Materialism is absurd

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Tamminen
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Re: Materialism is absurd

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: July 4th, 2019, 11:51 am ...one and the same thing can look different from different perspectives or points of view.
I look at my brain and see what happens there as I am looking at my brain, and I see correlations and make a catalog of them. Now I finally see what I am: I am what happens in my brain. My brain processes and my consciousness correlate, so they must be identical, and I am nothing but my brain processes.

If you want to call this 'identity', you can do so, but I would say it is misuse of language. As an individual I am my consciousness and as an experiencer I am the subject of my experiences. And what is important, I am not my body. The “point of view” you speak of, the I, does not belong to the world.

Anyway: if my brain processes stop so that I die, my world disappears, my existence is canceled, and the whole world ceases to exist if there is no one else for whom it could exist. So existence is subjective or in relation to subjective, there is no other rational meaning of 'existence'.

So theoretically, and paradoxically, the apocalypse can take place with nearly nothing changing in the world. But I do not believe in an apocalypse. I believe in eternal existence.

Matter is an abstraction.
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Consul
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Re: Materialism is absurd

Post by Consul »

Tamminen wrote: July 4th, 2019, 3:31 pmI look at my brain and see what happens there as I am looking at my brain, and I see correlations and make a catalog of them. Now I finally see what I am: I am what happens in my brain. My brain processes and my consciousness correlate, so they must be identical, and I am nothing but my brain processes.
Correlation doesn't include identity; and, strictly speaking, it excludes identity, because "[y]ou cannot correlate something with itself." (Jack Smart)
However, even if experiences are (nothing over and above) neural processes, and there are no ontological correlations between them, there can still be correlations between empirically or perceptually different phenomena: experiences as internally perceived from the first-person perspective on the one hand, and neural processes as externally perceived from the third-person perspective on the other hand. For such an empirical/phenomenal dualism doesn't entail an ontological dualism. That I'm not introspectively aware of my experiences as neural processes, and that I'm not extrospectively aware of neural processes as experiences doesn't rule out their identity.
Tamminen wrote: July 4th, 2019, 3:31 pmIf you want to call this 'identity', you can do so, but I would say it is misuse of language. As an individual I am my consciousness and as an experiencer I am the subject of my experiences. And what is important, I am not my body. The “point of view” you speak of, the I, does not belong to the world.
As an experiencer, a subject of experience you are a nonexperience. To use John Foster's terms, no "subject of mentality" is an "item of mentality" (or a group of such items).

What are you then if not your body? A Cartesian soul which doesn't exist anywhere in the spatiotemporal world?
Once again, you mustn't reify abstract subjective points of view, because they aren't concrete subjects! A subject has but isn't a subjective point of view!
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Sculptor1
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Re: Materialism is absurd

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Chili wrote: July 4th, 2019, 2:36 pm
Sculptor1 wrote: July 4th, 2019, 12:26 pm But that is all we can ever do for anything.
That's all we've got.
It does not get any better whatever you look into.
Most science can be described as a search for correlation between what measuring devices register numerically.

So many things in human life can be simply shown to be the same as what some device is measuring, but consciousness per see is another matter.
Numbers are not an explanation.
Science is not an explanation, but a description.
Science has consciousness pretty much sown up in terms of cause and effect, but nothing is going to say why there is a phenomenon such as heat, gravity, pressure, sharpness, hardness, or consciousness. Induction can provide more and more detailed descriptions but no ultimate answers.

So what exactly is your problem here? Why do you want a more detailed explanation of this rather than any other physical phenomenon?
We were all told porkies about souls and spirits when children, The refusal to accept the massive strides taken by neuroscience among us has more to do with the loss of innocence and the tooth fairly that any real objection.
Chili
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Re: Materialism is absurd

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Massive strides in neuroscience move us forward in explaining human behavior without referring to consciousness - just as we refer to weather without referring to consciousness.
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Consul
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Re: Materialism is absurd

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Chili wrote: July 4th, 2019, 7:10 pmMassive strides in neuroscience move us forward in explaining human behavior without referring to consciousness - just as we refer to weather without referring to consciousness.
Yes, but the distinctive subject matter of the neuroscience of consciousness isn't behavior (or cognition or intelligence) but—surprise!—consciousness.
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Chili
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Re: Materialism is absurd

Post by Chili »

Consul wrote: July 4th, 2019, 8:29 pm Yes, but the distinctive subject matter of the neuroscience of consciousness isn't behavior (or cognition or intelligence) but—surprise!—consciousness.
Which experiment or which measuring device detects consciousness? I could always hang out a shingle as a Divinoscientist and proclaim that my distinctive subject matter is - surprise - God.
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Consul
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Re: Materialism is absurd

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Chili wrote: July 4th, 2019, 8:39 pmWhich experiment or which measuring device detects consciousness? I could always hang out a shingle as a Divinoscientist and proclaim that my distinctive subject matter is - surprise - God.
Haven't I told you already that consciousness is at least indirectly detectable from the third-person perspective?! For there must be distinctive patterns of neural activity in the brain that occur if and only if consciousness occurs, because there are objective functional differences between the brain in the state of consciousness and the brain in the state of nonconsciousness.

But this is not the end of the story, because neuroscientists aren't satisfied with establishing mere psychoneural correlations:

"According to biological realism, the primary target is to find neural phenomena in the brain that go beyond mere correlative relationships with consciousness. The relationship between the phenomenal level and the lower neural levels is not correlation but hierarchical constitution. The phenomena at the lower neural levels constitute the higher phenomenal level. Thus, what neuroscience should be looking for, it if aims at discovering ad explaining consciousness, are the constitutive mechanisms of consciousness (CMC), rather than just the NCC."
(p. 297)

"If we accept that consciousness literally resides in the brain, then it follows that there must be some biological phenomenon in the brain that literally resembles or is similar to consciousness. Well, what phenomenon might that be? Of course, it is consciousness itself.
A particular experience is a specific pattern of phenomenal features at the phenomenal level of organization in the brain. Hence, to count as the discovery of the phenomenal level, the data we collect should reveal a level of organization in the brain that somehow directly corresponds to our subjective phenomenology. The data must in one way or another reveal the fact that there is a phenomenal world being constructed in the brain. Furthermore, the data should reveal what kind of bundles and patterns of phenomenal features are present at this level, and how they are spatiotemporally organized. The data should allow at least some sort of reconstruction of a model that includes the structure, organization, and content of the phenomenal level: the world experienced by the subject.

This is what discovering consciousness in the brain means: purely brain-based data that allow the construction of a model of the subject's phenomenal world.

In information-theoretic terms, the brain measurement adequate for the discovery of consciousness should constitute an information channel between the phenomenal level (as the object of the measurement) and the neuroscientist (as the subject doing the measurement). Physically, the research instrument serves as the information channel. When data are being registered, entities and activities at the phenomenal level should serve directly as the input domain of the information channel. The sensors pick signals directly originating from the phenomenal level. The outputs of the instrument convey the signals to the researcher. The data structures registered and stored by the measuring instrument (curves, maps, activation patterns, and what-have-you) constitute the output domain of the information channel. They are the only things directly accessible to the researchers. If they do not transmit any information about the state and the contents of the phenomenal level, then nothing does.
A measurement that fulfills these criteria would transmit information directly about the phenomenal level of organization. Such data would allow the reconstruction of a model of the phenomenal level (as it was experienced by the subject during the brain measurement).

The only way to distinguish the phenomenon itself from the myriads of its correlates is the fact that the CMC is the only NCC found in the brain that fully explains why the phenomenal world of the subject is in one configuration rather than another. A certain configuration of the CMC supports, constitutes, or realizes a certain configuration at the higher, phenomenal level. A detailed description of the state of the CMC should thus allow us to reconstruct the state of the phenomenal level of organization. In this way it is possible to create genuine understanding of how specific neural states constitute the phenomenal level, and why some other neural activities only show correlations with it."

(pp. 299-300)

"Certainly, we can make progress in NCC research, but we should also bear in mind that the results of the research do not amount to the literal discovery of consciousness. None of the data we get from the current research instruments can reveal a level of organization in the brain that would somehow correspond to our phenomenology, and we should not even expect them to find any such thing. The correlations we have detected are not sufficient for the construction of a multilevel model of consciousness, because the phenomena that constitute the sources of the signals (e.g., blood oxygenation levels, single-cell firing rates) detected by our best currently available research instruments are rather distant from the phenomenal level. Still, even the currently available signals might contain correlative information revealing when the phenomenal level is 'on' and when it is 'off' (say the difference between the conscious vs. unconscious state during anesthesia), or when a conspicuous change occurs in its global content (say during binocular rivalry). But this information, though very exciting in itself, is still hopelessly indirect and coarse for the purpose of building a detailed theoretical model.

In the philosophy of science, it has been noted that the development of science depends at least as much on new research instruments as it does on new ideas (Giere, 1988). Many biological phenomena could not have been discovered without the proper equipment and the development of very specific methods. For example, the complex internal structure of the mitochondrion could only be discovered with the electron microscope. Before the appropriate methodology was available the complete explanation of biological respiration and oxidative phosphorylation remained unknown (Bechtel & Richardson, 1992). In cognitive neuroscience, both our theories about the large-scale organization of brain activity and our instruments to observe such phenomena are still quite limited. Even if we forget about consciousness for the moment, there is a lot to be discovered in the brain. New methods and theoretical frameworks will be necessary to make those discoveries. We should not overestimate the state of our current understanding or the capabilities of the currently available research instruments; we are only beginning to open some restricted empirical windows to the living brain.

The difficulty in discovering and explaining consciousness is due to our crude research instruments and lack of established theories in neuroscience rather than to the mystical nature of consciousness. I am not implying that discovering consciousness in the brain is impossible in principle. I merely want to point out that even if consciousness turns out to be a real biological phenomenon in the brain, even our best research instruments are not yet capable of discovering empirically the relevant biological levels of organization in the brain."

(pp. 336-7)

(Revonsuo, Antti. Inner Presence: Consciousness as a Biological Phenomenon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006.)
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Consul
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Re: Materialism is absurd

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Chili: Do you want to solve the natural mystery of consciousness, or do you want to worship it?
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
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Consul
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Re: Materialism is absurd

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Subjective experience aka phenomenal consciousness is a natural high-level neurological phenomenon, a special system feature of the central nervous system.
The question is whether it's an irreducible neurological phenomenon sui generis which is caused or produced by, and thus different from lower-level neural processes, or a reducible neurological phenomenon which is composed of or constructed out of, and thus identical with (a complex of) lower-level neural processes.
To answer the first question in the affirmative is to accept nonreductive (causative/emergentive) materialism (about consciousness), and to answer the second question in the affirmative is to accept reductive (equative) materialism (about consciousness).
"We may philosophize well or ill, but we must philosophize." – Wilfrid Sellars
Tamminen
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Re: Materialism is absurd

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: July 4th, 2019, 4:50 pm Correlation doesn't include identity; and, strictly speaking, it excludes identity, because "[y]ou cannot correlate something with itself." (Jack Smart)
However, even if experiences are (nothing over and above) neural processes, and there are no ontological correlations between them, there can still be correlations between empirically or perceptually different phenomena: experiences as internally perceived from the first-person perspective on the one hand, and neural processes as externally perceived from the third-person perspective on the other hand. For such an empirical/phenomenal dualism doesn't entail an ontological dualism. That I'm not introspectively aware of my experiences as neural processes, and that I'm not extrospectively aware of neural processes as experiences doesn't rule out their identity.
As I said, it is not completely wrong to say that there is an ontological identity of brain and consciousness, in a way this is true. It is true if we think that my first person point of view can be compared with your third person point of view and say that these perspectives have a similar status, like when we see a tree from different perspectives. But my direct experiencing of the world is so fundamental that such a comparison cannot be made. The correct way of speaking is: I exist in the world by being conscious of the world, and there are material correlates of the contents of my consciousness. The word 'identity' is very ambiguous here, and I think we should not use it, but if we want to use it we must see the ontological situation in the right way and get rid of such abstractions as "matter", "consciousness" and "subject", understanding that only as their concrete unity they mean something. We cannot build anything on abstractions, and this excludes materialism from the possibilities rational ontology.
As an experiencer, a subject of experience you are a nonexperience. To use John Foster's terms, no "subject of mentality" is an "item of mentality" (or a group of such items).

What are you then if not your body? A Cartesian soul which doesn't exist anywhere in the spatiotemporal world?
Once again, you mustn't reify abstract subjective points of view, because they aren't concrete subjects! A subject has but isn't a subjective point of view!
Wittgenstein was right when he said that the subject cannot be complex. My body is a material complex and therefore it has nothing to do with subjectivity or the subject. The subject is something fundamental. Descartes reified it, saying it is some kind of soul-substance. But it is nothing like that. It is something much more original and fundamental, something that is so close that we do not see it. Even Descartes could not see it, in spite of his revolutionary insight. Husserl and Wittgenstein saw better. The subject is very simple and we all know pre-reflectively what it is. But in philosophy the simple reflective step of seeing it clearly seems to be amazingly difficult. As I have said, the subject is an abstraction in itself, but becomes concrete as consciousness of the material world. So I do not reify the subject. That was Descartes.
Tamminen
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Re: Materialism is absurd

Post by Tamminen »

Consul wrote: July 4th, 2019, 4:50 pm A subject has but isn't a subjective point of view!
So you think your body is what you are? But you say you have a body. What you? You could have another kind of body. So you are not your body. Your body is given to you. You are the subject of your experiences and the subject of your body. This reminds us of Spinoza who said that the body is the object of the mind.

The subject has many points of view to the world. These points of view are individual subjects, each having its own perspective to the world, i.e. consciousness of the world. To have a point of view to the world it needs a material instrument of existing in the material world, which I see as the community of subjects. This instrument is its body.

And you are right: the subject has points of view, without them it is nothing. Nevertheless, it is a necessary component of any rational ontology.

So I see the situation a bit differently compared with your interpretation.
Tamminen
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Re: Materialism is absurd

Post by Tamminen »

About mind/body identity: the situation is in fact very simple. The subject's existence in the world means that it has a relationship with the world, and because the world is material, the relationship has two sides: from the subject's side it is what we know as consciousness of the world, and from the side of the world it is the body. Two perspectives to one and the same relationship. Ontological identity but conceptual incompatibility. Can we agree on this, Consul?
Chili
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Re: Materialism is absurd

Post by Chili »

Tamminen wrote: July 5th, 2019, 11:38 am About mind/body identity: the situation is in fact very simple. The subject's existence in the world means that it has a relationship with the world, and because the world is material, the relationship has two sides: from the subject's side it is what we know as consciousness of the world, and from the side of the world it is the body. Two perspectives to one and the same relationship. Ontological identity but conceptual incompatibility. Can we agree on this, Consul?
What if I say that is also true of Zeus, who controls the weather?
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Sculptor1
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Re: Materialism is absurd

Post by Sculptor1 »

Chili wrote: July 5th, 2019, 12:04 pm
Tamminen wrote: July 5th, 2019, 11:38 am About mind/body identity: the situation is in fact very simple. The subject's existence in the world means that it has a relationship with the world, and because the world is material, the relationship has two sides: from the subject's side it is what we know as consciousness of the world, and from the side of the world it is the body. Two perspectives to one and the same relationship. Ontological identity but conceptual incompatibility. Can we agree on this, Consul?
What if I say that is also true of Zeus, who controls the weather?
I'd say you were talking rubbish on more than one level.
Chili
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Re: Materialism is absurd

Post by Chili »

Sculptor1 wrote: July 5th, 2019, 12:24 pm I'd say you were talking rubbish on more than one level.
You seem to be going with your gut, rather than offering methods - or even reasons - for your conclusions.
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