Common sense argument - the mind and materialism

How we ‘feel’ about an imagined chocolate sundae is determined by our previous experiences of chocolate, ice cream, sugar etc

How we ‘feel’ about an imagined chocolate sundae is determined by our previous experiences of chocolate, ice cream, sugar etc

Yeah this isn't the best example.

That said I do think the argument being made - there's a chasm between the pattern and what it's said to represent - does hold. It recalls Alex Rosenberg's Atheist Guide to Reality:

Now, here is the question we’ll try to answer: What makes the Paris neurons a set of neurons that is about Paris; what make them refer to Paris, to denote, name, point to, pick out Paris?...

The first clump of matter, the bit of wet stuff in my brain, the Paris neurons, is about the second chunk of matter, the much greater quantity of diverse kinds of stuff that make up Paris. How can the first clump—the Paris neurons in my brain—be about, denote, refer to, name, represent, or otherwise point to the second clump—the agglomeration of Paris?...

A more general version of this question is this: How can one clump of stuff anywhere in the universe be about some other clump of stuff anywhere else in the universe—right next to it or 100 million light-years away?

...Let’s suppose that the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way red octagons are about stopping. This is the first step down a slippery slope, a regress into total confusion. If the Paris neurons are about Paris the same way a red octagon is about stopping, then there has to be something in the brain that interprets the Paris neurons as being about Paris. After all, that’s how the stop sign is about stopping. It gets interpreted by us in a certain way. The difference is that in the case of the Paris neurons, the interpreter can only be another part of the brain...

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...

…What you absolutely cannot be wrong about is that your conscious thought was about something. Even having a wildly wrong thought about something requires that the thought be about something.

It’s this last notion that introspection conveys that science has to deny. Thinking about things can’t happen at all...When consciousness convinces you that you, or your mind, or your brain has thoughts about things, it is wrong.

Like Feser I think it is Alex Rosenberg who's wrong on the conclusion but correct in the reasoning up to the last line. I don't see how I cannot have thoughts, anymore than I can't have subjective experiences, and so materialism/physicalism must be false.

I don’t see any major problems with a pattern in my brain being well correlated with a thing. (I mean pattern in the the broadest sense). I don’t see any difference between ‘Paris’ and ‘Ice cream’. I agree Paris and Icecream  are not stored in a small ‘clump’ of contiguous neurons, but are distributed as a pattern across the whole brain.

I guess I'd draw a distinction between "Ice Cream" as a word pointing to a thing, and the calling up of the memory of a sundae. "Paris" to me is more clearly pointing to a city on a map you might never have been to. You can talk about it without having even seen a picture of Paris.

Regarding the distribution across the whole brain, that still is a pattern that represents something. The question would then be who does the pattern represent something to?

That said I have suspected that memory may be spread out in a "4-D" way, Stephen Earle Robbins had this idea of the past being the block universe that's continually being added to...or at least that's what I think he was saying:

"The brain, we have seen, is a reconstructive wave passing through the holographic, universal field. It is a wave supported by the concrete dynamics created by the biological, chemical, physical architecture of the brain. It is naturally, yes, “tuned” to Channel Normal – the ecological world at our scale of time, the scale of “buzzing” flies and stirring spoons. But the complex biochemical structure supporting this attunement can clearly be modulated for different attunements, just as we speculated in the context of introducing a catalyst to change our scale of time."


Robbins, Stephen Earle. Time and Memory: A primer on the scientific mysticism of consciousness (Kindle Locations 5767-5771). CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. Kindle Edition.

Yeah this isn't the best example.

That said I do think the argument being made - there's a chasm between the pattern and what it's said to represent - does hold. It recalls Alex Rosenberg's Atheist Guide to Reality:


Like Feser I think it is Alex Rosenberg who's wrong on the conclusion but correct in the reasoning up to the last line. I don't see how I cannot have thoughts, anymore than I can't have subjective experiences, and so materialism/physicalism must be focus.

Remember. The experience itself and the explanation of that experience are in two distinct categories. The inability to satisfactorily use language to describe how an experience arises says nothing about the nature of the experience one way or the other. That is why some argue that the hard problem is neither ‘hard’ nor a ‘problem’.

Remember. The experience itself and the explanation of that experience are in two distinct categories. The inability to satisfactorily use language to describe how an experience arises says nothing about the nature of the experience one way or the other. That is why some argue that the hard problem is neither ‘hard’ nor a ‘problem’.

But the argument deals with our Thoughts About Things, not our Subjective Experience - or at the least this is what Rosenberg is talking about.

It's why I'd agree the recollection of the sundae isn't the best argument to use, because it's conflating the experience of the sundae (Subjective Consciousness) with the thoughts about sundaes (Intentional Consciousness) and running what I've usually seen presented as two arguments against materialism together.

As Fodor notes these are actually 3 separate problems of consciousness:

[S]ome of the most pervasive properties of minds seem so mysterious as to raise the Kantian-sounding question how a materialistic psychology is even possible. Lots of mental states are conscious, lots of mental states are intentional, and lots of mental processes are rational, and the question does rather suggest itself how anything that is material could be any of these.

For more on the three separate problems, see Feser's article Fodor's Trinity.

In any case, I don't really get how language describing a subjective experience can say nothing about the nature of the experience. Why is one pattern correlating to the taste of chocolate, another to vanilla? Maybe I'm misunderstanding but surely there must be an explanation for why the matter reduced to...whatever materialists call matter's final reduction nowadays...that can be described quantitatively yields experiences that are introspectively irreducible & qualitative.

Finally I also don't think there's a Hard Problem, because we just need to recognize Consciousness is a Fundamental, even if this means it's an aspect of some substance from which the Mental & Physical arise (Neutral Monism).

Remember. The experience itself and the explanation of that experience are in two distinct categories. The inability to satisfactorily use language to describe how an experience arises says nothing about the nature of the experience one way or the other. That is why some argue that the hard problem is neither ‘hard’ nor a ‘problem’.

However, in the context of empirical science - not being able to directly measure the variables of the process model - is a show-stopper!

The best version of a solution to the "hard problem" model is the Global Work-space Model (GWM).   It is the fundamental "head-smacker" for me and the methodological approach that I am promoting.  The equations for work - where signal strength are measured - are totally irrelevant to the meanings behind the signals.  This has been passed-off by Dennett, Baars and others, as a language issue.  It is not linguistics that are the problem.  It is a fundamental obfuscation that covers-up the glaring issue with metaphors, instead of data!!!!!

The equations of power, work and signal strength - have nothing to do with with measuring order, directing functional communication, organization and evaluation of logical relations.  A.N. Whitehead began Modes of Thought with a talk about importance.  Then he dealt with expression and understanding.  With information science and help from Bayesian statistical tools - importance can be measured.  I think that understanding is being measured by ITT, more than consciousness.

https://brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/...8_toc.html

There are actual "work" calculations that describe neural signaling.  Its just the wattage is small.  The physics definition for work would have to address the displacement of electrons (hard to measure), so Ohm's law is the appropriate tool.  None of these SI derived units of measures, in the least way, are germane to important ideas and feelings being selected for focus in the mind.  (The activity that the GWM addresses.)  As a physical science is a just-so-story based on a mistaken metaphor that philosophers have supported in recent decades.

On the other hand - the GWM can address as does Tononi et all - with information science equations based on mutual information - is a great idea.  The work-space is infospace.  This whole thing is rooted in the symbol-grounding problem and is the blind-spot it is for materialism.

malf - I agree the hard problem may not be so hard - if one moves from airy "consciousness" and lands with pragmatic science.   Measurements for observation, from which reliable data specific to the process outcomes can be obtained, are the back-bone for further analysis.  Those measurement just aren't going to be found in the NCC - other than noting it takes brain signals to communicate biologically. Answers will be found measuring bits, coding methods, game theory, direct perception of affordances and the natural logic of living things.

malf - I agree the hard problem may not be so hard - if one moves from airy "consciousness" and lands with pragmatic science.

But is anything less airy than the subjective experience that we use in all discernment, from baby-hood to adult-hood?

Surely it is the abstraction of mathematics that is "airy", an example of Whitehead's misplaced concerteness? How else does Science wander into the fictions like uploading minds, multiverses, and over a decade of "Not Even Wrong" String Theory?