(2024-12-23, 05:19 PM)Paul C. Anagnostopoulos Wrote: You must have a really different concept of "generating" than I do. When we open up a skull, poke some neurons, and elicit an image, is that not the brain generating something? You may argue that it is not the brain, but instead some sort of immaterial mind, but there is even less evidence for that. No immaterial mind is forthcoming. So why rag on the materialists and not also the idealists?
Now, if you are going to insist that such experiences must by definition be the result of an immaterial mind, then you are begging the question.
~~ Paul
If someone tells me there are only shades of red in a paint set, it would hardly be question-begging for me to then say that set will never produce paintings with shades of blue or green.
@Valmar 's observation follows from the Materialist claim that the fundamental stuff making up reality lacks all mental character. If matter has no thoughts, it would only follow that combinations of matter don't have thoughts.
In fact AFAIK all Materialists seem to agree with us for almost all combinations with only brains being the special, mysterious exception for some...
I say "some" b/c in fairness there do seem to be Materialists who agree matter cannot have thoughts about anything ->
Quote:We see why the Paris neurons can’t be about Paris the way that red octagons are about stopping. It’s because that way lies a regress that will prevent us from ever understanding what we wanted to figure out in the first place: how one chunk of stuff—the Paris neurons—can be about another chunk of stuff—Paris. We started out trying to figure out how the Paris neurons could be about Paris, and our tentative answer is that they are about Paris because some other part of the brain—the neural interpreter—is both about the Paris neurons and about Paris. We set out to explain how one set of neurons is about something out there in the world. We find ourselves adopting the theory that it’s because another set of neurons is about the first bunch of neurons and about the thing in the world, too.
This won’t do. What we need to get off the regress is some set of neurons that is about some stuff outside the brain without being interpreted—by anyone or anything else (including any other part of the brain)—as being about that stuff outside the brain. What we need is a clump of matter, in this case the Paris neurons, that by the very arrangement of its synapses points at, indicates, singles out, picks out, identifies (and here we just start piling up more and more synonyms for “being about”) another clump of matter outside the brain. But there is no such physical stuff.
Physics has ruled out the existence of clumps of matter of the required sort. There are just fermions and bosons and combinations of them. None of that stuff is just, all by itself, about any other stuff. There is nothing in the whole universe—including, of course, all the neurons in your brain—that just by its nature or composition can do this job of being about some other clump of matter. So, when consciousness assures us that we have thoughts about stuff, it has to be wrong. The brain nonconsciously stores information in thoughts. But the thoughts are not about stuff. Therefore, consciousness cannot retrieve thoughts about stuff. There are none to retrieve. So it can’t have thoughts about stuff either.
Rosenberg, Alex. The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions (pp. 178-179). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.
For myself I remain skeptical that there is "physical" stuff outside all experience yet generating the experiencer and all their experiences. Additionally it seems this "physical" stuff that supposedly comes before all experience will only ever be known through experience...that calls to mind your sig ->
If the existence of a thing is indistinguishable from its nonexistence, we say that thing does not exist. ---Yahzi
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
- Bertrand Russell