Heh. You gotta read along with us! — Moliere

It's been feeling too much like coming home from work to go back to work. I talk to electrical engineers all day long. :joke:

I'm not seeing it. — Banno

Ah, ok. Like I said, it was very much a guess.

I thought there might be some relevant analogies.

And fuck knows what is happening in chapter eleven, where moving out of a plane is equated with bending time... or something. — Banno

I haven't read past the introduction, but perhaps this video conveys something of relevance?

Very much a guess.

...but one of the problems often brought forth by the substance dualist is that there is not empirical proof that brain state X always causes behavior Y because fMRI results do not show that for every instance of behavior Y the exact areas of the brain show activity. — Hanover

Yes. fMRI is far from being a technology capable of showing "exact" areas of the brain, much less the enormous amount of dynamic activity involved in the massively parallel information processing going on in there.

Consider this photo with motion blur and add focus blur with your imagination.



Then consider asking whether the image you are imagining is sufficient to prove that T. Clark picked your pocket.

Wherever we might draw a line representing "sufficient data for neuroscience to comprehensively explain consciousness", fMRI scans are a long way from crossing that line. Not to say that neuroscience hasn't come a long way, or that fMRI isn't an awesome achievement for social primates like ourselves.

On the other hand, there are lots of other avenues of empirical investigation that all seem to be pointing in the same direction. So the scientific picture might be seen as analogous to a jigsaw puzzle with the edges fully completed. Tough competition for dualists, on the empirical evidence front.

As with a lot of jargon, philosophical or otherwise, is "supervenience" really needed? What's wrong with "dependence?" — T Clark

Interesting question. I don't think I've ever used the word supervenience in discussions with other electrical engineers, although other EEs certainly have to understand the notion of supervenience regardless of whether they have any familiarity with the word.

I do think using "supervenience" is useful in philosophy however, to convey a rather specific sort of dependency. For example I might say, "My minor children are dependent on me.", but I wouldn't say, "My minor children are supervenient on me."

There isn't any one mainstream theory for this. Rather, there is a constellation of widely variant theories that focus on anything from "all complex enough computation results in experience," to "certain energy patterns = experience," to panpsychism, to brainwaves, to a quantum level explanations. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Seems to me the kind of situation we would expect in light of less than adequate empirical data, and all the more reason to recognize the low spatial and temporal resolution of the empirical data available at present.

What is surprising is that, even if we could resolve individual synapses, we aren't sure this would give us an answer. That is, most theories are such that, even if we magically had that sort of resolution, they couldn't tell us "look for X and X will show you if a thing is conscious or not." — Count Timothy von Icarus

To me it seems unsurprising that speculation in the absence of sufficient empirical data fails to yield definitive criteria for identifying the physical nature of consciousness.

Would you elaborate on why you find the situation surprising?

When a thing is exactly the same as a duck from all external appearances including
a blood test of DNA, then you can tell it is actually a space alien when it telepathically
invades your thoughts screaming that it <is> a space alien. — PL Olcott

When you believe that there is an alien, disguised as a duck, screaming into your head telepathically, there might be deeper epistemic concerns than Gettier problems.

And this then also neatly describes why consciousness is so impossible to find in all our myriad brain scans. This is puzzling because we think we should have the resolution of scans we need to be able to identify what it is that "causes," consciousness. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I had overlooked this until excerpted it.

Googling around, the smallest estimate of neuron count per fMRI voxel that I found is ~10,000. Mr. Spock would see our current fMRI technology as working with stone knives and bearskins.

If we were approaching the ability to resolve all the individual synapses in a brain we might be approaching sufficient resolution, but we are a long long way from that sort of resolution, and that's only talking spatial resolution. The temporal resolution of fMRI leaves much to be desired as well.

Non-biogenic methane is a different issue. — Agree to Disagree

I suspect that when I went back to university to do a 2nd degree you were probably still in nappies (or if you are American, still in diapers). — Agree to Disagree

Seems kind of silly to think that matters much in this discussion, when you are constantly demonstrating that you are a pretender to scientific understanding. Does, "Hesperus is Phosphorus", help?

Notice how close this is getting to the dictum of classical metaphysics - that ‘to be is to be intelligible’. — Wayfarer

What is the danger of getting close to the dictum?

Plus, paired with findings that give rise to the popularity of computational theory of mind, the view of computation as something that only occurs in sentient consciousness starts to get a little wonky. Presumably, I am computing if I am not a math wiz and have to consciously think about the steps involved in summing some list of figures. But then am I not computing if the entire process happens unconsciously and I just know the outcome by glancing at the symbols? Do I compute when I consciously try to read French, but acomputationally experience when the meanings of English words fly into my awareness with no conscious effort? If unconconcious computation is possible within a human, it seems harder to justify it not existing outside the mind. But then knowing the answer to 3+7, 2+2, etc. doesn't seem to require anything conscious or intentional on our part. — Count Timothy von Icarus

:up:

I think it might be the case that experience is special.
— chiknsld

Do you mean "special" in the sense of special relativity? — Benj96

Or maybe, the life experience through which information gets into our brains is special?

It’s the effect of propaganda…or pure stupidity. — Mikie

Or both. It doesn't seem to require much intelligence to be a propaganda parrot.

Methane oxidizes to CO2 after about 12 years. — frank

Thanks. That gives me a clearer picture of what is under consideration.

Since I know the outline, it is easy to know where each new sentence should go. In this way, bit by bit, I fill out the story, until I feel all the gaps are filled. — hypericin

Not someone with any literary writing experience to speak of myself, but I find that fascinating. I have a hard time imagining myself writing in such a way at the sentence level. I would love to learn more.

If you don't mind me asking... Do you think it is a matter of artistically focusing on crafting your language at the sentence level as an aesthetic choice, or would you describe it differently?

Now we'll add a cattle farm in Mexico, and it's truly net zero, which means that after 12 years, its output is entirely absorbed by its input. — frank

What is the proposal for how atmospheric methane is absorbed by the farm? As I understand it, plants don't make use of atmospheric methane as they make use of atmospheric CO2. (Although some species of bacteria metabolize methane.)

1. Intuitions (i.e., intellectual seemings): one ought to take as true what intellectual strikes them as being the case unless sufficient evidence has been prevented that demonstrates the invalidity of it. — Bob Ross

I have a more complicated perspective on intuitions.

Intuition is foundational to our thought and taking intuitions as true is something we do as fast thinking on autopilot. Being creatures that sometimes need to act quickly in emergencies, we sometimes need to act on intuitions without questioning them.

That said, there is a lot of epistemic value in questioning/testing intuitions when we have the luxury of doing so, because over the long term our intuitions can evolve to new and better intuitions as a consequence of such questioning/testing.

Another way of looking at intuitions, is as being the conclusions we jump to, and I expect we all have experience with jumping to wrong conclusions and can recognize value in reducing the frequency with which we jump to wrong conclusions.

I'm a big advocate for honing one's intuitions, and leaving that honing to other people's presentation of contradictory evidence seems excessively passive to me. An ability to refine one's intutions over time seems to me to be fairly crucial to philosophy and science, and inability to learn from philosophy and science looks looks to me as if it is strongly tied to an inability or unwillingness to question one's intuitions.

This causes all synthetic expressions of language to be rejected
as knowledge. — PL Olcott

You seem to have a weird notion of causality to me. Nothing is causing me to reject synthetic expressions of language as knowledge.

Maybe you can rephrase that?

Gettier cases prove that a reasonable approximation of knowledge
sometimes diverges from actual knowledge. — PL Olcott

Isaac Asimov's essay, The Relativity of Wrong, might be of interest.

I see lots of examples of science gaining some grasp of cognition and psychology in your list but none that indicate an understanding of consciousness. — FrancisRay

If you don't see cognition and psychology as significant aspects of consciousness, then I don't know what you are referring to with the word "consciousness".

We know a bit about anesthetics, as you say, but this tells us nothing nothing about consciousness. — FrancisRay

That looks like black and white thinking to me. Why think that knowing a bit about the effects of anesthetics doesn't tell us a bit about consciousness. Why think that consciousness is something that might be well understood without knowing all sorts of bits?

Did anyone in this discussion indicate or imply that this isn't true? I don't think so. — T Clark

Not that I know of, but I saw Tobias' point as worth emphasizing.

So, an appeal to evolutionary theory. But that is not really a philosophy, even though it's often taken as such - it's a biological theory, and viewing motivation solely through that lens is biological reductionism. — Quixodian

Well, I'm glad I don't view motivation solely through that lens. It's important to be able to consider things from a variety of perspectives, and to lack the ability to look at things from an evolutionary perspective is is to be intellectually impoverished.

'People can perform extraordinary acts of altruism, including kindness toward other species — or they can utterly fail to be altruistic, even toward their own children. So whatever tendencies we may have inherited leave ample room for variation; our choices will determine which end of the spectrum we approach. — Quixodian

Sure. There is no incompatibility between being informed about our evolutionary history and recognizing the existence of altruism, as is illustrated (in several ways) by this love story/obituary written by Jerry Coyne - author of Why Evolution Is True.

On the other hand, understanding that there is variation in people's neurological wiring resulting from humanity's evolutionary history helps in understanding psychopathy, and that there is only so much that nurture can do.

This is where ethical discourse comes in — not in explaining how we’re “built,” but in deliberating on our own future acts. Should I cheat on this test? Should I give this stranger a ride? Knowing how my selfish and altruistic feelings evolved doesn’t help me decide at all. — Quixodian

Do you know through experience with having the sort of knowledge of evolutionary psychology that you are referring to, that it does not help "at all"? That is not my experience.

I think your opinion of what it takes to be a philosopher is a bit high-falutin. — T Clark

Perhaps, but I think brings up an important point with the following quote, in that developing skills at communicating about philosophical topics requires relevant skill developing social experiences including exposure to unfamiliar ways of looking at things.

An objection you could then make is: "But what if someone plays out all the arguments in their head?". I would then say "That is nigh impossible to do, because it requires a brain that would outmatch all these brains that one could bring into play when one would conduct philosophy in a social group". That is why also philosophy was developed in conversation with others. — Tobias

I.e. two heads are better than one.

I don't think it necessities omnipotence for knowledge. For example, the Dude in the Big Lebowski knows "he's had a hard day and he fucking hates the Eagles man." He can't be wrong about this because his knowing he hates the Eagles necessitates that it is the case that he hates the Eagles. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I can't pragmatically argue with that. :up:

Though it is inconceivable that someone could hate the Eagles. So I suspect The Dude might be a fictional character.

Unless at least one mind has a belief B about subject S such that the justification of this belief necessitates its truth then B is not an element of {knowledge} because no one knows it. — PL Olcott

I am skeptical towards justificationism/foundationalism. It looks to me like human attempts at justification are always built on intuitions which are not in themselves logically justified. (Which is not to say that intuitions cannot be extremely reliable.)

I think that in the strictest sense the, JTB definition of knowledge would require a sort of intuition free omniscient ability to construct logical justifications that is not available to social primates like us. Which is not to say the notion of human knowledge is something we should toss, but that we should recognize that JTB is insufficient as a way of understanding knowledge.

I'd love to have a go at it, but I too find it daunting. A logician, a mathematician, and an electrical engineer would be useful contributors. Anyone? — unenlightened

I read the prefaces and the introduction, and I'm an electrical engineer who would be happy to contribute to such a thread if I saw a way to do so. I'm not sure I'm willing to make the time commitment of reading the whole book, although sufficiently interesting contributions from other posters might compel me to do so. :wink:

There needs to be rigor in that thinking and that is hard to acquire on your own. Nigh impossible I would think. — Tobias

That is a good point. Although I think an appreciation for critical thinking and reading can get people a long way.

When knowledge is defined as a justified true belief such that the justification necessitates the truth of the belief then the Gettier problem is no longer possible. — PL Olcott

So when knowledge is defined as something that can only be had by an omniscient being there is no Gettier problem?

Seems a bit drastic to me to define knowledge out of the range of humans to avoid Gettier problems.

In the exploration of the topic of nihilism, Nietszche is often cited, which puts me at a disadvantage as I am not well acquainted with his writings. But even in terms of general knowledge, his proclamation of the death of God is viewed as a kind of harbinger of the advent of nihilism, on the grounds that it undermines the basis of long-held and deeply-cherished beliefs and doctrines about the ultimate aim of life. — Quixodian

Yeah, "nihilism" has been used as a boogeyman for a long while now. It's like the Reefer Madness of philosophy. But can we set aside such arguments from consequences for now and talk about the intellectual position of moral nihilism?

There is a current of thought in modern scientific culture that life itself is a kind of chemical reaction, formed as a consequence of physical causes and operating according to the survival algorithm comprising the neo-darwinian synthesis. Life originates as a kind of biochemical fluke, and human beings an accidental by-product. — Quixodian

It's a tad bit more complex than that, but yes. There is a huge amount of evidence, the existence of which would be a fluke if something along the lines of that narrative hasn't occurred.

Suffice to say, it surfaces as the widely-held feeling that life has no inherent meaning or significance, often accompanied with a encouragement to make the heroic effort to give it the meaning of your own

I don't think it does suffice to simply say that.

For one thing, it looks to me as if that is an appeal to consequences. The fact that some people might experience such a psychological condition doesn't play any obvious role in determing whether or not there is some ultimate aim of life.

Finding things meaningful is an evolved aspect of our psychology. There is no need for things to be 'ultimately meaningful' in order for us to be creatures that find things meaningful. Not to say there aren't people in situations where they find it difficult to find things meaningful, but I think that for most of us most of the time, finding things meaningful comes fairly naturally.

To start at philosophy one should.... — Moliere

Be homo sapiens. Other species mostly suck at it, and don't get me started on the inarticulacy of rocks.

The problem that introduces is nihilism. Nihilism doesn't have to present itself in a very dramatic form, like a deep sense of foreboding or dread. It can simply manifest as the sense that nothing really matters. So if death nullifies or negates any differences between what beings do in life, that amounts to a form of nihilism, as Neitszche predicted (although of course he didn't believe in trying to cling to anything like belief in an after-life.) — Quixodian

Did you add to your post after I asked my question?

You seem to be speaking of nihilism as a sort of psychological condition rather than as a philosophical perspective. Is that what you intended?

The problem that introduces is nihilism. — Quixodian

How is that supposed to be a problem?

I should have said 'physical' sciences. With this qualifier I'd say the same in an academic journal if you wish and wouldn't be the first to do so. — FrancisRay

Lot's of things get posted in academic journals by people who don't know the subject they are talking about as well as one might wish. I'm not seeing a need for more of that.

I've already presented the stats of relevant "hidebound" academics - those more likely to have have put significant scholarly effort into becoming informed about science which is of relevance to philosophy of mind, rather than choosing ignorant denial of the relevance of science.

Consider this quote from the home page of The Science of Consciousness Conference.

The study of human consciousness is one of science's last great frontiers.
The Science of Consciousness (TSC) is an interdisciplinary conference emphasizing broad and rigorous approaches to all aspects of the study and understanding of conscious awareness. Topical areas include neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, biology, quantum physics, meditation and altered states, machine consciousness, culture and experiential phenomenology.

As you can see, knowledge of meditation is only one aspect of what is involved in being informed about this very interdisciplinary subject.

Do you have a significant example of how science has helped us understand consciousness? — FrancisRay

Sure,

Science has helped humanity understand the ability of consciousness to be shut down, in the sense of ansthesia.

Science has helped humanity develop some understanding of the effects of a variety of mind altering physical substances.

Science has learned much about the limits of people's conscious perception. Such scientific understanding leads to the wide variety of optical and other sensory illusions which can be seen today.

I could go on like this forever, if not for my strong tendency to get bored and frustrated with people who want to be spoon fed rather than go educate themselves.

At this tome I know of no scientist who claims any understand of it except for the rare ones outlier who explores meditation and mysticism. . . — FrancisRay

Not something to be bragging about.

What current understanding? the natural sciences have no method for acquiring an understanding — FrancisRay

He says in a post on an internet forum.

There is still an issue I have with physicalism. Physical matter is restricted to the physical present. Our mental content can deal with past, present and future. Doesn't this stepping outside the physical present make mental content different in kind from physical matter? — Mark Nyquist

It sounds like differences in theories of time is playing a big role in this for you. Do you consider yourself to be a presentist, and if so, are you aware that presentism is problematic in light of all the evidence supporting relativity?

I'm not really interested in getting into an involved discussion of theories of time, so I hope you will look through that link. In any case, it isn't a logical problem for a physicalism, that you hold to a theory of time which is incompatible with physicalism. That only poses a problem for your ability to recognise the merits of a physicalist point of view.

Without brains nature on it's own would have no mechanisms to know the past or affect the future. — Mark Nyquist

Why think nature wouldn't have the ability to affect the future without brains existing? Do you think the Sun's gravitational field didn't affect the course through space taken by the Earth before there were brains?

So with brains something extra has been added to the mix that strict physicalism (as a philosophy) doesn't permit. — Mark Nyquist

I'd say the evolution of brains added what we might call new classes of physical processes to what occurs in the universe, although that is rather circular as it dependent on there being brains to classify physical processes into different sorts.

Regardless, I think you need to develop a more accurate picture of what things look like from a physicalist perspective before you will be in a position to say what physicalism does and doesn't permit.

Everything is connected, everything is one. — Bret Bernhoft

Are there multiple things that are connected, or is there only one thing?

...time perception? The materialist/physicalist.view seems to have some difficulty with it and they may need to concede that the brain has an ability to deal with the non-physical. — Mark Nyquist

What gives you that impression? I'm a materialist/physicalist/naturalist and certainly don't see myself as having any particular difficulty with time. (Relatively speaking.)

Might that be a conclusion you jumped to, in light of my not having responded to your earlier post?

I agree with you that...

There really is a problem of terms and definitions here to sort out. — Mark Nyquist

...and there are matters of learning as well.

Suppose that physical reality is all that there is. In that case, wouldn't "dealing with the non-physical" equate to "dealing with the nonexistent"?

I seriously doubt this - but can't imagine how you could demonstrate your new understanding so won't push the point. — FrancisRay

It's not just my understanding, and it is not all that new. If you are interested in learning about the subject, the 2016 Atlantic article How Google's AlphaGo Imitates Human Intuition is a decent popular level article touching on salient points.

Alternatively, if there is something that you have real expertise in, and you recognize the role that intuition plays in your exercising that expertise, then perhaps in discussing your area of expertise I could point out things that would give you a greater recognition of how intuition works in yourself.

Admittedly, this stuff is somewhat esoteric at this point in human history, but there is no magic involved, and understanding of it is inevitably going to become more widespread. (Barring a near total collapse of human culture.)

Could you give an example of this explanatory value? — FrancisRay

Sure. Understanding the nature of deep learning in neural nets has given me a lot of insight into the nature of human intuitions, the reliabilty or lack thereof of human intuitions, and what it takes to change intuitions.

On the mind question, physicalism or non-physicalism, I would be stuck picking 'other'. — Mark Nyquist

A nice feature of the Philpapers survey webpage is the choices in results display that can be selected. (Hit refresh to get a page updated to show the new results display.) Earlier I copied and pasted the default coarse grained results, but selecting fine grained shows:

Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism?
Accept: physicalism 180 / 414 (43.5%)
Lean toward: physicalism 68 / 414 (16.4%)
Accept: non-physicalism 61 / 414 (14.7%)
Lean toward: non-physicalism 44 / 414 (10.6%)
The question is too unclear to answer 22 / 414 (5.3%)
Accept another alternative 13 / 414 (3.1%)
Accept an intermediate view 10 / 414 (2.4%)
Agnostic/undecided 8 / 414 (1.9%)
Reject both 4 / 414 (1.0%)
There is no fact of the matter 2 / 414 (0.5%)
Skip 1 / 414 (0.2%)
Accept both 1 / 414 (0.2%)

For the majority picking physicalism how do they account for our endless mental content of non-physical subject matter? — Mark Nyquist

I couldn't speak for the survey respondents. For myself, I'd ask you to clarify what you would find surprising about a physical system being able to represent ideas of things which don't exist in our physical reality.

I asked the physical system ChatGPT, "who is voldemort" and got the response:

Voldemort, also known as Lord Voldemort, is a fictional character and the main antagonist in J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" series. He is a dark wizard who seeks to conquer the wizarding world and achieve immortality by any means necessary.

Physical representations of things which don't actually exist in physical reality doesn't seem problematic from my perspective.

For example anything outside their present time and location. Of course it's done by physical means but shouldn't brains with the capability to deal with non-physicals be considered? And do the physicalists have any way of dealing with time outside the present? Past and future are non-physical to me. — Mark Nyquist

Brains which can encode memories of the past, and use those memories to project possible futures, seems to be one of the major reasons that brains have been evolutionarily adaptive. A lot of the benefit of our brains' modelling capabilities lies in our ability to imagine multiple possible futures, and only one of those multiple possible futures might actually occur. Our ability to imagine counterfactuals plays an important role in us having human level abilities to affect how the future unfolds.

So, I guess I would say that "brains with the capability to deal with non-physicals" are considered by physicalists, but perhaps I am not understanding your question.