pmurray

IMO: Sensations are thoughts, albeit of a peculiar kind. A a materialist, I do not accept that "thoughts" take place in a parallel platonic world of some kind.

When a row of domioes falls, is it because of the physical reactions between the atoms of each domino and the next, or is it because the first one was pushed and this caused a chain reaction? Obviously, these are two ways of saying the same thing.

VivaHedone

The difference appears to be that you believe the subjective experience and objective occurrence of a process to be fundementally the same thing, and I believe them to be different.

I think they are sufficiently different, anyway, for the purposes of cause and effect, ie. the objective occurrence can provide cause without the subjective experience also being the cause.

You have yet to rufute this.

The thermostat is not, then, the direct physical cause of the fire coming on at all, but merely the cause of the cause.

How? How is that experience translated into physical force?

Will reply to the rest later - must go.

boneyard bill

Posted by Vivahedone:

BB:
Viva:
By being, as you put it, the cause of a cause. Information can cause physical actions to take place just as it does with my thermostat and just as it does in countless computer, industrial, and military actions all the time.

But lets suppose for a moment that we didn't actually have these examples. Is it not true, nonetheless, that it happens.

I call you an asshole. You punch me in the face. What "caused" you to punch me in the face? Certainly your arm muscles provided the physical force, but it was my insult and your sensitivity that produced the action. This is just about undeniable. So why are you trying to fit this data into some kind of quasi-materialist theory? Why not accept the data and build your theory around it rather than the other way around?

Adrian Selby

Why should I try to refute your view that there is a distinction when you can't provide a causal explanation yourself. As I said, perhaps you need a different model, one that does provide an explanation. Are there other grounds on which you prefer not to adopt a new model?

Some occurrences such as the automatic balancing of the endocrinic system are caused by regulatory processes in the brain, but with Bill's example of the insult, the cause, in my view, results from the holistical behaviour of different brain systems, those that are necessary components for the brain to be such that it can scan its own states and form 'pictures' of the events within and outside of it.

Anyway, just how does one provide a falsification of the immaterial?

VivaHedone

Nothing in this:
Contradicts this:

So you accept that the cause is the brain systems that form the picture rather than the picture itself?

This answers nothing. Still, the immaterial is required to gain physical power, in order to cause the cause.

No - your insult set off the chain of electrons which caused me to hear the insult, and these electrons set off another chain which caused my feelings of sensitivity and my thoughts about your insult, and these electrons caused the movement of another lot of electrons, which caused the muscles in my arm to move. One long chain of physical reactions, with subjective experience arising at separate stages. It's the only way it can work.

Everything must have a physical cause. Therefore subjective experience has physical cause. And therefore (non-physical) subjective experience cannot provide cause.

Are you contending the law of causality then?

Nowhere357

Given the first statement, of course your conclusion follows.

I question your first statement. Tell me, what exactly are the physical causes for quantum randomness?

Also, why does mind to brain present conceptual difficulties for you, when brain to mind does not?

tronvillain

I am not really sure what the problem here is supposed to be. Isn't this all just about the level of explanation you are using? Trying to explain human physical actions in terms of individual atoms is theoretically possible, just as trying to explain the actions of a computer is, but in both cases a higher level of explanation is more useful: in the case of one, conscious experience, and in the case of the other, the operation of a program.

VivaHedone:
No, the chain of electrons is you hearing the insult, and the other chain of electrons is you being sensitive and insulted, and so on. As I said, it is all about level of explanation.

Adrian Selby

I used picture in inverted commas, the brain systems undergo successive states, and a set of those states will be the picture, occurring simultaneously with many non conscious brain functions in their given states.

Prove it. Prove also this isn't, as Tronvillain states, a confusion over the mode of explanation at a certain hierarchical level in relation to another explanation.

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the incorrigible analytics' club

boneyard bill

Vivahedone writes:

There is a problem with your point here. The chain of electrons that cause you to hear the insult and the subsequent chain of electrons leading to your thought do not possess sufficient energy to move the muscles of your arm. As physical causes go, they are insignificant. They are significant only insofar as they carry information, not energy. So information is the crucial causal connection here, not energy. Therefore, information can cause physical muscles to move. But your thought is information. So your thought is sufficient cause to move your muscles.

What is the basis for your first premiss? And even if we accept that, why do you conclude that there must be only a physical cause? And why only ONE cause?

What law of causality are you referring to?

Nowhere357

It seems clear to me that the brain uses the mind to process information. There must be a two-way communication going on. Some solid support is that the ability to recall memory is dependant on mental attendance to lay down the memory in the first place. It's not enough to just look at a page in a book, we must actually read it - mental attendance. The brain reacts to our awareness in order to build memory.