quote:But there are at least two stages of input at which I can insert a "false" (i.e. non-real) experience into your brain. I can fool your eyes and your other senses into seeing something that's not real; with additional technology, I might be able to make you think (or just remember) that you saw something that wasn't there.
Neither of these are "false" experiences. In both cases the experience really happens.
In the first case, you really do experience seeing X. Just because there is no physical X causing that experience doesn't mean the experience itself is any less real.
In the second case, you really do experience the memory of seeing X. Just because that memory is false doesn't mean the experience of that memory itself is any less real.
Both of these are cases where an experience leads you to a mistaken conclusion. But in both cases, the person experiencing it can be absolutely certain that their experience itself is real. When you feel pain, you KNOW you are feeling pain, even if the pain is not caused by anything real.
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quote: When you feel pain, you KNOW you are feeling pain, even if the pain is not caused by anything real.
I used to be a lot more persuaded by this point as a college philosophy student, before I'd had the experience of having a panic attack.
It's quite possible to be uncertain about whether pain is part of the content of your present experience.
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quote:This, by the way, is why I claim the whole idea of the "self" is merely a useful fiction.
I'd actually agree with that, to some extent.
To me my "self" is a combination of my memories and my physical body at any given instance. Neither of these things are quite the same from one day to the next, so I don't think that my "self-ness" is a persistant entity.
I was very much a "different person" in high school. I will likely be a very different person in twenty years.
My past selfs are entities who are similar to "me" to various degrees, with them generally becoming more and more like me the closer they get to the current "me". Even if I don't notice that the "me" of yesterday is any different than the "me" of today, he is.
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Mucus, I don't think I misintepreted you exactly. I think we agree. I just think you used the wrong word to describe what you meant. You were trying to say(if i understand you correctly) that the difference in whether the decision is geneticaly deterministic or mentally deterministic(whatever that may mean, i think you get my point) is relatively trivial in the sense that it's all deterministic. but you said nontrivial. which implies that difference IS important. correct me if i'm wrong.
quote:I'm a materialist. I think nothing exists that does not have a physical effect. In other words, your "mental image" exists insofar as it's a pattern of electrons. It has no reality in what I call the "external context" of the real world.
Tom, I'll take it a step further and say that I don't see a difference between the concept of a mental image and the real external context of the real world. What I mean by that is, when you have a mental image in your head of something, like you say, it's just a pattern of electrons. But when you physically "see" something in the real world, how is this any different? You're not really "seeing" the thing. Light waves are hitting your eyes, which send that signal to your brain, which processes that signal and projects a mental image(inside your head) of this real external reality. To me, it seems that for visual purposes, the brain is nothing more than an internal projector playing a film that it's being fed from one of our sense organs. Not that you'd disagree with any of this, you even touch on this in your reply to Tres, just thought it was worth mentioning.
quote:Does any of this make sense? I'm willing to try again to clarify if you want.
No, it makes sense. Thanks for answering. It's an intriguing concept, and I really don't know enough about the nature of extra dimensions(besides the 4th that is) to make any sort of informed opinion about the plausability of it. I actually have some questions about "dimensions" but I think they belong in another thread.
quote:the "Strider" which might exist beyond your experience of what we call mortality might possibly contain the whole of your life, plus whatever is possible to be experienced "beyond" it. Would this consciousness not be "you"?
In the sense you are describing, yes, it would be "me" as much as the "me" now is the same "me" when I was an infant. My problem with this line of reasoning stems from sort of the unbroken chain that led me from infancy to where I am now. The physical construct that is myself, that provides the physical basis for my thoughts and actions has been unbroken since that time. And when I die, it's not possible for that chain to continue. Now...I also understand that this concept of myself is pretty much equal to my memories. Nothing physical from that infant that was "me" remains, just memories. So if somehow these memories were able to continue to exist and evolve in a consciously aware being, after my physical death, then yes, i would be force to admit that that was still "me". I just don't see or understand a structure in place that could allow that. Though like I said, I don't fully understand the concept of 5-11 dimensions or whatever it is string theory predicts there are, and how those would affect the nature of reality.
posted
my apologies if this has already been covered and I just missed it in my quick perusal of the rest of the thread.
I think the concept of an afterlife may have been initiated as a response to social evolution. When society started evolving to the point where it made sense for individuals to make sacrifices for that society at large then side-rationale for those sacrifices would likely have been developed.
It may have immediately jumped to the concept of an afterlife in order to give more justification to your sacrifice. i.e. if brave warrior 1 dies defending the tribe lets give him the belief that he'll get to stick around and watch over the village and see what good he saved. This may even have just been the "wise-man"'s way of duping the dumb warriors into protecting the village and just eventually became the popular belief.
It may have stemmed out of stories and other culture. People sat around the campfire telling tales of the heroic yet tragic Xteltoc as he died fighting off the hungry leopard, but saved his 3 sons. Eventually the story started morphing to mythic proportions such that everyone started believing that Xteltoc was still around, maybe he was in the spirit of the leopard or maybe he was the courage of his eldest son or maybe he was just somewhere better as a reward for his sacrifice.
basically, while it started making social sense to make sacrifices for your society, most people would need something more personal as a motivation since we're generally selfish by nature...
that's just my guess, and it could quite potentially be where the concept of soul/deity came from rather than the other way around...
basically "hey, joe was really cool but died, that can't be all there is, can it?"
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posted
The main problem with hoping consciousness can exist beyond our physical death is that consciousness isn't a single, coherent, continuous entity in our minds. Several modern theories of consciousness, including the Multiple Drafts Model, interpret consciousness as ever-shifting among more "vocal" subsystems in the brain, somewhat like a presidency, a role that many players take on in the mind, though attributing it via the intentional stance to the entire organism that the mind is part of.
quote:1. Mental pictures of unicorns DO exist. (I know this because I'm picturing one right now and can see it in my mind. You can deny this if you want, but I can be certain it is true because I can directly observe it in my own mind. It is somewhat different from the experience of actually seeing something, but imagining a unicorn is nevertheless certainly a very real experience.)
I'm sure it seems very much like you've got a picture of one in your head (it seems like that to me, too). However, when I look at this screen, the image of the screen isn't being projected into my Cartesian theatre for my homunculus to view... the light hitting my eyes is stimulating nerves that connect to my brain and that put my brain into a specific state that helps me to interact with the computer. When I imagine the unicorn, I exapt all that hardware to trick myself into a state similar to what I would be in were I to see the mythical beast. I imagine this happens by my brain's activating the neural state of "seeing a horse" plus that of "seeing a horn" simultaneously. It's certainly plausible. Just like the "phantom limb" phenomenon, it really, really seems to me that there is an image of a unicorn in my mind, because I'm so used to the photo receptors in my eyes and my visual brain states happening together. But I know (just like I know there's no third dot in the phi illusion) that my brain is tricking itself into believing it can see the unicorn's image.
quote:2. There is no place in your brain where any pictures of anything exist. 3. Therefore, the mental pictures of unicorns exist somewhere that is NOT in the brain.
No. Like I said, they don't exist at all, at least, not as actual pictures. Kind of like clicking on a jpeg file in your computer but unplugging the monitor before it displays. The information is there, the computer is doing all it normally does to produce an image, but the image isn't really there, though to the computer's programming, it is.
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quote:However, when I look at this screen, the image of the screen isn't being projected into my Cartesian theatre for my homunculus to view... the light hitting my eyes is stimulating nerves that connect to my brain and that put my brain into a specific state that helps me to interact with the computer.
Hey! Isn't this what i said? Yours just sounds smarter.
quote:The main problem with hoping consciousness can exist beyond our physical death is that consciousness isn't a single, coherent, continuous entity in our minds. Several modern theories of consciousness, including the Multiple Drafts Model, interpret consciousness as ever-shifting among more "vocal" subsystems in the brain, somewhat like a presidency, a role that many players take on in the mind, though attributing it via the intentional stance to the entire organism that the mind is part of.
However, this doesn't preclude a "reawakening" of consciousness at some point after physical death, in my opinion and given what knowledge we have now. I used to be very concerned with continuity as a requirement for "self-ness", but not so much in the past few years. I have no way of knowing if the person who wakes up from my bed tomorrow morning is the same "me" that will go to bed in it tonight. If I am around to "reawaken" to consciousness in some far distant future, I will be grateful and thrilled to continue living, and won't question with any vested interest whether I'm the same "me" that exists now or a somehow different "me". At least not any more than I question it every morning (which isn't much, if you were worried. )
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Christy and I were actually thinking about heading out to the East Coast this summer....
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quote:In both cases the experience really happens.
You are confusing experience with sensation. The sensation happens, and the experience of the sensation happens. But the experience does not.
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quote:At least not any more than I question it every morning (which isn't much, if you were worried.)
I wasn't....
but see, when you go to bed, your body doesn't cease to function. you might not be aware of the continuity consciously, but it exists. And i realize you can just come back at me and say that what you're talking about can be a similar un-awareness of continuity, but I think it's a stretch, given there is no system to describe how that would work, in theory or practice.
I agree that the awareness of continuity isn't important though. If you could map every connection in my brain and store it somewhere, and then at some later time map it back onto a circuit or something, when you turned "me" on, i would still feel like "me". But at least in theory I can imagine a way in which this would be possible given what we know about the physical world.
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quote:You are confusing experience with sensation. The sensation happens, and the experience of the sensation happens. But the experience does not.
And you accuse me of playing semantic games?
If you agree that the experience of the sensation happens, then you agree with my point.
quote:It's quite possible to be uncertain about whether pain is part of the content of your present experience.
How so?
quote:I'm sure it seems very much like you've got a picture of one in your head (it seems like that to me, too). However, when I look at this screen, the image of the screen isn't being projected into my Cartesian theatre for my homunculus to view... the light hitting my eyes is stimulating nerves that connect to my brain and that put my brain into a specific state that helps me to interact with the computer. When I imagine the unicorn, I exapt all that hardware to trick myself into a state similar to what I would be in were I to see the mythical beast. I imagine this happens by my brain's activating the neural state of "seeing a horse" plus that of "seeing a horn" simultaneously. It's certainly plausible. Just like the "phantom limb" phenomenon, it really, really seems to me that there is an image of a unicorn in my mind, because I'm so used to the photo receptors in my eyes and my visual brain states happening together. But I know (just like I know there's no third dot in the phi illusion) that my brain is tricking itself into believing it can see the unicorn's image.
If you sort through all the scientific words in the above claims, all it amounts to is that the experience of imagining a unicorn is different from the experience of actually seeing a unicorn with your eyes. Which is true - the image of a unicorn that you imagine is a different sort of image than the image you'd get if you actually saw one. But that in no way implies the experience of imagining a unicorn does not exist, and it in no way implies there is no image of a unicorn in my head when I am imagining one.
In other words, saying my image of a unicorn is not the sort of experience I think it is does not imply my image of a unicorn doesn't exist. In the end, I am still experiencing something.
quote:I was asking whether the WoW servers had souls, not the pictures of night elves.
My bad.
In that case... no, there are no pictures of night elves on WoW servers. There is just a set of 1's and 0's on those servers. They only become pictures of night elves when the 1's and 0's are translated by a computer into light that is then observed by human beings with souls. Once the data enters the minds of human beings, then the images of night elves come into existence - in the minds of those people!
If there were no people around playing WoW, the data on those servers would be totally meaningless.
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quote: If you agree that the experience of the sensation happens, then you agree with my point.
No. Unless you've failed to communicate your point adequately, and you've been agreeing with me from the start while appearing to do the opposite.
Case in point:
quote:all it amounts to is that the experience of imagining a unicorn is different from the experience of actually seeing a unicorn with your eyes
See, you're continuing to use the word "experience" incorrectly. I really think you'd benefit from using my "context" idea, Tres; I think it'd help you keep this sort of thing straight.
By your logic, if I filled your brain with memories of having seen a unicorn, you would have seen a unicorn; there would be no difference between having a memory of the experience and actually having had the experience.
This is true only within your own internal context; the actual universe (i.e. external context) will not behave according to your assumptions if you continue to act as if unicorns are real, because unicorns do not in fact exist. By behaving (rationally) as if unicorns existed, you might -- depending on the quality of your perceptions -- rapidly discover discrepancies between what you expect of the world and what actually happens; in other words, your delusion becomes relevant once it affects your ability to interact with other objects having real existence.
quote:There is just a set of 1's and 0's on those servers. They only become pictures of night elves when the 1's and 0's are translated by a computer into light that is then observed by human beings with souls. Once the data enters the minds of human beings, then the images of night elves come into existence - in the minds of those people!
And yet you have no basis for the claim that these images of "night elves" in the minds of people are not merely electrons being translated by neural processes. What makes them stop being electrochemical entites and turns them into "real" images?
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I don't understand why you disagree with my use of the word "experience". I'm talking about the subjective, qualitative sensation that happens in my mind whenever a given thing occurs. What would you term that? Should I refer to it as "sensation"? "Quale"?
Regardless, I don't think the external (physical) universe is relevant to the issue here. The question is not whether my sensations/experiences accurately reflect the external universe. It is clear they don't always do. The question is whether the sensations/experiences themselves are real. Even if there were NO external universe, and even if everything existed entirely in my mind, the sensations/experiences of those things would be real. In fact, even if everything I saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched was the exact opposite of what was really there in the external universe, it would still be true that the sensations/experiences I am seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching are real. They are real because I am still experiencing them, even if the conclusions I draw from them are not true.
quote:By your logic, if I filled your brain with memories of having seen a unicorn, you would have seen a unicorn; there would be no difference between having a memory of the experience and actually having had the experience.
That is not true. By my logic, if you filled my brain with memories of having seen a unicorn, I would have experienced having memories of a unicorn. The thing you remember does not have to have actually happened in order for the memory to exist.
quote:What makes them stop being electrochemical entites and turns them into "real" images?
Because the concept of "mental image" is not consistent with being a thing made out of electrochemical entities. It'd be like saying that you have a candy cane built entirely out of prime numbers. It doesn't make any sense, unless you aren't talking about the same thing that I mean by "candy cane".
Claiming we can't prove mental images aren't really just electrochemical entities sounds to me like this question: "But Tres, how can you prove that candy canes can't be made out prime numbers? Maybe you are just confused."
quote:Unless you've failed to communicate your point adequately
That could be the case. I have a suspicion that most people do believe in experience/sensations/qualia, but many do not realize it because it is nearly impossible to talk about it in a clear way. I don't think our language is equipped to handle the discussion very well, because in practical life there is rarely ever a need to distinguish between the experience/sensation of red and the mechanical process in our body that seems to trigger that experience/sensation.
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posted
Suppose I show you a picture of a unicorn on a computer screen. Would you claim that the picture is not made of little pixels of colour? Nobody is denying that there is an emergent property, a picture-ness if you like, that would disappear if you sorted the pixels by colour. Nonetheless, to say that the picture is not made of pixels is to do violence to the language. It is in this sense that a mental experience is made of electrochemical whatnots.
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posted
a series of dots and colors show us an image that we perceive to be a unicorn. it can be interpreted however, but that specific image is how our brain will interpret the information
if you draw a square and then draw 4 dots that would be the corner of a square (Without lines to connect them), your mind invisions a square there. everything is really just how you perceive it...
the screen you are looking at right now to read this is actually a laser emitting the "pixels" over and over blinking rapidly and we cant see them fast enough to tell that the images are actually broken.
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quote:I'm talking about the subjective, qualitative sensation that happens in my mind whenever a given thing occurs. What would you term that? Should I refer to it as "sensation"?
I would call that "thought," since it's independent of actual sensation and independent of reality.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Suppose I show you a picture of a unicorn on a computer screen. Would you claim that the picture is not made of little pixels of colour?
The picture on the screen is made of pixels. The image in my mind is not.
And I'd argue that without a mind to experience the picture on the screen as an image, those pixels are actually just a meaningless data set.
quote:I would call that "thought," since it's independent of actual sensation and independent of reality.
I'd think experience can be independent of actual sensation and independent of physical reality. Aren't dreams a sort of experience?
Nevertheless, I don't want to call it "thought" because that term is too broad. Many things could be considered thought. I'm talking about only one sort of thought.
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posted
It is a sort of thing that can't be "made of" anything - which is how I know it is not made of pixels.
I know it is the sort of thing that can't be "made of" anything because I can observe it in my mind. Simply put, I observe it doesn't posses the property of being built out of physical components. Thus any discussion about something that IS built out of physical components is not a discussion about the image in my mind that I'm talking about.
One might argue that you could break it down into smaller component experiences (the experience of white, the experience of it looking shaped like a horse, etc.) but eventually you will break it down into fundamental experiences that cannot be broken into or made up of anything.
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quote:Simply put, I observe it doesn't possess the property of being built out of physical components.
That's not the case. More accurately, you do not perceive any physical components. That's like saying that atoms don't exist because you can't perceive them.
Fry your brain to scramble the appropriate electrical pathways, and I guarantee you that you'll screw up the physical components that make up your mental picture of the unicorn. Heck, take enough drugs and run the same risk.
What you're missing, Tres, is that even if there IS some weird non-physical dimension in which "qualia" exist, a physical interface between that dimension and this one must exist. And given that, the ONLY thing that matters is that interface; the qualia themselves become irrelevant.
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quote:That's not the case. More accurately, you do not perceive any physical components. That's like saying that atoms don't exist because you can't perceive them.
It's not really like that at all. Atoms are physical; they don't exist in my mind.
And it's not just that I don't perceive any physical components. Rather, what I perceive is that the thing I am talking about in my mind is of a nature such that it would not even make any sense to talk about it consisting of physical components - just like a candy cane built out of prime numbers makes no sense.
Thirdly, if you don't believe these images exist, how can you tell me what is or is not the case about them in my mind? I have these sensations/experiences in my mind. It is possible you do not, but if you did not, how could you go about telling me what I have in my mind?
quote:What you're missing, Tres, is that even if there IS some weird non-physical dimension in which "qualia" exist, a physical interface between that dimension and this one must exist. And given that, the ONLY thing that matters is that interface; the qualia themselves become irrelevant.
Why?
I'd dispute that last sentence 100%. Rather, qualia (experience) is the ONLY thing in the universe that directly matters. That is because without qualia, the universe is literally nothing more than a set of data, just like an image on a computer is just a set of data until there is a user to look at it. The physical universe is just a bunch of particles, which have no more significance that the bunch of 1's and 0's coded in a computer file. These particles only become meaningful insofar as they create phenomena that can be experiences as qualia by us. An apple is completely meaningless just as a collection of atoms - but once it becomes a red, roundish, tasty thing that looks and feels a certain way, then it becomes something real and meaningful to us. That is the idea behind "if a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it, did it really fall?" In a world where there is no, never was, and never will be any beings to experience trees as some sort of qualia, you could say they still fall, but it wouldn't really mean anything at all. It would just mean a bunch of atoms have been rearranged.
Given that, the interface is also important, but only indirectly because it influences or controls what qualia we experience.
And given that this is a discussion of the afterlife, I should point out that even though it is clear such an interface DOES exist while we are alive, it is not clear that an interface always must exist in order to experience qualia. It is possible that after we die, we continue to experience things, but that those experiences are no longer dictated by the state of our brains.
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quote:Rather, qualia (experience) is the ONLY thing in the universe that directly matters. That is because without qualia, the universe is literally nothing more than a set of data, just like an image on a computer is just a set of data until there is a user to look at it. The physical universe is just a bunch of particles, which have no more significance that the bunch of 1's and 0's coded in a computer file.
I almost, almost agree with your sentiment in this snippet... yes, it is our experience of the data in the universe that imbues our existences with meaning. I totally agree. However, the poignancy of this truism comes from the fact that both "we" and our "experience" (as synonymous with qualia) are illusory... there is no preexisting self (it's a fiction adopted by the cognitive subsystems of the brain and shuffled around among the systems that most successfully command processing time) whose experiences generate phenomena (immaterial, inexplicable aboutness).
What has happened to you and to other adherents to dualism is that you've taken the seeming ("it seems that I'm seeing an image in my mind") and convinced yourselves it's really being ("there IS an image in my mind"). The truth is the organism in which the Tresopax brain resides has no other way of discussing the experience of triggering brain states associated with vision (though sans eyes) except through the metaphoric shorthand of visual lexemes... it sure as hell seems like I'm seeing a unicorn in my head, but that's how my shifting consciousness has chosen to refer to this strange mental-state-of-seeing-without-input-through-the-eyes.
You've been infected by the IDEA of qualia... it eases a strange gap in your ability to report on what is happening to the organism your shifting self represents.
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quote:there is no preexisting self (it's a fiction adopted by the cognitive subsystems of the brain and shuffled around among the systems that most successfully command processing time) whose experiences generate phenomena (immaterial, inexplicable aboutness)
What reason can you give that would convince me to believe this rather radical claim that contradicts what seems to be observably true?
It sounds like you are asking me to bend over backwards and believe a bunch of observably-but-not-provably false claims just in order to avoid having to admit to the existence of a soul/mind. Philosophical materialists often tend to sound that way. Why so much faith in materialism that you'd acccept such outlandish claims like "my existence is an illusion" in order to be consistent with it?
posted
This is the impasse we always butt up against, isn't it? I would characterize much of your own argument in similar terms... you basically say, "I KNOW I experience in a non-material way, and I know YOU do too, so just admit it."
Not terribly convincing.
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posted
Except that you even agree, in your last post, that it SEEMS to be the way I say it is.
But then you say that is just an illusion. If you are the one who is claiming that "what seems true" is not really true, then I would think you are the one who needs to provide some strong reason to believe it. Otherwise, doesn't it make sense to just believe what seems to be true?
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quote:I KNOW I experience in a non-material way, and I know YOU do too, so just admit it.
Whether this is an accurate paraphrase, I don't know, but it's ambiguous.
Arg 1: If it means, "I experience things. That the mechanisms of this are non-material is a fact, because of such-and-such argument," then that would not be terribly convincing. The argument might be, though. Or not.
Arg 2: If it means, "I experience things, and these experiences sometimes have a non-material quality (such as imaginary pictures), and I know this because I perceive it directly," then that's completely convincing. Because I also can picture things in my imagination. To say why this happens would take argument, and the argument might fail, but the fact of the picturing things is an immediate experience and can't reasonably be disputed.
That is, this conversation is reasonable: A: I see a lion. B: No, you think you see a lion. There isn't anything there. You're imagining it.
but this isn't: A: I don't see a lion, but I can picture one. B: No, you only think you can picture one. There's nothing here, and you aren't imagining it. You only imagine that you imagine it.
[ January 17, 2007, 10:20 AM: Message edited by: Will B ]
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posted
Whereas I disagree. I think we've actually got three possibilities.
A. I don't see a lion, but I can picture one = Materialists B. You imagine that you imagine a lion = Idiots who aren't posting on this thread C. I picture a lion, and that picture is real in some non-physical way = People who believe in qualia
The problem I have isn't Tres' insistence on qualia; he's perfectly permitted to believe whatever reality he wants for the interior of his own head. The problem, rather, is that he insists that qualia have a true external reality, a Platonic reality, that in some measurable way affects the physical universe without being physical. This I dispute quite energetically. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
From the last 2 posts, I think y'all are misunderstanding each other.
Tresopax agrees completely, so he finds Arg 1 "not terribly convincing." I conclude Arg 2 is closer to what he meant. ?
Tom says Tres is claiming more than the immediate experience (Arg 2), and instead insisting on a conclusion from it (Platonic ideals), which fits Arg 1.
So I think you're talking past each other?
We might also get some clarification of "real in some non-physical way." This might mean "having a non-physical aspect" or "having a non-physical aspect as its _basis_."
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posted
Either way, Tom and I(and others) believe that everything has ONLY physical aspects. So I don't differentiate between those last two options you posited. They're both equally unlikely.
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quote:A. I don't see a lion, but I can picture one = Materialists B. You imagine that you imagine a lion = Idiots who aren't posting on this thread C. I picture a lion, and that picture is real in some non-physical way = People who believe in qualia
Both (A) and (C) believe in qualia. The difference is that (A) includes materialists who think qualia can have a purely physical explanation (functionalists, behavioralists, identity theorists, etc.), whereas (C) includes substance dualists, property dualists, and idealists who think qualia entails some non-physical explanation. But (B) is the only group that denies qualia, in the example you gave - they are the eliminative materialists .
I think David believes position (B) - or at least the philosopher Daniel Dennett does, and I am under the impression that David takes the same stance as Dennett on qualia.
Please note that I have NOT insisted in this thread that qualia can affect the physical universe. I believe it does, but I can't exactly prove it or explain how, so I'm not going to insist that it does. All I have insisted is that qualia exists, is not physical, and thus indicates the existence of a soul/mind.
quote:Either way, Tom and I(and others) believe that everything has ONLY physical aspects.
Then my question is, how do you explain the sort of conscious experience that I've been referring to? You'd have to argue it is either (A) something that somehow exists physically somewhere, or (B) it doesn't really exist. (using Tom's lettering)
quote:But (B) is the only group that denies qualia, in the example you gave - they are the eliminative materialists.
No, see, I'm a semi-eliminative materialist, too. And saying "you imagine you imagine qualia" doesn't accurately describe my position.
My position: the collection of physical entities that makes up a "you" imagines that you are a "you." That collection, as a "you," interacts with physical reality through a variety of subsystems we call "perceptions," and processes those perceptions interally through another set of filters. Those filters are also capable of generating "thoughts" which, while made up of physically real carrier information, do not necessarily accurately represent physical reality.
These "thoughts" are real insofar as they may motivate further real behavior; they are not real in that they are not necessarily useful or predictive in interacting with physical reality. When you "imagine" a unicorn, your brain produces electrochemical carriers that represent the "unicorn" and connect it to other carriers holding your memories of "horse," "hair," "horns," "smell," etc. In this way, you generate a "memory" of what a unicorn might be like based on hypothetical sense impressions. This projection acquires physical reality as a "thought;" it does not, however, cause unicorns to spring into existence, or exist anywhere outside the context of your brain.
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quote:Otherwise, doesn't it make sense to just believe what seems to be true?
Nope. The earth SEEMS to be flat from my perspective. It isn't. The sun SEEMS to go around the earth from my perspective. It doesn't. There SEEMS to be movement of static images or light in film (phi phenomenon) but there isn't.
There SEEMS to be an image of a pink elephant in my head, but there isn't.
So I would amend "B" to read "You interpret the imagining of a lion as your having an image of a lion in your mind, but there isn't any place for an image in your mind, and if there were, there isn't any conscious being floating around there with eyes to see it, hello."
[ January 17, 2007, 11:28 AM: Message edited by: David Bowles ]
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quote:When you "imagine" a unicorn, your brain produces electrochemical carriers that represent the "unicorn" and connect it to other carriers holding your memories of "horse," "hair," "horns," "smell," etc. In this way, you generate a "memory" of what a unicorn might be like based on hypothetical sense impressions. This projection acquires physical reality as a "thought;" it does not, however, cause unicorns to spring into existence, or exist anywhere outside the context of your brain.
Very well stated. I would only tweak the last part to "or exist anywhere outside the physical states of your brain."
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posted
I think of the mind - and I think my perception of it is similar to Tom's - as a process which has the appearance of a thing, much the same way we see a fire as a thing when it is in fact a rather simple chemical reaction.
To tie it back to the original question, I think that some of the evolutionary programming we operate under found it advantageous to treat processes and motion as things (like viewing a tornado as an entity of some kind, rather than moving air and bits of debris). The awareness of one's own thought process combined with this programmed tendency goes a long way towards explaining the concept of a soul to me.
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posted
I think we're doing well if there's *only* one opinion per poster!
Anyway, Strider, you may stick with your position
quote:Either way, Tom and I(and others) believe that everything has ONLY physical aspects.
but I'll challenge it and see, with the concept of circles (that pi-r-squared thing, I mean).
To maintain that everything has only physical aspects, you would have to say that circles aren't contained in the set of "everything" (?), or that circles are physical phenomena. I don't see how that's going to work.
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quote:Nope. The earth SEEMS to be flat from my perspective. It isn't. The sun SEEMS to go around the earth from my perspective. It doesn't. There SEEMS to be movement of static images or light in film (phi phenomenon) but there isn't.
In each of those cases, we don't believe what seems true at first because there is actual evidence to the contrary. What evidence do you have that there is no image of a pink elephant in my mind when it seems to me that there is such an image in my mind?
You say "there isn't any place for an image in your mind" but the image is non-physical so it doesn't need a place. You say "there isn't any conscious being floating around there with eyes to see it" but *I* am the conscious being in my mind, and I am aware of the things inside my mind whether I have eyes or not.
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quote:To maintain that everything has only physical aspects, you would have to say that circles aren't contained in the set of "everything" (?), or that circles are physical phenomena.
"Circle" is a descriptor, an attribute which is applied to something else. It's like being "happy" or "sad" or "red."
Non-physical descriptors are merely definitional. "This is an object which holds the property that we call 'circular,'" we might say, in the same way that we might say "this person is feeling the set of stimuli we call 'happy.'"
We've merely defined a set of physical properties, and then are using the descriptor as shorthand for that set.
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posted
But circularity doesn't describe physical reality: nothing in nature is circular. Nothing in nature is pi or e, either. (I think you might have a good case for physical constants being merely descriptors of physical reality -- that's certainly what they're intended to be!)
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Which is why "pi" and "e" don't exist, except again as descriptors for observed physical properties. You can have "e" of something; "e," however, is meaningless without the "of something" added in there. It's a descriptor for a property that describes quantity.
Edit: Now, I know you can never have precisely "e" or "pi" of something. But by being descriptive of quantity, they become "carriers" of useful information despite their apparently "unreal" natures. One of the great things about being intelligent is our ability to assign "properties" to objects which do not necessarily correspond to physical properties; the property still functions and holds elements according to our internal definitions (much as programming properties do, now that I think of it), but doesn't have physical reality until it's called upon to interact with other objects in some way.
quote:You say "there isn't any place for an image in your mind" but the image is non-physical so it doesn't need a place.
Circular (no pun intended, those who are debating circularity). You say I need to prove that what you think you see is not actually being seen, but the truth is that you need to prove what precisely it means for something to be "non-physical" beyond its not "need[ing] a place."
quote:You say "there isn't any conscious being floating around there with eyes to see it" but *I* am the conscious being in my mind, and I am aware of the things inside my mind whether I have eyes or not.
Do you understand from this quote the problem with your use of terms like "see"? If you have a soul or whatever, it hasn't got physical eyes, so its perception is unlikely to be the same as that as your physical body's. If you are willing to concede this, perhaps you'll find it easier to understand why I say that your imagining the pink elephant doesn't require that "you" actually "see" anything, but that you physically simulate seeing without any EM input. The mental subsystems that are presiding over your selfhood and consciousness at that moment quickly edit your memory (via Orwellian or Stalinesque techniques... see Dennett) so that you remember in microseconds having "seen" this mental image (a virtual reality much easier to consciously comprehend than what really is happening in your brain).
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posted
Again with my unicorn. Tres, would you dispute that when you are imagining a unicorn, something physical changes in your brain? Chemical or electrical potentials, whatever; the point is, something physical is happening. You are claiming that something unphysical is happening in addition, but I don't want to go there yet; I want to see how far we agree.
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I'm beginning to think that all that's really going on here, pun intended, is a dispute over what the words "real" and "exist" should mean. If we define "real" to mean "physical," then of course only physical things are real.
This still won't work with "everything has only physical aspects." e and pi are a part of everything; even if we define "real" to mean physical, thus making them "unreal," they're still part of everything, specifically the unreal subset. And they have no physical aspects.
I suppose we can define "everything" to mean "everything provided it's physical," but then "everything has only physical aspects" isn't a statement about reality, but simply a definition of the word "everything."
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No, they're not. Nothing is "made" of "e" or "pi." Pi and e are descriptors that can be applied to things which exist; they are not themselves things which exist.
Saying that "pi" has independent existence is like saying that "red" has independent existence. You can talk about it as if it does, you can even come up with representations of it, but you can at no point actually point at it and say "that's pi." You can say "that symbol stands for pi" or "the length of that thing divided by the length of that other thing is what we call pi," but it's not actually a thing.
It's a descriptor. It doesn't actually exist, any more than the color "red" exists. It's a term we've come up with to describe specific attributes of things that do exist.
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posted
If "everything" doesn't include every thing, I think the definition of "everything" has been stretched so much we can no longer communicate.
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