excreationist

No, conditioning, like in Pavlov's dogs, and instinctive reflexes are different! We don't learn to kick our leg when our knee is hit with a mallet! And the dive reflex is also not learnt.

Actually dogs show that they do expect food to come - by eventually becoming anxious and by whining if it doesn't come if they're used to it coming after a bell rings. But I guess Pavlov just concentrated on whether saliva was produced or not because it could be accurately measured and is related to the expectation of eating. I mean if you just measured how excited the dog is by its heart-rate then there could be many other unrelated factors involved.

When animals and people learn things they form beliefs that can be mistaken - they don't discover perfect knowledge - e.g. mathematical "truths". So these are called "beliefs". This is different from instinctual reflexes though since there is no expectation of the outcome (unlike when the dinner bell is rung) - it is just an urge to something. And we can overcome these urges (e.g. stop our legs from jerking and not holding our breath when we go underwater) - and so can other aware animals. (As long as the alternative is associated with huge amounts of pleasure and/or the instinct is associated with huge amounts of pain)

Adrian Selby

"The firing of c-fiber x is y. Where x is an electrical impulse and y is a pain in my foot. There is nothing in a description of the term "electrical impulse" that is included in the term "pain in my foot." "--BB

The difference in descriptions does not give grounds for thinking that something more, in reality, is going on than c-fibers firing.

I am not denying the validity of pain, or of consciousness as concepts, they are just useful definitions for arrangements of matter. Consciousness exists, where? I point to a brain. There's only neurons you say, yes I say, there's no different substance or property to the collection of neurons, its just a way of talking about what it is to be one of those collections of neurons (brains)

"If you mean to say that a pain in my foot is what the firing of c-fiber x feels like "on the inside," I have no problem with that. But then you are positing a fundamental relation between the two. And I am saying that that is the position best supported by the evidence."--BB

I am not positing a relation between two things, just positing a relation between two descriptions of the same thing. Having alternative descriptions of one thing does not make that thing more than one thing. And I'm saying that that one thing is a physical thing, a c-fiber (in this case).

"To claim, however, that the subjective language "pain in my foot" describes nothing more that the objective language "electrical impulse" is tantamount to denying the validity of subjective experience altogether."--BB

I'm not saying the subjective language describes the objective language, but that when someone wants to know what actually is happening, the objective language is more useful for describing the physical event, because that's all it purports to do. However, insofar as the reality of the pain is an electrical impulse, then the subjective language used refers only to an electrical impulse but has purposes above and beyond electrical impulses, for example, it could be used to elicit sympathy. The multifarious uses of such language, and other subjective language that only refers to material events, such as sadness and love, have social and psychological uses, but if one had to say, what substances are involved in all of this, I'm saying there is one substance, the c-fiber(in this case) and for an accurate description of that substance, the objective language is precise and has greater utility.

Your last point is a tricky one, in some respects, about me assuming the truth of that I'm trying to prove, how do I go about proving only physical properties exist? When I cannot point to non physical properties of things?

Adrian

excreationist

Well if consciousness has an epiphenomenal basis (it just observes?) then this is totally undetectable.
But if there is a physical realm and a kind of spiritual ("soul") realm then there is the possibility of detecting non-physical things. Since the spiritual would be able to interact with the physical then things with no physical cause could happen. And the consciousness and senses would no longer be dependent on the brain and body.
e.g. poltergeists, demon possession, NDE's, past lives, mediums (talking to the dead), seances, etc, and maybe remote viewing, OBE's, levitation, telekinesis, etc.

crocodile deathroll

It is still only Pavlov manipulating the dog's neurophysiology. That potential responses was already genetically built in like circadian rhythms. If you located Pavlov's dog to the other side of the world the neurons will have to make new connections due to a new set of environmental stimulus to adjust to different circadian rhythms.

That portion of the brain that causes that reflex response can be surgically removed and when that is done, someone like Pavlov cannot train his dogs into that classicly condition response no matter how hard they try.

All Pavlov did is that he used sound and not an Uncle Bens dog food package to "package" the food the dog was about to have. I found that out when I was about ten. I always found that if I walk out into the backyard with a can of dog food the dogs were very excited and drooled heavily. I told by may parents that the dogs had such an acute sense of smell they could smell its contents of the can. So the next I walked out with a can of house paint the about the same shape and size and I got exactly the same response, even with the top of the can off.

The nearest thing to a belief system I can attribute to other animal species is "agnosticism".
But only if I can give you an overly simplistic version of what defines "agnosticism".

e.g. If you do not know there is a "God" you are an agnostic.

Dogs do not know there is a God.

Thereofore dogs are agnostics.

But there is more to it than that. An agnostic is really someone who believes that nothing in known or can be known about the existence of God, Gods, reaincarnations etc or any other thing outside human experience

excreationist

Ok... well what about if you are training your dog to roll-over? If he got some of the way you would show a lot of approval (dogs like this because they're social animals) and maybe a bit of food. So eventually you can get your dog to believe that when it rolls-over when you tell it to will make you approve of the dog. Rolling-over isn't a natural behaviour of the dog, such as salivating during meal-time. And meal-time isn't natural either - in the wild dogs/wolves would just eat food when they saw it. There was no daily "meal-time". And these responses that show beliefs being expressed can happen all through the day. I don't see what that has to do with "circadian rhythms".
Another example of a belief would be if you rattled a dog's walking lead and chain while the dog was not in sight. My dog loves walking. And when I rattle the chain it runs around and become very impatient expecting me to put the choker-chain around it.

Yes, some part of the brain would be involved.

See... the dogs were excited as well... they really believed that food was coming.

Animals aren't agnostics. Agnostics understand what the concept of god means but they also believe that you can't say one way or another whether gods exist. I think that animals are either theists or weak atheists. Weak atheists because they lack an explicit belief in any gods, but they don't have an explicit belief that no gods exist either. And I think some animals can be theists too... e.g. we can do things to them that they can't understand - like make them fly through the air and immobilize them and throw things around, etc.

crocodile deathroll

[QUOTE}
Originally posted by excreationist
[/b]
Well if consciousness has an epiphenomenal basis (it just observes?) then this is totally undetectable.
But if there is a physical realm and a kind of spiritual ("soul") realm then there is the possibility of detecting non-physical things. Since the spiritual would be able to interact with the physical then things with no physical cause could happen. And the consciousness and senses would no longer be dependent on the brain and body.
e.g. poltergeists, demon possession, NDE's, past lives, mediums (talking to the dead), seances, etc, and maybe remote viewing, OBE's, levitation, telekinesis, etc.
[b]
[/QUOTE]
That non-physical thing is called complex information processes but it can really only emerge when matter reaches a critical level of complexity
One thing that goes hand in had with consciousness, is ordered complexity. A very fine example of ordered complexity are brain forms, and brain forms are very very complex entities, enough for these complex information processes to emerge. So I very much doubt if consciousness can exist outside brain forms and to the best of ones can really only emerge spontaneously through brain forms. No one has found any evidence of consciousness existing independently of brain form structures, no intelligent ghosts, no ghosts in the near perfect vacuum of outer space or poltergeists This is the reason why I doubt any form of consciousness can exist when the universe was only half its present age as there were no brain forms around at that point of time.

crocodile deathroll

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby asks:

Who's pointing? More specifically, who's referring? Is it a physical property that is referring to physical properties? The only thing we know is physical properties. But what is the nature of the knower? Is the knower physical? The knower is what it knows? An orange reflects light from certain frequencies of the visible spectrum between red and yellow. But is that reflected light orange? Or is the orangeness in my mind and something quite apart from the orange itself? That is the question being disputed. I don't have an answer. But metaphysical materialism claims to answer that question and so it faces the burden of producing a reductive explanation.

However, some people, I think Rorty is prominent among them, have said that if it is merely a language problem; then a reductive explanation is not required. This is the so-called non-reductive explanation. My point is that the non-reductive explanation faces the same problem. You cannot reduce subjective language to objective language and that's what you have to do to prove the case.

So I can say x is y. But the point is either a dogma or an axiom unless you can show that x is y through a reductive explanation.

So the non-reductive explanation says:

the language describing x is describing the same thing as the language describing y.

But this will not do. It is still just an axiom or a dogma. The non-reductive explanation must still show:

the language describing x is the language describing y. That requires reducing the one language to the other. And such a project would amount to a reductive explanation of x is y. But that's just the problem we started with.

boneyard bill

Devilnaut writes:

I haven't argued that materialism is defeated. I have argued for a different position on the grounds of the best evidence available. In the absence of a reductive explanation, materialism cannot support its own claims. But I can't prove that materialism will never be able to do this.

It isn't just a matter of not being able to satisfy David Chalmers. There is a whole area of philosophy of mind devoted to the discussion of the "explanatory gap." This refers to the lack of a reductive explanation for consciousness. So a philosopher comes up with a reductive explanation and it is subject to critique. His explanation may be shot down even by other materialists. The fact that such an area of discussion exists shows that this problem has not been solved even to the satisfaction of materialists. Daniel Dennett, for example, claims to have produced a reductive explanation; but other materialist philosophers do not cite Dennett's explanation to support their views because they know it doesn't work.

crocodile deathroll

We are just playing semantics with the word "agnostic". I do agree with you when you say Agnostics have understand what the concept of god means, and that is generally the default line for agnosticism , but it can also mean merely "not knowing". And under that simplistic definition, animals are agnostics.

I did say "there is more to it than that. An agnostic is really someone who believes that nothing in known or can be known about the existence of God, Gods, reincarnations etc or any other thing outside human experience" - which is the default line.
And I said it is the nearest thing to a belief system I can attribute to other animal species is "agnosticism". I did not say they were agnostics.

Even to be a theist you have to have some concept of God because before I learnt anything about religion my parents did things to me that I couldn't understand - like make me fly through the air and immobilize me and throw things around, etc. I did not attribute a concept of God to them.

Adrian Selby

"An orange reflects light from certain frequencies of the visible spectrum between red and yellow. But is that reflected light orange?"--BB

To the perceiver yes, orange is a word that the perceiver uses to classify that particular sense experience, and differentiate it from others. A scientist might prefer to use an alternative description. But what are they both describing in their different ways? light from certain frequencies of the visible spectrum.

I think talk of 'orangeness' is confusing. Is the light reflected orange? that is the word a perceiver would use when confronted with light from said part of the spectrum yes. It makes no sense to talk of something being orange apart from our perception of it, and we're just using the term to categorise this experience from others, particularly, experiences of light from other parts of the spectrum. An orange isn't orange to a bat. There is no such thing as 'orangeness' and orangeness isn't a property of anything. 'Orange' is simply a word we use to define part of sense experience when making sense of it for the purposes of communication.

"the language describing x is describing the same thing as the language describing y."--BB

This is where I might not be fully understanding you. Instead of the above, which confuses me, I would say
the vocabulary x and the vocabulary y describe the same thing, lets say its 'z'.

The thing is, in this c-fiber example, some neuron twitching under a microscope that's cunningly positioned on your brain.

The scientific vocabulary has a name for this fibre and what its doing and explanations that are couched in this vocabulary aim to be clear, descriptive and as value-free as possible, whereas, the vocabulary we normally use is much less precise, and open to different meanings in different contexts and even with different inflexions of voice.

I wouldn't therefore attempt to reduce the y language explanation, 'pain in my foot' to the scientific one (x language) because both have different purposes. But I would say both languages describe a single physical event.

"The non-reductive explanation must still show:

the language describing x is the language describing y"--BB

Its this part that I don't see as following from the above quote which describes the non=-reductive position. One vocabulary need not be identical to another one, in order to describe the same thing. I don't see how it must show that the one vocabulary IS the other vocabulary. I also don't see therefore why one vocabulary should equate to another.

Adrian