excreationist

Yes of course - our brains are informed only of the relevant signal itself rather than the details of how the signal works. In the same way, on a computer, the user just sees the programs themselves and doesn't know about the exact arrangement of transistors and electrons and circuitry that are involved.
At some point you *have* to just take the information for granted (assuming that there is a materialistic basis). I mean if your brain was able to look at the signals in detail and see that it involved neurons then this would involve a detection system. And to study that detection system you'd need another one. You could then take the information that detection system gives you for granted - or rely on another detection system to study and analyse that. But in order to get any thinking done, you've got to just go ahead and use that hardware. (Unless dualism is true and at some point hardware isn't required)

For me at least, this would be an axiom of my materialistic framework, but I am still open to any concrete evidence for dualism - That physical hardware is not required to do some kind of brain function - like OBE's, NDE's, ghosts, etc.

To repeat what I've said before (even though you are asking Adrian Selby), pain signals are just neural signals that are used by our motivational system to label certain situations and memories as being "undesirable". So when our motivational system is formulating goals, those linked to pain signals are automatically avoided, if possible, with the priority of avoidance depending on the intensity of the pain signals. According to my materialistic model, "we" are the processor of our brain's short term memory and the contents of short term memory include our goals and emotional information. So we are aware of the automatic compulsion to avoid the pain signal. Sometimes it mightn't be possible to avoid it, but we are still informed of it just in case it later becomes possible to avoid it. (e.g. it could take a few hours to avoid the pain signal if you broke your arm and aren't near a hospital - but it is important to be aware of the pain signal otherwise you might forget about your broken arm)

See my explanations for orange and pain and why we aren't directly aware of neurons firing.

Because it causes scientists to study it further which could lead to advances in treating mental problems (mental illnesses, etc).

Yeah, the world is just an illusion.... why bother with science. Let's just be mystical and meditate or whatever.

Adrian Selby

"Then why does it hurt so much? And why can't the different "perspectives" be reconciled? And are these "perspectives" both physical events? If they're physical events then there must be two of them because they are different. But if they aren't physical events, then there is something besides the physical. Of course, you can say that they are two different language descriptions of the same event. But, alas, I've dealt with that before:
To say the language that describes x is describing the same thing as the language describing y, is making the same statement as x is y."--BB

The different perspectives can be reconciled with regard to the physical thing they describe, but they cannot be reconciled as perspectives because one is 'inside' the other 'outside'. But just because two people have a different perspective on something doesn't in any way show that two somethings exist.

Again, the problem with saying 'the language that describes x' is that we're not using language that describes language, I understand 'x' here to be 'pain in my foot' and I'm saying that this is itself some language that describes a physical event in a certain way. 'y' just is language that describes the event in a different way. So to say 'language that describes x' is to say 'language that describes language' which is not what I think I'm doing. Vocabulary x and vocabulary y are describing event e. There is not being used a language that describes x and y, that presumes a dualism.

"The evidence that there are two events is the very fact that we have two distinct vocabularies - one for mental events and one for physical events."--BB

So because we talk about things in different ways it means different things exist? I don't see how having two vocabularies provides any evidence for two different events that are conjoined. 100 or more years ago I'd have struggled to say that, but only because our knowledge of physical things was perhaps (shaky ground) mechanistic, and just didn't fit the depth of consciousness as experienced. I would argue that it is the physical vocabulary's previous limitations that led thinkers to look to dualist answers for their explanations. Now in the present day we have more and more physical answers that better and better explain consciousness, the need to look for 'mental' events as distinct is becoming less and less necessary. And just to say that now there happen to still be two vocabularies for mental and physical events doesn't offer support for the reality of two different kinds of events robustly enough. I'm suggesting that its a historical fact we have two vocabularies, but not one that innately supports a dualistic hypothesis, because of the development of the explanations of physical events.

Adrian

Vorkosigan

"The evidence that there are two events is the very fact that we have two distinct vocabularies - one for mental events and one for physical events."

What are the two vocabularies? Can you give some examples?

Michael

excreationist

Maybe the difference is just the style of the language.
e.g. I talk about pleasure and pain as well, but I use a more mechanical style of language, where others might use a more poetic style of language.

boneyard bill

excreationist writes:

You don't seem to be following the logic of this discussion very carefully. If this is an axiom of your system, then your system isn't a materialist one.

Materialism and dualism aren't the only alternatives. What I'm claiming is that panpsychism fits the evidence best. Panpsychism is a kind of mind/matter monism. I'd just like to call it "monism," but that isn't the used most often so I have to go with panpsychism.

Yeah. But that doesn't answer the question, "why does it hurt so much?"

That completely avoids the point. We don't need a concept of matter to model the world scientifically. The question is whether the materialist model works better than the alternatives in accounting for the data. No one is proposing to toss out the data. The question is how best to interpret it.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

But again, this is just an attempt to shift the burden of proof. You deny that there is any explanatory gap on the grounds that consciousness doesn't exist. Then when it is pointed out that we have different vocabularies you deny that the different vocabularies have any meaning. But why, then, do you insist that only the physical vocabulary should be held to reflect reality. Why shouldn't the mental vocabulary be accepted as the one that truly reflects reality? We can fully account for the data without any concept of matter. So even if you're right in your claim, you still have provided no reason to favor a physical explanation.

But aside from that, you've offered no reason why you shouldn't bear the burden of proof. Why should I accept the claim that these vocabularies are commensurate? As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and you've offered no proof at all.

How so? Where has there been the slightest conceptual leap from the physical to the mental? We've traced the physical processes more minutely, but how has that done anything to get us closer to an explanation of the mental?

And you still haven't addressed my other point. If there are two different perspectives, what are these perspectives themselves? Is a perspective physical? If a "perspective" is physical, then you have two events, not one because you have said they are different. But if you have two different physical events, how can you say they're the same thing?

Let's go into this more deeply. You have two physical events (perspectives). They can't be simultaneous in the same place if they're both physical so they must be sequential. So we begin with a digital process. A photon strikes the lens and travels through the optic nerve where a c-fiber fires and voila! We have an analogical event called visual experience. So how does the digital process become an analogical one? Could holography explain this? I've suggested this before. I think that holds more promise than neuro-science in providing a reductive explanation. Still, I don't see how you get from the digital to the analogical without a reductive explanation. Are you going to say that digital and analogical are just perspectives? Even if they are they are, they have to be physical events and if they're physical, there has to be two of them and how do you get to one from the other. You either provide a reductive explanation or posit a fundamental axiom that the digital transforms into the analogical. And even if holographers could somehow provide such an explanation for vision, I still don't see how they could for pain or taste or smell.

boneyard bill

Turtonm asks:

The examples we've been using are:

"the firing of c-fiber x" and "the color orange"

boneyard bill

deleted by boneyard bill

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: boneyard bill ]</p>

Adrian Selby

"As Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and you've offered no proof at all."

Jeez, well if Carl Sagan said it....

I don't see my claim as extraordinary, you do, and all this burden shifting is making me tired. It's my position. I think its easier to understand than dualism, you, and Mr.Sagan of course, don't. I'm not trying to do anything, I'm just saying why things seem easier to explain from my point of view. It's you that are making the extraordinary claims, from my point of view, and just because you think extraordinary claims require some burden of proof doesn't mean that they do, I don't understand the rationale for that beyond habit, after all, isn't it a matter of perspective what's required, don't all positions require some kind of proof? Whether mine has or hasn't any proof doesn't validate your position any more when I see no evidence of non physical things popping out of your arguments.

"You deny that there is any explanatory gap on the grounds that consciousness doesn't exist."

Yet again, consciousness is a way of describing things that are also described as neural nets. That which consciousness as a word or concept or collection of concepts refers to exists.

"But why, then, do you insist that only the physical vocabulary should be held to reflect reality. Why shouldn't the mental vocabulary be accepted as the one that truly reflects reality?"

I insist the physical vocabulary is *better* at describing the nature of that which physical and mental predicates refer to, because it is less vague with regard to pure perception of things, you know, the act of sensing and what it is that is sensed. But insofar as it insists there is something to be sensed that is outside of us, the fact that such a vocabulary is well geared to that makes it all the more suitable for understanding what it is we're trying to describe. To insist, though this is going off track for me, that a mental vocabulary somehow opens the possibility that there are non-physical things presumes there are non-physical things. THe issue then is whether what we sense, before we categorise it, does exist objectively and physically or not. I'm saying it does, and that given that, a vocabulary that aims to describe the physical thing in itself *as far as possible* is more useful than another vocabulary.

"If there are two different perspectives, what are these perspectives themselves? "

I've said 'inside' and 'outside' The perspectives are this. I kick you in the leg. You howl out loud, you are in pain. I tell you that what I did is move a piece of matter, my leg, into a piece of matter, your leg, and it triggered nerve responses that were sent to your brain that led you to hop about holding your leg.

But the 'you' here, well, it's your leg, I can't feel its pain, or rather, the nerve signals are not related to my brain, or the brain that's spatially located here and not there, and not connected to those nerve fibres. That 'brain' (you) has the connections and inso having them, that brain (you) is experiencing what you categorise as pain. The experience of pain is when the brain that is you is receiving the signals. So of course, given I do not have the nerves that have been kicked and you do, and from your prespective the same would apply, I suppose you might primitively think, there is a qualitative difference to this experience that they don't have access to, there must be something more going on than just the nerve fibres and brain interacting.

"Is a perspective physical?" No, a perspective on the pain in your leg can be described physically, and indeed I could not describe your pain (the being you, the being that brain that is receiving the signals) but only describe physically and extrapolate from memory what must have happened and identify via memory what the experience would be like from my perspective. But I can't be you, so our perspectives are necessarily different with regard to those nerve fibres and their connection to the spine and brain stem.

"A photon strikes the lens and travels through the optic nerve where a c-fiber fires and voila! We have an analogical event called visual experience. So how does the digital process become an analogical one"

This analogical event is simply the succession of events after the fibre is stimulated as it acts and reacts with the rest of the visual cortex and other brain centres. The being of that brain when that happens is the having of the visual experience, but the term visual experience is a way of describing what happens when the brain that is you is having those kinds of fibres firing. The term visual experience, because it refers to an occurrence subsequent to the initial stimulation does not necessarily lead to some other realm of existence that is separate from neurons firing all over your brain. I'm not sure what you mean by the terms digital and analogic here mind.

Adrian

Vorkosigan

I have bifurcated this thread. I moved it into the Pol Forum, where BB, Moon and Echidna can continue their conversation with the vietnam war posts intact. I deleted the off-topic posts in this forum and the thread is now open.

Michael