VivaHedone

This thread is about the interaction in our brains between the subjective (sensations, thoughts etc) and the physical (namely, flow of electrons). I've got a theory, which still sounds a bit wacky even to me, but is, I think, totally logically sound (I�m sure I�ll soon be corrected if not!).

The theory is based on the law of causality - namely, that every effect has a direct physical cause - and how it is applied to the human brain. I hope that everyone here accepts that the direct physical cause of the subjective experience is the flow of electrons and chemicals through the brain - hence, when flow of electrons ceases, as in death, subjective experience also stops.

My theory is that subjective experience cannot influence anything. It has no effect. So our sensations do not affect our thoughts, and our thoughts do not affect our actions (this may sound weird but stick with me!).

The reasoning: well, subjective experience is not a physical entity. A sensation is not made of matter; a thought has no physical structure or shape. For subjective experience to have any effect in the brain, it would have to influence the electronic and chemical signals that are the direct physical cause of all activity in the brain. Now, how is it possible for something non-physical, like a thought, to influence something physical, like flow of electrons? How can a thought or sensation physically push an electron around the brain to cause an effect? It is simply not possible.

It may seem as if what we see influences what we think, but it cannot be so, seeing as a thought requires the direct physical cause of electronic flow, and a sensation has no physical power to induce such a cause. However, there clearly is a strong connection between sensation and thought � if you see something, you think about it. Therefore I think it must be not sight, but the direct physical cause of sight, that leads to our thoughts on what we see. What I mean by this is that the electronic and chemical reactions that cause our sensations must also cause the electronic flow that in turn is the cause of our thoughts.

Similarly, it must be the direct physical cause of our thoughts that causes our actions, rather than the actual thought. Hence, this thread also serves as an argument against free will. The workings of the brain can be seen as one big chain of chemical and electronic reactions, with subjective experience a by-product of each stage.

This theory would, then, mean that subjectivity is totally unnecessary to the working of our brain � subjective experience can have no effect, so our brains would work just as well for survival purposes without it. This ties in with my Purpose of Subjectivity thread.

Adrian Selby

How can a brain avoid subjectivity if it is the kind of thing that creates a model of its environment that differentiates it from that environment. Where it is able to scan itself, assess against input its desired output, then where that involves only the one brain, a discrete entity, surely the concept of subjectivity derives from that fact and then is inherent in it.

Are you able to explain just how a sensation interacts with the brain, is there a mechanism or do they magically seem to correlate? What is the cause of your thinking that there are two kinds of thing in a causal relationship?

By calling a thought non physical, are you suggesting that it is a real something but that it is not physically real, hence some kind of dualism of substance, a non real substance or thing and a real substance or thing?

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are you an incorrigible analytic?

VivaHedone

Yet subjective experience can have no effect, so it is useles in self-assessment. Self-assessment requires only the correct electronic configuration.

Cause and effect: electrons and chemicals cause sensations. Accepted scientific wisdom, I think.

Well, thoughts clearly exist, as we experience them. However, a thought is obviously not a physical entity - it is not comprised of matter. It is an experience. The physical matter is the electrons which cause thought.

Adrian Selby

That's where we differ then, I'm an identity theorist, and i've espoused my position on the nature of experience and subjectivity in the materialism thread below at great length

To summarise, my view is that the brain is an object capable of experiences, it experiences, to be a brain that works is to experience. I find this answers the problem of just why electrons etc. cause sensations, that you're saying aren't physical entities, if they're not physical what are they?

Scientific wisdom can support your view as well as mine, I'd argue mine more so, but I then I would wouldn't I

Sylvan Wizard

Is software a physical entity?
I would say it's made of patterns of electrical activity in the brain, like software on a computer. The mind is the software running on the hardware of the brain.
Indeed, and self awareness gives us that power.
How is it possible that software can influence itself, and to control/manipulate it's hardware as well?
Not directly as if by some magical force, no, but indirectly, yes.
Without awareness, I would say that a creature would be a deterministic slave, simply following it's nature. But when awareness comes in, so does free will.

VivaHedone

Yes. But it doesn't have subjective experience.

If you cannot differentiate between the electrical/chemical signals that cause sensations and the sensations themselves, you shouldn't be posting here. An electron is not a sensation.

How?

It is configured in such a way that the flow of electrons through it produces certain results. That is all.

An unsubstantiated comment. If you're saying that subjective experience does have effect, then at some point that subjective experience has to gain physical power. This I believe is impossible.

You have yet to show how awareness can even have effect, let alone produce free will.

VivaHedone

I'm going away for a couple of weeks - enjoy the discussion, while I'm on some sunny beach pretending not to stare at that topless 19-year old beautiful Mediterranean girl...

Godless Wonder

Technically the electrons are still there, nothing happens to them. Here, I'm allowing your word, "electrons" to stand for all the matter...

Quote:

My theory is that subjective experience cannot influence anything.[...] The reasoning: well, subjective experience is not a physical entity. A sensation is not made of matter; a thought has no physical structure or shape. [...]

I disagree. Those photons hitting your retina? Triggering impulses in your nerves? leading to your....dare I say it?...to your brain? None of that is of the physical, material world? I say, it is all of the material world.

Your thoughts have no shape? Tell that to the radiologists and neurobiologists who study this stuff who take pictures showing various brain regious showing activity correlating with specific thoughts. If I remove a piece of your brain, do you not suffer some memory loss, some decrease in your ability to function? The brain requires no magic. Just because we don't understand something completely is no reason to say that it must be magic. I would argue that if you memorize a random 7 digit number, there are physical (non-magical) changes which happen inside your brain to make that memory, and allow you to recall it later.

Here's an interesting book that I found very informantive and entertaining. Maybe you'd like it too. "What makes you tick, how the brain works in plain english" by Thomas B. Czerner
ISBN: 0-471-37100-9

Sylvan Wizard

It would if it was conscious.
Actually, it is. Or rather, part of one. Our minds are made up of these electrochemical signals, and these sensations exist solely in the mind, so it logically follows that sensations consist of electrochemical signals in the brain.
I haven't worked that out yet, even though I feel it's necessary to save my concept of free will.
Our brains are also configured in such a way that electrochemical signals produce certain results.
Impossible? If it were impossible you would be unable to type your reply. When you move your fingers to type you are consciously directing your fingers to move. The electrochemical signals in your brain are influencing your muscles to cause them to move in the manner necessary to type.
It's my belief that we are largely deterministic, and only consciousness gives us free will. Without it, one cannot have free will. A flatworm has no brain, no consciousness, and no free will. It reacts purely on instinct, merely reacting in a purely deterministic manner. I don't know exactly how consciousness can allow for a way out of determinism quite yet, and I'm not entirely certain it can, but I'm still looking into it.

VivaHedone

There is an important difference here, central to the whole argument. Electrons etc cause sensations, but they are not the sensations themselves. The sensation is the feeling these electrons and so on generate. AN ELECTRON IS NOT A SENSATION BUT THE CAUSE OF ONE.

Precisely. It is not the subjective experience that produces the effect, but instead the electrochemical signals that also produce the subjective experience.