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

On 6 May, 00:35, urthogie <urtho...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On May 5, 3:20 pm, Ernest Major <{$t...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:



In message <1178390642.398232.158...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
urthogie <urtho...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes

1. Brain activity without consciousness would observably follow the law
of conservation.
2. Brain activity with consciousness observably follows the law of
conservation.

How do you reconcile these two claims with the idea of a material
consciousness? I would argue that you can't.

If I may proffer an analogy.

1. Atmospheric convection without precipitation would observably follow
the law of conservation (of energy).

2. Atmospheric convection with precipitation observably follows the law
of conservation (of energy).

I trust that you agree that precipitation is physical and that the two
claims are reconcilable with the idea of physical precipitation, and
further recognise that the atmospheric convection is not identical in
the two cases.

This doesn't work. Let's say we were looking at a situation where we
had atmospheric convection with precipitation. If we could just click
a button and delete that precipitation from the universe while it was
raining, the law of conservation would be violated. You can't say the
same thing of what would happen if we "deleted" consciousness as a
result (emergent) of brain acitivty, which is the whole point of my
challenge-- to ask for a given situation where removing something
physical does not result in a violation of the law of conservation.


I suspect you are preoccupied with energy conservation because you
realise the only way to affect the natural and spontaneous course of
events in a system is to nudge it from outside, and if you do, that
will show up in the energy budget.

That is an unnecessarily specific way of looking at causation. You
could ignore energy and just make your point with "Every action has an
equal and opposite reaction.".

The known set of forces and entities in physics are considered to form
a causal closure. That is a fancy way of saying they push and pull
each other, and no unaccounted for pushes and pulls have been noticed.

If a theory of consciousness introduces new-to-physics real, physical,
causally efficaceous entities, and they *make a difference*, then we
would extend the closure to encompass them. If not, we might just
choose to disbelieve such a theory.


By analogy brain activity without consciousness and brain activity with
consciousness are not identical, and can both be consistent with the law
of conservation (of energy).

I recognise that analogy is neither evidence nor proof, but I think that
the above demonstrates that the syllogism

1. A without X follows the law of conservation of energy
2. A with X follows the law of conservation of energy
3. Therefore X is not material.

is not valid, from which it follows that your argument is at best
incomplete (you have to show what is different about brain activity and
consciousness). Note that it should be possible to produce other
analogies using less tangible referents.
--
alias Ernest Major

.

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