Re: Criticism of philosophical materialism (and a comment on someone2)

On May 4, 4:12 am, urthogie <urtho...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 3, 10:57 pm, Kermit <unrestrained_h...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On May 3, 5:24 pm, urthogie <urtho...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I ran into the "message/post throttle" for posting too much. I
emailed myself a reply to the criticisms posted since then by various
people, which explains my logic pretty simply, and should prevent any
of you from saying I "dont have a reason" for my views or I'm to
ambiguous or unemprical or illoigical or whatever :

Alas! These seem to be a list of unsupported or ambiguous non
sequitors.

1. If subjective experience was the same thing as brain activity, we
would be able to observe it, because we can observe brain activity.

Ummm... I can observe my subjective experience. Do you mean another
person's subjective experience? But there are many things which one
person can perceive which others may not be able to. I do not
understand the "because". If a child can hear a high pitch I cannot,
does that mean it is different from the high pitch which shows on my
sonometer?

Yes I mean another person's objective experience. Your example of the
child and the pitch doesn't work because you can use technology to
observe the pitch, and conceivably even hear it if you modified your
ear/brain.

An optical machine that records light frequency is not profoundly
different from a machine that detects the frequency and intensity of
sound. Not, I think, in any sense you mean.


2. We cannot observe someone elses subjective experiences.
Consciousness is exclusive to the possessor.

So are my fingers exclusive to me. And I perceive them differently
than you.

I didn't say "perceive differently" I said observe. You cannot
observe the way I experience seeing the color red, don't kid yourself!

I can scan your brain while you see red. We have learned much about
the complex, bidirectional visual process. I can see which neurons are
firing when you see red. Of course it's different than your "inside"
perception, just as my experience of my fingers are different than
your experience of my fingers are. I don't see the profound
difference.


3. Therefore, per 1. and 2., subjective experience is not the same
thing as brain activity

I don't see why that should follow.

2 proves the "if" of 1 incorrect, proving 1 wrong and making 3
correct.


Of course we can observe someone else's experience. Our outside
observation of it will not be as complex and rich as his personal
experience, true. I don't see why this is profound, nor any indication
of a non-material nature.

It certainly doesn't disprove # 1. If consciousness *is merely brain
activity, there is no reason to expect that my scanning your brain
would give me the same experience you perceive from the "inside". If
we sat next to each other and looked at a rock, we would see it
differently. Different perspectives always give different perceptions.
<shrug> Doesn't mean the rock is immaterial, yes?



4. Subjective experience emerges from brain activity. (mainstream
psychology is my source here. I can provide quotes and excerpts if
necessary)

Yes, in the same sense that noise emerges from vibrations in the air.

5. Brain activity is composed of balanced physical and chemical
reactions. (no one here disagrees with this premise, as far as I know)

What do you mean by balanced? Surely if you have too much serotonin,
bad things happen. This is a strange way to refer to metabolism. If
that's not what you mean, it's not clear what you *do mean.
6. Nonetheless, subjective experience results from these balanced
reactions. (repeat of point 4)

Rather than clarifying, "balanced" adds an aura of uncertainty and
caution to this assertion.

7. If subjective experience were physical (e.g. waves energy
particles, anything physical), it would violate the First Law of
Thermodynamics because it would be something (whatever it might be,
whether its waves or matter or energy or light) out of nothing (per
5., the brain acitivity balances itself out, without even considering
consciousness), extending beyond the "balanced" reactions.

Ummm... no, no, and no. Are you saying that the brain "balances out"
like an equation, and subjective experience is some kind of ill-gotten
gain? No. The brain uses about one third (!) of the calories we
consume. It uses a lot of food to do *something. Subjective experience
is part of what it does.

The brain is not a self-contained perpetual motion machine,
thermodynamically isolated from the rest of the world; it is a busy,
always-on, sugar-chompin' beast.

What it's doing is chemical reactions, meaning the end result of brain
activity should just be those balanced chemical reactions.
Consciousness would not be needed to explain the reduction of brain
activity to chemical and physical processes.

Correct. Nor is anything supernatural or immaterial needed to explain
consciousness. It seem to be brain activity, and we know how much of
it happens.

Chomping sugar does not
explain why consciousness is emerging-- it only explains that sugar is
being chomped.

I didn't say that it explains consciousness. I *did say, and reaffirm,
that consciousness as brain activity is not "something from nothing".
*Especially if it's only brain activity - there would be nothing
surprising from the viewpoint of chemistry or thermodynamics.






This is my argument in a small logical nutshell. I ask that you
attack it in earnest, rather than nitpicking it (for example pointing
out my poor knowledge of English literature). Here are my questions
that I want all of you to answer. If you give answers which don't
violate basic physical laws or logic, you win the argument:

1. Imagine that you could have any technology in the world. Describe
an experiment which gave an answer to the hard problem of
consciousness.

How can we know the explanation for something we haven't figured out
yet? We *have figured out much of it. I gave you a link to over 2500
papers on consciousness and related subjects. This was a busy field
when my wife got her degree 25 years ago and we've learned lots more
since.

You didn't give me a link to any paper with objective evidence that
answers even a smidgen of the hard problem.

Perhaps now would be a good time to briefly describe what you think
the hard problem is, just so I can be sure we're on the page with
that.

Wow! You've read all 2500+ papers? I've only read one. <sigh> I'll try
to catch up.




2. Imagine that you've just completed such an experiment. Describe
how the experience of seeing the color red would be described in your
scientific paper.

Most people know what red is, and those that can't see it wouldn't
know by describing it. I understand the mechanisms behind some of what
I subjective experience, and there are folks who understand much more
of it. I am optimistic that it will all pretty much fall under the
rubric of "understood" in time.

More importantly, you may be asking a very wrong kind of question.

Suppose in 1900 your grandfather asked someone "Chemists say that the
sun cannot be over 20,000,000 years old, but biologists say it must be
ten or even a hundred times older. Can you describe an experiment that
would explain how the chemistry of that mass could have taken a
hundred times longer to burn?"

If given any technology in the world (and this is a condition I
allowed you to have) we could make some spaceship that could fly into
the middle of the sun, pickup some isotopes for dating, and take them
back to the lab to study. Even with spaceships and such, my question
is unanswerable, which shows how ridiculous it is to think you can
answer it.

So is my question unanswerable. The fact is that it was Einstein's
theories of relativity which allowed us to understand that chemistry
was *not the answer to the apparent conflict in observations. Life
took far more than 20,000,000 years to evolve, but the sun could only
burn for 20 or 40 million, tops. The answer was in nuclear fusion.
Until we knew that, we couldn't ask the right question (or at least,
it was easy to ask the wrong one.) And once we knew that, we already
had the answer.

I don't know if you are asking the right question, and we may not know
until we have most of the process worked out. It may turn out to be a
trivial question, once we know enough to answer it.




In summary, I've supplied my reasons, and I don't think any of you can
give good answers to my questions, while I can give defensible answers
to yours. Whether you agree with me or not, I think I've supplied
good reasons for my views.

This discussion had no clear winners or losers for the simple reason
that neither side had any evidence. It was purely dialectical, and I
think both sides have defensible positions. Narcissist that I am, I
think my side was correct :)

The dialectical method is not necessarily the best way to find out the
nature of the world.

I agree, but sometimes its all we have.

I can't think of any scientific discovery that came about because of
the dialectical method. Perhaps someone knowledgeable in science
history has an example or two.


Kermit
Still Kermit


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