Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[Neo-Scholastic]

Please, Rhythm. (respectful tone) I don’t believe you are expressing yourself with sufficient nuance to convey what the term of art, materialism, means to you by saying things like the following:

You asked what music was made out of, I told you it was made out of sound. Is that foolish? Is it untrue? Is it immaterial? So what, then, is the issue for materialism here supposed to be, exactly? Materialism is a statement regarding the composition of the things we see.

The problem with the above is that even Thomas Aquinas would say a song is made out of sound, or rather vibrating molecules. He would call it the material cause. So when you say, “Materialism is a statement regarding the composition of the things we see,” you have haven’t actually defined materialism as a metaphysical theory; but rather, just noted the material cause of music.

I interpret from your explicit statements that, for you, materialism is a monist ontology that claims everything can be described in terms of matter and its modifications. At the same time you use words, like composition, which contain tacit assumptions with implications far beyond material interaction, as follows:

In a legal sense, in the sense of it [a song] is composition, in the sense of any given performance as it relates to another specific performance or indeed..vis a vis any given performance of the same by any other?

And:

their composition, those questions would not have any relevance to the materialist position itself. The materialist position...is that music...is made of sound. Sound, to whit, being vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.

You may not realize it but composition could be just another way of saying formal cause with respect to its essence and final cause with respect to its sense, what the song is about. To dispense with these non-material causes requires more work.

[The Grand Nudger]

Please, Rhythm. (respectful tone) I don’t believe you are expressing yourself with sufficient nuance to convey what the term of art, materialism, means to you by saying things like the following:

The problem with the above is that even Thomas Aquinas would say a song is made out of sound, or rather vibrating molecules. He would call it the material cause. So when you say, “Materialism is a statement regarding the composition of the things we see,” you have haven’t actually defined materialism as a metaphysical theory; but rather, just noted the material cause of music.

Sound doesn't cause music, we haven;t even been discussing musics cause.  You asked me what music was made out of.  I answered.  I gave you the very common, very uninteresting, very dry material explanation for the composition of music...that we both -already knew-  What it was made out of.  That there is no problem here is -your- problem.  You have nothing to say about materialism's explanation..of what sound is made of.    Respect, lol, you waded into this flinging shit around and babbling about your ignorant self serving interpretations of materialism and materialists. Don't get soft on me now.

I interpret from your explicit statements that, for you, materialism is a monist ontology that claims everything can be described in terms of matter and its modifications. At the same time you use words, like composition, which contain tacit assumptions with implications far beyond material interaction, as follows:

Your interpretations have been your problem from the moment you chose to share them.  

You may not realize it but composition could be just another way of saying formal cause with respect to its essence and final cause with respect to its sense, what the song is about. To dispense with these non-material causes requires more work.

Composition...as in the musical sense, jesus christ. It's material composition was a question that hardly needed to be answered, which you pretended had some deep..deep thing to say about materialism. Obviously, it didn't, and neither do you. You just wanted to get around to bullshitting us about immaterial causes. Get back to me when you find one.

Surprise surprise.

[bennyboy]

In my opinion, these options are neither mutually exclusive nor sufficiently inclusive of all the possibilities.

For example, it may be that the fundaments of mind are intrinsic to ALL matter, at all levels.

How? How is that useful? What explanatory power does that have? How can we test for it? What reason do we have to suspect that it might even be the case? How could we make use of thinking like this?

It's not falsifiable. It's not reproducible. It's not scientific. It's not based in reality. It's woo.

You seem to have trouble with the words "may be," as in "it's one of the possibilities."  Do you know what else is not falsifiable?  The assertion: "X may experience qualia."  And it doesn't matter if X is a person or a bit of space dust.  That's because you've never seen a mind, nor measured it, nor known it to exist except by a choice of philosophical assumption.

But let's say that qualia are real and that something in/about the brain IS responsible for it.  What would that be?  How would YOU, since you're so big on science, demonstrate which neural, chemical, atomic, or QM systems do or do not experience what things are like, and which do not?

Again, you sound confident, but I suspect you'll have to resort exclusively to mockery, and not at all to science, in answering my questions.

[bennyboy]

You keep calling qualia an assumption as though that were somhow a problem for the science thereof.  If you think that this is anything -other- than disputing -our- experience.........I don;t know what to tell you.  I don;t assume that qualia exists, nor do you.  I very literally observe it, and that is bound inextricably to the definition of the term itself...it's the thing we hope to explain.  So if you can't get past that, and we can't start on that common ground...we can -have- no discussion.  There's nothing to talk about.  Science is not attempting to explain qualia that we assume to exist, it's attempting to explain qualia as a fundamentally undeniable truth of -every single human beings on the planets experience, it is the very -term- for our experience.  If that's not enough to move it past the category of assumption, to you, then nothing will or can.  Your objection is not with materialism, but with knowledge itself.  Good luck.

That's a lot of words for, "I don't know what qualia is or what causes it, but it has to be the brain."

Yes, I know that you;d like for me to stop saying that..I already opined upon it...we decided to hug it out, but here again it rears it's head.  I would hope that, at some point...repeatedly pointing this out helps you to realize that your objections are in internal self contradiction.  You cannot first claim that materialism (or science) cannot account for something....and then object to all of the ways that it accounts for that very thing.  Both statements cannot be true, if you have something to object to.....then obviously there is an accounting -to- object to.

You can only, rationally, express your disagreement with that accounting, or in your case, contempt.

Show me the science that claims to account for qualia. Show me a plausible scientific theory of consciousness. And stop speaking on behalf of science unless you are actually prepared to BRING some science into this discussion, or you aren't so much defending science the process of inquiry as Science the institution.

I recommend we send out some e-mails to educational institutions and ask THEM my questions. I 100% guarantee you that they'll tell you they operate in the context of the assumptions I'm talking about, and that they are fine with that. But I do not think they will be as mocking as you and Mathilda about philosophical questions; in fact, I suspect they probably take them very seriously.

I've actually done some study in neurology and psychology, written ANNs, and so on. You think I'm just talking out of my ass, but it's partly my experience WITH the science of mind that leads me to take the philosophical issues so seriously.

[Bunburryist]

I hope that since you learned this explantion as a child (I didn't), 

Yes, you did, which is why I'm no more interested in humoring you than him, and why I snipped that lengthy response (and hey, I know about writing long forum posts, I appreciate the effort if nothing else). 

I won;t do this.  I respect myself, and I respect -you-, more than that.  I invite anyone who desires it, now, who feels the need.......  to dogpile in on this fucking debasement of human integrity.  Nows the time.  Here's the gotcha quotemine, here's the moment that someone -flatly- refuses to indulge you, refuses to play.  Sound, fucking sound..is not an immaterialist black box.  That is -all- I have to say about that.

You're doing it again - using one word (sound) to refer to two fundamentally different things - conflating vibrations in air (something describable in physical terms) and the experience of sound (which cannot be described in physical terms).  It's just like "red light."  Air vibrations and the "brain-experience" we call "sound" don't even exist in the same place in "the" material world.  In the sense story for sound, air vibrations propagate through air outside of the brain, and the experience is supposed to happen in the brain.  The actual experience of sound within the context of the sense story, has absolutely nothing to do with air vibrations.  Just as the experience of color that is supposed to happen in the brain has nothing to do with light (which ceases to have anything to do with it once it transforms the shape of molecules in the retina), so air vibration has nothing to do with the experience of sound happening in the brain.

These observations are themselves in no way anti-materialist.  I really don't understand why people who supposedly believe in the "scientific" theory of the senses either can not or will not acknowledge these basic ideas regarding the theory of the senses they supposedly believe in.  In a way, I hold the scientific establishment responsible for this perennial problem.  They tell us (through science education) that this is how we are supposed to see, hear, etc., yet they don't develop a systematic description of it.  It really makes me wonder if they are, on some level, trying real hard to steer clear of the conclusions these clarifications make clear - that this experience we call "the material world" simply cannot, if the materialist sense story is right, be a material world.

[robvalue]

I expect sound waves are an abstract idea, no? That they actually represent movements/vibration in a physical medium? There's no such thing as "a sound wave", right? I mean, as a separate entity.

If I'm right, we have the existent, moving under rules, and then a pattern/property which can be described abstractly as a sound wave.

[I_am_not_mafia]

But let's say that qualia are real and that something in/about the brain IS responsible for it.  What would that be?  How would YOU, since you're so big on science, demonstrate which neural, chemical, atomic, or QM systems do or do not experience what things are like, and which do not?

As I said, first you should define what qualia is and what you mean by 'experiencing'.

Only then can we "demonstrate which neural, chemical, atomic, or QM systems do or do not experience what things are like, and which do not".

So go ahead. Give me a sold definition.

Again, you sound confident, but I suspect you'll have to resort exclusively to mockery, and not at all to science, in answering my questions.

First rule in science is to define what you mean.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Show me the science that claims to account for qualia.

Explicitly define what you mean by qualia.

 Show me a plausible scientific theory of consciousness.

That's something different. I have a plausible scientific theory of consciousness. But first step I would have to do is to tell you what I think consciousness is. I also have a plausible scientific theory of intelligence. And of emotions. And in both cases I define what I mean by intelligence and emotions. There is also a plausible scientific theory and definition life which I hold to.

I can then go about trying to demonstrate that the idea is logically consistent by creating computer models. Other scientists may disagree with my definitions, but that's OK because they will say why it does not cover certain cases or propose a better definition.

For example, I described my own theory of consciousness here in this very forum and described it in terms of neural networks. You may disagree with my definition of consciousness, but that's OK if you give a valid reason for why it is lacking and then propose a better one that is more useful.

https://atheistforums.org/thread-45249-p...pid1394479

I recommend we send out some e-mails to educational institutions and ask THEM my questions.  I 100% guarantee you that they'll tell you they operate in the context of the assumptions I'm talking about, and that they are fine with that.  But I do not think they will be as mocking as you and Mathilda about philosophical questions; in fact, I suspect they probably take them very seriously.

I am a trained and published scientist that has worked in academia but if I received such a letter of course I wouldn't be mocking. It wouldn't be professional of me. But this is a discussion forum and so I can express what I truly feel about such concepts. Academics also express themselves more freely at conferences.

I've been to conferences where they have discussed consciousness and qualia. Even when someone has gone up and talked about qualia, they always try to define what they mean.

You simply cannot make any progress at all without doing so. This is why qualia is such a useless term. It's a quagmire.

I've actually done some study in neurology and psychology, written ANNs, and so on.  You think I'm just talking out of my ass, but it's partly my experience WITH the science of mind that leads me to take the philosophical issues so seriously.

By ANNs I assume you mean the classic kind with back propagation, activation functions and learning rules? That is an extremely simplistic model that is not biologically plausible. I suggest that you read Christoph Koch's Biophysics of Computation to show quite how complicated a single neuron actually is. It's computational complexity far surpasses a whole artificial neural network. Then try putting the biologically plausible neurons, with dendritic trees, neuromodulators, leakage and a local learning rule in a network that self organises. That will give you an entirely different view point on how the brain functions. Doing so really brought it home to me how the brain is a naturally occurring physical system.

[The Grand Nudger]

You keep calling qualia an assumption as though that were somhow a problem for the science thereof.  If you think that this is anything -other- than disputing -our- experience.........I don;t know what to tell you.  I don;t assume that qualia exists, nor do you.  I very literally observe it, and that is bound inextricably to the definition of the term itself...it's the thing we hope to explain.  So if you can't get past that, and we can't start on that common ground...we can -have- no discussion.  There's nothing to talk about.  Science is not attempting to explain qualia that we assume to exist, it's attempting to explain qualia as a fundamentally undeniable truth of -every single human beings on the planets experience, it is the very -term- for our experience.  If that's not enough to move it past the category of assumption, to you, then nothing will or can.  Your objection is not with materialism, but with knowledge itself.  Good luck.

That's a lot of words for, "I don't know what qualia is or what causes it, but it has to be the brain."

Strange, since I didn't make a single mention of that...but that's what you hear anyway.  You must know what the science says after all.

Show me the science that claims to account for qualia.  Show me a plausible scientific theory of consciousness.  And stop speaking on behalf of science unless you are actually prepared to BRING some science into this discussion, or you aren't so much defending science the process of inquiry as Science the institution.

Show yourself.  These bullshit attempts to exhaust a persons patience don't play with me.

I recommend we send out some e-mails to educational institutions and ask THEM my questions.  I 100% guarantee you that they'll tell you they operate in the context of the assumptions I'm talking about, and that they are fine with that.  But I do not think they will be as mocking as you and Mathilda about philosophical questions; in fact, I suspect they probably take them very seriously.

I'd take a philosophical question seriously if you'd mount one.  You haven't...and I know, I know, you think you have.

I've actually done some study in neurology and psychology, written ANNs, and so on.  You think I'm just talking out of my ass, but it's partly my experience WITH the science of mind that leads me to take the philosophical issues so seriously.

I -know- you're talking out of your ass, lol. If you want to take philosophical issues seriously than do so, stop making bullshit claims and then -calling- that philosophy, that's not philosphy..that's just exhausting someones patience with a long list of bullshit claims.

[bennyboy]

But let's say that qualia are real and that something in/about the brain IS responsible for it.  What would that be?  How would YOU, since you're so big on science, demonstrate which neural, chemical, atomic, or QM systems do or do not experience what things are like, and which do not?

As I said, first you should define what qualia is and what you mean by 'experiencing'.

How does one define qualia in scientific term? Qualia is the experience of "what things are like."