Free Will

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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RCSaunders
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Re: Free Will

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Belinda wrote: Mon Aug 02, 2021 8:52 am RCSaunders wrote:
Any other factors are irrelevant. If A cannot happen without B, than A is dependent on B. No matter how many other factors you want to pile on. Without B there is no A.

No matter how you describe it, like, "consciousness flowing through it," if there can be no, "consciousness flowing through it," without the corresponding brain behavior, that consciousness is dependent on that brain behavior, because it would not exist without it.
The questions to ask are as follows: are brains "dependent" on minds, or are minds "dependent" on brains, or are brains and minds two aspects of nature?

Your first paragraph describes the fact "cannot happen" that both mind and matter are necessary to existence as we know it. This is undeniable.
Your second paragraph implies that mind is subsumed under matter and that this is the one and only ontological option. Other ontological options are that matter is subsumed under mind i.e idealism; that matter and mind are each subsumed under nature i.e. neutral monism; and that mind and matter are unconnected** substances i.e. Cartesian dualism.

**except for God's occasional interventions, or except for pre-established harmony. Also except for atheistic existentialism.
Sorry I missed this earlier, Belinda. Actually, I'm not arguing for physical determinism at all. It's not your fault, but you are only seeing part of the conversation. I'm actually trying to point out, if someone claims there can be no conscious experience independent of any physical brain behavior that view makes consciousness and the physical brain interdependent, which is wrong.

The original discussion was this:
RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jul 30, 2021 9:21 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 1:58 pm
Do you think the exact same brain processes can occur with or without consciousness?
Do Determinists think that? Yes. But I'm not one.
Actually determinists don't think that.

If there is a link between the physical brain and consciousness such that any physical difference in the brain must result in a difference in consciousness, or vice versa, that would be physical determinism. Unless some brain processes are independent of consciousness, that is, unless some, "exact same brain processes can occur with or without consciousness," you have made consciousness a function of the brain.

I don't think that's what you meant.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Free Will

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jayjacobus wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 4:19 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 3:53 pm
Belinda wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 12:57 pm You seem to be a materialist(physicalist) like RCSaunders is.
Just for the record, I am not physicalist. Life, consciousness, and human minds cannot be described or explained in terms of merely physical properties as all merely physical entities can.

Nevertheless, life, consciousness, and minds do not exist independently of the physical organisms they are the properties of. Life, consciousness and mind are not supernatural or mystical, but perfectly natural attributes in addition to the physical attributes.
You could be wrong. There is no scientific evidence to support your opinion.
If there were scientific evidence, then I would be wrong. The physical sciences can only deal with what can be directly perceived (seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted) or deduced from what is directly perceived. There is no way to perceive conscious experience, not even one's own. We only know we are conscious because we are.[/quote]
jayjacobus wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 4:19 pm Minds are attributes that are mystical so far.
I don't know what you mean by mystical, but I regard anything for which there is no evidence as mystical, and anything that contradicts or denies what there is evidence for as mystical. I do not regard consciousness mystical because of the irrefutable evidence of my own. To deny my own consciousness would be mystical.
jayjacobus wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 4:19 pm Exposing one's head in no way explains the mind.
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

See, "The Nature of the Mind."

Or, if it's the nature of consciousness itself you think is mystical, see:

"The Nature of Consciousness"

"Perception"
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Terrapin Station
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Re: Free Will

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RCSaunders wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 6:01 pm
jayjacobus wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 4:19 pm

You could be wrong. There is no scientific evidence to support your opinion.
If there were scientific evidence, then I would be wrong. The physical sciences can only deal with what can be directly perceived (seen, heard, felt, smelled, or tasted) or deduced from what is directly perceived. There is no way to perceive conscious experience, not even one's own. We only know we are conscious because we are.
jayjacobus wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 4:19 pm Minds are attributes that are mystical so far.
I don't know what you mean by mystical, but I regard anything for which there is no evidence as mystical, and anything that contradicts or denies what there is evidence for as mystical. I do not regard consciousness mystical because of the irrefutable evidence of my own. To deny my own consciousness would be mystical.
jayjacobus wrote: Tue Aug 03, 2021 4:19 pm Exposing one's head in no way explains the mind.
I have no idea what that is supposed to mean.

See, "The Nature of the Mind."

Or, if it's the nature of consciousness itself you think is mystical, see:

"The Nature of Consciousness"

"Perception"
Physicalism is usually an ontological thesis, not an epistemological one. It sounds like ontologically you're a physicalist.

Also, it's not clear to me how you're using "perceive," but certainly one is phenomenally aware of one's own consciousness.
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Re: Free Will

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RCSaunders, thanks for the clarifications to me and to JayJacobus.

Apart from hallucinations, consciousness is attached to environment, which of course includes the biological brain. Consciousness is impossible without something to be conscious of. At every turn and twist of experience consciousness and physical matter are ontologically conjoined. Together they are a unit the name of which is nature.

It is impossible to be conscious and not experience joy, awe, pain, fear, and disgust. True, there has been a recent cultural movement to ignore or discredit the physical, especially sexual intercourse, and including also the beauties and sufferings of the non-human environment and our pleasures and pains which are intimately and necessarily pleasures and pains about something in our environment.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Free Will

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henry quirk wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:08 pm The physical determination does not extend to those entities which have additional attributes which are not physical, like life, consciousness, and volition.

I agree.

Where we disagree is on the source of life, consciousness, and volition.

You, I guess, believe these emerge from the material, which, it seems to me, means these are subject to the same limitations as the material.

Obviously, they aren't, so -- especially consciousness and volition -- can't be emergent.
I'm sorry I missed this earlier. Just to avoid a misunderstanding, I do NOT regard life, consciousness, and volition as, "emergent," any more than I regard, "mass," "momentum," or "physical states," as emergent. They are all just natural attributes. Some we call physical attributes (mass, momentum, solid, liquid, gas, for example) and others are addition to the physical attribute (life, consciousness, and mind). None emerge from any others.
Belinda
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Re: Free Will

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RCSaunders wrote: Wed Aug 04, 2021 4:52 pm
henry quirk wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:08 pm The physical determination does not extend to those entities which have additional attributes which are not physical, like life, consciousness, and volition.

I agree.

Where we disagree is on the source of life, consciousness, and volition.

You, I guess, believe these emerge from the material, which, it seems to me, means these are subject to the same limitations as the material.

Obviously, they aren't, so -- especially consciousness and volition -- can't be emergent.
I'm sorry I missed this earlier. Just to avoid a misunderstanding, I do NOT regard life, consciousness, and volition as, "emergent," any more than I regard, "mass," "momentum," or "physical states," as emergent. They are all just natural attributes. Some we call physical attributes (mass, momentum, solid, liquid, gas, for example) and others are addition to the physical attribute (life, consciousness, and mind). None emerge from any others.
If emergent is taken to refer to evolution by natural selection, then there is no doubt that consciousness and life emerged from things that were not alive nor conscious. There is nothing unnatural about evolution by natural selection! Materialism(physicalism) is perfectly adequate for science and for everyday living.

The idea that attracts idealists(immaterialists)is that the whole caboodle, Darwin and all, is a product of consciousness i.e. mind. Each of us who is conscious is a centre of experience of reality without exceptions. The absolute and perfectly total experience of reality is absolute mind.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

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Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:46 am If emergent is taken to refer to evolution by natural selection...
It isn't.

When used in connection with the Philosophy of Mind, it means "suddenly appearing when an entity arrives at a certain level of evolution." In other words, it's used as a sort of synonym for "sudden and not traceable to gradual, previous, material steps." In a way, that makes it a synonym for "not-evolved," because its arrival is explosive and sudden, and lacks all of the transitional forms. But it's supposed to be a kind of explanation for how consciousness can "spring suddenly" from mere materials.

Yeah, it's not a great explanation. Really, it's not an "explanation" at all. But what can the evolutionist say? For if we can invent any kind of gradual diagram of how a "brain" comes to be, it is not possible to draw any such diagram for the "mind." So its arrival is inexplicable and exceedingly odd, in the evolutionary scheme: especially as evolution itself is supposed to be utterly "blind" (to use Darwin's word) to anything that is not detectable by survival-of-the-fittest.
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Re: Free Will

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RCSaunders wrote: Wed Aug 04, 2021 4:52 pm
henry quirk wrote: Sun Aug 01, 2021 4:08 pm The physical determination does not extend to those entities which have additional attributes which are not physical, like life, consciousness, and volition.

I agree.

Where we disagree is on the source of life, consciousness, and volition.

You, I guess, believe these emerge from the material, which, it seems to me, means these are subject to the same limitations as the material.

Obviously, they aren't, so -- especially consciousness and volition -- can't be emergent.
I'm sorry I missed this earlier. Just to avoid a misunderstanding, I do NOT regard life, consciousness, and volition as, "emergent," any more than I regard, "mass," "momentum," or "physical states," as emergent. They are all just natural attributes. Some we call physical attributes (mass, momentum, solid, liquid, gas, for example) and others are addition to the physical attribute (life, consciousness, and mind). None emerge from any others.
RC, is mind subject to cause & effect? Is mind just another event in a causal chain?
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Re: Free Will

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Materialism(physicalism) is perfectly adequate for science and for everyday living.

Sure, with one critical exception: mind.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Free Will

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henry quirk wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 2:49 pm RC, is mind subject to cause & effect? Is mind just another event in a causal chain?
No! Mind has no physical cause.

Our view and meaning of cause are not the same. You think of it as some kind of motive force that makes things happen. To me, if, "cause," has any meaning it is only an explanation or description of what is and its nature and means nothing happens serendipitously or without reason. When I say nothing happens without a cause I only mean nothing happens by magic or miracle and that nothing real is ineffable.
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Re: Free Will

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Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:46 am If emergent is taken to refer to evolution by natural selection, then there is no doubt that consciousness and life emerged from things that were not alive nor conscious.
Please provide one example of life coming from something that is not living that I can examine, otherwise that is a mere conjecture.

There is definite evidence that abiogenesis does not occur in this world, else sterilazation discovered by Pasteur would not be possible.

I'm not denying abiogenesis is possible, only that there is no evidence for it.
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:46 am There is nothing unnatural about evolution by natural selection!
Evolution is just a hypothesis, a conjecture, based on rather sketchy evidence and lots of story telling. It is hardly a sound basis for establishing the nature of consciousness. However life originated, if it did, consciousness is inchoate in life itself. It doesn't, "emerge," form it.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

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RCSaunders wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 3:42 pm
Belinda wrote: Thu Aug 05, 2021 10:46 am If emergent is taken to refer to evolution by natural selection, then there is no doubt that consciousness and life emerged from things that were not alive nor conscious.
Please provide one example of life coming from something that is not living that I can examine, otherwise that is a mere conjecture.
They're going to come back with an assumed conclusion, RC. The next phrase you're going to get is something like "all life," or "you and me." Their reasoning goes like this:

Life is here.

Life evolved.

But everything was once inert matter (like oxygen, hydrogen, quark-gluon plasma, etc.)

Therefore all life is an example of abiogenesis.


The reasoning is pathetically bad, of course: but that's what I'll bet you get.

Incoming! :wink:
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Re: Free Will

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Mind has no physical cause.

Agreed.
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Re: Free Will

Post by Belinda »

Henry Quirk wrote:
RC, is mind subject to cause & effect? Is mind just another event in a causal chain?
That is the big ontological question which neither Immanuel Can nor RCSaunders has asked. They prefer to quibble about the status of the theory of evolution by natural selection. Do let's attend to Henry's question!

From Henry who has already begun well to answer his own question :
Mind has no physical cause.

Agreed.
The above shows that Henry is not a materialist(physicalist). I may not in the end agree with HQ, but I applaud his getting to the point.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

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Belinda wrote: Fri Aug 06, 2021 9:35 am Henry Quirk wrote:
RC, is mind subject to cause & effect? Is mind just another event in a causal chain?
That is the big ontological question which neither Immanuel Can nor RCSaunders has asked.
So you're not actually reading what either of us writes, B? Because we've explained this aplenty. RC says, in a sort of round-about way, "Yes," and I say, "No."
Henry is not a materialist(physicalist). I may not in the end agree with HQ, but I applaud his getting to the point.
If you'd read what we write, you'd see we've been "to that point" for a long, long time now.

But whatever.
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