• Wolfgang
    66
    Mind-body dualism – solved
    The mind-body dualism is a problem that ultimately comes back to a wrong categorization. I would like to show this below using a simple equation. The mind-body problem describes an apparent contrast between physis and consciousness, in which on the one hand the physique stands in the form of physical connections, on the other hand consciousness in the form of a philosophical attribution. If you write this down as an equation, then on the left side is the physical connection, in which I disregard the concrete content (as well as the calculation rule), on the right side the consciousness, in which it is just as little about the content. It is neurons A (physics) plus/ multiplied neurons B = consciousness (philosophy). You can see at a glance that such an equation makes no sense, since different languages are used on both sides. It's like saying apple 1 plus apple 2 equals pear.Physicalists get rid of this problem by simply deleting the right side of this "equation" and claiming that there is no consciousness at all. If one asks what sensations are, it is said that these are perceptions that the physique produces, which in turn causes the problem. The same applies to the question of how decisions are made. The common answer is that the physical brain makes decisions and then communicates them to conscious experience, as claimed in the Libet experiment. The entire complex process of decision-making with doubts, considerations, revisions, planning, etc. is simply reduced to a physical process, which as such should already provide the explanation. For understanding: I am describing here an ontological concept of consciousness that answers the question: what is consciousness in principle.

    The above equation, if written correctly, should be: Neurons A (physics) plus/ multiplied neurons B (physics) = consciousness (physics). However, this equation would be largely meaningless, since physics deals on the one hand with inanimate nature and on the other hand only provides abstract concepts that cannot be further specified on a physical level. It is precisely this fact that distinguishes Tononi's Integrated Information Theory, whose (physical) concept of information makes no distinction between animate and inanimate nature and thus opens the door to panpsychism.
    What about an equation that relates to chemistry? You have exactly the same problems there, but at this level an essential principle of life can be presented very nicely.

    A small digression: At the precursor to life, molecules (accidentally!) came together and, with the help of catalysts, generated reaction cycles that reinforced themselves by means of energy exchange with the environment and thus maintained themselves. This is the basis for the self-activity of life as opposed to the inanimate passive object world. Only with the 'encapsulation' as a cell does it act independently in this environment. This also adds a self-control, which makes the pure random walk an 'intended' one. What this 'intention' is, I show below.

    Let's move on to biology. There the above equation is: Neurons A (biology) plus/ multiplied neurons B (biology) = consciousness (biology). What can a 'biological' consciousness mean here? If we argue purely biologically, then consciousness must be in a historical series, starting with the first single-celled organisms. Single-celled organisms do not just move in the world by chance, otherwise they would hardly be able to survive. The above intention is nothing more than an orientation system. In single-celled organisms, this takes the form of 'orientation' based on physical and chemical gradients. If one extrapolates this phylogenetically, this means that what can be called consciousness also serves the orientation of the organism, only on the basis of nervous systems. At the same time, these nervous systems generate an excitation or excitement that the individual organism perceives as an experience and which can be measured as an observer.

    One can now use different models with which this excitement can be described and concretized. We are still at the biological level here. Thus, the physical theory of dynamical systems could be transformed into a model in which that consciousness could be described as an attractor, the physical concept of information (not Shannon!) in connection with information or structure density describes the same dynamic 'center', or evolutionary graph theory can be described as an orientation (random) walk.

    On this basis, neuroscientific approaches could now be classified that can lead to a convergence of the different concepts of consciousness, as a medical term (conscious vs. unconscious), psychological (conscious vs. subconscious) or neuropsychological (attentive vs. relaxed). Without such a scientific-theoretical categorization of consciousness, one moves in the realm of complete arbitrariness and indeterminacy. It also shows that consciousness – as well as life in general – cannot be described with any physical model. Biological terms are necessary, which form a basis for concretizations of any kind.
    I haven't solved the mind-body problem here because, as you have seen, it doesn't exist at all. What I solved is this epistemological misunderstanding.

    Incidentally, it should not be forgotten that sensations based on excitability (sensory and neural) naturally gave rise to behavior and hence communication, which was associated with sounds and thus these sounds became associated with meanings. With these patterns of meaning, one has made the world usable for oneself, it has been measured, so to speak. We call these linguistically meaningful sensations thinking.

    From this point of view, it becomes obvious that thinking has nothing to do with any cognition of an 'objective' reality. It is nothing more than the (highly differentiated) process of perception of reality, which (for us and not in itself) has produced tools with which we are able to process nature in a highly complex way.

    Since life only begins at the molecular level, there is no need to search for life on all the scales below.
    Since the philosophy of mind addresses consciousness as an entity in its own right, it fails to present it as an (emergent) consequence of life.
  • Gnomon
    3.7k
    Physicalists get rid of this problem by simply deleting the right side of this "equation" and claiming that there is no consciousness at all.Wolfgang
    I made a copy of your long post to read at my leisure. But for now, I'll just note that your metaphor of a Mind/Body Equation may have some merit. Personally, I have resolved the Mind vs Body or Physics vs Metaphysics "problem" with a BothAnd approach. Since an equation is supposed to balance out, arbitrarily assigning a value of zero to one side is a cop-out. Instead, we need to take the value of both sides seriously.

    For at least 6000 years, humans have assumed that there is an unseen "vessel" that contains their thoughts & feelings. Even though that receptacle, and its contents, are not knowable by the physical senses, humans have a sixth sense (Reason) that produces representations of "things unseen". And we tend to place great value on those imaginary models. So, merely dismissing them as pseudo-science or meta-physics (i.e. mental models) is not addressing the M/B problem at all. Instead, it merely denigrates the public value of those private tokens, while admitting their existence.

    For example, Non-fungible Tokens (intellectual property) have no intrinsic value, but only a mutually negotiated innate value. Therefore, to assign a zero value to mind-stuff is simply refusing to negotiate. Which is your prerogative ; but those who do play the game may gain some personal profit from their participation. Even if the token is as trivial as a Donald Trump trading card with buffoonish images, they seem to have non-zero value to some people. :smile:


    Innate Value :
    Since the word "innate" is defined as; originating in or derived from the mind or the constitution of the intellect rather than from experience
    https://www.quora.com/What-is-innate-value
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Since life only begins at the molecular level, there is no need to search for life on all the scales below.Wolfgang
    :up:

    Since the philosophy of mind addresses consciousness as an entity in its own right, it fails to present it as an (emergent) consequence of life.
    :fire: Ergo the 'panpsychic' woo-of-the-gaps of (pseudo-scientistic) idealists / anti-physicalists.

    NB: Excerpt from an old post ...
    The MBP was dis-solved in the 17th century by Spinoza (re: property dualism). Furthermore, given that mind is an activity or process (i.e. minding) and not a thing, the dualistic fetish of "mind" separate from, or without, "body" (or brain) is a category error (e.g. dancing without legs? digesting without guts?) ...

    And why confuse the scientific problem of explaining 'mind' with antiquated metaphysics of making up shit without evidence or sound reasoning about 'mind'?
    180 Proof
  • introbert
    333
    The mind-body problem interests me. Deleuze bases a lot on the cogito, but at the same time is critical of psychology/ psychiatry which I believe starts with cogito as first premise. It is difficult to do philosophy without the concept of thought or mind, but I think there is a problem where conceptualizing mind as cogito is creating an object that can turn against itself, rather than a more physicalist understanding that is synergistic between the material manifestations of the concept of mind (physical behavior, speech, and the code and calculation inherent in it) and its ways of exciting or pacifying the body. Psychiatry has a physicalist mode of treatment mostly, but psychotherapies and psychology isolate the cogito in a way that I believe produces a mind rather than actually proves the existence of one. My hunch is that thoughts and ideas are indistinct from mind, so the establishment of a cogito is the production of physical content that the body misperceives as mind. The inner voice that I identify as my mind thinking is actually my body working with code I got from outside my body. I know this because my thoughts are English and I am not English. That Descartes establishes the cogito after acknowledging that he could possibly have schizophrenia but in a premodern manifestation of a demon illustrates that how mind is conceptualized can change based on physical manifestations of ideas.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    13.1k
    One can now use different models with which this excitement can be described and concretized. We are still at the biological level here. Thus, the physical theory of dynamical systems could be transformed into a model in which that consciousness could be described as an attractor, the physical concept of information (not Shannon!) in connection with information or structure density describes the same dynamic 'center', or evolutionary graph theory can be described as an orientation (random) walk.Wolfgang

    I think you still have a huge gap to bridge. Physics employs "tensors", you suggest a biological "attractor". Don't you need to show how attractors effect tensors, or vise versa, if you want to set any sort of equation between the two?
  • Wolfgang
    66
    Although Spinoza saw a unity of body and mind, he also believed that both were two sides of the same, but could not explain this unity.
    My approach says that body and mind are not two sides of the same coin, but that consciousness is a property of the brain and it has the function of orientation, just like the heart has the function of pumping blood. That's a big difference. Nowadays, Spinoza's approach is more represented by the so-called four E's. There one sits on a naïve phenomenalism and squanders the opportunity to analyze the complex levels of regulation and their connection analytically.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Since life only begins at the molecular level, there is no need to search for life on all the scales below.
    — Wolfgang
    :up:

    Since the philosophy of mind addresses consciousness as an entity in its own right, it fails to present it as an (emergent) consequence of life.
    :fire: Ergo the 'panpsychic' woo-of-the-gaps of (pseudo-scientistic) idealists / anti-physicalists.

    NB: Excerpt from an old post ...
    The MBP was dis-solved in the 17th century by Spinoza (re: property dualism). Furthermore, given that mind is an activity or process (i.e. minding) and not a thing, the dualistic fetish of "mind" separate from, or without, "body" (or brain) is a category error (e.g. dancing without legs? digesting without guts?) ...

    And why confuse the scientific problem of explaining 'mind' with antiquated metaphysics of making up shit without evidence or sound reasoning about 'mind'?
    — 180 Proof
    180 Proof

    :fire: :clap: :100:

    A person without a soul cannot know what you know mon ami! :lol:

    Jokes aside, I haven't really seen any argument that could at the very least, at a minimum, prove just the possibility of an immaterial mind.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Or a five-sided triangle. :smirk:
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Or a five-sided triangle. :smirk:180 Proof

    :grin:
  • jgill
    3.8k
    Thus, the physical theory of dynamical systems could be transformed into a model in which that consciousness could be described as an attractor, the physical concept of information (not Shannon!) in connection with information or structure density describes the same dynamic 'center', . . .Wolfgang

    Such a model would be interesting. I've played with dynamical systems in the complex plane for years, and have seen only one instance when a theorem I contributed was extended to the realm of psychology (decision making in groups) - and this was done without regard for the technical hypotheses. That's what seems to happen when math is appropriated by a social science. I doubt things would be much better in a quasi-biological setting.
  • Wolfgang
    66
    I wanted to point out two things in my post:
    1. The mind-body problem is based on a misunderstanding in which two different languages are related to each other, which can be illustrated with the equation: n neurons (physics) = consciousness (philosophy). It is therefore wrongly tried to explain a philosophical concept physically, which is simply not possible.
    2. Since we are all biological beings, it must be possible to explain all expressions of life (including consciousness) biologically. To do this, you have to biologically operationalize what we call consciousness. If you do this, you get the general concept of orientation for consciousness and for this the central nervous system has developed in the course of evolution.
    And now one can specify this concept of orientation for all other human sciences.
    Actually quite simple, isn't it?
    No, because science still doesn't want to or can't understand that life is already a concept of structure, life is structure, because not one of the dead building blocks of life contains life. The phrase 'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts' is actually wrong. It should mean 'the whole is something other than the sum of its parts'. As long as you don't understand this, you will always want to reduce biology to physics.
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    t. It is neurons A (physics) plus/ multiplied neurons B = consciousness (philosophy).Wolfgang

    Unfortunately for your OP, this is a nonsense expression. It not actually an equation or even a meaningful sentence. The equations which govern the motion of bodies are quite well known, but there is nothing corresponding to that which explains the nature of thought. End of story.
  • Wolfgang
    66
    Unfortunately, you don't understand the whole thing. It was just about showing that you can't explain philosophy with physics. But this simple connection already seems to be too difficult. Well, never mind.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    the whole is something other than the sum of its partsWolfgang

    :up:

    The whole is not just the sum of its parts. Neurons, individually, can't do this :point: comprehend, but, together, as a brain, they can. How can a group (the brain) consisting of stuff that can't understand (neurons) understand? :chin:
  • Wolfgang
    66
    'The whole is different from the sum of its parts' is a very general expression that applies to life in general. Thinking, on the other hand, is a very complex process that only developed in the course of evolution, which also applies to thinking, but which cannot simply be transferred.
  • Joshs
    5.6k


    Nowadays, Spinoza's approach is more represented by the so-called four E's. There one sits on a naïve phenomenalism and squanders the opportunity to analyze the complex levels of regulation and their connection analytically.Wolfgang

    I assume you’re talking about 4EA ( embodied, enactive, embedded, extended and affective) cognitive science, otherwise known as enactivism. How does this approach squander the opportunities you’re referring to, and what models within cognitive science do you prefer? For instance, Tim Van Gelder relies heavily on dynamical systems theory. Are you familiar with his work on cognition and consciousness?
  • Pantagruel
    3.4k
    The mind-body problem is based on an apparent discrepancy between the evident nature of thought and the evident nature of the material body. Which is to say that thought has properties (perception, conception, will) which do not seem to accord with properties of matter (position, extension, substantiality). Except that physics has already demonstrated that all matter, in all of its most disparate forms, is itself a form of energy. So the notion of materiality itself (body) is, for all intents and purposes, completely plastic. In fact, any physical thing has really only a "comparative" existence, inasmuch as it exhibits certain properties in relation to some other physical thing (including the observer phenomenon). Quarks exist in the sense that they combine or entangle or are observed.

    So embodied mind may indeed be a thing (I think it is). But so is coherent energy. Given that all matter is energy, and coherent energy is real, I see no contradiction in the hypothesis that consciousness is, at some level, just another form of coherent energy, and itself a "deep" feature of the natural universe (i.e. independent of any of its embodied manifestations).
  • Mark Nyquist
    774
    I would try a relations approach instead of an equation approach:

    X is the physical universe
    x is all physical matter we access
    Y are are all the neurons and peripherals that interact with physical matter (x) and support mental content (o)
    (o) is mental content

    That is the entirety of the basic components.

    So our mental experience is the relation,

    x <----> Y(o) And this relation exists within the
    limits of the physical universe (X).

    Mental content should be identified as dynamic
    existing only in the physical present.

    This Y(o) term acknowledges the emergent nature of mental content in relation to biological brains. Breaking it down this way avoids the pitfalls of the monism/dualism question.

    Information always exists in the form Y(o).
    Consciousness always exists in the form Y(o).
    Hint, hint...they are the same thing at the fundamental level.
  • Wolfgang
    66
    As long as the difference between animate and inanimate nature is not seen and only physics is used to clarify both, one will never understand the principle of life and just as little consciousness. A discussion is therefore only worthwhile with those who want to get involved with this point of view.
  • Alkis Piskas
    2.1k
    Neurons, individually, can't do this :point: comprehend, but, together, as a brain, they can.Agent Smith
    :chin:

    How can a group (the brain) consisting of stuff that can't understand (neurons) understand?Agent Smith
    Exactly!
    So? Keep on ...
    (Maybe you are close to something I would really like to hear. Not only from you but from others too in here ...)
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    How can a group (the brain) consisting of stuff that can't understand (neurons) understand?Agent Smith
    Just as this sentence consisting of individually meaningless letters conveys meaning. :roll:

    Emergence.
  • Andrew4Handel
    2.5k
    Emergence is a mystery rather than an explanation.

    Why should A emerge from B?
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    Why do you belieeve "emergence is a mystery"? What's "mysterious" in the wiki article I linked above?
  • Andrew4Handel
    2.5k
    You didn't cite any of the article.

    It is very long.

    The mystery is when the emergent property is not predictable or when the concept of emergence is applied with no causal explanation attempted.

    If I rubbed two sticks together and consciousness emerged that would be an emergent property but it would also be magic and inexplicable like neurons firing creating consciousness.

    From the article:" Strong emergence describes the direct causal action of a high-level system upon its components; qualities produced this way are irreducible to the system's constituent parts"

    Also from the article:

    "Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? "
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    If I rubbed two sticks together and consciousness emerged that would be an emergent property but it would also be magic and inexplicable like neurons firing creating consciousness.Andrew4Handel
    Equivocating non sequitur. :roll:

    ↪180 Proof You didn't cite any of the article.
    The article offers a further reading reference, not an argument. I gave an example of how 'a whole greater than the sum of its parts' is the most ordinary, least mysterious thing (again, such as semantics of a sentence). It's a mystery to me, Andrew, how any numerate person would find emergence – nonlinear dynamic (i.e. chaotic) processes or systems – "mysterious".
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    t was just about showing that you can't explain philosophy with physicsWolfgang

    I am in complete agreement with your conclusion, but you don't make any kind of argument for it. But I'll leave you to it, others here seem to see something in it.

    Regarding 'emergence', I once attended lectures on Hindu philosophy by a lecturer who used to intone as a kind of principle of Vedanta, 'what is latent, becomes patent', referring to the evolution of the multitude of sentient beings who all actually originate in Brahman. I recall a similar passage in the writings of Swami Vivekenanda, saying that the acorn evolves into the oak because the oak is 'involved' into the acorn. However, I also note that in Hindu philosophy, the principle is that 'life comes from life', it doesn't recognise the possibility of a-biogenesis.

    To me the key philosophical distinction is that there is an ontological distinction between the living and inorganic domains. There are also ontological distinctions between sentient and non-sentient life-forms. I believe these distinctions were recognised in Aristotelian philosophy, but that they're generally not recognised by physicalism, for obvious reasons.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    How can a group (the brain) consisting of stuff that can't understand (neurons) understand?
    — Agent Smith
    Just as this sentence consisting of individually meaningless letters conveys meaning. :roll:
    180 Proof

    So holism i.e. antireductionism? :chin:
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    :up: Search for Searle's Chinese Room Argument on the forum and it should take you to the source of this idea which I merely regurgitated.
  • 180 Proof
    15.3k
    So holism i.e. antireductionism? :chin:Agent Smith
    Non sequitur.
  • Mark Nyquist
    774
    Why, at the start, do you write mind-body dualism- solved and then give an equation that makes no sense?

    I give anyone a hard time that claims inanimates are stand alone non-physicals so could you comment on how you think inanimates can exist.
  • Agent Smith
    9.5k
    Non sequitur.180 Proof

    But the property of the whole [brain] - comprehension ability - is not to be found in the parts [neurons]. What sorcery is this? :lol:
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