Your conclusion has a certain paradoxical appeal. I agree that sometimes we draw the wrong conclusions from what our senses tell us (that's a bit over-simplified, but it will do for now); but surely we sometimes get it right. Similarly, reality is partially intelligible to us and partly not, and we work hard to understand the latter part. You seem very fond of comprehensive statements, but the truth is more mundane than that. For example, you say:- — Ludwig V
And I say "Don't we also say things like "between t1 and t2 this process was going on?" — Ludwig V
In reality life is not simple, so all we're doing with this type of notion is facilitating the deception. — Metaphysician Undercover
Look, we see the sun as rising and setting, when logic tells us the earth is really spinning. . . . Do you think that living beings are incapable of 'feeling' that the planet they are on is spinning? — Metaphysician Undercover
But I am sure that the senses do not systematically deceive us. — Ludwig V
I'm also sure that simplicity is not an option, but a necessity. — Ludwig V
If we had senses that perceived everything that's going on at the level of electrons, we would be unable to grasp the bigger picture that we need. It's not about deception; it's about pragmatics. — Ludwig V
This is a classic example of what I mean. There's a story - I don't know if it's true - that someone observed to Wittgenstein that it is easy to understand why the ancients thought that the sun goes round the earth, because that's the way it looks. To which Wittgenstein replied "How would it look if it looked as if the earth was spinning?" The answer is, exactly the same. — Ludwig V
As to electrons, we are simply not equipped to perceive electrons directly. I'm cautious about pronouncing on the sub-atomic world; I don't understand the physics well enough. I am clear that our senses give us the information they are equipped to gather. By paying attention to our perceptions more closely, we work out that physical objects are very different at small scale. Our perceptions did not deceive us, any more than a normal microscope deceives us when it does not reveal electrons. We misinterpreted them, but now have a better understanding because we paid closer attention to the information they give us. — Ludwig V
Why do you think that the sun appears to come up and go down, when this has been proven to be false? — Metaphysician Undercover
.....moving forward into the realm of what logic dictates, even though this may appear contradictory to sense data, is to fall for that deception. — Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with the consequent, but I don't understand the antecedent. If the antecedent is false, then the project of understanding the world is hopeless. Or is there an alternative approach?
There's an ambiguity between "follows" in the sense of "comes after" and "follows" in the sense of "is constrained by". It doesn't make any sense to me to speak of the universe being constrained by natural laws. Natural laws are what the universe does given that it is not constrained. Actually, it is neither constrained, nor not constrained; it just does what it does.
There's a similarly weakness in the idea of causation. There's an idea that a cause somehow forces its effect. But that's a category mistake.
I'll ask you the same as I ask everyone who asks this question...
Why does any of this constitute or necessitate subjective awareness. or consciousness, or the capacity to experience?"
— bert1
... What would an answer look like? Give me an example answer. It's doesn't have to be the right answer, just an example of what sort of thing would satisfy you.
Like if I said "no one has yet answered the question of what is 567,098,098 * 45,998,087" I could clearly tell you what sort of thing I would accept as an answer - I'm expecting some big number - even though I don't know what that number is. Without that framework, I don't see how I could possibly claim that no-one's answered the question yet.
So what's the sort of thing you'd be satisfied with? If I went into my lab tomorrow, had a really good look at some brains, and came back to and said "Brain activity requires consciousness because..." What would you accept? — Isaac
At https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2022.767612/full, Peter D. Kitchener and Colin G. Hales say:It is not captured by any of the familiar, recently devised reductive analyses of the mental, for all of them are logically compatible with its absence.
According to these two quotes, physicalist/materialist/materially reductivist (What term is currently being used?) approaches do not address consciousness, and they explain things nicely without it. That seems like an important question to me - Why is it happening at all? If behavior is the result of stimulus & response, even vastly complex webs of S&R, then what use is any awareness of it all, or qualia? There are machines that can differentiate frequencies of the visible light spectrum to much greater detail than we can, and perform actions based on which frequency they are detecting at any given moment. There can also be other criteria involved in figuring out which action to take.The approach the majority of neuroscientists take to the question of how consciousness is generated, it is probably fair to say, is to ignore it. Although there are active research programs looking at correlates of consciousness, and explorations of informational properties of what might be relevant neural ensembles, the tacitly implied mechanism of consciousness in these approaches is that it somehow just happens.
This reliance on a “magical emergence” of consciousness does not address the “objectively unreasonable” proposition that elements that have no attributes or properties that can be said to relate to consciousness somehow aggregate to produce it.
We understand how the properties of particles that we are aware of give rise to the macro properties. Physical properties like liquidity, as well as physical processes like flight. There is no macro property that is not, ultimately, due to properties of the micro, even if we don't think about it that way.Although chemistry is theoretically based on physics and could be derived entirely from physics, this would be unwieldy and infeasible in practice, so chemistry has established its own rules and models. Similarly, we should be able to deduce the laws of thermodynamics from physics, but once we have a sufficient number of particles to call them a gas rather than simply a bunch of particles, solving equations for the physics of each particle interaction becomes hopeless, whereas the laws of thermodynamics work quite well. Biology likewise has its own rules and models. A single pancreatic islet cell is enormously complicated, especially if we model it at the level of molecules; modeling what a pancreas actually does in terms of regulating levels of insulin and digestive enzymes is considerably less complex.
The cues that normally allow us to know when we are moving are missing, just as they are missing in an aeroplane. — Ludwig V
Senses and reason are both capable of misleading us and are our only resources for finding the truth. Junking one in favour of the other is incomprehensible to me.
I have a feeling that the conditions are not such as to provide a basis for progress in this debate. Do you? — Ludwig V
If consciousness does not arise from the physical properties we know, and it does not arise from something like panprotopsychism (and I'm sure many here do not believe it does), then what? — Patterner
It decieved him in a context that is almost completely useless to most of us most of the time. So, yes, if one wants to understand the motions of the solar system parts, his assessment is off, in nearly every other human context, he's got a perfect fine interpretation. And one that can be useful.This is exactly why it's correct to say that the senses deceive. When the sensible "cues" are missing, we draw the wrong conclusion. You say: "The sun does go up and down, from the point of view of the surface of the earth. It could not be otherwise." Obviously, it could be otherwise. It could be that the surface of the earth is spinning in a circle, and the sun is staying put. And if you wrongly assume that you, on the surface of the earth are staying put, because the "cues" of moving are missing, you would wrongly conclude that the sun goes up and down from the point of view of the surface of the earth. Therefore, you failed to account for the motion of the earth in your assumption, and allowed your sensed to deceive you. — Metaphysician Undercover
which was in response to a quote that included...If you do not see that reason is far more reliable than sense, and when the two disagree it is far more reasonable to accept reason over sense, then I think you're right when you say further progress is impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover
Seems to miss the point. We don't have to give up either. Reason is pretty useless without the senses, at least to any empiricist. IOW the senses are, for example, the foundation of science: in observations.Senses and reason are both capable of misleading us and are our only resources for finding the truth. Junking one in favour of the other is incomprehensible to me. — Ludwig V
It decieved him in a context that is almost completely useless to most of us most of the time. So, yes, if one wants to understand the motions of the solar system parts, his assessment is off, in nearly every other human context, he's got a perfect fine interpretation. And one that can be useful.
And reason can also deceive. But since he goes ahead and advocates for using both, I'm not sure what the overhanding problem is. — Bylaw
Seems to miss the point. We don't have to give up either. Reason is pretty useless without the senses, at least to any empiricist. IOW the senses are, for example, the foundation of science: in observations. — Bylaw
We understand how the properties of particles that we are aware of give rise to the macro properties. Physical properties like liquidity, as well as physical processes like flight. There is no macro property that is not, ultimately, due to properties of the micro, even if we don't think about it that way. — Patterner
If you do not see that reason is far more reliable than sense, and when the two disagree it is far more reasonable to accept reason over sense, then I think you're right when you say further progress is impossible. — Metaphysician Undercover
Seems to miss the point. We don't have to give up either. Reason is pretty useless without the senses, at least to any empiricist. IOW the senses are, for example, the foundation of science: in observations. — Bylaw
Reread my post, I said "when the two disagree". It seems like you misunderstand the nature of science. The senses are not the foundation of science, science is based in hypotheses, theory. Your empiricist theory has misled you, another example of how human beings allow their senses to deceive them. — Metaphysician Undercover
We understand how the properties of particles that we are aware of give rise to the macro properties. Physical properties like liquidity, as well as physical processes like flight. There is no macro property that is not, ultimately, due to properties of the micro, even if we don't think about it that way.
— Patterner
That's true. The problem is that physics defines itself in such a way that it cannot recognize anything else. So friendship, love, hatred, tyranny, democracy cannot occur in a theory in physics. One can sometimes "reduce" things to physics, like the aurora borealis or heat. But the beauty of the aurora borealis is not reduced, but eliminated, and there is an argument about whether heat is the motion of molecules or a sensation, which is not something that can be recognized in thermodynamics. That doesn't resolve the problem, but perhaps does something to explain why it exists. — Ludwig V
That things behaved in such and such a way in the past, is not sufficient to produce the necessity to imply that they will necessarily behave this way in the future. What is needed is another premise which states that the future will be similar to the past. But this again appears to be just a more general form of the same inductive principle, How things have been in the past, will continue to be how they are in the future. So we do not escape the trap of relying on induction, and this does not give us the desired necessity, or certainty. — Metaphysician Undercover
If I understand physical reductionists (and that's an "if", and I guess not all agree with each other), physics' recognition of the things you mention is irrelevant. — Patterner
The term "category-mistake" was introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind (1949) . . .
The phrase is introduced in the first chapter. The first example is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the colleges and library, reportedly inquired "But where is the University?" The visitor's mistake is presuming that a University is part of the category "units of physical infrastructure" rather than that of an "institution". Ryle's second example is of a child witnessing the march-past of a division of soldiers. After having had battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc. pointed out, the child asks when is the division going to appear. "The march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons and a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division." (Ryle's italics) His third example is of a foreigner being shown a cricket match. After being pointed out batsmen, bowlers and fielders, the foreigner asks: "who is left to contribute the famous element of team-spirit?" He goes on to argue that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category mistake.
The physical events - which we think of in terms of neurons and brain structures, but which are ultimately reducible to particles movements and interactions - would still take place without our awareness. And our awareness doesn't add anything, because awareness has no causal ability. It's all physics. — Patterner
Not to say there aren't a lot of unknown details to how consciousness arises, but doesn't information processing seem likely to be the substrate on which consciousness is built? — wonderer1
. Hypotheses and theories are critically important, but when theory and data conflict, it is theory that needs to be changed. — Ludwig V
I thought you were against Hume's thesis. — Jacques
I don't know what you mean here.The physical events - which we think of in terms of neurons and brain structures, but which are ultimately reducible to particles movements and interactions - would still take place without our awareness. And our awareness doesn't add anything, because awareness has no causal ability. It's all physics.
— Patterner
You misunderstand. What goes on in our brain is the physical basis of awareness, so if what goes on in our brains were any different, we would not have awareness. As to the causal effects of awareness, it would be contrary to physical laws if there were none. We just don't know what they are yet. — Ludwig V
I was going to say much the same thing. If all of our consciousness and awareness, thoughts of the future - all of our mental characteristics - are reducible to the laws of physics, then how do we say physics doesn't produce computers? That's all there is, if that's all our consciousness is. And that's all our consciousness is, because the laws of physics cannot produce something that is outside of itself."...Yet the basis of human activity is physics. But physics left to itself does not produce computers."
↪Ludwig V
I'd say physics left to itself produced stars, which produced the elements of which the Earth is composed. Physics occurring on the Earth through evolution produced brains, and brains can reasonably be considered computers. (Though not digital computers.) The operation of brains is still physics and resulted in the production of digital computers. So in a roundabout way physics left to itself did produce digital computers. We just don't tend to think of ourselves as being aspects of "physics left to itself". — wonderer1
I agree with Hume's criticism of induction, as indicated. I just don't agree with how he proceeds from there. That the problem exists is really quite evident, but I think that Hume moves in the wrong direction, toward portraying it as unresolvable rather than toward finding principles to resolve it. — Metaphysician Undercover
I would say that a computer is constructed such that, in a (weakly) emergent sense, the computer behaves as if it were governed by mathematics/software. However, it would be suggesting overdetermination to claim that the behavior of the computer is governed by mathematics as well as physics. (I'm not sure what "governed by mathematics" would mean.) — wonderer1
I can't speak for what others are thinking when they say that "a computer is performing a calculation", but what I am doing in that case is taking pragmatic advantage of speaking simplistically in terms of the emergent properties a computer was designed to have. — wonderer1
I'd say physics left to itself produced stars, which produced the elements of which the Earth is composed. Physics occurring on the Earth through evolution produced brains, and brains can reasonably be considered computers. (Though not digital computers.) The operation of brains is still physics and resulted in the production of digital computers. So in a roundabout way physics left to itself did produce digital computers. We just don't tend to think of ourselves as being aspects of "physics left to itself". — wonderer1
But I'm arguing the fallibility of science in general, because of its reliance on sense data, so this is just circular. — Metaphysician Undercover
I agree with Hume's criticism of induction, as indicated. I just don't agree with how he proceeds from there. That the problem exists is really quite evident, but I think that Hume moves in the wrong direction, toward portraying it as unresolvable rather than toward finding principles to resolve it. — Metaphysician Undercover
You misunderstand. What goes on in our brain is the physical basis of awareness, so if what goes on in our brains were any different, we would not have awareness. As to the causal effects of awareness, it would be contrary to physical laws if there were none. We just don't know what they are yet.
— Ludwig V
I don't know what you mean here. — Patterner
The physical events - which we think of in terms of neurons and brain structures, but which are ultimately reducible to particles movements and interactions - would still take place without our awareness. And our awareness doesn't add anything, because awareness has no causal ability. It's all physics. — Patterner
That's all there is, — Patterner
If something other than physics is producing computers - if something other than physics exists at all - it had to have come about other than by physics. — Patterner
The fallibility of science is just a facet of the fallibility of human beings. I'm guessing, but I guess you are taking this line because you want to escape Hume's problem. — Ludwig V
So you put your faith in reason because a rational principle would resolve Hume's problem? — Ludwig V
One facet is the theorems and deductions, which give transcendent certainty. — Ludwig V
When things go wrong, we cannot blame the rules which are by definition immune to mistakes and error. So we blame ourselves instead. In other words, reason has success logic. — Ludwig V
You can trust reason in the abstract sense, but human attempts to apply it are not immune from mistake. When you think you have the rational solution, you may be mistaken. I think of reasoning as a human activity, rather than an abstract structure, so perhaps I have a slightly different perspective from you. — Ludwig V
Well, I don't think that. I am speaking from my understanding of the reductionist view. Again, the idea that everything is reducible to physics. Our consciousness, our awareness, is nothing more than lumps of matter noticing what’s going on. As Annaka Harris put it:Let me try again. The physical events in our brain - let's say - cause (or maybe underlie) our awareness, so although they are not dependent on our awareness, they can't take place without our awareness. I can't imagine why you think our awareness has no causal ability. — Ludwig V
In his book, Gazzaniga says:Surprisingly, our consciousness also doesn’t appear to be involved in much of our own behavior, apart from bearing witness to it. A number of fascinating experiments have been conducted in this area, and the neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga describes some of them in detail in a wonderful chapter aptly titled “The Brain Knows Before You Do” in his book The Mind’s Past.
We human beings have a centric view of the world. We think our personal selves are directing the show most of the time. I argue that recent research shows this is not true but simply appears to be true because of a special device in our left brain called the interpreter. This one device creates the illusion that we are in charge of our actions, and it does so by interpreting our past-the prior actions of our nervous system.
I'm thinking of my Kurzweil quote. (Hofstadter also discusses it in I am a Strange Loop, but that's a longer quote.) Although it's easier to work with things at higher levels, everything reduces to physics. Ultimately, everything is the interaction of particles and the four forces.That's all there is,
— Patterner
I don't know what that means. — Ludwig V
There are philosophers who are pragmatists and pragmatism(s) is(are) philosophical positions inside philosophy, so I don't accept the dichotomy implicit above. It seems possible you are conflating epistemology in philosophy with the correspondance theory of truth.That is the difference between pragmatics and truth as providing the guiding principle. For reasons unknown, the philosopher seeks the truth. Some people feel comfortable with pragmaticism, and accept without doubt, the principles which currently serve them. The philosopher always wants to move ahead and proceed toward the truth. — Metaphysician Undercover
You're still going to need both and I was supporting what he had asserted around that. I am certainly not saying we can't be fooled by our senses, just as we can by reason. Unless you are a rationalist, there are going to be empirical facets to getting past illusions. You can absolutely decide that X, based on sense impressions, was false, but any demonstration of this will have empirical work around it.Reread my post, I said "when the two disagree" — Metaphysician Undercover
Science is empirical. It is based on observations. People will create hypotheses based on models, which were also built up on research using empirical processes as their center. One of the reasons the scientific process is open to revision is precisely because it is an empirical approach to gaining knowledge.It seems like you misunderstand the nature of science. The senses are not the foundation of science, science is based in hypotheses, theory. Your empiricist theory has misled you, another example of how human beings allow their senses to deceive them. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think consciousness is casual. But I'm hoping someone who agrees that it is, indeed, nothing but physics, but also thinks it is causal, can explain how they believe both things, since they appear to contradict each other. Because, otherwise, I'm looking at panprotopsychism. Which is an awkward ideas. Even if true, it doesn't seem to be anything about which we can do more than speculate. — Patterner
There are philosophers who are pragmatists and pragmatism(s) is(are) philosophical positions inside philosophy, so I don't accept the dichotomy implicit above. It seems possible you are conflating epistemology in philosophy with the correspondance theory of truth.
I was also reacting to what I think is overly binary in saying he 'deceived himself'. — Bylaw
You're still going to need both and I was supporting what he had asserted around that. I am certainly not saying we can't be fooled by our senses, just as we can by reason. Unless you are a rationalist, there are going to be empirical facets to getting past illusions. You can absolutely decide that X, based on sense impressions, was false, but any demonstration of this will have empirical work around it. — Bylaw
Science is empirical. It is based on observations. — Bylaw
And, hey, that was a kind of slimy way to talk to me. I was not impolite to you so you didn't need to go ad hom. And before I am told I don't know what ad hom means, yes, you didn't make a formal ad hom fallacy, but it was definitely 'to the man.' And the first paragraph was also slimy though less direct. — Bylaw
Talk about senses in the sense of sense of oneself getting in the way of things. — Bylaw
I'm referring to the idea of a category. Physics explains everything in the category of the physical and nothing in any other category. So most radical reductionists are making a category mistake. The best way I can think of to explain this is by quoting the Wikipedia entry "Category mistakes":-
The term "category-mistake" was introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind (1949) . . .
The phrase is introduced in the first chapter. The first example is of a visitor to Oxford. The visitor, upon viewing the colleges and library, reportedly inquired "But where is the University?" The visitor's mistake is presuming that a University is part of the category "units of physical infrastructure" rather than that of an "institution". Ryle's second example is of a child witnessing the march-past of a division of soldiers. After having had battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc. pointed out, the child asks when is the division going to appear. "The march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons and a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division." (Ryle's italics) His third example is of a foreigner being shown a cricket match. After being pointed out batsmen, bowlers and fielders, the foreigner asks: "who is left to contribute the famous element of team-spirit?" He goes on to argue that the Cartesian dualism of mind and body rests on a category mistake. — Ludwig V
If we look at human activities as fallible, such that this is necessary, or essential to all human activities, then we can conclude that reasoning, or "reason" is necessarily fallible, through deductive logic. — Metaphysician Undercover
I think consciousness is casual. — Patterner
Our consciousness, our awareness, is nothing more than lumps of matter noticing what’s going on. — Patterner
Love your quartets, btw. — Patterner
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