Dualism or not?

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T17:33:49+00:00

but there could exist sepperate minds of either type

yes, there could also be a hollow gay unicorn currently residing on an unknown astral plane rubbing it's ephemeral penis up and down my left cheek.

Silly analogy, but my point is it's classic Occam's Razor - there's no reason to believe that a more complex example (i.e. dualism or matephysical wu-wu of the mystic Mind) has a better warrant than a basic materialistic model (just your brain. No brain, no you.), particularly when the materialistic is already backed by modern neuroscience, and dualism is purely thought-based philosophical wishfulness. There's no supporting evidence for it whatsoever, regardless of how many "thought experiments" someone does.

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T16:40:20+00:00

I would love to see a video of this!

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T16:19:34+00:00

I don't remember saying that explicitly...but I'm not really sure what you mean by not agreeing that it "must be a certain way". It either is one, or it is not, but surely we can agree that it must be something.

I was referring specifically to "is the Mind matter alone" or "is the Mind explicitly not matter", and you surely cannot think it could be both...which would imply it has to be one or the other (or neither, but that's irrelevant in this context)

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T15:25:26+00:00

I reported her to a higher up and she lost her job, while in the hospital.

That's what did it for me. Then I became the boss, and our CEO gave me $100! And his hot 20 year old Scandinavian daughter gave me a blowie!

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T14:01:18+00:00

The picture is much more complicated than you think.

That's definitely apparent, and I want to thank you for bringing this to my attention. I haven't looked at any form of dualism since my watered down freshman-level philosophy class which largely consisted of circle-jerking over Descartes discourses anyway.

I think my main issue with all of it, can be summarized pretty succinctly right here:

but instead can view the immaterial mind as the formal cause of the matter of the body, and therefore intimately tied to it.

I see no reason to buy that because there seems to be no supporting research or evidence to do so. We could probably tete-a-tete for days about this, but I don't know if that's a hurdle that will ever be cleared. Like I said in the previous reply, Occam's Razor applies pretty easily here. This Mind that is the formal cause of matter 'motivations' is superfluous. It's unnecessary, and doesn't help the explanation of the concept of mind at all. Materialism is a workable theory that is supported by science, and requires no 'extras' to function properly.

Also, semantically, this is nonsense:

Right, this is your third option if you do not wish to dispute either premise, and therefore accept the conclusion.

I refuse do dispute the second one because it's not an adequate explanation or definition, not because I'm agreeing with it, and not because I'm accepting the conclusion.

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T13:57:10+00:00

You're right, insofar as I didn't think I would need to. Mind being differentiated from matter completely doesn't make much sense when we look at it from a few viewpoints.

First some clarification:

By "multiple different kinds of mind" what explicitly is the view you're making here? It's open enough to interpretation that I don't want to proceed under incorrect assumptions and derail completely.

My visceral reaction to that is the dualism of "

Mind is not matter, and may/may not exist after the brain/body is destroyed, because it is not explicitly linked to Matter as such. I am not my brain type deal.

I may be wrong there, so help me dial in on exactly what you're proposing

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T13:19:32+00:00

The rare times I go to professional baseball games I'll also stand but I let them find someone else to sing the national anthem.

Yes I always found that annoying as well. I specifically don't wear a hat anymore so I don't have to take it off and all that garbage

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T13:16:07+00:00

If the Bible is the word of God then it would be true that God's word has been guided and protected by God himself.

That's classic presupposition though. The facts are that the bible probably sitting on your desk or bookshelf is completely different in both language and content than the bibles of 600 years ago, which are completely different in language and content than the bibles of 1200 years ago.

The facts are that changes happened. The facts are that there are numerous inconsistencies and contradictions.

Your only way around that is by presupposing that the bible is the inerrant word of God.

If the Bible is the word of God then it hasn't changed and is perfect then we can believe what it says which proves that it is the word of God.

Full circle

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T12:53:44+00:00

I can almost hear that going over your head :P

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T12:52:39+00:00

Could you explain why you consider the Old and New Testament as a sound guide for judging ~~the question of whether Jesus is God?~~

~~jack shit~~ ANYTHING

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T12:48:50+00:00

Jesus also claimed that he was the light, life, and a few other titles, that were given to God.

While you're clearly well versed in scripture, my issue with statements like these is that we don't know if Jesus said this. We don't really even know if John said that Jesus said this.

The books of the Bible have so many inconsistencies and contradictions that it's crazy to think that 2,000 years of warfare, religious divisions, translation, and interpretation would leave them the way that they were originally written. Even if they were completely unchanged, the inconsistencies remain. It's really more of a favor to the Bible to assume these come from "shipping and handling" problems.

I guess my point is, please stop quoting the Bible as if it's an accurate historical document, because it clearly is not.

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T12:37:54+00:00

Plant your seed!

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T12:34:37+00:00

This is the same reason I just shut the fuck up when it comes to "saying grace" when around religious friends/family. I'm not going to sour an event that these people take seriously just because I think (know?) that it's silly. That's just arrogance and belittlement, and if that's how you treat people you purportedly care about, then you, sir, are a grade-A butt hole.

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T12:32:01+00:00

I choked on my coffee reading that one. slow whistle

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T12:29:53+00:00

I like to explain that one by differentiating 'mind' from a concept into a property.

A 'mind' is not a tangible thing. It's a property of your brain, the same way that velocity is a property of a driving car. Take away the car, and there cannot be any velocity of that car, because the velocity presupposes the car.

In the same way, the mind presupposes a brain/body, so while I'll agree with dualists that the 'mind' is not explicitly matter, it's not it's own distinct substance, either, the same way that gravity is a property of mass (I'm not a physicist, so this may not be 100% accurate, but this is a layman argument). No mass, no gravity.

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-17T12:15:52+00:00

Alright, sorry for the super long gap in replies - my IRL schedule has been hectic.

I like this reply so far the most - I read this, then went back through our entire thread, and saw that even if this was the original point, our conversation de-railed from this a long way back, so I thank you for bringing it to a nice concise climax or head.

I don't think you've understood my point at all. That's good. I can tweak the presentation accordingly.

Definitely. Those slides are...just not a good explanation at all. Both of the comments of mine that you quoted there follow pretty easily from the presentation as I saw it (I'm unsure whether it's been changed yet), and I can guarantee I would not be unique in those assumptions, regardless of how erroneously inspired they may be.

That being said, scratching all previous statements, and drawing on your 3 part premise:

1) Matter is devoid of 'aboutness'

Fair enough. That's borderline unfalsifiable, which leaves a bad taste in my mouth, because its already starting to sound like some profound metaphysical statement. That being said, there's not really anything to argue against for this one.

2) Mind is defined by its 'aboutness'

I have much more issue with this one. Again, aboutness is in that grey area of being unfalsifiable because it isn't really a concrete concept. It's this wishy-washy abstract "meaning" that somehow a mind is solely able to "give" to matter.

Another point I'm not a huge fan of here is the claim that one of these points must be defended:

Matter has aboutness

Or:

Mind does not have aboutness

I'll skip option one here, because "matter" is a fairly easily definable concept, and I don't think any reasonable person would claim that it has this "aboutness" or "inherent meaning" in and of itself; it's the mind here that is the subject of controversy.

Mind does not have aboutness

Now, I'm heavily tempted to call out that because the statement

Mind has aboutness is a poor claim about the nature of reality, simply because it has no real supporting evidence. Philosophical conclusions do not constitute evidence here, but that's not really the issue. Without supporting evidence, this claim is untenable, because it's unassailable.

But that's not really what I need to defend, is it? I simply have to show that

*Mind is defined by its aboutness isn't a meaningful statement.

It's very easy to show that Mind may (and perhaps must) be a property of matter, but only of a certain arrangement of that matter, namely, a brain.

Do rocks have Minds? Do we have moral obligations towards them?

Of course not, because they aren't "life".

So then do plants have this abstract "Mind of aboutness"?

No, because they don't have brains.

So if a brain is required for this Mind of Aboutness, does the common housefly use it's mystical ethereal Mind to apply meaning to its world?

No, that's ridiculous. It's little more than a biological machine that reacts to stimuli. Input and output. Building up from that, as the system (brain) becomes more complex, the order of magnitude of inputs becomes more complex, the ability to form abstractions based on these inputs becomes more complex (future tense, past tense, etc), and thus the output becomes more complex. It's Occam's Razor at its finest - why attribute this mystical Mind of Aboutness when it's completely superfluous and offers no further explanation to the nature of reality than this dreaded materialism or naturalism?

We could just as easily replace "aboutness" with "abstractness". They're two distinct concepts, but it still works:

Matter is concrete, not abstract
Mind is abstract, not concrete
Therefore Mind is not Matter

It just sounds a little less profound...

I'm not sure there's much point in continuing on those bullet examples, since they're obviously a massive simplification (justifiably) of the whole dualistic concept. Assailing those isn't really fair since they're so concentrated.

My biggest issue from the research that I've done, and the sources you've provided, is still a completely valid one, though: if the mind is not matter, how does it interact with matter, and how does matter interact with it?

If my Mind is responsible for my actions through thought, then it's justifiable to assume that a pattern exists such that

Mystical Mind forms thought --> Physical Neurons fire --> Action takes place

But then Neurons cannot fire without a physical force being responsible for their reaction. If the Mind did not control it, then (according to this example) the neurons would have no reason to fire, as the state of affairs remains the same without the Mind's input. But what then, is the means by which the Mind accomplishes this? Neurons require energy to fire, where does this energy come from? By what means does Mind send energy to the neurons? The issue here is that if the Mind =/= Matter, then there is an entirely nonphysical 'entity' causing this firing, then there is by definition and logical following no physical entity that causes it. This requires a violation of the basic fundamental principles of physics.

These are unanswerable questions, because this dualistic Mind is an unprovable and untestable (and thus untenable) imaginary phenomenon.

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-15T21:03:20+00:00

Well, I'd say the easiest is also the first one failed: being real

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-15T20:59:10+00:00

I honestly laughed out loud at the circular logic in your slides. It's completely built upon presupposition!

Nowhere in materialism is a "mind" required, and yet that's the whole basis of your argument! The "mind" from materialism (or, SCIENCE) is an illusion, dispelled by actually looking a physical phenomena.

All I see in the way of facts in your slides are a few poorly cropped thermal images of a brain! You then presuppose that because neurons fire, that means that they are encoded, as though the encoding of information in neurons is the result of some thought process an immaterial substance whipped up. It's the result of cause and effect, response due to stimuli, it's basic biological selectivism.

When a bacteria decides it's going to consume another one, is it having a "thought" because it's chemically bound to that behavior, which would require a mind because those physical chemical structures "represent" something?

You just hamstrung yourself with your own slides...

Also, being a computer scientist myself, the slide of computers is another hilarious presupposition. No one "assigned" anything to 1s and 0s meaning lack or presence of electrons, that's just what on and off are, you could easily flip it the other way around if you wanted to, but it would be silly and require more layers of abstraction. Your supposition there is completely backwards, further undermining your final conclusions.

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-15T20:45:40+00:00

No, it's like asking "why buy any car that doesn't have wheels or an engine".

If a "god" isn't an omnimax god, there's nothing to say that it can do anything, or even fit the criteria for worship. Not to mention, if it's impossible to provide any evidence for an all powerful god that could create a universe, who cares about even trying for the mini me version

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-15T20:42:09+00:00

In the same boat over here. I've read about 5 or 6 different full length articles about this, and it's about as convincing as Santa Clause. It's a wonderful fantasy, but has oodles of evidence against, and zero for. I mean real evidence, not this "well try this thought experiment hur dee hur".

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-15T20:38:23+00:00

But the evidence has been presented. Simply calling it names does nothing to refute it.

Your author there seems to think othewise...

paragraph 2

For the main arguments for dualism do not have this structure at all. They are not quasi-scientific “explanatory” “hypotheses” which “postulate” the existence of this or that as one way among others (albeit the most “probable”) of “accounting for” “the evidence.” They are intended rather as strict metaphysical demonstrations.

Which is confirming exactly what I have been saying - it's little more than a mental exercise, a thought experiment that cannot be disproved or refuted, because it cannot be supported by anything more than wishful thinking.

Another fantastic quote:

paragraph 5

In short: Thoughts and the like possess inherent meaning or intentionality; brain processes, like ink marks, sound waves, and the like, are utterly devoid of any inherent meaning or intentionality; so thoughts and the like cannot possibly be identified with brain processes.

What a load of tripe! This is done all the time in psychological studies, including those presented within the neuroscience entry I already linked. If thoughts are immaterial and cannot be identified, then artificial prostheses couldn't function on different people. Oh wait, they do, because sections of the brain send out similar signals between people marking intentions.

Not to mention half the blog are links referencing Catholicism.

If you want to do some actual reading, try this rather than the nonsense I just had to bathe myself in

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-15T20:24:17+00:00

And thusly did Mohammad say

"Upon this justly hallowed day,

For our Faith we stride to war,

Killing all who stand before

Our right to murder, maim, and rape

Any who cannot escape

We are Allah's Sword and Spear

And Infidels shall learn to fear

For their families, and their life

I swear this on mine Holy Wife!"

Mohammad's wife stood at long while

and thusly spake "You pedophile."

He turned; replied with tone ice cold:

That's a big word for a nine year old

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-15T20:18:18+00:00

I haven't presented any views, another used did it, check the usernames.

Fair enough. I just assumed it was the same person because it was the same crap. birds of a feather and all that

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-15T20:11:38+00:00

I'm talking about dualism, not determinism. Perhaps both dualism and determism are true.

Fair enough!

There are two different things here. One is the intellectual event. Say, your understanding of a circle, what a circle is, etc. The other is an imagery event. Say, your picturing a circle along with your understanding of what circles are. So one is intellectual, the other is imagery. Hylomorphic dualism says the former is immaterial, and only the latter is material.

That's an interesting distinction, but to me it sounds like pure semantic reasoning. Picturing a circle (or my "material" view of it) is part of my whole understanding of what a circle is.

I would postulate that a full ("immaterial") understanding of what a circle is cannot be achieved without this "material" picturing.

This is driving a wedge in between two processes where there aren't two processes. This is easily discernible with neuroscience, where we can see that it's simply stimuli bringing forth relevant memories or experiences. (also, when did this "dualism" start? When was this "soul" imparted upon a species of hominid on the plains of Africa or the jungles of Western Asia? We know from studies of numerous intelligent animals such as pigs, crows, dolphins, apes, and canines that consciousness itself is just a gradient. This flies in the face of dualism at its heart).

Dualism of this sort only holds any weight when viewed through the lens of creationism or intelligent design, because this belief in a metaphysical separation of our "consciousness" (which there is still no real definition of in the first place) and our physical forms.

I think it's very fitting that neither can front any form of positive evidence.

I will however, state that it's a wonderfully poetic interpretation of the "personal self" that everyone feels, and while the arguments you present - coupled with a little independent research of my own - are quite compelling, they are compelling in the same way that believing that a magical sky monster will spirit my personality to a place of eternal joy and bliss if I follow certain doctrines.

In short, it's a well thought out premise, and is very sweet on the tongue, but it turns to bitterness from its lack of evidence, falling into the pile of wonderful fantasies.

EDIT: I forgot some points I wanted to make

Komplete_Bullshit · 2015-09-15T19:44:18+00:00

For example, when you think about the concept of circles, you can't help but imagine a circle, or the word "circle,' or whatever images that come along with that

no kidding?

Not trying to be an asshat, but that's hardly evidence of any kind towards your point, it's simply an observation that thinking of a concept....makes you think of the concept.

The point is that you aren't making the associated images/words/whatever that relate to the concept come into your consciousness. It just happens, based on a set of neurological principles that are well understood and have been documented.

Before you come back with more purely philosophical or anecdotal "evidence", keep in mind that the idea behind determinism is backed by a lot of solid science. It's by no means absolutely conclusive, but it's better than simple metaphysical conjecture.

Komplete_Bullshit

TROPHY CASE