Any Defenses of Materialism?

[atanu]

A fine argument for materialism is that the terms we use to describe behaviors and aspects of mind (even 'mind' itself) are derived from 'folk psychology,' in other words ordinary people looking at themselves and creating terms to describe experiences, and passing those terms on through language and culture. They create these terms on the fly, without analysis or basis, from 'feeling' it out, and without thinking twice about the implications of creating a new term; in other words, without actual reasoning to support the use of that particular term. Most of the terms of mind are metaphoric, using pictures to bring the mind to life, to express everyday experiential living. Said folk might defend it by saying we've no better terms, or even no other terms at all, to depict the tragedy of a broken heart or the genius of bright idea. But the materialist, then, is right to say that that doesn't make them real. Promise and courage are actually put together from circumstances. Choice and responsibility are strung on the strings of a tentative thing called "I," to which no one can properly point. We've no better terms to use to describe these things, but then perhaps (in an ideal materialist world) these are things for which more productive terms could be invented to more properly describe them. This would change our relationship to the world and favour the materialist, but perhaps for the better.

I think that it cuts both ways.

Most materialists often do not distinguish between cause and effect and as perpetual bias superimpose one effect after another on the cause. One example is how Theory of Evolution is extrapolated to origin of life and consciousness, without any concrete proof. Another is, how many think that there are machines that have passed Turing's test already and translate that erroneous idea into a belief that machines exhibit consciousness. It is another matter that even if a machine passed Turing's test a conscious agent will be needed to know and certify that.

But this is the very nature of nature -- to enjoy the subject-object division to the hilt.

 

[Revoltingest]

Two points of disagreement:

1.It is not pragmatic to imagine that matter controls mind. In a dead body, the brain exists, but no stimulus can elicit awareness out of it.
2.All testing requires a pre-existing consciousness. One cannot delete that which one is.

Your #1 sounds pretty pragmatic to me. If the brain (a meat computer) dies, so does consciousness by all measures.
This is consistent with the mind residing in the circuitry of the brain. Why would the
circuitry exist if not needed for sentience? Might as well be a skull full of tofu otherwise.
Your #2 is the case for all claims, & neither proves nor disproves anyone's views here.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I think the intended meaning is the physical matter that we are all familiar with is all there is and the mind is just an emergent property of the physical brain. This is saying all things like ghosts, souls, astral planes, etc., and basically all the things that fall under the colloquial term 'paranormal' do not exist.

No, the materialist position is that if these things exist, they're "material" in some way.

What counts as "material" is constantly changing. "The physical matter that we're all familiar with" once didn't include germs. Or quarks. Or quantum effects. Or radio waves. These are all "material" now.

Once we get enough evidence to substantiate that something actually exists, it gets recognized as "material".

So really, what's within the scope of "materialism" isn't just "the physical matter we're all familiar with"; it's ANYTHING that will ever be recognized as physical.

... and since things are recognized as physical based on how they interact with other physical things, you're really pre-judging future evidence when you declare certain things to be beyond the scope of materialism. What you're really doing by saying this is that physical evidence will never, ever be found for them. This is several steps further than even skeptics go: in the case of skeptics, they're happy to point out that evidence hasn't been found so far .

I think the definition of "materialism" that you're trying to peddle is a rhetorical trick used by people who accept claims without good evidence to cast their critics as closed-minded.

 

[1137]

No its not. This establishes identity relation. Show me an example of an A and a B that obeys (1)-(4) and yet A Not= B.

1) If A then B - if my radio is on then music comes through.
2) If not A then not B - if my radio is not on then music does not coke through.
3) If B then A - if music is coming through the radio is on.
4) If not B then not A - if there is no music coming through then the radio is not on.

I guess all music I hear originated in my radio.

 

[atanu]

Your #1 sounds pretty pragmatic to me. If the brain (a meat computer) dies, so does consciousness by all measures.
This is consistent with the mind residing in the circuitry of the brain. Why would the
circuitry exist if not needed for sentience? Might as well be a skull full of tofu otherwise.

Why would circuitry in PC exist if not needed for entertaining output?

Why should the meat computer allow its destruction, if it was the master of consciousness? If it was the creator of consciousness it will Will to be conscious eternally. Why it meekly dies? Something else surely controls how and how long a particular form of consciousness (such as a rabid Revolting type or a divine Atanu type) is manifested through the meaty (tasty also) computer. That is what the point is.

Your #2 is the case for all claims, & neither proves nor disproves anyone's views here.

It is actually the 'C' factor that provides the causation in the correlation 'A' to 'B'. And it is ignored because it is all around us. Both observations, the experience of an emotion and the corresponding brain state (colour pattern actually), occur in awareness. By ignoring the fact, that the awareness is given in all our observations, we conclude causation from correlation.

 

[sayak83]

1) If A then B - if my radio is on then music comes through.
2) If not A then not B - if my radio is not on then music does not coke through.
3) If B then A - if music is coming through the radio is on.
4) If not B then not A - if there is no music coming through then the radio is not on.

I guess all music I hear originated in my radio.

(1) is False because in many cases music may not be heard even when radio is ON (as in no signal).
(4) Similarly False.
Thus the ON state of Radio is and Music Coming state are not correlated without exception. Hence no identity relation is established.

Try again? You do understand logic correct. IF A then B allows No Exceptions. When radio is ON , Music has to come through every single time for the IF relation to hold.

 

[1137]

(1) is False because in many cases music may not be heard even when radio is ON (as in no signal).
(4) Similarly False.
Thus the ON state of Radio is and Music Coming state are not correlated without exception. Hence no identity relation is established.

Try again? You do understand logic correct. IF A then B allows No Exceptions. When radio is ON , Music has to come through every single time for the IF relation to hold.

Assuming the radio is working my statements are true. Yet another dodge from the materialists.

 

[sayak83]

True, but that's because neuroscience is largely about finding spurious correlations and assuming causes, even if this involves methods that allow one to identify, having asked a dead fish emotionally laden-questions, brain regions in the dead fish that responded to the question stimuli:
"In 2009, a highly remarkable scientific experiment was performed by Bennett, Baird, Miller and Wolford, four American brain researchers. They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a brain imaging technique, to determine which brain areas respond to emotional stimuli in a test subject. The subject was shown several emotionally laden pictures and was asked to verbalize the emotion shown. The display of pictures was alternated with rest, and by comparing the brain readings between exposure and rest, the researchers were able to clearly identify a brain area that showed a response to the stimulus offered (Bennett et al. 2011).
What was so remarkable about this experiment? Certainly not the idea of measuring brain response to pictures using fMRI; this had been done countless times by other researchers in the past. Also not the statistical methods used to find the relevant brain regions by comparing exposure and rest states; the same techniques had been used in many influential publications in brain imaging before. The originality of the study lay in the choice of the test subject. This was not, as usual, a human, but an Atlantic salmon. Moreover, the salmon was stone dead, having been bought in the local supermarket on the very morning of the experiment."
(source)
A central issue we've had to deal with in neuroscience is the wide divide between the computational, biophysical models of neuronal dynamics (either of single neurons or of populations) and the neural bases of cognitive processes. The former doesn't yield the latter and the latter is reducible to the former only in terms of very speculative and haphazard uses of correlations.
More generally, I agree that if A and B are correlated, then this implied causation (either A causes B, B causes A, or C causes both B or A). In practice, however, it is too often explicitly or (worse) implicitly assumed that there is no "C" factor if A and B are strongly correlated.

Of course sloppy techniques can lead to false results, but I consider most of the results that have been reproduced in other labs to be quite reliable and accurate. After all in science, thousands of papers are published every year and many are of dubious quality. Only 10% or so are important enough and done well enough to be picked up by other researchers, reproduced and lead to accumulative progress in the field. That is nothing new. The rest 90% are ignored and forgotten. Happens in every field.

But all of that is irrelevant. Do you have any evidence of mental states (A) and brain states (B) do not satisfy the relations (1)-(4) among all the observations made till present? If you do not, that constitutes excellent evidence for the identity hypothesis. Nothing in science is irrefutable of course. If contrary evidence comes, we will discuss it then.

 

[sayak83]

Assuming the radio is working my statements are true. Yet another dodge from the materialists.

Now you are dodging. A working radio ensures music to come through? As soon as your car goes into the woods, the signal gets lost and that working radio gives on white noise.

Who is dodging now?

 

[sayak83]

Even if we do not know how so called neural states lead to certain feelings?



When, in all observations, consciousness is a given. No observation happens by unconscious agents. It is the 'C' in correlation between 'A' and 'B'. But our biases just ignores its all pervading presence.



It is quite clear to you. Is it quite clear to the computer? Does a computer ask "Who am I?"

Never heard of a person being unconscious or in deep sleep? Now you are redefining terms to suit your purpose. People lose their consciousness every day during deep sleep and if they have concussion, get anesthesia, fall into coma.....
Thinking does not require self-consciousness.

 

[1137]

Now you are dodging. A working radio ensures music to come through? As soon as your car goes into the woods, the signal gets lost and that working radio gives on white noise.

Who is dodging now?

Hey man you're free to present the mechanism by which consciousness arises, address the mereological fallacy, or explain how we can know matter without the mind. We're all waiting while you play games in which the rules only apply to others!

 

[1137]

Never heard of a person being unconscious or in deep sleep? Now you are redefining terms to suit your purpose. People lose their consciousness every day during deep sleep and if they have concussion, get anesthesia, fall into coma.....
Thinking does not require self-consciousness.

Ah so the brain can be working without consciousness. Back to the radio and radio waves!

 

[sayak83]

Hey man you're free to present the mechanism by which consciousness arises, address the mereological fallacy, or explain how we can know matter without the mind. We're all waiting while you play games in which the rules only apply to others!

I have posted an excellent logical argument that is evidence for identity relation. You are simply ignoring it because you can't refute it and that is bad for your presuppositions.

 

[sayak83]

Ah so the brain can be working without consciousness. Back to the radio and radio waves!

Of course. Lots of brain states do not correlate with consciousness at all. The identity relation is applicable only to the subclass of brain states that do correlate.

 

[1137]

I have posted an excellent logical argument that is evidence for identity relation. You are simply ignoring it because you can't refute it and that is bad for your presuppositions.

Your 1-4 nonsense that you yourself have defeated? Correlation is not causation, end of story, basic low level college knowledge. You have nothing but correlation, not a single shred of casual evidence, not a single means by which to address the philosophical failures of materialism. Just correlation. So solid...

 

[sayak83]

I should add that none of this is, strictly speaking, true. At all. fMRI, EEG, and other neuroimaging methods/technologies allow us to correlate proxies for neural activity (e.g., BOLD contrasts via quantum mechanical spin signals in fMRI studies) that averaged in various ways to compare to averaged responses to stimuli (i.e., various brain activity which always differ and are always inaccurately measured are compared against identical stimuli across and among observers) yield neural correlates of conscious processes.
But this isn't sufficient to establish identity, because we NEVER, EVER, observe the "same internal states" even if we ignore the approximations that are humongous at any resolution level at which cognitive processes are studied.

The neural signals associated with a conscious and a REM brain is distinctly different than the neural signals associated with deep sleep or unconscious states. Recently several highly interesting diagnostics have been developed and approved that helps detect consciousness and locked in syndromes in coma patients through that route.

We can discuss how well these kinds of correlative evidence stand up to scrutiny if you wish. Do you accept that if the relations (1)-(4) do accrue, identity relation is established? If yes, then we can proceed to the next step. In the case of mind states and correlated brain states, how confident are we that they do accrue.

Thanks.

 

[sayak83]

Your 1-4 nonsense that you yourself have defeated? Correlation is not causation, end of story, basic low level college knowledge. You have nothing but correlation, not a single shred of casual evidence, not a single means by which to address the philosophical failures of materialism. Just correlation. So solid...

Ah, now the ranting starts....

 

[1137]

Ah, now the ranting starts....

Wow, so asking you to defend your position is ranting in your eyes? I guess I always new materialism was a fundamentalist position, but nice to have proof! Fine, let's address the one single point you have to make again, and see how well it works without addressing my questions.

1. If there is conscious thought there is brain activity.

2. If there's is no conscious thought there is no brain activity (which you yourself have said is false, but I'll ignore that).

3. If there is brain activity there is conscious thought (again you've stated this is false but let's ignore that).

4. If there is no brain activity there is no conscious thought.

First off this doesn't even work with your reasoning, but I'll ignore that. Second, it could simply suggest that consciousness causes brain states, not the other way around. You haven't even SUGGETED a mechanism so there's no reason to assume the brain is preceding the conscious states. Further you haven't addressed that we only know the brain through the mind, so you're making a leap in saying the brain is the cause. Then fourth of course, correlation isn't causation.

 

[George-ananda]

No, the materialist position is that if these things exist, they're "material" in some way.

What counts as "material" is constantly changing. "The physical matter that we're all familiar with" once didn't include germs. Or quarks. Or quantum effects. Or radio waves. These are all "material" now.

Once we get enough evidence to substantiate that something actually exists, it gets recognized as "material".

So really, what's within the scope of "materialism" isn't just "the physical matter we're all familiar with"; it's ANYTHING that will ever be recognized as physical.

... and since things are recognized as physical based on how they interact with other physical things, you're really pre-judging future evidence when you declare certain things to be beyond the scope of materialism. What you're really doing by saying this is that physical evidence will never, ever be found for them. This is several steps further than even skeptics go: in the case of skeptics, they're happy to point out that evidence hasn't been found so far .

I think the definition of "materialism" that you're trying to peddle is a rhetorical trick used by people who accept claims without good evidence to cast their critics as closed-minded.

So a 'materialist' can believe in ghosts, souls, mediums, astral planes, be a mind/brain dualist, etc.. Is that how the term is meant to be used?

Perhaps for the audience here the OP just needs to present a specific example like: Can consciousness exist without a physical brain?

The use of the term 'materialism' will be bogged down in hair-pulling word play.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So a 'materialist' can believe in ghosts, souls, mediums, astral planes, be a mind/brain dualist, etc.. Is that how the term is meant to be used?

Yes: there's nothing intrinsic to the materialist position that would stop a materialist from accepting the existence of, say, ghosts. The materialist would just infer that ghosts are rooted in some sort of (potentially undiscovered) physical phenomena.

Where a materialist would run into trouble is accepting the excuses that ghost afficionados often give for the lack of evidence for ghosts (e.g. "they're non-physical, so they don't leave physical evidence... but they really do exist").

Perhaps for the audience here the OP just needs to present a specific example like: Can consciousness exist without a physical brain?

Depends what you mean by "physical brain".

Could a materialist accept that the organ in our skulls is just a transceiver and it communicates with something external that does the actual thinking? Sure. A materialist would just believe that the "something external" and the means of communication between it and the brain are physical. Maybe relying on physical principles that are currently unknown to us, but still physical.

The use of the term 'materialism' will be bogged down in hair-pulling word play.

No, I'm just not playing along with your straw man.

A materialist is someone who infers that everything that exists in reality is physical. It doesn't mean someone who closed-mindedly assumes that nothing exists besides the physical things he already knows about.