I've always seen this idea as a deliberate separation of things that are meant to exist in unison. I believe that the spiritual and material are both true and have value. We are not mindless zombies, nor are we floating ghosts. We are humans. — Kasperanza

Reality certainly appears to have a spiritual and material aspect.

↪RogueAI
When you observe this website you observe philosophical discussions.
— RogueAI

Which are no more than a pattern of of letters. Which are no more than than a pattern of lights on your screen lighting up. Etc. — khaled

Well, this gets to the heart of my problem with materialist reductionism: it strips the world of meaning. You are claiming that this website is nothing more than computer code. OK, so the only difference between Plato's Republic and Lady Chatterly's Lover is the way the matter is arranged? Really? The only difference between this place and Breitbart is the amount/pattern of little switches turning off and on? Maybe you believe that, but if someone asked you to describe this website, I bet you wouldn't talk about computer code. You would say it's a website where people discuss philosophy. Because that's what it is!

The position you take is extremely counterintuitive and certainly does not map on to the way people talk. It also entails that a physicalist account of pain is a necessary AND sufficient definition for pain. I think that's preposterous. Any definition of pain has to include that it hurts. It feels bad. The physicalist account of pain doesn't mention the mental component of pain, and I think it becomes an absurdity by leaving subjective experience out of the definition and claiming it's a complete definition. I mean, if an alien asked you "what's pain?", you wouldn't talk about it hurting and feeling bad? Of course you would. That would be the first thing you would talk about.

Because she's never seen red before. No new knowledge was gained in the usual sense. Because again, in this case "know" has 2 meanings. There is the know in "know pythagorean's theorem" and the know in "know red". The latter simply means seeing something red. By the latter meaning, mary doesn't know red. Even if she knows everything about seeing red in the former meaning. No new knowledge in the former meaning is gained. The surprise comes from seeing red for the first time — khaled

You're arguing my case. There are indeed two kinds of knowledge going on in Mary's room: book knowledge and experiential knowledge. Are you sure you want to argue in favor of the existence of experiential knowledge? I certainly think it's a thing, but you're going to have trouble reconciling the existence of experiential knowledge in a purely physical world.

After reading ahead, I see we're too far apart on basic principles. You're willing to sacrifice meaning. I'm not. Sorry for how late the reply was! And the video I linked is really good.

PBS's Closer to Truth just released a new video that covers a lot of what's talked about in this thread:
"What is the Mind-Body Problem? | Episode 205 | Closer To Truth"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TnBjLmQawQ

And I saved the best for last. A blatant appeal to authority:

"A more serious objection to Mind-Brain Type Identity, one that to this day has not been satisfactorily resolved, concerns various non-intensional properties of mental states (on the one hand), and physical states (on the other). After-images, for example, may be green or purple in color, but nobody could reasonably claim that states of the brain are green or purple."
https://iep.utm.edu/identity/#H2

I think they do a good job (far better than I could) explaining it. I'm done for the night! Great discussion, Khaled. I'll reply tomorrow.

I'm talking about the website itself. Is the website more than the code? No. — khaled

Of course it is! Is the only thing you discover when you observe this website is that it's just computer code? Absurd. When you observe this website you observe philosophical discussions. You cannot claim that this forum/website/location in cyberspace is identical to computer code. That is a necessary, but not sufficient definition. It totally misses the fact that this is ALSO a place where people meet and discuss philosophy.

↪RogueAI
Is Mary surprised when she sees red?
— RogueAI

Yes. — khaled

Why is Mary surprised? She already knows everything there is to know about seeing red.

Maybe a car is a better analogy. We can say "This car can move at X km/h", without knowing anything about the engine or how cars are built. — khaled

Yes, but you're not claiming the car is identical to "moving at X km/h". I think what you're trying to say is that Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus, so talk of Phosphorus is talk of Hesperus even if the person has never heard of Hesperus. To which I would reply that that can be resolved by simply pointing out the labelling error going on.

Not so with ancient people meaningfully talking about their experiences. If experiences = brain configurations, then talk of experiences is talk of brain configurations and it's not just a labelling error going on. Ancient peoples had no idea what the brain even did. They were able to communicate meaningfully about their minds without exchanging any other meaningful communication, mislabeled or otherwise. If mental states = configurations of matter, and two people are meaningfully talking about their mental states, there should be meaningful communication about neurons and chemicals and action potentials and what not, but of course there's not. There's communication going on ONLY about mental states, which should not be the case if mental states are identical to anything else.

Me: A car is actually this specific combination of parts

You: So why is a car not this other specific combination of parts?

Does that make sense to you? How would you begin to answer that question? We can agree that a car is a combination of parts and no more yes? Engine, wheels, steering wheel, etc. Now if someone asks you "Ok but why is a car not a combination of biscuits, chocolate, and cream" how do you respond to them?

Explain to me why a car is a combination of parts (engine, wheels, steering wheel, etc) and not (biscuits, chocolate and cream), then I'll explain to you why stubbing your toe is pattern ABC not XYZ ok? — khaled

I think I addressed this with the Hesperus/Phospherus example.

Rogue AI: Are these pattenrs substrate dependent
— khaled

No I don't think so, but some define them as such. That's what I meant.

But you're not sure. So how would you go about verifying whether anything other than neurons can be conscious? You have a definition that neural state XYZ is the same as tasting vanilla ice cream. I will grant you there's neural correlates to experience and that's a definite plus for materialism and a problem for idealism.

So, you start with a prima facie advantage that the brain sure seems involved in consciousness (I think this grants you a prima facie casual connection between mental and physical states, and not an identity relationship). But now you have to prove whether brains alone are conscious. And of course you can't. There's no way in principle to verify the consciousness of anything outside yourself. Whatever physicalist theory of consciousness emerges, a scientist is going to eventually point to a machine and say, "that thing is doing the same thing brains do, so it's conscious." But you already admitted you don't know if consciousness is substrate dependent. So how is that scientist going to verify whether the machine that's functionally equivalent to a human brain is conscious or not? She can't. Science cannot give us the answer. I think that has implications. I think the above also answers the part I snipped out.

Let me ask you on the other hand, supposedly consciousness is an immaterial mind. How can you tell that your duplicate has an immaterial mind? You can't make a detector for it, because it's immaterial. So how could you tell? Or can you not tell? — khaled

I can't tell if there is more than one conscious mind or not. That is different than the situation the materialist finds herself in. Not only can she not disprove solipsism, she can't prove the material stuff she thinks brains are made of even exists (it's a non-verifiable belief), and she also can't prove whether a machine duplicate of a brain is conscious or not. I am not the in same boat. I only claim that mind and thought and consciousness exist. Unlike matter, we know that mind and thought and consciousness exist. My only problem is whether solipsism is true or not.

No because the meaning of "know" in both instances is different. When we tell someone "You don't know X emotion" or X color we mean "You haven't had X emotion" or seen X color, not "You don't know the neurological basis for X emotion". If the latter was what we meant we woudn't be able to talk about emotions or colors without knowing the neurology, yet we do so all the time. In the same way that you can use this site without knowing the code, so can we talk about emotions without knowing the neurology, and vice versa, EVEN THOUGH the emotion is no more than a neurological pattern (and the site is no more than the code). So no, Mary doesn't know red, even though she knows everything physical about seeing red. — khaled

At t1, Mary has never seen red before
At t2 Mary learns all the physical facts about seeing red
At t3, Mary sees red for the first time.
Is Mary surprised when she sees red?

Same as above. Two people talking thephilosophyforum need not know about the code that comprises the site. Even though the site is no more than the code, or do we disagree there? Is there something more to this site than its code? Something that you need to add to the code to get thephilosopphyforum? I've already mentioned this previously: — khaled

Are you saying the philosophy forum is identical to a computer code? I don't agree with that. The forum is computer code and a community of people talking about philosophy. Don't you agree that defining the forum as purely computer code is an incomplete definition?

You have no explanation for why certain patterns of matter are identical to the pain of stubbing a toe
— RogueAI

Do you have an explanation for why vanilla ice cream is vanilla ice cream? — khaled

I'm not a materialist. I'm not claiming the taste of vanilla ice cream is anything other than the taste of vanilla ice cream. YOU are saying the taste of vanilla ice cream is actually pattern of matter A,B,C. YOU must then provide an explanation for why pattern of matter A,B,C is the taste of vanilla ice cream and not pattern of matter X,Y,Z or E,F,G.

Are these pattenrs substrate dependent
— RogueAI

Definitional. — khaled

Oh, that's easy. OK, consciousness is an immaterial mind.

Definitional.

Again with the dualist view, suggesting there is a real object or property called "consciousness" that is added to physical stuff, that we can detect. There is no such thing. — khaled

There is no real property called consciousness??? Are you conscious, Khaled? Yes. Now imagine you have a mechanical duplicate of your own working brain. Is it conscious? If no, why not? If yes, how would you prove it? "Definitional" does not cut it. YOU are asserting that the machine has a property you admit you have: consciousness. YOU need to be able to prove that somehow.

Do you claim that the pain of stubbing your toe is identical to some configuration/pattern of matter?
— RogueAI

Yes. — khaled

Ok, I have problems with that:
1. Mary's room: You're committed to saying that Mary can know what it's like to see red without having the mental experience "seeing red". I think that's a huge problem for you. It's certainly counter-intuitive.
2. The opposite of Mary's room: You're committed to saying that two people meaningfully talking about their mental states are also meaningfully talking about configurations of brain matter, since mental state = certain configuration of brain matter. So, two Ancient Greeks meaningfully talking about what bad days they had and how depressed they are are also meaningfully talking about configurations of brain matter? Again, very counter-intuitive.
3. You have no explanation for why certain patterns of matter are identical to the pain of stubbing a toe, while other patterns of matter are identical to the joy of a good book, while other patterns are identical to no experience at all.
4. Are these pattenrs substrate dependent, and how would you verify whether a non-organic pattern of matter that you conclude is conscious is actually conscious?

Actually, we can ditch the whole mental state/brain state thing. Do you claim that the pain of stubbing your toe is identical to some configuration/pattern of matter?

No one said that minds are identical to brains, not even physicalists. — khaled

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

"The identity theory of mind holds that states and processes of the mind are identical to states and processes of the brain."

Either brain states are identical to mental states or they're not. You seem to be claiming a mental state is identical to a brain state "pattern".

Minds are patterns of brains. They are not a separate sort of thing. — khaled

Let's take the mental state: stubbing your state. Is the brain state that corresponds to "stubbing your toe" identical to the mental state "stubbing your toe"?

No I'm claiming that people can have knowledge of their minds but not their brains. — khaled

Then minds are not identical to brains. How are they different?

So, that being said, did ancient people who had knowledge of their minds also have knowledge of their brains? — RogueAI

Firstly no, — khaled

You're claiming ancient people did NOT have knowledge of their own minds?

Could a conscious mind not be introspective...I wouldn't be able to articulate this well, but I have a feeling consciousness entails a certain amount of introspection.

My wife thinks she has a similar argument:
1. Materialism means there is no free will
2. If there's no free will, we have no choice in what we believe nor can we decide whether evidence is good or not
3. If we have no choice in what we believe and/or no way to decide whether evidence is good or bad, knowledge is impossible.
4. Knowledge is possible, therefore materialism is false.

First off, I think consciousness is a neurological state. — khaled

If X(consciousness) = Y(neurological state), then knowledge of X should entail knowledge of Y. For example, knowledge of the behaviors of bachelors would necessarily lead to knowledge of the behaviors of unmarried men, since they're the same thing.

So, that being said, did ancient people who had knowledge of their minds also have knowledge of their brains?

Do you think computers will eventually become conscious (or already are)?

it's just that there is a pattern, and we call that pattern mind. — khaled

Why do some patterns of brain activity result in conscious awareness while others (the vast majority of what the brain does) don't?

I'm having a hard time accepting the possibility of a conscious being not being aware (or having a fake awareness) of their own consciousness. The justification for their true belief "I am conscious" would be the immediacy and undeniability of their own consciousness.

Knowledge is justified true belief, but it also requires a knower and what is known. I agree with you that accidental/bot-built collections of matter aren't the sorts of things that can be "knowers", but conscious beings are the sorts of things that are knowers. If a bot-built collection of matter somehow gives rise to a conscious mind, then I think you're going to have something that is capable of awareness and belief, at least of its own consciousness.

Isn't a precondition to any of these kinds of theories an explanation for how neuron arrangements and activity sometimes give rise to conscious awareness and sometimes don't?

No.

I mean Yes. I misread the question.

Brains can't produce consciousness, and I am conscious, so I know that I am not a physical brain-in-a-vat.

We ourselves could in principle be in that situation, though I don't think we can coherently take ourselves to be. — Bartricks

You're saying the following is false? "For any x, if x is conscious, x has a justified true belief that x is conscious." Is your claim that if x is the product of chance (or bot-built), x can't have a justified true belief about anything, even its own consciousness?

I agree with that and the easiest way for me to see it is in the case of simulations. The computer running a simulation is nothing but a collection of electric switches, and no matter how you arrange those switches, no matter how many there are, how complex the configuration, how much current you use, the claim that a collection of switches could know anything is absurd. A collection of electric switches isn't the sort of thing that can have beliefs. There's a category error going on there. And, of course, if that applies to collections of switches, it's going to apply to collections of neurons as well.

The universe pre-existent substratum would be left. — Nelson E Garcia

What are the properties of this substratum?

If all minds in the universe disappeared, what would be left?

no mind will be aware of anything if its mental states are the product of mindless processes - any mindless process, be it total chance or a process of blind natural selection. — Bartricks

Isn't a mind always aware of at least one thing, though? The Cartesian truth that it is a conscious mind? So if evolutionary forces can produce a brain that has mental states, that's going to result in some awareness, if only of the Cartesian sort, which is why I asked if Boltzmann brains are mindless or not.

They're begging the question. I have not argued here that minds are incapable of being or emerging from matter. I have argued that if the faculties such a mind possesses are the product of blind forces then they will not be able to give the mind any awareness of anything. — Bartricks

Are you claiming that a Boltzmann brain would have a mind (but not be aware of anything) or would it be mindless? A P-zombie, in other words.

So mental states could still exist, but none of them would qualify as states of awareness. — Bartricks

Do you mean a subconscious mental event could be going on?

:100:

A change in a law would raise the question, what changed it? — Kenosha Kid

A law that doesn't change also raises questions: why doesn't the law change?

I guess so?
Presently, "don't know" seems to be the honest response, the only honest response, at least as far as any comprehensive understanding goes. — jorndoe

I think that would have been OK 80 years ago, or even 50 years ago, but it would seem that at this point in time, with all the advances that have been made in various fields, an atheist should have something to say, at least in principle, about how their brains produce their minds. There should at least be a hint of an answer by now. So, I think the "don't know" answer has become a problem.

Typically, the response is a bit like that of idealism: mind is instead just assumed to be irreducibly basic, and so not explainable in terms of anything else in the first place. — jorndoe

Yes, by not positing the existence of matter, the idealist avoids the whole mind/body problem. Like I said earlier, I don't know any atheists that are idealists, though. I guess it's possible to be an atheist idealist, but I think idealism has theistic implications. But yes, an atheist idealist would not have to explain how brains produce consciousness because the atheist idealist doesn't believe that brains exist as anything other than ideas.

With theism, there's that vague "supernatural" or "magical" type undertone as well, which could be raised to explain anything, and thus explains nothing.

Well, theistic idealism does not have to explain the mind-body problem because it asserts there are no bodies. Traditional theism (bodies and souls existing) just kicks the explanation for consciousness up a level: matter produces consciousness because God does it somehow. That's not a good explanation, but if time goes on, and 100 years from now physicalist atheists still can't solve the mind/body problem, the "God did it" hypothesis is going to be taken more seriously.

Levine's explanatory gap / Chalmers' consciousness conundrum seems to stuff a wedge in between either explaining the other (which isn't a contradiction, but rather a gap), yet that's not related to theism in particular. — jorndoe

Well, as I said, if enough time goes by and the atheist materialist/physicalist project of explaining everything in terms of matter/energy is still struggling with an explanation for how brains produce minds, people will start turning to other explanations, and "God does it" will be one of them.

Just asserting that we can't acquire more understanding (say, in some sort of "physicalistic" terms), even in principle, won't do. — jorndoe

But if it's true that physicalism can't, in principle, explain something as fundamental as minds/consciousness, it's going to take a hit epistemically, and the competitor theories of reality (dualism/idealism), which have theistic implications, are going to get a bump from physicalism's failure.

Atheism might not entail physicalism, but that's certainly what every atheist I've ever encountered believes, so for the materialistic/physicalistic atheist, they have to have some explanation for how brains produce consciousness. The ongoing failure in this area has been (and is going to be) a problem for the kind of atheist I referred to.

What if a dualist claimed that when you get the right kind of complexity/sufficient complexity (e.g., a working organic brain, an intricate enough computer) it produces an immaterial mind that has awareness?

What do you consider the three best arguments against cosmic mind/one mind type idealism?

Wouldn't your argument preclude a Boltzmann Brain from being aware?

Hence, if Bart holds that we do indeed live in a world in which contradictions are possible, reason becomes impossiblein this world. — Banno

If you amend that to "we do indeed live in a world in which [Godly] contradictions are possible", then if God is the only one that can do contradictions, reason is still possible for us, since we need not fear being wrong by a Godly contradiction(s).

If it is inaccessible, then it's of no consequence. — Banno

Yes, but the claim was about possibility, not consequence. Is it possible God could draw a square circle in some way that is inconceivable to us? I'm not ready to rule out that possibility. I admit that it would be of no consequence to me.

In other words, even given that the evolutionist can't do it, who exactly can say that we know the world "as it is"? How would they ever know when they only have access to the way the world seems, just like the rest of us? They would just have to arbitrarily claim that their representations are not faulty. The evolutionist at least has a weak argument for why they may not be faulty (that in general, an accurate representation of reality is better for survival, even if sometimes it isn't) — khaled

That's a good point.

I have to think about that. Maybe there is a mode of reality inaccessible to me where square circles are possible in some way I can't conceive of. I don't agree strongly with Bart on that. I think he might be right, though.

I don't either. Where I was going with it was: could the evolutionist say that we are justified in claiming we are aware of the world (we have justified true beliefs about the world), because those whose beliefs about the world didn't map on to reality (those who had false beliefs about the world) were weeded out by natural selection. So the fact that we're here after that long weeding out process is evidence that we have an innate ability for our beliefs to correspond to reality, and this innate ability, arrived at through evolution alone, would justify the claim: we are aware of the world.

Since you were talking about knowledge:

Suppose there's a world where, by fantastic coincidence, erosion patterns just happen to spell out (in a language the people understand) mathematical/scientific truths, and this has been going on since time immemorial. Also, by fantastic coincidence, erosion patterns that take the form of language never give false information- they're always accurate. Eventually the people of this world accumulate a huge store of accurate information about their world. But could it ever be said they know about their world?

What is your view, briefly?

Keep in mind that Bart thinks God can create a square circle. — Banno

I actually agree with him. I'm not prepared, with my evolved little monkey brain, to say definitively what a god can/can't do.