boneyard bill

Titanpoint,

Thanks for the warning. It sounds like a hangout for even bigger egos than frequent these boards. Maybe that's why Thinker went there, though I can't say personally. I know him mostly by reputation.

Gurdur

Rubbish, Bill, and you know it. There are several theories of mind out there in various materialist camps - see references - and all you're doing is claiming that since they're incomplete, they don't exist as explanations.
The problem for you is that that position goes double, and with bells on too, for any competing theories or putative explanations.

The scientific community, when tackling the problems of consciousness, is a great deal more honestly modest in its claims than many competing schools (excepting wild short-term prognostications á la Marvin Minsky).

Twaddle and poppycock. Just which claim of mine have you refuted therewith, and how?

IOW, you're only arguing on the basis of personal feeling of value being understood as a phenomenological apprehension.
Just how do the 'materialist' explanations fit the physical evidence any worse than whatever you want to posit against them?

That is where the entire crux of the real debate is.

Actually, not true accroding to your own claims. Where's the role of consciousnes? You've left that out.

The fact that you attach values and links does not invalidate the physical basis on which you do it.

Strange. I gave you a link to comparative theories of mind, and my tiny little beginning of an explanation fits into the materialist functionalist camp.
You mean there is a materialist explanation after all?

The experience is an epiphenomenon of physical processes. So?

Edited to add: Each tiny element of that experience can be putatively reduced to a single neural impulse - and is in fact impossible without that neural impulse.
See way below.

Misleading and time-wasting.
Gosh, and how is your claim different from my 'materialist' functionalist claim?
Execpt you haven't brought in any alleged advantages of your claim at all in comparison with others, despite the fact you've implied they exist.

tsk tsk tsk.
Such polemics yet again.

Now give good non-linguistically-based, non-emotionally-based, i.e. fundamental reasons why they are not the same thing.

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

Gurdur

I'll add to the above:

When you stub your toe, you not only have the original pain - a straightforward neural impulse - you have other neural impulses being in operation, including how much attention you give to that pain, and what associations you build up on that. Each individual component can be straightforwardly identified with a putative initial neural impulse.

The whole bundle of impulses then gets subsumed under the term "experience".

IOW, we have linguistic and emotional conflation evident in this little discussion.


Just where is any additional input of anything such as a say dualist theory of external, inherent consciousness shown at all?

jj

Gurdur, you're a heck of a lot more patient than I am. All of this disputatious twaddle about polemics every time you hand him an honest opinion could just get a bit tiresome.

Perhaps after he reads up on biochem, how cell membranes change with use (referring to neurons), grow dendrites, etc, that change the favored paths, and so on, and explains how there is still a need for extra-physical non-materialism when it would seem that the mechanisms for purely chemical, physics-driven conciousness are in place.

I would never claim we understand all the details, but we don't need to understand all the details. What he needs to do is to explain how, in the presense of biochemical processes that provide memory, probabilistic, learned paths that resemble reasoning (I say 'resemble' because the learning is what sets the paths to that kind of function, as opposed to something that would not necessarily resemble reasoning, but rather something else), and so on, we need something that is extra-physical or non-material. (I count chemicals, electrons, and their effects on the universe as physical, to be clear.)

Gurdur

um, thanks, but I'm just in a quarrelsome mood.

Additionally, discussions have a good function for me in that they force me to clarify my own thinking in public, somehing that can always come in handy later.

The really tiresome bit is wading through polemics, and deciding whether someone is really trying to research something or just have a blast at others.

I've encountered Boneyard Bill before; I'm still trying to decide.

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

Gurdur

Of course, comments like these can be quite enlightening in decision-making.

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: Gurdur ]</p>

boneyard bill

Gurdur writes:

We seem to be going around in circles because you are raising objections that I have already answered. Metaphysical materialism requires a reductive explanation for consciousness. (There is one other option. It can deny the existence of consciousness which is essentially the position taken by Adrian Selby which I have answered above.) In the absence of such an explanation or a logical refutation of the existence of consciousness, there is simply no reason to believe it. (The fact that there are people who claim to have provided such an explanation is beside the point. They have failed to convince their peers. And their peers include such staunch atheists and materialisticly inclined critics as David Chalmers, a former materialist, and John Searle).

In the absence of a materialist explanation, what other option best explains the evidence? Idealism would require a radical re-thinking of physics. There are a few people out there who argue for this, but they are in the same camp as the materialists. They have failed to convince their peers. Cartesian dualism doesn't account for the apparent causal relationship between physical processes and sentient experience. The panpsychist approach accounts for everything. The only thing you give up is strict materialism. So what? The point is to explain what we know the best way we can.

If it were possible to construct a test for a reductive explanation, there would be no need to debate the issue. We could resolve it one way or the other. But it isn't. But materialism remained the most popular theory because it was felt that artificial intelligence would produce an explanation. After years of investigation, AI researchers have failed to come up with an explanation. And, as John Searle has pointed out, their major conceptual model, information processing, is itself an observer-related notion. So there is no reason to accept the materialist model of mind. Panpsychism offers an explanation that accounts for the data and does not conflict with what we know. It only conflicts with an interpretation of the data. It is therefore the superior model. None of this has to do with polemics or dishonesty. If anything, the shoe is on the other foot. You have obfuscated the debate by raising these charges. This is rather apparent since you raised the charges without even asking for clarification of the points in question. I have encountered this in debate with you before. If you can't refute the message, attack the messenger. I am through discussing this topic. I've made my point several times. People who are interested can follow the logic of the argument for themselves and make up their own minds. Some people will never be convinced no matter what the evidence is.

Devilnaut

Let's keep this simple.

You are attacking materialism because it fails to provide an explanation for consciousness.

You suggest that the fact that attempts at such explanations exist is irrelevent, because these explanations have failed to convince a few people.

This seems to be your entire point. This is not an attack on materialism (it in no way shows that materialism is inconsistent or incorrect, only that it does not have an explanation for consciousness adequate enough to satisfy David Chalmers).


If you consider this "materialism defeated", then it is pretty obvious that you have a hidden agenda in these subjects.

devilnaut

[ February 09, 2002: Message edited by: Devilnaut ]</p>

excreationist

So do I... so then he isn't a materialist. Have you read any consciousness books by materialists (e.g. Crick)? If so, which ones?
Also, that link was David Chalmer's home page and though it does talk a little about alternative theories, it would be quite biassed I think. A book would be a better source to see what materialists say than Chalmer's website.

What do you mean? That there can be telepathic interactions between different universes and dimensions? (e.g. heaven/hell)

So are you saying that there are no signals that travel from your brain to your leg to cause them to move? Electrical impulses are a physical phenomenon.

crocodile deathroll

In my opinion Pavlov's classical conditioning it really nothing more than a conditioned reflex response which is no more part of a belief system than an unconditioned reflex response like if I hit your knee with a rubber mallet did you believe you were consciously in control with the upward kick of you foot, or the dive reflex that causes a baby to hold its breath as it falls into deep water. The baby would not be holding its breath because it believe it was going to drown, it is just a relex. The reflex action of a dog salivating is not Pavlov's dog saying "I believe the sound of this bell means there is food on the way, therefore I will salivate in expectation of food ( translated into Russian". To have a belief system one has to have some concept of language and semantic memory.
crocodile deathroll