excreationist

MyKell:
Some links:
Oxford Companion to Philosophy - mental reductionism
Philosophical Materialism - talks about consciousness, reductive and eliminative materialism, etc.

King's Indian

Hello to both Frotiw and Mykell.
I just want to interrupt to say how much I’m enjoying this thread: I’m sure I’m not only speaking for myself, but for those others who may be too busy absorbing what you say to join in the discussion.
Having said that, I’d welcome your thoughts on some things that occurred to me reading the above.
1) I don’t think that it is necessarily against parsimony to state that one effect may have more than one cause. One example may be rainfall: it depends on such things as adiabatic lapse rates, but also the geography of the area specified.
2) On the view that causation is physical>mental only: as a materialist myself (in that I see no place for “mind”, or the supernatural in general) I can recognise consciousness, and conscious agency as facts in the world. These seem to exist no less than such natural phenomena as social species, or co-operation amongst species. In addition to this, I recognize the fact that existing objects interact with each other, in ways where cause and effect may flow both ways (e.g. the way predation seems to occur in some cases in cycles). Given the above, it seems strange that mental states are privileged in nature as only being acted on, but not acting. These leads me to another point: if it seems odd that the wish to scratch one’s head is an illusion, then so would be it’s seeming odd. Further, any intention to reply to one another’s posts on the matter would also be an illusion. In this case, what would it really mean to agree on the illusion on free will?

MyKell

Hi King,
Thanks for the interruption,
Yep, from a materialist point of view (being reductionist or non-reductionist), free will has to be an illusion. Some dualists even agree that it is an epiphenomenon and agree that there is nothing called "mental causation". The reason this concept seems to be very appealing is the fact that there is a causal closure in physics. There is no room, from a physicalist point of view, for a non-physical mind to intervene. A gap in the brain's information processing has never been observed
I think there was one of the links I cited that neatly explains that.

MyKell

Thanks excreationist. I was looking for a book though I have found one on amazon.com... Very few books in defence of physicalism... weird, huh?

King's Indian

Hello again, Mykell. Hope all is well.
Thanks for making room.
Two quick points:
1) Doesn’t the idea that free will is an illusion, applied consistently, inevitably lead to fatalism? I’m thinking of our present example: you were kind enough to respond to my post, but if our actions and mental states are reducible to the interactions taking place in our brains, then your kindness is of the same order of falsehood as the desire to scratch oneself. In this case, if our correspondence is entirely the province of neuronal electro-chemistry, do you really suggest that we’re making no effort at all in formulating our propositions ? That our decision to reply, consideration of each other’s position, our conscious attempt to explain ourselves, nothing but the whistle on a steam train?
2) There is no room from the viewpoint of Physics for a non-physical mind, I agree. I also think that there are areas in life where Physics has no business. Not only, as Mr Vitzthum states in your thread, where the atomism of De Rerum depends on metascience (and whether it is metaphysical in the Aristotleian sense or not, it is still philosophical): also in the areas of everyday life where we find ourselves making decisions. This is not a trivial aspect of our lives at all, and it is one where an approach by a physical-science model would not prove useful in the slightest. I rather think that Physics is best suited to the questions around which the science, historically, has crystallized. These are in short, facts found in nature which admit of explanatory mechanisms that are reducible to mathematics. This by no means exhausts the world around us. History, literature, linguistics are by no means more trivial just because they cannot adopt a Physics-model explanation of reality. That said, I cannot agree with your last statement. Of course there are gaps in the brain’s processing that have been observed: the gap between the activity at my neuronal levels and my posting this comment to you being one such. The question is whether one allows self consciousness as a fact, actually existing in this world, but not needing other explanations from those supplied by Physics; or whether one dismisses it as froth caused by a part of this world amenable to understanding by that same Physics.
Hope this doesn’t appear too bullish: of course I’m not responding in such depth to the things that I agree with, and I welcome your thoughts on the points I find confusing.
Take care,
KI.

MyKell

King,
Thanks for the insight. Very interesting indeed! Let me try to discuss some of your points.
Well by saying that free will is an illusion, I mean that it has no impact on the physical world which is deterministic in nature. A "representation of free will", however, might exist in the brain. An eliminativist would deny such a thing, but I disagree. Only people who are dualistic interactionists would suggest that there is a place for free will in a metaphysical reality. I don't quite understand how the reduction of mental states to electro/neuro chemical interactions in the brain makes our actions effortless. For instance, I appreciate your input, but I still think that alot of my appreciation stems out of the very basic physical interactions going on in my brain. Notice, that I'm not focusing on neural interactions, because I think there is more to consciousness than multiple hierarchies of neurons. I think also that we might not agree on the concept of the "self". Again, the "SELF" itself is a conscious representation among many, including the mental scene that each of us is observing. The "SELF" is a phenomenology by it's own right! (phenomenology not used in dualistic sense )

I think we got lost on terminology. By a gap, I meant a causal gap, not an explanatory gap. I don't think anyone has observed a delay between sensory and motor or cognitive tasks by various brain imaging techniques. This is a prediction made by dualistic interactionalism. There should be no causal closure as the one we observe.

Now let me calrify my position further on the mind/brain problem. I'm a monist, not a dualist. I think that the mind is an emergent property of complex brains. How complex, I have no idea! I'm using the word complex in a very vague way now, but I think I won't be doing it in a decade or so. I'm still not sure about how science will be able to reduce the mind to the brain. If it proves to be possible, I think there are multiple hierarchies to be "discovered" in the traditional explanatory gap. After we discover the NCC, I think we should broaden the concept to BCC (biological correlates of consciousness) to include the other, nonneuronal, processes implicated in consciousness. As biology itself is ultimately reduced to physics and biological complexity understood as a "network science", we can develop models for PCC (physical correlates of consciousness). I think the ultimate breakthrough will come from discoveries in Physics. It is premature to apply quantum gravity to models of consciousness right now, but when things are clearer in the future, such efforts will be much more fruitful.

Thanks again, I hope this clarifies some points. But again, maybe I'm missing your point

King's Indian

Mykell,

Thank you for responding to my questions in such depth. I feel able at last to approach the heart of my confusion.As I mentioned before, I too have no time for the metaphysical. It might seem strange, given our broad positions, but I would also include in the term such a “representation of free will”. This, to me, would be something observable in reality that is only acted upon, but never acting (as I said previously). One might say that this perception of free will is an illusion, except even such physically real “illusions” as mirages affect the world, insofar as they really are a product of different densities of air refracting light at different rates. This secondary designation of “free will” (to say nothing of consciousness per se) could not be distinguished from such phenomena as hallucinations, visitations and the like by the criterion of non-affectability. We might say that all such things leave no evidence. But the fact is we do make such useful distinctions between visions and our everyday life: a visitation from the Blessed Virgin Mary is discounted by applying the reason offered above. Absolutely. I’ve taken these quotes out of context to show the broad nature of my agreement; in fact I feel that our thoughts and actions entirely stem from brain activity, and it will ultimately be explained in such a way that there will be no gap where the supernatural (in whatever form) may hide. I myself think that such ideas as Bickerton’s view of language owing itself to a secondary representational system will shed much light on consciousness, and related phenomena.These points (rather gruesomely ripped from their context, admittedly) may indicate where we differ: although Physics- (and, where appropriate, mathematical-) models will be very important, I don’t think our success will lie in reducing all forms of rigorous enquiry to physics. There are quite well-understood aspects of biology that do not call on the deterministic physical models used to such effect in explaining particles (and come to think of it: even those models have no room for a too-rigid determinism). To make the banal point: Physics will help with those problems which admit of a Physics-based solution. When it comes to studying the way we interact as a social species (Not the least interesting problem about consciousness), we may find that different levels of explanation are appropriate to different levels of phenomena, and collapsing all explanation to one or other viewpoints may cause us insoluble problems.
…which is where I shall leave it: the only places where I experienced confusion are those where we are using different viewpoints to look at the problem: Yours focuses on what may be learnt applying the tools of physics to processes observable at the level of brain function; mine concentrates on the emergent processes easily observable at the everyday level. There is room for both approaches, as long as one doesn’t confuse the two, or subsume one to the other. By all means feel free to add any comments on the above, as I find them interesting; but I don’t want you to pursue a career of answering what are, after all, some fairly quotidian comments on the matter. Particularly since I was drawn to add my tuppen’orth by the interesting things said by you (and Frotiw: hello!) in the first place. BTW, if it turns out that Quantum Gravity does hold the key for understanding, may I be the first to clap you on the shoulder and buy you a drink? That would mean Dust is real!
Look after yourself,
KI.

John Page

Hi KI!

Forgive me for taking issue with your dismissal of the metaphysic. I think that the abstract or informational aspect of reality falls under metaphysics and is key to understanding how an appearance of mind/brain duality arises. Here's a definition of the word:

Other definitions refer to metaphysics dealing as much with the abstract as the supernatural. I do strongly agree with you that explaining how the mind "is an emergent property" of matter will reveal the accurate nature of the supernatural as hypothetical only. However, given that one see neither the abstract nor the supernatural a lot of convincing is sometimes required.

Cheers, John

MyKell

I think this is also a point where we differ. By reducing biology to physics you would not start studying cells in terms of quarks. This would absolutely make no sense. Chemistry, for instance, has been reduced to physics, but it has preserved its identity. What I mean by reduction is hierarchial reductionism, where one needs to go down one or two hierarchial levels to describe the working of a system. For biological system, we don't have such a framework yet. That is a framework that would describe and predict the emergence of life from non-living autocatalytic sets of macromolecules (chemistry).
The same apply to the brain, the fact that neurons have a certain number of mitochondria is hardly related to "reducing" consciousness to biology. But hierarchial reduction gives us a power to go all the way down to the basic hierarchial levels and borrow certain principles to explain complex phenomena...

King's Indian

Hello again, Mykell!
Yes, I think so too. If only all my agreements were as interesting!It is a minor point of difference though. Although I do think going to the supporting levels of a particular phenomenon is necessary to describe a system, I don't think explanation has to be complete unless it's reduced to those same levels. We may still need some explanation in the terms of the level itself (Which is how I think of "preserving identity").
Mmm. I hope it doesn't appear that I am arguing the toss. Your points have been very useful, and it has been quite fun thinking of responses pertinent enough to help my understanding (even if I seem a bit slow on the uptake sometimes).
Take care,
KI.