Atla wrote: ↑Fri Jan 05, 2018 6:17 pm
Me:
But the question I asked was what is the equivalent of those units of measurement when we want to measure a quantity of 'will'?
Your question is a categorical mistake and makes no sense.
If "will" is a part of the head, you can measure it with the tools of science. I don't know what kind of machine you want to install into your head to be also be able to do it from the inside, and measure your random personal opinion, which by definition can't be measured objectively because it's your random personal opinion. There are weak and strong willed people, there.
Absolutely it is a category mistake, but it isn't mine. You are the one saying that 'will', what you call a 'part of the head' is measurable by science. I don't think it is. (From what you write above, you seem to accept this, but later on you revert to your original idea.)
But going from what you write above, now there are two things that are 'part of the head'; things like 'will' which cannot be measured by science, and things like brains that can. That is the dualism.
You say: There is a tree. You see it and you also have a concept of it. But neither of those two is the tree itself, therefore dualism. This the most nonsensical argument in this thread.
That is right. There is the tree that can be measured, that is an object of science, but also my internal concept of a tree which can't. The tree that can be measured is fixed in time and space, it has particular attributes. But my concept of a tree is of no particular tree in no particular place. Those seem different, at least to me.
Me: I do not understand your use of the word 'simulation'. What is being simulated? Their experience is simply their experience; if we ask how closely it 'simulates' something that is not their experience, we have again reintroduced dualism. Now there is both experience and the cause of that experience.
Computer simulation, but I'm pretty sure you don't know how those work. And again the tree argument.
Computer simulation of what? This computer is simulating an experience, which not my experience, which I am supposed to compare to my experience...? I cannot make sense of it.
Me: You would have to build very big brains. If each sensation I have depends on their already existing a tiny bit of brain that corresponds to that experience, then when I am born I must already be equipped with a brain which contains every possible experience I might have. For example, unless I happen to already have a brain with bits already dedicated to 'seeing' the images that will appear in next week's TV programs I will not be conscious of them.
Wait what? You want to simulate every possibility ever? Yeah you'll need an inifitely large brain or simulation for that. I haven't encountered humans with infinitely large heads yet though.
Not me. This is your idea. Remember, you think that every possible experience we have corresponds to a physical part of our brains. So if I take a sip of coffee, there must be a tiny bit of brain that (in some way) corresponds to that individual sensation. The next sip, slightly different, requires a different tiny bit of brain, ready and waiting. You are stuck with this idea because you need to argue that every single internal experience must correspond to something finite and material, a bit of brain, that it is measurable by science.
As I say, not my idea.
Me: What I find confusing is your recourse to science, when your philosophy undermines the basis of science. For example, science assumes the observer and the observed.
No, observer-independent reality was refuted 100 years ago. We've been through that too. You are undermining science.
Well, leaving aside your ideas of the progress of science, your own ideas of locating bits of brain and measuring them sound like the old fashioned mechanistic version of science.
Me: To put it another way, what you might consider scientific knowledge would not be knowledge about anything, since you argue our ideas are identical to an existing physical state of the brain.
I don't know what you are saying. Scientific knowledge is "about" the world, but also a part of that world. Why would that mean that nothing exists.
No matter how you phrase it, it is either self-contradictory or recreates the dualism you deny. Think about 'knowledge'. 'Knowledge' is not an object
within science, it is not a finite material substance that we can measure. So 'scientific knowledge' is not an object within science. It is a description of a relationship, 'scientific' knowledge is a subject's knowledge
about science.
Science measures phenomena. It posits an objective world, outside the observer. But it does not do metaphysics, the nature of that objective world, what it might be 'in itself' is beyond science. Despite your use of scientific language, that is what you are doing.
These tiny pieces of brain that correspond to 'will' etc. are two things at once. They are phenomena, but also the origin of phenomena. They are observable, but also 'observation'. They are some sort of mystical connector that unites subject and object yet preserves the difference.
I think your ideas are a variation on the Pineal Gland idea, an organ that was thought to have the function of combining the physical brain and immaterial thought: "
the principal seat of the soul and the place in which all our thoughts are formed."