The different person argument is invalid. No one is the same person throughout their life, everything changes.

There is a matter of degree that is of relevance here. There are the typical day to day and year to year changes we experience in ourselves and see in others. Then there are much more extreme changes as in the case of Phineas Gage:

Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman remembered for his improbable[B1]: 19  survival of an accident in which a large iron rod was driven completely through his head, destroying much of his brain's left frontal lobe, and for that injury's reported effects on his personality and behavior over the remaining 12 years of his life‍—‌effects sufficiently profound that friends saw him (for a time at least) as "no longer Gage".

Autism resulting from the sort of differences in neural interconnections discussed here if 'cured' would result in a change in the person more akin to the change in Phineas Gage than to the normal year to year change in people.

I think it likely that Daniel Geshwind is correct in saying, "I prefer to call it “the Autisms,” because it’s not one thing, and no two autistic children or adults are exactly alike even though they may share basic features." So perhaps there are some autisms that are more 'curable' than others, but I haven't seen any good reason to think that is the case.

Darkneos,

I'm on the spectrum as well, but admittedly I'm one of the lucky ones, in that I have some strengths to go with my weaknesses. I well recognize that many others on the spectrum have a lot more challenges than I do. So I hope anything I say on the topic doesn't come across as patronizing. (But I won't be too surprised if it does.)

I don't really forsee any hope for a cure. At best I think better treatments applied early enough in childhood to make a significant difference might be something to hope for. It doesn't make any sense to me though to say, "There should be a cure for adults." when I don't think that is really a possibility.

The way I think of it is that if there was some means of restructuring my brain so that it was no longer an autistic brain, applying such a technique to me would at best result in there being a different person in place of me. Not to say that there isn't anyone who wouldn't consider that an improvement, but I don't see someone else existing in place of me as desireable.

The only thing I can say that seems like it might be helpful to you, is that having a good therapist with significant experience working with autistic people has made a real difference for me.

Hang in there.

Very good OP, and I largely agree. I do want to quibble with the following though:

What he is able to perceive of it is limited by his perceptual periphery, the fact that most of his sense organs point outwards toward the rest of the world and not inwards towards the mass where all the business of “experience” is occurring.

It is not unreasonable to look at every synapse impinging on a neuron as a sense organ which that neuron uses to detect the state of the neurons providing the outputs to those synapses. If 'sense organ' is broadly construed in such a way, then much of what is being sensed by neurons is the result of earlier information processing by other neurons, and there is much 'internal sensing' going on.

I'm fairly confident that such a neuron by neuron quanitification of sensing would lead to the conclusion that there is actually more sensing of internal than external going on, and I think such is necessary for our phenomenal consciousness.

Given that our species nature is real (i.e. the fact that there are things which are bad, harmful, suffering-inducing to do to our kind), acting towards one another in harmony with our species nature is 'moral realism', no?

I'm inclined to think so, but I'm not well enough informed about the way vocabulary is used by philosophers discussing ethics to feel confident making an argument for it.

Without ethical realism, how do you avoid nihilism?

Recognize that it is an aspect of humanity's evolved nature, for things to matter to people, and that the nonexistence of moral facts doesn't change the fact that things matter to people. Then act in harmony with your nature. (Not necessarily the way I would put it to a psychopath.)

Afaik, protestants do not believe in the trinity.

I'm fairly certain the majority of protestants in the US are trinitarians, though some protestant denominations are not.

If you are interested in the history of how trinitarian beliefs evolved, Bart Ehrman's How Jesus Became God is pretty good.

Thoughts?

I realize your question wasn't directed at me, but my $0.02 anyway...

Provided your "computational" is meant to be construed broadly enough to include connectionism that sounds good to me.

When this kind of thing comes up in a thread, I generally make my case once or twice and then bow out. I don't see any reason to disrupt the conversation. Please don't take that as criticism of you.

I can't say that I don't recognize the wisdom in that, but sometimes I am not so wise. :wink:

Science is actually about articulating a rational explanation to counter someone's views rather than saying "that's just pseudoscience".

Let's look at a definition of science. The first one to pop up as a result of my Google search was from The Science Council:

Science is the pursuit and application of knowledge and understanding of the natural and social world following a systematic methodology based on evidence.
Scientific methodology includes the following:

Objective observation: Measurement and data (possibly although not necessarily using mathematics as a tool)
Evidence
Experiment and/or observation as benchmarks for testing hypotheses
Induction: reasoning to establish general rules or conclusions drawn from facts or examples
Repetition
Critical analysis
Verification and testing: critical exposure to scrutiny, peer review and assessment

Note that only the last item in the list involves "articulating a rational explanation" and there can be a whole lot of doing science apart from "articulating a rational explanation". And as scientific articulation goes, sometimes doing science is saying "Bullshit!" at the back of the crowd listening to the snake oil salesman.

One operates off rational thought, the other off personal bias.

False dichotomy.

I'm all ears for a cohesive reasoning as to why it's pseudoscience. I'm not all ears however for unsupported determinations of pseudoscientifism.

It is pseudoscience becauses it is a grossly simplistic gloss over an enormously complex set of processes which is apt to lead uninformed people to false impressions about scientific understanding.

If you want to have better scientific understanding, you will need to look into sciences more deeply.

For you to establish anything as definitively "pseudoscience" that requires you to be the ultimate and unquestionable "scientist." Knowing all and everything that could possibly be considered scientific.

No, that's a ridiculous criteria which would make it impossible for anyone to point out pseudoscience.

I don't think I'm providing any positive contribution to this thread, so I'll bow out.


FWIW, I find pseudoscience debunking to be providing a positive contribution.

Exactly. It's not 'like' anything else... which is the point.

:up:

I believe suffering is an evil and we should do everything in our power to eradicate most of it. I thinking coexisting with suffering is problematic unless you become apathetic and just focus on making your own life as liveable as possible.

I see no need to become apathetic at all, but it's important to keep in mind that you are only Human.

I believe that the Nazis, The Holocaust and World War Two were evil. Man made evils with malice and intent and not natural accidents. Deliberate destruction and torture.

I find much about those events abhorrent. However I consider it important to try to keep in mind the human propensity for black and white thinking and try to avoid a simplistic way of looking at things. For example, Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party. Was Schindler evil?

I'd ask you to consider the possibility that assigning blame is something that was adaptive for our evolutionary ancestors, in that seeing others as to blame (and dishing out punishment as a result) was part of what has made primate social groups work for a very long time. It is natural for us to blame, and we all do it, and perhaps human society would collapse if somehow we all miraculously lost our instnctive tendency to blame. However, there are big downsides to not being able to recognize the 'monkey minded' nature of blaming, and recognize how being in a blaming state of mind tends to foster black and white thinking, and other ugliness.

Consider... What role did Hitler's blaming play in what you refer to as evil above?

Certainly, any philosophy has to be able to deal with empirical discoveries, and certainly the background worldview of the ancients was hardly scientifically informed by today's standards - but if you consider the main subjects of interest in the Platonic dialogues, many of them - the nature of love, of justice, of wisdom, of courage - are hardly affected by that.

I'll leave discussion of Plato's dialogs to people better informed than I.

However, I'd suggest some study of evolutionary psychology and game theory *might* disabuse you of the belief that understanding of the nature of love, justice, wisdom, and courage are hardly affected by knowledge of science.

Anyway, I'm letting myself get too absorbed with discussions on the forum. So I'm going to try to resist getting too sucked into this one.

Thanks for the discussion.

I don't see the benefit to explaining evil by dispensing of God/gods.

I dispense with evil (as something objective) as well. Certainly we form subjective judgements that certain acts are evil, but I'd say it is mistaken to not recognize such judgements as psychological reactions we have which were adaptive for our evolutionary ancestors.

So I'd say that on naturalism there is no evil in need of explaining.

That aside, what you have presented as reasons to reject naturalism amount to an appeal to consequences fallacy.

On the other hand, I think philosophy should provide the ability to explore the matter directly without needing to rely on neuroscientific research. After all, Socrates was recommended to 'know thyself' by the Oracle of Delphi, and I don't know if his endeavours were hampered by the absence of modern neuroscience.

Can you provide additional reasoning for why you think "philosophy should provide the ability to explore the matter directly without needing to rely on neuroscientific research." After all, Socrates was a rather enigmatic figure who is said to have said:

"For I was conscious that I knew practically nothing..." (Plato, Apology 22d, translated by Harold North Fowler, 1966). [c/p from wikipedia]

Furthermore, neuroscience points to us being much too complex to know ourselves in a comprehensive sense.

Another thing to bear in mind are the discoveries of neuroplasticity and how neural configurations can be changed 'top-down' so to speak. Neuroplasticity has shown that mental activity influences brain structure, that engaging in specific mental activities, such as learning a new skill or practicing a particular cognitive task, can lead to structural changes in the brain. For example, studies have shown that individuals who learn to juggle experience an increase in gray matter volume in areas involved in motor control. Another fascinating study showed that subjects who learned to practice piano in their minds (i.e. no actual piano!) showed neurological changes similar to those who practiced with a piano (ref).

I'm not sure what point you are trying to make here.

I suppose cultural conditioning might also affect neural configurations and not necessarily in a good way.

Certainly cultural conditioning affects neural configurations in what we would judge to be good and bad ways. However, fMRI doesn't have nearly the spatial resolution required to be able to measure the changes, except in cases of relatively extreme repetition (like the 'piano practice'). So I don't expect neuroscientists to be able to detect the neurological results of exposure to a meme via fMRI anytime soon. At this point in time it would take more invasive technologies and some degree of luck to detect such subtle changes without causing brain damage.

We're very much conditioned to be oriented with respect to the objective domain - the process of 'objectification'. It's woven into the fabric of the culture. If you read some of the idealist philosophers - Berkeley and Schopenhauer, for example - you will see they are quite sane and sober individuals.

The process of objectification goes deeper than cultural conditioning. It is a function of how our brains work:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk

Something that occurs to me in respect of this argument: when people say they're 'sceptics' in this day and age, you can bet your boots they generally mean 'scientific sceptics', i.e. they will question anything for which there isn't or may not be scientific evidence. Yet 'scientific scepticism' generally starts with the firm belief that the 'sensory domain' (a.k.a. 'the natural realm') is inherently real. They're never sceptical about the obvious reality of the sensory domain in a manner that is very different to the ancient sceptics

I see skepticism as something needing a degree of balance, and think there is a tendency for some philosophers (or philosophy fans) to go off the skeptical deep end.

For me personally, I've studied too much about sensation and perception, and neuroscience more generally, to be naive about the degree to which we can grasp reality as it truly is. On the other hand, as an electrical engineer, it seems rather ludicrous to think that we are having a discussion via the internet, yet there is no external reality.

Idealism seems to me an example of philosophy poisoning.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_qualification

Property qualification seems like an example of your latter scenario.

Pinter, Charles. Mind and the Cosmic Order (p92)

Sounds like an interesting book.

A common natruralisuts argument says that evil is expected under naturalism, becazuse of processes like natural selection. The suffering due to naturaal selection is good explanation fo rwhy there is evil in the world, because without the suffering, there would be no flourishment.

That's not an argument any well informed naturalist would make, and I recommend you consider it a straw man, and get a better handle on evolutionary theory before trying again.

Recently, I was thinking of how when I first started to post online it was the Internet Infidels Discussion Board, and that was 25 years ago!

It's interesting that both of us have been reminiscing similarly. We were at RFForums for a looong time. I was recently thinking of my internet history going back to before most people (outside of DARPA and various engineers and computer scientist) had ever heard of the internet. My interests at the time were more sexual than secular though, and in those early days I spent most of my internet discussion time on the Usenet group soc.singles.

It's ironic you should say that. I think the same can be said for feminism.

Well I'd say looking at things simplistically and assigning blame on the basis of our simplistic 'understanding' of things is just something all of us social primates do, at least from time to time.

Whether it is incels, feminists, or anyone else wallowing in such a state of mind, it is unfortunate.

These properties, if we talk about them as objects, are better classified as imaginary, fictional objects, because we cannot seem to be able to give them proper independent existence in practise.

I'd suggest "proper independent existence" is itself a fiction.

I agree(?) that the way our perceptual systems are apt to chunk stuff, and even sequences of events, into things tends to lead to misconceptions, but in many cases I would be more inclined to call 'things' being discussed "simplistic but epistemically pragmatic abstractions" rather than fictions.

Thoughts?

Yes, I would add to that, they probably originally started from the equally false notion that they themselves were entirely to blame for their failure... and then, to feel better about themselves, invented other stories that shifts the blame from themselves to women or society at large maybe. Blaming the physical world, or acknowledging it as a cause, doesn't quite seem to cut it in our psychology, or maybe that's just the way we are taught to think as a result of being raised in a moralizing culture.

Right. Undoubtedly, for at least some percentage of incels, blaming the physical world would amount to blaming God, and they aren't able to go there.

Yeah I mostly agree with this, I do wonder (in light of you question about determinism) how relevant the distinction is that we seem to be making between unfairness caused by non-human factors and unfairness cause by human actors.

Good wondering. :wink:

Perhaps it makes sense to see incels as people whose recognition that there is unfairness is valid, but who fail to see the unfairness as being the result of the nature and nurture that resulted in them being an incel, and mistakenly attribute the unfairness to women?

I think a small majority maybe theoretically is some kind of compatibilist determinist, but in practice, in their moral views, most are more on the side of libertarian free will it seems. I mean, I would also call it a useful or even necessary illusion probably, if I was pushed on it.

Yeah. I'm a determinist, but that doesn't mean I can prevent my brain's tendency to view people simplistically as free willed agents, or that there isn't a socially pragmatic necessity for viewing ourselves and others as free willed agent to at least some extent.

Why not play into this? Because we have set up this Manichean distinction, wherein they are purely victimizers, i.e. the enemy we should fight at all cost, VS the victims we should protect at all cost? Can't they be both victims and victimizers, as they appear to be?

I agree that the Manichean distinction is counter productive, but I don't think supporting incels in seeing themselves as victims as likely to be more productive. In fact seeing oneself as a 'victim' and commiseration with other 'victims' seems to me to be at the core of incelism.

Life isn't fair, but life being unfair doesn't equate to there being a victimizer. To "play into this" notion that incels are victims doesn't seem likely to get incels out of the victim mentality that is a big part of the problem they have. Acknowledging to an incel that life isn't fair and perhaps they did get the short stick in some regards I'd go along with. However, what seems likely to me to be most beneficial for the incel (and society at large) is for the incel to stop obsessing about being a victim, and start learning whatever they need to learn to improve their social competence.

As an aside, does anyone want to venture a guess as to what percentage of members of this forum believe in libertarian free will, determinism, and anything in between?

Good to see you GRW.

Luke,

Since it seems like you are much more interested in point scoring than in understanding, I'm inclined to drop the discussion. However, if you want to present, what you believe to be a sound argument for your interpretation, I might be enticed to discuss it further.

Maybe this is because most philosophy is bad philosophy.


Sturgeon's law does seem applicable.

So, is a persons claim that they are a religious philosopher, the inevitable beginning of losing/rationalising away, their [own] religion?
— universeness

Maybe. I think it's more likely, however, that a "religious philosopher" is an apologetic critic of naturalism, irreligion and/or religions (or sects) other than her own.


I've spent the past 15 years as a regular atheist poster on William Lane Craig's "Reasonable Faith" forum. (17k posts)

In my experience theists are more apt to use philosophy to maintain their own religious beliefs and the religious beliefs of others than they are to get themselves out of the psychological trap of their religion via philosophy. (Although it can be hard to gauge, since I don't know how many might have deconverted after they stopped participating on that forum and I know of a couple who stopped posting on the forum for a long time, and when they returned they were agnostics or atheists.)

In any case, while I would say philosophy played a significant role in me personally losing my religion, I'm skeptical towards the idea that philosophy plays more of a role in undermining religious belief than it does in sustaining religious beliefs.

Metaphysical questions are raised in the philosophy of mind, but if your metaphysics excludes scientific inquiry then it is a dead end. It is embodied minds that we must deal with, and so science is not merely a "supplement". It is fundamental to the inquiry. We do not have to take a stand on physicalism. We do not have to decide whether or not mental states are physical states, but we should not exclude the physical organism out of some metaphysical conviction.


:up:

If you haven't read the full article, then how are you in a position to question my reading of it?

I wish you would have saved me the time by dismissing my claim of "mutant super powers" and just moving on, but...

I've been following neuroscience for 36 years while having a background in electrical engineering and having studied the behavior of artificial neural nets. Thirty-six years ago, while contemplating what seemed like a weirdness to my cognitive processing (despite my scoring highly on various standardized tests) I had an epiphany about how variations in low level neural interconnection might explain my relative weirdness. Although I had myself tested for learning disabilities soon after (and was diagnosed as having one) it wasn't until 14 years ago that my wife recognized that it was likely that I was on the autism spectrum. This past year I happened on empirical evidence supporting my epiphanic hypothesis.

https://autismsciencefoundation.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/minicolumns-autism-and-age-what-it-means-for-people-with-autism/

Anyway, over the past 36 years, that insight I had into the functioning of human brains has been the basis for a lot of prescience. For example, I foreshadowed the two system view presented by Kahneman in his book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, though I was coming at things from a neuroscience perspective whereas (to the best of my knowledge) Kahneman came to the two systems view on the basis of psychological findings.

You think that your ability to guess about the parts that you didn't even bother to read is better than my actual reading of the article?

I would put it more like, I thought the probability was high that I was bringing a much more relevantly informed perspective to reading the article than you did. Furthermore, my understanding of the sort of information processing that neural networks are good at, leads me to understand the importance of testing my intuitions. So I saw questioning your interpretation of the article as a good test of my intuitions which were based on merely skimming the article.

If you think it's unlikely for the authors to suggest that "qualia constitute the self" then read the bloody article and find out. Have you read it all yet?

Yeah, I've read the article now, and I still don't have the foggiest idea why you think Humphrey was suggesting what you think he was. Anyway, I've reached out to Humprey. So maybe we will learn from him what his view is.

Whether I subconsciously picked up on it during my initial skim I have no idea, but when I read it through today I noted that Humphrey puts scare quotes around self when he first uses the phrase the self. That leads me to believe that Humphrey was only using the word self as a matter of convenience in conveying his idea to a lay audience, and also seems to me like a point against your interpretation.

Explain why you think "qualia constitute the self" is not implied by the article:

I think that what most people mean by "the self" includes not just qualia, but that which acts on the basis of qualia as well, and at the very least. That which acts on the basis of qualia is not itself qualia.

I think the authors would likely agree with the statement that, "If there were no qualia there likely would be no self.", but that is a different statement.
— wonderer1

Firstly, that isn't a quote from the article. Secondly, how does your statement "if there were no qualia there likely would be no self" not imply that "qualia constitute the self"? I might be wrong about it, but it seems to me to be strongly implied by the article.

1. I didn't suggest it was a quote from the article.
2. I've explained that I think the 'self' is more than qualia, and I think the functionality of the self would be likely to break down without qualia to sustain its functionality. Not immediately, but given time.

If you haven't read the full article, then how are you in a position to question my reading of it?


I don't suppose you'd accept, "Through the use of mutant superpowers."?

Anyway, I'm at work now and undoubtedly my brain will be contemplating in the background, whether and how to respond further in light of you having gotten so riled up over me questioning you. So we'll see what the results of those background processes are later.

In the meantime, some things for you to contemplate...

Aren't qualia transient events?
What would it mean to say that something is composed of transient events?

Have you read the article? It's not long.

I just skimmed through parts of it. It was interesting, but to be honest, I asked my question because based on what I did read I thought it unlikely that the authors suggested the notion that "qualia constitute the self".

Thank you for quoting the specific excerpt. However, I'm still not seeing why you think the author suggested that "qualia constitute the self". I think the authors would likely agree with the statement that, "If there were no qualia there likely would be no self.", but that is a different statement.

I don't see why it would be unreasonable to answer Chalmers with, "That's just the way evolution went."
— wonderer1

"That's just the way evolution went" does not explain the "adaptive end", the evolutionary purpose, or the biological advantage of the development of phenomenal consciousness. In other words, it does not answer the hard problem of why we have phenomenal consciousness. "Evolution did it" is about as explanatory as "God did it".

First off, I made that statement with the following sentence immediately after, "Unfortunately succinct perhaps, and I could suggest reasons to think that's the case, but I think this post is long enough."

Yes, I know I did not support my answer to Chalmer's question. I thought I made it obvious that I recognized that. I only have so much time to participate in these discussions, so I suggested an 'in a nutshell' answer.

Suppose miraculously I was able to produce an accurate account of every detail of the evolutionary path leading to humans. Would it then be unreasonable to conclude with, "So that's just the way evolution went?"

BTW, Do you think Chalmers is an evolution skeptic?

The physical processes would work fine without being aware of themselves. They do so in many other life forms.

It is a hasty generalization to go from, "The behavior of many lifeforms occurs without consciousness." to, "All of the behavior of humans could occur without consciousness."

The fact is, we expect the behavior of humans who are unconscious to be different from the behavior of humans who are conscious. So what reason do we have to think human behavior in general could be as it is without consciousness?

Damage is being done, the sensory system detects the damage, and it pulls away. How many other species even learn from the experience, and avoid the thing that caused the damage whenever they sense it?

You have selected a pattern of behavior that is relatively trivial and can be explained relatively trivially. How about if we decide the behavior of interest is composing sonnets? How many species are doing it? Why don't we expect a poet to be as apt to produce a sonnet while under anesthesia, as she was before she was under anesthesia?

If all off our mental activity is entirely physical, how is it we are not like those other life forms and machines? We aren't like them.

We have a different evolutionary history that resulted in us having different brains than other species do.

How is what makes us different accomplished?

I need clarification as to how to take your question. Are you asking how evolution resulted in human brains being as they are? Are you asking, given the way human brains are, how is consciousness a consequence of that brain structure? Something else?

I might answer your question by saying, "With lots of neurons which have lots of connections to other neurons." I don't suppose that is very satisfying though. However, it is not as if we have a complete schematic diagram of a human brain that scientists can study, so it doesn't seem surprising to me that neuroscientists don't have the thorough explanation we might like.

Do you think that if physicalism is the case, it is reasonable to expect neuroscientists to be able to answer your question in a comprehensive way at this point in human history, and if so why?

Thanks.

So the short answer is that in the levels close to God, the beings move faster, or time moves slower. These angel beings are sort of like computers then, what takes a human years to do, they can do in a nano second. Therefore they are always one step (or a billion steps) ahead of us. As soon as we start to decide, as time passes, they've already seen the whole decision. And God is even at a higher level, so fast (or time so slow), that time doesn't even pass for God. Then God sees all time, all at once.

I'm not seeing how that provides an answer to how free will is compatible with such a scenario.

[quoting from the OP]

However, what I found most fascinating is the idea that qualia constitute the self, rather than being something perceived by the self.

I haven't read through the full thread, so forgive me if you have already done so, but could you point out a specific passage from the article that you interpreted as promoting such a view?

In his article Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), David Chalmers posed the (hard) question: "Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel?"


I think Dennett suggested that it was an evolutionary "neat trick". In other (anthropomorphising of evolution) words, it is a means evolution stumbled upon which achieved an adaptive end. Perhaps a more adaptive end could have been reached by neurological processes evolving differently with no consciousness evolved, and perhaps not.

I see consciousness as a function of our brain's innate tendency to develop a model of physical reality based on our sensory and motor interactions with reality. Qualia might be seen as the symbols various parts of our brain present to 'modeling central' to represent the state of things in reality - the marks on the map, so to speak. Consciousness may simply be, what happens when some parts of the brain are outputting symbols in the form we associate with qualia. while simultaneously other parts of our massively parallel processing brains are monitoring the cloud of symbols being presented.

I don't see why it would be unreasonable to answer Chalmers with, "That's just the way evolution went." Unfortunately succinct perhaps, and I could suggest reasons to think that's the case, but I think this post is long enough.