To gain an insight into how all this came about is the shared goal of scientists
It is not surprising or inherently wrong that culture adopt some of the language that we used in older belief systems that asserted how we came to be here. — Read Parfit
Three things. First, if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false. Today's professional evolutionism [by which he means, actual biology] is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry. Second, there is indeed a thriving area of more popular evolutionism, where 'evolution' is used to underpin claims about the nature of the universe, the meaning of it all for us humans, and the way we should behave. I am not saying that this area is all bad or that it should be stamped out.... I am saying that this popular evolutionism—often an alternative to religion—exists. Third, we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it...
what they know... — Read Parfit
apokrisis then brought up the signal grounding problem, which is interesting, and I hope to get to, but in my view this represents an extension of the discussion, rather that a challenge to whether these concepts take a physical form in our head. — Read Parfit
My point in the OP was that concepts (even concepts involving truths, numbers and fictional things) exist in physical form inside our head — Read Parfit
[Nagel says that] if the mental things arising from the minds of living things are a distinct realm of existence, then strictly physical theories about the origins of life, such as Darwinian theory, cannot be entirely correct. Life cannot have arisen solely from a primordial chemical reaction, and the process of natural selection cannot account for the creation of the realm of mind. Biology, in his view, becomes a variety of science that is radically distinct from physics—it deals with a vast and crucial realm of phenomena that physics doesn’t, and can’t, encompass, precisely because they’re aspects of living things that are not physical:
subjective consciousness, if it is not reducible to something physical, … would be left completely unexplained by physical evolution—even if the physical evolution of such organisms is in fact a causally necessary and sufficient condition for consciousness.
Since neither physics nor Darwinian biology—the concept of evolution—can account for the emergence of a mental world from a physical one, Nagel contends that the mental side of existence must somehow have been present in creation from the very start. ...He argues that the faculty of reason is different from perception and, in effect, prior to it—“an irreducible faculty.” He suggests that any theory of the universe, any comprehensive mesh of physics and biology, will need to succeed in “showing how the natural order is disposed to generate beings capable of comprehending it.”
And this, he argues, would be a theory of teleology—a preprogrammed or built-in tendency in the universe toward the particular goal of fulfilling the possibilities of mentality. In a splendid image, Nagel writes, “Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.” 1
Life cannot have arisen solely from a primordial chemical reaction, and the process of natural selection cannot account for the creation of the realm of mind.
--Nagel?subjective consciousness, if it is not reducible to something physical, … would be left completely unexplained by physical evolution—even if the physical evolution of such organisms is in fact a causally necessary and sufficient condition for consciousness.
--Nagel?Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.
I'm guessing that is not a direct Nagel quote. — Read Parfit
I see no good reason to assume that this marvel of an organ, along with the rest of the body, is an insufficient host for consciousness to emerge. — Read Parfit
The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.
Each of our lives is a part of the lengthy process of the universe gradually waking up and becoming aware of itself.
--Nagel
This is the way I see it too. — Read Parfit
The answer seems to be a matter of degree, rather than a hard line. — Read Parfit
My point in the OP was that concepts (even concepts involving truths, numbers and fictional things) exist in physical form inside our head. — Read Parfit
Nick Lane argues that there is not a hard line where life begins. — Read Parfit
The symbols "1.2,3" for example, must be used in the conventional way in order for the arithmetical concepts to exist. These conventions do not exist "in physical form inside our head", they exist as relations between us. Since the existence of a concept can only be understood through reference to relations between human beings, then we cannot say that the existence of a concept is something "inside our head", because it is just as much something outside our heads, in between us, as it is inside our heads. — Metaphysician Undercover
Not really. Like all biologists, he sees the line defined by the combination of metabolism and replication. Life has to have both the chemistry and the control. — apokrisis
After reading Nagel's argument, I'm skeptical. I see consciousness as an emergent phenomenon (he uses the term fluke) of complex life so it is hard for me to see how consciousness predates life. But hey, in 2018 no-one has proof for this stuff, and I give him points for keeping the debate in the realm of science. — Read Parfit
The symbol grounding problem is related to the problem of how words (symbols) get their meanings, and hence to the problem of what meaning itself really is. The problem of meaning is in turn related to the problem of consciousness, or how it is that mental states are meaningful.
My first question after reading this is “so what?.” What it feels like is an answer I experience every day. What I am interested in are the mechanics of consciousness; to gain insight into how my feelings work. — Read Parfit
In terms of hard scientific analysis of the process, I am guessing it will have to stop at something like 'and then the dopamine is released.' — Read Parfit
Looks like Firiston has worked on a new collaborative book The Pragmatic Turn — Read Parfit
While studying this question I ran across Parfit who argues, roughly, that human thoughts (where our math, morality and fiction are developed) map to physical entities in our mind through neuron patterns and such, and thereby exist in the ontological sense. Although these concepts would not exist in the universe without minds, that fact makes them no less real than sun rays, which would not exist without suns. — Read Parfit
Once we grant thoughts themselves an ontological status, the next question becomes, can we apply objective criteria to the claims expressed by these thoughts? — Read Parfit
How are the concepts expressed in the rules of Math, different from the concept of Pegasus? — Read Parfit
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