The problem of self under materialism

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Justintruth
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Justintruth »

Immanuel Can wrote:
justintruth wrote: Assemble ordinary matter in such or such a way and you get experiencing of such and such a type.....
In short, how? How does it happen? How does the lifeless become the living, and the living transform into the sentient?
You are right if by "how" you mean "why".

It will describe how things happen by its explicit content. So whatever the science results in - some specifics that say such and such a material configuration results in such and such experiencing but it will not say why.

That is why it is necessaty to insert the posit. Because if the facts are that whenever you consruct a particular configuration you get a particular experiencing then your theory needs to capture that. For tecnical readons you can show that the current theory will not result in a prediction of experiencing of any kind give an arbitrary configuration. In other words the standard model does not predict experiencing by the particles for any configuration.

But that is just the same situation that Newton had after he had derived the laws of mechanics and before he had posited gravity. The laws of inertia in his physics did not predict that a gravitational or electro magnetic force existed. Nor could the electric force be explained by gravity. You needed the posits. In the same way we need posits here.

There is a difference here because of the nature of the posit. Basically you can say its existential not essential but that is a long explanation. Its a minor point with respect to the need for posits.

One other point. The lifeless does become the living under tge standard model. Take the right molecular compounds and illumibate them for very long periods and you will get living organisms. No additional posits are needed there.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Justintruth wrote:You are right if by "how" you mean "why".
When did words stop meaning what they say? :shock:

"How." "By what mechanism." "Describe the process precisely."

Does that help? :wink:
Justintruth
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Justintruth »

Immanuel Can wrote:
Justintruth wrote:You are right if by "how" you mean "why".
When did words stop meaning what they say? :shock:

"How." "By what mechanism." "Describe the process precisely."

Does that help? :wink:
I do understand your point. Now do you understand mine? :wink

No one can explain right now by what mechanism exactly. We know it is brains. We know something about how the work but the science is still developing.

Try using Newton's law of gravity by using Newton's laws of mechanics. Try to describe exactly how - in just the way you mean it - the laws of motion result in the fact that the earth will exert a force on another body. Or that electrons will repel each other.

You can't. Because the law of gravity can't be derrived from the laws of motion. Its the same situation here.

Does that help?

Don't want to sound flippant. Really. Does it help?
Justintruth
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Justintruth »

Immanuel Can wrote:
Justintruth wrote:
Immanuel Can wrote: So what is it? If we are merely materials, what makes some materials capable of sentience, and other materials not at all? :shock:

There must be some additional factor not present in materials qua materials, but what is it?
David Chalmers has an answer for this. Our notion of matter needs to be modified. Some think and additional material is needed - some soul stuff or other - but that is not necessarily true for the additional factor that causes seeing and other experiencing is probably just a particular class or classes of arrangements of the material.

Assemble ordinary matter in such or such a way and you get experiencing of such and such a type.
That's a non-answer, though. To say, essentially, "The materials have life, because when you get that bunch of materials, suddenly they have life," surely explains nothing at all. It doesn't even try to say HOW that happens...it just declares it by fiat. Are we supposed to believe him if he does not specify a mechanism? Or are we supposed to take it for granted that because life now exists that whatever explanation he gives must rightly account for it? Or does he say more than you've reported at the minute, and we need the rest of it to understand his point? And if so, what else does he say to fill in the obvious gap?

In short, how? How does it happen? How does the lifeless become the living, and the living transform into the sentient?
You are right. Saying that additional posits are needed is not saying what those posits are. Chamers does not have that. It will take a lot more investigation by neuroscience to define the many posits that will be needed.

And we should not ignore the experimental work required. Milikan's oil drop experiment motivated the notion of an electron. Rutherford's backscattering motivated the notion of the nucleus. The development of these additional posits will be as dependent on experimental design as on theoretical positing.
Justintruth
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Justintruth »

Justintruth wrote:
Immanuel Can wrote:
Justintruth wrote:
David Chalmers has an answer for this. Our notion of matter needs to be modified. Some think and additional material is needed - some soul stuff or other - but that is not necessarily true for the additional factor that causes seeing and other experiencing is probably just a particular class or classes of arrangements of the material.

Assemble ordinary matter in such or such a way and you get experiencing of such and such a type.
That's a non-answer, though. To say, essentially, "The materials have life, because when you get that bunch of materials, suddenly they have life," surely explains nothing at all. It doesn't even try to say HOW that happens...it just declares it by fiat. Are we supposed to believe him if he does not specify a mechanism? Or are we supposed to take it for granted that because life now exists that whatever explanation he gives must rightly account for it? Or does he say more than you've reported at the minute, and we need the rest of it to understand his point? And if so, what else does he say to fill in the obvious gap?

In short, how? How does it happen? How does the lifeless become the living, and the living transform into the sentient?
You are right. Saying that additional posits are needed is not saying what those posits are. Chamers does not have that. It will take a lot more investigation by neuroscience to define the many posits that will be needed.

And we should not ignore the experimental work required. Milikan's oil drop experiment motivated the notion of an electron. Rutherford's backscattering motivated the notion of the nucleus. The development of these additional posits will be as dependent on experimental design as on theoretical positing.
What Chalmers has shown is the need for those posits.
Justintruth
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Justintruth »

osgart wrote:yes physics can be beautiful and i may come from a single cell. Yet if existence is purely physical in nature what in existence says become alive and reason, grow an intelligent body, eat natures food which is good for you coincidentally as if is arbitrarily there. Is life arbitrarily there? I think not.
Actually the laws of physics do predict that life will evolve and even that it will be dependent on some energy source external to it.

It is just conscious awareness it doesnt predict.

But the idea has been around for a long time. Look at Galileo's telescope. It has two sides! In some way it is more clever that he pointed it at his eye than that he pointed it at Jupiter.

All of our scientific instuments have two sides. One that we point at some object and another that we point at one of our senory apparati. All save one! The clock! And now you can peer very deeply into Being and Time if you get the significance of that fact.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Justintruth wrote:No one can explain right now by what mechanism exactly. We know it is brains. We know something about how the work but the science is still developing.
What you've given me here is a bit routine, isn't it? You've said, "Well, we know something about physiology." Yes, yes we do: but what's that got to do with how consciousness appears from non-conscious materials? You're still only saying, "We know something about materials." :shock: You've said nothing about how those materials become conscious.

Then you've issued a promissory note that science will one day be able to do it. Really? :shock: How did you become possessed of this confidence? Is it your assumption that science will eventually "do everything"? But in the same moment, you are accidentally admitting what we all know, namely that it HASN'T done so yet. So what imparts to you this amazing power of prophecy about what science "will do" when it's finished "developing"? :shock:
Does that help?

Don't want to sound flippant. Really. Does it help?
Understood: I take you as sincere, and have no reason not to.

But I think not. As I say, so far, your response above consists only of a truism plus a promissory note. The ensuing analogy (the Newtonian analogy) isn't any more helpful; it's just another kind of promissory note, one all the weaker for being framed as an analogy. For all analogies are questionable for as to their aptness, and we have no way of knowing if this one has any real bearing on the case at all: I suspect it doesn't, and would have to be shown that it does.

What we really need is proof -- some actual reason, not just a hopeful analogy, to buoy our confidence that all that stands between us and an answer to the riddle of emergent consciousness is the passage of a few years. Let's see some actual progression the question itself: HOW does unthinking matter become conscious entities? What's the scientific mechanism there?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Justintruth wrote:You are right. Saying that additional posits are needed is not saying what those posits are. Chamers does not have that. It will take a lot more investigation by neuroscience to define the many posits that will be needed.
Then we're back to square one, having made no progress at all. "Additional posits are needed" is just a way of saying, "We still have no idea."

I'll take the first "posits" if you have them. What is the very first element of a mechanism by which materials convert into consciousness?
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Dalek Prime »

Immanuel Can wrote:
Justintruth wrote:You are right. Saying that additional posits are needed is not saying what those posits are. Chamers does not have that. It will take a lot more investigation by neuroscience to define the many posits that will be needed.
Then we're back to square one, having made no progress at all. "Additional posits are needed" is just a way of saying, "We still have no idea."

I'll take the first "posits" if you have them. What is the very first element of a mechanism by which materials convert into consciousness?
Excellent question. We haven't seemed to move much from the 'ghost in the machine' stage, have we? I mean, we can slowly describe how bits of the brain work, but that is a far cry from 'what is it about the brain that it hosts this unique consciousness we have'. I'm satisfied that we have it, so I wont be taking a stab at answering. Hence the, perhaps first, truth of philosophy; there is thought.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

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Hello, Dalek:

Welcome back.
Londoner
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Londoner »

Immanuel Can wrote:
What we really need is proof -- some actual reason, not just a hopeful analogy, to buoy our confidence that all that stands between us and an answer to the riddle of emergent consciousness is the passage of a few years. Let's see some actual progression the question itself: HOW does unthinking matter become conscious entities? What's the scientific mechanism there?
What sort of explanation would we find acceptable?

If somebody asked me where a cake comes from, I could write of flour and fat and eggs. I could write about the cooking. I could explain about gluten and emulsifiers. 'Yes', the say 'but where does the cake come from?' To which one can only reply that the word 'cake' describes what you get when you cook those ingredients in the way I have described.

Why aren't we satisfied with the explanation that if you have a certain sort of brain you get something we call consciousness? So the reason we have consciousness is that we have a certain kind of brain. Certainly this thing 'consciousness' is very interesting, but why does that mean it demands some special kind of explanation, beyond the one that serves for everything else?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

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Londoner wrote: If somebody asked me where a cake comes from, I could write of flour and fat and eggs. I could write about the cooking. I could explain about gluten and emulsifiers. 'Yes', the say 'but where does the cake come from?' To which one can only reply that the word 'cake' describes what you get when you cook those ingredients in the way I have described.
Quite so. So we can describe the origins of the "cake" by both ingredients and by the dynamics used to produce one. If that's the right analogy, then what is the "recipe" for consciousness? On your account, should that not be quite doable?
Why aren't we satisfied with the explanation that if you have a certain sort of brain you get something we call consciousness? So the reason we have consciousness is that we have a certain kind of brain.
Quite simply because that's circular. It actually gives neither the materials nor the dynamics of the "recipe." It just says, "Well, brains are here -- so let's not trouble ourselves about when and how they moved from hydrogen and carbon atoms to full philosophical consciousness."

That's certainly no kind of explanation.
Certainly this thing 'consciousness' is very interesting, but why does that mean it demands some special kind of explanation, beyond the one that serves for everything else?
Well, we explain a pile of rocks in a road by the word "landslide." That's the sort of thing that "serves for [the] everything else" in our world around us. It's totally inadequate as a way of speaking about consciousness, though.

Moreover, consciousness is unique, both in nature and value. Things like landslides employ none of it. Hydrogen and carbon, two of our building blocks, have zero of it. Yet we have tons of it, and we use it for things like philosophy, morality and science, and to guide every practical thing we do. Nothing could be more important to us, and nothing could be more urgently in need of explanation. And surely nothing is less-adequately explained by the sort of simple "explanation...that serves for everything else."
Londoner
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

Post by Londoner »

Immanuel Can wrote: Quite so. So we can describe the origins of the "cake" by both ingredients and by the dynamics used to produce one. If that's the right analogy, then what is the "recipe" for consciousness? On your account, should that not be quite doable?
I thought I had done so. The recipe for consciousness is having a working brain, of the type humans have.
Me: Why aren't we satisfied with the explanation that if you have a certain sort of brain you get something we call consciousness? So the reason we have consciousness is that we have a certain kind of brain.
Quite simply because that's circular. It actually gives neither the materials nor the dynamics of the "recipe." It just says, "Well, brains are here -- so let's not trouble ourselves about when and how they moved from hydrogen and carbon atoms to full philosophical consciousness."

That's certainly no kind of explanation.
They got there by being incorporated in a brain. If you put hydrogen and oxygen together in the right way, you get water, which exhibits properties not exhibited by the two gases on their own. Is that not a sufficient explanation?

What sort of explanation about 'how they moved' to make the new thing are you looking for?
Well, we explain a pile of rocks in a road by the word "landslide." That's the sort of thing that "serves for [the] everything else" in our world around us. It's totally inadequate as a way of speaking about consciousness, though.
Well, I can tell you how brains arise in the 'facts of life' sense. I could talk about evolution, or the way organic chemistry works. Again, what sort of explanation would satisfy us?
Moreover, consciousness is unique, both in nature and value. Things like landslides employ none of it. Hydrogen and carbon, two of our building blocks, have zero of it. Yet we have tons of it, and we use it for things like philosophy, morality and science, and to guide every practical thing we do. Nothing could be more important to us, and nothing could be more urgently in need of explanation. And surely nothing is less-adequately explained by the sort of simple "explanation...that serves for everything else."
I'm not sure it is unique. Are we talking about human consciousness? Because it doesn't seem radically different to that of an ape. And an ape does not seem so different to a dog. And so on. I could also say that the consciousness of babies seems to differ from that of adults, and some humans have different types of consciousness, so that even amongst humans consciousness is not all the same. I'm not even sure that I am conscious myself, in the same way, from moment to moment; rather the nature of my consciousness varies. So what is the aspect of consciousness we are calling unique?

One reason we cannot find a simple explanation for 'consciousness' is that it is a generality, an abstraction. ( I have no problem explaining why we might have consciousness of something in particular. ) One might equally ask 'What is the explanation for 'life'? For 'being'? For 'energy'? and have the same problem.

Consciousness also has the problem that we feel we experience it subjectively. I have given the sort of reasons that we would find satisfactory when discussing those experiences we think of as objective, but because consciousness has this subjective aspect we feel that this needs its own separate explanation. And since it would be self-contradictory to form an objective explanation of the subjective, we have problems.

But I would argue that all our experiences are a combination of the subjective, i.e. the nature of the observer, and what we think of as the objective. There is always two ways of looking at any experience. e.g. 'I stub my toe on a stone'; there an event is described as if it is external. But if I then speak of 'the feeling of pain', that is to describe it subjectively, in terms of consciousness. But it would make no sense to treat those two descriptions as if they had nothing to do with each other - to insist that 'the feeling of pain' was independent of 'stubbing my toe'. But I think that is what this demand for an explanation of 'consciousness' is asking us to do.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

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Londoner wrote:I thought I had done so. The recipe for consciousness is having a working brain, of the type humans have.
Brain is the "cake." By the time one has a working brain in place, consciousness is already a fait accompli -- the "baking" is done already. We all know that, so it's entirely uninteresting. The question is much more challenging: at what point did hydrogen, carbon, and electricity amount to a thought. THAT, nobody knows.
Is that not a sufficient explanation?
Not even close.
What sort of explanation about 'how they moved' to make the new thing are you looking for?
See above.
what is the aspect of consciousness we are calling unique?
There are several unique stages. One is when anything that was mere materials becomes even primitively "conscious." We need some account of how that can come about, because everything we know so far suggests it doesn't. Secondly, when does "consciousness" amount to "self-awareness"? And how does that happen? Then, when does "self-awareness" amount to "reflectivity," and "philosophy," and "science" and "art" and "engineering," and "existential thought?" How do all these transformations take place? Because somewhere along the line, we don't just lose your apes and dogs, but lower creatures and then it's inert materials and rocks and chemicals...How do these "low" elements become any and all of the "higher" ones?
One reason we cannot find a simple explanation for 'consciousness' is that it is a generality, an abstraction. ( I have no problem explaining why we might have consciousness of something in particular. ) One might equally ask 'What is the explanation for 'life'? For 'being'? For 'energy'? and have the same problem.
Yes. A similar one, anyway. Consciousness is a problem of an even more complicated order, of course.
And since it would be self-contradictory to form an objective explanation of the subjective, we have problems.
There's no reason to think this is a true statement. In fact, if Materialism, Naturalism or Evolutionism are true, it is EXACTLY what owe should expect to find: an objective, naturalistic, materialistic explanation for all the phenomena in the universe, including consciousness.

And since we don't have one, it's time to doubt that Naturalism, Materialism and that sordid lot is actually an explanation of anything...let alone consciousness.
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Re: The problem of self under materialism

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Immanuel Can wrote:
Londoner wrote:I thought I had done so. The recipe for consciousness is having a working brain, of the type humans have.
Brain is the "cake." By the time one has a working brain in place, consciousness is already a fait accompli -- the "baking" is done already. We all know that, so it's entirely uninteresting. The question is much more challenging: at what point did hydrogen, carbon, and electricity amount to a thought. THAT, nobody knows.
Is that not a sufficient explanation?
Not even close.
What sort of explanation about 'how they moved' to make the new thing are you looking for?
See above.
what is the aspect of consciousness we are calling unique?
There are several unique stages. One is when anything that was mere materials becomes even primitively "conscious." We need some account of how that can come about, because everything we know so far suggests it doesn't. Secondly, when does "consciousness" amount to "self-awareness"? And how does that happen? Then, when does "self-awareness" amount to "reflectivity," and "philosophy," and "science" and "art" and "engineering," and "existential thought?" How do all these transformations take place? Because somewhere along the line, we don't just lose your apes and dogs, but lower creatures and then it's inert materials and rocks and chemicals...How do these "low" elements become any and all of the "higher" ones?
One reason we cannot find a simple explanation for 'consciousness' is that it is a generality, an abstraction. ( I have no problem explaining why we might have consciousness of something in particular. ) One might equally ask 'What is the explanation for 'life'? For 'being'? For 'energy'? and have the same problem.
Yes. A similar one, anyway. Consciousness is a problem of an even more complicated order, of course.
And since it would be self-contradictory to form an objective explanation of the subjective, we have problems.
There's no reason to think this is a true statement. In fact, if Materialism, Naturalism or Evolutionism are true, it is EXACTLY what owe should expect to find: an objective, naturalistic, materialistic explanation for all the phenomena in the universe, including consciousness.

And since we don't have one, it's time to doubt that Naturalism, Materialism and that sordid lot is actually an explanation of anything...let alone consciousness.

Proponents of strong AI claim that sometime in the future computers will be so complex that out of this complexity consciousness will emerge. The overall claim is that the brain with it billions of connections creates something new that is more than the sum of its parts.
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