On naturalism and consciousness

[Mudhammam]

This quote from the current text I'm reading stuck out to me:

"...but then we have no good reason for saying that material things could not be conscious; nor, finally, for saying that material things could not in themselves give rise to consciousness." - J.L. Mackie, 'The Miracle of Theism'

Yeah, we do: neural networks. The only time consciousness is observed is when there are brains & nervous systems or their equivalent. Consequently...

I'm not sure I follow where it is you disagree. Neural networks, the fact that consciousness is only observed to exist in the presence of brains and nervous systems, supports his statement that "we have no good reason for saying that material things could not... in themselves give rise to consciousness."

Mackie's conclusion at the end of the chapter is that "once we have rejected, as we must, both the extreme materialism that would deny even distinctively mental properties and the complete immaterialism of Berkeley or of phenomenalism, we are stuck with some kind of dualism; and unless this is an absurdly extreme dualism it must admit psychophysical laws or lawlike correlations of some sort."

...doesn't follow. In fact, the reverse is true.

Where's the discrepancy in postulating consciousness as an "emergent property" and one that exists solely as a result of physical processes due to a "fundamental natural law of emergence for awareness" (again, his words)? As I gather it, he supports property dualism but not substance dualism.

[Ben Davis]

Sorry, big misread! Please ignore...

[Neo-Scholastic]

IF mind can be created by different mechanisms functioning differently, then it is transcendent-- "mind-ness," the capacity for mind,..

Within a naturalistic paradigm the term "multiple realizable" is used to describe mind supported by various platforms. The word transcendent has metaphysical/spiritual connotations that could be unintended.

[naimless]

i'll curve your fucking spoon

[bennyboy]

This quote from the current text I'm reading stuck out to me:

"If, instead of supposing that material structures themselves sometimes think, we assumed that there are immaterial substances, minds, or souls, associated with our bodies, we should have to say that matter somehow acts upon these immaterial things (in perception). This is as hard to understand as how material structures could think; yet we have to accept one or other of these. The problem is one that Berkeley saw very clearly: once we admit that there is a material world at all, we cannot deny that material things casually affect consciousness; but then we have no good reason for saying that material things could not be conscious; nor, finally, for saying that material things could not in themselves give rise to consciousness." - J.L. Mackie, 'The Miracle of Theism'

(Mackie's conclusion at the end of the chapter is that "once we have rejected, as we must, both the extreme materialism that would deny even distinctively mental properties and the complete immaterialism of Berkeley or of phenomenalism, we are stuck with some kind of dualism; and unless this is an absurdly extreme dualism it must admit psychophysical laws or lawlike correlations of some sort.")

First of all, is the bolded word meant to be "causally," or as you've quoted it?

I agree with Mackie's view on the problem of dualism, but I cannot understand why he "admits a material world at all." I assume in the text you quoted, he addressed why he isn't willing to consider an idealistic reality as a contender.

Question for you: you seem to be gravitating toward property dualism as well. If so, do you mean that mind may supervene on the brain, as a physical property, or that the nature of matter is intrinsically dual in nature, i.e. the universe is made of a kind of psychophysical stuff?

[bennyboy]

IF mind can be created by different mechanisms functioning differently, then it is transcendent-- "mind-ness," the capacity for mind,..

Within a naturalistic paradigm the term "multiple realizable" is used to describe mind supported by various platforms. The word transcendent has metaphysical/spiritual connotations that could be unintended.

I've spent a couple hours thinking about this, due to comments on my thread about transcendence. I don't mind the connotations you're talking about, because metaphysics means basically "the physics of physics," i.e. the underlying principles on which mechanical interactions rely. That some people use it to talk about ghosts, OBEs, etc. is irrelevant. This just means people had bad ideas about what the underlying principles were upon which physics depends.

So what are the underlying principles upon which mind supervenes? Not, I'd argue, the mechanics of the brain. Rather, I'd say that given the environment of Earth, the brain was the mechanism in which that underlying principle gradually manifested itself. Rhythm's idea is a good one in that it at least identifies an observable and easy-to-understand principle on which mind might depend: the ability of a mechanism to make logical comparisons.

This is partly perspective. For example, would you say that the particles of water in a lake, in transferring energy to and fro, "make" a wave, or would you say that the underlying forces act through the medium of water to make a wave? I prefer the latter view, since you could take out water, put in another substance, and still have the wave.

[Mudhammam]

First of all, is the bolded word meant to be "causally," or as you've quoted it?

I agree with Mackie's view on the problem of dualism, but I cannot understand why he "admits a material world at all." I assume in the text you quoted, he addressed why he isn't willing to consider an idealistic reality as a contender.

Question for you: you seem to be gravitating toward property dualism as well. If so, do you mean that mind may supervene on the brain, as a physical property, or that the nature of matter is intrinsically dual in nature, i.e. the universe is made of a kind of psychophysical stuff?

Whoops. Yeah, I meant to type "causally."

Mackie has an entire chapter (all this is from the Miracle of Theism, a great read thus far I might add) devoted to Berkelely titled "Berkeley's God and Immaterial Realism," and one of the points he quotes from Samuel Johnson, a correspondent and critic of Berkeley's, is that "it is... still something shocking to many to think that there should be nothing but a mere show in the all art and contrivance appearing in the structure (for instance) of a human body, particularly the organs of sense. The curious structure of the eye, what can it be more than merely a fine show, if there be no connection more than you admit of, between that and vision?" I think this a point immaterial realism has difficulty addressing, for even if we invoke a divine mind, the features of the world seem alien to the intentional objects of such a mind whereas if we take the world as objectively material, the details and complexity are natural enough. Mackie also writes that "it has been found possible, particularly with the growth of science over the last 400 years, to give further explanations of the behavior of the supposed physical objects in this three-dimensional world, particularly by postulating that they have micro-structures and various further features which are never directly perceived by our senses. And... the processes leading to sensory perceptions themselves have been traced, and the sensations therefore partly explained, by the identification of sense-organs and nerves leading from them to the brain--most notably the parts of the eye, the formation of images on the retina, and the connection between it and the optic nerve." I would also add two further points: if experience was strictly immaterial, it would seem to me to that thoughts would not be so dependent on the objects that we perceive to exist externally to us, but rather have more original content that has no correlation to the "outside" world. There also seems to be a regularity in the operation of these so-called external objects that abstract thoughts don't seem to follow; that is, our train of thoughts are often incoherent, jumping to and fro from subject to subject, lacking a direction and structure that the "external" world possesses. So what would explain this difference from an immaterial point of view?

I like the idea of property dualism but until I feel I have a better grip on all the issues involved and different approaches at solving them, I'm content with the position of agnosticism, but leaning towards the computational theory of mind (as far as I understand, that can be held in consistence with property dualism as well?).

[bennyboy]

I like the idea of property dualism but until I feel I have a better grip on all the issues involved and different approaches at solving them, I'm content with the position of agnosticism, but leaning towards the computational theory of mind (as far as I understand, that can be held in consistence with property dualism as well?).

Yes, you'll see that I'm a self-declared agnostic as well. But let me ask you this-- in a computational theory of mind, what is being "computed"? It seems to me you'd need metainformation-- i.e. information about your information, to arrive at an answer. But we don't have access to that.

Therefore, in a computational model, I'd argue that the simplest view is still an idealistic one, with a conflation between "idea" and "information." Or, to be cheeky, you could say our universe is "informationalist." Ultimately, it doesn't really matter if our information comes from an objective reality, or the Matrix, or the Mind of God: Matrixian spaceships still fly, Theomentalist (lol) bridges still stand, and "real" Bieber still sucks. But the information as it's presented to us, that is really the end of the line for our gnosticism.

[Mudhammam]

Yes, you'll see that I'm a self-declared agnostic as well. But let me ask you this-- in a computational theory of mind, what is being "computed"? It seems to me you'd need metainformation-- i.e. information about your information, to arrive at an answer. But we don't have access to that.

To answer off the cuff and without going into great depth at the moment, I guess I would consider the external objects of the material world around me as providing all the content that my brain receives and "computes" into the images and concepts which make thought, but more essentially, survival possible. Does that even follow from your question? (It's still quite early in the morning over here).

Also, if by metainformation you mean something like Kant's twelve categories, well, then I'll just have to hold my tongue until I get around to reading Schopenhauer. :-) I've been told that he discarded all of those except one... causality.

[bennyboy]

To answer off the cuff and without going into great depth at the moment, I guess I would consider the external objects of the material world around me as providing all the content that my brain receives and "computes" into the images and concepts which make thought, but more essentially, survival possible. Does that even follow from your question? (It's still quite early in the morning over here).

Also, if by metainformation you mean something like Kant's twelve categories, well, then I'll just have to hold my tongue until I get around to reading Schopenhauer. :-) I've been told that he discarded all of those except one... causality.

By metainformation, I mean information about information: where, exactly, does it come from? Why does it exist? What, if anything, does it "really" represent? Is it really just photons entering the eye in a physically monist universe, or is the entire physical universe the idealization of raw information that itself is not part of such a framework?

---

To answer off the cuff and without going into great depth at the moment, I guess I would consider the external objects of the material world around me as providing all the content that my brain receives and "computes" into the images and concepts which make thought, but more essentially, survival possible. Does that even follow from your question? (It's still quite early in the morning over here).

It follows just fine. It means that you have accepted that the physical universe exists as something beyond experience, concept or idea, and that our perceptions are representations of information from that universe. So you must be either a physical monist or a dualist, but cannot be an idealist.