Psience Quest

(2023-06-11, 06:46 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]So no, in this article, Tallis is not making the positive case that souls can do it. Rather he is saying we don't know how it is done.

And you cannot legitimately get from "we don't know" to "therefore souls".

What an uncharitable reading of what I've written [and frankly a somewhat dishonest reading of what Tallis has written]. I am the one who has said Materialism being false does not immediately mean Survival is true multiple times in this thread.

Sorry Merle but you're obviously a fanatic who seems to lose sleep over the terrible horror that somewhere someone in the world dares to think there's an afterlife.

I've already said it doesn't bother me that you think death is the end.

Why do you care so much that I think there is post-mortem Survival?

(2023-06-08, 01:34 PM)Silence Wrote: [ -> ]Neither exactly expresses what I think. Let me try again.

My position is that the mind is a set of states and processes of the brain.

You make the mind sound very like a computer.

Do you believe that a computer is actually conscious while it is doing a calculation, or that a mind (yours for example) just clicks through a sequence of states and is never conscious at all?

Do you see how what looks like common sense in materialist philosophy, breaks down when you look at it in detail.

If you think a computer can be conscious, think where that consciousness goes if the computer (more correctly the computer program) is being debugged. This involves pausing the action at various points, printing out the contents of its registers (say) and maybe changing the contents of those registers, before resuming the action.

David

David

(2023-06-11, 08:33 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]You make the mind sound very like a computer.

Do you believe that a computer is actually conscious while it is doing a calculation, or that a mind (yours for example) just clicks through a sequence of states and is never conscious at all?

Do you see how what looks like common sense in materialist philosophy, breaks down when you look at it in detail.

If you think a computer can be conscious, think where that consciousness goes if the computer (more correctly the computer program) is being debugged. This involves pausing the action at various points, printing out the contents of its registers (say) and maybe changing the contents of those registers, before resuming the action.

David

David

I think you meant to quote Merle not Silence?

But regarding the content of your post, I agree and if computers are [or could be] conscious [if they just ran the right program] then what about the Tinker Toy Computer ->



Beyond that I think what damns the attempt of justifying Materialism producing thoughts by way of comparing human consciousness to animals or computers is the Materialist Alex Rosenberg also uses the examples of animals and computers for his position that Materialism is true but also that we cannot have thoughts about anything (meaning Cogito Ergo Sum is false).

Since we have two kinds of Materialists making opposing arguments about whether Materialism can accommodate Cogito Ergo Sum, the arguably most basic root of all logical thinking about mind & body...well it certainly doesn't make me waver in my position that Materialism is utter nonsense no matter if there is no God, no Souls, etc etc...

But I know this isn't going to matter and all we've said will fall on deaf ears, that we'll still be arguing possibly months from now how nobody filled out the survey on waterfall souls or whatever...

(2023-06-11, 09:06 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I think you meant to quote Merle not Silence?

I have no idea how that happened - I hope thinks about what I wrote.

David

(2023-06-11, 10:44 PM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]I have no idea how that happened - I hope thinks about what I wrote.

David

Well there are interesting atheist bloggers like the young man Emerson Green, from whom who I learned of the Vagueness Argument Against Physicalism.

If that were the caliber of new posters we might be able to get I think it'd be great, but the last few days have made me even more wary of trying to get new blood into the forums...

(2023-06-11, 09:06 PM)Sciborg_S_Patel Wrote: [ -> ]I think you meant to quote Merle not Silence?

But regarding the content of your post, I agree and if computers are [or could be] conscious [if they just ran the right program] then what about the Tinker Toy Computer ->

Regarding that Tinker Toy Computer, I've (years ago but on this forum or Skeptiko) raised similar ideas before, showing examples with brass gears, cams and levers. These mechanical devices can do everything that modern electronic computers do. The difference is in the slow speed, unreliability and impracticability of scaling up to bigger versions.

Nevertheless (and my idea is not original), there isn't any sensible argument for inserting consciousness and awareness into a box of gears and levers. Adding more of the same isn't going to suddenly change anything.

The only 'answer' I received in the past was along the lines of 'it needs to be more complicated'. The idea being perhaps that when something gets too big to understand, it is easier to be fooled into thinking something magical is going on. Just why anyone would wish to be fooled in this way remains unanswered. Sure, it has entertainment value. But it isn't a serious attempt at a solution.

(2023-06-12, 07:59 AM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]Regarding that Tinker Toy Computer, I've (years ago but on this forum or Skeptiko) raised similar ideas before, showing examples with brass gears, cams and levers. These mechanical devices can do everything that modern electronic computers do. The difference is in the slow speed, unreliability and impracticability of scaling up to bigger versions.

Nevertheless (and my idea is not original), there isn't any sensible argument for inserting consciousness and awareness into a box of gears and levers. Adding more of the same isn't going to suddenly change anything.

The only 'answer' I received in the past was along the lines of 'it needs to be more complicated'. The idea being perhaps that when something gets too big to understand, it is easier to be fooled into thinking something magical is going on. Just why anyone would wish to be fooled in this way remains unanswered. Sure, it has entertainment value. But it isn't a serious attempt at a solution.

Yes - I'm not exactly sure why, but the idea that a mechanical calculator can be conscious seems extremely hard to believe.

OTH, there was a fad for the idea that water driven machinery might be conscious:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Restless-Clock-...B014RWV2CQ

Even Liebniz took an interest!

I was given that link in an email discussion with someone at the DI.

David

(2023-06-08, 09:07 AM)Laird Wrote: [ -> ]I've been meaning to dig deeper into the resources in that thread of yours for a while now, but your posting of it was curious timing for me, because while revisiting Titus's Exit Epiphenomenalism paper, including its discussion of evolution, and considering the discussion of natural selection in the SEP entry on epiphenomenalism, something roughly along those lines had suggested itself to me too, albeit that I hadn't fleshed it out (I know: it's probably hard to believe, but that really is how it went down). I've also been meaning to ping Titus to get his reaction to the argument, but haven't gotten onto that yet either.

Are there even any modern day philosophers of mind that are epiphenomenalists? At least from what I know most use it to fill gaps on their theories instead of stating consciousness is purely epiphenomenal.

(2023-06-12, 11:20 AM)David001 Wrote: [ -> ]Yes - I'm not exactly sure why, but the idea that a mechanical calculator can be conscious seems extremely hard to believe.

OTH, there was a fad for the idea that water driven machinery might be conscious:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Restless-Clock-...B014RWV2CQ

Even Liebniz took an interest!

I was given that link in an email discussion with someone at the DI.

David

Yeah Leibniz's conclusions still hold today for computers and brains [though I'd possibly disagree with his considerations of what simple substances are and can consist of.]->

Quote:Moreover, it must be confessed that perception and that which depends upon it are inexplicable on mechanical grounds, that is to say, by means of figures and motions.  And supposing there were a machine, so constructed as to think, feel, and have perception, it might be conceived as increased in size, while keeping the same proportions, so that one might go into it as into a mill.  That being so, we should, on examining its interior, find only parts which work one upon another, and never anything by which to explain a perception.  Thus it is in a simple substance, and not in a compound or in a machine, that perception must be sought for.  Further, nothing but this (namely, perceptions and their changes) can be found in a simple substance.  It is also in this alone that all the internal activities of simple substances can consist.

Materialism has only the mere illusion of plausibility, that it somehow just has to be true. But when one looks at the issue without bias all the "explanations" fade away.

Of course, as apparently must be said a 1000 times over, this doesn't mean Survival/souls are real. Heck even the Filter Theory could be true and Personal Survival could be false, as was discussed in James' time.

But in my experience, once someone accepts Materialism is false and begins to read the Survival cases in an unbiased way it begins to feel increasingly that Survival is at the least a reasonable conclusion. This for me was a years long process, reading not just facts but the story involved. Things like Stevenson's travels, recorded by [Tom] Shroder [in the book Old Souls]. Actually reading the book now as I'd only seen excerpts in the past.

For Materialist fundamentalists caught in their faith, however, I'm sure any evidence of this sort will be picked apart though. As the proverb goes - "The man who wants to beat a dog will always find his stick."

(2023-06-07, 04:46 PM)Merle Wrote: [ -> ]Similarly, a single water molecules is not wet, but many together make a substance that is wet.

Leibniz’s Mill 

E.Feser

Quote:Landesman considers the following objection raised by John Searle in his book Intentionality:

Quote:An exactly parallel argument to Leibniz’s would be that the behavior of H2O molecules can never explain the liquidity of water, because if we entered into the system of molecules “as into a mill we should only find on visiting it pieces which push one against another, but never anything by which to explain” liquidity.  But in both cases we would be looking at the system at the wrong level.  The liquidity of water is not to be found at the level of the individual molecule, nor are the visual perception and the thirst to be found at the level of the individual neuron or synapse.  (p. 268)

It is ironic that Searle should put forward such an objection, given that he is also a critic of materialism who has himself elsewhere denied that such cases are “exactly parallel.”  In particular, he has insisted that whereas liquidity, solidity, and other such properties of material systems have what he calls a “third-person ontology” insofar as they are entirely objective or “public” phenomena equally accessible to every observer, consciousness has by contrast a “first-person ontology” insofar as it is subjective, “private,” or directly accessible only to the subject of a conscious experience.  But then it would seem to follow that if we observed a system of water molecules on the large scale – not just an individual molecule or two but the whole system – and noted that they were moving around in such-and-such a way relative to one another, we would (given the standard scientific account of liquidity) just be observing the system’s liquidity.  By contrast, if we observed, on the large scale, the system of neurons which makes up the brain, we would not thereby observe the conscious experiences of the person whose brain it is.  This is a consequence of Searle’s own distinction between third-person and first-person ontology, and his own insistence that consciousness is unique in having the latter sort of ontology.  (See my paper “Why Searle Is a Property Dualist” for references and for further discussion of Searle’s views.)

Landesman makes a related point in response to Searle when he notes that when observing either a mill-sized brain or a mill-sized system of water molecules, we would not be limited to observing the individual neuron or molecule but could imagine instead observing the systems on the large scale.  And when we do so, Landesman continues, we would certainly be able to observe the liquidity of the water if by “liquidity” we mean a certain kind of interaction between molecules.  On the other hand, we might instead mean by “liquidity” the phenomenal features liquid water presents to us – the way it looks or feels to us, for example – and these, Landesman allows, would not be observable as we walked through a mill-sized system of water molecules.  But then, liquidity in this sense would really not be a feature of the water itself in the first place, but only of our experience of it.  And in that case it is irrelevant that we would not observe it in observing the system of molecules.  (Cf. my discussion of the fallacy Paul Churchland commits when he suggests that the red surface of an apple is really just “a matrix of molecules reflecting photons at certain critical wavelengths.”)  By contrast, thought and perception are features of the mind itself, and yet we would not be aware of them in observing the large-scale interactions between neurons in a mill-sized brain.  Thus, Landesman concludes (quite correctly, in my view), Searle’s objection fails.