The Category Error of Scientism

[Odysseus]

Punctuation is your friend. But apparently grammar is only a distant cousin.

oT ynhoset bE, zhit LaTemN KsTrcOun ke(ə)rs little rfO het Yevr AbtIRaYr aYw Ni hwchi ru Bairn zah eDdICedi oT cdoneE fronimtnioa

Sorry, I could not include tones and colors.

[Neo-Scholastic]

...Explain to me the necessity of this "non-physical stuff", and why you think it must exist. Start with any example of reality that I may perceive, and then point out what I must acknowledge to be incomplete with a Monist view of experience.

That’s simple! Any sensible object, like an apple, will do. Suppose you have before you an apple. You can observe its features and know the apple exists. Now you take a bite from it. It has a bite taken out but it’s still the same apple. If you wait a while you will see that the crisp white edges of the bite turn brown and mushy. You see two opposing principles in action: 1) the apple persists in its being and 2) the apple changes.

If you continue to eat, at some point you will say to yourself that the apple is gone and all that remains is a core. “Appleness” is not a feature of some physical object, but your judgment about it. And in order for the apple to even be an “it” you must observe a set of related features, you identify a thing, including yourself, as something that exists within an otherwise seamless reality.

The apple persists in its being because that being is grounded by a material substance. And what exactly is material, the stuff of which apples and all other things are made? You can deconstruct the apple into other substances like water, cellulose, etc. These you can break down into elements, elements into sub-atomic particles, to quarks, maybe strings, until… What is the end point? What remains when you have stripped away every formal property? That would be something that exists in-itself and which has the potential to be anything at all. This stuff is called Primal Matter.

From a physical point of view, your previous experiences with eating apples established base line values in your neural net that coincide with your belief about whether something is or is not an apple (that or some such similar mechanism.) Hold that thought.

The word ‘apple’ is a sign. Change one letter and ‘apple’ becomes ‘apply’ a sign with a completely different meaning. The significance of a sign comes from your awareness that the word refers to something, usually a recognizable pattern in physical reality. In and of themselves, physical systems do not have any meaning at all. An apple does not refer to anything else. It just is what it is. Meaning is assigned to recognizable patterns by the mind that is conscious off it. In its own way the apple is also a sign. One that the brain recognizes and to which you apply meaning.

So back to the neural net system of your brain… The brain is a physical system. Your brain, like all other physical things, doesn’t mean anything. It just is. And it takes on recognizable patterns. These patterns may be observed from the ‘inside’ as qualitative subjective experiences. The same patterns may be observed from the ‘outside’ (MRI images, etc) as quantifiable objective observations. Two different minds, yours and that of an independent MRI reader looks at the brain as a sign and interpret its significance. As an observer you have direct privileged access to brain signals, whereas an MRI reader’s knows the signals in your brain only after they have been mediated by the MRI machine and their own brain processes, which the reader also observes with direct privileged access.

So what is this thing called awareness that observes and supplies meaning. It is not your ideas themselves. Neo-Scholasticism teaches you that ideas are not knowledge; but rather, recognizable patterns, the means by which you know. Your ideas, perceptions, and sense data can change to make what you know more or less complete and accurate. You remain the observer of those changes, including changes in your self-concept. Your personal identity, in large part (and I would argue as a whole) is constructed by that within you that observes those ideas and thoughts.

Now I believe that all things continue in their existence apart from the observations of an individual observer. A tree in the forest is still a tree. And the parts of you of which you are currently unaware continue to exist. As stated earlier, things persist in their being and preserved as they change, by a mind that differentiates the otherwise seamless and formless primal matter.

The above should have clarified my statements that, “Non-physical stuff is that which gives form to primal matter. Primal matter is the formless ground of being.”

Is the picture of the ocean in my camera made manifest through non-physical properties?

In a sense, yes, because all physicality is made manifested by conjunction with the non-physical, as presented above.

[The Reality Salesman01]

If I've read this right, and there's a good chance I didn't, it seems like you're saying that descriptions, as they appear to us in consciousness, are evidence of a nonphysical substance? So if I smell something, and my brain processes the sense data, the descriptive state of that "smell" experience that appears in consciousness is now a separate substance that now must be accounted for by means other than the first person experience of an operating physical system? Have I messed this all up? Please clarify any misunderstanding on my part.

[Mudhammam]

Is the picture of the ocean in my camera made manifest through non-physical properties?

In a sense, yes, because all physicality is made manifested by conjunction with the non-physical, as presented above.

This reminded me of this bit I saw a few days ago by Dan Dennett on mental imagery in the mind. Dennett says to treat them as structures rather than pictures. If nothing else, I found it interesting. The relevant portion begins at 22:30:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbJHOnkFimg

[Neo-Scholastic]

I find your response to Jacob, a bit self-conceited. You present yourself as the enlightened purveyor of wisdom to the ignorant masses, i.e. a “reality salesman”. To me, your ontological naturalism sounds more like dogma than encouragement to inquire into the mysteries of existence.
You fail to distinguish between the knowing subject and ideas, which are the means by which we know. A computational model of the brain explains how the brain produces something akin to propositional relationships and information bearing signals. Computational model do not explain how you can have any awareness of the content, or meaning, of those relationships and signals.

It is not sufficient say that the brain responds mechanistically to sense data that produce only mechanical movements and then suddenly consciousness magically appears, like a rabbit from a hat. You want to wish a knowing subject into existence by moving a sparkly wand and throwing confetti just because that’s how you want things to work. You need a rabbit first, before you can bring it out from hiding.

The only problem with dualism is the interaction problem. But nothing prevents a source of intentionality from influencing brain states by means of some quantum process. I often hear that future advances in science will allow us to better understand consciousness. If that is so, then why do materialists insist that consciousness must only be explained by 19th century physics? After more than 100 years of trying no viable theory has been forthcoming. We need to start looking elsewhere. Why do you cling to failed models that are so blatantly counter-intuitive?

For crying out loud don't you guys ever brush Dennett's spooge off your teeth!

[The Reality Salesman01]

I honestly don't know how exactly consciousness works, but I don't pretend to know things about magical rabbits and hats as a substitute for my lack of knowledge either. Coincidentally, that's exactly what you're doing when you invoke the concept of immaterial substances as the hat, and consciousness is your rabbit. I see the hat, I see the rabbit, and I don't believe in magic. My intuition tells me there's a natural explanation for it, and yours says it's magic. I'm glad you recognize that there's an interaction problem, but I'm confused as to why you then went from a seemingly sincere admittance to having insufficient evidence to your claim to asserting a solution by means of "source of intentionality". Please expand on this thought while sticking to your dualist view. Keep in mind that as soon as you begin using physical terms, your whole concept falls apart. Even on a quantum level, it is matter that is being talked about. Waves, energy, matter, these are all physical terms. Describe to me this source of pure "intentionality", what are some of it's properties? Spare no detail, I'm very interested in shedding this dogma of materialism that you say I have.

---

I hope you'll allow me to also copy and paste responses from the same thread.

---

...and should I assume that I correctly interpreted the part of your position I responded to? You didn't confirm or deny, and I don't know how to proceed. I'd happily offer clarification on what you saw to be conceited, but I think we've got more than enough on our plates at the moment, and I tend to over-eat...

[Neo-Scholastic]

I tried to delete when I realized the mistake, but got this message:

You do not have permission to access this page. This could be because of one of the following reasons:
1.Your account has either been suspended or you have been banned from accessing this resource.
2.You do not have permission to access this page. Are you trying to access administrative pages or a resource that you shouldn't be? Check in the forum rules that you are allowed to perform this action.
3.Your account may still be awaiting activation or moderation. (Resend Activation Code)
4.You have accessed this page directly rather than using appropriate forms or link.

[The Reality Salesman01]

...and I haven't a clue what splooge you are referring to. What does Dennett have to do with what I've said? Not to appeal to authority, and I recognize that it's no indication of its validity, but it's even taught in psychology classes that the consensus among scientists is that dualism is a failed concept...don't single out Dennett.

[Silver]

Uh-oh, hax!

[The Reality Salesman01]

I tried to delete when I realized the mistake, but got this message:

You do not have permission to access this page. This could be because of one of the following reasons:
1.Your account has either been suspended or you have been banned from accessing this resource.
2.You do not have permission to access this page. Are you trying to access administrative pages or a resource that you shouldn't be? Check in the forum rules that you are allowed to perform this action.
3.Your account may still be awaiting activation or moderation. (Resend Activation Code)
4.You have accessed this page directly rather than using appropriate forms or link.

For a moment, I thought I'd done the same thing, and when I tried to delete, I got the same message. Honest mistake.