The Reality and Irreducibility of the Mental Life

[Dre89]

Way to strawman my argument.

If you picture a talking frog, that doesn't mean that talking frog exists, but it means that a mental picture of a talking frog exists. The mental picture is visually perceivable.

By your logic, I'd have to say that the thoughts I have of existing things exist, but the thoughts I have of fictitious things don't exist, which is absurd.

Mental pictures exist and are visually perceivable, even if their subjects don't exist in the actual world.

 

[blazedaces]

Way to strawman my argument.

If you picture a talking frog, that doesn't mean that talking frog exists, but it means that a mental picture of a talking frog exists. The mental picture is visually perceivable.

By your logic, I'd have to say that the thoughts I have of existing things exist, but the thoughts I have of fictitious things don't exist, which is absurd.

Mental pictures exist and are visually perceivable, even if their subjects don't exist in the actual world.

I've asked you this before and I don't remember how you responded. But it's still a really big hole in your otherwise blatantly asinine argument:

How would a blind person's idea of the apple be "stored" in your mind if, for a second we pretend, that in some world actual apple-shaped "ideas" "exist" in your mind? If he had been blind his whole life he has absolutely no idea what an apple looks like. All he has is his other senses. Would smell be stored in his mind as something that smells like an apple? Would you expect to open up his head and smell apple-like smells?

What about sound? How does the idea of the "wind" "exist" in your mind? I really only know how wind feels and sounds. Do you expect to open up people's heads and hear the wind?

What about concepts like "cold"? How does love "exist" in your mind?

I just don't understand Dre. You seem to me to be so well educated, why do you persist with these silly concepts? Why have you not dropped this yet?

-blazed

 

[AltF4]

I think I'm making a mistake in continuing to take this argument seriously, but it's pretty obvious that thoughts don't "exist" in the same sense that chairs do. When we say a thought of an image exists, the word "exist" is shorthand for "There is a series of electrochemical processes in my brain which are interpreted as an image".

Thoughts and electrochemical processes are one in the same just as sound and pressure waves through air are one in the same. There is no spooky world of immaterial sounds, and there is no spooky world of immaterial thoughts.

 

[Dre89]

Blazed- But those things don't necessitate a physical location because they don't have spacial dimensions. An image has spacial dimensions, therefore according to the materialist it must have a physical location.

Altf4- Of course I don't believe it exists in the same way, but it exists. The fact that you're assuming that there can only be one type of existence (physical) and therefore saying that thoughts don't exist is assuming the conclusion before the premises.

The chemical processes and the thought clearly aren't the same thing. Just because one causes the other doesn't mean they're the same thing. That's like saying the thought is identical to the brain, but it clearly can't be because that would mean the thought of a carrot would be indentical to the thought of the apple.

Or it's like saying that an image located ontop of a projector is the same thing as the projected image on the screen. One causes the other, but they're not the same thing.

Again, the chemicals and the thought are distinct from each other because otherwise we would be able to see chemicals the shape of an apple in someone's head.

In fact if they were identical then consciousness would be completely unecessary. Now according to you, any theory which holds an unecessary proposition is less valid than one which maintains entirely necessary propositions.

You would also have to say that we are no different to electronics. They must have the same state of consciousness as we do. Which means we should treat them at least the same way we treat animals.

The image and the chemicals have different properties. One is untangible, has no physical location, has the colour red and the shape of an apple. The other one is tangible, has a physical location and has completely different spatial properties to the image of the apple.

So it's logically impossible to say they're the same thing because the law of identity states two things are only identical when they share the exact same properties.

I'd understand if you were arguing that thoughts are a result of chemical processes, and are therefore physical, but to say that two things with evidently distinct properties are identical is absurd and beneath your level of intelligence.

 

[AltF4]

I do in fact assert that we are no different than electronics. Other than what is obvious in terms of biology and complexity. I am not what you might call a "Carbon Chauvanist", who thinks only objects made out of Carbon can be considered alive. For the sake of this thread, I'm not asserting anything of my own. But in general, yes, that is my view.

I don't know why you and underdogs are so hung up about this matter of logical identity. I am not arguing for logical identity. Clearly, "thought" and "electrochemical process" are not logically identical. They could certainly be different things. This whole thread isn't about whether it's possible for them to be different in reality, it's about whether or not they ARE different in reality.

Talking about logical identity only talks about how words are defined. To say that A and B are logically identical is to say that A and B share the same definition. It in no way reveals any information about the real world, except insofar as you can prove that something is impossible. It's just an elaborate way of playing with definitions.


What is sound? "Sound" is not logically identical with "pressure waves through air". Sound is perceivable, even visually perceivable. (Ask any good musician is they can see the notes) So do we then conclude that sound is not in reality pressure waves through air? Do we then conclude that "sound" is some nebulous, non-physical, immaterial object which exists in a separate plane of existence along with other nebulous, non-physical, immaterial objects? No. In reality, sound and pressure waves through air are the same thing. Any references to one is in fact a reference to the other. They're the same thing. There is a difference between what is logical identity and physical identity. The logical only involves what could possibly be. Not what is.

So when you tell me that the mind and the brain are not logically identical, all you're telling me is that it's possible for dualism to be right. Not that it is right.

 

[Dre89]

No what I'm saying is that mind body dualism is the only explanation for the existence of consciousness and thought, because an image has spatial dimensions therefore according to the materialist must exist in the material world.

Also, consciousness would be unneccesary. If you're not a carbon chauvanist how do you tell what has s conscience and what doesn't?

Does an electronic have to have a certain level of complexity? Some electronics are more complex than animals, should we treat them
like animals too?

Do you believe plants have consciousness too? Robots are just programmer to respond to certain stimulus in a certain way, just like plants.

 

[AltF4]

I don't know what it means to have spatial dimensions (ie: a concrete size) and yet not be physical. You're telling me you can measure the length of your thoughts in inches?


[Slight tangent probably worthy of its own thread]

All valid questions, and not at all a "reductio ad absurdum". Not all life is treated equally. If you intentionally kill a dog, you can be sent to jail. But you can make a living as en exterminator of ants and mosquitos. There is no hard line in the sand you can point to. So much of how we treat life is subjective and whimsical. Often having to do with how cute the life is, or if it's in our way.

Morality also is impacted by technological reality. Imagine if there was a reliable and provable method for saving your consciousness (or whatever you wan to call your "self") onto a computer, and retrieving it. Thus is someone died, we could just manufacture a new body and upload your mind into it. No harm no foul. Would this not change our conception of murder as an immoral act?

But that's exactly how computers work. Questions like "Is it immoral to turn off your computer once it gets sufficiently intelligent" are a bit along those lines. It's not quite the same as killing a person.

As for "how do you tell what is and isn't conscious": the answer is: You don't. I think you're using the word consciousness to specifically mean something magical. IE: Without natural explanation. I don't use it that way. It is just the natural emergent behavior of the physical processes of the brain. Thus consciousness isn't a binary proposition. It doesn't make sense to ask if object A "has it" or doesn't. There's gradients.

 

[Dre89]

They have spacial dimensions in that they have shape and size. For example you could imagine two apples, one bigger than the other.

Consciousness is the thought process invoked as a result of chemical processes.

If you don't want to distinguish between what has conciousness and what doesn't, then you'd have to say that a rock has conciousness too.

If you think conciousness is no different to a chemical process, then you'd have to maintain that all chemical processes create some form of conciousness, or at least the mental experience humans have, if you don't want to call it conciousness.

To me, it seems like you're holding your materialism as a premise before the conclusion, and using that premise to reject a lot of my arguments.

 

[Theftz22]

So, you're saying that all you have to do is show that minds and brains are not logically identical then *poof*, that proves the existence of a magical dimension of non-physical minds? Do you really think it's that easy? Why would anyone doubt that, if it were the case. Come on, now, don't be silly.

Not exactly, first you have to show that they exist at all. Then if I show them to be not "logically not identical" (which I'll take to mean have different modal properties) that means that they are not the same thing. Still, it wouldn't follow directly from that that they non-physical in the same way that it does with the other properties. The way the non-physicality of the mental states follows from their modal properties is that we look inside the head and don't see anything there other than the brain. Having established mental states to be different from brain states, it would follow that if they were physical then we should be able to see something distinct from the brain physically inside the head, but we don't. Therefore they are non-physical.

"Pressure waves through air" is not logically identical to sound. But sound is in reality just pressure waves through air. Photons and light are not logically identical. But light is in reality nothing more than photons. Wind is not logically identical with moving air, but wind is in reality nothing more than moving air.

I don't see why you would wind is not identical to moving air, I don't see any reason to suppose that's so. The issue of sound and pressure waves is a more interesting case. I think I could depict someone hearing without there being pressure waves, and I think my conception of the word "sound" is loose enough to allow whatever they hear to count as sound. So it would follow from that that they are probably not identical in the actual world. Sure, sound is entirely causally reducible to pressure waves moving through air in the actual world, in that sound is caused by their movement, but they are still probably not the same thing. If all you are arguing is that the mind is causally reducible to the brain, then I've simply never denied that. I'm arguing that the mind is not the same thing as the brain, meaning not identical.

The brain and mind are not logically identical, but in reality the mind is nothing more than the brain.

Not if my arguments are sound.

Saying that two things are logically identical means that they could not possibly be different in reality. Saying that two things are not logically identical means that they could possibly be different in reality. It does not say that they must be.

Saying that two things are logically identical means to say that they share exactly the same properties. That means that being not logically identical entails that two things could possibly be different in reality, but that's not simply what it means. It means that they do not share at least one property, whether that's a modal property or not. The essential thing is, how could we say two things are the same thing, if they have different properties in the actual world. If there are possibilities for A that are not possibilities for B, then A and B are not the same thing.

Of course speech only has content to a mind. That's what defines "content". It's a vacuous thing to say. This in no way helps you determine what the "mind" is. The mind could still be the brain at that point.

Well I wasn't trying to make an argument that the mind and brain are different with that point, I was only trying to refute an argument that you had just made about speech and propositional content.

You're playing games with words, even after I specifically called out that trick. In common speech, we tend to use phrases such as "I had a thought that was false". But this is impropper in a strict context. Your thought can't be right or wrong. It doesn't make sense to speak of ANY state of being as right or wrong. Even mental states.

Only statements can have truth values. If you can claim that mental states of being can be right, then I can claim that physical states of being can have truth values. But neither make any sense. It's a state of being. It just is. It can neither be correct nor incorrect.

Well I wasn't expecting someone to dispute the premise that beliefs can be false. At this point it largely turns on what the definitions of "truth" and "belief" are. But those are notoriously difficult words to define. I'd say that the fact that we understand perfectly what is meant by "true belief" but not by "true chair" or "true neuron" probably indicates that the concept that the words are meant to convey do make sense together, there can in fact be true beliefs. I guess the only other thing I can do at this point is point out that many definitions of "truth" explicitly involve mental states, see: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth/

Finally, a falsifiable statement!

So none of my other empirical claims are falsifiable?

So you would agree that if we are able in our lifetimes to build a mind reading machine, then that clearly demonstrates that the mind is purely physical?

How in the world does that follow? The argument from mind reading clearly went like this:

1. If reductive materialism is true, then we should be able to read minds.
2. We can't read minds.
3. Therefore reductive materialism is false.

At best, building a mind-reading machine would show premise 2 to be false. But showing the premise in an argument to be false doesn't show the conclusion to be false. And any, the argument from privileged access would still go through regardless. In fact, the decades of research and thousands of dollars it would take if that sort of machine could be built would underlie the truth of privileged access: we have no need of complex, expensive machinery to access our own mental states. We can use introspection. We cannot use introspection to access physical states.

Then what would be your response to the fact that neuroscience been able to identify what specific parts and functionality of the brain are respinsible for what mental activity? IE: We're already well underway into the process of discovering exactly what chemicals are responsible for what mental functions, what electric signals represent what mental functions, and everything else.

After doing that, it's just a matter of engineering a machine to measure the levels of serotonin, activities in specific areas, etc... and you've got yourself a brain reading machine.

Of course, each mental state may be caused by and therefore correlated with a physically observable brain state, it still would not follow that they are the same thing. Again, I'm not arguing for causal irreducibility.

If non-physical minds exist, then you should be able to tell me a mental function that the brain is incapable of or otherwise not responsible for. IE: Tell me exactly what the brain scanning machine will never be able to detect.

Well the properties I listed would be things that the brain is incapable of being. I'm not disputing that the brain could be responsible
for them all, in the sense of causing them. However I will say that one thing I think a brain scanner will never be able to detect is the qualia of a mental state, i.e. how it feels like to experience it. This is because it requires you to experience it yourself to know what it feels like.
So... you're telling me that physical states just happen without cause?

And you're telling me that the physical world doesn't behave according to causal relationships? Of course they do.

I'm afraid you've misinterpreted me, I never said that. I was disputing the claim that mental states don't participate in anything. What I said was that they obviously participate in causal as well as rational relationships.

I don't know what it means to have spatial dimensions (ie: a concrete size) and yet not be physical. You're telling me you can measure the length of your thoughts in inches?

To be clear, are you here denying that mental states are spatial (by saying you can't measure their length)? Surely you'd agree that physical states and brain states are spatial. It would follow from that that mental states are non-physical.

Even if mental states can do all the things you say that they can, what is to say that all physical states can't?

You haven't yet proven it to us. If you just assert that it's not possible for physical states to do these things, then aren't you committing a hasty generalisation fallacy?

Well I think that those properties in which I claimed all physical states do not have, there are good reasons for thinking so. Like for example see:

All physical states are equally observable to any competent observer. If you have properly functioning hearing, sight, taste, touch, smell, then you will be able to observe physical states just as well as any other competent observer. Any neuroscientist could cut open my head and observe my physical brain states just as well as any other, and you could as well, even if you couldn't interpret your observations as well as the neuroscientist.

But physical states have an objective ontology. They continue to exist even when no one experiences them. Rocks, trees, etc. don't pop out of existence when we turn our back on them and stop experiencing them. Similarly, even when I die, my physical brain states continue to exist even after I die and cease to be conscious.

But physical states never stand in relationship to things which do not exist, since they cannot physically effect that which is not physically present.

But physical states do not enter into rational relations. This is because to be involved in a rational relation requires propositional content, but we've already seen that physical states have no propositional content. One physical state may cause another physical state, but it doesn't make sense to say that one physical state entails another physical state.

Similarly, indubitability is clearly exclusively a property of mental states, because the Cogito on works for mental states and not physical states. Anyway, what would it mean for mental states to be different from brain states but still physical? As I said to Alt, if that were true we should be able to look inside the head and see something distinct from the brain physically inside the head, but we don't. Therefore they are non-physical.

 

[Bob Jane T-Mart]

All physical states are equally observable to any competent observer. If you have properly functioning hearing, sight, taste, touch, smell, then you will be able to observe physical states just as well as any other competent observer. Any neuroscientist could cut open my head and observe my physical brain states just as well as any other, and you could as well, even if you couldn't interpret your observations as well as the neuroscientist.

Light has a finite speed, 3 x 10^6 km/s and effectively it imposes a speed limit upon the universe. Nothing, (largely) can travel faster than it. The universe is 13.75 Billion years old. Now, if something were to happen say 1 trillion light years away at the beginning of the universe we cannot observe it unless we wait until the universe is 1 trillion years old. We cannot observe at all until that point. Beings closer to the even would be able to observe it however much sooner. So not all physical states are equally observable.

But physical states have an objective ontology. They continue to exist even when no one experiences them. Rocks, trees, etc. don't pop out of existence when we turn our back on them and stop experiencing them. Similarly, even when I die, my physical brain states continue to exist even after I die and cease to be conscious.

Have you heard of quantum mechanics? One of the fundamental principles of Quantum mechanics is that of Quantum Superposition. This effectively entails that until a physical system is measured or observed, it exists in all of its theoretically possible states. When it is observed, it collapses into one of them. This isn't just a trick, this actually happens. So physical states don't have objective ontology when observed on the finest of scales.

But physical states never stand in relationship to things which do not exist, since they cannot physically effect that which is not physically present.

That's a tough one. I'll have to say that your mind doesn't really have a relationship with a non-existent god. You ponder the question, but you don't actually interact with him. Additionally, computers can ponder questions and "think" about things.

But physical states do not enter into rational relations. This is because to be involved in a rational relation requires propositional content, but we've already seen that physical states have no propositional content. One physical state may cause another physical state, but it doesn't make sense to say that one physical state entails another physical state.

I may not be a computer scientist, but I can tell you that logic gates and that kind of thing exist. In other words, physical states become rational relations and begin entailing each other.

Similarly, indubitability is clearly exclusively a property of mental states, because the Cogito on works for mental states and not physical states. Anyway, what would it mean for mental states to be different from brain states but still physical? As I said to Alt, if that were true we should be able to look inside the head and see something distinct from the brain physically inside the head, but we don't. Therefore they are non-physical.

The first statement of the paragraph doesn't really make sense to me. It assumes that metal states are distinct from physical states to begin with.

 

[blazedaces]

Blazed- But those things don't necessitate a physical location because they don't have spacial dimensions. An image has spacial dimensions, therefore according to the materialist it must have a physical location.

The apple is still an apple to a blind person or to a person who can see. And every one of those things besides love does indeed have "spatial dimension". You really can't explain this away.

Altf4- Of course I don't believe it exists in the same way, but it exists. The fact that you're assuming that there can only be one type of existence (physical) and therefore saying that thoughts don't exist is assuming the conclusion before the premises.

Please provide a non-physical definition of existence and we can discuss whether or not it holds water. I have a feeling you can't do it.

The chemical processes and the thought clearly aren't the same thing. Just because one causes the other doesn't mean they're the same thing. That's like saying the thought is identical to the brain, but it clearly can't be because that would mean the thought of a carrot would be indentical to the thought of the apple.

It's not like saying a thought is identical to the brain, so I'm going to skip the rest of your faulty reasoning.

Or it's like saying that an image located ontop of a projector is the same thing as the projected image on the screen. One causes the other, but they're not the same thing.

Do you understand what an "image" is? It's photons being interpreted by your eye. That's all. What are the "spatial dimensions" of the image? Is is the size on the projector screen or the size of the film being projected from?

Again, the chemicals and the thought are distinct from each other because otherwise we would be able to see chemicals the shape of an apple in someone's head.

Nope, there's no reason to believe the shape would be preserved in your head.

In fact if they were identical then consciousness would be completely unecessary.

Why? You're making up rules that don't exist.

You would also have to say that we are no different to electronics. They must have the same state of consciousness as we do. Which means we should treat them at least the same way we treat animals.

Why would we have to say we are no different than electronics? You're jumping a lot of steps here. What part is no different?

The image and the chemicals have different properties. One is untangible, has no physical location, has the colour red and the shape of an apple. The other one is tangible, has a physical location and has completely different spatial properties to the image of the apple.

Begging the questions. This assumes they are not the same thing. Also, I disagree that your idea of the apple in your mind has these so-called "properties" you mention.

So it's logically impossible to say they're the same thing because the law of identity states two things are only identical when they share the exact same properties.

Prove that an idea has these properties.

No what I'm saying is that mind body dualism is the only explanation for the existence of consciousness and thought, because an image has spatial dimensions therefore according to the materialist must exist in the material world.

Prove to me that an idea of an image has these so-called yet-to-be-defined "spatial dimensions".

Also, consciousness would be unneccesary. If you're not a carbon chauvanist how do you tell what has s conscience and what doesn't?

There is a lot of ways to determine if someone is conscious or not. We even have machines that can do it for us. You're obviously using a different definition of consciousness than the rest of us. Please explain what you mean by it.

They have spacial dimensions in that they have shape and size. For example you could imagine two apples, one bigger than the other.

If you put a magnifying glass on top of the smaller apple, it may look larger than the bigger one, and yet, its actual concrete size has not changed. I can imagine apples literally changing size. Seriously Dre, think long and hard about what a "spacial dimension" is supposed to be.

Consciousness is the thought process invoked as a result of chemical processes.

I can't tell if you're saying this as a definition or not.

If you don't want to distinguish between what has conciousness and what doesn't, then you'd have to say that a rock has conciousness too.

No, he wouldn't. Having gradients as opposed to a binary value does not mean everything has consciousness.

If you think conciousness is no different to a chemical process, then you'd have to maintain that all chemical processes create some form of conciousness, or at least the mental experience humans have, if you don't want to call it conciousness.

No, he never said that consciousness was equivalent to every chemical process.

To me, it seems like you're holding your materialism as a premise before the conclusion, and using that premise to reject a lot of my arguments.

Prove it.

-blazed

 

[GofG]

To me, it seems like you're holding your materialism as a premise before the conclusion, and using that premise to reject a lot of my arguments.

Bayes Law is a way of systematically updating your beliefs based on evidence and what are called "priors", which are models of the universe and its various laws which an optimization algorithm (like the human mind) can use to make testable predictions. Bayes Law is undoubtedly the mathematical representation of the concept of "evidence", and so people who want to be able to make accurate predictions, who care about using new evidence properly when updating their models of reality, use Bayes Law to do it.

I am not going to suggest that, were you to use Bayes Law, and assign subjective probability mass to the variables in the equation, you would realize that you are wrong. No, you would find that the answer is that dualism is undoubtedly correct. That is because you have different so-called priors, mental models of how the universe works, and those priors lead to different assessments than the priors of AltF4 or I do.

I hope you can rest assured that the error which people like AltF4 or I are making is not one of self-contradiction. The actual argument of materialism is internally self-consistent. You are throwing around accusations of logic errors, of fallacious thinking, and things like that. Well, I don't know about AltF4's particular arguments, but I know the actual Bayesian arguments for why materialism is more likely than dualism are internally consistent.

And I hope we don't think the best possible argument for dualism would contain any logical inconsistencies. The best possible argument for dualism? No way. And that is the final enemy for materialism, the one we must eventually defeat one day. Since we want to believe true things, not materialism in particular, it seems as though we aught to face that final enemy as soon as possible. It seems like you should do the same, Dre, though for you there is so much more to lose should the evidence become surmounting, and so much more to gain by finding one of the easy pieces of circuitry evolution gave us for reaffirming why we are correct in the first place...

No, to go down that road is to presuppose materialism, is it not? I am getting ahead of myself.

A lot of people like to bring out a thing called "Occam's Razor", when up against the argument of dualism. I say "Occam's Razor" instead of Occam's Razor, because they may say "the simplest explanation is the best explanation", but they do not actually know what that means. The first to know what that actually meant was a man named Kolmogorov, who discovered the concept of Kolmogorov complexity (K complexity). This complicated bit of mathematics was basically a way to measure a theory's simplicity, in an objective way, such that the value was useful for doing Bayes Law calculations and deciding how to update your beliefs. Finally, we had a full chain, from seeing evidence to updating our beliefs, which was entirely based on objectivity and things we knew were real instead of possibly influenced by humanity's flawed perception of reality.

What is the problem with "Occam's Razor"? The "simplest" explanation for any strange thing is that the lady down the street is a witch: she did it.

One might wonder about the nature of lightning bolts. Someone comes up to you, and shows you what he says are Maxwell's Equations of Electromagnetism. You look at the ink on the paper and don't understand: you think it is very complicated. Another man comes up to you and says, "It is Zeus, the Sky God. He throws them when he is angry." You can understand this, it's very simple.

So does Occam's Razor support it over Maxwell's Equations? One might argue that a description of Maxwell's Equations in English, which wouldbe longer and more complicated, would be much longer than the above similar description. It seems like there should be some language in which it is easier to describe Maxwell, and that such a language might have some particular reason why we might think it a better language to use anyway...

The language of mathematics and physics! How much mathematics and physics would you have to do in order to have a complete understanding of how the theory could have predicted the phenomena you observed in the first place. This is what K Complexity is. If you wanted to completely understand consciousness, understand it well enough that you could remake it yourself if given the proper material, and you wanted to write a program which would then simulate that system so that you could make a computer conscious, how long would the computer program have to be (assuming an ideal assembly language on an ideal turing machine), and how much memory would it take up (assuming perfect compression).

This value is K Complexity, and it is a direct measurement of how complex a theory.

Now, let's apply this to dualism vs materialism. How complicated is dualism, REALLY? If you wanted to write a program which modeled the universe, and you wanted to add in a soul to this program, how much code and how much ram would it take to implement it such that you had actually modeled correctly how a soul actually works? How it actually interacts with the universe to produce speech patterns, not just knowing that it does, but explaining how it works?

I think it would take a lot of code. A ****ton of code.

Because there is so much to explain. If an extra-universal force is what interprets language, then how exactly does damaging the area 3 inches behind the left side of the brain result in a human who can no longer write, even if they can speak and hear correctly? Did it damage the soul to the point where it could no longer properly control the hand well enough? Because it sure ain't a hand problem. And if your theory couldn't have predicted in advance that damage to the brain 3 inches behind the left idea took away the ability to write, predicted it with a higher probability than neuroscience possibly could have, then discovering this new fact, this new evidence, can be defined by Bayes Law as being evidence against the theory of dualism. And since math and science can only correctly be used to decide which theory to support, not to be used as evidence for any particular theory after-the-fact (for to do so would be rationalization), it's not like I'm trying to use science to prove dualism wrong. I just happened to have done the math and shown that, starting with my priors, I used Bayes Law and examined new evidence, and as the new evidence came along and Dualism necessarily became more complicated to explain it, it eventually got discarded. For me.

With your priors, though, you might correctly end up at a different answer; that is the flaw of cognition, whether human or that of a perfect bayes law implementer, is that you basically have to start with some axioms, like induction. If those axioms are different, you end at different things.

But I'd like to remind you that the bar you should set for your beliefs, if you want to actually believe true things about the universe, should be very high. Beliefs must continuously pay rent when new evidence comes in; they must be able to say, "Yes, I predicted that", or quickly get supplanted by any idea which put a higher probability on the actual outcome of your experiment, any theory which might have even slightly better predicted the new evidence you are considering.

Do you really think that in the end, you could defeat even the perfect argument for materialism? You have enough evidence of Dualism that if God (or some other omnipotent creature) went and gathered all of the evidence for materialism he could possibly conceive of and presented it to you in the most persuasive way possible (without appealing to specific biases in human cognition) that you would be able to win that argument to your own satisfaction? For that is the bar you should set for your beliefs!

If you do not do this, then how can you know what you believe is actually true?

Edit: People are throwing the word "proof" out an awful lot. If you have proved something, you have a 100% subjective probability of it happening, that is, you 100% anticipate it happening.

That is why using percents is very very bad for laymen probability theorists. Sure, 100% looks alright enough, but if you try to express 100% with an odds ratio, one of the numbers goes to 0 and the other goes to positive infinity, and that's not good.

If you look at evidence from the mathematical perspective, you express evidence in terms of bits of entropy. The amount of entropy a particular theory has expresses the amount it has its predictions *focused* onto a few distinct possibilities. Good theories with low entropy focus their predictions very narrowly, giving odds of maybe 100,000:1 of one particular outcome, with the vast majority of possible outcomes receiving negligible anticipation.

But if you were to prove something, that would be 0 entropy, and the analogy to physics' notion of entropy is complete: you are only allowed to give 0 entropy to your axioms. The amount of evidence required to "prove" a theory is infinity.

Edit2: Oh, and just in case it wasn't clear: the K Complexity of a theory is directly proportional to how much evidence you would need to select that theory out of all possible theories. The entropy of a theory is its K Complexity relative to all other possible theories which currently explain all evidence.

 

[Dre89]

Whoa that came out of nowhere.

You're misrepresenting the position I took though. At the time, I never argued for a soul. You assuming that is a result of one of your 'priors'

Physicalism is the position that anything that exists does so in time and space. It's 'physical' or material. What I was arguing at the time was that an image in my mind, which is an existence (anything that has properties is an existence) and is distinct from the physiological process that created it (again, because they have differing properties) must have a physical location according to the physicalist interpretation of existence.
OR doesn't apply here for that very reason. OR is the idea that you should not multiply entities involved beyond necessity. The key word being 'necessary'. What I'm saying that if we are to accept the physicalist interpretation of existence, then mental images having physical locations is a necessary truth of the universe.

 

[GofG]

Well yes, of course when you look at something, an image of that something exists. First it exists as a real image on the back of your retina, though reversed like a mirror. Then the optic nerve encodes this image into a digital format, which, although unlike any kind of encoding algorithm used in computers, is analogous to an image file on your hard drive. If your brain wants to access that image, that desire causes neurons to fire which lead to the sequence of neurons which are that image, encoded into the storage system of our brain. When those neurons fire, it causes some other neurons associated with our visual cortex to fire, which allows the brain to "see" the image once more, although not nearly as detailed of an image, for our brain does not store memories losslessly.

It helps to imagine the brain, not as a computer as we know it, but as a computer where the hard drive and the cpu and the ram are all combined into one physical structure. The bytes on the hard drive, being accessed, cause some calculations to be done. Performing calculations causes other bytes to be accessed. Both things are actually the same physical process. There's no reason as to why evolution would design a brain like we design a computer. We don't have a tool for rewriting the contents of our hard drive; the contents of our hard drive were designed by natural selection over aeons, and we ended up, not with general self-modifying processes, but with very specifically-tailored processes for changing the structure of our brain. We do not have a general storage device, capable of representing anything which can be represented digitally; we have specific processes for modeling other humans, for modeling inanimate objects, for modeling images of things, for modeling sounds, etc. If evolution could plan ahead, we would have a modular general-purpose problem solving machine, but instead we have a machine capable of solving problems relevant in the ancestral environment where we evolved.

 

[Dre89]

But that doesn't address the problem. An actual image of an apple doesn't physically exist in my brain, in the sense that if you put a camera in my skull you wouldn't see an image of an apple. The image which I perceive is different to the actual physiological process that causes it, because they have different properties.
The image still exists though, and the point is that physicalism says that everything that exists has a physical location, but this image clearly doesn't have a physical location.

 

[Holder of the Heel]

This is an exact repeat of the last time this was discussed, the only difference was that it was previously discussed in the User Blogs if I remember correctly. Not that I believe this will change anything, because I'm just participating in this going through the motions of history repeating itself, but what the argument is is that the "image" itself doesn't exist. The process that provides the stimulation exists and is thus physical. The reason why the "image" is "seen" by the individual is because the process is stimulating them. That which provides the stimulation is basically what we see when we look at an apple, we don't see the "apple", we see the "sensation" provided by the apple. The apple never enters our head.

 

[Sucumbio]

-ignore this-

damn XF not updating quickly enough