
— Olivier5

That's probably true more often than not, — Kenosha Kid

It's always true, whether they know it or not. A scientist worth his mettle tries to understand the world, or some part of it. If he doesn't do that, he's a lab technician. And if he assumed the world could not be understood by human minds, then he wouldn't try day after day to do so.

Actions speak louder than words, they say.

Dualism vs dualism: whoever wins, reason loses. — Pfhorrest

reason isn't a stuff, it's an activity, [...] usually done by brains, — Pfhorrest

How can an activity lose anything?

Epistemology is based on the recognition that our understanding is dualistic; which is what I said. — Janus

Ok then.

We are all property dualists insofar as we recognize two basic kinds of action or process; the mental and the physical. As 180 Proof says, this is an epistemological, not a metaphysical or ontological, statement since it is referring to our ways of understanding the world. — Janus

This is a logical mistake. In fact, without dualism, there could be no such thing as epistemology. So dualism underpins epistemology and science. It is not itself epistemological or scientific, but metaphysical.

Dualism vs dualism: whoever wins, reason loses. — Pfhorrest

What sort of material stuff is reason made of, in your view? Or are you arguing vice versa, that all matter is made of reason?

I would say it emerged naturally, because it was possible.

You are assuming wrongfully that life comes from matter. — Protagoras

No, certainly not "matter". To me it comes from the fact that in our indeterministic world, anything that can happen will happen.

Scientists operate on the assumption of an objectively real physical universe, not on the assumption of non-physical minds. — Kenosha Kid

More precisely, scientists operate on the assumption of an objectively real physical universe, understandable by human minds.

There is life and there is matter. They mix but neither can be derived from the other. — Protagoras

I would contest that. Life is already transcendental vis-à-vis inanimate matter. Life is already a manner of thinking at biochemical level, and this manner of thinking is written down on matter.

Life creates new information, codes and stores it to use it later, chosing carefully which DNA code to play, which hormones or enzyme to pump up or down... It recombines information again and again (mainly through sex, a form of genetic dialogue) and in doing so it creates new information.

Life is one step towards thinking. Stones can't think. They have no need for it. But life is all about information, and it is very creative. So it was bound to lead to actual conscious thinking at some point or another, IMO.

So what? You operate (at least as a default position) under the assumption that other scientists don't lie to you about this, when they say that, e.g. they ran the math again and it doesn't work. You infer that the guy saying that did some actual thinking and reports truthfully about the result of said thinking.