Occams Hatchet and Is Materialism "Special"

[Excited Penguin]

If it moves like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's not a fucking dinosaur.

[I_am_not_mafia]

There are two ideas here:

1) The brain is solely responsible for consciousness and intelligence.
2) Consciousness and intelligence are a product of something non-material.

The first hypothesis is scientific. It is testable. It is falsifiable. It is reproducible. Above all, it is useful.

The second is none of these. It is not testable. It is not falsifiable. It is not reproducible and it absolutely is in no way useful. It is not science.

As an AI researcher myself, the first is useful. I want to try and create intelligence in a computer or a robot. Or consciousness. I can look at a real brain, real animals in environments, real data on how consciousness is affected by lesions, drugs etc. I can come up with hypotheses and test them out and see if they work in practise. And after all that, I can create models of consciousness or intelligence that do something in the real world. The same if I was a neuroscientist trying to find cures to a neurodegenerative disease or a psychiatrist trying to solve mental illness.

How would you even start doing any of the above if you start from the premise that something non-material produces consciousness, our identity, intelligence and who we are? You can't. It is not helpful in the slightest. You can have a belief in some kind of soul or whatever to give you personal comfort, but that's all you can do with it. It has no other relevance to reality. It is also wrong. Because if you start from that premise, you first have to explain what science already knows.

For example, why and how anesthetic works, or alcohol, or drugs, or the effect of brain damage on different parts of the brain, or neurodegenerative diseases. It is also consistent with what we understand about evolution and biology. You would have to explain away hundreds of thousands of papers in the scientific literature from many generations of scientists working across the globe. All this scientific data that is reproducible and falsifiable, tells us that materialism is the correct approach.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no reason to believe that it isn't. There is no reason to believe that the material brain is not entirely responsible for who we are and how we function.

[I_am_not_mafia]

Considering weighing in here but the woo dressed up as philosophy is strong in this thread.

There is no reason to think that materialism isn't enough and a myriad of reasons to think that it is.

Strong belief in that, but little actual proof, methinks.

What do you mean by proof?

How about enough scientific evidence that the chances of being wrong are negligible? Would that do?

Try drinking alcohol, or taking a paracetamol tablet when you have a headache, or drinking too much coffee, taking illegal drugs, or visiting a hospice where someone is suffering from a neurodegenerative disease.

Now to balance it out, tell me some way to demonstrate that who we are and how we think is a result of something immaterial. Make it reproducible and falsifiable so that you can convince others.

[I_am_not_mafia]

If it moves like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's not a fucking dinosaur.

I don't mean to be pedantic but ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_birds

The scientific consensus is that birds are a group of theropod dinosaurs that evolved during the Mesozoic Era.

Penguins are also dinosaurs ...

[Whateverist]

-as an addendum to the above.  When an artist studies art theory or art history, formally or informally, what are they doing other than engaging in science as it applies to art?  I do, btw, understand the sentiments of separation, I really do.  I don't concern myself much about science when I appreciate a painting...but I do realize that some people do, that it can be and has been done.  That the pursuit is valuable and informative, even if not to me or my immediate appreciation of the medium....though some behaviorist out there will tell you that this, too, is an empty statement.  It is important to me, I just don't know why or how.

There's more than just "me like painting, me no like painting" going on, and in this context it's hard to see why science would be an improper or unreliable tool...even for that thing we put on the pedestal called "art".  Just google "why do we like pop music" for a demonstration.  You'll be buried in links to research papers very much into the science, of art.

I harbor the romantic notion that the practice of art comes down to precisely what I highlighted in regard to whatever art form we may be drawn to create.  Some artists may take a more rationalist approach to the work they are making - being able to spell out precisely what their intention had been and what role each element included was intended to play.  But I'm pretty sure many more artists are engaged in art making as a kind of voyage of discovery, uncovering what the piece means as they go.  Most artwork is capable of conveying different meanings to different viewers, and of course if those meanings don't align with the artist's own that hardly makes the divergent viewers 'wrong'.  There are places in the world for woo and art is one of them.  My claim is that science could never exhaustively replace the place the arts hold in the world of ideas.  Science is a great tool for understanding the empirical world .. full stop .. nada mas.  Even after science has told us as much as it can about how the brain works, those of us who actually have one will go on experiencing a wide variety of things which no calipers can measure.  There would be no reason to try.

In his "Six non lectures" e e cummings wrote my sentiment more eloquently:

"So long as you and I have lips and voices which are for kissing and to sing with,
who cares if some one eyed son of bitch invents an instrument to measure spring with."*

*As best I can remember.

[bennyboy]

Strong belief in that, but little actual proof, methinks.

What do you mean by proof?

How about enough scientific evidence that the chances of being wrong are negligible? Would that do?

Try drinking alcohol, or taking a paracetamol tablet when you have a headache, or drinking too much coffee, taking illegal drugs, or visiting a hospice where someone is suffering from a neurodegenerative disease.

Now to balance it out, tell me some way to demonstrate that who we are and how we think is a result of something immaterial. Make it reproducible and falsifiable so that you can convince others.

You're circling around to a begging of the question, methinks.  The OP is about materialism, and the issue of mind is one of the cases we're talking about.  But the way you frame your descriptions and your ideas about mind are couched in purely material terms.

Tell me how you know ANYONE experiences anything subjectively, i.e. can experience qualia.  It seems to me if you are really going to take such a strong position on mind, you'll have at least be able to determine unambiguously what physical systems do or don't have it.  Are you able to do this?

[bennyboy]

There are two ideas here:

1) The brain is solely responsible for consciousness and intelligence.
2) Consciousness and intelligence are a product of something non-material.

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.

It's also possible that the entire physical universe is really an idealistic one, and that the way we perceive it is symbolic, rather than representative of a material "reality." Actually, I'd argue that modern science demonstrates for sure that reality is not as we perceive it.

[The Grand Nudger]

Qualia can be and -has been- detected.  It's not even difficult to do so.

ikr?  My Qualo-meter 2100 is on its way from Amazon even as I type!  Soon, I will be able to know exactly what physical systems do/don't experience qualia, and WHAT exactly they are experiencing.

Oh, wait. . . that's not a real thing.  I suppose I have to wait for you to tell us that things that aren't qualia really are.


We assume it in others, and call it recognition.  Is making an assumption the same thing as recognizing?

Yes, yes, we know.  You only assume that people have qualia.  

"Best evidence" seems to amount to "Our theory isn't actually provable, and requires philosophical assumptions to even get off the ground, but it sounds more sciencey than what you're saying."

Your contempt for science through straw is showing.  

What's your evidence that anything experiences qualia?  It laughs at the right jokes?  It leaks salty water when it watches Beaches?  I want to know what "best evidence" you have that isn't 100% rooted in philosophical assumptions that beg the question.

Does the thing you think materialism can't account for exist, or not?  We either agree that there is such a thing that we are attempting to explain, or you honestly have -nothing- to say...because it would be -about- nothing.  Make up your mind, because I'm tired of being trolled.  

Here is the essence of our difference.  You are convinced by commonalities in your experiences that there's a material universe with such and such properties, and you are ready to "move on" to the next issue.  I am not so convinced, even by the commonalities which are consistent enough to do science on, that it is right to move on to that view of the world; in fact, I believe it to be highly suspect.  It seems to me that since all of what we "know" can definitely be coined purely as idea and experience that the belief that it's "really really out there" doesn't add much.

You can "coin" things anyway you like, and you can retreat into solipsism if it suits you....but both are meaningless objections to me.  

We aren't really disputing experience, OR even the worth of science.  We have different, and I think very arbitrary, positions on how many assumptions, and of what type, we should accept in moving on to new avenues of inquiry.

Don't backpedal now.  You're disputing our experience, and you see no value in the non-science.  Own it. Now you may have an arbitrary position on how many assumptions to make, that;s your business..but I;ve been pretty clear about how many assumptions I would make, what type, and why.

[Neo-Scholastic]

I've already told you that I don't feel like indulging you.  You and I both know the material explanation for both sound and music.  We learned it as children.  Why not proceded directly to whatever it is you'll pivot to after that tiresome and pointless discussion played itself out?  That's what you want to talk about...whatever it is, and I'm not big on foreplay.

I don't need a scholarly essay, just an executive summary of your version of materialism. How you would deal with the ontological status of a song might guide me to better understand the context for your statements. You are under no obligation to explain yourself unless of course it is your intention to communicate your ideas as clearly as possible.

[The Grand Nudger]

@Whatevs.

Aren't we simply discussing the value we might place on whatever science could tell us about art, the different subjective meanings individuals might take any given work to represent, above?  We don't seem to be discussing a subject that science -can't- tell us something about. I think we both agree that in some sense neither of us gives a shit what science might have to say about art, we both agree that science cannot replace art. Neither of these things, though, make art immune to science.