Spiritual versus Religious

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
Tamminen
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 10:11 am "Whenever I hear philosophers and neurobiologists say that science cannot deal with subjective experiences I always want to show them textbooks in neurology where the scientists and doctors who write and use the books have no choice but to try to give a scientific account of people’s subjective feelings, because they are trying to help actual patients who are suffering."
Here again neurological correlates of subjective experiences are interpreted as those experiences themselves. There is a parallelism between mind and brain a´la Spinoza, but for him they were different attributes of the same substance, not explainable one by the other. If science tries to find an explaining bridge between them it will certainly fail. It is like trying to save physicalism by building "epicycles" between physics and psychology. The truth is much simpler: there is no scientific problem with consciousness.
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Consul
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

Post by Consul »

Tamminen wrote: February 9th, 2018, 10:45 amHere again neurological correlates of subjective experiences are interpreted as those experiences themselves.
Yes, it's a theoretical interpretation because psychophysical identities are not perceptible/observable (as such). "Physiophysical" identities such as water = H2O aren't perceptible/observable either, but chemists have been able to reductively explain the nature of water in purely chemical terms, such that they are fully justified in making the step from correlation to identity. So, analogously, if neuroscientists succeed in reductively explaining the nature and structure of consciousness in purely neurophysiological term, they are fully justified in making the step from psychophysical correlations to psychophysical identities.

"Suppose we reject the assumption that temperature is identical to mean molecular kinetic energy in favor of the assumption that temperature is merely correlated with mean molecular kinetic energy? And suppose we reject the claim that freezing is lattice formation in favor of a correlation thesis. And likewise for water/H2O. Then we would have an explanation for how something that is correlated with decreasing temperature causes something that is correlated with frozen water to float on something correlated with liquid water, which is not all that we want. The reason to think that the identities are true is that assuming them gives us explanations that we would not otherwise have and does not deprive us of explanations that we already have or raise explanatory puzzles that would not otherwise arise. The idea is not that our reason for thinking these identities are true is that it would be convenient if they were true. Rather, it is that assuming that they are true yields the most explanatory overall picture. In other words, the epistemology of theoretical identity is just a special case of inference to the best explanation.

(Block, Ned. "The Canberra Plan Neglects Ground." In Qualia and Mental Causation in a Physical World: Themes from the Philosophy of Jaegwon Kim, edited by Terence Horgan, Marcelo Sabatés, and David Sosa, 105-133. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. p. 123)
Tamminen wrote: February 9th, 2018, 10:45 amIf science tries to find an explaining bridge between them it will certainly fail. It is like trying to save physicalism by building "epicycles" between physics and psychology. The truth is much simpler: there is no scientific problem with consciousness.
Yes, there is! The neuroscientific attempt at a reductive explanation of consciousness will certainly fail if substance dualism, spiritualist substance monism, or fundamentalist (anti-emergentist/panpsychist) attribute dualism is true; but there are good philosophical and scientific reasons to think that they are all false—that consciousness is a completely natural/physical phenomenon in the natural/physical universe resulting from natural/physical evolution that is in principle explainable by natural/physical science (if not by ours, maybe by the one of some superhuman animal species on some other planet).

The assertion that any attempt at a (reductive) physico-scientific explanation of consciousness is doomed to failure is nothing but an objectively unjustifiable expression of metaphysical dogmatism.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Tamminen
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 10:11 am Self-conscious beings capable of introspection are psychologically conscious of their consciousness/mind too.
If I watch my brain in action, I have a perception of my brain in action. I also have a perception of my perception of my brain in action as I reflect my watching. Now physicalistic neuroscience tries to build a conceptual, explaining bridge between the objects of those two perceptions. I see this as very odd and complicated thinking, and condemned to fail because it is based on a false ontology that only leads to logical inconsistencies and absurdities. Immanence cannot be explained by transcendence. It is as simple as that.
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Consul
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

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Tamminen wrote: February 9th, 2018, 12:04 pm
Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 10:11 am Self-conscious beings capable of introspection are psychologically conscious of their consciousness/mind too.
If I watch my brain in action, I have a perception of my brain in action. I also have a perception of my perception of my brain in action as I reflect my watching. Now physicalistic neuroscience tries to build a conceptual, explaining bridge between the objects of those two perceptions. I see this as very odd and complicated thinking, and condemned to fail because it is based on a false ontology that only leads to logical inconsistencies and absurdities. Immanence cannot be explained by transcendence. It is as simple as that.
"The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?"

—L. Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 5.632+5.633)

He's wrong, the subject does belong to the world, being part of it. "Metaphysical" (hyperphysical/supernatural) subjects aren't to be found anywhere in the world, but physical/natural ones are, being a kind of material object (= animal organisms).

The physical world transcends the phenomenal content of consciousness, but the latter doesn't transcend the former, but is wholly immanent in it.

My point is that there is a perceptual/observational dualism (or an empirical/phenomenal dualism) between the brain and the (conscious) mind, because the (third-person) point of view of external perceptions/observations of the brain cannot possibly coincide with the (first-person) point of view of internal perceptions/observations of the (conscious) mind; but it doesn't follow therefrom that there is also an existential/ontological dualism between the brain and the (conscious) mind. The (conscious) mind cannot possibly be internally experienced or perceived as the brain, and the brain cannot possibly be externally (sensorily) experienced or perceived as the (conscious) mind; but they may nonetheless be ontologically identical.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Tamminen
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 11:22 am The assertion that any attempt at a (reductive) physico-scientific explanation of consciousness is doomed to failure is nothing but an objectively unjustifiable expression of metaphysical dogmatism.
No, it is based on the rejection of a metaphysical dogma called materialism. It is based on the original insights of Descartes, Kant, Husserl et al. that our immediate reality is the starting point of all serious philosophy. We cannot start with transcendence. It is precisely because of this that the material world needs explaining but our immediate reality needs another kind of analysis. That psychological phenomena have a material basis and in a way can be explained by them does not mean that they are on the same ontological level of being as the material world. Explaining in this sense means finding correlations and we can also speak of causation here, but in that case we have no problem: we only have to go on finding more correlations. This is the key to the fact that the being of consciousness can never be explained by material phenomena on a common conceptual framework. The bridge is not there, and there is nothing from which it could appear.
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 12:48 pm ...but they may nonetheless be ontologically identical.
They can be ontologically identical in the way Spinoza saw them as two attributes of one substance, but there is no way of explaining the being of consciousness by physics or neuroscience. The problem of what consciousness is cannot be solved by science. It is a philosophical problem, and my philosophy says that there is no problem of its being, only of its structure and relation to the world.
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Consul
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

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Tamminen wrote: February 9th, 2018, 1:24 pmThey can be ontologically identical in the way Spinoza saw them as two attributes of one substance, but there is no way of explaining the being of consciousness by physics or neuroscience. The problem of what consciousness is cannot be solved by science. It is a philosophical problem, and my philosophy says that there is no problem of its being, only of its structure and relation to the world.
There's a distinction between mere token physicalism, which is compatible with property dualism, and type physicalism, which is not. According to the former, all mental substances and occurrences (facts/states/events/processes) are physical ones; and according to the latter, it is also the case that all mental attributes are physical ones. Type physicalism includes token physicalism, but not vice versa.

The reductive physicalism I've been talking about is type-physicalistic and hence incompatible with mere token physicalism or what Jack Smart called "double-aspect materialism" (which had better be called "double-attribute materialism"), "according to which in inner experience men are acquainted with nonphysical properties of material processes"—according to which "we are immediately aware, in inner experience, of certain 'aspects' or 'qualities' of the neural processes, and the inner aspects are in principle quite distinct from those aspects which are open to the neurophysiologist or other external observer."

Again, I insist on the point that metaphysical a priori pronouncements to the effect that it is absolutely impossible for natural/physical science to ever solve the hard problem of consciousness and to close the explanatory gap are unjustifiable, since nobody can know now how theoretically and technologically advanced neuroscience will become. The neuroscience of consciousness is still in its infancy but it's getting bigger and stronger!

I'm not sure what you mean by "no problem of its being"; but if you mean to say that there is no question of its existence, then I agree with you. But if you mean to say that natural/physical science has nothing to say or cannot reveal anything about the real essence of consciousness and its relationship with matter (material objects: bodies/organisms, brains, brain processes), then I disagree with you.

The days are over when the mind-body problem was an exclusively philosophical problem! Science, particularly neuroscience, is marching forward and beginning to develop new theoretical and technological tools!
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Tamminen
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 12:48 pm The physical world transcends the phenomenal content of consciousness, but the latter doesn't transcend the former, but is wholly immanent in it.
If the physical world transcends consciousness, how can consciousness be immanent in the physical world? You seem to have your own definitions of these concepts.
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Consul
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

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Tamminen wrote: February 9th, 2018, 1:00 pm No, it is based on the rejection of a metaphysical dogma called materialism. It is based on the original insights of Descartes, Kant, Husserl et al. that our immediate reality is the starting point of all serious philosophy. We cannot start with transcendence. It is precisely because of this that the material world needs explaining but our immediate reality needs another kind of analysis. That psychological phenomena have a material basis and in a way can be explained by them does not mean that they are on the same ontological level of being as the material world. Explaining in this sense means finding correlations and we can also speak of causation here, but in that case we have no problem: we only have to go on finding more correlations. This is the key to the fact that the being of consciousness can never be explained by material phenomena on a common conceptual framework. The bridge is not there, and there is nothing from which it could appear.
As you (should) know, "is not yet there" doesn't mean "will never be there". How can you possibly know a priori that the explanatory gap between mind and brain cannot ever be bridged or closed by science?!

A mere identification and description of psychophysical correlations is not an explanation of them, and those correlations are differently philosophically interpretable indeed. The theoretical question is: What's the best, explanatorily most powerful metaphysical/ontological interpretation of them in the light of empirical science?

When we speak about materialism/physicalism, we shouldn't overlook that there is more than one version of it:

1. reductive materialism
1.1 conservatively reductive, equative materialism (= what I mean by "reductive materialism"!): experiential states and properties exist, but they are (identical with) material/neural states and properties.
1.2 eliminatively reductive, eliminative materialism: experiential states and properties don't exist.
2. nonreductive materialism: causative or emergentive materialism: experiential states and properties exist and they are different from, but caused (produced/generated/created) by material/neural states and properties.

Whether the subject matter of psychology and phenomenology constitutes an irreducible ontological level or layer of being in nature over and above the physical one (broadly defined as including chemistry, biology, and neurology) is the point at issue between (ontological) emergentists and (ontological) reductionists.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Consul
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

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Tamminen wrote: February 9th, 2018, 2:32 pm
Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 12:48 pm The physical world transcends the phenomenal content of consciousness, but the latter doesn't transcend the former, but is wholly immanent in it.
If the physical world transcends consciousness, how can consciousness be immanent in the physical world? You seem to have your own definitions of these concepts.
Both the phenomenal contents and the physical objects of (perceptual) consciousness are part of or immanent in the physical world. The latter "transcend" the former in the sense that they aren't reducible to (complexes of) phenomenal contents or "ideas" (in Locke's & Berkeley's sense of the term). The contents of (sensory) perception aren't the objects of (sensory) perception!
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Tamminen
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 3:07 pm Both the phenomenal contents and the physical objects of (perceptual) consciousness are part of or immanent in the physical world. The latter "transcend" the former in the sense that they aren't reducible to (complexes of) phenomenal contents or "ideas" (in Locke's & Berkeley's sense of the term). The contents of (sensory) perception aren't the objects of (sensory) perception!
I only wondered about your use of 'immanent' in the context of transcendence. I have used it only in the context of our immediate reality, the starting point of Husserl, for instance.
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Consul
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

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Tamminen wrote: February 9th, 2018, 1:00 pmNo, it is based on the rejection of a metaphysical dogma called materialism. It is based on the original insights of Descartes, Kant, Husserl et al. that our immediate reality is the starting point of all serious philosophy. We cannot start with transcendence.
I think that's the basic mistake of idealism. Natural or physical realism is a pretty good "starting point"—the commonsensical belief that subjects and the contents of their consciousnesses are part of a world of physical objects (and facts) which are independent of being objects of consciousness (of perception, conception, or cognition), and are not created or constituted by our mental representations ("ideas") of them.
The moon is still there when no one looks at it!
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Tamminen
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

Post by Tamminen »

Tamminen wrote: February 9th, 2018, 2:32 pm I'm not sure what you mean by "no problem of its being"
I mean that there must necessarily be the potential of subjectivity already in the universe even before it becomes actual, and it also must become actual. That potentiality is the ontological precondition of the being of the universe. A universe without inhabitants is impossible. I see the universe as an organism with no actual subjects at its early phases, but evolving towards conscious states of individual subjects, like an embryo which only becomes conscious when its time comes. The philosophical problem is the relation of the material universe to the various modes that subjectivity adopts in the form of individual subjects during cosmic and biological evolution. But there is no problem as to the essence of subjectivity or consciousness, only as to its structure, ie. its relation to the world. The task of philosophy is reflective: it has to study our being in the world in the way eg. Husserl and Heidegger have done. And then we can go further and step into the dangerous stream of speculative metaphysics, however keeping in mind that we do not ignore empirical evidence and logic.
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 4:22 pm ...and are not created or constituted by our mental representations ("ideas") of them.
The moon is still there when no one looks at it!
Now I have to ask: Have you read what I have written? Or is it so difficult to understand my text? The sentences above prove that you have missed one essential point: that I am an epistemic realist and an ontological idealist, thinking that the subject-object relation is ontologically fundamental, but the being of the material universe is independent of the being of an individual subject with its perceptions and other experiences. The big bang was there in spite of the fact that no one was witnessing it. But someone has witnessed something somewhere. A universe empty of subjects is no universe but an absurdity. And I do not believe in the existence of absurdities or in the existence of nothingness. Reductio ad absurdum.
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Re: Spiritual versus Religious

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Consul wrote: February 9th, 2018, 12:48 pm
Tamminen wrote: February 9th, 2018, 12:04 pm
If I watch my brain in action, I have a perception of my brain in action. I also have a perception of my perception of my brain in action as I reflect my watching. Now physicalistic neuroscience tries to build a conceptual, explaining bridge between the objects of those two perceptions. I see this as very odd and complicated thinking, and condemned to fail because it is based on a false ontology that only leads to logical inconsistencies and absurdities. Immanence cannot be explained by transcendence. It is as simple as that.
"The subject does not belong to the world: rather, it is a limit of the world.
Where in the world is a metaphysical subject to be found?"

—L. Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 5.632+5.633)

He's wrong, the subject does belong to the world, being part of it. "Metaphysical" (hyperphysical/supernatural) subjects aren't to be found anywhere in the world, but physical/natural ones are, being a kind of material object (= animal organisms).
It seems to me that ostensibly supernatural things are discovered all the time - extraordinary phenomena that beggars belief - and then they are said to be physical. Is it possible to find something and then claim it is not physical? By definition that which is found is said to be physical - aside from the internal. The subjective domain does not fit this.

I also wondered about your water analogy. It's true that we can observe its components and their configurations, but that does not tell us everything about water, particularly that it, along with carbon, have these critical and pivotal roles in nature. Why these and not others? One might go into the nature of molecular bonds, but why should those bonds be so special? Once can delve endlessly as per Feynman's observations here and never reach the bottom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36GT2zI8lVA

Ditto consciousness. What if we find precise correlates between neuronal activity and thought? Would that tell us about the relationship between dynamic patterning of electrical impulses and the theatre within our heads?
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