Can we talk about the philosophy of mind here?
I'm really not sure anymore what to believe. On the one hand I dislike dualism because it means there is something inherently mysterious and inexplicable outside of what we can research scientifically. On the other hand all the thought experiments concerning qualia are so convincing and I've never seen them being refuted, so it seems qualia cannot be accounted for by purely physical models.
Can you please either disprove dualism or explain it in such a manner that it becomes a tenable position without too many gaps?
>>849840
> I dislike dualism because it means there is something inherently mysterious and inexplicable outside of what we can research scientifically.
But why should we assume that even the scientific method can do away with all mysteries? Ultimately, it seems like scientific explanations rely on basic forces - that is, to avoid an infinite regress, we must postulate some irredcible power(s) of nature - and *why* these forces, rather than more or fewer or different forces, will remain an unanswerable question. Even if we could find some deeper explanation X for those forces, it seems like we could further ask "why?" and seek a still deeper explanation for X.
In other words, it seems to me that humans can always ask "why?" and thus some mystery will always remain.
>>850961
Sure, but it's a different situation. In particle physics we have working models with predictions and experimentally verified. Asking for even deeper explanations is some very high-level curiosity.
In studying consciousness however we don't even have a starting point. We still haven't figured out any method of explicitly relating the subjective experience to anything physical. We have no mechanism for qualia. All we have is some vague hope to say "Somehow our experiences are caused physically, but we don't know how".
Have you tried reading the critic of pure reason?
>>849840
>On the one hand I dislike dualism because it means there is something inherently mysterious and inexplicable outside of what we can research scientifically.
It's also incoherent, since there is no conceivable mechanism for an immaterial "soul" to interact with a physical "mind". If "souls" can have physical effects, why call them souls and not just ordinary physical processes? And if they can't, then what possible use are they as a theory?
>>851001
Is this a meme here? I'm new to /his/.
>>850982
>We still haven't figured out any method of explicitly relating the subjective experience to anything physical.
Eh, yes we have? There are machines that can see inside brains, even machines that can produce real-time "replays" of what is happening inside those brains.
> We have no mechanism for qualia.
Because it's not how reality turns out to work. Our experiences and memories can't be reduced to simplistic "substances", they exist as patterns of multiple neurons acting in concert. We haven't found a mechanism for qualia because there's no such thing, reality is much more complex than that.
>>851008
>there is no conceivable mechanism for an immaterial "soul" to interact with a physical "mind"
Can you prove this claim?
>>851031
Go on then, conceive of such a thing. Explain how an immaterial thing could interact with a material one. It's a logic impossibility.
>>851024
>There are machines that can see inside brains
By subjective experiences I meant qualia. Just in case this wasn't clear.
>Our experiences and memories can't be reduced to simplistic "substances"
By qualia I don't mean a substance. I rather use that word phenomenologically.
>>851008
Descartes thought it happened in the pineal gland, that it was like some sort of antenna picking up signals from the soul.
>>851037
Please show me the proof that it is impossible. I'd love to learn from you.
>>851049
Well, it's your prerogative to use words to mean whatever you want them to, but you must accept that doing so makes it a waste of time trying to communicate with you.
>>851058
This kind of tedious wordplay is why no-one takes philosophers seriously.
>>851082
>to use words to mean whatever you want them to
My usage of "qualia" is consistent with the standard terminology in most philosophical papers as well as encyclopedias such as wikipedia and the Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy. I only clarified my usage of the word because you seemed to imply a non-standard interpretation.
>tedious wordplay
As a mathematician I am formally educated in logic. You made a claim of "logical impossbility", so I naturally assumed you have formal proof. Please excuse if I overestimated your intellectual abilities.
>>851101
It is impossible for an immaterial thing to interact with a material one. Prove me wrong.
>>851123
Your claim, your burden of proof.
>>851123
Photons have no mass, yet they can interact with massive particles. Here's your example of an immaterial thing interacting with a material one.
>>851146
Are you suggesting that photons are immaterial?
>>851168
Photons have no mass. Do you disagree?
>>851171
While that's technically true, they have energy, which we have understood for about a century to be a form of the same underlying thing that mass is a form of.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence
>>851171
Are you suggesting that a lack of mass is all something needs to be considered immaterial? Do you know what an elementary particle is?
Also it is not even true that photons have no mass, it's a figure of speech based on the fact you can't slow them down so you can't weigh them but they respond to gravity just like massive particles do.
>>851202
>Also it is not even true that photons have no mass, it's a figure of speech based on the fact you can't slow them down so you can't weigh them but they respond to gravity just like massive particles do.
Keep your dumbed down "Neil smoke de grass Tyson" platitudes to yourself, underaged pop sci retard. What you said is wrong and cringeworthy. You don't know shit about neither GR nor QED.
>>851211
>They have no rest mass.
Unproven.
>They are not considered to be matter.
That's because they're bosons and not hadrons. Are gluons considered matter? what about WZ bosons, those things are HUGE.
Dualism as it's commonly described is not really something you can confidently claim to "believe" in, imo.
You can certainly say that you don't find conventional explanations of consciousness convincing - I personally don't either. But what is more likely: that consciousness is accounted for by some as-yet unexplained aspect of physical reality? Or that there's a completely non-physical aspect to it, which would necessarily exist outside of the natural world and would thus contradict everything we've so far been able to learn about the universe?
At best you could say that you don't think our current understanding of the physical universe can satisfactorily explain consciousness, and therefore you can't fully discount the possibility of dualism. But if you actually "believe" in dualism I think you're making leaps that just aren't warranted given the knowledge we have.
>>851239
Dualism is intuitively obvious, but our intuitions are a poor guide to reality, in psychology as in physics. The relationship between the brain and the mind is pretty concretely established at this point, maintaining a position of dualism is nothing more than religion.
>>851146
>>851199
>>851202
>>851211
>>851220
>>851232
Oh for fuck's sake, it's clear from context the first guy this conversation replied to meant physical vs. unphysical rather than material vs. immaterial and just worded his shit terribly. Now here you autists have derailed everything into hurr mass hurr no mass, which has no bearing on the question of dualism to begin with.
>>851232
>Unproven.
It's part of their definition.
>That's because they're bosons and not hadrons.
I don't think you fully understand what these words mean.
Instead of tormenting us with your ignorance, you could educate yourself. There are surely more productive things to do than being an annoyance on /his/.
>>851263
>It's part of their definition.
What? Nonsense.
>I don't think you fully understand what these words mean.
It's very clear which of us is the ignoramus.
>>851253
>The relationship between the brain and the mind is pretty concretely established at this point
Unfortunately that's not the case yet.
>>849840
Qualia doesn't imply substance dualism, assuming it's substance dualism you're talking about.
>>851270
Really, something material being material and something non-material being non-material isn't part of their definitions?
>>851270
The quanta of an abelian gauge field are massless. Kill yourself.
>>851276
Minds are what brains "do", you can't separate the two. If I poke a metal fork into your brain, your mind will suffer an injury too. If your brain stops working, then your mind is gone, too. Yes it's weird that a brain can become self-aware, but that appears to be what has, in fact, happened.
>>851291
Are you now claiming that physical concepts must be defined in philosophical terms? What a complete tool you are.
>>851295
Okay. So? They're still not immaterial unless you're a complete scientific AND philosophical illiterate.
>>851307
They have no mass. Hence they are not matter. Hence they are immaterial.
>>851307
>If I poke a metal fork into your brain
And if I destroy my computer, I can't access the internet anymore. That doesn't mean the internet was generated by my computer. The brain might be merely a sender/receiver needed for interaction between body and consciousness.
>>851311
>They have no mass. Hence they are not matter.
That doesn't follow at all. Immaterial is not a synonym for massless, photons are not immaterial even if they are massless (which is unproven but commonly assumed). Prooftext: Shine a torch at soemthing, note the photons interacting with the surface allowing you to see it.
>>851327
Something without mass is immaterial. Cry harder.
>>851325
>The brain might be merely a sender/receiver needed for interaction between body and consciousness.
Except there is no observable reason to assume this,other than simple fear of death. No such signal has ever been observed. On the contrary, the physical basis of memories has been observed. Now granted, it is possible that an immaterial signal is causing these patterns to be formed inside our brains, but it seems at least as likely that the brain is itself causing these patters to be formed, via it's admittedly poorly understood and phenomenally complex but purely physical processes.
>>851340
So you are claiming photons are immaterial? Please explain how they routinely interact with material objects.
>>851343
>Except there is no observable reason to assume this,other than simple fear of death
There are many other reasons. "Fear of death" isn't even a valid reason because obviously consciousness is not immortal since it is not independent of the body.
>>851276
I think it's fairly concretely established that there is a relationship. What the nature of that relationship is isn't 100% clear; we don't know for sure if consciousness is an emergent property of physical processes in the mind, if there's some sort of as-yet unobserved "consciousness gland", if the brain is like an antenna that picks up consciousness, or what. But we can certainly observe that by affecting the brain, we affect consciousness, and imo that is sufficient to justify the claim "there is a relationship between the brain and consciousness".
As well, of course, consciousness/awareness is only one component of the mind. Things like memories and emotions are pretty concretely established to be connected to the physical structure of the brain.
>>851350
I don't need to explain QFT to you. You asked for an example. I gave you an example. We can play this game all night but in the end you're just gonna end up depressed.
>>851325
False equivalence. A better analogy would be having computers as neurons and the internet as the brain. Anyway, the internet is generated by computers, yes. If you break all computers, you can't have computer networks.
First, show evidence of mind beyond brain, then science will entertain the idea.
>>851262
I think this debate over material vs. immaterial does shine a bit of light on the question of what a "non-physical" thing (ie the dualist mind) would even look like, though. It seems to me that if we can measure it, then by definition it's part of the physical universe, and if we can't measure it, how can we confidently say it exists?
>>851367
Your inability to understand the analogy doesn't invalidate it.
>>851355
>"Fear of death" isn't even a valid reason because obviously consciousness is not immortal since it is not independent of the body.
But that's the whole point of dualism, the idea that mind and body are in some sense separate and can exist without one another.
>>851376
>But that's the whole point of dualism
Nope. Stay ignorant.
>>851363
You don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, and this has been manifestly apparent from our first interaction. I have no idea why you think you're fooling me.
>>851343
I think you're conflating consciousness, ie the pure state of awareness, with identity, ie memories, emotions, values etc.
Although of course in our everyday experience consciousness tends to be thought of as synonymous with identity, that's not necessarily the case.
>>851374
Your analogy was bad because the internet doesn't exist without computers, the way you seemed to imply.
Maybe if you'd used TV for your analogy. (Because TV networks will keep transmitting even if there are no TVs to receive.)
>>851390
I don't think there's necessarily a difference. The concept we have of a "self" seems to be something of an illusion, a kind of narrative fiction our brain tells itself. Consciousness itself seems to be an emergent phenomena, it doesn't have sharp edges or neat boundaries like philosophers have always assumed.
>>851385
Why so emotional? I'm sorry if I hit a nerve, but as long as you post wrong and stupid comments about particle physics, I feel obliged to correct you
>>851409
>"self"
We have a "neural self" some experts think, but I guess you mean something more abstract?
>>851409
that's my point; there's not really any concrete reason to believe that the self and consciousness are inseparable concepts.
>>851417
Not a single thing you've said has been even close to accurate, and any emotion you are reading is your own projection I assure you.
>>851405
The internet keeps existing even if a single computer is destroyed. Why do you try desperately to get lost in irrelevant details instead of making arguments for your position?
>>851429
So you disagree that the gauge bosons of an abelian gauge field are massless?
>>851423
Well, our idea of what our "self" is is pretty far from the "neural self". We imagine that we control or at least command the other processes that go on in our brain, stuff like our visual imagination, or our ability to reason and perform logic, wheras the reality seems more like our "self" is just one among many autonomous neural processes, and possibly not even an especially important one. More a bystander who spins a yarn about how "he" thought about such and such, and then "he" decided to go punch such and such in the face, and then "he" got into a fight with the cops, etc etc, all the while most or all of these things "he" does, were being done by autonomous neural agents.
>>851424
This is also my position, which is one reason I reject dualism. I'm not sure how a dualist could believe this, tho.
>>851437
You don't know what a single word of that means. Continuing to discuss any part of this or anything else with you would be a waste of my time at this point.
>>851431
I never presented a position. My first post in this thread was my comment on your analogy.
I'm actually really into virtual neural networks so I take brains and computers way seriously.
So: If the internet was a mind, individual computers would be single neurons.
>>851453
Do you agree or disagree? Yes or no?
>>851446
Eh, lower processes are more fundamental, but top-down processes are still a thing, and people don't quite realize how much self-regulation can be achieved with practice. Controlling intrusive thoughts and images is just the tip of the iceberg.
>>851483
The illusion of top-down control really is illusory. Which is not to say that practises like meditation are not valuable for ordering your thoughts or achieving calmness of mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gen2p-9DvFE
This is a very long video but it's some fascinating stuff if you're interested in cognition.
>>851512
>writes a book claiming to explain how the mind works
What an obnoxious asshole.
>>849840
Dualism is unnecessary (see occam razor) and has yet to be empirically supported, after thousands of years of people pretending its real. As neurology progresses, it becomes less and less probable.
I don't remember the name, but there was this experiment a few years ago where someone had to push a true or false button to questions, and the neurologists that were looking at his brain were able to tell before it happened what he was about to do. Your decisions aren't coming from something inhabiting your head, they are produced by billions of neural links interacting with one another, reacting to an unfathomable amount of variables.
I don't have the slightest bit of interest on this, but are people here saying there is no such a thing as consciousness/rationality?
>>851307
>Are you now claiming that physical concepts must be defined in philosophical terms?
Oh for fuck sake you illiterate I'm questioning your sanity over bitching against the law of identity.
>>851547
Not that I'm a dualist, but that experiment in no way disproves dualism. Dualism is of course still extremely unlikely given what we know about the mind and the universe, but that experiment doesn't change the level of unlikelyness.
>>851556
There is consciousness, but it's not this thing inhabiting your head, it's the result of numerous physical, objectively observable processes.
Consciousness is to the brain what noise is to a room filled with hundreds of people talking.
>>851512
I can't have use the speakers right now.
Can you describe the important bits?
I'm always rather suspicious when someone refers to this or that mental process as "illusory".
I just link stuff like "self" to the default mode network. It informs the rest of the system on stuff about itself and other people. Slows down when you actually try to do something - when you focus outwardly. I think it evolved from a more basic form of proprioception (position of self in space, relation of body parts to each other, that kind of stuff).
Bottom-up processes don't explain all of how the brain works. It's more like loop of bottom-up and top-down processes with new information coming in from outside.
![819[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/lDl5MiK.jpg "819[1].jpg")
>>851556
>consciousness/rationality
This shit when people put an "and/or" or just a dash between two things that isn't the same thing in the slightest has to fucking stop.
>>851581
So yes, you are doing exactly what I said you were doing. You realise of course that the "laws of logic" are routinely violated by subatomic particles? That, for example, a photon can in fact interact with itself as tho it were two separate particles? Of course you don't, because you're an ignoramus. See what I meant by this being a waste of my time? Of course you don't, because you are an ignoramus.
>>851595
That's speculation. "Consciousness" has never been observed or quantified except in a subjective sense; the idea that it's an emergent property of lower-level processes is at best an educated guess.
>>851597
>I'm always rather suspicious when someone refers to this or that mental process as "illusory".
I don't think Pinker uses such a term. His book is about his research into neuroscience, all his claims are empirically supported, and his professional background in linguistics and philosophy of mind gives him a very broad perspective.
>>851616
I wouldn't know... I said I can't use the speakers.
I'm a bit into Damásio, though. Funny enough, he wrote a book named "Descart's Error". Might be appropriate for this thread on dualism, but I haven't read that one.
>>851611
It's the only empirically supported speculation. Any dualist hypothesis is more speculative, since it cannot be claimed only with the empirical evidence, it needs to assume something more to be understood.
>>849840
>On the other hand all the thought experiments concerning qualia are so convincing and I've never seen them being refuted, so it seems qualia cannot be accounted for by purely physical models.
What do you find convincing about qualia exactly? I've always found the idea of qualia to be interesting and representative of the fact there is a lot we don't know but not knowing something is not evidence to come to a conclusion in my opinion. Of course it has never been refuted. The idea that a teapot is orbiting the Solar System somewhere past Pluto has never been refuted but that doesn't make it a convincing position to hold.
>>851602
>You realise of course that the "laws of logic" are routinely violated by subatomic particles?
No it isn't you dumb fuck; they aren't in two states at the same time but merely act as if they are. There's a huge difference since the later means there's no contradiction. How the fuck can you have missed that while bothering to talk about QM?
>>851649
I'm not arguing for dualism, but I wouldn't say that consciousness as an emergent phenomenon (as opposed to, say, some sort of unobserved particle or whatever) is empirically supported. Consciousness being in some way connected to the brain is empirically supported; the mechanism by which it is connected is not empirically supported at present, regardless of what your theory of that mechanism is.
I'm not saying that there are necessarily more convincing theories out there, but I think it's important to note that consciousness being an emergent property of neuron interactions and whatnot is not something that is empirically supported. Doesn't mean it's wrong, but you can't authoritatively claim it's right.
>>851702
Have you read the thread? He thinks photons have mass. You're talking to a person who dedicates hours of his life to being annoying on the internet.
>>851698
Do you deny that qualia exist? If so, on what grounds?
>>851729
I don't deny they exist.
>>849840
Not trying to be meta.
Could you present which specific pro-qualia thought experiments you have in mind?
It's difficult to examine something that isn't presented; let alone argue against it's conclusions if only the conclusion is presented.
Philosophy of mind is going to be completely eaten up by neuroscience and similar so there's no point in considering it.
>>851963
> Neuroscience has no underlying philosophical principles.
>>851963
Consider a closed book.
a completed function.
a closed system.
Such a system is dead or doomed to death.
Science is a living body of knowledge and as such is dependent on small carefully herded measures of bullshit subjected to rigorous examination and inquiry followed by equally vigorous experimentation and revision.
This we call hypothesis and natural philosophy.
If there is a point to anything, it will lie in the philosophy of our most important artifact; the mind. For it is what we choose to make of it that matters more than what it is now.
Its facts are already perfectly recorded and in evidence in every lump of gray matter. But its potential cannot be foreseen, only achieved.
