Why Thoughts Aren't Immaterial.
Offline To those theists who try and pigeon hole you by using the 'morality, thoughts, love, hate, ect' is/are immaterial - and they still exist, so god does too.
If thoughts and ideas are immaterial, then how are they affected by drugs?
"Egnor's hangup is similar—he thinks that thoughts are in a different class from other physical states—that an idea cannot be embodied in a pattern of neuronal activity. His example is altruism.
Altruism, in contrast, has no matter or energy. It has no 'location', no weight, no dimension, no temperature. It has no properties of matter. Altruism entails things like purpose and judgment, which aren't material. Altruism has no parts, in the sense that there is a 'left-side' of altruism and a 'right side' of altruism. There are, of course, left sided and right sided parts of the brain, which may be associated with acts of altruism, but there is no 'left' or 'right' to altruism itself. Of course, objects (like human brains or bodies) that have location, weight, etc. can mediate or carry out altruistic acts, but the altruism itself doesn't have a location. Altruism isn't spatial. 'My altruism is three inches from the edge of the table' is a nonsensical statement.
That's extraordinarily weak. He's a neurosurgeon—you can't possibly become a neurosurgeon without having read about the case of Phineas Gage, the railroad worker who had a frontal lobe lesion and lost self-control and sociability and became noticeably less altruistic. The denialism blog makes a similar argument: people intentionally modify the way their brains work with psychoactive drugs, but how does that work if thoughts and ideas are immaterial? He could argue that "personality" also has no location, weight, dimension, or temperature, that it is this strange, pure abstraction that has no discrete connection to the brain, but he'd be wrong: it's clearly a product of the ordered connections and pattern of activity in the brain, and that disrupting those physical elements changes the expression of that instance of the abstraction.
His altruism does have a location. It's the product of activity in his brain. Where else would it be, floating in the air, in his left foot, or nonexistent? You know where he wants to trace its source: to the supernatural. He'd like to pretend something like altruism (or lust or intent or wonder or anything else he can assign to an abstraction) is the product of a supernatural agent. A soul. Of course, he can't say that—he's following the creationist paradigm of not saying anything specific about his hypothesis, and instead skirts about the issue, arguing what it is not.
Yet many things in the world, including our ideas and even our theories about the world, are not matter or energy. Altruism is obviously something very real; many people's lives depend on it. We don't know exactly what it is, but we know, by its properties, what it's not. It's not material. It shares no properties in common with matter. It can't be caused by a piece of the brain.
Of course it is caused by a piece of the brain—Phineas Gage, remember? We also know that a sense of altruism is generated by patterns of electrical and chemical activity in a material brain; modify the patterns, change the feeling or action. If he wants to argue for some other agent outside the material body that is adjusting those patterns, he's going to have to make a case for the agent's existence, rather than just stupidly asserting the brain isn't the source of feelings.
But…uh-oh. This is rather like one of those cartoons where the character is out on a tree limb, sawing it away. He's already refuted his own argument!
For one process to cause another there must be a point of contact, in the sense that the processes linked in cause and effect must share properties in common. In biology, the liver contains molecules of enzymes and bilirubin and cholesterol, which cause the secretion of molecules of bile. In physics, a moving billiard ball collides with another billiard ball, causing each to change course. Each billiard ball starts with momentum, and momentum is exchanged when they collide. The transfer of momentum mediates the cause and effect. 'Cause and effect' presupposes commonality of at least one property- enzymes or bilirubin or cholesterol or momentum. Without commonality, there is no link through which cause can give rise to effect.
So we need some causal link, hmmm? Where is the causal link, equivalent to the action of an enzyme mediating the chemistry of two reactants, between a burst of action potentials traveling down an effector neuron and his invisible, immaterial, zero-energy spirit, soul, or ghost? Does his soul carefully reach in and change the conformation of a g-protein, phosphorylate CREB, or open an ion channel? If he's going to postulate a supernatural agent outside the material brain, by his own reasoning, he's also going to have provide a link through which that magical cause can give rise to a mundane effect. No such link exists — and its proponents will quickly backpedal away from any consideration about how that link would work, because that makes their ghost a material and testable presence in the world."
I found that last link incredibly interesting.
Enjoy guys.
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You need to look at this as a cause-and-effect type of chain reaction. All communication is based on the same model essentially. One person has a thought which is the impetus for any kind of action. In order to transmit this thought to another person, some medium must be used to "carry" it from the transmitter's brain to the receiver's brain. Whether it is written words, pictures, or sounds, the medium used has no inherent value or meaning beyond that which it is given by the transmitter. At the same time, the receiver must be able to decode the message for it to successfully acheive the goal of stimulating a thought in the brain of the receiver. So, if the message is not able to be decoded by the receiver, the thought is not transmitted and does not cause any kind of reaction - kind of like an open in an electrical current. A transmitter without a receiver is useless, and both are necessary for the medium to have any function or use. The meaning is encoded into the medium by the transmitter and decoded by the receiver. Without the agents in this scenario, there is no medium and no meaning.
Any symbol is entirely meaningless on its own. So, hopefully I haven't confused you, but your card doesn't physically stop existing, but it is only the medium by which you can communicate the meaning to another person's brain. Without the encoding/decoding process, it has no meaning or value.
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First of all, i'd like to say how much i truly appreciate all who are replying on this thread. I have to say that everyone has been rather respectful when compared to other posts i've seen, which is very encouraging for me. So, for all of you who have posted here, than you!
Next. Kellym.
No, your post isn't confusing but rather helpful, since it gives me another opportunity to air my POV. (point of view)
Kindly note that on your own words, the meaning is encoded into the medium by the transmitter. In other words, before it is decoded by the receiver,
the meaning is on the medium.
Ok. Here is what i simply cannot stress enough for some people to absorb, and i hope that others will understand:
Yes, i agree with you that the symbol is useless on its own, but it is not meaningless.
Why?
Because, as i emphasized above, whether the message/symbol/medium/thought is decoded/received or not is irrelevant.
The fact is that whether it is decoded/received or not, the message remains on the medium.
If it is not decoded, the message still remains on the medium as long as the medium remains intact, and is merely unread or unknown.
If it is decoded, the message still remains on the medium, as long as the medium is intact.
Please take some time to thoroughly consider the above statements, because many seem unable to fully understand or comprehend it.
Hi Kelly,
I have a few objections there. Firstly, the medium used has no inherent value or meaning beyond that which it is given by the transmitter, I presume you mean consciously given, and in any case this is not so. If it was misinterpretation would never happen, and equally we'd never have advanced a single scientific line of inquiry in our history if that was the case, science relies almost exclusively on there being more information encoded in someone elses thought than they knew, Shannon wasn't doing physics or biology and Planck wasn't trying to revolutionise chemistry, Nash got his game theory from observing totally unrelated concepts which he could see were more universal than cursory. Meaning is not exclusive and that's a very good thing.
Secondly, I have already mentioned the anomalies of sound and they are not so easily dismissable. There is always unseen information transferred via waves they have inherent duality and can never be understood as simply as a cause and effect chain. Colour has the same properties and it is empirically known that they possess their own inherent information, ever heard of a green room? We did not ascribe that meaning, we discovered it. Numbers are an equal to these with their own inherent meaning that outlives the symbol, sine transforms aren't a universal model because we decided they would be, they are because nature is encoded that way already, the fibonacci sequence also, it's not just bunnies, and the list goes on. There are certain universal messages that are not our own thought, we discover their effects on our physical world, they shape thought and are not shaped by it. It's difficult, but not ridiculous to simply say the universe has it's own thoughts and it's own transmissions these exist independently of our sentience, we can't say we do not know this.
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Eloise, I know you are replying to Kelly, but I wanted to add a couple of thoughts.
The process of transmitting a message via symbols is not exact because of the subjective nature of thought and the inter-subjective nature of language. My thought is subjective, but because I know a common symbol to express the use of a word to another, I can communicate it. Nonetheless, because there are differences in conception of ideas, the communication is never exact.
It has nothing to do with there being more in the transmission or thought than they know, it has to do with the necessary ambiguity and flexibility in language. That is, when our brain has insufficient data to complete a concept, it (unconsciously) fills in the gaps to make the thought coherent. We do this with visual and auditory etc perception (if not others), and it happens without our being aware of it most of the time.
Our ability to advance our intersubjective/objective worldview with science happens despite these imperfections in communications, not because of some information encoded in the thought that we didn't put there.
Really? There is some truth that brilliant people sometimes find conclsuons and truths without being fully aware of what they are moving towards conceptually. The mind thinks both consciously and unconsciously, and sometimes the processes that occur in the brain that we are not self-reflective of (or less reflective of) impact our behavior and can later come to conscious attention (the "'a-ha!' moment, inspiration, or epiphany).
I'm assuming that you are referring to the fact that the waiting rooms in places are green because we somehow know that the color green encodes calming emotions? If that's what you mean, perhaps you should consider that the color green has a secondary emotional effect on our emotional state. There is no information in the color, there is a secondary, accidental, effect of the color on brain processes.
I can say we do not know this. I see no reason to think tha tthe universe itself, as a whole, has it's own thoughts. perhaps it does, but I would have to see some identified structures in spacetime itself (or something like that) to process thoughts before I would consider this possibility. it is not parsimonious to claim that the universe is thinking because of numbers, relationships in space and quantity, etc. I see no evidence of transmitted thoughts in the universe outside of sentient, biological life forms.
You are confusing our brain's ability to fill-in information and to discover order within chaotic structures as evidence for information inherent in the universe. Look into the perception of faces, and you will see why it is we see images of religious icons in pieces of bread, trees, and stained walls. Our brain is structured that it recognizes faces and forms where they don't even exist. Our discovering patterns in the universe to talk about is evidence of out ability to discover patterns taht arise from simple processes that arise do to the interactions of matter in spacetime.
Personally, I would find it more unbelievable that patterns would not exist, rather than to find that they did. I would be surprised because then the fact that my own pattern--my structure--would be unique to the nature of the universe and would need n explanation. But since patterns arise all over the place, my having patterns of complexity doesn't seem as remote.
This neo-Platonism of numbers is something I don't find convincing, although others might. But even conceding a kind of Platonism concerning mathematics, this does not necessitate or imply any thoughts or information inherent in colors, sounds, etc. it's more plausible that those perceived patterns are a result of our brain adding to the data automatically and unconsciously.
Shaun
I'll fight for a person's right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions and ridicule them as the content of their ideas merit.
*posting in this thread instead of the double-posted one*
Jorge: Wavefreak above recommended Hofstadter's book "Godel, Escher, Bach." If you really want the satisfactory answer to this question, I agree that this is the best possible place to get it.
Everything that everyone is saying on this thread is some version of what Hofstadter explains in detail about the relationship between messages, media and ideas. This is also the same stuff that makes up most of the field of semiotics (dating from the early 20th century) and that guys who work in Artificial Intelligence all know.
Most people don't have a problem understanding that a representation of a thought is meaningless without a brain interpreting it. The thought doesn't continue to exist in some mystical Platonic realm (as far as anyone can tell). The recorded version of a thought has the potential to be reconstructed into the original thought, but it is not, itself, a thought.
"After Jesus was born, the Old Testament basically became a way for Bible publishers to keep their word count up." -Stephen Colbert
It's cool, I'm happy to be discussing with you.
Why is the ambiguity and flexibility necessary? This is a serious question, necessary ambiguity and fundamentally computational intelligence are not a match. If we concede necessary ambiguity we concede our intelligence is not fundamentally computational.
We can then change tack and say that human intelligence is partially computational but generally statistical, that would work.. but it also opens the door to non physical information in the brain, anti-information , mental dark matter ....
Define unconscious/subconcious physically. If it is defined as the sum of computational matter then necessary ambiguity is false and anti-information is a real alternative, if it is not defined as the sum of computation then materially emerging mind is false and probabilistic anti-information is a real solution.
If it happens in spite of the theory then the theory is not complete. Is this not true?
Just an additional note. Mathematical universalism does necessitate the same realism be applied to colours and sounds. They are the natural counterparts. I noted the relationship be primes and harmonies already, there are too numerous connections to mention but basically sounds and numbers are the same. Platonic solids arise from sounds as naturally as from numbers. Colours are the natural counterpart of probabilitistic inference.
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Actually, i already discussed this several times along this thread. Kindly read through it again that i may not have to repost what i wrote. Thanks!
ShaunPhilly, Eloise, i just have to comment that you guys are having a very interesting conversation there.
I wish that i could contribute to your discussion, but what you're talking about is just beyond me. I do hope that you'll continue your thread cuz i really enjoy trying to learn stuff which is difficult to understand. (difficult for me to understand that is)
I should clarify and say that language is not necessarily ambiguous in itself. Rather, language is ambiguous because it isintersubjective. You need to make a distinction between a person thinking concepts andcommunicating those concepts. Our computational skills have to do with how we think, but our ability to communicate thoughts to other thinking things is only partially dependent upon this computational skill.
That is, our intelligence is something we do subjectively, but language is intersubjective. It is ambiguous because the concept is not contained in the symbol, but rather the symbol is supposed to refer to the same subjective concept in the brain of another. The problem is tha tthe thoughts are not the same in each brain, so the symbol refers to inexact referents.
No matter that when I point to a rock and call it rock that we perceive the same object. Each of our minds have different experiences and associations with the object and objects like it, so our brain state while thinking about the object will be different. So while the word 'rock' refers to the object for both of us, the concepts differ somewhat. This creates ambiguity.
My concept of the rock wiothout communication is based in intelligence and computation, but the communication about that object to another is inexact, per above.
How? I might be willing to say that the computational aspects of the brain are somewhat statistical (as is QM), but how does that open the door for anything non-physical? What non-physical things? What do they do? What properties do they have?
I don't follow how something not being fully computational (I would like your definitional usage for this term, for clarification) implies non-physicality.
This is how I understand it. Some of the later evolutionary parts of the brainm such as the cortex, are able to monitor events going on in the brain in a sort-of loop. It not only processes information about the world around us and within us, but it processes the processing of information. The is what is ultimately is responsible for self-reflection, awareness, and consciousness. When we are conscious, it is because of these complex and self-reflective processes in the cortex.
However, there are older, mammalian and reptilian, parts of the brain that do not have this capability, yet still contribute to our perception and other brain processes. And since these parts are not part of that loop, we are not aware of them in conscious thought, yet they influence behavior, thinking, etc.
What eventually arises as conscious awareness is a sort of competition of processes that occur in the brain, as the brain sorts out the data in various ways. The brain corrects for gaps (like the blind-spot, optical/auditory illusions, and patterns that are perceived to continue towards the periphery when those patterns are not actually there), leaves out information (many optical illusions demonstrate this as well), and genrally tries to order the world such that it makes sense. What comes to conscious awareness if often an approximal simulation of the world around us. But this approximation is based in computational processes from various parts of the brain, often creating conflicts and interference in processes.
Daniel C. Dennett once discribed the brain as (paraphrase) an old clunky computer haphazardly hooked up to a supercumputer with which it can interact with poorly, because they are both written with different software. What is on the screen may look coherent, but the process it takes to get there involves a complicated process that inexactly resembles what the cmputer is processing. It only needs to be right enough to not be harmed by the world it perceives, not right enough to create a GUT of physics.
This is not what I said. Theory happens despite lack of perfect communication. Any theory we have may never be complete. This is a problem within the philosophy of science, and scientists are aware that theories are never 100% accurate, nor are they intended to be. The problem of theory choice and reliability are problems, but they don't invalidate the scientific method. They are certainly better than any method based in pure rational speculation.
The fact that there are fundamental ways the universe functions, therefore certain relationships are found between things in the universe does not imply Platonism.
Let me ask you this (and the analogy may seem absurd or silly, but think about it). If our knees bent the other way around, would the Platonic form for 'chair' be different? Why is that?
If the universe behaved differently, would primes be different?
Which comes first; the way the universe works, or the rules that define those processes?
For me, forms have been, very loosley, like theoroes; theories are not the rules for how the world works, but rather descriptions about how the world works. The numbers don't have forms because of some Platonism, they have those forms because we think of them in those ways. Numbers are mental constructs we use to think about the world. I call them metaphysicalizations--they are projected metaphysical entities from our experience.
Shaun
I'll fight for a person's right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions and ridicule them as the content of their ideas merit.
Intersubjectivity makes sense if we aren't running the same programs, but we are running the same programs so Intersubjectivity begs to ask if each and every one of us is broken. Hypothetically two perfectly functional machines will communicate with zero ambiguity, exact computation gets the exact same results, if those results arise from the same program which they must if we are the same chemical machinery then the two will select the same exact symbol.
To say we are all broken is a fair call, I think, But then if we are all broken, how much information can you glean about the capabilities of a set of broken computers? The chance that you will inevitably miss a unique one thing over the whole set is also real and large, the chance of a whole set of the same machinery made in the same process breaking in the same place is a good one.
There is a technical regression problem with this scenario. These intersubjective differences needed to arise from computation. If you set up a row of computing machines with the same basic program and feed them similar data with random fluctuations and run them for a few thousand years you would still get a lack of ambiguity on the similar data simply because the computational machines only have the 'that/not that' function of one to one correlation. 'not that/not that' in compuation doesn't result in anything; in the machines not that/not that would be dumped and ignored as zero; but where do we find evidence that human mind evolved that way? we don't because it didn't. Technically there should be less ambiguity than exactness in our modern intersubjectivity if this happened, because it would equally happen that zero results would not exponentiate they would exist as scattered obstructions popping up in random communication. But that didn't happen, somehow zero results dominated our cultures instead, and this happened a long time ago if you believe creation myth is 100% imaginary.
They definitely are and they are also modular. Guesswork and association must have a correlative function in the brain.
For a statistical mind to work it must have its observable sets this is computational information. But it also must have its set definitions, this can also be computational information. Then there is a null hypothesis. This is imaginary. There is no one to one physical relationship to the null because if there was you wouldn't be asking the question. There are a few ways this can be strictly physical in an open noisy system, granted, but in most respects a mind null is using no information to locate some information in a set. If a mind can use no information in this way we have opened the door to an important existing zero in the mind. It's not a gap without information in it, it's a zero point that pushes information around and has an important function by just being nothing at all.
The computational energy model is purely physical, one to one correlation on all points, it's called it from bit. Each unique piece of information has an equal physical it. The computational brain uses a physical it for each bit with one to one correlation. In a closed system this results in exactness. An open system is much more difficult to define but standard computers in an open system are generally not unduly affected by noise thus the same should be assumed in the most for a computational model.
Okay, first are you defining subconscious physically as the older evolutionary parts of brain? I would just like to be sure about that.
It's a given that the brain has a self awareness loop. In a computational model that would basically consist of different streams of relevance, lets assume two: one stream for functional information and a secondary stream where information relevant to self checking is diverted. This equates to basically two programs computing separate results then feeding the results to each other as cross reference data. This ends with a table of cross referenced information, once there is a table how is correlative data retrieved from it? There are a couple of computational options, it can be retrieved statistically or computed as a matrix. Matrix is the logical choice for computation since statistical inference relies very heavily on information that it doesn't have and in a computational model, therefore, should not know it does not have (a computing brain should relegate non information to a zero value and should for all practical intents and purposes treat it the same as it would treat nothing). So lets assume the brain computer uses a matrix computation instead to retrieve information. From a matrix we get coordinated results dependent on their framework, outside their framework matrix results are precisely random bits with no meaning. So when matrix information is retrieved it must come *with* the framework. So we need a better definition for this framework which explains how it can be mapped precisely to it's own results to give them meaning. Computation runs out of cord here because it can't map to itself lest it lose its one to one symmetry. So we can say a computational brain can get results through matrix operations, but there is no way it transfers them anywhere else without losing information. That works fine for information passed between two bodies, but how does one coherent body know what it's talking about to begin with. LOL maybe we don't... I didn't expect this thought to have this outcome for example, I was trying to prove my case not yours...
Okay gathering thoughts cause I'm quite sure I still have something here.. I will come back to this a bit later if you'll give me a moment with it.
Yes absolutely, if the universe behaved differently our legs would bend different ways and chairs would be different. But on the other hand, my main interest is in physics and mathematics and I take the view that which came first doesn't define how. The conditions and results are necessary to each other one most certainly could not exist without the other in our universe. For example, when can you imagine the conditions separate from the results? It can't be imagined because in the same moment the right conditions exist the results are because mathematically they are equal things. Chairs are not singularly the result of our legs, they are the result of the sum of all conditions for chairs, and both the correct conditions and the chairs arrived at the same time, (some japanese people still prefer the floor so the chair equivalency can only be taken so far, it's not ultimately about our legs). Thinking this way is an important philosophy since the advent of quantum which diverts us from classical conditions and fuzzies all the boundaries so much that even the causal relationship between a bat and ball comes under question. When we break it down to that level neither exist without the other the rules and the universe are one whole dependent on each other.
Anyhow.. I have to give it all just a little more thought. The computation model works in terms of interpersonal communication but in doing so it also argues that our internal self communication is just random mush. This is where I am not sure I can really believe in it, after all, that would just be random mush anyway.
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