Nonetheless, any materialist would admit we don't know exactly how qualia work. — GLEN willows
There is no direct proof of where they are in the brain. But they are in the brain. — GLEN willows
I just think it could lead to a very long thread, for this topic alone. — GLEN willows
What more can be said? — GLEN willows
I feel like we're repeating ourselves here. I've admitted that there are feelings, qualia, that we experience. I've admitted no one knows quite how it works, including you. — GLEN willows
Do you believe words like "hope" and love" describe real things? — GLEN willows
Why? We didn't understand science back then, let alone neuroscience, so we made up words to describe what we were feeling. — GLEN willows
Saying we know qualia are part of the neurochemicals of the brain (which I think is clearly proven by the fact that altering the chemicals. or operating the brain, changes the qualia) — GLEN willows
doesn;t mean we know exactly how it works. — GLEN willows
When you say something is real, what do you mean? Real like a table? Real like a unicorn? Real like a character from a book? — GLEN willows
And if love is real like a table, then it must have material substance, right? — GLEN willows
I am not rejecting it whatsoever, of course. I consider it, in its strongest form as technically irrefutable and rejecting it is as fallacious as conjecturing it. I was just pointing out that since as a hypothesis it already has consequences, as a conjecture (or more boldly assertion) people will be divided on how strongly they subscribe to that theory. Essentially, I am trying to remain skeptical, but not indifferent, to consistent propositions that we can neither inductively confirm, nor refute. It is a slightly hypocritical position, because honestly, I have my partialities. But I keep them at bay for the discussions herein.I say yes to all your assertions. They are reasons to see it as repugnant, but not reasons to reject the theory. — GLEN willows
You could say we all are oversimplifying the brain function, and that neuroscientists are incapable of capturing enough signals therein. You could rightfully criticize that we are making conjectures stemming from the materialist explanation of reality, because of its utility to society. But you have very strong impartial commitments on the issue yourself. The synaptic connections that produce the person's neurological attitudes, including the emotion of love if they presently have such attachment, are one thing, and the synaptic connections that describe the person's conceptualization of love in the abstract, removed from their present emotion, in words or as notion, with self-deprecating generality, are a different thing. Feedback and self-learning by circular neurological pathways ("stored-program computer" style, but more elaborate) should be possible, at least theoretically. Another type of self-reference that supplements it is the indirect effect from observation of patterns of behavior and produced results. And finally, these days, inspection of the matter in the brain through artificial devices produces a more literal form of self-reflection through an external auxiliary loop, resulting in neuroscience itself. But the important point is, in principle, the states in the brain describing self-awareness would be distinct from the states that encode the emotions. The emotion, and the notion of that emotion (and conceptualization), could (probably somewhat impatiently we conjecture "would") relate to each other through neurological feedback, but need not have parapsychological mediation in the process. Honestly, we have no reason to think that it does not, but assigning value to different hypotheses in a pragmatic world is a style and an art.So the words describe feelings correct? Not chemicals? And those cannot be the same thing. Or else we would not have made words that refer to one and not the other. "Love" refers to a feeling, not a chemical, by virtue of the fact that we came up with the word without knowing what chemicals are. — khaled
Having the least amount of presuppositions is the most rationally correct approach, indeed. But it is also the least useful in practice, and philosophy, albeit the most abstract of sciences, still has some interest in its utility in the pragmatic sense. It is very important philosophically to explain what the assumptions are and to investigate their significance, so I am not dismissive of solipism at all, but extreme reductionism results in absurdism. Ultimately, everything lies on some amount of blind conviction. For philosophical purposes, I contest even "cogito ergo sum" (even though I wont go there, because I know I will sound delirious), but like Hume, I don't live that way.But my contention is that many phil. theories THEMSELVES lead to solipsism. — GLEN willows
You seem to think that's a bad word Lol! — GLEN willows
We already discussed what material substance means. — GLEN willows
But regardless, you said love is real like a TABLE, which you can touch. Can I touch love? — GLEN willows
how could anyone argue that consciousness ISN'T simply an integral aspect of the material brain - DESPITE the fact that the can't be explained scientifically? If they aren't - where are they? Isn't this still hopeless dualism — GLEN willows
I'm quite sure you have this backwards. The reason you confound doctrinal materialism with brain physiological oriented scientism is to pretend to an explanation for the only thing we can be certain of, our selves.the whole belief in a separate consciousness is based on folk psychology — GLEN willows
And that's the crux of the problem of dualism, we don't know how to logically relate our selves to a barely comprehensible illusory outside world with any of our theories. We are inventing absurd explanations out of ignorance.I don't believe in dualism - b/c of the interaction problem. — GLEN willows
The point was that you appear to think of two different references "the feeling of love" and "the synaptic activation of love" as referring to different phenomena, because they are differently expressed. I was remarking that this is not necessarily so. If it is correct that self-reflection manifests as a second order mental activity in a separate set of synaptic connections, there could be any number of synaptic expressions (and linguistic expressions) referring to the one unique original mental process, if those references are produced through different congnitive loops - internal cerebral loop, sensory loop of immediate observation of behavior, sensory loop of aided observation of the underlying physical causes. You are essentially asking, how can "the king" and "Arthur" refer to the same thing, if obviously they embody different ideas. That is because the same referrent is designated through different perspectives. And, if my neuroscience hypothesis is correct, those perspectives are second-order synaptic expressions, different from each other and the expression of the original phenomena, but amorphous. As a side note, not all animals can come to the realization that they are their image in the mirror. (Edit: I meant, that they are the object perceived through the image in the mirror. I hope that we wont have to start an argument over the semantics of the "image".) Thus, understanding that multiple references acquired though different cognitive pathways have the same referrent is an evolved feature of select number of species. (I think dolphins and guerillas or chimps, I am not sure.)Sure but I don't see what that has to do with anything. The emotion of love is represented differently in the brain from the concept of love. Ok.... Now what? — khaled
I would claim that if a proposition is not elaborated in terms that can be experienced, witnessed somehow, we cannot truly call it a hypothesis. I concur that it may be presumptive to insist that the terms refer to material aspects of life, but if they do not, the only way in which the proposition can be corroborated (on earth anyway) is through spontaneous agreement of intuition. Which doesn't appear to be all that effective for the philosophy on dualism, because it remains a divisive subject. If the proposition is not elaborated, it can be part of the discourse, in the positive or in the negative, but since it cannot be asserted even in principle, it is not a hypothesis. Second, a theist or a spiritualist is not claiming a hypothesis, but making a conjecture, even an assertion. According to my views, even materialists do that all the time - make conjectures based on unproven assumptions - but they are at least compelled to do so from emancipated forces in the external world. (And I don't mean just empirical evidence, but also sustained practices, biological dispositions.) I fail to see the motivation of a dualist to decide against the other choices - solipsism, intersubjective idealism, panpsychism and pantheism and claim dualism in particular. There doesn't seem to be enough particular arguments for it stemming from experience, in contrast to the other choices. It appears to be based on personal bias. Thirdly, if a hypothesis of dualism makes no physically tangible claims, then I fail to see how it distinguishes its description even conceptually from solipsism. I am not saying that all variants are like that. But certain flavors of dualism, particularly theistic dualism, are not even trying to be definite. (They rely on an "either you get it, or you don't" style of persuasion. Granted, life is like that in the end, based on intuition, but apparently the message does not translate well to everybody, so we have a problem for the philosophical debate.)But is this at all necessary? Isn't it possible that dualist hypotheses with connectivity CAN be constructed without anyone asking but where is this theory in space and how can I grasp it with my fingers? — magritte
Some variants of dualism might be ontically distinguishable, albeit not in a way that can be corroborated. The differences might not be detectable on earth or might be perceivable only through the lenses of hypothetical psychic observer. I accept such notions, because like with solipsism, there is difference between the version of the proposed reality therein and the conventional ones, even if it fails to project into sensory experience. Such description is still irrefutable. I insisted originally that there are different categories of questions that we could ask to distinguish one theory from the rest - ontic, epistemic, ethical and antropological. Some are distinguishable only through some of these questions, but to me, all should be distinguishable in an unambiguous manner as ontic descriptions or they are synonyms to another theory.I'd be a little less polite and add "...or how it distinguishes its description even conceptually from..." ANY theory with no proof, including any conspiracy theory you could concoct. ps - I will NOT that discuss that topic here, just using it to make a point. — GLEN willows
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