Do you believe it is accurate to say, according to the conceptual act theory of emotion (the Barrett paper you linked earlier and I reread) that while there are no neural correlates that match the aggregate state of "anger", there are neural correlates that match conceptualising (summarising inferentially) sufficiently similar neural correlates together with "anger"? — fdrake
Even if the role "anger" plays is as a character in a play, that doesn't make it cease existing, it might exist with a changed interpretation (that it's no longer a natural kind with a devoted and human-wide neural mechanism for it, it's instead a contextualised inferential summary for arousal and valence). Ie, there are angers which "anger" marks as a post-processed, publicly accessible, summary. — fdrake
Though that the two things are distortions of the same base image might break the analogy; it could be that the neural correlates of state classes conceptualised as anger wouldn't "feel the same" if you took one process and put it into another brain - the patterns might differ quite a bit over people — fdrake
This is the key to the issue I have with committing to it. I'm not sure though. Do 'games' exist despite only having a family resemblance, or do we only commit to 'activities' with 'games' being a functional term, a speech act which achieves some task in context but doesn't refer? I'm inclined to think of more and more of language as speech acts rather than sortal terms, but there may be limits to this tendency. — Isaac
Do you believe it is accurate to say, according to the conceptual act theory of emotion (the Barrett paper you linked earlier and I reread) that while there are no neural correlates that match the aggregate state of "anger", there are neural correlates that match conceptualising (summarising inferentially) sufficiently similar neural correlates together with "anger"? — fdrake
Yes, so long as we see 'sufficiently' as culturally mediated. I think interoception features are no different to perception features (which is the motivation for Barrett's collaboration with both Friston and Seth), so your list of four individually underdetermining variables is no less appropriate here than it is with perception. The cultural/linguistic priors were the missing element in the effort to map neural states to phenomenological reports. — Isaac
Do 'games' exist despite only having a family resemblance, or do we only commit to 'activities' with 'games' being a functional term, a speech act which achieves some task in context but doesn't refer? — Isaac
Metaphysical dualism is plagued by the so-called interaction problem. Physicalism eliminates that problem. — Janus
Yes, but it's not the only thing it eliminates. Also, property dualism and panpsychism don't have an interaction problem. — Marchesk
But what do you mean by physical? — Olivier5
What is property dualism, but merely an acknowledgement that we reify our linguistic concepts and think in dualistic categories. — Janus
If you want to say it's more than that, the next step seems to be metaphysical dualism. — Janus
Something is physical if it, or its effects are detectable. We count something as physical if we can form a causal hypothesis as to its detectable effects. — Janus
Something is physical if it, or its effects are detectable. — Janus
That’s much too easy. Anyone can form a causal hypothesis as to the detectable effects of God and the Devil, or the great Tao or something. This criteria simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t exclude anything.We count something as physical if we can form a causal hypothesis as to its detectable effects.
Well, that’s an easy decision then: the effects of the human mind cannot be denied. We’re even screwing up the climate now, thanks to our sciences and technology... we don’t need much philosophy to establish that. — Olivier5
That’s much too easy. Anyone can form a causal hypothesis as to the detectable effects of God and the Devil, or the great Tao or something. This criteria simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t exclude anything. — Olivier5
Our scientific knowledge of climate change as a theoretical possibility dates from the mid 19th century. In other words, it’s as old as the industrial revolution. Climatology validated the predictions in the 1960’s and 70’s.I think it's truer to say we are screwing up the climate due to our prior ignorance of the effects of our technology. It is only science itself that tells us how we are screwing up the climate. Wilful ignorance of science is now the problem. — Janus
Okay so by ‘physical’ you mean ‘testable’? Minds are testable all right. But more importantly, minds are what is testing anything. In order to test anything, you first need a mind to do the testing... So your very criteria for physicality presupposes the existence, centrality and effectiveness of minds.A causal hypothesis must be testable to count as such. Hypotheses about God, the Devil or the Tao are metaphysical hypotheses and are not testable.
Our scientific knowledge of climate change as a theoretical possibility dates from the mid 19th century. In other words, it’s as old as the industrial revolution. Climatology validated the predictions in the 1960’s and 70’s. — Olivier5
Okay so by ‘physical’ you mean ‘testable’? Minds are testable all right. But more importantly, minds are what is testing anything. In order to test anything, you first need a mind to do the testing... So your very criteria for physicality presupposes the existence, centrality and effectiveness of minds. — Olivier5
That's empirical. A Kantian would agree, while not being a physicalist, for example. So would Berkeley, for that matter.
Physical means mind independent stuff supervening on the fundamental microstructure physicists posit, like particles, forces and fields in a spacetime topology. — Marchesk
so what? — Janus
I haven't anywhere claimed that minds are not central to all our investigations. We investigate with our minds (and bodies of course). Physicalism, even eliminative physicalism, does not necessarily claim that minds are not central, or that they are illusory, all it necessarily claims is that there is nothing substantively non-physical about minds and their thoughts. — Janus
So if one applies your criteria, the question ought not to be if minds are physical, since minds decide what is physical... — Olivier5
What do you think that "something else" could be? — Janus
It's also true that the physicalist thinks that physical reality (what we are modeling, but not our models though) is "mind-independent". Don't you? Don't you believe there were dinosaurs prior to humans? Or better, since dinosaurs presumably also were minded, don't you believe there were stars and nebulae prior to the dinosaurs? And that those stars and nebulae were physical? — Janus
So the question ought not to be if minds are physical since minds decide what is physical... — Olivier5
In other words, if one applies your criteria, minds are evidently physical, since minds decide what is physical. — Olivier5
Kantians would be talking about categories of the mind as they structure experience, and idealists would be talking about ideas. Physical for both is something mental. — Marchesk
An even more important thing is that minds are natural. Forget ‘physical’. — Olivier5
Transcendental is natural, by the way, as it does not require the intervention of any god. — Olivier5
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