Logic is evidence for what?
Demonstrate that you can use logic to prove that your claims are true. That's all I ask.
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What is the default position in the mind-body problem?
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Demonstrate that you can use logic to prove that your claims are true. That's all I ask.
P1: [. . . ]
P2: [. . . ]
C: [. . . ]
(Fill in the blanks.)
Well, we know that the thesis of determinism is false. See my #13 for definition and evidence refuting it. As I noted, there is further such evidence. One doesn't need to try to square free will with determinism, anymore than one needs to try to square the dinosaur fossil evidence with the thesis of a 6,000-year-old earth.
Anyway you still don't seem to be grepping my point. This could be due to a failure of communication on my part, or maybe you are just a hard target to penetrate. I don't know you well enough to say.
Either way, I'll respond again tomorrow after things have a chance to marinate on both ends.
[/QUOTE]Marinating an idea is sometimes a good idea. (I must say you sound so very reasonable and open-minded here, which has not always been my impression in some of our previous exchanges.)
Yes, I did say that. I said it because there is nothing in any "physical" (I don't really know what that adjective means) processes that would allow a person's thoughts to be in control of bodily movements such as the medical encyclopedia defines voluntarily bodily movements.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
So, you think we know everything there is to know about physical processes? There is nothing left to be discovered?
No, but I think we do have a good idea about how the electrical activity of neurons occurs.
If you or someone else could give just some plausible hypothetical explanation as to how a person can choose to act or not to act while not violating the thesis of physicalism, then I would certainly take it into consideration. But, as already noted, the thesis of physicalism (at least the thesis of reductive physicalism) is a thesis of realism about, e.g., the properties of the fundamental constituents of the world, and the empirical evidence disproves such realism. So I have no need for it.
leibowde84
Veteran Member
As I stated previously, I am not arguing for reductive physicalism in general. Per the OP, I was only referring to the mind/body problem.
See the excellent Jaegwon Kim for the problems of non-reductive physicalism.
I still don't know what you mean by that. Why would the metaphysical thesis of physicalism between true in the context of the mind-body problem but not true for the rest of the world?
leibowde84
Veteran Member
Because the question in the OP was what the default position should be for the mind/body problem. If the mind actually is a product of the body, physicalism can still be false in other aspects of reality.
Please, please explain how, or a plausible scenario where, physicalism would be true about the mind but "false in other aspects of reality".
How would the mind about which the thesis of physicalism is true be able to deduce that physicalism is untrue about "other aspects of reality"?
leibowde84
Veteran Member
The mind could be a product of the body while still allowing for the existence of intellectual concepts.
siti
Well-Known Member
They are quanta, they are not particles. LGIs essentially show that 'they' (so-called 'particles') do not 'decohere' into (effectively classical) 'real' particles even up to certain 'macroscopic' levels - atoms and even crystals - and (importantly for Leggett-Garg) over macroscopic time scales. IOW quantum mechanical descriptions (probabilistic, undetermined) hold across space (Bell) and time (Leggett-Garg) and the so-called 'hidden variables' interpretations of 'realism' (basically the idea that the 'particle' is what it is - i.e. has a particular, definite and determined set of properties - even in the absence of a measurement) are violated. I agree that this is a problem for the idea of 'physical realism' at the fundamental levels - but it does not disprove physicalism per se because it does not prove that the fundamental reality is non-physical, just that it is non-determined. God knows how that actually works - certainly no human does. But it is definitely too early to rule in 'spookiness' just because Einstein's attempt to rule it out has failed. I still think he was right about the moon!
That you wrote that you would do something the next day, and then quite deliberately (and voluntarily) did that thing on the next day, defies what "prediction" means.
There was no uncertainty about the outcome. That's a plan, not a prediction.
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And hopefully never will be.
Unhappy that I am, I cannot command neurons to heave
My heart into my mouth
If that were true, then how can one claim that physicalism would be true in the context of the mind-body question? I.e., if it were conceivable for brain matter to give birth to concepts that have an independent nonphysical existence, then no one would propose that there is a mind-body problem.
Do you know of any philosopher who has argued any such thing? I don't.
There is no other coherent thesis of "physicalism" (insofar as it is a coherent thesis to begin with) than "physical realism". Physicalism requires realism of the properties of the fundamental constituents. The empirical evidence unequivocally shows that the properties of the fundamental constituents of the alleged "physical world" are non-realistic, therefore the "physical world" at its most fundamental level is non-realistic.
Hello? There have been dozens of tests of Bell inequalities (including loophole-free tests) and several tests of Leggett-Garg inequalities, and not one has ever found correlations that did not violate the inequalities. There is simply no argument that all of these findings are wrong. Get with it. The world is nonlocal and nonrealist.
Again, if I lacked the ability to determine my own actions, all of my bodily movements would be involuntary, and my foretelling that I would write a post the next day containing the name of King Lear's youngest daughter, then doing exactly what I foretold would have been an outrageous and inexplicable prediction of an extraordinarily complex involuntary muscle spasm. The fact that I foretold such a unique act and then did exactly what I said I would only demonstrates that I do not lack the ability to determine my own voluntary acts. Semantics notwithstanding.
But your foretelling then would actually BE a prediction, because the outcome is uncertain.
Are you disputing something I said? If so, quote it and demonstrate its error.
And decoherence would show that the moon is there even if nobody looks at it. The decoherence time for something the size of the moon, especially when bathed by photons, is very, very small. I'd have to calculate it, but I've no doubt it is getting close to the Planck time.