boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

[quote]"So a perspective must be matter or a material process for a materialist. "
yes, I said that a perspective on the pain in your leg can be described physically.

[/QUOT
This is exactly what you said:


Your perspective is necessarily different from mine, but is it physical? If it is not physical, i.e. it cannot be reduced to matter or material processes, then materialism fails. But how can I carry on a discussion about this if you don't establish a consistent position on this point?

This is a very frustrating debate because I do not disagree with most of the things that are being said on this board. I just deny that the positions being taken are materialism.

Materialism is, in fact, a lot harder to defend than most self-styled "materialists" are willing to admit. If it were that easy to defend, then the debate would have ended a long time ago. Most philosophers in this area, after all, are atheistic secularists who accept all the basic tenets of metaphysical naturalism. It is a rare gadfly who will defend theism or even Cartesianism. Yet there are many anti-materialists and the number seems to be growing.

boneyard bill

Dr. Retard writes:

The functionalists still need a reductive explanation of materialism to prove their case. The eliminativists don't need one since they that they exist. But, aside from the fact that this claim is rather unconvincing to most people, they then still have to account for the existence of a language that refers to consciousness, and they seem to press on with their same point. The language doesn't refer to consciousness it refers to something else that we call consciousness.

boneyard bill

excreationist writes:

I don't see the connection. A reductive explanation would explain my sense perception as nothing but a material process. What has that got to do with a motivational system?

I'm glad we agree on something. But that is not what materialists think. If you believe this, then there is no need for a reductive explanation of consciousness. We accept that consciousness exists, at least in potential, as a fundamental part of all that exists.

Adrian Selby

My apologies BB, I said the same thing in both quotes but used the words yes and no, perhaps I did so with regards to the context of the original points to which I was responding, and the yes and no referred to different sources to my counterpoints.

A perspective can be described in physical terms, and nothing more is going on when I have a perspective on the pain in your leg than neurons firing in a physical organism. Which is me using that language to get at the objectively real nature of the thing that has the perspective and the nature of the perspective itself.

I don't think anyone said materialism was easy, I tend to side with identity theory on the issue, but I think the materialist cause is made difficult due to the limitations of our understanding of the brain, and limitations in the analysis of what such things as 'meaning' and 'concept' and 'numbers' can be understood to be with regard to reductive explanations of humans.

Adrian

Adrian

excreationist

boneyard bill:
Firstly, I'll just quote my reductive model that involves consciousness:
I'm saying that consciousness is a very sophisticated form of awareness, which in turn is a very sophisticated form of a processing or programmed system. And a processing or programmed system is quite easy to explain in a materialistic way.

A motivational system is a more specific explanation for what pain is all about. This is part of an aware system (see previous definition). This in turn is a more intelligent or sophisticated form of a programmed or processing system.
So I am reducing it all down. If some part of the systems don't reduce down, could you explain *why*?

I think I disagree with you actually. The problem is that sometimes people use "consciousness" and "awareness" interchangeably and in the past I have occasionally I have said that awareness was a more sophisticated form of detection. So I was thinking that proto-consciousness (proto-awareness) is like detection. I kind of agree with that and sometimes I just respond without organising my thoughts very well. But working with my current framework (the definitions of processing/programmed, aware and conscious systems), rocks don't have "proto-consciousness". I think "proto-consciousness" should only refer to things that are almost conscious (according to my rough defintion) - e.g. young kids and maybe some apes.

Well I think that it is impossible for a single elementary particle to be conscious. My definition of consciousness involves it learning throughout its lifespan and this requires memory. And if it is incapable of having memory then it is incapable of being conscious.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby:

I have no problem if you want to hold the identity theory as an opinion or a theory. But my point, throughout, has been that mind/matter monism is the position that is best supported by the evidence. It accepts everything materialism claims about the material world except the materialist position on consciousness. Since the materialist position on consciousness cannot, at this point, be proven; mind/matter monism or panpsychism draws the necessary inference about the nature of matter and takes it from there. So the system is complete. And it doesn't violate occam's razor because the inference it draws is necessary one to provide a complete account. Furthermore, it isn't multiplying entities; it is making an inference about the nature of a single entity.

boneyard bill

excreationist writes:

The model you put forward reduces to the claim that consciousness is information processing. This is adequate to explain behavior and perhaps thought processes. But it does explain sentient experience. I can have knowledge of the color without actually experiencing the color orange. This is where the bottleneck occurs for the materialist. Why does it hurt to stub my toe? I can have all the information and the automatic responses involved in toe-stubbing without the necessity of pain.

Furthermore, reducing consciousness to informations processing doesn't really solve the problem because, as John Searle pointed out, information processing is itself an observer-related concept. Water flowing downhill is information processing for someone who wants to know the way of least resistence to the bottom. But processes are just processes until there is someone who wants to know something. So information processing presupposes consciousness and can't very well be used to explain it.

This ties in with my previous point about Searle. Motivation is an observer-related term even more than information processing is. So you're presupposing consciousness in an effort to explain it.


And why do you assume that matter and material processes are incapable of having memory? If humans are made up of matter and material processes, and humans have memory, then isn't it reasonable to conclude that matter and material processes are capable of having memory?

You see, you have a choice. You can make the inference I proposed above. Or you can try to prove that memory is nothing but matter and material processes. And if you choose the latter course, you must frame your explanation in a way that does not presuppose the existence of consciousness in the definitions of your terms.

I don't know how you do this. I think it is far more logical to conclude that memory is an inherent quality or potential of matter and material processes that manifests when certain conditions are met.

Adrian Selby

"I can have all the information and the automatic responses involved in toe-stubbing without the necessity of pain."

Are you suggesting here that if you stubbed your toe and the nerve fibres sent the signals up to your brain, its possible you wouldn't feel pain? that pain is something extra? I was interested in a related point you made to Turtonm:

"But how can the sensation of pain itself be described using nothing but physical language?"

I find this easy, "c-fiber firing" or some such term. It depends on what language you want to use to describe pain, if you want to use words like 'hurts' go ahead, if you want to use words like 'c-fibers' go ahead. You're talking about the same physical thing. You are not talking about something that correlates with something physical. Because you don't equate the language of neurobiology with the language of everyday life, you think there is something different 'in the world' because the word 'sensation' and 'c-fibers' seem not to equate with regard to a single physical thing. I'm saying they do. My proof is the fact that nobody's found any non physical thing that the word 'sensation' or 'hurt' refers to, indeed, by definition such a thing couldn't be 'found' given that 'found' requires physical apparatus. So I'm going with what the facts support, that physical things are what we ascribe all these terms to. You have argued that the hurt is causally connected to the nerves sending signals to the brain. But I don't understand the nature of this connection. When the fibres fire, how are they connected to 'hurt' I mean, when a billiard ball hits another, cheesy example, the cause of the latter's movement is the former, and is explicable because both are the same sorts of thing, but your reliance on hurt being a different sort of thing to nerves sending signals makes me wonder how you can explain the nature of the relationship rather than just blithely positing one exists without a description or evidence of connection.

"If humans are made up of matter and material processes, and humans have memory, then isn't it reasonable to conclude that matter and material processes are capable of having memory?"

No.

This is completely flawed.

Humans are made of some matter.
Humans have memory.
All matter has memory.

It's reasonable to conclude human matter has memory, but not matter and material per se, which is the point I've been trying to argue with you, its not just any matter that can be or has consciousness, the proof you think we don't have I've argued is at least behavioural, and is at least constituted of electrical signals and processes across this matter and many of your points about rocks being conscious are flawed in ways you haven't addressed. I don't think I've seen a satisfactory criticism to the definition I've proposed that it is only certain arrangements of matter that are capable of being conscious. I haven't seen you prove a rock is conscious. You say why should you, its not your burden of proof.

I think this is an evasion. I suggested the burden of proof defence depended on one's version of who was making the extraordinary claim.

This challenge: "Show me evidence a rock is conscious" is one you've refused to answer with reference to the above. But you ought to be able to see that if my argument rests on the fact that only certain patterns in certain complex arrangements can be conscious, you have the ability to prove that point wrong by showing me how a much simpler object than a brain, a rock, can be conscious too. It's a valid question, one which I suggest would help us further in this discussion, but you've neatly avoided it. Even if you continue to point out that I somehow have the burden of proof, at least offer some explanation of how a rock could be conscious as well, because until you do, you are not disproving my contention "Rocks aren't conscious"

Adrian

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Adrian Selby ]</p>

boneyard bill

Posted by Adrian Selby:

I see no basis for claiming that I wouldn't feel pain, but the materialist explanation accounts for everything except the pain. That is the point. What a materialist cannot provide is a reductive explanation for the pain.

boneyard bill

Adrian Selby writes:

I wouldn't argue with your claim that only certain arrangements of matter are capable of being conscious. But the consciousness itself cannot be explained as nothing but matter. The consciousness itself is not material and cannot be explained as a material process simpliciter. But the materialist claims that everything is just material or material processes.

So I agree than consciousness seems to arise from certain configurations of material processes. But that assumption has ontological implications for the nature of matter. A rock may not have consciousness, but the material in the rock has the potential to create consciousness when it is arranged in the proper configurations. That what I mean by "proto-consciousness."

In other words, I'm saying that matter that is arranged in certain configurations will give rise to consciousness. Since I cannot reduce the consciousness to material processes, I accept the claim that consciousness will arise as a fundamental axiom of my system. Since it is a fundamental axiom, I don't need to prove it. That's why I don't have a burden of proof. It is not an evasion. It is simply the logic of the situation. But in accepting that axiom, I also have to accept that it implies that certain properties are inherent in matter and material processes. The materialist denies that these properties are inherent in matter and therefore must prove that consciousness is nothing but matter.

This point, of course, is addressed in my previous comment.

Again, it's not a question of proving that rocks are conscious. What I said was that we might think of rocks as being conscious in the sense that we claim a flea exerts a gravitational force. I don't know that you could ever prove that a flea exerts a gravitational force since, even in outer space our own gravitational force and the force of our spaceship or whatever would overwhelm any force the flea might exert. But our theory of gravity posits that a flea exerts a tiny gravitional force. Likewise the material in a rock would have the potential to be conscious and that potential is inherent in matter. That is a necessary inference if matter causes consciousness but cannot be explained simply as a physical event and nothing else.

So once again, I face this frustration. I agree with you. What we call consciousness arises only from certain configurations of matter. But that implies a proto-consciousness for matter itself. And that is something that people on this web site don't want to accept.