Religion vs Atheism Book 2

[BloodRider]

OAR,

To the best of my knowledge you are correct I can't show "existence" of an idea in the sense you are limiting the concept to.  Apologies that I missed your direct question.  

I still believe ideas have a form of "existence" if not concrete "reality".  If not doesn't that imply that consciousness itself is illusory and has no real "existence"?

Conciousness is an emergent property from a group of related physical properties.  So too are many things: for instance the US Economy.  I would no more deny that conciousness exists than deny the US economy exists.  But both are still an abstraction. 

And just because I can't tell you what the average interest rate on Home equity loans will be by watching every transaction in the market, it doesn't mean I get to proscribe some extraphysical agency outside the aggregation of each individual transaction.  (Although, many do.  You can find them at Mises.org.)

[BloodRider]

TP,

Isn't that the trillion dollar question?  

If consciousness is merely neurons firing why can we not us MRI's to determine exactly what someone is thinking based upon brain activity?  Not generally, specifically?

 

 

Careful what you wish for.  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/409705/mind-reading-with-functional-mri/

[Wise Fool]

 

Huh? What are thoughts but patterns of neurons activating in our brains? 

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Cognition is merely one aspect of who we are, and it is not isolated, as material reductionism argues. Your body is more than simply a collection of dead matter. Your brain is more than simply a lump of living tissue. The experience of thinking is more than simply the state of your brain - because your brain's state down to its bottom-most level must necessarily interact with the rest of the universe; it is affected, and caused by everything from the big bang to evolution. Because of this, "just patterns of neurons in your brain" is an idea pointing to the experience of YOU, and you do not experience 'patterns of neurons' in your brain at all; you experience yourself as a higher level phenomena. The state of your brain, at a given point in space and time and in a configuration of neurons and patterns and atomic particles and so forth is not merely the state of a self-sufficient, reducible, material object - it is the state of the entire universe of which consciousness is an apparently emergent property. Consciousness cannot simply be explained as the process of calculations performed by a computer made out of meat. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

WF,

Preach it. 

[TrueMetis]

 

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Cognition is merely one aspect of who we are, and it is not isolated, as material reductionism argues. Your body is more than simply a collection of dead matter. Your brain is more than simply a lump of living tissue. The experience of thinking is more than simply the state of your brain - because your brain's state down to its bottom-most level must necessarily interact with the rest of the universe; it is affected, and caused by everything from the big bang to evolution. Because of this, "just patterns of neurons in your brain" is an idea pointing to the experience of YOU, and you do not experience 'patterns of neurons' in your brain at all; you experience yourself as a higher level phenomena. The state of your brain, at a given point in space and time and in a configuration of neurons and patterns and atomic particles and so forth is not merely the state of a self-sufficient, reducible, material object - it is the state of the entire universe of which consciousness is an apparently emergent property. Consciousness cannot simply be explained as the process of calculations performed by a computer made out of meat. 

Prove it.

[Wise Fool]

I don't really mean to preach. And I don't mean to argue, really. I can't prove anything to you if you want to have a materialist paradigm.

Arguing gets me down, Why am I arguing with anyone here at all? I like and respect TP and OAR. And I'm not the best with words. What I am trying to talk about is that the difference between the brain and the mind, between objective, measurable events and the subjective experience of ourselves as people living in a world. One of the philosophical approaches to this apparent difference is dualism.

Even if you believe you are nothing more than a nervous system, having patterns of neural activity (whatever this is supposed to really explain) you in ordinary consciousness experience yourself as a character, a person, and talk and act as if you are one. You presumably treat yourself, and treat others, differently than pieces of meat, or calculating machines. I mean if your children ask you what love is, do you really show them MRI pictures and talk about brain states? Maybe you do, but that hopefully isn't all you do, because that isn't all love is to us. Subjective experience matters to us just as much as the measurable objective reality, despite one of these things being "really real" and the other former "just" chemicals in the brain. If ideas aren't real, then by all means... abandon all the ideas you have! If thoughts aren't real, by all means stop having them - why not? Shouldn't you be committed to truth and to reality, isn't that your duty as scientists and humans? Why tell your kids stories of any sort, when no characters are real? Why present them with art and music and Shakespeare -- just so they can make more money? (Ha!) Just so they can enjoy things more deeply? Well, why should their enjoyment of life matter, if their enjoyment itself is just dopamine or other neurotransmitter activity happening in a brain? Because you are biologically programmed to love your children, a slave to neural states thanks to the meat? If so, why not break the bonds of your biology? I am only saying that you love your children NOT because you are a kind of helpless, stupid meat machine with basic programming that your behavior just happens to follow the same way computers process information. A computer does not have a "self." You do. This can be explained dualistically in a number of ways; "spirit" vs "matter" for example, but I don't think it's necessary to be mystical. No one has to believe in a nominal God. And I am not talking about a God of the Gaps argument - I am not saying that "God" "explains," scientifically, the gap between brain and mind, or the physical and mental spheres, or the domains of objective and subjective reality. I am saying that there is, in actuality, no gap at all. We are indeed our bodies, our meat machines. But we are also so much more. We are indeed the physical data of our memories. But we are also what it is like to experience those memories. What it is like to be ourselves does not reduce. Instead of a gap between our true and false selves, our own person and the external world, we are all part of the same thing - reality, if you will.

So ultimately I am merely talking about a nondualist philosophy of mind, which I find more aesthetically satisfying than "there's the real world, but then there's also that stupid shit that happens in your dumb brain." What you experience subjectively as a human matters and the dismissive nature of some dualist arguments is off-putting. I don't want to argue though.

[Gears of the Beast]

 

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Cognition is merely one aspect of who we are, and it is not isolated, as material reductionism argues. Your body is more than simply a collection of dead matter. Your brain is more than simply a lump of living tissue. The experience of thinking is more than simply the state of your brain - because your brain's state down to its bottom-most level must necessarily interact with the rest of the universe; it is affected, and caused by everything from the big bang to evolution. Because of this, "just patterns of neurons in your brain" is an idea pointing to the experience of YOU, and you do not experience 'patterns of neurons' in your brain at all; you experience yourself as a higher level phenomena. The state of your brain, at a given point in space and time and in a configuration of neurons and patterns and atomic particles and so forth is not merely the state of a self-sufficient, reducible, material object - it is the state of the entire universe of which consciousness is an apparently emergent property. Consciousness cannot simply be explained as the process of calculations performed by a computer made out of meat. 

What does that even mean? 

[TerraPrime]

 

 Consciousness cannot simply be explained as the process of calculations performed by a computer made out of meat. 

I accept that to some people, that is true.

But I don't see it as a factual declaration. It's one way to interpret the world, but there are other ways. If people want to see a world where consciousness is its own metaphysical entity, then by all means, go for it. I am content with the alternatives.

[Wise Fool]

What does that even mean? 

Well it's hard to describe. What I am referring to here is causality. The states of the constituent neural molecules depends ultimately on particle interactions and physics and mathematics, none of which I know anything about. What I do know is that the boundaries between objects is something we conceive of for convenience sake - it's practical to think one collection of gluons and quarks defined, broadly, in a region of spacetime is something inherently different from another collection in another region. But these things exist on a spectrum of interactions, all (as far as as science can observe) initially caused by the big bang. For something (ie, a meat machine, were we to suddenly have the technology to reproduce or copy or clone a human brain) to be actually us, it would have to occupy the same place in spacetime, not merely be made out of similar tissues. So for example if you were instantly, biologically cloned, there'd be another "you" with your exact memories and preferences and such as influenced by the biologically evolved brain. But this other you wouldn't be yourself, it would be a somebody who is like you, very much like you in fact, but not you. Well, why not? You wouldn't go around saying "okay, this other person is the real me, I'm just a copy" even if there were, say, video evidence showing that they evolved biologically and you were cloned using magic technology. You would still see yourself as your own, perhaps now separate person. Again, why not? You are caused, directly and indirectly, not merely by certain atoms and so forth, but all of them. We don't assign agency or responsibility for, say, our driving mistakes to "the big bang," we conceive of proximate causes and degrees of agency and selfhood and so forth out of convenience.You are in fact absolutely unique in that there cannot be more than one you. It's as if you are a single point in spacetime, even though you are not - you are a higher level phenomena that only happens to be associated with your nervous system's neural activity. If that nervous system were cloned there would be another higher level phenomena, associated with another nervous system.

I realize I am not making any sense to you at all. I'm sorry.

[Castel]

 

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Cognition is merely one aspect of who we are, and it is not isolated, as material reductionism argues. Your body is more than simply a collection of dead matter. Your brain is more than simply a lump of living tissue. The experience of thinking is more than simply the state of your brain - because your brain's state down to its bottom-most level must necessarily interact with the rest of the universe; it is affected, and caused by everything from the big bang to evolution. Because of this, "just patterns of neurons in your brain" is an idea pointing to the experience of YOU, and you do not experience 'patterns of neurons' in your brain at all; you experience yourself as a higher level phenomena. The state of your brain, at a given point in space and time and in a configuration of neurons and patterns and atomic particles and so forth is not merely the state of a self-sufficient, reducible, material object - it is the state of the entire universe of which consciousness is an apparently emergent property. Consciousness cannot simply be explained as the process of calculations performed by a computer made out of meat. 

I could give the same answer to the question; "what is smoke but the byproduct of combustion in your engine?" could I not? But I think you could grab my meaning from the question and it certainly doesn't imply an isolated engine/brain. 

I don't really mean to preach. And I don't mean to argue, really. I can't prove anything to you if you want to have a materialist paradigm.

Arguing gets me down, Why am I arguing with anyone here at all? I like and respect TP and OAR. And I'm not the best with words. What I am trying to talk about is that the difference between the brain and the mind, between objective, measurable events and the subjective experience of ourselves as people living in a world. One of the philosophical approaches to this apparent difference is dualism.

Even if you believe you are nothing more than a nervous system, having patterns of neural activity (whatever this is supposed to really explain) you in ordinary consciousness experience yourself as a character, a person, and talk and act as if you are one. You presumably treat yourself, and treat others, differently than pieces of meat, or calculating machines. I mean if your children ask you what love is, do you really show them MRI pictures and talk about brain states? Maybe you do, but that hopefully isn't all you do, because that isn't all love is to us. Subjective experience matters to us just as much as the measurable objective reality, despite one of these things being "really real" and the other former "just" chemicals in the brain. If ideas aren't real, then by all means... abandon all the ideas you have! If thoughts aren't real, by all means stop having them - why not? Shouldn't you be committed to truth and to reality, isn't that your duty as scientists and humans? Why tell your kids stories of any sort, when no characters are real? Why present them with art and music and Shakespeare -- just so they can make more money? (Ha!) Just so they can enjoy things more deeply? Well, why should their enjoyment of life matter, if their enjoyment itself is just dopamine or other neurotransmitter activity happening in a brain? Because you are biologically programmed to love your children, a slave to neural states thanks to the meat? If so, why not break the bonds of your biology? I am only saying that you love your children NOT because you are a kind of helpless, stupid meat machine with basic programming that your behavior just happens to follow the same way computers process information. A computer does not have a "self." You do. This can be explained dualistically in a number of ways; "spirit" vs "matter" for example, but I don't think it's necessary to be mystical. No one has to believe in a nominal God. And I am not talking about a God of the Gaps argument - I am not saying that "God" "explains," scientifically, the gap between brain and mind, or the physical and mental spheres, or the domains of objective and subjective reality. I am saying that there is, in actuality, no gap at all. We are indeed our bodies, our meat machines. But we are also so much more. We are indeed the physical data of our memories. But we are also what it is like to experience those memories. What it is like to be ourselves does not reduce. Instead of a gap between our true and false selves, our own person and the external world, we are all part of the same thing - reality, if you will.

So ultimately I am merely talking about a nondualist philosophy of mind, which I find more aesthetically satisfying than "there's the real world, but then there's also that stupid shit that happens in your dumb brain." What you experience subjectively as a human matters and the dismissive nature of some dualist arguments is off-putting. I don't want to argue though.

 

I'm not really sure why the reductionist (edit: or determinist or incompatibilist) simply wouldn't bite the bullet and accept that what we feel is different from what they believe the world is. 

 

[BloodRider]

Sensitivity to initial conditions is a known thing.  It occurs with complex aka non-linear systems.  If you want learn more James Glick wrote a great book.  It can be difficult to predict how such complex systems will react to stimuli as it moves through the environment, but it still doesn't amount to dualism.  Occams razor alone would determine that there is no need for dualism.  Everything to describe the system is right there.  You have the interactions of the meat with itself (the system) and the interaction of the meat with external stimuli (the vriable input).

Go read about the madlebrot set.  There is a (relatively) simple non-linear system with only one variable input that has literally-literally infinite depth and repeatability.  There is not some external 3rd part driving that complexity.  Its all right there.

[Kalbear]

Heh. Some folks highlighted passages in the bible and misrepresented them as passages from the Quran. The results will surprise you. (no they won't). 

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

BR,

I really enjoyed Glick's book The Information.  It was fascinating.

[BloodRider]

BR,

I really enjoyed Glick's book The Information.  It was fascinating.

That's a good one.  I was actually referring to Chaos: Making a New Science.  I tried to edit that in, but new board problems.....

[Seli]

 

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Cognition is merely one aspect of who we are, and it is not isolated, as material reductionism argues. Your body is more than simply a collection of dead matter. Your brain is more than simply a lump of living tissue. The experience of thinking is more than simply the state of your brain - because your brain's state down to its bottom-most level must necessarily interact with the rest of the universe; it is affected, and caused by everything from the big bang to evolution. ...

The same is basically true for any atom, any molecule, any chemical reaction. And it is a basic issue behind our understanding of physics, of chemistry, of the world. And the reason why so much effort is put in isolating aspects in studies and experiments.

 

....Because of this, "just patterns of neurons in your brain" is an idea pointing to the experience of YOU, and you do not experience 'patterns of neurons' in your brain at all; you experience yourself as a higher level phenomena. The state of your brain, at a given point in space and time and in a configuration of neurons and patterns and atomic particles and so forth is not merely the state of a self-sufficient, reducible, material object - it is the state of the entire universe of which consciousness is an apparently emergent property. Consciousness cannot simply be explained as the process of calculations performed by a computer made out of meat. 

And again the same is true for any chemical and physical reaction. Which we happily study and examine ignoring all the tiny interactions. 

An image that is stored on a computer, while perfectly describable in terms of electrons states in a physical material, is much easier to understand and talk about on a higher level of software environments, data formats, etc.  But that does not mean that higher level description is in any way invalid.

Describing the brain as a computer made out of meat, which by the way assumes a software layer which can be described, is horribly simplistic to start with, a version of  a reductio ad absurdum. The underlying network of cells, and the basic chemistry that takes place in them, is so much more complicated than that term implies. And it ignores the very basic issue that the brain, life, and consciousness are processes, rather than states. Which is one of the reasons they are so difficult to understand. Our language tends to fail us.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Heh. Some folks highlighted passages in the bible and misrepresented them as passages from the Quran. The results will surprise you. (no they won't).

 

 

The thing is there are a lot of similarities.

Just like Jesus' traits have a lot of similarities with pre-Christian deities. He's not the first sun god to be born of a virgin that was foretold by a ghost/spirit only to go on and be crucified and resurrected.

Religions borrow other religions ideas all the time.

[Kalbear]

The thing is there are a lot of similarities.

Just like Jesus' traits have a lot of similarities with pre-Christian deities. He's not the first sun god to be born of a virgin that was foretold by a ghost/spirit only to go on and be crucified and resurrected.

Religions borrow other religions ideas all the time.

Yep. Often very deliberately, like the Christian repurposing of the midwinter and spring festivals. 

I think comparing the words in the books is not that useful, personally; it's far more interesting to see what and how people interpret the books. Much of the bible is basically ignored by a vast majority of Christians at this point. Catholicism has far more myth and process compared to what is in the bible. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Yep. Often very deliberately, like the Christian repurposing of the midwinter and spring festivals. 

I think comparing the words in the books is not that useful, personally; it's far more interesting to see what and how people interpret the books. Much of the bible is basically ignored by a vast majority of Christians at this point. Catholicism has far more myth and process compared to what is in the bible. 

True. And I'll just add this. The Torah is basically a guide on how not to die in the way way back times.

Don't eat this.

Don't drink that.

Wash.

Don't have sex with animals.

And on and on.

[Stubby]

True. And I'll just add this. The Torah is basically a guide on how not to die in the way way back times.

Don't eat this.

Don't drink that.

Wash.

Don't have sex with animals.

And on and on.

Unless you were a woman, or a kid whose parents didn't believe, or from a different tribe and on and on...

[TerraPrime]

Unless you were a woman, or a kid whose parents didn't believe, or from a different tribe and on and on...

To be fair, I don't think the Torah forbids non-Jews to follow those cleanliness rules. It's just that doing it won't do them any metaphysical good because they are not God's chosen people. I don't know why God didn't choose them, but I suspect it might have something to do with their tribal ancestors telling the disembodied voice urging them to go kill their son as a sign of obedience to go fuck itself.