By giving the very same answer as I gave.

SO where is your account different to mine?

You seem to want to treat intentionality as magic - as if it comes from nowhere, and is not part of the world.

You asked a simple question, and got a simple answer. It says nothing about intentionality, because the scope of the question is such that it doesn't need to be addressed. If you wanted to ask, how can an intentional action affect a physical change, then you'd be asking a more sophisticated question, which would then lead to a consideration of the nature of intentionality, which is the power of minds and mental states to be about, to represent, or to stand for, things, properties and states of affairs. To say of an individual’s mental states that they have intentionality is to say that they are mental representations or that they have contents. And it is very difficult, or even impossible, to provide a physicalist account of intentionality, because there is no obvious analogy in physical theory for 'aboutness' or 'intentionality'. 'Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not do so in the same way. In presentation, something is presented, in judgment something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on.

This intentional inexistence is characteristic exclusively of mental phenomena. No physical phenomenon exhibits anything like it', said Brentano, who is credited with discerning the significance of intentionality.

But then, all you said was, you can raise your arm, so there's really no need to digress.

If the world were unpredictable, this would undermines not just science, but the capacity to describe the world in a consistent fashion. — Banno

This could be restated as "If the world were unpredictable, this would undermine not just science, but the notion of a world that can be made sense of". I suppose one is free to engage with the world as an inherently chaotic and arbitrary place, but one shouldn't be surprised if they get treated as a lunatic if they do.

And it is very difficult, or even impossible, to provide a physicalist account of intentionality, because there is no obvious analogy in physical theory for 'aboutness' or 'intentionality'. ' — Wayfarer

But if you would defend dualism then you must go further and say that something is not part of the physical world.

SO far, you are agreeing with me that we have two different descriptions. The question is, will you join me in rejecting dualism and admitting that they are descriptions fo the same thing - your raising your arm?

In other words, magic, i.e. mind-of-the-gaps.

Physicalism might not have worked out the precise relationship between mental phenomena and physical states/laws of nature, but at least its actually trying to think through the problem instead of engaging in this sort of lazy, hand-wavey magical thinking. I suppose that you could say that physicalism is the worst ontological proposal... except for all the rest (and especially dualism).

But if you would defend dualism then you must go further and say that something is not part of the physical world. — Banno

First, define 'physical world'.

No. You know what the physical world is. Stop dithering.


Or define it as you please, and I will respond to you in kind.

One of the most important things to do when dealing with abused children is to provide a world which is predictable. Perhaps the ability to see the world in an orderly fashion relies on a nice middle-class upbringing.

You know what the physical world is. — Banno

You don't. That is exactly the kind of thing I mean when I said:

Banno's method is to drag all of these debates into the realm of the banal by repeated use of innappopriate metaphors, cliches and over-simplifications repeated ad nauseum until all interest is drained out of the discussion and everyone looses interest — Wayfarer

Accordingly, I've lost interest, more fool me for trying.

One of the most important things to do when dealing with abused children is to provide a world which is predictable. Perhaps the ability to see the world in an orderly fashion relies on a nice middle-class upbringing. — Banno

I suspect your tongue was firmly seated in cheek, but FWIW, as a child my step-father had a volatile and unpredictable temper, and yet here I am. I don't know that I can tease out actual psychological causes, but my post-hoc narrative is that the lack of predictability in childhood made me more strongly crave to find such predictability in the larger world. Or genes, maybe it's that.

You can use whatever definition of "physical" that you need. If that is "dragging all of these debates into the realm of the banal", then that's down to you.

Interesting.

If we are nothing more than the perpetually rotting physical I can't be sure it has any meaning. We do good, we experience good, we learn, we try to evolve. All is worthless if it all ceases when our bodies end.

Your question is like asking what the mass is of democracy, and using the lack of an answer to argue that since democracy does not have a mass, it doesn't exist. — Banno

And what duck-rabbit hole did you pull that out of?

I’m not the one claiming that if thoughts don’t have mass they then don’t exist, remember. As a reminder, you're the one upholding a physicalism wherein epistemically nonphysical things - such as thoughts - are ontically physical and thereby composed of physical mass. And I’m the one saying this is utter and complete bullshit. Next thing you’ll tell me is that unicorns, being existent thoughts, are mass endowed physical things that aren't real. Tough you got me, I’m now feeling ridiculous in even needing to express this.

What does the theory of evolution visually look like?

How can one quantify its mass in principle? — javra

The obvious answers to these two questions are “it has no visual appearance” and “no one can” respectively. You can’t quantify the mass of a thought like the theory of evolution even in principle because, if for no other reason, you can’t empirically observe it in practice, and empirical data is requisite for the quantification of any physical thing’s mass.

If we are nothing more than the perpetually rotting physical I can't be sure it has any meaning. — TiredThinker

Life has whatever meaning you give it. That's the case whether dualism is true or not. Meaning is not something that is found in the world but that is imposed on it by us.

We do good, we experience good, we learn, we try to evolve. — TiredThinker

Yes!

All is worthless if it all ceases when our bodies end. — TiredThinker

Whether you like it or not you will have lived. That can never be changed; that you exist is in a sense eternal, unchangeable. What you do with life is up to you, as is what value your life has.

Here it is again:

...there are two ways to describe raising your arm. One involves forming the intention and acting on it. The other involves the firing of neurones and the contraction of muscle tissue.

I say these are two differing descriptions of the very same thing. — Banno

You want a description of one in terms of the other. The confusion is your own.

The confusion is your own. — Banno

No, Banno. It's yours.

You've claimed thoughts have physical mass. Now your evading and, worse, projecting your confusion onto me.

You've claimed thoughts have physical mass. — javra

If I did, it was facetious. But you didn't get the joke.

Those who suppose otherwise - the ball is in your court. It is over to you to explain how mind can have an impact on the physical world if it is an utterly different sort of thing. — Banno

Your answer involved reintroducing an anachronistic definition of energy, while denying that this would involve a re-think science; all this backed up with a reference to single line from wikipedia.

Care to have another go? Explain how you can decide to move your arm.

If I did, it was facetious. But you didn't get the joke. — Banno

Really. Now that is a joke.

Care to have another go? — Banno

Not after reading about you sense of facetiousness.

You know they know they can't. :smirk: — 180 Proof

Yay! I win! Twice!

Anyway, the better reply might be something like:

But Banno, you are advocating dualism! Not property dualism, of the sort the article espoused, but some sort of dualism with regard to discourse, were intentional states are irreducible to physical states...!

That'd be more interesting.

I interpret Cartesian dualism as rooted in extended substance and thinking substance. And as always and given the absolute self sufficiency of the distinct substances, the issue always comes down to how do they interact. And after 400 years of Cartesianism, the answer is always transcendence. And of course transcendence always turns out to be a label we give to some sort of process we cannot explain. Isn't it wonderful?

There is one interesting and scientifically-validated piece of evidence for the immaterial nature of mind. This comes from a discussion of the 'neural binding problem' in neuroscience. 'Binding' is the cognitive process which brings together all of the various elements of perception - movement, shape, colour, position, the nature of the object, and so on - into the unified whole that comprises subjective experience (called the 'stable world illusion'). In brief, the neural binding problem is that neuroscience can find no functional area of the brain which can account for this unified sense of self. — Wayfarer

The 'binding problem' assumes there's a representation or image that needs 'binding'. But that's not the case, as Bennett and Hacker explain:

1.9.1 Misconceptions concerning the existence of a binding problem

The sense in which separate neural pathways carry information about colour, shape, movement, etc. is not semantic, but, at best, information-theoretic. In neither sense of 'information' can information be 'organized' into 'cohesive perceptions'. In the semantic sense, information is a set of true propositions, and true propositions cannot be organized into perception (i.e. into a person's perceiving something). In the engineering sense, 'information' is a measure of the freedom of choice in the transmission of a signal, and the amount of information is measured by the logarithm to the base 2 of the number of available choices - and this too is not something that can be 'organized' into perceptions. One cannot combine colour, form and dimensions into perceptions, just as one cannot put events into holes - this form of words makes no sense. And, correspondingly, when we see a square purple box, we do not 'combine' purple, squareness and boxhood - for this too is a nonsensical form of words. It is true that in order to see a coloured moving object with a given shape, separate groups of neurons must be active simultaneously. But it does not follow that, in the semantic sense of information, the brain must 'associate' various bits of information; nor could it follow, since brains cannot act on the basis of information or associate pieces of information. Whether the brain, in some sense that needs to be clarified, 'associates' information in the information-theoretic sense is a further question. But if it does, that is not because the features of the object perceived have to be 'combined in the brain', for that is a nonsense.

Above all, to see an object is neither to see nor to construct an image of an object. The reason why the several neuronal groups must fire simultaneously when a person sees a coloured three-dimensional object is not because the brain has to build up a visual image or create an internal picture of objects in the visual field. When we see a tree, the brain does not have to (and could not) bind together the trunk, boughs and leaves, or the colour and the shape, or the shape and the movement of the tree. One may see the tree clearly and distinctly or unclearly and indistinctly, and one may be sensitive to its colour and movement, or one may suffer from one or another form of colour-blindness or visual agnosia for movement. Which neuronal groups must simultaneously be active in order to achieve optimal vision, what form that activity may take, and how it is connected with other parts of the brain that are causally implicated in cognition, recognition and action, as well as in co-ordination of sight and movement, are what needs to be investigated by neuroscientists. Since seeing a tree is not seeing an internal picture of a tree, the brain does not have to construct any such picture. It merely has to be functioning normally so that we are able to see clearly and distinctly. It does not have to take a picture apart, since neither the visual scene nor the light array falling upon the retinae are pictures. It does not have to put a picture back together again, since what it enables us to do is to see a tree (not a picture of a tree) in the garden (not in the brain).

...

For the neural correlates, the various cells firing in the various locations of the 'visual' striate cortex, cannot be 'recombined', and do not need to be. The thought that the features a perceiver perceives must be correctly synthesized 'to form a separate object', the so-called 'binding problem', is confused. (For critical discussion see pp. 32-8.) To perceive is not to form an image of what is perceived, either in one's brain or in one's mind. What is perceived is the tree in the quad, not a representation of a tree in the quad. The brain does not have to synthesize a representation of the tree out of representations of its size, shape, colour and orientation - it has to enable the perceiver to see the tree and its features clearly. — History of Cognitive Neuroscience, pp37-38,55 - Bennett, M. R., Hacker, P. M. S.

Thanks. However the journal article I referred to (which is here) is a peer-reviewed article that draws on contemporary neuroscience. So I'd be interested to know the specific sense in which he has it wrong. As I understand it, it has to do with the process of apperception, which is the process by which a person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it to the body of ideas she already possesses. That is what is rather like an act of synthesis. It's not the creation of an image per se but the ability to recognise the concrete whole and to recognise it and interpret it.

Which neuronal groups must simultaneously be active in order to achieve optimal vision, what form that activity may take, and how it is connected with other parts of the brain that are causally implicated in cognition, recognition and action, as well as in co-ordination of sight and movement, are what needs to be investigated by neuroscientists. — History of Cognitive Neuroscience, pp37-38,55 - Bennett, M. R., Hacker, P. M. S.

That doesn't really contradict the passage I quoted, as far as I can see.

It's not the creation of an image per se but the ability to recognise the concrete whole and to recognise it and interpret it. — Wayfarer

Yes, that's the real issue. As B&H say:

Which neuronal groups must simultaneously be active in order to achieve optimal vision, what form that activity may take, and how it is connected with other parts of the brain that are causally implicated in cognition, recognition and action, as well as in co-ordination of sight and movement, are what needs to be investigated by neuroscientists.
— History of Cognitive Neuroscience, pp37-38,55 - Bennett, M. R., Hacker, P. M. S.

That doesn't really contradict the passage I quoted, as far as I can see. — Wayfarer

The above B&H quote doesn't assume a binding problem. From the passage you quoted (italics mine):

That is, enough is known about the structure and function of the visual system to rule out any detailed neural representation that embodies the subjective experience. — The neural binding problem(s) - Jerome Feldman

The issue, as B&H argue, is that the "neural representation" assumption is mistaken, thus there is no binding problem to explain. But why would a "neural representation" be assumed in the first place? Because "subjective experience" (defined in the paper as "qualia") is a Cartesian conception of experience (the Cartesian theater, as it were).

why would a "neural representation" be assumed in the first place? — Andrew M

Because this: representation is necessarily the case, and because neurons are the only possible source of representations as such, therefore neural representations.

But not this:

Because "subjective experience" (...) is a Cartesian conception of experience (the Cartesian theater, as it were). — Andrew M

Cartesian theater was never the case, and subjective experience has long evolved from Descartes, as so aptly noted.

Brain machinations can be scientifically determined all day long, but how the “sense of self” manifests out of them isn’t answered by them. So either there is no sense of self, a veritable species-wide anathema, or, science wants it to be that there isn’t, by physical means.

Sad state of affairs indeed, that science wishes to determine rationality right out of being human, and at the same time, manifests a self-contradiction in attempting to do it.

I mean....so what if all the science is right? So what if all the brain machinations are determined as pure physicality and therefore subjective experience is pure physicality as well? B.F.D. The scientist is still going to sit there, and wonder what to do about it, which requires him to employ the very thing he just proved doesn’t exist.

Probably outta stick to better toaster ovens and birth of the Universe and such. You know....that which might make a difference.

“HEY!!! TEACHER!!! Leave us kids alone!!!”

If dualism is true, is science wrong ?

Questions about the mind-body problem
How does the mind as a whole emerge from disparate parts, the neurons that make up the brain.
How to explain the binding problem, the unity of consciousness, seemingly from the integration of highly diverse neural information.
How to explain that when we have the intention to raise our arm, our arm rises.
How can the mind emerge with properties that cannot be scientifically discovered in the neurons from which it has arisen.

Does substance dualism being true mean that science is false
Substance dualism is the idea that the mind and body are two distinct substances.
Science is an epistemic approach to gaining knowledge of our world, the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment.

A new physical property emerges when two permanent magnets are placed alongside each other
Substance dualism claims that, because the properties of the mind cannot be scientifically discovered in the physical parts from which it has arisen, then the mind must be of a different substance to the physical brain from which it emerges.
To disprove this, one example is needed of a system which has physical properties that cannot be discovered from the physical parts from which it has emerged.
Consider a system consisting of a pair of permanent magnets. When placed in the vicinity of each other they may repel or attract resulting in a movement.
A single magnet may have certain properties, such as mass, but no scientific investigation of a single magnet may discover the property of movement that the whole system is able to show.

New physical properties may emerge when parts are combined into a whole
IE, the whole physical system has properties that cannot be discovered in its individual physical parts.
In a sense, a new property has emerged from a combination of physical parts, none of which have previously exhibited this property.
The example of the magnets is not to infer any resemblance between magnetic fields and interactions between neurons, it is just being used to prove that it is possible for new physical properties to emerge from physical parts that don't exhibit the same property.
It is a fact that the new property of the system that has emerged from its parts can have an effect on the parts, even though the individual parts don't show this property.

Dualism may be true, but it isn't necessarily true
In summary, this example of the magnets proves that because some properties of the whole cannot be scientifically discovered in the physical properties of its parts, it does not follow that the properties of the whole are not also physical.
The example of the magnets does not prove that dualism is not true, but it does prove that dualism isn't necessarily true.

But why would a "neural representation" be assumed in the first place? Because "subjective experience" (defined in the paper as "qualia") is a Cartesian conception of experience (the Cartesian theater, as it were). — Andrew M

I'm sceptical about their dismissive attitude, as I think that the subjective unity of experience is an elemental constituent of self-knowledge; our experience, our being, functions as a unified whole. But the Feldman paper says 'There is now overwhelming biological and behavioral evidence that the brain contains no stable, high-resolution, full field representation of a visual scene, even though that is what we subjectively experience (Martinez-Conde et al. 2008). The structure of the primate visual system has been mapped in detail (Kaas and Collins 2003) and there is no area that could encode this detailed information. The subjective experience is thus inconsistent with the neural circuitry.'

I think what is being described here is close to, or identical with, what Kant describes as synthesis - 'the act of putting different representations together, and grasping what is manifold in them in one cognition (A77/B103)' (I wonder if @Mww would agree with that.)

I'm sceptical of this passage:

when we see a square purple box, we do not 'combine' purple, squareness and boxhood - for this too is a nonsensical form of words. It is true that in order to see a coloured moving object with a given shape, separate groups of neurons must be active simultaneously. But it does not follow that, in the semantic sense of information, the brain must 'associate' various bits of information; nor could it follow, since brains cannot act on the basis of information or associate pieces of information. Whether the brain, in some sense that needs to be clarified, 'associates' information in the information-theoretic sense is a further question. — History of Cognitive Neuroscience, pp37-38,55 - Bennett, M. R., Hacker, P. M. S.

I see no reason to presume upfront that the notion of 'binding' whereby the mind (not brain!) synthesises the disparate elements of experience and judgement into a simple whole is 'a nonsensical form of words'. Sure, when I see a tree, I don't form a mental image, but an act of synthesis is clearly occuring. I have vague recollections of experiments which demonstrate that this is just what happens in regular cognition, conducted by exposing a subject to various moving, coloured shapes for very brief periods and measuring the time it takes for the subject to be able to recognise the colour, shape and direction of motion. It's not a conceptually difficult issue. So I don't know if I accept their dismissal of the neural binding problem - in the quoted passage, there is an implicit acknowledgement that the question remains open. Feldman is merely stating that the question of the source of that unified perception can't be resolved in terms of known neural systems.

Substance dualism is the idea that the mind and body are two distinct substances. — RussellA

Important to note that 17th century philosophy still operated with the concept of substance derived from Aristotle - substance as ouisia, the 'bearer of attributes', not a 'material with uniform properties'. It is nearer in meaning to 'kind of being' than 'kind of stuff'. Where that is important is that this usage is no longer current in either popular or scientific discourse. I'd bet that most people talk about 'distinct substances' have no inkling what 'substance' meant in the original context, and instead try and conceive of 'res cogitans' as some 'spooky mind-stuff', like conscious ectoplasm, which is why it sounds such an absurd idea. So:

then the mind must be of a different substance to the physical brain from which it emerges. — RussellA

Not so much a 'different substance' as 'of a different order'. It is not manifest as an object of analysis but as the indubitable reality of the observing subject. (Which is why 'eliminative materialism' believes that it can't be real, as in their view, only the objects of analysis are real.) That is the change of emphasis that has come about through embodied cognition and enactivism and the realisation of the role of the subject central to phenomenology.

How much weighs a thought? Per day the brain uses about 1500 Joules. This is about 1500/(9x10exp16) or about 1.4x10exp-14 kilograms. It depends on the length of a thought but this it the maximum weight of a thought. Note that the kind of thought is irrelevant for its weight. Heavy thoughts weigh just as much as thoughts involved in making a cup of tea. It's difficult to put a thought on a scale. Like it's difficult to put a moving ball with kinetic energy on a scale. Neurons can be put on a scale, so can ions, but ions flowing through channels are just as difficult as the thrown ball.

:wink: :up: