Seeing red

[emjay]

Is it that argument, or similar, that you're putting forward here? I'm really sorry but I have trouble understanding these sorts of logical arguments, even if that does make me as thick as a plank. I just can't get my head around what we call in Mafia games, WIFOMs: Wine In Front Of Me, and that's what these sorts of arguments seem like to me.

No, it's not quite the same, though certainly I find Lewis' argument interesting.

When it comes to attempts to establish truth at a foundational level, the brain-mind thread of thinking leads to a nasty circle, or at least a question-begging assumption.

• My brain creates mind.
  
• My mind perceives a brain.
  
• Therefore I know that the brain is real, and that mind comes from it.
  

This is similar to:

• God created the Bible.
  
• The Bible says God is real.
  
• Since God created the Bible, we know it's accurate, and guess what?  It says God is real.
  

In the latter, you must take AS GIVEN either that God exists, or that the Bible is correct.

The problem with the former is that you must take AS GIVEN either that the brain creates mind, or that the perceptions of the mind represent an objective reality.  But they are mutually self-supporting.  So any materialist view which attempts to use brain science to establish the truth about what mind is is really doing this:


In the scope of everyday human life, this doesn't matter: you do your brain science, you develop your drugs, you live your life-- much the same as you don't need to understand QM (or possibly even what framework might underlie QM) to know that your desk is solid and it's safe to put your dinner on it.  It's only when you start looking for "truth" that you have to challenge those things we are so sure we "know."

Thanks for that explanation, it's helped and I understand yours now But I still don't understand CS Lewis' (well Professor Haldane's, whoever he may be)... I don't understand how he gets from the first point to the second, but that's not important because that's not your argument, but just saying. Anyway, yours is indeed a major paradox and one that leads to all sorts of seemingly impossible to answer philosophical questions.

One such question is 'why me, in this time and place?' If I look out there at everyone else, I see people with brains and have no problem assuming that each one has a consciousness. But then if I look at a video of myself with some other people then I can see that my mind is in one of many and the question is why that particular one? Part of the question is answered by my deterministic world view... there are no souls able to inhabit a body... there is only one me... only one way this life - my life - could be lived. So as long as my living body exists, 'I' am the consciousness that is guaranteed to 'inhabit' it, because this consciousness represents this body. So if you and I switched places, with me seeing out of your eyes and you seeing out of mine, I'd be you and you'd be me... there would be no change at all in the brain or experience... it would not be like that film Freaky Friday, where Lindsay Lohan takes over her mother's body and vice versa and they maintain their former personalities and memories... that couldn't happen in my world view, not even hypothetically. And from this perspective it's obvious why I can't see from any other person's perspective, because this is the perspective of this body. But despite all of that, there still remains an inkling of the question 'why me?' even though 'I' am the objective consciousness that is guaranteed, by the clockwork universe, to represent this body when it was determined that it would appear. It's very hard to identify exactly what I mean by me in this sense, especially given the way I view the brain as encompassing all aspects of personality, but nonetheless the (probably irrational and/or illusory) feeling is still there. One way out is to say that while I can ask the question 'why me?' there's nothing to say that I (well not I as in the I that represents this body but whatever I'm referring to - I'm sure you know what I mean but we can't define it) am not also you and everyone else and vice versa. There's no way I could ever know the answer because from this perspective I am 'trapped' in this consciousness, just as you are in yours. Anyway, that's just vague speculation - it doesn't answer the question in any way that puts my mind at ease. I do wonder if the questions are made harder by my use of language... that all my 'I's and 'yous' etc need to be either better defined, replaced, or removed entirely... so that the language itself doesn't create paradoxes that wouldn't be there if I could frame the questions right... because as it stands, the above mixes all sorts of probably incompatible viewpoints... including... as much as I try to fight it ...dualism; I think asking 'why me?' is a dualistic question but one that nonetheless I feel the need to ask, however irrational it may be. I need to identify what it is that's asking that question because in my view, that's part of the system - part of the illusion. If it wasn't, it would be a soul.

Anyway, after all that, the above perhaps only applies in a materialistic world view... one with the paradoxical brain-mind 'nasty circle' argument that you explained? Do you think like that or do you not even ask those sorts of questions because of your world view?

[The Grand Nudger]

Q: Why me?
A: Who else.

[emjay]

Q: Why me?
A: Who else.

I know... and that's the annoying part... what you say makes sense... and I say the same thing... but there's still something niggly asking why me? Do you have that at all or have you managed to exorcise that particular demon?

[The Grand Nudger]

It seems like there should be something more, eh?  Some deeper or more fundamental explanation.  Perhaps some answers are deeply and fundamentally unsatisfying?

I do have those moments.  I think we all do, the why's and what if's.  Ultimately, we have to remind ourselves that the universe doesn't owe us a debt of satisfaction.  Isn't it interesting how knowing that doesn't prevent us from having those moments? Mind, whatever it is, is an awfully funny thing.

[emjay]

I could wish to be someone else, to have their experiences and opportunities, but I can only wish that from this subjective perspective. If the wish came true I would be them and experience those experiences on their terms - from their POV - not mine from this POV. And the very wish that had brought me there - from this POV - would be meaningless and non-existent in the other. So such a wish is impossible because it changes nothing.

[The Grand Nudger]

Wishing to be another person is more euphemism than procedural.

[emjay]

Wishing to be another person is more euphemism than procedural.

Just to say, that post wasn't in reply to yours - I just ninja'd you. What do you mean by this one tho?

[emjay]

I don't particularly wish to be someone else but sometimes I do. But at the same I know that this consciousness that is me is inevitable. Every single thing that I have ever done or thought, or that has happened to me is determined by the clockwork universe. IOW if it weren't me it still would be me

[emjay]

It seems like there should be something more, eh?  Some deeper or more fundamental explanation.  Perhaps some answers are deeply and fundamentally unsatisfying?

I do have those moments.  I think we all do, the why's and what if's.  Ultimately, we have to remind ourselves that the universe doesn't owe us a debt of satisfaction.  Isn't it interesting how knowing that doesn't prevent us from having those moments? Mind, whatever it is, is an awfully funny thing.

That's comforting to know you feel the same way sometimes I know I get a bit mushy sometimes and probably leave blokey blokes edging for the door, but nonetheless I think you're great, so have a beer on me and just put this down to me being in a melancholy mood and just about to go to bed. Same thing for my other posts from the ninja onwards.

And about this, we are after all the embodiment of the system we study and it deems that we should have a sense of 'I' or selfness. So it's just us as the living system asking those questions from the perspective it has given us. So we can't be blamed for it. Some people take the philosophy too far and refer to themselves internally in the third person in a (imo) silly attempt to get around this 'I' illusion but the way we are 'meant' to be is with an I.

Night night

[Neo-Scholastic]

I wish to congratulate every participant for their thoughtful and respectful discussion in this thread. I would like to share my thinking as well and hope to also contribute positively to the discussion. Here are a couple of comments that stick out in my mind. I intentionally removed attributions to keep the focus on the ideas rather than on who said what. All bold emphasis is mine. Hopefully I have preserved the authors intended meaning despite my severe truncating of the individual posts.

My position is that mind is essential, rather than incidental, to the universe. And because of the "bridge" problem, dualism is out, and there are three possible positions only: 1) Physical monism, 2) Idealistic monism, or 3) Something that is paradoxically neither but both of those things.

The writer implies a kind of pan-psychism (option 3) and seems unaware of property dualism and functionalism. However, ruling out substance dualism is premature for two reasons. First, dismissing substance dualism because its proponents currently lack a robust theory explaining how the material and the immaterial interact is an argument from ignorance. No one really knows what a theory that makes the ‘hard’ problem a soft one looks like either. Secondly, those who raise the bridge problem presuppose efficient causal closure. Causal closure is a useful methodology but cannot be defended as ontology without begging the question. This is not an argument for substance dualism; but rather a suggestion that by not taking it seriously (hand-waving and setting up straw men) its detractors may be missing out on important considerations relevant to their own positions.

Nevertheless, some of the writers seem to have vastly different notions of what ideas are, as evidenced in these quotes:

Opinion 1…the most essential components of reality are reducible only to ideas-- like math functions. Not that they are DESCRIBED by them, but that they ARE them… An idea is an immaterial principle or pattern, either an experience or a principle which molds experience.

Opinion 2…ideas are things just as much as a desk or a glass is a physical thing…The evidence from science and medicine is that the mind behaves consistent with it being an object like any other.

Opinion 3 … [can] consciousness provide something that neurons couldn't do … The point is the neural network or system produces abstractions or information that make sense at the functional and structural level.

Opinion 1 appears to blend sensations, propositions, and prescriptive principles under the general category of ideas.

Opinion 2 apparently considers ideas to be identical with certain types of sensible bodies and/or their behaviors. It ignores the fact that sensible bodies, like physical desks or glasses, aren’t about anything in the way that thoughts and feelings refer to things beyond themselves.

Opinion 3 uses the terms ‘abstractions’ and ‘information’ and sees them manifested by functions and structures. What benefits does qualitative experiences add to functions and structures? It seems that by so defining mental phenomena they become either redundant or unnecessary.

Yikes! Where to begin? One of the reasons I admire the Schoolmen is the great care they took to distinguish between sensation, abstraction, imagination, concept formation, ideas and many other closely related terms. Despite its clarity, Scholastic nomenclature doesn’t comport well with modern usage. I know that promoting such terms would only meet with understandable resistance. And yet I cannot help but feel that people are doomed to talk past one another without them.