we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Discuss arguments for existence of God and faith in general. Any aspect of any orientation toward religion/spirituality, as long as it is based upon a positive open to other people attitude.

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mdsimpson92
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by mdsimpson92 » Sat Mar 16, 2013 12:11 am

Metacrock wrote: Yes but I guess the dualism collapses on itself. It seems like mental and physical are valid dualism but really the physical collapses to a product of the mental.

the materialist take on consciousness does it backwards. Physical collapses into the mental because we access the physical through the mental. They try to collapse the mental into the physical by making it a side effect of the physical, an abortion, a product of brain chemistry it's just an illusion of the physical. That doesn't work becasue they answers so many things, like the hard problem.

I think what's really happening is the medication issue wont allow the physical to predominate becasue our perceptions of the physical have to be mediated by the mental.
Which is why I prefer something closer to dual aspect theory. The inherent problem with that is describing what the hell the substance is anyways.

On a positive note, both neutral and dual-aspect monism plays better into proto-panpsychism, which has fairly interesting issues by itself. Though as I mentioned before with a different article, physicalism practically requires panpsychism for it to work in describing the mental.
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by fleetmouse » Sat Mar 16, 2013 7:38 am

mdsimpson92 wrote:Which is why I prefer something closer to dual aspect theory.
One interesting consequence of dual aspect theory is that we would expect any mental description to have a corresponding physical description, which matches up well to the findings of neuroscience.

However it also seems to predict that any physical description would have a corresponding mental description, which is such a bad fit for our overall observations of the world that we find it jarring.
The inherent problem with that is describing what the hell the substance is anyways.
I'd love to read a philosophically informed overview of the concept of substance throughout history. I hope someone's written it.(*) I have a sneaking suspicion that the best we can do with substance - which is itself our phenomenal apprehension and description, not the thing in itself - is to describe how we see it behaving.
On a positive note, both neutral and dual-aspect monism plays better into proto-panpsychism, which has fairly interesting issues by itself. Though as I mentioned before with a different article, physicalism practically requires panpsychism for it to work in describing the mental.
I thought so at one time but I think I'm reverting to eliminative physicalism (I hate the term materialism, it's a misnomer that encourages wrong ideas).

Think of it this way: you won't understand an economy by physically describing a stock exchange building and the people's bodies and desks in it, but we don't think there's "economic substance" that functions as a medium for the economy distinct from physical substance, or as an inherent aspect of a neutral substance that has both physical and economic qualities.

This still leaves us with the problem of qualia - the hard problem of consciousness - but I don't see that positing mental substance or neutral substance with mental properties does anything more than kick the problem down the road. You're saying, this "stuff" has innate mental properties and we're not sure how. You're treating it as a black box, still not actually explaining it. And you're not just admitting but insisting that it's inexplicable in principle.

This is, in my mind, worse and not better than temporarily treating brain process as a black box in which conscious awareness somehow arises in what way we're not sure how - reverting to talk of substance here reminds me of the way we once thought in terms of fire and water as elements, as things with fiery and watery qualities in and of themselves, rather than digging beneath and finding out why fire and water behave as they do. I don't see the harm in saying that we simply don't fully understand consciousness in the way that we once didn't fully understand fire and water. Why rush to cobble up easy "phew, we can stop thinking about it now" answers through talk about "substance"?

(* I guess this is a start. Good old Snodfart!)

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:09 am

Think of it this way: you won't understand an economy by physically describing a stock exchange building and the people's bodies and desks in it, but we don't think there's "economic substance" that functions as a medium for the economy distinct from physical substance, or as an inherent aspect of a neutral substance that has both physical and economic qualities.
Materialism just made up a bunch of stuff to stand in for religious belief so they can attack something they can beat. That's why there's a phony concept of supernatural that was put over for the real thing in the enlightenment. You can see that process forming up in works like ON the Plurality of Worlds by Fontenelle. It was formed in contradistinction to mechanical concepts. In the 18th century the concept of materialism and scinece was mechanical and deterministic. That's a carry over to today's "elminative whatever."

that's what your understanding of supernatural or spiritual is that you depict above.
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Sat Mar 16, 2013 9:16 am

Fleet:This still leaves us with the problem of qualia - the hard problem of consciousness - but I don't see that positing mental substance or neutral substance with mental properties does anything more than kick the problem down the road. You're saying, this "stuff" has innate mental properties and we're not sure how. You're treating it as a black box, still not actually explaining it. And you're not just admitting but insisting that it's inexplicable in principle.
In my view mind = spirit. So the innate mental properties are the thing itself, spirit. Mind is a place holder for our lack of understanding about what holds it all together. It doesn't have to be a Casper-like entity. Of course we know they tied up with electrical discharge across a synapse. theoretically if the pattern could be repeated exactly then the consciousness could re transformed to another container. So life after death and survival of identity is not some way out unscientific BS.

This is, in my mind, worse and not better than temporarily treating brain process as a black box in which conscious awareness somehow arises in what way we're not sure how - reverting to talk of substance here reminds me of the way we once thought in terms of fire and water as elements, as things with fiery and watery qualities in and of themselves, rather than digging beneath and finding out why fire and water behave as they do. I don't see the harm in saying that we simply don't fully understand consciousness in the way that we once didn't fully understand fire and water. Why rush to cobble up easy "phew, we can stop thinking about it now" answers through talk about "substance"?
"substance" is a philosophical term. it can used in a lot of ways. It doesn't have to mean a discrete substance but the content of the properties.
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by fleetmouse » Sat Mar 16, 2013 10:47 am

Metacrock wrote:In my view mind = spirit. So the innate mental properties are the thing itself, spirit. Mind is a place holder for our lack of understanding about what holds it all together. It doesn't have to be a Casper-like entity. Of course we know they tied up with electrical discharge across a synapse. theoretically if the pattern could be repeated exactly then the consciousness could re transformed to another container. So life after death and survival of identity is not some way out unscientific BS.
Yes! - the important thing is the dynamic pattern itself, the process of mind. It could well be platform-agnostic, which is to say the process could be replicated exactly - or close enough for our purposes - in another medium.

So right away there's two things we can say - one, that physicalism doesn't necessarily miss anything, because there's nothing about matter, energy, space and time that is necessarily inadequate as a medium for mental process.

Two, that this physical perspective on mind does not preclude the mind being copied or preserved after the death of the particular physical brain in which it has been occurring in life. So life-after-death is possible in both a religious and a scientific perspective.

Now, there are some philosophical puzzles arising out of this view too - first of all, if you copy the process into another medium, is it the same person? Is there experiential continuity? Is it "me", my current first-person experientiality, or is it a new one? To illustrate this, what if we made a copy of the Metacrock mental process in another body and kept the original? Would there then be two of you, and what would be the relationship between meta(1) and meta(2)'s experientiality? Would each copy have its own experientiality? If so, then we couldn't assume that your point-of-view would survive death even though a postmortem copy of you might have its own point of view.

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by met » Sat Mar 16, 2013 12:59 pm

Isn't what you're saying true of every experience essentially? We are altered by every experience. Not just death. Which opens the Question: what, if anything, is the essential thing that makes us "us?"
The “One” is the space of the “world” of the tick, but also the “pinch” of the lobster, or that rendezvous in person to confirm online pictures (with a new lover or an old God). This is the machinery operative...as “onto-theology."
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by fleetmouse » Sat Mar 16, 2013 1:42 pm

met wrote:Isn't what you're saying true of every experience essentially? We are altered by every experience. Not just death. Which opens the Question: what, if anything, is the essential thing that makes us "us?"
I don't think there is a self in an essentialist sense. In a pragmatic sense, what makes me myself and you yourself is the same thing that makes this tree not that tree - physical separation and causal continuity. It's pretty mundane and not philosophically interesting, IMHO.

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Sat Mar 16, 2013 2:01 pm

fleetmouse wrote:
Metacrock wrote:In my view mind = spirit. So the innate mental properties are the thing itself, spirit. Mind is a place holder for our lack of understanding about what holds it all together. It doesn't have to be a Casper-like entity. Of course we know they tied up with electrical discharge across a synapse. theoretically if the pattern could be repeated exactly then the consciousness could re transformed to another container. So life after death and survival of identity is not some way out unscientific BS.
Yes! - the important thing is the dynamic pattern itself, the process of mind. It could well be platform-agnostic, which is to say the process could be replicated exactly - or close enough for our purposes - in another medium.

So right away there's two things we can say - one, that physicalism doesn't necessarily miss anything, because there's nothing about matter, energy, space and time that is necessarily inadequate as a medium for mental process.
that doesn't follow. I said it depends upon how they are held together. then the big mystery of God.
Two, that this physical perspective on mind does not preclude the mind being copied or preserved after the death of the particular physical brain in which it has been occurring in life. So life-after-death is possible in both a religious and a scientific perspective.
yes except I don't think you have a way to account for it. It's reasonable to assume if God granted eternal life he has a way to preserve the pattern. But if there's no God what will preserve it? It might just adhere by itself for some reason.

Now, there are some philosophical puzzles arising out of this view too - first of all, if you copy the process into another medium, is it the same person? Is there experiential continuity? Is it "me", my current first-person experiential, or is it a new one?
depends upon how you define person. The Greeks were alienated form the body they would say body is not part of the person per se, the Hebrews would say it's integral so they have to find a away to keep the body, God has to restore it.

consider: you cut your nails. you dont' think of yourself as a new person. you don't say "I have to my nails back or I can't be me." same with hair. What if the body is just to our consciousness what hair and nails are? Then that alienates from the body.

we are made totally new every so often with the replenishment of cells. but we still think of ourselves as us.

To illustrate this, what if we made a copy of the Metacrock mental process in another body and kept the original? Would there then be two of you, and what would be the relationship between meta(1) and meta(2)'s experientiality? Would each copy have its own experientiality? If so, then we couldn't assume that your point-of-view would survive death even though a postmortem copy of you might have its own point of view.
right those are puzzles that arise.
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by mdsimpson92 » Sat Mar 16, 2013 8:42 pm

fleetmouse wrote: This still leaves us with the problem of qualia - the hard problem of consciousness - but I don't see that positing mental substance or neutral substance with mental properties does anything more than kick the problem down the road. You're saying, this "stuff" has innate mental properties and we're not sure how. You're treating it as a black box, still not actually explaining it. And you're not just admitting but insisting that it's inexplicable in principle.
Sounds like you're more leaning towards a kind of property dualism rather than eliminative physicalism.
fleetmouse wrote: Think of it this way: you won't understand an economy by physically describing a stock exchange building and the people's bodies and desks in it, but we don't think there's "economic substance" that functions as a medium for the economy distinct from physical substance, or as an inherent aspect of a neutral substance that has both physical and economic qualities.
I will get back to this one later...need to think about this... and what I'm coming up with in part is that it might not matter much what "substance" it might be so important much as the processes that come from it......I'm getting a Whiteheadian vibe from this. I'm going to see if there is something that adresses that problem.
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Sun Mar 17, 2013 6:59 am

mdsimpson92 wrote:
fleetmouse wrote: This still leaves us with the problem of qualia - the hard problem of consciousness - but I don't see that positing mental substance or neutral substance with mental properties does anything more than kick the problem down the road. You're saying, this "stuff" has innate mental properties and we're not sure how. You're treating it as a black box, still not actually explaining it. And you're not just admitting but insisting that it's inexplicable in principle.
Sounds like you're more leaning towards a kind of property dualism rather than eliminative physicalism.
fleetmouse wrote: Think of it this way: you won't understand an economy by physically describing a stock exchange building and the people's bodies and desks in it, but we don't think there's "economic substance" that functions as a medium for the economy distinct from physical substance, or as an inherent aspect of a neutral substance that has both physical and economic qualities.
I will get back to this one later...need to think about this... and what I'm coming up with in part is that it might not matter much what "substance" it might be so important much as the processes that come from it......I'm getting a Whiteheadian vibe from this. I'm going to see if there is something that adresses that problem.

O God no! not Whiteheadian vibe? I had that once, it took four anti-biotics to get rid of it! :mrgreen:
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