Atla wrote: ↑Fri Jan 05, 2018 4:07 pm
And you can use units like metres and grams to the things I listed.
That's right, because they are objects in science. But the question I asked was what is the equivalent of those units of measurement when we want to measure a quantity of 'will'?
Things are different, and? Why are things different in the physical substance then, same thing. In that case we should split the physicical substance into two again, and then again and again ad infinitum.
Yes reality isn't homogeneous but I see this argument as entirely invalid here.
It isn't an argument, it is an observation of the nature of consciousness, which is what we are discussing. Yes, we can also understand the physical world in many different ways. That is another problem.
Me: How do you mean; 'in'? If we looked in these two areas would we find a tiny piece of brain that was identical to 'the concept of wax'?
Yes. From the perspective of that piece of brain it is the concept of wax.
'The perspective'? You are just reintroducing dualism again; there is a piece of brain/wax itself, and now there is also 'brain' in another sense which has a 'perspective' on a piece of itself.
Me: How would we know we had found it?
Roughly simulating the inner experience of a lump of brain, by mapping that lump of brain say down to the last particle, is way beyond our current technology, we can only make the most primitive simulations so far. But we can already simulate very roughly what some people are dreaming about using MRI scanners, in a way we already found it.
And is that 'last particle' or brain an actual piece of wax? If not, we still have two non-identical things, the tiny bit of brain and Descartes' thought: 'wax', which is not actually made of wax either....so where is the wax!!!!
We make a simulation and then ask that person how accurate the simulation is compared to their inner experience. But I guess this method has limits, it works quite well with the visuals or sounds, other sensations well - I don't know how much that's doable.
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.
Me: Likewise, the multitude of sensations that might make up every specific 'experience' we might have of wax, past or future, like a particular colour, a particular smell, a particular touch, from moment to moment. Do we suppose that each is already sitting there, as physical states of the brain?
Yeah, you'd probably have to simulate or rebuild at least the entire brain/mind for this one, not just a part of it.
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.
Now that is possible, but it does not seem to fit with either experience or scientific observations of the way brains work.
Me: But it (the brain) is all homogeneous in that it is entirely made of quantifiable stuff, the stuff science deals with. None of it made of conceptual triangles, or emotional states. So the quantifiable stuff that makes up the brain seems to give rise to un-quantifiable things, like thoughts. That is the problem.
Conceptual triangles or emotional states are also structures in the head and quantifiable. But again, science can't yet map the inside of a living human down to the last particle, very far from that.
Then once again, I would ask what is the unit used to quantify them? Which is the biggest; a conceptual triangle or my current level of happiness?
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. It is knowledge
about something. But if everything in our heads is identical to tiny bits of brain then the notion of finding out about an external world is meaningless, since you deny any such world exists to be found and/or there is nobody to do the finding out. Indeed, 'brain' becomes a metaphysical idea, since there is nothing which is not-brain.
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. So to say
'this cup is hot' or '
humans are mammals' would no more be an assertion about the cup or humans than a rock is making an assertion by being a rock.