Adrian Selby

Oh, hehe, a closer read and i would have noticed that, well, consider it a point added in defense of materialism

Adrian

Filip Sandor

Theophage, all this really means is that your analogies of 'material information' have some major holes in them, a few of which I will address for you (see below).

It still boils down to what you call 'information'... right? Or is this 'function' called mind something new now and not a physical arrangement or pattern anymore??

I am just trying to get a few direct answers from you regarding your 'material information theory', which is proving to be quite the challenge!

Is there some really cute, 6th grader reason or excuse you have as to why you can't explain what this thing you call an 'arrangement', in physical terms??

You see Theophage, I am not 'misunderstanding' your fallacious analogies and examples; I am understanding them in much greater detail than you do yourself!! The only reason I haven't been putting much effort into disproving your flawed arguemnts is because I'm getting so tired of this whole debate (from debating in another thread about the same thing). Also, I don't enjoy debating with someone who relies so heavily on 'making things sound different' than they really are and being constantly cynical throughout the discussion.

I enjoy real, intellectual debates however and there is nothing wrong with a little teasing, but you just get way too carried away; in amost every single one of your posts you say something that attempts to label me as an 'idiot'.

I will take a few moments now to point out some of the fallacies you have committed and contradictory statements you have made:

You claim that information is a physical 'arrangement' or 'code', but you either cannot or refuse to define it in physical terms, meanwhile, you claim that a 6th grader can.

You cannot define what a 'reader' is, in physical terms either and you just use it arbitrarily, thinking that it's complex enough to pass up investigation and that we needn't worry about what it actually is. You're not alone, this is an extremely common practice amongst materialists.. (ie. I don't know how every atom in the burn out light bulb is arranged, so even though I tested it 100 times with a 100 different sockets... I cannot know for sure that it is burnt out; because the 'atoms are so complex').

You have even claimed (and I can quote it if you like) that 'information' is not a physical thing... in your bold a defense of materialism!!

If that doesn't put the cream on top of your fallacy filled pie then I am really in a loss for words!

In your response, if you do choose to reply, please try to address some of the fundamental questions you have been ignoring. Also, please try to keep in mind that using terms like 'reader' and 'code' arbitrarily, without defining them at least in physical terms only begs the question of materialism.

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Filip Sandor ]</p>

Adrian Selby

I'm thinking about 'information' as a concept.

The above sentence, Adrian thinking about a concept, is that something that doesn't exist physically?

No. A scientist could point to brain activity taking place at the time I am thinking about 'information'. A scientist sees brain activity. But because that activity is taking place in the brain that defines itself as me, Adrian, then being the brain that is having the neurons firing, when those neurons fire in the given way they do with regard to those other structures of neurons around them, then there is a concept of information that is reflexively being subject to multifarious other sets of neurons firing in ways that, to be the brain experiencing them, result in cogitation upon that concept. Nothing more than neurons firing is going on, but such is the complexity of the brain, its self consciousness and ability to use language result in expressions of the experience of being a brain. Those expressions, that allow successful interaction within the environment (namely, you guys on this message board) are an individual consciousness' way of refining its understanding of the environment.

Because you are not having the neurons firing in that brain, you aren't experiencing it, but in theory, if you could 'put on' those sets of neurons in those arrangements, you would experience thinking about a concept.

Practically, I'm not suggesting it will really ever be possible to isolate given sets of neurons who's firing corresponds to single 'conceptualisings', but perhaps its hard to think that a set of neurons can be said to be 'thinking'. We're loaded down with a dualistic vocabulary, that puts ridiculous demands on those who would recategorise what is going on. Anyway, its only the complexity of the whole brain structure that provides the basis for any given part to be firing in accordance with its general function, that, in the context and the structure of the whole, allows not only reflexive interaction with the environment, but cogitation upon it.

It should be clear that my difficulty is in trying not to use 'thinking' and other dualistic terms that we are used to describing experience with, in order to get across the materialist view.

Adrian

madmax2976

Since it pertains to the discussion, can anyone define what "materialism" really is? Can anyone define "immaterial"? What does it mean for a thing to be "material"? What would it mean for a thing to be "immaterial", assuming such a thing is possible?

Materialism can be defined as a philosophy which holds that everything is physical. If materialism is not true, then it would follow that there are things that are non-physical. However, we must then ask: What does it mean to say that something is physical or non-physical? And deeper and deeper we go.

In addition to its other faults, Filip's case rests on a sense of meaning that hasn't even been properly defined, perhaps can't be defined sufficiently for these terms, and I think it is clouding the issue needlessly.

Filip apparently believes there is "something else" that constitutes the human mind other than brain activity. There's no need to get bogged down in meanings of words like "materialism" and "physical". (There are no doubt many differing concepts that are held of what these terms mean anyhow) Its simply not necessary.

We know brain activity corresponds to thought processes of "the mind". We know drugs, injury and disease affect "the mind". This is evidence we have regarding how the brain functions and carries out its activities. It is up to Filip to present positive evidence for this "something else" that he is speculating about. I don't care if he calls it "immaterial", "meta-physical" or "the force" - the label is unimportant. What we need to have is evidence for whatever else he thinks makes up the human mind other than a brain in action. Endless questions that reference the human inability to describe how a brain does some particular act, will not suffice.

So Filip, stop the semantic games and word play. None of it is relevant or necessary. Lay out the postive evidence you have for this "something else" that makes up the human mind. How you label it is unimportant. Just present your evidence that it exists.

It may be that you are unable to present any positive evidence for your hypothesis since, depending on definitions, your hypothesis excludes the possibility of having "evidence" from the very start. If this is the case, then don't expect us to take you seriously.

David Gould

As a non-philosopher who has just worked out that he is in fact a materialist I have a question for the non-materialists about information:

If information can only be expressed using physical things, how can it possibly be immaterial?

Crocodiel deathroll seems to think that because the materials change and the information remains that this makes the information seperate to the materials.

I agree in a way but the information must always be expressed by materials. If all the materials are removed (rather than simply swapped with other materials) so is the information. Therefore, the information must be material.

Do I make sense here?

excreationist

Filip:
Could you answer this then?

Say a bee learns to navigate through a maze or something. The information about the maze is stored in its memories.

Are purely physical processes going on or is some kind of soul involved?

*

About information - to be meaningful it has to involve extracted features from our experiences (that's what neural nets do BTW). So if there were two red objects, you can extract the common thing (the "redness") and associate it with the word "red". Then say I wanted to talk about the colour "fuwaper". I could say that it was very different from red. This only makes sense if I've learnt what "very different" means. So you could teach me - "huge is very different from tiny", "tall is very different from short".
I'd also have to know what "colours" are - from learning a few examples I could infer that they are a thing I see with my eyes that clothe objects. And some objects can have many colours blended or weaved together.
So information involves features extracted from the physical environment (or from other extracted features) and it has a physical medium (to store the information on).
These extracted features are then combined and can be manipulated using logic and neural network "intuition".
So it is all very mechanical to me.
Physical energy is used to create information, which is stored on a physical medium. Physical energy is used to manipulate information and to translate it into things like new cars, etc.
I think it is like how physical movement can be turned into electricity (through motors) then into chemical energy. So the movement is "stored" in the chemicals (of a rechargeable battery). Or heat energy can be used to drive turbines that uses motors to store electricity using chemicals (rechargeable batteries). And then the heat energy can be extracted again by turning the chemicals into electricity then powering a heater - or you could power a fridge or freezer.
Bees also use information except that they don't use a lot of meta-features like we do - which involve looking at the patterns between different pieces of information - like talking about "colours" and saying that that is a "category" and talking about philosophy, etc.

excreationist

My definition of awareness is:
"a process where a system receives input and responds according to its goals/desires and beliefs learnt through experience about how the world works."

And I generally define consciousness as second-order awareness. I'll just talk about awareness now, and note that everything that applies to awareness also applies to consciousness.

My definition says that an aware system responds to its environment. But let's just ignore that part for now.

I also said that the system has goals and desires - so it is observing its environment for a purpose - to try and fulfil goals and desires. This is what motivates thought. If there were no goals, then what reason would there be for thoughts? Goals give structure to thoughts.

Goals and desires are also a good way about learning about the environment. I think that the main way we learn is to interact and then see for ourselves which behaviours lead to what outcome.

If the system is just a passive observer, their goals are meaningless since it can take no action to seek or avoid anything, and I don't see how they could empathize with people. (This is an important aspect of human-type consciousness) If it could interact then it could see that it can move, etc, like a human. But as a passive observer, it would just be like an adult, raised from infancy glued to a television, unable to move a muscle or even blink. It might learn patterns about what to expect but since it is incapable of moving - seeking or avoiding anything, it is all unimportant. There is no purpose for it to learn anything since it is unable to apply this knowledge.

Also, people have senses like eyes and pain receptors. Toy trucks don't. And when these senses are cut off from our brain, we can no longer see or feel pain from that area. So awareness of the external world requires senses to detect the external world. We also need a fairly complete brain. Those with brain damage often report a loss of memories or sensory awareness (e.g. <a href="http://www.hhmi.org/senses/b/b210.htm" target="_blank">awareness of movement</a>) so it seems that brain structures are required for those functions. (Which is obvious to materialists)

Toy trucks don't have brains either - they are just crudely manufactured clumps of metal and plastic.

For dualists, it is true that toy trucks *could* have human level consciousness though... so you should treat your toy trucks nicely otherwise you could hurt their feelings.

Filip Sandor

I'm sorry, I have this nasty habit of keeping things super-simple, but my definition of 'physical' would be: Anything that is comprised of quanta; the most basic, physical unit that comprises all physical phenomena.

You might want to ask a materialists though because maybe they can provide a more eloquent answer than me... afterall, I'm just a dumb dualist.

I know how you feel.. I feel the same way when the materialists use up to 7-8 different terms that are not synonymous with eachother to label one thing, as they desire, making any form of a coherent debate nearly impossible.

Being ridiculously sarcastic is not going to help support your case.

Key word: CORRESPONDS

The oil in a car 'corresponds' to the smoothly running engine... so it must be the engine, right?!!

What the kind of logic is that???

Conjure up a mental image in your mind -- there is your evidence.

You guys are hopeless.

You make uneducated analogies between us and computers, claiming that a JPG 'image' exists in the form of some 'code' which you cannot describe using physical terms... you just hope it sounds convincing enough to be true and accept it without even a second thought.

Did you ever stop to think that maybe those 'images' you see on your computer screen are mental representations of physical phenomena and not the physical phenomena itself? Do you seriously believe there is an 'image' on... in... or behind your computer screen? It's the same thing with text on paper.. specifically speaking, there are no 'words' on the piece of paper, the 'words' you perceive exist only in your mind.

Just ask anyone who doesn't know the language in which the 'words' are written in. That's why there are 'words' on the paper to you and 'scribble' on the paper to someone else who can't doesn't know the language... so who is right? Is there information on the paper or isn't there?? It can't be both.

Apply the same line of reasoning even to a brilliantly 'complex' machine like the computer and you get the same results. Complexity has nothing to do with it.

Whatever you interpret while you are working on a computer is a mental creation; you're not interpretting the 'hard-drive' or the 'particle arrangement' of the hard-drive, you're interpretting a mental map of reality, which is causally connected to the different phenomena that you interreact with. A causal relationship between two things doesn't make them the same thing however!

Am I making any sense here??

The correspondence between the mind and brain does not make them the same thing.

If they are qualitatively different from eachother then why can't you believe that they are different things?

Think about it. Scientists can map the entire brain and they will still be left with an apparent phenomenon, *perceived only by the individual possessor of that mind*, that they can't prove even exists!!

What more evidence do materialists need to second guess materialism?

If what I've attempted to explain here doesn't at least make you second guess the validity materialism and think about it in a little more depth then I have nothing more to say.

Thanks for listening anyway.

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Filip Sandor ]</p>

David Gould

Filip Sandor,

As a non-philosopher who has read the debate, I have to say that I do not understand your argument.

I will try to summarise it so you can see if I have any clue at all.

1.) Material things are made up of quarks.
2.) Information is not made up of quarks.
3.) Therefore, materialism is false.

I have no problem with 1 and I agree that if 2 is true materialism must be false.

However, in what sense can 2 possibly be true?

If we remove all the quarks that make up a piece of paper, where is the information that was on that paper?

Filip Sandor

The question you should be asking is:

Was there any information 'on' the paper to begin with?


To better illustrate:

Imagine we drew ten arbitrary symbols onto a piece of paper that don't mean anything. Is there any information on the paper... or just arbitrary markings?

Now what if we assigned different words to each symbol so that the symbols form a coherent sentence.

Does the paper contian information now?


*Note:

The physical structure of the paper has not been alterred in any way since the time before we assigned meanings to the arbitrary symbols to the time after we had assigned meanings to them.

[ January 30, 2002: Message edited by: Filip Sandor ]</p>