Seeing red

[bennyboy]

So, in your world, an idea is no-thing, and reality is made up of no-things.  Very illuminating.

And in your totally material world view, material means math functions. Deepity. Cuz I always thought stuff was. . . you know. . . stuff. As in, occupying space, having form, and being unambiguously observable. But if "material" means "math functions and other abstract ideas," then I guess I'll be happy to drop the word Idealist and be a materialist. . . because apparently you've just taken Idealism and given it a new label.

I don't think you know what the word etymological means.  Our understanding of the world consists of ideas.  You are taking this brute fact and using it as a shield against knowledge.  But you do so at a cost, and that cost consists in making your model of the world a useless one.  I may have a tough time explaining self-awareness but so what?  A difficult problem does not equal an insolvable problem.  The evidence from science and medicine is that the mind behaves consistent with it being an object like any other.  Complex in its action, but material.  Your preference for the notion of a world of ideas is nothing more than a strategic retreat from the question of how your mind works.  That materialism explains phenomena outside of mind makes you willing to accept mechanistic explanations otherwise.  Because you personally can't comprehend how ideas can be things, you recoil into a position of epistemic insularity.  You can't solve the problem of consciousness, so you assert that it cannot be solved.  And you retreat into a nest of words that mean nothing, and explain less.

That's quite the string of projections and strawmen you have there. Pray tell me more about who I am and what I think.

Well that's vague.  It's also the resort of the religious.  Ideas are immaterial.  So they really are no-thing.  What makes you think ideas are immaterial?

Because you can't see them, touch them or measure them. What does immaterial mean to you?

[The Grand Nudger]

And in your totally material world view, material means math functions.

We use math to describe material interactions. It's a useful and precise language...it helps us avoid common pitfalls of natural language, such as equivocation or interpretation.

Deepity.  Cuz I always thought stuff was. . . you know. . . stuff.  

Stuff -is- stuff, and that's even less than a tautology, yes.

As in, occupying space, having form, and being unambiguously observable.  But if "material" means "math functions and other abstract ideas," then I guess I'll be happy to drop the word Idealist and be a materialist. . . because apparently you've just taken Idealism and given it a new label.

The -many- problems with this statement have been pointed out to you at length, but they hardly merit airing out in context of the conversation.  

Yes, the material world fits the description for stuff that materialists use, hardly surprising since they're the ones coming up with those descriptions... and materialists don't think that stuff is made of math.  

You have just attempted, and failed, a TQ defense of a self refuting idea. You're compounding confusion with misery at this point.

[bennyboy]

And in your totally material world view, material means math functions.

We use math to describe material interactions.  It's a useful and precise language...it helps us avoid common pitfalls of natural language, such as equivocation or interpretation.

That's not what Jörmungandr said:

Materialism is a reduction of all phenomenon to a small set of mathematical principles, with some metaphysics thrown in for good measure.

Maybe this was just an imprecise description, because it's not that different than my past descriptions of Idealism: that 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. I believe that under the hood, you won't find anything BUT math and other abstracts. Do you believe that the math, at the most essential level of reality, is still descriptive of things?

[emjay]

So in other words, while accepting whatever science may learn about the content and processing that goes on in the brain (the physical in my case, the 'out there' in yours - physical/Matrix/BIJ etc), you choose to give up on the qualia question because there's no way of knowing whether it comes from a physical universe or the Matrix etc?

No matter what position you take, you have to take something as a brute fact.  Rhythm takes as his brute fact the existence of a coherent physical reality, with mind as a byproduct of particular phenomena within it.  I take as brute fact only the existence of my mind (I think therefore I am), and the content of my experience (things I can touch and see), but hold in high suspicion any interpretation that goes beyond experience.  Rhythm will point to brains, and bullets to brains, to prove that mind is a byproduct of brain function.  I'll point to the fact that 0% of what we know is known except as an experience, even watching someone get their head blown off halfway through singing Happy Birthday.

As it stands then, I take the same thing as brute fact as Rhythm, but I understand your point here as well, that the only way we know anything is through experience. But to be honest I can't understand how you can 'subsume' materialism either, given that where theories of psychology and neuroscience are concerned, they directly affect the content and nature of your experience - you can rely on them to make predictions about your experience, but they rely on materialistic assumptions. I know you say later that they don't have anything to say about the actual existence of subjective experience - why or how it exists - but nonetheless they still do have a lot to say about what you experience given that you can experience. It seems to me that if you accept the findings of materialistic theories of psychology and neuroscience - to whatever extent you do - then you have to be relying on materialism to some extent, and therefore to deny materialism seems like circular logic. Unless you're saying that everything that materialism sees as a thing is in fact an idea? But if that is the case, why would those ideas exhibit exactly the same relationships and coherency as the materialistic universe? Why would they be as if it was a materialistic universe? eg that certain ideas are only found in certain places in 'idea space'... like you'd have to look in a brain idea before you could see a neuron idea etc?

That's why in my PM I talk about ambiguism.  People will argue until their blue in the face about yin or yang, but may never be comfortable enough with paradox or ambiguity to accept the mindfuck that would be yinyang.  (I use these terms not representing any religious or spiritual idea, but just the idea that opposites are interconnected and possibly indistinguishable)

As I said, I'm not ready for that mindfuck yet

Admittedly I think I understand you better for this post, and see where that ambiguity lies... not in choosing to learn about the mind and consciousness - which you still do - but rather in the question of how the qualia is produced; I could take your stance and happily continue to study the brain and the mind, but just stop asking about how the qualia is produced? Is that what you mean?

It's important to differentiate between content and existence.  In the context of human life, and with science and knowledge of brains, throwing all that out would be counterproductive.  Obviously, drugs or brain damage will affect the way one experiences.  In looking at why there IS a mind, whatever its form or content, rather than a lack of mind, then one must ask-- why would things, which are objects, develop a subjective perspective?  What is it about the universe that allows this even to be possible?

I don't know. Whichever way you look there's what you refer to as the 'bridge problem' - or at least from a materialistic viewpoint there is, which I think is your point. But speaking from my materialistic viewpoint, limited as I know it is, in the past I've wondered if consciousness could provide something that neurons couldn't do and in that sense was tapped into by the brain... a new form of processing that couldn't be accomplished with neural networks and which was therefore like a black box but that suffers from the bridge problem big time so I had to discard the notion that consciousness could be anything more than a mirror or a story that we can do nothing but watch unfold, even though it feels like we're making choices etc - part of the illusion. In other words it couldn't feed back or influence the underlying system. My current position still suffers from the bridge problem but it feels less of a problem because there is somehow a kind of intervening layer in ironically something a lot like 'idea space' Well information space or abstraction space... unless they are not intervening layers but actual perception. The point is the neural network or system produces abstractions or information that make sense at the functional and structural level, and to me at least, fit in with what is experienced in consciousness. For instance, as I've said before, there are line detector neurons for instance, and there is hierarchical abstraction going on in the visual cortex to build complex representations out of simpler representations. And then you see the fruits of all of that in consciousness. The bridge problem is still there but that very strong correlation between abstractions understood at a functional/structural level and actual experience is something I can't ignore.

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
3) Something that is paradoxically neither but both of those things

If I have to choose a monism, I'd choose the 2nd, since Physical monism does such a piss-poor job of explaining the existence of mind, but Idealism has no problem accepting that some ideas are form, change over time, have properties, etc.

QM is interesting, because it hints (at least to me) that paradox itself may be part of the fabric of the universe: that things which cannot possibly be mind are mind and vice versa: a kind of universal mind-stuff.  And why not?  We've gotten over light being a wave, a particle, a thing, and an unresolved wave function; it is all of those, and somehow none of them, at the same time.  We've accepted the idea that the solid-seeming desk in front of me is 99.9999999999% empty space, and that even the .0000000001% is made of "stuff" that cannot really be said to have a well-defined volume or shape, even hypothetically, but is really more of a mathematical function.

Yes, QM is the second mindfuck The one I remember most is the black box with a mirror inside and with slits for entry and exit of a photon... fire it in, it reflects off the mirror and comes out the other slit. But then take away the mirror and do the same thing and sometimes it still comes out, with at least the book I was reading suggesting that it takes any path, even if it was like spaghetti junction. So what with photons that can take any path through space, and particles popping up and disappearing all over the place etc it is very interesting and very paradoxical. I do find what you're saying here compelling, and this, more than any other argument, makes me wonder about idealism.

[bennyboy]

But to be honest I can't understand how you can 'subsume' materialism either, given that where theories of psychology and neuroscience are concerned, they directly affect the content and nature of your experience - you can rely on them to make predictions about your experience, but they rely on materialistic assumptions.

They rely on objective assumptions more than material ones-- that is, that there is something outside your own mind, and that you are interacting with it. However, let's say we're in the Matrix or the Mind of God. Given that our experiences are consistent, and that there are some experiences which are so consistent across time that we consider them to represent "objects," would this now be a material universe, or wouldn't it?

I'd argue that however compelling our experiences are, without knowing where they come from or why, Matrix denizens or Mind of God denizens would infer from experiential consistency that there was a "material" reality, though really there is not guaranteed to be anything of the sort. So while their beliefs represent a pragmatic organization of their experiences, they are STILL ideas, as is everything they experience.

I know you say later that they don't have anything to say about the actual existence of subjective experience - why or how it exists - but nonetheless they still do have a lot to say about what you experience given that you can experience. It seems to me that if you accept the findings of materialistic theories of psychology and neuroscience - to whatever extent you do - then you have to be relying on materialism to some extent, and therefore to deny materialism seems like circular logic.

Not really. The brain, a microscope, an fMRI machine. . . they are all so far as any of us knows, just highly consistent experiences. Whatever is "out there" or not, it's not really disputed by anyone, even the staunchest materialist, that the universe at the point of experience is a mental representation. So while you might feel that you're using things to establish rules about the physical universe, when you forget that the use of things is ALWAYS an experience, you are missing out on the real circle-- using mind to establish a system by which to validate its own source. This is a nasty circle indeed, not really that different than that of the Bible and God mutually establishing each other's veracity.

[quote]


Unless you're saying that everything that materialism sees as a thing is in fact an idea? But if that is the case, why would those ideas exhibit exactly the same relationships and coherency as the materialistic universe? Why would they be as if it was a materialistic universe? eg that certain ideas are only found in certain places in 'idea space'... like you'd have to look in a brain idea before you could see a neuron idea etc?


--edit--
Your next paragraph was pretty thick for me. I want to reserve some time to fully read and understand it later.

[The Grand Nudger]

QM is thoroughly and necessarily materialistic. If it suggests or leads a person to idealism, they haven't understood QM. A honeycomb is alot of empty space as well, and it doesn't seem to elicit the same sort of wonder as the "empty" desk.

[bennyboy]

QM is thoroughly and necessarily materialistic.  If it suggests or leads a person to idealism, they haven't understood QM. A honeycomb is alot of empty space as well, and it doesn't seem to elicit the same sort of wonder as the "empty" desk.

No, ideas ABOUT QM are thoroughly materialistic, in that they are descended from a materialistic lineage.  You don't get to say that "x" is materialistic in substance, because the issue is whether ANYTHING is, and therefore you are begging the question.

[emjay]

QM is thoroughly and necessarily materialistic. If it suggests or leads a person to idealism, they haven't understood QM. A honeycomb is alot of empty space as well, and it doesn't seem to elicit the same sort of wonder as the "empty" desk.

You can't blame me for that, given that even the experts say along the lines of 'if you think you understand QM, you're not reading it right' I've read a few books on it, that's all. Is it a major interest of yours? Are you well versed in it?

[bennyboy]

Yes, QM is the second mindfuck The one I remember most is the black box with a mirror inside and with slits for entry and exit of a photon... fire it in, it reflects off the mirror and comes out the other slit. But then take away the mirror and do the same thing and sometimes it still comes out, with at least the book I was reading suggesting that it takes any path, even if it was like spaghetti junction. So what with photons that can take any path through space, and particles popping up and disappearing all over the place etc it is very interesting and very paradoxical. I do find what you're saying here compelling, and this, more than any other argument, makes me wonder about idealism.

Yep. Rhythm will pull out his most modern definition of materialism, and insist it's all stuff. But single particles that magically take multiple paths, that cannot be mapped onto 3d space, that cannot be said to have a non-zero volume in any precise sense, are pretty seriously abusing the term "material."

I have the feeling if reality is found to be billions of magic fairies dancing on the heads of pins, the materialists will say, "When MODERN scientists talk about material, they are of course talking about magic fairies. Therefore, materialism is right."

[The Grand Nudger]

Do those rules concern you now?  I was unaware.  Perhaps then, you shouldn't mangle them..because you're seeing boogeymen where they are not.  

OFC QM is an idea.  The idea of the thing is not the thing, basic logic.   It remains an idea that describes a thoroughly and necessarily materialistic "x".    You wish to "subsume" QM like you "subsumed" gears and pistons.  It won't work, for the same reason as before.

You had a fucking phycisist disabuse you of your notions concerning particles last we talked on this subject, and yet here they are again. 

You don't trust logic, and you don't trust science, you just don't realize it. You've got this pernicious idea at the core of your POV and it's showing itself to be more resilient than either of those things can hope to tarnish.