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

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Apr 05, 2013 11:34 pm

mdsimpson92 wrote:
runamokmonk wrote: I did watch all those videos (I did notice he is compatibilist, if I heard him correctly). I am not a philosopher so did not know some of the context of what he means.
Odd, he actually wrote a book stating dealing with how he considers free will to be incoherent. He is saying that compatibilism is probably the best free will can do.

In the third video he says that the only defensible conception of free will is compatibilist conception. He says that he thinks that's all we can have.

He says there is no intentionality without consciousness or without experience. He says that the other physicalists don't believe in consicousness or qualia at all can't have intentionality. He says he is certain we have consciousness. At least that's what I got out of it.
Last edited by runamokmonk on Fri Apr 05, 2013 11:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Fri Apr 05, 2013 11:35 pm

mdsimpson92 wrote:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSmfhc_8gew


David Chalmers definitely gives Strawson a run for his money in terms of rock star hair.
Funny, I almost posted that exact video of his just to comment on his hair. I was going to say he's a runner up.

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Sat Apr 06, 2013 8:23 am

fleetmouse wrote:Hm, I really let this one slide, didn't I? Sorry about that. I'm intensely interested in philosophy of mind now and I've scored copies of the overview book by Jaegwon Kim and a couple of Galen Strawson books. It's anyone's guess when I'll actually find time to read them.

In the meantime I found this great Galen Strawson interview - it's really more of a tantalizing taster of his ideas, if you can manage to concentrate on what he's saying instead of simply being awed into submission by his crazyhair -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtDgCQ5 ... 6979555BEE

So anyways guys, getting back to arguing briefly, can we at least agree that substance dualism isn't tenable because of the interaction problem?
I'm glad you are into philosophy of mind. Do you think of yourself as a reductionist? Or do you have a label? I have been assuming you are and then I thought assumptions always get me in trouble--hey why not ask!??
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Sat Apr 06, 2013 8:26 am

There's a book by two kelly (Father and daughter I think) Irreducible mind. It does a great job of dismissing the reductionist position and showing there's tons of reason not to be one.


Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century [Paperback]
Edward Kelly (Author), Emily Williams Kelly (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
List Price: $34.95

http://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Mind- ... 1442202068
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by fleetmouse » Sat Apr 06, 2013 6:50 pm

I'm not sure I know what your view of reductionism entails here. i feel like you're wanting to pigeonhole me so you can put your mind in neutral and give me a canned rebuttal.

To be a NON reductionist, must I believe that the mind is utterly non physical? Must I believe that the mind is simple, having no parts, subsystems, subdivisions or distinguishable particulars?

That Kelly book looks interesting. Wikipedia says he's an honest-to-Throgg dualist. Is that so? How does he solve the interaction problem?

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by runamokmonk » Sat Apr 06, 2013 11:14 pm

One issue I found with the videos is that it seemed to say consciousness is real, and since it is real, it can be incorporated into the philosophy of physicalism.

Like the quote I gave.
"if you want to be a real physicalist, well, you have to be a realist about consciousness because that's the most certainly known phenomenon there is. So you're going to have to go all the way and say that conscious states are themselves literally physical just like electric charge. And when I say conscious states I don't mean anything reductive in any sense, I mean that, the so-called qualia for you to believe in. The real thing that we all know about."

I do like that he said that consciousness is the most certainly known phenomenon. That seems obvious because the most basic thing you know, your personal awareness or experience and all that entails.

It seems possible, the idea that physical matter as being the base of reality, would have caused the problem that consciousness is an illusion or, somehow not real.

But he doesn't actually show that the philosophy or theory of physicalism fits in with there being literally real consciousness (here, at least). He says that conscious states are certainly real and so literally physical. But that does not seem to me to get around the interactive problem, but is possibly defining consciousness, as physical, just like an electric charge. But most don't think of electric charges as having subjective experience with intentionality. This is probably where panpsychism comes in. The physical has the mental aspect.

Granted, I am not as knowledgeable on this subject and may be dragging the discussion down, which is not my intention. Just thinking about it. From my vantage point it does almost seem like the mind is being 'defined' as physical. And from there you can be a realist about your own mind and also no longer have the interaction problem. Both the mind and body are physical, with a mental aspect, and so can now interact :lol: .

It made me wonder if there could be tests showing evidence that the mind can function outside of the body, maybe such as psychokinesis abilities. Could that also fit within physicalism, since consciousness would be "physical", yet having created a causal interaction outside of the body? It also had me wondering, if somehow heaven, or the afterlife, was somehow probable, could consciousness still be defined as physical? The problem might be, what is meant by the word "physical"? Because, above, the word physical appears to mean "real". Or maybe the word physical means, material substance, and the literal consciousness that everyone experiences is a physical reality or substance, and so real.

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by fleetmouse » Sun Apr 07, 2013 7:06 am

Good post runamokmonk. No you're not dragging the discussion down. You're thinking things through admirably clearly.
But most don't think of electric charges as having subjective experience with intentionality.
Yeah and this is my problem with panpsychism, and also in a way with idealism - the inanimate doesn't strike us as conscious, which is why we have the word "conscious" to differentiate experiencing entities from non experiencing ones (could we be wrong that they lack experience? Sure, but how do you explore the possibility?). However panprotopsychism or panprotoexperientialism is another thing - to postulate that the physical has the rudimentary raw properties necessary to enable consciousness and awareness under the right conditions. Though how this differs from emergentist physicalism escapes me.

I take physical to mean capable of interacting with the physical. Look at mass and energy for example - according to physics they're interchangeable, but energy can seem intangible at times. We're unaware of radio wavelength energy unless we have a radio or cell phone or (so I've been told) dental fillings that are arranged in the right way to interact with it. So the mind might be ultimately physical, but operating in an analogous way, in which it only interacts with systems that are "tuned in" to it (or that produced and emitted it in the first place...?)

Meta has talked about energy in the context of the mental and the spiritual before and I'm not sure if it's an analogy or literal so I'll invite him to step in here.

(edit: this mind = energy idea isn't my position, exactly, but it's an interesting way to explore the notions of physicality and interaction)

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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Sun Apr 07, 2013 2:52 pm

Metacrock wrote:
fleetmouse wrote:I'm not sure I know what your view of reductionism entails here. i feel like you're wanting to pigeonhole me so you can put your mind in neutral and give me a canned rebuttal.
you are taking all the fun out of canned responses. :|
To be a NON reductionist, must I believe that the mind is utterly non physical? Must I believe that the mind is simple, having no parts, subsystems, subdivisions or distinguishable particulars?
No
That Kelly book looks interesting. Wikipedia says he's an honest-to-Throgg dualist. Is that so? How does he solve the interaction problem?
I first spotted that guy on a Glenn Miller (Christian think tank) page where he was given as an example of a materialism who found a certain set of data overwhelming proof of something more than materialism. Sure enough he was saying "O this is amazing I can't believe it. I"m a materialist but this changes things." I start doing Google to find where he is today (that was in the 80s) he's written this thousand page book crammed full of studies and other stuff. much of it is history of his discipline and a lot of it is evidence for supernatural. A lot of it even I think is wacy. Some of it is very good.[/quote]
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by Metacrock » Sun Apr 07, 2013 2:57 pm

Meta has talked about energy in the context of the mental and the spiritual before and I'm not sure if it's an analogy or literal so I'll invite him to step in here.

(edit: this mind = energy idea isn't my position, exactly, but it's an interesting way to explore the notions of physicality and interaction)
Well I'm not sure myself. I think that's like asking me to define the indefinable. How can we really know when we don't even know what energy is really? It seems to lead to a big circular argument, where energy is mind but mind is energy and energy is mind, whatever.

It wouldn't bother me too much if we found that mind is a form of energy. that wouldn't supet any kind of SN or idealist apple cart I have hidden away.
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Re: we gotta get this thing kick started again.

Post by fleetmouse » Mon Apr 08, 2013 9:43 am

Metacrock wrote:
To be a NON reductionist, must I believe that the mind is utterly non physical? Must I believe that the mind is simple, having no parts, subsystems, subdivisions or distinguishable particulars?
No
OK! Good, great. So we can discuss the mental without having to treat it as a monolithic inscrutable un-analyzable thing-in-itself.
I first spotted that guy on a Glenn Miller (Christian think tank) page where he was given as an example of a materialism who found a certain set of data overwhelming proof of something more than materialism. Sure enough he was saying "O this is amazing I can't believe it. I"m a materialist but this changes things." I start doing Google to find where he is today (that was in the 80s) he's written this thousand page book crammed full of studies and other stuff. much of it is history of his discipline and a lot of it is evidence for supernatural. A lot of it even I think is wacy. Some of it is very good.
I will keep it in mind for the future but first I want to get a better grasp of the overall field of philosophy of mind, which is why I got the Kim book.

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