Not Everything Is Physical

So what's really going on?

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Skepdick
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Re: Not Everything Is Physical

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I Like Sushu wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:12 pm Of course. But we don’t need this (here written stuff) to operate in the world anymore than a chimp does in order to reason and solve puzzles.
Not true. Coordinating complex tasks works better with effective communication. Teamwork mandates language.

In distributed systems (herds of computers) the hardest kinds of problems to navigate around are communication failures.
So much so that there's mantra. All system failures are communication failures.

These failure modes also have a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byzantine_fault
I Like Sushu wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:12 pm In fact there is the case of ‘The Man with no Language’ who crossed a border into the US, functioned in society and earned a living; all with NO ‘language’ (born deaf and no comprehension of language until he was in his early thirties I think?)
Functioned IN society. Can such men build A society?
I Like Sushu wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:12 pm Again, I find myself asking “what do we mean by ‘language’?” - a question that been nagging me for a long time.
Any instrument for self-expression. Cooking is a language. Drawing/painting is a language. Music is language.
Architecture is language.

Manifesting our metaphysic into the physical world is language. Creation. Without the 'ism'.
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Sculptor
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Re: Not Everything Is Physical

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RCSaunders wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:10 pm I don't think the physical brain produces consciousness because I cannot accept the premise that something happens that is totally inexplicable. How is the brain, "conscious?" The brain is a complex physical organ and all that can be known about it is its physical attributes and behavior (physical, chemical, electrical, etc.). There is nothing about it that can be called consciousness.
That is an utterly absurd position to take since NOTHING is totally explicable.
The brain is as good as it gets for ANY phenomena. The fact that the "mind" whatever that is, is generated from the brain, is as good an explanation as the sun rises because the earth turns.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Not Everything Is Physical

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Sculptor wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:59 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:10 pm I don't think the physical brain produces consciousness because I cannot accept the premise that something happens that is totally inexplicable. How is the brain, "conscious?" The brain is a complex physical organ and all that can be known about it is its physical attributes and behavior (physical, chemical, electrical, etc.). There is nothing about it that can be called consciousness.
That is an utterly absurd position to take since NOTHING is totally explicable.
You really don't know the difference between, "totally inexplicable," and, "not totally explicable?" The difference is the first has no explanation whatsoever (totally unexplained), the second is at least partially explained even if not totally. There is no explanation at all for consciousness in terms of the physical. ("Somehow," is not an explanation.)
Sculptor wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:59 pm The brain is as good as it gets for ANY phenomena. The fact that the "mind" whatever that is, is generated from the brain, is as good an explanation as the sun rises because the earth turns.
There is no contest here. If that view satisfies you, as it does a great many today, it doesn't matter to me. It is just a view I cannot accept because my consciousness (my seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling experience) and what I am conscious of (the physically seen, heard, felt, tasted, and smelled) are just not the same thing.
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Sculptor
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Re: Not Everything Is Physical

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RCSaunders wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 6:46 pm
Sculptor wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:59 pm
RCSaunders wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 3:10 pm I don't think the physical brain produces consciousness because I cannot accept the premise that something happens that is totally inexplicable. How is the brain, "conscious?" The brain is a complex physical organ and all that can be known about it is its physical attributes and behavior (physical, chemical, electrical, etc.). There is nothing about it that can be called consciousness.
That is an utterly absurd position to take since NOTHING is totally explicable.
You really don't know the difference between, "totally inexplicable," and, "not totally explicable?" The difference is the first has no explanation whatsoever (totally unexplained), the second is at least partially explained even if not totally. There is no explanation at all for consciousness in terms of the physical. ("Somehow," is not an explanation.)

IF you read properly I do know the difference.
I was just doing you a favour, since "totally inexplicable" is rubbish.

Sculptor wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 4:59 pm The brain is as good as it gets for ANY phenomena. The fact that the "mind" whatever that is, is generated from the brain, is as good an explanation as the sun rises because the earth turns.
There is no contest here. If that view satisfies you, as it does a great many today, it doesn't matter to me. It is just a view I cannot accept because my consciousness (my seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting and smelling experience) and what I am conscious of (the physically seen, heard, felt, tasted, and smelled) are just not the same thing.

By your measure everything is "totally inexplicable". Since you rely on all these things to explain your entire world.

All the evidence is for the brain as the seat of consciousness and the generator of the mind. It really does not matter about absolute explicability, because you have so shot yourself in the foot with your objection that you have nothing to offer, even to yourself.
What would explicable look like to you?
Try an example!
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RCSaunders
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Re: Not Everything Is Physical

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Sculptor wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 10:16 pm Try an example!
"The reason your view is different from mind is because you begin with a different premise," is an explanation, which means the difference in our views is explicable.

"All the evidence is for the brain as the seat of consciousness and the generator of the mind," explains nothing. It is simply a statement of belief. There is no evidence of consciousness. There is evidence of brain activity, but there is no evidence of conscious experience itself. You can dissect a brain because it exists physically, and you can consciously perceive it and study it with instruments. You cannot even examine a consciousness. You cannot see it, hear it, or feel it, measure it, or weight it, or perceive it in any other way. The only consciousness you can know is your own because you are conscious. You cannot know anyone else's consciousness at all. You just have to take their word for it that they are conscious, which I believe because there would be no reason for them to lie about it.

Brain activity is not even evidence of consciousness, much less a cause of it. If you knew everything that could possibly be known about the behavior of the brain, it would not even indicate the existence of consciousness, much less explain it.

If you knew all there was to know about the behavior of the brain and neurological system, from that alone the existence of consciousness could never be deduced.
I Like Sushu
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Re: Not Everything Is Physical

Post by I Like Sushu »

Skepdick -

You cannot say ‘not true’ when what I said is true - there is video evidence of this. Even chickens can figure out puzzles in order to get food; as can many other creatures.

As for people with no language they do generally, create a language. Cases of feral children show that there is more to language than the capacity to communicate, as many cases show that such children cannot develop a full language - unlike the Man with No Language. This suggests that it is a matter fo relating experience to the world they are part of. Feral children brought up by wolves appreciate the world as a wolf not as a human. I call this ‘kinesthetic language’ - something akin to social body language combined with the commonly encountered environment.

Humans must have developed society at some point from a position of ‘no language’ - who made this first abstraction and how they related to others is anyone’s guess. I imagine it was a rather slowly evolving process built up from items that we see in the animal kingdom today - mating calls, warnings, and various different social displays. Given the range of sounds we produce and the amount of gesture involved in day-to-day life it doesn’t seem much of a leap to connect some given sound with some given gesture - deaf or not I doubt it would take much time for large communities to lay down a complex language.

You can bet your bottom dollar those feral children could communicate with the wolves effectively enough - or they’d be long dead.

So I’d say they could build a society because humans have done so before and being deaf doesn’t prevent language from developing - Nicaraguan children did this all by themselves (a case that has fascinated many linguists).

I too use term ‘language’ in broader terms - in linguistics this is a topic of some contention. Bees have a language as do other creatures, but human language is what many refer to when they say ‘language’ (that is why I tried to be more explicit).

Aa for manifesting the metaphysic? I guess so, but we could interpret this in other ways depending on what you mean explicitly by ‘metaphysic’ - referring to Eliade and his use of hierophant to distinguish sacred acts from profane acts (or rather point out the commonalities between the two.
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Sculptor
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Re: Not Everything Is Physical

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RCSaunders wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 1:07 am
Sculptor wrote: Thu Jul 04, 2019 10:16 pm Try an example!
"The reason your view is different from mind is because you begin with a different premise," is an explanation, which means the difference in our views is explicable.

"All the evidence is for the brain as the seat of consciousness and the generator of the mind," explains nothing. It is simply a statement of belief.
{/quote]
Absolutely not. I is a hard fact. I do not care to explain anything. I merely describe the facts.
This is provable.
There is no evidence of consciousness.
If there is no evidence of it, then what the hell are you talking about?
LOL. You are just making a mockery of your own post.
There is evidence of brain activity, but there is no evidence of conscious experience itself. You can dissect a brain because it exists physically, and you can consciously perceive it and study it with instruments.
You can do far more than that you can change and modify consciousness predictably with a scalpel or with drugs.


You cannot even examine a consciousness. You cannot see it, hear it, or feel it, measure it, or weight it, or perceive it in any other way. The only consciousness you can know is your own because you are conscious. You cannot know anyone else's consciousness at all. You just have to take their word for it that they are conscious, which I believe because there would be no reason for them to lie about it.
psychologist claim to do it all the time.
DO you have the same problem with gravity? You avoided my last question.

Brain activity is not even evidence of consciousness, much less a cause of it.
Since you have no evidence of consciousness, you cannot say this.
The fact remains the brain activity is evidence of consciousness, and the cause of it.
If you continue to ignore the evidence then you are never going to understand anything.

If you knew everything that could possibly be known about the behavior of the brain, it would not even indicate the existence of consciousness, much less explain it.
Never claimed to explain anything, science describes.


If you knew all there was to know about the behavior of the brain and neurological system, from that alone the existence of consciousness could never be deduced.
Denial is useless and in your case childish.
Consciousness is evident, and ALL the multitude of evidence demands that the brain is the seat of it.
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RCSaunders
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Re: Not Everything Is Physical

Post by RCSaunders »

Sculptor wrote: Fri Jul 05, 2019 12:55 pm Denial is useless and in your case childish.
Thanks for the comment.
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