kenaz

Objectivity is the presupposition of an external viewpoint that is above us all. You are substituting apple with apple.

First, science is a field of knowledge. It’s the strategies and tactics operating within this field that one finds one’s interpretation of one’s reality/life/truths. Thus there are realist, antirealist, pragmatist etc.. discourses on science. There is no one notion that can lay claim to the singular explanation of life as applicable to the entire humankind.
Similarly, there is no world-view, mechanistic or other, that can explain satisfactorily the entirety of life either.

It seems like you prescribe to the “mechanistic world-view”, thus trying to fit in the concept of subjectivity within this untenable paradigm. I hope you do realize that you are arguing against your conceptual prescription. Can’t help you out here mate.

Wonderful is it? You are mythologizing subjectivity because you can’t fit it into your conceptual prescription of the necessity of a singular world-view. There is nothing mystical or mythical about subjectivity- it is localized and tactical.

I don’t think I’m the confused one here my friend. With terms like “external viewpoint”, “world-view”, “wonder/wonderous/wonderful”, “mystified” it seems I’m not the quasi-religious believer of some higher purpose to Life here.

I think I’ve said all I want to say on this thread. Good luck with your confounding reasoning in search of the One Truth to rule us all.

cheers

contracycle

Hmm, I think it is exactly like a supercomputer, and that in a very real sense 'you' are a programme being run on that computer. Or perhaps a better analogy would be, an Operating System. All that is required for 'you' to spring from the hardware is that the code be so complex as to require self-auditing.

VivaHedone

That doesn't explain how subjectivity can arise from flow of electrons through the brain, or what subjectivity is.

Precisely my point - we are apparently in agreement.

When seen 'objectively', the world, and our brains, are mechanistic. However this does not explain subjectivity. I see no contradiction here.

I am 'mythologizing' subjectivty because I see no scientific explanation of it, and no prospect of a scientific explanation ever being found.

Mythical???? I have never denied that subjectivity is real. It is mystical because, in your words, 'there is no world-view, mechanistic or other, that can explain satisfactorily the entirety of life'.

I'd love to know how any of these indicate belief in higer purpose, but as you've 'said all I want to say on this thread' I doubt I will ever have the pleasure.

Never mind subjectivity, this certainly is mystifiying.

contracycle

Not electrons, information.

VivaHedone

No, physically electrons are what flows through the brain. Information is an abstract concept, amd does not flow through the brain. Our brain interprets the flow of electrons to produce information.

But this still leaves us no closer to explaining subjectivity.

boneyard bill

Viva Hedone writes:

Exactly. We are subjectivity. Everything that constitutes us in psychological terms is our subjectivity. Why do we have it? What is its purpose? Let venture a tiny beginning of a guess. It has great survival value. Because of subjectivity, I have self-identity. Because I have self-identity, I have a will to live. Because I have a will to live, I have an evolutionary advantage over those physical entities that are indifferent to their own survival value.

Of course you have to give up Darwinism and all that mechanistic nonsense. But you've already said that you don't find that believable anyway.

VivaHedone

What you are advancing seems to be very much Darwinistic - that we have subjectivity for some survival reasons. However, I believe that our brains could be just as easily configured to ensure that we respond to stimuli in a way likely to ensure our survival without the actual subjective desire to live.

boneyard bill

VivaHedone writes:

No. It is not Darwinist because it proposes a non-arbitrary and non-material mechanism for selection (self-identity) other than natural selection.

True our brains could be configured in other ways. This is just the problem with materialism, however. In place of a mental term "will" we have to substitute a physical term like "instinct." But instinct doesn't explain anything. It just labels the phenomenon. When subjectivity is banned from the acceptable nomenclature we're left positing a whole array of automatisms that cannot be explained or even be proven to exist.

Subjectivity enables self-identity. This is the challenge that should be put to materialists. (OK why haven't I done that already? Don't know. Lazy I guess). Anyway, how does the materialist explain self-identity? What is there about material mechanisms that would allow any molecule or protein or whatever to recognize itself as a self-consistent whole that would need or want to survive or to self-replicate?

I'm aware that the materialist can respond that there is no need for such a mechanism because natural selection takes care of that. But then, the materialist is forced to posit a whole army of automatisms to explain our behavior. But, as noted, the automatisms themselves are unexplained. They are needed to save the theory, but their own existence is really quite problematic.

When you examine it from this point of view, it becomes clear that subjectivity is a much simpler, more concrete explanation. Subjectivity enables self-identity which enables a will to live which enables better suvival mechanisms.

boneyard bill

Moving beyond evolution, we can explain other human behaviors quite easily also if we just abandon materialism. A baby feeds at its mothers breast, not because is possesses a "tit-sucking instinct," but because it feels hungry and it has learned that sucking its mother's breat will make that feeling go away. And ultimately we all want to eat rather starve because existence feels good, and we assume that non-existence doesn't feel like anything at all.

Since materialism cannot explain sentient experience, it really can't explain existence itself since all we know of existence comes through sentience.

It is really rather absurd to say that sentience arises from non-sentient entities, but we know of these non-sentient entities only because we have sentience.

contracycle

Meaningless statement - how does the brain interact with flowing electrons? With other electrons and fields. It is the pattern of flows that is more important - the information contained therein, and which the brain is expecting to handle.