boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

But the question is, where does "orange" exist? Is it an objective quality of the light or of the object itself? The materialist can't answer that question. A reductive explanation should be able to answer it. But the non-reductive explanation doesn't account for it either. It simply posits that this is the same thing, but we're using different vocabularies.


yes, They both describe a single physical event. But what is the mental event? Is it also physical? If it isn't, then materialism fails. If it is, what about it is physical? What can I say about pain that is physical other than the fact that it correlates with a physical event? Correlating with a physical event isn't the same thing as being a physical event.


I agree that the one vocabulary need not equate to the other. But if you are a materialist and you are trying to defend materialism, it isn't sufficient to say simply that this is a language problem. It could be. But it could also be that the two languages are describing two different things. In order to make the case for materialism you have to show that the two languages are saying the same thing. But that is tantamount to producing a reductive explanation of consciousness. So I'm saying that the non-reductive explanation is an attempt to avoid a reductive explanation but cannot do so. To stop at saying it's a language problem simply assumes what you are trying to prove.

If you don't stop there, you have to show that the two languages actually are describing the same thing, and that brings you right back to the need for a reductive explanation.

excreationist

crocodile deathroll:
It is true that for humans, there isn't really any difference between weak atheism and agnosticism - that it is just a word game.
Here's the dictionary definition:
<a href="http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=agnostic" target="_blank">agnostic</a>:
Animals can be agnostic towards other things, but not to the existence of God. (Maybe bonobos can be taught about God a bit though - but like little kids, they'd probably believe whatever you tell them)
If you look at 1.a. it says "One who believes that it is impossible to know whether there is a God". It doesn't say "one who is incapable of believing in God". They have an explicit belief that they can't believe whether God exists or not.

You did say that animals were agnostics, according to your definition of agnosticism. But that definition isn't in the dictionary. Agnosticism involves doubt. To doubt something you need to have a basic understanding of it. I mean do fish "doubt" that the tooth fairy exists? I think they simply lack a belief in the existence of the tooth fairy.

If you less than about 2 years old then you wouldn't be able to remember those experiences anyway (since you hadn't learnt language well enough yet). And if you were 2 or older then you would have done the same things to toys and understand that there was no magic going on.

On the other hand, animals are unable to pick up large objects and skilfully make them fly around. I guess we humans aren't like total gods to animals though, since my cat knows that I can't touch it from behind the screen door - without opening it up. I think they then see us as demi-gods or magical beings. Even a couple days ago I surprised my dog. Someone put some water for it in a metal bowl. It had never seen anything like that and was terrified. Then they put the water in a plastic container and my dog was ok.

excreationist

BTW, about the colour orange:

It is true that oranges probably reflect certain frequencies of the visible spectrum between red and yellow.

But this isn't true for pictures of orange... on a computer monitor or a TV, orange is made up of red and green light. And on a colour print-out, orange is made up of yellow and magenta inks...

Also, there can be additional mixed (white) light from all frequencies, and we'd still call it orange. But if there is a lot, it would become peach. And if there was a substant that only reflected orange light, we wouldn't necessarily call it orange - we could call it "brown" (which is dark orange).

jj

Whoa, there. It's not all as confusing as you think. The difference between light and ink is between additive and substractive colour spaces. And, by the way, orange is red and yellow in a subtractive space, too. Try it with food colouring. (printing is subtractive.)

If you take light with a predominantly orange colour, and you add white light a bit at a time, until the white light gets close to predominant you'll have nearly all orange, yes, it will go through peach, etc...

But I don't quite see your point. The only real point about perception is that to humans, the right combination of two fixed colours of light cna stimulate the cones of your retina the same as single-frequency orange light.

excreationist

I didn't say it was confusing. And you're the one just throwing in all that jargon... I'm trying to be understandable to lay people.

I know, but normal colour printers don't use red ink. My point was that orange can be made in many different ways! If you're saying that it can also be made subtractively with red and yellow food colourings then that isn't very interesting.

No - there doesn't have to be two colours either - you can have pure orange as well. Or you could have many coloured lights - red, orange, yellow and green - but a lot of red - that gives orange overall. Anyway, we only see three colours - red, green and blue. And we see orange as a mixture of red and green, even though it could be pure orange light or a mixture of red and yellow light, etc.

Adrian Selby

"where does "orange" exist"

great question! I'll have a go at it. Orange doesn't exist. But a certain part of the brain is stimulated by visual perception, and there is a standard response to that perception when there is a requirement to describe it. The experience of orange is no more than various fibers firing in response to areas of reality that, due to their properties, allow light to refract at certain frequencies.

Here its clear I'm using a scientific vocabulary, but that's because it describes more effectively what is going on, and in doing so, clears up, for me, dangerously muddled thinking about 'orange' that could lead people to believe there is some quality of objects that is orange. To say something 'is orange' is useful in everyday contexts, but can thoroughly mislead us because 'is orange' suggests some kind of property of the object.

"But what is the mental event? "

I don't understand that, I cannot think why there would be a mental event? an advantage to my position is that I don't need to talk of mental events, I don't understand the category and what makes it differ from the physical, without presuming the truth of some substance or quality of things that is orange.

"What can I say about pain that is physical other than the fact that it correlates with a physical event"

Pain doesn't correlate with a physical event, pain is a word used to describe a physical event. Pain is a physical event, neural fibres firing is a physical event. The same physical event. Pain doesn't correlate with the event any more than neural fibres correlate with the event. They are the event, but are terms used to describe it from different perspectives.

"it isn't sufficient to say simply that this is a language problem. It could be. But it could also be that the two languages are describing two different things. In order to make the case for materialism you have to show that the two languages are saying the same thing. "

How could it be that the two languages describe different things? Where is the evidence for that? Is the evidence only because there seem to be two ways of talking about an experience? It's because I cannot grasp or prove some other realm than the physical exists that leads me to conclude that the two vocabularies are only describing some real physical thing. I honestly can't see an explanation that includes mental events as having more explanatory power, because it raises questions about a mental realm, and some distinction between it and the physical realm, even when they are conjoined necessarily. That just all strikes me as redundant.

Adrian

crocodile deathroll

[QOUTE]
Originally posted by boneyard bill

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.
[/QUOTE]
I am of the view that material alone cannot explain consciousness, but I still believe consciousness cannot possibly exist without preexisting organic material
I feel it is the configuration of material and not the material itself that leads to consciousness. If there we no chemical reactions in the universe then some of the most complex patterns would be a the configuration of single uranium atoms. You would end up with a universe with all the essential materials, all the mass and all the elements for consciousness but no sufficiently complex configurations due such minimal molecular diversity. It is in my mind only through a critical level of molecular diversity it is possible for consciousness to emerge. I cannot dismiss the prospect some time down the track when all consciousness it reducible to a single pattern of information that we all share equally at the very early stages of our neural development, so that we are all collectively co-conscious with all neural matter, and not at all contingent on a single sperm meets egg event . So you must exist in the universe and if your parents had not pared up in the first place you still would of retained the potential to become somebody because I believe it is the configuration of matter and not the quarks and leptons of matter that is the essence of being.

crocodile deathroll

excreationist

Just some thoughts...
I think normally what happens is that objects absorb some frequencies and reflect the rest. Refraction is what happens in lenses and mirrors, etc.

Assuming that you are visually detecting an object using 3 colour components (red, green and blue) there is a fuzzy range of values called "orange". But without the detection system, there is no orange.

Well objects can absorb, reflect and even emit various frequencies of light. We can detect the amounts of red, green and blue light, using cones, and the overall light intensity, using rods - in our eyes. Orangeness is just an approximation of reality - we don't know for sure what frequencies of light make up the colours we are seeing - we just have it described using 3 components - red, green and blue.

I think that there are mental events - to understand how a brain works you'd need to acknowledge that there is information passing through it. These are mental events. Saying that just some neurons fire is only going to allow a very superficial understanding of how our brains work and exactly why we are so intelligent, etc.

I agree... but to be more specific, I define pain as a messenge used by the motivational (goal-orientated) system in the brain to avoid particular situations, depending on the intensity of the message. Pleasure, on the other hand, is a message to repeat or seek particular situations. They are just signals, just like colours, thoughts and hallucinations are.

Actually they don't really need to refer to the same thing. A related example is the Turing machine - hypothetical computer. This machine could be implemented in many different ways - with electronics, with light beams, and maybe clockwork. And the software side of things can be handled separately.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

An interesting opinion. But what is it about the experience of orange that makes you think this? My experience of orange tells me nothing about fibers firing or any such thing. Isn't your conclusion based on reported correlations? And if you claim the correlations are the experience, isn't this an axiom of your system?


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. And that is just assuming what you set out to prove.

Do I detect an effort here to shift the burden of proof? The burden rests with the materialist. 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. The materialist can claim a redundancy but how do you prove it? And if redundancy is the only objection, why favor the materialist alternative? Maybe physical events are the phony ones. After all mental events are directly experienced. I know hardness. I have no direct evidence of any cause for that hardness. Hardness and other sense data, exhaust my information.

boneyard bill

Crocodile Deathroll writes:

That's a perfectly reasonable position to take and well supported by the evidence, but it isn't materialism. I am not disagreeing with your position. But now, let us examine the implications. If consciousness is an emergent property of matter and material processes but is not itself a material process, what does that imply about the nature of matter? It says that consciousness exists within matter and its processes as a potential. Matter and material processes possess "proto-mind." That is a logical consequence of your postulate, and that is the position I am arguing for.

The term "matter" in this discussion and as it is used by materialists refers to both matter and "material processes."