boneyard bill

Primal writes:

Once again someone wants to butt in in the middle of this discussion and raise a point that has already been dealt with if that person had taken the time to read the preceding posts on this thread.

As I pointed out in a previous post, I am having difficulties with my computer. It either freezes up on me, or it shuts me down altogether. I cannot, therefore, make lengthy posts because everything I post is then lost. I need make short posts so that I only have to re-type a short amount. My computer froze up 3 times just in my previous posts to Adrian Selby. So everything you see there was basically typed by me twice.

So it is especially difficult for me to have to re-state what has already been stated in a previous post or often several previous posts.

I have reviewed the rest of your posts and I find that either the points have raised have already been answered by me in previous posts or you simply don't understand the point that is being made and that point has also previously been explained elsewhere on this thread. So I suggest that you read the entire thread to bring yourself up to speed on this discussion. Then, perhaps, you can bring up something that hasn't already been said.

boneyard bill

contracycle writes:

As I said. The point hasn't been refuted by you, and this little post that you offer as evidence is clear proof that you haven't refuted it.

excreationist

boneyard bill:
About your computer problems: you could write your messages in notepad and save it every minute or less (using ctrl+S). Then you can paste it onto the messageboard.

boneyard bill

Spacer1 writes:

Not only is this evidence not overwhelming, it isn't any evidence at all. If I take a hammer to the inside of your computer and then you find that it doesn't work very well, do you conclude that the problem is in the software?

I don't want to claim that the brain is simply a very complicated computer. I doubt very much that it is. But in this case the analogy is appropriate. Damage or impairment to the hardware, the material part, tells us nothing about the state of the software, the "mental" part.

But aside from that, you're missing the point. No one is disputing that there is a correlation between brain processes and sentient experience. It may even be that these brain processes cause sentient experience.

The problem is that most people involved in this discussion consider themselves materials and think that the claim "Sentient experience is caused by physical processes in the brain." Is the proper materialist position. In fact, that is not what the materialist claims. That is what the property dualist claims.

You see, if material processes cause sentient experience, then that claim also says something about the nature of material processes. It says that material processes already possess sentience in at least an inchoate form. In other words. matter can produce mind because mind is already existent within matter.

The materialist claims that nothing exists except matter and material processes. And the materialist definition of matter does not include any room for any inchoate mind-stuff.

This means that the materialist, in order to sustain his theory, must produce a reductive explanation of mind. In other words, he must show that sentient exerience is nothing but material processes in the same way that electricity is nothing but the flow of electrons. The flow of electrons does not cause electricity. The flow electrons is electricity.

But materialists are unable to come up with a reductive explanation. This has led some materialists to come up with the identity theory which is supposedly a "non-reductive" explanation for sentience, but one that is still materialist.

My point throughout this thread has been that the identity theory is indistinguishable from property dualism. A non-reductive theory of sentience simply isn't possible. No matter how you try to frame it, if you don't have a reductive explanation, you have ontological implications.

spacer1

boneyard bill,
Let's apply the analogy to the brain/mind and see how it holds up. If I take a hammer to the inside of your skull and then you find it doesn't work very well (why would you assume this?), do you conclude that the problem is in your mind?

To answer this, no. I conclude that the hammering inside the skull has broken the "hardware" which has the effect of deteriorating the "software".
I think that the deleterious effects on the "mental" part in almost every instance tells us quite a lot.
I agree that matter possesses the possibility of producing a mind, as we are examples, but I think that such an occurrence requires a very specific environment and the unique interactions humans have made amongst themselves and the rest of nature throughout our history. Therefore, I don't see a need to go so far as to attribute mind to all matter, even though the potential is there.
As I explained in my last post, a reductive explanation is not possible. I can't see how the analogy works here. Is it the electricity or the electrons which are supposed to represent the brain?
I don't see why we need to attribute mind to all matter based only on what appears to be a potentiality. We don't say that sand possesses glass in an inchoate form, but that it can be transformed into glass, under the right conditions.
The problem with reductive explanation in this special case is only one of description. I ask you again, what would you consider to be a sufficient explanation?

spacer1

Third-person reports are first-person reports. The seeming contradiction arises where you take these two phrases out of their appropriate contexts. This context, usually, is the situation where you are speaking of two individuals, with one monitoring the other's brain activity.

Adrian Selby

You say that isn't what sentient experience is, now tell me why. Of course it presupposes the brain can be aware, as with the bee, the bee as with most other creatures is aware of its environment is it not, or do bees have minds now?

Explain how its possible for the mind to have knowledge without sentient experience, aren't you the one presupposing a mind distinct from the brain here? If so, what is the basis of this presupposition? Look in a dictionary for the term aware, think of it as one would use for awareness in monkeys of their environment, or other similar primates. I'm not sure how a mind gets information without it experiencing things. As the mind is the brain, in my view, I would claim that what we call 'information' in the brain is the matching of environmental states to goal states, i.e. that what constitutes information is that which the brain is structured to and has learned to differentiate for the benefit of itself (the organism).

You say you've previously defined sentient experience as the five senses. The five senses are handy ways of delineating highly complex inputs. Take sight, I would say that sight is a sense of course, but that the experience of sight, the experience of what is seen is not merely the sensation or the sight itself, i.e. the object's impact on the retina as lightwaves. The experience of what is seen is a conflation of numerous filtering processes and reconstruction processes, from the data given by the retina into a model of what is out there, and the understanding comes from the categorial relations that the brain through its conceptual model imbue the experience with. To say its merely five senses seems erroneous to me, or at least inadequate. I would ask whether because apes have sight, taste touch and smell they equally have sentient experience, and therefore a mental life and qualia etc. Do you think they do? What kind of organism is thus on the borderline in your view regarding sentient experience? Isn't it the case that its not merely the possession of senses that defines sentience but also self awareness? Do apes thus have the emergent property I've defined as being only physical, and you've defined as mind/matter?

This is an ass backwards way of thinking about it I'm afraid. The experience of yellow in my view is a report of a set of brain states undergone. There is something in this that involves electrical discharges if, as I did say, you want to find out what is going on rather than just find out what the first person report is in terms of its most useful and comfortable concepts. You seem to be saying that the experience of yellow equates to a single sense, thus 'the sense of sight on occasion equates to the experience of yellow'. Can you now tell me, if you think there is an identity here, just what the sense of sight is if not physical? I would be grateful if you could point me to your specific theory of mind, as you seem to be charging me with making all kinds of postulations when everyone, Bill, everyone makes postulates, everyone postulates from within their conceptual models. Why is this any more contentious when taken in the context of the explanatory power of the whole model, as I've outlined in the link to the other thread from within this one, and just what broader explanatory power does your view have, whatever it is, in terms of explaining what the mind actually is? Just telling me I've postulated is no criticism per se. I'd be keen to see what proven facts you offer in your theory of mind for how the experience of yellow relates to brain states that occur simultaneously and why you presuppose that the 5 senses alone constitute or equate to sentient experience.

Brain processes are not third person reports, how is a brain process a report of a brain process. You seem muddled.

You're introducing the subjective and objective here as distinguishable, not me, I only distinguish them as modes of access to the brain process in question.

I have not aimed to achieve a full reduction of sense, only of reference. You cannot eliminate subjectivity as equated with the immediate mode of access to the brain process because it is the kind of process that can be 'undergone'. The reduction is with regard to what we once thought was distinct, but doesn't now appear to be, thanks to the models we can develop through cognitive science, neuropsychology and AI and cybernetic research.

This is a good point and I think I agree with you, but the reason I'v said that there is an undergoing of a process is because there does seem to be more going on than the particular set of mentallings referred to as, for example, the experience of yellow, (namely, the other processes occurring simultaneously such that experiencing yellow is only ever part of the set of mentallings occurring at any one time) and the idea behind saying 'this is a process undergone' is to attempt to make clear how the previously dualistic way of understanding the reference for first and third person reports requires an acknowledgement that they exist and an explanation of how they could come to refer to the same.

As for your computer problems, have you had someone have a look at it, having to reboot and have it freeze up that often suggests something seriously wrong with your machine. If its a problem that can be described here or via pm, perhaps I or others can help, unless you know what it is and just lack the wherewithal to carry out a solution

boneyard bill

ex-creationist writes:

Tks for the advice. I'll give it a try and see how it works.

boneyard bill

Spacer1 writes:

Per an example I have already given, I don't see the need to attribute gravity to a flea either. But our theory of gravity says that it possesses it.

However, that is a minor point. The claim that mind is inherent in some material processes would still not be acceptable to the materialist but would, I believe, be acceptable to most property dualists.

boneyard bill

Spacer1 writes:

It isn't an analogy. It's an example of a reductive explanation. It has nothing to do with the electrical discharge of a c-fiber firing in the brain.

If you accept that a reductive explanation is not possible then this shouldn't be a problem for you.