This train of thought was spawned by a religious conversation I had with a friend of mine. I’m an atheist, he could be considered an agnostic, yet he believes in some form of afterlife. And I know a number of “agnostics”(this term is so broad, which is why i used quotes. does this include people who are "spiritual, but not religious"?) who believe in varying degrees of life after death. It’s interesting to me when people let go of the idea of god and religion, and yet hold on to concepts like this. To me, we are alive, and conscious of it. Consciousness is a product of certain physical states. Death is the total cessation of consciousness. As an atheist, the concept of an afterlife is bewildering. I mean, what part of you survives death? How is that possible? I don't believe in the concept of a soul(obviously), so I can't really be appealed to by that route. But after this conversation it struck my how strong this idea of an afterlife is and I began to think about how something like that would have developed in the first place, because when you think about it, it’s a pretty weird thing to come up with out of the blue. Why would your natural instinct be to believe when you die, you don’t really die? So here’s what I came up with.
The process of evolution has selected for beings to avoid death as much as possible so as to have a better chance at passing on their genes. This has been ingrained in us genetically. So at some point self awareness and intelligence develops in creatures when we already have an inherent avoidance of death. But, unlike in any of our previous history, we have the intellectual foresight to understand that eventually we all die, one way or another(an early existential crisis I guess you would call it). But we still of course have this innate avoidance/fear of death. So we create the concept of an “afterlife”. Don’t ask me the specifics. But it’s easy to imagine how well this idea would do. Obviously there is no scientific knowledge available. We have lots of questions and no answers. How does the world work? Why do things happen? Why am I here? I guess these questions start venturing more in the god realm of things. But, I still think the point is valid. When you don’t understand what physical life is, then your observations about physical death will of course be ill conceived. And an idea like this has much appeal for people.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
another thought: the afterlife is also a really good way to keep people in line, in a negative sense. "if you are a bad person, you will burn in hell fire for all eternity"
but i feel the concept of an afterlife existed way before this issue came up and is more fundamental to our nature.
Are there any cultures in history who don't or didn't believe in an afterlife?
Posted by JumboWumbo (Member # 10047) on :
I agree with strider; it provides incentive. That could mean "you're going to burn in hell", but it could also mean," don't worry if you've suffered this life, the next one wil treat you far better. Just stick in there."
I believe that it can either give people hope or diminish it, depending on the POV.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:I agree with strider
Thanks.
As opposed to who though? Posted by Eduardo St. Elmo (Member # 9566) on :
The idea of an afterlife, in any form, stems from men's fear of the unknown. Nobody can tell us with certainty what will happen after we leave this mortal realm. So instead of living with one heck of a question mark always ahead, mankind has evolved several nice theories on the 'after death' situation. I'll readily admit that most of the theories (or beliefs if you will) that are out there are easier to live with than the notion that death is plainly the end of life. It must be rather soothing to be able to imagine sitting on a cloud and watching the events play out on the earth below, or to finally meet up again with those beloved persons that have passed on before. Or in the case of reincarnation, to know that eventually you will return into this world, (albeit in another shape) which is already familiar to you. All you have to do then is get to know the world form a different perspective. In the cases where the afterlife is split into a good and a bad realm, it can easily be seen as in incentive to work towards the good. Which is IMHO only a roundabout way to improve the life we lead on this earth. Too bad there's so much discord about the details that the set-up backfires far too often.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
First, you've sort of phrased or qualified your question so it can't really be answered. You denied the concept of the soul, and that's fine, but you can't deny the concept of the soul, or something at least soul-ish, and then pose a question about afterlife.
You have to accept that to ask the question is to accept the framework of those who DO believe in afterlife and all its implication, if as nothing else, then at least as a metaphor for explaining their belief. Simply, you can ask a question then deny me the metaphor to explain the answer.
It is possible to not believe in God as he is typically presented by most religions and not believe in the religions themselves, yet still believe in some form of afterlife.
I think part of the problem with God, Heaven, and afterlife is that, in order to have a framework to discuss it, we have had to mold God into our own image. I seriously doubt that Heaven is an earth like paradise. I seriously doubt that this thing that you call 'you' is the thing you will be in the afterlife.
Think of it from a Buddhist perspective. There is no God and there is no earth-like heaven, and your current identity is not your true 'Self'. Since Buddhist believe in reincarnation, how could your current earthly identity possibly be your true spiritual identity? It can't. There is no fantasy Christian Heaven, but there is the rejoining with the universal spiritual essense; the pure infinite white light.
When you die, who you are today in this life time ceases to exist. The thing you identify as 'you' is just a shell, and is very transient. It is your true eternal spiritual 'Self' that lives on.
Orson Scott Card gave us a perfect model for non-religious heaven in the continuation of the Ender Sage. In this series, Heaven is called 'Outside'. Outside is the source of all life in our Universe, yet it is infinitely larger. The universal essense of 'being' exists 'Outside', and responds to a yearning for life that comes from 'Inside'. Each aspect of the Outside essense heeds the call to life in proportion to its own capacity. Some 'essense' hears the calling of atoms yearning to be, and it answers the call, sparking to life the individual atoms.
Other essense hears the calling for life of a human, and answers that call by moving 'Inside' and sparking to life a human being. This Aiui (spark of life, spirit, soul, whatever) is the master of all the other aiui that give their sparks of life to each atom that make up the body. It is the greater aiui.
When you die, these 'sparks of life' go back Outside until they are called again. Perhaps with each journey to 'Inside', they become more powerful and more confident and become higher life forces while they are on earth. They continue to improve until the reach Nirvana or a state of 'Heaven' and no long feel the need to heed the call for life 'Inside'. That ends the cylce of reincarnation. Once you are in Nirvana or Heaven, you are at eternal peace.
Perhaps each incarnation on earth is the Hell we speak of. According to Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, all life is suffering, and until you accept that, you can't be at peace. Once we rise to a level of acceptance of life's suffering, only then can we become Spiritually whole enough to move to Nirvana or Heaven, and no longer heed the calling of life from 'Inside'.
You can deny the concept of the soul, but to understand afterlife, you have to at least allow the discussion to consider that there is something greater than our physical Selves that makes up who and what we are. It is not our physical Selves or our physical idenity that lives on. When your body dies, that person represented by that body is gone forever. But the lessons that person learns while living, live on in your eternal intangible spiritual and true Self.
To even have this discussion, you have to, to some extent, except this duality of man; the 'Outside' self and the 'Inside' Self, the transient physical Self and the Eternal spiritual Self. You do not however have to accept God in the image of man or heaven in the image of earth.
Just a few thoughts.
Steve/bboyminn
Posted by abysmalpoptart (Member # 10061) on :
the thought of an afterlife is not necessarily or inherently a religious one. i definitely agree with eduardo - how do you think religion in general was created to begin with? how did the lightning come about? how were mountains formed? oh my goodness... it must be.. a god! religion in itself was basically formed on the fact that man did not understand key elements of the surrounding world, and needed an explanation.
the afterlife can be that necessary explanation for death - we die to continue to another life
but more to what you're talking about, strider, i don't believe that the concept of a soul is, again, inherently religious. yes, you can argue that it is, but i'm sure you can see there is a big religious difference between "i believe in ghosts" and "god created the world."
nobody knows what happens after death, so nobody knows if our consciousness simply ceases or if we continue. the interesting thing, though, is that if we do continue, then wouldn't we have existed in the first place? i like to think that if our consciousnesses are continual, that we actually chose to put ourselves in certain situations or certain locations because... i don't know i like to think interesting things but anything and everything is possible, religious or scientific.
especially a giant spaghetti monster. that just makes perfect sense.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
I think a much simpler theory for the origins of the concept of an afterlife can be found in our own brains and to a lesser degree our sensory perception.
First, we are creatures with memory. When someone dies, they don't disappear completely. We have a mental image of that person which is sometimes very vivid. Along with that, we have the ability to dream. It stands to reason that just as we can have vivid dreams of our departed loved ones, so did early man. At some point there was likely a creature who dreamed, yet didn't have the knowledge to distinguish a particularly vivid dream from waking reality. Does it not stand to reason that this creature might dream of a departed loved one and mistake it for a visitation of some sort?
Additionally, we are evolved for survival. In the earliest times, only the most alert and perceptive of our kind survived long enough to pass on genes. Many of us today have experienced subtle sensations that remind us powerfully of past events and people. We are aware that a subtle smell can trigger a strong, yet forgotten memory. We can sometimes "feel" someone watching us, or feel a "presence" and for whatever reason we sometime think we know who that "presence" is. I don't believe in Ghosts, but I do believe that we have an amazing capacity to sense things at the fringes of perception, and enough innate evolutionary paranoia to translate those senses into unknown immediate dangers. Tangentially, I believe we can desire something enough to conjure experiences of it. A lonely widower reports sensing his wife's presence, etc.
All of these things must have seemed to early man or even pre-man as strong evidence of a place where things existed outside of our daylight sober perception, and that this might well be where that unknown part that differentiates a mobile being from a corpse "goes".
On the flip side of this, while I think it's somewhat inconsistent to be agnostic, yet believe in an afterlife, it's not at all inconsistent to hold onto the possibility of one. We know so very little about the true nature of existence and what it means to live in multi-dimensional space-time. What does a four-dimensional being look like from a 5 (or 6 or 9) dimensional perspective? Isn't it at least theoretically possible that you, as a 4 dimensional construct are eternal in some way we don't fully understand from our limited perspective?
Posted by abysmalpoptart (Member # 10061) on :
.... yes Posted by Altáriël of Dorthonion (Member # 6473) on :
I like the idea of an afterlife because it makes me think that life is worth something, you know? Like, why am I living this life if I will only die one day and that is that. I prefer to think that I will somehow live on.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
I think the concept of an afterlife came from the fact that it is simply the conclusion that naturally makes the most sense. Or, at least, that it is the simplest explanation.
After all, it is simpler to think of the conscious self as an eternal thing, like an elemental particle of matter. It gets far messier when you have to come up with a way to explan how a conscious self would come into existence and then leave existence - in the same way that it is simpler to think of an atom as an eternal thing, rather than get into how it can be split apart or put together or even how it could be created out of energy. It is very hard to conceive of what it really would be for your conscious self to come into existence, and would it what mean for it to cease existing.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:I like the idea of an afterlife because it makes me think that life is worth something, you know? Like, why am I living this life if I will only die one day and that is that. I prefer to think that I will somehow live on.
How does that help explain why you are living this life? Does an infinitely long life mean it is more meaningful?
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
Belief in the afterlife is the ultimate form of wishful thinking.
People desperately want to believe it is true. Death is scary, and it is far scarier when you realize that you cease to exist when it happens.
I wish I could convince myself of an afterlife, but to me it seems about as likely as convincing myself to believe in Fairies and Leprechauns. It would be so much easier if I could pretend that the loved ones I've lost are still around somewhere, like the religious do. I think myths of heaven or reincarnation are downright silly, however.
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
whoosh... this would be a fun subject... I wish I had more time to really really get into it.
You said you don't believe in the soul. That right there explains why an afterlife is a silly concept to you. Most people, however, have an experience of themselves as being more than their physical body... there is an awareness of their awareness that is impossible to physically verify, but inescapable in a self-aware being (by definition). Since this self-awareness doesn't seem to be a physical thing, and seems to animate (pun intended) the physical body, it's natural to believe that it transcends the physical body.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
Do you believe animals are self aware in the way you describe? If not, what "animates" them? How about plants?
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
One problem I've always had with the concept of a "soul" is thus:
When I was a child, a man came to speak to our elementary school class.
This man was the son of the current mayor of our little city. He was around 35 years old and had had a stroke (or other brain injury) few years before which had completely and totally wiped out his memory. He had to relearn how to speak, how to eat, the whole shebang. I'd say it left him with the cognitive abilities of an eight year old.
He was probably the most friendly, kind-hearted, loving person I've ever met. He was happy as a clam, and went around to schools giving motivational speeches about the power of perseverance. He was a great guy, and no one would ever doubt that this "soul" would go to heaven.
But, what if he was a total jerk before the brain injury? Say he was a thief, an adulterer, a pedophile, or whatever. His personality and memories were completely wiped when the brain injury happened, so he became a completely different person.
If he was an atheist monster before the brain damage, and a kind hearted Christian after the event, does he go to heaven?
And if he gets to heaven, is he restored to full cognitive function there? Even if he was a complete jerk with full cognitive function?
The things which make up what people think of as a "soul" seem ultimately tied to the brain and brain chemistry to me. Your cognitive abilities, your personality, your memories. Name an aspect of your soul, and doctors could change it with the right medications or brain surgery.
So if your personality on earth can be changed by drugs and physical changes to the brain, what persists in heaven? What part of "you" is not dependent on your brain? If your personality on earth is a jerk because of brain chemistry, but could have been fixed with pills if you'd taken them, are you still a jerk in the afterlife?
Edit:
Person A and person B both have the same brain defect which causes them to be a jerk.
Person A lives in a first-world country and gets medication to fix the defect, living a good life.
Person B lives in a third-world country and goes their whole life as a "bad person".
Which one goes to heaven? Which one has the better soul?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Altáriël of Dorthonion: I like the idea of an afterlife because it makes me think that life is worth something, you know? Like, why am I living this life if I will only die one day and that is that. I prefer to think that I will somehow live on.
You could think the other way too. That without an afterlife, what you do in the here and now, is what really matters. You have to create a world (and children) that you want to leave behind as a legacy, since there is no spiritual intervention to give you a second chance, so to say.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:You can deny the concept of the soul, but to understand afterlife, you have to at least allow the discussion to consider that there is something greater than our physical Selves that makes up who and what we are.
No, you don't. You merely have to allow the discussion to "consider" that people like believing there is something greater than our physical selves. It is irrelevant to the question whether or not a "soul" exists; it is only important that some people need to think so.
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
I'm not here concerned to convince anyone there is a "soul".
I'm saying that most people, even alive today, and certainly throughout history, have an experience of one... and that if you don't believe in one then it's natural that an afterlife makes no sense, but if you do believe in one, there's nothing inherently silly about it surviving past the death of the body.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I'm saying that most people, even alive today, and certainly throughout history, have an experience of one...
I know what you're saying, but I think the "experience" bit is laying it on a little thick. It'd be more correct to say "have believed in one." I'm not at all sure how someone could experience their non-material soul.
Posted by calaban (Member # 2516) on :
There are many observable things in life that are not quantifiable. Most social issues fall in this category including interpersonal relationships.
Even scientifically quantifiable studies produce multifaceted viewpoints.Many scientific discoveries were considered definite scientific impossibilites before the application of new theories and facts were able to redefine perspectives.
Right now science has no way to prove or disprove the existence of afterlife.
I am not saying that this is proof that it is there. I am just saying that beating the drum of scientific achievement as definite proof there is no god or afterlife is as unscientific as declaring the world flat, or the earth the center of the universe until there is definite proof either way.
It is a subject that can only be discussed using conjecture. For instance if you beleive in evolution (which I emphatically do) I can say because there is evolution there is no god because that contradics the bible, therefore there is no afterlife. But if I do that I am making a few very specific assumtions. Including but not limited to assuming that the only form of afterlife possible can only be connected to the christian form of thought. And that afterlife can only be attained through god or gods.
I have personally experienced things that cannot be explained through a scientific lense at this time.
I am all right with that because I don't think we are anywhere near real universal scientific understanding.
To some people the prospect of not being able to put everything they encounter in this life in its specific definiable category is just as frightening as the prospect of ceasing to exist when dying may be for others.
Let me reiterate that I understand the belief structure inherent to those who don't think there is an afterlife. I dont find fault in it.
I have just had experiences that cannot be quantified that I know are not hallucinations, or superstition. I will not relate them here because they are mine to share with those I know well.
The point I am trying to make does not involve saying that you are wrong, it merely involves your willingness to apply a blanket terms like superstitious, unscientific and uneducated to a large protion of the population of this planet. Admittedly there are many that fall under those discriptions, however there are many who do not.
In my opinion a blanket denial or dissmissal of other peoples spiritual beliefs displays just as much ignorance as some who will deny the fascinating and well documented process of evolution or other scientific theories that have redefined my perceptions of the world.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: I'm not here concerned to convince anyone there is a "soul".
I'm saying that most people, even alive today, and certainly throughout history, have an experience of one... and that if you don't believe in one then it's natural that an afterlife makes no sense, but if you do believe in one, there's nothing inherently silly about it surviving past the death of the body.
Again, I think you can accept the possibility of conciousness independent of your current physical body without postulating a "soul".
Posted by Jim-Me (Member # 6426) on :
ok... how about "have an experience that they consider 'being a soul'"?
I feel like I'm trying to say "I need to do my laundry" and you guys are trying to debate the merits of different detergents with me because you know I like "Cheer" and you think "Cheer" sucks.
Posted by calaban (Member # 2516) on :
I agree. It seems to me that the definition of the extra carporeal state is just a semantics exercise.
It seems like the issue discussed is the potential for the human body to incorperate anything other than just the basic elements. Is there an interface between the conciousness of the body and something that existed before or will exist after that body ceases to function.
Some call this entity a soul, others will debate this because they feel thier definition does not fall under the broadly assumed definition of a soul. But to people that dont believe there is any such entity a debate about what to call and how to define something they dont believe exists is moot.
Posted by The Pixiest (Member # 1863) on :
Personally, when I try to picture what it's like when I'm dead I have a very hard time... Because it's not blackness, it's nothingness. Like before you were born.. You weren't sitting in blackness, you just weren't there. There was no darkness, light, time, nothing... And that's how it will be after I die. But I still have trouble conceiving of it.
It's a very easy jump from that to coming up with an eternal part of us. And from that, the concept of rewards and punishments grow.
Then someone tells their child like it's fact and that child grows up believing in it whole heartedly and passes it on to their children. And blief grows and grows becuase kids tend to have the same faith as their parents. Especially in the old days when people didn't stray more than 5 miles from where they were born.
The idea of a soul is very powerful and alluring. It was the last string that held me to my faith when I was losing it.
Pix
Posted by Altáriël of Dorthonion (Member # 6473) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax:
quote:I like the idea of an afterlife because it makes me think that life is worth something, you know? Like, why am I living this life if I will only die one day and that is that. I prefer to think that I will somehow live on.
How does that help explain why you are living this life? Does an infinitely long life mean it is more meaningful?
It gives meaning to my life because I know that there will be something after it. That I'm not living just because some amoebas decided to evolve, but rather because there is something more out there.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I never figured out what people meant by "having a soul" anyway. m-w.com's definition lists at least 6 reasonable possibilities, and some of them aren't too clear either.
Main Entry: 1soul Pronunciation: 'sOl Function: noun Etymology: Middle English soule, from Old English sAwol; akin to Old High German sEula soul 1 : the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life 2 a : the spiritual principle embodied in human beings, all rational and spiritual beings, or the universe b capitalized, Christian Science : GOD 1b 3 : a person's total self 4 a : an active or essential part b : a moving spirit : LEADER 5 a : the moral and emotional nature of human beings b : the quality that arouses emotion and sentiment c : spiritual or moral force : FERVOR 6 : PERSON <not a soul in sight> 7 : PERSONIFICATION <she is the soul of integrity> 8 a : a strong positive feeling (as of intense sensitivity and emotional fervor) conveyed especially by black American performers b : NEGRITUDE c : SOUL MUSIC d : SOUL FOOD e : SOUL BROTHER
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
quote: If he was an atheist monster before the brain damage, and a kind hearted Christian after the event, does he go to heaven?
X - this statement shows that you live under the premise that our "works" get us into heaven -- in other words, it is by our own hand, or effort, that we get to heaven, which is why this logic doesn't work for you. Because it's a false premise
FG
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:It gives meaning to my life because I know that there will be something after it.
If life goes on forever, there definitely cannot be anything after it. I suppose you could say there is a second life after the first, but if the first life isn't important in its own right, why would the second life be any more important?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
quote:Because it's a false premise
In your religion. You are far from speaking for all Christians, let alone all religions on this point.
edit: In addition, Jesus had something to say about this.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:I'm not at all sure how someone could experience their non-material soul.
The experience of having a soul is the experience of existing.
My guess is that virtually everyone has experienced existing. Some people don't recognize or don't believe that that necessarily indicates you have a soul, though.
Posted by Farmgirl (Member # 5567) on :
Mr. Squicky. I don't want to derail this thread from it's primary focus, so we will save that debate for some other, future time.
I probably shouldn't have invited the debate with my comment, I realize.
FG
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:X - this statement shows that you live under the premise that our "works" get us into heaven -- in other words, it is by our own hand, or effort, that we get to heaven, which is why this logic doesn't work for you. Because it's a false premise
If that part doesn’t apply to you, there is a lot about my post that I would be interested in hearing your opinions on, Farmgirl.
Whatever you believe about what it takes to get into heaven, I'm far more interested in people's opinion of the nature of the described person’s, both pre and post brain trauma.
People who believe in souls usually believe that souls impart essential pieces of an individual's personality. That a person can have a "good soul", and likewise an “evil soul”. I am very interested in how those people reconcile the apparent dominance that the brain (both physical and chemical) seems to have on a person's personality with the idea that a "soul" determines who you are.
And further, if the personality of a person is wholly dependant on the brain (which it appears to be), then what makes it into the afterlife? Is your eternal soul influenced by your physical brain? Is there a mix of soul/brain in a person’s personality? If so, what parts of a person’s personality cannot be changed with drugs or surgery?
I'm reasonably confident that even the most altruistic individuals can be changed into raving amoral lunatics with the right combination of drugs/surgery. Do enough damage to certain parts of your brain, and you no longer have a conscience. Give you paranoia inducing drugs...
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xavier: Belief in the afterlife is the ultimate form of wishful thinking.
People desperately want to believe it is true. Death is scary, and it is far scarier when you realize that you cease to exist when it happens.
I disagree strongly. I think a lot of people are terrified at the idea that an afterlife might exist, and dread the thought.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:Originally posted by calaban: Is there an interface between the conciousness of the body and something that existed before or will exist after that body ceases to function.
Some call this entity a soul, others will debate this because they feel thier definition does not fall under the broadly assumed definition of a soul. But to people that dont believe there is any such entity a debate about what to call and how to define something they dont believe exists is moot.
See, I disagree that it is "just semantics". I suspect that there is nothing "pre-existing" to any individual other than the atoms from which their body is formed. I do believe that something "more" than "just the physical substructure" arises from the unique way in which intelligence has evolved, but that does not necessitate belief that such a thing can exist independently of some physical sub-structure. Is this "something more" a soul by your definition? I don't know. It could be. I might even agree to call it a soul, but I don't think such things are merely semantic. I think they are essential points requiring clarification if one is to discuss the topic.
There is quite a difference between believing in a pre-existing entity temporarily inhabiting a meat-vehicle and in an entity potentially separate from yet born of and currently dependent on the physical body.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lisa: I disagree strongly. I think a lot of people are terrified at the idea that an afterlife might exist, and dread the thought. [/QB]
Elaborate?
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:I disagree strongly. I think a lot of people are terrified at the idea that an afterlife might exist, and dread the thought.
If such people exist, I don't think their numbers are significant, and it doesn't invalidate the statement for the the other 4+ billion believers.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xavier: [QUOTE] Whatever you believe about what it takes to get into heaven, I'm far more interested in people's opinion of the nature of the described person’s, both pre and post brain trauma.
People who believe in souls usually believe that souls impart essential pieces of an individual's personality. That a person can have a "good soul", and likewise an “evil soul”. I am very interested in how those people reconcile the apparent dominance that the brain (both physical and chemical) seems to have on a person's personality with the idea that a "soul" determines who you are.
And further, if the personality of a person is wholly dependant on the brain (which it appears to be), then what makes it into the afterlife? Is your eternal soul influenced by your physical brain? Is there a mix of soul/brain in a person’s personality? If so, what parts of a person’s personality cannot be changed with drugs or surgery?
I'm reasonably confident that even the most altruistic individuals can be changed into raving amoral lunatics with the right combination of drugs/surgery. Do enough damage to certain parts of your brain, and you no longer have a conscience. Give you paranoia inducing drugs...
I think that everything that happens to us as incarnate beings effects us - physical, emotional, experiences, chemical - whatever. Our souls evolve and change based on what happens to us, how we deal with it, who loves us - all of it. It is a risky thing, incarnation.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
okay, I'm gonna do my best to respond to as many points as I can, I hate having to play catch up!
BlueWizard
quote:You denied the concept of the soul, and that's fine, but you can't deny the concept of the soul, or something at least soul-ish, and then pose a question about afterlife.
of course i can! I realize that if you're coming at this question from a religious/spiritual perspective there is a point where no further conversation is possible. I see no physical, philosophical, historical basis for the concept of a soul. To me, it's as baseless as the concept of a diety. I say this not to attack anyone's religious beliefs, but as a way to explain that where I'm coming from. You obviously tie the concept of an afterlife in with the concept of soul. My question is asking, assuming there is no soul, is some form of an afterlife possible? And if so what is the nature of that. Actually, that's not my question at all, because i already know(in my mind) the answer to it. My main question was, how did this concept of an afterlife come about? Pre religion.
quote:When your body dies, that person represented by that body is gone forever. But the lessons that person learns while living, live on in your eternal intangible spiritual and true Self.
To even have this discussion, you have to, to some extent, except this duality of man; the 'Outside' self and the 'Inside' Self, the transient physical Self and the Eternal spiritual Self.
agreed. the only way I can see believing in some form of afterlife is by believing in the duality of man. in a seperation of the "mind" and the brain. yet, i think there is no seperation, and see no basis for the belief that there is. Science can explain to my complete satisfaction not only that consciousness is a material phenomenom, but also that the idea of dualism is impossible(in the sense you're talking about).
KarlEd, I like most of your thoughts on the evolution of the idea of afterlife, they mesh with mine well. Just a few thoughts on what you say at the end.
quote:We know so very little about the true nature of existence and what it means to live in multi-dimensional space-time. What does a four-dimensional being look like from a 5 (or 6 or 9) dimensional perspective? Isn't it at least theoretically possible that you, as a 4 dimensional construct are eternal in some way we don't fully understand from our limited perspective?
quote:Again, I think you can accept the possibility of conciousness independent of your current physical body without postulating a "soul".
Here's the problem I have with these two quotes. I freely admit the possibility that consciousness as we know it is only one form/variety of what consciousness can be because of the way it is tied to the physical manifestation of life and our bodies and our brain activity, etc...and while the physical building blocks that create the construct that is me, may continue to exist after I "die", that in no way leads me to accept the possibility of an afterlife in any way, shape, or form. Because the fact is, who I am, what I define as myself is a product of physical states. When those states cease to function, I don't believe it's possible for my consciousness(as I know it) to continue. Those electrical and chemical signals that produce thoughts and an awareness of myself and the world around me will no longer exist, so how can I?
But lets even say for a moment that what you're talking about is possible. I agree there's so much we don't know, and can possibly never understand given the nature of our brains evolution to cope in a three dimensional environment. But this possible consciousness that continues to exist in some other plane of existence is not ME. To me, what I know as myself is a funciton of memory. I use my memory and my present state of awareness to define who I am. The me I know ceases to exist when I die(when my memories and awareness die with my body). And whatever consciousness continues to exist after the ME is dead, has no relation to me.
AoD
quote:I like the idea of an afterlife because it makes me think that life is worth something, you know? Like, why am I living this life if I will only die one day and that is that. I prefer to think that I will somehow live on.
other people have touched on this, but I see no reason to believe that a never ending life is in any way more meaningfull than a mortal life. A neverending life would probably make me question my purpose and the nature of existence even more. To me, knowledge that "this is it" gives me a much greater appreciation for life and a desire to to live as fully as I can during my time(if only practice was as easy as theory!).
calaban
quote:I am not saying that this is proof that it is there. I am just saying that beating the drum of scientific achievement as definite proof there is no god or afterlife is as unscientific as declaring the world flat, or the earth the center of the universe until there is definite proof either way.
I disagree with you very strongly. We know an extremely large amount about the nature of our minds and how they work. We know which areas of the brain correlate to certain things. We're learning more and more about the nature of consciousness and memory. And most telling, like Xavier says, we know that damage to different areas in the brain effect our consciousness/mind/functioning tremendously.
To postulate the concept of a soul, you would have to explain how this soul communicates with the body. with the brain. and then you would have to explain how people's nature changes so much when damage to either of those things(but particularly the brain) occur. To say that the souls ability to communicate with the body is weakened(that the soul is still speaking, but because of the damage our physical bodies can't listen), again seems to have no scientific basis to me. There is nothing else non-physical in the universe. certain religions believe only humans have souls. Why should such a small amount of matter in the whole entirety of the universe have some sort of non-materialistic quality to it, and nothing else?
I'd also just like to say that I am very attracted to the eastern religious ideas of letting go of your consciousness and realizing the connectivity of all life. But to me, this doesn't then lead to some sort of soul or eternal quality to life. It just helps me remember how limited in scope this construct that I know as myself really is. That sometimes all this awareness and the individual quality to life, takes away from the idea of "just being". It's a way, or a tool, as I see it, to help be more at peace. But I don't take it to a higher level.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:Our souls evolve and change based on what happens to us, how we deal with it, who loves us - all of it. It is a risky thing, incarnation
So if I were to do nasty things to your brain, changing your personality, your soul would then change as well?
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by Xavier:
quote:Our souls evolve and change based on what happens to us, how we deal with it, who loves us - all of it. It is a risky thing, incarnation
So if I were to do nasty things to your brain, changing your personality, your soul would then change as well?
I think so. There may be some parts of my brain or personality that are unreachable, but generally, yes.
So please don't.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
*sends evil thoughts in kmbboots general direction*
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Are they fun evil thoughts?
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:See, I disagree that it is "just semantics". I suspect that there is nothing "pre-existing" to any individual other than the atoms from which their body is formed. I do believe that something "more" than "just the physical substructure" arises from the unique way in which intelligence has evolved, but that does not necessitate belief that such a thing can exist independently of some physical sub-structure. Is this "something more" a soul by your definition? I don't know. It could be. I might even agree to call it a soul, but I don't think such things are merely semantic. I think they are essential points requiring clarification if one is to discuss the topic.
There is quite a difference between believing in a pre-existing entity temporarily inhabiting a meat-vehicle and in an entity potentially separate from yet born of and currently dependent on the physical body.
I agree that this point is not just semantics and is in fact extremely important to the conversation.
I would also be very interested in hearing not the specifics surrounding your belief of what form consciousness takes after death, but the way in which you came to believe these things. If it doesn't fit with the thread, feel free to email.
Though I think this thread is pretty sprawling, and has already completely moved away from the initial reason I started it. Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:I think so. There may be some parts of my brain or personality that are unreachable, but generally, yes.
Hmmm. I've never heard idea before.
It is my opinion that the "soul" was a concept invented by man in order to explain how individuals have different personalities.
Now that the brain has been found responsible for that, it seems as if the concept has stuck around because of all of the mythologies which were developed when what makes you "you" was still in so much question.
Now that we know what the brain does, and that we know that nothing outside our physical bodies is required to explain personality, I wonder why the majority of humanity still believes in the soul.
If you give the brain 100% credit, there is no need for a soul, and without a soul, any afterlife becomes very unlikely.
Your brain determines who you are, no brain, no "you". Seems pretty clear-cut to me.
I'll bet that most religious people don't give the brain 100% credit, however.
Edit:
And to tie this tighter to the original post...
When the brain was not given credit for personality, we invented the soul.
Here I am defining "soul" as: the idea of a non-physical "thing" which controls personality.
When giving the soul characteristics, it was easy to determine that if the soul is not physical, that it would not be destroyed when the body was destroyed. Hence the idea of an afterlife was the most logical conclusion once you accepted a non-physical soul.
People want to believe that there is something after death, and something which makes them more special than the bag of blood, bones, organs and neurons they carry around. Hence a belief in the soul, and a belief in the afterlife.
Like I said, I wish I could convince myself it was true, so I include myself in this statement.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Are they fun evil thoughts?
Are you hitting on me? Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Ah, Strider, if I thought I had a chance...
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Now that we know what the brain does, and that we know that nothing outside our physical bodies is required to explain personality, I wonder why the majority of humanity still believes in the soul.
If you give the brain 100% credit, there is no need for a soul, and without a soul, any afterlife becomes very unlikely.
Your brain determines who you are, no brain, no "you". Seems pretty clear-cut to me.
The brain can explain how you act the way you do. However, how you act the way you do is NOT all there is to being "you". After all, a sophisticated computer could act just as I do (it could simulate my personality perfectly) and yet it would not be me. I am much more than the set of my actions.
The brain cannot explain how you experience things. A sophisticated computer (with no soul) could not experience pain the way I experience it, or experience happiness the way I experience it, or experience the color red as I experience it. It could act like it does, but it doesn't.
This qualitative conscious experience is essential to be "you". You are not a person without it. You don't even exist as a self without it, because you must have a viewpoint from which you experience the world in order to exist as a self.
Thus explaining your personality does not 100% explain what "you" are. In fact, that leaves out the most important part of being a self - having a perspective and experiencing life (or the afterlife) from it.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:The brain cannot explain how you experience things.
You've already had this conversation with Tom, and I don't have any illusions that me and you would have better luck.
Regardless, I think this statement is dead wrong.
quote:Thus explaining your personality does not 100% explain what "you" are. In fact, that leaves out the most important part of being a self - having a perspective and experiencing life (or the afterlife) from it.
"Having a Perspective" is another name for having a mind, which also comes from the brain. Injure the brain, and your "perspective" has now changed.
"Experiencing Life" is also from your brain, in the firing of neurons and the processes of memory. Injure the brain, and your ability to "experience" goes down the drain.
I agree that personality is not 100% who you are. But everything else which is part of who you are is also determined by your brain.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
ditto what Xavier said. I'd just add to this:
quote:I agree that personality is not 100% who you are. But everything else which is part of who you are is also determined by your brain.
assuming you're using a broad definition of the word "personality" I agree. The point being that everything that makes up who you are is completely physical in nature.
quote:A sophisticated computer (with no soul) could not experience pain the way I experience it, or experience happiness the way I experience it, or experience the color red as I experience it. It could act like it does, but it doesn't.
I don't know why you would think this. What is so special about us as opposed to an intelligent machine? I believe that's all we are. Our experiences are just electrical signals that cause other electrical or chemical reactions. You say that you "see" red, or "feel" pain, etc...but those are just words you've created to describe what is happening. There is nothing special about what you "feel" as pain as opposed to what an intelligent machine would "feel" as pain.
Posted by Avatar300 (Member # 5108) on :
Mucus
quote: You could think the other way too. That without an afterlife, what you do in the here and now, is what really matters. You have to create a world (and children) that you want to leave behind as a legacy, since there is no spiritual intervention to give you a second chance, so to say.
I don't know that such a view makes life any more meaningful. I won't care what happens when I'm dead, because I will no longer be. So the idea of leaving a legacy behind me seems pointless. I think a better way to approach life is to identify what makes you happy, and then do it.
The Pixiest:
quote: Personally, when I try to picture what it's like when I'm dead I have a very hard time... Because it's not blackness, it's nothingness. Like before you were born.. You weren't sitting in blackness, you just weren't there. There was no darkness, light, time, nothing... And that's how it will be after I die. But I still have trouble conceiving of it.
Ever had a night where you fall asleep the instant your head hits the pillow, and then seem to open your eyes to find that eight hours, or whatever, have passed? No dreams, no sense of time. One moment you went to sleep, the next you woke up. I imagine it's like that, but without the waking up in the morning.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
Actually, I think the best way to imagine death was mentioned in this thread.
It's like how you were before you were born.
Remember? No, of course not, because you didn't exist. Same with death.
It is a difficult concept, however, and I'd imagine the percentage of people on this earth who have truly accepted it is extraordinarily slim.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:You've already had this conversation with Tom, and I don't have any illusions that me and you would have better luck.
Regardless, I think this statement is dead wrong.
I think the death penalty is dead wrong, but that is irrelevant to Hatrack except insofar as I can explain WHY I think that way. If you think the brain can experience pain, explain why. Is it just something you take on faith?
quote:"Having a Perspective" is another name for having a mind, which also comes from the brain.
I agree that it is possible that the mind may "come from" the brain. However, it isn't explained by the brain - sort of like how I come from my parents, but cannot be completely explained just by examining the nature of my parents. There are aspects of me that seem to have no source in my parents.
Conscious experience seems to have no source in the brain - our brains would appear to be perspectiveless machines, like our computers appear to be, if we didn't know otherwise from our own personal, subjective conscious experience.
quote:I don't know why you would think this. What is so special about us as opposed to an intelligent machine? I believe that's all we are. Our experiences are just electrical signals that cause other electrical or chemical reactions.
The reason I think this is because our experiences are definitely NOT just electrical signals or chemical reactions. I say this because they have different properties. (If they were the same thing they'd have to have the same properties!) For instance, my experience of "red" cannot be diagramed on a paper in a way that would explain to you what red looks like to me. However, any electrical signal or chemical reaction could be diagramed on a piece of paper to explain to you what is happening. Or you could do a scan of my brain and if your scan was detailed enough, it could show you all the electrical signals and chemical reactions in my brain. Yet it would not show what I experience when I see red. In this way "experience" and "chemical reactions" have inherently different properties. They literally cannot be the same thing.
Don't get me wrong - experience and chemcial reactions can certainly be related. One could certainly cause the other! And we can talk in a fuzzy, inaccurate sort of way about my experience of pain being just a bunch of neurons firing. (Just like we can talk in a fuzzy, inaccurate sort of way about my computer being "mad" at me when it gives me an error message. My computer is not literally experiencing an emotion of anger though.) But they are different things, because they have different properties. The neurons firing occurs in my body, whereas the pain occurs in my mind. Presumably they always occur in unison, but it is logically possible for me to feel pain without any reaction in my body, or for a reaction to occur in my body without any pain felt in my mind. And along the same lines, it is at least logically possible for me to feel pain (or other experiences) without having any body whatsoever - something people have had no trouble imagining for thousands of years.
That may be one contributing factor to why so many people believe in a "soul" - and an afterlife.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Avatar300: I don't know that such a view makes life any more meaningful. I won't care what happens when I'm dead, because I will no longer be. So the idea of leaving a legacy behind me seems pointless. I think a better way to approach life is to identify what makes you happy, and then do it.
Thats pretty much the same, since what should make you happy IS having children (at the appropriate age) and making the world a better place, for them at least. Humans (and animals) are kinda wired that way. It would be a poor species (evolutionary speaking) that was wired to be unhappy when they had children.
Posted by Amanecer (Member # 4068) on :
quote:For instance, my experience of "red" cannot be diagramed on a paper in a way that would explain to you what red looks like to me. However, any electrical signal or chemical reaction could be diagramed on a piece of paper to explain to you what is happening. Or you could do a scan of my brain and if your scan was detailed enough, it could show you all the electrical signals and chemical reactions in my brain. Yet it would not show what I experience when I see red.
I believe that you overestimate our current technology in the area of brain studies. When this technology improves, I fully expect that you will be able to diagram what happens in the brain when a person experiences red.
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
Which of these entities "experience pain" Tresopax:
A Human
A Chimpanzee
A Squirrel
A Mouse
A Lizard
A Chicken
An Earthworm
A Wasp
A Tree
An Amoeba
If you say "just the human", then I have a host of questions for you.
If you list some, but not others, different questions will follow.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Thats pretty much the same, since what should make you happy IS having children (at the appropriate age) and making the world a better place, for them at least. Humans (and animals) are kinda wired that way.
Are you suggesting that we should be happy about whatever we were "wired" to care about? What if Avatar was not wired that way?
quote:When this technology improves, I fully expect that you will be able to diagram what happens in the brain when a person experiences red.
Yes, I agree completely. I'm just saying that when you do so, it won't tell you what my experience of "red" is like. Which means "what happens in the brain when I experience red" != "my experience of red".
quote:Which of these entities "experience pain" Tresopax:
Truthfully, I really don't know. The only entity that I know experiences pain is me, because experience (unlike chemical reactions) can only be observed by the person having it. I can't know what (if anything) is going on in another person's mind.
I guess that other human beings have experience, based purely on fact that they are similar to me and act similar to me. I would think the same thing about several of those animals, with decreasing confidence as they get less and less like me. But again, that is a hypothesis I can't prove or back up, but that I have faith in. It is possible I am the only person in the universe who experiences anything, but I hope that is not true.
Generally, I tend to think animals are similar enough that they probably feel pain (and thus have souls). Trees and ameobas, probably not. But there have certainly been some groups that have historically felt trees could feel pain too.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Where did the concept of an afterlife come from?
Well...uh...God told us about it...
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
yeah...but how did he find out about it? Huh?? Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:I guess that other human beings have experience, based purely on fact that they are similar to me and act similar to me. I would think the same thing about several of those animals, with decreasing confidence as they get less and less like me.
Notice anything else about your decreasing confidence?
How about the decreasing levels of development of the brains of the other species?
You're pretty confident that Chimps do, because they have very well developed brains. Not too far from our own. Lizards? Less confident, as their "upper" brains are small and stunted. Earthworms? Not very confident at all are you? That's because their brains are so simple and primitive that removing it hardly changes their behavior at all. Pretty confident that trees and amoebas can't experience pain, I see, why is that? Could it be because they lack a brain entirely?
I mean seriously. When this ability to "experience" is 100% correlated with brain function, why does there have to be another explanation?
Edit: Can't you see what you've done? You've determined that any animal with a highly advanced brain has a soul. So why don't you see that this "soul" is really a side-effect of having an advanced brain? A non-physical, mystical, abstract "thing" which just happens to exist in every animal with an advanced brain? Doesn't that sound ridiculous to you?
Your thoughts about the differences between "experience" and what goes on in the brain is, in my opinion, pretty silly.
It's like us not fully knowing the details of software, but having access to a computer, and saying that by mapping and diagramming what happens in a computer when you start a program doesn't equal the display on the screen.
It is a true statement, but it doesn't mean anything.
The human brain is perhaps the most complex thing in the known universe. Our understanding of it is really quite limited. It's okay that we don't quite know how the chemical, physical, and electronic processes it produces results in things like conscious thoughts or feelings.
We don't have to create a "soul" to represent something we don't quite understand yet.
[ January 11, 2007, 11:56 AM: Message edited by: Xavier ]
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax:
quote:Thats pretty much the same, since what should make you happy IS having children (at the appropriate age) and making the world a better place, for them at least. Humans (and animals) are kinda wired that way.
Are you suggesting that we should be happy about whatever we were "wired" to care about? What if Avatar was not wired that way?
Yes, Avatar should be happy to do what he is "wired" to do. If he was not wired that way, then he won't. But from my perspective, I only know him as a fellow human for which on average, do like to have children.
To further clarify, I'm using the second definition of should as in
quote: should Pronunciation (shd) aux.v. Past tense of shall 1. Used to express obligation or duty: You should send her a note. 2. Used to express probability or expectation: They should arrive at noon. ...
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
well if you're using the second definition than I guess i have no argument. But to use the first definition for anything that we've been "wired" to do, I strongly disagree with. This is the greatest gift that has come from the evolution of our brains. That we can think for ourselves and choose to do(or not to do) certain things based on what is important to us and what we think is right, and not what are genes are telling us to do.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:You've determined that any animal with a highly advanced brain has a soul. So why don't you see that this "soul" is really a side-effect of having an advanced brain? A non-physical, mystical, abstract "thing" which just happens to exist in every animal with an advanced brain?
It is equally true that I suspect every animal on your list with highly advanced eyes has a soul. Does that imply that my eyes entirely explain the soul?
It is also true that the bigger the animal on the list, the more likely I think it has subjective experience. Does that mean that subjective experience is simply a side-effect of being big?
No... I think you are misusing correlation here. It doesn't imply causation.
After all, consider what I said. I said I am ASSUMING that things that ACT LIKE ME are more likely to have subjective experience. Most things that act like me have brains. Most things that act like me have eyes. Most things that act like me are around my size. So it is no surprise that you could say things with brains, thing with eyes, and things that are big end up higher on my list of things likely to have souls. That says nothing about what truly causes subjective experience. It only says something about my means of guessing who has it.
Please note that there are things you could have put on that list that I do not think have physical brains which I do think have souls. God, perhaps. There also could be things that do have physical brains, but which I don't think have souls. For instance, I have doubts that a brain sitting in a jar by itself would have a soul.
I do believe brains are intimitely related to souls, and to conscious experience. But I don't think either one necessarily implies the other - which is the critical issue when it comes to the continuation of the soul after the brain has died. I also don't think the soul and brain do the same thing.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Tres, do you accept evolution? Assuming you do, how do explain your concept of a soul with the fact of evolution? At what point did a creature suddenly get a soul? who was the first? I think it'd be absolutely impossible to draw that line.
If not all life has a soul, what is it about us physically that allows us to have a soul, but not another creature?
Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
I think you can eliminate the "size" thing, since I'd bet you'd think Squirrels have a soul.
quote:It is equally true that I suspect every animal on your list with highly advanced eyes has a soul. Does that imply that my eyes entirely explain the soul?
Poke out the chimp's eyes, and it would still "experience".
Destroy its brain and it no longer, in any observable way, "experiences".
Change its brain through drugs, and its "subjective experience" changes radically.
You think that things which act like you have a soul. Well they act like you BECAUSE THEY HAVE A BRAIN.
quote:I have doubts that a brain sitting in a jar by itself would have a soul.
If it can think, then why not?
quote:Please note that there are things you could have put on that list that I do not think have physical brains which I do think have souls. God, perhaps.
If the only one you can think of is a mythical being, then this doesn't really stand. I can imagine a fictional being who can see without eyes, but that doesn't mean that eyes aren't required for vision.
Posted by Geraine (Member # 9913) on :
I personally believe that without the idea of an afterlife that human civilization would not be where it is today.
I just finished up an anthropology class, and it is interesting to note that even the earliest forms of tribal life had some form of religion and idea of the afterlife. In Australia the tribal people believed in "The Great Dream" and that a deity.
It organizes and unites people. It helps people live their lives better. Without religion or the belief in an afterlife, America would not be what it is today.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Without religion or the belief in an afterlife, America would not be what it is today.
While I think a good argument exists against what you just said, lets say for a moment that it's true. If that's the only reason to keep it around, I think it's not only a weak reason, but a very damaging one as well. And if that's the only thing that keeps people good, then I also worry for humanity.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
quote:Originally posted by Tresopax: [QUOTE]Please note that there are things you could have put on that list that I do not think have physical brains which I do think have souls. God, perhaps. There also could be things that do have physical brains, but which I don't think have souls. For instance, I have doubts that a brain sitting in a jar by itself would have a soul.
You say that there are things that could be put on the list that don't have a physical brain but do have a soul. What things other than deities can you think of that you'd say this of?
I realize that your statement about things possessing brains but not souls was more conditionally phrased, but if you can think of other examples of that (and also expand on why you don't believe that a functioning brain in a jar wouldn't have a soul), I'd be interested to hear them.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Or you could do a scan of my brain and if your scan was detailed enough, it could show you all the electrical signals and chemical reactions in my brain. Yet it would not show what I experience when I see red.
You've used this example before, and I found it unconvincing then, too.
A printout of a brain scan is the equivalent of sheet music. Merely reading the brain scan wouldn't be a shared experience of "red;" it would be like reading the sheet music. If technology could play back the brain activity in someone else's brain (and this is a big "if," as I've admitted before; brain architectures may well be unique), I see no reason why they would not experience "red" the same way you do.
Posted by Noemon (Member # 1115) on :
Good analogy, Tom.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
You seem to have an understanding of consciousness -- this thing I experience whenever I'm, well, conscious! -- as something that is decomposable into activities of the brain. If this is true, can you share it? I can see the (solipsistic) consistency in saying that the behavior of others is simply a manifestation of brain activity, but I can't see any way to explain this sensation I have of consciousness as decomposable or physical.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:but I can't see any way to explain this sensation I have of consciousness as decomposable or physical
Sure you do. If I crush your brain in a vise, you will no longer have a sensation of consciousness. I don't even have to crush it all that hard; I don't even have to kill you. I just need to deny you oxygen for a few seconds, and bam! No sensation of consciousness.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Strider: That we can think for ourselves and choose to do(or not to do) certain things based on what is important to us and what we think is right, and not what are genes are telling us to do.
Perhaps, but I might note that it may be highly nontrivial to tell which is which.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Geraine, edited by Mucus: I personally believe that without the idea of "pointed sticks" that human civilization would not be where it is today.
I just finished up an anthropology class, and it is interesting to note that even the earliest forms of tribal life had some form of "pointed stick."
It organizes and unites people. It helps people live their lives better. Without "pointed sticks", America would not be what it is today.
Just as true by the way.
PS; You might ask how pointed sticks help unite and organise people. Well, how else would people kill the predators that might be between them? Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
trivial or nontrivial(meaning important)?
are you arguing that every thought and action we take based on instructions from the brain is as deterministic in nature as our genetics? Because if so I agree with that. Doesn't mean I can't appreciate the fact that something like this developed that allows me to be conscious and aware of my surroundings and myself. It allows me to live my life and act as if I have free will, regardless of whether I scientifically believe or understand that in reality I don't. I may not love everything about the state of the world today, but I do love and appreciate the state of affairs that allow me to exist and experience life in a very active conscious way. And so it IS important to me that I can use my brain to lead a happy and fulfilling life, however it is I happen to define that.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Thanks. (Both for the answer, and for not demonstrating!) What about the "decomposable into parts" bit? Or would you agree with that?
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
Relative to Strider's response to my post, which is somewhat outdated since the discussion is moving so fast, I will make a few comments.
I said - "You denied the concept of the soul, and that's fine, but you can't deny the concept of the soul, or something at least soul-ish, and then pose a question about afterlife."
To which Stider responded in part - "of course i can! I realize that if you're coming at this question from a religious/spiritual perspective there is a point where no further conversation is possible. I see no physical, philosophical, historical basis for the concept of a soul."
First, it is your assumption that I am coming at this from a religoius perspective. Pretty much everything I said in my post goes against standard Christian teachings.
Second, for there to be an afterlife there has to be something that lives after. To deny that there is the possibility of 'something' that lives after, is to deny any possible framework for answering the question.
Also, to your statement - "I see no physical, philosophical, historical basis for the concept of a soul." How about several thousands of years of religion, and religious and general philosphy?
We must consider in discussing the 'afterlife' that the concept of the 'soul' across a wide range of philosophical, religious, and even scientific beliefs can only be had with a very broad and diverse application of the word 'soul'. Note that in referring to the thing called 'soul' I also used - ...something at least soul-ish ...pure infinite white light ...true spiritual identity ...universal essense of 'being' ...Outside essense ...Auia ...(spark of life, spirit, soul, whatever) ...your eternal intangible spiritual and true Self ...the Eternal spiritual Self
Certainly, I am not the one locked into a particular model of 'soul'. However, for simplicity of discussion 'soul' serves as as useful broad all-encompassing word as any.
To reiterate -
You said - "You obviously tie the concept of an afterlife in with the concept of soul."
To which I answer, NO; I tie the concept of afterlife to the concept that there must be something that lives after. If you are going to have a conversation of 'afterlife' then you have to concede the possibility that there is something that lives after. You don't have to believe in 'it', but you have to concede the possibility to allow the discussion.
Later in your post you say - "I'd also just like to say that I am very attracted to the eastern religious ideas of letting go of your consciousness and realizing the connectivity of all life. "
You will notice in my post that I deny the human-mirror concept of God and Heaven. That is God is not a person who is divine and all powerful, and heaven is not a paradise-mirror of earth.
Every example I gave was far closer to the Eastern philosophies than to the Christian model. If we accept, at least for discussion, the Outside/Inside model of eternal life, then it fits nicely with the Animistic idea that all things are alive and endowed with some spark of spiritual life; the spirit of the forest, the spirit of the mountains, the spirit of the river, the spirit of each individual atom, etc....
That is not far from the Buddhist or Hindu view. They don't believe in the personafied Christian God or the Earth-mirrored heaven. The believe more in (greatly paraphrased) a broad universal intangible incomprehensible spiritual essense that permeates the universe, and once you have achieved sufficient moral wisdom, you return to be one with this essense. Until then, you continue to relive new lives.
Scientific evidence has also been mentioned, but I think you are making the great mistake of the ages. That is, every age believe that it is the height of knowledge and wizdom. In the late 1800's some one said that modern technology was so far advanced that everything that could be invented had been invented. Yet just a few short years later, we had telegraph, telephones, talking 'boxes', men flying through the air, and horseless carriages.
Do not be so foolish at to think that our modern society is the peak of all knowledge and learning. Our knowledge of science is pathetically inadequate. Even though was have a sufficiently workable theory, we can't really explain how electricity works. That is, the atomic model that explains chemistry fails to explain electricity, and a different atomic model that explains electricity (more accurately electronics) fail to explain chemistry. There are FAR more questions than answers in our bank of scientific knowledge.
As a scientific example, people who were about to die were placed on bed. Each leg of the bed had been placed on a scale. At the moment of death, the dying person lost a very small amount of weight. What was that weight and where did it go? Some speculate it was the 'soul' leaving the body. Of course, no CURRENT scientific explaination exists to prove this, yet something was there and then it wasn't.
Now, I doubt the science will one day explain life and the soul in a way the confirms the Christian religious view, but there could come a time when 'life and soul' are explained in a model similar to OSC's 'Outside/Inside', or in a model related to string theory and multiple dimension. So, today there is no explanation, but as I said, today we are in the infancy of science and don't really know of faction of what there is to know in the universe.
Other used assorted example of how people can change; brain damage was one example. Yet those example are 'meat puppet' examples. What happens to the body and to the current earthly personality are not relevant to the eternal spirit.
The physical body draws on a well of moral subconciousness that is guided by the Eternal Self, if the body is broken, it is the connection to the Eternal Self that is flawed and not the Eternal Self itself. That neither denies (nor confirms) the existance of an underlying (for lack of a better word) soul.
Part of the problem is that we all too strongly identify with our physical Selves. Though that is understandable since, for the most part, it is the only 'self' we have. So, any framework that alters the physical self and uses that alteration to prove or disprove the existance of a higher intangible self is flawed.
Do I believe that Science will one day prove the existance of this thing we broadly refer to as 'soul'? To some extent, YES; but not in a way that will please most religious organizations.
One last thing about the personified-God and the earth-mirrored Heaven. Since God or universal spiritual essense is incomprehendable, we use these lower examples as metaphors to give us a framework that allows us to even have a discussion of God and Heaven. But I fear that far far too many people are taking the metaphor literally, and I don't see that as a good thing.
So, in conclusion, and as I have already said, if you absolutely deny the concept that something lives after, then you have denied the framework for even discussing 'afterlife'.
Not sure what it's all worth, but there it is.
Steve/BlueWizard
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
Wow, it's good to see Tresopax clinging to his qualia... nice nostalgic breeze blew through my synapses just now!
Tres, I think it's likely that the description of a given quale is just a meme (or information pattern in the brain), and that the quale itself (like a unicorn) doesn't actually exist. You can certainly picture a unicorn in your head, interact with it mentally, imagine yourself riding it, imagine the feel of its mane in your hands, and yet UNICORNS DON'T EXIST. Ditto qualia, my friend.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:What about the "decomposable into parts" bit?
It's pretty obvious that most of human perception is decomposable into parts. How much of human thought is decomposable is still a matter of wide speculation, since no one has nailed down the mechanism of "thought" yet. I'm pretty confident that this will happen to some extent within my lifetime, but it's one of the hardest fields in science to observe and might take a bit longer.
quote: As a scientific example, people who were about to die were placed on bed. Each leg of the bed had been placed on a scale. At the moment of death, the dying person lost a very small amount of weight. What was that weight and where did it go? Some speculate it was the 'soul' leaving the body. Of course, no CURRENT scientific explaination exists to prove this...
There are good reasons for this: the MacDougall experiments have never been successfully repeated. http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I meant more consciousness than thought, but I still appreciate the answer.
BTW, my soul lost 3 pounds since Christmas! Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
quote:Originally posted by Jim-Me: I feel like I'm trying to say "I need to do my laundry" and you guys are trying to debate the merits of different detergents with me because you know I like "Cheer" and you think "Cheer" sucks.
Well, it does, you know. Tide all the way, baby!
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Tres, do you accept evolution? Assuming you do, how do explain your concept of a soul with the fact of evolution? At what point did a creature suddenly get a soul? who was the first? I think it'd be absolutely impossible to draw that line.
I agree that it is impossible to figure out what had the first soul. I don't think this means souls don't exist.
I don't know how or if souls evolved in some way. It is possible that one day some creature suddenly had a soul, for no logical reason. Or it is possible that there was some way that it arose. Until we understand souls better, and how they relate to brains and other physical entities, we won't be able to accurately place it into any evolutionary model.
quote:You say that there are things that could be put on the list that don't have a physical brain but do have a soul. What things other than deities can you think of that you'd say this of?
I realize that your statement about things possessing brains but not souls was more conditionally phrased, but if you can think of other examples of that (and also expand on why you don't believe that a functioning brain in a jar wouldn't have a soul), I'd be interested to hear them.
The other sort of being that I think has a soul but no brain would be people in the afterlife. There might be other things too, such as rocks or trees or whatever, but because they have no brain they can't behave in a way similar enough to me to give me an idea of whether they have a soul or not.
As for things possessing brains but not souls, I would include computers on that list, although I suppose you could argue those aren't really brains.
As for WHY I don't think a jar with a brain would have a soul, it is only because it doesn't behave similarly to me. As I said, I don't have any real way of knowing who has a soul and who doesn't. Instead all I do is guess based on their similarity to myself. I could be totally wrong - it might be that trees have souls and worms have souls, but squirrels and chimps do not.
quote:If it can think, then why not?
That's just it - I believe it has no soul so I don't believe it can think. It can process inputs and turn them into outputs, like a computer, but it can't "think" because thinking is a sort of experience. Unless it can experience thought, it doesn't "think" anymore than my computer thinks.
quote:A printout of a brain scan is the equivalent of sheet music. Merely reading the brain scan wouldn't be a shared experience of "red;" it would be like reading the sheet music. If technology could play back the brain activity in someone else's brain (and this is a big "if," as I've admitted before; brain architectures may well be unique), I see no reason why they would not experience "red" the same way you do.
So then you agree that the only way they could understand my experience of red is to experience it for themselves - and that they could not understand it just by understanding which neurons are firing in my brain?
quote:You can certainly picture a unicorn in your head, interact with it mentally, imagine yourself riding it, imagine the feel of its mane in your hands, and yet UNICORNS DON'T EXIST.
Yes but mental pictures of unicorns DO exist.
[ January 12, 2007, 12:12 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote: To deny that there is the possibility of 'something' that lives after, is to deny any possible framework for answering the question.
okay, so? My question is about why the concept would have come up in the first place since I believe there is no logical reason for it. To me there is no possible framework which allows for an afterlife, so i'm intrigued about the strength of the idea.
quote:Also, to your statement - "I see no physical, philosophical, historical basis for the concept of a soul." How about several thousands of years of religion, and religious and general philosphy?
telling me that your particular fairy tale believes in the afterlife is not an effecient way of making me believe it. And I think you'll also notice that as religion becomes less prevalent in philosophical thought, so does the idea of a soul.
quote:I tie the concept of afterlife to the concept that there must be something that lives after. If you are going to have a conversation of 'afterlife' then you have to concede the possibility that there is something that lives after. You don't have to believe in 'it', but you have to concede the possibility to allow the discussion.
I don't see why. I would think the onus of proof would be on you to explain how and why a framework would even exist to provide for the existence of a soul. I will concede that it is impossible to ever truly be 100% sure about anything, but that's all I'll concede.
quote: Do not be so foolish at to think that our modern society is the peak of all knowledge and learning. Our knowledge of science is pathetically inadequate.
if the best counter examples you can come up with are in the same vein as weight loss at death experiment, then I can't take your scientific arguments seriously. Do people really still use this as an argument for the existence of a soul?
quote:As for WHY I don't think a jar with a brain would have a soul, it is only because it doesn't behave similarly to me.
Tres, what if the brain was hooked up through electric wires to a robot body that reacted to the brains impulses in every way a normal body did? it would behave similarly to you and you would be forced to conclude it had a soul. when in fact, it's still the same brain, just hooked up to a machine. what if the robot body was made to look organic and realistic so you couldn't even tell the difference?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Yes but mental pictures of unicorns DO exist.
Images of night elves and trolls exist too, in the WoW servers. Do they have souls?
Posted by Altáriël of Dorthonion (Member # 6473) on :
quote:
quote:I like the idea of an afterlife because it makes me think that life is worth something, you know? Like, why am I living this life if I will only die one day and that is that. I prefer to think that I will somehow live on.
other people have touched on this, but I see no reason to believe that a never ending life is in any way more meaningfull than a mortal life. A neverending life would probably make me question my purpose and the nature of existence even more. To me, knowledge that "this is it" gives me a much greater appreciation for life and a desire to to live as fully as I can during my time(if only practice was as easy as theory!).
Strider
I don't imagine an afterlife the same as my mortal life simply because I feel that the concept of immortality seems boring to me. I am not sure how exactly to convey my feelings and thoughts on an afterlife mostly because those thoughts have not fully taken shape inside my head. However, something that keeps dabbing at me is that my memories are stored inside my brain, which rots after my death. I wonder where my memories are going after I die. I am not sure whether I will keep them at all, but I do think that the person I was because of them is what will live on and that is what forms a soul. As I said, it's hard for me to explain what I'm trying to say but hopefully you can kind of know where I'm getting to.
Posted by BlueWizard (Member # 9389) on :
Points made and taken, Strider.
I will make one additional comment however.
I have seen film footage of the equivalent of the MacDougall experiment, and it did not take place in 1907. Yes, the MacDougall experiment DID take place then, but I seriously doubt that they had film footage of it. The experiment I'm taking about took place at a university, and its result were presented in a couple of TV shows. One was on PBS, and another was a Network Show. I saw the footage three times to my memory.
It was not my intent to say that experiment 'proved' that the soul existed. Only to point out that scientific proof of something that would fall under the broad heading of 'soul' is not impossible.
That was the thrust of my whole 'scientific' rant. People are trying to use today's science and say that it has proven the soul doesn't exist, and I will, to a limited extent, grant that based on today's science. But, as I said, today's science is in its infancy, and what tomorrow's science will prove is something else altogether.
Though as I pointed out, I strongly suspect if and when science verifies what we are broadly terming the 'soul', most religions are going to be very disappointed. It is not going to be a 'soul' that fits their preferred model.
If fact, I will go so far as to say that Religion would prefer that the 'soul' not be verified. Without scientific varification, they are free to determine the soul after any fashion that suits them.
One last point that I didn't touch on. You and others seem to denounce the idea that the soul and the afterlife can be experienced. I'm not sure that's true. I think the belief in the soul and the afterlife's existance has very much been strongly reinforced by personal experience. Again though, experience is not necessarily absolute proof, but it is certainly enough to keep the belief alive across many many centuries.
So, you ask, not does the afterlife exist, but how did the belief in the afterlife come to exist? I think a big part of it was experience. I think it was upon that experience of higher-self awareness and near death experience as well as certain psychic phenomenon that people built their beliefs. Though again preceived experience and belief are not proof.
I'm not seeking to prove that the soul or afterlife exist, I'm simply providing workable frameworks and models in which they could exist. Whether you buy my model or the religious model or no model at all is entirely up to you.
Just a few more thoughts.
Steve/BlueWizard
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Tres, what if the brain was hooked up through electric wires to a robot body that reacted to the brains impulses in every way a normal body did? it would behave similarly to you and you would be forced to conclude it had a soul. when in fact, it's still the same brain, just hooked up to a machine. what if the robot body was made to look organic and realistic so you couldn't even tell the difference?
If you did that and it ended up acting like a human being, then I'd probably not be sure whether it did really have a soul or if it was just an elaborate machine designed to look like it had a soul - much like a robot designed to act like a human would probably be. There are numerous sci-fi stories in which questions like these are debated, and usually there is diagreement among characters over whether the monster or robot or whatever is a person with a soul. The truth is, again, that we don't know. I'm using "things similar to me" as a rough guideline, but like most rough guidelines, I suspect you can imagine situations in which the rule is manipulated in a way so that it gives the wrong answer.
quote:Images of night elves and trolls exist too, in the WoW servers. Do they have souls?
No. Pictures of unicorns don't have souls either. The point wasn't that imaginary mental images have souls.
quote:And I think you'll also notice that as religion becomes less prevalent in philosophical thought, so does the idea of a soul.
I don't think it would be accurate to say religion has become less prevalent in philosophical thought.
It might be accurate to say the word "soul" has become less discussed by philosophy, but "personal identity" IS widely discussed - and that is essentially the same topic, only put in more modern academic lingo. "Discussing the soul" sounds supernatural, while "discussing personal identity" doesn't.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
quote:Yes but mental pictures of unicorns DO exist.
Actually, no. They don't. There is no place in your brain where any pictures of anything exist. Certain sequences of neuron firings make your brain be in a similar state to what it would be in if it actually ever saw a unicorn.
No pictures, no qualia. Just your reported beliefs in them, which I simply process via heterophenomenology. That way I can use these reports about how things appear to be to you (as you have no privileged access to the innerworkings of your brain, they are only your opinions of what is happening in it) to analyze your behavior and make predictions about what you'll do. Just like when people claim God has spoken to them: I have no evidence this is so, and they've no way of proving it to me, so I can only treat this claim as a piece of data about themselves as a belief they hold, not as some objective report on a real phenomenon.
Oddly enough for anyone interested, I actually wrote a song about this issue called I Am Information. I think Tresopax would dig the line "If qualia are an illusion, what's the point of my crying?" Heh.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:There is no place in your brain where any pictures of anything exist.
Exactly! That's why the brain cannot explain qualia.
1. Mental pictures of unicorns DO exist. (I know this because I'm picturing one right now and can see it in my mind. You can deny this if you want, but I can be certain it is true because I can directly observe it in my own mind. It is somewhat different from the experience of actually seeing something, but imagining a unicorn is nevertheless certainly a very real experience.) 2. There is no place in your brain where any pictures of anything exist. 3. Therefore, the mental pictures of unicorns exist somewhere that is NOT in the brain.
That's the rough outline of how the general argument goes at least...
quote:I have no evidence this is so, and they've no way of proving it to me, so I can only treat this claim as a piece of data about themselves as a belief they hold, not as some objective report on a real phenomenon.
You could treat it as an objective report on a real phenomenon AND as a belief I hold if you wanted to. Why don't you? I often do that when people tell me something unprovable that I have no good reason to think is false. For instance, people told me that man walked on the moon. I can't prove it, but I believe it when people say so.
[ January 12, 2007, 09:23 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Strider: trivial or nontrivial(meaning important)?
are you arguing that every thought and action we take based on instructions from the brain is as deterministic in nature as our genetics? Because if so I agree with that. Doesn't mean I can't appreciate the fact that something like this developed that allows me to be conscious and aware of my surroundings and myself. It allows me to live my life and act as if I have free will, regardless of whether I scientifically believe or understand that in reality I don't. I may not love everything about the state of the world today, but I do love and appreciate the state of affairs that allow me to exist and experience life in a very active conscious way. And so it IS important to me that I can use my brain to lead a happy and fulfilling life, however it is I happen to define that.
I'd agree with the assertion that "every thought and action we take based on instructions from the brain is as deterministic in nature as our genetics." However, you kind of misinterpreted me, I was really just noting the point that to tell the difference between an action motivated by our genes and an action motivated by "think[ing] for ourselves and choose to do(or not to do) certain things based on what is important to us and what we think is right" may be extremely difficult. Especially since both processes are not (statistically) independent.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:So then you agree that the only way they could understand my experience of red is to experience it for themselves - and that they could not understand it just by understanding which neurons are firing in my brain?
You're using a faulty definition of the word "understand," Tres.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I don't know how it's relevant to afterlife, but the claim that mental images don't exist is, well, surprising -- surprising that people would go that far. It's a classic scenario that denying this won't work. No, I didn't just imagine a pink elephant! I will not picture a pink elephant! And every time you try to stop it, you imagine a pink elephant.
It is logically consistent (although bizarre) to claim that others don't really picture pink elephants, but when you do it yourself, you yourself experience proof that you do.
Limiting a discussion to behavior is sometimes useful for science, because that's what's observable, but even Skinner didn't (IIRC) say that nothing not observable existed.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:even Skinner didn't (IIRC) say that nothing not observable existed.
I'm a materialist. I think nothing exists that does not have a physical effect. In other words, your "mental image" exists insofar as it's a pattern of electrons. It has no reality in what I call the "external context" of the real world.
These mental concepts have validity within what I call the "internal context," the framework of your mind and motivations, but are not valid when describing reality.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:You're using a faulty definition of the word "understand," Tres.
I'll rephrase then: So then you agree that the only way they could know how I experience red is to experience it for themselves - and that they could not know it just by knowing which neurons are firing in my brain?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:It is logically consistent (although bizarre) to claim that others don't really picture pink elephants, but when you do it yourself, you yourself experience proof that you do.
Exactly! Which is why eliminitivist materialists (materialists who try to argue experience doesn't really exist) can make claims all day about how there is no proof for conscious experience, and they can never be proven wrong per se - but they also can't possibly convince those who can see for themselves with certainty that they do have such experience.
I don't believe it is rational to deny what I can directly observe to be true, just because I can't objectively prove it to another person - even if such a denial would make the universe explainable in a more simple fashion.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:Originally posted by Strider:
quote:See, I disagree that it is "just semantics". I suspect that there is nothing "pre-existing" to any individual other than the atoms from which their body is formed. I do believe that something "more" than "just the physical substructure" arises from the unique way in which intelligence has evolved, but that does not necessitate belief that such a thing can exist independently of some physical sub-structure. Is this "something more" a soul by your definition? I don't know. It could be. I might even agree to call it a soul, but I don't think such things are merely semantic. I think they are essential points requiring clarification if one is to discuss the topic.
There is quite a difference between believing in a pre-existing entity temporarily inhabiting a meat-vehicle and in an entity potentially separate from yet born of and currently dependent on the physical body.
I agree that this point is not just semantics and is in fact extremely important to the conversation.
I would also be very interested in hearing not the specifics surrounding your belief of what form consciousness takes after death, but the way in which you came to believe these things. If it doesn't fit with the thread, feel free to email.
Though I think this thread is pretty sprawling, and has already completely moved away from the initial reason I started it.
First, I won't say anything that follows or even preceded this post in this thread is what I believe, but only what I believe is possible in some theoretical sense. I don't have enough information to actively believe anything about a "soul" or "afterlife".
That said, I don't see any reason to believe that a 4 or more dimensional construct ceases to exist in the way we think things do when they are viewed in chronological three-dimensional slices. I think it's possible that from the appropriate vantage point, our whole 4th dimensional existence might be seen at once, from beginning to end, as a coherent whole. In that sense, or from that vantage point, death is only one point on the whole, just as the tip of a finger is only one point on a statue. It might be possible that once this progressive construction of our 4 dimensional selves is completed, there will be some continued consciousness in a higher form unseeable from our current limited 4 dimensional perspective*.
None of this is meant to be profound. It's mostly philosophical musings and doesn't affect my day to day existence in any perceptibly significant way. (I'm just as content, for the moment, if I'm completely wrong about this, and I'm certainly open to revising these thoughts given better understanding of reality.)
Does any of this make sense? I'm willing to try again to clarify if you want.
*We experience 3 dimensions clearly, and the 4th in which we commonly believe we exist we only experience imperfectly (I believe) as the passage of "time". From a 5th dimensional perspective, perhaps, we might get a clearer vision of what the 4th dimension really is.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:So then you agree that the only way they could know how I experience red is to experience it for themselves - and that they could not know it just by knowing which neurons are firing in my brain?
I think you're using a faulty definition of "know," too. Because you're using it as a synonym for "experience," which makes your question a tautology.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:but they also can't possibly convince those who can see for themselves with certainty that they do have such experience.
But there are at least two stages of input at which I can insert a "false" (i.e. non-real) experience into your brain. I can fool your eyes and your other senses into seeing something that's not real; with additional technology, I might be able to make you think (or just remember) that you saw something that wasn't there.
In this case, you have had the "experience" I wanted you to have, despite having had no such experience at all. To you, within your internal context, it is "real" -- but it's a completely false construct.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
Also from Strider, earlier in the thread:
quote:But lets even say for a moment that what you're talking about is possible. I agree there's so much we don't know, and can possibly never understand given the nature of our brains evolution to cope in a three dimensional environment. But this possible consciousness that continues to exist in some other plane of existence is not ME. To me, what I know as myself is a funciton of memory. I use my memory and my present state of awareness to define who I am. The me I know ceases to exist when I die(when my memories and awareness die with my body). And whatever consciousness continues to exist after the ME is dead, has no relation to me.
I don't think you can conclusively declare that this conciousness is not you, unless you also claim that the Strider who people will experience tomorrow isn't you because it has progressed further through time and you haven't. It seems possible to me that just as Strider tomorrow is more than but (as far as we can tell) wholly inclusive of the "you" that exists today, the "Strider" which might exist beyond your experience of what we call mortality might possibly contain the whole of your life, plus whatever is possible to be experienced "beyond" it. Would this consciousness not be "you"?
This may be a matter of semantics. I mean, in a sense you aren't the person who came out of your mother's womb. In the sense that "you" are your mind (containing your memories) "you" are a being of incredibly greater complexity than the infant that bore your name. I think it's possible that a conciousness might exist beyond your "death" that is not less "you" than that baby was "you".
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
This, by the way, is why I claim the whole idea of the "self" is merely a useful fiction.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: This, by the way, is why I claim the whole idea of the "self" is merely a useful fiction.
Tom, I'd like to discuss that with you in depth sometime, but I think the best way to do that would be over dinner or drinks.
When can we get together to do that? Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:But there are at least two stages of input at which I can insert a "false" (i.e. non-real) experience into your brain. I can fool your eyes and your other senses into seeing something that's not real; with additional technology, I might be able to make you think (or just remember) that you saw something that wasn't there.
Neither of these are "false" experiences. In both cases the experience really happens.
In the first case, you really do experience seeing X. Just because there is no physical X causing that experience doesn't mean the experience itself is any less real.
In the second case, you really do experience the memory of seeing X. Just because that memory is false doesn't mean the experience of that memory itself is any less real.
Both of these are cases where an experience leads you to a mistaken conclusion. But in both cases, the person experiencing it can be absolutely certain that their experience itself is real. When you feel pain, you KNOW you are feeling pain, even if the pain is not caused by anything real.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Tom, I'd like to discuss that with you in depth sometime, but I think the best way to do that would be over dinner or drinks.
When can we get together to do that? [Smile]
ummm...can I be invited? Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote: When you feel pain, you KNOW you are feeling pain, even if the pain is not caused by anything real.
I used to be a lot more persuaded by this point as a college philosophy student, before I'd had the experience of having a panic attack.
It's quite possible to be uncertain about whether pain is part of the content of your present experience.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:Originally posted by Strider:
quote:Tom, I'd like to discuss that with you in depth sometime, but I think the best way to do that would be over dinner or drinks.
When can we get together to do that? [Smile]
ummm...can I be invited?
Sure. Hanover-con anytime before mid-April. Posted by Xavier (Member # 405) on :
quote:This, by the way, is why I claim the whole idea of the "self" is merely a useful fiction.
I'd actually agree with that, to some extent.
To me my "self" is a combination of my memories and my physical body at any given instance. Neither of these things are quite the same from one day to the next, so I don't think that my "self-ness" is a persistant entity.
I was very much a "different person" in high school. I will likely be a very different person in twenty years.
My past selfs are entities who are similar to "me" to various degrees, with them generally becoming more and more like me the closer they get to the current "me". Even if I don't notice that the "me" of yesterday is any different than the "me" of today, he is.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:However, you kind of misinterpreted me
Mucus, I don't think I misintepreted you exactly. I think we agree. I just think you used the wrong word to describe what you meant. You were trying to say(if i understand you correctly) that the difference in whether the decision is geneticaly deterministic or mentally deterministic(whatever that may mean, i think you get my point) is relatively trivial in the sense that it's all deterministic. but you said nontrivial. which implies that difference IS important. correct me if i'm wrong.
quote:I'm a materialist. I think nothing exists that does not have a physical effect. In other words, your "mental image" exists insofar as it's a pattern of electrons. It has no reality in what I call the "external context" of the real world.
Tom, I'll take it a step further and say that I don't see a difference between the concept of a mental image and the real external context of the real world. What I mean by that is, when you have a mental image in your head of something, like you say, it's just a pattern of electrons. But when you physically "see" something in the real world, how is this any different? You're not really "seeing" the thing. Light waves are hitting your eyes, which send that signal to your brain, which processes that signal and projects a mental image(inside your head) of this real external reality. To me, it seems that for visual purposes, the brain is nothing more than an internal projector playing a film that it's being fed from one of our sense organs. Not that you'd disagree with any of this, you even touch on this in your reply to Tres, just thought it was worth mentioning.
quote:Does any of this make sense? I'm willing to try again to clarify if you want.
No, it makes sense. Thanks for answering. It's an intriguing concept, and I really don't know enough about the nature of extra dimensions(besides the 4th that is) to make any sort of informed opinion about the plausability of it. I actually have some questions about "dimensions" but I think they belong in another thread.
quote:the "Strider" which might exist beyond your experience of what we call mortality might possibly contain the whole of your life, plus whatever is possible to be experienced "beyond" it. Would this consciousness not be "you"?
In the sense you are describing, yes, it would be "me" as much as the "me" now is the same "me" when I was an infant. My problem with this line of reasoning stems from sort of the unbroken chain that led me from infancy to where I am now. The physical construct that is myself, that provides the physical basis for my thoughts and actions has been unbroken since that time. And when I die, it's not possible for that chain to continue. Now...I also understand that this concept of myself is pretty much equal to my memories. Nothing physical from that infant that was "me" remains, just memories. So if somehow these memories were able to continue to exist and evolve in a consciously aware being, after my physical death, then yes, i would be force to admit that that was still "me". I just don't see or understand a structure in place that could allow that. Though like I said, I don't fully understand the concept of 5-11 dimensions or whatever it is string theory predicts there are, and how those would affect the nature of reality.
quote:Sure. Hanover-con anytime before mid-April.
I'm down.
Posted by TheGrimace (Member # 9178) on :
my apologies if this has already been covered and I just missed it in my quick perusal of the rest of the thread.
I think the concept of an afterlife may have been initiated as a response to social evolution. When society started evolving to the point where it made sense for individuals to make sacrifices for that society at large then side-rationale for those sacrifices would likely have been developed.
It may have immediately jumped to the concept of an afterlife in order to give more justification to your sacrifice. i.e. if brave warrior 1 dies defending the tribe lets give him the belief that he'll get to stick around and watch over the village and see what good he saved. This may even have just been the "wise-man"'s way of duping the dumb warriors into protecting the village and just eventually became the popular belief.
It may have stemmed out of stories and other culture. People sat around the campfire telling tales of the heroic yet tragic Xteltoc as he died fighting off the hungry leopard, but saved his 3 sons. Eventually the story started morphing to mythic proportions such that everyone started believing that Xteltoc was still around, maybe he was in the spirit of the leopard or maybe he was the courage of his eldest son or maybe he was just somewhere better as a reward for his sacrifice.
basically, while it started making social sense to make sacrifices for your society, most people would need something more personal as a motivation since we're generally selfish by nature...
that's just my guess, and it could quite potentially be where the concept of soul/deity came from rather than the other way around...
basically "hey, joe was really cool but died, that can't be all there is, can it?"
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
The main problem with hoping consciousness can exist beyond our physical death is that consciousness isn't a single, coherent, continuous entity in our minds. Several modern theories of consciousness, including the Multiple Drafts Model, interpret consciousness as ever-shifting among more "vocal" subsystems in the brain, somewhat like a presidency, a role that many players take on in the mind, though attributing it via the intentional stance to the entire organism that the mind is part of.
quote:1. Mental pictures of unicorns DO exist. (I know this because I'm picturing one right now and can see it in my mind. You can deny this if you want, but I can be certain it is true because I can directly observe it in my own mind. It is somewhat different from the experience of actually seeing something, but imagining a unicorn is nevertheless certainly a very real experience.)
I'm sure it seems very much like you've got a picture of one in your head (it seems like that to me, too). However, when I look at this screen, the image of the screen isn't being projected into my Cartesian theatre for my homunculus to view... the light hitting my eyes is stimulating nerves that connect to my brain and that put my brain into a specific state that helps me to interact with the computer. When I imagine the unicorn, I exapt all that hardware to trick myself into a state similar to what I would be in were I to see the mythical beast. I imagine this happens by my brain's activating the neural state of "seeing a horse" plus that of "seeing a horn" simultaneously. It's certainly plausible. Just like the "phantom limb" phenomenon, it really, really seems to me that there is an image of a unicorn in my mind, because I'm so used to the photo receptors in my eyes and my visual brain states happening together. But I know (just like I know there's no third dot in the phi illusion) that my brain is tricking itself into believing it can see the unicorn's image.
quote:2. There is no place in your brain where any pictures of anything exist. 3. Therefore, the mental pictures of unicorns exist somewhere that is NOT in the brain.
No. Like I said, they don't exist at all, at least, not as actual pictures. Kind of like clicking on a jpeg file in your computer but unplugging the monitor before it displays. The information is there, the computer is doing all it normally does to produce an image, but the image isn't really there, though to the computer's programming, it is.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:However, when I look at this screen, the image of the screen isn't being projected into my Cartesian theatre for my homunculus to view... the light hitting my eyes is stimulating nerves that connect to my brain and that put my brain into a specific state that helps me to interact with the computer.
Hey! Isn't this what i said? Yours just sounds smarter.
Dig the song btw.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
Yeah, I didn't read your post before mine (I've been writing in bursts between classes, heh).
Thanks for the compliment, Strider.
Posted by KarlEd (Member # 571) on :
quote:The main problem with hoping consciousness can exist beyond our physical death is that consciousness isn't a single, coherent, continuous entity in our minds. Several modern theories of consciousness, including the Multiple Drafts Model, interpret consciousness as ever-shifting among more "vocal" subsystems in the brain, somewhat like a presidency, a role that many players take on in the mind, though attributing it via the intentional stance to the entire organism that the mind is part of.
However, this doesn't preclude a "reawakening" of consciousness at some point after physical death, in my opinion and given what knowledge we have now. I used to be very concerned with continuity as a requirement for "self-ness", but not so much in the past few years. I have no way of knowing if the person who wakes up from my bed tomorrow morning is the same "me" that will go to bed in it tonight. If I am around to "reawaken" to consciousness in some far distant future, I will be grateful and thrilled to continue living, and won't question with any vested interest whether I'm the same "me" that exists now or a somehow different "me". At least not any more than I question it every morning (which isn't much, if you were worried. )
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:When can we get together to do that?
Christy and I were actually thinking about heading out to the East Coast this summer....
------
quote:In both cases the experience really happens.
You are confusing experience with sensation. The sensation happens, and the experience of the sensation happens. But the experience does not.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:At least not any more than I question it every morning (which isn't much, if you were worried.)
I wasn't....
but see, when you go to bed, your body doesn't cease to function. you might not be aware of the continuity consciously, but it exists. And i realize you can just come back at me and say that what you're talking about can be a similar un-awareness of continuity, but I think it's a stretch, given there is no system to describe how that would work, in theory or practice.
I agree that the awareness of continuity isn't important though. If you could map every connection in my brain and store it somewhere, and then at some later time map it back onto a circuit or something, when you turned "me" on, i would still feel like "me". But at least in theory I can imagine a way in which this would be possible given what we know about the physical world.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:
quote:Images of night elves and trolls exist too, in the WoW servers. Do they have souls?
No. Pictures of unicorns don't have souls either. The point wasn't that imaginary mental images have souls.
I was unclear. I was asking whether the WoW servers had souls, not the pictures of night elves.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:You are confusing experience with sensation. The sensation happens, and the experience of the sensation happens. But the experience does not.
And you accuse me of playing semantic games?
If you agree that the experience of the sensation happens, then you agree with my point.
quote:It's quite possible to be uncertain about whether pain is part of the content of your present experience.
How so?
quote:I'm sure it seems very much like you've got a picture of one in your head (it seems like that to me, too). However, when I look at this screen, the image of the screen isn't being projected into my Cartesian theatre for my homunculus to view... the light hitting my eyes is stimulating nerves that connect to my brain and that put my brain into a specific state that helps me to interact with the computer. When I imagine the unicorn, I exapt all that hardware to trick myself into a state similar to what I would be in were I to see the mythical beast. I imagine this happens by my brain's activating the neural state of "seeing a horse" plus that of "seeing a horn" simultaneously. It's certainly plausible. Just like the "phantom limb" phenomenon, it really, really seems to me that there is an image of a unicorn in my mind, because I'm so used to the photo receptors in my eyes and my visual brain states happening together. But I know (just like I know there's no third dot in the phi illusion) that my brain is tricking itself into believing it can see the unicorn's image.
If you sort through all the scientific words in the above claims, all it amounts to is that the experience of imagining a unicorn is different from the experience of actually seeing a unicorn with your eyes. Which is true - the image of a unicorn that you imagine is a different sort of image than the image you'd get if you actually saw one. But that in no way implies the experience of imagining a unicorn does not exist, and it in no way implies there is no image of a unicorn in my head when I am imagining one.
In other words, saying my image of a unicorn is not the sort of experience I think it is does not imply my image of a unicorn doesn't exist. In the end, I am still experiencing something.
quote:I was asking whether the WoW servers had souls, not the pictures of night elves.
My bad.
In that case... no, there are no pictures of night elves on WoW servers. There is just a set of 1's and 0's on those servers. They only become pictures of night elves when the 1's and 0's are translated by a computer into light that is then observed by human beings with souls. Once the data enters the minds of human beings, then the images of night elves come into existence - in the minds of those people!
If there were no people around playing WoW, the data on those servers would be totally meaningless.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: If you agree that the experience of the sensation happens, then you agree with my point.
No. Unless you've failed to communicate your point adequately, and you've been agreeing with me from the start while appearing to do the opposite.
Case in point:
quote:all it amounts to is that the experience of imagining a unicorn is different from the experience of actually seeing a unicorn with your eyes
See, you're continuing to use the word "experience" incorrectly. I really think you'd benefit from using my "context" idea, Tres; I think it'd help you keep this sort of thing straight.
By your logic, if I filled your brain with memories of having seen a unicorn, you would have seen a unicorn; there would be no difference between having a memory of the experience and actually having had the experience.
This is true only within your own internal context; the actual universe (i.e. external context) will not behave according to your assumptions if you continue to act as if unicorns are real, because unicorns do not in fact exist. By behaving (rationally) as if unicorns existed, you might -- depending on the quality of your perceptions -- rapidly discover discrepancies between what you expect of the world and what actually happens; in other words, your delusion becomes relevant once it affects your ability to interact with other objects having real existence.
quote:There is just a set of 1's and 0's on those servers. They only become pictures of night elves when the 1's and 0's are translated by a computer into light that is then observed by human beings with souls. Once the data enters the minds of human beings, then the images of night elves come into existence - in the minds of those people!
And yet you have no basis for the claim that these images of "night elves" in the minds of people are not merely electrons being translated by neural processes. What makes them stop being electrochemical entites and turns them into "real" images?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Tom,
I don't understand why you disagree with my use of the word "experience". I'm talking about the subjective, qualitative sensation that happens in my mind whenever a given thing occurs. What would you term that? Should I refer to it as "sensation"? "Quale"?
Regardless, I don't think the external (physical) universe is relevant to the issue here. The question is not whether my sensations/experiences accurately reflect the external universe. It is clear they don't always do. The question is whether the sensations/experiences themselves are real. Even if there were NO external universe, and even if everything existed entirely in my mind, the sensations/experiences of those things would be real. In fact, even if everything I saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched was the exact opposite of what was really there in the external universe, it would still be true that the sensations/experiences I am seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching are real. They are real because I am still experiencing them, even if the conclusions I draw from them are not true.
quote:By your logic, if I filled your brain with memories of having seen a unicorn, you would have seen a unicorn; there would be no difference between having a memory of the experience and actually having had the experience.
That is not true. By my logic, if you filled my brain with memories of having seen a unicorn, I would have experienced having memories of a unicorn. The thing you remember does not have to have actually happened in order for the memory to exist.
quote:What makes them stop being electrochemical entites and turns them into "real" images?
Because the concept of "mental image" is not consistent with being a thing made out of electrochemical entities. It'd be like saying that you have a candy cane built entirely out of prime numbers. It doesn't make any sense, unless you aren't talking about the same thing that I mean by "candy cane".
Claiming we can't prove mental images aren't really just electrochemical entities sounds to me like this question: "But Tres, how can you prove that candy canes can't be made out prime numbers? Maybe you are just confused."
quote:Unless you've failed to communicate your point adequately
That could be the case. I have a suspicion that most people do believe in experience/sensations/qualia, but many do not realize it because it is nearly impossible to talk about it in a clear way. I don't think our language is equipped to handle the discussion very well, because in practical life there is rarely ever a need to distinguish between the experience/sensation of red and the mechanical process in our body that seems to trigger that experience/sensation.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Suppose I show you a picture of a unicorn on a computer screen. Would you claim that the picture is not made of little pixels of colour? Nobody is denying that there is an emergent property, a picture-ness if you like, that would disappear if you sorted the pixels by colour. Nonetheless, to say that the picture is not made of pixels is to do violence to the language. It is in this sense that a mental experience is made of electrochemical whatnots.
Posted by abysmalpoptart (Member # 10061) on :
a series of dots and colors show us an image that we perceive to be a unicorn. it can be interpreted however, but that specific image is how our brain will interpret the information
if you draw a square and then draw 4 dots that would be the corner of a square (Without lines to connect them), your mind invisions a square there. everything is really just how you perceive it...
the screen you are looking at right now to read this is actually a laser emitting the "pixels" over and over blinking rapidly and we cant see them fast enough to tell that the images are actually broken.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I'm talking about the subjective, qualitative sensation that happens in my mind whenever a given thing occurs. What would you term that? Should I refer to it as "sensation"?
I would call that "thought," since it's independent of actual sensation and independent of reality.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Suppose I show you a picture of a unicorn on a computer screen. Would you claim that the picture is not made of little pixels of colour?
The picture on the screen is made of pixels. The image in my mind is not.
And I'd argue that without a mind to experience the picture on the screen as an image, those pixels are actually just a meaningless data set.
quote:I would call that "thought," since it's independent of actual sensation and independent of reality.
I'd think experience can be independent of actual sensation and independent of physical reality. Aren't dreams a sort of experience?
Nevertheless, I don't want to call it "thought" because that term is too broad. Many things could be considered thought. I'm talking about only one sort of thought.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:The image in my mind is not.
How do you know? What do you think it is made of?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
It is a sort of thing that can't be "made of" anything - which is how I know it is not made of pixels.
I know it is the sort of thing that can't be "made of" anything because I can observe it in my mind. Simply put, I observe it doesn't posses the property of being built out of physical components. Thus any discussion about something that IS built out of physical components is not a discussion about the image in my mind that I'm talking about.
One might argue that you could break it down into smaller component experiences (the experience of white, the experience of it looking shaped like a horse, etc.) but eventually you will break it down into fundamental experiences that cannot be broken into or made up of anything.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Simply put, I observe it doesn't possess the property of being built out of physical components.
That's not the case. More accurately, you do not perceive any physical components. That's like saying that atoms don't exist because you can't perceive them.
Fry your brain to scramble the appropriate electrical pathways, and I guarantee you that you'll screw up the physical components that make up your mental picture of the unicorn. Heck, take enough drugs and run the same risk.
What you're missing, Tres, is that even if there IS some weird non-physical dimension in which "qualia" exist, a physical interface between that dimension and this one must exist. And given that, the ONLY thing that matters is that interface; the qualia themselves become irrelevant.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:That's not the case. More accurately, you do not perceive any physical components. That's like saying that atoms don't exist because you can't perceive them.
It's not really like that at all. Atoms are physical; they don't exist in my mind.
And it's not just that I don't perceive any physical components. Rather, what I perceive is that the thing I am talking about in my mind is of a nature such that it would not even make any sense to talk about it consisting of physical components - just like a candy cane built out of prime numbers makes no sense.
Thirdly, if you don't believe these images exist, how can you tell me what is or is not the case about them in my mind? I have these sensations/experiences in my mind. It is possible you do not, but if you did not, how could you go about telling me what I have in my mind?
quote:What you're missing, Tres, is that even if there IS some weird non-physical dimension in which "qualia" exist, a physical interface between that dimension and this one must exist. And given that, the ONLY thing that matters is that interface; the qualia themselves become irrelevant.
Why?
I'd dispute that last sentence 100%. Rather, qualia (experience) is the ONLY thing in the universe that directly matters. That is because without qualia, the universe is literally nothing more than a set of data, just like an image on a computer is just a set of data until there is a user to look at it. The physical universe is just a bunch of particles, which have no more significance that the bunch of 1's and 0's coded in a computer file. These particles only become meaningful insofar as they create phenomena that can be experiences as qualia by us. An apple is completely meaningless just as a collection of atoms - but once it becomes a red, roundish, tasty thing that looks and feels a certain way, then it becomes something real and meaningful to us. That is the idea behind "if a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it, did it really fall?" In a world where there is no, never was, and never will be any beings to experience trees as some sort of qualia, you could say they still fall, but it wouldn't really mean anything at all. It would just mean a bunch of atoms have been rearranged.
Given that, the interface is also important, but only indirectly because it influences or controls what qualia we experience.
And given that this is a discussion of the afterlife, I should point out that even though it is clear such an interface DOES exist while we are alive, it is not clear that an interface always must exist in order to experience qualia. It is possible that after we die, we continue to experience things, but that those experiences are no longer dictated by the state of our brains.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
quote:Rather, qualia (experience) is the ONLY thing in the universe that directly matters. That is because without qualia, the universe is literally nothing more than a set of data, just like an image on a computer is just a set of data until there is a user to look at it. The physical universe is just a bunch of particles, which have no more significance that the bunch of 1's and 0's coded in a computer file.
I almost, almost agree with your sentiment in this snippet... yes, it is our experience of the data in the universe that imbues our existences with meaning. I totally agree. However, the poignancy of this truism comes from the fact that both "we" and our "experience" (as synonymous with qualia) are illusory... there is no preexisting self (it's a fiction adopted by the cognitive subsystems of the brain and shuffled around among the systems that most successfully command processing time) whose experiences generate phenomena (immaterial, inexplicable aboutness).
What has happened to you and to other adherents to dualism is that you've taken the seeming ("it seems that I'm seeing an image in my mind") and convinced yourselves it's really being ("there IS an image in my mind"). The truth is the organism in which the Tresopax brain resides has no other way of discussing the experience of triggering brain states associated with vision (though sans eyes) except through the metaphoric shorthand of visual lexemes... it sure as hell seems like I'm seeing a unicorn in my head, but that's how my shifting consciousness has chosen to refer to this strange mental-state-of-seeing-without-input-through-the-eyes.
You've been infected by the IDEA of qualia... it eases a strange gap in your ability to report on what is happening to the organism your shifting self represents.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:there is no preexisting self (it's a fiction adopted by the cognitive subsystems of the brain and shuffled around among the systems that most successfully command processing time) whose experiences generate phenomena (immaterial, inexplicable aboutness)
What reason can you give that would convince me to believe this rather radical claim that contradicts what seems to be observably true?
It sounds like you are asking me to bend over backwards and believe a bunch of observably-but-not-provably false claims just in order to avoid having to admit to the existence of a soul/mind. Philosophical materialists often tend to sound that way. Why so much faith in materialism that you'd acccept such outlandish claims like "my existence is an illusion" in order to be consistent with it?
[ January 16, 2007, 08:40 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
This is the impasse we always butt up against, isn't it? I would characterize much of your own argument in similar terms... you basically say, "I KNOW I experience in a non-material way, and I know YOU do too, so just admit it."
Not terribly convincing.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Except that you even agree, in your last post, that it SEEMS to be the way I say it is.
But then you say that is just an illusion. If you are the one who is claiming that "what seems true" is not really true, then I would think you are the one who needs to provide some strong reason to believe it. Otherwise, doesn't it make sense to just believe what seems to be true?
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
quote:I KNOW I experience in a non-material way, and I know YOU do too, so just admit it.
Whether this is an accurate paraphrase, I don't know, but it's ambiguous.
Arg 1: If it means, "I experience things. That the mechanisms of this are non-material is a fact, because of such-and-such argument," then that would not be terribly convincing. The argument might be, though. Or not.
Arg 2: If it means, "I experience things, and these experiences sometimes have a non-material quality (such as imaginary pictures), and I know this because I perceive it directly," then that's completely convincing. Because I also can picture things in my imagination. To say why this happens would take argument, and the argument might fail, but the fact of the picturing things is an immediate experience and can't reasonably be disputed.
That is, this conversation is reasonable: A: I see a lion. B: No, you think you see a lion. There isn't anything there. You're imagining it.
but this isn't: A: I don't see a lion, but I can picture one. B: No, you only think you can picture one. There's nothing here, and you aren't imagining it. You only imagine that you imagine it.
[ January 17, 2007, 10:20 AM: Message edited by: Will B ]
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
I agree completely, Will.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Whereas I disagree. I think we've actually got three possibilities.
A. I don't see a lion, but I can picture one = Materialists B. You imagine that you imagine a lion = Idiots who aren't posting on this thread C. I picture a lion, and that picture is real in some non-physical way = People who believe in qualia
The problem I have isn't Tres' insistence on qualia; he's perfectly permitted to believe whatever reality he wants for the interior of his own head. The problem, rather, is that he insists that qualia have a true external reality, a Platonic reality, that in some measurable way affects the physical universe without being physical. This I dispute quite energetically. Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
From the last 2 posts, I think y'all are misunderstanding each other.
Tresopax agrees completely, so he finds Arg 1 "not terribly convincing." I conclude Arg 2 is closer to what he meant. ?
Tom says Tres is claiming more than the immediate experience (Arg 2), and instead insisting on a conclusion from it (Platonic ideals), which fits Arg 1.
So I think you're talking past each other?
We might also get some clarification of "real in some non-physical way." This might mean "having a non-physical aspect" or "having a non-physical aspect as its _basis_."
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
Either way, Tom and I(and others) believe that everything has ONLY physical aspects. So I don't differentiate between those last two options you posited. They're both equally unlikely.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:A. I don't see a lion, but I can picture one = Materialists B. You imagine that you imagine a lion = Idiots who aren't posting on this thread C. I picture a lion, and that picture is real in some non-physical way = People who believe in qualia
Both (A) and (C) believe in qualia. The difference is that (A) includes materialists who think qualia can have a purely physical explanation (functionalists, behavioralists, identity theorists, etc.), whereas (C) includes substance dualists, property dualists, and idealists who think qualia entails some non-physical explanation. But (B) is the only group that denies qualia, in the example you gave - they are the eliminative materialists .
I think David believes position (B) - or at least the philosopher Daniel Dennett does, and I am under the impression that David takes the same stance as Dennett on qualia.
Please note that I have NOT insisted in this thread that qualia can affect the physical universe. I believe it does, but I can't exactly prove it or explain how, so I'm not going to insist that it does. All I have insisted is that qualia exists, is not physical, and thus indicates the existence of a soul/mind.
quote:Either way, Tom and I(and others) believe that everything has ONLY physical aspects.
Then my question is, how do you explain the sort of conscious experience that I've been referring to? You'd have to argue it is either (A) something that somehow exists physically somewhere, or (B) it doesn't really exist. (using Tom's lettering)
[ January 17, 2007, 10:57 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:But (B) is the only group that denies qualia, in the example you gave - they are the eliminative materialists.
No, see, I'm a semi-eliminative materialist, too. And saying "you imagine you imagine qualia" doesn't accurately describe my position.
My position: the collection of physical entities that makes up a "you" imagines that you are a "you." That collection, as a "you," interacts with physical reality through a variety of subsystems we call "perceptions," and processes those perceptions interally through another set of filters. Those filters are also capable of generating "thoughts" which, while made up of physically real carrier information, do not necessarily accurately represent physical reality.
These "thoughts" are real insofar as they may motivate further real behavior; they are not real in that they are not necessarily useful or predictive in interacting with physical reality. When you "imagine" a unicorn, your brain produces electrochemical carriers that represent the "unicorn" and connect it to other carriers holding your memories of "horse," "hair," "horns," "smell," etc. In this way, you generate a "memory" of what a unicorn might be like based on hypothetical sense impressions. This projection acquires physical reality as a "thought;" it does not, however, cause unicorns to spring into existence, or exist anywhere outside the context of your brain.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
quote:Otherwise, doesn't it make sense to just believe what seems to be true?
Nope. The earth SEEMS to be flat from my perspective. It isn't. The sun SEEMS to go around the earth from my perspective. It doesn't. There SEEMS to be movement of static images or light in film (phi phenomenon) but there isn't.
There SEEMS to be an image of a pink elephant in my head, but there isn't.
So I would amend "B" to read "You interpret the imagining of a lion as your having an image of a lion in your mind, but there isn't any place for an image in your mind, and if there were, there isn't any conscious being floating around there with eyes to see it, hello."
[ January 17, 2007, 11:28 AM: Message edited by: David Bowles ]
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
quote:When you "imagine" a unicorn, your brain produces electrochemical carriers that represent the "unicorn" and connect it to other carriers holding your memories of "horse," "hair," "horns," "smell," etc. In this way, you generate a "memory" of what a unicorn might be like based on hypothetical sense impressions. This projection acquires physical reality as a "thought;" it does not, however, cause unicorns to spring into existence, or exist anywhere outside the context of your brain.
Very well stated. I would only tweak the last part to "or exist anywhere outside the physical states of your brain."
Posted by Juxtapose (Member # 8837) on :
I think of the mind - and I think my perception of it is similar to Tom's - as a process which has the appearance of a thing, much the same way we see a fire as a thing when it is in fact a rather simple chemical reaction.
To tie it back to the original question, I think that some of the evolutionary programming we operate under found it advantageous to treat processes and motion as things (like viewing a tornado as an entity of some kind, rather than moving air and bits of debris). The awareness of one's own thought process combined with this programmed tendency goes a long way towards explaining the concept of a soul to me.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I think we're doing well if there's *only* one opinion per poster!
Anyway, Strider, you may stick with your position
quote:Either way, Tom and I(and others) believe that everything has ONLY physical aspects.
but I'll challenge it and see, with the concept of circles (that pi-r-squared thing, I mean).
To maintain that everything has only physical aspects, you would have to say that circles aren't contained in the set of "everything" (?), or that circles are physical phenomena. I don't see how that's going to work.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Nope. The earth SEEMS to be flat from my perspective. It isn't. The sun SEEMS to go around the earth from my perspective. It doesn't. There SEEMS to be movement of static images or light in film (phi phenomenon) but there isn't.
In each of those cases, we don't believe what seems true at first because there is actual evidence to the contrary. What evidence do you have that there is no image of a pink elephant in my mind when it seems to me that there is such an image in my mind?
You say "there isn't any place for an image in your mind" but the image is non-physical so it doesn't need a place. You say "there isn't any conscious being floating around there with eyes to see it" but *I* am the conscious being in my mind, and I am aware of the things inside my mind whether I have eyes or not.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:To maintain that everything has only physical aspects, you would have to say that circles aren't contained in the set of "everything" (?), or that circles are physical phenomena.
"Circle" is a descriptor, an attribute which is applied to something else. It's like being "happy" or "sad" or "red."
Non-physical descriptors are merely definitional. "This is an object which holds the property that we call 'circular,'" we might say, in the same way that we might say "this person is feeling the set of stimuli we call 'happy.'"
We've merely defined a set of physical properties, and then are using the descriptor as shorthand for that set.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
But circularity doesn't describe physical reality: nothing in nature is circular. Nothing in nature is pi or e, either. (I think you might have a good case for physical constants being merely descriptors of physical reality -- that's certainly what they're intended to be!)
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Nothing in nature is pi or e, either.
Which is why "pi" and "e" don't exist, except again as descriptors for observed physical properties. You can have "e" of something; "e," however, is meaningless without the "of something" added in there. It's a descriptor for a property that describes quantity.
Edit: Now, I know you can never have precisely "e" or "pi" of something. But by being descriptive of quantity, they become "carriers" of useful information despite their apparently "unreal" natures. One of the great things about being intelligent is our ability to assign "properties" to objects which do not necessarily correspond to physical properties; the property still functions and holds elements according to our internal definitions (much as programming properties do, now that I think of it), but doesn't have physical reality until it's called upon to interact with other objects in some way.
[ January 17, 2007, 03:17 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
quote:You say "there isn't any place for an image in your mind" but the image is non-physical so it doesn't need a place.
Circular (no pun intended, those who are debating circularity). You say I need to prove that what you think you see is not actually being seen, but the truth is that you need to prove what precisely it means for something to be "non-physical" beyond its not "need[ing] a place."
quote:You say "there isn't any conscious being floating around there with eyes to see it" but *I* am the conscious being in my mind, and I am aware of the things inside my mind whether I have eyes or not.
Do you understand from this quote the problem with your use of terms like "see"? If you have a soul or whatever, it hasn't got physical eyes, so its perception is unlikely to be the same as that as your physical body's. If you are willing to concede this, perhaps you'll find it easier to understand why I say that your imagining the pink elephant doesn't require that "you" actually "see" anything, but that you physically simulate seeing without any EM input. The mental subsystems that are presiding over your selfhood and consciousness at that moment quickly edit your memory (via Orwellian or Stalinesque techniques... see Dennett) so that you remember in microseconds having "seen" this mental image (a virtual reality much easier to consciously comprehend than what really is happening in your brain).
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Again with my unicorn. Tres, would you dispute that when you are imagining a unicorn, something physical changes in your brain? Chemical or electrical potentials, whatever; the point is, something physical is happening. You are claiming that something unphysical is happening in addition, but I don't want to go there yet; I want to see how far we agree.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I'm beginning to think that all that's really going on here, pun intended, is a dispute over what the words "real" and "exist" should mean. If we define "real" to mean "physical," then of course only physical things are real.
This still won't work with "everything has only physical aspects." e and pi are a part of everything; even if we define "real" to mean physical, thus making them "unreal," they're still part of everything, specifically the unreal subset. And they have no physical aspects.
I suppose we can define "everything" to mean "everything provided it's physical," but then "everything has only physical aspects" isn't a statement about reality, but simply a definition of the word "everything."
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:e and pi are a part of everything
No, they're not. Nothing is "made" of "e" or "pi." Pi and e are descriptors that can be applied to things which exist; they are not themselves things which exist.
Saying that "pi" has independent existence is like saying that "red" has independent existence. You can talk about it as if it does, you can even come up with representations of it, but you can at no point actually point at it and say "that's pi." You can say "that symbol stands for pi" or "the length of that thing divided by the length of that other thing is what we call pi," but it's not actually a thing.
It's a descriptor. It doesn't actually exist, any more than the color "red" exists. It's a term we've come up with to describe specific attributes of things that do exist.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
If "everything" doesn't include every thing, I think the definition of "everything" has been stretched so much we can no longer communicate.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"Everything" includes every thing. As far as I'm concerned, "red" and "pi" are not things, unless of course you're seriously stretching the definition of "thing." Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
hah. nice Tom.
quote:The mental subsystems that are presiding over your selfhood and consciousness at that moment quickly edit your memory (via Orwellian or Stalinesque techniques... see Dennett) so that you remember in microseconds having "seen" this mental image (a virtual reality much easier to consciously comprehend than what really is happening in your brain).
this was interesting David. Can you explain more? or point me in the direction of some reading?
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
quote:Dennett's thesis is that our modern understanding of consciousness is unduly influenced by the ideas of René Descartes. To show why, he starts with a description of the phi illusion. In this experiment, two different coloured lights, with an angular separation of a few degrees at the eye, are flashed in succession. If the interval between the flashes is less than a second or so, the first light that is flashed appears to move across to the position of the second light. Furthermore, the light seems to change colour as it moves across the visual field. A green light will appear to turn red as it seems to move across to the position of a red light. Dennett asks how we could see the light change colour before the second light is observed.
Dennett claims that conventional explanations of the colour change boil down to either Orwellian or Stalinesque hypotheses, which he says are the result of Descartes' continued influence on our vision of the mind. In an Orwellian hypothesis, the subject comes to one conclusion, then goes back and changes that memory in light of subsequent events. This is akin to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, where records of the past are routinely altered. In a Stalinesque hypothesis, the two events would be reconciled prior to entering the subject's consciousness, with the final result presented as fully resolved. This is akin to Joseph Stalin's show trials, where the verdict has been decided in advance and the trial is just a rote presentation.
[W]e can suppose, both theorists have exactly the same theory of what happens in your brain; they agree about just where and when in the brain the mistaken content enters the causal pathways; they just disagree about whether that location is to be deemed pre-experiential or post-experiential. [...] [T]hey even agree about how it ought to "feel" to subjects: Subjects should be unable to tell the difference between misbegotten experiences and immediately misremembered experiences. [p.125, original emphasis.]
Dennett argues that there is no principled basis for picking one of these theories over the other, because they share a common error in supposing that there is a special time and place where unconscious processing becomes consciously experienced, entering into what Dennett calls the 'Cartesian theater'. Both theories require us to cleanly divide a sequence of perceptions and reactions into before and after the instant that they reach the seat of consciousness, but he denies that there is any such moment, as it would lead to infinite regress. Instead, he asserts that there is no privileged place in the brain where consciousness happens. Dennett states that, "[t]here does not exist [...] a process such as 'recruitment of consciousness'(into what?), nor any place where the 'vehicle's arrival' is recognized (by whom?)." [2]
"Cartesian materialism is the view that there is a crucial finish line or boundary somewhere in the brain, marking a place where the order of arrival equals the order of "presentation" in experience because what happens there is what you are conscious of. [...] Many theorists would insist that they have explicitly rejected such an obviously bad idea. But [...] the persuasive imagery of the Cartesian Theater keeps coming back to haunt us—laypeople and scientists alike—even after its ghostly dualism has been denounced and exorcized. [p.107, original emphasis.]
With no theater, there is no screen, hence no reason to re-present data after it has already been analyzed. Dennett says that, "the Multiple Drafts model goes on to claim that the brain does not bother 'constructing' any representations that go to the trouble of 'filling in' the blanks. That would be a waste of time and (shall we say?) paint. The judgement is already in so we can get on with other tasks!"
According to the model, there are a variety of sensory inputs from a given event and also a variety of interpretations of these inputs. The sensory inputs arrive in the brain and are interpreted at different times, so a given event can give rise to a succession of discriminations, constituting the equivalent of multiple drafts of a story. As soon as each discrimination is accomplished, it becomes available for eliciting a behaviour; it does not have to wait to be presented at the theatre.
You can see that I was wrong in attributing the editing view to Dennett... gah. Need to go back and read Consciousness Explained.
[ January 18, 2007, 08:59 AM: Message edited by: David Bowles ]
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Circular (no pun intended, those who are debating circularity). You say I need to prove that what you think you see is not actually being seen, but the truth is that you need to prove what precisely it means for something to be "non-physical" beyond its not "need[ing] a place."
Is this your roundabout way of saying you don't have proof for your position?
I would think being "non-physical" means it neither consists of nor can be accurately described in terms of physical particles, in addition to having no location in space.
quote:Do you understand from this quote the problem with your use of terms like "see"? If you have a soul or whatever, it hasn't got physical eyes, so its perception is unlikely to be the same as that as your physical body's.
Physical bodies don't actually "see" anything, in the way we think of it. They are just a collection of atoms. All they do is react in the ways the laws of nature makes them react. There is no entity there to see anything. You could call it "seeing" when the atoms of the eye react in the way that it does, and when other atoms in the body then respond, but this is not really "seeing" any more than a camera "sees". Cameras are collections of atoms too, and they also respond to light in certain ways. Yet, I don't think that is actually "seeing" or even "perceiving" as we actually think of it, because we are souls, not collections of atoms.
"Seeing" is actually a term to describe something that only souls can do. It is describing a specific sort of qualia (a specific type of experience.) We think of it as a sort of experience that can give us information about the physical world. Although, the world is not as we "see" it - trees and rocks are not really solid objects as they appear, but rather collections of atoms with lots of space in between.
If you think "seeing" is something physical bodies do with eyes, consider the case of a blind man who can see. There are numerous stories that discuss such a hypothetical person. Imagine that such a person actually lost their eyes, and thus have no eyes with which they could see. Imagine also that we do a brain scan and determine that none of the processes we'd associate with seeing are present in this guy's brain. But then imagine that in his mind he sees just like we do, and his sight accurately reflects the outside world just like ours does. Would you say he is "seeing"? I would think almost everyone would.
Now imagine the reverse. Imagine someone with good eyes whose brain is functioning in exactly the way a person who is "seeing" functions. Yet, also imagine that he experiences no vision in his mind - no colors, no shapes, only blackness, like it looks to you when your eyes are shut. Is this person "seeing"? I would say no. Even if his body began to act as if it knew the outside world as if it could see, I would still say no, if the conscious person himself could not picture the world outside in his mind the way I can.
Hence, "to see" is a thing souls do, not a thing physical bodies do.
But as I said before, our language is poorly equipped to handle this. Normally, at least while we are alive, the physical reactions are always present when the mental experience occurs. We have never had much reason to develop a language that distinguishes the two. We casually say stuff to our children like "you see with your eyes", without stopping to really consider if technically we do or not, because in practical life it usually doesn't matter.
quote:Again with my unicorn. Tres, would you dispute that when you are imagining a unicorn, something physical changes in your brain? Chemical or electrical potentials, whatever; the point is, something physical is happening.
At least while I am alive, it certainly seems like this is true. The brain and the mind seem to parallel one another.
But there is no reason to think it is necessarily always true, in other cases. For instance, it might be possible that dead people can also see unicorns, even though their brain is now gone. I wouldn't know one way or another, on that matter.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Also...
Strider, something to beware of when reading Dennett... I think he has a tendency to bury his actual argument under a lot of scientific and psychological side-issues which don't directly support his main point. The effect is that things sound complicated, and then radical assumptions can be slipped in almost unnoticed. Make sure you stop and consider what his actual fundamental argument is, and what assumptions he is using to base that argument upon.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Well, we need some terms to describe, well, everything. If we can't use thing, everything, real, exist, how can we refer to all, including pi and e? I'm pretty sure we'll lose "all" as well (are pi and e part of "all"?). And "is," if pi isn't part of all that is. Making it impossible to express thoughts you disagree with isn't philosophy; it's Newspeak.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
I was just at Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago and looking at some Dennett and some Bertrand Russell. I've been meaning to read both of them for some time now(Dawkins mentions them periodically in his writing too), but went with Russell. Been reading "Why I'm not a Christian" and other essays. "Why I'm not a Christian" was actually my least favorite essay of the bunch, maybe because I've heard those arguments so much already, there wasn't anything new.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
Read The Mind's I, which Dennett coauthored with Douglas Hofstadter. Then read Hofstadter's Göedel, Escher, Bach. Then read Dennett's Consciousness Explained.
Tres,
Lot of stuff in your definition of "seeing" that you can't prove, so it's real purdy and all, but no thanks. I'll stick with my more empirically supported speculation rather than switch to your intuitive folk psychology.
What is it in the soul that makes it see? Gah, the fact that you can't understand that you've just put the problem off by various steps is infuriating. You say that the body is just made up of atoms, and something like that can't see. Well, what the blazes is a soul made of? How are its constituent ingredients more adequate for making a seeing-capable being than atoms are? You explain nothing, you just wave your wand and postulate unprovable stuff to explain away the questions you don't want to face.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
I ownGoedel, Escher, Bach, but only just started reading it and haven't come back to it since. This was a little while ago, recommended by someone here at Hatrack actually. Fitz I think.
I'll add the books to my ever expanding reading list.
edit - I enjoyed what I read of Goedel, Escher, Bach, it was just a bit too dense for me at the time and I was reading other things. Been meaning to get back to it for a while.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Lot of stuff in your definition of "seeing" that you can't prove, so it's real purdy and all, but no thanks. I'll stick with my more empirically supported speculation rather than switch to your intuitive folk psychology.
What empirical support do you have?
I'm also not sure how it is even possible to empirically prove the definition of a concept like "to see". However, I did offer non-empirical proof - the example of the man with no eyes who can see, for instance.
quote:What is it in the soul that makes it see? Gah, the fact that you can't understand that you've just put the problem off by various steps is infuriating. You say that the body is just made up of atoms, and something like that can't see. Well, what the blazes is a soul made of? How are its constituent ingredients more adequate for making a seeing-capable being than atoms are?
A soul is just a soul - it cannot be divided into any parts or ingredients. It is not made up of anything, other than itself. Sort of like physical space. What is space made out of? What part of space allows it to have atoms in it? You can't answer these questions because space is a fundamental thing, with fundamental properties that exist for no other reason other than that's what the nature of physical space is.
One of the properties of the soul, I'd argue, is that it can experience qualia. And since sight is one of those experiences, the soul is able to see.
I don't think this same property is possessed by matter, hence I don't think matter can see. One could imagine matter having that property though - it would be like OSC's auia.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:"Seeing" is actually a term to describe something that only souls can do.
Can robots see? What about flatworms? Cats?
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
The difference between space and the soul is that at present physics considers space a fundamental as we have no present knowledge of any thing that constitutes it, but we certainly haven't, as you've done with the soul, completely discarded the possibility that it is made up of constituent bits.
quote:If you think "seeing" is something physical bodies do with eyes, consider the case of a blind man who can see. There are numerous stories that discuss such a hypothetical person. Imagine that such a person actually lost their eyes, and thus have no eyes with which they could see. Imagine also that we do a brain scan and determine that none of the processes we'd associate with seeing are present in this guy's brain. But then imagine that in his mind he sees just like we do, and his sight accurately reflects the outside world just like ours does. Would you say he is "seeing"? I would think almost everyone would.
Very pretty intuition pump.
1) if the man had seen before losing his eyes, then his brain would have learned how to compute visual input, and it would be able, as mine does even if I'm not looking at something, to put itself into that state and MIMIC SEEING, without the EM input.
2) if the man had never seen before, his brain couldn't do so, and so he could never MIMIC any EM-induced brain state. QED.
Your point is...?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:If we can't use thing, everything, real, exist...
We can. But tell me: is "green" part of everything? Is "happy?"
When you say "I want my burger with everything," are you not only referring to lettuce but also demanding that it be granted the property of "tastiness?"
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:It is not made up of anything, other than itself. Sort of like physical space. What is space made out of? What part of space allows it to have atoms in it?
If we suppose physical space is accurately represented by relativity, it actually has a lot of different parts. These parts serve different purposes, in a sense. For instance, a space's points are what allow things to be located within it. Its metric is what explains distances. Its curves are the paths objects can take through it.
Space has many parts that explain why it works the way it does. Conclusion: bad analogy.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:At least while I am alive, it certainly seems like this is true. The brain and the mind seem to parallel one another.
But there is no reason to think it is necessarily always true, in other cases. For instance, it might be possible that dead people can also see unicorns, even though their brain is now gone. I wouldn't know one way or another, on that matter.
Then, if you don't mind, try not to use such unsubstantiated concepts in the discussion. It's bad enough when people insist on gods.
Getting back to the point at hand, it seems you agree that as far as we can observe, imagining a unicorn is always accompanied by certain physical changes. Now, let's try it the other way. Suppose I were able to precisely replicate those physical changes in your brain - we'll do this at whatever level of detail you want, right down to what quantum mechanics actually forbids; it's a hypothetical question. Do you think you would then experience the sensation of imagining a unicorn?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:You say that the body is just made up of atoms, and something like that can't see. Well, what the blazes is a soul made of? How are its constituent ingredients more adequate for making a seeing-capable being than atoms are?
I'd just like to underscore how important this point of David's is.
In my experience, any phenomenon more complicated than simple motion is explained by relationships between the parts of a thing. Phenomenal consciousness is obviously a complicated and hard-to-understand thing. Seems much more likely, then, that a structured, complicated thing like a brain is the seat of consciousness, if the alternative explanation is a simple thing with no structure.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Yes, greenness and happiness are part of everything. I witnessed both today!
I'll assume the "burger with everything" comment was a joke? If not, I'll never order one again. I'd hate to get one that contained scorpions, the population of China, and the Cygnus X-1 black hole.
Posted by Leonide (Member # 4157) on :
*snerf*
i'm sorry. that was pretty funny.
am i allowed to laugh in such a serious, important thread about the nature of life, the universe, and everything?
;0p
[ January 22, 2007, 09:28 PM: Message edited by: Leonide ]
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
:pages Tresopax:
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Just read through. I think I'll take part for the pro-soul side, but too tired to do it justice right now.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:1) if the man had seen before losing his eyes, then his brain would have learned how to compute visual input, and it would be able, as mine does even if I'm not looking at something, to put itself into that state and MIMIC SEEING, without the EM input.
2) if the man had never seen before, his brain couldn't do so, and so he could never MIMIC any EM-induced brain state. QED.
Your point is...?
My example is a third option. The man never had eyes that functioned, and his brain never mimics any brain state, but he sees anyway. Can't you imagine such a person? I certainly can, and I know such characters have appeared in many stories throughout history. I could write one right now and I'd bet virtually all readers who weren't specifically intent on defending materialism from qualia would have no trouble imagining such a person. Hence, my point is that you can imagine someone seeing who is not processing signals through his eyes, therefore "seeing" must not literally mean to us the act of processing signals through our eyes. Rather, I'd argue, it is an experience, because I cannot imagine any character that actually "sees" who does not have an experience of it. Walking down the street, processing signals with my eyes, and thus not bumping into anything, but having only an experience of total blackness would not constitute seeing, I'd think.
This would be better termed a "introspection pump" rather than an "intuition pump" because it is a thought experiment designed to make you observe something about what you mean when you think of a certain concept - seeing. Introspection is critical in any discussion of the mind because many important aspects of the mind cannot be observed in any other way.
quote:If we suppose physical space is accurately represented by relativity, it actually has a lot of different parts. These parts serve different purposes, in a sense. For instance, a space's points are what allow things to be located within it. Its metric is what explains distances. Its curves are the paths objects can take through it.
So you would suggest space is made up of points, metrics, and curves.... I'm not sure I would call any of these components, but if so, what then are "points" made out of? What are curves made out of? Eventually any model of the universe is going to break down into fundamental things that are not built out of other things. And these fundamental things have properties that cannot be explained, except by saying that's simply the way they are.
quote:Suppose I were able to precisely replicate those physical changes in your brain - we'll do this at whatever level of detail you want, right down to what quantum mechanics actually forbids; it's a hypothetical question. Do you think you would then experience the sensation of imagining a unicorn?
I think it is likely, because as I said, the physical brain and mental experiences seem to be linked while we are alive.
quote:In my experience, any phenomenon more complicated than simple motion is explained by relationships between the parts of a thing. Phenomenal consciousness is obviously a complicated and hard-to-understand thing. Seems much more likely, then, that a structured, complicated thing like a brain is the seat of consciousness, if the alternative explanation is a simple thing with no structure.
I'd guess phenomenal consciousness IS a thing explained by the relationships between parts. The parts include many many brain cells and one mind, among other things. Or, so I believe. A mind by itself would just be an awareness, I'd think - a very simple sort of phenomenon. I would think that in order for that awareness to start having complicated experiences, something must induce it to have those experiences - such as a brain, or something else.
But this is just an assumption, based on my experience, which is like yours. It is possible that our experience is simply totally misleading, and that the mind is an exception to the rule that phenomenon tend to arise from the relationship of parts. There seem to be other exceptions after all. I'm not sure how the Pythagoreon Theorum can be explained by any "parts" of anything, for instance, but it is nevertheless an important phenomenon. The Universe's existence could be considered another - no relationship of parts within the universe explains why there is a universe there in the first place. It is possible the mind is like that, and does not depend on other things to create conscious experience as we know it - I can't really know for sure.
[ January 23, 2007, 11:09 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:I'd guess phenomenal consciousness IS a thing explained by the relationships between parts. The parts include many many brain cells and one mind, among other things. Or, so I believe. A mind by itself would just be an awareness, I'd think - a very simple sort of phenomenon. I would think that in order for that awareness to start having complicated experiences, something must induce it to have those experiences - such as a brain, or something else.
So a mind needs to be connected to a body in order to imagine colors? Because that's a complicated experience too, as you've pointed out.
Couldn't a body-less soul make decisions or form opinions? Those also seem like complex activities.
I've said it before: the soul, as you envision it, doesn't seem to have much it can do.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:The man never had eyes that functioned, and his brain never mimics any brain state, but he sees anyway. Can't you imagine such a person?
No. I can imagine someone without eyes whose brain state relies on other sources to produce a sense equivalent to eyesight and thus "sees," but I cannot imagine that someone without eyes OR the ability to induce the appropriate brain state can "see."
(Note: there are substitute senses that can permit people to perceive the world around them, but they do not mimic or resemble "sight." I submit that, to do this, your brain would need to interpret incoming sense impressions as "sight.")
quote:I think it is likely, because as I said, the physical brain and mental experiences seem to be linked while we are alive.
Since you grant this point, Tres, would you also grant that since drugs and surgeries can substantially alter someone's perceptions AND reactions to those perceptions, that drugs and surgeries can also alter someone's soul? If not, what happens when they die? Does their essential nature revert back to what it was before the drugs were applied? Is their essential nature never changed, but forced to "watch" as a wall of drugs and surgeries separates it from the brain, its preferred interface with the world?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:So a mind needs to be connected to a body in order to imagine colors? Because that's a complicated experience too, as you've pointed out.
Couldn't a body-less soul make decisions or form opinions? Those also seem like complex activities.
I'm not sure, because I am not and can't ever remember being a bodyless soul. I would think probably not, but that too is just a guess.
I assume a body-less soul would experience something but I couldn't really guess what that would be. For an atheist, one might might imagine it to be like a TV tuned to static. I believe in God though, so I assume God would dictate whatever it is the soul experiences when not attached to a body.
quote:I've said it before: the soul, as you envision it, doesn't seem to have much it can do.
Quite the opposite - the soul experiences, which is the single most important ingredient to our lives. Without experience, all other things are just a collection of meaningless abstractions that we call "particles". Trees, cars, ice cream cones, etc. are all only meaningful through the ways in which we experience them - their colors, tastes, feeling, value to us, and so on. Imagine a code of seemingless meaningless number that fills millions and millions of sheets of paper, but without any key with which we can interpret the code into anything meaningful. That would be the universe without qualia.
True, it seems the soul without something to experience is not terribly useful - but a universe without souls to experience it is not terribly useful either.
quote:No. I can imagine someone without eyes whose brain state relies on other sources to produce a sense equivalent to eyesight and thus "sees," but I cannot imagine that someone without eyes OR the ability to induce the appropriate brain state can "see."
Fair enough - I guess the example won't convince you then. But if that is true, I don't think you are very imaginative.
quote:Since you grant this point, Tres, would you also grant that since drugs and surgeries can substantially alter someone's perceptions AND reactions to those perceptions, that drugs and surgeries can also alter someone's soul?
They can alter what the soul experiences, yes. In fact, it seems to happen to people all the time who use drugs, etc.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:
quote: Suppose I were able to precisely replicate those physical changes in your brain - we'll do this at whatever level of detail you want, right down to what quantum mechanics actually forbids; it's a hypothetical question. Do you think you would then experience the sensation of imagining a unicorn?
I think it is likely, because as I said, the physical brain and mental experiences seem to be linked while we are alive.
Good, we agree on this. In that case, what possible grounds do you have for postulating a soul? We've agreed that there is a one-to-one correspondence between changes in the brain and experience; where are you going to put the soul, then?
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:Quite the opposite - the soul experiences, which is the single most important ingredient to our lives.
What about making decisions and acting on them? If the soul is only the seat of experience, and not of decision-making, why is it that my soul (I presume) deserves and will receive heavenly reward? Or hellish punishment, if you believe in that.
Getting more philosophically technical, I tend toward the view (Donald Davidson's, I think) that only a creature with desires can properly be said to have beliefs, and vice versa.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:We've agreed that there is a one-to-one correspondence between changes in the brain and experience; where are you going to put the soul, then?
There is typically a one-to-one correspondence between lightning and thunder. That doesn't mean they are the same thing.
quote:What about making decisions and acting on them? If the soul is only the seat of experience, and not of decision-making, why is it that my soul (I presume) deserves and will receive heavenly reward?
My guess would be that decision-making is a process that entails both a soul and a body, although my confidence on that is not very good. It seems to be impacted by both - messing around with my brain can alter my decision making without seeming to alter my experiences, and yet I can also imagine that experiencing pain differently would alter my decisions too. The trouble is that it is unclear how the soul and brain would interact - in fact, it violates physics as we currently understand it, if a non-physical soul were to someone influence how my body makes decisions. As a result, I'm hesitant to make any claims about where the seat of decision making is.
However, I don't believe souls "deserve" heavenly rewards, so to speak. I don't think it works like that. Even if the soul IS the seat of decision-making, those decisions are still going to be predetermined by whatever the nature of the soul is, just like how the decisions of a brain in a materialist model would be predetermined by the nature of that brain. It is not really fair to credit or blame a soul for what its nature makes it choose, I'd argue.
Instead, like I've said in the past, I think all people are good people, because their nature is to try to do the right thing. I believe the trouble is that circumstances distort things to the point where what seems right is actually wrong. I don't think they should be blamed or credited for either of these. Rather I think they should simply be valued (or loved, to use the Christian way of talking about it). And for that reason, I think God would put everyone in heaven if He could, and if that were truly the best thing for each soul. I don't think whether or not they "deserve" it factors in. Instead, my guess is that if good decisions increase the likelihood of a heavenly reward, it is only because for some reason it is harmful to put souls that have made wrongful decisions in heaven. I don't have any real insight into the afterlife though, so I can't really speculate on why this might happen.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:They can alter what the soul experiences, yes.
You mistake my meaning. By giving you specific drugs, I can make you angry, happy, sad, paranoid, satisfied, hungry, etc. Some of these changes are permanent: I can make you MORE angry, less intelligent, etc.
Is "intelligence" a property of the soul? If I can make you less intelligent with drugs, am I making your SOUL less intelligent?
If emotions aren't properties of the soul, what's left for the soul?
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
Tresopax, I can also imagine a walking skeleton that sees, feels and whistles "Dixie." I don't see how that's a proof of anything.
Posted by lynn johnson (Member # 9620) on :
Fascinating thread, I am sorry I just came in so late. The philosophy stuff leaves me dizzy, so I won't attempt to contribute.
Strider asked originally where religion came from. I suspect it is from the ubiquity of paranormal experiences. Every society I am aware of reports ghosts, out-of-body experieces, visions and intuitions (that come true), and so on. So the parsimonious explanation is that there is another level of experience that we experience occasionally. Then we attribute all sorts of meaning to the core experience, hence religions.
Too often we describe "primitive" societies as ignorant and superstitious. My experience is different. What little experience I have makes me respect individuals in those societies. They are incredibly resourceful and wise, or they are dead (Alaska natives; Southwest Indians). When they describe their religions, they seem to come from very unusual but real experiences.
Twenty years ago I interviewed 32 NDE survivors. That was an astonishing experience and changed me profoundly. There is a scientific organization for that sort of thing (www.iands.org). Pim Van Lommel's article is insightful, worth a read. He also has a commentary on Scientific American's shameful misrepresenting of his _Lancet_ article on www.nderf.org.
I also just finished Deborah Blum's amazing book, _Ghost Hunters_ and found it worthwhile.
Well, there is no proof of life after death, but there are some hints. Tom's Materialism doesn't stand up if you look at Radin's random number generator results, for example. But no proof.
Perhaps God wants the universe to be a Rorschach, something that brings out our own projections. So it must always be - at a fundamental level - ambiguous. Hence, I have no interest in convincing people, but I would like to contribute to the discussion.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote: If emotions aren't properties of the soul, what's left for the soul?
Thoughts perhaps? Can you administer chemicals that make me THINK about specific things?
Posted by lynn johnson (Member # 9620) on :
Tom, emotions and experiences - if you accept the remote viewing / NDE line of data - are things that the soul _observes_. All experiences are good for learning and growth, at least according to those viewpoints.
Does that help?
johnson
Posted by Destineer (Member # 821) on :
quote:My guess would be that decision-making is a process that entails both a soul and a body, although my confidence on that is not very good. It seems to be impacted by both - messing around with my brain can alter my decision making without seeming to alter my experiences, and yet I can also imagine that experiencing pain differently would alter my decisions too.
That's inconsistent with the possibility of zombies who are physically identical to us but experientially different. But most dualists believe in the possibility of zombies. It seems like if your man with no optical brain signals, and yet who can see, is possible, zombies ought to be.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote: If emotions aren't properties of the soul, what's left for the soul?
Thoughts perhaps? Can you administer chemicals that make me THINK about specific things?
At this time the technology is not good enough. We can, however, give you drugs to make you not think about things, as in Prozac for depression. Would you like to dispute the possibility in principle?
quote:There is typically a one-to-one correspondence between lightning and thunder. That doesn't mean they are the same thing.
Yes they are; to wit, they are both effects of large-scale ionisation discharges. But there is absolutely no reason to think that such a common cause exists for physical changes in the brain (after all, we can induce those from outside, if crudely) and thoughts; it is much more reasonable to assume that thoughts are caused by the physical changes. So why this insistence on an additional step?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote: At this time the technology is not good enough. We can, however, give you drugs to make you not think about things, as in Prozac for depression. Would you like to dispute the possibility in principle?
Yes. You can prevent me from experiencing the sensation of depression. You certainly cannot control whether or not I think about an idea or an event.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
I stopped your depression by controlling whether or not you obsessively think about a particular idea or event. That's a crude level of control, but then the technology is in its infancy.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Are you sure its not sometimes otherway around? As in, I feel the sensation of depression and in response think about something sad that has happened which reinforces a habit of thinking about it whenever I feel the depression.
If I dwell on something sad, I become depressed. By doing it repeatedly I start associating that memory with depression, and vice versa.
Certainly your medication can't make me not think about the event. All it can do is tell my brain to stop producing the depression chemicals or produce the chemicals that cause euphoria.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Certainly your medication can't make me not think about the event.
Before I give you the medication, you think about it X times a day. Afterwards, you think about it Y << X times a day. That's control.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Certainly your medication can't make me not think about the event.
Before I give you the medication, you think about it X times a day. Afterwards, you think about it Y << X times a day. That's control.
Not if you are merely removing the stimulus that produces the response. The response in this case being me thinking about a specific event that was sad.
You are more removing a restraint I have created for myself more then directing what I think about.
People with clinical depression have brains that produce the depressing chemicals more than is healthy. Medication simply restores the balance Its not like the medication make me think about of specific events that make me happy. It simply creates the chemical that I interpret as happiness. What I will then think about is not something you can simply predict using any scientific method.
I am pretty certain there will NEVER be a way to chemically cause a person to think about say a brick.
edit: There may be a way to stimulate the brain into perceiving a brick. You can even do it so often that I start focusing on the bricks and it becomes something that is always on my mind. But that is because I have chosen to think about the bricks, and it has become a habit. You cannot make me think about a brick.
double edit: Do you think perhaps we should create a new thread about this topic as it is not directly related to the original premise?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:I am pretty certain there will NEVER be a way to chemically cause a person to think about say a brick.
Bets? Watch closely, now, there may be questions afterwards.
DON'T THINK ABOUT PURPLE RHINOCERI!
Now then. Did you think, even for a moment, about purple rhinoceri? And I didn't even have to use any chemicals. Honestly, this is trivial.
quote:You are more removing a restraint I have created for myself more then directing what I think about.
A purely semantic difference and completely uninteresting. I changed the frequency of your thoughts about <whatever>; therefore I control what you think about.
Posted by lynn johnson (Member # 9620) on :
Does depression influence the soul? I imagine so. So what about the chemicals?
Actually, chemicals have a fairly weak effect on things like depression. The effect size is about .2, according to an Archives of General Psychiatry article a couple of years ago. Struggling with the depression has a larger effect size, around .8, so that which causes the soul to grow, struggling with meaning and behavior, has more impact.
Chemical control of thinking is still almost unimaginable to those of us in the field. I would use the word "influence" since control is too strong a case. King's comment is in the realm of thought experiment.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Lynn, are you seriously referring to the "Global Consciousness Project" as a disproof of materialism? Leaving aside the "project's" truly God-awful (heh) methodology, the simple fact is that "psychic phenomena" are not disproofs of materialism if in fact there are physical causes for the results. In other words, if a gland in my brain makes it possible for me to control gravitons or something and thus levitate spoons, I haven't disproved "materialism;" I've just demonstrated a new non-supernatural ability.
quote:Can you administer chemicals that make me THINK about specific things?
What if I could? Research at LEAST as credible as the random number stuff cited above claims to have, in at least one woman, isolated a specific neurological stimulus that, of all things, appears to make her dependably think of Bill Clinton. I think it's very likely, based on what little we know about the way the brain stores information, that these stimuli would vary from person to person (and often change on the fly), but I think it's not much of a stretch at all to imagine that it'd someday be possible.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Tresopax, I can also imagine a walking skeleton that sees, feels and whistles "Dixie." I don't see how that's a proof of anything.
It means that there is nothing in what you mean by "seeing", "feeling", and "whistling Dixie" that inherently precludes skeletons from being able to do them - which is true. In contrast, I bet you can't imagine a skeleton that has no bones, because presumably what you mean by a skeleton is something made of bones.
quote:Is "intelligence" a property of the soul? If I can make you less intelligent with drugs, am I making your SOUL less intelligent?
If emotions aren't properties of the soul, what's left for the soul?
The answer to the first question, I think, is no. My computer is intelligent. It doesn't need a soul for that.
As for the second question, I answered that before. At a minimum, I believe souls allows us to have awareness - to experience qualia. This is an absolutely critical function because the entire world as we know it is only meaningful through the ways in which it is experienced.
The soul might be necessary for other things as well, but I can't offer proof for those. I can only speculate.
quote:That's inconsistent with the possibility of zombies who are physically identical to us but experientially different.
I believe choice is, at least in part, an experience. Therefore a zombie with no experience cannot choose. It would be like my computer. My computer DOES things, but it doesn't CHOOSE what to do. It just does what it is programmed to do. You could easily make a zombie that does all the same things I do, but it wouldn't be making choices, I'd think.
As far as why I choose what I choose, you could make a zombie that chooses all the same things I do, but that wouldn't mean my soul doesn't influence my choices. It just means you can't prove, looking from the outside, that a soul is influencing my choices.
quote:But there is absolutely no reason to think that such a common cause exists for physical changes in the brain (after all, we can induce those from outside, if crudely) and thoughts; it is much more reasonable to assume that thoughts are caused by the physical changes. So why this insistence on an additional step?
I never said thoughts aren't caused by physical changes. I never said experiences aren't caused by physical changes, either. I said experiences aren't physical. And my reason for this is that I can observe, directly in my mind, that they are not something made of matter - not unlike how I observe thunder is not something you see.
quote:In other words, if a gland in my brain makes it possible for me to control gravitons or something and thus levitate spoons, I haven't disproved "materialism;" I've just demonstrated a new non-supernatural ability.
This illustrates an interesting point about materialism: Science can never disprove it. It is a bias actually built into the scientific method. That is because science studies only the objectively measurable - which includes only material things. Then it builds a theory to predict future observations of material things. Because both ends of the process end with materiali things, anyone who follows Occam's Razor will never include any non-material thing in the middle of the process. Why have a model that says MATERIAL CAUSE->NONMATERIAL EFFECT->MATERIAL EFFECT, when the nonmaterial effect can't be observed by the scientific method, and you could more simply just say MATERIAL CAUSE->MATERIAL EFFECT?
Thus science is an excellent way of predicting material effects based on material causes, but may be a biased and incomplete way of actually determining the truth about how the whole universe works. It intentionally ignores all but a certain sort of evidence.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:It just means you can't prove, looking from the outside, that a soul is influencing my choices.
Which means, for the purposes of inquiry, that the soul is irrelevant.
quote:And my reason for this is that I can observe, directly in my mind, that they are not something made of matter
No, you can't. That's like saying that you can observe in your mind that unicorns are not purple. You can assert it, but you can't observe it.
quote:It intentionally ignores all but a certain sort of evidence.
Here's the reason: because any other sort of evidence (by which I mean "evidence that doesn't exist," by which I mean "evidence which has no existence in or correlation to physical reality") is completely irrelevant. By which I mean it's completely non-predictive, and thus useless.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Which means, for the purposes of inquiry, that the soul is irrelevant.
Why would it mean that? All it means is that for the purpose of inquiry by an external observer, you can't prove there is a soul influencing someone's choice or not.
Yet there are many relevant things that can't be proven. The existence of all things physical is one.
quote:No, you can't. That's like saying that you can observe in your mind that unicorns are not purple. You can assert it, but you can't observe it.
Why not?
quote:Here's the reason: because any other sort of evidence (by which I mean "evidence that doesn't exist," by which I mean "evidence which has no existence in or correlation to physical reality") is completely irrelevant. By which I mean it's completely non-predictive, and thus useless.
I'd argue this is one of the most dangerous mistaken beliefs that exists in modern society. Can you support it?
There are at least three mistaken assumptions here: 1. It is false to say that non-predictive evidence is useless. There are uses of knowledge beyond predicting things. 2. It is false to say that non-physical evidence is non-predictive. For instance, I can predict a whole lot about myself simply based on observations of my non-physical mind. 3. It is false to assume that science only excludes non-physical evidence. Science also excludes all sorts of physical evidence - including anything that cannot be experimentally repeated and anything that cannot be quantified.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Why would it mean that? All it means is that for the purpose of inquiry by an external observer, you can't prove there is a soul influencing someone's choice or not. Yet there are many relevant things that can't be proven. The existence of all things physical is one.
Sure. Which means that "physical things exist" is axiomatic. You can assert that the "soul" is axiomatic, if you'd like, but I find it difficult to imagine what utility you'll derive from that premise.
quote:Why not?
How exactly do you intend to observe that your thoughts are non-physical? What other non-physical things can you compare them to, and what methods do you have for perceiving and observing non-physical "things?"
quote:There are uses of knowledge beyond predicting things.
Name one.
quote:For instance, I can predict a whole lot about myself simply based on observations of my non-physical mind.
I don't believe you have a non-physical mind. I think it's quite likely that you can predict quite a lot about yourself based on what you know of your mind, but asserting off the bat that your mind is "non-physical" is a non-starter.
quote:Science also excludes all sorts of physical evidence - including anything that cannot be experimentally repeated and anything that cannot be quantified.
Not necessarily. Science actually admits such evidence; it just doesn't use it to build categorical cases. "Science" is perfectly willing to discuss possibilities and probabilities based on anecdotal observations, although -- like all sensible approaches -- it does so as a last resort.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:How exactly do you intend to observe that your thoughts are non-physical? What other non-physical things can you compare them to, and what methods do you have for perceiving and observing non-physical "things?"
It is simply a property of experience that it is directly observable to the person experiencing it. If there is a method or process behind it, I don't understand that process - but that doesn't change the fact that I can observe the experiences in my mind. What reason can you give to suggest I can't?
(Note: Telling me I can't explain how it happens is no reason to conclude it doesn't, as many things do in fact happen that I don't know how they happen.)
quote:Name one.
One of the most important uses of knowledge, other than predicting things, is figuring out what is good and what is bad. Predicting things is useless unless you know which outcomes you want and which outcomes you don't want.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:If there is a method or process behind it, I don't understand that process - but that doesn't change the fact that I can observe the experiences in my mind.
I suspect that you're using "observe" very differently than I am. Are you simply saying that you are aware of experiencing things, and aware of that awareness, and that this awareness does not seem to you to possess a physical component? And that therefore it should be safe to assume that it does not?
quote:One of the most important uses of knowledge, other than predicting things, is figuring out what is good and what is bad.
Can you tell me -- in a way which does not rely on prediction -- what is good and what is bad?
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Ah so - "You can't disprove the soul", the final argument of the desperate theist. You can't disprove the IPU either, but I don't see you believing in that.
As for your anecdotal 'evidence' of experience being non-material, sorry, you observe no such thing. You're observing at the wrong level. Let me take an analogy from traffic: In one pattern of cars, we say that traffic is free-flowing; in another, we call it gridlocked. But it would make no sense to say that an individual car is gridlocked. To see the gridlock, you have to take a step back and observe the whole thing. But with the brain, at least one's own brain, you don't have the option of seeing the details; you only see the overall pattern. So, in one state, we say that you are "seeing red" or "imagining a unicorn". We can't see the individual microstates that lead to these macrostates, so it looks as though they are unphysical. But to say that these are not physical properties of the brain is just as silly as claiming that gridlock is not a physical property of the city traffic.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Are you simply saying that you are aware of experiencing things, and aware of that awareness, and that this awareness does not seem to you to possess a physical component? And that therefore it should be safe to assume that it does not?
I'm curious too. What is it about "observing" your experience that makes it non-physical? Your consciosness produces this "awareness" of your surroundings and some of your internal states. Why is this awareness non-physical in nature?
Whatever you want to call it, experience, awareness, consciousness...they're all just words that describe concepts. concepts whose components are all physical in nature. just because the sum total of these components "seem" to you to be non-physical, doesn't mean there is a basis to assert this.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:I suspect that you're using "observe" very differently than I am. Are you simply saying that you are aware of experiencing things, and aware of that awareness, and that this awareness does not seem to you to possess a physical component? And that therefore it should be safe to assume that it does not?
No, I am saying that there are things I know are in my mind that I am calling experiences (although it is more like a continuous indivisible stream of experience), and it does not fit various criteria for being physical. It cannot be broken into parts, be rebuilt out of matter outside my mind, I cannot study it objectively, I cannot communicate its nature to you, etc. Also unlike physical things, they can be examined by me in a direct way that does not rely on any assumptions (examining physical things relies on the assumptions that my eyes tell the truth, that my senses tell the truth, and that I am generally not hallucinating about what I am observing.) This is why I can know that these experiences exist, and know that they don't fit certain criteria for being physical - because I can examine them directly in a way that physical things cannot be examined.
That's just how experiences are. If you don't believe me, my guess is that only introspection will convince you of it. (Although there are some philosophical arguments that will point you in the right direction, which is what I'd like to try to do. )
quote:Can you tell me -- in a way which does not rely on prediction -- what is good and what is bad?
I'm not sure any philsopher or person in all of history has ever given an accurate explanation of what distinguishes good from bad. So, no, I can't.
However, I can tell you some things that I think are generally bad or generally good. Pain, for instance, is generally bad. That's an easy one - and yet you could do no physical experiment to show it is true. It relies on our own personal experience of pain, and our knowledge that the experience is bad.
quote:Whatever you want to call it, experience, awareness, consciousness...they're all just words that describe concepts. concepts whose components are all physical in nature. just because the sum total of these components "seem" to you to be non-physical, doesn't mean there is a basis to assert this.
What is your basis for asserting that they are physical? If there is no basis either way, why should I not go with what "seems" to be true?
[ January 24, 2007, 03:25 PM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:I am pretty certain there will NEVER be a way to chemically cause a person to think about say a brick.
Bets? Watch closely, now, there may be questions afterwards.
DON'T THINK ABOUT PURPLE RHINOCERI!
Now then. Did you think, even for a moment, about purple rhinoceri? And I didn't even have to use any chemicals. Honestly, this is trivial.
No it isn't. All you did was mention an object and in response I visualized it. And since your command was to not think about it, I corrected the response by ceasing to think about it. Congratulations you have proven that I have reflexes that I have developed since birth. So what am I thinking about now? After your momentary stimulus has ended, its back to business and I decide what I am thinking about. I even decide HOW I would like to to think about it. Your example is like saying that because my spinal cord controls quick motor reflexes that therefore its the same thing as my brain.
quote:You are more removing a restraint I have created for myself more then directing what I think about.
A purely semantic difference and completely uninteresting. I changed the frequency of your thoughts about <whatever>; therefore I control what you think about.
Its not semantics at all. I created the link between the event and the chemical that causes depression. Whenever the chemical is produced I by habit dwell on the sad event. You remove the improper chemical and thus I am less prone to thinking about the sad event. Its the same thing as throwing all the cookies out of the jar so your kid stops seeing them and is prompted to ask you for one. You didn't make your kid unable to think about cookies, or even canceled the thought midthink (yes I created a word). All you did was remove what will likely cause the thought to come up.
Or does your mind run constantly on stimulus/response? Are you completely incapable of controlling your thoughts? Are your thoughts all reflexes then? If you can control your thoughts, where does that control come from? I don't know about you but sometimes I have thoughts that I know are bad or improper, and I have to consciously decide to not think about them. What gives me that ability?
I would argue your soul is what ultimately governs the river of your thoughts. But I would be willing to concede that evidence indicates that its probable your soul and your brain are very thoroughly connected.
Tom: I'd like to see the "research" and the case study of that woman before I respond as if what you said was fact.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:It cannot be broken into parts, be rebuilt out of matter outside my mind, I cannot study it objectively, I cannot communicate its nature to you, etc.
Before I challenge any of these points, can I ask why these are your criteria for "physicality?"
quote: That's an easy one - and yet you could do no physical experiment to show it is true. It relies on our own personal experience of pain, and our knowledge that the experience is bad.
You just broke your own argument. The idea that "pain" is "bad" relies on a definition of "bad" which means "undesirable." Once we've defined "bad" as something which we do not desire, things we do not desire can easily be considered "bad." Only if we desired pain (either because we enjoyed it, or because we felt it was necessary) would it not be "bad" in any given situation.
We have no knowledge or experience of "bad." We have created the useful fiction of "badness," and assigned it a value that eventually ties directly back into physicality. We then classify as "bad" those things which possess the real-world attributes that we've defined as "bad."
There's nothing in the idea "pain is bad" that relies on a single non-physical experience. It uses some semantic fictions, but semantics aren't things.
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quote:I'd like to see the "research" and the case study of that woman before I respond as if what you said was fact.
quote:What is your basis for asserting that they are physical? If there is no basis either way, why should I not go with what "seems" to be true?
My basis is that everything else in the known universe is physical. Everything I see is particles interacting with eachother. Everything in the universe is made up of the same stuff all interacting in different ways. And they all interact based on simple rules. It "seems" to you that there is something non-physical happening when you experience things, the same way it "seems" to you that you are looking at a real solid monitor on a real solid desk on a real solid floor. But just because you can't see the true nature of what makes up your physical world, does't mean there is anything mystical or magical or non-physical about what is really going on. And by the same token, just because your personal experience "seems" to be something non-physical, doesn't mean that it isn't all based on those same laws that govern everything else. And honestly, what possible reason would there be for the particular combination of atoms that makes me up to suddenly produce some sort of non-physical conscious entity that doesn't exist in 99.9999999% of all the other combinations of atoms in the universe?
Where were these souls for most of the history of the universe? Where were these souls during the millions of years we evolved? When did they decide to enter our bodies(and no other creatures bodies)? What did we do to become worthy? And isn't it a little coincidental, that according to your view they decided to merge with us around the same time we developed enough awareness to experience the world around us in a conscious manner?
Add to all this all the knowledge we've acquired about how our bodies work, how our brain functions, what is really happening internally, etc...we understand our behavior, actions, emotions now in relation to the physical processes that govern them, and we're learning more and more about the brain and thus about our conscious experience.
So given all this, what possible reason could I have to posit the idea of something non-physical occuring in my mind when I experience things. It seems to me that you're saying something along the lines of, "these concepts we're talking about can't be physical because they're *concepts*!" Well sure, of course. and you're right, the soul can't be physical, because it's just a concept. Which makes it a concept, not real.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
You know, over the years many of us jatraqueros have had very similar discussions to this one, and they always reach a similar impasse... to me it seems that Tresopax and those who think like him simply come to the debate wanting to believe in the soul; while there are some in the materialist camp who also come to the table wanting to disprove the existence of the soul, most of us, I'd wager, have been slowly converted to our materialism from earlier, different philosophical stances. For example, I was a fundamental Christian as a teenager, and I entered college gung-ho about defending my faith in the classroom (my minor was philosophy for that first year). Very slowly, over a period of nine years, the weight of the evidence dragged me away from my dualist vision. Believe me, I scoured the research and racked my brain for a legitimate way to continue believing in the soul... I really, really wanted there to be one... but by the time I was 27, I had been convinced by the depth and breadth of our present knowledge about the universe that there simply COULD NOT EXIST A SPIRITUAL PLANE. Not a fun conclusion. The next nine years (up to the present) have been a search on my part to find the beauty in meaning in THE WAY THINGS REALLY ARE. There is quite a bit of it. I don't need a soul to MEAN. Qualia don't have to exist for my experiences to have VALUE. Granted, it isn't an objective value, but I don't give a damn about that. The subjective, virtual meaning they have works just fine for me.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I think we *started* the soul discussion at an impasse, since we didn't define "soul," and I don't know what people mean by it.
Now, I gave examples of things that exist and are non-physical, and ended up with a lack of agreement on what "thing" and "exist" mean. This is an effective way of _stopping_ thought about an issue by ensuring that there are no terms for discussing it. But if we allow sufficient terms to discuss things that some people say aren't things (the word "thing" is really the only thing general enough to apply), then we could go further.
We could discuss whether the soul is something like pi and e; or whether it's something like a spleen; or something of its own type. Of course, we still wouldn't reach an agreement, but I think our dissent would end up as something more like "the soul is merely an epiphenomenon of brain function" or "the soul is more than those things, and here's what." That might be interesting.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:to me it seems that Tresopax and those who think like him simply come to the debate wanting to believe in the soul; while there are some in the materialist camp who also come to the table wanting to disprove the existence of the soul, most of us, I'd wager, have been slowly converted to our materialism from earlier, different philosophical stances. For example, I was a fundamental Christian as a teenager, and I entered college gung-ho about defending my faith in the classroom (my minor was philosophy for that first year). Very slowly, over a period of nine years, the weight of the evidence dragged me away from my dualist vision. Believe me, I scoured the research and racked my brain for a legitimate way to continue believing in the soul... I really, really wanted there to be one... but by the time I was 27, I had been convinced by the depth and breadth of our present knowledge about the universe that there simply COULD NOT EXIST A SPIRITUAL PLANE.
And my story is quite the opposite. I am a moderate Christian who originally believed atoms could explain all important things about me in life, including all my thoughts and feelings. That was because I believed firmly in science's ability to study everything, given everything it has correctly told us about the world over the past few centuries. The idea of a mind floating around somewhere seemed to me as crazy as believing that ghosts were haunting my house. I trusted science far too much to accept something like that. I did believe in a soul, but to me that was an abstraction.
It was only as a philosophy major in college, being exposed to the arguments for and against dualism, that I slowly changed my mind. Several of the arguments designed to illustrate the non-physical nature of qualia seemed compelling to me, and I could not figure out how to explain them in any physical way. The more I read materialists philosophers trying to resolve those problems, the more I got the impression that they were entering the discussion wanting to find any way they could to avoid admitting a soul. Materialists would try increasingly convoluted arguments, or try to assert assumptions that just didn't make sense. It reminded me of those who believe the Bible is literally true, and will bend over backwards to try and explain things in a way to make the world seem consistent with the Bible. Materialists argued in the same fashion, except instead of Religion driving it, it seemed to be a desire to affirm Science. (Given the ascension of science in academia, I think philosophers are afraid to sound wacky by expressing support for an idea that sounds very unscientific at first - I think many very much want to try and reconcile philosophy with what science assumes is true.)
I do remember the moment I finally changed my mind, because I decided to write a paper on it - and I couldn't figure out what side to take. I was sitting in my dorm room trying to figure out if I was actually experiencing the bright orange sunset outside my window, or if I was just reporting to myself that I was experiencing it. Eventually, after a great deal of thought, I concluded that I could not just be reporting it without actually experiencing it - that would create a sort of paradox, because the report is still an experience itself. It would be logically consistent for an outside observer to believe I was merely reporting it to myself, when viewed from the outside, but internally I could be absolutely certain I was experiencing it. It was at this point I changed positions, and I have yet to get an answer from materialism that allows me to explain that very simple yet important problem.
So, I know what it is like to believe in materialism. I am aware of the difficulty in rejecting a sort of paradigm that science has found so successful. There is a very strong motivation to WANT to believe in materialism, to make the world more simply explained, and to be consistent with the current popular scientific view. However, the evidence is just too compelling. Unless some solution I can't imagine comes around someday to explain away that evidence in an honest way that does not rely on assumptions that just don't appear to be true, I can't accept materialism.
quote:Before I challenge any of these points, can I ask why these are your criteria for "physicality?"
Because physical things seem to always have these features. It is possible that the mind is a physical thing that is totally unlike all other physical things, but that seems to dilute the concept of "physical" into something meaningless to me.
quote:There's nothing in the idea "pain is bad" that relies on a single non-physical experience. It uses some semantic fictions, but semantics aren't things."
Why else would pain be bad? It is useful from an evolutionary standpoint - creatures that don't feel pain don't realize when they are injured, and thus die rather easily. The only reason we consider pain to be bad is because the experience itself is undesireable to us. If it weren't for the experience, pain would be like that warning light that tells me when my car is running out of gas - there's nothing bad about that.
quote:My basis is that everything else in the known universe is physical. Everything I see is particles interacting with eachother. Everything in the universe is made up of the same stuff all interacting in different ways. And they all interact based on simple rules.
This is circular. You are asserting your conclusion (everything is physical) in order to justify that conclusion. I'd say many things in the universe are not physical.
quote:Where were these souls for most of the history of the universe? Where were these souls during the millions of years we evolved? When did they decide to enter our bodies(and no other creatures bodies)? What did we do to become worthy? And isn't it a little coincidental, that according to your view they decided to merge with us around the same time we developed enough awareness to experience the world around us in a conscious manner?
The souls may have been around forever, or may have been created when we were.
I assume it is not a coincidence that they are merged with our physical bodies in whatever way they are. I assume there is something about our bodies that results in this happening. None of this is a reason not to believe in souls.
quote:So given all this, what possible reason could I have to posit the idea of something non-physical occuring in my mind when I experience things.
Because experience is inconsistent with the properties of physical things, as I talked about in earlier posts. They aren't "concepts". They are experiences.
That convinces me that the soul is either nonphysical, or a physical thing that can somehow generate nonphysical experiences (like an auia).
[ January 25, 2007, 11:08 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Now, I gave examples of things that exist and are non-physical, and ended up with a lack of agreement on what "thing" and "exist" mean.
Here's the deal: if the soul is something like "pi" or "e," a definitional concept used to describe a property of something -- and not a thing itself -- then it's just another convenient fiction, just like "pi" or "e". In that context, we'd use the word "soul" as a convenient shorthand, an abstration, for "the bunch of inputs and outputs that make up your sense of self."
quote:I concluded that I could not just be reporting it without actually experiencing it....
Again, I think your use of the word "experience" here is very broken.
quote:Why else would pain be bad?
Again, pain exists. "Badness" does not exist. Badness is something we broadly define as something that is undesirable. If we do not desire a given sensation of pain, pain is therefore -- to us -- bad. If we conclude that pain is in general undesired, we can speak broadly of "pain" being "bad." That does not mean that pain is empirically bad, as if "badness" were some inherent property of the universe; badness does not carry a charge or spin in a given "direction." Pain is bad because the concept of "badness" we invented is delimited in a manner that includes pain.
quote:I'd say many things in the universe are not physical.
And I would ask you to demonstrate one.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Badness is something we broadly define as something that is undesirable. If we do not desire a given sensation of pain, pain is therefore -- to us -- bad. If we conclude that pain is in general undesired, we can speak broadly of "pain" being "bad."
You've changed the words but the same point remains. Why would pain be undesirable, except for the experience we have when we are in pain?
quote:
quote:I'd say many things in the universe are not physical.
And I would ask you to demonstrate one.
Pinch your arm. Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
done. now what? Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
I'm reading Minsky's The Emotion Machine right now, and he makes the point that "feelings" and "experience" are concepts that, contrary to the normal practice, need more complexity added to them instead of simplification. In other words, feelings are likely made up of many levels of mental resources (Minsky argues that feelings are different approaches to problem solving cascades of activity in the brain that shut off certain resources and turn others on), and to understand why and how we feel, we must break those "emotions" down into smaller, easier to analyze parts. Nothing, I repeat, is solved by postulating monadic entities... unless you don't want to actually solve the problem.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
Strider, he's trying to say that the sensation of pain isn't physical. That the actual EXPERIENCE of pain contains some non-physical, Platonically essential quality to it.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
i get it. I just obviously disagree. Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
<-- being a little obtuse today.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:Why would pain be undesirable, except for the experience we have when we are in pain?
Except the "experience" we have when we are in pain is just signals sent to our brain telling us(over and over again) that our current physical state is not one to be desired. It tells us in such a way that I assume must have evolved over time to really "make us listen" in a sense. If damage to the body didn't produce extreme negative feelings in the organism that was damaged, this would be a huge survival disadvantage. So yes, pain is undesirable because of the experience it produces. But we're back to square one, because I still don't see anything about what just happened as non-physical, because again, experience is a just a word to describe a multitude of physical phenomena going on.
also, explain the documented condition of people who can't feel pain because of genetic disorders(lack of formation of nerve cells, messages not reaching the brain). Wouldn't the fact that this can happen imply that pain is a physical phenomena?
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
The reason we experience emotions, sensations and so forth as something significantly different from other physical phenomena is that we are constantly applying the intentional stance to ourselves. This perceptive trick, through which we attribute internal belief states to other human beings and successfully predict their behavior, when applied to ourselves, creates a recursive feedback loop in which we perceive ourselves as an entity, then as an entity perceiving itself as an entity, etc. Eventually this strange loop of perception analyzes all of our conscious thought, imbuing all of our emotions and experiences with intentionality... to me, this is why we perceive our internal life as being different... because of these strange loops of perception.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Except the "experience" we have when we are in pain is just signals sent to our brain telling us(over and over again) that our current physical state is not one to be desired. It tells us in such a way that I assume must have evolved over time to really "make us listen" in a sense.
If there is no soul, who is this "us" that the signals are telling? If there is only the physical brain, all the signals are doing is triggering other signals or mechanical actions. Any sort of explanation of why pain is undesireable that requires an "us" being told not to desire it is an explanation that implicitly accepts the existence of a soul. If there truly is no nonphysical soul, then your explanation should be able to explain it solely in terms of chemical brain signals and mechanical actions, and should not have to rely on any mysterious "us".
quote:also, explain the documented condition of people who can't feel pain because of genetic disorders(lack of formation of nerve cells, messages not reaching the brain). Wouldn't the fact that this can happen imply that pain is a physical phenomena?
It would suggest that pain is triggered by certain physical nerve cells, which is quite different from saying pain actually IS a bunch of physical nerve cells.
quote:The reason we experience emotions, sensations and so forth as something significantly different from other physical phenomena is that we are constantly applying the intentional stance to ourselves. This perceptive trick, through which we attribute internal belief states to other human beings and successfully predict their behavior, when applied to ourselves, creates a recursive feedback loop in which we perceive ourselves as an entity, then as an entity perceiving itself as an entity, etc. Eventually this strange loop of perception analyzes all of our conscious thought, imbuing all of our emotions and experiences with intentionality...
So how does creating a recursive feedback loop do this? I can program my computer to recursively tell itself that it exists, after all, and it will run through the loop an infinite number of times. Yet, it doesn't seem to become a conscious self. That's because the computer has no "us" in it to tell - all it does is repeatedly rearrange bits from 0 to 1 and back, no matter how many times the loop runs through. So why should a recursive loop in my brain do anything different?
Note that you, too, use "we" repeatedly in your explanation. As in "we perceive ourselves". Yet a physical explanation should not rely on any "we". Each brain signal is only triggering physical responses in other brain cells. They are like a long set of dominoes. So then the question is, if you got a large enough set of dominoes and arranged them in the right order, would they begin to have experiences? If you could get dominoes that right themselves back up after they fall, and if you could arrange them to loop back around recursively to simulate a recusive feedback loop, how would that make it any more likely that those dominoes become conscious?
It is easy enough to say a recursive feedback loop can cause us to start experiencing sensations, because complicated things tend to sound possible, but how does it actually work? Is there any explanation that does not rely on some sort of "us" to tell "we" exist?
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
Right... the "we" and "I" are deliberate shorthand expressions. Here's the "just-so" story (read Hofstadter's work for a much more involved explanation... I'm just a layman... in fact, read V.S. Ramachandran's awesome article): The evolved resources in the brain that historically worked to attribute intentionality to other organisms were, at some point, turned upon the organism they themselves were part of. The use of resources evolved for the evaluation and prediction of other organisms to do the same for the source brain/body creates a distancing in the various cognitive processes, promoting the illusion that these myriad brain modules are actually one single conscious mind.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I'm not sure it's possible to argue this. Once you accept that your brain is playing a trick on you even as you speak, there's no guarantee it can only play one trick. If your brain deceives you to make you think you exist as one entity, your brain might also be deceiving you to make you think you don't.
That is, if our brains don't work when we think about ourselves, then they don't work when we think about ourselves.
There may be a way around this beyond just saying "I believe," but I don't see it yet.
--
quote:
quote:I'd say many things in the universe are not physical.
And I would ask you to demonstrate one.
Wouldn't your response to such a demonstration be, "This is not a thing in the universe, because all things are physical"? That is, demonstration isn't relevant. If you define "doohickey" to mean "green thing," it would be pointless to challenge someone to show you a red "doohickey." You'd simply say, "That's no doohickey -- it's not green!"
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:If there is no soul, who is this "us" that the signals are telling? If there is only the physical brain, all the signals are doing is triggering other signals or mechanical actions.
This is in fact demonstrably true. Reflex reactions to pain, for example, occur considerably before you become "consciously" aware of the pain.
quote:Yet, it doesn't seem to become a conscious self.
If you were doing nothing but sitting on the floor thinking to yourself "I am a conscious self. I am a conscious self. I am a conscious self," I probably wouldn't think you were a conscious self, either.
quote:Wouldn't your response to such a demonstration be, "This is not a thing in the universe, because all things are physical"?
Close. Show me a non-physical "thing" that is neither a concept, a property, nor a term (as I exclude those from my definition of "thing.")
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:If you were doing nothing but sitting on the floor thinking to yourself "I am a conscious self. I am a conscious self. I am a conscious self," I probably wouldn't think you were a conscious self, either.
So if I programmed my computer to run such a loop, it won't appear conscious to an outside observer but actually will be a conscious self?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I think the answer to that question depends entirely on your definition of "conscious."
How aware are you at any given moment, for example, of your fingernails?
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
No, Tresopax. No one's talking about a single loop within (relatively) simple architecture. I'm talking about hugely complex systems of discrimination and prediction being utilized by even larger supersystems of mentation to mirror all of the systems in the brain as a unit, as if they were being seen by another organism.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
David, Ramachandran is awesome. His Secrets of the Mind tv special was fantastic, and he writes a lot of articles for Scientific American Mind.
This is great too. A series of lectures where he talks about a lot of the topics we've been discussing in this thread.
thanks for the link.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Here's the "just-so" story (read Hofstadter's work for a much more involved explanation... I'm just a layman... in fact, read V.S. Ramachandran's awesome article): The evolved resources in the brain that historically worked to attribute intentionality to other organisms were, at some point, turned upon the organism they themselves were part of.
Ramachandran's article seems like an excellent explanation for self-awareness. Building around the concept of "mirror neurons" he suggests that we have evolved the capacity to be aware of ourselves in a similar sort of way that we are aware of others. He says "I suggest that self awareness is simply using mirror neurons for 'looking at myself as if someone else is look at me' (the word 'me' encompassing some of my brain processes, as well)."
The trouble is that self-awareness is not the problem. Or, that is to say, the ability of a brain to model itself in the way your brain models others is not really surprising. One could write a computer program telling the computer to model itself in the same fashion. Many complex systems could be built to include information about themselves within them.
The real problem is that explaining self-awareness in no way solves the problem of conscious experience. That is because the information stored within a brain (whether it is about itself or about someone else) only serves to influence physical actions - just like how the information in a computer is meaningless to the computer except insofar as it controls the flow of electricity through the computer to produce certain actions. Thus Ramachandran's solution can explain how we ACT in a way consistent with possessing information about our internal workings, like how a computer can be programmed to display how much memory it is using. But Ramachandran's solution cannot explain why any of that would be accompanied by experiences. We don't just ACT like we possess experiences. We DO possess experiences.
One can say "Well, experiences are just what happens when you report information about yourself to yourself." But why does ANYTHING extra have to happen when you report information about yourself to yourself? And who is "yourself"? When my computer reports to "itself" how much memory it is using, I just assume all that is going on is a whole bunch of switches are being switched back and forth from 1 to 0 and back, don't you? I don't think there is any real "itself" in the computer that it is talking to - that's just a shorthand way of speaking about how the bits are processing. The bits don't mean anything more to the computer when talking about the computer itself than when talking about any other given thing. The bits don't mean anything at all to the computer, except insofar as they control how the pieces of the computer act. So why would it be different with the computer that is my brain?
So, Ramachandran has a good explanation for one particular mystery of the mind (how the brain possesses self-knowledge), but it doesn't solve the big problem. This is a common issue when it comes to explanations of the human mind - explanations typically swap an easier problem for the hard problem, then solve the easy problem.
quote:I'm talking about hugely complex systems of discrimination and prediction being utilized by even larger supersystems of mentation to mirror all of the systems in the brain as a unit, as if they were being seen by another organism.
"Being complicated" does not equal "Can do anything". If it doesn't work at all on the simple level, why should we assume that doing the same thing in a much more complicated way would make it work?
[ January 26, 2007, 01:15 PM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:But why does ANYTHING extra have to happen when you report information about yourself to yourself?
What makes you think that anything does?
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
I observe it happening in my mind.
If I see a tree fall in my yard, it would be dishonest of me to then try to convince myself that I saw no such tree, just in order to fit some sort of worldview I'm trying to justify.
It would be even more dishonest of me to deny the existence of my experiences, because at least in the case of the tree falling it is possible I just imagined it. That escape doesn't exist for experiences, because imagination itself is an experience.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I don't think you understood the question.
What's the difference between reporting information about yourself to yourself and observing that you have reported information about yourself to yourself? The latter is just one additional iteration of the former.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Well, there is a difference in words. Do you consider "observing" to mean the exact same thing as "reporting to yourself"? I'd think there is a difference.
Regardless, the dispute isn't over the difference between reporting information about yourself to yourself and observing that you have reported information about yourself to yourself. Rather, the dispute is over the difference between reporting information about yourself to yourself and experiencing something while reporting information about yourself to yourself. The difference between those two is that the latter entails having an experience, whereas I see no reason why the former would.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I don't see the distinction. In fact, I think "reporting to myself" is pretty close to an exact functional description of "observing."
I still have absolutely no idea what your definition of "experience" is meant to encompass. You're using it a lot, but it doesn't seem to mean anything consistent.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Well, I can report to myself that I have 11 toes. "Dear self, I have eleven toes." But I don't think I can observe myself having 11 toes, unless I (a) hallucinate, or (b) actually have 11 toes. That is because reporting to myself entails just a transfer of data, whereas observation involves an experience that backs up the data.
As for "experience", what I mean by that is "what it is like" to have something happen. For instance, the experience of smelling apple pie is what it is like to smell apple pie. The experience of observing I have 11 toes is what it is like to see myself having 11 toes. And so on. "Experience" is very similar to the term "qualia", but most people don't know what "qualia" is, so I don't want to use that term. Also, many use "qualia" to refer more specifically to sensory experiences, whereas I'd use the term "experience" to cover anything that has a "what it is like" aspect to it.
Here is one broader explanation of qualia from a Wikipedia article, that sums up what I would consider to be "experience". (The whole Wikipedia article is there if you want more detail.):
quote:There are many definitions of qualia, which have changed over time. One of the simpler, broader definitions is "The 'what it is like' character of mental states. The way it feels to have mental states such as pain, seeing red, smelling a rose, etc'"
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Well, I can report to myself that I have 11 toes. "Dear self, I have eleven toes."
Can you really? I don't think you can. Because even as you're saying that to yourself, another part of yourself is saying "I don't really have eleven toes."
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
The January 29th issue of Time magazine was a special issue devoted to the brain. There was one article in particular called "The Mystery of Consciousness" by Steven Pinker that touched on many things we talked about in this thread.
His basic premise is that the idea of a self and free will are illusions brought about by our experience. That consciousness IS neural activity.
Definitely worth a read. The whole brain section was interesting.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 233) on :
I think Mr. Pinker's assertion is NOT that consciousness is just an illusion. Rather, if you read the end, he asserts that consciousness does exist, and that "our own consciousness is a product of our brains".
Note also that on page 6, he gets into possible explanations for the "Hard Problem" of consciousness, which is the problem I have been talking about in this thread (the Hard Problem is the problem of qualia, more or less.) He gives Dennett's solution (denying the existence of experience) but seems to not buy it:
quote:Many philosophers, like Daniel Dennett, deny that the Hard Problem exists at all. Speculating about zombies and inverted colors is a waste of time, they say, because nothing could ever settle the issue one way or another. Anything you could do to understand consciousness--like finding out what wavelengths make people see green or how similar they say it is to blue, or what emotions they associate with it--boils down to information processing in the brain and thus gets sucked back into the Easy Problem, leaving nothing else to explain. Most people react to this argument with incredulity because it seems to deny the ultimate undeniable fact: our own experience.
The complaint he offers above is exactly the thing that is wrong with Dennett's solution, and with eliminativism in general - it simply denies reality. It is easy to make any model work if you simply say everything that doesn't fit the model doesn't really exist. But the fact of the matter is, experience does exist.
Here is his description of what he argues that the majority of neuroscientists believe:
quote:The most popular attitude to the Hard Problem among neuroscientists is that it remains unsolved for now but will eventually succumb to research that chips away at the Easy Problem. Others are skeptical about this cheery optimism because none of the inroads into the Easy Problem brings a solution to the Hard Problem even a bit closer.
This is the problem when it comes to what seems to be the popular view of consciousness among scientists: It amounts to optimistic thinking. We don't have an explanation for the Hard Problem, but physical brains seem to explain everything else, so we can safely assume it will explain the Hard Problem too eventually, they say. The scientific community is simply assuming materialism will be correct.
The trouble with this is something the article does not explain completely - why the "Hard" problem is "Hard". Mr. Pinker says "the problem is hard because no one knows what a solution might look like or even whether it is a genuine scientific problem in the first place". But the "hardness" of the Hard Problem goes beyond just not knowing what a solution looks like. The Hard problem is hard because it seems to be logically impossible to explain with a physical mechanism. That is for the reasons I gave above - because the characteristics of experience conflict with the features of physical things. It is "hard" in the same way it is "hard" to make a square circle, or to make a two-sided triangle, or to explain how you believe the Earth is 6,000 years old yet you also believe dinosaurs existed millions of years ago.
That's the problem I have with the "cheery optimism" about physicalist models of the mind. It is one thing to assume your model will eventually explain something it hasn't yet explained. But it is something quite different to assume your model will eventually explain something whose nature fundamentally contradicts the model.
[ February 16, 2007, 11:34 AM: Message edited by: Tresopax ]
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
quote:I think Mr. Pinker's assertion is NOT that consciousness is just an illusion.
not exactly what i said....
quote:His basic premise is that the idea of a self and free will are illusions brought about by our experience. That consciousness IS neural activity.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Ah, I see. I'm not sure I see where he argued that anything was an illusion. He definitely did argue that consciousnesss IS neural activity though.
Posted by Strider (Member # 1807) on :
hmmm...i guess those words aren't specifically used in the paper. But I do feel it's his point if you pay attention to his arguments. Also, in the paper copy of the magazine, there is heading just above the title of the piece that reads:
quote:you exist, right? Prove it. How 100 billion jabbering neurons create the knowledge-or illusion-that you're here.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 233) on :
Sight is illusion to, in the neurological model.
I use my brain primarily for controlling my body, I don't really use it to store my personality or important stuff like that. It may be more reliable and stable than a human brain, but it's still...you know, a brain. As D would say, sick! Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: They can grow active neural tissue in a dish these days, you know. I don't know that anyone is making the claim that this stuff is conscious, though.
Thought is the traffic. The tissue is just the road.
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quote:But the fact of the matter is, experience does exist.
No, it doesn't.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
No one will respond to that post, because nobody experienced it.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
This is why definition of terms is so freakin' important. Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:No, it doesn't.
Yes, it really does. Perhaps you don't experience anything (you might be a philosophical zombie!) but I can tell you that I do, so I can say with certainty that experience DOES exist. For instance, when I smell apple pie, I definitely experience it as a very good sensation. And given that you can't look into my mind, I don't see how you could possibly claim to know whether I do or do not experience anything.
If you don't like my use of the word "experience" then mentally substitute some other word every time I write it if you like, as long as you know what I am referring to and that it does in fact exist. Call it "qualia" or "XYZXYZ" or whatever. The difference is semantics. The important issue is that it does exist, and does pose a "Hard Problem" for materialist models of the mind.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Here's the thing: qualia do not exist. "Experience" as you're meaning it -- a discrete, metaphysical, non-metaphorical lump of awareness -- is bunk. There's no "hard problem," period, because it just doesn't exist.
We don't see the space between atoms, either. We don't perceive the universe as being made up of mostly nothing. And yet it is. We conveniently overlook all the space between particles to see the larger picture; the same thing happens with "experience," which is just a convenient fiction used as shorthand for a much more complex system.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Definitions and terms don't exist either. Neither does bunk. I'm not just being difficult. When you eliminate from existence entire classes of things, you render your own discussion invalid, as well.
It might be an interesting challenge to try making an argument about the nonexistence of convenient fictions *without* using the convenient fictions.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:It might be an interesting challenge to try making an argument about the nonexistence of convenient fictions *without* using the convenient fictions.
Sure. In the same way that it's quite interesting to catch a ball by calculating its weight, vector, and airspeed, then manually adjusting each of your muscle fibers to move the molecules of your arm into the correct position to intercept the molecules that make up the ball.
There's a reason those fictions are convenient, and it's that our brains -- and the other subsystems that make up our senses -- are not wired to be consciously aware of all the various inputs. We streamline them and actually submit them to pre-processing well before they intercept our consciousness, so that we don't have to do physics to catch a ball.
But that doesn't mean that we can't. More importantly, it doesn't mean that the best way to catch every ball is to rely on instinct and stick our hand out there. The same principle by which we catch a ball was used to send someone to the moon, but we didn't just hurl a rocket up there in that general direction; we first made sure we understood the physical principle that underpinned the ways in which things fall and are caught, even though our bodies told us something quite different.
My "self" tells me that I have a self. It also, depending on the situation, reminds me that I have a knee -- usually when it's strained or skinned -- or a stomach. Very, very rarely do I ever become aware that I have pores, or capillaries, or neurons. But I am a collection of all these things, and there's no reason to assume that the collective shorthand my physical self-awareness uses to refer to the various parts of my body as a single unit is limited to my physical self. My sense of self is just as much a superset of various subdepartments and dedicated functions; my "awareness" is at any time a confused and fluctuating series of constant inputs. There is no steady state of "me."
Posted by Survivor (Member # 233) on :
Hah. So Tom says that "experience" doesn't exist, because the "self" is an illusion.
I don't need philosophy to know that he's lying, but that's because he provoked me into peeking in on his consciousness, a long time ago. Not pretty. But definitely a consciousness. More than one, actually, which was the horrible and not pretty part of it.
Well, that's only my opinion, though. At some point, Tom freely chose that existance. Whether some part of him now regrets it is not really my concern. I'm not in the business of abrogating human decisions just because they're stupid.
But man, I wouldn't even consider my brain a necessary element of my self. Meanwhile Tom wants to throw in his pores and crap? I don't get that at all. He doesn't even have good body awareness for a human, why would he need to consider his pores and capillaries elements of his self, even if they were coextent (which they are not)?
I don't know that very many humans can directly sense an inert physical object like a ball (let alone its mass and velocity) and then adjust muscle fibers directly to catch the ball. Wouldn't it be simpler (if you could do that, I mean) to just catch the ball without using your body at all? What's the point if you don't use the provided control interface?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I don't know that very many humans can directly sense an inert physical object like a ball (let alone its mass and velocity) and then adjust muscle fibers directly to catch the ball.
Nor do I. But you have to admit that it WOULD be "quite interesting," neh?
As you've pointed out, we have a "control interface" that greatly simplifies our interactions with our environment. We disagree, however, on whether or not that interface has been "provided."
Moreover, by believing in a "self," you -- in my opinion, at least -- are ascribing to one level of the interface an autonomy and coherence that does not exist. It's like saying that chocolate, because of its obvious existence and importance, is not made of atoms.
The "self," as a collection of things, exists in the same way any collection exists: as a conceptual framework that makes it easier to address the parts. In the same way that "chocolate" is made up of molecules of various ingredients which have changed through incorporation into chocolate, or the same way it's possible to affect all members of an instance in code by calling a method, I believe it's possible for the "self" to affect its components.
So, yeah, it's useful. But it's still a fiction.
Posted by Launchywiggin (Member # 9116) on :
I love reading about this philosophical stuff, guys. I don't really have the ability to contribute, and I wish I did--but I want you to know that I have a lot of respect for all of you.
Tom, I like how you use analogies so I can understand where you're coming from.
I think on the topic of "experience", the problem is in our definition of "exists". Experience does exist as we have defined it as the "INSTANCE of personally encountering or undergoing something"(dictionary.com). The "instance" is what exists. That is how I see "experience" as real--it's constantly happening. When we construct all of the experiences into a "self" is the fiction--which doesn't exist.
I tried Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Tom, I like how you use analogies so I can understand where you're coming from.
I like it when my brain does it, too. Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Thing is, when we say, "Babe Ruth threw a pitch," we aren't saying something we consider to be untrue. (At least, I'm not.) Shorthand is simplification, but it isn't falsehood. For example, I can say "thousands" rather than "3,629," which makes life easier, but it isn't untrue.
[ February 18, 2007, 04:54 PM: Message edited by: Will B ]
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:Thing is, when we say, "Babe Ruth threw a pitch," we aren't saying something we consider to be untrue.
That's part of the pervasiveness of this shorthand. We're wired to not perceive things as clumps of molecules, to perceive "individuals." It's not meaningless for us to do this; they actually "exist" as individuals within a given context, and can often be addressed more effectively for many purposes from within that context.
And for observations like "Babe Ruth threw a pitch," it's perhaps not very important to know which part of Babe Ruth threw the pitch -- or why, or how.
Where things get titchy is the discussion of intentionality. Babe Ruth meant to throw a pitch. Did he really mean to put just that much spin on it? Did he mean for it to go an inch and a half above the bottom of the strike zone, just to the left of the catcher's glove? Did he mean for his little finger to curl in just the way it did when the ball left his hand?
All these things happened. They are all components of the pitch that Ruth meant to throw, but his conscious control of them may or may not have been complete -- even within the limits of his physical ability to override his autonomous responses. He may not, for example, particularly care what his little finger does, and might well be surprised to discover that it did anything at all.
Now, we're again dealing with something that doesn't have much of a moral dimension. So consider this sentence: "Harrison got drunk, drove home, did a line of cocaine, and beat his wife." There are a number of decisions involved there. How many of those decisions were conscious ones? If Harrison hit and killed someone while driving home, would it be necessary for society to pretend that the Harrison-self who decided to drive home was the same Harrison-self who was later punished for the crime? Would it be true? Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
I have a hard time getting past the things you keep saying. There is no "we" to deal with something that doesn't have much of a moral dimension; there is no "something," and there's no such thing as morals. So there's really nothing to talk about.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
That certainly would be ONE way to interpret the data. Another is that we maintain these fictions because they're useful, and since it suits the collection that makes up "me" to pretend that "I" exist and "you" exist, I may as well play along for want of anything else better to do.
By the way, morals -- as things which are explicitly invented concepts -- most definitely "exist," as they exist solely in the context of invented concepts. Now, if you were to say that there are "objective" morals somehow hard-coded into the universe, I'd disagree with you -- but they clearly exist as concepts, and have exactly as much existence as all other concepts have.
Note, however, that this usage of "exist" is not the same usage I've been using elsewhere in the thread. This is why I've been pointedly suggesting that you work to refine your terms. Morals do not "exist" for a given value of "exist," but they clearly have some "existence" in a non-physical context. The problem you're having is that failing to clarify the word "exist" leads to what appears to be -- but which isn't -- contextual absurdity.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
But concepts don't exist, so how can morals exist as concepts?
Oh -- I see that you're redefining "exist" to make it easier to discuss things. So we can speak of non-physical things existing. That should make it easier to talk!
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
The difficulty with "exist" is that there are clearly things that "exist" which have no physical reality, but are instead attributes of physicality. As discussed earlier on this thread, for example, all numbers fall into this class; there is no "one," but you can have "one" of something (i.e. something real can possess the conceptual property of unity). This is further complicated by the fact that some of these unique properties can be combined to produce predictable effects. For example, if I take something with a quantity of three and join it with something with a quantity of five, I can also be said to now have something with a quantity of eight. Since these effects are so predictable, it is useful shorthand to speak of the concepts of "three" and "five" as if they had reality. (Note: there are other philosophers and mathematicians who would say I have this backwards, and that information is in fact the primary building material of the universe. In this model, quantity is actually a primary element; things don't have the "quantity" of three, but the real quantity of "three" occasionally acquires the less important property of, say, "apples." They may be right, but that particular assertion's not one that I, as someone inept at math, enjoy. *grin*)
So when we say that "three" exists, we mean that it can be said to interact independently of an object to which it provides a property. We don't need to multiply three apples by three apples to get nine apples; we can multiple three by three and get nine, and don't care whether there are apples involved. But the important thing is that this is only true within a very specific context.
And I think context is probably the single most important thing that we need to learn to understand as humans struggling to comprehend the nature of our own consciousness. It's my belief that one of the things we do very, very well as a species is create -- to use a programming term -- instances of a class that we then populate with statics. We run methods within that class, sometimes to perform work and sometimes to process submitted data before returning the resulting value to the function that called it. And when we're done with that specific task, we send that class through a deconstructor method and set everything to null. When I multiple three by three, in other words, I create a mental class in which "three" can exist as an independent entity. I perform the necessary math, and pull "nine" back out of the subroutine -- perhaps to insert it into a string that indeed concatenates the result with "apples," out in Main().
But Main() -- reality, if you will -- is never aware of my unitless "three." That "three" doesn't have any real existence to Main(), and certainly doesn't intersect any other programs running on the system (which, for the purposes of this metaphor, are other people); unless I've instanced an API that permits me to hand off the results of my multiplication subroutine to them, those programs remain completely ignorant of the existence of my "three." I could hang onto that "three" all I want. I could set things equal to it. I could even make up new variables if I wanted, just to set them equal to "three." "Let there be light," I could declare, "and let it be three." And as long as I was using a forgiving compiler or remembered to cast light to something appropriate, so it would be.
But -- and this is key -- it wouldn't really exist. "Three" would exist only in my subroutine (i.e. my head). Unless I communicated it to someone else, it would never exist at all.
Now, Tres would have you believe that this concept of "three" is a qualia, something that actually has a sort of metaphysical existence. But in my example, this concept of "three" actually exists (eventually, after it compiles) as a set of binary instructions, a few flipped bits. It has physical pointers that represent and define it, but these pointers are meaningless without the context to which they're pointing. And my system state -- my constant brain activity -- maintains that context, and is itself reliant on flipped bits and electrical traffic to move data back and forth, sometimes into temporary buffers and sometimes into other physical I/O interfaces (like printers, scanners, and my tongue.)
So I hold "three" in my head, and three "exists" in my head. But it doesn't exist outside my head, which is the context about which most people speak when they're asking whether something exists.
Posted by Will B (Member # 7931) on :
Interesting analogy. Anybody who uses C++ to explain philosophy deserves extra points!
Thing is, 3 *does* exist outside your head: it also exists in mine! And billions of others. And it's not like that old question of whether my experience of "red" is like yours. The things that are true about your 3 (3=1+1+1; 3 = floor (pi); 3 = sqrt (9) ...) are exactly the same as the things true about mine. If in fact we find that there's a difference, we can use proof to reconcile it.
And if the human race dies out, and in a million years intelligent bread mold from Aldebaran comes and finds our records...they'll recognize the same 3. If we know things about it they don't, they'll learn something.
So it looks like 3 isn't a static local (const) variable, but a global constant or literal. (If it's local, and somebody defines it locally as 2, we've got trouble when 2 squared = 9. We'll then have a mathematical system that isn't consistent with anyone else's, and no longer works with physical reality.)
Side note: mathematics also enables us to have classifications, by mathematical description of groups of objects -- you can plot objects based on characteristics on a graph, and mathematically determine that some groupings (like "car") are better than others (like "the set of objects containing my car, your car, a half-eaten Twinkie, and men who claim to have had sex with Anna Nicole Smith"). Once we allow math, we also get classifications, w/o need for Plato. THis btw is how machine learning algorithms discover classifications of objects.
I don't know if Tresopax thinks 3 is a qualia. Since a qualia I think is some type of experience, I would disagree with that: I can experience adding, but 3 wouldn't be an experience, but a number.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
quote:Here's the thing: qualia do not exist. "Experience" as you're meaning it -- a discrete, metaphysical, non-metaphorical lump of awareness -- is bunk. There's no "hard problem," period, because it just doesn't exist.
You say this like you know it is true. Again, what is your evidence? How can you know it doesn't exist?
Note that it is considerably easier to say a certain sort of thing does exist, than to say nothing of that sort exists. My evidence for experience's existence is the fact that I have experience, something that I can introspectively observe to be true. If that is true, then experience certainly exists. What evidence do you have that would counter it? You can't look into my mind. You can't look into the minds of everyone in the world. You certainly can't look into the minds of whatever other being might possibly exist somewhere in some other part of the universe. So how could you have any evidence to support a claim to know that no such thing as "experience" can exist?
At best, all you can say is that I can't prove to you that experience exists, if you don't observe yourself to have experience. But this is certainly not proof that experience doesn't exist. "I can't prove to you that X exists" does not imply "X doesn't exist."
quote:Now, Tres would have you believe that this concept of "three" is a qualia, something that actually has a sort of metaphysical existence.
I don't think the number three is a sort of qualia, unless numbers are a sort of experience. I don't think they are. I can experience seeing or touching three things, which would be an experience, but that doesn't mean the number itself is. For that matter, threes would exist in the world even if people did not exist to experience things that come in threes.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:We'll then have a mathematical system that isn't consistent with anyone else's, and no longer works with physical reality.
This is why those philosophers and mathematicians I mentioned earlier believe that the universe is numeric at root: they assert (perhaps correctly) that saying something is consistent with physical reality is essentially saying that it's consistent with mathematics, and that mathematics is therefore the root of our shared reality.
------
Sorry, Tres. "What Tom feels when he looks at things that are red" is your version of qualia, I know; I was just on a numbers kick and wanted to keep the metaphor broad and all-encompassing. The same observation applies, FWIW: that it is unnecessary for things which exist in a personally-defined context and are enabled by a physically-real medium to have an independent and universal existence outside of either context.
Posted by Launchywiggin (Member # 9116) on :
quote:that it is unnecessary for things which exist in a personally-defined context and are enabled by a physically-real medium to have an independent and universal existence outside of either context.
I totally understand this.
*eats Tom's brain*
mmmmmm
Posted by Survivor (Member # 233) on :
quote:It's like saying that chocolate, because of its obvious existence and importance, is not made of atoms.
Chocolate is made up of atoms. But the concept of chocolate (without which chocolate cannot be created) is not made up of atoms. Just as the universe...um, well, the universe isn't made of atoms. But it's made of something other than math. The physical elements of the universe are distinct from the theoretical elements that predict the behavior of those things. This distinction is essential to prediction, otherwise you just wait for something to happen, and when it happens it happens.
More to the point, it's essential to the idea that you can be responsible for your actions, and even your thoughts. By attacking that idea, you liberate yourself from feeling guilty about what you do. But then again, you also erase your self with that argument. It's fundamentally impossible to disbelieve in the self. Not that people don't try, given their belief that they can avoid personal responsibility that way.
You can only deny the existance of everything else, though. You do exist, and you'll still exist even when you walk out into that solipsistic darkness that is the last refuge of those who would deny ultimate reality. I have no desire that anyone should go out into that final and utter separation from truth. But I cannot stop you.
Your "friend" will not accompany you, though. If you go through that door, you must go alone.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:It's fundamentally impossible to disbelieve in the self.
Why? There's nothing remotely inconsistent with believing that the self is a fiction that one chooses to use as shorthand.
Posted by Tresopax (Member # 1063) on :
Except then there'd be nothing to believe that belief.
Posted by David Bowles (Member # 1021) on :
quote:It's fundamentally impossible to disbelieve in the self
It's more accurate to say that it's fundamentally impossible not to automatically act as though oneself were a self... in other words, I certainly understand that I am not a monad, that I am not a homunculus, no seed of being is who I am... I see clearly how "I" am made up of instincts and memes and experiences and knowledge and skills that have accrued to this organism.... nevertheless, despite all that knowledge, I cannot but see myself as a self. My every act is predicated on the idea that I am a contiguous whole with free will, regardless of how deeply I understand the falsehood of that belief.
And I am freaking HAPPY it's that way!
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Oh, same here. I'd go nuts if I were, just as an example, continually aware of my teeth.
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