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"Everything" includes every thing. As far as I'm concerned, "red" and "pi" are not things, unless of course you're seriously stretching the definition of "thing." Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote: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).
this was interesting David. Can you explain more? or point me in the direction of some reading?
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Dennett's thesis is that our modern understanding of consciousness is unduly influenced by the ideas of René Descartes. To show why, he starts with a description of the phi illusion. In this experiment, two different coloured lights, with an angular separation of a few degrees at the eye, are flashed in succession. If the interval between the flashes is less than a second or so, the first light that is flashed appears to move across to the position of the second light. Furthermore, the light seems to change colour as it moves across the visual field. A green light will appear to turn red as it seems to move across to the position of a red light. Dennett asks how we could see the light change colour before the second light is observed.
Dennett claims that conventional explanations of the colour change boil down to either Orwellian or Stalinesque hypotheses, which he says are the result of Descartes' continued influence on our vision of the mind. In an Orwellian hypothesis, the subject comes to one conclusion, then goes back and changes that memory in light of subsequent events. This is akin to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, where records of the past are routinely altered. In a Stalinesque hypothesis, the two events would be reconciled prior to entering the subject's consciousness, with the final result presented as fully resolved. This is akin to Joseph Stalin's show trials, where the verdict has been decided in advance and the trial is just a rote presentation.
[W]e can suppose, both theorists have exactly the same theory of what happens in your brain; they agree about just where and when in the brain the mistaken content enters the causal pathways; they just disagree about whether that location is to be deemed pre-experiential or post-experiential. [...] [T]hey even agree about how it ought to "feel" to subjects: Subjects should be unable to tell the difference between misbegotten experiences and immediately misremembered experiences. [p.125, original emphasis.]
Dennett argues that there is no principled basis for picking one of these theories over the other, because they share a common error in supposing that there is a special time and place where unconscious processing becomes consciously experienced, entering into what Dennett calls the 'Cartesian theater'. Both theories require us to cleanly divide a sequence of perceptions and reactions into before and after the instant that they reach the seat of consciousness, but he denies that there is any such moment, as it would lead to infinite regress. Instead, he asserts that there is no privileged place in the brain where consciousness happens. Dennett states that, "[t]here does not exist [...] a process such as 'recruitment of consciousness'(into what?), nor any place where the 'vehicle's arrival' is recognized (by whom?)." [2]
"Cartesian materialism is the view that there is a crucial finish line or boundary somewhere in the brain, marking a place where the order of arrival equals the order of "presentation" in experience because what happens there is what you are conscious of. [...] Many theorists would insist that they have explicitly rejected such an obviously bad idea. But [...] the persuasive imagery of the Cartesian Theater keeps coming back to haunt us—laypeople and scientists alike—even after its ghostly dualism has been denounced and exorcized. [p.107, original emphasis.]
With no theater, there is no screen, hence no reason to re-present data after it has already been analyzed. Dennett says that, "the Multiple Drafts model goes on to claim that the brain does not bother 'constructing' any representations that go to the trouble of 'filling in' the blanks. That would be a waste of time and (shall we say?) paint. The judgement is already in so we can get on with other tasks!"
According to the model, there are a variety of sensory inputs from a given event and also a variety of interpretations of these inputs. The sensory inputs arrive in the brain and are interpreted at different times, so a given event can give rise to a succession of discriminations, constituting the equivalent of multiple drafts of a story. As soon as each discrimination is accomplished, it becomes available for eliciting a behaviour; it does not have to wait to be presented at the theatre.
You can see that I was wrong in attributing the editing view to Dennett... gah. Need to go back and read Consciousness Explained.
[ January 18, 2007, 08:59 AM: Message edited by: David Bowles ]
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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quote: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."
Is this your roundabout way of saying you don't have proof for your position?
I would think being "non-physical" means it neither consists of nor can be accurately described in terms of physical particles, in addition to having no location in space.
quote: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.
Physical bodies don't actually "see" anything, in the way we think of it. They are just a collection of atoms. All they do is react in the ways the laws of nature makes them react. There is no entity there to see anything. You could call it "seeing" when the atoms of the eye react in the way that it does, and when other atoms in the body then respond, but this is not really "seeing" any more than a camera "sees". Cameras are collections of atoms too, and they also respond to light in certain ways. Yet, I don't think that is actually "seeing" or even "perceiving" as we actually think of it, because we are souls, not collections of atoms.
"Seeing" is actually a term to describe something that only souls can do. It is describing a specific sort of qualia (a specific type of experience.) We think of it as a sort of experience that can give us information about the physical world. Although, the world is not as we "see" it - trees and rocks are not really solid objects as they appear, but rather collections of atoms with lots of space in between.
If you think "seeing" is something physical bodies do with eyes, consider the case of a blind man who can see. There are numerous stories that discuss such a hypothetical person. Imagine that such a person actually lost their eyes, and thus have no eyes with which they could see. Imagine also that we do a brain scan and determine that none of the processes we'd associate with seeing are present in this guy's brain. But then imagine that in his mind he sees just like we do, and his sight accurately reflects the outside world just like ours does. Would you say he is "seeing"? I would think almost everyone would.
Now imagine the reverse. Imagine someone with good eyes whose brain is functioning in exactly the way a person who is "seeing" functions. Yet, also imagine that he experiences no vision in his mind - no colors, no shapes, only blackness, like it looks to you when your eyes are shut. Is this person "seeing"? I would say no. Even if his body began to act as if it knew the outside world as if it could see, I would still say no, if the conscious person himself could not picture the world outside in his mind the way I can.
Hence, "to see" is a thing souls do, not a thing physical bodies do.
But as I said before, our language is poorly equipped to handle this. Normally, at least while we are alive, the physical reactions are always present when the mental experience occurs. We have never had much reason to develop a language that distinguishes the two. We casually say stuff to our children like "you see with your eyes", without stopping to really consider if technically we do or not, because in practical life it usually doesn't matter.
quote: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.
At least while I am alive, it certainly seems like this is true. The brain and the mind seem to parallel one another.
But there is no reason to think it is necessarily always true, in other cases. For instance, it might be possible that dead people can also see unicorns, even though their brain is now gone. I wouldn't know one way or another, on that matter.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Strider, something to beware of when reading Dennett... I think he has a tendency to bury his actual argument under a lot of scientific and psychological side-issues which don't directly support his main point. The effect is that things sound complicated, and then radical assumptions can be slipped in almost unnoticed. Make sure you stop and consider what his actual fundamental argument is, and what assumptions he is using to base that argument upon.
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Well, we need some terms to describe, well, everything. If we can't use thing, everything, real, exist, how can we refer to all, including pi and e? I'm pretty sure we'll lose "all" as well (are pi and e part of "all"?). And "is," if pi isn't part of all that is. Making it impossible to express thoughts you disagree with isn't philosophy; it's Newspeak.
Posts: 1877 | Registered: Apr 2005
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I was just at Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago and looking at some Dennett and some Bertrand Russell. I've been meaning to read both of them for some time now(Dawkins mentions them periodically in his writing too), but went with Russell. Been reading "Why I'm not a Christian" and other essays. "Why I'm not a Christian" was actually my least favorite essay of the bunch, maybe because I've heard those arguments so much already, there wasn't anything new.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Read The Mind's I, which Dennett coauthored with Douglas Hofstadter. Then read Hofstadter's Göedel, Escher, Bach. Then read Dennett's Consciousness Explained.
Tres,
Lot of stuff in your definition of "seeing" that you can't prove, so it's real purdy and all, but no thanks. I'll stick with my more empirically supported speculation rather than switch to your intuitive folk psychology.
What is it in the soul that makes it see? Gah, the fact that you can't understand that you've just put the problem off by various steps is infuriating. You say that the body is just made up of atoms, and something like that can't see. Well, what the blazes is a soul made of? How are its constituent ingredients more adequate for making a seeing-capable being than atoms are? You explain nothing, you just wave your wand and postulate unprovable stuff to explain away the questions you don't want to face.
Posts: 5663 | Registered: Jun 2000
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I ownGoedel, Escher, Bach, but only just started reading it and haven't come back to it since. This was a little while ago, recommended by someone here at Hatrack actually. Fitz I think.
I'll add the books to my ever expanding reading list.
edit - I enjoyed what I read of Goedel, Escher, Bach, it was just a bit too dense for me at the time and I was reading other things. Been meaning to get back to it for a while.
Posts: 8741 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Lot of stuff in your definition of "seeing" that you can't prove, so it's real purdy and all, but no thanks. I'll stick with my more empirically supported speculation rather than switch to your intuitive folk psychology.
What empirical support do you have?
I'm also not sure how it is even possible to empirically prove the definition of a concept like "to see". However, I did offer non-empirical proof - the example of the man with no eyes who can see, for instance.
quote:What is it in the soul that makes it see? Gah, the fact that you can't understand that you've just put the problem off by various steps is infuriating. You say that the body is just made up of atoms, and something like that can't see. Well, what the blazes is a soul made of? How are its constituent ingredients more adequate for making a seeing-capable being than atoms are?
A soul is just a soul - it cannot be divided into any parts or ingredients. It is not made up of anything, other than itself. Sort of like physical space. What is space made out of? What part of space allows it to have atoms in it? You can't answer these questions because space is a fundamental thing, with fundamental properties that exist for no other reason other than that's what the nature of physical space is.
One of the properties of the soul, I'd argue, is that it can experience qualia. And since sight is one of those experiences, the soul is able to see.
I don't think this same property is possessed by matter, hence I don't think matter can see. One could imagine matter having that property though - it would be like OSC's auia.
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The difference between space and the soul is that at present physics considers space a fundamental as we have no present knowledge of any thing that constitutes it, but we certainly haven't, as you've done with the soul, completely discarded the possibility that it is made up of constituent bits.
quote:If you think "seeing" is something physical bodies do with eyes, consider the case of a blind man who can see. There are numerous stories that discuss such a hypothetical person. Imagine that such a person actually lost their eyes, and thus have no eyes with which they could see. Imagine also that we do a brain scan and determine that none of the processes we'd associate with seeing are present in this guy's brain. But then imagine that in his mind he sees just like we do, and his sight accurately reflects the outside world just like ours does. Would you say he is "seeing"? I would think almost everyone would.
Very pretty intuition pump.
1) if the man had seen before losing his eyes, then his brain would have learned how to compute visual input, and it would be able, as mine does even if I'm not looking at something, to put itself into that state and MIMIC SEEING, without the EM input.
2) if the man had never seen before, his brain couldn't do so, and so he could never MIMIC any EM-induced brain state. QED.
quote:If we can't use thing, everything, real, exist...
We can. But tell me: is "green" part of everything? Is "happy?"
When you say "I want my burger with everything," are you not only referring to lettuce but also demanding that it be granted the property of "tastiness?"
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:It is not made up of anything, other than itself. Sort of like physical space. What is space made out of? What part of space allows it to have atoms in it?
If we suppose physical space is accurately represented by relativity, it actually has a lot of different parts. These parts serve different purposes, in a sense. For instance, a space's points are what allow things to be located within it. Its metric is what explains distances. Its curves are the paths objects can take through it.
Space has many parts that explain why it works the way it does. Conclusion: bad analogy.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:At least while I am alive, it certainly seems like this is true. The brain and the mind seem to parallel one another.
But there is no reason to think it is necessarily always true, in other cases. For instance, it might be possible that dead people can also see unicorns, even though their brain is now gone. I wouldn't know one way or another, on that matter.
Then, if you don't mind, try not to use such unsubstantiated concepts in the discussion. It's bad enough when people insist on gods.
Getting back to the point at hand, it seems you agree that as far as we can observe, imagining a unicorn is always accompanied by certain physical changes. Now, let's try it the other way. Suppose I were able to precisely replicate those physical changes in your brain - we'll do this at whatever level of detail you want, right down to what quantum mechanics actually forbids; it's a hypothetical question. Do you think you would then experience the sensation of imagining a unicorn?
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:You say that the body is just made up of atoms, and something like that can't see. Well, what the blazes is a soul made of? How are its constituent ingredients more adequate for making a seeing-capable being than atoms are?
I'd just like to underscore how important this point of David's is.
In my experience, any phenomenon more complicated than simple motion is explained by relationships between the parts of a thing. Phenomenal consciousness is obviously a complicated and hard-to-understand thing. Seems much more likely, then, that a structured, complicated thing like a brain is the seat of consciousness, if the alternative explanation is a simple thing with no structure.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Yes, greenness and happiness are part of everything. I witnessed both today!
I'll assume the "burger with everything" comment was a joke? If not, I'll never order one again. I'd hate to get one that contained scorpions, the population of China, and the Cygnus X-1 black hole.
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Just read through. I think I'll take part for the pro-soul side, but too tired to do it justice right now.
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quote:1) if the man had seen before losing his eyes, then his brain would have learned how to compute visual input, and it would be able, as mine does even if I'm not looking at something, to put itself into that state and MIMIC SEEING, without the EM input.
2) if the man had never seen before, his brain couldn't do so, and so he could never MIMIC any EM-induced brain state. QED.
Your point is...?
My example is a third option. The man never had eyes that functioned, and his brain never mimics any brain state, but he sees anyway. Can't you imagine such a person? I certainly can, and I know such characters have appeared in many stories throughout history. I could write one right now and I'd bet virtually all readers who weren't specifically intent on defending materialism from qualia would have no trouble imagining such a person. Hence, my point is that you can imagine someone seeing who is not processing signals through his eyes, therefore "seeing" must not literally mean to us the act of processing signals through our eyes. Rather, I'd argue, it is an experience, because I cannot imagine any character that actually "sees" who does not have an experience of it. Walking down the street, processing signals with my eyes, and thus not bumping into anything, but having only an experience of total blackness would not constitute seeing, I'd think.
This would be better termed a "introspection pump" rather than an "intuition pump" because it is a thought experiment designed to make you observe something about what you mean when you think of a certain concept - seeing. Introspection is critical in any discussion of the mind because many important aspects of the mind cannot be observed in any other way.
quote:If we suppose physical space is accurately represented by relativity, it actually has a lot of different parts. These parts serve different purposes, in a sense. For instance, a space's points are what allow things to be located within it. Its metric is what explains distances. Its curves are the paths objects can take through it.
So you would suggest space is made up of points, metrics, and curves.... I'm not sure I would call any of these components, but if so, what then are "points" made out of? What are curves made out of? Eventually any model of the universe is going to break down into fundamental things that are not built out of other things. And these fundamental things have properties that cannot be explained, except by saying that's simply the way they are.
quote:Suppose I were able to precisely replicate those physical changes in your brain - we'll do this at whatever level of detail you want, right down to what quantum mechanics actually forbids; it's a hypothetical question. Do you think you would then experience the sensation of imagining a unicorn?
I think it is likely, because as I said, the physical brain and mental experiences seem to be linked while we are alive.
quote:In my experience, any phenomenon more complicated than simple motion is explained by relationships between the parts of a thing. Phenomenal consciousness is obviously a complicated and hard-to-understand thing. Seems much more likely, then, that a structured, complicated thing like a brain is the seat of consciousness, if the alternative explanation is a simple thing with no structure.
I'd guess phenomenal consciousness IS a thing explained by the relationships between parts. The parts include many many brain cells and one mind, among other things. Or, so I believe. A mind by itself would just be an awareness, I'd think - a very simple sort of phenomenon. I would think that in order for that awareness to start having complicated experiences, something must induce it to have those experiences - such as a brain, or something else.
But this is just an assumption, based on my experience, which is like yours. It is possible that our experience is simply totally misleading, and that the mind is an exception to the rule that phenomenon tend to arise from the relationship of parts. There seem to be other exceptions after all. I'm not sure how the Pythagoreon Theorum can be explained by any "parts" of anything, for instance, but it is nevertheless an important phenomenon. The Universe's existence could be considered another - no relationship of parts within the universe explains why there is a universe there in the first place. It is possible the mind is like that, and does not depend on other things to create conscious experience as we know it - I can't really know for sure.
quote:I'd guess phenomenal consciousness IS a thing explained by the relationships between parts. The parts include many many brain cells and one mind, among other things. Or, so I believe. A mind by itself would just be an awareness, I'd think - a very simple sort of phenomenon. I would think that in order for that awareness to start having complicated experiences, something must induce it to have those experiences - such as a brain, or something else.
So a mind needs to be connected to a body in order to imagine colors? Because that's a complicated experience too, as you've pointed out.
Couldn't a body-less soul make decisions or form opinions? Those also seem like complex activities.
I've said it before: the soul, as you envision it, doesn't seem to have much it can do.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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quote:The man never had eyes that functioned, and his brain never mimics any brain state, but he sees anyway. Can't you imagine such a person?
No. I can imagine someone without eyes whose brain state relies on other sources to produce a sense equivalent to eyesight and thus "sees," but I cannot imagine that someone without eyes OR the ability to induce the appropriate brain state can "see."
(Note: there are substitute senses that can permit people to perceive the world around them, but they do not mimic or resemble "sight." I submit that, to do this, your brain would need to interpret incoming sense impressions as "sight.")
quote:I think it is likely, because as I said, the physical brain and mental experiences seem to be linked while we are alive.
Since you grant this point, Tres, would you also grant that since drugs and surgeries can substantially alter someone's perceptions AND reactions to those perceptions, that drugs and surgeries can also alter someone's soul? If not, what happens when they die? Does their essential nature revert back to what it was before the drugs were applied? Is their essential nature never changed, but forced to "watch" as a wall of drugs and surgeries separates it from the brain, its preferred interface with the world?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:So a mind needs to be connected to a body in order to imagine colors? Because that's a complicated experience too, as you've pointed out.
Couldn't a body-less soul make decisions or form opinions? Those also seem like complex activities.
I'm not sure, because I am not and can't ever remember being a bodyless soul. I would think probably not, but that too is just a guess.
I assume a body-less soul would experience something but I couldn't really guess what that would be. For an atheist, one might might imagine it to be like a TV tuned to static. I believe in God though, so I assume God would dictate whatever it is the soul experiences when not attached to a body.
quote:I've said it before: the soul, as you envision it, doesn't seem to have much it can do.
Quite the opposite - the soul experiences, which is the single most important ingredient to our lives. Without experience, all other things are just a collection of meaningless abstractions that we call "particles". Trees, cars, ice cream cones, etc. are all only meaningful through the ways in which we experience them - their colors, tastes, feeling, value to us, and so on. Imagine a code of seemingless meaningless number that fills millions and millions of sheets of paper, but without any key with which we can interpret the code into anything meaningful. That would be the universe without qualia.
True, it seems the soul without something to experience is not terribly useful - but a universe without souls to experience it is not terribly useful either.
quote:No. I can imagine someone without eyes whose brain state relies on other sources to produce a sense equivalent to eyesight and thus "sees," but I cannot imagine that someone without eyes OR the ability to induce the appropriate brain state can "see."
Fair enough - I guess the example won't convince you then. But if that is true, I don't think you are very imaginative.
quote:Since you grant this point, Tres, would you also grant that since drugs and surgeries can substantially alter someone's perceptions AND reactions to those perceptions, that drugs and surgeries can also alter someone's soul?
They can alter what the soul experiences, yes. In fact, it seems to happen to people all the time who use drugs, etc.
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quote: Suppose I were able to precisely replicate those physical changes in your brain - we'll do this at whatever level of detail you want, right down to what quantum mechanics actually forbids; it's a hypothetical question. Do you think you would then experience the sensation of imagining a unicorn?
I think it is likely, because as I said, the physical brain and mental experiences seem to be linked while we are alive.
Good, we agree on this. In that case, what possible grounds do you have for postulating a soul? We've agreed that there is a one-to-one correspondence between changes in the brain and experience; where are you going to put the soul, then?
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quote:Quite the opposite - the soul experiences, which is the single most important ingredient to our lives.
What about making decisions and acting on them? If the soul is only the seat of experience, and not of decision-making, why is it that my soul (I presume) deserves and will receive heavenly reward? Or hellish punishment, if you believe in that.
Getting more philosophically technical, I tend toward the view (Donald Davidson's, I think) that only a creature with desires can properly be said to have beliefs, and vice versa.
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quote:We've agreed that there is a one-to-one correspondence between changes in the brain and experience; where are you going to put the soul, then?
There is typically a one-to-one correspondence between lightning and thunder. That doesn't mean they are the same thing.
quote:What about making decisions and acting on them? If the soul is only the seat of experience, and not of decision-making, why is it that my soul (I presume) deserves and will receive heavenly reward?
My guess would be that decision-making is a process that entails both a soul and a body, although my confidence on that is not very good. It seems to be impacted by both - messing around with my brain can alter my decision making without seeming to alter my experiences, and yet I can also imagine that experiencing pain differently would alter my decisions too. The trouble is that it is unclear how the soul and brain would interact - in fact, it violates physics as we currently understand it, if a non-physical soul were to someone influence how my body makes decisions. As a result, I'm hesitant to make any claims about where the seat of decision making is.
However, I don't believe souls "deserve" heavenly rewards, so to speak. I don't think it works like that. Even if the soul IS the seat of decision-making, those decisions are still going to be predetermined by whatever the nature of the soul is, just like how the decisions of a brain in a materialist model would be predetermined by the nature of that brain. It is not really fair to credit or blame a soul for what its nature makes it choose, I'd argue.
Instead, like I've said in the past, I think all people are good people, because their nature is to try to do the right thing. I believe the trouble is that circumstances distort things to the point where what seems right is actually wrong. I don't think they should be blamed or credited for either of these. Rather I think they should simply be valued (or loved, to use the Christian way of talking about it). And for that reason, I think God would put everyone in heaven if He could, and if that were truly the best thing for each soul. I don't think whether or not they "deserve" it factors in. Instead, my guess is that if good decisions increase the likelihood of a heavenly reward, it is only because for some reason it is harmful to put souls that have made wrongful decisions in heaven. I don't have any real insight into the afterlife though, so I can't really speculate on why this might happen.
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quote:They can alter what the soul experiences, yes.
You mistake my meaning. By giving you specific drugs, I can make you angry, happy, sad, paranoid, satisfied, hungry, etc. Some of these changes are permanent: I can make you MORE angry, less intelligent, etc.
Is "intelligence" a property of the soul? If I can make you less intelligent with drugs, am I making your SOUL less intelligent?
If emotions aren't properties of the soul, what's left for the soul?
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Tresopax, I can also imagine a walking skeleton that sees, feels and whistles "Dixie." I don't see how that's a proof of anything.
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Fascinating thread, I am sorry I just came in so late. The philosophy stuff leaves me dizzy, so I won't attempt to contribute.
Strider asked originally where religion came from. I suspect it is from the ubiquity of paranormal experiences. Every society I am aware of reports ghosts, out-of-body experieces, visions and intuitions (that come true), and so on. So the parsimonious explanation is that there is another level of experience that we experience occasionally. Then we attribute all sorts of meaning to the core experience, hence religions.
Too often we describe "primitive" societies as ignorant and superstitious. My experience is different. What little experience I have makes me respect individuals in those societies. They are incredibly resourceful and wise, or they are dead (Alaska natives; Southwest Indians). When they describe their religions, they seem to come from very unusual but real experiences.
Twenty years ago I interviewed 32 NDE survivors. That was an astonishing experience and changed me profoundly. There is a scientific organization for that sort of thing (www.iands.org). Pim Van Lommel's article is insightful, worth a read. He also has a commentary on Scientific American's shameful misrepresenting of his _Lancet_ article on www.nderf.org.
I also just finished Deborah Blum's amazing book, _Ghost Hunters_ and found it worthwhile.
Well, there is no proof of life after death, but there are some hints. Tom's Materialism doesn't stand up if you look at Radin's random number generator results, for example. But no proof.
Perhaps God wants the universe to be a Rorschach, something that brings out our own projections. So it must always be - at a fundamental level - ambiguous. Hence, I have no interest in convincing people, but I would like to contribute to the discussion.
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Tom, emotions and experiences - if you accept the remote viewing / NDE line of data - are things that the soul _observes_. All experiences are good for learning and growth, at least according to those viewpoints.
quote:My guess would be that decision-making is a process that entails both a soul and a body, although my confidence on that is not very good. It seems to be impacted by both - messing around with my brain can alter my decision making without seeming to alter my experiences, and yet I can also imagine that experiencing pain differently would alter my decisions too.
That's inconsistent with the possibility of zombies who are physically identical to us but experientially different. But most dualists believe in the possibility of zombies. It seems like if your man with no optical brain signals, and yet who can see, is possible, zombies ought to be.
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quote: If emotions aren't properties of the soul, what's left for the soul?
Thoughts perhaps? Can you administer chemicals that make me THINK about specific things?
At this time the technology is not good enough. We can, however, give you drugs to make you not think about things, as in Prozac for depression. Would you like to dispute the possibility in principle?
quote:There is typically a one-to-one correspondence between lightning and thunder. That doesn't mean they are the same thing.
Yes they are; to wit, they are both effects of large-scale ionisation discharges. But there is absolutely no reason to think that such a common cause exists for physical changes in the brain (after all, we can induce those from outside, if crudely) and thoughts; it is much more reasonable to assume that thoughts are caused by the physical changes. So why this insistence on an additional step?
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quote: At this time the technology is not good enough. We can, however, give you drugs to make you not think about things, as in Prozac for depression. Would you like to dispute the possibility in principle?
Yes. You can prevent me from experiencing the sensation of depression. You certainly cannot control whether or not I think about an idea or an event.
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I stopped your depression by controlling whether or not you obsessively think about a particular idea or event. That's a crude level of control, but then the technology is in its infancy.
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Are you sure its not sometimes otherway around? As in, I feel the sensation of depression and in response think about something sad that has happened which reinforces a habit of thinking about it whenever I feel the depression.
If I dwell on something sad, I become depressed. By doing it repeatedly I start associating that memory with depression, and vice versa.
Certainly your medication can't make me not think about the event. All it can do is tell my brain to stop producing the depression chemicals or produce the chemicals that cause euphoria.
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quote:Certainly your medication can't make me not think about the event.
Before I give you the medication, you think about it X times a day. Afterwards, you think about it Y << X times a day. That's control.
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quote:Certainly your medication can't make me not think about the event.
Before I give you the medication, you think about it X times a day. Afterwards, you think about it Y << X times a day. That's control.
Not if you are merely removing the stimulus that produces the response. The response in this case being me thinking about a specific event that was sad.
You are more removing a restraint I have created for myself more then directing what I think about.
People with clinical depression have brains that produce the depressing chemicals more than is healthy. Medication simply restores the balance Its not like the medication make me think about of specific events that make me happy. It simply creates the chemical that I interpret as happiness. What I will then think about is not something you can simply predict using any scientific method.
I am pretty certain there will NEVER be a way to chemically cause a person to think about say a brick.
edit: There may be a way to stimulate the brain into perceiving a brick. You can even do it so often that I start focusing on the bricks and it becomes something that is always on my mind. But that is because I have chosen to think about the bricks, and it has become a habit. You cannot make me think about a brick.
double edit: Do you think perhaps we should create a new thread about this topic as it is not directly related to the original premise?
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quote:I am pretty certain there will NEVER be a way to chemically cause a person to think about say a brick.
Bets? Watch closely, now, there may be questions afterwards.
DON'T THINK ABOUT PURPLE RHINOCERI!
Now then. Did you think, even for a moment, about purple rhinoceri? And I didn't even have to use any chemicals. Honestly, this is trivial.
quote:You are more removing a restraint I have created for myself more then directing what I think about.
A purely semantic difference and completely uninteresting. I changed the frequency of your thoughts about <whatever>; therefore I control what you think about.
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Does depression influence the soul? I imagine so. So what about the chemicals?
Actually, chemicals have a fairly weak effect on things like depression. The effect size is about .2, according to an Archives of General Psychiatry article a couple of years ago. Struggling with the depression has a larger effect size, around .8, so that which causes the soul to grow, struggling with meaning and behavior, has more impact.
Chemical control of thinking is still almost unimaginable to those of us in the field. I would use the word "influence" since control is too strong a case. King's comment is in the realm of thought experiment.
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Lynn, are you seriously referring to the "Global Consciousness Project" as a disproof of materialism? Leaving aside the "project's" truly God-awful (heh) methodology, the simple fact is that "psychic phenomena" are not disproofs of materialism if in fact there are physical causes for the results. In other words, if a gland in my brain makes it possible for me to control gravitons or something and thus levitate spoons, I haven't disproved "materialism;" I've just demonstrated a new non-supernatural ability.
quote:Can you administer chemicals that make me THINK about specific things?
What if I could? Research at LEAST as credible as the random number stuff cited above claims to have, in at least one woman, isolated a specific neurological stimulus that, of all things, appears to make her dependably think of Bill Clinton. I think it's very likely, based on what little we know about the way the brain stores information, that these stimuli would vary from person to person (and often change on the fly), but I think it's not much of a stretch at all to imagine that it'd someday be possible.
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quote:Tresopax, I can also imagine a walking skeleton that sees, feels and whistles "Dixie." I don't see how that's a proof of anything.
It means that there is nothing in what you mean by "seeing", "feeling", and "whistling Dixie" that inherently precludes skeletons from being able to do them - which is true. In contrast, I bet you can't imagine a skeleton that has no bones, because presumably what you mean by a skeleton is something made of bones.
quote:Is "intelligence" a property of the soul? If I can make you less intelligent with drugs, am I making your SOUL less intelligent?
If emotions aren't properties of the soul, what's left for the soul?
The answer to the first question, I think, is no. My computer is intelligent. It doesn't need a soul for that.
As for the second question, I answered that before. At a minimum, I believe souls allows us to have awareness - to experience qualia. This is an absolutely critical function because the entire world as we know it is only meaningful through the ways in which it is experienced.
The soul might be necessary for other things as well, but I can't offer proof for those. I can only speculate.
quote:That's inconsistent with the possibility of zombies who are physically identical to us but experientially different.
I believe choice is, at least in part, an experience. Therefore a zombie with no experience cannot choose. It would be like my computer. My computer DOES things, but it doesn't CHOOSE what to do. It just does what it is programmed to do. You could easily make a zombie that does all the same things I do, but it wouldn't be making choices, I'd think.
As far as why I choose what I choose, you could make a zombie that chooses all the same things I do, but that wouldn't mean my soul doesn't influence my choices. It just means you can't prove, looking from the outside, that a soul is influencing my choices.
quote:But there is absolutely no reason to think that such a common cause exists for physical changes in the brain (after all, we can induce those from outside, if crudely) and thoughts; it is much more reasonable to assume that thoughts are caused by the physical changes. So why this insistence on an additional step?
I never said thoughts aren't caused by physical changes. I never said experiences aren't caused by physical changes, either. I said experiences aren't physical. And my reason for this is that I can observe, directly in my mind, that they are not something made of matter - not unlike how I observe thunder is not something you see.
quote:In other words, if a gland in my brain makes it possible for me to control gravitons or something and thus levitate spoons, I haven't disproved "materialism;" I've just demonstrated a new non-supernatural ability.
This illustrates an interesting point about materialism: Science can never disprove it. It is a bias actually built into the scientific method. That is because science studies only the objectively measurable - which includes only material things. Then it builds a theory to predict future observations of material things. Because both ends of the process end with materiali things, anyone who follows Occam's Razor will never include any non-material thing in the middle of the process. Why have a model that says MATERIAL CAUSE->NONMATERIAL EFFECT->MATERIAL EFFECT, when the nonmaterial effect can't be observed by the scientific method, and you could more simply just say MATERIAL CAUSE->MATERIAL EFFECT?
Thus science is an excellent way of predicting material effects based on material causes, but may be a biased and incomplete way of actually determining the truth about how the whole universe works. It intentionally ignores all but a certain sort of evidence.
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quote:It just means you can't prove, looking from the outside, that a soul is influencing my choices.
Which means, for the purposes of inquiry, that the soul is irrelevant.
quote:And my reason for this is that I can observe, directly in my mind, that they are not something made of matter
No, you can't. That's like saying that you can observe in your mind that unicorns are not purple. You can assert it, but you can't observe it.
quote:It intentionally ignores all but a certain sort of evidence.
Here's the reason: because any other sort of evidence (by which I mean "evidence that doesn't exist," by which I mean "evidence which has no existence in or correlation to physical reality") is completely irrelevant. By which I mean it's completely non-predictive, and thus useless.
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quote:Which means, for the purposes of inquiry, that the soul is irrelevant.
Why would it mean that? All it means is that for the purpose of inquiry by an external observer, you can't prove there is a soul influencing someone's choice or not.
Yet there are many relevant things that can't be proven. The existence of all things physical is one.
quote:No, you can't. That's like saying that you can observe in your mind that unicorns are not purple. You can assert it, but you can't observe it.
Why not?
quote:Here's the reason: because any other sort of evidence (by which I mean "evidence that doesn't exist," by which I mean "evidence which has no existence in or correlation to physical reality") is completely irrelevant. By which I mean it's completely non-predictive, and thus useless.
I'd argue this is one of the most dangerous mistaken beliefs that exists in modern society. Can you support it?
There are at least three mistaken assumptions here: 1. It is false to say that non-predictive evidence is useless. There are uses of knowledge beyond predicting things. 2. It is false to say that non-physical evidence is non-predictive. For instance, I can predict a whole lot about myself simply based on observations of my non-physical mind. 3. It is false to assume that science only excludes non-physical evidence. Science also excludes all sorts of physical evidence - including anything that cannot be experimentally repeated and anything that cannot be quantified.
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quote:Why would it mean that? All it means is that for the purpose of inquiry by an external observer, you can't prove there is a soul influencing someone's choice or not. Yet there are many relevant things that can't be proven. The existence of all things physical is one.
Sure. Which means that "physical things exist" is axiomatic. You can assert that the "soul" is axiomatic, if you'd like, but I find it difficult to imagine what utility you'll derive from that premise.
quote:Why not?
How exactly do you intend to observe that your thoughts are non-physical? What other non-physical things can you compare them to, and what methods do you have for perceiving and observing non-physical "things?"
quote:There are uses of knowledge beyond predicting things.
Name one.
quote:For instance, I can predict a whole lot about myself simply based on observations of my non-physical mind.
I don't believe you have a non-physical mind. I think it's quite likely that you can predict quite a lot about yourself based on what you know of your mind, but asserting off the bat that your mind is "non-physical" is a non-starter.
quote:Science also excludes all sorts of physical evidence - including anything that cannot be experimentally repeated and anything that cannot be quantified.
Not necessarily. Science actually admits such evidence; it just doesn't use it to build categorical cases. "Science" is perfectly willing to discuss possibilities and probabilities based on anecdotal observations, although -- like all sensible approaches -- it does so as a last resort.
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quote:How exactly do you intend to observe that your thoughts are non-physical? What other non-physical things can you compare them to, and what methods do you have for perceiving and observing non-physical "things?"
It is simply a property of experience that it is directly observable to the person experiencing it. If there is a method or process behind it, I don't understand that process - but that doesn't change the fact that I can observe the experiences in my mind. What reason can you give to suggest I can't?
(Note: Telling me I can't explain how it happens is no reason to conclude it doesn't, as many things do in fact happen that I don't know how they happen.)
quote:Name one.
One of the most important uses of knowledge, other than predicting things, is figuring out what is good and what is bad. Predicting things is useless unless you know which outcomes you want and which outcomes you don't want.
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quote:If there is a method or process behind it, I don't understand that process - but that doesn't change the fact that I can observe the experiences in my mind.
I suspect that you're using "observe" very differently than I am. Are you simply saying that you are aware of experiencing things, and aware of that awareness, and that this awareness does not seem to you to possess a physical component? And that therefore it should be safe to assume that it does not?
quote:One of the most important uses of knowledge, other than predicting things, is figuring out what is good and what is bad.
Can you tell me -- in a way which does not rely on prediction -- what is good and what is bad?
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Ah so - "You can't disprove the soul", the final argument of the desperate theist. You can't disprove the IPU either, but I don't see you believing in that.
As for your anecdotal 'evidence' of experience being non-material, sorry, you observe no such thing. You're observing at the wrong level. Let me take an analogy from traffic: In one pattern of cars, we say that traffic is free-flowing; in another, we call it gridlocked. But it would make no sense to say that an individual car is gridlocked. To see the gridlock, you have to take a step back and observe the whole thing. But with the brain, at least one's own brain, you don't have the option of seeing the details; you only see the overall pattern. So, in one state, we say that you are "seeing red" or "imagining a unicorn". We can't see the individual microstates that lead to these macrostates, so it looks as though they are unphysical. But to say that these are not physical properties of the brain is just as silly as claiming that gridlock is not a physical property of the city traffic.
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quote:Are you simply saying that you are aware of experiencing things, and aware of that awareness, and that this awareness does not seem to you to possess a physical component? And that therefore it should be safe to assume that it does not?
I'm curious too. What is it about "observing" your experience that makes it non-physical? Your consciosness produces this "awareness" of your surroundings and some of your internal states. Why is this awareness non-physical in nature?
Whatever you want to call it, experience, awareness, consciousness...they're all just words that describe concepts. concepts whose components are all physical in nature. just because the sum total of these components "seem" to you to be non-physical, doesn't mean there is a basis to assert this.
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